Someone Is Writing About You on the Internet

Visitors of the blog may have noticed I haven’t been writing here about the big tournament series happening in Las Vegas like I did for the 10 previous summers. Or not. In any case, there are plenty of other places to read about what’s happening out there just now, so I trust I’m not creating any sort of void here.

That doesn’t mean I’m not supporting the efforts of the many who are reporting all summer from Las Vegas, including the official live updates team. I have a number of friends playing various roles in that group, and have been chatting with several over the last couple of weeks as they’ve started down the long, winding road that doesn’t end until mid-July.

Haven’t been on the road myself for about a month. But I was reminded again of the travails of the tourney reporter today, including the occasional marathon days-slash-nights-slash-early-mornings they end up having to endure. A couple of times, actually.

The first was early this morning, when I realized Mo Nuwwarah was still reporting from the iNinja World Championship at Planet Hollywood for PokerNews. And in fact he would be another six hours or so, making for what I think might have been around a 20-hour final day in that event.

Then in the afternoon I read a blog post from my friend Darrel Plant (a.k.a. “Mutant Poker”), one of those reporting from the Rio this summer. I had to read it. After all, it had a tremendous title: “Damn you, Martin Harris!”

Sure, that’s some very specific click bait. But it worked!

As I have done here many times before, Darrel’s both reporting on tournaments and chronicling his adventures doing so on his blog. Click on that above link and find out why he’s out there cursing me while he does.

Image: PanicPosters.

WSOP-Related Reads on PokerNews

A few good reads over on PokerNews today, IMHO (as they say). All have something to do with the 2016 World Series of Poker, which starts in just about a week.

For one there’s the first part of PN’s annual predictions for the upcoming World Series of Poker, where I’m chiming in along with several others. We give thoughts about 10 different questions in this part, with more to come.

We guess who will win WSOP POY, who will win various marquee events, opine about how various pros will do, and weigh in as well on this question of whether or not Howard Lederer and/or Chris Ferguson will turn up at the Rio this summer.

I’m more or less okay with my predictions in this part, though I’m less confident about some of the ones I ventured in the second part. In any case, check out “2016 World Series of Poker Predictions, Part 1: Will Ferguson or Lederer Return?” and compare your own ideas about what’s going to happen this summer.

Two good strategy articles additionally went up today, also both relevant to the upcoming WSOP.

One is by Darrel Plant, who took a close look at the structures for the low buy-in events at this year’s WSOP and saw the early levels go much faster this time versus last year. The $565 buy-in Colossus gets most of the focus, and what Darrel has to say should be pretty interesting (and useful) to those playing in that one.

See “Playing the Colossus? Structure Changes to Early Levels Make Fast Start Crucial.”

Also, our friend Robert Woolley, a.k.a. the “Poker Grump,” wrote what I think has to be the first strategy article I’ve seen that specifically focuses on seniors events such as the $1K one the WSOP has for players aged 50 and up.

Check it out: “Thinking of a Seniors Event? Tips to Make it Fun and Profitable.”

Photo: courtesy PokerNews.

Charting and Graphing the 2014 WSOP Main Event Final Table

Darrel Plant who writes the Mutant Poker blog has a couple of nifty items over on the PokerNews Strategy section this week to which I wanted to draw your attention.

One is a post detailing all of the many times 2014 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Martin Jacobson pushed all in on the first day of the final table (when they played down from nine players to three).

If you recall, Jacobson entered the final table eighth in chips out of final nine, and thus had few options early on besides open-shoving or reraising all in. Even after he’d accumulated some chips, he slipped back down under 10 big blinds again at one point and so had to revert back to a push-or-fold strategy.

Darrel goes through all 19 instances (!) of Jacobson going all in on that first day of the final table, sorting out what his equity would have been every time had opponents called (which by and large they did not). Check it out: “Pushing His Way to a WSOP Main Event Title: A Look at Martin Jacobson’s All-Ins.”

Darrel’s other piece this week is a groovy graph showing chip movement throughout the 328 hands of the final table, complete with annotations highlighting knockouts, double-ups, and other important moments along the way.

That’s a small version of the graph up above -- to see the big one in all its colorful glory, check out “Graphing the Changing Chip Stacks at the 2014 WSOP Main Event Final Table.”

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!