2013 WSOP, Day 22: Step Right Up

I was writing yesterday about playing a tournament downtown at the Golden Nugget, mentioning that momentary, minor feeling of trepidation I experienced sitting down to play a live event after not having done so for many months before.

Most years when I’ve come out to help report on the WSOP I felt something similar when stepping into the Rio that first day, especially early on. But I can’t really say I felt too much of that yesterday as I jumped in for my first full day of live blogging for PokerNews, helping out the team reporting on Event No. 32, the $5,000 NLHE 6-max. event.

I’ve mentioned to a few folks I’ve been reuniting with these last couple of days how it seems like the intervening months since the 2012 WSOP passed by more quickly than ever. Got to chat with both Jess Welman and Lukas Willems of the WSOP team yesterday and said as much to both of them, noting additionally how during this last year I’d been on a number of trips -- including several WSOP Circuit events -- which made coming out this year seem a little less momentous than in the past. Of course, both Jess and Lukas well knew what I’m describing, as they are both on the WSOP beat all year round.

So picking up with reporting on the second day the $5K 6-max. felt a little like stepping right back into something that hadn’t ever really ended for me. The PokerNews site had a redesign just before the start of the WSOP, and so there were a few small puzzles to solve yesterday to figure out how things were done. But none of it was too troubling, and I had both Jon and Mat to help me along the way, anyhow.

I’ve reported on this same $5K 6-max. event in the past, and it always proves to be one of the tougher events on the schedule, attracting both the toppermost tourney regs and the many online MTT and SNG grinders, too.

I remember well the 2009 WSOP when Matt Hawrilenko won this event, Josh Brikis took second, and Faraz Jaka third. There were 928 playing that year, with Hawrilenko earning over $1 million for first. The turnout slipped to 568 in 2010, though, and so for the past two years they’ve made it a $10K and drew fields of exactly 474 both times (with the winners each earning over $1 million).

Just 516 played the $5K 6-max. this year, meaning there’s a little over $600K up top for first. Of those 128 returned for yesterday’s Day 2, and 14 of them survived to night’s end, led by Jonathan Little, Allen Bari, and Vasile Buboi. Others still in the hunt include Ryan D’Angelo, Erick Lindgren, Andrew Robl, Jon Aguiar, and Lee Markholt.

There were tons of other notables among the eliminated and small-cashers yesterday. T.J. Cloutier was solidly in the mix right up until the money bubble, but he had a momentary slip-up to go out a few spots shy of the money. In his final hand, Cloutier four-bet jammed more than 60 big blinds with 8-7-suited and Mike Sowers was quick to call with his pair of kings.

“How’s that for ABC poker?” said Cloutier afterwards, as Jon reported. After losing the hand and during the counting down of chips, Cloutier expressed how he hadn’t realized Sowers had as much as he did and thus had him covered.

The table talk was generally engaging and fun for eavesdroppers. Lindgren was very chatty throughout the day and night, talking golf a lot with Craig Fishman near the end. Allen Bari could be heard occasionally sharing observations about life. Also Matt Glantz and Daniel Negreanu had a long, interesting conversation about the WSOP Player of the Year race and the inclusion of the WSOP Asia Pacific results.

Negreanu, of course, is at the center of that discussion currently as he leads the POY race thanks to his performance in Melbourne (including a Main Event win), with Tom Schneider’s second bracelet win this week putting him squarely behind Negreanu at the moment. Both Negreanu and Schneider are gunning for an unprecedented second WSOP POY title, by the way, with Negreanu having won in 2004 and Schneider in 2007.

The play was solid throughout, and obviously several steps up from what I experienced in my little tourney on Tuesday. There were a few situations like Cloutier’s bustout that perhaps appeared to ride that fine line between “move” and “mistake,” but as always I don’t think a person watching intermittent hands at a table can ever be wholly confident about such judgments.

It was a long day, and I suppose even after working a lot of events over the last several months I found myself dragging a bit as we crossed the 2 a.m. mark to work that 15th and final hour. Playing for 11 hours the day before probably didn’t help.

But it was a good day full of good poker. And some good eats, too, as B.J. Nemeth stepped up to make a dinner run to In-n-Out Burger for a bunch of us.

Will be back at the Rio today and the next several in a row, this time stepping over to join the coverage of Day 2 of the $3,000 pot-limit Omaha event in which 137 remain. Step over to the PokerNews live reporting page starting this afternoon to follow along.

The Amateur vs. the Professional

One subject I have discussed here off and on is the difference between “amateur” and “professional” poker players. Probably the most recent attempt at discussing that often difficult-to-make distinction came last spring, when I declared myself once and for all to be an example of “The Recreational Poker Player” -- not exactly an “amateur,” but certainly not a “pro” either.

A thoughtful piece was posted over on the ESPN Poker Club website yesterday, an article titled “What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Pro’?” The author is Eric Siegel, Marketing and Player Development Leader for Poker Players International, an agency with a large roster of players. Poking around the PPI website, it appears the agency represents dozens of players, including folks like Tom McEvoy, Kathy Liebert, Victor Ramdin, John D’Agostino, Linda Johnson, T.J. Cloutier, and many other recognizable folks. The agency divides its players into different teams according to various criteria (Team PPI, Team PPI Elite, and Team PPI Pro, and Team PPI International), so Siegel is perhaps quite familiar with this sometimes tricky business of classifying poker players.

Siegel begins his article by noting that the “professional” label doesn’t always fit poker players as neatly or obviously as it might in other areas of society. “By definition, a professional is someone who engages in an activity as a source of livelihood or as a career,” writes Siegel. However, when it comes to poker there are many who “are either labeled or label themselves as ‘professionals’” without necessarily regarding that otherwise cut-and-dry criterion as a prerequisite for doing so.

Siegel goes on to make a couple of further points before making his own attempt at answering the question that appears in the headline. One point he makes concerns the fact that poker players on the tournament circuit are “under constant scrutiny from other players, family or the media,” with their results “made public record on thousands of websites” -- oftentimes even before they collect their checks! Might be a slight exaggeration there to say “thousands” of sites posting such info, but you get the idea -- it’s all out there (says Siegel).

In this discussion, Siegel does gloss over a couple of obvious factors. One is the fact that a relatively small percentage of actual poker pros are exclusively tournament players. Dan Harrington declared in a Card Player interview (the December 11, 2007 issue, Vol. 20, No. 24) that he didn’t think the tournament circuit was even a viable option for those truly looking for “a source of livelihood or as a career.” Because “the volatility in tournaments is out of sight,” says Harrington, “I don’t think you can consider playing tournaments for a living. I think that is impossible.” Some still try to do so, of course, but I haven’t seen too many folks disagreeing with Harrington’s statement over the past couple of years.

So a lot of poker pros are in fact sticking mainly to the cash tables, where their successes and failures are not part of the “public record.” Of course, even with the tourney players this “public record” is highly incomplete, including only cashes and not the amount spent on entries or overall ROI. Earlier this week another item appeared on the ESPN site, a piece by Gary Wise about the recent sale of T.J. Cloutier’s 2005 WSOP bracelet on eBay. The “public record” of Cloutier (incidentally, a PPI player) is stellar, denoting him as one of the top tourney players of all time. However, it appears the $9.8 million he’s won over the years in tournaments is probably not a true indication of his relative “livelihood.”

Siegel goes on to note how sponsorship -- say, for a televised final table -- doesn’t really provide a trustworthy indicator of whether or not a player is a pro. He also adds a comment about a player having earned others’ respect as perhaps a sign that he or she might have earned the “pro” designation.

In the end, Siegel’s says he considers real poker pros as falling into two groups, although both are similar and both in fact go back to that traditional definition of a “professional” as someone earning a living at what he or she does. The first group, says Siegel, includes the person who has left his or her career in pursuit of a career in poker, while the second group includes those who made poker “their first job with no prior income source.”

Like I say, a thoughtful piece, though ultimately Siegel doesn’t really offer us a different way of thinking about the professional-amateur distinction. He’s right to say traditional ideas of what it means to be a “pro” don’t always apply perfectly to poker. But while Siegel does give us some things to think about, he doesn’t quite offer us a clear way to think differently about the distinction with regard to poker players.

I still like David Spanier’s distinction, drawn in his 1977 book Total Poker, a collection of essays I have come to believe is one of the more underrated and overlooked poker books around. (See a review here.) “A fine line is drawn between the status of amateur and professional at poker,” writes Spanier. “Really, it’s a moral line. How far do you go, how much do you play, how much do you want to win?”

Ultimately, argues Spanier, the pro will come to think of poker as “work,” and thus as part of his or her self-identity, whereas the amateur will never quite get rid of the idea that poker is “play.” “Somehow you can’t imagine a professional saying he is getting down to play,” says Spanier.

That observation, I think, starts to get at the real issue here, and offers us a genuinely different way to think of the amateur-professional problem as it applies to poker. Set aside the idea of identifying one’s “livelihood” as determined by how much cabbage it earns you. What is your level of commitment? When it comes to this game -- it is, after all, a game -- are you playing or working?

Does the WSOP Need a Commish?

As I’m sure most of you have heard by now, a delay was indeed granted for compliance with the finalized regulations of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, meaning U.S. banks and other financial institutions will not be required to block transactions with online gambling sites until June 1, 2010. Doesn’t mean they cannot block such transactions already -- they have been able to do that since January 19, 2009, in fact -- but doing so is still not mandatory.

So another six months to see if any other legislation might get moved along here. Will be keeping an eye on that hearing scheduled for Thursday, December 3 at 10:00 a.m., the one where the House Financial Services Committee will be discussing Rep. Barney Frank’s two bills -- one to make the UIGEA delay a full year, and the other to introduce a mechanism with which to regulate online gambling in this country.

The delay is terrific news, in my view, and while regulation isn’t necessarily desirable -- particularly if certain states, namely my own, opt out -- it doesn’t look as bad as a world in which the UIGEA has been fully implemented.

Indeed, the misbegotten law has already done significant damage in the poker world, negatively affecting both online and live poker as well as the various industries associated with both. Sure, the UIGEA has certainly provided me with a lot to write about here at Hard-Boiled Poker over the last three-plus years, but the overall effect of the law has been exceedingly negative. Will be glad to see the sucker taken care of once and for all.

Speaking of the “UIGEA era,” I was thinking again over the weekend about the World Series of Poker and how a little over two weeks ago, Jeffrey Pollack stepped down from his post as the first-ever WSOP Commissioner. Since Pollack’s resignation, a few folks have written further about how he’ll be remembered, and indeed, one aspect of his tenure as Commish will be how it mostly coincided with this awful law that single-handedly slowed down what appeared at the time to be unstoppable growth for the Series.

In “The Pollack Legacy: The Good, the Bad, and the Silly,” Amy Calistri does a good job compiling various moments of significance during Pollack’s time with the WSOP. In her discussion, Calistri notes how “After the UIGEA, people were ready to stick a fork in poker,” and how she and others all “argued that the UIGEA would accelerate the end of the poker boom.” However, the WSOP rebounded from the hit, and Pollack’s contribution to that recovery was certainly, as Calistri says, a “significant accomplishment” for which he’ll be remembered.

T.J. Cloutier also wrote a little something about Pollack last week, a piece titled “Poker Has Lost a Good Man.” In his article, Cloutier talks a bit about how Harrah’s apparently created “a position one level above” Pollack’s, someone who would henceforth “be a buffer between [Pollack] and top management,” and speculates about whether that bit of reorganization might have provided a kind of encouragement for Pollack to step down.

Cloutier, who served as a member of the Players Advisory Council (a Pollack creation), notes that while Pollack always “had to answer to corporate management,” in his view “he was pretty much in control of the World Series.” The implication, then, is that given a situation in which the Commissioner no longer enjoyed such control, Pollack chose to move on. Not sure what the hierarchy really is at present, but the fact that soon after Pollack’s resignation Harrah’s stated it has “no intention at this time to replace the Commissioner role” does suggest the corporation feels that moving forward the operational management of the WSOP can continue without any Commish appearing to guide the ship.

Does the WSOP need a Commissioner? It did, after all, make it 35 years without one.

Gary Trask of Casino City Times thinks so. In a recent article, Trask argues that the Series “needs someone -- not a group of people -- to act as the face of the brand.” He has a point, and indeed, as one further considers the “Pollack legacy,” one might add how he succeeded in making the whole idea of having someone “act as the face of the brand” seem essential for the WSOP. (In the post-Binion’s era of the WSOP, that is.)

As Trask notes, one especially important function of the Commissioner is to provide “a voice to do the same and take the heat when something goes awry” -- something that will surely happen, no matter how well managed things go. Trask goes onto suggest his top ten current poker professionals who could serve as Commish, although I think most would agree that it probably wouldn’t do to have a pro come along to fill the position. (Trask puts the well-liked Mike Sexton atop his list, perhaps the only serious suggestion among the ten.)

While not everyone was always happy with Pollack, the consensus seems to be mostly favorable regarding his legacy, and the fact that it seems difficult to imagine a replacement is probably further evidence of his having served a successful term in the position. I agree with Trask that it is probably a mistake to move forward without having someone acting as WSOP Commissioner, although I cannot easily imagine who would be the person to fill that politically-challenging role.

I know I wouldn’t want to.

Sartre’s Gambler (3 of 3)

If you ever to listen to PokerRoad Radio, you’ve probably heard a clip of T.J. Cloutier from his appearance on PRR back in early March. They’ve been using it repeatedly as a bumper on all of their shows. The clip begins with co-host Ali Nejad asking Cloutier what advice he has for players who are running bad or “who feel snakebit.”

“I wake up every day with a new attitude,” Cloutier responds. “I’m not gonna worry about what happened yeseterday. I just go on to the next day.” Then he adds, “How can anybody who’s won about 11 million in poker and lost about 3 million in craps worry about what happened yesterday?”

That last question elicits laughter -- and a bit of sarcasm -- from the PokerRoad crew. It’s a very existentialist thing for Cloutier to say, actually. In fact, every time I hear that clip, it makes me think again about Sartre’s gambler.

By describing each day as a new one -- or, to say it differently, to distinguish between what one is or does today from what one was or has done previously -- is to regard the past as Sartre does, as an example of “nothingness” that Cloutier says he chooses not to draw upon as he endeavors to make meaning of the present.

Of course, it isn’t as though Cloutier is “reborn” each day. There’s obviously a lot that he has experienced during those previous thousands of days that does help him figure out what today means for him. But his “attitude” or philosophy is basically existentialist, at least in the way he puts it. And frankly, all poker players who have enjoyed long-term success almost without exception adopt a similar approach in the way they view and interpret the game.

As a way to close the discussion, let me refer to three examples of poker writers also evoking this very existentialist view of life in their discussions of poker.

One comes from one of my favorite passages in Small Stakes Hold ‘em by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth, that short little section early on titled “Random and Independent Events.” After talking a bit about how the human brain has a remarkable capacity for seeking out and identifying patterns, the trio explain how easy it is at the poker table to make the error of seeing patterns where none exist. “When it comes to gambling,” they point out, “mistaking false patterns as real has led many to ruin.”

In particular, many sometimes falsely conclude that the cards dealt in one hand have something to do with what gets dealt in the next. The authors underscore the importance of avoiding such a fallacy by using italics: “The cards dealt on any poker hand are, for practical purposes, completely random and independent of the cards dealt on any previous hands.” Indeed, the cards are simply “existents,” or “pieces of plastic” with “no knowledge, no memory, no cosmic plan.” An obvious point, perhaps, but we’ve all made that mistake at one time or another. (He can’t have aces again, can he?)

The second passage I’ll quote comes from the first volume of Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold ’em. It’s a point he makes over and over again when talking us through sample hands, particularly when he is narrating one in which his player has made an error early in the hand, and now faces a new quandary later on. “Once you’re in a hand,” he explains, “every subsequent decision has to be determined by your hand, the pot odds, and the total table situation.” Like the authors of SSHE, Harrington brings in the italics to emphasize the point: “Every betting decision is a new problem. Don’t forget that.”

Finally, I’ll share something from Barry Tanenbaum’s epilogue to his terrific Advanced Limit Hold ’em Strategy (published last year). Tanenbaum is especially gifted at explaining poker-related concepts, and in fact a lot of them apply regardless of the game one is playing.

The epilogue is titled “Forgive Yourself” and there Tanenbaum stresses the importance of not brooding over yr screw-ups (which, for most of us, are inevitable) and instead focusing on the next hand. “A positive attitude is essential,” Tanenbaum argues, thus the need to avoid beating oneself up over that missed bet or incorrect fold. “The better you get at not dwelling on past mistakes other than to learn from them and move on,” says Tanenbaum, “the better your play will be.”

Sounds a lot like Cloutier. And Sartre, in a way . . . .

The point, I suppose, is to understand that as humans we necessarily allow a lot of stuff that isn’t really “there” -- a lot of “nothingness” -- to creep into our understanding of what is there, such as all the different “existents” (cards, chips, people) gathered around a poker table at any given moment. We take that “nothingness” (be it from memories of the past, or ideas of the future, or wherever) and make meaning of our present. We can’t help it. We’re human.

But as we do, we should try to recognize and avoid those circumstances when we might be tempted to make meaning and then apply it incorrectly (and thus go down that path that “has led many to ruin”), e.g., expecting the next hand to balance the previous one, allowing a preflop mistake to affect unduly a post-flop decision, letting a bad session affect our play in the next one, and so forth.

All important to keep in mind, I would think. I just hope I remember it tomorrow.