Weapons of Choice

I’ve been perusing Arnold Snyder’s first book about hold’em tournaments, titled The Poker Tournament Formula (2006). The book concentrates largely on “fast” tournaments, i.e., tourneys with rapidly rising blind/ante structures that require players to master strategies that Snyder collectively refers to as “speed play.” A sequel, The Poker Tournament Formula 2, came out this summer, and it focuses more on “slow” tournaments with large starting stacks and longer levels with more gradual increases of blinds/antes.

Incidentally, “Arnold Snyder” is actually a pseudonym for a successful tourney player who has also written some well-regarded books on blackjack. He writes quite clearly and has many interesting ideas that build upon and, in some cases, refute well-known concepts appearing in other books such as Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold’em series. For example, in the second book Snyder offers a particular criticism and clarification of Harrington’s much-lauded “M” concept that I would think most hold’em tourney players would find persuasive (or at least intriguing).

In this first book Snyder starts out with an explanation of how to analyze the structure of a given tournament and thus determine whether or not it is “fast,” “medium,” or “slow.” Snyder provides some formulas to help figure out the “patience factor” of a given tournament based on its starting chips and schedule of play, as well as the relative “skill level” one might therefore associate with the tournament.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of Snyder’s formulas (which do seem quite helpful), but wanted instead just to share one observation he makes early on in the first book regarding the relative importance of cards, chips, and position.

Snyder believes that in tournaments with fast structures, “your cards are the least important of your three weapons.” Also, echoing Doyle Brunson’s point from Super/System, Snyder believes that “position is the most important weapon you have in... a fast no-limit hold’em tournament.” That said, “it’s usually best not to tangle with a big chip stack when you’re really just making a position play.”

Thus when assessing the relative value of cards, chips, and position in these fast tourneys, Snyder suggests thinking of of the three factors as a version of the “rock-paper-scissors” game. He even offers a helpful mnemonic device for remembering what beats what: “Cards are made of paper. Chips are something you could throw, like a rock. If you can remember those two, there’s nothing left for position except scissors.”

Thus, cards beat chips (paper beats rock). Chips beat position (rock beats scissors). And position beats cards (scissors beats paper).

An interesting analogy. Of course, as Snyder goes on to explain, there are a few reasons why it is incorrect to think of hold’em tourneys as simply an elaboration on the game of Rochambeau. For one, in rock-paper-scissors, all three weapons are always of equal value, no matter what. In hold’em tourneys, the relative strength of your three weapons is constantly changing -- as is the case for your opponents, too -- and so it is important to recognize where you stand with regard to each when determining how best to proceed.

I’m hardly doing Snyder’s idea justice here -- you’ll have to go check out his book yourself for more explanation. Interesting stuff, though.

Even so, I haven’t left my usual pot-limit Omaha and H.O.R.S.E. ring games and started jumping into any hold’em tourneys just yet. Although I am thinking of playing in a certain one tonight.

Most reading this blog probably know all about it already, but Dr. Pauly is hosting a $5.00+$0.50 no-limit hold’em tourney on PokerStars tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time as a way of celebrating the fifth anniversary of Tao of Poker. And in addition to the usual prize pool, the winner will receive an entry into a $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament during the Borgata Poker Open (September 12th) as well as two nights’ stay there Borgata Hotel & Spa in Atlantic City.

Pretty swell deal, there. Like I say, I’m probably going to be playing, although I might be distracted for the first hour as tonight ESPN is showing the final table of Event No. 4, the $5,000 Mixed Hold’em event which I covered for PokerNews. That airs from 8-10 p.m. Eastern time.

Whether I make it or not, let me encourage everyone reading to join in the fun. And don’t forget yr weapons.

New “Clarification” Bill Provides Little Clarity for UIGEA

There were a few items related to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 that came up during the last couple of weeks, including the introduction of two more bills having something to do with the UIGEA and/or online gambling. That makes a total of seven different bills concerning internet gambling that have been proposed since April 2007. Meanwhile, the regulations for the UIGEA have yet to be finalized.

I thought I’d throw in my two cents regarding the most recently-proposed bill, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Clarification and Implementation Act of 2008 (H.R. 6663), introduced late last week by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX).

First off, it should be noted that this one has a very misleading name. You’d think that after nearly two years of fussing over the UIGEA, including the feds coming back to Congress to say they can’t make heads or tails of their charge to finalize the regulations, a “clarification” bill like this would be especially welcome. Unfortunately, this bill doesn’t try to clarify what really needs clarifying as far as the UIGEA is concerned -- but I’ll get to that in a moment.

I’ve actually seen a few people around the intertubes reporting on H.R. 6663 as “yet another anti-UIGEA bill,” but anyone who actually reads the bill would realize instantly it is hardly that. In fact, I’d describe it as precisely the opposite -- a “pro-UIGEA” bill that seeks to reinforce the significance of its having been signed into law.

The bill’s “Congressional Findings and Purpose” state that “Prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act of 2006... on October 13, 2006, Federal law was both vague and outdated regarding Internet gambling activities.” A lot of us -- particularly online poker players -- would argue that the law continued to be vague even after the UIGEA was signed, but the (unstated) implication here is that the UIGEA sets straight what is legal and what is not.

I’ve argued before here that from a legal perspective, the UIGEA does indeed make clear that not just sports betting, but other types of gambling -- including poker -- are intended to be covered when it defines a “bet or wager” as “the staking or risking by any person of something of value upon the outcome of a contest of others, a sporting event, or a game subject to chance.” Unless a bill like Rep. Robert Wexler’s so-called “Skill Game Protection Act” (H.R. 2610) miraculously made it into a law and provided an exception or “carve out” for poker from the UIGEA -- which ain’t gonna happen -- the matter of whether or not poker is gambling has been settled. Legally speaking, anyway.

Anyhow, the “Findings” go on to point out that “to date” all federal prosecutions of online gambling have concerned sports betting only (i.e., were covered by pre-UIGEA law). Then it is said that many foreign companies who offered online gambling to Americans that did not involve sports betting (e.g., poker) made the decision to refuse U.S. customers “upon receiving clarification of United States law regarding internet gaming through the enactment of the UIGEA.” The reference here would be to sites like PartyPoker that immediately withdrew from the U.S. market when President Bush signed the UIGEA.

The next section is the one purporting to provide “UIGEA Clarification and Implementation,” and essentially says that companies like PartyPoker that have complied voluntarily with the UIGEA since it was signed into law will not be subject to prosecution. Frankly, none of this even needs to be said. There is no point at all to “clarifying” that someone who broke a law before it was a law, yet voluntarily abided by the law after it was passed, will not be subject to prosecution.

The “Findings” conclude with a recommendation for the feds to focus their efforts on stopping online sports betting in the U.S. Also, a final section adds the disingenuous disclaimer that “No provision in this Act... shall be construed as clarifying or implying that Internet bets or wagers, other than sports bets or wagers, which were accepted subsequent to October 13, 2006, are in violation of Federal law.” As I’ve already suggested, this final disclaimer is a bit suspect, given that H.R. 6663 does, in fact, appear to reinforce the UIGEA’s definition of a “bet or wager” as extending beyond sports betting to cover other types of gambling (like poker).

H.R. 6663 concludes on an especially ironic note, then. It is called the “Unlawful Internet Gambling Clarification and Implementation Act,” yet it ends by explicitly denying that it clarifies anything regarding what exactly internet gambling is! All it clarifies, really, is that the law cannot be used to prosecute those who violated its terms prior to its passage. Utterly needless, in other words.

As the feds demonstrated in that April hearing before the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade, and Technology (a subcommittee of the House Financial Services committee), they want clarification all right when it comes to the UIGEA. But this is hardly the kind of clarification they are requesting.

What they need is clarification about which sites are to be designated as prohibited sites (i.e., specific guidelines regarding what kinds of activities are covered by the UIGEA), and clarification about how exactly to instruct financial institutions to implement the policies and procedures for blocking transactions outlined by the UIGEA.

None of that here, though. And frankly, that sort of clarification is never going to come in the form of yet another bill. If it ever comes at all.

The Poker Players Alliance has already made a statement that it does not support H.R. 6663, primarily because of the way the bill indirectly suggests the UIGEA does, indeed, designate online poker as a prohibited activity. I’m in complete agreement with the PPA here.

Of course, not many others will support H.R. 6663, either. Like most (or all) of the other online gambling bills presented to Congress, it will also die before ever coming to a vote. The only bill that I would suggest has any chance whatsoever of getting out of the House would be Rep. Shelley Berkley’s H.R. 2140, a bill to provide funding to the National Academy of Sciences to study online gambling. In fact, Berkley’s bill (which has 73 co-sponsors) was supposed to be considered last Wednesday, but got postponed as the House found itself preoccupied debating a resolution whether or not to find Karl Rove in contempt for not appearing to testify after he’d been subpoenaed.

And now it is vacation time. Congress is in recess until after Labor Day. And when they return, the November elections will surely eclipse any other considerations for a good while.

So when it comes to online gambling, you can safely forget about any sort of legal clarity for a good while.

The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, Episode 6: The Ambassador of Poker

The latest installment of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show went up yesterday. It is already in iTunes, so if you subscribe to the podcast over there you’re already seeing it show up. I assume it also is appearing in the other feeds, too. Or, if you just want to listen online, click here.

This episode starts and ends with some audio I recorded at this year’s World Series of Poker. Vera gave me this little microphone attachment thingy for my iPod which enables one to record voice memos. I had thought at one point I might try to do some interviews along the way, but never got around to it. But I did grab some noise on the first day of the Main Event, and so am sharing it here.

I’ve included a short story about poker by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. The story is called “Four Men and a Poker Game, or Too Much Luck is Bad Luck.” It was written in the 1920s, and definitely has a hard-boiled feel to it. As I have done at certain points on some of the other episodes, I added a bit of background ambiance to the storytelling to make it a more interesting listen. Still an amateur when it comes to audio theater, but am having fun learning.

That’s followed by an episode of Escape called “The Ambassador of Poker.” Kind of an adventure story, with a so-called “Virginia gentleman” using his poker playing prowess to swindle a Chinese warlord.

Neither of my usual partners in crime -- Tim Peters or the Poker Grump -- appear in this one, although both should be returning soon in later episodes. I had mentioned at the outset my goal was to produce a show at least once per month, so I am pleased to see six episodes have been cranked out here in the first four months.

If you haven’t heard the show yet, you might go back and check out Episode 1 to get an idea what it’s about. None of the episodes necessarily focus on contemporary happenings, so unlike some podcasts these don’t necessarily go out of date.

As I have said before, doing these shows definitely increases my respect for those who do them on a regular basis -- a lot harder than it looks to pull these together, believe me. If you do happen to listen to the show, I’d love any feedback -- either here, on the show’s blog, as a review in iTunes, or via an email at shamus AT hardboiledpoker DOT com.

Daily Affirmation; or, What Color is the Sky in Your World?

“Poker is just a never ending series of hands. During each hand a pot is built and won, money in the center of the green felt-covered table. No beginning and no end, because each hand takes only a minute and then we go on to the next one....”

That’s from Jesse May’s novel Shut Up and Deal, which I picked up this summer when I visited the Gamblers Book Shop. May’s protagonist, Mickey, says this early on in the novel while introducing himself. I’ve only just started the book, but am liking what I’ve read thus far.

By the way, my buddy Tim Peters gives a nice commentary on Shut Up and Deal -- and poker-based fiction in general -- in episode 2 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show. I’m hoping to post a new episode very soon (perhaps today or tomorrow). Will let you know here when it is ready.

That notion of poker -- especially cash games -- being “a never ending series of hands” is not new with May, of course. All of those who’ve been successful for long periods of time have understood and accepted this formulation as a way of dealing with momentary swings up or down. And we’ve heard most of the top pros characterize their careers as “one long game” time and time again. So much so it has become a poker (or gambling) cliché, really.

In any event, it is important when coming out of a bad session or streak to remember the long term. And that there really is “no beginning and no end” other than the ones we invent along the way.

Since I returned from Vegas, I’ve been playing online fairly steadily for the last two weeks. And as I always have done, I record every session in one of those little Moleskine pocket squared notebooks. I’m on my second one, now. (Wrote about the notebooks in an earlier post, titled “The Psychology of Record-Keeping.”) I record details about each individual session (site, game, limit, hands, time played, wins/losses), then also always make a note of the day’s total (whether I’ve played more than one session that day or not).

Had something weird going on here over the last two weeks, something I’d started noticing three or four days ago. I knew I was running well, but hadn’t realized that up until the day before yesterday, I’d somehow managed 11 straight winning days. I had two days in there when I didn’t play at all, so that meant nearly two weeks of nothing but winners.

I haven’t gone back and checked, but that was probably the longest such streak I’ve ever enjoyed. Not only that, but a lot of those days featured some pretty big days (by my short-stacked standards). In fact, I was cruising toward a record month, profit-wise, even though I barely played at all until after mid-month.

You’re noticing my use of the past tense here. That’s right -- it all came crashing down yesterday. The streak is over. A pretty bad day, too, as I found myself starting out enduring some bad fortune, then compounding it with several rash, spewy plays that ensured I wasn’t gonna climb out of the hole I’d dug. Not yesterday, anyway.

Still way up since Vegas, though, which considerably lessens the pain of yesterday’s sorry showing. Meaning I am therefore demonstrating a couple of other poker clichés...

One is becoming reckless and unfocused after having a long stretch of success. Like May writes about in his introduction, you win some and “then you think that this is the easy life and how sweet it is and the simplest thing in the world is to wake up whenever you want, go into the card room, play a little, and win.” Guaranteed recipe for failure, there.

The other is the way we poker players instinctively rewrite our stories in the most favorable ways to accommodate our own self-image. As May also says in his introduction (on the subject of assessing poker players and their play), “there is no reality, it all depends on how I present what is and how I cloud it.”

When yesterday ended and I had to record a big loss in the Moleskine notebook, I impulsively looked back over the last two weeks and quickly redeclared myself a big winner. That’s why I still keep that column over on the right-hand side listing “total” winnings since I started playing back in late 2004.

Am I “clouding” reality? Or clarifying? Does it matter?

2008 WSOP Moves to TV Land

Have been watching ESPN’s 2008 World Series of Poker coverage the past couple of weeks. Last week they gave two hours’ worth to Event No. 1, the $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em event won by Nenad Medic. Last night was Event No. 2, the first (and biggest) of the “donkaments,” i.e., those $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em events.

By the way, how about that last hand of Event No. 2 in which Grant Hinkle made a horrendous blunder and got rewarded? With just a small chip advantage over James Akenhead, Hinkle raised preflop from the small blind/button with , Akenhead reraised, then Hinkle crazily pushed all in. (Actually, the heads-up battle did last two hours -- ESPN only showed two hands -- and thus there was some context for Hinkle’s play. Still, even with the context, a pretty wild shove.) Akenhead snap-called with . But the flop came 10-4-10, and the turn brought the case ten, giving Hinkle quads and the bracelet. (Read F-Train’s account of that last hand here.)

Have to say, all things considered, that finale has to be “good for poker,” as they say. Don’t you think? (How many fish will Hinkle’s move inspire?)

I don’t believe I’d even started my first shift live blogging for PokerNews until after Event No. 1 had completed. During Event No. 2’s final table I was there, positioned right outside of the little mini-stadium covering the second day of Event No. 4, the $5,000 Mixed Hold’em event. I mentioned in one of my early 2008 WSOP posts how we were somewhat affected by the spectacle of Chris “Jesus” Ferguson as we sat nearby posting about that other event. Big crowd of people that night wanting to get into that relatively small arena (only seats 90-100, I’d estimate).

Next week ESPN will be showing the Event No. 4 final table. Will definitely be watching that one closely, as I was there covering it live. I remember talking to Dr. Pauly on one of my last days in Vegas and him explaining how he tends not to watch the foreground of these ESPN telecasts but instead focuses on the periphery. Hard not to avoid doing that, I’m discovering, as I’ve already had fun spotting a number of colleagues and other familiar faces in the background these last two weeks.

The packaging of these ESPN shows is done quite well, in my opinion. I know some on the forums don’t care for certain aspects of the productions, e.g., the player profiles, the “Nuts” segments, the necessarily selective presentation of hands, etc. But they do manage to make it all fairly compelling, even for someone like me who is already very familiar with what happened.

I watched last night’s show with Vera, and she also got hooked by the various storylines ESPN created.

Early on, one player, Jeff Wiedenhoeft, apparently misread his hand and as a consequence found himself bounced in tenth place. (That was the first hand shown, and in fact was the very first hand of that final table.) ESPN continued to focus on his mistake, but did an okay job folding it into a larger narrative, I thought. They underscored his triumph (he had outlasted over 3,900 others, after all), and also did a “Nuts” segment about other poker players’ “most embarrassing moments” which made Wiedenhoeft’s miscue seem less egregious.

The Mike Ngo-Theo Tran drama that developed was curious to follow, as well. Ngo bluffed Tran out of a fairly big pot in which Tran mucked the best hand on the river (pocket aces). (This was Hand #43 of the final table.) After the hand Ngo gloated a bit, and while Tran appeared initially to take it well, he was obviously steaming afterwards. Later on, Tran outwardly roots for Ngo’s elimination. Neither player came off too terribly well there.

Tran would get pocket aces cracked again just six hands later by Aaron Coulthard. My colleague Loganmark reported both hands here. (I think ESPN might’ve shown just one of the intervening hands.) It was easy to sympathize with Tran’s predicament. Losing once with A-A is bad enough. Losing twice in such short succession -- at a WSOP final table, no less -- is simply brutal, especially when you actually had the winner on one occasion.

And the Hinkle family stuff was all entertaining, too, I thought. ESPN made a lot of the rivalry between the two Hinkle brothers, Grant and Blair, and their proud mother, Lynn. I think Vera especially liked that part of the show. After Grant won, I told Vera that Blair would go on to win a bracelet himself (in Event No. 23, the $2,000 No-Limit Hold’em event), and she got a kick out of hearing that. ESPN won’t be covering Event No. 23 in full, so I thought it was okay to give that part of the story away.

Back in May I complained about ESPN’s decision to forgo showing most of the preliminary events and instead devote most of its coverage -- 20 of its scheduled 32 hours -- to the Main Event. I still would rather see some of the other events, but frankly, I wouldn’t want to sit through too many of these No-Limit Hold’em final tables.

Like I say, ESPN does well to create interest, but one can only endure so many sequences of “all in” and “call.” So if they aren’t going to show other games (just four of the 32 hours will feature non-Hold’em games), they might as well get to the ME as fast as they can.

On Judging Others

In “A Note on the Verse of John Milton,” T.S. Eliot talks about Milton as a poet whose style is so grandly idiosyncratic he is basically impossible to imitate. Eliot isn’t the only reader of Milton who talked about him this way. Many have pointed out that the “Miltonic” style just can’t be mimicked. In that essay, Eliot also suggests that really only the very best poets are qualified to judge Milton (or any other great poet, for that matter). They are the only ones, says Eliot, who are able to form an appropriate “jury of judgement.”

Not everyone agreed with Eliot. On either count. Several have argued differently about Milton’s style, explaining it in ways that makes it seem less “out there” and, consequently, more suitable as a model for others. Some also took Eliot to task for suggesting only poets (and of those, only the very best ones) are able to judge the work of a Milton or any other highly-regarded poet.

Probably the most famous example of the latter criticism came from C.S. Lewis, author of the The Chronicles of Narnia as well as several other works of literary criticism and Christian apolegetics. Lewis wrote a book about Paradise Lost in the early 1940s, just a few years after Eliot wrote his essay, and in his book Lewis makes a point of addressing Eliot’s idea to limit the number of those who are qualified to judge a poet like Milton.

Lewis disagrees with the notion that only the best poets are able to judge the work of the best poets, pointing out that if what Eliot is saying is true, then the great majority of us wouldn’t be able even to discuss the relative merits of the best poets. They’d become a secret group, in a sense, only able to judge one another, “an unrecognizable society” whose “mutual criticism goes on within a closed circle which no outsider can possibly break into at any point.”

Lewis admits that while it is true that “only the skilled can judge the skillfulness” of poets, “that is not the same as judging the value of the result.” In other words, while it probably does take a poet -- and a good one at that -- “to tell us... whether it is easy or difficult to write like Milton,” we don’t need to leave it to them to tell us “whether the reading of Milton is a valuable experience.”

Was playing a little PLO online and watched a hand develop in which a player in late position raised before the flop, an early position player reraised, and the late position player called. (I stayed on the sidelines for this one.) The flop brought two baby cards and two hearts, and the two players ended up getting it all in right there. The showdown revealed the EP player had K-K-x-x with no hearts, while the LP player had 8-7-6-4 with two hearts. The LP player ended up turning a straight on the hand and winning a nice pot.

Kind of typical, really. The guy with the kings obviously overplayed his so-so hand from out of position, and the late position player smartly played his speculative hand and got paid. A bit less typical was the way the guy with kings subsequently criticized his opponent’s play. Forced to sit out as he’d lost all of his chips, he typed “what were you thinking of?” The other player simply replied “donkey,” and the sore loser soon left.

To me, the less-skilled player had not only bungled the hand, but also clearly revealed how ill-qualified he was to judge the playing style of his opponent. I assume you’ve seen something similar in your poker-playing experience, and perhaps even demonstrated it yourself. I know I have. (Wrote about this phenomenon a little bit last week in a post about note-taking -- this idea of making hasty, ill-informed judgments about others’ playing styles.)

In the debate about poetry, I want to side with C.S. Lewis and say how wrong it is to believe only the very best poets are qualified to judge each others’ poetry. Seems silly to shut out most readers as unqualified evaluators and/or to suggest a poet like Milton is too different or grand or idiosyncratic to be imitated -- as though there is something dangerous about doing so.

I’m wondering, though, if Eliot’s argument does apply a bit more readily to games of skill like poker, wherein one really is asking for trouble whenever one tries to judge a more-skilled player’s style. (Or imitate it.)

Of course, when we are sitting at a table competing against a better-skilled player, we have to try to judge what he or she is doing, or risk frequently finding ourselves in uncomfortable, confusing situations. But we also have to be cautious, not jumping to conclusions about plays that appear strange or idiosyncratic.

I guess what I’m getting at here is a fairly obvious paradox of poker, one that has likely occurred to just about everyone who has spent any time at all thinking seriously about the game. Namely, that one of the most important tasks before you when you sit down at a poker table is to judge your opponents’ relative skill levels, yet one’s ability to make those judgments is necessarily limited by one’s own skill level.

You have to keep reading, though. Even if it is hard-going.

Is This the Real Life?

Left Vegas nearly two weeks ago. Have been hanging out with Vera, visiting family, resuming a more stable sleeping pattern, etc. Have also gotten back into my usual online poker playing routine -- mostly short sessions (1-2 hour) at the cash tables, scattered here and there. After those two months in the desert, life is starting to return to “normal” (whatever that was).

Am also listening to the podcasts again, and enjoyed hearing Gary Wise’s post-WSOP show (Wise Hand Poker, 7/23/08 episode) in which he compiled a number of interviews he conducted throughout the summer.

Among the several interesting conversations in there is a 20-minute one with Brandon Adams. Wise talked to Adams just after his big Day 1 of the Main Event (he ended the day among the chip leaders). Before Day 2, Adams had helped pull together a high-stakes cash game at Bobby’s Room in which he and about a dozen others had convened for a $300/$600 PLO/NLHE game. Oh, and everyone also had to pony up a $300 ante each hand, too, just to make things interesting.

The discussion of the cash game is compelling enough, but I especially enjoyed hearing Adams’ comments about his non-poker life. Some of you might know Adams is kind of an anomaly in the poker world, having gone to graduate school and picked up a couple of Masters degrees (one in economics), then having entered Harvard’s Ph.D. business program in 2001 where he did all of the course work and is now what they call “A.B.D.” (all but dissertation). In 2004 Adams published a novel, titled Broke: A Poker Novel. He also continues teach courses at Harvard every spring in behavioral finance and, more recently, in applied game theory.

“This makes you unusual as a poker player,” said Wise. “Because you are a successful poker player, yet you choose to have a job. What keeps you teaching?”

Adams quickly came up with a witty response to the question. “I like to keep one foot in the world of respectability,” he said (amid Wise’s laughter).

“And the other in the real world?” Wise cracked (pun intended).

Adams went on to talk about how much he enjoys being in the college/university environment, full of interesting, smart people who are in a place where they actually have the time and energy to explore ideas, be creative, and learn.

I appreciated the exchange for a couple of reasons. Wise’s reference to the poker world being the “real” world is funny because of how often that world is characterized as fantasy land -- is defined, in fact, as being a place where “real” world obligations and concerns simply do not register.

That’s the primary allure of professional poker (for some). In The Biggest Game in Town, Al Alvarez well portrays what he calls the “different ordering of reality” that routinely goes on in the world of high-stakes poker where Adams currently spends a lot of his time. Alvarez writes about how some of those who live in that reality particularly value being able to avoid the so-called “straight world” or “stay outside the system.”

Wise’s reference also reminds some of us of how the college/university campus -- that intellectually-stimulating environment that Adams values -- is also often regarded as somehow not being the “real” world. For Adams, teaching his classes gives him the chance to challenge others and explore ideas without money being on the line. That’s what the classroom is -- a place where theories are formed and discussed, then later can be tested or confirmed outside the classroom in the so-called “real” world.

Adams clearly benefits a great deal from having this sort of balance in his life. He went on to tell Wise how he’s been involved with the very high-stakes games for the last three years or so. He mentioned how especially helpful it was for him to have his teaching and other interests when dealing with steep downswings on the poker side. “At those times you really appreciate being able to fall back on… being a part of a broader society, if you will,” Adams explained. “I would never be willing to give that up to go full force into poker.”

I’ve written before about the “double life” of the poker player, although my emphasis was a little different in those other posts. There I was talking about the fact that in my “real” life I am mostly interacting with people for whom poker is essentially a non-entity -- if it has any meaning at all, it is as a signifier for gambling, sin, or other unsavory activities. As a result, I don’t normally share my poker-related experiences with them the way I do here.

This summer the contrast of my “double life” became even more stark as I physically relocated and spent most of two months doing nothing but writing about poker under this here pseudonym. Still, I like (and can identify with) what Adams is saying about “being a part of a broader society” and how that helps keep one grounded.

I didn’t experience the severe highs and lows of the high-stakes player, of course. But I did immerse myself in the poker world there for a good while, a place where much that might seem fantastic, alien, or even impossible exists. It is good to be back over here in this one again, if only to regain that sense of balance.

Not gonna venture to guess which of these worlds is the “real” one. Am inclined, in fact, to agree with that other great existentialist, Freddie Mercury’s bohemian, and say it doesn’t really matter to me.

UB & AP Think Makeover Gives Them a Do-Over

Like most of you, I saw yesterday’s presser from the “management” of online poker sites Absolute Poker and UltimateBet announcing “the upcoming launch of CEREUS: a new poker platform that will integrate the customers and features from both poker rooms, instantly making CEREUS the third largest online poker network.”

First read the news over on Pokerati. Dan’s headline to his post -- “AP and UB Merge to Form Criminally Questionable Supersite” -- initially gave the impression that we were reading some sort of lampoon in the style of The Onion (or Melted Felt). But apparently this is no joke.

Sounds like the idea here is not to form a single site, actually, but rather to share the player pools between AP and UB. Thus, as is the case with other networks that feature “skins,” players will (I assume) only be allowed a single account on both, but will have the option of which interface to use.

Aside from the dozens of puns that spring to mind (“Are they Cereus?”), I just have three initial reactions to the news:

(1) Damage control.

What we are seeing here is not unlike what the Kahnawake Gaming Commission was doing earlier in the week with its much-belated statement regarding the UltimateBet scandal. Despite appearances, said the KGC, we weren’t “doing nothing” with regard to UB. Rather, its “investigation... has yielded a number of key findings which, within the next several days, will enable the KGC to issue its decision on the appropriate steps to be taken.”

That 60 Minutes exposé ominously looms in the near future, and both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet stand to lose face when that feature finally airs. When that day comes, all of those associated with both AP and UB will want to have positioned themselves in such a way as to appear to have responded correctly to the scandals. A new network with a new name affords new titles for those running the show, enabling them (perhaps) to distance themselves even further from all that unpleasantness everyone keeps going on about.

(2) People are buying this?

I see an enthusiastic announcement over on Pocket Fives about the merger. Bluff Magazine also thinks it’s just the cat’s pajamas. (P5s continues to operate as an affiliate of UltimateBet, while Bluff is still an affiliate of both Absolute Poker and UB.)

Applesauce, of course. The reasonable response to such news is serious (I said it), deep-rooted skepticism. The idea that two online poker sites, both of which permitted insiders to exploit breaches in the sites’ integrity in different ways, could somehow be expected to manage the task of creating a unified, trustworthy network between them is frankly beyond belief.

(3) How futile.

What a half-baked, facile attempt at rebranding. Really. Something likely dreamed up by the same underachieving ad execs who thought putting Phil Hellmuth in a general’s uniform in order to recruit dupes to join the “UltimateBet Army” was clever.

Over on UltimateBet, we read that “the strongest online poker community is about to get CEREUS.” Over at Absolute Poker, word is “the future of online poker is CEREUS; bigger, badder, better...” Only those utterly ignorant of online poker could possibly be convinced that AP and UB together comprise “the strongest online poker community.” And perhaps some segment of that group responds positively to hollow (yet alliterative!) phrases like “bigger, badder, better.”

No telling where it all will lead. Can’t help thinking, though, that somewhere down the road -- perhaps not that far -- we’ll be reading about “Cereus missteps” and “Cereus problems.”

Reporting on the 1979 WSOP

When in Vegas this summer, I made a point of stopping by the Gamblers Book Shop. I’d been there before when I had met the shop’s friendly and knowledgeable proprietor, Howard Schwartz. I enjoyed chatting with him again this time. By the way, let me once again recommend Howard’s podcast which he records right there in the bookstore. Lots of terrific interviews among the two dozen or so shows he’s done thus far. If you haven’t heard the show already, the three-part episode he did during the WSOP is a great place to start.

While there I picked up a couple of books as well as some back issues of Gambling Times from the late 70s and early 80s. The issues I chose all included coverage of the World Series of Poker. As I was there covering the WSOP myself, I was curious to look back on how the Series had been reported on back in its relative infancy, before the “boom.”

The first issue of Gambling Times was produced back in 1977. In these early issues, only a handful of the 100 or so pages would concern poker, with much more attention being given to sports betting, blackjack, backgammon, gambling theory, and other features. To give you an idea of how the WSOP was covered, let me summarize the six-page article in the October 1979 issue by John Hill titled “Highlights of the World Series of Poker.”

The first third of the article gives a quick rundown of how the “soft-spoken amateur Hal Fowler” managed to upset all expectations to become the first non-professional to win the WSOP Main Event. Fowler took the 10th annual WSOP title after defeating Bobby Hoff in a five-hour heads-up battle.

The article picks up the action with five players remaining, and describes in a cursory fashion the hands with which Fowler managed to knock out Johnny Moss (in 5th), Sam Moon (in 4th), and George Huber (in 3rd). We then get a four-paragraph overview of the heads-up battle, which includes descriptions of exactly two hands. The first is one in which Fowler bluffs Hoff off of a medium-sized pot and shows deuce-six offsuit. The second is the final hand in which Fowler cracks Hoff’s aces after turning a gutshot straight, thereby claiming the bracelet.

Hill then shares some reactions to Fowler’s victory, including an interesting one from Junior Whited: “That’s going to prove to people that anyone can come in here and win half a million dollars. It’s not all Texas anymore.” Indeed, while the “Fowler Effect” wasn’t nearly as wide-reaching as what we’d see in 2003, there was a tremendous symbolic significance to the amateur having broken through.

The rest of the article relates various other happenings of note from the four-week-long Series. There’s the story of a Social Security administrator named J.J. Whalen who had won an entry into the Main Event after having been one of 300 who’d ordered an advance copy of Doyle Brunson’s How I Won A Million Dollars Playing Poker (later renamed Super/System). For those who had bought advance copies, a drawing was held, and Whalen had won an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas and an ME entry. His wife, Elsie, is quoted saying she didn’t know her husband had spent $100 on the book. “I don’t think I would have stood for it if I had known,” she said. Whalen was knocked out of the tourney on the first day.

There’s a discussion of the side games, including a reference to Jimmy Chagra (pictured at left) winnning approximately $4 million playing blackjack and craps during the WSOP. Chagra, a large-scale drug trafficker, has a place in poker history as a frequent donator to the big games during the 70s. (EDIT [added 7/28/08]: The morning after this post, Chagra succumbed to his battle with cancer. He was 63.)

Of course, Hill doesn’t mention any of Chagra’s other, nefarious activities in the article. Nor does he say anything about the drug-taking of Bobby Hoff and Hal Fowler during the WSOP Main Event, recounted in detail in Des Wilson’s Ghosts at the Table. (One wonders if there were an early version of Dr. Pauly hanging out at Binion’s that spring taking notes on such matters.)

There’s an interesting, brief reference to Stu Ungar being there and not being able to get anyone to play gin rummy with him. (Ungar, of course, would win the WSOP Main Event the next two years running.) It is curious to see how Ungar’s presence -- and prowess -- was already being openly acknowledged in 1979. As Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson write about in One of a Kind, Ungar had only come out west the year before

There’s also discussion of CBS’s coverage of the event. This was the period in WSOP history when CBS was filming the Main Event for its CBS Sports Spectacular. According to Hill, there had been “several incidents… the year before between newsmen and the CBS crew jockeying for position in the cramped space of the tournament area.” Even though the Main Event had only started with 54 entrants (just six tables), every inch of space there in Binion’s was taken up with the crew and their equipment, “hordes of spectators, relatives of players, well-wishers, and newspersons.” Apparently the year before “one overzealous camera assistant incurred the wrath of virtually all the newsmen and relatives of players sitting inside the ropes by bodily shoving people out of the vicinity of the camera he was tending.” According to Jerry Adler, producer of the 1979 coverage, measures had been taken to avoid such unpleasantness this time around.

That passage certainly made me think of this year’s Series, where we PokerNews folks and others covering the action were often sharing space with the ESPN guys, especially as play wound down to the last few tables of the Main Event. Unlike what happened thirty years before, in 2008 those of us covering the WSOP all seemed to coexist quite amicably. (In fact, toward the end one of the ESPN guys made a point to come over and compliment the PokerNews crew on how smoothly the entire operation had run.)

The article winds up with some references to various celebrities who made appearances at the 1979 WSOP. Gabe Kaplan played his second Main Event. Lily Tomlin stopped by. And Kenny Rogers came around to sing his new hit song, “The Gambler.”

An interesting article. Also interesting to contrast not only how huge the WSOP has become since the late 1970s, but how the nature and scope of its coverage has changed, too. Would be very cool to go back in time and see full-fledged, wall-to-wall reporting of these old WSOP Main Events. Further details of that Fowler-Hoff heads up battle would be fascinating to read through as well.

Then again, having all of those details would probably demythologize the WSOP’s history in detrimental ways. And frankly, even in today’s world of (relatively) comprehensive WSOP coverage, there’s always going to be much, much more that is left untold.

On the Horizon: The Future of UltimateBet?

Catching up on the podcasts once again. Kind of fell behind over the summer, but am now back to listening regularly to all of those listed over on the right-hand column. And, by the way, new episodes of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show will be coming before too long.

Yesterday I listened to Big Poker Sundays (7/20 episode) and the Two Plus Two Pokercast (7/21 episode), both of which spent time discussing the ongoing UltimateBet scandal, particularly focusing on the decisions made by individuals who have chosen to associate themselves with the site. A couple of points came up in those shows that I wanted to share and respond to here.

Phil “Completely Oblivious” Hellmuth

On the Two Plus Two show, hosts Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz spent some time early on discussing the recent week of Poker After Dark. Rather than follow the usual sit-n-go format, last week PAD featured a cash game involving Mike Baxter, Allen Cunningham, Tom Dwan, Phil Hellmuth, Guy Laliberte, and David Peat. In their discussion of the show, Johnson and Schwartz particularly focused on Hellmuth’s poor performance and apparent lack of awareness of how others perceive him.

That got the pair onto other Hellmuthian absurdities, including his non-response to ongoing revelations of insider cheating having occurred at UltimateBet -- the site for which he is a paid representative.

Regarding the latter, Schwartz said that he has “talked to somebody who’s very close [to Hellmuth] and [whom] everybody... would know -- I don’t want to say [who it is].” According to Schwartz, this person has “talked to Hellmuth about [the scandal], and Hellmuth is completely oblivious. Like, he thinks that nobody really pays any attention to any of this stuff.... He absolutely doesn’t think this is going to anything bad for his reputation.”

Most listening to the podcast (or reading this blog) are probably not surprised to hear this about Hellmuth. We’ve grown accustomed to his aloof behavior. We’ve also rolled our eyes at the recent ads in CardPlayer attempting to recruit more members into the “UB Army” (from one of which the above picture of Hellmuth in faux-military garb comes). A recent one includes a memo from “UB High Army Command” from “Eleven Star General Phil Hellmuth Jr.” in which he invites the reader to join the UB Army “and gain exclusive access to our TOP SECRET MISSION.”

We roll our eyes, of course, because we know what happened at UltimateBet. It wasn’t exactly a “super-user”-type account being exploited such as we saw over at Absolute Poker, though functionally speaking it was the essentially the same problem -- namely, players who had access to opponents’ hole cards were playing on the site and exploiting the games. Indeed, the problem was more grave over at UltimateBet than at Absolute, insofar as it apparently involved an external program one ran alongside the UB software that enabled the user to see opponents’ hole cards (and not a special account).

What makes the scandal especially grievous is that the scam was perpetrated by insiders -- as UB itself admits in its statement of May 29, 2008, “the individuals responsible were found to have worked for the previous ownership of UltimateBet prior to the sale of the business to Tokwiro in October 2006.” Since that claim was made, further questions have arisen regarding the nature of UB’s ownership and whether the “sale of the business” really represented a complete break from those responsible for the cheating. UB’s failure to respond to these questions has only increased suspicions regarding the site, its owners, and its spokespersons.

All of which makes ad campaigns about some “TOP SECRET MISSION” seem particularly inappropriate -- or “oblivious” -- wouldn’t you say?

The Future of UltimateBet?

While news about Hellmuth’s lack of awareness about how he is perceived isn’t particularly surprising to most of us, there was one statement made over on the Big Poker Sundays show that I found especially curious. Unexpected, even.

There hosts Scott Huff and Haralabos Voulgaris spent the majority of the show discussing both Tiffany Michelle’s decision to don UB patches during the last three days of play at the WSOP Main Event and responding to some of Annie Duke’s statements in recent interviews about the cheating scandals.

Both Huff and Voulgaris express astonishment at Michelle’s decision to go with UB. For a thoughtful explanation of that decision and situation, go check out Change100’s analysis from late last week (if you haven’t already). A lot of us share the BPS hosts’ incredulity at Michelle’s decision, and Change100’s explanation of the significance of the player-agent relationship here does a lot to help those of us on the outside understand what might have happened.

In the midst of expressing his view of how short-sighted Michelle was in signing with UB, Voulgaris made a statement which I found a bit surprising. He pointed out how these sponsorship deals generally are set up so as to pay more the deeper one gets in the Main Event; thus, if Michelle had made the final table, she’d likely be looking to make considerably more than whatever she got for wearing the UB patches on Days 5, 6, and 7.

“This final table is going to play out in November,” Voulgaris continued. “There’s like a better than fifty percent chance that UltimateBet won’t even be around in November to pay her. So it’s like ‘okay, yeah, I’m gonna sign up with a company that may or may not be out of business by the time I’m due to collect my money.’ Which is kind of, I mean, may not be a smart thing to do. I don’t know, I mean if I’m going to [sign] an incentive-based contract, I want to at least make sure the people are going to be around to pay me.”

Can this possibly be true? Is there really a “fifty percent chance” UB will close up shop by November?

I mentioned last week that PokerNews no longer operates as a UB affiliate. (They no longer promote Absolute Poker, either.) Also on the “better late than never” front, the Poker Players Alliance yesterday issued its “Response to Online Poker Cheating Scandals,” in which the PPA urges both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet “and their regulating authority, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, to provide full and transparent accounting of these breaches of the public trust to help lift the black cloud that has been placed over the industry.”

Without such “full and transparent accounting” of what happened, will others turn their backs on Absolute Poker and UltimateBet as well? Will CardPlayer, ESPN, and others stop accepting advertising from the sullied sites? And, most importantly, will players stop playing on them?

I’m thinking we’re looking at considerably less than a fifty percent chance UB will no longer be around come November. Then again, who knows what exactly General Hellmuth sees approaching on the horizon?