Interviewing the Interviewer

I think I might have mentioned something last week about having had plans to interview Kara Scott, the poker player who has appeared as a host or presenter on numerous poker shows, including currently on “High Stakes Poker.” We did get a chance to talk this week, and the interview can now be read over on Betfair.

I asked her about various topics, including how she got into poker and poker TV, “High Stakes Poker,” the recent PartyPoker Big Game IV in London, her joining up with team PartyPoker, and her own play, in particular those two deep runs in the WSOP Main Event she has had over the last couple of years (finishing 104th and 238th).

As was the case last week with Matthew Hilger, I had a lot of fun talking with Kara, especially regarding her experience at the 2008 WSOP. I was also surprised a little about the story of her having trained as a Thai boxer (and that being an avenue to television for her). I guess I had heard that about her at some point along the way, but had forgotten.

There was one question I didn’t ask her which didn’t occur to me until later on, a question having to do with her new affiliation with PartyPoker. She mentioned how there would be some television work there for her with Party -- the Big Game IV was an example. I remembered afterwards that PartyGaming had purchased the World Poker Tour last year, so I might’ve asked if she knew anything about the future of that relationship (including the TV side of things).

We also talked a bit about interviewing players, generally speaking -- something with which Kara has a lot of experience. Speaking of, I mentioned last week I was thinking of compiling a list of poker-related interviews I’ve done, so here that is:

Dennis Phillips (October 2008)
Barry Greenstein (April 2009) -- Part 1 & Part 2
Andy Bloch (May 2009)
James McManus (November 2009)
Victoria Coren (January 2010)
Kevin Mathers (February 2010)
Lou Krieger (February 2010)
Ilya Gorodetsky (March 2010)
Matthew Hilger (April 2010)
Kara Scott (April 2010)

Have other fun stuff coming up over on Betfair Poker in the near future, including involving contributions from some of your favorite poker bloggers regarding the good-gawd-is-it-less-than-five-weeks-away-that-can’t-be-right-I-guess-it-is 2010 WSOP. (Stay tuned!)

Meanwhile, enjoy the weekend, all! Don't forget the BBT5 continues over on Full Tilt Poker (details here).

Hooray for Boeree; Remembering Richmond

You’ve no doubt heard by now that Liv Boeree took down that European Poker Tour San Remo event yesterday, coming out on top of a huge field of 1,240 players to claim the €1,250,000 first prize. Lot of folks excited about it. Boeree becomes the third woman to win an EPT Main Event, following Vicky Coren (EPT London 2006) and Sandra Naujoks (EPT Dortmund 2009).

Boeree’s win also comes on the heels of Vanessa Selbst’s NAPT Mohegan Sun victory less than two weeks ago. And a month before that, Annie Duke took down the NBC National Heads Up Poker Championship -- not an “open” event, but still one in which men had only prevailed in the past.

Some object to assigning too much importance to women winning events such as these, arguing that doing so reinforces the significance of a player’s sex and thus suggests another kind of inequality in the way one views women players as opposed to men.

There’s something to that argument, I suppose. But still, it is hard not to recognize the uniqueness of women succeeding in these big buy-in, “big bet” tourneys, especially given the small number of women entering them as compared to men.

By the way, even before Selbst’s win at the NAPT Mohegan Sun, Jen Newell and I chose the topic of women & no-limit hold’em tourneys for our April “He Said/She Said” columns over at Woman Poker Player. There we were separately responding to a chapter in James McManus’s Cowboys Full in which he offers a few thoughts about why men seem “biologically inclined to sign up for” NLHE tourneys.

As we were working on our articles, Selbst won her NAPT title, and so we both ended up making reference to her win. You can see what else we said about McManus’s ideers here: He Said / She Said.

Last week I also wrote a post here called “Women and the WSOP.” There I mentioned how even though 12 different women had won open WSOP events, none had done so in a NLHE event (aside from Annette Obrestad’s 2007 WSOPE Main Event title). In that post I included a list of women who had won WSOP bracelets in open events, with Vera Richmond being the first to do so back in 1982 in the $1,000 buy-in Ace-to-Five Draw event.

Curiously, when people discuss this topic many tend to overlook Richmond’s victory and cite Barbara Enright’s 1996 bracelet in the $2,500 pot-limit hold’em event as the first by a woman in an open-field WSOP tourney. In fact, when it comes to poker history, Richmond is probably better known not for her WSOP bracelet but for her involvement in that story in which Amarillo Slim Preston allegedly said he’d cut his own throat if a woman ever won the WSOP Main Event -- another story the accuracy of which sometimes gets skewed.

According to the story, at the 1973 WSOP Main Event, Richmond -- who according to this had to have been the first woman ever to play in the Main Event -- enjoyed the chip lead for a time, and during a break took the opportunity to tell Preston she intended to win the sucker. Preston (the reigning champ) responded by telling Richmond that if she were to win the tourney, she could cut his throat with a “dull knife.”

The exchange later got retold in such a way as to suggest Preston had threatened to cut his own throat, and that his threat referred to any woman winning the event (not just Richmond). Preston himself later would exploit the apocryphal version of the story, such as in 2000 when both Annie Duke and Kathy Liebert made deep runs in the Main Event, as recounted by McManus in Positively Fifth Street.

(EDIT [added 1:00 p.m.]: Actually there are other problems with this story, including the fact that Richmond didn't play in the 1973 event at all. Hat tip to Kevmath here, who points us to an article by Susie Isaacs that suggests Barbara Freer was the first woman to play in the WSOP ME in 1978.)

That was about all I recalled about Vera Richmond, too, other than the fact that she always gets described as a “brusque cosmetics heiress” in histories and on the web. There was, however, a reference to Richmond not too long ago on the Gamblers Book Shop podcast (episode 63, 3/19/2010).

There guest Linda Johnson -- the third woman to win a WSOP in an open event (1997, $1,500 Razz) -- noted how Richmond “never got credit for her win,” referring to what I mentioned earlier about how Enright tends to be more readily cited as the first woman to win an open WSOP event.

Host Howard Schwartz asked Johnson why that was the case. “Well, she wasn’t very popular,” answered Johnson. “She was kind of mean and nasty... spoke like a truck driver, and nobody liked her. And so when she won her event, she never got credit for it, which isn’t right because plenty of asshole men have won and they are in the record books.”

Kind of interesting -- and not that surprising -- how the story of the first woman to win a WSOP open event appears to involve ideas of traditional “gender roles” as well as (in the Amarillo Slim story) men showing some resistance to the idea of women playing and succeeding.

Times have changed, certainly. The general enthusiasm about Boeree’s win yesterday -- from both men and women -- is evidence of that.

A Metaphysical Check Up

Just now happened to recall that I scheduled a physical for this afternoon. Have a little reminder card by the monitor here that was supposed to guarantee I wouldn’t forget, but it very nearly slipped my mind. I set up the visit a week ago, and when I told Vera she complimented me for having done so.

“You’re growing up,” she cheekily added.

I guess it wouldn’t have seemed so mature to have forgotten the appointment, so I’m glad I’m remembering it now. Could well be I blocked it out somehow, subconsciously not wanting to endure the close inspection of my current status.

In a recent post titled “Mental Mazes,” the one physician whom we actually look forward to visiting -- Dr. Pauly -- offers some thoughtful ideas with regard to this business of self-assessment. The post starts with a discussion of Tiger Woods, moves on to a short catalogue of character types most of us tend to exhibit (at the poker table and elsewhere), and ends with a breakdown of breakdowns in which the Doc classifies a few different kinds of tilt.

All good stuff, though I especially like the middle section in which he talks about the “five or six versions of ourselves” we present to others as we make our way through our jobs, our relationships, our poker games, and elsewhere. Pauly explores in particular how we present ourselves as various types at the tables, including the “nebbish goober,” the “reckless gambler,” the “confident warrior,” or the “fraidy cat.”

As Pauly’s descriptions of the types suggest, when it comes to presenting one of these “versions of ourselves” at the poker table, our selection usually isn’t wholly self-guided. Usually we’re reacting to how the game is going, and a rush of cards or a sour sequence often dictates which type we become. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that it sometimes takes just a single hand to produce such a change in character.

For example, yesterday I was cruising along in what had been a nice, comfortable session of six-handed limit hold’em in which I was mostly “confident warrior,” taking the initiative, forcing folds, and making hands frequently enough to reinforce my feeling of having an edge.

Then came a funny hand in which a player who had distinguished himself to me as a “reckless gambler” raised from UTG. I three-bet with from the cutoff, and it folded back around to my opponent who capped it. I called, of course, and together we saw a flop of .

He bet, I raised, and he reraised. Unsure about my top pair but having seen him get out of line before, I capped it and he called. The on the turn brought another bet from him, and feeling less well about the whole situation I just called. The river was the . Once I again I called his bet, and he showed for a rivered two pair and took the pot.

Somewhere in the middle of that hand I had clearly changed from “confident warrior” to “nebbish goober,” a transformation that became more evident over the next few orbits as suddenly I became more passive and self-doubting. Might have even let myself be temporarily affected by that “why-me-how-unfair-I’m-a-victim” applesauce that we all sometimes feel after an unfortunate river card takes a hand from us.

As Dr. P. also suggests, this stuff happens away from the poker tables, too. And there, also, we often let outside forces -- i.e., that which we cannot control -- dictate which of the “versions of ourselves” we become.

Hopefully we figure out how to manage those changes and get along well enough, a process that involves being willing to look at ourselves more closely, to see and accept the flaws, and to do what is necessary to be the best self we can be. Or at least a version with which we can be comfortable.

And then, if you’re lucky enough, someone may point out to you that you’re growing up.

NAPT Debuts on ESPN2

Watched some of that NAPT Venetian $25,000 “High Roller” Bounty Shootout event on ESPN2 last night. Only saw the first hour before I had to hit the sack, but I recorded the rest. It appeared they were devoting both hours to the first round of that event -- i.e., the seven seven-handed tables, the winners of which met a couple of days later at the final table. Looks like next Monday there will be a couple more hours devoted to the NAPT Venetian -- one hour showing the Shootout final table, then one showing the Main Event final table.

Wasn’t sure what they were going to do with the three hours for the High Rollers, but it didn’t surprise me to see ESPN2 showing all of this first round action, given all of the big names among the field. I helped cover both “flights” that first day -- the afternoon one (which was shown during the first hour) and then the evening one (second hour). Wrote a little about how that long day went here.

From what I saw of that first hour, the coverage of the three simultaneous tables was pretty good, although necessarily a bit choppy (and, of course, dominated by the all-ins). That feature table match in which Hoyt Corkins eventually outlasted John Duthie to win actually took about seven hours, with Duthie pretty much dominating Corkins during the couple of hours of heads up, only for the cowboy to get very lucky to hit a runner-runner hand to survive, then beat the Brit. Didn’t necessarily see that narrative develop quite that way during the show last night, given the need to edit down.

I kind of wonder how the show went for those who weren’t already familiar with how those tables had played out. Seemed like ESPN did a decent job with the graphics updating the number of bounties folks had captured and chip counts on each of the tables, but my sense was all of the back-and-forthing probably made the show seem a bit different from your usual poker tourney show.

There was a piece over on PokerNews a few days ago by Matthew Parvis in which he pointed out how the “High Roller” event at the recently-completed NAPT Mohegan Sun (also a $25,000 buy-in) had seen a dip in the number of entrants (from 49 to 35), and that the future of that event may be in doubt moving forward. Of course, the Main Event there drew a healthy 716 players, following up on the NAPT Venetian having attracted 872 to its Main Event (both $5,000 buy-ins).

As Parvis notes, online qualifiers are helping big time here, and while I like the prospects of the NAPT moving forward, I think its continued success hinges greatly on that part of the equation remaining unchanged. In other words, looking at the World Poker Tour and WSOP-Circuit events and their respective struggles with declining fields, it seems clear the NAPT probably needs those online qualifiers to keep flourishing.

We still await word on future NAPT events. I am sure some are in the works, though I’ve no guess when the announcement of those stops may come. I am not sure whether the looming deadline for banks and financial institutions to start enforcing the final regulations of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (on June 1) is necessarily a factor here, but I suppose it could be.

Obviously the UIGEA being enforced might prove something of a fly in the ointment for the NAPT, but I do hope it doesn’t overly affect the tour’s growth.

The Skill of the Players, the Skill of the Game

Played in the first of those invitationals in the Battle of the Bloggers Tournament 5 last night. There were 79 runners in this one I believe, and the top 15 spots paid. Thanks again to Sir AlCantHang for pulling the sucker together!

After a couple of hours and around 150 hands, I hadn’t been running particularly well though I felt okay about how things were shaping up. I sat with a little over 4,000 chips, which was below the average (about 5,000) with 47 players left. Blinds were 100/200, and I had just been moved to a new table that had several short stacks, plus a couple of folks in the top ten with about 10,000 each.

Soon I picked up pocket kings in the small blind, and it folded around to one of the big stacks who raised to 450 from the cutoff. The button folded, and I decided to put in a hefty reraise to 2,850, essentially saying I was ready to put the rest of my stack in here. The big blind folded and the LP player called.

Flop looked all right to me -- Q-7-7. My opponent had just called off nearly a third of his stack preflop, so for him to hold a seven felt unlikely. A queen seemed very possible, and as I went ahead and stuck the rest of my chips in the middle it occurred to me he’d probably have to call with a lesser pair or maybe even worse. He did call.

Alas, he did have a seven. Actually, he had two of them.

“Oof,” I typed, seeing he’d flopped quads. “Rigged,” he responded sympathetically. Two community cards later I was on the rail.

The hand made me think of a few weeks ago when I managed to flop quads a few times in short stretch while playing limit hold’em (wrote about that here). I remember looking around then to see the chances of doing so was something like 1 in 408 or something. The Poker Grump had calculated this once.

The hand also made me think about an exchange on The Poker Beat from a couple of episodes ago that I had meant to write about but forgot to -- one concerning that age-old “skill-vs.-luck” debate in poker. It was on the 4/8/10 episode, during the panel’s discussion of that recent ruling in a Pennsylvania appeals court that poker was “predominantly a game of chance.”

Host Scott Huff came up with what I thought was an interesting approach to the topic, even if it didn’t sound quite right when he proposed it. “Is it possible,” asked Huff, “that the way these courts are looking at it is that ‘Yes, while poker may be a game of skill, most people -- and I think we can all agree on this -- most people play poker as if it is a game of chance?”

Huff suggested going down to Hollywood Park Casino at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning to see how much “skill” was being employed in the games. Huff wondered if this state of affairs helped create the impression to non-players that poker really was “predominantly” luck-based. “Because in order for poker to be a game of skill,” concluded Huff, “you must be skillful at it. You must study the game.”

Like I say, it sounded like an interesting approach, although I remember at the time sensing there was something a little off about it. Gary Wise brought up one of those studies that shows most hands aren’t shown down -- not quite answering the question. B.J. Nemeth said it was a good point and jokingly wished Huff wouldn’t give poker’s opponents ammunition like this. Finally, Dan Michalski said that while he agreed poker was a game of skill we nevertheless “have to acknowledge that there’s so much chance involved, and when it comes to the politics of it, they are always going to be looking at it as gambling because it is something that is run by casinos.”

I didn’t think too much more about it, but then was reminded of Huff’s question again a couple of days later when I looked at the PokerRoad forums and saw that a poster had challenged his thesis that “in order for poker to be a game of skill, you must be skillful at it.”

You see the logical fallacy there, yes? A game can require skill regardless of how people play it. Indeed, how can one be skillful at a game if it does not require skill?

Such was the 6th Wilbury’s point on the forums, which included his noting that the presence of bad players in fact “supports the argument that poker is a game of skill” insofar as the difference between them and the skillful players is discernible.

Even so, I do think that when it comes to considering how non-players sometimes perceive poker, Huff probably has a point. Heck, even a game like golf can look mostly chance-based to the non-player. Makes sense to suggest that to those who don’t play the game -- who are often the ones drafting legislation or presiding over cases in which the question comes up -- poker sure can look like luck sometimes.

Especially when dudes are flopping quads on you.

BBT5 Begins, Betfair Interview

Hello, Friday. Has been another busy week here. I haven’t had the chance to play a heckuva lot lately -- just short sessions here and there -- although I always tend to do better when that is the case, so I ain’t complaining.

One bit of news this week was the launching of the Battle of the Bloggers Tournament 5, which gets underway this weekend. I’ve landed a spot in the invitational portion of the sucker, which means for the next few Sunday nights I’ll be playing some deep-stacked no-limit hold’em tourneys against my fellow scribes in the hopes of winning a seat into the Tournament of Champions that happens at the end of May.

There are other events associated with BBT5, too, to which all are invited to participate, with a bunch of goodies -- over $50,000 in cash and some WSOP seats -- up for grabs. Click here to read more about BBT5 and see the full schedule. And look for updates here regarding my efforts in those Sunday tourneys.

In other news, earlier in the week I enjoyed talking to the poker author and player Matthew Hilger. I interviewed Hilger for Betfair -- check it out.

Hilger runs a publishing company, Dimat Enterprises, which has put out several quality strategy books, including Hilger’s own Internet Texas Hold’em, a limit HE book of which I am a big fan.

Hilger also co-wrote The Poker Mindset with Ian Taylor, another book I like and have written about here before. A few times, actually.

Hilger and I discussed his books, the Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand a Time series by Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet, and other forthcoming titles from Dimat, including Jeff Hwang’s next PLO book. We also talked a bit about the state of poker book publishing, generally speaking.

I’ve really enjoyed the interviews I’ve done thus far for Betfair. I had done a couple for PokerNews previously as well. I am thinking at some point perhaps pulling together a list of the various interviews and articles I’ve written for other sites and posting them here somewhere, if only to keep track of ’em all. Always interesting to talk to the pros to get their insights and thoughts, and I also get a special kick out of talking to authors about the writing/publishing game, too.

The BBT5 awaits. Now I’m realizing I should’ve asked Hilger for tips on deep-stacked NLHE tourneys. I suppose patience will be in order. I think I’ll only open with suited pairs until the antes kick in.

Enjoy the weekend, all.

Picking Out a Bluff

“Bluff is the essence of poker,” writes David Spanier at the start of his 1977 collection of essays Total Poker (reviewed here). “It is lurking in every single hand of the game. Has he or hasn’t he got what he says he’s got?”

Bluffing indeed separates poker from other card games, and as Spanier suggests is for some the tell-tale feature that defines poker. In other words, it ain’t “poker” if you cannot pretend to have something other than what you have -- and, perhaps, win by doing so. Like the dog on the left there in C.M. Coolidge’s “A Bold Bluff” is trying to do in one of Coolidge’s “Dogs Playing Poker” series (which you can read more about here). In fact, one finds in some early references to poker the game actually being called “bluff” -- a nod to the poker’s most salient characteristic.

So the word “bluff” being used to indicate someone trying to represent a hand other than the one he or she is holding has a long, long history -- extending back almost as far as does the word “poker.” But the word itself was around before poker was, having other meanings.

The Oxford English Dictionary introduces “bluff” as a “a nautical word of uncertain origin” that once indicated “a broad flattened front,” although could be used when describing a number of possible objects, including part of a ship, a shore or coast-line “presenting a bold and almost perpendicular front,” or even a person’s face or forehead. From there the word took on figurative meanings as well, suggesting someone standing firm (e.g., “he stood bluff”) or being notably direct or blunt in one’s manner.

The word turns up in a couple of other contexts as well prior to becoming part of the vocabulary of poker. Stemming from that reference to the look of a shore or coast-line, the term starts being used to refer to any “cliff or headland with a broad precipitous face.” Among the representative OED quotes is one by Washington Irving noting “the wild and picturesque bluffs” as part of his description of a landscape. From that usage come even further references to river banks or any steep incline.

According to America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America by Allan Metcalf and David K. Barnhart, it is this topographical meaning of the word that got picked up and transferred over to poker. “Since a bluff puts up a high imposing front,” write the authors, “someone or something that put on a show of intimidation was [said to be] bluffing, a use attested as early as 1839.” The authors note that it was only a few years before that the first instances of the word “poker” turn up in the U.S.

There are other explanations for the word’s origin that have challenged that one. Another less prominant usage refers to “a blinker for a horse” -- that is some sort of cover for the eyes (also called “blinders”), say for horses drawing a carriage to keep them from getting distracted and running about. The OED says that appears to have led to a slang usage of “bluff” to mean “a false excuse intended to blindfold or hoodwink,” a connotation which then got picked up with reference to card games.

However, “the etymology [here] is quite unknown” says the dictionary, as that particular meaning “does not appear to have any possible connexion with BLUFF... [and] is probably one of numerous cant terms... which arose between the Restoration and the reign of Queen Anne” -- that is, the late 17th and early 18th centuries (well before poker came around). “It looks as if recent users have imagined a connexion,” adds the OED, making that explanation seem even more dubious.

Sounds as though the connection to an imposing looking cliff or steep hill is the one that has been given the most credence. That one does evoke that other, commonly known meaning of “bluff” still used today, making it seem even more persuasive.

But I can’t help wondering if that’s really the origin of the term. It’s not that it sounds too good to be true, but not good enough. Then again, I suppose that’s why the story is somewhat believable. So I guess I’ll believe it.

I don’t have enough information to challenge it, anyway. Not even a bluff-catcher.

What We’re Hearing About the Hearing

A hearing to consider Barney Frank’s two bills -- H.R. 2266, the Reasonable Prudence in Regulation Act & H.R. 2267, Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act -- had been scheduled for this Friday, April 16. The meeting of the House Financial Services Committee (which Frank chairs) was announced late last week, but soon after was postponed with no makeup date scheduled.

Both of those bills were proposed by Frank (D-MA) last spring. H.R. 2266 is a very brief bill that simply seeks to delay compliance with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 until December 1, 2010. That one currently has 55 co-sponsors (all but five of whom are Democrats). H.R. 2267 is a much more comprehensive bill proposing the licensing and regulation of online gambling in the United States -- a version of Frank’s earlier, failed IGREA from the previous Congress. H.R. 2267 currently has 66 co-sponsors (all but four Democrats).

The Poker Players Alliance is saying a new date for the hearing should be announced soon, although whenever the committee does get together, it doesn’t appear there will be any debate or “mark-up” of the two bills at that time. Rather, the primary purpose of the hearing looks to be to invite the feds (i.e., representatives of the Federal Reserve and Department of Treasury) to come and address the situation in broader terms -- that is, to discuss “Governmental Perspectives” on the issue of online gambling in the United States (as the scheduled hearing had been titled).

Two years ago there was a hearing in which two such representatives -- Louise Roseman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Valerie Abend of the Department of Treasury -- came to answer questions about the feasibility of enforcing the UIGEA. I wrote a long summary of that hearing (from early April 2008) here, titled “UIGEA Regs: Burden without Benefit? Without a Doubt.”

That meeting came at a time when the regulations for the UIGEA were still being worked out, and Roseman and Abend both made it clear that those trying to put together the regulations were finding it quite difficult thanks to the vague nature of the UIGEA as it is written. Following that meeting, it appeared the UIGEA might well have finally been sunk under the weight of its own inconsistencies and impracticality. But the feds pushed on, and by the end of the year had come up with the regulations which were then finalized (in November 2008).

Technically speaking, the UIGEA went into effect on January 19, 2009 -- the last full day of George W. Bush’s presidency -- though compliance was not made mandatory until December 1, 2009. In other words, banks and financial institutions can if they wish go ahead and try to enforce the UIGEA now and block transactions between their customers and online gambling sites, although they aren’t required to do so. It was during the last week of November 2009 that the feds decided to push forward that mandatory compliance date to June 1, 2010, having been encouraged to allow further discussion of the UIGEA, Frank’s proposed bills, and perhaps other possible avenues to handling the issue of online gambling in the U.S.

A hearing followed soon thereafter during the first week of December, and once again it appeared there was some genuine momentum gathering to stop the UIGEA from finally being enforced. But that momentum died down quickly, and we find ourselves now just a month-and-a-half away from the deadline.

My sense is that online poker players in the U.S. have already come to accept that the UIGEA is going to go into effect on June 1. Among those who pay any mind to it, that is. A lot of those who play aren’t really fretting over the UIGEA too greatly, believing that even with the law in place there will always be another way to get funds on and off online poker sites.

Having already decided the UIGEA is a done deal, it becomes difficult to get too excited over the possibility of another House hearing. Indeed, my sense perusing forums, blogs, and other sources of online poker talk is that few are paying much mind to any of these legal machinations, including the craziness happening here and there on the state level (e.g., Kentucky suing Full Tilt Poker over the rake).

Rather, as poker players have always tended to do, we play on. The game requires too much of our mental capacity for us to spare any on things we cannot control, anyway. In other words, it seems like news of these hearings being scheduled and/or postponed mostly fall on deaf ears.

Then again, I have a feeling that as we get closer to June 1 this here legislative chatter is probably going to get a bit louder. Indeed, it might well become impossible not to start listening.

Watching the Big Game

Looks like PartyPoker’s Big Game IV’s -- that nonstop 48-hour cash game being played at Les Ambassadeurs in London -- will be wrapping up within a few hours.

A couple of players, David “Viffer” Peat and Neil Channing, have been there from the start (although I believe Channing might have gotten voted off the table). Others who have been coming and going include Tony G, Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz, Jennifer Tilly, Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt, Isaac Haxton, Justin Bonomo, Roland de Wolfe, Andrew Feldman, and a few more.

I believe there were about 20 players altogether scheduled to play. For details on all of the action, including who is up and who is down, you can check out Adam “Snoopy1239” Goulding’s excellent live reports from the event over on the PartyPoker blog: Day 1 and Day 2.

Of course, the big story from the Big Game during the days leading up to it was the announcement that Isidur1 would be playing, thanks to the backing of Tony G. Such was thought to be the case up until the eve of the event when Tony G informed us on his blog that despite various arrangements having been made -- including allowing for the possibility of letting Isildur1 play while wearing a mask (no shinola) -- online poker’s international man of mystery had decided not to play.

Tony G -- who rode into the Big Game on a bike to the accompaniment of Queen’s “Bicycle Race” (natch) -- also notes that Isidur1 will be in Monte Carlo for the EPT Grand Final (scheduled at the end of April). We’ll see if that pans out.

While no official “outing” has happened yet, most seem to agree that Isildur1 is the young Swedish player Viktor Blom. Tony G said as much in late November 2009 (“I can reveal to all it is Viktor”), though later would equivocate and suggest he wasn’t as certain. Blom himself apparently denied being Isildur1 then, though soon it was determined the fellow issuing the denial wasn’t the poker player but another Viktor Blom. Speculation continued, with Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz adding his two cents last month in an interview for PokerPlayer U.K., saying he was indeed Blom.

Last month I wrote a post about Mike Matusow’s interview on the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast in which “The Mouth” offered some thoughts regarding Isildur1 and the high-stakes games in which he’s been participating over on Full Tilt. Had a comment on that one from Jeremiah (Smith, I believe) who’d spoken with Barry Greenstein about Isildur1, and the Bear told Jeremiah that he’d played with him in a tourney. Seems safe to say there are many in the poker community -- esp. among those who play high stakes -- who know who Isildur1 is.

Kara Scott has been there at Les Ambassadeurs hosting the televised coverage of the Big Game that will be airing later this year in the U.K. before being shopped around internationally. Once she’s done with that, I’ll be talking with her for an upcoming Betfair piece. Definitely plan to ask her about the Big Game as well as “High Stakes Poker” and see what she has to say about our fascination with these high-stakes games.

The fact is, while the “Who is Isildur1?” thing is no doubt interesting, even when we know the players’ names and what they look like, they still often tend to captivate a lot of us who aren’t playing for the highest stakes. Indeed, the very fact that they are playing for such high stakes necessarily makes them mysterious to us (in a way), adding a layer of intrigue that they may or may not deserve, but which nevertheless often grabs our attention.

As Al Alvarez puts it in The Biggest Game in Town, when it comes to high-stakes players, “It is a question not just of a different level of skill but of a different ordering of reality.” In other words, they are not like us. They see the world in a different way. They do things we wouldn’t do.

You know, like ride a bicycle indoors.

Women and the WSOP

As I said I would do on Friday, over the weekend I ended up following the NAPT Mohegan Sun online, reading along to find yesterday afternoon that Vanessa Selbst had won the sucker, besting the field of 716 to take it down. (That there final table photo was taken by the great Joe Giron, by the way, who was there helping cover the event for the PokerStars blog.)

With that win, the Deuces Cracked instructor and Yale law school student earned $750,000, moving her career tourney earnings over the $1.65 million mark.

It sounded like the tournament played out in a similar fashion to the way the 2008 WSOP $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event did that Selbst won. There Selbst also built a big stack early on, then led the tourney almost wire-to-wire, using her chips and aggressive play to keep opponents from gaining any momentum against her.

I helped cover that PLO event for PokerNews in 2008, and it was probably the most exciting one I saw that summer. Some might recall that tourney (Event No. 19) was the one in which Jamie Pickering began ordering drinks for himself and the rail as soon as they had reached heads up, then started raising pot without looking at his hole cards, helping create a wild scene. Here’s a HBP post that discusses some of the craziness: “Reporting from the Eye of the Hurricane.”

I covered several PLO events that summer, and began noticing how women tended not to show up for those tournaments. The PLO event that Selbst won had 759 entrants, and I recall there being perhaps no more than a dozen women in the starting field total, if that. With 100 players left, Selbst had a huge chip lead, at which time I believe there were only two women left -- Allyn Jaffrey Shulman (who finished 41st) and Kathy Liebert (72nd). (EDIT [added 4 p.m. ET]: I should have also remembered here that the BwOP finished 86th in this one, as described in her recap of the event here.)

As Selbst won yesterday, a few of us on Twitter began discussing what her victory perhaps might signify in terms of women and poker. Like some of the other NAPT events, the Mohegan Sun Main Event will get an airing on ESPN in a few weeks (on May 10th, according to the schedule), so Selbst will get quite a bit more publicity for this one than she did for the 2008 WSOP win which was not televised.

As folks were tweeting comments back and forth, it was noted that Selbst was the last woman to win an open bracelet event at the WSOP. That’s when a question occurred to me. Who was the last woman to win an open no-limit hold’em event at the WSOP? Besides Annette Obrestad, that is, who won the 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event.

I posed the question, and pretty soon it became clear that perhaps I had asked a trick question. Had a woman ever won a NLHE bracelet at the WSOP that wasn’t in the Ladies, Seniors, Casino Employees, or Mixed Doubles events?

I could be wrong, but the answer seems to be no. Looks like a total of 12 women have won WSOP bracelets in open events. (Again, not including Obrestad’s 2007 WSOPE win here.) Jennifer Harman is the only one to have done it twice. Here’s the (unofficial) list:

Vera Richmond (1982, $1,000 A-5 Draw)
Barbara Enright (1996, $2,500 Pot-Limit HE)
Linda Johnson (1997, $1,500 Razz)
Maria Stern (1997, $1,500 Seven-Card Stud)
Jerri Thomas (2000, $1,500 Seven-Card Stud)
Jennifer Harman (2000, $5000, NL 2-7; 2002, $5,000 Limit HE)
Nani Dollison (2001, $2,000 Limit HE)
Cyndy Violette (2004, $2,000 Seven-Card Stud/8)
Kathy Liebert (2004, $1,500 Limit HE Shootout)
Annie Duke (2004, $1,500 Omaha/8)
Katja Thater (2007, $1,500 Razz)
Vanessa Selbst (2008, $1,500 PLO)

Enright’s win in a PLHE event looks to be the closest thing here. Enright has two more bracelets (in ladies-only events) plus that 5th place in the WSOP Main Event -- the best ever by a woman -- in 1995. Nani Dollison also has two more bracelets in ladies-only events.

One other interesting bit of WSOP trivia: The year Maria Stern won her bracelet in the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud event (1997), her husband, Max, also won two bracelets, including one in Seven-Card Stud/8.

Who will be the first woman to win a WSOP bracelet in an NLHE event in Vegas? Will it happen this year? Favorites would have to include Selbst, Obrestad, Liebert, and Vanessa Rousso, I’d think, though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else breaks through to be the first.