The theory of poker records

Date: Mon, Jun 23, 2008

The intrepid reporters at PokerNews yesterday brought us this unusual boast from David Sklansky:

A Long Drought

There are plenty of dubious records to hold in sports like baseball: lowest
career batting average, minimum 2,500 at bats (Bill Bergen, .170); most errors
in a season (John Gochnauer, 98); and longest losing streak (Philadelphia
Phillies, 23 in a row). We may have discovered the poker equivalent.

David Sklansky claims to hold the record for longest time between
bracelets. He can't think of a single player who won a bracelet before
Sklansky's last bracelet in 1983, who is still playing and hasn't won a bracelet
since. That's 25 years since Sklansky's last bracelet.

"A very interesting record," said Sklansky. Do you see why?

If that last question is being sly about something, it has passed right over my head.

But as to the record--if it is, indeed, a record--it is one that is rather difficult to verify, which is, I assume, why Sklansky phrased it with some tentativeness. As with most things in poker, all one can say is "it depends." In this case, it depends on exactly how you define the question, and on information that is not always readily available.

To see what I mean, consider these examples of possible contenders to Sklansky's title that I was able to find with a little Googling. I did not attempt to check every pre-1983 winner (too time-consuming), but I did find some names that at least give one pause about accepting Sklansky's claim.

Bobby Baldwin: He won the last of his four WSOP bracelets in 1979, so he clearly surpasses Sklansky in number of years since last being champion. But is he "still playing"? That's where "it depends" comes in. He is certainly still playing poker, at least occasionally, and at least in cash games. But his last cash in a major tournament was apparently in 1995 (see Hendon Mob database entry here), so he is either no longer entering tournaments or doing quite poorly in them. There's no easy way for me to check this. But if Sklansky's "still playing" is interpreted loosely as still actively playing poker in one form or another, Baldwin has him beat.

Carolyn Gardner: According to her Hendon Mob database entry, she won her one and only WSOP bracelet in 1983, the same year as Sklansky's last one, thus tying him in length of drought. But again we bump up against the question of whether she is "still playing." Her results show a cash as recently as July, 2007, in last year's WSOP, but I can't verify anything since then. Heck, she might be dead for all I know. Although not mentioned in the PokerNews story, it is also possible that Sklansky would limit his claim to those with a win in an open event, and Garder's came in the restricted ladies event (then called the "women's" event--I have no idea when or why they decided to change that to "ladies"), which was then played in 7-card stud, rather than today's no-limit hold'em.

June Field: She took her one and only bracelet in 1982. Is she still active? The latest I can find on her is a September, 2004 cash, so I just don't know.

Terry King: We have approximately the same situation here. She claimed her only bracelet in 1978, but it's hard to tell if she is still actively playing. Her last recorded cash was in 2003. However, the one before that was in 1998, so perhaps she only plays occasionally, and will pop up again some time soon.

So I'm left unsure whether to give Sklansky the credit he is asserting for himself. It's the sort of claim that would be hard to prove definitively true (because it's really not feasible for any one person to check on the status of every pre-1983 bracelet winner; that would involve knocking on doors, seeing who is still alive, who still plays poker at their local clubs but maybe not in big tournaments, etc). But it's also the sort of claim that could readily be disproven with a single name, should anybody come up with the right counter-example.



Addendum

Immediately after I finished writing the above, I went back to the PokerNews page on which I had seen Sklansky's claim posted, in order to read the rest of the feeds that came in after I had shut it off for the day yesterday. I found that the definitive refutation of Sklansky's theory had already been suggested in the "Shout Box" section of the PokerNews live feeds, in which readers can contribute comments and questions to the bloggers. Somebody calling himself "jimmyjam" wrote:

Sklansky is a goof. Why be proud of your ineptitude? Anyway, Howard 'Tahoe'
Andrew won two bracelets in 1976 and is still playing/cashing in tourneys.
...so, not surprisingly Sklansky is wrong in his claim.

Whatever you may think of this guy's assessment of Sklansky, his information is correct. Howard Andrew did indeed win two WSOP bracelets in 1976, none since, and is still active in poker tournaments. According to his Card Player magazine player profile, he continues to rack up many cashes every year, and most recently had two cashes in late April, 2008.

Sorry, Mr. Sklansky. You don't get to claim this record after all.

Two rules controversies from the WSOP

Date: Sun, Jun 22, 2008

Every variant of poker has its own peculiar rules, often ones that developed early in the game's history and are perpetuated, even though they don't make a lot of sense in the modern world. When I was in poker dealer school, I chafed against having to announce "possible straight" and "possible flush" in seven-card stud. After all, that information is out there for all to see, and if a player doesn't perceive the potential, well, it's his own damn fault! But they said that's just the way it is done--do it or your don't graduate.

Another common house rule in stud is that if you call, but can't beat even the cards that your opponent was showing (let alone his full hand including the down cards), you get your last bet back. This was instituted, apparently, to protect the most naive of players from going broke too fast. I don't like that one, either, but nobody asks me.

I have played very little of the game called deuce-to-seven triple draw (aka Kansas City lowball). Lots of poker rules apply only to specific, uncommon situations, so you tend to become familiar with them only after you've played the game long enough to have seen even the rare things come up. For example, I can't count the number of times that I've seen tourists unfamiliar with what is done when the dealer puts out a board card in hold'em prematurely, before a betting round has been completed. They tend to think that the card room staff is making up a remedy for the problem on the spot, and want to argue about it. Actually, they're just following a script that was written long ago. They do exactly the same thing every time, but the newbies don't realize that, and often think they're being treated unfairly.

Anyway, the only 2-7 (in which the object is to make what would in most forms of poker be the worst hand: five cards as low as possible without any pairs, straights, or flushes) I have played has been as one of the rounds in a mixed game. This also wasn't one of the main poker variants covered in dealer school. As a result, there are lots of intricacies of its rules that I know nothing about. Two of them that were new to me made for controversies at the WSOP triple-draw event today.

First was this, as reported by PokerNews:

Check Those Suits

Bit of controversy. After the third draw in which Mimi Tran and an opponent
just drew one, Tran's opponent spread out his hand -- 9-8-7-4-2, and Tran mucked
before realizing her opponent had five spades.They called for a ruling, and it
was determined that since Tran had mucked her hand her opponent gets the pot.
Gavin Griffin pointed out that the hand probably would have turned out
differently if we were playing in Los Angeles, where one must announce if one
has made a flush. One isn't obligated to make such announcements here,
though.

My first thought was that Tran was plain out of luck, pure and simple, just like a million other dummies (myself included on a couple of occasions) that have misread an opponent's hand and mucked the winner. How is there even a controversy here? She screwed up, and has nobody else to blame.

The note about Gavin Griffin's comment, though, was enough to send me to my rule books to check. As it turns out, things are not as I had assumed.

Cooke's Rules of Real Poker says this:

7.18.03. Verbally Announce Pairs

Any player spreading a hand at showdown with a pair in it must announce
"pair" or risk losing the pot if it causes any other player to foul a
hand.

Similarly, The Rules of Poker by Krieger and Bykofsky says:

8.5.3

Players holding a pair in their hand are obliged to announce the pair's
presence at the showdown. If they fail to announce a pair, and that failure
causes an opponent to foul his hand, the player holding the pair in his hand may
lose the pot.

These books don't explicitly extend the same principle to straights and flushes (which are even worse in 2-7 triple draw than pairs), but one would tend to assume that the same thing applies. If not, then the rule is even dumber and more illogical than I already judge it to be. I don't know if Vegas casinos routinely employ this rule when spreading 2-7 as a cash game. If they do, however, I don't know why the WSOP isn't using it for the tournament.

I don't like this rule even a little bit. In my not-so-humble opinion, the rules of poker ought to be universal and standard across all of the variants, insofar as it is possible to make them so. In hold'em I certainly do not have to make a verbal announcement of what my hand is at the showdown; I just have to expose my cards. Reading my hand, comparing it to his own, and deciding whether he holds a winner or a loser is my opponent's responsibility. I shouldn't have to help him. I can't think of any good argument why it should be different in triple draw. The only thing the rule has going for it is tradition, which isn't sufficient rationale, in my view.

Here's the second rules controversy, again as reported at PokerNews:

Discard Controversy

Tournament Director Jack Effel is being chased from one side of the
Amazon Room to the other by several players who are unhappy with his decision
regarding the procedure to use when more draw cards are taken than are in the
deck.

To reiterate, at the start of the tournament Effel declared that discards
will immediately be killed and placed in the dead wood. (This is the pile that
includes mucked hands but excludes burn cards.) Those cards will be shuffled
back into the deck if needed. However, burn cards will stay down on the table
for the duration of the hand.

Howard Lederer thinks all discards should be kept separate from mucked
cards; you should never have the chance to get back the same card. Typically, in
2-7 Triple Draw, the discards are kept in a separate pile from the muck for this
very reason. However, under Effel's rule, it's possible that a player could
receive in the third draw a card he discarded before the first draw.

Greg Raymer, and several other name pros, are even more unhapy with the
chance to receive the same card in the same round. They all agree that there
should never be the chance for such a situation to occur. However, again, under
Effel's rule, each player discards, and those discards are immediately killed
and placed in the dead wood. If the stub proves insufficient to cover all draws
in that round, the dead wood is shuffled and then the draw is completed.

Again I had no idea there was disagreement about how to handle this, so once again I hit the books.

Cooke:

14.26 Reshuffles.

In any situation in any game requiring a reshuffle, neither discards nor
burns shall be included in the reshuffle. If there is any doubt as to whether a
card ought to be included in the reshuffle, then it shall not be so included.

OK, that seems to be in agreement with what the players are arguing.

Krieger:

8.7.4 Insufficient cards

If too few cards are available to complete a drawing round, the muck is
shuffled and used to complete the draw. The universe of cards available to
complete the draw therefore includes discards from previous drawing rounds and
discards from any player who received all of his replacement cards on the
current round.

Aha! So that conforms with what the WSOP tournament director is requiring (at least insofar as it pertains to cards discarded in an earlier round; reading between the lines, it seems to agree with the players about discards from the current drawing round), in direct contradiction to Cooke's rules and the players' experience. So at least we know that Mr. Effel isn't just making stuff up here.

I don't know if there's a more compelling case for one point of view than the other, nor do I know how this problem is handled in cash-game situations. I also don't see any good reason not to include the burn cards in the reshuffle. But it certainly sounds like something they had darn well better get cleared up before next year's event.

By the way, kudos to the PokerNews team for including stories like these. They are interesting, educational, and, in my opinion, add a lot of color to what can otherwise become a fairly dull hand-by-hand chronicle of the goings-on.

Another cautionary tale from today's WSOP event

Date: Sun, Jun 22, 2008

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh
out of the mouth, this defileth a man. (Matthew 15:11, King James Version)

I've written several times before about how being careless about one's words can cause all sorts of troubles at the poker table; see, e.g., here. Today at the World Series of Poker Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw event, a player had to learn this the hard way. PokerNews tells the tale:

That's Tilt-Inducing

There was a little bit of controversy on Blue #2. A floor was called
over to make a ruling on the final round of betting after one player checked.
His opponent claimed that he then asked, "Did you check?" The original player
only heard "check" and exposed his hand: 9-8. Allen Kessler, also seated at the
table, said he only heard, "Check." No other player expressed an opinion. The
floor ruled that the second player checked as well. Disgusted, he turned up his
hand to show a wheel and said sarcastically, "Yeah, I definitely checked this
hand."

I think we can safely assume from the cards that he showed down, the player's protest at not being allowed to bet, and his comment when it was all over, that he really did ask--or at least intended to ask--about his opponent's check, rather than intentionally checking himself. What we don't know is exactly what he said. Although he claimed after the fact to have said, "Did you check?" it is, in my opinion, just as likely that he actually said just "Check?" with a raised inflection in his voice, intending it as a question. I have heard such careless questions from players countless times.

Such subtleties are easily lost in a noisy poker room. Also there are players with impaired hearing, others with music blaring in their ears, and yet others with a native language in which a slight raise of the voice does not communicate a question as distinguished from a statement.

If you ever have need to inquire what action has transpired, you should not include any words which, if taken alone and out of context, might be erroneously interpreted as a statement of your own action. If you ask another player "Did you raise?", you might have just inadvertantly committed yourself to a raise. If you ask the dealer, "Did he check?", you might have just inadvertantly passed up your opportunity to bet. If you eyeball the stack that an opponent pushed forward and ask, "100?", but it was actually only 10 because you mistook the colors of the chips, you might have just committed yourself to a raise to 100.

The only safe way to ask is with words that cannot be misinterpreted as a declaration of your own action. For example, ask the dealer, "What is the action so far?" or "What did Seat 4 do?" (By the way, such questions are better addressed to the dealer than to an opponent in the hand. The dealer will answer; the opponent may choose not to. Furthermore, if the dealer gets it wrong, and a controversy ensues, the floorperson will be more inclined to see things favorable to you than if you rely on something another player has said that is inconsistent with what action was actually taken.)

Occasionally there is a situation in which I need to use the potentially dangerous words. For example, I have asked the dealer to count an opponent's all-in bet. He then tells me how much it is, but he has a thick accent, and/or the room is extremely noisy, and I'm not sure I heard it right, and I need to repeat back to him what I think I heard him say. In such cases, I always make sure that I have his full attention and we have direct eye contact, and I ask it with a full sentence (e.g., "Did you say 150?" rather than just "150?"), all in an effort to minimize the chance of a misunderstanding. If I haven't yet decided whether to call, I don't want my repetition of the amount of the bet to be interpreted as a statement of my bet size.

This all must seem incredibly picky and burdensome to players used to online play or casual home games. But you don't have to spend too much time in commercial poker rooms to see exchanges exactly like the one that occurred today at the WSOP. Misunderstandings happen all the time.

As long as we're stuck with the now-entrenched dogma that verbal declarations are binding as to one's actions, and other players are entitled to rely on what comes out of your mouth, you have to think carefully about what words you put out there. They might come back to haunt you.

Things aren't always what they appear--but sometimes they are

Date: Sun, Jun 22, 2008

At Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon last night, I had positioned myself with the table's weakest player on my immediate right. He was stuck, and trying to play every hand in an effort to catch lucky and get back to even. He was also drinking heavily. This is USDA-certified Prime picking-on material.

In the hand of interest, he limped in. I had Q-Q and raised. He was the only caller. The flop was Ad-8d-2c. Well, not the greatest flop I could have asked for, but when he checked to me I bet at it, hoping he'd credit me with having an ace. He called. Hmmm. Flush draw seemed the obvious possibility, maybe a weak ace, maybe second pair hoping to catch trips or two pairs. The yellow flag was waving, but not the red flag just yet.

Turn card was the queen of diamonds. I loved making my set here, but I was not thrilled with the third diamond on board. My opponent checked again. I wasn't sure what to make of this. I had him pegged as extremely straightforward, so I would expect him to bet a flush if he made it. On the other hand, maybe he was going for a check-raise, or maybe he had only a small flush and was afraid I had just made a bigger one. I couldn't tell.

Well, in poker the way you get information about an opponent's hand is by betting and seeing what he does. So that's what I did. In response, he grabbed enough chips for a substantial raise, but then just held them for a while, thinking what to do. Finally, he said, "I don't like those three diamonds out there." He then dropped most of the chips that had been in his hand, and put out only enough for the call.

Hey, pal--you think I was born yesterday? You think I can't see right through a speech? No sensible player who was actually afraid of the possible flush would give that information away by saying so out loud. Ergo, he has the flush and is trying to lead me astray so that he can squeeze more out of me. Oldest trick in the book.

Obviously I hoped to pair the board and thus make a full house, then have him bet his flush hard. No such luck. The river card is the 9c. This changed nothing about the situation. For the first time, he now became the aggressor and bet out, but it's small--only about 1/4 of the pot. Well, for that price I was willing to make the crying call, in the remote hope that he had two pair or something else I could beat, but fully expecting to see him flip up two diamonds.

I was astonished to see him instead show me two black 8s. He had flopped a set, and slow-played himself to a loss. I can only guess that he credited me with one diamond, so when no fourth one came on the river, he thought his three 8s were good.

Speeches during a poker hand almost always spell trouble. "Beware the speech," the saying goes. Remember a couple of years ago at the WSOP when Jennifer Harman made a full house, and was beaten by Corey Zeidman's straight flush? Before he raised her on the river with an unbeatable hand, he said, "I guess I can do a lot of sightseeing if I lose this hand." Classic example of a speech. (See the incredible hand play out here; see the players' after-the-fact reflections on it here. Actually, Zeidman believed he was raising--hence the speech to draw Harman in--when he didn't understand that she had bet enough that his all-in move was just a call.)

This was a new one on me: A speech that actually meant what it said, from a player so bad that he truthfully announced that he couldn't beat a flush.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was an amazingly brilliant double-reverse psych-out, plotted carefully to convince me that he did have a flush and then win the pot with a bluff on the end. After all, it contributed to my unwillingness to raise him on the river, so he lost less than he otherwise might have. And if he had moved all in there, instead of making the small bet, I would have had quite a pickle on my hands. I really don't know what I would have done.

Nah, I don't think the brilliant reverse is what was going on. I'm about 99% confident that he was too drunk and too stupid for such third-level trickery. But the possibility of pulling such a move had never occurred to me before, and it might be a good one to add to the arsenal for deployment in just the right situation some time in the future.


Incidentally, this was one of two hands in last night's session in which I made a bigger set on the turn to beat an opponent's flopped set, which is a pretty darn rare occurrence. In the other one, I had 10-10, raised, and got one caller, a pretty good player at the other end of the table. The flop was J-7-3. I bet, hoping he didn't have a jack. He raised. I thought it was most likely that he had a mediocre jack (J-Q, for example), and was a savvy enough player that he could lay it down if shown sufficient strength. I hadn't been bluffing at all, and had shown down only good hands. So I reraised him all in, thinking that he would credit me with A-J or an overpair that had him beat. He insta-called, and turned over 7-7 for the set. Oops. But then a third 10 hit the turn, and I sheepishly showed that I had caught one of my two outs for the win. As you can see, poker is all skill....

Free show at Bill's, starring you, maybe

Date: Sun, Jun 22, 2008

Many Las Vegas casinos like to leave their doors wide open to encourage passers-by to enter without expending even the effort to open a door. A lot of them appear to have sort of a wall of vertically moving air, pushed by strong fans, just inside the open door. I assume that this helps prevent mixing of the >100-degree outside air and the cool indoor air. (This way, the casino owners' parents don't have to yell at them, "Close the door! I'm not paying to air-condition the whole world, ya know!")

At Bill's, the tiny, two-table poker room is just inside the doors leading to the Strip. The previous times I've played there, either they didn't have the doorway fans going (it wasn't nearly as hot then), or I just wasn't paying attention. Last night, though, something anomalous became very apparent: The Bill's fans blow upward from the floor, rather than downward from the ceiling. In case the famous Marilyn Monroe photo above didn't give you adequate foreshadowing, at this point I'll let you guess what the result is.

A few times per hour, a woman with a loose and/or short skirt or dress is caught unawares by the fans, and gives everybody in the room a free look at what she is wearing underneath. I suppose some give a free look at what they are not wearing underneath, but that didn't happen last night.

Be careful. It's a jungle out there.

He shoulda listened to the Grump, redux

Date: Sun, Jun 22, 2008

Almost three weeks ago, near the beginning of the World Series of Poker 2008, I put up this post about a player in one of the tournaments who had to learn the hard way about using a card protector to prevent the dealer from accidentally picking up and mucking one's cards.

Some people just refuse to learn. Yesterday it happened again. Here's the story, as reported by the hard-working live bloggers at PokerNews:

A Bit of a Kerfuffle

From time to time a calming influence is required at the table, and
today that person was Clonie Gowen. With one player yelling at the dealer for
accidentally mucking his cards, Gowen quoted the TD [Tournament Director] rules
in which players are responsible for the protection of their own hands and
cannot blame the dealer if they are subsequently pulled into the muck. The
player seemed to accept this and the situation was quickly diffused without the
need for a tournament director to step in.

Now, Clonie Gowen is hardly the optimal person to turn to on questions of rules, after admitting on national television to cheating in a poker tournament and advising others to do the same (see here). But this time she was absolutely correct. Players never seem to think about this until it's too late, but what do they imagine the solution should be, once their cards have been accidentally mucked? Allow them to dig through the muck until they find what they claim their cards were? Just announce what their cards were? Those are so obviously rife with potential for angle shooting and outright cheating that it's laughable that anybody would seriously suggest such idiocy as the proper recourse, once the mistake has been made.

One might argue that the whole hand should be declared moot, as is done when a fouled deck is discovered, and all bets returned to the players, as if the hand had never occurred. But why should the other player(s) be penalized because you failed to take the extremely simple expedient of dropping a chip on your cards?

By odd coincidence, I saw the same thing happen during my cash game at Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon last night. The player in seat 9 (to the dealer's immediate right) looked down to respond to a bet his opponent had just made on the turn, only to discover that his cards were gone. None of us had noticed it happening. They were mixed into the muck and unrecoverable. He was livid (although he calmed down after his opponent, in a very nice gesture, showed him that he was way behind in the hand anyway, and the dealer's mistake apparently saved him a lot of money). But he hadn't protected his cards, and the second rule on the list on the wall at Bill's poker room says--as does every other list of posted poker rules I've ever seen--that players are responsible for protecting their cards at all times.

C'mon, folks. This is really, really easy. Dealers make this mistake not every day, but with a predictable enough regularity that not using a card cap is like driving without a seat belt--just begging to get hurt.

Among poker players who habitually leave their cards unproctected, there are only two types: Those who have had a hand accidentally killed or fouled at an inopportune moment, and those who will. The World Series of Poker is probably not the place at which you would want to move from the latter category into the former.

The name game

Date: Fri, Jun 20, 2008

One part of the job I'm doing for the World Series of Poker involves spending way more time than I would really like looking at the names of the players who have registered for the various tournaments.

Probably the lowest, most primitive, juvenile, abject form of humor is to make fun of people for their names. After all, with rare exceptions, nobody chooses his or her own name. Besides, those with names that make easy targets for ridicule have already had to endure a lifetime of idiots thinking they are clever by making the same tired jokes over and over again.

TOO BAD! I'm going to do it anyway. I think it's impossible to spend as much time looking at long lists of names as I have over the first three weeks of the WSOP without developing a list of things that strike one as amusing.

So first the disclaimers. As far as I know, every person mentioned herein is a fine, upstanding individual, probably an excellent poker player, and didn't do a single thing to me that would justify me making fun of them. Furthermore, I understand that what one finds funny is highly subjective, and varies from country to country and culture to culture.

TOO BAD! This is my list, and I get to pick what I find amusing!


Hardest to spell correctly; even their own mothers might get them wrong

Daniel Alaei
Pawel Andrzejewski
Remy Biechel
Erik Haakenson
Aditya Agarwal
Bret Atiyeh
Sirous Baghchehsaraie
Michael Chrysanthopoulos
John Strzemp
Steve Sarrafzadeh
Enkhjargal Ochirbat
Shavarsh Pirijanian


Cool

This batch is the exception. I'm not making fun of them. On the contrary, I find something unusually cool about these names.

Jac Arama
Kia Hooshmand
Champie Douglas
Vassilios Lazarou
Jose Paz


Just plain weird

Yeah, yeah, these names are probably not too out of place in whatever God-forsaken land they come from, but here they stand out as, uh, excuse me, what did you say your name was again?

Hani Awad
Praz Bansi
Gebon Barnoski
Wolbert Bartlema
Arash Beral
Remy Biechel
Sasa Biorac
Rami Boukai
Badih Bounahra
Asger Boye
Hamed Cholagh
David Daneshgar
Trai Dang
Quinn Do
Osmin Dardon
Lyric Duveyoung
Sherkhan Farnood
Yuebin Guo
Kazuki Ikeuchi
Faraz Jaka
Cort Kibler-Melby
Thang Luu
Ayaz Mahmood
Mihai Manole
Ugur Marangoz
Davood Mehrmand
Ketul Nathwani
Birinder Nijran
Alioscia Oliva
Shankar Pillai
Vivek Rajkumar
Sven Schmithuysen
Mojtaba Seyedin
Nadim Shabou
Soheil Shamseddin
Sigi Stockinger
Rodeen Talebi
Rajesh Vohra
Yueqi Zhu


Yeah, I find poker tedious, too

James Bord


Jed's brother?

Chris Clampitt


Think he pees like a race horse?

Jose Barbero


Can I get you a drink, sir?

Robert Beveridge


Say, can you fix my transistor radio while you're over here?

Motoyuki Mabuchi


He probably hits a lot of miracle cards on the river

Morgan Machina
(It's a joke about deus ex.... Oh, never mind.)


I thought they pulled him off of the market

Chris Viox


Wicked Chops Poker would make fun of them, but I never would

Woody Deck
Mark Dickstein
Darrell Dicken
Zelong Dong
Tam Hang
Emmanuel Sebag


These guys run a men's clothing store, right?

Eric Brooks
Joseph Brooks
Zach Brooks


De plane, boss, de plane!

Pete de Best
Greg Debora
Martel De La Chesnaye
Mike DeMichele
Ivan Demidov
Mark DeSerrano
Michael Deveronica
Jason DeWitt
Roland de Wolfe


They howl at the moon if the tournament runs too late

Roland de Wolfe
Paul Wolfe
Stephen Wolff
Dustin Woolf


The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

Aleksandr Bolotin
Ivan Demidov
Nikolay Evdakov
Kirill Gerasimov
Svetlana Gromenkova
Eugene Katchalov
Christopher Kolesnikoff
Alexander Kostritsyn
Alex Kravchenko
Anatoly Shilyuk
Anton Smolyanskiy
Leonid Vernik
Leonid Yanovski
Andrey Zaichenko


But where's Uncle Fester?

Dan Adams
George Adams
Tyler Adams


Names that, for some reason, strike me as properly belonging to porn stars

Dustin Dirksen
Dane Lomas
Steve Pestal
Ram Vaswani


At risk for getting each other's mail by accident

Nathan Doudney
Jimmy Dowda

Alan Jaffray
Allyn Jaffrey Shulman

Jamie Pickering
Janice Pickering

David Podgurski
Chris Podlewski

Jimmy Schultz
Jimmy Shultz


What, no Robert E.?

Allen Le
Anh Le
Hai Le
Julie Le
Nam Le
Richard Li
Minh Ly
Trung Ly


In lieu of a real name...

Liz Lieu
Eric Liu
J.J. Liu
Serena Liu
Shi Jia Liu


Candidates for the WCP "Davidson Matthew" club

(Explanation: Davidson Matthew is a poker player who came in 2nd in a World Poker Tour event. Ever since then, the entities at Wicked Chops Poker have inducted into the "Davidson Matthew" club any poker player who has two first names or has a name for which it is difficult to tell which is the first and which the last name.)

Daniel Martin
Jesse Martin
John Martin
David Matthew
Danny Ryan
Todd Terry


Let's stop at McDonald's!

Casey McCarrel
Chris McCormack
Tom McCormick
Jim McCrink
David McCollum
Roger McDow
Jesse McEuen
Jesse McGinty
Jonathan McGowan
Jason McIntosh
Michael McKenna
John McKinney
Stephen McKinney
Tom McLaughlin
Calen McNeil
Michael McNeil
Evan McNiff


Hello, Newman!

Jeffrey Neuman
Clayton Newman
Stewart Newman


A "winning" team?

Chi Nguyen
Hoa Nguyen
Men Nguyen
Minh Nguyen
Thang Duc Nguyen
Tracey Nguyen
Ut Nguyen


The Irish are coming! The Irish are coming!

Daniel O'Brien
John O'Brien
Frank O’Dell
Earl Odom
Kevin O'Donnell
Stephen O'Dwyer
Ciaran O'Leary


They've got a phan club

John Phan
Tim Phan
Young Phan


Everything's coming up roses

Jamie Rosen
Russell Rosenblum
Jason Rosenkrantz
Eric Rosenman
Michael Rosenthal


I like these guys, schwartz and all

Mike Schwartz
Noah Schwartz
Ylon Schwartz


If they make it to heads-up, I guess one of these guys is playing the other

Ravi Shankar
Dustin Sitar


Present tense, past tense

Kevin Song
Steve Sung


If the tran has left, you can just catch the next one

David Tran
Hien Tran
J.C. Tran
Jimmy Tran
Mimi Tran
Thanhdat Tran
Theo Tran


They all took a van from the airport

James Van Alstyne
Thierry van den Berg
Roy Vandersluis
Jorryt van Hoof
Anh Van Nguyen


That's enough of this silliness--I have to go catch some z's

Andrey Zaichenko
Jacques Zaicik
Mark Zajdner
Vachagan Zakarian
Scott Zakheim
Benjamin Zamani
Dave Zand
Alan Zarka
Cory Zeidman
Yueqi Zhu
Paul Zimbler
Robert Zipf
Robert Zoellner
Michael Zowie