The Poker Boom of 1957?

Was thinking some about Herbert O. Yardley over the weekend. He’s the fellow who wrote the highly-influential 1957 book The Education of a Poker Player. Part strategy guide, part memoir, Yardley’s book was a huge best-seller in its day. And for poker players looking for some sort of instruction in draw, stud, or other popular variants of that era, The Education of a Poker Player was pretty much the only book around for the next couple of decades, really, right up until Brunson’s Super/System and other titles started to appear in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

I was rereading Yardley’s book as part of my preparations for today’s meeting of my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class. I’m having the students read an excerpt as well as James McManus’s chapters about Yardley that appear in his 2009 history Cowboys Full. I don’t think it is that big of a stretch to suggest that the appearance of The Education of a Poker Player might well have helped spark a proto-“poker boom” of sorts nearly a half-century before the one we all remember taking place in 2003.

Heralding the book’s publication was an excerpt in the November 9, 1957 issue of the very popular weekly magazine The Saturday Evening Post, advertised on the cover as “How to Win at Poker.” McManus reports how that issue “broke its newsstand record by selling 5.6 million copies.” The book, appearing one week later, was a big commercial success too, while also drawing a lot of favorable reviews.

Yardley, in his late 60s when The Education of a Poker Player appeared, was already something of a known entity. As McManus outlines in his chapters on Yardley -- and as one can read about in David Kahn’s 2004 book The Reader of Gentleman’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking -- Yardley had already had a significant and somewhat famous career as a cryptographer, having proven his skills as a code-breaker in the service of several different governments.

Near the end of World War I when the U.S. finally became involved, Yardley was enlisted in military intelligence, becoming part of the group known as MI-8, a.k.a. the “American Black Chamber.” Soon he was leading MI-8, and would remain in that position through the 1920s until the unit was dissolved following the stock market crash in October 1929.

In 1931, Yardley wrote his first best-seller, The American Black Chamber, a book that won him a lot of sales but also criticism for its revelation of various secrets regarding America’s intelligence activities. Created quite an uproar, so much so that a couple of years later when Yardley had a second book prepared on the subject its publication was suppressed thanks to a new bill signed into law by then-president FDR.

The gifted code-breaker ended up having to find other means to make a living. He wrote a few “hard-boiled”-type spy novels, none of which I have read (although I am curious to track them down). He was also a consultant in Hollywood on the 1935 WWI spy film Rendezvous starring William Powell, the story of which was based on Yardley’s controversial book.

Eventually, Yardley would get recruited by China to do some intelligence work for them, and he writes about those experiences some in Education. Canada would call on him too, just prior to WWII, though cut him loose after the U.S. and U.K. -- still miffed about Yardley having given up so much in that 1931 book -- pressured the Canadians to drop him.

By the mid-1950s poker was no longer strictly a game played in saloons, on steamboats, or in other potentially nefarious locales, but had found its way into the homes of many of those middle-class readers of The Saturday Evening Post. It had also evolved somewhat from the “cheating game” of the 19th century (as McManus dubs it) into more of a “square game” in which knowledge of strategy really could help one succeed. “By 1957, the public was primed for a serious book about poker” says McManus. Like I say I do think if we looked into it more closely we could support an argument that a “boom” of sorts was taking place around that time for poker in America, with the appearance of Yardley’s book significantly contributing to it.

In any event, the book remains a fascinating read, full of colorful stories and even some useful strategy advice, too. If you’re curious, you can read my review for a fuller account of it, or check out this “Poker & Pop Culture” piece that also shares more about the book and its significance.

In Favor of Small Stakes

“No one ever abandons Poker that plays it on small limited stakes.”

So wrote John Blackbridge, a New York City lawyer, who in 1875 first published The Complete Poker-Player: A Practical Guide Book to the American National Game.

We read an excerpt this week from Blackbridge’s book in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class. Kind of a strategy guide that also includes general observations about the state of poker ca. late-19th century as well as some wonky stuff about probabilities and the math of the game (talkin’ draw poker, natch).

The excerpt we read appears in the 2004 anthology of poker writings, Read ‘Em and Weep, edited by John Stravinsky. It begins with Blackbridge noting many examples of the various forms of cheating that were rampant in poker games of his day, then segues into more general advice about dealing with losing -- what we would call controlling “tilt” -- and the virtues of playing for small stakes.

Blackbridge offers a few different arguments on behalf of sticking to the smaller games, one of which being his conviction that the cheaters tend to leave such games alone, choosing to sit down at the larger games instead. It’s a point we’ve heard brought up time and again in the context of possible instances of online cheating, where many believe (naïvely or otherwise) the microstakes games are the least likely targets of the colluders and other modern-day “sharps.”

But Blackbridge also has a lot to say about the importance of playing within one’s means, which allows one to retain a “contented mind,” minimizing emotion and thus thinking clearly at the table. “No man can play his game well if he feels that on the turn of a card depends his solvency,” writes Blackbridge. He doesn’t use the term “bankroll” or speak of the importance of managing such, but that’s precisely the lesson he’s teaching to his readers.

Such, then, is another argument in favor of sticking to “small limited stakes.” In Blackbridge’s experience, “Nearly all Poker-players that eventually abandon the game do so because they have suffered by large play,” having been either beaten out of their money fairly or having been cheated by a sharp.

It’s an interesting point the attorney is making. Of course, there are plenty of folks who give up poker without ever rising above the smallest stakes. But I suppose Blackbridge is persuasive when he suggests that it is much more likely those who stick to the low-stakes games will continue to play, finding enjoyment in the game that perhaps is not directly linked to the amount of money won or lost at it.

Couldn’t help but think a little of Blackbridge’s observation this week when I heard the news that 2008 WSOP Main Event champion Peter Eastgate would be coming out of his so-called “retirement” to play EPT Copenhagen and in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship in March. Not the first instance of a high-stakes player having announced he was “abandoning” poker. (Or of the player coming back, either.)

I wrote a little something about Eastgate -- as well as that Griffin-Qureshi prop bet discussed in yesterday’s post -- in a piece over on Betfair Poker today, titled “The Limits of Being Human in a No-Limit World.” Tried there to address the notion that these guys who play for the highest-stakes, while sometimes thought to be somehow greater than (or at least different from) us regular folk, are in fact as human as the rest of us.

And if you’re looking for something else to read, you can take a look at some of Blackbridge’s excerpt in this Google Books preview.

Have to pick up Stravinsky’s anthology to see the entire excerpt, I’m afraid. Or I suppose you could find an original copy of The Complete Poker-Player.

I’m gonna guess, though, that would be a bit too pricey for those of us who stick to “small limited stakes.”

Sick Bet: Griffin, Qureshi, and “the World of Poker Players”

Creative, crazy, even dangerous proposition bets have long been part of poker. A few spring to mind.

Huck Seed once bet Phil Hellmuth $10,000 that he could float in the ocean for 24 hours without touching the bottom, though Seed forfeited the bet before making an attempt. Erick Lindgren won $340,000 from Gavin Smith, Phil Ivey, and others after he played 72 holes of golf in one day, shooting under 100 each round, in the 108-degree Vegas heat in June 2007. And this past summer, Ted Forrest won $2 million off Mike Matusow after managing to go from 188 lbs. to under 140 (138, to be exact) in the space of just two months. Forrest fasted the final 10 days straight to win that one.

Trumping them all, I suppose, is Brian Zembic, also a poker player though probably more of a blackjack/backgammon player. In the fall of 1996, Zembic won a $100K prop for receiving breast implants, the story of which was subsequently chronicled in Michael Konik’s 1999 anthology The Man With the $100,000 Breasts and Other Gambling Stories.

However much some want to argue that poker is somehow not gambling -- that its significant skill component allows one to approach the game as a strictly intellectual and/or psychological competition -- it is, in fact, a game that involves chance and is therefore a gambling game. Even if it weren’t, poker’s frequently close proximity to all those other gambling games -- usually just a few steps away in the casino (or a click away online) -- would probably increase the likelihood for action-seeking poker players to seek further opportunities to gamble. Especially when they are encouraged by fellow, like-minded “degens” as they are sometimes described, usually with a semi-serious mix of reproach and wonder.

You probably recently heard about another such prop bet, one involving a couple of young poker players, Ashton “theASHMAN103” Griffin and Haseeb “INTERNETPOKERS” Qureshi. Both have emerged over recent years as part of the latest generation of tough, successful online players, with Griffin additionally enjoying some big live scores including winning the $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout event at NAPT Venetian in February 2010.

Like Griffin, Qureshi has been involved in some of the highest-stakes online games, including being an early combatant of Viktor “Isildur1” Blom last year. His well-considered thoughts about those battles and their significance were shared by Qureshi on his CardRunners blog last fall (alluded to here).

Here the two roommates bet whether the 22-year-old Griffin, formerly a college wrestler and by most accounts well-conditioned athlete, could run 70 miles on a treadmill within a 24-hour period. The bet incorporated various provisions, and ultimately went off with Griffin giving Qureshi 3-to-1 on a wager of $285,000, meaning that if Qureshi lost he’d owe Griffin $285K and if Griffin lost he’d owe Qureshi $855K. Griffin booked an additional $15K of action with others, meaning he was risking a total of $900K -- not to mention the physical trauma of running nearly three marathons in one day -- to win $300K.

As reported on many outlets earlier this week, Griffin incredibly succeeded in the task and won the bet. Meanwhile, his friend Qureshi appears to have been affected by much more than having lost a significant portion of his bankroll. Yesterday and today Qureshi published a lengthy two-part account of the bet on his blog: The Million Dollar Bet, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2.

It’s a harrowing read, one that should give a great deal of pause to those eager to celebrate Griffin’s accomplishment and/or the undeniably fascinating culture that seems to produce such rash, risky behavior. Qureshi is highly self-critical throughout, recognizing the absurdity of the situation of his having bet on his friend’s body to fail him physically -- perhaps even irreparably. The experience seems to have been unrelentingly hellish for Qureshi (who turns 21 this year), and he writes with the self-awareness and perspective that belies his young age (and which he appears to have been lacking when he agreed to the prop).

Near the conclusion Qureshi speculates about “the world of poker players” in which he has lived for a short time, wondering if perhaps there is something “fundamentally unhealthy” present there of which all should be wary. It’s not a new observation he is making. But perhaps it is being made in a new way here -- and from a different perspective -- and thus might capture the notice of some it might not otherwise have gained.

People complain about the overuse of the term “sick” to describe risky maneuvers at the poker table or the awe-inspiring exploits of some of the games’ most celebrated “degens.” Qureshi’s account perhaps invites us to reconsider the term’s applicability to “the world of poker players,” including considering its possibly literal significance for some who inhabit it.

Changes at “High Stakes Poker”

Was hearing late last week some of those rumors about the upcoming seventh season of “High Stakes Poker,” set to kick off on February 26 -- a Saturday night -- on the Game Show Network. Most concerned a possible host change, with Gabe Kaplan, part of the show since its premiere in 2006, apparently not coming back either for this season or the next.

The guys on Ante Up! floated something about it on their show last week (the 2/3/11 episode). Quoting a “trusty source” -- possibly another ex-HSP host, A.J. Benza, who has been a guest on their show more than once -- they noted that Kaplan had been “fired” and replaced with “another funny a-hole.” (The quote certainly sounds like Benza.) After mentioning that tidbit on the show, they additionally included the news in their show notes afterwards.

Now we know for certain. When the shows begin airing later this month, Kaplan will no longer be at the mic commenting on the action and cracking wise. Rather, Norm MacDonald (“Saturday Night Live,” Dirty Work), another comedian, will be taking over the hosting duties. Kara Scott will be returning as well as a co-host, and apparently for those with 3-D televisions the show will be watchable in that format, too.

MacDonald is in fact a poker player, showing up at small events and satellites in L.A. and at the World Series of Poker over the past few years. He did a turn on an episode of “Celebrity Poker Showdown” once back in 2004. He also was one of the first guests on the Two Plus Two Pokercast back in early 2008 (episode 5), and gave one of the best (and funniest) interviews those guys have ever had on that podcast.

But his poker resume obviously pales in comparison to that of Kaplan, who was there playing at the WSOP way back in the late 1970s. A long-time cash game player (at times for high stakes), Kaplan’s tourney résumé is mighty impressive, too, and certainly helped qualify him for the commentator’s role.

I always enjoyed Kaplan on the show, so like many my initial response to the news that he had been replaced was not positive. Nor was I that enthused by the news that no Full Tilt Poker pros will be on Season 7, either, although I don’t mind seeing new faces. (See Kevmath’s Bluff piece for a full rundown of the players who will be appearing.)

The sorta-surprising news of Kaplan’s “firing” and MacDonald’s stepping in brought a couple of other, similar changes to mind.

One was from back in late 1997 when MacDonald, after having hosted the “Weekend Update” segment on “Saturday Night Live” for four years, was suddenly fired by Don Ohlmeyer, then president of NBC’s West Coast division. While MacDonald frequently appeared in other segments on SNL, including doing a hilariously-half-hearted Burt Reynolds (a.k.a. Turd Ferguson) impersonation on the recurring faux-“Jeopardy” spoof, he was best known on the show for anchoring the “Update” desk.

Somewhat controversial, that, and perhaps made even more memorable by MacDonald’s subsequent appearance as a guest on the “Late Show with David Letterman” on which Letterman offered a lot of pointed commentary about Ohlmeyer.

Kind of a similar scenario, I suppose, though on a smaller scale, with a much-liked host being suddenly yanked. Only this time MacDonald is the one stepping in rather than shipping out.

The other, similar change the story brought to mind was when “Monday Night Football” brought in Dennis Miller -- another comedian and “Weekend Update” alum -- back in 2000 to deliver color commentary.

Miller lasted a couple of seasons on MNF, though his frequent obscure references (a big part of his schtick as a comedian-slash-political commentator) didn’t land that often with the average sports fan and the entire experiment is generally viewed as having failed. In fact, last year TV Guide listed Miller’s stint on MNF among its “25 Biggest TV Blunders.”

Despite the title of the show, the stakes are much, much lower when it comes to “High Stakes Poker” and changes to its cast and format. Not really sure how MacDonald is gonna pull it off, to be honest, though as one of those who enjoys his humor I’m at least curious to watch how he does. And how the new cast of players do as well.

The fact is, while MacDonald’s contributions will most certainly affect the success of the show, it’s the players who matter most. And when it comes to attracting and keeping an audience that extends beyond hardcore poker fans (as GSN obviously wants to do), it’ll be the personalities of the competitors -- and whether they help create and maintain interest -- that’ll determine the show’s fate.

In other words, as much as I like Kaplan as a host, I think replacing Ivey, Dwan, Antonius, and the other Full Tilters will prove much more challenging here than will replacing Mr. Kotter. Here’s hoping all those non-FTPers on the Season 7 line-up -- all great players, obviously -- can prove successful at the game of entertaining, too.

Beyond Belief: The Bellagio Bandit

Have you been reading about the arrest of this “Bellagio bandit”? Stranger than fiction, that.

The arrest took place last Wednesday night, February 2, a little over six weeks after the crime was committed. The suspect, Anthony Michael Carleo, appeared in court yesterday, at which time a hearing was scheduled for February 23.

The article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting the arrest from last week is interesting enough. For a more detailed, suspense-filled account, though, check out the arrest report, which reads like a decent “hard-boiled”-type police procedural.

The report begins by describing the robbery that took place at the Bellagio just before 4 a.m. on the morning of December 14, 2010. The thief drove up to the north entrance on a black motorcycle with no license plate. Leaving the bike parked outside of the entrance with the keys still in the ignition, the suspect walked into the casino -- still wearing his helmet -- pulled a handgun and yelled, filled his fanny pack full of casino chips, and left.

Later it was determined the thief made off with about $1.5 million worth of chips, including a number of $25,000 denomination ones, sometimes called “cranberries” because of their dark-pinkish color.

A little over a week later, on December 23, two fellows came into the Bellagio trying to cash a $25,000 chip and aroused suspicions. It would take some digging, but eventually it was determined that one of the them had been manning a Salvation Army collection bucket just before Christmas when a man had placed the chip in his pocket, telling him it was valuable. After being interviewed, the Salvation Army volunteer and his friend were released.

Right around then the police were contacted by someone else -- a dealer -- who had spoken with Anthony Carleo shortly before the robbery had taken place. Carleo had apparently told this person of his desire to commit such a crime, noting additionally that he thought he knew people who would purchase the stolen chips. Carleo also had mentioned to this dealer that his “parents were connected” -- referring to his father’s being a Las Vegas municipal court judge -- a fact which apparently made him believe he would have a better chance of escaping punishment for the crime.

The dealer additionally reported that he’d seen Carleo gambling at the Bellagio shortly after the robbery had occurred, thinking it odd since his impression was Carleo was busto. He saw him again on January 4 when he sat down in the poker game he was dealing.

Tipped off about Carleo, background checks revealed he lived at an address also associated with the purchase of some handguns, he owned a motorcycle, he had prescriptions for more Oxycontin than is usual, he had once filed for bankruptcy, and a few other bits of biographical ephemera. Carleo’s activities at the Bellagio were also researched, revealing that he’d lost more than $107,000 gambling there between December 14, 2010 and January 22, 2011.

The report goes on to uncover some other information about Carleo subsequently pieced together to support the case against him, including having spoken with others whom Carleo had contacted about possibly buying some chips. Most interesting is the revelation that among those Carleo was talking to was a fellow named Matthew Brooks, someone Carleo contacted via “a website named Two Plus Two poker forum.”

That’s right! Brooks, who goes by “provotrout” on 2+2, was contacted by Carleo who had created an account with the name “oceanspray25.” You read that right. Oceanspray25. Name kind of makes you think of cranberries, yes? If not, perhaps his listed location might -- “Cranada.” (No shinola.)

In fiction, authors will sometimes choose character names that evoke certain ideas they intend to associate with those characters. Gotta be careful, though. A lack of subtlety with such name choices might pull your reader out of the story.

But this isn’t fiction. It’s real life. And so the story continued.

You can see posts by both “provotrout” and “oceanspray25” in this thread about the robbery. And in a couple of other threads there appear posts by Carleo petitioning Brooks to get in touch with him via private message (here and here).

The report describes how Brooks did exchange some emails with Carleo, including some in which Carleo sent him photographs of stolen “cranberries.” That’s when Brooks contacted the investigators, a sting was subsequently set up in which Carleo unwittingly tried to sell chips to an undercover officer, and the arrest was made.

You can read more on Brooks’s involvement in the “Bellagio chip robber BUSTED (Judge’s son)” thread on 2+2, including some further info from Brooks himself regarding some of his exchanges with Carleo (including pictures like the one up top and at left) and his assistance with the arrest. (Some in the thread are expressing uncertainty about Brooks -- now a primary witness -- continuing to speak out about what happened, wondering if perhaps his doing so might compromise either the case against Carleo or the chances of his securing any reward money.)

From start to finish, Carleo’s actions appear quite desperate, perhaps making it seem as though he was expecting (hoping?) to get caught, though determined to live out an exciting few weeks before he did.

But that is really too rational of an interpretation, I think. The fact is, there’s a kind of irrationality present throughout that makes it difficult to empathize enough with the guy to comprehend his decision-making. Like that dude sitting across the table whose plays consistently fail to conform to logical explanations, it’s always possible even he didn’t know exactly what he was doing or what his “plan” ultimately was.

One does get the sense from the report, though, that Carleo himself believed he would somehow get away with not only the robbery, but with the spending and selling of the chips, too. It is somewhere in there that he loses most of us, unable to share such a belief.

Many have evoked the film Ocean’s Eleven when discussing the robbery, the plot of which revolves around an especially elaborate, complex scheme to rob several Vegas casinos simultaneously. Usually those references are to the 2001 remake (not the 1960 original), in which the Bellagio -- opened in 1998 -- serves as one of the thieves’ targets.

Even the police report includes reference to the movie when quoting that dealer who’d been in conversations with Carleo before and after the robbery. Upon hearing Carleo contemplating the possibility of trying to pull off such a theft, the soon-to-become-informant was incredulous.

“Dude you watch Ocean’s Eleven too much,” he told Carleo. “This is real life and that shit doesn’t happen.” “Oh, no, it’s not that hard,” was Carleo’s reply. “All you need is a black mask and a motorcycle and I have a motorcycle.”

Such a simple plan. Simple-minded, anyway.

Placing Poker in American History

In my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class we’ve spent the first few weeks talking about the origins of the game as well as its development and history in the U.S. And the game’s place in American history, too.

We’ve read through the first two-thirds or so of James McManus’ Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker (2009), a couple of chapters of David Spanier’s Total Poker (1977), and a couple of other essays along the way, too. That’s brought us up past the mid-20th century and into the Vietnam era. That picture, by the way, is of Green Berets playing poker in Saigon in 1964, one of the many excellent poker-related photos in the Life Magazine collection.

Pretty soon we’ll be carrying the story forward to the present, which means we’ll be talking Vegas, California poker, and the WSOP. (See the list of readings here.)

The class has been a lot like a history course thus far. Soon it will turn into more of a sociology or even anthropology course as we talk more about the “culture of poker,” examining some of the different contexts in which the game is played and how individuals tend to behave in those contexts.

After that it will be a literature class for a few weeks (when we read short stories and a novel), then a film class (when we watch The Cincinnati Kid, California Split, and Rounders). Finally we’ll be talking psychology, cultural studies, and more when we address a miscellany of topics at the end (gender roles, morality, law, technology). By the way, if you want to read a bit more about the course and what it is about, Amy Zupko of Woman Poker Player did a piece last week on my class, titled “American Culture Through the History of Poker.”

One topic that has come up several times during these first few weeks has been the way our writers -- McManus and Spanier, primarily -- “use” poker to interpret history.

The first time I read Cowboys Full (back in the fall of 2009 when the book initially appeared), I remember thinking McManus every now and then seemed as though he might be forcing poker into the discussion a bit too impertinently. (Here is the review of the book I wrote for Betfair Poker at the time.) In other words, it appeared at times poker was really only a minor, tangential part of a given anecdote, yet it had been promoted to a place of utmost importance in the telling.

For example, one chapter relates in great detail the story of the life of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a tough, at times brutal soldier and leader. His story includes the fact that he played poker, and McManus makes a lot of the fact that “his military record suggests he was a poker natural” -- that is to say, his successes on the battlefield demonstrate for the author the sort of aggression and nerve that usually serve one well in a poker game.

I remember when I first read this chapter thinking McManus might be making too much of the poker connection. At one point he’s explaining how Forrest disagreed with the battle plans of his superior, General Braxton Bragg, who, as it happens, did not play poker. Forrest -- whom McManus groups with other “poker-playing regular fellows” -- is drawn as a more competent strategist, with his “poker-inflected stratagems” distinguishing him from the less effective Bragg.

While I’m inclined to buy the general point that poker can be an especially useful game to learn for military leaders (or presidents or others in power) -- a point that McManus, Spanier, and others make repeatedly -- I wasn’t utterly convinced in this chapter that the relative disparity between Forrest and Bragg’s knowledge of the game was as significant as I was being told it was. (Perhaps the fact that the racist Forrest would go on to become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan made me even less inclined to celebrate his poker playing.)

In any event, as I go back through McManus’s book again with my class, I realize I’m appreciating more and more what McManus is up to. Obviously one can get carried away with this business of “seeing poker everywhere.” (We players do this a lot, don't we?) But as I go back through the book, I’m understanding a bit more readily the significance of many of the connections he’s drawing between poker and American history. And appreciating his book more as I do.

McManus’s references along the way to other historians like Shelby Foote (the great Civil War chronicler) and David Halberstam (author of The Best and the Brightest and other important works on Vietnam) and their frequent evocations of poker in their histories is also helping to convince me that the references are mostly appropriate. The fact that these guys tend to make a lot of the way the subjects of their histories play poker -- and “think” poker -- helps support what McManus is doing in his history.

And perhaps helps justify the idea that poker is indeed a topic worthy of consideration in an American Studies course, I might as well add.

The Search for Inspiration; or, You Get What You Pay For

Had a six-handed, pot-limit Omaha hand a couple of days ago in which I open-raised from the button with and only the big blind called. The flop came -- the nuts for me -- and not surprisingly my opponent checked.

I have no standard line for this situation, although generally speaking I’ll usually bet something here. The continuation bet doesn’t mean I’ve necessarily hit the flop, and so while often it will induce folds, suspicious players occasionally will call, especially if they have a lower flush, a set, or even two pair. And at the low limits I play (with dime-and-a-quarter blinds), some will happily stack off with less-than-nut flushes, too, so it is often worth at least trying to build a pot.

Here I bet about half the pot, and my opponent called. The turn was a harmless , and again when it was checked to me I bet again, a little more than half the pot this time. Once more my opponent called.

The river brought the and my opponent surprised me a little with a half-pot-sized bet of his own. The straight flush was quite possible here -- indeed with that board there were several ways to make the hand. I minimum-raised, and when my opponent responded by pushing all in I was fairly convinced he had it. I had been playing with him a while and he had done nothing to make me suspect he didn’t know what he was doing. So, after a bit of thought I folded my ace-high flush, and the two of us engaged in some chat after the hand.

My opponent initially denied having had a straight flush, but the more we chatted the more I was certain he had. Somewhere in there I said, “if not, an inspired bet” and complimented him on a good hand, and it was after that he appeared to let down his guard, suggesting I’d made a good fold.

It’s possible, of course, that I folded the best hand. But at these low limits such “an inspired bet” -- i.e., an attempt to force the ace-high flush to fold by representing a straight flush like that -- is pretty out of place. Folks simply aren’t folding here, not for less than ten bucks or whatever it was. Such was my thinking when I did fold. I didn’t believe my opponent would be so foolhardy as to reraise all in without a straight flush, not after the way I’d played the hand up to that point, anyway. (Was my play “inspired”? Or just timid?)

In any event, the hand stood out for me in a couple of ways. One was the way it gave me that funny “I-lost-but-I-won” feeling that comes with making a correct fold. Even if it weren’t correct, I still felt that way afterwards. As John Lukacs says in that “Poker and American Character” essay I’ve been referring to off and on over the last few months, poker is a unique game, one in which “free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered free moral agents, and where -- at least in the short run -- the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens.”

The other reason why the hand stood out for me was the way it encouraged me to think about non-straightforward plays and/or “Level 2” thinking (and above) -- something that basically doesn’t happen a heck of a lot when playing the dime-and-a-quarter games. Kind of ensures that those of us who stick to these limits are probably only going to grow so much as players, perhaps developing to the point of being able to fold an ace-high flush once in a while when it appears warranted, but not to explore more advanced or “inspired” plays. Not really.

Before signing off, let me point to a couple of other items you might check out sometime before we meet again on Monday.

Speaking of looking for inspiration, I greatly enjoyed writing up a piece for Betfair this week about Jack Ury, the oldest-ever WSOP participant who died on Tuesday at the age of 97. Got to relive some Ury’s most memorable hands from the last four WSOP Main Events in that one, including the epic “slowroll” from 2009. Check it out -- I promise you grins if you do.

Also let me point you to a piece over on Full Tilt’s “Poker on the Rail” blog by Dr. Pauly regarding the recently-announced 2011 WSOP schedule. More chuckles and some other benefits to be had there, too.

Enjoy the Super Bowl weekend, all.

A Couple of Saab Stories

You might’ve heard that story from last week about a poker player in Australia who was charged along with a couple of others with drug offenses, including having tried to arrange for the importing of about 46 pounds’ worth of cocaine. Street value somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 million (Aussie dollars), apparently. Not that you are I would be doing business on that street.

The player, David Saab, appeared in court last week, and will be going back in May. Sounds like at least one of the others arrested is a poker player, too, part of the so-called “Saab Squad” of Australian players of which Saab is the best known.

Saab has had a few notable results over the last few years, his biggest cashes both coming in 2008. That’s the year he won an Asian Poker Tour event in Manila for $280,000, then finished 46th in the World Series of Poker Main Event where he earned $135,100.

I remember Saab quite well from that 2008 WSOP ME, both for his boisterous personality and for the blue Superman t-shirt he wore. When I heard the story of his arrest last week, I thought specifically of two hands I saw him play during his Main Event run that year.

One of the hands came on Day 4 when there were perhaps 250 players left in the event. Saab was way up there, among the leaders with 1.8 million chips. Jason Su, who was also sitting very comfortably with about 1.2 million, opened with a raise from the cutoff, and Saab three-bet from the button. The blinds got out, Su reraised, Saab unhesitatingly shoved all in, and Su just as quickly called.

The blinds were just 4,000/8,000 at the time, meaning the players had committed around 150 big blinds each, with Su putting his tourney life at risk. As it happened, both had A-K and ended up splitting the pot.

I remember Saab being utterly unfazed throughout. Su had on the hand, while Saab’s cards were unsuited. “Hey, I can make a flush two ways!” he cracked before the community cards were dealt. I also remember him yelling out something -- after the hand concluded, I think -- about having to be willing to gamble to win.

The other hand I remember involving Saab came from Day 5 when the field had shrunk to 150 or so. This one began with Phil Hellmuth (who’d go on to finish 45th that year, one spot ahead of Saab) limping from under the gun. Saab raised from the cutoff, the button called, and Hellmuth called as well.

The flop came , and all three players checked. The turn brought the , pairing the board. This time Hellmuth fired a pot-sized bet. Saab quickly called, and the third player got out.

The river was the . The Poker Brat checked. Saab, again acting without any delay, pushed out a decent-sized bet, about two-thirds of the pot. Hellmuth let it go, and a grinning Saab showed as he collected the chips.

As you might imagine, Hellmuth was Not Amused.

A lengthy tirade followed which included the 11-time bracelet winner characterizing all of his opponents as “these idiots.” In my post on the hand -- titled “Believe It, Phil” -- I couldn’t resist referring to Jack Buck’s memorable call of Kirk Gibson’s Game 1 homer in the 1988 World Series when reporting Hellmuth’s post-hand declaration: “I can’t believe what I just saw.”

That post also refers to Saab calling himself “the luckiest player” and claiming that he was color blind, the latter a not-necessarily-serious suggestion that he was perhaps not fully aware of what the chips were worth.

Saab clearly had his opponents on their heels that day, his seemingly fearless play (combined with some good fortune, one imagines) certainly helping him make that deep run.

It appears, however, such a willingness to gamble might’ve caught up with Saab. Will be curious to see what happens when this one reaches the showdown -- most specifically whether or not Superman will be able to avoid being sent up the river.

Two of a Kind: W. Joseph Johnston and Russ Hamilton

Poker in Florida is experiencing a significant boom these days. Since betting limits were uncapped and other restrictions (e.g., games offered, hours of operation) were loosened on July 1, 2010, poker rooms throughout the state have witnessed unprecedented growth over the last six-plus months, with players pouring into the state’s more than two dozen card rooms in droves.

One player who has turned up at the new Florida games is Russ Hamilton, the 1994 World Series of Poker champion who remains the only person implicated in the four-and-a-half-year-long UltimateBet insider cheating scandal. According to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission’s “final decision” on the matter (issued September 11, 2009), 31 individuals were involved in the cheating, with former UB “consultant” Hamilton the only one of them named in the report. The site refunded over $22 million to cheated players, and the KGC fined UB an additional $1.5 million.

According to the report (which I can’t seem to locate on the KGC site any longer), “The vast majority of the computer devices and IP addresses used by the cheating accounts were directly associated with Russell Hamilton.” The report also suggested that “the cheating incidences detailed herein could constitute criminal behavior,” indicating that the regulatory body might pursue such, even though doing so was outside of the scope of its responsibility.

As we all know, no criminal charges have been sought against Hamilton or any of the others involved in the cheating at UB. Thus is the disgraced WSOP champ free to go where he likes, including showing up at the Gulfstream Park Casino for the 5/10/20 uncapped NLHE game there a couple of weeks ago.

A player at the game who recognized Hamilton confronted him about his involvement in the cheating. The resulting brouhaha was subsequently documented in detail in a Two Plus Two thread with the excellently descriptive title “Russ Hamilton verbally eviscerated; breaks down into an obscenity laced tirade.”

As the title indicates, Hamilton showed some defiance during that incident. And reports since of further appearances in Florida card rooms seem to suggest that Hamilton remains undeterred.

I thought of Hamilton yesterday when rereading a chapter in James McManus’s history of poker, Cowboys Full (2009), one concerning an incident of cheating that occurred at the Americus Club in Pittsburgh in 1906. Much like Hamilton seeing his opponents’ hole cards while playing online at UB, in that case the cheater, a man named W. Joseph Johnston, used a mirror ring to catch a glimpse of the down cards he was dealing in a game of five-card stud.

After cleaning out his opponents, one of them, Frank Sauers, spotted the mirror ring and beat up Johnston. Then he had him arrested “on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses” (as a New York Times article reported). The case went to court and Johnston was ordered to give Sauers back the money (and diamond ring and a diamond stud) he’d swindled from him, plus play court costs.

Johnston “sneeringly” paid what was due, says the article, but when the magistrate ordered him to leave Pittsburgh he insolently declared he’d “take his own time” doing so, insisting on first letting everyone know what he thought of the Americus Club members and their “squealing.”

“You fellows who have yelled at your losses have always been looking for the best of it at cards,” Johnston is reported to have said. “Yet when someone better than yourself at the game beats you you yell.” Johnston was even brazen enough to ask that his mirror ring be returned to him! The magistrate didn’t, though, and instead indicated he’d have the cheater arrested again if he didn’t skedaddle.

McManus explains how Johnston’s audacity in fact reflected general attitudes about poker during the 19th and early 20th centuries, namely that cheating was widely accepted as part of the game. Johnston’s boldness in court stemmed from his belief -- shared by many -- that “poker was a cheating game” and thus “it was unmanly to ‘squeal’ when someone got the better of you.” In other words (McManus explains), it was “by virtue of their superior sharping skills” that Johnston believed he had “earned the right” to steal from his opponents at the tables there at the Americus Club.

Rereading that chapter in Cowboys Full caused me think of Hamilton and wonder if perhaps that idea -- that in poker, cheating is part of the “game” -- somehow lingers in his mind as a kind of vestige of an earlier age. Certainly the decision to cheat in the first place was inspired by such, perhaps even rationalized by the thought that in poker one tries to find whatever edge one can in order to get one’s opponents’ chips into one’s own stack, including stealing peeks at others’ cards.

But perhaps the idea somehow remains in his thoughts today? Somehow providing Hamilton the needed courage -- or nerve -- to allow him to continue to show up in poker rooms to play?

And evoke the ghost of a certain W. Joseph Johnston, shouting invective in a Pittsburgh courtroom over a hundred years ago, with his own “obscenity laced tirade” at the Gulfstream Park Casino.

The Test of Time

It’s a new month. Already. Another chance to think about what has been accomplished, and what goals remain as we move forward.

Such a busy month was January. Tourneys being played all over the world, every day it seemed. Plus lots of other poker-related distractions to occupy us all.

One item from last month I missed mentioning here was that votes for this year’s Bluff Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards were finally tallied and the winners announced. In the “Favorite Poker Blog” category, our buds over at Wicked Chops claimed their second straight award. Big congrats to the Entities!

I managed to land some votes in the sucker as well, and wanted here to thank everyone who voted for me. Also, thanks a ton to those who’ve sent along nice comments to me regarding getting nominated.

Hard, really, to compare blogs. All are so different. Even just the four that were included in the category are mostly unlike one another in method and approach, really.

As much as I like Pokerati and Wicked Chops, I tend to think of Tao of Poker as providing kind of the “template” for what I imagine a poker blog to be -- a mix of personal anecdote and more general reportage, delivered in a particular style that well communicates the blogger’s personality.

But there are many, many other ways of going about it, obviously, and so “ranking” blogs is about as difficult a task as comparing the relative abilities of poker players (a topic that has been getting a lot of attention here lately). And maybe as futile, too, although I suppose such an exercise affords a certain amount of fun and even usefulness insofar as it gets us thinking about what qualities make a blog (or player) especially good.

Have been pondering a bit lately about the relative value of some of the writing -- both poker-related and otherwise -- I’ve been doing (e.g., blog posts, articles, tourney reporting, and the new novel I keep adding to when I get a chance). Some of it I certainly value and am reasonably proud of. Other stuff tends to vanish more quickly, not necessarily leaving much of an impression on yr humble scribbler.

Some of the latter was written more for money than for other reasons, although financial gain usually does not dictate exactly how I’m personally going to value something I’ve written. As is the case with playing poker (for many), there are a lot of reasons to write -- and benefits to be had from writing -- that don’t have anything to do with making money.

Had an exchange not long ago with someone who had read my post about Jon Bradshaw’s excellent 1975 collection of essays, Fast Company, and then went and picked up the book for himself. He thanked me for drawing his attention to Bradshaw’s book, which contains some of the best poker writing you’re going to find.

I told him I was glad he enjoyed the book, adding that I hoped one day I’d be able to write something as meaningful and lasting about poker.

Or about anything, really (now that I think about it). A goal worth pursuing, I believe.