No PPT For You!

Am waking today to somewhat dramatic news from the Partouche Poker Tour. After a day’s worth of simmering from players regarding the apparent failure of the PPT to honor a guarantee for this year’s PPT Main Event, the tour’s CEO Patrick Partouche has announced there will be no more PPTs going forward.

News of yesterday’s controversy filtered over the intertubes via forum postings, tweets, and eventually a few articles.

While certain details are disputed, the PPT had apparently been advertising a €5 million guarantee for this year’s Main Event for some time, with print ads, website banners, and statements in interviews suggesting as much.

Ultimately 573 players entered the €8,500 buy-in tournament, with some re-entries as well. When it was announced the top 57 finishers would be dividing prize money totaling €4,264,580, many players vented their displeasure that there would not be an overlay and the supposed “guarantee” wouldn’t be honored.

Lots of back-and-forthing (or tête-à-tête-ing) ensued, much of it sounding as though it involved PPT officials characterizing the “guarantee” as merely an “estimate.” One player, Peter Jetten, even tweeted that “One of the head Partouche people told me ‘this was not a guarantee but a marketing trick.’”

Posters in a thread on the Two Plus Two forum helped document what appeared to have been changes to website banners occurring after the final prize pool had been announced, taken by most as further attempts to remove evidence of earlier claims of the guarantee.

There was much speculation about what might happen next, including some entertaining ideas of the PPT switching course and honoring the guarantee. But I don’t believe I saw anyone anticipating PPT CEO Patrick Partouche announcing that the PPT would be shutting down altogether at the conclusion of this week’s Main Event, meaning Season 5 would be its last. A tweet from Jonathan Duhamel expressing his surprise is indicative of many of the reactions I’m seeing in my timeline.

Benjo is at the PPT reporting for Winamax, and he was there jotting down notes as Partouche made his announcement. In his report on the announcement, Benjo quotes Partouche describing the past success of the tour, his dismay at suggestions that his family was dishonest in any fashion, and delivering the message that this would be “la dernière édition du Partouche Poker Tour.”

Partouche also added some complaints about young ego-driven players fueled by a need for recognition while noting further that “la cagnotte de 5 millions d'euros n'a jamais été garantie où que ce soit dans notre communication” -- i.e., the PPT had never made a €5 million guarantee part of its promotion of the Main Event.

The PPT started in 2008 and over five seasons had grown into a well-known and (for some players and media) a well-liked stop on the professional tournament circuit. A few controversies have arisen at Partouche over the years, most notably the disqualification of the German player Ali Tekintamgac from the Main Event final table two years ago following cheating accusations. One gets the sense those earlier incidents helped provide significant context for this week’s conflict between players and tournament organizers, causing some to be less patient with the PPT than they might have been otherwise.

From afar it certainly sounds as though a promise was broken, or at the very least many were misled. Of course, here in the U.S. we’re up to our necks in a presidential campaign at the moment, with “guarantees” being delivered left and right. And unfortunately many of us instinctively understand such promises to be mostly “marketing tricks,” evidence of the ever-widening divide between image and reality in politics.

We like to think that in poker, the meaning of one’s “word” has a special significance. Talk of tournament “guarantees” -- in any language -- is generally understood to mean exactly what it sounds like it means. And in the majority of cases, it does.

To pursue the comparison further, entities like the PPT or other organizations might be said to create their own private realms over which they preside. And players “vote” or at least make known their positions regarding those organizations in various ways, including by putting up buy-ins and in some cases broadcasting their pleasure or annoyance with how the events were governed.

That said, these entities are hardly to be thought of as democracies. Patrick Partouche’s announcement shows that.

(EDIT [added 12:40 p.m.]: A video of Patrick Partouche making the announcement has been posted on YouTube. The first four-and-a-half minutes are in French at which point he switches to English.)

Giants or Cowboys?

Was writing yesterday about ESPN’s coverage of the 2012 WSOP Main Event. As it turns out, they didn’t show poker last night, opting instead to air this week’s shows tonight. Of course, by doing so they’ll likely lose a lot of viewers.

That’s because tonight the National Football League finally returns, with the season opener between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants kicking off during prime time. The game would’ve been tomorrow, actually, but I believe was moved back a day so as not to conflict with the last night of the Democratic National Convention when President Obama will again be accepting the party’s nomination.

Once again I’m participating in a pool requiring me to pick every game throughout the season. Thus have I already spent some time this week fretting about my pick for tonight’s game. I’m trying a “Survivor Pool” this time, too, for which I’ll have to select one team each week I believe will win their game, yet won’t be able to choose the same team more than once.

I wrote about the pool off and on last year, including at the end when I happened to end strongly enough to win the sucker. Ended up picking 180 regular season games correctly out of the 256 (straight up, not against the spread), which left me three clear of the field to come out on top.

I much prefer these types of games -- i.e., picking winners -- to the fantasy games that have pretty much taken over the NFL over recent years. I do like occasionally piddling around on the DraftDay site (which offers daily fantasy games), which I wrote about here a while back. In fact, I’ll be playing that PokerNews freeroll on DraftDay this week for sure. But I just can’t get myself too interested in the more involved season-long versions of fantasy football.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the strategy involved with fantasy sports -- i.e., games in which you select certain players (by position) and are rewarded according to their individual performances. It’s just that I prefer watching games in a traditional manner with my rooting interest being focused on a team, not a player.

In poker terms, I’d liken fantasy sports to prop bets such as betting on the flop being all-red or all-black or whether or not the next community card will be a face card or the like. That is to say, a type of gambling that focuses on some particular element of play rather than what is really most important and theoretically the primary motive for the actions of all involved, namely, who wins or loses.

Then again, maybe I just haven’t given fantasy sports a fair chance. Reading Moneyball recently certainly got me in the mood to reconsider them. So before I sign off to go study the Week 1 games further, I’ll end with two questions...

For those of you who play fantasy football, what makes it fun for you?

And also, Giants or Cowboys?

Showing Not Telling: ESPN’s “Tells” Segments

ESPN continues its coverage of the 2012 WSOP Main Event tonight. I believe after showing the bubble bursting last week they’ll be showing more highlights from Day 4 this week.

I’ve been watching off and on over the last few weeks. During last Tuesday night’s episode I was noticing some chatter on Twitter from Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) regarding the “Tells” segment featuring former FBI interrogator and author Joe Navarro, of which Negreanu doesn’t think too highly.

I believe Navarro’s segment is only coming on once per night -- i.e., just a very brief piece (like half a minute) appearing at some point during the two one-hour episodes. If it’s coming more frequently than that, I’ve missed it.

Last week the segment appeared near the end of the second hour following what was really a mundane three-way hand between Vivek Rajkumar, Anthony Scherer, and Patrick Khayat. If you watched the show last week, you might vaguely remember it as the hand during which Norman Chad and Lon McEachearn made a lot of the fact that all three of the players involved had credentials when it came to higher ed (multiple degrees, one went to MIT, etc.).

In the hand, Rajkumar open-raises with , Scherer calls with , and Khayat calls as well from the blinds with . The flop comes , it checks to Rajkumar who bets, Scherer raises, and the others fold. “Scherer may have picked up the pot,” then says McEachern, “but if his opponents were watching, they may have picked up some tells.”

That’s when Navarro comes on to analyze Scherer’s behavior during the hand. He notes Scherer’s “chest heaving,” although doesn’t say what that indicates. He also points out how Scherer grabs his shirt collar and pulls it up over his mouth “using it like a security blanket, almost to hide in the open by grabbing onto something that is soothing for him.” Navarro doesn’t say what that was supposed to mean, either.

In fact, if you go back and look at the hand, what Navarro’s analyzing all happens before the flop, not after. Scherer actually doesn't grab his collar until after the player to his left has acted. This might be to mask his reaction when the flop comes, although Navarro doesn’t suggest that. Then after the flop -- when Scherer raises -- he’s no longer holding his collar at all. (Here's a link that goes to the beginning of the hand, if you’re curious.)

Tells seem to be only marginally meaningful here, relatively speaking. And whatever meaning they might have, Navarro’s commentary isn’t really clarifying much since he doesn’t say anything about Scherer being strong or weak or whatever.

To be honest, when I watched last week I saw the Navarro bit but didn’t really pay much attention to it. But looking back at it, I can see where Negreanu was coming from when he tweeted “Just watched the Navarro segment and have no clue what he is talking about. Security blanket shirts mean what exactly? He’s strong and weak?”

We might cut Navarro a little bit of slack and say the hand that was selected for analysis was hardly a good one for talking about tells. Then again, it’s not like there’s a paucity of hands from which to choose. And as I say, without any conclusions being drawn about the meaning of the tells, it’s hard to know what to do with the observations he’s sharing.

The previous week’s “Tells” segment went similarly, with Navarro talking about Gregory Milliron being stoic and hiding his tells but not connecting that with the hand we just saw or drawing any conclusions regarding the meaning of his behavior. In fact, the segment was really just saying Milliron had no tells to speak of in the hand we were just shown.

While I come at it with a lot less experience and knowledge than Negreanu, I nonetheless share his confusion about what exactly we’re supposed to be getting from these analyses. For those of you who’ve been watching, what are your thoughts about these Navarro “Tells” segments?

By the way, for more intriguing and useful discussion of tells, check out Zachary Elwood’s recent posts about Guy Laliberte’s behavior during various televised appearances, including the Big One for One Drop. He’s put together three intriguing discussions -- two about Laliberte’s body language (Part 1 and Part 2), and another about his bet timing and habit of leaning back in the chair. Lots of interesting (and enlightening) findings tucked in those posts.

Obviously Elwood has more freedom to elaborate on his observations than does Navarro in a short video segment. But still, the Navarro segments’ lack of a conclusion -- his not offering to tell us what the tells mean -- make them much less useful, not to mention a little frustrating.

Or maybe I’m missing something. Could it be that Navarro is telling us what the tells mean, but non-verbally?

(EDIT [added 7 p.m.]: It appears this week ESPN isn't showing the WSOP tonight, but is instead moving the shows to Wednesday, I suppose to compete against the opening of the NFL season [?].)

It Was the Third of September, That Day I’ll Always Remember

The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” -- which memorably begins with that line about remembering the date of a father’s passing -- first appeared just about forty years ago in late September 1972.

It’s a great jam, with extended funky instrumental passages surrounding smart lyrics recounting a child’s curiosity about a wayward father who “spent most of his time chasing women and drinking.” “Wherever he laid his hat was his home,” explains the mother, “and when he died, all he left us was alone.”

It’s a song about a man’s legacy, or lack thereof -- really just a few stories reflecting badly on his character and a date for the gravestone -- with compelling characters, what can be construed as a kind of social commentary, and even broader messages about the tenuous nature of existence and our responsibilities to one another during this life (if you wanna go that far with it).

The third of September also happens to be the birthday of someone close to me. Thus is it a day I’ll always remember, though for a much happier reason than is the case for the child in the song.

Maybe it’s that underlying quest for meaning rumbling below the groovy rhythms of a song I can’t help but play out in my head every time the calendar rolls around to this particular day. Or maybe it’s the way birthdays bring to mind the passing of time. Or maybe it’s having gone yesterday with Vera to visit an elderly relative -- in her nineties -- and talking with her about the past (both recent and long ago) and the future (both near and distant)...

But for some reason today I’m waking up thinking about those Big Questions again, including the one regarding how best to make use of the time we have. What we owe each other. What we owe ourselves.

I continue to piddle for pennies online now and then. I break even there -- no, really, I do -- although every time I sign off after goofing for an hour or more I can’t help but feel I’ve lost something kind of significant.

Of course, I’m just a recreational player giving a few hours here and there to a game I mostly enjoy, but to which I haven’t the commitment of many others. Still, I am reminded of that passage near the end of David Hayano’s 1982 study Poker Faces: The Life and Work of Professional Card Players about which I’ve written before, one coming in a section called “The Existential Game.”

“Because of the relentless instability and uncertainty of day-to-day gambling, players continually examine and reexamine their motives, feelings, and entire state of being,” writes Hayano as he tries to sum up the experiences of those many poker pros he’s been discussing throughout the book.

“If the life of the professional poker player were comfortable and predictable, I do not think that such extensive and persistent self-reflection would be required,” he continues. “Living, playing, and surviving in the chance world of the cardroom repeatedly assaults the sensibilities, and several pros have openly commented on the difficulties of ‘lasting’ and explaining what ‘all this means.’”

He goes on to point out how some are plagued with doubts about whether or not playing cards for a living is really worthwhile, as well as gnawing grief that playing poker is not a “particularly productive” way to live (no matter how much money one makes at it). Nor (worry some) is it much of a contribution to society, generally speaking.

Hayano further delves into the way the poker pro’s temporal existence -- specifically the way a cash game player fails to experience much sense of finality and/or structure -- can affect his or her well being. “The dimension of temporality, experienced as an undue prominence in the future, in what the next hand or thousand hands are likely to bring, manifests itself in an existential, if not socio-psychological, kind of imbalance,” suggests Hayano.

In other words, for some the third of September becomes nothing to remember. Nor is any other day, all of which run together in an endless game. Rolling along.

2012 WCOOP Begins Today at PokerStars

The 2012 World Championship of Online Poker begins today on PokerStars. What began as a nine-tournament series back in 2002 has now grown to a massive 65-tournament schedule lasting over three weeks.

I was noting here last September when the WCOOP came around how it marked the first one in which Americans couldn’t participate, and was thus wondering how that might affect the popular online tournament series. Back in 2010 just over a third of the 141,126 entrants were from the U.S., with Americans winning 33 of the 62 events that year. Total prize money for those 62 events in 2010 was more than $63.1 million.

Last year there were again 62 events, and while the total number of entrants and the prize pools were indeed down without the Americans participating, the totals were still staggering. The guarantees were scaled back in anticipation of smaller fields, the series total going from $50 million guaranteed to $30 million. However, the tourneys still drew a total of 119,832 entrants, thus building prize pools exceeding $47.1 million.

In all players from 137 countries cashing in WCOOP events in 2011. Russia and Canada ended up seeing the most players enter, with each country comprising about 11% of the total entrants. And Russia took the most titles with 10, followed by the United Kingdom with eight.

When following some of the major tourneys on PokerStars such as the Super Tuesday or Sunday Million, I’ve noticed that Russia and Canada are being heavily represented in those tournaments, with the U.K., Costa Rica, Ukraine, and Mexico starting to come on as well.

For example, a couple of weeks ago there was a Super Tuesday (a $1,050 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament) which saw four players from Canada make the final table, two each from the U.K. and Costa Rica, and one from Ukraine. Four more from Canada made the Super Tuesday final table last week, too, as did Shaun Deeb playing from Mexico.

Of course, as Deeb’s example suggests, a lot of those players designated as being from Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and elsewhere are in fact U.S. players who have relocated to play on PokerStars. I have been seeing a ton of tweets in my Twitter feed from U.S. players describing how they are traveling out of the country just for September in order to play the WCOOP.

The guarantees for the 2012 WCOOP again total $30 million, even with a few additional events to bring the total to 65. Have to believe that’s being conservative -- i.e., guarantees for most tourneys will surely be met, and the overall numbers will likely end up challenging last year’s totals.

Check the WCOOP site for the full schedule, including information about satellites. They will be running the always-entertaining WCOOP Radio show, too, with shows happening every day at 15:00 ET throughout the series.

Best of luck to those able to play. And for those who can’t (or even if you can), let me invite you to play in the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Game tonight on PokerStars, either in a 6-max NLHE tourney (at 20:00 ET) or a Razz one (at 21:00). It’s free to play -- check the sidebar for info on how to join my Home Game.

More on Moneyball

I was writing last Friday about having picked up Moneyball by Michael Lewis, the 2003 book in which Lewis engagingly discusses changing attitudes toward the evaluation of talent in baseball, focusing largely on the ahead-of-the-curve thinking and decisions made by the Oakland A’s during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Last week I was recommending the book to poker players, mentioning just a few ways observations shared in the book tended to overlap with issues and strategy we often associate with poker. I quoted a passage appearing early on characterizing the “old school” of talent evaluation in baseball and pointed out some obvious parallels to poker.

Having now finished Moneyball, I’m looking back at many other passages illustrating all sorts of different connections with poker. Now and then Lewis explicitly evokes gambling and casino games -- and even poker a couple of times -- such as when he characterizes the non-method method employed by many baseball teams when it comes to drafting players. Time and time again, teams with bad records (who thus get to draft early) squander their picks on high school players who more often than not won’t pan out as big leaguers.

Lewis characterizes such high-risk plays thusly: “The worst teams in baseball, the teams that can least afford for their draft to go wrong, have walked into the casino, ignored the odds, and made straight for the craps tables.” Meanwhile the Oakland A’s brain trust don’t “think of the draft as a crapshoot” but operate more like “card counters at the blackjack tables.”

That said, there isn’t a lot of specific reference to poker or gambling games in the book. But the parallels are everywhere.

Reading on the Kindle allows you to highlight passages just by running a finger over them. Then later you can go back and look only at those passages (in a folder called “My Clippings”). I kind of went overboard with the highlighting with Moneyball, actually. But I’ve spent a little time sifting through my “clippings” from the book in order to organize them under six poker-related headings I thought I’d share here.

Again, take all this as a general recommendation of the book as well as an implicit argument about the many ways poker and baseball are alike.

The Mental Game

A running theme in the book concerns how baseball requires mental toughness in addition to physical ability.

Oakland general manager Billy Beane’s playing career sounds as though it was cut short considerably thanks to his being unable to control his emotions and not avoid going on “tilt” after things didn’t go his way. “Emotions were always such a big part of whatever he did,” says Lewis. “A bad at bat or two and he was done for the third and fourth at bats of the game.”

A contrast is drawn between Beane and Lenny Dykstra, the Phillies star who perhaps wasn’t as physically gifted as Beane but had a significant mental edge. “Lenny didn’t let his mind screw him up,” writes Lewis. “The physical gifts required to play pro ball were, in some ways, less extraordinary than the mental ones.”

In fact, Lewis speculates that Beane’s fascination with “sabermetrics” and new ways of analyzing the game and evaluating talent stems in large part from his mental struggles as a player. “Beane tilts easily,” Lewis writes, “kind of an explanation for/cause of his fascination with ‘objective’ evidence.”

Being Results-Oriented

Speaking of the “mental game,” relatively early on Lewis quotes a psychologist named Harvey Dorfman who authored a book called The Mental Game of Baseball. Dorfman actually worked for the A’s at one point prior to Beane’s tenure there. Among other observations, Dorfman makes one about the type of player who “‘sees himself exclusively in his statistics. If his stats are bad, he has zero self-worth.’”

Of course, in baseball it isn’t just players letting their numbers influence their ideas of themselves. Those in charge of evaluating talent and trading for or signing players are also heavily swayed by such numbers, and thus let results (i.e., players’ stats) affect their decisions. That’s not necessarily a problem in and of itself; however, it can be a big one if the stats are being misinterpreted.

For example, Bill James (featured heavily in Moneyball, especially during the first half) is quoted at one point complaining way back in the 1980s about how batting average gets overvalued in baseball. “‘I find it remarkable that, in listing offenses, the league will list first -- meaning best -- not the team which scored the most runs, but the team with the highest batting average’” says James. “‘It should be obvious that the purpose of an offense is not to compile a high batting average.’”

Thus did James come up with a new stat -- “runs created” -- that was a better indicator of a player’s offensive worth. Others followed James to come up with still more ways to isolate skill from luck in baseball, and while I won’t bore you with all of the examples I will say all tend to challenge traditional measures of achievement by focusing more on players’ ability to perform in ways that maximize the team’s chance of success.

As Paul DePodesta, Beane’s assistant, puts it: “‘It’s looking at processes rather than outcomes.... Too many people make decisions based on outcomes rather than processes.’”

It is perhaps easier in poker than in baseball to distinguish processes from outcomes. We can often tell when we’ve played a hand well yet gotten unlucky, or played a hand badly but managed to hit a two-outer and win anyway. What we do with that knowledge, though, is what makes us better or worse poker players.

Appearances

Innovations introduced by the Oakland A’s regarding drafting players, organizing rosters and line-ups, and in-game decisions looked weird to those unfamiliar with the underlying reasoning. But the A’s staff didn’t care, and the book kind of promotes those guys as fearless iconoclasts often unfazed by criticisms of those unaware of the method behind their seeming madness.

A good example of the lack of care about appearances is the shunning of “textbook” baseball plays like moving a runner over with a sacrifice bunt, stealing bases, or using the hit and run. “Bunts, stolen bases, hit and runs -- they all were mostly self-defeating and all had a common theme: fear of public humiliation,” Lewis explains. He then quotes Pete Palmer, an engineer-turned-sabermetrician, pointing out how “‘Managers tend to pick a strategy that is least likely to fail rather than pick a strategy that is most efficient.... The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.’”

Poker presents us with similar spots quite often, where we avoid making a play that is in fact correct out of fear that it may look strange or incorrect to others. Particularly when it comes to unorthodox or “innovative” plays that go against “received wisdom,” some of us might in such cases resist making what we know is the best move.

Under this heading I’ll also put the extreme emphasis on drawing walks that is part of the “moneyball” strategy. Reading about the reasons why walks should be valued frequently made me think about folding in poker, another action that is perhaps undervalued by some because of how it looks -- surrendering, not fighting, and thus appearing weak.

But such patience reaps great rewards both in baseball and in poker. As Lewis explains, “Any ball out of the strike zone was an opportunity for the batter to shift the odds in his favor. All you had to do was: not swing!”

Game Theory

Specific discussion of game theory comes up now and then in Moneyball, and again the potential application to poker is obvious. A lot of times the idea arises when talking about the confrontation between pitcher and batter, a duel that in many ways resembles a heads-up situation in poker.

A reader taxdood commented on that earlier post and mentioned the great description of an at-bat between Oakland first baseman Scott Hatteberg and Jamie Moyer, both of whom might be described as above-average when it comes to using game theory to try to “level” opponents. It’s a great scene, with Lewis doing a neat job describing the head games going on between the two.

I love the moment near the end of the at-bat when Moyer steps off the mound and says directly to Hatteberg “‘Just tell me what you want.’” Hatteberg has no response to that, it being unprecedented for a pitcher to ask directly what pitch and/or location he desires. Such a tactic reminded me of the poker player asking an opponent if he or she wants him to call or fold, or similarly direct queries that can play an important role in how the game is played.

I also like how Hatteberg describes someone like Moyer in terms that might remind us of a very savvy poker player who is able to flummox opponents with clever, hard-to-decipher betting patterns. “A good pitcher... creates a kind of parallel universe,” explains Hatteberg. “It doesn’t matter how hard he throws, in absolute terms, so long as he is able to distort the perception of the hitters.” The sort of thing can make players make mistakes, in baseball and in poker.

(Hatteberg is described elsewhere as loving to chat up opponents reaching first base, something Lewis explicitly suggests is “like chatting at the poker table.”)

Meanwhile you have those in baseball who like inexperienced poker players are oblivious to “leveling” or other “game theory”-type tactics. As another player, John Mabry, points out, “‘Some of the guys who are the best are the dumbest.... I don’t mean the dumbest. I mean they don’t have a thought. No system.... Guys can’t set you up. You have no pattern. You can’t even remember your last at bat.’”

Playing by the Numbers vs. Playing by “Feel”

The debate explored in the book between the old way of looking at baseball and the new -- what Lewis in a postscript refers to as “baseball’s religious war” -- breaks down in various ways, but one way of characterizing it is a conflict between “faith”-like, instinctive responses unconfirmed by concrete evidence running up against cold, rational facts.

“In human behavior there was always uncertainty and risk,” says Lewis. “The goal of the Oakland front office was simply to minimize the risk. Their solution wasn’t perfect, it was just better than the hoary alternative, rendering decisions by gut feeling.”

Such passages make me think of arguments raised by some against those getting too carried away with letting ideas about the math of poker overwhelm other ways of looking at the game. Obviously you want to try to find a good balance between the numbers and “feel,” but it sounds like in baseball there has existed (and perhaps still exists) a strong, influential majority in charge of running teams who have essentially done it by “feel” alone for many, many years.

Luck vs. Skill

There is so much in Moneyball concerning the relative balance of luck and skill in baseball, I’m going to cut short summarizing the references if only to keep this post from getting any longer than it already is.

I talked about one instance in a “Pop Poker” piece for PokerListings this week, if you’re curious. The article is called “On Luck, Skill, Hail Marys and Moneyball,” and brings up one example of pitchers “running good” when it comes to balls being put in play and resulting in outs rather than hits.

At one point Lewis quotes another sabermetrician (Pete Palmer) estimating that “the average difference in baseball due to skill is about one run a game, while the average difference due to luck is about four runs a game.” If true, that sounds like luck holds a lot more sway in a given game than it does in, say, a session of poker, doesn’t it?

I’ll refer to one other interesting example of luck in baseball -- the postseason, which Lewis refers to as “a giant crapshoot” in which luck really does affect outcomes greatly and thus can “frustrate rational management because, unlike the long regular season, they [the playoffs] suffer from the sample size problem.”

That characterization of the relationship between the playoffs to the regular season in baseball makes me think of final tables in poker tournaments where it sometimes happens that after hours (or days) of skill mattering more than luck, the blinds have risen to a point where luck predominates. In other words, at the most crucial moment when ultimate winners and losers are determined, the game
becomes “a crapshoot.”

There are many other gems in the book I might’ve included here, including what I consider a highly persuasive argument on behalf of the importance of studying or writing about baseball. That is to say, Lewis (along with many of those whom he talks to or quotes) does a good job justifying his object of inquiry being worthwhile, and does so in ways that remind me why poker is also “more than just a game” and thus similarly worth studying and writing about.

But I’ll stop here and let those of you who haven’t read Moneyball go check it out for yourselves. Or for those who have read it, I’ll invite you perhaps go back and check it out again with an eye toward all of the many ways the story and its characters speak to poker players.

Interlude

Yesterday I left the house for a few hours without my phone.

Like just about everyone these days, I have a “smart” phone (an iPhone). And like just about everyone else I carry it with me pretty much everywhere I go, checking it constantly for emails, text messages, the nonstop stream of missives by those I follow on Twitter, and so on.

I didn’t mean to leave my phone at home. It usually gets included in the small number of items jammed into my pockets whenever I leave, along with my wallet, keys, and iPod. But somehow I managed to leave off grabbing my phone this time and so found myself on the highway and without it, driving out to meet Vera at the farm where she rides several times a week.

Goes without saying I found myself a lot less distracted during the time I was away from home. At the farm I paid more attention to enjoying the unseasonably mild weather. I noticed the sun low on the horizon, a bright blur behind the gathering clouds. Birds chirped. Horses whinnied. And the wind blew through the branches of the large trees surrounding the property, quiet hints of a possible late afternoon storm.

At one point I watched Vera from far away walking her horse back to the pasture, thinking how striking the scene appeared with Vera dressed in light clothes, her dark horse trotting beside her, the green beneath, and the grayish blue above.

I thought it would make a great picture. But I didn’t take one, of course. I’d forgotten my phone.

Further musings ensued, all more or less revolving around the irony suggested by the fact that if I had brought the device with which I could’ve taken a picture, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the scene which had looked worth capturing with a photograph.

Soon enough I was back home. And not long after I’d gotten back, I was checking in once more on the messages and everything else.

The poker world hadn’t changed too much during those few hours. Some were reporting on their fluctuating chip stacks here and there. A few were talking further about the Republicans and that bit in their platform supporting the prohibition of online gambling (discussed here yesterday). And I saw something about Howard Lederer’s lawyers wanting to put into play that recent U.S. v. Dicristina ruling that poker wasn’t illegal gambling as defined by the Illegal Gambling Business Act (as reported on today by PokerFuse).

But overall not a lot was happening. A bit of static, but no storms.

Platforms and Parties

Was following some of the buzz on my Twitter feed yesterday regarding the Republican Party’s national convention which has gotten underway down in Tampa, Florida. The Dems will be having theirs next week right close to me in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Since I follow a lot of poker people, it wasn’t surprising to see some discussing the GOP’s 2012 platform and its statement of position regarding online gambling. A platform, of course, is that often lengthy statement of a party’s positions on all sorts of subjects, kind of like a manifesto in which one finds included a long list of ideals for which a party purports to stand. Yesterday the Republican delegates in Tampa ratified their party’s platform for 2012.

The 2012 GOP platform is about 30,000 words long, up a bit from the 2008 platform (about 24,000 words), though shorter than the massive 2004 one (around 48,000 words). Forty-five of those words in this year’s GOP platform concern online gambling. That is to say, there’s a lot else on the party’s plate at the moment.

The statement about online gambling appears in a category of items falling under the heading of “Renewing American Values to Build Healthy Families, Great Schools and Safe Neighborhoods.” It’s the first paragraph of a short section called “Making the Internet Family-Friendly,” and goes as follows:

“Millions of Americans suffer from problem or pathological gambling that can destroy families. We support the prohibition of gambling over the Internet and call for reversal of the Justice Department’s decision distorting the formerly accepted meaning of the Wire Act that could open the door to Internet betting.”

The second and last paragraph in the section then discusses protecting children against online predators and sex offenders and stopping child pornography.

When I saw folks discussing this paragraph on my Twitter feed last night, I thought how the mention of wanting to prohibit online gambling wasn’t anything new as far as GOP platforms were concerned. I knew a similar statement appeared in the part of the 2008 platform, too. I decided to look back to see just where the references to online gambling first began appearing in GOP platforms.

There’s a neat website where you can find all of each major parties’ platforms going back to the mid-19th century, as well as platforms for other parties, too, thus making it easier to find out these things.

2008 GOP Platform

In 2008, the GOP’s statement about online gambling appeared in the category “Protecting Our Families” as its own short little section, coming just after “Stopping Online Child Predators and Ending Child Pornography” and before “Ridding the Nation of Criminal Street Gangs.” In fact, the statement is identical to what appears in the 2012 platform except for the additional reference to the recent memo from the DOJ regarding the Wire Act:

“Millions of Americans suffer from problem or pathological gambling that can destroy families. We support the law prohibiting gambling over the Internet.” (Sounds like “the law” might refer to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, even if that is not what the UIGEA really is. Or, if not that, another law that might be used to argue such a prohibition to be in place.)

2004 GOP Platform

In that novella-length platform of 2004, the reference comes not in the category titled “Strengthening Our Communities,” but rather in another one, “Building an Innovative, Globally Competitive Economy.” It strangely arises in a section on “Higher Education Affordability” that mostly concerns college costs. Here’s how it goes there:

“Millions of Americans suffer from problem or pathological gambling that can destroy families. We support legislation prohibiting gambling over the Internet or in student athletics by student athletes who are participating in competitive sports.” Pretty much the same, although “the law” here is referred to as “legislation” (i.e., there was less confidence such a prohibition was already on the books?).

I suppose we could conclude from the different location of the statement that if we go back a decade or so, the issue of online gambling was for some more closely connected to sports gambling, especially among student-athletes. Later it would get moved over next to street gangs, child pornography, and so on.

2000 GOP Platform

Online gambling was mentioned by the Republican Party in its platform way back in 2000, too, with what amounts to the first-draft version of the statement that has remained in the platform ever since. This time the reference comes amid a grab bag of items appearing under the heading of “Justice and Safety,” with the reference to sports betting among student-athletes again part of the statement:

“Millions of Americans suffer from problem or pathological gambling that can destroy families. We support legislation prohibiting gambling over the Internet or in student athletics by student athletes who are participating in competitive sports.”

No change in the wording, then, from 2000 to 2004. And looking back, the statement has been there pretty much since shortly after online gambling was invented.

1996 GOP Platform

No references to gambling of any kind in the 1996 GOP platform. In fact, there’s just one brief mention of the internet, which had yet to grow into such an important part of our culture. “The Internet today is the most staggering example of how the Information Age can and will enhance the lives of Americans everywhere,” goes the reference. “To further this explosion of newfound freedoms and opportunities, privacy, through secured communications, has never been more important.”

There is talk of “internet freedom” in the 2012 GOP Platform, too, with a more thorough statement about how the web “offers a communications system uniquely free from government intervention” and how the party intends to “remove regulatory barriers that protect outdated technologies.” There’s also discussion of individual freedoms and the need to “ensure that personal data receives full constitutional protection from government overreach.”

I took a peek at the Democrats’ recent platforms as well. Not seeing any mention of gambling in those -- online or otherwise -- as far as I can tell.

There are statements about the need to “protect the Internet's traditional openness and [to] ensure that it remains a dynamic platform for free speech, innovation, and creativity,” as well as calls “to identify and prosecute those who exploit the Internet to try to harm children.” But there’s nothing about either prohibiting any forms of gambling or ensuring that adult citizens who wish to have the freedom to gamble are allowed to do so.

I kind of feel like sorting through the platforms for brief mentions of online gambling like this is a mostly trivial pursuit. Sure, the platforms give us a general idea how elected officials might position themselves and thus cast their votes. But when it comes to online gambling, the many related issues are obviously much too complex to be covered in a sentence or two. And in truth, individual legislators are often motivated by wildly disparate purposes in their favoring or disproving of Americans playing poker or participating in other forms of gambling on the internet.

In other words, which party a legislator belongs to is obviously meaningful, but perhaps less so when it comes to online gambling than with other issues over which Republicans and Democrats are more obviously divided.

Linking Out

For today’s post I thought I’d compile a few interesting poker-related reads (and one listen) from the last few days.

First off, Grange95 wrote an excellent post following last week’s ruling by a federal district court judge that poker was a game “predominated by skill rather than chance” and thus not in the judge’s view to be regarded as gambling as defined by the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA)

Grange95’s post takes the form of outlining various consequences of the ruling, along the way summarizing its more salient points in a manner we non-lawyer types can follow. His conclusion? It is indeed a landmark ruling, and one that will play a role in future chapters of the “luck-vs.-skill” debate. However, its scope is limited and there still exist federal and state laws other than the IGBA with which poker’s proponents will have to contend.

Check out “United States v. Dicristina -- A Win for Poker Players (with an Asterisk)” for more.

The Forbes site provided yet another interesting poker-related piece yesterday, a feature describing the high-dollar home game (of sorts) hosted by the much-heralded, highly influential investor Warren Buffet.

In “Inside Warren Buffet’s Private Poker Game,” Randall Lane describes what is in fact an annual tournament hosted by Buffet in which a select group competes for a prize pool worth half a million dollars. Lane himself played in the tournament this past June along with a few high-profile folks, some of whom were bounties in the tourney.

The article mostly focuses on Lane’s own performance (he went out early), and in fact it sounds like Buffet isn’t really much of a poker aficionado (he’s more into bridge). Still, kind of an interesting look at poker being played by a different cast of characters than the ones we usually follow.

Jesse May (Shut Up and Deal) returns this week with another episode of his podcast, “The Poker Show.” It’s been about six weeks since May’s last show back in early July (near the end of the WSOP), making the appearance of a new one notable.

In episode 39 (dated August 27), May talks to a couple of hot German players, “Mad Marvin” Rettenmaier and Dominik Nitsche. Rettenmaier, of course, just comes off an unprecedented feat on the World Poker Tour, having won the last two main events at the Bellagio (the $25K World Championship that ended Season X) and in Cyprus (the kickoff to Season XI). Nitsche, meanwhile, is also having a good year, including winning a bracelet in Event No. 59 at the WSOP, a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event that I happened to help cover.

Both are interesting characters besides being great players, and of course May is always good with the questions, so if poker podcasts are your thing, the show is worth a listen. (EDIT [added 6/10/14]: Sorry, had to remove the link to the show per a request from bwinparty.)

Finally, I’ve recommended posts before by Phil Galfond on his personal blog, and he’s come up with another very good one that should probably interest anyone reading this blog. This time Galfond has written a thoughtful evaluation of one of his most celebrated opponents in the high-stakes online games, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom.

I had a chance this past summer to watch Blom play for most of Day 2 of the World Series of Poker Main Event, reporting on a number of his hands for PokerNews while gathering some thoughts of what it was like to watch the online superstar play live. I shared those impressions here in a post called “Blogging Blom,” although obviously what I saw and related was very limited, the imperfect impressions of an amateur watching the action from a few feet away.

In “Viktor Blom: The Man, The Myth, The Legend,” Galfond provides a more intimate look at both Blom the player and Blom the person. He assesses Blom’s talent (considerable, though with certain flaws), his character and personality (charming, fun-loving), and his prospects going forward (promising, though uncertain). Check it out.

Culture in the Cards

Today in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class we will be talking in part about poker’s prehistory, including discussing various games that can be called poker’s precursors such as as nas, mus, brag, poch, and primiera. Next class we’ll get to poque, the French game that most believe is the most immediate forerunner to poker, and then into the 19th century and the early days of actual poker in the U.S.

Like poque, most of these earlier games come from Europe, although the story of poker’s prehistory also extends elsewhere, including the far East. Today we’ll talk about the invention of playing cards, too, and how in all of these different countries the cards tended to incorporate reference to the producing culture.

Thus do you see weird things like coins and cups and scimitars and flowers and plants and polo sticks and all sorts of other meaningful items printed on the cards, depending on the country. When the suits came about, they, too, had symbolic significance, with the hearts sometimes representing the church, the diamonds the merchant class, spades the military, and clubs the importance of agriculture/farmers.

In France came the “valet” (knave or jack), “dame” (queen), and “roi” (king), figures which ultimately would appear as the face cards in most decks. Once the 52-card deck became established, kings and queens remained even in countries where there was no royalty to speak of like the U.S.

I was in the middle of reviewing this material yesterday when I saw a short piece over on the Slate site l reporting from the upcoming Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. The report shared the story of a fellow named Matthew Sanchez (not the embattled New York Jets quarterback) who was there this past weekend as a vendor at a rally for the candidate Ron Paul.

Sanchez has created a new deck of playing cards he refers to as “The Official American Standard Playing Cards” in which he’s incorporated all sorts of U.S.-themed symbolism and/or highly literal reference to various aspects of American government and history.

“After 236 years, America should have her own playing cards that represent her founding and her republic,” explains Sanchez in a short video as he introduces his set. Here it is, if you’re curious:



It’s a bit confusing to follow (e.g., instead of the usual suits, there is “faith, declaration, revolution, and unity”), and all of the text on the cards seems a bit much, too (e.g., the Bill of Rights are printed on cards 1-10). Gentlemen, Ladies, and Patriots replace the jacks, queens, and kings; thus there are no royals, which Sanchez says are “Un-American.”

Don’t really expect Sanchez to get very far with his deck, the creation of which sounds like it might have been motivated not simply by patriotism but by a kind of isolationist impulse -- i.e., the deck provides an occasion to voice certain thoughts about the U.S. needing to distinguish itself from or break ties with other countries. Or maybe in the context of poker, there’s an idea in here somewhere to “take back” the game somehow, I don’t know.

In any case, Sanchez does follow in a long tradition when it comes to the conscious incorporation of cultural symbols and messages in the manufacture of playing cards. I may have to mention him and his “Official American Standard Playing Cards” in class today, if only to reinforce the idea that in most cultures, the games people play take on all sorts of added significance.