Robl's Footnote

Normally Gabe Kaplan does an excellent job as commentator for High Stakes Poker. In last night's episode, however, he either missed or intentionally chose not to comment on a reference made by Andrew Robl in a hand against Patrik Antonius.

The hand itself was straight-forward. Phil Ivey opened to $7,000 from the cutoff with KdTd. Robl called on the button with AsQh. Antonius was in the small blind with AhAc and three-bet to $30,400. Action folded back to Robl. After what appeared to be a lengthy decision-making process, Robl moved all in for $144,000. Antonius (obviously) double-fist-pump snap-called.

Antonius offered to let Robl pick how many times they'd run the board. Robl decided, "Run it twice." While they waited for the first board, Robl then added, "Maybe four times would be better. I don't know how I can win it four times. I don't know if there's enough cards."

Robl was slyly referencing a hand of high-stakes PLO he played against Antonius (and I reported) at the 2009 Aussie Millions Cash Game. He got it in really bad against Antonius and offered to run it four times, then won all four boards. Here's the clip:

Particularly amusing are Antonius' snarky comments after the hands are revealed ("Wow. Good luck buddy. Good call, by the way. Or good raise. Good re-raise.").

PLO is a drawing game. You need big hands -- and big draws -- to win. Stacking off with one pair and no appreciable draw is a pretty massive PLO-fail if ever there was one, especially given the action. Antonius raised his button pre-flop to $3,500, then called Robl's three-bet to $12,000 from the small blind. On the flop, Robl bet $16,000 of his remaining $119,000. Antonius then raised pot to $72,000, representing either a big hand or a big draw. Either way, Robl's play of shipping it all in is mind-bogglingly bad. He has no fold equity. He is never ahead there and often he is way, way, way behind.

This time around, on HSP, Antonius and Robl ran it twice. There was no repeat lightning strike for Robl. He lost both boards.

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The Phil Ivey of Golf

Interesting feature in this week's New York Times Magazine by Jonathan Mahler, an author best known for the 2006 book "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning". The feature is entitled "The Tiger Bubble" but it's not about the carefully constructed public image of Tiger Woods. The focus of the piece is on how golf is marketed and what Tiger Woods has done for the game since he turned pro in 1996. "For years," Mahler writes, "Woods fueled a frenzy of investment in the game — from corporate sponsors, advertisers, broadcasters, clothing and equipment manufacturers, even golf-course developers. It was, you could say, a classic economic bubble, the Tiger Bubble. The question now is whether Woods’s crash will end up being just a temporary correction for golf or if the bubble has truly burst."

Even if you have no interest in golf, the article is a compelling read. Additionally, the parallels to poker are almost impossible to ignore. The inflation of purses; better talent being attracted to the game as a result; the sponsorship angle; the need for "stars" and how the game is televised. On this point Mahler's comments seem to be speaking almost directly to poker:

Sports are driven by stars, and it was impossible to predict who was going to be the big story at any given golf tournament. A leader one day could drop out of contention the next, replaced by someone you never heard of before — and might never hear about again. Woods changed all of this. He won roughly a third of the time he played, a rate that defied the sport’s conventional wisdom. Even when he lost, it didn’t much matter. Whether Woods was pumping his fist after an important putt, flinging his driver aside after a disappointing tee shot or just applying lip balm, he was the guy viewers wanted to see. The weekly Nielsen ratings underscored the point: the tournaments Woods played routinely drew twice the audience, including many younger fans, of the tournaments he skipped.

Later the point gets hammered home with even more intensity by golfer Harrison Frazar.

“The TV people come to talk to us every once in a while, and they say that’s what we need. We need more emotion. We need the guy out there pumping his fist in the air, jumping up and down when he makes a putt,” the tour veteran Harrison Frazar told me. “But as golfers we’re taught to be gentlemen and to be respectful to the people we’re playing with. And also all of the psychologists and coaches teach us to try to stay level. Yeah, they want emotion, but it’s a tough thing to ask of people who are taught to be emotionless.”

We've long seen a crossover appeal between poker and golf. Many of the poker players I know are also golfers. That may be because of the competitive angle, or the gambling angle, the mastering-your-emotions angle or just because of the idea that an average guy can pick up the sticks, hit the links and put together a respectable round the same way he can do that at a poker table with a deck of cards. I never realized that the parallels on the professional side of things, the industry side of things, the marketing side of things, run much deeper than that.

I highly encourage reading the article. And for that matter I also recommend The Bronx is Burning. It's a book that holds special meaning to me for a number of reasons.

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Poker Idol

It's hard to believe but the WSOP is roughly two months away. I'm reminded of this because of the announcement this week of the return of the Tournament of Champions to the 2010 WSOP.

Many are decrying the latest TOC as a "popularity contest", because 20 of the 27 slots for this $1 million, invitation-only freeroll tournament will be chosen by an online voting process. But really what else should anyone expect?

Television executives are not often noted for being forward-thinking. In the same way that this year's NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship represented "poker in 1996", so will ESPN's the WSOP TOC put faces on TV that poker viewers have come to expect. Although the original concept of the TOC (as researched by Shamus) was an admirable one, it's not the way televised poker is consumed today. Poker today relies on marketable personalities -- players who are well known and "make good TV".

What ESPN Harrahs and the WSOP have ingeniously done is take the American Idol concept and bring it to poker. "Tell us who you want to watch!" they have asked the televised-poker-watching world. And apparently the televised-poker-watching world is responding with a list of the usual suspects. I wouldn't be surprised if ESPN is kicking into the prize pool as well. After all, why would Harrahs want to put up the whole prize pool on its own? What does it stand to gain?

Ten weeks until the madness begins. Lots of time to bitch until then.

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Anti Freeroll

Ok, PLO gurus, I need some help. I've had a recurring situation in PLO that is proving maddening.

I'm out of position for whatever reason -- usually in the blinds, either limped or with a decent hand. In the most recent example I was big blind with Q-J-10-8 no suits for a four-way limped flop of 7-8d-9d. Now I've learned enough to know that if I get any kind of resistance on this board I'm not going to like it. I bet $1.50 hoping to take it down right there. Two players fold but the last raises to $6.

Am I just supposed to surrender here? The problem is I assume opponent has the same straight to pot such a coordinated board on the flop (even maniacs with little sense of self-preservation will play a set slower than that on this flop) and I have no way to improve. Too many times I find myself stacking off in a situation where I am getting freerolled, and goddamn if the flush doesn't hit the river EVERY single time (no matter how many times I say "don't put the flush out there" after all the money is in on the turn).

In this instance I tried to control the size of the pot by just calling the flop raise, but it seems this is a really bad situation, where I'm just chasing half of the pot with little chance of getting all of it. And it didn't matter much because opponent, who had mind-bogglingly limped Jd-10-10-3d from middle position, had diamonds and managed to shove the turn anyway after I potted (clearly, not the right move on my part).

Help please!

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Climbing the Learning Curve

I haven't played any live poker in more than a month, a staggering length of time. But I'm still mucking around with Rush PLO periodically -- 100 hands here, 150 hands there. At roughly 200 hands per hour it's easy to put in a quick session and still feel like you've accomplished something.

Although I'm still not sure if I'm a winning player (I mean, results-wise I'm a winner; but whether the jury's still out on whether I'm actually a long-term winner) I'm definitely getting a better feel for the game. Knowing which hands play better after the flop, knowing which draws are the true powerhouses, and even getting a sense for when one pair might be enough to take down the pot. It helps that I'm not playing for big stakes. The biggest Rush PLO games are .25-.50. As a result the competition is not the toughest, allowing me to play a fairly tight style without sacrificing too much equity.

Some of the most painful lessons were learned in the first 2,000 hands, I think. Now it's just a matter of getting the right edges to hold up in the right pots. Overall I've become so focused on PLO that NLHE is disorienting. Last night I sat down to play miniFTOPS #1 (a painful, painful mistake) and took a few hands to adjust to being dealt only two cards and playing at a much slower pace.

There might be something to this Omaha game.

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Pointless Ruminations on Shopping

I'm not the type to buy things. Anything more than $100 is a "major purchase" worthy of study, research and dithering. A lot of dithering.

I first considered purchasing an HDTV in September 2007 before an ill-fated trip to the Borgata on Yom Kippur. At the time I rationalized it as acceptable by using someone else's money to buy it. So of course that day I had one of my worst losing sessions ever in the $10-$20 LHE game.

After that setback I didn't actually buy an HDTV until more than two years later. I read all the reviews of the different technologies. I price-compared until my eyes bled. I visited several different stores solely to see differences in picture quality with those same bleeding eyes. When I was finally convinced I had all the facts I walked straight into Best Buy and walked out with a 50-inch television ten minutes later. There was a feeling of satisfaction in knowing that I had made the right purchase at the right price.

It was the same with mattress shopping three years ago. Tons of internet research on the different types of mattresses available. Price comparisons galore. Visits to several stores to take 15-minute naps on different mattresses (making sure to rotate five minutes each left side, stomach, right side because that's how meticulous I can be). Once I was sure of what I wanted, I walked into Macy's and ten minutes later was the owner of a new mattress -- a mattress which I absolutely love sleeping on.

Don't even get me started on what I went through with my car.

Yesterday I went appliance shopping. For the life of me, I cannot understand why there is such a huge variation in prices on these things -- even after doing the research. I recognize some perform their function better than others and some have more "features" than others. But at the end of the day these are very functional items and for me that's where the buck stops. A refrigerator is a box for keeping food cold. A washer is a box that cleans your clothes. A dryer is a box that dries them.

My purchase was narrowed down to two identically priced but vastly different items. After thirty minutes of comparison and spot iPhone internet research I couldn't decide. And so I finally flagged down the salesperson who had already approached me twice asking if I needed help.

Generally I am suspicious of salespeople. Their job, after all, is to sell. Their function is not so much to help you as it is to make you feel more comfortable to part with your cash on a major purchase. Hand holders. Providers of reassurance. The mythical "outside opinion" that makes you feel like you're not making a mistake.

Now obviously salespeople have reputations too. If they constantly recommend craptactular items it will eventually catch up to them. But any item that's in a major store probably isn't the complete worst. So it's hard for the salespeople to go wrong with recommending anything in the store.

Did the salesperson sell me the proverbial bill of goods? Who knows. In this instance, since each item was priced the same, it didn't much matter. I asked a few questions; he answered them. I made my choice. And during the course of writing this post, the delivery truck arrived with the goods.

Thankfully, after this there's only one more major set of purchases to go.

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NBC Heads-Up Championship -- Poker for the Old Ages

The 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship ended yesterday at Caesars Palace here in Vegas. Along the way were several exciting matches that should make for good television. I won't spoil it for you in case you want to watch it except to repeat a comment my good friend Gloria Balding made on Twitter about the finals: "Ah now I can see what poker was like in 1996."

One thing everyone in the media noticed about the tournament this year was that it lacked the energy of prior years. That started at the bracket party at PURE on Thursday night (where the room emptied not 15 minutes after the brackets were finalized) and extended through each day of the tournament.

It's hard to know why the tournament didn't have the zing it's previously had. Is it that the novelty of the concept has worn off after six years? That the invited players now look at it as just another mandatory marketing appearance for the online poker sites that sponsor them? That the producers have not kept it fresh enough by including more of the young guns, instead choosing the "safe" route with too many pros that have been around, as Gloria suggests, since 1996?

On that last point, one thing that struck me about the semi-final matches and the finals was the average age of the gallery. With space on the set for about 100 spectators, and poker having become predominantly a young person's game, it was surprising to see that the average spectator was in his or her late 40s or early 50s. I joked with flipchip that producer Mori Eskandani might want to keep a three-foot pole handy to jab in the ribs of any spectator who nodded off during the proceedings. The age of the gallery seemed to be a function of the place in poker of the invited players -- generally grizzled veterans of more than a decade, sprinkled in with a few younger players who've had significant television exposure already (for example, the WSOP Main Event winners of the last seven years).

The truth is that the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is a six-hour infomercial for the major online poker sites. Those sites want their logo plastered all over your television screen for an hour every Sunday for six weeks. When advertising spots cost $30,000 for 30 seconds, it's much cheaper for the sites to put a stable of players into the tournament. In any event the tournament wouldn't work without the sponsored players because few poker players would pay $20,000 to enter what amounts to a six-legged super turbo tournament.

In that regard the producers are handcuffed to inviting players who (1) have already secured a lucrative sponsorship arrangement from a major online poker site, and (2) have some "brand name" recognition with a non-poker viewing audience. That's the target demographic here, after all. Poker junkies can rightly protest the snubbing of an excellent heads-up player like Vivek Rajkumar but the fact is that the average tv viewer has no idea who Rajkumar is. He's not a good "draw".

As long as this tournament keeps making money for NBC, the major online poker sites, and title sponsor GoDaddy.com, don't expect anything to change. Instead enjoy it as a sort of time machine to what poker was like in 1996.

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2010 NBC National Heads-Up Championship Starts Today

You're probably looking for brackets. I'll send some love Pokerati's way. He's got the brackets here.

The Diamonds bracket is the clear winner for 1st Round intrigue. Barry v. Vanessa; Sammy v. Antonio (I think I'll set up camp as close to this table as possible for the entirety of the match); Jen Harman v. Jen Tilly; the Raggedy match, Andy v. Annie; and even Gus v. Raymer should be entertaining.

The other brackets each put forth only one or two interesting match-ups. I know a lot of people think Eastgate v. ElkY is a marquee match-up, but neither player is particularly gregarious. Let's be honest -- this tournament is mainly an advertisement for the online poker sites with potentially a lot of entertainment value. The poker component (15-minute levels with a starting stack of 67 blinds) is almost an afterthought.

In Clubs I like Dario v. Jamie Gold and what Ali Nejad called the "You Must Be This Tall to Play This Match" pairing of Erik Seidel and Huck Seed. Spades? Gavin v. Ivey and Phil Gordon v. durrrr. Hearts is by far the least interesting of the brackets, which will probably serve Phil Hellmuth's One-Man Media Circus well. He drew Howard Lederer.

However things shake out it should be fun. Action starts at 1pm. I'll be there with Katkin covering the event for PokerNews.

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Party Over Here, Party Over There

This weekend is the taping of the 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship at Caesars. My last two experiences at the Caesars poker room were enough to convince me I have no need to ever set foot in the room again. But for purposes of work I am temporarily un-banning myself.

Things kick off tonight with the draw party at PURE. Last year I wasn't able to attend the party because Caesars allotted only two party passes to PokerNews despite issuing us four press credentials. This year we have three press credentials... and only two party passes. But the ways things have shaken out I'll be there with digital recorder in hand.

This means that I'm not going to be in South Carolina for some shenanigans this weekend. I didn't originally intend to go anyway. Traveling on your own dime isn't cheap and I've had some large expenses lately while also being a bit light on work. Then I hung out with Otis a few times during NAPT Venetian and was reminded about the benefits of being around people whose company I truly enjoy and who seem to truly enjoy my company -- expenses be damned. By that point I'd already agreed to work NBC. C'est la vie.

Instead I'll get my drink on at PURE (a place I've seen the inside of more than I'd care to admit) and hoist a 2,000-mile toast.

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