Big Numbers at the Bellagio

The World Poker Tour has returned to the Bellagio this week for the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic, a $10K buy-in event that has become a huge punctuation mark of sorts to the poker calendar each year.

I had the chance to help cover this one three years ago, the last time (I believe) it still had Doyle Brunson’s name attached to it. Dan Smith won the event that year, topping a 449-entry field to win about $1.16 million.

In 2014 they drew 586 entries, and Mohsin Charania won it, earning $1.18 milly. Then last year there were 639 entries, with Kevin Eyster taking the title and a big $1.59 million first prize.

This year the Five Diamond is even bigger with a whopping 791 entries, which means the first prize is way up to $1.938,118 and even the runner-up will win seven figures. It’s a re-entry tournament, which helped boost the overall total. Still, that’s a huge turnout, suggesting the Five Diamond has become kind of a must-play for many top pros as they plan out the close of their tournament year.

Am seeing Jennifer Tilly is second in chips out of about 270 players heading into tomorrow’s Day 3. Tilly sent a funny (and insightful) tweet late in the day alluding to her status near the top of the leaderboard.

“Trying to hold on to my big stack is exhausting!” she wrote. “It’s like trying to keep a giant rock from rolling down the hill.”

I know some players thrive when they have a big stack, and in fact some aren’t comfortable otherwise. But many (most of us?) are more used to being in the middle somewhere or on the short side, which can sometimes make the new challenges presented by having a lot of chips especially taxing or even anxiety-producing.

I guess the Five Diamond (and WPT) is itself kind of experiencing having built up a “big stack” (in a way), with such a big field having turned out. As always happens with tours and particular events, drawing huge numbers presents a new challenge for organizers, sometimes causing problems as they discover various reasons why it isn’t so easy to accommodate so many. Thus will certain events peak in terms of turnouts, then fall back to something more sustainable thereafter.

I haven’t followed things that closely, so don’t know how well the Bellagio -- which doesn’t have the biggest room -- managed things these last couple of days. Hope all has gone well, though, and that sucker can continue to grow going forward.

Have to admit Tilly’s giant rock metaphor made me think as well about my status in my Pigskin Pick’em pool, where I continue to maintain a lead (and have for most of of the season). It is exhausting -- that is, the amount of mental energy I’ve found myself putting into this sucker when both picking games and sweating them every Thursday, Sunday, and Monday.

Am hoping Tilly can keep that big rock of chips right where it is as the tournament continues. Meanwhile I’ll be jetting in the other direction tomorrow, heading over to Prague for the European Poker Tour’s last festival, where I imagine some of those playing in Las Vegas this week will be heading once they are done.

Will have to see how well EPT Prague does to close out both 2016 and the EPT (nominally, anyway, as the rebranding begins in January).

Image: “2008-03-26_IMG_0519_Las Vegas - Fountains at the Bellagio” (adapted), Dieter Weinelt. CC BY-ND 2.0.

Cards, Money, and Bluffing

Gonna get a little abstract both in this post and the one tomorrow. I had written something up for another purpose a while back and never used it, and so rather than leave it hidden in an old file on my computer I have decided to share it here.

The first part has to do with defining the game of poker according to its essential elements. It’s something I want to say was first inspired by a conversation with Tommy Angelo from many years back, although it could be I’m associating the author of Elements of Poker with this argument about the elements necessary to the game.

Wherever this started, the question with which we begin couldn’t be more broad in its scope: “What is poker?” And the answer is a list: “Cards, money, and bluffing.”

First, cards. Dating back as far back as the ninth century to imperial China, playing cards were employed in a wide variety of games over the next millennium while spreading throughout Asia and Europe, reflecting a host of cultural symbols and values in their changing designs along the way.

By the early 1800s, most features of the modern deck had been established, including the size and thickness of the cards as well as the four suits, with various games including bouillotte, mus, pochen, and poque having been introduced throughout Europe and carried to North America. Features borrowed from each of these games, including the building of five-card hands as well as discarding and drawing, would be incorporated into poker, a game initially played with 20 cards, then later with the full 52-card deck.

In the United States the game would grow and develop alongside the country itself, expanding to include a multitude of variants linked by the use of similar hand rankings and rules of play. Poker wouldn’t be poker without cards, but then the game has always been about much more than a flush beating a straight.

All of these precursor games offered opportunities for wagering, though it would be the amalgam of poker that would promote money to the status of being a required element of the game, as essential as the cards.

In an essay written about a half-century ago titled “Poker and American Character” (discussed here and here), historian John Lukacs maintains that “Money is the basis of poker: whereas bridge can be played for fun without money, poker becomes utterly senseless without it,” a position which many commentators on the game readily share.

Each hand of poker is like a complicated negotiation, with players forced both to invest in their own hands while weighing prices set by opponents on theirs. Entering into such transactions requires purchasing power -- one must bring money to the table to participate at all -- and just like in negotiations away from the poker table, each player’s personal idea of what money signifies directly affects the amounts set when selling, or the costs agreed to when buying.

“The money staked in poker represents not only our idea of the value of our cards, but our idea of what the other players’ idea of the value of our cards might be,” explains Lukacs, suggesting that money’s importance to the game is even greater than the cards. “Cards count in poker,” the historian acknowledges, “but they count less than in any other game.”

Of course, as anyone who has played even a single hand of poker well knows, such negotiations need not be entered into in good faith, thus making bluffing a third defining feature of the game.

Like the cards and the use of money, bluffing was likewise inherited by poker from most of its immediate precursors. For example, the British game of three-card brag -- one of the few antecedents of poker still played today -- bluffing is literally the name of the game, with players dealt a hand, then “bragging” their cards’ value with bets until just two remain.

“Bluff is the essence of poker,” argues David Spanier in Total Poker, articulating another sentiment with which many poker players would agree. “It is lurking in every single hand of the game,” he continues, alluding to the possibility of a bet or raise misrepresenting a hand’s value: “Has he or hasn’t he got what he says he’s got?” Every instance of a player backing cards with money presents the question to the next player to act, adding layers of complexity to the game that distinguish poker markedly from other card games and forms of gambling.

Poker needs cards, then, and money and bluffing. This argument might be used to exclude some card games that are often referred to as poker, such as liar’s poker (no cards) or HoldemX (no money) or Chinese poker (no bluffing), but to be honest I’m not that interested in drawing hard, angry lines around poker here. Rather I’d like merely to suggest cards and money and bluffing to be core elements of the game, perhaps forcing us to recognize that any variants that lack one of the three is better considered part-poker and part-something-else.

It’s not too complicated of an argument, saying poker is cards and money and bluffing. Of course, when these elements are combined, it is clear poker becomes much more than the sum of such parts, and, importantly, more complicated to describe. Doyle Brunson notes early start of Super/System that “poker is a game of people.” And because poker is a game of people -- and since people are inconsistent, flawed, and self-contradictory -- it perhaps isn’t surprising to find the game itself replete with several seeming incongruities.

These paradoxes of poker I’ll discuss tomorrow when I share the rest of this discussion.

Photo: “Cash Money,” Aaron Jacobs. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Games, Grins, and Meadowlark

Was sad to read this morning about the passing of Meadowlark Lemon, the famous Harlem Globetrotter and North Carolina native. Spent time this morning reading about his interesting life, then remembering the time when as a kid I had a chance to see Lemon and the Globetrotters in the late 1970s.

It had to have been one of Lemon’s last games with the team, as I’m being reminded today he left the Globetrotters in 1978 after 22 years with the barnstorming group of riotous roundballers. They played the Washington Generals, natch. And beat them, natch. Lemon sunk a hook shot from half-court, tossed a water cooler full of confetti on spectators in the first row, and shot a free throw with rubberbands attached to the ball so it sprung back into his hands.

As a kid I recall that the distinction between the Globetrotters and other basketball teams -- i.e., “real” ones such as in the NBA -- wasn’t exactly one hundred percent clear. Eventually I figured out their games were more like highly entertaining exhibitions than actual competitions, but I don’t think I understood that to be the case that night at the Greensboro Coliseum when I saw them.

Of course, the Globetrotters were always about making audiences laugh and have fun, with basketball serving as a kind of unique comedic medium in which to perform their specialized brand of theater. That Lemon was inducted into both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the International Clown Hall of Fame is fitting, given how his contributions were equally significant in both realms.

I often write about poker being about more than simply winning money or even competing, but like other games (and sports) also about enjoying others’ company and also perhaps participating in a kind of “show” in which the players are the performers. Poker also obviously brings together people of disparate backgrounds, providing a context to interact and even create communities among themselves. Basketball (and other sports) function similarly for many as well.

Doyle Brunson was also a basketball player, and in The Godfather of Poker he writes a bit about other parallels between the sport and the card game. There’s also a chapter in there near the middle where Brunson describes a kind of crisis of faith he endured following the death of his daughter, Doyla. In the early 1980s he got reacquainted with Christianity and even for about a year-and-a-half helped organize some “Bible studies” among players in Las Vegas. To make things more interesting, he’d bring in celebrity speakers and Meadowlark Lemon -- who’d become an ordained minister in 1986 -- was one of them.

One other thought comes to mind when searching for connections between the Harlem Globetrotters and poker. As the Globetrotters became more and more popular during the 1970s -- a true pop culture phenomenon -- they helped make basketball more popular, too. Many point to that moment at the end of the 1970s and start of the 1980s when the NBA really took off (with Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and a little later Michael Jordan), saying how the Globetrotters had kind of set the stage for that explosion in popularity some respects by having brought b-ball to larger audiences in the preceding years.

The Globetrotters played what might be called an “exaggerated” version of the game, a somewhat distorted image perhaps which -- as I mentioned before -- as a kid I didn’t necessarily realize was all that different from “real” basketball. Poker kind of underwent something like that, too, with the “boom” of televised poker in the 2000s and a presentation that introduced poker to many in a kind of “exaggerated” fashion that wasn’t exactly what most poker really was (or is).

I guess there’s something about that image of the Globetrotters in a circle, passing the ball around as “Sweet Georgia Brown” whistles along as the soundtrack, that resembles a poker table, too.

Except it’s chips we’re passing back and forth, not a ball. And perhaps doing a few tricks with as well.

Remembering Wasicka’s Call-or-Fold Dilemma

Poker-wise, today -- August 10 -- has several significances. It’s Doyle Brunson’s birthday today. Kara Scott, Ed Miller, and John Hennigan are also celebrating birthdays today, I believe.

Meanwhile, it was on this date in 2006 that the final table of the World Series of Main Event played out, the one in which Jamie Gold won what is still the largest first prize ever in a WSOP Main Event of $12 million.

Was thinking back a little today to that final table -- the first WSOP ME to play out after I’d started Hard-Boiled Poker about three months before.

I have an article over on PokerNews today focusing in particular on the wild three-way hand that resulted in Michael Binger finishing third and Paul Wasicka making one of the most talked-about folds in WSOP history (before eventually finishing second). Those who remember the hand might find it interesting to relive it briefly. And if you don’t recall the hand, check out the incredibly tough spot in which Wasicka found himself.

The article appears under the heading “Hand Histories,” and I’m kind of thinking of occasionally writing about other famous poker hands in history, in particular ones that highlight an especially interesting strategic decision. Will try to avoid the same old stuff with these, but rather invite readers to hone in on a moment -- like Wasicka’s decision -- and share their thinking about it.

What other hands might work well for “Hand Histories”? Let me know -- I’m all ears.

Big Big Bets Between Beal and Brunson in Bobby’s Room

Had a non-poker playing (or following) friend ask me yesterday “What’s going on in poker these days?”

He asks me the same question every six weeks or so, and more often than not I’m answering by telling him wherever it is I might have recently gone for a tournament. He then almost always follows up with a question about who won the most or what was the biggest game-slash-tourney I’ve seen or heard about.

More than once I’ve concluded my response to the latter question with some version of the statement that “it’s the same guys trading it back and forth” -- usually referring to those “super high roller” events which do often feature the same small population of players.

However yesterday I had a different response, referring instead to that Andy Beal-Todd Brunson heads-up session of fixed limit hold’em in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio that happened last weekend, the one in which each player brought $5 million to the game and Brunson ultimately won it all.

Tweets by poker pro Kyle Loman about the match (who snapped the photo above of Beal and Brunson, with Tex Dolly also there to the right) started Friday night and lasted into Saturday morning, covering about five-and-a-half hours altogether. Loman noted how they were using pink $25,000 chips and the limits were $50K/$100K, making a loss of $5 million equal just 50 big bets. Or should I say BIG bets

Loman did a great job with his updates, providing about 25 tweets altogether noting the changing stack sizes as Brunson gradually whittled away at Beal’s stack before taking the last of his chips.

The game, of course, represents a belated reprise of the famous games between the banker and investor and the team of pros dubbed the “Corporation” that first took place over a decade back. The 2001-2004 games were chronicled in Michael Craig’s The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King (2005), then there was another round in 2006, the last before Beal’s surprise return to the tables a few days ago.

My friend was impressed to hear that amount, although truth be told it wasn’t all that different to him (or me) than to hear of a player winning $200K in a tourney. Meanwhile, to look at a $5 million loss from Beal’s point of view -- he’s worth something like $11 billion, apparently, which would make a $5 million loss the equivalent something like $25 for the average wage-earner in the U.S. today.

I don’t know the details, but surely Brunson wasn’t just playing with his own money. In any event, the story made it impossible with my friend to end with the usual sign-off about the same guys trading money back and forth.

A 2006 WSOP Time Capsule

Didn’t watch the “One Drop” last night (DVR’d it). Instead what time I did spend looking at poker actually involved viewing some of the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event -- not the ESPN episodes, but the live pay-per-view that was shown that August night (the eighth anniversary of which comes this weekend) when Jamie Gold won the biggest first prize in WSOP Main Event history.

The program brings back some personal memories. That final table occurred just a few months after I started this blog, and about six weeks prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Thus it exists within a rosy context, a time when my absorption in all things poker was at an all-time high. As was the case for a lot of people.

The playing styles at the final table are of course conspicuously different from what we see today, with everyone opening for at least three times the big blind before the flop (sometimes more), lots of overbetting of pots after the flop, and many all-ins that today would automatically be read as “ICM suicide.”

The commentary by Phil Gordon doesn’t have the benefit of eight years’ worth of hindsight, and so while he does point out what seem like misplays or less-than-recommended bet-sizing here and there, most of his observations -- like the plays themselves -- are essentially time-bound, perfectly fine then while highlighting in retrospect changes in tournament strategy that have happened since.

Other comments by the many guest hosts rotating through during the broadcast are similarly time-bound, and since it was such an interesting time those comments are all the more intriguing.

At one point Doyle Brunson stops by. It happens to be his 73rd birthday. He’s just finished playing a 14-hour day the night before, finishing 21st in one of those post-Main Event bracelet tournaments they ran that year.

“What are your impressions... eighty-seven hundred players this year?” begins Gordon, and Brunson answers that he was one who expected there would be an increase in players from 2005. There were 8,773 players in the WSOP Main Event that year -- still a record. That was more than 3,000 more than had played in 2005, and more than 10 times as many as had played in 2003.

“I think that it’s just going to get bigger and bigger,” Brunson continues. “I don’t see any stopping it. In fact if there were some way to bet, I would like to bet there would be something like 40-50 thousand players in 10 years.”

“Oh boy,” says Gordon, who begins to disagree. “I think so,” affirms Brunson. “The only thing that would stop it, you know, if the internet....”

At that point Brunson gets interrupted by another “Oh boy” from Gordon as a hand has developed that will result in Sweden’s Erik Friberg getting knocked out in eighth place by Gold.

“Hold onto that thought,” says Nejad as the hand starts to play out. But the bustout distracts them and they never do get back to the topic.

Not unlike the way the idea itself would be interrupted just a few weeks later. That vision of 50,000 WSOP Main Event players -- perhaps spread all over Las Vegas and/or the internet -- would be left behind, time-bound.

Travel Report: Season XII WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, Day 4 -- Fantasyland & BrokeLivingJRB

Not a ton of time for scribbling today, so I’ll move through this update quickly. One reason why my time is short is because after play was done yesterday I joined B.J. and our friend Shancy for a couple of hours’ worth of open-face Chinese, during which many grins were had while I also made it to Fantasyland a couple of times.

Speaking of fantasies, the 59 who returned for yesterday’s Day 4 still entertaining dreams of winning this year’s World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic and realizing a seven-figure score battled down to just 21, with Jean-Robert Bellande building a big stack to carry the lead into today’s penultimate day of play.

I’m remembering Bellande being especially short in the middle of Day 2 of the event, right around the time the re-entry period ended. He was definitely in shove-or-fold mode there for a while, but when they came back for the last level of that night he went on a rush, knocking out both Phil Hellmuth and Jen Tilly sitting next to him, to finish the day in good shape chip-wise. Then for the last two days he’s just kept on adding to his stack.

I agree with those who are entertained by Bellande and find him “good for poker” (as they say). I also dig his self-deprecating persona, especially when he retweets others’ digs at him (both seriously delivered and otherwise).

Jeremy Ausmus had an especially funny tweet yesterday (which @BrokeLivingJRB of course retweeted), in which he suggested there might be something wrong with the reporting regarding Bellande’s first-position status.

Lots of big names left among the final 21 in addition to Bellande, with Joe Serock, Dan O’Brien, Christian Harder, Will Failla, Dan Smith, Barry Hutter, and Steven Silverman among them. It’s been that kind of tourney. In fact, yesterday I went through and saw I knew by sight 40 of the 59 remaining at the start of the day, a very high percentage relatively speaking.

Also happening in the Bellagio poker room yesterday was the start of a non-WPT $100,000 event which quietly began playing out on a couple of tables in the center of the room. Ben Lamb, Joseph Cheong, Erik Seidel, Jason Koon, Ben Tollerene, Anthony Gregg, and Justin Bonomo were among the dozen or so entrants in that one.

At one point I overheard staff referring to one of the high rollers (one not listed above) and saying how he’d seen him play in a $100 tourney just a day or so ago. Reminded me a little of the story OhCaptain told me about a guy who’d busted from our $10K event showing up to play that night in an $80 tourney in which he took part. Those anecdotes illustrate how the game paradoxically is both all about money and has nothing to do with money (for some).

We’re thinking it might well be a long one today. Again, head over to the WPT site to see if JRB can maintain his frontrunner status today and perhaps make tomorrow’s six-handed final table.

Travel Report: Season XII WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, Day 3 -- Tight Fit

Down to 59 now in the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, just 14 eliminations away from the money. There are three more days to go the six-day event, so today will probably see the field carved down to the low 20s or so, then on Tuesday they’ll play down to six and finish up on Wednesday.

I was talking yesterday about how the re-entry format and lengthy period for buying back in made the first day and much of the second kind of anticlimactic, likening it to a “regular season” and calling the period after re-entries end the “playoffs.”

I might have called that re-entry period the “preseason,” actually, with this interim between the re-entry period ending and the money bubble bursting being the regular season and play following the cashes starting being the playoffs. However we want to draw our analogies, things are getting increasingly more interesting with much more to report as the significance of individual hands grows incrementally as they go.

Nearly all 40 or so tables in the Bellagio poker room have been constantly filled for the past three days, initially with tourney players, then as the field finally got smaller (especially yesterday) with cash games filling in once the tourney no longer needed tables. Bobby’s Room -- the walled in inner room inside the poker room -- has had two or three tables going constantly, too, with Doyle Brunson (who didn’t play the tournament bearing his name), Eli Elezra, David Oppenheim, Kenny Tran, Huck Seed, and several other familiar folks among those who have been sitting at the tables in there.

All of which means the poker room has been constantly packed with people, including players, media and the TV crew, poker room staff and Bellagio servers, and others filling every inch. Interestingly, though, I’m not really sensing anyone being that bothered by the crowded quarters, and I, too, have realized ideas of “personal space” kind of automatically adjust in such situations.

It’s like we’re all at a sold out, standing room only show or something, and while there isn’t much room to move around, all seem pretty glad to be there. The fact that everyone has been especially helpful and all seem to be working together well to keep things running smoothly has gone a long way in this regard, making it a fun tourney thus far to cover. Kind of an emblem of multi-table tournament poker, I guess, a huge field all doing what they can to try to fit into just a few seats at the end.

Non-tourney news from yesterday included me winning one NFL bet (the Bengals) and correctly resisting making a second one (on the Panthers). Also I’d had ideas during the day of perhaps joining B.J. Nemeth and Jess Welman to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey (which Jess had never seen) once the day was done, but decided to go for the extra couple of hours of sleep instead. (Here is an old post in which I wrote a bit about 2001: “My Mind Is Going... I Can Feel It....”)

Sounds like from the tweets B.J.’s attempts at making Jess appreciate the film’s achievement didn’t quite land, given Jess’ tweet afterwards (“Worst. Movie. Ever.”). I imagined a scene of conflict between the two resulting in the remote control being thrown up in the air, rotating end over end in slow motion like a bone or a space station. I also thought of B.J. responding to Jess’ dislike of the film in HAL’s voice…

“Look Jess, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”

I think Jess will soon be explaining her response to 2001 on her blog, for which we can stay tuned. Meanwhile, as always, check back over at the WPT site for updates today from Day 4 of the WPT Five Diamond.

Travel Report: Season XII WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, Day 2 -- The Playoffs Begin

Another busy one at the Bellagio yesterday for Day 2 of the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic. They played five more 90-minute levels, with the field ultimately getting whittled down to 140 players by night’s end with Jeff Madsen leading everyone at the moment.

I’ve been mentioning how this $10,300 buy-in event features a “re-entry” format. That re-entry period lasted all of the way to the end of Level 8 yesterday, with no limits on the number of times players could enter.

Once we got into Level 9, B.J. Nemeth did some number crunching. Ultimately there were 449 total entries in the event, with 309 unique players. A little over two-thirds who participated bought in just once (216), while the rest entered anywhere from two times all of the way up to a couple buying in seven times.

At one point during the day I told B.J. and Ryan Luchessi (my blogging partners here) that until the re-entry period ended, the tourney felt a little like the regular season, with players jockeying for position but no one really being out of it quite yet, even if they bust. But once we got into Level 9 and players could no longer buy back in, it was as though the “playoffs” had begun.

Having re-entries and lots of players taking the option definitely affects the flow of a tournament from a reporting perspective, with lots of bustouts-that-are-not-really-bustouts creating a kind of ongoing sense of anticlimax. Thus it was almost relieving once players really were eliminated for good during the last two levels of the night yesterday, if only to provide a sense that we were finally moving forward with the tournament.

Of course, there are many other more relevant issues regarding re-entry tournaments and how they affect players that are being debated at present. WPT Executive Tour Director Matt Savage shared some thoughts about the re-entry tourneys not too long ago in an op-ed for PokerNews that begins with the question of whether or not it might be time to rethink having them.

Meanwhile, all this talk about entries makes me think of “entrees,” a word that for some reason I always want to type when I mean the former. And speaking of entrees, I am definitely eating well here.

Yesterday began with a big (and enjoyable) breakfast at the Cafe Bellagio with Jen Newell, Drizzdtj, and OhCaptain. Then it was back to the buffet once again following the end of play along with many of the remaining players. I think many tend to like these days of reasonable length (lasting around eight-and-a-half hours with breaks) with dinner coming at the end rather than in the middle.

Ended up making a quick trek via the tram over to Monte Carlo after dinner to visit a short while with Absinthetics and OhCaptain who were playing in a tourney there. Handy getting from here to there on the free tram. I took that pic up above on the way over during the brief period of being exposed to the windy, cold conditions here in Vegas at present.

Should be another interesting day, tourney-wise, as the “playoffs” are now in full swing with every elimination bringing us closer to a champion. Meanwhile I am gonna enjoy a little morning football right now before play begins. Check over at the WPT site for updates to see how things progress.

Travel Report: Season XII WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, Day 1 -- Crab Legs and Christmas Trees

Kind of a whirlwind day yesterday for the kickoff of the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic. They played through five 90-minute levels with short breaks between each and no stopping for dinner, which made the day go by quickly.

We got our dinner, though, hitting the Bellagio buffet afterwards where my blogging partner B.J. Nemeth loaded up on crab legs as he said he would be doing all day.

“Why should I get anything else?” asked Nemeth.

We were packed fairly tightly there in the Bellagio poker room, our workstation positioned right next to Bobby’s Room with nearly all of the 36 or so tables being filled at some point with tourney players. We were almost as crowded as those crab legs on B.J.’s plate!

With players busting and re-entering throughout the day there ended up being more than 320 entries all told, although I don’t know how many individual players were actually participating. Chances are we’ll see the total entries go up significantly today through the first three levels when re-entering remains an option. There will be some new faces, too, showing up to start their tourneys today. I know, for instance, that is Phil Hellmuth’s plan.

Found myself throughout the day having flashbacks to earlier visits to the Bellagio and its poker room, including some that came early on when I was just getting started with the blog. Among those visits was one instance when I interviewed Barry Greenstein, and we actually conducted the interview in Bobby’s Room while Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Eli Elezra, and others played at the neighboring table.

Was a little starstruck then, I’ll admit, although having been around it all for so long now that feeling has gone away. I did recall it yesterday, though, especially when occasionally peering into Bobby’s Room where Doyle was there again all day along with a few more familiar faces.

Also was reminded of those days thanks to the visit of OhCaptain who got himself a media badge and shot some pictures. Was nice finally to meet him after all of these years blogging alongside one another, and I know he got a kick out of doing the photographer thing.

I’m not even sure Brunson plans to play in the tourney at all, as the games in Bobby’s Room have to be more attractive to him. He did take a break at one point yesterday, though, to go help light the Bellagio’s Christmas tree.

Meanwhile the field was full of familiar folks yesterday, with several well known (and accomplished) players seated around just about every table. The tourney should produce a talented final table, I imagine, and as we move into the next couple of days the play will become more interesting, too, especially after the re-entry period ends.

Gonna break it off here for now as I’m running to meet Jen Newell and Drizztdj, the latter another one of those whom I’ve known for years but never actually met face-to-face. Am grateful for the chance to connect with these folks thanks to the World Poker Blogger Tour having their big get together this weekend (with the WPBT tourney happening today).

Meanwhile you can check over at the WPT site later today to see how Day 2 plays out and who emerges as contenders in this week-long $10K event.

2013 WSOP, Day 45: The Past, The Future, and Doyle

Was kind of a manic day yesterday at the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event with the cash bubble arriving quickly after less than an hour of play, the drama of hand-for-hand play lasting another half-hour or so before the final two eliminations before the money arrived (Yuri Dzivielevski in 650th and Farzad Bonyadi in 649th), then about 400 more players busting out over the course of the day.

With the field getting smaller, tables were broken down as usual to create more space in the Amazon Room, although the ones that remained were still positioned very close to each other which meant the space in between them became increasingly crowded with all the tournament staff, media, cocktail servers, and massage therapists.

Today that congestion should clear up some, I imagine, as tables will likely be moved farther apart to start the day. Just 239 players are left, meaning there should be 27 tables’ worth of players, including the main feature table (in the “mothership”), the secondary feature table, and the four tertiary feature tables separated out from the others in a row down the middle of the big ballroom.

At one point yesterday I was standing smack in the middle of the maddening crowd among the outer tables when I began to hear people clapping from the main stage, and I knew even before I looked up why they were. I peered into the distance to see the leaned over figure of Doyle Brunson rising from his chair, his wide-brimmed cowboy hat gleaming under the lights, and knew he’d been eliminated. (The photo above is by Joe Giron for PokerNews/WSOP.)

Brunson cashed in the Main Event yesterday for the eighth time, finishing in 409th. His cashes have been spread out enough for him to have made the money in the ME at least once each of the last five decades (1976, 1977, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1997, 2004, 2013).

At the previous break some of us had been discussing a few of the storylines emerging in this year’s Main Event, and we all agreed the further Brunson went, the more exciting it would be. Indeed, I think we all were carrying in the back of our minds the same thrilling thought all day right up to the point of his elimination -- Doyle is still in!

The applause began to spread from the main stage throughout the Amazon Room as Brunson moved slowly from the table and off the stage, and play stopped for a moment as players stood from their seats around me to join in the spontaneous standing ovation.

It was a genuinely moving moment, weirdly providing a brief, calming respite amid an otherwise chaotic day. I realize the moment concerned a particular poker player having achieved something in a poker tournament, but it nonetheless had the effect of recalling to us all how there are more important things in this life than winning or losing money at cards.

While I quickly became occupied with gathering hands being played at the tables around me -- and dodging the occasional horde of ESPN crew members dashing back and forth to catch hands in progress -- I thought a little about what Brunson represents to the poker community, part of which includes that connection back to the early days of the WSOP I was mentioning yesterday.

The connection to the past goes back even further than the WSOP’s origins, as far as Brunson is concerned. His days of “fading the white line” during the 1950s and 1960s to play underground games in the South mark one era of poker’s history preceding our own, while he and the characters belonging to that time harken back even further to the Old West and the many deep-rooted connections between poker and American history.

But as much as Brunson reminds us of the past, I think he makes most of us think about the future as well, with his longevity and perseverance -- and continued success doing what he does (which happens to be playing poker) -- providing tangible hope to many. At the start of the WSOP, Brad Willis wrote a nice piece for the PokerStars blog that touched in part on how Brunson affects us in this fashion.

As my colleagues and I had been discussing during that break yesterday, there are a lot of intriguing stories emerging this year. But I have a suspicion when I leave Las Vegas next Tuesday, Brunson’s Main Event run and the various emotions and thoughts it inspired in others will be the one I return to the most going forward.

2013 WSOP, Day 44: Working in the Amazon

For most of my reporting from this year’s World Series of Poker I have been stationed in the Amazon Room. It’s become a very familiar work environment for me, to which I’ve returned every summer for six years now.

A couple of nights ago I was stationed at a table in the corner of the Amazon. It was around 1 a.m., I think. Play had concluded and I was finishing tying some loose ends before packing up. A security guard with the familiar bright yellow shirt and black patches ambled over to where I was sitting.

“Who do you work for?” he asked, and I told him. He chuckled and said “You’re f*ckin’ here more than I am!”

The Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino has several big ballrooms it has employed over the years in which to stage the WSOP. This year once again the Brasilia and Pavilion rooms were put into service throughout the Series. But the Amazon is where the WSOP’s most memorable moments have tended to occur since the move from Binion’s to the Rio completed in 2006. I’m speaking of the summer, that is, as the delayed Main Event final table (in place since ’08) shifts the action down to the Penn & Teller Theater.

I was reading Vin Narayanan offering a list of 10 observations about the WSOP for the Casino City Times a few days ago. One of his points was that “the Amazon Room in the Rio hasn’t just replaced Binion’s,” but has “made it a distant memory.” Narayanan is mostly right, I think. The WSOP has been completely transformed from what it had been at Binion’s, having been at the Rio long enough now to develop its own, related but unique tradition.

Yesterday Day 3 of the Main Event played out, with 1,753 players starting the day. They’d gotten down to 954 by dinner. During that break, Doyle Brunson drove his scooter over to a quiet space in the Amazon and snoozed for a short while. After waking up he tweeted how he’d been napping underneath the big banner of Puggy Pearson, hung in recognition of his Main Event win long ago. “Can’t believe it’s been 40 years since he won WSOP,” he wrote.

Brunson, of course, is the one who ties the new to the old, as far as the WSOP goes, and who perhaps alone is keeping Binion’s and what the Series once was from becoming entirely “a distant memory.” The almost-80-year-old returns to a top 40 stack today, and I don’t think there’s anyone -- players included -- who is not rooting for him to continue his run.

It was near the end of the night that the last tables were broken in the Brasilia and WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel made the announcement that all of the remaining players -- about 680 at that moment -- were seated in the Amazon. “The next World Series of Poker Main Event Champion is in this room!” said Effel, and there was a kind of distracted cheer in response.

I say distracted because the tournament had gotten to the point where many were wondering if perhaps the cash bubble might burst before the night concluded, as the final 648 will be making the money. Effel then removed doubt regarding that question by assuring all that the tournament would not be reaching that stage before play concluded, and indeed by the time the last level ended there were still 666 players left.

It was probably a good thing the night ended when it did, as the atmosphere had built to an almost unsettling mix of anxiety and excitement about the bubble’s approach, with tons of media filling empty spaces around and in between tables. The Poker PROduction guys are now working full blast to capture footage for the later ESPN broadcasts (which will begin with Day 3 of the Main Event again). So not only are the additional cameras and crew adding more bodies to fill the available space in the Amazon, they’re also adding to the tension a bit as everyone is aware that not only is a tournament playing out but a reality show (of sorts) is being constructed as well.

I suppose at the moment Effel made his announcement, the Amazon -- or, my office -- was as packed as it has been all summer and as it will be going forward. You could barely see the carpet, its criss-crossing lines all covered by people criss-crossing back and forth themselves. As the field whittles down from 666 to two hundred-something today, tables will be removed and there will be more space in which to move around.

It was about an hour before the announcement came that I found myself doing another circuit through the tables in the Orange section, experiencing an almost dizzying moment of déjà vu as I thought about walking the exact same route, time after time after time, as people played poker around me.

Some of those people playing are the same, some are different. Some of those who are walking the route with me are the same, too, while some are new. But there was something intensely uncanny about walking through my own footsteps like that again and being so aware of doing so -- the familiar becoming strange.

Such a feeling happens in any work environment. I’ve worked other jobs long enough where I’ve suddenly become conscious of doing something I’ve done before hundreds of times, and thus been made to think of the action differently, if only for a moment -- as though viewing it from without, if that makes sense.

It’s a weird place to work, the Amazon Room in the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada in mid-July, alongside hundreds of others filling the space doing what they’re doing. Kind of different, I suppose, compared to most jobs. But kind of the same, too.

2013 WSOP, Day 34: Motoring Through

Have to admit I’m running just a sliver above empty at the moment in terms of mental fuel, having just completed another sequence of several days of work in a row and finally landed on what I think might be my last day off this summer today. So I’m afraid I’ll again have to keep today’s update short as I’m not sure the engine in my head can motor all of the way through something longer and of greater depth.

Yesterday I was back on Event No. 55, the $50,000 Poker Players’ Championship, which ultimately ended up drawing a bigger than expected field of 132. I sincerely thought the turnout might be down from last year’s 108 given the fact that both the $111,111 buy-in One Drop High Rollers event and the $25K NLHE 6-max. had just completed in the days leading up to the PPC. But such was not the case.

They played down to 78 players last night in this deep-structured tourney. I was working with Donnie and Chad yesterday, and at one point Donnie noted how the tournament is especially fun to cover given the fact that there isn’t this rush toward the final table that marks even the large-field, lower buy-in events. There’s a lot of play early, but there’s a lot on the line, too, as only the top 16 make the cash.

It’s almost as if the “bubble” in the event begins relatively soon after the tournament starts. There are several levels early on where one could reasonably say the tourney plays like a deep-stacked cash game. They start with 150,000 chips and tiny blinds and limits, so the threat of elimination on Day 1 isn’t really that great and there were very few instances of players being all in and at risk. Indeed, only a handful of players failed to survive Day 1.

But once we got about halfway through Day 2, there were numerous players who had gotten short enough that even the limit games presented situations where they could find themselves all in by the end of a hand. That said, since the game isn’t strictly no-limit even those with the super short stacks had legitimate opportunities to work their way back into the mix and avoid elimination -- i.e., they could find spots in which their risk was less and not necessarily have to rely on winning a few flips in a row to double up multiple times and get back to a workable stack.

So like I say, it’s a little like they’re on the bubble from about 100 players all of the way down to 16, if that makes sense. If it doesn’t, then let me refer back to the fact that I’m running on fumes at the moment, intellect-wise.

John Juanda provides the most ready example of what I’m referring to from yesterday, having slipped all of the way down to less than 4,000 (not even a single big bet) at one point after dinner, yet somehow worked himself back up over 120,000 with less than an hour to go, then doubled that before night’s end to be sitting with an average stack.

The highlight of Day 2, though, was Doyle Brunson’s survival in a late-night situation that saw him all in a NLHE hand with pocket jacks on a 10-3-9 board versus Cole South’s set of treys, then the turn and river bringing two more tens to enable Tex Dolly to survive. Kind of reminded me a little of Brunson’s “miracle” stories with regard to his health and survival from over the years such as are included in his autobiography. He returns today to a stack of 265,000, which is just a little above the average as well.

Like I say, I’m off today and in fact won’t be rejoining the $50K coverage when I return, as I’ll be moving over to a couple more non-hold’em tourneys (2-7 Triple Draw and more PLO) before the Main Event event arrives. But I will be checking in over at PokerNews to see how things continue to play out in the PPC, including keeping an eye on how Brunson fares.

Okay, need to sign off and get a little rest so as to refuel for this final push. In fact, this talk of running low on fuel reminds me that the rental car is also in need of a fill-up. That’ll have to be a first order of business today, as the consequences of being stranded on the side of the road with an empty tank amid these 115-plus degree days could be especially dire.

2013 WSOP, Day 33: Doyle Takes a Seat

Was on the first day of Event No. 55, the $50,000 Poker Players’ Championship, yesterday, and will be back on it for today’s Day 2 before getting a day off tomorrow. I’ve helped here and there with covering the $50K in the past, always an interesting one thanks to the fact that nearly everyone who enters is a “name” player instantly recognizable even to casual followers of poker.

The big board was showing 123 had entered by the time play concluded at nearly 3 a.m., with late registration continuing until they kick off today. I’d say of that field there were perhaps only a half-dozen or so players in the entire tourney whom none of us recognized.

All of the usual suspects were there, of course. I don’t even have to name them, as most anyone reading this blog knows who they are. But when the day was done, I found myself thinking primarily about one in particular, Doyle Brunson (pic via PokerNews).

Event No. 55 marked Brunson’s first event this summer. He’s scaled back his participation at the WSOP considerably over the last couple of years, only playing a half-dozen prelims a couple of years ago (plus the Main), then last year playing in just three events prior to the ME, including the $50K PPC.

Brunson turns 80 in a little over a month, which means he probably has at least a couple of decades on the next oldest player in the field. I’m guessing Konstantin Puchkov (born in 1952) might be the nearest in age to Brunson among those playing the event. Meanwhile, Brunson is more than a half-century older than a lot of the field, yet to reach their 30s.

Early in the day Josh posted about Brunson having tweeted about his numerous side bets for the event. He reported having made 28 different bets on himself in this one, including bets on him cashing, final tabling, and winning. If he were to win the event, he says, he’d earn an extra $800K on top of whatever the first prize turns out to be (probably $1.7 million or so). If he doesn’t, it’ll cost him between $80K and $140K, he says.

Brunson had a good first day, chipping up all night and building a starting stack of 150,000 up to 232,000 by bagging time, good enough to sneak inside the top 15. It’s a long event -- five days -- and still a long way until it gets down to 16 or so and the money. But Tex Dolly is off to a good start.

I reported just one small hand of stud he played with Jennifer Harman, sitting to his left, thinking as I did about the “Big Game” in Bobby’s Room and how those two had played many stud hands over the years.

While I tend not to pull for anyone in events I cover, it’s difficult not to want to see Brunson continue to accumulate and advance. I got the sense yesterday a lot of his opponents feel similarly, even if they’re trying their hardest to get his chips in order to help their own causes.

Back at it in a little while. No rest for the weary. Then again, seeing Brunson continue on down a road much, much longer than the ones most of us have journeyed tends to inspire one more than a little to press forward.

As always, head over to PokerNews to follow along.

2012 WSOP, Day 44: And Doyle Makes 6,598

Numbers geeks (a group to which I occasionally admit belonging) watched the final tally closely yesterday, tracking the number playing Day 1c of the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event, the last of the three Day 1 flights.

Once late registration finally closed a total of 3,418 came to play on Monday, making the overall turnout for the 2012 WSOP ME add up to 6,598. That’s a bit shy of last year’s 6,865, which was also down a touch from the 7,319 that played in 2010. Still a huge number, and really we might as well say the ME has essentially been holding steady attendance-wise throughout the post-UIGEA era (2007-onward).

I was writing yesterday about the relative lack of spectacle at the Main Event compared to years past. In part I was thinking about the goofy, sideshow stuff such as players coming dressed as Snow White and the like. I suppose I was also remembering the first time I came to the WSOP, when the UNLV marching band wound through the Amazon room playing “Viva Las Vegas” with Wayne Newton singing and announcing “Shuffle up and deal.”

Yesterday’s Day 1c did see some of that. There was a player with yellow crime scene tape wrapped around his head like a bandana. Another came dressed as a large banana. And Spider-Man played, that is, a dude dressed in a Spider-Man get-up, not Tobey Maguire (who has played and cashed in the Main Event in the past).

Speaking of actors, Jason Alexander played yesterday, sporting a “porn stache” and sideburns thanks to his being in the middle of shooting a film set in the ’70s. The director Mars Callahan was there, as was cricket player Shane Warne and basketballer Earl Barron.

Jonathan Duhamel was awarded a new bracelet for his 2010 WSOP Main Event win, the original having been damaged after that scary home invasion and robbery that included the bracelet being stolen and recovered. And Antonio Esfandiari was given a big comedy check for $18,346,673 for his win in the $1,000,000 buy-in “Big One for One Drop.”

Our buddy Kevin Mathers also played yesterday, lasting most of the day until running pocket queens into Jamie Kerstetter’s pocket aces to go out during the last level. Kevmath had a ton of support from those recognizing his significant contributions to the poker community, and I know I got a kick out of his getting to play the ME.

Of all the stories yesterday, though, Doyle Brunson changing his mind and deciding to play this year’s Main Event was the one that stood out for me yesterday (photo: Joe Giron/WSOP.com). As I mentioned yesterday, he’d earlier tweeted his intention not to play this time around, but mid-afternoon sent a note saying he was having “second thoughts” since the ME was “such a great event.”

Finally he did join the thousands of Day 1c entrants and took a seat, managing to build the starting stack of 30,000 up to 81,400 by day’s end. That means he’ll be there for the second Day 2 flight tomorrow, when I’ll be back on the reporting beat.

Brunson is the only one of the 6,598 playing in the 2012 WSOP Main Event who was around for the very first WSOP back in 1970. He’s played in every ME since except during the period from 1999-2001. (He sat out during those years amid the family feud that saw Becky Binion-Behnen take over control of the Horseshoe and institute a number of changes to the WSOP.)

While there are dozens in poker who might justly be regarded as “ambassadors” for the game, Brunson transcends them all.

Sure, his longevity is remarkable, and being able to play the game at such a high level for more than half a century certainly distinguishes him from pretty much all of his contemporaries. But Brunson has always been much more than just a great player. While he’d shrug off such grandiose claims, he really is a “living legend,” and over the decades has come to represent numerous positive aspects of the game, including the way it rewards skill and demands integrity.

Of course, besides being a symbol or icon, he’s a real person, too, with plenty of flaws just like the rest of us. Just read his memoir, The Godfather of Poker, where he confesses to many.

He’d said he wasn’t going to play the Main Event this year because he was “really tired after 6 weeks of tough cash games, playing 10-12 hours every day.” That explanation made me think of how I, too, began this year’s Main Event feeling tired after many long days that were taxing both physically and mentally. But Brunson is nearly twice my age, and this year I’ve only been here at the WSOP half as long.

All of which is to say, I lamented Brunson’s skipping the ME, but certainly understood the decision if he were not to play. But I’m glad he changed his mind and decided to play. And I look forward to seeing him sit down again on Wednesday and continue to try to work up that stack to which he’s coming back.

I’m off again today, but will be on every day from Wednesday through the end when they play down to the final table next Monday.

Am thinking I might get back over to the MGM today for that weekly H.O.R.S.E. tourney. I hear Norman Chad might be playing as well, which provides further incentive to play. Wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to get whamboozled in a stud/8 hand versus the graduate of University of Maryland, home of the Ragin’ Cajuns.

2012 WSOP, Day 43: Flying Along

There to the left is a picture I took from the media box near the end of the dinner break on Day 1b. PokerNews photographer Neil Stoddart had an idea to snap some photos of the dealers waiting out the break at the tables, and at one point he got them to stand and hold their arms out.

“Like you are airplanes,” he told them.

The dealers laughed and played along, grateful for something to help them pass the time waiting out the break while confined to their tables. I wrote a short post in the live blog once play resumed, where you can see Neil’s better photo.

Meanwhile, the 2012 WSOP keeps flying along. There were 2,114 players who bought $10,000 tickets for the Day 1b flight yesterday, making that the starting point for their Main Event tourney journeys. For 727 of them, Day 1b also marked the end, too.

As usually happens with these Day 1 flights, a little over a third of the field fails to make it through the first day of play. On Saturday (Day 1a), there were 1,066 entered and 657 survived (61.6%). Then yesterday 1,387 made it through out of 2,114 (65.6%).

So far 3,180 have played, and for today’s third and final Day 1 flight the WSOP knows for sure there will be at least that many playing, and likely a good bit more. In other words, the total number is going to rival the 6,865 who played last year.

They can certainly handle 4,000 playing today. They proved they could three weeks ago when 4,128 came to play the first (and only) Day 1 for Event No. 29, the $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold’em Championship, which I believe was the largest single-day start of a tourney in WSOP history.

The WSOP has been saying there are a total of 478 tables available for use in the Amazon, Brasilia, and Pavilion rooms, which means at ten-handed they can easily accommodate a crowd as big as that which showed up for the Seniors event, and even more.

I remember well the fiasco that was Day 1d at the 2009 WSOP Main Event, when something like 400-500 players apparently were turned away as they could only handle 2,809. In a post at the time I talked about how the PR problem resulting from not being able to seat players wanting to play in the ME would be “as massive” as the field was.

Definitely a situation the WSOP never ever wanted to encounter again, and I think they’ve planned well enough in the years since to prevent just such an occurrence.

By the way, looking back at my 2009 post sent me on an excursion through Dr. Pauly’s live blog from 2009, reading what he wrote then about the big snafu in his live blog as well as in a second, feature-style piece titled “No Soup for You.”

I am not the only one here who is missing the good doctor this time around. In fact, it was impossible not to think about him yesterday when during the final break of the evening a WSOP staff member filled the time playing the Grateful Dead over the PA, which put smiles on everyone’s faces for the entire 20 minutes. Was from the Charlotte show in 1973, he explained afterwards, promising he might play some Phish today. Pauly, as some know, is “gone Phishing” this summer, following the band on tour rather than covering the WSOP as he’d done for the seven previous years.

Speaking of missing folks, Doyle Brunson tweeted at the start of the day yesterday that he was thinking of skipping this year’s Main Event, although today he’s tweeting he might still get over there during late registration. Brunson’s played a very limited schedule this year -- the only time I’ve seen him, actually, was during the $50K Poker Players Championship. Here’s hoping he does take a seat this afternoon. Heck, he’s been taking a seat at the WSOP ever since the sucker started in 1970 (only missing a couple of Main Events along the way). Wouldn’t be the same without him.

As far as working went, yesterday was a fun day, providing a lot to write about in the PokerNews live blog while the poker was moving at a slow enough pace to afford space to scribble. Or perhaps it just seemed slower after following the nutso final day of Event No. 59 on Saturday when they swiftly played from 51 down to a winner.

Had a few conversations with folks yesterday talking about how the ME didn’t seem particularly different from any of the prelims that have been playing out the last six weeks, atmosphere-wise. Indeed, that whole carnivalesque quality of the ME -- with crazily-costumed players, antics galore, and other sidebar stuff -- seems largely gone. Although I imagine that might change some today, with the larger turnout upping the likelihood for such.

ESPN didn’t fully cover Days 1 or 2 last year, and while I don’t know their plan this time I’m guessing they are following a similar strategy. There certainly weren’t many cameras around, and those that were I believe were primarily just grabbing some b-roll stuff and not really trying to capture hands or chronicle it all in earnest.

The removal of that sort of coverage probably lessens the incentive for some to do what they can to “get on teevee.” By Day 3 they’ll be starting with around 2,000 players and playing down to less than 1,000, which will be in shouting distance of the money (the bubble will burst on Day 4). The excitement will necessarily build from that point forward.

And after that, when the field narrows further and they begin to break down and remove tables from the Amazon, we’ll know for sure that the Main Event isn’t like the prelims. Or any other poker tournament.

Daniel Damns, Doyle Defends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They Called It the World Series of Poker

The 2011 World Series of Poker Europe is off to what appears to be a successful start in Cannes. Seven “open” bracelet events this time around, plus a ladies-only event, too. They are getting good turnouts thus far. And the early buzz from players seems positive with regard to the move from London to the south of France.

The WSOPE began back in 2007 and has steadily grown ever since. This year’s Event No. 2, a €1,090 buy-in no-limit hold’em event, drew a whopping 771 entrants, the most of any WSOPE event thus far. (The previous high had been 608 for a £1,000 event in 2009.)

I was thinking this morning about the early days of the WSOP, those initial few years back at Binion’s Horseshoe when only a handful of players, many from Texas or other southern states, made their way over to Fremont Street each spring.

You’ve probably read that story somewhere before. About how a fellow from San Antonio named Tom Moore staged what he called a “Texas Gamblers Reunion” at his hotel up in Reno in 1969. Moore decided not to bother the next year, partly because all of the players he’d invited did nothing but play poker and thus it had failed to produce much revenue for him.

So Jack Binion asked Moore if they could do something similar the next year, and Moore said sure. And thus the WSOP was born.

Most accounts suggest that at that very first WSOP there were a total of 38 different players who kind of came and went during the playing of five different games. However, usually only a small percentage of those names ever get mentioned as having participated, a list that usually begins and ends with Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim Preston, “Sailor” Roberts, Doyle Brunson, Puggy Pearson, Crandall Addington, and Carl Cannon.

In his autobiography, The Godfather of Poker, Brunson notes that “about thirty different players” were there playing in the games, mentioning Jack Straus and Titanic Thompson as being among them, too.

In any case, it was a modest-sized event by any stretch of the imagination, thus making it seem all the more audacious for the Binions to have named it the “World Series of Poker.”

The following year they’d stage some tournaments, including three prelims and a $5,000 buy-in Main Event in which just six played. If you hunt around the internet you’ll find all sorts of different line-ups listed for that 1971 WSOP ME, but I trust Brunson’s memory: himself, Moss, Pearson, Roberts, Straus, and Jimmy Cassella.

That’s four Texans, a Tennessean (Pearson), and a New Yorker (Cassella). And yet they called it the World Series of Poker. And following the lead of major league baseball, the Binions would add the Poker Hall of Fame in 1979, the year the Main Event would exceed the 50-player mark for the first time. Still a pretty small “world,” really.

It would take a few decades, but the WSOP would eventually literally evolve into an international event. Players from 105 different countries participated in WSOP events in Las Vegas this summer. In the Main Event, just about 33% of the field were non-Americans coming from 84 other countries. And as usually happens whenever the WSOPE gets going, we’re hearing some chatter about the possiblity of staging WSOP events on other continents, too, like Australia or Asia or Africa.

Was a bold thing dubbing that first get-together the “World Series.” Yet, if you think about it, calling it such allowed for growth -- without limit, really -- in a way that could never be the case for, say, something like the “Texas Gamblers Reunion.”

So, yeah... I guess that turned out to be a good call.

Rereading The Biggest Game in Town: Reality and Romance (5 of 6)

“Poker is a skill, it’s an art, it’s a science. You have to improve yourself continually and know your weaknesses. To be successful, you must be realistic.”

So said Mickey Appleman to Al Alvarez, as quoted in Chapter 3 in The Biggest Game in Town. In fact, talk about the need to “be realistic” with oneself in poker comes up quite frequently in the book.

For Appleman, the point primarily concerns understanding as well as possible one’s own abilities. As Appleman puts it in a later chapter when the topic arises once more, “There can be no self-deception for a poker player.... You have to be a realist to be successful. You can’t think you’ve played well if you lose consistently. Unless you can judge how well you play relative to the others, you have no chance.”

Perhaps influenced by what Appleman and others are telling him, later on Alvarez refers to poker as “one of the most realistic of all disciplines.” Here again the emphasis is on the way the game requires one to think clearly, to see things for what they are, to know oneself and to know others.

Of course, as has already been noted in these posts about The Biggest Game in Town, the whole idea of “reality” can get skewed rather quickly in poker. Especially when the game is being played for the highest stakes.

That proclamation about poker being a “realistic discipline” is made amid a brief biographical sketch of Doyle Brunson in which Alvarez describes some of the health-related wonders that have occurred during Texas Dolly’s long and interesting life.

Those familiar with Brunson’s story know about his having unexpectedly beaten cancer when a young man, as well as some of the other, similarly-surprising life turns he has experienced and which he’ll sometimes correlate with his faith. Thus does Alvarez note the irony of someone who regards his own life as having been punctuated by “miracles” having committed himself to the “realistic” world of poker.

(For more on Brunson and faith, see this post about The Godfather of Poker in which I suggest a comparison between the poker player’s autobiography and St. Augustine’s Confessions.)

Getting back to Appleman and what he’s telling Alvarez back in Chapter 3, on this rereading I found it interesting to see where the veteran of the Mayfair Club and (now) four-time WSOP bracelet winner’s observations ended up going -- most particularly how after starting out talking about being “realistic” he ends up acknowledging that he is, in fact, a “romantic.”

In literary studies, scholars often speak of “reality” and “romance” as indicating contrasting perspectives, manifested in poems, stories, and novels as “realism” and “romanticism.” Perhaps it is that contrast that caused me to find Appleman’s seemingly effortless shift from espousing realism to talking about romance somewhat curious.

“I’m a romantic, and for me gambling is a romance,” explains Appleman, who in addition to being a poker player has always been a big-time sports bettor, too. “That’s what I enjoy; the rest is by the way. I play and I play and I play; then I pick up the pieces and see how I did. It’s only at that moment that I realize I was playing for real money.”

See the apparent contradiction? One has to be “realistic” in order to play well, says Appleman. But then he says that when he plays he explicitly denies “reality,” losing himself (so to speak) in the “romance” of the game as though the period spent at the table affords an opportunity to escape the “real” world.

Afterwards, Alvarez offers his own interpretation of Appleman’s thesis: “When he said, ‘Gambling is a romance,’ he was not referring to the smoke-filled rooms, the sullen tribal faces, or the stilted backchat that passes for conversation; he meant the art of the game at its highest level and the romance of personal liberty.”

In other words, it doesn’t have to be a contradiction to speak of poker as being a “realistic discipline” while also saying it provides a kind of “romantic” freedom from the so-called “real” world. Describing another, less successful player, Alvarez uses the term “fantasist” to describe his lack of self-knowledge, thus providing us a useful distinction here.

Appleman is no fantasist. He enjoys the “romance” of the game, but understands the difference between “reality” (self-knowledge) and fantasy (self-deception). Including how -- as discussed in that post about “reality” last week -- it is needful to think of “real money” differently while the cards are in the air.

Indeed, it’s even “realistic” to do so -- to think of the chips not as a steak dinner or the gas bill or next month’s rent or an automobile or a house, but as what they really are.

Chips.