Poker gems, #367

David Apostolico, in Card Player magazine column, June 2, 2010 (vol. 23, #11), p. 31.


If you're looking for justice, don't play poker.

Poker gems, #342

Dalai Lama, as quoted by David Apostolico in Card Player magazine column, January 27, 2010 (vol. 23, #2), p. 25.


To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else.


[Note: Mr. Apostolico did not provide a reference for the quotation. I'm always suspicious of such things. Sure, one can find this attributed to Dalai Lama all over the web, but is it genuine, or a misattribution? Fortunately, with a little probing around I found the source. It's from The Path to Tranquility, by Renuka Singh and Dalai Lama, 2002, page 5. Although less relevant to poker, the rest of the thought is also worth considering: "Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities. If you find yourself slandering anybody, first imagine that your mouth is filled with excrement. It will break you of the habit quickly enough."]

Two more books get it wrong

Back in January I wrote about some published sources that have significant details wrong in their descriptions of one of the most famous hands in poker history, Johnny Chan versus Erik Seidel at the conclusion of the main event of the 1988 World Series of Poker.

I just found two more.

Richard D. Harroch and Lou Krieger, in Poker for Dummies, have a chapter on bluffing. In a sidebar on p. 140 they discuss Chan's "reverse bluff" with the nuts:

Chan had won the World Series the previous year and had been on a roll ever
since. Here he was, 12 months later, with a chance to win back-to-back titles.
But he'd need some magic to accomplish it. Seidel, a former commodities broker
from New York, left Wall Street for the life of a professional poker player; and
now he had a big chip lead on the defending champ.

At this point in the tournament, the blinds were $10,000 and $20,000. Chan
was first to act on each betting round. The flop was Qs 10d 8d.

Chan checked. Seidel bet $50,000. Chan called. The turn card was a complete
blank, and both men checked. The fifth and final card was another blank. Chan
checked.

Seidel held a queen in his hand, giving him top pair, albeit with a weak
kicker. He thought for a moment that Chan might have a queen with a better
kicker. But by checking on the turn and on the river, Chan passed up his final
chance to bet!

Seidel then pushed all of his chips into the center of the table, certainly
a sizeable enough bet to cause Chan to release any slightly better hand in the
event that Seidel had misread him. Seidel thought his all-in bet would prevent
Chan from calling with hands such as a queen with a better kicker, or two small
pair.

Seidel had, in fact, misread Chan. And not by a little, but by a lot. Chan
smiled as he turned over his hand. Chan had flopped a straight with the Jc
9c.

Here are the errors:

1. Seidel did not have the chip lead; Chan did--by about 4:1, in fact. That's why when he won this hand, the tournament was over. If Seidel had the chip lead, how do Harroch and Krieger explain the fact that the tournament was over when Seidel lost the hand? It's true that when heads-up play began, Seidel had a chip lead on Chan ($1.2 million to $470,000, according to Michael Kaplan and Brad Reagan's Aces and Kings, p. 111.) However, by the time the final hand came up, Chan was way ahead.

2. The 10 on the flop was the 10h, not 10d. This can be seen clearly in the video clip from YouTube, included in the addendum to my original post.

3. Chan was not "first to act on each betting round." He had the button.

4. Chan did not check on the flop. The action was that Seidel checked, Chan bet $40,000, Seidel check-raised an additional $50,000, and Chan called.

5. Chan did not check on the river; the action was Seidel moving all-in, followed by Chan's call. Thus, Chan did not "pass up his final chance to bet," as Harroch and Krieger claim (with an exclamation mark for emphasis, even).

I'm also pretty sure that Seidel had not yet set out on the life of a poker pro at this point; the WSOP was kind of a lark for him. Kaplan and Reagan report Seidel saying that it was doing so well in this tournament that made him realize that "maybe I could make a living from poker" (p. 111).

Let me also take this opportunity to point out yet another error in David Apostolico's report, one that I overlooked in my previous post on this subject. He said that the queen on the flop was the queen of clubs. Nope. It was, as Harroch and Krieger correctly report, and as can be seen clearly in the video clip, the Qs. Seidel was holding the Qc.

When re-checking some of the above, I noticed that yet another published source has the action wrong! Kaplan and Reagan, in Aces and Kings, p. 111, repeat the Smith/McEvoy/Wheeler error, discussed in my original post, of saying that Chan checked on the turn, followed by Seidel moving all-in. This in spite of them acknowledging earlier in the same paragraph that Chan had the dealer button! If Chan checked the turn on the button, that necessarily means that Seidel had checked first (which is correct). So how can they then say that Seidel moved all-in on the turn after Chan's check? In theory, that anomaly might be explained by Seidel making his all-in move in the dark, after Chan's turn check but before the dealer had put out the river card. But as the video clip makes clear, that's not at all what actually occurred.

I remain astonished that so many prominent poker writers, with the correct facts so readily available, will get things so many things wrong when describing a hand that just might have been viewed in video replays more times than any other hand in poker history. It really makes one wonder about the accuracy of the reporting on plays for which it is not so easy to check up on the authors.

Poker gems, #83

David Apostolico, Card Player magazine column, January 30, 2008 (vol. 21, #2), p. 44:

As anyone who has played the game knows, the characteristics to be a good poker player are largely at odds with those we need in just about every other aspect of our life. Thus, it becomes critical to separate out those qualities and differentiate things in your life. It doesn't make you a bad person to adopt a ruthless attitude in the poker room. It would make you a bad poker player if you didn't.

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.