Poker Women's list symptomatic of a game on tilt

Date: Wed, Feb 27, 2008 Internet

British comedian Frank Skinner took a pounding from the media when he once confessed to nostalgic hankerings for the days when English football meant hooliganism and ramshackle stadia.

Replace soccer with poker and I begin to realise how he felt.

Skinner's argument was that the testosterone-charged mob mentality of '70s football at least had the effect of keeping the middle classes away from the game and while he now admits that there was an element of provocative hyperbole in his comments, he had a point of sorts.

The combination of TV money and an enough-is-enough national revulsion following the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, saw the rough corners planed off our national game. Stadia were ordered to acquaint themselves with the 20th century, standing-room only gave way to all-seater affairs and football was awash with money and family-friendly facilities.

The middle classes suddenly had incentive to visit matches and while no-one seriously wants a return to gang warfare, the gentrification of football has not been without its drawbacks: bloated admission prices, stadia shorn of atmosphere and a professional game whose narcissism at its highest level is increasingly repugnant to those fans who remember when football's ugliness was at least accompanied by realism.

By the same token, I suspect that poker is now reaping the less-welcome consequences of swapping the sawdust on its floors for TV lights and mainstream exposure. Particularly as I run my eye over the kind of hogwash represented by the Top 10 Women of Poker list.

It's not often you read a news item that cuts the throat of its own credibility within the first two sentences but this it:

"Let's be clear, this is not a list of the best women poker players. This list tries to capture the women who live at that strange intersection of poker and pop culture."

Strange? Try non-existent.

And what a list. Clonie Gowen, Isabelle Mercier and Evelyn Ng get a free pass, of course. You'd think me nuts if I left them in the line of fire. As for the the rest, spot the icons of a game going the way of all flesh - Pamela Anderson, Serinda Swan, Shannon Elizabeth and - God help us - Brandi Hawbaker.

Maybe it's a little harsh on Shannon but someone has to nail this tosh for the garbage it is.
The Top 10 Women of Poker, swung by boobs and beauty.

"...collectively, they're the most talked-about women in the game. So sit back, enjoy the list - and let the debates begin."

What debates? How long do you think anyone with a life and half a brain will waste mulling over nonsense like this? Its only redeeming feature is that I wasn't in the same room when it came to the attention of Annie Duke and Linda Johnson.

I'm with you, Frank Skinner. Suddenly the days of Mob-run poker dens and Dead Man's Hands have a refreshing intensity about them in comparison. There's little time for debating The Top 10 Women in Poker when you're trying to establish if someone's followed you home.

I exaggerate, of course but you get my drift
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Poker Pic of the Day X

Gambling no sin - behold, the theology...

Date: Mon, Feb 25, 2008 Internet

I don't know the Rev. Mervin Stoddart but judging by his closing line in this diatribe against the Church's stance on gambling, he could be hankering for a little action.

He loses me by the time he gets onto Einstein, Hawking and quantum physics but I have some sympathy with his more comprehensible observation that "Life itself is a gamble and a game of trial and error in which all humans are forced to participate".

After all, as it says in Oscar and Lucinda:

"Where's the sin? We bet!...We bet that there is a God. We bet our live on it. We calculate the odds that return that we will sit with the saints in paradise. Our anxiety about our bet wakes us before dawn in a cold sweat. And God, God sees us suffer. I cannot believe that a God whose fundamental requirement of us is that we gamble our mortal souls--it is true we stake everything on the fact of his existence. I cannot believe that he would look unkindly on a chap wagging a few quid on the likelihood of a dumb animal crossing the line first. Unless, unless it might be considered a blasphemy to apply to common pleasure that which is divine. Shall we play?"

Gizmo Friday at Wagering War

Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2008 Internet

• Great site for keeping tabs on live and online tournaments and also poker TV programming (although the latter could use a little more content where UK TV schedules are concerned)
• In-play odds calculators on trial here and here. Nice sound effects with Wingman but it tends to clog up your RAM when you've only got about 250meg to play with. Tournament Indicator may have to wait for a test-run: I've given up poker for Lent...
• Poker Pic of the Day IX - however bad a message it sends...
  

Poker now latest sport in which 'World' means 'America'

Date: Wed, Feb 20, 2008 Internet

Those non-Americans who can't resist a smirk whenever the Superbowl winners call themselves 'world champions', will savour the slimming-down of the World Poker Tour Schedule.

After last year's nods to globalism - visits to the Turks & Caicos Islands and Barcelona - this year's schedule will see the Tour's world-view move more into line with that of the Republican Party, with the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls representing its solitary venture outside the USA.

"84 WPT Poker-made Millionaires and counting..." boasts the Tour's website. When that figure rises in 2008, some of it will be down to air-fare savings alone...

“Players let us know [where they prefer to play] verbally, and they also vote with their tournament dollars,” explained Tour CEO Steve Lipscomb. “I think we’re trying to be mindful of places that people really want to go, where they want to play, and the properties that really have the resources and the dedication to be able to grow substantial events over time.”

While we wait to see whether the trimming of the Tour schedule from 20 events in 2007 to just 14 this year is the more significant part of the deal, don't expect this page on the WPT website to last too long.

One hundred-dollar pot I'd happily lose...

Date: Mon, Feb 18, 2008 Internet

Just so I could buy a copy of Harrington on Hold'em for each judge responsible for the latest defamation of poker's name.

Maybe then the penny might finally drop that calling poker merely a game of chance is like calling The Messiah a ditty.

That, at any rate, was my initial reaction to their deliberations.

I'm about two thirds through Harrington's first volume at present, with Volume 2 to come and while I'm usually not the best at knuckling down to absorb such detailed instruction, I can already see why 1995 World Champion's name rarely appears in a sentence without the word 'bible' following close behind.

He's already taken several scenarios (eg my pre-flop raise with QQ, re-raised with a vengeance by a player behind me) where my normal reasoning would go no further than how lucky I happened to feel at the time and has shown me how to weigh-up my options and quantify the apparent unknown. All this with a quite remarkable lucidity.

I defy any judge in any jurisdiction to read this book and not realise that skill and chance are inseparable bedfellows at the poker table.

Originally, that was where I intended to conclude this post but the more I've reflected on this latest legal slander on the game, the more I think we have it wrong. Maybe it's not judges who underestimate poker but we who underestimate judges.

After all, these are not usually stupid people. I start to wonder if they know full well that poker has a significant skill element but a different consideration altogether compels them to rule otherwise.

Public policy.

Sure, we can talk about plenty of other games being games of skill mixed with chance but the fact is that other games aren't teetering on a precipice. Generally, side-bets notwithstanding, people play golf or tennis so that they can play golf or tennis. If they're out of dough, the game can still go on.

People play poker, on the other hand, to make money. If they run out of money, the game is over for them until they get some more. Money is poker's essence; its driving force, which makes the game a social accident waiting to happen.

I now think hell will freeze over before this malevolent genie is allowed out of its bottle. Judges will leap through semantic hoops rather than allow poker to escape the yoke of licensing and regulation.

It stings us when their judgments sell our game's image short but maybe, just maybe, the end justifies the means. We get our poker but only if it's on a leash. And that's not such bad a thing.
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Don't think of me as being late with this Vegas Valentine's Day link. I'm just getting in early for next year...
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Poker Room Review: Harrah's Atlantic City, Atlantic City, NJ
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Full Tilt Poker Referral Code Bonus POKERZEN for $50 Free money $600 extra

Oh, how casinos hate a fair fight

Date: Wed, Feb 13, 2008 Internet

Forget a woman scorned. If you want to see real fury in action, spend some time with a businessman who can't get his own way.

No doubt Las Vegas Sands CEO William Weidner schmoozed with the best of them while there was still a chance of turning parts of the UK into an outpost of Sin City. I bet his face ached he smiled so much, while wooing those politicians contemplating the introduction of a wave of US-style supercasinos into Britain.

Had I collected five bucks for every time Weidner's team uttered the word 'regeneration' during that lobbying process, I'd probably be writing these words on a yacht moored off Maui.

Alas for poor William, his expansionism then ran into a dark, sinister force.

Democracy.

Once he and his fellow-casino bigwigs had their say, the British people had theirs. Our newspapers poured scorn on the idea, followed closely by our churches and our public, among whom there had been no clamour for such uber-casinos in the first place.

Our new Prime Minister, who unlike his despised predecessor has at least an inkling of what a Labour Party born of socialism is supposed to stand for, saw social problems ahead, heard the unease and ordered that the proposal be slung out.

At which point, the William Weidners of this world should do what they doubtless teach their kids to do. Lose with class. Thank us for our time and move on to the next opportunity, soothed by the ongoing billions spewed from that bottomless pit they run in the Nevada desert. Call us what you want but at least have the good grace to do so in private.

Apparently, that's asking rather a lot of grown men these days. I'm not sure if Weidner was actually stamping his little feet as he vented his frustration to the press earlier this week but it rather sounds like it.

"The home team won. The operators there in the UK worked the system very well, so they ended up with what they wanted, what I would consider to be sub-optimal, lousy little casinos that kept them in the game and kept us out."

Said an in-no-way bitter Weidner...

"And so they have the worst of all worlds - now they have casinos that won't drive visitors in from further away and they'll just have larger places that take more of the money of the local people"

What we have, William, is casinos that discreetly meet demand, instead of loudly dangling gambling's illusory carrot in front of every single donkey out there until he's drawn into a problem he can't handle. Contrary to the supercasino spin, you could walk the length of Britain three times over and still not find anyone complaining that there aren't enough places to gamble here. The supposed 'demand' is a fiction.

"If we'd have known the game was stacked against us, we wouldn't have wasted jet fuel going over there"

Someone pass me a tissue. I'm filling up here...

I'll say this for you, Weid-boy. Thanks for showing us what a lucky escape we just had.

Previewing poker movie The Grand

Date: Tue, Feb 12, 2008 Internet

Rounders it ain't...



Debated here
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Poker room review - Mohegan Sun, Uncasville, CT
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Stud Poker strategy
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Poker Pic of the Day VIII

And the Underwhelming News of the Day Award goes to...

Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2008 Internet

Gambling and Depression Consistently Linked

Spin this...

Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2008 Internet

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

Charities robbed by gambling addicted staff

Warms your heart, doesn't it? Plenty more where this came from...

UK poker portals a mixed bag

Date: Thu, Feb 7, 2008 Internet

Of two UK poker portals hitting the news today, I'm not sure why Cardkings bothered with their 'official launch'.

So sick am I of hearing the word 'portal', the concept has to be presented mightily impressively these days to catch my eye. Cardkings looks like it's been put together by university students.

Pokersites, on the other hand, I like. Nothing flashy but the upcoming freerolls sidebar appeals (provided it's accurate - a major hurdle for too many widgets like these, it seems) and you can also download a general tournaments toolbar. Here, of course, it's the 'no spyware' promise that's the $64,000 question. I'll let you know if I have problems with it.
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It might seem old hat now, but limit poker is not without its uses.
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Poker Pic of the Day VII

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I may have found the flaw in the Monte Carlo Casino's health & safety policy.

"Hotel guests say MGM Mirage handled Monte Carlo fire with class"

See, they really ought to be handling it with water and retardant foam.

Bad Beats - the truth

Date: Wed, Feb 6, 2008 Internet

True to my word for once, I've installed a bad beats graph in my sidebar designed to keep a running tally of the bad beats I've both enjoyed and endured in 2008.

I won't pretend there's any scientific quantification going on here but bad beats are like porn - hard to define but we know them when we see them. Basically, If I or my opponent have come back from the dead in a hand, then that's the criterion.

I'll update it at the end of each month. I was 7 and 10 in January but have cut the deficit to 9-10 since. We'll see.

Bad Beats - the truth

Date: Wed, Feb 6, 2008 Internet

True to my word for once, I've installed a bad beats graph in my sidebar designed to keep a running tally of the bad beats I've both enjoyed and endured in 2008.

I won't pretend there's any scientific quantification going on here but bad beats are like porn - hard to define but we know them when we see them. Basically, If I or my opponent have come back from the dead in a hand, then that's the criterion.

I'll update it at the end of each month. I was 7 and 10 in January but have cut the deficit to 9-10 since. We'll see.

Online poker bad, Keno good? Only in politics land...

Date: Fri, Feb 1, 2008 Internet

Just when I thought Conservative MP Derek Conway and his ironically liberal interpretation of the term 'Parliamanetary expenses' was set to win the Idiot Politician of the Week award at a canter, along comes Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.

Ted's had a brainwave when it comes to easing his state's $733m budget deficit - electronic Keno machines in public places around the state.

"Players pick 10 of 80 numbers on a betting ticket that is fed into a machine that randomly picks 20 numbers. Winnings are based on the number of correct matches, with higher cash prizes for more matches. Each game would cost 50 cents or $1, according to a Lottery Commission spokeswoman."

So let me get this straight: when it comes to Americans having fun in the privacy of their own homes by playing a skill/luck game like online poker, America effectively has to ban this for the good of its people but when it comes to baling out bungling politicians, there is suddenly no gambling game so tawdry or devoid of skill that it cannot be inflicted upon the dumbest and/or poorest members of that same Society?

I would say shame on the pair of 'em but on the basis of their actions I suspect Conway and Strickland no longer have the slightest inkling of what shame is.

Calling non-gambling hacks: time to fold the Kenny Rogers thing

Date: Fri, Feb 1, 2008 Internet

No sooner do I lambast the genre (second item in link) than another lazy Kenny Rogers gambling reference crops up.

It's beyond a joke now, you bone idle journos trying to be flash about a subject of which you clearly know little. Read around, then get cute.

Or try some of these for a change:

The Winner Takes it All, Abba
Gambler's Blues, Otis Rush
Tumbling Dice, Rolling Stones
Kentucky Gambler, Dolly Parton

But please note, the key word is "change"...

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Poker Pic of the Day VI