Hellmuth vs. Negreanu

I never get tired of seeing Phil Hellmuth lose.

Should you go pro?

A sobering look at the financial realities of trying to make it as a professional poker player, from one who has been there, Daniel Negreanu, here.

Negreanu on the perception of luck

This is one of the best things I've seen Daniel Negreanu write:

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-journal.php?subaction=showfull&id=1428280619&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&

Daniel Negreanu, on the online poker ecosystem

"You guys don't even want to know what I would do to the VIP programs if I was in charge! I would focus on giving bonuses to the LOSING players exclusively. They'd play more, last longer, and the pros would get the money in the end anyway. I think it's overkill to not only have pros crushing all the rec players, but then also giving them the majority of the bonuses on top of that?" 

Whole thing here. 

Mind games

I was browsing YouTube for something else when the site suggested this clip. I watched it and liked it. I'm not sure the river raise alone would have won the hand, but the raise plus a well-conceived little speech did the trick.

Poker gems, #462

Daniel Negreanu, in this week's broadcast of the World Series of Poker Main Event.

There's actually a good quote from the Rocky Balboa movie, where he says, "It's not how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."* That's what separates a true champion from the rest.

*Here's the full speech, from IMDB:

Rocky Balboa: You ain't gonna believe this, but you used to fit right here.[taps on the inside of his hand] I'd hold you up to say to your mother, "this kid's gonna be the best kid in the world. This kid's gonna be somebody better than anybody I ever knew." And you grew up good and wonderful. It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilege. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that! I'm always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You're my son and you're my blood. You're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain't gonna have a life. Don't forget to visit your mother.

Strange ultimatum

In the January 30 issue of Poker Player Newspaper, publisher Stanley R. Sludikoff has an editorial about the Full Tilt Poker mess that has been dragging out for almost a year now.

The principal players--Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson--have, of course, remained essentially silent, undoubtedly on the advice of their legal team, given the hefty criminal and civil penalties potentially hanging over their heads.

Here's how Mr. Sludikoff starts his editorial:

In this segment it is my intention to take up the issue of the alleged illegal activities of poker celebrities Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, et al. I say "alleged" because no indictments have been handed down, and everyone should be granted the supposition of innocence until proven guilty.

I pause here to note the wild factual inaccuracy of saying that "no indictments have been handed down," but let's go on.

On the other hand, Howard, Chris, and their cohorts have been publicly silent, apparently hiding from their usual public exposure. This activity tends to support the proposition that they are guilty.

Oh really? So, Mr. Sludikoff, if you are ever accused of a crime, and you heed your attorneys' advice not to make any public statements, we should take that as evidence of your guilt, right? To put it another way, the accused enjoy the presumption of innocence, unless they fail to issue statements to the press--is that your view, sir?

So in the interest of justice, I will delay subsequent editorials for two more weeks and invite the named parties to communicate with me, lay out their position, and tell our readers what happened. And I will print their statements exactly as rendered.

Wow. How big of you. Because, after all, these people surely would have spoken out by now if only they had some media outlet that would give them space to do so!

It's so ridiculous. I can't imagine why Mr. Sludikoff thinks that these guys will feel so threatened by the specter of his coming tirade against them that they will reverse course and suddenly open up in his pages. What could he possibly plan to say about them that hasn't already been said ten thousand times before over the past ten months?

To pick just the most recent example I've seen, earlier today Daniel Negreanu unleashed another torrent of hatred on the FTP gang:

They edited down my comments about Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson, but they definitely got the gist of my vitriol towards them. I'm disgusted by them and what they've done to smear the game with putrid decision making. Ray is a buffoon, Howard is arrogant, condescending, and incompetent, and Chris is a liar and has the warmth of a snow pea. These were never my friends, I never cared for any of them. I never trusted them for a second, and my "read" was always that these were not my kind of people. Why are they different from the rest of the group? These three were on the board, admittedly making all the decisions, and jeopardizing millions of dollars worth of players money that still hasn't surfaced. You guys suck. I hope to never see any of your faces at the WSOP anymore, and I hope you live with the shame you deserve for the rest of your lives. Your own personal, private hell. You deserve all the wrath you've received from the poker world, and much more. You are scum and each of you absolutely deserves a few swift baseball bat swings to the groin area, old school Vegas style.

Does Mr. Sludikoff have in store rhetoric that is so much worse than that that the possibility of seeing it in print will cause the accused to open up to him, with the risk of handing more ammunition to a federal prosecutor who has his missiles radar-locked onto them, just to avoid another round of name-calling? He might as well say, "Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time."

I am really baffled at what combination of arrogance and ignorance it takes for Mr. Sludikoff to believe that his pulpit is so fearsome that threatening to use it will pry an explanation out of defendants who are lawyered up six ways to Sunday.

As they used to say on Seinfeld, "Good luck with all that."

Negreanu and Epic

I'm sure many of you have already read Daniel Negreanu's explanation in his blog as to why he decided not to play in the first Epic Poker League tournament (or, apparently, any subsequent ones). I'm sure I'm not the only one that was left with the feeling that there is something missing from the explanation.

He may well be right that the league will eventually prove to be just the latest in a long line of failed, high-profile attempts to form a sustainable poker equivalent to the pro golf tour, that its financial structure can't be sustained over the long run unless they manage to get some sort of foot in the door to a U.S.-legal online poker site.

But so what? Why would that make him decide not to play now? There's a substantial overlay (I think it's $400,000 added to the prize pool), and I understand that the casino is taking no money out for itself (though some small fraction goes directly to the dealers). Does Negreanu not like money? It doesn't make sense that he would pass on a +EV opportunity just because the venture may at some unknown time in the future. That would be a good reason not to invest in it as a business, or not to take a leadership role in it if offered. But why not play the tournaments while they're available? It's clear from his Twitter feed that he's not doing anything else at the moment except golfing and catching up on TV shows.

One obvious possibility is that his dislike for Annie Duke is so intense that he will pass up a chance at winning a reasonably lucrative and prestigious tournament in order to avoid having to be civil to her. That's almost surely a factor. But is it the dominant one? If it were, given his history of bluntness, I don't think he'd have any problem saying exactly that in his blog--something like, "I don't like her, I don't want to be around her, and I don't want to support things she's in charge of and making money from." Everybody already knows that that's how he feels, so it's hard for me to believe that he wouldn't come out and say it if that were the core reason he is staying away from the Palms this week.

Which leads me to consider another possibility: he doesn't think it's a +EV situation for him. Consider his description of the field:

The only real difference I see between this league and something like the WPT is:

-much tougher field in the EPL means that even with $400k added most of the field will still be -EV, while the truly elite players, like a Vivek Rajkumar or a Sam Trickett will feast on the bankrolls of lesser skilled pros.

-no real Cinderella stories at the final tables....

For the truly elite players, this is free money for them in terms of EV, but the vast majority of entrants are just not good enough to show a profit against this super tough field.

I suspect that he has looked over the competition and decided that, good as he is, his edge on the field, if any, is too small to be worth the cost of entry. After all, if he deemed himself to be a "truly elite player" comparable to Rajkumar or Trickett, surely he would jump at the chance to "feast on the bankrolls of lesser skilled pros" and get himself some "free money." If I'm right, this, understandably, would not be an explanation he would be eager to state explicitly and publicly.

My conclusion is that the most likely real reason that Negreanu is battling across golf greens this week instead of green felt is that he has taken a good, hard look at the field and his own ranking within it, and had to conclude that he was one of the "lesser skilled pros," one who is "just not good enough to show a profit against this super tough field."

I don't think there's anything shameful about that. On the contrary, in order to be successful, every poker player has to be able to accurately take his own measure and that of his competition. If Negreanu has done so here and decided that he's better off waiting for tournaments with more dead money, hey, I can't blame him. I just think it's kind of an interesting conclusion to reach when it's something that he hasn't expressed directly, yet seems the most likely truth.

Incidentally, speaking of super-elite players and tough fields, check out this call made by Erik Seidel a couple of hours ago as I write this. Phenomenal!

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/epic-poker-league-event-1/main-event/post.195675.htm

Having skin in the game

You probably think the biggest news in the poker world in the last 24 hours has something to do with the suspicious ongoing delays in payouts from Full Tilt, or maybe the goings-on at the WPT Championship at the Bellagio, especially the controversy over alleged cheater Ali Tekintamgac being allowed to play, and other players being prohibited from talking about the accusations.

Nope.

The biggest poker news of the past 24 hours is that we learned the status of the foreskin of two of the games most prominent players. In case you missed it, here are the relevant Twitter posts:

TexDolly Doyle Brunson
Enjoyed playing with @RealKidPoker....had someone to talk to. Even about who got "snipped." :-)

RealKidPoker Daniel Negreanu
@TexDolly "same team" no snip crew! Can't imagine if I ever have a son that I'd let the doc snip his pecker.

In retrospect, this is clearly what Bluff magazine's Jessica Welman had been referring to with this earlier Tweet:

jesswelman jesswelman
Never in my life did I think my job would entail listening to @realkidpoker and seven other guys discuss circumcision.

To which I had cheekily responded:

PokerGrump Poker Grump
@jesswelman You didn't read the fine print in the contract, obv.

Poker gems, #403

Daniel Negreanu, on PokerStars Big Game, needling "loose cannon" William Given, after Given won only a small amount with quad aces, having slow-played them to death against Scott Seiver.


Where's the rest of the pot?

Poker gems, #394

Joe Stapleton, on the PokerStars Big Game, on Daniel Negreanu's lack of aggression:


Daniel's been calling more than a clingy girlfriend.

All rolled up

Daniel Negreanu tweeted this question last night: "Weird question was raised: what are the odds that at an 8 handed stud table, all 8 players are rolled up? (Dealt 3 of a kind)." He followed that a short time later with this observation: "Bill Chen just told me its 1 followed by about 20 zeros."

This shouldn't be too hard to figure out. For conceptual simplicity, let's assume that the cards are dealt all three to one player, then three to the next, etc. The actual order of dealing doesn't affect the math.

The first player's first card can be anything. His second card must match the first, so must be one of the three remaining of that rank, out of 51 cards left in the deck. The third card he gets must be one of the two remaining of that rank, with 50 cards left in the deck. So the probability that the first player is rolled up is 52/52 x 3/51 x 2/50, or 0.00235, which is 1/425.

The second player can get for his first card any card in the deck except for the fourth of the rank that the first player got, meaning that 48/49 cards will do. Then his next card must be one of the three remaining of the same rank as his first one, with 48 cards left, for a probability of 3/48. His last card being the same rank is a probability of 2/47. The product of these three probabilities is 0.00261, or 1/384.

I'll spare you the repetitive prose for the other players, but you see how the logic goes. Here's what I get for each of the eight players:

1: 0.00234 (1/425)
2: 0.00261 (1/384)
3: 0.00290 (1/345)
4: 0.00324 (1/309)
5: 0.00364 (1/274)
6: 0.00412 (1/243)
7: 0.00468 (1/214)
8: 0.00534 (1/187)

(If it seems strange to you that the probability increases for each subsequent player, it's because the deck is becoming less disordered and more constrained with each set of three ranked cards we remove. Imagine if we took them out four ranked cards at a time--i.e., all the aces out, then all the kings, etc. By the time you got down to the final four cards in the deck, they would necessarily all be of the same rank. The same thing is going on here, though a little less drastically.)

To get the final answer, we just have to combine these probabilities by multiplying them together. The result is 2.16 x 10^20, or 0.0000000000000000000216, or about 1 time out of every 46,300,000,000,000,000,000 deals.

It is safe to conclude that (1) in the whole history of poker, this has never happened without the aid of a mechanic as dealer, and (2) if you ever see it happen, it has been set up. (You might be on "Candid Camera.")

If Negreanu was accurately quoting Bill Chen, and if Chen meant that this would happen one time out of about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000, then he was off only by a factor of about 2. If that was an off-the-cuff guess on his part, I'd call it phenomenally accurate.

Poker players are as gullible as anyone

I just saw this Twitter message from Doyle Brunson: "Had great endurance at the poker table & was pain free. Go look at Endurapokerstrips.com this really works. Unbelievable!!"

I looked, and it is indeed unbelievable. Literally. So why does he believe it?

I mean, look at the manufacturer's explanation for how the strips work:

The human body is surrounded by an energy field. Proprietary methods to store
“intrinsic energies” into a holographic strip have been developed that
communicate externally with the human body’s energy field. Nothing enters the
body. These communications are instructions that allow the body to naturally
regulate itself back to an optimum state. Strip programming and placement are
crucial to stimulating the numerous natural body reactions. Our formulas are
optimized to stimulate the body to naturally move towards a desired result.
Optimum chip placement, in conjunction with the formula, help the body naturally
move to that optimum point.

Oh, please. Could you possibly pack more pure BS, vagueness, and meaninglessness into one paragraph?

One question I notice they don't bother answering in their FAQ section is why you have to apply a new strip every 48 hours, when no matter dissipates from the things. That is, if the way they work is the "program" that they carry interacting with the body's supposed "energy field," then why can't one strip last forever? I don't have to replace my copy of Excel every 48 hours. The answer is both simple and obvious: So they can keep selling them to you.

Take a look at the FAQ page. But before doing so, imagine that you had a product that did absolutely nothing--maybe you pick up random pebbles from the roadside and sell them as healing rocks, infused with the spiritual energy from being blessed by the Grand Guru of Nahirzebol in Tibet. You want to anticipate questions that potential buyers might have. Your goal is to sell as many of your rocks as you can. You will therefore write your answers so as not to dissuade any potential sales or uses. If you think in advance about what the answer to any question would have to be in order to attain that result, that's what you'll find in this FAQ section.

What if you get a bad batch of strips? No such thing! Can you take them through security at the airport? Sure! What if they don't work? You must be either placing them wrong or not giving them enough time--keep trying! Any side effects? None whatsoever! Can I use multiple strips at once? Of course--that will make them work even better! Can I use them on pets? Absolutely! Do doctors recommend these things? Yes! Will temperature extremes affect them? Nope!

These things are just the latest incarnation of snake oil. Throughout recorded history, flim-flam artists have sold pills and potions and lotions and contraptions and incantations that claim to heal whatever ails you. They are all nothing more than a million different ways to package the placebo effect.

I am genuinely surprised that Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu both attached their names to this unadulterated hogwash. I would have thought both of them were smart enough to see through one of the worst bluffs anyone has tried to pull on the poker community. Seriously--if you can read a statement such as

The Endura Poker Strip technology communicates with the body through the
human electromagnetic field. This is known as bio-magnetic transfer. It works
similar to acupuncture.

and it not only fails to cause you to laugh out loud at the outrageous, audacious idiocy, but makes you think, "Wow. Cool. I want to try it," well, I hold out little hope for you.

Doyle and Daniel, while you're affixing your little energy strips to your skin or clothes, you might as well at the same time plaster on a sign that says, "I'm an idiot. I'm a sucker. I'm gullible. I'll believe anything you tell me," because that's exactly what the purchase and use of these silly things announces to the world.

What complete bullshit product are you going to endorse next? Dowsing rods that tell you what your opponents' hole cards are? Hey, how about those x-ray glasses advertised in the back of comic books, so you can SEE the hole cards? Or maybe a pill that gives you mind-reading abilities? They would all be just as plausible and credible as the hoax you have fallen for here, so why not?


Addendum, June 25, 2010

Negreanu just sent out a message on Twitter: "I do NOT endorse Endura Poker Strips!I didn't write that testimonial.I have absolutely ZERO to do with that company! They better correct it." A short time later he added, "It's fraud. This happens sometimes where people use my name to endorse a product without my permission. I expect it to be cleared soon."

I'm willing to take his word for that at this point. The manufacturer is lying about everything related to what the product and how it supposedly works--why not also lie about who endorses it?

Who's a celebrity in Vegas?

The Las Vegas Weekly has put up their list of the top 50 celebrities in Vegas. Here are three names and descriptions from the list that might ring a bell with my readers:


17: Phil Ivey
Poker player
There are poker faces and then there are poker faces. And then there’s Phil Ivey’s poker face, the most feared and recognizable in the game today. It scorns opponents for even bothering to scan for emotion even as it baits them into messing with the man many consider the best in the world. Bluff? The nuts? Or is he just running down the grocery order he’s gonna put together on his way home? When 6,500 card players enter a room intent on taking one guy down, and he still makes the final table of the World Series’ Main Event, you’ve gotta wonder how he does it. Good luck finding the answer on Phil Ivey’s face.


30 Doyle Brunson
Poker player
If you’re considering sitting down at a Las Vegas poker table, and you can’t recognize this 76-year-old poker legend (he’s the dude with the cowboy hat and the toothy smile, by the way), might we suggest slots?


47 Daniel Negreanu
Poker player
He’s appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Katy Perry’s “Waking Up in Vegas” video. Oh yeah, and he’s second on the World Series of Poker’s all-time money list.

Women's event at the WSOP

This post is about the ladies' event of the WSOP, which started today, as well as the general phenomenon of such tournaments. The post is going to be quite different that it would have been if I had written it when I first decided to do so, about nine hours ago. Since then, I have been back to the Pavilion Room to play a cash game, took a few pictures, and saw and heard various relevant things, as that is where Day 1 of Event #22 is being played.

I have also, since returning home,

-- Read maybe 100 Twitter messages about the subject, mostly from people I know, a few from people I don't know.

-- Read this story at Card Player's site about the WSOP threatening various long-term consequences for the men who played in the event.

-- Watched Daniel Negreanu's video blog post about the subject.

-- Read the PokerNews live updates for the first eight hours or so of play.

-- Read F-Train's excellent post. This may have changed the intended post more than anything else, because he said much of what I was thinking, but better than I might have, as well as shifting my thinking on one big point, which I'll get to later.

As often happens, I don't have a coherent thesis (failing English Comp 101), just a bunch of more-or-less interconnected thoughts, which I present here in no particular order. I am going to assume that my readers are familiar with the beat-to-death basic arguments for and against the existence of female-only events, and not rehash them here.


1. Here are two men I saw playing who were close enough to photograph easily, presented so that you can either hate or admire them, as you choose. I have no idea who they are.






2. Taking an early departure from topical relevance, I just have to show you this picture of Cheryl Hines. From a technical point of view, it's a horrible shot, but I love her facial expression anyway.




3. One of the women in my cash game had earlier been playing in the tournament, and was at a table where a male player (she designated all of them who entered as "idiots," just to give you one sampling of woman-on-the-street opinion) had a tampon that he was using as a card protector. I thought this might be my little reporting scoop of the day, but I found out when I got home that the incident--including the penalty this jackass incurred--had already been widely reported. Not cool, dude. Not funny.


4. As has also been reported everywhere, upon every elimination of a male player, the female players let out a collective cheer. This was not--repeat, not--the polite "good game" applause that one hears from the audience when a player exits a final table. No, this had an unmistakable flavor of "Get the hell out of here and don't ever come back."

This behavior shows that men have no monopoly on being jackasses and poor sports. Perhaps it is wrong and offensive for these men to have entered the event, but that doesn't make it OK to vocalize your glee at their elimination. As my mother liked to remind me ad nauseum, two wrongs don't make a right.

If you object to a male entering the tournament and sitting at your table, I think you are within your rights to basically snub him socially--don't humor him, don't chat with him, don't interact more than is minimally required to keep the game moving. Cold shoulders from eight women at a table might make him rethink whether this is an action he wants to repeat. I consider that a socially acceptable form of expressing your opinion about his choice.

If you feel like being more direct, you can even start the day by telling him something like this: "I think your entering this tournament is like urinating in the punch bowl of a party that you weren't invited to. I resent you being here, and I hope you will think better of entering any other such event in the future." Then snub him. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you're calm and civil in your tone and choice of words.

But if you want to claim the moral high ground in this controversy, you have to keep your reaction to the situation classy. Cheering an opponent's loss completely fails that simple test.


5. I wonder if Harrah's is really serious about imposing some sort of sanctions on the men who entered. Are they actually that stupid, or is it just a corporate bluff?

Here's what Seth Palansky said, according to Card Player's reporter: "The good news is at the World Series of Poker, we have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time at any point that we deem, as operators of the event."

Assuming, as would seem to be the case, that it is illegally discriminatory for a place of public accommodation to forbid men from entering the tournament, it must surely also be illegally discriminatory to refuse them equal access to public events in the future on the basis of their legitimate participation today.

Suppose that some racist restaurant owner didn't want to serve blacks, but wanted to get around the anti-discrimination laws. So he says, "I'll serve you today if you absolutely insist, but if you do, then I'm going to ban you from the premises forever, because I'm free to take or reject the business of anybody I want to."

How does that even make sense? If Harrah's doesn't have the legal right to refuse access to a public event on the basis of sex, then it can't possibly have the right to ban that person from future events on the grounds that he accepted the open invitation. I can't imagine how a court, if asked to decide the matter, could come to any conclusion other than the obvious: The future ban is just a different means of practicing the illegal discrimination. There can't be any logical distinction between "You can't play today because you're male," and "OK, you can play today, but if you do, then because you're male, we will never let you enter one of our tournaments again." The perverse consequence of that approach would be that a place of public accommodation could freely discriminate on the basis of sex or race for a person's entire lifetime, as long as they didn't do it this one time.

That's just too bizarre to take seriously. If they really try it, I'd love to be the attorney bringing the suit. Seems like a slam-dunk win for the plaintiffs to me.


6. Speaking of bizarre legal theories, you should listen to Negreanu's. He proposes that Harrah's set up a men-only tournament with a buy in of $100 billion. Then they could legally hold the women's tournament as is.

Well, unlike Seth Palansky's idiotic claim, at least Negreanu freely admits that he doesn't know the law and doesn't know what he's talking about. Courts enforcing anti-discrimination laws have little patience for schemes that pay lip service to inviting full participation by everyone, but in actual practice have unreasonable or insurmountable barriers to participation by members of some protected class.

I guess Negreanu never heard of "separate but equal" being struck down--and he's not even trying to make it "equal."


7. I have what will probably seem like a hopelessly muddled and self-contradictory view of discrimination law, by the way. I believe that:

A) There should be no laws prohibiting discrimination by private entities, such as individuals or corporations, even if they are in the business of public accommodation. That is, yes, a bar or hotel or store should be able to exclude anybody on any basis--even the most vile, such as race. They almost always shouldn't do it, but they should have the legal right to make that choice. That is not because I endorse racial (or other) discrimination, but because, primarily, I place an enormous value on private property rights. (Biting tongue so as not to go into full rant on this. Suffice it to say that Rand Paul had it right recently, and I was disappointed that he backpedaled on the point (though he didn't actually retract it).)

B) However, if there are going to be anti-discrimination laws on the books, then they should be vigorously enforced. This is especially true when it comes to enforcing them in ways that are unpopular, and not what those enacting the laws had in mind. Using such laws to challenge women getting free or discounted drinks at a bar, or free or discounted entry into hotel swimming pools (both of which are very common in Vegas) is precisely the sort of thing I have in mind. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. (And letting men gander is the main motivation, isn't it?!) One of the most effective ways of getting bad laws changed or repealed is to have them fully enforced.


8. Oh, PokerNews, is this really your best work? From the very first live update of the event today:

"Over the next three days, our bloggers and field reporters will be relieved of the stench that comes with every male-dominated tournament field, as the women of poker take to the felt for the 2010 WSOP Ladies No-Limit Hold’em Championship."

That's how you start--by talking about how women smell better than men? That's as much of an embarrassing face-palm moment as Harrah's giving out decks of lavendar playing cards as gifts (as they did last year).


9. The next paragraph is just as bad, though for completely different reasons:

"Last year's event drew 1,060 of the world's finest female poker players...."

Uh, no, it didn't. It may have drawn 1060 female players, and it may have drawn many of the world's finest ones. But the sentence includes every participant in the tournament within the category of "the world's finest female poker players." I watched some of them play. Trust me--that term does not accurately characterize some of the ones I saw. (See my post here.)


10. Several people reported via Twitter that Harrah's security guards were harrassing and intimidating men who signed up--requring them to submit to being searched, for example--in ways that women were not subjected to. This is, of course, appalling. Frankly, I hope those who were at the receiving end of such treatment sue Harrah's, prove that this was done purely on the basis of gender, and win a big, fat judgment.

If Harrah's is going to claim that it has the right to do this as a condition of entering the tournament, but applies the requirement selectively only to men, then legally it's going to have to say that it would also have the right to apply that requirement only to blacks or Asians, for example, if it wanted to do so.

Imagine how many people in the WSOP and security departments would lose their jobs if it became publicly known that they harrassed racial minorities that way in an effort to dissuade them from entering a poker tournament. Then imagine how much Harrah's stock value would fall when mutual funds, retirement funds, etc., came under pressure to sell it off, with Harrah's acquiring a foul reputation for its own private version of apartheid.

Really--how stupid are the people in charge of this corporation?


11. Soon after I sat down in the cash game (maybe 2:30 p.m. or so), I heard an announcement over the PA system. There is apparently a daily rundown of news given to the players. Today, a female announcer (no idea who it was) informed the players about who had won bracelets in the last 24 hours, what events were going on today, etc.

Among the announcements, though, was that Shaun Deeb was playing in the Ladies' Tournament, in drag. (See his story and photo here.) She wanted to make clear that he was doing this because he had lost a prop bet, and he had pledged that any money he won would be donated to some unspecified female-oriented charity. She added, "So please don't give him any grief about being here."

Let's make clear what is implied here. First, by omission, she suggests on behalf of Harrah's (because this woman was clearly speaking for Harrah's) that it is OK to give all of the other men grief about their participation. Again, just consider the obvious racial parallel to realize how shockingly wrong and self-defeating this is.

Second, she announces that Harrah's corporately thinks it's OK for some men to be playing in the women-only event, if their reason is good enough. And, by implication, Harrah's reserves the right to determine what constitutes a good enough reason.

Putting this tidbit together with the previous one, we get this picture: If you are a male and register for this tournament, Harrah's representatives will apparently quiz you as to your motivations (after taking your money). If you pass their little test (for which there are obviously no published or set standards), they will let you go unharrassed, and even publicly praise your participation. If they don't like your reasons, on the other hand, you will be searched, threatened with future exclusion, and watched for any rules violations with a scrutiny that is not given to female players, so that they have a pretext for disqualifying you from the event, while keeping your money.

Hey, Harrah's--how about throwing in a little backroom flogging while you're at it. After all, it's private property, and you can do whatever you want, right?


12. I understand from a PokerNews video that the bracelet for this event is different from all the others of 2010: it has little pink diamonds on it. Join me in collective eye-rolling here.

13. The same video reports (and I heard this in person at the Rio, too) that two tables decided to do restroom breaks en masse so that nobody would miss a hand.

The stupidity just never ends. That decision meant that everybody involved spent several times as long away from the table as they would have otherwise--while the clock was running. Particularly in a shallow-stack event like this, time is a precious commodity. You can't afford to be dilly-dallying around while players at the other tables are accumulating chips by the minute.

This event apparently gathered two groups of nine people in which nobody was bright enough to figure out that they hurt rather than helped themselves with this move. *sigh*


13. My original reason for thinking to write a post on this subject was a Twitter friend asking why on earth any men would enter, even if it's technically allowed. That was the approach I was first planning on taking: a list of possible reasons one might have. The more obvious ones include easier route to a bracelet and money (Kathy Liebert is one who doesn't mind admitting that fact; she tweeted, "I do like the ladies event. It is an easier field than the open events because many of the women haven't played much"), meet women, get publicity, lost a prop bet, etc.

I was then going to expound on one possible reason that I suspect is the primary motivation for only a small minority: Trying to effect change. Imagine, I had thought of saying, if they got 1000 women entering but 3000 men. What would that force Harrah's to do? If you're a principled opponent of single-sex events, isn't that a legitimate goal?

I'm not taking that tack now because F-Train's post persuaded me that it's wrong. I like his general proposal for other ways that one could and should go about trying to get things changed, if one is pure of motive.


14. I have somehow gotten this many words out without addressing the usual arguments about consistency: If you're against the women's event, are you also opposed to the seniors' event? Well, yes, though less so, for one reason: It's one from which prospective players are barred only temporarily, not for life. Everybody will be eligible for it sooner or later. Heck, even I will be eligible for it next year. (Ugh.) That makes it less onerous, in my view.

What about the employees' event? That's a kind of odd one. If it were solely for Harrah's employees--who, I understand, are ineligible to participate in open fields--it would make sense as some compensation. But they open it to all casino employees. I don't really see the point of it. It's not like being a casino employee puts one at an intrinsic disadvantage for playing poker. If I were in charge, I think I'd eliminate it.

Although rarely mentioned in discussions of women's events, there is another type of tournament that one has to take into account if one is going to try to achieve logical consistency. (I strive to, but often fail, and I'll admit in advance that this whole subject is one on which I probably haven't made it.) There are special events for people with certain physical disabilities, most notably the National Deaf Poker Tour. Hey, Mr. Smarty-Pants, isn't that discrimination, too?

Yeah, it is, as are the seniors' and employees' events. But they have something in common that still distinguishes them in one important respect from the women's events: They were not started and are not continued because of a belief that those invited are, on average, not up to snuff to play in open fields. I said I won't go into the hackneyed arguments about ladies' events, and I won't, but you just can't get around the historical stigma problem. Even if current organizers disavow any such belief, everybody knows that that's how and why the practice began, and it taints the victory.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever thought that, for example, deaf people have less poker talent or ability, on average, than those without that handicap. But they do have particular pragmatic difficulties that others don't have to deal with. I can understand why they would want to have an occasional tournament where, first, they are on equal footing with their opponents in terms of the nuts and bolts of the game, and, second, they can easily engage in the social aspects of poker that are much harder when they have to resort to lip reading, an interpreter, or the chance presence of a player who knows sign language.

(I was at the Orleans once while a deaf poker tournament was going on. It was fascinating to watch, though I felt a little self-conscious about it, and tried to be discreet. I was genuinely interested in how they made all the pokery things work that we usually rely on our ears for, but at the same time I didn't want to make them feel like they were a freak show there for my entertainment.)

That said, if the WSOP proposed to begin a bracelet event for which only the deaf were eligible, I'd have serious misgivings about it. This obviously applies with equal force to any other specific type of physical handicap for which one might envision a special poker tournament--but if there currently exist any others, I don't know of them.


15. Hey, speaking of male interlopers in the women's event, how about this guy skulking around?




Oh, never mind--that's just B.J. Nemeth, one of the best photographers at the Rio year after year.


Whew. I'm all typed out. This has got to be one of the longest posts I've ever done, and it has worn me out even though I have barely touched on some of the arguments that one might expect me to have tackled. I guess I'll just have to leave those for somebody else, or at least for another day.


Addendum, June 12, 2010

Nicole Gordon (aka Change100) has a particularly thoughtful and well-written op-ed on the whole subject, at PokerNews, here. Other new bloggentary available at Table Tango, Tao of Poker, and CrAAKKer.


Addendum, June 13, 2010

Yet more interesting perspectives here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Negreanu, the WSOP, and the poker media

You may have read or heard about Daniel Negreanu's complaint, via Twitter posts and a recent blog post, about the PokerNews chip counts--how they're updated so infrequently and inconsistently as to be worthless. He said that coverage of the events would be more worthwhile if the whole PN team just kept the chip counts up to date, and dropped all of the story-telling that they do about specific hands, bustouts, etc.

I was going to let this go by without comment. But today an "anonymous pro" posted, via Pokerati, an interesting and thoughtful rejoinder to Negreanu, which you can (and, I think, should) read here.

I don't have a well-composed essay ready to pound out here, just a few scattered responsive thoughts. I think most readers know that I worked for PokerNews's for the WSOP in 2008 (behind the scenes) and 2009 (writing nightly recaps). I'm not exactly a deep insider, but that experience gives me at least a degree of credible perspective, I hope. If it means that I have some bias, too, OK, I'll accept that accusation.

1. Just purely as a matter of self-interest, it seems unwise for Negreanu to make enemies of the people who will be reporting on his every move. Now, I know a fair number of the rubber-hits-the-road part of the PokerNews team, and they're classy people who take pride in their work. They are certainly not going to let a sting or a grudge change wholesale how they cover a story. But they're also human, and they are able, at least at the margins, to make coverage-shaping decisions.

I don't know whether they would or will actually do the kind of thing I'm thinking about, but one can easily imagine Negreanu saying something stupid or embarrassing while in an unguarded or exasperated moment at the table. Suppose it gets overheard by or reported to somebody working for PokerNews. They can either make a story of it, or ignore it. Which would you rather have them do, if you were the subject? Which outcome will Negreanu's screed be more likely to result in?

Or set aside the theoretical. Here's an actual consequence, though not involving the PokerNews product that you'd find on their web pages: An informed insider of my acquaintance told me recently that a day or two after Negreanu posted this rant, he was interested in knowing how somebody was doing in a tournament, and approached media row to ask the bloggers. They did give him the bare minimum information he was seeking, but coldly and quickly, without elaboration, whereas their previous interactions had been warm and friendly. He might have gotten more out of them if not for his public shaming of them. Who can blame them for such a reaction? Why go out of your way to help and/or be nice to somebody who has just used his very large megaphone to announce that you're incompetent at your job?

I've shot from the hip in this blog any number of times, only to find that the bullet landing in my foot. (I have reason to think that I once cost myself a poker media job that I was interested in because of how nastily I had lambasted the work of the outlet in question.) I think Negreanu may find that he has done the same thing.

2. As "Anonymous Pro" says, Negreanu has the wrong target in his sights. The problems he complains of are not the fault of the reporters and bloggers. They hustle their tails off doing what they can to report on events so large that they are effectively unreportable, and many of them are the best in the world at what they're doing. (OK, there are a few duds, too.) They are bright, creative, hard-working people, seriously underpaid for the incredibly long hours they devote to the job. The first time I ever set foor in the Amazon Room was two years ago tomorrow. It was Shamus's birthday (happy birthday a day in advance, friend!), and I took a store-bought cake to the PN crew for the occasion. Not much of it got touched because they were all too busy to take the time away from photographing, catching hands, and editing posts. If you read the personal blogs of some of these guys, you know what kind of exhausting hours they put in. Any blame for how things are covered lies with the people at PN who decided to hire a crew that is way too small to do the job right, not with the individuals cranking out the product.

3. Negranu is just plain wrong, in my view, that chip counts are a more valuable part of the reporting than the stories. Not all the posts are gems, but with commendable frequency the PN staff manages to pass on interesting and funny stuff, often with writing quality and wit that far exceeds what one could expect to get under the working conditions of enormous time pressure and mind-numbing fatigue. There are hundreds of examples I could point to, but I particularly remember writing this fawning post because of how perfectly F-Train had told the story of several hands, and how his account conveyed a sense of having been there.* I would not be sitting here two years later reflecting with admiration on a perfectly reported chip count from that event.


I like Negreanu a lot, and I have great respect for the candor he brings to his blogging (e.g., his recent no-holds-barred dumping on UltimateBlecch, here and here). This time, though, I think that while he has a valid point, he aimed at the wrong target. I'm glad that Pokerati let Anonymous Pro supply a needed corrective voice.


*I think this is a funny story, though maybe nobody else will. My very first interaction with F-Train was via Skype instant messaging. I was sitting at home doing on-the-fly editing (i.e., fact-checking and proofreading) of the PN posts during the 2008 WSOP. He had just put up a post about Jimmy Fricke and Howard Lederer being seated at the same table. This was potentially awkward because it was just a few months after the infamous leaked email, in which Lederer had referred to Fricke as "a freak and a very weird dude." F-Train had used some generic headline for the post. I saw a glimmer of potential, and quickly shot him a suggestion: "Please, please change the headline to 'That's very weird, dude.'" Making snarky editorial suggestions was most definitely not in my job description, but he apparently liked the idea enough to make the change (or perhaps decided to just humor the nutjob on the other end of the line to avoid trouble), and we have been friends since.


Addendum, June 11, 2010

Negreanu has posted a response to Anonymous Pro on his blog--a clarification of sorts. See here.

Poker gems, #333

Daniel Negreanu, on NBC's "Poker After Dark," Monday, December 7, 2009, about how Phil Ivey looked playing poker on television during a tournament.


You look like a crackhead, especially that day. He did! He had his hyperfocus crack eyes going.

Poker gems, #312

Daniel Negreanu, in ESPN's World Series of Poker Main Event coverage, broadcast September 22, 2009.


I don't think bubbling is a bad thing at all. If you're a bubble boy, that means you've got guts. It's the guys who squeak in the money like little rats--those are the ones who should be embarrassed. The guy who goes out with a blaze of glory and says, "I am the bubble boy," y'know, he should be applauded. This is a guy that's going to make it some day.

Famous pros' blogs, real or otherwise

Just a quick note to point you to this funny post from Daniel Negreanu's blog, in which he parodies what other well-known professional poker players' blogs actually are like, or might be like if they wrote them. Enjoy.

Poker faces, #4

SPOILER ALERT!!

I just watched next Sunday's episode of High Stakes Poker (season 5, #9), which GSN accidentally released prematurely on YouTube, and which was thus captured and re-released at other sites of questionable legality. So if you want to watch it without knowing how any hands turn out, avert your eyes now.

Below is Howard Lederer's confusion and consternation upon learning that not only did Tom Dwan outdraw his A-K with trash, but Dwan had put in the fourth raise pre-flop with 8-6 offsuit.




The rest of the table, though, finds the whole thing highly amusing.




Daniel Negreanu points at Lederer and says, "You just got Durrrrrrrred!"