Buddhist Monks Busted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anticipation

For those of us of a certain age, the title of this post automatically makes us think of that Carly Simon song from the ’70s. Which in turn makes us think of Heinz ketchup. And absurd exchanges between children about whether or not their mothers buy them Heinz ketchup for their burgers and fries.

That’s because those ads were pounded into all our consciousnesses relentlessly during our formative years sitting in front of the tube, a.k.a., the “electronic babysitter.” Kind of like those multiple Geico campaigns from which there presently appears no escape.

Between the World Series of Poker being just a little over two weeks away, the big finale of the World Poker Tour’s Season X coming up before that, suggestive hints about the PokerStars-Full Tilt Poker-DOJ deal possibly edging toward completion, other legal machinations regarding online poker currently being advanced, and even the imminent return of the Two Plus Two forums (tomorrow?), the word seems most apt to describe the poker world at the present moment.

It’s like watching Tom Dwan holding out chips, hesitating before releasing them onto the felt. Like were all just waiting for something to happen. Soon. And perhaps something big.

Perhaps we’re also conditioned a bit by the fact that over the last year or so -- really the last several years -- there hasn’t been a stretch of more than a couple or three months to go by without some “bombshell” going off somewhere in the poker world. So after a period of relative calm, we brace ourselves, expecting something to happen yet again to cause us to rethink pretty much everything we thought we knew before.

I guess as poker players we all kind of hunger for such news, too... not unlike we crave “action” at the tables. All of which makes the feeling of anticipation that much stronger.

We’ll see what happens, and if we have to wait much longer. Meanwhile, I’m hungry. Who else wants to go for a burger?

Rounders’ Game of Tell & Show

Kind of wiped out today thanks to a late night following some of these marathon SCOOP tourneys on PokerStars. Meaning there ain’t a lot in the tank for posting here at the moment. So let me send you over to another blog for an interesting read.

Not long ago I had the chance to read Zach Elwood’s new book Reading Poker Tells and ended up reviewing it over at Betfair. I enjoyed the book quite a bit, which does a neat job categorizing and describing a number of revealing behaviors at the poker tables. Check out my review for a full run down of what the book covers.

Zach also keeps a blog where he posts further on the subject of tells in poker. Over the last few months he’s posted some interesting analyses of the Pius Heinz-Martin Staszko heads-up battle for the 2011 WSOP Main Event bracelet. Those are some interesting reads, especially for those of us who watched that more-than-six-hour heads-up match play out on ESPN last November.

Anyhow, yesterday Zach published a post discussing tells in Rounders, going beyond the one we all remember -- Teddy KGB and his Oreos -- to point out others exhibited by both Teddy and Mike McDermott. Both characters are pretty transparent, really, with regard to their tells, although as Zach points out in his post the characters’ failings in this regard could well be considered part of the film makers’ intentions to convey certain things to the audience, including the non-poker people watching.

Thanks to my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course, I’ve been watching Rounders over and over again for the last few semesters as one of the films I assign to my class. Thus have I become pretty familiar with the tells Zach is describing in his post, as well as some other idiosyncracies in the presentation of poker scenes that may or may not have been intended.

I’m also picking up on other small things with each viewing, such as the neat symmetry between the backstory about Mike and Worm being involved in fixing a basketball game back at prep school and the later scene in the church gym. As back at prep school, Mike agrees one last time to team up with his friend in a plan to make some scratch, although like before things won’t work out.

Anyhow, check out Zach’s analysis of some tells in Rounders. Kind of thing would be neat to do with a lot of poker films, actually, since there is lot of overlap -- potentially -- between the non-verbal types of communication that happens at the poker tables and the language of cinema.

WSOP Stirring Things Up for 2012

As happens every year around this time, the World Series of Poker held a conference call yesterday for media to talk about the upcoming WSOP and give writers things to hype up here during the last few days before the sucker starts.

It’s getting close. Sunday, May 27 is when things get going for real at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. That’s when the first two events start up, the Casino Employees Event (No. 1) and the first of many $1,500 no-limit hold’em tourneys (Event No. 2).

You can find plenty of “live blogs” and other articles running down what was covered yesterday, so I’ll pass on that sort of thing here. I suppose the biggest “news” concerned some rule changes regarding player conduct, including allowing players more freedom when it comes to table talk as well as celebrating. The former sounded a bit like an invitation to engage in Jamie Gold-like banter (“I said top top!”), while the latter reminded some of Hevad Khan (“Bulldozer!”).

Speaking of speaking at the table, another rule that will likely get some pushback from players is one requiring those at televised feature tables to announce their action verbally. Not everyone plays poker this way, with many just letting the chips and cards do their talking for them, and so some have already begun to voice displeasure over Twitter regarding having different requirements for feature-table players than for the rest of the field.

There was other stuff about the “Big One” (the $1 million buy-in event), the new WSOP APAC, the ladies event and men playing, and so on. Like I say, you can easily find news on that elsewhere. Next week the media guide comes out, and I assume we’ll get a look at the official new rules soon as well, so there will be continued buzz going forward.

Someone brought up the topic of the huge banners of past WSOP Main Event champions that decorate the Amazon Room each year, asking in particular whether 2000 ME champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson’s banner might be obscured given the Black Friday-related charges against him and all the other Full Tilt Poker folderol.

The reply was that the WSOP would not be doing anything with the banners that might resemble any sort of statement of position on Ferguson. (A similar issue has been raised in the past with regard to 1994 ME champ and Russ Hamilton and his involvement in the UltimateBet insider cheating scandal and cover up.)

I’m with the WSOP on this one, by the way. The banners are meant to refer to WSOP’s history, and it’s not like you can change the past. If a past champion was found later to have cheated in order to win, that’s a different story. But it’s silly for the WSOP to get into the business each year of casting judgment on past champions. I say hang those banners and let the people looking up at those faces form their own opinions about each one.

In delivering that response, Executive Director Ty Stewart pointedly noted that the WSOP didn’t “want to get into having a standards and ethics committee,” an unsubtle jab at their ex-colleague Jeffrey Pollack, Annie Duke, and the Epic Poker League. As if that weren’t clear enough, a further dig came when it was unnecessarily noted that “wsop.com” didn’t stand for “wicked series of poker” -- a reference to that domain URL purchasing business and the early plan pursued by the EPL to try to name itself the Wicked Poker League.

We’ve already seen evidence of the WSOP’s dislike of the EPL. Whether it derives from personal animosity toward Pollack, irritation at what was perhaps once perceived a competitor, or other behind-the-scenes stuff we haven’t heard about, there’s something a little unseemly about it coming up unprovoked like this in the context of the annual conference call.

Don’t get me wrong -- Epic is most certainly deserving of criticism, and my six-month tenure as a contributor to the EPL blog hardly prevents me not only from believing that, but from voicing such criticism myself. But to me the WSOP might do better to continue to try to appear above all that applesauce.

Still, the call worked well enough to get me excited about it all again. Am starting to think about my return to the Rio this summer, and my instinct is to think that whatever this new loosening up of restrictions regarding player talk and behavior will do to the game, it will likely help create more interesting stories to report.

So maybe I shouldn’t criticize the WSOP for its own “loose talk.” As Dashiell Hammett’s Op says in Red Harvest (1929), “sometimes stirring things up is all right.”

It's About That Time

Yesterday I was caught in one of those crazy need-to-be-in-two-places-at-once situations we all sometimes find ourselves. What comes from juggling several different work assignments. Thankfully I have some super cool and supportive colleagues who helped make the whole day a lot less stressful than it might have been otherwise, and I made it through in one piece.

Got me thinking a little about the “virtual” world of online communications and how all of us kind of “exist” in multiple places these days. I guess my thoughts are also leaning in that direction because I’m planning to teach my poker class online this summer, and in fact will be away on one poker-related trip at the start of the session, and by the end I’ll be in Vegas for the WSOP. (Is the Series really less than three weeks from starting?)

I’ll be plotting my strategy for that soon. Likely I’ll be trying to manage things so that I’ll be “teaching” my class an hour or so each day (plus the added time I’ll spend grading essays), meaning that wherever I am, as long as I can get to the web I’ll be all right.

Kind of looking forward to managing a course this way, which after many years of “face-to-face” classes will be a first for me. I certainly like the idea of omitting the commute back and forth to teach, but I know I’m going to miss the classroom interaction, too. (By the way, anyone with experience teaching online courses with handy tips or advice, please share.)

Anyhow, getting back to the idea of being in two places at once... it’s not an original observation, I know, but damn it seems like we’re all always “multi-tasking” these days. I mean you’re reading this blog post right now, but I’m sure you have other tabs open, too, yes? And checking that Twitter feed and/or Facebook. And probably doing three or four other things as well, am I right?

I can’t be too offended. I mean if I’m going to be honest, I have to admit I’m also doing other things -- some work-related, some not so much -- while writing this.

Vera and I were sitting in front of the teevee the other night and I brought up how way back when -- before the internet came along to try to consume us, that is -- it was possible to do nothing but watch television. For hours. I mean watch without doing anything else. Or, you know, read a book start to finish. Or just listen to an LP, first one side, then the other. I mean really listen....

Ah, I’ve got too much to do today. But I think I can spare 20 minutes before splitting myself up again into all those selves. We all need to take the time to unplug now and then.

If you’re trying to reach me... don’t fret. I’ll get back to you shortly. Just taking a little break. To slow down. To listen...

A Necessarily Small Revolution

Was hearing a bit over the weekend about this Lock Poker move away from the Merge Network, a move which also appears to involve Lock acquiring the Cake Poker Network and renaming the whole kit-and-kaboodle the Revolution Gaming Network.

The weekend rumors appear to have been backed up with more official word this morning from the concerned parties. There’s presser from Cake reporting it “is in the process of selling selected assets” to Lock, and mirror-image one from Lock saying it “is in the process of acquiring assets from Cake.” The latter also notes how the transition will officially be occurring on May 31, at which time players on the sites will encounter “a simple software update” reflecting the newly-created partnership between the Cake network sites and Lock.

I’m a bit swamped at the moment -- caught between SCOOP stuff and wrapping up my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course -- and so can’t really spend too much time pondering this here development. Truth be told, it kind of feels a bit like talking about a trade involving minor league players or future draft picks. In other words, just a faint echo of the “big league” talk from a couple of weeks ago concerning the possible purchase of Full Tilt Poker by PokerStars, even if here we have actual quotes and such rather than all the second- and third-hand fuzziness.

Certainly seems as though Lock’s decision to break away from Merge might have had something to do with that brouhaha a couple of weeks ago over the LOCKOPS tournament series the skin had been planning but the network cancelled. Not completely up on all of the details there, although it did sound as though approval to run the series had been given to Lock, then taken away somewhat surprisingly.

Was reading one article about the Lock-Cake partnership (I realize I’m weirdly avoiding using the word “merger” so as to avoid a pun) that referred to Lock as the “largest US-friendly poker room... on the largest US-friendly poker network,” namely Merge.

The article also suggests the deal and creation of the new Revolution Gaming Network “will likely tip the scales of power for the current US online poker industry,” an impressive-sounding suggestion when one doesn’t think too specifically about how little traffic all of those involved actually get.

Merge is certainly the largest U.S.-facing network, but its 60-plus skins together only attract a fraction of the traffic on other small networks like iPoker and Ongame, all of whom are of course just teeny, tiny blips compared to PokerStars. And Lock is certainly the biggest skin on Merge, accounting for something like 40% of the traffic there from what I’ve read.

It looks like from PokerScout’s numbers that the Cake network only grabs a third or less of the traffic Merge as a whole did -- probably something similar to Lock’s total traffic, which would mean the joining of the two would indeed create a player pool that would jump ahead of Merge’s after losing Lock.

But still, we’re talking about just a few hundred cash game players total. Meanwhile, yesterday’s first day of SCOOP events saw nearly 70,000 entrants signing up for the six tournaments on offer there.

So sure, I guess Lock acquiring Cake does “tip the scales of power” in a relative sense -- as far as U.S.-facing online poker sites go. But globally speaking, online poker has for a good while already been... well... locked up.

(Got over that pun-shyness PDQ.)

PokerStars’ 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker Starts Today

As evidenced by all of the excited tweets in my timeline this morning, PokerStars’ 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker kicks off in just a couple of hours.

Am recalling that feeling back in early September 2011 when the first World Championship of Online Poker (the WCOOP) without Americans got going on PokerStars. Feeling a little bit of the same there’s-a-party-happening-and-we’re-not-invited vibe, I guess, although not as strongly as before.

The SCOOP, of course, is the one with three separate tournaments -- “low,” “medium,” and “high” stakes -- for each event. Event No. 1, a six-handed no-limit hold’em event, starts in about an hour with $22, $215, and $2,100 buy-ins. A little later today comes Event No. 2, a full-ring NLHE event, featuring the same buy-ins.

There are a total of 40 events scheduled, meaning 120 tournaments altogether, culminating in the big Main Event on May 20. Several of the tourneys are scheduled as two-day tournaments, and even the one-day tourneys look as though they’ll be attracting big fields and thus go on for many, many hours.

The overall guaranteed prize pool for the all of the 2012 SCOOP events totals $30 million. The 2011 series -- which happened just a few weeks after Black Friday -- had 114 total tourneys the prize pools for which added up to $43,165,800.

The 2011 SCOOP did feel the hit of Black Friday somewhat, as the previous year saw $63,802,405 in prize money awarded in 114 tourneys. The series began in 2009 when just 22 events (66 tourneys) were played with the prize pools adding up to $38,324,830.

A little over half of the SCOOP events are no-limit hold’em only, but all other games are in the mix as well, including stud, stud/8, Omaha/8, PLO, PLO/8, triple draw 2-7, razz, five-card draw, Badugi, and the mixed events (8-game, H.O.R.S.E.).

For a lot of non-Americans -- as well as those “expats” currently living abroad in order to play at PokerStars -- the SCOOP has become not just an important part of the online poker tourney calendar, but a meaningful warm-up for the World Series of Poker, too.

The WSOP continues to distinguish itself by including so many non-hold’em tourneys on the schedule, and for a lot of players getting to jump into some large field non-hold’em events with big prize pools during SCOOP provides a needed tune-up in those other games.

Can’t play myself, of course, although I’ll be following a lot of what happens with SCOOP over the next couple of weeks. I’m guessing those guarantees will probably be exceeded in most if not all 120 of the events this time around. Will be doing a bit of reporting on SCOOP here and there as well. Kind of a tune-up of my own, I suppose, as the plan is for me to be back in Vegas and reporting from the World Series of Poker this summer (more on that to come).

Another B-Day (Belated)

This week I realized a few days late that the blog had turned six years old. First time I’ve managed to let one of those anniversary milestones slip by without some sort of introspective bit of rambling here. As far as I remember, anyhow.

When I noticed the date (April 28) had passed, I sent a tweet remarking how I’d forgotten. And how I should be forgiven “as six is like a hundred in blog years.”

Stepping back it’s tempting to compare the blogging thing and my experience of it to the trajectory taken by some poker players. Or, to be more specific, how my relationship to the act of keeping the blog over a lengthy period of time might resemble how a lot of us experience poker’s oft-evoked “long run.”

At first, we’re fascinated by the game, always wanting to play and never getting enough. With experience comes learning, too, and so we recognize ourselves getting better. For many that encourages exerting still more effort to try to improve our skills further and thus better our performance.

Eventually most of us discover our games leveling off at some point, likely well shy of once-dreamed-of goals. Our infatuation levels off as well, at least for a lot of us. Nothing seems especially new anymore, or at least we start having a hard time recognizing that which is.

For some what once seemed play perhaps becomes more like work. The player becomes a grinder. Who, depending on how things go from there, might well become a former player.

Like I say, pursuing such an analogy is tempting. And there’s more to it, of course. But after six-plus years of writing a poker blog, well, I have already written more than a few times about how writing and poker compare.

Obviously the game -- both games -- still inspire me enough to keep grinding. As do those of you who keep reading. Big thanks once again, all.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forums

As all in the poker world have noticed by now, the popular Two Plus Two forums remain down, having been taken offline a week ago today. While the site is still up -- meaning the archives, the Two Plus Two store, and the weekly podcast are all available -- no one can log in and make new posts.

Speaking of the Two Plus Two Pokercast, I was invited to jump in for a brief segment during this week’s show to talk about the passing of Amarillo Slim Preston. I arrive around the 1:20 mark, I believe, coming on after Greg Dinkin who co-authored Preston’s memoir Amarillo Slim in a World of Fat People. Dinkin also wrote an interesting column on Grantland this week about his experiences with Preston.

During the early part of the show, co-hosts Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz spent a little while discussing the forums being down, and had 2+2 “Grand Poobah” Mason Malmuth on as well to give an update. It sounds like it may be another week or so before the site is up and running again.

As I mentioned last Friday, a hacker apparently gained access to 2+2 members’ encrypted passwords as well as their email addresses. The hacker showed an ability to decrypt the passwords as well. It sounds like whoever did it went into the moderators’ forum and posted some of the mods’ passwords, thus proving the site had been compromised.

In that post last week I mentioned how the longer the 2+2 forums remain down, the more obvious the forums’ status in the poker world as a kind of central “meeting place” will become apparent. Mike and Adam noted on the show how a lot of poker news sites essentially take cues from 2+2 when it comes to identifying stories about which to write and even researching them, and I think for the most part they’re probably right.

We live in an age where Twitter and other types of social networking assure that most newsworthy items -- or even just gossip -- will get passed around quickly enough to grab the attention of most in a hurry. In other words, it’s not like the absence of 2+2 means the poker world doesn’t have other ways of communicating with each other or learning what’s happening. Still, it’s interesting to imagine how exactly last week’s story of PokerStars’ potential purchase of Full Tilt Poker might have gotten passed around -- and received -- had it not begun with that anonymous post on 2+2.

On the one hand, if security issues remain, it’s certainly good for 2+2 to keep the forums down until those issues can be resolved and everyone who logs into the site can be assured their privacy won’t be unduly compromised.

Then again, the longer the forums remain down, the more time we have to wonder about what might have happened with regard to the security breach, and maybe to start accumulating some doubts about the forums going forward. Not to mention ponder whether or not the hacker might have made off with some truly interesting (or damaging) PMs (personal messages) -- e.g., previously private information related to the many scandals in poker explored on 2+2 over the years.

Something like that would make for some interesting poker news. Or some good gossip, anyway.

WSOP Asia Pacific Adds More Bracelets

This week the World Series of Poker announced that a new series of gold bracelet events will be happening at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. The first installment of the WSOP Asia Pacific series will take place April 4-15, 2013, where five bracelets will be awarded.

Most seem pretty excited about the news, including many players. The Crown has a decade’s worth of history hosting the successful Aussie Millions, and it sounds like at least some pros might make a return trip down under for the WSOP APAC. (That’s the sorta awkward acronym it appears we’ll be using to refer to the WSOP Asia Pacific series.)

Shortly after the announcement, Lance Bradley of BLUFF Magazine tweeted “Coming Soon: arguments amongst poker media about whether or not WSOP APAC bracelets count as WSOP bracelets or not,” adding a hash tag clarifying his position in advance: “#TheyCount.”

Bradley is, of course, alluding to debates over whether or not WSOP Europe bracelets are “real.” By now those arguments appear to have mostly settled into a general acceptance of WSOPE bracelets being more or less equivalent in status to the ones awarded in Vegas. The WSOPE started in 2007 and has expanded over its five years with its new home in Cannes, France appearing to suit many.

The schedule for this fall’s WSOPE has already been announced, and like last year seven bracelets will be awarded. Meanwhile there will be a record 61 events at this year’s WSOP in Las Vegas, plus one more bracelet given for the WSOP National Championship. So 69 bracelets total will be won in 2012, which means if the WSOP and WSOPE stick with similar schedules in 2013 we’ll likely see at least 74 bracelets awarded.

Bracelets weren’t awarded at the first few WSOPs -- last year’s media guide lists 1976 as the first year they were -- although the WSOP still classifies those who won events in prior years as “bracelet winners.” If I follow the WSOP’s numbers correctly, there have been 954 WSOP events from 1970-2011, although there are actually 959 “bracelet winners” since five of those were mixed doubles events (in the late ’70s and early ’80s).

That means somewhere along the way this summer we’ll be commemorating the awarding of the 1,000th WSOP bracelet. When that 1,000th WSOP bracelet is awarded -- around Event No. 41, I suppose (a $3,000 no-limit hold’em event) -- I believe that will mark the 470th bracelet won since Chris Moneymaker grabbed his at the 2003 WSOP Main Event.

By the end of the 2012 WSOPE, the overall total number of WSOP events during its history will be up to 1,028, with more than half (533) having been contested during the last decade (2003-2012).

In the presser about the WSOP APAC, WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart mentions a desire eventually “to establish the worldwide grand slam of poker,” a statement that suggests the WSOP is already eyeing a fourth destination at which to stage another series of bracelet events.

Took 43 years to get to 1,000 bracelets. At the current clip it’ll take a little over 13 years to get to 2,000, although we may well get there sooner.