Hard-Boiled Poker

Travel Report: 2012 LAPT Punta del Este, Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:55:00 +0000

Another short one yesterday here in Punta del Este, as we just played six levels again. Looks like things will pan out well enough, though, as just 76 players made it through to today.

We’ll definitely have a longer day today -- the plan sounds like 10 levels -- with an eye toward getting sorta kinda close to a final eight-handed table before night’s end so we can finish the sucker up on Sunday in decent shape.

The day went well, with a few interesting stories arising along the way, including one involving last year’s LAPT Punta del Este winner Alex Komaromi. We were tracking him, obviously, but soon became aware that his father, Pedro, was also in the event.

Drawing on the collective memory of the regular crew of international bloggers for various sites, we remembered Pedro had actually stone-cold bubbled this same event two years ago (in Season 3). That led to a kind of fun post about the pair of them titled “Padre e hijo (Father and Son).”

Alex eventually busted yesterday afternoon, but Pedro survived with a slightly below average stack of 85,600. With just 20 players to go until we reach the money, have to say I’m kind of hoping Pedro makes it that far this time.

Later in the day, well after writing up that post, we discovered that in fact Alex’ mother played in the event as well. In fact, she survived into Day 2 -- longer than Alex did -- before being eliminated. We missed that story, thanks mainly to the fact that she doesn’t have the same last name (Lina Gecelter). We met and talked to her afterwards, though, and included that part of the story with a reference in the end-of-day wrap.

Just six levels meant another relatively early night -- ending around 8 p.m. -- which was nice enough, but then we were all treated to a free meal afterwards at Zafferano, one of just two restaurants (I believe) here at the Mantra Hotel Spa & Casino.

Our crew was joined by Team PokerStars Pros Angel Guillen and Jose “Nacho” Barbero (both of whom are coming back on Day 3 to above-average stacks). Entertained the brain with lots of good conversation. And filled the belly with a tasty bowl of butternut squash soup, an especially flavorful filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and cheesecake.

Signing off now as play is about to get underway. Check that PokerStars blog today and tomorrow for more poker from Punta.

Travel Report: 2012 LAPT Punta del Este, Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:14:00 +0000

There’s a shot out the back of my hotel suite, the Atlantic ocean lapping up onto the shore here during the early days of a mild Uruguayan winter.

It was a relatively calm Day 1 at the tournament yesterday. Short, too, as we only played six one-hour levels.

Apparently the reason for only playing six levels -- as opposed to the usual eight or ten -- had something to do with the availability of dealers and their union not permitting them to work more than seven-hour-long shifts.

With the large field here at the start of the tourney there’s a need to spread more tables, and thus a need for more dealers. Once the field shrinks, however, they’ll be able to split up the dealers they have into early and late shifts, and so we’ll be able to play more at that point.

I believe the plan today, then, will be another six-level day, which means tomorrow’s Day 3 will probably be extra long, and Sunday’s final day may be as well. A total of 375 ended up coming out for this one, down a little from the 422 they had back in August, but still a big group. They played down to about 274 or thereabouts yesterday.

Had a chance to write some fun “color”-type posts yesterday with my blogging partner F-Train, which made the short work day even more enjoyable. My favorite of the day was one about the wild sculpture in the sand just up the road called the “Monumento al Ahogado” or the “Monument of the Drowned.” That’s the one with the four fingers and thumb coming up out of the sand (see a picture in my Tuesday post).

I managed to pull together a post about the sculpture that told the story while relating it to poker, and was able to include a couple of neat pictures as well. Reinaldo had a cool one of himself standing amid the sculpture, and our awesome photographer Carlos got me a picture of stacks of poker chips that I incorporated into the post as well.

Then the title kind of wrote itself: “Have I Got a Hand for You.”

Thanks to the short day we were able to take a cab back down to the Isidora, the waterfront restaurant we’d enjoyed during the last visit and which a couple in our group (F-Train and Josh) hadn’t been to before. I made sure to get the delicious rabas (squid rings) again.

At the end of the meal, someone mentioned playing credit card roulette for the bill, and while we decided against doing so, Mickey thought he’d see what would have happened if we had. My card was picked first, continuing that run good I’ve been having on the trip thus far, and with what seemed like utter inevitability, Mickey’s own card was last.

“Unbelievable,” he said. Which all who know Mickey will find believable.

Got back to the room in good shape and am reasonably rested for today. Am vaguely aware of other big happenings in the poker world, including the WPT Championship winding down and the WSOP about to crank up. But enjoying a little respite from that frenzy for now amid the relative calm of Punta.

Travel Report: 2012 LAPT Punta del Este, Pregame

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:37:00 +0000

Made the short trek last night down the beachside highway from where we’re staying here on the east coast of South America to a little gathering place for the LAPT Punta del Este welcome party.

We arrived early to find a sparsely-populated scene in which attendees were then outnumbered by staff. Soon, however, the place filled with poker players and others, meaning we left a loud and festive scene a couple of hours later.

Besides enjoying some food and drink and reuniting with a lot of friendly faces with whom we’ve worked before on the tour, the night included LAPT President David Carrion and others announcing various honors for the recently completed LAPT Season 4 such as player of the year (Pablo Gonzalez), shorthand player of the year (Daniel Ospina), online qualifier of the year (Engelberth Varela), among others.

Lynn Gilmartin and Will Thomas arrived to shoot some videos with players and others. Among the interviews Lynn conducted was one with our buddy and fellow PokerStars blogger Sergio Prado, and I snapped a quick photo of Sergio delivering predictions about how the Season 5 version of LAPT Punta del Este would go.

Last August this event attracted 422 entrants. Sergio thinks we’ll probably see a similar-sized field -- perhaps even larger -- this time around. That means players will be scattered all over the Mantra Resort Spa and Casino for today’s first day of play.

Once again we’ve descended on Punta del Este during what is essentially off-season for what is really a summertime destination. Sergio was telling me last night that he was told there are around 10,000 people in the city currently, whereas on New Year’s Day (the summer time) there were like 60,000 or 70,000.

We noticed last year how the roads were mostly calm and quiet when we went out. Such was the case during our walk to and from the party last night as well.

That won’t be so a few hours from now, though, once the cards go in the air and hundreds of players start the process of trading chips back and forth until just one remains. If past LAPT events are any indication, things will get a little more animated at that point.

Check out the PokerStars blog today for reports on how it all goes.

Travel Report: 2012 LAPT Punta del Este, Arrival

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:25:00 +0000

After a 24-hour plus journey consisting of three flights and another 70-mile trek via shuttle van from Montevideo to Punta del Este, I’ve successfully traversed the necessary 5,000 miles or so to help cover the next stop on the Latin American Poker Tour here in Uruguay.

A little bit bumpy at times along the way, but such is to be expected. Never mind traveling from one hemisphere to another, we came all the way from summer to winter, too. But I’m not complaining, as I enjoyed some especially fortunate “run good” to make each of my flights and make it here pretty much on schedule.

Met up with tourney reporter extraordinaire Mickey Doft in Miami last night, where storms all day and night had backed up everything for everybody by an hour or so. Our late departure there made it appear highly doubtful we’d make our connection in Santiago, Chile, and in fact we landed just a few minutes after our next flight was supposed to leave.

Could tell even before getting off the plan that Chile was, well, chilly. As we disembarked, we had resigned ourselves to an extra wait in Chile, and likely another long one in Montevideo, Uruguay, since we’d be late catching that scheduled van. We were told by an airline official how we’d already been rebooked for a later flight, and so in no hurry Mickey and I decided we’d try to find that Starbucks with wi-fi we’d visited during a previous visit to the Santiago airport.

As we walked and talked, we heard an announcement in Spanish in which we recognized our original flight’s number and “Montevideo” being uttered. We also heard what sounded like a gate number, one that just so happened to be coming up on the left. Intrigued, we picked up the pace a little and were amazed to see our original flight still on the screen up above, punctuated by the words “LAST CALL.”

We walked over and could see the plane below. Sure enough it was our original flight, somehow delayed more than a half and hour. Within minutes we were aboard, and not long after that were airborne once again. Uruguayward.

All of which, as I say, ended well for your humble scribbler. In fact, later on we learned that next flight -- the later one we had thought we’d be taking -- was in fact cancelled, with the next one not leaving until something six hours later. So we were even luckier than we realized to have heard that announcement and gotten on board our original flight.

Not much to share since the last post, then, beyond pictures out plane windows. Up top is on the way to Miami, in the middle approaching Chile, and this one to the left on the way to Uruguay. Temps here are actually milder than the snow-capped mountains suggest, with highs in the 60s all week.

Pre-tourney party happening in a little while, and Day 1 tomorrow. More to come.

Packing for Punta

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:06:00 +0000

A quick post today to relate I’m heading back to the southern hemisphere to Punta del Este, Uruguay to help report on this week’s Latin American Poker Tour event. It’s a return trip for me, as I was there last summer as well for the LAPT. The tourney runs from Thursday through Sunday, so if you head over to the PokerStars blog later this week, you’ll see F-Train and I doing our best to share what’s happening from the event.

By the time I return, the 2012 World Series of Poker will have already gotten underway. The first event, the $500 buy-in Casino Employees Event (Event No. 1), kicks off on Sunday, May 27. On Monday comes the first open event, a three-day $1,500 no-limit hold’em tourney (Event No. 2). Then on Tuesday two more events get going, and the sucker gets rolling for real all of the way through to early July and the Main Event (Event No. 61).

I will be heading back to Vegas once again this summer to help PokerNews with their coverage of the WSOP. Gonna do similar to last year and go out a few weeks in, arriving a little after mid-June. Will be the fifth year for me at the Series, which seems hard to fathom.

Am looking forward to this short trip, which ought to serve as a fun warm-up for the more intense scene I’ll be reporting from in Vegas come June. Will be good to experience a little live poker, too -- if only as an observer -- after having spent so many hours of late watching the online guys pushing chips back and forth.

Anyhow, there are bags to pack and other matters to which to attend, so I’m signing off. Expect I’ll try again to submit a few travel reports, if I can, from the coastal city of Punta del Este, where I know for sure I’ll be seeing at least one big hand.

The Old Stall Re-Stall

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:56:00 +0000

Saw something kind of interesting I’m not sure I’d noticed before while following some of the SCOOP stuff over the weekend. Incidentally, thanks to the turnouts for the final events on Saturday and Sunday, PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker ended up exceeding pretty much all expectations regarding total prize pools to push past the $65 million mark, bettering the 2010 SCOOP and in fact becoming the biggest online poker tournament series ever.

I’ve written here before about the topic of players stalling as the money bubble approaches in online tourneys. The tactic isn’t of much use once they get to hand-to-hand, of course, but sometimes in the bigger field multi-table tourneys you’ll see short-stacked players letting their time banks run down when they get a couple of eliminations away from going hand-for-hand.

The stalling strategy comes up in regular tourneys now and then, for sure, but in SCOOPs and WCOOPs the prize pools are often quite large and so the stakes are higher for those looking at perhaps missing the money. Also, the time banks are usually increased as well for these events, which probably encourages stalling a bit more.

The two-day, $10,300 buy-in SCOOP Main Event kicked off yesterday and attracted 517 players to create a prize pool of more than $5 million. The top 63 got paid, with almost $1 million of that money due the winner. The schedule was to play 20 half-hour levels yesterday, and as they approached the end of Level 20 the field had in fact shrunk enough to approach the money bubble, getting down to 66 with about 20 minutes to go in the night.

There was some stalling happening as the next couple of bustouts happened, although it didn’t seem especially egregious. In any case, they got down to 64 and hand-for-hand, and as it happened a player busted on the very last hand of the night to ensure all of those who made it to today’s Day 2 also made the money.

Anyway, the slowdown that marked the end of the night reminded me of another, more conspicuous example of stalling occurring near the money bubble in an earlier SCOOP event, the $5,200 “high” version of the six-handed, fixed-limit hold’em event (Event No. 34).

Just 62 players played in that one, meaning only the top nine got paid. With 11 left the stalling began in earnest when Dan “djk123” Kelly, down to just over 8,000 chips (five big bets), dipped into his time bank for a good long stretch in a hand where it folded to him in middle position before the flop. Any sort of delay is all the more noticeable in an LHE game, of course, where the decisions aren’t usually as difficult as in no-limit.

Anyhow, at the time Kelly was essentially tied for 9th out of the final 11 with another short-stacked player at his five-handed table, while over at the other six-handed table one player sat in last place with less than 2,000 chips, and Sorel “zangbezan24” Mizzi also was on the short side with a little over 11,000.

Once I realized Kelly was going to be taking at least a couple of minutes before folding, I took a look at the other table where a similar scene was taking place. The action was on Bryn “BrynKenney” Kenney, who was sitting UTG with a comfortable-sized stack, and he, too, had dipped into his time bank before making any action. Conversation in both chat boxes clarified the situation.

“i got 300 seconds too,” typed Kenney over at Kelly’s table. He then explained to his table that “other table is stalling” and “otherwise i wouldn’t be,” adding further that “ive never stalled in my life.”

Mizzi agreed with Kenney that “we alll have to,” and the pair continued to discuss the matter, with a third player, “MaiseE,” joining in as well.

zangbezan24: sick how its come to this
BrynKenney: its a joke always in all the high limit tourneys
MaiseE: ya i know just saying its pointless ;)
BrynKenney: when its 2-3 from the money
BrynKenney: everyone stalls like crazy
BrynKenney: and nobody has any chips after

Was kind of interesting to consider the whole stalling-to-combat-the-effect-of-stalling strategy. From Kenney’s perspective -- i.e., a player with a healthy stack of more than 25 big bets as the bubble approached -- he would rather have everyone play as usual so as to play more hands before the stakes increased and thus lessened (somewhat) the advantage of having a bigger stack.

I suppose, then, that Kenney’s stalling was primarily a tactic meant to discourage Kelly from doing it subsequently. In any case, it certainly negated whatever benefit Kelly was trying to get from stalling. I can’t remember whether or not it worked and Kelly no longer stalled after realizing Kenney (and perhaps others at the other table) were going to stall in return. In the end both Kelly and Kenney would cash, finishing third and fourth, respectively. Mizzi ended up finishing seventh for a min-cash, while those other two short-stacked players referred to above ended up bubbling.

Some players get quite animated over the issue, of course. See for example Daniel Negreanu’s response to stalling in that earlier post of mine on the topic. I also noticed some tweets last night during that final half-hour of play as well from players lamenting the stalling.

Dani “supernova9” Stern (who busted shy of the top 100 in the SCOOP ME), tweeted that the allowing of stalling meant “they are basically making it mandatory, or else you are losing on the bble.” And Jon “FatalError” Aguiar, who made it today’s Day 2 (18th of 63), tweeted “Stalling Championship of Online Poker #SCOOP @pokerstars.”

As Stern points out, by allowing the stalling it has become a somewhat unavoidable part of the game. I guess I’m less bothered by it than some, given how stalling is not presently against the rules (not yet, anyway). Then again, I’m a lifelong UNC Tarheel fan who remembers the days of Dean Smith’s pre-shot clock, “four corners” offense.

I remember the 1982 ACC tournament final between UNC and Virginia in which the Heels led 44-43 with eight minutes to go, went into the stall, wiped out most of the remaining clock, and managed to win the game 47-45.

I also barely remember that infamous 1979 game against Duke when the Heels went into the four corners at the beginning of the game and it didn’t work out so well, as the halftime score was 7-0 Blue Devils. (No shinola.) Of course, I have tried to forget that one over the years.

The “four corners” was usually effective, though. And was within the rules. Until they changed them.

On SCOOP, and the Stars-FTP-DOJ Scoop

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:09:00 +0000

A ton happening at the moment, both in the poker world at large and for your humble scribbler. As far as the latter is concerned, there’s a bit too much going on for me at the moment to spend too much time here today, I’m afraid.

One of the activities that has occupied me a lot over the last two weeks has been helping report on results of the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker. Not too surprising to have seen this year’s SCOOP consistently draw huge fields for event after event, routinely crushing the conservative guarantees for each.

The overall guarantee for all 120 SCOOP events totaled $30 million. That figure was already eclipsed a few days ago, actually, having tripped up over $40 million for the first 90 events. And there’s $5 million worth of guarantees scheduled for the three Main Events alone (the "low," "medium," and "high") coming up this Sunday.

All of which means this year’s SCOOP series has already beaten the 2011 version in terms of total prize money, and may well ultimately produce a total that comes within shouting distance of the 2010 (pre-Black Friday) SCOOP in which 114 events featured prize pools adding up to $63,802,405.

Speaking of PokerStars thriving, I’m also kind of passively following those rumors about the Stars-FTP-DOJ deal possibly being finalized as early as next week. Like you, I imagine, I’ve clicked on some of those links to sites providing vaguely-collected inside dope regarding the status of the deal, yet in some cases stating in non-vague, even definitive-sounding terms when the announcement of a deal will be made.

I remain in “believe-it-when-I-see-it” mode. For those looking for more in-depth and more informed reporting on the matter, check out Haley Hintze’s two-part article from earlier in the week for the Kick Ass Poker blog titled “The Big Muddy.”

In Part 1, “Mixed Signals Everywhere on Possible Stars / Full Tilt / DOJ Deal,” Haley addresses both the rumors and those reporting them. Then in Part 2, “Fine Print in New Jersey Legislative Pact Emperils PokerStars Deal,” she steps back to consider the fate of the deal within a broader, constantly-changing context of legislative machinations, particularly with regard to recent moves in the Garden state.

And for more on the latter, check out Grange95’s discussion over on the crAAKKer blog as well, titled “A Poison Pill for PokerStars in New Jersey iPoker Bill?”

Will be very interesting, obviously, to see if anything comes of the possible deal next week -- or ever -- although as this year’s SCOOP success is once more confirming, one senses Stars is going to be okay either way.

WPT Takes Center Stage

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:31:00 +0000

The World Series of Poker is about to consume our collective consciousness for the foreseeable future, with the summer’s first events kicking off just 10 days from now. Between now and then, however, we’ll be distracted a bit by the wind up of Season X of the World Poker Tour at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

The traditional WPT World Championship event starts this Saturday, the $25,000 buy-in tourney that has served as a culmination for the tour ever since it started a decade ago. There will also be a three-day $100,000 buy-in “Super High Roller” event beginning next Wednesday which will surely draw a lot of attention as well.

Season X saw a record 23 events on the WPT schedule (including both the Bellagio ones coming next week). Over the last year the tour has visited Spain, Slovenia, France (twice), Malta, Morocco, Prague, Italy (twice), Ireland, Austria, in addition to numerous U.S. casinos.

Yesterday the first half of the Season XI schedule was announced, and it appears there’s no slowing down as far as the number of WPT events are concerned nor its extending to new places to visit, with stops in Cyprus, Copenhagen, and one in Casablanca (rather than Marrakech) on the schedule this time around.

Kind of amazing, really, to think about how the WPT has thrived over such a long period. There was that stretch a few years back when the tour seemed on relatively shaky ground, having scaled back in events and been forced to move around from the Travel Channel to the Game Show Network and finally to Fox Sports.

But things today appear better than ever for the WPT, one of the few constants in the poker world since the “boom” began around 2003 when the show first debuted. By the way, if you’re curious to read more about the WPT’s remarkable decade, I did a brief overview for Betfair poker last week, noting how the tour has fared over the last ten years and significantly grown in scope of late.

A WPT title remains a much-coveted goal for pros and amateurs alike, having retained its cachet despite the tour’s expansion and other changes -- both to the WPT and the poker world in general -- over the years. Indeed, whoever wins those two WPT events next week will be justly regarded as having achieved something of value and celebrated as such.

At least until the WSOP begins, anyway.

Human Interest

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:12:00 +0000

Just had a chance to read and enjoy Phil Galfond’s latest blog post, the first part of a kind of mini-memoir detailing his path to becoming a poker pro. He’s titled it “My Poker (+other) Story.”

If you’ve read Galfond’s blog before, you know he’s a thoughtful, smart guy and a good writer, too. Thus does it come as no surprise to see the discussion of his journey extend beyond the same-old-move-up-through-the-stakes tale so many other online grinders have told.

And really, it’s usually the “(+other)” stuff that makes any poker player’s story more interesting, isn’t it? More human.

I’ll just mention a few reflections I had as I read, then let you go check out the post yourself.

One was how easy it is for me to identify with Galfond, despite the fact that his achievements as a player obviously dwarf my own.

He talks about being obsessive, sort of an introvert (but still social), and intellectually curious. He mentions both friendships and family and makes it clear how important relationships with others are to him. And he also shows a well-founded appreciation of the need for balance between work (or pursuing one’s personal goals, such as in poker) and leisure.

All stuff I can understand and relate to, for sure. You, too, I’ll bet.

His post additionally covers his college career and how his pursuit of a philosophy degree was cut short by poker. He talks a lot about classes that interested him and other aspects of the academic life that did not.

Here is where Galfond and I went in somewhat different directions. I’m one who ended up going on with higher education as far as it would take me, getting graduate degrees and eventually teaching at the college level. And even though I got a ton of value out of taking that path and have no regrets about doing so, I share some of Galfond’s cynicism about the importance of degrees and grades and other ways we use higher education to measure ourselves against one another.

I like Galfond saying how he decided to be a philosophy major simply because the classes were interesting, and not worrying about where such a degree might take him, career-wise. “I didn’t know what it would lead to in life,” he says, “and I didn’t much care.”

I’ve had a lot of experience advising college students. While I always try to be practical with my recommendations to them, I also always attempt to make sure they understand that whatever major they choose, it had better be in something they find interesting. If they have some ability in that field and can do well in those classes, so much the better. But they gotta like it... at least something about it.

Thus when students ask me about being an English major, I ask them if they love to read literature and write about it. If the answer is yes to that, then we can talk about how you don’t have to be an low-earning English teacher after graduating with an English degree. In fact, you can do just about anything in which being able to read and write is needed.

I never tell students it doesn’t matter whatsoever what major they choose -- they don’t want to hear that -- but I have thought it numerous times. Because really it doesn’t. Not that much.

People joke about the relative value of humanities degrees a lot. Even Galfond parenthetically asks later on when talking about not graduating “what’s a Philosophy degree worth anyways?” But he’s not talking about translating the degree into any dollar amount or other measure of value, a mistake some students make that all but ensures they’ll get as little as possible out of their college years. Not entirely (I don’t think).

No, Galfond is talking about finding something interesting and worthwhile, and continuing with it until it stops being either. The classes were worth it for him, for a while, anyway. Finishing and meeting arbitrary requirements for a degree was not.

I had one other, more personal thought when reading Galfond’s post, namely the memory of having been there at the Rio back in 2008 when he won his WSOP bracelet in the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha event (with rebuys). That was my first WSOP with PokerNews, and it just so happened Galfond’s win came at one of the first final tables on which I had ever reported. Change100 and I were there for that one.

I’d have to go back through the blog to recall details of the tourney and final table, but I remember it being a fairly dominating performance by the guy we kinda vaguely knew at the time as that “OMGClayAiken” dude who crushed online.

So I’m looking forward to Galfond getting to that part of the story, too, so as to learn more about what the experience was like for him that night. And to learn more about both the “pro poker player” and the “person,” as Galfond describes himself atop his blog.

Playing Poker with Sanford and Son

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:10:00 +0000

One of my favorite shows as a kid was Sanford and Son starring Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford and Demond Wilson as his son, Lamont. The sitcom about a widower junk dealer and his son ran from 1972-1977, and reruns were on for many years after that, which is when I ended up catching them.

It wasn’t until many years later I found out Foxx had produced a ton of comedy LPs during the late ’50s and ’60s from his nightclub act, so-called “party records” with material too risque for kids. Had a roommate in college who had one and later on heard several, discovering them all to be uniformly hilarious.

Hadn’t really thought about the show for a while, but amid doing some other poker-related scrounging on the web I realized there were a few episodes of Sanford and Son featuring poker that I’d forgotten about. All are on YouTube in their entirety.

The first titled “The Card Sharps” came early in the second season, initially airing on October 27, 1972. Like most episodes, it begins with Fred slacking off (in this case sleeping), Lamont coming home, then Fred pretending like he was hard at work.

Lamont explains he has plans that night to have a group over for a poker game, and Fred objects. “Not in my house,” says Fred. “You know what your mother called cards? Fifty-two devils in Satan’s army!”

He goes on to explain to Lamont how his mother made him swear off cards before she died. Lamont isn’t deterred, however, pointing out how the only reason his mother made Fred promise not to play was because he was terrible and always lost.

Lamont explains that he’s played once before with the guys coming over, including one, Skeeter (Thalmus Rasulala) who apparently just got out of jail. “How much did you win?” asks Fred. “How did you know I won?” asks Lamont. Fred goes on to explain how “it’s the oldest trick in the business,” that is, to let a sucker win once, then the next time “break him… take everything they got.”

Fred immediately warns Lamont not to play with Skeeter and the others, knowing for certain they’ll cheat his son. He offers to watch the game and signal with a flyswatter if anything fishy arises.

The guys arrive, and once Skeeter produces his own deck with which to play and suggestions are made to raise the stakes from what they played the last time, Fred becomes increasingly concerned. Thus it’s no surprise that when Skeeter gives himself an ace when determining who will deal, the signaling starts even before the first hand (see left).

The game they play is five-card draw, and Lamont starts losing right away, including one hand in which Skeeter beats his full house with a straight flush. “Flush is right,” says Fred to Lamont. “Yo’ money going right down the toilet.”

Check out the episode if you’re curious to see how it goes. I won’t give away the ending, except to share Fred claiming to quote scripture near the end: “Deal unto others as they have dealt unto you.”

Later in season 2 came another episode with poker, this one called “The Kid” (first airing March 9, 1973). This time the show begins with Fred playing solitaire -- and cheating -- rather than working, and when Lamont gets home Fred hastily hides the cards inside an accounting ledger, which Lamont immediately finds.

“Bookmark,” explains Fred. “Fifty-two of them?” asks Lamont. “I lose my place a lot,” says Fred with a sheepish grin.

This episode involves a young nine-year-old named Jason (Lincoln Kilpatrick, Jr.) who comes around wanting to hang out at the junkyard. Against Fred’s wishes, Lamont invites Jason to stay for dinner and even to spend the night when Jason explains he has no father and his mother is working.

When Lamont offers Jason some milk to go with his dinner, Fred offers him an alternative. “What about a beer?” he suggests. “Pop, children do not drink beer,” says Lamont. “What's wrong with that? It’s just got some barley and some grain and stuff in it. You know, it’s just corn flakes in a can!”

Fred eventually decides he likes Jason, and the next day they play some five-card draw, keeping track of how much they are winning and losing on a notepad.

A hand arises in which Jason discards four. “Four?” asks Fred incredulously. “That ain’t no way to play poker. Only a dummy would draw four cards.”

Predictably, Jason wins the hand, ending with four kings, and Fred now owes him $650 according to their tally. Fred then hastily suggests a new game.

Fred deals Jason three cards, then four for himself, then two more for Jason, then three more for himself. A betting round follows, and Jason is confused.

“How do you know who wins?” the kid asks. “How many cards you got?” says Fred. “Five,” answers Jason.

“I got seven, I win.”

A third episode with poker came late in the fourth season, one titled “The Stung” (from February 28, 1975). This one features another poker night with Lamont inviting series regulars Julio (Gregory Sierra) and Rollo (Nathaniel Taylor) over, and they bring along a brawny buddy appropriately named Arms (George Reynolds).

Meanwhile, Fred’s old friend Al Banks (Richard Ward) turns up, who just happens to have been a professional gambler, and the two of them cook up a scheme to win back money Fred has lost to the fellows over recent weeks -- or if not at least to have some amusement at their expense.

Like the other two episodes, this one has lots of funny lines throughout, such as when Fred is plotting his scheme and Al says he knows he’s up to no good from the look in his eye.

“I’m past no good,” explains Fred. “I’m up to evil… and approaching treachery!”

Later when Julio arrives, he apparently is wearing a shirt he literally won off of Fred at an earlier game, and Fred facetiously compliments him by telling him it looks good on him.

“It would even look better if you washed it,” he continues. “And starched it. And ironed it. And then folded it up real neat… and shoved it up your nose.”

There’s less actual poker shown in this episode -- the game they introduce early on is seven-card stud, but we never see a hand play out. In any case, I’ll let you take a look at the episode rather than give away how Fred and Al’s “sting” turns out.

Maybe it’s a bit of nostalgia tugging at me, causing me to laugh a little more loudly than some might at these shows. But there’s just something about Foxx and his delivery that instantly makes me smile. And Fred Sanford was a perfect match of a character for him, too.

The dude was aces.

Buddhist Monks Busted

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:49:00 +0000

Catch that news item over the weekend with the eye-catching headline “Monks Resign Over Poker Scandal”? Had to click on that, right?

Reading more, we learn that the monks were Buddhist, part of the Jogye order in South Korea. A video was surreptitiously shot of a group of monks -- leaders in the order, apparently -- playing poker. The video shows them in a hotel room sitting cross-legged around what looks like a bedsheet with chips and cards in the middle, smoking and drinking as they play, and appearing to laugh as one drags a pot.

Hey, at least they weren’t rubbing a laughing Buddha’s belly for good luck.

At first glance, it looks like just another private game. That said, according to one report “Seongho, a senior monk, said the stakes for the gambling were about $875,300.” Another article in The Korea Times says the money with which they were playing “is believed to be from donations from believers.” Also read that the group was engaged in a "marathon 13-hour game” in the Janseong hotel room, with the monks having gathered there for a memorial service.

Six of those who participated in the game have since resigned from the Jogye order. All of this is happening just a few days before South Korea celebrates “Chopail” or the birth of Buddha on May 28.

Apparently the game and the secret video are all part of a larger political struggle involving the Jogye order and its leadership, a big deal for the 10 million or so adherents of the order.

Not entirely sure about how it all fits together, but it sounds like this Seongho had been among the candidates to become head of the order a couple of years ago, but another monk, Jaseung, was elected. Seongho was eventually expelled from the order for defamation against its new leader, and subsequently brought a complaint against the order that included the gambling charge.

The article in The Korea Times explains that Seongho “claimed he found a USB drive containing the footage on the floor of his temple.” I don’t believe it has been made clear as yet who shot the video. I have seen references both to it having been from a hidden surveillance camera as well as the suggestion that it was shot by someone who was present at the game.

Meanwhile, the leader Jaseung has apologized to the Jogye adherents, saying that “his order will conduct a 108-bows ritual for 100 days starting next Tuesday to repent the misbehavior of the monks.” Who knows what will eventually happen with regard to the DOJ trying to resolve the cases associated with the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint, but I’m going to guess no bowing rituals will be part of any negotiated settlement.

Buddha -- i.e., the spiritual leader (Guatama), not the laughing one (Budai) -- was no fan of gambling. The Sigalovada Sutta, one of the scriptures in which Buddha imparts wisdom to a young man named Sigala, includes a discussion of gambling, there listed as one of six ways of squandering wealth.

According to Buddha, there are “six dangers of being addicted to gambling.” There's the fact that “in winning one begets hatred.” There’s the danger of losing wealth, of course, plus the additional danger that “in losing one mourns the loss of one’s wealth.” There’s the effect that being a gambler can have on your perceived character, since “one’s word is not accepted in court.” Gambling also leads to isolation, as “one is avoided by both friends and officials.” Finally, by gambling “one is not sought after for marriage because people say a gambler cannot support a wife.”

In practice, though, I think Buddhists are somewhat tolerant of recreational gambling (as opposed to the addictive variety). Meanwhile, with drinking alcohol or taking drugs there's less wiggle room; thus did those monks passing the bottle around in the video compound their troubles significantly. And I guess Buddha also talked about monks being forbidden from handling money at all -- which is obviously happening in the poker game -- although that's not really a rule followed by monks today.

Interesting stuff, and as full of political intrigue, possible corruption, and church-and-state conflict as any scandal on this side of the globe.

Anticipation

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:49:00 +0000

For those of us of a certain age, the title of this post automatically makes us think of that Carly Simon song from the ’70s. Which in turn makes us think of Heinz ketchup. And absurd exchanges between children about whether or not their mothers buy them Heinz ketchup for their burgers and fries.

That’s because those ads were pounded into all our consciousnesses relentlessly during our formative years sitting in front of the tube, a.k.a., the “electronic babysitter.” Kind of like those multiple Geico campaigns from which there presently appears no escape.

Between the World Series of Poker being just a little over two weeks away, the big finale of the World Poker Tour’s Season X coming up before that, suggestive hints about the PokerStars-Full Tilt Poker-DOJ deal possibly edging toward completion, other legal machinations regarding online poker currently being advanced, and even the imminent return of the Two Plus Two forums (tomorrow?), the word seems most apt to describe the poker world at the present moment.

It’s like watching Tom Dwan holding out chips, hesitating before releasing them onto the felt. Like were all just waiting for something to happen. Soon. And perhaps something big.

Perhaps we’re also conditioned a bit by the fact that over the last year or so -- really the last several years -- there hasn’t been a stretch of more than a couple or three months to go by without some “bombshell” going off somewhere in the poker world. So after a period of relative calm, we brace ourselves, expecting something to happen yet again to cause us to rethink pretty much everything we thought we knew before.

I guess as poker players we all kind of hunger for such news, too... not unlike we crave “action” at the tables. All of which makes the feeling of anticipation that much stronger.

We’ll see what happens, and if we have to wait much longer. Meanwhile, I’m hungry. Who else wants to go for a burger?

Rounders’ Game of Tell & Show

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Kind of wiped out today thanks to a late night following some of these marathon SCOOP tourneys on PokerStars. Meaning there ain’t a lot in the tank for posting here at the moment. So let me send you over to another blog for an interesting read.

Not long ago I had the chance to read Zach Elwood’s new book Reading Poker Tells and ended up reviewing it over at Betfair. I enjoyed the book quite a bit, which does a neat job categorizing and describing a number of revealing behaviors at the poker tables. Check out my review for a full run down of what the book covers.

Zach also keeps a blog where he posts further on the subject of tells in poker. Over the last few months he’s posted some interesting analyses of the Pius Heinz-Martin Staszko heads-up battle for the 2011 WSOP Main Event bracelet. Those are some interesting reads, especially for those of us who watched that more-than-six-hour heads-up match play out on ESPN last November.

Anyhow, yesterday Zach published a post discussing tells in Rounders, going beyond the one we all remember -- Teddy KGB and his Oreos -- to point out others exhibited by both Teddy and Mike McDermott. Both characters are pretty transparent, really, with regard to their tells, although as Zach points out in his post the characters’ failings in this regard could well be considered part of the film makers’ intentions to convey certain things to the audience, including the non-poker people watching.

Thanks to my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course, I’ve been watching Rounders over and over again for the last few semesters as one of the films I assign to my class. Thus have I become pretty familiar with the tells Zach is describing in his post, as well as some other idiosyncracies in the presentation of poker scenes that may or may not have been intended.

I’m also picking up on other small things with each viewing, such as the neat symmetry between the backstory about Mike and Worm being involved in fixing a basketball game back at prep school and the later scene in the church gym. As back at prep school, Mike agrees one last time to team up with his friend in a plan to make some scratch, although like before things won’t work out.

Anyhow, check out Zach’s analysis of some tells in Rounders. Kind of thing would be neat to do with a lot of poker films, actually, since there is lot of overlap -- potentially -- between the non-verbal types of communication that happens at the poker tables and the language of cinema.

WSOP Stirring Things Up for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:51:00 +0000

As happens every year around this time, the World Series of Poker held a conference call yesterday for media to talk about the upcoming WSOP and give writers things to hype up here during the last few days before the sucker starts.

It’s getting close. Sunday, May 27 is when things get going for real at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. That’s when the first two events start up, the Casino Employees Event (No. 1) and the first of many $1,500 no-limit hold’em tourneys (Event No. 2).

You can find plenty of “live blogs” and other articles running down what was covered yesterday, so I’ll pass on that sort of thing here. I suppose the biggest “news” concerned some rule changes regarding player conduct, including allowing players more freedom when it comes to table talk as well as celebrating. The former sounded a bit like an invitation to engage in Jamie Gold-like banter (“I said top top!”), while the latter reminded some of Hevad Khan (“Bulldozer!”).

Speaking of speaking at the table, another rule that will likely get some pushback from players is one requiring those at televised feature tables to announce their action verbally. Not everyone plays poker this way, with many just letting the chips and cards do their talking for them, and so some have already begun to voice displeasure over Twitter regarding having different requirements for feature-table players than for the rest of the field.

There was other stuff about the “Big One” (the $1 million buy-in event), the new WSOP APAC, the ladies event and men playing, and so on. Like I say, you can easily find news on that elsewhere. Next week the media guide comes out, and I assume we’ll get a look at the official new rules soon as well, so there will be continued buzz going forward.

Someone brought up the topic of the huge banners of past WSOP Main Event champions that decorate the Amazon Room each year, asking in particular whether 2000 ME champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson’s banner might be obscured given the Black Friday-related charges against him and all the other Full Tilt Poker folderol.

The reply was that the WSOP would not be doing anything with the banners that might resemble any sort of statement of position on Ferguson. (A similar issue has been raised in the past with regard to 1994 ME champ and Russ Hamilton and his involvement in the UltimateBet insider cheating scandal and cover up.)

I’m with the WSOP on this one, by the way. The banners are meant to refer to WSOP’s history, and it’s not like you can change the past. If a past champion was found later to have cheated in order to win, that’s a different story. But it’s silly for the WSOP to get into the business each year of casting judgment on past champions. I say hang those banners and let the people looking up at those faces form their own opinions about each one.

In delivering that response, Executive Director Ty Stewart pointedly noted that the WSOP didn’t “want to get into having a standards and ethics committee,” an unsubtle jab at their ex-colleague Jeffrey Pollack, Annie Duke, and the Epic Poker League. As if that weren’t clear enough, a further dig came when it was unnecessarily noted that “wsop.com” didn’t stand for “wicked series of poker” -- a reference to that domain URL purchasing business and the early plan pursued by the EPL to try to name itself the Wicked Poker League.

We’ve already seen evidence of the WSOP’s dislike of the EPL. Whether it derives from personal animosity toward Pollack, irritation at what was perhaps once perceived a competitor, or other behind-the-scenes stuff we haven’t heard about, there’s something a little unseemly about it coming up unprovoked like this in the context of the annual conference call.

Don’t get me wrong -- Epic is most certainly deserving of criticism, and my six-month tenure as a contributor to the EPL blog hardly prevents me not only from believing that, but from voicing such criticism myself. But to me the WSOP might do better to continue to try to appear above all that applesauce.

Still, the call worked well enough to get me excited about it all again. Am starting to think about my return to the Rio this summer, and my instinct is to think that whatever this new loosening up of restrictions regarding player talk and behavior will do to the game, it will likely help create more interesting stories to report.

So maybe I shouldn’t criticize the WSOP for its own “loose talk.” As Dashiell Hammett’s Op says in Red Harvest (1929), “sometimes stirring things up is all right.”

It's About That Time

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:18:00 +0000

Yesterday I was caught in one of those crazy need-to-be-in-two-places-at-once situations we all sometimes find ourselves. What comes from juggling several different work assignments. Thankfully I have some super cool and supportive colleagues who helped make the whole day a lot less stressful than it might have been otherwise, and I made it through in one piece.

Got me thinking a little about the “virtual” world of online communications and how all of us kind of “exist” in multiple places these days. I guess my thoughts are also leaning in that direction because I’m planning to teach my poker class online this summer, and in fact will be away on one poker-related trip at the start of the session, and by the end I’ll be in Vegas for the WSOP. (Is the Series really less than three weeks from starting?)

I’ll be plotting my strategy for that soon. Likely I’ll be trying to manage things so that I’ll be “teaching” my class an hour or so each day (plus the added time I’ll spend grading essays), meaning that wherever I am, as long as I can get to the web I’ll be all right.

Kind of looking forward to managing a course this way, which after many years of “face-to-face” classes will be a first for me. I certainly like the idea of omitting the commute back and forth to teach, but I know I’m going to miss the classroom interaction, too. (By the way, anyone with experience teaching online courses with handy tips or advice, please share.)

Anyhow, getting back to the idea of being in two places at once... it’s not an original observation, I know, but damn it seems like we’re all always “multi-tasking” these days. I mean you’re reading this blog post right now, but I’m sure you have other tabs open, too, yes? And checking that Twitter feed and/or Facebook. And probably doing three or four other things as well, am I right?

I can’t be too offended. I mean if I’m going to be honest, I have to admit I’m also doing other things -- some work-related, some not so much -- while writing this.

Vera and I were sitting in front of the teevee the other night and I brought up how way back when -- before the internet came along to try to consume us, that is -- it was possible to do nothing but watch television. For hours. I mean watch without doing anything else. Or, you know, read a book start to finish. Or just listen to an LP, first one side, then the other. I mean really listen....

Ah, I’ve got too much to do today. But I think I can spare 20 minutes before splitting myself up again into all those selves. We all need to take the time to unplug now and then.

If you’re trying to reach me... don’t fret. I’ll get back to you shortly. Just taking a little break. To slow down. To listen...

A Necessarily Small Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Was hearing a bit over the weekend about this Lock Poker move away from the Merge Network, a move which also appears to involve Lock acquiring the Cake Poker Network and renaming the whole kit-and-kaboodle the Revolution Gaming Network.

The weekend rumors appear to have been backed up with more official word this morning from the concerned parties. There’s presser from Cake reporting it “is in the process of selling selected assets” to Lock, and mirror-image one from Lock saying it “is in the process of acquiring assets from Cake.” The latter also notes how the transition will officially be occurring on May 31, at which time players on the sites will encounter “a simple software update” reflecting the newly-created partnership between the Cake network sites and Lock.

I’m a bit swamped at the moment -- caught between SCOOP stuff and wrapping up my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course -- and so can’t really spend too much time pondering this here development. Truth be told, it kind of feels a bit like talking about a trade involving minor league players or future draft picks. In other words, just a faint echo of the “big league” talk from a couple of weeks ago concerning the possible purchase of Full Tilt Poker by PokerStars, even if here we have actual quotes and such rather than all the second- and third-hand fuzziness.

Certainly seems as though Lock’s decision to break away from Merge might have had something to do with that brouhaha a couple of weeks ago over the LOCKOPS tournament series the skin had been planning but the network cancelled. Not completely up on all of the details there, although it did sound as though approval to run the series had been given to Lock, then taken away somewhat surprisingly.

Was reading one article about the Lock-Cake partnership (I realize I’m weirdly avoiding using the word “merger” so as to avoid a pun) that referred to Lock as the “largest US-friendly poker room... on the largest US-friendly poker network,” namely Merge.

The article also suggests the deal and creation of the new Revolution Gaming Network “will likely tip the scales of power for the current US online poker industry,” an impressive-sounding suggestion when one doesn’t think too specifically about how little traffic all of those involved actually get.

Merge is certainly the largest U.S.-facing network, but its 60-plus skins together only attract a fraction of the traffic on other small networks like iPoker and Ongame, all of whom are of course just teeny, tiny blips compared to PokerStars. And Lock is certainly the biggest skin on Merge, accounting for something like 40% of the traffic there from what I’ve read.

It looks like from PokerScout’s numbers that the Cake network only grabs a third or less of the traffic Merge as a whole did -- probably something similar to Lock’s total traffic, which would mean the joining of the two would indeed create a player pool that would jump ahead of Merge’s after losing Lock.

But still, we’re talking about just a few hundred cash game players total. Meanwhile, yesterday’s first day of SCOOP events saw nearly 70,000 entrants signing up for the six tournaments on offer there.

So sure, I guess Lock acquiring Cake does “tip the scales of power” in a relative sense -- as far as U.S.-facing online poker sites go. But globally speaking, online poker has for a good while already been... well... locked up.

(Got over that pun-shyness PDQ.)

PokerStars’ 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker Starts Today

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Sun, 06 May 2012 12:54:00 +0000

As evidenced by all of the excited tweets in my timeline this morning, PokerStars’ 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker kicks off in just a couple of hours.

Am recalling that feeling back in early September 2011 when the first World Championship of Online Poker (the WCOOP) without Americans got going on PokerStars. Feeling a little bit of the same there’s-a-party-happening-and-we’re-not-invited vibe, I guess, although not as strongly as before.

The SCOOP, of course, is the one with three separate tournaments -- “low,” “medium,” and “high” stakes -- for each event. Event No. 1, a six-handed no-limit hold’em event, starts in about an hour with $22, $215, and $2,100 buy-ins. A little later today comes Event No. 2, a full-ring NLHE event, featuring the same buy-ins.

There are a total of 40 events scheduled, meaning 120 tournaments altogether, culminating in the big Main Event on May 20. Several of the tourneys are scheduled as two-day tournaments, and even the one-day tourneys look as though they’ll be attracting big fields and thus go on for many, many hours.

The overall guaranteed prize pool for the all of the 2012 SCOOP events totals $30 million. The 2011 series -- which happened just a few weeks after Black Friday -- had 114 total tourneys the prize pools for which added up to $43,165,800.

The 2011 SCOOP did feel the hit of Black Friday somewhat, as the previous year saw $63,802,405 in prize money awarded in 114 tourneys. The series began in 2009 when just 22 events (66 tourneys) were played with the prize pools adding up to $38,324,830.

A little over half of the SCOOP events are no-limit hold’em only, but all other games are in the mix as well, including stud, stud/8, Omaha/8, PLO, PLO/8, triple draw 2-7, razz, five-card draw, Badugi, and the mixed events (8-game, H.O.R.S.E.).

For a lot of non-Americans -- as well as those “expats” currently living abroad in order to play at PokerStars -- the SCOOP has become not just an important part of the online poker tourney calendar, but a meaningful warm-up for the World Series of Poker, too.

The WSOP continues to distinguish itself by including so many non-hold’em tourneys on the schedule, and for a lot of players getting to jump into some large field non-hold’em events with big prize pools during SCOOP provides a needed tune-up in those other games.

Can’t play myself, of course, although I’ll be following a lot of what happens with SCOOP over the next couple of weeks. I’m guessing those guarantees will probably be exceeded in most if not all 120 of the events this time around. Will be doing a bit of reporting on SCOOP here and there as well. Kind of a tune-up of my own, I suppose, as the plan is for me to be back in Vegas and reporting from the World Series of Poker this summer (more on that to come).

Another B-Day (Belated)

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:05:00 +0000

This week I realized a few days late that the blog had turned six years old. First time I’ve managed to let one of those anniversary milestones slip by without some sort of introspective bit of rambling here. As far as I remember, anyhow.

When I noticed the date (April 28) had passed, I sent a tweet remarking how I’d forgotten. And how I should be forgiven “as six is like a hundred in blog years.”

Stepping back it’s tempting to compare the blogging thing and my experience of it to the trajectory taken by some poker players. Or, to be more specific, how my relationship to the act of keeping the blog over a lengthy period of time might resemble how a lot of us experience poker’s oft-evoked “long run.”

At first, we’re fascinated by the game, always wanting to play and never getting enough. With experience comes learning, too, and so we recognize ourselves getting better. For many that encourages exerting still more effort to try to improve our skills further and thus better our performance.

Eventually most of us discover our games leveling off at some point, likely well shy of once-dreamed-of goals. Our infatuation levels off as well, at least for a lot of us. Nothing seems especially new anymore, or at least we start having a hard time recognizing that which is.

For some what once seemed play perhaps becomes more like work. The player becomes a grinder. Who, depending on how things go from there, might well become a former player.

Like I say, pursuing such an analogy is tempting. And there’s more to it, of course. But after six-plus years of writing a poker blog, well, I have already written more than a few times about how writing and poker compare.

Obviously the game -- both games -- still inspire me enough to keep grinding. As do those of you who keep reading. Big thanks once again, all.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forums

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:18:00 +0000

As all in the poker world have noticed by now, the popular Two Plus Two forums remain down, having been taken offline a week ago today. While the site is still up -- meaning the archives, the Two Plus Two store, and the weekly podcast are all available -- no one can log in and make new posts.

Speaking of the Two Plus Two Pokercast, I was invited to jump in for a brief segment during this week’s show to talk about the passing of Amarillo Slim Preston. I arrive around the 1:20 mark, I believe, coming on after Greg Dinkin who co-authored Preston’s memoir Amarillo Slim in a World of Fat People. Dinkin also wrote an interesting column on Grantland this week about his experiences with Preston.

During the early part of the show, co-hosts Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz spent a little while discussing the forums being down, and had 2+2 “Grand Poobah” Mason Malmuth on as well to give an update. It sounds like it may be another week or so before the site is up and running again.

As I mentioned last Friday, a hacker apparently gained access to 2+2 members’ encrypted passwords as well as their email addresses. The hacker showed an ability to decrypt the passwords as well. It sounds like whoever did it went into the moderators’ forum and posted some of the mods’ passwords, thus proving the site had been compromised.

In that post last week I mentioned how the longer the 2+2 forums remain down, the more obvious the forums’ status in the poker world as a kind of central “meeting place” will become apparent. Mike and Adam noted on the show how a lot of poker news sites essentially take cues from 2+2 when it comes to identifying stories about which to write and even researching them, and I think for the most part they’re probably right.

We live in an age where Twitter and other types of social networking assure that most newsworthy items -- or even just gossip -- will get passed around quickly enough to grab the attention of most in a hurry. In other words, it’s not like the absence of 2+2 means the poker world doesn’t have other ways of communicating with each other or learning what’s happening. Still, it’s interesting to imagine how exactly last week’s story of PokerStars’ potential purchase of Full Tilt Poker might have gotten passed around -- and received -- had it not begun with that anonymous post on 2+2.

On the one hand, if security issues remain, it’s certainly good for 2+2 to keep the forums down until those issues can be resolved and everyone who logs into the site can be assured their privacy won’t be unduly compromised.

Then again, the longer the forums remain down, the more time we have to wonder about what might have happened with regard to the security breach, and maybe to start accumulating some doubts about the forums going forward. Not to mention ponder whether or not the hacker might have made off with some truly interesting (or damaging) PMs (personal messages) -- e.g., previously private information related to the many scandals in poker explored on 2+2 over the years.

Something like that would make for some interesting poker news. Or some good gossip, anyway.

WSOP Asia Pacific Adds More Bracelets

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:25:00 +0000

This week the World Series of Poker announced that a new series of gold bracelet events will be happening at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. The first installment of the WSOP Asia Pacific series will take place April 4-15, 2013, where five bracelets will be awarded.

Most seem pretty excited about the news, including many players. The Crown has a decade’s worth of history hosting the successful Aussie Millions, and it sounds like at least some pros might make a return trip down under for the WSOP APAC. (That’s the sorta awkward acronym it appears we’ll be using to refer to the WSOP Asia Pacific series.)

Shortly after the announcement, Lance Bradley of BLUFF Magazine tweeted “Coming Soon: arguments amongst poker media about whether or not WSOP APAC bracelets count as WSOP bracelets or not,” adding a hash tag clarifying his position in advance: “#TheyCount.”

Bradley is, of course, alluding to debates over whether or not WSOP Europe bracelets are “real.” By now those arguments appear to have mostly settled into a general acceptance of WSOPE bracelets being more or less equivalent in status to the ones awarded in Vegas. The WSOPE started in 2007 and has expanded over its five years with its new home in Cannes, France appearing to suit many.

The schedule for this fall’s WSOPE has already been announced, and like last year seven bracelets will be awarded. Meanwhile there will be a record 61 events at this year’s WSOP in Las Vegas, plus one more bracelet given for the WSOP National Championship. So 69 bracelets total will be won in 2012, which means if the WSOP and WSOPE stick with similar schedules in 2013 we’ll likely see at least 74 bracelets awarded.

Bracelets weren’t awarded at the first few WSOPs -- last year’s media guide lists 1976 as the first year they were -- although the WSOP still classifies those who won events in prior years as “bracelet winners.” If I follow the WSOP’s numbers correctly, there have been 954 WSOP events from 1970-2011, although there are actually 959 “bracelet winners” since five of those were mixed doubles events (in the late ’70s and early ’80s).

That means somewhere along the way this summer we’ll be commemorating the awarding of the 1,000th WSOP bracelet. When that 1,000th WSOP bracelet is awarded -- around Event No. 41, I suppose (a $3,000 no-limit hold’em event) -- I believe that will mark the 470th bracelet won since Chris Moneymaker grabbed his at the 2003 WSOP Main Event.

By the end of the 2012 WSOPE, the overall total number of WSOP events during its history will be up to 1,028, with more than half (533) having been contested during the last decade (2003-2012).

In the presser about the WSOP APAC, WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart mentions a desire eventually “to establish the worldwide grand slam of poker,” a statement that suggests the WSOP is already eyeing a fourth destination at which to stage another series of bracelet events.

Took 43 years to get to 1,000 bracelets. At the current clip it’ll take a little over 13 years to get to 2,000, although we may well get there sooner.

Talkin’ Titanic

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:45:00 +0000

Another new “Pop Poker” column is up at PokerListings, this one looking at a few connections between poker and the Titanic, including the 1997 film, the actual doomed voyage of the White Star liner, and efforts to locate the wrecked ship.

The 100th anniversary of the tragedy and all of the recent stories commemorating that inspired the idea for the column. At first I thought I’d focus solely on the film which does feature a short poker scene early on. (A new 3-D version of the movie is now playing in theaters.) If you’re among the many who’ve seen Titanic, you’ll remember Jack Dawson wins his third-class ticket to ride in a poker game.

There are a couple of references back to the game in the film as well, although no more poker scenes. As I say in the PokerListings post, the game does introduce in rapid manner what is an obvious theme in the film, namely the way luck governs our fates. And it kind of helps introduce Jack’s character, too, as this carefree wanderer-type willing to go wherever chance takes him. That’s needed, since despite the three-hour-plus running time of the film there’s an amazing lack of back story or filling in of character in Titanic.

There’s one small reference to poker that comes up later in the film that I did not mention in the post, a poker metaphor used by Ruth DeWitt Bukater, Rose’s mother, when referring to her desire that Rose forget about this Jack character she’s just met and follow the plan to marry the detestable yet rich Cal Hockley.

The reference represents pretty much all the back story we get regarding the Rose-Cal match, with her widowed mother explaining that when Mr. Bukater died he left a mountain of debt, although the family name still had enough cachet to attract upper-class types like the Hockleys.

“That name is the only card we have to play,” Mrs. Bukater tells her daughter. “It is a fine match with Hockley. It will ensure our survival.”

Doesn’t really seem all that meaningful a use of poker talk -- that is, the line doesn’t necessarily strike me as intending some sort of allusion back to Jack’s poker game, although I suppose one could pursue that argument. Besides, I had too much else I wanted to share in the column from my “expedition” (so to speak) searching for other poker-Titanic connections. If you’re curious, check it out. Take a look, also, at the second half of this post by the Poker Grump in which he helps confirm that yes, indeed, there was poker played aboard the ship during its sole, doomed voyage.

When Titanic came out, Vera Valmore and I were living in Lille, France. We spent a year there where she taught at the university and I pretended to work on my dissertation. There was a movie theater right in the middle of city where we sometimes went. Seemed like they almost always had mostly American films running and I remember Titanic playing for a long time.

We weren’t really too interested in seeing U.S. films during our year there, although I do remember going to see Le grand Lebowski right before we returned. So we didn’t go see Titanic, although we did stay up late one night to watch a broadcast of the Academy Awards where it seemingly won everything.

I didn’t get around to watching it until much, much later, and Vera still hasn’t seen it. I think I was put off largely because the movie just seemed like another big, sprawling example of American excess, an impression made even deeper by my walking by the big poster on the marquee in the middle of the rue de Béthune for so many weeks.

Titanic is certainly lacking in a number of ways, but it’s pretty compelling, too, in the way it combines the romance and disaster stories. And as a commercial product designed to appeal to the widest possible audience, it’s kind of a marvel.

That said, I’m still not interested in seeing Avatar. Maybe I will be in a decade or so. There’s not any poker in that, is there?

“Amarillo Slim” Preston (1928-2012)

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:24:00 +0000

We had heard a couple of weeks ago that Thomas Austin Preston, Jr. -- a.k.a. “Amarillo Slim” -- was nearing the end, his friend and fellow poker icon Doyle Brunson having tweeted that he was “in critical shape,” then last week again reporting he was “at death’s door.” Preston passed at age 83 during early Sunday morning.

Preston’s significance to the modern history of poker is impossible to ignore.

In my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class we cover the entire history of poker, going back to the early 19th century. By the time we get to the latter part of the story Preston comes up again and again.

We read and talk about the World Series of Poker and Preston’s win at the third ever WSOP Main Event in 1972. We even discuss the possible deal-making that occurred at that final table that resulted in Preston’s victory, since that story helps show poker’s still uncertain place in American culture. And we talk about Preston’s subsequent publicity tour, including his many appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson where he was, for all intents and purposes, the face of poker in America and the game’s chief spokesperson.

I wrote a “Poker & Pop Culture” piece for PokerNews a few years back detailing that part of Preston’s story -- check it out for a fuller treatment of how Preston uniquely combined the Old West cowboy image with modern ideas about poker and gambling while advancing the message of poker to mainstream America.

I save the films in my class until the last few weeks. I feel like the students get a lot more out of them after having studied poker’s fascinating history, as well as after having thought a lot about poker’s place in American culture. They are, I believe, uniquely positioned to interpret and critique the movies after having gone through such study previously.

As I mentioned in a post last week, we just watched the 1974 film California Split, in which Preston has a memorable cameo near the end, essentially playing himself. His appearance immediately communicates a huge change from the games back at the California Club we see at the beginning of the film, announcing at once that this is high-stakes, serious poker.

This morning I’m rewatching Rounders (1998) for today’s class, and of course there are numerous references to Preston in that film, too, the script for which is packed with lots of knowledgeable allusions to poker’s past. In fact, the movie’s famous opener -- “If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half-hour at the table, then you are the sucker” -- is often attributed to Preston.

“I had this picture in my head,” explains Mike (Matt Damon) early on, after having been gutted by Teddy KGB in the film’s opening sequence. “Me sitting at the big table, Doyle to my left, Amarillo Slim to my right, playing in the World Series of Poker.”

For at least three decades, Preston was most certainly a symbol of poker greatness, the mention of his name in a film like Rounders instantly conveying a young player’s aspirations.

I never met Preston, although I did cover him in a few events at the WSOP, and searching back through I am seeing some posts of a few hands here and there. He didn’t play in that many during the years I’ve covered events (since 2008), usually showing up for the Seniors event, the Main, and perhaps a few others.

Of course, Preston’s place in the poker world changed dramatically just as the poker world itself began to change following Chris Moneymaker’s dramatic win at the 2003 WSOP Main Event and the subsequent “boom” in poker’s popularity.

In the summer of 2003 Preston was indicted on charges of indecency with a 12-year-old child (his granddaughter), charges later reduced to a misdemeanor to which Preston pleaded no contest. There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the case, addressed by Preston in a two-part interview with Nolan Dalla in 2009 for PokerListings titled “A Legend Lost” (part 1 & part 2).

Last week in my class we talked about Preston’s place in poker history when discussing his scene in California Split. We necessarily talked about the indecency charge, too, which I summarized as a factor that had already affected his place in the poker world presently, and would certainly complicate how people would remember him once he had died.

In any event, for anyone with an interest in poker’s history, Preston’s passing is certainly worth noting. As I’m sure we’ll be doing in class this afternoon.

Someone Figured Out Two Plus Two

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Like most of you, I’ve noticed the popular Two Plus Two forums went offline yesterday afternoon, having fallen victim to a hacker who “has displayed the ability to access e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords” as well as “the ability to decrypt passwords” (to quote from 2+2’s statement on the matter).

The site was taken offline as a precaution, with 2+2 advising users that if they happened to use their password for the forums for other accounts, they should change them as the hacker potentially has that info. NoahSD published a helpful post on his blog yesterday afternoon discussing the situation and providing advice.

The forums have been down for over 24 hours now, which means just about everybody who frequents them has become aware. The situation reminds me of that little brouhaha that erupted just about a year ago -- in late March, just before Black Friday -- which inspired a lot of talk about 2+2’s true significance to the poker community.

At issue was the revelation of still more questionable information regarding the insider cheating scandal (and subsequent cover-up) at UltimateBet. You might recall how during the first weeks of 2011, Joe Sebok -- at the time still a sponsored pro as well as UB Media and Operations Consultant -- was stirring things up a bit with interviews as well as some wars over Twitter. Coupled with some other new revelations about UB, the clamoring for answers was starting to become louder, with some wanting in particular to hear what UB’s COO Paul Leggett had to say about it all.

That’s when 2+2 “Grand Poobah” Mason Malmuth suggested in a thread that if Leggett were to come forward to address any questions, “He should answer them here,” since “2+2 is where the poker community is.”

That suggestion of 2+2’s centrality to the poker community -- or, perhaps even that 2+2 was “the poker community” -- got a lot of response, including many pointing out that the poker community includes a lot of people who have little or nothing to do with the forums, among other rejoinders.

I wrote a post here at the time in which I noted that in poker we really have multiple, overlapping communities (plural). I also got a little abstract and talked about how the whole idea of “community” in sometimes hard to imagine in poker given how the game necessarily pits us all against one other.

I suppose the longer 2+2 stays offline, the more its significance within the poker community will be clarified to us. It isn’t hard to imagine us all congregating somewhere else to share news, spread rumors, discuss strategy, insult and troll, earn warnings and bans, and imagine different scenarios in which Phil Hellmuth would ride a giant hot dog on water.

Then again, since Black Friday a lot of us have been wandering around somewhat detached from “the” poker community for many months now. Could make it that harder to get back together....

I expect 2+2 will be back soon enough, though. Which is good, ’cause I don’t have time to keep making my own photoshops.

Sources Are Reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:04:00 +0000

Continuing to follow this possible acquisition-slash-settlement story involving PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Yesterday afternoon, Wicked Chops Poker published a brief post titled “Confirmed: PokerStars Acquires Full Tilt Poker.” The post looks like it might have been hastily written (“We’ve been working various sources...”), and doesn’t offer too much beyond the declaration in the headline. The “scoop” here is that having spoken to unidentified people in the know, “the deal is in fact done.” Also confirmed is that $750 million purchase price we saw ChiliPoker CEO Alex Dreyfus tweeting a couple of days back.

The use of anonymous sources is common, of course. Some news organizations defend them as utterly necessary, while others resist using anonymous sources, adopting a code of ethics that forbids their use.

In poker we encounter it a lot, most often because of the myriad conflicts of interest that exist in the poker industry, including those involving poker media. Indeed, just yesterday I was referring to two different articles in which anonymous sources were used.

One was the article in The Wall Street Journal by Alexandra Berzon in which she spoke to “a person familiar with the matter” who confirmed the rumor that Stars was indeed pursuing the purchase. The other was by Diamond Flush in which she, too, shared information provided to her by unnamed sources regarding Groupe Bernard Tapie’s hare-brained scheme to “repay or otherwise make whole” ROW players’ accounts on FTP. (Heck, in the latter case, even the writer is anonymous.)

I assume in both articles that those providing information to the reporters did so on the condition that they not be identified as sources. Such was also likely the case with Wicked Chops’ “various sources,” although sometimes reporters will make such decisions for other reasons than the sources’ own desire for confidentiality.

Consequently, we readers are invited to decide for ourselves how much we trust the reporter’s judgment when relying on sources whose identities he or she cannot or will not share. Our trust is usually based on the information being conveyed and its believability (measured by its fitting with other established facts) as well as the writer’s credibility (measured by past reporting, including past uses of anonymous sources).

There’s a kind of irony here, actually. When we read something -- a news article, a blog post, a poem, a novel, whatever -- our idea of the “author” is of particular significance depending on the genre. In some cases, it matters a lot who the author is; in others, it does not. When it comes to reporting, it matters, thus when an anonymous source is being used, we tend to be skeptical, and can usually only be assuaged by our knowledge of the reporter -- in other words, the less we know about the source, the more we need to know about the one citing the source.

Just two days ago the whole Stars acquisition story “broke” with an entirely anonymous post on a poker forum. Practically no one paid the post any heed until another known poster (NoahSD) who has established some credibility confirmed that he’d spoken with others -- not named -- and was led to believe there may be something to the anonymous poster’s claim. And off we went.

This whole way of communicating information piecemeal, with wildly varying levels of corroboration and verification, is kind of fascinating, really.

With this particular story, it’s like we’re halfway through a poker hand in which we’ve been given various bits of information upon which to base our response. Some of that information is reliable and unambiguous. Some is not. So we go with our “reads” -- both literal and figurative. We read the lines as they are written. And we read between them. And then we decide what we believe.

My usual play in these spots is to be tentative and not risk too much without more concrete information. Do I believe these reporters’ claims as based on their anonymous sources? Sure. But I wouldn’t go making big bets on any of it just yet, nor would I venture to waste too much energy speculating what may come of it all.

And sure, you can quote me on that.

Seeing Stars, Tapie Taps Out

noreply@blogger.com (Short-Stacked Shamus) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:03:00 +0000

We awake this morning to little new information regarding yesterday’s bombshell that PokerStars may be looking to purchase Full Tilt Poker as part of both sites’ efforts to reach some kind of settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Several mainstream sites have picked up on the story by now, including the Wall Street Journal where Alexandra Berzon, having spoken to “a person familiar with the matter,” can confirm “PokerStars In Talks to Buy Full Tilt Poker.”

Those of us who have seen the new documentary All In: The Poker Movie recall Berzon as one of the many interviewed for the film. She reported on Black Friday and its aftermath for WSJ, and thus was able to fill in some details on that as well as share other interesting observations about Full Tilt Poker’s “bluffing” and the whole poker “boom” being manufactured (in part) by the online poker sites and their loose-aggressive marketing campaigns. I wrote a little about her comments in a post here a few weeks ago.

The unidentified person to whom Berzon spoke confirmed that the purchase “would be part of a broader settlement of a civil case brought by the DOJ against the two companies.” In other words, the civil complaint seeking money from PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker could be settled here; however, Berzon notes, “the deal would likely not affect criminal charges pending against the Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars executives not in the U.S., according to the person with knowledge of the matter.”

The rest of Berzon’s article fills in further background regarding the indictment, the civil complaint (and its later amendment), as well as a reference to past history when “PokerStars and Full Tilt were once fierce rivals.” That latter point was the one that dominated my thoughts about it all yesterday -- the fact that for so many years we saw Stars and Tilt as not just distinct but opposed to one another. For me, that was a context that made the thought of one acquiring the other so wild to contemplate.

Given Berzon’s experience covering the story, I’m going to assume the person to whom she spoke is a well placed source and that we can trust from her reporting that indeed something is going on with regard to these negotiations.

Interestingly, the abrupt failure of the Groupe Bernard Tapie bid has grabbed relatively less attention, despite the fact that the efforts of the French group to acquire FTP have been so closely documented and reported on over the last seven months. Never mind that with that story individuals from both GBT and FTP (with names) have come forward with statements about the failed deal.

I always thought that GBT sincerely wanted to acquire Full Tilt -- that is, they were serious about doing so -- but their offer and method of negotiation never seemed legitimate. Diamond Flush’s detailed breakdown of “The GBT Repayment Plan, Fact vs Fiction” (posted on her site late yesterday) chronicles in detail the group’s mostly unrealistic ideas about repaying “ROW” (rest of world) players. Seems like just one of several aspects of GBT’s negotiating strategy that indicate the deal was mostly doomed from the start, thanks largely to the buyer’s non-willingness to spend.

All along GBT never seemed like they were bringing much at all to the table. Was like they had come to buy something, but in reality Tapie was pretty much tapioca.

There was some talk yesterday floating around about the GBT-FTP deal having somehow fallen victim to “sabotage,” an idea first suggested by an early tweet by iGaming France stating that “Laurent Tapie confirms deal is off for FTP buyout, insinuates external sabotage over DOJ negociations [sic].” iGaming France’s follow-up article mainly shared Tapie’s official statement that the deal was off and brief explanation of the reasons why, including a last acknowledgement that a Stars-FTP-DOJ deal was apparently in the works.

It is that reference to the Stars deal that apparently “insinuates external sabotage,” the implication being the possibility of Stars stepping in here weakened GBT’s negotiating position to the point of ruining their candidacy as purchasers. Unlike GBT, PokerStars is able to offer a lot more for the purchase and thus also better able to repay all players (including those in the U.S.) as well as perhaps settle with the DOJ regarding civil charges. (That $750 million figure we saw ChiliPoker CEO Alex Dreyfus tweeting about early Tuesday is repeated in the iGaming France article.)

No ideer, of course, of the order of things or who has been talking to whom and when, but it seems a little cynical for a non-legitimate suitor to claim (or imply) “sabotage” when a legitimate one comes along to knock them out of the running.

Sort of like GBT was sitting at the table with some trash hand and was vainly trying to bluff Full Tilt Poker off a monster... you know, like K-K. (We have to give FTP pocket kings here, right?) Then PokerStars reraises with A-A, forcing GBT to give up on the hand. Yet GBT still complains while folding, as though they should have won somehow.

Am certainly intrigued to see how the rest of this plays out, as well as to discover ultimately Stars’ true purposes for striking such a deal -- which I’m sure we’ll all learn if and when it gets done.

Because unlike the amateurish GBT who always seemed like they needed to get lucky to win anything, PokerStars generally plays just about everything like a pro, with each move made for a specific reason, and as part of a larger plan.