Generous to a Fault? “All In” the Way You Look at It

An interesting “what would you do?”-type poker discussion to share with you, if you haven’t seen it already.

It starts over on the PokerStars blog where Lee Jones, Head of Poker Communications, recently published a post called “Letting one off the hook.”

There Jones describes playing in a $1/$2 cash game and having the good fortune of flopping an ace-high flush versus a lone opponent. His leading bet was called, then after Jones still had the nuts following the turn card, he bet again and this time was raised. At that Jones reraised back, his opponent announced “all in,” and Jones quickly called, showing his cards.

That’s when the story becomes interesting enough to write a post about. Upon seeing Jones’s hand, his opponent then claims not to have said “all in.” Meanwhile the dealer had heard him say it, and after the floor was called another player said he heard it, too.

Skipping ahead a bit, in the face of all the growing hubbub Jones ultimately decides to let his opponent “off the hook” and not be forced to go all in, with Jones just taking what was in the middle as if the player had folded and not shoved. Jones explains he honestly didn’t think the player was trying to angle shoot, but he doesn’t spell out all the reasons why he thinks that way.

It’s a nice story, and like most I tend to like these hearing such tales of good sportsmanship in poker and in other contexts. But yesterday Rob of Rob’s Vegas and Poker Blog posted a response to Jones’s post in which he respectfully suggests Jones should not have been so generous.

In “He Let This One Off the Hook -- But Should He Have?” Rob points out how letting his opponent wiggle his free negatively affects the integrity of the game. “If we allow someone to say ‘all-in’ and not really mean it, the game falls apart,” says Rob. It’s a persuasive point.

As I read both posts, I thought about how in a tournament setting such a situation could never be condoned -- there letting someone call “all in” and then take it back not only affects the players in the hand, but everyone else, too. In a cash game one might argue differently, but as Rob notes it’s still important that everyone abide by the rules, and that the players not be allowed to let each other not follow them when occasions such as this one arises.

When looked at in a vacuum -- i.e., without the session-specific info about the player and situation Jones possessed when making his decision -- I’d lean toward Rob’s way of thinking here when it comes to not letting players “off the hook” like this. Indeed, even imagining extenuating circumstances, I think it’d be hard for me to imagine justifying allowing someone not to have to commit chips after verbally agreeing to do so.

Anyhow, check out both posts and decide for yourself.

Image: “IMG_4600” (adapted), Stewardship - Transforming Generosity. CC BY 2.0.

Correcting the Zoom

Noticed a little earlier today that PokerStars has responded to complaints regarding that Zoom Challenge event at the PCA. As some may have heard, an issue came up near the end of the event regarding the tourney’s fairness, and it appears Stars is now giving out a number of additional cash prizes in order to try to make things right.

Others have reported on the snafu at length, most inspired to do so following a thread having been started on 2+2 by a player who was unhappy with how the event played out.

To give a quick thumbnail... there was a $1,025 buy-in “Zoom Challenge” event among the 40 on the PCA schedule this year. Unlike a regular multi-table tourney, this one involved having players sit down with an iPad for 12 minutes and play a quick session of no-limit hold’em Zoom on Stars (for play money). The idea was to try to run up a starting stack of 20,000 as high as possible during the allotted time, and in the end those accumulating the biggest stacks divided the prize pool according to a traditional MTT payout schedule.

Players could take part over the course of five days, and near the end of the fifth day trouble arose when several wanted to play at once just before the event was to conclude. A couple of groups of players were subsequently allowed to play at the same time, and in fact there were instances of Challenge players occasionally being seated at the same tables and playing against one another.

Such wouldn’t necessarily have been as big of an issue if not for the fact that play money players on Stars generally play a tight game (you’d be surprised how protective they are of their play money chips), thus making it difficult for the Zoom Challenge players to run up their stacks. But with multiple Challenge players playing against one another, that ensured a better chance for them to find opponents (i.e., each other) willing to shove their stacks.

As it turned out, four of the players who played at the end under these favorable circumstances ended up cashing, although none managed to outchip David Williams (who had played earlier in the week) who ultimately won the event.

Anyhow, after hearing the complaints PokerStars is now awarding prizes to four players who just missed cashing, plus giving some more cabbage to three who did make the money. For a full rundown of what happened and these additional “goodwill payments” being doled out by PokerStars, see Lee Jones’ post in the 2+2 thread.

I followed the reports about the PCA Zoom Challenge with some interest. Back in November when I was in Macau, I had a chance to participate in a kind of trial run of the Zoom Challenge. They had a similar set up there with a “mobile lounge” situated near the tournament area where the Asia Championship of Poker events were playing out. Among the offerings was a version of the Zoom Challenge in which people could play for free with an iPod going to the player amassing the biggest stack, and I took a shot.

I wrote a post on the PokerStars blog about my Zoom Challenge attempt. (That’s a picture of me to the left playing, courtesy Kenneth Lim Photography.) I didn’t win, but did enjoy trying. If you read my post, you’ll see that when I played I busted one time but was allowed to “rebuy” (so to speak) and continue.

I had actually been under the impression that when it came time to run the actual Zoom Challenge at the PCA, there wouldn’t be any rebuying -- that is to say, if you lost your original stack of 20,000, you ended the tourney registering a score of zero. Thus when those complaints came up at the PCA, I was a little surprised to hear how players there were in fact able to continue even after busting their original stacks.

It sounds like from Lee Jones’s post that if they were to try another Zoom Challenge down the road, they’ll get rid of the unlimited rebuy option (or limit players to one rebuy). Seems like that would be a good idea to me.

There may have still been issues at the PCA with multiple players simultaneously participating in the Zoom Challenge even if no rebuys were allowed (e.g., collusion possibilities), and I think they’ll be working to keep that from happening going forward, too. I still think there’s probably something a little weird about having players play events for real money against random play money players on Stars. But I’m glad to see Stars trying to fix a past slip-up and getting things in place to try to avoid any similar mistakes in the future.

Speaking of playing for play money on PokerStars, the first two tournaments of Season 3 of Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games are happening this Sunday night. See the sidebar for more information on this week’s events and joining the league. Season 3 will run through the end of March, and once again I’ll be awarding prizes to the top three finishers in the season’s standings.

Good luck to all. And just so you know, no matter how much you complain, don’t expect any “goodwill payments” to those finishing outside the top three.

Poker Table Ratings Notes Recent Spike in PokerStars’ Aggression Frequency

Yesterday Vera Valmore was showing me a site -- a relatively new one, I think -- that compiles dressage scores in a comprehensive fashion. The site is called Centerline Scores and describes itself as “a tool to assist the United States Dressage community.”

Dressage is a sport in which riders compete at various levels as outlined by the United States Dressage Federation. There are beginner levels (introductory, training, first), intermediate levels (second, third, and fourth), and what are called “FEI” or international levels (Prix St. Georges, Intermediate I & II, and Grand Prix).

If you ride in a USDF test, then, you get judged and receive a score, and like I say you can search for and view such results at Centerline Scores. They apparently have everything going back nearly a decade, plus lots of rides/scores going all of the way back to 1993. I think some or perhaps most of this stuff comes from the USDF website’s own posting of results, but Centerline Scores has sorted it all out for easier access.

You can search the database according to rider or horse. Thus, if you are thinking about hiring a rider as an instructor, you can go find out what sort of scores he or she has gotten and at what levels. Or if you are looking to purchase a horse, you can see whether the horse has competed and how the horse has done at various levels, too. “We’re all about accuracy and transparency,” the site explains.

As Vera showed me the site, I couldn’t help but think of the news this week regarding Poker Table Ratings, that website that for the last few years has made a business out of collecting hand histories from online poker sites and marketing the data to players. In addition to collecting hands, PTR tracks all sorts of statistics from the cash games, too, including results and win rates as well as a host of other items such as a player’s overall skill rating, preflop looseness, aggression frequency, showdown frequency, “tilt tendency,” and on and on.

As you probably heard, PokerStars sent PTR “cease and desist” letters and threatened lawsuits over things like infringing intellectual property rights and other violations of the site’s terms and conditions. Yesterday PTR went offline for a little while, then came back with all of its info on PokerStars players having been removed.

Here’s the latest on it all from PokerFuse. Lee Jones, who currently heads up PokerStars’ Home Games program, also contributed an op-ed over at PokerFuse discussing data-mining sites like PTR and their influence on “the health of the online poker ecosystem.”

Jones brings up a few negatives associated with data-mining sites, including creating unfair advantages for those players who use the data as well as occasionally contributing to an unpleasant experience at the tables when players start citing opponents’ stats in chat boxes. I think most of us who have played online poker at all since the advent of PTR have seen the latter come up now and then.

I first became aware of PTR in 2009 or thereabouts, I believe (the site first went online in early 2008). I remember noting at the time how PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker both tried to forbid players from using PTR while playing, although that was essentially another one of those unenforceable items in the sites’ TOC.

Looking back I see I wrote a post back in January 2010 in which I mentioned having discovered PTR had a pretty thorough, mostly accurate record of my play on their site. I emailed them then to ask that my accounts be removed from searches, but they responded “that feature is not available at this time.” They also told me my request “has been sent to our development team as a possible future enhancement” which I’m guessing inspired a little bit less activity than did PokerStars’ more recent threats.

It’s interesting to compare the site compiling all those scores from USDF rides and something like PTR. Seems like the former is a great asset to riders of all types for a number of reasons, while the latter is just the opposite for most online poker players, in particular the so-called “recreational” ones.

Another obvious difference, of course, is the fact that Centerline Scores provides all of its info free of charge while PTR gave away only some of its data for free while charging for more comprehensive access (thus the intellectual property-related allegation from Stars, I suppose).

That said, tracking sites do potentially provide a kind of independent audit of what’s happening on online poker sites, thus perhaps making it easier to discover any sort of funny business like collusion or bots or “super-user”-like applesauce.

A tough call, I think, trying to find a way to achieve “transparency” for what is by definition a partial information game.

A Mistake at Cake

Kind of a weird story from Cake Poker -- a site on which I do not play, although have thought about opening an account there. Apparently during a microstakes no-limit hold’em hand played yesterday afternoon, the pot was shipped to the wrong player.

The hand involved two players named “dimondidenko” and “d0nkeyk0ng9.” Of course, on Cake one can change one's username once per week, so I suppose these players don't always go by those nicks. I believe the hand was actually played on Doyle’s Room, a skin of Cake.

It was a $0.02/$0.04 game of NLHE, and all the money went in preflop with dimondidenko holding and d0nkeyk0ng9 . The board ran out , yet for some reason the $5.36 pot was not awarded to d0nkeyk0ng9 who rivered the nut flush, but to dimondidenko who ended with a king-high flush.

A thread started on Two Plus Two shortly after the hand occurred, and while at first it appeared the whole thing might be a bunch of applesauce, Lee Jones, Cake Poker Cardroom Manager, quickly jumped on to confirm that “Unfortunately, at the moment, this appears to be real.”

Jones went on to note how “bizarre” the occurrence was to have “have happened this one time out of the tens of millions of hands we've dealt,” adding that “our software people have dropped everything else to track this down.” Jones added that he’d be coming back with an update as soon as they found out what happened with the hand. He later returned to the thread in the early evening to report that Cake was pausing its servers for 20-30 minutes “so we can put some logging in to watch and see if anything happens again.”

The thread continued throughout the night, with some stating their intentions to cash out of Cake, while others used the occasion to voice other complaints about the software. And a few brought up the hand on UltimateBet from December 2008 in which Phil Hellmuth was erroneously awarded a pot in a limit hold’em hand ($400/$800 stakes). If you don’t remember that one, see “Honey, I Was Supposed to Lose That Hand!”

“What a wonderful day in online poker,” added one poster who found the whole situation amusing. “I am still waiting for 2 aces of spades to be dealt. That would be cool.”

That comment made me think of this little time-waster I have on my iPhone called “Heads Up Hold’em” which allows one to play quick NLHE tourneys (with blinds rising every three hands) either against the computer or another player. Generally works pretty well, although once I lost a hand in which I flopped two small pair, but the computer rivered me when the board paired and it held two aces. Then I looked more closely at what my opponent had -- two aces of spades! (See screenshot at left.)

No idea how that happened on the iPhone game. Nor have I much clue how mistakes like the one that apparently happened on Cake Poker yesterday and UB before can occur, although Greylocks offers a good explanation there in the comments to that post about the UB hand that helps demystify things a bit -- check it out.

As far as I know, we still await word this morning of an explanation of what happened at Cake. Not sure how much an incident/story like this will affect Cake’s ability to attract players, or if it even registers much with most. I think everyone appreciates Jones hopping into the thread and immediately showing both that he takes the matter seriously and is desirous to communicate all he can about it -- not exactly the sort of openness we’ve seen previously from others when such situations have arisen on their sites.

I probably won’t be opening an account at Cake soon, not so much because of any worries about the site (at the moment) but mainly because I’m presently content with the sites on which I do play (PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Bodog), both in terms of their functionality, the games they offer, and my experiences with support.

Interesting to think how a mistake like this can happen, though, and perhaps how other, less obvious mistakes (e.g., those that don’t involve the wrongful awarding of a pot to a losing hand) might happen as well without our being aware.

On to other things... like this here big ol’ milestone of a post I have for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

(EDIT [added 2/4/10, 3:30 p.m.]: Lee Jones returned to the thread this afternoon with a further update, plus a promise to send $500 to any player who finds -- and Cake confirms -- that he or she was involved in a hand in which there was a wrongly pushed pot. See here for more.)

(EDIT [added 2/5/10]: More illustration of the right way to handle these situations -- Jones came back on Two Plus Two yesterday with an explanation of how the snafu occurred, plus further info on how Cake plans to handle it [and any future such mistake, should it somehow arise]. Click here to see Jones’ explanation.)

Keeping Track of Those Keeping Track

Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? Used to be just the paranoid few who were afflicted by this malady. But hey, it’s 2010. We may not have hover cars, but we do have Google Earth. And a ton of other ways to leave our footprints -- actual, virtual, etc. -- thus helping others track our every move.

There’s been a lot of talk lately in online poker about the various tools available with which one can track one’s opponents. The big blow-up regarding that Brian Hastings-Isildur1 session from 12/8/09 -- the one in which Hastings took around $4.2 million off the mystery man in less than 3,000 hands of $500/$1,000 heads-up pot-limit Omaha -- had to do with Hastings’ having perhaps benefited from some “data mining” of Isildur1 performed by his CardRunners buddy Brian Townsend (see “Digging for Gold (Mining Isildur1)” for more.)

In a subsequent interview with PokerNews, Isildur1 made known his intention to make a “formal complaint” to the site, Full Tilt Poker, perhaps in an effort to recover his losses, although Tony G’s recent blog post in which he states he might stake Isildur1 seems to suggest the player probably won’t be pursuing the matter. (Tony G also implies there Isildur1 is not, in fact, Viktor Blom.)

If such a grievance were to be pursued, it would be because of the apparent violation of Full Tilt Poker’s “Site Terms” that might have occurred when Townsend shared his findings regarding Isildur1 with Hastings. Such an action perhaps fell under the site’s definition of “an unfair advantage,” namely, “a user accessing or compiling information on other players beyond that which the user has personally observed through his or her own game play.”

Anyhow, it was from following some of the articles and forum threads regarding that incident that I recently became reacquainted with the website Poker Table Ratings. You ever visit this sucker? Wild stuff.

I remember I’d actually visited PTR at least once previously -- for example, to watch a replay of that limit hold’em hand on UltimateBet between Phil Hellmuth and DOUBLEBALLER ($400/$800 stakes) in which Hellmuth was strangely shipped the pot despite having the worst hand. The site had gone online back in the spring of 2008, I believe, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to what exactly it offered. Like I say, the recent debates over Hastings and Isildur1 recently led me back to the site in order to explore it more fully.

I started out doing what I imagine most who visit PTR do when they first open the site -- I looked up myself. Although PTR prevents full access without having signed up for a free account, one can poke around some without registering. Checked out what they had for me from the two sites where I’ve played just about all of my hands here of late, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

Whoa. Looks like just about everything.

According to the site’s FAQs, they’ve only been tracking PLO since October 2009, meaning they’d only had the last three months or so of my play in their database, since that’s been my only game. I have Poker Tracker and so I have my own, fairly thorough record of what I’ve been doing over the last three months against which to match what PTR was saying.

The site correctly shows how I’ve been doing okay at Stars, but not so well at Full Tilt Poker (particularly lately). Some of the FTP losses were mitigated by that bonus I’d been working off over the last month, but that isn’t reflected in the stats. In addition to wins/losses, you can check my relative looseness/aggressiveness, my showdown frequency/winrate, and look at specific hands with my biggest pots won or lost. You can even replay some of my recent sessions in their entirety.

Ooh, whether I’m winning or losing, can’t say I like that too much.

There’s also a way to see my top ten “enemies” and “friends” -- that is, the players against whom I’ve won the most and lost the most since October. Checking PTR’s figures against what I have in Poker, it looks like their list is pretty close to mine. The amounts aren’t exactly the same, and there are a couple of guys in my records that don’t show up in theirs, but on the whole the lists match up pretty closely.

PTR goes so far as to offer to sell you hand histories, too. For example, if I wanted to, I could buy 5 million hands of PLO played on PokerStars, 0.10/0.25 blinds, 3-6 players for $204.75. Pretty sure doing so would mean gaining “an unfair advantage,” wouldn’t you say?

I emailed PTR to ask about blocking my own stats from searches, and they sent a quick reply letting me know “that feature is not available at this time,” although my request “has been sent to our development team as a possible future enhancement.”

Sure.

I also rechecked Full Tilt Poker’s list of prohibited programs and, yes, Poker Table Ratings is one of the ones “Not Permitted During Play.” Then I looked over at PokerStars’ list of “Third Party Tools and Services FAQ” and noticed how they, too, prohibit users from using Poker Table Ratings -- not just during play, but at all times.

Stars actually lists over 50 programs and sites as being out of bounds. The penalty? Well, Stars says if they discover you’re using any of the programs or tools you’ll get a warning. Then, if they find out again, they’ll block Stars from running on your computer. Full Tilt appears to be a little less specific about penalties, but they of course reserve the right to judge each case as they see fit, and “Full Tilt Poker management decisions are final in all matters.”

So I don’t think I’ll be fooling around with Poker Table Ratings anymore, though I imagine some of my opponents will.

Was listening yesterday to the latest episode of the Gambling Tales Podcast (1/2/10) in which Special K and Falstaff finished their interview with Lee Jones, the new poker room manager over at Cake Poker. I haven’t got an account at Cake, but I have to say I’m newly intrigued to get one thanks to the way the site allows one to change one’s Player ID every seven days.

Looks like if you take notes on a player at Cake, those notes remain regardless of the ID change. Still, the feature appears a way to ensure sites like PTR can’t track folks. Not yet, anyway.

What else could sites do to stop the rampant data mining? Seems to me like it wouldn’t be that difficult for sites simply to allow players to “turn off” their names if they wanted to -- that even to have a name could be a choice each user makes much like the choice of avatar or photo. You’d appear at the table as “Seat 1” and appear in hand histories as such, too. Would make it marginally more difficult to track one’s own play, I guess, but virtually impossible for sites like PTR to provide such thorough data. I suppose sites could do a lot of other things, too, such as make it impossible even to observe tables without sitting down -- although there are obvious reasons why they’d prefer not to go to that extreme.

Will have to think about all of this further. As a recreational player, I like to keep close records of my own play and even explore some of the data in Poker Tracker to try to improve. But I can’t say I care much for being watched so closely by PTR -- and not being able to prevent others from having comprehensive access to the same stats whether they’ve played a hand with me or not.

Then again, such is the world in 2010. We’re way beyond 1984. We’re all being watched. Always. Might just have to figure out a way to get used to it.

Shake Some Action

“Shake some action’s what I need to let me bust out at full speed...”

Pulling a Lee Jones today by starting out with a song lyric. Been listening to the Flamin’ Groovies this week. One of the greats, though probably a good number of rock/pop fans don’t even know about ’em. Critics often compared ’em to the Rolling Stones, which I guess is somewhat apt when we’re talking about their earlier discs like Flamingo (1970) and Teenage Head (1971). I’d more quickly suggest Big Star or the Kinks for comparative purposes, though really the Groovies were one of a kind

Shake Some Action comes a bit later -- 1976 -- although it hardly sounds like the mid-seventies. That pulsing, infectious title track sounds like an 80s college hit. Other tracks on the record evoke early 60s Brit pop, though usually even those are tinged with some sort of twist or weird forward-looking element. Probably explains why the Flamin’ Groovies never really rose above cult status. Their timing was way out of kilter with the rest of the world.

I mentioned earlier in the week how I’d only had a limited amount of time here lately to play. Usually short sessions are much better for me, but they also make it difficult to get familiar with others’ styles and/or successfully establish an image of my own to try to exploit.

Have found myself several times this month feeling out of sorts while playing. For a variety of reasons I’ve been becoming too passive and essentially depending on getting good cards and hitting flops to come away even or ahead. Was starting to talk about this feeling some a couple of weeks ago in that post titled “Sometimes the Cards Play Us.”

Have slipped into that funk often enough to recognize some of its characteristics -- a good thing, since that then becomes a first step out of it. I’ll call it “Can’t Win Poker,” a style which essentially prevents you from doing well in a session unless the deck hits you in a particularly gracious and accommodating way (and the other players cooperate, too).

“Can’t Win Poker” manifests itself differently, sometimes depending on the game, though I suspect the primary characteristics of the style are similar no matter if it we’re talking pot-limit Omaha (my game), no-limit hold’em, limit hold’em, or the other games.

For me, in PLO, I start to realize I’m playing “Can’t Win Poker” when the frequency of my preflop raising slows down and perhaps even stops altogether. Then I start finding it hard to bet at pots where I have less than the nuts. Next thing I know, I am getting A-A-x-x in middle position and realize I can’t really raise that, either, as I’ve been playing in a way that essentially signals to all what my holding would be in that spot. I’m also limping in with too many “what-am-I-hoping-for?” hands. You know, those uncoordinated hands where the only way to connect with a flop would be to make a miraculous boat right away, and the likelihood of getting paid for that is minimal.

I think sometimes you can still do okay playing “Can’t Win Poker” if you have enough opponents at the table who are also playing “Can’t Win Poker.” In fact, when I’m running good-slash-playing well, I usually can identify pretty quickly a couple or more such folks and eventually find a spot to move some of their chips over to my stack.

Like I say, I suppose this self-defeating style manifests itself in different ways, say, in other games like NLHE, but probably there also tends to involve an overly passive, card-dependent, transparent approach that necessarily works against one’s goals.

What I’ve started to do when I notice this happening in my PLO games is simply to wait until I’m back in late position, then put in a raise preflop no matter what cards I am holding. Usually the raise gets some to fold, as I’ve been so darn passive. Then I’ll try to play smart postflop, pursuing a hand if it makes sense to do so, but letting it go, too, if need be. In any event, just the act of putting in that raise -- to “shake some action” -- kind of wakes me up and gets me back in the game. Also helps me work on my image, too, as well as perhaps clue me in to how others are playing.

And then, perhaps, I don’t feel so out of kilter -- like the Flamin’ Groovies always were. Check out the clip below. It is from much later (1986), but still a killer version of the tune.

Lee Jones would go back to the song at the end, so I guess I will, too...

“...and I’m sure that’s all you need to make it all right.”

Apocalypse Now?

Played a much more reasonable number of hands this afternoon over on Stars -- 110, to be exact -- and in fact won the same amount I earned the other night playing the fifteen hundred (just over $27). Running really well as of late. Caught some cards today. Also had a couple of bleeders at the tables . . . always helpful. There was the “Dadgummit I'm gonna raise me twelve straight hands and see what happens” guy on one table. Then there was the “What the hell I’ll call down with this here bottom pair ’cause the dude leading out might be insane” guy. (God love ’em all.) Also felt like I was reading the table well, value betting where appropriate, letting go of hands at the right time, etc. On top of the world, as it were . . . .

Too bad the world appears to be ending.

Today most of the sites came forth with official statements regarding the surprise late night passage last Friday by the Senate of the dreaded Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (formerly known at the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act).

I spoke with Party Poker’s customer support today and was informed that the moment President Bush signs the Act into law, American players will no longer be able to play on the site. The customer service representative confirmed for me what I had already read in the statement issued by Party Poker earlier today:

“After taking extensive legal advice, the Board of PartyGaming Plc has concluded that the new legislation, if signed into law, will make it practically impossible to provide US residents with access to its real money poker and other real money gaming sites. As a result of this development, the Board of PartyGaming has determined that if the President signs the Act into law, the Company will suspend all real money gaming business with US residents, and such suspension will continue indefinitely, subject to clarification of the interpretation and enforcement of US law and the impact on financial institutions of this and other related legislation. Access to PartyGaming's online gaming sites for the Group's US free play customers will be unaffected. Access for all of PartyGaming’s non-US customers will also be unaffected.”

The use of the subjunctive there -- “if” Bush signs the Act into law -- is wishful thinking. As sure as a full house beats a flush, Bush will be signing the Act into law. And soon. In other words, the party is over. I’ve already cashed out . . . all but the 46 cents they kept, having rounded my request to the nearest dollar. I’ll consider it a tip.

Another site on which I sometimes play, Interpoker, informed me today that the bonus toward which I was working is no longer available to U.S. players. No matter how far we had progressed on these new player and reload bonuses and/or rewards, they’ve all evaporated into thin air as of now. I haven’t written about Interpoker before, but I do enjoy the site. It hasn’t the traffic of the larger sites, but the software is about as smooth as any I’ve experienced. They have a good selection of games and tourneys, and customer support is always available via phone and (with relative rapidity) via email. So I do recommend ’em to non-American players. But not to us Yanks.

Cryptologic, the corporation that owns Interpoker, has also announced they “will not take wagers from U.S.-based players.” Their statement sounds as though they have already stopped allowing Americans from playing on the site; however, I spoke with their customer support today and they, too, are allowing players to continue to play until the Act is signed into law. The very nice customer support representative told me she wasn’t sure what the plan was once Bush signs the Act, but she thought it very likely they, too, would cease allowing Americans to play on the site. So I’ve withdrawn from there as well. Account balance = $0.00.

In their statement, Full Tilt Poker essentially says they’re not commenting on the situation at present. They “do not expect any immediate impact from the legislation,” citing the 270 days that banks and credit card companies are being allowed to respond to the new law once Bush signs it. Neither has Poker Stars committed to any position regarding the future for American players. Says Lee Jones, the Poker Room Manager for Stars, “We have not made a decision one way or another as regards closing our American accounts.”

Not too long ago, I had nearly emptied my Full Tilt account and pumped those funds over to Stars in order to maximize the WCOOP reload bonus. So I’ve only a pittance sitting over there. I have more in Stars and will probably leave it there for the time being.

It is quite remarkable how few seem to have anticipated the poker sites’ response to the Senate passing the Act. On forums and podcasts there were frequent references to the part of the Act that disallows online gaming sites from accepting payments via U.S. banks & vice-versa. Most commentators characterized such restrictions as largely impotent, given the fact that most American players use Neteller, Firepay, and other (non U.S.-based) third-party vendors to transfer money to the sites. Few seemed to have worried much at all about the part of the Act that places a so-called “burden” on internet service providers to block online gaming sites, perhaps with good reason. In their earlier commentary on the Act, CardPlayer called that latter part of the act “an unenforceable nightmare for all involved.” I still think they are right on that score. I genuinely cannot imagine federal agents actually coming to get ISPs for allowing access to poker sites. Or poker blogs, for that matter . . . .

But not once did I hear or read anyone discuss the possibility that has actually occurred -- that the poker sites would back down by blocking American players. I’m sure someone on the 2+2 Forums somewhere along the way floated this possibility, but I never read it. Nor did any of CardPlayer’s many commentaries even suggest this might happen. Indeed, Allyn Jaffrey Shulman’s article from July 12th now sounds hopelessly naïve on the entire subject. There Shulman confidently wrote “I will reiterate what I have predicted every year for about the last 10 years. My prediction is that no law will pass in 2006 banning online gaming. The attempts are more complicated but no more feasible than they have ever been . . . .” So much for that prediction.

As mentioned in the previous post, the 2+2 Forums' “Legislation” section is a good place to keep up with the latest news. Once Bush drops the big one and signs on the dotted line, we’ll have a better idea what is left of the online poker landscape.

Meanwhile, has anyone seen where I put my gas mask and duct tape . . . ?

Photo: “The End Is Nigh,” Alma Ayon. CC BY 2.0.

169 Ways to Showdown

The chart at the left is a fairly useless, though somewhat interesting piece of trivia I picked up some time ago that ranks all 169 starting hands in hold ’em. (Click the chart to enlarge.) The color-coding indicates whether a hand is ranked in the top 25% (green), the second 25% (yellow), the next 25% (red), or the bottom 25% (black). I suppose the colors could be read as indicating whether to “go” or “use caution” or “stop” or whatever.

I’m afraid I’ve lost track of the source of this here information. I do recall that the rankings come from a computer simulation, not actual play, which involved dealing a 100,000 or 1 million hands (or something) to a ten-handed table and then showing down all ten to see which hand came out the winner -- an occurrence that might well have never happened a single time in all of the billions of hands of hold ’em ever played on the planet. That is to say, these rankings are strictly theoretical and not based on actual play. (I have seen attempts to produce hand rankings that were based on hands that were really, truly played; for example, here’s a fairly popular chart I’ve seen posted in more than one place.)

The only time I can see this chart ever being of any real value is in a no-limit tourney where you are heads-up and deciding whether or not to push all-in or call an all-in bet. Since you know you’re going to show down the hand, you might check to see how your hand rates (e.g., is it a “green” or “yellow” hand and thus above average?) as a way of helping you make your decision. As with all mechanically-derived decision-making solutions, though, I imagine doing this would likely cause more harm than help. (For another, more useful heads-up strategy that also focuses on the all-in decision, see Lee Jones’s article about his SAGE system in CardPlayer.)

Anyhow, stumbling across this chart again got me thinking about Poker Tracker and all of the data it contains. I purchased the program a couple of months ago, and have now entered all of the hold ’em hands I've played since January 1. Like a dutiful detective, I started snoopin’ around the numbers a bit and uncovered a few items of interest. Don’t know yet, really, how having this information around is helping my game at present. It does satisfy a few curiosities, at least.

I have now entered a total of 52,483 hands into this little monster. The great majority of the hands are from limit hold ’em, and two-thirds of those are at 6-max tables. I’m not going to get into precise numbers, but I will say that this particular sample demonstrates I’ve been a winning player. I mention that to provide a context of sorts for some of what follows -- obviously some of these stats would come out differently had I been only breaking even or losing at a high clip.

In those 52,483 hands, I have, unsurprisingly, been dealt all 169 possible starting combinations (between 100-500 times each). And -- perhaps more surprisingly -- I have “VP$IP” (voluntarily put money in the pot) for all 169. At least six times each, it appears. That’s right. I’ve willingly pursued 72-offsuit on multiple occasions. (There are lots of ways Poker Tracker can humble one, PDQ.)

I wondered if I had been dealt aces my fair share of times. I discovered I’d gotten AA a total of 223 times, a little less than the 1 in 221 the math says I am supposed to (more like 1 in 235 or so). In fact, of all 13 pairs AA is the one I’ve been dealt least often, although really the difference between my getting AA and 44 (266 times, my most frequently-drawn pocket pair) is pretty negligible. Overall I’m getting pairs just about exactly as often as I should -- 3156 times or once every 16.62 hands (slightly better, in fact, than the 1 in 17 that I should be expecting). This fact might be read as an indication that the shuffling software on the sites where I play the most (PokerStars, PartyPoker, and Full Tilt Poker) seems to be in order, not that I doubted it. It won’t satisfy the “RiverStars” conspiracy theorists, though. Nothing would.

How often do I win with AA? About 80% of the time, by far the highest percentage of all 169 hands. I’m getting the highest BB/100 rate with AA as well, considerably above the second-best hand (KK). Interestingly, of all 169 hands there are only 11 hands where my win % is above 50%: AA, KK, JJ, AQs, AKs, QQ, AKo, AJs, TT, AQo, KQs. Notice that 10 of these 11 hands are rated as top 11 hands in the chart. AQo, my 10th-best hand, is rated 18th; KJs, which the simulation ranked 9th, is only my 20th-best hand in terms of winning percentage. (Of course, I could well be playing KJs like a donk.) The small number of +50% winners confirms what most of us already know -- most hands simply aren’t going to prove winners, no matter how good a player you are.

I also learned that winning percentage isn’t necessarily related to making a profit. Scanning down the list of hands I see some glaring examples of such incongruity. I only win 14% of the hands when dealt J4-suited, yet I’m scooping the same number of BB/hand with that hand as I am when dealt a pair of sevens (a hand that wins 40% of the time). In fact, when I look at the “W$SD” column (wins money at showdown), J4-suited is the third-best hand, winning 72% of the time when I show it down.

How can this be? Thinking about it a bit, I realize a stat like this makes sense. I might be a bit jingle-brained, but I’m not insane, so I’m not showing down shinola like J4s unless I’m a likely winner. Same goes for 73-suited, which proudly sits atop the W$SD list at 89%. Closer inspection reveals why that percentage is so high. I’ve been dealt 73-suited 154 times. Only 21 times did I actually play the hand, and 20 of those 21 were from the blinds. (Once, I called from the button with 73s and -- predictably -- lost the hand before the showdown.) Of those 21 hands, I ended up going to showdowns 9 times total (seems like a lot), winning three times with flushes, twice with a pair of sevens, once with a straight, once with two pair, and once with a pair of threes. 8 of 9 showdowns comes out to 89%. (I should add that all 8 of these wins were at 6-max tables, where such crap is marginally more likely to hold up than at a full table.)

One last observation here about starting hands and limit hold ’em. You might notice how on the chart the suited hands generally rank much higher than their non-suited counterparts. For instance, A6-suited is rated the 34th best hand, whereas A6-offsuit is a crummy 113th. Looking at Poker Tracker, it seems this truth is borne out in practice. Again and again and again. The biggest losers (in terms of winning percentage) are almost all non-suited hands -- 37 out of the bottom 40, in fact. Also, in every single case I’ve won more often with the suited version of a hand than with the same hand, non-suited. That’s every time -- all 78 pairs of suited/non-suited starting hands! Sometimes the difference is enormous. For example, K8-suited wins three times as often as K8-offsuit; K5-suited wins four times as often as K5o. With all of those popular “suited connectors” (JTs through 54s), I'm doing much better than with their offsuit counterparts -- again, usually 3 to 4 times better. So I’m inclined to distrust those who claim suitedness is an overrated factor, particularly if you’re playing limit hold ’em.

If you’ve read this far, you must be at least a little intrigued by the numbers of poker and/or Poker Tracker and/or silly charts like the one posted above. If you are, let me know if any of my observations seem off-base or the result of my own idiosyncracies. I’m also interested to hear about how others are using Poker Tracker and whether (and how) it is beneficial to them.

Enough numbers, sheesh. The likelihood that the next post will not involve math in any way is well above 95%, I’d say.