Poker gems, #439

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.


The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to.

Guess the casino, #1004

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: South Point

Guess the casino, #1003

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Mirage

Over and out

I'll be gone for a few days, off to Salt Lake City to visit the parental units.

To tide you over until I get back, here's the latest adventure in the life of the Mighty Deuce-Four:

Guess the casino, #1002

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Harrah's

Hodgepodge

First up, in the "What's in a screen name" category, we have this excellent example:

Second, it keeps on raining quads for me at Bodog. These two happened in the same game today:

Finally, no post would be complete without at least one example of the Mighty Deuce-Four at work. Here the flop was checked around. I bet the turn, on the strength of my sure-to-get-there draws, got one caller. He called again on the river. He had A-J with no spade. He thought that was enough to take down the Deuce-Four. I pity the fool!

Guess the casino, #1001

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Excalibur

I am pure awesome sauce

If you should doubt that, just ask Josie.

Screw-ups at Full Tilt

Excellent read about what may have happened, by Bill Rini:

http://www.billrini.com/2011/10/04/screwed-full-tilt-poker/

The part that doesn't ring true to me, however, is the bit about the big investors accepting ongoing payments, when they knew they really shouldn't, because they had to keep up appearances. I just don't buy the premise that Howard Lederer was depositing checks for millions of dollars at a time, while muttering under his breath, "Damn, I really hate that I have to take this money, but it's for the good of the company, so I'll do it."

Guess the casino, #1000

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Binion's

Poker gems, #438

Tom Schneider, today on Pokerati.

The one thing I’m most curious about is Chris Ferguson. Why Jesus? Why did you let this happen to us Jesus? Why did you need that much money? It’s obvious that you didn’t spend it at the barber. Your clothing budget couldn’t have been very much since you have worn the same long, black, scary leather jacket for the last ten years. The poker community after review of all of the facts should take a vote on whether Jesus should be able to keep his name. Whatever, we probably couldn’t even organize that.

Barry Greenstein as judge of character

The news today is that Barry Greenstein and Doyle Brunson say they believe their friends over at Full Tilt Poker may have been incompetent businessmen, but they couldn't possibly have had any malicious, criminal intention.

See http://www.pokerlistings.com/brunson-greenstein-talk-full-tilt-poker-scandal-55027.

I want to focus just on Greenstein here. He is quoted saying, “There’s no doubt in my mind that their thought wasn’t ‘We’re going to steal from customers’ but when Black Friday hit it came at the absolute worst time for them.” Further, “Most of these guys on Team Full Tilt are friends of mine and most of them definitely didn’t know what was going on." And, finally, “I don’t think anyone believes that the initial intent was to defraud the customers, it just worked out that way in their method of fixing the problem."

Well, that's fine and noble of him. But how is Greestein's track record as a judge of character?

Here he is in 2008, speaking of Russ Hamilton, after going to his house to interview him specifically to determine whether Hamilton was guilty in the UltimateBlecch scandal: “This is being investigated and there’s no doubt in my mind that it will end up that Hamilton knew who the cheaters were, but I don’t get the feeling that we’ll be saying that Russ Hamilton is one of the cheaters.” “I didn’t get the feeling that he was that knowledgeable about what was going on as we hoped he would be.” “Russ seemed like he knew a couple of the guilty parties, but in the end, I don’t think it was him.”

We all know how that story turned out.

So it seems to me we have to conclude one of two things:

(A) Greenstein is an astute reader of human minds, he correctly assessed Hamilton's soul, and the poor guy is wrongly accused, as pure as the driven snow, despite all the evidence (only some of which was known at the time of Greenstein's interview), and despite the formal conclusions of the investigating gaming commission.

or

(B) Greenstein is a nice guy and tends to assume that other people are also nice guys, and he has a blind spot to the evil that men do. Furthermore, he has a habit of trusting his own gut feeling about people in preference to objective evidence. As a result, his comments about Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst should be viewed as the product of friendship and wishful thinking, rather than a reliable, objective assessment of the whole situation.

I know which way I'm voting.

Guess the casino, #999

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Tropicana

Guess the casino, #998

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: MGM Grand

Poker gems, #437

Sam Trickett, in Party Poker Big Game 5, episode 2.

There's too many levels in this stupid game.