Risk Versus Reward

I continue to lead in my Pigskin Pick’em pool, which means I’m necessarily locked in and following closely just about every NFL game each week. I’d be watching and checking scores anyway, but my motive for doing so has increased considerably thanks to the pool standings.

Amid all those missed extra points yesterday (which created a few interesting spots, strategy-wise), there were a few instances of coaches faced with key fourth-down decisions late in games. A couple stood out, both involving teams that were ahead and looking at a fourth-and-short with just a few minutes left.

One came late afternoon when the Los Angeles Rams were up 10-0 against the Miami Dolphins with six minutes and 45 seconds remaining. The Rams had a fourth-and-1 at the Miami 30-yard-line, and rather than go for it decided to try a 48-yard field goal that like those PATs ended up a miss (hitting the left upright).

Miami subsequently marched down the field to score a touchdown in less than three minutes, held the Rams to a three-and-out and got the ball back, then took just a minute-and-a-half to mount another TD drive to win 14-10. Rams coach Jeff Fisher was maligned somewhat afterwards for not going for the first down rather than try to stretch the lead from 10 to 13 -- certainly more so than would have been the case if L.A. had managed to hang on to win.

Another instance came in the night game between Washington and Green Bay. In that one the Redskins were up 29-24 and in fact there was exactly the same amount of time left -- six minutes and 45 seconds. In Washington’s case, they were on their own 41-yard line and facing a fourth-and-1. They decided to go for it, got a couple of yards and the first down via a quarterback sneak, then went on to score a TD themselves and more or less seal the game.

Of course, in the latter situation Green Bay’s offense was proving hard to stop for Washington (they’d scored TDs their last two possessions), so the desire to retain possession was higher there than was the case in the Rams-Dolphins game where Miami hadn’t scored a point in any of their 11 possessions. In any case, Washington coach Jay Gruden earned accolades for what was deemed a gutsy decision to go for it on fourth in that spot, although again it’s easy to imagine the decision being judged differently had it not worked out the way it did.

“Gruden was feeling risky all night,” writes ESPN, alluding both to the fourth-down try and Washington having gone for two-point conversions twice earlier (failing both times).

Meanwhile many noted the very conservative game plan followed by the Rams who had rookie QB Jared Goff making his NFL debut, with Fisher’s decision to try that field goal earning some censure for being too risk-averse. “Los Angeles could have won that game if Jeff Fisher was less conservative on fourth down late in the game,” concludes RamsWire, articulating a thought shared by many.

Neither of these fourth-and-1 decisions were unambiguous in terms of their reward. That is to say, making the first down didn’t guarantee victories, although certainly would meaningfully improve the team’s chance of winning the game. The risk each presented wasn’t cut-and-dry, either, although it appeared Washington faced a greater one with a smaller lead and worse field position.

I saw a stat not long ago stating that over the last 20 years nearly half of all NFL games ended up being “one score” games decided by seven points or less. Games finishing with margins of eight points up to 16 are also often still in doubt by the middle of the fourth quarter, which means the majority of NFL games present situations in which teams that are ahead face similar challenges to weigh risk versus reward when it comes to clock management and possession.

Like a player with a final table chip lead, such teams and coaches still often have to continue to take risks in order to increase their chances of winning. In other words, they usually can’t just “fold” their way to the win.

My frontrunner status in the pool is causing me to identify somewhat with this position. And the example presented by these coaches and their disparate ways of handling the endgame is making me recognize I shouldn’t become too conservative with picks going forward, since being overly risk-averse may lessen my chance at the reward of winning the sucker.

Photo: Advanced Football Analytics.

Living Through Another Cuba

Lot of focus on Cuba this week, what with President Barack Obama’s visit, the exhibition baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team, the Rolling Stones concert tonight, and other associated activities. While certainly historic, it’s hard to gauge in the moment whether these events are positive or not both for the Cuban people and for the United States’ relationship with the country going forward.

There’s much ambiguity on both sides here -- like watching a poker game play out without knowing either player’s hole cards nor getting to see any showdowns.

All of it is nonetheless very intriguing to follow, especially for someone who is already often reading and thinking about U.S. politics of the 1960s and so spends perhaps more time than most learning about the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s takeover, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the continued complicated responses by the U.S. to Cuba over subsequent years and decades.

The ouster of Fulgencio Batista’s regime -- officially occurring on January 1, 1959 -- also meant the end of the “Havana high life” culture marked by casinos, gambling, numerous nightclubs, and the significant influence of organized crime. It’s a scene memorably depicted in Sydney Pollack’s 1990 film Havana whose protagonist is an American poker player played by Robert Redford (which I wrote about here before).

Perhaps influenced by these recent posts about “poker’s precursors,” I found myself wondering a little bit today about the history of poker in Cuba. I’ve read that following Castro’s takeover playing cards were banned altogether by the communist regime, which would considerably mute the development of poker and other card games post-1959 (even if games were no doubt still played). But looking back to the 1950s and before, I wondered a bit about how poker was played on the islands, including what variants were popular.

The games appearing in Havana resemble games played in the U.S. during that time (e.g., we see Redford’s character playing five-card draw in the film). One would assume both draw and stud were the favored games during the first half of the century and before, with other games like the Spanish game of mus -- a game that turns up in several Central American countries -- undoubtedly also making an appearance during Cuba’s earlier history.

There’s another popular Cuban game called “cubilete” that is actually a dice-based game though involves poker-related elements. The dice are in fact marked “ace,” “king,” “queen,” “jack,” “gallegos,” and “negros” -- that’s the order they are ranked (i.e., A-K-Q-J-G-N). Players take turns rolling and trying to make high hands. I believe aces are wild, but I’m not up on other details of scoring and game play. (Some irresponsible, unresearched speculation perhaps suggests “cubilete” represented a way to play poker without cards.)

In any event, I will continue to follow this seemingly new chapter in Cuba’s story and U.S. relations with its neighbor to the south.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is often discussed as having been a kind of heads-up poker game between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev -- with the highest-stakes imaginable. I suppose the events of this past week might also be regarded as small-pot hands being played by a couple of wary opponents, with neither side appearing to go for much value just yet.

(That post title, of course, comes from the similarly-titled XTC tune, written at a time much closer to the crisis to which alludes -- in 1980 amid the ongoing Cold War -- than to today.)

Photo: “Sunset over Hotel Nacional, 2014,” LukaszKatlewa. CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Game Without the Game

Not get overly abstract here on a Friday afternoon, but I was mulling over this kind of half-formed idea this week and thought I’d share it before signing off for the weekend.

With poker -- and many other games and sports, for that matter -- you often hear references to the “game within the game.” You can think of specific examples of what I’m referring to; most of them will probably fall under the category of “metagame” considerations whereby players think in broader terms about setting up future plays, cultivating and then playing off of table images, and so on.

Certain recent discussions about poker and in particular the online game got me thinking about how poker itself operates as a “game within a game,” and that in some ways the “outer” or “contextual” game actually resembles poker itself. (I warned you I was going to become abstract.)

Online sites obviously want to attract and keep players, ideally encouraging a significant percentage of them to continue depositing the money which serves as a key element to the games themselves, and which importantly helps contribute to the rake taken from every cash game hand played and the fees charged for every real money tournament. The rake and those fees ensure that more money is lost than won overall, which thus helps ensure the rooms profit.

Theoretically speaking, it doesn’t have to be the case that more players lose than win. It could work out in such a way that a smaller percentage of players actually contribute most of the money that goes to the site -- that a higher percentage of players actually profit by playing.

But in practice that isn’t how it tends to go. I recall studies from several years back (during the “boom” years) pinpointing that in fact only something like 7% of online poker players tend to be profitable. Even if it were considerably more than that, it seems more likely than not that most who play do end up losing money they deposit rather than consistently profit and only withdraw. And that some percentage of those who lose are encouraged for various reasons to deposit again.

Stepping back from all of this, it’s hardly that insightful to point out that online poker sites are not unlike brick-and-mortar casinos where the effort to encourage gamblers to play games in which the players’ actually have a negative expectation. Some players will win at those games, some will lose, and in the end the casino will earn a profit. The same happens in poker, but the game’s skill element tends to influence who is doing the winning and who is doing the losing (more often than not).

Think for a moment of the pool of online poker players homogenously -- that is, as a single player rather than a bunch of individuals. As a group, they’re going to lose money and the room is going to profit. The more they play, the more they’ll lose and the more the room profits. The room, then, is trying to encourage this group -- this entity, if you will -- to do something that isn’t really in their interest (collectively speaking, that is).

As I say, it’s not that far removed from the way a casino tries to get players to play roulette, or a state tries to get its citizens to play the lottery.

There’s a “game,” then, going on between the sites and players, one that involves things like image, bluffing, “representing,” and other forms of indirect communication and/or deceit (depending on your point of view). The parallel from poker itself would be a player doing whatever is necessary to get an opponent to do what is not in that player’s self-interest -- e.g., checking or folding when holding better cards; calling, betting, or raising when holding worse cards.

Just something that occurred to me amid discussions of late about sites’ relationships to players, and the sometimes challenging to decipher “game without the game.”

Poker and Other Gambling Games

Recent developments with online poker have inspired conversations (again) about poker’s relationship to other gambling games, especially other casino games.

When I first became serious about poker and broadened my knowledge enough to appreciate first-hand its strategic complexity, it wasn’t long before I found myself becoming similarly serious about wanting to distinguish poker from other types of gambling which I was much less inspired to pursue. Most who come to poker not via those other gambling games but by other routes (as I did) probably experience something similar, if they become at all serious about the game.

I have to admit I feel differently today, though -- still convinced of why poker is distinct from those games, but much less energized by any special need to point out the significance of that difference.

When the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was suddenly sprung upon us a little over eight years ago, responses from the poker community included a lot of hopeful talk about “carve outs” and how poker somehow shouldn’t be considered “a game subject to chance” (to quote the UIGEA) -- even if, of course, it is. That “skill argument” continues to invigorate some including the Poker Players Alliance, the lobbying group created in response to the UIGEA, despite the fact that legally speaking the argument that poker isn’t entirely “subject to chance” hasn’t really had any major influence.

Sure, there have been occasional rulings by judges sympathetic to poker’s skill component, including that one from August 2012 in which a federal judge maintained poker “is not predominantly a game of chance” while throwing out a conviction for illegal gambling of someone who’d run a poker game out of a Staten Island warehouse. But a year later the ruling in that case was reversed, and it doesn’t seem any occasional declarations in courts acknowledging that it takes a little more know-how to win a hand of poker than to hit your number in roulette has ever mattered all that much as far as the law is concerned.

Meanwhile in Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware came the passage of online gambling laws that have made it possible for players within those states to play poker against each other (“intrastate”) while allowing for casino games, too. We in the poker community focus more on the poker side of things, but just like in live casinos, online poker is operating right alongside online slots, online craps, online blackjack, and so on. And relatively speaking -- also like in live casinos -- those other games are earning significantly more revenue than poker, to no one’s surprise.

Other recent developments with regard to online poker sites operating outside the U.S. have perhaps served to emphasize further poker’s connection to other gambling games, and I’m not just alluding to PokerStars recently following other poker sites to offer other casino games.

Games like the Jackpot Sit & Go tournaments on Full Tilt Poker and the Spin & Gos on Stars are still poker, of course, though incorporate elements from elsewhere in the casino like slots or the “wheel of fortune.” (Wrote a little about Spin & Gos here last month.) There are plenty of examples of video poker available online, too, a game that might be considered even more of a hybrid of poker and slots. Meanwhile something like live dealer casino holdem at Paddy Power actually changes poker into more of a blackjack-type game -- still incorporating some strategy, though it’s a game fairly distinct from traditional poker.

Makes me think a little of how you’ll often find dice wedged in there next to decks of cards inside a poker chip set. What are they doing there? Well, for one thing, they’re reminding you of traditional notions of poker being just another gambling game.

I still think it’s worth pointing out (when relevant) that poker is different from most gambling games, especially those in which you’re playing against the house rather than other players. But the game’s place in various cultures -- in the U.S., in other countries, and online -- has always been very closely aligned with other forms of gambling. And whenever poker gets pulled away from those games, it seems like it can never be for long before it gravitates back toward them again.

Love, Gambling, and Casanova

The Venetian adventurer and libertine Giacomo Giralamo Casanova’s legacy was such that to this day the mere mention of his name instantly evokes the art of making love. While Casanova lived and died just prior the advent of poker, his predilection for gambling also demonstrates the various seductions of card games, thereby suggesting more than a few connections between love and poker.

Born in Venice to actors in 1725, young Giacomo was destined to endure a childhood marked by abandonment. His father died when he was but eight, and he was sent away from his mother and siblings a year later to stay at a boarding house. Soon he became a gifted student, studying numerous subjects and earning a degree in law by age 17.

He was introduced early on to sex and romance, losing his virginity while still an adolescent. And he started gambling early, too, managing to accrue significant debts even as a teenager.

As a young adult, Casanova would begin a clerical law career and even for a short while was admitted as an abbé before scandals -- including debts that earned him a short stay in prison -- spelled the end of his association with the Catholic church.

He then tried a military career, although again his gambling helped curtail that pursuit after he lost most of his initial earnings at the faro tables. A failed try at being a musician followed before Casanova finally found himself a patron, thereby allowing him the freedom to engage with less restraint in his two favorite pursuits -- women and gambling.

Casanova’s adult years were marked by various escapades and travels throughout Europe, with numerous affairs -- some scandalous -- punctuating his days in Paris, Dresden, Prague, and Vienna. A return to Venice followed where he found himself mired in more scandal and another prison stay before embarking on another romance-filled romp throughout Europe.

As the 18th century came to an end and Casanova’s life was coming to a close he found himself alone and poor, working as a librarian in Bohemia. In his old age the longtime lover had an urge to chronicle his illustrious life, and so would spend his final years writing the 12-volume Histoire de ma vie where much of his amazing story has been preserved.

It is amid those 3,800-plus pages we learn of his prodigious sexual conquests, often cast as adventures with the author as hero while also serving as a kind of tutelage by Casanova to his reader in the art of seduction. All told Casanova recounts himself having affairs with more than 120 women, including one nun (who, he explains, propositioned him). He almost always conducted multiple liaisons at once, at apparently at one time had 20 different Parisian apartments with lovers residing in each.

And no, he never married.

His memoirs additionally relate the many different gambling games he and other Europeans of the day favored, foremost among them faro, but also including various card games like whist, quinze, basset, biribi, and primero, the latter often described as one of poker's precursors. As would be the case in the 19th century when poker came to America, cheating was prevalent in these games, and Casanova relates stories in which he, too, occasionally engages in dishonesty while gambling at cards.

In fact, the practice of deceit might be highlighted as a trait or element of Casanova’s unique “philosophy” that connects his sexual exploits and his repeated dalliances with Lady Luck.

When explaining the art of seduction to his readers, Casanova freely admits that while not all of his many brief relationships were based on lies, many at least began on false pretenses. “I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools” he wrote, alluding to the various cons he ran throughout his life. “As to the deceit perpetrated upon woman,” he asks his reader to “let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other.”

While Casanova clearly loved women -- and at times speaks of them with a kind of reverence that reveals his having considered them equals during an era when it went against the grain to do so -- he nonetheless recognizes how oftentimes his “victories” over them hinged upon his having outwitted them in some fashion. His interactions with men, including those against whom he gambled, in many cases went similarly.

However, while he insists deceit is simply part of the “game” of love and thus shouldn’t be considered especially noteworthy, he gladly accepts whatever judgment might be delivered upon him for his triumphs over men. When speaking of men he’s successfully duped, Casanova many times sounds like he could be writing a poker strategy text in which he’s advising readers about the benefits of targeting less-skilled opponents.

“I always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my snares,” he writes, “for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they challenge wit. We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool... in fact, to gull a fool seems to be an exploit worthy of a witty man.”

Of course, it should be noted that on the whole Casanova was not necessarily the most successful of gamblers, his career marked by wild swings both positive and negative, with his “tilting” at the tables sometimes proceeding as far as engaging opponents in duels with pistols. And like many poker players he was susceptible to chasing losses and becoming reckless when running well. “I had neither prudence enough to leave off when fortune was adverse,” he explains, “nor sufficient control over myself when I won.”

Casanova wasn’t uniformly victorious with the ladies, either, with a few failures occasionally damaging his status as a “player.” Most notable among these tales is his lengthy, unhappy pursuit of Marianne de Charpillon, a prostitute from France he encountered in London. In the end he’d squander many hours and significant sums over her without success, and like a successful poker player who suddenly meets with an unfortunate run of cards, his confidence was said to be shaken thereafter.

It would be around the middle of the 19th century -- well after Casanova’s death when poker had begun to emerge as a favorite card game -- that the Italian’s name would start to appear as a synonym for a well-skilled lover, as it still is today.

But Casanova’s life was more complicated than such usage might suggest. And in fact, his fascinating story provided numerous object lessons for lovers and gamblers alike.

Instant Games

“Congratulations!”

So said the grocery store manager or assistant manager or whoever it was manning the front counter. I had brought him a winning lottery ticket to redeem, and as he handed me my bounty -- a cool five bucks -- he was concluding our transaction with that one-word acknowledgment of my good fortune.

As I walked away, I realized how jarring his declaration had seemed. It failed to resonate with the usual “have-a-good-day”-style parting phrases I’d usually hear when departing the store, the goodbyes often additionally containing some form of thanks for my having shopped there. Something about the situation faintly echoed the feeling of cashing out chips after a session of poker, although there, too, it didn’t exactly fit as in that spot cashiers normally refrain from such felicitous statements, not knowing (usually) whether the customer has won or lost.

I wasn’t leaving the store, actually, as I needed to pick up a couple of items (light bulbs, milk) the cost of which would exceed my winnings. I slid the bill into my front pocket, mentally noting how I wouldn’t use it to make my purchase. I’d use a debit card instead, and hold onto the cash. My winnings.

As I passed through the aisles, I continued to meditate on my lottery experience.

I almost never play the lottery. Amid the “Mega Madness” from last spring I did end up buying two $1 tickets, one for myself and one for Vera. Neither ticket had won anything.

If you recall, that was when the prize for the multi-state Mega Millions lottery was being advertised as having ballooned up over $600 million (a record), and by the end the total was something like $656 million. Three winning tickets were ultimately sold for that one, with all three winners ultimately taking the “cash option” (i.e., getting paid all at once rather than in installments) and thus would split a total of $474 million.

So I can’t really say I’ve never played. And in this instance, I hadn’t even bought the ticket, but rather had been given it as a Christmas gift. It was a holiday-themed scratch-off game -- an “instant game” -- for which the largest possible prize was $100K and the lowest was $5. The overall odds for winning any prize were 1 in 3.97. As a poker player, I know better than to want to get my money in with those odds.

The price of the game had been $5, in fact, so I had won back the cost of the ticket. In other words, if my brother (who’d given me the ticket) had just given me five bucks as a gift, it would’ve worked out exactly the same.

Then again, by giving me the ticket he did give me something more than the cash I’d won. There was the mild anticipatory excitement that came with scratching off the little pictures of gift boxes to see if I’d won, plus another small bit of pleasure that came from actually winning even the smallest possible prize. Then came still more fun from later sharing the story of the ticket -- as mundane as it was -- with my brother and a few others.

“I won the lottery,” I had joked with Vera and others. “I am a winner!” And while the fellow at the grocery store was being sincere with his congratulations, there was something kind of tongue-in-cheek about it all, too, in his acknowledgment of my having successfully broken even on the game.

The process of cashing the ticket was a novel one for me, too, and I’m tempted to add that experience to the list of items that perhaps “enriched” the gift further for me (so to speak). Never having cashed one before, I had approached the counter with some sort of tentative, questioning address -- “Can I cash this here?” -- and was met with a nod and a swiftly-handled conversion of my piece of cardboard into a fiver.

During the brief period in between, I looked upon the other “games” available to “play,” that is, the other “instant games” people can purchase. I can’t help but use scare quotes, perhaps betraying my own, personal definition of a game as something that requires elements that in this case are not present (e.g., competition, skill or strength, etc.). There were about 15 varieties from which to choose. Looking on the North Carolina Education Lottery site, I see that in all there are more than 70 different “instant games” currently being offered, with tickets costing from $1 to $20.

There’s no legalized poker in the state, other than what’s being spread at a few tables up at Harrah’s Cherokee in the mountains. (There’s actually going to be a WSOP Circuit event there in April, a first for North Carolina.) Nor is there really much in the way of other (legal) forms of gambling, either, outside of the usual games in that casino. But the lottery is everywhere here in North Carolina. And in 42 other states and the District of Columbia, too.

And it’s so easy.

It was that latter thought that carried me through the rest of my visit to the grocery store -- the ease with which one can play the lottery, and how utterly trivial the process is by which one can win or lose money this way. I passed by the front desk as I left, moving toward the exit and into the path of the electric eye that would trigger the doors opening for me. There was a vending machine full of lottery tickets sitting just to the left of the doors, kind of resembling an oversized slot machine.

I realized the effort needed to pull that five-dollar bill from my front pocket and slide it into the inviting slot would be only slightly more than what was required of me to make the doors open. Just another small step, really.

But I resisted. I kept walking. Do I deserve congratulations? I don’t even know.

Gambling As an Object of Inquiry

Was talking with students this week about the 1974 film California Split, a movie I’ve written about here several times and like more and more every time I see it and discuss it with groups watching it for the first time.

Thanks both to Robert Altman’s unique directorial style and Joseph Walsh’s unorthodox script, the movie can be a challenge for students who aren’t necessarily used to watching creatively complex films. But the movie works especially well at the end of the course -- that is, after we’ve already explored in detail the many ways poker has been a part of American history and culture and thus come to appreciate many of the themes the movie addresses.

I won’t rehearse all of those themes again. Here are some earlier posts in which I do:

Poker Review: California Split

California Split and First Impressions

Selling Stories in California Split

As Joseph Walsh talks about in his 2008 memoir, Gambler on the Loose, his screenplay came largely from his own experiences as a gambler. Here’s a post in which I discuss Walsh’s funny (and also unorthodox) book.

As I talk about in that post, in the book Walsh portrays himself as a person wholly under the spell of gambling, paradoxically praising it as a means to give one’s life more profound meaning (“Getting shut out of the action is unthinkable. A living death!”) and acknowledging it as a sickness of sorts (understood and accepted by “willing victims”). And the movie smartly delves into this love-hate relationship with gambling, presenting viewers with “a journey through the pain and gain of gambling” (as Walsh describes California Split in his introduction).

Now I’m not really a gambler myself. I’ll play my small buy-in pools and maybe bet on a game once in a while when in a place where such a diversion is available. And sure, I understand and accept that playing poker is gambling, although not really in the same way betting on sports or playing the lottery or other forms of gambling are.

That said, when Walsh draws lines between “us” and “them” in his book, I have to admit I really belong over on the “them” side -- that is, with the non-gamblers. “Non-gamblers tend to look at gamblers like an amusing freak show,” writes Walsh. “We tend to look at them like they barely exist. We match their interest in us, with disinterest in them.”

He’s pegged me perfectly here. That is, as someone with what might be called an “academic” interest in gambling -- i.e., a curiosity about the people who gamble and the culture of gambling. When leading the discussion of California Split in class, it was hard for us not to talk about the character of Bill as an “addict” or someone with a “gambling problem.” Charlie, too, for that matter, although he appears to be much more comfortable with being a committed gambler.

I think the class and I kind of had to talk about the characters in this way because we’re basically all non-gamblers. That is to say, for those of us who aren’t always “in action,” there’s something kind of alien to us about those who always are. We have never really felt the need to gamble, which makes it seem all the stranger to us when we watch a movie or read stories about people who do have that need.

This morning I stumbled on an article about a woman in Australia who’d incredibly managed to lose $7.8 million playing slots online -- on the “online pokie machines,” as they call ’em down under. Now most of us will read a story like that and be puzzled how such a thing is even possible. Not only did she somehow manage successfully to steal money electronically more than a thousand times from her employer (she’s been found guilty of 1,410 instances of theft), but then she was able to lose all of those millions one spin at a time online, much of that time spent taken up with the business of chasing losses.

To go back to Walsh’s dichotomy of “non-gamblers” and “gamblers,” I think the latter group is perhaps able at least to understand such extreme behavior, perhaps even to identify with it to some extent (and in some cases). Meanwhile the former group finds it as baffling as other addictive behaviors with which they have little or no personal experience.

Still, some of us -- the non-gamblers -- are nonetheless fascinated. I suppose these stories about others’ willingness taking risks give us something by which to measure and consider our own risk-taking. For us, a “gambling problem” isn’t some sort of malady, but a puzzle to be solved.

Buddhist Monks Busted

Catch that news item over the weekend with the eye-catching headline “Monks Resign Over Poker Scandal”? Had to click on that, right?

Reading more, we learn that the monks were Buddhist, part of the Jogye order in South Korea. A video was surreptitiously shot of a group of monks -- leaders in the order, apparently -- playing poker. The video shows them in a hotel room sitting cross-legged around what looks like a bedsheet with chips and cards in the middle, smoking and drinking as they play, and appearing to laugh as one drags a pot.

Hey, at least they weren’t rubbing a laughing Buddha’s belly for good luck.

At first glance, it looks like just another private game. That said, according to one report “Seongho, a senior monk, said the stakes for the gambling were about $875,300.” Another article in The Korea Times says the money with which they were playing “is believed to be from donations from believers.” Also read that the group was engaged in a "marathon 13-hour game” in the Janseong hotel room, with the monks having gathered there for a memorial service.

Six of those who participated in the game have since resigned from the Jogye order. All of this is happening just a few days before South Korea celebrates “Chopail” or the birth of Buddha on May 28.

Apparently the game and the secret video are all part of a larger political struggle involving the Jogye order and its leadership, a big deal for the 10 million or so adherents of the order.

Not entirely sure about how it all fits together, but it sounds like this Seongho had been among the candidates to become head of the order a couple of years ago, but another monk, Jaseung, was elected. Seongho was eventually expelled from the order for defamation against its new leader, and subsequently brought a complaint against the order that included the gambling charge.

The article in The Korea Times explains that Seongho “claimed he found a USB drive containing the footage on the floor of his temple.” I don’t believe it has been made clear as yet who shot the video. I have seen references both to it having been from a hidden surveillance camera as well as the suggestion that it was shot by someone who was present at the game.

Meanwhile, the leader Jaseung has apologized to the Jogye adherents, saying that “his order will conduct a 108-bows ritual for 100 days starting next Tuesday to repent the misbehavior of the monks.” Who knows what will eventually happen with regard to the DOJ trying to resolve the cases associated with the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint, but I’m going to guess no bowing rituals will be part of any negotiated settlement.

Buddha -- i.e., the spiritual leader (Guatama), not the laughing one (Budai) -- was no fan of gambling. The Sigalovada Sutta, one of the scriptures in which Buddha imparts wisdom to a young man named Sigala, includes a discussion of gambling, there listed as one of six ways of squandering wealth.

According to Buddha, there are “six dangers of being addicted to gambling.” There's the fact that “in winning one begets hatred.” There’s the danger of losing wealth, of course, plus the additional danger that “in losing one mourns the loss of one’s wealth.” There’s the effect that being a gambler can have on your perceived character, since “one’s word is not accepted in court.” Gambling also leads to isolation, as “one is avoided by both friends and officials.” Finally, by gambling “one is not sought after for marriage because people say a gambler cannot support a wife.”

In practice, though, I think Buddhists are somewhat tolerant of recreational gambling (as opposed to the addictive variety). Meanwhile, with drinking alcohol or taking drugs there's less wiggle room; thus did those monks passing the bottle around in the video compound their troubles significantly. And I guess Buddha also talked about monks being forbidden from handling money at all -- which is obviously happening in the poker game -- although that's not really a rule followed by monks today.

Interesting stuff, and as full of political intrigue, possible corruption, and church-and-state conflict as any scandal on this side of the globe.

Mega Madness

My dad is a retired physics professor. I’ve mentioned him before here, including once in a post titled “Physicists & Poker” in which I pointed out how when I was a kid watching Road Runner cartoons, he couldn’t resist stepping in whenever Wile E. Coyote ran off of a cliff and hung for a moment in mid-air before plummeting downward.

Dad could never allow such a blatant disregard of the law of gravity to go by without making sure his kid understood the folly of what he was seeing. I was exaggerating just a little with that story, but it is nonetheless indicative of how matter-of-fact Dad is. I mean really, he’s a very grounded guy. (Rimshot.)

As such, Dad has little patience for the lottery. Our state (North Carolina) was pretty much the last one on this side of the country to give in and allow its citizens to play the lottery, like around 2006 or so. If asked, Dad will proudly point out he’s never once bought a lottery ticket. Actually he’ll occasionally point that out even if not asked, if something inspires him to do so.

“A tax on the dumb,” he calls it, knowing that it’s never a +EV game to play. And while he’s not really a poker player he appreciates the huge difference between a game like poker in which one really does stand a chance of winning -- especially if one is skilled -- and the guessing game that is the lottery.

Was thinking about Dad this week as I read about the Mega Millions, the big multi-state lottery, having grown to its largest jackpot ever. Actually, we’re now talking about the largest lottery in the history of the U.S., with the Mega Millions having rolled 18 times since it was last won back in January.

The next drawing is tomorrow (Friday) at 11 p.m. Eastern time. Right now the estimated prize is about $540 million, crushing the previous all-time high of $390 million split by two players back in March 2007. It sounds like the winner could either take a single payment of $360 million or so or get $19-20 million a year for the next 26 years. (Those figures will probably go up over the next 36 hours, I imagine.)

I read with interest an article tweeted by my buddy F-Train yesterday in which a computer science researcher broke down the relative expected value of a Mega Millions ticket, showing how it changes as the jackpot grows. The article was penned back in January 2011 at a time when the Mega Millions had also ballooned large enough to get the attention of lots of folks.

According to the author, Jeremy Elson, the expected value of a $1 ticket actually peaks right around the point that the jackpot hits the $420 million mark, then slides back down again from that point forward. He’s taking all sorts of factors into consideration, including the possibility of multiple winners, non-jackpot prizes, taxes, and so forth. In other words, we’re already on the downslope of that graph now that the jackpot has pushed up over $540 million.

However, even at its peak the expected value of a $1 ticket only reaches 69.3 cents according to Elson. “Thus,” he concludes, “Mega Millions tickets are never a rational investment, no matter how big the jackpot grows.”

He adds a disclaimer concerning professional poker player friend of his who plays the lottery and then declares the cost of tickets as tax-deductible. For him, the peak point of the graph actually sneaks up over $1 for a time, but Elson kind of dismisses that as not too terribly significant to the larger point that the lottery is no way to invest your cabbage.

In fact, he ends on an anecdote that sounds a heckuva lot like one my Dad likes to tell, the one suggesting your chances of getting killed driving to the store to buy a lottery ticket are much, much greater than your chances of buying a winner.

“That’s why I plan to walk,” jokes Elson as a final punch line.

I’m kind of thinking I might just walk up to the corner and get one myself. However, I’ll be looking up as I go, you know, to make sure there aren’t any genius coyotes falling from the sky.

Wish me luck. Also, please don’t anyone tell Dad what I’m doing.

Guessing Games

As in past years, I’ve joined a pool this fall in which I’m attempting to pick winners of all NFL games. No picking against the spread in this one, just winners. Adds a little fun to the game watching, which I’m doing anyway.

So far things have gone reasonably well and I’m tied for first in the pool, having accurately predicted 98 of 145 winners going into tonight’s game between the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers. Almost getting two out of every three correct, a decent rate comparatively speaking.

In fact, out of all the hundreds of thousands of folks picking games over in the ESPN Pigskin Pick ’em game, the absolute best of the bunch in picking the non-spread games has only gotten 109 of them right. Which I suppose shows that even the most skillful prognosticator can’t do much better than to pick winners in three of every four games.

I’ve written here before about how generally speaking I am not much of a sports bettor. I’ve placed a few bets here and there on games while in Vegas, but only rarely and never for more than a few bucks.

That said, I certainly appreciate how sports betting can involve genuine skill. Or at least knowledge. Because even just picking straight-up winners in NFL games requires at least some familiarity with the teams if one hopes to do better than what one might get by just randomly guessing. Or pursuing some idiosyncratic “system”.

The relative skill involved in sports betting actually came up in that response earlier this month by the U.S Department of Justice to the motion to dismiss the charges filed by Black Friday defendants John Campos and Chad Elie.

Was talking some about that in last Friday’s post -- how one of the arguments made by the defendants was to suggest poker didn’t fall under the heading of “illegal gambling” as defined in the Illegal Gambling Business Act or the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, and how the DOJ in its response has taken up the opportunity to clarify their position that yes, indeed, poker is illegal gambling.

In their motion to dismiss, the defendants argued that neither the IGBA nor UIGEA does an adequate job defining what “illegal gambling” is. They then go on to try to show how poker shouldn’t be considered such because it is unlike other gambling games in which “the bettor has no role in, or control over, the outcome.” (They make other points, of course, responding to more than just the charges for violating the IGBA and UIGEA.)

In response, the DOJ has pointed out that both the IGBA and UIGEA are meant to leave the business of defining “illegal gambling” to the states, not to come in and “federalize some kinds of gambling that are outlawed by states but not others.”

The government’s response then discusses how even sports betting affords the bettor a “role in, or control over, the outcome.” We can’t control the games, obviously. But we can control how we bet on them, and our judgments there can involve skill (says the DOJ).

“Sports bettors have every opportunity to employ superior knowledge of the games, teams and the players involved in order to exploit odds that do not reflect the true likelihoods of the possible outcomes,” they argue. “Indeed, academics who have argued that poker should not be treated as a form of illegal gambling on the grounds that it is a ‘game of skill’ make the same argument with respect to sports betting. Ultimately, the outcome of the bets that poker players make on the cards, just like the outcome of the bets on sporting events [sic].”

I say “sic” because there’s obviously a verb missing in that last sentence. But you get the gist, I trust. The DOJ is conceding that sports betting can be considered to include an element of skill -- can even be regarded as a “game of skill” -- while at the same time thought of as gambling (or “illegal gambling”). And that poker can, too.

Later on the response the DOJ defends the UIGEA more specifically against charges of vagueness. Speaking of that phrase “game subject to chance” that appears in the UIGEA to help indicate what exactly “unlawful internet gambling” is, the response explains how an earlier draft of the UIGEA had phrased it “game predominantly subject to chance” (original emphasis), but the adverb was removed precisely to ensure that games like poker (which do involve some skill) would be covered.

In other words, pretty much any betting game you can think of that we can play online is going to be covered here, say the feds. That includes totally gambly ones, and the ones in which you do need some smarts to succeed long term. Any game in which there is at least some chance involved.

Oh, except for betting on horse racing. And fantasy sports. And lotteries. And other “educational games.” And whatever else the government decides is cool.

Like we can reasonably predict that.

The Search for a System

Am struggling thus far in my NFL pick’em pool. In three weeks I’ve sunk close to the bottom of the 40-plus entrants after a sad stretch of pedstrian prognosticatin’.

We are just picking winners (not versus the spread), and I was correct on 10 of 16 the first week, but then went a measly 8-8 both of the last two weeks.

Have been kidding around on Twitter some about employing various “systems” for picking the games. One was to go by the relative height of the teams’ mascots; e.g., Giants are obviously taller than Panthers, so pick New York over Carolina, etc.

Was just joking, of course. That is to say, I picked those first two weeks “straight” -- i.e., went by what I thought I knew about the 32 teams thus far in the young season and chose those I legitimately thought would win.

Still, got some funny responses, including this one from @AtlantaMJ:








As the weekend rolled around last week, I was looking over the games and realized I had little feel for picking them, other than simply to go with favorites. That’s essentially what I’d done for Week 2, and it didn’t do very well. So I threw out a line on Twitter about my struggles, and the Poker Grump responded with the suggestion to pick teams based on their overall weight.

He was kidding, too, but for fun I found a site that listed each team’s average weight per player, then checked to see how the picks would go. Realizing there was really only a couple of games where I’d probably have chosen differently, I decided to go with the system, which I eventually dubbed “LBS” (the Largest Behinds System).

In all 16 games, I picked the teams that had the higher average weight per player. Like I say, the picks actually came reasonably close to what I’d have done otherwise. In fact, there were only two games on the entire schedule that I know for certain I would have picked differently. I would not have picked Atlanta to beat New Orleans, nor would I have picked Dallas to beat Houston.

As it happened, using LBS helped me get both of those games correct.

After the 1 p.m. games I was 7-2 and feeling pretty smug. But I ended up being on the wrong side of most of those close games during the 4 p.m. slot, then missed both the night games on Sunday and Monday to end up 8-8 again.

This week the PokerGrump was suggesting picking teams according to the relative position of the cities; i.e., going with all of the teams whose cities are north of their opponents, or vice-versa. He determined that during Week 3 the northernmost teams went 10-6, while during Week 2 the southernmost teams went 11-5.

“So clearly the trick is going to be figuring out in advance which weeks are ‘north’ weeks and which are ‘south’ weeks,” the PokerGrump concluded, adding (with tongue still in cheek), “But other than that little glitch, it appears to be a foolproof system.”

My response was that all he needed to do was develop a system for determining that and he’d be set.

I think I’ll go back to trying my best to make “straight” picks this week, and hopefully will make up some ground on my fellow forecasters.

I like watching NFL regardless, and get an extra kick out of having a team to root for in every single game. But as I’ve said before here, I’d hate to have serious money riding on any of these games.

Am much more comfortable looking for good spots to get my money in during a poker hand, where I can know with great certainty whether I’m a favorite or not, than relying on, say, Sebastian Janikowski to make a 32-yard field goal with time running out to win.

The fact is, in poker one can rely on “systems” -- as long as they relate to the game, of course, and are not built upon silly superstitions and other extraneous factors that are not relevant. Simply knowing correct pot odds is a “system,” really, the knowledge of which can give one an edge over an opponent who is less familiar with such.

Incidentally, Janikowski, the Oakland kicker who missed that potential game-winner versus Arizona last week, is the highest-paid kicker in the NFL, having just signed a contract in the offseason that netted him $16 million over the next four years. And I picked the Raiders, ’cause, well, they weigh a little more than Arizona.

Hmm... now that I think about it, I believe Janikowski is the heaviest place-kicker in the NFL at 250 lbs.

Oh, man... I wuz doomed!

Gambling on Grades

Little time today, I’m afraid, to do much more than point you to an article of mine over on the Betfair poker site that went up today --> “Cash for Grades?”

You might have read something this week about a website -- called Ultrinsic -- that is allowing U.S. college students (at 36 different schools) to place real money wagers on the grades they receive in their courses. No shinola!

The story came via the Associated Press and got picked up by dozens of papers and websites across the U.S.

One element of the story of particular interest to poker players (I think) was the discussion of whether or not the site -- based in New York -- was, in fact, offering “online gambling.” Our buddy I. Nelson Rose, the law professor and gambling law expert, actually turns up in the article to opine on the issue with regard to Ultrinsic.

As you’ll see if you go read my article, I’m no fan of the idea of college students betting on their grades. Obviously I’m not opposed to gambling per se, but I don’t like the idea of artificially adding this extra significance to grades (which I already think are made out by many to be more significant than they should be).

Besides, the site itself also looks more than a little sketchy to me. Check it out if you are curious, and tell me what you think.

And then have a good weekend!

Did Gambling on the Super Bowl Alter Your Brain?

Really enjoyed that there Super Bowl yesterday. Was mostly just hoping for a good, competitive game, which after the first quarter didn’t appear was gonna be the case. But the Saints were solid from the second quarter onward, and definitely deserved the win. Great fun watching, capping an entertaining season of football viewing for yr humble gumshoe.

I did not bet on the game nor did I go for any of the many prop bets (longest field goal, length of national anthem, coin flip, etc.), though I enjoyed following on Twitter the travails of others who did. The Super Bowl is, of course, the single most gambled on contest in sports. Saw estimates ranging from $2 billion to as high as $10 billion being wagered worldwide on the game. Hard to know for sure, of course, since so much of that betting is not necessarily on the up and up, but it is safe to say a ton of cabbage changed hands yesterday based on what happened down in Miami.

For many people the Super Bowl is the one time all year when they will gamble on sports. The Super Bowl also often becomes a favorite time of year for pundits to opine about gambling, generally speaking. Among those articles one caught my eye over the weekend on the Fox News site, one titled “Super Bowl Gambling May Alter Your Brain.”

The article appeared in the “Science/Technology” section, so I guess what we’re looking at there is technically reporting, not editorializing. Actually, it probably doesn’t qualify as either, really. The piece basically just compiles quotes from three sources as a way of trying to support that sensationalistic headline.

First, the author quotes a junior faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia pointing out that while most believe “gambling is enjoyable and harmless,” for some “it is as destructive as being addicted to drugs.” No argument there, but that doesn’t really speak to the idea that our brains are changing.

The next source quoted is Kyle Siler, author of that study on online poker that appeared in The Journal of Gambling Studies. I wrote a few weeks ago about Siler’s article, which he titled “Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker,” mainly noting how Siler’s findings got muddled by USA Today in its reporting. The Fox piece similarly misrepresents Siler’s study, suggesting that it “showed that the more hands of poker someone plays, the higher the chances that he’ll walk away with smaller profits.”

I read the study and it actually says nothing at all like that. After pumping 26.9 million hands into Poker Tracker, Siler did find that the players with higher win rates were not the ones who won the most hands, percentage-wise. Then he offered some speculations about why that might be the case, including suggesting that winning small pots might gird one against the pain of losing big ones. But Siler does not suggest playing more hands leads to winning less -- rather, his main point (the one that keeps getting misrepresented) is that winning more hands does not directly correlate to winning more money.

A more accurate summary of Siler’s study -- one that sticks more closely to the text of his article as well includes a real interview with Siler (and not just a quote-grab) -- appears over at Casino Online. Some interesting discussion there about this “counterintuitive incentive structure” Siler says characterizes poker, as well as some further talk about the online game, if you are interested.

Getting back to the Fox News piece, though, we’re still not talking about how the brain works yet. Only the third source quoted in the piece offers anything along those lines, a researcher named Luke Clark who works at the Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge.

Last year Clark published a study in the academic journal Neuron that showed that when a person gambles, the brain responds similarly to near losses as it does to wins. That is, Clark looked at MRIs of people gambling and found the same parts of the brain appeared stimulated when they came close and lost as when they won. Clark’s study, titled “Gambling Near-Misses Enhance Motivation to Gamble and Recruit Win-Related Brain Circuitry,” concluded that these near misses actually “invigorate gambling through anomalous recruitment of reward circuitry,” increasing the desire to gamble despite the lack of monetary reward.

As he told the Fox interviewer, “a near miss is a signal you’re acquiring the skill, so it makes sense that your brain processes [it] as if [it] were a win.” This is even true, says Clark, when dealing with gambling games that are nothing but chance-based like slot machines (which were used in his study).

All very interesting, although if we go back to that headline, if gambling does “alter your brain” it sounds like it only does so temporarily -- not quite like the way, say, drugs or physical trauma might permanently damage one’s brain as the article’s headline seems to imply.

I do think Clark is probably on to something there with regard to the way coming close and losing can increase one’s desire to try again. But I also think one can easily go too far with talk about how gambling can “alter your brain.” Saying that suggests a greater than temporary change, which I don’t think Clark is necessarily saying. Such a claim also perhaps might encourage dubious arguments questioning the culpability of problem gamblers, too.

In fact, I’d compare what Clark is saying to the temporary “pleasure” I received from simply watching the game last night (without betting on it). I guess you could say my brain was momentarily altered by the experience. That cold medicine I took during the evening also probably altered my brain for awhile, too. But I think this morning my brain is pretty much the same as it was yesterday when I woke up.

Or maybe that’s just what my brain is telling me to say.

The More Cowbell System

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times how I’m participating in an NFL pool this year, Pauly’s Pub. The league name comes from its commissioner, the Rt. Hon. Dr. Pauly. It’s a straight-up “pick ’em” pool -- meaning everyone picks winners for all the games (i.e., not against the spread).

I started the year slowly with my entry -- “More Cowbell” -- then had a nice stretch of four weeks or so during which I got back into contention. However, with three weeks to go I am now a longshot to make the money (i.e., the top four spots out of 40). I’m currently tied for eighth, but am five games behind the two teams tied for third. Would be remarkable somehow for me to gain that much ground over the last 48 games, I think.

Overall this year I’ve picked 143 of 208 games correctly. That’s just 68.75% overall, although better than almost 96% of the tens of thousands participating in ESPN’s Pigskin Pick’em game. My worst week was Week 7, when I only picked a miserable 7 of 14 correctly. My best came the following Week 8, when I chose the right team in 11 of 13 games.

Kind of interesting to see that of all of entries on ESPN, the absolute best anyone has done is 158. That’s basically just getting one more correct per week than I have. The top entry in Pauly’s Pub, “Fear the Ginger,” a.k.a. Lance Bradley (Bluff Magazine Editor-in-Chief), has hit an impressive 155. He appears to have locked the sucker up, as our buddy Julius Goat (“Some Jive-Ass Slippers”) is in a distant second with 149.

We’re all searching for a system, I suppose. Except for those who have already discovered theirs. For example, if I understood a series of tweets Mr. Goat sent out last week correctly, he makes his picks following a complicated rubric based on the relative fear induced by team names.

Topping the list as the least threatening names (according to JG) are the Browns (“‘The Browns In the Superbowl’ sounds like a euphemism. Not a good sign”), the Cardinals (“only intimidating if you are a seed”), and the Chargers (“once was much stronger, but in the age of cell phones and laptops it has downgraded to wussy accessory”). Search his Twitter timeline for more. (And for even more grins, start following.)

I’m not much for gambling on sports, really. Not too long ago I wrote a post here called “Confessions of a Non-Gambler” in which I explained how poker actually tended to diminish rather than encourage whatever small urge I might have had to wander over to the sports book and place a bet. The utter lack of control -- which I know some enjoy immensely -- is what tends to make sports betting less fun for me.

That said, I’m digging having a rooting interest in every single game this year. I’m an NFL fan anyway, and can thus be engaged no matter who is playing or what the situation. But this year I’m finding myself living or dying with every friggin’ game. Whether I miraculously make the cash or not, the increased fun I’ve had following games was most certainly worth more than the modest entry fee.

Thus, relatively inconsequential games like that Detroit-Cleveland epic from Week 11 in which the Browns (whom I picked) lost on the last play 38-37 now stand out in my mind as the most memorable of the year. So do other, more significant games like that New England-Indianapolis debacle from Week 10 in which Belichick crazily went for that fourth down late. (Had the Pats there, I did.)

But I’ve won my share of games on last-second plays, too. Much like the percentages in poker, such things tend to even out, I guess.

Not surprisingly, I’ve done best when trying to predict games involving the league’s worst teams. Have only missed picking games involving the St. Louis Rams (1-12) and Detroit Lions (2-11) a single time all year. (And, as mentioned, could’ve been perfect with Detroit thus far if not for that game in which they beat the Euphemisms.) Also doing well with the two remaining undefeated teams, the Indianapolis Colts (13-0) and New Orleans Saints (13-0), having only picked against them twice each. Of course, I assume most everyone has done well with those teams.

Meanwhile, I’ve guessed incorrectly seven times when picking games involving the surprising Cincinnati Bengals (9-4), the uneven Jacksonville Jaguars (7-6), and the disappointing Pittsburgh Steelers (6-7). I also have missed seven games involving the hard-to-figure San Francisco 49ers (6-7), although one of those was a Thursday game I forgot to pick. (Did get the Niners right last night, though. Woot!)

So, fellow NFL prognosticators... how have you done? Let me know. Meanwhile, I have some injury reports to study.

Confessions of a Non-Gambler

I am a huge basketball fan, especially college, and so always follow the NCAA tournament fairly closely. Used to play a lot of hoops, which I think makes the game all the more interesting to watch. Haven’t played so much over the last few years, although every now and then I will come out of retirement to sink the odd fifty-footer.

I also would generally always join a pool or two, sometimes expending a lot of effort during Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday deciding how to fill out them brackets, then -- usually -- watching my carefully-calibrated prognostications all rapidly turn to dust by Thursday evening.

I recall particularly enjoying one variation in which one was rewarded with bonus points for picking upsets correctly, with the stakes going up with each round (including the bonuses). Also, you didn’t fill out the whole sucker beforehand, but picks were made before each round, meaning you were never really out of it on Thursday. (But you could be toast by Saturday, I think.)

It’s been a few years, though, since I’ve bothered with the brackets. I did half-heartedly fill out one over on ESPN at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, and see this morning I’m in 4,268,437th place heading into the second day of play. Sounds about right.

While I’ve always been a sports fan, I never took much interest in sports betting, and I think since getting into poker I find myself even less inclined to gamble in that way than before. I know for many the opposite is true, with poker playing encouraging the desire to bet on sports or engage in other games of chance. Probably more so if one is a live player and thus usually not that far from the sports book and everything else the casino has to offer. But even online it isn’t that hard to click on over to the Bodog Sportsbook or other such places to lay yr moneys down.

For me, though -- and perhaps for many others, too -- poker satisfies whatever “gamble” is in me just fine.

In Gambler on the Loose (2008), Joseph Walsh’s whimsical collection of autobiographical essays-slash-prose poems, Walsh tosses out dozens and dozens of maxims about gambling -- some uncanny in their precision and apparent accuracy, some obscure to the point of impenetrability, most hiliarious. I’ll quote just one:

“When it comes to handicapping, keep in mind you are handicapped.”

Of that I am acutely aware whenever I have tried -- in earnest -- to predict the outcome of a sports contest. Talk about a “game of partial information”!

In any event, I hope everyone has a good weekend watching all those games of partial information in high definition.

Getting Down to the Nuts & Bolts

Last week my buddy Tim Peters thoughtfully sent along a copy of this nifty little volume called The Poker Encyclopedia put together by Elkan Allan and Hannah Mackay. Hardback, bound in green felt (like a poker table!). I might write more about it once I’ve had some time to peruse it further, though I’ve had fun thus far finding out new terms and enjoying the witty prose in the various entries. (If yr curious, Tim reviewed this one for Card Player back during the summer, and you can read his review here.)

When I read the entry for “Nuts, The” I realized (with some surprise) that I’d never come across this particular explanation for the term’s origin. Or at least if I had, I hadn’t remembered it.

After The Poker Encyclopedia explains that the nuts are “the best possible hand” and thus “by definition, unbeatable,” there comes the little explanation of how the term came to be:

“The phrase evolved in the frontier states of the nineteenth century, when chips or cash were only some of a huge number of goods that could be wagered on the poker table.

If a player got so deeply embroiled in a hand that he’d run out of funds, he would often end up betting his horse and wagon, which were represented in the pot by the nuts and bolts of the wagon wheels themselves, which had been removed. Needless to say, the table stakes ruling nowadays protects the problem gambler from staking their wagon, and it tends not to happen anymore.”

There’s a taste of that wit to which I was referring. Fun stuff. Like I say, for some reason I’d missed that story about poker players in the old West bringing nuts and bolts to the table, and when I read it here it sounded like one of those “Liars’ Club” kind of too-good-to-be-true tales. Have hunted around on the intertubes some, though, and it does appear at least to be a fairly well-known explanation of the term’s origin.

The “Nuts” entry made me think of a short conversation I’d had last week with a co-worker, a fellow I’ve referred to here before as Leonard Lapchuck. He’s the one colleague with whom I’ll occasionally share stories from my poker life, something I generally prefer to keep to myself otherwise. He’s a thoughtful guy and a good friend, a person with whom I have a lot of common ground when it comes to the big questions -- you know, about life, the universe, and everything.

Leonard enjoys hearing my stories about playing, going to the World Series of Poker, writing, and the like even though he doesn’t play poker or gamble himself. (I suspect sometimes he gets a vicarious thrill from some of these tales, although in my mind they ain’t nearly as wild and exciting as he might imagine them to be.) In the past I was never too specific with him about the precise stakes for which I play, although I’d always made clear to him that it was just “nickels and dimes.” I mentioned something to him a month or so ago about having played a hand with a forty-dollar pot, and he immediately recognized it as small change, “like what you’d play for in the Friday night game” (I think he said).

In other words, Leonard understands well I’m not risking the wagon.

Anyhow, last week Leonard and I were discussing the various “midnight rulemaking” and other moves being made by the Bush administration as it says goodbye to the White House, and I mentioned how the finalization of the regulations for the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 had been one of those last-minute moves. I briefly explained to Leonard what the UIGEA was and how it has (and could possibly further) affect my playing online poker.

I don’t know why I am surprised when Leonard does this, but his reply kind of took me off-guard.

“Yeah, well, I think that’s actually a good thing,” he said. “Anything to make it harder to for people gamble is something I’m in favor of.”

He explained to me again -- as he’d done before -- how he himself had what he considered an addictive personality, and thus he felt as though if he were to get into something like online poker he wouldn’t be able to curb the desire to gamble more and more.

Setting aside the whole “is poker like other forms of gambling?” question, listening to Leonard analyze himself and then apply his findings to society as a whole made me think about the motives of those who have championed the UIGEA and other anti-gambling measures. As Barney Frank has pointed out repeatedly, the issue is most certainly primarily a moral one for most. But I wonder if it also stems from an overall pessimistic view of human nature, one that insists we, as humans, are inclined to hurt ourselves and thus need to avoid situations in which it becomes easier for us to satisfy that self-destructive urge.

Even though I often myself tend in that direction -- i.e., in the direction of having a basically dim view of human nature -- I suppose I’m actually more optimistic than that. Then again, perhaps I’m doing just what Leonard did, namely, basing my read of others on my understanding of myself as someone who is not inclined toward self-destruction.

Or bringing the nuts and bolts to the table.