Travel Report: PokerStars Festival New Jersey, Day 2 -- Extra Innings

Was another fun day at the Resorts Casino Hotel helping cover the second Day 1 flight of the PokerStars Festival New Jersey Main Event. The overall turnout for the sucker is coming in at just over 200 players, I believe, so while it’s a small one there’s nonetheless a lot of excitement surrounding it, plus the players -- many from the area, unsurprisingly -- appear to be having a good time.

While the poker was interesting, that thrilling Game 7 of the World Series gradually began occupying everyone’s attention more and more as the night wore on. It was near the very end of play when Cleveland’s Rajai Davis hit that stunning two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game, and the whole tournament room exploded in noise in response.

We’d more or less finished up everything we had to do by the end of the ninth inning, and so were seated at an empty poker table before a big screen when that sudden rain delay gave everyone an extra 15 minutes to think about what had happened and what was to come. Brad Willis snapped that pic above of the team adding an extra hour or so to the day as Chicago and Cleveland prolonged their battle into the 10th.

It all seemed fittingly apocalyptic for an Indians-Cubs World Series Game 7, and the finish was nail-biting as well. Fun stuff to experience with a group.

The group returns to the tournament room today for Day 2 of this Main Event, where 70 players are returning. Later tonight is the Third Annual Chad Brown Memorial Tournament which I plan at least to check in on as it happens. I had the lucky opportunity to get to know Chad a bit and am glad at least to be around as his friends gather to remember him and to raise some money for charity.

Check the PokerStars blog today for news on that event as well as the PSF New Jersey Main.

Travel Report: PokerStars Festival New Jersey, Day 1 -- Main Events and World Serieses

Was a fun, not-too-stressful day helping cover the first Day 1 flight of the PokerStars Festival New Jersey Main Event at the Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City yesterday.

The turnout for the $1,100 tournament was modest (81 players), and while there ought to be considerably more for today’s Day 1b I don’t think the bar has been set too high as far as expectations go. Kind of an early run of the Festival format, I think, plus just getting back in the U.S. is a big step for Stars regardless.

During the evening one interesting side story was both the World Series of Poker and the baseball World Series happening on the big screens around the tournament area. (I know, the correct plural for “series” is of course simply “series,” but it’s more fun to be less serious and say “serieses.”)

Since the Cubs jumped out to that big lead versus the Indians to force a do-or-die Game 7 tonight, the attention was drawn more so to the last night of the WSOP Main, especially thanks to all the fireworks early on with Cliff Josephy doubling up, then Gordon Vayo doubling through him, then Josephy’s attempts to get back into things before busting on the 16th hand of the night.

Kind of a funny moment during the last break of play here, as the players were drawn to watch the crazy set-over-set hand between Josephy and Vayo, making it necessary to extend the break by a few minutes in order for them to see it through. That’s a hastily-snapped shot above of players watching it play out.

We finished before midnight and so I got back to the room to watch a little more of that crazily long heads-up between Vayo and Qui Nguyen. Then I slept with the television on, waking occasionally to crown noise whenever Vayo would double-up again. Was fully awake to see the conclusion this morning -- it ended around 6:30 a.m. here on the east coast -- and Nguyen’s victory.

From what I could tell, Nguyen played a bold style throughout the final table and presented lots of challenges to the others, making his win seem well deserved even if he did run well by picking up big hands in key spots along the way.

And even though I didn’t sit and study every single one of the 384 final table hands this time, I watched enough to appreciate ESPN’s coverage, which is probably just about as good as it could possibly be at this point.

Back at it here in New Jersey in a little while. Check the PokerStars blog to see how the Main Event they have going here continues to play out.

Failing to Play Your Ace

I’ve been fading in and out of baseball this year, occasionally checking in here and there but mostly letting it all go by until these last couple of weeks.

Now the playoffs are here and I’m intrigued again to watch, with that one-game wild card between the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays providing a decent amount of excitement last night thanks to extra innings and a walk-off homer to end it.

Kind of interesting today how the discussion of the game is focusing less on the three-run blast by the Jays’ Edwin Encarnacion to clinch the 5-2 win for Toronto, and more so upon Baltimore manager Buck Showalter’s decision not to bring in their ace closer Zach Britton who was 47 for 47 in save chances this year with a 0.54 ERA.

No Britton at all last night -- not in the ninth, not in the 10th, and not in the 11th. He warmed up three different times, but never entered the game. If he had it wouldn’t have been a save situation. But instead he was the one being saved, and never used.

An article over on ESPN today serves as kind of an extreme exercise in second-guessing, going through no less than 15 different moments during the game when Britton might have been called upon to enter the game. Some are brought up and dismissed, and some are more serious than others, but each of the ones coming near the end legitimately belong to the woulda-shoulda-coulda category.

Last week I was writing about the use of poker analogies when describing the presidential race, and how in fact sometimes the references to cards actually evoke other games. Today the talk is about Showalter having failed to play his “ace,” which again sounds more like a trick-taking game than poker.

Then again, poker -- a game in which the timing of one’s “moves” often matters greatly -- provides plenty of other, similar examples supporting the maxim “he who hesitates is lost.”

Image: “Ace of clubs” (adapted), Ulf Liljankoski. CC BY-ND 2.0.

First They Support You, Then They Attack

There’s a new article appearing on the ESPN site today about Ichiro Suzuki, the Japanese-born baseball star who is closing in on 3,000 career hits in the major leagues.

Suzuki had already had a significantly successful career in Japan before making his Major League Baseball debut in 2001 at the age of 27. He played nine years fro the Orix Blue Wave of the Nippon Professional Baseball league, accumulating 1,278 hits while batting .353 and winning the league’s MVP award three times.

This is his 16th season in the majors, and today he sits with 2,998 hits in the MLB. That means all told he has 4,276 hits across his entire career. A few weeks ago when his overall total surpassed Pete Rose’s MLB record of 4,256 hits in the MLB, there was small bit of back-and-forth over whether or not Suzuki had really broken any record or not.

I’ve written here about Rose before, a hero of my youth who at age 75 is now still a controversial figure thanks to his ignoble, forced exit from baseball. Around the time Suzuki’s cumulative hit total reached and then surpassed Rose’s in mid-June, Rose was quoted in USA Today making kind of a snarky comment about the notion that Suzuki could be considered the hit “king.”

“It sounds like in Japan they’re trying to make me the Hit Queen,” Rose told USA Today. “I’m not trying to take anything away from Ichiro, he’s had a Hall of Fame career, but the next thing you know, they’ll be counting his high-school hits.”

Getting back to today’s ESPN article, Suzuki was asked if anything bothered him about the coverage from when he passed Rose’s total. The question wasn’t specifically about Rose’s comment, but that’s what Suzuki addressed in his response.

“I was actually happy to see the Hit King get defensive,” says Suzuki, unsubtly acknowledging Rose’s crown. “I kind of felt I was accepted.”

He goes to explain how about five years ago he’d heard Rose had said some positive things about him, even saying he wished Suzuki could break his record. “Obviously, this time around it was a different vibe,” adds Suzuki.

That’s when Suzuki adds an interesting comment about American culture that kind of explains his point about feeling as though he had been accepted upon hearing Rose’s comments last month.

“In the 16 years that I have been here, what I’ve noticed is that in America, when people feel like a person is below them, not just in numbers but in general, they will kind of talk you up,” says Suzuki. “But then when you get up to the same level or maybe even higher, they get in attack mode; they are maybe not as supportive. I kind of felt that this time.”

That observation actually made me think of poker, a game which more than a few people have recognized parallels various “American” ideas and characteristics. I’m thinking on a “macro” level about how the game works and continues to sustain itself, not about particular strategy or even game mechanics.

In poker, the good players often try to encourage the bad players to remain in the game -- or at least that’s what the good players who have some clue about how the game actually works are doing. They compliment and even nurture (to an extent) the lesser-skilled in order to keep them playing, which in turn helps keep the “economy” of the game healthy.

Then, once the not-so-good players become good themselves, they aren’t treated quite the same way. To put it in Suzuki’s terms, the good ones don’t “talk them up” as often, and in fact may well go into “attack mode” (so to speak), having recognized their own status being legitimately challenged.

I hadn’t thought all that specifically about this process occurring on a cultural level, and in fact being a distinguishing characteristic of American society. But I think Suzuki is probably onto something with the observation.

He’s 42 now, and says in the article he wants to play until he’s 50. I suppose if he did there exists an outside chance Rose’s crown as MLB hit king could be threatened for real, although the chances are heavily against that happening. In any case, ornery old Rose will certainly let us know if he thinks there’s ever a real threat to his title.

Image: “Ichiro Suzuki at bat in St. Louis, 2016” (adapted), Johnmaxmena2. CC BY-SA 4.0.

All-Star Voting Royally Skewed

Major League Baseball’s All-Star game is scheduled for Tuesday, July 14 this year. That’s also the last day of the summer portion of the World Series of Poker -- that is, the day they’ll play down to a final nine in the Main Event.

It’s been a while since I’ve paid much attention to the MLB All-Star Game. Back in the day as a kid I remember looking forward to it every year -- even mailing in ballots -- and then always rooting for the National League which enjoyed a lengthy streak of victories, as I recall.

I continued to follow the MLB into adulthood, albeit less intensely, though by the late 1990s my interest had begun to fade. As far as the All-Star game goes, I remember staying up to watch 11 innings of the 2002 game only to watch it end in a tie after both teams ran out of players, which for me (and I imagine for many others) made that the last All-Star game I bothered to watch all of the way through.

I could be bothered to watch the game this year, though, at least the first couple of innings. That’s because one team’s fans -- the Kansas City Royals -- has done a great job of stuffing the ballot box thus far. In fact right now Royals players are leading for eight of the nine positions for which fans get to vote.

Below is a shot of the latest update of the AL voting totals:

Only Mike Trout of the Angels has one of the outfield spots at the moment -- the rest are all KC.

Something similar happened in 1957 when Cincinnati fans voted seven different Reds into the NL starting line-up. The MLB took voting away from the fans the next year, not giving it back until 1970.

You can now vote online -- up to 35 times per email address, in fact -- and as this Washington Post article spells out that’s a big reason why Kansas City fans have been successful thus far.

The Royals are leading their division currently, although all of their starters are hardly having seasons worthy of earning the All-Star nod. In fact one of them, Omar Infante, who is leading among second basemen, is batting .204 and is currently ranked dead last in the league in “OPS” (on-base % plus slugging %).

Still, I’m kind of pulling for the Royals all to get voted in, just for the sake of anarchy. Kind of reminds me of the time online voters chose Tom Dwan as a Poker Hall of Fame nominee (back in 2009). Like MLB Commissioner Ford Frick did back in 1957, though, when he took a couple of Reds off the NL team in order to give Willie Mays and Hank Aaron spots, the WSOP took Dwan’s name off the ballot.

Analyzing Analytics

Yesterday ESPN published kind of an interesting piece in which all 122 professional teams in the country’s four major sports -- that is, the MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL -- were assessed with regard to their relative commitment to “analytics” or using the advanced stats available to guide them in the development of their franchises.

They say they came up with the list “after looking at the stats, reaching out to every team and dozens of informed sources and evaluating each front office." Not sure what stats they looked at, actually. In fact, it almost sounds like they eyeballed it. (Rim shot.)

I wrote a couple of posts some time back about reading Moneyball and reinvigorating an interest in the topic that for me traced all of the way back to reading Bill James’ Baseball Abstract each year as a teen.

The Oakland A’s and their sabermetrics-using general manager Billy Beane were the focus of that book, and they earned a spot inside the top 10 at No. 9 in the rankings. Meanwhile the Philadelphia 76ers -- for a time earlier this year the worst team in the NBA -- sit atop the rankings as the franchise that has “embraced data the most.”

Within each league teams are broken down into categories as either being “all-in” with analytics (using a poker metaphor), “believers,” having “one foot in,” being “skeptics,” or being “nonbelievers.” The New York Knicks -- the team that took over the distinction as the NBA’s worst this year from the Sixers -- ranks dead last among NBA teams, with their president Phil Jackson described as a “conscientious objector.” The Knicks rank just above the Philadelphia Phillies at the very bottom of the overall list.

There are a handful of NBA teams who are “all-in,” but in the NFL not one team is accorded that status. Only one NHL team is -- the Chicago Blackhawks -- while the MLB has the highest percentage of teams “all-in” with analytics (nine of 30 teams), reflecting how most of the earliest work in that area occurred in baseball before making its way to other sports.

My Panthers are described as “skeptics,” while my Hornets have “one foot in” the analytics door. I’d probably describe myself as having “one foot in” as well, and so tend to feel better about the Hornets’ commitment than that of the Panthers.

In fact, I would guess that each team’s fans feel more or less encouraged by the report according to how closely their team’s evaluation matches their own views of using advanced stats to guide roster decisions, the management of salaries, line-up creation and other in-game moves, and so on.

Someone should poll fans of all 122 teams and with the results build a spreadsheet, then measure the findings against team performance, attendance figures, regional climate, the city’s GDP, and other relevant factors to create a Fan Contentedness Index to be used for the scheduling of promotions and ticket pricing.

Or, you know, they could skip all that and just listen for cheers and boos.

Missing Game 7

I was mentioning yesterday how that other World Series -- of baseball, not poker -- had emerged for me as one of several distractions from ESPN’s coverage of this year’s WSOP Main Event. Tonight the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants play a winner-take-all Game 7, something that comes along rarely enough that even a long-lapsed baseball fan like me will be forced to take a look.

I’ve written here before about how devoted I was to baseball as a youngster. It was easily my favorite sport both to play and watch up through my middle teens, at least, although by the time I was a senior in high school my devotion to the game had begun to waver. In fact, it was that fall I can pinpoint a particular day when baseball suddenly became less important to me.

During the Royals’ playoff run this year many have been pointing back to the last time Kansas City made the playoffs way back in 1985, when, coincidentally, they won the championship in a World Series that also went seven games. Those references reminded me of that Game 7, not because of what happened during the game, but because I didn’t see it at all.

The game was on a Sunday (I remember). It was my senior year, a time when I’d already started looking at colleges. I can’t remember if I’d sent any applications by late October or not, but I probably had. I made decent grades in high school, good enough to put me in the running for some scholarships, including one for the school I wanted to attend, UNC-Chapel Hill.

The specifics escape me, but for this particular scholarship there was some sort of get-together I could not avoid that was scheduled for that Sunday evening. I’d submitted some written materials, including an essay showing whether or not I knew how to put sentences and paragraphs together. Then on this day there was a personal interview with a committee, followed by a dinner for all of the applicants.

It was a novel experience for me. The only thing I remember about the interview was that the person leading the five-person committee was blind. He smiled a lot, though, and had a friendly tone that helped keep everything from becoming too intimidating. And the only thing I remember about the dinner afterwards was commiserating with some of the guys from other schools about how we were missing Game 7.

I suppose I could have gotten out of it, but at the time it seemed like one of those things I just had to do. Looking back, it’s tempting to read my decision as one of those fork-in-the-road moments where I chose not to watch a baseball game as my younger self would have done, but instead did the “mature” forward-looking thing with an eye toward my future. That surely exaggerates the moment, though, charging it with more meaning than it really had.

I also remember how missing the game turned out to be much less of a big deal than it seemed at the time. Maybe it was because the game was -- much like last night’s Royals win -- a laugher, with Kansas City winning 11-0. Or maybe it was because lots of other interests had already begun to crowd into a boy’s still-forming mind, pushing baseball over into what would become a mostly-neglected corner.

I didn’t get the scholarship, although I did end up going to UNC-Chapel Hill, and that led to all sorts of other good things for me (not the least of which being meeting Vera during our first week on campus). The next fall I was a college freshman, way too distracted to pay much attention to another great World Series between the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox that would go seven games as well.

I’d look in on the World Series occasionally thereafter, and I became somewhat invested in the Atlanta Braves (my team as a kid) as they finally started winning and playing some exciting playoff games in the 1990s -- among them a heartbreaker of a Game 7 in 1991 which I did watch.

But I’d never again be as big a baseball fan as I had been prior to October 27, 1985, the day I didn’t watch Game 7.

World Series Time

Sitting down to watch Game 1 of the World Series tonight between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox. Was joking a little last week about how baseball really doesn’t capture my attention so much anymore until the postseason rolls around, and with the playoffs now extending deeper into October the Series is probably the only time when I’ll sit down and watch every game, or at least most of every game.

If this year’s Series goes the full seven games it will be ending on Halloween, which means it will be over and done with when that other World Series -- the World Series of Poker -- finally cranks back up with the “November Nine” starting on Monday, November 4.

Thanks to the way ESPN now presents its coverage of the Main Event, most who watch probably think of the WSOP as only the Main Event. That is to say, there must be a decent number of casual viewers who are aware of the WSOP having a big tournament every year in which a world champion is crowned, but aren’t necessarily aware or concerned about all of the preliminary events, never mind what’s happening at WSOP Europe, WSOP Asia Pacific, or even all the other tours and tourneys filling up the calendar from January to December.

Interestingly enough, though, I feel like the actual final table of the WSOP Main Event has kind of receded relatively speaking when it comes to its imprint on the broader cultural memory. In fact, when I compare baseball’s World Series to the WSOP Main Event, it almost seems like for poker its the long lead-up -- the “regular season” or early playoff rounds, we might say -- that gets at least as much attention and/or review, ultimately, as does the final table.

Think about how often we saw the WSOP ME final table rerun on ESPN from 2003-2005, that seemingly incessant loop of showings that we all basically memorized by the time the next year rolled around. Then think about how little the 2006-2012 final tables have been shown -- or watched, I should probably say.

I watched every hand of the 2012 WSOP Main Event final table last year -- all 399 of them -- focusing on it quite closely when it was all playing out. But while I was aware of later edited showings of it on ESPN that followed, I never really paid that much attention to them nor was I that aware of others discussing those broadcasts or even hands in that much detail in the months that followed.

It’s certainly the case that the “almost live” coverage of the WSOP ME final tables is lessening interest in the later reruns, but even so, it feels like the “highlights” from Greg Merson’s win a year ago have already faded almost entirely.

Anyhow, what happens between the Cards and Red Sox over the next week will certainly be relived over and again until next spring, and I suppose that once the WSOP ME plays out November 4-5 we’ll spend at least a week or two talking to each other about that, too. But after that I wonder if we’ll think about it much at all, already having moved on to something else.

FTW

Following the lead of my friend and colleague Brad Willis on Twitter the other day, I admitted along with him that with the Major League Baseball playoffs having begun, I am only now giving the sport much attention.

Baseball was easily my favorite sport from early childhood through my mid-teens, and while I’ve continued to follow the game into adulthood it’s probably been more than two decades now since I can say I sincerely followed a season from beginning to end.

I used to be a Braves fan, and I remember that great worst-to-first turnaround back in 1991 as a wild ride from spring all of the way to Game 7 of the World Series. The 1992 season stands out, too, especially that three-run ninth inning to come back against Pittsburgh in the NLCS Game 7. I think when Sid Bream slid across home plate late that mid-October night, that might have been the last time I involuntarily rose up out of my seat while watching a baseball game on television, having been literally moved by what I was seeing.

Now, though, I’m much more passive with my playoff baseball watching, often doing other things -- like writing a blog post -- while a game is on. No longer feeling the pull of Braves fandom, I tend to root for entertaining games and can still be impressed by a particularly crafty pitcher, muscle-bound hitting feats, and those wild, split-second plays in the field to record improbable outs with zero margin error.

Since my close following of the game has been more or less reduced to a few weeks in the fall, I have to admit I’m not completely up on some of the more accepted “new” statistical measures like WHIP or WAR or OPS or BABIP and the like, neither to recognize their meaning or be able to understand readily what figures are good or bad.

That’s not to say I’m not interested in the games’ endless supply of numbers. Indeed, as a kid the box scores and stats were a big source of my fascination with baseball, something I’ve written about here before, including last summer when I wrote a couple of posts about Moneyball (here and here). But I’m only vaguely aware of baseball’s “new math” and its implications.

I am intrigued, though, by the debate over the value of wins when assessing a pitcher’s worth, an argument that seems to have gotten increasingly conspicuous over the last couple of years with some sabermetricians interested in “killing the win” as a much too arbitrary measure.

Wins are definitely assigned in ways that can sometimes confound common sense, such as when a pitcher throws eight shutout innings and departs with a 2-0 lead, a reliever comes in and gives up two runs to blow the save, then that reliever gets the victory when his team scores in the bottom of the ninth.

The win for pitchers is one of those stats that is probably unduly affected by chance elements. Above-average skilled pitchers (in particular starters) will tend to earn more wins than others, but the reliance on run support and lead-preserving bullpens obviously takes a lot out of the pitcher’s control. The obvious poker analogy would cite the player “getting it in good” then needing the cards to cooperate, with a similar emphasis on luck making it wrong on some level to be “results oriented” when it comes to pitchers and wins.

But I can’t imagine really and truly “killing the win” as some are suggesting should be done, even if we all know the team wins a game and not (just) the pitcher. So in this new age of baseball acronyms, I guess I remain stubbornly FTW.

The Poker Shot Clock (Again)

I think I’m turning into a night blogger.

Long ago -- back when I worked a full-time job every weekday -- I’d get up an hour or two early each day to write here. Then writing became the full-time job, although I’d usually still post here during the morning hours or at least by noon. Now I’m finding my days are too full of other obligations for me to get over here until the late afternoon or evening.

I don’t suppose it matters too greatly as time here on the internet tends to be reduced down to a kind of perpetual present, anyway, with nothing much seeming to matter except for what is happening right now or perhaps only just recently happened, in which case right now is filled up with everyone repeating to each other what just was.

Speaking of time and the seeming lack thereof, I was skimming through Two Plus Two a couple of days ago and saw how a thread started almost exactly one year ago titled “Should there be a ‘shot clock’ in live tournaments?” had gotten bumped to the front page once again in response to some of the WSOP Main Event coverage currently being shown on ESPN.

One of the posters embedded a hand from Day 4 involving Yevginiy Timoshenko and Adam Friedman in which Timoshenko took a long time (about two minutes, we’re told) to make a decision, during which time Norman Chad brought up the shot clock idea.

Last week I watched some of the broadcast and saw another hand from Day 6, kind of a memorable one involving Carlos Mortensen and Jorn Walthaus in which Mortensen folded on the river after having the clock called on him.

I say the hand was memorable because Jay “WhoJedi” Newnum was there taking photos for BLUFF, and he snapped a very cool picture of Mortensen tossing away his hand that revealed he was folding pocket kings (see left, click to enlarge). For more about that hand, check out this Betfair piece I wrote a while back describing the situation.

Both of those hands happened at the feature table, and as it happened both saw players not involved in the hands being the ones to call the clock.

I know there are some who are very much in favor of having some sort of shot clock in poker, but to me the current system almost always seems to be satisfactory with only occasional exceptions. It reminds me a lot of the current situation in Major League Baseball, perhaps because with the playoffs underway I’ve been paying a little more attention to baseball than I normally do.

In fact just today I was listening to the latest B.S. Report with Bill Simmons in which he had Bob Costas as a guest and among the topics they covered was the one about baseball games being too long and often unnecessarily drawn out by batters stepping out frequently and pitchers taking more and more time between pitches.

There, too, people will sometime argue in favor of a “shot clock” (or the equivalent). While I’m mostly a purist when it comes to baseball (including still being anti-DH), I could imagine something like that being put in place without too much of an intrusion. I don’t think I’d like to see the same become the norm in poker, though, not because I’m a purist but just because I think it would change the game too radically.

Anyhow, thanks for your patience today as I took most of the day before posting. And I appreciate no one calling the clock on me.

Racing Presidents, the Future of No-Limit Hold’em, and the Significance of Context

Over the weekend I was able to take a quick trip with Vera up to Washington, DC to enjoy a couple of days’ worth of leisure.

We’d been a few times before in the past, and thus had already done much of the usual sightseeing stuff. This time we mostly just enjoyed some good eats in various restaurants, checked in on a museum, saw the Washington Monument being repaired, and did a lot of walking around. We made it to a Washington Nationals game, too, and had a laugh watching the Racing Presidents run around the field between innings.

The huge-headed mascots include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. Of those I know Lincoln played a little poker. Taft isn’t known so much for his poker-playing, I don’t think, although he was a member of the Queen City Club in Cincinnati that had some card rooms. TR, though, was the big poker player of the bunch, and as it happened Roosevelt won the race on Saturday afternoon.

I was searching around online a little this morning and found a piece about the Racing Presidents visiting Mount Rushmore a few months back. While there, it looks like Teddy took a trip over to the famous Old Style Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, the site of the famous poker game in which Wild Bill Hickok met his demise. In fact, old “Square Deal” Teddy took the opportunity to sit in on a poker game while there (pic above via the Black Hills Travel Blog).

Got a chance to visit a number of cool bookstores while in DC as well. At one of them I picked up several poker-related titles on the cheap, some of which I’ll be sending out as prizes in the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games. One of the books I picked up was Mason Malmuth’s Poker Essays.

First appearing in 2000 and including a lot of previously published items (among them several revised Card Player columns), it is the first of three volumes’ worth of similar essays published by Malmuth. Like a lot of titles published back then, the book is probably more interesting in the way it provides evidence of an earlier, pre-boom era of poker than for specific strategy advice. Also included are several pieces offering opinions about the staging of tournaments and talk about structures, as well as some thoughts on how card rooms were being run at the time, thus providing more interesting reading as reflections on the Las Vegas and California poker scenes circa 1990s.

This is the book that also contains a couple of Malmuth’s most quoted lines about the future of no-limit hold’em and tournaments. You might have run into these statements before somewhere, which in retrospect obviously read a little differently than they might have back when they were made.

In a chapter called “The Future of Poker,” Malmuth discusses 11 different variants then being spread in card rooms, offering his thoughts about the current and future popularity of each. He’s high on fixed-limit hold’em and seven-card stud (at the time the most popular variants in most rooms), and down on both pot-limit Omaha and fixed-limit Omaha (the latter having been spread during the late ’80s and ’90s, but hardly at all since). He thinks razz and Omaha/8 will survive, while draw poker probably won’t.

Of course, it’s his assessment of no-limit hold’em -- the first game on his list -- that grabs the attention the most while reading today. “The problem with no-limit hold’em,” writes Malmuth, “is that the expert player has too great an edge over weak players and will virtually never lose to these people.” He adds that “since bad players almost never win, they either go broke, find another game, or quit playing poker altogether.”

Those thoughts then inform what seems an inevitable conclusion for Malmuth.

“Unfortunately, there is not much future in no-limit hold’em.”

There’s another essay titled “Are Poker Tournaments Dying?” that offers a similarly bleak forecast. “I suspect that as years go by, there will be fewer major tournaments in Nevada casinos,” speculates Malmuth, although he does think things might play out differently in California. He also recognizes that there are “a few events, like ‘The World Series of Poker,’ [that] are spectacular successes and probably will continue to be so.”

“But as far as Nevada is concerned,” he says, “the great poker tournament boom is, in my opinion, past its peak.”

It isn’t fair, of course, to go back and isolate Malmuth’s proclamations about no-limit hold’em and tournaments almost a decade-and-a-half later like this, especially when considering that both were made well before online poker had surfaced much at all, never mind the subsequent and sudden “boom” fueled by televised that began around 2003 and which very few saw coming -- a development that directly spurred tremendous interest in both NLHE and tournaments.

Found a 2+2 thread from 2008 in which someone brought up the NLHE prediction and Malmuth responded, pointing out that “It did die as a side game. There were virtually no no-limit poker games for many years. It came back due to the interest in the TV shows and the fact that a cap was put on almost all games, something which was not done before.”

In other words, context matters. Thus when you alter the context -- say by reading predictions made long ago, or having former U.S. presidents absurdly dash around a baseball field to the delight of cheering fans -- a few grins (including unintended ones) are sometimes gonna result.

Empty Hall

Moving kind of slowly this morning-slash-afternoon following a late night of writing. Have been a little distracted today by some of the lead-up to the announcement of this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame vote, with a lot of the discussion concerning the candidacies of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa.

The story reached its climax just a few moments ago with the announcement that in fact no player had earned the needed 75% total of votes to be elected this year. For the first time since 1996, the Baseball Writers Association of America didn’t see fit to elect anyone to the HOF.

Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa all made their last appearances in the majors in 2007, which means after five years of non-activity this was the first year they were eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Bonds won seven MVPs during his career on his way to establishing a new all-time home run record. Clemens won 354 games as a pitcher and seven Cy Young Awards. And Sosa was a seven-time All-Star on his way to becoming one of only eight MLB players ever to hit more than 600 home runs.

Of course, thanks to allegations regarding all three players’ use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) during their careers, all three were likely considered essentially ineligible by a large number of voters. In the end Clemens only earned votes from 37.6% of the 569 BBWAA voters, Bonds only got 36.2%, and Sosa 12.5%.

There were a few other players whose named appeared on this year’s ballot who’ve also had their reputations tarnished by allegations of PED-use, including Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Rafael Palmeiro, and Mark McGwire. While the allegations have more or less substance in each instance, all four of those players have what most observers regard as “HOF numbers.” But none of them were voted in this year either.

“This is the best pitcher and the best hitter that any of us have ever seen, and they’re only getting one-third of the vote” said a somewhat baffled-sounding Tim Kurkjian on ESPN just now. The MLB analyst was referring to Clemens and Bonds, of course. “At some point the relevancy of the Hall of Fame is going to come into question... when the best players of a generation are not voted in,” Kurkjian added.

Baseball Hall of Fame voting follows a complicated process that many regard as flawed even without the impossible-to-quantify variable caused by the “steroid era” that plagued the game from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s.

For the last three years I’ve had the great privilege of being invited to participate as a voter for the considerably less controversial Poker Hall of Fame. The process we follow is also not perfect, although I think has ultimately produced some worthy inductees of late.

There are certainly players and other individuals who are not presently in the Poker Hall of Fame who deserve such recognition. And there are probably a couple in there who shouldn’t be. But I think the institution (as such) does nonetheless retain a modest level of veneration, with those who have earned their way into the PHOF justly regarded as having achieved something significant.

I wonder about the Baseball Hall of Fame, though. While I certainly belong to the large group of fans who lament the influence of PEDs on the game, I tend to share Kurkjian’s consternation that baseball’s HOF may be rapidly descending into a state of irrelevancy (if it isn’t already there). Yet another, only recently realized casualty of the steroid era, you might say.

Apples, Oranges, and the Poker Hall of Fame

As you’ve probably heard by now, Brian “Sailor” Roberts and Eric Drache are the latest inductees into the Poker Hall of Fame. The Poker Hall of Fame Governing Council made the announcement yesterday, and the Class of 2012 will be recognized in a ceremony at the “Octo-Nine” at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino later this month.

I had the honor of participating in the process once again this year, being one of the poker media who voted on the 10 finalists. Living Poker Hall of Famers also voted, and while I believe both Roberts and Drache got support from the media, my sense was that the other PHOFers were especially behind those two and likely ensured their getting in. (For more on Roberts and Drache, here’s a Betfair Poker piece about their induction.)

As in the past, I’m not going to reveal specifically how I voted. However, I will say I’m glad about the two inductees and believe both are deserving of being included among the now 44 members of the Poker Hall of Fame.

Roberts, of course, is being elected posthumously, having passed away in 1995. While Drache is still part of the current poker scene (serving as a consultant on poker TV shows, playing in events on occasion), both he and Roberts really belong to earlier eras of poker, with their contributions mostly coming before or during the birth of tournament poker as we know it.

As one of the “Texas Rounders” with Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim Preston, the most significant years of Roberts’ poker career mostly predated tournament poker, although he did enjoy success during the early years of the WSOP, including winning the Main Event in 1975. Meanwhile, Drache is being recognized largely thanks to his having served as the WSOP’s tourney director from 1973-1988, during which time he introduced the significant innovation of staging satellite tourneys to feed players into the larger buy-in events, including the Main Event. In other words, Drache is one of several who helped create and build the wildly popular variant that is tournament poker.

Today the WSOP, the WPT, and other tournaments tend to overwhelm all other aspects of professional poker, at least in terms of media coverage and the marginal place poker occupies in popular culture. Tournaments also largely influence opinions about players’ skill and thus their qualifications for recognition in something like the Poker Hall of Fame.

These days winning tournaments, especially WSOP events, rapidly promotes a player into a position of prominence when it comes to debates about his or her greatness as a player. But poker has been played for about two centuries, with tournament poker (and all of its associated statistics and records) having only truly come into prominence during the last three decades or so.

When we think of different sports and their respective histories, it’s easy to see how games change over time. The baseball being played today is obviously much different from that of even 10 or 15 years ago, let alone during the 1950s or 1920s or 1890s. That said, it’s still essentially a very similar game, and in fact produces a lot of the same statistical measurements that can be useful when drawing comparisons between players and ranking them against one another.

So while it might be hard to draw parallels between, say, a couple of pitchers like Christy Mathewson (who won 373 games from 1900-1916) and Greg Maddux (who won 355 games from 1986-2008), you can still tentatively pursue a comparison. And you can definitely talk about how each pitcher rates against others of his respective era, thereby drawing some meaningful conclusions about the greatness of each.

But with poker, there are no such stats to draw on outside of tournaments. There is no “record book” prior to 1970 -- only fading memories, stories (often embellished), and other scant evidence. And even if there were records of every high-stakes cash game ever played, it would be a mostly quixotic pursuit to try to compare one to another.

Indeed, even tourney results are only somewhat useful when talking about players’ skill and rating them against one another. There are so many variables that make even identical-looking events wildly different from one another, not to mention the variance that affects outcomes in significant ways. And, of course, the fact that lists of results generally omit all reference to non-cashes also makes the “record book” as it currently exists less than comprehensive.

In other words, everywhere you look in poker, just about every comparison you might be tempted to make requires extensive qualification. Every game, every tourney, every hand is different.

All of which is to say the debates that always surround the naming of players into various sports’ halls of fame -- debates that usually revolve around numbers and what might be considered objective evidence -- aren’t as applicable when it comes to poker and its hall of fame. Just like comparing any two poker players brings up an “apples and oranges” situation, so, too, does trying to match up the Poker Hall of Fame against other halls of fame highlight too many differences to make the comparison apt.

In the case of poker, even the numbers we do have are of limited value, which if you think about it perhaps lends an even greater importance to poker’s storytellers. I’m mostly referring to stories told by the players themselves, but also to others (the witnesses, the historians) who take up the challenge of trying to chronicle the game and tell its tales.

Perhaps it is best to think of the Poker Hall of Fame not as a collection of poker’s greatest players or contributors, but of poker’s most valuable characters -- the ones whose stories have proven the most compelling and influential and meaningful to the game and its continuing evolution.

Yeah, I know... how do we measure that?

Online Poker’s Hot Stove League

“When might Americans, who invented the freakin’ game in the first place, be able to play it again on the Internet?”

So writes James McManus at the conclusion of his new piece over on Grantland, “Full Tilt Boogie: The UIGEA and You.” In his lengthy feature McManus recounts the last eight months or so of online poker in the United States -- including the whole Full Tilt fiasco -- a prelude, it appears, to a series of articles he’ll be writing for the site.

Some of us Yanks are still playing online poker, actually. Sort of.

I’ve mentioned here how I’ve won some freerolls on Hero Poker and Carbon Poker, thereby earning myself some modest real money rolls on both sites. Had sort of an interesting series of exchanges with support over at Hero Poker over the last week or so which I thought I’d share, if only to pass along an actual anecdote related to playing online poker. (Remember when we used to share those all the time?)

One aspect of Hero I have liked is the fairly frequent awarding of tickets for sit-n-gos and tourneys (all micro stuff) as well as the occasional bonus. The more you play, the higher you rise through the various levels they have on the site (Farmer, Recruit, Barbarian, etc.), and I believe you earn some sort of small something each step of the way. (Here’s a page describing it all, if you’re curious.)

In late November I tripped over one of the levels and was given both a play-through bonus worth $15 (i.e., I had to play a certain amount to earn it) and an instant bonus of $10. As is my custom, I recorded the instant bonus in my daily ledger along with other info about my play for that day, and pretty much forgot about it.

About two weeks later I played a short session and won a few bucks, then when I went to record my balance noticed I was down a little from when I started. The discrepancy was exactly $10. Not much, although unfortunately ten bucks represents a decent percentage of my roll at the site.

So I sent an email to support. Hero is a small site, but they do quite well getting back to you quickly whenever anything arises. Sometimes, though, the promptness of the replies aren’t exactly matched by clarity. I got a quick response which said the money was deducted “because on November 23rd you were credited with an instant cash bonus twice... by mistake.”

Fine, I thought. Kind of uncool just to take money out of my account without any sort of heads-up, but at least I understood why. But when I looked back at my records -- as well as the “Player Admin” they have for you there at Hero (a fairly handy feature) -- I could see on 11/23 that I’d only gotten the bonus once.

To make a long story short, we ended up exchanging several more emails before someone was finally able to explain that I’d gotten an instant bonus for $10 way back in early September and the latter one on 11/23 was awarded erroneously. Also, there apparently had been a bulk email sent out regarding the error and correction, but I had never received it.

Along the way one of the emails had instructed me both to “disregard the email” I had just been sent as well as to “please just use the very last email.” In the same sentence. Like I say, the responses come in a timely fashion, though they aren’t always as lucid as one would like.

All of it reminded me of PokerStars and how they, too, always rapidly responded to any support requests. And clearly, too. I also thought about how they’d handle a situation such as this one -- how Stars would likely allow me to keep an erroneously awarded bonus. But Hero is a small outfit and if they did issue even small bonuses to all of their players by mistake, I can see how they wouldn’t be able to handle the loss as easily as Stars might.

The future of these relatively small U.S.-facing sites has to be tenuous, I’d think, at least as far as their continuing to serve Americans goes. That said, I assume a number of these sites (Hero included) probably couldn’t really continue without the continuing to serve the U.S. -- the only part of the world where they currently can compete and Stars cannot.

We’re definitely the minor leagues here in the U.S. right now as far as online poker is concerned... not even Single-A ball, but Rookie league. Worldwide, PokerStars is the only big league left. In fact, “big” isn’t a big enough word for them, given their overwhelming dominance of the market at the moment. Party, iPoker, Ongame, and 888 we might call Double-A, but then so are Stars’ own French- and Italian-only sites. Then come the Merge guys, Bodog, Cake, and the rest.

I suppose the baseball analogy sprang to mind here because like poker, baseball is an American game. McManus’s piece and particularly his anti-UIGEA arguments are further tempting me to refer to our online poker game as currently mired in the “Bush leagues” and pun on the name of the person who signed the UIGEA into law.

But while that action was certainly central to the story of online poker’s fall in the U.S., it was hardly the only contributor. Really, the better baseball metaphor for online poker would be to say we’re amid a kind of “hot stove league” -- i.e., an off-season during which we are having to be patient while awaiting the return of our favorite game.

Will be interested to see where McManus goes with his Grantland articles. And, of course, what will happen with online poker in the U.S., too.

That Other World Series

Three weeks ago -- the morning after the last day of the Major League Baseball season -- I sent a tweet referring to the many wild endings that had occurred in several of the games the night before, all of which had playoff implications riding on them.

“Has anyone looked into Buffalo Wild Wings’ possible involvement in last night’s MLB games?” I asked.

Was making a jokey reference to those commercials in which crowds at BWW sports bars who are enjoying the games are able to order the games fixed to continue into extra innings and overtime, thereby allowing them to continue their fun evenings. Saw more than a few folks alluding to those commercials again last night during the latter stages of that wild Game 6 of the World Series.

You know what I’m talking about, right? That other World Series... of baseball.

What a game, eh? Lots of head-spinning, crazy-ass back-and-forthing at the end, including a couple of instances where the St. Louis Cardinals were down to their last strike only to get a needed hit to tie the game. By the time the bottom of the 11th rolled around it almost seemed inevitable that St. Louis was going to score and snatch it away from the Texas Rangers to force tonight’s decisive Game 7.

I’ve been a baseball fan since I before I can remember, playing little league from the age of six, collecting cards, and watching the “Game of the Week” back when there was only one game on each week. I think I’ve confessed here before how I was geeky enough to score games at home while I watched -- one of those early, formative activities that could be said to have distantly foreshadowed my eventually becoming a poker tournament reporter.

Like many young boys, I spent endless hours carefully studying The Sporting News and all the box scores, playing Statis Pro games, and memorizing all of the important stats and records.

The other day when reading about how the St. Louis Cardinals had experienced a couple of snafus in Game 5 while making phone calls from the dugout to the bullpen, I saw the article writer referring to the fact that they were relying on technology (the telephone) invented the same year the National League had been founded.

I knew before finishing the sentence the year in question -- 1876. And that the American League came in 1901. And there was no World Series in 1904. And so on. All that is still wedged somewhere in there along with other vital stuff like our old phone number in the house where I grew up, my grandparents’ birthdays, and other important numbers like .367, 56, 755, and 4,191.

Some immediately described last night’s game as one of the best if not the best in World Series history. Funny, because prior to the ninth inning it was shaping up to be remembered as one of the sloppiest-played games ever, with five errors between the two teams. (I think the WS record might be six -- that’s one stat I never did memorize growing up.)

Other goofy decisions and mistakes made both on the field and by the managers further complicated matters. But all that of course made the game even more compelling to watch. And then came some real heroic stuff in the form of those big two-out, two-strike hits by the Cards late.

Despite not having a dog in this fight, I was thoroughly entertained right up until the last pitch and after. Made me think how all of the errors and high fastballs hung over the plate and other missteps added both to the fun and to that sense that the players -- as incredibly talented as they are -- are all human, too.

It’s mistakes and “human” foibles that help make poker more interesting to watch, too. Am looking forward to some high caliber play at the WSOP Main Event final table (just over a week away!), but I’m also anxious to see the out-of-the-ordinary stuff, too -- i.e., the unorthodox play and/or “incorrect” move that throws an extra, unexpected wrinkle into the story of the tourney’s final act.

Speaking of, one last act to go for MLB tonight. Haven’t been this interested to see a baseball game since I was a kid. Might have to get some chicken wings. Maybe I’ll even score it.

Charlie Hustle, A-Rod, Gambling & Poker

My love of baseball probably peaked around the age of nine. That’s when I played little league, collected cards, tuned into games on AM radio, and never missed the “game of the week” on television. When we eventually got cable, I watched more games, and would even sometimes score them as I did. (No shinola.) I also sent letters a few times to players asking for autographs, and in just about every case I received replies, often with signed photos.

The only one of those pictures I managed to save from those days was from Pete Rose, who for a while there was right at the top of the list of my favorite players. That's the photo to the left, and the envelope in which it arrived is below. (I feel like I might have told this story before on the blog at some point, but searches aren’t turning up anything, so I suppose I have not.)

It was some time later, well after my fascination with the game had waned, that Rose, a.k.a. “Charlie Hustle,” was accused of having bet on games and was banned from baseball in 1989. Despite a mountain of evidence against him, Rose would deny the accusations for the next 15 years before finally admitting that he did, in fact, bet on games, but only for his own team to win. By then no one was really listening to him, though, that long period of denial having made it difficult for many to give him any credit for finally ’fessing up.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure it was Rose’s troubles that helped ensure I’d hang on to his autographed picture while losing track of the others. Might’ve partly been out of an idea that it’d be worth more as a result, although I’ve never thought much about selling it. Could’ve also been just because I felt sorry for Rose, in a way, I don’t know. In any case, while the kid in me still gets a kick out of him sending me the picture, my more mature self agrees with most that what he did was very wrong, and his refusal to admit to it for so long made it all even worse.

Found myself thinking about Rose after reading about Alex Rodriguez’ meeting last Friday with “officials” of Major League Baseball to talk about his poker playing -- or at least about the allegations of such. Despite being injured for much of the summer, Rodriguez has been in the news quite a bit over recent weeks. But all of the stories seem to concern his poker-playing, not his bum knee.

One such story came in the wake of those lawsuits being filed against participants in that big Hollywood home game who won money off of Bradley Ruderman, the hedge fund guy who ended up convicted of swindling his clients via some sort of Ponzi scheme. Tobey Maguire was kind of singled out among those who were sued, but other famous folks like Gabe Kaplan, Nick Cassavetes, and Rick Salomon were targeted, too. (I wrote a bit about Maguire’s situation in my latest Epic Poker “Community Cards” post, if you’re interested.)

Shortly after those lawsuits came to light -- they’re being brought in order to try to recover some money for Ruderman’s victims -- a story emerged that Rodriguez apparently played in the games, too, although that was soon refuted both by Rodriguez as well as one of the participants, the poker pro Dan Bilzerian.

Then last week came another story about Rodriguez allegedly playing some high-stakes poker at the Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs near the end of his stint rehabbing with the Yankees’ Triple AAA affiliate, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees. That story also was refuted both by Rodriguez and representatives of the casino. (That photo of Rodriguez and Jay-Z is from much further back -- a celebrity tourney back in 2006.)

In any event, the MLB wanted to talk to Rodriguez in part because he’d been connected with underground poker games in New York previously (back in 2005). And because the league is obviously super-sensitive to any players being connected with gambling in any fashion, not least because of situations like the one involving Pete Rose years ago.

There wasn’t much in the way of specific news about the meeting on Friday, other than Rodriguez saying he’d answered all of the questions asked of him. The Wall Street Journal piece about the meeting tells about how Rodriguez was asked if he thought it wasn’t fair that his trip to the Pennsylvania casino -- just for a steak dinner, Rodriguez alleges -- drew so much attention, Rodriguez sounded kind of melancholic about it all.

"I guess that’s just the world we’re in,” he said. “There’s a moving goal post. Those are the rules and it is what it is. Sometimes you just want to say uncle."

When Rodriguez refers to the “rules” here it is hard to tell what exactly he’s referring to, although it sounds like he’s talking about “unwritten” rules in our culture regarding gambling (“that’s just the world we’re in”) or perhaps more specifically the MLB’s recommendations that players steer clear of casinos or any gambling-related activities. At least that’s what the “moving goal post” comment seems to suggest -- namely, that the “rules” outlined to Rodriguez in the meeting perhaps haven’t been spelled out anywhere in particular.

Interestingly, the last time I wrote about Rodriguez here it had to do with his breaking an “unwritten rule” by running over the mound on his way back to first base after a foul ball. And, of course, Rodriguez is also well known for having broken another written (but poorly-enforced) rule when he used performance enhancing drugs from 2001-2003. Rodriguez admitted to the latter in 2009 after a list of players (including A-Rod) who’d failed tests in ’03 was published by Sports Illustrated.

My buddy Rich Ryan wrote a thoughtful op-ed for PokerNews a couple of weeks ago titled “Sports and Poker Don’t Mix” in which he essentially says pro athletes should say “uncle” and stop courting trouble by playing poker. I can see where Rich is coming from, but I can also see how some would object to players being unreasonably restricted or discouraged from entering a casino and/or participating in legal poker games.

I think again of Pete Rose. I remember visiting Las Vegas a few years back and while walking down the strip suddenly coming upon Rose sitting at a table, signing autographs. Looked a little closer and (if I remember correctly) saw it was $50 for an autograph, and $100 for a photo with the all-time hits leader.

Many who’ve visited Vegas over the last few years have seen the same sight, and probably shared the same thought I had about Rose and his legacy -- forever linked with his gambling -- and how Vegas perhaps seems a weirdly appropriate setting for him now.

I didn’t bother to wait in line to pay for a signature or photo or anything. I did stand and watch Rose a short while, though, thinking about the autograph I’d gotten for free so many years ago.

You know, way back before our heroes all started to fail us, with Rose (for me) one of the first to go. I guess for some Rodriguez would be one of the more recent examples. If so, I’d hope it’d be for reasons other than his poker playing.

On Luck, Skill, and Reward

Was reading the sports page this morning and came across a bit of news that got me thinking once again about the whole “skill-vs.-luck” debate in poker, though in a different way, perhaps, than I have thought about it in the past.

Now that the baseball season is over and done, all of those annual awards are being voted upon and handed out (MVPs, Rookies of the Year, Gold Gloves, etc.). Found it kind of interesting to see that over in the American League, Seattle pitcher Felix Hernandez was awarded the Cy Young Award recognizing him as the league’s best pitcher.

What made the news interesting was the fact that Hernandez had a very modest-looking 13-12 record this year. In fact, his total of 13 wins was the fewest ever by a Cy Young award winner (in a non-strike-shortened year). Yet he earned 21 of the 28 first-place votes for the award -- pretty much a landslide.

Hernandez got the Cy Young not because of his win-loss record, but because he had a stellar earned run average (2.27), a whole bunch of strikeouts (232 in 249.2 innings), and limited his opponents to a low batting average (just .212).

Why didn’t he win more games? Well, his teammates didn’t do very much on the offensive side when he pitched, averaging just 3.06 runs a game for him when he started. According to the New York Times article from which I’ve gotten all of these other statistics, Hernandez had 12 starts in which he gave up two runs or less yet did not win.

The author of the article, Tyler Kepner, concludes that when it came to casting their ballots for the AL Cy Young, those charged with that task apparently took into account the fact that Hernandez didn’t get a lot of run support this year. “The voters did not penalize Hernandez for that bit of bad luck,” writes Kepner, and thus three-fourths of them decided to list him their top choice for the honor.

It does seem a little odd to have a Cy Young award winner with a barely .500 win-loss record and only 13 wins. But I understand the reasoning and am not really invested enough in the issue to object to the voters’ decision.

Even so, that line about not holding Hernandez’ “bad luck” against him got me thinking.

Baseball -- like poker -- is a game in which luck obviously does play a role, not just in terms of individual statistics (like with Hernandez and his win-loss record), but with regard to teams’ success, too. A ball hits a pebble and bounces over the shortstop’s head, a “lucky” break that allows the winning run to score. Or an umpire blows a call (which happens... a lot), which proves fortunate for one team, and bad “luck” for the other. And so forth.

Thinking back to this year’s Poker Hall of Fame vote in which I had the privilege to participate, it goes without saying that Dan Harrington, Erik Seidel, and all of the other members of the PHOF most certainly experienced some good luck along the way. They had to, right?

Don’t get me wrong -- most of those in the Poker Hall of Fame are unquestioningly skillful poker players. (I’m leaving out Edmund Hoyle, who never played poker, and perhaps a couple of others.) But those skillful players also necessarily had to withstand the game’s element of chance, enjoying good luck and avoiding bad luck frequently enough to be winners and become recognized as belonging among poker’s greats.

Thinking again about Hernandez winning the award, how absurd would it seem to single out a particularly unlucky poker player as deserving of recognition (e.g., entry into the Poker Hall of Fame), backing one’s argument with the assertion that he or she should not be “penalized” for “a bit of bad luck”?

Luck matters, right? Winning certainly matters. And winning -- in baseball, poker, and just about every other game -- requires luck. Didn’t all of those other Cy Young award winners, just like most all of those Poker Hall of Famers, enjoy some good luck? If we don’t want to penalize a player for experiencing bad luck, is it right to reward another for experiencing good luck?

Play well this weekend, all. And good luck!

On the Unwritten Rules

I mentioned a few weeks back that I’d been watching more baseball this year than I have been in the recent past. Am still doing so, and while I don’t necessarily have a fave team anymore (used to be the Braves, long ago), there are a handful of teams I’ve been following a little more closely than others, mainly because they’ve turned up on the tube most often.

One of those teams getting extra coverage, of course, has been the New York Yankees, off to a hot start this year although currently trailing the surprising Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East. And speaking of the Yankees, there was an interesting incident last week in a game between New York and the Oakland A’s you might have heard or read about, if you follow baseball, too. The incident involved Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, Oakland pitcher Dallas Braden, and a lot of talk about so-called “unwritten rules.”

To summarize what happened briefly, in the sixth inning of the April 22 game, Rodriguez had been on first base when Braden was pitching to Robinson Cano. Cano hit a high pop-up, during which Rodriguez had rounded second and was halfway to third when the ball landed foul. A-Rod then trod over the mound as he headed back to first base, kind of a no-no insofar as pitchers tend to be a bit fastidious over their workspace.

Braden saw what Rodriguez did, and was not a happy camper. When the inning ended he gave A-Rod an earful, yelling at him to “stay off my mound.” There’s a video of Braden’s outburst and more details of the incident over on the MLB site, if you’re interested.

When asked about it afterwards, Rodriguez expressed surprise that Braden had gotten so upset, adding that he didn’t think “a guy that has a handful of wins in his career” should be barking so loudly, anyway. Braden has been a major leaguer since 2007 and currently has 17 wins to his credit. Rodriguez, meanwhile, has been around since the mid-1990s, is a three-time MVP, is closing in on 600 home runs, and for the last decade has been the highest paid player in baseball.

Rodriguez has failed to acknowledge certain unwritten rules before. There was an incident in 2007 when he yelled out at Toronto outfielder Howie Clark causing him to miss a pop-up. And back in the 2004 playoffs versus Boston there was that play in which Rodriguez slapped the ball out of Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s glove as Arroyo tried to tag A-Rod while running to first (see picture). Rodriguez was called out for interference, and then was later called out again by Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling who described Rodriguez’s action as “junior high school baseball right there, at its best.”

Schilling’s shot referred to the fact that besides breaking a written rule there, Rodriguez had violated another of those unwritten rules, too, by doing something major leaguers shouldn’t do. Of course, A-Rod has long been a lightning rod -- pun intended -- for other reasons, too, including his gaudy salary, his high level of achievement (something that always draws haters), and his admission to steroid use back when the policing of such was so badly managed by the MLB.

The whole episode reminded me a lot of the many unwritten rules in poker -- i.e., that sometimes elaborate code of conduct players and sometimes others (dealers, poker room managers, tourney directors, reporters, etc.) all are expected to know and follow. What sometimes gets referred to as “etiquette” and which tends only to get attention when someone fails to follow the code.

Slowrolling would be an obvious example at the tables -- not technically disallowed, but a clear violation of an unwritten rule. Other examples would include acting in a timely manner, refraining from verbally abusing the dealer or others, not “hitting and running” (i.e., winning a big pot quickly and then immediately leaving), or not speaking or interfering with play when not involved in a hand.

I suppose what Rodriguez did when he crossed Braden’s mound was a bit like touching another player’s chips unnecessarily. Not cool, man.

And, as a few commentators have been pointing out, Rodriguez’s response afterwards -- a kind of incredulity borne from the difference in experience between himself and Braden -- suggests another unwritten rule, namely, that seniority allows one greater freedoms. Such also often seems to be the case in poker, where the “name” players sometimes seem to get away with more egregious behavior and/or are given the benefit of the doubt more readily than are others when it comes to violations of etiquette. (Scotty Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth, and the 2008 WSOP spring to mind.)

Interesting stuff, and perhaps indicative of something more profound -- and paradoxical -- about human nature and competition. We like to compete, and perhaps have a kind of natural instinct to do so. But we also tend to surround our competitions with all sorts of guidelines (rules, written and unwritten) that not only ensure fairness, but a kind of decency as well. We want to beat each other, but we want to get along with each other, too.

Most of us, anyway.

Baseball, Poker, and Taking Your Time

Found myself tuning in to baseball on a few occasions this week, actually getting involved in a couple of games more earnestly than I have in quite some time.

As a preteen I couldn’t get enough of baseball. Collected cards, pored over stats, even scored games I watched on television sometimes (hopelessly nerdy, I know). But somewhere in there amid the work stoppages, the exploding contracts and free agency gone wild, and later the steroids and other whatnot, my interest waned. Lately I’ve only really paid attention come playoff time, and even then it hasn’t been something I’ve gone out of my way to follow.

Every April, though, I tend to recall those days when Opening Day seemed like a big deal. And so, following some faint vestige of an earlier instinct, I took a look this week to see what games were on and ended up getting involved in a few, including a couple of those Red Sox-Yankees games this week. The one on Sunday, won by Boston 9-7, was a thriller from beginning to end. And the 10-inning pitchers’ duel on Wednesday in which New York prevailed 3-1 was some good fun, too.

All of the insta-stats now provided with televised coverage of the games -- not to mention the wealth of stuff one can get online at ESPN, the MLB.com site, or other sites as the games are happening -- makes watching games a lot different than when I was a kid. Man, I would’ve really dug all of this stuff if I were 11 years old again. (I guess I still do, a little.)

As I say, the games were quite compelling, I thought, and I’m finding myself looking at the sports page again and perhaps might pay attention to baseball beyond mid-April this year. I know baseball isn’t everyone’s favorite game to watch. Fans of basketball or football often don’t care for baseball’s relatively slower pace. But for me those gaps between pitches where strategies are formulated and decisions made -- and anecdotes and other color shared by commentators -- are a big part of the game’s attraction.

Having watched those Red Sox-Yankees games, I was intrigued by a story on ESPN this week in which the long-time umpire Joe West complained about the slow pace of games, specifically targeting Boston and New York as prime culprits in the dragging out of play. West -- who has been around since I was a kid watching those games way back when -- said he thought the constant delays caused by stepping out of the batter’s box, mound visits by players, and so forth were “pathetic and embarrassing” and “a disgrace to baseball.”

The game I saw Sunday night apparently lasted 3 hours and 46 minutes -- definitely on the long side, but the high score (9-7) meant lots of drawn-out innings and pitching changes. The Wednesday night game that went an extra inning took 3 hours and 21 minutes. I hadn’t really felt like either game had been overly long nor did I think players were being unduly deliberate. But apparently West (who was working those games) felt like the players were wasting too much time.

There was a lot of feedback to West’s comments. Yankees closer Mariano Rivera called his complaints “incredible,” saying if West “has places to go, let him do something else.” Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling also weighed in with some criticism of West, too, saying that “part of the reason the games are slower is because their offenses are so deep, and so good,” praising how many of today’s “hitters never give away at-bats.” If you’re interested, you can read more about West’s comments and these reactions here.

This latter point is the one I would make as well. It is a characteristic of good teams -- and the Yankees and Red Sox are both good -- that they have a lot of hitters who are very selective when it comes to choosing a pitch at which to swing. They’re also often good at fouling off pitches and extending at-bats, all of which helps tire the pitcher and increase their chances of succeeding. Sure, they step out a lot, but that’s part of the game, too -- i.e., finding one’s own rhythm and perhaps disrupting that of your opponent. There’s no clock in baseball, so all of this gamesmanship is essentially within the rules.

We can, of course, liken this situation to what we find in poker. In fact, the rhythm and/or pace of poker sometimes uncannily resembles that of a baseball game.

Each hand is like an at-bat, with every betting round another pitch in the sequence. Hands often resolve into heads-up confrontations, with the two players adopting “offensive” and “defensive” positions relative to one another not unlike that of a pitcher and hitter. (I recall the poker player Gabe Thaler, a former catcher, pursuing this comparison on an old ESPN WSOP broadcast, from 2004, I think -- anybody else remember that?)

And the good players -- like the good hitters -- never give away anything. They think before they act. Sometimes that means it takes longer to decide things, but that’s part of the game.

Unlike in baseball, one can “call the clock” in poker if the delays become too protracted. I suppose that’s what West is trying to do with his comments, in a way -- to try and get hitters back in the box more quickly and/or reduce those trips to the mound by catchers. I don’t believe this tactic is going to work very well, though. You can’t hurry baseball too much. If it’s going to remain baseball, that is.

Will probably try to watch some more baseball this weekend. I’ll also be following the action at the NAPT Mohegan Sun event. They completed Day 2 yesterday, with Jordan “iMsoLucky0” Morgan ending the day with the most chips of the 125 players (of the original 716) remaining. Between innings, I’ll be clicking over to PokerNews and the PokerStars blog for updates. I will also check in over at ESPN’s Poker Club for Andrew Feldman’s reports, as well as Tao of Poker for Dr. Pauly’s “dispatches.”

Have a restful weekend, everybody. With no hurrying.