Whose Turn Is It, Again?

What a weird week already, and it’s only Wednesday. And I guess it’s May already, too, which means the World Series of Poker is just around the corner to start distracting us all even further.

Been trying to follow all of the online poker-related developments, although it’s starting to feel a little like I’ve accidentally sat down at a table where they’re dealing some brand new variant with multiple flops and extra streets where I’m not sure about hand values and I don’t even really know how many betting rounds there are.

Kind of makes me want to sit back and take a hand or three off, just to avoid playing out of turn or any other missteps.

On Monday I was writing about the current troubles at Lock Poker, the latest issue to emerge symbolizing the confusing and highly uncertain world of so-called “rogue” offshore U.S.-facing online poker sites. Easy enough to draw a conclusion there to steer clear of Lock and other such sites, although it’s still a bit headachy trying to delve into the specifics of what is happening with the communications and cashouts (or lack thereof) and ever-shifting landscape for players.

Then yesterday came the sudden launch of Ultimate Poker, which created some huge buzz and various conversations and commentary throughout the day and night.

Again, lots of questions linger as the site moves into its second day of offering actual U.S. licensed and regulated real money games to players in Nevada. PokerScout reported a peak of 136 players on the site during its first day of dealing, and a quick check of the “Hand ID” numbers at the moment suggest more than 25,000 hands have been dealt at the cash tables and in sit-n-gos.

Amid all of the talk of triangulation -- a word that always sounds short of breath -- and other matters related to players’ attempts to get up and running on Ultimate Poker, I wondered some more about how quickly the sucker went live, with only a few hours in between players being able to make initial deposits and the games getting underway. (No free play games, either, to test out things beforehand.)

But like the great majority of those talking about Ultimate Poker right now, I’m not actually playing on the site as I am not in Nevada. Thus am I hesitant to say much at all regarding how things appear to have gone during UP’s first day, although I have been following with interest the various posts, forum comments, tweets, and other talk about what’s happening.

Then last night came what appeared to be another item of apparently uncertain significance as Alexandra Berzon of The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal between PokerStars (or, rather, the Rational Group) and the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel (or, rather, Colony Capital LLC) had reached an impasse thanks to the passing of an important deadline established between the two entities.

According to Berzon, the deal had been contingent on Rational obtaining a Preliminary Casino Authorization (i.e., a temporary license) to operate in NJ by last Friday. That day came and went, and thus the agreement between the two parties expired. While the significance of the news was initially unclear -- neither side had offered any on-the-record comments for Berzon’s article -- this morning it sounds like the deal is well and truly nixed, as the Atlantic Club’s CEO is confirming that to be the case. Though again, it is hard to pin down what it all means for New Jersey and/or PokerStars going forward. (Hard for me, anyway.)

Finally, there was one more item popping up this morning over on Politico suggesting that yet another federal online gambling bill was about to be proposed by House Rep. Peter King (R-NY). Actually that item initially suggested another Congressman (Jay Rockefeller) was to propose the legislation before a correction soon followed.

Of course, it seems like just about every story we’re hearing at present having to do with online poker seems in need of correction. Or at least revising to add further clarification. And the fact that half of these stories are hidden behind pay walls doesn’t make it any easier for the majority of us wanting to know what’s up.

I’ve made the analogy before here about how reporting on poker -- like poker itself -- is often a “partial information game,” although when I have it has been in the context of reporting on tourneys in which those of us on the side cannot see hole cards or know players’ thoughts, entire shared history, and so on.

Such a characterization seems appropriate with regard to stories about the status online poker in the U.S. at present, too. Like I was saying above, the whole scene regarding online poker’s present and future in the U.S. is getting so muddled it’s becoming increasingly difficult even to follow the order of play.

Makes the game more unpredictable, I guess, and thus more apt to surprise us. Even so, I think I might just sit out and watch for a while before getting further involved.

More Thoughts on All In: The Poker Movie: Building a “Boom”

Not too much time for scribblin’ today, but I did want to share just one thought that’s been banging around in the noggin’ over the last week or so.

I mentioned last week how I’d had a chance to see the new documentary All In: The Poker Movie and liked it quite a bit. You’ve no doubt started to see lots of reviews and other articles about the film. I imagine it will continue to have some momentum, especially within the poker community, all of the way up to the start of the World Series of Poker in late May and even after.

The limited theatrical run for All In will continue over the next month or more, then it will become available online and via DVD, which will ensure more viewers. You can get details about all of that on the film’s website.

If you’ve seen All In or even just read about it, you know how it was in production for several years, and in fact the makers were gearing up to finish everything when Black Friday suddenly arrived last April.

Our buddy Jeff “PKRGSSP” Walsh interviewed director Douglas Tirola on his show last week, and Tirola talked about how they were actually readying for a July 2011 release when the DOJ unsealed its indictment and civil complaint, effectively shutting down online poker in the U.S. Thus it became necessary to shoot some more interviews and refashion the film’s narrative a bit, which now begins and ends with Black Friday and positions that against the larger story of poker’s growth and importance in America.

A lot of attention has been given to the interviews with Howard Lederer and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson in the movie, both of which (I believe) were done not long before Black Friday. I think in the interview Tirola mentions the one with Lederer having been very close to April 15, what Tirola believes to have been the last real interview he did (aside from perhaps discussing a tourney with someone) before the DOJ hammer fell.

The many clips from the interviews with those two are of course quite provocative, and as I said in my review over at PokerListings I think the film does a good job handling all of the unintended irony surrounding the pair’s championing of Full Tilt Poker and other comments they make about poker.

One of the interviews conducted post-Black Friday was with Alexandra Berzon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal who covers Las Vegas and who wrote articles about Black Friday and its aftermath.

In the film, Berzon talks about how the WSJ reported on the Black Friday story, in particular the Full Tilt Poker fiasco, explaining how they approached it as “not about cheating but about bluffing.” That is, referring to the way FTP had lied and misled players regarding the security of their funds, the whole enterprise was ultimately revealed to be a kind of “bluff” unexpectedly called back in April of last year.

She also makes what I thought was an intriguing observation about the explosion in popularity of poker over the last decade, a “boom” most (including the makers of All In) attribute in large part to the overlapping influences of Chris Moneymaker, the rise of the online game, and the growth of televised poker.

“If you look at it, the [online] poker companies created the poker boom and had a huge amount to do with it on television,” says Berzon. “And so, was the poker boom a real boom or was it a manufactured thing by these online poker companies?”

Here Berzon is setting up another question -- “Can it outlast PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker?” -- regarding whether or not any “boom” can continue in the U.S. without the sites’ considerable efforts to keep it going. This is where the film kind of ends, with speculation about poker continuing to remain popular in the U.S. and a kind of hope that it will, indeed, survive this significant setback.

But the first time I watched All In I found myself contemplating that idea that the “boom” was in fact “manufactured” or at least accelerated in a kind of artificial way by the sites and their substantial marketing campaigns, ca. 2003-2011.

For those of you who came into poker post-Moneymaker, think about what the game seems to represent to you. What pleasures or values do you associate with poker? How does poker compare to other activities, pastimes, even professions? What does poker signify, ultimately?

Now, try to think whether any of those ideas have occurred to you independently from ideas or suggestions made by the online poker sites, either directly or indirectly.

I’m not implying anything nefarious here, just remarking on how pervasive the influence of Stars, Full Tilt, Absolute/UB, and other sites has been over this period of poker’s greatest growth in the U.S., with all of the sites’ efforts to ensure poker’s continued popularity having proven so obviously successful in terms of helping get people into the game. And more than just casually committed to it, too.

The film doesn’t pursue the implications of Berzon’s comment specifically, but rather just tosses it out as an idea worth contemplating. Which I guess I’ve been doing since I first saw All In.