Unusual day

Sunday was a highly atypical day for me.


Family

First I had a late lunch with my sister, her husband, one of their daughters, and her husband, all in town for the annual rodeo. Then we went bowling at Sam's Town. I won both games, scoring 139 and 150, which is pretty good for me--especially since I haven't bowled in about 18 months.

Unfortunately, in the process I somehow managed to wrench my back, so now I'm in pain and walking funny, dreading when I have to change positions. Getting old sucks.


Chinese

Came home, did some work. In the evening I sort of invited myself to a home game some friends were having--@spencer_chen, @gamble24x7, @veggiepoof, and one other whose Twitter I don't know. It was my first chance to play open-faced Chinese poker, which seems to be all the rage these days. I had never even played regular Chinese before, though I had watched it a few times and understood the basic idea.

My entire knowledge of OFCP comes from an article in Card Player magazine by Jennifer Shahade , a blog post a few days ago by Shamus, and an article by Dave Behr in the December issue of Bluff magazine, which by coincidence I had just read yesterday. So I was green as green could be, and knew I was likely to lose money. Which I did--$89, to be exact, at $1/point. But that's OK. Learning new forms of poker always costs money as one makes mistakes and, hopefully, learns from them to play better.

But ya know what? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that OFCP is not, in fact, a form of poker. For that matter, neither is traditional Chinese poker.

This is a point that I haven't seen raised in any of the three sources I mentioned, but which occurred to me as I watched the others play during the one hand out of five I had to sit out. (A maximum of four people can play at once, since each player needs 13 cards.) There are several ways to express the basic element that is missing, but they all amount to the same thing:

• There are no hole cards, no secrets that you hold which are unknown to the other players. 
• There is no betting on the strength of your hand. 
• It is a game of perfect rather than imperfect information. 
• You cannot bluff. 

Mike Matusow is generally not a font of wisdom that I turn to, but Michael Craig quotes him as saying, "If you can't steal, it ain't poker." He's absolutely right. 

Mike Caro has argued that the ability to bluff is more a defining element of poker than are cards. He describes an imaginary game of "cow chip poker," in which the players scout a nearby field for cow chips, conceal what they find in paper bags, then reassemble to bet on who has the biggest one. You can win with an empty bag by betting in such a way as to convince your opponents that you found the biggest cow chip. That's poker, even with no cards. In another hypothetical situation, he describes how two people can play poker with a deck of just three cards, because you still have the crucial elements of being able to have a secret card and bluff with the worst hand. 

Video poker is not poker, in part because it's played against the house rather than against other players, but also because it lacks secret information and bluffing. OFCP fails by that same criterion. They are both games that superficially resemble poker because they use the standard 52-card deck and poker's traditional five-card hand rankings. But resembling is not being. They are not poker. 

It was, nevertheless, highly enjoyable. I didn't find it nearly as addictive as others breathlessly describe it after first exposure, but it's definitely an intriguing game. 

Oh, and the other important thing I learned about OFCP is that people say "fuck" a lot. Really a lot. 

Television

After I got home, I watched the premier of "Sin City Rules" on TLC, which I had taped earlier. The only reason I was interested in it is because one of the stars is Jennifer Harman, whom I like. But I thought the whole thing was awful, painful, unwatchable. Jennifer is fine, but the other women are completely unbearable. They're self-absorbed attention whores. Judging by the first episode and the teaser on TLC's web site, the show exists mainly to capture and televise the catfights among them. Ick. I can't understand why anybody would watch such trash. The preview for next week's show seemed to focus more on Harman's life as a mother and poker player, so I'll probably give it one more try, but I can't see myself tuning in much beyond that. I'm kind of perplexed how she got associated with the show; she seems not at all like the others. 

And that was my completely out-of-the-ordinary day. 

In case you missed it

Just a few minutes ago, Jennifer Harman posted the above photo on Twitter along with an explanation that it came from a hand of Stud-8 she had just played at Aria. Four players made ace-high flushes. Three players had low hands, including (if I'm reading the blurry image correctly) one wheel for the nut low (second hand from the left). She said that they generated a $27,000 pot in this $300/600 game.

Live poker is SO rigged.

Poker gems, #370

Jennifer Harman, about an hour ago, while some of the final seven players in the WSOP razz event were attempting to negotiate a deal, as reported on Twitter by photographer B.J. Nemeth.


I don't buy bracelets. I win them.


Update: She finished in 6th place.

Another charity tournament that I didn't enter

I played at the Venetian today, partly because the big NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) is in town, and I thought that was a likely spot its attendees would congregate, but also because I knew that Jennifer Harman's annual charity tournament for the SPCA would be there, which might be fun to watch.

They had staff and/or volunteers from the SPCA there with a bunch of adoptable animals, cleverly taking advantage of the publicity to try to place a few, as well as show the public what sweet critters they have there ready for homes:










Maybe I'm just stupid, but I thought that that might have actually been Cab Calloway there, until I got home, looked him up, and discovered that he died in 1994. So probably not.




Louis Anderson took a turn posing with a doggy to try to help get it adopted:




As usual for such events, there were a bunch of celebrities. There was a protracted "red carpet" thing going on. I took a couple of quick breaks from my poker game to snap a few shots, but I didn't have the patience or interest to stick around from beginning to end. Frankly, I can never figure out why those things take so long. Should be about 30 seconds per celebrity, 60 tops. But they turn out to be like traffic congestion--going slow for no apparent reason. People are just standing around waiting for their turn to step in front of the camera, and there's no obvious reason they're not going, but everything just goes in slow motion anyway.

Here's Robert Iler, "A.J." from "The Sopranos" (best drama ever put on television).




And here's Holly Madison, Hugh Hefner's ex-#1 girlfriend. Whatever oddities and flaws she may have, she certainly knows how to smile and pose.






There were a few fake celebrities, too, though I'm not clear on what their purpose was, when there were plenty of real ones to grab public attention.






And, of course, there were poker celebrities.

Erik Seidel:




Tom McEvoy:




David "The Maven" Chicotsky:




Tiffany Michelle:




Andy Bloch, with a cat named Corkie (as per his Twitter feed):




And, of course, Jennifer Harman. I have no idea who the others with her are, but they seemed to be connected to some organization that was donating a bunch of money to the SPCA:




Jimmy "Gobboboy" Fricke was there, but not as part of this event. He was at the final table (day 2) of yesterday's Deep Stack Extravaganza. My cash game, oddly, was in the tournament area, right by the elevated platform where they had the final table going on. It seemed that nobody was paying any attention to it. I tried taking a picture, but it came out blurry because I didn't use flash and had it on telephoto, and right after I snapped it they asked me not to take pictures in the "gaming area." So it looks like a stalkerish photo, even though that's not what I wanted the result to be.




Lots and lots of other poker and non-poker familiar names/faces were there. I made no effort to catch them all. Just got you a sampling.

There were a bunch of cool things available for bidding through a silent auction. A couple of examples:






That's all I have to tell you about it.

Another intolerably bad poker movie

I just watched "The Big Blind."* It is as bad as the worst of any of the poker movies I've previously reviewed.

There's a caveat to that, however--it has a lot more poker than most. It's not very good or interesting poker, but at least the movie does largely revolve around the game. It might better be called "Scenes from a Poker Room," because there isn't any central plot. Instead, there are something like 12-15 characters, forming about five distinct story lines. The only thing they all have in common is the real-life Lake Elsinore Casino.

The production values are about half a step above home movies.

There are a few recognizable poker faces. Here are Matt Corboy, Jennifer Harman, and, in a non-speaking, uncredited role, Daniel Negreanu (looking remarkably like Worm, the Edward Norton character in "Rounders"):



Corboy is best known in poker circles as one of the commentators for the one-season, ill-fated Professional Poker Tour. Here's another shot of him, with a look that the producers of the PPT, oddly, did not ask him to recreate for their shows:



Then there's the inimitable Scotty Nguyen, who plays a character named "Scotty," a poker player. Imagine that. He stars in what I thought was the best scene in the film (though it had nothing to do with poker). He is in a store, gets treated kindly by one stranger, badly by another, and deals with them both accordingly--but never loses his cool, speaking only a few carefully chosen words.



The poker is reasonably true to life, as movies go. The most glaring bit of phoniness about it, as you can see from the next screen shot, is that in this casino they play high-stakes cash games with plain, solid-colored chips--the kind you can purchase at K-Mart. That would certainly make buying into the game a lot cheaper: pick up several dozen generic chips at the discount store for a song, then take them to the casino, where they will be honored as worth hundreds apiece. I can't figure out why they had permission to shoot lots of scenes in the casino, but not use real chips. It's a glaring error, like shooting a war movie with water pistols as props.



But the whole thing is badly written, badly acted, and badly shot, so there's really no reason to expect anything better from the props, I suppose. If you're big-time into poker, you probably need to see this stinker just so that you can say you did. But don't expect much from it.

This customer review from amazon.com (you can buy the DVD used from a few of their affiliated vendors) has it about right, though I think he's too hard on poor Scotty Nguyen:

This is a low budget widescreen movie (in LPCM audio=48 khz,16 bit, 2
chnnl--though, it sounded perfectly fine), sprinkled with a few poker stars. I
only rented this, so it was easier for me to watch the whole thing without
feeling ripped off. Jennifer Harman (top poker player), does an okay job playing
the very minor role of a woman (Linda-I think), who's temporarily playing poker
along with her boyfriend Lane (played by Matt Corboy-best known as one of the
PPT tv announcers, or as Officer Ray Carlson, in the tv series, "The Shield"),
until they win enough to get out of town. Corboy was good enough in the movie as
well (he had a goofy, yet, still charming persona), and I liked the way he would
often sing Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" (You got to know when to hold 'em...) to
annoy people or please himself. After doing well, Lane decides to stay and keep
playing, while Harman's character decides to leave town (that's the last we see
of her in the movie).

However, Scotty Nguyen is so bad, it is actually quite funny. Half of the
time I couldn't understand what he was saying. He plays a wise poker player
named Scotty. He says baby, quite often, so I guess he's just playing himself.
But he's so bad, he needs to work on even playing himself, before his next small
screen appearance. At least at the end, they showed his WSOP win (with audio
only at the very end of it). Poker star, Daniel Negreanu, is just in a brief
scene near the beginning, sitting beside Jennifer at the poker table. He says
nothing and was obviously just doing his real life friend, Harman, a favor.

The movie also features several other characters that are struggling with
poker and some who are also ultimately searching for love. It has an annoying
narrator, who comments throughout the movie, but after awhile his drab comments
blended in with the awful storylines, so I was less repulsed. There is enough
poker in the movie, but it mostly centres on bad play and angry reactions,
rather than any quality poker.

So, yes, the movie is awful, but if you're a fan of poker great, Scotty
Nguyen, and want to see him in a train wreck of a movie, then look to rent it.
Whatever you do, don't buy it, or you just might decide to stop watching poker
movies, forever! You've been warned, baby!

*The date on this movie is somewhat mysterious to me. The usually reliable IMDB lists it as 1999 (see here), while the DVD is apparently labeled as 2003, at least according to the information on the torrents directory from which I downloaded it. (It's not available for purchase, nor from Netflix, so one's choices for accessing it are limited.) Jennifer Harman is credited as "Jennifer Harman Traniello," implying that she was married when it was produced. According to a book I have, she was married in late 2000. My best guess is that it was shot in 1999, but not released until 2003.

Sorry, Jennifer, but your movie sucked

In last night's segment of NBC's "Poker After Dark," apparently filmed in late spring/early summer, Jennifer Harman and Howard Lederer are discussing "Lucky You," which Lederer had not yet seen.

Howard tells Jennifer that http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ had compiled seven reviews of the movie so far, and they were all bad. Jennifer, who appears in the movie as a character trying to win a seat in the World Series of Poker through a satellite tournament, explains, "You know what I think it is, is most of the reviewers don't know poker, and it has a lot of poker in the movie."

Well, first, Jennifer, a well-made movie shouldn't require its viewers to know any particular subject in order to enjoy it; a good movie explains a technical area enough for a previously uninformed viewer to understand and enjoy it, perhaps even makes the viewer want to learn more about the subject later. "Lucky You" didn't do that.

If Howard were reporting to Jennifer today, he'd have more data--specifically, that site now lists 132 reviews, of which only 38 (29%) were considered positive, with an average rating of 5/10. It includes gems such as these:

"The Bellagio's fountains give a more expressive performance than Bana."

"An empty shell of a film, devoid of heart and soul, leaving us to wonder how in the world this movie ever got released."

"Staying home and playing solitaire would be two levels more interesting than watching this movie."

"If watching endless reruns of the World Championship of Poker is your idea of a hot weekend, there's finally a movie for you and your sad life."

"Below average, overlong drama that fails to deliver an emotional punch, largely because it's unsure of whether it wants to be a father-son drama or a romcom."

"Lucky You is long, utterly predictable and always bland."

"Curiously lifeless, Lucky You feels like poker without stakes; it goes through the motions with nothing to play for."

"Hanson’s an excellent director, and there are swaths of 'Lucky You' that are admittedly very well executed. But without a main character to root for, a believable romance or any reason to give a crap about the story, the whole thing just rolls over on its back and dies like a big, bloated, poker-flavored dead fish."

"Rather tepid going...the title obviously doesn't refer to the viewer."

Similarly, http://www.metacritic.com/ lists 29 reviews, with an average score of 49/100, including 10 in the green zone, 14 yellow, and 5 red. Check these excerpts:

"So what's Hanson exploring this time? His boring side, apparently."

"This spring, boredom has a new name: Lucky You. In the poker flick, an announcer calling a climactic poker match uses a Texas hold 'em term frequently, saying, 'And the flop. And the flop. And the flop.' This movie reviews itself."

"Poker has proven itself a popular spectator sport on television -- at least in the short run -- but as scripted drama, where you can pretty much guess the winner of a given hand, it's dull, dull, dull."

"The result is dull and lifeless."

Could all of those raspberries be just because the reviewers don't know the game of poker, as Jennifer lamely claims? No. Consider this one from Bob Pajich at Card Player magazine (http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/article/8828/movie-review-lucky-you):

The people who made Lucky You took unprecedented access to the world’s most respected poker players and blew a chance to make an authentic movie about what
it’s like to live and compete in their world. Instead, the players become merely background in a movie that fails in just about every way.

Even the scenes of the “big game” at the Bellagio... are poker-chip flat. Sure, the sets look incredible..., but the games come off more like a council meeting than a
high-stake poker match.

After about two years of waiting for Lucky You, expectations may have gotten out of hand, but who could blame us? Looking at all the poker players the producers manage to assemble, it’s hard to believe the end result. It’s been almost nine years since the last good poker movie, Rounders, came out. Who knows how long poker fans will have to wait for another one.

I've written before about how bad this movie was (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-do-poker-movies-have-to-be-so-awful.html), so there's no need to repeat it. I'm obviously not alone. Actually, in all the poker-table conversations I've had and heard about this movie, not a single player has admitted to liking it.

If I had been Danette (barely seen in the screenshot above), dealing at the time this Lederer-Harman conversation was going on, I think I'd have stopped the action to say, "You're kidding, right? You really don't know how bad that film was?"

Jennifer, you're a sweetheart, but your movie sucked.

Poker gems, #39

Gabe Kaplan, on "High Stakes Poker," Season 2, Episode 4, when asked by A. J. Benza if Jennifer Harman is the best female poker player in the world:

I think it's between her and Bea Arthur.