Players Sponsoring Themselves on Twitch

Was reading about Twitch this week. Hadn’t realized it had begun as a spinoff from the old Justin.tv, which I recall having tuned into occasionally in the past, including during those early marathon-streaming days of the old Quadjacks who I believe moved there at some point not long after Black Friday.

Justin.tv began back in 2007, then in 2011 created Twitch as a kind of separate network just for video gaming and “e-sports” competitions. The latter grew in popularity, then last summer Justin.tv was shut down so the parent company (Twitch Interactive) could focus just on Twitch.

Back in February PokerNews did an article suggesting 10 poker-related Twitch accounts to follow. Last month Eric Raskin wrote an interesting piece for All In looking at Twitch from a more theoretical point of view and relating it to other forms of “life streaming” whereby people turn their lives into shows for others to watch. (Twitter functions like that for some, I think, as I was writing about yesterday.)

BLUFF just ran a long profile of Scott Ball, a.k.a. “The Man Behind Twitch’s Poker Explosion,” which includes an overview of the site’s brief history and increasing involvement with poker.

Even The Wall Street Journal has written about Twitch becoming a destination for online poker players and those who enjoy watching others play (and/or learning about poker, too). The WSJ article cited a statistic that “In January, Twitch streamed 56 million minutes of poker, less than 1% of the total 16 billion minutes of streamed video on the site.” There were only 44,640 minutes in January, so I suppose that means an average of about 1,250 poker-related streams were live every minute of every day that month -- more than I’d have guessed.

Those who are able to get 500 or more viewers to watch their streams consistently are eligible to have a subscriber button put on their channels, which in turn becomes a way for viewers to subscribe for $4.99 a month (half of which goes to Twitch). Subscribers can then be offered extras such as special programming, access to archives, and so on.

Those who have Twitch channels can also derive income by selling advertising (with the revenue also shared 50/50 with Twitch). Twitchers can additionally get sponsorships or collect donations as a way to “monetize” what they’re doing, and in the case of poker players who are also coaches, they can use their Twitch channels to direct folks to purchase other content, hire them as coaches, and so on.

It struck me that with the paucity of online poker sponsorships post-Black Friday, Twitch has become a form of “self-sponsorship” for a not insignificant number of players, kind of analogous to self-publishing or other kinds of independently-produced content (e.g., music, video/film).

For me it remains a kind of idle, only occasionally-sought-after entertainment, although I continue to be impressed with how some -- with Jason Somerville the pioneer and current Twitch “chip leader” (by far) -- have found ways to make it work both for them and their viewers/followers/subscribers. And I continue to be curious about what will come of it, too.

Fantasyland at the WSOP

As everyone reading this blog probably knows, the 2013 World Series of Poker begins tomorrow. Lots of buzz building in anticipation, both for the bracelet events and for the numerous fantasy leagues folks have created as way to make the tourneys that much more interesting to follow.

Daniel Negreanu is again running a $25,000 buy-in WSOP fantasy league, I believe for the third consecutive year. The drafting of players happens tonight, warranting enough interest both in who’ll be participating in the league as well as which players will be drafted for Quadjacks to run a live stream of the event starting at 7:00 p.m. PDT.

Noting all of the interest in Negreanu’s $25K WSOP Fantasy league, I tweeted yesterday that I would be running a Fantasy Fantasy league in which participants would draft participants in Negreanu’s draft. We can assign a point system based on how well the fantasy league players in Negreanu’s league perform according to their point system. I’m hoping if my Fantasy Fantasy league catches on, people will start creating fantasy leagues in which they pick players in my league, and so on and so on.

This is an idea with a lot of potential.

Two years ago I wrote a post about the $25K WSOP Fantasy league in which I noted that first prizes awarded in some bracelet events will in fact be less than the first prize in Negreanu’s league. Thus it could happen -- although one needs to twist oneself in a fairly complicated hypothetical pretzel to imagine it -- that a player could have financial incentive not to win a tournament if doing so meant preventing a player he’d drafted for his fantasy team from winning.

But such a scenario is obviously unlikely, and in the end I don’t believe a fantasy league -- even a high-stakes one -- can affect the integrity of a tournament all that much. In other words, the existence of fantasy leagues hardly affects game play, say, the way the “fantasyland” option in open-face Chinese poker can affect strategy in that game. If you think about it, the myriad backing arrangements and other forms of staking that are such a common part of the tourney poker scene have a lot more potential to matter than the existence of fantasy leagues, I’d think.

One interesting side effect of something like Negreanu’s draft tonight is the way it functions as a kind of ersatz “all star” vote of poker players by their peers -- that is to say, a way for a certain high-rolling subset of poker players to voice their opinions via their drafts who they think to be the best players around at the moment, or at least the best tournament players who they expect to put in a lot of volume at this summer’s WSOP.

I imagine those of us who follow tournament poker relatively closely we’ll recognize the majority of the names of those selected tonight, although there will probably be some with whom we’re less familiar. All chosen will get some attention, though, and perhaps will be followed a little more closely than they would otherwise have been.

I’ll probably have to tune in later to see which players turn out to be the most coveted by the Fantasy league players as well as what dark horses emerge as “ones to watch.”

For those of you participating in WSOP fantasy leagues... who are you drafting?

Public Concerns

Marco Valerio, frontman for QuadJacks who after leaving for a stint with the Global Poker Index has recently returned to revive QJ in time for the upcoming World Series of Poker, has penned an interesting article for the May issue of Two Plus Two Magazine. The article is titled “The Poker Community versus the Poker Public,” and among the topics addressed is the distinction between the two groups identified in the title.

In the article, Valerio comments on frequent, often loosely-defined references to a “poker community” which often seems to include players, Two Plus Two posters, and others fairly in tune with the game as it is played in cardrooms, online, and on the many tourney tours. I like his suggestion that those belonging to the group have an “affinity for poker goes beyond merely playing it.”

He then discusses the “poker public” as a larger group of which the “poker community” might be understood as a subset, encompassing people who aren’t necessarily living and breathing poker the way the “poker community” often does. Some play, but not all do, as there are some in this larger group who are content merely to watch others play on television or in person. All, however, are interested in poker in some fashion.

Valerio ultimately offers advice to all regarding the significance of this distinction, in particular directing his comments to those working in various poker-related industries (esp. online poker) who have a vested interest in trying to attract members of the “poker public” into the “poker community” as players.

In other words, while the title of the article might suggest an adversarial relationship, Valerio’s clearly petitioning for better communication and respect between the groups. It seems a worthwhile point to make, perhaps of special significance to certain parties within the “poker community.”

The article reminded me of various debates that have popped up before over recent years, including some of those “Is it good for poker?” discussions focused on moments when poker occasionally earns brief attention from so-called “mainstream” popular culture. A reference by Valerio to Two Plus Two’s central place in the “poker community” also made me think of a post I wrote here a couple of years ago “On Poker Communities” that overlaps a little with some of what he discusses.

However, a lot of my thoughts after reading the article centered around the experience of teaching my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class for the past couple of years, one consequence of which has been being frequently forced to think about the larger “poker public” Valerio describes.

Most (not all) who sign up for the course have at least some interest in poker, with a few being players themselves. Readers of this blog -- most of whom are probably best considered part of the “poker community” Valerio is describing -- might be surprised to learn that very few among those who take my class play poker regularly, let alone are as serious about the game as most of us are. And I even have a few take the class who have never even thought much about poker before at all, let alone played.

It might have been different if were teaching the class a few years ago. Black Friday happened during the first semester I taught the course (spring 2011). I know I had quite a few online poker players enrolled in that first installment of the class, but obviously the situation has changed since then. These days there are usually only a few who take the class each time around whom I’d unequivocally peg as coming from the “poker community” group.

In any case, talking with groups of people who mostly belong to that “poker public” about poker and its place in American culture has forced me to think a lot about how people outside of our “poker community” view the game and its significance. Often there are some great differences between how the two groups think of poker, the most conspicuous usually being the way the “poker public” views poker as essentially just another gambling game while those in the “poker community” often consider poker as something much different.

Being the teacher in this dynamic, I guess I’m also quite conscious of how those in the “poker community” sometimes recognize a need to educate the “poker public” about certain important elements of the game (including its skill component). But I’m also aware that I often learn a lot from my students, too, regarding the topics we discuss, and thus can say from experience that the “poker public” can teach the “poker community” a lot, too.

Fact-Checking; or, The Professor’s Plight

Am still occasionally giving time here and there to ongoing fallout from Howard Lederer’s interviews for PokerNews (“The Lederer Files”) and for the Two Plus Two Pokercast (Episode 239). Have viewed QuadJacks’ “Oral History” compilation of responses, am reading Diamond Flush’s still-in-progress summary-response, have watched Daniel Negreanu’s latest rant, and have looked in on the forum discussions and op-eds continuing to pop up.

These responses kind of remind me of all the so-called “fact-checking” that happens following each of the debates between the major parties’ presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Some of that effort is legitimately aimed at seeking corroboration (or the lack thereof) to support or challenge statements made during the debates. But a some of it -- perhaps a lot of it -- is really just spin, that is, a rhetorically-savvy way to persuade others to read a particular, desired message or intent into what was said.

Speaking of fact-checking, there was a moment in the Two Plus Two interview with Lederer in which he instantly inspired pretty much everyone listening to engage in such. I’m talking about that moment when the “Professor” professes a kind of ignorance that Full Tilt Poker continued to deliver the “your funds are safe and secure” message to customers well after the point when it was obvious that was not the case. (I’ve written about this a little before, but forgive me a quick look back at it in the present context.)

To review, Lederer was asked during the 2+2 interview about Full Tilt Poker’s continuing to tell customers that their funds were safe even after Black Friday. Lederer responded by saying he did not believe the words “safe and secure” were still being used in any of FTP’s communications “after April 20 [2011].” And if they were, “it happened without me knowing about it.”

To me that was one of the more blatant bits of culpability dodging Lederer exhibited in either interview.

For one, as just about everyone listening to the podcast knew immediately, the statement was obviously inaccurate. We all remembered how assurances to players about the return of their funds continued to appear well after April 20, 2011 via emails and forum posts by FTPDoug (Shyam Markus). Some of us also recalled the amended civil complaint, filed on September 20, 2011, which catalogued several post-April instances of the “funds are safe and secure” message being repeated.

I included a reference to this point in a post earlier this month. There I noted how the FTP website continued to display the message until after the amended civil complaint appeared that “funds are safe and secure.” I also referred to a post I wrote on 9/22/11 called “Talk About Red Pros (More on the DOJ vs. Full Tilt Poker)” in which I included a screen shot of the front page of the FTP site, taken that day, showing the statement still appeared.

But you don’t have to believe that. Or rather, if you want to check my facts, just take a look at the amended complaint where the DOJ makes the same assertion. “As of September 19, 2011,” they write, “Full Tilt Poker’s website stated that players’ funds were ‘safe and secure.’”

Which means not only is the statement inaccurate, it also sounds highly insincere.

That’s because when Lederer says he doesn’t believe FTP was saying anything about funds being “safe and secure” after April 20, he’s suggesting both that he had no idea what was posted on the fulltiltpoker.com site between April-September 2011 and that he wasn’t aware of the long list of examples of the assurance being repeated that appears in the amended civil complaint.

The latter suggestion is especially odd to consider, given how Lederer himself is being directly charged with funneling player funds into his own accounts in that very complaint. Indeed, it is at the end of the long section titled “FULL TILT POKER’S AND THE FTP INSIDER DEFENDANTS’ THEFT OF PLAYER FUNDS” that we find the quote about FTP’s website continuing to maintain on 9/19/11 that player funds were “safe and secure.” In other words, it is beyond disingenuous for Lederer to have us believe he never read the civil complaint in which he himself is named.

So he’s factually incorrect. And he’s not credible, either, when he explains why his facts might be wrong.

I call this one of the more blatant instances from the interviews of Lederer ducking under a hood of supposed ignorance in order to evade blame, but it isn’t the most significant example of him doing so. And really, in the larger scheme, while Full Tilt Poker’s misrepresentation of the situation to customers during 2011 is certainly blameworthy, worse crimes were committed in order to create that situation.

Again, I think of the debates and the so-called “fact-checking” that follows them. In some cases, those engaged in the effort to confirm or dispute candidates’ statements are being moved by a genuinely estimable intention -- i.e., to seek truth, and to hold those seeking our votes accountable for the words they say. Others are motivated by the less noble purpose of political spin, their goal being to recast objective evidence (the words that were spoken) as supporting this or that self-serving narrative.

While I suppose some of those engaged at present in fact-checking Lederer are just piling on or following the mob, I think most are doing so with good, constructive intentions.

Even so, at the risk of sounding overly cynical, in the end I’m afraid what we’re all mostly engaging in is a big, distracting game of trivial pursuit. The same goes for the debate fact-checkers. Most of the details of their findings will be forgotten come Election Day, and all of them will essentially buried thereafter, only to be dug up later by academics and other obscurists.

It’s a curious text, no doubt, the two-act absurdist play in which Lederer starred in those interviews with PokerNews and Two Plus Two. Call it The Professor’s Plight, another drama helping comprise that fascinating and varied genre of theatrical works that have been produced over the last decade by online poker. About which someone will someday be writing a dissertation, I am sure.

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.

Talkin’ ’Bout Luck, Talkin’ To PKRGSSP

Just a quick note today to point to a couple of other items to satisfy your reading and/or listening pleasure.

First, I wrote something for the Epic Poker blog that was posted yesterday regarding the new HBO series Luck starring Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte. Those of you who have seen any or all of the first four episodes have noticed there are quite a few poker scenes, all involving one character, Jerry (Jason Gedrick).

I wrote about the way poker seems to have been presented thus far on the show -- as a kind of “leak” that is obviously detrimental to Jerry and potentially to his friends with whom he has business relationships. The post is titled “The Pull of Poker in HBO’s Luck.”

Incidentally, when I wrote the piece I was mindful of the fact that a lot of people watch TV differently these days, saving episodes on the DVR or planning later to watch them consecutively on DVDs or in other ways rather than watching week-to-week. I do get into some specifics regarding scenes in which Jerry plays poker, but give a warning in the article regarding which paragraphs to skip if you wish to avoid “spoilers.”

The show is fairly gripping, perhaps more so for those interested in horse racing and/or gambling. There are a lot of threads going with little having been resolved during the first four shows -- kind of a “slow build” that perhaps takes into account how viewers now often don’t watch one show per week, but many at a time.

I’m guessing some will find Luck less immediately engaging than The Sopranos or other, similar “high end” dramas after which this series has clearly been patterned. But like I say, if you’re interested in poker and/or gambling, the show might be worth checking out.

The other item I wanted to let you know about was my appearing on The PKRGSSP Show last night on QuadJacks Radio. I was one of three guests, coming on in between my buddy Rich Ryan of PokerNews and the great tourney director Matt Savage. Had a lot of fun chatting with Jeff (a.k.a. our friend, Mr. Can-I-Buy-a-Vowel PKRGSSP) about blogging, my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class, and other topics of the day.

They uploaded the show onto YouTube overnight, and so if you’re interested you can listen. I come on around the 23-minute mark.



By the way, the QJ guys photoshopped that picture of me that pops up when I’m on, and in fact did an uncanny job of estimating my teaching disguise. Although I do like to unbutton that top button and loosen my tie just a little.

A Break-In, a Brouhaha, and a Beginning

Hugely busy these days, trying to get everything together before all the gift-giving, family-visiting, and food-stuffing gets going in earnest this weekend. As a result I haven’t had a lot of time to devote to poker -- either playing it or giving a lot of attention to the various news items surfacing in the poker world.

I did get a chance to skim through a few stories standing out from the most recent cycle, though.

Truly hated to hear about 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel being the victim of what sounds like a harrowing home invasion this week. Two men broke into his Montreal home, tied him up and physically assaulted him, threatened to kill him, then left with money and other items including his 2010 WSOP Main Event bracelet.

Of course, that bracelet is a pretty damned conspicuous item -- hard to imagine the thieves being able to pawn such a thing with ease. It sounds like they also made off with a lot of 500 Euro notes that are also rare enough to raise eyebrows, should they try to use them. Here is a report about the incident from a Canadian news outlet.

I also found myself a little distracted the last couple of days by this multi-way spat that has arisen involving I. Nelson Rose, the Poker Players Alliance, Mason Malmuth, and Rep. Joe Barton.

Barton, as we know, has proposed a federal bill designed to provide a means to license and regulate online poker in the U.S. He’s also appeared a couple of times before the House committee that’s been discussing the topic of online gambling, speaking in particular about poker and his desire to see his bill or something similar move forward.

Earlier this month, the gambling lawyer I. Nelson Rose attacked Barton in a piece for Poker Player Newspaper, primarily aiming at Barton’s previous record regarding votes to prohibit online gambling (including his votes on the UIGEA).

The Poker Players Alliance took issue with Rose’s article, sending out a rebuttal of sorts on Tuesday. And Mason Malmuth stirred the pot some more by starting a thread on Two Plus Two in which he shared the PPA’s statement, then jumped in to criticize Rose himself. Then following Rose’s appearance on QuadJacks Radio yesterday, Malmuth appeared on QJ Radio as well to further discuss Rose, Barton, and everything else.

The result is a fairly noisy, overlapping discussion touching on a number of different issues, including the prospects of Barton’s bill, Rose’s political leanings, the PPA’s effectiveness as a representative of poker players’ interests, the possible editorial stance of Poker Player Newspaper, Malmuth’s status as a firebrand, among others.

Finally -- and not unrelatedly -- today we’re learning of Nevada moving forward as expected to adopt intrastate internet gaming regulations. A vote today confirmed that Nevada has agreed to rules for allowing entities to apply for licenses to operate online poker sites.

It sounds like this vote means that should any sort of federal legislation come to pass, Nevada will be a place to go for those seeking licenses to operate sites. It also sounds like Nevada may be ready to go forward with in-state-only sites, too, but work will have to be done to ensure they'll be able to pull that off (i.e., successfully limiting play within the state's borders).

I still need to read up more on this latter item in order to grasp the particulars. Here’s a Wall Street Journal piece from yesterday describing what was voted on today, which as mentioned did pass. (EDIT [added 12/23/11]: Here is a report from PokerFuse about the Nevada vote and its possible implications.)

Definitely appears as though movement on the state level is going to be happening a lot more swiftly than on the federal level, as far as the licensing and regulating of online poker in the U.S. is concerned. And while it is hard to say just yet what the significance of today’s move in Nevada will ultimately be, it does appear to be the beginning of something.

Speaking of beginning something, these gifts aren’t gonna wrap themselves. Better go get started.

On Subscription Sites; or, a Penny for Your Thoughts

Been thinking a little this morning about the “subscription site” model for web content.

One reason why this topic has entered my thoughts is because my Twitter feed has become mildly animated by talk of a new development in the Full Tilt Poker saga, this one apparently involving some of the site’s companies having filed a claim for nearly $100 million worth of money seized by the feds following Black Friday.

Few in my feed have more specifics on that one, since apparently the full report currently exists behind a paywall over on the eGaming Review website. I imagine before the day is through the story will get disseminated more widely by other outlets without such restricted access.

I get a daily email from EGR telling me of all the articles I’m missing out on from not being a subscriber, so tomorrow I expect I will get a message telling me about this latest one. Starting in September, the site began charging £320 a year (plus VAT) for access to its reports, op-eds, and other features regarding the online gaming industry.

The model is not unusual, with many news-related sites having employed it with varying degrees of success (and in some cases, failure). There are “hard” paywalls in which almost no content is available to non-subscribers, “soft” paywalls which allow limited access to all, and other varieties.

The eGaming Review occasionally reports items of interest to the poker industry, which is why those folks on my Twitter feed are talking about it this morning. Most other sites that report poker news are free, although recently we’ve seen some sites experimenting with subscription plans of their own.

QuadJacks has tried something along these lines, introducing subscription plans back in September. To be honest, I haven’t given much effort to deciphering what exactly they are doing over there with their “silver,” “gold,” and “platinum” plans (costing $5, $10, and $20 a month, respectively).

A couple of weeks ago WickedChops also launched its paywall-protected “Insider Wicked Chops” site where “independent poker writers and thought leaders” are posting various “industry inside information” via articles and editorials.

Black Friday obviously had a significant effect on some poker news sites’ ability to generate revenue, particularly those that had depended on affiliate programs and other advertising dollars from the targeted sites. Thus was the partial inspiration, I’d assume, for poker news sites to experiment with the subscription model.

But I wonder what readers of this blog -- many of whom, I assume, also peruse those poker news sites -- think about these paywalls having been erected here and there amid your usual browsing paths? What exactly would make you want to pay to read any of these articles (or with QJ, listen to the shows)?

I assume one would have to have some financial reason to do so -- that is to say, your willingness to pay for such “inside information” would have to be directly related to your ability to use that information to make money yourself. Unless, that is, there is some other, non-financial benefit to be had from such access (e.g., the entertainment it provides).

Soliciting your thoughts here. Sorry, I can’t pay you for them -- not even a penny.

The Culture of Poker

Am a little bit spent with all this reading/writing/hearing/thinking about the Full Tilt Poker mess. Aren’t you? Still lots to digest. And, really, the more you take in, the more likely you are to suffer from a case of indigestion.

I mean the last 24 hours alone have been stuffed, so to speak.

There was NoahSD’s enlightening interview with Tom “durrrr” Dwan over on Subject:Poker. Followed by Noah’s overnight appearance on a special episode of the Two Plus Two Pokercast (also enlightening).

Yesterday QuadJacks interviewed the reluctant attorney, Jeff Ifrah, whose firm wants to withdraw from representing Full Tilt (I believe) though he continues to represent them as they make their case to the Alderney Gambling Control Commission not to pull the plug once and for all. (I would link, but I am not seeing it on the site -- perhaps it is part of that content for which QJ is now charging?)

Relatedly, last night came that story regarding a possible investor perhaps willing to buy the company, and all the tremendous liabilities that would go along with it.

And today came news that the DOJ has issued a warrant to seize assets belonging to Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, and Rafe Furst (i.e., the four named in the amendment to the civil complaint). The guv’ment be going after accounts listed under the names of the first three, plus another Swiss account that is apparently connected with Furst. Read more about that at Subject:Poker, too.

Regarding the latter, I’d been wondering about the more $443 million that had wound its way into those “FTP Insider accounts” and the suggestion (made by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara) that the owners and board members had simply “lined their own pockets” with that loot. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed perhaps that what was really happening was an attempt to squirrel the company’s money away in places where it might be safe from seizure. Who knows, really... but it looks as though if that were the idea, it hasn’t worked out so well.

Like so many other ideas Full Tilt Poker has had, I guess.

Anyhow, I’m going to leave it all alone for now. Coincidentally, in my Poker in American Film and Culture class we’re about to move into the unit I call “the culture of poker” where we are starting with some 19th century texts that help demonstrate how prevalent cheating was. Indeed, how cheating was to be expected whenever one sat down at a game.

For example, we’re reading an excerpt from George Devol’s 1887 memoir Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi in which he describes getting involved in a game full of cheaters on a riverboat. He knows they are “stocking the cards,” and early on loses a few bucks with three queens to another’s three aces. Then he loses some more. Then he suggests they play a little higher.

Finally there comes a hand in which he’s dealt three jacks. It’s another set-up, he knows. But he keeps on raising, because -- as he tells us without a hint of embarrassment -- he’s kept four fives out of the deck and sneakily switches them into his hand before the showdown.

When Devol wins the hand, the cheaters know he’s cheated. One pulls a knife and says “You are a gambler, and I want my money back.”

“I will give it back, as I don’t want you to think I did not win it fairly” says Devol. But just as he looks like he’s about to give them the money, he pulls out “old Betsy Jane” -- his gun. He then demands they apologize, keeps the money, and it sounds like they all somehow coexisted thereafter without further incident until the ship reached its destination.

Like I say, Devol offers no apologies. Cheating -- and a readiness to draw old Betsy Jane, if needed -- was part of what it meant to be “a gambler.” Indeed, in Devol’s apparent system of acceptable behavior, cheating essentially fits within the parameters of what it meant to play “fairly.”

From there we’re moving to the 20th century and eventually into contemporary stories and anecdotes that reveal the changing culture of poker. Where the idea was we’d be drawing a contrast between poker’s early history and the “square game” it eventually would become.

So goes the argument, anyway. But it’s getting harder and harder to appreciate that contrast, dontcha know?

Speaking of, check out this trailer for the forthcoming documentary All In: The Poker Movie, which I challenge you to watch without rolling your eyes:

Beyond Repair

Yesterday I mowed our lawn. As I did, the air turned cool and the sky dark. Moments after I’d finished we were hit by one of those late afternoon showers that’ll often happen during the summer months. I went inside to do a little work, then when the weather cleared I got in the car to take a short drive over to the grocery to pick up something for dinner.

I was nearly at the store when I heard a weird crunching sound coming from behind my head. Took a quick peek back as I turned into the parking lot and noticed the small back window on the left-hand side in back had been shattered. Not the big one that can be rolled down, but the little triangular one behind it.

Took me approximately one second to realize what had to have happened. We have a gravel drive, and I must have gotten too close to it at one point with the mower, thereby hurtling a rock about 15 feet or so in the car’s direction and breaking the glass.

The shamus in me did note there didn’t seem to be any water inside the back seat along with the many irregularly-shaped pieces of greenish-edged, tempered glass. But actually only about half the small window had landed in the seat there, meaning the opening was hardly big enough to allow much water in anyway.

Feeling sheepish, I drove to the far side of the lot and parked with the broken window facing away from the store. Got out and spent a short while examining the damage there, then after returning home spent some time clearing out the remaining glass and disposing of it, then fastening a plastic bag in the space.

The car is an old 1998 Saturn. Has about a million miles on it. And has been through it all. The power windows are only partially functional, and the locks don’t really work, either. We routinely travel with jugs of coolant as from time to time it’ll overheat. Additionally, the car still bears scars from having been rudely sideswiped once while parked on the street. Had to replace driver’s side mirror after that, I recall. In fact, I believe the car was technically totaled following that incident, the cost of repair (with which we never bothered) exceeding the vehicle’s worth.

The Saturn has long been demoted to second-car status. Really third-car, as we have an old diesel Ford truck available to use that’ll surely outlast it. So while I wasn’t thrilled to see what I’d done to the window, I was hardly broken up about it (pun intended).

Later on yesterday evening I listened to Adam Small, co-founder of Pocket Fives, be interviewed over on QuadJacks. I used to listen to the Pocket Fives podcast (which Small co-hosted) quite regularly, and was intrigued to hear him narrate his experiences with online poker and P5s (which launched in January 2005). (They’ve already archived the conversation over there at QuadJacks, if you’re curious.)

Most interesting were his comments about the whole affiliate/rakeback model and all of the problems that (in his view) were caused by many sites’ poor decisions regarding it. As we all know now, there were a host of serious problems/issues with online poker in the U.S. dating back to the industry’s earliest days, all of which together helped cause the wreck it’s become today.

Small also talked about how he and his colleagues had thought about selling Pocket Fives shortly after the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was signed into law. “We were kind of at time uncomfortable with the direction the industry was going and our place in it,” he said. They did end up selling the site to PokerSourceOnline (or Protos Marketing) in 2007, I believe, though it was a long-term payment plan and Small ended up moving to Costa Rica to work with Protos, meaning he was never completely separated from P5s.

Then came Black Friday, after which it was decided that Protos would stop with the payments and just give P5s back to its original owners. Then, about a week ago, P5s finally announced it was no longer going to advertise traditional (i.e., rakeback-based) U.S.-facing sites. Commenting on that latter decision, Small noted how significantly the situation for online poker in the U.S. has changed over recent years.

“It’s gone gradually -- with a few big hits -- from a situation where five or six years ago everyone felt extremely confident about putting money into and taking money out of poker sites... [to] nowadays, in the U.S. at least, it’s a very uncomfortable process for most people to go through....”

As Small spoke, I found myself thinking about the Saturn. I thought about how, like when it was sideswiped a couple of years ago, we might not even bother to repair that window. I suppose we’ll probably at least find out what it would cost to do so, but I’m guessing when we do we’ll likely decide it’s too much.

In other words, we’ll keep driving the thing. But we ain’t fixing it anymore. No, when the time comes, it’ll have to be replaced altogether with something new.

The Show Must Go On: QuadJacks Live

I was, oh, 3,200 miles or so from where I am today. It was sometime early Saturday morning, around 3 a.m., I believe. I had just worked what I’d normally describe to have been a “marathon” of a day helping report on the LAPT Lima event. That’s when I first dialed up the QuadJacks podcast, the one I’d seen a few folks referring to on my Twitter feed among all of the other frenzied back-and-forthing happening on “Black Friday.”

They’d been on since early evening, at least six or seven hours, I guessed. Then I tuned in the next night. They were still on. I’d tune in once more during the wee hours of Monday morning. There they were again. In fact, they’d never left the air.

I started to rethink the significance of that term “marathon.”

And aside from a few breaks here and there to re-air interviews or to relocate over on Justin.tv, the gang is still at it. Led primarily by “Agent” Marco Valerio and Zekda “Zekday0” Art, a rotating cast of co-hosts, “panelists,” and guests have incredibly kept the conversation -- about “Black Friday” and its aftermath, as well as just about everything else to do with poker’s current affairs -- going for nearly two weeks now.

That first weekend the show felt something akin to a trauma counseling session, the kind of thing that might follow a natural disaster or some other calamity in which a large group of people are affected, with victims invited to call in and share their stories.

What had happened was hardly a disaster. But the sudden news that those who ran the largest U.S.-facing online poker sites were facing federal indictments and thus the sites were closing their doors to Americans was nonetheless highly unsettling. And disconcerting, given all the uncertainty regarding consequences for so many of us for whose lives are affected one way or another by online poker.

It was good to hear people talking about it all. Even if no one really knew much for certain about what was to come.

By the time I got back to the U.S. and continued checking in, the show had evolved into something different, perhaps even more constructive. I like how Zimba (of Cardrunners) explains how “with a mix of humor, outrage, education and community, QuadJacks created an uninterrupted forum for the poker community to react to the incredibly disrupting news.” Having moved beyond the initial shock, the show had emerged from those first few days to become a kind of meeting place to share news and opinions about the fast-changing story. And more than a few grins, too.

Like many, I kept listening.

Yesterday I spent some time trying to compile a list of people who have appeared on the show, enlisting the help of Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers to do so. Then I saw Zimba had already put together a comprehensive catalogue of the many poker pros, industry insiders, media types, legal experts, and others who have appeared thus far. Click here to see the list of more than 80 contributors. (I believe Zimba continues to update the list as more folks appear.)

I’m a long-time listener of poker podcasts. Indeed, you could say the whole idea of starting this blog -- fifth anniversary tomorrow! -- was partly inspired by hearing Cincy Sean and Brent talk about blogs on the Lord Admiral Card Club show way back when. I’ve always thought podcasts provided something important to the poker community -- a uniquely immediate medium that served us in ways that were distinct from news sites, blogs, television shows, and other modes of communication.

Thus was I perhaps more predisposed than most to like the QuadJacks radio show. But during this second week of the show -- by which it has now further evolved into a sort of an ongoing 24-hour poker news channel -- I’ve been especially impressed by the level of discussion often on display.

I’m not saying every single time I’ve tuned in I’ve been thoroughly entertained and/or enlightened. But that has definitely been the case more often than not.

Where will QuadJacks and the “Wombat Nation” -- named for Wombat Poker, an imagined utopia of a poker site where we all can play and no one can tell us we can’t -- next proceed? Who knows? My sense is whatever form the show subsequently takes, its further growth will not happen carelessly, but with thoughtfulness and care.

For example, last night/this morning, the panel -- which included Zimba, Karak (“Lawdonk”), Mark Gahagan, SrslySirius, B.J. Nemeth, and Marco -- engaged in a lengthy discussion of the poker media and its various biases, most of which could be traced back to the advertising dollars of the online sites.

As I’ve written here many times before, I agree such compromise is generally the rule when it comes to the productions of the “so-called poker ‘media’” (as the Entities over at Wicked Chops so call it). I also think there’s nonetheless still a lot of solid reporting being done by some of those who “write about people who play cards” (as Benjo describes what he does).

All on the panel agreed that the relative “independence” of QuadJacks (at present free from advertisers) is preferable when it comes to the business of unfettered reporting and/or editorializing. But I liked how all didn’t therefore automatically dismiss all other efforts to report on the poker world as without value. And there was also a willingness shown in the discussion to rethink what QuadJacks is “about,” too.

Such self-reflection at least partly explains how QuadJacks has been able to keep the sucker going this long, I’d say. Keeps me listening, too.

Click here to listen yourself.