Poker’s Stick-to-it-iveness

Not surprisingly, Tobey Maguire decided to settle out of court in that poker-related lawsuit involving the famous “Hollywood home games.” You’ve heard that story, haven’t you? The other one in which “poker” and “Ponzi scheme” both keep coming up?

The lawsuit had been brought by the victims of Bradley Ruderman, a corrupt hedge fund manager who bilked clients out of millions via what has been described as a Ponzi scheme.

Ruderman had participated in the Hollywood poker games for about three years (from 2006 to 2009), losing consistently with his clients’ money. While it is probably impossible to say exactly how much Ruderman lost in the games -- the precise details of which have mostly remained closely-guarded -- most reports suggest his losses to have exceeded $5 million.

Maguire has long been rumored to have been a big winner in the Hollywood games, perhaps even the biggest. In fact, Mr. Name Dropper himself Phil Hellmuth once said on a 2007 episode of “Poker After Dark” that Maguire had won at least $10 million in them.

Ruderman was finally nabbed and pleaded guilty to wire fraud, investment-adviser fraud, and failure to pay taxes. He’s now in prison, serving a 10-year sentence, and has also been ordered to pay back more than $27 million to his victims.

Back in the spring, lawsuits were filed against something like two dozen different individuals, all of whom were said to have won money from Ruderman in the games. Those targeted included Gabe Kaplan, Nick Cassavetes, Rick Salomon (of “1 Night in Paris” notoriety), and others.

Some -- including Kaplan -- have already settled out of court, usually for a fraction of the amount sought. In Maguire’s case, the suit claimed he’d taken over $311,000 from Ruderman at the tables, but the settlement was only for $80,000. A judge will still have to approve the deal in court next month, but odds are the Spider-Man star will successfully wiggle free from this entanglement.

While the legality of the home games is being questioned in the lawsuits -- see this Hollywood Reporter feature for details -- it’s unclear whether these efforts to sue players to recover money they won in the games would succeed if the cases went to trial. What is clear, though, is that folks like Maguire aren’t interested in seeing their names continuing to be highlighted in tabloids in connection with things like “fraud” or “lawsuits” or “Ponzi schemes.”

Or, one might as well add, “poker.”

Recall how Maguire shunned the spotlight at the World Series of Poker back when he was regularly playing in events, including in 2007 when he went fairly deep in the Main (finishing 292nd)? No, the celebs generally don’t want to be linked with the game, even those who are somewhat dedicated to it like Maguire. They just don’t want “poker” following ’em around. Thus are these cases being settled out of court.

I guess in the end Maguire probably views the $80K as hefty rake taken from whatever he’s won from the games. But I suppose there’s another “rake” when it comes to poker, a risk to one’s status among those who view the game as an objectionable pursuit or pastime.

That’s thanks in part to poker’s legacy as a game for outlaws, giving poker a reputation that has long been kind of, well...

Sticky.

From the Annals of Bad Timing

Today marks the two-month anniversary of Black Friday. Seem like it’s been longer than that to you, too?

Of all the many consequences of the unsealing of the Department of Justice’s indictment and civil complaint on April 15, there was one kind of personal one that I’ve been wanting to share. I’m going to have to be a little bit vague with some of the details, I’m afraid, but you’ll still get the gist of the story, I think. And then we can laugh at my pain together.

As I’ve mentioned here now and again, I’ve been doing a lot of freelance writing about poker for various publications and sites. One publication in particular asked me some time ago about possibly writing a feature for them at some point, and after several months of talking about it an assignment was finally delivered. I had several weeks on which to work on the story, which gave me a chance to research the piece thoroughly as well as to try to contact various individuals in the poker world for comments, too.

The story concerned what had been a very prominent issue in poker for quite some time. I’d commented on the issue at least a couple of times here on Hard-Boiled Poker, I know, and it was one that many others had noticed and formed opinions about. Had to do with the many poker TV shows and how on several of them -- including the most popular ones like “High Stakes Poker” and “Poker After Dark” -- the PokerStars pros and those from Full Tilt Poker were for various reasons unable to compete against one another.

I ended up digging fairly deeply into the background of the situation, noting a number of different explanations for why the PS guys and FTP guys were not getting to play on the same shows. Most of it was related to the sites’ sponsoring of the shows, but in many cases the situation wasn’t as cut-and-dry as it might have seemed from the outside. That is to say, just because one site sponsored a given show, that didn’t necessarily mean players from the other site were prohibited from playing on it. Like most everything to do with online poker, it was a highly complicated situation.

For the piece I spoke with a number of individuals, including several pros from both sites who regularly appeared on the shows. There were a number of different opinions and views, with some on both sides articulating a desire to resolve the impasse and even coming up with some ideas about how to do so. I also was able to get quotes from the shows’ producers, too, who clarified that while they certainly were involved with the casting of the shows, they weren’t preventing anyone from playing due to a particular site affiliation.

That was one aspect of the article I was especially desirous to have reported, since I think many believed erroneously that the shows’ producers were somehow making decisions about who could and couldn’t play. To refer to just one example, while PokerStars was sponsoring “High Stakes Poker” this season, neither Stars nor the “HSP” folks were saying Full Tilt guys couldn’t play on the show; rather, that was a decision made by FTP.

In addition to talking to PokerStars and Full Tilt pros who appeared on the shows, I also was able to contact some other very prominent players who weren’t affiliated with either site and who also often played on the shows. Interestingly (I thought), some of those non-affiliated players declined to comment on the story, not wanting to get in the middle of the battle between PS and FTP.

Anyhow, like I say a lot of time and effort went into the piece. I had about six weeks to pull it all together, and I’ll admit it was a satisfying feeling finally to submit it just a couple of days prior to the deadline I’d been given. Maybe even felt a little bit proud about the whole thing.

When was that deadline, you ask? Ah, yes. Friday, April 15.

By dinner time that day I already knew my feature couldn’t possibly run. The entire story was written within a context that had suddenly become utterly obsolete. It was like I had carefully crafted a long, detailed account of a petty little civil war in a country that had suddenly been successfully crushed by another much larger and more powerful one.

Perhaps another, related story could be told, one concerning how the warring factions might have been better off focusing their attentions on other, more pressing matters than their bickering with one another. But the one I’d written was no longer relevant at all.

Of course, looking back on it, I wonder how much it really mattered before. I mean, it seemed important at the time. But in the end, no matter how the whole battle between the sites ultimately went, all of the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk ’cos they got all the money.

PLO on PAD

A couple of weeks ago news broke regarding the upcoming season of “Poker After Dark,” due to get crankin’ in the new year. Word is that perhaps in order to infuse a little something new into the now long-running, late-night poker show (on the air nearly four years now!), two weeks’ worth of six-handed pot-limit Omaha will be featured.

The six players recruited for the PLO shows were Brandon Adams, Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Brian Hastings, and Phil Galfond. The taping took place earlier this month, and if Hastings has it right on his blog, they played $300/$600 blinds (perhaps with an ante), with a minimum buy-in of $100K. Not sure if there were any instances of players “running it twice,” although it seems like it wouldn’t be out of place for them to have done so.

As someone who plays PLO probably 90% of the time I sit down at the virtual tables, I’m obviously excited to see how these PAD shows go. Like just about every other non-hold’em game, PLO has only rarely been shown on television since the big “boom” in 2003. So for us Omahalics, this’ll be a treat.

The news got me thinking back, trying to recall other instances of PLO being shown on the tube.

In 2004, ESPN included the $2,000 PLO event as part of its WSOP coverage, an episode I remember seeing more than once. Chau Giang won that one, outlasting PLO-specialist Robert Williamson III heads up to take the bracelet. That was the year, of course, when ESPN went wild with the WSOP coverage, for the first time showing numerous preliminary events. Heck, even the Razz event got covered that year -- the only time, I believe, that game has ever been shown on TV outside of a H.O.R.S.E. event.

ESPN actually covered PLO events a few more times over the next three years, although to be honest I have only a fuzzy memory of seeing these other shows. Another PLO event was shown in 2004, in fact, the $5,000 buy-in event won by Ted Lawson (who defeated Lee Watkinson heads up). Then in 2005 two more PLO events were covered, the $2,000 w/rebuys won by Josh Arieh, and the $5,000 w/rebuys won by Phil Ivey.

In 2006, only the $10,000 buy-in “World Championship” event was aired, with Lee Watkinson breaking through to win there. And if I’m not mistaken, 2007 was the last year ESPN covered PLO, showing the $5,000 w/rebuys event won by Burt Boutin.

Regarding that last instance, I actually wrote something here a good while back about ESPN’s coverage of that one, a post titled “A Non-Hold’em TV Sighting.” From the looks of that post, I appeared to have enjoyed the show, although I do say that Norman Chad’s analyses might’ve been a little misleading at times.

I’m not aware of PLO turning up on “High Stakes Poker” or any of the other TV shows, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it has come up elsewhere here and there and I missed it.

Obviously hold’em is much, much simpler to televise than is PLO, and thus I can’t really be too hard on Chad or anyone else who tries to provide commentary for the four-card game. I do think, however, that with a little extra effort on the production side PLO can be just as exciting to watch as NLHE. Perhaps even more so, particularly with this group of PLO vets who’ll be appearing on the “PAD” shows, where we’ll surely see some high-level strategy on display. (Not to mention all the monsterpotten!)

Still -- as ESPN’s decision to go hold’em-only since 2008 tends to show -- I think it’s safe to say that no matter how well these two weeks of PLO on “PAD” go, PLO will remain something of an exotic novelty when it comes to poker on TV going forward.

NBC’s Evening Line-Up & “Poker After Dark”

Had some extra time last week and so ended up filling some of it watching “Poker After Dark” here on the computer. The show has been around almost exactly three years now, although last week marked the debut of what they are calling season six.

The theme for the week was “Commentators III,” meaning the six participants in the winner-take-all sit-n-go were all people who have hosted poker shows at some point -- Howard Lederer, Gabe Kaplan, Joe Sebok, Ali Nejad, Mark Gregorich, and Kara Scott. I’d seen a few comments here and there about the first episode, and so that got me over onto the NBC poker page where I ended up following the match throughout the week.

I won’t go into particulars of how things went or who won, in case you have the sucker on TiVo or something and plan to watch yourself. I realized as I was watching I hadn’t really seen an entire week’s worth of “PAD” for a while. The show was somewhat entertaining, I suppose. Have to admit, though, I found my attention drifting more than once.

The poker was mostly tight, with really only one or two hands during the entire week demonstrating a player making what might be called a “move.” Thus did the outcome primarily rest on who caught cards in the most timely fashion. The banter was at times interesting, although I found it a little headachy trying to hear everyone. Seems like if the table talk is meant to be a focus of the show, they’d highlight what folks were saying more aggressively by keeping the talkers on camera and maybe turning up their mics now and then. (Then again, maybe there was just more mumbling going on last week than normally occurs on the show.)

I am nevertheless interested to see the show again this week, primarily to check out the debut of Annette Obrestad. Gonna be a big year for Obrestad, who turned 21 last September. They are calling this week “Nicknames” week, although strangely on the NBC site they are not referring to Obrestad by her best-known nickname -- “Annette_15” -- instead referring to her as “The Huntress.” Actually, I’m pretty sure that decision was quite consciously made so as to avoid any need to explain what “Annette_15” actually means.

As I say, I watched the show last week on the NBC website, as I don’t normally stay up late enough to watch “PAD” when it airs on my local TV station at 2:05 a.m. Probably the last time I was watching the show at that time of night was last summer when I was in Vegas helping cover the WSOP and getting back to my room around then after a long day-slash-night at the Rio.

You probably heard all of that news yesterday about NBC’s late night line-up being in serious doubt here following the 2010 Winter Olympics which will be taking over the network for most of February. “The Jay Leno Show,” which currently airs nightly at 10 p.m., has apparently been losing viewers at a rapid clip, with many affiliates saying they’ll drop it because of the way it has been negatively affecting ratings for the local 11 p.m. news. So NBC announced yesterday they’ll take Leno out of the prime time line-up once the Olympics are over, meaning their post-local news schedule is a bit up in the air.

It sounds like NBC wants to put Leno on at 11:35 p.m. for a half-hour, bump Conan O’Brien’s “The Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m., then move “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” to 1:05 a.m. Apparently Carson Daly’s half-hour show “Last Call,” currently at 1:35 a.m., will get dropped altogether if this turns out to be the new arrangement. Other possibilities being reported are that O’Brien could skedaddle, taking his show over to the Fox Network. In any event, the whole thing sounds like a major headache for NBC, compounded by significant regret over the whole Leno prime time experiment.

So the question for poker fans -- especially those of us who don’t bother much with all these late night talk shows -- is what might all this have to do with “Poker After Dark”? Even if I wasn’t riveted by last week’s episodes, I’d still very much like to see the show stay on NBC. Will this shake-up on NBC between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. affect “PAD”?

I kind of doubt it. That isn’t to say the show is altogether safe. But I’m not really seeing these moves as directly affecting the show’s fate all that much.

For one, while ratings for “PAD” aren’t without meaning, they aren’t nearly as important as they would be without Full Tilt Poker’s sponsorship. Indeed, my understanding is the show wouldn’t exist without FTP supporting it. Recall how about year ago PokerStars decided no longer to send its pros onto the show? (Daniel Negreanu wrote about it on his blog.)

In other words, the show really operates more like an infomercial than a regular, ratings-driven show. It’s not like the show needs to remain popular enough to attract advertisers to keep it on the air, although obviously if it were to tank too badly Full Tilt would no longer view it as a worthwhile vehicle to advertise their product. So, how well “PAD” is doing ratings-wise compared, say, to Carson Daly’s show isn’t necessarily a huge factor here, I don’t believe.

One other point that seems relevant here: the articles I read yesterday suggested that NBC hasn’t any say over what its affiliates show after 2 a.m. As I mentioned, most were reporting that if the Leno-O’Brien-Fallon shuffle into the night indeed happens, Carson Daly’s show will be axed -- that is, it will not moved to 2:05 a.m. At least that’s how NBC network chairman Jeff Gaspin is characterizing that possible scenario. (EDIT [added 5:45 p.m.]: Actually, it sounds like Conan O’Brien is having none of this proposed shufflin' around, according to the statement he released today -- addressed to “People of Earth.”)

All of which seems to indicate that if local affiliates are presently content to keep “PAD” on at 2:05 a.m., there doesn’t seem much reason yet to think they won’t continue to keep the show moving forward. I suppose if they were presented an option to show that Daly show at that time, that could threaten the future of “PAD,” but it doesn’t appear that’s going to happen.

Gonna be a busier week for me this time around. But like I say I want to find time in here somewhere to watch Obrestad take on the other “nicknames” on this week’s show -- Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari, Erick “E-Dog” Lindgren, Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, and Phil “The Poker Brat” Hellmuth.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking -- no Chainsaw?!