You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best

The WSOP Main Event drew 7,221 entrants this year, a big boost from a year ago and actually the third-largest field ever behind the pre-UIGEA 2006 Main (8,773) and the last pre-Black Friday one in 2010 (7,319).

They’re down to a final table now, with the two-day respite before that gets going very welcome to those of us who've been at this for 10 days running. You’re no doubt following the action in the usual places, as well as on both ESPN and PokerGO (a very welcome addition to the coverage, imo).

Just to report quickly here on a few off-the-beaten path items, the WSOP Media Event happened back on Tuesday. Close to 100 played, I think, and your humble scribbler made it to the last 20 or so before finally busting a short stack.

“Thanks to all my backers,” I tweeted, forgetting to add the obligatory “AQ<QJ” afterwards. (The Media Event is a freeroll).

A few days after that Howard Swains and I felt uptight on a Saturday night and so spent part of the dinner break walking over to the other side of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino to enjoy a round of KISS Mini Golf.

Was a fun 45 minutes or so knocking golf balls around the course replete with cool black lights and glow-in-the-dark decor full of all sorts of KISS imagery, with the tunes blasting the whole way (natch). Click that pic above for a bigger image. Imagine “Calling Dr. Love” pounding through your device’s speakers as you do.

I’m going to post a full report in a few days over on the PokerStars blog which I’ll link to here. (Here’s that report: “Rock in the Rio at KISS Mini Golf.”)

Finally, the day after that (Sunday the 16th) I was parked as usual on media row when Antonio Esfandiari came around to settle up his “shirt bet” with Lance Bradley (here with Pocket Fives). Was humorous watching them tie up that loose end, then seeing Esfandiari look up at everyone with a grin to say “Who’s next?”

Most everyone cowered behind their laptops in response, not having Lance’s courage. (If you aren’t familiar with the bet, Lance spells it out here.)

More to come.

To Panama and Back

Am back safely on the farm after a fun, long trip to Panama and back.

I miss a little doing the daily “travel reports” here, although as I’ve mentioned previously especially when returning to a place I’ve been before there ends up being a little less that’s fresh from the road to discuss. Never mind how busy the trips are, which obviously uses up a lot of the mental fuel left for scribbling further about what’s happening.

It was interesting going back to Panama where I’d been twice before for Latin American Poker Tour stops. Both there and elsewhere, the LAPTs were always popular though modest-seeming relative to European Poker Tour festivals or the World Series of Poker.

Usually LAPTs only featured a dozen or so events with a Main Event often featuring a buy-in on the small side (e.g., in the $1,100-$1,500 range). Meanwhile the EPTs would have as much as 100 events or more, including satellites, making for a much busier schedule.

This inaugural PokerStars Championship Panama series had 46 events on the schedule, a $5,300 Main Event (like at the former EPTs/other PSCs), and other elements that made it less like the LAPTs of old and more like the first PSC in the Bahamas and what is coming up in Macau, Monte Carlo, Sochi, and Barcelona.

In the coverage we focused largely on the $50K Super High Roller (won by Ben Tollerene), the $10K High Roller (won by Steve O’Dwyer), and the $5K Main Event (won by Kenny Smaron). Meanwhile there was some time here and there to look upon the city’s remarkable, idiosyncratic architecture, with several excursions by foot around the Sortis Hotel, Spa & Casino and a cab trip over to Old Town for a nice meal and more interesting sightseeing.

Those two photos up above -- and the idea to juxtapose them -- come via Brad Willis of the PokerStars blog who snapped ’em on one such evening out. “Panamanian noir,” he titled them.

Probably the night from the trip I’ll remember the longest was that of the media tournament. There were 30-40 entrants including three Team PokerStars Pros -- Jake Cody, Felipe Ramos, and Leo Fernandez. Tito Ortiz, the MMA fighter who managed to get all of the way to 22nd in the Main Event also took part in the media tournament, and I ended up playing with all four of them before the night was over.

After a slow start in the sucker, I had some good hands come my way and after a while had made the final table, then eventually got all of the way to heads-up before coming up short to finish second (again!). Was kind of a circus by the time we got to the end, with tons of people having stuck around to support both me and eventual winner Melanie.

And heads-up featured some big time back-and-forths with both of us getting close to finishing the other off in preflop all-ins before cards fell on either the turn or river to keep the thing going. Afterwards I knew I could’ve played a bit more aggressively heads-up, but I’ll have to file it away as more experience to draw from the next time around.

The best part of the trip was of course getting to work and laugh alongside my many colleagues and friends there, too. Among them was Carlos, who took that great pic of me just above during the media event, one of several great ones he snapped. “You are the most boring player,” grinned Carlos to me, referring to my lack of animation at the table. But from his photos you’d never guessed that was case.

Will be sitting tight for a while now, the next trip likely going to be another return visit, this time to Monaco. Plotting the summer as well, which might contain a fun adventure, too -- will update accordingly.

Photos: Brad Willis (top); Carlos Monti / PokerStars blog (bottom).

The Recap Writer’s Lament

Many times when explaining to someone unfamiliar with poker tournaments what exactly I do when I go report on them, I’ll bring up sports writing as an illustrative analogy. It’s a handy reference point, and while it doesn’t provide a perfect parallel there are a lot of connections between the two.

There’s the “play-by-play”-type reporting of hands and other aspects of a tournament’s progress that resembles sports reporters’ straightforward accounts of games and their results. There are also the profiles and features and player interviews and so on that go along with tournament reporting that similarly can correspond to how a baseball or football or basketball game gets covered.

A short New York Times article appearing a couple of days ago reminded me of the connection once again, one by Ben Shpigel titled “‘Or So It Seemed’: Notes on Rewriting the Super Bowl.”

The article relives the craziness of Super Bowl LI from the sports writer’s perspective. Shpigel notes how he’d written and filed a draft version of his report on the game early in the third quarter, when it appeared all but certain the Atlanta Falcons would coast to an easy victory. Then came the mad scramble to rewrite and amend once New England mounted what turned out to be a historic comeback to win.

Anyone who has ever reported on the final table of a poker tournament can identify with Shpigel’s story. I’m referring in particular to being the one charged with the assignment of writing an end-of-tournament recap of the result highlighting big hands and/or other themes from the final table.

Those who have done it have all been there. Trying to get a head start in order to publish your piece in a timely fashion after the tournament concludes, you’ll sometimes pick a potential winner to foreground, perhaps even writing an entire mini-profile of the player and how the victory fits into the larger picture of his or her career.

The player holding a big chip lead to start heads-up play will often be the one so targeted. Sometimes even with four or five players left there might be one with both a large chip advantage and significant experience edge who the recap writer will be encouraged to make the star of the early-draft version of the story.

Then comes the series of improbable double-ups and suddenly you’re hitting that backspace key. Speaking of, I wrote something for PokerNews this week presenting the Patriots’ crazy comeback as a series of all-in hold’em situations -- “Patriots Use Their One Time in Super Bowl Comeback.”

Depending on how long the final table goes, sometimes multiple recaps get written, all of which get trashed but one. I remember at some point a group of us agreeing that it was bad luck to get too enthusiastic about prematurely selecting one player to win, since doing so necessarily dooms your pick.

And never actually save a draft version naming a winner in the headline, a sure-fire set-up for future pain.

Anyone who has been there will enjoy Shpigel grieving over the many unpublished, alternate realities he’s composed. That group will also nod in ackowledgment when Shpigel explains he is “not in the business of rooting for teams,” but that he does “root for good stories and for blowouts.”

Tournament reporters will probably also like finding out the meaning of the phrase in the headline -- “or so it seems.” Check it out.

Image: “IMAG0021 Backspace” (adapted), Tom Anderson. CC BY 2.0.

The Name Game

Glad to be back home where I’ll be settled over the next stretch, at least until December when that very last European Poker Tour stop in Prague arrives.

Got to talking with a couple of different people last week about the EPT (and LAPT and other tours) all coming to conclusions here with the end of the calendar year. Well, nominally coming to conclusions, as for the most part a lot of the same stops are still going to be featured among the new “PokerStars Championships” and “PokerStars Festivals.”

I was writing about back in September not long after the announcment was made in Barcelona about the new branding and tours.

This New Jersey festival was interesting in part because there were many folks from different tours all there, kind of like happens in the Bahamas each January (at the no-longer-named PCA).

Kind of got the sense everyone is a little sorry to see the specific tours go away, which’ll mean the records and stats associated with them will be somewhat frozen right where they are going forward. But folks also seem intrigued to see the beginning of this new schedule and the unifying of all the tours (and the start of new records and stats).

The PokerStars Festival New Jersey ultimately played out like a kind of “preseason” event, I think -- not quite what the Festivals are going to be going forward, even if sharing the same name.

Will be interesting to see, say, six months or a year from now what the thoughts are regarding it all, and whether the new names change the games or not.

Image: PokerStars Live.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 12 -- Exponentially-Growing Happiness

Most of these tournaments we cover tend to run together, with most ultimately not standing out too starkly in the memory even just a few weeks on, let alone years later. Somehow I think tonight’s finish to the European Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event will ensure this one will stick in the memory a little more successfully.

They pretty much raced down to heads-up in the sucker, leaving just two players from the 1,785 who entered -- Uri Reichenstein (originally of Israel, now Germany) and Sebastian Malec (of Poland). Reichenstein is in his late 20s, has a ton of big online wins, and fits the mold of the very solid, smart young player. Malec, meanwhile, is just 21, and qualified for the €5,300 buy-in Main via a €27 satellite online.

Malec is also clearly an intelligent player, and in fact it wasn’t that surprising to see these two emerge from the final group to make it to heads-up. Malec didn’t necessarily stand out all that much prior to it getting down to two, but afterwards he did. I mean that literally, too, as in he was standing for a lot of the time while playing, particularly after he made an incorrect hero call of a big river shove by Reichenstein to give the latter the chip lead.

His nervous energy made watching and reporting on him a little stressful, I have to admit. He chattered nonstop, mostly to himself and occasionally to Reichenstein. He’d rock back and forth on his feet while standing and added tons of extra movements to every action. Meanwhile Reichenstein couldn’t have been more stoic and serene, and when Malec occasionally did engage him in conversation, he was very cool and classy with his responses (I thought), making him a likable character in the developing drama.

I found myself liking Malec a lot, too, though, despite all of the talking and near-mania of his behavior. When heads-up first began, he said something to Reichenstein about the “glory” of winning an EPT title, asking him whether he wanted heads-up to be short or last a long time. They were very deep to begin, with Reichenstein on about 100 big blinds and Malec on 70 or 80, so a long duel was a possibility.

Reichenstein said he didn’t care much one way or the other about the length of their match, he just wanted to win. But Malec was firmly on the side of wanting it to go on for a while. He referred to how special it was to get to that point and how he wanted it to last as long as possible.

Then, much later in the match, Malec uttered a line amid the chatter that really stood out -- so much so that my colleague Howard quoted it in his recap of the night:

“My happiness grows exponentially the longer we play,” he said.

You don’t hear that kind of stuff at the poker table very much. Heck, you don’t hear it much anywhere at all, with reference to any profession or recreation or activity in which we engage.

But if you think about it, there are certain things in our lives (hopefully) that do give us happiness, and for which the longer we experience them the happier we grow. I’m mostly thinking of friendships and our relationships with those we love, but there are other things we do that we really like to do, and which keep giving back to us over and over in greater degrees.

One of the things I like to do is to watch other people be happy. And so when Malec won and his joy was such that he couldn’t avoid letting the tears flow, it was hard not to enjoy that. A lot.

Check Howard’s recap for more on what happened, and you can also read the account of the last hand in the live updates. Really, though, you ought to watch the last half-hour or hour of the EPT Live broadcast to get a better idea of what a spectacle it all was. I’m thinking I probably will be doing that myself again once I’m home.

Flying tomorrow. Was a great time and ended on a genuine high, and getting to experience it with friends made it even better. Talk again from the other side of the Atlantic when I’m back on the farm.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 11 -- Learning Games

Was a nice morning and early afternoon today, as I had a chance to visit the pool for a short while and also to go for a longish walk along the coastline to see all of the beachgoers. Saw a bunch of dudes gathered around a table playing some sort of dice game at one point (and snapped the pic at left).

When I tweeted the photo earlier today, Remko Rinkema shot back that “Looks like they have a lot of skin in the game,” reminding me of one of my other favorite Remko quotes: “Imagine how much funnier I am in Dutch.”

They had a cup they used to shake up the dice, and one had drawn lines on a sheet of paper for tallying the score. Anyone know what game they might be playing? (Click the picture to embiggen.)

Speaking of not understanding games fully, I had a couple of funny things happen in short succession while helping cover Day 2 of the €10K High Roller at European Poker Tour Barcelona, both suggesting something similar -- and perhaps not so obvious when looking at these tournaments from the outside.

In order to get to the High Roller tables in the back right of the spacious tournament room one had to pass through a few dozen other tables in the front, and early on there was a pot-limit Omaha hi-lo tournament happening. It was a smallish side event with a 72-player cap and a €550 buy-in.

As I was passing through, that tournament was going on break and I noticed lingering at one of the tables two seated players, two more standing up, and the dealer engaged in an animated conversation while pointing to a set of community cards on the board. From the looks of things, one of the players had just lost the hand, but had questioned the result afterwards.

“You use three of these and two of these,” another player was saying, pointing first to the board cards then to the player’s hole cards. The player was nodding, and before I got out of earshot I heard him express his appreciation.

A little later I was back on the other side of the room with the High Roller, and noticed a couple of people near the edge of the playing area but didn’t pay them too much mind. Then someone came up behind me and after greeting me in Spanish had a question for me.

“What is the short stack?” he asked. Thinking initially he was one of the group I had seen observing the tournament, I asked him what he meant. Was he asking who was the shortest stack in the room at that moment with about 150 players left or what size stack at that point in the tournament qualified as “short”?

He clarified that he was asking the latter. The blinds were 2,000/4,000, and I’d just reported a couple of hands in which players with 10-12 big blinds had shoved all in. “About 40 or 50 thousand,” I said. “That’s when people are going all in,” I added, using my hands to mimic the gesture of pushing chips forward.

He nodded. “Good,” he said. “I have to wait.”

I watched him then proceed back over to the edge of the tournament area and take a seat behind a stack of about 110,000.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. They were about 30 eliminations off the money, and he was trying to gauge whether or not he could fold his way into the money. Indeed, over the next hour-plus he mostly did just that, but alas went out a few spots shy of the bubble bursting.

It had been amusing to see the player in the Omaha hi-lo event being confused about the rules. It was more surprising to encounter the one in the €10,300 high roller inquiring about short-stack strategy as the bubble approached.

All of it reminded me that the stakes for which players are playing don’t automatically suggest anything in particular about their skill level or experience. These were exceptions, of course, but I don’t think it’s that uncommon to find players in low buy-in non-hold’em events who aren’t completely clear about the games they’re playing. And when you have a €10K NLHE tourney with nearly 600 entries, there are probably going to be more than few less experienced folks among the field.

One more day of poker to go here in Barcelona, with the €10K playing down from 36 players to a winner and the Main Event final table also playing out. Check that PokerStars blog all day and night on Sunday to find out how things turn out.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 10 -- Popeye & Paella

Had a short one today, working only up to the dinner break of Day 4 of the EPT Barcelona Main Event and skipping out on the last 90-minute level as I’m due to work what will likely be a late one tomorrow. Gonna be over on the €10K High Roller, and with 550-plus entries on today’s first day (with late registration open until the start of Day 2) it’s going to be an unavoidably long day.

The most interesting hand of the day I watched was between the young Belgian Anthony Chimkovitch and a Polish player named Norbert Berent. Wrote it up on the PokerStars blog with the generic-sounding title “Big-chip battle between Berent and Chimkovitch” -- click here and scroll to 5:15 p.m. if curious.

To summarize here, Chimkovitch called a raise from the blinds, check-raised the flop, barreled the turn, then bet big on the river only to see Berent raise all-in. With three spades and a pair on the board, Chimkovitch ditched his hand pretty quickly, and Berent showed his ace-high for a bluff.

In the post I began by describing Chimkovitch’s t-shirt which had a picture of Popeye, and with Berent in the role of Bluto I had Chimkovitch’s strength-representing bets expressing the sailor’s “I am what I am” ethos. Ultimately, though, Chimkovitch needed some spinach because he wasn’t strong to the finich. I liked his play on the hand, though, and his demeanor at the tables as well, and so wouldn’t mind seeing him take his run deeper if he can.

After finishing had a chance to enjoy a “real meal” somewhere other than the casino or hotel, hitting one of the places along the beach called Moncho’s. I actually remembered eating there a year ago (and not enjoying it very much), but this time was much better. My colleague Stephen and I shared a lobster paella dish, and our buddy Brad took a picture of us just before digging in. It wasn’t spectacular, but quite good and satisfying, with the on-the-way-back ice cream from Farggi rounding out a pleasant evening meal.

On the way back we watched a little beach volleyball. Check out these dudes -- no hands!

Like I say, it’s going to be a long one tomorrow. Check that PokerStars blog for updates of both the Main and the High Roller.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 8 -- Double Bubble

Today at the European Poker Tour’s Barcelona stop was highlighted by Day 2 of the Main Event reaching the bubble near the end of Day 2 (faster than typical thanks to the new payout schedule in which 20% of the field cashes) and the always fun media event.

I happened to be there for the bubble hand today in the EPT Main. I was also there for the one in the media event as, alas, I was the one going out one spot shy of the cash.

In the Main Event there were 360 players left, meaning exactly 45 eight-handed tables had gone to hand-for-hand play as the top 359 made the money. There were several of us on hand to try to catch the bubble hand, although to be honest it usually isn’t that hard to witness at least the end of such a hand given how the usual procedure is to stop the tournament, get the EPT Live cameras over and ready, then deal out the hand and/or have a showdown. By then there are many reporters from multiple outlets there, too, again making it easier to get details if needed.

I was watching just a handful of tables, and somewhat uncannily was standing right beside the one where the bubble hand ended up taking place, being there from the very start to record the preflop action. The hand was a bit unusual for a bubble hand. Rather than a preflop all-in, it had lots of postflop back-and-forthing and culminated in the at-risk player calling off his remaining chips on the river. Kind of a neat hand to follow, actually -- you can read about it here.

The media tournament came later, starting after 10 p.m., drawing 40 entrants. It followed the same 20% payout scheme of the other EPT events, meaning the top eight made the money with eighth getting €25, just five euros more than the buy-in.

Your humble scribbler-slash-low-roller made it to the final nine, getting lucky once along the way when my ace-king outdrew pocket kings. I might’ve folded into the money, but took a reckless gamble in one hand to lose about a third of my stack, then lost with ace-king versus pocket sevens to finish ninth.

Good fun, though, getting to play for two-and-a-half hours or so. And it wasn’t that bad getting back to the room in time to get a decent night’s sleep, upon which I am presently going to embark.

Will probably have to write a little something next week about the big announcement today from PokerStars regarding its live events and the consolidating of all the tours as “PokerStars Championships” and “PokerStars Festivals” -- a lot of buzz about that, as you might imagine.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 7 -- Knowing Where to Look

Moved over to help cover the Main Event today at the European Poker Tour Barcelona festival.

It was the very big Day 1b which ended up creating a total turnout of 1,785 players (a record for EPT Barcelona) and a €8,657,250 prize pool (also a record).

I’ve written here many times before about covering Day 1s of multi-day poker tournaments (i.e., three-day or longer), and how the big field events in particular make it both impractical and unfavorable (I think) to cover things the same way as you do later on in the event. That is to say, the individual hand reports and chip counts that are important later on -- say, after the money bubble bursts and (really) once the sucker is down to just a few tables -- simply don’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things during a tournament’s initial stages.

In fact, I was thinking today when walking around the tournament how the reporter is often better off on a Day 1 looking up rather than down -- that is, at the faces rather than the chips and cards. See who’s there, listen to what they’re saying, get a sense for the “characters” (so to speak) that will begin rounding out the cast of the narrative you’re creating about the tournament.

Eventually you begin to move your gaze downward -- namely, to the chip stacks. Of course, you’re always counting chips, even from the start. But it really isn’t until play gets a few levels in and even into the late stages of Day 1 and the start of Day 2 that the stacks matter much at all -- except, of course, to the short stacks and endangered players sitting behind them.

Later you move your focus still further downward to the table -- specifically the cards and the chips that are going in the middle, which at some point take over the narrative as the most meaningful motivator of plot. Sure, “color” will crop up here and there, and adds greatly if noticed and shared, but you can’t avoid talking about hands anymore.

By the very end you’re looking at payout schedules and filling blanks showing where players end up. You could say you begin looking away from the table entirely, toward the cashier’s desk and that last transaction made by those participants who manage to be around for the story’s final scenes and denouement (not always a “climax” to the story, as sometimes -- even often -- that’ll happen earlier than the end).

Enough abstraction. Check out the reports on the PokerStars blog where some of these high-falutin’ ideas can be shown being put into practice.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 4 -- Percentage Players

Have been here since Tuesday morning and still am out-of-whack sleep-wise, so I’m cutting this entry short so as to get some snooze time sooner than later.

The bubble burst in the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event today, but with 695 players making the money out of 3,447, that made the event a little less climactic, particularly since the first wave of cashers were only getting their €1,100 buy-in back.

Was saying yesterday how I tend to prefer freezeouts. Not sure what to think, really, about the idea of paying a higher percentage of players in these things -- namely 20% (instead of 15%), a change the EPT introduced this season.

There were some in the €50K Super High Roller tweeting negatively about their event featuring 20% payouts, and today I heard Frank Op de Woerd interviewing EPT Tournament Director Neil Johnson about it. (EDIT [added 8/21/16]: Here’s that interview, if you’re curious.)

I’ll have to think further about it to decide what I think. Having the top 10-15% cash has always seemed like a reasonable amount, but I can also imagine entertaining arguments that such a range is arbitrarily selected -- that is, if another percentage had been adopted as the “standard,” we’d feel differently about this one.

All I know right now is my energy level has dropped to that same 10-15% range, so I’ll cut it off here and sign off. Check the PS blog. More here mañana.

Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 3 -- The Big Freezeout

Crazy huge field for the third and final Day 1 flight of the Estrellas Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event, which my colleague Jack and I helped report once again along with help from our photographer friend René.

That to the left is a pic of the registration line early in the day. Ended up with 1,755 players on this day alone, which brought the overall number of runners up to 3,447 -- a little over 150 more than what they drew for this same €1,100 buy-in event from a year ago. That makes the prize pool €3,343,590 with €423,600 up top for the winner.

It’s kind of a unique thing these days to have a relatively big field event for a relatively low buy-in and there not being any reentries involved.

Looking at this past summer’s World Series of Poker, there were seven events out of the 69 that drew larger fields in terms of entries, although four of these were reentry events. Only the Main Event, the Seniors, and the Monster Stack were freezeouts drawing more “uniques” to play -- of those, only the Monster Stack really compares (being a $1,500 event).

As a fan and reporter, I very much prefer freezeouts. As a player I do as well, although that could be in part because when I first started playing tournaments, “rebuy” events (as they were called, and for which there is a distinction) were then the exception, not the norm.

From the reporting side of things, it’s tedious enough to do multiple Day 1s, but to have the same players entering over and over and report on their bustouts time after time is more than a little absurd. I’m remembering one event from a couple of years back I covered in which a player entered seven times, and I reported five of his bustout hands.

Talk about chronicling trivia.

Anyhow, things get a bit more interesting tomorrow with the bubble bursting and everything becoming a bit more meaningful going forward. Thankfully I’m catching a slight break with these 10 a.m. starts, as Jack is covering the start and I’m doing a little extra at the end, giving me a bit more time in the mornings for other things. I won’t go on about it, but I’m no fan of the pre-noon starting times, no way no how.

Back at it tomorrow. Check that PokerStars blogfor more on the ESPT, as well as for reports from the first €10K High Roller which should be playing down to a winner.

Photo: courtesy René Velli/PokerStars blog.

Inflection Points

I am recalling at least three occasions when acts of violence so horrific and massive have occurred in this country, I’ve found myself unable not to write about them here on HBP.

This is a poker blog, after all, and while I’ll often write about sports, politics, entertainment, business, music, and other non-poker topics including what it’s like living on a horse farm, I still try to keep things oriented in the direction of poker, which necessarily leaves certain topics out of the mix.

One was the shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007, prompting in part a meditation on college classrooms (where I’ve spent so much of my adult life, including then when I was teaching full-time). Another was the one at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012, also taking place at a school, with many children among the victims.

The third was the bombing at the Boston Marathon in April 2013. As had been the case during the Sandy Hook shooting, I was reporting on a tournament at the time, and wrote then how “it felt odd to be locked in that poker tourney cocoon while such terrible things were happening outside of it.”

The shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning has again forced all of us out of our respective cocoons. Or has it? Beyond the horror of the scene and the extent of pain inflicted, there’s that unsettling sense already that even the “deadliest mass shooting in American history” -- as some (not all) have described it -- hasn’t necessarily moved the collective to a point of acting in response.

Remember the Harrington on Hold’em books, and that explanation of “inflection points” that comes up in the second volume? That’s the concept associated with the famous “M” ratio signaling how many orbits you have left according to your stack size, and the corresponding “zones” (green, yellow, orange, red, and “dead”) meant to identify what sort of maneuverability you have left according to your remaining chips.

Regarding inflection points, authors Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie introduce the concept by way of a football analogy, referring to a team that is behind having to jettison certain plays from their playbook in order to preserve time and score fast. As the clock winds down, multiple “inflection points” are crossed -- i.e., first short runs are out, then all running plays, then even short passes aren’t viable as the seconds tick away. Finally a team’s options are whittled down to just one -- a long Hail Mary pass into the endzone.

Similarly in tournaments, they explain, when your stack gets too short your reduced to just a few moves, then eventually only the one of going all in. Each time you reach an inflection point, you must actively recognize certain options are no longer available to you.

I feel like each of these shootings first appear as though they could represent “inflection points” insofar as they seem initially to encourage both dialogue and even action designed to reduce the chances of another occurring. But we never seem to reach the inflection point beyond which the option just to keep on sitting tight is no longer available to us.

Perhaps as a collective we’re overwhelmed by the seeming impotence of the majority in the face of those in power (or, in this election year, those seeking power) -- that is to say, those whose all-encompassing motive is to preserve their comparatively elite status. Such a goal is usually best achieved by continuing to encourage all to keep on sitting tight -- that is to say, to prevent us from thinking we’ve crossed an inflection point beyond which some sort of drastic, culture-changing, life-altering action emerges as the only option left.

(Incidentally, the screamingly hurtful, nonsensical noise emanating from the demagogue who has now secured the Republican party’s presidential nomination is meaningfully confusing to many. If regarded with any scrutiny whatsoever, the several “options” he proposes are in truth uniformly self-destructive, and if we step back to take a broader view of the nation’s history, we quickly realize his proposals were shown to be untenable long ago, after we crossed earlier inflection points.)

There’s a point somewhere, I’m sure of it, which if reached will finally force our hand in some constructive way to make such acts of violence less likely. What’s most chilling is to try to imagine what must happen in order for us to get there.

Image: “The Point of No Return,” Pat Hawks. CC BY 2.0.

Travel Report: EPT12 Grand Final, Day 7 -- Runner-Up

The year is only about a third over, but I feel like I’ve endured enough runner-ups for the rest of 2016 already. My Carolina Panthers lost the Super Bowl in February, then my UNC Tar Heels lost the championship game last month. Heck, even the Charlotte Hornets teased me into thinking we might win that first round series versus the Miami Heat before coming up short in the end.

Now I have my own second-place finish to add to the list, after playing deep into the night in the media tournament here in Monaco at the European Poker Tour Grand Final.

Prior to my own poker-playing fun came Day 2 of the Main Event, a relatively shorter day that went from noon to around 8:30 p.m. without a dinner break. Got a sandwich and a cup of tea after that, then headed over to the media tourney that started around 10 p.m.

I’m not playing a heck of a lot these days, so these media tournaments are kind of a treat. Like others on the EPT, this one was €20 to play. Unlike others, they made this one a “knockout” event with a €5 bounty on each player, too, making the entry €25.

We got going on time, and were seated in the main tournament room along with the other side events still going on all around us. About 40 or so participated, I think, or perhaps a few more.

Footballer legend Ronaldo (i.e., Ronaldo Nazário) played -- you can see him pictured at left -- as did Friend of Team PokerStars and Global Poker League player Felipe “Mojave” Ramos (against whom I played an interesting hand in the media tournament at EPT Dublin). I didn’t end up playing against either of them, but had a ton of fun nonetheless competing versus my media friends and colleagues.

Enjoyed greatly hands during the first hour-plus when the blinds weren’t yet too big to prevent postflop shenanigans, giving me a chance to play position a lot and also occasionally pressure shorter stacks. Soon, though, that became harder to pull off as the levels were only 10 minutes long, forcing the all-ins all around fairly frequently.

Got in on a five-euro last longer organized by Frank Op de Woerd that ended up being worth more than third-place prize money as so many participated. That became interesting once we got to the nine-handed final table when I had an above average stack and the only other two still in the last longer -- Victor (who writes for the PokerStarsLive French site) and Stephen (of the PS blog) -- came in short.

While I started the final table well by adding chips in the first hand, those two went all in a couple of times against each other after with Stephen coming out the worse of it, then shortly after getting eliminated. Soon after that Victor and I decided to chop the last longer, guaranteeing each of us a profit on the night.

Made it through the cash bubble (the top six finishers got paid), then with five left got short myself. A hand then arose in which Victor had raised all in and after posting the big blind I had only a couple of BBs left. Looked down at 5-2-offsuit, decided my range included any two cards, and called. Despite being up against two bigger cards I ended up making two pair by the turn, which beat the pair of jacks Victor made on the river, and a little after that chipped up enough to take the lead (winning a big one with pocket kings once along the way).

Actually had something like half the chips with four left, though things got even again when we were down to three. Victor then finally went out in third, and one of the TV guys Farhan and myself were heads-up. I joked that if we were still playing at 5:30 a.m. they’d make us stop as had happened with Ole Schemion and Fabian Quoss the night before in the €50K Single-Day High Roller, although we knew it wasn’t going to last much longer given the relative depth of the stacks.

I had a small advantage when we had our first all-in situation, with me calling his shove with K-10 and feeling pretty good about things when he tabled K-2. But a deuce appeared in the window, and suddenly I was down to four BBs and outchipped something like 6-to-1.

I’d double once with 5-3 versus his J-6 after he flopped a six, then I hit runner-runner two pair (I was around 6% to win on that flop). But then Farhan got me with 5-4 versus my A-3 (see left), meaning every heads-up all-in was won by the player with the worst hand when the chips went in the middle.

It was around 2 a.m. by then. Like in Barcelona earlier this EPT season (where I finished third in the media tournament), my only real disappointment was missing out on getting a winner’s photo, although the €275 I ended up taking away was a decent consolation prize. That total came from second-place prize money, chopping the last-longer, and the half-dozen or so bounties I collected. Just missed out again on being the first to win two of these media tournaments on the EPT (I think), after winning that one way back at EPT Kyiv many years ago.

Grabbing some sleep now. The tournament most people want to read about is still going on today, of course, with just under 200 making it to today’s Main Event Day 3. Check in again at the PokerStars blog to see who wins the all-ins over there and continues to have a chance to make their final table on Friday.

Photo (nine-handed final table): courtesy Jules Pochy/PokerStars blog.

Some Bad Hands Are Badder Than Others

I was working yesterday afternoon and so while I had the teevee tuned to the fourth round of the Masters I wasn’t paying especially close attention to it. Besides, defending champion Jordan Spieth was up by five strokes with just the back nine to go, so it didn’t seem like there’d be that much drama in store as the tournament wound toward its conclusion.

That means I didn’t quite live through the moment-by-moment agony of Spieth’s 12th hole, the par 3 that he quadruple-bogeyed. I looked up and saw he was strangely and suddenly down by three strokes, then caught up a bit to discover more details of what had happened.

Perhaps it was because of my casual viewing, but I didn’t anticipate how the pundits today would characterize that hole and Spieth’s overall “collapse” as “the most shocking in golf history.” Part of me wants to react by talking about recency bias and hyperbole, although like I say I wasn’t as tuned in to the proceedings as many others were, nor do I have a command of all of golf history to provide me the needed authority to counter such a claim.

I do remember Rory McIlroy’s less sudden but no less affecting “collapse” five years ago when he led the Masters heading into the back nine only to finish in a tie for 15th.

As I wrote about here then, McIlroy’s fall was perhaps easier for many of us to identify with than what happened with Spieth yesterday, given Spieth’s utter dominance over the previous seven-and-a-half rounds’ worth of Masters golf. The lightning-bolt quality of Spieth’s single-hole nightmare also made it seem like too much of an aberration to recognize and empathize with as it was happening.

Thinking again about the different ways players lose at poker, I guess Spieth’s “one really, really bad hand” probably happens a little less often to us than does the gradual series of small mistakes and lack of focus McIlroy demonstrated on his ill-fated back nine in 2011.

It happens sometimes, say, in a tournament, where one especially poor decision overwhelmingly determines a player’s fate, bringing on elimination either right there and then or shortly thereafter. But usually it’s not so simple to pinpoint precisely where it all goes wrong.

In poker I think it is easier to come back from the one really bad hand where one can focus on a particular error or misjudgment and correct it going forward. It’s a little less simple to overcome the bad habits and overall skill deficiencies that often lead to more gradual slides out of tournaments or to the felt in a cash game.

Not sure it’s quite the same in golf or other sports, though. Thinking back, McIlroy did come back to win the U.S. Open -- the very next major -- just a couple of months after that Masters five years ago. Which variety of losing is easier to correct and/or overcome?

Photo: “Golf ‘Lessen’,” JD Hancock. CC BY 2.0.

Calling Up the GPL Feed

Major League Baseball had its opening day on Sunday, and for the first time I took the plunge and got the relatively cheap MLB At-Bat app that allows you (among other things) to listen to all the games. You even get to pick which team’s announcing crew you want to hear, and I’ve already had fun sampling a few of them.

I’ve also already realized I’ll only occasionally have time actually to listen to baseball games, but given the relatively cheap price of the app I’m not too bothered by that.

Meanwhile there was another opening day yesterday as the Global Poker League kicked off its inaugural season with live streaming of some six-max sit-n-gos played between representatives of the 12 GPL teams. I dialed up the Twitch channel on the Roku so it would play on the teevee while I worked on other things, and found it an enjoyable background hum that occasionally had me looking up as each of the SNGs got down to heads-up before concluding.

Can’t say I focused too intently on Griffin Benger and Sam Grafton’s commentary, although it seemed enjoyable when I did. I thought Laura Cornelius and Eric Danis did well, too, in the studio between matches, with their contributions helping to lend the proceedings the feeling of some kind of sporting event (a goal, I know, of the GPL and its attempt to “sportify” poker).

Watching an online tournament isn’t necessarily the most dynamic thing to witness, of course (and I say that as someone who has watched and reported on a lot of online poker over the years). The attention necessarily drifts, with only occasional hands standing out and most drifting past unnoticed.

Davidi Kitai made what seemed a remarkable fold on his way to winning the first SNG yesterday for the Paris Aviators. Dan “Jungleman” Cates, playing for the Berlin Bears, came in sixth of six in that initial match to earn his team zero points, then in the second one made a weird call of an all-in push by the Moscow Wolverines’ Dzmitry Urbanovich to lose most of his stack before taking sixth again.

Regarding the latter hand -- in which Cates instantly called the shove with J-8 (sooted!) -- Jungleman noted over Twitter that he didn’t mean to call the shove: “misread my hand in gpl, thought i had A9s somehow (j8s hand)... I was playing cash on side. Pretty tilting even though it's not for money...”

Some responded to that tweet by observing that it seemed to undercut the whole idea of the GPL a bit to have a player not giving the matches his full attention this way. Kind of thing does make it hard to compare folks playing online poker to actual sporting events. I mean we don’t see outfielders missing fly balls because they were checking Facebook or playing some other game on their phones.

In any case, it’s diverting and as I mentioned before my inner sports nerd delights in seeing early standings and statistics starting to build -- both for MLB and the GPL. Like baseball, it looks like from the GPL’s ambitious eight-month schedule they’ll be on the air pretty much all the time, too, for those of us curious enough (and having the time) to dip in to catch some of the action.

We’ll see how often I sample both feeds.

Image: Global Poker League.

The Other Opening Day: Global Poker League Starts Next Week

Looking at this schedule for the first season of the Global Poker League, just announced today. Matches involving the 12 teams start on April 5th and continue all of the way through to November 22nd when the finals are scheduled.

That means baseball gets going on Sunday, but on Tuesday there will be this other opening day that I might have to check out as well.

It appears as though there is a 14-week “regular season” schedule broken into two parts (the first lasting eight weeks, the latter one six), with a series of six “Summer Heats” coming in between that will coincide with the World Series of Poker playing out in Las Vegas (from early June to mid-July).

Each week of the regular season starts with some 6-max matches involving representatives from each of the six teams in each division (Eurasia and Americas), then has teams squaring off against one another over subsequent days.

I’m still in the dark regarding where and when all of this happens. If I’m following the press release correctly, these weekly matches (both the 6-max ones and the team-vs.-team ones) will all be online, “livestreamed and following an esports broadcast format.” Then the “Summer Heats” will be in person (I think), “filmed live on location in GPL’s Las Vegas Studio.” (Is that where the cube and playing while standing up comes in?) Then the final will apparently happen at the SSE Arena, Wembley (a place that seats 12,500).

It all remains pretty abstract, although my sports nerd side enjoys looking at schedules and imagining standings and statistics and associated whatnot. I think there will be a lot of interest in these first streams next week, at least among the poker community during a bit of a dry spell, tourney-wise. I wonder if that’ll drop off afterwards, or if there will be any appeal at all to fans of other esports who might gravitate over.

I think actually the whole project in a way is attempting to create a different, somewhat abstract version of the game -- one in which certain core elements (namely the investment of money and the individual participation) are being jettisoned in favor of highlighting other facets, including (I’m guessing) in-game strategy, personalities, and city identities.

We could step back, of course, and think about how tournament poker is itself a kind of abstraction of cash game poker, although not a hugely dramatic one. Much we take for granted about how tournaments work were once wholly new and strange -- not that long ago, in fact.

Such a long season -- I guess by the end it won’t seem so strange anymore, at least among those who stick around to follow it.

Image: Global Poker League.

Hedging

Might still have another post or two left to file under the “poker’s precursors” heading -- at the very least I’m going to do an epilogue recapping those games and adding a few other thoughts regarding them. Today, though, I’ll just pass along this short poker-related item from National Public Radio, a segment appearing earlier today called “Hedging Their Bets: How The Pros Diversity Their Poker Portfolios.”

Clicking the above link gets you to the short audio clip as well as a transcript of the report. Basically it’s just sharing to a non-poker audience the phenomenon of players buying pieces of each other in tournaments, presenting it as an alternative way to “invest” besides simply paying one’s own entry fees and trying to eek out a profit.

Poker pro Derek Wolters is featured as the investor, describing in particular his having played and busted the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event while also buying pieces of 16 other players in the tournament. One of those Wolters bought pieces of turned out to be Jake Balsiger who went onto finish third for a nearly $3.8 million prize -- good for almost $600,000 for Wolters.

“Are you a better investor or a poker player?” asks reporter Keith Romer of Wolters near the end, who replies he thinks he’s better at investing while adding “there’s not that many people who do as much investing as me.”

The piece does a nice job presenting the phenomenon of buying action, with the analogy of this being a way to “diversify” a “poker portfolio” helping get the idea across. The piece might give the impression that tournament players selling/buying action is somewhat new, when obviously it isn’t.

It also perhaps suggests misleadingly that buying pieces of others is a better investment strategy than playing oneself, with the bonanza Wolters happened to hit with Balsiger making it seem he exerted some kind of skill or strategy with his investments that was better constructed than the strategy he employs at the poker tables. That could well be true, but in just over three minutes there wasn’t a lot of space to give his two methods of investing a thoughtful comparison.

Finally, I can’t help but think how at least a few non-poker playing listeners might wonder a little about the ethics of players buying and selling each other’s action while also competing against each other in the same event. It’s an issue -- usually a non-issue -- with which those of us close to that world are very familiar, but from the outside it has to seem a little strange. That is, buying percentages of others whose success or failure is not unrelated to your own, not to mention the more direct possibility of collusion that always exists as a possibility when players who’ve bought pieces of each other happen to meet at the same table.

Describing the practice as “hedging” fits in one sense -- by buying up pieces of others, players do give themselves extra chances to win should they themselves lose. But are they “limiting their exposure” (as hedging is normally described) or increasing it? Just as poker is a more complicated game than it might appear from the outside, so, too, is buying action a more complicated investment strategy than the piece perhaps lets on.

I liked the piece, but then again I’m not sure. I want to hedge.

Image: $100 bills in $10000 straps, stacked in a pyramid, public domain.

Nothing Endures But Change

Strange weather here on the farm today, where the skies were constantly going back and forth from dark gray to bright blue as the sun played hide-and-seek. Temperatures varied wildly as well, with winds up around 25 miles per hour at times. Precipitation came and went a few times, too, though we had none of the hail or more severe stuff that occurred all around us, including tornadoes in the Carolinas and surrounding states.

During the late afternoon I was cleaning stalls and taking care of some other barn-related duties. When inside our modest-sized (four-stall) barn everything sounds a bit more ominous than it actually is. Even a medium-strength drizzle gets amplified to a booming drone on the barn’s roof, while the wind whipping through conjures thoughts of the black-and-white scenes in The Wizard of Oz.

While working I thought in passing about where I was just a few days ago, standing amid tables’ full of poker players who together created a different sort of whirlwind as their chips went scattering around and around. There, too, everything is in constant flux, with any snapshot taken at a given moment becoming relatively less indicative of the scene once another orbit’s worth of hands go by.

At one point I stepped outside the barn to refill some water buckets, and was almost taken aback by the breathtaking sight above.

The sky had been dark and slightly menacing-looking just a few minutes before, as shown in that photo up top. Now it was light again, with a brilliant and vivid rainbow splashing down in the woods that run alongside the edge of our property. A double-rainbow, actually:

(Click either of the pics in this post to embiggen.)

That only lasted a few minutes longer, too, as the sun began to dim and dark clouds swiftly tumbled back to fill the skyscape. Later in the evening I talked with Vera’s mother, describing the scene to her as well as I could. She joked that a leprechaun might have followed me back from Ireland and over in the woods had hidden a pot of gold.

Looks like tomorrow there will be clouds but less of the craziness, if the prognosticators are to be believed.

Perhaps I might wander over to those woods at some point today, just to be sure no one has left anything.

2016 WSOP Schedule Released

This afternoon the World Series of Poker released details regarding this summer’s 2016 WSOP schedule, another monster with 69 bracelet events this time around.

They’re advertising the series as starting on May 31, although in truth the first bracelet event doesn’t kick off until June 1. The Main Event will again play down to a final table and then come back to finish in the fall, with the last day of that scheduled for July 18. The “November Nine” will actually start in October on the 30th and last three days, finishing November 1. Here’s a .pdf with details of the Main Event schedule.

There appear to be a lot of changes from previous years both in terms of the events being offered, the schedule (11 a.m. starts), payouts (15% getting paid for most events), starting stacks (50,000 in the Main; 5x stacks in other events) and accompanying structure changes, and so on.

There’s a new “top-up turbo” event with 20-minute levels with bonus chips for satellite players, a “triple draw lowball” mixed event featuring ace-to-five TD, deuce-to-seven TD, and Badugi, another mixed event featuring three Omaha variants, a “tag team” event in which groups of 2-4 players enter as a team, among other new stuff.

Kind of interesting trying to absorb such a mass of information all at once. Seeing lots of quick responses already by folks, with most seeming favorable and a few less so regarding specific items. It’ll take a week or three for more substantive evaluations to emerge, I imagine, then once we get to late May and into June we’ll probably hear more intensely delivered opinions once players realize exactly how specific events have been planned.

The WSOP will continue to enjoy its central spot on the poker tournament calendar. It also will probably always remain unique in the way it continues to attract players from around the globe, in particular non-professionals. But with the year so jammed with tournaments already, both in the U.S. and everywhere else, it’s hardly as distinct as it once was, even just a decade ago during the early “boom” years.

The full schedule can be found here, while the WSOP’s presser highlighting the new events and changes is here.

Image: WSOP.

Remembering and Recovering

Today Vera Valmore and I went to the local Y (which we’ve just joined). For the first time in I don’t know how long, I spent a half-hour shooting hoops.

Had to a chuckle at that sign pictured at left, one I noticed when heading into the gym. The top one, I mean. Can’t say avoiding dunking has ever been that much of a problem for me.

Basketball has always been my favorite sport to play. I grew up with a hoop in the driveway and spending practically every single day of my childhood and right into my late teens playing. I continued to play regularly through college and grad school, often playing pickup games up to three times a week.

Over the last decade-and-a-half things trailed off considerably for me as far as b-ball goes. It’s the unfortunate transition most of us find it hard to avoid making at some point after reaching adulthood -- less play, more work. I was still occasionally jumping in games and at least shooting around up until about five years ago, but to be honest I can’t even remember the last time I even took a shot before today.

I knew from previous experience that the first shot, and likely the first several, would not be pretty. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, though, and in fact within the first handful of shots I’d already swished a three-pointer. Even so, I was mindful of how the memory of a skill like shooting a basketball only comes back to a person in stages after a long period having not exercised it.

For me, the first part of the “recovery” concerns simply holding the ball. I don’t have to work hard to remember how I hold the ball when I shoot it, and it only takes a little more effort to remind myself how to lift the sucker up and push it toward the basket.

After that comes becoming familiar once again with gauging how much physical exertion is needed to shoot from various distances -- five feet, 10, 15, 20, and so on -- as well as sharpening the aim to make the ball go more or less straight and not to one side or the other. I found it easier to remind myself how to shoot the long ones than the middle-range ones. Even lay-ups were a little tricky, partly because one of the last things I was remembering how to do (or “recovering”) was how to move my feet and hold the rest of my body when shooting.

It reminded me a little of playing poker, which has also become something I do less frequently these days. As a result, I’m often going through a similar “recovery” period when taking those first few hands, starting with simply handling the chips and cards, then moving on to remembering strategy and trying to learn once again how to play effectively.

I didn’t get into a game tonight, which means I didn’t challenge myself to try to run up and down the court several times without interruption. I know from previous experience how that is almost an insurmountable hurdle for those who haven’t played for a long time, as it only takes a couple of times running the court for a lot of us to be left gasping for air.

That’s also a poker-related skill -- namely, stamina and the ability to focus and perform for lengthy periods -- that necessarily takes time to get back. The last session of any considerable length I have played was probably the media event at EPT Barcelona where I finished third, adding up to four or five hours of time at the tables (I think). I don’t doubt if I were to jump into a multi-day tournament with days scheduled to go ten hours-plus, I’d probably be in rough shape halfway through Day 1.

Fun to play again, though, even for just a little while. Will have to find a way to play more.