November Nine Errata

I'm sitting in a noodle shop in Taiwan (no, really) waiting for a flight to Manila so that I can connect with a puddle-jumper to Cebu. While I wait to play my next leg of Asian hopscotch, I'll download a few lingering thoughts from... whatever day that was that that the final table of the WSOP was played.

* WSOP and Harrah's made a *significant* improvement in stage design this year. Last year, people in the audience of the theater couldn't see the table at all. Instead they were forced to watch the action on two projection screens set up to the sides of the stage. This year it was done right -- the table was brought front and center on the stage so that everyone had a decent view of the action.

* If this were 2005, this final table would have LOL DONKAMENTS written all over it. If you were all in with the best hand, you were almost certainly doomed. I thought my proximity to the table might have something to do with it (I was sitting fifteen feet away and my cooler powers are legendary) until I remembered that no, poker is just a gross game sometimes.

* Did they or didn't they? After the elimination of Eric Buchman in fourth place, there was a very long break -- longer than typical for the usual bust-out interviews. When play resumed, all three players came back to the table together. Just saying...

* Phil Ivey is impervious to excitement or adrenalin. He was all-in with ace-king against ace-queen and didn't even flinch when Moon flopped a queen (of course he did!). In fact, Ivey reached over to a side table, picked up n apple he was eating, and took another bite out of it.

* The Handshaking Issue: You'll see on the broadcast that Darvin Moon eliminates three people: Phil Ivey, Steve Begleiter and Eric Buchman. What you won't see is Moon shake hands with Ivey or Begleiter. I have no idea why. If Phil Ivey was the picture of calm, Moon might have been asleep or dead. He beat Ivey (AQ v AK) and Begleiter (AQ v QQ) from behind, then sat stone still at the table when his miracle card hit and his opponent stood up to shakes hands and make his exit. Moon did, however, offer a handshake and a few words to Buchman.

* Despite eliminating three player, Moon finished the day with almost exactly the same number of chips that he had at the start of the day. That's because of two different mind-bogglingly bad raises: one with a total airball when Antoine Saout had already committed 60% of his chips to the pot, and the other with... ? (we'll find out tomorrow) when he check-raised Steve Begleiter from 5MM to 15MM and then folded to Begleiter's shove for 6MM more. As Joe Sebok said on the live Bluff audio commentary, Moon "could have had a Tarot card and a Snickers wrapper" and he still should have called.

That's all I've got for now. It was an honor to be that close to the action for the second year in a row. I hope everyone who followed along with the live coverage at PokerNews enjoyed my and FerricRamsium's efforts!

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T Minus One

The long wait for the 2009 November Nine is almost over. Tomorrow at noon local time, the WSOP Main Event resumes from the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio. I'll be on hand as a last-minute addition to help PokerNews provide Live Reporting.

Last year the atmosphere outside the theater before the final table began was more akin to a live sporting event than a multi-million dollar poker tournament. As I described it in the PokerNews live-reporting blog that morning,

The day dawned gray and rainy in Las Vegas, but that hasn't dampened spirits in the hallway outside the Penn & Teller Theater. Spectators were lining up hours in advance of the official 9:30am opening of the theater to the general public, stretching almost all the way to Buzio's seafood restaurant. Nobody was tailgating in the parking lot outside, but there were people downing a breakfast of barbecued meats; people carrying giant foam hands and thunder-sticks; an army of people dressed as Dennis Phillips (red St. Louis Cardinals caps and white button-down shirts) and the usual assortment of attractive models hawking poker-related products. The Starbucks outside the theater was doing a brisk business.

Last year was the first time the November Nine concept had been tried. Most would agree it was a rousing success: there was significantly more interest in the live proceedings than was previously the case and ESPN's television ratings for the final episodes of its WSOP coverage showed a marked increase over 2007.

The 2008 November Nine spectacle gave us the Dennis Phillips Army with its truck horn and the Ooba! Ooba! chant of Peter Eastgate's entourage. What will this year bring? We're all going to find out in less than 24 hours.

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On Phil Ivey, Full Tilt and ESPN

I found myself home between 4pm and 5pm today and, thanks to Elaine, turned on my TV in time to catch Chad Millman's E:60 segment on Phil Ivey.

I haven't read the article that Millman wrote for ESPN the Magazine, but I knew the basic premise. Millman accompanied Ivey on a four-city, three-day jaunt to Foxwoods, then Montreal, and then Amsterdam before arriving in Salzburg, Austria for the Full Tilt Million Euro Challenge. Ivey diced for 30 minutes at Foxwoods, where he won about a quarter million, and 30 minutes in Montreal, where he won three-quarters of a million despite the fact that he let Millman throw the dice with $240,000 on the table and Millman sevened out. The segment included some clips of Ivey dicing, shots of private villas, private jets, fancy cars and all of the extravagances that you would expect along with such a lifestyle, and interviews with a childhood friend and Ivey's mother. There was also the story of Ivey's early days in NJ, his move to Vegas, and his success in Larry Flynt's high-stakes stud game in LA.

One thing that was missing? Almost any mention of Full Tilt Poker.

Sure, there were shots of various Team Full Tilters wearing the logo. There was an interview with Howard Lederer in front of a Full Tilt step-and-repeat (probably from Salzburg). And there was a throwaway line at the end of the segment about Ivey "building his image as the face of Full Tilt Poker". But that was it.

I know that Ivey's success in poker is what's driven him as far as he's gone in life, and Millman makes sure to point out that Ivey was reputed to have made $7 million playing online poker last year. But to me it's irresponsible journalism not to mention that Ivey is reputed to earn $1.5 million a MONTH from his association with FTP. That's $18 million a year, more than twice Ivey's take from cash games last year, and an amount that surely helps Ivey not to care about how much money he throws around when dicing or playing poker.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Ivey's poker accomplishments. He is without a doubt one of the very best (if not the best) players in the world and definitely the most feared player in the world. But by ignoring this major income source, ESPN paints a misleading image of a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants gambler. Ivey may be willing to go broke -- admitting there were some nights that he went broke and slept under the Boardwalk in AC are testament to that -- but unless his -EV gambling gets wildly out of control, Ivey doesn't have to WORRY about going broke ever again. ESPN gets a big demerit for missing (or choosing not to report) that angle of the story.

Still, despite that flaw, I'd recommend the segment. It's a glimpse of something most of us are never likely to see.

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Laugh and the World Laughs With You

Last night I played some more NLHE at Venetian and found myself in an enviable position: on the immediate left of an extremely nice fellow who was an absolutely horrible poker player. It gave me an opportunity to practice making a losing player feel like he was having fun. I chatted about his home, his work, his Vegas trip and anything else I could. It was effective enough that after I stacked him a second time, we had a good laugh about it. He raised preflop and noted that I hadn't seen a flop in a while. I told him just for that I'd call him. I flopped top two and got his whole stack, with a teasing admonition afterwards to "Be careful what you wish for!" that made him laugh.

Stony-faced seriousness tends to be off-putting to recreational 1-2 NLHE players. They don't like it, they don't enjoy it and I've seen it drive them away from a table. Since they're the majority of the softest ranks in Vegas NLHE, it makes sense to ditch that mentality and try to laugh it up with them so that they relax and enjoy their losing.

My new friend, a Subway franchise operator in Charlotte, stayed in the game until 5am. I can't tell you how much he was stuck. I tagged him twice and I wasn't the only one. But when he left he couldn't have been in a better mood. And with $1,002 of profit, neither could I.

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Big-Bet Poker

In what I'm sure will come as blasphemy to certain parties, I've been playing a bit of NLHE lately. I think I've become an action junkie because after all the LHE I've played, NLHE seems dull.

Dull but profitable, that is.

I had forgotten how poorly typical $1-$2 players play. At Borgata in 2007 the $10-$20 players were just as awful as the $1-$2 players, and in many cases worse. In Vegas today the small pool of LHE players is made up mainly of LHE diehards. They may not be great but they're more skilled than Random JoeDonkey.

$1-$2 games, on the other hand, are full of terribad spewtards. Sorry, sir, bottom pair is no good. Oh, Mr. D-bag, you have an overpair? Then you have ze nuts! Look, madam, I know an ace is a pretty card but the books do not recommend taking A-2 up against two preflop all-in bets for $150. What's that? You'd like to make a complete non-sensical and hopeless all-in bluff on the river? Thanks for your chips!

I haven't given up on LHE. Venetian had three $8-$16 games last night at one point, providing more hope that they can breathe life into he Vegas LHE scene. But variety never hurt anybody or anything -- especially my bankroll.

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All Atwitter

I make my living writing. It's something I love and something that constantly presents challenges. One of the beliefs I've long held about writing -- even before I made it a profession -- is that the best writing is collaborative. An extra set of eyes will make any piece of writing significantly stronger than it would otherwise be without those eyes. I can't count how many times CK has given me suggestions, guidance, or constructive criticism on my own work that has made it immensely better than it would have been without her feedback. Whatever opinion people have of the pieces I've produced would be much lower if CK did not read my work before it is published.

Like Otis, Pauly, and Gene before me (to name three), I got into my current profession through blogging. Blogging is a solitary pursuit. Even on team blogs, the posts that are produced are written by one person. That person might spend a lengthy amount of time writing the post but in the end it is his/her creation alone. That's why I feel that blogging can't supplant more polished forms of writing. Blogging is the instant ramen of writing: it's quick and it can be tasty but it will never rise to the level of gourmet cuisine.

Blogs were the pre-cursor to Twitter. The problem that blog-writers encountered -- which Twitter users do not -- is that the act of writing something that people will want to read requires (1) passable writing skills, (2) a good writing voice, and (3) something interesting to say (or an interesting way to say something otherwise mundane). The vast majority of bloggers lacked one or more of those three attributes and as a result had difficulties finding and maintaining an audience. There's the added problem of a lack of collaboration in blog-writing, which tends to make the writing of a lesser quality than you can find at more traditional sources.

Twitter, with its 140-character limit, doesn't demand much in the way of skill, voice, or even interest. That has allowed Twitter to develop a larger userbase than blogging did and, like many things in life, for those individuals Twitter has become what they made of it. There's no "right" way to use Twitter. Some people use it as a public IM service among a group of friends; others use it as a self-promotional or marketing tool. A third group might find it best-suited for random thoughts or quips while still others think it is perfect for social and cultural commentary. Let's not forget poker players who use it to update tournament progress or whine about bad beats. Still, Twitter "writing" is limited to 140 characters. If blogging is a bowl of instant ramen, Twitter-ing is the powder packet in the ramen package. It instantly provide flavor but is otherwise unrecognizable as food.

Blogging and Twitter-ing have become entrenched elements of the poker community, for which I'm grateful. They have certainly enriched that community. The problem with them is that they have pushed the community to clamor for more content faster. It seems to me that we may be crossing a tipping point where polished, high-quality writing -- the type that is collaborative and takes more time, voice and skill to produce -- is receding in prominence in favor of instant ramen. And while most people will admit to the guilty pleasure of a bowl of ramen now and again, a diet solely of ramen and the chemicals in a ramen flavor package are not enough nourishment to sustain a healthy body.

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Oh Danny Boy

Years ago when I lived in NYC, I played at a weekly poker game with a bunch of improvisors and comedians. At its height, our silly little $10 freezout and $25 cash game regularly boasted about 30 players in attendance.

Somewhere along the way, the organizer of the tournament got the idea to start tournament stat-tracking. I believe we used a points formula based on finishing position and number of players; I know for sure we tracked money in and money out.

What I observed at the Above Malibu game -- and what I have observed with every public stat-tracking of its kind since then -- is that most of the players were happy to show up and lose before the stat-tracking started. They didn't think much about it. If they made the money one week, they were very happy to do so. But after the stat-tracking was implemented, those players stopped showing up after being presented with the cold hard data of their (net losing) performance over time.

So it was with some interest that I read a recent blog post by Daniel Negreanu in which he performs some analysis on WPT results using the WPT stats database. Nothing about Negreanu's analysis strikes me as terribly wrong. I think he makes some excellent points. But I also think he mis-stepped by naming names of many of the WPT's net losers.

Rule Number One in the winning poker player's handbook is "Don't tap the glass." Negreanu's point about the WPT's need for a satellite system could have just as easily been made without naming actual names of net losers. By doing so he's put those people on direct, unavoidable notice that they are net losers on the WPT over 30 events. Will that encourage those people to play more events? If they stop playing, doesn't that make the fields tougher for the people who already are net winners?

Some might say "but tournament results databases have existed on the internet for a long time." Of course they have. But the fallacy of sites like The Hendon Mob is that you don't see a player's net results, only their cashes. You might see that Doyle Brunson has cashes of $135,203 in 2009, but without some work it's difficult to determine: (1) what his net on those cashes was (about $97,000); (2) how much money he spent on buy-ins for other tournaments where he didn't cash; and therefore (3) whether he is a net overall winner or loser in tournaments in 2009. Those omissions make results databases mostly harmless -- perhaps even helpful, because they tend to paint a rosier picture of a player's results than is actually the case.

On the other hand, comprehensive, net-result-based public stat-tracking in poker is a terrible, terrible idea. It only serves to dry up the pond. I have always been struck by a quote Nat Arem, a founder of PokerDB, gave to PokerNews in early 2009. Nat was asked, "If you could, what one thing that could be attributed to poker's "boom" would you prevent or change?" His reply:

I wish that all of the things that made the poker world less fishy would've never developed. That would include things like datamining stuff, like what we do at the PokerDB... It would also include CardRunners... [and] StoxPoker [and OPR and PXF}... [and] things like rakeback. ... The reason why is because it turns poker into this business that essentially exists entirely for the good players to extract money as quickly as possible from the bad players...

Tapping the glass doesn't just take the form of berating a bad player for sucking out with a bad play. Like tilt and many other elements of poker, it can often take more insidious forms. Scare the fish away and after long enough they'll stay away.

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