Hard-Boiled Poker

Stranger Than Fiction

2012-01-30T09:57:00.011-05:00

I mentioned last post (on Friday) my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class, as well as another class taught by Professor Bruce McCullough over at Drexel University, titled “Poker, Probability and Decision-Making.” When I spoke with Bruce about his class, we talked about various teaching strategies, including the relative usefulness of having students actually play some poker in our classes.

If you take a look at our Betfair poker interview from last week, you’ll see us discussing the various topics Bruce’s course covers, including probability, expected value, Bayes theorem, odds and outs, Sklansky's Fundamental Theorem of Poker, decision trees, expected utility, prospect theory, bankroll management, and more. You’ll also see Bruce describing having set up weekly tournaments online for his students to play, and really it made a lot of sense to me that he had them playing poker as a way of immediately applying various ideas from their course.

In my course, I have the students play a session of poker in class just one time early on primarily to help them understand the rules of the various games -- draw, stud, and hold’em -- that we’ll be reading about and watching being played in films. Not everyone who signs up for the course is a poker player, and indeed even those who are don’t always have a lot of familiarity with five-card draw or other variants.

I mentioned this strategy here a few months ago, sharing an especially boring handout I provide the students detailing the rules of the various games. Knowing that actually handling cards and chips and having to play hands can be much more instructive than simply reading a sheet describing the rules, our little session does a good job getting everyone at least somewhat familiar with the games.

Last week we met for the second time and so as I’ve done before we went ahead and had our day of playing poker in class. I shared on Twitter last week a remarkable seven-card stud hand that occurred in which two students put in a number of bets to force others to fold, and by the end both had incredibly drawn four of a kind. One had quad nines and the other quad jacks.

We all marveled at the hands, and I tried to convey just how unlikely it was for this to have occurred. After all, I was introducing the game to just about all of them, so most had no frame of reference to help appreciate just how crazy a hand it was. I insisted on taking a picture (see above), just to chronicle the moment.

“What are the odds?” I was asked, and I had to tell them I didn’t know. I’ve seen a couple of different attempts to calculate it, both coming up with different yet similarly long odds against. (If any math-minded folks want to work it out exactly, please do -- my students and I would be grateful.)

One reason why I want to make sure the students realize quads over quads is hardly an everyday occurrence is because we are going to be reading a number of stories and watching some films (both clips and entire features) in which these sort of improbable hands are fairly common -- e.g., straight flush over straight flush, four aces over four kings, etc.

In many cases, cheating helps create these unlikely hands, though not always. Of course, we might say that cheating always creates these hands in the stories we read -- that is, either the characters are cheating or the author is “cheating” (in a way) by giving the characters such hands.

But in reality, hands like the one we had in my class last week just don’t happen. Pro player Joe Tall was telling me last week he’d never seen quads over quads in 7CS live, and perhaps once in ten years’ worth of playing online (including 1-2 years of full-time play online).

So I’m preparing today’s class during which I’ll be showing a few different film clips, including the great scene from The Sting in which Gondorff outcheats the cheater Lombard aboard the 20th Century Limited. And as I was looking over my notes and thinking about showing the scene to a new group, I realized what hands are turned over at the showdown.

Quad jacks over quad nines!

A different game (five-card draw), but the same hands as my students last week! Now what are the odds of that?

Teachers Talking Out of School

2012-01-27T12:44:00.010-05:00

One of the neat consequences of teaching my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class has been getting contacted by others with an interest in the course and/or who are themselves teaching college classes in which poker has a place.

Recently I ended up starting a correspondence with a fellow named Bruce McCullough who has taught a neat honors course over at Drexel University called “Poker, Probability and Decision-Making.” He sent me his syllabus and I sent him mine, and we ended up exchanging a few messages before I suggested possibly interviewing him for a Betfair poker column.

He agreed, and today the interview was posted. His class looks very interesting, and he really makes a great case for how poker serves as an excellent tool for learning about probability and decision-making. His own story about how he got into poker is quite fun, too.

If you’re interested, go check out the interview, titled “Poker in the Classroom: Teaching Probability and Decision-Making.” I’m now imagining perhaps eventually taking to other folks teaching courses involving poker and having a little series of “Poker in the Classroom” interviews with them.

During our exchanges Bruce recommended the 1990 film Havana to me as one I might want to consider including in my course. It’s an interesting and entertaining film starring Robert Redford as an American poker player named Jack Weil who finds himself kind of caught in the middle of the last days before the Castro revolution in Cuba at the end of 1958.

I ended up writing about the film this week over on the Epic Poker blog for my “Community Cards” column where I talked about the way it uses poker to flesh out Jack’s character. I also noted how there seemed to be a connection between poker and American identity being advanced in the film, with Jack -- the supposedly non-political American only interested in playing cards -- getting caught up in the revolution thanks largely to his attraction to a woman.

The movie also has more than a few parallels to Casablanca which make it even more interesting to those of us who are fans of that film. I talk some about that as well in the “Community Cards” piece, but one item I don’t mention there is the fact that Jack owns some high-level textbooks on probability. Bruce found that detail quite interesting, as you might imagine, and so back over in the Betfair piece I asked him a little about that at the end of our conversation.

So if any of these things interest you -- college courses involving poker, the subjects of probability and decision-making, the film Havana -- click them links above and let me know your thoughts.

And if you happen to teach a class that involves poker or know about one, let me know about that, too!

Ivey Showing Up Down Under

2012-01-26T14:51:00.017-05:00

Three days of play at the Aussie Millions Main Event have seen the starting field of 659 play down to 26, with Phil Ivey (currently in sixth) being the name that stands out most conspicuously among the remaining players.

Ivey has been on the first page of the leaderboard pretty much since the start of the $10,600 (AUD) Main Event. After the first three Day 1 flights, Ivey was in the top 10 overall out of the 305 players who made it to the second day of play. And he was second in chips after Day 2 with 75 players left.

Leading right now is Matt Turk with more than 2.6 million chips, about twice what second-place Tim O’Shea has. Ivey will have a little over 1.1 million when Day 4 begins a few hours from now. I believe they’ll be starting with Level 18 (1,000/5,000/10,000), with the average stack at about 760,000.

Ivey played in the $100,000 event at the Aussie Millions as well, bubbling the final table when Gus Hansen knocked him out. (That’s Ivey playing in the $100K below, as photographed by the PokerNews guys who are there covering several events from the series.) Hansen would go on to be the cash bubble boy by finishing fifth as only the top four spots paid in the 22-person event.

Ivey stayed away from the professional poker circuit for most of 2011, skipping the WSOP in dramatic fashion and stating on his website that as long as Full Tilt Poker’s many players weren’t able to cash out their funds, he didn’t feel as though he should play. At the time Ivey noted that he was “deeply disappointed and embarrassed that Full Tilt players have not been paid money they are owed,” adding “I do not believe it is fair that I compete when others cannot.”

He continued to sit out of events after the WSOP had completed, only surfacing at last in late November in Macau where he participated in the APPT Main Event while joining some of those big cash games there, too. And now he’s in Melbourne, suddenly the focus of poker world’s attention yet again.

While Ivey and Hansen -- a couple of Team Full Tilters -- played in that $100K event, most of the FTP crowd that participated in the $100K event at the Aussie Millions in 2011 weren’t there this time around. Exactly half of the 38 who played in 2011 were either members of Team Full Tilt or FTP red pros. This time around just Ivey, Hansen, Erik Seidel, and Tom Dwan were among those who played.

Recall also that $250,000 “Super High Roller” added at the last minute to the Aussie Millions schedule in 2011. Of the 20 who participated there, 11 were either Team Full Tilt members or red pros. It is safe to assume the turnout for that one will be smaller this year, too, when it happens this weekend.

Revelations since Black Friday have clued us all into the fact that besides having significant amounts of money seized by the Department of Justice, Full Tilt Poker additionally squandered a lot of funds in other ways, too, including (one presumes) for recompensing the site’s many sponsored players and thus -- directly or indirectly -- enabling them to play in high-stakes events such as the high roller ones at Melbourne last January.

As we all know, Full Tilt Poker players still have not been paid money they are owed. At the time Ivey made that statement, the site was still operating outside of the U.S., but went offline entirely about a month later when the Alderney Gambling Control Commission suspending its license to operate in late June.

Hopes were raised late in the year in response to news of that possible Groupe Bernard Tapie deal to purchase Full Tilt Poker, though nothing has come of that as yet. And yesterday Subject:Poker dropped another drama bomb (sans identifying sources) regarding Chris Ferguson’s various bank accounts and the efforts he and his lawyer, Ian Imrich, apparently have been taking to recover $14.3 million or so he believes he is owed by FTP.

Remember how according to that September 2011 amendment to the civil complaint (discussed here) the DOJ alleged that Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Rafe Furst, Ray Bitar, and “the other approximately 19 owners of Tiltware LLC” had funneled $443,860,529.89 into various “FTP Insider Accounts” and other personal accounts? The amendment also noted how at the end of March 2011, FTP had only about $60 million on hand at a time when its players worldwide thought they had about $390 million sitting in FTP accounts.

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday how Ferguson’s lawyer having that name -- Imrich -- serves as kind of an uncanny-name-bookend to a guy named Moneymaker starting it all. In other words, when the story of online poker’s meteoric rise and staggering fall in the United States is finally told, it will begin with Moneymaker and end with Imrich.

All of which is to say, I can’t help but feel ambivalent about Ivey -- most certainly among those other “approximately 19 owners” mentioned in the amended complaint -- showing up and doing well at the Aussie Millions this week. His presence obviously adds interest to the story of the tournament, and if this deep run had happened at last year’s Aussie Millions, it would’ve been hard not to have been intrigued by yet another high-level performance by one of poker’s best.

But given what has happened over the last eight months -- and remembering what Ivey himself was saying about what he thought was the right course of action for himself back in late May -- makes it difficult to get too enthusiastic about it all this time around.

A Thousand Words (Or So) About Bill Simmons

2012-01-25T10:32:00.021-05:00

Over the last couple of months I’ve come to appreciate more and more what Bill Simmons and his collection of writers are doing over at Grantland.

I’ve mentioned Grantland here a few times, such as last June when alluding to Rounders co-scripter Brian Koppelman’s interesting op-ed that appeared on the site called “The Beauty of Black Friday.” I brought up Grantland again in late July when referring to the novelist Colson Whitehead’s novella-length account of his experience World Series of Poker that ran on the site.

And last month James McManus did a turn on Grantland to recap the “Full Tilt Boogie” in which he presented the story of Black Friday and its messy aftermath to a wider audience, so I made mention of that, too.

Poker only turns up now and then on Grantland. The site primarily focuses on in-depth analyses of sports as well as some interesting and similarly detailed essays on popular culture. Bill Simmons is the Editor in Chief and lead writer on the site. In one of those earlier posts I characterized Simmons as “some sort of superblogger, one of these endlessly passionate fans who will go on and on and on with little acknowledgment that it might seem self-indulgent or obsessive to do so.”

I wrote that about Simmons with full self-awareness that I, too, have been guilty of such self-indulgence now and then here on Hard-Boiled Poker. But I do try to be mindful of the fact that quality trumps quantity when it comes to any sort of writing, not to mention the fact that readers are much less likely to stop and read thousands of words about anything unless they are similarly passionate and/or interested in the subject.

Grantland was begun back in the spring as kind of a carve-out from ESPN (where Simmons has written for years, including occasionally about poker) to provide a space for long-form writing about sports and entertainment. And as I say, I’m coming around to enjoy the site more and more, including the podcasts.

I particularly like Simmons’ own “B.S. Report” podcast, having gotten into it a lot over the last couple of months in order to hear him talk with a variety of guests about the NFL season and playoffs.

On Monday’s show (1/23/12), Simmons was talking with the always funny Cousin Sal about how both of the conference championships that took place on Sunday interestingly turned on player mistakes that created a few more “goats” than “heroes” in the games. Indeed, while the New England Patriots and New York Giants both played well and deserved their victories, both benefited considerably by opponents’ errors that helped make their victories possible.

In fact, both contests saw late-game miscues -- a couple of fumbles in the Niners-Giants game, a muffed catch and missed field goal in the Ravens-Pats one -- that were on the flukey side. That is, they were mistakes to be sure, but it is easy to imagine them having been avoided and the outcomes being different.

Simmons used a poker analogy to explain his point further, bringing up an idea that those of us who play poker know quite well.

“I came to the realization yesterday that… there’s gonna be these NFL seasons where you have four or five or six teams that are all basically the same talent level, and then they play and it becomes a poker hand,” said Simmons. “It’s like everybody can do everything relatively the right way, but it’s still going to come down to… the last card… on the river. And I need this and you need this and our percentages are pretty much equal and then that happens and then you win.”

In terms of a given hand, Simmons is describing one of those “coin flip” situations in which all decisions have been made and players’ fates are now to be decided by whatever card peels off the deck. Both players apparently have played the hand well, and now the odds of each winning is roughly the same.

Of course, the analogy also includes a slightly different observation, namely that when two players of essentially equal skill level sit down to play poker, luck will ultimately decide who walks away a winner. (I think the latter is actually the primary point Simmons was making here.)

All of which I found interesting and relevant as part of an analysis of what happened on Sunday. I’m still a little amazed at how Simmons pours out thousands upon thousands of words each week about a given game, then invites multiple guests on his show to break down the games even more.

Last week Simmons’ ESPN colleague Rick Reilly responded to a reader’s email complaining that he’d left out mentioning something in a column by making reference to his desire to keep his columns a reasonable length. “I try to keep all my columns under 900 words so people don’t have to quit their jobs to read me,” wrote Reilly. “It’s just sports, not the American Medical Journal. Not everything fits in 900 words.”

That particular “mail bag” column by Reilly ballooned over 2,800 words, actually, although as he says he usually keeps it around 1,000 words or less, such as he did in the column about 49ers kicker David Akers about which that particular reader was complaining.

One of Simmons’ readers mentioned Reilly’s comment to him, and Simmons shared the message in his own “mail bag” column from last Friday. Referring to Simmons’ prolixity, the reader remarked that Simmons -- who goes by “the Sports Guy” -- might consider changing his nickname to “the American Medical Journal Guy.”

Simmons replied that thanks to that snarky comment he was going to try for 7,500 words in that column. In fact, he almost made it, getting up over 7,200 before signing off.

I’ve already shot past the 1,000 word-mark myself in this post, and since I don’t have the same aspirations -- or inspiration -- to aim much higher, I think I’ll be signing off soon. As I said I do understand and appreciate Simmons’ approach. And while sports or poker probably aren’t as important in a practical sense to the discoveries being shared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of close, extended scrutiny.

After all, how we play and experience games tell us a lot about ourselves, and learning about ourselves can be as meaningful to improving our lives as can finding out how to treat a disease. Besides it is hard to be inspired by writers who aren’t inspired themselves. Or, to put it another way, I’m not really that into spending my time reading a sports column only to be told "it’s just sports.”

By the same token, I also think (like I assume Reilly does) that more isn’t necessarily better, and it’s possible to start saying less the more words you pile on. I believe Simmons is plenty aware of that, though. The self-effacing highlighting of his initials -- B.S. -- in his podcast title suggests as much.

Quite succinctly, in fact.

Still About Even

2012-01-24T09:48:00.011-05:00

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address tonight. Pokerati Dan today is posting about the “State of the Poker Union.” I guess it’s as good a day as any to think about the state of my own online poker game.

Am still piddling away on a couple of Merge network sites from time to time, playing with those funds won via freerolls. Most nickel-and-dimin’ it at the PLO tables, or sometimes playing limit hold’em where I am also mainly just passing quarters back and forth. Occasionally I will hop into low-limit sit-n-go, though not that often. Meanwhile I’m not terribly anxious to try to deposit anywhere, as I imagine is likely the case for most U.S. players these days.

I was talking with a friend over the weekend, a recreational player who first got interested in poker after seeing it on television over recent years. He’d opened a PokerStars account a while back on which he played for play chips for a few months. He was right on the verge of making a deposit and starting to play the micros when Black Friday hit. Interestingly, he doesn’t play at all on Stars anymore, even though technically he still can in the free games.

“How do you still play online?” he asked. Not a simple question to answer.

I told him the story of winning a few bucks in freerolls on Hero and Carbon and how I’ve kind of held steady on both. I actually ran the Hero roll up to a point where I might’ve considered trying to withdraw a little, but never quite pulled the trigger. Then I fell back down to where I no longer want to try to take any out. If I even can, that is, without enduring too much hassle.

But in truth, as I’ve suggested here before a few times over the recent months, it doesn’t even feel like I’m playing the game we all enjoyed for the several years prior to last April. So when my friend asks how I am still playing, I almost feel like answering that I’m not. Not really.

If you scout around you can still find a number of online poker sites that are serving Americans. For instance over on the Cards Chat site there’s a list of poker sites that are still serving U.S. players. (Anybody ever play on Juicy Stakes?)

Actually most other poker news sites and forums have similar listings, in most cases highlighting a half-dozen or so sites in an effort to get sign-ups as affiliates. One of the more comprehensive lists (that gets updated fairly frequently) can be found over at Compatible Poker.

I did finally get around to balancing my online poker ledger for 2011 last week. Used to be I kept that stuff constantly updated after each session, but the urgency to do so has lessened considerably as the stakes got smaller and the frequency of play slowed down. Was mildly happy to find I’d ended the year in the black, although not by a lot. In fact, the final figure essentially represented just a tad more than what I’d won in those freerolls.

I think my online poker career has probably followed an arc very similar to others, with the best years coming shortly after the boom (through about 2007 or so), then things flattening out a bit after that once the UIGEA came and opponents became less plentiful (and less fishy).

The height of my graph is of course way, way below that of many, though perhaps above some, too. But the shape is probably similar, with the peak coming around the same point on the timeline.

Right now, though, at least for Americans, most of those lines are strictly horizontal. And have been for a good while.

Such is the state of things at present as we hope for online poker to revive back to life.

Bracing for a Boom of Dragon Babies

2012-01-23T16:43:00.003-05:00

Was in the car today when I happened to hear I. Nelson Rose talking the Wire Act and the future of online gambling in America on “Here & Now,” an NPR show.

Nothing we haven’t heard or read before, particularly if we have been keeping up with the various state-level developments that happening in the wake of that December memo from the Department of Justice noting that the Federal Wire Act of 1961 applies strictly to sports betting (and not other forms of gambling). Or if we happen to follow some of what Rose has been writing about over on his Gambling and the Law blog of late.

Still, it was interesting to hear both the questions and Rose’s answers, and perhaps notable to consider that NPR saw fit to give it a quarter-hour’s worth of time to discuss. You can listen to the segment online here.

When Rose was done, the show then segued to a segment on the Chinese New Year which begins today.

“Here & Now” did a good job keeping me from changing the channel, initially by introducing the segment with Warren Buffett performing “I’ve Been Working the Railroad” on the ukulele. Apparently Buffett’s company owns the railroad operator Burlington Northern-Santa Fe in China, and more than a billion Chinese travel during the Lunar New Year holiday period, including many by train. The song was part of an advertisement.

I didn’t change the channel after Buffett was done, though, because I was intrigued by the host Robin Young explaining how Asia was “bracing for a boom in dragon babies.” The funny-sounding phrase brought to mind fantastic, B-movie scenarios, but in fact Young was referring to how the Year of the Dragon (which starts today) is widely considered by the Asian countries that follow the Chinese calendar to be the luckiest of the twelve in the cycle.

Thus have many families been carefully planning to have children during the current year, or “dragon babies.” The segment went on to share quotes from a Hong Kong couple talking about children born during the Year of the Dragon being both smarter and luckier.

Hong Kong’s medical system is in fact being put under extra strain to accommodate the extra births (about a 10% increase). The educational system also feels the effect of there being more “dragon babies” than children born in other years, although those effects aren’t felt until a few years later when those children start going to school. “Dragon babies may not receive the same quality of education as children born in other years,” commented a Hong Kong University professor.

In other words, one might argue that it is in fact less advantageous, practically speaking, to be a “dragon baby” than not, since you could face issues initially with regard to your birth and care, then later in terms of the education you might receive.

The segment (which you can listen to here) got me thinking a little bit about how superstitions in poker -- such as coveting lucky hands or seats or the like -- can sometimes have real, practical consequences on game play. Or, to look at it from the other direction, how others’ apparently irrational predilections can affect the fortunes of the logical-minded trying to coexist and/or prosper in their world (or at their table).

Meanwhile, if there isn’t already a band named the Dragon Babies, I’m grabbing that one right now. Fire-breathing power pop is what we’ll play.

Brace yourselves.

A Zynga Zinger

2012-01-20T13:22:00.021-05:00

I have played Zynga poker a few times on my iPhone. I think I logged onto Facebook once long ago to play, although as I have noted here before I am so strongly averse to Facebook I essentially ignore the account I have. In fact, my distaste over having to log into the Facebook account in order to get to the game on my phone has prevented me from opening it more than just a few times out of curiosity.

But there are millions who aren’t reluctant like me who love playing Zynga poker. Like eight million a day, or something, and over 30 million playing each month. Thus today’s news regarding Zynga Poker perhaps wanting to get involved with real money games isn’t utterly surprising, though it is still a bit of an eyebrow-raiser given how it follows a long sequence of suggestions to the contrary.

In fact, it was only just a couple of months ago that Zynga Casino General Manager Lo Toney was telling eGaming Review that his outfit had “no plans to enter the real-money market.” That echoed a sentiment Toney and the Zynga folks had been reiterating for most of 2011, including after Black Friday when the online poker world as it previously existed was suddenly turned upside down.

The Entities over at Wicked Chops are today pointing us to a story on a site called “All Things D” in which an unnamed Zynga spokesperson is telling them “that there’s an interest in the real money gambling market” among (some? many? a few?) Zynga players and that Zynga is “in active conversations with potential partners to better understand and explore this new opportunity.”

In an Insider piece the Entities consider the many steps needed before Zynga could enter the real money online poker market outside of the U.S., let alone be part of the game here in the States should legislation allow that to occur. The “All Things D” article actually breaks down the situation quite well itself, if you’re interested in reading more about where things presently stand for Zynga and its prospects.

The timeline would include getting a real money platform together, developing it, launching the sucker outside of the U.S., then following the path of other European sites have done and form a partnership with a U.S. casino brand in anticipation of legislation opening the door to America. All of which would take a while.

It is interesting to step back and contemplate what this possible crossover by Zynga from “social gaming” to real money gambling might look like. It makes me think of two possible futures for online poker, both very unlike one another and different as well from what we all grew accustomed to during the “rise and fall” of online poker in the U.S. over the past decade.

There’s the version in which online poker undergoes some sort of transformation to become something more like social gaming as it presently exists, only with real dollars going back and forth in a more conspicuous way than is currently the case with most games. (Real money exchanges do occur in “social gaming” -- in significant amounts in some cases -- although the majority of those who play such games are not part of that segment of the player base engaging in such.) In other words, a future game consisting of a weird “kinda-sorta-poker” that is even further removed from the live game than online poker has been.

Then there’s the heavily-regulated version of online poker that federal or state governments might allow to happen in which game play options will be necessarily limited, with all sorts of assumptions we grew to make about online poker getting thrown out as no longer permissible (e.g., multitabling, cash transfers, certain game variants, other volume-limiting restrictions, etc.). This version would be like the old game, but with lots of missing pieces players will initially complain about before either accepting the changes or giving up.

As I think out loud about this, it occurs to me that there is probably a third future for online poker in the U.S. that I’m not smart enough to envision. I still think whatever it turns out to be, it will be so markedly different from what we experienced before as to be unrecognizable in comparison.

(EDIT [added 8:30 p.m.]: For more on the Zynga speculation -- and why that possible future in which the Facebook game becomes a real money player in online poker is not necessarily likely -- see Bill Rini’s post "Zynga Ready for Real Money Gaming or Trying to Hide Failures?")

Patchwork Poker

2012-01-19T14:54:00.011-05:00

Amid yesterday’s poker-related headlines was a story from the Des Moines Register relating how a senator from that state, Jeff Danielson, is taking that recent memorandum from the Department of Justice regarding the 1961 Federal Wire Act as an invite of sorts for his state to entertain online gambling as a possible revenue source.

You remember the DOJ memo, the one from just before Christmas which clarified that the Wire Act applied to sports betting only. Danielson told the Des Moines Register this week he believed not only that the opinion -- which he (like others) calls a “ruling” -- opened the door for online gambling within the state, but also means “we can now have a multistate compact” with other states, too. (Danielson attempted to push a similar bill last year but failed.)

Another Iowa state senator, William Dotzler, is on board with Danielson. In the article he points out how “the evidence is pretty clear that Iowans are already gambling online… using offshore Internet gambling accounts,” and so he is ready, too, to find a way for Iowa to keep such revenue in-state. The article suggests Danielson is about to draft a bill for which Dotzler “would most likely serve as floor manager” when it comes to trying to shepherd it through the legislative process.

Iowa thus joins a growing list of states edging closer to following Nevada’s lead by passing legislation to offer some form of online gambling (either intra- or interstate). The District of Columbia has also passed such legislation, while New Jersey and California are making noises to indicate they may be next in line. Here’s a good, thorough overview by Michael Cooper of The New York Times reviewing where things stand at present, “As States Weigh Online Gambling, Profit May Be Small.”

That headline for the NYT piece suggests how the ability to form a “multistate compact” may well be key to states actually realizing significant revenue from online gambling -- i.e., the kind of revenue that would encourage some legislators to set aside whatever reservations they might have in order to vote in favor of such bills.

Right now the situation feels a little like one in which there are a few disconnected folks trying separately to drum up a game. They’re aware of each other, and in fact there exists a kind of competition between them to try and get a game up and running first. Yet all are additionally aware the game is going to be much better if they can somehow get to a stage where they can pool resources, share contacts, and spread a game that won’t have too many empty seats to be viable.

So many contingencies still must be met, though, including the one regarding whether or not such multistate agreements will be allowed to proceed free of any undue federal pressure. From the way the state senators and others (like New Jersey governor Chris Christie) are talking, there doesn’t seem to be a concern that multistate agreements can’t go forward à la the Powerball. But I can’t imagine such plans will be realized without some interference coming along at least to slow things down, if not stop them entirely.

Also worth noting in this context was Sen. Harry Reid’s comment last weekend regarding the DOJ’s revised opinion on the Wire Act and how “it’ll give us an incentive to get something done” with regard to pushing through a federal online gambling bill. Reid wants to avoid having “a series of laws around the country related to gaming,” believing “it’s very important that we have a national law.” See this Pocket Fives article for more on Reid’s recent comments.

The Des Moines Register piece ends with a quote from a representative of the American Gaming Association expressing similar concern “that a state-by-state approach would result in a ‘patchwork quilt of rules and regulations’ governing online gambling in the United States.”

It’s a legitimate concern. I don’t know how realistic hopes are for a federal bill to pass. But it sure seems at the moment that the “patchwork” state-by-state (or multistate) form of online gambling is a more likely future. If the future includes any online gambling in the U.S. at all, that is.

Making Picks, Getting Fix

2012-01-18T14:32:00.022-05:00

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times how I’ve experimented a little with fantasy sports, mostly on the Draft Day site started by Taylor Caby and some other online poker-people in the wake of Black Friday.

If you’re curious to learn more about Draft Day, an article appeared on Mashable yesterday in which Caby was interviewed about the site. There we read that after being launched back in September, the site has already attracted 10,000 users, with about a quarter of them regular players.

Caby points out in the article how they are “not going for the people who already spend hours on fantasy sports,” but rather are hoping to attract those “who are more casual sports fans and just looking to have fun.” In other words, the site presents itself as especially attractive to those whom we might call “recreational” fantasy sports players with limited time and/or bankrolls to commit.

That would be me.

Rather than buy into an entire season as some fantasy sports games require, the Draft Day games all last either a single day or in the case of the NFL a single weekend’s worth of games. So, for instance, with the NBA games you draft line-ups of players chosen from that evening’s slate of games, then watch to see how many points your players accumulate and whether or not you come out ahead of the totals put up by others’ line-ups.

The site is especially easy to navigate and I’m really enjoying how simple it is to sweat your teams. Stats are calculated instantaneously as the games proceed, with your ranking within a given game constantly updated as well. And there are freerolls and inexpensive games, too -- as low as $1-- also good for a noob like me who is just becoming acquainted with some of the strategy involved with player selection. You know, like not starting injured guys.

And of course as those of us who’ve spent the last five-plus years fussing over the awful Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 well know, the law specifically (and oddly) identifies fantasy sports as not falling under its otherwise ambiguous definition of “unlawful” online gambling. Which means easy deposit methods (including PayPal and credit cards), fast payouts, and none of the multitudinous money-related hassles to which we online poker players have grown accustomed.

While I’m finding the fantasy sports thing a fun diversion, it doesn’t really satisfy the desire for competition in the same way poker does. Even though we compete against others, it feels a lot more like playing solitaire. None of the decisions we make are controlled by others’ actions. (Not really... although I suppose one could apply some game theory-related arguments to counter that notion.) That is to say, all players are available to everyone, with each player portioning out the allotted salary as he or she sees fit.

And to be honest, I’m not really that into the way fantasy sports force a kind of fragmented rooting interest where you have to pull for individual players to succeed rather than teams.

For instance, last night the L.A. Clippers-Utah Jazz game was the last to complete, a blowout in which the Jazz won by nearly 30. I had the Clippers’ Caron Butler and was hoping he’d add a few buckets late to improve my position. Meanwhile, others still had Butler’s teammate Blake Griffin. Kind of absurd hoping for one player to score over another like that, and even stranger caring at all about what happens at the end of a game in which the outcome has long been settled.

As it happened, Butler did little in the fourth quarter while Griffin sat out. But I did manage to “min-cash” in my game thanks to big nights had by LeBron James, Dwight Howard, and others I’d fit onto my team’s roster.

Anyhow, as I’ve been saying, the Draft Day site is well-constructed and easy to use, and as Caby notes it is particularly aimed at casual players or those who are just curious about how fantasy sports work. If you click here, sign up, then eventually deposit something I get a referral bonus. But like I say, you can play for free, too.

If you do check it out, let me know how it goes. And remember to keep an eye on those injury reports.

Tempus Fuggitaboutit

2012-01-17T14:24:00.020-05:00

Teaching this “Poker in American Film and Culture” course has been both interesting and challenging. I’m now teaching it for a third time, having revised the syllabus again by dropping a few items and adding others.

From the beginning, I knew I’d have to be careful about how I handled the most recent decade or so as far as the historical survey of poker went. So much has happened so quickly -- even over the last year -- that I knew it would be tricky to try to pretend to cover all of the developments in poker from 2003-onward in a course that also purports to look at the 200-year history of the game in America.

The first two times I taught the course, I saved a couple of classes at the end to deal with “miscellaneous” topics like online poker, legal issues, and other items. This time around I’ve actually omitted that unit entirely, planning instead to bring up these topics at other moments during the semester, kind of tying various present-day matters to historical events and issues as they arise.

All of which is to say, I’ve pretty much set the topic of online poker to the side this time around. Imagine one of those literature survey classes that tries to cover everything in 15 weeks. You know, “Beowulf to Virginia Woolf” or something. And how oftentimes the professor never got to Virginia Woolf or even the 20th century, having been slowed down by the Romantic poets right after the break and falling hopelessly behind schedule.

It’s kind of the same situation here. My course begins at the start of the 19th century and extends to start of the 21st century, with contemporary developments being addressed along the way. We only have a few months together. Not enough time for everything.

The fact is, I can imagine an entire class devoted solely to the story of poker since the first online cash game went live on Planet Poker on January 1, 1998. Just think of all of the many areas of inquiry such a class would have to cover as it traced the explosion of the online game, the rise of televised poker and the game’s sudden emergence in the mainstream, the celebrities and scandals, the various legal conflicts highlighted by the UIGEA, Black Friday, and other signal moments, and more.

You can see why I’m finding it hard to include all of that in my single semester course while dealing with the previous couple of centuries, too.

That 10th anniversary PokerStars celebrated last month got me thinking further about the rise of online poker, generally speaking. Obviously Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 WSOP Main Event win -- his entry into the event coming via qualifying online at Stars -- was a big part of the online game suddenly becoming popular. But even if that hadn’t happened, it seems like playing poker online would have become popular, anyway, although perhaps not quite as rapidly.

If I remember correctly, I think I got my first email account in 1994. It wasn’t long after that that the first online casinos started to appear, although I can’t say I was aware of them then. I believe the first online casino went live in 1995 or thereabouts. Amazon and eBay both went online in 1995, too.

That was the same year Clifford Stoll infamously penned an article for Newsweek titled “The Internet? Bah!” in which he uttered a handful of proclamations including “no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”

Also listed among his many ill-fated prophecies was a claim that consumers will never agree to the idea of actually purchasing items online. “Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet -- which there isn’t -- the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople,” wrote Stoll.

To be fair, the idea of sending money over the internet did seem more than a bit sketchy in 1995, let alone trusting sites enough to gamble that way. But things changed quickly, and before the end of the 1990s people like Rob Spiegel of the E-Commerce Times were already writing articles asking “When Did The Internet Become Mainstream?”

With users having quickly become comfortable with the idea of shipping money back and forth online, it was inevitable that increased opportunities to gamble online would follow, including online poker. The poker “boom” was certainly accelerated by Moneymaker and the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel, but it likely would’ve happened in some form, anyway, even without those encouragements.

Which leads to another “alternate history”-type question. If the “boom” hadn’t happened as quickly as it did, would legislators have done better to keep up with things sufficiently enough either to stem online poker’s growth or introduce reasonable, workable means to regulate the industry?

I suppose that would be a topic for my own alternate poker class, the one in which we examined the last decade in earnest.

Speaking Out

2012-01-16T15:04:00.011-05:00

The Aussie Millions is underway, which means tennis’ Australian Open -- also in Melbourne -- has begun as well.

I was intrigued this morning to read about a bit of a rift having occurred between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer regarding the latter’s unwillingness to pipe up about certain undesirable tour conditions -- including an overloaded schedule.

It sounds like various issues have arisen over recent months regarding the ATP, including discontent surrounding the scheduling of Davis Cup matches in February right on the heels of the Australian Open. Apparently the pro tennis schedule is especially packed this year thanks in part to the 2012 Olympics.

Nadal has spoken out about the problems in recent months, as has the Scottish player Andy Murray. Meanwhile, Roger Federer has kept mostly mum, something Nadal alluded to when asked at a pre-Australian Open news conference about the scheduling issues.

Nadal was asked specifically about Federer’s not speaking out and whether he took that to indicate that Federer believed it wasn’t good for tennis’ image to have players complaining. “For him it’s good to say nothing,” said the Spanish player somewhat facetiously (via a translator). “‘It’s all well and good for me, I look like a gentleman,’ [says Federer] and the rest can burn themselves.”

The press may be blowing up this story more than is really warranted. Both Nadal and Federer have a long tradition of being great examples of sportsmanship and highly respectful of each other’s games. Even so, it does appear that there are a few problems being faced by professional tennis at the moment, including the problem of being willing to acknowledge such problems in a public forum.

The story reminded me a little of some of the considerable problems in poker -- live and online -- and the way some players and media are more than willing to address them while others are not.

I’m thinking of writers like Jesse May speaking out last summer and fall about the sorry circumstance created by the Full Tilt fiasco and other related matters. Or Daniel Negreanu’s “Being Real” blog post from last October in which he addressed a host of different concerns, some more personal than others.

I also thought about Matt Glantz’ post on the Epic Poker blog from a couple of weeks ago titled “Responsibility in Poker” in which he addressed poker’s image in mainstream culture and suggested ways in which current pros could help improve it.

Finally, I was reminded of a lengthy blog post penned just yesterday by Phil Galfond titled “Let’s Make Some Changes” in which he addresses all sorts of problems currently plaguing online poker, including various examples of “angle shooting” and other sorta-tolerated-but-ethically-sketchy practices he believes are hurting the game.

There’s always some element of risk associated with putting oneself out there and taking positions regarding issues over which there exist legitimate debate -- i.e., over which reasonable people disagree. Particularly when doing so could in some way negatively affect one’s own bottom line in some fashion, either directly or indirectly.

Not going to suggest some trite comparison between reforms in tennis and/or poker and other, more serious reforms which a holiday like MLK day invites us to contemplate. Nor do I mean to suggest I necessarily agree with all of the reforms proposed by those mentioned above. But it does seem an appropriate day to note the need to talk about problems when they arise. And, even more importantly, to be willing to listen, too.

Plots and Percentages

2012-01-13T15:33:00.009-05:00

Am slipping into spectator mode today.

Have currently dialed up the streaming coverage of the final table of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event final table on pokerstars.tv. Will probably look in on the coverage there tomorrow as well when they show the finale of the High Roller, the $25,500 buy-in event that ended up drawing a huge field of 148.

Am remembering how last year the PCA kind of inaugurated the whole “almost live” programming that by year’s end became something of the norm thanks to its employment at both the World Series of Poker Main Event (online and on television) and a few World Poker Tour final tables (online).

Last year the PCA managed to grab several hours of air time on ESPN2 to show Galen Hall’s come-from-behind Main Event win over Chris Oliver. Was entertaining stuff, and I’m similarly enjoying the start of today’s final table, being shown on a 40-minute delay with commentary by James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton.

And, of course, I’ll remain in spectator mode this weekend as I will surely look in on those NFL playoff games, all four of which are pretty darned intriguing. Was especially locked in when it came to pro football this year, especially during the last few weeks as I battled to win that there pick’em pool run by the good Dr. Pauly. (Discussed that some here.)

For the entire regular season, I was picking games each week. Until December or so, I would confine my study of the week’s games to Sunday mornings. Then, as we approached the end of the year, I couldn’t help but think about the match-ups a day or two earlier, reading some online and trying to gather a little extra info to help me make my picks.

I’m kind of fascinated by the full-time sports bettors who spend countless hours crunching numbers, finding the best spots, and seeking enough of an edge to beat the vig on a consistent basis. And I’ve always been kind of a numbers-geek, instinctively intrigued by sports’ seemingly endless statistics. But I don’t think I could ever become that immersed in the numbers side of things. Besides, I like the stories -- the plots and characters -- sports can produce too much.

I’ve thought about this before, and probably written about it, too -- I believe it is that combination of stories and puzzles, of literature and logic, that has made poker such a fun, gratifying pursuit for me.

Speaking of sports producing interesting plots and characters, I took a shot at talking about the whole Tim Tebow phenomenon over on Betfair poker today, specifically considering how he’s begun to attract interest of non-football folks and comparing that phenomenon to poker’s ongoing struggle to capture the attention of those outside its niche audience of hardcore fans. Here’s that article, if you’re curious.

While you do that, I’m going to go retake my seat among the niche audience of hardcore fans watching the PCA final table this afternoon.

The Hangover’s Game of Chicken

2012-01-12T13:06:00.015-05:00

Well behind the crowd, Vera Valmore and I finally got around to watching The Hangover this week. Kind of surprising we hadn’t caught it yet, given how we both generally like these over-the-top kinds of comedies. Indeed, a lot of time when we make it to the theater it is to kick back and enjoy something like The Hangover rather than to be challenged too greatly by more intellectually-demanding fare.

That said, The Hangover is a fairly clever film, particularly in its unusual plotting whereby the story moves ahead yet also looks back pretty much throughout. As those of you who’ve seen it know -- and even those who haven’t probably do, too -- the main characters’ bachelor party turns into a night of mayhem that none can remember afterwards, and so the final two-thirds of film involves them trying to piece together what happened during those hours they all blacked out.

Lots of grins throughout, and the Las Vegas setting made it more fun given the amount of time we’ve both spent in Sin City over the last few years. The “wolfpack” speech by Alan (Zach Galifianakis) was a definite highlight, as was the tiger song performed by Stu (Ed Helms).

Something friends of ours had drawn our attention to before viewing was the apparent non sequitur of the chicken. While all of the story’s considerable complications seem reasonably resolved by The Hangover’s conclusion, no real explanation ever comes for the fact that when the fellas wake up in their Caesars Palace suite following their wild night there’s a chicken conspicuously present.

Even stranger, the guys never seem concerned to figure out why the chicken is there, instead content just to stumble over it repeatedly while they work on other puzzles. Of course, they might be forgiven by the fact that there are a number of other issues that seem more urgent, including the additional presence of a tiger and a baby in the suite, as well as the absence of their friend, the groom-to-be.

Vera and I talked about the chicken some afterwards, and I floated the idea that rather than representing a “mistake” in the plotting, its presence actually served to reinforce the idea that the rest of the film’s many loose ends had been tied. Not so much a MacGuffin -- i.e., a plot element that is also ambiguous but more integral to driving the action -- but really just a superfluous, non-integrated detail that reminds us how just about every other detail has significance. Just part of the overall game of concentration being played with the audience.

That response might be a little on the high-falutin’ side, but you get the point. It makes me think of how in poker some value can be created by making a non-characteristic or erratic-seeming play early in a session. Say you call a raise from out of position with a lousy hand, perhaps even give up another bet by the river, then showdown your trash as your opponent wins a small pot. Everyone pegs you as a noob with little understanding of hand values or the importance of position, then pay you off repeatedly when you subsequently play your usual solid game.

Of course, there we might say the poorly-played hand isn’t really like the chicken, because it is in fact integrated into the “plot” you’re creating during the early part or “exposition” of your session. Even so, it is similar insofar as the “failure” represented by the poorly-played hand helps make the “success” of the rest of your session seem that much more impressive. (And perhaps even more profitable.)

Pulling off such a move can be easier said than done, though. It is hard to play a hand badly deliberately. In fact, I’d suggest that usually when this sort of scenario develops it is because we’ve genuinely screwed up a hand early on, then settled down afterwards.

Anyhow, to get back to The Hangover, I admit I may be giving more attention to the silly chicken than is warranted. Although a bit of searching online reveals a lot of theories -- some considerably more abstract and involved than this one -- regarding it.

If I am going overboard here though, well, that’s okay. I’ll just have to be a one-man wolfpack on this one.

A. Alvarez and America

2012-01-11T13:03:00.009-05:00

I’ve written here many times about the English writer Al Alvarez, in particular regarding his 1983 book The Biggest Game in Town. Just click that “Al Alvarez” tag at the bottom of this post to see a number of examples.

In fact, last spring I wrote a half-dozen posts that focusing on a single chapter of The Biggest Game in Town, a kind of extended close reading intended to highlight some of the book’s themes as well as to demonstrate how packed full of great stories and ideas the book is. (Those posts begin here.)

Alvarez is not just a “poker writer,” of course, having had a lengthy career writing poetry, literary criticism, and other nonfiction on a host of different topics. However, his contributions to our little subgenre of nonfiction or sports journalism or whatever you want to call it are especially noteworthy. Inspiring, even.

In The Biggest Game in Town, Alvarez reports from the 1981 World Series of Poker (won by Stu Ungar), ultimately providing an especially insightful, thorough portrait not just of the WSOP and Vegas but American culture as a whole and poker’s significant status within it.

Years later Alvarez penned a second book about poker titled Poker: Bets, Bluffs, and Bad Beats (first published in 2001). At first glance that book’s extensive (and very cool) collection of illustrations and photographs might cause one to consider it a “coffee table book,” but it, too, includes a number of smart, entertaining, and revealing discussions about our favorite card game. The book provides a nice supplement to The Biggest Game in Town, exploring various facets of the game and culminating with a chapter recounting Alvarez’ own participation in the 1994 WSOP Main Event.

Like The Biggest Game in Town, the more recent book also finds Alvarez making some astute observations about American culture and the many ways poker reflects it, especially in the first chapter, titled “The American Game.”

For my “Community Cards” column this week on the Epic Poker blog, I shared some of what Alvarez talks about in that first chapter of Poker: Bets, Bluffs, and Bad Beats as well as in the initial chapter of The Biggest Game in Town. Obviously there was a lot more to be said about the two books and Alvarez’ significant contributions to poker writing, but in the column I mainly focused on some of the Londoner’s observations about poker and American culture.

Check out the column for more, and as I say at the end, if you aren’t familiar with Alvarez’ poker writings, you could do a lot worse than to pick up The Biggest Game in Town, Poker: Bets, Bluffs, and Bad Beats, or both.

Breaking Records in the Bahamas

2012-01-10T13:05:00.013-05:00

Been following reports from the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure over the last few days, including the news of Viktor “Isildur1” Blom’s triumph in the $100K Super High Roller over the weekend.

Sort of a neat reprise of that revelation at the PCA almost exactly one year before when Blom finally confirmed once and for all what everyone already knew, namely, that he was in fact the Swingin’ Swede of online legend.

Blom won $1,254,400 for besting the field of 30 at the Super High Roller, his best live score by a long, long shot. When I saw that first prize, I couldn’t help but think back to that hand of $500/$1,000 pot-limit Omaha Blom lost to Patrik Antonius a little over two years ago on Full Tilt Poker, the one for which the pot totaled a mind-boggling $1,356,946.50.

Remember that? I suppose that still stands as a record as far as online poker goes.

Speaking of records, I was also kind of diverted on Sunday by the exploits of Randy “nanonoko” Lew at the PCA. Lew spent the day sitting at a computer, a couple of large monitors glowing before him, attempting to set a record for most hands of poker played during an eight-hour period while still turning a profit. (That is Lew pictured above, as photographed by the great Joe Giron.)

I’m not really sure what the previous record was supposed to be here, but in any case Lew did manage to establish a new standard by playing 23,493 hands and concluding with a small but significant profit of $7.93. That broke down to a shade under 49 hands per minute, if you can imagine that.

I believe he was moving back and forth between low limits and $5/$10 no-limit hold’em throughout the day. According to Brad “Otis” Willis’ report on the PokerStars blog, Lew was actually down as much as $1,200 at one point before grinding his way back into the black. And thus into the record books.

I’d have to go back through my own personal record books to see for certain, but I imagine the most hands I ever played in a single session was probably around 1,500 or so, and that probably took eight hours or thereabouts. I never got much beyond three-tabling, really, a far cry from the 40-ish tables Lew generally had going throughout the day.

In fact, after the first couple of years playing online, I gravitated towards shorter sessions (a hour or two) and one- or two-tabling, both because I tended to win more consistently playing that way and I found myself becoming less and less desirous to sit and play for long stretches.

As far as my biggest-ever pot goes, I remember losing a hand of PLO50 once that had ballooned up around $400 or so, half of which I had contributed. Straight flush over my aces full. Exquisite pain, that. Won a few big pots, too, but nothing that high. You know, just $1.356 million or so off the record.

Now, of course, I am strictly playing for nickels and dimes, nursing my two smallish rolls on Carbon and Hero, both earned in freerolls. And usually no more than a half-hour or hour at most. Looking back, I see I had a 300-plus hand session back in November, easily the longest I’ve played over the last half-year or so.

Blom is still just 21 years old. I believe Lew is 26. I guess it is safe to say both probably view money a little differently than do most of us. And time. And the relationship between the two.

Oh, and they both gots some skills, too.

The Hunger Games and Poker Tournaments

2012-01-09T10:06:00.019-05:00

I did finish The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins the other day, my first Kindle book.

The novel was published in 2008 and is the first of a trilogy set in a kind of post-apocalyptic America (redubbed “Panem”) in which 12 “districts” are ruled by a totalitarian government (the “Capitol”). Little back story comes in this first book, so the reader just has to accept the premise in which Panem’s citizens must suffer unfair treatment from the Capitol, including an annual ritual in which two citizens from each district (one boy and one girl, aged 12-18) are made to fight in the brutal “hunger games” from which only one of the 24 participants can survive.

The book is told in the first person by the 16-year-old Katniss, the girl from District 12 who must fight in the games. The book and trilogy have been marketed as “young adult” fiction, and as I read I could tell I probably would’ve enjoyed it much more as a teen. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, a film adaptation is due soon (in March, I think), a lot of which was filmed in North Carolina last summer. Depending on the budget, I’m guessing the movie will be a CGI-laden action pic with a lot of good-looking young actors, and will probably be a hit.

The story kind of plays off “Survivor” and other competition-based “reality” shows which feature an ensemble of players whom an audience follows for a few weeks until one emerges as the winner. The “hunger games” take place in an elaborate, controlled “arena” and are televised throughout Panem, and it seems like they become a kind of national focus as they play out. Kind of like the NFL playoffs or “American Idol” or the presidential campaign or... (fill in the blank).

As I said in that earlier post, the lottery at the beginning of the book which determines who must fight in the games is pretty directly lifted from that famous Shirley Jackson short story from the 1940s. And while it has been many years since I’ve read Stephen King’s early novel The Long Walk (published in 1979 as by Richard Bachman), the story seems very similar to that one, too.

I was also reminded as I read of Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago) as well as her two Parable novels, which also featured young female protagonists fighting for survival amid creatively-constructed, alternate worlds. Butler’s books also provide a lot more depth in their exploration of similar themes, including violence, sexuality, self-identity, family and relationships, and more. (I’d definitely recommend Butler before The Hunger Games.)

Anyhow, I’m bringing up The Hunger Games again here because I wanted to point out how the story reminded me in several ways of a multi-table poker tournament such as the World Series of Poker Main Event. I’ll try to list a few here without giving away too much plot.

There are constant references in the book to the “Gamemakers” who might be likened to tournament officials and/or the director governing game play. As in a poker tournament, the rules for the hunger games are significant, although the possibility for the Gamemakers in Collins’ novel to change the rules or introduce new ones as they go is a bit greater than is the case at the WSOP.

Like happens with the WSOP, non-players bet on the outcome according to constantly shifting odds. And as mentioned, viewers can follow all of the action at home. Once the field shrinks to less than a dozen, Katniss mentions how “they’ll be doing special features on each of us” for the viewing audience.

While the hunger games are literally life-and-death for the characters, they seem mostly about creating a spectacle and retaining an audience. “From the Gamemakers’ point of view, this is the final word in entertainment,” explains Katniss at one point. There’s even a highlight show at the end, again reminding me of the way the WSOP Main Event has often been presented. “Condensing several weeks into three hours is quite a feat,” observes Katniss.

Players collude with one another in the hunger games (something that is allowed more openly than in a poker tournament), their “alliances” sometimes recalling the online sponsorships that identify certain players as belonging to the same “pack.” And speaking of sponsorships, the players in the hunger games are also sponsored, with gifts provided to them as they fight (medicine, food, etc.) which could be said to create an unfair advantage for some.

There’s some profiling of opponents and “reading” of other players in The Hunger Games. Katniss enters the games with a healthy respect for others’ abilities. However, at one point she notes “I’ve spent so much time making sure I don’t underestimate my opponents that I’ve forgotten it’s just as dangerous to overestimate them as well.”

Indeed, while she seems a relatively well-prepared or “skilled” player, she knows that the reckless play of others can get her in trouble, noting early on that “stupid people are dangerous.”

Game play recalls poker strategy in other instances, too, with bluffing, trap-setting, slow-playing, and many other examples reflecting the psychological warfare of a poker tournament. At one point Katniss refers to “the surreal world of the arena where the authenticity of everything is to be doubted.”

By the way, it is in the context of such strategy talk that the book’s only sorta-kinda-reference to poker arises, when Peeta (the boy selected from District 12) tells Katniss she isn’t a good bluffer. “Never gamble at cards,” he says. “You’ll lose your last coin.”

There are a few other analogies with poker tourneys and especially the WSOP ME I could draw, including the handsome, set-for-life reward due the winner. I’ll stop here, though, as it would be hard to explain further without dropping a few spoilers.

While I can’t really say I was moved too terribly much by the book -- I don’t think I’m going to continue with the rest of the trilogy -- it was entertaining. And it might well appeal to poker players, especially those who play tourneys and thus perhaps might be inclined to like this sort of winner-take-all story.

New Jersey to Join the Online Gambling Race?

2012-01-06T12:48:00.007-05:00

I remember arriving in Atlantic City last spring to help cover the WSOP-Circuit event there. Just a few days before I got there, New Jersey governor Chris Christie had vetoed a bill that would have allowed for instrastate online gambling via websites run by AC casinos, and there was still a bit of buzz going around about the news.

Had the bill made it past Christie’s desk, New Jersey would have been the first state to pass such a bill. As it happened, Nevada would gain that distinction a few months later when it passed A.B. 258.

At the time, Christie had said he had “significant concerns” with the proposed bill, including uncertainty about whether it satisfied certain requirements in the state’s constitution. Christie also noted at the time that many New Jersey residents were in fact opposed to the state offering online gambling -- polls then indicated they were about 2-to-1 against -- and thus wasn’t sure if the bill reflected “the public’s sentiment.”

There were no references to federal laws in the message accompanying Christie’s veto. That is to say, he mentioned nothing then about the Wire Act, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or other federal laws that might have raised concern for a state wishing to pass a bill such as the one he’d chosen to veto.

There was talk even then about the value of getting out ahead of this issue -- i.e., for New Jersey to be first in line when it came to passing such legislation and thus getting the infrastructure together to start offering online gambling before other states could. But Christie weighed the risk against the potential reward and decided folding the better option.

Cut to the first week of 2012. As the previous year was coming to a close, a revised opinion from the Department of Justice regarding the Wire Act and its applicability to non-sports betting was made public, seemingly removing a possible obstacle to states setting up their own online gambling sites.

Nevada, having passed its online gambling bill six months before, has approved regulations for licensing companies to offer online gambling, and many have already applied. Approvals of those applications are expected to come in April.

And now, after playing it safe for several months, New Jersey appears ready to play.

State senator Raymond Lesniak had reintroduced the a new version of the bill in August with revisions responding to some of Christie's concerns about it opening the door for more than just AC casino-run websites. As the new year began, Lesniak again attempted to get the bill (S-3019) considered before the current legislative session ends next Monday, although it doesn’t appear that is going to happen.

However, it does look like the bill could well come up for a vote and could possibly be passed during the first part of the next session (i.e., within a couple of weeks). This week Lesniak met with the governor and came away confident that Christie is likely on board with the new bill. “I expect that we can get it through the Legislature and signed by the Governor within the first few weeks of the new session,” said Lesniak in a statement issued on Wednesday.

I haven’t examined the previous New Jersey bill (that Christie vetoed), nor the revised one that sounds like it may pass, so I don’t know the specifics of how it was changed to assuage the governor’s concerns. In any case, it seems clear that the DOJ’s new stance has ignited something here, even if Christie hadn’t mentioned anything about federal laws regarding online gambling last spring when vetoing the earlier bill.

Meanwhile, several other states are starting to talk in similarly serious ways about offering online gambling in the wake of that revised DOJ opinion. As Mike Sexton would say, it looks like we have ourselves a race situation, Vince.

Novel Thinking

2012-01-05T11:31:00.014-05:00

Like I imagine most folks who trip over here from time to time to read these poker-related scribblings, I usually spend a bit of time each day perusing various poker news sites, forums, and following the chatter on Twitter in an effort to keep track with what’s happening in the poker world.

As I’m sure you also notice when making such a virtual trek around the intertubes, there’s a lot of repeating of information happening online. Such is the case not just for poker but for just about any subject area. It’s as though as soon as something newsworthy happens or gets reported, dozens are sharing the exact same news within a short span of time, thus helping any item -- even examples of misreporting -- quickly proliferate around our little circle.

I remember once having a writing teacher explain to me the concept of “common knowledge.” In academic essays, one generally is required to document one’s sources whenever presenting ideas or words that are not one’s own. The one exception to this rule was the occasion of presenting so-called “common knowledge.” You know, like the Titanic went down in 1912 or John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

The teacher offered a rule of thumb for determining whether or not an idea or bit of information qualified as “common knowledge.” If you see the information in five different sources, the teacher explained, only then can you safely assume it is common knowledge and thus not in need of citation.

Back then we didn’t have the internet to assist us with our research. So finding something in five different sources meant putting in a lot of time amid the stacks in the library. Indeed, I sometimes thought the five-source minimum was intentionally established as a difficult-to-reach barrier so as to keep students from being too quick to think of something as “common knowledge” and thus more apt to cite sources whenever in doubt.

Today, of course, such advice is mostly meaningless. Moments after I publish this post, you’ll probably be able to find the words I am writing appear in five different other places, having been “scraped” and published by various web-page producing programs. It is almost as though everything that gets published somewhere online instantly becomes “common knowledge” and is regarded as such by many going forward -- i.e., as fair game for reporting without attribution.

Maybe it’s because I have occasionally been called on to write poker news articles myself that I find myself thinking about this phenomenon. Or because I write this blog every weekday, where I always try to avoid repeating what else is out there and provide something novel or at least a little bit different, even if it is only just to share a personal take on what everyone else is talking about.

Thanks in part to the way search engines work and the whole “SEO” thing, a distinction has developed in internet reporting between publishing something that is “new” and publishing something that is “original.” The fact is, it is much more valued to be first -- or perceived as first by the elusive algorithms employed by internet search engines -- than it is to be original. (I smile grimly at the post I wrote yesterday, today appearing on other sites as though published years ago.)

Writing and publishing original content is by definition going to mean producing something that is new. Readers will recognize this, but so will the search engines (which will help attract more readers).

But it is possible also to appear to write something new without necessarily writing something that is original. A quick summary of someone else’s reporting can accomplish as much quite efficiently, and depending on the site producing it, can effectively place a newly-published page way up or even at the top of searches for the item.

And speaking of efficiency, it is much less costly to come up with such “new” (but not original) content than it is to commission that which is truly original.

I’m conscious of the fact that my observation here is itself unoriginal. I nonetheless felt compelled to bring up the idea here as I’ve been lately seeing not just the usual examples of the phenomenon but also some others pointing out having seen the same, too.

Perhaps it was because of thinking about all of this -- coupled with a further bit of meditating on “viral” videos and marketing, cut-and-paste emails, “retweeting” on Twitter, etc. -- that I have come up with the first inklings of an idea for a new novel.

It may turn out to be a science fiction story, though the variety of sci-fi that serves to provide a commentary on the “real” world we inhabit. Perhaps even an original one.

Gonna file the idea away for now, though. I have another novel I need to finish first. Besides, I don’t want to get to carried away with explaining the idea here today only to see it a hundred times over elsewhere before I even begin writing.

A Cure for Pokeritis (1912)

2012-01-04T15:02:00.005-05:00

Wanted today to point everyone to a new “Community Cards” column over on the Epic Poker blog, this one about a 1912 silent film titled A Cure for Pokeritis. Has to be just about the oldest poker movie ever made, I would guess.

The 12-minute movie was recently chosen by the National Film Registry for preservation. Each year a fellow named James H. Billington, a Librarian of Congress, selects 25 films from a list compiled by the National Film Preservation Board and the general public.

The idea is to pick movies that are of “enduring significance to American culture.” In other words, one might regard the list as kind of like a time capsule in which all sorts of examples of cinematic storytelling are being kept, all indicating various ideas or themes or values thought to be representative or important to the U.S.

The list started in 1989, so now there are 575 films total on the list. Most of the titles are familiar insofar as they are films that were very popular or critically acclaimed or both. But there are a number of fairly obscure ones there, including some non-commercial fare.

Here’s the full list, if you’re curious. Would probably be fun to go through and watch them all. You’ll see that along with A Cure for Pokeritis this year’s list included Bambi, The Big Heat, The Silence of the Lambs, Porgy and Bess, War of the Worlds (the original), Forrest Gump, and a one-minute film from 1972 called A Computer Animated Hand.

According to the little blurb about A Cure for Pokeritis that came along with the announcements of this latest round of choices, the film was picked primarily because it stars John Bunny, one of cinema’s first comic stars. That’s him on the right, having to borrow money from a friend for the fare home after losing all he had at the tables.

But in my “Community Cards” column I speculated a bit about how its inclusion also could be said to help preserve something of the significance of poker to the U.S.

The column includes two YouTube clips which deliver the entire film. So if you’re curious about this disease “pokeritis” and how it can be cured, go check it out.

On Occupy PokerStars and Other Protests

2012-01-03T11:31:00.011-05:00

Have been somewhat intrigued by all the hubbub surrounding PokerStars’ change to a weighted-contributed model of attributing rake instituted on January 1. The ones griping about the change have made the most noise, it seems. Meanwhile, those with less of an issue with it have been relatively less conspicuous, though perhaps more persuasive.

I’m one of those recreational players who despite playing a lot of online poker never really got heavily into taking advantage of things like rakeback or other promotions sites offer to reward high frequency players. While PokerStars didn’t offer rakeback, anyway, its “VIP Stellar Rewards” program was a way for even small-timers like me to earn a few bonuses along the way. So I became somewhat familiar with it until last April when I had to leave the site with the rest of the Americans.

I played a lot more on PokerStars than Full Tilt Poker over the years, preferring the site for a variety of reasons. So I ultimately earned a lot more extras on Stars than I did on Tilt, including numerous cash bonuses. I think the only extra I ever got from FTP was to purchase an international power converter with my FTP points once. Meanwhile, I never did figure out FTP’s “Black Card” program or “Iron Man” program or any of the rest.

All of which is to say, I’d never really given a ton of thought to how rake was attributed on the various sites. I knew that my Frequent Player Points (FPPs) on Stars were awarded based on how much rake was taken from pots, but it really wasn’t until last year -- after closing my account on Stars -- that I became aware of different ways to attribute rake and thus award FPPs or the equivalent.

Since I write some for Betfair Poker, I’ve gotten to know a little bit about its poker site (even though I cannot play on it) which joined the Ongame network back in 2010. There they have something called “Ongame Essence” which is some sort of algorithm that factors playing style and amounts won or lost when calculating the attribution of rake.

“Essence” is an appropriately mysterious-sounding name for it, I think, because it is hard for players to know how many points they are earning as they play. If I understand it correctly, the model boils down to keeping the less profitable players in the game, essentially (pun intended).

I’ve read forum threads where some have objected to the fairness of giving losing players extra benefits to retain them this way. I’ve also seen the whole program characterized as “poker socialism.” But others have noted how they’ve found a lot of poor players populating the tables on Ongame sites, suggesting the model might well be indirectly benefiting good players, too.

In any case, learning about Ongame Essence made me more aware of different ways to attribute rake and award loyalty points. It’s an issue fairly unique to the online game, really, something that can be experimented with much more easily there than in live poker where comps are generally given for the amount of time one plays (e.g., $1 or $2 per hour) rather than how much rake has been taken at the games.

By changing to a weighted-contributed model of rake attribution, Stars moved away from the so-called “dealt method” which awarded every player at the table similarly regardless of their involvement in a hand. In other words, whereas before all players at a table would get credited with the same amount of VPPs for hands into which they were dealt, now only those players who actually put money into the pot -- and thus contribute to the rake taken out -- can earn any VPPs.

In other words, you can’t really earn a lot of VPPs (which get translated into FPPs according to your status on Stars, e.g., Bronze, Silver, Gold on up to SuperNova and SuperNova Elite) if you fold the majority of your hands. Thus does the change appear to some to resemble the Essence program insofar as it gives the looser players (who tend to be less skilled) more VPPs while the tighter players (who tend to be better) receive less.

There are other objections being raised, including the fact that the change will likely mean PokerStars will be awarding less FPPs overall due to the fact that fewer players will be able to achieve higher statuses (where they get more FPPs for VPPs). A common cry, then, is that the change hurts regulars/good players a lot, helps recreational/poor players a little, with the site pocketing the difference.

The complaints reached a kind of fever pitch on the forums last week, making it seem like Stars’ decision fell into the same category as the Netflix-Qwikster debacle from September, Bank of America’s new debit card fee in October, and Verizon’s attempt last week to add a fee when customers paid their bills online.

All three of those changes were swiftly reconsidered in response to customer backlash. Back in August, PartyPoker saw similar complaints arise when they changed their rake structure and also decided to go with a weighted-contributed model for rake attribution. Players protested by staging a mass “sit-out” on the site -- logging in, sitting at tables, then not playing -- and Party backed off the rake hike although did keep on with the weighted-contribution model.

Perhaps inspired by all of these other successful protests, there was an attempt by some regulars to stage their own “sit-out” on PokerStars on New Year’s Day. But the site quashed that quickly by clearing tables and locking the accounts of those trying to pull an “Occupy PokerStars.” Read more about that on PokerFuse.

“im guessing this sit out shizznit didnt go well?” asked one poster in the 2+2 thread devoted to the sit-out. “thats the general consensus,” was another’s response.

As I say, the cries of dissent have been loud, but some -- including Phil Galfond and a few other respected voices in the poker community -- are noting that the complaints aren’t necessarily warranted. Others -- including Kim of Infinite Edge -- have pointed out that Stars is in fact behind the curve a little when it comes to moving away from the dealt method of rake attribution, with only a few sites still operating that way. (Incidentally, Full Tilt had switched from the “dealt” method to the weighted-contributed model for rake attribution just prior to shutting down.)

If I were still playing on Stars, I probably would’ve have been affected a small amount by the change, likely earning FPPs at a slightly lower clip than before. But as I mentioned I doubt it would’ve mattered that much to me, given that I never put in enough volume for the loyalty bonuses to matter too greatly.

So I probably wouldn’t have been too bothered by it all were I still playing on the site. And while its hard to be certain from the rail like this, I’m less persuaded by the protestors than I am by those pointing out the change isn’t as worthy of criticism as some believe.

Page 2 of 366; or, Following the Crowd

2012-01-02T12:23:00.025-05:00

Saw this odd-looking item among the trending topics on Twitter this morning. Took me a while to figure out what it meant. And once I did I decided to go along with the crowd and name today’s post after it. Because, well, the post is sort of about just that -- following others.

It’s a new year. Spent the first day of 2012 intently concentrating on those NFL games yesterday, for a couple of reasons.

One was because I’m a football fan and there were a ton of meaningful games, all piled onto the same day as each of the 32 teams finished out their regular seasons. The NFL does a smart thing with their schedule, having all 16 of these final games being within the division, thereby increasing the likelihood that they’d have some impact on playoffs. And as often happens there were a lot of fantastic finishes all day that further amped up the excitement.

The other reason I was so focused on football was this pool I’ve mentioned off and on here, the Pauly’s Pub one in which we pick all the games all year. No spreads to worry about, but still a not insignificant challenge each week to guess winners.

I’d been hovering near the top of the leaderboard since mid-season and entered yesterday tied for first, meaning I had a shot at winning the whole shebang. So I fretted all week over the games, deciding that this final week of the season was probably the hardest to handicap given all the different factors in play regarding injuries, playoff seedings, and teams’ relative need to win.

I was conscious of one other factor, too, something I’d been thinking about pretty much every week since I’d found myself either leading or tied for the lead in the pool -- namely, what picks others were making.

There had been a number of games over the last few weeks where I had picked a team not necessarily because I thought that team would win, but because I knew everyone else near the lead was going to pick that team as well. It might sound odd, consciously not picking a team I actually thought would win. Hell, it is odd. But by not going against the crowd and picking an underdog I could just about assure myself that the game wouldn’t affect the standings no matter how it turned out, which in several such cases was the option I took.

To give one example, a week ago the Houston Texans were at the Indianapolis Colts on Thursday night. Houston had already locked up its playoff spot and was coming off a bad outing at home in which they were beaten by the Carolina Panthers, while Indy had just avoided a winless season the week before by beating Tennessee. Was one of those games where even though Houston was a decent-sized favorite -- by 5 or 6 points, I think -- there were a few reasons why Indy actually seemed like the right pick.

I remember hearing some pundits say as much that day, including Michael Wilbon making a convincing case on “Pardon the Interruption” a couple of hours prior to kickoff for why Indy would win the game. But I took Houston anyway, and as expected the entire top half of the pool’s leaderboard did the same. We took the game out of play, essentially. And when the Colts won we all thought a moment about what might have been, then moved on to consider the weekend’s games.

In poker we sometimes talk about “game theory” entering into certain decisions, although most of the time a lot of us aren’t altogether clear on what exactly game theory is. I’m not going to pretend to understand all of the ins and outs of game theory, but I do get how it involves making decisions based on what we think our opponents have chosen to do.

I can see how game theory perhaps could be said to have come into play occasionally in the pool. Especially in a situation like this, where all of us at the top of the leaderboard faced having to pick that Houston-Indy game and thus found ourselves in a spot kind of like that represented by the prisoner’s dilemma, that classic example often used to illustrate game theory.

In that example, two prisoners are suspected of a crime. Each has an opportunity either to turn the other in or remain silent. If one turns the other in and the other remains silent, the one who did the turning in goes free while the other receives a maximum sentence, say a year. If both turn each other in, both get a lesser sentence, say three months. If both remain silent, both will serve even less time in jail, say one month.

To translate the example into “Pigskin Pick’em” terms, picking Indy would have been like remaining silent here, but we were all worried about everyone else “betraying” us and picking Houston. In other words, the fact that we were sure everyone else was going to pick Houston made picking Indy seem more risky than it would have been otherwise.

So we all took Houston, thus guaranteeing the game wouldn’t matter in terms of our relative standing in the pool. We avoided the longer sentence (i.e., the risk represented by going it alone and possibly dropping a game to everyone else), but took the lesser one (i.e., picking as we assumed everyone else would and accepting that the game wouldn’t help us, but wouldn’t hurt us, either).

As one tied for the lead, I liked inching one game closer to season’s end like this without having to worry about the possibility of losing my lead. But I knew once we got to the final week it might not be such a simple thing to continue to play this way -- to try to pick games the same way I thought my closest challengers were picking -- unless I had somehow built a big enough lead and was reasonably sure I could predict my opponents’ picks with accuracy.

But neither was the case. As I mentioned above, I made it to the final week tied for first with another player, Johnnie Walker, with Dawn Summers just one game back in third. And it didn’t take me long when looking over yesterday’s schedule to realize we were probably going to go in a lot of different directions on these final games. There really were only a couple of “obvious” picks out of the 16 -- e.g., there was little doubt that Atlanta was gonna crush Tampa Bay, Philly was probably gonna whip the Redskins, etc. However, while there were some favorites here and there among the other games, most were genuine toss-ups where it wasn’t really possible to predict which way the others were going to go.

So, unlike the last several weeks, I picked all 16 this time without giving a single thought to what others were doing. And as it happened I did well with my picks, getting lucky in a few cases -- as I have all year -- and hitting 14 of them to take the sucker down. (The two I missed were picking Detroit to beat Green Bay and Oakland to beat San Diego.)

Like I say, I only have a general understanding of game theory, and realize I might be applying it a little too loosely or even incorrectly here. I also can’t help but think how worrying too much about what others are doing in a non-zero-sum game like this one is bad strategy, making me pick a team not because I think it will win but in order to avoid what appears to be a larger cost should I miss the pick.

Hard not to play it safe and follow the crowd sometimes, though. Speaking of, figured out that post title yet?

Hard-Boiled Poker 2011 Year in Review (3 of 3)

2011-12-31T12:11:00.006-05:00

The clock is ticking. Just a few hours left in 2011. Just enough time to wrap up the wrapping up and resolve to start resolving.

September

September began with still “More Full Tilt Poker Chatter.” About three weeks later came the DOJ’s amendment of the civil complaint, a moment almost as withering and disappointing as was Black Friday. Ended up writing a short sequence of posts then in response: “Full Tilt Poker a ‘Ponzi Scheme’ Says DOJ,” “What Does ‘Poker’ Mean Today?,” “Talk About Red Pros (More on the DOJ vs. Full Tilt Poker),” and “The Culture of Poker.”

A few September posts were inspired by visits to other’s blogs. I wrote “Talking Black Friday & Blame” after reading an interesting post on Bill Rini’s blog. Along similar lines, I responded to a post by Jesse May later in the month concerning Full Tilt mess and the sorry state of online poker, generally speaking, titling mine “What May Said.”

A Subject:Poker report about another possible DOJ action prompted “Another Online Poker e-MERGE-ncy.” And a tip by Brad “Otis” Willis sent me to Derrick Goold’s blog and a post about computer-generated content, after which I wrote “On ‘Roboreporting.’”

Weighed in on yet another online poker-related brouhaha in “Stop Counting Me! Bodog vs. Pokerscout.” The month then concluded with the Alderney Gambling Control Commission revoking FTP’s license, talked about in a post half-jokingly titled “Full Tilt Poker: Chapter the Last?” A day later came the possible buyout by Groupe Bernard Tapie surfaced, noted in “It’s Alive.”

October

There’d be more FTP talk in October, of course. Kind of filled the space left by the lack of online poker and the waiting around for the November Nine.

In “The Perils of Learning As You Go,” I thought a little about the situation at FTP in which a number of folks kind of stumbled into running a multi-million dollar company. Badly. Some of those who’d been jettisoned from the Full Tilt family since Black Friday started piping up, and in “From the Department of Redundancy Department: Full Tilt Poker’s Ex-Employees Speaking Out” I chronicled some of that talk before a lot of it got deleted from the forums.

A long-awaited feature about online poker in the U.S. finally appeared in The New York Times that unfortunately fuzzed over or got wrong a number of aspects of the situation and story. Tried to explain why I thought so in “NY Times Online Poker Piece Misplays Hand” and “More On Skill-Vs.-Luck.”

October marked “Five Years of the UIGEA,” that ill-conceived law that has successfully twisted the poker world into the most tangled knot imaginable. Has certainly affected just about everything to do with my experiences writing about poker, something I reflected on some more in a post “On the ‘Industry.’”

Speaking of legal machinations, there was some talk on the Hill not long after that UIGEA anniversary passed, summarized in part in “House Hearing on ‘Internet Gaming’ Shows U.S. Online Poker a Complicated Game.” As we know, nothing would ultimately happen on a federal level in 2011, although the chatter today suggests we might be seeing some so-called “intrastate” online poker happening sooner than later.

November

That said, I began November “In a Subjunctive Mood,” kind of a cynical response to all of the not-a-matter-of-if-but-when talk floating around with regard to the future of online poker.

Perhaps thankfully, the November Nine finally arrived, allowing us to focus on actual poker for a change. Leading up to the finale, I wrote about the “almost live” presentation of the final table. I also participated in the ESPN conference call a couple of days before. Then I did my own “almost live” blog of the play on November 6, added a few further “Impressions” of what happened as they played from nine to three, then added another “almost live” blog of the final day (November 8) when Pius Heinz won it all as the first German ever to take down the WSOP Main Event. Added one further post speculating about how the comprehensive coverage might have played to broader audience, titled “Making Stories That Make Sense.”

Looking back through the rest of the month’s posts, I’m seeing a wide variety of topics popping up, as reflected by post titles like “On Subscription Sites; or, A Penny for Your Thoughts,” “Strip Poker, Art, and Cultural Commentary,” and “The Rebranding of Poker.”

I lamented the passing of a great poker writer and good guy in “Barry Tanenbaum (1945-2011).” I won some small change in a couple of freerolls on Carbon Poker and looked upon the prospect of building my roll with an ironic reference to “The Chris Ferguson Challenge” (remember that?). And I wrote yet another post about poker’s embattled image in the broader culture in “Poker’s Stick-to-it-iveness.”

December

Another month, and more scandal and controversy, variously discussed in “Talkin’ Bitar, Facebook, and Bodog,” “UB Data Leak,” and “A Man-Made Monster Is On the Loose! (Black Friday).”

Bodog kind of stepped forward to try and usurp Full Tilt Poker’s rightful place as online poker’s most bewildering site in December. For more on that development, see “Bodogoholics Anonymous” and “The Bravado of Bovada.”

In “Please Be Patient” I meditated a bit about the “wait and see” attitude I realized was starting to creep into a lot of my posts -- my non-conclusive way of concluding discussions about various topics with loose ends that couldn’t be tied. And speaking of patience, a late, late night following a tourney on PokerStars and hand-for-hand reports from the latest Epic Poker League main event inspired post titled “Unlimited Hold’em” -- again kind of wondering aloud how much the detailed, comprehensive coverage of poker tourneys can possibly appeal to all but hardcore enthusiasts.

The big news from the final week of the year concerned this apparent reversal of position by the Department of Justice regarding the Wire Act, a shift which many are thinking might well herald a return of online poker in the U.S. I commented on the development in “Talkin’ the DOJ Letter and Nevada (The State of Online Poker)” and “Reports and Opinions (The DOJ Letter).”

Always a lot of interesting off-the-felt stuff to discuss in poker. Such is the game’s nature, producing a multitude of interesting characters and plots that often extend well beyond hands played and into other areas where we find ourselves interacting with one another.

Still, seemed like 2011 saw us all thinking and writing more about such extracurricular activities than in past years. Here’s hoping we all get back to the tables in 2012 and have the chance to remember why it was we all got into poker in the first place.

Thanks again to everyone for coming back here time and again to read my musings about it all. See you on the other side.

Hard-Boiled Poker 2011 Year in Review (2 of 3)

2011-12-30T12:14:00.005-05:00

Getting back to the reviewing business. Speaking of, if you visit Betfair Poker today you’ll find me taking a shot at recounting the top stories in poker for 2011, one of those I-know-I-am-forgetting-something kind of posts.

What a crazy year, really. I mean when we step back and consider how different everything seemed twelve months ago, then think back further just a bit more to those first few post-“boom” years for poker following Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP win in 2003, I can’t imagine anyone being able to come close to imagining all of the drama that has ensued since.

May

Was still fairly well mired in the Black Friday funk as May began. I wrote one post titled “We Leave the Sites, the Sites Leave a Legacy” in which I noted how PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and UltimateBet would remain influential for years to come thanks to their prominence during online poker’s early heyday. Followed that with “My Mind Is Going... I Can Feel It...” in which I talked about how I already knew whatever meager poker skills I possess were starting to erode from not playing regularly.

I then wrote what is probably my favorite post of the entire year, “2011 LAPT Lima Postscript: Plotting in Peru,” in which I told one last story from the Lima trip about Dr. Pauly, F-Train, Reinaldo Venegas, and myself enjoying one final game of cards in Lima before departing.

While I cashed out from PokerStars -- and didn’t from Full Tilt Poker -- I did manage to continue playing online. Sort of, anyway. I won a few bucks in a freeroll on Hero Poker to give me a little something with which to goof around, as I described in “The Urge to Merge; or, Zero to Hero.” In “J’Accuse! Tekintagmac at WPT Championship” I wrote about an accused cheater turning up to play the big $25K event at the Bellagio. And in “The ‘Boom’ Eight Years Later” I noted the anniversary of Moneymaker’s big win and marveled at how much has happened since, a topic I got to talk about some more a few days later when “Crashing the Two Plus Two Pokercast.”

The WSOP began, and this time I arranged to hold off going out to Vegas until about three weeks in. That meant continuing to monitor the whole Full Tilt saga, including the worrisome news that the site was having to raise capital before paying back players.

As it would happen, that was just the start of it as far as the Full Tilt fiasco was concerned.

June

We all remember Phil Ivey’s stunning announcement that not only would he be skipping the WSOP, but was suing the site he’d represented since it first opened in 2004. In “Ivey to Full Tilt Poker: The Writing’s on the Wall” and “Following the Action” I shared initial reactions to the eight-time WSOP bracelet winner going to Facebook to make public his plans.

It sounded from afar as though the mood at the WSOP was less than pleasant during those first few days of play, with a lot of anxious, “Angry Poker” being played. That same topic came up in a different way on others’ blogs, as I discussed here in “Poker in the Wild: Jesse May and Brandon Adams on Chaos & Order.”

Meanwhile, I reflected on the strange state of online poker in the U.S. in “Lost in America,” what it was like to follow the Series from home (for a change) in “WSOP and POV,” and incited a lot of interesting response and debate with what I had considered a mostly trivial observation in “The Order of the Flop.”

Just before I made my way to Vegas, I asked “How Do You Figure? WSOP Attendance Is Up.” Soon your humble scribbler made it “To Vegas, To Friends,” arriving on June 21, “The Longest Day of the Year.”

Once there I met Kevmath and James McManus, laughed at some railbird hooting at Phil Hellmuth, and was influenced by the huge “Mothership” to believe I was watching “Game Shows in the Desert.” Pretty soon the long workdays started adding up and I was “Getting Loopy.”

July

In “Coincidences” I wrote about meeting Julius Goat, who, as it turns out, doesn’t look much like a goat at all. Or a Julius, for that matter.

A post “In Which I Lose to Joe Hachem Playing Chinese Poker” is self-explanatory. I then became a bit self-reflexive about the whole reporting thing in a few posts over the next couple of weeks, such as in “Snapshot,” “I See What You Are Doing, But What Are You Thinking?,” and “A Glimpse,” the latter probably ranking as my second-favorite post of 2011.

Vera visited just before the Main Event began. “Exploding Floats and Missed Flush Draws” chronicles one of the most fun days during the time she was there. Once the ME got going I shared a few more stories, including one titled “The Lottery” regarding a player from my home state of North Carolina who won his way into the WSOP ME via the lottery, then busted on Day 1 in spectacular fashion, and another fun one about a player barely squeaking into the money, “A Short-Stacked Story.”

I met Andrew Foucault and titled the post about our meeting after his blog, “Thinking Poker.” Finally we made it down to the November Nine and our summer’s work was done, by which point we could all “Smile.” Once back home, I collected all of the WSOP posts into “A Reporter’s Notebook” for handy reference.

It was time again to ask “Now What? Online Poker in the U.S., ca. late July 2011.” It was hard not to be affected by “The Impression of Darkness” when it came to the dim prospects surrounding the game’s return. So we waited, occasionally visiting Full Tilt Poker where we were always told “Please Check Back Later.”

August

August began with another trip to South America, this time all of the way down to Punte del Este, Uruguay to help cover an LAPT event with Brad “Otis” Willis. Told about that in Pregame, Arrival, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, and Departure.

By the time I returned the Epic Poker League had finally launched, and soon I was given an opportunity to contribute a column for the Epic site about poker and pop culture called “Community Cards.”

The rest of the month was relatively uneventful, aside from a rare earthquake which we felt here on the east coast. “Was It Just Me?” was the question we all asked each other. I started “Watching the 2011 ESPN Main Event on ESPN.” And I kept wondering like everyone else about those hard-to-fathom “Full Tilt Priorities.”

Of course, when it came to Full Tilt, September would bring us a heck of a lot more to contemplate. Which we’ll remember together tomorrow.

Hard-Boiled Poker 2011 Year in Review (1 of 3)

2011-12-29T10:11:00.010-05:00

Has it really been a year already? Seems like we were just all yammering on about SuperStar Showdowns, the so-called Reid bill failing to attach itself to some last-minute legislation in 2010, and arguing whether online poker in the U.S. could or could not continue with the “status quo.”

Then again, those days also all seem far, far away. You know, back when we were still playing online poker all the time, taking part in a global community of players and lovers of the game. A time which we now must necessarily refer to as a different era.

I’m going to handle this here review business in the same fashion I’ve done in past, taking three final posts to compile references to past posts as a way of reflecting on what has been. Will cover four months per post, meaning this first one will carry us up to April 15 -- the day everything changed -- and a little after.

As I’ve been doing here since the start of 2008, I manged to post at least once each weekday during 2011. I posted on the weekends from time to time, too, such as over the summer when I again was in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker. All that added up to 280 posts thus far this year, with three more to come.

I remember in those weeks following Black Friday wondering whether or not I’d see fit to continue with the weekday posting. The fact that I’ve always been able to pepper the blog with posts about my own play -- those “on the street” posts -- has made it easier to post more frequently. It has also added a certain variety to the kinds of posts I can write, making it more fun on this end, and hopefully making things more interesting on the reader’s side, too.

But as it turned out, there was still plenty about which to write. More than plenty, really.

I don’t know yet what my plan for 2012 will be. Am seriously considering scaling back just a tad, mainly because I’m also nearing the end of a first draft of another novel and would like to devote more of my limited brain power to revising that and getting it out into the world. It’s a murder mystery, though not strictly a detective novel like Same Difference. It’s also more closely matched with my own experiences than that story was, although again, as with the first one, there’s no poker.

’Cos you know, I write enough about poker as it is.

January

This year I began teaching a college course in American Studies titled “Poker in American Film and Culture.” I shared my original syllabus here at the start of the spring semester, although I’d revise it somewhat when I taught it again in the fall and am changing a few more things this spring. I’m planning to create a permanent page here on the blog soon where I list all of the readings and films I’ve included in the course over its several iterations.

Those SuperStar Showdowns on PokerStars I mentioned did manage to intrigue us somewhat in January. You remember those, don’t you? The heads-up matches pitting Isildur1 -- who finally confirmed what we all already knew by “revealing” himself to be Viktor Blom at the PCA last January -- against a rotating cast of opponents? The Tony G match was particularly fun, as recounted here in “A Farce, a Tragedy: Tony G in the SuperStar Showdown.”

We were also somewhat “Captivated by the PCA” in January, where my friend Change100 won the Ladies Event! Meanwhile it was less simple to meet “The Challenge to Follow the Durrrr Challenges.” There also came the announcement of the new Epic Poker League in January, considered here in a post titled “A League of Their Own.”

And speaking of poker being played in a different league, all of those six-figure tourneys at the PCA and the Aussie Millions had us scratching our heads, too, and focusing “On the All-Time Money List,” players with deep pockets “Ordering Twice at the 100 Grand Bar,” and how it was all “Hard to Relate: On the $250K Aussie Millions Super High Roller.”

February

One of the most viewed posts on the site this year was one from early February titled “Beyond Belief: The Bellagio Bandit” in which I discussed a thief’s audacious -- and ultimately failed -- attempt to accumulate himself a stack of chips without going through the hassle of playing for them.

Seemed like I was writing a lot about criminals at the start of the month, such as in “Two of a Kind: W. Joseph Johnston and Russ Hamilton” (about two poker cheaters, one from the early 20th century and one from the early 21st) and “A Couple of Saab Stories” (in which I discuss David Saab -- who was arrested in early 2011 in Australia for drug trafficking -- and recall some of his antics from the 2008 WSOP).

In “Sick Bet: Griffin, Qureshi, and ‘The World of Poker Players’” I wrote about what probably turned out to be the most famous (or infamous) prop bet in poker in 2011. I joined others mid-month bidding “Farewell to The Poker Beat,” the long-running poker news podcast. And I fretted about the appearance of a new movie, Unknown, in which the title character shared my name in “Hey, That’s My Name!”

My “Poker in American Film and Culture” course was inspiring some posts about our readings, including “Breakfast and Poker” (a chapter in David Spanier’s Total Poker), “David Hayano’s Poker Faces,” and “Placing Poker in American History” (reflecting again on James McManus’s Cowboys Full and the whole idea of a course such as mine).

I was writing a bit about televised poker here and there, including commenting on “Changes at ‘High Stakes Poker’” and sharing impressions as “World Poker Tour Season 9 Debuts.” And speaking of posts written before April 15 that read a hell of a lot differently post-Black Friday, I offered one titled “Man Power: The BLUFF Power 20” reflecting on the magazine’s annual list of powerful figures in poker, a list destined to become ironic-seeming in short order.

March

Further inspired by my American Studies class, I decided to write six posts amounting to a detailed reading of Chapter 3 of Al Alvarez’s 1983 classic poker narrative, presented under the heading “Rereading The Biggest Game in Town.” Following a “Prelude” those posts discussed “Poker’s Challenge to ‘Reality,’” “Losing,” “Playing Jimmy Chagra,” “Reality and Romance,” and “America, Where Gambling is a Form of Patriotism.”

From there I took a trip to Atlantic City to help cover a WSOP Circuit event with my buddy Rich Ryan. I reported on the trip in a sequence of posts -- Prelude, Arrival, Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 -- then wrote about playing a short low limit session at Caesars AC.

My course continued forward, inspiring posts like “Hold’em’s History Makes a Good Mystery” and “Bluffing and Nothingness,” the latter talking about the great “kick a buck” scene in Cool Hand Luke, one of my all-time favorite poker scenes in film.

What else was occupying our attentions in March? Various twitter gripes involving Prahlad Friedman, Justin Bonomo, Isaac Haxton, Joe Sebok, and Jon Aguiar, discussed here in a post titled “Ambiguous Images.” A crazy-ass -- and, of course, doomed -- new high roller series to be sponsored by Full Tilt Poker, “Another Level: The Onyx Cup Series.” And increasing attention on UltimateBet and its myriad failures as well as some “who am us”-type discussion about the poker world, chronicled here in a post “On Poker Communities.”

Funny how March looks now, ain’t it? Like the last moments of a wild, out-of-control party or something, just before the cops finally arrived to break it up once and for all.

April

By now in my class we were discussing poker films in earnest, and so the month of April began with various posts sharing some thoughts inspired by those discussions, including “Experience and The Cincinnati Kid,” “California Split and First Impressions,” and “Reflecting on Rounders.”

A week before Black Friday, I wrote a post titled “Some Rambling About the Rumble (Online Poker in the U.S.)” which mentioned some of the legal machinations happening in the U.S. with regard to online poker as well as the various “joint ventures” then being struck between online poker sites and land-based casinos in the U.S. The point of the post was essentially to say that it appeared likely some major shift was about to occur with regard to online poker in the States, although I had no idea exactly what.

Would like to claim now I had some foresight of what would occur seven days later, but I obviously did not. Indeed, while I shied away from being too bullish in the April 8 post -- preferring rather just to say (vaguely) “that something is going to happen, perhaps sooner than later, on the legislative front” -- I confess that when I wrote the post my mood was generally optimistic about the situation, and not at all fearful of anything close to what would actually turn out to happen a week later.

In other words -- as the blog shows -- I was as surprised as anyone, having failed like most to read how the U.S. government would be playing its hand.

I had another travel gig in April, a return to Lima, Peru to help cover a Latin American Poker Tour event. Was paired with Dr. Pauly for this one, which in and of itself would have made the trip memorable. But it was while we were down in South America all hell broke loose back home.

I filed my reports on the LAPT Lima trip here -- Arrival, Pregame, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, and Departure -- those posts probably sounding increasingly apocalyptic as they go. After all, it was hard not to shake the sense that we were covering what seemed like the Last Poker Tournament while among the ruins in Lima. (By the way, that pic at the top of the post is Pauly playing at being a shade at Huaca Pucllana.)

I did write one quick reaction on the night of April 15 to the U.S. Department of Justice unsealing its indictment and civil complaint targeting 11 individuals and PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/UB, a post titled “Thunderstruck: The Day It All Changed for Online Poker.” And of course there’d be more posts regarding the significance of what had happened and speculating about what was to come, including “The Game of Outlaws: Poker’s Image in America,” “The Hustler, the DOJ, and Online Poker in the U.S.,” and “Bharara’s Hammer.”

By month’s end I was marking “Five Years” of Hard-Boiled Poker. In that anniversary post I wondered a little about the whole idea of continuing the blog, my mind still somewhat clouded by the heavy Black Friday fog.

But I saw my way clear to keep it going. And so the blog -- and the game -- continued.

Reports and Opinions (the DOJ Letter)

2011-12-28T17:15:00.013-05:00

Has been interesting over the last few days to peruse “mainstream” (or non-poker) outlets reporting on that memo from Assistant Attorney General Virginia A. Seitz that was made public last Friday. That was the one sharing the Department of Justice’s revised opinion regarding the Wire Act as applying to online sports betting only, a view that many have taken as possibly heralding a new era in online gambling -- including poker -- in the U.S. (See Monday’s post for more.)

The Wall Street Journal and Forbes were among the first to report the story on Friday.

In “Justice Opinion Finds Room for Online Gambling,” the WSJ summarizes the opinion and speculates briefly about its significance. The article actually quotes a lawyer who represents Absolute Poker (Dennis Ehling) speaking of the opinion as "a clear change" in the DOJ's stance toward online gambling and "a boon for a lot of operators." Of course, I can’t really see how it helps his client all that much at present.

Meanwhile on Forbes Nathan Vardi (who has been reporting on all things Black Friday and/or online poker-related for quite some time) borrowed language from the current presidential campaigns for the title of his piece: “Department of Justice Flip-Flops on Internet Gambling.” Vardi points out how as recently as 2007 the DOJ was insisting the Wire Act covered not just sports betting but other forms of gambling.

Vardi also notes how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada received a letter on Friday from another Assistant Attorney General, Ronald Weich, which clarified that “in states that ban various forms of gambling -- including Internet poker -- the Department will be able to investigate and prosecute those gambling businesses” as before, using the UIGEA and other laws to do so.

I didn’t see too much about the story over the holiday weekend, although like most I wasn’t online as often then to check. The New York Times did report on the DOJ letter on Christmas day in an article titled “Ruling by Justice Dept. Opens a Door on Online Gambling.” A few more “mainstream” articles popped up over the last couple of days which discussed the opinion some more.

On Monday the Christian Science Monitor reported on the story in "Boom in Internet gambling ahead? US policy reversal clears the way." The piece notes "gambling critics see[ing] the move as another major crack in America's moral foundation," and speculates whether Congress will further move to pass legislation aimed at curbing addiction and preventing minors from gambling online.

The CSM piece quotes I. Nelson Rose’s recent editorial about Seitz’s memo, makes the connection between the DOJ letter and Nevada's approval of online poker regs, and also notes Sands casino owner Sheldon Adelson's recent statement of opposition to online gambling.

Yesterday The Boston Herald reported on how the letter has encouraged state representative Daniel Winslow to hope Massachusetts soon gets its own online poker game going. “Rep hopes ruling puts web poker back in play.” goes the title. The article reports how the state’s treasurer is already convening a task force to look into getting the lottery up and running online.

CNN weighed in yesterday as well to opine that “Ruling increases odds for online gambling legalization”, a short piece that essentially passes along Rose’s optimistic interpretation of things. (Incidentally, a lot of these articles are calling the letter a “ruling” rather than what it is -- an “opinion.”)

MarketWatch had a piece today titled “The online poker gold rush” characterizing the DOJ letter as indicating “the Obama administration may be moving towards legalizing online poker.” The article goes on to suggest keeping an eye on Bwin-Party Digital Entertainment’s stock, referring in particular to the deal Bwin-Party struck with Boyd Gaming and MGM Resorts International a couple of months ago.

The piece concludes with writer Brett Arends cyncially noting how the real reason behind any possible shift in stance regarding online poker is the need for revenue and not a recognition of “freedom, [the] pursuit of happiness, or the absurd hypocrisy of our gambling laws.”

Those are just some of the articles I’ve been reading over the last few days on non-poker sites which are considering the possibility of online poker’s return to the U.S. Almost prefer keeping up on such things from outside the echo chamber that the usual poker news sites and forums can sometimes be -- where even a small rumble can swiftly be made to seem an earthquake.

Of course, that is not to say the non-poker folks aren’t prone to make a lot of a little, especially where online gambling is concerned.

Light Reading

2011-12-27T10:54:00.019-05:00

Vera gave me a Kindle Touch for Christmas. I like it.

When I first heard of these e-readers my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic. I’m one of those people who has lived a life fairly devoted to books and reading, enough to have developed a strong affection for page-turning and the physical pleasures of books -- their feel, their look, even the way they smell. Even the weight of a book seems meaningful to me, like the literal weight of a book somehow represents its figurative “weight” or significance, too.

Meanwhile, this Kindle weighs just 7.8 ounces. Barely anything. Feels like small picture frame. Looks like a notepad. And smells like... well, nothing.

It took me about fifty tries before I stopped touching the screen a couple of lines before reaching the bottom of the page. I never realized it before, but I suppose when reading a book I had the habit of lifting the page a moment or two early, readying to flip the moment I had read the last word. Can’t do that with the Kindle.

I’m getting used to it, though, and I think it will probably lead to my reading more contemporary fiction and nonfiction in the coming year. Would be cool to be able to read blogs on this sucker, but it doesn’t appear to be set up for that. (I can get on the web via wi-fi with it, though, if I want.)

We have Amazon Prime, too, which means I can take books out of the “Lending Library.” Like many new Kindle users, I started out by taking out Suzanne Collins’ best seller The Hunger Games, and I have read about a hundred “pages” so far.

I had actually been mildly curious about the book even before I saw it at the top of the list of suggested titles, mainly because last year we’d heard a lot about a film adaptation being shot not too far from where we live. In fact, there was a short period in there somewhere when I’d even considered going to a casting call for extras, but ultimately decided it would take too much time were I chosen to participate.

The book pretty obviously lifts its premise from Shirley Jackson’s famous New Yorker short story from 1948, “The Lottery.” Also borrows a lot from Stephen King, especially his early one The Long Walk (1979) which I once wrote about here, a book also clearly influenced by Jackson’s tale.

The story is entertaining enough so far, though. The set-up is rapidly delivered. It’s the U.S., only different. We’re a little ways into the future, following some sort of civil war that resulted in the Capitol wielding totalitarian-like dominance over the other twelve “districts.” Once a year two adolescents from each district are selected to participate in a barbaric fight-to-the-death from which only one survives (the “games” of the title).

The reason for the contest seems pretty sketchy -- they are “a yearly reminder” from the Capitol of their power over the districts and that any sort of rebellion like “the Dark Days” of the previous uprising “must never be repeated.” Erm, okay. I assume-slash-hope there is more back story to come.

The set up and story actually remind me somewhat of a freezeout multi-table tournament. I made a similar analogy in that post about The Long Walk during the WSOP Main Event a couple of years ago.

Like with an MTT, it’s a similar sort of scenario in which only one can possibly “survive.” And like in a poker tourney, the players in the “games” come to it with differing levels of preparedness and skill. There’s even talk of sponsorships perhaps unduly affecting players’ competitiveness, another detail that is making me think of the professional tourney circuit.

We’ll see where it goes, and whether or not I’ll be inspired to read more than just the first book of Collins’ trilogy.

Meanwhile, I’m seeing a lot of other cool titles for the Kindle. My novel Same Difference is in there, too, by the way, if you’re looking for something to add to your new Kindle. It’s a detective novel set in mid-1970s NYC amid the grindhouses and other sordid Times Square fare. I purposely priced the Kindle version on the low side, so if spicy murder mysteries are your thing, check it out.

I’ve had a few people tell me my book is a “page-turner,” which I’ve liked hearing. No way you can say that about the Kindle version, though.

Talkin’ the DOJ Letter and Nevada (The State of Online Poker)

2011-12-26T17:19:00.012-05:00

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend festivities. I know I enjoyed seeing family and eating more than I should. Turkey sandwiches on the menu today.

Was enough to make us forget about that burst of poker news that happened last Friday. You remember, how in the afternoon a memorandum emanating from the U.S. Department of Justice momentarily grabbed the attention of the poker world thanks to its apparent connection to the legality of online poker in the U.S. Early reactions over Twitter and on certain sites made it sound at first as though after an especially rough year for online poker players we’d all been delivered some sort of nifty early Christmas gift by our otherwise Grinchy government.

Alas, the news turned out to be not as immediately significant as those early indications suggested. Sort of like reaching in your stocking, pulling out an intriguingly-shaped package, tearing it open and discovering you’d been given a box of dental floss.

That said, it might come in handy at some point. You know, like after you finally finish with the barely-used box of floss you got last year.

The memo -- an opinion regarding proposals made in New York and Illinois having to do with state lotteries -- is dated a little over three months ago (September 20), although it only became public on Friday. In fact, the timing of the memo becoming public is quite interesting and most certainly noteworthy (more on that below). It is signed by Virginia A. Seitz, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, and you can read it in full here.

The opinion shows Seitz -- and, by extension, the DoJ as a whole -- weighing in on a question regarding those two states selling lottery tickets online to residents who might not physically be within the state at the time of purchase. The opinion essentially says such sales are okay, thanks mainly to the fact that they do not violate the Interstate Wire Act of 1961.

In asking for the opinion, the states had argued that selling state lottery tickets in this manner (over the web, across state lines but to their own residents) shouldn’t violate the Wire Act since that federal law applies only to sports betting. The states also argued that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 also allows for this sort of online gambling (i.e., lotteries).

The memo describes how in the past the DoJ’s Criminal Division had interpreted the Wire Act to cover other types of online gambling than just sports betting. Previously, the Criminal Division had taken the position that what the Wire Act prohibits “is not limited to sports wagering and can be applied to other forms of interstate gambling.” But Seitz also spells out how this particular way of reading the Wire Act “creates tension with [the] UIGEA, which appears to permit out-of-state routing of data associated with in-state lottery transactions.”

So there are a couple of different issues being discussed here. One is the DoJ’s prior view that the Wire Act applies not just to interstate online sports betting, but other kinds of interstate online gambling, too. The other is the UIGEA clarifying that it is permissible for states to sell lottery tickets online to its own residents, even if those sales involve transactions that could be said to cross state lines (i.e., could perhaps be called “interstate” transactions in a technical sense).

On the first issue, this new opinion says that the DoJ’s Criminal Division’s previous interpretation of the Wire Act was “incorrect” and that the law “prohibits only the transmission of communications related to bets or wagers on sporting events or contests.” The explanation of this differing view takes up the majority of the memo (Sections II and III, starting on page 3 and continuing to the end of the letter on page 13).

As far as the second issue is concerned -- i.e., the UIGEA’s allowance for states to sell lottery tickets online to its own residents (even if those transactions happen to cross state lines) and whether that presents some sort of conflict or “tension” with the Wire Act -- that is set aside by Seitz as not really relevant because of the way this new opinion interprets the Wire Act as not covering lotteries.

“In light of that conclusion,” writes Seitz, “we need not consider how to reconcile the Wire Act with UIGEA, because the Wire Act does not apply in this situation. Accordingly, we express no view about the proper interpretation or scope of UIGEA.”

And that is that. So what we have is a fairly notable revision of the DoJ’s earlier stance regarding the Wire Act. And while the letter ends with that note saying that no view is being expressed regarding the UIGEA, it does along the way quote a passage from the UIGEA emphasizing that individual states can pass their own laws to allow intrastate online gambling: “The UIGEA specifies that ‘unlawful Internet gambling’ does not include bets ‘initiated and received or otherwise made exclusively within a single State’... and expressly provides that ‘[t]he intermediate routing of electronic data shall not determine the location or locations in which a bet or wager is initiated, received, or otherwise made.’”

So what are we looking at here? Well, as Grange95 helpfully explains in his post “Why the DOJ’s Wire Act Opinion is No Big Deal for Online Poker,” the opinion regarding the Wire Act is significant insofar as “it removes one federal criminal statute from the weapons prosecutors can wield over online poker companies.”

This is the reason why the Poker Players Alliance quickly issued a press release last Friday in which it “applauded the ruling” represented by the DoJ’s memo. (Of course, the letter isn’t really a “ruling” but rather an “opinion,” though it is still significant for the DoJ to weigh in like this.) The PPA is excited because getting the Wire Act out of the way would certainly be helpful when it came to passing federal legislation to license and regulate online poker (à la Joe Barton’s H.R. 2366).

Also important here is the way the opinion quietly defers to states when it comes to legislating intrastate online gambling. This is what the UIGEA says, too, although any state that might have been interested in pursuing such legislation was understandably hesitant in the same way the New York and Illinois lottery folks were -- not wanting to get carried away with allowing online gambling in their state without having some sort of okay from the feds first.

In his post, Grange95 further describes what he sees the memo representing as far as individual states offering online gambling is concerned. As he points out, no state allows it just yet. But that could change. Which brings us back to the interesting timing of the memo being made public last Friday.

Recall how it was just one day before -- on Thursday -- that the Nevada Gaming Control Board approved regulations for intrastate poker. In fact, six companies have already filed applications for licenses to operate online poker sites (Bally’s Technology, Caesars Entertainment, Cantor Gaming, International Game Technology, Shuffle Master, and South Point). Check out this CardPlayer interview with a member of the NGCB for more particulars of the vote and its implications.

This approval comes about six months after the passage in May Assembly Bill No. 258 in Nevada, approved by Governor Brian Sandoval and made effective on June 10. That’s the law enacting provisions governing the licensing and operation of online poker in Nevada.

In allowing for the licensing and regulation of online poker in Nevada, A.B. 258 includes a couple of provisions designed to keep the state from appearing to step on the feds’ toes. Before any licenses can be issued, says the bill, one of two things must first occur: “(1) A federal law authorizing the specific type of interactive gaming for which the license was granted is enacted; or (2) The United States Department of Justice notifies the Board or Commission in writing that it is permissible under federal law to operate the specific type of interactive gaming for which the license was granted.”

It appears that the memo that we all learned about on Friday would be an example of that second provision. Thus is the timing of last week’s events all the more interesting. (Thanks to Scarlet Robinson for her help sorting through some of these connections.)

I’m not completely clear on the extent to which we’re looking at the possibility of not just intrastate online poker (e.g., in Nevada), but interstate online poker as well, e.g., via agreements between states that have individually legalized intrastate online poker to form agreements and start sharing player pools, but that’s certainly part of the discussion here. Grange95 talks about the possibility of multi-state consortiums a bit in his “Wire Act” post as well as in a second post “Online Poker Legalization Will Ultimately Be a State by State Fight”

My Dad just called me about an hour ago to say he saw something crawling across the bottom of the screen on CNN about online poker. Something about it being legal again, he said. I said, yeah, something is happening.

But it’s complicated. And it will take a while. A lot of behind the scenes politicking going on, and probably some state-vs.-state battles having already developed over the issue of online poker. And as far as our getting to play again goes, that is going to take some time, too. Indeed, for anything to get done, it’ll probably seem like pulling teeth.

Which reminds me, now that I’ve finished another turkey sandwich... I think I’ll go floss.

Poker and Telling Stories on TV

2011-12-23T13:50:00.008-05:00

Had some fun this week with a new Community Cards column for the Epic Poker Blog. There I’m writing about various instances of poker turning up in “mainstream” popular culture.

The other night I happened to be switching channels on the old crystal receiver and during the course of the evening ran into not one, not two, but three different shows in which poker was featured. These were otherwise non-poker shows, mind you -- one a “reality” show, another a sitcom, and the third a crime drama.

I ended up rewatching all three shows, then put together a brief discussion of how each “used” poker to help with the business of storytelling.

One idea that struck me as I wrote the column was how poker can provide show creators a kind of short cut when it comes to character development, advancing the plot, or communicating themes or messages. As anyone who has played the game well knows, poker is a story-producing activity, instantly providing contexts for characters to emerge, conflicts to occur, and ideas about human nature to be explored.

Meanwhile, television shows are about as fast-paced a variety of storytelling as there is these days. Thus does the occasional poker game come in handy to move things along more quickly in between all of the Geico commercials.

Anyhow, if you’re curious go check the column out. The shows I discussed were “Basketball Wives LA,” “30 Rock,” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.”

Got some more gift-wrapping to take care of, so I’m going to cut things short here today. Everyone enjoy them holidays, and thanks again for giving me some time now and then on this here blog.

A Break-In, a Brouhaha, and a Beginning

2011-12-22T15:36:00.003-05:00

Hugely busy these days, trying to get everything together before all the gift-giving, family-visiting, and food-stuffing gets going in earnest this weekend. As a result I haven’t had a lot of time to devote to poker -- either playing it or giving a lot of attention to the various news items surfacing in the poker world.

I did get a chance to skim through a few stories standing out from the most recent cycle, though.

Truly hated to hear about 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel being the victim of what sounds like a harrowing home invasion this week. Two men broke into his Montreal home, tied him up and physically assaulted him, threatened to kill him, then left with money and other items including his 2010 WSOP Main Event bracelet.

Of course, that bracelet is a pretty damned conspicuous item -- hard to imagine the thieves being able to pawn such a thing with ease. It sounds like they also made off with a lot of 500 Euro notes that are also rare enough to raise eyebrows, should they try to use them. Here is a report about the incident from a Canadian news outlet.

I also found myself a little distracted the last couple of days by this multi-way spat that has arisen involving I. Nelson Rose, the Poker Players Alliance, Mason Malmuth, and Rep. Joe Barton.

Barton, as we know, has proposed a federal bill designed to provide a means to license and regulate online poker in the U.S. He’s also appeared a couple of times before the House committee that’s been discussing the topic of online gambling, speaking in particular about poker and his desire to see his bill or something similar move forward.

Earlier this month, the gambling lawyer I. Nelson Rose attacked Barton in a piece for Poker Player Newspaper, primarily aiming at Barton’s previous record regarding votes to prohibit online gambling (including his votes on the UIGEA).

The Poker Players Alliance took issue with Rose’s article, sending out a rebuttal of sorts on Tuesday. And Mason Malmuth stirred the pot some more by starting a thread on Two Plus Two in which he shared the PPA’s statement, then jumped in to criticize Rose himself. Then following Rose’s appearance on QuadJacks Radio yesterday, Malmuth appeared on QJ Radio as well to further discuss Rose, Barton, and everything else.

The result is a fairly noisy, overlapping discussion touching on a number of different issues, including the prospects of Barton’s bill, Rose’s political leanings, the PPA’s effectiveness as a representative of poker players’ interests, the possible editorial stance of Poker Player Newspaper, Malmuth’s status as a firebrand, among others.

Finally -- and not unrelatedly -- today we’re learning of Nevada moving forward as expected to adopt intrastate internet gaming regulations. A vote today confirmed that Nevada has agreed to rules for allowing entities to apply for licenses to operate online poker sites.

It sounds like this vote means that should any sort of federal legislation come to pass, Nevada will be a place to go for those seeking licenses to operate sites. It also sounds like Nevada may be ready to go forward with in-state-only sites, too, but work will have to be done to ensure they'll be able to pull that off (i.e., successfully limiting play within the state's borders).

I still need to read up more on this latter item in order to grasp the particulars. Here’s a Wall Street Journal piece from yesterday describing what was voted on today, which as mentioned did pass. (EDIT [added 12/23/11]: Here is a report from PokerFuse about the Nevada vote and its possible implications.)

Definitely appears as though movement on the state level is going to be happening a lot more swiftly than on the federal level, as far as the licensing and regulating of online poker in the U.S. is concerned. And while it is hard to say just yet what the significance of today’s move in Nevada will ultimately be, it does appear to be the beginning of something.

Speaking of beginning something, these gifts aren’t gonna wrap themselves. Better go get started.

A Man-Made Monster is On the Loose! (Black Friday)

2011-12-21T17:57:00.017-05:00

We keep talking about Black Friday. And we will for a long time to come, too.

Headlines yesterday regarding Brent Beckley, one of the 11 targeted as part of the “Black Friday” indictment and civil complaint unsealed back on April 15. Beckley pleaded guilty to a couple of the counts against him -- conspiracy to violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud. Here’s the DoJ’s press release announcing Beckley’s plea.

As Haley Hintze points out over on the Kick Ass Poker blog, Beckley wasn’t exactly one of the founders of Absolute Poker -- as was his stepbrother, the also-indicted AP founder Scott Tom -- although he did come in early on and served as the director of payment processing. Beckley now likely faces up 12-18 months imprisonment (or more) while also being made to give up $300,000. His sentencing isn’t scheduled to happen until April 2012.

Stuart Hoegner (a.k.a. “Gaming Counsel”) has a new blog post over on Pokerati in which he discusses Beckley’s deal, interpreting its terms to suggest that Beckley may not be cooperating with the DoJ in quite the same way another of those indicted on “Black Friday,” the payment processor Bradley Franzen (who pleaded guilty to three counts back in May) might be.

Meanwhile, two other “Black Friday” defendants -- Chad Elie (another payment processor) and John Campos (former Vice Chairman of the Board and part owner of SunFirst Bank in Utah) are fighting the charges at this point, having filed a motion earlier this month to have the charges against them dismissed. (See Subject:Poker’s report on that motion.) That probably ain’t gonna happen, meaning that barring any deal those two will be going to trial in March 2012.

One other indicted on “Black Friday,” the payment processor Ira Rubin, was arrested back in late April in Guatemala. I believe he’s still in custody and is apparently nearing some sort of plea agreement.

It seems doubtful at present that any of the others indicted will be coming to the U.S. either to make pleas or fight the charges against them any time soon. Those include Isai Scheinberg (PokerStars founder), Paul Tate (Director of Payments for Pokerstars), Ray Bitar (CEO of TiltWare/Full Tilt Poker), Nelson Burtwick (Director of Payments for TiltWare), Scott Tom (of AP), and Ryan Lang (another payment processor), all of whom remain “offshore” like the sites with which they are associated.

Remember the separate civil complaint targeting the sites -- the one amended back in September to add more allegations against Full Tilt Poker as well as the names/accounts of Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst -- seeks the forfeiture of a big bunch of cabbage (i.e., $3 billion) but isn’t bringing criminal charges or aiming to imprison anyone.

Also worth remembering is the fact that the still-pending deal involving Group Bernard Tapie and FTP -- the one “brokered” by the DoJ (and on which the DoJ hasn’t really commented, as far as I know) -- involves dismissing those civil claims against FTP but doesn’t affect the “Black Friday” indictment or amended civil complaint.

We’re coming to the end of 2011, and thus instinctively are encouraged to look back and think about the year’s top stories in poker. Obviously Black Friday will be topping all such lists this time around.

But really, just about every poker-related story from 2011 is going to be related in some fashion to the sudden shutdown of the online game in the U.S. following the events of April 15. Probably most of them in 2012, too.

Ed Miller’s How to Read Hands at No-Limit Hold’em

2011-12-20T14:01:00.011-05:00

Not long ago I had a chance to read and review Ed Miller’s latest book-length offering, titled How to Read Hands at No-Limit Hold’em.

I’ve been a big fan of Miller’s ever since Small Stakes Hold’em (2004), a book he co-authored with David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. That book focuses on limit hold’em and for me was kind of a formative text that especially helped me understand winning LHE strategy.

That was back when I’d generally be reading a new poker strategy book every other week or so. Can’t say I’m reading as many such books today, although the truth is books aren’t being produced at quite the same clip, either, having been largely replaced by various forms of online instruction, including videos, forums, and online coaching. But if you’re like me you still like to read, and perhaps respond well to smartly conceived and well written books of strategy. If so, then Miller’s book might be worth checking out.

Like SSHE, Miller’s new title is similarly aimed at low-limit players although it definitely assumes the reader has some experience with NLHE and understands basics like starting hand strength, the importance of position, and so on.

As the title suggests, Miller hones in on one particular aspect of the game here -- i.e., hand reading. That means that while other topics like bet-sizing or bluffing or more advanced methods of “leveling” versus tough opponents are touched upon here and there, the primary focus throughout is simply learning how to profile opponents at the low-limit games, then how to put them on hand ranges that you can narrow down as a hand progresses, then playing accordingly.

A few ideas stand out for me from the book, one being the way Miller groups the players at these tables into three categories -- nits, fish, and regulars. Nits are the easiest group to read, although as Miller points out a lot of us still have trouble letting go of hands in the face of nits’ bets. “A recent survey of small stakes poker games revealed that every eight seconds, somewhere in the world a nit is holding the nuts and getting paid on the river,” jokes Miller.

Regulars are generally more crafty, but they, too, play a relatively straightforward game most of the time. Meanwhile the fish are generally the hardest to read, illustrating as they do the principle that it is hard to interpret the actions of someone who isn’t clear himself regarding why he does what he does. That said, the fish will often play a range of hands that include a lot of weak holdings, increasing the chances that a solid player who uses discretion when choosing hands to play will be ahead of them and thus profit from playing hands against them.

Another point Miller emphasizes in the book is this tendency a lot of us have to assume the worst when engaged in post-flop hand reading. In other words, when faced with an opponent who doesn’t cooperate immediately by folding to our post-flop bets, we instantly assume he’s connected with the board in the strongest possible way. In other words, we aren’t really “reading” his hand, but letting our emotion (or fear) overwhelm us into imagining bad outcomes rather than using logic and an understanding of probability to approach the situation in a more rational -- and thus profitable -- manner.

Part of this effort to minimize emotion and maximize logic involves committing to some significant mental effort to construct hand ranges and be willing to do some math to figure out how to proceed. Miller offers advice about how to develop this skill so as to be able to take some shortcuts at the table when making these calculations, and his book includes some terrific suggestions for away-from-the-table exercises for doing just that.

There’s much more to talk about -- and to like -- in Miller’s book, but rather than go on further about it I’ll just point you to my more comprehensive review over on Betfair poker. You might also check out Bill Rini’s review of How to Read Hands at No-Limit Hold’em as well.

As Bill notes, Miller kind of stands out from the crowd as far as poker strategy texts go, both for the clarity of his style and the originality of his thinking. I agree with Bill that if you are looking for a new NLHE strategy book to energize your thinking about the game -- and especially if you want to work on the art-slash-science of constructing hand ranges and reading opponents’ holdings -- Miller’s new title is a good one for getting back into reading and thinking about poker.

Unlimited Hold’em

2011-12-19T05:31:00.001-05:00

Was up late last night, following both the finale of the third Epic Poker League Main Event and the $10,300 buy-in “High Roller” event on PokerStars.

The latter was part of the 10th Anniversary festivities over on Stars, running alongside the big Sunday Million that drew over 62,000 players and sported a whopping $12,423,200 prize pool. Meanwhile, the High Roller attracted 187 players, making for a $1.87 million prize pool over there, well above the event’s $500,000 guarantee.

The High Roller event featured deep starting stacks (200 big blinds) and 30-minute levels. Meanwhile, the last day of the Epic Poker League “mix max” event also found the final players super-deep, averaging nearly 167 BBs to start. On Sunday they played down from five to two players -- Andrew Lichtenberger and Chris Klodnicki -- at which point those two then played a best-of-three heads-up match.

They carried their stacks over to heads-up from when Joe Tehan busted in third, which meant Klodnicki started with 3.47 million and Lichtenberger 1.526 million. The blinds were just 6,000/12,000 when they began, meaning Klodnicki had almost 290 BBs and Lichtenberger a little more than 127 BBs.

Klodnicki beat Lichtenberger in their first match, taking more than three-and-a-half hours to do so. And then they reset the stacks and rolled back the blinds and did it all over again.

Such deep stacks of course allowed for more “play” at the end of these tournaments, which meant players were able to engage in a lot more post-flop challenges of one another. Most definitely got the sense in both tourneys that skill was at a premium, particularly at the very end.

I’d spent the better part of the day watching NFL football, enjoying the constant action of that game which also requires a great deal of skill but for which luck plays a role, too. As I followed the much more serene-seeming poker through the night, I couldn’t help but think what a tough sell these tourneys really were as “spectator sports.”

Kind of a paradox, I suppose, that in order to show most definitively the skill poker can require, one has to slow down the game to a point where only the most dedicated players or fans would be willing to watch.

I noticed a railbird at one point in the High Roller tournament jokingly refer to the game they were playing as “unlimited hold’em.” As the tourney dragged on into the wee hours of the morning, it did start to seem like it could go on and on and on -- as though not only was there no limit on the betting, but no limit on the amount of time they were willing to take to decide the sucker.

Eventually ends would come for both the High Roller and Epic Poker League events. And I guess both in a way demonstrated how the appeal of poker played at its highest level is certainly not unlimited.

Please Be Patient

2011-12-16T12:05:00.008-05:00

Just a couple of weeks left in 2011. Every other year I’ve kept this blog, this would be the time of year I’d be devoting at least part of my mental energy -- as well as a post or three -- to thoughts of how my online poker ledger was going to add up for the year.

Can’t really say that’s the case this time around.

Since the spring I’ve continued to play for small amounts with money won in freerolls on a couple of sites, but there hasn’t been any serious attention paid to sessions or results -- nor the occasional withdrawals -- that have punctuated previous years.

I suppose I could say -- without even looking up the figures -- that 2011 is going to result in a net positive year for me as far as playing online poker goes. I say that because I remember exactly what I was able to withdraw from PokerStars back in early May, and I know that amount was greater than what I still have sitting over in my Full Tilt Poker account. Or at least what the number is that represents what I should have there.

I wonder how other players will be calculating their FTP money here at year’s end?

The news this week has been that the site’s deal with Groupe Bernard Tapie has moved a step closer to completion, which those of us with money still stuck on Tilt all hope represents another step toward the eventual return of our funds.

According to Subject:Poker, Full Tilt Poker’s ownership voted and agreed to the further transfer of assets to the Tapie group. But several more steps have to be taken before the deal will be completed and the U.S. Department of Justice takes over the business of getting the $150 million or so back to the U.S. players. (The Tapie group will assume responsibility for everyone else.) For more on where things stand at present, see S:P.

Pretty clear that 2011 is going to end without anyone getting back into their Full Tilt Poker accounts. Think back to the afternoon of Friday, April 15. Could you have imagined?

It took me a long time, but I finally removed the FTP icon from my “dock” on my Mac laptop short while back. Every now and then I’d accidentally click the sucker, then watch it enthusiastically bounce back and forth while the program failed to load.

I’d stare at the familiar message that I was “just a few seconds away from playing the most exciting poker games anywhere online,” smirk a little at that added directive to “please be patient,” then cancel the operation.

I enjoyed Pauly’s recent post on Tao of Poker, “Zombie Poker Apocalypse,” in which he meditates on the current status of poker and poker-themed entertainment, specifically televised poker. The scene Pauly describes reminds me of that stupid, bouncing icon... there’s movement, but no life.

I realized yesterday that I’m on a streak of ending posts with “we’ll see”-type statements. Such is the general state of things at the moment, poker-wise, I suppose.

We’re in a holding pattern. Necessarily waiting. For our money. For our game.

Epic Returns

2011-12-15T12:07:00.012-05:00

No, that title isn’t referring to my having realized any sort of massive ROI. Rather the latest Epic Poker League series is underway, about three months after the last one concluded.

This is the third tourney series so far of the EPL’s first season. A fourth will happen late Jan.-early Feb. of next year, followed directly by the Season One Championship in which the top 27 money winners in the four “regular season” Main Events will play in a $1 million two-day freeroll.

The third EPL Main Event (which kicked off yesterday) adopts an unusual format that recalls a couple of those “mix-max” or “split format” events from the most recent World Series of Poker Europe in Cannes, France.

If you recall, the €3,200 no-limit hold’em shootout Event No. 4 at the WSOPE (won by Tristan Wade) had players playing eight- to ten-handed on the first day, three-handed on the second, then ten-handed for the final table. Then Event No. 5, a €10,400 buy-in event won by Michael Mizrachi, had them play a mix of multi-table tournament poker and heads-up. For that one, Days 1 and 2 were played as an MTT, nine-handed the first day then six-handed the next. Then from Day 3 onward the remaining 16 players played a heads-up tourney, although they carried forward the chips they’d won from the first two days, making for uneven starting stacks for the remaining matches.

The new EPL event kind of resembles that latter WSOPE event in that it begins as an MTT then becomes a heads-up tourney at the very end. Days 1 through 4 are played as a multi-table tournament, eight-handed on the first day, then seven-handed on Day 2, then six-handed on Day 3 (or on Day 2 if they get to 36 players), then four-handed on Day 4 when they will play down to five players.

Those last five will return on Day 5 and play down to two, then those two will play best two-out-of-three heads-up, starting out the first two matches with whatever stacks they had when the third-place player was knocked out. If those two make it to a third match, they’ll reset the stacks to even for the decider. (Make sense?)

Exactly 100 players came out for this third EPL $20,000 buy-in Main Event, up from the 97 who played the second Main Event (an eight-handed MTT, won by Mike McDonald) though less than the 137 who played the first (a six-handed MTT, won by David “Chino” Rheem). Erik Seidel -- surprise, surprise -- was the overnight leader among the 61 who survived to today’s Day 2. (See updates here.)

Not sure what the format will be for the fourth EPL Main Event. It had been originally planned as a “mix max” event (and #3 as a heads-up only event), but I imagine that’s being changed. Probably will end up a straightforward MTT, if I had to guess. (EDIT [added 6:45 p.m.]: Sounds like the fourth one will be a regular nine-handed MTT, but with a shot clock! Thanks, Kevmath, for pointing me to the info.)

Neither am I sure how exactly to interpret the turnout for this week’s Main Event. Or even the relationship between turnouts and the overall health and future of the Epic Poker League. If there had been a huge drop off from the second event, that certainly would’ve been meaningful. But holding steady is a less obvious indicator of where things stand, I think.

The partnering of Epic with USA Today and Big Lead Sports announced a couple of weeks ago -- a move that seems part of that general effort by the EPL to try to move poker more into the mainstream -- is also suggestive of future machinations, though again it’s hard to say what exactly it all signifies.

Meanwhile, the finale of this third EPL Main Event will once again necessarily involve several of poker’s biggest names. Kind of expect it won’t be long before the EPL makes the move others have made to offer live streaming coverage of its final tables, although I don’t believe there is any plan for such this time around. Perhaps for the big freeroll in February?

I know I’d be curious to see that. As I am about where the EPL might be headed, generally speaking.

The Bravado of Bovada

2011-12-14T16:56:00.026-05:00

This morning Bodog -- the site where even Americans can still play online poker for real money as well as bet on sports, horse racing, and play other casino games -- shifted its American customers over to a new site awkwardly called “Bovada.”

The new site appears to feature all of the same software and design as the Bodog site, with only the URL and name differing. According to the site’s welcome page, the new name was chosen deliberately to begin with the same letters as Bodog so as to help users “find us in your browser for the next few weeks.”

The site has an odd “.lv” extension (a Latvian domain), which it explains is meant to “remind our players of Las Vegas, the number one gambling destination in the U.S.” And, of course, the made-up word “Bovada” sounds a little like Nevada as well, thus perhaps furthering the association.

While the rest of the world continues to play and gamble on Bodog, then, we Americans are now being invited to visit Bovada, a kind of mythical destination where I suppose we are to believe U.S. laws cannot reach.

Way back when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was first signed into law and the possible fate of U.S.-facing online poker sites was first being discussed, nearly everyone held up Bodog as the least likely to survive in the U.S. going forward. Remember? The fact that Bodog offered other gambling games, especially sports betting, alongside poker, caused most in the poker world to believe the site couldn’t possibly be long for the U.S. post-UIGEA.

Some of us also recall Calvin Ayre (who founded Bodog back in 2004) brazenly appearing on the cover of Forbes magazine and being featured in a story whose title -- “Catch Me If You Can” -- paraphrased the entrepreneur’s attitude toward the U.S. Department of Justice. That, too, made it look like Ayre was just asking for trouble, which in a few short months would potentially arrive in the form of the UIGEA.

Lots of talk at the time by poker people over whether or not our favorite game was in fact covered under the UIGEA’s original definition of a “bet or wager” as “the staking or risking by any person of something of value upon the outcome of a contest of others, a sporting event, or a game subject to chance.” However one came down on that one -- then or now -- all tended to agree that what Bodog was doing by offering sports betting along with other games pretty obviously subject to chance must make them a more obvious target.

But somehow they perservered. On Black Friday, when we first scanned the list of sites targeted -- PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and UltimateBet -- many were surprised Bodog had escaped being included in that list.

Sorta seems like ever since I first opened an account on Bodog way back in late 2006 they’ve been on the move.

It was right about the time I first started playing on Bodog that the site announced it was planning to scale back its advertising in the U.S. This was back during that brief period when 2006 WSOP Main Event champion Jamie Gold was representing Bodog, a relationship fated to last only a short time.

I wrote Bodog at the time asking about the decision regarding advertising and whether they like Party and others were about to leave hte U.S. They wrote back to confirm their plans while also underscoring their stance that the site was “completely legal” and a “legitimate business.”

Then a few months later, in a somewhat less legitimate-seeming turn, Bodog temporarily lost their domain. Remember in the summer of 2007 when they suddenly went offline for half a day when they lost the dot-com thanks to some legal legerdemain by an enterprising web designer who’d sued them for patent infringement? They were NewBodog.com for a short while after that, then BodogLife.com, then they finally got their dot-com back.

I know Bodog didn’t take bets from Canadians for a long time, then opened up in 2009 via bodog.ca site. Last May -- after Black Friday -- Bodog finally got rid of the dot-com site altogether, moving the operation entirely over to bodog.eu. (The Canadian site now redirects there, too, I believe.)

It wasn’t long after that (in July), that we heard about this move to eliminate the Bodog brand in the U.S. Sounded at first like Bodog was pulling out of America altogether, but we soon came to understand that wasn’t the case.

Then in September the site removed full tables from their lobby to try to thwart PokerScout and anyone else tracking what was happening on the site. Didn’t exactly work as planned, but the change did make it less simple for most of us to know what exactly was happening on the site.

And, of course, a couple of weeks ago came the move to wholly anonymous play at the poker tables, a move accompanied by a variety of stated motives but which also obviously makes it more difficult for observers to observe.

Yes, Bodog -- or Bovada -- is still here.

I’ve long stopped playing on the site. And with anonymous tables, I can’t say I’m at all enthused about ever hopping back on there again. Can’t help but continue to be intrigued by the site having endured in the U.S. to this point, though. And even if I’m not a participating citizen of Bovada, I expect I’ll still be monitoring its diplomatically difficult co-existence within American borders.

Online Poker’s Hot Stove League

2011-12-13T11:10:00.015-05:00

“When might Americans, who invented the freakin’ game in the first place, be able to play it again on the Internet?”

So writes James McManus at the conclusion of his new piece over on Grantland, “Full Tilt Boogie: The UIGEA and You.” In his lengthy feature McManus recounts the last eight months or so of online poker in the United States -- including the whole Full Tilt fiasco -- a prelude, it appears, to a series of articles he’ll be writing for the site.

Some of us Yanks are still playing online poker, actually. Sort of.

I’ve mentioned here how I’ve won some freerolls on Hero Poker and Carbon Poker, thereby earning myself some modest real money rolls on both sites. Had sort of an interesting series of exchanges with support over at Hero Poker over the last week or so which I thought I’d share, if only to pass along an actual anecdote related to playing online poker. (Remember when we used to share those all the time?)

One aspect of Hero I have liked is the fairly frequent awarding of tickets for sit-n-gos and tourneys (all micro stuff) as well as the occasional bonus. The more you play, the higher you rise through the various levels they have on the site (Farmer, Recruit, Barbarian, etc.), and I believe you earn some sort of small something each step of the way. (Here’s a page describing it all, if you’re curious.)

In late November I tripped over one of the levels and was given both a play-through bonus worth $15 (i.e., I had to play a certain amount to earn it) and an instant bonus of $10. As is my custom, I recorded the instant bonus in my daily ledger along with other info about my play for that day, and pretty much forgot about it.

About two weeks later I played a short session and won a few bucks, then when I went to record my balance noticed I was down a little from when I started. The discrepancy was exactly $10. Not much, although unfortunately ten bucks represents a decent percentage of my roll at the site.

So I sent an email to support. Hero is a small site, but they do quite well getting back to you quickly whenever anything arises. Sometimes, though, the promptness of the replies aren’t exactly matched by clarity. I got a quick response which said the money was deducted “because on November 23rd you were credited with an instant cash bonus twice... by mistake.”

Fine, I thought. Kind of uncool just to take money out of my account without any sort of heads-up, but at least I understood why. But when I looked back at my records -- as well as the “Player Admin” they have for you there at Hero (a fairly handy feature) -- I could see on 11/23 that I’d only gotten the bonus once.

To make a long story short, we ended up exchanging several more emails before someone was finally able to explain that I’d gotten an instant bonus for $10 way back in early September and the latter one on 11/23 was awarded erroneously. Also, there apparently had been a bulk email sent out regarding the error and correction, but I had never received it.

Along the way one of the emails had instructed me both to “disregard the email” I had just been sent as well as to “please just use the very last email.” In the same sentence. Like I say, the responses come in a timely fashion, though they aren’t always as lucid as one would like.

All of it reminded me of PokerStars and how they, too, always rapidly responded to any support requests. And clearly, too. I also thought about how they’d handle a situation such as this one -- how Stars would likely allow me to keep an erroneously awarded bonus. But Hero is a small outfit and if they did issue even small bonuses to all of their players by mistake, I can see how they wouldn’t be able to handle the loss as easily as Stars might.

The future of these relatively small U.S.-facing sites has to be tenuous, I’d think, at least as far as their continuing to serve Americans goes. That said, I assume a number of these sites (Hero included) probably couldn’t really continue without the continuing to serve the U.S. -- the only part of the world where they currently can compete and Stars cannot.

We’re definitely the minor leagues here in the U.S. right now as far as online poker is concerned... not even Single-A ball, but Rookie league. Worldwide, PokerStars is the only big league left. In fact, “big” isn’t a big enough word for them, given their overwhelming dominance of the market at the moment. Party, iPoker, Ongame, and 888 we might call Double-A, but then so are Stars’ own French- and Italian-only sites. Then come the Merge guys, Bodog, Cake, and the rest.

I suppose the baseball analogy sprang to mind here because like poker, baseball is an American game. McManus’s piece and particularly his anti-UIGEA arguments are further tempting me to refer to our online poker game as currently mired in the “Bush leagues” and pun on the name of the person who signed the UIGEA into law.

But while that action was certainly central to the story of online poker’s fall in the U.S., it was hardly the only contributor. Really, the better baseball metaphor for online poker would be to say we’re amid a kind of “hot stove league” -- i.e., an off-season during which we are having to be patient while awaiting the return of our favorite game.

Will be interested to see where McManus goes with his Grantland articles. And, of course, what will happen with online poker in the U.S., too.

On Second Thoughts

2011-12-12T13:22:00.011-05:00

Was a fun day of football yesterday. Did well on picks, including benefiting from all three of those miracudiculous finishes that saw the Houston Texans, Denver Broncos, and New York Giants each pull out victories when defeat seemed all but certain.

I’ve mentioned before how the pool I’m in is a simple pick’em pool -- i.e., we pick winners only, not fretting about the spread. Which means that every week everybody’s picking mighty Green Bay to win and poor Indy to lose. But there are usually a handful of games in which our little group of pigskin prophets part from one another.

With the Dallas-New York game, I’d gone back and forth a few times on Sunday morning before finally selecting the Giants. I figured even though they’d lost four straight, three of those games were against top tier teams (49ers, Packers, Saints). Was also counting on NYG being in do-or-die mode as a loss would pretty much dash their playoff hopes for good.

So I submitted the pick before lunch, and mentioned to Vera Valmore something about being less than confident about it.

“You can always change it,” she said with a grin, knowing that I have a strict policy against such second guessing. I laughed in acknowledgement of her jokey challenge to my resolve.

Funny thing, though... just minutes before the game began last night, I was possessed with an urge to switch the pick. Which, as Vera had indicated, is possible right up until the opening kickoff.

But I resisted. And when the Giants were down 12 with five minutes to go, I again mostly resisted second guessing my policy regarding second guessing, having resigned myself to missing the pick. Then came one touchdown. And another. And a two-point conversion and a blocked field goal.

And then I felt like a genius. You know, in the got-all-my-chips-in-as-a-huge-dog-and-hit-like-a-luckbox sort of way.

I think that for most of us second guessing oneself is almost unavoidable. And if we engage in pursuits like poker or trying to pick winners of football games, we necessarily give ourselves repeated tests of self-confidence to go along with the analytical challenges already present in these tasks.

People who second guess themselves a lot often also worry about not having control over their own lives. Meanwhile, participating in any gambling game like poker or sports betting also necessarily invites a kind of chance element into one’s life that requires us to recognize and accept that there are events that will affect us that we simply cannot do anything about.

All of which is to say that these gambling games perhaps answer some sort of need a lot of us have to test ourselves -- to see how well we can withstand the inevitable second guessing which the games invite upon us.

Then again, maybe they don’t.

In Which I Nearly Get Run Over on Memory Lane

2011-12-09T13:35:00.013-05:00

In his weekly updates regarding our football pool, our friend Dr. Pauly has started referring to me as “the absent-minded professor.” He doesn’t know it, but by alluding to the 1961 Disney film in which Double Indemnity star Fred MacMurray took a turn as the flubber-inventing title character, Pauly is in fact highlighting what is essentially my biggest fear in the pool -- to forget to submit my picks.

I’m actually quite organized, hardly the absent-minded type, although this week hasn’t been the greatest for me. I could blame it on the end of the semester -- always a very distracting time for teachers -- but now that I’m teaching just a single class that really isn’t much of an excuse.

There have been a couple of uncharacteristic slip-ups this week, I’m sorry to report. Small memory lapses serving to remind that perfection eludes us all. The most comical of these by far happened last night. Indeed, it was almost as slapsticky as some of the scenes in The Absent-Minded Professor.

Vera Valmore and I own a big Ford diesel truck which she sometimes uses to pull horse trailers. Not long ago I we were shuttling vehicles back and forth from the barn to our house and the truck wound up at home rather than the barn where it normally sits parked. So last night while Vera was at the barn riding I drove the truck out with the plan to leave it there, and she would drive us both back.

I had to transfer some stuff from another car to the truck while also remembering to take Vera her extra truck key and a few other items from the house. To summarize, there were a handful of things I needed to keep in mind in preparing for the trip, and somehow I managed to remember them all.

Except one, that is.

In transferring items to and from vehicles I occasionally set a few on the hood of the truck rather than on the seat. In retrospect, that was not a recommended choice.

I initially drove out, got halfway down the road heading toward the interstate, then realized I’d left the key for Vera on the counter. Drove back, secured the key, then left again, traveling about a mile or so to the interstate.

I had just gotten onto the ramp downward to the highway when I noticed an item flying off the hood of the truck. My wallet! Don’t ask me why I had thought it needful to set my wallet there during all of my fiddling, because I have no idea myself. Incredibly it had remained put during that initial extra trip around the block as well as the mile that led up to my picking up speed to merge onto the interstate.

Luckily there was some shoulder available on the side of the ramp, and I pulled over quickly and got out. It was just about dusk, but there was still enough light for me to see my wallet sitting in the middle of the road a few dozen yards back. Cars were driving over it, and I had to wait for them to pass before dashing out into the road to retrieve the sucker.

I picked it up to see all of the cards had fallen out -- credit and debit cards, library cards, my health insurance card, my voting registration card, all of it. Even my Total Rewards card, haha. I looked around to see a few scattered on the pavement, and a few more among the fallen leaves that lined each side of the road.

The next ten minutes were spent dashing up and down and back and forth, grabbing cards and dodging cars, trying desperately to keep my head clear and not succumb entirely to the absurdity of the situation. It was getting darker, and fast. I had recovered what seemed like all of my cards except one. Unfortunately it was a debit card, one of the few among the bunch I really didn’t want to leave lying somewhere on the road.

Finally I saw what looked like my debit card sitting among some leaves. But it was only an empty cigarette pack. Then I thought I saw it back in the road, but that was just my similarly-colored savings card from the grocery store.

At last I spotted the debit card back up the road where the wallet had first taken flight. I waited for a couple more cars to pass, ran out and grabbed it, jogged back down to the truck, and hopped back into the driver’s seat.

As I drove I thought briefly of that “data leak” of information regarding UltimateBet customers from last week (discussed here). If I hadn’t managed to recover all of my cards, I could’ve replaced them, sure. But I’d have still worried vaguely about some of my personal information getting literally spilled about.

Anyhow, everything seems to be back where it belongs today. As far as I can remember, anyway.

Meanwhile, I think I might just go ahead and make my Sunday NFL picks right now.

Five-Suited Poker

2011-12-08T12:32:00.018-05:00

The history of playing cards dates way, way back, well before anything resembling poker.

Most historians point to east Asia to the Korean peninsula and China for early references to cards, going all of the way back to the seventh and eighth centuries to find cards made from strips of silk. By the year 1000 and after come more frequent references to cards and card games, particularly in China (where paper was invented). It would take another few hundred years -- until the late 14th century or so -- before cards began turning up in Europe.

By the time cards came to Europe there were already examples of 52-card decks, although there were also some decks of 36 cards, 40 cards, and other amounts. One 52-card deck that turned up in Italy by way of Persia featured four suits -- coins, cups, scimitars, and polo sticks. As cards spread across Europe came the introduction of court figures (kings, queens, knaves) as well as the four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) printed in red and black.

All of that happened by the late 15th century or so, meaning when it comes to playing cards, games with 52 cards and the four suits with which we are familiar has pretty much been the norm for the entire modern era.

Thus a lot of precursors to poker like mus (Spain), poch (Germany), primiera (Italy), brag (England), and poque (France) were usually played with similar decks, as was poker when it first came about in the early 19th century. Some of those games featured smaller decks (several with just 40 cards), but all were played with four suits. (One other game considered an ancestor of poker, the Persian game As nas, was actually played with a 25-card deck with five suits.)

Subsequently, just about all variants of poker have been played with four suits during the two centuries the game has been around, but attempts have been made now and then to introduce a fifth suit. Probably the most notable of these attempts occurred in the late 1930s when a five-suited, 65-card deck was briefly introduced.

In the United States, the fifth suit -- “eagles” -- was printed in green. Around the same time in England there were five-suited decks produced with the fifth suit printed in blue and called “royals.”

In truth, the five-suited decks were not really made for poker but rather for bridge, which by the late 1930s was enjoying a major boom in popularity in the U.S. According to “As They Saw It” (a neat website that compiles information from news articles about various 20th-century topics), there were something between 12 and 15 million bridge players in America at this time. Worldwide the game had taken off in a big way, too, with the World Bridge Olympic in 1938 attracting nearly 200,000 players from 57 different countries.

Much as we’ve seen happen in poker over the last decade with the introduction of new games coming in the wake of the explosion in popularity that has occurred, the bridge boom also inspired some attempts at innovation, including the idea of five-suited bridge. Apparently the idea originated in Austria, moved over to England, then made it to the U.S.

It sounds like the introduction of five-suited bridge got a lot of publicity in the U.S. with many wanting to get the new decks and give it a shot. The game only remained in the spotlight for a short while, however, as the five-suited game proved too cumbersome. The contract bridge master Ely Culbertson pronounced at the time that “the average player has not yet thoroughly learned how to play with four suits, let alone five,” correctly signaling that five-suited bridge would likely be just a fad.

Card manufacturers quickly stopped producing the five-suited decks, but a few found their way into poker games here and there, which I imagine led to some interesting variations. Indeed, you can see in this picture there was included in the five-suited decks a card indicating hand rankings for “five suit poker,” with a five-of-a-kind beating a straight flush.

Today there is a company called Stardeck that continues to produce five-suited decks (their fifth suit is “stars”). Their website has some interesting discussion of how the fifth suit comes into play in traditional poker games as well as some other historical anecdotes about five-suited card games, if you are curious to read more.

In his 1945 Pocketbook of Games, Albert Morehead made mention of the already scarce five-suited decks, noting how “a five-suit bridge game was widely played for some months, but was soon forgotten.” Morehead also opines that “five-suit poker made a better game, but can seldom be played today because the cards are no longer generally on sale.”

Morehead doesn’t back up that claim with any evidence to support why five-suited poker was better, although if you hunt around the Stardeck site you’ll see “testimonials” regarding five-suited card games, one of which mentions how the larger deck makes it possible to accommodate more players.

Fun to think about the existence of a fifth suit, even in theory. In fact it’s probably more fun in theory than in practice, although never having played with such a deck I can’t say for certain what it feels like to draw an eagle flush.

Poker’s Not-So-Square Deal

2011-12-07T16:12:00.017-05:00

President Barack Obama yesterday delivered an address on the economy in Osawatomie, Kansas. Or campaign speech, if you like. We are, after all, already amid another presidential campaign, even if the election is nearly a year away.

This isn’t a political blog and so I’m not alluding to Obama’s speech for any reason other than to evoke an idea about poker -- specifically about the “skill-vs.-luck” argument that often comes up in discussions about legislating the game.

Much of the reporting on the speech today is pointing to parallels between a few of Obama’s talking points and ideas advanced by Theodore Roosevelt in a famous speech also delivered in Osawatomie in 1910.

Roosevelt became president when William McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, just a few months into McKinley’s second term. TR was reelected in 1904, then chose not to run again in 1908. However, TR came back to compete for the 1912 election, and the Osawatomie speech was part of that effort. (TR would not be elected again, as Woodrow Wilson became the nation’s 28th president.)

This was the speech in which TR argued that government needed first and foremost to protect American workers’ ability to earn a living and make their own way without being exploited by corrupt business practices. The speech is known especially for introducing TR’s “New Nationalism” idea which dovetailed with the “Square Deal” agenda he had pursued when president.

It was that assurance of a “Square Deal” -- a term borrowed from poker -- that most commenting on Obama’s speech are highlighting today. One sound bite from Obama’s speech getting a lot of play goes as follows:

“I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them.”

There are a lot of ways we could talk about this idea of everyone getting “a fair shot” and “play[ing] by the same rules” in the context of poker. But I have just one thought in mind I wanted to throw out that kind of connects with this “square deal” talk.

Many of those who defend poker do so by highlighting its skill component, something that is said to distinguish the game in a meaningful way from other purely chance-based gambles like the lottery or roulette or what have you. For some, this makes poker worthy of being legalized as a game not unlike sports or other competitions in which players test their skills against one another.

A few who make this argument get carried away and try to minimize or ignore entirely the fact that chance does play a role in poker. Poker is certainly a form of gambling, but one in which various skills can be employed which often help one overcome the game’s chance element and promote the more-skilled players ahead of those with less ability.

It occurred to me recently how the very fact that poker does reward the skillful -- that it isn’t like just picking a number and hoping it hits -- might make some people less comfortable with it than they are with pure chance games like the lottery.

With the lottery, there’s no disputing that everyone has a “fair shot” (relative to one another, anyway). And unless the operation of the lottery is crooked, everyone “plays by the same rules,” too. But in poker, some really are better equipped than others to succeed. It’s a game that divides us, that highlights our differences. The fact is, whenever we sit down at a table it is very likely some are going to have an advantage over others.

Those of us who play poker understand how players come to gain that advantage -- i.e., by study, by experience, by work. Sure, you could say we all had a “fair shot” at some previous point, but once we’ve taken a seat it soon becomes clear that some have an edge over others.

That’s never the case with the lottery. We’re all equally equipped there.

I wonder if perhaps some percentage of non-players who are made uncomfortable by poker dislike it even more because it requires skill -- that it isn’t a game in which anyone can play and have a “fair shot.” And since it involves money and players betting on themselves and against others -- and, well, that chance element in there complicating things, too -- poker thus becomes all the more difficult for some to tolerate.

I’ve probably unnecessarily complicated my point with the Obama/Roosevelt references, but I hope the idea is coming through. Obviously some oppose poker because they view it as gambling -- they object to poker just as they object to roulette or slots or other gambling games (on moral grounds, or for other reasons).

But could it be there are others who object to poker because it isn’t enough like those other games? People to whom talk of poker’s skill component in fact makes them less comfortable with the idea of legally allowing the game? People who fear poker because, well, they realize it isn’t necessarily a “square deal” in the way the lottery is (even if the “deal” the lottery offers is equally bad to all)?

Seems like this could be an issue -- not the biggest one, but an issue -- with which proponents of poker might have to... erm... deal.

Bodogoholics Anonymous

2011-12-06T16:05:00.009-05:00

“If you paid me to sit for a year and think only of ways to make online poker less good, I doubt I could improve upon ‘anonymous tables.’”

So tweeted @JuliusGoat yesterday, responding to Bodog’s sudden move to “anonymous tables” last week and the subsequent brouhaha. As the respected author of the award-avoiding Stupid/System, I trust Mr. Goat’s judgment here.

Because the man definitely knows stupid.

I’ve seen a number of comments over the last few days regarding the switch. The forum posters seem to hate-hate-HATE it. And if what they are saying is to be believed, many who played on the site are talking about withdrawing their funds and never going back. You know, like dedicated drinkers suddenly swearing off the stuff for good.

I also saw that the revelation yesterday over on the HH Smithy blog that the new Bodog tables aren’t in fact as anonymous as they seem. A site that sells hand histories, the hackersmiths over at HH Smithy have managed to show how it is still possible to identify individual players and in fact find out their Bodog account numbers, too.

Here’s the video, if you haven’t seen it:

Thus while Bodog advertises their new tables as completely anonymous, that’s apparently not exactly the case. Of course, even if they were anonymous, fears about cheating and especially collusion should remain high for anyone playing on the site.

Not only are there no usernames or avatars with which to identify opponents, player notes have been disabled, too. There is no way to see mucked cards anymore. And hand histories -- never simple to deal with on the site -- cannot be easily saved, either, which to me would be the biggest reason to steer clear.

When playing online poker -- or making any sort of real money transaction online -- one simply has to be able to have some sort of record of the transaction. There are many reasons why this is so, including being able to consult such records should any dispute arise. For example here, should one have suspicions of collusion, it would be difficult if not impossible to build a case without any concrete evidence from hands played.

In its press release last week announcing the move to “anonymous tables,” Bodog described the change as part of the effort to implement a “Recreational Poker Model” on Bodog -- i.e., a place to play poker for fun where one needn’t worry about opponents gathering data on your play, incorporating that data in Hold’em Manager or PokerTracker, and using HUDs against you.

As the press release says, the new model “offers all players of all abilities the fairest place to play.”

(Remember when Bodog used to be the site where players were invited to “play hard” -- that hypermasculine ad campaign that made playing poker on the site sound just a wee bit like dropping Viagra? What is the slogan now -- “play nice”?)

Obviously if some have the ability to identify players (as the HH Smithy guys can), the whole idea of leveling the playing field this way is no longer valid. But even if this weren’t the case, it seems like making the games anonymous would tend to diminish the skill element even further, making the games more like the “in-Client Blackjack” the site is also proud to list among the innovations introduced into the newly-refurbished tables.

Such is the position of Kid Dynamite who in a blog post recently argued why he believes anonymous poker is in fact a “skill mitigator.”

As KD points out, not allowing players to keep track of opponents’ play means the information one gathers from playing against an opponent in one session is no longer of use the next time you sit down with that player. Responding to the suggestion that Bodog is the “fairest” site on which to play, Kid Dynamite says “‘Fair’ is one way to put it. ‘Taking the skill out of the game’ is another.”

There’s also, of course, the utter erasure of whatever social element existed for online poker that occurs when usernames, avatars, and the ability to search for certain players are removed. This sort of thing is important to many, in particular the “recreational player” who isn’t necessarily playing the game primarily to grind out a profit.

Thinking back to Mr. Goat’s suggestion that if given a year he couldn’t come up with a worse idea for online poker, I can’t help but think he’s being damned provoking. Truth be told, I’m finding myself responding to that pronouncement in much the same way the HH Smithy guys did when Bodog claimed in their press release that “Anonymous tables make... player data impossible to collect.”

I mean, there has to be a worse idea for online poker out there, yes? Put on your thinking caps, people, and let me hear your ideas. We can’t sit back and let a goat get our... you know, get us upset and all.

All comments welcome. Even anonymous ones.

UB Data Leak

2011-12-05T16:45:00.012-05:00

At some point within the last couple of weeks, a large amount of information concerning player accounts on UltimateBet was made available on the web. The information was contained in a number of Excel and text files -- like 150 or so -- and could be downloaded by anyone in possession of the URL.

The files are all dated around the middle of last month. Late last week someone posted a link to the page on the Two Plus Two forums, then deleted the post just a few minutes later. However, a small number of people -- including the moderators at 2+2 -- were able to obtain the URL and get a look at what the files contain.

One of those mods, Noah Stephens-Davidowitz, reported the leak on Subject:Poker early Friday evening. Haley Hintze got a look at the files and posted about them on her blog on Saturday afternoon. And Todd “Dandruff” Witteles (formerly of NeverWinPoker / DonkDown) also saw the files and shared an analysis on his new site.

The page linking to the files was taken down late Saturday, was back up again briefly early this morning, and is now down again. If you’re curious about what information is contained in the files, take a look at those three linked-to articles mentioned above. While there is certainly information most of us wouldn’t want spread around too liberally -- e.g., date of birth, mailing address, email address, phone number -- there doesn’t appear to be any specifics such as bank info, social security numbers, or the like contained in the files.

There’s some mystery about who is responsible for the leak (a rogue customer service employee?) as well as the possible reasons for the data having been sorted and assembled in this way (to sell to spammers?).

As Haley points out in her post, while some alarm is being expressed about this leak (e.g., in a new Two Plus Two thread started in response to the S:P article), it is not as though information provided to online poker sites hasn’t already been shared or sold or otherwise “leaked” around many times over. As Haley explains, “Most players are just commodities to the online sites. That’s the real why and how of it. Your data is secure as long as the site rakes in money, but once the squeeze comes, all bets are off, and anything that can be grabbed and sold is usually fair game.”

As I’ve written about here before, I had accounts on both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet.

I opened my AP account in October 2006, just a few days after the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was signed into law. It was right about that time that the company that owned AP bought out the company that owned UB. Talk then suggested the player bases would be consolidated, but instead AP and UB continued to operate independently. (It was not until July 2008 that the two sites would start touting themselves as the “Cereus network.”)

Then in August 2007, AP and UB offered to allow players to move funds back and forth between accounts on both sites. In early September 2007, I decided to do just that and moved some money from my AP account over into a new one on UB.

Within weeks the insider cheating scandal at Absolute Poker became public, and I immediately decided to withdraw all of my funds from both AP and UB. Getting my money out of AP was simple enough, but I had a hell of a time getting my measly roll off of UB. I finally did get my funds, but not after enduring a lot of frustration and absurdity first, details of which I shared in a post titled “UB Kidding Me.”

Shortly thereafter I began posting fairly frequently about the Absolute Poker scandal while also suggesting neither AP nor UB were sites to be trusted. Then in early March 2008 the UltimateBet scandal first hit the fan in a big way.

Thus I had an active AP account for a little over a year, and one on UB for just a couple of months. Just as with other online poker sites, I never gave either AP or UB any information I wasn’t comfortable sharing (e.g., I never gave credit card numbers, bank account numbers, my SSN, etc.).

Since Black Friday, the Full Tilt Poker fiasco has mostly eclipsed the equally-bad-for-poker mess that was/is AP/UB. Whereas the two Cereus networks had previously been the standard for dishonesty and fraud in online poker, FTP has swiftly evolved into the industry’s current benchmark for the-worst-it-can-get.

Thus while a few are anxious about it, the general outcry at the UB customer info leak has seemed mostly muted. I agree that it isn’t as though we should be all that surprised at the news that online poker sites have sold our information if there were a buck to made from it. But I do think this latest development should be remembered and included in the long list of ways UB managed to screw over its players. And the game.

Does kind of recall late 2007-early 2008 writing about this, though. Back when cheating and scandal in online poker was still relatively new. And for many, still something that seemed like it could be dismissed.

Talkin’ Bitar, Facebook, and Bodog

2011-12-02T14:34:00.015-05:00

A few items stood out this week among the various articles and headlines falling under the “poker news” heading.

F-Train’s lengthy feature on embattled and indicted Full Tilt Poker CEO Ray Bitar that appeared on the Wicked Chops Insider site was damned riveting. He interviewed a number of Full Tilt Poker employees who while remaining anonymous otherwise opined openly about the “rise and fall” of Bitar and FTP.

It’s an enlightening read start-to-finish, in truth an important part of a larger narrative about the history of online poker that currently exists only in fragments all over the web. Haley Hintze’s forthcoming book on the UB/AP scandals will be another important part of that story, too. (By the way, Haley has an interesting new post up this week regarding Phil “The Chairman of the Board” Tom, father of Absolute Poker’s also-indicted owner Scott Tom, a story that kind of resonates with the Bitar article in a couple of spots.)

As I was talking about here a couple of weeks ago, one needs a subscription to read the Wicked Chops “Insider” pieces, although the cost for one is quite modest. As indicated by a minor furor on Twitter prompted by the appearance of F-Train’s article earlier this week, there are some who are opposed to the idea of paying anything for this variety of what might be called “intellectual property” online.

As I think I implied in my post a couple of weeks ago, I definitely share some of that same skepticism. Nonetheless, I have gotten myself a subscription to the Insider Wicked Chops site, partly out of simple curiosity, and partly out of a desire to support some friends and colleagues. Whether you choose to or not is your call, but if you do, a captivating read awaits.

Speaking of transitioning into the real-money world, another story of note this week concerned the social media behemoth Facebook contemplating entering into agreements with PokerStars, 888, and a half-dozen other online gaming companies. The report appeared on another subscription-only site, the eGaming Review, the cost of which is much too prohibitive for your short-stacked friend. But Paul Hoppe offered a nice summary on PokerFuse that provides some details.

It sounds like Facebook may follow the affiliate model and start directing users (not U.S., of course, and over 18 years of age) to the online gambling sites. It’s further possible that the site could let some companies work up apps that would run within Facebook, too. In any case, should Facebook make this step they’d instantly become a massive player in real money online gambling outside the U.S. (and maybe, eventually, in the U.S., too).

While I have a Twitter account (@hardboiledpoker) I use fairly often, I have continued to resist Facebook pretty much altogether. I do have a Facebook account, created mainly to set up a page for my novel, Same Difference. But don’t bother “friending” me or anything, because I almost never log in.

Part of it is because I’m too lazy to get in there and learn how to use the site, but I’m mostly staying off because of what sounds like a constant need to update settings in order to keep Facebook (and who knows who else) at arm’s length from my bidness. Not to get all Tao of Fear or anything, but I’m half-convinced if I log into Facebook for more than a minute or two I’ll wind up under such heavy surveillance I might as well be part of a Witness Protection Program.

Finally -- to segue to one last story from this week -- this desire to remain anonymous online came up again with Bodog’s announcement that they were suddenly removing all usernames and avatars from cash games and tournaments. Can no longer see mucked cards in hand histories anymore, either (if you can even see HHs at all -- I am not 100% clear on that).

The move is being dubbed as further underscoring the “Recreational Poker Model” the site is championing since it thwarts the use of HUDs or tracking programs to compile data on opponents. Whether it hurts or helps the recreational player is in fact an issue over which reasonable people might disagree. In any case, this development follows a move back in September to remove full tables from being listed in the lobby, thus making it harder for sites like PokerScout to count players. (Read more on that here.)

I still have an empty account at Bodog, a site on which I used to regularly back in the day. I haven’t bothered to log in over there in a good while, partly because I tend to work on my laptop (a Mac) and not my desktop (a PC), and Bodog doesn’t run on the Mac.

While the idea of non-trackable, anonymous play might sound okay, not being able to consult my hand histories seems highly problematic, particularly if any suspicions regarding cheating/collusion were to arise. Again, while I’ve always been highly circumspect about putting cash on an online poker site, I’d be even more so when it came to a site where there were no identifiers at all for players, nor any simple way of keeping track of your play. (For more concern being expressed about the new anonymous tables, see this article over on Pocket Fives.)

Sure is a wild, weird world online. Thanks again for tripping over to my little corner of it this week.

Comments from the Peanut Gallery

2011-12-01T13:02:00.014-05:00

This has been the week of making something out of nothing for your humble gumshoe.

Told you on Monday about winning some minor scratch after scoring free entries into a couple of tournies on Carbon Poker.

I also mentioned a week ago how I’d jumped into a freeroll on the relatively-new fantasy sports site, Draft Day. Thanks in large part to that offensive outburst by New Orleans on against the New York Giants on Monday night, I snuck into the money in that one, too, meaning I now have another tiny roll ($9) over there with which to try to learn a little more about the fantasy thing.

Then yesterday I hopped into one of those “Fast Fifty Freezeout” tournies on Hero Poker. I had not been faring too well over there of late at the nickel-and-dime cash tables, I’m afraid. Meanwhile, I’ve accumulated a ton of free tickets into these tiny MTTs and so decided to ensure at least a break-even day by trying one of those.

There were 108 entered into the Fast Fifty, called such because of the relatively fast structure (five-minute levels) and fifty-cent entry. As it happened, I went deep and in fact had a great shot at winning but came up short to take runner-up.

Given how the last hand of heads-up went -- I raise-shoved a nine-high flop with top pair, got called by 10-5 for middle pair of fives, then watched tens come on both the turn and river -- it would be tempting to say I deserved to win but fell victim to bad luck. In truth, though, there was a hand earlier in which I’d folded middle pair to my opponent’s flop shove, then he showed he was drawing to a flush. Woulda shoulda coulda.

Still, earned a few more bucks to add to the small Hero roll. Pure profit! Infinite ROI!

I continue stubbornly to add entries (handwritten) into my little ledger of online play. Yesterday I did what I have done at the end of every month since I started playing online back in 2004, tallying up the month’s total and writing that figure down as well. Then I turn the pages back and chuckle when I compare current totals to what I was playing for before.

Not that I had ever really moved higher than low limits previously, but I’m having to make a conscious mental effort now to make the amounts seem meaningful to me. Or “real,” even, given the somewhat theoretical nature of the idea of cashing out. Whereas before, when I’d slowly accumulate and cash out from time to time, such an effort wasn’t needed.

Had an exchange on Twitter a few days ago in which someone referred to having a little bit on these sites with which to play as an “itch scratcher,” and I said I thought that was a good way of describing it. Passing the time is what we’re doing. Just snacking.

Still, it’s fun to play, not to mention win. Even when it’s just for peanuts.

Being Human

2011-11-30T10:46:00.008-05:00

Victoria Coren wrote a neat, short Guardian piece yesterday titled “How do you find the best player in the world?”

There she reflects briefly on the recent International Federation of Poker event in which teams from 11 nations (plus a team from the “virtual” nation of Zynga) completed against one another using the duplicate poker format. I wrote a little about the IFP event, though not so much about duplicate poker, in my Community Cards column for Epic Poker this week, “Poker as a Sport.”

Coren’s succinctly-made point yesterday was to point out how difficult -- really, impossible -- it is to rank poker players according to any utterly unambiguous scale. “I rather like the impossibility of naming anyone ‘best,’” writes Coren, adding that “the ensuing, unceasing argument is so human.”

I rather like Coren’s choice of adjective to conclude that thought. It is “human” to attempt such futile tasks. And it’s our being “human” that helps contribute to the impossibility of objectively ranking poker players.

She ends her column with a quote from the last page of Richard Jessup’s novel The Cincinnati Kid, a book I wrote about here some years ago. The quote is in fact presented in the novel as an idea Christian (Eric’s girlfriend) tries to impart to the Kid. “For every number one man there is a number two man,” goes the idea, “and because of this a man cannot retreat from life.”

Then comes a pronouncement about the seemingly unbeatable Lancey Howard: “The difference is that the number one man is a machine and the Cincinnati Kid is not, and was not, and never will be a machine.”

The implication that Lancey is “a machine” sounds an ironic note when we recall his nickname -- “The Man.” Another implication, of course, is that being human means being capable of losing. That no “number one” can ever continue as such without being challenged. Not if he’s human, that is.

All of that talk resonated strongly with me today as we just happen to be reading and discussing “poker bots” and online poker in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class. Our readings consider recent efforts in artificial intelligence to create poker-playing computer programs -- i.e., to make machines more human-like -- as well as how online poker might have the effect of making humans more machine-like.

All of these items -- artificial intelligence, poker bots, online poker, the fictional character Lancey Howard -- encourage us to consider the significance of the human element in poker. And how it is our flaws and our efforts to exploit those of others and suppress our own that make the game interesting and meaningful -- not a “retreat from life,” but an expression of it.

Poker’s Stick-to-it-iveness

2011-11-29T14:19:00.018-05:00

Not surprisingly, Tobey Maguire decided to settle out of court in that poker-related lawsuit involving the famous “Hollywood home games.” You’ve heard that story, haven’t you? The other one in which “poker” and “Ponzi scheme” both keep coming up?

The lawsuit had been brought by the victims of Bradley Ruderman, a corrupt hedge fund manager who bilked clients out of millions via what has been described as a Ponzi scheme.

Ruderman had participated in the Hollywood poker games for about three years (from 2006 to 2009), losing consistently with his clients’ money. While it is probably impossible to say exactly how much Ruderman lost in the games -- the precise details of which have mostly remained closely-guarded -- most reports suggest his losses to have exceeded $5 million.

Maguire has long been rumored to have been a big winner in the Hollywood games, perhaps even the biggest. In fact, Mr. Name Dropper himself Phil Hellmuth once said on a 2007 episode of “Poker After Dark” that Maguire had won at least $10 million in them.

Ruderman was finally nabbed and pleaded guilty to wire fraud, investment-adviser fraud, and failure to pay taxes. He’s now in prison, serving a 10-year sentence, and has also been ordered to pay back more than $27 million to his victims.

Back in the spring, lawsuits were filed against something like two dozen different individuals, all of whom were said to have won money from Ruderman in the games. Those targeted included Gabe Kaplan, Nick Cassavetes, Rick Salomon (of “1 Night in Paris” notoriety), and others.

Some -- including Kaplan -- have already settled out of court, usually for a fraction of the amount sought. In Maguire’s case, the suit claimed he’d taken over $311,000 from Ruderman at the tables, but the settlement was only for $80,000. A judge will still have to approve the deal in court next month, but odds are the Spider-Man star will successfully wiggle free from this entanglement.

While the legality of the home games is being questioned in the lawsuits -- see this Hollywood Reporter feature for details -- it’s unclear whether these efforts to sue players to recover money they won in the games would succeed if the cases went to trial. What is clear, though, is that folks like Maguire aren’t interested in seeing their names continuing to be highlighted in tabloids in connection with things like “fraud” or “lawsuits” or “Ponzi schemes.”

Or, one might as well add, “poker.”

Recall how Maguire shunned the spotlight at the World Series of Poker back when he was regularly playing in events, including in 2007 when he went fairly deep in the Main (finishing 292nd)? No, the celebs generally don’t want to be linked with the game, even those who are somewhat dedicated to it like Maguire. They just don’t want “poker” following ’em around. Thus are these cases being settled out of court.

I guess in the end Maguire probably views the $80K as hefty rake taken from whatever he’s won from the games. But I suppose there’s another “rake” when it comes to poker, a risk to one’s status among those who view the game as an objectionable pursuit or pastime.

That’s thanks in part to poker’s legacy as a game for outlaws, giving poker a reputation that has long been kind of, well...

Sticky.

The Chris Ferguson Challenge

2011-11-28T09:53:00.009-05:00

Those tourneys on Carbon I mentioned last Friday both turned out well for me. Both had $5 entries, but I’d won free entries by answering questions posted by the @CarbonPoker account over on Twitter.

The “Fat Stack” tourney featured starting stacks of 1 million chips (with 25,000/50,000 blinds to begin) and 10-minute levels. A total of 50 entered, which I liked because Carbon has a kind of odd payout schedule whereby only the top five spots cash if 30-49 players play, but the top 10 make the money if 50-99 play.

Thus with exactly 50 registered, that meant 20% of us would cash. While I certainly wanted to win, even a small cash would be fine by me, helping me start a tiny bankroll. As it happened, I did make it all of the way to a seventh-place finish, at which point my pocket aces were cruelly cracked by a player holding 6-6. Good for $12.50, that.

I chipped up early in that one and was sitting on 30-35 big blinds for much of the time, so there was some play pretty much until the very end. By contrast, the other one, the “Slim Stack” one, was just about entirely chance-based, essentially an “all-in-or-fold” tournament in which we began with 10 chips and 0.5/1 blinds, then saw increases every two minutes.

Only 15 entered that one, which meant only the top three spots paid. Again, though, we were looking at 20% of the field cashing.

On the third hand I shoved with A-8, got called by A-J, and spiked an eight. Tripled up soon after that with A-Q (I believe), then survived to finish third and score another $15. In other words, I made more in the crapshoot than in the one requiring some genuine decision-making.

I mentioned Friday how I had a penny in my account there before, so that makes my total roll on Carbon $27.51.

Once again, then, I get to contemplate how best to turn a little into a little more. For those of us who were playing online poker several years ago, this whole “zero to hero” scenario automatically recalls “The Chris Ferguson Challenge” in which the pro succeeded in building a bankroll of $10,000 from nothing, starting his journey by winning a pittance in a freeroll, then practicing sound bankroll management from there.

Ferguson’s rules included never buying into a cash game or sit-n-go with more than 5% of your total bankroll, never buying into a multi-table tourney with more than 2% of your total, and leaving a cash game if you ever worked the money on the table up to more than 10% of your total worth.

He allowed exceptions for the micro limits. You could buy into any cash game or SNG for $2.50 or less, or any MTT for $1 or less, regardless of your roll. I think he may have busted at least once and had to start over, but eventually he did reach the goal, then donated the $10,000 to a charity.

That whole story reads much differently today, of course, thanks to the “Black Friday” indictment and civil complaint that targeted (among others) Full Tilt Poker, with the civil complaint later amended to include Ferguson among those being accused of various wrongdoing.

The amended complaint (made public in September) alleges that “Defendant Ferguson” was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tiltware LLC as well as a part-owner of the company, and that he was among those who paid large sums out of player funds, thereby helping create a situation in which Full Tilt owed players something like $390 million worldwide while having less than $60 million on hand (in late March 2011).

According to the amended complaint, “Ferguson was allocated approximately $85,161,305.88 in distributions,” although records indicated only about $25 million had actually been transferred to Ferguson’s accounts “with the remaining balance characterized as ‘owed’ to Ferguson.”

Shortly after the amended complaint dropped in September, Ferguson’s lawyer, the excellently-named Ian Imrich, responded by refuting the whole “Ponzi scheme” characterization made by U.S. attorney Preet Bharara. A couple of days after issuing the amended civil complaint, the DOJ moved to seize funds from FTP board members’ accounts, including Ferguson’s.

A week later Ray Bitar filed a claim against those seizures, and a couple of weeks after that (in mid-November) Ferguson likewise filed a few motions with the Southern District of New York, including some against seizures of funds from his accounts. One of those motions lists a couple of different FTP companies (the Kolyma Corporation and Vantage Ltd.) having the rights to $98,276,540 in several accounts seized by the DOJ. Another speaks of Tiltware, and that one Ferguson claims his right to $196,553,080 worth of funds in several different accounts.

The argument -- if I am following it correctly -- is that some of the funds in those seized accounts were “in the process of being returned to Full Tilt Poker players” (to quote from one of the motions). Indeed, I’ve thought since I first heard of those “FTP Insider Accounts” that the moving of big sums into the owners’ personal accounts probably wasn’t unrelated to an effort to keep the money squirreled away somehow and not necessarily evidence that the owners were simply taking the money for themselves. Then again, I think some of that was probably going on... who knows, really?

Of course, the status of all of this has likely changed with the apparent deal between Groupe Bernard Tapie and FTP (“brokered” by the DOJ) to effect the sale of the company to the French group as well as the return of funds to players, including funds seized by the DOJ.

A curious contrast, isn’t it, between Ferguson's careful management of money in his “Challenge” and his apparently less-than-cautious handling of things at Full Tilt Poker?

In any case, I'll consider Ferguson's bankroll advice as I try to manage my little roll on Carbon, realizing as I do that it’s hard to refer to something called “The Chris Ferguson Challenge” anymore without recognizing all of the new possible meanings the phrase evokes.

A Matter of Perspective

2011-11-25T12:44:00.015-05:00

NFL Picks went well yesterday. Three for three. I mean it was a good day, but small stuff big picture-wise. A ways to go yet.

Will now relax for a couple of days to enjoy some college ball (both football and basketball) before focusing anew on those pro picks on Sunday.

Meanwhile, I scored a couple of free entries into tournaments happening on Carbon Poker later today, more chances for me to build a bankroll there without actually depositing.

We Americans can deposit onto Carbon if we want to, though it takes a little effort. We can withdraw, too -- an important point -- although that also requires some patience. But as I’ve been expressing in various ways here over the last seven-plus months, I’m with that large crowd of can’t-be-bothered recreational players unwilling to make the effort to go through the extra steps needed to stay in action.

I'm not sure of exact figures, but I think it’s probably safe to assume that when Black Friday came -- that other, one, on April 15, not today -- probably more than 90% of Americans who played online poker for real money played entirely on PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, or UltimateBet. (At the time, I only played on Stars and FTP.)

And of that group of players, I believe it's still a super small percentage who have since found their way over to the Merge sites, Bodog, Cake, or the few other tiny ones still taking Yanks. I’d be interested to know exactly how the number of real money players in the U.S. today compares to that of early April.

I am still piddling about some with the money I won in a freeroll over on Hero Poker. And like say, perhaps I can win me a little over on Carbon, too.

Technically speaking, I do currently have money on Carbon. Exactly one penny (no shinola)!

Some time back I won a $1 ticket to a sit-n-go on Carbon, finished second there to win $2 cash, then ran that up to more than five bucks playing micro cash games and a few $0.11 SNGs. But alas, a bit of run bad compounded by bad bankroll management knocked me back under a buck, then all of the way down to the $0.01 total I have today.

Will see, though, if these tourneys work out and I can try again over there. One is a “fat stack” tournament in which players start with 1 million chips, with blinds beginning at 25,000/50,000. The other is called a “slim stack” tourney. In that one, players begin with just 10 chips, with blinds beginning at 0.5/1.

In truth, both tourneys start relatively shallow (20 BBs in the “fat“ one, 10 BBs in the “slim”), although the “slim” will feature turbo-style blind increases every two minutes, as opposed to the 10-minute levels in the “fat” one. Will be fun to see how players differently respond to starting with a million chips as opposed to just 10.

Kind of a psychological test, I guess, these two tourneys. Of course, the whole year has been a similar challenge for online poker players in the U.S., where once it seemed we had a ton of chips (and play) left, but at present very few.

I guess that explains why I’m sorta looking forward to my little freerolls today. ’Cos you know... they look different than they would’ve before.

Thx

2011-11-24T12:15:00.005-05:00

Looking at a day full of football and food here. Am already settled into my favorite spot on the couch, from which I don’t plan to move very much at all for the next several hours.

I continue to battle in that Pigskin Pick’em league. Three interesting games today in the NFL, all winnable by either team, I’d say. Makes the picking more interesting, since not everyone will be going the same way on every game.

I have also now gotten an account over at Draft Day, the new fantasy sports site started by some CardRunners guys and others to fill the void left here in the U.S. following Black Friday. (And to step through that little carve out for fantasy sports crazily existing in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.)

I entered a freeroll over there and so will be keeping my eye on how that goes this week, too. The site is expertly set up, by the way, with super simple depositing options if you happen to be into the fantasy thing.

Meanwhile, the eats will comprise the usual -- ham, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and apple pie. Vera and I are taking this one in together, staying off the roads and saving the traveling and visits for December. A lot different from last year for me, when I spent the Thanksgiving holiday down in Marrakech, Morocco with the World Poker Tour.

We are already starting to hear some reflecting on the fact that 2011 has been one of the more interesting, tumultuous years poker has seen. Certainly is ending much differently than it began.

But a few things have remained the same for me since a year ago. I remain thankful for all of the opportunities I’ve had and continue to have in a wildly interesting field. And most importantly, I’m thankful for all of the great people I’ve gotten to know and build friendships with both through this blog and in other areas of the poker world.

Thanks again, all.

Barry Tanenbaum (1945-2011)

2011-11-23T10:24:00.013-05:00

I noticed a few days ago that Lee Jones had started a thread over in Two Plus Two reporting that Barry Tanenbaum had fallen ill. Sadly, the Card Player columnist, author, and friend to many in the poker community passed away yesterday.

Recent Poker Hall of Fame inductee Linda Johnson has written a nice piece on the Card Player site about Tanenbaum. There you’ll find one of Tanenbaum’s many friends sharing details of his endearing personality and his talents as a poker player and teacher.

He was a winner. In many respects.

As someone who only barely knew Tanenbaum, I haven’t a lot to add to Johnson’s remembrance, although I do have one small story to share.

Like many, I got to know Tanenbaum through his articles in Card Player, of which there are well over 100. For a long time I was primarily a limit hold’em player, and since his pieces were always focused on LHE I routinely turned to them whenever a new issue of the magazine arrived. I also always enjoyed his appearances on podcasts, including Lou Krieger’s Keep Flopping Aces. Thus was I especially glad to see him bring forth a book collecting his wisdom in late 2007, Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy.

It was Tanenbaum’s second poker strategy book, technically -- he’d collaborated before with a couple of others titled Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies -- but this was the first solely devoted to his own ideas and thinking about LHE. I read the book from cover to cover, then reread to absorb further the advice it contained. Looking back at my records, this was actually my most profitable period playing online, and I know it wasn’t a coincidence I was spending a lot of time then with Tanenbaum’s columns and book.

It wasn’t long after that I began to review poker books for PokerNews, and when I proposed writing a review of Tanenbaum’s book to my editor, Haley Hintze, she said she thought that was a good idea.

It was a challenging book to review, given that its primary audience were the middle- and high-stakes LHE players against whom Tanenbaum often played. Indeed, the book begins with disclaimers about it not being for beginners, and while I wasn’t that, I was hardly one who could reasonably sit down at those $30/$60 and $40/$80 LHE games (or higher) and expect to succeed.

But I knew I had gotten a great deal from the book, and so in my review explained how I believed it was of value to players of all stakes. I also tried to get across this central idea that Tanenbaum wasn’t so much teaching players a particular style but rather was trying get them to understand (and improve upon) whatever style they already played.

As Tanenbaum explains, his intention wasn’t to write a how-to book that told players what to play when, but rather to teach LHE players how better to think about the game. “I am trying to improve your game, not give you one,” he writes.

You can check out the review for a full summary of what the book covers as well as other ideas I had about what Tanenbaum is up to in Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy.

Sometime after the review went up, I received a very nice email from Tanenbaum thanking me for it. We ended up exchanging a few messages in which he complimented me for having understood the book and successfully gotten its message across in the review.

As I mentioned, I’d been a little apprehensive about writing the review. It was among the first I had written for PokerNews, actually, so I was especially grateful to get such feedback from the author. (I’d continue to review books for PN until the summer of 2009; they’ve since gotten others to write reviews for them.)

It will happen from time to time that after reviewing a book I’ll hear from the author, but rarely do we get beyond a simple thank-you-and-you’re-welcome. But with Tanenbaum our exchange was more substantive and meaningful -- something I suspect most who knew him would say was the case in their interactions with him, too.

I think it was the following spring (2009) that Vera and I visited Las Vegas for a dressage show, the big World Cup that used to come to LV every other year. I remember talking with Tanenbaum a few times over the phone during that visit. His wife also rode horses, and I think we had an extra ticket to one of the sessions and were talking about perhaps giving it to her, but the plan fell through.

Tanenbaum had a website and fairly popular forum, too, where I participated occasionally and continued to interact with both him and others. And we stayed in touch a bit over email as well. I remember at some point providing him some .mp3s of some podcasts on which he had appeared that I had saved, but it has been awhile since our last exchange of messages.

Anyhow, like I say the story of my interactions with Tanenbaum is a relatively small one, but I wanted to share it today as further testament of his friendliness as well as his being one of those “poker people” who always welcomed newcomers into the game in a variety of ways.

Far from Super

2011-11-22T12:51:00.002-05:00

Well, everybody’s disappointed in the “super committee” it seems. This despite the fact that most appear never to have held out much hope to start with that the sucker would produce anything, anyway.

Yesterday the specially-appointed, 12-member bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction announced it had been unable to complete its charge to issue a recommendation for reducing the nation’s deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. (They’d started out talking about $1.5 trillion, but scaled that back.) Apparently the group of senators and representatives were still meeting as late as yesterday, leading some to think they may in fact come through with legislation that would then be voted on by the House and Senate. But alas, they did not.

Not even taking an “incomplete” here, to draw a campus-related analogy. No, this is “withdraw/failing.”

If I am not mistaken, now that the “super committee” has failed, “automatic” budget cuts will start happening -- including cuts to defense spending -- although they don't start up until 2013. Meaning Congress can still step in to change their minds on that, too. As Sen. John McCain has said, “Congress is not bound by this. It’s something we passed. We can reverse it.”

Such is the life of the rule-makers. You can withdraw with a failing grade. But you can keep retaking the course, too, as long as you keep your seat.

When the “super committee” was first created by in August -- a consequence of that debt ceiling crisis from the summer -- there had been some talk that a provision to license and regulate online poker as a new revenue source might pop up as part of the recommendation the group would be making. Last week’s leaked story that Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. Jon Kyl are perhaps looking to co-sponsor some sort of online poker legislation faintly revived that hope once again for some, as Kyl was on the Joint Select Committee and Reid had appointed the three Democratic senators who served.

But all of the commentary this morning seems to indicate that the “super committee” was a doomed enterprise all along. And some are connecting its failure to come to terms with a larger one characterizing the U.S. 112th Congress.

Wendy Schiller, an Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Brown University, told CNN today that the committee’s failure was not just theirs -- apparently they’d tried to cut deals with others in Congress to get something together, “but were rebuffed by their party leaders” -- but a “failure of political leadership on both sides of the partisan aisle.”

“Both parties chose their own electoral livelihoods over the good of the country, and it is outright shameful,” added Schiller. “This might be the most self-serving, mediocre, and uncaring set of legislators in Congress in the last 50 years.”

Schiller suggests that the current Congress is perhaps unique in the extent of its self-interestedness and collective failure to lead. But we know that when it comes to legislating online gambling in the U.S., every action made in the past -- on the state or federal level -- has been “self-serving” to the legislators who made it. As such will be the case for whatever comes next, if anything.

Meanwhile, as citizens with a desire to play our favorite card game against each other online, we just have to hope what serves the political interests of our overlords happens to overlap a little with what serves our own.

Sure, they represent us in theory. But in practice the arrangement is not so super.

Back ’Round to Rounders

2011-11-21T16:52:00.010-05:00

We discussed Rounders today in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class, rounding off our unit of films. Just a couple more weeks left in the semester, during which time the students will pick a particular film in which poker is prominent and write an essay analyzing the film and its use of poker.

I’ve mentioned before here how I’ve always been kind of lukewarm about Rounders. But with each viewing I’m growing to appreciate it a little more, I think. It works especially well here at the end of the semester, bringing together all sorts of themes and ideas we’ve been reading about and discussing for the past three months.

It’s clear from those opening shots of classic poker strategy books like Mike Caro’s Poker Tells and Doyle Brunson’s Super/System that the film was made by people with a keen understanding and appreciation of the history of poker. Indeed, the script is peppered with many familiar, much-repeated lines from the two-plus century-long story of the game. Some of these are passed along by Mike McDermott in his voice-over narration with attribution, while others are uttered by characters without stopping to identify sources.

That “allusive” quality of the film makes it especially fun to watch and talk about at the end of the course, after we’ve read Cowboys Full by James McManus, The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez, and many other essays and stories.

We’ve already read Doyle’s characterization of hold’em as “the Cadillac of poker” more than once by now.

We’ve seen reference to Amarillo Slim Preston several times, too -- even watched him and Doyle and others in a video in class -- and so recognize the reference when Mike quotes him talking about being able to “shear a sheep many times, but you can skin him only once” (noting how Worm never seemed to have learned that lesson).

We hear Teddy KGB complain about Mike having “alligator blood” at the end of the film, and we remember Johnny Moss saying the same thing about Stu Ungar at the 1981 WSOP near the end of The Biggest Game in Town.

And so on. References to the World Series of Poker resonate, too, since we have already discussed its central place in poker culture at present. And even situations the characters find themselves in throughout the film are mostly recognizable to us by now, having read those histories, short stories, Jesse May’s novel Shut Up and Deal, and watched other films including The Cincinnati Kid and California Split.

All of which is to say that while I still wouldn’t put Rounders at the tippy top of my list of poker movies -- or anywhere close to the top of a list of best movies, poker or otherwise -- I am enjoying certain aspects of David Levien and Brian Koppelman’s script more and more. And I especially like the way the film kind of encapsulates so many themes one finds in an extended survey of the culture and history of poker in America.

The Rebranding of Poker

2011-11-18T15:26:00.021-05:00

I watched the live streams of both of those Congressional hearings regarding online gaming this week.

This first happened yesterday afternoon over in the Senate where the Committee on Indian Affairs had an oversight hearing on “The Future of Internet Gaming: What's at Stake for Tribes?” Then this morning came a second meeting in the House of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade to talk about “Internet Gaming: Regulating in an Online World,” in particular the bill proposed by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) to license, regulate, and tax online poker in the U.S. (H.R. 2366).

Yesterday’s discussion in the senate regarding Native Americans’ potential stake in a regulated online gambling environment in the U.S. did deal in some specifics with regard to how it might be reconciled with the current situation and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. Otherwise, the talk was mostly of a generic variety when it came to what such an environment would be like.

The upshot seemed to be that proponents of regulation all want to assure the Native Americans that neither their current rights nor their brick-and-mortar casinos will be unduly threatened by the dawning of a regulated online gambling in the U.S. Meanwhile, representatives of the Native Americans’ interest are somewhat divided, with several sounding less than enthusiastic about such a prospect.

That is to say, there are more than a few reservations from the reservations.

Meanwhile, today’s House subcommittee hearing was much more specific about logistics and seemed to indicate the real possibility that the Barton bill could move forward soon. Still, there were a number of points made to suggest at least some legislators aren’t thrilled with the idea of allowing anything like H.R. 2366 to move along, including Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) whose nickname may or may not be “Big Bad.”

Channeling our old friend Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) -- the House Financial Services Committee Chairman currently scheduling hearings to look into insider trading while being accused himself of having benefited from the very same practice (no shinola) -- Wolf spoke of suicides and ruin as unavoidable consequences to unleashing the “crack cocaine” of online gambling upon citizens who will necessarily be unable to control their worst, most self-destructive instincts.

Responding to Wolf in today’s hearing, Rep. Barton tried to distinguish poker from other gambling games -- his bill is, after all, poker-specific -- promoting it as a true test of skill that primarily attracts intelligent people who aren’t in such dire need of governmental hand-holding. Referencing the World Series of Poker on ESPN, Barton praised the smarts on display there, noting how the players seemed more like “very intelligent, ‘MIT’ type engineering people” than potential gambling addicts.

Wolf wasn’t really hearing that argument, and indeed others who would support Barton’s bill such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) who also testified at today’s House hearing aren’t that excited, either, to start distinguishing poker as particularly different from other gambling games. Not when it comes to arguing for individual liberty and citizens’ rights to play those games, anyway.

All of this made me think of a Forbes article that just appeared a couple of days ago by Jeff Bercovici titled “Poker Shuffles the Deck.”

Taking an argument that is currently being advanced by the International Federation of Poker, the group currently holding a duplicate poker tournament in London (“the Nations Cup”) designed to highlight the skill the game requires, Bercovici discusses current efforts to try to “rebrand” poker as a “mindsport.”

Besides improving poker’s cultural status (and perhaps helping legislators like Barton make his case for poker’s difference from other gambling games), such a “rebranding” may also help in the securing the support of advertisers other sports currently enjoy. So goes the argument, anyway.

“If poker ever manages to transcend its unsavory origins and become a mainstream sport with big-league sponsorship -- and that's a big if -- it will have followed a familiar path,” writes Bercovici. He then goes on to compare poker to Mixed Martial Arts, stock car racing, and even football -- all sports that weren’t initially accepted by the American culture at large before eventually becoming some of the country’s most popular sports to watch.

The comparisons are interesting, as is the overall effort to “rebrand” poker into something more acceptable to more Americans. I can’t help but think, though, that it would be easy to take all of this too far -- to try to characterize poker as a game that does not involve real gambling, or to make the game over into something else entirely (as one could argue duplicate poker tries to do).

Barton’s words today implied the idea that it’s mostly super-smarties playing poker, but we all know that is hardly the case. And even if everyone who played poker approached it as studiously as many approach other “mindsports,” it would still be a gambling game in which chance necessarily plays a significant role. And well, not everyone is okay with that.

Apparently there might be another online poker-only bill introduced over in the senate before the end of the year -- at least that is what the New York Post reported this week. Harry Reid (D-NV) is said to be behind this one (again), with UIGEA-architect and former opponent of all things gambling-related Jon Kyl (R-AZ) allegedly on board as a co-sponsor. Kyl is on that “super committee,” you'll recall, and so some are wondering if the subject might have come up as that group works on discovering ways to reduce the deficit, including creating new revenue sources.

Am highly curious to see where all of this legislative pushing ultimately goes. And, of course, what the poker “brand” will become in terms of its significance to American culture if and when it does.

Return of Full Tilt Poker Funds Coming Sooner Than Later?

2011-11-17T16:35:00.018-05:00

Was following that hearing this afternoon of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs regarding “The Future of Internet Gaming: What's at Stake for Tribes?” Some interesting and suggestive talk about the prospects for federal legislation going on there, with the tribes’ potential involvement being foregrounded throughout.

Right near the end, though, I was distracted by news regarding a possible deal having been struck between Full Tilt Poker, Groupe Bernard Tapie, and the Department of Justice.

The story, filed by Aaron Smith and Erica Fink, popped up a couple of hours ago over on the CNN Money site, although was subsequently taken down. The same article remains up over on Yahoo’s finance page; however, a disclaimer at the top of the report suggests it perhaps the article was posted prematurely: “Editors: THIS STORY IS UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL ERICA GETS THE CLEAR FROM THE LAWYER AT GROUPE BERNARD TAPIE.” (EDIT [added 6:30 p.m.]: The story has been removed from the Yahoo site now, too. Here is a cached version.)

The report says the deal involves FTP forfeiting its assets to the DOJ “which then sold the assets to the GBT.” The purchase price in this deal “brokered” by the DOJ is $80 million. Also mentioned in the story is a plan for the DOJ to dismiss civil forfeiture proceedings against Full Tilt. (Meanwhile, there’s no mention of the amended Black Friday indictment and civil complaint versus Full Tilt and its owners.)

More pertinent to most of us, it sounds like the deal also requires the GBT to “take responsibility for the burned players outside the U.S., while the Department of Justice will facilitate paybacks to the American gamblers.” We Yanks will have to “apply to the DOJ for compensation.”

Like I say, the status of the deal is not 100% certain quite yet. Shortly after the CNN Money article was posted and removed, the International Business Times reported that the deal remained up in the air, choosing the headline “Settlement Stalled?” for their report. Meanwhile, both Vin Narayanan of the Casino City Times (@CasinoCityVin) and Andrew Feldman of ESPN (@ESPN_Poker) tweeted within the last hour that they’d spoken with representatives of the DOJ who refused to confirm or deny any deal had been struck.

However, Wendeen H. Eolis over at Poker Player Newspaper did speak with a legal representative of the GBT who confirmed to her that the deal had been made pending “approval of the deal by a 2/3 vote of the FTP shareholder interests.” Other points of interest regarding the terms of the deal being reported by Eolis include the fact that that the “GBT will hold at least a majority interest in the company,” and that “none of the current FTP directors will be permitted to hold shares in the company.”

Quite a development, this, if the deal is indeed about to be finalized and the news hasn’t been prematurely delivered. I imagine if the FTP shareholders do agree to the deal we should hear some sort of confirmation soon from the DOJ. Would imagine FTP will have a statement of some sort, too. (EDIT [added 7:30 p.m.]: FTP has; see here.) Kind of par for the course, really, for such a story to “break” so uncertainly like this, given the way all of the previous chapters in the ongoing Full Tilt Poker serialized drama have been shared.

I guess we’ll stay tuned. And perhaps some of us will get ready to fill out those applications to the DOJ for the return of our cabbage. I suppose a problem may arise in there somewhere for folks who liked to avoid paying taxes on their winnings, though it is hard to say for sure exactly how that will go.

In any case, it’s funny to compare such a prospect to how things used to look whenever we withdrew from Full Tilt Poker.

Strip Poker, Art, and Cultural Commentary

2011-11-16T17:17:00.020-05:00

This week I’ve seen a number of articles about this performance art happening up in New York City involving a strip poker game. You’ve probably seen stories about it by now, too, if you spend any time on the poker news sites. Or even several non-poker news sites where the story has proven attention-grabbing enough to rate a mention.

Zefrey Throwell is the artist behind the performance, titled “I’ll Raise You One...” All week at the Art in General studio on Walker Street in Tribeca, a group of 48 people are playing an ongoing game of strip poker. The game is taking place from 10:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. each day through Saturday in the studio’s front window, meaning passersby can look in and watch the game as it proceeds.

According to a report in the Village Voice, the performance is meant to offer a commentary of sorts on American culture, a commentary which seems to either have some affinity with or to have been inspired by the “Occupy” protests in New York and elsewhere.

“Throwell sees strip poker as a metaphor for the economy, with clothing symbolizing money,” the article states, quoting from the studio’s explanation of the piece. “While skill can help, the people who show up with the least clothing are in the worst shape, and no one can control the luck of the draw.”

Like I say, there’s plenty online already about the strip poker game. Here’s a short video put together by The New York Post presenting it, and here is the page on the Art in General website explaining it further.

Throwell was in the news back in early August after another of his performance pieces, also involving public nudity, was swiftly shut down within minutes. That one also had an awkward title -- “Ocularpation: Wall Street” -- and involved 50 people suddenly stripping on Wall Street. Was sort of a visual pun, I guess, on the “flash mob” idea.

A few were detained for disorderly conduct, the others quickly put their clothes on, and that was that. Other than the news articles, that is, which helped spell out the artist’s intended message “to lend more transparency to Wall Street, a street which is so damn mysterious.”

I was intrigued to hear about this performance piece thanks in part to the fact that last month I’d written a short piece about strip poker in American history and culture for the Epic Poker blog. But the more I read about “I’ll Raise You Once...” the less enthused I am about the piece.

Like that “Ocularpation: Wall Street” performance, this one, too, seems to be delivering a not-so-interesting political message, in this case regarding the unequal distribution of wealth and material goods. And again, public nudity gets the piece extra attention, thereby extending the reach of that message.

But I dunno... can’t say I’m all that inspired by it.

Maybe it’s because as a poker player I am already too well acquainted with the message. We players well know that having more chips gives a player more options and thus an advantage over his or her shorter-stacked opponent. And sure, we’re also well aware that we’re all subject to luck, and that while having more chips makes it easier to absorb potential misfortunes, there are no guarantees.

Poker is unfair. Life is unfair. Being good doesn’t guarantee reward. Got it.

“Using the language of small stakes capitalism mixed with America’s favorite gambling pass-time [sic], and the flirtatious teenage party game of strip poker, Throwell draws a fluxus parallel between what we consider winning and losing in the world today.” So explains the studio.

“Fluxus” refers to that category of experimental art across a variety of media usually designed to deliver various kinds of cultural commentary -- including commentary on art itself -- often with an emphasis on humor. Sorta big in the ’60s, it was. Think John Cage or Yoko Ono.

The strip poker piece reminds me of a similar but more interesting work, a short film titled “Naked” in which poker pro and chess champ Jennifer Shahade plays chess against a nude male amateur, Jason Bretz. That piece plays off of a famous photo of Marcel Duchamp (a big influence on the Fluxus crowd), reversing the roles of the man and woman to make a comment on the relationship of the sexes.

In Big Deal, Anthony Holden famously observed that “whether he likes it or not, a man’s character is stripped bare at the poker table.” Holden’s point was to emphasize the inescapability of “exposing” oneself (figuratively) at the table. And the need to appreciate that fact if one hopes to endure as a player. “Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all,” says Holden, “he will be a loser in cards as in life."

I suppose strip poker kind of weirdly literalizes this process of being “stripped bare,” although losing your clothes needn’t signify much in particular about your character. (Other than perhaps a willingness to party, that is!) Nor does it say too much about your abilities as a player, either. Not in the short sample size marked by a few garments and a pair of shoes, anyhow.

Does it say something about the U.S. economy? Or the unequal distribution of wealth in this country? Or “a world where money has taken supreme importance and all functions of life are commoditized”?

Eye of the beholder, I guess. Or of the voyeur.