This week's "Poker After Dark" is an unusually entertaining one so far. This is mainly because of the other players picking on Phil Hellmuth. He made the unfortunate mistake of comparing himself to Winston Churchill, a remark which Phil Gordon, Gabe Kaplan, and Cory Zeidman will not let him forget.
We also have Hellmuth telling Zeidman (paraphrased; it didn't seem worth the time to go back and transcribe accurately), "It's like there's a hold'em ladder with 30,000 pegs, and I'm at about peg #20,000--higher than anybody else in the world. You're at about #4. I'm so far above you, you have no right to talk to me about hold'em." Other players later noted that Phil placing himself at only 20,000 out of 30,000 may be the humblest thing he's ever said.
Phil boasts about being paid $50,000 a pop for doing corporate gigs. Then he badly misplays a hand and loses a pot he could easily have won. Zeidman zings him: "People pay $50,000 to watch you play like that?"
Spoiler: Hellmuth is first to bust out, and does so in an uncharacteristic fashion. Whatever his faults, it must be said that Phil rarely exits a tournament by calling off all his chips when he's badly behind. He's usually much more careful than that (too careful, in fact). But this time he called twice (turn and river) in a situation where he should have been far more willing to dump his hand. Naturally, he has to inject some under-the-breath remarks about how he had his opponent (Kaplan) beautifully trapped until a miracle card hit, and how he "knew" Gordon had paired that ace. (So why did you call, if you knew?)
If you love to hate Hellmuth as much as I do, it's all great fun. Watch it here.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Fun on TV
Poker gems, #205
David Mamet, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, September 16, 2005 (available here). (Hat tip to James McManus's most recent Card Player magazine installment on the history of poker for referring to this essay, which I had not seen before.)
One needs to know but three words to play poker: call, raise or fold.
Fold means keep the money, I’m out of the hand; call means to match your opponents’ bet. That leaves raise, which is the only way to win at poker. The raiser puts his opponent on the defensive, seizing the initiative. Initiative is only important if one wants to win.
The military axiom is “he who imposes the terms of the battle imposes the terms of the peace.” The gambling equivalent is: “Don’t call unless you could raise”; that is, to merely match one’s opponent’s bet is effective only if it makes the opponent question the caller’s motives. And that can only occur if the caller has acted aggressively enough in the past to cause his opponents to wonder if the mere call is a ruse de guerre....
In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one’s convictions, one’s intuitions, one’s understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt....
One may sit at the poker table all night and never bet and still go home broke, having anted away one’s stake....
[One] may be bold and risk defeat, or be passive and ensure it.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Poker gems, #204
Barry Tanenbaum, in Card Player magazine column, December 31, 2008 (vol. 21, #26), p. 78.
Some players, probably due to proper upbringing, find it hard to escape the feeling that bluffing is somehow unethical. They rarely try, and if they do get caught bluffing, they feel just like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar....
Bluffing is part of the game. It is not theft, any more than a baseball pitcher who mixes up a fastball with a curve is stealing from the hitter. If you are ashamed to bluff, you will have a very hard time beating anyone except the most oblivious players.
This and that
1. Just back from Salt Lake City. Had a nice visit with family. While there, we went to see the "Body Worlds 3" exhibit. There was an unforgivably long line to slog through to get in. The only entertaining part of the wait was the display above. One could text messages and the skeleton would "say" them. I was too bored to resist.
2. I had gotten a bit behind on listening to the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, so I downloaded the last three (episodes 9, 10, and 11), put them on my non-iPod, and listened to them today while driving home. Good stuff, as always, and utterly unlike any other poker podcast out there.
3. The SLC editorial I mentioned a couple of days ago is available here. The highlight: "Internet wagering is the crack cocaine of gaming. It's highly addictive and readily available, a round-the-clock siren preying on those too weak to know their limits."
I wonder if the Salt Lake Tribune is consistent in wanting to ban everything for which it is true that a small minority of users indulge to excess, causing personal and societal woes: alcohol, computers, pornography, sex, eating, rummage sales, shopping in general....
The concluding paragraph: "The Legislature should approve the resolution and send a strong message to Washington. It's imperative that federal officials respect Utah's constitution, and preserve the state's right to protect the public from these Internet predators."
The actual legislative proposal on the table wouldn't make it a crime to engage in Internet wagering in Utah, but that sentence sure makes it sound like the Tribune editorial board thinks the state legislature should follow Washington state down that path.
I shouldn't have to tell you by now how things like this make my blood boil. I neither need nor want any government (local, state, or federal) to "protect" me from my own decisions. The unstated, but unavoidable, implication behind this is that they know better than I do what is a good use of my time and money. That's appallingly, shockingly condescending, and such overt governmental paternalism should be offensive to every right-thinking American.
4. Rather than risk an expensive breakdown of my old car in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, I decided to go for a rental. Found a great deal from Alamo: a 2009 Toyota Yaris 4-door for four days for $59, including all fees, taxes, etc. The thing got 39.2 mpg over just under 1000 miles, even though most of that was at 75-80 mph, not exactly the car's sweet spot for optimum mileage, while going up and down through mountains (at least 5000 feet of elevation change). Impressive.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Guess the casino, #18
Some readers have pointed out to me that at least some RSS readers reveal the answer in the title. I still haven't figured out why this is, but in an attempt to remedy that problem, I'm trying a new way of revealing the answer. (And, by the way, there are still a few people who haven't caught on to the fact that the answer will always be contained in the post--no need to submit guesses!) Just hover your mouse over the appropriate text below, and the answer should pop up. Please let me know if this solves the problem and/or creates any new ones.
HOVER YOUR MOUSE HERE FOR THE ANSWER
Readers seeing the light on the 2-4
Remote-posting as a virtual outlaw from one of the two states of the union in which all gaming is illegal. (I slipped over the border unnoticed.) It's even in the state constitution, f'r cryin' out loud. (Article VI, Section 27: "The Legislature shall not authorize any game of chance, lottery or gift enterprise under any pretense or for any purpose.") In fact, the state's biggest newspaper this morning carried an editorial urging that that prohibition be allowed to be extended to a ban on online gambling, no matter what international trade agreements might say to the contrary. It even used the lame "crack cocaine of gambling" line. Srsly. I'll post a link to it when I can, but it seems not to be available on the paper's web site yet. (The editorial is in support of the legislative proposal discussed here and here.)
Anyway, this is just a quick post to point you to an excellent 2-4 hand posted by reader GrrrlZilla here. (See her blog here.) I won't embed it because I keep getting complaints about the page being slow to load when it contains Flash movies.
Nice to be getting more converts to the cult religion of the deuce-four, of which I have anointed myself to be Grand Poo-Bah.
Oh, and while I'm throwing together unrelated links, F-Train shows why it pays to read the ol' Grumpster once in a while!
I'll be back in Vegas late Monday. Don't go crazy while I'm gone.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Friday, January 02, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Program alert
A long time ago I put a reminder in MS Outlook to watch "Stargate Atlantis" tomorrow (Jan. 2). I have never seen the show before, but somewhere I read that they filmed an episode at Planet Hollywood, which I thought would be interesting to watch. I see from the Sci-Fi Channel web site that the episode is titled "Vegas." I can't imagine how they'll work PH into a science fiction show, but I guess "Star Trek" managed to make its share of voyages back to 20th-century Earth, so writers can pull off anything that they want to.
Wow--odd coincidence. I will be on the road tomorrow, so I programmed my VCR (yes, I still use one, not having yet moved up to the DVR era) to record the show, and found that an old episode of "Twilight Zone" from 1960 with William Shatner was on. So I'm watching it while I write this note, and I was a few words away from the end of the previous paragraph when they played a promo for the show I was describing. Sure enough, they mention a "rift in the space-time continuum" having thrown them to today's Planet Hollywood.
Should be a fun show.
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