Poker Podcast Round-Up

I know last Friday I was promising in this space a new episode of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show. Ended up taking longer to put together than expected. Always does, actually. Managed to create another modest “audio theater” thing that required extra effort. Anyhow, the show will most definitely go up tomorrow (Saturday). No shinola. Comedy stuff, this time around.

Speaking of podcasts, I continue to follow the ones listed down on the right-hand side of the page. There are a few others out there, but that list comprises the most popular ones out there at the moment, as far as I know. Not going to do a full-fledged review of all of ’em, but I thought it might be helpful to some just to give a brief rundown of what one generally finds when listening to each.

Two of the shows -- the Two Plus Two Pokercast and the PocketFives podcast -- are associated with popular poker forums, though the shows are quite different.

This year marks the second year for the 2+2 show, a version of an older show called Rounders, the Poker Show done by the same hosts, Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz. On the 2+2 show, Johnson and Schwartz usually spend the first part of the show talking about various poker news and “forum static,” then eventually they have one or more guests on (usually) from the poker world. The pair have good chemistry and are good interviewers. Lately the podcast has become the Two-Plus Hour Pokercast, and sometimes it is difficult to find the time during the week to listen to the whole sucker. Good stuff, though.

The PocketFives show is generally just under a half-hour long and most often features interviews with online stars who participate in the P5s forums and/or write for the site. The last four episodes have all given attention to legal issues of various kinds, and frankly those shows are a bit more useful and interesting than the ones that concentrate on interviewing the wunderkinds.

A couple of other “poker news”-oriented podcasts that focus on current events in the poker world and generally feature interviews are the Hardcore Poker Show (which airs over on Sirius) and the Bernard Lee Poker Show (which airs on a Boston AM station, then gets syndicated over on Rounder’s Radio). I sometimes have a little trouble tracking down the Hardcore Poker Show as it doesn’t seem to come up in iTunes very easily. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place over there.

And, of course, under the heading of “poker news” shows comes the new one from Scott Huff, The Poker Beat, which I discussed a little bit last Friday. I did like that first episode quite a bit, and especially like Huff’s idea to have various poker journalists and bloggers on to discuss the latest stories and issues. Have a feeling this one will likely be at the top of my queue each week.

Ante Up!, the Florida-based show hosted by Chris Cosenza and Scott Long, continues to put out new episodes every Friday. The show has gone through a few changes over the last six months or so, but still follows what (for me) is the same winning formula -- a couple of serious amateur players talking poker. As an amateur (or, more properly, “recreational”) player myself, I like being able to identify with the hosts, and Cosenza and Long do a nice job articulating various issues and concerns of interest to those in our group.

Shows that specifically concentrate on poker strategy discussions are the Deuces Cracked show (a.k.a. “Deuces Plays”) hosted by Bart Hanson, Killer Poker Analysis hosted by Tony Guerrera (author of some of those “Killer Poker” books), and All Strategy, the PokerRoad show hosted by Scott Huff, Daniel Negreanu, and Justin Bonomo. Actually All Strategy has been on hiatus for six weeks now, and perhaps may be done. I usually can only take these strategy-specific shows in small doses, to be honest, although I do think Hanson especially does a good job communicating ideas and asking interesting questions of his guests.

Other poker podcasts will also sometimes get into strategy segments while not exclusively concentrating on such. Phil Gordon’s The Poker Edge (the ESPN poker podcast) has now turned its attention to discussing nothing but no-limit hold’em multitable tourneys, although it doesn’t always have that bent to it. Three of the other Rounder’s Radio shows -- Pumped on Poker, Poker Talk Beyond the Books, and Lou Krieger’s Keep Flopping Aces -- will also often get into strategy talk, although they tend to cover other items of interest in the poker world. While all three of those are recorded live, the first two -- Pumped & Poker Talk -- are more free-form than Krieger’s show, which tends to have a bit more focus each week.

Speaking of free form, the NeverWin Poker podcast -- the “Cold Call” show -- is mainly that, too, with a lot of off-color stuff thrown in for good measure (as one would expect). Can be fairly compelling now and then, depending on the hosts and the relative frequency of crank calls, but is usually a lot of goofin’.

When it comes to genuinely compelling interviews, though, you probably can’t top Wise Hand Poker (also on Rounder’s) and the Gamblers Book Club podcast. Gary Wise tends to land guests who are most in demand, and invariably does an excellent job with the interviews (in my opinion). And Howard Schwartz’s podcast in which he interviews authors and other figures from poker and/or gambling is terrific, too. (Wrote about Schwartz’s show a couple of weeks back, if you want to read more.)

The PokerRoad Radio podcast has been mostly dormant over the last few weeks. That’s the one hosted by Ali Nejad, Joe Sebok, Gavin Smith, Court Harrington -- and maybe a couple of others -- which had been following the professional circuit and doing multiple shows at each stop. I think they’re working on changing the format, though, and perhaps going to a more regular weekly show or something. The shows are usually fun, although the games and whatnot that often fill the first half can be a bit repetitive (especially when they’re doing five shows in five days). But I do think Nejad especially does well with the interviews, and they routinely land interesting guests over there.

I think that’s all of ’em. Like I say, I know there are other shows out there. There’s the Ultimate Poker Show (on Rounder’s) -- which seems to me like a paid advertisement for UB. I think the Joe Average Poker Show still exists, but I lost track of it after its long hiatus last year. Have not really followed whatever is happening on Hold’em Radio these days, though I think they are still up and running. And I think there’s something called Poker Soup hosted by some of my buddies that I might need to check out here soon.

Let me know if there are any shows out there of which I don’t seem to be aware that you think I should know about. And share yr thoughts about these podcasts, too, if you wanna.

Meanwhile, as I say, the podcast that features old time radio shows & other storytellers bringing you tales about poker and/or gambling has a new episode tomorrow. No shinola.

Running It Again with the UIGEA

Thanks to High Stakes Poker, even casual poker fans and players have become familiar with the idea of “running it again.”

One of the more memorable examples of players doing so was probably that $743,800 pot that went down between Patrik Antonius and Jamie Gold during the fourth season. (See the hand here.) With the board showing , the pair got it all in with Antonius holding for the Broadway straight and Gold for top set.

There Antonius had something like a 3-to-1 advantage with one card to come, and they agreed to “run it” three times, meaning three different river cards would be dealt, with each being worth one-third of the massive pot. Gold got lucky when the first river card was a queen and the second a trey, giving him full houses both times. Antonius finally claimed one-third of the pot when the third river card was an eight.

On the first day Barack Obama took office (January 20), some apparently thought that from a legal perspective we were now in a situation where it would be possible to “run it again” with regard to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

On that day came a report that his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had already sent a memo around to all of the new administration’s agencies and departments telling them to “stop all pending regulations until a legal and policy review can be conducted” by the new administration. Some heard that news and took it to apply to regulations for the UIGEA.

An easy mistake to make, I think, as those regs had indeed been “pending” for many, many months. But they were published back on November 12, 2008, and went into effect on January 19, the day before Obama took office -- i.e., those regs are not among the ones able to be stopped and reviewed. Of course, as the regs themselves state, “compliance... by designated payment systems is not required until December 1, 2009.”

No, there will be no “running it again” when it comes to the UIGEA.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that definitively, as there are a couple of faint legislative possibilities out there for the UIGEA and other so-called “midnight rules” that were finalized and put into effect by the outgoing Bush administration to be revisited.

One is this Congressional Review Act of 1996 that actually allows Congress (not the White House) to review and even overturn any rules finalized during the last six months of the previous administration’s tenure. However, that law has only actually been used one time since it was passed -- in 2001, when Congress used it to overturn a rule made during the Clinton administration having to do with establishing requirements for ergonomic work spaces. (If you’re curious, you can read more about the CRA here.)

The other chance at “running it again” with the UIGEA is this new “Midnight Rule Act” (H.R. 34) proposed right at the beginning of the new 111th Congress by House member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). Nadler actually first introduced this one back in November 2008, but had to reintroduce it when the new Congress started its work. Nadler’s bill would permit a new administration’s cabinet secretaries to approve or disapprove any rules adopted during the last 90 days of the previous adminstration, which would potentially include the UIGEA rules.

It appears highly unlikely, though, that either the CRA or this new Midnight Rule Act -- which was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary where it will likely remain for a good while -- are gonna be used to overturn the UIGEA. Which means from a legislative perspective, other avenues will have to be explored.

There’s been a small bit of buzz this week as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told the Financial Times he intends to reintroduce legislation to license and regulate online gambling in the United States. Frank probably has some sort of IGREA redux in mind, I’d think.

It should be noted that from a practical point of view, those of us who play online poker have to ask ourselves whether we really want to see online poker regulated, especially now that the UIGEA has gone into effect. To apply the analogy from High Stakes Poker, I can’t say for sure if we are in Jamie Gold’s position as an underdog who most certainly would desire the chance to “run it again” or that of Patrik Antonius who having the advantage might be better off not running it more than once.

In any event, we’ll be watching intently. And if they do run it again, it will be interesting to see how the cards fall.

Steve Martin is a Card

Some of you might have heard about Steve Martin’s appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman on Monday night. During the interview, Letterman asks Martin about his hobbies, and Martin says “for a while I played internet poker.” The audience genuinely laughs at this news, but Martin appears utterly serious.

In all likelihood, this is yet another “bit,” but Martin plays it deadpan. Then again, Martin did tell a story earlier in the interview about having been a passenger on that U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in which the two pilots managed to set the plane safely down on the Hudson River a few weeks ago. He even had a Photoshopped pic of himself amid the other survivors.

The laughter that comes just after Martin utters the phrase “internet poker” is interesting, I guess. I took it initially as the audience finding “internet” poker (as oppposed to “real” poker) humorous. Then I thought perhaps the crowd found something funny in the incongruity of the white-haired, 63-year-old Martin playing games on the computer. (Of course, Martin has been white-haired since he was 30.) Always interesting to gauge reactions whenever poker or online poker pokes its little head above the surface of the cultural mainstream, I think.

As the laughter dies down, Martin adds “when it was legal,” which seems to suggest his understanding that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 somehow made it illegal to play. Something about the way he tells the story seems sincere, actually, and this little disclaimer about the legality -- not really necessary to the comedy, here -- seems further to suggest he’s actually on the level and this is not “a level” (as the Two Plus Two-ers would say).

Anyhow, Martin then goes on to tell about having “one of those Ambien experiences.” Ambien is a sleeping pill taken to combat insomnia, and there have been instances where people have been found sleepwalking, eating, even driving cars after taking the drug, then later having no memory of having done any of these things. You can probably guess where this is headed.

If you haven’t heard the rest of the story, I’ll let you enjoy it yourself:



Again, the reference to calling support in “Pakistan... or India” is another detail that lends support to the idea that Martin isn’t quite making all of this up. He probably is (or was) somewhat familiar with “internet poker.” The stories on PokerListings and elsewhere about Martin’s appearance on Letterman are describing him as a “hobby victim” of the UIGEA -- that is, as likely happened with many others, the passage of the law dissuaded him from playing altogether, just as it has probably kept many new players from signing up to play, too.

Gotta think if the story is at all true Martin was over on PartyPoker -- the biggest site around at the time -- and when Party left the U.S. he, and perhaps many others, simply thought that was the end. People only have so much time, energy, and cash to devote to their hobbies, and since the UIGEA did have the effect of eroding some of those limited resources, some -- like Martin, perhaps -- decided they just didn’t need the hassle.

Yeah, Martin probably said “I don’t need internet poker anymore. All I need is this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp....”

Speaking of Image

So a few nights ago (Saturday night-Sunday morning) I had one of of those weird, vivid dreams most of which survived to remain in my consciousness upon waking. I’ll spare you the crazy chain of circumstance that led up to the dream’s final scene, but it ended with me watching the Olympics -- both in person and on television (not sure how).

I was watching a newly introduced sport that combined platform diving and card tricks. Divers would dive into the pool from ten meters or whatever it was, swim the length of the pool and get out the other side, then on a small table perform some sort of card trick. I’m not making this up.

When I explained the dream to Vera Valmore, she asked me if the cards were waterproof. I assumed they were. She also asked me what I thought might’ve inspired the dream, and all I could come up with was last week’s announcement of this summer’s WSOP schedule, with its novel tweaks and various whatnot.

Would’ve been easier to explain, I think, had the dream come the next night, after I heard the news (along with everyone else) about Michael Phelps’ apology following a U.K. tabloid’s publication of a photo of the 14-time Olympic gold medal winner hitting a bong.

When I read that story, I immediately thought of that Todd Brunson article in the November 11, 2008 issue of Card Player describing Phelps bringing an entourage of 40-50 people to Vegas to stay at the Palms and meet and hang out with some famous poker players.

Brunson describes a long, fairly raucous night beginning with a big steak dinner (with lots of drinking), followed by a basketball game, a poker tourney, then some roulette in which Phelps won over a grand. By then it was early morning, and Brunson leaves the group to sleep for 12 hours. When he rejoins them at dinner the next night, “Michael was already in full swing at the bar,” ordering a drink for Brunson and “making fun of one of his friends for not drinking.”

The article goes on, with Brunson marvelling at Phelps’ capacity for liquor. “‘Incredible,’ I thought to myself. This guy was drinking some sort of mixed drink when I got here, then the tequila, then the whiskey, all in less than five minutes!” (I suppose a dude who consumes 10,000 calories a day or whatever it is should be able to handle a bit more booze than yr average drinker.) In the end, Brunson concludes Phelps to have been a super friendly guy who was “on cloud nine,” letting go a bit after the many years of discipline that led up to his Olympic triumphs.

I’m not judging Phelps at all, and in fact would tend to echo Brunson’s conclusion that the man is certainly entitled to live it up a bit. I was actually surprised when I read the Card Player article that the story told there didn’t appear to make the mainstream media, although perhaps some tabloids did pick it up and I missed it. Of course, drinking never suffers the backlash smoking dope does, even if the moral distinction the public tends to make between the two is a sketchy one.

Knowing the significance of appearances, it seemed a little remarkable to me that Brunson would report Phelps’ drinking and partying with such nonchalance. While letting go like that would be perfectly normal behavior for yr average 23-year-old, for a guy like Phelps there are obvious risks in doing so. Especially in public. As it turns out, that probably was a mighty expensive buzz the swimmer caught off that bong, as many of those lucrative endorsement deals he snagged along with those eight golds last summer have opt-out clauses regarding just this sort of conspicuous, public embarrassment.

I guess the other part of the story that interests us poker players is the fact that Phelps has made known his interest in our game and even played in a tourney or two during his Vegas trip. I wrote a post back in August in response to the news that the star athlete was talking about playing in the 2009 World Series of Poker, optimistically titling that post “The Poker Cause: Phelps Helps.” There I speculated a bit how Phelps coming around to the WSOP “instantly affords poker a kind of credibility in mainstream society.”

Of course, now I suppose we have to wonder if that is really the case.

Phelps has time to rehabilitate his image, certainly. But I guess I wonder now whether poker perhaps takes an image hit if Phelps comes around to Vegas to play in some more tourneys? That is to say, would Phelps playing in the WSOP inspire the general public more readily to associate poker with other vices...?

I ask that question knowing full well how absurd such a line of thinking is. But the human mind works in strange ways, making associations where one would least expect it.

Like this dream I had the other night....

Lessons in Limit(s)

So January ended up a nice month for me, poker-wise. After an unhappy January 1 playing pot-limit Omaha, I decided to stick with limit hold’em for pretty much the entire rest of the month (with just a few very minor excursions elsewhere). Did not play a single tournament. Had an especially good January 31 and finished the month with a profit that actually resembled a good month (for me) playing PLO50 -- this primarily sitting at $0.50/$1.00 6-max. LHE tables. Lot less stressful, too, lemme tell ya.

I used to play nothing but LHE, right up until the middle of ’07 when I became a (mostly) PLO guy. So it took me a week or two to get back into the limit hold’em mindset. Sort of like going back to that old neighborhood where you once lived. You recognize street names and certain landmarks, though can’t quite drive directly to your old place without making a few wrong turns. Eventually, after circling around a bit, you start to remember the old route you used to take, and soon yr gettin’ around just fine.

Have been reviewing some in Small Stakes Hold’em by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth and Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy by Barry Tanenbaum. Also picked up Matthew Hilger’s newly revised and expanded Internet Texas Hold’em, which contains a couple of new chapters about short-handed play. All good for the reorientation.

Thought I’d share three generalities (and/or guidelines) about micro/low limit hold’em that have occurred to me over the last month.

1. Learning Others’ Limits. Probably the most important factor when first sitting down at the LHE table is getting an idea how others approach the game, most specifically what hands your opponents are willing to play. And, once you’ve got that, how they tend to play ’em.

One aspect of short-handed play I like a lot is the fact that no one can really sit and hide from you for very long. In fact, at this low limit where I’m playing it generally takes very little time to figure out the other five players’ styles. Often, all a player has to do is open-call one time from the cutoff to signal he or she is not all that crafty. Then, when that player shows down K-7 offsuit in that hand, one can usually conclude something about that player’s hand selection abilities, too. One can be fooled, of course, but it generally isn’t that hard to figure out and categorize yr tablemates in this game.

2. Limiting Variance. There are a few situations in LHE that I’ve started to approach with the idea in mind that I’m making a conscious decision expressly to limit my swings. Some involve starting hands. Depending on my opponents and how a session has been going, I’ll sometimes throw away hand like A-rag or K-10 even if it has been folded to me in late position, telling myself I’m purposely opting out of getting involved in a potentially big winner or loser. Other times I’ll open raise with the same hand.

There’s also a situation on the turn where I sometimes am also making a similar decision. It is heads up, and I could be acting first or last (doesn’t matter). I’ve taken the lead on the hand on the flop with a less than sure holding, say middle or bottom pair or maybe just ace-high, and have been called (or check-called). The turn does not help me, and I decide either to check behind or check-call (depending on my position), rather than continue betting out. Basically I’m avoiding putting three big bets in the pot, instead making it so I can see a showdown for just one big bet (or perhaps two). I might be letting my opponent fill out an inside straight or back into two pair or something to pass me in the hand, but again, I’m trying simply to avoid putting lots of bets in the middle in situations where I’m less than confident I’ll be getting ’em back.

3. Limiting Emotion. Probably the biggest difference between LHE and PLO, I’m guessing, is how easily Omaha can get you riled up to the point of irrationality, while limit hold’em remains much more subdued. Or serene. Or sane.

Sure, it is possible to get flustered now and then when the donkeys get lucky, or when one is forced to endure a succession of misfortunes. And some cannot help but respond by lashing out in the chatbox. (I was just writing about one such character on Friday.) However, I am generally able to avoid such hand-wringing in LHE -- most of the time, anyway. In fact, I’ve realized that my decision to play LHE (rather than PLO) amounts to another conscious choice to limit my emotional investment in poker -- in other words, not to “chase the dragon” (as Dr. Pauly describes PLO).

The highs won’t be as high, but the lows won’t be as low. Much prefer the monthly graph looking more like the left-half of a rocky, yet gradually upward-sloping mountain than a seismogram of a tectonic earthquake.

Podcasts, Programs, & Presumptions from Pessimistic Poker Players

Let me start this Friday morning by passing along a few items for you poker fans out there.

First, Scott Huff (of CardPlayer’s The Circuit, PokerWire Radio, Big Poker Sundays) has started up a new poker podcast over on PokerRoad called The Poker Beat (replacing BPS). The focus of the weekly show will be to discuss current poker headlines, with Huff mostly having journalists, bloggers, and other insider-types on as guests.

For the first episode (1/29/09), Scott had lead WPT tourney reporter B.J. Nemeth, Pokerati poobah Dan Michalski, Bluff Magazine Editor-in-Chief Matthew Parvis, and ESPN poker reporter Gary Wise on to discuss the state of the WPT, UIGEA stuff, and Tom “durrrr” Dwan’s challenge. Huff’s Two Jacks in the Hole co-host Joe Stapleton also came on at the end for a humor segment.

By the way, speaking of podcasts, the plan is to have Episode 13 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show available for your listening pleasure tomorrow. Looking at a comedy show, this time. (EDIT [added 9 p.m., 1/31/09]: Looks like it might be a couple more days before the show is ready -- stay tuned!)

Also, if you hadn’t heard, ESPN plans to televise the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event for us Americans starting on Sunday. We Yanks never got to see the 2007 WSOPE (won by Annette Obrestad), so this’ll be our first glimpse of how they do it over in the U.K.

The first four hours of coverage airs on ESPN on Sunday night (February 1) from 6-10 p.m. Eastern time. For those who might be watching a certain football game during those hours, those four hours will be repeated over on ESPN2 starting at 10 p.m. Eastern. From what I’m reading, they outfitted many of the tables with the hole card cameras -- i.e., not just the feature table -- which will apparently add a little something extra to the coverage.

Finally, a quick anecdote from the online tarbles...

Had a longer-than-usual session of limit hold’em yesterday ($0.50/$1.00, six-handed). Started well, but ended up a loser for the day (down 20 big bets, oof!). Has been a nice week, though, and the total for the month is shaping up decently, so I wasn’t too miffed about one poor outing.

I say the session started well. I won a few small pots early, then had a sweet hand in which I’d been dealt pocket fours in the big blind, called preflop after there had been a raise and two other callers, then the flop brought a four. Ended up taking two of my opponents to the river, both of whom held (unimproved) pocket pairs of their own.

After the hand, the guy who’d lost with J-J started griping in the chat box.

GaryGripe said, “***in stinking rigged fake site”
GaryGripe said, “no matter what you ***in do not matter what table you go if this stinking rigged site wants you to lose you lose”

Interestingly enough, shortly after his tirade he started catching cards like crazy, and ended up leaving the table some twenty bucks ahead of where he was when he so eloquently offered his well-considered conspiracy theory to us all.

Like I say, things went downhill for me after that early rush. Turned into one of those days where everyone else seemed to be getting the aces and kings, making their flushes, flopping two pair out of the blinds, etc., while I kept getting dealt J-4-offsuit. The guy sitting to my left (not GaryGripe) would flop sets three times within eight hands. He left the table, another player took his spot, and damned if he didn’t flop sets twice right away.

As the late Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.

After the session, I was fooling around looking at site statistics for the blog and noticed someone had come to Hard-Boiled Poker after having done a search of the key words “titan poker micro limits rigged.” Took the seeker to a post of mine from a couple of years ago called “Online Poker Is Rigged, ver. 2.0” in which I told the story of a dude at a LHE table on Bodog who kept yammering on in the chat box as he lost hand after hand, cursing someone named “Bo.”

Finally I realized the dude was cursing the site itself, having personified it as an evil antagonist out to get him. (A funnier than average post, by the way, if yr looking for a good laugh.)

The tin-foil-hat guys are certainly entertaining. Actually, I don’t think it is entirely goofy to worry about sites’ integrity, but to entertain the possibility that a site actually has it in for you in particular -- esp. when yr sitting at a $0.50/$1.00 LHE table -- seems an especially remarkable display of self-centered thinking.

Earlier this week, Thomas Steuerman wrote a post over on the Bigger Deal site called “The ‘Poker God’ Delusion” which kind of touches on that impulse to assign the cause of one’s momentary misfortune to a higher power. I think the dudes whimpering about sites screwing them are basically doing the same thing, only they’re a bit more earth-bound in their thinking.

Probably more interesting -- and more useful -- for those of us who don’t believe in “poker gods” or the targeted rigging of sites is to think about how to play back against such fatalists when we encounter them. At my table, I sensed others start to give GaryGripe more action after his comment, which probably contributed a few big bets to his suddenly-growing stack. (Maybe I did, too, now that I think about it.) Perhaps his whimpering was all part of a larger strategic metagame...?

Nah. What am I thinkin’? Lol microlimit metagames.

Have a super Super Bowl weekend, all.

Keep Your Mind at Ease (Play at PokerStars)

Had a little moment of anxiety yesterday when I discovered that for some reason my password was no longer working for one of my email accounts. Tried five times, and the sucker kept coming back “incorrect username or password.”

I knew it wasn’t the username that was the issue. My password just wasn’t working. What to do?

As it happens, the problem was with the email account that is connected to my online poker accounts, and it didn’t take long for me to conjure up some worst-case-scenario-type paranoia that perhaps somehow, some way, some rat was at that very moment stealing all my cheddar.

You recognize, of course, that detail from Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting “The Scream.” Munch created a few versions of the painting, and at least a couple of have been stolen over the last couple of decades. When one was stolen in 1994, apparently the theives left behind a note saying “Thanks for the poor security.” No shinola.

Well, suddenly, amid an otherwise placid, adequately-caffeinated morning haze, I found myself thinking intently about security matters.

Perfectly silly, of course. I honestly had little reason to worry about my smallish online poker rolls. If someone had hacked my email account, it really didn’t make much sense to think they could then successfully move on to my poker accounts. Even so, I was stuck at my place of work -- where, of course, I do not have the poker site clients on my work computer -- and so had no way of checking whether or not all was well with my accounts.

I was able to reset my email password, then decided to fire quick emails to support over at PokerStars and Full Tilt, the only two sites where I have significant moneys at the moment. Explained the situation and just wanted confirmation that my money was still there, safely waiting for me the next time I logged on.

It took PokerStars exactly 18 minutes to write back. Brett, of the PokerStars Support Team, told me there had been no real money deposits or withdrawals over the last 48 hours. “To further put your mind at ease,” wrote Brett, “I have attached a report that shows your full real money activity at PokerStars for the past 24 hours.”

The file was a nifty “audit” of my play from Tuesday afternoon –- that brief session I was referring to in yesterday’s post from which I came away with a small profit. Shows me what I bought in for, notes that I rebought for an extra $10 at one table at one point, then shows what I had when leaving each of the tables. Also notes all of my VPP & FPP accumulation (for session, month, and year).

I realize my request was a simple one. But Stars showed yet again they’re simply awesome when it comes to this sort of thing.

Meanwhile, Full Tilt has yet to respond to my request, which will be 24 hours old a little later this morning. Though I have received a tip from Keith Sexton about raising with a draw.

Once I got home yesterday I logged onto FTP and saw all was well with my account. I’ve never had too much trouble with FTP support (as others have from time to time), though during the years I’ve played on both sites I can say unhesitatingly that Stars has always outdone FTP support-wise.

Over the last few months, PokerStars has soared well past all competitors in terms of numbers of players. For the last month or more, Stars has consistently been attracting more than twice the number of cash game players than does Full Tilt, its nearest competitor, with the iPoker Network, PartyPoker, and the Ongame Network far behind.

When I checked PokerSite Scout last night, Stars had over 25,000 playing cash games to FTP’s 12,000. Among the other American-facing sites/networks, the Cereus network had just 2,500 or so playing for cash, Cake Poker had about 2,000, and Bodog was way down under 1,500.

My buddy Mark wrote an interesting post last week over at Plan3t Gong where he speculated a bit over why it was Stars had taken such a significant traffic lead.

Mark weighs several possible reasons, then concludes that the 100% match up to deposits of $50 has a lot to do with Stars being able to attract new players.

What? Yr not familiar with that? Hmmm. Wonder how you could find out more about that offer...?


Says Mark, many newbies generally don’t want to start out shipping too much into the sites, and so the humble-seeming offer to match up to $50 actually works well as an incentive to take that first plunge. Makes sense, frankly.

Of course, what we’re also clearly seeing happening over at Stars is the same phenomenon that occurred at PartyPoker back in 2005-06 -- right up until they pulled out of the U.S. post-Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Namely, the biggest site getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Always lots and lots of active tables from which to choose on PokerStars, which is the main reason why I generally am logging onto Stars first when I’m ready to play. I prefer the software, too, though I think that is always a more subjective preference for most players.

But for support -- and security -- I think most would probably agree PokerStars is way, way above all the rest when it comes to putting yr mind at ease.

On Being Results Oriented

Had a poker-related thought flash through my mind while running yesterday. It happens.

By the way, I am still doing two miles just about every day. Have gone three on a few occasions, and there have been a couple of rainy or cold days this month when I’ve opted to go to the gym and ride the bike instead of fighting the weather. Getting near month’s end, and I’ve managed to exercise every single day in January.

I suppose I feel somewhat healthier, although to be honest I’m not really seeing any particular “results” from my regimen. I’m already a skinny dude, so we’re not watching weight or anything. I guess I do have a bit more mental energy, oft-cited as a happy consequence of keeping physically active.

Anyhow, as I was running yesterday I was pondering this whole “results oriented” idea we often hear about in poker -- usually as something to be avoided. The idea, we’re told (again and again), is to make correct decisions and not get too caught up in the fact that sometimes we lose anyway. Get yr money in as a 4-to-1 favorite and even if you lose when yr opponent makes his flush you can take solace in the fact that over the long term, if you repeatedly take that gamble, you’ll come out ahead.

What occurred to me as I ran was how the whole “don’t be results oriented” idea is, of course, based on the ultimate goal of achieving better results. So it is good to be results oriented, just not in the short term. Thus does the point of the advice occasionally get misconstrued by not-so-sharp players, as sometimes happens with other poker concepts like “implied odds” or “expected value.”

Tommy Angelo has a nifty little chapter in his Elements of Poker in which he bluntly admits to being results oriented, both with regard to individual hands and to sessions, too. “When I win, I think I played better than I did,” says Angelo. “When I lose, I think I played worse that I did.” We all do.

I won’t repeat Angelo’s examples, but instead just offer a quick one of my own from a hand of six-handed limit hold’em I played yesterday. Hand began with me limping under-the-gun with a pair of deuces. Was one of those passive LHE tables one likes to find (and frequently can find at the $0.50/$1.00 limits), so I wasn’t too worried about raises and reraises behind. The cutoff also limped, then the small blind raised, the BB called, and me and the cutoff called as well. The flop was nice: . The blinds checked and I went ahead and bet out. All three of my opponents called.

The turn was the . The blinds checked again, I bet a dollar (into the six-dollar pot) and the cutoff raised. The blinds folded and I took a moment to decide whether I’d run into the straight. I decided it unlikely he had K-J or J-8, a judgment I somewhat rashly based on the 30 or so hands I’d played with him. So I three-bet. He paused (something I took as a good sign) and just called. I figured him for two pair here, say Q-T or Q-9.

The on the river changed nothing (according to my read), so I bet out. The cutoff called, showing , and I picked up a nice $13.50 pot with my set of ducks.

Was patting myself on the back, too, for having grabbed that extra turn bet. Of course, had a king or eight fallen on the river to cause me to lose to the straight, I’d have certainly felt much less heroic. Or even worse, had the guy actually had K-J (which, really, would have been perfectly reasonable given the preflop and flop action) and thus turned his straight, I’d have felt like a moron for having pumped up the pot there with the three-bet.

Thanks in large part to that one hand, I walked away from my brief session (just under 100 hands) with a tidy 16 big-bet profit, recording such in my notebook while experiencing yet another “results oriented”-inspired flush of satisfaction. Sue me.

We’re human. When the day begins and we wake up yet again and are glad for doing so, we immediately start being results oriented. If I were pulling muscles and feeling fatigued all the time, I’d stop running for sure. But I’m not. The results, if not dramatically obvious, have been acceptable. So I keep going.

While we are on the subject, last week I read an interesting article over on Salon by Patrick Smith, an airline pilot who contributes a weekly column over there called “Ask the Pilot.” The article (dated 1/23/09) asks the question “What saved the passengers of Flight 1549?” and in it Smith makes the case that neither Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger nor the first officer, Jeffrey Skiles, the two co-pilots who safely brought down that U.S. Airways plane onto the Hudson River earlier this month, should be exalted to greater-than-human status on the basis of what happened. Writes Smith, “we are owed a sober discussion of what actually befell them, instead of the vapid and infantile yammering about miracles and the ‘heroics’ of ‘the pilot.’”

Smith’s argument throughout the article is essentially to say the media and public have been way too “results oriented” with this one. Smith maintains that while the pilots should both be commended for having performed well under pressure, “skill was not the issue” that ultimately determined the fate of the 155 aboard that flight. Rather, it was luck. A lot of it. And according to Smith, “nowhere in the public discussion has the role of luck been adequately acknowledged.”

Read the article for the full discussion. Smith has a point, sure. Of course, I don’t think I’d agree with the claim that no one has said anything about “luck” here. And frankly, I’m not so eager to join the side of the dude wanting to diminish claims of the pilots’ skill and/or heroism, either. But I get where he is coming from.

But damn, isn’t this one instance where we can allow ourselves to be a bit more “results oriented”?

That is to say, a bit more human?

2009 WSOP Schedule Announced

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the schedule of events for the 2009 World Series of Poker has been announced. Two more events than last year, meaning a record 57 bracelets will be handed out this summer -- and in November.

That’s right. November. They’re bringing back the four-month delay for the Main Event final table. No surprise there, given much of the talk surrounding the 2008 WSOP ME final table a couple of months ago (and since). The decision makers and other higher-ups have all been unanimous in praising the “success” of the experiment, while the rest of us have expressed varying degrees of praise, censure, and/or ennui.

More on that in a sec. How about a few other first impressions of the new sked?

-- Fifty-seven bracelets is way too friggin’ many. (Go ahead and add five or so more for the WSOPE later in the year, too, if you wanna.) I’m a poker fan and so don’t mind the overload, but I recognize and appreciate the whole “value-of-a-bracelet-has-been-watered-down” gripe. Hell, as recently as five years ago there were only 33 bracelet events. And five years before that? Sixteen.

-- Am glad to see a preponderance of non-hold’em events again (24 of the 57, if we count Event No. 10, the pot-limit Omaha/pot-limit hold’em event). I’m assuming Event No. 12 ($10K buy-in) is the eight-game mixed event featuring no-limit hold'em, pot-limit Omaha, 2-7 triple draw, and the five H.O.R.S.E. games. You know, the one oft-referred to by discerning commentators as S.P.L.E.N.D.O.R. Looks like there is possibly a second, lower buy-in version of S.P.L.E.N.D.O.R. ($2,500) stuck in there as Event No. 42, too.

-- The so-called “stimulus” Event No. 4, i.e., that $1,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event for which organizers are hoping to attract over 5,000 entrants, seems like a mostly harmless idea, I guess. I suppose it may well bring a few folks out who might not otherwise have come, and some of those may stick around for other events, too. Will be curious to see the payout schedule, actually, as an incorrectly calculated schedule could make this one a huge disappointment to many.

-- The $40,000 NLHE event (Event No. 2) incites some curiosity, for sure. The buy-in (designed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the WSOP) will certainly introduce some exclusivity to the field, although I think we might be surprised at just how many pony up for this one. It’s possible, though, that this one coming at the start of the series might prove to be a bit of an “anti-stimulus,” knocking some players out of action a little earlier than would have been the case otherwise (although that sort of thing would be hard to measure).

-- There are ten $10,000 “World Championship” events this time around (as opposed to eight last year). The overall price tag for a person playing all 57 events adds up to $289,500, compared to $236,500 in 2008. (Feel free to check my math, there. To swipe a line from F-Train’s very cool coverage of that high-stakes cash game at the Aussie Millions a couple of days ago, I’m no mathemagician.) Of course, for a person to be eligible to play all 57 events she would have to be a woman aged fifty or older who is also a casino employee.

-- Getting rid of the rebuy events has nothing to do with what the players want, nor with that absurd suggestion that such events make it possible for high rollers to “buy a bracelet.” I wrote about this issue last month, and in a comment Dr. Pauly pointed out that the real reason for eliminating the rebuys probably had to do with shenanigans surrounding the collection of the money. I think he is probably right.

-- The November Nine is back. Which sucks eggs.

I remain opposed to the delay for the way it introduces a strange, unwieldy variation into the poker tournament format. Granted, over the years we’ve grown accustomed to (and many of us have enjoyed) a myriad of creative modifications to “traditional” tournament formats. Indeed, one could reasonably argue there is no such thing as a “default” format for poker tournaments. Like novels, each one has its own way of redefining the genre to which it belongs.

That being said, stopping the sucker for four months then rebooting remains for me just too damn great a violation of form, making it too different from all other tourneys for any comparisons to be coherently made. I realize we want to make the Main Event unique, but think about it. It’s the “world champion of poker” we’re nominally crowning here. How can we even say that with a straight face if the event only barely resembles all other forms of poker ever played?

To put it another way...

Let’s say that for Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the NFL announced it was permitting both teams’ players to sell advertising space on their jerseys for the game. In fact, the league is encouraging it. Also, all of the space between the lines on the field at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay will be made available to advertisers, too.

Fans would object, sure, but hey, it doesn’t affect the actual game, right? And the NFL promises the ads on the field won’t obscure the yard-line numbers in any way.

But then we hear the NFL has decided to give each team one extra time out per half than teams are normally allotted. Also, each team will be allowed two extra challenges to use during the course of the game.

We want to make sure our champion is not decided because of an incorrect call, the league is saying in defense of this latter change, although in truth both of these ideas were primarily tied to a desire to squeeze in a few more of them cool commercials, if possible.

A few fans would pipe up about “integrity” and whatnot, but most would still be able to deal.

But wait. Now we’re hearing the league has actually decided to stretch the game out over a period of two days, with the first half played on Saturday and the second half on Sunday night. There will be extensive “halftime” shows both nights, with Springsteen still scheduled to perform on Saturday (between the first and second quarters) and Kelly Clarkson on Sunday (between the third and fourth quarters).

Also, as part of the Super Weekend, Kurt Warner and Ben Roethlisberger will be co-hosting Saturday Night Live via simulcast from the studios of WTVJ in Tampa. Special “holographic” technology such as CNN used during its election coverage will enable the quarterbacks to remain in Florida to participate in skits with the SNL cast in New York in what is sure to be a memorable program brought to you by the good folks at Sprint.

That’s about where we are with this four-month delay idea, I think.

Actually, I was going to go one step further there and say that the NFL had decided to repackage the telecast to show only the first downs, turnovers, and scoring plays. But that would’ve have been silly.

Pokerback Writer

Have arrived at another centennial here. Seven hundred friggin’ posts. Damn lot of scribblin’ that.

Vera Valmore came up with that phrase -- “pokerback writer” -- some time ago to describe whatever it is I think I’m doing here (and elsewhere) writing about poker. This whole idea (to write about poker, that is) started on a whim, of course. As these things tend to do. Over two-and-a-half years later, and I’m writing about poker, either here or elsewhere, just about every single day. And when I’m not writing about it, I’m thinking about writing about it.

Oh, and I’m playing it, too. But even then I’m thinking about writing about it.

Last week I was referring to Vicky Coren’s interview over on Wise Hand Poker (the 1/14/09 episode) and mentioned how she had offered some thoughts in there about the relationship between writing and playing.

“I think every poker hand is a story,” she began. “My favorite situations in poker are [in a] cash game or a deep-stacked tournament, you know, and there’s an awful lot of chips... and maybe it’s on the turn and somebody’s made a big bet and you have to work out what to do. And at that point, you look back through the whole story.”

Coren is obviously not the first to make that observation about the story-like nature of poker -- how the game is constantly suggesting these tales to us over and over again, affording us countless plots, settings, characters, conflicts, themes, and differing points of view. We’re all familiar with the way the game produces such an effect, allowing us to live out all of these tales as ourselves but also as someone else.

Say, a detective.

“You know, you’re like Hercule Poirot, [doing] the detective thing,” Coren continued. “Going back over the entire sequence of events.... And you’re piecing together this great narrative, [reviewing] tiny little incidents, [asking yourself] what happened that I didn’t notice at the time but subconsciously I did? I mean it’s very poetic. It’s like reading a book, every time you sit down to play.... Watching the action is like reading a story, but it’s up to you to determine the ending.”

I like the stories poker produces. I like experiencing them. I like reading about them. And apparently, if we are to regard all this scribblin’ as evidence of something, I must like to try to write about them, too.

I also like that last bit Coren suggests, that we have a say in determining the endings of these stories. Of course, at the table, the cards ultimately tell us our fate, making our stories into comedies or tragedies. That we cannot control. Not fully, anyway.

But we don’t have to let the stories end there, do we? We can keep them going, playing another hand, making what just happened not the denouement but yet another element of the rising action, the climax, or the falling action. Or afterwards, even after we leave the table, we can continue to tell our stories, scribblin’ those hands into a larger narrative.

So thanks once more, all, for coming around again and again to follow this here story. And for telling your stories, too. We’ll all determine our respective endings eventually, I suppose.

Not just yet, though. Still a few more clues to find.