A League of Their Own

Date: Tue, Jan 18, 2011 Internet

Last night Vera and I watched a little of the Australian Open. We caught the end of a women’s singles first-round match between fifth-seeded Samantha Stosur of Australia and the 17-year-old American Lauren Davis. Stosur easily defeated Davis (6-1, 6-1), for whom this was her first-ever Grand Slam event. Davis had won her way into the tournament after winning a junior tourney in December in order to earn a wildcard entry. A little like winning a satellite tourney in poker, I suppose.

Was kind of intriguing to see Davis do what she could against Stosur, the not insignificant skill divide between the two accentuated somewhat by their contrasting appearances. There was the pixie-like Davis (only 5’1”, I believe), battling gamely against the taller, more muscular Stosur who made the French Open final last year and whom many think is a strong contender perhaps to win her first Grand Slam this month.

While Davis did manage to pick up a few points here and there, the outcome was never in doubt. Unlike in poker, where a fortunate card (or several) really can help an outmatched newcomer defeat a seasoned pro, there was no chance here for Davis to go “all in” and gamble for the win.

The possibility in poker for amateurs to compete directly against top pros has always been one of the most fascinating elements of the tournament circuit. Aside from a handful of invitation-only, often made-for-TV events, every single major tournament on the poker calendar is -- like the Australian Open -- technically an “open” event in which anyone (theoretically) can play.

That said, when it comes to the Australian Open one must demonstrate at least some ability to participate. All 128 players in the women’s draw, for instance, either received an invite because of their current WTA singles rankings or won a wild card spot like Davis did. Meanwhile, in poker, anyone with enough to cover an entry fee can play.

Found myself thinking about this difference again this morning when the news broke of the creation of a yet-to-be-named professional poker league.

The story is only a couple of hours old, though by now you’ve probably at least heard about it. According to an article from the Associated Press -- picked up by a number of outlets, including ESPN (who listed the story among its front page headlines today) -- Annie Duke will serve as the new league’s commissioner, with former WSOP Commish Jeffrey Pollack acting as its chairman. Pollack is also described in the AP story as one of the league’s co-founders, with a private company, Federated Sports & Gaming, Inc., listed as having created the league.

Among the other details shared in the article is a plan to stage four televised “regular-season events” as well as a “$1 million championship freeroll” that will take place at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. As was the case with the short-lived Professional Poker Tour -- the last attempt at something like a professional poker league (begun in mid-2005 and defunct a little over a year later) -- those who participate in this new league will do so by invitation only.

“About 200 players will be invited into the league based on a mathematical formula measuring finishes in major events, money earned, and recent success,” says the article. Notably, only live tourneys will be considered, with cash games and online events not factoring into the calculations. Also not unlike what was the case with the PPT, players will be granted memberships of differing lengths, lasting either two, three, or five years, with a few “lifetime cards” being given to certain elite players.

Quotes from Duke and Pollack in the article directly evoke this issue I’ve brought up of non-pros competing with the established veterans of the game, sort of making it sound as though it’s a problem that the game’s best players sometimes (or often, even) have to play against less talented players. “This is incredibly pro-centric,” says Duke. “This is the one piece that’s kind of missing from the poker landscape right now... something for the best players in the world to compete against the best players in the world.”

Will be interesting, no doubt, to follow the process as it unfolds over the next few months. (I believe the first event will not happen until August.) Debates over invitations and the “formula” for determining who gets in will no doubt be fierce. Indeed, just a couple of posts ago I was referring to how the “all-time” list of tourney winnings is most certainly an imperfect indicator of who might be the “best players in the world.” I’ll also be curious to see how well the new league manages to avoid the many problems that led to the PPT’s demise, although I imagine that example will likely serve as a kind of object lesson for the new league as it forges ahead.

Am wondering a little about the money, the securing of which will obviously prove crucial to the league’s survival. Am also wondering about how the new league will be viewed, specifically whether or not it will find an audience and earn a spot on “the poker landscape” (to use Duke’s term) that is not way over on the periphery somewhere.

It certainly sounds like the league’s founders are envisioning more than a curious, large-scale “home game,” but rather something much more ambitious.

The AP story begins with a comparison with professional golf, saying how “the new league is hoping to become the PGA of poker.” There Pollack also speaks of how membership in the new league “will signify standing as a true professional in poker.” And in another press release from the Federated Sports & Gaming, Erik Seidel is quoted saying he hopes the new league will be “on par with other professional sports,” adding that he is “looking forward to true excellence in the game being rewarded.”

I do hope the new league turns into something fun and good for poker. But these are some lofty goals. Indeed, might it go against the nature of the game itself -- of which luck is necessarily a part -- to insist on finding a way to reward “true excellence”? I mean, even with links on the front page of ESPN, poker can’t really be tennis, can it? In poker, a Lauren Davis will beat a Samantha Stosur now and then.

Of course, in this new league, they’ll never play.

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Good News for Change

Date: Mon, Jan 17, 2011 Internet

Enjoyed following the coverage of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event final table Saturday night on ESPN2. Was disappointed (again) that I couldn’t see any of action from the first few hours when the show was online only, given that my ISP is not an affiliate of ESPN3.com and the PokerStars.tv stream wasn’t watchable from the U.S. But once it finally made it to air on my teevee I was impressed.

It did very much resemble the EPT Live streaming of final tables we’ve seen in the past (especially with James Hartigan on the mic), although revealing the hole cards definitely made for a different experience. (The final table was shown on a one-hour delay, making it possible to show the players’ cards.)

And while hours and hours of hands -- including all of those over and done with a preflop raise -- being played on a relatively sterile-seeming, hushed set certainly doesn’t make for the most exciting viewing, the show probably did bring in at least few new folks. And might even make some curious to see more. In any event, it was an interesting experiment that I imagine will likely be tried again.

Of course, I’ll admit that while Galen Hall’s comeback to defeat Chris Oliver heads up in the PCA Main Event was fun to watch, I wasn’t nearly as riveted by them I was earlier in the evening when reading reports on the progress of my friend Change100 in the PCA Women’s Event.

A couple of weeks ago, Change wrote over on Pot Committed about how she had satellited her way into the event. Took her a few tries, and what sounded like maybe $100 (or even less) worth of buy-ins to win a seat in a $215 satellite which she then made it through in order to win her package. Included the $1,100 tourney buy-in, travel and lodging, some extra cabbage for expenses, and a ticket to a boot camp conducted by Vanessa Rousso, winner of last year’s PCA Women's event.

Was cool enough just to read about Change winning the trip. Discovering she was chip leader after the first day of play on Friday was pretty nifty, too. Was positively thrilling Saturday, though, to follow Dr. Pauly’s tweets reporting her surviving all of the way to win the sucker as Ricki Lake (of Hairspray fame), Victoria Coren (another great writer-slash-player), and Lauren Kling (a tough tourney pro) all fell short.

In the end, Change managed to turn the $100 or whatever it was into $29,798! That’s a sweet ROI. You can read about the final day of play on the PokerStars blog, and here’s the neat video of her being interviewed by Gloria Balding afterwards.

I love Change’s laughing response to Glo’s question about turning pro. “No,” she smiles, “I like doing this for fun.” The winnings, she explains, will help give her some space to work further on a screenplay she began last fall.

Of course, the story of her trip to the Bahamas will also make for a pretty nifty feature. Change has already written a short note on her blog about her victory, though tells us a longer account is coming.

Looking forward to that, too. I knew Change was a great player, having played with her before. But you know how tourneys go. Being great doesn’t guarantee success.

However, I also know Change is a great writer. And that really is a skill game. So I know the story of her trip will be a winning one. As will the others she writes.

(EDIT [added 1/20/10]: As promised, Change100 has written an account of the tournament over on Pot Committed: “Beyond Fairy Tale: The 2011 PCA Ladies Event, Part 1 & Part 2”)

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On the All-Time Money List

Date: Fri, Jan 14, 2011 Internet

Well, things didn’t work out so well for Mr. Moneymaker yesterday at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event. Still sitting in second place with 16 left, a rapid tumble resulted in the 2003 WSOP ME champ begin eliminated in 11th. Ana Marquez, the leader entering play yesterday, also fell short of making tomorrow’s final table, finishing in 10th.

Chris Moneymaker earned $130,000 for his finish, which will bring his overall total tourney winnings to just under $3.2 million. Still keeps him well outside the Top 100, according to Hendon Mob’s current rankings. You need to have at least $3.55 million to be in that exclusive club.

I found myself looking back at that “All-Time Money List” some this week, inspired to do so after Daniel Negreanu reclaimed the top spot following his second-place finish in the “Super High Roller” event at the PCA. The $1 million Negreanu earned there catapulted him back ahead of Phil Ivey and into first. At the moment, Hendon Mob lists Negreanu as having $14,116,192 in career tourney winnings, Ivey next with $13,859,944, and Jamie Gold in third with $12,231,105.

Like Moneymaker, the great majority of Gold’s earnings came from his WSOP Main Event win, with his $12 million first prize in 2006 still the largest amount ever won in a poker tournament. That win put Gold in first for more than three years before Negreanu passed him in September 2009 following his runner-up finish at the WSOP Europe Main Event. Ivey then passed Negreanu during the Aussie Millions in January 2010, sitting in first for nearly a year before Kid Poker took the lead once more.

For many reasons, the list obviously cannot be regarded as an unambiguous indicator of poker ability or greatness. It only tracks live tourney winnings. And it only considers cashes, not taking buy-ins into account. Marcus Bateman wrote a little something about this latter point this week in a short piece on the all-time list. And Negreanu himself pointed out several of the drawbacks of the list, too, during his interview on the Two Plus Two Pokercast this week (Episode 155, 1/10/11).

They discussed the all-time list some over on The Poker Beat this week, too (the 1/11/11 episode). There Scott Huff brought up an interesting issue related to the list, namely what appears to be the difficulty most players will necessarily have in their efforts to challenge the current leaders.

“It does seem like it’s going to be tough for someone who doesn’t have huge sponsorship dollars behind them or is hugely successful in poker to the point where they are really a brand in and of themselves to really compete on an all-time list,” said Huff, referring in particular to events such as the “Super High Roller” at the PCA which sported a $100,000 buy-in and thus necessarily excluded all but those with the highest bankrolls and/or most backing.

In other words, the guys at the top (like Negreanu and Ivey) are obviously better suited to play in big buy-in events than are folks positioned further down the list, and thus are going to have more opportunities to make million-dollar scores like Negreanu did earlier this week.

Gary Wise responded smartly to the observation (I thought), noting that “those guys [like Negreanu and Ivey] have earned the right to be playing at the higher stakes,” and while there may be other flaws with regard to the list being a true ranking of poker players, there wasn’t anything especially unfair about the guys at the top using their big bankrolls to build further on their record-setting totals.

The exchange made me think about how the issue being discussed kind of reflected what happens all the time in poker -- namely, that having the big stack at the table is always advantageous, giving one more options and often putting one in a better position to increase one’s stack (and by more) than is the case for the smaller stacks. Happens every day at my small-stakes PLO tables where I always buy in for the maximum, immediately enjoying an edge over those content to try to battle with smaller stacks.

All in all, though, I guess I find the list only mildly curious -- a good conversation-starter, perhaps, but not much more.

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Captivated by the PCA

Date: Thu, Jan 13, 2011 Internet

Getting interesting down in the Bahamas, where the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event has now played through Day 4. The plan yesterday had been to play down to 24 players (three eight-handed tables). But the final hand early yesterday evening saw three bustouts happen on different tables, leaving just 22 players to come back for today’s Day 5.

The top of the leaderboard heading into play today is compelling for a couple of reasons. For one, Ana Marquez of Spain leads the way, the only woman left in the event. And Chris Moneymaker is right behind her in second.

Marquez currently has only one small cash in a Venetian Deep Stack event last summer on her poker resume. Meanwhile, everyone knows Moneymaker’s previous biggest cash -- his first one, too. Interestingly, the $2.3 million due the winner of the 2011 PCA isn’t that far from the $2.5 million Moneymaker earned for his 2003 WSOP Main Event triumph.

Will obviously be highly interesting to see if Moneymaker can stick around for the final table of this one. Such is the lot of the man who remains the most famous amateur ever to win the WSOP Main Event.

Intrigue automatically builds whenever Moneymaker comes within shouting distance of a big final table or bracelet. Heck, even when he survives half the field with an above-average stack, the former Tennessee accountant necessarily gets our attention.

I remember at the 2009 WSOP where I helped cover the big “Special 40th Annual No-Limit Hold’em Event,” the one with the big $40,000 buy-in. A small, tough field of 201 entered, and after Day 1 just 89 remained with Bruno Fitoussi on top and Moneymaker in second place. (Had a bit to say about that at the time here.)

If you recall, there was a lot of hype built up around that one, the biggest buy-in NLHE event in WSOP history. And all eyes were on Moneymaker on Day 2. He made it through the dinner break still in relatively fine shape, but lost a big all-in race versus Tony G with pocket queens versus A-K, then ran pocket tens into Ted Forrest’s K-K to get bounced shy of the money in 38th place. (Wrote a little about Moneymaker’s exit from that event here.)

He’s well in the money this time, though. And seemingly well positioned to make it to that final eight. Adding to the building excitement here is the fact that the PCA Main Event final table is going to be broadcast from start to finish, beginning on ESPN3.com at 5 p.m. Eastern time, then moving over to ESPN2 at 10 p.m.

That’s right! Same-day, final table action right there on our teevees!

I’m not completely sure about how the coverage will be handled, though it sounds like we’ll be seeing the event on a one-hour delay with hole cards being shown along the way. The EPT Live team headed by James Hartigan will be there for the ESPN3 stuff (with Daniel Negreanu commentating as well), then I believe Lon McEachern and David Williams will be in a studio providing some input as well once things move over to ESPN2. A glance at the ESPN2 schedule shows that the network has nothing scheduled for the next eight hours, so it appears the plan will be to show every hand of the sucker right down to the conclusion.

Poker nuts like you and me will enjoy the show regardless of which eight players make it to the final table. But you gotta think if Moneymaker is there, too, there are going to be a lot more eyes on ESPN2 late Saturday night.

Listening to the latest ESPN Poker Edge podcast with Andrew Feldman and Bernard Lee (the 1/12/11 episode), it seems once again that poker finds itself situated in that same awkward, uncertain spot it has been for some time now -- the game’s popularity is obviously continuing to rise, but trouble looms.

Feldman and Lee talked a bit about Moneymaker’s deep run and how fascinating it would be should “the stars and moons align” (as Lee put it) and the 2003 WSOP ME champ somehow take this one down.

The pair also noted how the turnout of 1,560 for the PCA Main Event, while impressive, hadn’t reached the 2,000 or so some had predicted for the tournament. Since the PCA ME field has traditionally been filled by online qualifiers, Feldman and Lee interpreted the turnout as having perhaps been affected by the fact that the “growth of the online [poker] world is really slowing.”

All of which would make a Moneymaker final table appearance -- or even a victory -- all the more curious to watch, both for the drama it would create down there at the Atlantis and for whatever “effect” might subsequently ensue.

In any event, I know I’ll be checking in again today over at PokerNews as well as at the PokerStars blog (from which that pic of Moneymaker at the 2010 WSOP comes, btw) for ongoing coverage of the PCA ME.

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On PokerStars Home Games

Date: Wed, Jan 12, 2011 Internet

I first started playing online poker many years ago. PokerStars was the first site I joined, and for several months I only played for play money. In fact, even after I made my first deposit, I continued to split time between the play money games and real money games. Eventually I managed to build up that initial deposit into a modest roll, then at some point left the play money games behind for good.

When I think back to those days of battling for play chips, a couple of things spring to mind. One is how useful it was to practice that way. Even though the play was at times crazily erratic, with the absence of real money encouraging a lot of loose, undisciplined play, I know I learned a lot both in the ring games and tournaments that proved helpful for me over on the cash side.

There was one other aspect of the play money games I remember -- a lot of socializing in the chat box. In fact, I recall getting to know quite a number of folks, players whom I eventually found myself searching for whenever I signed on. If they happened to be online too, I would usually join their tables and engage in what was often a lot of fun, entertaining banter while playing.

Whereas I took a lot of the strategy I’d learned over to the cash games once I made that move, the socializing/chatting I quickly left behind. I encountered a few players here and there who would try to open up genuinely friendly conversations -- that is, players who wanted to talk about something other than an opponent’s resemblance to barnyard animals or invite others to have relations with themselves -- but for the most part it was all business, even when playing for pennies.

It’s pretty much been that way ever since for me online. I’ll occasionally find myself in special tournaments or situations where I’m playing against friends (or friendly types) and some socializing will happen, but for the most part I’m completely on my own, each session another silent, solo flight.

For a couple of reasons, then, the announcement this week of these new PokerStars Home Games made me think again about those early play money days. One was the fact that the Home Games are being rolled out initially on the dot-net (i.e., play money) side only, although word is they’ll become available on the cash side in the very near future. The other reason, though, was how the idea of setting up these private “clubs” reminded me of those early chat-filled games.

I’ve been reading around about the new Home Games, exploring the FAQs to find out more about how they’ll work. It looks like each player is only allowed to set up a single “club” (for which he or she will act as “Club Manager”), but everyone is able to participate in as many as three different clubs. Also, each club is limited to 50 participants.

When setting up a club, the Club Manager chooses a name and also creates a special invitation code that he or she then gives to invited players. From what I can tell, there isn’t a way to send that invite/code through the PokerStars client, but it has to be done separately (e.g., via email). Once a player gets an invite, he or she will click on a “Join a Poker Club” button and enter the code. Sounds a little like those ESPN “clubs” for fantasy leagues or pick’em pools, actually.

The Club Manager also acts as a Club Administrator, and can additionally grant administrative privileges to other invited players, including scheduling tournaments and setting up customized ring games. Most of the games are available (hold’em, Omaha, stud, H.O.R.S.E.), and via the game management tools one can customize a number of details like the way the club lobby looks and so on. Sounds like there are ways to set up leaderboards, player stats, and other fun stuff, too.

Interestingly, the Chat Moderators who are available to arbitrate all of the other cash games and poker tournaments on the site will not be around to help out for the Home Games, the idea being you’re playing with people you know (and trust) and thus there won’t be a need for the Mods to come settle disputes. Could end up creating some issues, I suppose, including problems with collusion (Home Games players are able to play from the same IP address, says the FAQ), but this kind of makes sense.

Once this opens up on the dot-com side, I’m thinking it might be cool to set up a “Hard-Boiled Poker Club,” although I kind of wish I could invite more than 50 friends to play. I imagine PokerStars will probably keep tweaking things and perhaps will lift that restriction down the road if some ask them to do so.

Could be strange, actually, to “host” games like this online. Probably would feel some responsibility to ensure all were enjoying themselves whenever they came to my little “club” to play. In any event, I think for those who do end up taking part in this Home Games idea, the main purpose for participating would have to be to increase one’s enjoyment of the game -- to socialize and have fun -- and not (necessarily) to profit.

I know that’s an idea that is foreign to some poker players, namely, that one can play poker for reasons other than to make money. But for a lot of us “recreational” players (as I’ve here confessed myself to be), there really are other reasons why we like to play.

Something I learned -- along with basic strategy, hand rankings, and the like -- way back during those days of playing for play chips.

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“Poker in American Film and Culture” Readings & Viewings

Date: Tue, Jan 11, 2011 Internet

I mentioned last week the new college course I’m teaching, called “Poker in American Film and Culture.” We were all set to begin yesterday, but snow and ice caused classes to be cancelled, so it appears we won’t be able to get started until tomorrow.

I guess this means I have to revise my whole blind/ante structure now. :)

Actually missing a day is no biggie... we’ll be able to catch up without much difficulty, I imagine. I have completed the syllabus and since some have expressed interest I thought I’d share a list of the reading/viewing assignments. Right now it appears I’ll be able to teach the class again after this semester, so as we move through these units this spring I’ll be thinking about which assignments I want to keep and what other ones I might want to include next time around.

Unit 1: Origins, Rules, and Variants

David Mamet, “The Things Poker Teaches Us” (essay, 1982)

John Lukacs, “Poker and the American Character” (essay, 1963)

James McManus, Cowboys Full, (history, 2009), chapters 1-5, 17, 18, 32

This first unit -- just covering the first few classes -- introduces poker as a subject worthy of academic study as well as a lens through which we can examine numerous aspects of American culture from the early 19th century to the present.

The Mamet essay (which I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s post) sounds a few general notes about poker that we’ll return to throughout the semester. Mamet concludes that poker teaches us “character,” so the Lukacs piece will follow-up on that idea a bit by more specifically talking about “American Character.” (I wrote at length about the Lukacs essay a few months back here and here.) Then the first chapter of McManus’s book -- in which he spells out his plan to talk about how poker is interwoven in “American DNA” -- will also give us a number of things to look for going forward.

The next few McManus chapters then talk about all of those games like “mus” and “primiera” and “as nas” and “poque” that can be regarded as poker’s precursors. The later chapters talk about draw poker, stud poker, and hold’em, and that’s where we’ll make sure everybody at least knows the rules to these games before going forward.

As I mentioned last week, Cowboys Full is kind of a “core” text for the class, especially here in the early going. Here’s my review of McManus’s history from the fall of 2009 when the book first appeared.

Unit 2: The History of Poker

McManus, Cowboys Full, chapters 6-16, 19-22, 24, 26, 28-30, 33, 34

James Hildreth, excerpt from Dragoon Campaigns (memoir, 1836)

David Spanier, Total Poker, (essays, 1977), chapter 2 (“Origins”) and chapter 3 (“Presidents and Poker”)

These couple of weeks the class will mainly be a history class, and we’ll primarily be sticking with McManus’s version of the story of poker in the U.S., although here I’m bringing in Spanier to supplement things a bit as well as to introduce another voice into the discussion. I’m a big fan of Spanier’s collection, by the way (reviewed here). The Hildreth excerpt presents the first instance of the word “poker” appearing in print.

We’ll basically be carrying the story up through the middle of the 20th century, covering poker’s spread across America in saloons and on riverboats, Civil War poker, the stories of Wild Bill Hickok and other characters from the Old West, and notable anecdotes involving presidents and poker. We’ll also look at McManus’s observations about poker’s relevance during the World Wars, Vietnam, and the Cold War.

Unit 3: The Culture of Poker

John Blackbridge, excerpt from Practical Guide Book (strategy, 1880)

George Devol, excerpt from Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi (memoir, 1887)

Herbert O. Yardley, excerpt from The Education of a Poker Player (strategy/memoir, 1957)

McManus, Cowboys Full, chapters 23, 25, 27

We start this unit by backtracking a little to revisit the idea that poker was formerly “the cheating game” in America (with Blackbridge and Devol), before later (with Yardley) becoming a “square game.” The McManus chapters provide more background and detail regarding Yardley’s interesting story, including about his experience as a codebreaker for the U.S. government. (I wrote a bit about Yardley’s landmark -- and best-selling -- poker text here.)

Then we move into some other readings that help illustrate the “culture of poker” in the U.S. from 1950s to present.

McManus, Cowboys Full, chapters 31, 35-40

Spanier, Total Poker, chapter 5 (“Breakfast in Vegas”)

David Hayano, excerpt from Poker Faces (anthropological study, 1982)

Dick Miles, “Lowball in a Time Capsule” (article, 1967)

Jon Bradshaw, excerpt from Fast Company (essays, 1975)

Paul McGuire, excerpt from Lost Vegas (memoir/history, 2010)

Al Alvarez, The Biggest Game in Town (history, 1983)

Here we’ll start out talking about the birth of Las Vegas, move into the California Poker scene, then read and discuss the World Series of Poker. McManus writes about all three, of course, so we’ll be dipping back into Cowboys Full for the relevant chapters.

McManus and Spanier will help us talk about the early days of Vegas, including that big game at Binion’s between Johnny Moss and Nick “the Greek” Dandalos. Hayano and Miles provide a lot of background for those Gardena games (material that will then get dramatized with that cool opening of California Split the students will watch later).

The excerpt from Bradshaw (reviewed here) concerns the 1973 WSOP, and from Dr. Pauly’s book I’ve chosen chapter 35 (from the 2008 WSOP). Then we’ll read Alvarez’s great account of the 1981 WSOP, a book that includes a lot of insightful commentary about Vegas and American culture.

Unit 4: Poker in Culture -- Literature

Mark Twain, “The Professor’s Yarn” (story from Life on the Mississippi, 1882)

Stephen Crane, “A Poker Game” (story, 1900)

Bertolt Brecht, “Four Men and a Poker Game, or Too Much Luck is Bad Luck” (story, 1926)

James Thurber, “Everything is Wild” (story, 1932)

Robert McLaughlin, “Let’s Get Rid of the Ribbon Clerks” (story, 1945)

John Updike, “Poker Night” (story, 1987)

Jesse May, Shut Up and Deal (novel, 1998)

As I’ll explain to the class, it will begin as a history course, then here will turn into a literature class (before becoming a film course, then a class in sociology or even psychology). Here we’ll consider literary texts in which poker is of special thematic importance. Actually, we’ll be finishing Alvarez at the start of this unit, which kind of fits as I consider The Biggest Game in Town a literary triumph as well as an exemplary piece of journalism.

All of the stories appear in the 2004 anthology Read ‘Em and Weep edited by John Stravinsky. I think it will be especially interesting to read them along with May’s novel after having learned about poker’s history in such detail. There are a number of other texts I might’ve included here (such as Rick Bennet’s King of a Small World which I talked about here a few weeks ago), and I imagine in later iterations of the course I’ll likely substitute some of those to see how the students respond.

By the way, Tim Peters discussed Shut Up and Deal way back on Episode 2 of The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, if you want to hear more about the novel.

Unit 5: Poker in Culture -- Film

The Cincinnati Kid (film, dir. Norman Jewison, 1965)

Spanier, Total Poker, chapter 5 (“Movies”)

Anthony Holden, Big Deal (memoir/history), chapter 4 (“Read ‘Em and Weep”)

California Split (film, dir. Robert Altman, 1974)

Joseph Walsh, excerpt from Gambler on the Loose (memoir, 2008)

Rounders (film, dir. John Dahl, 1998)

Just three required films here, although as I said last week I’ll probably concoct an assignment that allows students to choose other films to write about if they wish. I also plan to show a lot of clips from various films along the way all semester to help illustrate various themes and issues suggested by the readings, so film will be a prominent part of the course throughout.

For the film unit, I wanted us to focus on what I consider well made films that really use a lot of the poker-related ideas and themes that we will have read about for the previous weeks by the time we view them. The readings here are supplemental, with Spanier and Holden both commenting on The Cincinnati Kid and Split screenwriter Walsh telling stories about his relationship with Elliott Gould and the making of that film. (See here for more on Walsh’s book.)

Looking back, I realize I have never really written a great deal about Rounders here on the blog, although it has obviously come up frequently. I wrote a full-fledged review of Altman’s California Split, a film I admire a lot. And I devoted a series of posts long ago to The Cincinnati Kid, including a review, a "commentary on the commentary" from the DVD, a discussion of Richard Jessup’s original 1964 novel, and an analysis of differences between the endings of the novel and the film. (That last one contains spoilers, dontcha know!)

Unit 6: Poker in Culture -- Gender Roles, Morality, Law, Technology

Spanier, Total Poker, chapter 6 (“Loving and Losing”) and chapter 10 (“Morals”); and “Net Poker” (essay from The Hand I Played, 2001)

McManus, Cowboys Full, chapters 45, 48, 49

Barbara Connors, “Power Play” (from Women’s Poker Night, essay, 2007)

Mark Twain, “Science vs. Luck” (story, 1870)

Barbara Tuchman, “A Game, Gentlemen, A Game...” (essay, 1966)

William J. Florence, excerpt from The Gentleman’s Handbook on Poker (strategy, 1890)

I. Rose Nelson, “History of Gambling in the United States” (history, 1997)

Martin Harris, “Laak-Eslami Team Defeats Polaris in Man-Machine Poker Championship” (article, 2007)

I’ve kind of jumbled the order of these readings here a bit, but you get the idea -- kind of a miscellany of topics with which to close out the semester.

We’ll first talk about men, women, so-called “gender roles,” and the like, using Spanier, a chapter from McManus, and Connors’s essay from Women’s Poker Night (a book I reviewed here). Then we’ll have one class where we get into the whole “luck-vs.-skill” debate (with Twain and Tuchman), which I think will be relevant to the subsequent discussion of morality which will begin with another chapter from Spanier and that old strategy bit from Florence.

We’ll then talk a bit about gambling laws in the U.S., reading Rose’s historical overview and McManus’s UIGEA commentary. Then we’ll end the course talking about online poker, poker “bots,” and artificial intelligence, using another of Spanier’s essays (from The Hand I Played), some more from McManus, and my little report from one of the Polaris matches.

Students will write three essays along the way as well as take two exams. Like I say, I do plan to make some changes for the next time I teach the course. I also expect to learn a lot from my students, too, about these texts and the issues we discuss. Don’t really plan right now on writing too much here on Hard-Boiled Poker about the class, although I imagine I will bring it up from time to time.

Wish me luck. Or skill. Or both.

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Viktor Blom is Isildur1 and Other Revelations

Date: Mon, Jan 10, 2011 Internet

Everyone knew already.

That is to say -- among those who follow such things, anyway -- no one was surprised by the announcement on Saturday down at the Atlantis Resort and Casino that Viktor Blom was indeed Isildur1. On the heels of the announcement, our man Otis swiftly published a cool feature in which he spoke with Blom, an introduction of sorts to the 20-year-old Swede about whom so much has been written since late 2009.

Jokes about this “worst kept secret” in poker have been part of the fun, of course. So has the sometimes-serious, sometimes-not speculation about Isildur1’s identity. I’m thinking of Dr. Pauly’s faux “interview” with Blom from last spring. Or Jen Newell and I contemplating in our “He Said/She Said” columns at Woman Poker Player the significance of how most assumed (correctly, as it happened) from the get-go that Isildur1 had to be a man.

Some have suggested PokerStars might’ve derived additional benefit from prolonging the mystery even further. However, it appears that doing so wouldn’t really have been feasible, especially if Blom were to continue to play in live events. According to the PokerStars piece, the offer to become a Team Pro “came with a price” -- namely, that Blom would have to end the charade once and for all.

“It felt like the right time,” Blom told Otis. And in truth, despite all the fun and intrigue, for the guessing game to have lasted more than a year was probably long enough.

A couple of thoughts came to mind for me following the “revelation” on Saturday. One was that no matter who Isildur1 turned out to be, we knew him pretty well already -- a seemingly fearless, ultra-aggressive, unpredictable player who in a few short months had managed to gain the respect and/or awe of many of the world’s top pros.

In the Stars piece he tells how he turned $2,000 into $2 million in just three weeks. We know how he took a lot of that roll to Full Tilt Poker and built it even higher before crashing hard against Brian Hastings (et al.) in December 2009. According to Poker Table Ratings, Blom has been involved in all 10 of the biggest pots in online poker history (and 18 of the top 20), including that monstrous $1,356,946.50 PLO pot Patrik Antonius won off of him.

That “Isildur1” turns out to be a private, perhaps even a bit shy young man in need of a haircut (or at least a comb) certainly adds to the portrait, but those details hardly distinguish him. It’s the force-of-nature-like online persona with which those details contrast that makes them at all interesting, really.

The other thought I had while reading about Blom’s introduction in the Bahamas was how it kind of dramatized something that happens to all of us when we play poker, albeit in a much more extravagant, even grandiose way. That is the way poker forces us to “reveal” our true selves, so to speak.

That second thought probably occurred to me because I’m about to start teaching that course I mentioned last week, the “Poker in American Film and Culture” class in which we’ll be reading all sorts of discussions of poker and its significance. In particular, I’m thinking about one of our first scheduled readings, the playwright David Mamet’s short essay from 1986 called “The Things Poker Teaches Us.”

Among the several points Mamet makes, he mentions how “poker reveals to the frank observer something... of import -- it will teach him about his own nature.” It’s inevitable, really. The more we play, the more we necessarily reveal about our characters or our true “natures” -- both to our opponents and to ourselves.

Such a process had been happening with Isildur1 for quite a while now. We (and his opponents) had been getting to know him more and more with each passing hand. The revelation of his “real” name and other biographical details perhaps adds further to the character sketch, though the process had been ongoing for quite some now.

Mamet gets into various psychological traits such as “a need to be abused” or “a need to be loved” and so forth in his catalogue of such disclosures, though I’m sure you can imagine other elements of the self that poker potentially exposes. As Anthony Holden says in Big Deal (another text we’ll be looking at this semester), “a man’s character is stripped bare at the poker table.”

That second thought might have been a little abstract, but you get the idea. We know Isildur1/Blom a little better today. And so do his opponents. And I imagine many of us will keep watching, seeing what else gets revealed

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Twitter Can Be Bitter, Or a Tweet Can Be Sweet

Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2009 Internet

In my trip reports from the World Series of Poker last summer, I made note on a few occasions of the prevalence of text messaging at the tables. Was quite a phenomenon, really. In 2008, just a handful of players appeared to have their iPhones or other, similar devices at the ready. In 2009, seemed like everyone had ’em.

It was early in the summer I noticed that despite there having been a rule in place stating that “iPhones, iTouch, Treos, Blackberrys, and other similar devices will not be allowed at any time,” the rule was never being enforced. Thus did folks happily text away at the tables, mostly between hands, but sometimes even when they had cards before them.

A little later I had occasion to talk about how curious it was to be reporting from the events amid so many players simultaneously sending out messages to the world about their progress. I called that post “Land of 1000 Reporters.”

Dr. Pauly has gotten me thinking again about texting and poker, specifically the use of Twitter -- that latest, greatest form of “social networking” whereby folks accumulate “followers” to whom they can broadcast reports about themselves, reflections on current events, or anything that pops in their heads in 140 characters or less. Pauly makes several interesting points in his new PokerNews article on the subject, correctly observing that whatever Twitter ultimately signifies, like other all media via which we communicate with each other, “it becomes what you make of it.”

The article contains several examples of well known pros who use Twitter, including that one story of Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) sending out a tweet in which he called a player at his table a “whackjob surprise,” only to find that player -- Julie Schneider -- was herself following his tweets and thus instantly called him out on his casual characterization. Surprise!

That story made me think of another one from the WSOP, one I’d read over on cmitch’s blog, O-Poker, toward the end of June. In a post titled “Careful What You Tweet at the Poker Table,” cmitch recounts how he played one of the $2,000 no-limit hold’em events, and at one point was moved to a table where Vanessa Rousso had just busted out. When he arrived at the table, he discovered the players left behind were all quite animated as they continued to discuss her.

Indeed, if you weren’t so sensitive about puns, you might say they were all a-twitter.

The players were excited for a couple of reasons. One was Rousso’s bustout hand, which according to some at the table apparently hadn’t been played very well. You can read a description of the hand in cmitch’s post, but it involves getting all her chips in on a king-high board with A-K and running into a player holding pocket rockets.

The other topic of conversation, though, was how she’d sent out a tweet earlier on which read “Just sat down...danny wong at my otherwise weak table.” A friend of one of the players had read Rousso’s tweet, then forwarded the message in a text to his buddy. And, in fact, that turned out to be the player who busted Rousso on the hand. As cmitch says, the inside dope about Rousso’s low estimation of her opponents’ skills may or may not have influenced how he played the hand, but it surely didn’t hurt him to have had the extra info.

I saw some texting at the tables at the EPT -- and to be honest, I don’t know one way or the other what sort of rules are on the books there regarding the use of electronic devices -- though not as much as at the WSOP. I still feel (for various reasons) as though I’d like to see officials make players step away from the tables whenever using their devices, but I’m doubting that’ll ever come to pass.

No, for better or worse, these devices are permanently part of us now. And it appears a lot of us are satisfied to use them primarily to send tweets to each other -- consistent, frequently updated progress reports from our respective journeys through this mortal coil.

I’d say more about this, but I have to run. Time to go send a tweet that this post is up.

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Final Decision on UltimateBet: None of My Business

Date: Mon, Sep 14, 2009 Internet

On Friday, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission -- the entity that “is empowered to regulate and control gaming and gaming related activities conducted within and from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake [near Quebec, Canada] in accordance with the highest principles of honesty and integrity” -- issued its “final decision” regarding the cheating that occurred at UltimateBet, one of the sites to which the KGC issues a license (and thus purports to regulate and control).

Friday’s news comes nearly a year after we last heard from the KGC, and about 20 months after a few online players first began publicizing their suspicions that cheating might be happening on the site.

Turns out at least 31 different people -- in addition to 1994 WSOP Main Event champion and UltimateBet “consultant” Russ Hamilton -- were involved in the cheating at UB. And those guys had over 100 separate accounts with which to have their fun (click on list to enlarge). Over $22 million has now been refunded to affected players, and the KGC has further fined UB $1.5 million. The KGC says it believes “criminal behavior” has taken place, and so is providing information to law enforcement authorities, although whether any sort of prosecution will follow remains to be seen.

According to Friday’s report, this applesauce went on at UltimateBet for a period of four-and-a-half years -- from June 2003 to December 2007. If you’ve been paying attention, the UB cheating era keeps getting lengthier (and involves more cheaters) with each report. Back in May 2008, Tokwiro Enterprises, the company that owns UltimateBet (and Absolute Poker), reported that the “fraudulent activity” on UB first began in March 2006. The last time we heard from the KGC back in September 2008, we were told that “multiple cheating incidents” started to occur on UltimateBet in May 2004.

Since this is the “final decision,” I imagine the UB cheating era won’t be extending back any further. Couldn’t go back too much further, I guess -- UB only went online in 2001.

I’m glad the KGC has at last made its “final decision” public. I’m glad efforts are being made to try to make the criminals pay for their deeds, although am skeptical those efforts will get very far. I’m glad that the KGC has audited and approves of the operation of Tokwiro Enterprises, and has also audited and approves of the Cereus Poker Network system on which both Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet presently run.

Of course, it took a bunch of players noticing a player named “NioNio” was enjoying a statistically improbable run of good fortune on UB -- not the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, despite its being “empowered to regulate and control” the sites to which it issues licenses -- for the cheating by 30-plus other individuals on the site to be discovered. And, it appears, eventually stopped.

Not so glad about that.

Tokwiro took over ownership of UB in October 2006, and Friday’s report further details how the new owners became aware of the cheating, reported it to the KGC, and aided KGC with the investigation. The new report confirms the previous statement made by Paul Leggett, CEO of Tokwiro, that “this cheating occurred on our site through illicit software placed on the UB servers prior to our purchasing UltimateBet” and “that Tokwiro and its entire management team had no knowledge of the illicit software until it was revealed by our investigation; and no one associated with Tokwiro was involved in the cheating scheme at any point.”

Fine. The new owners are clean, although they were in charge for over a year before recognizing that a gang of folks using over 100 different usernames were cheating the site. And again, such recognition only arriving after some players started to notice and complain.

When that happened -- in January 2008 -- we had just heard from the KGC regarding the Absolute Poker cheating scandal that took place in 2007. There it was concluded that cheating had occurred at AP for a period of about six weeks during the late summer of 2007. Multiple user accounts were identified as having been involved in the cheating, “with players using software that enabled the viewing of the ‘hole cards’ of each of the other players.” Not exactly what happened at UB, apparently, according to the “Anatomy of the Cheating” section of the new report, but practically speaking very similar. The suckers playing with these cheaters were playing with their cards face up.

Absolute Poker was fined $500,000 and placed on a two-year probation by the KGC, a probation which involved the KGC conducting random audits of AP. By then, I had already abandoned Absolute Poker as a place to play, having pulled my money off the site in October 2007. I had an account over at UltimateBet at the time as well, and realizing that the same company ran both sites, I soon removed my funds from UB, too, in November (though not without some headache) -- that is, even before the NioNio thing came to light and (eventually) we all began to realize the UB scandal was much, much bigger in scope than what had happened at Absolute Poker.

So I was no longer playing on UltimateBet when the site acknowledged in March 2008 that a cheating “scheme” had been detected on the site via an “interim statement” sent to various poker industry folks. Nor was I a couple of months later when players began uncovering a number of other usernames that appeared to be involved in the cheating. Nor in September 2008 when the KGC issued its “initial findings” on the UB matter.

Nor in November 2008 when that “60 Minutes” story about the scandals appeared along with accompanying features in The Washington Post. Nor in December 2008 when UltimateBet spokesperson Phil Hellmuth was shipped a pot despite holding the worst hand, about which he said afterward (on the 12/28/09 episode of The Ultimate Poker Show) “this has happened 100 times.”

Like I say, I made my decision long ago. Am a bit incredulous, I guess, that an online poker site can manage to abuse its customers so badly for so long -- not to mention negatively affect the reputation of the industry as a whole -- and still be endorsed. And attract players.

But that’s none of my business.

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I Get Up, I Get Down

Date: Fri, Sep 11, 2009 Internet

I mentioned a week-and-a-half ago how August had gone particularly well for me poker-wise. September? Not so good. Has been a rough, rough last week at PLO25 (six-handed).

Some bad play on my part, for sure. In some cases compounded, I think, from having played at least a couple of sessions while tired.

You might remember me whimpering earlier in the week about my sleep schedule having gone wacky from helping out with some of those WCOOP write-ups. As my buds Change100 and California Jen have been noting in their tweets, doing those often requires sitting up into the wee hours, sometimes all through the night.

Three of the four recaps I did last weekend were like that, and as I’m no good at sleeping during the day, I ended up having a few 24-hour periods in there during which I only got a couple of hours of actual snooze time. Yet I stubbornly tried to play my usual sessions anyway, and while I haven’t studied the hand histories (too tired, haha), I’m reasonably sure I was making some poor decisions that made it harder for me to succeed.

Have been running bad, too, though, seemingly missing most draws while my opponents always seem to hit theirs. Which doesn’t help, dontcha know.

Played yesterday and was doing all right, up a modest amount (ten bucks or so). Had mentally slipped into that zone where I was thinking of leaving so as to secure even a tiny win, a strategy I like to employ when on a downswing. Does a lot psychologically, I think, just to be able to return the next day with a memory of ending in the black.

Anyhow, I’m thinking of getting up when I get dealt in the cutoff. The first two players limp in, and I raise the pot (to $1.35). After all, my hand fell into that very small class of starting hands Jeff Hwang calls “Magnum.” “Ultra premium Aces,” he says, are the “double-suited aces with... a second big pair.” “The very best starting hands in PLO. A raising hand from any position.”

Folds back to to the big blind -- whom I have covered by a few -- and he reraises pot to $5.90. The limpers fold, and its back on me. I suppose I can call and see a flop, but really, that’s silly talk. I’m Magnum, baby! I reraise, he puts the rest in, and I call, making for a pot of 65 bucks or so.

He has ticked the the option not to show his cards when all in, so while I don’t see his cards when the flop comes , I am sure already that I’m cooked. I have flopped a set of tens, but I know know know he’s flopped a better set. The turn is the , the river the , and sure enough he’s got the kings -- .

After being up, now I’m down. I notice I had both his suits covered. A little more insult to injury arrives in the form of my opponent typing “ty” afterwards. I leave shortly thereafter, having to book another loss.

Speaking of injury, all apologies for sharing this here story of woe, as I know know know how unpleasant they are to read sometimes. In fact, this week -- as I’ve endured my own downswing -- I’ve begun to notice just how excruciating these stories of poker misfortune can be. And prevalent.

I read a lot of blogs, forums, tweets, and whatnot, and was starting to see this week how these stories are everyfrigginwhere. Kind of like the smoke that used to fill most poker rooms, choking us all. So, like I say, sorry for clouding up the room with more of that. Here, let me just put this one out right here.

One of those whose tweets I follow is Joe Sebok, who occasionally broadcasts to his 793,195 followers (?!?) his “album of the day.” Several weeks ago I recall he mentioned he was listening to that Yes album, Close to the Edge (1972), one I have on the iPod but hadn’t dialed up in some time. I think it was the suggestion that caused me to listen yesterday.

What a jewel, that one. Lyrics mostly applesauce (as is usual for Yes), but nonetheless fascinating from beginning to end, especially the title track, which has that moment of clarity during the sweetly serene middle section, titled “I Get Up, I Get Down.”

Don’t ask me what any of the surrounding lyrics are supposed to be saying, but I get that one phrase. I think we all do.

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When Winners Lose, and Losers Win

Date: Thu, Sep 10, 2009 Internet

Been following from afar the progress of the European Poker Tour event in Barcelona and the World Poker Tour one over in Cyprus. Have buddies reporting from both tourneys, and so have had some extra interest to follow the coverage from both.

The big news out of Cyprus seems to be the low turnout -- just 181 players for the $10,000 buy-in main event, although a number of “name” guys made it to the Mediterranean island (including several Full Tilt pros). F-Train has some thoughts about the turnout and the event as a whole. They are currently down to their next-to-last day over there, with Layne Flack, Nenad Medic, and Huck Seed all still alive with two tables remaining.

Meanwhile, they just finished up over in Barcelona yesterday, where 479 players made it for the main event. That one had a €8,300 buy-in -- the equivalent of a little over $12,000. Most of the PokerStars guys followed the EPT and played in that one. The 20-year-old Carter Phillips, a PokerStars qualifier, won the event last night. Everyone will next be getting together over in London for the WSOPE which starts a week from today.

Roland de Wolfe of the U.K. finished 15th at EPT Barcelona, despite losing a controversial hand on Day 3 of the event in which he mucked a winner, and his opponent showed a loser. That’s right. Strange stuff.

The hand was a blind-vs.-blind hand in which German Tobias Reinkemeier (who’d go on to finish 30th) was in the small and de Wolfe in the BB. Not sure what happened preflop -- someone had raised and the other called, as there appears to be a small pot built up. The flop came . Looks like Reinkemeier checks, de Wolfe makes a bet, Reinkemeier check-raises, and de Wolfe calls. The turn is the . This time Reinkemeier makes a sizable bet, and de Wolfe calls. The pot is about 100,000 at this point.

The river then brings the . Reinkemeier checks, de Wolfe quickly bets 95,000, and Reinkemeier thinks for a moment then calls. De Wolfe’s expression shows he thinks he’s beat, and he turns over one card -- the -- making as though he’s ready to muck. He says “king-high” a couple of times as well. Reinkemeier -- who hasn’t shown his hand -- says he wants to see de Wolfe’s hand, and a resistant de Wolfe does not comply. Instead he pushes his cards forward to the point where they are touching the mucked cards.

Once de Wolfe’s cards touch the other cards -- this happens very quickly -- Reinkemeier triumphantly flips over his -- a busted flush draw, just queen-high! The dealer then digs de Wolfe’s cards out and turns them both over -- he had , not even a draw, but king-high was in fact the best hand. The floor is called, and after a lot of discussion the pot is awarded to Reinkemeier. No shinola! See for yourself:



Obviously de Wolfe made a mistake by forcing his cards into the muck, even if he (very reasonably) thought his king-high had to be beat. So the hand pretty clearly illustrates the lesson about not mucking your cards without making sure you don’t hold a winner.

What I think about, though, when I watch this hand is how challenging it is for the reporter standing alongside the table charged with telling the world about what happened. I wrote a bit about this phenomenon back during the WSOP in a post called “Seeing Is Believing.” “When you see a hand like that, you start distrusting your senses,” I wrote, noting how sometimes your instinctive response is to check with someone else if what you saw really and truly occurred.

That this particular hand was captured on video -- and interviews with the players about the hand were conducted as well -- is terrific. Makes the story of the hand all the more compelling. And believable.

Because without the video, would you believe it?

Both players do very strange things here. De Wolfe mucks before seeing his opponent’s hand. And Reinkemeier calls a nearly pot-sized bet on the river with queen-high. In the interview afterwards, Reinkemeier explains how he believed de Wolfe’s range there at the end was polarized -- either he has a flush or air -- and that since he’d seen de Wolfe muck bluffs without waiting for his opponent to open his hand before, he knew he could call and perhaps win even if his queen-high was the worst hand. (A translation of some of what Reinkemeier is saying appears a few pages into the 2+2 thread about the hand.)

Like I say, the hand makes me think of situations where I’ve watched and reported on hands in which players call huge bets with very little (e.g., ace-high or king-high), or hands in which players muck without waiting to see opponents show their hands.

The latter situation can be especially perplexing when it comes to reporting, as the “story” of the hand seems somehow incomplete -- as though there’s a loose end there still dangling afterwards. A “showdown” in which no cards are shown? I saw this happen a few times at EPT Kyiv, in fact, with players mucking as soon as their opponent’s called their river bluffs. (I mentioned one example in a post from Day 1b, actually.) Most disorienting for the observer, particularly if he or she is charged with the task of explaining it all to someone who wasn’t there to see it.

But I suppose that challenge is part of what makes reporting from these tourneys more interesting, too. You think you’ve seen it all. You’re standing next to a table watching another boring little blind-vs.-blind hand unfold. Snoozerama....

Then, suddenly... the world turns upside down! A winner loses and a loser wins! Madness!

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The Poker Hall of Fame: Will Anyone Be Worthy?

Date: Wed, Sep 9, 2009 Internet

Yesterday the names of the nine finalists to be considered for induction into this year’s Poker Hall of Fame were announced.

You might recall how the process by which Hall of Famers would be named was changed somewhat this year. Rather than just have a small group of insiders pick one or two for the honor behind closed doors, the process was opened up a bit, with the public invited to participate in online voting during WSOP.

Toward the end of the Series the WSOP Commish Jeffrey Pollack announced the names of the top 10 vote-getters, then explained how the next step of the process would be for a group called the Poker Hall of Fame Governing Council either to remove or add names before sending the list along to the people who’d be voting on whether folks would get in. (In other words, while the public got to start the process, the insiders still get to control who gets considered for real.)

The Poker Hall of Fame Governing Council didn’t add any new names to the list of top 10 vote-getters, and only removed one -- Tom “durrrr” Dwan. Thus, the nine who are to be considered are Barry Greenstein, Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, Tom McEvoy, Men Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, and Mike Sexton.

The real voters consist of the living Hall of Fame members -- of which there are 15, they say -- and 15 more members of the poker media. They’ll be submitting their ballots by October 2, and for someone to picked he’d have to have at least 75% of the voters say “yes” to the question of his candidacy. The winners are to be announced in a ceremony on November 7 to take place during a dinner break at the 2009 WSOP Main Event final table.

The criteria for selection are that (1) “a player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition,”(2) “played for high stakes,” (3) “played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers,” (4) “stood the test of time,” and (5) “for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.”

Also, interestingly, when the voters send in their ballots they are being invited to write in candidates for 2010. Those write-in candidates will be automatically added to the list next year (i.e., will not have to be picked either by the public vote or the HOF Governing Council adding their names to the ballot).

So, really, while the public does now have a “say” in the whole process, there are a lot of checks along the way to ensure that the public doesn’t say anything too terribly crazy. That said, the new process does add some suspense to the whole business of picking Hall of Famers, and certainly makes the HOF a more prominent part of the WSOP and professional poker scene.

Indeed, one element adding suspense is the fact that while everyone is curious about who might get picked, there remains another possiblity -- that no one will make it at all.

Wouldn’t that make for an awkward award ceremony? It could happen.

Voters are only allowed to vote for three of the nine finalists. That makes it impossible for all nine to make it in this year, since there’s no way all nine can get 75% of the voters to say “yes” for them. If my math is correct, the highest number of Hall of Famers we can possibly see will be three. Let’s say all 30 voters cast ballots, and all 30 submit the maximum three “yes” votes. That’s 90 votes, and with 30 voters a person would need at least 23 “yes” votes to make 75%. Three players could get there, but that would leave less than 23 votes as a remainder.

So there’s no possiblity of all nine making it. But there is a possibility that none of the nine make it. In fact, given the way the process has been set up, I’d say there’s a real chance of that happening.

Look at the list of nine candidates again. Then look at the criteria. There are ways of weeding out certain folks, sure. The younger guys, though worthy in other ways, probably can’t reasonably be said to have “stood the test of time” yet. A couple of others might have lost some support (or “respect of peers”) thanks to some extracurricular stuff. That said, I think any voter is probably going to have at least five or six guys who rank as legitimate choices here, and so when voting for three will be necessarily made to vote “against” two or three they feel probably deserve the honor, too.

Let’s say five of the nine finalists end up getting a significant number of votes here. In fact, let’s go so far as to say the voters will only be focusing on five guys. Which ain’t gonna happen (each of the other four will probably get at least a vote or two, probably more), but let’s pretend it does.

So the 90 votes would be divided among those five. If divided evenly, none of them will come close to making it, as each will only get 18 votes, or 60% -- well shy of the needed 75%. And, like I say, there probably won’t be 90 votes submitted for just five players, as the others will take some of those votes away. There will have to be overwhelming support for one candidate for him to get in, and given the group that has been proposed, the votes might be divided in such a way as to make it hard for that to happen.

In the end, one guy will probably make it, actually, but I’d be surprised if two are inducted. And, like I say, zero is possible -- unless the Poker Hall of Fame Governing Council steps in and changes the rules after the voting, which could well happen if no one gets the 75%. They could decide to allow the top vote-getter in regardless of how many votes he gets, so as to ensure at least one player gets in. In fact, that option probably should have been included from the start -- and I’d bet it will get included going forward if it does happen that no one gets the 75% this year.

’Cos while the whole idea of having a Poker Hall of Fame might be debatable, if yr gonna have one, you have to put people in it now and then.

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Matching Up Poker and Tennis

Date: Tue, Sep 8, 2009 Internet

Was up late again last night watching Event #13 of PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker, the $300+$20 Seven-Card Stud event. Early in the evening, I had the U.S. Open on as well, watching the hard-fought, three-set battle between the 19-year-old Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark (pictured) and the Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova.

I tend to enjoy watching the women’s matches more than the men, if only because the points tend to go longer, and so there’s more of a chance for some drama and suspense to be built up in a given point. The Wozniacki-Kuznetsova match was just terrific in this regard, with a lot of wild, lengthy rallies and spectacular winners that made you go “wow.”

The 19-year-old Wozniacki eventually took it down, outlasting Kuznetsova in three sets 2-6, 7-6, 7-6. She’ll now play the American Melanie Oudin in the quarterfinals, another teen sensation who also came back to beat a higher-seeded Russian yesterday, defeating Nadia Petrova 1-6, 7-6, 6-3.

While I was watching the Wozniacki-Kuznetsova match conclude, I had one of the stud tables open on the laptop, kind of idly noting hands go by when the players were between points. Perhaps unsurprisingly I started to become aware of the many similarities between tennis and poker. Probably goes for any poker variant, but somehow stud seemed especially poker-like last night.

Most stud hands tend to become heads up by fourth street, and thus more readily resemble the back-and-forth of tennis from that point forward. As hands developed, the betting reminded me of two players volleying, with a raise or three-bet looking like an attempt at a passing shot or hitting a line, trying to end the “point” right then and there. Some would prove winners; others “unforced errors.”

The fixed limit betting format also seemed to reinforce the comparison, insofar as the players’ relative status changed only incrementally, bet by bet, hand by hand. No one could win it all on a single play, but only by the lengthy accumulation of actions and results.

Finally, I found myself contemplating the whole “luck-vs.-skill” debate in light of the analogy I was almost involuntarily tracing. Certainly I was witnessing awesome displays of skill by Wozniacki and Kuznetsova, both in terms of athletic prowess and strategic, on-the-fly decision making.

But the players’ relative skill levels also helped create what seemed to be “lucky” moments here and there. I don’t have the stats before me, but it was clear Kuznetsova played a higher-risk (or “looser”) style, thereby hitting more winners (and aces) while committing more unforced errors (and double-faults). Some points would develop in such a manner that one player appeared to have a decided advantage -- like having positional advantage or the better starting hand in poker -- yet the other would somehow find a way to steal the point, to “get lucky” (so to speak) thanks to a fortunate bounce or a slight mistake from her opponent.

Yes, there’s definitely some degree of “luck” in tennis -- or at least elements of the game that, as is the case in poker, are constantly out of the player’s control. But like in poker, the skillful players tend to win out over time, and a match (or tournament) generally goes on long enough to ensure that will usually be the case.

There are many other parallels one could pursue -- momentum, confidence, focus, reading opponents’ strengths and weakness, and so forth. One of the winners of a WCOOP event, Joel Adam Gordon (a.k.a. “2FLY2TILT”) who won Event #4, the No-Limit 2-7 Single Draw event, and who also did well in last night’s stud event, made a similar comparison in his post-tourney interview with Otis. Said Gordon, he was “aiming to be one of the most versatile and well-rounded players around,” likening himself to “a tennis player who can play well on all surfaces.”

Yea, there are lots of ways to go with this analogy. I’ll stop there, though, and let you think about them. Ball’s in your court.

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PokerStars’ WCOOP Continues

Date: Mon, Sep 7, 2009 Internet

Been fairly well immersed in PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker the last three days, so that’s what we’ll discuss today here on Hard-Boiled.

I have written wrap posts for three of the events thus far. Will be doing so again tonight/tomorrow morning, then will have a few days away to go work the “real” job before getting back at it next weekend. Was sitting up ’til after eight a.m. today watching my event finally come to its conclusion, some 20-plus hours after it began.

I tried to nap a little as the night wore on, but it is hard, really, not to keep tabs on the action since one never really knows when the final table is going to happen in these things -- and I absolutely have to be at the computer when the final table begins. Sleep schedule all kinds of out of whack, dontcha know.

They have been drawing some enormous fields for these suckers. The event I was watching yesterday -- Event #9, a $200+$15 no-limit hold’em event -- had a $1 million guarantee, but drew over 11,000 entrants, making the prize pool more than twice that. Had a tourney on Saturday with more than 15,000 playing. And players are hopping on in over 100 different countries, too -- truly the “World Series” of online poker, you’d have to say.

For those of you interested in following some of the coverage, head over to the PokerStars blog and look for the WCOOP posts. They aren’t too hard to find. The wraps initially appear in the regular rotation -- amid the reports from EPT Barcelona -- there “above the fold.” If you look down on the right-hand side of the page you’ll see links to all of the event reports, and if you go to the WCOOP page on the blog you’ll find ’em all as well, along with Otis’ interviews of winners.

If that’s not enough WCOOP for you, Scott Huff is doing a daily podcast over on PokerRoad which also is a neat way of catching up on the action. He, too, is interviewing event winners and PokerStars pros. Huff remains the far-and-away chipleader when it comes to poker podcasting, so if you like The Poker Beat and his other shows, give this one a listen, too.

Finally, most of you reading this probably are also aware Dr. Pauly has begun a weekly op-ed column over on PokerNews -- if not, lemme pass that along to ya. In his first (appearing yesterday), Dr. P talks about the WCOOP, his thesis evident in his headline, “WCOOP: It’s Good, But Let’s Make it Better.” Some good ideers in there. Some tongue-in-cheekiness thrown in here and there as well. Check it out.

For now, I’m gonna try to enjoy a few hours of rest here on Labor Day before my next event begins later today. Maybe get outside a bit and enjoy this terrific weather we’ve got going. If you ain’t busy satelliting yr way into the next WCOOP event over on PokerStars, that is.

(Incidentally, I have a new post today over on Film Chaw, reviewing the 1975 sci-fi cult flick A Boy and His Dog.)

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