Poker and Sports (and Fun and Games)

Earlier this week Victoria Coren Mitchell was interviewed over on PokerNews about various topics, one of which was the participation of no less than 22 men in this year’s women’s event at EPT11 Deauville. You might have heard about the men overrunning that event, with one of them eventually winning. In fact there were but 83 total entrants in the €200 buy-in tournament, meaning men made up more than one-fourth of the field.

I’ve written here before on several occasions about the subject of men playing in tournaments designated as women’s events. In fact I’ve even written about Coren Mitchell’s opinions about the subject, a post occasioned by my having covered the Ladies Event at the 2012 WSOP when around 10 men participated, as did Coren. That was before she would add Mitchell, and before the WSOP would add that inflated 10x price tag to the event for men wanting to play.

To summarize that earlier discussion, both she and I find the men playing in ladies events a huge bummer, a point of view she reiterated in the interview this week. There was another point she made at the end of the interview, however, that I found newly thought-provoking, something that came up in the context of discussing the Hendon Mob database.

Coren Mitchell has known the Hendon Mob guys from way back, having participated in the old forum, written columns in the past for the site, and also shared many funny anecdotes about them in her excellent poker memoir, For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair With Poker.

In her comments she somewhat laments the Hendon Mob site’s having been taken over by the Global Poker Index group, primarily because it disconnects the site from what it once was (and from her friends the Boatmans, Joe Beevers, and Ram Vaswani). “It was all a bit of fun, and now they are not involved in it anymore,” she says.

Continuing from there, Coren Mitchell speaks directly to the effort by the GPI and Alexandre Dreyfus to “sportify” poker.

“If the website is trying to seriously make poker a sport, I think they may have lost some of the comedy of the enterprise,” suggests Coren Mitchell. “But it doesn’t matter. Is snooker a sport? Is darts a sport? Is chess a sport? I don’t think it’s an important question, really.”

Again I’m finding myself agreeing with Coren Mitchell, sharing the same ambivalence about arguments over poker being or not being a “sport” (something else I’ve written about before.) But the idea that focusing on poker’s sport-like elements could potentially drain some of the “comedy” or fun from the game isn’t necessarily something I’d considered before.

I can see the point -- that is, how heightening the significance of competition perhaps diminishes that of community, thus (potentially) making things more serious and less fun. But it’s an idea I’ll need to think about further before deciding if I agree.

What do you think? Whatever your thoughts might be about efforts to “sportify” poker, do you think those efforts might in some way serve to reduce “the comedy of the enterprise”?

Managing the Mob

Noticed yesterday that the excellent Hendon Mob website had finally taken down all of those Full Tilt Poker banners and ads, effectively ending its long-standing association with the embattled website. The four players who made up the actual Hendon Mob -- Joe Beevers, Barny Boatman, Ross Boatman, and Ram Vaswani -- have announced they are no longer FTP “Red pros” as well.

Some may have viewed the Hendon Mob site as having been a bit slow with their decision to make the break with Full Tilt. After all, it has been over five months since Black Friday, and nearly three months since the online poker site went offline altogether following the Alderney Gambling Control Commission’s suspension of Full Tilt Poker’s license to operate in late June.

One reason why some might have found the Hendon Mob’s response to have been a little sluggish here was the fact that in most respects the Mob has been way ahead of curve for a long time.

In For Richer, For Poorer, Vicky Coren tells the story of the early days of the Hendon Mob -- how the group formed, its connection with the early days of Late Night Poker, the launching of the website (back in 2001), and how the four Mobsters managed to be among the earliest poker players around to secure any sort of sponsorship.

Coren notes how the group from very early on had “small bankrolls and big dreams” -- that unlike others they had “ambitions beyond the card-playing itself.” Then she tells how it wasn’t long after Chris Moneymaker’s victory in the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event that they were able to realize those ambitions, soon inking “the first million-dollar contract in poker” to wear logos for Prima Poker. That relationship lasted a couple of years, I believe, after which point the Mob became absorbed by the ever-expanding throng over at Full Tilt.

Back in the spring I had a lot of fun interviewing Jesse May for Betfair Poker. Among our many topics we talked about the debut of Late Night Poker (in 1999) and those early, pre-Moneymaker days. The interview appears in two parts (Part 1 & Part 2) -- it is in the second that we focused more on the show and May’s involvement.

If you click over there you’ll see May allude to the Hendon Mob guys as also an important part of the scene there in the late 1990s/early 2000s. I’m remembering May making further observations -- ones which ended up on the cutting room floor as far as the published interview went -- regarding how clever and forward-thinking the Hendon Mob guys were when it came to formulating their identity and landing those early sponsorships.

That said, I can understand how difficult it was for them finally to take down the ads -- to accept at last that whatever the future holds for the Hendon Mob, a continued association with Full Tilt Poker probably isn’t going to be part of it.

In their statement from yesterday, they lament what has become of FTP. “We are saddened by the problems that continue to beset Full Tilt Poker” they say, adding almost wistfully that they “would be delighted to see positive developments in the weeks and months ahead” for the site. Perhaps news from today’s hearing with the AGCC will further such hope, but one gets the sense from the Mob’s tone that it’s hard to be overly optimistic at this point.

Over the last decade-plus, the Hendon Mob site has grown considerably, with that database of tourney results now its unquestioned highlight -- the part of the site most of us visit on a regular basis.

Kind of funny how early on the “Hendon Mob” consisted of just the four players, only a couple of whom were from Hendon, apparently. (By the way, Coren explains how the name is kind of an in-joke, Hendon being a decidedly non-frightening north London suburb where she used to watch Disney films at the cinema.) But soon the “Mob” grew to refer additionally to the many forum participants and others who wrote for the site. And today the phrase “the Hendon Mob” is synonymous with the database, that massive collection of names and statistics that, well, includes just about everybody.

As you might imagine, they do have a lot of folks working for them over there. In the statement they point out how the site “employs a sizable staff of full and part time people” who maintain the database, and that they are “currently running at a substantial loss and this is not sustainable in the long term.”

By ending what had been an exclusive relationship with FTP, they explain, the site is now free to explore “new opportunities” -- e.g., another sponsorship that would enable them to continue with their considerable contribution to the poker world.

As someone who writes about poker regularly, I’d hate to see the tremendous resource that the Hendon Mob provides go away. Thus do I hope some entity might find it worthwhile enough to step and sponsor the Mob. ’Cos, in a way, we’re the Mob, too!

On the All-Time Money List

Well, things didn’t work out so well for Mr. Moneymaker yesterday at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event. Still sitting in second place with 16 left, a rapid tumble resulted in the 2003 WSOP ME champ begin eliminated in 11th. Ana Marquez, the leader entering play yesterday, also fell short of making tomorrow’s final table, finishing in 10th.

Chris Moneymaker earned $130,000 for his finish, which will bring his overall total tourney winnings to just under $3.2 million. Still keeps him well outside the Top 100, according to Hendon Mob’s current rankings. You need to have at least $3.55 million to be in that exclusive club.

I found myself looking back at that “All-Time Money List” some this week, inspired to do so after Daniel Negreanu reclaimed the top spot following his second-place finish in the “Super High Roller” event at the PCA. The $1 million Negreanu earned there catapulted him back ahead of Phil Ivey and into first. At the moment, Hendon Mob lists Negreanu as having $14,116,192 in career tourney winnings, Ivey next with $13,859,944, and Jamie Gold in third with $12,231,105.

Like Moneymaker, the great majority of Gold’s earnings came from his WSOP Main Event win, with his $12 million first prize in 2006 still the largest amount ever won in a poker tournament. That win put Gold in first for more than three years before Negreanu passed him in September 2009 following his runner-up finish at the WSOP Europe Main Event. Ivey then passed Negreanu during the Aussie Millions in January 2010, sitting in first for nearly a year before Kid Poker took the lead once more.

For many reasons, the list obviously cannot be regarded as an unambiguous indicator of poker ability or greatness. It only tracks live tourney winnings. And it only considers cashes, not taking buy-ins into account. Marcus Bateman wrote a little something about this latter point this week in a short piece on the all-time list. And Negreanu himself pointed out several of the drawbacks of the list, too, during his interview on the Two Plus Two Pokercast this week (Episode 155, 1/10/11).

They discussed the all-time list some over on The Poker Beat this week, too (the 1/11/11 episode). There Scott Huff brought up an interesting issue related to the list, namely what appears to be the difficulty most players will necessarily have in their efforts to challenge the current leaders.

“It does seem like it’s going to be tough for someone who doesn’t have huge sponsorship dollars behind them or is hugely successful in poker to the point where they are really a brand in and of themselves to really compete on an all-time list,” said Huff, referring in particular to events such as the “Super High Roller” at the PCA which sported a $100,000 buy-in and thus necessarily excluded all but those with the highest bankrolls and/or most backing.

In other words, the guys at the top (like Negreanu and Ivey) are obviously better suited to play in big buy-in events than are folks positioned further down the list, and thus are going to have more opportunities to make million-dollar scores like Negreanu did earlier this week.

Gary Wise responded smartly to the observation (I thought), noting that “those guys [like Negreanu and Ivey] have earned the right to be playing at the higher stakes,” and while there may be other flaws with regard to the list being a true ranking of poker players, there wasn’t anything especially unfair about the guys at the top using their big bankrolls to build further on their record-setting totals.

The exchange made me think about how the issue being discussed kind of reflected what happens all the time in poker -- namely, that having the big stack at the table is always advantageous, giving one more options and often putting one in a better position to increase one’s stack (and by more) than is the case for the smaller stacks. Happens every day at my small-stakes PLO tables where I always buy in for the maximum, immediately enjoying an edge over those content to try to battle with smaller stacks.

All in all, though, I guess I find the list only mildly curious -- a good conversation-starter, perhaps, but not much more.