The Humans and the Bots

Had a thought today about the world in which we currently live. It was poker-related, too -- in fact, online poker-related -- so I figured I might share it here.

Post-Black Friday my online poker playing essentially dwindled to some half-hearted noodling on a couple of the small, remaining sites, then disappeared entirely save the occasional play money game on PokerStars.

Not long ago I got an account on this new site called Coin Poker. It went live in November, and I believe it was sometime in December or maybe early January when I hopped on there for the first time. The site is “powered by blockchain technology via Ethereum,” and in fact the games are played with a newly invented cryptocurrency, “Chips” or “CHP” (now listed on a couple of exchanges).

The site had an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) -- actually a “pre-ICO” and then two stages of ICOs -- in which a good chunk of these CHPs were sold for Ethereum. Meanwhile the site has been conducting tournament freerolls to give away the rest of the CHPs. There were a lot of those early on, though the schedule has thinned a little lately.

It’s through the freerolls that I won some CHPs and began a modest “bankroll” on the site, something with which to play in the “cash” games. I haven’t explored where exactly things stand as far as depositing and withdrawing are concerned, and don’t really anticipate doing so soon (unless perhaps I were to run my small total up significantly).

Playing on the site has been diverting, though, and for the first time in several years I have found myself genuinely invested in the games when playing poker online. I’ve even revived some of those earlier online poker memories of pleasure and pain associated with wins and losses, to a lesser degree of course.

When I first started on the site, I’d join the freerolls which like all the games on the site are played either four-handed or six-handed. Very frequently there would be players at the table shown as sitting out, something I grew accustomed to quickly. At a six-handed table there might be three or four seats occupied by the non-playing entrants, and occasionally at four-handed tables I might be the only live one there just scooping up blinds and antes until the field got whittled down.

At the time I assumed the site was filling the empty seats with these “dummy” players just to make the freerolls last a little longer, or perhaps to foster the impression of more traffic than there really was. Whatever the reason, I haven’t noticed the sitter-outers as much lately, or at all, really. As the site has grown a bit more popular, I imagine if there were such a strategy employed before it has now been withdrawn. (I’m only speculating.)

I wasn’t bothered too much by all the players sitting out, although the presence of all of those silent “zombies” at the table did cause me to recall the controversies and occasional hysteria surrounding the use of “bots” in online poker. Coupled with some of the news from the past few weeks (and months), that in turn has made me think about the significant influence such software applications running automated tasks or scripts online now have upon our lives.

It’s an enormous subject, but in particular I’m thinking about those indictments handed down last Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that charge 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities with conspiracy to defraud the United States via their attempts to meddle with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If you’ve read through the 37-page document spelling out what happened (or heard it summarized), you’re familiar with some of the methods employed by these agents to manipulate news and opinion consumed by Americans during the campaign, especially via social media.

The report describes in detail how a Russian company called the “Internet Research Agency” (a name sounding equally generic and sinister) employed hundreds to help generate content published via fake accounts with invented personas on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, content that was in turn disseminated far and wide “via retweets, reposts, and similar means.”

The network has been characterized as a “bot farm” and even this week there was evidence of the network or something similar continuing to operate via the rapid spread of various messages (including false ones) in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Lakeland, Florida a week ago.

One of the more curious aspects of the “disinformation operation” (as some have described it) is the way invented news and opinion gets picked up and further distributed by unsuspecting social media users (i.e., Americans not involved with the operation). The indictment describes “unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters” of the campaign the Russians were supporting as having performed such work along with others “involved in local community outreach, as well as grassroots groups.”

In other words, certain messages and information “campaigns” begun by this Internet Research Agency were initially promulgated by a vast number of fake accounts with programs or “bots” helping extend their reach and influence. Then actual, living and breathing humans receiving those messages (and unaware of or unconcerned about their origin) passed them along as well, increasing their audience and influence.

Setting aside questions of legality and jurisdiction (and ignoring entirely the many other areas being explored by Mueller and his team), I just want to isolate that phenomenon of an automated message sent via a “bot” being received and then resent by a human. The fake accounts being directed by the scripts are simply executing commands. The humans who then receive and resend those messages do so consciously, although they, too, act by rote in a sense, simply hitting “like” and “retweet” in what is often an uncritical fashion. (Bot-like, you could say, depending on your predilection for irony.)

When playing against the “dummy” non-players in those freerolls, I could comfortably bet or raise against them every single time, knowing full well that even though they might resemble “human” players sitting there at the table, they weren’t going to play back at me. They were programmed simply to fold every time the action was on them. If you’ve ever played against “the computer” in crude games (including poker games), you’ve probably similarly been able to pick up on the program’s patterns and exploit them to your favor.

Of course, increasingly sophisticated programs have been created to run much more challenging poker playing “bots,” including those powered by artificial intelligence. These programs can in fact exploit the tendencies of humans who often find it very difficult to randomize their actions and thereby avoid detectable patterns. It’s much harder to know what to do against these, as some of the more recent efforts in this area have demonstrated.

Many of those who forwarded along memes, photos, articles, and other bot-created content during the 2016 presidential campaign weren’t aware of the original source of that information (were “unwitting”). They were -- and are, still -- being exploited, in a way, by others who know how they tend to “play” when using social media.

The “game” is getting a lot harder. As far as social media is concerned -- and news and politics and everything else in our lives that has now become so greatly influenced by message-delivering mechanism of social media -- it’s becoming more and more difficult to know who is human and who is a bot pretending to be human.

Especially when the humans keep acting like the bots.

(EDIT [added 3/19/18]: Speaking of CoinPoker and bots, there’s an interesting new article on PartTime Poker sharing some research regarding the site’s unusual traffic patterns. The title gives you an idea of the article’s conclusion -- "CoinPoker’s Traffic is a Farce.")

Image: “Reply - Retweet- Favorite” (adapted), David Berkowitz. CC BY 2.0.

Going Over Their Heads

This week in my “Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics” course the assignments include a viewing of Nixon’s televised resignation speech, delivered on the evening of August 8, 1974.

Nixon begins the speech saying “This is the 37th time I’ve spoken to you from this office,” an opening move designed to suggest a kind of “transparency” that contrasted sharply with the whole idea of a “cover-up” which had led to the offenses listed in the articles of impeachment that had already been recommended by the House Judiciary Committee (obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress).

There is conflicting information out there regarding just how many times Nixon delivered televised speeches from the Oval Office -- some places agree with him and say 37 times, others list fewer. Most agree, though, of all the presidents of the television age, Nixon used the medium as much or more than anyone else, with Ronald Reagan the only one to challenge him for such a title.

Nixon considered such speeches a way for him to communicate directly with American citizens without having his words or ideas filtered through the interpretive lens of those reporting on him. Doing so enabled him to have more control over the response, or so he believed, and not have to rely on a press with whom he was on increasingly antagonistic terms as his career went along -- not to mention his steadfast belief in a bias against him shared by most media.

A few of these speeches represented examples of Nixon’s greatest political triumphs, going back to the “Checkers” speech of September 1952 on up through the famous “Silent Majority” address on Vietnam in early November 1969. They also now retrospectively appear as some of his most ignominious moments, such as the three Watergate speeches (given in April 1973, August 1973, and April 1974), each of which present evidence of Nixon delivering what were later conclusively shown to be blatant lies and intentionally deceptive statements.

In any case, Nixon always valued the idea of having what felt like a “direct” line of address to the American public. Writing about the “Checkers” speech and the role of television in politics in general in his 1990 book In the Arena, Nixon told of reporters then having “naturally found it very difficult to accept that by going over their heads to the country on TV, I had proved them wrong.”

That’s how Nixon viewed such televised addresses -- a way of reducing the power of the press by “going over their heads” and getting his message to the people without any interference.

Yesterday I couldn’t help but think of this notion of a president speaking “directly” to the people when reading president-elect Donald Trump’s barrage of tweets strangely calling into question the legitimacy of the election he won nearly three weeks ago.

You’ve no doubt seen or heard about the tweets. The most wild-eyed and crazed of them refers to how Trump believes he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” (Trump won the Electoral College, but Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 2.2 million, according to the most updated counts.) In another he specifies Virginia, New Hampshire, and California (three states won by Clinton) as sites of “serious voter fraud.”

“Why isn’t the media reporting on this?” asks Trump in the latter tweet. “Serious bias - big problem!”

Trump provides no evidence to support such claims, nor does he refer to any sources that do. From the reporting of others it sounds as though Trump is repeating some unsubstantiated claims made shortly after the election by a conservative activist named Gregg Phillips (also delivered via Twitter) that were subsequently promoted on the conspiracy site InfoWars.

InfoWars is a site identified with conspiracy theorist and talk show host Alex Jones and has provided a means for him to advance various fictions about historical events -- e.g., that the Oklahoma City attack, 9/11, and the Boston Marathon bombing were all “false flag” operations conducted by the government to increase its power; that the Sandy Hook school shootings didn’t even happen, nor did the moon landing in 1969; that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States (an idea Trump promoted and used as a gateway for his entry national politics); that global warming is a fiction invented by the Chinese and Muslims in New Jersey publicly celebrated on 9/11 (ideas Trump has also repeated); and so on. Jones even argued Mitt Romney really won the 2012 presidential election.

Like Nixon, Trump’s antagonism toward media and its “serious bias” inspires his “going over their heads” to communicate directly with the public, although Trump appears to favor Twitter over television as a preferred medium. In his 60 Minutes interview the Sunday after the election, Trump described Twitter as “a method of fighting back” against “bad” or “inaccurate” reporting on him. (He also said he would be “restrained” -- or, rather, “do very restrained” -- when using it going forward.)

But what Trump is presenting as his own, “unfiltered” message about what he thinks to be true is itself a kind of reporting being presented by sources that aren’t just biased in favor of a particular ideology, but seemingly unbound by reality, free to manufacture “info” out of whole cloth.

Nixon lied and covered up and did all sorts of things an elected official -- never mind a president -- should never do. He often claimed he rarely bluffed as a poker player, but he bluffed a lot as a politician, including repeatedly at the very end when he was called down and went busto.

But as paranoid and delusional as Nixon could be, he at least operated within a largely recognizable, shared actuality with others. These aren’t even “bluffs” Trump is tweeting out -- they don’t even meet the minimum standard of credibility to be characterized as such.

I suppose some believe there’s a method to the madness, though that would be even scarier than what is more likely the case. It’s an instinctive response to Trump, I think, wanting to impose some kind of order on what seems utterly chaotic (and frightening, given the stakes in play).

Tim Murphy tweeted an interesting comment yesterday. He’s a writer for Mother Jones, I’ll hasten to add, so as not to sound like some who simply tweet “I hear” and leave it at that.

“People act like Trump’s playing like eight-dimensional wizard chess with his tweets,” began Murphy. In other words, for those who don’t understand the president-elect’s intentions, he is communicating “over their heads,” perhaps only to those who for whatever reason can follow what he’s doing.

“But the much more obvious explanation,” added Murphy, “is he’s unstable.”

Image: “Donald Trump” (adapted), Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

A Game Seven Hot Take

So the NBA Finals has turned into some kind of weird, twisty-turney soap opera with six fairly non-competitive games resulting in a 3-3 tie between Golden State and Cleveland. Even if Game 7 results in yet another blowout, it will nonetheless provide an intriguing climax to an unexpectedly gripping series to punctuate the season.

One sure-fire prediction -- whoever loses the game will be forced to endure an incredible letdown. For the Warriors, it would mean failing to cap a record-breaking regular season with a title. The Cavs would similarly suffer greatly with a loss, coming one step shy of completing a never-before-accomplished comeback from 3-1 down in the finals to lose in the finals a second straight time.

I’ll add a few other predictions I’m less sure of, but in which I’m still reasonably confident. The Cavs probably won’t be as consistently brilliant as they were in Games 5 and 6. Neither will the Warriors be as consistently bad. Both will likely show some evidence of nerves, too, especially early in the game and perhaps again near the end (depending on the closeness of the score).

But here’s a less obvious prediction I’ll throw on top of the bonfire of “hot takes” that’s already starting to build, will grow higher by Sunday night, then disappear like so much ash in the wind once a result is determined. This one is probably contingent on the game being close at some point beyond the start -- i.e., in the second half, either early or late.

Here’s the “hot take”...

From the referees there will be a judgment call (or non-call) that will be agreed upon afterwards by most viewers to have affected the game’s outcome.

Every sport adjudicated by human beings involves some degree of error. Happens in poker, too, when rulings based on partial or even incorrect evidence sometimes occur, or even incorrect rulings based on clear and complete (and misunderstood or misinterpreted) evidence occasionally arise.

Over the course of an NBA basketball game, refs collectively make hundreds of decisions. They never make it through an entire game getting every decision correct, although generally do hit the mark on most of them. I’m not predicting (necessarily) that there will be an incorrect decision that will affect the outcome of Sunday night’s game; rather, I’m suggesting that some judgment call (which may or may not involve bad judgment and thus an incorrect decision) will be considered by most watching as having inordinately affected the outcome.

I guess my prediction itself involves a kind of judgment, although I’m saying most of those watching will come to the same conclusion that a key call (or non-call) more or less decided the game. It’s a prediction partly about the game and partly about how it will be discussed Monday morning, and it’s based both on the way the NBA games currently are officiated and tend to play out and the way games are scrutinized and discussed today.

Within a minute or two, the call (or non-call) will be a Vine, delivered instantly like an outlet pass starting a fast break all over the web. And many will be hot, hot, hot about what they are sharing.

Image: Emojipedia.

Ten Thousand Tweets

Was noticing over the last several weeks that the total for the number of tweets I’ve sent from @hardboiledpoker was approaching 10,000. Today I got there, with the tweet I sent to announce this post being the one.

It actually has taken me a while finally to reach that milestone after first noticing I was getting close. It took me a little over a month to get from 9,900 to 10,000 tweets. I first opened my Twitter account on April 9, 2009. That was 2,304 days ago which means I’ve been averaging sending out a little over four tweets per day over the last six years-plus.

Went back today to find my first tweet, pictured above. You can see before I even get to the end of that one how I’m distracted by the medium itself, self-reflexively counting down the characters at the end.

Seeing my reference to an article about Twitter by Otis (Brad Willis), I was curious to track it down once more. I headed over to Rapid Eye Reality, the blog Brad started way, way back in 2001 (about five years before I began Hard-Boiled Poker), and found his post dated April 9, 2009 titled “Much Atwitter About Nothing.”

He begins engagingly -- as he always does -- suggesting “Twitter is the Keanu Reeves of the internet.” Then he proceeds to list by category those who were then complaining about Twitter:

Advertising and branding people who can’t figure out if it’s important

Hipsters who have to hate anything a lot of people like

Companies that feel like they have to use it but don’t know why

People who don’t know what a Twitter is and are afraid to put one in their pants

“My favorite criticisms,” Brad continues, “are those who use Twitter to talk bad about Twitter,” following that with a list of examples I won’t cut-and-paste here, because you’ve been reading the same kinds of statements about Twitter on your feed for the last six-plus years, too.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Brad says, “you’re better off wringing your hands about Keanu Reeves.” That is to say, in his estimation, Twitter was hardly something to get too worked up over. Sure, like Reeves (then), it was a conspicuous part of our cultural landscape, something hard to avoid if you wanted to. That said, it was (at least then) something more or less innocuous -- an occasionally entertaining diversion.

“I use Twitter the same as I use the blog,” he concludes. “It’s a way to communicate. If you’re in the business of communication, you should know Twitter. If you don’t, you’re behind.”

I feel like over the years I’ve mostly thought of Twitter in a similar way, simply viewing it (and using it) as another way to communicate, although I’ve always been more inclined to express opinions here on the blog than over there. Even though I agree Twitter is real, actual communication, it still feels ephemeral to me, despite the fact that I can search back through all 10,000 of my tweets if I wish, as well as the tweets of others. And while I generally like Twitter, I do sometimes experience a kind of Twitter weariness such as I was describing a few months ago in “Time for a Twitter Break?”

If you’ve read any of those 10,000 tweets of mine and looked at the photos and other silliness I’ve broadcast there, you’ve perhaps gotten to know me a bit, much as have those who’ve read what I’ve been posting on this blog over the years. And if that’s the case, thanks for following and responding and communicating with me along the way.

See you on Twitter, then. And definitely not on Facebook. Speaking of, the occasion of tweet #10,000 is reminding me of tweet #5,000 (pictured at left).

The Virtual Rail

Late last week I was railing a friend as he played a Spring Championship of Online Poker event on PokerStars.

He was on Twitch as well, and once I realized that I opened up his channel and heard him commenting about the heads-up match in which he was involved to a modest-sized audience of viewers, some of whom were chatting to him along the way.

Eventually someone in chat mentioned how his opponent in the heads-up match was also streaming the match on Twitch, something my friend found interesting but didn’t really give much attention. His viewers continued to discuss it, though, and eventually someone mentioned the fellow’s Twitch handle.

Soon enough I had his channel up as well, meaning I had the Stars client open and showing the match play out plus both players’ Twitch channels on which they were commenting about the hands as they went by (about five minutes behind for each, I think).

This wasn’t a couple of pros playing at the highest levels and breaking down every decision to the smallest possible minutiae, so it wasn’t quite what you might be used to hearing as far as live analysis goes. My friend was commenting on hands in a relatively low-key manner, occasionally speculating about his opponent’s thinking or intentions as a hand progressed. Occasional chat box criticisms from the other fellow also got my friend’s attention, leading him to wonder if perhaps the guy might be tilted.

The other fellow’s channel absolutely confirmed that he was indeed much more emotionally involved in the match, hurling frequent epithets at my buddy whom he’d judged some time before to be a less than skilled player. While he’d kept the chat box comments to a minimum, he was showing no restraint before his Twitch followers, and it was almost as good a show as any Hellmuthian “How does he always get there!?!” rants.

The contrast between the two players’ personalities couldn’t have been greater. The match concluded almost predictably with my friend winning -- sucking out on the last hand, actually, after getting it in a slight dog -- and noting in an understated way his good fortune to advance. Meanwhile the other fellow was angrily throwing headphones around and shouting “I’m done! I’m done!” before logging off.

It all added up to something a little out-of-the-ordinary as far as watching poker was concerned, although maybe down the road something like that won’t seem so novel. Was entertaining to be sure, and perhaps a little bit educational, although in truth it felt more voyeuristic than anything, as a lot of what falls under the heading of “social media” ultimately is -- i.e., us looking at what other people are doing.

Turn and Face the Strange

Poker’s a great game for helping a person realize how resistant we can be anything new. When something works for us once, we try it again. And if it works again, we try it a dozen more times. Then when it doesn’t work it takes us twice as long to get away from it and accept the idea of changing our ways.

Back on April Fool’s Day -- actually I think it might have been the night before -- ESPN changed the design of its website for the first time since 2009. The site had obviously been tweaked a lot over those six years, but that’s still a long time to go between overhauls for one of the most visited sites on the internet.

I read the article over on ESPN announcing the change, then clicked to see the comments afterwards. One of the changes made to the site, in fact, is that you have to click to read comments in a pop-up now, rather than just scroll down -- kind of makes comments less conspicuous, I’ve discovered, which I’ve also realized ain’t a bad thing.

It was kind of hilarious to read what was clearly a loud, angry concensus of negative reaction. Absolutely no one seemed to like the new look of the site which besides having a brighter look now conforms more closely to how people experience the site on tablets and smartphones than before.

The most “liked” comments at the top were uniformly critical. “Change it back, the new site sucks.” “This is a mess.” “Can you please go back to the old format, this wasn’t what anyone wanted.” “Perfectly awful new design.” “Daily user for 10+ years. Am completely blown away by how bad the new site it.” And so on and on and on, with plenty of April Fool’s references peppered in along the way. Everyone commenting seemed to hate the new site.

This week Norman Chad -- whom poker fans are used to hearing on ESPN quite a bit (where, now that I think about it, WSOP coverage hasn’t experienced that much change over the last decade-plus) -- chimed in with his own negative review of the redesign in his weekly “Couch Slouch” column for The Washington Post. “There’s just too much going on — it feels like I’ve walked into a pinball machine,” writes Chad amid a characteristically funny rant that concludes with a self-deprecating admission that “the problem is me, not them.”

When I first loaded the site after the redesign, I, too, was vaguely annoyed at not being able to find the things I usually sought out. But to be honest it only took a few more visits to realize the new design is much, much better than what had been there before, with most of it being very intuitive and easy to navigate.

All of this is pretty subjective stuff, though. The overwhelmingly negative reaction at first seemed to suggest something meaningful about the culture as a whole. In his column Chad noted “I hate change in general,” and the chorus of comments appeared to confirm that most people feel similarly.

The reaction also perhaps says something about the subset of surfers who bother to comment on articles -- there, too, you’re often much more likely to find comments to be critical than praising. Then there’s that other echo-chamber phenomenon that often occurs online whereby the first responses get repeated ad infinitum, especially when there’s a easy target for everyone to point to with their downward thumbs.

That said, I’m hardly one to dispute the idea of being resistant to change. It took me about five years, I think, to change this site’s background from brooding black to grim gray, and it’s almost been another four years since (never mind having stuck with essentially the same layout throughout the run).

Gonna go think about how to change this sucker into a pinball machine.

Time for a Twitter Break?

Like many people -- especially those who have jobs that require them to be online most of the time -- I’ve gotten into the habit of checking Twitter frequently throughout the day to see what messages those I follow are sending out.

Maybe you do this, too, clicking on TweetDeck (or whatever program) you use many times an hour, such as when a web page doesn’t load instantly or in between (and during) practically every other task you are performing throughout the day. Twitter becomes kind of a constant hum that plays behind everything you do, sometimes getting very noisy and disruptive while other times just providing a kind of mental ambience that may or may not be constructive for you as you try to get other things done.

Something today made me think about different Twitter “styles” and how they resemble the different styles of poker playing. I think such thoughts might have been inspired by the fact that folks seemed especially argumentative on my timeline today (for whatever reason).

Some are obviously “loose” with their tweets, like a player who plays more hands than most, while others are “tight” and only get involved occasionally. And of course, some are “aggressive” in the way they engage others on there while many are “passive” with their comments.

The analogy can be pursued much further, if one wants. Some are clearly there just to have fun, while others perhaps view Twitter more like a job or business -- either literally (e.g., those who are tweeting with the explicit purpose to “monetize”) or in a figurative way (e.g., those who are genuinely trying to “profit” in some way from their interactions over Twitter). In other words, some “play” at Twitter while others “work” at it (or appear to, anyway).

Twitter is also like a poker game insofar as those who “take a seat” do so voluntarily, and in fact could be said (in a way) to have consciously selected the “game” or at least to have chosen the other players by following them. That said, people can retweet others and can introduce lots of other content into your timeline that you haven’t necessarily “chosen” to read or see. But for the most part we are mostly able to manage the “game” somewhat, not having to “play” with those we don’t wish to.

This latter aspect of Twitter makes me reluctant to complain about it -- that is to say, if I find the chatter tedious or wearying or in any way unpleasant, I’ve really only myself to blame as no one forced me to log on to read (or “sit down” and “play”). And besides, the people whose tweets I’m reading I’ve willingly chosen to follow, anyway.

My own Twitter game has become increasingly “tight-passive” over the last year or two, I think. I only occasionally tweet -- I probably average one or two a day -- and usually only to crack jokes, link to new blog posts, or share funny photos from the farm. Perhaps because I became an adult well before social media or even the internet turned into such a big part of our lives, I am mostly hesitant to share much in the way of personal details over Twitter, nor am I that encouraged to engage in even benign conversations about much of anything.

It still seems odd to me to have a “conversation” with someone with a big crowd “watching” -- a lot more odd than playing a hand of poker in front of a table full of others who aren’t in the hand.

In other words, I’m content mostly to fold, only playing once in a while in a very low-risk way. Meanwhile I watch others battle over pots, although lately I’ve started to realize I’m not always enjoying that, either.

I’ve written here before about how I have mostly avoided Facebook entirely, only having had an account over there early on for a short while before deleting it. I’m thinking I might start “sitting out” of Twitter, too, if only just to take a break and see how I like not always having the “game” going.

Taking breaks from poker is often helpful to stay refreshed and keep one’s level of interest and engagement up. Maybe it’s time to do something similar with Twitter. (And no, this ain’t an April Fool’s gag.)

The Players Speak

Saw this new website launched yesterday by recently-retired New York Yankee Derek Jeter called The Players’ Tribune. From articles I’ve seen describing the site, the idea seems to be to give professional athletes a forum through which to share “their own perspectives without the filter of a reporter.”

Actually that quote comes from a reporter who has filtered Jeter’s perspective into the above paraphrase. You can read the original in a letter by Jeter on the site in which he talks about his own career and experience with the media, and how that experience appears to have helped inspire the idea for The Players’ Tribune.

“I know I’ve been guarded,” Jeter says, acknowledging his notorious reticence throughout his 20-year career to diverge much at all from the usual cliché-filled sports-speak in interviews. But he insists “I’m not a robot. Neither are the other athletes who at times might seem unapproachable. We all have emotions. We just need to be sure our thoughts will come across the way we intend.”

On the one hand, it’s an interesting idea. I’ll admit I’m not that intrigued to read about Jeter’s emotions or those of Russell Wilson, the site’s first contributor who has shared a confessional-type story about being a bully as a youngster. (Like Jeter, Wilson has also routinely been “robot”-like in every interview situation I’ve ever read or seen.) But there could be some contributors to come whose stories I might want to hear.

Then again, social media and other forms of online communication have already well established numerous avenues for players to deliver their stories and opinions in an “unfiltered” way -- to the detriment of some of them.

It reminds me a little of about five years ago once Twitter had become popular, then suddenly I realized when reporting on a tournament I was amid the “Land of 1000 Reporters.” Today all poker players can, if they wish, tell their own stories with as much detail as they wish. And many of them do -- everyday, and without cessation.

In some cases, reporters tell those stories again, often “filtering” them to suit some purpose. So, too, has already happened with both Jeter’s letter and Wilson’s column, with articles on practically every sports and sports-related site retelling those stories with different emphases and conclusions.

Of course, any currently-employed professional athlete will hardly be speaking without constraints on The Players’ Tribute -- their agents and teams’ managements will ensure that. Might be curious, though to see if the site (or others like it) might affect the way people perceive the athletes who contribute and/or the sports they play.