UP Goes Down

Sour news to end last week with the announcement from Ultimate Poker they were folding for good. Brings to mind how often it seems those players who show up early for tournaments and get seated first end up being among the first to be eliminated.

I’m looking at the website this evening the front page of which doesn’t even reflect the fact that UP is done. There’s the notice to New Jersey players, first posted less than two months ago to announce Ultimate Poker was leaving the Garden State, but one has to dig around a little to learn that the Nevada games ended today, withdrawals can be made as usual for the next week, and any remaining player balances will be refunded by check thereafter.

The New Jersey pull-out had seemed primarily consequent to the troubles of Trump Taj Mahal Associates, the land-based casino with which UP had partnered up. Details of “multiple breaches” of their agreement on the part of the Trump group -- not the least of which being TTMA’s owing UP’s parent company some significant cabbage -- all colored that move as unsurprising and not necessarily indicative of Ultimate’s shutdown being imminent.

That said, the prospects for Ultimate in Nevada were hardly rosy. The front page of the website not being updated to reflect the latest news seems kind of emblematic, in fact, of the feeling of stasis that has characterized Ultimate Poker pretty much from the get-go.

The news caused me over the weekend to look back at what I posted here on April 30, 2013, the day Ultimate Poker dealt its first hand in Nevada. Seems hard to believe that was only a little over a year-and-a-half ago, but as often happens in “poker time” things move quickly. And for UP, it all moved much too quickly, and mostly in the wrong direction.

In that post I was hopeful for UP, if not overly optimistic. My main concern then was that the site successfully operate “minus the scandals and other problems that became such a conspicuous part of our previous experience with online poker here in the States.”

It did that, I suppose -- the fact that the funds in all of the 25,000 NV accounts with money in them will be reclaimed (as the UP account tweeted) is a kind of faint silver lining. But as the tweets and forum posts have been spelling out in bits and pieces, while there was an adherence to the regulations that permitted the site to serve U.S. customers, the company’s management perhaps wasn’t quite as disciplined.

Terrence Chan’s thoughtful “post-mortem” video blog provides insight along those lines. Posts by “Union of the Snake” on 2+2 (here and here) provide some interesting reading as well, with the points made corresponding closely to those made by a “wise man” on a certain podcast just a few days before, one regular listeners know more often than not opens with an ’80s ear worm.

The slow-moving story of Online Poker 2.0 in the U.S. will continue pretty much as it had even when Ultimate Poker was still sitting short-stacked at a table full of short stacks. But the inauspicious launch and fall of the first to the table can’t be much of a source of encouragement for those still in the game.

2009 WSOP, Day 43: Anatomy of a Hand Report

An especially enjoyable and interesting day yesterday helping cover the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event for PokerNews. As I texted to Vera Valmore at the end of the night, it might have been one of the more fun days I’ve ever hand doing this silly stuff.

It was announced as the largest-ever restart of a WSOP tournament, with a whopping 2,924 players coming back from Days 1c and 1d. A few minutes before play began, I asked one of the tournament officials where exactly all of the players would be seated. “Every table in the building,” was the answer. That meant all of the Amazon room, the Brasilia, the Miranda, the regular “poker room,” as well as tables set up in the hallway in front of Buzio’s restaurant. Something like 325 tables altogether.

The day was a good one for reporting for several reasons. For one, even though it was such a huge field, since it was a Day 2 we did have a seating chart and at least knew where folks were starting the day. The chart became less reliable as the day wore on, since tables would break and players would be moved. But having that kind of head start helps immensely, as there’s a chance to locate the “notables,” the big stacks, and others early on in order to track them. And there’s also a better opportunity to discover new folks, too.

Also, the day was only four levels long, which seemed way too short for a Day 1 (see my sort-of-whiny post about covering Day 1b), but which was not so bad for a Day 2 (Levels 6-9), when the antes were already in play and folks were willing and/or required to do a bit more gambling than they had to back when they had 300 big blinds with which to work. So a lot of action happening all around to help keep us engaged.

Additionally, I had a pretty cool draw as far as tables went, although I think any assignment would’ve been good yesterday in terms of getting a lot of interesting players and personalities to cover. One field reporter (Drew) and I were watching about 35 tables or so, including the two feature tables being shot by ESPN. Some of our guys were trying to keep an eye on a larger number of tables -- especially early on, before we lost approximately half the players who started the day -- but really when there are just two of you and it gets above a half-dozen tables you’ve already got more than enough to handle.

Covering the feature tables is a bit of a logistical hassle. Because of the necessities required to capture the video and audio for the later ESPN broadcast, they can’t really allow other media to get too close to the tables (as we might be able to do otherwise). So basically I’m jostling with all of the other fans on the rail trying to catch glimpses of hands and chip stacks. I managed to keep track of both tables in a general way throughout the day.

Dennis Phillips was at the secondary feature table, and while I didn’t get any of his hands I saw his stack stay around 120,000 most of the day. I chatted with him at the end of the day and discovered he’d picked up a couple of pots at day’s end to chip up to 190,000. I interviewed Phillips over the phone for HBP last fall, and have gotten the chance to meet him in person this summer -- indeed, as you've already heard elsewhere, a helluva friendly guy.

I was able to report on a few hands from the main feature table where Phil Hellmuth was seated. Hellmuth had a good day yesterday, starting with 27,000 or so and ending with somewhere in the neighborhood of 135,000. (Again, I had to estimate his stack from approximately 40 feet away, so I could never be that precise.) From the hands I saw, players appeared mostly unwilling to tangle with the Poker Brat, often folding to his raises. Say what you will about him, but he is an intimidating player, most especially to the relative novices. And being on TV doesn’t lessen his opponents’ anxiety much either, I imagine.

Had some very interesting hands to report otherwise, too, some of which were supplied to me by Drew and others I was able to see for myself. Toward the end of the night I reported a hand with Terrence “Not Johnny” Chan -- it was the post I wrote on Day 2b -- and realized afterwards that the post came from what was kind of an ideal situation for reporting a relatively early level tournament hand. Click here to read the post.

I’m a fan of Chan’s blog, and at the end of the day he cut and pasted the post over there. I’m also a fan of Chan, and so when I say I liked the post I should point out that I didn’t necessarily like how the hand turned out, as he lost some chips after suffering a fairly unfortunate beat on the hand. But I did want to say a few words about why the conditions surrounding the hand and its report were so agreeable.

Why do I say it was an “ideal situation” for reporting a hand? Well, there are a number of reasons. First, I had adequate context for the hand. I’d been keeping an eye on Chan’s stack the entire day, and so was roughly aware how the day had been going for him. I wasn’t necessarily aware of the relative toughness of his table (as Chan talks about in his post), but I had some idea at least of what the day had been like for Chan before getting to this end-of-night hand.

Secondly, I’d actually watched the previous two hands played, and so also was aware of the immediate context for the hand. Not that I would include all of that info in the hand report, but it helped me understand better some of the significance of what I was seeing when the actual hand played out.

Thirdly, I was there for the whole hand -- the preflop betting, all of the subsequent action, the showdown, etc. A lot of times we reach a table after the flop and while it can still be interesting to read how a big hand plays out postflop, not knowing what happened with the preflop betting necessarily lends a (sometimes very significant) incompleteness to the report.

We might also throw in that a “notable” player was involved. We even had a picture of Chan to include with the post, another bonus.

There are a few more reasons why the conditions were good for that particular hand report. I got Chan’s opponent’s name afterwards -- Dean Bobel -- and so didn’t have to refer to him as “the button” or the like (as sometimes cannot be avoided). It was one of the last hands of the night, and so the scene surrounding the table was of interest, too. I included a detail about the announcement to spectators to clear the room having come across while Chan was tanking.

Finally, the hand itself had a kind of intrinsic interest to it. Bobel had made a gutsy raise all-in on the turn with what he likely knew was the worst hand, and Chan made a gutsy call which required a good read by him of the situation. The river took the hand away from Chan, and thus the outcome, too, had a little twist to it, adding a bit of drama to the whole story.

One last, important factor that made the conditions for reporting the hand especially favorable -- I saw the hand myself. While our field reporters are typically very good at what they do, there’s always going to be something lost when one person conveys to another what he or she witnessed, and the second person then tries to convey that to an audience. Not only does the possibility of inaccuracy become greater, but there is something about being there watching something go down that just can’t be passed along.

I thought I’d mention all of this because, to be honest, such an “ideal situation” comes up very, very rarely on the tournament floor. Really it isn’t until the final table that we can ever hope to have such unfettered access to all of the details of a given hand and thus be able to produce such a report.

According to WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack’s Twitter feed, 2,044 players will be coming back for Day 3 on Friday, and so it will likely be a similar day from the reporting side of things. Not sure if they’ll be able to play all of the way down to the money (the top 648) or not tomorrow, but I think that could happen.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned yesterday, today is going to be a fun day off as I get to participate in a couple of tournaments. First will be what is called the “Media Charity Poker Tournament” in which Benjo, Katkin, and myself will be competing as a team, Le Grand Fromage. Then later in the day will come the PokerNews freeroll in which we’ll all be playing for ourselves. There’ll be some bounties in the latter, I think, to make things more interesting. Then in the evening comes the PokerStars party over at the Palms, which I may or may not attend. I went last year, but since I am still sort of fighting off the “casino crud” I referred to a couple of posts back I may opt to conserve my energy tonight -- we’ll see.

In any event, I’ll do my best to report on it all here tomorrow. Whether or not conditions are ideal for doing so.

UB Owns Up (Sort of)

Got back a little while ago from a long day of training and meetings. A memorable day, to be sure. Will share a few reflections about all that tomorrow morning, as well as a look ahead to Day 1 of the 2008 World Series of Poker.

For now, though, I’ll briefly weigh in on the statement from UltimateBet summarizing the findings of an investigation into allegations of a cheating “scheme” (as UB had characterized the malfeasance in an earlier statement regarding the matter).

As you might imagine, having spent all day hanging out and interacting with other poker media types, there was a bit of buzz among my colleagues about UB’s statement. Having been occupied all day, I hadn’t seen the statement myself, and so gathered what I could from others’ impressions. Some felt the statement said what needed to be said, while others saw it as inadequate, essentially raising more questions than providing answers.

The statement specifically comes from Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, the company that owns both UB and Absolute Poker. According to Tokwiro, the cheaters used six different player accounts (changing account names multiple times in the process) to exploit “unauthorized software code that allowed the perpetrators to obtain hole card information during live play.” Not unlike the “super-user” scandal over at Absolute Poker, although the logistics here appear to have differed somewhat from what happened at AP.

Also similar to the Absolute case, UB’s statement fails to identify any of the cheaters by name (aside from listing usernames), though does state that “the individuals responsible were found to have worked for the previous ownership of UltimateBet prior to the sale of the business to Tokwiro in October 2006.” Nat Arem adds further clarification here with his post relating a series of questions he asked of UB and their replies. In response to Arem’s question about the cheaters’ identities, UB explained that they did “not believe anyone involved was an owner of the business.”

Of particular note is the confirmation “that the fraudulent activity took place from March 7, 2006 to December 3, 2007,” with UltimateBet only having discovered the existence of “the unauthorized code” in February 2008. That’s nearly 21 months of cheating, not discovered until almost three more months after it had stopped occurring.

The statement goes on to describe how the security breach has been permanently closed. Also, UB has added “to its existing security department” what is described as “a new specialized Poker Security team of professionals dedicated to fraud prevention.” Arem was apparently consulted in the creation of this new, extra level of security, something he thinks is “going to be a great tool when it’s finished.” In his Q&A, Arem reports this newly-implemented system will be in place in six to eight weeks.

The statement also outlines UB’s plan to refund all players who lost money to those operating the fraudulent accounts. I noticed that Terrence Chan received an unexpected refund. Also saw on the forums others reporting how they had already received their refunds as well.

The statement concludes with an assertion that “UltimateBet has worked closely and transparently with its governing body, the KGC [Kahnawake Gaming Commission] and its designated expert auditors, to determine exactly what happened, how it happened, and who was involved, and has taken action to prevent any possibility of this situation recurring.”

Glad to hear UB was transparent with the KGC and Gaming Associates (the auditors) during the past few months. Unfortunately, they haven’t been at all transparent with their customers during that same time period. And while this statement does provide some clarity, it also continues to conceal a great deal of information that customers should be demanding (e.g., how much money was involved; what games/stakes were affected; etc.).

Still a little baffled at the timing of the statement, too, although I think I might understand why today was the day designated for its release. I am realizing as I type this that I myself would much rather be thinking and writing about what’s going to happen at the Rio starting tomorrow. I imagine you’d rather be reading about those goings-on, too.

Perhaps that was part of the plan -- to reckon on poker people not wanting to be bothered at this moment with such unpleasantness, and thus continue (essentially) to ignore the fact that such extensive cheating occurred on UltimateBet without its owners’ knowledge for such an extended period of time.

We’ll put this one to bed (for now). See you in the morning for the fun stuff.

Nine Players In Search of a Final Table

You must’ve heard by now. ESPN and Harrah’s has confirmed that the final table of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event will be delayed 117 days in order to have sufficient time to package the sucker into a big ol’ crazy Spectacle of Unprecented Magnitude in the History of Mankind or At Least That Part of History That Involves Mankind Playing Cards.

Some, like Daniel Negreanu, believe this move represents a “huge step forward for poker.” Others are decidedly less enthused.

Was reading poker pro Terrence Chan discussing the change over on his blog earlier today. More than anything, he expresses amazement that such a huge decision could have been made for such a big event without any sort of prior attempt to test out the logistics of it all.

“Consider this,” writes Chan, “they’re running an experiment on the biggest prize in the game with something like a combined $20-25 million in player money at stake! It’s ludicrous. You don’t just dramatically change the format of the biggest tournament in the world with absolutely no precedent or trial run. To my knowledge, not once in the entire history of poker has a final table run four months after they break for it. And they decide the best time to try it for the first time is the main event of the World Series?”

That frankly astounds me, also. That officials not only would wait until the beginning of May to make the decision, but that they are willing to experiment with the idea at such high stakes.

I realize that on some level there’s no way to “test” out anything with a trial run when it comes to the World Series of Poker Main Event. Nothing else compares to it, so there’s no way (not really) to take a tournament of similar scale and see what sort of consequences might arise after delaying a final table several months and then airing it (sort of) live.

Then again, the idea could have been attempted with, say, a WSOP Circuit event. The creation of a “live”-ish, televised final table for one of those would’ve certainly reignited flagging interest in that tour again, as doing so would likely have attracted big name pros to play who otherwise wouldn’t have.

Too late for all that now, though.

The whole idea of having these nine players sit around waiting four months to find out how their stories are going to end reminds me a bit of another experiment -- a literary one -- Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 play Six Characters in Search of an Author.

As you might imagine from the title, Pirandello’s play is one of those headachy, self-reflexive, “idea”-type works of literature that probably appeal much more to academics than actual audiences. Indeed, when it was first performed at the Valle di Roma in 1921, the play apparently enraged enough patrons that the search for an author became somewhat literal (and aggressive), with Pirandello ultimately being chased from the theater.

The play nevertheless stands as an important example of existentialist storytelling, thoughtfully addressing the idea that (as one of the characters says) “each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us has his own special world.”

Six Characters begins with a group of actors and the Manager rehearsing another of Pirandello’s plays. They are interrupted when the “characters” enter and explain that Pirandello had sketched them for some other fictional work, but never completed it. Thus they are searching for an “author” or someone to help them act out their “drama,” thus (one supposes) making them more fully realized as characters.

The rest of the play shows the “characters” and the actors and Manager unsuccessfully try to negotiate the staging of their story, with lots of discursive digressions along the way regarding the nature of art and literature, ideas about identity, and other existentialist themes.

World Poker Tour final tables sort of work this way, one could argue. Before the final table is filmed, the last six players are all taken aside for interviews, then the proceedings are shot, edited, and repackaged -- in other words, “authored” -- so as to create a “drama” of sorts that otherwise might not have been as readily apparent to those outside the ropes.

Of course, in the case of WPT final tables, the delay prior to the staging of that final table is negligible. While the producers of the television show do get to shape the “characters” somewhat, the players all still remain pretty much themselves, relatively speaking.

With the four-month-long delay prior to the WSOP ME final table, that can’t happen. As I quoted Greg Raymer saying in the previous post, “this long gap allows the players to become completely different people between the time they make the final table.” I think that is probably what bothers me the most about the idea -- the fact that the nine players will necessarily be “different people” by the time we get to November.

They’ll resemble what they were back in July, but they’ll be different, for sure, each representing a host of different interests, backers, coaches, theories, and others’ conceptions of who they were before. As Negreanu points out, we are going to see a “different dynamic” at the final table than we would have otherwise.

He likes it, of course. “You’re going to see some really kind of more sophisticated play,” says Negreanu. Breathlessly. He might be right. He might be wrong. Whatever happens, though, it will be different than what it would have been.

A bit like in Six Characters, actually, when the actors try to act out the characters’ lives for them. As one of the characters points out, “It will be difficult to act me as I really am.” And so the actors fail. Miserably.

I don’t like the fact that the players will have changed -- will have become “authored” so heavily into someone else’s story.

I mean damn, it’s poker. One player to hand, already.

Playing Favorites

I suppose I’m not the only one who was glad to see Phil Ivey finally break through and win that WPT title last night at the L.A. Poker Classic. Thought that first hand -- in which Ivey crazily lost nearly a third of his chips after calling an all-in with A9-offsuit -- was a bad omen. But obviously Ivey recovered and once again demonstrated why he’s so justly revered as a poker player.

It’s an interesting phenemon, really, how we poker fans tend to root for the “name” guys whenever possible. All of the buzz yesterday on the forums and blogs collectively demonstrated a sincere desire to see a Hellmuth-Ivey heads-up showdown last night. (Hellmuth departed in sixth.) I referred to this phenomenon in passing in a post just after the Giants’ stunning upset of the Patriots earlier this month. There I pointed out how most of the world was in fact pulling for the underdog. Yet when it comes to the professional poker tournament circuit, that otherwise instinctive allegiance to the little guy just doesn’t seem to apply.

I followed the live updates last night over on the WPT site. I like how they present the hand-by-hand reports -- essentially similar to what PokerNews did last summer for the WSOP, plus that nifty auto-refresh feature on the live blog page. Was playing hands of H.O.R.S.E. up top and watched as each new hand appeared below.

Speaking of those reports -- and our fascination with “name” players like Ivey and Hellmuth -- I saw Terrence Chan’s recent post (by way of Andrew “Foucault” Brokos) in which he points out how when it comes to poker tourney reporting, the more famous players tend to come off better when reporters recount hands in their articles.

Chan offered a couple of examples in support of his thesis. In one, he tells how the Australian edition of Bluff left out certain details when reporting a hand in which he knocked Chris Moneymaker out of a tournament in Sydney. In the hand, Chan held J9 preflop vs. Moneymaker’s JT. Chan made a straight on the turn, which is when Moneymaker ended up putting all of his chips in the middle. However, the article simply stated that “Moneymaker fell to Chan’s straight despite being marginally ahead preflop.” In other words, the report -- though not inaccurate -- implies the all-in occurred before Chan had made his straight, thus making Moneymaker look better (or the victim of misfortune) and Chan lucky (or less skillful).

By the way, Foucault gives a counterexample in which he quotes PokerNews’ report of the hand in which he busted Barry Greenstein from the 2007 WSOP Main Event. That hand report similarly omits details, this time making the more famous player -- Greenstein -- appear to have played the hand less well.

As far as live reporting goes, I have a lot of respect for the difficulties those guys face. They are forced to work quickly and oftentimes cannot obtain every detail from a hand, yet must report on it anyway. Am somewhat less forgiving of a misleadingly incomplete hand report for an article appearing some time after the fact, but even there I can see where certain factors outside of the reporter’s control (e.g., space considerations) might force an ambiguity-causing abridgement here and there.

While I don’t think these omissions clearly add up to an agenda among journalists to reinforce the notion that “the more famous you are the better you play” -- as Chan says (with tongue partially in cheek, I’m imagining) -- these anecdotes do highlight a couple of truths about poker reporting. One is that details, even those that perhaps seem superficially insignificant, matter greatly. All poker players know there is a host of meaningful information that comes with every single hand that would escape even the most meticulous rail-watcher. So even the most exhaustive hand report is going to omit something.

The other is that famous players certainly do get more attention from reporters and probably a bit of bias in their favor as well. Sort of thing comes with being famous, really. Reporters are (or should be) mindful of the fact they are writing for an audience. And when it comes to poker tourneys, the audience is usually made up mostly of folks who are more interested in hearing about the likes of Hellmuth and Ivey than about the other players sitting around the table, no matter how good those players are.

All of which provides a good rule of thumb for reporters to remember: If you must omit details from hands, try not to do so in a way that paints an inaccurate portrait of what actually occurred (no matter who the players are).

So . . . if any good hands come up at tomorrow’s Saturdays with Pauly (which I plan to play), I’ll try my very best to report ’em fairly!