Deuce-Four wins again

This time it was the final winning hand in the WSOP "Millionaire Maker":

https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2018-wsop/event-21-millionaire-maker/

PokerNews article #139

If you make a bad call, don't compound the error with a bad justification of it.

https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/two-things-you-should-never-say-at-a-poker-table-26465.htm

Deuce-Four always wins

Deuce-Four always wins

Even when it doesn't make the best hand, it plays Jedi mind tricks on your opponents.

Deuce-Four wins a WSOP bracelet

http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/update/1ECN/jean-gaspard-wins-the-10k-dealers-choice-championship/

Thanks to Eric Farbman for pointing this out to me.

WSOP photos

My friend Elizabeth Wolynski has compiled some of her fine WSOP photographs into a video. I especially like many of the black & white portraits in the first couple of minutes.

The math of monster stacks

Jonathan Little has an excellent blog post, in which he dissects the nutty idea that so many amateurs apparently got this year that the new "Monster Stacks" event at the WSOP was a better value to enter than events with the same entry fee but shorter stacks. Little shows why this is exactly the opposite of the truth; in fact, the pros' edge over the amateurs increases with bigger starting stacks.

http://jonathanlittlepoker.com/the-monster-stack-wsop-event/

There's an old saying among trial lawyers: "If the law is on your side, pound on the law; if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts; if neither is on your side, pound on the table."

In poker, there's a tension between the skill factor and the luck factor. If you're at a skill disadvantage, you want to increase the relative role of luck in a tournament. You do that with smaller starting stacks, with faster blind structures, with more aggressive all-in betting (as opposed to the pros' preferred "small ball" approach), with taking more coin flips, and so on. If you have a skill edge, you want the exact opposite on all of those variables.

Of course, it's possible that the mistake the enormous field of amateurs made in selecting Monster Stacks over more conventional tournaments was not in having a misunderstanding of the effects of stack size on the skill/luck dimension, but a misapprehension of where their skill lay with respect to the whole field. It is a truism that most poker players think they are much better than average, and the great majority of them are simply wrong in that assessment.

WSOP controversy

Here's an interesting story of a dispute at the WSOP and how it was resolved (probably badly), from Barny Boatman, whom I would judge to be well above average in reliability in recounting the pertinent facts.

http://pokermob.com/poker-forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=240

Poker miscellany

1. My friend Dominic, of the moribund "No Limit Doc" blog, just won a Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza $400 NLHE event, scoring $25,728. Of course, for me that's pocket change that I wouldn't even notice was missing from my wallet, but for him it's a big deal, so please share with him all due adulation--in comments here, on his blog, or to his Twitter (@nolimitdoc).

Photo stolen, with neither permission nor attribution, from his Facebook page:

2. Oddball story of the week from the WSOP: Player crippled (and shortly thereafter eliminated) by an opponent getting four queens to his aces full--except that the four queens were not one of each suit. There were two queens of hearts on the board. Amazingly, nobody noticed, even though the board was up for long enough for at least one photograph to be taken. As I understand it, the player involved didn't notice the anomaly until the next day, when he posted the bad-beat picture on Facebook, and somebody pointed out to him the fouled deck. Of course by then nothing could be done to remedy the unfortunate situation. You've got to pay attention, folks!

http://f5poker.com/poker-news/2014/6/20/chris-queen-hearts-ruby-might-boycott-wsop-might-notwell-see-/


3. A week or two ago, I saw a link to a new blog dedicated to poker in the movies, and meant to post a link to it, but then got distracted and forgot. So I'm making up for that now. Take a peek if that subject interests you:

http://pokerinmovies.blogspot.com/


4. The always-classy (cough, cough) Brandon Cantu says on camera that when one poker player accuses another of being an angle-shooter, what "should" happen is that the accuser gets punched in the face.

Uh, no.

http://www.pokernews.com/video/wsop-2014-fight-in-the-amazon-8841.htm


The same always-classy (cough, cough) Brandon Cantu followed that little performance with a tweet (apparently later deleted) saying, "WSOP dealers do not deserve to live they are so bad." This according to Linda Johnson's Twitter feed (@firstladypoker).

Poker >>>> Bridge!

I guess MemphisMOJO knows that now, in case he was ever in doubt. He of the poker, bridge, and photography blog just made what I have to assume is his best run ever, getting all the way to 3rd place in the WSOP Seniors event, and walking away with $279,412 in prize money. Not too shabby for three days' work. I wasn't watching the live video, but apparently his other fans were, and they said that he raised a couple of times with The Mighty 2-4 towards the end, winning the pots. He must have flashed the cards for the camera, because the PokerNews hand-for-hand blog does not seem to report them.

Congratulations, sir. Truly superb work. Now you can pay me that $275,000 you owe me for teaching you everything you know about poker, and still have a little party money left over!

Deuce-Four works down under

The first thing I found when logging onto Twitter this morning was Kevmath alerting me that The Mighty Deuce-Four had won a key hand in the WSOP-APAC High Rollers tournament. I quickly looked up the live updates (here) and found this:

As I write, Cheong is heads-up for the title, with the chip lead.

Who ya gonna believe--Bluff magazine or, um, Bluff magazine?

I have been paying very little attention to the November October Nine this year. I recognize a couple of the names from watching the weekly ESPN broadcasts, but that's about it. I couldn't tell you who's in the lead, who's a good or bad player, or anything about their lives or personalities.

This week I started reading the October issue of Bluff magazine. One of the first things I read was on page 28, "By the Numbers...October Nine," by Ryan Lucchesi. He writes:

6
Number of professional poker players among the October Nine. Russell Thomas (insurance actuary with Aetna Insurance), Michael Esposito (commodity broker), and Jacob Balsiger (student at Arizona State University), are the three non-pros at the final table. 

Then a couple of days later I got to page 65 and the cover feature, which is titled "October Nine: A Look at the Contenders," with no byline. (I don't know if all of the player profiles were written by one person, each by a different person, or distributed in some other way among Bluff's staff.)

We start with Russell Thomas:

Russell Thomas is one of only three professional players at the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event final table, though the other two have a bracelet to show for it.... He's primarily a cash game player, though he also has a full-time career working for an insurance company. 

So now we're being told that there are three professional players among the final nine, whereas the earlier article said there were six. Now we're being told that Thomas is among the three pros, but Ryan Lucchesi said Thomas was among the three amateurs.

Confused yet? Hang on, there's more.

The second profile is that of Jacob Balsiger. He is explicitly labeled as an amateur, with a decision to make as to whether to go pro after the WSOP ends. That concurs with the label given him by both Lucchesi and the writer of the Thomas profile.

Next up is the profile of Jeremy Ausmus:

Ausmus, a Bellagio cash game regular, was considered by some to be one of the best cap game players in the world on Full Tilt Poker before Black Friday hit.... In 2005, he moved to Las Vegas to play poker professionally. 

It lists no job for Ausmus other than poker, and that description certainly sounds like they're considering him a professional player (as does everything else I can find about him), and he is one of the six that Lucchesi is calling a pro. But at the same time he must not be one of the three being dubbed a pro by the anonymous author of the Thomas profile, because he specified that the two professionals other than Thomas both had bracelets, and Ausmus has no WSOP wins to his credit.

Next up is Steven Gee. No controversy here. He is explicitly labeled as a professional player and is also one of the two bracelet winners.

Same story for Greg Merson--his profile dubs him a pro, and there seems to be no argument about this designation. He is the other bracelet holder, having won the last tournament before the start of the Main Event.

Here's Jesse Sylvia's profile:

The 24-year-old pro who originally hails from Massachusetts is having his first real taste of success in live tournament poker.... Sylvia is a cash game specialist who's had a lot of success online. 

Sylvia, therefore, is deemed a pro by his profile writer (no other job is listed for him) and by Lucchesi, but definitely not by the author of the Thomas profile.

Robert Salaburu:

Twenty-seven-year-old Robert Salaburu primarily makes his living as a professional poker player who predominantly focuses on cash games, and if you think you're starting to see a pattern among the October nine, you might be onto something. 

Again we read nothing about any other job. He is considered a pro by his profile writer and by Lucchesi, but not by the writer of the Thomas profile.

Andras Koroknai:

Koroknai is a 30-year-old professional poker player from Debrecen, Hungary.... Koroknai has been playing professionally for the past six years and he is proud to represent his home country at the final table. He attended the University of Debrecen and worked as a computer engineer before turning to poker. 

Again we have agreement between this profile writer and Lucchesi. But the author of the Thomas profile deems Koroknai an amateur, not a professional. On what basis? I do not know.

Michael Esposito:

Michael Esposito is a 44-year-old from Seaford, New York, who has two kids and works as a commodity broker in New York City. Esposito plays just a few times a year as a hobby. 

Here we appear to have agreement among the three different viewpoints I've been exploring: Esposito is one of the amateurs.

To sum up: Lucchesi says that there are six professional players: Ausmus, Gee, Merson, Sylvia, Salaburu, and Koroknai. The author of the Thomas profile says that there are only three pros: Thomas, Gee, and Merson. And the nine profiles taken together judge seven of the nine to be professionals: Thomas, Ausmus, Gee, Merson, Sylvia, Salaburu, and Koroknai.

You can also look at it by the player. There is agreement across the board that Gee and Merson are pros and that Balsiger and Esposito are amateurs. Thomas is dubbed a pro by the author of his profile but an amateur by Lucchesi. Ausmus, Sylvia, Salaburu, and Koroknai are all called pros both by Lucchesi and by the author(s) of their individual profiles, but are all considered amateurs by the author of the Thomas profile.

Thanks for clearing that up for us, Bluff!

Elizabeth Hille knows

See this clip from this week's installment of the World Series of Poker Main Event. (Thanks to Nerve Ending for the pointer.)

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.

Poker gems, #458

Matt Matros, in Card Player magazine interview, July 11, 2012 (vol. 25, #14), page 34. Deep into a World Series of Poker event earlier this summer, he got all in with K-K versus an opponent's A-K, and lost the massive pot when an ace fell on the river.

There are going to be times when you go from the big stack to the short stack for reasons outside of your control and hopefully you've been through it enough to make a quick mental adjustment, shrug it off and continue to play your best. Having said that, I don't think I've ever experienced anything quite so drastic. Had I won that pot, I would've been the chip leader with about 1 million while second place held only 300,000. Instead, I was left with a below average stack.... I was a little shaken, but I started to look at the positives. I told myself that I was still in the hunt with 30 players left [out of] a massive field. Chances like that don't come around everyday [sic], so I could either sit back and complain about my bad luck, or really try to make the most of the opportunity.

[Matros recovered and went on to win the tournament ($1500 6-max no-limit hold'em), his third bracelet in three years.]

One form of sexism in poker

I see that the final nine of the WSOP Main Event have been determined since I went to bed. Every news story I have seen so far--and, I predict, every one I will see in the future--prominently mentions that two women were eliminated just short of the final table, in 11th and 10th places.

More troubling is that as Day 7 played out, my Twitter feed was full of people openly expressing their hopes that one or both remaining women would make the final table. Poker being a zero-sum game, if you hope that a female makes the final table and/or wins, it is the same as hoping that a male does not do so.

None of the people I follow on Twitter who hoped for the women to advance did so on the basis of knowing them personally, or because of them having superior poker skill and thus deserving the victory. It was entirely because of their sex, and for no other reason.

If you want for a good outcome to happen to one person and a bad outcome to happen to another person for no reason other than their respective genders, well, we have a couple of words in our language for what that makes you: (1) sexist, and (2) bigot.

I think I expressed this as well as I'm capable of doing four years ago when Tiffany Michelle was garnering attention for being the "last woman standing":

Yes, women are statistically under-represented at poker tables generally and in big poker tournaments specifically. But that is true of black people, too, so that fact does not constitute a rational justification for paying attention to one group but not the other.

If you privately are glad to see that a black person will not win the Main Event this year, then you are obviously a racist. Of course, if you are upset about the fact that a black person will not win the Main Event this year, then that makes you a racist, too. Similarly, if you hope that Michelle is eliminated because for whatever reason you can't stand the idea of a woman winning, you are sexist. And, in parallel, if you were rooting for her to win solely because of her gender, that, too, makes you sexist. It's all the same. If you favor or disfavor a person because of race, you're a racist. If you favor or disfavor a person because of sex, you're a sexist. You're a bigot either way.

One of the great things about poker is that it simply doesn't matter whether you're male or female, black, white, Hispanic, or Asian, young or old, tall or short, skinny or fat, physically handicapped or a perfect specimen of humanity. Not only is the game equally open to all, but none of those characteristics intrinsically impact one's ability to learn and succeed at the game.

Frankly, I find the attention heaped on female players in the spotlight demeaning to women. Every time there is attention lavished on a female player specifically because she is female, there is at least a vague undertone that she merits the attention because she's doing something one would tend to think she shouldn't be able to do, like a pig learning to play a Brahms piano concerto.

What would be most genuinely respectful of women, in my never-humble opinion, is silently accepting, as a simple matter of fact--so obvious that it's not even worth mentioning, let alone dwelling on--that women are just as capable of playing the game as men are.

To the media outlets and bloggers who focus on the Last Woman Standing, but completely disregard the Last Black Standing, I ask you to justify why you deem one worthy of your attention but not the other. Can you do it?

I think it should be noted that nobody either in or out of the poker media took me up on the challenge to explain why the sex of a poker player was newsworthy but race was not. I'm still listening, should anybody care to try.

Cards for pot--it's a trade

People, people, people--when will you ever learn? Do not muck what you believe to be the winning hand until the dealer pushes you the pot. This is not that difficult a concept. You gain nothing by trying to jump the gun and muck them the first instant you think the hand is over, and once in a while you'll lose a great deal, as illustrated by a story from yesterday at the WSOP:

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2012-world-series-of-poker/event-61-no-limit-hold-em-main-event/day5/post.208172.htm

(Hat tip: Hard-Boiled Poker.)

Crazy hand at WSOP

If you're a poker rules nerd, you might enjoy these two separate write-ups of the nuttiest hand of WSOP 2012 so far:

http://www.pokerlistings.com/wsop/2012/event45/live-updates?day=2#live-update-35048

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2012-world-series-of-poker/event-45-the-poker-players-championship/post.206642.htm

(Note that in the first version, B.J. Nemeth makes a slight error by missing Shaun Deeb's flush, but the outcome is the same.)

Can't possibly be true

An alert reader tipped me off to this piece of so-called poker journalism from PokerNews reporting the WSOP:

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2012-world-series-of-poker/event-25-limit-hold-em-shootout/chips.29231.htm

I don't know if the blogger just made a simple error, or if this is a damnable lie intended to tarnish the good reputation of the Mighty Deuce-Four, but it is obviously not actually possible to bust out of a tournament while holding that hand.

Runner-up

Pius Heinz just won the 2011 WSOP. But I'm writing in commendation of Martin Staszko. I really liked how he played. He made a crucial mistake near the end calling an all-in with just a flush draw, which is probably what cost him the match in the end. But before that, he had been in the lead for most of the heads-up battle. He looked completely unflappable, whereas Heinz showed obvious signs of the stress and frustration. He said hardly a single word. He tamed the wild Heinz by using the call as his primary tool--just as Mike Caro advises for dealing with a maniac. He supplemented that with some impressively well-timed bluffs, deadly traps, and perfectly sized value bets. His style of play is not flashy or sexy, in the way that Heinz's daring high-wire act of unrelenting aggression is, but it is highly effective. It's the classic tortoise and hare story. I've always been partial to tortoises.

I think I was with most observers in seriously underestimating him coming into tonight. I mostly thought of him as having luckboxed his way to the final table, and then coasting on his chip lead to the final three. He always struck me as looking confused, like he didn't really know what was going on. But we learned from a Kara Scott interview late in the evening that, to everyone's surprise, most of Staszko's online play is heads-up, so he came to the end-game not nearly at the experience disadvantage that most of us assumed. And it showed--he never seemed the least bit intimidated by Heinz's aggression, and actually managed to force Heinz to dial it down, frustrating him by calling light, and usually correctly.

I'd like to think that I would have played about the way he did, in both decision-making and composure.

Good game, sir.