LOL Americans

I was playing online over the weekend over on the Hero Poker site. While some of the Merge network sites are now allowing U.S. player sign-ups, I believe Hero is one skin that is not letting any new American players jump in. They are, however, allowing those who currently have accounts there to continue to play.

It is pretty silly, all of the different restrictions and what not. Not to mention the many hoops through which American poker players presently have to go in order to play online at all. And of course our prospects going forward remain dim as far as the near future goes, although perhaps down the road we may have some sort of legislation to allow us back online to play what Al Alvarez once called “the American game.”

Am seeing some funny usernames around the tables at Hero, stuff like “FTPTookMyMny” and “FtheDOJ” the like. On Hero you can see what country a player is from, and it does seem like whenever I check that a lot of my opponents are from the U.S.

Was playing against one guy on Saturday, though, who wasn’t from the U.S. but from Germany. He had a funny name, too -- “LOLAmericans” -- with a smirky Sarah Palin pic as an avatar.

A little later another player lost a decent-sized pot after getting it in good versus “LOLAmericans” only to be sucked out on. The loser -- a U.S. player -- got a little fired up in the chatbox about it afterwards, referring to the player’s nationality once or twice in the process. I think the username might have tilted him as much or more than losing the hand.

I had to laugh a little, both at the situation and the “LOLAmericans” name. Made me think of a couple of different stories coming out over the last few days regarding non-Americans doing a bit of trash-talking about the relative poker-playing abilities of American players and the rest of the world.

There was that story involving 2010 WSOPE Main Event winner James Bord and Matchbook.com opening up betting on who will be this year’s WSOPE Main Event champ. You might heard how Bord (who is from the U.K.) has said he will be refunding all losing bets if an American wins the ME.

A pretty bold offer, really. By the way, this year’s WSOPE Main Event at Cannes attracted a record-smashing total of 593 players. (The previous high for a WSOPE ME was 362.) Just eyeballing the list of entrants, I’m seeing 107 Americans listed in the field, meaning a little more than 1 in 6 players are from the U.S.

All of the seven WSOPE bracelet events drew big fields, in fact. Incidentally, among those first six prelims three Americans won bracelets (Steve Billirakis, Tristan Wade, Michael Mizrachi).

The other America-versus-the-rest-of-the-world story from over the weekend involved the always needling Tony G. The G decided to do a little boast-posting on his blog after getting asked by Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier to join the European team in the upcoming Caesars Cup that starts on Wednesday. That’s that team event pitting a U.S. team versus a European team that was started back in 2009 as a kind of postlude to the WSOPE. (Sort of poker’s version of golf’s Ryder Cup.)

By the way, Phil Hellmuth is captain of the U.S. team this year. I am certain Hellmuth will bring the needed gravitas to help the Americans avoid any further ridicule. I mean no one ever makes fun of him.

Tony G’s post was titled “Bring on the Americans!” and there he offers some more mostly playful-sounding vitriol directed toward the U.S. players, concluding with a somewhat confusing call to “reignite the cold war.”

He also noted there how he was betting $20,000 at 5/1 on Matchbook.com that he’d make the money in the WSOPE Main Event. After drawing a straight flush on his first hand to crack Barry Greenstein’s pocket aces, Tony G remains in the running at the moment with about 240 players left. (The top 64 cash.)

Those side bets on the online betting exchange certainly can spice up things a bit for players and fans alike. For everyone but Americans, that is, since we cannot place bets on Matchbook.com. (LOL.)

Making fun of Americans is a worldwide sport in and of itself, really. In fact, Americans themselves tend to enjoy it as much as anyone else.

How do Americans compare to the rest of the world as poker players? Historically speaking, the U.S. had a big head start versus the rest of the world with regard to poker. But I think it’s safe to say that whatever general edge Americans once had has been essentially closed over recent decades.

And given the way we’ve closed ourselves off from the online game at present, I suppose it won’t be that long before we might have to admit the U.S. will be playing from behind (generally speaking) when it comes to “the American game.”

A Farce, A Tragedy: Tony G in the SuperStar Showdown

Was there on the virtual rail with a lot of others last night for that second PokerStars SuperStar Showdown, this one pitting Tony Guoga, a.k.a. “Tony G,” against the secretive Swede, Isildur1.

Knew this one would likely provide a bit more drama than did the first Showdown between Isildur1 and Isaac Haxton. Not only was the colorful and often melodramatic Tony G involved, but he and Isildur1 apparently have some sort of personal relationship as well.

Tony G has spoken out frequently about Isildur1 since he first came on the scene in late 2009. In fact, early on, Tony G eagerly identified him as Viktor Blom, although later would become more equivocal about the matter. Also recall how back last spring Tony G was prepared to provide partial backing for the international man of mystery to play in the PartyPoker IV Big Game. Other arrangements had been made, too, including talk of allowing Isildur1 to play while wearing a mask (no shinola), but the Swede backed out at the last minute.

Also was curious to see some pot-limit Omaha this time, as the combatants were slated to play two tables of PLO along with two tables of no-limit hold’em, spreading out their 2,500 hands evenly across all four tables.

The match ended up lasting nearly nine hours -- about twice the length of the first Showdown -- with Isildur1 finally coming out on top by $44,820. Lots of crazy swings throughout, with Tony G taking an early lead of nearly $70,000 during the first third of the match, then sinking fast during the middle act to fall behind more than $77,000.

The pair were close to even coming down the stretch, with Isildur1 clinging to a lead of less than $10,000. As the final hands played out, Tony G valiantly began pushing all in frequently on the last remaining no-limit hold’em table, clawing back a bit before finally running into Isildur1’s pocket kings to ensure he’d be ending the match in the red.

For complete details of the match, check out Change100’s recap on the PokerStars blog. Michael “merchdawg” Reed also followed the proceedings, tweeting frequently, and wrote up the sucker as well over at Part Time Poker.

Adding considerably to the interest (and entertainment) last night were Tony G’s frequent contributions to the chat box. As you might imagine, he was quite boisterous early on when leading the match, frequently questioning (perhaps with tongue in cheek) Isildur1’s abilities in an obvious attempt to provoke.

When things started going against the G, the Lithuanian unsurprisingly grew quiet. Then, as the last couple of hundred hands played out, he became a bit petulant about the Showdown format (again, see Change100’s recap for details). Finally, when it became obvious he was not going to be able to come back Tony G launched into a kind of maudlin-sounding, dramatic monologue in which he admitted defeat.

Tony G: well done isildur
Tony G: ure a legend
Tony G: people want to watch you
Tony G: yu defeated me fair and square

As the concession speech continued, a number of PokerStars Team Pros had gathered on the rail -- including David Williams, Daniel “KidPoker” Negreanu, Lex Veldhuis, Jose “Nacho” Barbero, and Arnaud Mattern -- congratulating both players for their efforts.

That’s when Tony G -- a sponsored pro over at PartyPoker -- made what I thought was an interesting observation.

Tony G: you boys a big players
Tony G: I go back to home gorund
Tony G: my site that i play on after this
Tony G: was nice to be away
Tony G: and I think everyone should have a chance to play away
Tony G: every nw and again
Tony G: n matter where you pro at

Phil Gordon (of Full Tilt Poker) made a similar point on “This Week in Poker” a couple of months ago when he stated how he disliked the fact that pros from differing sites weren’t able to compete against one another on many of the televised shows. (Wrote about this a little at the time in a post titled “TWiP notes.”)

Fans of poker would surely agree that the segregation of big name pros onto different sites ain’t necessarily to be preferred, although I kind of doubt we’ll see any changes along those lines any time soon. Who knows, though? Perhaps this SuperStar Showdown might encourage some occasional border crossing such as Tony G is suggesting.

Tony G then quickly slipped back into his soliloquy of surrender:

Tony G: isildur1 is hte legend
Tony G: well done your of many so be strong isildur
Tony G: people love you
Tony G: and you are all class
Tony G: i am outcalssed
KidPoker [TeamPro]: Tony how do you think Hellmuth would do vs Isildur?
L. Veldhuis [TeamPro]: looool
Tony G: no idea
Tony G: he has many bracels
Tony G: I have n\one
Tony G: he must do better
Tony G: I am an ordinary player I feel anyone can play like me
Tony G: just pretend to have sme ability
Tony G: but I have HART
Tony G: and I am "qualified"
Tony G: i been playing from day 1
Tony G: with erik123
Tony G: so not many of us old elephans left
Tony G: you guys are all so much better
Tony G: much higher class
Tony G: much higher class

I suppose the typos could be said to add further pathos. By “HART” Tony G meant heart, of course. And by “elephans” elephants, although I think he really meant dinosaurs, identifying himself as an “old school” type while interestingly adding that he perhaps doesn’t even consider himself a serious pro but rather a somewhat glorified “ordinary” player distinguished mainly by his courage.

In a weird way, that elephant reference made me think momentarily of George Orwell’s famous essay “Shooting an Elephant.” After evoking some sympathy for the beast with references to its “distracted grandmotherly air,” Orwell then describes in detail what happened when he finally shoots the elephant. “He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old,” motionless for a few moments before “he sagged flabbily to his knees.”

Since the young Orwell botches the shooting miserably, it takes a long, long time for the elephant finally to die. Sort of like Tony G, whose frequent breaks -- and final speech -- had helped make the match go on much longer than anticipated.

The speech continued unabated, even after Isildur1 finally piped up to say “Gg, nice playing with u... u really did have heart... so close”:

Tony G: all over
Tony G: I have been humilated
Tony G: well done
Tony G: let me go and look for my bike
Tony G: BIKE time
Tony G: was fun
Tony G: well wrth it all
Tony G: let me go fr my big walk
Tony G: and see you all on my blog
Tony G: i desrve to walk for 30miles today

End scene. Leave it to the G to build a heads-up online poker match -- a “FARSE,” as he complainingly called it earlier -- into a full-fledged tragedy. He lost, but even in defeat he was still at work, building further on that “larger than life” image.

Actually, I do remember him at one point saying he wasn’t “god enough” to win.

Robl, Negreanu, and Tony G Play Poker (and Other Games) on TV

Remember those first couple of years following the “boom” in 2003, when poker on television was still a novelty for most? Wasn’t that long ago.

A favorite saying back then was to observe how what one sees on television wasn’t a good representation of so-called “real poker.” Since the shows were often edited to highlight the biggest encounters -- the bustouts and double-ups -- we saw lots of all-in bets and not so much post-flop maneuvering. Thus could one get the impression from TV that playing poker meant being in a state of constant crisis, with little down time or even that much evidence of the way the game demands careful thought.

Sort of like most television, movies, video games, what have you. Always something happening. No time for thinkin’.

Of course, poker on TV has changed over the years, with shows like “High Stakes Poker” and “The PokerStars.net Big Game” now delivering us long sequences of cash-game hands, thereby introducing a much greater variety into the programming. Still, even in those settings, many continue to maintain that “TV poker” is fundamentally different from “real poker,” with the need to create action -- and thus keep viewers interested -- being a kind of unwritten rule players have to follow.

That latter idea was highlighted over the last couple of days following the most recent episode of “The PokerStars.net Big Game,” thanks largely to a couple of hands involving Andrew “Good2CU” Robl.

By taking a little longer than most to make decisions at the table, Robl drew the ire of Tony G who responded by calling the clock on the young player -- first in a hand between the pair, then again in another hand between Robl and Negreanu. Here’s a video compiling those moments as well as some follow-up comments by the players.



Commenting on the action, Joe Stapleton makes an observation during the first hand. “As entertaining as this is,” says Stapleton, “it’s actually breaking etiquette a little bit to call the clock on someone, especially in a cash game where the blinds don’t increase.”

The usually irascible Tony G acknowledged as much in a recent blog post about the episode and his behavior, provocatively titled “I Am the Third Most Hated Man in Poker.” There Tony G admits he “crossed the line,” but adds that he nevertheless had “a point about [Robl’s] nittish waiting at a bus stop behavior,” explaining that Robl’s deliberations “drove me to distraction.”

In his short post, Tony G doesn’t explicitly say that because they were playing on television, Robl should have been playing more quickly. However, the always-opinionated Negreanu did make that very point in his comment on the show, which one can find posted in a thread over on Two Plus Two.

You can read Negreanu’s statement yourself, which includes a number of comments about televised poker in general and multiple criticisms of Robl in particular. To sum up Kid Poker’s thesis, he says TV poker must be played quickly as production costs are significant, and also should be played “faster” in terms of players’ willingness to give action, partly because they are being paid to appear. Robl failed in both regards on “The Big Game,” says Negreanu, taking too long to act and also refusing to straddle when all of the others wished to do so.

In other words, it sounds like “Good2CU” is not the nickname Negreanu would choose for Robl. (EDIT [added 7:00 p.m. ET]: Negreanu has added a few more thoughts about the show in a blog post, where he also notes he and Robl have recently spoken and “we are cool and we squashed it.”)

Robl has also spoken up about the show, yesterday publishing a blog post about the episode and the issues that have been raised.

Again, I’ll let you read Robl’s post if you are curious about particulars, but in essence he’s defending playing a deliberate, analytical game (regardless of the context), he points out that straddling doesn’t necessarily lead to increased action (while also potentially reduces the skill component), and he additionally notes that while there are production costs his time is also valuable. (Robl also speaks in complimentary terms about both Tony G and Negreanu while at the same time rating himself a better player than both.)

While I find myself leaning in the direction of agreeing more with Robl than with his older opponents here, it might be that I am being more swayed by the thoughtfulness of his response than by the particulars of his position.

Because I can see, too, what Tony G is implying and what Negreanu makes explicit -- namely, that TV poker is still different from “real poker.” There are always going to be other games going on there, too, besides the one with the cards and the chips -- something anyone who goes on TV to play is probably going to have to acknowledge one way or another.

Watching the Big Game

Looks like PartyPoker’s Big Game IV’s -- that nonstop 48-hour cash game being played at Les Ambassadeurs in London -- will be wrapping up within a few hours.

A couple of players, David “Viffer” Peat and Neil Channing, have been there from the start (although I believe Channing might have gotten voted off the table). Others who have been coming and going include Tony G, Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz, Jennifer Tilly, Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt, Isaac Haxton, Justin Bonomo, Roland de Wolfe, Andrew Feldman, and a few more.

I believe there were about 20 players altogether scheduled to play. For details on all of the action, including who is up and who is down, you can check out Adam “Snoopy1239” Goulding’s excellent live reports from the event over on the PartyPoker blog: Day 1 and Day 2.

Of course, the big story from the Big Game during the days leading up to it was the announcement that Isidur1 would be playing, thanks to the backing of Tony G. Such was thought to be the case up until the eve of the event when Tony G informed us on his blog that despite various arrangements having been made -- including allowing for the possibility of letting Isildur1 play while wearing a mask (no shinola) -- online poker’s international man of mystery had decided not to play.

Tony G -- who rode into the Big Game on a bike to the accompaniment of Queen’s “Bicycle Race” (natch) -- also notes that Isidur1 will be in Monte Carlo for the EPT Grand Final (scheduled at the end of April). We’ll see if that pans out.

While no official “outing” has happened yet, most seem to agree that Isildur1 is the young Swedish player Viktor Blom. Tony G said as much in late November 2009 (“I can reveal to all it is Viktor”), though later would equivocate and suggest he wasn’t as certain. Blom himself apparently denied being Isildur1 then, though soon it was determined the fellow issuing the denial wasn’t the poker player but another Viktor Blom. Speculation continued, with Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz adding his two cents last month in an interview for PokerPlayer U.K., saying he was indeed Blom.

Last month I wrote a post about Mike Matusow’s interview on the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast in which “The Mouth” offered some thoughts regarding Isildur1 and the high-stakes games in which he’s been participating over on Full Tilt. Had a comment on that one from Jeremiah (Smith, I believe) who’d spoken with Barry Greenstein about Isildur1, and the Bear told Jeremiah that he’d played with him in a tourney. Seems safe to say there are many in the poker community -- esp. among those who play high stakes -- who know who Isildur1 is.

Kara Scott has been there at Les Ambassadeurs hosting the televised coverage of the Big Game that will be airing later this year in the U.K. before being shopped around internationally. Once she’s done with that, I’ll be talking with her for an upcoming Betfair piece. Definitely plan to ask her about the Big Game as well as “High Stakes Poker” and see what she has to say about our fascination with these high-stakes games.

The fact is, while the “Who is Isildur1?” thing is no doubt interesting, even when we know the players’ names and what they look like, they still often tend to captivate a lot of us who aren’t playing for the highest stakes. Indeed, the very fact that they are playing for such high stakes necessarily makes them mysterious to us (in a way), adding a layer of intrigue that they may or may not deserve, but which nevertheless often grabs our attention.

As Al Alvarez puts it in The Biggest Game in Town, when it comes to high-stakes players, “It is a question not just of a different level of skill but of a different ordering of reality.” In other words, they are not like us. They see the world in a different way. They do things we wouldn’t do.

You know, like ride a bicycle indoors.