The Three-Bet

The term “three-bet” (and “four-bet” and so on) has become especially common in poker these days, although that development is relatively recent. In fact, I don’t really remember people using the phrase that much even five years ago.

Generally speaking, people say “three-bet” when referring to a reraise that happens before the flop in hold’em. (Occasionally you’ll hear some use the term when talking about post-flop action, though not that often.) In other words, the big blind is the first forced bet, the first raise is a second bet (although that initial raise is never, ever called a “two-bet”), then the first reraise becomes a “three-bet.”

I remember a few years ago reading some discussion about the term, probably inspired by its having first become somewhat popular and a person on a forum wondering about its origin. I recall the explanation for the term connected it to fixed-limit hold’em where the first raise equals two bets, the next equals three, and so on. Even though the raises in no-limit hold’em aren’t of fixed amounts, the terminology was borrowed and used in the same way to describe successive raises/reraises.

I can’t recall the first time I heard the term, but I remember being a little confused by it initially. It’s really not obvious what a “three-bet” means if you’ve never heard the term before, but nowadays almost everyone says “he three-bet” rather than “he reraised” when discussing preflop play. I guess I’ve become conscious of the term’s less-than-obvious meaning thanks to working with Learn.PokerNews and thinking more specifically about new and beginning players who perhaps aren’t up on all of the terminology just yet.

In any event, now everyone uses the term, and in fact it seems almost weird not to. It is so common of a term there’s a clothing line named after it. PokerListings even calls its daily recap of three big stories of the day the “Daily 3-bet.”

I brought the subject up with a friend today and we speculated that the increased use of the term likely coincided with more adventurous preflop betting -- that is, with more and more three-bets actually occurring before the flop. And with all of the “light” reraising and “clicking back” (i.e., raising/reraising the minimum) becoming popular, that has given even more impetus to people using “three-bet,” “four-bet,” and so on when talking about preflop action.

It is helpful, actually, as a kind of shorthand to say “he five-bet shoved” as a way of quickly explaining how many reraises preceded the all-in bet. Or to distinguish between three-betting and four-betting (and five-betting, etc.) when discussing preflop strategy and putting players on ranges and so forth.

Still, it’s a curious term, and one that continues to have a kind of odd disconnect for me. After all, the “three-bet” is the second action (when speaking of preflop betting). Even though I understand the term, there’s a strangeness to it that I’m also always aware of when I hear or read it.

Not Guilty

This morning was different. I was in court. No shinola!

Back in early January I was pulled over for having failed to renew my license plate. I was given a court date about six weeks later, and today was the day. I could have just paid the fine plus court costs, but the officer suggested I go in and as long as I had renewed in the meantime it was possible I might get it dismissed.

Turned out his advice was correct, and I felt like I began the day in the black after avoiding having to drop a couple of hundy for my mistake.

I was one of about three dozen who had shown up to be there when the door opened on traffic court. In fact I got there about 20 minutes early and so was among the first in line. Not really up on exactly how it would go, I spent the time letting my imagination wander through vague, ill-informed possibilities.

The theme of these musings was of course finding ways to mitigate my guilt. I had excuses for forgetting to renew my license plate, of course. I won’t rehearse them here -- just fill in the blanks with your own excuses for why you might forget something similar. And underpinning all of these explanations was my history of never having forgotten to renew my license plate on time before.

Even as I sat there working out this staggeringly long list of mitigating circumstances, I was laughing at myself at the futility of such thoughts. I was most certainly guilty of the violation described on the sheet of paper the officer had given to me. And while I didn’t know whether or not I’d be made to pay the amount listed at the bottom of it, I knew this vain checklist I was building as a kind of theoretical defense wasn’t going to matter one way or the other.

This instinct to defend oneself comes so naturally, it’s almost startling to become conscious of that fact in a setting such as the one I was in this morning. We are always thinking to ourselves variations of the same idea, over and over in different ways and with different applications...

I’m not guilty.

We’re all familiar with that reflex in poker, often coming after losing but sometimes after winning, too. I’m not guilty of making a bad play. I had to make that call or bet or raise or fold. My opponent played his hand badly, leading to the hand’s outcome. And so on.

Better players are able to prevent such self-defensive recasting of reality from affecting their play, or even to allow such thoughts to develop at all. Meanwhile I’d venture the great majority of us can’t help ourselves, and in truth we’d all like to believe no one can judge us -- can really judge us -- like we can ourselves.

Duly humbled by my court appearance, I drove home flawlessly, stopping at every sign and light, observing speed limits and maintaining safe distances from others, steering and signaling like the champion vehicle operator I am.

Guilty? Perhaps... of being awesome.

Picking Your Spots, Finding Your Targets

Just wanted to post a short one today pointing to a new piece over on Learn.PokerNews by Nate Meyvis, co-host of the great Thinking Poker podcast with Andrew Brokos. Am feeling pretty good about the quality of contributors we’ve gotten over at Learn over the last couple of months, and Nate again brings some great ideas and good writing to help up the overall quality over there.

In his article titled “Seven Attention Targets for Beginning Poker Players,” Nate points out how it’s obviously good to try to pay attention at the tables -- a much-repeated maxim we’ve all heard -- but it’s also important (or more so) to be paying attention in ways that are actually constructive. That is to say, following the action and not “checking out” mentally when not involved in a hand is all well and good, but you should also be looking for some specific actions and behaviors, too, as you gather information about your opponents.

The list of “attention targets” Nate provides includes a few I hadn’t really considered before. Like I say check it out, and maybe click around a little, too, just to see what else has been happening over on the site. Still somewhat in “building” mode over there (and I expect will be for a while), but there have been several good contributions there already and I’m optimistic about what’s to come.

I’ve mentioned before here how the Learn site -- directed primarily toward newer players although also meant to be of value, too, to those with some experience -- has gotten me thinking more and more frequently about getting started with poker and the many questions I had then, as well as all of the things that made the game seem so fascinating and appealing to play, read and talk about, and watch.

Nate’s topic reminded me how in a lot of cases my own study of the game during those early days was without any real focus, nor was it even conducted with any specific goal in mind. Not usually, anyway. What I mean is I would read and watch everything without much idea how to discriminate between information that was genuinely useful or content that was without much value at all. Kind of like when you are a kid and first start recognizing songs on the radio -- you pretty much liked them all, right?

As my understanding of the game grew, so, too, did my ability to be more selective about strategy advice and to get an idea of what worked and what didn’t, or what was original and what wasn’t. I guess on one level it was good to have that open mind at the start that didn’t automatically refuse certain types of content based on received prejudices. But after a while it became apparent that not everything written about how to play poker was necessarily helpful.

I guess I’m alluding to at least three stages of learning that likely happen for most players -- an initial one in which we start playing without even thinking about strategy or the need to study, a second stage in which we get introduced to studying and want to take in everything, and a third in which we’ve learned enough to begin to differentiate between different types of study and determine which are the most useful to us.

Nate, I think, is addressing those who are moving into that third stage who know it’s good to pay attention -- and want to do so -- but are still working out where it is best to focus that attention. Like I say, check out his list of “attention targets” and see if one or more of them prove useful to you.

The Desire for Results

Was listening to The Dan Le Batard Show last Friday for a short while and caught a brief visit by NBA Hall of Famer and commentator Charles Barkley.

Barkley was only on for just a few minutes. While I had missed the discussion that just preceded his arrival, apparently Le Batard and his co-host had been talking about Robert Horry, the power forward who had a solid, long career who happened to be on seven different teams that won NBA championships -- two with Houston (1994-1995), three with the L.A. Lakers (2000-2002), and two more with San Antonio (2005, 2008). (That is Horry pictured after winning his seventh title.)

The discussion had been focusing on Horry’s seven rings and the suggestion that players who perhaps had more individual accomplishments on the court but no titles might wish to swap careers with Horry. Barkley -- one of many great NBA players who never won a championship -- was then invited on to comment on the topic, primarily because Horry himself had made an interesting statement that he would in fact rather have had Barkley’s career.

I don’t want to get into comparing the two players’ careers, but rather I just wished to share something Barkley said during his comment, which reminded me a little of the oft-discussed topic of being “results oriented” in poker.

“Charles, if I give you Robert Horry’s career... seven championships... [would] you trade it for yours?” asked Le Batard of Barkley.

“I don’t look at it like that,” Barkley began. “I tell all of these guys, basketball is what you do, not who you are. I mean, to be honest with you, I think the championships are more for the fans.... I wanted to win for the fans of Philadelphia and for the fans of Phoenix. But I still tell these guys ‘Don’t you ever let these people tell you basketball dictates what you think about yourself as a person. It’s what you do, it ain’t who you are.’”

There were a couple of ideas overlapping in Barkley’s comment, I believe, one of which was this broader statement about self-worth and not getting caught up others’ standards of greatness when considering your own accomplishments.

The more specific point, though, was to respond in an indirect way to the suggestion that winning a championship represented a goal that transcended all others in sports. Perhaps never winning a title has encouraged Barkley to want to speak of doing so as only part of the picture for NBA players, not the entire picture. In any case, it struck me as interesting to hear him deliberately contradict the much-repeated mantra in sports that winning is all.

Also intriguing (to me) is this idea Barkley tosses out that “the championships are more for the fans” than for the players. There I think Barkley isn’t necessarily correct, as it’s obvious most players, coaches, owners and front office folks find championships especially important. But I realized when hearing him make that point that it evoked pretty strongly those discussions about being “results oriented” you often hear in poker.

One way of taking Barkley’s statement is to regard it as a claim that as a player he recognizes things about the game that the fans only partly know about or don’t understand at all. There are lots of ways of measuring one’s success as a player and teammate, says Barkley, that fans don’t necessarily appreciate, and in fact the winning of championships tends to eclipse a lot of those other evaluative measures for the fans when it comes to judging players and/or teams.

In other words, fans are (in a way) results oriented. (Which is absolutely fine, I think Barkley is saying.) Players, meanwhile, know better than strictly to judge an individual’s career based on how many titles he won.

Meanwhile in poker the complaint about people being “results oriented” usually comes from a similar angle, with the more experienced (or skilled) player being the one pointing out how less accomplished players or observers with little understanding of poker strategy are too easily swayed by outcome of a hand to realize it doesn’t always accurately reflect the skill with which it was played.

In poker, too, there are different ways to measure players’ worth than simply on the basis of their results. But again (to further the analogy suggested by Barkley’s comment), it takes a keener understanding of the game to appreciate that fact. (Here, I think, the criticism also often implies that those who make the mistake of judging players solely by results should learn more about poker and correct their ways.)

Setting all of this aside, though, it’s funny how the very fact that results do signify so heavily in poker and in sports is in fact a chief appeal of both. When one team wins and another loses -- or when one player wins a poker hand and another loses -- we have something very concrete and unambiguous to help us define the experience of playing or watching. We have “closure” (of a kind). So much of life isn’t so definite, with “winners” and “losers” and the whole idea of “results” being much, much more elusive.

It’s no wonder we get carried away with assigning importance to results in the games we play and watch. Results are something the games give us, something we desire, and something we have immense trouble finding elsewhere.

The Post-Main Event Study Continues

A little bit pokered out here so am going to try to keep this end-of-week post on the short side. Still following with interest a lot of the post-Main Event discussion continuing to circle about.

The strategy debates are especially interesting, and I think part of what makes the WSOP Main Event fun to watch. Who played the best? Who was the least impressive? Who was the most lucky cardwise? Who was least?

The evidence with which to form such opinions is fairly comprehensive, although not entirely so. After all, we know what some of the players had on all of the hands, but not all of them.

Speaking of, I had a chance today to go back over my post from a couple of days ago -- “2013 WSOP Main Event Final Table Hole Cards (Complete)” -- and fill a couple of gaps here and there, meaning right now it’s as complete a record as it gets with regard to players’ hole cards as they were shown during the broadcasts on ESPN and ESPN2. (And in some cases, there might have been errors even there, as the showing of the cards wasn’t always perfectly executed.)

Spectators of other sports engage in debates, too, but in poker just about everyone who does so is usually also a player. There’s an interesting overlap, then, in the experiences of players and spectators, which makes can the post-game stuff even more involving.

That’s not to say most who opine about how the players performed at this year’s WSOP Main Event have ever experienced anything close to the pressure and uniqueness of that particular experience. But most have faced analogous challenges at the tables and thus can address the decision-making with a least some empathy and even understanding than is necessarily the case when, say, a non-football player comments on a football game.

I find watching the WSOP Main Event final table educational, much more so than is the case with the edited, packaged shows leading up to the November Nine, although those, too, can occasionally provide some momentary insights. I also find these post-Main Event discussions enlightening, too.

In fact it doesn’t matter too much how knowledgeable about poker the discussants are, really, because even those debates can reveal certain things about how players think about the game. A particular exchange may not explain much at all about what the players themselves were up to in a given hand, but it still communicates something about how those engaging in the discussion view certain situations and decisions.

Maybe it’s the academic in me, relishing the questions and further inquiry and not being bothered by a lack of definitive conclusions about the “text” presented to us by the WSOP Main Event final table. Here’s to the continued annotations upon it!

(Groovy final table pic above by Joe Giron for PokerNews.)

If You Never Go All In, You Cannot Lose

“Tournaments are like plus-EV lottery tickets... or in some cases, minus-EV lottery tickets.”

That was an idea tossed out by Phil Laak this week while helping with the commentary on the WSOP Europe live stream. Kind of an interesting observation, I thought, about tournament poker that highlighted how much luck is involved in winning a tourney while also noting that some players can via their skills and tourney know-how lessen that chance element -- or, with a lack of such know-how, increase it.

During some of the breaks this week on the WSOPE stream they’ve been showing clips from last year’s WSOPE Main Event final table won by Phil Hellmuth. Saw the finale again a little earlier today, including Hellmuth’s coming over to the rail after winning and saying something about having been all in and at risk only a single time throughout the entire tourney.

We take him at his word, I suppose, but in truth I think that is one statistic Hellmuth can be counted on to keep track of as he plays -- namely, the number of times he’s been all in and at risk in a tournament. He’s famously pronounced in the past with pride his ability to avoid such spots in tourneys. Of course it is an inarguable truism that if you never go all in versus a player with more chips, you cannot possibly be eliminated. (Easier said than done.)

Was kind of setting those two ideas beside each other today while watching what has turned out to be a long heads-up battle between Fabrice Soulier and Adrian Mateos, thinking about how that strategy of avoiding all-ins -- when employed in conjunction with a lot of other poker skills, of course -- can work to improve ones chances in the tourney “lottery.”

Especially in a relatively small field tourney like the WSOPE Main Event usually is -- Hellmuth topped a field of 420 last year; there were 375 entered this time -- the chances of making one’s way all of the way through it without being at risk more than once is better than is the case, say, in the WSOP Main Event where I have to imagine all nine of those who made this year’s final table were at risk somewhere along the way, perhaps more than once. Would be interesting to sort that out regarding this year’s November Nine (if possible).

In any event, it’s interesting to think how playing a tournament is on one level a willing acceptance of risk (especially from the perspective of a cash game player), a primary strategy of the tournament itself is to avoid risk.

Have a good weekend all. And whatever you do, manage your risk appropriately.

On What Is Possible; or, By Nearly Two Feet

Poker players are familiar with how the game often fools us with regard to our own abilities. The game’s not insignificant chance element can confuse even the most level-headed when it comes to understanding what we’ve accomplished (or failed to accomplish) when we play. Indeed, a big part of poker is the way it forces us to think about how we measure ourselves -- both what we’re capable of, and what we’ve ultimately done.

Yesterday I ended up spending some time thinking along these lines -- i.e., with regard to human psychology and ideas about what humans are capable of doing -- though the cause and context of these musings weren’t poker-related, but rather brought on by something else.

I ran across a reference to the fact that the 45th anniversary of Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s “black power salute” on the podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City had come on Wednesday.

That got me reading around about the event and before long I was reading about a 2008 documentary titled Salute. The film tells the story of the event while also bringing to the foreground the role played by the other person standing on the podium, the Australian sprinter Peter Norman, who took silver while Smith won gold and Carlos bronze. Discovering the film streaming on Netflix, I took a look.

Having followed the battle over racial equality in the U.S. while also witnessing similar strife in his own country, Norman supported the American sprinters’ protest. Like Smith and Carlos, Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights button on the dais. The OPHR was an organization founded by the sociologist Harry Edwards in order to protest racial segregation in the U.S., and had even proposed and backed an ultimately unrealized plan for black athletes to boycott the ’68 games.

Norman’s wearing of the button was an unambiguous indication of his support for what many regarded as an outrageously defiant act made by the men standing behind him during the playing of the American national anthem. As the film shows, Norman’s support wasn’t idly given, but the product of his own well-nurtured beliefs in human rights and equality. Salute also explains how like Smith and Carlos, Norman suffered repercussions for action that day and for his statements afterwards in support of the Americans’ protest.

The film is fairly riveting, including lots of primary footage as well as lengthy contributions from all three runners. It was made by Norman’s nephew, and there might be a moment or two where that fact might enter into one’s thinking during the uninterrupted championing of the Australian runner.

But Peter Norman is so unassuming and modest in the film -- and especially persuasive when even-handedly explaining his unwavering humanitarian beliefs -- it’s hard not to come away liking him a lot, and perhaps even being inspired, too. (Norman died in 2006.)

After the film was over, I found myself going back to a favorite sports moment of mine, Bob Beamon’s electrifying world-record long jump at Mexico City that happened two days after the protest -- i.e., 45 years ago today. The protest during the 200-meter medals ceremony was shocking to many, for a variety of reasons. But Beamon leaping 29 feet, 2½ inches was just plain staggering.

I remember as a kid being fascinated with the picture of Beamon hanging in the air in The Guinness Book of World Records, knees up around his chest, arms extended like wings. I love watching YouTube clips of the jump, and don’t think I’ll ever tire of doing so. He bounds through space, lands and immediately springs back up out of the dirt and jumps again. And again. Then jogs around in a way that almost looks like he’s dancing a little.

He has no clue what he’s done.

Afterward Beamon explained “it felt like a regular jump,” although he knew it was good and perhaps even a record-breaker. But it was hardly a regular jump.

When Ralph Boston had broken the 25-year-old record in 1960, his 26’11” jump set a new standard by a couple of inches. The record had then literally inched upward over the next several years, with Boston and Igor Ter-Ovanesyan having each made it to 27’4½” by 1967.

Now Beamon had shattered the record... by nearly two feet!

It took several minutes to measure the jump, as Beamon had gone farther than the optical measuring equipment was set up to record. Then when a figure of “8.90” was finally posted on the scoreboard (representing meters), Beamon still didn’t know immediately what that meant as far as feet and inches went.

Boston -- the former record holder, 1960 long jump gold medalist, and now Beamon’s teammate and coach -- was the one who explained to him what he’d done.

“You really put it all together,” Boston said to him as he explained he’d gone 29’2½”.

I said the jump was staggering. On learning how far he’d gone, Beamon himself actually staggered, falling dramatically to the track as he was momentarily overcome with emotion.

Sure, there was wind and altitude in Mexico City. But Beamon still jumped two-and-a-half feet farther than anyone else would at those games. And even though his record was eventually topped in 1991 by Mike Powell (who went two inches farther), Beamon’s leap nonetheless remains atop most lists as the most stunning moment in sports history.

Watching Salute and thinking about how incredibly tense the world and the U.S. was during that incredible year of 1968, then moving over to the YouTube clips of Beamon, I couldn’t help but formulate a vague thesis that some of Beamon’s extra adrenaline had come from the charged atmosphere surrounding him as he leapt through the air.

I guess both the story of Smith, Carlos, and Norman as well as that of Beamon’s leap highlight ideas about human achievement and how it is possible for us to do things we might believe are beyond our capabilities.

Passive, Not Passing

My Carolina Panthers began their season Sunday with a game that greatly resembled many of those played during last year’s disappointing 7-9 campaign. Leading 7-6 to begin the fourth quarter versus the Seattle Seahawks, they gave up a long TD pass with about 10 minutes to go to relinquish the advantage, then were unable to score subsequently and lost.

Carolina had several games last year go similarly, wherein they enjoyed fourth quarter leads before ultimately losing, sometimes in excruciating fashion for their fans. Among those games was one against the Atlanta Falcons that featured what ultimately became one of the more scrutinized decisions of the year by embattled head coach Ron Rivera.

Ahead 28-27 with 1:45 left in the game, the Panthers faced a fourth-and-1 at the Falcons’ 45. Rather than go for it, Rivera chose to punt the ball. Atlanta then managed to fashion a quick drive during the last minute to kick the winning field goal and steal the win from Carolina.

Many focused on the decision by Rivera to punt the ball rather than go for the first down, arguing that a QB Cam Newton sneak had such a high chance of succeeding that it was worth attempting as a means to secure the win. The number-crunchers had great fun analyzing the decision, with the ESPN Stats & Information group coming up with a conclusion that just by punting the ball rather than running a play, the Panthers’ chance of winning the game instantly dropped from 83.5% to 57.4%.

From the perspective of a fan on the couch who doesn’t watch the game with a scientific calculator handy, we still understood what we were seeing. Rivera is a conservative coach, and the decision to punt was yet another example of his “playing it safe.” Such a mindset no doubt led to other instances of losing leads and ultimately games, with non-risky offensive play calling and the “prevent defense” often preventing the team from being able to put games away.

I didn’t get to see Sunday’s game versus Seattle, as I only got home from Barcelona after it had completed. But reading up on it afterwards, I learned the Panthers ran just 49 offensive plays the entire game, with caution being the rule throughout. In fact, Newton only threw three passes that went more than 10 yards in the air with the longest being 23 yards.

Carolina has a new offensive coordinator this year, Mike Shula, who replaces the much more wide-open and aggressive Rob Chudzinski who got hired as a head coach by the Cleveland Browns. Much of the fallout from Sunday’s loss is that Shula was much too conservative with the play calling, and coupled with Rivera’s already risk-averse mindset a formula was in place for yet another disappointing result.

By contrast, the Philadelphia Eagles with their new head coach Chip Kelly got a lot of attention last night with their fast-paced, no-huddle offense that incorporates a lot unique formations and higher-risk plays that go down the field. Thanks to some Washington turnovers, the Eagles actually ran an incredible 53 offensive plays in the first half last night -- more than the Panthers did for their entire game Sunday -- and finished with 77 plays run and a 33-27 victory.

The difference in approach between the Week 1 performances of the Panthers and Eagles reminds me a lot of the different between the passive poker player and his aggressive counterpart. For Panthers fans it has long felt as though our team holds itself back somehow, making it hard to earn much in the way of reward because the Panthers are so unwilling to take risks. This approach has characterized Rivera’s two-plus years thus far and was also often true of previous coach John Fox, although every now and then Fox would impress with the occasional out-of-the-box maneuver.

Like the predictable play of Mr. Tighty McTighterson in poker, the Panthers’ conservative style makes life easy for opponents who don’t have to worry about being caught off-guard by unconventional plays. Obviously in both poker and football there are times in which tight really is right, but such cannot be adopted as a permanent guideline if only because doing so allows one’s opponent to become much too comfortable when calling their own plays, and more often than not correct when guessing yours.

All of which is to say, once again it’s feeling like as far as Carolina is concerned, a min-cash (i.e., a wild card playoff berth and a first-round loss) is just about the absolute best we fans can hope for, unless the Panthers figure out how to add a little variety to their game.

On Winners and the Image of Poker

Was somewhat diverting last week to see how that $25K World Poker Tour World Championship played out and all of the surrounding hubbub concerning the deep runs of Erick Lindgren (the eventual runner-up) and David “Chino” Rheem (who won the sucker). I actually barely followed the tournament itself, to be honest, but I couldn’t help but overhear some of the hooting and hollering that resulted from that particular pair making it to heads-up.

Both obviously occupy interesting, similar places in the poker community at present. Lindgren’s story is perhaps somewhat better known thanks to a recent BLUFF feature discussing his significant gambling debts and even a stint in rehab, as well as the openness with which his many creditors have reported on sums owed.

Rheem’s story might be a little less well known, although that absurd-in-retrospect judgment placed upon him by Epic Poker’s Standards and Conduct Committee back in August 2011 broadcast his reputation for failing to pay back debts a little more widely than had been the case previously.

Recall how the EPL placed its first Main Event winner on probation “in order to effectively monitor the personal conduct of Mr. Rheem as he works to meet his personal financial obligations as required under the Players’ Code of Conduct”? Provides a chuckle today, that, as we now understand the extent of Epic Poker’s own significant financial obligations, and the way Federated Sports + Gaming weaseled out of those obligations by taking the bankruptcy route. Heck, some of us are still receiving legal notices helping us monitor that, too.

Both Lindgren and Rheem provide a lot of forum fodder, obviously, and their performances in the WPT World Championship created another occasion for further judgments, jokes, and conjecture about the players’ backing arrangments as well as the possibility of certain debts getting settled thanks to their large scores ($1,150,297 for Rheem and $650,275 for Lindgren).

My initial reaction upon seeing those two in the top spots heading into the final table and then learning they had finished 1-2 was to think back to what I was writing about a week ago regarding “The Shifting Place of the WPT World Championship.” There I was noting how the event has become much less central on the poker calendar over the last several years, both for players and for fans.

One idea I had in mind when writing that post that I didn’t really discuss explicitly was the way the $25K WPT World Championship seems to have evolved into an event reserved for only a select few -- namely, those who can afford and/or be backed for the $25K buy-in. Thus my initial thought about Lindgren and Rheem both playing and coming away with the top two prizes was to think how that result seemed to confirm such an idea that the tournament is kind of segregated from others on the schedule, something only for those like Lindgren and Rheem who even with their debts (or perhaps because of their debts, and, of course, their skills as players) can get backers and play.

But then I had a different thought about it all, partly inspired by the EPL’s fretting over its image once Rheem won that first Main Event. I thought about how curious it is that people place so much importance on who wins a poker tournament and the way the story of that person’s triumph might reflect on the game itself.

The NBA playoffs are currently down to four teams -- Miami, Indiana, San Antonio, and Memphis -- and some commentators are already talking about how the upcoming finals will probably fail to earn high television ratings because of the absence of “big market” teams (e.g., from New York or Los Angeles). But no one is worried about the state of the game itself being negatively affected by who ends up winning in the end. Or affected at all, really.

Meanwhile in poker, discussion about how winners are perceived both within the community and beyond often forms part of the post-tourney response, particularly in the case of the highest-profile tournaments.

Such discussion always surrounds the WSOP Main Event, of course. Remember the first year of the “November Nine” (2008), when all of the talk was about how the final nine featured a bunch of nobodies? Coincidentally -- or ironically -- it was Rheem alone who initially stood out among that group as the only “pro” among them, thus causing a lot of uncertainty about whether or not the whole delayed-final table experiment was ultimately going to be “good for poker” if no one knew the players involved.

Such has been the case ever since the WSOP Main Event started to attract notice by those outside of poker. I’m thinking of the end of The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez in which he reports on the 1981 WSOP. Alvarez describes one player, Bill Smith, drinking heavily throughout the tourney on his way to the final table, and quotes an unnamed poker pro worrying “If Bill ends up beating all of the nice guys, like Bobby [Baldwin], it’s going to set the image of poker back ten years.”

Smith ended up busting in fifth, leading Alvarez to say (with tongue clearly in cheek) that “the new, clean-living image of poker had been spared for another year.” That Stu Ungar would go on to win that year -- an amazing character, to be sure, though obviously not exactly a wholesome representative of the game -- perhaps provides yet another one of those hindsight-producing ironies here.

In any case, this whole idea of assigning such significance to the winner’s character or identity and its ultimate effect on the “image of poker” is curious to say the least. After all, the game attracts such a wide variety of people, and the very nature of the game -- with chance a significant element -- makes it impossible to exert any sort of control over who is going to win and thus be perceived as representing the game going forward.

Looking back, I’d say that was one of a few impossible goals the EPL was striving for during its brief, quixotic existence, i.e., to try to exert some sort of control over who the winners in poker were going to be, ensuring they be both skillful and of acceptable character. (Wrote a little on that idea way back in early 2011 when the EPL was first announced in a post titled “A League of Their Own.”) But in truth, it is foolhardy to suggest the fate of the game depends so heavily on outcomes.

So Rheem wins and Lindgren almost does. So what? Poker endures.

The Need to Be Naïve

Another busy day here at chez Shamus. Part of it was spent having a conversation with a friend discussing a poker-related writing project on which he’s presently working. The discussion was fun, interesting, and inspiring.

I thought I’d briefly share one idea that came up in that conversation, ripping it free from the context entirely to apply it in ways other than its original intention. It’s not too complicated of an idea, but one that I found myself thinking a lot about afterwards.

Was something someone had told him. Then he told me. And now I’m telling you.

Referring to this writing project of his -- on which he’s been working for quite some time -- he noted how another friend had humorously pointed out to him that he probably wouldn’t have even embarked on it in the first place if he hadn’t been somewhat naïve to have begun it.

Hearing him share that self-deprecating observation, I couldn’t help but think about how I, too, will sometimes think similarly about myself and various projects I’ve begun in the past -- some of which I have finished, some of which I have not.

Just yesterday I wrote a blog post in which I made a reference back to an earlier post written a couple of years ago. Rereading that old post led me to click around for a little while and read a few others. At one point I found myself lingering over one of them thinking to myself a couple of thoughts.

One was to marvel at the energy and enthusiasm I’d pumped into the post, so full of opinions being confidently delivered one after another.

The other was to think how naïve I was when I wrote it, and how knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have bothered.

I shared that story with my friend, adding that it seemed like there was probably some sort of “life truth” embedded in that observation about needing to be naïve in order to do most things that are worthwhile.

Think about the first time you sat down to play poker and how naïve you were. Think about how much more you know now about the game and how to play it. Then answer the following question...

If you knew then how much you didn’t know about poker, would you ever have played at all?

Best-of-Seven Series and Hold’em Hands

I am back to being more distracted by sports than by poker at the moment, with the NBA playoffs having earned a lot of my attention most evenings. Things are finally getting interesting there as many of these best-of-seven first round matchups have moved into the more exciting latter stages (e.g., games five, six, and perhaps some sevens to come).

I’m not an NHL fan, but I’m aware their playoffs have begun as well with the 16 teams making it to the hockey postseason similarly engaged in best-of-seven matchups as they start the lengthy process of determining a champion.

Was thinking today how the shifting dynamic of a best-of-seven tournament can resemble a Texas hold’em hand.

The first two games of a series -- both played at the higher-seeded team’s arena -- are a bit like preflop play. Having home court/ice could be said to be like playing from late position, where you are going to be able to operate a little more freely than otherwise and where expectations of winning are greater.

Then when a series reaches Game 3, that’s a bit like what happens after the flop. The first three community cards further define how players can proceed in a hand, much as the results of the first two games in a series can have influence on how teams perform going forward.

Game 4 continues in the same vein, sometimes ending with a sweep (like a bet-and-fold winning the hand right there), a team moving ahead 3-1 (assuming a position of strength going forward), or the series getting knotted 2-2 (as though flop betting -- or checking -- failed to establish one player as having the “lead” or appearing at an advantage to win the hand).

Game 5 is then very much like the turn. In both the playoffs and in poker, it’s the “pivotal” game or street. Again the series (or hand) can be over right here, but if it doesn’t, the team who wins Game 5 -- just like the player who plays the turn most effectively -- is often now in good position to end as winner.

I’d finish the analogy by referring to both Games 6 and 7 as the “river.” I’m more familiar with the NBA, where relatively few series actually get all of the way to Game 7. But however you look at it, both of those games are like the “endgame” portion of a poker hand where final, decisive moves are being made.

And I suppose when those series do get to a game 7, weird, unexpected things sometimes happen as well, much like a surprising river card that gives an underdog the win.

I’d explore all of this more thoroughly, but I think before watching tonight’s games I need instead to watch “The Adventures of Christopher Bosh in the Multiverse” again, starring Miami Heat forward and superhero from Zorg-nok Chris Bosh.

Hand for Hand, Play by Play, Frame by Frame

Have been spending the morning reading tweets from folks heading south to the Bahamas for the 10th annual PokerStars Caribbean Adventure that gets underway tomorrow. Have never made that trip myself, but would like to do so at least once some day. I know the Atlantis is insanely expensive, but I imagine it wouldn’t be so bad to spend part of the winter in such a place.

Lots of players are tweeting, but so are a number of my poker-reporting colleagues as the PCA will be getting extensive coverage. I was thinking this week again a little about how poker reporting has changed over recent years, as well as how all kinds of other reporting and/or analysis of other cultural events/products has evolved of late.

Back in October I wrote a post about reporting from the World Series of Poker Main Event in which I made reference to the stark contrast between the way tourneys were reported on a few decades ago and what we now experience. The big difference, of course, concerns the amount of detail provided by the coverage today.

Indeed, between the nearly instantaneous tweets from a variety of sources, the hand-for-hand reporting on PokerNews, and ESPN’s “almost live” start-to-finish coverage, the amount of information available from the 2012 WSOP ME final table was nearly overwhelming. Incidentally, as I mentioned in the last of my recaps earlier in the week, I went through and compiled all of the hole cards from that final table that were shown on ESPN, then posted them here. That’s obviously another added dimension to poker tourney coverage that wasn’t part of the equation back in the day.

Like I say, I was thinking about how the growth of various forms of media and technology have changed our level of access to just about everything in our culture, both in terms of how we experience, say, a poker tournament or sporting event (or just about anything) as well as how the greater level of detail invites closer, more precise scrutiny when it comes to subsequent analysis. Those wishing to study and interpret players’ decisions at that most recent WSOP ME final table, for example, have a lot more information available to them than was the case even just a few years ago.

This week I caught the better part of a replay of the 1973 Sugar Bowl on one of the ESPN networks, shown as kind of a preview of the upcoming Alabama-Notre Dame BCS Championship. The game from three decades ago also saw the Crimson Tide and the Irish playing what was essentially a national championship game, ultimately won by Notre Dame 24-23.

The replay was of ABC’s original broadcast of the game, and of course featured very few onscreen graphics and only a small fraction of the copious statistical information we are accustomed to today. Only a few cameras were employed, and I can’t even remember if any replays were shown (perhaps there were a few). In fact, rather than show the score or time on screen there were frequent shots of the scoreboard (especially near the end) to let us know how much time was left as well as the down and distance. (Here is a video compiling some highlights from the game in which you can see what I am talking about with regard to the way the broadcast went.)

As those of us old enough to remember watching sports on TV a few decades ago remember, the experience was really much more akin to watching a game live than what we get today. And of course no one was recording the sucker to watch again later, either. Today everyone is DVR-ing everything, with all plays documented in precise detail and available for close study later to those who make it their business to analyze and interpret statistical data from sporting events. The same goes for other types of research and study, too.

I sometimes write about film, and over the years I have managed to place a few articles in academic journals that included detailed analyses of films. These articles all were written within the last decade, and so I obviously benefited from having personal copies of the films about which I was writing, enabling me to look at them repeatedly and examine them closely for potentially relevant details.

Speaking of, I have a film article coming out in the new issue Paracinema, a print publication that features in-depth studies of all sorts of off-the-beaten-path films and cinema-related subjects.

My article actually looks at five different films, all produced by Universal in the early 1970s as part of a “youth division” within the big studio designed to make low-budgeted, quasi-“indie” films. The movies I discuss are Taking Off (1971, dir. Milos Forman), The Hired Hand (1971, dir. Peter Fonda), The Last Movie (1971, dir. Dennis Hopper), Silent Running (1972, dir. Donald Trumbull), and American Graffiti (1973, dir. George Lucas). Mine is just one of a dozen essays in the issue (No. 18), which you can order for just $7 over at the Paracinema website, if you’re interested. (Shipping is free!)

(As it happens, poker is played in four of the five films I discuss -- not that I focus on that in my article. Only in Graffiti is there no poker. Then again, only in Graffiti is there the awesome Wolfman Jack!)

In writing about those films made 40 or so years ago, I read a number of contemporary reviews and was reminded of how those who wrote about film in the early 1970s generally didn’t have personal copies to consult, and instead had to watch the films in the theaters. Indeed, if you spend any time at all reading film reviews or criticism written during that era or before, you frequently encounter all sorts of inaccuracies regarding plots, dialogue, and other specifics, errors which readers often weren’t able to notice or challenge as they, too, were limited as far as their access to the films was concerned.

But today we live in an age of “total access” (relatively speaking), with technology enabling us to control and manage our reception of a poker tourney or sporting event or film or just about any other cultural product with incredible precision, the difference affecting both our initial experiences of those products as well as later reflections.

There’s more to say along these lines, but instead I’ll leave it there and let you reread, parse, scrutinize, dissect, evaluate, and reflect as much or as little as you wish.

On the Author Function in Poker and Poker Writing

I was in graduate school a long time. Long enough to be infected -- briefly, though significantly -- by the literary theory bug to which most of those who go for advanced degrees in English are necessarily exposed.

I choose a disease-related analogy because in the end most of us who put aside the novels and plays and poems and even the criticism written directly about various works of literature to pick up these works labeled “theory” found ourselves momentarily disoriented as though affected by a fever.

Part of the reason for such a response had to do with the head-spinning novelty (I think) of leaving the “primary” texts for a while -- the novels, the plays, the poems -- to read the utterly different, often confounding prose of writers with names like Derrida, Lyotard, Lacan, Bakhtin, Althusser, Spivak, Fanon, and Foucault (the philosopher, not the poker player). Then came the extreme mental gymnastics required when trying somehow to apply these writers’ ideas to the literature we were supposed to be studying.

For a lot of us, the drawing of such connections was mostly beyond our capabilities. But we made the attempt, anyway, because it seemed like everyone else was doing it and, well, we didn’t want to be left behind. Not surprisingly, we wrote a lot of poor, confused essays as a result. And while a few found literary theory enticing enough to become a focus of their studies thereafter, most of us made our way back to the novels and poems and plays once the fever finally broke.

That said, those courses and readings in literary theory did provide me with a few ideas that have stuck with me and proven useful from time to time. In most cases those ideas were in the form of invitations to question certain aspects of a text I might have otherwise taken for granted. You know, things like the cultural conditions under which a given work of literature is produced. Or the relationship between form and content the work exhibits. Or the way the work addresses (or doesn’t address) issues of race, class, and sex. And so on.

One of those useful ideas -- something I probably would’ve never thought much about had I not endured and survived my theory fever -- was the significance of the author to a given piece of writing and how our ideas of the author necessarily affect the way we interpret what we are reading.

It might seem like a simple idea, but whenever we pick up a book we typically make note of the author’s name and thus allow whatever connotations we associate with that name to shape our interpretation of what we read. Right? Even if we don’t know the first thing about the author, as we read we start to form ideas and opinions about who that person might be, and thus our response to what has been written still gets shaped by the notion that someone -- a person we think of as “the author” -- has attempted to communicate something to us via these words we are reading.

It was an essay (actually a lecture) from the late 1960s called “What Is an Author?” by Michel Foucault that probably first introduced this idea to me in a way I could understand. That is to say, the idea that there is what Foucault calls an “author function” we tend to associate with certain kinds of writing or “discourses,” for example, so-called “literary” writing (novels, plays, poems). These would be varieties of discourse in which certain standards occur to us that make the idea of the author important or needful -- in other words, there are certain kinds of writing for which the idea of the author is more important to us than others.

What was really eye-opening for me was the idea that Foucault proposes that the “author function” is something the reader (or the culture, which influences the reader) brings to the text and is not necessarily inherently part of the text itself.

Foucault gives the example of scientific writing and how during the Middle Ages its validity and thus influence (as determined by readers) was often affected greatly by who authored it. But later on, who wrote an article advancing a new scientific discovery was thought to be less important than the discovery itself -- that is to say, the way the text was read and interpreted was less affected by the “author function” than was earlier the case.

One other idea Foucault points out (and he’s not the only literary theorist to come up with this one) is how when we do start thinking about the author of a given text -- or give significance to the “author function” when we read -- that person we’re thinking about is not identical to the person who wrote the sucker. Rather, it’s a limited, skewed version of that person, necessarily shaped in the reader’s mind by the text itself as well as by other cultural factors influencing the reader.

So “Freud is not just the author of The Interpretation of Dreams or the Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious; Marx is not just the author of The Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital” writes Foucault. Rather when we read, say, The Interpretation of Dreams, we think about this “Freud” fellow as we do and let our idea of that person affect how we interpret the book. But that person we’re thinking of isn’t Freud. Not really (or utterly).

I’m not going to go any deeper into Foucault’s essay than I already have -- I’ve barely scratched the surface, if you can believe that -- but hopefully you see how just asking the question “What is an Author?” can open us up to all sorts of other questions when it comes to interpreting a piece of writing.

I was reminded of all of this “author function” business recently after reading Diamond Flush’s announcement that Howard Lederer had backed out of his planned-for interview with her following his two long interviews with PokerNews (“The Lederer Files”) and for the Two Plus Two Pokercast (Episode 239).

Actually, Lederer himself already had me occasionally thinking a little bit about the “author function” from things he said in those earlier interviews. For instance, when he attempts to dodge responsibility for various poor decisions by alluding to the “Operating Agreement” or the “owners” or the “board” as if they were the true “authors” of FTP’s demise who were somehow to be understood as distinct from himself.

Or when in the 2+2 interview he responds to a question about FTP continuing to repeat that message to customers that “funds are safe and secure” well after Black Friday -- in fact, all of the way until late September 2011! -- by saying he did not believe “that those words would have been used after April 20 [2011]” and that if they were “it happened without me knowing about it.”

In that latter case, Lederer is suggesting two wildly improbable ideas: (1) he did not read the amended civil complaint in which he himself is named which spells out several instances of Full Tilt Poker telling customers their “funds are safe and secure” and were continuing to do so on September 20, 2011 (the date of the amendment); and (2) he never once visited the Full Tilt Poker website after April 20 where the “funds are safe and secure” message remained prominently displayed until late September 2011 (i.e., until after that first amendment to the civil complaint).

Relatedly, the whole issue of the “author function” comes up again when we think about good old “FTPDoug” (a.k.a. Shyam Markus), i.e., the apparent “author” of many of those “safe and secure” messages. His transformation into “FTPMarkus” in preparation for the launch of FTP 2.0 in November has encouraged all of us to think differently about the significance of a signature and how it isn’t necessarily to be understood as representing “authorship.”

But it was while reading a thread on 2+2 about Lederer’s backing out of the Diamond Flush interview that I found myself thinking most specifically about the “author function,” namely thanks to a post by Pokercast co-host Mike Johnson regarding Diamond Flush herself.

“I’m not knocking the massively important role she has played in all of this, she has been beyond invaluable,” writes Johnson. “I just personally believe that once you start interviewing the biggest names involved in the story on the record you have officially made the transition from info-leaking blogger to media member. I actually can’t think of any other media person who interviews major news personalities for public consumption anonymously.”

Johnson’s post inspired some interesting discussion about journalistic standards, the so-called “poker media” (and whether it adheres to such standards), as well as blogs and pseudonyms. There were several direct responses to Johnson’s observation, some quite thoughtful. My friend Change100, a.k.a. Kristin (of “Pot Committed”), came up at one point in the discussion. Diamond Flush herself then jumped in with an explanation of her reasons for using a pseudonym and a defense for doing so. “It’s not the name that’s important,” she argued. “It’s the content.”

Someone later humorously responded that “Diamond Flush is the Isildur of poker insiders.” Another made a Watergate reference by referring to her as “the Deep Throat of poker journalism.” One poster pointed out how DF has appeared on the Pokercast as a guest in the past and Johnson never insisted she identify herself there. And 2+2 Grand Poo-Bah Mason Malmuth hopped in as well to say he believes DF needs to identify herself publicly.

Thinking again about the “author function” and how it affects our understanding and interpretation of the written word, I think this whole debate makes clear that there are certain contexts in which it continues to have great importance, for better or worse.

I think it is interesting that Johnson’s objection to Diamond Flush’s use of a pseudonym was clearly inspired by the content of her posts which to him has reached a certain level of significance (“interviewing the biggest names involved in the story on the record”) that to him changed the nature of the discourse and thus introduced a different standard according to which the identity of the author is somehow more significant. As Johnson says of DF, “you have officially made the transition from info-leaking blogger to media member.”

I certainly see where Johnson is coming from. And, of course, I understand Diamond Flush’s position as well. After all, I started this blog using a pseudonym -- for some of the same reasons DF says she uses one, actually -- and only when I began writing for other poker sites did I begin using my real name for a by-line.

But really, even if a person signs his or her real name to something he or she has written, the “author” of the piece is still going to be distinct from the person who wrote it. The credibility of the piece might be affected by the “author function,” but other contextual factors have as much or more to do with credibility, too, including other texts produced by the same hand, others’ responses to those texts, as well as additional culturally-determined factors regarding journalistic standards.

I’ve written before about how the poker world is filled with characters with multiple identities, with lots of examples of pseudonyms and attempts to participate with anonymity, and with other factors complicating what we might regard as the “author function.” And of course all of that becomes even more evident when it comes to online poker.

There’s a lot more to say about it all, really. But I’ll sign off now. As “Short-Stacked Shamus,” that version of me who regularly -- sometimes feverishly -- writes here.

On the Possibility of Scaling Back

For various reasons I have been thinking a lot about the blog this week, specifically how I continue to follow this schedule of posting at least once every weekday. Have been doing so for quite a long time now (since the start of 2008, if you can believe that), and for the last year or more I’ve been thinking off and on about the possibility of scaling back.

I updated the archive pages this week, which is perhaps what started my thoughts going down this road. If you look down the right-hand column you’ll see those five sections -- On the Street, The Rumble, Shots in the Dark, High Society, and By the Book. I’ve created pages for each that link to all of the posts belonging to each category.

It might sound strange coming from someone who has written so many friggin’ posts, but I’ve always thought quantity a poor substitute for quality. While I’m proud of most of those posts, I know overall it is much better to produce one solid piece of writing than several so-so ones.

That would be one reason among several for posting less. Sort of like being more judicious with hand selection -- one has a better chance at doing well those times one does play than is the case when playing every hand. If I posted, say, two or three times a week rather than five, chances would increase that the quality of each post would improve. I’d choose fewer and probably better/more interesting topics upon which to write (I’d be playing better hands). And I’d have more mental energy to devote per post, too (I’d be playing hands better).

A couple of other reasons for posting less spring to mind. One has to do with the fact that the whole culture of personal blogs has changed considerably, especially over the last year or so. I’ve written about this before, but many of the bloggers have moved on, choosing Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr or Instagram or FourSquare or Pinterest or other avenues via which to communicate and/or interact.

I started the blog initially because I like to write. Very quickly it became a way of interacting with others, kind of an introduction into a great community of readers and writers. But now it’s become... well, a more isolated-seeming activity. I’m not talking about having fewer readers (that’s not the case), but just recognizing that something has changed about the community that has altered the place personal blogs have within it.

Perhaps more than anything it was the loss of online poker for us Americans that fragmented the community to which I’m referring. A lot of us aren’t really playing poker with each other anymore. Or on the same sites, anyway. I think having that common point of reference is important, and perhaps what potentially can make a blog like this one more than just a series of broadcasted op-ed pieces about the poker world.

As a freelancer, I’m also having to think about the bottom line and how much time I can afford to devote to the blog, time that necessarily takes away from the pursuit of for-pay writing opportunities. While I certainly don’t believe I deserve payment for anything I’ve ever posted here, I sometimes think of a sentiment once expressed by a fellow freelancer long ago -- something about it being hard to expect to be paid for something you’re willing to give away for free.

The blog has definitely helped me land a number of writing opportunities. There’s no doubt about that. But sometimes I feel like it’s prevented me from landing some, too, if that makes sense.

I haven’t decided to scale back just yet. Indeed, there’s something a little daunting about actually going ahead and altering a routine such as the one I have followed here on Hard-Boiled Poker for so many years. It’s like I’ve been playing so long and employing a style with which I’ve grown very comfortable, thus making it hard to change gears and do something differently.

We’ll see. Have a feeling I’ll be continuing to check off those boxes every weekday for the near future, anyhow.

Have a good weekend, all. I’m sure I’ll see you Monday.

A Meaningful Interruption

However you define the game, playing poker can be an incredibly immersive experience. Anyone who has played poker in a more than casual way has experienced being so caught up in the game that the idea of actually stopping and leaving becomes utterly shut out of one’s consciousness.

In The Biggest Game in Town, Al Alvarez tells the story of how during several weeks in Las Vegas during the 1981 WSOP he’d heard practically zero references to the outside world. To further the point that all were too involved in what they were doing to acknowledge anything else, Alvarez mentions how during his time there Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter’s Square. “But nobody mentioned it, despite the innumerable crucifixes dangling from the necks of both the players and the casino staff.”

Poker (or other casino games) can do that. But so can other activities or routines. We all can be more or less obsessive about whatever it is we do.

Speaking of routines and getting knocked from them, I had a few different ideas for topics for today, but I’ve become stymied somewhat thinking about the anniversary of 9/11.

Like you, I find myself remembering the day itself and how like everyone else I became aware of the events of that morning. And how they stopped us all in our tracks then, too, changing our plans not just for the day but for weeks and months and years to come.

I was teaching that day, my world lit class scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. It was early in the semester, and I remember we were scheduled to discuss The Aeneid, Virgil’s epic all about conflict and war and destiny and gravitas and how when it came to Aeneas getting to Rome “the man should sail: that is the whole point.”

Normally I would’ve made it to school about an hour before my class, spending that time at my desk in the large office I shared with a colleague. However, that morning I’d taken a detour to my bank to deposit a check -- the so-called “tax refund,” actually, that was sent out late that summer to try to inject some extra dollars into the economy. The idea was we’d all spend the extra few hundy, but Vera and I thought it most prudent for us to bank it, and so that’s what I was doing.

I was still in the car a little after 9 a.m. listening to sports radio. The Panthers had won their season opener the previous Sunday against the Vikings, and so the hosts were enthusiastic discussing that. However, they were distracted a little by news of something happening at the World Trade Center. There’d be no football the following Sunday, of course, and in fact when the season resumed the Panthers wouldn’t win another game that year.

I got to my office around 9:15 or so. My colleague had a television -- one of those on a roller-cart with a VCR underneath that teachers sometimes wheeled into classrooms to show videos -- and had it on. Soon I learned about both planes hitting the Twin Towers, and by the time I was walking to my class we’d heard President Bush was about to address the nation.

Canceling class seemed like a no-brainer to me, although as I think back on that day I recall how some of my colleagues did not do so, choosing instead to teach as usual for the entire 75-minute period. The school ultimately closed, although not until lunch, I believe. I just told my students we’d push our reading back a class and let them go, then went to a neighboring classroom where a group had gathered around another of those TV-on-a-carts.

It wasn’t long after we heard about the third plane hitting the Pentagon. That was the point when things really did seem to be coming apart. I hung out with the students for a while, then went back to my office where a half-dozen or more colleagues had gathered. We heard about the fourth flight crashing in Pennsylvania. We watched the towers fall, speculated about the numbers of the dead, and fretted about what was to come.

Before long I was driving back to the small apartment where Vera and I then lived. She was out of town, unfortunately, and I don’t think it would be until early afternoon the phones worked and I was able to talk to her. So I’d spend the day with my cat, Sweetie, then just three months old, watching the coverage unfold.

I’d learn the FAA had halted all flight operations (in fact, planes would stay grounded for three more days). At some point I learned that President Bush had been in a classroom that morning, too, reading stories with a group of elementary school kids. His continuing with the class for several minutes after learning of the second plane crash would later earn a lot of scrutiny.

All of this sticks with me, as I imagine do all of the events of that day for you, too, coming back to me today to make me stop and ponder. I’ve long forgotten all of my students in that class I canceled. I’m sure they all remember their teacher -- whose name they probably can’t recall -- coming in and telling them we’d put off discussing the Aeneid until Thursday.

Later in the week we were all back in class. That Friday morning I recall teaching a seminar, a small class in which about a dozen upperclassmen sat around a large table. It was my 18th-century Brit lit class, although I don’t remember what our reading was that day.

A student had been talking and she’d just finished. I opened my mouth to respond, and in the brief space of silence in between we heard something that made us all stop for a moment. A plane.

We looked at each other, saying nothing. It was a sound we hadn’t heard all week. A meaningful interruption. I’ll bet my students probably remember that moment a lot more than all of the other ones we shared together that semester.

I know I do.

Defining Poker

Had fun again last night playing Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games on PokerStars while watching the opening weekend of NFL football. We’re still pushing through “Season 1” of the HBP HG, playing two tourneys each Sunday night until the end of September. By the end there will have been 20 events in this season, then at the beginning of October I’ll begin a “Season 2” that will play through the end of December.

As I’ve mentioned here before, players in each of the events can accumulate points for finishing in the top third of the field, and the one earning the most points for the season is going to win a copy of Poker: Bets, Bluffs and Bad Beats by Al Alvarez. I’m looking into lining up a few extra prizes for Season 2, so that one won’t be a winner-take-all.

I’ve been trying to schedule various games besides no-limit hold’em to keep things interesting. Last night we played pot-limit hold’em (Event No. 13) and what PokerStars calls “Triple Stud” (Event No. 14), the latter rotating between the three stud games in H.O.R.S.E. -- that is, stud (high only), stud hi/lo, and razz.

One of the ongoing challenges when playing Triple Stud was simply to remember which game was being played. The levels only lasted three minutes, which meant the games were switching frequently, and I think just about every one of us at least once started a hand thinking it was one stud variant when in fact it was a different one. Keeping track of the games is part of the challenge of any mixed game format, but I think the test might be slightly more taxing when all of the games are stud and thus superficially appear similar.

Kind of got me thinking a little about how “poker” covers so many different kinds of games. Or, to put it another way, how flexible that word “poker” really is in terms of what it could be said to define.

Heck, when I create Home Games, PokerStars let’s me choose from 17 different poker variants, with a number of those allowing for different betting formats (e.g., no-limit, pot-limit, fixed-limit). And of course there are options for full ring, short-handed, heads-up, different level durations, different starting stacks, and so forth. We couldn’t get through all of different poker games if we played a 100-event series.

Many say there are certain elements that are absolutely essential for a game to be called “poker.” I’ve heard and read a number of attempts at pinning those elements down, with most usually declaring that in order for a game to qualify as “poker,” it must involve cards, money, and bluffing.

Think about it, though... what a huge range of possibility exists for games that include those three criteria. And I’m not even completely sure those three elements are absolutely essential or cannot be modified significantly without carrying the game outside of the boundaries of what we can still call “poker.”

It’s like “literature” or “the novel” or other ambiguous categories or genres, really. One could even argue that as long as participants can agree on rules and that the game is still going to be called “poker,” then it’s poker.

How do you define poker? What elements would you say are utterly essential for a game to be called poker?

It Was the Third of September, That Day I’ll Always Remember

The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” -- which memorably begins with that line about remembering the date of a father’s passing -- first appeared just about forty years ago in late September 1972.

It’s a great jam, with extended funky instrumental passages surrounding smart lyrics recounting a child’s curiosity about a wayward father who “spent most of his time chasing women and drinking.” “Wherever he laid his hat was his home,” explains the mother, “and when he died, all he left us was alone.”

It’s a song about a man’s legacy, or lack thereof -- really just a few stories reflecting badly on his character and a date for the gravestone -- with compelling characters, what can be construed as a kind of social commentary, and even broader messages about the tenuous nature of existence and our responsibilities to one another during this life (if you wanna go that far with it).

The third of September also happens to be the birthday of someone close to me. Thus is it a day I’ll always remember, though for a much happier reason than is the case for the child in the song.

Maybe it’s that underlying quest for meaning rumbling below the groovy rhythms of a song I can’t help but play out in my head every time the calendar rolls around to this particular day. Or maybe it’s the way birthdays bring to mind the passing of time. Or maybe it’s having gone yesterday with Vera to visit an elderly relative -- in her nineties -- and talking with her about the past (both recent and long ago) and the future (both near and distant)...

But for some reason today I’m waking up thinking about those Big Questions again, including the one regarding how best to make use of the time we have. What we owe each other. What we owe ourselves.

I continue to piddle for pennies online now and then. I break even there -- no, really, I do -- although every time I sign off after goofing for an hour or more I can’t help but feel I’ve lost something kind of significant.

Of course, I’m just a recreational player giving a few hours here and there to a game I mostly enjoy, but to which I haven’t the commitment of many others. Still, I am reminded of that passage near the end of David Hayano’s 1982 study Poker Faces: The Life and Work of Professional Card Players about which I’ve written before, one coming in a section called “The Existential Game.”

“Because of the relentless instability and uncertainty of day-to-day gambling, players continually examine and reexamine their motives, feelings, and entire state of being,” writes Hayano as he tries to sum up the experiences of those many poker pros he’s been discussing throughout the book.

“If the life of the professional poker player were comfortable and predictable, I do not think that such extensive and persistent self-reflection would be required,” he continues. “Living, playing, and surviving in the chance world of the cardroom repeatedly assaults the sensibilities, and several pros have openly commented on the difficulties of ‘lasting’ and explaining what ‘all this means.’”

He goes on to point out how some are plagued with doubts about whether or not playing cards for a living is really worthwhile, as well as gnawing grief that playing poker is not a “particularly productive” way to live (no matter how much money one makes at it). Nor (worry some) is it much of a contribution to society, generally speaking.

Hayano further delves into the way the poker pro’s temporal existence -- specifically the way a cash game player fails to experience much sense of finality and/or structure -- can affect his or her well being. “The dimension of temporality, experienced as an undue prominence in the future, in what the next hand or thousand hands are likely to bring, manifests itself in an existential, if not socio-psychological, kind of imbalance,” suggests Hayano.

In other words, for some the third of September becomes nothing to remember. Nor is any other day, all of which run together in an endless game. Rolling along.

A Momentary Loss of Focus

Had a nice, relaxing day yesterday, made even nicer by all of the friendly birthday tweets I received. (Thanks again, all.) Yeah, it was my birthday, which I didn’t mention here but did note on Twitter when I decided to host a “Birthday Bash” home game over on PokerStars.

By the way, if you have a PokerStars account and want to join my “Hard-Boiled Poker” home game in which the games are for play money (and pride), the Club ID is 530631 and the invitation code is noshinola. I’ll probably crank up another couple of tourneys this week, which I’ll announce over Twitter (@hardboiledpoker).

Am thinking it might be fun to set up some sort of weekly tourney or league at some point, probably after I return from the WSOP in mid-July. Anyone with suggestions and/or preferences for times, tourney types, structures, etc., feel free to send them along.

Mostly rode out the big day at home, although I did go out at one point for some errands, including a needed visit to the eye doctor.

I’ve worn eyeglasses for most of my adult life, and not long ago got a new prescription and had the lenses replaced in the frame I’ve had for a few years. Unfortunately that old frame finally gave out and broke -- on my Uruguay trip, actually -- and so I had to go in to see about that.

Anyway, I relate this mundane bit of trivia to you mainly because of a funny moment that came up along the way. Before heading over to the eye doctor, I fished around to see if perhaps I had any old glasses lying around. I found a pair, put them on, and was kind of floored by the fact that the world appeared an indecipherable, blurry mess when I looked through them.

Wow, I thought. I didn’t realize my new prescription was that different.

It was my birthday, mind you. And perhaps as a result, ideas of getting older and bodies failing and all the other existential applesauce that sometimes accompany such momentous occasions surfaced even more quickly than usual.

I indulged for a few minutes in a probably predictable bit of brooding, then found more immediate distractions to keep such thoughts at bay. You know, like usual. What our lives mostly consist of, right? Staying in motion. Keeping busy. Looking at what’s just ahead.

Eventually Vera got home and at some point we got around to discussing my quest for a new pair of spectacles. Something in my story sounded a little off to her, and quickly she set it right after pointing out where I’d gone wrong.

That old pair of glasses I’d tried on weren’t mine. They were hers. No wonder I couldn’t see a thing through them.

In my defense, Vera’s glasses do look very similar to mine, with the same small oval lenses. Even to people who can see clearly. Her prescription is much, much different, though. And really, if I’d thought about it for more than a few seconds, I’d have realized there was no way those lenses were at any point in time ever correct for me.

In fact, after a bit more searching I did find an older pair of mine from a few years back, and after putting them on realized my vision hasn’t weakened all that much over the last few years.

Thought it was funny, though, how quickly and easily self-doubt can come. Happens in poker all the time, even in a single hand. We make a decision on an early street about an opponent’s possible holdings, then something happens later to make us doubt that earlier read.

“Man, did I see things badly before,” we think. Then come to find out we were seeing just fine earlier, it was later we started misread the situation. Not to mention misread our own judgment -- our ability to see -- as well.