Book Announcement: Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game Coming 2019

I have some fun news to share, and for some reason April 1 felt like a good day to share it. This one is a long time coming, something I’ve hinted at here on the blog a few times before.

The “poker & pop culture” book is happening. No foolin’! (And no shinola.)

The book will be published by D&B Poker. After many years of publishing strategy books, D&B Poker has widened its scope a bit to include other poker-related titles like Tricia Cardner and Jonathan Little’s books on psychology and poker, as well as autobiographies by Mike Sexton and Phil Hellmuth.

You’ve probably heard as well about Lance Bradley’s book due to appear this summer titled The Pursuit of Poker Success: Learn From 50 of the World’s Best Poker Players that features Bradley interviewing many of the game’s best known and most successful players. You can preorder Lance's book now either via D&B Poker or Amazon.

My book will be titled Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game. Ordered somewhat chronologically as a history of the game, the book primarily will focus on poker’s prominence in American popular culture or the “mainstream.” In other words, I’ll be examining the game as it has been discussed and portrayed over the last two centuries-plus not just at the tables, but in newspapers, magazines, letters, memoirs, paintings, fiction, drama, radio shows, music, film, television, and elsewhere.

The book will additionally highlight poker being frequently evoked in politics, business, economics, warfare and diplomacy, business, economics, sports, and other “non-poker” contexts, with all of those references furthering the argument for poker’s importance to U.S. history and culture.

Such references to poker popping up day-to-day American life also tend to foreground links between certain ideals and values considered “American” -- things like individual liberty, self-reliance, the frontier spirit, egalitarianism, the “pursuit of happiness,” the ideologies of capitalism, and so on -- and so that obviously will be part of the story, too.

The idea of doing some sort of poker book probably began for me way back during the early days of the blog (begun almost 12 years ago), at some point not long after I picked up the habit of writing about poker on a regular basis both here and then soon after for a variety of different sites and publications.

For a few years that was mostly just an idle thought encouraged by the fast-growing number of Hard-Boiled Poker posts. However, once I developed and began teaching my “Poker and American Film and Culture” class in 2011, the idea began to take on a more concrete shape as I envisioned creating a book that might serve as a kind of textbook for the course.

Then in 2014 things got even more specific when with the help of an agent I began shopping book proposals and developing blurbs, detailed outlines and annotated tables of contents, sample chapters, and the like.

That process evolved into a year-and-a-half long mini-adventure that was interesting for me though less so for others, I imagine, so I’ll gloss over the details. Instead I’ll just skip ahead to the happy ending of D&B Poker entering the picture. I’ll be spending most of this year writing and rewriting as I get the manuscript together, with the 2019 World Series of Poker being the current target for the book to hit the stands.

I’ve written a book-length disseration and two novels before (Same Difference and Obsessica), and so I have had some experience planning and completing long-term writing projects. As in poker, patience is a big part of seeing such things through and having something to show for it in the end.

But this will be something different, a new and different kind of writing challenge. And I expect it ultimately to be a lot of fun for your humble scribbler and (hopefully) for some of you, too.

I’ll keep you updated on the project over here as well as on Twitter. Meanwhile big thanks to everyone who has read posts here and other articles of mine, and whose support and feedback encouraged me to keep writing. I know already the list of people I’m going to want to mention in the Foreword will be a long one.

Image: A Friend in Need (1903) by Cassius M. Coolidge, public domain.

Pursuing Poker

Spent the last couple of days watching poker on my computer. The PokerStars Championship Sochi series is running, and as I’m staying on the farm for that one I’ve had occasion to check in now and then from here to follow the coverage both on the PokerStars blog and via PokerStars TV.

Then yesterday I had Day 1 of the Super High Roller Bowl on all day, that $300K buy-in tournament that started last night and lasts for several days. Both events are serving as a kind of prelude to the World Series of Poker that gets cranking on Wednesday.

Did very much enjoy seeing Kevin Hart knock out Phil Hellmuth on Day 1. Hellmuth had a bit of a cooler versus Justin Bonomo early (flopped set versus flopped straight), then as a short stack lost all his chips in a set-under-set hand versus Hart.

In fact, when the cards were dealt and Hellmuth had pocket treys versus Hart’s queens, I was already imagining a Q-3-x flop and that’s exactly what happened. Such fun.

Realizing the NBA Finals don’t start until Thursday -- a full week since the last game of the conference finals completed -- I had to joke on Twitter that poker had found a “sweet spot” amid what amounted to a “November Nine-like wait” for basketball to return.

Indeed, the entire WSOP, right through the Main Event that will go until July 22nd, will more or less function to fill a fairly dead spot in the sports calendar between the NBA and NFL. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m all on board with getting rid of the November Nine and playing the Main down to a winner this summer with only a couple of days’ delay before the final table.

This new PokerGO channel that PokerCentral has created seems okay from the outside, although there are obviously a lot of kinks still to be ironed out. While it’s nice to be able simply to click through and watch (as with PokerStars TV) -- ideal, really -- I’m not too bothered by the subscription model they’ve set up and $10 a month doesn’t seem like a lot to fuss over, as long as the sucker works.

(That said, I’m still waiting for the PayPal option to become functional, as I prefer that route to using a credit card. And I’m looking forward to them getting Roku up and running as they are saying they will, as I’d much rather watch on the teevee than the laptop.)

Still feel like televised (or online streaming) poker remains a super niche form of entertainment, and frankly can’t imagine it being otherwise. There’s always a dream to grow televised poker into something bigger than it is, something resembling or even competing with other sports or entertainment. In other words, something like it was 13-14 years ago, when the televised poker boom first boomed.

That ain’t happening again, of course. But a more modest goal of providing something worth checking out when other desired distractions aren’t available isn’t such a bad one.

Images: PokerStars; PokerCentral / PokerGO.

Not the Madman Theory

I’m only finally getting around to this much-derided article from Wired last week titled “How Poker Theory Explains Ted Cruz’s Convention Speech” by Jason Tanz.

The speech was quite something, by the way, with Cruz very deliberately withholding a specific endorsement of the party's nominee, smirking all the way.

Saw a number of responses to the Wired piece last week, most of which seemed to find the poker analogy weakly presented. Also saw several eyeball-roll references to the article’s reliance on Phil Hellmuth’s “animal types” theory as presented in his 2003 book Play Poker Like the Pros.

You remember Hellmuth’s idea, don’t you? As a way of presenting certain categories of players according to playing styles, Hellmuth described the mouse (squeaky tight), the lion (aggressive and bluffy), the jackal (loose and maniacal), the elephant (unmovable calling station), and the eagle (soaring over the rest as “one of the top 100 players in the world”).

In actuality, the idea to explain different playing styles in such a manner isn’t such a bad one, particularly when addressing relatively untutored players (as most readers of Hellmuth’s book were). The presentation in the book is kind of rushed and a little vague, though, making the “animal types” idea a bit less useful than it could have been.

Meanwhile for someone in 2016 to bring it up as a seemingly unchallenged bit of “game theory” as Tanz does is not nearly as brilliant an idea as the author probably thought it was. He identifies Donald Trump as a jackal, then tries to argue that Cruz is one, too, with his RNC speech showing his willingness to play wild and loose. He then tries to give Cruz some of the characteristics of the lion as well, crediting him in a guarded way with having at least some strategic know-how.

Tanz does successfully highlight the importance of position in poker, noting how Cruz’s place in the speaking order (before others) was disadvantageous. But concluding by saying “maybe Cruz mis-bet” again belies the author’s understanding of the game. (Who says “mis-bet”?)

There’s one other problem in the article, though -- a passing reference to Richard Nixon that also misses the mark. Here’s the line:

“Jackals can be difficult to play against because, as in Nixon’s Mad Man theory, they don’t abide by the rational rules of poker.”

That’s more or less what Hellmuth says about jackals, but that’s not what the “madman theory” actually was. Rather than being an example of someone recklessly betting and raising without any seeming logic, the madman theory concerned projecting the image of someone who “played” that way, but who in actuality did not. It was, at its core, a strategy of bluffing.

Via others, Nixon wished to convince foreign leaders that he was irrational and ready to bomb away on a whim. For example, during the prolonged and mostly unsuccessful negotiations with the North Vietnamese, there were multiple instances of Nixon having National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger try to represent RN in this way, hoping it would frighten the North Vietnamese into a truce.

The comparison in the Wired article is thus entirely misleading, suggesting the “madman theory” wasn’t an actual strategy, but just a literal description of Nixon’s “mad” style of dealing with certain, unfriendly opponents.

Nixon was kind of mad, mind you. But the “madman theory” wasn’t this.

Image: Play Poker Like the Pros, Phil Hellmuth, available via Amazon.

Hellmuth and Gold, Political Pundits

Today is Tuesday, which often makes me think of the “Super Tuesday” -- that is, the $1,050 buy-in weekly no-limit hold’em tournament on PokerStars. Of course today that phrase has a different meaning for many as both the Democrats and Republicans are holding primaries or caucuses in a number of states.

If I’m counting correctly, the Democrats are having primaries and caucuses in 11 different states with about a third of the total delegates up for grabs. Meanwhile the Republicans are holding primaries and caucuses in 13 states with about half of their delegates in play. In other words, after today both races will suddenly move from the early levels to the mid-to-late stages, with nominations perhaps even being all but locked up depending on how things go.

Speaking of poker and politics, I saw a couple of items pop up yesterday in which poker pros were being asked to weigh in on the ongoing presidential race.

First there was Phil Hellmuth tweeting about an article on the website The Street concerning Donald Trump running away with the GOP nomination and the efforts by some in the part to stop him. The article is titled “How Do You Beat Donald Trump? We Asked a Poker Champion,” and has Hellmuth characterizing Trump as a “loose-aggressive” (LAG) player and offering ideas for how to win versus such an opponent.

Nothing too unusual about seeing Hellmuth appear in such a context. I mean we all consistently go to Hellmuth for commentary on all sorts of things besides poker, seeking his thoughts about, say, Jay-Z’s latest joint, the Golden State Warriors, or Carl’s Jr. Texas BBQ Thickburgers.

In the article Hellmuth unsurprisingly advises patience and waiting for a strong hand with which to defeat the player getting involved in too many pots (and betting too much when he does). Of course, that strategy hasn’t worked very well for Trump’s opponents thus far, perhaps because they themselves are too weak as candidates to have much with which to play back against him.

To Hellmuth’s credit, he also outlines a Plan B which involves essentially being even more loose and aggressive in response. It’s a more interesting article than you might think, getting a bit more specific and going beyond that earlier attempt at casting Trump as a poker player appearing in Time a month ago.

The other item that came up yesterday was Jamie Gold (of all people) appearing on Fox News to talk about the presidential race. It was a short three-minute bit in which Gold, introduced as both a former “world poker champion” and an “expert odds analyst,” shared a few thoughts about betting on the election.

Gold talks a little about how betting odds perhaps provide more accurate indicators of what will happen than polls, then offers some ideas about how to bet the election, including explaining the idea of “middling” (here relevant if, as Gold suggests, “it’s about a 99% chance” Hillary Clinton and Trump will be the parties’ nominees).

Gold’s appearance predictably earned some funny and cynical responses yesterday, although it made me think back to his expressed desire after winning the 2006 WSOP Main Event -- on High Stakes Poker, I believe -- that he one day become known as the greatest bluffer ever. Have to say, his commenting on a major news network as an “expert odds analyst” is getting there, wouldn’t you say?

Gold was fine in the short segment (I thought), which you can watch here.

Photos: “Phil Hellmuth” & “Jamie Gold” (adapted), flipchip / LasVegasVegas.com, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Travel Report: 2016 PCA, Day 1: Super High Rolling

Completed a first full day of reporting from the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure yesterday, where the focus was just about entirely on the $100,000 Super High Roller event that took up just a few tables in the front right-hand corner of the huge poker room (a.k.a. Convention Center) at the Atlantis Resort.

We were stationed in the exact opposite corner of the room -- actually, to be more accurate, just outside of the room in a back area usually reserved for the EPT Live (or, here, PCA Live) folks and the television crew shooting for the edited shows that come later. We were repositioned for this first day mainly because the set for the live streaming and TV shows was still being constructed.

I share the detail of where we were sitting just to point out that we were traversing the entire room each time we walked from our laptops to the SHR event and back, and thus necessarily saw how all of the other side events were getting impressive turnouts as the entire room managed to fill up with activity. In past years the PCA would start a little more slowly, but it looks like more players have arrived early this time around.

That may be due in part to the dozen events on the schedule for Day 1. But I’m also thinking the LAPT Bahamas event that begins today might have gotten a few extras out early this time. This will be the second year the LAPT has put on such an event at the PCA, one that serves as a “Main Event” for the tour as well as a $2,200 buy-in “preliminary” event as far as the entire PCA schedule goes. Will be curious to see if the turnout on Thursday matches or exceeds the 736 entries they had at LAPT Bahamas a year ago.

Like I say, though, the Super High Roller had everyone’s attention, and most of the usual suspects were out to participate in that one. That is Fedor Holz up above (courtesy Neil Stoddart and the PokerStars blog), just a few days removed from winning $3.4 million-plus in that $200K SHR in Manila, and a couple of weeks on from winning a $100K WPT Alpha8 and almost $1.6 million in Las Vegas.

Bill Perkins bought in three times, busting all three, and he intends to come back to try a fourth entry at the start of Day 2 before late reg closes. 2015 WSOP Main Event champion Joe McKeehen took part and did well all day, ending with a top five stack. Businessman Talal Shakerchi finished with the chip lead, with Kathy Lehne (also of the business world) in third position. Lehne took runner-up in that WPT Alpha8 in St. Kitts I covered in December 2014. (She also final-tabled the WPT Alpha8 at the Bellagio in December, taking sixth.)

While the focus was often on the hands, the table talk was equally interesting -- even more so, in some cases. Daniel Negreanu got into an extended monologue about Phil Hellmuth at one point that was obviously entertaining the table quite a bit, including a reference to Donald Trump and some of the parallels between the Poker Brat and the Donald. (You can probably imagine what they are.)

The SHRs are always interesting tournaments to be around. You get a mix of elite pros and the amateurs who are nonetheless serious and usually competitive. There’s always a relaxed feel, suggesting in a strange way a negative correlation between the size of the buy-in and the amount of stress felt by the players.

Gonna move off the SHR today as my beat now becomes that LAPT Bahamas event over the next three days. Might have to wander over there to the SHR once in a while, though, just to see who makes it through to Friday’s final table.

Meanwhile you can wander over to the PokerStars blog today for coverage of the Super High Roller, LAPT Bahamas, other side events, and more.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

Files Found! Poker Audio from 2004-2006

We still have this desktop PC in use that is probably more than a decade old now. We use it for a few household-related tasks, among them printing documents with the even older printer attached to it (although that is rarely needed in this mostly paperless world). It’s not even online, which in truth has probably helped add to its longevity, being isolated as it is from the scary virus-filled outside world.

As you might imagine, there are some old, old files on there, including some old audio files of poker podcasts from back when podcasts first became a thing. I’ve written about those before here, including recently. In fact it was just in December of last year I shared a screenshot of all the folders on the drive containing those old shows.

I guess I’ve got a little bit of hoarder in me, having continued to keep all those files. The only reason I downloaded them in the first place was because that was typically the method of listening to them then. We weren’t listening to podcasts on our phones quite yet, and so a lot of the time I’d download the show and listen on my computer while playing online.

Anyhow, for a long time I’ve been going back to those directories and to other places on that old PC to look for something else -- something I knew I had downloaded once upon a time, but could never quite put my finger on where it could be.

In 2005, CardPlayer sponsored live audio commentary for that year’s World Series of Poker Main Event final table. I remember listening all night and into the morning, with the sun having risen here on the east coast by the time Joe Hachem finally ousted Steve Dannenmann in a short heads-up battle to win. Shortly after that CardPlayer posted the .mp3s on their site -- one per week, I think -- eventually posting eight files which totaled something like 13.5 hours’ worth of audio. It wasn’t long after that the files were no longer available.

I was positive I had downloaded those files, and I thought I must have them somewhere but just couldn’t figure out where. Finally -- kind of randomly -- I looked in an old external drive last week and there they were, along with some other old poker-related goodies.

Among the other files there were what I believe might even be the entire run of Card Club on Lord Admiral Radio shows (from 2004-2006), a number of Ante Up! episodes from their first couple of years (2005-2006), some episodes of CardPlayer’s The Circuit from early 2006, Phil Gordon’s 2005 WSOP podcasts plus some Poker Edge shows, the old Poker Diagram podcast (anyone remember that one?), and several episodes of Rounders the Poker Show (forerunner to the 2+2 Pokercast) from the summer of 2006.

I think the latter collection of Rounders shows might include the Jamie Gold interview he gave just a couple of days after winning the 2006 WSOP -- the one I believe was later admitted into court as part of Crispin Leyser’s lawsuit against him that was eventually settled out of court in 2007. (I hope so, anyway.)

I grabbed the 2005 WSOP shows, got ‘em loaded on the iPod, and listened to the first 20 minutes today. Phil Hellmuth and Jeff Shulman are hosting, and already within that short introductory section had on Gary Thompson and Howard Greenbaum of Harrah’s, Mike Matusow (who was at that final table and destined to go out in ninth), Howard Stutz of the Las Vegas Review-Journal (then, and still), and Oklahoma Johnny Hale.

I remember lots of other guests coming and going throughout the marathon, including Puggy Pearson who would pass away the following spring. I found myself wanting to jot down some notes as I listened, thinking perhaps I’ll share some highlights here once I get through it all.

What a time that was, and it’s hard to believe it’s now over a decade ago. A time when I couldn’t get enough poker -- I’d listen, watch, or read anything. You too, probably.

The 2015 WSOP Main Event on ESPN (So Far)

ESPN’s coverage of the 2015 World Series of Poker has been up and running for four weeks now, with eight-and-a-half hours’ worth of shows shown so far. I think that total is correct, anyway, as an extra half-hour turned up this week.

They’ve moved the shows around some on the schedule, making it challenging to find them sometimes, although mostly they’ve been popping up on Monday nights. The strategy appears to be mostly to put the episodes on one network while NFL football is playing on the other, which I have to think hasn’t helped a lot with ratings. It also means I’ve actually never watched any of them initially but only later on DVR.

I’ve somewhat enjoyed the coverage thus far. I didn’t plan on it beforehand, but was inspired to start a series of strategy articles (over on PokerNews) each of which focuses on an interesting hand or two while giving readers a chance to play along. The response has been pretty good on these, which all include polls that invite you to pick how you would play a certain hand. (When setting the scene, I withhold the hole cards of the player with whom you play along.)

Here are those so far (the headline of the first one is quoting something a player said at the table):

“Watching Phil Hellmuth or ‘The Master at Work’”

”Daniel Negreanu Turns the Nuts -- Call or Reraise?”

”How Would You Respond to Negreanu’s Check-Raises?”

”Flopping Huge Versus Fedor -- Play Fast or Slow?”

I think all of them present genuinely interesting spots that are made a little more fun from a strategic standpoint when you don’t know all the players’ holdings. Watching the shows with an eye toward finding such spots is probably adding significantly to my enjoyment of them, too, I would venture.

As those titles suggest, the coverage to this point has featured a lot of Hellmuth (until he busted) and Negreanu, with the latter destined to be front and center all of the way up to the November Nine thanks to his near-miss of the final table.

They started with Day 4 this year, and by now they’ve gotten to the end of Day 5 at which point just 69 remain from the 6,420 who entered. Would have been preferable, I think, to start back on Day 1 and give a couple of hours to each of the days (rather than four or more for both Day 4 and 5), but obviously it’s cheaper to shoot fewer days.

Starting on Day 4 means they actually began after the bubble burst (on Day 3), which skips one of the more exciting moments of the Main Event. This year, too, with 1,000 players cashing, there were certainly dozens (if not hundreds) of cool stories about first-time players/cashers which might have been entertaining to hear about, along with all of the other fun stuff that tends to mark the early days of the WSOP ME.

Still, I’m finding I’ve been looking forward to the shows each week. Have you been watching at all? What do you think?

Tuning In: The 2015 WSOP Main Event Begins on ESPN

Saw our friend Kevmath tweeting a little earlier about viewers for last night’s initial two episodes from ESPN of their 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event coverage.

I was watching ESPN last night, although not the WSOP. Looking over at Sports TV Ratings’ numbers from Monday night, I was part of the group of 13.56 million watching the night’s first NFL game (Philadelphia at Atlanta) as well as part of the 14.33 million looking in on the second one (Minnesota at San Francisco).

I was also enduring some of that agony I was talking about yesterday after having picked both games incorrectly (in both cases going with “consensus” picks). (Argh!)

The episodes of the WSOP aired over on ESPN2 at 8 and 9 p.m. Looks like 245,000 were watching that first hour, then 414,000 tuned in for the second hour.

Instead of watching live, I DVR’d the poker and watched this afternoon. Was entertaining, I thought, in large part because of Phil Hellmuth being on the feature table for the entire two hours, then Daniel Negreanu getting seated there for the last 45 minutes or so of hour no. 2.

I also liked the snippets of talk from various players talking about what it meant to play the Main. That helped broaden things in such a way that it was possible to think of the larger context for the various hands that were shown. (Otherwise, it was hard -- as usual -- to think about how the tournament as a whole was going.)

Speaking of the number of people watching, at the end of one hand during the first part of the first hour, Hellmuth made a reference to his hand after being folded to, and when asked if he was telling the truth he said if he weren’t he’d “just lied in front a million people.”

Then he recalculated.

“Gonna be five million people watching this, at least.”

I believe last year’s Main Event final table -- the “almost live” November Nine, that is -- drew something like 1.15 million viewers, with the episodes leading up to it drawing considerably fewer. About a month ago I looked up some of these stats, finding that the 2008 WSOP ME final table had 2.364 million watching (the most of the Nov. 9 era).

This old PokerNews article from a decade ago lists some stats for ESPN’s WSOP episodes from back in the glory days. The article says in 2003 the average was 1 million viewers (for those seven Main Event episodes), in 2004 it was 1.5 million (for 22 hrs. of coverage, including non-ME shows), and in 2005 it was 1.1 million (for 32 hrs. of coverage).

No surprise to find that five million people watching a poker show didn’t happen even at the height of the poker boom. Nor is it to hear Hellmuth imagining five million are watching him.

EPT12 Barcelona, Day 13: The Stand-In

A few quick thoughts about the final day yesterday at the European Poker Tour Barcelona festival where John Juanda ended up winning the Main Event, Mustapha Kanit won the High Roller (after an unusual deal was made), and five other side events wrapped up.

The media room was full of apprehension both Saturday night and early Sunday about how long things would go on the last day. Most felt the Main Event would end at a decent hour, with tourney staff also predicting a pre-midnight finish. But the High Roller was a wild card, with 30 players returning and a potential to go much longer.

As it happened, the €10K High Roller finished up first thanks both to the fact that things moved more quickly than anticipated and to an unique finish. With three left, Kanit, Kuljinder Sidhu, and Nick Petrangelo decided on a deal to chop the remaining prize money and end things right then and there, with chip leader Kanit getting the trophy and designation as winner.

Have to say Kanit is becoming kind of a favorite to watch for me, having seen him win a couple of huge ones -- this and the €50K One-Day Super High Roller in Monaco in May -- as well as take down the SCOOP High Main Event where the Italian plays as “lasagnaaammm” (a way-better-than-average screen name).

Kanit is fun to watch, both for his play and the entertainment he provides. In Monaco, Nick Wright wrote a piece highlighting Kanit’s jovial demeanor at the tables. In Barcelona, Kanit’s multi-colored sport jacket was a highlight of a piece by Howard Swains about some of the fashion on display.

Kanit also had a perfect comeback versus Phil Hellmuth during the summer after the pair tangled in a hand in the One Drop High Roller at the WSOP.

After losing a pot to Kanit, Hellmuth trotted out his customary petulance. “Why do we try and bluff the amateurs?” said Hellmuth after the hand (from the WSOP update), betraying his ignorance about who he was playing against. “They are going to give you 500K with a king and no kicker.”

Kanit’s response -- not even hinting at the fact that he is anything but an amateur -- was golden: “I traveled a long way to play the tournament,” he said. “I just want to enjoy myself and play some hands.”

How can you not pull for a guy whose instinct versus Hellmuth’s applesauce is to respond like that?

Juanda winning the Main was kind of remarkable to watch play out, in part because about a week before he’d tweeted that he hadn’t played any live poker at all since the last EPT Barcelona festival a year ago. He made a couple of fortunate hands as a short stack on the final day, and apparently was super short earlier in the event, too. Quite something to see him there at the finish. (There was also a deal in that one, although they left some on the table to play for.)

Finally, I got a huge laugh out of seeing the “Challenge Stapes” segment during the stream yesterday in which I took part. The segment featured Joe Stapleton recreating a hand between Dan Shak and Kamal Choraria from last year’s EPT Barcelona, with Stapes playing both roles and me serving as a silent stand-in for both.

That just above is a photo taken during the shoot (click to embiggen). Here’s the whole segment:

By the way, you can see the original hand from last year’s EPT Barcelona here (which lasts a couple of minutes), and then the table talk afterwards starts here.

Working that 13th-straight day and reporting on the last side events, I kind of felt like a silent stand-in there, too, a sore throat keeping me from talking much and other symptoms reducing me to a kind of dummy version of my usual self. Still, it was great being there and seeing it through to the finish, especially while working alongside so many friends and great colleagues.

Talk to you again soon from the other side of the Atlantic.

More for Hellmuth

As you’ve no doubt heard, Phil Hellmuth has won another WSOP tournament, outlasting a field of 103 to win the $10K Razz Championship (Event No. 17).

That’s 14 total (including one WSOP Europe win), and two in razz after he won the $2,500 razz event three years ago. He finished runner-up in the $1,500 razz to Ted Forrest last year, too.

Besides having the most WSOP bracelets (by four, ahead of Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan each with 10), Hellmuth has 109 cashes at the WSOP and enjoys a healthy lead on that list, too, ahead of Erik Seidel’s 90. (Seidel finished 11th in the $10K Razz.) He’s also made 52 final tables, with Men Nguyen the nearest challenger with 39.

That means of the times Hellmuth has cashed at the WSOP, he’s gone on to make the final table 47.8% of those occasions. When he makes the final table, he has won the tournament 26.9% of the time. And he’s finished second 10 times (19.2%), meaning he has gotten to heads-up 46.2% of the time he’s made the final table.

He’s also now -- with last night’s win his first cash of the summer -- 29th in the WSOP POY race, which may or may not make sense, depending on how you view such things.

Watched some of the stream of the razz final table last night and very much enjoyed hearing the strat talk of Calvin Anderson and Nick Schulman. Hellmuth had the lead and was continuing to build his stack when I watched, so it wasn’t too surprising to wake up and hear he’d won.

For something more thoughtful than just marveling at Hellmuth’s results, Brad Willis penned a good response to last night’s events at the WSOP today in which he covers both Hellmuth winning and John Gale taking down Event No. 18, the $1,000 Turbo NLHE event.

Reaching back to 2006 (when both Gale and Hellmuth also won bracelets), Brad explains “Why we should thank Phil Hellmuth and John Gale.” Check it out.

Some Moments Are More Important Than Others

For those of us in the anti-Dook Blue Devil camp -- and there are a lot of us, with UNC-Chapel Hill alums like me just part of a subset -- last night’s championship game in which the Devils beat the Wisconsin Badgers 68-63 was a bit agonizing.

So, too, was it a painful one for the Wisconsin fans who saw their team sitting pretty up nine with 13 minutes to go and both of Duke’s big men, Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow, on the bench in foul trouble. That’s when Duke frosh Grayson Allen -- who averaged four points a game this year -- scored eight in a row while the Badgers only scored three, and suddenly all was in doubt again.

It was a game full of such surges, and in truth it felt all along like whichever team happened to be on the high end of the see-saw as they entered the endgame was likely to come away with the win. That’s how it turned out, albeit with a few key calls down the stretch that helped the Devils, all involving Winslow.

The first came with just over nine minutes left when Wisconsin was up 54-50. Duje Dukan (who seems like he should have been playing for the other team with that name) was called for a blocking foul after colliding with Winslow in the lane, one of those to-MAY-to/to-MAH-to judgment calls that always looks a certain way depending on the team for which you’re rooting. Okafor had just been benched again after collecting his fourth foul, and a charge would’ve meant four on Winslow, too. But it went Dook’s way and after Winslow sank two free throws the lead was down to two.

The second occurred after the Blue Devils had moved in front by a point, 59-58. With about three-and-a-half minutes to go, Winslow grabbed an offensive rebound and then appeared to step on the endline, but the refs missed it. Okafor would score on that possession to make the lead three. Bad break again for the Badgers.

The third one then came a little after that, not long after the Blue Devils had pushed out ahead to lead 63-58. This one involved an out-of-bounds play that occurred with just a little under two minutes to go, with the on-court call being Dook ball but with enough doubt for the refs to review the replay. We watched, too, and this time it was obvious -- Winslow was the last player to touch the ball (that’s a freeze-frame of the play above; click to embiggen). But somehow the refs didn’t see it that way, Dook retained possession, and seconds later hit a three-pointer to push the lead to eight.

Even so, the latter was one of those calls (or non-calls) that like the previous two can also be put in the category of “variance” -- i.e., like other manifestations of luck that occur in the game, the whims (and occasional failings) of the refs also have to be considered similarly. Still, since all three of these came at such potentially tide-turning moments, it’s hard not to assign them extra signficance.

A couple of weeks ago a long, interesting profile of poker pro Brian Rast by Chad Holloway was posted over on PokerNews, and the article included the story of Rast’s victory in the $50K Poker Players Championship at the 2011 WSOP. Recall how that tournament ended with Rast battling Phil Hellmuth heads-up, a duel that involved not one but three huge “coin-flip” type events, all of which went Rast’s way.

Hellmuth had built a 4.5-to-1 chip lead when the first happened, one in which Rast was all in with A-K on a ten-high flop versus Hellmuth’s flush draw, and neither the turn nor the river brought the flush. Then came another hand in which Rast flopped top pair versus another Hellmuth flush draw, the chips went in again, and Rast’s hand held a second time.

The third time it happened, Hellmuth was the one all in on the flop -- again with a flush draw -- and this time Rast had flopped even more strongly with a straight. For a third time Hellmuth couldn’t complete the flush, and Rast won.

All three weren’t exactly coin flips -- Rast’s edges were about 52%, 60%, and 63% in those hands when the money went in -- but to win all three was certainly fortunate for him. Just as having all three of those moments go Dook’s way was fortunate for them.

In both last night’s game and the Rast-Hellmuth finale, those moments were only relatively small instances within the larger competitions, though their effect on the final outcomes was much larger than was the case for all of the other instances. The players weren’t in control of how those moments played out in either case, but that can’t be a complaint -- because that’s how the games are played.

My Fill of Phil

Phil Hellmuth recently appeared as a guest on Rounders co-scriptor Brian Koppelman’s “The Moment” podcast which is part of the Grantland “pop culture” category of content.

I’d heard something about the appearance, but hadn’t got around to listening. Then after all of the ruckus regarding Daniel Colman’s comment in a Two Plus Two thread about the show calling Hellmuth -- or, at least, “people of his attitude and character” -- “a cancer to this world,” I decided to dial it up, perhaps to listen and weigh in here about it.

Hellmuth is no doubt a fascinating character in poker. He’s also one of a very few in the game known to non-players or casual observers of the game and its subculture.

Occasionally I’ll get asked about him by those who’ve seen his antics on television. “Is he really such a jerk?” the question usually goes. I can’t really answer without lots of qualifications. Yes, I’ll say, he’s awful at the tables. But those who know him best insist he’s a “good guy.” And he’s also highly diverting for those of us who report on tourneys, always adding an extra layer of entertainment (for better or worse) to what can sometimes be plodding proceedings.

I don’t go deeper into Hellmuth’s troubling association with UltimateBet or other possible marks against him. Or for him, for that matter.

I’ve written here before about my ambivalence toward the Poker Brat. A couple of years ago there was a lot of talk following his 13th bracelet win (in the WSOP Europe Main Event) that perhaps the WSOP would be signing him up in some capacity to represent the brand and/or the (then still-to-come) online site.

Some seemed weirdly enthusiastic about such a possibility, but I wasn’t. Referring both to his UB/Cereus past and consistently poor behavior at the tables, I concluded “the WSOP could do much, much better than to hire the world’s whiniest winner and poker’s poorest sport” as a representative.

All of which probably explains why I couldn’t even get through the first half-hour of Koppelman’s podcast, during which Hellmuth…

shares details regarding his extensive charity work,

suggests that he’s earned everything he’s got in poker without being backed,

insists “the only place to measure poker greatness is by bracelets won,”

brags “I’ve crushed people in the mixed games” and “I’m the biggest winner on Poker Night in America,”

notes how everyone respects him and he gets along with everybody,

laments how he missed out on a big contract with an online site worth $20 million-ish when Black Friday arrived,

drops names (including Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton),

reports “I’m under siege for autographs everywhere I go,”

and also -- repeatedly -- explains that he’s never cheated on his wife despite having had opportunities to do so.

Koppelman does gamely try during that opening blast to dig beneath the surface a little, and perhaps he gets there later on. But I found it too much of a struggle to give another moment to “The Moment,” having heard enough PR from PH to last a while.

The Hunger for Poker

Been involved in some interesting conversations over the last day or so regarding poker and its current state of popularity, particularly in the U.S.

Last week I noted how ESPN had started its 2014 World Series of Poker broadcasts, discussing in particular those first couple of hours’ worth of coverage of the “Big One for One Drop” and the hand involving Cary Katz and Connor Drinan that saw both players all in before the flop with pocket aces and Drinan ultimately lose to Katz’s flush.

By the time I wrote that post Tuesday night, ESPN had already published a clip of the hand to YouTube (and thus I was able to embed it in my post). Within three days the clip had 4.5 million views; today, not even a week after it was first posted, the clip has nearly 6 million views.

I wasn’t the only one writing about that hand last week, of course, as several mainstream outlets picked up the story and embedded the clip as well. Social media was probably the biggest reason for all the views, with folks passing it around on Twitter, Facebook, and by other means.

Then today I saw that Carl’s Jr. -- known as Hardee’s around this part of the country -- had inserted Phil Hellmuth into a commercial. It’s a non-speaking role, with Hellmuth described simply via caption as “Texas Hold’em Champion.” The captions also suggest we “double down with smoked brisket on a black Angus burger,” a line that not only betrays a lack of understanding of poker but a reckless disregard for nutritional recommendations.

Poker is clearly still firmly in the mainstream when it comes to popular culture. Certainly the number of new players coming to the game has slowed considerably since the “boom” years, but that period did succeed in making more people aware of poker than ever before. Awareness of poker remains high, and interest in the game, the players, and game’s colorful history continues to be there.

For many whose livelihood is connected to poker in some capacity -- as players, as employees of casinos or tours or other poker-centric venues, as members of the surrounding “industry,” etc. -- the emphasis on growing the game via the introduction of new players is understandably central.

As an academic, though, I also find it intriguing to consider how the game’s cultural influence continues to grow, capturing the notice not just of players but of others, too. Even if there aren’t a lot of new players -- and certainly nothing close to the increase of players that was happening 8-10 years ago -- poker continues to attract a lot of attention both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Thus while the “boom” may be technically over, its effects continue with many more interested in and/or aware of poker today than was the case in the early 2000s. To borrow another fast food chain’s old slogan, the game continues to serve the interest of millions.

Thirteen Bracelets, Thirteen Quotes

I was skimming the updates this morning for Event No. 61, the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud Championship where just nine players remain for today’s final day.

Todd Brunson has a big chip lead, while 90-year-old Henry Orenstein -- the Poker Hall of Famer who patented the hole card camera that subsequently became so important to televised poker -- is also still in there with one of the shorter stacks. Brunson has one bracelet (in Omaha/8), while Orenstein also won a stud bracelet before back in 1996.

There are others left who should make today’s final table interesting to follow, including Ben Yu, James Obst, and Jesse Martin. But of course it’s Phil Hellmuth (pictured above via PokerNews) -- currently third in chips -- who’ll be the focus as long as he sticks around as to gun for his 14th career bracelet.

The updates from last night are kind of hilarious to read through, given Hellmuth’s constant commentary, as usual demonstrating that familiar mix of witless hubris and comical petulance the Poker Brat has by now honed into a kind of performance art.

For those who missed it, a sampling of Hellmuth’s late night stud table talk:

To the always well-attired Yu: “Why you so dressed up, kid?”

To chip leader Brunson: “The internet said you had over 700,000.”

To Brunson again: “I just hope when I have the ace burgers that you don’t get there with the king-jack-ten!”

To Obst, just before correctly identify his hand: “Give it up, kid”

To anyone who’ll listen: “Todd... he’s a genius. He just turns his hands into miracles!”

When having to fold a hand on third street: “F***!”

When that same hand ended with Obst showing a winner: “That’s legit.”

To the PokerNews reporters, in reference to himself: “No whining... it’s been six days! Six days! Report it!”

To Steve Landfish after folding to him on seventh: “You’re an interesting player.”

To Matt Grapenthien who’d forgotten to ante: “I see everything. Trust me, I see everything.”

To Yu after he mimicked Beth Shak’s infamous “I got ‘em” dance with aces: “Dang it, that’s just so good! You’re so clever.”

To Matt Grapenthien after he’d won a hand: “Buddy, you better not show up light again or they’ll barbecue you!”

After Brunson drew a flush to beat his straight: “I can’t f***ing believe it.”

One Drop Drop

So the second installment of the $1,000,000 buy-in Big One for One Drop kicked off on Sunday, with 42 taking part.

That’s a smaller field than the first time the event was staged two years ago when they drew 48, thus meaning the $37,333,338 prize pool and the $15,306,668 first prize are both less than what we saw in 2012.

Seems strange to look at figures like those and regard them as thought they are somehow disappointing because they aren’t bigger, but such is the way of comparisons. And hype, too, as it certainly sounded like expectations were they’d be nearing or perhaps even hitting the 56-player cap for the event.

Besides being a smaller field, there are also a higher percentage of pros taking part this time around, as several of the amateur businessmen who played in 2012 likely viewed the event as a kind of one-shot deal and thus aren’t coming back for more. The relative toughness of the field increasing thus certainly prevented a few from playing.

Just glancing over the names of those involved, there only appear to be five or six who are not full-time pros with most of the others being part of the same group we’ve seen routinely taking part in the “high roller” and “super high roller” events over the last three-plus years.

Thomas Keeling (SrslySirius) interviewed Phil Hellmuth for BLUFF who sounded as though he was going to play, but was too slow to get his backing in order by the time late registration ended. Meanwhile Frank Op de Woerd spoke with Haralabos Voulgaris -- another of those who played the One Drop in 2012 but decided not to this time around -- and he provided some insight regarding why others might have chosen not to play this time.

As he’s bought significant pieces of several players, Voulgaris obviously has an interest in seeing who makes the final eight to cash and who wins the event. But he was noting on Twitter yesterday how in truth “nobody cares who wins,” which I think on one level is probably true, even if the poker world will get increasingly curious about how it concludes once they get to a final table tomorrow.

That is to say, while the charity element is of course significant, the spectacle is all. And as with most sequels, there’s necessarily going to be a decrease in the impact earlier enjoyed by the novelty of such an event.

I’ll still be following along though.

The Return of the Champ

Joe Cada’s victory last night in Event No. 32, the $10,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em Championship, marked the first time one of the last 12 WSOP Main Event winners -- dating back to 2002 champ Robert Varkonyi -- has been able to follow his ME title with another WSOP bracelet win.

Carlos Mortensen was the most recent champion to follow his ME title with a win in another bracelet event, having won his second (and so far only other) WSOP bracelet in 2003 in a $5K limit hold’em event.

That was a big year for former Main Event champs, actually, with no less than six different ME winners collecting bracelets in 2003. In addition to Mortensen, Chris Ferguson, Phil Hellmuth, and Johnny Chan each won two events apiece, while Doyle Brunson and Huck Seed won events as well. (Ferguson finished runner-up in another event that year, too.)

There hasn’t been as good a year for former ME winners at the WSOP since, not by a long shot. Chan and Brunson would each win bracelets in 2005 -- the last for both. Scotty Nguyen would win the $50K H.O.R.S.E. in 2008. And Phil Hellmuth won WSOP events in 2006, 2007, and 2012, while also winning the 2012 WSOP Europe Main Event.

The period since 2003 has seen fields expand dramatically, although the number of bracelet events has essentially doubled, too, since 2003. And while there have been a lot of ME winners playing a lot of events, getting all of the way back to the winner’s circle has proven difficult for nearly all of them.

Cada was a likely candidate to break through to get that second bracelet, having come close several times recently with two fourth-place finishes last year and a runner-up in 2012.

Greg Merson has cashed three times already this WSOP and seems capable of being the next WSOP ME winner to win a bracelet. I’d say Jonathan Duhamel probably would be a good choice, too, to win one, even though he’s off to a rough start at this summer’s Series.

Then again, Hellmuth is 11th of 38 in another event to start today (Event No. 36, $1,500 NL 2-7 Draw), and so perhaps he’ll be the next ME winner to grab more gold. Again.

The Favorite Underdog

Have written here a few times over the last several months about how Vera Valmore and I made a move and now live on a farm where we keep a couple of horses. Vera rides dressage, and in fact competed in a show not that long ago where she rode well in a musical freestyle for which she devised the music. Cool stuff.

So we’re horse people, although not really horse racing fans. The sport intrigues us somewhat, but Vera doesn’t like the way the horses sometimes get exploited and mishandled in a mercilessly competitive, high-dollar industry, which necessarily tempers our excitement whenever the Triple Crown races come back around on the calendar.

But we watch them, and were watching on Saturday to see if California Chrome could do what no other horse has done since 1978 and manage to win the Belmont Stakes after having won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.

I was absolutely ambivalent about the outcome. Nor did I bet on the race -- which, illogically, I can legally do while I cannot play online poker except on sketchy, unreliable “rogue” sites located offshore.

But I was still fascinated by how the great majority of others were pulling for California Chrome to pull it off. We ended up watching a lot of the lead-up to the race, and without exception everyone who appeared on camera seemed excitedly to be pulling for Chrome, too, with all of them -- without exception -- predicting that Chrome, who ultimately set off as a big 4-to-5 favorite, would win the race.

I mentioned to Vera just before the race began how it was weird, in a way, that in this case the favorite had everyone’s support whereas in sports it is more often the case that the underdog gets more love. But she pointed out to me that I was miscalculating. Even though Chrome was the favorite odds-wise (which, of course, are dictated by the betting) and perhaps might even have been the horse with the best potential to win the race, 36 straight years of no horse winning the Triple Crown necessarily gives the impression that any horse is going to be an underdog to accomplish the feat.

In other words, in this instance, pulling for the nominal “favorite” was in a funny way like pulling for an upset.

It reminded me a little of what I was writing about last week with regard to Vanessa Selbst’s WSOP win and how we tend to be surprised even when “favorites” win at poker. Sure, a given player might be a favorite versus another (or all of the rest, even), but such a player will always be a dog to win a big field tourney.

Then Chrome lost, with Tonalist winning, and Chrome’s owner Steve Coburn swiftly destroyed a lot of good will and support with his complaint about the other horses taking “the coward’s way out” by not racing all three legs of the Triple Crown. Very Hellmuthian, that rant.

It’s a tough spot, I guess, being so favored while an underdog.

Assigning Bradshaw and McGuire

Among the readings I assign in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class is a chapter from Paul McGuire’s Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker.

The chapter comes from the latter part of the book when Dr. Pauly is at his most cynical regarding the commercial spectacle of the WSOP, the chapter ending with a funny punchline about Phil Hellmuth’s increasingly elaborate entrances to the Main Event up to that point (2008).

Pauly suggests Hellmuth try riding in one year on a donkey. “I can only imagine the snarky headlines,” he writes. “‘Ass Rides Ass to WSOP.’”

I assign the reading alongside another favorite of mine, Jon Bradshaw, writing in Fast Company about a much smaller World Series of Poker happening some 35 years before. I’ve reviewed Bradshaw’s book here before, an excellent example of long form journalism that includes several great essays, including the one about Johnny Moss I have my students read.

Unlike McGuire, Bradshaw is much more admiring of his subjects whom he treats almost as though they are larger than life. Both authors are insightful about the WSOP and poker’s broader relationship to American culture, and the contrast of their perspectives gives the students a lot to consider which makes the discussions especially enjoyable for me.

Some occasionally find Pauly a little snarky. But most are entertained and enjoy the inventiveness of his style. And they respond, too, to his overall point about the commercialization of the game, something which indeed reflects larger trends happening in America not just in poker but in other cultural forums, too.

Anyhow, the discussion this week reminded me of how much I enjoyed Pauly’s book. If you’re interested in the WSOP’s history -- and in particular that 2005-2008 period he covers most closely -- and haven’t read Lost Vegas before, I recommend it.

A lot has changed over the last five years at the WSOP, I think, and, of course, in poker, generally speaking and its place in the U.S. over the same period. And of course it has all changed even more dramatically since the 1970s when Bradshaw wrote about poker and gambling and the WSOP. But many of the observations made in both books still apply, too, which along with the strong writing is why I recommend both.

Egalitarian? Egad.

Like many of you who might have clicked through my tweet announcing a new blog post (@hardboiledpoker), you probably also had your timelines populated today with much back-and-forthing regarding the Global Poker Index and the pros and cons of ranking systems designed to indicate who might be the best of the best when it comes to tournament poker.

If you did, you noticed that Phil Hellmuth has kind of weirdly wandered into the conversation, making various claims and pronouncements that remind me of a tenured faculty member who has missed every meeting all semester suddenly showing up to share his thoughts on this particular agenda item.

Starting earlier this week, Hellmuth has tweeted about a half-dozen times on the matter, sort of firing randomly in ways that belie a lack of understanding of how the GPI works, what ranking systems actually represent, and perhaps a desire to be considered by his Twitter followers to be the kind of respected commentator on poker-related issues that other players actually are.

His first salvo was the most hilarious, although he’s come close a couple of times since. “The GPI is very flawed,” he began. “I cannot respect a points award system that counts $100,000 high rollers. Poker awards need to be egalitarian.”

I liked Dreyfus’s early response to the non-specific criticism of the first sentence. “Poker is flawed,” said Dreyfus.

Dreyfus also offered a more detailed response to the rest of Hellmuth’s tweet in a post over on the GPI site, including pointing out that the Poker Brat’s criticism of $100K events being included ignores how the GPI actually weighs high roller and super high roller events differently in order to prevent them from unduly affecting rankings.

The best part of it, though, is the line that “Poker awards need to be egalitarian.” Hellmuth might as well say that the ranking system is unfair because it penalizes poor players while rewarding the good ones.

Sure, he means to say something less obtuse about high-rolling players having an inherent advantage in such rankings, but that ain’t the words he’s chosen. (I see the latest episode of the PokerNews GPI podcast is titled “Hellmuth the Egalitarian,” which makes me want to listen.)

I suppose the only real “egalitarian” tourney rankings system would be one that accounted for buy-ins, too (something that came up during the long Twitter discussion today), but that obviously ain’t happening.

Now Hellmuth is ducking his head inside the door to say stuff about a “players council” being needed to establish criteria for ranking systems. We’ve heard this line before from him -- recently, in fact, such as last fall when he wanted to “draw a line in the sand” over which WSOP bracelets were supposed to “count.”

But like I say, it’s like the whole faculty has been working on this issue for weeks and he’s just bumbled into the room to remind everyone that even if he’s presently well outside the top 100 on the GPI, he can’t be fired!

Anyhow, sorry to those who like my buddy Remko were pointing out how there was an overload of GPI-related talk in his timeline today. “They should change the word ‘Timeline’ on my Twitter app to ‘Endless GPI Discussion with some sports news and pictures of cats,‘” he tweeted.

To which I felt like there was really only one correct response (click pic to enlarge).

If You Never Go All In, You Cannot Lose

“Tournaments are like plus-EV lottery tickets... or in some cases, minus-EV lottery tickets.”

That was an idea tossed out by Phil Laak this week while helping with the commentary on the WSOP Europe live stream. Kind of an interesting observation, I thought, about tournament poker that highlighted how much luck is involved in winning a tourney while also noting that some players can via their skills and tourney know-how lessen that chance element -- or, with a lack of such know-how, increase it.

During some of the breaks this week on the WSOPE stream they’ve been showing clips from last year’s WSOPE Main Event final table won by Phil Hellmuth. Saw the finale again a little earlier today, including Hellmuth’s coming over to the rail after winning and saying something about having been all in and at risk only a single time throughout the entire tourney.

We take him at his word, I suppose, but in truth I think that is one statistic Hellmuth can be counted on to keep track of as he plays -- namely, the number of times he’s been all in and at risk in a tournament. He’s famously pronounced in the past with pride his ability to avoid such spots in tourneys. Of course it is an inarguable truism that if you never go all in versus a player with more chips, you cannot possibly be eliminated. (Easier said than done.)

Was kind of setting those two ideas beside each other today while watching what has turned out to be a long heads-up battle between Fabrice Soulier and Adrian Mateos, thinking about how that strategy of avoiding all-ins -- when employed in conjunction with a lot of other poker skills, of course -- can work to improve ones chances in the tourney “lottery.”

Especially in a relatively small field tourney like the WSOPE Main Event usually is -- Hellmuth topped a field of 420 last year; there were 375 entered this time -- the chances of making one’s way all of the way through it without being at risk more than once is better than is the case, say, in the WSOP Main Event where I have to imagine all nine of those who made this year’s final table were at risk somewhere along the way, perhaps more than once. Would be interesting to sort that out regarding this year’s November Nine (if possible).

In any event, it’s interesting to think how playing a tournament is on one level a willing acceptance of risk (especially from the perspective of a cash game player), a primary strategy of the tournament itself is to avoid risk.

Have a good weekend all. And whatever you do, manage your risk appropriately.