Listening Back to Back in the Day

There’s a lot that’s interesting swirling around with regard to online poker and where it’s going these days. (Or not going, if you’re here in the U.S.)

But that’s standard -- that is, for there to be all sorts of stories, scoops, sensations, and scandals associated with the online version of the game. Has been the case ever since I started writing this blog more than eight-and-a-half years ago.

In fact today I took a break from reading the latest to look back a little at some of the issues being discussed not long after I started this sucker, thanks in part to my having randomly happened on a folder on an old computer full of poker podcasts.

The shows are all from late 2007 and early 2008, back when I remember having to download podcasts in order to hear them. That above is a crude screenshot of the folder -- if you’re curious you can click the pic to enlarge it. Looks like more than 40 different shows represented in the folder. Just by chance I decided to dial up one from exactly seven years ago today -- the 12/2/07 episode of “Big Poker Sundays” hosted by Scott Huff and Haralobos Voulgaris which aired on the now-defunct PokerRoad site.

The show covered various topics of the day, including a story about an infamous instance of “ghosting” involving the soon-to-be-let-go Managing Editor of BLUFF, Chris Vaughn, and Sorel Mizzi. Shane “shaniac” Schleger called in, too, to talk more about the state of online poker including current worries about multi-accounting, ghosting, and what was then a recent development regarding cheating on Absolute Poker. (I was even surprised to hear a quick reference to Hard-Boiled Poker in there, something I hadn’t remembered at all.)

Listening to the show sent me back to some articles online as well as some old posts here, including this post written the day after the BPS show that mentions some of what was discussed. Think I’ll probably next have to back up a few weeks with these and listen again to the first discussions of the Absolute Poker cheating scandal as it was just starting to break.

Speaking of, during my clicking around through some old HBP posts I landed on this one from February 2008 compiling lots of early articles about AP. Talk about a rabbit hole.

I’ll spare you all the little twists and turns I’ve been clicking my way through tonight, though will say I had a chuckle over this article (from mid-September ’07) from someone expressing utter disbelief that any cheating could have happened on the site, as well as this follow-up (written a week later) adamantly confirming that position, then adding the following:

“I've also spoken with an anonymous source who has had contact with individuals at Ultimate Bet and a few other sites, who notes that no such super user exists on those sites, either. Why, then, would Absolute Poker be the lone site that finds a need to create a super user?”

Farewell to The Poker Beat

Without much fanfare and zero anticipatory build-up, The Poker Beat podcast posted its final episode late last week, culminating a little more than two years’ worth of solid shows. If you missed it, here’s the “Show Finale” (2/8/11) over on PokerRoad.

While I continue to follow a number of poker podcasts -- and now, online video shows like “This Week in Poker” -- there really are only a small number for which I try never to miss a show, and The Poker Beat was one of them. Indeed, it’s possible I might have been one of those who listened to all 95 episodes since the show’s debut back on January 29, 2009.

The Poker Beat was the latest poker podcasting effort of Scott Huff, primary host of the show and veteran of several previous poker podcasts including CardPlayer’s The Circuit, PokerWire Radio, and Big Poker Sundays. If I’m not mistaken, the first Circuit show dates back to late 2005, meaning Huff has been at this off-and-on (mostly on) for more than five years.

In other words -- I realize as I write this -- I’ve been listening to Huff’s podcasts a little longer than I’ve been keeping this blog (started in April 2006). Thus have I had several occasions here to respond to items discussed on his shows and commend his significant contributions to reporting on poker.

Unlike the previous shows, The Poker Beat was consciously modeled after those Sunday morning news programs that gather reporters to debate topics of the day. I think I remember Huff early on evoking ESPN’s “Around the Horn” as a possible analogue, too, which it indeed resembled (aside from the faux-game show stuff they incorporate into the ESPN show).

Huff’s “roundtable” most often consisted of poker media types like John Caldwell (a co-host for many of the shows), B.J. Nemeth, Gary Wise, Dan Michalski, and Jess Welman, with Joe Stapleton also contributing frequently with his “Tight Laydown,” a humorous postscript to the discussions in which he, too, commented on the week’s stories through a satirical lens. Other bloggers/reporters/media-types were invited into the discussions as well from time to time, too, including like Dr. Pauly, Amy Calistri, Matthew Parvis, among others.

Like I say, I don’t believe I missed an episode. Even if I was already very familiar with a news item being discussed -- perhaps having written on it myself or been present at the event under consideration -- I always looked forward to hearing what the group had to say. One big reason why I did was the relative independence (i.e., freedom from the influence of sponsors and other content-affecting forces) the show enjoyed when it came reporting.

As was the case on his previous shows -- and even “Poker2Nite,” the television show Huff co-hosted with Joe Sebok that was sponsored by UB -- The Poker Beat pretty much always featured a kind of editorial objectivity, at least relatively speaking. Some may want to disagree with me here, but the point I’m making is simply that while Huff certainly had his own opinions and predilections (as we all do), he never allowed his own P.O.V. to affect unduly the choice of topics discussed on The Poker Beat. And while his opinions on those topics were always his own (and thus, by definition, subjective), I never sensed they were shaped by sponsors or other external entities.

The same can be said for the panelists on the show, too, most of whom in fact also reported for other outlets that do depend on online poker sites and other sponsors that at times can affect coverage. However, on The Poker Beat it seemed (to me, at least) everyone spoke without constraint, with their opinions genuinely representing their own thoughts on the topics being considered.

Thus will the end of The Poker Beat leave a bit of a void in the world of so-called “poker media,” although there are other places where one can still find relatively unblinkered commentary and reporting on the poker world. The Two Plus Two Pokercast springs to mind (sponsored by PokerStars but nonetheless autonomous), as do some other sites and especially certain independently-produced blogs.

So thanks to Huff and all the others for two-plus years’ worth of The Poker Beat. And here’s hoping Huff returns -- as he intimated on that last episode he might -- with some other contribution to poker reporting in the not-too-distant future.

Speaking of Poker: What You Can and Cannot Say, Part II

Sean G added a comment to yesterday’s post about “Poker2Nite” mentioning that the show’s hosts had put out a new episode of the Poker Road Radio podcast, and that on that episode (12/6/09) they discuss the television show, some early critiques, and their efforts to improve it.

Ended up listening to the podcast later yesterday and greatly enjoyed hearing Scott Huff, Joe Sebok, and Joe Stapleton (who, indeed, is a contributor and writes the “Weekly Misdeal” segments) talk about the show. There’s a terrific interview in there with new World Series Main Event champion Joe Cada, by the way, with Cada continuing to come off as a down-to-earth, likable dude as well as a willing, able “ambassador” of poker. Both before and after the interview the hosts talk about “Poker2Nite,” and having just watched the first three episodes I found their discussion very entertaining and revealing.

The fun they had at their own expense -- e.g., laughing some at Sebok’s stilted appearance and delivery (especially on the initial episode) -- reminded me a little bit of a passage near the end of Victoria Coren’s new memoir For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker which I reviewed here last week. Amid a passage discussing the Hendon Mob forum and some of the more rude and critical contributors she’d encountered there, she notes how the original spirit of the site had become altered over time.

“The original idea [of the site] was all about self-deprecating British humour,” she notes. “The guys played down how good they were. They played up the bumbling hopefulness of the game, the borrowing of money to get into tournaments, the impoverished Delboy dreams of greatness.” (For Americans, that latter is a reference to the central character in a popular British sitcom “Only Fools and Horses” from the 1980s, I believe.)

Referring to her own sponsorship by PokerStars (and the cynical responses of some on the Hendon Mob forum), Coren wonders “With sponsors to impress and carping railbirds to placate, is there any room for humorous modesty?” She goes on to quote her friend and Hendon Mobster Barny Boatman draw a contrast with American culture, where “players talk up how great they are, how much better than the next guy,” something he finds “a bit crass.”

I realized listening to the PokerRoad Radio podcast a couple of things. For one, I was laughing a lot thanks to the off-the-cuff wit of the hosts, a lot of which, in fact, was derived from that willingness to poke fun at themselves -- that “humorous modesty” -- that Coren wonders might be threatened in poker by things like sponsorship, corporatization, and what might be called the “professionalization” of the game. (And which, I suppose, Americans are in fact capable of, too, here and there.)

The other thing I realized when listening to the podcast was how these elements -- the spontaneity and the “humorous modesty” -- were largely missing from the television show.

One can see an attempt to bring in some of both in the most recent episode of “Poker2Nite” with the addition of a segment called “All In Blind” in which Huff and Sebok picked topics at random and discussed them without apparently having prepped too much beforehand. It will be interesting to watch tonight’s show and see how the guys continue to work on incorporating these elements that make their podcasts so entertaining.

Speaking of the pressures of sponsorship, they were adamant about how UltimateBet (or “UB”) had given them total creative control over the show, and how none of the decisions made about segments or their content had been dictated by UB’s preferences. “UB has not tried to tell us one thing to put on the show or leave off the show,” explained Stapleton. Having watched those three eps, I’d say there’s no real reason to doubt that claim. Indeed I can’t say I ever was all that conscious of the fact that UB could have had any sort of editorial input when I was watching.

However, I did find very intriguing Huff’s explanation for why in their discussion of the big $1.35 million dollar hand between Patrik Antonius and Isildur1 (in the second episode) they were unable to refer to the fact that the pair was playing the hand on Full Tilt Poker. The omission was not because of UB’s sponsorship of the show, but rather because Fox Sports Network would not allow them to mention a “dot com,” real money online poker site on the show.

Explained Huff, “We are allowed to mention ‘dot nets’ but we also have to be factual as journalists.... This hand did not take place on ‘fulltiltpoker.net’ so for factual reasons we can’t say it happened on ‘Full Tilt Poker-anything’ because if we say ‘dot com’ it’s illegal [i.e., forbidden by the network] for us to say it and they’ll just bleep it or take the segment out entirely, and if we say ‘dot net’ we’re being factually incorrect, so it also can’t be aired. So the only option is to not mention where it happened and only mention the facts we are allowed to report on.”

Kind of amazing, really, and indicative of the delicate spot the guys sometimes find themselves on the show, reporting-wise. Stapleton then added a bit more clarification to the situation.

“If Phil Ivey had happened to be playing that hand, or someone who was in the United States at the time, we wouldn’t have been able to report on it, as per Fox,” said Stapleton. “We can’t talk about anyone playing online poker for money in the United States [because] in the eyes of the network, we are promoting illegal activity.”

Indeed, I remember at the start of that segment reference was made of both Antonius (a native of Finland) and Isildur1 (thought to be from Sweden) as “Scandinavian sickos,” and Huff also had mentioned -- seemingly unnecessarily -- that Antonius was a “Monte Carlo resident.” And at the end of the narration of the hand, Sebok noted how the money had “shipped straight from Sweden to Monte Carlo.”

Pretty strange world, if you think about it. A show sponsored by a “U.S. facing” online poker site, airing on a U.S. network, that can’t even mention that people in the U.S. can play online poker for real money. Makes one appreciate how hard it can be to find grins in the midst of such a humorless, litigious context.

Anyhow, for those with FSN, the show airs again tonight (Wednesday), and the rest of us can watch online shortly thereafter.

(I titled the post that way because this whole topic recalled an earlier one -- written two-and-a-half years ago -- in which participants on an episode of “Poker After Dark” were bemoaning the fact that they were not allowed to say certain words like “gambling” and “money” when announcing poker shows.)

Poker2Nite Brings Poker to the World

Finally had a chance to catch up with the first three episodes of “Poker2Nite” the UB-sponsored weekly show now appearing Wednesday nights on Fox Sports Net. I only receive a limited package which does not include FSN, meaning I haven’t been able to dial the show up on the crystal receiver when it airs. But all of the episodes can be viewed online. Search YouTube for the show, or just visit the show’s site.

The mere fact that any network would entertain the notion of a weekly half-hour of poker news is itself an indicator of the extent to which our beloved mutt poker has surprisingly dog-paddled its way into the cultural mainstream. What are we supposed to think of this? In truth, it is very difficult for those of us who are fully immersed in poker and the poker media to have any sort of reliable perspective when it comes to judging a show like “Poker2Nite.”

Someone like me -- not only already familiar with practically all of the news and stories that appear on the show, but also with the now-lengthy “pokertainment” careers of the show’s hosts Scott Huff and Joe Sebok -- will necessarily have a hard time making any sort of objective-sounding statements about the show’s quality (that is, to guess how the show probably looks to someone not like me).

The situation makes me think of having once seen a feature-length article in the late 1990s in The New Yorker about the group The Shaggs.

The Shaggs were this little group of teenaged sisters (the Wiggins) who were encouraged by their father to cut an album back in 1969 called Philosophy of the World. The album -- full of oddball songs like “Who Are Parents?” and “My Pal Foot Foot” -- would have certainly disappeared without a trace had not Frank Zappa, guest hosting The Dr. Demento Show in 1973, played “My Pal Foot Foot” and voiced praise for the band.

Gradually The Shaggs (who never made another record) developed a cult following. Later on, the iconoclastic Zappa would dub Philosophy of the World the third-greatest album of all time. Like others, I found The Shaggs through Zappa and came to appreciate their decidedly amateurish but weirdly infectious LP. It’s one of those you-have-to-hear-it-to-believe-it-type records that causes most to wonder “is this a joke?” (A question which is itself, one could say, a starting point for developing a philosophy of the world.)

Anyhow, I remember not knowing how to react when I saw The New Yorker piece. It was as if something the essential nature of which was private had suddenly been rudely exposed for all to examine. “How could this possibly play to a wider audience?” I wondered. “No one is gonna get it.”

Actually, I think I can say the prospects that people are going to “get” “Poker2Nite” are much better. The show is styled after other sports news shows like “Sportscenter” or the like, with Huff and Sebok seated behind a desk (most of the time) delivering stories, conducting interviews, and introducing prepackaged segments from the field (or “on fifth street,” as Sebok calls his segments).

The first episode (11/18) featured pieces on the WSOP Main Event conclusion, a short interview with Joe Cada by Lacey Jones, an longer interview with Lon McEachern by the hosts, and a report on Tom “durrrr” Dwan’s signing with Full Tilt Poker. The second (11/25) had some talk about Isildur1, a report from an Annie Duke-hosted charity tournament, an interview with Andy Bloch, and a bit about how poker players celebrate Thanksgiving. Last week’s show (12/2) mostly concerned the delay of the banks’ compliance with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, including an interview with Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas.

No surprise to see Huff -- always terrific with the podcasts (in my opinion) -- function as a great host for this sort of thing. He looks to me as though he’s ready to step in over at the Fox Sports desk at any moment. Trying to imagine how those unfamiliar with PokerRoad or Huff or Sebok or even poker are going to view all of this, I’m guessing most who stumble onto FSN and see Huff are going to think he looks a little young but is a fine, capable host. They might even think like me and find him funny and likable.

Next to Huff, Sebok appears relatively less polished and/or comfortable, and I’m not certain how he comes off to the wider audience. I’m a big Sebok fan, but I ain’t sure how others operating the remote control are responding. This is where I think of The Shaggs a bit, and have to admit that, yeah, their guitars are a little out of tune. Okay, a lot out of tune. And yeah, I know, little Dot Wiggins’ voice sounds a little weird.

Okay, maybe more than a little.

I think even more along those lines watching Dana Workman’s “Weekly Misdeal” segment included in each episode, kind of the analogue to “The Tight Laydown with Joe Stapleton” that appears at the end of each episode of The Poker Beat podcast. I’m not seeing any credits for “Poker2Nite” to clarify, but I know I’ve heard Stapleton is involved with the show and am going to guess he’s writing those lines for Workman, most of which concern inside jokes about the poker world. I generally like Stapleton’s humor, but I’m not going to lie and say I’ve laughed all that much thus far at the “Weekly Misdeal.”

But hey, like The Shaggs sing, “It doesn’t matter where you go / It doesn’t matter who you see / There will always be / Someone who disagrees.”

I’m glad “Poker2Nite” is on FSN and I did enjoy watching the first three eps. But I haven’t a decent perspective on any of this, really. I can say that while I had misgivings about seeing that piece on The Shaggs in The New Yorker, I’m genuinely glad for the PokerRoad guys’ increased exposure on “Poker2Nite.” And optimistic about the show’s potential moving forward.

And like I say, I know for certain that Huff, Sebok, et al. have a much, much greater chance at achieving mainstream appeal than The Shaggs ever did. Don’t believe me? Here, listen to the title track from the third-greatest album ever:

Raise. Stack. Own. Rebrand. Try Again.

Vera and I do have a satellite dish and a hi-def teevee, but subscribe to the least expensive package available. So while we still get several dozen channels more than we need, we don’t get a few we occasionally want, including Fox Sports Net. Meaning I haven’t had the chance as of yet to see that Poker2Nite show hosted by Scott Huff and Joe Sebok which premiered last night.

As a longtime fan of the various podcasts produced by those two over the last three-plus years, I’m looking forward to seeing the show. I understand that UltimateBet -- the online poker site that signed Sebok as both a sponsored pro and a “media and operations consultant” back in September -- is the “presenting sponsor” for the show. Indeed, I believe episodes can be viewed over on the online site’s website, though I haven’t explored that yet.

Speaking of UltimateBet, you might have heard how the site has now “rebranded” to become UB.com. I first heard about that via Twitter when I saw Spaceman’s tweet “UltimateBet's rebranding reminds me of when evil tobacco co. Philip Morris became friendly-sounding ‘Altria.’”

Haven’t too much to say about that, really, other than to express the usual cynicism most of us probably share regarding marketing. Makes me think of that line Raymond Chandler once had Philip Marlowe say regarding chess -- a line from The Long Goodbye that usually gets misquoted as applying to poker -- noting that the game was “as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.”

As was the case when UltimateBet merged with Absolute Poker on the Cereus Network back in July 2008, itself a kind of “rebranding,” all of the new slogans and messages bear the burdensome weight of that legacy of four-and-a-half years during which some players were playing against opponents who could see their hole cards -- i.e., the most massive cheating scandal in the short history of online poker.

So forgive me a little chuckle when reading the explanation of the new slogan “Raise. Stack. Own.” on the UB blog: “I will raise you. I will stack you. I will own you. -- This is how winning players approach the game, no mercy.” Can’t say hearing the site say “I will stack you. I will own you” really encourages me to come back.

Neither does the site’s continued lack of response to my requests regarding hand histories.

I’ve chronicled my quixotic efforts to get UltimateBet -- or UB -- to send me hand histories here before, the most recent synopsis appearing in a post from a couple of months ago titled “On Those UltimateBet Hand Mysteries, er... Histories.”

Following Sebok’s signing with UB, I had been momentarily encouraged to think I would eventually get my hand histories sent to me, given his statements that when signing with the site they had indicated to him that would be one of the first orders of business. I wrote the site (again) in late September and received a quick response saying my request had been “forwarded to our upper management for further review of your request.” Then on October 1, I got a note from a “Poker Security Manager” saying that while I was unaffected by the cheating, “I will work on getting your data to you ASAP.”

Three weeks passed with no response, so I replied to the email I’d been sent. It was returned as undeliverable. I’m thinking that when the fellow said “ASAP” he might have been calling me a sap.

I griped a little at the time on Twitter about once again having appeared to hit a dead end in the quest for my hand histories. And to Sebok’s credit he responded to my whimpering, saying he was glad to hear about the problem and was doing what he could to get UB to be more responsive to these things. He also mentioned, though, that he had come to realize his efforts in that regard were going to take him longer than he’d originally hoped they would.

As I’ve said before here, I’ve got all kinds of respect for the Cub. I do worry, though, that when it comes to this business of fixing UB, you be running the risk of being rebranded yourself.

For those interested in learning more of the skinny regarding the whole UltimateBet fiasco, check out Haley’s “Just Conjecturin’” series of posts on the subject, the most recent of which explains how Ted Forrest’s name (and a couple of others) should be added to the list of those who’ve had an ownership interest in the maligned online site. Links to Haley’s posts (thus far):

Just Conjecturin’, Part 1

Just Conjecturin’, Part 2: Sebok Signing (Update)

Just Conjecturin’, Part 2.5: Oh, Those UB Hand Histories

Just Conjecturin’, Part 3: The 56% Solution

Just Conjecturin’, Part 4: Inside the Excapsa Ownership Bloc

Just Conjecturin’, Part 5: If a Forrest is Silent, Does That Mean There Aren't Any Trees?

PokerStars’ WCOOP Continues

Been fairly well immersed in PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker the last three days, so that’s what we’ll discuss today here on Hard-Boiled.

I have written wrap posts for three of the events thus far. Will be doing so again tonight/tomorrow morning, then will have a few days away to go work the “real” job before getting back at it next weekend. Was sitting up ’til after eight a.m. today watching my event finally come to its conclusion, some 20-plus hours after it began.

I tried to nap a little as the night wore on, but it is hard, really, not to keep tabs on the action since one never really knows when the final table is going to happen in these things -- and I absolutely have to be at the computer when the final table begins. Sleep schedule all kinds of out of whack, dontcha know.

They have been drawing some enormous fields for these suckers. The event I was watching yesterday -- Event #9, a $200+$15 no-limit hold’em event -- had a $1 million guarantee, but drew over 11,000 entrants, making the prize pool more than twice that. Had a tourney on Saturday with more than 15,000 playing. And players are hopping on in over 100 different countries, too -- truly the “World Series” of online poker, you’d have to say.

For those of you interested in following some of the coverage, head over to the PokerStars blog and look for the WCOOP posts. They aren’t too hard to find. The wraps initially appear in the regular rotation -- amid the reports from EPT Barcelona -- there “above the fold.” If you look down on the right-hand side of the page you’ll see links to all of the event reports, and if you go to the WCOOP page on the blog you’ll find ’em all as well, along with Otis’ interviews of winners.

If that’s not enough WCOOP for you, Scott Huff is doing a daily podcast over on PokerRoad which also is a neat way of catching up on the action. He, too, is interviewing event winners and PokerStars pros. Huff remains the far-and-away chipleader when it comes to poker podcasting, so if you like The Poker Beat and his other shows, give this one a listen, too.

Finally, most of you reading this probably are also aware Dr. Pauly has begun a weekly op-ed column over on PokerNews -- if not, lemme pass that along to ya. In his first (appearing yesterday), Dr. P talks about the WCOOP, his thesis evident in his headline, “WCOOP: It’s Good, But Let’s Make it Better.” Some good ideers in there. Some tongue-in-cheekiness thrown in here and there as well. Check it out.

For now, I’m gonna try to enjoy a few hours of rest here on Labor Day before my next event begins later today. Maybe get outside a bit and enjoy this terrific weather we’ve got going. If you ain’t busy satelliting yr way into the next WCOOP event over on PokerStars, that is.

(Incidentally, I have a new post today over on Film Chaw, reviewing the 1975 sci-fi cult flick A Boy and His Dog.)

The (Unexpected) Return of the Prodigal Son

So I’m listening to yesterday’s episode of The Poker Beat (2/12/09), that new podcast over on PokerRoad hosted by Scott Huff in which he has on various poker media types to discuss news of the day. After a discussion of that Russ Hamilton video and its possible significance, Bluff Magazine Editor-in-Chief Matthew Parvis came on to talk about this new “Bluff Magazine Online Poker Challenge” announced earlier this month.

The Challenge sounds interesting enough. It looks like a great chance for the sponsoring site, Lock Poker, to get some publicity, although in the interview Parvis says it was his “brainchild.” As one can read about over on Bluff, the “competition will bring together some of the best online poker players and each will be given an opportunity to build a bankroll playing multi-table tournaments and sit-n-gos exclusively on Lock Poker.”

As Parvis explained on the show, “we are basically depositing $200 into a Lock Poker account” for each player invited to play in the Challenge. The accounts are apparently “locked” (pun intended?) so no other deposits or transfers can be made with them, and as the Challenge proceeds they will be audited each night “because we don’t want any scandal to be associated with the Challenge itself” (explained Parvis). The players will have 30 days to try to build their rolls, and the one who manages to earn the most will make the cover of an upcoming issue of Bluff. I believe all of this will happen in March.

“We were lucky enough to get some really quality guys,” noted Parvis on the show. He mentioned several, including the magazine’s 2008 online poker player of the year David “The Maven” Chicotsky, Adam Junglen, Matt Vingren, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Søren Kongsgaard, “Bodog” Ari Engel, and Jeff “Yellowsub” Williams. “A really, really good line-up of quality guys,” said Parvis, adding that he was only listing some of the 20 players who had been invited.

The article over on Bluff mentions some of the others who have been invited, including Garrett “GBecks” Beckman, Phil “USCphildo” Collins, Brett “Bhanks11” Hanks, and Maria Ho. Sorel Mizzi is also listed, he of the “account selling” incident from December 2007 that caused him to be banned from Full Tilt Poker.

Parvis talked a bit about Mizzi on the show. He also talked more than a bit about one other controversial name appearing over there on the list of invitees: Josh “JJprodigy” Field. No shinola.

You remember Field, don’t you? First banned from PartyPoker back in February 2006 (when he was just 16) after he won their $500,000 Sunday Tournament in which he was playing under two screen names (JJProdigy and Ablackcar). He was then caught cheating at other sites, as well, from which he was also banned. PokerStars even banned him from playing in their PokerStars Caribbean Adventure once he turned 18.

It was right around the time he turned 18 that Field issued some “apologies” (of a sort) on forums and in interviews. I transcribed a bit of the PokerRoad interview (the 1/14/08 episode) in a post titled “Uncorrected Personality Traits That Seem Whimsical in a Child May Prove to Be Ugly in a Fully Grown Adult.”* Among other questions, Field was asked in the PokerRoad interview whether or not he was then “playing on the sites you’re banned from and you have no plans to play on [those] sites.”

“At this moment in time, yeah,” answered Field. “I can’t tell you in a month I’ll be thinking the same, because it’ll be really hard not playing all those sites. But right now, yeah.”

On The Poker Beat, Parvis said he’d spoken with Field at the recent Aussie Millions and afterwards felt he was worth inviting to participate in the Challenge, even though Parvis admitted Field had made some “serious, serious mistakes in his life in terms of the poker world and cheating, and multi-accounting, and ghosting, and selling accounts... whatever the scandals may be.” “That’s a hell of a laundry list,” joked Huff in response.

Well, now it appears Field will not be able to play in the Challenge after all. Parvis told Huff he received an email on Wednesday which reported “there was some situation” over on Cake Poker (for which Lock Poker is a skin, I believe) with an “account hand-off” involving Field. “Whatever the case is, it appears that JJ has been involved in another sticky situation here,” said Parvis, and so will not be allowed to play in the Challenge.

To Parvis’ credit, he expressed humility to Huff about having been fooled into thinking Field had indeed changed his cheating ways. Still, one has to wonder about the initial decision to invite the notorious JJProdigy to participate in such a Challenge. They don’t want “any scandal to be associated with the Challenge itself,” but then Bluff invites the most notorious, scandal-ridden player in online poker to participate?

As I was listening, I was amazed Field could even resurface in this way as part of any story -- much less one involving selecting top online pros to participate in a freeroll like this. As Seth Meyers would say over on Saturday Night Live Weekend Update, “Really?!?”

Yet another head-scratching moment from the ethically-ambiguous world of online poker.

*By the way, that earlier post title came from Robyn Hitchcock’s twisted a cappella number “Uncorrected Personality Traits” that appears on one of my all-time favorite discs, Hitchcock’s 1984 masterpiece I Often Dream of Trains. And speaking of masterpieces, that’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” by the Dutch master, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, pictured above.

On Player of the Year Awards

Some of you may have heard or read about how John “the Razor” Phan was named Card Player’s “Player of the Year” for 2008. Phan also finished atop the 2008 POY list over at Bluff Magazine, thanks to his having earned over $2 million in prize money this year.

In addition to making several final tables, Phan won a couple of bracelets at the WSOP in 2008. I had the chance to cover the final table for one of them, Event No. 40, the $2,500 Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw event. I wrote a couple of posts here about that final table.

One was back in late June, just after it took place. In that one, “2008 WSOP, Day 27: Cheers,” I wrote a bit about Phan’s ordering 10 cups of Corona once they had gotten down to three-handed. The other post, “Thriving vs. Surviving: John Phan & David Sklansky at the 2008 WSOP, Event No. 40 Final Table,” was written back in August after I’d returned, and there I contrast Phan’s aggressive style at that final table to the decidedly more conservative one employed by Sklansky (who’d finish sixth). Check ’em out, especially if you happen to be a Phan fan.

A few weeks ago I listened to Scott Huff talk about player of the year awards on Big Poker Sundays (the 12/18/08 episode). There Huff talked some about Phan and how his manner at the tables -- lots of deliberation, lots of confrontational table talk -- rubs some players the wrong way. Huff was more interested, though, in discussing POY awards and their value, generally speaking.

Huff suggested Card Player was the “gold standard” when it comes to player of the year awards, since “they have the most . . . scientific system for figuring this out,” although he admits “it is still flawed.” I’m not sure how “scientific” it is, but Card Player does certainly employ a fairly complicated rubric to assign points for its player of the year. And it is probably safe to say CP’s POY award is probably the one of which the majority of poker players and fans are most aware.

For last year’s award, Card Player only counted single events with at least $250,000 in the prize pool, or events that were played as part of series in which the overall prize pool for the entire series was $750,000. At least 60 entrants had to be playing in a given event for it to be counted, and the buy-in had to be at least $300.

That meant all of the big ones were in there -- the WSOP, the WSOPE, the EPT, the APPT, the Aussie Millions, and so forth. There were also many smaller events included, too, although when it comes to assigning points CP gives more for higher buy-in events and for events with more players. There was also even a provision in there to include online events in which the prize pool exceeded $5 million. Off the top of my head, I know the Main Event of PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker (played in September) had a prize pool of over $10 million, so it must have been included. There may have been one or two other online tourneys with big enough prize pools in there somewhere as well.

If you’re curious, you can sort through the entire Card Player 2008 Scoring Criteria by clicking here.

The system over at Bluff is similar insofar as players get points according to three main criteria: their finish, the amount of the buy-in, and the number of entrants. However, unlike Card Player, Bluff limits the number of tournaments it considers to just the big series: WSOP, WSOPE, WSOP Circuit events, WPT, Wynn Classic Tournaments, EPT, APPT, Aussie Millions, and the Monte Carlo Millions. Here’s the Bluff system, if yr interested.

I should add that both magazines include non-hold’em events in their rankings, too. That meant Phan’s Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw bracelet win did help him, although the majority of his cashes and deep runs came in NLHE tourneys.

Getting back to Huff’s commentary, the Big Poker Sundays host went on to make a couple of other, broader observations about POY awards. I thought both points were fairly provocative, and since I am curious to know what others think about them, I thought I would share Huff’s points here.

The first observation has to do with the “flawed” system currently used to determine POY. In response, Huff suggests an alternative method. “I would like to see it polled much like college football (minus the BCS),” says Huff. “I would like to see a poll of the people that are working in poker as journalists who follow and cover the tournament circuit. You know, people like B.J. Nemeth. People like Gary Wise . . . . Even people like Dr. Pauly. People who are around this all of the time, voting on who they think is deserving of the player of the year. And then also have the players vote on their peers.”

Huff goes on to say he doesn’t know how such a system would be weighted, but he thinks this polling method for determining the best player of the year would be preferable to the “scientific” method of assigning points currently used.

Such a poll would be quite interesting, I think. However, as much as I respect folks like Nemeth, Wise, and the good doctor, I think even they would tell you their own votes for player of the year would be of limited value. I know for a fact that Nemeth has spent a lot of time thinking about different ways of determining POY -- in fact, last summer he shared some of his thoughts on this very subject with me. While I won’t go into any of the details of Nemeth’s ideas here (which are terrific, by the way), I will say none of them give any weight at all to his own opinion or “vote” on who the player of the year should be.

Dunno about Wise or Dr. Pauly, but I would guess they, too, would be suitably humble about their own abilities to say who is the best player they’ve covered this year.

Huff’s other observation was to point out the relative value of POY awards. He thinks they are important, and thus improving the system for determining player of the year “would give even more legitimacy to an award that I think is necessary when we’re trying to still promote poker as a sport, and trying to get people to watch it.”

Huff is on to something here, I think. He maintains “the more statistics that we have, the more accessible those statistics are, the more sense that they make, and also being able to tell people out there in the general public who are watching poker as entertainment, to be able to tell them this person is definitively the ‘best player in the world for this year’ as far as tournaments are concerned, is an important thing.” Huff acknowledges that some would disagree with his view, but believes that “as a fan of poker” such awards do, in his opinion, serve an important purpose.

He’s probably right that POY awards do have the ability to excite the interest of casual poker fans -- i.e., those who watch poker on television much as they would any other sport, and are therefore interested in following certain players and learning how they rate against one another.

Even so, I don’t think a poll of journalists and/or players is going to be the way to make such an award more “legitimate” or give it a more prominent status than the relatively modest one it currently enjoys, even among the most ardent poker fans.

The Chicken or the Egg?

Was unable to catch ESPN’s coverage last night of the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha World Championship (Event No. 50), though I’ll probably try to pick it up later in the week. While I worked several PLO events at this year’s World Series of Poker, that was one I did not. Still, I am always curious to see how non-hold’em games get presented. Coverage of the Main Event begins next week.

Speaking of ESPN, for those still interested in further context and/or analysis of Scotty Nguyen’s “performance” at the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event (Event No. 45), first aired on ESPN last week, tournament director Matt Savage provides a response over on PokerNews centering on the various rules that were violated that night. Also, there have been a couple more podcasts of late concerning the final table and/or ESPN’s coverage that are worth checking out.

One was Gary Wise’s Wise Hand Poker podcast (the 8/20/08 episode), which features an interview with Event No. 50 runner-up and primary Nguyen antagonist Michael DeMichele. DeMichele does a good job explaining his perspective of the various goings-on from that evening, candidly answering all Wise’s well-chosen questions. (Looks like DeMichele is also on the newest episode of the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast, which I have yet to hear.) Incidentally, that show also features an interview with current Main Event chip leader Dennis Phillips, in which Phillips again proves himself an interesting, likable, “everyman.”

The other was the most recent installment of Big Poker Sundays (8/24/08), on which the always thoughtful Shane “Shaniac” Schleger joined Scott Huff. They spent an entire hour discussing the H.O.R.S.E. final table, Nguyen’s antics, ESPN’s manner of packaging the program, Norman Chad’s editorializing, and other, more general topics related to etiquette, rules enforcement, and the ol’ “good of the game” issue.

Toward the end of the Big Poker Sundays show, Huff and Schleger talk about the effect of television and the potential rewards it brings to professional poker players, as well as the impact the prospect of such rewards sometimes has on how they behave. Says Huff, “It’s gotten to the point now in poker that some of these guys who are quote-unquote ‘stars of the game’ have really gone off the deep end” in terms of how they present themselves to the public -- especially when the television cameras are around. To Huff, it appears that “promoting yourself has become [such] a big deal for some of these guys to the point where they’ve totally lost it.”

Schleger’s response made me think a little of what I had written last Friday about the incident, particularly those observations of Tommy Angelo’s I shared concerning the stressful nature of poker. Schleger half-jokingly observed that sometime during this year’s WSOP he’d concluded that “95 to 99% of all full-time poker players have some kind of, you know, clear mental disease... clear mental illness... myself included,” listing traits such as an “extreme level of self-absorption,” “paranoid delusions,” and “manic depressive psychosis” as evidence that “we’re all messed up in the head, severely.” Circling back to Nguyen and the H.O.R.S.E. event, Schleger concluded “you add television cameras, you add alcohol, and this is what you get.”

As I say, Schleger is half-kidding around here, but he makes an interesting observation (I think) about the kind of person who gravitates towards poker/gambling in general, and professional tournament poker in particular.

Angelo spoke on that TwoPlusTwo Pokercast (the 8/18/08 episode) of how poker “tests us,” presenting numerous stressors (all at once) that are very similar those we encounter away from the poker tables, kind of like a “little microcosm” of the larger world.

In other words -- and I’m overgeneralizing points made by Angelo and Schleger just a bit here -- Angelo is talking about how poker makes us crazy, while Schleger is suggesting it is the crazy ones who find poker. “We’re diseased, screwed-up individuals,” says Schleger, “who are very lucky something that something like gambling came along that we can make a living at.”

So which came first? Were we crazy before we found poker? Or did poker make us that way?