Gonzo Gareth

Writing hastily today from the Philly airport, taking advantage of a pause between flights to France where I will be helping cover EPT Deauville next week. I had to take the opportunity to pop online to read one particular tournament recap from last night, one I hadn’t had a chance to call up yesterday.

The report was for Event No. 3 of the just-begun Tournament Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) on PokerStars, a $215 buy-in turbo “knockout” event which attracted just under 5,000 entrants. I’d railed the end of the sucker once I’d become aware that a fellow blogger, Gareth Chantler, had managed to find a seat at the final table.

I follow Gareth on Twitter and so had seen his occasional updates regarding the event in which references to his “running hotter than the sun” began to pick up the deeper he got in the event. Being someone who has watched countless tourneys online, it was fun to observe one with a genuine rooting interest for a change.

Just yesterday I was mentioning what is essentially my most remarkable achievement as a “writer-player” in poker, namely luckboxing my way to winning a media event in Ukraine several years ago. Another third-place finish in a WSOP Media Event remains memorable to me as well, thanks largely to my having claimed a trophy for the effort which I just repositioned on my bookshelf at home following a recent move.

But really, as someone unlikely to enter even modest-sized buy-in events any time soon, such trifling finishes will likely together represent the pinnacle of my own tourney triumphs. Thus do I get an especially big kick out of seeing my poker blogging brethren breaking through for big scores, which is why I followed the end of TCOOP Event No. 3 intently last night as Gareth pursued the footsteps of James McManus, Change100, and Chad Holloway to take a turn at becoming the subject of a tournament story rather than the author.

Gareth ended up making it to three-handed and then agreed to a chop that guaranteed him more than $97K -- even more than Chad earned for his bracelet win last summer! He’d make it to heads-up before being bested for a second-place finish. Exciting stuff.

Then I saw Gareth send the above tweet. Sure, he was going to be featured in the tourney recap... but he was also going to be the one writing it!

This morning Brad Willis who heads up the PokerStars blog tweeted “Gave ‪@GarethChantler assignment to cover poker tourney last night. So, he PLAYED it, finished 2nd for nearly $100,000 & then wrote the piece.”

Gareth had a ready response for Brad: “In my defense I thought it was a Gonzo assignment.” (For those unfamiliar with the variety of reporting pioneered by Hunter S. Thompson and his ilk, here is the Wikipedia explanation of “Gonzo journalism.”)

Like I say, I was intrigued to read how Gareth would be writing up the story of what is easily the most exciting tournament he’s ever played. And he did not disappoint, including a priceless (and inspired) “brief, exclusive interview” with the runner-up.

Read and enjoy Gareth’s account here: “TCOOP 2014: K_Heaven07 ascendent in Event #3, $215 NLHE Turbo, Knockout.” Impossible to do so without grinning, I promise.

(Talk to you next from France!)

Good Read: The Atlantic on Vanessa Selbst and Women in Poker

On Twitter, sometimes one discovers messages pointing to online articles with an accompanying declaration “#goodread” or some other terse recommendation of a particular landing spot on the endlessly-distracting interwebs.

I’ll send out such tweets sometimes when I haven’t the energy to provide a more detailed recommendation, say, in a blog post. I’ll also admit to experiencing some vain satisfaction whenever someone on Twitter points to something I’ve written in similar fashion, such as happened yesterday with something I wrote for Ocelot Sports “On the Baseball Hall of Fame Shutout.” (Sorry for the shameless Shamus plug.)

With character limits, there usually isn’t much space left in a tweet to say much if one is also including a link. Nor is Twitter really a great place (in my estimation) to deliver meaningful critiques of anything, really, although some use the medium regularly to deliver such commentaries on movies, books, TV shows, music, politics, news of the day, Justin Bieber, and/or just about everything else. And a select few are even good at delivering such evaluative assessments in 140 characters or less.

In any event, I usually rely a lot on my knowledge of the tweet’s author before automatically clicking through when encountering such a recommendation. Earlier today, Change100 delivered such a message, referring to a new piece on the Atlantic website by Shawnee Barton profiling Vanessa Selbst. Trusting Change100’s taste generally speaking -- and in particular regarding a mainstream outlet’s discussion of poker (and a woman in poker, at that) -- I didn’t hesitate clicking through.

Unsurprisingly, the piece by Barton titled “What It’s Like To Be a Woman Who Plays Professional Poker” is indeed a worthwhile read for anyone interested in poker, Selbst, or issues concerning men and women and how they interact.

There are a number of aspects of the article that recommend it, one of which being an obvious awareness on the part of Barton of both Vanessa Selbst’s background and playing history as well as of recent trends in poker, generally speaking. Indeed, at no point in the article did I find myself questioning Barton’s knowledge of the game or the historical context for Selbst’s story -- kind of a rarity when it comes to poker articles emanating from non-poker outlets.

And -- also refreshing -- I not only learned new things about Selbst, but feel like Barton made some insightful observations about cultural expectations for men and women and how those expectations often get amplified in the context of the male-dominated world of poker. Barton also adds a good point near the end regarding the possible impact of Black Friday and the relative absence of online poker in the U.S., noting how it might be affecting women’s participation in poker.

But go read the article yourself, and forgive my going on a little longer than 140 characters in my recommendation of it. As a fan of both Selbst and solid poker writing, I’m glad I followed Change100’s suggestion.

Human Interest

Just had a chance to read and enjoy Phil Galfond’s latest blog post, the first part of a kind of mini-memoir detailing his path to becoming a poker pro. He’s titled it “My Poker (+other) Story.”

If you’ve read Galfond’s blog before, you know he’s a thoughtful, smart guy and a good writer, too. Thus does it come as no surprise to see the discussion of his journey extend beyond the same-old-move-up-through-the-stakes tale so many other online grinders have told.

And really, it’s usually the “(+other)” stuff that makes any poker player’s story more interesting, isn’t it? More human.

I’ll just mention a few reflections I had as I read, then let you go check out the post yourself.

One was how easy it is for me to identify with Galfond, despite the fact that his achievements as a player obviously dwarf my own.

He talks about being obsessive, sort of an introvert (but still social), and intellectually curious. He mentions both friendships and family and makes it clear how important relationships with others are to him. And he also shows a well-founded appreciation of the need for balance between work (or pursuing one’s personal goals, such as in poker) and leisure.

All stuff I can understand and relate to, for sure. You, too, I’ll bet.

His post additionally covers his college career and how his pursuit of a philosophy degree was cut short by poker. He talks a lot about classes that interested him and other aspects of the academic life that did not.

Here is where Galfond and I went in somewhat different directions. I’m one who ended up going on with higher education as far as it would take me, getting graduate degrees and eventually teaching at the college level. And even though I got a ton of value out of taking that path and have no regrets about doing so, I share some of Galfond’s cynicism about the importance of degrees and grades and other ways we use higher education to measure ourselves against one another.

I like Galfond saying how he decided to be a philosophy major simply because the classes were interesting, and not worrying about where such a degree might take him, career-wise. “I didn’t know what it would lead to in life,” he says, “and I didn’t much care.”

I’ve had a lot of experience advising college students. While I always try to be practical with my recommendations to them, I also always attempt to make sure they understand that whatever major they choose, it had better be in something they find interesting. If they have some ability in that field and can do well in those classes, so much the better. But they gotta like it... at least something about it.

Thus when students ask me about being an English major, I ask them if they love to read literature and write about it. If the answer is yes to that, then we can talk about how you don’t have to be an low-earning English teacher after graduating with an English degree. In fact, you can do just about anything in which being able to read and write is needed.

I never tell students it doesn’t matter whatsoever what major they choose -- they don’t want to hear that -- but I have thought it numerous times. Because really it doesn’t. Not that much.

People joke about the relative value of humanities degrees a lot. Even Galfond parenthetically asks later on when talking about not graduating “what’s a Philosophy degree worth anyways?” But he’s not talking about translating the degree into any dollar amount or other measure of value, a mistake some students make that all but ensures they’ll get as little as possible out of their college years. Not entirely (I don’t think).

No, Galfond is talking about finding something interesting and worthwhile, and continuing with it until it stops being either. The classes were worth it for him, for a while, anyway. Finishing and meeting arbitrary requirements for a degree was not.

I had one other, more personal thought when reading Galfond’s post, namely the memory of having been there at the Rio back in 2008 when he won his WSOP bracelet in the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha event (with rebuys). That was my first WSOP with PokerNews, and it just so happened Galfond’s win came at one of the first final tables on which I had ever reported. Change100 and I were there for that one.

I’d have to go back through the blog to recall details of the tourney and final table, but I remember it being a fairly dominating performance by the guy we kinda vaguely knew at the time as that “OMGClayAiken” dude who crushed online.

So I’m looking forward to Galfond getting to that part of the story, too, so as to learn more about what the experience was like for him that night. And to learn more about both the “pro poker player” and the “person,” as Galfond describes himself atop his blog.

A Glance Back While Driving Ahead

Been spending today thinking some about the near future -- specifically that November Nine which finally kicks off on Sunday afternoon -- as well as the recent past.

By the recent past I’m referring to the last four years or so, the period comprising my having surprisingly transitioned into this life of poker writing and tourney reporting. I guess there are a few reasons why my anticipation of watching the WSOP Main Event finale this weekend is being mixed a bit with the retrospective stuff.

The event itself is bringing on some of the looking back. Seems like I was just there, helping PokerNews report on the eighth and final day of action at the ME back in July. I won’t be there for this weekend’s restart, but will certainly be following the reporting coming from my several buds who will be.

Speaking of buds, posts by a couple of them have also got me thinking back even further than the last few months.

My friend Change100 yesterday penned a piece called “The Last November Nine?” in which she shared her thoughts about the possibility that this ME final-table-delay experiment may well have “run its course.” (Talked about that a little at the start of yesterday’s post.)

The possibility that the November Nine might be on the way out was the occasion for Change’s post, but along the way she shares a lot of insight both about the way this whole “poker media” thing has evolved and about where it might be headed. She also connects the current, wildly uncertain state of online poker in the U.S. to larger cultural contexts in ways that are worth considering.

One observation in particular that stands out for me from Change’s post is her point about how televised poker’s greatest “hook” has always been the viewer getting to enjoy the idea -- even if it were largely fantastic -- that he or she could be among those playing for the bracelets or bundles of cash one day. That connection between viewers and participants is incredibly meaningful, I think, even if it is mostly imaginary. And without online poker or even a faint hope of winning our way into the events being shown on our teevee screens, it’s hard for many to care much about watching them.

I’m not going to rehearse all of Change’s other points here about where poker has come from, where it might be going, and the ever-evolving status of those who write about poker within the overall scheme of things. Go read for yourself.

Meanwhile, another friend, Brad “Otis” Willis, has today posted a brief history of the PokerStars blog that similarly reflects on the whole idea of “poker media” as a relatively recent phenomenon. His post is titled “PokerStars 10th Anniversary: How the PokerStars Blog Got Its Start.”

Brad had told me before how the PS blog first came about in 2005 and how things grew from there, but his write-up adds further depth and color to the story that makes it especially fun to relive. It also illustrates -- like Change’s post -- the inherent value of thoughtful, reflective prose, something both Brad and Change have brought to poker writing in ways that have influenced others of us who’ve tried our hands at such.

Anyhow, check it out. It really is a cool story, bro’.

Oh, crap. Am noticing the next post is No. 1,500 for me here. Will be another temptation to wax nostalgic, although I think I’m sufficiently distracted what’s coming up to get too carried away with too much more looking back just now.

Angry Poker

The 2011 World Series of Poker is in full swing now, with the first nine events having begun, seven bracelets won, and two more tourneys starting up today, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event (Event No. 10) and the $10,000 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship (Event No. 11).

Was following coverage off and on over the weekend. That is, when I wasn’t distracted by my cat, Sweetie, screeching like I’ve never heard her do before. Sweetie is an indoor cat, and a neighbor cat that lives outdoors has been coming around to visit, disturbing her windowsill slumbers. These standoffs between the two -- just a thin piece of glass separating them from some wild, whiskery warfare -- have been riveting to watch, although I think Sweetie is starting to get a little stressed out by having to keep on her guard like that.

The poker has been fairly exciting, too. In between clicking back-and-forth between several sites to follow the action, I have also continued to dial up the live streaming of final tables that is happening over on the WSOP site.

As I mentioned last week, the picture and sound are both good, and with an announcer tableside and a view of the community cards, one can follow what’s happening well enough. Was most interested last night to watch Allen Bari win Event No. 4 ($5,000 No-Limit Hold’em), his heads-up battle with Maria Ho successfully pulling me away from the one going on between Sweetie and Intruder Cat.

I thought it was funny afterwards to see Lex “RaSZi” Veldhuis tweet that “The world just got a little angrier” as he congratulated Bari on his win. Veldhuis was alluding to Bari’s reputation as an against-the-grain type of guy (one way to put it) whose self-confidence occasionally rubs some the wrong way.

In an interview with Kristy Arnett of PokerNews after his win, Bari demonstrated that irascible personality a little when responding to her question about whether it would’ve been humbling for him to have lost after entering heads-up play with such an enormous (almost 6-to-1) chip lead.

“Tournaments are nonsense,” says Bari. “They’re all variance. Anybody who plays with me and talks with me knows that I know my stuff, so it doesn’t matter. This bracelet means nothing except now these randoms who all hate me won’t talk sh!t about me.”

I was thinking about Veldhuis’ comment about the world getting “angrier” when reading a couple of other items later last night, too.

There was an article over on the Fox News site from Saturday titled “Families Face Dire Straits After Online Poker Shutdown” that gave a little sketch of Brian Mogelefsky, a player who has had a burgeoning career as an online grinder abruptly altered by the events of Black Friday.

The article cites John Pappas of the PPA saying that approximately 50,000 full-time players have been “deprived” of their income. While I obviously oppose any sort of prohibition against online poker, I have to admit I’m never all that moved by this “honest living” argument some want to make when petitioning for its regulation.

Obviously only a very small percentage of those who play poker -- online or otherwise -- can be said to earn a living from it. Always seems to me this line of reasoning ignores about 95% of the real consequences of having a licensed and regulated industry. Does help highlight the whole “freedom” thing, though, as Mogelefsky’s story demonstrates.

At the conclusion of the Fox piece, we read that not being able to stay at home and support his family by the income he’s been able to make playing online means Mogelefsky “plans to attend the World Series of Poker in Vegas to test his mettle in live games.” It is this very move -- of the online poker grinder using Black Friday as reason to take a WSOP shot -- that Change100 addressed in her guest post on Tao of Poker that appeared yesterday, titled “Apocalypse Now.”

Change picks up on the “pure, unadulterated desperation” in the air at the Rio and in other Vegas poker rooms these days, with lots of players -- both in the tourneys at the WSOP and at the cash tables -- seeming as though they are playing with a lot more on the line than has been the case in the past. (EDIT [added 9 p.m.]: For another take on the more-serious-than-fun vibe at the Rio during the first week of the WSOP, see Jon Katkin's “Off to a Slow Start” over on Pokerati. And Gary Wise offers a similar sentiment in “The Ugliest WSOP.”)

Veldhuis’ tweet about Bari and the “angrier world” was partly in jest, I suppose, but it weirdly fits with the more-antagonistic-than-usual atmosphere in which poker is being played these days. Will be interesting to see how things go at the WSOP these next couple of weeks, and what it will be like there when I finally arrive on June 21.

Perhaps by then the fights, lawsuits, accusations, and so forth won’t be on the front page and things will have calmed down a bit. I mean, we can only stay angry for so long, right?

Then again, Sweetie’s battle has been going on for a few days now. You tell me... does she look like she’s ready to give in?

Moving Forward (Not Starting Over)

Was listening yesterday to Change100’s interview over on PreGame.com, conducted last week just a few days after “Black Friday” smacked us all in the face like Teddy KGB holding aces full.

Change shares a lot of insight throughout the interview. And foresight, too, especially considering she was talking so soon after the indictments and civil complaint had been unsealed and the sites’ shut their doors to U.S. players. There was one moment in particular, though, where I felt particularly connected to what Change was saying.

Asked what she planned to do moving forward, she brought up Pauly and explained that even if the future is somewhat unclear for the two of them at the moment, one thing is certain -- they’ll keep writing.

“Both of us are writers,” Change explains. “That’s our chosen profession. We've written about poker because we love it. And because it was this incredible, booming industry and we had an amazing run in it. And I got to see the world through poker, which is something I certainly wouldn't have been able to do if I was still stuck in an office....”

Like I say, that kind of hit home for me in a few ways. For one, a change of careers is something I have in common with Change. I, too, had a possible future mostly spent inside an office from which I was steered away by poker.

I also identified with that reference to the past few years and all of the opportunities that have come our way via writing about poker. Would I have ever gone to the Ukraine? To Morocco? To Peru? Not likely. Hell, even getting to Atlantic City might’ve been less of a priority for me, had I not gone there on an assignment.

I like as well the reference to choosing to write about poker because of a love for the game. These other things -- the chance to travel, to get paid, etc. -- really are secondary for a lot of us. We love poker. And we love to write. And that’s where it all begins and ends, no matter where we go in between.

Been thinking some lately about the blog and why I write it. “Black Friday” certainly got me contemplating (again) the whole idea of keeping a poker blog -- especially at this present moment when I’m not even playing poker! The fact that the five-year anniversary of the sucker is coming up on Thursday has also perhaps encouraged me to indulge in such self-reflection, too.

Will I keep writing about poker? I think so. The game is too much fun and too damned interesting and full of stories for me not to.

I’ll probably be doing other kinds of writing, too, including pushing forward more earnestly on the second novel. I see another poker player and writer, Matt Matros, talking in similar terms in his Washington Post piece from last Friday, a thoughtful defense of online poker worth checking out if you haven’t already.

In that article, Matros speaks of how for him the sudden unavailability of online poker “almost feels as if I’ve been stripped of one of my college degrees -- as if a career skill I’ve been honing for all of my adult life is suddenly useless.”

That’s not entirely the case, I don’t think. As Matros himself points out later in the piece, “Poker teaches life skills,” among them “logic, discipline, psychology, [and] mathematics.” I’m going to assume poker has also taken him many places, become the means by which he’s gotten to meet and know many people, and allowed him to experience many things he wouldn’t have otherwise.

In other words, much like those college degrees and other life experience he’s gathered, poker has helped prepare him for what comes next. (Including the writing of that novel on which he is working.)

Same goes for a lot of us.

Blom By One Big Blind? Couldn’t Have Scripted That

Last night the Oscars were awarded. Was a bit distracted, though I did manage to watch some of the show with Vera.

Was flipping back to that exciting Knicks-Heat game for much of it, while also following the Sunday Warm-Up on PokerStars for which I wrote a recap. (Infected a bit by all the movie talk, I had a little fun in the wrap by referring to a number of films that had won Best Picture over the years -- check it out.)

Early in the evening I also found myself keeping an eye on that latest “SuperStar Showdown” involving Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and the qualifier Attila “DodgyFish72” Gulcsik. Gulcsik had prevailed in an $11 satellite to win the right to battle the swingy Swede.

Whereas the usual format for the Showdowns calls for Blom and his opponent to play $50/$100 blinds and bring at least $150,000 of their own money with which to play, in this special version the game was played with $5/$10 blinds and Gulcsik was staked with $15,000. Gulcsik would win whatever he had left from the original stake after 2,500 hands versus Blom, plus any profits, if there were any. Also, if either player managed to win all of the other’s $15K, that player would earn an additional $10,000.

I had the four tables of heads-up, no-limit hold’em open for a while early on, watching as Blom surged to a more than $10,000 lead by the halfway point. I wasn’t watching as closely during the second half of the match, but noticed folks tweeting that DodgyFish72 was closing the gap.

As Change100 recounts in her recap of the match, a flurry of all-in hands mostly won by Gulscik had brought him within just under $2,500 with 200 hands to go. Then came a couple more $1K-ish pots that went the qualifier’s way, and suddenly the pair were nearly even.

On the very last hand -- the 2,500th played -- Blom open-shoved from the button over the top of the $1,600 or so Gulscik had at that table, and DodgyFish72 folded. As it turned out, the $10 big blind Blom grabbed on that hand turned out to be the difference in the match, as the final tally showed Isildur1 just $10 ahead.

After being ahead by more than 1,000 big blinds, Blom won the match by one?!? Incredible.

Maybe it was the Oscars -- or Change100’s recap, in which she refers to the way the match ultimately failed to adhere to the usual cinematic formula of the underdog winning in the end -- but when contemplating what had transpired in the Showdown I found myself thinking about one of my all-time favorite movies, The Bad News Bears.

Saw this one in the theater when I was a little leaguer myself. Loved it then, and still love it today. I remember my parents being a bit surprised at the language used in the PG-rated flick, but for me getting to hear the kids say those words was just one of the film’s many excellent attributes.

If you haven’t seen the movie before and want to, I’ll warn you now I’m about to give away the ending. (And by the way, I’m talking about the original 1976 film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal, not the terribad remake from 2005 with Billy Bob Thornton.)

In the film, Matthau plays Morris Buttermaker, an alcoholic and ex-minor leaguer who gets recruited (coerced, really) to coach the Bears, a squad made up of players not good enough to make the other teams in the league. In their first game they fall behind the Denny’s team (named the Yankees, natch) by 26 runs before Buttermaker forfeits.

Eventually Buttermaker brings in a couple of ringers to join the team, the hard-hitting Kelly (Jackie Earle Haley) and a girl pitcher Amanda (O’Neal) who is the daughter of an ex-girlfriend. Bolstered by the new additions, the Bears improve dramatically and make it all of the way to the championship game versus the hated Yankees.

A ton of fun stuff along the way, including a perhaps obvious (but no less important) lesson about adults being overly competitive when playing out their desires and needs through the kids. Along those lines, Buttermaker has a revelation of sorts during the championship game and near the end pulls the starters in order to give the scrubs some time on the field. The move causes the Bears to fall behind 7-3 heading into the bottom of the last inning, thereby setting up the film’s awesome climax.

The Yankees record the first two outs with little trouble, then a walk, a successful bunt, and another walk load the bases for Kelly. The Yankees actually try to issue an intentional walk to the dangerous Kelly (and give the Bears a run), but he lunges across the plate to hit one of the outside pitches anyway, driving it into the outfield and to the wall.

The music swells as three runs score, then Kelly charges toward the plate. But the relay throw arrives a moment before he does and... he’s... out.



The Bears -- like DodgyFish72 -- come up just short.

But as Change100 notes at the end of her Showdown recap, “even though David didn’t defeat Goliath, it sure feels like he won.” By film’s end, it is obvious that being a Bear is much, much preferable to being a Yankee. “Why are we celebrating?” asks one of the kids in the clubhouse as Buttermaker surprisingly delivers them beers from his cooler (no shinola!).

“Because you should be damn proud of yourselves,” explains the coach.

As should DodgyFish72, the one with whom -- like the Bears -- the great majority of us can identify with much more readily than with the other guy. Of course, while technically he “lost” he still gets to keep $14,990, a sweet consolation prize for sure.

I imagine he might use some of that to buy himself a beer or two.

Good News for Change

Enjoyed following the coverage of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event final table Saturday night on ESPN2. Was disappointed (again) that I couldn’t see any of action from the first few hours when the show was online only, given that my ISP is not an affiliate of ESPN3.com and the PokerStars.tv stream wasn’t watchable from the U.S. But once it finally made it to air on my teevee I was impressed.

It did very much resemble the EPT Live streaming of final tables we’ve seen in the past (especially with James Hartigan on the mic), although revealing the hole cards definitely made for a different experience. (The final table was shown on a one-hour delay, making it possible to show the players’ cards.)

And while hours and hours of hands -- including all of those over and done with a preflop raise -- being played on a relatively sterile-seeming, hushed set certainly doesn’t make for the most exciting viewing, the show probably did bring in at least few new folks. And might even make some curious to see more. In any event, it was an interesting experiment that I imagine will likely be tried again.

Of course, I’ll admit that while Galen Hall’s comeback to defeat Chris Oliver heads up in the PCA Main Event was fun to watch, I wasn’t nearly as riveted by them I was earlier in the evening when reading reports on the progress of my friend Change100 in the PCA Women’s Event.

A couple of weeks ago, Change wrote over on Pot Committed about how she had satellited her way into the event. Took her a few tries, and what sounded like maybe $100 (or even less) worth of buy-ins to win a seat in a $215 satellite which she then made it through in order to win her package. Included the $1,100 tourney buy-in, travel and lodging, some extra cabbage for expenses, and a ticket to a boot camp conducted by Vanessa Rousso, winner of last year’s PCA Women's event.

Was cool enough just to read about Change winning the trip. Discovering she was chip leader after the first day of play on Friday was pretty nifty, too. Was positively thrilling Saturday, though, to follow Dr. Pauly’s tweets reporting her surviving all of the way to win the sucker as Ricki Lake (of Hairspray fame), Victoria Coren (another great writer-slash-player), and Lauren Kling (a tough tourney pro) all fell short.

In the end, Change managed to turn the $100 or whatever it was into $29,798! That’s a sweet ROI. You can read about the final day of play on the PokerStars blog, and here’s the neat video of her being interviewed by Gloria Balding afterwards.

I love Change’s laughing response to Glo’s question about turning pro. “No,” she smiles, “I like doing this for fun.” The winnings, she explains, will help give her some space to work further on a screenplay she began last fall.

Of course, the story of her trip to the Bahamas will also make for a pretty nifty feature. Change has already written a short note on her blog about her victory, though tells us a longer account is coming.

Looking forward to that, too. I knew Change was a great player, having played with her before. But you know how tourneys go. Being great doesn’t guarantee success.

However, I also know Change is a great writer. And that really is a skill game. So I know the story of her trip will be a winning one. As will the others she writes.

(EDIT [added 1/20/10]: As promised, Change100 has written an account of the tournament over on Pot Committed: “Beyond Fairy Tale: The 2011 PCA Ladies Event, Part 1 & Part 2”)

PokerStars WCOOP Concludes -- It’s a Skill Game, Jo

Poker players -- particularly those with a special desire or need to defend their game against accusations of it being mostly “gambling” or some other non-edifying, less-than-moral pursuit -- like to point out how the better players tend to succeed more often than not. Such evidence helps support the argument that the game does, in fact, require skill, despite the very real truth that chance does often govern how a particular hand or sesssion or tourney might go.

Last night I was up late again -- ’til about 3 a.m. my time -- helping cover the end of the PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker Main Event (a $5,000 + $200 buy-in no-limit hold’em event). Change100 and I handled the live blog, and as the night wore on we were marveling at the fact that Daniel “djk123” Kelly was building a huge chip lead once again. Kelly had already cashed 10 times in this year’s WCOOP series, and won two previous WCOOP bracelets, including one just the night before in the $10,000 + $300 High Rollers H.O.R.S.E. event.

Kelly was in the top ten when Day 2 of the WCOOP Main Event started yesterday (with 178 players still alive from the 2,144 who entered). With about 50 players left, Kelly charged into the chip lead and had a huge advantage for much of the endgame before finally falling in third place.

We were also noticing and reporting on several other recognizable names among those still around for the conclusion of this one. J.C. “area23JC” Tran -- who won the WCOOP Main Event in 2006 -- made a deep run and finished not far outside the top 100. Scott “dorinvandy” Dorin, who won a High Rollers event during the 2008 WCOOP, ended up finishing 61st. Layne “reloadthis” Flack was around at the end, too, getting eliminated in 55th.

A lot of the online names were familiar, too, having turned up time and again deep in these WCOOP events we’ve been covering, or having become recognizable after taking down big Sunday tourneys. There were a few who made it deep who hadn’t been “outed” officially, and so while we knew they were name pros we weren’t identifying them in the blog.

A couple who were eventually identified included Isaac “philivey2694” Haxton, who finished 31st, and Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko, who ended up winning the sucker. Change100 and I covered Haxton back in the summer when he finished second to Vitaly Lunkin at that $40,000 WSOP event (Event No. 2). And, of course, we remember Timoshenko for winning that WPT World Championship event at the Bellagio this past April.

I had been up all night the previous evening writing up the report on Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier’s victory in WCOOP Event No. 43 -- his second WCOOP bracelet of the series. So I was going on 40-plus hours without sleep when, noticing the preponderance of players who’d enjoyed repeat successes going deep in last night’s Main Event, when I confidently delivered the following thesis to Change100 in chat: “this must be a skill game.” “haha” she replied at my less-than-startling conclusion.

’Cos it’s obvious, ain’t it? We poker players love to quote Mike McDermott’s sort-of-hyperbolic-but-still-meaningful questioning of his girl, Jo, in Rounders when he asks “Why does this still seem like gambling to you? I mean, why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker every single year? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas?”

Mike concludes “it’s a skill game, Jo.” Indeed, this year’s WCOOP provided still more evidence to support that ideer, I think.

2009 WSOP, Day 19: The Meisner Technique

Probably the easiest of the 14 days I have worked thus far at the World Series of Poker yesterday, for a couple of reasons. One, the final day of Event No. 26 ($1,500 Limit Hold’em) only lasted into the sixth scheduled one-hour level of play, which means with breaks it was only about an eight-hour day -- by far the shortest I’ve had this summer. Also, I was teamed with Change100, whose experience at these things helps make everything easier for those working alongside her.

We went from 15 players to six in less than two levels, as the stakes had risen to the point where all of the short stacks really only had one big hand left in them. When we got to three players (Al Barbieri, Tomas Alenius, and Jason Tam), each had about the same amount of chips (around 900,000). With limits of 30,000/60,000, that meant each had about 15 big bets, which was the highest that average had been since Level 2, I think. Took a little while, then, for Barbieri to go out in third. After that it was probably 50-60 hands or so before Tam was finally eliminated in second. Had a big full house-over-flush hand there near the end that helped Alenius to victory.

I was writing yesterday about how even though this event had evolved into something of a card-catching contest, there was still a great deal of skill involved, as players had to make correct decisions over and over again, hand after hand. Surely it helped that Alenius caught some cards right at the end like that, but he’d successfully negotiated his way through something like 1,100-1,200 hands or so (I’d estimate) before getting there.

And after he got there, I got outta there, well before midnight for a change.

I have wheels here for my stay, though generally the only time I spend in the rental car is driving to and from the Rio. There’s a CD player in the car, but I have no discs, and so I’ve been listening to the radio during these quick trips. Such gawd-awful stuff up and down the dial, really. (Who else is sick of that Vocoder effect on every other pop song?) More often than not I end up listening to the NPR station where I heard an interesting interview a couple of days ago with the actor Sam Rockwell. He was talking about his experience filming this new movie called Moon that has just gone into limited release this week.

The movie is directed by Duncan Jones (a.k.a. Zowie Bowie, son of David). Sounds like an interesting flick, for sure, in which Rockwell plays a mine technician working on the moon in isolation, with a robot his only companion. Not entirely sure how the story goes, but I think Rockwell’s character is alone for most of the film, and Rockwell himself the only actor on screen for much of it. Rockwell’s character ends up suffering from some mental difficulties, and there are scenes in which he is alone but hallucinating (I think?), and appears to be interacting with others -- including himself.

In the interview, Rockwell talks about the challenge of the shoot, which was itself very isolating. In particular, he struggled with the scenes in which he was playing opposite himself -- scenes that had to be shot in sequence using the “green screen.” The big problem faced by Rockwell in those scenes was the fact that he had been trained in the Meisner technique -- a kind of acting that is primarily based on reacting to others’ behaviors, something that wasn’t really possible for Rockwell when shooting these scenes.

I asked Change about the Meisner technique a little bit yesterday. I knew she’d know more about it than I did, given her Hollyweird background. Is derived from Stanislavski and the whole “method acting” movement that has had such a profound influence on cinema over the last century. Named after the American Sanford Meisner (pictured).

When covering this last event, I was thinking a lot about this Meisner technique by which an actor primarily responds to others’ cues. Just observing a tableful of players, one can readily see that some of the players seem to be responding more to their opponents’ behaviors and actions than others. In fact, I’m starting to become more and more convinced that this may well be the most valuable skill in poker -- that is, being able to fashion one’s own “acting” according to how others are performing their “roles” -- and that generally the game’s elite is primarily made up of players who’ve been able to master that very skill.

Maybe it’s just another way of stating an obvious truth about poker -- that being able to read one’s opponents is of foremost importance, and one’s own “style” necessarily must be shaped according to the styles of the players one is up against. I think it’s interesting, and maybe even helpful, to consider this activity as a kind of “method acting” which requires (and can be improved by) conscious, thorough training.

A lot easier said than done, though.

Am off today, then back on tomorrow to cover another of those big field, $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em events, Event No. 34. (Wow, are we up to 34 already?) To follow today’s action, including the finale of that World Championship Heads Up No-Limit Hold’em (Event No. 29), go over to PokerNews’ live reporting page for all the skinny.

Ladies Night: PokerListings Grand Finale

It occurred to me after Change100 had defeated Spaceman in that heads-up match to secure the final spot in the PokerListings Run Good Challenge Super Happy Grand Final Championship that the field today would be evenly divided by sex -- three women and three men. Have to say, it was pretty cool to be playing today, as everyone who qualified for the final stood to make some extra cabbage. (Read details here.)

I can’t say I thought much further about the half-men/half-women thang after I’d first noticed it, though. Didn’t think about it all until about an hour or so into the match. That’s when I realized the ladies were killin’ the guys.

In other words, I was the last dude standin’...!

Michele Lewis got off to a quick start, crippling PokerListings Dan with a flopped flush versus his flopped top set, then finishing him off in a pocket jacks vs. pocket tens showdown. After winning the first two PL tourneys, Dan ended up as Gigli in the last two. As was the case in Week 3, I can’t say I felt too bad to see a tough player like Dan go out early. Sort of like Tom Brady going down the first week of the season -- anything seems possible after that.

Dr. Pauly would be the next to go. We were in Level 4 (blinds 50/100). The good doctor had 2,675 when the hand began -- fifth of five. Michele raised to 300 from the button, I meekly folded in the small blind, and Pauly repopped it to 900 from the big. Michele called, and the flop came . Pauly shoved, Michele instacalled, and Pauly showed... the hammer. Deuce-seven offsuit. The hand with which he had crushed Kid Dynamite back in Week 1.

Unfortunately for him, Michele had a ten in her hand.

I actually would win a hand later on with the hammer, though I have to admit I felt a little sheepish about it. I showed, of course. But I tend to fold whenever I get dealt the favorite hand of bloggers -- one I assume folks are playing with regularity at the Bash this weekend. I frankly haven’t the cojones to play the hammer the way it deserves to be played. When I saw the good doctor drawing dead today, it was a little like seeing a fellow comrade jump on a grenade to save the rest of us.

It had to be done. That’s all there is to it.

And then we were four. Me and the ladies.

The hand right after Pauly’s bustout was kind of interesting, I thought. Michele had limped from the cutoff, and I decided to limp as well from the button with 8-6. The flop came 6-2-2 rainbow. “Hammer one hand too soon,” said Amy Calistri. The table checked to me. There was 400 in the pot. I started to make a half-pot bet, then decided for funsies to bet 222.

The blinds folded, and Michele quickly typed “????????????????????” Then “222?” Then she raised to 500. “Is that what u have?” I typed, then folded. She showed the . “Runnin’ gooood,” she would type afterwards, echoing the especially well-chosen name of the series.

Kind of a cheeky play, on my part. I pretty much have to bet it, though. So why not throw out something weird like that to get everyone wonderin’? Have to say, I was glad to have lost very little there, as I would’ve been in sad shape had we gone any further with that one.

After that hand, I had a bit more than 3,500, which actually was second place though not by much. At that point, I ran into a particularly bad stretch of starting hands. (Indeed, the whole day was pretty much below average in terms of cards for me.) Meanwhile, Change started to build up a stack -- and play more aggressively, raising to 420 a lot preflop. (Was she transmitting some sort of message with her bet sizes, too?) Between her and Michele (where I was seated), not to mention the increasing blinds, it started to become increasingly uncomfortable for yr humble gumshoe.

Pretty soon we were in a situation where Amy and I had extremely short stacks (me about 1,500 and her even less), while our aggressive opponents had about 8K (Michele) and 5K (Change). Amy and I were trying to wait each other out, folding most hands. She managed to double up a couple of times, though, and finally I was forced to push with A-2 suited against both Change and Michele. Change happened to have ace-jack on that one, and I was cooked.

That left the three ladies -- Change, Amy, and Michele. Amy would get bounced in third fairly soon after me (at Change’s expense, I think). Thanks to those couple of bustouts and another good hand or two, Change would take the chip lead, then finally get Michele all in on a hand in which Change had pocket rockets. Just like Gus Hansen at the 2007 Aussie Millions, Change would take down the sucker with the best starting hand in hold’em. Maybe she’ll write an “every hand revealed” book about today’s tourney, too.

Congrats to everyone who made today’s final -- and especially to Change for taking it down -- and big thanks again to PokerListings for hosting the sucker. Big fun from beginning to end. Word is we’ll be having another one of these sometime in the future, probably with a larger field of bloggers along for the ride.

As far as overall results for this here extravaganza, I made out like a bandit. Also -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- I’ve picked the tourney bug again big time, and am therefore now thinking seriously about getting back into playing MTTs (after a couple of years of primarily focusing on cash games). So maybe there will be some discussion of friggin’ no-limit hold’em -- the game everyone and his brother sister plays -- on this here poker blog movin’ forward.

Lucky Man

Played the second tourney in the PokerListings Run Good Challenge on Saturday. The tournament started at two in the afternoon. Unfortunately, I had to start covering the PokerStars WCOOP event that began at 2:30, and as I and my colleagues there have discovered, that tends to take up a lot of mental energy.

But as Viv Savage, keyboardist for Spinal Tap, once said, ”Yeah, I've got two hands here.”

Like last week, the tourney was again no-limit hold’em, although this time we were playing a turbo format (i.e., five-minute levels). Given the breakneck structure, I remember thinking as the first hand was dealt I could very well be done before 2:30, anyway.

Matt Showell and the PokerListings guys came up with that name -- the ”Run Good Challenge” -- and it particularly applied to this event. While there are certainly better and worse approaches to turbo tourneys (i.e., there is some skill involved), one generally needs a lot of luck and/or good timing, too, to get anywhere in ’em. As it happened, I had both.

There were three key hands for me that determined my fate (and that of some others), all of which went my way.

The first came right near the end of Level 4. The blinds were already 50/100, and in a couple of hands would bump up to 75/150. After having built up to 1,900 or so early on, I had slipped back to 1,570 when the following hand took place. I was sitting in the cutoff where I’d been dealt . It folded to me, and I put in a raise to 300. (I might’ve raised with anything here.) Folded over to the Wicked Chops entity who reraised all in for 795 total. You can figure out the odds here and a short-stack’s possible range yourself. I called, and Chops showed . Luckily for me, a deuce flopped and my set survived. I now had over 2,500, tops at my table.

The second fortunate hand came after we’d consolidated to the final table. This one came in Level 8 (blinds 150/300, antes 25), about 35-40 minutes into the tournament. By this point the WCOOP had gotten cranked up and I was becoming increasingly distracted by the half-dozen windows I had open in order to live blog the sucker. (Ended up writing a few posts while playing, actually.) So I’d been folding a lot of hands, basically just hoping to catch a good starter and push. I had 1,740 chips -- actually was third out of the six players remaining (though not by much) -- when I picked up in the cutoff. It folded to me, I shoved, and after a few seconds of considerin’ chip leader Dan from PokerListings called from the small blind with .

I liked how the situation looked until the flop came . Ugh. What’s that, ten outs now for Dan? Then the came on the turn. Oh, dear. I was wishing I had his hand. But the river was the , and I’d survived. “How do i miss that," typed Dan. “Bulletproof,” answered Dr. Pauly. I was up to 3,730.

The third instance of good-timing came when we were four-handed in Level 9 (blinds 200/400, antes 50). After folding a bunch of hands I was down to 2,880 -- ahead of Pauly but behind Change100 and Dan – when I got in the under the gun-slash-cutoff seat. I thought a beat, then minimum-raised to 800. Change also took a moment before reraising to 2,800. The blinds folded, I stuck the 2,830 I had left in the middle, and Change called, showing .

“Boo,” said Change. Like I say, good timing for me there. The rockets held up and I was in good shape to cash.

A short-stacked Pauly went out shortly thereafter, followed by Change in third. When heads-up began Dan had me outchipped just about 2-to-1 (12,095 to 5,905). I didn’t play the heads-up portion particularly well, in my opinion, though did somehow grab the chip lead briefly. Overall, though, Dan was the aggressor and deservedly took it down. (Check out Dan’s blog for his discussion of heads-up.)

Nice little payday there ($480) for just under one hour’s worth of play. And I believe I have now picked up enough leaderboard points to secure a spot in the fourth and final tourney scheduled later in the month.

Additionally, since Dan from PokerListings is not eligible for the cabbage, this week’s first place money gets rolled over yet again to next week’s tournament (a combined NLHE/PLO event, I believe). That means some huge prizes for those who make it into the top three next Saturday.

I suppose, then, I wasn’t the only lucky one.

In Which It Is Demonstrated Why Pocket Jacks Are Sometimes Called “Hooks”

So we played this little blogger event on Saturday, the PokerListings Run Good Challenge. By invite only. A nifty little freeroll with some decent cabbage for those who finish in the top three ($600/$300/$100). Only 12 were invited, and of those only 11 showed up (I think the “Entities” from Wicked Chops missed it). And Pokerati Dan also came too late to make anything happen, and so we were really starting with 10. A decent shot at some money, no matter how you look at it. Of course, as the name suggests, it would help to run good.

I’m hardly playing these no-limit hold’em tourneys at all these days, but as I’ve mentioned the last few weeks I have been reading quite a bit and so had some ideas swimming around in the ol’ cerebral stew about how I was a-gonna approach this sucker. Wasn’t terribly confident going in, but once things got started I quickly felt better, realizing I might’ve actually picked up a thing or two from my reading. Books are our friends.

To give you an idea how it went for me, I took a peek after all was said and done at my stats and discovered I’d managed to claim a ton of pots without showing. Out of 35 pots I won, PokerStars is actually saying I’d only shown three times the entire event. (That was of 130 hands total.) Not quite sure if that’s entirely accurate, but I do know I was avoiding the showdowns pretty much throughout.

Grabbed a medium-sized pot early to push out to 1,900 or so when everyone else was still hovering around the starting 1,500, and that gave me room to operate a little more freely and accumulate a bit. Maneuvered my way up over the 3,000-chip mark before the first hour was up, which had me in second or third place for most of those first four levels. During that time we’d lose Change100 and Matt from PokerListings, and just after the one-hour break the nine players remaining were consolidated onto one table. My opponents: Dr. Pauly, Amy Calistri, Kid Dynamite, Michele Lewis, the Poker Shrink, Spaceman, Poker Listings Dan, and Pokerati Dan.

At that point I had a little less than 3,000 in chips, which in fact put me in second behind the current leader, Poker Listings Dan, the strategy writer over at PokerListings, who had approximately twice that. It was at that point where I feel like I played only so-so poker, folding for a couple of orbits when I probably could have gotten involved a time or two. Was trying to gauge the table, though.

Finally at the start of Level 6 (blinds 100/200), I got active again. And players started busting. First Pokerati Dan, who’d blinded all of the way down to 95 chips before playing his first hand, got bounced. (“I played too tight,” said Dan in chat from the rail.) Then the Poker Shrink.

Then a short-stacked Dr. Pauly put a brutal beat on Kid Dynamite when he shoved his last 1,655 with the hammer (7-2) and got called by the Kid who held . The flop was benign, but the turn and river both came deuces, and the Kid was crippled. He’d go out in seventh, followed soon thereafter by the Spaceman (6th) and Amy (5th).

At four-handed (the money bubble), I was again in second place with roughly the same stack (3,160) I had when the final table started, a bit less than half of what Dan Skolovy had. After a dozen hands or so, I had held steady, but Dr. Pauly had snuck ahead of me, having about 4,200. Self-proclaimed “last woman sitting” was Michele Lewis with about 2,000.

Then came this hand. I’m a-gonna tell you what happened, but I offer it to all-a-you well-versed MTTers as a “what would you do?”

I’m on the button with 3,460 and get dealt . Blinds are still 100/200. Dan from Poker Listings, who has 6,785, raised to 600 from UTG/the cutoff. Now Dan is the head strategy writer over there at the PL, and we’d all already picked up that one key part of his strategy was either to raise or fold preflop, and almost never limp. So when he raises there, his range is fairly wide, I’m thinking. Probably has a better than average hand to raise my button, but not necessarily something better than pocket jacks.

Here’s where I ask you, what would you do?

Folding seemed weak. Calling with position might’ve been a good choice here, but if an ace, king, or queen flops -- more likely than not -- and Dan bets out, I’ve got a tough decision. If I call, the pot would be 1,200, and I’d have 2,860 left.

I decided I wanted to raise, and given my stack size figured I couldn’t make a real raise without pushing all in. So I did. Pauly and Michele folded, and Dan took a few seconds before calling and turning over . I was surprised he’d call with that, but elated that I was 70-30 to win here. (Do you call in that spot? What, really, could my range be there?)

Alas, an ace flopped, I couldn’t catch up, and I was out on the bubble.

So while I brood a little about how I might’ve folded into the money, Dan from Poker Listings eliminated Michele in 3rd on the very next next hand, then after 130 hands of back-and-forthing with Pauly would take first. That means the first-place prize money gets rolled over into the next tourney (this coming Saturday), although I’m not sure how it’ll be distributed.

My consolation prize: I get some leaderboard points for finishing in the top six. After three weeks of this, those who end up in the top six get to play a fourth freeroll the last Saturday of the month.

And I guess another consolation prize is the feeling that, for the most part, I played a tournament well. Congrats to Dan, Pauly, and Michele! And thanks again to PokerListings for the invite -- was a ton of fun, for sure.