Post No. 1,000

Was looking back over the blog this week -- the whole sucker, I mean, going all of the way back to April 2006 -- and thinking about what would do for some sort of suitably momentous, whiz-bang-type message to deliver here in post no. 1000.

It’s a big, intimidating number. What should I say about it?

I considered various ideas, such as compiling a list of the posts with the most hits, or maybe my own list of favorites. I thought about doing one of those funny “word clouds” using all of the words I’d ever written on Hard-Boiled Poker. I fussed over that for a while, during which time I discovered the total number of words on here was approaching 900,000.

As I’ve said before, that’s a damn lot of scribblin’.

Of course, when you’ve written a thousand friggin’ posts, you’ve said and done a lot of things before. Like that word cloud idea -- I realized I’d done that once before, too. Besides, the word cloud pic looked ridiculous. Just a big ol’ mess of words that didn’t really seem to communicate much that was meaningful.

So I thought about the blog a little more. And what it means. And I thought about how many people I’ve gotten to know because of Hard-Boiled Poker. Really great, smart, funny, interesting people. And how many more with whom I’ve communicated over the years thanks to the blog, whether in comments on each other’s blogs, via email, or in other ways. And of all the nice things people have said to me and about me regarding the last 999 posts. And a lot of other stuff that can’t really be measured or counted or quantified in any tangible way.

And that’s when I had to admit... I was at a loss for words.

I mean, really, there’s no way I get this far along without help. You can’t play poker by yourself. Not really. And while you can write for yourself, the meaning of what you write grows with every reader.

A thousand thanks, everybody, for helping give all these words more meaning.

A Mistake at Cake

Kind of a weird story from Cake Poker -- a site on which I do not play, although have thought about opening an account there. Apparently during a microstakes no-limit hold’em hand played yesterday afternoon, the pot was shipped to the wrong player.

The hand involved two players named “dimondidenko” and “d0nkeyk0ng9.” Of course, on Cake one can change one's username once per week, so I suppose these players don't always go by those nicks. I believe the hand was actually played on Doyle’s Room, a skin of Cake.

It was a $0.02/$0.04 game of NLHE, and all the money went in preflop with dimondidenko holding and d0nkeyk0ng9 . The board ran out , yet for some reason the $5.36 pot was not awarded to d0nkeyk0ng9 who rivered the nut flush, but to dimondidenko who ended with a king-high flush.

A thread started on Two Plus Two shortly after the hand occurred, and while at first it appeared the whole thing might be a bunch of applesauce, Lee Jones, Cake Poker Cardroom Manager, quickly jumped on to confirm that “Unfortunately, at the moment, this appears to be real.”

Jones went on to note how “bizarre” the occurrence was to have “have happened this one time out of the tens of millions of hands we've dealt,” adding that “our software people have dropped everything else to track this down.” Jones added that he’d be coming back with an update as soon as they found out what happened with the hand. He later returned to the thread in the early evening to report that Cake was pausing its servers for 20-30 minutes “so we can put some logging in to watch and see if anything happens again.”

The thread continued throughout the night, with some stating their intentions to cash out of Cake, while others used the occasion to voice other complaints about the software. And a few brought up the hand on UltimateBet from December 2008 in which Phil Hellmuth was erroneously awarded a pot in a limit hold’em hand ($400/$800 stakes). If you don’t remember that one, see “Honey, I Was Supposed to Lose That Hand!”

“What a wonderful day in online poker,” added one poster who found the whole situation amusing. “I am still waiting for 2 aces of spades to be dealt. That would be cool.”

That comment made me think of this little time-waster I have on my iPhone called “Heads Up Hold’em” which allows one to play quick NLHE tourneys (with blinds rising every three hands) either against the computer or another player. Generally works pretty well, although once I lost a hand in which I flopped two small pair, but the computer rivered me when the board paired and it held two aces. Then I looked more closely at what my opponent had -- two aces of spades! (See screenshot at left.)

No idea how that happened on the iPhone game. Nor have I much clue how mistakes like the one that apparently happened on Cake Poker yesterday and UB before can occur, although Greylocks offers a good explanation there in the comments to that post about the UB hand that helps demystify things a bit -- check it out.

As far as I know, we still await word this morning of an explanation of what happened at Cake. Not sure how much an incident/story like this will affect Cake’s ability to attract players, or if it even registers much with most. I think everyone appreciates Jones hopping into the thread and immediately showing both that he takes the matter seriously and is desirous to communicate all he can about it -- not exactly the sort of openness we’ve seen previously from others when such situations have arisen on their sites.

I probably won’t be opening an account at Cake soon, not so much because of any worries about the site (at the moment) but mainly because I’m presently content with the sites on which I do play (PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Bodog), both in terms of their functionality, the games they offer, and my experiences with support.

Interesting to think how a mistake like this can happen, though, and perhaps how other, less obvious mistakes (e.g., those that don’t involve the wrongful awarding of a pot to a losing hand) might happen as well without our being aware.

On to other things... like this here big ol’ milestone of a post I have for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

(EDIT [added 2/4/10, 3:30 p.m.]: Lee Jones returned to the thread this afternoon with a further update, plus a promise to send $500 to any player who finds -- and Cake confirms -- that he or she was involved in a hand in which there was a wrongly pushed pot. See here for more.)

(EDIT [added 2/5/10]: More illustration of the right way to handle these situations -- Jones came back on Two Plus Two yesterday with an explanation of how the snafu occurred, plus further info on how Cake plans to handle it [and any future such mistake, should it somehow arise]. Click here to see Jones’ explanation.)

Play the Game Existence to the End of the Beginning

“Back to quits” is one of my favorite poker expressions, although I don’t think it is one that is all that commonly known or used. I don’t see it in The Official Dictionary Poker by Michael Weisenberg, accessible online over at Mike Caro’s site. Nor does it appear in The Poker Encyclopedia compiled by Ethan Allan and Hannah Mackay.

Can’t recall exactly where I first encountered it. I know Anthony Holden uses the phrase in Big Deal, which is why I think of it as probably more of a British term -- like calling a player a “punter” or the pot the “pool.” Early in the book, Holden describes starting out his year-long experiment as a poker professional with some losses, followed by a couple of cashes in small tourneys and “a run of cards in a £5-and-£10 Hold ’Em side game, which got my bankroll back to quits.”

The meaning of the phrase is clear enough, I assume -- getting back to even. I like the way the phrase connotes that irrational feeling we’ve all had that makes recovering one’s starting stack a requirement for leaving the game.

We know it’s wrong to think this way. “Perhaps the stupidest words in poker are ‘I’ve got to get even,” writes Al Schoonmaker in Your Worst Poker Enemy. “When you feel that way, you are in danger of turning an unpleasant loss into a catastrophe,” explains the psychologist. “You can get further off balance, play more poorly or perhaps go to a larger game or the craps table, desperately trying to get even.”

Thus do I like calling it getting “back to quits” rather than getting even, because the phrase tends to remind me that my real goal is simply to leave the game -- which perhaps I should consider going ahead and doing rather than pressuring myself to recoup my losses. In other words, realizing that I’m simply trying to get “back to quits” sometimes helps me get up from the table sooner -- not always easy to do. (Wrote about that a couple of times before, actually, in “Poker Sisyphean Challenge” and “The Long Goodbye”).

I sometimes marvel at how this mindfulness of how much I am up or down perfectly evokes the existentialist idea of “making meaning” -- in this case, interpreting the meaning of my play according to what is necessarily a wholly subjective criterion that only really matters to me. In fact, depending on how aware my opponents are, sometimes I might be the only one who even knows if I’m up or down. And even if others are aware, they haven’t a true idea what the significance of being up or down (by a lot or a little) means to me, anyway.

It was during another session of Rush Poker (pot-limit Omaha, six-handed, $25 buy-in) that I found myself thinking about all of these things once again. Despite playing a few hands well early on, I’d taken a couple of unfortunate beats, then made a couple of missteps to take me nearly two buy-ins down. I gradually fought back, and without winning any large pots managed to get almost “back to quits” before signing off.

As those who have played Rush Poker know, with each new hand you are taken to a new table. After a while, you do start to see the same players, and it is even possible to get reads and use them (especially if you are a note-taker). But a lot of what happens in each individual hand happens without the usual contextual info of the standard game.

I realized absolutely no one knew whether I was up or down during my session. In fact, towards the end I was sitting with a fairly big stack (nearly three buy-ins deep), but was still down a couple of bucks. Nor did anyone know if I’d been playing well or poorly.

A hand came up where it folded to me on the button and I raised pot with a trash hand. As I did, I momentarily thought of my “image” and its significance (or lack thereof). My opponents didn’t really know if I was the sort of player who sometimes would raise with bad cards there. But I did.

As I waited for the blinds to act, I began involuntarily thinking about how I’d played the last couple of times it had folded to me on the button, actually considering -- and maybe even being slightly affected by -- the patterns in my own play. Patterns I had noticed, but no one else had.

The existentialist recognizes that while we play with each other, what the game means is necessarily going to be different to each of the players. And if for you getting to the end means returning to the beginning, well, only you may see the meaning of within.

Groundhog Day & Other Rituals

Today is Groundhog Day, that day when folks gather in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to watch a groundhog emerge from its burrow to deliver a weather prediction for the next six weeks. Actually it looks like such gatherings are occurring in dozens of cities this morning, as apparently “Punxsutawney Phil” is no longer the sole authority when it comes to rodent meteorologists these days.

If the groundhog does not see his shadow, he’ll scurry on out of the burrow, an action that is taken to signify that winter will be ending soon. If he does see his shadow, he’ll turn tail and run back down the hole, meaning we are to expect six more weeks of winter (as the calendar had already indicated).

I always thought that seemed a little counterintuitive, in that seeing a shadow would mean the sun is out, which would perhaps suggest in a more direct way that winter weather might be giving way to spring. Then again, we’re getting our weather forecasts from an animal that allegedly gets frightened at the sight of his own shadow, so perhaps it is best not to be so fussy about such things.

The real value of such rituals lies elsewhere, I suppose. Groundhog Day has origins that date back well into the 19th century, but it doesn’t appear that anyone ever really planned his or her life according to the prediction. Rather, the event is an occasion for an annual social gathering, perhaps some PR for the hosting city (which explains why other places than Punxsutawney are getting into the act), and other more tangible benefits than can possibly be derived from the capricious behavior of what is essentially a big squirrel.

It is fun sometimes to agree -- or pretend to agree -- with others that something that is not verifiably true somehow is. Such is the value of fictions, those made up stories the pleasure of which comes from our willingness not to insist on factual truth. And even if fictions dispense with facts, they can reveal deeper “truths” sometimes -- that is, ideas about our lives’ significance that also give us pleasure, or perhaps edify us in other ways, too.

Poker involves many rituals. Many are connected to the rules of play, almost all of which have been introduced with good reason. Tapping the felt before dealing the community cards signals to players that betting has concluded. Burning cards reduces the likelihood of dodgy dealing. Capping one’s cards with a protector prevents them from being mistakenly dragged into the muck. And so forth.

But many other rituals are superfluous, introduced into the game by players for reasons that aren’t necessarily logical. Rubbing one’s cards on the felt before looking at them. Stacking chips in a particular way. Standing up when all in. These actions have no particular, concrete significance, really, other than perhaps contributing to the player’s comfort level. Yet players perform them. Again and again.

Then there is that card protector. Needful, yes. But often loaded with extra, illogically-assigned meaning, too.

Noticed a tweet about card protectors yesterday from “DonkeyBomber,” a.k.a. Tom Schneider, the two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner who finished 52nd in last summer’s Main Event. (If you enjoy funny, poker-related tweets, check him out.) Speculates Schneider, “What if the only thing keeping a person from winning the main event is that he was using the wrong lucky card protector for the last 20 yrs.[?]”

Like most of Schneider’s tweets, he’s kidding us. The question nevertheless made me think of an old friend from school, a huge basketball fan with whom I’d sometimes watch games on TV. When his favorite team played, he insisted on a number of rituals, including assigning particular seats to his guests, turning certain lamps on or off, and forbidding the utterance of certain words and phrases at certain times (e.g., never say “miss” when the opposing team shoots a free throw).

Occasionally some new person -- already suspect because his or her very presence introduced a new element into the game-watching -- would challenge the need, say, to refrain from laying one’s jacket over a particular armrest. To which my friend always had a ready response: “You can’t prove it doesn’t have an effect.”

Good enough. Same goes for Punxsutawney Phil, I guess. Or Queen Charlotte. Or Buckeye Chuck. Or General Beauregard Lee. I guess in terms of causality we’re talking about something slightly different here, but there remains the difficulty of trying to prove the lack of a connection between two events.

Groundhog Day does help prove one thing, though. Humans can be cute, silly creatures sometimes.

Poker and the English Language

I occasionally talk here about how impatient I sometimes get with poker-related analogies. For instance, about a year ago I referred to the Poker Shrink noting how he wasn’t “a big fan of the ‘Poker is like Life’ books and articles” because, in his view, most of them end up being “too general to carry any more wisdom than a dribble glass.” I agreed with the Shrink in saying I also didn’t care much for these analogies -- most particularly when they end up making one’s meaning more vague rather than helping clarify what it is one is trying to express.

In other words, I ain’t too keen on someone proclaiming “Poker is like life” and leaving it at that, though I do often appreciate the many ways poker presents us with situations that resemble those we face elsewhere, and thus occasionally provides interesting ways to talk about and assess those non-poker situations. And yeah, I, too, will indulge in such making comparisons now and again, as it is both fun and occasionally even useful.

That said, one has to be careful not to introduce unwanted vagueness when making such comparisons. Another danger one faces when choosing to employ poker-related metaphors is to fall into stale, overused phrases and clichés -- also not recommended if the goal is to engage an audience.

The abundance of poker terms and phrases in everyday English is testament to the game’s popularity and significance. But this abundance also means many of these terms and phrases have become pretty well worn by now. People everywhere are constantly bluffing each other. Or upping the ante. Or noting when the chips are down. Or passing the buck. Or trying their hand at something. Or singing that he can’t read my, can’t read my, no he can’t read my poker face. Or warning you about that guy being a wild card, with an ace in the hole. Or up his sleeve. Or simply being an ace.

I’m reminded of George Orwell’s still relevant 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” in which he laments the decline of the language in various contexts, but most especially in political speech and writing. Among his many warnings listed there, Orwell advises readers to avoid “dying metaphors” if at all possible. In his list of examples Orwell does include one poker-related one -- “playing into the hands of” -- and I’d imagine he’d list most of those appearing in the previous paragraph, too, as often introducing an unwanted “loss of vividness” in one’s language.

Last week Tiffany Michelle appeared on Fox News to chat with Neil Cavuto, ostensibly to discuss the current status of President Obama’s efforts to introduce health care reform and all of the legislative tangling -- and political fallout -- that has occurred in connection to those efforts thus far. Why Michelle? Well, because she’s “a professional black jack and poker player” -- i.e., a gambler -- and someone thought it would be a good idea for a person who understands risks and rewards to comment.

Bill Rini wrote a bit about the segment last week in a post that also has the embedded video. Then he came back and transcribed the whole sucker. As Rini points out, the conversation between Cavuto and Michelle -- coming in at just under five minutes -- is more than a little cringe-worthy, primarily because of the not terribly successful attempt to describe everything in terms of poker or gambling metaphors.

It appears that Cavuto (and Fox) mainly wanted to say that Obama has “a bad hand” here and should fold. And perhaps -- as Cavuto hastily adds at the end -- also to charge that the President isn’t playing with his own money, but with the taxpayers’. So they brought Michelle on to help communicate that message, but Cavuto’s questions were so imprecise those (essentially banal) observations barely came through, if at all.

If you’re curious, check out Rini’s transcript and/or watch the video. I actually wouldn’t fault Michelle too much here -- she does pretty well, I think, to try to respond to Cavuto’s garbled clichés, and in fact probably saves the whole segment from becoming utterly inscrutable.

The hosts of The Poker Beat discussed the segment a bit on their show last week, and there tourney reporter B.J. Nemeth did a good job summarizing why it failed -- and why I am sometimes impatient with poker-related metaphors that tend to obscure more than clarify. “The whole point of an analogy is to try and make something easier to understand,” said Nemeth, “and I think what they did is took something the [viewers] had some grasp of and made it incomprehensible.”

Then again, as Orwell notes, what Nemeth is describing is often what happens when language is employed for political purposes. Writing in the wake of the second World War, Orwell notes how “Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Perhaps the stakes were a bit higher then (to use a dying metaphor). But Orwell’s desire for us to view “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought” is still worth reiterating.

Salinger’s Game of Solitaire

J.D. Salinger died on Wednesday at age 91. Been a while since we’d heard from him.

Been a while also since I’d thought much about Salinger. Like most, I encountered The Catcher in the Rye as a young person, and like some I went on to read Nine Stories and everything else I could find. As a teen I suppose I identified somewhat with Holden Caulfield’s frustration. And puzzled over Seymour’s suicide in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”

But like I say, haven’t thought much about Salinger since, other than occasionally to wonder what he’s been up to, and whether he ever wrote anything again since 1965 when the last story of his to appear in print -- the lengthy “Hapworth 16, 1924” -- was published in The New Yorker. Perhaps now that he’s gone, we may find out more about what he’s exactly been up to these last 45 years. (Or not.)

Many have speculated about why Salinger -- once a genuine literary celebrity, famous not just in academic circles but well beyond -- stopped publishing and so thoroughly withdrew from the public eye. One oft-repeated story, appearing in The New York Times article from yesterday about Salinger’s death, concerns him having been interviewed by some high school students for what he thought was going to be an innocuous piece in the local paper. The interview wound up on the editorial page (not on the high school news page), and Salinger apparently was so upset he soon began refusing interview requests.

He also built a six-and-a-half foot fence around his property.

Publishing is a tricky business. One never knows exactly how others are going to receive your words and ideas. As in poker, there’s always an element of risk that must be weighed against whatever reward may come from putting yourself “out there.”

Just so happens that on Wednesday -- the day I wrote about driving a lot -- I was in the car listening to a National Public Radio segment that had to do with blogging and the way one potentially loses control of one’s message when putting one’s words and ideas on these here intertubes.

The story was about the Pope who is apparently considering whether or not to start some sort of blog. A few experts were asked for their thoughts, and there was some funny, irreverent humor in there with people giving the Pope advice about the need to blog every day, to use hot links (not footnotes), and so forth.

One such expert, David Weinberger (a technology pundit and blogger), came on to address this issue of what happens when one publishes online. “Putting a message out on the internet is exactly the same thing as losing total control of your message,” said Weinberger. “People take it up, they republish it, they make fun of it, they contextualize it, [and] the simple message becomes incredibly complex.”

As if to confirm what Weinberger was saying, there was another story about Apple announcing its new iPad in which the reporters noted that there probably weren’t any women involved in the naming of the new tablet computer. Without being specific, they were alluding to the instantaneous reaction on the internet to the name “iPad” which saw some associate it with a woman’s product. (Some may have noticed that “iTampon” became a “trending topic” on Twitter within an hour of Apple’s announcement.) I suppose you could call that another example of having (somewhat) lost control of the message, with the speed of the ’net significantly accelerating that process.

I’ve been well aware for a long time how keeping a blog -- or writing and publishing, generally speaking -- necessarily involves “losing total control” of one’s message. But really, who wants “total control”? If, that is, these are indeed “messages” we are delivering, with a hope that those messages might be heard and perhaps responded to in some fashion, and not just “broadcasts” (or sermons?) for which we neither expect or desire feedback.

No, publishing means being willing to share the “control” over one’s messages. Otherwise we’re just talking to ourselves. Like playing solitaire -- no risk of losing, but not much to gain, either.

In a rare interview from 1974, Salinger told a reporter of how content he was not to be publishing. “It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

I can respect that, but that’s about all I have to say about it. Not much one can say in response to someone who prefers sitting out to playing.

The Amateur vs. the Professional

One subject I have discussed here off and on is the difference between “amateur” and “professional” poker players. Probably the most recent attempt at discussing that often difficult-to-make distinction came last spring, when I declared myself once and for all to be an example of “The Recreational Poker Player” -- not exactly an “amateur,” but certainly not a “pro” either.

A thoughtful piece was posted over on the ESPN Poker Club website yesterday, an article titled “What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Pro’?” The author is Eric Siegel, Marketing and Player Development Leader for Poker Players International, an agency with a large roster of players. Poking around the PPI website, it appears the agency represents dozens of players, including folks like Tom McEvoy, Kathy Liebert, Victor Ramdin, John D’Agostino, Linda Johnson, T.J. Cloutier, and many other recognizable folks. The agency divides its players into different teams according to various criteria (Team PPI, Team PPI Elite, and Team PPI Pro, and Team PPI International), so Siegel is perhaps quite familiar with this sometimes tricky business of classifying poker players.

Siegel begins his article by noting that the “professional” label doesn’t always fit poker players as neatly or obviously as it might in other areas of society. “By definition, a professional is someone who engages in an activity as a source of livelihood or as a career,” writes Siegel. However, when it comes to poker there are many who “are either labeled or label themselves as ‘professionals’” without necessarily regarding that otherwise cut-and-dry criterion as a prerequisite for doing so.

Siegel goes on to make a couple of further points before making his own attempt at answering the question that appears in the headline. One point he makes concerns the fact that poker players on the tournament circuit are “under constant scrutiny from other players, family or the media,” with their results “made public record on thousands of websites” -- oftentimes even before they collect their checks! Might be a slight exaggeration there to say “thousands” of sites posting such info, but you get the idea -- it’s all out there (says Siegel).

In this discussion, Siegel does gloss over a couple of obvious factors. One is the fact that a relatively small percentage of actual poker pros are exclusively tournament players. Dan Harrington declared in a Card Player interview (the December 11, 2007 issue, Vol. 20, No. 24) that he didn’t think the tournament circuit was even a viable option for those truly looking for “a source of livelihood or as a career.” Because “the volatility in tournaments is out of sight,” says Harrington, “I don’t think you can consider playing tournaments for a living. I think that is impossible.” Some still try to do so, of course, but I haven’t seen too many folks disagreeing with Harrington’s statement over the past couple of years.

So a lot of poker pros are in fact sticking mainly to the cash tables, where their successes and failures are not part of the “public record.” Of course, even with the tourney players this “public record” is highly incomplete, including only cashes and not the amount spent on entries or overall ROI. Earlier this week another item appeared on the ESPN site, a piece by Gary Wise about the recent sale of T.J. Cloutier’s 2005 WSOP bracelet on eBay. The “public record” of Cloutier (incidentally, a PPI player) is stellar, denoting him as one of the top tourney players of all time. However, it appears the $9.8 million he’s won over the years in tournaments is probably not a true indication of his relative “livelihood.”

Siegel goes on to note how sponsorship -- say, for a televised final table -- doesn’t really provide a trustworthy indicator of whether or not a player is a pro. He also adds a comment about a player having earned others’ respect as perhaps a sign that he or she might have earned the “pro” designation.

In the end, Siegel’s says he considers real poker pros as falling into two groups, although both are similar and both in fact go back to that traditional definition of a “professional” as someone earning a living at what he or she does. The first group, says Siegel, includes the person who has left his or her career in pursuit of a career in poker, while the second group includes those who made poker “their first job with no prior income source.”

Like I say, a thoughtful piece, though ultimately Siegel doesn’t really offer us a different way of thinking about the professional-amateur distinction. He’s right to say traditional ideas of what it means to be a “pro” don’t always apply perfectly to poker. But while Siegel does give us some things to think about, he doesn’t quite offer us a clear way to think differently about the distinction with regard to poker players.

I still like David Spanier’s distinction, drawn in his 1977 book Total Poker, a collection of essays I have come to believe is one of the more underrated and overlooked poker books around. (See a review here.) “A fine line is drawn between the status of amateur and professional at poker,” writes Spanier. “Really, it’s a moral line. How far do you go, how much do you play, how much do you want to win?”

Ultimately, argues Spanier, the pro will come to think of poker as “work,” and thus as part of his or her self-identity, whereas the amateur will never quite get rid of the idea that poker is “play.” “Somehow you can’t imagine a professional saying he is getting down to play,” says Spanier.

That observation, I think, starts to get at the real issue here, and offers us a genuinely different way to think of the amateur-professional problem as it applies to poker. Set aside the idea of identifying one’s “livelihood” as determined by how much cabbage it earns you. What is your level of commitment? When it comes to this game -- it is, after all, a game -- are you playing or working?

On Poker and Driving

I am coming ever closer to a milestone here on Hard-Boiled Poker. Have been aware of it for a few weeks now -- seeing it on the horizon, so to speak -- and watching now as it approaches ever closer. Will probably be sometime next week when I finally get there, at which point I’ll post some sort of marker here to commemorate the occasion.

That word “milestone” implies a certain metaphor, of course, comparing -- in this case -- the writing of posts to a physical journey, as though I were hurtling down some road with mile markers periodically indicating my progress.

I’ve mentioned before here how my “real” job involves my having a significant commute to and from work. Thus do I spend a lot time each week behind the wheel, trying to get from here to there.

If I were to plot out all my activities each week, calculating to the minute how much time I spend doing every little thing, I’d probably discover that the amount of time I spend driving rivals almost every other activity I do (aside from sleeping). I write a lot, but I drive just as much. And I play poker quite a bit, but again, each week I’m likely driving at least as many hours, if not more.

While I often listen to podcasts or music during my drive, sometimes I shut everything off and let my mind wander. No surprise, I suppose, that my thoughts often will become occupied with poker.

The other day I found myself thinking about how poker sometimes resembles driving. I’m sure this analogy has occurred to many other players. You know, some jerk cuts you off, and you feel like you’ve just been check-raised. In fact, I’d be surprised if I haven’t written something about it before on the blog. I’m not sure about that, though. It has been a long trip here, after all.

It was this Rush Poker over on Full Tilt -- which I’ve been playing quite a bit over the last week -- that encouraged these thoughts this time. I’m not so sure about the name, really, but I guess it does successfully connote the idea that we’re dealing with a faster variant of the game. I talked about it some last week, how in my experience I’m playing about three times as many hands per hour in the Rush Poker game than in the regular ring games.

In Rush Poker, when you fold a hand, you’re immediately taken to a new table and dealt new cards (i.e., you don’t have to wait for the hand to play out). In other words, you just keep on driving, like on the interstate. No stop lights or signs to hold you up. Never have to wait for that train to cross. Just put on the cruise control and go go go.

Relatively speaking, the regular ring games are more like driving in the city. Of course, even there (we easily forget) we’re most certainly rushing around quite a bit. Anyone who has played both live and online poker knows the latter tends to provide about twice the hands per hour -- and that’s just if you’re playing a single table. Call up two, three, four, or sixteen tables, and you’re back on the interstate, always in action, always moving.

The literary critic and theorist I.A. Richards once provided an influential definition of what a metaphor is (in his 1936 book, The Philosophy of Rhetoric). There he explained that a metaphor is made up of two parts -- the “tenor” and the “vehicle.” The tenor would be whatever it is you are trying to describe, while the vehicle would be whatever you’ve borrowed from elsewhere to try to help you describe it.

For example, Paul Simon wants to create a lonely, isolated character. He has the character say “I am a rock.” The tenor is the loner. The vehicle is the singular rock. And whether the character really “feels no pain” (like the inanimate rock) is open to question.

So here, I guess you’d say poker is my tenor, and driving my vehicle. (Rim shot.)

You could get a lot of mileage out of this particular vehicle, I’d think. You could talk about slow, timid drivers/players. Or the reckless, risk-taking types. Or tilt as “road rage.” And so forth.

Yes, you could go down that road for a long time. I’m gonna leave it there, though. Because this is my stop.

Talking Chess, Poker, and AI

The Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov has an interesting new piece in the February 11, 2010 issue of The New York Review of Books, a review of Spanish writer Diego Rasskin-Gutman’s Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence of the Human Mind. Much of the article concerns the book, but toward the end Kasparov makes a couple of interesting references to poker -- comparing it to chess and talking about both games in the context of advancing research in the field of artificial intelligence -- that I thought I’d share here.

Kasparov begins by recounting how back in 1985 -- after he had defeated Anatoly Karpov and become World Chess Champion at age 22 -- he took on 32 chess-playing computers in a much publicized event in Hamburg and beat them all. Then he talks about the later 1997 match that he lost to IBM’s Deep Blue (pictured above) and some of the reactions that event caused, both within the chess world and in the culture at large.

While many outside of chess took Deep Blue’s triumph as “as a symbol of mankind's submission before the almighty computer,” Kasparov explains how the top chess players mostly took it in stride, and were in fact surprised it had taken that long for computers to catch up. And, in fact, among the artificial intelligence community -- “the AI crowd,” as Kasparov calls them -- there was some dismay that Deep Blue, while able to defeat a human at chess, still didn’t really seem to demonstrate human “intelligence.”

“Instead of a computer that thought and played chess like a human, with human creativity and intuition,” writes Kasparov, “they got one that played like a machine, systematically evaluating 200 million possible moves on the chess board per second and winning with brute number-crunching force.” In other words, for some Deep Blue’s win represented more of a programming triumph than a particularly significant advance in the development of AI.

Kasparov notes how today pretty much any home PC has the computing capacity to run a chess program “that will crush most grandmasters.” Even so, chess remains much too complex of a game to be “solved” once and for all argues Kasparov, citing Rasskin-Gutman’s book in a couple of places to support his point. He then moves into a longer discussion of the book, which sounds appealing for those interested in chess and/or discussions of how the human mind works.

I’m not going to summarize that entire discussion here (check it out yourself, if you’re interested), but I did want to share what Kasparov says at the end of the review when he talks about how “the AI crowd” have begun to refocus their efforts away from chess and toward another game.

“Poker is now everywhere,” writes Kasparov, “as amateurs dream of winning millions and being on television for playing a card game whose complexities can be detailed on a single piece of paper.” Indeed, there was a time -- around the early 1970s -- when it looked like chess would experience a “boom” not unlike the one poker has enjoyed this past decade, although it didn’t quite pan out. I wrote a little about that a couple of years ago in a post called “The Failed Ambassador” that was occasioned by the death of Bobby Fischer.

Getting back to the subject of artificial intelligence, Kasparov continues: “But while chess is a 100 percent information game -- both players are aware of all the data all the time -- and therefore directly susceptible to computing power, poker has hidden cards and variable stakes, creating critical roles for chance, bluffing, and risk management.”

As such, suggests Kasparov, poker is perhaps a much better game on which to focus AI research. He refers to the efforts of Jonathan Schaeffer, leader of the University of Alberta’s Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG) that has been developing poker-playing programs “Polaris” and “Polaris 2.0” that have taken on top pros like Phil Laak, Ali Eslami, and the Stoxpoker guys over the last couple of years. I actually had the chance a while back to interview Schaeffer (following that first match with Laak and Eslami, see picture), who told me he believed “one of these days -- within 5 to 10 years -- two-person, limit Hold’em will be solved.”

My sense is that Kasparov isn’t quite as confident as Schaeffer regarding the possibility of “solving” even this relatively less complex variation of poker, though he does recognize how Schaeffer’s “digital players are performing better and better against strong humans -- with obvious implications for online gambling sites.”

The question remains, of course, as to whether or not these poker-playing computers are actually thinking “like humans” or not -- that is, when Polaris 2.0 defeated the Stoxpoker guys back in the summer of 2008, to what extent did that victory represent a real advance in the creation of artificial intelligence as opposed to a mere triumph in “programming” (as Kasparov characterizes his defeat to Deep Blue)?

In any event, much as he reacted to the work of the chess programmers as having exciting implications for his game, Kasparov seems enthused about the work of Schaeffer and his colleagues at the University of Alberta, too. Referring again to poker’s growing popularity, Kasparov notes how there is a “current trend of many chess professionals taking up the more lucrative pastime of poker.”

These chess pros are smart guys. They see there’s more money to be made playing poker than chess these days. But some -- like Kasparov -- also see poker as offering other benefits, too, such as the opportunity to test ourselves in “partial information” situations in which we much learn to adapt, to weigh risk and reward, and to act accordingly.

In other words, besides being a game ripe for the study of artificial intelligence, poker can help us develop our actual intelligence, too.

PokerStars WBCOOP Event No. 1 (No-Limit Hold’em): Live Blog

So here’s the skinny. I’m signed up to play in this here initial event of the 2009 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker thingy over on PokerStars this afternoon, for which I’m gonna try to live blog while I play. Hell, I got two hands.

Am askin’ for trouble, I’m sure, given the limited capacities of my jingle brain, not to mention the fact that it has been a couple of months since I last played no-limit hold’em (or a tourney, for that matter).

All of which is to say, don’t be comin’ around expecting pokery greatness from yr humble gumshoe.

Looks like with a little over a half-hour until the first hands are dealt there are already over 1,500 scribblers registered for the sucker. Top 153 finishers win tickets of varying amounts into the upcoming Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), with a total prize pool of $5,096.50 having been set aside for today’s event.

Click here for more info on the WBCOOP series. I’ll be back here shortly after five o’clock ET with the first report. (And hopefully not the last!)

5:01 p.m. ET
Tourney is underway. 1,690 runners all told at the moment, but late registration is still open. Looks like at least two-thirds of my starting table is sitting out.

5:06 p.m. ET
Okay, there are five of us playing, with four sitting out. The sitters are all to my left, and the players to my right. At least one of the four other players is raising preflop each hand before it gets to me, so I have yet to be able to take the sitters’ blinds uncontested. Biding my time for now, but will probably have to start reraising to get involved.

5:08 p.m. ET
Just took my first hand, a standard PF raise with one caller, followed by c-bet on ace-high flop. (No, I didn’t have an ace.) Shortly after, I see an all-in confrontation between 8-7 offsuit and A-10 offsuit. It’s a freeroll, all right.

5:11 p.m. ET
I am seeing on Twitter my buddy the Poker Grump is already out. Must have picked up deuce-four and went with it, I am assuming.

5:15 p.m. ET
Just lost few chips getting a little reckless with the bloggers’ favorite, the hammer, but got it back very next next hand. Back to starting stack of 2,000.

5:21 p.m. ET
Pocket kings in early position. Both blinds call my standard raise. A king flops, both check, I make a smallish c-bet, and both go away. Might’ve milked it for more, I guess, but I’ll take it. Little over 2,400 now.

5:26 p.m. ET
First elimination at my table, about 25 minutes into the proceedings. Looks like 1,730 runners or so at the moment.

5:30 p.m. ET
Okay, just won first big pot of the tourney. Player raises to 120 (3x) in front of me from early position, I reraise to 420 with pocket kings, it folds around and my opponent calls. Flop comes Q-J-T. He checks, I shove (about 1,800), and he instacalls with A-J. Turn and river both nines, giving me straight and 4,670-chip pot (my new stack).

5:37 p.m. ET
EP preflop raiser gets one caller to his left, then I call, too, from cutoff with K-Q. Flop comes Q-4-2 with two hearts, and both check to me. I bet three-quarter pot (475), preflop raiser thinks, then raises to 1,400. I immediately shove (what do I know?), raiser goes into time bank for 30 seconds, then folds. At 6,170 now.

5:42 p.m. ET
Sheesh we are already at Level 5 (ten-minute levels). I don’t need to consult Arnold Snyder to conclude this here is a fast-structured tourney.

5:47 p.m. ET
Pick up another pot (1,135) with pocket queens. (Yes, I am getting some decent starting hands so far, no doubt.) Both an ace and king come by the river, but my opponent had neither (was chasing draws). At 6,965 now.

5:54 p.m. ET
I see registration is finally closed, with a total of 1,740 entrants. Looks like around seven hundred have already hit the rail. First break comin’ up.

6:01 p.m. ET
At first break I have 6,805 chips. That puts me 103rd out of 1,026 remaining players. Leader has 22,301 at the moment. We’re getting ready to start Level 7, where the blinds are 40/80 with an ante of 10.

6:06 p.m. ET
Just played Hand No. 100. I’m listening to Tortoise’s 2009 album Beacons of Ancestorship, probably my favorite disc from last year. Certainly the one I’ve listened to the most. Very cool ensemble, with lots of great instrumental grooves. I have it on repeat, and so we’re on the second go-round now.


6:11 p.m. ET
Oof, just tripped up and lost half my stack. A little more than half. A short-stacked player with about 1,900 to start the hand raised from early position to 300 (3x). I had and only the blinds really to worry about, and so shoved to isolate. Small blind -- whom I had covered -- pushed all in, too, and the shorty skedaddled. My opponent has me dominated with A-K. Board ran out eight-high, and I’m now down to 2,705. Still 27 big blinds, though, so no worries quite yet.

6:21 p.m. ET
Just had a goofy hand. UTG limps in, and the table folds around to me in the big blind with 6-4 offsuit. I check, and flop comes 6-6-7. I check, and so does my opponent. Turn another seven. I check again, but he doesn’t bite. Then the river is yet another seven, meaning I’m now playing the board. I make a cheeky minimum bet of 120, and he pushes all in. Argh. I call, he shows K-3, and we split. I probably mangled that one.

6:25 p.m. ET
Just lost a big coin flip. I had built back to about 3,100, and was all in before the flop with A-K versus pocket queens. Board came 7-4-3-8-2, and now I’m down to 585.

6:36 p.m. ET
I doubled up once, then with the blinds 75/150 I open-shoved my last 1,190 chips with . Folded around to the big blind who thought a long while, then called with . The flop was a nice one: . I liked the turn, too -- . But you know what's coming... the on the river. Rude! And I’m outta there in six-hundred-and-somethingth, just as the last song of Beacons of Ancestorship was finishing for the second time this afternoon.

Thanks for reading, peoples... and good luck to all who remain in the first event of the WBCOOP. I do plan to try again tomorrow in the PLO event. Not sure if I’ll live blog again tomorrow (a bit of effort, that), but we’ll see. Have a good evening, all.