Strangest "Poker After Dark" ever

Last night's episode of "Poker After Dark" was the strangest ever. It had little to do with the poker. The whole thing was dominated by a weird prop bet that started as a seemingly trivial bit of small talk.

Phil Gordon said to Howard Lederer, "I saw your mom playing poker at the Mirage yesterday." Lederer doesn't believe it. And it eventually turns into a $1000 bet. Gordon is so convincing that Robert Williamson takes $1000 of the action, too.

Before the bet is actually placed, though, Gordon's story changes several times, and gets embellished. First he decides that it was at the Venetian, not the Mirage, and it might have been two days ago, rather than yesterday. And maybe she wasn't actually playing poker, but was just in the poker room.

Then there's a big question about whether it was Lederer's mother or stepmother. Both Gordon and Lederer state that Gordon has definitely met both of them, and should be able to recognize either one and tell them apart. But Gordon is confused for a while. Apparently at some unknown time in the past there was a karaoke contest at which Lederer's mother was a judge, and she voted against Gordon. Gordon at first says that this is the woman he talked to yesterday. Then later he says, no, not that one, the other one--so presumably Lederer's stepmother.

Whichever one it supposedly was, Lederer isn't buying it. His mother hates casinos, and won't even go to a movie theater inside of one, so the idea that she was casually playing poker (she doesn't play poker, either) in the Mirage or the Venetian is just out of the question, even though she does live in Las Vegas. Lederer's stepmother does play poker, but Lederer was pretty sure that she was then in San Diego (she does not live in Vegas; I assume, though it wasn't stated, that she lives in New England, where I believe Howard's father still lives and teaches English), and that she would never hit town without calling him. On the strength of those presumptions, he's willing to bet that whoever it was that Gordon saw and spoke to, it was neither his mother nor his stepmother.

But Gordon isn't backing down. In fact, his story gets more specific, which is what draws Williamson into the bet. Gordon says that not only did he recognize the woman in question, but that she asked him if he recognized her. He said, "Yeah, you're Howard's mom," and she confirmed that. Gordon is so certain of all of this that he says he would bet up to $20,000 on it. When others at the table express interest in the bet, he is so confident that he tells them that if Howard will cover their bets, "Back the truck up!" He had temporarily forgotten Lederer's stepmother's name, but when Lederer mentions "Simone," he adds extra emphasis--yes, that's definitely who it was.

Well, after a lot of back and forth (and this is a greatly condensed version of all that took place), they make the bets, somebody gets a cell phone, and Lederer places the call to his stepmother. (They never call his mother; apparently Gordon accepts that it was not she.) She is in Florida (I think that's what she said) and has been for a few days. She has not been in Las Vegas recently. Lederer is careful not to lead the witness; he simply asks her where she is now and how long she has been there, without telling her the back story or that there is money on the line. Gordon speaks briefly to her, too, ruling out the possibility that Lederer is faking the conversation.

He pays up, but remains apparently completely baffled at how he could have it wrong. He suggests that maybe Lederer has set the whole thing up, coaching Simone in advance to deny having been in Vegas. (This seems unlikely. Not only do I not think that Lederer would stoop to that kind of rank dishonesty, but it just seems too looney a thing to set up in the hopes that it would somehow lead to a prop bet.) Williamson seems to believe that Lederer and Gordon conspired to make the whole thing up just to take Williamson's money, which they will secretly split later. (Unlikely, I think, for similar reasons.)

This is a really bizarre situation. I'm impressed that Lederer would have such reliance on his knowledge of the two women in question (particularly his stepmother, who does play casino poker; he was therefore relying solely on the presumption that she would not come to town without calling him) as to disbelieve an incredibly earnest and highly convincing Gordon. Gordon, in fact, was so convincing that Ali Nejad said that if Lederer accepted the bet, it could only be because he hated money. Gordon had me convinced, too. I thought that Lederer was going to get a surprise on the other end of the phone. (I wasn't sure enough that I would have put $1000 down on it, though, especially because of how Gordon's story changed in significant details along the way.)

So what could possibly have occurred in Phil Gordon's life that had him 100% certain that he had had a conversation with Lederer's stepmother the day before, yet be wrong about it? That's the core of the mystery for me. I hopped over to the http://www.twoplustwo.com/ "televised poker" forum to see if there was speculation about this. A reasonably plausible suggestion was made by somebody calling himself "badatmath": "It was probably some lady that had met Phil in a poker tournament or something and when he said "yeah, you're Howard's mom!" she didn't hear what he said, thought he was joking, or just went along with it for some reason."

That does seem to be just about the only possibility that makes sense. Of course, it also requires that she coincidentally happened to resemble Lederer's stepmother, or that Gordon had a brain lapse as to what Lederer's stepmother looks like. Nobody during the show nor online has openly suggested this, but a healthy dose of alcohol in Gordon's system at the time might also be part of the answer. That would also help explain his uncertainty as to which casino this happened in, what day it occurred, which of Lederer's relatives it was, whether she was actually playing poker or just hanging around the room, etc.

Phil Gordon hasn't had any well-known nickname before now. At the close of the episode, the fill-in voice-over commentator said that Gordon, now with some egg on his face, could become known as Phil "Back The Truck Up" Gordon.

All in all, it was a weird but fascinating glimpse into human psychology generally--i.e., how we can trick ourselves so easily, and be much more certain of things that we really ought to be--and, more specifically, into the lives of professional gamblers, and how easily they turn ordinary interpersonal interactions and conversations into betting opportunities. No matter how long I stay in this racket, I can't imagine ever becoming such a gambler at heart that I would act that way. Maybe I still just value money way too much....


Addendum, May 25, 2008

It's actually even a little weirder than I reported above. I'm watching the "Director's Cut" show, where they recap the week's events. In replay, it's clear that I slightly misremembered what Gordon said in his story of the encounter. Rather than him being the one to affirmatively suggest to the woman that she was Howard's mom, he actually says that she offered this: "You remember me. I'm Howard's mom." If he's accurate about that, it effectively eliminates the suggestion discussed above about Gordon saying such a thing and it being unheard or misunderstood or shrugged off by the woman he was talking to. Of course, memory is tricky, and perhaps it did happen as suggested above, and in Gordon's memory he has accidentally inverted who made the identification. (In the twoplustwo thread on this, somebody transcribed part of the discussion, and very specifically quotes Gordon as saying that he's the one who suggested the identification. But just moments ago I saw a replay of another part in which he says that the woman is the one who affirmatively identified herself, so apparently he told it both ways, a detail that I didn't catch the first time around.)

In the post-game interview, however, Gordon remain adamant about who he spoke to. He is mystified about the whole thing, says it's the strangest thing that has even happened to him, and he is headed over to the Venetian to investigate. Perhaps he is hoping to find other people that know Lederer's stepmother and will verify that she was there.

This all transpired several months ago, so I wonder what he uncovered. Gordon has a blog, but he has only posted on it twice in the last year and a half, and there's nothing there. I submitted a question about this through his web site, but I'm not really expecting a response.