Saw yesterday how Carlos Mortensen and Todd Brunson had been elected as the 51st and 52nd members of the Poker Hall of Fame. Now’s the time for the World Series of Poker to create a commemorative deck of cards featuring pictures of all 52 members.
If I’d had a vote I certainly would’ve given support to Mortensen’s candidacy, though there were other nominees I’d have probably chosen this year ahead of the younger Brunson (though he’s certainly deserving).
Mortensen is a WSOP Main Event champion (2001), and I tend to have a bit of a prejudice in favor of that select group when it comes to the PHOF. With three WPT titles, nearly $12 million in career tourney earnings, and a near-miss to make a second WSOP Main Event final table in 2013 (when he finished 10th), he was a shoo-in. That’s not even counting the highly advanced chip stacking skills that further distinguish the Spaniard (originally from Ecuador).
Todd Brunson has won a lot in tournaments as well (nearly $4.3 million, including a WSOP bracelet in 2005), although he’s much better known as a high-stakes cash game player. His notable heads-up battles with Andy Beal -- including a $13.5 million win over two days (as chronicled in Michael Craig’s The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King), then another belated reprise versus Beal in early 2015 which Brunson is said to have won another $5 million -- are legend-making and probably enough to earn him serious PHOF consideration.
I’m going to guess he got a lot of support from the living Poker Hall of Famers, and perhaps not quite as much from the media who voted. Speaking of living PHOFers, he joins his dad, Doyle Brunson, as a PHOF member, which has to be fairly unusual as far as hall of fames go, generally speaking.
The only other father-son combo I can think of in any sports hall of fame would be Bobby and Brett Hull, even if Ken Griffey, Sr. and Jr. spring to mind (Jr. got in this year, Sr. isn’t a HOFer).
In any case, congrats to both. And if the WSOP is reading, feel free to steal that special WSOP PHOF deck idea!
Had a non-poker playing (or following) friend ask me yesterday “What’s going on in poker these days?”
He asks me the same question every six weeks or so, and more often than not I’m answering by telling him wherever it is I might have recently gone for a tournament. He then almost always follows up with a question about who won the most or what was the biggest game-slash-tourney I’ve seen or heard about.
More than once I’ve concluded my response to the latter question with some version of the statement that “it’s the same guys trading it back and forth” -- usually referring to those “super high roller” events which do often feature the same small population of players.
However yesterday I had a different response, referring instead to that Andy Beal-Todd Brunson heads-up session of fixed limit hold’em in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio that happened last weekend, the one in which each player brought $5 million to the game and Brunson ultimately won it all.
Tweets by poker pro Kyle Loman about the match (who snapped the photo above of Beal and Brunson, with Tex Dolly also there to the right) started Friday night and lasted into Saturday morning, covering about five-and-a-half hours altogether. Loman noted how they were using pink $25,000 chips and the limits were $50K/$100K, making a loss of $5 million equal just 50 big bets. Or should I say BIG bets
Loman did a great job with his updates, providing about 25 tweets altogether noting the changing stack sizes as Brunson gradually whittled away at Beal’s stack before taking the last of his chips.
The game, of course, represents a belated reprise of the famous games between the banker and investor and the team of pros dubbed the “Corporation” that first took place over a decade back. The 2001-2004 games were chronicled in Michael Craig’s The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King (2005), then there was another round in 2006, the last before Beal’s surprise return to the tables a few days ago.
My friend was impressed to hear that amount, although truth be told it wasn’t all that different to him (or me) than to hear of a player winning $200K in a tourney. Meanwhile, to look at a $5 million loss from Beal’s point of view -- he’s worth something like $11 billion, apparently, which would make a $5 million loss the equivalent something like $25 for the average wage-earner in the U.S. today.
I don’t know the details, but surely Brunson wasn’t just playing with his own money. In any event, the story made it impossible with my friend to end with the usual sign-off about the same guys trading money back and forth.
I was skimming the updates this morning for Event No. 61, the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud Championship where just nine players remain for today’s final day.
Todd Brunson has a big chip lead, while 90-year-old Henry Orenstein -- the Poker Hall of Famer who patented the hole card camera that subsequently became so important to televised poker -- is also still in there with one of the shorter stacks. Brunson has one bracelet (in Omaha/8), while Orenstein also won a stud bracelet before back in 1996.
There are others left who should make today’s final table interesting to follow, including Ben Yu, James Obst, and Jesse Martin. But of course it’s Phil Hellmuth (pictured above via PokerNews) -- currently third in chips -- who’ll be the focus as long as he sticks around as to gun for his 14th career bracelet.
The updates from last night are kind of hilarious to read through, given Hellmuth’s constant commentary, as usual demonstrating that familiar mix of witless hubris and comical petulance the Poker Brat has by now honed into a kind of performance art.
For those who missed it, a sampling of Hellmuth’s late night stud table talk:
Forgive me another football-related post today. I realize there are other things going on in the world that certainly rate as slightly more significant, all things considered -- including within our little poker world where the WSOP Europe Main Event is today playing down to an eight-handed final table (with none other than Phil Hellmuth enjoying the chip lead with nine players left as I hit publish). But yesterday I was listening to some commentary about last weekend’s NFL games and heard something sorta interesting (and poker-related) I thought I’d share today.
I’m locked in on these NFL games once more thanks to being in this “pick’em” pool in which we’re trying to predict winners of all games. Trying to defend my title, in fact, after lucking out last year to finish first in the sucker.
Had a decent Week 4 in which I managed to be correct with my picks for 12 of the 15 games. Much better than the previous week when I only got 6 of 16. (I blame the replacement refs, of course.)
One of the games I missed this past weekend was the New York Giants-Philadelphia Eagles game from Sunday night. I had the Giants, but the Eagles prevailed 19-17. Like many NFL games, this one came down to the wire with New York missing a potential game-winning field goal at the end.
With 10 seconds left, the Giants’ kicker Lawrence Tynes -- who had hit all 10 of his FG attempts this year, in fact -- lined up for a 54-yard field goal try. Employing a much-used strategy that many NFL watchers have complained about over the last few years, Philadelphia called a timeout a split-second before the ball was snapped. The play continued, with Tynes missing the attempt wide left. But since the timeout negated the play, the Giants were able to try the kick again.
The second time Tynes kicked the ball straight down the middle but just a yard or two shy of the crossbar and it fell short, ensuring the victory for Philadelphia.
What I wanted to write about concerned that strategy to call a timeout in order to disrupt a team attempting an important field goal at the end of a game -- the so-called “icing the kicker” strategy that often results in a kicker ultimately attempting the field goal two times with only the second attempt actually counting.
The number-crunchers have looked deeply into the strategy, ultimately coming up with statistics showing that calling a timeout might have some small effect on kickers, although not a big one statistically. Over on ESPN’s “stats blog” they reported this week that since 2001 kickers are hitting 81% of those late-game field goals when no timeout is called and 76% when the timeout is called. Sounds like the difference is a little wider when it comes to overtime field goals.
Anyhow, I was listening to sports radio yesterday, ESPN’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning” program that serves as suitable background noise when doing other tasks. To be honest, a lot of the commentary and so-called “analysis” by the show’s hosts, Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, can be superficial and rarely enlightening. Like a lot of sports radio, they talk about sports like fans, not really bringing much insight beyond what any of us could pick up by watching the games ourselves. But they’re entertaining and likable, and occasionally hit upon some decent topics of discussion. Besides, it’s fun sometimes to hear fans jawing about a game we’ve also watched. (Here’s a post from last spring in which I complain a little about the lack of depth one encounters in most sports commentary.)
Yesterday I was listening to Monday’s podcast of the “Mike and Mike” show, a kind of digest version of the lengthy show they do each morning, and as they talked about Sunday night’s Giants-Eagles game the topic of icing the kicker predictably arose.
Golic mentioned how Michael Vick, the Philadelphia quarterback, said after the game that he hated the strategy of calling a timeout to try to psyche out the kicker -- this despite the fact that his own coach, Andy Reid, had employed it. “I don’t believe in icing the kicker,” Vick was quoted saying in USA Today. “You let him kick it, and if it’s in, it’s in.”
Neither of the Mikes are fans of icing the kicker, either, and they went on to talk about how calling that timeout at the last moment does give a kicker a kind of “warm-up” attempt which might in fact be useful when it comes to long field goals such as the one Tynes faced on Sunday.
Greenberg went so far as to say “the one thing I would never do is what Andy Reid did last night... [and] give a guy a second chance to try a long kick.” In other words, since longer kicks are (for most kickers) more difficult, he would rather avoid giving a kicker a first attempt that didn’t count as it might improve his chances of making the second one. “It’s like letting a guy with a 12-foot putt with a big break in it try it twice,” said Greenberg.
That was the comment that made me think about poker and the somewhat popular strategy of “running it twice” in cash games -- you know, those spots where players are all in and agree to have the remaining community cards dealt two times with each result determining where half of the pot goes. Our friend the Poker Grump wrote about the topic and facing the decision himself not too long ago. Here’s an example of players running it twice from an old episode of High Stakes Poker:
In the hand, Todd Brunson and Sam Farha get all of Farha’s stack in the middle on a flop with Farha leading with bottom two pair versus Brunson’s top pair of queens. Farha is a 70% favorite to win the hand, but they agree to run it twice. As it happens, Brunson wins the first time by making trips, but Farha’s hand holds up the second time and the pair split the pot 50-50.
Going back to icing the kicker, Greenberg was suggesting that by calling a timeout Andy Reid improved Lawrence Tynes’s chances of hitting the second field goal because the kicker benefitted from getting a practice attempt. Tynes and the Giants were taking a “long shot” -- literally -- and Greenberg didn’t like the idea of doing anything to make it easier on New York in such a situation.
Similarly does Farha let the underdog Brunson have a better chance of making his hand by running it twice. As Greenberg made his point I found myself thinking about whether or not it might be more or less prudent to run it twice in poker according to how big of a favorite or underdog one was. After all, as Greenberg was suggesting, it did seem that to let a kicker try a long field goal more than once was perhaps a less recommended strategy than might be the case for shorter kicks.
However, there’s a key difference that causes the analogy to break down. Only the second try actually meant anything for Tynes and the Giants, whereas both results counted for Farha and Brunson.
Still, there remains a kind of parallel between the two situations. In fact, when Vick argues to “let him kick it, and if it’s in, it’s in,” it sounds a lot like what Phil Laak is saying -- as PokerGrump quotes in his post -- regarding his decision to stop running it twice and to “embrace the variance.”
Like Vick and the two Mikes, I’m not a big fan of icing the kicker, either, and if I were to guess I’d bet they’ll probably institute a rule in the near future designed to prevent the practice. But my objection doesn’t really concern the effectiveness of the strategy (or lack thereof).
Rather, as I was alluding to last week, there are already too many examples of “do-overs and didn't-counts” in the NFL thanks to all of the replay challenges after every score, turnover, and other instances when coaches are able to throw the red flag and dispute calls.
I’d like to be able to watch plays happen and know they were meaningful and counted, and not always be wondering if what I just saw was going to be rethought and revised. Then again, I’m a spectator, not a participant. I understand those actually playing the game aren’t going to be as ready to “embrace the variance” of human error in officiating.
But as far as icing the kicker goes, I think we might safely get rid of that particular variety of “running it twice” in football.
So a few nights ago (Saturday night-Sunday morning) I had one of of those weird, vivid dreams most of which survived to remain in my consciousness upon waking. I’ll spare you the crazy chain of circumstance that led up to the dream’s final scene, but it ended with me watching the Olympics -- both in person and on television (not sure how).
I was watching a newly introduced sport that combined platform diving and card tricks. Divers would dive into the pool from ten meters or whatever it was, swim the length of the pool and get out the other side, then on a small table perform some sort of card trick. I’m not making this up.
When I explained the dream to Vera Valmore, she asked me if the cards were waterproof. I assumed they were. She also asked me what I thought might’ve inspired the dream, and all I could come up with was last week’s announcement of this summer’s WSOP schedule, with its novel tweaks and various whatnot.
Would’ve been easier to explain, I think, had the dream come the next night, after I heard the news (along with everyone else) about Michael Phelps’ apology following a U.K. tabloid’s publication of a photo of the 14-time Olympic gold medal winner hitting a bong.
When I read that story, I immediately thought of that Todd Brunson article in the November 11, 2008 issue of Card Player describing Phelps bringing an entourage of 40-50 people to Vegas to stay at the Palms and meet and hang out with some famous poker players.
Brunson describes a long, fairly raucous night beginning with a big steak dinner (with lots of drinking), followed by a basketball game, a poker tourney, then some roulette in which Phelps won over a grand. By then it was early morning, and Brunson leaves the group to sleep for 12 hours. When he rejoins them at dinner the next night, “Michael was already in full swing at the bar,” ordering a drink for Brunson and “making fun of one of his friends for not drinking.”
The article goes on, with Brunson marvelling at Phelps’ capacity for liquor. “‘Incredible,’ I thought to myself. This guy was drinking some sort of mixed drink when I got here, then the tequila, then the whiskey, all in less than five minutes!” (I suppose a dude who consumes 10,000 calories a day or whatever it is should be able to handle a bit more booze than yr average drinker.) In the end, Brunson concludes Phelps to have been a super friendly guy who was “on cloud nine,” letting go a bit after the many years of discipline that led up to his Olympic triumphs.
I’m not judging Phelps at all, and in fact would tend to echo Brunson’s conclusion that the man is certainly entitled to live it up a bit. I was actually surprised when I read the Card Player article that the story told there didn’t appear to make the mainstream media, although perhaps some tabloids did pick it up and I missed it. Of course, drinking never suffers the backlash smoking dope does, even if the moral distinction the public tends to make between the two is a sketchy one.
Knowing the significance of appearances, it seemed a little remarkable to me that Brunson would report Phelps’ drinking and partying with such nonchalance. While letting go like that would be perfectly normal behavior for yr average 23-year-old, for a guy like Phelps there are obvious risks in doing so. Especially in public. As it turns out, that probably was a mighty expensive buzz the swimmer caught off that bong, as many of those lucrative endorsement deals he snagged along with those eight golds last summer have opt-out clauses regarding just this sort of conspicuous, public embarrassment.
I guess the other part of the story that interests us poker players is the fact that Phelps has made known his interest in our game and even played in a tourney or two during his Vegas trip. I wrote a post back in August in response to the news that the star athlete was talking about playing in the 2009 World Series of Poker, optimistically titling that post “The Poker Cause: Phelps Helps.” There I speculated a bit how Phelps coming around to the WSOP “instantly affords poker a kind of credibility in mainstream society.”
Of course, now I suppose we have to wonder if that is really the case.
Phelps has time to rehabilitate his image, certainly. But I guess I wonder now whether poker perhaps takes an image hit if Phelps comes around to Vegas to play in some more tourneys? That is to say, would Phelps playing in the WSOP inspire the general public more readily to associate poker with other vices...?
I ask that question knowing full well how absurd such a line of thinking is. But the human mind works in strange ways, making associations where one would least expect it.
Have been playing more and more Stud-Eight-or-Better lately. Doing okay, actually. Also have noticed my variance is quite low when compared to other games, especially when I play on Stars where the antes are lower than on Full Tilt or Bodog.
I’ve read up a bit, having worked through the Stud/8 half of Ray Zee’s book, High-Low-Split Poker for Advanced Players, as well as Todd Brunson’s chapter in Super/System 2. Am feeling increasingly comfortable gauging starting hands, remembering upcards, figuring out when to apply pressure, and keeping in mind the importance of scooping (what Brunson calls the “platinum rule” of the game).
Like any game, intuition plays a big role in Stud/8, I think, insofar as one has to have a “feel” (so to speak) for what others have and are gunning for, as well as whether or not the situation is right to pursue one’s own hand. Of course, moving from flop games like Hold ’em & Omaha to stud games introduces some different situations that can have a tendency to screw with one’s “feel,” making intuition less reliable as a result.
Keeping track of upcards, for instance, is a very alien-seeming obligation to Hold ’em & Omaha players. And while that can be hard enough to do, knowing what those upcards actually signify isn’t always as easy as it might appear.
Here’s just one example of how our intuition -- esp. among us players of flop games who haven’t a lot of experience with keeping track of upcards -- can potentially fail us. I had a hand a couple of days ago in which I was dealt Q-5-Q rainbow with one of my queens showing. I instinctively glanced around to see if any other queens were out, then waited for the action to come around to me.
Might be a playable hand in Stud high, but in Stud/8 this is a fairly crummy starter. Even a relative novice like me knows better than to get in too deep with a high-only hand like this. Making me even less likely to play the hand was the fact that to my right I saw two players each of whom had a king showing. There were a couple of limpers, the first king folded, then the second one -- the one to my immediate right -- completed.
Like I said, I had already decided I’d probably be letting go of my queens. But tell me this. What do you think are the chances the fellow who completed has a king underneath?
This is exactly one of those intuition-defying situations, I think. Todd Brunson writes about it specifically in his Super/System 2 chapter. His entry is divided into a list of concepts, and included is one titled “Dispelling a Long-Held Misconception.” His point there is to explain a mathematical truth that frankly seems counterintuitive until one really concentrates on the explanation. For those who haven’t read it, let me try to summarize. Brunson is making a point here about making assumptions about what our opponents might have underneath on the basis of what cards are showing on third street.
Let’s say (says Brunson) we look around the table and see one player with an ace showing. A certain percentage of the time that player will also have at least one ace as a downcard as well. Brunson goes through the math to show that there is exactly a 13.94% chance that player has at least one ace underneath (if we don’t hold one of them, that is). So if that player completes or raises on third, we keep that possibility in mind as we proceed.
Now let’s say we look around and see two players have aces showing as their door cards. What percentage of the time will one of them have an ace underneath as well? Without doing the calculations, we might be tempted to say the percentage must be less than in the previous scenario. After all, there are only two aces left, right?
That is the long-held misconception, explains Brunson. In fact, there is a higher chance one of the two players has an ace underneath. Significantly higher, actually. As Brunson shows, in this case one of the two players will have at least one ace underneath 18.35% of the time.
Going back to my hand, if I weren’t aware of Brunson’s tip, it might have seemed like there would be less chance the fellow who completed had a king underneath. Perhaps if I were a bit looser (or thick-headed), I’d have talked myself into playing my queens based on that assumption.
But no. I let ‘em go. I knew better than to pursue a high-only hand like this. (The idea that it is worth going for half the pot -- except in certain cases -- is itself a misconception a lot of players have trouble dispelling.) And I’d also read Todd Brunson’s chapter and so had an idea my neighbor might have split kings after all. The hand played to the end, with my neighbor ending up sharing the pot with a low hand across the table. Sure enough, he’d had a king underneath. Full Tilt does reorder the downcards after the hand is done, but I’m reasonably sure he had that king under there to start out.
How long would it have taken me to learned that bit about upcards and stud games? If you hadn’t known already, how long would it have taken you?
A lot about poker I don’t know. One thing I do know, however. There’s always something new to learn.
