How many mistakes can you make in one paragraph?

In the December, 2007, issue of Poker Pro magazine, David Apostolico has an article on slow-playing big hands (pp. 80-81). In it, he recounts what has become one of the most famous hands in poker history, Johnny Chan versus Erik Seidel in the World Series of Poker main event, 1988. Here's what Apostolico says. If you know the history, see if you can count how many factual errors Mr. Apostolico manages to make in describing just one hand of poker.

The ultimate example of this is Johnny Chan's play in the final stages of
the 1988 World Series of Poker as memorialized in the movie Rounders.
Chan was heads-up with Erik Seidel when he flopped the nut straight. Chan held
Jc-9c and the flop was Qc-10d-8d. Seidel held a queen with a weak kicker, giving
him top pair. There was $40,000 in the pot and Chan was first to act after the
flop. He checked. Seidel bet $50,000, which Chan called. The turn brought a blank
and again Chan checked. However, this time Seidel checked also. The river
brought another blank and again Chan checked. This time Seidel went all in and,
of course, Chan called (right away, I might add).

Seidel was severely crippled and soon Johnny was world champ. Chan took a
big chance by checking on the river. If Seidel had checked also, then Chan would
have lost the opportunity to make a bet with the nuts.

First, let's acknowledge that Mr. Apostolico gets a few things right. Chan and Seidel were, in fact, heads-up for the 1988 WSOP championship. Chan did, in fact, hold the Jc-9c, and Seidel had a queen with a weak kicker (Qc-7h, to be exact). Chan did flop the nut straight. And the hand did famously get featured in "Rounders." But that's pretty much the entire list of things that Mr. Apostolico gets right.

The errors:

1. "[T]he flop was Qc-10d-8d." Actually, the 10 on the flop was in hearts, not diamonds. This is confirmed by three sources: Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback, All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of The World Series of Poker, St. Martin's Press, 2005, p. 150; and Dana Smith, Tom McEvoy, and Ralph Wheeler, The Championship Table at the World Series of Poker, Cardoza Publishing, 2nd edition, 2004, pp. 112-113; and Mark Rogers and Matthew Booma, 52 Greatest Moments, World Series of Poker, Amalgam Studio LLC, 2007, p. 135.

2. "There was $40,000 in the pot." I'm not certain that this is wrong, but I suspect that it is. I haven't found any source that relates what the blinds and antes were at this stage of the tournament, but it's clear that both players limped in before the flop. It's hard to think of a plausible combination of blinds and antes that would have resulted in a $40,000 pot before the flop.* I think more likely, given the other mistakes I'll discuss below, Mr. Apostolico is erroneously getting the "$40,000" figure from the initial post-flop bet.

3. "Chan was first to act after the flop." Nope. Chan had the button, as you can clearly see from the famous footage. Seidel had to act first after the flop. This mistake leads to several others that follow in the article.

4. "He checked." No. The action on the flop was this: Seidel checked first, Chan bet $40,000, Seidel check-raised another $50,000, and Chan called.

5. "The turn brought a blank and again Chan checked. However, this time Seidel checked also." Well, it did go check-check, but in the opposite order. The card was the 2s, incidentally.

6. "The river brought another blank and again Chan checked. This time Seidel went all-in and, of course, Chan called." The river was the 6d. But Seidel was first to act and moved all in. Chan called (which, I suppose, I should count as another point Mr. Apostolico gets right).

7. "Seidel was severely crippled, and soon Johnny was world champ." Uh, no. According to Smith/McEvoy/Wheeler, "When the final hand began, defending World Champion Chan had $1,374,000 in chips and challenger Seidel had $296,000." This is plausible, because this makes a total of 1,670,000 chips in play, and there were 167 players in the tournament, at $10,000 each. Grotenstein/Reback give the same figure for Chan, but don't specify Seidel's stack size. They do note, however, that Chan had "a substantial lead." It's obvious from the footage that the hand in question ends the tournament. Seidel wasn't "crippled," he was eliminated! Furthermore, Chan would not "soon" become the world champ, as Mr. Apostolico writes. This is wrong in two ways. First, Chan was already the defending world champion, having won the same event in 1987. Second, he gained the title for the second year in a row upon completion of this hand, not sometime "soon" thereafter.

8. "Chan took a big chance by checking on the river. If Seidel had checked also, then Chan would have lost the opportunity to make a bet with the nuts." No. Since Chan had the button, he didn't have to make the difficult decision as to whether to continue his slow-play on the river.

I should add that a couple of lines of dialog in "Rounders" sort of suggest that Chan was first to act and had the "patience" to wait for Seidel to "bluff." But it's not so. Also, the movie calling Seidel's move a "bluff" is inaccurate; he likely believed that he had the best hand. Top pair in a heads-up situation is usually good, especially given the way Chan played it (which was indeed masterfully deceptive).

I also see that Smith/McEvoy/Wheeler make an apparent error when they suggest that Seidel moved all-in before the river card hit. It's not quite explicit, however, and it's possible to read their text as being correct. In the actual footage, though, you can clearly see all five community cards are out when Seidel pushes his stacks forward, followed by Chan's call. That the action was check/check on the turn and all-in/call on the river is confirmed in both of the other books mentioned above.

So that's eight (plus or minus one, depending on how you count them) factual mistakes in 14 sentences of Mr. Apostolico's article--a pretty high error rate by any standards.

I'm disappointed by this, because I've enjoyed his columns in Card Player magazine. He has also written six books about poker (at least that's how many are listed on amazon.com), two of which I own but haven't read yet. One of them is Lessons from the Pro Poker Tour, a book devoted to lessons to be learned from specific hands as they played out in a tournament series.

If Mr. Apostolico can't be bothered to get the facts correct when he's describing one of the most famous hands in the history of poker, it's going to be hard to put much confidence in an entire book that depends, through and through, on getting just such hand-history details correct.


*Theoretically, blinds of, say, 9,000 and 18,000, with a 2,000 ante would make the pot 40,000, but those are kind of odd amounts for a tournament structure to use. Blinds of 7,500 and 15,000 with a 5,000 ante would work mathematically, but it would be highly unusual to have the antes be that high a percentage of the blinds. Blinds of 8,000/16,000 with a 4,000 ante would also yield a 40,000 pot, but, again, it would be strange to have an ante that was half the size of the small blind. I just can't think of a plausible set of numbers that works, which is part of why I strongly suspect that Mr. Apostolico's number is just wrong here.

Addendum, January 5, 2008

A reader pointed me to this YouTube clip, which appears to be unedited from the original broadcast. Without the editing imposed by "Rounders," it's much clearer about the order of action, and completely confirms what I had pieced together above.