Calling Up the GPL Feed

Major League Baseball had its opening day on Sunday, and for the first time I took the plunge and got the relatively cheap MLB At-Bat app that allows you (among other things) to listen to all the games. You even get to pick which team’s announcing crew you want to hear, and I’ve already had fun sampling a few of them.

I’ve also already realized I’ll only occasionally have time actually to listen to baseball games, but given the relatively cheap price of the app I’m not too bothered by that.

Meanwhile there was another opening day yesterday as the Global Poker League kicked off its inaugural season with live streaming of some six-max sit-n-gos played between representatives of the 12 GPL teams. I dialed up the Twitch channel on the Roku so it would play on the teevee while I worked on other things, and found it an enjoyable background hum that occasionally had me looking up as each of the SNGs got down to heads-up before concluding.

Can’t say I focused too intently on Griffin Benger and Sam Grafton’s commentary, although it seemed enjoyable when I did. I thought Laura Cornelius and Eric Danis did well, too, in the studio between matches, with their contributions helping to lend the proceedings the feeling of some kind of sporting event (a goal, I know, of the GPL and its attempt to “sportify” poker).

Watching an online tournament isn’t necessarily the most dynamic thing to witness, of course (and I say that as someone who has watched and reported on a lot of online poker over the years). The attention necessarily drifts, with only occasional hands standing out and most drifting past unnoticed.

Davidi Kitai made what seemed a remarkable fold on his way to winning the first SNG yesterday for the Paris Aviators. Dan “Jungleman” Cates, playing for the Berlin Bears, came in sixth of six in that initial match to earn his team zero points, then in the second one made a weird call of an all-in push by the Moscow Wolverines’ Dzmitry Urbanovich to lose most of his stack before taking sixth again.

Regarding the latter hand -- in which Cates instantly called the shove with J-8 (sooted!) -- Jungleman noted over Twitter that he didn’t mean to call the shove: “misread my hand in gpl, thought i had A9s somehow (j8s hand)... I was playing cash on side. Pretty tilting even though it's not for money...”

Some responded to that tweet by observing that it seemed to undercut the whole idea of the GPL a bit to have a player not giving the matches his full attention this way. Kind of thing does make it hard to compare folks playing online poker to actual sporting events. I mean we don’t see outfielders missing fly balls because they were checking Facebook or playing some other game on their phones.

In any case, it’s diverting and as I mentioned before my inner sports nerd delights in seeing early standings and statistics starting to build -- both for MLB and the GPL. Like baseball, it looks like from the GPL’s ambitious eight-month schedule they’ll be on the air pretty much all the time, too, for those of us curious enough (and having the time) to dip in to catch some of the action.

We’ll see how often I sample both feeds.

Image: Global Poker League.

Words With Friends

Followed with interest the conclusion of the first Epic Poker League Main Event that ended early Saturday morning with David “Chino” Rheem the winner. Also noted, of course, the 2+2 thread and all of the hullaballoo on Twitter and elsewhere regarding Rheem’s many outstanding debts, the obvious joke being his $1 million score had many lining up to meet him at the cashier’s cage.

Rheem’s victory came amid further revelations having to do with that other big story in poker from last week, one that also involved the issue of players trusting one another and getting burned. I’m talking of course about the “Girah” scandal involving Jose Macedo, Haseeb Qureshi, Dan Cates, and others. More has come out regarding that one, particularly with regard to Cates’ involvement and culpability, enough to warrant a revised and expanded “Cliffs notes” post over on 2+2.

At some point last week -- after I’d posted my bit about the “Girah” scandal on Thursday -- I was talking with a friend about it who commented on how incredibly naïve and/or gullible Macedo’s “friends” had to be to get hoodwinked into that whole Skype scam.

I’m talking about the part of the scandal where Macedo persuaded others in his “strategy group” to play a couple of unknowns whom he characterized as fish. Somehow Macedo additionally convinced these others to allow him to view their sessions as they played, using TeamViewer, a desktop sharing tool. His “friends” ended up losing to the fish, and later it was revealed Macedo was either relaying information about his strategy group’s buddies’ hole cards to the “fish” -- or perhaps was even playing those two accounts himself.

My friend and I were chatting about this -- over Skype, in fact -- when he joked that he knew some “aggro fish” who were looking for heads-up action, facetiously asking me to play while he watched. “It boggles the mind,” he said, to think how these guys would allow Macedo -- a person they’d never even met face-to-face -- talk them into playing the unknowns while he watched.

“I don't let anyone look over my shoulder when I play Words With Friends,” was my response.

More naïvety, gullibility, and other ethically-dubious behavior is on display in Cates’ lengthy interview on Subject:Poker that appeared on Friday. There Cates reveals himself to have made numerous bad decisions over recent months, another one seeming to have been his agreeing to give the interview in the first place. Cates -- whom it should be noted is still only 21 years old -- can’t seem to give a straight answer to any question put to him, contradicting himself and even calling back to admit to lying (repeatedly) about having multi-accounted.

All of this drama over “Girah” and Rheem got me thinking further about the value of a person’s word and how such is often said to be of special importance in the poker world. Many poker players -- especially those who’ve been part of the scene for a long time -- speak of the value of a person’s word as in fact being higher in the poker world than outside of it, the frequency of verbal agreements involving money (such as the many Rheem has been accused of failing to honor) a testament to that difference.

There’s something almost counterintuitive about it, really. That poker -- a game based on lying, or at least misrepresenting oneself in ways that serve one’s self-interest -- would be a realm in which people could trust one another more readily than elsewhere. But many insist that is the case, citing the “gambler’s code” and pointing out how stories such as the ones surrounding Rheem and the “Girah” group are noteworthy because of their uniqueness.

Speaking of, Noah Stephens-Davidowitz (who along with Vanessa Selbst conducted the Cates interview for S:P) wrote an interesting post on his personal blog last week titled “The Vouching System Sucks” in which he decries the way many in the poker community overvalue each other’s “word,” particularly when given as a recommendation to trust a third party. And Zimba over on CardRunners added some thoughtful advice last week as well regarding “Protecting Yourself From Cheating.”

“Poker is no different from any sport, business or life situation,” writes Zimba in his post, explaining how one will certainly encounter others failing to honor their word in poker just as one will elsewhere. I tend to agree. While recognizing the uniqueness of the culture of poker -- where the collective pressure to honor one’s word perhaps operates differently than it does outside of poker -- it’s obvious that when it comes to taking a person’s word, you still gotta know with whom you’re dealing.

That is to say, in poker or elsewhere, know who your friends are. And value their words accordingly.

Welcome to the Jungle: Daniel Cates Profiled in New York Times Magazine

Late last week there appeared an insightful feature by Jay Caspian Kang in New York Times Magazine about Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates titled “Online Poker’s Big Winner.” Kang’s title alludes to the fact that Cates, who just turned 21 last November, earned more playing online in 2010 than any other player, ending the calendar year a whopping $5.5 million in the black.

We’ve gotten to know Cates a little bit over the last few months. His huge run, tracked and reported meticulously by sites like highstakesdb.com, started grabbing a lot of attention as early as last spring. Cates’ following Patrik Antonius to accept the second “Durrrr” challenge in late August 2010 also put “Jungleman12” on the radar of some of those who hadn’t heard of him previously.

Interviews followed, including one in early February on the Two Plus Two Pokercast (episode 159). If you happened to have heard that one, you probably recall how Cates sounded like a friendly, reasonably modest young man, though for the most part didn’t really have a lot to say, mostly sticking with brief, not-so-revealing replies to questions posed to him by hosts Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz.

All of which made me more interested to read the New York Times Magazine feature. Sure, I was curious to see how online poker would be presented in this mainstream publication, but also just wanted to see what else the reporter might have been able to uncover about Cates.

The article begins with a quick sketch of Cates grinding online, casually fighting for five-figure pots while referring to the stakes as “boring” and not as big as what he normally plays. Reference to a million-plus dollar downswing versus Gus Hansen is also reported by Cates with relative indifference -- not meaningless, but obviously not out of the ordinary, either.

The rest of the piece is primarily concerned with exploring the question of how young Cates came to occupy the current title of “online poker’s biggest winner” as well as estimating what may lie ahead for the young phenom. Like I say, it is an insightful piece that anyone reading this blog will likely find worth checking out. When you do, you’ll see that Kang avoids making any sort of overt judgments in the piece, leaving it to the reader to decide what he or she thinks about the world of online poker in general and Cates’s example in particular.

That said, Kang’s portrait of Cates certainly shows the 21-year-old’s range of life experience to this point to have been somewhat narrow, mostly confined to sitting in front of computers and playing video games. From those many hours Cates has obviously developed a skill set that has proven most useful to him when playing heads-up cash games against online poker’s elite.

Those video games helped Cates develop the “dexterity” (both “mental” and “manual”) that enable him to think quickly while multi-tabling. They also appear to have helped him develop both aggression and a kind of fearlessness that Kang suggests might be “the greatest benefit borne from a life spent playing video games,” namely, having become used to “the strange, disconnected relationship between what is simulated and what is real” characteristic of the games.

Cates supports this latter point, admitting that he himself -- like “most of us young kids who play at nosebleed stakes” -- doesn’t “really have a clear idea about the actual value of the money we win or lose.” The dollars are like “points,” he says, and like many of those with whom he competes his primary goal is “to have the highest score.”

Still, as Cates himself admits in the article, there is something lacking when it comes to the “balance of life” he desires. We were all talking about this same issue at length a month-and-a-half ago in the context of that huge prop bet between Ashton Griffin and Haseeb Qureshi, the story of which also comes up in the NYT Magazine article as Griffin and Cates are roommates.

I’ll stop there and let you read the piece for yourself. I will say I find most intriguing the distinction Cates makes between “Daniel” and “jungleman” near the end of the article, and how he appears to wish that he could perhaps “be” Daniel (i.e., a more “human” self) a little more and “jungleman” (the “virtual” self he exists as online) a little less.

Funny that he has that name “jungleman” to represent the virtual Cates.

On the one hand, there’s something decidedly “futuristic” about the quick-thinking, several-steps-ahead-of-everyone online poker player who is consistently competing with and beating the best. Seems almost alien -- or at least not so human.

Yet the name suggests a more primitive, less developed self, one yet to evolve into a fully realized member of society.

Which makes Cates not unlike most 21-year-olds, really.

The Challenge to Follow the Durrrr Challenges

Already a lot happening in poker here during the first few weeks of 2011. Or “twentyleven,” as I have suggested we agree to call it. I mean, really, that extra syllable is such a bother, ain’t it? Plus, think of all the time we’ll save saying it this way!

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure kicks off soon, with that “Super High Roller” $100,000 buy-in event starting on Thursday, then the $10,000+$300 Main Event getting going on Saturday. This month will also see another WSOP-Circuit event take place at the Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Oklahoma. There’s the Beau Rivage Southern Poker Championship down in Biloxi, Mississippi coming up, too. And, of course, the Aussie Millions is just around the corner as well.

Meanwhile, on the tube this week a new season of “Poker After Dark” is premiering, with a big $100,000 buy-in sit-n-go featuring Phil Ivey, Erik Lindgren, Huck Seed, John Juanda, Phil Galfond, and Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

Speaking of Dwan, I was reminded yesterday that his “durrrr challenge” with Daniel “jungleman12” Cates is still ongoing. Actually both of the challenges are still ongoing, technically speaking. Was almost funny to think how the previous night’s SuperStar Showdown on PokerStars between Tony G and Isildur1 had grabbed so much more attention, even though the stakes for that match were so much less (relatively speaking) than those for which Dwan and Cates are playing.

If you recall, the “durrrr challenge” involves Dwan and an opponent playing 50,000 heads-up hands of either no-limit hold’em or pot-limit Omaha, with the blinds being a minimum of $200/$400. (The blinds in the SuperStar Showdown are at least $50/$100.) If Dwan is up at the end of the 50,000 hands, he wins whatever profit he’s made plus an additional $500,000 from his opponent. If his challenger is up, that player gets the profit plus $1.5 million from Dwan.

Remember also that Dwan said way back in late 2008 when he first announced the challenge that the one player he would not compete with would be Galfond. (Perhaps another encouragement to watch “Poker After Dark” this week.)

The first challenge between Dwan and Antonius, begun in February 2009, has gone quiet over the last few months. Dwan currently enjoys a lead of about $2.05 million over Patrik Antonius. They’ve played 39,436 hands of the scheduled 50,000, but none since early August 2010.

The second challenge between Dwan and Cates started in late August. So far those two have played 17,108 hands -- a little over a third of the way -- with Cates currently up over $820,000. Unlike the Antonius match in which PLO is the game, Dwan and Cates are playing NLH.

Last night saw several $100,000-plus pots, including one of $216,505.50 won by Cates in which both players turned heart flushes, but Cates had the better of the two. You can check the “Durrrr challenge” page over on the Full Tilt Poker website for more information, including graphs, stats, hands, etc.

Despite the big pots, it’s hard to get too psyched about Dwan’s challenges, primarily because with so many hands left to play, the end is much, much too far off to add much excitement to the watching of any individual hands. Indeed, with the Antonius match one wonders if the pair will ever get to the 50,000-hand mark. Perhaps the Finnish player will just concede the sucker first.

Comparing it to the PokerStars SuperStar Showdown, it’s kind of like the difference between a single game -- a game of special importance, like an NFL playoff game -- and an entire college football season. I pick college football because without a playoff it ends in anticlimax, limping to the finish with a lot of relatively non-significant battles punctuating the season’s final days.

Never mind the fact that here in 2011 we ain’t got time to follow something of such length. It’s twentyleven, man!

Or, as the Black Widow of Poker yesterday suggested we call it -- a craps-inspired proposal that would save us even more time -- “twenty-yo.”

Sounds cooler, that.

Railbirds Gather for Durrrr Challenge II

You probably heard something about this second version of Tom Dwan’s “Durrrr Challenge” having recently taken off over at Full Tilt Poker. Looks like the sucker kicked off one week ago (August 27th), with Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates having stepped up to take on Dwan.

It’s been a long, long time -- like 18 months now -- since the first “Durrrr Challenge” was issued and accepted by Patrik Antonius. So long ago it is hard to remember what the original terms for these here challenges.

Looking back, it was early 2009 when Dwan said he’d play anyone -- except Phil Galfond -- to play four tables of heads up simultaneously, either pot-limit Omaha or no-limit hold’em, at a minimum of $200/$400 blinds. The challenge would last for 50,000 hands, and if Dwan’s opponent was up at the end -- even by just a buck -- Dwan would give his opponent a handsome prize of $1.5 million on top of the winnings. Meanwhile, if Dwan ended ahead, his opponent would owe him an additional $500,000.

Antonius was the first to try -- with PLO the chosen game -- and there was a lot of initial hype as the pair started playing their first hands. We also heard at the time that Phil Ivey would be next in line to take on Dwan, but that match has yet to materialize.

A few months passed, and by the summer it was obvious it was going to take Antonius and Dwan much longer than most had thought it would take to get through the 50,000 hands. According to the Full Tilt Poker site’s tracking of the progress of that first challenge, they’ve now played 39,436 hands and Dwan enjoys a hefty lead of about $2.06 million. As Dwan explained earlier in the week on This Week in Poker, his lead isn’t necessarily insurmountable, but he’s definitely looking as though he is in position to finish off the Finn.

Perhaps because that match seems to be somewhat in hand for Dwan, he’s begun a second challenge with Cates -- with the game being no-limit hold’em this time -- and the pair didn’t take long to move through the first 6,800 hands or so. Dwan is already down something like $700,000, as shown on this here graph appearing in the Two Plus Two forum sticky devoted to the Dwan-Cates challenge (click to enlarge):



Looks like they’re still getting the official tracking page together for Durrrr Challenge II over on the Full Tilt site, but meanwhile AlCantHang has set up this here page to report on the proceedings. Dr. Pauly has chimed in over there as well with a guest post commenting on it all; check it out: “Freaky Styley: Durrrr and Jungleman12.”

Most of the talk seems to suggest this second match will probably finish much more quickly than did the first with Antonius, and in fact might even conclude before the Antonius one does. Interesting how the second challenge appeared to get the forum guys and most other pokery people excited again about watching online poker, despite the fact that the first one had become kind of a running joke, with “Durrrr Challenge” having become a handy metaphor for anything tedious or slow-moving.

I’ll admit I remain highly intrigued by it all, and like most folks continue to find Dwan a highly compelling figure. On the most recent episode of the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast, Scott Seiver -- another interesting figure, not to mention excellent poker player (both online and live) -- commented a bit on the challenge. (An excellent interview, by the way, with a highly articulate, smart, and likable guy.)

Seiver was asked for his take on why he thought Dwan was issuing the challenge, in particular why he thought Dwan was willing to give that 3-to-1 advantage to his opponents. Seiver said he didn’t know exactly what Dwan might be thinking, but that he thought it had to do both with the publicity it drew and the fact that when playing that many hands offering 3-to-1 “isn’t that big of a deal.”

“If you’re the better player, you’re going to make enough money to overcome any odds you basically give as a side bet,” explained Seiver. He later added another comment about the challenge that I thought was very insightful, and perhaps helped explain why it remains interesting:

“To be able to play something like the Durrrr Challenge where you are in the spotlight and playing 50,000 hands against the same opponent, you can’t ever let doubt or fear creep in. And that’s what I think is one of Tom Dwan’s best assets, that he just has so much confidence and he doesn’t have the fear to make the right play.... Sometimes you know what a right play is, but it’s tough to actually pull the trigger on it. I think that’s one of Tom’s biggest strengths.”

I’m sure Dwan has his moments in which he experiences doubt, or even fear. If he’s human, that is. But still, it’s fascinating (I think) to see someone operate in a way that suggests he has neither, and even inspiring to see someone act with confidence, whatever it is that person is trying to accomplish.