Speaking of . . . Online vs. Live (Part II)

I mentioned here before occasionally Bart Hanson’s podcast Cash Plays which ran for about a year over on PokerRoad Radio. Hanson left PRR back in December and moved his show over to the online training site Deuces Cracked, picking things back up there in mid-January.

Hanson is calling the new show “Deuce Plays” (a title which I’m not too sure about), and it follows pretty much the same format as his previous show, with Hanson having lengthy interviews with various guests. He may be primarily interviewing Deuces Cracked pros and instructors on this new show, but as was the case on PRR, the show is still focused on middle and higher stakes cash games.

(Incidentally, it appears PokerRoad will soon relaunch the Cash Plays show with a new host, Jeremiah Smith.)

As someone who plays almost zero no-limit hold’em (particularly cash games) and certainly doesn’t even come close to playing the stakes Hanson and his guests usually play, I probably shouldn’t find Hanson’s show as interesting as I do. I always somehow find the shows compelling, though, and I think I probably pick up certain tidbits that are of use now and then.

The most recent show (the 2/24/09) features poker pro and coach Tommy Angelo, author of Elements of Poker. I believe it is the first of a two-parter. Some of you might have heard Angelo on the Two Plus Two Pokercast back last August (episode 36), where he was a big hit. If you haven’t read his book or heard him before, you might check out the new show as a good introduction to some of Angelo’s ideas.

Anyhow, like I say I shouldn’t really care for Hanson’s show but I do. Case in point: A couple of weeks ago Hanson had Sean Nolan on as a guest (the 2/10/09 episode), and about 20 minutes into the show the pair were discussing the relative merits of 20-tabling $5/$10 full ring NLHE games versus playing four $25/$50 six-max. tables. What business do I, a guy who generally sticks to playing just two or three limit hold’em games at once, have listening to this debate?

Still, like I say, I’m listening. And frankly, several of the factors that Hanson and Nolan focused on in their discussion -- variance, relative skill levels of opponents, theoretical differences between short-handed and full ring play, and so forth -- are relevant to all of us, no matter what limits or games we’re playing.

One other interesting item came up on that show with Sean Nolan -- really, this was the whole reason I decided to mention Hanson’s show. At the very beginning, Hanson talked about how six months ago he was struggling a bit at the $10/$20 no-limit hold’em tables at the Commerce Casino (in Los Angeles, where the LAPC is currently winding down). In order to “retool” his game decided to move back down to the $5/$10 NLHE tables (a 150-big blind capped game), which he found “a world of difference” with less variance and, apparently, less difficult competition.

“Then I watched your videos,” he told Nolan, referring to the instructional vids Nolan had created for Deuces Cracked, “and then I put in about 80,000 hands at $0.50/$1.00 full ring (which is 100NL).” That’s when Hanson said something I found fairly provocative:

“I think that a $0.50/$1.00 game [online] is way tougher than $5/$10 no-limit [live].”

He asked Nolan for his opinion and he essentially agreed that 10-to-1 ratio sounded “about right” when comparing the relative toughness of online and live play. I recall Isaac Haxton making a similar claim on PokerRoad Radio -- I believe it was last January (the 1/5/08 show) -- where he also suggested something like a 10-to-1 ratio between the skill levels online and live.

I wrote a post a good while back concerning the whole online-vs.-live thing, so I thought I'd make this one a sequel. As someone stuck in a part of the country with no live poker, my live experience has been quite limited and thus I can’t comment with any authority on this issue at all. Additionally, there are differences between the way limit games and no-limit games are played that would likely make it problematic simply to apply the same 10-to-1 ratio over on the limit side.

But are these guys right? Is the difference in skill levels that huge? Are $0.50/$1.00 games online as tough as $5/$10 live?

What Do the Numbers Show?

If we’re going to be honest here, I’m basically more of a word guy than a numbers guy. Sometimes numbers fascinate me, though. Especially when they leave me at a loss for words.

Had a happy little session of limit hold’em over on PokerStars yesterday. Was two-tabling for about an hour and 45 minutes or so -- one full ring, one six-handed, both $0.50/$1.00. Played 249 hands and ended up $31.35. That’s an unusually high win rate (12.59 big bets/100 hands), way above the 1.5-2.0 rate I’ve been enjoying since Jan. 1 when I decided to move back over to LHE. Probably highlights a weakness of mine that I’m more apt to look over the stats after that kind of unusually good session than after a losing one.

Whatever the reason, I was doing a little post-game with PokerTracker, trying to see if some factor jumped out to offer an unequivocal explanation for the inordinately high win rate. I had won a lot of my showdowns -- 57.14% -- though not that much more than I usually do (54%). Other stats like preflop raise % and VP$IP (voluntarily put money in the pot) were basically the same, too.

I looked at my starting hands and saw I did get pocket aces three times -- and won all three. That helped considerably, no doubt. Playing just 249 hands, I should normally expect to get A-A just once (it is a 220-to-1 shot), so that was definitely a bonus.

Picked up A-K four times, about what I should expect. Of the 1,326 possible starting hands, there are 12 ways to get ace-king offsuit, and four more ways to get Big Slick suited. That means you normally get A-K about once every 82 hands or so (about 1.2% of the time). So being dealt the hand four times in 249 hands, I got it once more than averages would have suggested. But I lost twice with that hand, and was nearly six bucks down overall with it.

Kept hunting around a bit. Then -- FLASH! -- I saw it. A huge anomaly. Don’t know if it fully explained my high win rate for the session, but it definitely had its effect.

In 249 hands, I was dealt A-Q a total of 14 times. That’s right -- nearly five times as often as I should’ve expected. Got ace-queen offsuit 12 times, and suited twice.

Even crazier, I was dealt ace-queen at one of my tables -- the full ring one -- 11 times in just 112 hands. That means I was getting A-Q about once per orbit, when normally I shouldn’t expect to get it but once every eight orbits or so.

How did I do with ace-queen? Okay, I guess. I won half of the hands (7 of 14), for an overall profit of $6.90 (about half a big bet per hand). Looking at the individual hands, I notice most of the pots were small, with only a couple creeping up to four or five bucks. I raised preflop most of the time with A-Q (11 of 14 hands), though I also folded it once preflop from UTG+1 after a tight player had raised from UTG at the full ring table.

Even if I didn’t necessarily make most of my profit from A-Q, getting dealt the hand so frequently at that full ring table did have a significant effect on my image, I’m sure. My preflop raising percentage was actually higher at the full ring game than it was at the six-max. game yesterday, and while I didn’t necessarily consciously note the frequency with which I was getting ace-queen, I did pick up on the fact that the rest of the players at the table (most of whom were tight, with one notable exception) were starting to react to my relative aggression.

Ace-queen can be a frustrating hand in LHE, no doubt. Especially in full ring games. I think that explains my being relatively unfazed by getting it so often -- I wasn’t necessarily glad to see it over and over again. But I should have been. Not only was it a winning hand for me yesterday, it probably helped me win other hands, too, given the way it helped shape my image.

Am still enjoying the return to LHE after my lengthy sojourn with pot-limit Omaha. Of course, the “stories” about individual hands aren’t nearly as riveting as happens with PLO. I suppose one reason for that is the fact that LHE really is more of a “numbers game” than is PLO.

For some of us, though, the stories numbers tell can still be interesting.

Some of us (of a certain age) may also recall that vaguely suggestive picture above of the men in trench coats flashing numbers as coming from an old Sesame Street short from the 70s. Really, was that appropriate for the kiddies...?

Here is another Sesame Street short, which perhaps also helped inspire for some viewers a fascination with numbers. Or pinball. Or mind-altering chemicals....

A Heads Up for the WSOP (Courtesy the L.A. Poker Classic)

Been following the live reports and various news items emanating from the L.A. Poker Classic currently going on over at the Commerce. It’s a helluva series, lasting for six weeks and including 35 different events. As this year’s Tournament Director Matt Savage noted over on PokerRoad Radio over the weekend (the 2/21/09 episode), the LAPC is starting to rival the World Series of Poker in terms of its variety of offerings.

The series schedule included a number of non-standard events. There were eight non-hold’em events, including that $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. event won by Scotty Nguyen. The Main Event (also a $10,000 buy-in) attracted 696 entrants. They have now completed three days of play in that one, with three more days to go.

There was one other $10,000 event in the series, Event No. 32, the Heads Up Championship, won by Vivek Rajkumar. That one was originally capped at 64, with the original plan being to allow any additional entrants to play $5,000 play-in matches so as to participate. I’m not quite sure how that would have worked, but they eventually attracted a total of 111 players, and thus ended up eliminating the $5K prelim rounds.

The event was planned all along to be a double-elimination tournament, and they kept that format, somehow figuring out how to make it work for 111 players. There was a draw on Day 1 (last Wednesday) to determine the first-round matches as well as which players -- 17 in all -- would be receiving first-round byes. Once the first-round matches were complete, the winners and those who received byes then moved to the “winners’ bracket” (a total of 64 players) while the 47 losers all met up over in the “losers’ bracket.”

Since the losers’ bracket had that odd number, they had to draw again to determine who got byes. Seventeen got byes, while the other 30 played matches. The 15 losers of those matches, having lost twice, were done. That left 32 players, each with one loss apiece, over on the losers’ side. If I follow it correctly, the 32 losers from the winner’s bracket then came over to play these guys, and so on and so forth, until Chris Moore, the lone player remaining on the winners’ side, faced Rajkumar who emerged from the losers’ side. Rajkumar then had to beat Moore twice to take the title.

If you’re curious about the event and want to try to piece together the entire bracket, you can go over to the World Poker Tour page and read through B.J. Nemeth’s excellent live updates from the Heads Up event.

Have to say I very much like the use of a double-elimination format as a means to lessen the overall effect of drawing for byes. I’m remembering the fiasco at the 2007 World Series of Poker, the first time the WSOP tried a heads up tournament. 392 players signed up for that $5,000 buy-in event. If I remember correctly, officials had hoped to attract 512 and didn’t get there, and so they drew and 120 players got byes into the second round, meaning the unlucky 272 who didn’t had to play an extra match. Not too cool when you consider everyone had to pay the same entry fee for the sucker.

Last year the WSOP tried it again and this time capped it at 256 (and made it a $10,000 event), thus avoiding the issue altogether. That worked out okay, if I remember correctly, although some players who wanted to play the event got closed out, including Doyle Brunson. “Unbelievable!” wrote Brunson on his blog. “To think they would limit the number of players in a WSOP tournament. I am aware of the structure but they should change it, make another bracket, have alternatives, or something!”

The Heads Up event is part of the 2009 WSOP as well, again as a $10,000 “Championship” event (Event No. 29, to start June 13th). Structures/formats have not been announced as yet for this summer’s WSOP, but I’d think the WSOP might consider taking a cue from the LAPC and try out a double elimination format this time around.

Of course, it simply might not be feasible for the WSOP to pull off a double-elimination tourney (which would require dealing about twice as many matches) during the three days they have allotted for the event. Still, I think it is definitely an idea worth considering, if it can be managed.

Speaking of the Dead: An Afternoon with George Romero

“Do zombies ever get full?”

That was the joke question asked of George A. Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead and all of its zombie-themed sequels, by Michael Felsher, the fellow who moderated a two-hour Q&A session with the director I attended yesterday.

A nearby museum of contemporary photography and film (The Light Factory) had arranged a weekend-long tribute to Romero, with a schedule packed with events. There were screenings of half a dozen films (followed by Q&As with Romero), some sort of zombie-themed costume party on Saturday night, a couple of other sideshows, and the two-hour “One-on-One Seminar” on Sunday afternoon.

I was too busy to commit too much time to the sucker and so opted just to go to the seminar on Sunday as well as watch one of the films, Dawn of the Dead, which I’d never seen in a theater.

As any of you who have ever heard Romero speak (say on DVD commentaries or in interviews) already know, he’s not just an intelligent thinker and commentator on film and culture. He’s also a funny, extremely likable guy who has a lot of enthusiasm both for making films -- and talking about making films.

I guess like many impressionable young boys, I found the horror films of my youth fairly compelling. (I suppose that’s a phenomenon common to any generation.) So I became aware of Romero and his oeuvre early on -- films like Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977), Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow (1982), Day of the Dead (1985), and others.

Of all of those films and directors, though, Romero is one of the few that I continued to follow and admire after becoming an adult. So when I heard he was coming, I thought I’d check him out.

Romero turned 69 earlier this month. He’s now moved to Toronto, having fully rejected the Hollywood system with which he butted heads for so much of his four-plus decade long career, and now has returned to being a fully “independent” filmmaker. He’s also fully committed himself to making more zombie films (all with “of the Dead” in the titles). A new one -- as yet untitled -- is apparently nearly finished.

“It’s my ticket to ride,” he explained of the “Dead” films. “I have this franchise,” he noted, “I can bring the zombies out of the closet.” (That line got a laugh.) But he’s hardly interested in making the same film over and again. “The movies are not about zombies anymore.... In a way, they never have been. I’m not feeling restricted in any way. I’ve been able to make movies about a lot of different things -- they just all have zombies in them.”

If you’ve never seen any of the “Dead” films, you might not be aware that what Romero is saying is true -- while all are based on the same premise of having the dead return to life to feast on the living, all are unique, too, and often concentrate on advancing different social commentaries (e.g., Night’s implicit observations about the family, the civil rights struggle, Vietnam; Dawn’s satire on consumer culture).

“I’ll make ten more,” Romero said, to the delight of the crowd. “I’ll die, come back and make another one.” (That got a big laugh, too.)

Since this is a poker blog, I won’t go on too long with all of the interesting points Romero touched on during the session regarding his various films, the commercial aspects of filmmaking, his creative process, among others. Rather, let me pull out a couple of poker-related moments that came up during the afternoon.

One came during the talk when Romero was discussing his latest film, Diary of the Dead (2007), the fifth in the series. That one focuses on a film student trying to document the crisis and the commentary there is focused largely on the media and how it aggressively shapes our ideas of ourselves.

With reference to Diary, Romero was noting how we’ve gotten to the point where the “media is not just taking over… it’s becoming life!” He alluded to virtual reality technology and research being conducted at various places, including Carnegie Mellon University in his hometown of Pittsburgh. Such research, fueled by corporate dollars, is working on creating comprehensive VR environments (virtual apartments, etc.) in which consumers can “live.”

“It’s like this f*cking gigantic Monopoly game!” Romero mused.

That analogy made me think briefly of being one of hundreds of thousands of folks logged into online poker sites playing one another. I suppose we start to resemble zombies, too, after a while.

The only other time I thought of poker yesterday was during the screeening of Dawn of the Dead. There’s a point about two-thirds of the way through the film when a couple of characters are shown playing poker. In the film, a group of four people have managed to escape the zombies momentarily to find refuge in an abandoned shopping mall. They are able to secure the mall and for a brief interlude get to enjoy a kind of Shangri-La-type existence before a gang of marauders on motorbikes arrive to screw everything up.

I actually think this is the part of the film that appeals the most to viewers, this idea of creating a self-contained, worry-free existence such as the characters in the film try to do. Of course, as Romero shows, even once you’ve managed to enclose yourself into such a world, it ain’t gonna satisfy. Not really.

Anyhow, two of the guys play poker and are tossing real hundred dollar bills back and forth, the now-worthless cash having been taken from the bank located in the mall. There were a few chuckles in the crowd, actually, at the sight of the money. In the context of the story (the apocalypse had come), the money meant nothing.

I didn’t think too long about poker then. The bikers arrived shortly afterwards, and there was their threat to focus upon. But afterwards I did consider how for most of us the money is what makes poker interesting, but how we’ll never, ever be satisfied no matter how much we get.

I guess we’re sort of like zombies that way, too. We never get full.

The Games of Life

Yesterday afternoon I found myself stuck between meetings and a bunch of other I’d-rather-be-playing-poker-but-gotta-do-this-other-crap all day and thus missed lunch altogether. Found a small window of time there in the middle of the afternoon and so ran over to the fast food chicken house not too far from where I work for a quick bite.

Grabbed a two-piece dinner and settled over in a corner of the mostly empty dining area with some reading material. After a while I noticed that besides a couple of kitchen workers taking a break over on the other side of the room, the only other people in the establishment were a collection of elderly women -- eight in all -- gathered around three tables. I glanced up briefly from my meal to make a mental guess at their ages. None seemed less than seventy, I was certain.

I went back to the food and reading, but got distracted when I realized that the women didn’t seem to be talking to one another. In fact, only one of them seemed to be saying anything, and she was doing so in a most peculiar way, following an unnatural rhythm of short statements while the others kept quiet. I looked up and saw that none were looking at each other. Strange.

When I discerned the words being spoken, I finally figured out what was going on.

“G-56.... O-72.... O-68.... B-12.... I-22....”

A small purple plastic cube was positioned on the table in front of the lady making the utterances, and between each one she depressed the yellow half-sphere on its top side. She was repeating whatever the voice emanating from cube was saying, and her colleagues were dutifully noting on cardboard cards whether or not they could find a match for the numbers called.

“Bingo,” one eventually answered. “Gotta bingo,” said the caller lady, employing the same monotone she used when calling the numbers. The lady passed her card to another woman who verified its correctness while sipping her tea through a straw.

I was there long enough to hear several games, and noticed the caller announcing different ones with words like “kite” and “two stamps,” referring to variations that require players to form something other than a straight line. For example, for “kite” you have to make a four-square box in the corner with a diagonal line going from it to the opposite corner (like a kite with a tail -- see the picture).

I thought about the ladies again later in the evening when I went for my run. Still running every day, by the way. Usually two miles. As I motored over the sidewalks, I contemplated that Thursday afternoon bingo game, considering what it probably meant to the women who played it.

Am reasonably sure they weren’t playing for money, although they could have been. No, it seemed like it was mostly just for fun. And to be together. The group’s average age suggested it could very well be the case that most or all had outlived their husbands, if they’d had ’em. In any case, it was easy to see getting together like that -- being with others, and having some activity to provide an occasion for the get-together -- was important stuff. The most important stuff.

As I ran, last week’s episode of “Keep Flopping Aces” came to mind as well (the 2/12/09 show). Host Lou Krieger had Ashley Adams on to talk about the many, many poker rooms the latter has visited in his extensive travels. An interesting hour.

About halfway through the show, they got into discussing various promotions some rooms offer, and Adams brought up Joker’s Wild in Henderson, Nevada as a not-so-great room for atmosphere, but a terrific one for its promotion. As Adams outlines in his recent review of the room over on PokerNews, regulars can get a whopping $599 bonus a month for playing 130 hours. That discussion led Krieger to point out the preponderance of senior citizens regularly playing low limit games who could benefit greatly from such a bonus.

“Certainly, there are so many people in Las Vegas that are retired and on fixed incomes and they’re not getting wealthy,” said Krieger. “They sit in these low limit poker games, day in and day out, hour after hour after hour, trying to supplement their pensions by a couple of bucks an hour and waiting for a tourist or some terrible player to come into the game and spew money around.”

Picking up an extra few bucks an hour could help out a lot for such folks, Krieger concluded. Adams agreed. “It’s not the kind of existence that I’d want or you’d want,” said Adams. “But, hey? If you’re retired and you’re already just sitting around in some other poker room gathering dust, waiting for the bad beat to hit while you’re in there so you can get a fraction of the jackpot, it’s not a bad gig.”

The chicken house bingo ladies reminded me that for many in this crowd there’s another bonus to be had, too -- the non-monetary one that comes from getting out regularly, interacting with others, and being part of the world. That general effort not to be “gathering dust,” one might say.

I suppose I understand what is meant by the idea that such an existence is not necessarily preferable. But really, how different is it from the ones we already lead? What is it we are all running around trying to accomplish? To find something interesting to do, to have fun, to endure. And finding others to do these things with, well, that’s a big part of what’s going on, too. Maybe we’re sometimes playing against each other, but we need each other to have a game at all.

Have a good weekend, friends.

American Vendor

Part of that PokerStars 25 Billion Bash promotion this past week included a bonus for depositing. Stars doesn’t offer those that often, and this one was quite generous -- 25% up to $250. In fact, the site was calling it their “Biggest Ever Reload Bonus.”

When I heard about the offer, I reacted pretty much as I have to all bonus offers since Neteller shut its virtual doors to us Americans.

That is to say, I didn’t react at all.

I’ve told the story a few times here how I started playing online poker back in late 2004. Like just about everybody who played then, I moved my initial roll to a poker site (Stars, actually) using Neteller. I started with the minimum deposit of fifty bucks, broke even for three months or so on the penny tables, then began winning some and pretty soon had built up to a couple of hundy.

Looking back at my log book, I see that I had $232.33 in my Stars account when I made my first withdrawal -- a hundred bucks’ worth. Basically followed that pattern for a while there early on, taking out a hundred every time I got back up to $200-250 or so. As those who remember Neteller know, you first had to move your money from the poker site to Neteller, then another step was required to move it from Neteller to your bank account.

Stars was my only site until 2006 when I finally opened an account over on PartyPoker. That was about the time I became familiar with deposit bonuses and how lucrative they could be. Unlike Stars, Party offered such bonuses constantly -- it seemed like every other month. I started keeping a few hundred over on Neteller to have ready whenever one of those came up.

And they were so easy to clear, too. I can’t recall exact details, but it seemed like it only would take an afternoon to claim the $20 or $40 or whatever Party was giving me for depositing. Once I cleared a deposit bonus, I instantly would withdraw the money I had deposited back out of the site.

I eventually got a Full Tilt Poker account, too, and took advantage of their deposit bonuses when they came around as well. Then came the UIGEA and the exit of Neteller, and I basically stopped doing the deposit thing altogether because of all the added hassles.

That’s why I didn’t react to the recent Stars offer, instead shrugging my shoulders and thinking, well, this was yet another way Americans are playing at a disadvantage thanks to our bass ackwards legislators.

It was after a short spell of reading some folks on forums chirping about the promotion -- expressing unfettered glee at all the free moneys they were enjoying -- that I decided to look again at deposit options available to me over on Stars. There aren’t many, but this eChecks thing looked fairly simple to use.

The way the 25 Billion Bash deposit bonus went, one stands to earn 25% of whatever one deposits up to $1,000, meaning the maximum one could get would be $250. One has to earn a certain number of VPPs to clear the bonus -- I believe it is 20 VPPs for every dollar. Not too hard to do.

I ended up exchanging several emails with PokerStars support in an effort to figure out how I could best take advantage of the offer. (As is always the case with Stars support, they were very helpful and accommodating.) There are limits on how much one can deposit via eChecks if one has never used it before. Long story short, I was only able to deposit $200 before the promo period ended yesterday, meaning I will be earning a $50 bonus once I accumulated the needed VPPs. Having now made my first eChecks deposit, I’ll be able to take better advantage of such offers with Stars whenever they come up again.

As far as I can tell, the process of using eChecks to deposit was super smooth. And a bit of an eye-opener. Things may well change between now and December 2009 when banks will be required to follow the UIGEA regulations that were published in November 2008 and went into effect on 1/19/09. But for now, depositing online doesn’t seem to be that big of an issue for Americans. Not to Stars, anyhow.

Hell, now that I think about it, depositing is even easier than before (no Neteller = no middle man). And in my experience, withdrawing has always been a breeze, too.

Gonna have to stop thinking myself as an American to whom all the online poker options are not available. At least until December, anyway.

Watch & Wondurrrr: The Tom Dwan Challenge Has Begun

Am sure most of you reading this here blog have at least heard of that high stakes, heads up challenge issued by Tom “durrrr” Dwan late last year in response to which a few players -- Patrik Antonius, David Benyamine, and Phil Ivey -- have agreed to take a shot. The first match began a couple of hours ago, with Antonius and Dwan each taking spots across from one another at four different $200/$400 pot-limit Omaha tables (especially named “durrrr Challenge”) over on Full Tilt Poker.

For those who don’t know exactly how Dwan set up the challenge, he invited anyone (other than his friend Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond) to play heads up, four tables of either PLO or no-limit hold’em, at a minimum of $200/$400 blinds. The challenge would last for 50,000 hands, at the end of which whoever was ahead -- even by a single dollar -- would be the victor. If Dwan won, the loser owed him $500,000; if Dwan lost, he’d pay his vanquisher $1.5 million.

The winner would also (of course) claim whatever was won during the challenge itself, an amount which has the potential to exceed the bet amount. Considerably.

I’ve actually railed a little bit this morning, and it appears both players are mostly playing tight with big pots erupting only occasionally. Of course, with blinds this huge even the small pots are not insignificant, and with four tables going the swings are noteworthy.

Here’s the biggest pot I saw during the short time I was watching, a $90,000 pot won by Antonius. Took place on “Table durrrr Challenge 3” around 8:10 a.m. ET:



Kind of curious to see both players pushing the flop with what appear to us mortals as fairly thin holdings (even for heads up). Such is the world of high stakes PLO, I guess.

Just glancing at the sure-to-be-monstrous thread over on Two Plus Two (where folks are posting lots of hands), it appears Antonius might have taken an early lead, going up about $68,000 after 170 hands, then Dwan won a couple of huge pots, including one over $100,000. But Antonius battled back and appeared to be enjoying a $70K lead or so after 300 hands of play when the pair took a short break. All that seems a bit fuzzy, though, as posters appear unsure whether or not Antonius might have rebought on one of the tables.

Not to mention that in the time it took me to type that, all has no doubt changed.

I suppose I am as intrigued as anybody about the challenge. Kind of harkens back to that legendary match between Johnny Moss and Nick “the Greek” Dandalos at Binion’s Horseshoe back in 1949 or 1951 or whenever it did (or didn’t) take place.

That was that four- or five-month long match staged by Benny Binion that some want to say planted the seed for the World Series of Poker (which started in 1970), although the connection is a bit tenuous. Although much that surrounds the Moss-Dandalos match is shrouded in mystery, certain details have been repeated many times, including the fact that pots sometimes reached as large as half a million dollars, and in the end Moss won a heady amount off of his Crete-born opponent, perhaps as much as $2 million.

The pair began their match back in the poker room, but Binion apparently moved them out to the casino’s entrance so as to attract the attention of those passing by on Fremont Street. In Big Deal, Anthony Holden notes that “the crowd stood six deep around the table, marveling at the nerve and stamina of these two poker titans, and at the vast amounts of money passing back and forth between them.” James McManus says in a Card Player article there were “200 or 300” watching the match. I suspect a few more than that might be railing over on Full Tilt right now.

In fact, even Albert Einstein -- who was living out his last years in the U.S. at the time -- was reported to have been among the railbirds. (If yr curious, you can read more about the whole story of the Moss-Dandalos match here.)

There is one huge difference between the Moss-Dandalos match and the “Durrrr Challenge,” though -- the historical record. When it comes to the final results of the Antoinus-Dwan battle, one thing we can all be assured of is that it will be reported widely. That wasn’t the case for Moss-Dandalos; in fact, some (including Michael Craig) have expressed doubts about whether the match even took place at all!

No, there will be no doubts, I wouldn’t think, about what actually happened between Antonius and Dwan. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone took all of the hand histories, imported them into a hand replayer such as the one above, and built a YouTube movie of the match for all to watch.

And analyze. And wonder.

Losing Focus

I mentioned yesterday that over the weekend I’d played a large number of hands over on PokerStars. Actually has been an inordinately high volume couple of weeks for me here in February, as I’m already approaching Silver Star status while playing strictly $0.50/$1.00 limit hold’em.

As far as results go, the month has been fairly uneven thus far. Had a particularly poor day yesterday while two-tabling, during which I think I experienced a somewhat unique situation in which a player at one table negatively affected how I did at the other. Let me try to explain.

I have been making it a habit to two-table these 6-max. games, and as I normally do, I sat down first at a single table to play a few rounds and get to know the players before opening the second one. I recognized a player on my left from before -- TheAgitator -- a somewhat aggressive type whom I remembered as mostly solid.

On just the fifth hand I picked up under the gun and raised. The table folded back around to TheAgitator who then three-bet from the big blind. Knowing this was TheAgitator’s usual modus operandi to reraise with a wide range of hands preflop (indeed, I’d already seen him do it at least once during the first four hands), I went ahead and capped it and he called.

The flop came , giving me a set, and The Agitator check-called my bet. The turn was the , and again my opponent check-called. The river -- wouldn’t you know it -- brought yet another heart, the . This time TheAgitator bet out, I made the crying call, and he showed for the backdoor flush. (Cut to cartoony shot of steam comin’ out from under Shamus’ fedora.)

Not a great way to start. TheAgitator subsequently went on a nice little rush, and took full advantage of the swell advertising that resulted from his having played four-trey offsuit in such a nutso fashion. I mostly kept out of the way, and indeed managed to get some chips back from him by being patient.

Incidentally, sitting there to TheAgitator’s left, I thought a little bit about how, contrary to popular wisdom, some strategists have noted that my seat isn’t always the best spot to be in such a situation -- that is, to the immediate left of the loose-aggressive maniac. If yr curious about that topic, here’s an article by Rolf Slotboom that makes the case against sitting to the maniac’s left (both in LHE and PLO). The article is reprinted as two pieces in Slotboom’s newest title, Secrets of Professional Poker 1.

Meanwhile, as I dealt with TheAgitator there on Table #1, I opened Table #2 and quickly proceeded to drop a load of big bets in short order thanks to my own loose-aggressive play. Perhaps in response to the way TheAgitator was handcuffing me there on the first table, I was open-raising with a wider range than I normally would on the second table, and unfortunately (1) I couldn’t hit a flop, and (2) my opponents often were. Not only were my opponents catching cards, they were catching on to what I was doing, too, thereby smartly maximizing my losses on hand after hand.

A disinterested observer watching me play might have described what I was doing over on the second table as a poor parody of TheAgitator’s approach on Table #1. I finally figured out I needed to readjust after getting successfully called down by a player holding only king-high. I was holding my own against TheAgitator at the first table, but thanks to his influence had become an incoherent mess over at Table #2.

F-Train was writing yesterday about doodling down in these low limit HE games online (referring specifically to $0.25/$0.50) and he made a few valid points. One was mostly implied, namely, that even these low stakes games can provide an interesting challenge, even for a guy like F-Train, who can occasionally be found at middle stakes live LHE games. He also noted how these low limit games are quite “beatable” (though can be “frustrating”). Hear, hear.

The other point he made, which I think my session yesterday illustrated, was “that losing focus or discipline for even a moment can be very costly” (relatively speaking, that is). I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to me, even though I didn’t consciously realize that was the case until afterwards.

Of course, that’s what losing focus generally amounts to -- becoming less “conscious” of the here and now.

Milestones (in Cluelessness)

Played a ton of hands over the weekend over on PokerStars. Thus was sitting at a couple of tables (occasionally three) when a number of those “milestone” hands were being played elsewhere.

Yes, elsewhere. Didn’t manage to luck my way into playing one of those hands with the juicy extra cash prizes attached to ’em. Not sure what the precise odds were for hitting one of those, but it felt like one in several thousand at least.

I assume most of those reading this blog were aware of the big promotion over the last few days Stars had to commemorate the dealing of its 25 billionth hand. Several promotions, actually. One of which was a series of cash prizes handed out every ten million hands starting with hand 24,850,000,000.

Those hands were treated sort of like “jackpot” hands, with every player dealt into the hand getting an extra cash prize, then the winner of the hand getting an additional bonus. The cash prizes were given out according to table stakes, meaning if the hand happened at a “Micro” table, everyone got $125 and the hand’s winner an extra $300. At the “Low” tables, all got $250 and the winner $750 more. At “Medium” stakes tables, everyone got $500 and the winner an extra $1,250. And at the “High” stakes games, everyone got $1,000 and the hand’s winner an additional $2,500.

There were some shenanigans early on, I heard, involving two-player teams sitting with each other at two dozen heads up tables and folding every hand, thereby trying to increase the chances of getting dealt a milestone hand. Stars actually had to suspend their “1-on-1” tables for the duration of the promotion in order to thwart that bit of blatant collusion.

When one of the hands was about to take place, Stars gave a little announcement in the chat box. They also were linking to milestone hand tables from the main lobby, and a couple of times I clicked through to watch the hands take place.

Here was one of the milestone hands, a $0.02/$0.05 six-handed no-limit hold’em hand from Friday afternoon:



As I usually do, I changed the player names -- in this case to protect the clueless. As this was a “Micro” stakes hand, all six players won $125 just for being dealt cards. Then the winner stood to receive an extra $300 on top of that.

No one had more than $8.60 when the hand began. One player, out2lnch, posted both the small and big blinds (that is, seven cents). Before the flop comes down, there is a delay while PokerStars’ support announces in the chat box that it is a milestone hand. I believe there is also a banner-type announcement that briefly appears over the table pointing out the same. In other words, anyone paying even a little bit of attention should know something is up.

Of course, not everyone knew about how the promotion worked, specifically how the winners of these hands got extra cabbage. That was clear from how this one played out. Two players -- spacey & zoned out -- fold preflop! The replayer doesn’t show it, but zoned out actually left the table immediately after he folded. Clearly he wasn’t tuned in to what was going on here, and was probably surprised to see the extra $125 in his account later.

Two more players -- out2lnch & in a fog -- subsequently fold to einstein’s 15-cent bet on the flop. Then dopey folds on the river. No showdown, even!

Take the case of spacey, who had $2.22 when the hand began and folded preflop. That’s something like 135-to-1 odds spacey is turning down -- assuming he would have to commit his entire stack at some point -- by deciding not to play this one out.

If one hops over to the forums, apparently this sort of thing wasn’t unusual at all during the promotion, as many of the milestone hands saw players folding out, obviously unaware of what they were giving up by doing so.

The big one -- the 25 billionth hand -- went off sometime early this morning, around 4:45 a.m. ET or thereabouts. For that one, those dealt into the hand split a cool $100,000, and the winner stood to grab an extra $100,000 plus an EPT Monte Carlo package, a PokerStars Caribbean Adventure package, a WSOP Main Event package, and a World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event entry.

That hand ended up happening at a $1/$2 Omaha/8 table, and there was a bit of controversy as one player either accidentally folded his hand or there was some sort of connection issue that caused him to fold. If yr interested, Otis wrote it up over on the PokerStars blog.

I generally liked this promotion. Brought a hell of a lot of traffic to the site -- there were over 250,000 players logged on during the afternoon yesterday, with something near 60,000 of them playing cash games at one point. The best part about the promotion, of course, is that the players aren’t paying into the “jackpot” as happens on other sites. That is, they aren’t paying over and above what they’d be paying for rake in order to contribute to some “bad beat jackpot” thingy or the like.

Guess I’ll just have to try again when they get close to the 30 billionth hand. Only took Stars six months to deal the last five billion, so I’d estimate four or five months until that promotion happens. I know that’s a long way away, but please, try to remember: if you happen to get dealt into one of those suckers, don’t fold!

The (Unexpected) Return of the Prodigal Son

So I’m listening to yesterday’s episode of The Poker Beat (2/12/09), that new podcast over on PokerRoad hosted by Scott Huff in which he has on various poker media types to discuss news of the day. After a discussion of that Russ Hamilton video and its possible significance, Bluff Magazine Editor-in-Chief Matthew Parvis came on to talk about this new “Bluff Magazine Online Poker Challenge” announced earlier this month.

The Challenge sounds interesting enough. It looks like a great chance for the sponsoring site, Lock Poker, to get some publicity, although in the interview Parvis says it was his “brainchild.” As one can read about over on Bluff, the “competition will bring together some of the best online poker players and each will be given an opportunity to build a bankroll playing multi-table tournaments and sit-n-gos exclusively on Lock Poker.”

As Parvis explained on the show, “we are basically depositing $200 into a Lock Poker account” for each player invited to play in the Challenge. The accounts are apparently “locked” (pun intended?) so no other deposits or transfers can be made with them, and as the Challenge proceeds they will be audited each night “because we don’t want any scandal to be associated with the Challenge itself” (explained Parvis). The players will have 30 days to try to build their rolls, and the one who manages to earn the most will make the cover of an upcoming issue of Bluff. I believe all of this will happen in March.

“We were lucky enough to get some really quality guys,” noted Parvis on the show. He mentioned several, including the magazine’s 2008 online poker player of the year David “The Maven” Chicotsky, Adam Junglen, Matt Vingren, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Søren Kongsgaard, “Bodog” Ari Engel, and Jeff “Yellowsub” Williams. “A really, really good line-up of quality guys,” said Parvis, adding that he was only listing some of the 20 players who had been invited.

The article over on Bluff mentions some of the others who have been invited, including Garrett “GBecks” Beckman, Phil “USCphildo” Collins, Brett “Bhanks11” Hanks, and Maria Ho. Sorel Mizzi is also listed, he of the “account selling” incident from December 2007 that caused him to be banned from Full Tilt Poker.

Parvis talked a bit about Mizzi on the show. He also talked more than a bit about one other controversial name appearing over there on the list of invitees: Josh “JJprodigy” Field. No shinola.

You remember Field, don’t you? First banned from PartyPoker back in February 2006 (when he was just 16) after he won their $500,000 Sunday Tournament in which he was playing under two screen names (JJProdigy and Ablackcar). He was then caught cheating at other sites, as well, from which he was also banned. PokerStars even banned him from playing in their PokerStars Caribbean Adventure once he turned 18.

It was right around the time he turned 18 that Field issued some “apologies” (of a sort) on forums and in interviews. I transcribed a bit of the PokerRoad interview (the 1/14/08 episode) in a post titled “Uncorrected Personality Traits That Seem Whimsical in a Child May Prove to Be Ugly in a Fully Grown Adult.”* Among other questions, Field was asked in the PokerRoad interview whether or not he was then “playing on the sites you’re banned from and you have no plans to play on [those] sites.”

“At this moment in time, yeah,” answered Field. “I can’t tell you in a month I’ll be thinking the same, because it’ll be really hard not playing all those sites. But right now, yeah.”

On The Poker Beat, Parvis said he’d spoken with Field at the recent Aussie Millions and afterwards felt he was worth inviting to participate in the Challenge, even though Parvis admitted Field had made some “serious, serious mistakes in his life in terms of the poker world and cheating, and multi-accounting, and ghosting, and selling accounts... whatever the scandals may be.” “That’s a hell of a laundry list,” joked Huff in response.

Well, now it appears Field will not be able to play in the Challenge after all. Parvis told Huff he received an email on Wednesday which reported “there was some situation” over on Cake Poker (for which Lock Poker is a skin, I believe) with an “account hand-off” involving Field. “Whatever the case is, it appears that JJ has been involved in another sticky situation here,” said Parvis, and so will not be allowed to play in the Challenge.

To Parvis’ credit, he expressed humility to Huff about having been fooled into thinking Field had indeed changed his cheating ways. Still, one has to wonder about the initial decision to invite the notorious JJProdigy to participate in such a Challenge. They don’t want “any scandal to be associated with the Challenge itself,” but then Bluff invites the most notorious, scandal-ridden player in online poker to participate?

As I was listening, I was amazed Field could even resurface in this way as part of any story -- much less one involving selecting top online pros to participate in a freeroll like this. As Seth Meyers would say over on Saturday Night Live Weekend Update, “Really?!?”

Yet another head-scratching moment from the ethically-ambiguous world of online poker.

*By the way, that earlier post title came from Robyn Hitchcock’s twisted a cappella number “Uncorrected Personality Traits” that appears on one of my all-time favorite discs, Hitchcock’s 1984 masterpiece I Often Dream of Trains. And speaking of masterpieces, that’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” by the Dutch master, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, pictured above.