2009 November Nine Just Hours Away... Time for Special Tactics!

Today was listening back to some of these interviews with November Nine-alists on The Poker Edge from the past few weeks. Great stuff, and Andrew Feldman and the crew is continuing to produce shows right up until tomorrow’s final table. Don’t forget Feldman’s also got a blog goin’ over there on the ESPN Poker Club with polls and other whatnot, so check that out as well.

One of the eps I was listening to today was that one with chip leader Darvin Moon (the 9/25/09 episode). Just as we read earlier this week in Matt Waldron’s interview with Moon (from a while back), Moon insists on The Poker Edge that in that huge hand with Billy Kopp that his impression was the board had not paired on the turn. No shinola!

You’ll recall that when the flop came both he and Kopp had flopped diamond flushes, with Moon holding , and Kopp . The turn brought the , Moon checked, Kopp bet 2 million, Moon check-raised to 6 million, Kopp shoved, and Moon called. Kopp was drawing dead.

“The flop come ,” says Moon to Feldman and co-host Phil Gordon, getting that third card wrong. “I checked and he checked.” Actually, Moon checked, Kopp bet 750,000 (a little under half the pot), and Moon called.

“Turn card come ,” Moon continues. (Photo courtesy the great Flipchip.) “I checked, he bet 2 million, so I went all in, and when he said ‘all in’ my heart ’bout jumped on the table.”

I don’t believe Moon was misremembering the final sequence of bets -- he didn’t go all in first. Rather, he was just stumbling a little in the retelling, as made clear by his subsequent words. “When that happened, I mean I just leaned back in my chair, leaned back forward, and I said ‘I call.’”

Moon goes on to say how Kopp turned over . “Didn’t the board pair on the turn?” asks Feldman. “No,” says Moon. Gordon reiterates that the board paired on the turn, but Moon insists “No, the board didn’t pair. It might’ve paired on the river. But it didn’t pair on the turn. The turn come the . I’m very confident of that.”

“Interesting,” says Gordon.

After the interview was over Gordon and Feldman revisit the issue, and both seem ready to believe Moon, though as we all saw back in July -- and as was confirmed by the ESPN telecast earlier this week -- the original reports of the hand were correct.

In other words, Kopp, for whom the board pairing on the turn absolutely dictated his play on that street (see his explanation here), was playing against a guy who hadn’t noticed the board had paired! Doomed, he was.

Gotta love Moon, though. “Are you paying much attention to the telecasts?” Gordon asks him. There’s a pause.

“On the teevee?” Moon responds.

Moon has absolutely no desire to change his lifestyle one iota, regardless of how this sucker turns out. “I’ve got everything I want,” he says. “I don’t need anything. I mean, I’m 45 years old. I’ve live my first 45 years like this. Why change?”

That attitude similarly applies to his decision not to seek any sort of coaching for the final table.

“See, I’m not hiring no coach. I don’t understand all that. I’ve been called and asked if I would like to have coaching, and... naw. I mean, I’m going in there the same way I went in the last time. Just with a game plan of my own and if it works, it works, and if it don’t, it don’t.”

Speaking of coaches, the interview with Phil Hellmuth -- who is coaching Jeff Shulman -- from yesterday (the 11/5/09 episode) is pretty fascinating as well. Do note the Poker Brat has supplied Shulman with a “special tactic” that will “shock the world” when used. Awesome!

(Of course, one wonders how well them special tactics will work if the opponent ain’t clear on the community cards!)

Can’t wait.

Shamus the Scribbler Betfair Bound

With the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event restart just a day away, most all of our thoughts are focused toward the Nevada desert. I’ll likely be posting some here later today and over the weekend, as I can’t imagine being able to resist commenting on the proceedings in some fashion. Might as well warn anyone who doesn’t want to know how things are going to avoid Hard-Boiled Poker (and just about every other poker-related site, too) until the show finally airs on ESPN Tuesday night.

I’ve yet to join any of the “pick’em” pools that have sprung up all around us during the last few days. I might still do so, but am kind of reluctant, partly because I don’t really want to follow the final table with any particular rooting interest regarding who finishes seventh, sixth, fifth, etc.

Like anyone else, I’m highly intrigued by the prospect of a Phil Ivey win, and I’ve also given some thought to the various consequences for each of the others coming out on top -- the whole “is it good for poker?” thing. A question which, by the way, the always cogent Nicole Gordon has addressed very well regarding each of the November Nine over at PokerNews.

But really, I’m just excited to see how all nine of these guys handle the situation. And to see what cards come their way.

Of course, while I am certainly thinking about what’s happening at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino over the next few days, my thoughts are turned in the opposite direction as well -- across the Atlantic toward the U.K. Why? That’s because today marks the debut of a new column of mine over on Betfair!

Some of you recognize Betfair as the sponsoring site for the recent World Series of Poker Europe. It’s the largest online betting company in the U.K., and includes a fairly popular online poker site under its tent. The recently-turned-21 Annette Obrestad is probably the site’s best known sponsored pro.

Included on its site is a nifty poker blog to which Betfair has invited me to begin contributing. Am starting out today with a book review of James McManus’s Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, a book I have written about here a bit. I also interviewed McManus last week, and for my next Betfair piece will be sharing that interview. The plan at present is for me to be posting over there once per week, and it looks like Fridays will be my day.

If you don’t have the Betfair blog already listed there in your favorite reader, here is the RSS feed. And if you happen to check out the review, do let me know what you think!

I’ll be posting more book reviews over there, I expect, as well as other pieces covering different poker-related subjects. I’ve already used two exclamation points in this post, so you can probably tell I’m fairly psyched about starting the new column. Much thanks to Dave Allan and the folks at Betfair for bringing me aboard.

Meanwhile, I’ll be talking to you again over here soon.

2009 WSOP November Nine Tidbits... plus Tender Cuts, Nuggets, and Snack Sticks

Our buddy Kevmath over on Pokerati has linked us up to the official media guide for the 2009 World Series of Poker November Nine, a 26-page document which I assume was primarily pulled together by our other friend, the indefatigable Media Director of the WSOP, Nolan Dalla. Thought I’d pass along a few interesting trivia bits from the guide regarding this weekend’s festivities.

Play begins at the Penn & Teller Theater in the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino on Saturday at noon Vegas time, with the remaining nine playing down to the final two. Those two players will then return on Monday night at 10 p.m. Vegas time to play it out. Once again, here are those chippies and seat assignments:

Seat 1: Darvin Moon (1st, 58,930,000)
Seat 2: James Akenhead (9th, 6,800,000)
Seat 3: Phil Ivey (7th, 9,765,000)
Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel (6th, 12,390,000)
Seat 5: Steven Begleiter (3rd, 29,885,000)
Seat 6: Eric Buchman (2nd, 34,800,000)
Seat 7: Joe Cada (5th, 13,215,000)
Seat 8: Antoine Saout (8th, 9,500,000)
Seat 9: Jeff Shulman (4th, 19,580,000)

They are almost finished with Level 33 (just seven-plus minutes left), where the blinds are 120,000/240,000, and antes 30,000. That means after just a few hands they’ll be posting blinds of 150,000/300,000 and antes of 40,000.

Leafing through the guide, we learn a few new things about the players (in “thumbnail bios”). More interesting is a breakdown of the scheduled payouts:

1st -- $8,547,042
2nd -- $5,182,928
3rd -- $3,479,670
4th -- $2,502,890
5th -- $1,953,452
6th -- $1,587,160
7th -- $1,404,014
8th -- $1,300,231
9th -- $1,263,602

All nine players have already received ninth-place prize money ($1,263,602). The guide tells us that the remaining $15 million-plus was placed “in a risk-free Goldman Sachs Treasury-Only Money Market interest-bearing account,” and over the course of three-and-a-half months accrued $1,321 interest.

Yeah, that’s what it says. $1,321. As Mean Gene says in a comment over on Pokerati, that piddling total of “$1,321 wouldn’t cover the Jack’s Links Beef Jerky tab for Media Row for one week during the WSOP.”

Something highly weird going on with that figure, as last year a similar process was followed and the yet-to-be-awarded prize money had earned nearly $100,000 in interest during the 100-plus day wait for the final table. In any event, the interest was only added to the top eight spots, so the first guy to go on Saturday will not be taking home anything more than what he’s already received. That first-place prize easily eclipses the largest cash prizes earned in any other individual sport, the closest being the $3,048,055 Hélio Castroneves earned for winning the Indianapolis 500 in May of this year.

There is also a section explaining that a pro hasn’t won since 2001 (Carlos Mortensen). According to the guide, four of the nine players at this year’s final table are recognized as professionals -- Akenhead, Buchman, Cada, and Ivey -- with two more (Shulman and Saout) described as “semi-pros.” It’s a fuzzy distinction, really, but I’d think if Ivey, Shulman, Buchman, or Akenhead won, there wouldn’t be too much disputing the claim that the seven-year streak of amateurs winning the Main Event had been snapped. I guess Cada, too, although the dude had only been old enough to play live poker legally in the U.S. for six months or so prior to the start of this year’s WSOP.

Also of note, in 2009 there were a total of 60,875 player registrations for the 57 bracelet events, breaking last year’s record of 58,720.

There’s some other stuff about the planned Hall of Fame ceremony during which Mike Sexton will be officially enshrined. And way, way more info about Jack Link’s Beef Jerky than one could ever hope for, including a comprehensive rundown of the company’s various offerings. Most distressing: something called the “Sasquatch Big Stick,” which comes in “Angry” and “Happy” flavors.

Uh, no thanks. Not messin’ with that.

Kopp Busted!

Last night ESPN aired the final hours of its coverage from this summer’s World Series of Poker, culminating a lengthy run of 24 hours of programming devoted to the Main Event. As I have been noting here, I was coming and going a lot during the coverage of the first few days of the ME, but by the end I was pretty much riveted.

The two hours last night -- in which the final 18 players played down to nine -- were particularly intriguing, with lots of non-bustout hands shown. This was the first time all tourney that ESPN had all of the remaining players sitting in front of hole card cameras, as both the main feature table and the secondary table were equipped. So they had a lot of flexibility to pick and choose hands beyond the nine in which players were eliminated, and I think they made some good choices.

One of the more surprising hands to see was a bustout hand, actually. I’m talking about the one in which Ian Tavelli opened to 450,000 from under the gun (not quite a 3x raise, as the big blind was 160,000), then was reraised to 1.35 million by Steve Begleiter sitting to his left. Thanks to the hole card cameras, we see that Tavelli had pocket nines and Begleiter pocket kings. When the hand began, Tavelli had about 7.7 million and Begleiter about 20 million.

Then we watch James Akenhead, who I believe had around 8 million or so, look down at in middle position, and after a short think decide to toss his suited Big Slick. Next in line comes Eric Buchman in the hijack seat, who had something like 16 million, and we see him folding pocket tens. Joe Cada then looks down at pocket jacks (!). Cada takes a gander around the table, and he also chooses not to commit any of his 14 million chips or so.

A lot of big hands, and it seemed surprising to see that trio all choose to step aside. I have no idea what sort of image Tavelli had there, as he hadn’t been at any of my tables, so perhaps that UTG raise meant something. I had been watching Begleiter quite a bit just prior to his having been moved over to the main feature table, and while he had shown a willingness to gamble now and then, his amateur status might’ve made his reraise with the entire table left to act especially menacing. And perhaps Phil Ivey sitting in the big blind had some effect on how things went in that hand as well.

Ivey folded, however, Tavelli pushed, and “Begs” called. His kings held, and Tavelli was gone in 17th.

I’ve said before how I was at the secondary table that night (along with F-Train). Interestingly, once they had gotten to 18 and gone to two tables, the next four eliminations all took place at the main feature table. Then we went to dinner, and after coming back the next three -- Ben Lamb (14th), James Calderaro (13th), and Billy Kopp (12th) -- all happened at our table. Lamb and Calderaro’s eliminations were fairly anticlimactic, as both had gotten very short-stacked just prior to their bustouts.

But Kopp’s... well, as discussed here before, that was something different.

When watching it live, everything happened so quickly there really was no time to react or feel any sort of anticipation. It was essentially “hmm... the two big stacks at the table are mixing it up,” then suddenly Kopp was standing up and wincing, then walking away.

I’m assuming you watched the hand -- in which Kopp lost 80-plus big blinds -- and so I won’t rehearse the details. You can read F-Train’s write-up of the hand here. Also of interest is Ryan Nelson’s interview with Kopp from September over on PokerNews, in which Kopp explains what he was thinking at each stage of the hand. (Incidentally, contrast Kopp’s approach here with that of the folders over at the main feature table.)

Watching the hand again last night was a little disorienting, that massive doom cloud hanging over Kopp’s head kind of affecting my focus. (Don’t, don’t, don’t!) One thing I was able to notice was that ESPN’s editing didn’t seem to alter the timing of the hand all that much.

That is to say, if my memory serves, the amount of time each player appeared to take to make each decision was pretty much what you saw last night. In other words, I believe Kopp really took about a half-minute there before announcing he was all in, and Moon about 15 seconds or so to make the call.

Kevmath was noting on Twitter last night how eerily quiet the crowd seemed after the hands were revealed. That I remember as well. WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla was working alongside F-Train and myself that night. When the hands were revealed, it took us all a couple of beats to realize what was happening.

“He’s drawing dead?” asked Dalla quizzically. “He is,” we answered unsteadily. It didn’t seem possible.

Kopp had a small, vocal cheering section there, but Moon’s wife (shown on ESPN a few times) kept as reserved as her husband. So no big roars at Moon’s win, and really, Kopp (and his supporters) took less time storming out of there than it took the rest of us to piece together what we’d just seen.

Good stuff, for sure. And now I’m totally hooked to see how it plays out this weekend. As was the case last year, Bluff Magazine will be doing some sort of live audio commentary with graphical updates of chip counts. And, of course, PokerNews will be there as well, finishing out the live blog for Event 57.

Best wishes to all my buds heading out to Vegas and the Rio this weekend to cover the sucker. You know I’ll be following.

(EDIT [added 11/5/09]: As Sean G points out in his comment, a highly interesting twist to the big Moon-Kopp hand was the fact that Moon apparently did not realize the board had paired with that deuce on the turn. See the follow-up piece over at PokerNews for further details.)

2009 WSOP Main Event Still Incomplete (But Not for Long)

Back in college, I was never one of those students who was much inclined to take an “Incomplete” for a course. Always preferred to get the sucker done and move on to the next round of classes without having a last assignment hanging over my head.

I do recall one occasion when I had to take an “I” after I’d screwed up a final paper (doing it on the wrong topic), and thus was given an “Incomplete” by the professor so as to give me a chance for a redo. Being the relatively conscientious student I was, I submitted the new paper early the next semester, but the procrastinating prof. ended up taking a year-and-a-half to take care of the grade. (No shinola.)

Wasn’t that big of a deal, but I recall sometimes thinking it wasn’t too cool to have that “I” following me like that. That “I” wasn’t me!

The idea of having to take an “Incomplete” came back to me again this weekend as I noted we’re now less than a week away from the final table of the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. Finally, finally, finally we'll get to see who will be this year’s champ.

I continue to dislike the delay in principle, but will admit to having gotten caught up in the hype a bit more this time around. Indeed, I am starting to realize how much I’ll miss being at the Rio this weekend to see the thing through, something I didn’t feel much at all last year.

I’ve had the tremendous opportunity the last two summers to live in Las Vegas and help cover the World Series of Poker. Have written at length here about my experiences (here’s a compilation of the 2008 reports, and here’s one from 2009). This past summer I was able to stick around right up to the end of play there on Day 8, a wild, adrenaline-fueled day and night punctuated by jaw-dropping hands that sent the huge, boisterous crowd of onlookers in the Amazon into hysterics time and again.

We all thought that last day was going to go deep into the next morning. If you recall, players began this year’s Main Event with triple stacks of 30,000 chips, meaning that by the time we reached this latter stage of the tourney, most all the players had mountains of chips sitting before them. The average stack for the 27 players returning on Day 8 was more than 7.2 million. A stack of that size amounted to more than 70 big blinds when play resumed early that Wednesday afternoon.

I had a flight scheduled for Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m., and thus had even brought my bags to the Amazon Room, anticipating the possibility of having to go straight from the Rio to McCarran should play stretch into the early morning. As it happened, the players were moving chips much, much faster than anyone had expected they would. By the dinner break they were already down to 14, and soon after we returned a couple more bustouts happened, meaning there was still daylight outside when just a dozen remained. Then -- as I assume most of us will watch tonight on ESPN -- it was “boom, boom, boom” and the final nine were set.

Seat 1: Darvin Moon (1st, 58,930,000)
Seat 2: James Akenhead (9th, 6,800,000)
Seat 3: Phil Ivey (7th, 9,765,000)
Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel (6th, 12,390,000)
Seat 5: Steven Begleiter (3rd, 29,885,000)
Seat 6: Eric Buchman (2nd, 34,800,000)
Seat 7: Joe Cada (5th, 13,215,000)
Seat 8: Antoine Saout (8th, 9,500,000)
Seat 9: Jeff Shulman (4th, 19,580,000)

Amid the roar of hundreds, Robbie Thompson bellowed out the names of the nine who’d made it, his self-aware, step-right-up baritone neatly heightening the drama as we all came to the realization that the summer’s last hand of poker had been played. A genuinely climactic moment, it was.

I got to sleep in the hotel one last time that night. Then a cab to the airport. Then home. Like everyone else who’d spent the last seven-plus weeks in Vegas, I was more than ready.

Like I say, last year once November rolled around I really didn’t experience much of a pull Vegas-ward once the sucker finally got going again. From the standpoint of a fan, I didn’t have much of an emotional investment in any of the final nine. And from a reporter’s P.O.V., I guess my relative newness to the business of covering the WSOP prevented me from feeling presumptuous enough to think that I had any special insight to provide regarding the tourney’s completion.

This year is different, though. I know these guys much, much better than was the case last year, both from having been there covering them right to the end and from having sought out the stories and interviews with them during these intervening months. No, I’m not talking about those nonsensical, space-filler type articles out there that purport to profile the players but in truth offer very little. Rather, I’m referring to the more studied coverage in which reporters smartly tell the stories of the final nine and handicap their chances.

Just to point you to a few good examples, Card Player has a couple of “Meet the November Nine” articles that do a nice, comprehensive job of introducing the players -- Part I and Part II. And Stephen Murphy has further added to CP’s coverage with quality profiles of each player. A little tricky to negotiate the CP archives, but I’m seeing seven of those profiles posted thus far -- Akenhead, Begleiter, Buchman, Cada, Ivey, Saout, Schaffel. (I think the other two are coming to the website soon, if they haven’t already -- will add links to those when I see ’em.)

I’m also digging what ESPN is doing both on their new, web-based show “Inside Deal,” and on the Poker Edge podcast. Several of the nine players have appeared as guests on the Inside Deal thus far, including Begleiter, Buchman, Cada, Ivey, Moon, and Schaffel. (Click the names to get to their respective episodes.) And those six plus Shulman have all appeared on the Poker Edge podcast as well.

Finally, I’ve recommended before the analyses of all nine players’ chances by Spaceman and Riggstad over on AlCantHang’s “Poker from the Rail” blog. Those commentaries can be found in three separate posts -- Part 1 (Moon, Buchman, Begleiter), Part 2 (Shulman, Cada, Schaffel), and Part 3 (Ivey, Saout, Akenhead).

Check out all those links and you’ll be about as well-informed as you can be regarding the 2009 November Nine, I’d imagine.

Of course, there is no way to know everything -- in other words, our knowledge of these guys is necessarily going to be incomplete, no matter how much we read, hear, and watch. But our knowledge of how the November Nine made out at the 2009 WSOP Main Event will be completed soon enough.

Yep, one last assignment for these guys. Then we’ll see what kind of grade they earned.

Post-Production is 20/20

Heard an interesting follow-up to that hand shown on ESPN’s coverage of the 2009 World Series of Poker last week, the one in which Phil Ivey mistakenly mucked what would have been the winning hand at showdown.

You’ve probably either watched the hand or heard all about it by now. With 24 players left, Ivey opened with a preflop raise from under the gun with , and the table folded around to Jordan Smith who reraised from the big blind with . Both players ended up cautiously checking down the flop, turn, and river, with the river having put four spades on the board.

After Ivey checked behind on the end, Smith announced that he’d paired his ace. Ivey waited for Smith to show his hand, then surprisingly Ivey dropped his cards in front of the dealer, obviously not realizing he’d made a flush and thus held the better hand. The two million-plus chip pot went to Smith.

Barry Greenstein sporadically keeps an “audio blog” over on PokerRoad, and at the end of last week he spoke a bit about having talked to his friend Ivey about the hand.

Greenstein asked Ivey whether he knew about having mucked the winner prior to the hand being shown on ESPN, and Ivey said he did not. Ivey also said he was surprised no one called him before Greenstein did to tease him, but Greenstein explained that was because Ivey’s cell phone doesn’t work in Cabo, Mexico where he’s relaxing in preparation for the final table. (For those interested in Ivey’s “self-imposed exile” in Cabo, a recent “The Life of Ivey” video sheds some light.)

“I think this hand is never going to leave me,” Ivey told Greenstein, revealing that he does, in fact, at least have some awareness of how he’s perceived.

What I found most interesting in Greenstein’s audio blog, though, was the Bear’s report that Ivey’s first response after having seen the hand was to ask “Is there a way they [i.e., ESPN] could doctor the hands?” He told Greenstein he didn’t remember there having been four spades on the board, and wondered if perhaps there could have been some funny business post-production. Greenstein said he guessed it was possible to doctor the footage, but he doubted that it had been done.

As I mentioned last week, Change100 was reporting from the feature table that day. Indeed, in her report of that hand, all of those board cards just as they appeared on ESPN. So yeah, not that we really would have suspected it anyway, but I think it is safe to say there was no post-prod doctoring here.

Ivey’s question reminded me of something I’ve witnessed from time to time while covering televised final tables at the WSOP. We all know how the productions are highly edited, well-crafted programs designed to be watched as a seamless narrative. Thus you can assume there are numerous examples of inserted reaction shots and the like that aren’t perhaps representative of the strict chronology of how events actually occurred -- and indeed, I’ve been able to pick up on a few of those now and then when watching the shows of tables I’ve covered. But I’m with Greenstein in the belief that there are never any outright doctoring of hands.

However, it does happen that there will occasionally be some on-the-fly “restaging” during the course of a televised final table. I’ve seen it happen several times that during a brief pause in the action, a dealer might be asked to repeat the dealing of a flop, turn, or river in order for ESPN to get a better looking shot. Perhaps the cards didn’t come out neatly enough the first time around, or the dealer’s hand was obscuring one of the cards from the overhead camera, and so a second take is ordered up. I recall one time watching this happen and the crowd reacting, obviously confused about what was going on. Then everyone had a laugh afterwards as it became clear they were watching a recreation of a hand that had just occurred.

In his audio blog, Greenstein speculates that by the river Ivey had become convinced Smith was holding an ace in his hand, and so when the ace appeared on the river he’d completely overlooked the suits. Ivey said as much to Greenstein, noting how when it came to showdown, he was surprised to see Smith show A-9 offsuit, since Smith had reraised him from out of position. When he saw Smith’s hand, Ivey was, to employ one of Norman Chad’s favorite terms, “bamboozled.” So surprising it was to see his opponent’s hand, Ivey forgot his own.

Greenstein goes on to say how common it is to misread one’s hand, even among the pros, and expressed doubts that anyone who claims never to have misread his or her hand is telling the truth.

As I mentioned last week, Ivey’s misstep was hardly the biggest one that happened on that Day 8. Will certainly be watching tomorrow night. Indeed, there’s one hand in particular -- one which back in July I said “sort of emblematize[d] the entire frenzied last day” -- I know I want to see. Even if I know already how it turned out, and even remember all of the reactions of the individuals involved.

’Cos, well, those editors... they can do some neat stuff.

Talking WSOP Main Event Final Table: ESPN Conference Call

Had a very enjoyable conversation with Jim McManus yesterday, whose new book, Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, has finally come out this week. I wrote a little something about the book here last week. I’ve also been invited to review it for a couple of other places, and my interview of McManus will additionally be appearing on a website near you -- not this one -- in the not-too-distant future. (More on that to come!)

We talked a lot about the new book, as well poker writing in general. I had a list of questions and got through just about all of them, although I noticed afterwards one question had gone unasked. Since McManus is not only a person who has studied World Series of Poker history, but has helped write it and, in fact, is part of that history himself (having made the WSOP Main Event final table back in 2000), I had meant to ask him his thoughts regarding the current state of the WSOP Main Event, in particular his opinion on the delayed final table. But we’d gotten onto other things and that one fell through the cracks.

As it happened, around the time I was chatting with McManus, ESPN was having a conference call with the media to talk about the upcoming final table, which finally will be getting started in just a little over a week. George McNeilly, Senior Director of Corporate and Consumer Communications for ESPN, moderated the call, with Lon McEachern and Norman Chad, the WSOP show commentators, and Doug White, the Senior Director of Programming and Acquisitions for ESPN, offering their thoughts and fielding the questions. I had a chance to listen to that call later on, thanks to our buds over at Pokerati.

Things began with McNeilly noting that there will be a live blog over on ESPN.com (kept by Andrew Feldman, I’m assuming), as well as a “poker pick’em” game with trivia questions about the final table. Chad noted early on that he was particularly focused on the storylines of Phil Ivey, Joe Cada (trying to become the youngest ME winner ever), and “the logger coming out of the woods,” Darvin Moon. Later on Chad would say the presence of these three players and their stories made this year’s FT the “most fascinating” for him “since we started doing it in 2003.” Later a reporter from The Washington Post tried to characterize these nine players as “one of the least charismatic groups you’ll ever see,” but both Chad and McEachern begged to differ.

The first questions concerned coaching -- it appears Jeff Shulman is the only one of the players thus far to have publicly acknowledged having hired a coach (Phil Hellmuth) -- and the effect of the delay. Then Stephen Murphy of Card Player asked an interesting question about that Phil Ivey hand aired earlier this week, the one in which Ivey mucked the winner at showdown.

“My first reaction was somehow something was wrong with the tape,” said Chad, who called it “a stunning thing to see.” McEachern added that Ivey’s gaffe proved “this [kind of mistake] does happen even to the best, because the grind tests every fiber of a player’s mind and spirit.” They added that as far as they knew, Ivey may not have known he had made the mistake until the show aired this week. Would they ask him about it? Of course, said Chad, who guessed that Ivey would probably say “‘Thank goodness it didn’t happen in the Big Game.’”

Midway through the call they took a break to give summaries of all nine players. One interesting point made by Chad was the fact that of these nine, there are three players in their 20s, three in their 30s, and three in their 40s and 50s. McEachern said he favors Eric Buchman to win it all, and Chad said he thought Moon would not bully the table with his big stack but instead play it conservatively so as to guarantee himself a finish in the top four or five.

Dan Cypra of Poker News Daily asked about the pros and cons of a Moon victory, as well as that of an Ivey win. McEachern said there was “a huge upside for both players winning,” speaking particularly of a Moneymaker-like effect should Moon take it down. “The stuff of storybooks,” said Chad of a possible Moon victory, sort of echoing himself from earlier ESPN broadcasts. Near the end of the call, they talked a bit more about Moon and the fact that he has yet to accept any sponsorship deals. Chad suspects he will ultimately take a one-day deal and be wearing a logo of some sort at the FT, though thinks it would be cool if he didn’t.

Gary Trask of Casino City Media asked about the production of the final table and whether ESPN had learned anything from last year. “We heard our fans loud and clear,” said Doug White, adding that they were “hoping to show a little bit more of heads-up play” this time around. Along those lines, we also heard reports yesterday -- not in the conference call, but elsewhere -- that ESPN Senior Producer Jamie Horowitz is saying that ESPN is reserving the possibility of extending its programming on Tuesday night (November 10) beyond the scheduled two hours so as to show more of heads-up play.

Answering another question, White said he did think the ratings for this year’s final table would exceed last year’s, and he also intimated that the plan for 2010 will likely be to follow a similar schedule as we saw this year, with a lot of shows devoted to the Main Event (and not so many to the prelims).

There will be no preview show this year, but as McEachern pointed out “we’ve already introduced all of the players to America already” and so ESPN won’t be taking away from showing hands in order to bother too much with that during the final table show. There will be a feature on Phil Ivey next Tuesday night on ESPN’s “E:60” show (at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time).

Those were the highlights. Not too much in the way of news, really, and in fact, the only real news of the day didn’t come from the conference call, but in that report in which Horowitz said they might show more than two hours of coverage on November 10.

I may well follow up with McManus to ask him his thoughts regarding the Main Event final table. I’m remembering that the year he made the ME final table -- 2000 -- where he finished fifth, Jeff Shulman also went deep, being eliminated in 7th. (The televised final table was six-handed that year, the last year before the switch to a nine-handed FT.)

In any event, I’m sure that like the rest of us, he, too, will be curious to see how this next chapter of “the story of poker” plays out.

Have a good weekend, all.

Watch and Wondurrrr: The Challenge Crosses Halfway Point

Like everyone else, I’d largely taken my eyes off of that “Durrrr Challenge” between Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Patrik Antonius that has been going on (and off and on) over at Full Tilt Poker for the last nine months. Found myself checking back in on it recently, though.

You might recall how Dwan issued his challenge in late 2008, inviting anyone (other than Phil Galfond) to play against him heads up, four tables of either pot-limit Omaha or no-limit hold’em, at a minimum of $200/$400 blinds. Whoever was ahead -- even by just a single buck -- after 50,000 hands would be the winner. If Dwan won, the loser would have to pay up an additional half million clams. If Dwan’s opponent won, he’d pay that person $1.5 million.

A few names surfaced as possible opponents for Dwan (including David Benyamine and Phil Ivey), but it was Antonius who was first in line. The game chosen was PLO ($200/$400). The pair began their match in February of this year amid much hype, but interest died down after several long gaps between sessions. Following the WSOP this summer, they finally began playing again in earnest, and earlier this month crossed the halfway point of 25,000 hands played.

A couple of days ago Dwan and Antonius had a lengthy session in which they played over 2,000 hands versus one another. Dwan had the upper hand for much of the session, and at one point apparently was up around $400,000-$500,000 for the night, but Antonius pulled back closer and when they logged off Dwan had increased his overall lead by $81,716.

There was a moment in there somewhere when they took a dinner break, during which time Dwan chatted with the fellas over at the high-stakes 7-game table about how the night was going. Nicole Gordon, in her latest report on the challenge for PokerNews, shares a funny moment from that conversation:

Ziigmund: durrrrr
durrrr: wtsup?
Ziigmund: who won in challenge?
durrrr: i won small
durrrr: 150 mayb
John Juanda: yeah u won small ferrari

Gotta watch that Juanda. Sits there all quiet like, then -- zing!

According to Full Tilt Poker’s official stats page, the pair have played a total of 27,185 hands to this point (in 42 sessions). Back at the 14,000-hand mark or so, Antonius was up over $500,000, but Dwan stormed back and currently is up $779,248 and Antonius down $785,355.

As the volatility of that session from earlier in the week shows, Dwan’s lead is by no means insurmountable, and indeed could potentially be halved in a single hand. The pair have played at least 10 hands with pots of more than a quarter million dollars, with a couple nearing the half-million mark. Dwan has had the advantage in those so far, having won most (eight) of those “monsterpotten” hands (as Gordon calls them). If you’re curious, you can view replays of those biggies over on the Full Tilt page. (Clicking on the pic will get you there.)

According to the Full Tilt page, the pair have played for a total of 3 days, 14 hours, and 50 minutes. That means the average session has been a little over two hours. That also means they are playing about 5.2 hands per minute when they sit down at their four tables. All of that adds up to nearly a solid week (160-plus hours) of play in order to get the challenge done.

I guess many thought that once the challenge began, it would continue uninterrupted until the 50,000th hand was played, but obviously neither player saw that sort of insane stamina test as preferable. Even playing sporadically as they are, there have been several moments when each player has reported falling asleep at the computer, accumulated fatigue from all of the other high stakes games they are also regularly playing having caught up with them.

I remain intrigued by the challenge and am glad others are keeping tabs on it for me. As I noted in February when it began, we’ve come a long way from that Nick “the Greek” Dandalos-Johnny Moss challenge back in 1949 or 1951 or whenever it was. (Read more about that here.) Full details of what precisely happened at Binion’s between those two -- another high stakes, heads-up battle in which millions were won and lost -- will remain shrouded in mystery, perhaps never to be revealed. But with the Dwan-Antonius challenge, every mouse-click and keystroke is being carefully chronicled.

Not Exactly Ivey League

Watched that 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event coverage again last night on ESPN. They’re giving four whole hours to Day 8 -- really one of the most exciting days of poker I’ve ever witnessed (as I wrote about here back in July) -- so next week will be devoted to this one as well. Last night they showed them playing down from 27 to 18, while next week they’ll get ’em down to the final nine.

Looking back at the PokerNews live blog of the day (kept by F-Train, Change100, and myself), I’m calculating that those two hours aired last night covered only about two-and-a-half hours of actual playing time, as the bustouts were happening at a rapid clip. It was still the middle of the afternoon when the final 18 players redrew for seats around the last two tables.

I was positioned near Table 2 that day/night, the one where Antonio Esfandiari busted in 24th, and Steven Begleiter was hitting all of those flops. F-Train was over at the other outer table where Eric Buchman was building a big stack, while Change100 was at the feature table with Nick Maimone, Andrew Lichtenberger, Joe Cada, and the player everyone in the Amazon Room was focused on most intently that day, Phil Ivey.

Watching Ivey is always a treat, if only to see the timidity he causes in other players, most of whom seem never to know for sure what two cards he is holding. Not surprising, then, that the most memorable hand from last night’s coverage involved Ivey. Very surprising, though, to see that it was a hand in which Ivey himself didn’t know what he held!

If you watched, you know the hand. There were 24 players left, I believe, so they were eight-handed. The blinds were 60,000/120,000, with a 15,000 ante. (ESPN doesn’t always mention the antes.) That means there was 300,000 in the middle when Ivey is shown opening with a raise to 320,000 from under the gun with .

The table folds around, including Jeff Shulman who tosses away his pocket deuces, and the action is on Jordan Smith in the big blind. Smith looks at his cards -- . He thinks a moment, then raises to 1,000,000. Ivey (in Seat 1) leans forward and asks Smith (in Seat 9) what he has left. Smith says “six-and-a-half or six [million], something like that.”

“I’d like to tell you what Phil Ivey is thinking,” says Norman Chad. “But he thinks at a much higher level than I do, so I don’t want to pull a brain muscle.” Ivey makes the call.

The flop comes , and both check. The turn is the , and again both check. The river brings the . I’ll freely admit that when I watched this for the first time, my initial instinct was to think Ivey had let Smith catch up, as I was focused on an ace or nine coming. Of course, with the hole cards displayed on the screen for me, it was easy enough to see that the river had in fact given Ivey the flush and so his hand was still the best.

The gum-chewing Smith takes a few seconds, then checks, and Ivey waves his hand with what appears to be some exasperation, indicating he is checking as well. “Ace,” says Smith, and Ivey waits to make his opponent turn over his hand. When he does, Ivey then unexpectedly drops his cards face down before the dealer, mucking the winning hand (see picture). In other words, Ivey gifted Smith more than 2 million chips, leaving himself with a bit more than 8 million. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch the hand here -- skip to the five-minute mark.)

A pretty astonishing little lapse in attention, that. And of course all the more wild to see because it was Ivey. Like Tiger missing a three-footer, or Jordan missing a breakaway dunk or something. Made Chad’s little preflop speech about Ivey thinking at a higher level -- added afterwards, of course -- all the more ironic-sounding.

Some like to make the argument that poker must be a skill game because unlike in other entirely chance-driven games like roulette or slots, one can lose on purpose in poker. An interesting idea, I suppose, although to be honest my addled brain has never quite put together why that “proves” poker is a skill game. It does, however, most certainly prove that in poker one can make a mistake like Ivey did -- that the often-taken-for-granted “skill” of remembering your own hole cards is indeed part of the game.

Ivey survived his misstep, of course. And as it happens, Smith would be the last one out (in 10th) before the final table was set. Indeed, the real excitement of that day -- including some much, much bigger missteps than Ivey’s -- was still to come.

Call and Response

The blog. It’s been around for a good while now. I keep it. It keeps me. Whatever.

The way it works? Generally speaking, I get up early. Earlier than I would otherwise. And I write. I take care of the blog. And I guess it takes care of me. It’s a little like running, which I am still doing (though not as earnestly as I was earlier in the year). A kind of mental exercise that has become... routine? Obsession? Whatever.

Indeed, I’ve now reached a point where I can’t quite imagine what it would be like to make it through an entire weekday without having posted something to the blog.

I have written before (at length) about some of the reasons why people keep blogs, and most particularly what I perceive to be the purpose(s) for my own. Tended to do that quite a bit during the early days of Hard-Boiled Poker, in posts such as “An Existential Pause,” “Milestones,” and “Who Wants to Write About Poker?”

Haven’t gone for the navel-gazing thing quite as often here lately. A recent example was a post titled “Pokerback Writer” in which I talked some about the stories poker produces, and what to me seems like an inevitable relationship between playing poker and writing about it. However, I have been inspired to think again along these lines during the last few days, really for a couple of reasons.

One is my reading of Vicky Coren’s new memoir For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair With Poker, which the further along I get into it the more I’m realizing is an especially good entry into that little subcategory of “poker literature.” Coren identifies herself early on as more of a writer than a player, although like pretty much all of us who do either with any degree of seriousness, she has sufficient awareness and humility to recognize that she’s still learning in both realms.

Because really, if we had either completely figured out -- writing or playing -- why would we continue doing either?

The other inspiration for thinking again about the blog and its purposes was F-Train and his post from late last week “All Atwitter.” As the title suggests, F-Train is reflecting on the effect Twitter has had on blogging over the last few months, namely, that not-so-gradual shift among many in the poker writing crowd from blogging to Twittering. They “all” haven’t given over their blogs for Twitter, but it does seem quite a few have. While I still subscribe to a ton of poker blogs, really only a small percentage of the authors still post consistently, with many having opted instead to send out multiple “tweets” per day.

In his post, F-Train talks about that 140-character limit in Twitter and how such an abbreviated form necessarily affects the content. But he also suggests that both blogging and Twittering lack the sort of collaboration he believes is fundamental to good, quality writing. If I understand him correctly, we’re all kind of “broadcasting” -- either in 140-character-or-less chunks on Twitter or in longer stretches in blog posts -- without necessarily receiving (or even seeking) the kind of feedback that can make writing better (and more meaningful).

F-Train is absolutely correct when he says “polished, high-quality writing -- the type that is collaborative and takes more time, voice and skill to produce -- is receding in prominence.” Such is true not just in our little world of poker blogs and poker-related Twitter accounts, but everywhere. The fact is, here on the web, people do write hastily, hit ”publish” without reservation, and do not expect (let alone seek) feedback.

I do, however, think that a kind of collaboration is possible with blogs -- and even Twitter -- but it depends on how one approaches each medium. Soon after I started Hard-Boiled Poker, I quickly became aware of the “community” I had not-entirely-wittingly joined. As I wrote in an earlier post (“Community Watch”), “This here is a complicated, overlapping set of communities where (one might argue) we all eventually get around to hearing from each other. Unlike the world of print media, we ain’t so bound by time and space -- or even other factors that make it hard or even impossible for us otherwise to communicate with others. Here the interaction seems more alive (if that makes sense), and usually more meaningful.”

That’s how I have tended to think of the blog, anyway. Thus have I always felt myself interacting with others, not simply issuing monologues one after another with no expectation of being read and/or responded to. Sometimes in poker we make a bet and don’t want to be called. But when it comes to writing -- public writing, anyway -- we should always be seeking response.

Indeed, to write publicly without an awareness of (or respect for) audience is at best silly or pointless, at worst dangerous. Like Coren, I know I’ve a lot to learn. About poker, obviously. And about writing, too.

So please, keep writing everyone. Blogs, Twitter... whatever.

’Cos I’m reading. I’m responding.