2013 WSOP, Day 41: Where There’s Smoke

As I mentioned yesterday, had such a late one Sunday-night-slash-Monday-morning I was pretty much wiped out for much of the day, sleeping ’til noon, operating with low efficiency for the afternoon hours, then peaking mentally at dinner time for a very enjoyable couple of hours with Pokerati Dan and his girlfriend, Trish, at the Herbs & Rye not too far from the Rio.

As proof that I was still essentially waking up when I arrived at the restaurant a little ahead of our scheduled meeting time, I hadn’t even noticed the enormous and alarming billowing ridge of smoke covering the landscape on the other side of South Valley View Boulevard and visible from the restaurant’s parking lot. It wasn’t until after I went in and Dan and Trish mentioned it that I had to go back out and get a look before we ate.

What I was finally seeing after having been cooped up inside the Rio for most of my waking hours during recent days was evidence of the wildfire currently raging on Mt. Charleston located about 35 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Apparently the fire started with a lightning strike on one side of the mountain on July 1, and now more than 15,000 acres have been burnt or are burning with hundreds of the area’s residents now having been evacuated.

So far it has yet to reach any structures and no one has been hurt. But the fire has not been contained. One report I’m reading this morning says officials are estimating July 19 as a date by which they hope to have a handle on it, which means it will continue to burn and fill the sky this way until after all of us here for the WSOP have left.

I’d seen a few photos and had been pointed to some incredible time-lapse videos of the fire, and was thus aware of it. Brad “Otis” Willis -- here at the WSOP now and reporting for the PokerStars blog -- yesterday pointed me and his Twitter followers to this short one yesterday taken by the poker player William Reynolds (@ReynoldsXO) on July 4:

It was a little bit of a shock to walk back out of the restaurant prior to our meal and look at the huge, apocalyptic-looking cloud of smoke eclipsing not only the sunset but nearly half the early evening sky. I snapped a couple of photos, not really seeing until afterwards how the sun was peeping through and appearing ruby red through the haze. (Click the pics to enlarge.)

Dinner was terrific and it was a good time catching up with Dan and meeting Trish. I won’t rehearse all of our various topics of conversation, but there was lots of common ground between all three of us with Dan and my shared history in poker and Trish being an academic teaching at the university level. It was fun hearing their stories and sharing my own. I also can now share Dan’s recommendation of Herbs & Rye as a great getaway for folks searching for good eats and a comfortable ambience without wanting to fight the crowds on the Strip or to travel too far from the Rio.

I got back to the home-away-from-home by nine and didn’t last much beyond that before drifting off again, only checking in on the WSOP coverage briefly including taking note of all the official numbers that were being passed along once late registration closed during yesterday’s third and final Day 1 flight of the Main Event.

The ME ended up drawing 6,352 total, down a couple of hundred from last year. All the stats are being spun this way and that, with the WSOP leading the charge with its early evening press release compiling various records -- some legitimately impressive, others perhaps a little contrived -- for news outlets to cut and paste. I was too tired to think deeply about any of it, although it seems obvious that poker is doing just fine and that the WSOP is again holding steady as it has each of the six years I’ve been here to help report on it.

People in poker, in particular those who profit from the game and its surrounding industry, are so often on the defense regarding its health and well being. It’s understandable, to an extent, given the many different forces (legal, economic, cultural) that are constantly exerting pressure on poker, either seeming to or actually threatening it with various proscriptions.

Ever since I’ve been coming to the WSOP there’s been this worry about the end coming somehow, that all of the many pleasures -- intellectual, emotional, social -- the game provides to so many will in some way be limited or taken away. Such fears sometimes take a concrete shape but are mostly wispy and vague, given greater influence by the uncertainty they introduce.

Soon I was asleep, then woke up this morning thinking again of the smoke and the fire. And about how I’ll probably forget about it in a few hours once I’m on the floor passing between the tables at the WSOP.

2013 WSOP: Day 24: Year of the Player of the Year

Was a late one on Friday as I was on Day 3 of Event No. 35, the $3,000 pot-limit Omaha event here at the World Series of Poker where Jeff Madsen led pretty much the entire last day as they played down from 19. Madsen won his third WSOP bracelet and first since winning two in one week as a 21-year-old back in 2006.

Afterwards my blogging partner Rich and I marveled a little at how many of the WSOP Player of the Year winners seem to be thriving in 2013. In fact, four of them have won bracelets, counting 2004 WSOP POY winner Daniel Negreanu’s Main Event win at WSOP Asia Pacific. Madsen won the WSOP POY in 2006, Tom Schneider (who has won two bracelets this year) won it in 2007, and Erick Lindgren (who won a bracelet this week) won WSOP POY in 2008. Additionally, after the event completed last night, Jess Welman tweeted that seven of the nine WSOP POY winners have made final tables this year.

I liked Rich’s way of describing the trend. “Year of the Player of the Year,” he said. That pic above, by the way, is from the start of the 2008 WSOP (via Pokerati) and shows Madsen’s WSOP POY banner on the right and Schneider standing in the spot where his poster eventually would be hung that year.

I’ve been on two events thus far since I’ve arrived, won by Lindgren and Madsen. Good players repeatedly performing well in poker tournaments always inspires lots of talk about the game’s skill component, with results such as the ones we’ve seen at the WSOP this summer often becoming cited examples in a long running argument that the rewards in poker ultimately correspond to players’ relative decision-making abilities -- i.e., that poker is, indeed, “a skill game.”

Such results do not, however, work as evidence to support arguments minimizing luck’s role in the game. As dominating as Madsen was yesterday, there was a hand in which he was not involved that saw a short-stacked Scott Clements fail to earn a double-up after getting his last chips in on the turn with a 90% chance of winning only to bust in fifth.

For a good while before that hand, it appeared somewhat likely that Clements -- who like Madsen had won two bracelets prior to this event, both in Omaha games in fact -- would be the one eventually to meet Madsen heads up. Besides being the most accomplished players remaining, they appeared the strongest, too, and so it was hard not to anticipate such a conclusion.

But Madsen wouldn’t have to worry about Clements from four-handed on down, and after losing his lead momentarily just as heads-up play began with Douglas Corning, Madsen retook the advantage and more or less rolled to the win. That is him on the left from last night, still exhibiting that same characteristic pending-action pose with his left hand on his opposite shoulder as was captured in that banner photo from seven years before.

Such is often the case, that even in tourneys where a winner’s skill appears to have been unequivocally demonstrated, one still can’t deny the chance element in poker, especially short term. Sure poker “aintluck” entirely (as the poker news site says). But it ain’t all skill, either.

By the way, that Phil Hellmuth blow-up I alluded to in yesterday’s post was in fact directed toward Madsen shortly after the latter had eliminated him.

Amid Hellmuth’s petulance -- which included him calling Madsen the “worst f***ing player ever” -- Hellmuth asked a question of the tourney’s eventual winner.

“How do you even have all those chips?”

Madsen didn’t reply, but the actual answer to such a question is always complicated, no matter how good the player with the chips is.

I’m back on another PLO event today, picking up Day 1 of the $5K PLO 6-max. (Event No. 41) on which I’ll be reporting from start to finish, an event that no doubt will have Madsen and Clements in the field. The higher buy-in will ensure a number of other strong players will be there as well when play begins later this afternoon. Click on over if you get the chance.

Ambient Noise

“Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones.” --Major T.J. “King” Kong, Dr. Strangelove

I’ll admit that while I’ve been busy with other things this week, I’ve continued to linger some over that Travis Makar info dump from last Friday regarding the UltimateBet insider cheating scandal, in particular those two lengthy audio files chronicling two meetings involving Russ Hamilton, Dan Friedberg, Sandy Millar, and (on one of them) Greg Pierson.

Been snooping through the files some more, reading various articles and postings, as well as listening to still more audio regarding it all in the form of podcasts.

The most recent episode of the Two Plus Two Pokercast with Haralabos Voulgaris provided some interesting discussion, with Voulgaris providing some interesting tidbits from his experience with UB and some of its principals. However, the lengthy guest spot of Scott “ElevenGrover” Bell mostly had the effect of confusing rather than clarifying (for me, anyway).

I better liked Todd Witteles’s partial breakdown of the recordings on his Poker Fraud Alert show this week. “DanDruff” played clips (mostly from the first part of the first recording) while commenting along the way, which seemed a more constructive exercise.

Finally I heard Witteles’s ex-cohort Bryan Micon’s latest Donk Down show on which appeared both Pokerati’s Dan Michalski and the man in the middle himself, Travis Makar. A mostly maddening hour-and-a-half, I’m afraid, with neither of the hosts having listened to the audio and even Makar saying he wasn’t completely up on what the recordings contained.

Makar expressed a willingness to answer any questions from Micon and Michalski, but neither seemed able to come up with any and thus the show failed to add much of value at all other than to remind us that Makar has still more information (and audio) which may or may not be revealed at a later date.

All of which is to say, the actual significance of the recorded discussions as well as all of the other newly-publicized data obviously remain in need of cogent explanation. And probably will for a good while, I imagine.

I mentioned on Monday how the recordings uncannily recall the Watergate tapes, what with the secretive nature of the recordings being made and the discussants’ talk of covering up previous scandalous behavior while making decisions that will subsequently affect the lives of many others. The ambient noise and interruptions occasionally obfuscating certain exchanges adds further to the similarity.

Every now and then I’ll dig around and listen to those tapes Richard Nixon had made, part of my hobby-like fascination with reading and learning more about the complicated figure. Of course, I almost never do so without also looking a transcript and usually having some sort of additional annotation to help guide me regarding who is saying what and what it all ultimately means.

Given the historical importance of those recordings and the fact that they were made so long ago, it’s easy to locate various aids to understanding that can help make the experience of listening all the more worthwhile. Not to mention even more compelling. (By the way, if you’re curious about the Nixon recordings, the “Nixon Tapes” website is a good place to start.)

* * * * *

Speaking of private meetings conducted during times of crisis, I wrote a new “Pop Poker” column for PokerListings regarding Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the 1964 darkly-comic satire directed by Stanley Kubrick that is mostly taken up with a U.S. president and his advisors meeting in a “War Room” to discuss and try to deal with the surprise launch of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union by a deranged general.

The film actually has a couple of significant connections to poker, including the character of Dr. Strangelove (one of three played by Peter Sellars) being partly based on John von Neumann, the Austrian-born mathematician often credited with having written and co-written the works that helped inaugurate the study of modern game theory. Von Neumann wrote about poker in those seminal works, and during the Cold War especially game theory played a particular role when it came to decision-making regarding nuclear weapons.

In fact, as I note at the end of the piece, in Dr. Strangelove the War Room itself features a large circular table around which the president and his advisor sit that was deliberately meant to look like a poker table.

Check out the article, if you’re curious to read more.

2012 WSOP, Day 25: Chasing Dreams

Woke up this morning from a dream in which I was chasing a little boy around a large yard. He was tossing my laptop around like it was a frisbee. He’d gleefully throw it several yards, chase it down, pick it up, and throw it again. Meanwhile I couldn’t catch up to him, nor could I seem to shout loudly enough to get his attention.

Might be tempting to psychoanalyze this one. You know, to come up with theories about work-related anxiety, self-identity, the creative process, the inner child, what have you. But I think it came mainly from the background image on my desktop, a picture of me and my three-year-old nephew -- not the little demon in my dream -- tossing a ball in his back yard.

Then again, I can’t say for sure what caused the dream. Hey, I’m just a reporter.

Spent a lot of yesterday at the Rio, despite not being officially working. Got there around two o’clock, just as the final table of Event No. 35, the $2,500 mixed hold’em event, was starting. That was the one with Phil Ivey among the final nine, having made his fifth final table of the summer.

They were in the “mothership,” slightly modified from last summer although essentially the same arena-like structure positioned in the center of the Amazon Room. There were quite a few there to watch at the start. The Dutchman Joep van den Bijgaart began the day as chip leader, with Ivey coming in with a relative short stack in seventh position.

I was curious about the odds to bet on those making the final day, a new thing they’ve added over in the Rio Race and Sports Book this year. Here’s what they had for each of the final nine:

1. Joep van den Bijgaart (605,000) -- 3/2
2. Samuel Golbuff (526,000) -- 2/1
3. Michael Gathy (418,000) -- 5/2
4. Erik Cajelais (368,000) -- 3/1
5. Chris Tryba (347,000) - 7/2
6. Salman Behbahani (347,000) -- 5/1
7. Phil Ivey (169,000) -- 5/1
8. Brent Wheeler (158,000) -- 9/1
9. Michael Foti (105,000) -- 12/1

Can’t say any of those bets seemed especially appealing to me. Even as someone with a bit more knowledge than the average punter about some of the players not named Ivey -- e.g., I knew Gathy had won a bracelet this summer, that Cajelais was tough (and a bracelet holder), that van den Bijgaart had been a Team PokerStars Pro -- I didn’t feel like the reward for any of those bets came close to the risk. (What do you think?)

Tryba ended up winning, hitting a straight flush on the last hand versus Cajelais. Van den Bijgaart finished fourth. And Ivey was knocked out in eighth not long after a nutty hand with Golbuff in which the latter claimed most of Ivey’s stack.

It was a couple of hours in, during which stretch Golbuff had sunk down in the counts after having lost a lot in a limit hand versus Tryba. In that one Golbuff had raised preflop, bet the flop, then checked the turn as the board came J-4-4-8. A queen fell on the river, and when Tryba bet Golbuff raised. Tryba tanked, finally calling with K-Q, and Golbuff showed .

The game had switched back to no-limit when Ivey -- still with about the same stack he’d started the day with (around 170,000) -- opened with a min-raise from the cutoff, then Golbuff shoved all in from the button for 159,000 or almost 16 big blinds. It folded back and Ivey quickly called, tabling pocket eights. Golbuff then sheepishly showed his .

But the board ran out , the river giving Golbuff a straight and leaving Ivey with just 11,000 and an open-mouthed look wordlessly indicating “WTF?” All in on the next hand against three opponents, Ivey was soon out the door. As were a lot of those in attendance.

Gonna venture to say my dream was a lot easier to figure out than that one.

Later in the evening I spent a little while over at Day 1 of Event No. 38, one of the $1,500 NLHE events before taking off. Got to assist Josh Bell for a couple of hours as he covered that one, mainly just to get myself reoriented a little before starting back today for real.

Kind of a scaled-back staff this year as far as PokerNews goes, which means the Day 1 coverage can’t be as thorough as in past years. In fact, most of the time only a single blogger is being assigned on these first days, which will be the case for me tonight with Event No. 40, the $2,500 6-max. limit hold’em event.

That same “scaling back” is true for most of the poker media this year, I think. Met up with Dan Michalski of Pokerati yesterday and among the things we chatted about was the relatively empty media box and how things have changed over the years with regard to WSOP coverage.

Dan pointed out how not long ago -- before Twitter, live streams, and so on -- those reporting on the WSOP were delivering information to an audience that couldn’t really receive it any other way.

But now everyone is kind of reporting on themselves (and each other), a phenomenon that is affecting what the media -- already needing to be judicious about resources -- chooses to do with its reporting. I wrote something about this trend three summers ago in a post titled “Land of 1000 Reporters,” well before everyone (it seems) was on Twitter.

Last year this same $2,500 LHE event attracted a relatively small group of 354 players -- a lot for one reporter, but not nearly as daunting as the big field of 2,500-plus Josh was tasked with covering yesterday.

Follow along over on PokerNews’ live reporting page, if you’re curious to see what I come up with as I chase back and forth, trying to catch hands and give an idea what is happening as some stacks go up and others disappear.

Don’t expect it to be too difficult. Unless of course that kid shows up and gets ahold of my laptop.

Black Friday Stories; or, Where Were You?

Whenever I teach a class, I always take time early on to talk about things like the objectives of the course and what exactly it is I’m hoping the students learn by taking it. Part of that effort involves asking the students to think about why they are taking the class, that is, beyond the need to pick up credits or satisfy a requirement.

For example, when teaching literature classes I’ll ask students to think about the reasons for studying stories, plays, and poems. Of what use is it, really? Kind of a dangerous thing for the teacher to be doing, if you think about it, especially in those core classes where the great majority of those sitting in the seats didn’t sign up because they liked the subject, but rather because they had to take it to graduate.

But I remember my best teachers and how they all forced me to think about such questions -- not just with regard to their classes, but about everything. So I ask my students to do the same kind of work, to think not just about what we’re studying but why we’re studying it.

In a literature class, this means talking about how poets and fiction writers respond to the world and being humans differently than do historians or scientists or philosophers or others. Their stories and plays and poems are imaginative responses to their experiences in the time and place in which they live, perhaps meant to comment on the world as a historian or scientist or philosopher would but doing so in a much different way. And, of course, literature has other purposes, too, such as to entertain or provide pleasure, or force us to feel certain emotions in addition to think certain thoughts.

Sometimes I’ll ask students to think about what “literature” or “literary” writing is. Not a simple matter, really, even for those who’ve spent their lives studying the subject.

Among the distinctions I’ll draw in such discussions will be to point out how literary writing is more likely to involve less literal modes of expression (e.g., figurative language, symbols, metaphors, irony, allusion, and so on).

The writer of literature also isn’t as bound to realism as is the historian or scientist or philosopher. All of which means when reading a poem or story or play we always have to be ready for the possibility that something we read might not be meant to be taken “straight,” but rather is intended to evoke an idea in a less literal, more indirect way.

Sometimes it’s obvious the writer is being “literary.” When you get to chapter 19 of William Faulker’s As I Lay Dying and Vardaman Bundren startles us with the line “My mother is a fish,” well, we can be pretty sure the boy isn’t literally saying his recently deceased Mom is a fish. There’s something else going on there, clearly.

Other times, though, it isn’t so clear that a non-literal meaning is being intended within a poem, story, or play. Such is one of the many challenges literature provides -- that is, to figure out just what the author might be saying when he or she isn’t necessarily being “straight” with us.

This brings up one of the reasons why I think reading and studying literature is useful even to those who don’t go on to become teachers or scholars with jobs focusing primarily on parsing the meanings of sonnets or novels. The fact is, people use “literary” language all of the time, not just poets, fiction writers, etc. Understanding literary techniques helps us understand the world at large -- to recognize allusions, irony, symbolism, metaphors, and so forth when people communicate their ideas to one another.

I had been thinking about this use of “literary” language in non-literary contexts last week when reading some reviews of the new documentary All In: The Poker Movie.

The film begins and ends with Black Friday, and in both spots we see players and other commentators talking about the day itself, a somber soundtrack kind of emphasizing a tone of sadness and dismay. It’s pretty clear the film makers included the question “Where were you when you heard about Black Friday?” in a lot of their interviews, then used the replies to help create the bookends for the narrative they ended up creating.

In a couple of spots, people answering the question bring up the assassination of president John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, appearing to suggest some sort of juxtaposition as they do.

“This is like the Kennedy assassination,” says author Peter Alson (Take Me To the River, One of a Kind) barely a minute into the film. “Every poker player knows where he was.” Alson’s tone suggests he’s questioning the interviewer, actually, guessing (correctly, in fact) the film makers’ intentions to suggest that exact “Where Were You When...?” kind of feel with regard to Black Friday.

Then near the end, Anthony Holden (Big Deal, Bigger Deal) is shown saying “It’s kind of like 'where were you when JFK was shot?'” That clip is presented without much context, so it’s hard to tell how serious Holden is being when making the comparison. But I’m going to guess that Holden -- who, like Alson, has authored some very “literary” reads about poker -- was similarly clued in to what the film makers were up to by asking the question.

In other words, in my estimation both Alson and Holden are making a historical allusion that is meant to evoke an analogy between two examples of large groups of people reacting collectively to an event. Obviously neither is suggesting the two events are somehow equal in their gravity, but rather the point is in both cases something happened that caught a lot of people by surprise and that the circumstances surrounding their learning of the news got kind of burned into their memories in similar fashion.

However, not everyone has been so generous in their response to such an analogy. In his review for Variety, John Anderson derisively notes how All In starts “with a number of the film’s recurring interviewees... making reference to some cataclysmic event in ways that suggest a combination of Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination,” going on to explain how the event being remembered is “the so-called ‘Black Friday’ of April 15, 2011.”

Anderson is clearly mystified at why people in the movie are taking the whole Black Friday thing so seriously, and as the rest of his review shows he’s coming at it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t share the film makers’ view of the importance of poker to American history and culture. That’s fine, although I think Anderson has misrepresented the JFK references in the film, and in fact adds a couple of his own allusions (to Pearl Harbor and 9/11) that the film doesn’t make in order to exaggerate his response even further. (That is, he’s using another literary device -- hyperbole -- to make a point.)

As the anniversary of Black Friday approaches, we’ll no doubt be hearing more of these kinds of stories as people remember where they were on April 15, 2011 when they first heard the news. I understand the Wicked Chops guys are gathering such accounts for piece they’ll be pulling together to mark the anniversary. You know, an “oral history”-type article in which all of the stories will come straight from the horse’s mouth. And no I don’t mean literally reaching in between the horse’s teeth and... oh, you knew what I meant.

We might well see more references to the Kennedy assassination among those stories. Or, perhaps even 9/11, which more experienced and thus remember.

I saw how yesterday Dusty Schmidt in his blog was apologizing for making a 9/11-Black Friday comparison in an earlier post. It appeared to be kind of a carelessly made reference, and in today’s post Schmidt expresses sincere regret for suggesting the analogy. Indeed, in his case it wasn’t as though he was referring to groups collectively reacting to an event, but was kind of suggesting something similar in the events themselves, which is obviously not a smart comparison to make.

I do recall others having made 9/11-Black Friday comparisons before, however, including our buddy Dan Michalski of Pokerati. Dan pursued that analogy a bit on QuadJacks radio the night of April 15, 2011 right after the DOJ unsealed the indictment and civil complaint -- with Dan even going so far as to describe PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker as “Twin Towers” of online poker going down.

Apologies to Dan for bringing up what was likely a first-response, off-the-cuff attempt at trying to characterize what was happening that day. I personally wouldn’t have gone in that direction with the analogy-making, although I’m going to suggest Dan was being somewhat “literary”-minded when trying to draw such an allegory.

Suffice it to say, Black Friday was an important moment for poker and for all of those affected by what transpired that day. I have written more than once here about where I was on April 15, 2011 -- in Lima, Peru, covering a poker tournament. The most “literary” of those posts was one written a couple of weeks after, titled “Plotting in Peru.”

We might well brace ourselves for more Black Friday stories over the next week or so. Some will probably include examples of hyperbole when trying to convey the magnitude of the day. And some of these stories may well adopt a more “literary” approach than others -- worth keeping in mind as we evaluate them and respond.

Still About Even

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address tonight. Pokerati Dan today is posting about the “State of the Poker Union.” I guess it’s as good a day as any to think about the state of my own online poker game.

Am still piddling away on a couple of Merge network sites from time to time, playing with those funds won via freerolls. Most nickel-and-dimin’ it at the PLO tables, or sometimes playing limit hold’em where I am also mainly just passing quarters back and forth. Occasionally I will hop into low-limit sit-n-go, though not that often. Meanwhile I’m not terribly anxious to try to deposit anywhere, as I imagine is likely the case for most U.S. players these days.

I was talking with a friend over the weekend, a recreational player who first got interested in poker after seeing it on television over recent years. He’d opened a PokerStars account a while back on which he played for play chips for a few months. He was right on the verge of making a deposit and starting to play the micros when Black Friday hit. Interestingly, he doesn’t play at all on Stars anymore, even though technically he still can in the free games.

“How do you still play online?” he asked. Not a simple question to answer.

I told him the story of winning a few bucks in freerolls on Hero and Carbon and how I’ve kind of held steady on both. I actually ran the Hero roll up to a point where I might’ve considered trying to withdraw a little, but never quite pulled the trigger. Then I fell back down to where I no longer want to try to take any out. If I even can, that is, without enduring too much hassle.

But in truth, as I’ve suggested here before a few times over the recent months, it doesn’t even feel like I’m playing the game we all enjoyed for the several years prior to last April. So when my friend asks how I am still playing, I almost feel like answering that I’m not. Not really.

If you scout around you can still find a number of online poker sites that are serving Americans. For instance over on the Cards Chat site there’s a list of poker sites that are still serving U.S. players. (Anybody ever play on Juicy Stakes?)

Actually most other poker news sites and forums have similar listings, in most cases highlighting a half-dozen or so sites in an effort to get sign-ups as affiliates. One of the more comprehensive lists (that gets updated fairly frequently) can be found over at Compatible Poker.

I did finally get around to balancing my online poker ledger for 2011 last week. Used to be I kept that stuff constantly updated after each session, but the urgency to do so has lessened considerably as the stakes got smaller and the frequency of play slowed down. Was mildly happy to find I’d ended the year in the black, although not by a lot. In fact, the final figure essentially represented just a tad more than what I’d won in those freerolls.

I think my online poker career has probably followed an arc very similar to others, with the best years coming shortly after the boom (through about 2007 or so), then things flattening out a bit after that once the UIGEA came and opponents became less plentiful (and less fishy).

The height of my graph is of course way, way below that of many, though perhaps above some, too. But the shape is probably similar, with the peak coming around the same point on the timeline.

Right now, though, at least for Americans, most of those lines are strictly horizontal. And have been for a good while.

Such is the state of things at present as we hope for online poker to revive back to life.

A Man-Made Monster is On the Loose! (Black Friday)

We keep talking about Black Friday. And we will for a long time to come, too.

Headlines yesterday regarding Brent Beckley, one of the 11 targeted as part of the “Black Friday” indictment and civil complaint unsealed back on April 15. Beckley pleaded guilty to a couple of the counts against him -- conspiracy to violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud. Here’s the DoJ’s press release announcing Beckley’s plea.

As Haley Hintze points out over on the Kick Ass Poker blog, Beckley wasn’t exactly one of the founders of Absolute Poker -- as was his stepbrother, the also-indicted AP founder Scott Tom -- although he did come in early on and served as the director of payment processing. Beckley now likely faces up 12-18 months imprisonment (or more) while also being made to give up $300,000. His sentencing isn’t scheduled to happen until April 2012.

Stuart Hoegner (a.k.a. “Gaming Counsel”) has a new blog post over on Pokerati in which he discusses Beckley’s deal, interpreting its terms to suggest that Beckley may not be cooperating with the DoJ in quite the same way another of those indicted on “Black Friday,” the payment processor Bradley Franzen (who pleaded guilty to three counts back in May) might be.

Meanwhile, two other “Black Friday” defendants -- Chad Elie (another payment processor) and John Campos (former Vice Chairman of the Board and part owner of SunFirst Bank in Utah) are fighting the charges at this point, having filed a motion earlier this month to have the charges against them dismissed. (See Subject:Poker’s report on that motion.) That probably ain’t gonna happen, meaning that barring any deal those two will be going to trial in March 2012.

One other indicted on “Black Friday,” the payment processor Ira Rubin, was arrested back in late April in Guatemala. I believe he’s still in custody and is apparently nearing some sort of plea agreement.

It seems doubtful at present that any of the others indicted will be coming to the U.S. either to make pleas or fight the charges against them any time soon. Those include Isai Scheinberg (PokerStars founder), Paul Tate (Director of Payments for Pokerstars), Ray Bitar (CEO of TiltWare/Full Tilt Poker), Nelson Burtwick (Director of Payments for TiltWare), Scott Tom (of AP), and Ryan Lang (another payment processor), all of whom remain “offshore” like the sites with which they are associated.

Remember the separate civil complaint targeting the sites -- the one amended back in September to add more allegations against Full Tilt Poker as well as the names/accounts of Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst -- seeks the forfeiture of a big bunch of cabbage (i.e., $3 billion) but isn’t bringing criminal charges or aiming to imprison anyone.

Also worth remembering is the fact that the still-pending deal involving Group Bernard Tapie and FTP -- the one “brokered” by the DoJ (and on which the DoJ hasn’t really commented, as far as I know) -- involves dismissing those civil claims against FTP but doesn’t affect the “Black Friday” indictment or amended civil complaint.

We’re coming to the end of 2011, and thus instinctively are encouraged to look back and think about the year’s top stories in poker. Obviously Black Friday will be topping all such lists this time around.

But really, just about every poker-related story from 2011 is going to be related in some fashion to the sudden shutdown of the online game in the U.S. following the events of April 15. Probably most of them in 2012, too.

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.”

Talkin’ Zynga PokerCon

Been reading here and there about this Zynga PokerCon event that happened at the Palms last weekend. Like a lot of poker media, I was on the list of folks receiving emails and invites over the last few weeks, all of which succeeded in getting me at least vaguely intrigued in the sucker, though not enough to hop on a plane and fly across the country for it.

Zynga is a social network game developer with an especially big presence on Facebook thanks to various games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and the very popular Zynga Poker game. I guess they're involved with MySpace and other networking sites, too, but Facebook is obviously the one most know about and use these days.

I don’t really do Facebook, but I do have an iPhone, and since hearing about the PokerCon I did download the Zynga Poker app and goofed around on it a little. Both fun and functional, and while chatting with friends and ordering virtual mixed drinks on the little iPhone screen is a little awkward, I can certainly see how the game has attracted many -- reportedly 38 million -- who play it (mostly on Facebook and MySpace).

Sounded like the first day of the event was taken up with some seminar-like “training” sessions (by “Zynga Poker University”) led by Annie Duke, with some meals and mixers filling out the schedule. The second and final day included more meals and parties as well as 500-player poker tournament for attendees that cost $125 to enter and featured a $100,000 prize pool. (Here is the full schedule.)

My impression from reading through various reports on the event was that it appeared -- like the game itself -- to be kind of a social networking opportunity allowing media, Zynga reps, and a number of poker pros to connect. Seemed like a genuinely fun time for a number of people there, too.

Some of my friends and colleagues were there. Pokerati Dan was at PokerCon, providing audio, video, and textual reports. Michele Lewis also posted frequently about happenings at the Palms. F-Train stopped in and has offered “Some Quick Thoughts” on what he saw as well.

B.J. Nemeth, who has recently begun a nifty site called “Sport of Poker” where he’s collecting a lot of his photography, Jess & B.J. vids, and opining on all things poker, was there, too, and has written up a very interesting opinion piece about the significance of Zynga and the event.

In his piece, Nemeth addresses speculation about Zynga’s possible online-poker-related intentions in the U.S., specifically the idea that should some sort of federal law ever be passed allowing for the licensing and regulating of online poker in America, Zynga has positioned itself to swoop in and instantly become a major player in the newly-created market.

Nemeth expresses doubts about that possibility -- doubts reinforced by some of his interactions with Zynga people last weekend. But he adds an interesting point, too, about the demographic of players he saw enjoying themselves at Zynga PokerCon -- many older, and a lot more women than one typically finds at the tables in your average poker room, live tourney, or getting most of the attention in the online poker world.

In other words, the event seemed to highlight for Nemeth something potentially very significant about poker’s current status in American culture -- namely, that poker is popular not just among young men in their late teens or early 20s, but across a much wider range of players than we perhaps realize from inside the little world shaped by the sites we play on, the WSOP and other tours, the forums we frequent, and so forth.

It’s a revelation I’ve also had over the last couple of months while teaching this “Poker in American Film and Culture” class. There I’ve had the chance to “talk poker” with a different group of people with whom I usually do so, and to talk about poker differently, too, as we together try to assess its significance and place in the U.S. today.

Fact is, poker’s significance to American culture is a lot broader and more varied than a lot of us might realize, something the PokerCon appears to have helped demonstrate.

The Test of Time

It’s a new month. Already. Another chance to think about what has been accomplished, and what goals remain as we move forward.

Such a busy month was January. Tourneys being played all over the world, every day it seemed. Plus lots of other poker-related distractions to occupy us all.

One item from last month I missed mentioning here was that votes for this year’s Bluff Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards were finally tallied and the winners announced. In the “Favorite Poker Blog” category, our buds over at Wicked Chops claimed their second straight award. Big congrats to the Entities!

I managed to land some votes in the sucker as well, and wanted here to thank everyone who voted for me. Also, thanks a ton to those who’ve sent along nice comments to me regarding getting nominated.

Hard, really, to compare blogs. All are so different. Even just the four that were included in the category are mostly unlike one another in method and approach, really.

As much as I like Pokerati and Wicked Chops, I tend to think of Tao of Poker as providing kind of the “template” for what I imagine a poker blog to be -- a mix of personal anecdote and more general reportage, delivered in a particular style that well communicates the blogger’s personality.

But there are many, many other ways of going about it, obviously, and so “ranking” blogs is about as difficult a task as comparing the relative abilities of poker players (a topic that has been getting a lot of attention here lately). And maybe as futile, too, although I suppose such an exercise affords a certain amount of fun and even usefulness insofar as it gets us thinking about what qualities make a blog (or player) especially good.

Have been pondering a bit lately about the relative value of some of the writing -- both poker-related and otherwise -- I’ve been doing (e.g., blog posts, articles, tourney reporting, and the new novel I keep adding to when I get a chance). Some of it I certainly value and am reasonably proud of. Other stuff tends to vanish more quickly, not necessarily leaving much of an impression on yr humble scribbler.

Some of the latter was written more for money than for other reasons, although financial gain usually does not dictate exactly how I’m personally going to value something I’ve written. As is the case with playing poker (for many), there are a lot of reasons to write -- and benefits to be had from writing -- that don’t have anything to do with making money.

Had an exchange not long ago with someone who had read my post about Jon Bradshaw’s excellent 1975 collection of essays, Fast Company, and then went and picked up the book for himself. He thanked me for drawing his attention to Bradshaw’s book, which contains some of the best poker writing you’re going to find.

I told him I was glad he enjoyed the book, adding that I hoped one day I’d be able to write something as meaningful and lasting about poker.

Or about anything, really (now that I think about it). A goal worth pursuing, I believe.

Nominated! Bluff Reader’s Choice Awards (Favorite Poker Blog)

Traveling can be great fun, no doubt. Of course, one of the greatest things about traveling is coming home.

Got a good night’s sleep, although I did wake up a few times with fleeting thoughts of posting hands, searching for wi-fi connectivity, and racing to make flight connections. One time when I woke, I actually thought I was slumped in an airplane seat, and when I realized where I was -- in my own bed -- I was overjoyed to realize I’d been mistaken.

Will be spending the day finishing unpacking and getting further reoriented. A lot of catching up to do, and so haven’t too much time today to write.

I did, however, want to share some nifty news -- Hard-Boiled Poker has been nominated as a “favorite poker blog” as part of Bluff Magazine’s recently announced, sixth annual “Reader’s Choice Awards.” No shinola! (Unless, of course, this is yet another dream, which is possible.)

Am reasonably certain that anyone reading this blog probably also keeps up with and digs (like me) the other nominees -- Wicked Chops Poker, Pokerati, and Tao of Poker. Am pretty sure those guys have all been nominated before, and I know WCP won the sucker last year. (Can’t recall if Pauly or Dan’s blogs have won before.)

Here’s the article from today listing the nominees. It looks like voting opens on December 6th, at which time I’ll probably put a link up somewhere on here.

Big thanks to Bluff for the nod. And I promise, regular posting to resume tomorrow.

I mean, I gotta kick-start the campaign, right?

2010 WSOP, Day 41: Rejoining the World (Series)

Ten days ago I was writing about having a day off and finding it almost uncomfortable, the routine of working so much having made it strangely difficult to handle the sudden reward of leisure.

After another long stretch of consecutive work days, I was given that reward again here at the start of the Main Event, not assigned to begin helping with PokerNews’ coverage until today (Day 1d). That meant two straight days off -- something I don’t think I’ve had all summer.

Had no problem figuring out what to do on the first one. I slept. A lot.

Yesterday, though, I realized I needed to get out of the home away from home. Which, of course, is not a home at all, but a room, decorated (incidentally) entirely in blacks and dark grays. Sure, I’m a “noir” kind of guy (as the scheme of this blog indicates), but six straight weeks in the dark simply cannot be good for a person.

So I got up and wrote a little. Then I got out.

Did some walking around outside in the 100-plus degree heat which immediately had a positive effect on my mood. Then I met up with Pokerati Dan at a nearby sushi place for dinner. Some dishes were better than others, but overall it was good eats. The place was nearly empty save us and a group that included Shannon Elizabeth, Nick Binger, and a few other poker players to whom we said hello as we left.

Dan and I mostly talked about the WSOP and the many knotty issues connected with covering it, including that Pokerati op-ed on the subject by the “Anonymous Pro” from earlier in the summer that generated a lot of discussion (and heat). I always like talking with Dan about such things, both because he’s knowledgeable and connected, but also because he’s got some real insight into how this complicated game gets played.

Having given up my rental car a couple of days ago, I caught a ride with Dan to the Rio where I ended up sitting in on the latter part of Day 1c. I had a couple of purposes to going in on a day off like that. One was to get my autographed copy of Lost Vegas from Dr. Pauly, which I’ve already begun and am hooked.

As I told Pauly last night, a lot of us are as excited as he is to see the sucker finally available for public consumption. Lost Vegas is available over at Lulu. Where, by the way, you can also get my hard-boiled detective novel, Same Difference (which has nothing whatsoever to do with poker).

The other reason why I went to the Rio was to interview Nolan Dalla, the WSOP Media Director, for a Betfair piece that’ll appear tomorrow.

I’ve gotten to know Nolan a bit over the last three summers and readily echo the praises of many in the media for the many, many ways he helps us do our jobs. He’s a writer, too, of course. Besides writing hundreds of articles and releases about poker for the WSOP, he also co-authored (with Peter Alson) the excellent biography of Stu Ungar, One of a Kind.

In the interview I asked him a few questions about how the Series has gone thus far and about some other things, including one about the coverage of the WSOP, generally speaking. I think it’ll turn out an interesting read -- I’ll remind you of it tomorrow once it goes up over at Betfair.

All in all, it was a good day, which included some visiting with Otis and Stephen (the PokerStars blog) and Reinaldo (Pokerstarsblog.la). A day mostly spent among writers, punctuated by a lot of interesting and useful discussions -- in many different contexts -- about writing.

As the day wound down, the mood in the Amazon Room seemed to me to be somewhat reserved. There were a few outbursts of excitement here and there, but all in all it looked like a fairly cautious, deep-stacked tourney in which a lot of patient poker was being played. Nor did the media seem overly frantic about things, having perhaps settled into this Day 1 groove now that they’d done it three times over.

I think things will be a little different today, though, as just about everyone I spoke to yesterday anticipates the largest group of any of the Day Ones to be there -- perhaps even as many as 3,000 players, which would mean filling up both the Amazon and a good portion of the Pavilion to start the day. Whatever the turnout, there’s little doubt at this point that the 2010 Main Event will be the second-largest ever (behind the 8,773 of 2006).

Back to the circus, then. I’m already reading the excited tweets by some players who will be there for Day 1d. I’ll admit I’m excited, too. Would be strange not to be.

See you over at the PokerNews’ live reporting page.

2010 WSOP, Days 4-11: Catching Up

Been away from the WSOP for a little over a week, during which time there has already been a fair amount of drama happening over at the Rio. Felt a little weird to be away like that, but in this golden age of wireless, I never felt too detached from what was happening.

(That’s right -- a Thomas Dolby allusion for you there. Sheesh, can it really be true that album is pushing 30 years old?)

When in Lima, I frequently followed the live reporting on PokerNews, then also checked in on those other sites I recommended in a post last week (“Where to Go”).

As is probably the case for a lot of you, I found Dr. Pauly’s daily recaps mandatory reading for keeping up. Kevmath’s posts at Pokerati were helpful, too. And while Wicked Chops’ photos from the WSOP didn’t necessarily help with the “big picture” the way, say, B.J. Nemeth’s photo blog does (also a must-follow), I nevertheless might’ve checked in over there from time to time as well.

Lots of places to go, then, for someone on another continent wishing to satisfy a WSOP fix. Here were a half-dozen stories I found myself following most closely over the last week-plus while I was away.

1. The “Near Disaster” of Event No. 3

Among the stories from the first week-plus of the 2010 WSOP that got my attention, the first was that “near disaster” (as some have called it) of Day 1b of Event No. 3, the first of the $1,000 no-limit hold’em events, or “The Grand Games” (as one has called them).

I was actually there for that one, reporting on Day 1b, and, indeed, some were sweating it a little there near the end. On Day 1a, 2,601 players showed up and only 276 remained at day’s end. Then on Day 1b -- a day when all seemed to expect at least as many or even more to play -- only 1,744 came out. That meant 4,345 total, which translated to 441 spots paying.

They had to play 10 levels, but they couldn’t allow the 1,744 who showed on Day 1b get below 165 left, or else they’d reach the cash. Can’t do that before consolidating the fields, and so tourney officials were having to decide on the fly whether to stop play short of the end of Level 10 (if needed). Turned out not to be an issue, as there were still about 200 of the Day 1b entrants left when play concluded.

I actually think this story got blown up a little more than it deserved, probably because we were still early in the WSOP and there wasn’t much else to write about yet. Apparently, however, there is a new policy in place going forward to stop play on Day 1a if they get down to 15% of the field, then have the Day 1b crowd stop at the same point so as to avoid any further “near disasters.”

2. The Mizrachi Crunch

Some of us old enough to remember The Golden Age of Wireless are also old enough to remember that “Happy Days” episode in which Fonzie and Pinky Tuscadero enter a demolition derby. They find themselves up against the villainous Malachi brothers. Actually, looking online I am reminded this was a three-parter, with one episode ending on a cliffhanger after Pinky gets caught in the “Malachi crunch” -- i.e., the brothers simultaneously smash her pink car from either side. We had to wait a week to find out, I guess, but Pinky did survive.

Was fairly amazed to see both Michael and Robert Mizrachi making the final table of the $50,000 buy-in Player’s Championship (Event No. 2), with Robert ultimately finishing fifth and Michael earning his first WSOP bracelet. In fact, “The Grinder” knocked out Robert on his way to the victory.

The WSOP site tells us this was the just the third time two family members made a WSOP final table, with the Mizrachis having the best finish of any such pair. In 1995, siblings Annie Duke and Howard Lederer both made the final table of the $1,500 pot-limit hold’em event. Duke finished sixth in that one, with Lederer going out in ninth. And in 2002, brothers Ross and Barny Boatman both made the final table of the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event, with Ross finishing seventh and Barny ninth.

3. Hellmuth Gets (Sort of) Close

Phil Hellmuth finished 15th in Event No. 8, a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event which attracted 2,341 entrants. Close enough to bring out all of the fans and haters. Dr. Pauly summed up the frenzy well in his post titled “Darth Hellmuth.”

Hellmuth was in the Event No. 3 I covered, though only briefly. He arrived very late on Day 1b and lasted about an hour before pushing his signature hand -- pocket nines -- from the button only to run into a big blind player holding K-K. Despite drawing such huge fields, these low buy-in NLHE events are clearly the Poker Brat’s best chance at getting a 12th bracelet.

Most have heard that some Native Americans believe having one’s picture taken steals one’s soul. The idea is usually linked to the fact that Crazy Horse apparently never allowed his picture to be taken. For some reason, Pauly’s account of a fan of Hellmuth (or “Hellmouth”) taking the Poker Brat’s picture from the rail made me think of that.

“The more photos he took” of Hellmuth, writes Pauly, “the more powerful he became.” Make of that what you will.

4. For the Nguyen; Men Lands Seventh Bracelet

Men “All You Can Eat, Baby” Nguyen won Event No. 10, the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud World Championship event, outlasting an amazing final table that included (in order of finish) Brandon Adams, Steve Billirakis, Nikolay Evdakov, Joe Cassidy, Michael Mizrachi, Vladimir Schmelev (who finished second to the Grinder in the $50K), and Sirous Jamshidi. That’s Men’s seventh bracelet, won in a variety of poker variants (hold’em, O/8, stud, lowball) -- interestingly, all fixed limit games.

I remember covering one of the early events last summer in which Men cashed. It was Event No. 19, the $2,500 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event (won by Brock Parker). Nguyen eventually finished 16th in that one. Just after the cash bubble burst, he stopped me to tell me he’d moved within one WSOP cash of Phil Hellmuth’s record, but a quick check with Nolan Dalla showed he wasn’t quite there yet. (This year’s WSOP Media Guide has Hellmuth with 75 WSOP cashes entering this summer’s Series, with Men in second with 65.)

Besides competing with Hellmuth for cashes and bracelets, Nguyen rivals the Poker Brat in the number of haters he has, too. I’ve heard the same stories all of you have, and as a result am necessarily reserved about celebrating Nguyen’s accomplishments. Still, seven bracelets is nothing to sneeze at.

5. Cool Britannia

The British are coming, apparently. And winning. Lots of success for U.K. players here early on. First, Praz Bansi won Event No. 5 ($1,500 NLHE). Then in Event No. 6, the $5,000 NLHE Shootout event, Neil "Bad Beat" Channing and Stuart Rutter both made the final table, finishing second and third respectively. Then James Dempsey took down Event No. 9, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em event.

Again, check out Pauly’s discussion of this one. Also, be sure to add Snoopy’s Black Belt blog to your regular reading for more on the Brits.

6. Dwan’s Song

Probably the biggest story from the first 11 days of the WSOP was Tom “durrrr” Dwan nearly taking down Event No. 11 ($1,500 no-limit hold’em). Indeed, if Dwan had won the event rather than finishing second, this one might’ve ended up the story of the entire WSOP this summer.

That’s because -- as you’ve no doubt read elsewhere -- side bets on Dwan winning a bracelet this year apparently amounted to something in the neighborhood of $8-$10 million, meaning his winning would’ve scored him a payday that will possibly be even bigger than that enjoyed by the person winning the Main Event.

Terrence Chan wrote an interesting post about how the side bets essentially meant the final heads-up battle between Dwan and eventual winner Simon Watt of New Zealand amounted to the biggest game in poker history. (Thanks to the Black Widow of Poker for pointing me to this one.) According to Chan’s estimates, if one takes the side bets into considerations, the real-dollar value of the blinds were something like $55,000/$110,000 at the end.

Interesting stuff, although I’d add to the commentary that while the blinds may have had that significance for Dwan, Watt -- whom I presume wasn’t on the other end of any of Dwan’s bracelet bets -- obviously wasn’t playing quite so high.

Those are the biggies thus far. That's the way it seemed from 4,000-plus miles away, anyhow.

Have also been following F-Train’s posts about the total numbers of entrants thus far at the WSOP. (Here is the most recent one of those.) And while I haven’t heard anything tangible about our having passed the June 1 deadline for banks and other financial institutions to start complying with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, I’m braced for some sort of news on that front, too.

That's better. Will probably take a day or two before I feel completely back in the swing of things, but I’m looking forward to rejoining the fray. More stories to come!

Poker Blogs, ca. 2010

Writing that post earlier this week marking four years of Hard-Boiled Poker got me thinking once again about poker blogs -- most specifically how the poker “blogosphere” has changed over that period. I mentioned there how when I started mine there were a number of poker blogs already out there to serve as possible models. Back then it seemed just about anyone who played poker and enjoyed writing even just a little had a blog goin’.

I remember writing a post very early on -- titled “An Existential Pause” -- in which after just a few months of blogging I tried to explain the various purposes I thought a poker blog could serve. I had heard an interesting conversation on the old Lord Admiral Card Club podcast between Cincinnati Sean and Iggy, a.k.a. the “Blogfather” of poker blogs thanks to his long-running Guinness and Poker blog. I took their conversation as a cue to offer my own thoughts about what a poker blog was, or could be.

At a time when I was still trying to figure out what kind of blog mine would be, I suggested “a blog can be any number of things -- a personal diary, a virtual soapbox, a promotional tool, a news outlet, a discussion-starter, a confessional . . . you name it,” concluding that, “ultimately, a blog shapes itself according to the personality of its creator.”

I also added at the end that I had already found the process of writing the blog to have been somewhat illuminating, insofar as it required a bit more self-study than I might have otherwise performed. I was speaking mainly about my poker game, really, although the idea would obviously apply more generally. “Writing a poker blog is like being a detective,” I suggested. “Raymond Chandler once described the detective story as ‘a man’s adventure in search of hidden truth.’ All poker bloggers are shamuses, really. Investigating themselves.”

I continue to subscribe to a number of poker blogs today, although if I had to generalize I’d say that the idea of starting and maintaining a poker blog occurs much less frequently now to players than it did four years ago. Folks are much more likely to start Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, or find other ways to satisfy that impulse to chronicle and/or communicate their adventures, if they have that impulse.

Still, there are plenty of good ones out there, demonstrating that same variety of approaches and angles to all things poker that keeps me following along. Just to give a small sample, let me mention ten bloggers who are among those I tend to click on first over in the reader whenever I see they have published something new. While I’m at it, I’ll mention particular, relatively recent posts from each which are indicative of why I like following ’em.

I always click on a new post from Tommy Angelo whenever I see he’s added something to his blog. Gonna reach back a few weeks to March to point you to a little poker anecdote-slash-riddle of his, which itself saw Angelo reaching back several years to share the story: “You No Gamble” (March 15). Speaking of Angelo, Episode 13 of the Gambling Tales Podcast went up earlier this week and on that one I joined Special K and Falstaff to discuss Angelo’s book, Elements of Poker. Check it out.

Amy Calistri has sort of moved out of the “poker blogging” game, having entered the so-called “straight world” of business investing. She still commments from time to time on the poker/gambling world, though, bringing with her the perspective of someone with a lot of poker reporting experience. Earlier this month she wrote a neat post titled “Frugal Detective Work” (April 4) which wasn’t really about poker (although it begins with an anecdote about Andy Beal), but provided a nifty little example of puzzle-solving that I think should appeal to poker players. And fans of detective stories, too.

Julius Goat’s blog is a great one for fans of the TV show “Lost” and/or video clips demonstrating examples of “awesome” or “crazy.” Other fun stuff there, too, including a new installment of his long-running, award-winning Stupid System strategy guide, “Stupid System 013: Rush Poker” (April 7). Okay, I made that up about the award. Although really, I think anyone who has been following the series would agree the sucker deserves some sort of recognition for its important contribution to our collective poker knowledge.

Most of you know the prolific Poker Grump, I assume. Lots of good stuff from him again this month, including more stories from his adventures at dozens of different Vegas cardrooms. I especially liked one such recent tale, “Beware the Newbie” (April 16), which concerns his having recently played with an absolute novice. The newbie experienced some especially good fortune in the session, thereby producing some very entertaining moments along the way. A well-chosen picture of Mr. Magoo illustrates that one.

Pokerati celebrated its sixth birthday not too long ago. Dan Michalski’s site (to which I occasionally try to contribute) is a great one for breaking poker news, one recent example being his post reporting “Rogue Payment Processor Arrested in Las Vegas Accused of Laundering Full Tilt, PokerStars, UB Money” (April 17). Many times the comments to posts over there add quite a bit to the stories, such as was the case with that post.

Dr. Pauly’s Tao of Poker is of course always a must read, for many reasons. I’ll point you to his “Dispatches from the Mohegan Sun” from a couple of weeks ago: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. Kind of a preview of the sort of thing we can probably expect to see from Dr. P. once again from the WSOP -- namely, the sort of off-the-beaten-path, stuff-you-can’t-get-elsewhere reporting on poker that often reveals much more about what really happened at a given event than one can get through the usual channels.

F-Train is another blogger whose posts are consistently thoughtful and thought-provoking. He’s also one who will sometimes report or comment on matters one doesn’t generally find being talked about elsewhere. For example, his recent post titled “Tilt Transfer OK?” was an eyebrow-raiser, I thought. There he commented some on Full Tilt Poker’s current legal tribulations, most specifically that federal grand jury investigation we heard about a few weeks back.

There have been a few more eyebrow-raisers over on Haley Hintze’s blog over the past week, too. Haley continues to add to her “Just Conjecturin’” series regarding the insider cheating scandals at Absolute Poker and UB. In the past week, she’s moved over to provide some startling evidence regarding the AP scandal in “Just Conjecturin’, Volume 11: Meanwhile, Over at Absolute Poker, It Seems Scott Tom Really Did It” (April 24) and “Just Conjecturin', Volume 12: The Absolute Scandal and the Day Occam Rolled Over in His Grave” (April 28). I know I’m not the only one hastily clicking on her feed whenever a new post arrives.

Since having covered the NAPT Venetian back in February, I’ve been enjoying following Thomas “gnightmoon” Fuller’s blog. Fuller made the final table of the Main Event there, which finally turned up on ESPN2 earlier this week. He took that occasion to write a little something about the experience in “NAPT Venetian TV Premiere” (April 25).

Finally, I also like checking in over at the ESPN Poker Club to read what their bloggers, including Gary Wise and Andrew Feldman, have to say. Yesterday Feldman opined a bit on the low turnout at the WSOP Circuit event at Caesars Palace this week in “WSOP Circuit Continues to Struggle” (April 29), providing some insights into what’s going on with that tour and with the professional tourney circuit, generally speaking.

That by no means covers all of the blogs I’ve been following of late, but those were some posts that kind of stood out for me as particularly interesting and/or entertaining.

Two more blogger-related bits of news to pass along. One, I am working on creating a separate page here for my ever-growing “Blogroll.” Have a few too many outgoing links here on the main page, and so am doing a little bit of tidying up. Will keep you updated on that.

Also, in the near future my weekly Betfair poker column will be including some contributions from a number of your favorite poker bloggers offering their thoughts about the upcoming WSOP. Will let you know about that, too.

Meanwhile, click on some of them links above and enjoy yourself. Then go have a good weekend.