Book News: Poker & Pop Culture Now Available!

Checking in again to let everyone know my book Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game is now out! No more preordering and waiting... order it today and you’ll have it right away.

I received some author copies a short while back, and earlier this week I got a copy of the e-book from D&B Poker as well. Here is a short video that provides a glimpse of both -- take a look:

Valerie Cross also wrote a nice piece about me and the book for PokerNews last week. Check it out: “Martin Harris Shares Inspirations for New Book ‘Poker and Pop Culture.’”

Right now you can order the paperback from Amazon, and I imagine the e-book version is going to show up there soon as well. Meanwhile both the paperback and e-book can be ordered at the D&B Poker site. In fact, if you get the e-book from D&B, we’ve added a special bonus “appendix” that includes a list of “The Top 100 Poker Movies” with summaries, memorable quotes, and links to the films’ IMDB entries. (The appendix won’t be included with the e-book if you get it on Amazon.)

Also coming in the near future will be an audio book. Last month I spent many hours in a studio recording the book, and before too long that ought to start showing up as well both on the D&B site and Amazon.

Here are some places online where I’ve found you can buy the book:

D&B Poker

Amazon

Apple Books

Books-A-Million

Barnes & Noble

Book Depository

Target

ThriftBooks

Poker & Pop Culture is also on sale right now at the D&B Poker booth at the World Series of Poker there in the halls of the Rio. I’ll be heading out there next week for a visit, and I’ll surely spend some time hanging out there at the booth, too.

As I say in the video (and have talked about here on the blog), the book provides both a history of poker and a history of how poker has been represented in American popular culture -- i.e., movies, television, music, fiction, drama, plays, literature, and so on. Thus the book not only tells you when and where and how poker has been played over the last two centuries, but also when and where and how poker has been portrayed, too, and how those portrayals have influenced opinions about poker and the game’s significance to America.

There to the left is a picture of the list of the book’s chapters. It took me a while to settle on this way of organizing the book, and in fact once I did I had this piece of paper posted by my desk -- kind of a way to keep that “bird’s eye view” before me as I wrote.

As you can see, each chapter covers a particular place where poker can be found, with that idea being applied broadly to refer to locations in history (e.g., the Old West, the Civil War, etc.), in media (movies, television, music), in society (business, politics), in time (the past, the future) and in literal locations (homes, clubs, casinos).

The book is roughly chronological, starting with poker’s origins and ending with discussions of the game in contemporary contexts. But what I’ve really tried to do is create a kind of “geography” for poker with each chapter highlighting a different place for the reader to visit where poker exists. That includes real places, made-up ones, and many combining fact and fiction.

It’s a pretty complicated story, really. One theme that emerges fairly quickly in the book is how poker occupies this very paradoxical place in America as a game both beloved and condemned. There are just as many examples in popular culture of poker being romanticized and celebrated as there are examples of it being censured and demonized.

I’m not really an unrelenting “cheerleader” for poker in the book, having chosen instead to try to be somewhat objective as I chronicle and interpret all of these examples of poker from American history and culture. That said, I think just by writing a book like this I’m obviously taking the position of someone who thinks the game is worth studying and of historical importance.

It’s definitely satisfying to have reached this point in the book-making process. Of course, there’s also that difficult sense of “letting go” while knowing I might have said more, or said things differently -- something akin to ending a poker session knowing that while you did your best, there were still hands in which you might have made different (and possibly better) decisions. (To mitigate that feeling, I hang onto the idea of a revised, expanded edition down the road.)

Thanks to those who have picked up the book already, and thanks in advance to those who plan to do so later. And to you, reader of Hard-Boiled Poker, who inspired me more than you realize to take this interest in the game and writing about it in this direction.

Down the JFK Rabbit Hole

Over the last several years I’ve spent an unexpected amount of time rooting around the John F. Kennedy assassination rabbit hole. As have many, and as many more will continue to do for a long, long time.

It could’ve only happened one way, right? There’s a single, unequivocal reality down in that rabbit hole somewhere. Has to be, even if I don’t expect there’s enough time in this lifetime to dig deep enough to find it.

I became piqued in part because of a growing curiosity about Richard Nixon’s life and career, an interest that necessarily had me also wanting to read and learn more about U.S. politics and government from the end of WWII through the mid-1970s. That meant learning more about Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and, of course, Kennedy.

The 50th anniversary of the assassination further ignited my inquisitiveness, in particular with all of the media coverage of the event (a lot of which got renewed attention in late November 2013). You can more or less relive the entire sequence right through the funeral in dozens of different ways now via YouTube, if you like. Additionally, it’s not hard at all to find most of the contemporary reporting on the event in newspapers, magazines, not to mention those first few books that began to emerge in the following years.

I’ve done enough reporting of my own (both about poker and otherwise) to be fascinated by the challenge journalists faced to report on the assassination as it was occurring, as well as what followed (including Lee Harvey Oswald’s killing by Jack Ruby). And as most know, the reporters themselves became a big part of the story during those four days in Dallas.

I’ll admit that by now I’ve become so familiar with all of the reporting and the early shaping of the story of the JFK assassination it has become like a song I’ve heard hundreds of times. Additional deep-diving has me in the position of being acquainted with a lot of the supporting cast in the crazily complicated story, although I wouldn’t claim to possess the sort of granular level of knowledge of those who’ve spent lifetimes studying-slash-obsessing over the event.

I’ve read The Warren Report, a.k.a. The Official Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It’s an amazing narrative, actually, one that reads a bit like a faith-based text deliberately designed to reassure and comfort.

Along the way hundreds of complications arise that potentially challenge the Commission’s central arguments that (1) Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, that (2) he fired three shots (one missing, two inflicting all wounds on Kennedy and Governor John B. Connally), and that (3) the Commission found no evidence of a conspiracy involving Oswald and/or Jack Ruby and others. However after each such challenge is acknowledged it is immediately declared invalid or inconclusive, which has a reassuring effect upon those inclined to agree with those central arguments while agitating those who are not.

I’ve also read the Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives that was produced in 1979 following a couple of years’ worth of study and investigation. Whereas the Warren Report has the effect of putting one’s mind at ease, the also flawed and incomplete HSCA report has precisely the opposite effect, inspiring suspicion and doubt about the Warren Commission’s conclusions without really offering anything concrete to serve as an alternate explanation of the assassination.

The HSCA report’s finding that “the committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” is a frustrating one. I’m no fan of adverbs, generally speaking, but to throw a “probably” into a pronouncement like that is almost maddening. As it happens, that finding is based on another, less equivocal one having to do with an examination of acoustical evidence (from which it was determined four shots were fired), which was swiftly shown by others to be less than reliable.

Indeed, the HSCA report was so derided from all sides (including by some who worked on it and subsequently maintained the report didn’t reflect their findings) it has faded from the collective’s memory. Many still overlook that latter effort made by U.S. lawmakers to try to get to the bottom of the assassination, continuing to point back to 1964 and the Warren Commission’s conclusion as the government’s “official” and ultimate conclusion on the matter.

I was up on it all enough to know a long while back that the release of these new “JFK files” was coming last week, so I wasn’t surprised when the date approached and stories about the assassination again began to appear. (Nor was I that surprised the current administration appeared to bungle the release despite the date being known for 25 years, but that’s another matter.)

I’ve only heard bits and pieces about what is in the released files, but I’ll be intrigued to find out more. I’ve found myself coming around to a point of view that largely coincides with the one Edward Jay Epstein has articulated especially well (I think). As a young man Epstein published the first book raising some questions about the Warrent Commission, titled Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (the first of several books on the assassination he’d eventually write).

Epstein’s book came out a few months before the bestselling Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane who I’ve always thought to have been much less admirable as a scholar, though nonetheless a compelling and important character in the early blossoming of the JFK conspiracy industry.

Epstein has written many times about what he thinks happened on November 22, 1963 with his thoughts scattered through many books and articles. If you’re curious, you can hear him summarize his view in a fairly succinct way on a podcast recorded in 2015 for The New Criterion, one titled “Edward Jay Epstein on the mysteries surrounding the Kennedy assassination.” You can search around online for more thorough versions of his argument, shared by Epstein himself and by others who have presented and commented on his analysis.

I won’t rehearse Epstein’s entire argument, although even a highly abbreviated version takes a little while to get through. It begins with an assertion that while Oswald was most certainly the lone shooter that day, he certainly had made some interesting and meaningful contacts with others, in particular with both the Russian and Cuban embassies in Mexico in late September-early October 1963.

Epstein notes how failed attempts by the U.S. to remove Fidel Castro from power (including by assassination) had understandably gotten the attention of the Cuban leader. On September 7, 1963, Castro gave an impromptu interview to an AP reporter in Havana in which he shared his intention to respond to attacks both against the country and himself, and a couple of days later an article including some of Castro’s quotes appeared.

A couple of days later an article including quotes from Castro was published in various newspapers, including in the Times-Picayune in New Orleans where Oswald was (and assuredly read the article). Castro speaks out against the U.S. aiding rebels’ attacks in Cuba.

“Prime Minister Fidel Castro said Saturday night ‘United States leaders’ would be in danger if they helped in any attempt to do away with leaders of Cuba,” the article reports. “Bitterly denouncing what he called U.S.-prompted raids on Cuban territory, Castro said, ‘We are prepared to fight them and answer in kind. United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorists’ plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.’”

Differently edited versions of the AP article appeared in other places, and in fact the versions showing up in The New York Times and Washington Post didn’t include the threatening line from Castro, which meant most Americans weren’t aware of it. In fact even after the assassination few were attaching much significance to the statement (including the Warren Commission who didn’t reference it at all).

Epstein suggests Oswald, already a Castro-supporter, might have been inspired by the threat. While the specific purpose for Oswald’s Mexico trip is hard to pinpoint, he surmises it was motivated in part by Oswald’s desire to offer his services to support Castro and Cuba. Included in there is Oswald apparently making explicit his willingness to kill JFK, perhaps even delivered in the form of a threat. Such a threat was delivered to officials in the Cuban embassy and was passed along to Castro. The CIA may or may not have been aware of Oswald’s threat as well, since they periodically monitored conversations there. The FBI knew about it, too.

Meanwhile Epstein spells out a parallel plot to assassinate Castro playing out, and in fact on the day of the JFK assassination a meeting occurs in Paris between a U.S. representative and a confidant of Castro’s named Rolando Cubela to advance that plot. The U.S. thought Cubela who had close access to Castro and could pull off an assassination was working with them as a double agent, but in fact he was reporting back to Castro about the plot. (In fact Cubela was the source of knowledge from which Castro was drawing when making his statement about U.S. attempts to kill him.)

The parallel plot is fascinating, and relevant to speculation about whether or not Oswald was acting at the direct behest of Castro and Cuba when he killed Kennedy. In that podcast I link to above, Epstein leaves that as a somewhat open question, saying that Oswald could well have still been acting on his own (though inspired by Castro’s obvious motive), or perhaps Oswald could have misinterpreted statements from Cuban officials in response to his stated threat.

All of which is to say I’m fairly convinced both that Oswald acted alone and that there were many different entities -- including Castro and Cuba, the Soviets, and American intelligence agencies privy to Oswald’s pre-assassination actions and statements -- who had knowledge of and/or contact with Oswald beforehand and thus motive not to publicize that knowledge and/or contact afterwards. In other words, there were plenty of actual “conspiracies” surrounding the assassination, though I believe they likely had more to do with covering up potentially compromising-looking relationships and connections after the fact than with planning and executing the actual event.

I don’t think anyone is expecting anything definitive enough to convince everyone of a single, unequivocal narrative to explain what happened. The newly released files may shed some additional light on Oswald’s Mexico adventure. They may also include something more about those who knew about the trip when it happened and afterwards.

Even so, I imagine it’ll remain quite dim way down the JFK rabbit hole.

Image: z161 from Zapruder plus view reenactment, public domain.

Travel Report: LAPT9 Uruguay, Day 2 -- Summit of the Americas

Was reading a little today and happened across a reference to Lyndon B. Johnson having come right here to Punta del Este, Uruguay back in 1967 for a summit meeting with around 20 different Latin American heads of state.

Other U.S. presidents have come to Uruguay, although the others all primarily stayed in Montevideo for their visits. Franklin D. Roosevelt came to meet with the Uruguayan president in 1936; Dwight D. Eisenhower did the same in 1960 near the end of his tenure. Both of the Bushes came to Montevideo, too, although after a little searching around it looks like George H.W. did stop by Punta del Este briefly as well (in late 1990). In fact, Reinaldo is telling me George H.W. Bush either once had a home in Punta del Este or maybe still does.

LBJ’s visit here in April 1967 was by far the most significant one by a U.S. president. It lasted for three days and was called the “Summit of the Americas,” and from it resulted a detailed declaration signed by all of the presidents who attended detailing intentions regarding economic integration, industrial development, multinational action for infrastructure projects, measures to improve international trade, improvements to education and “modernization” of all nations, and reduction of military expenditures.

Here’s an interesting article from 1994 from the Los Angeles Times looking back on that ’67 summit and contrasting it with an upcoming one in Miami involving President Bill Clinton and other Latin American heads of state. The point is made how back in the late 1960s some of those at the Punta del Este summit were dictators (unlike in ’94). And, of course, the Cold War was still raging, with Castro and communist Cuba representing a constant threat to the rest of Latin America (from the perspective of the U.S.).

At the summit Johnson was very insistent that absolutely everything said by anyone be taken down and transcripts made available to all -- an indicator of the historic nature of meeting. Sounds like LBJ got along with pretty much everyone, save the president of Ecuador who was a little too conspicuous with his criticism of the U.S. for the Texan’s tastes.

I might be tempted to draw some sort of an analogy between an international summit and a Latin American Poker Tour Main Event such as the one here in Punta del Este I’m helping cover. After all, players from 16 different countries are making up the 438-entry field, and they’re also doing a lot of “negotiating” you could say, as they try to get what they want from each other.

Of course, no one here can win unless everyone else loses, so it’s not like these negotiations are aimed at producing some sort of harmony going forward. And there’s not a single U.S. player in the field, so that also might make the comparison seem less persuasive.

All but a handful of the players are from the “Americas,” though. More than half of entries (237) were made by Argentinians, and in fact there are still 25 players from Argentina left among the 32 who made it to tomorrow’s Day 3, with one of them -- two-time champion Mario Lopez -- enjoying the overnight chip lead.

We’ll see how things go for him and everyone else tomorrow as Day 3 of this poker summit continues. Go to the PokerStars blog where we’re not necessarily taking down everything said and done by everyone, but enough of it to create an adequate historical record for future researchers.

Photo: “Meeting of American Chiefs of State,” LBJ Library photo archive (public domain).

Wild Bill’s Last Hand

Over in the “Poker & Pop Culture” series on PokerNews I’ve reached the end of a section focusing on “saloon poker” during the 19th century, mostly focusing on some of the more notable names associated with poker of the era.

This week’s column is all about James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, covering his story in brief including his famous murder at a poker table in 1876. From there, though, I move on to talk more broadly about the idea of the “dead man’s hand” as it has played out in popular culture over the almost 140 years since.

Hickok, as many know, was said to be holding two pair, aces and eights, at the time he was murdered. In the column I talk about how in fact there were several other poker hands designated the “dead man’s hand” before a book about Hickock in the 1920s helped solidify the association between the term and his hand.

I also get into some -- not all -- of the later references to the dead man’s hand and/or aces and eights, a catalogue that includes John Wayne, R.P. McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Motörhead, and Bob Dylan among others.

Here are links to all the “saloon poker” posts, if you’re curious to explore any of them:

Digging for Gold (and Aces) in California

Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, A Premium Pair

The Many Versions of Bat Masterson

Lady Gamblers and Poker Alice

The Long, Strange Life of the Dead Man’s Hand

My primary goal with these articles is to highlight the many ways poker enters “mainstream” popular culture, and not necessarily to write a straightforward history of poker as others have done (including most recently James McManus in his 2009 book Cowboys Full). However, particularly during these early installments of the series, I have nonetheless spent some time narrating the game’s early history to set up a useful context for what’s to come.

The next few articles come under the heading of “steamboat poker,” then after a brief discussion of poker in the Civil War I’ll be moving on to consider the game as it appeared in a variety of contexts -- in early clubs, on the bookshelf (with the first poker strategy titles), and in homes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Photo: Wild Bill Hickok, public domain.

General Eisenhower’s Calculations

In late 1943, a story regarding Dwight D. Eisenhower was circulated in the country’s newspapers. This was right about the time he was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, beginning preparations that would lead to the invasion of Normandy six months later. A little less than a decade later, Eisenhower would be elected the United States’ 34th president.

It was a poker story, and not one usually told of Eisenhower. The more frequently shared poker-related anecdotes concerning Ike appear in his 1967 collection of autobiographical anecdotes At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends. At least these are the ones that get repeated most often whenever Eisenhower’s poker playing is discussed.

Early in that book Eisenhower tells of learning poker as a young boy. He also talks about his time at West Point, and how he only attended cadet dances “now and then, preferring to devote my time to poker.” At another point he refers to the game as “my favorite indoor sport.”

He relates how when he played poker at West Point, he meticulously kept track of wins and losses. “The financial results of the games were always recorded in books with debts to be paid after graduation,” he explains, noting as well how he eventually had to stop playing with others because of their failure to pay up after he beat them.

A bit later in the book he tells of playing in a twice-a-week poker game at Camp Meade where he served under George S. Patton, where again he was a consistently winning player. That’s the setting for a much-repeated anecdote of Eisenhower winning a sum off a particularly unskilled player who paid him in war bonds, causing Ike to feel sorry for his opponent. He then conspired with others to lose on purpose to the fellow in order to get him his money back without embarrassing him.

“This was not achieved easily,” Eisenhower explains. “One of the hardest things known to man is to make a fellow win in poker who plays as if bent on losing every nickel.”

Like I say, these stories are fairly well known. There’s one other discussion in the book of a fellow named Bob Davis who served as an influence over a young Eisenhower, including teaching him about “poker percentages.”

“He dinned percentages into my head night after night around a campfire,” tells Eisenhower, “using for the lessons a greasy pack of nicked cards that must have been a dozen years old.” They played for matches, and the experience provided significant intellectual stimulation to the youth. “So thoroughly did Bob drill me on percentages that I continued to play poker until I was thirty-eight or forty and I was never able to play the game careless or wide open,” he adds. He also notes that since many of those whom he played against weren’t so knowledgeable about odds and probabilities, he was thus a consistent winner.

That episode in which the officer paid Ike with war bonds actually discouraged him from playing poker, as he eventually concluded “it was no game to play in the Army.” Especially after he had risen up the ranks, Eisenhower felt bad about beating those under him. “When I found officers around me losing more than they could afford, I stopped playing.”

However, Eisenhower still thought about the game from time to time, which brings me back to that somewhat obscure story from when Ike was well past his poker-playing days in his early 50s.

The story emanates from Naples, Italy, dated December 9, 1943. “Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s popularity has skyrocketed throughout the Fifth Army as a result of one of his recent pronouncements,” it begins. But the pronouncement had nothing to do with calculating military strategy -- rather it concerned a problem involving “poker percentages.”

A soldier had written to Eisenhower, having “heard that the commander in chief has a hobby of mathematically computing odds on poker hands.” The letter writer, a GI named Simon Davis, asked him what the chances were of drawing exactly three kings and two jacks when dealt a five-card poker hand.

The article only summarizes Eisenhower’s reply, although the letter itself is quoted directly in Play the Devil: A History of Gambling in the United States from 1492 to 1955 (1960) by Henry Chafetz. Here’s what Eisenhower said:

“Although I’m afraid my power of gauging percentages in filling poker hands is a bit overrated, I do like to figure them in my spare time. I haven’t had time to go too deeply into the exact figures of your chances of drawing three kings and a pair of jacks -- but I’d say they are about 1 in 1,082,900 times. Any mathematician will prove I’m completely wrong, but, anyway, don’t count on doing it in a pinch.”

Going back to the newspaper article, we learn that “Since then doughboys through Italy have been doing heavy pencil and paper work. Scores of them wrote letters to the Stars and Stripes declaring ‘Ike’ almost hit it on the nose with his estimate.”

Clearly it was a great morale booster for Eisenhower to have answered the letter so thoughtfully. The article concludes with a quote from one “doughboy” saying “I’ve always thought a lot of the general, but now he’s tops on my list of great greats.”

Not to doubt Eisenhower, but just fiddling around a bit with this I’m pretty sure he’s a bit off with his answer, despite the support of those doughboys who checked his work.

If there are four ways to be dealt three kings and six ways to get two jacks, that would mean 24 different ways to be dealt kings full of jacks. Meanwhile there are 2,598,960 distinct five-card hands, which actually makes it 1 in 108,290 to be dealt three kings and two jacks.

In other words, I think Ike might have added an extra zero to the correct answer. I’ll be like Ike, though, and modestly invite anyone who wants to correct me to please do so.

Incidentally, while scouting about regarding this story, I ran across one attempt to summarize it that identified the GI as “Bobby” Davis (not Simon). I decided that had to have been a mistake by the author who probably conflated Eisenhower’s story of learning “poker percentages” from Bob Davis with the latter one about the GI’s letter and his question.

I mean, really, what would be the odds of that?

Photo: General of the Army, February 1, 1945, public domain.

The Draw and Stud Kingdoms in the Poker Domain

I’ve been thinking about draw poker and stud poker lately, and the idea that, in a sense, all variants can be categorized as having been derived from one or the other category of poker games.

That is to say, if we created a taxonomy of card games with poker being the “domain” up at the top, draw and stud would be the top two “kingdoms” just underneath, with all the other games belonging to one or the other.

In modern poker parlance, it’s common to see three categories of games identified -- flop games, draw games, and stud games. That’s a helpful system, say, if you’re choosing variants for a mixed game and want to ensure you’ve got a balance between different game types.

You could, for example, have a nine-game rotation with three flop games (no-limit hold’em, pot-limit Omaha, Omaha hi/lo), three stud games (seven-card stud, seven-card stud hi/lo, and razz), and three draw games (2-7 triple draw, 2-7 no-limit draw, Badugi), which would also provide a good mix of a few “big bet” games among the fixed-limit ones.

Then if you added further variants, you could try to keep the three categories balanced so as not to favor one over the others, since many players often come at a mixed game with more experience and/or knowledge in one of the three.

However, if you go back in history and think about how poker was initially introduced and developed in the 19th century, it actually makes sense to slide the later-introduced flop games over and think of them as a subcategory of stud (its own “phylum,” you might say). In other words, while the hundreds of different poker variants introduce all sorts of distinctions making each unique, the most significant one determines whether or not a game can be said to derive from draw or stud -- namely, whether or not players can see any of the cards making up their opponents’ hands.

Games derived from draw typically involve players showing none of their cards as they proceed through whatever rules govern the order of play, betting, hand ranking, and so on. Meanwhile games derived from stud typically involve players revealing some portion of their hand to each other, e.g., as “up cards” or shared “community cards.”

Even with these two seemingly unblendable characteristics -- i.e., either all your cards are hidden, or they are not -- there exist some hybrids (we might call them) that try to combine draw and stud in some fashion. I’m thinking of draw games that involve sharing cards, of which Spit in the Ocean might have been the first step down that road (a draw game that has one card dealt face up in the middle to indicate what is wild). There are other draw games incorporating something like “community cards,” too, that seem to combine the categories.

But you could argue as soon as any portion of a player’s hand is no longer hidden, the game no longer belongs to the draw “kingdom” and should be forced to emigrate over into stud.

This point -- that all poker variants essentially come from either draw or stud -- is one made by Al Alvarez in his Poker: Bets, Bluffs and Bad Beats (2001). There he points out that all poker games, “even the craziest, are variations on two basic themes: closed or draw poker, in which all the cards are dealt facedown, and stud, in which four of the player’s five or seven cards are dealt faceup.”

Alvarez is speaking of earlier pre-hold’em variants when making that point, but the taxonomy being suggested could still be said to include the flop games, which obviously were derived from stud.

Could be fun, working out an entire taxonomy of poker variants. How would we classify Badeucy, for example? Put the Badeucy species in the poker domain, then the draw kingdom, then the fixed-limit phylum, then the multiple-draw class, then the lowball order, then the Badugi family, and finally the deuce-to-seven genus?

I wrote about the first references to draw poker in this week’s “Poker & Pop Culture” column, noting how the introduction of the draw was the first meaningful variation from what might be called the “original” form of poker sometimes called “Old Poker” in which five cards were dealt, a round of betting followed, and then there was a showdown.

In the column I make a few gestures toward the idea that being able to discard and draw evokes (in a way) various “American” ideas of being free to try to improve your status if desired. Check it out and see if you buy that argument or not:

Poker & Pop Culture: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Better Hand

I’ll be talking about the introduction of stud next week, and will be suggesting this point as well that all poker variants might be thought of as belonging to one of these two “kingdoms” of games. Let me know if you have any thoughts about any of this as I pull together my own.

Image: “Taxonomic ranks” (adapted), Annina Breen. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Poker & Pop Culture, the Return

A quick post today to let you know of a new series of columns I’ve begun over on PokerNews. In truth, it’s not entirely new, and in fact is focused entirely on the past. Let me explain.

Way, way back, I had the opportunity to begin writing some columns on PokerNews under the title “Poker & Pop Culture.” Then-editor Haley Hintze proposed the idea, and if I remember accurately she did so after I’d written a two-parter here on Hard-Boiled about poker references in Rolling Stone magazine (here those are: Part 1 and Part 2).

For a good while I wrote columns every couple of weeks about how poker popped up in various films, books, television shows, and so on. I think the one I got the most response from both right away and over the years since was one discussing the many references to poker on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

That lasted less than a year, during which time I wrote not quite 20 of those columns. Sometime after that I freelanced my way over to Betfair Poker where I occasionally would write columns in a similar vein, then had a spell writing a similarly-themed column titled “Community Cards” for the ill-fated Epic Poker League site. Then after that I had a nice opportunity to revive the idea yet again for PokerListings, where we called the column “Pop Poker.”

Meanwhile I developed this college course I’ve mentioned here many times, “Poker in American Film and Culture,” which I teach in the American Studies program at UNC-Charlotte. Between all of those columns and the course -- not to mention the many posts here at HBP that have highlighted poker references in non-poker contexts -- I’ve now amassed a lot of material under this heading.

That inspired the “Poker & Pop Culture” revival, with the idea this time being the columns will eventually be collected (along with other material) as a book. I’m doing the series in a roughly chronological fashion, and so after starting with an introduction last week did a kind of “pre-poker” survey of references to gambling and cards today. Then next week we’ll finally get going with actual poker history, starting with the very first reference in print to poker.

If you’re curious to see the first couple, here they are (first one’s headline shares the title of the book):

Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game

Poker & Pop Culture: If I Gamble, Will I Go to Hell?

Would be keen to hear either feedback or suggestions along the way, if anyone has any. These first couple do a lot of stage-setting, and I expect the ones starting next week will each be more focused on telling distinct, stand-alone stories and anecdotes, hopefully in new and entertaining ways.

Cards, Money, and Bluffing

Gonna get a little abstract both in this post and the one tomorrow. I had written something up for another purpose a while back and never used it, and so rather than leave it hidden in an old file on my computer I have decided to share it here.

The first part has to do with defining the game of poker according to its essential elements. It’s something I want to say was first inspired by a conversation with Tommy Angelo from many years back, although it could be I’m associating the author of Elements of Poker with this argument about the elements necessary to the game.

Wherever this started, the question with which we begin couldn’t be more broad in its scope: “What is poker?” And the answer is a list: “Cards, money, and bluffing.”

First, cards. Dating back as far back as the ninth century to imperial China, playing cards were employed in a wide variety of games over the next millennium while spreading throughout Asia and Europe, reflecting a host of cultural symbols and values in their changing designs along the way.

By the early 1800s, most features of the modern deck had been established, including the size and thickness of the cards as well as the four suits, with various games including bouillotte, mus, pochen, and poque having been introduced throughout Europe and carried to North America. Features borrowed from each of these games, including the building of five-card hands as well as discarding and drawing, would be incorporated into poker, a game initially played with 20 cards, then later with the full 52-card deck.

In the United States the game would grow and develop alongside the country itself, expanding to include a multitude of variants linked by the use of similar hand rankings and rules of play. Poker wouldn’t be poker without cards, but then the game has always been about much more than a flush beating a straight.

All of these precursor games offered opportunities for wagering, though it would be the amalgam of poker that would promote money to the status of being a required element of the game, as essential as the cards.

In an essay written about a half-century ago titled “Poker and American Character” (discussed here and here), historian John Lukacs maintains that “Money is the basis of poker: whereas bridge can be played for fun without money, poker becomes utterly senseless without it,” a position which many commentators on the game readily share.

Each hand of poker is like a complicated negotiation, with players forced both to invest in their own hands while weighing prices set by opponents on theirs. Entering into such transactions requires purchasing power -- one must bring money to the table to participate at all -- and just like in negotiations away from the poker table, each player’s personal idea of what money signifies directly affects the amounts set when selling, or the costs agreed to when buying.

“The money staked in poker represents not only our idea of the value of our cards, but our idea of what the other players’ idea of the value of our cards might be,” explains Lukacs, suggesting that money’s importance to the game is even greater than the cards. “Cards count in poker,” the historian acknowledges, “but they count less than in any other game.”

Of course, as anyone who has played even a single hand of poker well knows, such negotiations need not be entered into in good faith, thus making bluffing a third defining feature of the game.

Like the cards and the use of money, bluffing was likewise inherited by poker from most of its immediate precursors. For example, the British game of three-card brag -- one of the few antecedents of poker still played today -- bluffing is literally the name of the game, with players dealt a hand, then “bragging” their cards’ value with bets until just two remain.

“Bluff is the essence of poker,” argues David Spanier in Total Poker, articulating another sentiment with which many poker players would agree. “It is lurking in every single hand of the game,” he continues, alluding to the possibility of a bet or raise misrepresenting a hand’s value: “Has he or hasn’t he got what he says he’s got?” Every instance of a player backing cards with money presents the question to the next player to act, adding layers of complexity to the game that distinguish poker markedly from other card games and forms of gambling.

Poker needs cards, then, and money and bluffing. This argument might be used to exclude some card games that are often referred to as poker, such as liar’s poker (no cards) or HoldemX (no money) or Chinese poker (no bluffing), but to be honest I’m not that interested in drawing hard, angry lines around poker here. Rather I’d like merely to suggest cards and money and bluffing to be core elements of the game, perhaps forcing us to recognize that any variants that lack one of the three is better considered part-poker and part-something-else.

It’s not too complicated of an argument, saying poker is cards and money and bluffing. Of course, when these elements are combined, it is clear poker becomes much more than the sum of such parts, and, importantly, more complicated to describe. Doyle Brunson notes early start of Super/System that “poker is a game of people.” And because poker is a game of people -- and since people are inconsistent, flawed, and self-contradictory -- it perhaps isn’t surprising to find the game itself replete with several seeming incongruities.

These paradoxes of poker I’ll discuss tomorrow when I share the rest of this discussion.

Photo: “Cash Money,” Aaron Jacobs. CC BY-SA 2.0.

“Trust everybody, but cut the cards”

Found myself earlier today involved in one of those click-click-click loops that might’ve begun as “research” but devolved into the usual mix of curiosity and voyeurism internet surfing usually represents.

It wasn’t fruitless, however, as one of the items I ended up lingering over had to do with the origin of that often-cited pokerism “Trust everybody, but cut the cards.”

I’ve always liked that quote because of pithy way it combines both the social or “community building” aspect of poker and the fact that at its core poker is a game of self-interest. We have to “trust” others to some extent if only to get a game going, but once hands are dealt we necessarily are each looking out for number one.

You’ll see vague references to the quote as being an “old cowboy saying,” which is probably more or less a correct way to refer to the origins of a lot of similar folklore surrounding the game. In this case, though, the phrase actually should be credited to the American satirist Finley Peter Dunne.

Dunne became an editor at the Chicago Times in the 1880s, and not long after created a character named “Mr. Dooley” who would author short pieces that served as an entertaining brand of social commentary. In some respects Dunne was following the tradition of the old 18th century essayists Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson. He gets compared to Mark Twain a lot as well, of course, having been a contemporary whose concerns, use of humor, and even worldview tended to overlap with Dunne’s.

The stories touched on a wide variety of subjects, all told from the point of view of Dooley, a pub-owning Irish immigrant. In 1899 a collection of the stories was published as Mr. Dooley in Peace and War, and there would be about a half-dozen more such compilations as Dunne would ultimately write over 700 “Mr. Dooley” stories. It was Dunne’s character of Dooley who uttered the phrase, although I’ll need to click around some more to figure out the exact story in which it appeared.

The sentiment it expresses I’m also seeing linked occasionally to the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” puzzle I once took a crack at discussing here.

That gives me an excuse to point you to a neat article by Robert Woolley from a couple of days ago over on PokerNews titled “Got GTO? The Connection Between ‘A Beautiful Mind’ and Perfect Poker” in which he shows the recently-deceased John Nash’s relevance to game theory and poker -- check it out.

Meanwhile, thanks for clicking over here again. If I pinpoint the story in which Dunne’s Dooley utters the phrase, I’ll come back and share it. You can trust me.

One Thing Leads To Another

From the house to the car to the plane to the car to the hotel I went, and here I am. Again

It was a super quick flight down to Jacksonville late yesterday afternoon. I think we weren’t in the air but for an hour at most, meaning it took much longer just getting to the airport and then again getting all squared away with the rental car to drive to my home-away-from-home for the next few days just down the road from the bestbet Jacksonville.

I’m reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63 on the Kindle currently, knocking out another portion of the lengthy book yesterday to close in on the finish. I read every King novel there was as a teenager, meaning everything up through Pet Sematary (including the Bachman books), I think, then didn’t pay too much attention to his fiction thereafter, although I did enjoy his book about writing. Kind of like digging a band’s early records as a young person, then leaving off after both you and the band get older.

You might remember I was talking about rereading Don Delillo’s Libra on a trip back in the spring, another speculative fiction about the Kennedy assassination. Since the 50th anniversary almost a year ago, I’ve gotten myself kind of hooked on JFK-related materials, including the endless trove of videos on YouTube both about the assassination and its coverage and all of the aftermath, theories, and other ephemera. An event the elusive truth of which will always be more head-spinning than any fiction that treats it.

King’s book isn’t nearly as “literary” as Delillo’s, of course, although it’s kept me turning the pages. I like much of it thus far, and have even found a couple of moments quite moving (particularly early on). The time-travel conceit is interestingly handled, encouraging a lot of “What would I do?” kind of thinking along the way.

Perhaps because the main character is an English teacher, I’m identifying with him a bit more than I would otherwise. That may also be a reason why I’ve found myself occasionally thinking along the way about how all forms of fictional storytelling -- and reading -- are kind of like “time travel” (and/or “place travel”), if you think about it.

There are frequent references to the butterfly effect as this 2011 man wanders about during the late 1950s and early 1960s, a concept that often occurs to us during poker tournaments where every action has at least a small effect on everything else. There’s also some gambling here and there as the protagonist places some bets on the World Series and other sporting events -- sure things, because he actually does know their outcomes.

I’m eager to finish the book, but will have to set it down for the next few days as I’m again going to be working some long ones as the WPT bestbet Bounty Scramble plays out. I’ll be stopping in here to add a few tidbits about that story over the next few days, too.

Such is the chain of circumstance I find myself following, one that I control only somewhat.

From Eugene Edwards' Jack Pots: Stories of the Great American Game (1900)

Published in 1900, Jack Pots: Stories of the Great American Game by Eugene Edwards collects numerous anecdotes about poker as it was played during the 19th century, all of which add up to a convincing testament to the game’s popularity as well as to its special relationship to American culture more than a century ago.

Before getting into the various stories of particular characters and notable hands that make up the historical narrative, Edwards uses the first chapter to explain “What Is Poker -- Its Origin, and Why We Like It.”

He begins with a general observation about Americans being especially eager when it comes to playing games, our fondness for baseball being a primary example and our readiness to import other games (golf from Scotland, lacrosse from India, etc.) further demonstrating such a predilection. Card-playing is special, though, says Edwards, because of its accessibility to all, no matter how old or young.

He then rattles through various card games of the day, dismissing each for various reasons as coming up short of representing “the Great American Game.” Euchre, for example -- “the ladies’ game” -- is too French. Seven-up is “the country boy’s game.” And whist is both too closely identified with England (even the Queen plays it) and requiring of “too much brain work.”

“When you shuffle up all the games, however, there is one that stands out before and beyond all the others,” Edwards continues, “like a lighthouse on the sea coast or a water tank on a prairie, and that is POKER.”

From there he offers a thumbnail sketch of the game’s origins, taking a few shots in passing at the European nations whose games were precursors to poker for their failure to embrace “the modern and perfected game” of poker (“we know how cordially Europeans detest innovations”). Such is probably the most dated of the sentiments in the chapter, given the game’s widespread popularity in Europe today.

“Therefore we may say with truth that America monopolizes the game of poker, and it certainly is the game that best fits our national character,” Edwards triumphantly concludes, speaking of how the game requires nerve, money, strength, and brains each of which (in his estimation) are areas where “we lead the world.”

Edwards edges closer to jingoism as he successively dismisses Germans, the French, and the English as not nearly as well suited for poker as are Americans. But despite the heavy-handed commentary, he does make several salient observations about the game itself, praising in particular its accessibility (being easy to learn) and its ongoing challenge (the learning never stops).

“It is such a simple game to learn,” writes Edwards, noting how a person with any familiarity at all with other card games “can be taught the game of poker in a half hour -- and then spend the rest of his life learning it.”

“That is the main beauty of the game,” he continues. “You think you know it all after you have played ten hands and then after a hundred seances you begin to realize there is something for you to learn. There is so much human nature in it, and human nature is so complex.”

By 1900, poker had well established itself in American culture, a pastime which could be referenced just a few years later by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge in his “Dogs Playing Poker” paintings as an instantly recognizable aspect of modern American life. Edwards notes how by the time of his writing the game had already endured a period of demonization by opponents and survived, alluding to a time “thirty or forty years ago... when cards were held up to scorn as the invention of the devil, and all card players were placed but a shade above a forger or pickpocket.”

That time, Edwards insists, had by then passed. “We do not hear so much of that wild talk nowadays,” he reports.

Of course, such “wild talk” would never go away entirely, returning again and again throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.

Gentlemen Do Not Bet the Nuts

In 1864 The American Hoyle; or Gentleman’s Hand-Book of Games by William Brisbane Dick (writing/editing/compiling as “Trumps”) was among the first titles to spell out in detail rules for draw poker. It wasn’t the very first, but it did expand significantly on the “laws” of the game, the terminology employed while playing it, and hand rankings.

Interestingly, as explained here, straights are still up for debate. The earliest versions of poker (including the 20-card variety) didn’t count straights or flushes, and the 1864 Hoyle explains how it remained the case that “straights are not considered in the game, although they are played in some localities.” Flushes weren’t part of the earliest variants of poker, either, but here are part of the line-up of possible hands.

Since straights aren’t universally accepted, neither are straight flushes, although a footnote to the hand rankings does explain that when they are counted they should be considered as ranking higher than four of a kind. “It is strongly urged by some experts that the strongest hand at Draw Poker should be a Straight Flush, for the reason that it is more difficult to get than four of a kind.”

The “experts” are right. A 52-card deck produces 2,598,960 possible five-card combinations, with only 40 of them being straight flushes (1 in 64,974) as opposed to 624 being quads (1 in 4,165).

There’s one other point made in the footnote in favor of counting straight flushes I find kind of intriguing, namely, that doing so “removes from the game the objectionable feature of a known invincible hand.”

Without straight flushes, any hand containing four aces would be known to be unbeatable, as would a hand containing four kings with an ace. With straight flushes there still exists, of course, the “invincible” hand of an ace-high straight flush (or royal flush), which could theoretically be equaled. (This possibility is explained in the footnote.) But there’s only four of those (1 in 640,974), making it exceedingly unlikely for the invincible-hand situation to arise.

Setting aside this quibbling, though, it’s kind of curious to think of “a known invincible hand” being an “objectionable” feature in poker. The variants popular today obviously include this possibility, and in fact it is hard to imagine poker otherwise. Players know fairly frequently in hold’em, for instance, whether or not they hold the “nuts” or an unbeatable hand.

Still wondering why this feature of the game might be considered “objectionable,” I continued on to read the last sentence of the footnote, which does provide an explanation of sorts.

“No gentleman would care to bet on a ‘sure thing,’” it is explained, “and we therefore think the Straight Flush should be adopted when gentlemen play at this game.”

Ah, right. This is a “gentleman’s hand-book of games,” imparting rules both for the games and for what it means to be a gentleman.

Now, of course, one can earn a penalty for not betting the nuts when last to act. And claiming you were just being a gentleman is no excuse!

Prelapsarian Poker

Have been engaged pretty deeply of late in some study of poker history, including reading through one of the first extensive discussions of the game in print authored by a self-described “reformed gambler” named Jonathan Harrington Green.

Green would write a number of anti-gambling books during the mid-19th century, all kind of straddling that line between education and exploitation that is typical of heavy-handed works of moral instruction that dwell a little too indulgently in describing the vices being warned against. This first one, not-so-humbly titled An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling, Designed Especially as a Warning to the Youthful and Inexperienced Against the Evils of That Odious and Destructive Vice, is of particular interest to students of poker’s history thanks to a 30-page excursion to introduce poker to an audience perhaps not yet familiar with the game.

Green is mostly dealing with the earlier 20-card version of poker -- later sometimes called “Old Poker” -- that bore affinities to the French game of poque. He runs through the rules, doing so almost in spite of himself as he says he’d rather not teach his readers how to play this “immensely destructive” game he regards as but one step down a long “road to ruin” including other gambling games like faro and roulette, not to mention “the race-course and cock-fightings.”

“I would that all were ignorant of it,” says Green of poker, the game being doubly destructive thanks both to the general debilitating effects of all gambling games and to the frequency of cheating in poker which Green says ensures “the uninitiated need never expect to win any thing.” Really, today’s opponents of gambling and/or poker have nothing on Jonathan Harrington Green, who for the entire discussion of poker relentlessly hammers away at his thesis “that the greatest villainy and rascality attend not only this, but every other game, when played for a wager.”

Anyhow, I mainly just wanted to share one passage of Green’s that interestingly evokes a strange idea of an earlier era in which poker was free of such negative influences, a kind of idealized “prelapsarian” age in which there was no cheating, people didn’t wager inordinate sums, and everyone just seemed to have a jolly good time.

“There was a time when this game was not so dangerous as it has come to be of late years,” writes Green. “It was then common to see men of almost all classes amuse themselves at this game; and landlords would join their guests for social amusement. Captains and other officers of packets and steamboats, generally, would engage freely in a game with their passengers for recreation. And little if anything was wagered or lost at the game, and all got up pleased, and seldom had any cause of dissatisfaction.”

Green’s book was first published in 1843 and most of his references to the “bad” poker (marked by cheating and high-stakes gambles) seem to refer to games occurring during the 1830s, so one might presume he is speaking of the earliest days of the game when it was just being introduced and played for the first time in the American south and west.

That said, there’s something obviously disingenuous about Green’s suggestion of things being better “back in the day” (so to speak) -- i.e., that there ever existed an earlier, “innocent” age for poker free from the various vices that would come later. Almost Rousseau-like, you might say, of him to posit the existence of an earlier “primitive” poker player free of selfish motives against whom to contrast the hopeless, “fallen” players among his contemporaries (a group to which he once belonged).

Human nature, I guess, to believe things used to be better than they are now, in all respects, and thus to trick ourselves into remembering the past differently than it actually was.

The New Frontier and the Bay of Pigs

This morning I was up early feeding and taking care of barn business, and entirely at random dialed up an old Mort Sahl LP, one of about a half-dozen on my iPod -- The New Frontier (1961). I mentioned getting into these records a while back as part of one of the detours I’ve found myself going down with these Nixon studies in which I’ve been engaged.

Like pretty much all of Sahl’s records, I believe, this one is recorded live and captures a single performance, in this case at “the hungry i” nightclub in San Francisco where Sahl frequently performed.

“Here we are on the new frontier,” Sahl opens, getting a chuckle as he pauses afterwards. “Cuba,” he continues, and gets a bigger laugh.

The “new frontier” of course referred to John F. Kennedy’s administration, then only a few months old, and the ambitious goals and “vigah” (as JFK would say) characterizing it. Kennedy first used the phrase when accepting the Democratic party’s nomination for president in July 1960 where he spoke of “a new frontier -- the frontier of the 1960s -- a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.”

That same speech finds Kennedy characterizing his Republican counterpart Nixon as an unworthy successor to Eisenhower, and in fact Kennedy employs a poker reference during that section of his speech that also evokes domestic programs of the most recent Democratic presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

“We know that it will not be easy to campaign against a man who has spoken or voted on every known side of every known issue,” says JFK of Tricky Dick. “Mr. Nixon may feel it is his turn now, after the New Deal and the Fair Deal -- but before he deals, someone had better cut the cards.”

Getting back to Sahl, his cynical reapplication of the “new frontier” idea to Cuba refers to the volatile climate then present in the spring of 1961 and the U.S.’s perception of the danger posed by the Fidel Castro-led Communist country located about 90 miles off the shore of Florida.

Just a little later, Sahl expresses that cynicism again when he jokingly speaks of being in Florida and residents there telling him “he’s a real threat, Castro, because you can see the island.” “I used to look and I’d say ‘Well, I still can’t see it.’ And they’d say, ‘Well, it’s right behind that aircraft carrier.’” That line gets a big laugh, too.

Sahl also refers at the very start of the record to the Academy Awards taking place the night of his show. That got me curious to look up when exactly that might have been, and it just so happens today is the anniversary -- April 17, 1961 -- kind of a weird coincidence. Then I realized that today is also the anniversary of the start of the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempt to overthrow the Castro regime that marked a major early misstep by Kennedy.

“The invasion of Cuba is on,” says Sahl, referring to the news of that very day. Still early, it’s clear from the way he speaks of it that the American public isn’t yet aware of what exactly is happening.

Sahl mentions as well a speech given that afternoon by former presidential candidate and newly-appointed U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in which Stevenson declared there was no U.S. involvement in the invasion. In the speech, Stevenson -- who lost presidential elections twice to Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 -- is essentially repeating a CIA cover story that the Cuban exiles leading the invasion were rebels operating on their own and with no U.S. help.

“He said that Castro can look to our government for help if he’s been rejected by his own people,” says Sahl, paraphrasing from Stevenson’s speech of that day. “And uh... Stevenson should know.” (About such rejection, that is.)

It wouldn’t be long before the invasion would fail and Kennedy would own up to the involvement of the U.S. in the plot just a few days later (on April 21). Thus was Stevenson made to look especially bad for his claim that afternoon, and in fact would consider resigning his position though was eventually encouraged to stay on. And, of course, Kennedy and his administration would take a big hit, too.

The Bay of Pigs would set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis that took place about a year-and-a-half later, a historical event that we discuss in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class thanks to its frequent comparison to a poker hand full of bluffs and re-bluffs between Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.

Anyhow, just wanted to share that weird coincidence of having dialed up Sahl’s record on the anniversary of it having been recorded. Here is that opening to Sahl’s The New Frontier, if you’re curious to hear it yourself:

Poker’s Past: Four-Plus Decades of the WSOP Main Event

Like the rest of the poker world, my interest is gradually turning back toward Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker Main Event final table, due to get started next Monday afternoon at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.

We’re running a few different WSOP-related pieces this week over on Learn.PokerNews, including some concerning the history of the WSOP Main Event. I’ve posted two installments thus far, “Learning Poker History: WSOP Main Event, 1970-79” and “Learning Poker History: WSOP Main Event, 1980-89,” trying to give the broad history while also including a few nuggets that might not be so common to the usual rehearsals of WSOP history.

I was partly inspired to do something about the WSOP Main Event and its history after picking up on some folks expressing uncertainty about what exactly the “November Nine” really was.

I know for a fact that some following the weekly edited version of what happened back in July on ESPN aren’t entirely aware how the final table works -- or even if perhaps it has already been played and will be shown in the same fashion as play from Days 3 through 7 have been. Realizing this, I thought further about how some may not be familiar with the WSOP Main Event in its pre-November Nine iteration, and so thought I could help to spell that out somewhat.

On one level, the WSOP Main Event is wholly unlike other sporting events like the Super Bowl, baseball’s World Series, the Stanley Cup, the NBA playoffs, and so on, as well as other individual sports’ championships like the majors in tennis and golf and the like. While many of those who have won the WSOP ME are considered among poker’s greatest players, there is never a consensus regarding the winner being the best poker player in a given year, particularly these days.

That said, the WSOP has managed over the course of 44 years to create a sports-like tradition with its Main Event, and digging through the history and all of the names and stories does help further that impression. It’s kind of fun, too, for those who enjoy trivia and other interesting anecdotes having to do with our favorite card game.

So if you want to read along about the WSOP Main Event while watching the last part of Day 7 play out on ESPN tonight, check out those pieces on Learn.PokerNews. Also, let me know if there are any other subjects which you might like to see explored under that “Learning Poker History” heading.

(The photo above from the 1979 WSOP as well as the one to the left of Ken “What a Player!” Smith courtesy the UNLV Special Collections on the World Series of Poker.)

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.

For the Record: Keeping Score at the WSOP

Jessica Welman, besides now working as Managing Editor for WSOP.com, also keeps an engaging personal blog where she mostly writes about popular culture or comments on other issues of the day. However, every once in a while she uses that space to write about poker, such as a few days ago when she shared a nifty find she’d made in her capacity with the WSOP in a post titled “Lending History a Helping Hand-for-Hand.”

Jessica came across some online reporting from the WSOP conducted from 1995 to 2000 -- that, is dating back to pretty much the beginning of online anything -- and in her post describes what she found and what she likes about it.

Her post ultimately points back to the argument in favor of so-called “hand-for-hand” reports from final tables, something both she and B.J. Nemeth have long petitioned for and demonstrated in their reporting from World Poker Tour final tables. I’m talking about the practice of reporting every single hand from a final table, often numbering them, rather than only reporting most and/or significant hands while perhaps inserting other items of interest or relevance along the way.

Thus Jessica’s primary emphasis in her post is to argue that “it is time we stepped it up with hand-for-hand of every major final table” at WSOP events and other major tourneys. I want to address that argument, but first let me say a few things about that 1995-2000 coverage Jessica unearthed and in particular the examples of hand-for-hand reporting they contain.

Here is the page containing links to those 1995-2000 WSOPs. I know I’ve seen some of this before tucked away on the Conjelco site, although to be honest I hadn’t really explored it much and so like Jessica wasn’t previously aware of everything that was there.

By the way, for those seeking more early online reporting from the WSOP, the PokerPages site has reports going back to 2000. (There’s overlap, actually, with the same 2000 reports appearing on both sites.) CardPlayer has live updates from all events in 2005 and 2006. And from 2007 to present, PokerNews has handled the coverage as a primary content provider for the WSOP.

Among those reports from 1995-2000 one finds event summaries (including interviews and other goodies) written by Tom Sims, Andy Glazer, and Mike Paulle. Some of their reports from those final tables are quite thorough, and as Jessica points out these writers have left behind a great resource for anyone interested in studying the WSOP history during these pre-“boom” years. These guys were truly trailblazers.

One especially cool nugget highlighted by Jessica is a hand-for-hand account by Sims of the 1997 WSOP Main Event final table at which Stu Ungar won his third title. She also highlights another interesting item from that year’s WSOP Main Event, “The Andy Bloch Project” in which Sims and Bloch worked together to report all 648 hands Bloch played in that year’s ME.

Both reports are fascinating in their thoroughness. I think it’s probably safe to say nothing quite like it had been tried before -- not on such a scale, anyway -- and thus was Sims (and in the latter case, Sims and Bloch) challenged to establish both a methodology for keeping track of the info as well as devise a system for presenting it.

There to the left is a little snippet of Sims’s hand-for-hand reporting from the 1997 ME final table, with abbreviations indicating players, positions, and actions. As he himself explains in his “Post-Mortem” that appears as a sidebar to his reporting, he dictated hands into a microcassette recorder as they occurred, then transcribed it all to post online by the next day. (Jessica mentions in her post the poker player Melissa Hayden confirming this method adopted by Sims.)

Jessica praises Sims highly, and I can’t help but agree with her that he’s left something especially valuable in his report. Jessica calls Sims’s 1997 ME final table report “one of the most compelling, colorful, and thorough pieces of content” she’s ever read, and even goes so far as to suggest that between that report and “The Andy Bloch Project,” “his efforts... have more long-term value than any of the coverage generated at this year’s series.”

I’ll continue to agree with Jessica regarding Sims’s reports being “compelling” and “thorough.” And while the hand-for-hand stuff is not really that “colorful,” the “Daily Report” Sims filed to go as part of his 1997 ME final table reporting is indeed terrific, setting the stage nicely and really capturing the unusual scene at the only WSOP Main Event final table every to have been played outdoors (on Fremont Street, in front of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino).

I’m not going to go as far as Jessica and suggest the wealth of coverage from the 2012 WSOP somehow has less long-term value than Sims’s ’97 reports. I do think Jessica means more to praise Sims than denigrate more recent reporting efforts, and in fact her main point (as mentioned above) is really to advocate for hand-for-hand reporting from all WSOP final tables -- i.e., not just the Main Event -- so future readers and students of the WSOP can enjoy a record as thorough as the one Sims created 15 years ago.

In other words, I appreciate what she’s saying about the need for hand-for-hand coverage. From 2005-2006, CardPlayer occasionally provided hand-for-hand reports from WSOP final tables. PokerNews continued to try to do so from 2007-2008, and every once in a while in 2009. I was there with PN in ’08 and ’09, and so helped produce some of those reports and thus have had experience live blogging hand-for-hand. But from 2009 onward I believe the only hand-for-hand reporting from final tables that has been done at the WSOP happened at Main Events and the big buy-in events like the $50K Player’s Championship and the “Big One for One Drop.”

However, with regard to hand-for-hand reporting, let me point out a few issues Jessica doesn’t mention in her post.

She refers to the WPT’s reporting of final tables (which she helped with up until taking her position with the WSOP) and the standard set there for hand-for-hand reporting. “As a result,” notes Jessica, the WPT is “able to offer a wealth of statistical information that can only be estimated on other tours and at the WSOP.”

She’s right. It’s a little like having complete box scores for one league’s games, but only partially complete statistics for another. And like I say, I like the point she’s making about there needing to be more thorough “box scores” at the WSOP. As she notes, “these updates are the official record of these events and have a shelf life and utility that extends beyond the day of the final table,” and thus the more thorough the reports are, the more useful they can be.

Of course, the WPT’s final tables are exclusively no-limit hold’em, whereas at the WSOP many non-hold’em events present particular challenges when it comes to hand-for-hand reporting.

Pot-limit Omaha with pot-limit betting and two extra hole cards requires an extra bit of mental cogitation to chronicle hands at showdown. Stud games present more problems, with even more cards to keep up with, shifting betting order, and fixed-limit betting often speeding up the action. And of course, split-pot games add still more difficulty with multiple winning hands, split and quartered pots, and so on.

That’s not to say hand-for-hand coverage isn’t possible for non-hold’em events. But it is easier said than done. In fact, I’d suggest even an especially quick and talented reporter with a microcassette recorder (or today, an iPad) would find producing a complete hand-for-hand report from a Stud/8 final table an incredibly difficult task.

Speaking of Sims’s microcassette recorder, we might also point out that Sims didn’t “live blog” the 1997 WSOP Main Event final table, but rather filed a report the next day. Still a quick turnaround, but it’s probably worth noting that Sims didn’t face the same deadline -- i.e., right now -- that today’s live bloggers do.

Finally, I’d like to share some of what Tom Sims himself had to say about the innovative experiment of trying to report every hand from the 1997 WSOP Main Event final table. Interestingly, while he’s clearly proud of what he achieved with his report, he’s much less quick to praise his work and hold it up as a model of reporting than is Jessica.

Sims starts his “Post-Mortem” reflection on his reporting thusly: “The 1997 WSOP is now history, and while I am generally satisfied with my role in Conjelco’s coverage of this annual classic, I think I could have done better.”

The next paragraph then describes his process a little further while explaining why exactly he believed his reporting was somehow lacking.

As I have related previously, I was a reluctant participant, and it took numerous invitations by Chuck Weinstock before I relented and consented, much against my better judgment. I really didn’t need the hassle of what turned out to be an unrealistic commitment on my part. Also, as I now realize, I violated an old maxim of mine: I put the “em-PHAW-sis” on the wrong “syl-LABBLE”, by focusing on recording the play-by-play data and getting it on the net the next day. I only did the Daily Report narrative because of Chuck’s urging, had little time nor mind-frame to do it justice, and relied on the coded, hard to read, play-by-play data to provide most of the meat of my reportorial efforts. This was a big mistake. Making the play-by-play data a public record was my prime motivation, but I should have highlighted more of the color and important hands at the daily Final Tables, and done the tedious transcribing of play-by-play data at my leisure, after the WSOP. If I ever undertake another Poker reportorial [sic] assignment, I will skip the hand-by-hand data (I’ve made my contribution!), or do it on a “to follow at my leisure” basis, and devote a lot more time and effort to what’s going on.

Sims is much too hard on himself here, particularly with regard to his “Daily Report” which is quite engaging and highlights plenty of color (even if it doesn’t really talk about important hands). And despite what he says about abandoning the experiment, it appears he did provide one more hand-for-hand report for the 1998 WSOP Main Event final table as well.

Still, the reservations he expresses about hand-for-hand reporting are worth noting.

Interestingly, while he certainly believes that the “play-by-play data” he’s produced is valuable -- and with great prescience has an idea of a “public record” to which he’s contributing -- he laments that by producing the hand-for-hand report he’s largely missed out on being able to share the larger story of that year’s final table. Recognizing his own limitations as an individual reporter, he consciously chooses to forgo the hand-for-hand experiment going forward in favor of stepping back and being able to report “what’s going on.”

I present Sims’s own self-criticism as more food for thought to those who like Jessica would like to see future WSOP coverage model itself after what he accomplished.

One way of ensuring the creation of such a “box score”-like report from every WSOP final table would be for the WSOP to assign one person (or perhaps two for non-hold’em events) to do what Sims did and simply stand nearby and chronicle every hand -- not reporting it immediately like the live bloggers do, but taking the time afterwards to reassemble the notes into a readable format.

Of course, PokerNews (or another media outlet) could assign reporters to perform this task. And not to speak for PN, but I’d imagine they’d happily do so if the WSOP insisted that was the kind of coverage they required from them as part of their arrangement. But as Sims himself points out, producing such “play-by-play data” necessarily means the reporter(s) engaged in doing so aren’t going to be able to do much else.

I’ll end the post here, having already run on much longer than intended. I haven’t even gotten into the larger debate between the relative “value” or “shelf life” of unembellished hand-for-hand reporting and more imaginative narratives about what happens at a poker tournament -- an argument that if taken far enough starts to resemble debates about the relative worth of scientific explanations of the world versus artistic responses to it.

Anyhow, as a “word guy,” you probably already suspect where I lean on that one. So I’ll stop here and invite you to share your own words about it all.