On the Relative Watchability of Poker (Again)

Just a quick sign-off to the week today to share something unrelated to politics or elections or the like. I mean, it’s a poker blog, you know?

Saw my buddy Tim Fiorvanti -- formerly of BLUFF magazine and now writing for ESPN -- tweeting out today a new article appearing on ESPN in which one of the site’s senior writers Arash Markazi shares a personal reflection of having watched this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event final table.

Markazi isn’t necessarily a “poker guy,” although as he explains at the start of his column he plays now and then and like a lot of people during the 2000s found a lot of enjoyment in watching televised poker.

He shares the not uncommon view that a big reason why he found poker TV compelling back then was “because of the characters I had become connected to while watching all those shows.” He also got a little tired of it all even before Black Friday, and sounds as though he’d drifted away from watching over recent years (again, like many others).

Markazi went to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino this year to watch all three nights of the final table. To summarize his general impression, he wasn’t too entertained, finding it all much too tedious and tame. To be fair, Markazi seems to be applying some of the criteria for what makes a sporting event entertaining to this in-person experience of the final table, which most of us who have spent time watching people play poker know isn’t really the best way to judge.

Even so, he persuasively laments that even after watching players going at it for more than a dozen hours, he “had no real connection to them” and thus couldn’t find a way to be engaged.

He thinks back to Jamie Gold at the 2006 WSOP Main Event final table who helps provide a sharp contrast between a fond poker watching memory and the more recent experience. He talks to Gold as well, who affirms the much-shared point that “you need to have players talking to have heroes and villains.” Since the 2016 WSOP Main Event final table featured relatively little of that, there was necessarily going to be (in Markazi’s estimation) a “disconnect between the viewers and the players at the table.”

Interestingly, Markusi doesn’t mention any of the coverage leading up to the final table, which I have to assume he didn’t see. If he had, he would no doubt have discussed the prominent role William Kassouf played in those shows, cast as he was as a kind of “villain” precisely because of his table talk or so-called “speech play.”

He might also have addressed the WSOP’s somewhat confused handling of Kassouf, which could have been interpreted as representing a position directly opposed to the one Markusi and Gold espouse in the column -- namely, that table talk is a very good thing when it comes to making poker more interesting as a “spectator sport.”

Anyhow, check out Markusi’s article if you’re curious, titled “Poker is lacking the heroes and villains it so desperately needs.”

Image: “Bax's parents watching him play the #mainevent #finaltable #wsop #poker #gojohnnygo #bax,” Dutch Boyd. CC BY 2.0.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 9 -- Friberg Reflects

Day 3 of the European Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event went smoothly enough, ending at a decent hour. They’ve now played down from a starting field of 1,785 players to just 98. Starts to get a little more interesting from this point onward.

One of the players making it through to tomorrow is Erik Friberg of Sweden. Those with longer poker memories will remember him from the 2006 Main Event final table where he finished eighth. That was the biggest WSOP Main ever, won by Jamie Gold.

Was kind of intriguing today hearing Friberg talk to a tablemate (Felipe Oliveira) about the experience of making that WSOP Main Event final table just over 10 years ago. Oliveira asked him if he enjoyed it, and Friberg immediately responded “no.” He then explained how he’d made a couple of mistakes, he felt, partly because of the pressure of the situation and not being able to be as mentally strong as he would’ve liked.

Most interesting (I thought) was hearing Friberg say he wished there had been some kind of delay before the final table such as has been introduced and made the norm with the November Nine (in place since 2008). Even just a week, he said, would’ve helped him get his wits together and perhaps helped him to have performed better.

Of course, we can all argue how being able to handle those pressures and the stress of many consecutive days of poker is “part of the game,” so to speak. That’s what those making the final table of this event will have to handle, all of whom will be playing their sixth day of poker in either six or seven days.

Meanwhile I’m on nine straight days here, and as I’m tired I’m gonna cut it short. Talk again mañana.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

2015 WSOP November Nine, Day 2: McKeehen’s Still On Top

Watched every hand again last night as the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event final table played down from six players to three, with Joe McKeehen remaining in a dominant position going into three-handed play for tonight’s finish.

It’s reminding me once again of that WSOP Circuit final table from a couple of years ago that I’ve mentioned before, the one at Caesars Atlantic City I helped cover where McKeehen entered the final day with a big lead and never seemed to be challenged much at all on his way to the win.

Kind of remarkable, really, to think how easily things have gone for McKeehen at the final table thus far. Not only has he avoided making any bad decisions, he’s barely even taken that many risks at all even with decent hands in good spots. Both his opponents’ styles and the cards have dictated that result somewhat, but the overall impression has been that it’s hard to imagine how things could have gone much differently for McKeehen up to this point.

Easily the most interesting hand last night was the one that came relatively late when they were four-handed and Josh Beckley managed to three-bet and then fold pocket jacks to a reraise from the chip leader. We knew when watching that McKeehen had four-bet with pocket queens, which helped raise the eyebrows a little further when we saw Beckley avoid getting hooked by his two hooks.

The hand reminded me of one from the 2006 WSOP Main Event final table, something I brought up in another “what would you do?”-type PokerNews article today. I’m referring to a hand in which Richard Lee reraised all in with pocket jacks versus Jamie Gold’s queens and was knocked out in sixth.

Even though the two hands were similar, it’s funny to go back and think about how crazily different the play was at the ’06 final table -- where, it should be said, most of those there were amateurs, with Allen Cunningham being the exception. In fact in the hand Gold limped in with his queens, something that is hard to imagine happening today. So, too, have the 3x-and-above opening raises at that final table become a thing of the distant past.

Will be there ’til the end again tonight. While it’s hard to envision McKeehen in trouble, it sure would be interesting to watch should either Beckley or Neil Blumenfield manage to get in a position where they can present him some difficulty to complicate the conclusion.

Remembering Wasicka’s Call-or-Fold Dilemma

Poker-wise, today -- August 10 -- has several significances. It’s Doyle Brunson’s birthday today. Kara Scott, Ed Miller, and John Hennigan are also celebrating birthdays today, I believe.

Meanwhile, it was on this date in 2006 that the final table of the World Series of Main Event played out, the one in which Jamie Gold won what is still the largest first prize ever in a WSOP Main Event of $12 million.

Was thinking back a little today to that final table -- the first WSOP ME to play out after I’d started Hard-Boiled Poker about three months before.

I have an article over on PokerNews today focusing in particular on the wild three-way hand that resulted in Michael Binger finishing third and Paul Wasicka making one of the most talked-about folds in WSOP history (before eventually finishing second). Those who remember the hand might find it interesting to relive it briefly. And if you don’t recall the hand, check out the incredibly tough spot in which Wasicka found himself.

The article appears under the heading “Hand Histories,” and I’m kind of thinking of occasionally writing about other famous poker hands in history, in particular ones that highlight an especially interesting strategic decision. Will try to avoid the same old stuff with these, but rather invite readers to hone in on a moment -- like Wasicka’s decision -- and share their thinking about it.

What other hands might work well for “Hand Histories”? Let me know -- I’m all ears.

A 2006 WSOP Time Capsule

Didn’t watch the “One Drop” last night (DVR’d it). Instead what time I did spend looking at poker actually involved viewing some of the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event -- not the ESPN episodes, but the live pay-per-view that was shown that August night (the eighth anniversary of which comes this weekend) when Jamie Gold won the biggest first prize in WSOP Main Event history.

The program brings back some personal memories. That final table occurred just a few months after I started this blog, and about six weeks prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Thus it exists within a rosy context, a time when my absorption in all things poker was at an all-time high. As was the case for a lot of people.

The playing styles at the final table are of course conspicuously different from what we see today, with everyone opening for at least three times the big blind before the flop (sometimes more), lots of overbetting of pots after the flop, and many all-ins that today would automatically be read as “ICM suicide.”

The commentary by Phil Gordon doesn’t have the benefit of eight years’ worth of hindsight, and so while he does point out what seem like misplays or less-than-recommended bet-sizing here and there, most of his observations -- like the plays themselves -- are essentially time-bound, perfectly fine then while highlighting in retrospect changes in tournament strategy that have happened since.

Other comments by the many guest hosts rotating through during the broadcast are similarly time-bound, and since it was such an interesting time those comments are all the more intriguing.

At one point Doyle Brunson stops by. It happens to be his 73rd birthday. He’s just finished playing a 14-hour day the night before, finishing 21st in one of those post-Main Event bracelet tournaments they ran that year.

“What are your impressions... eighty-seven hundred players this year?” begins Gordon, and Brunson answers that he was one who expected there would be an increase in players from 2005. There were 8,773 players in the WSOP Main Event that year -- still a record. That was more than 3,000 more than had played in 2005, and more than 10 times as many as had played in 2003.

“I think that it’s just going to get bigger and bigger,” Brunson continues. “I don’t see any stopping it. In fact if there were some way to bet, I would like to bet there would be something like 40-50 thousand players in 10 years.”

“Oh boy,” says Gordon, who begins to disagree. “I think so,” affirms Brunson. “The only thing that would stop it, you know, if the internet....”

At that point Brunson gets interrupted by another “Oh boy” from Gordon as a hand has developed that will result in Sweden’s Erik Friberg getting knocked out in eighth place by Gold.

“Hold onto that thought,” says Nejad as the hand starts to play out. But the bustout distracts them and they never do get back to the topic.

Not unlike the way the idea itself would be interrupted just a few weeks later. That vision of 50,000 WSOP Main Event players -- perhaps spread all over Las Vegas and/or the internet -- would be left behind, time-bound.

Borgata Brouhaha

Reading today about this trouble at the Borgata where the first event of the big two-plus week Winter Open had to be suspended before the start of today’s third and final day of play thanks to the discovery of some sort of issue affecting the tournament’s integrity.

As Rich Ryan reports over on PokerNews, Joe Lupo. Senior VP of Operations at the Borgata, said this afternoon “we have reason to believe the tournament was compromised,” and given the importance of “ensuring the integrity of the tournament” play was halted for 24 hours.

Ryan goes on to share that someone speaking for the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement mentioned “a situation involving counterfeit chips,” and via Twitter and elsewhere one finds many more references to some shady-looking 5K chips apparently being introduced into the tournament at some point.

In fact, Luke Edwards, a player in the tourney, yesterday tweeted a picture showing some differently appearing 5K chips. Some are saying over 1 million of the phony chips made it into the event, an amount that if true would represent about 1.13% of the total chips that were supposed to be in play.

Learning that got me scurrying back to the old story of the extra chips accidentally introduced into the 2006 World Series of Poker during a color-up at some late stage prior to the final table, something like 2.4 million worth which in that tournament represented more than 2.7% of the chips in play.

There were 4,812 entries total in the $560 buy-in event at the Borgata, a tourney that had three Day 1 flights and allowed re-entries. They’d gotten down to just 27 players to start today, meaning the money bubble has already burst long ago as the top 450 finishers made the cash.

Will be especially curious to hear the rest of this story. Assuming the extra counterfeit chips are indeed the cause of the tourney being compromised, it will be interesting to find out (1) what comes of the investigation into how the chips were introduced into play, and (2) what will be done about the tournament at this late stage.

Regarding the latter, all of those entries ended up building a total prize pool of $2,325,835, thereby besting the $2 million guarantee. About $900K of that prize pool has been claimed already by players who have cashed thus far, with something like $1.43 million still left to be divided among the final 27. In other words, it’s exceedingly awkward spot to try to fix an issue such as the one that appears to have arisen.

Indeed, I can’t think of any solution, really, that wouldn’t seem unfair to someone. Can you?

What the Winner Said

I might have mentioned here before how I’d covered new World Series of Poker Main Event champion Ryan Riess in a couple of WSOP Circuit events during the 2012-13 season.

He had a big score early in the season at an event I did not cover, the WSOP-C Horseshoe Hammond Main Event in October 2012 where he won nearly $240,000 for finishing runner-up. He then traveled to many subsequent WSOP-C stops, earning a number of small cashes leading up to the WSOP this summer.

I believe it was at the Harrah’s Cherokee stop where I first began to notice him, mainly because he’d come over to chat with Rich and myself during breaks a couple of times. He struck me as a friendly guy and from what I could tell a decent player -- i.e., at a table full of non-pros in that Cherokee ME, he was stood out as perhaps a little more comfortable and seasoned as a player.

Thus when the WSOP Main Event reached its fifth day or so during the summer and I saw Riess still among the field, I wasn’t too surprised having known a little of him before. I also wasn’t surprised when he made it to Day 7, then battled with a short stack before finally accumulating some chips to take to the final table.

I watched the coverage this week and like everyone else saw that ESPN profile in which Riess spoke of himself as being the best player among the final nine. And of course I saw the short interview with Kara Scott after his win in which Riess responded to her question about his confidence going in by proclaiming “I just think I’m the best player in the world.”

Was kind of funny to hear, especially since I’d already formulated that image of Riess that didn’t really fit with such boastfulness. Of course, my image of him was based on incredibly slight information, and thinking back I found myself tempted to reinterpret his giving us updates on his chip counts at Cherokee. Sure, he was friendly and likable, but was he also self-promoting some, too? (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)

I also followed what struck me as a kind of crazed reaction on Twitter to Riess’s bold self-assessment, something Rich wrote a little about in his “Five Thoughts” piece this week. The forums -- where every new WSOP Main Event winner is necessarily a loser until proven innocent -- have likewise predictably taken the statement and run wildly with it.

Riess appeared on Fox News yesterday morning and did well fielding some artless questions from Shepard Smith who was more nitwit than wit during the short segment. Smith asked Riess about the statement, in fact, and Riess explained a little how it hadn’t been an off-the-cuff remark, but an idea he’d been articulating for several months.

“Yeah, I said that before this tournament started,” replied Riess. “I started saying it in March and I was practicing for this tournament and it worked out. I proved myself.”

Shepard continued with jokes about putting it all on black and so on. Shepard even had a heads-up game queued on his monitor to play with Riess, but he screwed that up to add a little more awkwardness to it all. Finally Shepard signed off with a cynical-sounding “Congratulations on your big money and on being the greatest player in the history of the world,” and a smiling Riess thanked him.

The last player to win a WSOP Main Event and then afterwards even entertain the subject of being the “best player in the world” was Jamie Gold, of course, who even before he won the Main Event back in 2006 was appearing on CardPlayer’s The Circuit podcast as the chip leader talking excitedly about how great he was. I remember Gold telling Scott Huff and Joe Sebok how he had accumulated so many chips that he -- all by himself -- was making the tournament go faster than it was supposed to, thus causing tournament staff great consternation as they tried to adjust the schedule to handle it all. (Anyone else remember that?)

Then Gold won and afterwards continued with similar statements about his greatness on an appearance on Rounders, the Poker Show (precursor to the Two Plus Two Pokercast) and elsewhere.

One of the active stories at the time of Gold’s win was the whole “ambassador of poker” mantle given to the WSOP Main Event winner, with the Moneymaker-Raymer-Hachem triumvirate having established a lot of expectation in that regard. Gold, meanwhile, was talking during the WSOP Main Event about how he wasn’t interested in serving such a role, something I wrote about here way back in 2006 the day after he won in a post called “Assessing the Gold Standard.”

Then came the legal squabbles and other ugliness regarding his deal with Crispin Leyser and other missteps, with Gold more or less removing himself from consideration as an “ambassador” in the eyes of many, deservedly or not. In truth I always thought Gold really did give at least some effort toward promoting the game in those couple of years after his win, not that he had to. See this post about Gold, “Starting Again,” I wrote during the 2008 WSOP for more on that thought.

Don’t really see Riess as following Gold’s path, though. The whole “poker ambassador” thing has changed a lot over these last several years -- the change starting, really, with Gold’s win -- and I don’t think the poker community looks to the WSOP Main Event winner as having as much of an obligation in that regard as once was the case.

So I’m not really thinking too much about Riess being a representative of the game going forward. Nor am I bothered that much at all by a poker player exuding confidence, particularly after having experienced some success at the tables. As I more less tend to do with all of those who win the WSOP Main Event, I’m pulling for Riess to handle it all as well as he can going forward, and I’m pulling for poker to do well, too, although I don’t necessarily think those two things are that closely related so much anymore.

Meanwhile, kind of funny to think about Riess doing a Muhammad Ali after his win, yea? I mean he’s given us all something to talk about, that’s for sure.