Podcast Recommendations: Alan Boston on Thinking Poker & Kara Scott on the Remko Report

Had a chance over the weekend to listen to a couple of poker podcasts which I found very interesting and entertaining, so I wanted to pass them along here.

One was the most recent episode of The Thinking Poker Podcast, co-hosted by Andrew Brokos and Nate Meyvis. I’ve mentioned the TPP show here many times before -- and in fact appeared on that one a couple of times, once very early when they had just started, then again more recently.

Last week they had as a guest the poker player and sports bettor Alan Dvorkis -- better known as Alan Boston. I’ve often enjoyed hearing Boston talk about sports betting on other podcasts, and he’s an entertaining follow on Twitter for sure, especially when expressing misery and/or vitriol regarding bets gone wrong.

Other than exchanging a few tweets with him about Todd Rundgren on Twitter, I haven’t really interacted with Boston that much -- one hilarious exchange at the WSOP from a few years back comes to mind -- but I’ve always found him an interesting, thoughtful guy whenever he’s interviewed.

On the TPP show the interview was divided between some stud strategy talk (including some anecdotes about Danny Robison and Stu Ungar), and discussion of helping others with mental issues (and dealing with one’s own). All pretty engaging and not what you typically hear on poker podcasts.

The other was the latest “Remko Report” on which Remko Rinkema interviewed Kara Scott. Besides being friends with both Remko and Kara, I’m a big fan of both as well. As you might imagine from two people so good at talking and expressing themselves, their conversation is highly enjoyable.

The first half or more of the episode is poker-focused, with some good discussion about various things including the ongoing struggle to introduce poker to larger audiences, some good talk about Joe McKeehen and this whole (overdone) topic of WSOP Main Event champions needing to be “ambassadors” (Kara and I agree they don’t), and some further discussion about how the WSOP Main Event is currently covered and what could be changed.

They also share notes on the challenges of interviewing poker players, something I think both do very well in part because they are both so interested in examining more closely what goes into making a good, engaging interview. (It’s a lot harder than it looks or sounds, as they both are well aware.)

From there they cover some of Kara’s life before becoming a poker presenter. Some of this story I knew before, in part from having interviewed Kara myself several years ago for Betfair Poker. (That’s another one of those interviews that has now disappeared from the internet -- and which I may try to recover and republish here at some point, as I’ve done with some of the other ones.)

I knew about her background as a teacher, something I very much enjoyed talking to her about given how that’s an experience we have in common. I knew a bit about her growing up in Canada and moving to England, as well as her transition from teaching to training in Muay Thai and then becoming a presenter for a martial arts show. Which eventually led (along with some acting gigs on the side) to her getting involved with poker television.

There were other things discussed with which I was less familiar, including some having to do with how getting involved with poker and the poker community helped Kara at a time in her life when such help was really needed. Here the show reminded me a little of Boston’s appearance on TPP, if only for the way both interviewees got across the message of how important it is to have support from others, especially during difficult times.

If you have a couple of hours when you’re driving or cleaning barn stalls or doing something else where you need some interesting audio to fill that noggin’, check out both shows:

Thinking Poker Podcast Episode #186: Alan Boston

Remko Report #45: Kara Scott Opens Up About Her Life Before Poker

Photos: Alan Boston courtesy PokerNews; “Kara Scott at the Main Event of the World Series of Poker 2015,” Dutch Boyd, CC BY 2.0.

2012 WSOP, Day 28: The Future Is Now

Yesterday at the Rio I saw Event No. 40 ($2,500 short-handed limit hold’em) play out in exciting fashion.

Was sorry to see Terrence Chan come up short to finish in seventh yesterday (his eighth cash of the summer). Chan is an amazing player, great writer and thinker, and all-around good guy. But it was fun to see another good guy, Ronnie Bardah, somehow manage to comeback from 10th out of 10 to start the day to win the bracelet.

His heads-up opponent, Marco “Crazy Marco” Johnson also made a wild comeback yesterday, starting in ninth. The two of them had about 5-6 big bets each to start the day, and went off at 18-to-1 (Johnson) and 20-to-1 (Bardah) over in the Rio Sports Book.

The final table took place in the Pavilion Room, up on a stage positioned at one end. It was the first time I’d worked there so far this summer, and so got to experience the weird, almost uncanny feeling of sitting in such a large space (see above). They’ve removed a wall this year, I believe, thus and have fit a whopping 257 tables in the massive room.

Announcements of seats opening for players in the cash games echo back and forth above the players’ heads, sounding something like what you might hear in an airport terminal. Looking down on the scene from the stage, the set-up resembles some sort of huge disaster relief shelter or something. A very odd vibe (to evoke something I discussed earlier this week). Post-apocalyptic-like. The kind of scene you cannot help but survey and think of what the WSOP once was, and how different it has all become.

We actually began the day over in the Amazon Room, crammed next to a couple of other tournaments. We had several reporters sitting elbow-to-elbow at a single small table along the wall, with one of the tables for Event No. 42 ($2,500 Omaha/8-Stud/8) mere inches away from us.

Among those seated at the table were Andy Bloch, Alan Boston, and Cyndy Violette. Boston had us all cracking up with his various quips, including comments about the tableau we reporters formed sitting around the table. Someone else said it looked like the Last Supper.

“It’s only the last supper for him,” said Boston, pointing at me, the only one among us with gray hair on top and eyeglasses (both of which definitely tend to give away the fact I have a few years on my colleagues). I laughed, and he said he was jealous of my having hair at all. He then continued forward with one of those hilarious self-loathing monologues such as you might’ve heard him deliver in interviews on the Two Plus Two Pokercast and elsewhere.

“This is how f*cking pathetic my life is,” he explained, noting how coming to play in the event represented a special day out for him. He also had little optimism about his prospects in the tournament. “Hey,” he added with mock glee, “I’m going to the Rio tonight to get f*cked!”

The fun continued as Andy Bloch noted how close we were sitting behind him. Bloch was wearing a black t-shirt with one of those evolution-of-man sequences on the front showing white silhouettes of crawling cavemen becoming upright-walking humans becoming a robot.

“You guys comfy back there?” he asked. “You want to help me play my hands?” he then added with a grin.

You get the sense that guys like Bloch and Boston have experienced all sorts of craziness at the WSOP, and thus can take the perhaps-not-so-ideal conditions in stride. However, before my event moved away from that location and to the Pavilion, I did notice one example of players being less than happy with one particular element of how their tourney was being run.

That Event No. 42 utilized this new “ChipTic” tracking system that involves dealers using Blackberry Playbook tablets to note bustouts and report chip counts at breaks. I hadn’t seen the system in use before, and so got a dealer to show me her tablet during the first break.

In theory the idea seems like it could be a nifty addition that might help a lot with keeping track of who is left in events as well as keeping tabs on their counts. I did notice a problem, though, when I saw that during the breaks there were ChipTic folks counting players’ chips not by eyeballing them -- as we reporters always do -- but actually handling them to count them out.

A few players hung around during that break to complain, with Greg Raymer in particular pointing out how it was a very bad idea to allow anyone to handle players’ chips when they were away. In fact, he refused to leave during the break as he did not want to be gone while others touched his chips.

Raymer’s absolutely right, and as someone who has been counting chips for years without ever touching a single one, I know there is no reason whatsoever why the ChipTic guys need to be handling chips as they are. I have to imagine the WSOP will put a stop to it quickly and instruct everyone to start counting chips by sight.

There were also large screens displaying a scrolling list of bustouts for the event, all having been entered by the dealers as they occurred. Up-to-the-minute stuff, as you see the exact time the player was recorded as having been eliminated. I snapped a pic of one such screen just as Mickey Appleman had wandered over to take a look.

Seemed like a funny juxtaposition to see Appleman -- who has played at the WSOP for more than three decades -- standing there in front of the display checking out who has busted, like some sort of meeting between the past and the future. Kind of reminded me of Bloch’s t-shirt, actually.

Boston had some funny lines about ChipTic, too, suggesting they could start tracking players by their ethnicity, chosen faith, or other factors.

“You know they could enter the data and sort it... they could even have a column for the players’ IQs! You know... over on the right there have a little ‘null set’ sign!”

Will be back at the Rio today, helping out with the coverage of Day 3 of that Event No. 42. Neither Boston, Bloch, Violette, nor Appleman survived yesterday. But of the 22 who did make it to today there are a lot of interesting names at the top of the counts, including Jeff Lisandro, Norman Chad, Tom Schneider, and Bryan Devonshire (all in the top 10).

Should be a fun one. Skip over to PokerNews' live reporting today to see what the future brings.