Looking Ahead

Well, the flight is booked. Still a few details to be ironed out, but I’ll be back in Las Vegas this summer, again helping PokerNews cover the World Series of Poker. Will be arriving in LV in just a week-and-a-half (no... really?), and once more I’ll be there for the duration, all the way ’til mid-July when the new November Nine is set.

Haven’t really had a lot of time to think about the summer. Don’t anticipate having a lot of time for reflectin’ once I get there, either, as it looks to be another very busy one for those of us who’ll be reporting from the Rio. Am especially looking forward to reuniting with the PokerNews crowd as well as all the other media types with whom I got to work (and play, some) last time. Am hopin’ to make a few other new connections this time around, too.

I have been alluding here and there to my other “life” -- the one characterized by the full-time job about which I don’t write here. About a month back I was writing about how I might be going back to LV this summer for the WSOP, and how the writing thing has started to make me think more and more about possibly making some sort of career move.

Not saying I’m ready to make that leap, nor even that I necessarily see “full-time poker writer” as real option, even if I were ready to choose it.

But it has been an interesting week.

Just about the time I knew for sure I was heading to the WSOP, had a bombshell of sorts happen with the first job, with sudden not-entirely-unexpected-but-still-surprising news of pay cuts and other (significant) scaling back of benefits across the board. No one’s losing his or her job just yet, but that is starting to appear pretty damned inevitable. Maybe not right away, but soon.

I know, I know... it’s happening everywhere. But for a dude who’s already been thinking about making a change, this sort of stuff can be, well... a bit suggestive.

So it’s hard to say what lies ahead, beyond the next couple of months anyway. But hey, let’s have a good summer! I’ll definitely be posting here throughout, so stay tuned.

Check-Raising the Devil by Mike Matusow, with Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli

This week Mike Matusow’s autobiography, titled Check-Raising the Devil, finally hits the shelves -- both virtual and actual. If you didn’t know it already, two of our friends, Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli, helped Matusow write the book, which tells the story of his rise and fall. And rise and fall and rise and fall. And rise.

Starts in the early 1990s with Matusow in his early twenties playing video poker and living in a trailer, then eventually moves through his becoming a poker pro and winning three WSOP bracelets and over $7 million in tourney earnings. Along the way, Matusow describes in detail his period of drug use and self-destructive behavior during the early part of this decade, his getting clean and properly diagnosed as suffering from both bipolar disorder and ADHD, his arrest for drug trafficking and six-month jail term, and his triumphant return to poker as well as to a more balanced existence.

I’ve had the chance to read Check-Raising the Devil and can say without hesitation that it is a compelling story, very well presented. It most certainly does not lionize Matusow, and in fact most often brings him down to our level (or below) in its bald confessions of the author’s many limitiations -- some involuntarily imposed on Matusow (e.g., his disorders, other psychological issues), others brought on himself (e.g., the drug use, his ruinous sports betting). Actually, it isn’t always simple to sort through where Matusow’s culpability begins and ends, but on the whole the book doesn’t do too much passing of the buck. This is a man owning up to everything -- the good and the bad.

So Check-Raising is a very interesting character study, and since he’s a character most of us already know at least a little bit about (probably more than a little), the book is all the more intriguing.

The book also provides a nifty overview of the last ten years or so of poker from the point of view of a professional player who was there for just about every major happening -- both live and online. There’s much about the WSOP in there, as well as other major tourneys. There’s some chronicling of the online scene, too, including Matusow’s getting cheated by Russ Hamilton over at UltimateBet. (No punches pulled there.)

All of which is to say, there’s a lot to recommend here for both casual fans and hardcore players. Matusow’s life to this point has been full of extremes, although there’s a lot in his story to which most of us can relate, including the highs and lows caused by poker itself. Even if we haven’t experienced the euphoric triumphs and soul-crushing defeats to the degree Matusow has, we all know what he’s talking about.

I also want particularly to recommend what I perceive to be the contribution of our friends, Amy and Tim. This is an especially well written and well presented book (better than yr average poker text, and I’ve read a bunch), and we’ve got to believe Amy and Tim had a lot to do with that being the case.

When you start a blog, then keep at it for a while, it doesn’t take too long to become aware of this here nifty community of blogs, forums, podcasts, and other interwebby connections via which people with similar interests interact. And while there are tons of poker blogs, forums, podcasts, and now Twitter pages and so forth, the community is nevertheless still relatively small, especially compared to some other ones out there. So if you keep writing -- and, importantly, keep reading -- you are gonna find these folks eventually, I’d think.

It was probably just a few months after I began writing Hard-Boiled Poker that I became aware of Amy Calistri’s blog, Aimlessly Chasing Amy. I’m pretty sure it was via Iggy that I did. There was a good long stretch there during which we all routinely found each other through Iggy’s “uberposts.” Soon after that I was listening to Amy when she co-hosted Keep Flopping Aces with Lou Krieger. She gave that gig up about a year ago, I believe, somewhere around the time she also went back into the “real” world of business and scaled back her work with poker media.

Found Tim Lavalli not too longer after that, if I remember correctly. Probably was those series of investigative articles he wrote with Calistri about the extra two million chips that mysteriously showed up during the latter stages of the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event, titled “Two Million Questions: Will Poker Answer?” That series began in September 2006 (if yr interested, click here for part one). Somewhere around there I started reading Lavalli’s “Poker Shrink” articles (which he began in 2006) as well as his personal blog.

Ended up meeting Tim last summer near the end of the WSOP. Didn’t get the chance to meet Amy, who after several years in a row at the WSOP didn’t make the 2008 one. Am hopeful to see both this time around to congratulate them on having made it through the several-years-long journey that got them to the book’s publication this week.

I’ll also thank them, because while Matusow’s story is itself somewhat inspiring, as a writer I’m also inspired by seeing Tim and Amy -- two of “us” -- realize this terrific achievement and get themselves “into print.” Am looking forward to seeing others in the blogging community make that move as well one day. And those that do, I assume, probably will have been inspired somewhat by Tim and Amy, too.

(By the way, if you are interested in hearing more about the book and how it was written, tune into to Keep Flopping Aces this Thursday [5/14] where Matusow, Lavalli, and possibly Calistri will be Lou Krieger’s guests.)

Whatcha Gonna Do With All Them Chips? (On Changes to the Structures at the 2009 WSOP), continued

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post referring to the new “triple stacks” that will be used for this summer’s World Series of Poker. If you haven’t heard, the WSOP has decided to give players more starting chips -- “deeper stacks,” as they say -- this time around, starting them three times the buy-in in chips. That means players entering a $1,500 buy-in event will start with 4,500 chips instead of 3,000 (as they did for the same buy-in events in 2007 and 2008) or 1,500 (as they did in 2006 and before).

When event organizers made the change to “double stacks” in 2007, it was initially lauded by some as inviting more “play” in the early levels, making it less necessary to gamble it up right away. However, once the tourneys began, it was discovered the increased starting stacks really didn’t help as much as some had thought they would.

What happened was that in preliminary events -- for example, the popular $1,500 no-limit hold’em events -- the first level (a 25/25 level) was eliminated, meaning players were essentially starting the tournament at the second level (25/50). (These are all 60-minute levels, by the way.) Also, several later levels were omitted as well. Check it out:



Those figures in red on the 2006 side represent omissions in 2007, and the green ones in ’07 represent additions/changes. You see how mostly levels were omitted, and in fact the only new one in 2007 (Level 11) replaced one that was taken out.

By removing that first level, one could argue the tournament was essentially starting with double blinds/antes, thus making the “double stacks” relatively less meaningful. The further removal of levels later on had an even greater effect on how the tournament was actually played. All in all, the “deeper stacks” didn’t really translate into more play. (Incidentally, in the 2007 Main Event the blinds/antes schedule was with a couple of exceptions doubled from beginning to end, making the change from 10,000 to 20,000 starting chips mostly meaningless.)

Moving from 2007 to 2008, some adjustments were made. Again, here’s how the structures for the $1,500 no-limit hold’em tournaments compared:



Easy to see how it was decided to put those later levels back in. There was some tweaking done for the 2008 Main Event schedule of blinds/antes as well, with some levels added in both at the beginning and later on. While there were still some complaints here and there, players seemed to come away largely satisfied with the changes. (I could be wrong, but that was my impression.)

In other words, unlike was most certainly the case in previous years, there didn’t seem to be a huge call at the end of 2008 for the WSOP to revise structures for the following year. Nonetheless, following the trend toward “deep-stacked” tournaments happening elsewhere on the strip -- and perhaps also a response of sorts to economic woes happening everywhere -- the WSOP decided to go with “triple stacks” this time around.

In that earlier post, I discussed the changes and suggested that they probably wouldn’t dramatically affect the way the tournaments go all that much other than to make it possible to be a little more patient in the early going. To complete our comparative journey, here’s how a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event in 2009 compares to last year:



As you can see, while the starting stacks will be different, the structure will be unchanged, save the addition of two extra levels -- one near the beginning of Day 1 (level 3), and the other midway through Day 2. So, as I was saying a few weeks ago, I do think there will be a chance for players to take their time a little more early on. (I haven’t really looked at the 2009 WSOP Main Event structure yet, so I can’t say anything about how the 30,000-chip stacks might affect things there.)

But will there be other consequences here? Andy Bloch raised a bit of a ruckus a few weeks back at the WPT Championship event at the Bellagio where it was decided to give everyone a whopping 100,000 chips -- 1,000 big blinds! -- to start. According to Bloch, the deeper stacks basically just translated into a wasted day of play, as it took considerably longer for the field to get trimmed down. Then, some crazy-big jumps in the blinds later on forced players to gamble more, causing even more ire.

While I’m not seeing in the WSOP events the inordinately big increases in later rounds as happened at the WPT last month, I do think the WSOP might run into a bit of trouble introducing these slower starts to the tournaments. As Bloch has observed, more players should be making it to the second days than was the case last year, which may well mean those Day Twos are going to be very long if they hope to play down to the Day Three final table. (Goes without saying that more players making the second day of events will also affect the turnout for events starting the next day, too.)

I’m remembering covering the WSOP last year for PokerNews and how everyone regarded Day Twos with trepidation. Unlike Day Ones, where there were a certain number of levels scheduled to be played (and one knew when one’s day was going to be done), we would begin Day Twos without knowing how long the shifts would be. I had some lucky draws in there, enjoying some relatively short Day Twos that ended around midnight or just after. But I had some insanely long ones, too, returning to my home-away-from-home well after the sun had risen, knowing I’d be back within a few hours to cover Day Three.

Hard to know for sure, but it’s looking like there might be quite a few long Day Twos this summer for players and reporters.

(To give credit where it is due, that photo above is from PokerNews’ coverage of the 2008 WSOP, and I'm pretty sure it is of Amnon Filippi’s stack -- he tended to create such eye-popping edifices whenever he built a stack, which was quite often.)

(EDIT [added 7:45 p.m.]: Still reading?!? Check out F-Train’s rejoinder to read further on the subject of these here triple stacks.)

Was It Good For You? (On the Celebrity Apprentice Finale)

I’m no culture snob. Sure, I might write something here about Dostoevsky from time to time. I’m even contemplating a soon-to-be-written post in which I’m going to reference Virginia Woolf. But I obviously enjoy (and appreciate) a good, pulpy page-turner, and consume other forms of popular culture (music, film, etc.) as readily as anyone.

Have never, ever been a big fan of the “reality” show thing, though. Like everyone else, I first became aware of the shows cropping up in the 1990s. I noticed when programs like The Real World starting to push music off of MTV, then Survivor (which premiered in 2000) kind of representing a tipping point after which similarly-styled programs began their decade-long TV tyranny. I remember watching some of that first Survivor that summer, the one in which the clothes-optional dude won the $1 million. Can’t say I paid much attention to that one after that first season, however, even in 2007 when poker pro Jean-Robert Bellande was on the China one.

Nor have I bothered much with the dozens and dozens of Survivor imitators (except for American Idol, which does entertain from time to time). Since these shows basically come and go without my ever noticing them, it wasn’t until last night that I bothered with Celebrity Apprentice, despite all of the hype in the poker community regarding Annie Duke’s deep run. Finally did break down and watch the finale last night in which Joan Rivers managed to “win” the hopelessly-contrived “competition” manufactured by the show.

Since there is that poker connection, and since a lot of people are buzzing about what happened last night, I thought I’d share here a bit of my own response to the show.

One of the questions most intriguing to poker players and folks in the poker media is the familiar “Is it good for poker?” question. Always comes up, that one. They ask it fairly often -- about various cultural phenomena -- on The Poker Beat, so much so that someone started a thread on their forum a few weeks ago titled “Sick of ‘is it good for poker’ topic?” The discussion on that thread went back and forth for a while, then some joker jumped in with his own non-constructive entry into the debate:

“Good points, all. But the question needs to be asked: is the ‘is it good for poker’ debate good for poker?”

Now that I think about it, that might have been me. Although my question was about 98% class clown in its inspiration, it actually produced some interesting responses. (As it happens, it really is not so useless to assess once in a while the usefulness of self-assessment!)

Anyhow, I suppose we’re all wondering whether or not Annie Duke’s appearance on Celebrity Apprentice is good for poker. In that WSOP conference call a couple of weeks back, WSOP Commish Jeffrey Pollack indicated that he thought it was, pointing out how it represented a “leap forward for the mainstreaming of poker into our pop culture” and that the “net effect was going to be very good for poker.”

I gotta wonder, though. I mean, did you watch?

From what I could tell, Rivers “won” the thing not because she raised more money than Duke (she didn’t), nor even because she demonstrated in any obvious way better leadership skills or creativity or whatever it is the show is attempting to measure in its contestants. Rather, it seemed pretty clear that Trump picked Rivers in the end as the winner of a popularity contest, and her popularity rested largely on her characterization of herself as a person who wanted to “win with honor,” and her characterization of her opponent -- a “pokah playah” -- as someone who was willing to forgo all moral guidelines in her Machiavellian quest to succeed.

In other words, while Annie Duke’s profession as a poker player made her an intriguing figure on the show, it also clearly helped make her the villain. And I guess now we’re left to contemplate whether that’s good or bad for poker.

Even if you haven’t been watching the show, you’d probably heard about Rivers’ shots at poker and Vegas. How she referred to the money contributed by poker players to Duke’s cause as “money with blood on it.” How she referred to her many years performing in LV by saying “I’ve met your people in Vegas for forty years -- none of them have last names,” suggesting the nefarious and/or criminal backgrounds of the inhabitants of Sin City. How she called poker players “beyond white trash.”

And, oh yeah, there was that Hitler thing, too -- a crazily hyperbolic attempt to characterize Duke as a ruthless dictator. That offended some, but not as many as you might think. (Rivers later apologized on her Twitter page -- to Hitler.)

Rivers again sounded the poker-is-gambling-is-criminal theme last night. In the final fund-raising task, Duke raised three times as much as Rivers (about $450,000 to $150,000); however, Rivers was able to diminish Duke’s achievement by referring to the money raised as “mafia money.” Duke again fired back in defense of poker players, but her cause appeared lost.

Even though I haven’t been watching the show, I knew Rivers was going to “win” early on Sunday night and told Vera Valmore as much. The not-so-subtle way the show portrayed Rivers as “all heart” and Duke as “all business” made it obvious. Rivers’ final “America is a charitable nation” speech at the end was just overkill -- she was already destined to be anointed the show’s heroine.

What is a show like Celebrity Apprentice about? It’s about what just about every cultural product produced for mass consumption that achieves significant commercial success is about, namely, reaffirming the status quo. Which at the present time does not include a loving acceptance of poker as a pursuit accepted by the majority of American society. If you didn’t get that before, the show confirmed it fairly unambiguously, in my view.

The show also confirmed a few other elements of the status quo of American culture, none too flattering. I’m not going to explain all of these points here, but if you watched the show, you know what I’m talking about:

Men are in charge.

Women shouldn’t act like men.

Emotion trumps intellect.

Greed is good, but don’t be so obvious about it.

There are other things to say about how the show reflects other aspects of American culture -- including issues associated with class and race -- but we’ll keep it a poker blog today.

And as far as poker is concerned, I’ll conclude (for now) that Annie Duke’s appearance on Celebrity Apprentice is at best a push. Might have helped a little insofar as it invited people who hadn’t previously thought much about poker to consider the question of whether or not it represents a legitimate pursuit. But that would require looking past the way the show indirectly positioned poker as part of what defined the show’s “villain,” thereby underscoring cultural prejudices against poker.

How Many Will Enter the 2009 WSOP Main Event?

Shortly after Jeffrey Pollack was promoted from Vice President of Marketing to Commissioner of the World Series of Poker in January 2006, he began fielding interviews in which almost invariably Pollack would be asked how many players he thought would be entering the upcoming WSOP Main Event.

For three years running, Pollack always had the same reply -- or non-reply -- to the question. For example, when Pollack last year appeared on Phil Gordon’s podcast The Poker Edge (the 5/15/08 episode), Gordon put the question to the Commish once again. “I couldn’t pin you down last year,” Gordon began, “I’m going to try again this year: How many participants in the championship event for the World Series this year?”

“I don’t know, you tell me,” said Pollack. “There are certain things I’m consistent on, and one of them is never publicly predicting the turn-out. I will give you the line I always give, and that is [to say] whoever makes the decision to show, we’re going to welcome them with open arms and they know they’re going to have a better experience than they did the year before.”

Makes sense, really, for the Commish to avoid making such predictions, as there really isn’t much to gain from doing so. Predict a number too low, and it gives the impression the WSOP wasn’t prepared to handle the field that arrives. Predict a number too high, and it gives the impression the WSOP hasn’t met expectations. And, as a marketing-savvy guy, Pollack has always been aware of the importance of impressions.

I’ve heard Pollack interviewed a few times this year, and also heard his answers to questions at the 2009 WSOP Media Conference Call a couple of weeks ago. Haven’t been hearing the question about Main Event numbers so much of late, as I suppose reporters are getting wise to the fact that Pollack ain’t gonna give them anything concrete in response.

All of which makes it interesting to discover that in the 2009 WSOP Staff Resource Guide one finds predictions -- of a sort -- of the numbers of entrants for each of the 57 bracelet events. Including the big one.

Now this guide isn’t necessarily meant to serve as part of the marketing of the WSOP, but rather just a helpful reference for those many individuals employed by Harrah’s to manage the various events. It’s a good idea for those folks to have at least some clue about how many will be showing up for each event so as to prepare more efficiently the needed tables, dealers, and other resources.

Nevertheless, these planned-for numbers do give us a glimpse into what those running the show at the WSOP are anticipating. If you are curious, you can mosey over to Pokerati to see where Kevmath has compiled a list of these predictions, including indications of whether returning events are predicted to have more or fewer entrants.

Lots of interest in there, for sure, such as the prediction of 150 entrants for the much-hyped $40,000 buy-in “40th Annual” No-Limit Hold’em Event (Event No. 2). Barry Greenstein has an over-under bet on that one with Eli Elezra in which Greenstein has taken the over on 222 entrants. They’re also planning for 5,305 players to come out for the so-called “stimulus special” $1,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Event (Event No. 4), which would rival the number of entrants for the Main Event in 2005. Like I say, check out the list on Pokerati for other interesting figures.

So, in this here WSOP Staff Resource Media Guide, we have ourselves a prediction (in a way) for the Main Event -- 7,323. That would represent an increase of nearly 500 from last year’s total (6,844).

My instinctive response to the number is to say it sounds reasonable. There are many factors, of course, which will affect the Main Event turnout, the two biggest probably being the still-struggling economy and the rest of the overstuffed WSOP schedule. But the general vibe I’m catching is that there’s a bit more excitement this year regarding the WSOP than last time around. And as far as the Main Event goes, we might actually see some benefit coming from the institution last year of the “November Nine” delayed final table, insofar as everyone saw how it worked and thus some may well be further encouraged to participate in the Main Event this time around.

Dr. Pauly has already predicted 7,100 for the 2009 WSOP Main Event. Like I say, I think some number over 7,000 sounds reasonable. What do you think?

The Winner is the Loser?

Was reading through the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition the other day. A lot that is worthwhile in there, I think.

In Howard Lederer’s chapter on limit hold’em tourneys (one of the few discussion of LHE tourneys you’ll find, actually), he brings up a concept regarding tournaments that I remember Mike Caro at one time making a lot of noise about. Kind of a curious idea (as most of Caro’s ideas are).

Early in the chapter, Lederer extols the virtues of making it to the cash -- and in fact ultimately makes simply cashing a primary goal for tourney players, kind of countering what a lot of folks will say about the importance of winning or finishing near the top where one usually finds the big money. He admits that he might have won more money in his career overall if he’d adopted a looser, more aggressive approach, but for him that was “not a style I’m comfortable playing.” This business of approaching tourneys conservatively is not the concept I want to talk about, though.

Amid that discussion, Lederer offers the observation that when you cash in a tournament, but don’t finish first, “you have, by definition, taken advantage of the tournament structure.” Why? “Because you ended up broke -- zero chips -- but they paid you a big check anyway.”

It’s kind of an interesting point, I think -- this idea that, as Lederer goes on to say, “the winner actually is the one that pays the biggest price for the tournament structure,” because “the winner gets all the chips but does not get all the money.”

Like I say, this is an idea that I first saw Mike Caro address as what he calls a “conceptual problem” with tournaments. In Caro’s discussion, he points back to the mid-1970s when tourneys stopped being “winner-take-all” affairs and the prize pools began to be distributed among several of the top finishers, not just the winner.

The history of the World Series of Poker Main Event exemplifies this trend. For the first eight years of the WSOP (1970-1977), the winner of the Main Event won the entire prize pool. When Doyle Brunson won his second title in ’77, there were 34 entrants in the event, each of whom paid $10,000 to play. That meant Brunson’s first prize was $340,000.

However, in 1978 the WSOP began to divide up the prize pool. There were 42 entrants that year, and Bobby Baldwin won. But he only got $210,000 for winning, and the other half of the money was divided among those finishing second, third, fourth, and fifth.

Another big change in the payout schedule at the WSOP Main Event happened in 1986, the year Berry Johnston won the WSOP. There were nearly the same number of players in the Main Event in ’86 (141) as there were the previous year (140). However, in 1985 only the top nine finishers cashed, while in 1986 the top 36 players cashed (although those finishing 28th-36th got less than their buy-in back -- $7,500). So Johnston’s first prize of $570,000 was considerably less than the $700,000 Bill Smith got the year before for winning.

For Caro, this change created a “conceptual problem” with tournaments insofar as the way he views it, “first place is punished and all other close finishers are rewarded.” For the Mad Genius of Poker, this makes tournaments much, much less attractive to him, and in fact becomes a reason for him not even to play them. He goes on to suggest that “in terms of strategy... if you play to win first place... you’ll probably lose money in the long run.”

Because if you win you lose. Get it?

Caro thus offers the same advice as Lederer and insists “the way to make a profit in these tournaments is to survive” -- that is, play conservatively, try to make the cash, and be satisfied with knowing that when you do cash (but do not finish first) you have taken advantage of the structure. Ever the iconoclast, Caro probably takes the whole idea a bit too far when he adds that “you should not go out of your way to win the first-place trophy, because the winner of the tournament is penalized.” (Here’s an article in which Caro explains his idea, if you’re interested.)

I’ve heard him made this argument in other contexts, and he usually insists that finishing second is really where it’s at. The guy finishing second is the one who makes the most money despite losing all of his chips.

Now I’m no mad genius. (In fact, I’ve been known to have trouble operating a cell phone.) But I think the point being made by Caro and Lederer actually depends on a particular view of the relationship between tournament chips and buy-ins -- namely, a view that essentially sees tournament chips as directly representing the money one paid to enter the tournament. Which sort of makes sense when we talk about tournaments in a theoretical way, but creates a different “conceptual problem” (I think) once we sit down and start playing the actual tournament.

For example, there’s gonna be somewhere around 5,000 players entering that $1,000 no-limit hold’em “stimulus special” tournament (Event No. 4) this year. Let’s just say exactly 5,000 enter. All players will be receiving 3,000 chips, meaning, in a sense, that every chip cost them 33.33 cents.

Of course, since some of the prize pool is going to be taken out before the first hand is dealt, you could say the players will already be getting the worst of it just by entering the tournament. According to the WSOP, 7% of the prize pool is going to be withheld for entry fees, and another 3% taken for the tourney staff. With 5,000 players, that means there is going to be 15 million chips in play. Players will have paid $5 million total, but the prize pool is going to be $4.5 million after the juice. That means every chip is technically worth exactly 30 cents, even though players paid 33.33 cents per chip to play. If we view tournament chips as the equivalent of cash, every player is going to be down $100 just for entering the tournament.

Now I’m going to guess somewhere around 9% of the field is going to cash in this event (judging from the payout schedules of similar, big field events from the 2008 WSOP). That’s 480 players. Not sure what the prize will be for first place, but last year Grant Hinkle took a little over 15% of the prize pool for winning that first no-limit hold’em event -- the one that had nearly 4,000 enter. So let’s say the winner of the $1,000 “stimulus special” gets 15% of the prize pool for winning -- that’s $675,000. That means the other $3,825,000 will go to 479 players who finish with zero chips. If we think of tournament chips as cash, well, then it does appear that 479 of the 5,000 players entering are getting a pretty good deal here.

But really, once the entry fee is paid, that $1,000 each player handed over is long gone. All that’s left are the 3,000 chips waiting at the player’s seat at the start of Day 1. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense (to me) to think any longer of those chips bearing any relationship at all to the money spent for them, because you can’t go back and cash them in. Once the tourney starts, the trick is to turn those chips into more chips, and hopefully all of the chips. That’s the only way to maximize their value from that point.

I understand Caro’s lament about tourneys moving away from the “winner-take-all” format. And I even appreciate the “conceptual problems” that result, thus making him less inclined to play tournaments. But I don’t think I’m going to buy the conclusion that the winner of a tournament is in some sense the biggest loser, even if it is the case that he or she has won all the chips but is only claiming a small portion of the prize pool.

But that’s my choice, of course. I can buy what I want -- chips, concepts -- as long as I can afford to do so.

Play the Game

Had one of those unbelievably unfortunate sessions of low limit hold’em yesterday. Six-handed (which I generally play) can be swingy at times, so it isn’t that much of a deal to experience a run of bad cards, bad timing, and bad results. And thus, not so surprisingly, when the session is finally over, feel bad.

But the badness just wouldn’t stop. It was one of those sessions plagued by what seemed an inordinate number of SIGHs or “So It Goes Hands.”

In an earlier post, I tried to make a distinction between SIGHs and other varieties of “bad beat” hands, although I suppose one could call a SIGH a bad beat. And thus call SIGH stories bad beat stories. And thus, very rightfully, complain “Hey, Shamus, enough already with the sighing! No one cares!”

The distinction that makes a SIGH is that you find yourself getting “whamboozled” (to use a Norman Chadism) without having ever really made any conscious effort to get yourself into the situation. In other words, it is not that you played the hand well and lost. You just played the hand as any sane person would and lost, often the maximum. Basically what we’re talking about here is a hand that played you, not the reverse.

I actually don’t want to lengthen this post unnecessarily with examples -- indeed, I imagine you don’t want that, either -- but I’ll give one just for the purposes of clarification.

Table folds to me on the button and I raise with . Both the blinds call. The flop comes . Checks to me, I bet, and only the SB sticks around. The turn is the . Again: check, bet, call. The river is the and my opponent bets. Really? Okay, let’s see. I call. He turns over .

Maybe someone somewhere plays this hand differently. But I doubt it. From my perspective, the hand played me. Thus, I call it a SIGH.

Like I say, endured a high number of these sorts of situations in the session, and so afterwards found myself muttering to poor Vera Valmore such applesauce as “Why do I even play?” I continued with my whimpering, noting that after several years of this, I am still just a recreational player piddling around in the lower limits who even when things go well can’t really earn more than a couple of bucks per hour, anyhow.

In fact, I’ve been becoming increasingly conscious over the last couple of months that whenever I play, there’s always something else I could be doing, something more profitable -- not just money-wise, but health-wise (physical and mental). Which now that I think about it, could be a bit of a distraction that may not be hurting my game, but certainly isn’t helping.

Vera, as wise as she is lovely, stopped me with a simple reminder: “You love to play. You like the strategy and you like the challenge. It doesn’t matter if you only make two bucks.” It would matter, she added, if I were losing significantly every time I play. But I’m not. Overall, I win. Not much, but like Vera says, that doesn’t matter.

What matters is the game -- being able, once in a while, to play (and not “work”). Just play the game, Shamus. You love it. Don’t let it play you.

The States of Online Poker

Word is that Barney Frank (D-MA), the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, is very close to reintroducing legislation -- any day now, apparently -- designed to counter the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

What’re we supposed to think about that?

If the new bill is like his previous Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (IGREA) -- introduced during the previous Congress almost two years ago -- it will likely propose a means by which to regulate and tax online gambling, thereby creating the possibility for U.S.-based sites to begin operating.

The IGREA had outlined a licensing process which would allow for such sites, however, it wasn’t too specific about how taxation would work. That sort of thing was more directly considered in some of the other anti-UIGEA bills that came and went over the last couple of years, and perhaps could get incorporated in Frank’s new bill somehow.

The IGREA was quite specific, however, with regard to its having included a provision for individual states to opt out of the new arrangement if they wished. And it wouldn’t take a vote or anything for that to happen, either. All it would take would be for the state’s governor to inform the person in charge of the licensing process (according to the IGREA, that would have been the Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which operates out of the Department of Treasury) that his or her state didn’t want to play along.

Have to believe that given Frank’s “states’ rights” leanings, he’s likely going to include a state opt out provision again this time around, too, regardless of the specifics of the new bill. Probably something to consider, given what’s been happening in Kentucky and Minnesota.

You remember Kentucky, where the governor Steve Beshear decided last fall that in the interests of the state’s horse racing industry he’d declare himself king of the intertubes and try to block the state’s residents from accessing 141 domains on which online gambling sites were located? The governor lost that one on appeal back in January, although I believe the state’s administration continues to fight their cause, planning to appeal the appeal in the Kentucky Supreme Court.

And in Minnesota the Department of Public Safety (no less) last week ordered ISPs to start blocking access to over 200 gambling websites, an action based not on the UIGEA but on the 1961 Wire Act. Incidentally, the list of sites to be blocked appears to have been written by someone without a heck of a lot of knowledge of online gambling (which, of course, some might argue ain’t really the purview of “Public Safety” anyhow).

Most of the sites on the list are for casino games or sports betting, with just a few poker sites listed. Without much rhyme or reason, some poker sites are on the list (Full Tilt Poker, Bodog), while others are not (PokerStars, Absolute, UltimateBet). And there are some sites on the list (Titan, Mansion) that don’t even serve U.S. customers! I’m sure the proprietors of those sites are wringing their hands over losing Minnesota.

Anyhow, back to the upcoming bill. The political climate is certainly much different today than it was in May 2007. The prospects for a Frank-sponsored online gambling bill seem on the surface much more favorable in terms of it actually moving through the House and to the Senate, and perhaps even further than that. We all still lament the UIGEA’s passage and the fact that we still cannot play on many online poker sites. Perhaps many of us, having gotten so used to railing against the UIGEA for more than two-and-a-half years now, are still instinctively cheering on Frank or anyone else interested in challenging that misbegotten law.

But while the political climate has changed, so, too, has changed the climate in which online poker is currently being played in America. U.S. players have it much, much better today than they did two years ago when it comes to moving money on and off of online poker sites, despite the fact that the UIGEA regulations were finalized back in November 2008 and went into effect in January of this year. Of course, the situation could conceivably change when the UIGEA really goes into effect on December 1, 2009. That’s when “designated payment systems” are said to be required to start complying with the law’s interdiction against transactions from individuals to online gambling sites.

It is possible that Frank’s bill could, in fact, also contain language that would specifically undo the UIGEA altogether, incorporating the emphasis of a couple of his other bills from the previous Congress that didn’t make it out of committee. If that were indeed the case, online poker players will be in an interesting position when it comes to deciding whether or not to throw their support behind Frank’s bill, I think.

On the one hand, regulation and taxation probably is not something most of us sincerely desire, all things considered, although I can see certain benefits -- the most obvious being protection against fraud -- from having such regulation in place. On the other hand, it could be in our interests to see a bill become law that rendered the UIGEA obsolete, especially if come December our banks really did start preventing us from moving cabbage onto our favorite sites.

Whatever happens, it’s going to take some time. I could be wrong, but I’m reasonably sure we’ll get to December 1, 2009 before any repeal of the UIGEA happens. Meanwhile, at least one state -- California -- looks like it might be positioning itself to try to “opt out” of the UIGEA, in a sense, and write their own ding-dang laws concerning online poker (although it isn’t completely clear they can actually do that given the way the UIGEA is written).

If you happen to live in a state which presently doesn’t allow live poker, I guess I wouldn’t be all that enthused about the prospect of your state being invited (forced?) to make some sort of decision about the legality of your playing online poker.

Should be a while, though, before states start seceding from our embattled online poker nation.

(EDIT [added 4:00 p.m.]: News came today that Frank will be announcing his new bill tomorrow, May 6th. Stay tuned.)

The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, Episode 15: The Lacework Kid

At long last, a new episode of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show has been posted. Full details can be found over on the show’s website, but I’ll give a little summary here.

For those who’ve never heard the HBPRS -- and yes, I’m fully aware that may very well include the vast majority of you internet peoples -- the main idea behind the podcast was to present stories about poker and/or gambling, with an emphasis on old-time radio shows. I’ve had guests on a few times who have contributed their own stories and observations, and I’ve also done some readings from various poker narratives, occasionally trying my own hand at some o’ that “radio theater” with sound effects, etc.

If you’ve never heard the show and are curious, you can safely go back and listen to any of the old episodes since one of the guidelines I’ve tried to follow throughout is to make the show not so “time-bound.” Unlike other poker podcasts that focus on news of the day, the HBPRS purposely avoids that sort of thing, so I’m hoping the old shows have a decent shelf life as a result.

The show’s blog has show notes for each of the 15 episodes thus far, so you can peruse that to find an episode that interests you. I can suggest a few.

A lot of the episodes of the HBPRS feature mysteries or dramas. However, Episode 3 has a terrific old comedy called Duffy’s Tavern, as well as some other funny bits (such as from the old Jack Benny Program). Episode 4 has a nifty thriller called “Hitchhike Poker” starring Gregory Peck. And Episode 13 includes a reading of a funny James Thurber short story called “Everything Is Wild” in which the lovely Vera Valmore makes a guest appearance.

This latest one includes a song by the Grateful Dead, a couple of short readings (from Anthony Holden’s Big Deal and Nolan Dalla/Peter Alson’s One of a Kind), and an episode of The Damon Runyon Theater.

Click here to listen to Episode 15. Or head over to iTunes where you can subscribe to the show. If you happen to listen to this one or any other of the shows, send along your feedback here, on the show’s blog, or shoot me an email at shamus at hardboiledpoker dot com.

Meanwhile, if for some strange reason yr lookin’ to hear more Shamus, the cool cats over at Poker Soup had me on their show for a while last night -- for their episode 15, coincidentally enough.

We chatted about the HBPRS, other podcasts (including good old Card Club with Lord Admiral Radio), the upcoming WSOP, among other topics. Fun stuff. Check it out.

Departing on AA

It’s May Day. It’s what? May day? Mayday, Mayday! Good Gawd. The World Series of Poker is less than four weeks away!

My plans are still somewhat up in the air, as they say, but I’m a-gonna be there. As they also say, details to come. And speaking of being up in the air, I ain’t even booked a flight to Vegas yet, but that’ll happen soon.

Thought I’d write a short note today about my own play. Been managing to squeeze in short sessions of limit hold’em here and there, generally not playing more than 100-200 hands at a stretch (usually an hour or so, as I’ll often play two tables). That actually is my usual schedule, really, and if I were to look back and study my stats carefully, I would likely discover that is my most profitable modus operandi. That is to say, I do best with the short sessions, ’cos the longer ones tend to be longer ’cos I’m in a hole and trying to get “back to quits.”

The art of quitting is, of course, one of the more important skills in poker. In Elements of Poker, Tommy Angelo writes a longish chapter on quitting. At the start he explains why the chapter is relatively long: “What happened was, I started writing about quitting, and well, you guessed it, I couldn’t quit.”

“In order to quit well,” Angelo continues, “you must be in control of yourself at the end of the session. It can be no other way. To achieve your highest possible score, you must be at your A-performance and your A-mindset all the way to the end.” We all are aware of this idea, I think, but as with most things in poker, easier said than done.

I had one session this week conclude in a particular way, and I realized that I’ve sometimes purposely forced myself to quit simply because I have been dealt one specific hand. Of course, if I’ve only played a short while and get dealt this hand, I won’t quit, because I know I want to play at least an hour or so. But if I’m getting somewhere close to that one hour-mark and pick it up, I know it has happened more than once that I’ll go ahead and put a tic in the “Sit out next hand” box, thereby readying myself to leave no matter how things turn out.

What’s the hand? American Airlines, of course. My ticket outta there.

Why quit on aces? Well, for one thing, while I like to think I don’t get too tilty that often, I do know getting aces cracked generally doesn’t have such a great effect on my overall mood, making it harder to be at my “A-performance” and have my “A-mindset.” Not that I’m expecting to lose the hand, mind you, but I am anticipating those potentially less-than-pleasant side effects should things not go my way.

On the other hand, if I win, well, that’s not a bad way to leave, either, yes? With the memory of having the best of it, and getting paid... in other words, happy poker thoughts to carry me to my next session.

I know it’s a fairly artificial way to make the quitting decision, and, of course, one can’t necessarily sit around and wait to be dealt aces so one can leave. So I ain’t necessarily recommending it as a genuine strategy, though, like I say, I’ve noticed myself doing it every now and then.

What happened earlier this week was I had been two-tabling for a little over an hour, and after having dug a decent-sized hole had gotten back close to even when I picked up under the gun (6-max., $0.50/$1.00). I think I might’ve already sat out on my other table and so was out the door anyway, but did indeed click “Sit out next hand” as I watched four of my five opponents call my raise.

The flop came . Top set, but with that board I knew when I led out that most if not all of my opponents would probably stick around. All but one did. Turn a safe , though now we’re looking at another flush draw out there. All four stayed for one more card. The river was the (Flippin’ sweet!), and I led out again. Others seemed to like that river card, too. Here’s how it played out (RSS readers might have to click through):



Easy as A-B-C, 1-2-3. I hit the runway thereafter. Even if I lose that one, I know I ain’t gonna be in the mood to continue.

Further evidence of how busy & distracted I’ve been lately: the third birthday of Hard-Boiled Poker happened earlier this week -- the day I played that hand, actually -- and I forgot to mark the occasion here.

In fact, I didn’t even think of it until this post took me back to one of the very first posts I ever wrote here, a mini-satire called “Folding AA: A 12-Step Program.” Perhaps good for a grin or two.

Here's hopin’ everyone’s weekend ends up aces.