Live and Learn

A busy Wednesday has already almost gotten away from me. I’d wanted today to write something here about this story of yet another U.S.-facing “rogue” online poker operator embarking on a dubious strategy for survivng in a mostly desperate marketplace. I’m referring to the Equity Poker Network apparently closing accounts of so-called “aggressive” players -- that is, winning players who put in lots of volume. You can read more about it over at pokerfuse.

Seems like there is some kind of symbolism worth teasing out of the story, one showing how an online poker network that can only serve U.S. customers by not allowing winning players to remain among the player pool is itself emblematic of online poker’s current status in the U.S. -- i.e., it’s a “loser’s game.”

Kind of a downer proclamation to make on this, the one-year anniversary of legal, regulated online poker’s introduction into the U.S. (Ultimate Poker debuted in Nevada one year ago today.) So rather than pursue that topic further I’m instead going to point you to a cool series of articles by Carlos Welch over on Learn.PokerNews which he’s dubbed “Cash Catastrophes.”

Carlos is writing articles about hands from his home game in which he’s made what he deems mistakes that have cost him money (hence the series title). All four of the articles illustrate situations that are familiar and have caused me to recall decisions with which I myself have struggled.

Here are the four “Cash Catastrophes” Carlos has shared thus far, the titles of which give an indication of the dilemma being faced in each:

“Out of Position and Out of Ideas”

“Folding Aces Leads to Paranoia”

“Missing Value With the Nuts”

“Hero-Calling Unexpected River Bets”

I appreciate Carlos’s willingness to share his missteps. It’s hard sometimes even to look into one’s own play and acknowledge to oneself mistakes made, never mind share them with an audience as he is doing. But doing so is obviously helpful all around.

Of course, if you aren’t interested in working on improving your game, apparently there’s an online poker network that is built just for you!

The GPI’s Tinkering

There are a few different topics floating about the poker world at the moment that seem worth discussing, one of which is that announcement this week by the Global Poker Index that they were “suspending” two players from their rankings thanks to allegations regarding their having cheated at the 2009 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event final table.

You’ve heard about this already, I imagine, both about the cheating and the GPI’s action, and so I won’t needlessly delve too deeply into the particulars. The players concerned are Jean-Paul Pasqualini and Cedric Rossi who finished first and second, respectively, at that year’s PPT ME final table.

A video compiled by the player and writer Nordine Bouya was posted a couple of weeks ago and presents what appears to be some fairly damning evidence of collusion occurring between the pair. For a rundown of the story of the video and what it shows, see Haley Hintze’s report over on PokerFuse “2009 Partouche Poker Tour Cheating Allegations Further Tarnish Tour’s Legacy.”

Yesterday the GPI decided to make a formal announcement regarding their decision to remove Pasqualini and Rossi from their rankings. Actually the 2009 tourney happened outside of the 36-month period on which the current rankings are tabulated, but as Zokay Entertainment CEO Alex Dreyfus spells out in his article on the matter, the primary motivation here is to use the GPI as a mechanism to help discourage cheating and better conditions for players, generally speaking.

Dreyfus acknowledges that by making such a decision regarding what is otherwise a stats-based ranking system the GPI perhaps puts itself in danger of sliding down a “slippery slope” when it comes to delivering judgments regarding particular players and their eligibility to be considered in the rankings. He also notes that the GPI isn’t even ready to commit to having been convinced that Pasqualini and Rossi did, in fact, cheat, saying that “we are not claiming that we know they cheated” and adding that such a finding is “up to the casinos and the overseeing regulatory bodies to decide.”

In other words, it’s a somewhat awkward stance being taken here by the GPI to remove a couple of players from their rankings when neither were ever disqualified for cheating from the tourney in question, nor is it even clear there will be any sort of retrospective handling of the matter (e.g., a post-tourney DQ-ing of the players and/or attempt to recover winnings).

Rich Ryan posted an op-ed over on PokerNews today in which he disagrees with the GPI’s decision to “suspend” Pasqualini and Rossi from the rankings. Rich draws analogies from other sports (baseball, cycling) to talk about how various forms of cheating have affected the record books in those contexts, concluding that he dislikes how making subjective decisions about players’ results being compromised ultimately lessens the overall strength of the GPI’s ability to assess and compare players’ tourney performances.

I’m mostly with Rich, I think, regarding his stance on the issue. That is to say, I’m not really sure the GPI needs to worry too much about this sort of policing of its rankings, although I also understand where Dreyfus is coming from with his broader goal to use the GPI to help improve the game and the experiences of the players.

That said, I’m less apt to agree with the assumption that the GPI rankings are in fact wholly objective. Even if the rankings are entirely based on players’ performances, a host of decisions have been made regarding the various criteria for weighing those performances that are, in fact, subjective. It’s a nifty measuring system, no doubt, that certainly works to provide a different and more thorough way of measuring players’ performances than comes from, say, a panel’s votes or by polling players. But as we all know, an entirely objective measure of performance in poker tournaments doesn’t really exist.

Anyhow, check out Haley’s report and Ryan’s op-ed, and decide for yourself whether the GPI should or should not be “suspending” players from its rankings, or the degree to which the issue even should matter to the poker community.

A Hero-ic Effort (Hero Poker Steps Aside)

Yesterday evening I was relaxing at home with Vera, watching basketball while she wrapped presents. I say relaxing, although by night’s end I was making it difficult for myself to relax.

It was getting late when I had a cup of hot tea, and too eagerly drinking from it I managed to burn my tongue well enough that I can still taste a little tingle this morning.

Then later when getting in bed I was trying to pull the covers up over me and when my hand slipped I basically punched myself right above my left eye. It was a good, solid smack, and pretty comical, really. Lucky I didn’t give myself a black eye.

But I survived all of that to have a restful night of sleep. Then this morning I goofed around a little playing on Hero Poker, the usual fixed limit hold’em games (0.25/0.50 & 0.50/1). Made a couple of dumb plays on one table that put me in a hole early, but climbed back out of it to break even for the session.

By dumb plays I’m referring to the usual LHE mistakes -- cold-calling raises, chasing draws without proper odds, overplaying likely second-best hands, etc. Kind of reminded me of my slapsticky misadventures from the night before a little, and how a lot of times at the poker table our losses can usually be traced back to our own errors or lapses. It’s not always as dramatic or obvious as punching yourself in the face, but it often doesn’t require a lot of study to discover it probably wasn’t so much the cards as how you played them that affected your success or failure.

I checked my modest Hero balance -- still right around a hundy, where it’s essentially been for months as I piddle around in the micros -- and went to log off, but before doing so noticed an “alert” informing me that it sounds like I may not be playing on Hero much any longer.

“Dear Players,” read the alert. “Hero Poker will be transferring all players tonight to a new client on the Merge network.” There followed a promise that our funds were “completely secure” and we'll be getting info later about the new client.

The note is from David Jung, the CEO of Hero who has been especially communicative with players over on a dedicated “player relations” thread on Two Plus Two. I’ve actually been in touch with David personally a few times as well, and have appreciated being able to talk to him about various aspects of the site.

I knew from checking in on that thread that Hero might well be shutting down here soon, and another look over there this morning shows Dave providing further details regarding what is happening tonight. It sounds like Hero and the Merge network (of which Hero has been a part) have reached an impasse and that Hero has made a decision to step aside.

Dave’s note reflects the same sort of professionalism and honesty he’s demonstrated throughout the year-and-a-half I’ve been playing on Hero and have been either talking to him or reading his messages in the thread.

My sense from the outside is that Hero did the best they could in what was essentially an impossible environment in which to operate, and now they’re following a course that makes sense for them and hopefully provides for the Hero players adequately, too. That is to say, while they probably made some mistakes here and there, they weren’t punching themselves in the face (so to speak) like some online sites have done in the past.

I’m hoping whatever new client my balance gets forwarded to is functional and allows me to continue my low-limit piddling, although I’m not too optimistic. For more details about Hero’s decision to close (and some further context), Pokerfuse has just posted an article reporting about it.

I’m playing with money won on a freeroll, and since I haven’t been able to run it up significantly I’m not overly concerned about cashing out. Maybe such a relaxed attitude is just setting myself up to get burned or smacked again, but if so it’ll be my own fault.

Re-Entry: Atlantic City

Limited space to scribble this morning, as I’m heading off for another poker-related voyage.

I actually have two tourneys I’ll be reporting from coming up here in rapid succession, both up in the northeastern part of the country. The first takes me to Atlantic City for the World Series of Poker Circuit event at Harrah’s (a $1,675 buy-in event, with re-entries). Then I’ll be headed to the Sands in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for the Main Event of their Sands Bethlehem Deepstack Extravaganza (a $2,500 event, also with re-entries).

This’ll be a return trip to AC for me, as I was there previously for the WSOP-C back in March 2011. Was a memorable trip and tourney, in part because it was won by Brian Ali (who I was able to meet and play with this past summer in Vegas), and Ali knocked out most of the players at the final table, including one named Ellis Frazier (much to the delight of pun-seeking bloggers).

Yesterday the poker world’s attention was suddenly focused on Atlantic City thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s report that PokerStars is looking to purchase the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel in AC, a deal that is in limbo while New Jersey continues to debate an online gambling bill that would allow casinos to operate sites. The article explains how if such a bill were passed, Stars would likely move to obtain a license to operate in New Jersey.

Speaking of that NJ online gambling bill currently under consideration (Assembly Bill A2578), that bill was recently revised to remove language that might have prevented PokerStars from returning to the U.S. because of its so-called “bad actor” status (i.e., for having taken U.S. customers post-UIGEA). Haley Hintze explained that change and its possible implications in an article for PokerFuse yesterday.

Put together with PokerStars’ deal with the DOJ (and purchase and relaunch of Full Tilt Poker), all of this adds up to a possibility that Stars could well find its way back to the U.S., with Atlantic City the avenue through which such re-entry would occur.

All very interesting to consider as I plan for my own re-entry into Atlantic City a little later today.

Will be curious to see how AC is holding up after Hurricane Sandy barrelled through six weeks ago. I’ll probably hop back on here starting Sunday to file some travel reports along the way. Meanwhile, have a good weekend, everyone!

Palmetto Poker: The South Carolina Ruling (Recommended Reads)

Once upon a time I used to post fairly regularly here about various federal bills and state-level cases and/or debates about poker’s legality, especially the online variety.

In fact, whenever I’m asked about how I started the blog and the early days (in the spring of 2006), I usually mention how it began as a simple outlet to discuss my own low-limit adventures online, then when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was signed into law a few months later (in October), I found myself writing about all sorts of other things happening in the poker world.

In some ways, that development probably helped ensure the blog would become less inward-looking and more interesting than if I had simply stuck with talking about hands and uncertainly mimicking other, more able writers of strategy and theory. The whole UIGEA mess and other, subsequent legal machinations would continue for years thereafter, and I was sufficiently energized by the whole situation to keep writing about every new bill or development.

But as I’ve mentioned here before more than once, I never felt all that equipped to analyze what was happening. I’m a decent reader, I think, even of sometimes opaque legal documents. And so I thought it was somewhat useful at least to summarize what I thought was happening, if only to help with my own understanding. But even there I was never wholly confident.

Thus one day when I was asked by a site to be the “legal correspondent” who’d report on such things, I had to decline. I knew I could fake it to some extent, but I also knew I wasn’t really the best person to do such reporting. And on top of that, by then (a couple of years ago) I’d gotten a little fatigued by the whole situation, which seemed to involve a lot of variation on a tired theme -- namely, nothing was getting passed, arguments were never conclusive, and those debating legislation or ruling on cases themselves often seemed only partially to understand the first thing about what they were discussing.

Not to mention it was the same friggin’ story over and over and over again. It was like reporting on the same exact hands repeatedly, only with different players. Except there was never any final all-in or resolution to come.

So I mostly stopped writing about that stuff. Sometimes I’m tempted, though, such as last week when the South Carolina Supreme Court came down with an interesting, conflicted ruling regarding the legality of home games. But now I’m more apt just to read others’ summaries and analyses than to attempt my own, and I’ve just read some good ones I thought I’d recommend.

One comes from our lawyer friend Grange95 on his crAAKKer blog, who provides an excellent explanation of the unusual split ruling delivered by the five judges. In fact, the first part of the title of his post -- “Same Song, Different Verse” -- kind of evokes that idea I’m referring to that we’ve heard all of this before many times over. Although as his explanation shows, there were a couple of new twists involved here.

In this case, two of the judges ruled that a regular SC poker game with a low buy-in (just $20) but which saw the host take a rake to cover expenses and which advertised online in order to attract players was indeed illegal gambling according to a century-old statute. Meanwhile, two other judges dissented, while the fifth agreed with points made by both sides before ultimately concurring with the “plurality opinion” (i.e., the judges who found the games illegal).

After providing a nice, clear explanation of the ruling, Grange95 adds some analysis that also looks ahead to how this particular ruling may affect future developments. The fact that the whole “skill-vs.-luck” issue was mostly set aside in this case as irrelevant (by both sides) is intriguing, as is the way the ruling kind of throws things back to the SC legislature to try to craft a better, more up-to-date law regarding illegal gambling. I also find interesting the way all of the judges seem to have voiced a kind of “common sense” or pragmatic view of how the kind of game being spread in their case (with a rake, and soliciting players online) differed from “casual games” played between friends in a private residence (with no rake, and not advertising to attract players).

Grange95 thinks new legislation is a likely next move in South Carolina, and isn’t too optimistic about what may result from a modernized illegal gambling law (i.e., “Things Could Get Worse For Poker Players”). He also has some interesting things to say about the Poker Players Alliance and its relative impotence both in this case and generally speaking. So check out Grange95’s post for a full rundown of what happened in SC last week and what it may possibly mean going forward.

Rakewell, a.k.a. the Poker Grump, added some thoughts regarding the case as well that serve as a good follow-up after reading Grange95’s post. He sides with the dissenting view in the case, and offers some thoughtful criticisms of the majority’s argument and of the strange I-agree-with-the-dissenters-but-concur-with-the-plurality position of the judge who cast the swing vote.

Grange95 also recommends a PokerFuse article reporting on the case written by Haley Hintze which provides a good, short digest of the case and its implications.

There are other articles in the usual places regarding the SC case, but most just echo each other and none seem to offer anything close to the thoughtful summary/analysis provided in the above-mentioned posts. So if you’ve been hearing about this SC business and were looking to learn more, check out those posts.

A funny side note... when searching around for other reports and/or analyses on last week’s SC ruling, I quickly came upon an article from early 2009 on the same case reporting on the ruling that subsequently was appealed to the SC Supreme Court. It sounds like the defense then made a lot of the whole “skill-vs.-luck” issue and that the judge there even went so far as to acknowledge hold’em to be a game of skill while nonetheless issuing his guilty verdict.

Seems like a competent enough article, I guess. I wonder, though, if the author really knew what he was talking about.

Faraway Poker

While in Macau last week, we were all mindful of the reopening of Full Tilt Poker that happened Tuesday, November 6. There was even a minor buzz in the poker room at the moment FTP’s cash tables opened up, with people mentioning it to one another and wondering aloud about transferring money to and from their PokerStars’ accounts.

I called up the newly updated client on my laptop, actually, and a few of us looked in briefly as players began to take seats at the money tables. For us it was the evening, with the final table of the Asia Championship of Poker Warm-Up event going on before us. That was the final table featuring Johnny Chan (who finished seventh) and Joseph Cheong (who took third), with the Australian Jeff Rossiter eventually winning later that night.

I watched the number of players starting to climb a little -- not overly dramatically, but certainly increasing -- then closed the client. And really, I pretty much forgot all about Full Tilt Poker the rest of the week.

Looking at PokerScout today, I see that according to their tabulations Full Tilt has swiftly moved back into second position behind PokerStars as far as cash players are concerned, with about a third the number they are counting at PokerStars’ real money tables.

A couple of “Sunday majors” played out on the site last weekend (tourneys with $50K and $200K guarantees). Viktor “Isildur1” Blom -- now an FTP-sponsored pro -- is back on there vying for six-figure pots again on the $50/$100 PLO tables. And the FTOPS XXI schedule has been announced -- 35 tourneys totaling $7.5 million in guarantees starting in early December.

Meanwhile as far as FTP is concerned, we Americans piddle around on the free money tables, wonder about our balances (which now read “$0.00”), and read less-than-inspiring missives from the Poker Players Alliance regarding the DOJ-managed return of our balances.

According to the PPA, there is no timeline in place at present as far as the U.S. players’ return of funds is concerned. Says PPA Executive Director John Pappas who has been meeting with DOJ officials about it all, the “completion of a refund claims process is a long way away.”

Apparently a “third-party claims administrator” needs to be found -- with possible entities bidding on the right to assume that duty -- before anything else can happen, and even there no date has been set for when such an administrator will be put in place.

Over on PokerFuse, Dave Ferrara wrote a piece about “FTP Hoopla From Afar: A U.S. Player’s Perspective on the Relaunch” in which he wistfully laments being kept on the sideline amid the excited tweets, forum posts, and articles regarding FTP’s return.

Indeed, the “hoopla” tends only to accentuate the already well established feeling of powerlessness felt by the U.S. online poker player -- unable to play, wholly dependent on others for the recovery of lost funds, and with still uncertain future prospects for playing the so-called “American game” of poker online.

It almost seemed weirdly appropriate to have been 8,000-plus miles from home to watch Full Tilt Poker’s relaunch of cash games. As Ferrara’s choice of headline suggests, it does feel as though FTP 2.0 is all happening from “afar.”

Meanwhile, the return of our FTP funds is a “a long way away.” And for Americans, our regular playing of online poker is quickly receding into a distant past, perhaps to return at point -- unknown as yet -- in the future.

Meanwhile... Reid-Kyl

We’re careening toward the end of another Congress, to be punctuated again by one of those weird little stretches between elections and the start of the new year. I’m talking about the so-called “lame duck session” when certain legislation that has been avoided during the pre-election period sometimes gets entertained.

And once again, talk about some sort of federal online poker bill sneaking its way through before the Congressional finish line has arisen. Turning into kind of a tradition, really.

You’ll recall how two years ago the month of December was dominated by talk of the “Reid Bill,” a.k.a. the Prohibition of Internet Gaming, Internet Poker Regulation and UIGEA Enforcement Act sponsored by senator Harry Reid (D-NV).

Looking back through my old posts from the end of 2010, I see how I was distracted enough by the story to write several times on the topic, the titles of those posts kind of describing in shorthand form the narrative’s trajectory: “Getting a Reid on the Situation,” “Adding to the Cacophony: More on the ‘Reid Bill,’” and “Zombie Bill Dies, UIGEA Monster Lives.”

This time we’re hearing about a new federal bill, dubbed the “Reid-Kyl bill” thanks to the co-sponsorship of former UIGEA architect Jon Kyl (R-AZ). This full title of this one is the Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection, and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2012.

A summary of this bill began circulating in September, and I’ll admit that at the time I didn’t pay too much attention to either the bill or the chatter surrounding it. I might cite having been too busy to pay it much mind as a reason for my neglect, although in truth, despite having devoted a lot of posts to trying to sort through various legislative intrigues over the years, I’m mostly bored by the topic.

Also, the bits of early commentary on the Reid-Kyl bill I did catch seemed to suggest it had so little hope of passage that it wasn’t worth too much attention. (I am referring to commentary by people I tend to trust.) In other words, kind of like “Full House with Johnny Chan,” there didn’t seem to be much future for the bill, and so my response was necessarily muted.

The very first item in the Reid-Kyl summary talked about undoing “the impact” of that DOJ memorandum that became public in late 2011 which offered the opinion that the 1961 Wire Act only applied to sports betting -- that is, what opened the door for states to start exploring licensing and regulating online poker (and other non-sports related gambling) on their own. Later comes the talk of online poker, which would be permitted although with the provision that states or reservations could opt out if they wished.

Also present in that summary was an item indicating that in order “To deter U.S. players from patronizing illegal sites, the bill makes explicit that any property involved in or traceable to a gambling transaction in violation of the new act (including winnings) is subject to forfeiture.” That item understandably raised some eyebrows, insofar as it represented for the first time talk of players potentially being penalized for playing on non-licensed sites.

Late last week a full-text draft of the Reid-Kyl bill surfaced, and with it discussion about the bill has been revived. QuadJacks provides a copy, if you’re curious.

The actual bill appears to correspond fairly closely to the summary in pretty much all respects. However, the big news accompanying the publication of the actual bill was the apparent omission of that business about the feds being able to grab the funds of players who patronized unlawful sites.

This take on the Reid-Kyl bill -- repeated on practically every poker news site -- was largely influenced by the Poker Players Alliance. In an article for Pokerfuse last Friday, Rich Muny, the PPA’s Vice-President of Player Relations, is characterized as having “asserted that this language [about player penalties] is now completely absent from the current bill draft.” Muny is also quoted suggesting that the removal of such language was largely due to the PPA’s influence as a lobbying organization. Referring to the legislators, Muny says “They knew we would likely oppose a bill with player penalties and were willing to answer us on that.”

So if you peruse the news sites, you see that in most of the articles about the full text of the Reid-Kyl bill being made public the focus is on that “player penalties removed” message.

There’s a problem with that reporting, though. It’s wrong.

The bill does contain a short section (“Bettor Forfeiture”) that describes “any property, real or personal, involved in a transaction or attempted transaction in violation” of the Reid-Kyl bill and explains how it that language would be added to Section 981(a)(1) of Title 18 of the United States Code. That section of the U.S. code spells out all sorts of offenses resulting in property being “subject to forfeiture to the United States,” including any property (including money) that’s used to traffic weapons, commit fraud, support or plan acts of terrorism, or break a host of other laws.

Reader “TA Miller” left a comment on the Pokerfuse article pointing out the significance of that section in the bill and how it does in essence represent what could be considered “player penalty.“ And Haley Hintze has provided a lengthier examination of the PPA’s misinterpretation of Reid-Kyl bill which adds some further speculation about whether this section about “bettor forfeiture” might possibly apply to U.S. citizens playing from abroad on sites the U.S. considers unlawful.

As Haley rightly points out, any bills spelling out ways for governments to start seizing player funds introduces something fairly alarming into the equation for U.S. citizens playing online poker -- namely, the idea that playing itself is an act that can be penalized, just like funding terrorists or breaking other federal laws can.

That said, much like talk about future installments of “Full House with Johnny Chan,” this whole discussion is probably mostly about something that ain’t never going to happen. It appears doubtful that the Reid-Kyl bill has much chance of actually becoming federal law. (I’m not even sure if the bill’s sponsors are wholly serious about pushing it through.) Rather, it seems much more likely that within the next year or so we’ll be talking about online poker being played in the U.S. via state-level licensees and regulation.

But who knows, really? Things can get weird after an election and before the new Congress steps in. Or weirder, I should say.

(EDIT [added 10/24/12]: Chris Grove, author of the Pokerfuse article referenced above, clarifies a few points while also responding to some of Haley’s analysis in an article posted yesterday on his Online Poker Report website titled “Reid/Kyl, Haley Hintze and the PPA.”)

The “Very American” Story of Online Poker

I mentioned yesterday how I’d started my class once again, that American Studies course called “Poker in American Film and Culture.” I’ve taught it several times now, and each semester am adding certain readings, moving others off the “required” list and onto a “recommend” one. I’ve also been gradually accumulating more and more examples of poker in film, showing different clips in class along the way to emphasize various topics we cover.

One scene I know I’ll be showing at some point this time around is from the 1968 film The Odd Couple which I just wrote about in a new “Pop Poker” piece for PokerListings.

I also noted in yesterday’s post how we begin the semester reading an excerpt from Poker: Bets, Bluffs and Bad Beats by Al Alvarez, taken from the first chapter titled “The American Game.” It is a neat way to kick off the whole discussion or “argument” of the course that poker is distinctly “American” and thus worth studying as a way to learn more about American history and culture. Reading the excerpt also introduces Alvarez to the students, whom we’ll read again later on when we pick up The Biggest Game in Town.

By talking about the syllabus, reading that Alvarez excerpt, and then soon after starting James McManus’ Cowboys Full (from which we’ll read a lot during the first few weeks), we quickly gather lots of examples of so-called “American” values or ideals. Thus do we focus a lot at the start on ideas and concepts like freedom, liberty, equality, democracy, capitalism, self-reliance, the “frontier spirit,” the “American dream,” the importance of being rewarded for one’s work, and the inclination to take risks and gamble. And how poker could be regarded as a game that neatly reflects or is shaped by all of these ideas and concepts.

Of course, when we use the adjective “American” in class we do it in the context of academic inquiry, not jingoistic sloganeering. That is to say, it is understood that while there is much that is great about the U.S., not everything that is “American” is automatically “good.” There are a lot of things about the country and American culture that aren’t necessarily admirable, and some of those less than admirable characteristics also find their way into poker.

Speaking of The Odd Couple, Alvarez includes in his chapter that great Walter Matthau quote about how “the game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great.” The quote points out in an humorous way how there are both positive and negative aspects to the game and the country.

I found myself thinking further about referring to something as “American” as a kind of uncritical defense when I heard Ben Mezrich, author of Bringing Down the House (about the MIT blackjack team) and The Accidental Billionaires (about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook), talking on CNBC about his plans to write “a big new book for next summer” that appears to cover the rise and fall of Absolute Poker. Mezrich appeared on the panel show Squawk Box as a guest host, and while there was given a chance to talk about his own writings, past and future.

Mezrich enthusiastically characterized the story as being “about a bunch of college kids who launched the online poker world out of a dorm room essentially” -- kind of a nutty, highly misleading thing to say about the AP guys who hardly “launched” online poker, having come into it years after its beginnings.

Mezrich continued, revealing he has a strange take on the story’s principals, too. “They’re brilliant kids who built an empire in a way, and now they’re being persecuted, hiding in Antigua or whatever, and because they did something to me that was very American,” said Mezrich. “It’s an intersection of 21 and The Social Network,” he added, alluding to film adaptations of his two best-known books.

The misleading here becomes more grievous, I’m afraid. Those “brilliant kids” now being unjustly “persecuted” are the same ones who were involved in the original superuser scandals and subsequent cover-ups, the bilking of millions from investors, various forms of bank and wire fraud, violating the UIGEA, and the failure to return player funds following Black Friday.

Hardly heroes, in other words, although it sounds like Mezrich might be angling towards shaping them into such with his version of the story. See Haley Hintze’s response to Mezrich’s weird take here, as well as this article on PokerFuse that notes how Mezrich may himself in fact have ties to the AP “frat boys” that might be influencing both his decision to write about them and how he’s approaching the task.

Mezrich describes AP’s founders as having done something “very American,” a superficial defense of the entrepreneurial urge that motivated them to build their “empire.” But clearly there was an abundance of unchecked greed there, too, perhaps also an “American” trait though here pursued to the point of abandoning morality and engaging in criminal behavior damaging to many, many others.

Mezrich certainly seems to be glossing over (or missing altogether) some obvious points in the story in this early, abridged pitch of his book. We’ll see where Mezrich goes with his project, which obviously could change. After all, as the Absolute Poker frat boys well demonstrated, things don’t always go as originally planned.

I will give him this much, though -- there is perhaps something “very American” about the story of online poker’s rise and fall in the U.S., as well as the stories of some of the more nefarious characters in that narrative.

I think when I use the phrase my meaning is a little different, though.

Developing: PokerStars to Buy Full Tilt Poker?

I remember a little over a year ago pulling together a lengthy feature article for a poker magazine for which I spent several weeks researching and interviewing players and industry figures regarding the “cold war” between online poker’s then-superpowers PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

The article was primarily focused on poker television shows and how top players representing the two sites were unable to compete against one another because the sites wouldn’t allow it. Most of the players I talked to hated the fact that they couldn’t play against one another on the shows.

Seemed kind of a one-sided thing, actually, with Stars being perfectly willing to let the FTP guys onto their shows, but FTP being less interested in such desegregation. Meanwhile, the shows’ producers (with whom I also spoke) had no restrictions regarding players -- that is, they certainly “cast” the shows, but didn’t follow any guidelines about not picking players based on which site they represented.

The due date for the article was April 15, 2011. No shinola. I managed to submit it a few days early before heading down to Lima, Peru for the LAPT event. That’s where I’d be when Black Friday happened. I knew shortly after hearing the news that Friday afternoon that my article had instantly become anachronistic, something I wrote a little about here a couple of months afterward in a post titled “From the Annals of Bad Timing.”

I was reminded of all that this morning amid this rumor-slash-news regarding PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. Let’s back up a couple of days first.

“Recently heard some very promising news regarding full tilt,” tweeted Dan “jungleman” Cates this past Sunday afternoon. “Can't share it because it's confidential, but things looking very good :)”

Cates, of course, has a particular interest in all things Full Tilt Poker, given how he reportedly had somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 million in his account when Black Friday struck a little over a year ago. Stories since then have suggested he may have sold a good portion of that balance, but obviously he’d still be one to take a sincere interest in the fate of FTP.

Then early this morning, before the sun rose here on the east coast, a brand-new poster at Two Plus Two named “PS<3FTP” provocatively started a thread in the News, Views, and Gossip forum titled “Big News: PokerStars Purchases FTP(?)”

The brief post declared that Stars “has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to buy FTP.” Additional bullet points include players getting “refunded 100%” as well as “both sites back online.” (The latter seems an odd thing to say as only one of the two sites is currently offline.) “Expect more news today,” is the signoff.

Moderator NoahSD (formerly of Subject:Poker) correctly responded with cynicism, deleting the thread, but reinstated it after “a number of inside sources” told him there might be something to the report. So the thread remains, with posts being added at a clip of a couple hundred per hour -- none containing any additional news thus far, natch.

About four hours after the post appeared, Alex Dreyfus, CEO of ChiliPoker, tweeted an unambiguous declaration: “Pokerstars buys FullTilt for a consideration of $750m, including settlement with DOJ and full balances of players (330m). I'm impressed.” That got retweeted a lot, of course.

A few minutes later, iGamingFrance tweeted they had asked the Laurent Tapie group about the rumor and the response was they had no comment and would be sending out a press release later today.

Now PokerFuse has posted an article the title of which appears to confirm the story once and for all -- “PokerStars Reaches Agreement to Buy Full Tilt, Settles with DOJ” -- although they, too, are still seeking confirmation from the parties involved. However, the PokerFuse article does indicate that the Tapie group has apparently tapped out of the game, quoting a source at e-Gaming magazine confirming that “efforts to obtain final DoJ approval to acquire the assets of Full Tilt Poker have ended without success.”

The general tenor of the gradually building hysteria is that all are awaiting word from PokerStars and/or the DOJ in particular one way or the other regarding the possible deal. Meanwhile, a few have begun speculating about the reasons why Stars might possibly care to involve themselves in the FTP saga at all.

Indeed, our memories of the situation from just over one year ago remain fairly vivid, with the two sites standing side by side, towering over the rest of online poker as wholly separate entities with seemingly little interest in joining forces, even for a televised sit-n-go.

All of which makes this development -- actual or not -- all the more intriguing to envision. That is, an actual winner in that old “cold war” as a possible consequence of the U.S. government’s having used its own legalistic weaponry to drive both from American soil.

Will keep an ear to the ground here, and perhaps come back to update this post as we learn more. In other words, as the news sites say, developing...

EDIT (added 12:30 p.m.): Shortly after noon Eastern time, the GBT indeed announced “that after seven months of intensive work, our efforts to obtain final approval of the United States Department of Justice of the agreement to acquire the assets of Full Tilt Poker have ended without success.” The statement goes on to explain the deal failed primarily for two reasons -- an inability to settle on a plan with the DOJ to repay “ROW” (rest of world) players, and FTP’s U.S. legal morass which the GBT characterizes as “unresolvable.”

The statement additionally refers to “press reports that the DOJ may have entered into an agreement with PokerStars” regarding the acquisition of Full Tilt Poker. In other words, the GBT here is merely confirming that it has heard what the rest of us have. You can read the full GBT statement at iGaming Post.

EDIT (12:45 p.m.): Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu tells PokerListings he has no information regarding the story, adding that “the idea of PokerStars buying Full Tilt for $750 million seems impossible to me.”

EDIT (1:30 p.m.): Picking up on the “cold war” theme, Brian Balsbaugh, the founder of Poker Royalty (the agency representing a number of poker pros), sent a tweet a short while ago in which he imagined how the PS-buying-FTP scenario might appear from the perspective of the latter: “It's hard to explain the level of corporate hatred btw PS & FTP. PS w power/control over major FTP shareholders is their worst nightmare.”

EDIT (3:15 p.m.): Andrew Feldman of ESPN Poker spoke with PokerStars and tweeted just before 3 p.m. “there is no comment from them at this time.” A little after that, Team Full Tilter Andy Bloch cryptically tweeted “This might just be ‘Super Tuesday.’”

EDIT (4:00 p.m.): A statement from PokerStars finally came a little after 3:30 p.m. with a note from Eric Hollreiser, Head of Corporate Communications for PokerStars, explaining that the site couldn’t comment on either its ongoing settlement discussions with the DOJ or any of the other rumors swirling about. “As soon as we have information to share publicly we will do so,” said Hollreiser.

EDIT (5:30 p.m.): As the afternoon wore on, Shaun Deeb stirred the pot a bit by starting a new Two Plus Two thread suggesting he had some inside dope about the matter that “the deal is already done” along with some other semi-surreal-seeming stuff. Meanwhile, a Full Tilt Poker lawyer spoke with Diamond Flush about the failed GBT deal, noting that the site continued to hope that players were repaid. That statement ended with a reference to “settlement discussions with the US Department of Justice” and the need to be confidential, as well as an indication that “as soon as we have information to share publicly we will do so” -- i.e., language uncannily identical to Stars’ earlier statement.

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.

To Sum Up

Among the writing assignments I have today is one involving the novel I’m working on, the first draft of which I have completed.

There’s still a way to go on this sucker, with much revising to do as well as a few additional scenes to include. But I’ve written the first version of the last chapter, which is satisfying in its own right.

My assignment today is to write a 50-word synopsis of the book, a “pitch” such as I might include in a query letter soliciting an agent or in other contexts. Not an easy thing to do, although I think I have a good idea of how I’m going to say it. My first novel, Same Difference, was just over 100,000 words long. This one will be shorter, but getting it all down to two or three sentences remains a challenge.

I’m unsure at the moment how I plan to go about publishing this one. I may not even get to the stage of trying to get an agent -- I didn’t use one for the first novel -- and even if I do, I may or may not be trying to get one via the query letter route. But I think it’s still a good exercise to try to boil it all down to a quick, understandable synopsis. In fact, I can tell already it will be a useful exercise when it comes to the revising, having focused my thoughts a bit more sharply regarding what the novel is really about.

When it comes to writing well, summarizing is often an underrated skill. Just about every kind of writing requires a least some form of summary, and a lot of times it takes more creative muscle to grasp the “gist” of something that has already been written than to write something wholly new or original.

A lot of people reading this site probably frequent other poker-related sites where summaries of the day’s news are regularly posted. You know, like PokerNews’ “Nightly Turbo,” the “Daily Rewind” at PokerStrategy, BLUFF Magazine’s “The Week That Was” and the like. Michael Gentile’s “This Week in Poker Podcasts” for PokerFuse can be listed, too, as an another example of the form.

Barry Carter recently wrote about these “news in brief”-type articles amid that series of posts about poker media I was recommending a while back. Such articles may appear relatively simple to pull together, but often require a lot of effort to be done effectively, with some of the hardest decisions being of the editorial variety where one has to be judicious when selecting what to include and what to leave out.

Of course, summarizing your own stuff presents a different challenge, too, since even great writers often have occasional blind spots when it comes to reading and evaluating their own work. But like I say, it can be a useful -- even enlightening -- exercise for a writer.

Here... for practice I’ll try boiling down this 500-word post to 10:

While summarizing his novel, Shamus procrastinates by writing about summarizing.

On the (Legislative) Road Again

With the WSOP Main Event finally in the rearview, attentions are slowly turning back to ongoing machinations concerning the shambles that online poker in the U.S. currently is and the possibility for some newly-regulated game to become available to Americans in the future.

Setting aside the whole FTP-Groupe Bernard Tapie thing, as well as that story from a couple of weeks back that Absolute Poker/UB have a plan to liquidate assets in order to pay back its players, there appear to be three main areas on which to focus when it comes to federal-level legislative talk about online poker.

And anyway, like we were talking about yesterday, three is always a cool amount to use for organizing one’s thoughts, right?

One is this so-called “super committee,” a.k.a. the Joint Select Committee for Deficit Reduction, which continues to meet and formulate recommendations for cutting spending and increasing revenue. The bi-partisan group of senators and House members has a report due on November 23, and within a month of that the Congressional houses will be voting “up or down” (with no amendments or filibusters allowed) on what is recommended.

Some have suggested an online poker bill could sneak into the recommendations somehow, although most of the scuttlebutt seems to be suggesting that’s unlikely to happen. In any case, in a couple of weeks we’ll know for sure whether or not to strike this one off the list of items to watch.

The second bit of news to focus on is that next week not one but two different Congressional committees will be meeting to talk about online gaming.

One is the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, which will meet on Thursday, November 17 to talk about the native Americans' stake in particular. The other is that same House subcommittee that met last month to talk online gaming (the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade) who will be meeting on Friday, November 18 to pursue the subject further.

Those meetings will most surely create some buzz, and perhaps even some concrete steps toward a vote on an online poker-related bill. Of course, with 2012 being an election year, the window for any such bill making its way up the legislative ladder will be closing soon.

Finally, we learned back in early October how two of the figures targeted in the Black Friday indictment -- John Campos (the vice-chairman and co-owner of that Sun Trust bank in Utah) and Chad Elie (a payment processor) -- were fighting the feds in court, having both filed motions to have the counts against them dismissed. Those motions largely are resting on the argument that the online poker sites with which they dealt were not “illegal gambling businesses” as defined (or not-so-well defined) in the Illegal Gambling Business Act of 1970 or the UIGEA.

Of course, in addition to being accused of violating these laws (the IGBA and UIGEA), these two are also both said to have conspired to commit money laundering, and Elie is looking at a bank and wire fraud charge, too. So how well their arguments about the online poker sites not being “gambling businesses” are carrying them in those contexts, I do not know.

In any event, late last week federal prosecutors responded by filing a 51-page defense of their case responding to the pair’s motions to dismiss the counts. That response makes several points, one being an affirmation of the position that poker is indeed gambling, despite the many arguments that have been made regarding its skill component. The feds also address in great detail other misdeeds by the pair with regard to the non-UIGEA stuff, too.

Additionally, in a kind of superfluous attempt to explain how when the IGBA was passed into law poker had long been considered to be gambling by the culture a large, the feds botch a reference to the poker song “The Gambler”:

Those who spent their time playing poker in saloons were called ‘gamblers’ from the outset, and poker is described almost unfailingly as ‘gambling’ in a variety of contexts in reported cases dating back to the 1800s. This characterization of poker as gambling reflects society’s traditional understanding of poker, particularly at the time of IGBA’s enactment. For example, Willie Nelson’s classic poker song, about knowing when to “hold ’em” and when to “fold ’em” is called -- based on the movie by the same name -- “The Gambler.”

As just about all of the rest of us know, that was Kenny Rogers, not Willie Nelson, who recorded the referenced song. His version first released in late 1978, a few years after the IGBA came about. The TV movie starring Rogers -- the first of several -- came a couple of years later. Don Schlitz first wrote it (and recorded it earlier, actually), a story I wrote about in a “Poker & Pop Culture” piece a while back.

In any event, the feds are pretty adamant in their response about poker falling under the heading of gambling, likening it to other examples of gambling that may incorporate an element of skill -- they even admit sports betting has some of that -- but in which outcomes are ultimately “subject to chance.”

If you want more details on this latter item, Nathan Vardi of Forbes reported on the feds’ reponse a week ago. The guys at PokerFuse wrote up a detailed analysis of the response earlier this week. And Pokerati Dan chimed in last night as well with a quick list of some of the feds’ major points.

Of these three items, then, the “super committee” doesn’t seem too promising, nor does the Campos-Elie case inspire much confidence regarding the UIGEA ever getting taken down. Thus do we look to those Congressional committees, watching and wondering if and when any change for online poker in U.S. is coming any time soon.

Or whether, when it comes to American online poker players, our situation continues to resemble that of the figures Willie Nelson sang about... “like a band of gypsies we go down the highway.”

Stop Counting Me! Bodog vs. PokerScout

Here’s something sorta curious.

You might’ve heard how just a week or so ago Bodog changed its software so as to make it more difficult for tracking sites and those interested in “datamining” to do their thing. The site removed full tables from being listed in the lobby, thus making it harder to see at a glance what’s happening on the site.

Other sites have it set up as an optional feature to remove full tables from the lobby view, but now on Bodog you can’t see ’em even if you wanted to. As I understand it, they’ve also gotten rid of waitlists, too.

I report this somewhat second-handedly, as I haven’t really been on the Bodog site for quite some time. I used to play on it regularly, but long ago pulled my money from the site. I sometimes wish now that I’d left a pittance on there with which to mess around. But to be honest, when I thought of the possible futures for the sites on which I was then playing -- PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Bodog -- for a long time it seemed like the latter was the most likely to be the most risky on which to leave money thanks to its inclusion of sports betting.

In any case, I’ve heard the dataminers are starting to find ways to work around this new obstacle, but I’m not up on the specifics. Meanwhile PokerScout, the site that provides traffic info on all the online sites, found itself momentarily thwarted by Bodog’s new system and thus unable to track numbers. A story on PokerFuse from last week described the changes at Bodog as well as how they were affecting PokerScout’s ability to track Bodog’s traffic.

Apparently PokerScout was also able to overcome the new challenge and start reporting numbers again for Bodog, but meanwhile a brouhaha has developed between the two sites. I first noticed this conflict via some tweets between the two, then early this morning Bodog fired a fairly inflammatory-sounding shot via an article on Bodog owner Calvin Ayre’s site titled “PokerScout.com’s Extortion Attempt.”

It should be noted that articles appearing on Ayre’s site are occasionally of dubious origin and/or intention, many of them existing as fairly obvious SEO-grabs presented under the superficial auspices of news reports or editorials. Thus do I always find myself reading articles there with a measure of skepticism, knowing that they are often necessarily self-interested and/or biased in one way or another.

This article stands out, however, as it not only comments (negatively) on PokerScout’s efforts to track Bodog’s traffic, but flat out accuses PokerScout of trying to extort money from Bodog.

Say wha?

When making the change last week, Bodog explicitly referred (in another article) to its desire to stop PokerScout from keeping count of its players (which, it ought to be noted, is markedly different from the full-fledged datamining performed by other sites). In “The Death of the Poker Volume Tracking Model,” Bodog argued that since PokerScout “serve[d] no beneficial purpose to the poker industry other than to feed the sharks” with its data, Bodog wanted to help the non-sharks by keeping PokerScout from filing its reports.

As mentioned, PokerScout was nonetheless able to keep on tracking Bodog’s traffic, or at least that is what they claimed. As PokerScout explained (in an article posted yesterday), they are still able to estimate traffic at Bodog and thus are keeping the site listed. Also noted there was the fact that Bodog was the only online poker site that had ever asked PokerScout not to track their traffic, a request with which PokerScout decided not to comply.

In today’s missive, Bodog notes that in fact there were two reasons why they had earlier asked to be removed from PokerScout’s listings.

First was that desire to protect the non-sharks or “recreational poker players” whom Bodog claims are somehow being hurt by the information PokerScout provided. “The second reason,” explains Bill Beatty in today’s calvinayre.com article, is “the US Department of Justice had just indicted the top 3 poker sites listed in the PokerScout.com rankings.”

To be honest, I understand the second reason a lot more than I do the first. Sounds like Bodog would like to grow, but would also like for no one to notice they are growing, thus perhaps helping them continue evade being targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“It wasn’t a time where poker companies wanted to raise their profile,” continues Beatty. “It might have been putting a huge target on their chests. Potentially if Stars, Tilt and AP/UB had not been sitting at the top of these ranking sites, who knows if the DOJ would have had such a hard on to take them down.”

Beatty is being more than a little disingenuous here, I’d say. Stars, Full Tilt, and UB/AP had a pretty high profile even without PokerScout’s reports. Indeed, I think it would have been a pretty simple matter for anyone to conclude those sites were the four biggest worldwide back in April -- and by far the biggest U.S.-facing sites -- even if PokerScout didn’t exist.

In any case, then comes the bombshell from Beatty when he claims PokerScout said they would remove Bodog from the listings in return for “a seven figure extortion payment” which Bodog ultimately refused to pay.

PokerScout has tweeted a response that appears to deny the accusation. “More lies about PokerScout coming from the Bodog-mouthpiece website,” was the message. “What a surprise. So disappointing.”

Here comes Bodog, making a pretty serious accusation against PokerScout, characterizing the traffic-tracking site as having engaged in “unethical and potentially criminal behaviour” (i.e., the alleged extortion attempt). Meanwhile, Bodog continues to serve U.S. customers, thus subjecting itself to similar accusations from certain parties, including those who are in a position to do something about what they interpret to be “criminal behaviour.”

Like I say, sorta curious.

Getting harder to count how many are playing on Bodog, I guess. Meanwhile, in the poker world, it is becoming easier to count on such conflicts cropping up, not to mention increasingly weird ideas of what is and what is not “unethical.”