The Professionals Leave the Table

Today Full Tilt Poker announced they aren’t renewing sponsorship contracts with Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Gus Hansen, thereby jettisoning the last two sponsored pros from the site. Also gone (apparently) is the name originally given to the site’s “power trio” of sponsored pros -- Blom, Hansen, and Tom Dwan -- shortly after the launch of FTP 2.0 in November 2012: “The Professionals.”

Dwan left the band in December 2013. I wrote here then how the occasion inspired “thoughts of how the whole idea of poker celebs -- that different class of poker ‘professionals’ -- once such a very effective construct of online sites and abetted ably by the TV shows the sites sponsored, seems like something from an earlier era.”

Today’s news moves the needle even less. Hansen has long remained a figure of interest to many thanks to his win in the very first televised World Poker Tour event way back in 2002, his high-level involvement with FTP as a member of Team Full Tilt, and his continued participation in the “nosebleed” stakes games on the site where he’s reportedly lost over $20 million, including more than $17 million on the site during the last two years (according to High Stakes DB).

Blom, too, has fascinated many ever since the mysterious “Isildur1” showed up to challenge all of those Team Full Tilters and the rest of the world in late 2009. I’ve written here many times about Blom, including how intriguing it was to report on him at the WSOP. High Stakes DB shows Blom sitting around break-even during his almost two years playing on FTP 2.0, having been up nearly $6 million during the first six or seven months before falling back down to where he was on the site back in November 2012 (down a few milly).

The last post I wrote here about Hansen was in January 2013 when just a couple of months after FTP 2.0 went live he fired off some tone-deaf tweets in defense of Howard Lederer that were dismissive of just about the entire online poker community. The title of that post, “Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High,” suggests how his thoughts were received here. The last one I wrote about Blom was right about the same time, the title of which was a response to enthusiastic tweets from the FTP account reporting his presence at the high-stakes tables on the site: “Blasé About Blom.” Again, the title is an indicator of the attitude expressed in the post.

Today the dissolution of “The Professionals” altogether brings a different thought to mind about the significance of sponsored pros to online sites. I actually think they can serve a great purpose, even today, not just in helping attract players and building sites’ presence, but in helping to advocate for poker, generally speaking. The Team PokerStars Pros are an obviously well managed example of this, with players all over the world doing a lot to help explain and promote poker to wider audiences in their respective countries.

I’m realizing today, though, that FTP’s “Professionals” idea -- a dim echo of Team Full Tilt from the start -- had very little to do with establishing and strengthening connections among members of an online poker community. Rather, its whole ethos was to emphasize the impassable distance between Hansen, Blom, and Dwan and the unwashed masses.

The spectacle of watching “The Professionals” play for high stakes was mildly diverting for some, but hardly inspiring for most, particularly given the seeming apathy -- or even antipathy (in Hansen’s case) -- they appeared to have for the poker community as a whole.

In fact, the news of the end of the “The Professionals” makes me think of what a table full of amateurs might say to each other after a pro player finally gets up to leave after having made things difficult for them for the previous several hours.

“Glad he’s gone.”

Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High

A little over a week ago, Gus Hansen fired off three tweets from his Twitter account.*

The first came on Christmas evening. “Never underestimate stupid people in large groups,” wrote Hansen, cryptically adding that an “explanation will follow.” Without any context -- and given the date of posting -- it initially came off like some sort of complaint about Christmas shoppers or perhaps some weird, unflattering reference to religion.

But Hansen wasn’t talking about either, as he made clear with a second tweet about 20 minutes later, then a third the following morning:



Talk about Christmas spirit! In less than 280 characters, one of the new Full Tilt Poker’s ambassadors -- or “Professionals,” as they’ve dubbed them -- offered a sweeping condemnation of pretty much the entire poker community, characterizing those who are critical of Howard Lederer and his involvement in the Full Tilt Poker fiasco as “stupid,” needing to “get a fu**ing grip,” and perhaps so deeply under the spell of a couple of other poker pros that they are unable to form opinions of their own.

It’s a strange, highly off-putting message Hansen has sent the poker community. My first thought when reading the tweets was to think how utterly far removed Hansen’s world is from the one I inhabit, and I’m not just talking about the way he routinely wins and loses millions within the space of mere days or even hours. No, it’s a complete disconnect, a huge divide over which something resembling “sympathy” has little chance of crossing.

Seriously, how could Hansen sympathize with anyone whose bankroll of a few hundred -- or a few thousand, or even tens of thousands -- has been inaccessible for what is now going on two years (as is the case for us American players)?

Among the responses to Hansen’s tweet was a predictably diffuse 2+2 thread, a thoughtful commentary by Haley Hintze for Flushdraw, and an expression of justifiable bafflement from Dan Katz over at PokerNews Daily. There was also some back-and-forthing on Twitter, too -- mostly anti-Gus, though not entirely.

Meanwhile, Daniel Negreanu posted his most recent YouTube “rant” yesterday, and when I dialed it up I half-expected to hear some sort of rejoinder to Hansen’s suggestion that Negreanu’s influence in Lederer-related matters is suspect. In fact, Negreanu doesn’t even mention Hansen in his video, and instead begins by listing as a “number one goal” for the new year “to do everything I can to help the poker community be shed in a much better light than it was in 2012 and 2011... and also the people in it.”

Negreanu goes on to explain his meaning, that really he’s thinking primarily of certain individuals who have gotten “off track” somehow and become destructive to themselves or to others in the poker community. Even so, it’s hard not to hear an extreme contrast between the messages of Negreanu (to engage and unite) and Hansen (to divide and estrange).

When I think of this disconnect between the great majority of us -- we “amateurs” or recreational players who love poker yet do not experience the game in the way “Professionals” like Hansen do -- I think back to how things were five or six years ago, during the height of the “boom” in online poker. Even though it was all mostly illusory, there was nonetheless a real sense felt by most of us pushing quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies back and forth online that we really did have something in common with players like Hansen and others we saw on television or railed online.

In truth, this idea of a connection between the pros and the rest of the poker community was part of FTP’s marketing strategy as it helped to concoct the Frankenstein monster known as the “poker celebrity.” Sure, in retrospect it is easier to see how such a ploy was probably driven more by ad-exec-inspired, promotional phony baloney than by genuine community building, but it nonetheless worked. We heeded the call to “learn, chat, and play with the pros.” Even if the connection was more perceived than actual, the sense that we were all playing the same game improved the experience for many.

When Full Tilt Poker 2.0 launched, reports soon followed that Hansen was losing hundreds of thousands within the first few days. According to HighStakes Database (from which that graphic to the left comes), Hansen lost $1.84 million on Full Tilt Poker in November, then about $1.4 million more in December. Hansen additionally lost over $1 million on PokerStars during 2012 (as “broksi”). And he has dropped another $100K during the first two days of 2013 on FTP, too.

As a Team Full Tilter, Hansen earned big time dividends throughout FTP’s rise and fall. Haley points out how “Hansen should clearly know by now that a good chunk of what he was paid -- from late 2010 until Black Friday -- came during a period when Howard Lederer knew that Full Tilt Poker was underwater, with hundreds of millions in unpaid debt and uncollected deposits.”

In other words, while there’s no emotional connection left between Gus Hansen and most of us (the “stupid people in large groups” who played on Full Tilt Poker), there is still one other way we might connect ourselves with the “Great Dane.”

It has to do with the $159 million or so U.S. players thought they had in their accounts on the morning of April 15, 2011. (You’re welcome, Gus.)

*At the time this post was written, Hansen’s verified Twitter account had been under the “@RealGusHansen” handle. Soon after it was changed to simply “@GusHansen,” where one can still read the three tweets discussed above here, here, and here.

Full Tilt Poker Relaunch Soon (No Shinola)

Full Tilt Poker 2.0 is happening. In less than a month, the site will be relaunched under the auspices of PokerStars. Soon players around the world will be back at the FTP tables, reanimating their geckos and pandas and gnomes and other avatars (I assume) in real money games.

It wasn’t that long ago that the prospect of Full Tilt Poker actually reopening seemed as far-fetched as oh, I don’t know, a team winning a football game by throwing a game-ending interception.

Then again, following his recent media-blitz-cum-absurdist-theater performance of a couple of weeks ago, Howard Lederer is now back at the tables in Vegas playing $400/$800 mixed games.

How did we get here? Well, to borrow a line delivered by the “Professor” character in “The Lederer Files” (Act I, Scene 1), “something weird happened.”

When the Department of Justice first amended the civil complaint in September 2011 and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara described the site as “not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme,” it was hard to imagine any sequence of events that could result in an FTP comeback.

That sense remained evident pretty much all through that whole uncertain pas de deux between the site and Groupe Bernard Tapie that followed the DOJ’s amendment, when the idea of the site actually being purchased, relicensed, and revived somehow continued to appear a distant prospect at best.

And even after rumors regarding PokerStars entering the picture began swirling in April of this year, for most it wasn’t until the official confirmation of such and estimates regarding the date of an FTP relaunch were starting to be made at the end of July that FTP’s return seemed a real possibility.

And it’s happening, all right. Last month some players in non-U.S. countries began receiving emails from FTP regarding their accounts. PokerStars then began rolling out procedures for those non-U.S. folks to follow in order to access their funds.

Last week came news that Team Full Tilt member Gus Hansen was being tapped as the “first brand ambassador” for the relaunched site. A couple of days ago we learned that after having its licenses suspended and then revoked by the Alderney Gaming Control Commission last year, FTP has been granted a new online gaming license by the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission (the same group that has licensed PokerStars since 2005). Heck, they’ve even announced dates for FTOPS XXI -- picking back up Full Tilt’s popular online tourney series -- scheduled for the first half of December.

All systems are go, then, regarding the targeted relaunch date of Tuesday, November 6. Alas, along with players in a few other countries (Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Italy, and Spain), Americans won’t be able to reopen their accounts and play real money games on Full Tilt Poker that day.

We will, however, be able to vote for candidates running for president, House and Senate seats, and local offices as it just so happens November 6 is also Election Day here in the U.S. A few will grimly note some vague irony tucked away inside that juxtaposition.

Even though Full Tilt will operate as a distinct site and not as a “skin” of PokerStars or part of the same network, its position in the online poker market will nonetheless be as a kind of Stars subsidiary, a highly visible and important complement to the primary site which according to PokerScout currently enjoys “around 50% market share.” In other words, as far as the business side of things is concerned, the online poker “game” should be affected considerably by FTP’s return.

Should prove an interesting game tto watch. Which is what we mostly do here in the U.S. at present when it comes to online poker. Watch.

Gus Goes For Gold

The World Series of Poker Europe continues to intrigue, with that “high roller” Event No. 4 -- the £10,350 no-limit hold’em heads-up event -- now down to just four from the starting field of 103.

In just a little while they’ll be starting the final day of that one. The always smiling Jim “Mr_BigQueso” Collopy will play Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani in one semifinal match, while Andrew “Not the ESPN guy” Feldman goes against Gus Hansen. The winners will then play a best-of-three match to determine who gets the bracelet.

Incidentally, the structure for the WSOPE heads-up event is similar to that used this summer at the WSOP, only less one round. That is to say, players are taking chips won to subsequent matches, meaning the finalists today will start with nearly two million chips. (I wrote something about this format earlier this week.)

Both Collopy and Feldman are gunning for their first WSOP bracelets, while Vaswani is trying to land his second. Of course, all eyes will be on Hansen today to see if he can land his first bit of WSOP gold.

Hansen has been the focus of a lot of attention of late for his massive online losses. I wrote some about the subject not long ago. Apparently he dropped another $3 million on Full Tilt Poker in August alone!

Gloria Balding of PokerNews interviewed Hansen a couple of days ago just prior to the heads-up event. Pretty interesting stuff, actually, with Hansen not being shy at all about addressing his recent online woes.

Hansen recently suffered an injury to his Achilles’ tendon, and it sounds like his mobility has been limited somewhat as he must wear a walking cast for six weeks, then go through some rehab. “Good thing you play online poker,” said Balding in the interview. “No, right now it's actually a very bad thing that I play online poker,” said Hansen with a kind of weary-looking grin, alluding to how badly things have gone for him there of late.

A little later Hansen talked about dealing with losing and acknowledged that it “takes its toll,” sometimes causing one to play worse and thus extend the downswing. He also noted that he’s been gambling for 18 years -- including a lot of high-stakes action not just in poker, but in backgammon and a Russian game called “hachi-puri” also played on a backgammon board (not sure about the spelling of that) -- and so has become well acclimated to handling losses.

“In the beginning it was tough when you lost 50 bucks,” says Hansen. “Then it was tough when you lost 500 bucks. And so forth. So you kind of get used to it.”

Hansen goes on to draw an analogy with acting and how some may begin their careers being nervous to perform in front of crowds, but gradually grow accustomed to doing so. Like I say, an interesting interview -- check it out.

Hansen is, of course, a fairly well-renowned backgammon player who may well be offsetting some of these poker losses in those other games, even though they are less readily available for him to play, especially for high stakes.

(By the way, if you are yearning for more Hansen video, take a look at this absurdly dramatic introduction by Hansen to the rules of backgammon.)

After receiving a bye in the first round of the WSOPE heads-up event, Hansen has defeated Max Steinberg, Mark Everett, Phil Ivey, and Neil Channing to make it to the semifinals. Hansen was incredibly lucky in the match with Ivey, who had about a 4-to-1 chip advantage at one point and had Hansen all in and drawing to just two outs, one of which came to save the Great Dane.

Not necessarily rooting for Hansen today, but I do think his being there in the final four adds a lot of interest to the event. And of course if he does win, that’ll make a good story -- as would his subsequent return to the online high-stakes games which one assumes would inevitably follow.

The WSOPE Main Event (£10,350 NLHE, Event No. 5) gets started today, too -- in fact, it is already underway -- so I’ll probably once again be checking in frequently on those reports over at PokerNews. Will also be looking in over at the World Poker Tour live updates some today, where the final table of WPT Borgata kicks off a little later.

But as I imagine will be the case for most poker-watchin’ peoples, it’s gonna be Gus who’ll get most of the attention today.

Gus Can’t Get Up

I mentioned last post I was a child of the ’70s. Therefore, I saw pretty much any Disney film produced during that era in the theater. In fact, I’m remembering there was always some sort of summer movie series for kids each year to occupy us little brats during those hot months when school was out.

As a result, whenever I hear the name “Gus” I instinctively think of the goofball 1976 film of that title. If you’re of a certain age, you remember it. That’s the one with Don Knotts and the place-kicking mule named Gus. The California Atoms are the worst football team around until they bring in Gus to kick 100-yard field goals for them.

That’s right -- nothing in the rule book preventing the Atoms from suiting up a mule. “Oych!” said the mule's owner (I think), which triggered Gus to kick. I haven’t seen the movie since I was a kid, but I remember it being a good time-waster.

Realized I was thinking of Gus the mule yesterday when reading those stories online about poor Gus Hansen and his monstrous downswing online at Full Tilt Poker. I followed the link from Wicked Chops over to Poker King’s site where I read the sad details.

Man, oh man. Hansen is running worse than the California Atoms were!

The numbers are staggering. According to the Poker King (compiling info from HighStakesDB.com), Hansen is down almost $7 million since the start of 2008. He was a loser in 2007 as well -- in the hands that were tracked, anyway -- meaning since 1/1/07 he’s down something like $7.7 million.

It sounds like Hansen began both 2009 and 2010 with winning months, but slid soon thereafter, falling back into negative territory. All told, Hansen’s account is the biggest loser on the site since 1/1/08. Apparently Cirque du Soleil founder and everyone’s favorite whale Guy Laliberte has donated more on FTP via three different accounts -- like $15 million -- but the “Gus Hansen” account is overall down more than any other.

The reddest pro, you might call him. Oych!

Hard to imagine, really. Makes me think of that “Not Real Poker” line Mike Matusow delivered back in the spring with reference to those nosebleed-stakes Isildur1 games.

Probably my favorite stat among those shared by the Poker King is the one pointing out that over the course of nearly 850,000 tracked hands played by Hansen on Full Tilt over the last three-and-a-half years, he’s lost an average of $9 per hand.

Hanging out at the low stakes as I do, I’ll admit I get a little perturbed when I lose $9 in a hand online. Perhaps a bit feisty when it happens twice. And downright distressed after the third time. That’s about when I usually decide it isn’t my day and sign off.

But to play 850,000 hands, losing an average of $9 per?! Someone would have to be very stubborn to keep that up.

You know, stubborn as a... well, something that’s really stubborn.