No Money in Wacky Usernames, Everyone Is Solid

Chuckling here over the latest report of a big winner on PokerStars’ Spin & Go game, this time over on the French site where a trio of players entering a €25 game hit a lucky spin and got to play for €300,000, with €250K of that going to the winner (and the losers each getting a nice consolation prize of €25K).

The story is interesting in part because the fellow who won the sucker, a Russian player, was streaming on Twitch at the time, and so the entire short tournament he was on camera, going through the emotions of first realizing how big the prize was, then talking to himself (and his viewers) with increasing animation as the tournament played out.

In its report on the win, PokerStars has embedded a short video of the fellow’s Twitch stream showing the Spin & Go, with Team PokerStars Pro Online’s Mikhail “innerpsy” Shalamov providing commentary and translation.

It’s a fun watch. He luckily wins a big all-in with 7-6 versus K-Q, then soon has the other opponent at risk with pocket fours against his A-2. The flop comes 3-5-K, then a four on the turn gives him a straight. The river is a blank, and he wins the €250K (pictured above -- click to enlarge).

His reaction is pretty great, as you might imagine -- literal jumping for joy, followed by some genuine tears as his tremendous fortune starts sinking in. I’ve seen references to it being the biggest single online poker win ever streamed on Twitch -- in fact, I think it breaks the previous high by a wide margin.

The part of the story, though, that has gotten the most attention is the fellow’s username on the PokerStars.fr site -- “SolidPenis.”

No shinola. Not since “RectalRash” won a SCOOP five years ago -- the win memorialized by Dr. Pauly in a post headlined “RectalRash irritates field en route to Triple Draw victory” -- has there been a more embarrassing username that had to be reported.

Just as the Russian fellow this week apparently set a new standard for online poker-playing Twitch streamers, he’s also probably established a new, hard-to-surpass standard for ignominious IDs.

Image: PokerStars blog.

Ivey Loses, Spin & Go Spins, and Johnny Carson’s Poker Game

Hello, weekend (almost). Looking back on the week in poker, there were three items I wish I’d had more time to explore with blog posts, but did not. Gonna just catalogue them here to invite comment, and perhaps next week if inspired I’ll get back into issues raised by one or two of them.

One was Phil Ivey losing his case against Crockfords Casino in Britain’s High Court. The case started on Monday, then two days later Judge John Mitting decided Ivey was not entitled to the £7.7 million he’d won playing Punto Banco and that Crockfords had withheld from paying out.

In Mitting’s view, the “edge sorting” technique Ivey employed “gave himself an advantage which the game precludes.” “This is in my view cheating,” he concluded, ruling in favor of Crockfords.

Last week I was mentioning Ivey’s appearance on the 60 Minutes Sports program (which was on Showtime this week, which I don’t get) where he defended himself against accusations of being a cheater. I also mentioned there how out in the non-poker world the stories of Ivey’s suit against Crockfords and more particularly the Borgata’s still-pending one against Ivey have suggested that “cheater” label for him in the minds of some.

The Two Plus Two thread about the case indicates most in the poker world were surprised by the ruling and disagreed with it, and that’s the general tenor of response over Twitter, too. Jeff Ma, a member of the MIT blackjack team back in the mid-1990s, has written an op-ed for ESPN’s poker page defending Ivey’s play as not unethical (while expressly forgoing talking about its legality as interpreted by the High Court).

A second item popping up here at week’s end concerns those new Spin & Go games on PokerStars which I was trying out over on the play money side when they were first introduced. The new format has proven especially popular, so much so that some sit-n-go regs are not happy about the way they have affected traffic in other games. In fact, a petition “to demand a removal of these games” has been started by one disgruntled grinder -- an extreme-seeming response, to be sure.

The petition isn’t really that interesting to me, but some of the discussion that it has provoked both about the Spin & Go format and online poker in general has provided some worthwhile observations. One of the most thought-provoking came from Daniel Negreanu in a contribution to a 2+2 thread about the petition in which he points out that the full-timers (including the Supernovas and Supernova Elites) who are complaining about the way the format attracts recreational players and thus draws the “fish” away from their games are in fact themselves the greatest danger to the online poker’s survival.

“Do you know what kills games and destroys the poker ecosystem above and beyond all the things mentioned? Winning players,” explains Negreanu, who goes on to say how if the Spin & Go format does in fact deter pros from playing, that would be a positive as far as the survival of the “ecosystem” is concerned. Negreanu also says that if he were in charge of VIP systems he’d reward the losing players, not the winning ones. It’s an interesting read -- check it out.

Incidentally, with regard to “ecosystems” Darrel Plant authored an interesting article this week for PokerNews called “Circle of Life, Circle of Death: Depletion and Replenishment in Multi-Table Tournaments” that provides a nifty, math-based explanation of why poker needs new players (or at least new money). There’s also a very cool simulator embedded in the article which allows readers to input their own numbers to crunch to see how depletion and replenishment works in MTTs.

Finally, Martin Short was on Conan O’Brien’s late night talk show this week talking about a poker game he once played with Johnny Carson. Also part of the game were Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin, along with some big-time agents and others. Short had actually never met Carson beforehand, and so was understandably intimidated when participating in the game.

As it turns out, there isn’t too much poker talk in the story, but it’s still contains a couple of grins -- you can watch the clip here. It does make me curious, though, to dig a little deeper into Carson’s poker-playing. Indeed, his having had Amarillo Slim Preston as a guest a dozen times in the early 1970s suggests Carson had more than just a passing interest in poker.

Like I say, I might get back one or two of these items next week, and if you have thoughts to share about any of them, fire away. Meanwhile, enjoy the weekend, everyone!

Spinning and Going

I continue to be an intermittent play money player on PokerStars.

That’s where I started with online poker over a decade ago -- playing the play money games on PokerStars -- and these days that’s pretty much all the online poker I’m playing as I don’t live in Nevada, New Jersey, or Delaware and I’m not currently interested in the giving up the time or money or accepting the inherent risk that’s involved with playing on any of the “rogue” sites.

I still very much like the PokerStars client, and I’m always glad when any of the innovations they introduce for real money players like new games or formats are trickled down to the play money side, too, just so I can try them out.

One new game just introduced on PokerStars is this “Spin & Go” variation on the traditional sit-n-go. You choose a buy-in and soon afterwards are sat down at a three-handed, winner-take-all, turbo-structured SNG. The prize, however, isn’t calculated by adding up the three players’ buy-ins.

No, instead before the game begins you watch numbers spin on a slot machine-like display that ultimately land on a number representing the payout. For example, in the 1,000 play-chip Spin & Go, prizes range from 2,000 (in fact less than the 3,000 the players have paid) all of the way up to 1,000,000.

I believe for all of the buy-ins the largest possible prize is 1,000 times the buy-in while the smallest is 2 times the buy-in. Of course, the likelihood of getting to play for 1,000 times the buy-in is quite small. Below is a chart reflecting the probabilities for a $1 Spin & Go tournament.

I did a little math to see how the distribution of prizes ensures PokerStars comes out ahead (natch) -- I think to the tune of about 8 cents for every dollar.

Playing a bunch of play money Spin & Gos I noticed right away how for most of them I’d only be playing for 2x my buy-in, as the probabilities would suggest should happen. I also noticed how there was something slightly addicting about registering for another one -- or several at once, as the client makes it easy to do -- and giving the sucker another spin in the hopes of getting lucky and hitting a bigger first prize (and then winning the thing).

(I know Full Tilt Poker has a similar offering -- the Jackpot Sit-n-Gos -- with different probabilities, but I haven’t logged on over there for a while.)

The format is kind of fun and does satisfy what for me has become the primary way I play on the site -- usually just jumping into quick heads-up matches or short-handed sit-n-gos, often of the turbo variety. It does introduce another layer of luck onto poker, and I’m sure there are reasons to point out why it’s not such a great format for players’ bankrolls (or for encouraging more serious, studied poker).

But it’s still fun taking it for a spin, even just for play.