Thoughts About Not Thinking

Was writing yesterday about going deep in that $1 tourney on PokerStars which ended -- for me -- with what seemed a disproportionately small payoff for having outlasted exactly 1,201 players (98.36% of the field!). I kind of deserved it, though, having jumped into the sucker like I did without really thinking.

Football was on when I’d begun the tourney, and it was still playing when I finished, now having switched to that New York Jets-Miami Dolphins game. I left it on, but didn’t really pay close attention, and in fact made a run to the grocery as it headed toward its conclusion in order to pick up some dinner for Vera and myself.

Among the items I got for us were a couple of roasted chicken leg quarters. As we ate, I told Vera a little about the tourney and how I’d won five bucks for my efforts. “Winner winner chicken dinner,” she grinned, noting how I’d won just about what the meal had cost.

The Jets-Dolphins game ended as we ate, and we noticed afterwards on the post-game how they kept showing a replay of a certain play involving a Miami player running down the sideline. Eventually we’d figure out what had happened on the play.

It was late in the third quarter when Miami, leading 10-3, punted to the Jets. Miami player Nolan Carroll was racing down the sideline, having been blocked out of bounds by a couple of feet, when he suddenly tripped and fell. When the play concluded, Carroll remained on the ground, apparently injured.

The replay showed that -- incredibly -- a Miami assistant, Sal Alosi, appeared to stick his knee out slightly as Carroll had run past, thus causing Carroll to fall! The video from NFL.com shows that announcers spotted the action immediately:

After the game, Alosi did not try to deny or explain away the incident, but rather admitted he’d done exactly what it looked like he’d done, and was apologetic and unreservedly self-critical in his statement.

“I made a mistake that showed total lapse in judgment,” said Alosi shortly after the game. “My conduct was inexcusable and unsportsmanlike,” he added, saying that he alone “accept[ed] full responsibility for [his] actions as well as any punishment that follows.”

Luckily Carroll was not injured. (That Alosi is a strength and conditioning coach only adds an extra layer of “wtf” to the incident.) Yesterday Alosi spoke to the media again and once more apologized.

“I wasn’t thinking,” he said. “If I could go back and do it again, I’d sure as heck take a step back.”

Last night Vera and I had a vegetable medley (peas, corn, greens, and mac & cheese). Among the topics of our dinner conversation, we discussed the incident with the Jets coach who’d acted without thinking and had made a regrettable mistake.

We talked about how the incident might be compared to certain kinds of cheating or “angle-shooting” that occasionally come up in poker that perhaps could be described as analogous to what Alosi had done.

I mentioned a recent poll on Two Plus Two asking posters what they would do if they “stumbled” onto a so-called “superuser” account and could see opponents’ hole cards while they played, and how the great majority of those who responded chose “profit” over “inform site about the glitch.” Vera pointed out how that didn’t really correspond to Alosi’s having acted “without thinking,” although it did perhaps say something similar about human nature.

We talked about the common occurrence of catching a glimpse of one’s neighbor’s hole cards at the table, but that, too, seemed to fail as an analogy. I suppose you could say that having someone failing to protect his or her cards sitting next to you presents an opportunity to try to cheat -- sort of like that Dolphins player running down the sideline toward you as you stood there coaching the other team -- and you either “get out of the way” or don’t.

But again, it’s hard to draw a perfect comparison here. Alosi described his action as somehow instinctive or irrational. “I wasn’t thinking,” is what he said. He also has described what he did as “an illogical act by a logical person.” In other words, it almost doesn’t sound like his action was a genuine attempt to “cheat” per se, but rather an example of someone having gotten carried away by his own competitiveness -- an overly emotional, “heat of battle” kind of response.

Which is sort of understandable, I guess. Although the more I think about it, I can’t help but believe most of us would have acted differently there. That is to say, our instinct would have been to follow the rules, to protect ourselves and each other, to get out of the damn way...

And to have done so without thinking.

I might be wrong, though. Too Pollyannaish for my own good. Four out of five posters in that Two Plus Two poll say they’d cheat if they could. Maybe there’s something about competition that necessarily turns us against one another, especially when the stakes get really high.

What do you think?

Stopped Short of the Goal Line

Was kind of a comical afternoon, really. My Carolina Panthers were getting thrashed once more. Fumbling on the first play. Falling down 14-0 within first five minutes. Ending the first quarter with fewer total yards than the Falcons had points. On their way to making it 1-12 on the season, the NFL’s worst.

How they even won one game this year is baffling, to be honest.

Bored, I idly registered for a $1 “Twitter” no-limit hold’em tourney on PokerStars. As did 1,220 others. A couple of hours later we were in the “money” (as it were). And a couple of hours after that I was one of 19 players still with chips. I joked on Twitter that first prize -- a little over $200 -- was “afternoon-changing” money.

Of course, by that point -- sitting with about twice the average stack and feeling fairly confident about my abilities relative to those of my opponents -- I had started to believe I had a genuine chance at claiming that modest little score.

The tourney had gotten stuck on 19 left for some time. The blinds were 2,000/4,000, which meant the average stack was around 15 big blinds or so, if I remember correctly. Everyone’s stacks had been fluctuating, with the shorties having survived a number of all-in shoves. I think I was as high as third place at one point.

Then came more comedy.

At our six-handed table, I raised with pocket jacks and it folded to the big blind who reshoved his stack of 30,000 or so. I called, he showed K-K, and I lost about a quarter of my stack, slipping to about 90K.

Two orbits later another short stack open-raised his stack of 30,000 and I took up the challenge with pocket eights. He turned over , and when the flop came things were looking fairly grim for my opponent. But a king on the turn and a jack on the river gave him the runner-runner straight, and he and I were both sitting on stacks of about 60K.

I fought back, though, and in fact managed to build back up over 130K, mostly without having to show hands, although there was one showdown in there when after flopping an ace my A-Q proved best.

Then came another preflop all-in battle, with the same player who’d previously hit that Broadway straight, as it happened. He’d shoved about 60K (15 big blinds) with A-K, and I’d called with pocket tens. Board ... . Another Broadway straight, again on the river, and we’d swapped stacks, with him now enjoying having about 120K, while I had slipped to 60K.

By now the table was having some fun in the chatbox marveling at my repeated misfortunes. I didn’t mind, and was giving my nemesis some good-natured grief over it all. Even though I’d become short-stacked, I still had chips and felt reasonably fine about my chances, especially when I picked up on the very next hand.

My chips went in the middle, and my nemesis -- the same fellow -- called me with . The community cards brought two jacks, and that was that. Out in 19th, with not even five bucks as a parting prize.

I hardly ever play tourneys. I usually enjoy ’em, and probably overall do okay -- maybe better than okay -- when I do. There are a couple of reasons why I often don’t find myself choosing tourneys when I sit down to play, though.

One is the time commitment. I much prefer hopping in and out of cash games for short sessions than being stuck for hours in a tourney.

Secondly, tourney regulars have to be especially well-suited to handling a lot of losing. After all, even the best players only cash once every five to ten times they play, and actually win the suckers very, very rarely. It’s part of becoming a skilled tourney player, really -- not just learning and improving on one’s strategy, but being able to learn how to deal with coming up short again and again. And again.

And even though I might get a perverse pleasure out of seeing my miserable Panthers find new ways to disappoint each week, I have to admit I can’t quite get used to the losing.

eBook Gift Ideas (McGuire & Angelo)

I suppose I’m pretty much an “old school” guy. In some respects, anyway.

To give you an idea, it really wasn’t until I was pretty far along in my academic career that I started writing papers on a computer. Up to then used a typewriter, natch. In fact -- if you can believe it -- I would sometimes literally “cut and paste” sentences out of drafts when putting together an essay.

Yeah, I know what your thinkin’. Right, grandpa... and this was all done by candelight, yes? And did you ride on back of the horse or were you pulled in a carriage to get to class?

All of which means when it comes to books, it shouldn’t be that surprising to hear that I’ve yet to try out the Kindle or any of the other many “eBook” readers out there about which I’ve heard such good things. I’ve also resisted making my hard-boiled detective novel, Same Difference, available as an eBook, although perhaps I should consider doing so at some point.

Anyhow, I wanted to share the news about two poker-related titles that have recently been made available in the eBook form. These are both books I like a lot (in the print versions I own), and would certainly recommend either to any of you trying to come up with holiday gift ideas for your poker-playin’ buds who can presently handle this whole eBook thing more comfortably than can I.

One is Dr. Pauly’s chronicle of his Vegas experiences, circa 2004-2008, titled Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker. The book mostly focuses on the good Doctor’s reporting on the WSOP, although there is much else in there, too, that together helps create an interesting and provocative commentary on Las Vegas and its current place in our culture.

I reviewed Lost Vegas for Betfair shortly after it appeared this summer, if you want a more extensive rundown of what you can expect to find in the book. And like I say, if the eBook thing works for you, you can now pick up a copy in that form (click here for more info).

Another fave poker title of mine has also recently become available as an eBook, Tommy Angelo’s excellent Elements of Poker. It has been just about three years since this one first snuck onto the scene, not really a strategy book but more of a “how to think about poker” kind of text that features a lot of insightful, clever writing and discussion.

I reviewed Elements here on Hard-Boiled Poker some time ago. Just a couple of weeks ago the book became available as an eBook, and you can head over to Angelo’s site for more info on that.

Taking the new eBook version of Elements as an occasion to do so, I interviewed Angelo for Betfair poker, and that interview just went up today. Those familiar with Elements or his articles -- or who might have heard him interviewed elsewhere -- know that he’s an especially interesting (and funny) guy. And if you aren’t familiar with the poker coach and author, the interview should serve as a decent introduction.

Like I say, I’ll get around to this here eBook stuff soon enough. Am actually looking at moving here soon, and am feeling a little sick inside at the thought of boxing up these hundreds and hundreds of books I’ve accumulated during my lifetime and carting them to a new location. I’m thinking this move may very well push me over the edge to give the eBook thing a try. If I survive it, that is.

Adding to the Cacophony: More on the “Reid bill”

Yesterday was certainly an interesting day for those of us curious about the fate of “Reid bill,” a.k.a. the “Prohibition of Internet Gaming, Internet Poker Regulation and UIGEA Enforcement Act” proposed by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) late last week (discussed here).

Lots of rumors swirling every which way on Wednesday regarding the bill’s possible fate, fueled in part by a bit of misleading reporting by the Las Vegas Sun.

Late in the afternoon, the Sun fired off a story with the headline “Harry Reid: Online poker falls off agenda” announcing that the Senate Majority Leader was no longer pursuing having the bill added as a rider to any other legislation, most particularly the tax bill that has taken absolute precedence for this lame-duck Congress.

That headline sounded pretty definitive. But the article itself was much less so. A quote from Reid in the article regarding his plans seemed ambiguous -- that is, it didn’t appear to indicate at all that he’d abandoned the fight to get some sort of licensing and regulatory scheme for online poker in the U.S. passed before the 111th Congress closes up shop.

And, as it turned out, that wasn’t the case at all.

After what I assume was a bit more legwork by the reporter, the article was quickly revised and given a new, very different headline: “Reid’s office: Legalizing online poker still on lame-duck agenda.” According to the updated article, a Reid spokesman explained away the earlier quote, saying “the Senator’s comment got muddled in the cacophony of the Senate hallways.”

Kind of a cacophony, too, on Twitter, in the forums, on various blogs and websites, and elsewhere with regard to this bill -- both in terms of its potential to become law and what exactly would happen should that come to pass.

I had to laugh when yesterday I noticed a new poll over on Two Plus Two in the Poker Legislation forum asking the question “Do you want the ‘Reid bill’ to pass?” The poll’s results show an almost perfect divide between those who want to see it pass and those who do not.

Worth remembering, I think, who exactly is being polled here -- namely, poker players, probably all of whom play online regularly. Collectively, they don’t know what to think about the prospects of this bill, what with its temporary “blackout” period during which online poker apparently will be unavailable to U.S. players (other than via “black market” means), and its subsequent reorientation of the market to favor new casino-run sites and (apparently) sweeping aside the sites on which we presently play for a while. (Or for good?)

Makes me wonder... if the players aren’t even sure about it, how are legislators -- who obviously will be using an entirely different set of criteria to judge whether or not to support the bill -- responding to it?

From what I have heard, if the bill does indeed get added to the tax bill, it will most assuredly be passed. The real question, however, is whether or not Reid will be successful in that quest to get his “Prohibition of Internet Gaming, Internet Poker Regulation and UIGEA Enforcement Act” added.

And as far as that goes, I think anyone who says he or she knows definitively what will happen next is just making more noise -- adding further to the cacophony, you might say.

Four Kings, One Joker

Was goofin’ as usual at the short-handed, dime-and-a-quarter pot-limit Omaha tables yesterday. Had a couple of tables up and began badly, but made a comeback. Was up a bit and about to hit the road when the following hand came up.

Had the button and at this table the current big stack. One empty seat meant we were five-handed. I watched as the player under the gun limped and the next folded, putting the action on me. The previous orbits had proven my four opponents were mostly just playing their cards, and usually only if they were especially pretty-lookin’. In other words, there’d been little funny business from any of ’em. Lotsa limpin’. Bets meant made hands. Calls meant draws. And folds all else.

Was one of those “probably-raising-no-matter-what” kind of spots. But wait. What have I been dealt? Four kings.

I currently have about 85,000 hands or so loaded into PokerTracker Omaha -- by no means a complete run, but I’ve been lazy about loading previous years’ worth of hands in there. A quick look shows that in all of those hands, I’ve started with four cards of the same rank exactly once before -- four sixes. In that hand, I folded (promptly, I imagine) to a raise.

Poking around online, I see the odds of being dealt four cards of the same rank in Omaha are apparently a bit worse than 1 in 20,000. Not surprising, then, that there isn’t a lot of discussion about how to play such a hand. No need, of course -- most PLO players know it’s a stinker. Indeed, I’d imagine anyone foolhardy enough to create a “hand rankings” chart of the 16,432 distinct hands in PLO would probably be putting those 13 “four of a kind” hands right at the very bottom of the sucker.

I mean, really, it’s a truly miserable hand. Sort of like a used car with a couple of hundred thousand miles already on it. Not worth much, and can only depreciate further. Can’t make a straight. Or a flush. The community cards could turn the hand into two pair or a full house, I suppose, but that’s just silly talk.

I have a fuzzy memory of Bob Ciaffone talking about the prospect of being dealt four aces in Omaha. I believe it comes up in his Omaha Poker, and I’m pretty sure he was referring to Omaha/8, in which having an ace among your starting four is more crucial than in PLO. Seems like Ciaffone said something about wanting to raise that hand to see if he could force out everyone, since he’d know they couldn’t have aces. (Been searching the book and haven’t found the passage.)

Like I say, I was about to quit. And being up a bit, my capacity for mischief had been increased a touch. So, with full awareness of how loony it was to do so, I decided to play my four kings. Thinking I might at least knock out the blinds, I raised pot. But both blinds came along, as did the original limper.

Four kings. Four players. Pot four-forty. I smiled and shook my head, quietly telling myself “you deserved that.”

But then the flop came . And all three checked. The action on me, I realized that’s about the best flop I could have hoped for. So I bet. (RSSers, you might need to click through.)



The joker wins.

Stars Scoops Isildur1

I mean, it seems like this qualifies as a scoop. Doesn’t it? In a couple of senses, actually.

Early this morning, PokerStars sent out a presser announcing that “online poker phenomenon” Isildur1 had been signed on as the latest Team PokerStars Pro. (Here is the article reporting the news on the PokerStars blog.) Kind of a “hot off the presses” deal here, although the story has already begun to spread quickly onto the usual sites and forums, as well as via Twitter, Facebook, carrier pigeon, etc.

But the signing also seems like a “scoop” in terms of PokerStars having grabbed up a player so directly identified with its nearest competitor, Full Tilt Poker. Wouldn’t you say?

It was a little over a year ago, if you recall, that Isildur1 first grabbed our attention by playing highest-stakes heads-up matches on Full Tilt Poker against the site’s top players -- both the sponsored “red” pros and others. Seemingly having appeared out of nowhere, the then-unknown Isildur1 suddenly appeared playing the likes of Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Cole South, Brian Townsend, Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, Brian Hastings, and others on a nightly basis, experiencing mammoth swings of millions of dollars in both directions while driving the railbirds wild.

I recall having railed the games myself one Saturday night in late November 2009, watching as Isildur1 played six tables of $500/$1,000 pot-limit Omaha versus both Ivey and Antonius while also participating in a $25,000 buy-in PLO heads-up tournament on Full Tilt. That was the night of the $1,356,946.50 pot versus Antonius -- the biggest-ever pot in online cash game history -- which you can read further about here.

The “Isildur1 Saga” (as it was often dubbed) only lasted a few short months, actually, fading rapidly as the final days of 2009 came to a close. The saga’s final episodes were marked by controversy after Brian Hastings enjoyed a massive session versus the mysterious Isildur1 in which the college student earned $4.2 million on what was essentially a short break from studying for exams.

Hastings later let it be known that he and Brian Townsend had shared some data with one another regarding Isildur1’s play, perhaps violating the site terms for Full Tilt Poker. I wrote about that here in a post titled “Digging for Gold (Mining Isildur1),” then also about the possibility that Isildur1 might be filing a complaint of some kind with Full Tilt in “Grab Your Popcorn (Isildur1 v. Full Tilt).” (One wonders if perhaps this hubbub might’ve negatively affected the possibility of Isildur1 ever becoming a Full Tilt Poker red pro.)

Isildur1 disappeared from the scene as 2010 began, though we did briefly see “The Return of Isildur1” in late March. Like most sequels, though, it disappointed, though there were some interesting PLO hands between Isildur1 and Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond during that stretch.

In April it was announced that Isildur1 would be playing in PartyPoker’s Big Game -- finally acknowledging once and for all his true identity -- though he backed out at the last minute. More recently came rumors that a player on PokerStars from Sweden named “grolongo” might in fact be Isildur1, though such rumors were never ultimately confirmed.

Viktor Blom, the player generally thought to be the mysterious Isildur1, then turned up at the World Series of Poker Europe in September where he battled Phil Ivey for the chip lead in the Main Event during the middle stages of the tournament before finishing 16th.

Speaking of rumors, there had been some buzz lately -- especially during the last couple of weeks -- that Blom/Isildur1 might have signed a deal of some sort with a major site. A few days ago there was an article over on Gutshot noting that within the last couple of months Blom had moved out of his apartment in Sweden, where taxes on gambling winnings are inordinately high -- the primary reason, say most, for all of the intrigue surrounding identifying Isildur1. Reaction to that news included some speculating that the move might have been connected to Blom having signed with an online site.

Most interestingly, the PokerStars press release does not identify Isildur1 definitively, instead noting that his “real identity is set to be unveiled in the near future.” The article on the PokerStars blog suggests that Isildur1 “MAY be revealed” prior to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January. Also, there will soon be occurring some scheduled heads-up matches on PokerStars involving Isildur1, a “Super Showdown” series consisting of 2,500-hand sessions at stakes of at least $50/$100. The first match is scheduled for December 19th at 18:00 ET against a yet-to-be-named opponent.

So it sounds like the stakes won’t quite match those of the matches from a year ago -- not at first, anyway. And one imagines the buzz surrounding Isildur1’s play can’t possibly reach the level of last year, either.

But whatever hype does happen, it appears Stars -- and not Full Tilt -- has the scoop.

Getting a Reid on the Situation: On the “Prohibition of Internet Gaming, Internet Poker Regulation and UIGEA Enforcement Act”

You’ve no doubt heard by now that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), currently the Senate Majority Leader, has proposed a new bill in the Senate that has gotten those of us who enjoy online poker sitting up in our chairs. There had been rumors of an attempt to pass some type of online gambling-related legislation during this brief “lame duck” session of Congress, and the appearance of Reid’s bill appears to have confirmed such rumors as having been well-founded.

A draft of the 75-page bill became available late last week, and if you have an interest in these things I encourage you to take a look at F-Train’s “quick and dirty” summary of the bill, to follow Pokerati’s ongoing reporting on it, to read B.J. Nemeth's “Early Analysis,” and/or to check out the Poker Legislation forum over at Two Plus Two to find out more about the bill as well as to keep up on what’s happening with it.

My understanding is that even though the proposed bill is comprehensively argued and full of detail -- in other words, more carefully composed than was the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 -- it is nonetheless still a draft version and apparently changes have already been made prior to its receiving any discussion or vote.

Like the Barney Frank-sponsored bills that have come before, Reid’s bill also proposes a way to license and regulate online gambling in the United States -- that is, to allow operators to set up shop here in America, if they play along with all the provisions and secure themselves licenses to do so -- one big difference being that Reid’s bill only allows for poker and not other forms of gambling.

In fact, Reid’s bill does more than simply outline a scheme to license and regulate online poker; it also seeks to reinforce current efforts to curb other types of online gambling, including strengthening that poorly-constructed UIGEA with some more specifics such as creating a list of “unlicensed gambling enterprises” so the banks know for certain the sites with which they are supposed to be blocking their customers’ transactions.

Thus is the bill’s short title -- “Prohibition of Internet Gaming, Internet Poker Regulation and UIGEA Enforcement Act” -- is already kind of long, indicating the extensive ambitions it contains.

The scuttlebutt appears to suggest the possibility that the bill could get tacked on to some other legislation and passed through Congress without extensive fuss, not unlike what occurred with the UIGEA back in the fall of 2006. Or at least that is the most likely short-term scenario by which Reid’s bill will become law, since the current Congress is occupied with more pressing concerns such as whether or not to extend those “Bush-era tax cuts” in some form or another.

I’m not going to attempt to make any sort of exhaustive analysis or summary of the bill in its current form, both because of its status as a draft and because (as always) I feel somewhat out of my element when it comes to understanding the legislative process. Sure, I’m a good enough reader, but this stuff almost never translates into something entirely coherent and/or logical. To my jingle-brain, anyway.

I will, however, share three kind of general reactions to the news of Reid’s bill.

First off, it does not sound as though the bill if passed would be such great news to any of the current “U.S.-facing” online poker sites -- most particularly the two largest ones, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker -- all of whom apparently will be swiftly swept away from the U.S. market for an extended period of time should Reid’s bill become law.

The bill as written requires that no licenses to operate online poker sites in the U.S. will be issued until 15 months after the bill becomes law. Furthermore, the bill includes provisions to prevent issuing licenses to anyone but U.S.-based casino operators (or other business entities who have been involved in the industry here in the states for five years or more) for the first two years after that. In other words, Stars, Full Tilt, Cake, the Cereus delinquents, and others would all have to sit in the penalty box (so to speak) for at least 39 months before coming back to the U.S.

The idea here is obviously to try to develop this new market of online poker in the U.S. in such a way as to ensure its primary beneficiaries are U.S.-based (and, not incidentally, significant backers of Reid’s campaigns).

Have to say, the prospect of suddenly losing Stars or Full Tilt does not excite me much. Nor does sitting around for a couple of years or more waiting to get back online to play on other sites make me feel any better about that situation. So that’s one response -- perhaps inspired by short-term thinking, but hard to avoid.

A second reaction is to fret a bit over all the ways states can “opt-in” or “opt-out” when deciding whether or not to allow licensees to operate. In other words, even with online poker becoming licensed and regulated in the U.S., I wonder if my state will still keep me away from the tables.

Added to that are other less crucial concerns about taxation and other specifics that might introduce unwanted changes to the way I play online poker today. I’m not saying I don’t want to pay tax on my winnings -- I do that already. Rather, I’m uncertain about how regulation might negatively affect both my own experience playing and perhaps that of others, too.

I suppose, then, you can file these first two reactions under the general heading of “resistance to change,” with a bit of cynicism thrown in there, as well, inspired by the thought of our federal government successfully managing the complicated process of licensing, regulating, and taxing online poker.

I have one other reaction, too, to share, namely some doubts about whether or not Reid will be able to sneak his bill through during these final days of the 111th Congress.

I could be wrong -- indeed, understanding the political realities affecting the legislative process is perhaps the most nebulous part of all of this for me. But it seems like the situation Reid faces is much different than the one then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist enjoyed back in 2006 when he played a major role in getting the UIGEA signed into law.

We all remember how the UIGEA was stealthily appended to that “must pass” legislation, the SAFE Port Act, back in 2006 just as the 109th Congress was closing up shop for that fall’s elections. (Incidentally, I have read analyses of the SAFE Port Act that are critical of it as having been -- like the UIGEA -- mostly impotent with regard to its intended purposes.) We were right to criticize the lack of debate in Congress at the time over the UIGEA in particular -- to feel something undeserved had occurred, somehow, as though we’d played our hand reasonably well and were nonetheless sucked out on in the end.

The SAFE Port Act (with the UIGEA) was passed by Congress late in the evening of September 30, 2006, then later signed into law by President Bush on October 13th. In fact, there had been an earlier attempt to sneak the UIGEA through a few days before. Sen. Frist had tried to append it to a defense spending bill, but was blocked from doing so by other senators. In other words, it isn’t as though one man -- as powerful as he might be -- can alone decide to pass a bill through both houses of Congress. Others have to go along with the plan.

And when it came to the UIGEA, that sucker had been around a long, long time -- in various forms, that is -- having been proposed again and again for nearly a full decade before. And in July 2006, the House of Representatives had passed H.R. 4411, the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act proposed by Jim Leach (R-AZ), by a 317-93 vote (with 22 absent/not voting). That is to say, while the Senate never really debated the UIGEA (a whittled-down version of Leach’s bill) in late September 2006, senators at least knew the thing had been discussed and approved on the other side of Capitol Hill.

It seems to me that the situation surrounding Reid’s bill is entirely different. Neither the full House nor the Senate has been given a chance to discuss or vote on any of Frank’s earlier bills designed to license and regulate online gambling in the U.S. And there really hasn’t been any discussion even on the committee level regarding an online poker-only licensing and regulatory scheme.

So there isn’t really much of a history of legislative debate for Reid’s bill. Nor does there exist any obvious support for the idea it proposes such as that House vote on H.R. 4411 suggested for the UIGEA. All of which makes me think it less likely that Reid’s bill could be successfully snuck through as an add-on to some other legislation over the next few days.

Of course, as I have said (repeatedly), I could well be wrong here with my read. It’s not as though these things tend to follow easily predictable paths.

Even so, my general impression at the moment is to feel mostly ambivalent, and not terribly optimistic -- neither about the idea of Reid’s vision for online poker in the U.S., nor the prospects of such occurring.

(EDIT [added 12/7/10]: There is a new draft of the bill, and F-Train has again broken it down and delivered a handy synopsis translated into regular talk.)

Audacity and Poker

I haven’t added it up, but I probably spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-plus hours or so in airplanes getting to and from Marrakech, Morocco to help cover the WPT-Chilipoker event last week.

Spent much of that time either listening to tunes or reading. Music-wise it was Steve Hillage, Cheap Trick, Metric, Tortoise, Brian Eno, Eric Dolphy, and a few others filling out the playlist. And as far as reading went, I was in mostly hard-boiled mode for much of the time, including reading through a couple of novels, George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972) and James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity (1936).

Have probably read the latter a half-dozen times -- a short, tough, no-nonsense novel about an insurance salesman who gets involved with a femme fatale to plot her husband’s murder. Was first serialized in 1936, published in book form in 1943, then adapted as an excellent film noir in 1944, a film directed by Billy Wilder and co-scripted by Wilder and Raymond Chandler.

While these travels have interrupted my progress a little, I continue to work on a second novel, another murder mystery as was the case for the first one, Same Difference. (Available via Amazon, Lulu, and elsewhere!) I’d certainly list Cain among a handful of writers whom I’d call direct influences, and would love to be able to produce a story as lean and mean as Double Indemnity.

I’ve always thought there were many links between this mode of storytelling -- the crime/detective/mystery stories typical of “hard-boiled” fiction -- and the kinds of stories produced by the game of poker. While Same Difference has no poker in it per se, there’s a lot of gamesmanship and strategy and “partial information” that one might say makes the unfolding of the plot not unlike the unfolding of a hand of poker.

Thus am I constantly reminded of poker while reading such books. Happened again with this latest read of Cain’s novel. More than once, in fact, although I wanted to share just one example.

Near the beginning of the novel, the insurance salesman, Walter Huff, and Phyllis Nirdlinger quickly decide upon the plan to murder her husband and collect insurance from a policy Huff himself has sold to them. It is an audacious plan, with lots of potential pitfalls that could sabotage it. But Huff believes he has everything worked out.

Speaking of audacity, when it comes to the murder itself, Huff insists that it must be carried out boldly -- that audacity, in fact, is one of “three essential elements to a successful murder.” The first element is having help to carry out the murder -- that is, a co-conspirator. The second, says Huff, is careful planning, knowing the time and place well in advance.

“The third is, audacity,” says Huff. “That’s the one all amateur murderers forget... [the one] only a professional knows.”

He goes on to describe to Phyllis the example of a gangster-style killing, with the victim being shot in front of a crowded movie theater: “right there, in the glare of the lights, with a couple hundred people looking on, they let him have it.” What happens, explains Huff, is the witnesses haven’t time to provide adequate eyewitness testimony, the spectacle of the shooting being too intense -- too wildly out-of-context -- for them to be able to say for certain what exactly they saw.

“They were only seen for a second,” says Huff of the killers, “by people who were so scared they didn’t know what they were looking at -- and there isn’t a chance to convict them.”

This ability to act with audacity is something that distinguishes the pros from the amateurs in poker, too. One could pursue the analogy further, I suppose, and talk about possessing a “killer instinct,” but that’s not necessarily what I’m getting at here. Rather, I’m referring more generally to being ready and willing to act boldly -- to make plays that are unexpected or perhaps may “expose” one, and be undeterred by worries about consequences while making them.

Such seems an important -- perhaps even essential -- skill that helps some players “get away with stuff” while others cannot. Put in such situations, only a few can act audaciously and “pull the trigger,” it seems, while most haven’t the capacity to follow through.

So... is Huff’s plan audacious enough to work? Go read Double Indeminity and find out.

Nominated! Bluff Reader’s Choice Awards (Favorite Poker Blog)

Traveling can be great fun, no doubt. Of course, one of the greatest things about traveling is coming home.

Got a good night’s sleep, although I did wake up a few times with fleeting thoughts of posting hands, searching for wi-fi connectivity, and racing to make flight connections. One time when I woke, I actually thought I was slumped in an airplane seat, and when I realized where I was -- in my own bed -- I was overjoyed to realize I’d been mistaken.

Will be spending the day finishing unpacking and getting further reoriented. A lot of catching up to do, and so haven’t too much time today to write.

I did, however, want to share some nifty news -- Hard-Boiled Poker has been nominated as a “favorite poker blog” as part of Bluff Magazine’s recently announced, sixth annual “Reader’s Choice Awards.” No shinola! (Unless, of course, this is yet another dream, which is possible.)

Am reasonably certain that anyone reading this blog probably also keeps up with and digs (like me) the other nominees -- Wicked Chops Poker, Pokerati, and Tao of Poker. Am pretty sure those guys have all been nominated before, and I know WCP won the sucker last year. (Can’t recall if Pauly or Dan’s blogs have won before.)

Here’s the article from today listing the nominees. It looks like voting opens on December 6th, at which time I’ll probably put a link up somewhere on here.

Big thanks to Bluff for the nod. And I promise, regular posting to resume tomorrow.

I mean, I gotta kick-start the campaign, right?

Travel Report: WPT Marrakech, Day 3

Am writing this one on a plane, somewhere high above the Atlantic, a little over halfway through what will ultimately be about a 24-hour journey back home to the States from Marrakech, Morroco. Looking at four flights total today, the first two of which carried Elissa, Mickey, and me to Casablanca, then to Paris.

“Preflop and flop were okay,” I joked with them as together we wound our way through Charles de Gaulle airport. “Now we just gotta hold through the turn and river.” Mickey said something about the flop -- the flight to Paris -- not being ideal, and I cracked that at least we were still drawing live.

They both each had two more flights as well, and we had all been more than a little unsure how the first part of the trip would go. There had been floods in Casablanca and Rabat, causing casualties and (we had heard) shutting down the airport there. And heavy snow in Paris, too, making us unsure whether CDG would be fully operational. But we all made it through those stops without difficulty, and so the journey continues.

Yesterday’s final day of the World Poker Tour Main Event went relatively well, all things considered. Down to nine players and a final table, the tournament was relocated over to the Epicurean room, a not-terribly-large space located adjacent to a bar-slash-lounge right near the casino proper.

A crescent-shaped table with black felt sat in the center -- imagine a largish blackjack table -- with a couple of rows of seats arranged on all sides. Elissa pointed out the paintings of ladies and other ornamentation on the walls, noting that the place perhaps more resembled a bordello than a poker room. But it was certainly functional. There was a flop camera and a couple of television screens in the corners, and all in all the arrangement was such that anyone in the room could see the action from pretty much any spot.

We got there early and took seats in one of the front rows -- just a few feet from the table -- where we had access to power for our laptops. A few other media also set up in the room itself, although many chose to take tables out in the lounge and walk back and forth instead. We found a wireless connection without difficulty prior to the first hand being dealt, and settled in for what initially appeared as though it would be a fairly painless day of reporting.

Such was not to be the case, however, as the wireless immediately stopped working just as the final table began. It was completely out for an hour before it was restored, then went out again shortly after that. We essentially resigned ourselves to writing up several posts at a time, then taking turns running back over closer to the larger poker room where the first two days had been played and from which we could access the internet. Kind of a long, winding walk to and from -- and through the smoky, crowded casino -- which definitely made the day a bit more arduous than we’d hoped it would be.

Our brains were further challenged by the names at this final table. First off, there were two Guillaumes sitting next to each other, then a Sebastian and a Sebastien (with an “e”), also side-by-side and sitting next to them. That group provided a bit of a challenge to WPT Executive Tournament Director Matt Savage who announced the final table. And among the last names we had a Willamsson, a Labuissiere, an Oberauer, and a Nitsche. (My fellow reporters will sympathize with me here.)

But we managed well enough. The final table itself went relatively quickly, with one player -- Sebastian Homann of Germany -- essentially running over the other eight to win the sucker. He’d entered the final table first in chips, then knocked out three of the first four to have more than three-quarters of the total chips with five left. At heads-up his opponent, Guillaume Cescut of France, actually fought back to take the lead briefly, but Homann soon retook the advantage and finished him off.

It was still early evening when we finished, so we ended up at the restaurant at the hotel located adjacent to Casino de Marrakech where we enjoyed one last terrific meal in Morocco. After having fun with some of the English translations on the menu -- the most alarming-sounding being “Cake of brain to tarragon” -- Mickey settled on the salmon while Elissa and I split an especially tasty rack of lamb.

We got back to the hotel by ten o’clock or so, but were already eyeing the clock and calculating how we’d have to leave by 3:30 a.m. to catch our pre-dawn first flight. And, of course, we had those worries about whether airports would be open to keep us from sleeping soundly the few hours we had left to do so. But I did manage to sleep a solid four hours and as I say as it has turned out the hand we’ve been dealt for the journey home has gone just fine up to now.

I wasn’t that anxious, anyway, to be honest. These last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about that Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much -- not the first one (from 1934, I think), but the remake he did in 1956 with James Stewart and Doris Day. In that one, an American family goes to Morocco and unwittingly gets involved in international intrigue right there in Casablanca and Marrakesh.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, and now I definitely want to check it out again. Doris Day’s Oscar-award winning song comes up somewhere in there -- “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).” Like that Crosby, Stills & Nash song I was referring to a week ago, “Que Sera, Sera” is also one of those especially memorable melodies that kind of sticks with you.

Kind of lullaby-like, even soothing. And I’m realizing the whole “the future’s not ours to see” theme of the song kind of settles one down, too. The internet might stop working, making it hard to do the job you’ve been assigned. Flights might get cancelled or delayed. But like the cards dealt in a hand of hold’em, those things are out of our control. And therefore not worth our fretting over them too much.

Okay, gonna try to rest my peepers a little. Still a long way to go. Might try to post this one during my final layover, if I have access.

If not, no worries, right?

(P.S. Some incredible run good has gotten me home as scheduled. Time shleepy Shamus went to bed.)