More to Learn

Swamped again here on the farm and thus out of time to write much today. However, I did want to recommend some cool new posts that have appeared on Learn.PokerNews for those who might be interested.

Nate Meyvis returned today with a smart strategy piece titled “A Planning Exercise: What If I Get Ace-King?”

In the article Nate recommends spending time between hands thinking about how you might play A-K should it be dealt to you -- as the title suggests, kind of a mental exercise that forces you to think specifically about your opponents and their tendencies, stack sizes, and other factors in a preparatory way.

I really like the way he explains the exercise as well as the concrete questions and issues he invites the reader to consider while thinking about how he or she might play Big Slick.

I’ve done exactly the same thing before at the tables, not necessarily thinking about A-K specifically but just how I would next play a premium hand or a hand with which I’d likely want to open-raise. But I can’t claim I ever thought too carefully about how just going through the steps of thinking ahead in this way forces you to concentrate more on your opponents, your own image, and other important factors affecting table dynamics.

Also going up today on Learn was another one by Robert Woolley, a.k.a. the “Poker Grump,” in his “Casino Poker for Beginners” series. He’s writing about buttons right now -- not just the dealer’s button, but all of the many different ones used at the table (e.g., the absent button, the missed blinds buttons, etc.), and explaining their purpose and use.

I’m finding all of Bob’s “CFB” articles enjoyable to read, and with each one am thinking to myself “I wish I’d known” as I read through them. In fact each one also tends to include at least something I still didn’t know about (or was at least a little fuzzy on), and he presents it all in an interesting and entertaining way, too. So check out all of the “CFB” articles if you haven’t already, and I’ll bet you find something interesting and informative.

And while I’m at it, if you missed Tommy Angelo’s latest about the “Cinderella Syndrome” in poker (hint: it has to do with knowing when to quit), take a look at that, too.

The Three-Bet

The term “three-bet” (and “four-bet” and so on) has become especially common in poker these days, although that development is relatively recent. In fact, I don’t really remember people using the phrase that much even five years ago.

Generally speaking, people say “three-bet” when referring to a reraise that happens before the flop in hold’em. (Occasionally you’ll hear some use the term when talking about post-flop action, though not that often.) In other words, the big blind is the first forced bet, the first raise is a second bet (although that initial raise is never, ever called a “two-bet”), then the first reraise becomes a “three-bet.”

I remember a few years ago reading some discussion about the term, probably inspired by its having first become somewhat popular and a person on a forum wondering about its origin. I recall the explanation for the term connected it to fixed-limit hold’em where the first raise equals two bets, the next equals three, and so on. Even though the raises in no-limit hold’em aren’t of fixed amounts, the terminology was borrowed and used in the same way to describe successive raises/reraises.

I can’t recall the first time I heard the term, but I remember being a little confused by it initially. It’s really not obvious what a “three-bet” means if you’ve never heard the term before, but nowadays almost everyone says “he three-bet” rather than “he reraised” when discussing preflop play. I guess I’ve become conscious of the term’s less-than-obvious meaning thanks to working with Learn.PokerNews and thinking more specifically about new and beginning players who perhaps aren’t up on all of the terminology just yet.

In any event, now everyone uses the term, and in fact it seems almost weird not to. It is so common of a term there’s a clothing line named after it. PokerListings even calls its daily recap of three big stories of the day the “Daily 3-bet.”

I brought the subject up with a friend today and we speculated that the increased use of the term likely coincided with more adventurous preflop betting -- that is, with more and more three-bets actually occurring before the flop. And with all of the “light” reraising and “clicking back” (i.e., raising/reraising the minimum) becoming popular, that has given even more impetus to people using “three-bet,” “four-bet,” and so on when talking about preflop action.

It is helpful, actually, as a kind of shorthand to say “he five-bet shoved” as a way of quickly explaining how many reraises preceded the all-in bet. Or to distinguish between three-betting and four-betting (and five-betting, etc.) when discussing preflop strategy and putting players on ranges and so forth.

Still, it’s a curious term, and one that continues to have a kind of odd disconnect for me. After all, the “three-bet” is the second action (when speaking of preflop betting). Even though I understand the term, there’s a strangeness to it that I’m also always aware of when I hear or read it.

Talking Ice, Power, and Limit Hold’em

Had a decent-sized ice storm hit us starting before dawn today with the cold temps and freezing precipitation lasting into the early afternoon.

We woke up to no power and as I write here just after dinner time we’re still without, although after successfully cranking up our generator (a must for farm living) we’re enjoying a window of a few hours of power before bedtime. That pic is of two of our barn cats, Lily and Moe, who like Vera and myself figured out how to make do.

With little time to write I just wanted to point folks to Nolan Dalla’s latest piece on his personal blog, one that focuses on limit hold’em and how it was once all the rage in poker rooms prior to the “boom” and now finds itself a threatened game not unlike five-card draw and other rarely spread variants.

Dalla titles his post provocatively -- indeed, pretty much everything he posts on his blog is provocative -- calling it “Mason Malmuth Was Right (Limit vs. No-Limit Hold’em).” The title is referring back to Malmuth’s prediction way back in the early 1990s that no-limit hold’em had little chance of catching on, something he had written in a volume of his Poker Essays.

I actually wrote a little something last summer about this very same passage in Malmuth’s book, coming in a chapter titled “The Future of Poker.” It’s one of those predictions that reads much, much differently from our perspective, of course, and Dalla offers some reasonable justification both for Malmuth’s position back then and for his underlying arguments about no-limit hold’em actually still being valid despite the fact that NLHE has not only lasted but has grown into the single most popular variant of poker played for the last several years.

I can’t delve into the entire discussion just now, but you can read what Dalla has to say and decide for yourself what you think about the points he makes. I will say that as a LHE player myself, I’ve always felt similarly to Dalla that the game is more fun than NLHE, and in fact to me provides a lot more action in the form of constant decisions and the higher percentage of hands played.

I even wrote a kind of defense of LHE for Learn.PokerNews some time back called “Limit Hold’em Isn’t Always Like Watching Paint Dry” in which I made a couple of the same points Dalla does about why LHE is fun, perhaps especially so for beginners and/or recreational players.

Anyhow, follow those links for more Friday evening reading. Meanwhile, I’m going to go try to enjoy a couple more hours’ worth of power here before we shut it down for the night. Might go check on the cats one more time, too, although I’m sure they’re doing fine.

Click to Confirm: Finally, Those FTP Funds

Because I just came from the Full Tilt Poker Claims Administration website being managed by the Garden City Group and the pursuit of my long lost FTP balance is foremost in my thoughts at the moment, I thought I’d share a quick update regarding that quest today.

I mentioned less than a week ago -- on “Green Friday” -- how I hadn’t been part of that first wave of U.S. players getting their funds back, but I did feel fairly confident I’d be among the second group. My confidence stemmed from another cordial and what seemed to me productive exchange over the phone with a GCG representative, with that conversation ending with a promise of an email follow-up.

Indeed that email arrived today with my correct petition and control numbers and an invitation to log in over at the site and see if the balance they had listed for me was what I had left in my account back in mid-April 2011.

I followed the instructions, corrected some contact info, then clicked through to the page showing what they believed to be my balance. And it was... correct! I actually did a faint little fist pump at the laptop, kind of a dim, gestural reprise of all those years of playing on Full Tilt.

Had to click through a few more screens, including one on which I had to give information to facilitate repayment, and I was done. No idea how long it will take, but the prospects seem better than ever that I will finally be cashing out from Full Tilt Poker.

Last night I was listening to Todd Witteles’s weekly show on Poker Fraud Alert where I heard that Chris “Jesus” Ferguson is apparently planning to return to the poker world in the near future, perhaps at this summer’s WSOP. Witteles was relating news shared by Diamond Flush in a Two Plus Two thread a few days ago.

I enjoy Witteles’s show and have found myself either listening live or seeking out the podcast practically every week lately. His take on the Ferguson news was appropriately negative -- this is a “second coming... we don’t want,” says Witteles -- and I can’t really disagree with his view.

Thinking back at the absurd spiral FTP had entered into at the time, if it weren’t for Black Friday coming when it did, we’d all have lost our FTP funds permanently. And of course if it weren’t for PokerStars striking its deal with the DOJ later, we would’ve have been SOL, too.

Assuming there isn’t a coincidence that news of Jesus’s plan to resurrect his poker career -- the puns are all so dangerously close here -- comes just as U.S. players are starting to get their funds back. We’ll see what happens with that. Meanwhile, keeping eyes peeled for another, long belated return in my bank account.

On the Clock (It’s a Matter of Time)

All of this “shot clock” talk happening these days in the poker world -- and gathering a lot of momentum of late -- has been interesting to follow.

In fact, I’m finding the whole dynamic of discussion-slash-debate among players and tournament organizers that seems a constant presence in poker diverting. Seems like everything is on the table these days, perhaps more a function of social media than any specific poker-related development.

Rich Ryan reported on the vote among players that happened this week at the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic, the one that resulted in 80% of players saying they favored the introduction of a “shot clock” on the WPT next season. We had a piece on Learn.PokerNews discussing the topic as well. That pic, by the way, is an inset from one taken at an earlier LAPC event a couple of weeks ago in which a clock was used.

I find it hard to drop the scare quotes because the term isn’t exactly descriptive. The clock being proposed would limit the amount of time a player has to act, and shooting hasn’t really been a common feature of poker since the Old West. Still, everyone knows what is meant by the idea of a shot clock in poker, and indeed the subject has been discussed for more than a couple of years now.

I personally don’t like the idea at all. I understand the problem of excessive, unnecessary tanking and definitely would encourage measures to prevent it. But introducing a shot clock -- especially a 30-second one such as was used in that A$100,000 Challenge event at the recent Aussie Millions and was being discussed at the WPT LAPC -- seems to me like it would introduce several more problems (and probably not even satisfactorily solve this one).

Looking at it from the perspective of a non-pro player, I also dislike the idea and imagine many other non-pros feel the same. While people can adapt to just about anything, my sense is facing the prospect of playing with a shot clock would prove a big turnoff to newer players.

I guess I also find the idea of a shot clock a little too great of a violation of the “natural” rhythm of the game, which like baseball contains a kind of beauty precisely because of the way it accommodates individual differences when it comes to the pace with which each person plays. (Of course, there’s a similar discussion happening in baseball, too, over whether or not some time restrictions should be introduced to shorten games.)

All of which is to say I think a shot clock in poker could be interesting here and there, but wouldn’t like seeing it become a standard part of the game. That said, it is starting to feel like the introduction of this shot clock thing in tournament poker might be only a matter of time (pun intended).

Assigning Bradshaw and McGuire

Among the readings I assign in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class is a chapter from Paul McGuire’s Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker.

The chapter comes from the latter part of the book when Dr. Pauly is at his most cynical regarding the commercial spectacle of the WSOP, the chapter ending with a funny punchline about Phil Hellmuth’s increasingly elaborate entrances to the Main Event up to that point (2008).

Pauly suggests Hellmuth try riding in one year on a donkey. “I can only imagine the snarky headlines,” he writes. “‘Ass Rides Ass to WSOP.’”

I assign the reading alongside another favorite of mine, Jon Bradshaw, writing in Fast Company about a much smaller World Series of Poker happening some 35 years before. I’ve reviewed Bradshaw’s book here before, an excellent example of long form journalism that includes several great essays, including the one about Johnny Moss I have my students read.

Unlike McGuire, Bradshaw is much more admiring of his subjects whom he treats almost as though they are larger than life. Both authors are insightful about the WSOP and poker’s broader relationship to American culture, and the contrast of their perspectives gives the students a lot to consider which makes the discussions especially enjoyable for me.

Some occasionally find Pauly a little snarky. But most are entertained and enjoy the inventiveness of his style. And they respond, too, to his overall point about the commercialization of the game, something which indeed reflects larger trends happening in America not just in poker but in other cultural forums, too.

Anyhow, the discussion this week reminded me of how much I enjoyed Pauly’s book. If you’re interested in the WSOP’s history -- and in particular that 2005-2008 period he covers most closely -- and haven’t read Lost Vegas before, I recommend it.

A lot has changed over the last five years at the WSOP, I think, and, of course, in poker, generally speaking and its place in the U.S. over the same period. And of course it has all changed even more dramatically since the 1970s when Bradshaw wrote about poker and gambling and the WSOP. But many of the observations made in both books still apply, too, which along with the strong writing is why I recommend both.

Game Culture

Sunday ended up being a workday for me, although the latter part of it I spent with the laptop in my immediate view and the Oscars playing out on the television a little farther away. Watched the whole sucker, more or less. I think the last time I did that Titanic swept the statues.

I don’t get out to see too many movies these days, not the current fare at least. I’ve been watching a few these last couple of months while we enjoy some free premium channels after initiating a new satellite setup in our new place, but we’ll let those channels go soon as we don’t spend enough time watching to justify the expense.

Of the ones highlighted last night I’d only seen Gravity, and that was on a plane (as I wrote about here a few weeks ago describing my trip home from EPT Deauville) -- hardly the ideal setting to take in the effects-laden spectacle, although I did form an appreciation of the film nonetheless. Not seeing the rest I can’t really say one way or another whether the trophies were handed out in a way that was deserving.

Found myself thinking a little about how on a certain level awards shows kind of weirdly make “games” out of pursuits and entertainments that aren’t really competitions at all. That up above is a “2014 Awards Season Scorecard” put out by Yahoo, further emphasizing the “sport” of such shows. I guess the Academy Awards are really like the playoffs, complete with favorites and underdogs, significant betting on outcomes and pools, and various kinds of scorekeeping taking place throughout the night.

I remember several months back listening to an episode of “B.S. Report” and getting a little frustrated with a lengthy discussion between host Bill Simmons and a guest regarding the acting career of Jodie Foster. It is a sports podcast (primarily), and so it shouldn’t have struck me as odd to hear the discussants pursue an analogy between Foster’s oeuvre and the career, say, of an NBA player. But after a while it felt like an unnecessarily narrow method of analysis.

Her two Academy Awards for Best Actress were likened to MVP or championship seasons. A stretch of non-remarkable roles stood for a lengthy slump. Her acting skills were questioned in the same way a player’s ability is, with an argument pursued that her apparent career highlights were more the product of fortunate casting and support (i.e., being on a strong “team”) than individual ability.

And so on. It was interesting, but seemed way too easy and ultimately not that revealing. In other words, the “sports guy” was talking about something that wasn’t sports as if it were, and finally I just wanted him instead to talk about sports again.

But that’s not to say such an approach can’t be insightful, nor that it is even wrong to make a “game” out of the act of criticism or evaluating artistic performance. It might even be inevitable, the way we tend to judge pretty much anything by making comparisons or ranking or assigning grades.

Heck, as I go to hit publish I’m already imagining giving myself a score out of 10 on this post. What would you say... 6? 7?

Green Friday

Well, today was the day. Nearly three years after Black Friday -- and the subsequent discovery by all of us in the U.S. who played on Full Tilt Poker that not only could we not withdraw the funds from our accounts but there were no funds at all -- some American players have finally had their money returned to them.

If I’m following the story correctly, during this first wave around 30,000 players are getting around $82 million back. I believe that represents a little over half of the total U.S. players had in their accounts.

News that the Garden City Group was about to start shipping these payments came not too long ago, and indeed it sounds like from forum posts and tweets that many have already seen the “pending” notice of the wire transfers coming in, apparently designated as coming from “DOJ Poker Stars.”

A friend sent me a note a few days back letting me know he was one of these first 30,000. He’d gotten an email from the GCG telling him he was about to see the payment come in the next seven business days. “This payment represents the full amount of your Full Tilt Poker Account Balance, which you confirmed on the Full Tilt Poker administration online filing site,” he was told. I assume he’s seeing the pending transaction notice now or perhaps has already gotten his cabbage.

I filed my petition back in early October 2013. I wrote about doing so here, explaining how I had not received any email and thus had to create a new petition, then having seen my balance reading as “$0.00” I had to try to provide some supporting documentation to show that I indeed had a few hundy in there.

Anyhow, not to rehearse the whole process again, I had again failed to receive any emails from the GCG as this first round of payments was approaching, so my friend’s email prompted me to give them a call to check on the status of my petition.

Have to say I’ve been pleased the two or three times I’ve called the GCG, with the support being very friendly and communicative in every instance. We found my petition, then I was told that since I was designated an affiliate I wouldn’t be included in this initial wave of folks getting repaid but would be later on. I actually wasn’t an affiliate at FTP (i.e., I never made a dime there except by playing poker), but it’s possible I might have been designated one at some point -- I honestly can’t remember.

I also apparently am being given a new petition number (I’m not sure why), but I’m told I’ll be contacted soon regarding my status. I updated my contact info, including my mailing address and phone, and now sit tight hoping that indeed things start to move forward for me.

I’m not too worried about it all, both because of what I’m perceiving to be a process that appears to be functioning as it is supposed to and because of the relative small amount of funds I’m seeking. Am glad for others today, and like others feel good about PokerStars having stepped in here John Wayne-like to help make things happen for FTP players. I understand how doing so has served their own interests, too, but still it’s so easy to imagine a different, much less sanguine outcome here.

Can’t really see “Green Friday” sticking as a name for this particular day, nor people really remembering years from now when exactly U.S. players finally started getting their money back off the site. There’s some anticlimax, too, of course, but three years of waiting around will do that.

I’d hope people getting their money back won’t cause them to forget how egregious and fraudulent those who ran Full Tilt Poker 1.0 really were, although that may well be a side effect. After all, as much as we talk about not being “results oriented,” most of us are.

Egalitarian? Egad.

Like many of you who might have clicked through my tweet announcing a new blog post (@hardboiledpoker), you probably also had your timelines populated today with much back-and-forthing regarding the Global Poker Index and the pros and cons of ranking systems designed to indicate who might be the best of the best when it comes to tournament poker.

If you did, you noticed that Phil Hellmuth has kind of weirdly wandered into the conversation, making various claims and pronouncements that remind me of a tenured faculty member who has missed every meeting all semester suddenly showing up to share his thoughts on this particular agenda item.

Starting earlier this week, Hellmuth has tweeted about a half-dozen times on the matter, sort of firing randomly in ways that belie a lack of understanding of how the GPI works, what ranking systems actually represent, and perhaps a desire to be considered by his Twitter followers to be the kind of respected commentator on poker-related issues that other players actually are.

His first salvo was the most hilarious, although he’s come close a couple of times since. “The GPI is very flawed,” he began. “I cannot respect a points award system that counts $100,000 high rollers. Poker awards need to be egalitarian.”

I liked Dreyfus’s early response to the non-specific criticism of the first sentence. “Poker is flawed,” said Dreyfus.

Dreyfus also offered a more detailed response to the rest of Hellmuth’s tweet in a post over on the GPI site, including pointing out that the Poker Brat’s criticism of $100K events being included ignores how the GPI actually weighs high roller and super high roller events differently in order to prevent them from unduly affecting rankings.

The best part of it, though, is the line that “Poker awards need to be egalitarian.” Hellmuth might as well say that the ranking system is unfair because it penalizes poor players while rewarding the good ones.

Sure, he means to say something less obtuse about high-rolling players having an inherent advantage in such rankings, but that ain’t the words he’s chosen. (I see the latest episode of the PokerNews GPI podcast is titled “Hellmuth the Egalitarian,” which makes me want to listen.)

I suppose the only real “egalitarian” tourney rankings system would be one that accounted for buy-ins, too (something that came up during the long Twitter discussion today), but that obviously ain’t happening.

Now Hellmuth is ducking his head inside the door to say stuff about a “players council” being needed to establish criteria for ranking systems. We’ve heard this line before from him -- recently, in fact, such as last fall when he wanted to “draw a line in the sand” over which WSOP bracelets were supposed to “count.”

But like I say, it’s like the whole faculty has been working on this issue for weeks and he’s just bumbled into the room to remind everyone that even if he’s presently well outside the top 100 on the GPI, he can’t be fired!

Anyhow, sorry to those who like my buddy Remko were pointing out how there was an overload of GPI-related talk in his timeline today. “They should change the word ‘Timeline’ on my Twitter app to ‘Endless GPI Discussion with some sports news and pictures of cats,‘” he tweeted.

To which I felt like there was really only one correct response (click pic to enlarge).

Fallsview Postscript

Still somewhat in recovery mode after the quick trip to the Great White North. There were a couple of items I meant to share from the World Poker Tour Fallsview Poker Classic that occurred to me this afternoon as I returned to my barn duties here on the farm.

One was the fact that local gaming regulations not only forbid any photos or videos from being taken in the tournament area, but also dictated that players weren’t allowed to use their phones at all while at the tables. That meant players couldn’t really tweet out constant updates as has become a routine practice at most events.

It reminded me a little of when I first started reporting from tournaments, back when smart phones weren’t as ubiquitous. I know some players didn’t care for the restriction, and in fact on breaks when they did have a chance to use their phones a few would tweet out complaints about it. But most seemed not to be too bothered by it.

The other effect of that rule, of course, was that generally speaking almost all of the players seemed pretty engaged throughout -- that is, those who’d folded hands were focused more on watching the involved players and their actions than skimming through content on iPads or phones or messaging. I only became aware of that difference toward the latter part of the second day of play, but I imagine it created a somewhat altered dynamic at some tables than many tourney players were used to.

They played down to 10 players on Sunday night and stopped the tourney just a few minutes shy of the time the tourney was already scheduled to stop. It was a good decision, as there was a redraw necessary at that point and it made more sense to wait another day to play those first ten-handed hands.

A stage had been constructed with lights and good seating for spectators, and that’s where things played out on Monday as 10 played down to one. Even though the official six-handed final table wasn’t shot for television, it still retained a little bit of that “spectacle” feel the WPT final tables generally possess with the hands being announced over a PA and large screens showing the community cards and showdowns.

One other humorous detail to share. For much of that final day, whenever the announcer related that a player was all in, that would cue some music -- played relatively faintly, but plenty audible -- that I think was from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. You know what I mean, that familiar decision-making music with the “heartbeat” sounds…

Actually, now that I listen to this clip I’m not sure it is exactly what they were playing at Fallsview, but it was similar enough that everyone instantly associated it with the game show. People generally laughed, too, when hearing it the first few times. Remko and I had a phone at our table from which we were reporting, and one time during an all-in I picked it up saying “Regis, I’d like to phone a friend.”

Anyhow just wanted to add that little postscript before moving on to other things this week, and there are a lot of them, including a couple more chip-related scandals, the first Full Tilt Poker remission payments finally arriving, Phil Hellmuth’s lack of understanding of the Global Poker Index, among others.

So many topics out there now, in fact, I’m not sure which one to choose. Regis? I’d like to ask the audience.