Best televised hands

PokerUpdate has been running a "tournament" to determine readers' most memorable televised poker hand, out of 32 nominees. I haven't been following closely as things progress, but I popped in to see what the final four were--and they are all excellent, well worth re-watching.

http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/poker-opinion/the-most-memorable-televised-poker-hand/

For sheer poker skill, the one with Tom Dwan is the clear winner. But for viewing pleasure, it's hard to top seeing Phil Hellmuth take the bad end of one of the most incredible suckouts of all time.

At least he's educably retarded

Since the last time I saw him play the Mighty Deuce-Four on TV, Tom Dwan has clearly picked up some pointers--here forcing Phil Ivey to fold. (A 5 was coming on the river, obviously.)

Not as simple as it looks

My favorite magicians, Penn and Teller, have for decades had in their act a routine in which Teller does something that looks simple, but is actually difficult and intricate. He appears to crush out a cigarette, take out another and light it. But what's actually going on is a complex series of sleight-of-hand moves. Take a look:





I was reminded of this just now when watching Wednesday's Poker After Dark. Tom Dwan has A-5 and raises. Phil Galfond reraises with A-K. Dwan calls. The flop is 9-2-3. Galfond bets. Dwan raises all-in. Galfond tanks for about 30 seconds, then settles on a call. (You can watch the hand play out here; it's Wednesday's segment 3.)

We have all seen a zillion calls that superficially resemble this. Most of them come from bad players. Their thought process is no deeper than approximately this: "I have ace-king. I'm not getting many good hands. He might be bluffing. I think I have to go for it."

I think we can safely assume that Galfond's thought process was vastly more complex and nuanced. He knows Dwan's play very, very well, as they have played against each other for countless hours. He knows that Dwan has the positional advantage and a big chip lead in the tournament, and deduces that Dwan will be using those factors to force Galfond to difficult decisions. He obviously knows that it's possible that Dwan has a monster hand, such as a flopped set, or even a medium-strength hand such as A-9 for top pair/top kicker. But he runs some quick estimates about Dwan's range, how often he is bluffing with complete air, takes into consideration that it's a winner-take-all format (which requires taking more chances), checks the size of the pot and his stack, perhaps stares deep into Dwan's soul, and the end result of crunching all of that information is a conclusion that a call is a worthwhile gamble--paying off often enough to be worth going broke if he's wrong.

What I find fascinating is that the call made by the fishy amateur and the one made by the top pro look externally identical, but there is almost no similarity at all in what is actually taking place inside their heads. One is flailing wildly, with more hope than sense. The other is drawing upon his years of experience, his memory of the thousands of hands he has played against this opponent, the facts of the specific situation, some complicated math, and an incredibly well-honed intuition, using it all as inputs for a black-box algorithm so complex that the best poker software in existence would not be able to replicate it.

When you make a call for all your chips with ace-high, which thought process would we see if we could look inside your head?

Tom Dwan may be retarded

OK, this post will definitely fall into the category of weird, quirky things that nobody else would notice.

I'm watching this week's Poker After Dark. On Wednesday's episode, we get a shot of Tom Dwan looking at his hole cards. We're supposed to be excited that he has two kings. I saw something else entirely: It looks to me like he has a single palmar crease on his right hand, rather than the usual two.

This minor anatomic anomaly is known as a "simian crease," because it resembles the way that, e.g., chimpanzees' palms look. It is commonly found in people with Down syndrome. (Incidentally, the term "Down's syndrome" is not considered correct, no matter how many times you may have heard it.)

When I was in college, I noticed that one of my friends had bilateral Simian creases. He had never known that he differed in this way from other people. I should mention that he was an exceptionally bright guy, working on his PhD in economics at the time. I told him, in jest, that this meant he had Down syndrome. He paused a few seconds, then replied, "Gee, just think how smart I'd be if I weren't retarded!"

Somebody else that I know very well has a Simian crease on one side, though her other hand is normal. So if you ever meet Cardgrrl, take a look!

You know who else has a Simian crease on one hand, but the normal two palmar creases on the other? Hillary Clinton, that's who. Oh, and Robert DeNiro, too. And actor Rainn Wilson. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has them on both sides.

So if Dwan does indeed share this little anomaly--and I should add that I'm not sure that he does, because it could simply be a weird camera angle that is preventing view of the more proximal second line--he is in good company. It's just a weird little meaningless thing.

I really only worry about his intellect because of how he plays the Mighty Deuce-Four.

(BTW, this is the kind of post for which it is required that at least one reader submit a comment such as "Get a life!" or "You have too much free time on your hands" or "You need to get out more.")


Addendum, January 8, 2011

Now watching the Thursday installment of the show, I'm more confident that I was right. Here's an even better shot of Dwan's right palm:





There are a couple of shadow lines, but pretty clearly only one transverse palmar crease. We have us a simian poker player!

How do people get here?

Recently I've seen myself listed by other poker bloggers (specifically Bill Rini and Wicked Chops) as among their top referrers. It occurred to me that I've never done more than glance at the Google Analytics report about who has been referring hits to me. I herewith correct that deficiency. For 2010, the top ten referrers were:

1. http://craakker.blogspot.com/
2. http://www.allvegaspoker.com/
3. http://pkrdlr.blogspot.com/
4. http://taopoker.blogspot.com/
5. http://magicalmysterypokertour.blogspot.com/
6. http://ftrain.blogspot.com/
7. http://www.thinkingpoker.net/Blog/
8. http://bwop.blogspot.com/
9. http://www.twoplustwo.com/
10. http://bastinptc.blogspot.com/

While I was at it, I also took an updated look at what Google queries lead people to something I've written. To be sure, the great majority of Google searches that find me are clearly looking for me, with some combination of "poker," "grump," "rakewell," and "blog." But setting those aside, for as long as I've been peeking in at this sort of thing from time to time, the top inquiry has been about Tom Dwan's sexual orientation. I wrote about it the first time I saw Dwan play on television. Then a while later, I discovered that Google searches about Dwan were by far the most common thing leading people to my blog. For 2010, such questions remain in the lead by a huge margin, with at least 1200 souls having looked through my pages in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity on this vitally important matter.

Interestingly, for the first time, I can actually provide something of an answer. Since I last mentioned the subject, I have heard Dwan speak openly about his girlfriend when playing in various televised events and on his Twitter feed. Assuming that he is telling the truth, and that this refers to a romantic rather than platonic relationship, the answer appears to be that he is straight. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Oddly, the next most common Google search that leads people my way is now "Brad Booth broke." That plus a few variants on the same idea brought over 650 searchers to the blog. The only thing I've written about Booth is a post pointing readers to an interesting All In magazine article about his travails: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/05/brad-booth.html It's not like either Booth or Dwan actually feature heavily in my thoughts or writing.

There are also some strange keyword searches that show up in the rankings:

• poker grump jeep (209)

Huh? I've used the word "Jeep" exactly once in four years. It was in a non-poker-related post, just showing a few photos of a crazily decorated car that I noticed while walking downtown, here. And yet more than 200 people specifically sought out that post? I don't get it.

• shannon elizabeth (152)
• shannon elizabeth feet (61)

Um, OK. I have no idea what these people are doing here. I just tried a Google search for Shannon Elizabeth, and I'm nowhere in the first five pages of results. If you have a foot fetish for her, I'm surely not the go-to guy about that.

• grange95 blog (131)

Baffling once again. When I replicate this search, I find my first mention toward the bottom of the second page of results. If people are looking for the infamous Craakker, how do so many of them get diverted my way, rather than where they presumably want to go?

• cory zeidman drunk (46)

One of my personal favorites, this--though just as mysterious a result as the others. I did write once about having Zeidman at the table with me briefly, but he was not drunk. He consumed only water while he was playing.

As I have found in the past when doing such high-tech navel-gazing, what specific things people are looking for when they find me has zero correlation with either what I write most about or with what I think are my best pieces of work. Oh well. I'm glad I have at least a little something to offer to people with such widely varying interests.

Dwan vs. Hellmuth

Well worth watching, IMO.

Pictures from around town (1)

I took a bunch of pictures of this and that and the other over the last ten days or so while hanging out with Cardgrrl. Now that she has gone back home, I have a little time to sort through and post them. I'll do it in chunks, because Blogger's stupid interface makes it awkward to handle more than a handful of photos in any one post.

First up are some license plates that I saw while walking past the valet area outside the convention center at the Rio last Wednesday night (June 16), as I was on my way in to sweat Cardgrrl in the $1500 HORSE event she was playing.

This is Vanessa Rousso's Lamborghini:




I'm guessing that this guy won a big Omaha tournament with J6AQ as his final hand:




This one is just fun:




Cardgrrl was at a table on one side of one of the "hallways" inside the Amazon Room. On the other side Tom Dwan was playing in another event. It was only a few steps away, so I wandered over to try to get a picture:




What I didn't realize as I was trying to get a decent shot was that he was extremely short-stacked. In fact, though I didn't know it at the time, that proved to be his last hand of the tournament. I clicked the shutter again, but he had started moving and it came out all blurry:




Why was he moving? Well, I didn't know until he stood up and walked away with no chips left at his spot at the table, and I realized he wasn't coming back. So if you've ever wondered what Tom Dwan looks like two seconds after he learns that he busted out of a WSOP event, now you know!

That Dwan kid needs a lesson from the Grump

On last night's "High Stakes Poker," Tom Dwan showed us how to misplay the Deuce-Four. He flopped two pair. Nobody bet. He added a flush draw on the turn. Nobody bet. Antonio Esfandiari bluffed the river, Eli Elizra called. The little flip of the wrist you see going on in the screen shot above is Dwan throwing away the best hand. After he saw the winner, he said, "I play so bad."

Well, at least that time you did, Tom. But do not worry. I can coach you on how to play 2-4 for fun and profit.


While I'm on the subject, I did a little 2-4 evangelizing at Sandia casino in Albuquerque yesterday. A four on the turn gave me bottom pair, so I check-raised the original raiser when he bet (as I thought he would). He folded and I showed. Just a couple of hands later, he flopped two pair with his own 2-4 and won a nice pot. The gospel continues to spread everywhere I go.

Poker faces

From the new episode of "High Stakes Poker," this week's contestants for best poker face are Gun Hansen (doing his Viffer impersonation) and Tom Dwan (who always seems to make an appearance in these posts).

Poker gems, #344

Phil Hellmuth, on "High Stakes Poker," season 6, episode 1:


Hellmuth: Durr [Tom Dwan] and I gamble, buddy. We put in 16,000 each when the blinds were 200 the other day. He had 10-jack, I had 9-7 offsuit.

Antonio Esfandiari: How did that work out for you?

Hellmuth: Not well.

I've gone viral!

I attended some of the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Championship at Caesars Palace, and wrote up a post about it here. Included were a few video clips I shot of hands being played out. I posted them on YouTube, then embedded them in the blog post.

Well, yesterday YouTube notified me that one of the clips--with Mike Matusow eliminating Tom Dwan--had become very popular. They were inviting me to share in the revenue from ads placed next to it.

This puzzled me, because there's nothing special about that hand or the little video I shot of it. So I went to YouTube to check out the viewing stats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zhqBPkjRQg

Good Lord! The things has been watched 122,000 times!

This completely boggles my mind. I have no idea why it has been hit so often. None of the others that I did at the same time is over 30,000--and even that number startles me.

I didn't know it, but I guess I'm just about the next best thing to the Numa Numa kid!

Poker faces, #5

From this week's episode of High Stakes Poker, we have a tie!

First up is Tom Dwan (a recurring contestant). This week he is giving us his version of "Eli called my big bluff on the river. How did he know?"







Our second equally deserving contestant is new to this series. It's none other than David "Viffer" Peat, doing his rendition of "I have top pair top kicker, and the fishy fat bastard is raising me. WTF is up with that?"







Strong work, gentlemen!

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!"

Poker gems, #230

Justin Bonomo, in Bluff magazine column, March, 2009, p. 68.


I first played it [the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure] five years ago when I was nineteen. It was my second WPT ever and I managed to cash in it (30th). On the bubble I had a table full of internet phenoms. We all told each other our online names and had some good chats. There was one eighteen-year-old kid at the table who wouldn't give his online name. He claimed we would all know how he played if he told us. He ended up making a terrible call for all his chips against a super-nit that obviously had the nuts. He bubbled finishing two or three off the money. Afterwards, when he said his online name was "HoldemNL", we all laughed because none of us had a clue who this egotistical nobody was. Some of you reading this might be familiar with him. He goes by the name "Durrrr" these days.

Poker faces, #3

From this week's episode of High Stakes Poker, we see more of the faces of poker.

First, this is how you execute the fake yawn to look bored when you have pocket aces:




But then when your aces get cracked for $548,700, you first look away to hide your disgust...




...then turn back around to reluctantly settle up:








If you're Barry Greenstein and you got all your money in bad but sucked out for half a mil, you display true facial minimalism thusly:




On one of the early HSP episodes, after a big pot, Gabe Kaplan commented that Greenstein is such a consummate pro that you couldn't tell by looking at his face whether he had won or lost that hand. That's not always true--he will occasionally crack a smile or shrug his shoulders--but it is indeed usually the case, as demonstrated here. Tom Dwan, to his credit (especially given his age), is barely more animated, either in victory or defeat.

Imagine Phil Hellmuth in that spot. Oh wait--you don't have to imagine it. Just replay what happened when Dwan got lucky and cracked Hellmuth's aces, here. See if you can tell which of them is more mature, the 21-year-old or the 43-year-old.

Every time I watch Dwan play on television, I end up liking him more. I admire both his phenomenal skill and his devil-may-care attitude.

What do poker players really care about?

I suppose that all bloggers, from time to time, get curious about what searches bring people to read their posts. Fortunately, tools such as Google Analytics make it easy to track such things.

Not surprisingly, the most common search terms that direct people here are variations on "poker grump." But what is surprising is what comes next.

Is it concern about how certain nausea-inducing online poker sites have been cheating their customers and lying about it? Is it questions about rules or poker etiquette? Strategy advice? Poker news? The egregious rules violations and bad floor decisions at our game's premiere event, the World Series of Poker? My dozens of poker room reviews and suggestions about where in Vegas to play?

Nope. None of the above.

tom dwan gay
is tom dwan gay
tom dwan is gay
"tom dwan" gay
is tom dwan gay?
"tom dwan" sexuality
gay poker players
tom dwan gay?
tom dwan poker gay
dwan gay poker
gay poker

I assume that these searches led to this post, in which I commented on that possibility specifically, though the larger point was not about Dwan in particular, but rather the absence of "out" gay professional poker players generally.

This inquiry was only for the last 30 days. I assume that Dwan being on two consecutive new weeks of "Poker After Dark" is what raised the question, apparently, in the minds of so many Google users.

But after excluding the search terms that indicate that somebody is looking for this blog specifically, when I extend the inquiry to the entire time that I have had Google Analytics watching the site (that means back to last October), "tom dwan gay" is still the number one thing people are looking for when they land here, with "is tom dwan gay" and "tom dwan is gay" also making the top ten.

So now we know what poker players are most interested in. Weird, eh?


There were some other search terms of interest:

62 people have looked for "pokergrump t-shirts." Never thought about that before, but it's an interesting idea.

12 people came looking for information about Heather Esquin. I didn't recognize the name, couldn't remember ever writing about such a person, and had to search myself to find the post in question.

Another one that completely baffled me was the search term "genomeboy poker." Turns out that "genomeboy" is the alias of a guy who has left a few comments on posts here.

"Chris Ferguson mole" leads to this post. Odd, but I guess if it caught my attention enough to write about it, I can't accuse other people of bizarre interests for searching for what might be written about it. For a bit of amusement, click on that link and check out what Google ads pop up alongside the post.

There have been at least 83 searches for James Klosty. I've written about James a few times, in his role as floorperson or poker room manager at three different place in town, as well as host of a poker-themed radio show for a while, but I was still surprised that there would have been that many people looking him up.

Yet another search term that I didn't understand at first was "lucymagem." But she was one of the players who got caught cheating Betfair out of money by exploiting a temporary glitch in their software.

There are countless variations on search terms involving some combination of "phil gordon" and "howard lederer's mom," really too many for me to add them up separately. But together they make up a pretty big chunk of the search results, undoubtedly because of this post.

It's all very strange. The things that I care most about, have written the most about, and think that my best and most original writing has centered on make nary a blip in the Google searches. It's the weird, one-off, minor things that bring in the searchers. I suppose that's because it's those offbeat subjects that get precious little attention anywhere, so whatever I've said about them is a good portion of what one can find.

Still, it all pales in comparison to poker players' apparently insatiable curiosity about Tom Dwan's sexual orientation.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

OK, maybe I've still got too many Sound of Music echoes bouncing around in my head, but the title of this post alludes to the fact that today I watched both the Monday and Tuesday episodes of this week's new "Poker After Dark" (available here) and got to experience what is indeed one of my very "favorite things" in poker: watching Phil Hellmuth lose. (The photo of him above is selected because it's one of the few in which he's not sporting that blecch-inducing UB logo.) This week's PAD is a cash game, a departure from their usual format.

First, it was amusing to see him seated next to Tom Dwan, acting as if Dwan is his new best friend. This was apparently taped after the heads-up championship, because one of the other players asks something like, "Weren't you two supposed to play a heads-up cash game?" That's a challenge that was (sort of) issued and accepted when Dwan busted Hellmuth with a bad beat at the Caesars event.

In Monday's episode, Hellmuth raised with suited K-5, and Allen Cunningham called with 6-6. The flop was 5-6-X. Hellmuth bet, Cunningham raised with his set. Hellmuth goes into a rant about how he had predicted for the cameras that this exact scenario would come up: that he would get Cunningham to put all his money in drawing nearly dead. Oh yeah, great read there, Phil! LOL!

But things got even better on Tuesday. First, Hellmuth picked up suited A-K and appropriately put in a substantial reraise from one of the blinds. His opponent, an amateur I had never heard of before, called with Q-10 offsuit. The flop came king-high, but Hellmuth, following his usual idiotic habit when he is playing out of position, had checked in the dark, so he couldn't bet his top pair/top kicker. The other guy checked, too. But even more stupidly, Hellmuth checked again on a fairly non-scary turn card, and his opponent, who had now picked up a straight draw, checked behind. The river completed his opponent's straight. Hellmuth checked again, then called when the other guy bet about $12,000.

Predictably, rather than kicking himself for misplaying the hand about as badly as can be done, Phil berated his opponent for the preflop call. He then spent several minutes congratulating himself on having lost the minimum on the hand! Uh, no, Phil--you should have won it, and probably would have if you had bet on either the turn or the river. Aren't "eagle" types supposed to be bold and fearless about their strong hands? You played it like a mouse. (For those among my readers who don't know, Hellmuth's book, Play Poker Like the Pros, famously categorizes poker players into animal types: the mouse, the jackal, the elephant, the lion, and the eagle.) I was glad to hear the commentator, Ali Nejad, say "Phil has nobody to blame but himself" for the loss. That fact was obvious to everybody except Phil.

Next, Hellmuth gets stacked off when he finds himself on the bad end of a set-over-set situation with Cunningham, fives versus tens. He shoves it all in and, of course, gets called. He is 100% certain that he trapped Cunningham for all the marbles--until he sees the cards. It's a priceless moment.

Now he's well and truly steaming, and rebuys for another $100,000. (At least this time he pulled it out of a very nice black leather satchel, unlike the laughable plastic grocery bag in which he was carrying his money when he showed up on the second season of "High Stakes Poker.") He runs some junk hand (can't remember the details) into Mike Baxter's K-K. Hellmuth hits top pair, but is behind all the way, and loses a bunch more money. Again, rather than berating himself for overplaying his mediocre hand, he latches onto the fact that Baxter took maybe two seconds longer than he really needed to to turn over his cards after being called on the river, and launches into a several-minute tirade about being slow-rolled. I don't think this fit any reasonable definition of a sl0w-roll. When Baxter got called, he very likely thought that Hellmuth would only call him with a hand that had him beat. He even grimaced a bit, which I interpret to be him thinking that he must have lost. He really hesitated only a second, and I got absolutely no sense that he was doing it to prolong the losing opponent's anticipation (which I think is the essence of the slow-roll). Baxter was very classy about it, though, and apologized for the perceived infraction of etiquette, in order to smooth things over with Phil. (And maybe just to shut him up.)

Speaking of classy, I have been highly impressed by Tom Dwan so far. Other than the NBC heads-up match, this is the first time, I think, that I've seen him play on television. The guy seems to have a phenomenal poker sense, knowing when to apply pressure and when to back off. He has played nearly flawlessly in the first two hours, and is the big winner up to this point. Some of that is because of good luck, for example, flopping the nuts when his opponent flopped the second nuts, but I think he squeezed every single chip out of the guy that he could have, which takes a great feel for the game.

Just as impressive, though, is how he held his tongue with respect to Hellmuth. Before Phil mucked his A-K in his misplayed hand, he flashed them to Dwan. Dwan could easily have engaged Phil in a debate about how badly he had played it, but he just said, "No comment." I think it was clear from his facial expression that he know Phil had completely bungled the situation, and he certainly owed Phil a needle or two from their heads-up encounter. But he didn't take the shot, just kept it to himself. Smart and classy, both.

Three more days of watching Phil Hellmuth lose his money--it's like a brown paper package tied up with strings!


Addendum

It just occurred to me to check what Phil's book says about playing A-K when you flop an ace or a king to go along with it. Here it is, p. 52: "You bet, raise, and reraise quite a bit because you have hit 'top pair' with 'top kicker.' In every case where an A or a K hits the flop you will have top pair with top kicker (A-A-K or A-K-K), and this is a very strong hand in Hold'em! ... The point I'm trying to make is that A-K becomes very powerful when you catch an A or a K on the flop, and you should put in a lot of betting and raising on the flop when this is the case." (Emphasis added.)

Of course, this is in the "Beginners' Strategy" section. Probably in the "Advanced Strategy only to be attempted by Eagle players" section, it says, "Check it down until your opponent makes a straight, then call him."

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

This is a sensitive subject, one that I've toyed with writing about for months. On Sunday I decided to post about it, but still I put it off, because I'm not quite sure what it is I have to say about it.

But here's the question: Are there any gay professional poker players?

Well, the first problem is defining "professional poker player." There are probably many thousands of us low-level grinders squeaking by. Never mind that group. I'm really thinking about the upper crust of the poker world. Suppose we limit the field to, roughly, the group that did qualify or would have qualified for the Professional Poker Tour a couple of years ago. That field was somewhere between 150 and 200 players. That might be the most restrictive, limiting definition of poker pro that one could reasonably come up with. (They included few if any online tournament specialists, and not many cash-game specialists, so it is indeed a narrow selection.)

Statistically, it would be quite remarkable if there were not at least one gay person in a group of that size, wouldn't it? Yet I am not aware of a single name-brand player who has identified himself or herself as gay or lesbian.

Nearly every professional sport has experienced one or more players coming out of the closet. How can poker be different?

What brought this from an occasional idle passing thought to the point of deciding to post about it was Sunday's broadcast of the first installment of the NBC heads-up championship. In particular, I hadn't previously seen Tom "Durrrr" Dwan on television. During his first match with Phil Hellmuth, I was immediately struck by his speech patterns and non-verbal mannerisms. They weren't quite Jack-from-"Will-and-Grace"/Truman Capote/Harvey Fierstein flagrant--but they weren't exactly subtle, either. They were quite typical of what I've observed in many, many uncloseted gay men.

Since then, I've looked up several on-line video clips of other interviews with him, and seen the same things repeated. I've also searched his name with "gay" and found that at least several other people in various public forums have concluded or assumed that Dwan is gay, though never with any evidence specified.

I hasten to add that I have exactly zero information on Tom Dwan's personal life. I don't know if he's gay or straight or somewhere in between, and as far as I know he hasn't publicly addressed the matter. Furthermore, I honestly don't care, as far as the guy himself is concerned. As a good libertarian, I'm about as purely live-and-let-live as one can get. I'm interested only because of the rather striking (when you stop to think about it) absence of any gay high-visibility poker players, and the possibility that he might be the first to break ranks, so to speak.

Even if it's not Dwan, sooner or later, inevitably, somebody that we all recognize from televised and/or online poker events (even if it's somebody who is not currently well known) will out himself. Every time this little curiosity has occurred to me, I've wondered how this incredibly macho, sexist, swaggering, "I am the MAN" poker world will react to the news. My guess is that there will be a lot of public quoting of the famous Seinfeld line (a la the title of this post), accompanied by a lot of quiet, private, nasty bashing. You can imagine the kind of things that will be written by the scads of anonymous contributors to the poker forums--those who can't make a comment about a female professional player that doesn't involve judging her attractiveness or lack thereof. I don't envy whoever it is who takes on (voluntarily or otherwise) the role of the first openly gay poker pro. I think it will be a difficult mantle to wear.

And just in case the very writing of this post makes readers wonder--no, I'm not. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Recommended viewing

Go to the NBC Sports poker page here. Click on the "Heads-Up" section. Even if you don't want to watch the whole 64-player match, or even the whole two hours of the first show (which aired earlier today), at least treat yourself to the three-hand match in which Phil Hellmuth busts out at the hands of Tom "Durrrrrr" Dwan. It's "1st Round--Clubs, segment 2." It's only six minutes long.

For a second, it looks like Phil might handle the bad beat in a sportsmanlike manner, but then his true self shines through, and he starts haranguing and criticizing and making fun of his opponent for bad play.

The above is an actual photograph of Phil, taken just moments after this match ended.