Main Event Memories

Been back on the farm more than a week now from Las Vegas. I snapped that pic to the left as I left the Rio for the last time following a 16-night stay.

It took me a while, but finally I’m sharing links to some of my favorite features posted during the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Early on I had the chance to chat with New York Times best selling author Maria Konnikova about her current book project. You might have heard something about it -- the story has been passed around the poker world the last few month’s as Konnikova writing a book “about” Erik Seidel, although that isn’t exactly what she’s doing.

Rather, the author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and The Confidence Game is spending a year playing poker on the professional poker tournament circuit as part of an inquiry into how humans make decisions, including when faced with elements outside of our control (such as happens in poker).

Talking with Konnikova was one of my favorite half-hours of the entire trip, to be honest, and while not everything we talked about made it into this post, a lot of it did, including a fuller introduction to her study. You can read it here: “Konnikova seeking answers in the cards about life, poker, and everything.”

A couple of days after that I had another fun conversation with Vanessa Selbst, a player I’ve been covering in tournaments for nearly a decade now.

If you followed the Main Event you probably remember how Selbst found herself in a highly unusual spot only an hour or so into the tournament, running into Gaelle Baumann’s quads to be eliminated halfway through the very first level.

We talked about that hand, of course, but also about one of the very first tournaments I ever covered, the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event at the 2008 WSOP in which Selbst won her first bracelet. That remains one of my favorite reporting experiences ever -- thanks in large part to the crazy finish -- and it was fun inviting Selbst to remember the scene.

She also neatly tied together with her comments the end of that tournament and her exit hand in this year’s Main -- check it out: “Vanessa embraces the variance.”

The cash bubble burst at the end of Day 3, and just before the start of Day 4 I spoke with one of those who’d made the money -- Kenneth “K.L.” Cleeton.

You might have heard something about this story, too. Cleeton is a 27-year-old player from Illinois who suffers from a rare neuromuscular disorder that leaves him essentially paralyzed from the neck down. He’s anything but handicapped otherwise, though -- very quick-witted and gregarious and also a good poker player, too.

Cleeton entered a contest put together by Daniel Negreanu and along with a couple of other entrants was put into the the Main Event by Kid Poker. With his father at the table providing assistance looking at cards and making bets, Cleeton survived the bubble bursting with a short stack, and both of them were unsurprisingly ecstatic about it all when we chatted just before Day 4 began.

Negreanu shared some comments as well for the post. Read about Cleeton and be energized by one of the cooler stories of the whole Main: “K.L. Cleeton continues inspiring run into Day 4.”

As the tournament wore on, a player named Mickey Craft started to get everyone’s attention thanks to his big stack and especially loose style of play. He was also kind of a character at the tables, chatting it up and obviously enjoying himself immensely.

I happened to be around when Craft won a big pot on Day 4 in an especially nutty hand. I remember watching it play out alongside the ESPN crew, talking a bit with one of them who was marveling at how crazy the poker was. I knew right then they’d be finding a way to get Craft onto a feature table soon, and sure enough that’s what happened later in the day.

Here’s that post describing the wacky hand: “Mickey Craft is must-see poker.”

Finally, if you paid any attention at all to the Main Event -- particularly to the final table -- you certainly heard about the 64-year-old amateur from Bridlington, England named John Hesp.

You couldn’t miss Hesp in his multi-colored, patchwork shirt and jacket and Panama hat. His personality was just as colorful, and by chance I ended up chatting with him on multiple occasions during his deep Main Event run, including about how the Main was a “bucket list” item for him, a bit of a diversion from his usual 10-pound tournaments in Hull.

Just before the final table (where he’d go on to finish fourth to earn $2.6 million), I posted a piece sharing some of what Hesp and I chatted about: “John Hesp’s Vegas vaction continues; or ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’”

These are just some of my favorites among the nearly 100 posts Howard Swains and I wrote over the course of the Main Event. Wanted to kind of bookmark them here, though, and also invite some more eyes to ‘em in case folks missed them before.

Lederer’s Mea Culpa

So Howard Lederer today -- today (!) -- issued an “apology” for the whole Full Tilt Poker 1.0 fiasco shared via Daniel Negreanu’s blog over on Full Contact Poker.

As it happens, earlier this week the player pool at Full Tilt Poker 2.0 was at last combined with that of PokerStars, both sites being currently owned by Amaya Gaming. That’s actually coincidental, though, as Lederer has no connection to the new Full Tilt other than having been among those who named the site long ago.

No, the timing of the apology rather has to do with the World Series of Poker beginning in just a week-and-a-half, or at least that seems the most likely explanation for it. Lederer is now admitting both to having made mistakes pre-Black Friday and not owning up to his culpability afterwards in what appears to be an attempt to pave the way for his return to the WSOP, something Negreanu alludes to as well in his contextual commentary on the statement.

You can read the statement yourself and decide how genuine the apology seems. You might also note how it mostly avoids any sort of particulars with regard to the mismanagement of player funds, Lederer’s own prominant role with FTP right up until and after Black Friday, and the way he still weirdly seems to portray himself as a victim of sorts while nominally accepting blame.

As far as Lederer’s playing at the Rio this summer goes, the WSOP reserves the right to refuse anyone the ability to participate in their events, and so it is technically up to them. I don’t necessarily see any legitimate argument for not allowing Lederer to play, but perhaps others might.

That said, I can’t imagine most are going to be all that enthusiastic about Lederer playing. He himself notes in his statement, “Players were not able to get their money back for a minimum of a year and a half, and, for many, it has been much longer. I’ve been a poker player my entire adult life. I know the importance of having access to one’s bankroll.”

In other words, thanks to Lederer’s own mismanagement and lack of oversight, he (and others) significantly damaged the careers of thousands of poker players -- indeed, in many cases, ended those careers altogether. Who could possibly be eager now to compete with such a person at the poker table -- i.e., to have such a person (again) do what he can to try to keep others from winning money at poker?

That’s what I think about here -- not just Lederer playing in WSOP events, but winning in them by cashing. Who could possibly be enthused by that prospect? (I even wonder how much Lederer himself would enjoy it.) Reminds me a little of what happens when men who choose to play in ladies events make the money, and the unpleasant feeling that results. What has been won, exactly?

If Lederer is not angling for a WSOP return, then, well, the gesture perhaps has some, small meaning. If he is, though, that only makes the much-delayed apology seem more empty and without significance than it already is -- another mostly self-serving act, following a long, long sequence of them.

Photo: “Sorry,” Timothy Brown. CC BY 2.0.

Travel Report: 2016 PCA, Day 1: Super High Rolling

Completed a first full day of reporting from the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure yesterday, where the focus was just about entirely on the $100,000 Super High Roller event that took up just a few tables in the front right-hand corner of the huge poker room (a.k.a. Convention Center) at the Atlantis Resort.

We were stationed in the exact opposite corner of the room -- actually, to be more accurate, just outside of the room in a back area usually reserved for the EPT Live (or, here, PCA Live) folks and the television crew shooting for the edited shows that come later. We were repositioned for this first day mainly because the set for the live streaming and TV shows was still being constructed.

I share the detail of where we were sitting just to point out that we were traversing the entire room each time we walked from our laptops to the SHR event and back, and thus necessarily saw how all of the other side events were getting impressive turnouts as the entire room managed to fill up with activity. In past years the PCA would start a little more slowly, but it looks like more players have arrived early this time around.

That may be due in part to the dozen events on the schedule for Day 1. But I’m also thinking the LAPT Bahamas event that begins today might have gotten a few extras out early this time. This will be the second year the LAPT has put on such an event at the PCA, one that serves as a “Main Event” for the tour as well as a $2,200 buy-in “preliminary” event as far as the entire PCA schedule goes. Will be curious to see if the turnout on Thursday matches or exceeds the 736 entries they had at LAPT Bahamas a year ago.

Like I say, though, the Super High Roller had everyone’s attention, and most of the usual suspects were out to participate in that one. That is Fedor Holz up above (courtesy Neil Stoddart and the PokerStars blog), just a few days removed from winning $3.4 million-plus in that $200K SHR in Manila, and a couple of weeks on from winning a $100K WPT Alpha8 and almost $1.6 million in Las Vegas.

Bill Perkins bought in three times, busting all three, and he intends to come back to try a fourth entry at the start of Day 2 before late reg closes. 2015 WSOP Main Event champion Joe McKeehen took part and did well all day, ending with a top five stack. Businessman Talal Shakerchi finished with the chip lead, with Kathy Lehne (also of the business world) in third position. Lehne took runner-up in that WPT Alpha8 in St. Kitts I covered in December 2014. (She also final-tabled the WPT Alpha8 at the Bellagio in December, taking sixth.)

While the focus was often on the hands, the table talk was equally interesting -- even more so, in some cases. Daniel Negreanu got into an extended monologue about Phil Hellmuth at one point that was obviously entertaining the table quite a bit, including a reference to Donald Trump and some of the parallels between the Poker Brat and the Donald. (You can probably imagine what they are.)

The SHRs are always interesting tournaments to be around. You get a mix of elite pros and the amateurs who are nonetheless serious and usually competitive. There’s always a relaxed feel, suggesting in a strange way a negative correlation between the size of the buy-in and the amount of stress felt by the players.

Gonna move off the SHR today as my beat now becomes that LAPT Bahamas event over the next three days. Might have to wander over there to the SHR once in a while, though, just to see who makes it through to Friday’s final table.

Meanwhile you can wander over to the PokerStars blog today for coverage of the Super High Roller, LAPT Bahamas, other side events, and more.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

Short-Handed, Short-Stacked, and Short-Changed

Have a postscript to share regarding yesterday’s discussion of the last part of Day 7 of the World Series of Poker Main Event (and ESPN’s coverage of it). Has to do with the short-handed play and a problem faced by some of the short stacks -- I’ll keep it short.

The episodes this week showed them play down from 15 players to nine, with Daniel Negreanu dramatically lasting as far as 11th place. While watching I was reminded of the significant faux pas made by the WSOP not to go to hand-for-hand play immediately after George McDonald’s knockout in 12th place. This issue wasn’t brought up at all on ESPN. It might have been, because it involved a mistake in judgment that affected who of the final 11 ultimately were able to make it to the final table.

After McDonald’s ouster, there were two short-handed tables, with the feature table being the shorter one with just five players. That’s where leader Joe McKeehen sat with a monstrous stack that dwarfed those of the other four players, including Negreanu.

In fact, for much of the sequence that followed, McKeehen was in first while the others were 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th in the counts. He also was opening practically every hand and keeping the pressure on constantly (as he should have). Too bad for the short stacks, for sure, but that’s the luck of the seat draw and subsequent table-balancing.

What wasn’t fair, though, was the fact that at the five-handed table they were playing nearly twice as fast as at the outer six-handed table. Over the next hour-and-a-half, they played 48 hands at the feature table (with McKeehen winning 26 of them), while they only played 26 hands at the six-handed table.

Not incidentally, when McKeehen had the button, Negreanu was in the big blind, and we saw several hands in the coverage involving those two. Looking back through the live updates again, Negreanu was in the big blind 10 times during the non-H4H portion when there were 11 left. Meanwhile Patrick Chan -- who became the short stack on the outer table after Neil Blumenfield doubled up soon after McDonald’s ouster -- was in the big blind exactly five times during the same hour-and-a-half.

The WSOP finally decided to go to hand-for-hand once they reached the next level break, well after the many criticisms for not doing so had been fired over Twitter and across other social media. It then only took four hands more for Negreanu’s bust to come (in one last button-versus-big blind hand with McKeehen).

There were some strange pay jumps in play here, too, you might recall. Here’s how the top 11 spots of the WSOP Main Event pay:

1st: $7,683,346
2nd: $4,470,896
3rd: $3,398,298
4th: $2,615,361
5th: $1,911,423
6th: $1,426,283
7th: $1,203,293
8th: $1,097,056
9th: $1,001,020
10th: $756,897
11th: $526,778

This payout schedule also represented something that might have been done otherwise, and once it was announced during the early part of the Main Event many suggested problems with it and possible corrections.

Notice how the jumps between 11th and 10th ($230,119) and 10th and 9th ($244,123) are both much greater than the ones between 9th-8th, 8th-7th, and 7th-6th. Not that anyone is going to be less than cautious with 11 players in the WSOP Main Event, but those big jumps could obviously encourage players to play less quickly, especially if they saw short stacks at the other table being threatened by the chip leader.

The fact that the WSOP did finally exercise their judgment and go to hand-for-hand some 90 minutes after they should have shows they could have done it as soon as they got to 11 players. As I wrote about here back in July, the fact that they didn’t represented a serious mistake, one made more conspicuous (if not more significant) by the fact that Negreanu was among the players directly affected.

2015 WSOP Main Event: The Finale, Finally

The last of ESPN’s pre-November Nine episodes from the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event have now aired, and now everyone’s attention turns to the final table -- finally! -- which will begin this coming Sunday.

I ended up watching all 16 of the episodes which altogether added up to 19-and-a-half hours’ worth of shows on the ESPN networks. That counts commercials, of course, which I skipped through like most. I didn’t watch a single one of these shows live, choosing the NFL instead (usually) as just about every one of the premieres went up against football.

The coverage started with the beginning of Day 4 (after the money bubble had already burst on Day 3) and carried through the end of Day 7, taking viewers from 661 players down to nine. I enjoyed most of the shows, especially from Day 7. Daniel Negreanu’s deep run definitely helped -- he was a huge part of all of the episodes right up until the last half-hour of the last one.

It’s been at least a couple of years, perhaps three or four, since I actually sat down and watched every episode of ESPN’s WSOP Main Event coverage like this. Again, I can’t say they have done too much to alter the formula, which is probably on the whole a good thing even if one would like to think there are better ways of doing this sort of thing.

Seven years later, the final table delay still irks me. Negreanu’s desperate hanging on with the short stack before finally getting knocked out in 11th -- on a river card, too -- would have been utterly electric to watch live (or on a slight delay). But seeing it three-and-a-half months later was nowhere close to as exciting. (Even a far cry from the “Twitter rail” from that night in July.)

That other World Series wrapping up earlier this week got me thinking about how I experienced baseball as a kid. The first World Series I can remember watching was in 1977 when the Yankees beat the Dodgers in six games and Reggie Jackson hit five home runs -- three in the final game. What a thrilling series that was between two incredible teams full of characters and stars. And many of the games and plays remain etched in my memory, even decades later.

Meanwhile I was a Cincinnati Reds fan as a kid, and so I only indirectly was able to enjoy the Big Red Machine’s two wins in ’75 and ’76 after the fact via highlights, reading books and magazine articles, and so on. While I obviously can recall the image of Carlton Fisk urging his game-winner in Game 6 in ’75 to stay fair, I don’t remember much of anything else from those two series given the indirect way I originally “experienced” them.

It’s this latter way that we now experience nearly all of the World Series of Poker Main Event, save the final table. It’s a highlight show, and with such a huge distance between it happening and our getting to see anything it tends to pack the same, generally weak punch of seeing a few plays the morning after on SportsCenter. If that.

That said, I’ll confess watching all the shows definitely has me ready for Sunday night. I might even have to turn off the football for once.

By the way, if you want to play along with my series of "what-would-you-do?"-type strategy articles over on PokerNews stemming from the ESPN coverage (with poll questions about decision points), here are all of them:

“Watching Phil Hellmuth or ‘The Master at Work’”

”Daniel Negreanu Turns the Nuts -- Call or Reraise?”

”How Would You Respond to Negreanu’s Check-Raises?”

”Flopping Huge Versus Fedor -- Play Fast or Slow?”

”Pick Your Spots and Play Along with Max Steinberg”

”Negreanu and November Niners Playing Trouble Hands”

”Nearing the November Nine, What Would You Do?”

”Leader Joe McKeehen Pressures, How Do You Respond?”

The Cincinnati Kid Turns 50

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the film I still consider the best of all poker movies, The Cincinnati Kid.

I guess Daniel Negreanu or “Kid Poker” is in his 40s now, so it isn't that odd to note The Cincinnati Kid is 50. Heck, Steve McQueen (aged 35 when he portrayed the title character) always did seem a little old for the part.

When the film debuted in 1965, initial reviews were lukewarm. It was frequently likened to The Hustler (1961), an obvious influence, with many viewing it a lesser attempt to tell a similar story. I tend to agree that The Hustler is greater cinematic achievement, although Kid has a lot going for it, too.

I’ve mentioned my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class here many times before. Every time I’ve taught the course I’ve included The Cincinnati Kid, and every time I’ve enjoyed seeing the students’ overwhelmingly positive response.

Many who are college-aged don’t bother much with films made three decades before they were born. Indeed, I seem to remember one or two of my students confessing to me it was the oldest movie they’d ever seen (if you can believe that). But a lot of them are surprised when they find it not just entertaining but thought-provoking as well. A very high percentage of them are surprised by the ending, too -- I’ve had many of them every semester tell me how they fully expected the Kid to win in the end.

The film gives the class a lot of great themes to explore, with the “coming of age” story at the heart of it, a theme connoted pretty transparently by “the Kid” and his duel with “the Man.” There are also a lot of interesting “existential” ideas in play, plus other commentary about human nature, gender roles, and other topics that make for some great discussions.

Way back in early 2007 (not that long after I started the blog) I wrote a series of posts about The Cincinnati Kid (both the film and the Richard Jessup book on which it is based). I’d probably put things differently today, but I can still link to those posts without too much embarrassment:

Commentary on the Commentary: The Cincinnati Kid

Richard Jessup’s The Cincinnati Kid

Poker Review: The Cincinnati Kid

The Last Hand of The Cincinnati Kid: Differences Between the Novel and the Film

Wrote a couple more posts since then, too, on the film -- “Does the Kid Know Jack?” and “The Cincinnati Kid and Looking Back” -- which contain still more thoughts about it. Meanwhile today over on PokerNews I wrote something exploring the final hand in particular which for many represents a deficit for the film given its odds-defying improbability. That article is titled “Hand Histories: 50 Years of Debate Over the Last Hand of ‘The Cincinnati Kid,’” if you’re curious.

A half-century on, I’m keeping Kid at the top of my list of favorite poker films. Where does it rank on yours?

The 2015 WSOP Main Event on ESPN (So Far)

ESPN’s coverage of the 2015 World Series of Poker has been up and running for four weeks now, with eight-and-a-half hours’ worth of shows shown so far. I think that total is correct, anyway, as an extra half-hour turned up this week.

They’ve moved the shows around some on the schedule, making it challenging to find them sometimes, although mostly they’ve been popping up on Monday nights. The strategy appears to be mostly to put the episodes on one network while NFL football is playing on the other, which I have to think hasn’t helped a lot with ratings. It also means I’ve actually never watched any of them initially but only later on DVR.

I’ve somewhat enjoyed the coverage thus far. I didn’t plan on it beforehand, but was inspired to start a series of strategy articles (over on PokerNews) each of which focuses on an interesting hand or two while giving readers a chance to play along. The response has been pretty good on these, which all include polls that invite you to pick how you would play a certain hand. (When setting the scene, I withhold the hole cards of the player with whom you play along.)

Here are those so far (the headline of the first one is quoting something a player said at the table):

“Watching Phil Hellmuth or ‘The Master at Work’”

”Daniel Negreanu Turns the Nuts -- Call or Reraise?”

”How Would You Respond to Negreanu’s Check-Raises?”

”Flopping Huge Versus Fedor -- Play Fast or Slow?”

I think all of them present genuinely interesting spots that are made a little more fun from a strategic standpoint when you don’t know all the players’ holdings. Watching the shows with an eye toward finding such spots is probably adding significantly to my enjoyment of them, too, I would venture.

As those titles suggest, the coverage to this point has featured a lot of Hellmuth (until he busted) and Negreanu, with the latter destined to be front and center all of the way up to the November Nine thanks to his near-miss of the final table.

They started with Day 4 this year, and by now they’ve gotten to the end of Day 5 at which point just 69 remain from the 6,420 who entered. Would have been preferable, I think, to start back on Day 1 and give a couple of hours to each of the days (rather than four or more for both Day 4 and 5), but obviously it’s cheaper to shoot fewer days.

Starting on Day 4 means they actually began after the bubble burst (on Day 3), which skips one of the more exciting moments of the Main Event. This year, too, with 1,000 players cashing, there were certainly dozens (if not hundreds) of cool stories about first-time players/cashers which might have been entertaining to hear about, along with all of the other fun stuff that tends to mark the early days of the WSOP ME.

Still, I’m finding I’ve been looking forward to the shows each week. Have you been watching at all? What do you think?

Book Learning

There was a time years ago when I’d read any poker strategy book I could find. I scribbled about many of them here, and ended up writing reviews of dozens for various outlets over the years, too.

My consumption of such titles has slowed down considerably of late, as I imagine it has for most of us here in the distant wake of the poker “boom.” But I’ll read one every now and then, and will review them occasionally, too.

A couple of days ago Daniel Negreanu wrote a blog post offering to answer the question “Which Poker Books Should You Buy?” in which he makes a few different points about how to judge strategy texts, most of which make sense to me.

Negreanu spends some time in the post distinguishing between “mental game” books or those that might be filed with other sports psychology texts, and nuts-and-bolts poker strategy texts. He notes how when it comes to the former category, the author’s own record as a player isn’t necessarily a crucial issue. After all, people can help you become mentally stronger without necessarily even being poker players themselves.

However, when it comes to strategy texts or “books that teach you how to play the game better,” Negreanu maintains that “it is essential that the author is a successful, winning player over an extended period of time.” Thus does he strongly advise readers to check the credentials of the strategy authors -- i.e., their results -- before considering reading their books.

It’s reasonable advice, and I tend to agree with the distinction Negreanu makes between poker and other sports in which successful coaches need not have been players themselves.

Negreanu doesn’t really focus on the fact that there are plenty of very good players who aren’t so great at writing strategy books. (I’m remembering a few of examples of such books, some of which still gather dust on my shelf today.)

Thinking back, I’m remembering I actually reviewed a couple of Negreanu’s books back in the day -- his Power Hold’em Strategy (compiling chapters from many contributors) and More Hold’em Wisdom for All Players (which collected syndicated columns he’d written). I liked both books, although I’m remembering there were some sections of Power Hold’em Strategy I liked more than others, including Negreanu’s own good explanation of his “small ball” strategy.

Poker is also unlike other sports in another important way, one not irrelevant to this topic.

Most of us know instinctively whether or not we are expert enough at basketball, baseball, football, tennis, golf, or other sports to advise others. In poker, though, where accurate self-assessment can be more elusive, it can be a lot harder to arrive at such certainty.

Have a Spare $51K Lying Around?

There’s a $51,000 buy-in online poker tournament this weekend. No shinola.

I’m sure you’ve heard about it. PokerStars’s annual World Championship of Online Poker is nearing the end of week number two (of three), and on Sunday comes a special “Super High Roller” with the $51K price tag. It’ll be the biggest buy-in online tournament ever on Stars, and I think ever, period.

They’re even trying out letting folks bet on the outcome over on the Casino side on Stars, with the opening lines listing Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris Moorman as favorites.

If betting on a winner were an option for me, I wouldn’t take it -- not because the lines don’t seem so favorable, but the sheer fact that betting on any individual to win a poker tournament, even one with a small field, is inherently going to be a longshot play.

Speaking of the field size, if I were betting on how many might participate, I’d look back at the last $21K buy-in heads-up event from the Spring Championship of Online Poker back in May where 33 players took part. Could it draw that many? More? (Many seem to think more, actually.)

It has a $1 million guarantee (20 players), which will surely be met. It also will most certainly feature many of the usual super high-rolling suspects who populate the small fields in the World Poker Tour Alpha 8 events and other live SHRs on the schedule.

Should make for some decent railbirding, I’d imagine. That costs nothing.

Tuning In: The 2015 WSOP Main Event Begins on ESPN

Saw our friend Kevmath tweeting a little earlier about viewers for last night’s initial two episodes from ESPN of their 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event coverage.

I was watching ESPN last night, although not the WSOP. Looking over at Sports TV Ratings’ numbers from Monday night, I was part of the group of 13.56 million watching the night’s first NFL game (Philadelphia at Atlanta) as well as part of the 14.33 million looking in on the second one (Minnesota at San Francisco).

I was also enduring some of that agony I was talking about yesterday after having picked both games incorrectly (in both cases going with “consensus” picks). (Argh!)

The episodes of the WSOP aired over on ESPN2 at 8 and 9 p.m. Looks like 245,000 were watching that first hour, then 414,000 tuned in for the second hour.

Instead of watching live, I DVR’d the poker and watched this afternoon. Was entertaining, I thought, in large part because of Phil Hellmuth being on the feature table for the entire two hours, then Daniel Negreanu getting seated there for the last 45 minutes or so of hour no. 2.

I also liked the snippets of talk from various players talking about what it meant to play the Main. That helped broaden things in such a way that it was possible to think of the larger context for the various hands that were shown. (Otherwise, it was hard -- as usual -- to think about how the tournament as a whole was going.)

Speaking of the number of people watching, at the end of one hand during the first part of the first hour, Hellmuth made a reference to his hand after being folded to, and when asked if he was telling the truth he said if he weren’t he’d “just lied in front a million people.”

Then he recalculated.

“Gonna be five million people watching this, at least.”

I believe last year’s Main Event final table -- the “almost live” November Nine, that is -- drew something like 1.15 million viewers, with the episodes leading up to it drawing considerably fewer. About a month ago I looked up some of these stats, finding that the 2008 WSOP ME final table had 2.364 million watching (the most of the Nov. 9 era).

This old PokerNews article from a decade ago lists some stats for ESPN’s WSOP episodes from back in the glory days. The article says in 2003 the average was 1 million viewers (for those seven Main Event episodes), in 2004 it was 1.5 million (for 22 hrs. of coverage, including non-ME shows), and in 2005 it was 1.1 million (for 32 hrs. of coverage).

No surprise to find that five million people watching a poker show didn’t happen even at the height of the poker boom. Nor is it to hear Hellmuth imagining five million are watching him.

The Serena Stunner

Was working this afternoon with the U.S. Open playing on the teevee, pretty much the way it has gone for the last 10 days or so after my return from Barcelona.

Tennis probably ranks fourth or fifth on my list of favorite sports to watch (with the NFL and NBA up top). As with golf, it is really only the majors that encourage me to tune in when it comes to tennis. I’ll happily leave the set on all day and night during the two weeks of Wimbledon, the French, and the U.S. Open. (Not so much during the Australian, because of the time difference.)

My viewing goes back and forth between passive awareness of how matches are progressing and concluding and active following of every point near the ends of sets or matches.

Today I can’t say I even really paid much attention at all to Flavia Panetta’s quick handling of the No. 2 seed Simona Halep in the day’s first match. I’d seen several of Halep’s matches leading up to today’s, and considering her high seed I’d guessed she was going to be a finalist, so the 6-1 6-3 result was kind of eyebrow-raising.

Then came Serena Williams’s match with Roberta Vinci. I looked up for a while before it began to hear the commentators talk about “David versus Goliath” and speculate how quickly the match would be completed, none thinking for a moment that Williams could possibly lose to the unseeded Italian.

The first set was over in a flash, won by Williams 6-2, and I’d moved fully into passive mode as they moved through the second set. Saw Vinci -- who at age 32 is older than the average player although a year younger than Williams -- was up a break, then watched as she managed to hold on to win that one 6-4, and suddenly I was setting work aside to see what was going to happen next.

The third set was a strange one, with Williams breaking Vinci early to go up 2-0 and seemingly in position to cruise into yet another major final. But Vinci broke back right away and seeing her rallying herself and the New York crowd it suddenly became obvious she wasn’t going to be an easy out. Soon she was up a break, and after Williams missed an opportunity to break back (having a couple of break points to do so), it was all crazily pointing to one of those huge, impossible-to-have-foreseen upsets.

The last game was almost an anticlimax, with Vinci clinching the set 6-4 to stop Williams’s run at the grand slam. Stunningly. The Italian’s post-match interview was terrific. “Today is my day, sorry guys!” she said, and it was impossible not to grin in response.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. After all, Vinci’s name literally means “win.”

Afterwards the commentators tried to find examples from other sports with which to compare the magnitude of the upset, with the usuals (Villanova over Georgetown, Douglas over Tyson, etc.) being highlighted.

From poker I was harkening back to Hal Fowler defeating Bobby Hoff heads-up at the 1979 WSOP as a closer analogue than Moneymaker over Farha. This evening I saw Pamela Maldonado make what was probably an even better comparison over Twitter, bringing up Joe McKeehen’s knockout of Daniel Negreanu two spots shy of the November Nine back in July and noting McKeehen’s similarly sympathetic-while-competitive response afterwards.

The favorite-underdog dynamic makes poker an exciting game, since in every hand the dog still has a chance. In sports, too, it adds a layer of interest as we watch to find out how what happens compares to what was thought would happen. And there, too, do the favorites -- even the greatest ones -- sometimes fall.

A Look Back Before Lima

Am sketching out a quick post here mid-transit on my way back down to Lima, Peru where I’ll be covering the Latin American Poker Tour Peru Main Event for the PokerStars blog from Friday through Tuesday.

Like most of the poker world, I still have those last few hours of the World Series of Poker Main Event circling around in my noggin’. As is probably true for most, as the other stories of that finale fade a bit the one that will stick with us for the next short while -- and probably for longer than that -- was Daniel Negreanu coming oh-so-close to making it to the November Nine and thus to be front-and-center amid all of the hubbub he’d surely help build between now and then.

I’m seeing a few folks trying to go against the grain a bit with sorta-kinda provocative posts about how it didn’t matter so much “for poker” (as they say) for Negreanu to come up short. Or even that it is better somehow that he didn’t.

While I’m in agreement that poker won’t be overly negatively affected by his not being able to do the mainstream media rounds as one still in the hunt for the long-paused ME, I’m not really convinced by those who want to suggest it wouldn’t have been a net positive overall for that to have happened.

The NFL does fine regardless who makes it to the Super Bowl. So, too, does the NBA seem to make out all right regardless which teams get to the later rounds of its playoffs, although the MLB and NHL are perhaps affected somewhat when smaller-market teams compete for their respective championships. And I suppose golf and tennis tends to “need” (speaking in relative terms) recognizable names on the leaderboard to sustain interest and keep television ratings high.

Poker is different, though, functioning like a sport (especially when it comes to the WSOP Main Event) but also existing in many other ways that have different meanings for different people -- as a pastime, a hobby, a semi-serious recreation, a potential career, an actual career, or even just as something fun to watch like a drama series or (more similarly) a reality show.

I’ll be watching in November for sure, as usual, although I think a lot who might have if Negreanu was there probably won’t.

Anyhow, turning all that off now as I ready for Peru. It’ll be my fourth time there, I believe, and my mouth is already watering at the thought of the great eats that await. More to come.

WSOP “Play Down” Day: The Might-Have-Beens Begin

Well, that was exciting.

Everyone’s still reeling from Daniel Negreanu’s suspense-filled near-miss of the World Series of Poker Main Event final table, incredibly matching his best-ever finish from 2001 after getting knocked out in 11th.

The “Twitter rail” was tremendous last night, with Negreanu’s agent, Brian Balsbaugh, tweeting every hand Negreanu played and even every street at times, right up through the fateful knockout hand when Joe McKeehen spiked a needed card on the river. See the sequence at left, which I’ve turned upside down from earliest to latest to recreate the tension (click pic to embiggen).

After winning the first couple of hands yesterday to boost his stack well above average, Negreanu slipped back soon thereafter and was more or less just outside of or squarely within the danger zone most of the night as they played down from 27 to 11. Just before dinner he survived an all-in versus chip leader McKeehen that produced a lot of drama, but later on couldn’t fade his opponent’s many outs... and he was out.

There’s a lot worth discussing regarding what happened last night as well as what’s to come in November. I like McKeehen, whom I mentioned on Monday I first encountered when covering his victory in the WSOP Circuit Main Event at Caesars Atlantic City in early 2013.

From that tournament I recall he also experienced some run good near the end of the penultimate day, picking up pocket aces a couple of times to earn knockouts and carry a big lead to the final day. I remember him clearly being a solid tournament player, seemingly comfortable in every situation and especially well-suited to play with the lead (I don’t recall him being challenged much at all at that final table).

I also recall McKeehen being very social at the table and even supportive of others, including some obvious amateurs who made it relatively deep in the event. I’m not talking about Negreanu-level good will -- no one has that -- but enough for me to have banked it as one of my impressions of the guy at the time, and to make it nice to have seen him win the sucker. With more than twice the chips of his nearest challenger (the Israeli, Zvi Stern) heading into the final table, McKeehen is certainly a big favorite, and again I wouldn’t mind seeing him get there at the end.

Pierre Neuville (in fourth position) making it to the final table is another very cool story. The amiable Belgian is 72 years old -- the oldest November Niner ever -- and last night I enjoyed chatting with my Dad who also happens to be 72. Here’s hoping the hashtag “#NeuvemberNine” picks up again as the final table nears.

Meanwhile the 61-year-old Neil Blumfield (in third) also significantly skews the average age of this year’s ME final table. Max Steinberg (in fifth) is the only bracelet-winner of the bunch, and is a fun, talented player to watch. The others -- Thomas Cannuli (sixth), Joshua Beckley (seventh), Patrick Chan (eighth), and Federico Butteroni (ninth) -- we’ll get to know eventually, too.

My thoughts this morning, though, were mostly taken up with two takeaways from last night. One was the lamentable lack of any live stream for what was easily the most exciting night of the summer at the Rio. If you were on Twitter, you saw the frequent references by many to the fact that because of the ESPN contractual obligations our game’s “Super Bowl” must be necessarily experienced piecemeal when it is happening live -- via updates and other “coverage” such as Balsbaugh and others were providing -- and then only in an edited, spaced-out form months later.

It’s bad, and like others I wish it weren’t so. But clearly there was nothing the WSOP could do about that last night. The other focus of my thoughts, though, concerns something the WSOP did have control over.

After George McDonald got his queens cracked by Stern’s 10-8-suited to go out in 12th, they were six-handed at the outer table and five-handed at the feature. At the latter were seated McKeehen and four short stacks, Negreanu among them. A huge pay jump had arrived as well, as the next player out in 11th would earn $526,778 while the 10th-place finisher was due $756,897 -- a more than $230K jump which oddly was greater than the jumps from 9th to 8th, 8th to 7th, and 7th to 6th.

From that point forward, reading the updates on WSOP.com makes it glaringly apparent the pace of play at the feature table was much, much faster than on the outer table, with several hands being reported for the former in each post versus just a couple per post in reports from the latter.

With one less player and with players generally acting more quickly, the main feature table was blitzing along while the outer table inched slowly from hand to hand. If I’m counting correctly, by the time they reached the next break they had played 48 hands on the feature table and just 26 on the outer table.

After about an hour-and-a-half of this, with the start of a new level tournament officials finally decided to have the tournament played hand-for-hand. This was something I’d anticipated they’d do as soon as they’d gotten to 11 players, as I mentioned at the end of a PokerNews article yesterday titled “From 27 to 9: How Might the New Payouts Affect Play on Day 7 of the WSOP Main Event?”

In that article I talk about how the pace of play differed between the last few tables on “play down” day at the WSOP ME over the last couple of years. With such a huge pay difference, it seemed to me a trivial decision to go to hand-for-hand at 11 this year, but somehow they didn’t.

For a decent part of that sequence, McKeehen was the overwhelming chip leader and the other four players at his table were 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th in the counts. McKeehen hammered away at them throughout, and they had to play nearly twice the hands as those at the feature table did during the same 90 minutes. A quick skim through those 48 hands shows McKeehen predictably involved in the great majority of them, and winning 26.

It only took four more hands before Negreanu’s bust at the start of the new level. The fact that they did at last go hand-for-hand shows they could have done it earlier. And they should have, because not doing so introduced unfairness into what was the most crucial period of the tournament up to that point.

Those are the thoughts I’m mulling over this morning. I suppose I’ll eventually get around to thinking about what might have been had Negreanu made it. But for now I’m distracted by this other “might have been” having to do with the decision not to go hand-for-hand immediately after McDonald’s knockout.

Negreanu’s Intentions

Folks have had fun with Daniel Negreanu’s frequent statements of his “intentions,” often delivered via Twitter, whenever he heads into a new day of tournament poker.

A short while before play begins, the newly-inducted Poker Hall of Famer will send his more than 365,000 followers or so a tweet starting “My intention is” with the rest spelling out some specific goal he intends to realize by the end of that day. Usually he lists a specific chip count for which he’s aiming, while sometimes he adds other less tangible intentions, too.

As he has explained in various forums, Negreanu’s motive for stating such intentions has to do with maintaining a positive, optimistic attitude about what he hopes to accomplish, not any particular superstition or other irrational purpose (as far as I’m aware).

About a half-hour ago Negreanu tweeted out his intentions for today, Day 7 of the World Series of Poker Main Event, which he’ll be starting in ninth position out of the final 27, his above-average stack of 8,495,000 representing a little under 71 big blinds when play begins in just a few minutes.

“My intention for day 7 of WSOP main event is to maintain focus and intensity, be compassionate, and reach the final table with 40 million” says Negreanu. That chip goal, if reached, might well put Negreanu in the chip lead as the tourney pauses nearly four months before resuming in November.

Of course, if Negreanu does survive the whittling down from 27 to 9 and make it through today -- no matter how many chips he has -- I think many of us already have an idea what his intentions will be during the long interruption of play. Never one to shy from the limelight, nor one to demonstrate reticence regarding the promotion of poker, I think it’s safe to assume he’ll show us once and for all what good might come from having someone who is already a full-fledged poker “ambassador” slotted into the November Niner role.

Former 2+2 Pokercast co-host Mike Johnson tweeted earlier today a question that suggested a little bit of skepticism about how exactly Negreanu making the November Nine will change the status quo as far as his already considerable influence is concerned.

“WSOP ME - someone needs to explain how Daniel winning helps poker?” asks Johnson. “He’s had a huge stage to promote/be an ambassador for yrs. It would be the same.”

It’s a valid question and point, I think. And it might well be true to say that whether Negreanu realizes his intention to make it the WSOP Main Event final table or not, the difference for the larger poker community -- ultimately -- might in fact be negligible.

But I think most of us are still curious to see what comes next, should that eventuality occur. That’s why my intention is to follow closely what happens.

Stories Upon Stories at the WSOP

Yesterday was definitely an interesting day to rail the World Series of Poker Main Event, which I find I’m doing mostly by shuttling between WSOP.com (for live updates and counts), the poker news sites (for spontaneous features), and Twitter (for reactions and discussion).

Lots of interesting stories emerging regarding the players who remain. As the day wore on, I found myself continually seizing on one particular plotline as “the” story of Day 5, then having that one be soon replaced by another and so on right up until the end of play.

Start-of-day chip leader Joe McKeehen spent a good portion of the afternoon on top of the counts, and he finished up with 3.66 million -- above the average (about 2.79 milly) and good for a spot inside the top 20 with 69 players left from the starting field of 6,420. McKeehen intrigues me mostly because I helped cover his win in a WSOP Circuit event in Atlantic City in March 2013, a tournament in which he conspicuously distinguished himself as a talented player and dominated at the close.

Brian Hastings ascent up the counts then led to thoughts about his complicated place in the poker world at present (see “The Battle of Hastings”). He finished the night at 4.74 million and in 10th position, and thus will continue to earn attention going forward, thanks also to his having won two bracelets already this summer which allows him to challenge for the lead in that strangely-calculated WSOP Player of the Year race.

Then it was Anton Morgenstern leaping to the fore, the player who entered Day 7 of the 2013 WSOP Main Event in first position with 27 left only to be ousted in 20th place. It wasn’t exactly a blow-up two years ago for the young German -- he experienced some bad fortune in two big hands against Mark Newhouse -- but still, it was a remarkable turn of events.

I still like to rib my friend Stephen Bartley for his tongue-in-cheek-but-still PokerStars blog post he published during Day 6 declaring “Why Anton Morgenstern will (probably) win the main event.” After leading for a short while yesterday, Morgenstern ended today with 4.2 million (17th of 69). See “Anton Morgenstern Getting the Second Chance of Lifetime” on PokerNews to read what Morgenstern is saying about his return trip to the latter stages of the ME.

Speaking of the PokerStars blog, the deep run of Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu will continue to keep them occupied over there as it has throughout the Main Event thus far. He has 3.62 million (in 22nd place) and chances are the closer he gets to the final table the more likely his story will be eclipsing everything else.

Then at another break the not-so-familiar name of Bruce Peery appeared in the top slot, with a tweet by Chris Moneymaker quickly helping everyone learn why he might be of interest to WSOP Main Event fans and historians. “Sick sweat at @WSOP #MainEvent,” wrote Moneymaker, “as best friend from 2003 and guy who lost half my action leading with 145 left.”

As Eric Raskin wrote about in his oral history The Moneymaker Effect (2014) as well as in the preview Grantland article “When We Held Kings,” Peery was the fellow who told Moneymaker not to aim for fourth place and a cash prize of $8,000 in that final PokerStars satellite back in ’03 but to try to win one of the three Main Event packages, ensuring his friend he’d give him $5,000 and take half his action. Alas for Peery, he backed out of the deal and thus missed out on being able to claim half of Moneymaker’s $2.5 million score.

Tim Fiorvanti jumped on that story yesterday for BLUFF, talking to Peery to get more details which Tim shared in “Moneymaker Legend Grows as Bruce Peery Takes WSOP Main Event Lead.” Peery will begin today in 35th position with 2.4 million.

But finally it was Pierre Neuville’s story that ultimately pushed past all of these, just as his chip count managed to exceed everyone, too, by night’s end. The 72-year-old finished with 7.105 million to lead all and grab away the Day 5 headlines.

We’ve all gotten to know Neuville over the years as the very amiable Belgian who earned a reputation as the “Serial PokerStars Qualifier” after winning seats in 23 straight EPT events online. He only took up poker seriously after retiring from a lengthy career in business, I believe, and has earned nearly $2.2 million in live tourney cashes (plus a lot online, too) over the last eight years or so including a two runner-up finishes in EPT Main Events and another second-place in a WSOP bracelet event.

If you don’t know Neuville, check out this interview Remko Rinkema did with him at EPT Deauville earlier this year to hear him explain how “poker makes me younger every year”:

Impossible not to pull for Neuville, and his story -- just like his chip stack -- will take precedence when they get going again today. But with all of these other stories -- and players -- still in the mix, the overall narrative should continue to take some interesting turns.

Poker Cheaters and Public Confidence

Today Daniel Negreanu posted a new entry on his blog provocatively titled “A List of Players Who Should Be Barred from WSOP?”

The post goes on to answer the title’s question with discussion of six different individuals, each of whom has distinguished him or herself in the poker world via significant controversies that ultimately reflected poorly not just on themselves but the game, generally speaking. Negreanu doesn’t, in fact, propose banishing all six of those whom he discusses, but instead presents a specific criterion for earning such a penalty -- namely, having been found to cheat at poker -- then applies it to each of those he examines.

You can probably guess most if not all of the six persons Negreanu chooses to discuss as candidates for being barred, as well as who among them would be chosen for banishment by Kid Poker and who would not.

The WSOP’s official tournament rules cover a number of violations for which the penalty includes being ejected from a given event and/or losing the privilege to participate in future WSOP events (or even ever again being able to enter the Rio). Various forms of cheating are obviously covered under that heading, with tournament officials likewise able to use their own discretion on how to treat other behaviors thought to compromise the integrity of a given event.

In other words, if you cheat, collude, chip dump, or soft play, you’re risking being made to forfeit your chips, having to give up any prize money won, being ejected from the tourney, or losing the ability to play at the WSOP ever again. Other disruptive behaviors while playing in WSOP events can be penalized similarly -- you can check out Section IV of last year’s rules for a complete rundown of offenses.

The last rule listed in that section looks like it does give the WSOP authority to impose the kind of “barring” Negreanu discusses -- that is, to keep someone from participating who hasn’t necessarily broken any rules or committed other acts in a WSOP event, but who would nonetheless create problems for the WSOP should he or she try to register for an event.

“Where a situation arises that is not covered by these rules,” reads that rule, “[the] Rio shall have the sole authority to render a judgment, including the imposition of a penalty, in accordance with the best interests of the Tournament and the maintenance of its integrity and public confidence.”

I think it’s safe to say tournament officials would hate to face the prospect of delivering that kind of judgment upon a player who hasn’t actually violated any rules while playing a WSOP event, but who by attempting to participate in one would somehow compromise either the integrity of the tournament and/or damage “public confidence” -- like a known cheater would.

Check out Negreanu’s post and decide for yourself what might happen if any of the six he discusses happened to show up to play an event this summer.

Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Day 8 -- Penultimate-Day Poker

We’re almost there. One day to go here at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure with both the Main Event and High Roller tournaments scheduled to complete today.

Poker-wise there was much of interest yesterday. In the Main Event, Chance Kornuth stormed to a lead which he kept through the end of the day as they played down to six players.

I’m curious to see how the two remaining South Americans -- Diego Ventura (of Peru) and Juan Martin Pastor (of Argentina) -- do today, both of whom are more online than live players, although Pastor I’ve come to recognize from the LAPTs where he’s notched some cashes. (Meet Pastor in this great video from late last year when he clinched Supernova Elite before a crowd of partying friends.)

The High Roller, meanwhile, played down to 11 players with a kind of wild knockout of Daniel Negreanu in 14th by Dan Heimiller highlighting the late night action. Here’s the hand report of that one from PokerNews, with Negreanu’s post-bust series of tweets lamenting how the hand went also interesting to read.

Jean-Pascal Savard carries the chip lead into the final day in that one, with Heimiller third in chips. (On a side note, I'm lamenting the fact that apparently Heimiller's excellent website is no longer online. From where will I order my sea monkeys now?)

Had a fun High Roller post yesterday titled “Finding little edges” in which I managed to discuss the carpets, talk to Jake Cody, and mention my five-and-a-half-year-old nephew.

There was the famed PCA party last night (from which came the above pic), moved indoors because of inclement weather. Was quite a spectacle, with dancers, marching bands, people walking around on stilts, and a nonstop beat with food and drink a-plenty.

Heading in for one more day of fun-slash-work today, after which I’m eager to get back to the farm tomorrow. Follow the reports today on both the Main Event and High Roller on the PokerStars blog, and watch PokerNews for hands, counts, and everything else.

End-of-Year Lists

With the end of the calendar year come a lot of those “top ten stories”-type lists to help us realize just how poor our short term memories really are. Have seen several poker-related ones, including the countdown of story recaps currently appearing one per day over on PokerNews.

I cast a vote for that PN list, and in past years actually compiled similar lists on my own (e.g., for Betfair Poker). Not as easy as it looks.

Like “best of” rankings, Hall of Fame votes, and other such exercises, lists of a given year’s top stories are always subjective and thus open to criticism and debate. That’s because they not only reflect the various predilections of those making the selections, but the criteria being followed when designating what a “top story” is can be pretty amorphous, too.

Poker, for instance, is a game around which several different subcultures exist, groups that overlap in some ways but are distinct, too, and thus can have very different interests or concerns. For example, the divide between online poker and live poker was once larger than it is today, but there still exist many issues which only affect one or the other, thus making stories exclusively about one either highly important or nearly irrelevant depending on the audience.

Stories about online poker legislation, then, might rate high on some lists or fail to chart on others, depending on who’s doing the listing. Same goes for poker tournament results -- they directly affect many who play poker and are of special interest to fans and those who follow it, but they can be largely meaningless to many others.

Industry news including items about casinos and online sites can often be more significant than many players and/or fans realize, but those stories don’t always capture the public’s attention. Meanwhile cheating scandals and other untoward activities always draw lots of rubberneckers, but sometimes aren’t as important as they seem. And while there may not be as many “poker celebrities” diverting us today as there were a decade ago, the words and actions of certain players and others still fascinate some, thus getting those “Did you hear what he/she said/did?!” stories a lot of play.

Looking back a few years, in 2009 Phil Ivey making the WSOP Main Event final table while winning two other bracelets was a consensus pick for top story that year. In 2010, Michael Mizrachi’s $50K PPC win and final-table run topped a few lists, although Harry Reid’s late-year failed online poker bill got a lot of play in the rankings, too (even topping some lists).

In 2011, Black Friday was the unchallenged choice for top poker story by practically everyone. In 2012, the PokerStars-DOJ-FTP deal provided a significant sequel that many rated that year’s most important poker story. Last year Daniel Negreanu’s big year topped some lists, while the reintroduction of online poker in the U.S. headed others.

So what poker story tops your list for 2014?

Two More for the PHOF

I mentioned a few weeks ago when the nominees for this year’s Poker Hall of Fame were announced how this year I was not part of the panel of media who voted along with the living PHOF members. I had that privilege to cast a ballot for the previous four years, actually. Was honored to have had the chance to take part and happy to step aside to allow others the chance to do so.

Today the WSOP announced Daniel Negreanu and Jack McClelland had been voted in, with Negreanu a “first-ballot” Hall of Famer as he just turned 40, the minimum age for induction.

As I didn’t participate this time, I’m not 100% sure on what the instructions were for those who did. In the past, we’d receive the ballot with the 10 nominees listed and vote according to a “10-point must system” meaning we had 10 points we had to assign to one, two, or three candidates. So we could give all 10 points to one nominee, split the points among two or three, or even vote for no one (I think).

Then the points were all tallied and the two candidates who received the most total points were elected. I believe at some point early on there was talk about a candidate needing enough points to exceed a minimum overall percentage to make it (as in the Baseball Hall of Fame), but if I’m not mistaken they just take the top two point-getters, however many points they happened to get.

Like I say, I don’t know if they used the same system this year, but if they did I have to imagine everyone had to have given Negreanu some of their points, perhaps even most of them. And I’d guess many of the living PHOFers likely cast votes for McClelland, as well as some of the media.

Negreanu’s poker résumé is so extensive it goes without saying he was a shoo-in and much deserving. McClelland recently retired at the end of last year after four decades in poker, a time that included serving as a tournament director since the 1980s in various poker rooms (including at the WSOP).

I was at McClelland’s last tourney, actually, the WPT Five Diamond at the Bellagio last December, where there were some nice moments of recognition for him at the final table. His contributions to poker are harder for those who came into the game more recently to appreciate, but he’s clearly had a significant influence that many have regarded as especially positive.

There will be a ceremony at the November Nine to recognize Negreanu and McClelland. Perhaps next summer the WSOP will consider my Poker Hall of Fame idea to construct some sort of temporary “Hall” in the halls of the Rio.

Ivey Loses, Spin & Go Spins, and Johnny Carson’s Poker Game

Hello, weekend (almost). Looking back on the week in poker, there were three items I wish I’d had more time to explore with blog posts, but did not. Gonna just catalogue them here to invite comment, and perhaps next week if inspired I’ll get back into issues raised by one or two of them.

One was Phil Ivey losing his case against Crockfords Casino in Britain’s High Court. The case started on Monday, then two days later Judge John Mitting decided Ivey was not entitled to the £7.7 million he’d won playing Punto Banco and that Crockfords had withheld from paying out.

In Mitting’s view, the “edge sorting” technique Ivey employed “gave himself an advantage which the game precludes.” “This is in my view cheating,” he concluded, ruling in favor of Crockfords.

Last week I was mentioning Ivey’s appearance on the 60 Minutes Sports program (which was on Showtime this week, which I don’t get) where he defended himself against accusations of being a cheater. I also mentioned there how out in the non-poker world the stories of Ivey’s suit against Crockfords and more particularly the Borgata’s still-pending one against Ivey have suggested that “cheater” label for him in the minds of some.

The Two Plus Two thread about the case indicates most in the poker world were surprised by the ruling and disagreed with it, and that’s the general tenor of response over Twitter, too. Jeff Ma, a member of the MIT blackjack team back in the mid-1990s, has written an op-ed for ESPN’s poker page defending Ivey’s play as not unethical (while expressly forgoing talking about its legality as interpreted by the High Court).

A second item popping up here at week’s end concerns those new Spin & Go games on PokerStars which I was trying out over on the play money side when they were first introduced. The new format has proven especially popular, so much so that some sit-n-go regs are not happy about the way they have affected traffic in other games. In fact, a petition “to demand a removal of these games” has been started by one disgruntled grinder -- an extreme-seeming response, to be sure.

The petition isn’t really that interesting to me, but some of the discussion that it has provoked both about the Spin & Go format and online poker in general has provided some worthwhile observations. One of the most thought-provoking came from Daniel Negreanu in a contribution to a 2+2 thread about the petition in which he points out that the full-timers (including the Supernovas and Supernova Elites) who are complaining about the way the format attracts recreational players and thus draws the “fish” away from their games are in fact themselves the greatest danger to the online poker’s survival.

“Do you know what kills games and destroys the poker ecosystem above and beyond all the things mentioned? Winning players,” explains Negreanu, who goes on to say how if the Spin & Go format does in fact deter pros from playing, that would be a positive as far as the survival of the “ecosystem” is concerned. Negreanu also says that if he were in charge of VIP systems he’d reward the losing players, not the winning ones. It’s an interesting read -- check it out.

Incidentally, with regard to “ecosystems” Darrel Plant authored an interesting article this week for PokerNews called “Circle of Life, Circle of Death: Depletion and Replenishment in Multi-Table Tournaments” that provides a nifty, math-based explanation of why poker needs new players (or at least new money). There’s also a very cool simulator embedded in the article which allows readers to input their own numbers to crunch to see how depletion and replenishment works in MTTs.

Finally, Martin Short was on Conan O’Brien’s late night talk show this week talking about a poker game he once played with Johnny Carson. Also part of the game were Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin, along with some big-time agents and others. Short had actually never met Carson beforehand, and so was understandably intimidated when participating in the game.

As it turns out, there isn’t too much poker talk in the story, but it’s still contains a couple of grins -- you can watch the clip here. It does make me curious, though, to dig a little deeper into Carson’s poker-playing. Indeed, his having had Amarillo Slim Preston as a guest a dozen times in the early 1970s suggests Carson had more than just a passing interest in poker.

Like I say, I might get back one or two of these items next week, and if you have thoughts to share about any of them, fire away. Meanwhile, enjoy the weekend, everyone!