On Spines, or the Lack Thereof

Earlier this week the latest issue of Card Player magazine appeared in the mailbox, the one with Gus Hansen on the cover (Vol. 24, No. 9). I had already skimmed through it and had left it on the counter where Vera Valmore spotted it one evening. Then she did something I couldn’t remember ever seeing her do before -- she picked up the issue and leafed through it.

Vera isn’t a poker player herself, and so generally isn’t too interested in what the poker magazines and books I have laying around have to say. I have shared an article or two from Card Player with her before, but I had no recollection of her picking it up without my having recommended something. I watched as she quickly flipped to the article on page 8, a one-pager in the “Inside Straight” section that briefly summarized the events of “Black Friday” and the immediate aftermath.

While the issue is dated May 24, 2011, it’s clear the article was probably written about a month before, as it only speaks of the indictment, relates a few of the initial responses (from PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, the PPA, and Rep. Barney Frank), and tells of the deals struck between the DOJ and Stars/Tilt to regain their domains.

“Is that all?” said Vera, flipping through the rest of the magazine.

I laughed and shook my head, saying that yeah, that was it. I added that it was a little funny to think that this was the third issue of Card Player I’d received since “Black Friday” and this was the first mention of it.

I pointed out one other interesting detail of this issue, the conspicuous lack of advertising for Stars, FTP, Absolute Poker, and UB throughout. I noted how it was 16 pages shorter than the previous issue, pointing to the staples on the side to show that the magazine had even been bound differently.

“There isn’t a... uh, it doesn’t even have a...”

“Spine,” said Vera, finding the word for me. Then she added, “It’s spineless.”

I chuckled at the word, remembering some of the criticisms that have been directed of late toward various publications and sites that report on poker. Some have felt certain outlets -- just about all of which have long depended on online poker sites for advertising dollars and in other ways -- weren’t going after the story of “Black Friday” with the sort of vigor it deserved, muting their coverage perhaps because of their relationships with the targeted sites.

I realize Card Player’s publication schedule likely prevented it from reporting on the matter sooner, though it was interesting to see the story finally appearing in the very same issue in which the ads for Stars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and UB no longer appeared.

I pointed out to Vera how Card Player has always, even from its early days, been more focused on supporting its advertisers, which early on were mostly casinos and more recently the online sites. When explaining this, I was remembering having heard Linda Johnson -- publisher and owner of Card Player from 1993-2000 -- interviewed by Gary Wise way back in early 2008.

In that interview, Johnson explained to Wise how the magazine was never intended to be “journalistic,” but rather “was to support the poker industry,” one consequence of which being the avoidance of reporting on stories or events that reflected badly on the industry as a whole and/or their advertisers in particular. (Incidentally, I’m a big Linda Johnson fan, one of those who believes “The First Lady of Poker” deserves serious consideration for the Poker Hall of Fame.)

I wrote here a bit about that interview in a post titled “On Poker Mags,” discussing it in the context of considering Card Player’s tentative coverage of the insider cheating scandal at Absolute Poker during those early months of 2008. My conclusion there was to say that even though the magazine touts itself on its cover (still) as “the poker authority,” one obviously would want to look elsewhere for genuinely revealing news and/or unblinkered opinion about the industry.

All of which is to say I hadn’t necessarily been anticipating reading much of anything in Card Player about “Black Friday.” Indeed, that one-page summary of information we’ve all known about for more than a month now pretty much fit my expectations for what I’d find there on the matter. And I should add there are a number of interesting pieces in the issue -- as is often the case -- including the usual strategy talk, the columns and interviews, and that feature on Gus, too.

Understanding the magazine’s purpose, then, I suppose I’d refrain from using the word “spineless” to refer to it other than literally to describe its changed physical appearance. It is interesting to consider, however, how “Black Friday” has inspired renewed attention on the relationships between media outlets that report on poker and their advertisers -- relationships that in just about every single case have at least some significance when it comes to editorial content produced.

Indeed -- not to single out any one site or publication in particular -- when it comes to accommodatin’ those advertisers, some’ll bend over backwards.

The Amateur vs. the Professional

One subject I have discussed here off and on is the difference between “amateur” and “professional” poker players. Probably the most recent attempt at discussing that often difficult-to-make distinction came last spring, when I declared myself once and for all to be an example of “The Recreational Poker Player” -- not exactly an “amateur,” but certainly not a “pro” either.

A thoughtful piece was posted over on the ESPN Poker Club website yesterday, an article titled “What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Pro’?” The author is Eric Siegel, Marketing and Player Development Leader for Poker Players International, an agency with a large roster of players. Poking around the PPI website, it appears the agency represents dozens of players, including folks like Tom McEvoy, Kathy Liebert, Victor Ramdin, John D’Agostino, Linda Johnson, T.J. Cloutier, and many other recognizable folks. The agency divides its players into different teams according to various criteria (Team PPI, Team PPI Elite, and Team PPI Pro, and Team PPI International), so Siegel is perhaps quite familiar with this sometimes tricky business of classifying poker players.

Siegel begins his article by noting that the “professional” label doesn’t always fit poker players as neatly or obviously as it might in other areas of society. “By definition, a professional is someone who engages in an activity as a source of livelihood or as a career,” writes Siegel. However, when it comes to poker there are many who “are either labeled or label themselves as ‘professionals’” without necessarily regarding that otherwise cut-and-dry criterion as a prerequisite for doing so.

Siegel goes on to make a couple of further points before making his own attempt at answering the question that appears in the headline. One point he makes concerns the fact that poker players on the tournament circuit are “under constant scrutiny from other players, family or the media,” with their results “made public record on thousands of websites” -- oftentimes even before they collect their checks! Might be a slight exaggeration there to say “thousands” of sites posting such info, but you get the idea -- it’s all out there (says Siegel).

In this discussion, Siegel does gloss over a couple of obvious factors. One is the fact that a relatively small percentage of actual poker pros are exclusively tournament players. Dan Harrington declared in a Card Player interview (the December 11, 2007 issue, Vol. 20, No. 24) that he didn’t think the tournament circuit was even a viable option for those truly looking for “a source of livelihood or as a career.” Because “the volatility in tournaments is out of sight,” says Harrington, “I don’t think you can consider playing tournaments for a living. I think that is impossible.” Some still try to do so, of course, but I haven’t seen too many folks disagreeing with Harrington’s statement over the past couple of years.

So a lot of poker pros are in fact sticking mainly to the cash tables, where their successes and failures are not part of the “public record.” Of course, even with the tourney players this “public record” is highly incomplete, including only cashes and not the amount spent on entries or overall ROI. Earlier this week another item appeared on the ESPN site, a piece by Gary Wise about the recent sale of T.J. Cloutier’s 2005 WSOP bracelet on eBay. The “public record” of Cloutier (incidentally, a PPI player) is stellar, denoting him as one of the top tourney players of all time. However, it appears the $9.8 million he’s won over the years in tournaments is probably not a true indication of his relative “livelihood.”

Siegel goes on to note how sponsorship -- say, for a televised final table -- doesn’t really provide a trustworthy indicator of whether or not a player is a pro. He also adds a comment about a player having earned others’ respect as perhaps a sign that he or she might have earned the “pro” designation.

In the end, Siegel’s says he considers real poker pros as falling into two groups, although both are similar and both in fact go back to that traditional definition of a “professional” as someone earning a living at what he or she does. The first group, says Siegel, includes the person who has left his or her career in pursuit of a career in poker, while the second group includes those who made poker “their first job with no prior income source.”

Like I say, a thoughtful piece, though ultimately Siegel doesn’t really offer us a different way of thinking about the professional-amateur distinction. He’s right to say traditional ideas of what it means to be a “pro” don’t always apply perfectly to poker. But while Siegel does give us some things to think about, he doesn’t quite offer us a clear way to think differently about the distinction with regard to poker players.

I still like David Spanier’s distinction, drawn in his 1977 book Total Poker, a collection of essays I have come to believe is one of the more underrated and overlooked poker books around. (See a review here.) “A fine line is drawn between the status of amateur and professional at poker,” writes Spanier. “Really, it’s a moral line. How far do you go, how much do you play, how much do you want to win?”

Ultimately, argues Spanier, the pro will come to think of poker as “work,” and thus as part of his or her self-identity, whereas the amateur will never quite get rid of the idea that poker is “play.” “Somehow you can’t imagine a professional saying he is getting down to play,” says Spanier.

That observation, I think, starts to get at the real issue here, and offers us a genuinely different way to think of the amateur-professional problem as it applies to poker. Set aside the idea of identifying one’s “livelihood” as determined by how much cabbage it earns you. What is your level of commitment? When it comes to this game -- it is, after all, a game -- are you playing or working?

End of Story: 2009 WSOPE Main Event Concludes

Spent much of the afternoon and evening following the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event final table on PokerNews. Sucker ultimately went something like 16 hours all told -- not quite the 22-plus hours from the year before when John Juanda outlasted Stanislav Alekhin, but a marathon nonetheless.

The last five hours consisted of Daniel Negreanu and Barry Shulman battling heads up for the bracelet. Negreanu had the chip lead when heads up began, although the Card Player publisher pulled even and then ahead after an hour or so. But Kid Poker moved in front again and looked as though he was going to win it all after getting Shulman all in preflop holding versus Negreanu’s two black aces. But two hearts flopped, then a third came on the turn, and Shulman was back in front with a three-to-one chip lead.

Negreanu would spend the next couple of hours clawing back close to even, and had the lead once more when the hand Danafish declared “Hand of the Day” occurred. The pair got it all following a jack-high flop with Shulman having A-A this time versus Negreanu’s . Then a second jack stunningly came on the turn, and it again looked like Negreanu’s day. Then came an ace on the river, saving Shulman and crippling Negreanu. Shortly after that one, Shulman would take the last of Negreanu’s chips with pocket tens versus Kid Poker’s pocket fours.

As I said, I followed along for most of the latter part of the final table yesterday, thoroughly enjoying the reports on PokerNews. Like Snoopy (who reported earlier days), both Danafish and Djinn employ a keen wit and (to me) add a great deal of fun to the reports, exemplifying what makes live blogging ultimately more valuable than the ticker-type updates one can find on Twitter -- although those are fine, too, for those desirous of the quick check.

I love posts with headlines like Danafish’s “Negreanu Has Chips Delivered to Him on a Trey,” in which one learns Negreanu flopped a set with pocket threes. Or Djinn’s “One Way Street Changes Direction, Confuses Tourists” describing how after a brief spell of pots won by Shulman the chips had begun to flow back Negreanu’s way. Fun stuff, and the kind of thing that definitely encourages one to keep hitting refresh to read more.

Last summer while helping cover the WSOP for PokerNews I wrote a post asking the question “Does Humor Belong in Tournament Reporting?” My answer was ultimately an affirmative one, noting that even if there were millions of dollars at stake, we were reporting on a game, after all, and so I concluded that “keeping it light (within reason) is probably the right instinct, generally speaking.”

Wouldn’t want to sacrifice accuracy, clarity, or reader interest, of course, in order to yuk it up too wildly... but a little bit of wit here and there definitely adds value to the reports, in my view. One could even argue doing so lends a “literary” quality that ensures the reports endure a little better than they would otherwise as straightforward, unadorned accounts of the action.

And as I say, Danafish, Djinn, and Snoopy are in my opinion the tops, striking the right balance throughout. Thus what’s left there on the PokerNews page is a vivid account of all of the important hands, as well as a fine balance of humor and color that makes the chronicle well worth reading through even after the event has ended. Well done, mates!

Barry Shulman’s win obviously adds another layer of intrigue to the upcoming November Nine, where his son, Jeff, will be trying to match his father’s victory with a win of his own. Gary Wise has a new interview with Jeff this week up over on the ESPN Poker Club in which the publisher, president, and COO of Card Player takes back his earlier threat to “renounce” the bracelet by “throw[ing] it in the garbage” should he win the Main Event. (He’s currently fourth in chips.) Jeff also points out in the Wise interview that “[n]ot once was [he] ever thinking about trying to get extra publicity” by making the statement, which some -- including your humble gumshoe -- remarked was a pretty obvious consequence of the whole brouhaha.

Wise comes away from the interview saying Shulman doesn’t appear a “villain” to him in the still-unfolding 2009 WSOP Main Event story. Some will still characterize him that way, though. And it will be interesting to see how Barry Shulman’s WSOPE Main Event victory will play into that bit of story-manufacturing.

’Cos like I say with regard to the live blogging, that’s part of what makes all of this fun -- the stories. That’s a point WSOP Commish Jeffrey Pollack made on this week’s Two Plus Two Pokercast with regard to the WSOP ME final table. “I think the November Nine table is straight out of central casting,” said Pollack, noting how among the nine there are “a lot of great players and interesting characters” -- Shulman included.

I know I’ll be reading.

2009 WSOP, Day 1: It Gets Real

Another fun day yesterday. Ended with a couple of hours of socializing at the bowling alley over at the South Point Hotel and Casino with AlCantHang, the Poker Shrink, California Jen, Benjo, FerricRamsium, Pokerati Dan, Change100, Dr. Pauly, Dave King, Tom Bostic, and a few others.

Made it back home by midnight and so am reasonably rested (I think) for the upcoming grind. Before that the day had been taken up with a few more setting-up-shop type activities (got the rental car, finally got the friggin’ internet connection working here in the home away from home, etc.). Then spent part of the afternoon with about two-thirds of the PokerNews’ staff enjoying some delicious BBQ over at Lucille’s in Henderson. Big fun reuniting with a few more of the crew, as well as meeting some new folks. We talked a little shop, too, but the day was more devoted to pleasure than business.

That’ll change today, when we have some more preparatory meetings. Then work really begins in earnest tomorrow.

Technically speaking, today is the first day of the 2009 World Series of Poker, as that Casino Employees Event, a $500 buy-in, two-day no-limit hold’em event (Event No. 1), kicks off at noon. PokerNews will report something on that one, I believe, but won’t be giving it the attention the other 56 bracelet events will receive as far as live blogging and everything else goes.

So, really, all eyes are on that Event No. 2, the much anticipated $40,000 buy-in, Special 40th Annual No-Limit Hold’em event that starts on Thursday. Or, as Mike Matusow referred to it on the most recent episode of Wise Hand Poker (5/20/09), what “truly could be the dumbest idea in the history of the World Series of Poker.”

Matusow’s criticism is focused primarily on the timing of the event -- i.e., placing it right here at the start rather than later on. “Why, in God’s name, when you juice everybody to death, would you want to bust everybody on Day 1?” he asks. He went on to suggest it would have made a lot more sense to have positioned it after the $50K H.O.R.S.E. and before the Main Event, or really anywhere other than right off the top.

I can see a couple of obvious reasons why the decision was made to position the $40K NLHE event at the beginning. As many have observed, the presence of a no-limit hold’em tournament in the WSOP with a buy-in that exceeds that of the Main Event does have some significance. For one thing, the Main Event is the only so-called “World Championship” bracelet event in the entire schedule for which the buy-in is not the highest for that particular game. (Was writing about that here some three-plus months ago when the schedule was first announced.)

So there’s a good reason not to have the $40K NLHE event happen too closely to the Main Event -- namely, to prevent encouraging any sort of thinking that the Main Event isn’t really “the big one.” Daniel Negreanu was asked to comment on the event on the Two Plus Two Pokercast (the 5/19/09 episode), where he was specifically asked about the possibility of the $40K becoming a regular part of the schedule. “The danger there,” said Negreanu, “is that it really does change what the Main Event is. I mean, it’s kind of silly, wouldn’t you think, to have the $40K buy-in not to be the Main Event if it [were] to happen every year. And I think it’s dangerous to do that, because then you sort of dwarf the significance of the Main Event.”

That’s one reason why this year the sucker is early, not late -- so as not to dwarf the ME. Another reason for having it early is probably tied to ESPN’s production schedule. As you know, the network is only filming four events for broadcast later this summer and fall, the $40K NLHE event, the WSOP Champions Invitational, the Ante Up for Africa Celebrity Charity Poker Tournament, and the Main Event. The first two happen right at the beginning (this week), while the latter two occur right at the end (in July). ESPN will therefore be able to do their work this week, disassemble everything and send most of the crew away for a month (save the smaller group who will remain to do the ESPN360/Bluff final tables), then come back and reshoot at the end.

So how many will enter the $40K? Matusow seems to think the turnout will be huge -- 250, easily, or maybe even more. Which will be good for the moment, but bad ultimately, says the Mouth. “They’re gonna be just horrified, because they are going to get a way bigger turnout [for the $40K event] than they thought, and all of the other tournaments are going to be way down.” Negreanu was less concerned about the impact the event was going to have on turnouts for the rest of the Series. In fact, he seemed to suggest that having it so early will mean fewer will actually enter the event, since having it later could have made it possible to have more satellites.

The number I’m hearing most often is 225 or thereabouts. That seems to be the “line” near which most over-under bets are happening. I talked about it some at the BBQ yesterday with Tom Bostic and Jeremiah Smith. You might remember Jeremiah from his deep run in last year’s Main Event, or perhaps his hosting of PokerRoad’s Cash Plays podcast. He’ll be playing in several events this summer (though not the $40K), and will be doing some blogging over on PokerNews as he goes.

We all had our ideas, but none of us really know. Indeed, with just a few short hours until the WSOP gets underway, that’s kind of how the next seven weeks exist in all of our minds at the moment. We have vague notions of how it all will happen, but the specifics are yet to be determined.

’Cause you can study and you can prepare. But then the cards go in the air.

For the Record (Thoughts on Tracking Tournament Winnings)

Yesterday I happened to be hunting around over on Hendon Mob looking up players’ stats. That’s the comprehensive, quite reliable site that compiles poker tournament winnings and presents them in a way where one can quickly see a player’s cashes, overall earnings, year-to-year stats, and so forth. Nearly 100,000 players are listed there.

Came across one dude’s totals and when I saw his lifetime earnings had one of those “yeah, but” moments as I wondered just how many tourneys he’d actually entered. I started to think about how it would be interesting for someone to compile statistics that included the number of tourneys a person had played, thus providing some added context to the number of cashes and total winnings.

I mean, the way it looks over on Hendon Mob, everyone is winning and no one is losing. All cashes, no fees.

Was pondering this one a bit more as the day wore on. I thought that while it would be improbable to expect all tournaments everywhere to make available complete lists of entrants to a site like Hendon Mob, perhaps the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour could handle such a thing with regard to their respective series of tournaments.

If the WSOP began keeping track of all entrants this way, they could compile databases such as one finds on PGA.com and its associated sites. Those guys keep track of everything everyone does it seems, including cuts made, scoring average, driving distance, greens in regulation, how they did on par threes, and so on.

If all entrants in poker tourneys were tracked, the WSOP could (say) for a given year show us who had the best ROI (return on investment) percentage, who did best in the higher buy-in events, who had the most cashes per entry, and the like. And eventually statistics could be compared from year to year, adding further information to consider when debating players’ relative abilities.

Later in the day I listened to Mike Matusow interviewed over on the Wise Hand Poker podcast (the 3/18/09 episode), and coincidentally he spoke to Wise about how in his opinion he had “the best year in the history of poker” in 2008, even though “nobody really wants to put it on record and say what kind of year [he] had.”

According to Matusow, he played in 21 tourneys, cashed in 11, made five final tables, and won one, Event No. 18 at the 2008 WSOP, the $5,000 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw w/Rebuys event. (By the way, that picture above lists Matusow’s 2008 WSOP cashes.) “Nobody realizes I only played 21 tournaments... when most people play a hundred,” he added.

Of course, 11 cashes looks impressive, anyway. But out of 21 tourneys -- if that’s accurate, well that is fairly special.

At first I thought Matusow was implicitly supporting this idea I had about keeping track of folks’ entries in order to produce stats which more closely indicated how well players were performing.

Then I realized -- what a horrible idea. Why?

Because the publication of such information, while perhaps satisfying fans’ curiosity, would likely have a detrimental effect on the players. And the tournaments, too. The WSOP or WPT would have little to gain, I would think, from showing all of its players (and the rest of the world) exactly how much they’ve lost over the course of their respective series. Could possibly discourage some from entering tourneys, even. In any event, I can’t really see how it would help.

Of course, sites like SharkScope (where the graph on the left representing one player’s stats appears) have made the publication of such information about players’ performances in online multi-table tourneys and sit-n-gos a significant part of that world, with players routinely looking up their opponents’ stats which do not hide the number of times they failed to cash. (SharkScope focuses on SNGs, while other sites provide similar info regarding MTTs.) I don’t suppose those sites have negatively affected the popularity of MTTs and SNGs -- in fact, one could perhaps argue they have added to their popularity (?) -- but I think the story for live tournament poker is considerably different.

Such are among the many special considerations those who wish to market poker as a sport -- particularly the professional tourney circuit -- have to keep in mind. The fact that most players pay their own way (aside from the lucky few whose sponsors pay their entry fees) means they cannot be treated the same as, say, those who secure PGA Tour cards or who qualify for the Sunday NASCAR races.

So it isn’t just that “nobody really wants to put it on record” how Matusow did last year. Nobody wants to put it on record how anybody did, I think. Not really.

Victoria’s Secrets

The latest Wise Hand Poker podcast (the 1/14/09 episode) contains three interviews. Wise starts out talking to 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event champ Peter Eastgate, and concludes with a conversation with Jeffrey Haas, president of the Asian Pacific Poker Tour.

Those two interviews are fine, but the one I especially want to recommend is the middle one with British poker player, writer, and PokerStars Team pro Victoria Coren. The Coren interview begins at about the 27:00-mark and lasts about a half-hour. Definitely worth checking out if yr curious to hear an insightful, articulate, and interesting observer commenting on all things poker. To share a few highlights....

During the first part of the interview, Coren discusses her poker-playing background, including winning the 2006 EPT London Main Event. That was the first televised final table ever won by a woman, and so Wise asks her a bit about the significance of that achievement.

Coren immediately responds with what I thought was a very provocative comment about men, women, tournaments, and cash games. Coren says that she, like many others, had previously found herself “falling into the trap of believing that women are more natural cash game players than tournament players. You know, [the idea that] in cash games where there’s virtue in patience and perception and guile, women were better suited to it, than [to] the aggressive, blustery nature of a tournament.”

Coren’s victory at the EPT London helped her see through this notion, realizing there wasn’t anything particularly “natural” about women being better suited to cash games than to tourneys. (“It proved to me that was a load of old hogwash,” as she puts it.)

Perhaps an obvious dichotomy to some -- this suggestion that we might theoretically “gender” tournaments and cash games this way -- but one I can’t say I had necessarily thought about all that much before. Since I spend about 95% of my poker time at the cash tables, I don’t generally spend much effort contemplating all that deeply the differences between cash games and tourneys (though I certainly immediately recognize ’em whenever I do decide to take a seat at a MTT).

That issue of the relative “competitiveness” or “aggression” of men and women at the poker table emerges as a kind of theme in the book Women’s Poker Night (2007), edited by Maryann Morrison. I reviewed that book here a while back, if you’re curious. As it happens, several of the essays in that collection deal in one way or another with the notion that “there’s a killer instinct women don’t naturally have” (as one contributor, Raparata Mazzola, quotes pro Kristy Gazes saying).

Interestingly, in the interview Coren goes on to talk about her own game and explicitly notes how despite her tournament success she still believes she lacks the “killer instinct” at times, and in fact recognizes that as a weakness in her game. But it is a weakness with which she is willing to live.

“For me, it’s a balance,” says Coren. “I want to beat the game, I want to be successful, I want to win, but I want to do it while still being able to sleep at night and look myself in the mirror with pride. And I’m aware that it’s a cruel game with a lot of hard edges, but I think I can find my way through it doing things that are morally acceptable to me while still winning.”

There’s more of value in the interview, including some thoughts from Coren about “poker writing” (and some of the great poker narratives), as well as a comparison or two between poker playing and writing (of special interest to yr humble gumshoe, for sure).

Coren is at work on a poker narrative herself. I would expect it to be a good one, given her writing background. She currently has regular columns in both The Observer and The Guardian, and she’s also already authored or co-authored four books, including one detailing her experiences trying to produce a porn movie, titled Once More With Feeling (2002). (Was a little surprised Wise didn’t ask her about that, though I suppose he was being tactful.) If yr interested in that, or anything else about Coren, you can find out more on Coren’s website.

Meanwhile, if yr wanting to hear some thoughtful commentary about men, women, writing, and poker, check out that interview.

PokerNews News

My association with PokerNews began around May 2007. Card Player had covered the World Series of Poker in ’06, then the next year Bluff secured the rights and an agreement was made to have PokerNews handle the live reporting. I came on board to help out with some background stuff and also write some for the site while all the first-stringers were in Vegas that summer. I have continued to work with PokerNews ever since.

Early last year John Caldwell, the Editor-in-Chief over at PN, asked me if I’d be interested in coming out to Vegas and helping with the live blogging at the WSOP. I took him up on the offer, and have noted here several times how positive an experience that was. As a poker player and fan, it was a blast to be there at the Rio for those seven weeks and experience the madness up close.

A huge part of what made the summer so satisfying -- both personally and professionally -- was the smart, supportive, fun group of folks with whom I got to work. I probably interacted with and in many cases worked closely with more than 50 different people, and I know there were more coming and going who were also part of the team. It really was a “team,” with everyone genuinely looking out for each other and committed to making the coverage as good as it could be.

And while there were other talented people who had a lot to do with the whole operation running so smoothly, Caldwell was the one overseeing the sucker. Hellmuth might’ve been prancing around the Rio in the general’s outfit, but Caldwell -- never one to seek such attention -- was the one leading troops.

Yesterday we heard the news that Caldwell had decided to step down from his post over at PokerNews. Dr. Pauly quickly posted his thoughts, and if you’re interested you might head over to Tao of Poker to see what he has to say and to read the comments, too, for others’ reactions.

Thought I’d also take the time to add my thanks here to Caldwell for the opportunities he’s sent my way, and for having done such a terrific job over the years helping build PokerNews up into a prominent part of the poker media landscape.

If you’re curious to learn more about Caldwell and/or PokerNews, you might check out the 3/26/08 episode of the Wise Hand Poker podcast on which Caldwell appeared as a guest. Gary Wise interviews Caldwell for the first half of that episode.

Wise and Caldwell began the show chatting some about the history of PokerNews (which first started up in late 2004), moved on to talk about Caldwell’s background working in the music industry, then spent the rest of the conversation discussing the role of poker media in general and PokerNews in particular. Last spring I wrote a post here, titled “Sunshine & Lollipops,” that focused on that latter portion of the interview, particularly the issue of how the poker media has to negotiate this sometimes-tricky business of reporting on subject matter -- i.e., gambling -- that certain segments of the general public find objectionable.

The first part of the interview -- the part in which Caldwell relates some of the background about PokerNews -- is interesting, too. Caldwell tells about the site’s humble beginnings, starting over at pokernews.info, then gravitating to pokernews.com, and how thanks to “a lot of hard work and a lot of belief” the site was able to grow.

Caldwell notes that a “big turning point” for him occurred when PokerNews began to focus on providing content in languages other than English. In 2005, a German version of the site was launched, then one in French, until eventually versions of the site became available in over 30 languages.

That meant finding qualified people in all of those countries to translate articles appearing on the main site, as well as to report on items of particular interest in to poker players and fans in those countries, too. A huge undertaking, to be sure. And fascinating, really, when one considers the extent of the site’s reach.

I do hope PokerNews makes it okay without Caldwell. And, of course, that Caldwell does well, too, without PokerNews.

The fact is, when it comes to poker media and the professional circuit, it is probably best to understand that nearly everything is subject to change at any moment. Tournament series appear and disappear, the WSOP is constantly revising itself, advertisers come and go, and thus are media outlets constantly affected by a myriad of forces that are mostly out of their control. Indeed, Caldwell’s lengthy tenure at PokerNews (going on five years) is something of an anomaly, really, insofar as he’s helped provide a kind of stability there that one doesn’t really find much elsewhere in the industry.

As I say, best of luck to Caldwell and his family. And to PokerNews, too.

The Secret Struggle of the Starmaker (on Marketing the 2008 WSOP Main Event final table)

Another interesting episode this week of the Gary Wise podcast, Wise Hand Poker (the 11/19/08 episode). Wise interviews Barry Greenstein for the first half of the show, and the two discuss the recent World Series of Poker Main Event final table, the new “red pro” forum on PokerRoad, and other matters. Wise then has Harrah’s Sports and Entertainment Director of Communications Seth Palansky on and they continue the discussion of the delayed final table and the relative success of the experiment.

During the latter interview, Palansky reveals some of Harrah’s intentions regarding marketing the “November Nine” and building hype around the ESPN broadcast. He talks about how they’d apparently decided “to treat the Nov. 9 as a finale, like you would a movie opening, which means you don’t want to strike too early.” Comparing the final table to a much-anticipated movie premiere, Palansky explained “You’re trying to get people to the box office, to make the decision to purchase a ticket and go watch a new movie. So the real crux of the promotion should have been around the last couple of weeks.”

Apparently (according to this here post-mortem), various factors, including the Olympics, the presidential election, and even the economic crises made it more difficult for promoters to “strike” at that crucial time -- i.e., the last two weeks before the table was played and then shown on ESPN. Sounds a little strange, frankly, given that everyone knew back on May 1 when the Olympics and the election were scheduled.

Palansky goes on, though, to cast further aspersions in the effort to explain why the November Nine was not the huge cultural phenomenon organizers had envisioned it to be.

He also blames the players. That’s right. Now that the final table has finished, the Director of Communications for Harrah’s has decided it is okay to suggest the players themselves were somehow to blame for the failure of the idea.

On Wise’s show, Palansky said he wanted to “break” the news that two of the November Nine had been offered the chance to do guest spots on mainstream talk shows -- the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Ellen Degeneres show -- and both turned down the opportunities. Wise was unable to get Palansky to identify which players were the ones asked, but on the 2+2 thread about the interview Dennis Phillips’ agent says he was not made any such offer. Gotta believe that. I mean, I know Hard-Boiled Poker is the cat’s pajamas and all, but I can’t imagine Phillips would do an interview with me (and about 200 others) and not do one with Jay Leno or Ellen Degeneres! Scott Montgomery also chimes in on the thread to say that he doubts the claim is even valid (“umm, i think this whole thing sounds like a load of bs to me” says Montgomery).

After passing along that item, Palansky then offers lengthy judgment of the players who he says refused the chance to take poker to the mainstream:

“But one of the reasons why I wanted to come on here with you tonight Gary, was to express a concern I do have for some of the advice and some of the moves poker players are making. Because if you want to mainstream a game, and if you’re trying to get corporate America to buy into what you’re selling, you need Tom Bradys, you need Peyton Mannings, you need Michael Jordans, etc. If we have guys that aren't willing to take that mantle, or the same ten, twelve guys that you see getting a lot of attention at the Main Event early on: the known names for their antics or whatever the case may be. If people want to leave it just to those dozen, they can’t grow the game. For all the others, they’ve got to take advantage of the opportunities that get presented to them, and it’s unfortunate that in situations where we had a successful pitch and an opportunity for our players to be on that national stage, they chose not to.”

(Thanks, by the way, to Kevin Mathers for doing the transcribing work.)

I don’t even know where to begin, there are so many incorrect assumptions underlying such a view. Not to mention the fact that when the final table delay was first announced, WSOP Commish Jeffrey Pollack made it abundantly clear that nothing in particular would be expected of the nine who made the final table in the way of promotional activities.

For one, there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of poker players, generally speaking, many of whom don’t want to be Peyton Manning (or Phil Hellmuth or fill-in-the-blank). Secondly, there’s a misapprehension about the tournament itself, wherein the cash prize for winning far exceeds any possible benefits a guest spot on Leno might bring a person (and thus should be weighed accordingly).

There’s also a fairly misguided view about poker’s place in popular culture. Palansky comes to poker via the National Football League where he also served as Communications Director. His comments seem to suggest that poker is perfectly analogous to football, both in the way it is played and presented and its place in the public consciousness. Poker has a real problem, I think, if those in charge of promoting the WSOP are going to continue to operate under this assumption.

In the 2+2 thread, Shane “Shaniac” Schleger” offers his rejoinder to such a view. He finds it “disingenuous and frustrating to blame player apathy or laziness for not helping to ‘grow the game,’” pointing out how Harrah’s, the WPT, and other corporations haven’t exactly compensated players generously (or at all) in the past. He goes on to call it “delusional” to think any of the nine who made this year’s final table were “going to have the motivation and charisma to try and become the next Hellmuth,” and thus thinks a “new strategy” is in order.

Over on the Big Poker Sundays radio show, Schleger suggested that like Scott Montgomery, he was doubtful Palansky was even being truthful with his claim about the Leno/Ellen offers.

I can’t imagine why Palansky would make up such a thing, although it does uncannily recall Lou Krieger’s recent observation, voiced on his podcast and repeated on his blog, that he “expected to see these guys on all the major TV shows, much the same as you see movie stars trotted out on the talk show circuit whenever they have a new film to promote. It was really disappointing that none of them got a chance to talk poker with Letterman, or play some cards with Ellen, or appear on any of the morning network shows. That would have been a real build up.”

Even if the claim is truthful, I can’t say I see the purpose in throwing the November Nine under the bus this way except perhaps to try to bully the next group of poker players who make the 2009 Main Event delayed final table subsequently to perform more closely to Harrah’s wishes. Which -- even if successful -- would not necessarily produce desired results (to my way of thinking). ’Cos poker ain’t football. Nor will it ever be.

I guess there is one aspect of all of this that relates to poker -- the idea of blaming others when things don’t go one’s own way.

The Chicken or the Egg?

Was unable to catch ESPN’s coverage last night of the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha World Championship (Event No. 50), though I’ll probably try to pick it up later in the week. While I worked several PLO events at this year’s World Series of Poker, that was one I did not. Still, I am always curious to see how non-hold’em games get presented. Coverage of the Main Event begins next week.

Speaking of ESPN, for those still interested in further context and/or analysis of Scotty Nguyen’s “performance” at the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event (Event No. 45), first aired on ESPN last week, tournament director Matt Savage provides a response over on PokerNews centering on the various rules that were violated that night. Also, there have been a couple more podcasts of late concerning the final table and/or ESPN’s coverage that are worth checking out.

One was Gary Wise’s Wise Hand Poker podcast (the 8/20/08 episode), which features an interview with Event No. 50 runner-up and primary Nguyen antagonist Michael DeMichele. DeMichele does a good job explaining his perspective of the various goings-on from that evening, candidly answering all Wise’s well-chosen questions. (Looks like DeMichele is also on the newest episode of the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast, which I have yet to hear.) Incidentally, that show also features an interview with current Main Event chip leader Dennis Phillips, in which Phillips again proves himself an interesting, likable, “everyman.”

The other was the most recent installment of Big Poker Sundays (8/24/08), on which the always thoughtful Shane “Shaniac” Schleger joined Scott Huff. They spent an entire hour discussing the H.O.R.S.E. final table, Nguyen’s antics, ESPN’s manner of packaging the program, Norman Chad’s editorializing, and other, more general topics related to etiquette, rules enforcement, and the ol’ “good of the game” issue.

Toward the end of the Big Poker Sundays show, Huff and Schleger talk about the effect of television and the potential rewards it brings to professional poker players, as well as the impact the prospect of such rewards sometimes has on how they behave. Says Huff, “It’s gotten to the point now in poker that some of these guys who are quote-unquote ‘stars of the game’ have really gone off the deep end” in terms of how they present themselves to the public -- especially when the television cameras are around. To Huff, it appears that “promoting yourself has become [such] a big deal for some of these guys to the point where they’ve totally lost it.”

Schleger’s response made me think a little of what I had written last Friday about the incident, particularly those observations of Tommy Angelo’s I shared concerning the stressful nature of poker. Schleger half-jokingly observed that sometime during this year’s WSOP he’d concluded that “95 to 99% of all full-time poker players have some kind of, you know, clear mental disease... clear mental illness... myself included,” listing traits such as an “extreme level of self-absorption,” “paranoid delusions,” and “manic depressive psychosis” as evidence that “we’re all messed up in the head, severely.” Circling back to Nguyen and the H.O.R.S.E. event, Schleger concluded “you add television cameras, you add alcohol, and this is what you get.”

As I say, Schleger is half-kidding around here, but he makes an interesting observation (I think) about the kind of person who gravitates towards poker/gambling in general, and professional tournament poker in particular.

Angelo spoke on that TwoPlusTwo Pokercast (the 8/18/08 episode) of how poker “tests us,” presenting numerous stressors (all at once) that are very similar those we encounter away from the poker tables, kind of like a “little microcosm” of the larger world.

In other words -- and I’m overgeneralizing points made by Angelo and Schleger just a bit here -- Angelo is talking about how poker makes us crazy, while Schleger is suggesting it is the crazy ones who find poker. “We’re diseased, screwed-up individuals,” says Schleger, “who are very lucky something that something like gambling came along that we can make a living at.”

So which came first? Were we crazy before we found poker? Or did poker make us that way?

Worryin’ About Hurryin’: The 2008 WSOP Main Event Final Table

Was catching up on some podcasts over the weekend and heard Gary Wise’s interview with David Rheem on Wise Hand Poker (the 8/13/08 episode). Rheem is one of the so-called “November Nine” who made the delayed final table of this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event. You might remember Rheem from his appearance at the Event No. 4 final table (the $5,000 Mixed Hold’em event) shown on ESPN a couple of weeks ago. He entered that final table the chip leader, but ended up going out in fifth.

You might also recall back in July an article appeared in the South Florida Sun Sentinel reporting Rheem had an outstanding warrant in Hollywood, Florida for apparently having failed to appear in court in 2003 on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. Less widely circulated was a subsequent report that the 2003 warrant is apparently no longer valid.

I had heard Rheem interviewed once before on the Two Plus Two Pokercast (Episode 32, 7/14/08), but on Wise’s show Rheem mentioned something new. When asked his thoughts regarding the 117-day delay before the WSOP ME final table, Rheem admitted that when he began the tournament, he had no idea such a delay was scheduled.

According to Rheem, following Day 2 he had a decent-sized chip stack and was discussing the tournament with some friends. “They were, like, ‘you know, once you make the final table, you make a three-month break,’ and then, you know, I almost lost money on it because I didn’t believe them. I was like ‘I’ll bet you money that you don’t!’ And then when their arm was out ready to shake my hand, I knew they were serious.” Rheem said he then went to the Tournament Director to confirm, and that’s when he first found out about the delay.

There was no hurry, I guess. Not like it really mattered on Day 2.

Rheem seems pretty likable. So do his fellow final tablists Dennis Phillips, whom I heard interviewed on Phil Gordon’s The Poker Edge (7/24/08), and Craig Marquis, who appeared on The Poker Edge as well (8/7/08). Listening to their interviews got me wondering about where things stood heading into that final table, still nearly three months away.

Play stopped in the early morning hours of July 15th with exactly 21 minutes and 50 seconds left in Level 33. That means these guys played over 65 hours of poker to get to this point in the tourney. The blinds are currently 120,000/240,000 with 30,000 antes. Here’s what each player will have in front of him when the first hand gets dealt on November 9th:

On the World Series of Poker website, there’s an article dated July 15th that purports to give final table seat assignments, but that information is incorrect. As Dennis Phillips mentioned on The Poker Edge, they will be drawing for seats five minutes before play begins on Nov. 9th.

I listed the number of big blinds each player currently has as well as the “M” or ratio of one’s stack to the current total of blinds and antes -- i.e., the “cost per round” figure popularized by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie in their Harrington on Hold’em series.

On the most recent episode of The Poker Edge, Phil Gordon suggested that “the pace of play at that final table is going to be ridiculously slow.” He was referring to the fact that when it came to players like Marquis -- whom he said was “not exactly short-stacked, not exactly desperate yet” -- “you’ve got 40 big blinds, there’s no hurry.”

Indeed, if one looks at the “M” ratio of the nine players, a lot of them are still in that “Green Zone” (an “M” of 20 or higher) in which Harrington and Robertie say “all moves are available.” However, Arnold Snyder, in his discussion of “chip utility” in The Poker Tournament Formula 2, would certainly disagree with the notion that “there’s no hurry” when one is down to 40 big blinds.

For Snyder “full utility” is only possible when one has 100 big blinds or more, a situation only Phillips and Demidov currently enjoy. That, says Snyder, “is the minimum stack size required for unhampered post-flop play, including information bets and more advanced moves on later streets or against more aggressive deep-stacked opponents.” Snyder describes a stack size of 60 big blinds as still “competitive,” though not “fully functional.” Stacks of 30-60 big blinds have “moderate utility,” and below 30 makes one’s utility “low.”

Of concern here for players other than Phillips and Demidov is the fact that 20 minutes after they start play on November 9th -- i.e., probably less than one orbit -- the blinds and antes will be moving up to 150,000/300,000 plus 40,000. That means unless a player like Marquis picks up a pot within those first few hands, he’s down to 30 big blinds and “low utility” (according to Snyder’s rubric).

Gordon’s comment reminded me that he had said something similar last year at the start of the 2007 final table. Indeed, that final table also began with 120,000/240,000 blinds and antes of 30,000, with roughly the same total number of chips in play. After the first hand of that final table -- in which Jerry Yang raised to 1.4 million from under the gun, was called by a late position player, then took the pot with a big bet on the flop -- Ali Nejad spoke of the 630,000 that was in the pot before each hand began and how that was a decent-sized prize to go after.

“Yeah, but the blinds are very small in relation to the stack sizes here,” answered Gordon. “There’s not a single player at the table who’s ready to just push under the gun or raise all in…. It would surprise me greatly -- unless there are just some huge hands, like aces versus kings or something like that -- to see any elimination here in the first three or four hours of this tournament.”

Anybody remember where we were after four hours last year? No less than four players -- Philip Hilm, Lee Watkinson, Lee Childs, and Hevad Khan -- had already busted.

We’ve a long time to wait, still. But I tend to believe we’re probably gonna see some serious hurryin’ once we get there.

Is This the Real Life?

Left Vegas nearly two weeks ago. Have been hanging out with Vera, visiting family, resuming a more stable sleeping pattern, etc. Have also gotten back into my usual online poker playing routine -- mostly short sessions (1-2 hour) at the cash tables, scattered here and there. After those two months in the desert, life is starting to return to “normal” (whatever that was).

Am also listening to the podcasts again, and enjoyed hearing Gary Wise’s post-WSOP show (Wise Hand Poker, 7/23/08 episode) in which he compiled a number of interviews he conducted throughout the summer.

Among the several interesting conversations in there is a 20-minute one with Brandon Adams. Wise talked to Adams just after his big Day 1 of the Main Event (he ended the day among the chip leaders). Before Day 2, Adams had helped pull together a high-stakes cash game at Bobby’s Room in which he and about a dozen others had convened for a $300/$600 PLO/NLHE game. Oh, and everyone also had to pony up a $300 ante each hand, too, just to make things interesting.

The discussion of the cash game is compelling enough, but I especially enjoyed hearing Adams’ comments about his non-poker life. Some of you might know Adams is kind of an anomaly in the poker world, having gone to graduate school and picked up a couple of Masters degrees (one in economics), then having entered Harvard’s Ph.D. business program in 2001 where he did all of the course work and is now what they call “A.B.D.” (all but dissertation). In 2004 Adams published a novel, titled Broke: A Poker Novel. He also continues teach courses at Harvard every spring in behavioral finance and, more recently, in applied game theory.

“This makes you unusual as a poker player,” said Wise. “Because you are a successful poker player, yet you choose to have a job. What keeps you teaching?”

Adams quickly came up with a witty response to the question. “I like to keep one foot in the world of respectability,” he said (amid Wise’s laughter).

“And the other in the real world?” Wise cracked (pun intended).

Adams went on to talk about how much he enjoys being in the college/university environment, full of interesting, smart people who are in a place where they actually have the time and energy to explore ideas, be creative, and learn.

I appreciated the exchange for a couple of reasons. Wise’s reference to the poker world being the “real” world is funny because of how often that world is characterized as fantasy land -- is defined, in fact, as being a place where “real” world obligations and concerns simply do not register.

That’s the primary allure of professional poker (for some). In The Biggest Game in Town, Al Alvarez well portrays what he calls the “different ordering of reality” that routinely goes on in the world of high-stakes poker where Adams currently spends a lot of his time. Alvarez writes about how some of those who live in that reality particularly value being able to avoid the so-called “straight world” or “stay outside the system.”

Wise’s reference also reminds some of us of how the college/university campus -- that intellectually-stimulating environment that Adams values -- is also often regarded as somehow not being the “real” world. For Adams, teaching his classes gives him the chance to challenge others and explore ideas without money being on the line. That’s what the classroom is -- a place where theories are formed and discussed, then later can be tested or confirmed outside the classroom in the so-called “real” world.

Adams clearly benefits a great deal from having this sort of balance in his life. He went on to tell Wise how he’s been involved with the very high-stakes games for the last three years or so. He mentioned how especially helpful it was for him to have his teaching and other interests when dealing with steep downswings on the poker side. “At those times you really appreciate being able to fall back on… being a part of a broader society, if you will,” Adams explained. “I would never be willing to give that up to go full force into poker.”

I’ve written before about the “double life” of the poker player, although my emphasis was a little different in those other posts. There I was talking about the fact that in my “real” life I am mostly interacting with people for whom poker is essentially a non-entity -- if it has any meaning at all, it is as a signifier for gambling, sin, or other unsavory activities. As a result, I don’t normally share my poker-related experiences with them the way I do here.

This summer the contrast of my “double life” became even more stark as I physically relocated and spent most of two months doing nothing but writing about poker under this here pseudonym. Still, I like (and can identify with) what Adams is saying about “being a part of a broader society” and how that helps keep one grounded.

I didn’t experience the severe highs and lows of the high-stakes player, of course. But I did immerse myself in the poker world there for a good while, a place where much that might seem fantastic, alien, or even impossible exists. It is good to be back over here in this one again, if only to regain that sense of balance.

Not gonna venture to guess which of these worlds is the “real” one. Am inclined, in fact, to agree with that other great existentialist, Freddie Mercury’s bohemian, and say it doesn’t really matter to me.

Television & Poker; or, the Search for a Happy Medium

Busy weekend, a lot of it spent in the car. Have been trying to visit various family and friends before my summer in Vegas. I’ll be leaving in just under two weeks to go help PokerNews cover the World Series of Poker.

Had the iPod-like device with me and ran through all of the several podcasts I had recently downloaded, many of which concerned the much-discussed decision by ESPN and Harrah’s to move the final table of the WSOP Main Event to November. Heard WSOP Commish Jeffrey Pollack interviewed on a few of the shows. Some were recorded prior to the announcement, such as the April 7 episode of WSOP Radio (posted April 8). In those Pollack remains reticent when asked about the “rumor” of a possible change. Others were recorded afterwards, such as the May 1 episode of Keep Flopping Aces in which Pollack jubilantly echoes all of the points he’d made earlier in the day during the WSOP presser.

Over on Wise Hand Poker, Gary Wise interviewed recently-hired WSOP Communications Director Seth Polanski (on his May 7 show). I’d heard Polanski on another Rounder’s Radio show back on April 2nd (Pumped on Poker), at which time he didn’t even hint at the possibility of the change. Polanski’s resumé includes performing similar roles for the NFL Network and Fox Sports. On Wise’s show, he explained he thought one of the reasons why he had been hired a couple of months ago by the WSOP was to help facilitate this very move, so he obviously knew something back in early April.

After his interview with Polanski, Wise spoke briefly about why he was in favor of the change. Wise referenced the recent decline in popularity of poker on television and how it suggests “the poker boom as passed.” Linking falling TV ratings to the game’s overall health, Wise stated that “the only way to sustain the growth of the community . . . is to keep poker as a televisable entity popular.”

Wise then mentioned the history of televised game shows, and how the most popular of them -- his examples included Twenty One and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? -- were often short-lived, having too quickly exhausted their appeal. He pointed out how Twenty One was so popular (in the late 1950s), attendance at baseball games went down on those nights when it aired. However, theorized Wise, the “adrenaline rush” of the show quickly wore off. “Within two years of that kind of popularity, Twenty One was off the air, and without some serious adjustment, televised poker was facing the same kind of fate. That’s why a change is needed.”

Wise’s example here wasn’t the best chosen. Twenty One was not cancelled because of poor ratings. In fact, when it first aired in September 1956, it was not a hit initially. Only after the producers began manipulating the results (apparently at the insistence of the show’s advertiser, Geritol) and started feeding contestants answers and “scripting” a more exciting drama, did the show become a cultural phenomena worthy of the cover of Time. When an unhappy contestant who had been made to lose came forward with allegations of impropriety, a federal investigation ensued, and Twenty One was unceremoniously yanked from the airwaves in October 1958. (The scandal was dramatized with some embellishment in the 1994 film Quiz Show.)

So the show didn’t fail because people became tired of it. It failed because the game it was depicting had become unacceptably corrupt.

Once I ran out of podcasts, I turned on AM radio (something I rarely do these days). Landed on Sporting News radio, where Dave Harbison was hosting his SNR Pregame show. Apparently he was taking calls on any topic. The first call I heard was about the NHL playoffs. Then the second caller had the following question for Harbison:

“Where do these sports networks come off showing so much poker?”

I’m not making this up. This was just before noon yesterday.

Harbison answered the caller by explaining that the networks need programming, and while he himself didn’t watch poker, enough people apparently did for it to be an acceptable way to fill the time on the sports networks. The caller didn’t like that explanation, and said that since poker didn’t involve athletic ability, he didn’t consider it a sport. “Well, neither does a hot-dog eating contest,” Harbison replied. “But they show that, too.”

Harbison then offered a brief dissertation on media, in which he actually brought up Marshall McLuhan’s famous argument from Understanding Media (first published in 1964) that the “medium is the message.” Although he glossed over most of the particulars of McLuhan’s thesis, Harbison’s essentially seemed to be applying the idea correctly when he said that when in comes to, say, a network like ESPN, the medium itself is more important than the content. As McLuhan states -- I had to pull out my musty copy of Understanding Media to find the quote -- “it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action,” even if the “content” may once in while distract us from that fact.

After a couple of minutes, I sensed the sports talk show host becoming self-conscious about having unintentionally revealed his theoretical chops. He hastily ended the discussion by referring the caller to McLuhan’s book, then took a call about a recent list of the best baseball parks.

I switched off the radio and meditated a bit on what I’d been hearing. When it comes to televised poker, the decision to move the final table to November clearly indicates the relative importance of the “medium” and the “content.” (For more on this point, see Amy Calistri’s wistful post from yesterday, titled “The Way We Were: Computers and Final Tables.”) And while Wise might’ve picked a different example than Twenty One, his point still makes sense -- and perhaps is even more illustrative of this situation than he intended it to be.

Regardless of the content, the medium -- television -- introduces certain requirements in order to survive -- that is, in order to retain its ability to “shape” or “control the scale and form of human association and action.” I think Wise is correct to say the medium demands a certain element of “novelty” or “innovation” or “change” in order to keep viewers engaged. So the content, while relatively less meaningful in and of itself, must nevertheless be constantly manipulated and repackaged so as to keep the relationship between broadcaster and viewer alive.

Of course, as the example of Twenty One aptly demonstrates, it is possible to manipulate the content too much, corrupting it to the point where it is no longer viable for its given medium. Television audiences (and federal officials) could not tolerate an ethically-ambiguous, “scripted” game show in late 1958. Nor would they, I imagine tolerate similar shenanigans were they to happen with the WSOP. (Let’s all hope this change doesn’t invite anything along those lines.)

Then again, audiences won’t tolerate stasis, either. So those who create television shows have to keep changing the content in order to sustain themselves. I suppose there’s a middle ground in there somewhere, where the content continues to be revisited and altered but not to the point where it is no longer acceptable for its given medium.

One thing’s for sure, though. There’s no way to keep everyone happy.

The Name Game

Last week, Gary Wise posted a two-part article about online poker “tells” over on the ESPN Poker Club. In the first part, Wise talks to Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo, Isaac “philivey2694” Haxton, and Todd “DanDruff” Witteles about bet-sizing, timing tells (or “click tells”), and screen names. In the second part, Matt “DaProfessor” Hawrilenko and Mike “Schneids” Schneider also join in to say a bit more about bet-sizing and timing, and even speculate about the significance of a player’s city.

The issue of screen names and their significance is one that’s been discussed before. John Vorhaus wrote about screen names in his Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game (2003). There Vorhaus encouraged readers to choose neutral monickers that “give no hint as to your age, gender, geographical location, level of expertise, or philosophy of play.” As it happens, I think I have done just that with all of my screen names, although as an experiment I did specifically choose a female username for one site. “Over time your choice of screen name probably won’t make a huge money difference,” writes Vorhaus, “but why give anything away?” Others have written on the subject as well, including Dr. Pauly whose “Guide to Online Poker Screen Names” appeared in Poker Player last summer (although I think he wrote about it some time before that).

Anyhow, Haxton says he varies his play “radically” against an unknown based on a player’s screen name. He then lists a number of assumptions he tends to make about names. Says Haxton, someone with a name like “shipmonieslol” or the like “is probably under 30 and probably reads poker forums” and is thus to be regarded as at least a “winning amateur.” Players who choose names of cars, cigars, or drinks (like “laphroaig,” a kind of scotch) are probably over 30. Of such a player, says Haxton (betraying a bit of age-based prejudice, perhaps), “there is a higher than normal chance that he is a fish.”

Certain off-color handles (e.g., those that include crotch jokes) and/or names featuring wacky capitalization (e.g., “AcEsFuLL4346385”) connote aggression for Haxton. He says names including words like “gamble” or “fish” or “rock” are more often than not accurately self-descriptive.

Finally, while not exactly referring to screen names, Haxton believes “anyone who has a picture of their baby as their avatar is terrible at poker.” I suppose Haxton must play a lot on PokerStars, then, the site Wicked Chops dubbed “Best Online Poker Site if You Like Pictures of Children and Dogs” earlier this month.

Following Haxton’s catalogue, Bonomo chimes in to disagree. “A screen name is not a tell,” Bonomo insists, but rather just an occasional encouragement to “stereotype” players (rightly or wrongly). Says Bonomo, screen names are better described as “personality/play style indicators” than as tells.

If I had to choose, I’d lean toward Bonomo’s line here, although frankly I would say most screen names aren’t “indicators” of much at all, with a few exceptions, perhaps. I suppose names containing “1989” or “pimp” or “420” may well tell us something about the player which may or may not relate to how he or she plays poker. But generally I’m not going to fashion a strategy -- or vary my play “radically” -- based solely on the nick.

I will admit, however, that certain names do occasionally suggest something to me about the player’s level of education and/or intelligence. Have played several sessions of H.O.R.S.E. over the last few weeks with a guy named after a Dostoevsky character. A decent player, as far as I can tell, although I’d already been inclined to think he had something going on upstairs just from his name.

A couple of months ago I played with someone named “rhizome.” If I remember correctly, he asked me something about my avatar, and after a bit he and I ended up in a brief chat about the late Gilles Deleuze. Again, even before our chat I’d already suspected the guy might’ve picked up a book once in a while.

Not saying, of course, that if someone’s screen name happens to be a character from a Russian novel or a term used by a French philosopher that automatically means that person knows how to play poker. But I tend to assume these folks are thinkers, at least. And thinkers usually have a better chance at figuring out how to play poker than most.

Then again, there are certain things about which one can probably think too much.

Sunshine & Lollipops

I mentioned a few weeks back how I enjoy listening to Wise Hand Poker, Gary Wise’s weekly podcast over on Rounder’s Radio. I never catch the show live -- indeed, I don’t ever catch any of these poker shows live -- I just grab the downloads whenever they become available. So while I assume he had a new show last night, I only listened to last week’s show (the 3/26 episode) yesterday.

It was a good one, in my opinion, with two more thorough, fairly absorbing interviews. The first was with John Caldwell, Editor-in-Chief of PokerNews. Wise and Caldwell talked at length about the current state of poker media, coverage of the Absolute Poker scandal, exclusivity deals (e.g., for covering the WSOP or WPT), among other topics. The second guest was Andy Bloch who shared a lot of interesting observations about the new film 21 and the book on which it was based, Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House. Was quite intriguing to hear Bloch discuss the huge differences between what actually happened with the M.I.T. blackjack team and how the story has mutated (quite wildly, in some particulars) into its various fictional forms.

Getting back to the first interview, though, there was one observation made by Caldwell that I found especially insightful -- something that brought together a couple of different ideas I had explored here before, but which in itself struck me as something I hadn’t necessarily consciously considered (nor written about, of course).

I’ve written several times here about the poker media and the various (mostly commercial) reasons why it often fails to be “objective” -- or at least reasonably free and unrestrained -- when covering the poker world. Wasn’t that long ago I was discussing that issue in an earlier post about Wise Hand Poker in which I reflected on some of Wise’s interview with Linda Johnson. Johnson had told Wise about her experience as the publisher and owner of CardPlayer back in the 1990s, and her notion that part of her role was to be “a ‘good will’ part of the industry,” an idea she mainly connected to the fact that advertisers wouldn’t support the magazine otherwise.

I’ve also written here more than once about the way poker is viewed by much of the general population as objectionable. Probably the most recent attempt to address that subject was about a month ago when I wrote “On the Poker Haters.” There I discussed a few of the many reasons why folks tend to denigrate poker as a disreputable activity.

During the show, Wise brought up the tendency of some poker media outlets to gloss over or suppress negative stories about particular players or other occurrences. Then he asked Caldwell for his thoughts on the subject. This is where Caldwell made that point I thought brought together a couple of earlier interests of mine.

Caldwell said that with regard to poker, “I try very hard to -- at least within some parameters of responsibility -- portray things in a positive light. Reason being, I feel like there are a lot of people out there that would like to see . . . that consider poker not okay. [If] the surge in the popularity of poker waned, they would like to see all of that stuff go away. So as a result, I’m going to do what I can to try to promote the game and try to put the game into a positive light . . . .”

I suppose I have always been aware of this idea -- this need, really -- for those who cover poker to remain aware of poker’s negative reputation (particularly among non-poker players). The idea is certainly related to the more practical concern of keeping advertisers happy. However, I think it is safe to say Caldwell is really thinking not so much here about the bottom line as about the big picture.

The truth of the matter is there are a lot of “poker haters” out there, and many are certainly on the lookout for further evidence to support their point of view. It makes sense, then, for those who cover poker to want to promote the game as a legitimate pastime/recreation/career. And I like Caldwell’s additional qualification that it is okay to do so “within some parameters of responsibility” -- another “big picture”-type point to make.

Wise responded by asking Caldwell when he thought we were going to be able to know that poker had gotten past this stage in its development -- this stage of poker media needing to try to promote the game as well as simply report on it -- and therefore stop delivering what he called the “sunshine and lollipops version of the game.” (Wise admitted that he himself is guilty at times of coloring the game in a perhaps overly-rosy light, too.) Unfortunately, the conversation moved into another direction and the pair did not return to the question.

If I were asked that question, I’d probably say that will happen only when poker becomes accepted into society as readily as other games, sports, and/or forms of popular entertainment. In other words, not any time soon -- indeed, probably not ever. The fact is, as long as poker continues to be regarded as a shady activity that provokes bitter reactions, those who cover it are gonna find at least some sunshine and lollipops to be necessary.