Still in holiday mode around here after yesterday’s marathon of football and repeated helpings of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and everything else. Even had a full serving of sushi near night’s end to add a weird (though delicious) twist to the gourmandizing extravaganza.
Got two of three games correct yesterday, having gone with the Steelers in the nightcap and endured that painful almost-but-not-quite finish for Pittsburgh. Feel good about the pick even if it didn’t work out, as it seemed like a reasonable gamble to go with the visitors.
Speaking of taking gambles, this week over on the Learn site I’ve been exploring the topic of final table deal-making, partly inspired by the preponderance of deals I saw being made during the recently concluded MicroMillions 6 series on PokerStars -- the deals, of course, often being proposed and agreed to primarily to avoid taking gambles late in a tourney when the stacks are shallow and the pay jumps steep.
The MicroMillions series can be especially interesting when it comes to final table deals because many of the players involved in the discussions aren’t necessarily that well versed in the nuances of final table deal negotations. With such low buy-ins (many of the events are just a couple of bucks or thereabouts to play), there are a lot of players making the final tables who’ve never come close to winning, say, $1,000 in a single tournament (or more). So it stands to reason some might not have ever dealt with dealing.
Watching some of the discussions take place, I started thinking about how it might be somewhat useful to give a little primer on the process, and so ended up writing a three-parter this week on Learn talking about final table deals, how they work, and some of the pros and cons for making them.
The first part mainly just introduces the topic, then in the second part I spent some time explaining the what “chip count” (or “chip chop”) deals were and what a deal based on the “ICM” (“Independent Chip Model”) method of assigning cash values to stacks was. That latter discussion took a little while to get through, but I hope it comes off as easy enough to read and ultimately helpful.
Then in the third part I got into some of the reasons why people want to make final table deals as well as reasons why others do not. Again, it goes on a while, in part because I spend some time talking about both a wild heads-up deal in Macau from a year ago and the famous story of Moneymaker offering a deal to Farha in the 2003 WSOP Main Event (and Farha refusing).
But like I say, I hope the articles end up being of use to someone who might eventually find him or herself at the final table of a MicroMillions event (or some other tourney) and thankful for having had an introduction to the whole process of such deals.
Was on Day 1 of Event No. 41 yesterday, the $5,000 PLO 6-max. that drew exactly 400 runners. That’s adds up to exactly 6 million chips in play, of which Sorel Mizzi ended the night with the most so far with 146,400.
A ton of familiar, top-level pros played this one, although to be honest my colleagues and I have been doing this long enough that sometimes it feels like everyone is familiar on some level. Just looking through the list of 117 players who survived to make it to today’s Day 2, I found myself thinking of how I’ve probably at least reported one hand on nearly every single one of them before (no shinola), thus ensuring their names are at least familiar to me, and for a lot of them their faces are, too.
Speaking of recognizing players, the theme of the day emerged early on yesterday after I’d made several rounds to gather names and start reporting. It was more than an hour into the event, perhaps even longer, when suddenly I realized I’d passed by a nearby table a dozen times without recognizing Sammy Farha sitting at it, playing his first event of the summer.
Every year a common question gets asked a few weeks into the WSOP: “Has anyone seen Farha?” He generally doesn’t play many preliminary events, although he always plays the Main. Last year he played just two prelims, and the year before four. Among the few he does play are always the bigger buy-in PLO events, though, and so it wasn’t a surprise at all to see him making his 2013 debut in Event No. 41.
What startled me, though, was how I didn’t trust myself initially that it was in fact Farha. That is him above, of course, as photographed by Joe Giron for PokerNews and the WSOP yesterday.
He was wearing a dark t-shirt and jeans and early in the day had sunglasses on. Later he’d remove those and occasionally wear dark-framed eyeglasses, and after being quiet for the first few hours he became more animated, eventually emerging as that Cheshire-cat-grinning, life-of-the-party character with whom many of us are familiar from his TV appearances. The fact that he began accumulating chips later on might have helped him suddenly seem more like himself, too (if that makes sense).
I realized later that while Farha looks great, he is like the rest of us a decade older than he was when he made that first, most lasting impression upon us all during ESPN’s coverage of the 2003 Main Event. We all look a little different than we did then, perhaps markedly so. I thought it was interesting, though, that I’d struggled initially to trust my recognition of him.
Soon after that I found myself doing a similar double-take with Andy Bloch. It’s been a couple of summers now since Bloch has donned his once signature big black cowboy hat and sported Full Tilt Poker logos, so like with Farha, Bloch’s current appearance doesn’t necessarily match the image with which most of us first got to know him.
After that it was Brock Parker who stymied us for a short while after having shaved his beard this week. Is that him, we asked? I covered one of his bracelet wins back in 2009, the year he won two, and like everyone else have grown accustomed to spotting his bald head and full beard in tourney fields. Took a moment or two extra, but again came recognition.
I think I might be feeling a kind of long-range effect of repeating the sequence year after year, with the Rio and specifically the Amazon Room being the only place in the world where I keep seeing a certain group of people over and over and over again.
In any case, today I’ll get to see Farha, Bloch, and Parker again, along with many others for Day 2. Click over and follow along today, and see how many of the players are familiar to you.
A couple of days ago, our friend Kevmath casually tweeted a question to his followers that had been inspired by a conversation between himself and his BLUFF colleague Tim “Timtern” Fiorvanti, a.k.a. “tim00.”
“Me and @tim00 were discussing this in #BluffHQ,” wrote Kev. “What are some of the biggest ‘What if’ moments in poker?”
The thought experiment inspired a lot of response with possible examples, with Sam Farha calling Chris Moneymaker’s “bluff of the century” (rather than folding) during heads-up play at the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event by far the most commonly referenced “What if?” moment.
You remember it, of course. We’ve seen it so many times...
That was also the first “What if” moment that came to my mind upon reading Kevmath’s tweet, but by then a few minutes had passed and a half-dozen others had already suggested it, so I didn’t bother. I spent a couple of minutes idly trying to think of others, but to be honest all seemed so much less meaningful when compared to Farha’s fold I soon stopped trying.
So I thought back to the hand itself. If Farha had called, he would not have won the tournament right there, as Moneymaker had him covered. Indeed, for Farha to have called and discovered Moneymaker had better than his top pair of nines would have meant elimination for the pro, a factor that obviously influenced his decision. But his nines were good, and so calling would’ve meant a big double-up for Farha.
The pair had begun heads-up play with Moneymaker leading with 5.49 million to Farha’s 2.9 million. I believe the blinds were 20,000/40,000 when they began (with a 5,000 ante, unless they’d jettisoned the antes for heads-up), meaning Moneymaker had about 130 BBs and Farha more than 70 BBs at the moment Dan Harrington had gone out in third.
Ultimately heads-up play lasted for 28 hands, just three of which made it to TV. We see Farha win a 570,000 pot, then we are told what the stacks are just before the big bluff hand begins -- Moneymaker 4.62 million, Farha 3.77 million.
The pot Moneymaker won in that hand ended up being 1.8 million, and as a result essentially put their stacks back to where they were to begin heads-up play. If Farha had called, he would have had a stack of more than 7.5 million while Moneymaker would’ve slipped all of the way down to 850,000.
At some point later came the final hand (the third shown) in which Farha flopped top pair of jacks but Moneymaker made bottom two pair with 5-4. The money went in on the flop, and Moneymaker’s hand held up, improving to a full house by the river.
All of which is to say, one answer to the question “What if Farha calls?” is that Farha very likely would have won the 2003 WSOP Main Event.
But the mind can’t help but leap from there to consider other possible answers as one begins imaginatively to construct a Philip K. Dick-like alternate past in which the popularity of poker and the online poker industry followed a different course post-2003. And some of us -- including your humble scribbler -- can’t help but think about how what had once been a hobby strangely evolved into a full-time profession, and perhaps wonder whether that would have been the case had Moneymaker finished runner-up in 2003.
I suppose a lot of what did happen following Moneymaker’s win probably would have happened anyway, though perhaps less quickly. The WSOP would have continued to attract larger turnouts, online poker would have continued to expand, and televised poker would have probably evolved similarly, too. One can’t help also but contemplate whether or not the UIGEA would have become law in 2006 had there not been such rapid, conspicuous growth in online poker’s popularity in the U.S. during the three years prior. And whether some other legislative course might have been taken instead.
Poker is always presenting us with these seemingly crucial moments that inspire thoughts about how a particular card or action becomes yet another turning point in the garden of forking paths. Only makes sense, then, that we’d sometimes be inspired to think about poker’s history similarly and ask “What if?”
Forgive me another football-related post today. I realize there are other things going on in the world that certainly rate as slightly more significant, all things considered -- including within our little poker world where the WSOP Europe Main Event is today playing down to an eight-handed final table (with none other than Phil Hellmuth enjoying the chip lead with nine players left as I hit publish). But yesterday I was listening to some commentary about last weekend’s NFL games and heard something sorta interesting (and poker-related) I thought I’d share today.
I’m locked in on these NFL games once more thanks to being in this “pick’em” pool in which we’re trying to predict winners of all games. Trying to defend my title, in fact, after lucking out last year to finish first in the sucker.
Had a decent Week 4 in which I managed to be correct with my picks for 12 of the 15 games. Much better than the previous week when I only got 6 of 16. (I blame the replacement refs, of course.)
One of the games I missed this past weekend was the New York Giants-Philadelphia Eagles game from Sunday night. I had the Giants, but the Eagles prevailed 19-17. Like many NFL games, this one came down to the wire with New York missing a potential game-winning field goal at the end.
With 10 seconds left, the Giants’ kicker Lawrence Tynes -- who had hit all 10 of his FG attempts this year, in fact -- lined up for a 54-yard field goal try. Employing a much-used strategy that many NFL watchers have complained about over the last few years, Philadelphia called a timeout a split-second before the ball was snapped. The play continued, with Tynes missing the attempt wide left. But since the timeout negated the play, the Giants were able to try the kick again.
The second time Tynes kicked the ball straight down the middle but just a yard or two shy of the crossbar and it fell short, ensuring the victory for Philadelphia.
What I wanted to write about concerned that strategy to call a timeout in order to disrupt a team attempting an important field goal at the end of a game -- the so-called “icing the kicker” strategy that often results in a kicker ultimately attempting the field goal two times with only the second attempt actually counting.
The number-crunchers have looked deeply into the strategy, ultimately coming up with statistics showing that calling a timeout might have some small effect on kickers, although not a big one statistically. Over on ESPN’s “stats blog” they reported this week that since 2001 kickers are hitting 81% of those late-game field goals when no timeout is called and 76% when the timeout is called. Sounds like the difference is a little wider when it comes to overtime field goals.
Anyhow, I was listening to sports radio yesterday, ESPN’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning” program that serves as suitable background noise when doing other tasks. To be honest, a lot of the commentary and so-called “analysis” by the show’s hosts, Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, can be superficial and rarely enlightening. Like a lot of sports radio, they talk about sports like fans, not really bringing much insight beyond what any of us could pick up by watching the games ourselves. But they’re entertaining and likable, and occasionally hit upon some decent topics of discussion. Besides, it’s fun sometimes to hear fans jawing about a game we’ve also watched. (Here’s a post from last spring in which I complain a little about the lack of depth one encounters in most sports commentary.)
Yesterday I was listening to Monday’s podcast of the “Mike and Mike” show, a kind of digest version of the lengthy show they do each morning, and as they talked about Sunday night’s Giants-Eagles game the topic of icing the kicker predictably arose.
Golic mentioned how Michael Vick, the Philadelphia quarterback, said after the game that he hated the strategy of calling a timeout to try to psyche out the kicker -- this despite the fact that his own coach, Andy Reid, had employed it. “I don’t believe in icing the kicker,” Vick was quoted saying in USA Today. “You let him kick it, and if it’s in, it’s in.”
Neither of the Mikes are fans of icing the kicker, either, and they went on to talk about how calling that timeout at the last moment does give a kicker a kind of “warm-up” attempt which might in fact be useful when it comes to long field goals such as the one Tynes faced on Sunday.
Greenberg went so far as to say “the one thing I would never do is what Andy Reid did last night... [and] give a guy a second chance to try a long kick.” In other words, since longer kicks are (for most kickers) more difficult, he would rather avoid giving a kicker a first attempt that didn’t count as it might improve his chances of making the second one. “It’s like letting a guy with a 12-foot putt with a big break in it try it twice,” said Greenberg.
That was the comment that made me think about poker and the somewhat popular strategy of “running it twice” in cash games -- you know, those spots where players are all in and agree to have the remaining community cards dealt two times with each result determining where half of the pot goes. Our friend the Poker Grump wrote about the topic and facing the decision himself not too long ago. Here’s an example of players running it twice from an old episode of High Stakes Poker:
In the hand, Todd Brunson and Sam Farha get all of Farha’s stack in the middle on a flop with Farha leading with bottom two pair versus Brunson’s top pair of queens. Farha is a 70% favorite to win the hand, but they agree to run it twice. As it happens, Brunson wins the first time by making trips, but Farha’s hand holds up the second time and the pair split the pot 50-50.
Going back to icing the kicker, Greenberg was suggesting that by calling a timeout Andy Reid improved Lawrence Tynes’s chances of hitting the second field goal because the kicker benefitted from getting a practice attempt. Tynes and the Giants were taking a “long shot” -- literally -- and Greenberg didn’t like the idea of doing anything to make it easier on New York in such a situation.
Similarly does Farha let the underdog Brunson have a better chance of making his hand by running it twice. As Greenberg made his point I found myself thinking about whether or not it might be more or less prudent to run it twice in poker according to how big of a favorite or underdog one was. After all, as Greenberg was suggesting, it did seem that to let a kicker try a long field goal more than once was perhaps a less recommended strategy than might be the case for shorter kicks.
However, there’s a key difference that causes the analogy to break down. Only the second try actually meant anything for Tynes and the Giants, whereas both results counted for Farha and Brunson.
Still, there remains a kind of parallel between the two situations. In fact, when Vick argues to “let him kick it, and if it’s in, it’s in,” it sounds a lot like what Phil Laak is saying -- as PokerGrump quotes in his post -- regarding his decision to stop running it twice and to “embrace the variance.”
Like Vick and the two Mikes, I’m not a big fan of icing the kicker, either, and if I were to guess I’d bet they’ll probably institute a rule in the near future designed to prevent the practice. But my objection doesn’t really concern the effectiveness of the strategy (or lack thereof).
Rather, as I was alluding to last week, there are already too many examples of “do-overs and didn't-counts” in the NFL thanks to all of the replay challenges after every score, turnover, and other instances when coaches are able to throw the red flag and dispute calls.
I’d like to be able to watch plays happen and know they were meaningful and counted, and not always be wondering if what I just saw was going to be rethought and revised. Then again, I’m a spectator, not a participant. I understand those actually playing the game aren’t going to be as ready to “embrace the variance” of human error in officiating.
But as far as icing the kicker goes, I think we might safely get rid of that particular variety of “running it twice” in football.
Yesterday the World Series of Poker announced plans this summer to host a few heads-up “rematches” from Main Events past. On Thursday, June 2, three such rematches will be staged, and later (on July 26) ESPN will air two hours’ worth of coverage showing what happens with all three.
One of the pairings will feature the 2003 WSOP Main Event finale between Chris Moneymaker and Sammy Farha, the tournament that many believe helped change the course of recent poker history thanks to the amateur Moneymaker’s victory.
With that one the WSOP will have the players play a best two-out-of-three format. In the first match they will start with the same stacks each had when heads-up play began back at Binion’s in 2003, when Moneymaker had the advantage with 5.49 million chips to Farha’s 2.9 million. The second match will begin with the two exchanging stacks prior to the first hand; i.e., Farha will have 5.49 million and Moneymaker 2.9 million. If they split those two matches, they’ll play a third and start with even stacks.
I’m not seeing anything in the press release about what the blinds/antes or scheduled structure will be for these matches. In their original heads-up match, I believe the blinds were at 20,000/40,000 (with a 5,000 ante) when they started, meaning they were quite deep (i.e., Moneymaker had over 130 BBs and Farha more than 70). By the way, that original heads-up match back in 2003 lasted for 28 hands.
The second rematch will find Johnny Chan and Phil Hellmuth reprising their heads-up battle from the 1989 WSOP, won by Hellmuth. This will be a one-and-done affair, with both starting with even stacks.
Not too sure how exactly heads up went between those two back in the day (anything before 2000 quickly gets fuzzy when it comes to tracking down WSOP details). But it appears to have been a short battle that ended when Hellmuth -- with about a 2-to-1 chip lead -- won a preflop all-in after his outlasted Chan’s .
For the third rematch (another single match with even stacks), the WSOP is soliciting fans to select among four possible pairings of former Main Event heads-up combatants:
Johnny Chan vs. Erik Seidel (1988)
Greg Raymer vs. David Williams (2004)
Jamie Gold vs. Paul Wasicka (2006)
Jonathan Duhamel vs. John Racener (2010)
Of these, it appears Chan-Seidel is the likely favorite to be selected for the third match. The WSOP is conducting its vote over on Facebook, unfortunately, rather than having the poll on its site, which means I won’t be voting. If I were, I’d probably select Chan-Seidel as the one rematch I’d most like to see of these four. I’m guessing ESPN would not mind if most of those voting think similarly.
Glancing at other pairings that might’ve been considered, I could see nominating a few others as contenders, including Baldwin-Addington (1978), Ferguson-Cloutier (2000), and Hachem-Dannenmann (2005). One assumes various factors (including player availability) kept those off the list of possibles.
Incidentally, while I assume the players participating are receiving something for doing so, it is interesting that the press release mentions nothing regarding any sort of cash prize for the winners.
Perhaps it is just as well that there be no real cash or anything tangible on the line here. ’Cos really, who wins or loses these rematches will matter very little to just about everyone. With the exception of Hellmuth, of course, whom we should expect to speak loudly and often about “defending” his title.
Rather, these rematches will be more about the spectacle than the sport, mostly functioning as occasions for thinking about and revisiting certain moments in WSOP history -- especially the one that lit the fuse for the “boom” back in ’03.
Relatively speaking, yesterday was one of the less hectic days at the WSOP in terms of number of events being played. Whereas on Saturday (say), there were six different events going on throughout the day, with two final tables, yesterday there were just four and one final table.
Of course, I ain’t gonna say anything remotely resembling that it was not a busy day at the WSOP too loudly around my buds F-Train and Donnie Peters. That is because those two were assigned to cover the one final table yesterday for Event No. 25, the $10,000 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship. Which only ended like a half-hour ago. Looks like even the otherwise indefatigable Dr. Pauly had to give up and go to bed before the sucker finally concluded.
F-Train and Donnie knew the deal when things first got started for them mid-afternoon on Sunday. As F-Train’s Day 3 intro post notes, they had 23 players coming back yesterday, and so knew it was going to be a long, long day from the beginning. I haven’t checked the schedule, but I’m hoping for both those guys’ sakes they have today off, or at least aren’t to come in until later in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, I ran well yesterday -- in a couple of ways.
For one, I had the day off, and so for the first time since the WSOP started -- save that week-long Peru excursion for LAPT Lima -- I did not set foot in the Rio. Took care of some day-to-day stuff, including getting ready for Vera’s visit later in the week by renting a car (something I’ve held off doing until now).
Also got to visit with my friend the Poker Grump, having a delicious early dinner at Bachi Burger, an “Asian Inspired BBQ Burger restaurant.” I had the Banh-Mi burger, garlic salt & pepper french fries, and a strawberry Boba drink. Just awesome. Vera and I may be going back there when she comes. (Here’s a page full of photos of dishes and the menu, if you are curious.)
Then Bob and I went for a short session of low limit hold’em afterwards at the MGM, where I ran well again. Couple of full houses, a few other one-pair hands holding up, and even a hand in which I somehow -- incredibly -- beat Bob’s .
Readers of the Grump are well aware of his long-time championing of the “Mighty Deuce-Four.” I explained to the Grump after that hand that as strong as the deuce-four is normally, in $2-$4 it gets cracked all the time.
Anyhow, things get busy again today, both for me personally and the WSOP in general. At least five or six events will be going on every day this week.
For the next three days, I’ll be helping report on Event No. 28, the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event. I might have anticipated Sammy Farha -- the Omaha king -- perhaps to show up for this one, but he was up late last night, too, winning that Event No. 25 (his third Omaha bracelet). Also, Farha doesn’t tend to play the lower buy-in events, anyway.
We’ll see, though. Check in over at PokerNews’ live reporting for news from all five events happening today.
outlasted Chan’s 
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