Here Comes the Flood: Newsweek on Online Poker

A long cover feature about online poker from the latest issue of Newsweek became available online this morning, and it has already captured a lot of attention in the poker world. Titled “How Washington Opened the Floodgates to Online Poker, Dealing Parents a Bad Hand,” the article reviews recent legislative history regarding online poker in the U.S. while advancing a view that the current, nascent era of state-by-state legalization heralds a potentially negative future.

Most in peril are the youth of America, as emphasized by the cover image of a young boy holding an iPad with a poker hand displayed. There’s perhaps a humorous incongruity between his rueful look and the royal flush he “holds.” In any case, it’s not a subtle image. Nor is the article that subtle when it comes to tipping its hand (so to speak) with regard to online gambling.

The author is Leah McGrath Goodman who earned some notoreity back in March of this year after writing another cover story purporting to identify the inventor of Bitcoin by name -- a pretty big scoop given the fact that his identity had been previously hidden. The outing of Dorian Nakamato as Bitcoin inventor “Satoshi Nakamoto” spurred debates about ethics in journalism, then the adamant denial by Nakamoto to the Associated Press that he was the inventor of Bitcoin fueled further controversy. (Another person claiming to be “Satoshi” later denied he was Dorian.) While Newsweek stood behind the article, the question of the founder’s identity remains uncertain.

I mention that earlier article because part of the resulting backlash against it involved the Bitcoin community being critical of Goodman’s understanding of the cryptocurrency, as well as Goodman lashing back on her Facebook page at the “fanatical Bitcoiners” whom she said “will see this all in a different light once they reach puberty.”

In her new article, Goodman again comments at length on a subculture that includes a number of passionate defenders, even if none of them is represented in her piece.

Goodman speaks to a law professor who opposes the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel’s undue influence over law enforcement, a Republican member of the House from Utah who oppposes online gambling, a professor of child psychology and psychiatry who warns of 18-to-25-year-olds’ susceptibility to gambling addiction and who has knowledge of an instance of an underaged player losing money playing poker online, a psychiatry professor researching addiction who likens gambling disorders to substance abuse, and the executive director of the National Council of Problem Gambling who expresses similar concern about gambling addiction.

The article begins with a summary of the memorandum by Virginia Seitz of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel first made public in December 2011 that opined the Wire Act only applied to sports betting and not other forms of gambling, thus helping create conditions for certain states to consider and in a few cases pass online gambling bills.

The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel is further introduced in a dim light, starting with a winky parenthetical note referring to its writing “justifications of drones and waterboarding.” Then comes the law professor complaining about the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinions being “treated as legally binding,” followed by the Utah House member’s fears about online gambling “reaching all the states.” He, too, is concerned about the Office of Legal Counsel (“an office in the bowels of the DOJ”) having so much power. (Incidentally, no reference is made in the article to how the UIGEA became law.) The Congressman is also skeptical about geolocational technology and about preventing children from being able to gamble online.

Next comes the academics’ observations about gambling addiction, followed by an overview of the current status of legislative efforts regarding online gambling in the U.S. The last part of the article goes back to tell the story of how we got here, summarizing Black Friday, the subsequent settlements, and current efforts by lobbyists and those contributing to politicians’ campaigns with an interest in the online gambling issue (with a conspicuous lack of perspective regarding Sheldon Adelson).

While mostly letting others speak of the evils of online gambling, Goodman does frequently target both Seitz and President Obama, highlighting their connection via the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin where both have worked. We learn that Seitz has left the DOJ and is planning to rejoin Sidley Austin to practice law. Thus does discussion of the Sidley Austin firm having “expanded its deal-making practice in the gambling space, which now includes major markets in North America, Europe and Asia” indirectly -- and speciously -- suggest that Seitz might have had a personal motivation for promoting online gambling. (Goodman did speak to Seitz, too, who reminded the author that the memo she wrote was an opinion.)

Obama’s acceptance of contributions from the gambling industry is also given a lot of attention near the end of the article, again kind of indirectly (and weirdly) suggesting that the nation’s growing interest in passing online gambling legislation helps support a larger goal of the current administration.

Many of the points shared in the article involve issues with more nuance than the commentators suggest. For instance, the professor of child psychology and psychiatry tells of a college student describing to him the “general progression” some take with Facebook games in which they start out playing them “purely for fun,” then some go “to the next level, where it’s for fun and money,” then some of those move further to “where the fun has disappeared and they are doing it just for money.”

Cool story, bro, but hardly as representative as it is made to appear. Nor does it account for the many other factors that contribute as causes for gambling addiction. Nor does it acknowledge that Facebook games are not the same as the regulated forms online gambling currently available in three U.S. states. In other words, in this article it is essentially a non sequitur, although it might have been useful to share in a feature about social gaming.

Speaking of there only being three states on board at the moment, to say the “floodgates” have been opened in the U.S. with regard to online gambling is so far from being true it can only be understood as either (1) a lethargic reliance on clichéd language (one of two in the headline), or (2) propaganda. Three states have passed laws, and in none of them is online gambling thriving by any means. And only a few others are tentatively considering such laws (with very modest prospects), while many other states never will come close to considering such.

(And by the way, why are we highlighting poker in that headline and not other forms of gambling? Makes for a better photo?)

There’s a lot, then, that is potentially misleading here thanks to the article’s unapologetic bias, something that comes out again in the very last last line which also incidentally includes another obvious inaccuracy. Referring to the DOJ’s repayment of Full Tilt Poker players (I received mine in June), Goodman derisively alludes to “Americans who had money in their Full Tilt Poker accounts on Black Friday, even though at the time those people should have known it was illegal to gamble online in the U.S.”

It wasn’t, of course, illegal for Americans to play on Full Tilt Poker -- indeed if it were it seems preposterous to think the DOJ would bother to help facilitate the return of players’ funds. The snide comment reminds the reader of the perspective informing the entire article, one that instinctive elides gambling with other illicit and illegal activity, deserving of punishment not reward.

That’s not even one of the other “11 Serious Problems With Newsweek’s Weird Tirade Against Regulated Online Gambling” that Chris Grove has already compiled over at the Online Poker Report. Others are already chiming in, too, with articles and over Twitter. And Goodman is responding, occasionally sounding a lot like she did before when dismissing the “fanatical Bitcoiners” as too immature to share her own wise perspective:

I’ll cut Goodman a break and conclude that here she’s mostly intending to echo Lance Bradley’s criticism of her methodology with a facetiously imitative rejoinder. Even so, her response does remind us that by speaking in favor of online gambling -- or even just asking those who oppose it to clarify their positions -- you risk being labeled as in favor of exposing children to danger. Or being grouped with others who support morally dubious behaviors. Or worse.

To reply to “How Washington Opened the Floodgates to Online Poker, Dealing Parents a Bad Hand” with yet another cliché, I tempted just to call it fear-mongering. But I’ll end with a fear of my own, namely that many will read and agree with Goodman’s blinkered position about online gambling -- especially poker -- and thus be likely to dismiss those trying to point out its flaws as “fanatical,” too.

Mushrooms, Real and Imagined

We’ve gotten a lot of rain here on the farm over the last week or so. Recently a couple of these mushrooms have oddly popped up here and there, including that one pictured to the left. They look a little like teed up golf balls from afar, although this one is already approaching softball size.

They come up fast, too -- this wasn’t even there yesterday. When I bent over to snap the photo, I found myself thinking a little about mushroom clouds, and before long an associative-chain of YouTubing led me to rewatching a couple of TV films from the early ’80s that focused on the possibility of modern day nuclear war -- The Day After and Special Bulletin.

Both of these movies appeared on network television on Sunday nights in 1983, with Special Bulletin being shown on NBC in March and The Day After on ABC in November. I vividly remember watching them then, and I don’t know if I really had sat down to see either since.

Both are highly intriguing, with The Day After the more accomplished of the two. Both address the horror of nuclear weapons, with Special Bulletin also attempting some further commentary on news media with the entire movie being presented as a faux news broadcast, sort of like Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds radio show from nearly a half-century before.

In fact, disclaimers are shown throughout Special Bulletin reminding viewers they are watching a “realistic depiction of fictional events.” Even so, just as happened with Welles’s broadcast, there were viewers calling stations who weren’t sure what they were watching wasn’t in fact real.

It’s impossible to watch these movies today without being mindful of the specific historical context of the Cold War as well as the recent Three Mile Island incident and other nuclear-related fears of the day. Chernobyl came a couple of years later, and that, too, weighs on the mind when viewing today. Nor can one watch them now without doing so through the memory lens of the real-life horror of 9/11, an event that resonates in various ways with both films.

In Special Bulletin, an activist group manages to steal plutonium, assemble a bomb, then take hostages in a docked boat in Charleston, South Carolina. Their demands include the turning over of all of the triggers for the nuclear devices located at the nearby naval base, part of a larger design to encourage the reduction of nuclear weapons generally. If their demands aren’t met, they’ll detonate their device.

At one point a couple of talking heads on the news broadcast bring up a poker metaphor when discussing the activists -- or “terrorists,” as they are tentatively described in the film -- and whether they’ve actually obtained plutonium or not.

The analogy they use is an obvious one. “I don’t believe the bomb is real,” says the doubter. “We’re witnessing an extraordinary kind of bluff -- a poker move, simple as that.” Then the other expert responds by declaring the first commentor “wishes to play card games with an entire city” before taking the position that the bomb might be real.

The Day After presents a different scenario, one depicting a rapidly deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. turning the Cold War hot in a relative flash after a quick sequence of aggressive moves. Poker is not mentioned in that film, and the strategizing being employed by both superpowers is suggested in subtle ways that allows some ambiguity while focusing the viewer’s attention much more so on the effects of a massive nuclear strike on citizens.

Was curious to watch both films again all of these years later, and to remember how we were viewing them three decades ago. We’ve grown a lot more accustomed to becoming utterly absorbed by news and entertainment media today, but then it was something quite out-of-the-ordinary to experience. More than 100 million watched The Day After, and they reran Special Bulletin again later, too. The cultural impact of both films (and a handful of others with similar subject matter) certainly “mushroomed” and I suppose could be said still to exert some influence today.

I guess today, though, we’d say of their popularity that they really “blew up.”

Dropping in on “The Big One for One Drop”

Was writing yesterday in general terms about watching poker on the tube, then tonight I found myself getting surprisingly absorbed by a couple of hours’ worth of poker TV while watching the finale of the “Big One for One Drop” on ESPN. Have to say I enjoyed the show more than I’d expected I would.

The first hour showed them play down from nine players to three. There would be 13 hands total shown during that first hour, selected from a span of 41 actual hands. From those hands, no less than 12 featured players all in, most often preflop. And in all but one of those hands the all-in was called and a player either doubled or was knocked out.

That hour was actually a little fatiguing to wade through, save the one hand featuring Scott Seiver make a bold all-in shove on the turn with an open-ended straight draw (and king-high) to force Tobias Reinkemeier to fold his pocket aces (an overpair to the board). Here was the hand from PokerNews’ reporting, and here the clip on the ESPN site, if you’re curious.

The hand took over 10 minutes in real time, and they actually took up around eight minutes of the program for it, not counting the gimmicky commercial break stuck in the middle. It was the only all-in bet not called during the first hour, and it was easily a highlight of the entire night.

The second hour began similarly, with a short-stacked Christoph Vogelsang all in three times in the first five hands shown (culled from about 30), finally busting on the last one. Then came what turned out to be a fairly enjoyable rest of the program showing 11 of the 46 heads-up hands between the two Daniels, including some very interesting reads by both players of each other -- some correct, some not.

Negreanu’s big call with K-Q on a 4-8-J-A-4 board against what turned out to be Colman’s full house with A-4 was the most intriguing decision (Hand #103). I remember reading James McManus writing about the “Big One” final table for Bloomberg and mentioning Negreanu had king-queen in the hand, something I hadn’t seen reported elsewhere, and so was intrigued to see that confirmed.

Then the final hand provided some uncanny symmetry with Colman using K-Q to beat Negreanu’s A-4, the latter actually flopping two pair before Colman turned his winning straight.

Poker-wise that heads-up portion of the show was more fun to watch than I’d anticipated it would be, although I think Negreanu had a ton to do with it thanks to both his table talk and the somewhat infectious excitement he was showing right through to the end. (Negreanu’s tweets during the night commenting on hands actually added a lot to the enjoyment, too, I came to realize.)

ESPN’s occasional acknowledgements of Colman’s disinterest in chatting it up with the media were mostly fine, I thought, although the montage of pros commenting on the subject felt more like another excuse to squeeze Phil Hellmuth into a poker show than anything else. Hardly that gripping of a side story, but at least ESPN didn’t go overboard and try to construct a full-blown villain out of such meager materials.

Talk of folks buying pieces wasn’t ignored, with shots of Colman backers Olivier Busquet and Haralabos Voulgaris a fairly frequent reminder, although not a lot of focus was placed upon it. (Then again it never felt as though the millions for which players were vying were all that significant to anyone involved.) Meanwhile references to the One Drop charity and other positive messages about poker came often enough to represent a minor theme for the night.

Like I say, I found myself more engaged by it all than I thought I’d be, especially knowing the outcome, something I wrote about a couple of weeks ago being a big deterrent when it came to viewing. Was still nowhere near as captivating as your average live sporting event, but once I dropped in on the show it nonetheless kept my attention.

Watching Golf, Watching Poker

Got thoroughly caught up in the PGA Championship yesterday. Such high quality play from the leaders at the end, and Rory McIlroy more than proved himself with his comeback, making shot after shot to top that tough field and claim yet another major. Three straight weeks’ worth of wins by McIlroy is pretty incredible, too -- perhaps slightly more likely than a poker player winning three successive tournaments, but still a very rare feat to pull off.

I’ve written here before about the many similarities between golf and poker, both of which are games that players of wildly differing levels of skill and commitment can enjoy. Amateur golfers like myself can watch pros and still feel somewhat connected with what we are seeing, having ourselves attempted similar shots even if we’re competing on a much lower level. I’m not sure that’s really so much the case, though, with poker. Not currently, anyway.

I was realizing yesterday that when we think back to televised poker’s heyday during the mid-2000s, one of the primary attractions for a lot of us was the fact that we could make a similar connection with what we were watching. Whether it be the WSOP Main Event, the prelims that got some play on ESPN during those couple of years, the WPT, or other poker on TV, many of us watching were players ourselves and without too much effort could readily appreciate similarities between hands we were playing and those we were watching.

It was kind of like one big game then (if that makes sense), with online poker especially helping all of us feel connected in a much more immediate way than is the case today. Even if we didn’t necessarily think “one day that’ll be me” as we watched, we still recognized the games on TV as analogous to what we were doing when we played.

Some of us who continue to tune in and watch televised poker today still think in similar terms as we watch -- that is, we connect somewhat with the players and the game -- but I think the gap between what’s happening on screen and what most of us experience with poker is a lot wider now. Certainly when it’s the “Big One for One Drop” being shown none of us identifies that much with those participating in a $1 million buy-in event. But even in other tourneys I’d venture to say many of us find it hard to relate to what we’re seeing.

During the PGA broadcasts this week they would occasionally show short instructional segments featuring Lou Guzzi, the 2013 PGA Teacher of the Year. That’s a shot of him above, getting set to deliver a quick lesson about how to hit the ball out of a fairway sandtrap. The lesson didn’t seem out of place at all within the context of the coverage. Players could benefit from the instruction, and even non-players might have found it interesting to see the mechanics of such a shot being explained.

I know in televised poker there have been various attempts to introduce strategy discussion into the coverage. In truth, every single hand shown is usually accompanied by some talk along those lines. But I think most of such commentary is received simply as describing the action, not prescribing potential plays we viewers might make. The level of engagement by the viewer just isn’t the same with poker as it is with golf.

I’m discussing this phenomenon as if it isn’t just personal but applies more broadly among most viewers, which could be incorrect. This might just be me. Or what I’m describing might primarily apply to recreational players of both golf and poker (in which categories I put myself in both cases), and not as much to others.

Still, I think for all the similarities between golf and poker, there are some big differences, too, particularly when it comes to trying to make the card game into a game as engaging to watch as golf can be.

Humility and Hubris

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times how over the last several months I’ve gotten hooked on The Dan Le Batard Show. It originates each weekday afternoon from Miami where they have an hour just for the locals, then three more hours syndicated nationally.

The show was especially fun to follow during the latter half of the NBA regular season, playoffs, and the post-Finals drama involving LeBron James that ended with his decision to leave the Miami Heat after four years to return to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

James, you’ll recall, made that announcement via a letter published in Sports Illustrated. The general response to the move was much more positive than had been the case four years ago when James decided to leave for Miami, with “The Decision” still earning him derision as a poorly-conceived bit of PR. Here, though, James saying “I’m coming home” played a lot more favorably among most observers (outside of Miami, anyway), and it does set up an intriguing storyline for the NBA next year.

They’ve predictably spent a lot of time discussing both James’s departure and the future of the Heat on Le Batard’s show. Also capturing the attention of folks in Miami was how James conspicuously failed to thank the Heat fans in his letter. He refers to Miami as a “second home” and thanks his teammates and Miami management, but doesn’t specifically thank Heat fans.

Today there is a big “Welcome Home LeBron” event happening in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. As a prank, the Le Batard show bought up several billboards telling James “You’re Welcome” from the Miami fans, humorously drawing attention to the omission in the letter.

Regular listeners of the show knew all about the billboards as well as the fact that the show was readying a “multi-pronged attack” involving some more hijinks today. They also know that Le Batard himself is much more interested in having fun than anything else, and his buying up the billboards to deliver a message genuinely felt by some Miami fans was mainly just a goof to fill some downtime in the sports calendar (and drum up publicity for his show).

The ESPN folks didn’t find the billboards as funny or harmless, though, actually suspending Le Batard and knocking his show off the air for two days in response. Saying the “stunt does not reflect ESPN’s standards and brand,” the network weirdly claims they “were not made aware of his plans in advance” despite the fact that the idea was discussed repeatedly on the show beforehand.

ESPN’s reaction is silly, although it kind of helps promote even further that sense of “fun anarchy” surrounding the episode (to use Le Batard’s phrase describing the “stunt”). In any case, the story made me think about how sports fans relatively value humility and hubris, a topic that comes up in poker sometimes, too.

James’s move to Miami was overtly cloaked in hubris, with his infamous prediction of multiple championships (“not one, not two, not three...”) still being endlessly quoted as a mark against him. He scored points for humility, though, with his SI letter, explicitly saying “I’m not promising a championship” and “I know how hard that is to deliver.”

The jokey, indirect complaint about James failing to thank the Heat fans, though, refers again to a lack of humility -- something most missed when reading the letter initially.

We see this in poker sometimes, such as in the reaction to Ryan Riess saying after winning the WSOP Main Event last fall that “I just think I’m the best player in the world.” Or Daniel Colman stirring things up by proclaiming after winning this year’s “Big One for One Drop” that “I don’t owe poker a single thing.”

We like competitors to express confidence, but I think we like hearing expressions of humility a lot more. Perhaps in poker it is different, where the element of luck is more conspicuous than in basketball or in other sports (where it exists, too), thus making it appear even more unseemly not to acknowledge that one isn’t actually invincible.

In any case, will be interesting to hear Le Batard when he returns, including where he will position himself on the humility-to-hubris spectrum regarding ESPN’s humorless action.

(EDIT [added 8/11/14]: For more regarding Le Batard’s suspension -- which sounds as though it was more for some planned-for hijinks than for the billboards alone -- read his column over at ESPN.)

Is Gutshot Straight the Nut Low?

Saw folks referring this week to this forthcoming film starring Steven Seagal that is getting referred to as a “poker movie” thanks to a plot that appears to include a professional poker player as its protagonist and a title that like the miserable Runner Runner involves a poker term -- Gutshot Straight.

The trailer recalls Runner Runner, too, with poker not appearing too vital to the story and ham-fisted lines punctuating action sequences being front and center:

Not a lot of info circulating about the film with regard to release dates or distribution plans, and in fact it appears it is likely headed for some kind of direct-to-video release. I saw one article from early May actually saying something about the producers wanting to send it to Cannes later that month, but that clearly wasn’t a realistic plan.

There isn’t even a lot available regarding what exactly Gutshot Straight is about. It’s “the story of a professional poker player who gets mixed up with a mysterious underworld gambler,” or so goes the line repeated in most articles about the movie.

It seems like there would be about a hundred other poker terms and phrases that would work better as titles for an action-adventure vehicle than “gutshot straight” or “runner runner.”

“Under the gun” has been used a lot before, including by John Vorhaus for his poker-themed novel. But there are so many still available, like…

Bad Beat

Blind Steal

Catching Perfect

Calling the Clock

Cards Speak

Cold Call

Dead Money

Drawing Dead

Drawing Live

Freezeout

Hand-for-Hand

Hijack Seat

Jackpot

Kill Game

Misdeal

Run It Twice

Scare Card

Squeeze Play

Heck, even Nut Low seems like it’d be better than Gutshot Straight, although it would probably be better suited not for an action flick but for an indie production pursuing some existentialist theme, say, about a down-and-out ex-junkie hitting rock bottom.

Could be worse, I guess, but Bubble Boy was taken.

A 2006 WSOP Time Capsule

Didn’t watch the “One Drop” last night (DVR’d it). Instead what time I did spend looking at poker actually involved viewing some of the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event -- not the ESPN episodes, but the live pay-per-view that was shown that August night (the eighth anniversary of which comes this weekend) when Jamie Gold won the biggest first prize in WSOP Main Event history.

The program brings back some personal memories. That final table occurred just a few months after I started this blog, and about six weeks prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Thus it exists within a rosy context, a time when my absorption in all things poker was at an all-time high. As was the case for a lot of people.

The playing styles at the final table are of course conspicuously different from what we see today, with everyone opening for at least three times the big blind before the flop (sometimes more), lots of overbetting of pots after the flop, and many all-ins that today would automatically be read as “ICM suicide.”

The commentary by Phil Gordon doesn’t have the benefit of eight years’ worth of hindsight, and so while he does point out what seem like misplays or less-than-recommended bet-sizing here and there, most of his observations -- like the plays themselves -- are essentially time-bound, perfectly fine then while highlighting in retrospect changes in tournament strategy that have happened since.

Other comments by the many guest hosts rotating through during the broadcast are similarly time-bound, and since it was such an interesting time those comments are all the more intriguing.

At one point Doyle Brunson stops by. It happens to be his 73rd birthday. He’s just finished playing a 14-hour day the night before, finishing 21st in one of those post-Main Event bracelet tournaments they ran that year.

“What are your impressions... eighty-seven hundred players this year?” begins Gordon, and Brunson answers that he was one who expected there would be an increase in players from 2005. There were 8,773 players in the WSOP Main Event that year -- still a record. That was more than 3,000 more than had played in 2005, and more than 10 times as many as had played in 2003.

“I think that it’s just going to get bigger and bigger,” Brunson continues. “I don’t see any stopping it. In fact if there were some way to bet, I would like to bet there would be something like 40-50 thousand players in 10 years.”

“Oh boy,” says Gordon, who begins to disagree. “I think so,” affirms Brunson. “The only thing that would stop it, you know, if the internet....”

At that point Brunson gets interrupted by another “Oh boy” from Gordon as a hand has developed that will result in Sweden’s Erik Friberg getting knocked out in eighth place by Gold.

“Hold onto that thought,” says Nejad as the hand starts to play out. But the bustout distracts them and they never do get back to the topic.

Not unlike the way the idea itself would be interrupted just a few weeks later. That vision of 50,000 WSOP Main Event players -- perhaps spread all over Las Vegas and/or the internet -- would be left behind, time-bound.

Nixon’s Big Fold, Forty Years Later

I have mentioned my “Nixon studies” here often enough now that people sometimes bring it up to me, including a couple of instances in the last few days as the 40th anniversary of Richard M. Nixon’s resignation from office approaches this Saturday.

For a long time now I’ve been compiling lots of anecdotes and other information related to Nixon’s poker playing, building toward what I am planning to be a short book about the subject. Many don’t even know “Tricky Dick” played poker. Those who do perhaps are aware of the much-repeated story of his supposedly learning the game as a Naval officer when serving in the Pacific during World War II. Some even know that he won enough during those games against fellow officers to help fund his first Congressional campaign in 1946.

The truth is Nixon learned poker well before his military service, and also played the game afterwards as well. Poker comes up constantly in Nixon’s story as well during his campaigns, in his speeches and writings, and throughout his political career up to and including the Watergate scandal and his resignation.

There’s enough there, I think, to make for an interesting book, one that not only would share more details about Nixon’s poker playing than are generally known but also explore how his political thinking was often shaped by poker-like strategy, sometimes overtly.

The more I read about Nixon (and of his own writings), the more I’ve come to understand his “zero sum” mindset whereby practically everything he did or said had political implications, with every word or action supporting his view that in practically every context one person’s gain necessarily depends on another’s loss. Such was how he personally interacted with others, I think, and also, of course, how he conducted himself in campaigns and when governing.

Looking at his presidency in such terms thus causes his role during Watergate to resemble that of a stubborn poker player unwilling to let go of a losing hand, blundering through it with a sequence of poor decisions, then finally -- well after having committed essentially all of his chips -- letting go of his cards.

It’s definitely possible to get carried away with the analogy, but I think there’s some genuine insight to be gained from looking at Nixon’s life and career through the lens of poker. As I was remarking yesterday, poker is endlessly interesting, even to many who don’t even play the game. And Nixon is just plain fascinating, with no end to the amount of material available for those pursuing such “studies.”

Let me share one small anecdote. While the hearings of the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee were televised, with PBS actually showing everything from mid-May 1973 right up through early August, there isn’t a lot of footage floating around aside from certain highlights. (Video exists, but isn’t just a click away.) But full transcripts of all 250 hours or so are readily available for those curious about such things.

One of the first witnesses to testify was James McCord, one of the five arrested on June 17, 1972 during the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate hotel. A former longtime CIA employee, McCord had been tried and convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping, and during his lengthy testimony was entirely forthcoming about his involvement in both break-ins (they were only caught during the second one) and his understanding of higher-ups’ endorsement of them.

McCord was asked repeatedly by various senators why he would involve himself in what he well knew to be a criminal activity, and his response was that he understood the break-ins, photo-taking, and wire-tapping to have been okayed by then Attorney General John Mitchell -- and, by extension, by Nixon, too. “The Attorney General, the White House itself, and in my personal opinion, the President of the United States, I felt, had set into motion this operation,” says McCord.

While McCord admits that others would have had political reasons for wanting to gather information from the rival campaign’s headquarters, he understood the operation to have been motivated by national security, prompted by concerns about demonstrations occurring at the upcoming conventions in Miami and suspicions that the Democrats may in fact have been “working closely with violence groups.”

Reading from a memo he prepared titled “Sanction of the Watergate Operation,” McCord shares how the Committee for the Re-Election of the President’s mission included “obtain[ing] information regarding not only political intelligence but also regarding violence-oriented groups who would be planning violence against the committee in Washington, and later at the August convention site, thereby endangering the lives and property of the committee and its personnel.” The riots at the 1968 DNC in Chicago were “uppermost in everyone’s minds” he says, as were more recent threats and actual attacks, thus making the threat more “realistic” than “theoretical.”

The memo also includes an acknowledgement of the political motive, however, noting in particular how the Republicans believed the Democrats were gathering intelligence on them, thus casting their efforts as simply a response in kind. McCord doesn’t ever present that argument as a justification for his own participation in the break-ins, but rather shares it to help round out the larger picture for the Senate Watergate Committee regarding why the break-ins occurred.

“Now, we also had word from CRP sources alleging that the McGovern committee had ‘a pipeline’ directly into the offices of the Committee To Re-Elect the President in Washington,” explains McCord. “Allegedly, they were feeding out, on a regular basis, policy position papers, that is, plans and strategy, which were rather important to the success of a candidate's campaign.”

McCord then punctuates that observation with an analogy.

“If the other side is reading your poker hand, he can negate your plans.”

The comparison suggests how the gathering of “political intelligence” was looked upon as being not unlike a game of poker in which an opponent has demonstrated a willingness to cheat, thus making it imperative to defend against such cheating and perhaps to cheat oneself in order to be able to compete. Nixon would make a similar point subsequently when commenting on Watergate during his post-Presidency, pointing out how other administrations had performed similar acts of political espionage as a kind of justification of what happened during his own.

That’s one of a few references to poker that come up during the hearings. They come up quite frequently on the tapes, too, including during exchanges between Nixon and Henry Kissinger in which the President encourages his National Security Advisor to bring up Nixon’s prowess as a poker player when negotiating with the North Vietnamese. Such references and analogies arise during various speeches, too, often very deliberately -- the list goes on and on.

The project has been delayed somewhat thanks to another possible book I might be writing -- one even more ambitious that may be happening sooner than later (stay tuned for that). In the meantime, I look forward to reading others’ reflections this week as we approach the anniversary of the biggest fold a U.S. president ever made.

The Hunger for Poker

Been involved in some interesting conversations over the last day or so regarding poker and its current state of popularity, particularly in the U.S.

Last week I noted how ESPN had started its 2014 World Series of Poker broadcasts, discussing in particular those first couple of hours’ worth of coverage of the “Big One for One Drop” and the hand involving Cary Katz and Connor Drinan that saw both players all in before the flop with pocket aces and Drinan ultimately lose to Katz’s flush.

By the time I wrote that post Tuesday night, ESPN had already published a clip of the hand to YouTube (and thus I was able to embed it in my post). Within three days the clip had 4.5 million views; today, not even a week after it was first posted, the clip has nearly 6 million views.

I wasn’t the only one writing about that hand last week, of course, as several mainstream outlets picked up the story and embedded the clip as well. Social media was probably the biggest reason for all the views, with folks passing it around on Twitter, Facebook, and by other means.

Then today I saw that Carl’s Jr. -- known as Hardee’s around this part of the country -- had inserted Phil Hellmuth into a commercial. It’s a non-speaking role, with Hellmuth described simply via caption as “Texas Hold’em Champion.” The captions also suggest we “double down with smoked brisket on a black Angus burger,” a line that not only betrays a lack of understanding of poker but a reckless disregard for nutritional recommendations.

Poker is clearly still firmly in the mainstream when it comes to popular culture. Certainly the number of new players coming to the game has slowed considerably since the “boom” years, but that period did succeed in making more people aware of poker than ever before. Awareness of poker remains high, and interest in the game, the players, and game’s colorful history continues to be there.

For many whose livelihood is connected to poker in some capacity -- as players, as employees of casinos or tours or other poker-centric venues, as members of the surrounding “industry,” etc. -- the emphasis on growing the game via the introduction of new players is understandably central.

As an academic, though, I also find it intriguing to consider how the game’s cultural influence continues to grow, capturing the notice not just of players but of others, too. Even if there aren’t a lot of new players -- and certainly nothing close to the increase of players that was happening 8-10 years ago -- poker continues to attract a lot of attention both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Thus while the “boom” may be technically over, its effects continue with many more interested in and/or aware of poker today than was the case in the early 2000s. To borrow another fast food chain’s old slogan, the game continues to serve the interest of millions.

Writing and Playing

A thread was started over on Two Plus Two last week by a poster complaining about commentary regarding a particular player on a poker broadcast. The poster was specifically talking about Dan Shak and referring to some commentary on EPTLive.

The poster had some things to say about how some players might be discussed more favorably as players when compared to others, although might have been a little unfair in this particular instance as the subsequent discussion helped point out.

In fact EPTLive co-host James Hartigan posted a few times to help clarify some of the commentary highlighted by the original poster, with his response being both interesting to read and constructive. From there the short thread moved on to talk more broadly about poker commentary before winding down a few days later.

One of the more interesting points made in the thread came from Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke who contributes to the EPTLive shows and for that reason was encouraged to join in the discussion. He spoke humbly about the challenge to produce good, insightful strategic commentary on poker, noting how easy it is to be wrong with one’s read of a situation or player.

“Writing about poker correctly is a lot like playing poker,” Fricke then added.

Fricke mainly refers to writing (or discussing) strategy, and what he says makes a lot of sense. Commenting on hands well presents a challenge very similar to playing them well.

I was tempted, anyway, to apply the point more broadly to other kinds of poker-related writing which likewise can require technical knowledge, analytical ability, and creative thinking. You could even take the analogy further and talk about how writing about poker well also involves being able to read others, understanding how stories are put together and affect others, and even sometimes enjoying luck in the form of good timing or other external factors that lie outside one’s “skill.”

In what other ways is writing about poker like playing poker?