Two things to make me more pro-antes

Date: Mon, Sep 15, 2008 Internet

The first thing is already taken care of: I'm still not sure I see the point of antes in tournament holdem poker but at least I now see how I can make use of them, instead of just fuming impotently at this back-door rape of my chip stack.

For this, I am indebted to the one they call "gobbs":

"Antes are an asset to the players who know how to change gears and adapt their games to the blind structures they are playing. I would argue that antes enable the more skilled players to be more successful"

And also to Justin Bonomo:

"During the later stages, I play both looser and more passively. As I've already said, this is the opposite adjustment that most players make. So why do I do it? Because it enables me to play as many hands as possible, and this is exactly what I should be doing when the antes become large"

Which leaves just one more quibble for those of us who play online poker: must an already-irritating raid on your chips be executed with such an irritating sound effect?

Much as I love playing at Full Tilt, the ante audio clip is guaranteed to set your teeth on edge - a hard, loud, cutting 'clack' that repeats all the way round the table, like a breeze in a castanet factory.

If your computer volume is set on 'high', you can't handle more than two circuits of this without feeling like you're the subject of a new interrogation technique.

Is this just Full Tilt or is it standard throughout online poker? How anti-ante are you? Please leave a comment and let me know.

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Republicans lovin' their poker - the final insult

Date: Thu, Sep 4, 2008 Internet

Imagine American presidents past and present kicking back over a game of poker.

It's a nice idea and artist Andy Thomas has brought it to life superbly but, man, is it the wrong time where the Republican portrait is concerned.

You must excuse my British ignorance where the third head from the right is concerned - he's the only one I can't identify but to be honest, the only one that matters - the ghoul that haunts the entire montage - is the third man from the left.

Dubya. Clearly having a blast at a game for which his party has done so much these last two years, and in such an open and democratic fashion. Bully for you, George.

As for the artist, I can only assume that Mr Thomas either doesn't play online poker or that his irony antennae are in for repairs.

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Online poker? It's over there, by the toilets

Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2008 Internet

Poker quivers in a weird equilibrium these days. On one hand, players scream in the direction of Washington DC that it's a game of skill, while on the other hand, online poker rooms strip it of as much skill as possible, to guarantee an endless queue of brain-dead punters, happy to be hypnotised for hours by the recurrent wiggle of Lady Luck's hips.

Or maybe there's something I'm just not getting about the 'Carnage' sit-and-gos over at Doyles Room:

"Test your luck with this one of a kind poker game known as single-handed carnage. One hand is all you need to defeat your opponents. Everyone starts with two cards, dealt face up and you're automatically all-in on the first hand. A second hand may be played if the winning players tie"

You may remember one of the first repercussions of the online poker boom: casinos suddenly finding prime floorspace for poker tables that had been shoved into any old corner for years because the rake wasn't a patch on what the house could make on slots and roulette.

Are we about to see a similar dark age for the online game, I wonder, with real poker marginalised by diluted variants that put more onus on turnover than on IQ? Perish the thought but might we one day find at the extreme right of every online room's lobby, next to the 'About Us' and 'Support' tabs, a small button marked 'Old Poker'?

And how does the game's elder statesman feel about putting his name to tosh like 'carnage poker'? Then again, as I've suggested in the past, maybe he doesn't even know he has...

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What if it's not just your poker that stinks?

Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008 Internet

You have to admire Michael Wax's candour.

On a scale of social nightmares for the common man, being taken to one side and told you have body odour issues is just a notch down from having a woman ask you if it's in yet. Most of us would slink off quietly into the night, crushed and humbled.

New York poker player Wax, however, is made of sterner stuff. Ordered out of the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City after opponents complained about his personal fragrance, Wax brushed embarrassment aside in his quest for a fair deal.

"There's no question I stink. I'm not denying it. I do have an odor. I've been playing for 17 hours," he retorted.

The unshakable Mike isn't even vowing never to return, insisting that he likes gambling at the Borgata, whose refusal to acquiesce in his request for a room in which to freshen up before continuing, calls for some explanation.

Alas, Dave Coskey, a spokesman for the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, said it is company policy not to comment on anything in the slightest bit awkward matters involving customers.

So what's a long-haul poker player to do? And just how much does it hum at a WSOP Main Event final table?

I've located the following for the man who'd rather slow-play cowboys than smell like them...

• Travelproof bathroom cabinet - "The finished rolled up size is dictated by the quantity of contents. There is enough space to incorporate other bits and pieces"
• Ultimate Travelwash - "suitable for clothes, washing up, shaving, showering AND washing fruit!
• Travelproof compact towel - "Works and feels like a shammy - dampen first and watch the water lift off your body"
• H2O No water handwash - "an ideal hand cleaner for situations when there is no water"
• Pocket travel shaver - palm sized and ultra-thin
• Tube toothbrush holder - "The see through sealable tube will hold your brush and toothbrush which also means no more toothpaste leakages in your wash bag"

And if you feel you really can't trust the table while you're gone, there's the TRAVELJOHN EMERGENCY SOLID WASTE COLLECTION KIT...

"Imagine you are on the move. You feel you need to go and answer natures call. But there's no toilet or if there is, it is grotesquely unsanitary. Frustration mounts and can even turn into panic and indeed can put your health at risk...

...Relax. TRAVELJOHN EMERGENCY SOLID WASTE COLLECTION KIT is the most amazing pocket size disposable solid collection kit for both men and women that can be used discreetly even in the confines of a car or a tiny toilet cubicle, with a puncture resistant pouch containing Liqsorb that turns the urine and solids instantly into a leak proof, odourless, spill proof gel..."

Gel? Great; that's your hair styling needs taken care of as well. Now that's what I call a kicker.

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Spin this...

Date: Wed, Aug 13, 2008 Internet

Another in the series highlighting those fabulous PR coups that make you rejoice to be a gambler...

Bookies lose turf war with racecourses over rights to broadcast pictures - a defeat not helped when the Tote broke ranks with Britain's bookmakers and signed up for the very Turf TV race coverage to which bookies had been so implacably opposed.

Something tells me the Association of British Bookmakers' chairman wasn't overly impressed...

"There followed a flurry of private emails between directors of the Association of British Bookmakers, read out in court, which laid bare the disappointment felt at this decision. ABB's chairman, Warwick Bartlett, wrote: 'The Tote are irredeamable [sic] bastards and everyone their [sic] should have been shot at birth. Members of the ABB? I don't think so.'"

Credit where it's due to Mr Bartlett; you can't fault his consistency. As if acting like a six-year-old wasn't enough, he spells like one, too. With this kind of consummate pro at the helm, I suspect that distancing itself from the ABB won't go down as the worst move the Tote has ever made...
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Long-term followers of Wagering War will know that I have no truck with the use of shades in poker. Nice as it is, Royal Poker Eyewear's website adds just one more weapon to my armoury:

"Giving away no tells, and providing vastly improved vision through our lenses unique brightening agent, our poker glasses offer the best all-round support for long poker sessions or tournaments."

I'm sorry, but unless you're a consummate movie actor, just how many tells can you make with your eyes, anyway? Compared to the ones you make with your hands, mouth, shoulders, legs and torso, that is?

If it's a toss-up between "the next generation of poker glasses" or the first generation of poker burqa, I'm Afghan in a heartbeat.

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Poker journalist struggles to deal with 'loss'

Date: Tue, Jul 29, 2008 Internet

What grabs you most about the following headline?

Former EastEnders star Michael Greco loses £250K in Vegas card game

All right; absolutely nothing if you're not from the UK and wouldn't know EastEnders from West Side Story.

If you are familiar with the former soap opera actor, however, then it's the idea of his grand scheme blowing up in his face: most if not all of his TV earnings gone, all on the turn of a card, no doubt in some stupid cash game where he was clearly in over his head.

This was the man who gave up showbusiness to play cards for a living and no matter how low their schadenfreude threshold might be, I defy 99% of poker-playing Brits not to have clicked on the link just to see one more perceived flash harry get his come-uppance. Deep down inside, we just can't help ourselves...

Yet what do we find?

"The Scots actor turned pro poker player, who starred as Beppe diMarco in EastEnders, told of his bad luck when asked by an interviewer when he last felt sorry for himself.

"Dunbar-born Greco, 38, replied: 'When I busted out of a tournament in Vegas recently, I was very close to winning half a million dollars but, on the turn of a card, lost it.'"

Right...

Funnily enough, I lost four million pounds just a few months ago, in a freeroll to a satellite to a satellite to the WSOP Main Event. There I was, just four tournaments and 10 thousand opponents away from pocketing four million, only to lose every last dime on the turn of a card.

Some nights, my kids say they still hear me crying myself to sleep.

So now I'm just sitting by the phone, waiting for the Daily Record's ace Mountains-from-Molehills correspondent to return my call and chronicle every last devastating second of my loss.

Who'd have thought it? Michael Greco and I, united in grief.

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Poker home games - when good rabbis go bad

Date: Fri, Jul 25, 2008 Internet

When I'm doing something altogether more wholesome with my life, one of my favourite fishing blogs is The Fly Fishing Rabbi, in which Rabbi Eric Eisenkramer delightfully interweaves fly fishing with thoughts on life and Man's spiritual side. Nothing too heavy, more a sort of Thought for the Day but in print, rather than on the airwaves.

It now seems that Tao of Poker may have discovered the Yin to Eric's Yang during an LA home game:

"The cast of characters was worth the price of admission. An infomercial guru. Former NBA player. A ninety-year old woman. A pregnant travel writer. Former child actor. A foul-mouthed rabbi knocking back Kettle One and cranberry juice in a pint glass. And some dude with a goatee who used to chase after a faded Scott Weiland as he ran naked down 3rd Street...

...Change100 cashed, but took third place wen the rabbi busted her. The drunker he got, the filthier his mouth got. He said some classic lines, such as...

"May the fleas of a hundred camels infest your armpits."

"F***in' bitch ass bitch ass BITCH!"

The drunken-foul-mouthed rabbi beat Jen Leo heads up to win."

It is a vintage ToP post in general, putting you right among the action in a way that no other poker blogger can match right now. My abiding conclusion, however, is that the Fly Fishing Rabbi and the Poker Playing Rabbi are probably two different people.

And the asterisks are mine. Just in case Eric reads this.

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Two welcome blogroll additions...

Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2008 Internet

So crowded is poker's blogosphere these days that it can be hard to stand out from the crowd - and don't I know it - so it's always good to encounter those that do.

Lucky Dog Poker is the blog of poker player, editor and columnist Russ Scott, while Melted Felt could be the best satirical look at the game out there, although feel free to let me know if you think I'm overlooking someone.

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Nazarian out to make Sahara less of a desert

Date: Mon, Jul 21, 2008 Internet

If I'm being profiled in the Wall Street Journal as the potential saviour of a fading Vegas casino, I'd want the kind of portrait they've given Sam Nazarian, new owner of the down-at-heel Sahara Hotel & Casino (where...eeek..."life-size Arab figures pull a row of cheesy plaster camels").

True, I'd like it to make me look 32 rather than 42 but otherwise, it's perfect.

Nazarian is the supremo of Los Angeles' evening entertainment for young people ("he and his PR handlers cringe at the term 'nightclub king'") who now seeks to weave his magic on the Rat Pack's last surviving watering hole.

"The usual Vegas style of renovation is implosion: the Sands leveled for the Venetian; the Dunes razed for the Bellagio. There is no other way, the reasoning goes, to compete with the Strip's new luxury casinos and hotels. But Mr. Nazarian has built his reputation on converting rundown pockets of real estate into trendy, A-list magnets. His company, SBE Entertainment Group LLC, and private-investment partner Stockbridge Capital, bought the 18-acre Sahara property last year for about $300 million. Mr. Nazarian won't say how much he will spend on rehabilitation; plans include a new hotel tower and a makeover of the hotel's 1,700 rooms. 'There's not one part of this property we're not touching,' he says."

British readers studying the hotel's website may smile wistfully at what America regards as 'down-at-heel' but so be it: if injecting class into his latest acquisition is Sam's top priority, let me simply mention that the Sahara's advertising strategy should be high on his schedule...

























[Nazarian photo - Robert Gallagher/Wonderful Machine; illustration - Sean McCabe]

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This is why it's called 'poker', not 'patience'...

Date: Thu, Jul 17, 2008 Internet

Just when I thought that seeing the first 'book now for Xmas' sign of the year would take today's biscuit in the wishing-your-life-away category, the restaurant in question was trumped completely by this:

Bodog hands out 2009 Main Event seats

Calvin Ayre may be gone but BoDog's capacity for getting on your nerves apparently remains undiminished.

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"Who Dat?" final table lands Pollack gamble

Date: Tue, Jul 15, 2008 Internet

I went through the full rainbow of opinion when I learnt that the WSOP Main Event was to be played in two instalments this year.

My immediate response was to hate the notion of eventus interruptus as an artificial contrivance that flew in the face of everything a sporting event should be. How long would a radio station last if it invited you to tune in next week for the thrilling climax to Bohemian Rhapsody?

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was an idea worth trying and for us Europeans at least, it was not without some kind of precedent. Every two years, our national soccer teams attempt to qualify for the finals of the World Cup or European Championship: those that do so then have to wait seven months to convene for the finals themselves.

As for the reasoning behind the four-month gap that now separates the Main Event from its final table, if WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack ever allows himself a moment of smugness, this would be the time. As if to re-assert poker's rags-to-riches potential in the face of a WSOP that had become something of a pros' benefit, the Main Event has thrown up a final table of no-names that would have been a publicist's nightmare had the competition proceeded to a self-contained climax in the traditional fashion. 'Poker world champ could be an accountant' isn't exactly a PR gig to die for.

That's the thing with the underdog concept; it only works in context. David has to be up against a clearly-defined Goliath or we just lose interest. Over the next four months, we need to learn about the final nine - which of them has the dying relative, which of them has creditors queuing round the block, which of them is unkind to small animals.

"On July 22, ESPN begins a series of weekly shows that will chronicle happenings in the 55 separate poker tournaments that make up the World Series, capped by the Main Event. This year, it also will follow the final nine during the four-month break.

"We'll be following each of the nine people for the 117 days to see how their lives changed. Did they go back to their regular day job? Did they hire coaches? We'll see how they study film," said ESPN senior producer Jamie Horowitz, adding that the network will do a Nov. 4 special documenting their "journey" and previewing the final."

I think Pollack is wrong when he says that he wants people anticipating who will win. What he wants is people seeing conflicts in stories and personalities among the final nine that they can really get their teeth into.

On the thinking behind the split-event format, however, I doubt he could have been more vindicated had he hand-picked the Final Table himself and when they're handing out the gongs for best CEO in sports at year's end, I hope his bold gamble does not go unmentioned.
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And please, enough of this "what if one dies?" hand-wringing. What if one of the final nine does die between now and November?

How gloriously macabre would it look, an empty chair behind a stack being relentlessly blinded away, like the sands of time themselves? What other sporting event has anything to match that kind of dark theatre?

Poker lore has effortlessly embraced the Dead Man's Hand for 132 years. I'm sure it would take a Dead Man's Chair comfortably in its stride.

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Reading-room Friday at Wagering War

Date: Fri, Jul 11, 2008 Internet

Remember when it was end of term at school, your teacher had admin to sort and you were told to bring a book to class and just read quietly until the lesson ended? It's like that now.

I'm fishing in Scotland as part of my day job and under orders to get five trout-stuffed features in the bag by the weekend, so weighty poker analysis on these pages is out. Like it was ever in.

Read these quietly instead and leave my apple on the desk when you leave. We reconvene Tuesday...

• The Unseen Series: Off Hours at the 2008 WSOP
• Mob scene: when gangster, gamblers and glamorous celebrities ruled nightlife in Havana
• The story behind those poker-playing dogs...
  

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Everything on red - Russian gambling update

Date: Wed, Jul 9, 2008 Internet

It was just before Christmas 2006 when I reported on Russian leader Vladimir Putin's efforts to effectively drive gambling out of harm's way by confining it to four far-flung and not-exactly-gorgeous areas of his nation. Two of the pictorial links no longer work, sadly, but trust me, you're missing nothing...

Here's an update on one of those areas - Russia's Seaside Vegas to be, if you will - while there are photos here, albeit a little light on waterfall-strewn golf courses.

The local lawyers, however, look distinctly promising .
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Strategy: how to spot a poker tell
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Ah, the happy naivete of the newcomer; remember when this was you...?

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No limit no country for old men

Date: Mon, Jul 7, 2008 Internet

Seems like stud fantasies for those of us getting on in life may not be so futile after all, as Jeff Haney reflects on the polarisation of poker, with youngsters crowding the no limit tournaments and seniors moving towards the game's less glamorous variants.
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Strategy: Utilize power of position
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In a genre dominated by words, often dry, repetitive and revolving way too often around the phrase 'hand history', Life's a Bluff is a welcome addition to the Wagering War blogroll. Best pictorial poker blog since The Poker Prof's Poker Blog, although sister blog Las Vegas Vegas continues to raise the bar pretty high...

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