Rarities

Was scanning through the Two Plus Two forums yesterday when I noticed a thread that had begun during the spring that got “bumped” to the front page thanks to a new post or three. Not really that interesting of a thread, and in fact it looks like the mods swiftly closed it as there didn’t seem to be that much left to say about the original topic.

The thread appeared in the “Two Plus Two Magazine” forum and was titled “How is being delt [sic] aces twice in a row not over 40,000-to-1?” The original poster’s question was in response to something Mason Malmuth had written in his “Publisher’s Note” to the April 2009 issue of the online magazine.

At the end of his note, Malmuth mentioned how he’d been playing limit hold’em at the Bellagio and a woman had been dealt pocket aces on two consecutive hands. “She couldn’t believe her good fortune and wanted to know what the odds of that happening were,” tells Malmuth. “Another player spoke up and told her that it was over 40,000-to-1. Of course this is wrong.”

The subsequent debate revealed that, in fact, “over 40,000-to-1” does correctly describe the odds of getting dealt A-A on two consecutive hands -- i.e., (1/221)(1/221) = 1/48,841. Of course, the odds of getting dealt pocket aces on the hand after the one in which you just got pocket aces is still just 220-to-1, as it always is for every hold’em hand. Indeed, Malmuth himself chimes in on the first page of the thread to say as much.

As I say, not that interesting of a thread, and it seems like the only real debate is over accuracy in one’s phrasing. As we all know, the odds of being dealt any two cards are entirely unrelated to whatever cards one was dealt before. As Malmuth, Ed Miller, and David Sklansky say in one of my favorite passages in Small Stakes Hold’em (2004), “each hand is an independent event. Cards are pieces of plastic. They have no knowledge, no memory, no cosmic plan. They are scrambled and shuffled thoroughly prior to every hand. Pieces of plastic cannot possibly conspire against you....”

In Andy Bellin’s Poker Nation (2002), he relates the story of a small-time pro named Dicky Horvath. He quotes Horvath describing how boring the lifestyle of the small-time grinder can be. “‘The monotony is what kills you,’” says Horvath. “‘Not the gambling. You got to remember that poker is a finite game. There are only so many variations. I’ve been dealt pocket aces five hands in a row. That’s like a billion to one odds. I figured it out once.”

Some may want to quibble with the precision of Horvath’s calculation. But really, who cares? Getting aces twice in a row is quite rare. Five times is extraordinarily rare. The odds of either are not really worth knowing, other than to satisfy our curiosity for mathematical trivia.

For some reason, thinking about this whole issue of getting dealt pocket aces twice put me in mind of baseball and its many statistics and records. As a kid, I was a fanatic, and like many young American boys memorized all of the important numbers associated with baseball records -- numbers like 4,191, 56, 755, .367, 61, and 511. Some of the records represented by those numbers have since been broken. Some haven’t yet.

They say all records are made to be broken, but there’s one baseball record that I think it is safe to say will probably never be broken. And it sort of resembles getting dealt pocket aces twice in a row.

I’m referring to Johnny Vander Meer’s having thrown no-hitters on two consecutive starts (June 11, 1938 and June 15, 1938). Someone one day might also get two, but no one is going to get three, I don’t think.

That’s like a billion to one odds. I figured it out once.

On the Menendez Bill (S. 1597); or, Be Careful What You Ask For

Last week Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced yet another online gambling-related bill, something called the Internet Poker and Games of Skill Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act of 2009 (S. 1597) (full text here).

Once again, the news of another “anti-UIGEA” bill has evoked a kind of vague enthusiasm in the poker community. And once again, I find myself wondering “Do We Really Want Online Poker Regulated?”

You might recall that Menendez introduced a somewhat similar bill on the Senate floor last September (S. 3616). That one also focused on “games of skill” as it brought together various ideas for regulation of online gambling that had been proposed in the several other bills introduced over on the House side during the previous (110th) Congress.

Mendendez’ previous bill went nowhere -- in more ways than one. Once S. 3616 was introduced, it was referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and that’s the last action taken. But like all bills introduced in the Senate, it remained “in play” (as it were) even as a new president took office and a new Congress took up residence over in the House. That’s because unlike House bills, which fade into history if not made laws during the Congress in which they are proposed, Senate bills that have not been acted upon perpetually remain in consideration since the Senate is technically a “continuing body.” (EDIT [added 8/12/09]: Might not be accurate here with regard to the fate of Senate bills, I am afraid -- see comments.)

In other words, when Menendez decided to introduce a second online gambling-related bill last week, his decision meant he’d had a rethink and wanted to propose something different from before, since his earlier bill was still on the table. That’s a little different from Barney Frank (D-MA) reintroducing his legislation last May -- he had to, if he still wanted the legislation considered, since all of those bills he’d proposed during the previous Congress (including the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, or IGREA) had died away.

So there’s a procedural difference to note here. And, indeed, the new bill from Menendez does represent a kind of rethink, insofar as it presents a much more detailed outline of how licensing and regulation of online poker (and other “games of skill”) would go.

There’s also a fairly huge difference between the bill Frank proposed back in the spring -- his Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267) (full text here) which now has 54 co-sponsors -- and the Menendez bill. I’ve already heard some commentators strangely describe Menendez’ bill as just “a Senate version” of Frank’s House bill, but that’s not even close to being the case. While it does recite several of the same mechanisms for licensing and regulating online sites that Frank’s bill recommends, it also makes that distinction between “games of skill” (e.g., poker, chess, bridge, mah-jong, backgammon) and other forms of online gambling, and thus only proposes to regulate sites that offer such skill games.

Like Frank’s H.R. 2267, Menendez’ bill sets up a federal licensing and regulatory system, to be run by the U.S. Treasury, but also allows for individual states (and tribes) to ask to be allowed to take over the business of issuing licenses and do the regulating. This continues to be the part of such proposed legislation that frets me the most, as I happen to live in a state where it seems quite possible my government would decide against letting the feds license and regulate online gambling here.

In his analysis of Menendez’ bill, I. Nelson Rose, a gambling law professor at Whittier Law School in California, explains that this state “opt out” provision is quite sketchily explained and even self-contradictory, and so is hard to respond to as it is presently worded. If you are interested, you can read Rose’s analysis here, which once again gives us a lot of reason not to be so excited about this or any other bill proposing the licensing and regulating of online poker.

The Poker Players Alliance has come out in favor of the new bill, noting how it speaks to the need “to protect consumers by exercising appropriate control and oversight over Internet poker and other games of skill.” PPA Chairman Alfonse D’Amato calls S. 1597 “another powerful step towards protecting Internet freedom, protecting consumers and protecting online poker.”

What do I think? I have a couple of responses.

For one, I have to think the prospects for Menendez’ bill are quite dim, especially compared to Frank’s. I say that mainly because of the present makeup of the two legislative bodies, as well as the relative power Frank and Menendez currently enjoy in each. And like that previous House bill introduced by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) regarding “skill games,” I think S. 1597 is likely going to remain in the background of any discussions about licensing and regulating online gambling for the near (and possibly far) future.

Secondly, I’m becoming less and less enthused by these bills as time goes by as it becomes increasingly clear that each doesn’t really represent “another powerful step toward protecting Internet freedom” (as D’Amato says), but instead introduces ways to restrict such freedoms.

I fully recognize that we need to be able to play online poker without worrying about sites cheating us -- and we need to have some legal recourse whenever they do. But what’s the point of fighting for that protection if by doing so we help create a situation in which some of us -- maybe a lot of us -- cannot play at all?

The sole reason to be at all energized by any of these bills is the way they invite criticism of the hopelessly-flawed and unfair Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 -- the bill that has become law.

And, really, the only bill I’m supporting at present is the one Frank introduced back in May just before his latest attempt at licensing and regulating online gambling, namely, his Reasonable Prudence in Regulation Act (H.R. 2266) (full text here), a simple two-pager that does nothing more than ask for a one-year delay before financial institutions’ compliance with the UIGEA becomes mandatory. That happens on December 1, 2009, and I do think we online poker players are going to face some frustrations here and there -- particularly with regard to depositing -- if that date arrives without any legislative action happening in the interim.

H.R. 2266 currently has 35 co-sponsors -- more than I thought it would have at this juncture. It has been referred to the House Financial Services Committee (which Frank chairs), and so shouldn’t completely fall off the radar, although I’m not too hopeful about it moving through the House, Senate, and onto the president’s desk before December 1.

Even so, I think that’s probably where our energy should be directed -- toward the rapid passage of H.R. 2266 -- and not so much expended as vague, misinformed praise for bills we may not actually want to see become law.

On Poker Books

On Friday I was writing about a recent poker strategy book I had read, Jeff Hwang’s Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha, Volume I. (Lot of great comments, by the way, regarding the hand example from Hwang’s book I brought up -- check ’em out.) As I mentioned then, I think both of Hwang’s Omaha books are particularly good examples of the genre, and thus recommend them to anyone interested in learning more about PLO.

That post -- in which I talk about and endorse a poker book I had recently read -- got me thinking a bit over the weekend about the current status of poker books. What is the place of the poker strategy book in today’s world?

You might recall I was also last week lamenting here a bit about how reading, generally speaking, is not really a favored activity among the great majority of us. The fact is, only a small percentage of us actually read books anymore, those works printed on sheets of paper and bound together between covers. Most of us do read, though mostly what we read appears on computer screens, on our iPhones (or similar devices), or in the scrawl passing along the bottom of the television screen.

There’s a big difference, though, between that kind of reading -- hurried, distracted, transitory -- and the lengthy mental commitment required of us by a book. I refer back to that “time is money” ideer that possesses most of us so completely (especially poker players). Indeed, when recommending Hwang’s new book to you I should probably have told you that it is kind of a monster -- more than 500 pages! Lots of hand examples in there, too, which considerably slow down the pace at which one can turn the pages.

So, never mind the price of the book. Can you afford to give up the several hours it’s gonna take to read it?

When it comes to learning about poker strategy, we may well have moved beyond the moment when the book was considered the primary avenue by which most players seek such instruction. In fact, that “moment” might have only lasted six months or so -- probably, say, somewhere around the first half of 2005 when the first two volumes of Harrington on Hold’em originally appeared.

You might recall that period, just after the “boom” but still before the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was signed into law by Bush in October 2006. Remember all of the new books appearing on the shelves then? And new editions of the old ones, too? Many, many new players, having signed up for their first online accounts during that stretch, soon afterwards made that visit to Borders or Barnes & Noble or wherever to find a book or two with which to get started. Were you one of them?

New players still make that trip to the bookstore, I think, but with less regularity. And very few do more than buy one or two or five books before they are done with them, with the more studious typically moving on to the forums, podcasts, and online video instruction, from which one can learn as much or more -- often more quickly.

Although I’m certainly a fan of books -- and up to now can say unequivocally that I’ve gotten much, much more out of poker books than from other learning methods -- I’m not going to make some argument here promoting books as better than all other ways one might improve one’s game. I know better than that. And, the fact is, few poker books are as consistently good as Hwang’s. Really, among the eighty-plus I have on my shelves, there are probably fewer than ten I can recommend without some sort of qualification.

One reason why I have so many poker books is that for a good while I’ve had the opportunity to write reviews, meaning publishers have been sending me review copies on a regular basis. It has been a good gig, though the run has ended now as poker book reviews have become less of a priority. Sign of the times.

I thought it’d be interesting to mark the occasion of the apparent end of my career as a poker book reviewer with a picture of the poker books I currently own. (Oh, and if anyone reading this is looking to hire a poker book reviewer, I might be yr guy. Let me know.)

I pulled ’em all down off the shelves and stacked ’em up for the photo (larger version below). I was thinking perhaps of eventually writing up short synopses of each and posting them somewhere around the site here, if folks would be interested. (Would you?) Not full-fledged reviews, but just indications of what each book contained and perhaps general recommendations of whether or not I thought the books were worth yr time.

Anyhow, here they are. Look fast -- before they topple over:

To Pot or Not to Pot, a PLO Predicament

A couple of weeks ago I moved back over to pot-limit Omaha (from limit hold’em) and have been once again enjoying the game I focused on primarily for the latter half of ’07 and all of ’08. Part of what got me back over onto the PLO tables was reading Jeff Hwang’s new one, Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha, Volume I: Small Ball and Short-Handed Play -- one of the best written, most helpful strategy texts I’ve read in some time.

I’m a big fan of Hwang’s first book, titled Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy, the first half of which focuses on PLO (the rest concentrates on limit Omaha/8 and PLO8). That first book does a terrific job explaining how to think about PLO, and is particularly valuable (I think) in its discussion of starting hand constructions and what Hwang calls “straight draw physics.” For newcomers, it is essential to understand that while there isn’t that huge of a difference between a lot of starting hands preflop, certain hands have a much, much better chance of connecting with the flop than others, and thus there really is a lot to think about when it comes to selecting which hands to play.

The second book neatly follows the first with discussions of various “advanced” plays and concepts. One need not have read the first book to pick up the new one, but it would help to have had some experience with PLO and a basic understanding of why, say, is a better starter than . Or other basic concepts such as the supreme importance of position or knowing that having a couple of aces in your hand ain’t the cat’s pajamas the way it is in hold’em.

I’m not going to delve into a full-fledged review here, but I will say I like Hwang’s new one very much and recommend it highly. Rather, I just wanted to pose a quick question regarding PLO strategy that comes up in Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha, Volume I with which I’ve struggled occasionally.

Early on, Hwang discusses how in PLO the pot-sized bet is frequently chosen -- especially preflop, on the flop, and even on the turn -- when a player is opening the betting. “Generally speaking,” writes Hwang, “unless the board is paired or a possible flush is present, the standard bet on the flop and turn is a full-sized bet. That said, more often than not, a bet in the neighborhood of half- or three-quarters of the pot in these spots is a sign of weakness, amounting to little more than a weak attempt to pick up the pot.”

In many of Hwang’s hand examples whenever an opponent makes a less-than-pot-sized bet it is often described as a “weak stab” -- even if the bet is 75% of the pot or more. These bets then become invitations to play back by “floating” or check-raising or otherwise doing something to take the initiative away from the opponent and (hopefully) claim the pot.

Now, I’m kind of generalizing here -- I don’t mean to suggest Hwang is always regarding less-than-pot-sized bets as “weak” -- but I wanted to present one of his hand examples and ask you what you think about the situation.

In this hand, Hwang is playing from the big blind, but there’s a “Mississippi Straddle” (on the button), meaning preflop action starts with the small blind. The blinds are $5/$10, and the straddle is $25. Hwang is dealt . The small blind folds, Hwang completes, then a player in EP raises to $75. Two players call, including the button, and Hwang calls as well.

Never mind the straddle business -- this is a situation that comes up fairly frequently. You’re in the blinds and get a neat-looking, double-suited hand with some straight potential and a small pair in it, and you want to play it, even though you’re out of position. So you end up in a hand like this where a pot has already been built up a bit and there are four of you seeing a flop -- and you’re there in the worst position, having to act first on every street from this point forward.

Hwang is self-deprecating about his decision to play the hand -- indeed, one of the things I like most about Hwang’s books is his willingness to admit having made errors or less-than-ideal plays here and there (and the humor he uses when pointing out such mistakes). “I am about to get what I deserved,” says Hwang as he readies for the flop, “ -- a marginal situation.”

The flop comes , giving Hwang a bottom set of fours. He says he doesn’t want to bet out and be forced to fold if raised, so he checks. The others check to the button who bets $250 into the $305 pot. Hwang characterizes this less-than-pot-sized bet as a “weak stab.”

One little side issue, here: If the button had bet just $55 more (the pot), is it that much different? Is it no longer a “weak” bet? I wonder about this sometimes, as I notice in my PLO25 games sometimes if I bet even a nickel less than the pot it seems like I am much more likely to get called (or raised) than if I bet the entire pot. (Which is what I desire, sometimes.)

Note, the button wasn’t the preflop raiser, so this isn’t technically a c-bet. But given the not-so-coordinated board (no flush draw, a possible straight draw) and the apparent invitation to claim the pot when the other three checked, Hwang doesn’t really think much of the button’s bet. He notes the stack sizes (most in the $2,000 range), then decides to check-raise the pot to $1,055. All fold.

So here’s my question. I’ve been in this same situation frequently, and sometimes I’ve played it exactly the same way. (Of course, you can divide the total amounts in Hwang’s example by 50 or so, lol.) I understand why calling is awful here -- you can’t give the straight draws odds and you don’t want to let the pot get bigger and bigger while playing from out of position.

But what troubles me here is the idea of betting $1,055 to win $505.

Readers of Harrington on Hold’em instinctively recall his advice about c-betting half the pot and how the move only has to work once every three times for you to break even. I realize we’re looking at an entirely different situation (and game) here, but in this case Hwang is betting twice the size of the pot -- and really, really doesn’t want callers, preferring to take it down right here. So it seems like the move has to work almost all of the time to be profitable. Because when it doesn’t -- say, when the button (or one of the other players) comes back over the top with a bigger set -- you’re likely playing for the rest of your stack, and also likely in sad shape when putting the rest of your money in the middle.

I say I recognize the situation and have experienced it before -- what I mean is I’ve played hands where I’ve made a bold pot-sized raise after the flop, won the hand, then, when looking at my stack afterwards, thought to myself “is that all?” Because I’ve put a lot of chips at risk to win what amounts to a relatively small pot.

Anyhow, I guess the real advice here is to avoid these “marginal” situations if you can. As Hwang himself states at the start of the “Advanced Concepts” section of his new book, “The true mark of an expert player is not the ability to maneuver in tight spots, but rather the ability to avoid putting himself into tight spots to begin with.”

If anyone has thoughts about this situation, I’d love to hear ’em. Like I say, for those of you thinking about moving over to PLO, I greatly recommend both of Hwang’s books.

Have a great weekend, all.

Time Is Money, So Can I Afford to Pause to Reflect?

On Sunday, Otis sent us all a tweet linking to an interesting Washington Post article called “The Death of Journalism.”

As you probably know, Otis ably steers the ship over at the PokerStars blog as well as writes his own smart, funny, insightful personal blog Rapid Eye Reality. In a previous life, Otis had experience in news reporting -- “real” journalism -- which kind of distinguishes him a bit in the world of poker media. That previous experience also means Otis tends to raise an eyebrow at articles with titles like “The Death of Journalism.”

The article is by Ian Shapira, and tells the story of his having researched and written a feature for the WaPo, then subsequently discover his article had reappeared in a different form over on the popular news and gossip website Gawker.

Shapira’s initial response was to experience a kind of narcissistic pleasure at seeing his work disseminated further via Gawker. Then his editor at the WaPo suggested he shouldn’t be so excited. “They stole your story,” said his editor to Shapira. “Where’s your outrage, man?”

Shapira’s article provides further details of the writing of the feature -- a highly laborious exercise that took hours and hours of legwork, interviewing, and research -- and the process by which the story got cut-and-pasted (essentially) over on Gawker. Shapira even ended up phoning up the fellow who “authored” the Gawker piece, a guy named Hamilton Nolan, who revealed it had taken him “a half-hour to an hour” to pull the piece together.

The rest of Shapira’s piece talks further about some of the implications of sites like Gawker -- among which he lists The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast -- these “free-rider” type sites the content of which is primarily “sourced” from other places on the web and then presented in ways that maximize hits and other revenue-creating actions from readers, sometimes crediting original sources though often doing so only ambiguously or non-conspicuously.

The title of Shapira’s article -- “The Death of Journalism” -- refers to at least a couple of different phenomena, actually. One is that severe financial struggle being faced by traditional print newspapers like The Washington Post. They are “dying” insofar as circulations are dwindling, staffs are being cut, and some papers are printing fewer pages, publishing fewer times per week, or ceasing to exist altogether.

The other is a general shift away from traditional ideas of reporting -- those that value accuracy, thoroughness, and originality -- toward the new set of values one sees being followed on these “free-rider” sites which instead emphasize speed, pithiness, and what might be called “the art of borrowing.” The “wild and riffy world of the Internet,” writes Shapira, “is killing real reporting -- the kind of work practiced not just by newspapers but by nonprofits, some blogs and other news outlets.”

With regard to the former -- the business failure of print papers -- there isn’t too much to say. An inevitable consequence of the introduction of new media, one might argue. Books are in trouble, too. For some new college students, the act of sitting down with a book and reading an assignment -- with no computer screen glowing nearby -- has already become a strange, new experience. We can mope about that (or some of us can), but it doesn’t seem too constructive to do so. Such is life.

I do have a thought about the latter, though -- that is, the way the internet and its various financially-driven models tend to punish those who care about so-called “traditional” journalistic values like accuracy, thoroughness, and originality and instead reward the aggregators, the cut-and-pasters, the “riffers.”

Nolan -- the Gawker “author” -- described what he does to Shapira as “trying to put in a highlight reel of the stories. It’s like doing movie previews.” I understand the value in having someone else digest the news for me and provide “highlights” like this. But I also instinctively know better than to value that above the actual reporting on which such sites rely.

But not everyone sees a difference. Many genuinely prefer brevity, shun depth -- both readers and those who run the websites. Hell, poker players are probably more focused on that equation than most of the population, measuring their hours by big bets won as they do.

Indeed, having already cruised past 700 words here -- never mind 140 characters -- I’ve probably lost four-fifths of my readers. To those who remain, I appreciate the time you’ve invested, and invite you to take a minute or two more to think about what constitutes “accuracy” or “thoroughness” or “originality” when you pause between sessions to make your daily rounds of poker sites and blogs.

And whether or not those things matter to you.

On First Choices, Second Guesses

“Your first choice is wisest to follow in the coming month.”

Such was the fortune cookie I received last night. Vera Valmore and I had had a late dinner at the local sushi place where I’d enjoyed a delicious Firecracker Roll, and with the bill came the little message about trusting one’s first instincts.

My instinctive response to getting the fortune? Uncanny.

You often hear about the importance of first instincts in poker. The otherwise straightforward playing dude suddenly check-raises you big on the turn. That top pair, top kicker with which you had confidently delivered your continuation bet suddenly feels like a sure ticket to getting stacked.

Better skedaddle, you tell yourself. Surely, I’m cooked.

Then you start thinking it over, coming up with other reasons not to fold. You spot backdoor draws, and contemplate whether that’s further encouraged your opponent’s aggressive play. Or perhaps what you’re seeing is the utter lack of any draws, the dry board making it seem even more obvious he is representing a set. Why the heck wouldn’t he slowplay it, you ask yourself? Maybe I should look him up here.

Second thoughts lead to third thoughts lead to a complicated dissertation examining the viability of all possible actions. Maybe after all of that you finally return to that initial impulse to let your hand go. Maybe you don’t.

The value of that initial impression largely comes from one’s prior experience, as well as from whatever other study one has given the situation. A combination of practice and theory, you might say, that works together to inform that “gut feeling” with which your chain of reasoning started. All the subsequent fretting then becomes variations of a similar question...

Can you trust your gut?

We run into these situations frequently away from the poker tables, too, where we reach a fork in the road of life and are made to decide on a path. I’ve faced a number of such choices over the last couple of years, some of which I could see coming, others which came as surprisingly as that sudden check-raise from an otherwise pliable, playable opponent.

With each my response has usually been to go with that first instinct, which seems to have worked out okay thus far. In other words, I still have a stack with which to play.

But we can’t just shut off our minds. Second guessing equals being human. Did he really have it? (We wonder.)

Then, hopefully, we realize... there’s just one thing left to do.

Play on.

Ceci n’est pas a coin flip

Noticed this morning that the Poker Grump had directed us to an interesting article that explained how coin flips -- not the ones in poker, but real tosses of a coin -- are not, in fact, the absolute “50-50” propositions they are usually cited as being.

The article, which appears on the website called The Big Money (via Slate), explains that “research into coin flips has discovered that the laws of mechanics determine the outcome of coin tosses: The startling finding is they aren’t random. Instead, for natural flips, the chance of a coin coming up on the same side as it started is about 51 percent.”

Further explanation follows, including a bit about methodology and consequences. As far as the latter goes, it really doesn’t matter much that a coin is slightly more likely to end up on one side or the other if no one knows which side of the coin is right side up prior to the flip. In other words, if one is wagering on the outcome, it wouldn’t do for the person doing the flipping to be the one calling heads or tails, since that person could have an advantage by knowing which side of the coin was up prior to the flip, and thus which way the coin was slightly more likely to fall.

The article reminded me of a section in a book called Confessions of a Crossroad Gambler written by Gentleman Jack Newton. Newton is one of those old-timers who spent about a half-century (from the Great Depression on up through the 1970s) gambling all over creation -- in the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, and South Africa. Last spring when I was visiting Vegas CK (a.k.a. the BWoP) gave me a copy of the book, which was published some time in 2008.

Newton includes several “how-to”-type discussions of various cheats, including a section on “Coin Flip Control.” There he describes how he taught himself as a teenager to flip coins so they appeared to be turning over when in fact they weren’t. They’d wobble, but wouldn’t tumble, and thus he could know how it would land. Wouldn’t work on concrete or some other hard surface, but would do best on dirt or even wood floors. As Newton explains, “I knew if I could control my coin flip on some fraction of my throws, I would win at the end of the day.” In fact, it was better only to try coin flip control now and then, as doing it too often would attract notice.

Thus would Gentleman Jack exploit his edge even further as the flipper of the coin, not settling for the apparent 51-49 advantage physics already gave him.

The article also put me in mind of so-called “coin flips” in poker, of course, almost all of which also are not exactly 50-50 situations. For example, let’s say you’re in a no-limit hold’em tournament and it is still early -- the antes haven’t kicked in. You lost some chips during the first couple of levels are looking to double up right now. The table folds to you sitting in the small blind with and you raise all in. Your neighbor in the big blind is holding and decides to call. According to Two Dimes, he’s 49.78% to win, you’re 49.67% to win, and there’s a 0.56% chance the hand will end in a tie.

So not quite even money, but essentially so. Each player is putting exactly half of the money in the middle, and each has just about the same chance of winning the whole pot. A coin flip.

But it’s not a coin flip. And I’m not just talking about the slight edge one hand has over another. You pushed all in first, thus forcing the big blind to decide whether or not to call. There’s a chance he’ll fold, and you’ll win his blind. A pittance, sure, but there’s some likelihood -- some percentage, perhaps quite high -- that he ain’t gonna gamble with his ten-nine suited here.

So there’s an additional advantage afforded to the person who acts first here -- sort of like the one enjoyed by the guy flipping the coin (as the article explains), though perhaps greater than just an extra 1%. In other words, in poker the relative willingness of players to take a roughly 50-50 gamble is a factor that affects the “coin toss.” Or, to be more exact, whether the coin gets “tossed” at all.

Further evidence, I suppose, that poker is not strictly gambling -- is not ever precisely like betting on coin flips, not even metaphorically.

Prime Time Poker: “Face the Ace” Debuts

Got a call early Saturday evening from my mother letting me know that she’d seen an ad for a poker-themed show coming on NBC that night called “Face the Ace.” She assumed I’d heard about it, but wanted to let know just in case I hadn’t.

Like you, I had been hearing about “Face the Ace” off and on for the last couple of months. Indeed, within the poker community it has been singled out as a somewhat landmark event -- a poker show in prime time on a major network. I ended up recording the show Saturday night and watched it later. I tried to watch not only as a poker fan and player, but also as someone like my mother who isn’t particularly interested in poker, but might have happened on the show and watched nonetheless.

Had sort of a similar look and feel to NBC’s “Poker After Dark,” with a somewhat glitzy opening sequence cutting back and forth between scenes of Vegas at night and slow-mo, stylized shots of the pros -- the “aces” (all Full Tilt folks) -- approaching the poker table. The host is the boisterous Steve Schirripa, best known for his role as Bobby Bacala on “The Sopranos.”

One could hear applause early on as if there were a studio audience, but that must have been canned as we saw no shots of any crowd. As on “Poker After Dark,” the atmosphere quickly turned sedate once the poker playing commenced, with just a little bit of mood music thrown in (à la “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”) whenever there was an all in.

“Most people have played a little poker before,” Schirripa began.

Indeed, I was surprised at how the show essentially assumed the audience’s knowledge of hold’em. There was no explanation early on about how to play. Nor was there much info about how the heads-up matches were going to be structured, although that was made clear enough as the show progressed. I know most of the readers of this blog wouldn’t need any of that stuff, but I sensed the non-poker person probably wasn’t going to be sticking around for long without some help along those lines.

How does the show work? Contestants qualify via Full Tilt, I believe, and are given the chance to play a heads-up match against one of the site’s sponsored pros (whom they choose at random). If the contestant wins the first match, he or she gets $40,000 and the option to play a second match against another pro. Winning the second match nets the player $200,000, but losing means going home with nothing. If the contestant manages to win the second match, there’s an option to play one more for a cool $1 million. Again, it’s an all-or-nothing proposition, as losing the third match means losing the $200K as well.

In addition to Schirripa, Ali Nejad comes and goes occasionally, serving as the “tournament director” and additional (perhaps a bit superfluous) commentator. Play-by-play is delivered by Matt Vasgersian (heard, not seen). And Megan Abrigo is the “hostess” there to open to doors to admit the entrance of the “aces” into the room.

Saturday’s debut featured two contestants playing three matches. If you’re planning to watch the show and don’t want to know ahead of time how the matches went, stop reading now.

The first contestant was Jonathan Nygaard who drew Phil Ivey. Nygaard seemed more than a little uncomfortable on camera -- making it all a bit uncomfortable to watch, to be honest -- though Ivey actually drew him out a bit with some table talk (asking him where he was staying in Vegas, what he was doing for fun, etc.). As far as poker goes, the match was hardly compelling. Players started with 20,000 chips (blinds 200/400). Nygaard picked up pocket aces on the first hand, and won a small pot. Then on the third hand he got pocket queens, Ivey drew an ace, they got it all in preflop, the board came jack-high, and just like that Nygaard had won.

Facing the ace hardly seemed much of a challenge.

Nygaard took the money and ran, and a new contestant, the much more sociable Don Topel, came to play. He ended up playing two matches, defeating both Erik Lindgren and Howard Lederer. We only saw eight hands for the E-Dog match, and seven for the Professor’s. It appeared that most of the hands were being shown, although whenever they went to a commercial break and returned, if one was playing close attention one could tell a few hands had been omitted.

The poker was slightly more interesting in these two matches, though in both they arrived at the all-in-or-fold stage quite rapidly. (Blinds appeared to increase every five hands or so.) As I say, Topel was amiable, and there was some pleasant banter between him and the pros. He asked Lindgren where he played, and Lindgren said the Bellagio and mentioned Bobby’s Room. They joked about Topel taking his million dollars over there afterwards, and Topel said “I’ll leave town with a barrel around me.”

It looked like the show must’ve been taped just after the WSOP ended, as Ivey referred to his hopes of winning the Main Event and Lindgren mentioned how he was getting better hands in the match with Topel than he’d gotten all Series. The show concluded with Topel announcing he was going to risk the $200,000 he’d won for beating Lindgren and Lederer and go for the million dollars in a third match, which will be shown next week.

Over on the NBC site, they have listed a full schedule for the all of the episodes of “Face the Ace.” I suppose this is all subject to change, but it appears this coming Saturday’s episode will mark the last time the show will appear during prime time. Here’s the schedule:

August 1, 2009 -- 9:00 p.m. ET

August 8, 2009 -- 9:00 p.m. ET

September 12, 2009 -- 2:00 p.m. ET

October 31, 2009 -- 3:30 p.m. ET

November 14, 2009 -- 3:00 p.m. ET

December 12, 2009 -- 3:00 p.m. ET

January 2, 2010 -- 2:30 p.m. ET

Doesn’t really appear NBC has big plans for “Face the Ace,” other than to use the show to fill empty blocks here and there over the next few months. Would like to see the show succeed, of course, but can’t really imagine that happening, especially with this schedule. Of course, making it to air at all is still somewhat of an achievement.

I’m reasonably sure my mother didn’t watch the show Saturday, though like I say she was at least aware of it. From that I’m concluding that “Face the Ace” did perhaps help a little in the broader effort to “legitimize” poker (whatever that means). That said, the show certainly didn’t do much to emphasize the skill component in poker -- really what we saw was not too unlike “Deal or No Deal” in terms of the game play. And while Topel is a likable enough guy and easy to root for, I can’t imagine any non-poker player (or even many poker players) getting invested much at all in following his journey to the possible million bucks.

All of which is to say, if you missed the show and were thinking of watching -- which you can do over on the NBC website -- well, it’s mostly harmless fun, I guess. Sort of like picking up a small pocket pair and getting to see a flop cheaply, then missing your set and letting your hand go without taking much of a hit. A small investment, a minor thrill, all quickly forgotten.

Seeking a Signal Amid the Noise

I am not a huge fan of science fiction, generally speaking, but I do have a few favorite authors to whom I return time and again. And I like very much what the best SF can do, namely, position itself as what the theorist Darko Suvin once called the “literature of cognitive estrangement.”

In Suvin’s definition -- outlined in his influential Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) -- “cognitive” refers to the “science” half of science fiction, the half that concerns SF’s focus on logic and reason, while “estrangement” refers to the “fiction” making, that is, the creation of a new world that is different from the one in which the reader lives. That’s what defines the genre, says Suvin -- what makes a book “science fiction” and not something else. A work of SF presents us a new world, but does so in a way that still pays heed to rational, scientifically-sound explanations.

What happens then (Suvin goes on to explain) is that the reader does get to “escape” his or her world, in a way, while reading, but on finishing the fiction is then encouraged to return to his or her world with a questioning attitude. Thus you get SF books that function as cogent commentaries on various aspects of our reality. Some of these comment specifically on the pursuit of scientific knowledge and understanding, but some also give us things to think about with regard to the many other disciplines by which we try to understand our reality such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, poltics, and so forth.

Like I say, I have a few favorite SF authors and books, and the ones I like always do more than simply provide an “escape” but force me to take that next step and think about the world in which I live in a different way.

A couple of days ago I was reading Otis filling out one of those “memes” which included listing “15 Books I’ve read that, for whatever reason, stand out in my mind.” Otis’ list has about three SF titles on it, and I think if I were to fill out such a list mine would also include a few SF books, though not the same ones.

My list would include Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), a time-travel book about slavery that some (including Suvin, I’d guess) might argue isn’t technically SF but fantasy. It would also include Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s brilliant, witty satire on crass commercialism called The Space Merchants (1952).

I’d additionally be tempted to include Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint (1959), which starts out as a very realistic -- even somewhat mundane -- narrative about a not-so-inspiring hero whose main talent is an uncanny ability to solve the daily puzzle in his local newspaper. Then, about halfway through the novel, we -- along with the hero -- come to realize nothing is what it seems. (I'll say no more, but think The Truman Show or other, similar stories that were undoubtedly influenced by this novel.) Simply an amazing book, really, that like the other two “for whatever reason” tends to “stand out in my mind.”

There’s a fourth SF book I’d definitely include on the list, one by the Polish author Stansilaw Lem titled His Master’s Voice (1968). Lem is best known for a book called Solaris (1961) from which a couple of films have been made. I also recommend that book, as well as the 1972 film by the Russian director, Andrei Tartovsky. But the Lem novel I keep going back to is His Master’s Voice.

I took His Master’s Voice to Vegas this summer, actually, and was rereading it beside the pool on those days off from helping cover the World Series of Poker for PokerNews. And, in fact, the point of this here post was to suggest at least one of the ways Lem’s book -- set in the Nevada desert, in fact -- might be said to relate to the experience of playing poker.

His Master’s Voice is presented as an autobiography by a mathematician named Peter Hogarth, a person who becomes involved in a governmental program called “His Master’s Voice” (abbreviated as HMV), the object of which is to try to decipher what is thought to be a message from space, delivered in the form of a neutrino emission. The set-up perhaps calls to mind those various “SETI” (“Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”) projects in which people use computing power and other means to try to glean out some sort of communication coming to us via the skies.

It is the presence of what seems to be some sort of pattern in the emission that leads many to believe that some entity has sent it as a message -- “that behind the object of investigation there indeed stands a Someone” -- and the HMV project is created to figure out just what the message says. The novel takes some surprising twists, with the message alternatively being understood as instructions for the creation of a new, previously unknown life form as well as a recipe for a weapon of mass destruction. Ultimately, the book -- which is very academic in tone and almost reads like a philosophy text at times -- ends up making a lot of profound observations about the ways humans interact with one another, particularly the ways we “communicate” (or fail to).

I guess the aspect of His Master’s Voice that most directly makes me think of poker has to do with this effort to seek out patterns -- a “signal” amid the “noise” -- and interpret them in ways that make sense to us. At the poker table, we watch an opponent’s behaviors and actions, we make note of betting decisions and amounts, and we build some sort of understanding of what “message” that player is sending to us.

The fact is, though -- and Hogarth (the narrator) kind of insists on this point throughout the book -- any “message” is going to be imperfectly delivered and imperfectly understood. Hogarth often stops and points out how “one’s personal experience in life is fundamentally unconveyable. Nontransmittable.” He acknowledges repeatedly that his memoir is riddled with gaps and references to things that are “unconveyable.” And Hogarth also knows that even what he does manage to convey will likely be understood differently than he intends. Thus is the HMV project also doomed to fail, in Hogarth’s view.

So, too, are our efforts to read others’ messages at the poker table always imperfect, unfinished, taken from inadequate sample sizes. We may still profit from them, but we can’t ever really come away with an utterly absolute, unequivocal understanding of the meaning of others’ “messages.”

Indeed, I am aware that it is very likely you’ve arrived at the end of this post still searching for its “message.” Take from it what you will, but do at least take these book recommendations as part of whatever communication it is I’m trying to deliver.

On the Odds (2009 WSOP Main Event Final Table)

Not being a gambler -- not really -- I ain’t planning on placing any bets on who’ll win the World Series of Poker Main Event final table once they restart that sucker in November. Am curious, nonetheless, about the odds folks have come up with for such wagers.

Today on the Betfair site, chip leader Darvin Moon is listed as a 3.3-to-1 favorite to win. On Bodog, Moon is likewise listed as the favorite, though the odds over there are 17/10 or 1.7-to-1. And over at Ladbrokes, Moon is currently a 2.5-to-1 fave.

Here are the current odds for all nine players from all three sites:

Betfair: Darvin Moon 3.3-to-1; Eric Buchman 4.6-to-1; Steven Begleiter 6-to-1; Phil Ivey 6.6-to-1; Jeff Shulman 7.2-to-1; Joseph Cada 15.5-to-1; Kevin Schaffel 16-to-1; Antoine Saout 19-to-1; James Akenhead 19-to-1.

Bodog: Darvin Moon 17-to-10; Eric Buchman 3-to-1; Steven Begleiter 4-to-1, Phil Ivey 4-to-1; Jeff Shulman 4-to-1; Joe Cada 10-to-1; Kevin Schaffel 12-to-1; Antoine Saout 12-to-1; James Akenhead 22-to-1.

Ladbrokes: Darvin Moon 2.5-to-1; Eric Buchman 4-to-1; Steven Begleiter 5.5-to-1; Phil Ivey 6-to-1; Jeff Shulman 7-to-1; Joe Cada 12-to-1; Kevin Schaffel 12-to-1; James Akenhead 16-to-1; Antoine Saout 18-to-1.

All three sites essentially have the nine players in the same order as far as the odds go, with a few differences here and there. Of course, the most striking aspect of all three sets of odds is the fact that while they pretty much order the players according to current chip counts from first to ninth, the glaring exception in all three cases is Phil Ivey -- seventh in chips currently, but rated fourth-most likely to win it by Betfair and Ladbrokes, and tied for third-most likely by Bodog.

As a reminder, here are the current chip counts:

1. Darvin Moon (seat 1) -- 58,930,000
2. Eric Buchman (seat 6) -- 34,800,000
3. Steven Begleiter (seat 5) -- 29,885,000
4. Jeff Shulman (seat 9) -- 19,580,00
5. Joseph Cada (seat 7) -- 13,215,000
6. Kevin Schaffel (seat 4) -- 12,390,000
7. Phil Ivey (seat 3) -- 9,765,000
8. Antoine Saout (seat 8) -- 9,500,000
9. James Akenhead (seat 2) -- 6,800,000

Like I say, I’m not planning to place any bets, although if I were I think I’d probably take Shulman. I’d be betting on experience there, plus his having enough starting chips to make things happen from the very beginning. (Then again, people who bet against Phil Ivey tend to regret it.)

On whom would you bet (or are you betting)?