Travel Report: PokerStars Festival New Jersey, Day 5 -- The Jersey Shore, Dock’s, and Mo

Good morning from the Philadelphia International Airport. Am here plenty early for my flight back home, so thought I’d spend part of the time sharing a couple of notes from yesterday, my last helping cover the PokerStars Festival New Jersey at the Resorts Casino Hotel.

Was a laid back day, relatively speaking, given that the Main Event had finished up a day early and the High Roller was already down to just four players. I ended up following that one to a conclusion -- Jack Duong outlasted Jennifer Shahade heads-up to win the trophy -- and recapping things, then not long afterwards went for a short stroll across the Boardwalk and onto the Jersey shore.

It was another pleasantly mild day, making for some nice, postcard-worthy shots all around. That’s one up above of the Steel Pier, a thousand-foot-long amusement park jutting out into the water nearby, closed currently (it operates from April through October).

A little later on Brad, Jess, Joe, and I took a ride over to Dock’s Oyster House over near Caesars in Ducktown, a district so named for the duck houses built by the Italian immigrants who raised poultry there a century ago. Dock’s has a history stretching back even further to the 1890s, a family-owned high-end seafood place Joe had seen featured on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, and so we had all been looking forward to getting the chance to get over there (and “off campus,” so to speak).

We all commended Joe afterwards on having made a terrific suggestion, as both the atmosphere and our meals were excellent all around. Brad and I started out by diving into multiple trays of the Cape May Salts oysters from a couple of hours south at the southern tip of the Cape May peninsula. Then I had the seared sea scallops over mashed potatoes with broccoli rabe and roasted tomatoes. Just fantastic.

Bourdain refers to Dock’s as “a symbol of what Atlantic City was and could be again.” It did feel a little like a trip back in time to a different Atlantic City, one perhaps more closely resembling the one each of my parents visited back in the 1960s. Hard to believe now, but in ’64 the Dems had their national convention in AC at the Boardwalk Hall just a mile or so away from the Resorts.

After lingering some more in Ducktown at a tavern across from Dock’s, we made our way back to Resorts in time to see our buddy Mo Nuwwarah heads-up in the 8-game event that had begun early in the afternoon. The event had drawn 50-some runners, and in the end Mo had to outlast a couple of very formidable foes in Barry Greenstein (who took third) and Chris Reslock (who finished runner-up) to earn the silver spade.

Was a blast seeing Mo with the chip advantage at the end running especially well through rounds of limit hold’em, seven-card stud hi/lo (which we referred to as “Hi/Mo”), and deuce-to-seven triple draw. Indeed, on the winning hand Mo drew three and just like that he had a 7-6-5-4-2 (a “number four”). After that we hung out some more, celebrating Mo’s victory a bit at the Margaritaville bar before calling it a night.

Got a decent night’s rest, with the extra hour thanks to Daylight Savings Time having ended last night. Was an entertaining shuttle ride to the airport this morning thanks to a very talkative driver, with up-and-down the history of Atlantic City being kind of a running theme around which he opined on numerous other topics.

Overall it was a very fun trip, made more so thanks to getting to work with great folks like Brad, Jess, and Joe and also alongside a number of friends, many of whom I’ve known and worked with for seven or eight years now. Happy to be heading home, though, and very glad to be staying put for a while after these last few weeks of running around.

Talk again soon from the farm.

Regional Finals, Final Tables, and the Coming Final Four

Not unexpectedly, both my Heels and my NCAA bracket crumbled, and now I semi-dread the inevitable happening a week from today, namely a Kentucky-Duke final. (Others feel similarly?) Some exciting games, though, particularly in the regional finals.

Meanwhile I watched some poker on the computer this weekend, too. On Saturday I frequently dipped in and out of the EPT Live stream of the final table over at EPT Malta, including some of the seven-hour long heads-up battle between the two Frenchmen, Valentin Messina and Jean Montury that Montury ultimately won.

They ended up playing 148 hands total against one another, with the lead swinging back and forth in what turned out to be a hard-fought duel. What stood out the most, however, was the emotion Messina showed during his all-ins in the latter stages (such as pictured above in a screenshot from the stream).

Was hard not to be affected just a little watching him, something mentioned both in the commentary and in the PokerStars blog recap of the final table. The latter includes a nice picture of Montury consoling Messina after the final hand, as well as a good description of the scene by Howard Swains -- check it out.

Then on Sunday I followed a random tweet alerting me to the fact that Barry Greenstein had found his way over onto Twitch, and once on his channel I discovered him playing what turned out to be the priciest play money tournament ever on PokerStars, a 1 billion-play chip tournament that attracted 31 players.

Interestingly, Greenstein’s fellow Team PokerStars Pro Chris Moneymaker also took part, and the two of them ended up making it all of the way to heads-up against one another. Decidedly less emotion was on display for that heads-up match, although it was clear both were battling just as earnestly until Greenstein ultimately emerged the victor, winning 13.95 billion play-chip first prize while Moneymaker picked up 9.3 billion.

Obviously the kitty there was not as significant as what Montury and Messina were playing for (Montury won €687,400 while Messina took away €615,000 following a heads-up deal). Even so, from the rail both were interesting finishes to follow. And I guess the parallels help point up how poker can be meaningful at a wide variety of stakes, high to low.

I guess in both cases I wasn’t necessarily rooting for either player to win, but rather just to see a well-competed contest, which turned out to be so in both cases. Meanwhile we’ll see if that NCAA tournament comes down to the predictable heads-up next Monday, too, where (if does turn out to be the Wildcats and Blue Devils) I guess I’ll also lack any specific rooting interest.

Go Michigan State! Go Wisconsin!

Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Day 5 -- Poker's Past, Present, and Future

Thanks to those long days associated with covering the LAPT Bahamas Main Event during the week, I earned myself a little bit of a break yesterday by signing off a level or so early from Day 2 of the PCA Main Event.

The total turnout settled at 816 players for the $10,000 event, which means a $7,915,200 prize pool with $1,491,580 going to the winner. The top 119 get paid, so with 175 players returning today that money bubble will surely be bursting at some point in the afternoon, I’d expect.

Among my contributions over on the PokerStars blog during the day was an early compilation of observations about the differences (and similarities) between poker and the “real” world all filed under the heading “Is this the real life? A Bahamian rhapsody,” and a short item called “The hero call” in which I commented on a table featuring a player in a Batman t-shirt, another in a Superman tee sitting right next to him, and the Brazilian soccer hero Ronaldo.

Ronaldo, who plays as a PokerStars “Sport Star,” survived to Day 3 and has above average chips, and so he may well cash. He definitely plays like an amateur, but an active one seeing lots of flops and not just folding his way through the levels. And as a huge World Cup hero and one of the greats of that game, he gets a lot of attention which adds an extra layer of interest to the tournament as a whole.

Later in the evening I was able to watch almost all of the Panthers-Seahawks playoff game with the fellows, and that turned out to be much more engaging (and emotionally draining) than I’d anticipated it would be. I told everyone Carolina would lose 35-3, and so for them actually to be competitive up until that last pick-six with about six minutes to go was encouraging. And the Panthers adding the last TD at the end to make it a 31-17 final was somewhat satisfying, too.

In between the tournament and the game I was able to spend a very enjoyable, leisurely dinner with Jim McManus, the author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, the latter being a text I assign in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course.

Jim participated in an interesting panel discussion here a couple of days ago along with Lee Jones, Jason Somerville, and Barry Greenstein in which the group discussed poker’s colorful history, its present, and the future (with Somerville handling a lot of the contributions regarding the latter). You can read all about that here in my colleague Adam Hampton’s write-up.

Jim had played the PCA Main Event and busted on Day 2 (to the left is a shot of him playing taken by Joe Giron), and so one of the subjects we discussed was the high caliber of play these days in tournaments, especially major ones like the one he’d just played. We also covered a lot of other ground, including how my students respond to his book, his current writing projects, and some of what I have in the works for the coming year.

I delighted in talking with Jim a lot about Richard Nixon -- both his poker “career” and his political one -- and from some of his stories about Dwight Eisenhower (the best poker-playing president, Jim opines), I came away realizing I need to learn more about Ike as I further pursue my “Nixon studies.” Great fun, that.

Am following up that visit with one this morning with another favorite poker writer, Jesse May, whom I ran into earlier in the week. Hoping to write something from that meeting for the PokerStars blog as part of our Day 3 coverage today, so check out that and everything else over there (including the America’s Cup) as the reports continue from the Bahamas.

Daniel Damns, Doyle Defends

One of the topics Jeff “PKRGSSP” Walsh and I discussed briefly on his podcast Tuesday night was the recent spate of commentary from top pros regarding Full Tilt Poker, specifically Daniel Negreanu’s video blog from last week (which I wrote briefly about here) and Doyle Brunson’s response-slash-commentary posted on his blog on Monday (see the 2/20/12 entry). Since then Negreanu has posted another video blog in which he talks further about FTP as well as Brunson’s post.

I’m not going to summarize all of the back-and-forthing going on, nor am I going to rehearse the short conversation PKRGSSP and I had about it. But I did want to chime in with a few thoughts both about Brunson’s post and Negreanu’s rejoinder.

If you’ve read Brunson’s post you saw him acknowledging those who ran FTP to be guilty of “gross negligence and terrible mismanagement,” though ultimately defending Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson against the charge that they knowingly committed fraudulent actions. Instead Brunson -- who interestingly includes scans of the handwritten pages from which his posts are transcribed (a latter-day testament to the authority of the written word?) -- mostly blames CEO Ray Bitar for all that has happened. Brunson refers to Bitar as “an unknown person to the poker world,” kind of like an outsider who wandered into an Old West town and was given an unreasonable amount of authority regarding those who call it home.

There’s a lot of imprecision in Brunson’s post regarding the facts of the case. “Exactly how FT lost their cash is not clear to me,” he says. “Something about processors, electronic checks they couldn’t cash, etc.” This despite earlier professing some inside knowledge thanks his close relationship with Jack Binion who for a time was considering buying the beleaguered site.

These hand-waving, vague allusions to the “something” that happened at Full Tilt Poker don’t do much to bolster Brunson’s credibility on the matter, but they do fall in line with his general defense of Lederer and Ferguson as being out of their element as businessmen. “The bottom line was they were poker players, not corporate executives,” says Brunson, suggesting that as such they might be forgiven for transgressions occurring under their watch.

I can’t help but recall the succession of stories Brunson tells regarding his own failed business ventures in The Godfather of Poker, a few of which saw him and the late David “Chip” Reese losing money time and again on what Brunson calls “crazy schemes.” In other words, while his defense of Lederer and Ferguson partly stems from his friendships with the two (especially Lederer), I think it also comes from the fact that Brunson has been in a similar situation many times -- that is, being a poker player who found himself in over his head when trying to prevent a business venture from failing.

Of course, none of those “crazy schemes” Brunson describes in his book appear to have hurt others like the one Full Tilt Poker did. Significantly.

In his video response to Brunson’s post, Negreanu draws an interesting parallel between Brunson’s defense of Lederer/Ferguson and Barry Greenstein’s statements about Russ Hamilton during the early days of the UltimateBet scandal back in the summer of 2008. In that case, Hamilton had already apparently been advised by lawyers not to speak (or so he said), but had a two-hour meeting with Greenstein which the latter then reported in summary fashion on the old PokerRoad podcast.

I don’t believe Greenstein went as far as to say he thought Hamilton was innocent. Nor do I recall any suggestion that the now-disgraced 1994 WSOP Main Event champion looked Greenstein “dead in the eye” and said he wasn’t aware of the cheating or any other wrongdoing (as Lederer apparently did with Brunson when asked “about the financial problems”). But Greenstein did say he wanted to believe Hamilton, and also in an indirect way indicated he thought Hamilton perhaps wasn’t as guilty as some believed by saying he thought Hamilton knew the guilty party or parties. (See here for more on that Greenstein-Hamilton meeting.)

I think it is safe to say now that Greenstein was somewhat off-the-mark in his assessment of Hamilton. And while the parallel isn’t perfect I think Negreanu’s reference to it makes some sense in this context, especially given how Brunson’s defense similarly evokes the relative knowledge of the accused.

Negreanu also correctly brings up how the site continued to accept deposits from non-U.S. players after Black Friday (up until the end of June when the Alderney Gambling Control Commission suspended their license to operate). In the Department of Justice’s September 2011 amendment to the civil complaint, we see how Lederer was reporting “to others at Full Tilt Poker that there was only approximately $6 million left, and therefore no realistic ability to repay its new depositors.” In other words, Negreanu appears correct to point out that Lederer certainly knew something “about the financial problems” post-Black Friday (and of course likely knew things weren’t hunky dory before April 15, too).

To this point I would add what the amended complaint also alleges, namely how Full Tilt Poker continued right through the summer -- even after the site went down -- to claim repeatedly to all who asked that their “funds were safe and secure.” This, too, should go into the category of the numerous ethical failures on the part of Lederer et al., namely, to have allowed such reassurances to have been made when they certainly were false.

Brunson has already indicated he intends to follow up his post with more on the matter, so the dialogue between him and Negreanu will no doubt continue. As I said on PKRGSSP’s show, I think it is generally a good thing that these two are letting us know their thoughts on the issue given the prominent standing of both in the poker community. Their opinions matter, and will influence how others among us think about the situation going forward.

Ultimately, though, we’re still just dealing with the court of public opinion here, where the only real consequence is going to be the affecting of attitudes. We can and should keep talking about all this. But as far as resolution or reparation goes, for that we remain reliant on others.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Caught up with PokerRoad Radio this week, a podcast I’ll admit I hadn’t really paid too much attention to over the last few months. Just too many out there at the moment -- including some relatively new ones -- that have been competing for (and winning) my attention of late.

The Rabbit Hunt (over on CardRunners) and a few episodes of the PokerNews podcast are a couple I’ve found myself dialing up over the last few weeks. And, of course, the “Cold Call Show” on DonkDown Radio has claimed extra hours on the listening schedule, too, thanks to all of the Travis Makar-UB drama.

Feeling the void left by the recent end of The Poker Beat, I did manage to find time to check in on a couple of the new PRR shows from the L.A. Poker Classic, specifically the 2/27 and 2/28 episodes, co-hosted by Joe Stapleton and Barry Greenstein.

Both episodes were quite entertaining and informative, I thought, with Stapleton and Greenstein both quite funny and interesting throughout. There were a long catalogue of items covered, including some observations from Greenstein about the Makar revelations (on the 2/27 show), plus a number of interviews along the way, too.

I’m not going to summarize it all, but will point you to the PKRGSSP! blog where you can find daily rundowns of a number of podcasts, blogs, news sites, and other pokery productions. Also, over on Pokerati our buddy Merchdawg is offering weekly “podcast round-ups” as well, usually on Fridays, I believe, so check those two sources if you’re looking for poker podcast suggestions.

I did, however, want to highlight something from the 2/27 show I found particularly thought-provoking. Among those interviewed on that show was Joseph Cheong, third-place finisher at last year’s WSOP Main Event, an articulate, humble, and intelligent guest whom it’s hard not to like.

There was, as you might imagine, discussion with Cheong of the hand from the WSOP when at three-handed Cheong six-bet shoved with A-7-offsuit (a hand which I, too, discussed here). While the merits of the play weren’t necessarily being debated, Greenstein did ultimately express some appreciation for the fortitude Cheong showed in the hand and in the way he’s answered questions about it ever since.

“In some sense, Joseph sleeps well at night knowing that he didn’t dog it,” says the Bear, acknowledging that while things didn’t turn out so well in that hand or subsequently for him in the Main Event, Cheong at least had committed to a play that his decision-making process had suggested he make at the time, and thus wasn’t left wondering what might have happened if he hadn’t done so.

That discussion also included some more talk about how winning a tournament completely changes the way one looks back on it afterwards -- how, in other words, results really do tend to affect our thinking about our play. “When you win,” says Greenstein, “you don’t have to think about the stupid hand you could’ve played [differently], because it’s like all sins are forgiven.”

“Because it’s all on the path to victory, is what you’re saying?” asks Stapleton, and Greenstein agrees, saying further how not winning automatically causes one to think “well, if I’d have done this different, [or] if I’d have done that different, I might have won.”

Amid all of that Stapleton tosses in a quick analogy by referring to those old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books some of us read as kids. Remember those? In which you would read a page or two and then get to choose what the characters did next, each choice sending you to a different page in the book? At some point, say when “you ended up in the pit” (as Stapleton says in his example), you might end up having to backtrack to find the choice that led you astray.

I liked thinking about that analogy afterwards and how well it applies to the labyrinth-like experience each player has when playing a poker tournament. Every decision sends each of us in a different direction, with many other possibilities constantly occurring to us as we wind our way through our chosen adventure.

I still had those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books in mind later in the 2/27 show when Greenstein related the story of an interesting hand he’d played in the L.A. Poker Classic Main Event involving Josh Arieh, Allen Cunningham, and two other players. (The story begins around the 50-minute mark and lasts about five minutes.)

It’s a complicated hand, but to sum it up quickly, Greenstein found himself in an awkward spot, not knowing what exactly to do preflop with AQ-suited in middle position. He ended up just calling an early-position raise along with four others, then getting out after a ten-high flop encouraged significant action from Arieh and Cunningham.

In the end, Arieh’s pocket kings were crushed by Cunningham’s flopped set of fours, but that didn’t prevent Greenstein from indulging in a lot of second-guessing regarding his own play. All through the narration of both the pre-flop and post-flop action, Greenstein humorously points out time and again how he was wondering if he could’ve either forced everyone out or set up a reasonable heads-up situation with the all-in shove he never did make.

Even after Arieh and Cunningham end up all in on the flop, Greenstein jokes he had to sweat the turn and river, even though he was already out of the hand. “This is a self-centered story,” laughs Greenstein. “How did this affect Barry?”

As he explains, if an ace had spiked on the turn or river, he’d have felt bad thinking he’d missed that opportunity to shove before the flop and set up a heads-up situation versus Arieh’s K-K which Greenstein would have won.

In fact, a queen landed on the turn, giving Greenstein more (theoretical) outs. “Thankfully, no ace or queen came” on the river, Greenstein says, which amid all of this second-guessing enables Greenstein to congratulate himself -- again, with a lot of humility and self-deprecating humor attached -- that from a gleefully unembarrassed, results-oriented perspective he had indeed made the right decision not to have shoved all in. “I got to feel good that I didn’t go broke.”

In a way, Greenstein is acknowledging here (quite humorously) that he didn’t have the fortitude he was crediting Cheong for having earlier. Admitting that he was feeling “out of sync” with his play throughout the event, he further confesses to second-guessing himself constantly in this particular hand, only feeling better about things after the result of the hand shows he managed to avoid making a decision that would’ve resulted in his elimination.

Would seem self-contradictory but for the fact that the Bear obviously knows what he’s saying here about his own uncertain play. In any event, I found his “self-centered story” quite entertaining, not to mention further proof of how in tournaments we are constantly “choosing our own adventures” -- as well as how we tell of those adventures afterwards, too.

2010 WSOP, Day 33: Games People Play

Was off yesterday, and spent the day doing a lot of nothing. Slept off and on all day. Still feel a little tired this morning, but I know once I return to the Rio this afternoon, I’ll be fully charged and ready to go.

I mean, it is the World Series of Poker.

During my waking hours yesterday, I did check in on PokerNews’ live reporting now and then. Was in particular following that Event No. 47 (the $1,000 no-limit hold’em event), the final table for which I’ll be helping cover later today. Early reports were they were going to play that one all of the way through yesterday (in which case I might possibly have had a second day off), but by early evening they changed that plan.

Followed some of the silliness on Twitter yesterday, including Barry Greenstein’s accidental tweeting of direct messages in which he broadcasted to the world details of how much he’s stuck this summer and backing arrangements. (Dr. Pauly fills in a few details on that one, if yr curious.)

Speaking of Twitter, I also noticed that Daniel Negreanu had the day off yesterday, too, and that he spent some of his day firing off tweets about Rocky movies and (once again) chip counts.

Negreanu also found time to write a blog post yesterday, at the end of which he comments briefly about “the whole twitter thing.” He concludes by noting that “Drama Queens often use twitter to. . . well, create some drama!” and adds that some of the ways Twitter is used “can be destructive or just a plain waste of time.”

Kid Poker more insightful there than he realizes, I think.

I additionally had some time yesterday to catch up on some blog reading. Among the items I read was Bill Rini’s piece from a couple of weeks ago titled “What the World Series of Poker Means to Me” in which he criticizes how the Series is set up and covered.

Rini begins by characterizing the WSOP as a whole as “contrived” and suggesting those here reporting on it are “all trying to make something out of what is usually nothing.” “The vast majority of events during the WSOP are barely even newsworthy,” he continues, then fills out the rest of the piece with a catalogue of “predictable outcomes” (i.e., articles) one often finds coming out of the Rio this time of year.

Rini brings up some good points about how the Series has too many events and thus tends to yield a lot of redundant-seeming reporting that lacks true inspiration. I don’t perfectly agree with all of the gripes that appear in his catalogue, but I think I understand where he’s coming from with each.

The WSOP is too long. Punishingly so, for all involved. As Tom Schneider told me last year, “It's like flying to Australia every day. Only when you get there you're at the Rio. Again.” And sure, there’s a lot that is wrong with the “system” (as Rini puts it) in which those of us reporting on it find ourselves forced to operate.

But really, can’t we just enjoy it a little bit? Why must the WSOP constantly be surrounded by so much negativity and criticism -- about seemingly everything?

Today I will be watching and reporting on nine players who entered a $1,000 buy-in poker tournament. These nine survived a total field of 3,128, and now the winner will earn almost half a million dollars. A couple of the players are known by some in poker, but for the most part all are relatively obscure figures. In the grand scheme of things, anyway.

Will it be “newsworthy”? I happen to think so. But I realize many -- even those who love poker and invest a lot of time and energy thinking about what the WSOP means to them -- might not feel the same way.

But so what? It’s a game, and games are fun. And poker is especially fun, a kind of game that allows for the expression of personality, for narratives to develop, for surprise and suspense, for all sorts of outcomes that are anything but predictable.

So back I go. Yeah, I’ve seen other tourneys, other final tables. But I want to see how this one turns out.

More Rush Poker, UB HHs, and WBCOOP Starts

Ended up playing some more Rush Poker over the weekend on Full Tilt and enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m just one-tabling the sucker, sticking with the pot-limit Omaha games (both six-handed and full ring).

Looking at my Poker Tracker stats, it appears I’m playing almost exactly 150 hands per hour. That compares to about 45-50 hands per hour at a regular PLO table. And while I’m not going to get into win rates too specifically, let’s just say there’s been a similarly significant jump there, too, when compared to the regular ring games. (Insert smiley face here.)

As others have noted, the game is such that it is generally difficult to “get a read” on opponents in the way one might do in a regular ring game. In particular, since with each new hand players have been reassembled around a new table, there is no way of knowing what happened with everyone else just prior to the current hand being dealt. Thus, I don’t know if the guy coming out raising pot from UTG just suffered a horrendous beat and is now tilting, or if he’s a tight player who almost never raises from early position without aces, double-suited.

However, it is not impossible to get reads on players, especially when the pool is small enough that you see the same names coming back again and again. When I’ve been playing the PLO games, the player pool has been as big as 170 or so, and as small as 65, with usually about 20% of the players multi-tabling -- that is, playing two, three, or four tables. (I know the hold’em player pools have generally been much larger.) Thus, I have had sessions where I’ve encountered players several times and thus eventually come to develop some ideas about them from having seen them play previous hands. Gotta pay attention, though.

My sense is the software is assigning the various seat positions fairly enough, even though there have been times when it seems like I’m in the blinds more often than I should be. Again, looking at Poker Tracker, it appears I am, in fact, moving around the table just fine, occupying each of the positions roughly the same percentage of the time I would be in the regular ring game.

There’s one other aspect of the game that took a while for me to figure out. If you’ve played Rush Poker you know that once you fold a hand you are immediately moved from the table and start a new hand, meaning you don’t get to see the previous hand play out among the players still involved. However, the completed hand does make it into your personal hand histories, so if you open up that “Last Hand” window it isn’t too hard to go back and see how the story ended.

Speaking of going back and examining unfinished stories, this weekend I also became interested in this thread over on Two Plus Two regarding the UltimateBet cheating scandal and its aftermath, the one titled “How goes Sebok's hunt for the real (UB) killers?” Some interesting info starting to pop up in that one, including the contributions of Haley Hintze regarding both ownership issues and, more recently, the hand histories Barry Greenstein received from UB.

A month ago I shared the story of how -- after a full year of emails -- I finally received some of my hand histories from UltimateBet. I say “some” because in the end I was only sent roughly two-thirds of the hands I actually played on the site (along with a number of hands in which I was sitting out). As I mentioned then, I stuck to the small stakes, meaning I did not run up against any of the cheating accounts in the hands I played on the site (as far as I know).

Anyhow, Haley has written further about Greenstein’s hand histories on her blog, noting in particular a couple of curious plays made by the cheating account when up against the Bear. You can look at Greenstein’s hand histories, too, if you want, as they’ve been posted over on PokerRoad.

By the way, the scattered, difficult-to-parse text files Greenstein received are in the same user-unfriendly format in which my HHs were sent to me. One difference, though -- Haley points out how some of the hands from particular sessions appear to be missing from Greenstein’s histories (i.e., there are some gaps in the numbering sequences). I noticed no such gaps in any of my sessions, although as I said before, I had a couple of sessions for which the hand histories were not sent to me.

Like I say, if you’re interested in that story, check out Haley’s most recent blog post as well as the Two Plus Two thread for more.

Meanwhile, let me remind you that the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker series begins this afternoon on PokerStars with the first event, a no-limit hold’em freeroll. (For more on that, see here.) I’m planning to be there, although I doubt I’m gonna try to blog and/or tweet much as I play. NLHE ain’t my usual game, so I might need my whole jingle brain to focus on the tourney. Good luck to you, if yr playin’ too.

Post-Production is 20/20

Heard an interesting follow-up to that hand shown on ESPN’s coverage of the 2009 World Series of Poker last week, the one in which Phil Ivey mistakenly mucked what would have been the winning hand at showdown.

You’ve probably either watched the hand or heard all about it by now. With 24 players left, Ivey opened with a preflop raise from under the gun with , and the table folded around to Jordan Smith who reraised from the big blind with . Both players ended up cautiously checking down the flop, turn, and river, with the river having put four spades on the board.

After Ivey checked behind on the end, Smith announced that he’d paired his ace. Ivey waited for Smith to show his hand, then surprisingly Ivey dropped his cards in front of the dealer, obviously not realizing he’d made a flush and thus held the better hand. The two million-plus chip pot went to Smith.

Barry Greenstein sporadically keeps an “audio blog” over on PokerRoad, and at the end of last week he spoke a bit about having talked to his friend Ivey about the hand.

Greenstein asked Ivey whether he knew about having mucked the winner prior to the hand being shown on ESPN, and Ivey said he did not. Ivey also said he was surprised no one called him before Greenstein did to tease him, but Greenstein explained that was because Ivey’s cell phone doesn’t work in Cabo, Mexico where he’s relaxing in preparation for the final table. (For those interested in Ivey’s “self-imposed exile” in Cabo, a recent “The Life of Ivey” video sheds some light.)

“I think this hand is never going to leave me,” Ivey told Greenstein, revealing that he does, in fact, at least have some awareness of how he’s perceived.

What I found most interesting in Greenstein’s audio blog, though, was the Bear’s report that Ivey’s first response after having seen the hand was to ask “Is there a way they [i.e., ESPN] could doctor the hands?” He told Greenstein he didn’t remember there having been four spades on the board, and wondered if perhaps there could have been some funny business post-production. Greenstein said he guessed it was possible to doctor the footage, but he doubted that it had been done.

As I mentioned last week, Change100 was reporting from the feature table that day. Indeed, in her report of that hand, all of those board cards just as they appeared on ESPN. So yeah, not that we really would have suspected it anyway, but I think it is safe to say there was no post-prod doctoring here.

Ivey’s question reminded me of something I’ve witnessed from time to time while covering televised final tables at the WSOP. We all know how the productions are highly edited, well-crafted programs designed to be watched as a seamless narrative. Thus you can assume there are numerous examples of inserted reaction shots and the like that aren’t perhaps representative of the strict chronology of how events actually occurred -- and indeed, I’ve been able to pick up on a few of those now and then when watching the shows of tables I’ve covered. But I’m with Greenstein in the belief that there are never any outright doctoring of hands.

However, it does happen that there will occasionally be some on-the-fly “restaging” during the course of a televised final table. I’ve seen it happen several times that during a brief pause in the action, a dealer might be asked to repeat the dealing of a flop, turn, or river in order for ESPN to get a better looking shot. Perhaps the cards didn’t come out neatly enough the first time around, or the dealer’s hand was obscuring one of the cards from the overhead camera, and so a second take is ordered up. I recall one time watching this happen and the crowd reacting, obviously confused about what was going on. Then everyone had a laugh afterwards as it became clear they were watching a recreation of a hand that had just occurred.

In his audio blog, Greenstein speculates that by the river Ivey had become convinced Smith was holding an ace in his hand, and so when the ace appeared on the river he’d completely overlooked the suits. Ivey said as much to Greenstein, noting how when it came to showdown, he was surprised to see Smith show A-9 offsuit, since Smith had reraised him from out of position. When he saw Smith’s hand, Ivey was, to employ one of Norman Chad’s favorite terms, “bamboozled.” So surprising it was to see his opponent’s hand, Ivey forgot his own.

Greenstein goes on to say how common it is to misread one’s hand, even among the pros, and expressed doubts that anyone who claims never to have misread his or her hand is telling the truth.

As I mentioned last week, Ivey’s misstep was hardly the biggest one that happened on that Day 8. Will certainly be watching tomorrow night. Indeed, there’s one hand in particular -- one which back in July I said “sort of emblematize[d] the entire frenzied last day” -- I know I want to see. Even if I know already how it turned out, and even remember all of the reactions of the individuals involved.

’Cos, well, those editors... they can do some neat stuff.

2009 WSOP, Day 17: It Was Fun

Yesterday I helped cover the first day of Event No. 26, the $1,500 Limit Hold’em event. I like LHE, of course, and so didn’t mind drawing the event. In fact, I’m starting to think when the day comes that I do take my shot and sit down at one of these suckers, it will probably be in this very event.

But I understand why some players (and reporters) subscribe to the idea that the game -- as Barry Greenstein says in Ace on the River -- is like watching paint dry.

It was certainly a relatively more sedate scene over there in the Blue section where Event No. 26 was being played than it was on the other side of the Amazon Room last night. There were two final tables yesterday -- the $1,500 No-Limit Shootout (Event No. 22) and the $10,000 World Championship 2-7 Draw (Event No. 23) -- and both had attracted some raucous fans making lots of noise, particularly as we reached midnight and beyond, making the limit hold’em lot seem even more serene. Every few minutes a huge roar would erupt to punctuate a big hand over at the main feature table, causing the limit players to stop and look up before returning to their hands.

Partly out of necessity because of staffing, for some of the events PokerNews has scaled back coverage of Day Ones, meaning we don’t necessarily try to track all players’ chip counts, bustouts, and so forth from the very start, but focus on that more once we get to Day Two and the money. Not the case for all of the events, but for some of the lesser-profile ones -- like the $1,500 LHE -- that’s the strategy.

Even if it weren’t a matter of necessity, staffing-wise, I think it is a good call to be a little more selective early on in a tournament and try to report on items of interest rather than aim for some sort of pseudo-comprehensive coverage. Which truth be told, ain’t really feasible even if you had a dozen or more reporters assigned to the event.

So there were just a couple of us -- me and Neil, a terrific field reporter -- and we did our best to give some idea of what was happening, selecting mini-stories along the way to share and report.

One phenomenon I noticed early on was the fact that there seemed to be a lot more women in the tournament than in a typical WSOP event. I mentioned the fact a couple of times in the live blog, but tried not to make too much of it. In the blog, I suggested that of the 643 entrants, at least 60 were women. In fact, the number might have been even higher, which meant more than 10% of the field were women. That’s at least one per table, and indeed there were a few tables with two or three women playing.

In most open WSOP events, one finds less than 5% of the players are women. Indeed, in certain of the higher buy-in events with fewer players, relatively speaking, there will sometimes only be two or three women in the entire field. Even in the lower buy-in events one generally only sees a woman every three or four tables or so, if that.

I remember that $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event I covered last summer (Event No. 19), won by Vanessa Selbst. There were 759 entered in that one, and I’m pretty sure of that number there weren’t more than six or seven women there at the start. Selbst was the chip leader for a lot of the latter part of that tourney, when it got down under 100 players, and I think Kathy Leibert was the only other woman still in the tourney at that point (she finished 72nd).

Like I say, in the live blog I reported on this aspect of the tourney, but didn’t editorialize, as it ain’t really the place for such. I think it is probably an interesting issue to explore, and there’s probably some points to be made about the reasons why the fixed limit game might appeal more to women than does a no-limit or pot-limit game. (And, by the same token, how many men seem to prefer the no-limit games to LHE.)

I also found myself wondering as the night wore on how the presence of relatively more women in the field might have affected the overall atmosphere of the tournament, especially at those tables where there were two or three women seated. I said above that the LHE crowd was “relatively more sedate,” but that doesn’t mean they weren’t expressive or having fun. And, in fact, at some tables having fun seemed to be the main focus, with a lot of laughing and camaraderie, especially as we reached the last levels of the night.

You might have played in these kinds of games before -- I know I have. Low-limit poker where the players kind of seem to pull for each other to make their hands, as if it were blackjack or some other game where they weren’t playing against each other but against the house. I guess I shouldn’t assume the presence of the women helped create this atmosphere -- indeed, it could possibly be explained as more a function of the game itself. But it might have had something to do with it.

For most of the night I was seated within a few feet of a table where Shannon Elizabeth was playing, and much of the time there were one or two other women at her table as well. Lots of laughing and smiling going on there all night, and I don’t think it was all due to the men being spellbound by the attractive actress (although that’s certainly possible). Hard to explain it, but sitting a few feet away I could sense the whole night developing into this meaningful, shared experience for the players that was going to be a fond memory for them, regardless of how they finished the tournament.

That’s not to say people weren’t playing to win -- of course, they were. But unlike most tourneys, where you’re often looking at a collection of non-communicative individuals in constant conflict with each other, one had more of a sense of small “groups” genuinely relating to one another and enjoying themselves. Indeed, on more than one occasion I overheard players telling their tablemates with sincerity “it was fun” as they were busted from the tournament, and receiving similarly sincere well wishes in return.

I know some people feel like these sort of pleasantries aren’t really part of poker -- that the idea isn’t to socialize or “have fun,” but to win at all costs. I get that. But being surrounded by people who are making an effort to be friendly and engage one another in this way does make it a little more agreeable for those of us assigned to hang around them for 13-14 hours and report on what they’re doing.

I’ll be back for Day 2 later today. There are 124 players left (including a short-stacked Elizabeth and seven other women). Greenstein is still there, too, despite that thing he said about LHE and paint drying.

The plan, as usual, will be to play down to the final nine, or to stop at 3 a.m., whichever comes first. The blinds/limits are pretty high -- indeed, they have been since about the fifth level, in relative terms, with the average stack being only 10-12 big bets -- so I’m going to guess we lose a lot of folks fairly quickly, though I don’t know if we’ll get all of the way to nine today.

Follow along and find out over on PokerNews.

Tom’s Adventures in Durrrrland

Barry Greenstein keeps what they call an “audio blog” over at Poker Road called “Tips from the Bear.” His entries come fairly infrequently, with some being genuine “tips” and others just recounting various hands or happenings. In the latest (dated 3/9/09), Greenstein discusses that amazing hand from the most recent episode of High Stakes Poker -- the final one of the episode primarily involving himself, reigning World Series of Poker Main Event champion Peter Eastgate, and the guy everybody’s talking about these days, Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

“This hand will be remembered for a long time,” Greenstein begins, using the same sober tone he always employs when doing these audio blogs. I think he’s right. Already been a bit of buzz on the intertubes about it, and I imagine the hand will continue to receive a lot of attention over the next couple of months as people discuss it even further on blogs, forums, podcasts, and elsewhere.

If you have not seen the hand, I don’t want to spoil it for you. Before reading any further, take a look:

As Greenstein points out in his audio blog commentary, stack sizes are very significant here. Greenstein says he was one of the shorter stacks at the table with about $230,000. Meanwhile, Eastgate had bought in deep (and had won a few pots), and so had about $500,000 in front of him when the hand began. Dwan also had something in the neighborhood of a half a million. All of which means we’re talking hundreds of big blinds in each stack -- nearly 300 or something for the Bear, and twice that for Eastgate and Dwan.

To describe the action: The blinds are $400/$800 with a $200 ante. Greenstein picks up under the gun and open-raises to $2,500. Incredibly, all seven of his opponents call the raise. Dwan starts it by calling from UTG+1 with . Then David Benyamine calls with , Eli Elezra with , Ilari Sahamies with , Daniel Negreanu (button) with , Eastgate (small blind) with , and Doyle Brunson (big blind) with . Total pot is $21,600.

“Who opened this pot that got seven callers, that’s all I want to know,” says a sheepish-looking Greenstein.

The flop comes . As Greenstein says on his audio blog, about as good a flop as he could hope for (aside from flopping a set) when holding pocket aces and facing a table full of opponents. Eastgate checks his trips, Brunson checks, and Greenstein leads out for $10,000 -- just under half the pot. Dwan, who has paired his ten, then raises to $37,300. “I don’t know what he’s doing,” says Gabe Kaplan on the commentary. “He’s gotta know that Barry’s really got a hand here.” It folds around to Eastgate who silently calls Dwan’s raise. Greenstein calls, too. Pot now $133,500.

The comes on the turn, and both Eastgate and Greenstein check. Dwan (who has the weakest hand of the three) considers for a good while, then fires out $104,200. Eastgate folds, perhaps worried that Dwan has ace-deuce or something, and a very pained-looking Greenstein also folds. Dwan wins the pot.

Once the hand is over, Elezra pipes up to say “Barry fold the best hand.” Technically true, as Eastgate had gotten out, but I am not sure what Elezra thought Eastgate might have had. “Well, he had the best hand,” says Dwan, pointing to Eastgate as he stacks his chips. Dwan goes on to say he’ll make a side bet that Eastgate had the best hand, and it sounds like Brunson takes him up on it. Kaplan rounds out the commentary saying the only other player he could imagine making a play like Dwan’s would have been the late Stu Ungar.

I’m not even going to pretend to try to analyze this hand. For that, go listen to Greenstein, whose 17-minute commentary in his audio blog gives us novices a lot of other things to think about here. Instead, let me just list three reasons why this hand is so friggin’ fascinating to small-time punters like myself.

For one, the action is especially peculiar, utterly unlike anything we’ve ever seen previously when it comes to poker on television. The majority of televised poker is tournaments, where such “family pots” rarely occur (and are even more rarely shown). They don’t occur in cash games that much, either, especially high stakes games. As Greenstein says in his narrative of the hand, he open-raised and “something happened to me that has never happened to me before in an eight-handed game,” namely, the whole table called. Things get even weirder post-flop, and seem even more so to a lot of us given that we see the hole cards. So the sheer novelty of the hand is one element here.

Secondly, seeing the worst hand manage to push out not one but two better hands is also something most of us find amazing to watch. Those of us who call ourselves recreational players (or amateurs) watch a hand like this and with all three players discover that we are probably not personally capable of having acted the way each of them act. Take just the turn action: most of us cannot imagine ourselves betting out like Dwan, nor folding trips like Eastgate, nor folding pocket rockets like Greenstein. The whole hand thus has an “uncanny” feel to it wherein we recognize it is the same game we play, but we also recognize what we are watching is wholly unfamiliar to us.

Finally, the fact that the hand involves these particular players makes it all the more interesting. Thanks to his frequent participation over on Poker Road and on the forums, his well-regarded book Ace on the River, his long-term record of solid play, and his humor and generosity, Greenstein rightly occupies a fairly central position in our little poker world. When we watch High Stakes Poker, we’re usually more intrigued by a hand involving the Bear than a hand, say, between Benyamine and Elezra. Eastgate also fascinates, thanks to his youth and status as the 2008 WSOP Main Event champ. For a variety of reasons, we want to see how this youngster is going to handle himself on this difficult, challenging stage.

Then there’s Dwan. Of the “Durrrr Challenge.” Cover boy of the February 2009 Bluff. “He posterized me,” says a humble Greenstein in his commentary. Indeed, Dwan is poker’s current Michael Jordan. Dwan makes this hand happen, of course. But his involvement ensures it fascinates, too.

Earlier in the episode, in response to a false claim from Dwan regarding the strength of a hand he had folded, Kaplan cracks “He lives in a little cabin in Durrrrland.”

Dunno where that is. But, like Alice, I think we’re all becoming curiouser and curiouser!

Facing the Facts

Was reading in Barry Greenstein’s Ace on the River yesterday -- always a good one just for picking up and rereading certain short chapters from time to time. In the chapter titled “Money Management,” Greenstein notes how “Most players initiate record keeping after a win since it is more satisfying to start with a win than a loss.”

I’ve written here many times about my obsession with record keeping, something I’ve done since I first started playing poker. Even so, this week I think I could be said to be somewhat guilty of what Greenstein is saying. Finding myself on a bit of an upswing, I decided at last to go ahead and get a copy of Poker Tracker Omaha and start entering hands. Call me vain, but I think I was partly motivated by a desire to see some of them green numbers (indicating wins) in the PTO program.

Have just begun to mess around with the program, and indeed have only had time to enter the last three months’ worth of play -- just under 15,000 hands. I have a ton more, though, and so hope before too long to have a more significant sample to examine. Did happen to spot a couple of interesting items, though, that I thought I’d share here.

I say I’m on an upswing, and indeed, I’ve enjoyed several good sessions here lately, although there was one very bad one mixed in there where I dropped nearly two buy-ins (almost $100) in 279 hands. Those wounds healed quickly, though, as I had a ridiculously fortunate session the next day in which I somehow won over $120 in just 69 hands. I came away from both sessions with particular ideas about how things had gone, but thought I’d use Poker Tracker to take a closer look and perhaps try to confirm those conclusions I’d drawn.

The losing session ended with a terrible last hand in which I’d turned a well-concealed six-high straight, got it all in versus a guy I thought might have a set or perhaps a wheel, and it turned out he’d also turned the same six-high straight plus a flush draw -- and the flush got there on the river. A perfect storm kind of hand for him, ending with him freerolling me, hitting, and taking about $30 from me. Up to then, I had lost a few hands with A-A-x-x, and in fact had gotten to the point where I felt myself getting a bit apprehensive whenever I picked up aces, as if anticipating losing with them yet again (not a good way to play, for sure).

Anyhow, my conclusion from that session was I’d been somewhat unfortunate and perhaps had misplayed a couple of A-A-x-x hands along the way, thus ensuring the big loss.

In the next session, I knew exactly why I’d won so much so quickly. Two hands, both of which involved me hitting nut straights, big pots developing, and my hands holding up. I hadn’t confirmed it, but I knew most if not all of the $120 had come on those two big pots.

Okay, so what do I see when I look at Poker Tracker?

Well, my impression from that first session that I’d been dealt aces a lot and had lost a lot with them was definitely correct.

There are 270,725 different starting hands in Omaha. Actually, there are only 16,432 distinct starting hands (i.e., taking into account the fact that suits have no particular value before the flop). Compare that to the 169 distinct starting hands in hold’em! But we have to consider all of the combinations in order to talk about how often one should expect to be dealt, say, a hand like A-A-x-x.

Of these starting hands, 82,368 combinations contain a single pair, and of those, exactly 6,336 combinations contain two aces only (i.e., we aren’t including the small number of hands with three or four aces here). That means one should expect to be dealt two aces approximately 2.34% of the time, around once every 43 hands or so. In my session, I played 279 hands and picked up A-A-x-x nine times. That’s once every 31 hands, meaning I got aces two or three more times than I should have in terms of what the probabilities suggest.

In those nine hands, I lost a whopping $63.45 -- basically my entire loss except for that last hand! Most of that (about $50) actually came in just two of the hands. I see one of those hands was a bad luck situation (flopped a set and got outdrawn), but the other was a poorly played gamble by me (someone else flopped a set and suckered me in).

In the second session -- the winning one -- I’m seeing that in those two big straight hands I actually won $130.15, meaning in the other 67 hands I was a ten-buck loser! In one my starting hand was 8-7-6-5 double-suited, and in the other 9-8-7-5 double-suited. One hand I played fine (flopped the straight plus a flush draw; opponent also flopped a king-high flush draw, gambled, and lost), and in the other was a bit fortunate (I took a gamble after flopping a wrap draw versus two opponents and ended up rivering my straight to win the pot).

How are aces treating me, generally speaking? Well, over the last few months, I was dealt A-A-x-x a total of 359 times in 14,729 hands. That’s about once every 41 hands, which is about what I should expect. And somehow I’ve only won six bucks in those hands, a miserable win rate (although it would have looked a lot better prior to that bad session the other day, I guess). I thought I was one of those players who knew better than to overplay aces in PLO, but perhaps I have been struggling there more than I realize.

Like I said, I’ve only barely started to root around in here to see if I can discover any other meaningful trends. Am noticing that a couple of players whom I had thought were especially strong are in fact losing quite a bit in the hands they've played with me at the table. (Perhaps they aren’t so much strong players as players whose styles make me uncomfortable somehow.) Am also seeing that in the last three months I have done much better in 6-max games than in full ring games, something of which I hadn’t necessarily been aware before.

In his list of 25 “traits of winning poker players,” Greenstein notes that among other qualities the winners are “attentive to detail,” “the ones with the best memories,” and “honest with themselves.” Seems like this here Poker Tracker could help with all three of those.

Moonlighting

That is the word for it. Shamus in the shadows. Playing it straight by day, living out a second, secret self at night.

Was on the World Series of Online Poker Event No. 11 yesterday, the $320 pot-limit Omaha/8 event. Goofy game. And not so simple to report, either. Big, split pots are frequent (and anticlimactic to report). And the big, scooped pots -- often report-worthy -- are usually not a little bit arduous to recount and explain.

One big difference between reporting online tourneys and live ones is the sheer amount of information one gets online. (Not to mention the speed with which that bombardment occurs.) Spaceman did a good job detailing this phenomenon -- and other relevant factors affecting the pursuit of one’s goal here -- in a post from earlier this week. Kind of makes it seem disingenuous to summarize a hand when you have every single detail at yr disposal there in a hand history.

Hell, on PokerStars you can even reanimate the sucker again and again, if you’d like. You could turn a single hand into a regular little novella, if you wanted. Was joking with one of my colleagues early on how nice it would have been at the WSOP had we been able just to click a replayer and get the players to do it again.

Best part of the evening was eavesdropping on the incessant chat over at Barry Greenstein’s table. A constant stream of questions for the Bear, from both railbirds and tablemates. And from what I could tell, Greenstein answered every one, no matter how silly or personal. One even asked how old he was when he’d lost his virginity. “Still holding out,” responded Greenstein cheekily.

Back on tonight (and for the next several days, too). Maybe when it’s all over a couple of weeks from now I’ll have more to say. No time right now, though. Big pot brewing over on Table 106.

Three Reasons Why Limit Poker Is More Exciting Than Watching Paint Dry

Those summer projects are finally happening. Couldn’t put ’em all off indefinitely. One was to do something about the walls around here. When moving in, the agent had described the original color as Clam Chowder. New England style, I suppose, since we’re talking about the blandest off-white you can imagine on every wall (and ceiling) in every room of the house. Now it’s Dancing Light, Golden Fleece, Brick Dust, Sweet Annie, Delightful Moon . . . .

Miscalculated a bit, though, and bought a few more gallons of each than was necessary. So I’ve decided to scrap the primer and instead I’m putting up two coats. Generally takes a couple of hours to ensure the first coat is sufficiently dry. That’s right . . . I’m playing less poker this week in favor of watching paint dry.

Articles concerning recent legislative efforts to criminalize online poker have reported that nearly two million people log on every day to play for real money online (with something like two-thirds of these players being from the U.S.). A quick scan of the tables at any site shows that the great majority are playing no-limit games or tourneys, not limit games. A lot of players speak with disdain about limit poker, a view often reinforced by the pros. In his autobiography-slash-anecdote anthology-slash-strategy primer, Ace on the River: An Advanced Poker Guide, Barry Greenstein describes an early stage of his career when he quit his software job and began playing limit hold ’em full time. He’d play twelve hours a day, seven days a week, eventually deciding that even though the game provided a reliable stream of income, for him playing limit was "like watching paint dry.”

As I sit here waiting to apply a second coat of Dancing Light to the hallway, I thought I’d offer three reasons why -- for me, at least -- Greenstein’s opinion, though shared by many, doesn't quite hold. Don’t get me wrong -- these aren’t arguments for why limit poker is more exciting than no limit. Rather, these are reasons why limit poker is more interesting and fun than those who avoid it might think:

1. Limit poker forces players constantly to make decisions. There are a lot of showdowns in limit -- more than in NL. Thus playing a limit hold ’em hand to the end means making a total of four decisions along the way. Even when not involved, one gets to see other players making multiple decisions just about every hand. (Rarely do hands end preflop.) One can often gain a lot of information about one’s opponents in a short amount of time in a limit game, information that can later be used when having to make all of those decisions.

2. As a result, limit poker requires concentration. On the July 2 episode of CardPlayer’s The Circuit, Greenstein’s son Joe Sebok told how he spent the night before the $3,000 limit hold ’em event (Event 7) drinking and partying with friends. He’d overcome the effects of his night to do well on the first day. “I’m lucky that it’s limit today, ’cause I’m really hungover,” Sebok explained. “When you’re hungover playing limit, it’s like heaven, ’cause you don’t really have to think at all. It’s such a mathematical game, you can just play . . . you play your hands, you listen to music, it’s actually really nice.” (As he writes about in his blog, Sebok ended up busting just short of the money.) Sebok was certainly being facetious here, not just about playing with a hangover, but also about how limit hold ’em doesn’t require one’s full attention. As I’ve written about before, odds are important, to be sure, and definitely play a huge role in limit games when determining whether to fold, call, or raise. And it is true that in limit “you play your hands” (as Sebok says). In other words, since you’re showing down more hands, you’re usually better off being more concerned with the strength of your own hand than with that of your opponent. (The opposite is true in NL.) Still, you’ve got to pay attention. And not just to the math.

3. Limit poker (often) involves having to adopt different “roles” or styles of play. Again, this is true of NL as well, but those who believe limit is strictly a math game don’t always appreciate the fact that one can play -- indeed, has to play -- a number of different styles even in a single session. The key difference is that it is often the cards (and not other players’ styles) that encourage you to “become” (for a while, anyway) one kind of player rather than another. Had a session last week in which I was dealt KQ three times in the first four hands, and in fact preraised on all three occasions. My actions actually solicited a comment from another player about all of my preflop raises, helping me see how I had suddenly created for myself an image as a loose player interested in building pots and getting action. I had then to try to use that image to my advantage in subsequent hands (tightening up a bit in the hopes of getting action when I eventually got some cards).

That’ll do for now. I believe we’re good to go here with that second coat. So long Clam Chowder.

Image: Barry Greenstein, Ace on the River: An Advanced Poker Guide (2005), Amazon.