The Biggest Game in Town (and a Couple Tangents)
I finished The Biggest Game in Town a couple weeks ago, and my thoughts on it have been percolating since then, so this post is gonna be kinda long. For my short-attention-span readers, here's the quick version: On the cover of the book, a reviewer is quoted saying "probably the best book on poker ever written." I agree.

As you may know, there's a quadrilogy of sorts about the World Series of Poker. First, there's The Hand I Played: A Poker Memoir by David Spanier, in which the author described his experience playing in the (1980?) WSOP. (I haven't read this one yet.) Then there's The Biggest Game in Town, by Al Alvarez, which covers the 1981 WSOP. Then there's Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player, by Anthony Holden, in which the author plays in the 1988 WSOP, plays poker for a year, then plays again in the 1989 WSOP. And finally there is Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker, which is set during the simultaneously-occurring 2000 WSOP and Ted Binion murder trial.

Given the current poker craze, there will surely be more books about the Word Series of Poker out within the year. Part of my reason for reading The Biggest Game in Town (and soon, The Hand I Played), along with the most highly-recommended how-to poker books, is so that I have a good background to weigh the coming deluge of poker books against. Let us hope that future WSOP books are even half as good as The Biggest Game in Town.

Simply put, The Biggest Game in Town does a brilliant job of capturing why poker--and poker players--are so fascinating. What's more, this book that was first published in 1983 does a better job of describing the excitement and allure of the WSOP than any of the "America's poker craze" articles I've read in the past couple years.

Nuggets of Wisdom

First off, this book has more of the greatest poker quotes all packaged together than anything I've read. Seems like every few pages there was a bit of poker wisdom that really gave you insight into the game. Some of these quotes were no doubt were known in the poker world prior to this book, but I couldn't help but wonder how many first saw print in The Biggest Game in Town and have just been repeated ad infinitum ever since. Here's a couple I just now picked out flipping through the book:

Playing poker for a living gives you a backbone. You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. I don't care how bad you are or how good, you have to stand solid. Poker is a character builder--especially the bad times. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. --Bobby Baldwin

If they had wanted you to hold on to money, they'd have made it with handles on. --Jack Straus

It's like any other field; you have to develop yourself and your game. Poker is a skill; it's an art; it's a science. You have to improve continually and know your own weakenesses. To be successful, you must be realistic. . . There can be no self-deception. --Mickey Appleman

I'm willing to play anyone in the world for any amount. It doesn't matter who they are. Once they have a hundred or two hundred throusand dollars' worth of chips in front of them, they all look the same. They all look like dragons to me, and I want to slay them. --Jack Straus

More Like a Documentary Than Other Books

In a previous post, I compared Big Deal to Positively Fifth Street, and explained why I liked Big Deal better. While reading The Biggest Game in Town, I couldn't help but compare it to the other two books. All three books describe the drama of no-limit Hold'Em, the history of the WSOP, and the intensity surrounding the event. Keep in mind the order in which the books were written. The Biggest Game in Town describes the WSOP and the major players in it, providing non-poker players with a wonderful window into the world of professional poker. When Anthony Holden wrote Big Deal, he essentially did the same thing but added a "twist": He played in two WSOPs, and several major major tournaments in between. In Positively Fifth Street, McManus added a different twist, simultaneously chronicling his WSOP experience and the Ted Binion murder trial that was going on just down the street.

So my point is that, reading these books in reverse chronological order as I did, I felt that with each I was reading a "purer" poker chronicle (fewer "twists"). My biggest problems with Positively Fifth Street were that the murder trial seemed like it belonged in a different book, and also McManus wrote a lot about his childhood and such. I was wishing he would just focus on the WSOP, but now I see that he add those other elements at least partly because the definitive WSOP chronicle had already been written by Al Alavarez.

I really, really liked Big Deal, but it was also written from the perspective of a WSOP participant. Holden describes his experiences at the table, and a couple chapters in Big Deal even deal with him visiting a psychiatrist to try and understand why he is so obsessed with poker.

The Biggest Game in Town, however, is written from the perspective of an outsider. Alavarez doesn't play any poker at all in his book, nor does he really discuss himself in any way. He's an observer rather than a particpant, and that gives the book a very distinct tone--it's a lot more like a documentary than a memoir. For example, McManus portrays T.J. Cloutier as a poker legend--but he also described rivering him at least twice in Positively Fifth Street, and that detracts from the dramatic image of poker that he's trying to paint. Similarly, Anthony Holden provides character sketches of several poker greats, but since Holden--whose experience at the time was limited largely to home games--is traveling the poker pro circuit with these greats, it kind of detracts from the view of them as larger-than-life.

Not so with The Biggest Game in Town. Alvarez does an incredible job of capturing the psychology that drives poker greats such as Brunson and Straus without delving into his own interest in the game. Because he doesn't try to live in their world, Alvarez is better able to capture the romance of it.

That's not to knock Holden and McManus. In several ways their books are more realistic. But the fact is that countless poker players view the WSOP as the arena where legends gather and heroes are made--and the The Biggest Game in Town captures that romantic image best.

Interestingly, in Big Deal Anthony Holden mentions Alvarez several times, describing him as a good friend and a regular in his home poker game. So from Big Deal I know that, despite the "outsider" perspective of his book, Alvarez loves poker about as much as Holden; and in writing Big Deal Holden was trying to provide a different perspective than Alvarez had.

Window to the Past

Written more than 20 years ago, The Biggest Game in Town provides a picture of an interesting time for the WSOP, when it was beginning to attract national attention and draw more amateurs. It's interesting to think about the differences between then and now, what's changed and what hasn't. A few things struck me.

First, Doyle Brunson is a bad-ass. This book made that clearer than any other book I've read. I particularly liked Alvarez's account of the difficulty that Brunson had in publishing Super/System. The publishing houses refused to give him more than 10 percent, so he published it on his own and didn't make a profit on it for years. Now it's the bestselling poker book of all time.

Second, all the debates about the WSOP--"Are there too many amateurs in the event?" "Does the luck outweigh the skill?" etc.--certainly did not originate with Moneymaker and instead go back to at least 1981. I really got the impression that the only big change to the WSOP over the years has been its scale.

Third, David Sklansky has always been cocky and loved math. I mention this because Iggy just posted (July 18, 2004, alas the Blogfather has no permalinks) about an argument on the 2+2 forums about Lee Jones's Winning Low-Limit Hold'Em versus a new book by Ed Miller and co-authored by Sklansky. Across several 2+2 posts, Sklansky goes on an on about how Ed Miller graduated from MIT and is therefore an authority on all things math and otherwise. What's perfectly clear in The Biggest Game in Town (if it wasn't already clear from Sklansky's books) is that to Sklansky, poker is math: "Almost anything can be put into a mathematical model, although most people don't know that." Alvarez also notes how proud the young author is of the fact that he went to (but did not graduate from) the University of Pennsylvania (just as he is so proud of Ed Miller being an MIT man). "'Not Penn State,' he insists, 'the University of Pennsylvania. There's a major difference: The University of Pennsylvania is part of the Ivy League."

A Couple Vegas Memories

Okay, have I made myself clear enough? Fantastic book, a real must-read for the poker enthusiast. On a personal note, I liked The Biggest Game in Town because, like the other poker chronicles, it brought back some fond memories.

As I said, it's quite evident that while McManus and Holden were writing their respective WSOP chronicles they were very much aware of their predecessors. One common thread is that both authors make a point of taking a dip in the Binion's rooftop pool, largely because Al Alvarez did so back in 1981. So in The Biggest Game in Town, I finally got to read that first account.

This is interesting to me primarily because Mrs. Cheap Thrills and I stayed at Binion's back in 1999 and did indeed take a couple dips in the rooftop pool. We hadn't read any of the WSOP chronicles at that point, and in fact didn't know much about big-time poker at all -- we just thought a dip in the pool would be nice. The rooftop was hot as hell and we literally ran from the elevator doors to the water. Five years later I've found it pretty cool to read all 3 WSOP chroniclers recount their experiences with the pool: their surprise at how small and spartan it is compared to the Strip; how few people seem to even know that Binion's has a pool; the beautiful view of the mountains; the weird feeling of being above the hubbub of Freemont Street; and the wonderful cold of the water compared to the scorching-hot rooftop. So that's a nifty little experience I share with 3 great poker writers.

That particular Vegas trip stands out in my mind because it was the only time we stayed downtown. (If you love Las Vegas and have never tried staying downtown, I recommend it for a change of pace.)

We were actually there during the WSOP, albeit not the final championship event. To my frustration, I couldn't find the damn event. While B played blackjack, I wondered around the casino and found some full poker tables with some spectators, but the whole affair seemed way too small to be the WSOP. Turns out those were the satellite games. The actual events were going on upstairs, and there weren't even any signs to that effect. Amazing how low-key it all was then. When I came back to check in with B, I told her sheepishly how I couldn't find the WSOP, and the blackjack dealer said he would be on break in a couple minutes and would be happy to take us up to it. Very, very nice guy, and I don't care if it was genuine or he was just looking for a tip, the whole encounter is a perfect example of why I love Las Vegas.

Upstairs turned out to be a large ballroom with hundreds of players seated at what seemed like at least a hundred tables, but was probably less. There were very few spectators. We stood there amazed for a bit, watching all the commotion going on behind maroon velvet ropes. The friendly blackjack dealer pointed out a couple of famous players. We recognized Johnny Chan from Rounders, but were mostly cluess about the rest and just nodded happily. Then the dealer said, "Would you like to take a walk around the floor?" And we said, "Are we allowed past the rope?" And the dealer, in true Vegas fashion, said "I don't see why not." And he unhooked the rope and we strolled righ past Johnny Chan's table, and hoo-boy did we think we were cool. Ahh, memories.
posted by JD at 5:25 PM

New Poker Books
Woo-hoo! My order from Overstock.com just arrived today. It consists of the following:

• Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players by Sklansky, Mlamuth, and Zee--seems to be the bible of the game.
• Middle Limit Holdem Poker by Bob Ciaffone and Jim Brier--I've read great reviews, seems to be one of the most recommended books after Sklansky's Advanced Player book.
• Pot Limit & No-Limit Poker--I've been wanting this one for a while.
• The Complete Book of Hold'Em Poker--according to the reviews, it's far from a perfect book, but has good tips for loose games.

(By the way, I like the reviews at winningonlinepoker.com--they seem to jive with my experience so far.)

The total for the order came in at $60. I paid for it with cash from my poker bankroll--don't want to dip into the poker bankroll on a regular basis, but I figure I'll allow it for infrequent poker-related purchases.

Okay, I guess I'll have a lot to blog about once I actually read these puppies. Weight- and thickness-wise they remind me of textbooks, and having them all arrive at once makes me feel like I'm back in college at the start of a new semester . . . Advanced 7-Card Stud Theory, Applied Hold'Em Methodology, Introduction to Pot Limit, and a seminar on loose games . . .
posted by JD at 3:21 PM

Fox's Live Poker Broadcast
I really enjoyed the live broadcast of the Turning Stone "American Poker Chmapionship" on Fox Sports Network last night. As Maudie notes, it solved the two main problems with the WPT and WSOP: 1) Often you know who's going to win because you've read about the tourney results elsewhere, and 2) even if you don't know who'll win beforehand, you certaily know who's going to win before the final hands is played, because you can figure it out based on the chip stacks and how much time is left in the program.

I also thought that the live broadcast really gave the viewer a better feel for what the final table is like. One of the commentators said at the beginning of the broadcast that up til now televised poker has been like a highlight show, but in this live broadcast, instead of seeing just the fumbles and touchdown passes, we would see all the 3-yard runs and shorts outs in between. I thought that was a pretty apt comparison. (It was also helped by the unseasonably cool whether we're having in the Northeast--it feels like football weather!) Watching a final table live felt pretty much like watching a slow-paced slugfest of a football game. Just as you get a feel for the rhythm of the back-and-forth struggle that type of football game, last night it was fun to try to get a feel for which player had the momentum at any given point. And folding and blind-stealing are sort of the important-but-not-glamorous parts of poker, just as run-blocking and pass-protection are the important-but-not-glamourous parts of football.

Watching all the steals that John Juanda and Phil Ivey made with the worst hand was just great. I also really liked Howard Lederer as a commentator.

It was also cool that the commentators didn't try to overly dramatize every hand as Mike Sexton and VVP always do. Instead the drama came from the players themselves--Phil Ivey's 3-hour-continuous staredown of the other players added a certain intensity.

As with a football game, I started to get a little bored late in the 3rd quarter--in this case, in the early stages of heads-up play when it didn't seem that the blinds were big enough for the contest to end anytime soon. I fired up Absolute Poker (I've got a $100 bonus to clear) and unsuccessfully tried to beat the $1/$2 game while watching the FSN event. Lost about $35--doh! Some pretty bad beats there from loose-passive types. Then I lost another $10 at the Paradise .50/$1 7-Card Stud games (double doh, since I've been owning those games lately). Once poker on TV was over I then won a $5 sit-n-go on Absolute to finish out the evening down $20. There's a lesson I thought I had already learned: playing online poker + watching TV poker = losing at online poker.

Anyway, I really enjoyed watching this first-ever live final table and I hope we will see more live poker coverage in the future.
posted by JD at 12:45 PM

Better Off Bald
Just sat down to watch the live poker event airing on Fox Sports Network.

Paul Phillips's hair: Oh the humanity!
posted by JD at 6:08 PM

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Tilt
Normal JD: I respect an opponent's raise until he gives me reason to do otherwise.

Tilted JD: You're raising me? Well that don't scare me none, I got a pretty good hand. Just to show you I mean business I'll reraise. Oh, you want to cap it. Fine by me!

I am up $131 at the .50/$1 7-Card Stud games at Paradise since I started playing them three weeks ago; B is up $57 in just a week and a half. The term "ATM game" applies. Then last night I gave the $1/$2 game a try. It went pretty well except for a couple hands where Mr. Tilt emerged to scoff at opponents' raises while holding 2 pair, for a final loss of $30. Mr. Tilt was then beaten and thrown back in the basement.
posted by JD at 11:43 AM

601 BB/100 Hands
I sat down at the $2 max buy-in No Limit game at Paradise Poker this afternoon. I've only ever sat down at NL ring games 3 or 4 times before, and always for penny blinds. I decided to try low-limit NL this afternoon for something different, but also because I'm tired from staying up too late last night and I didn't feel I was up to "serious" play.

It was some of the worst poker I have ever seen. I've read plenty of blog posts about people playing NL really badly, but usually it involves loose maniacs going all-in with lousy hands. At least those types of gambloors are getting their thrills. Not so at the table I was at today. They were loose, but incredibly weak. The average hand saw almost everyone calling the 2-cent big blind. Seriously, I saw maybe 6 or 7 preflop raises (besides my own) in an hour. If I made a hand, I would bet the pot, and generally I'd get 2 or 3 callers, at least 2 of whom would fold when I again bet the pot on the turn. Then if the river wasn't scary I'd again bet the pot, and about half the time my opponent would call to keep me honest.

Have I mentioned before that the low-limit players are really, really passive at Paradise?

I ran my $2 up to $12.11 in under an hour (42 hands). I didn't lose a single showdown, and I was pretty amazed that I didn't get at least one suckout.

By the way, the poker world really needs a better phrase than "suckout." It's some ugly imagery when players talk about how "this guy sucked out on me," "he's a real suckout artist," etc. I guess it's no worse than "the nuts," but I'm gonna start using "rivered" instead (and when the curse-card comes on the turn, well, I'll have to think on it).

I rivered an opponent only once, when my pocket 10s caught a 10 on the river to an opponent's pocket Queens. Had that opponent actually raised preflop, I would've folded to his $1 all-in on the flop. Instead he called the BB from early position. So I called his all-in on the rag-flop and hence the rivering. A third player was also all-in on that hand with J8o and a paired 8.

I think I was raised maybe two other times, and both times I folded. It was really not that hard to catch on to what I was doing: Semi-bluff a lot and back off at the first sign of aggression. The friends I play with in home games caught on long ago, to my dismay.

Anyway, I couldn't wait to import the hands into PokerTracker to look at my win rate: 601.79 big bets per 100 hands. I have no illusions that I could do 1/100th as well in a "real" NL game, nor am I going to try anytime soon. I doubt I'll be back to the micro-NL game either, because when the game is that easy it makes me start to play worse just out of boredom. But I found the 601 figure pretty amusing. As they say in chatbox-speak, lol.
posted by JD at 3:56 PM

Fun with PokerTracker
Okay, stat time. I'll run some Paradise stats today, then do Absolute in the next week or two once I get a few hundred more hands in.

Since I started PokerTracking on May 19, I've made $194.75 at the Paradise .50/$1 tables over 1,642 hands for an average of 11.86 BB/100 hands. I play only during the evenings, at tables with players-seeing-the-flop percentages in the high 30s to low 50s. I am fairly tight, with a "voluntarily put money into the pot" percentage (VP$P) of 23.93.

Suited Connectors, Pairs, and Big Cards

Interestingly, using the PokerTracker filter to show only hands where I had suited connectors, I have lost $6.50, or an average of 10 cents each time I'm dealt them (this includes the hands where I fold them). The most profitable suited connector by far is AKs, for $17 ($4.25/hand). So far KQs (-2.71/hand) and QJs (-.19/hand) are both costing me money. The specifics are probably an artifact of sample size, but the low overall profit from suited connectors is something to think about. I'm inclined to think that non-paint suited connectors just aren't very profitable at the Paradise .50/$1 tables, but I also have to consider the possibility that I'm just not playing them well.

The filter on pairs shows mostly good news: I've won $75 with them, for an average of 74 cents a pair. Aces ($4.90/hand) and Queens ($1.94/hand) are my most profitable pairs, while Kings are slightly negative right now (-.55/hand), which again is surely due to sample size.

Here are the numbers for some other often-played hands:

AKo: .35/hand
AQs: 2.63/hand
AQo: 1.96/hand
AJs: -.44/hand
AJo: .13/hand
ATs: 3.13/hand
ATo: -.66/hand
A9s: -.25/hand
A9o: 1.50/hand
KQo: .04/hand - wow
KJo: 3.78/hand - weird
KTs: 3.79/hand - also weird
KTo: .57/hand
QJo: 2.61/hand
QTs: $2/hand
QTo: -.30/hand
JTo: 1.24/hand

Position

Not surprisingly, 1off the button is my most profitable position, with $60.25. My next most profitable position is 4th off the button, with 49.25. I've only made $19.50 on the button, and $6.25 UTG. Showing an $18 profit from the small blind and $41 loss from the big blind (which is less than the approximately $80 I would lose if I just folded every big blind).

I've played 320 hands in in UTG and the 2 positions after it, and 534 on the button and in the 2 positions before it. I think that if anything this difference should be greater, and I should be playing even fewer hands in EP.

Number of Players in the Pot

It makes sense that the more players in the pot, the more you win, right? My numbers confirm that to a point, although there is a dip when 4 people (including me) see the pot:

2 on flop - $25.25 profit - .11/hand
3 on flop - $35.00 profit - .09/hand
4 on flop - $30.75 profit - .07/hand
5 on flop - $56.50 profit - .17/hand
6 on flop - $57.50 profit - .38/hand
7 on flop - $8.50 loss - .19/hand
8 on flop - .50 loss - .06/hand

These numbers all go up if you limit the filter to hands where I voluntarily put money into the pot. I ran those numbers, but it starts to get complicated and I didn't I glean much beyond what these numbers show. (And the 4-on-the-flop dip is still there when you limit it to hands I voluntarily put money in the pot with.)

The Profitability of Paradise

Obviously I'm pretty happy with thse numbers (I say "obviously" because I would be happy with any non-negative numbers :) I'd just like to add one thought, which i didn't want to give its own post because i don't want to sound too argumentative:

Not a week goes by that I don't see at least a couple poker bloggers proclaim "you'd have to be crazy to play anywhere else but Party/Empire." I can't argue that Party has the most players and the most fish. However, I don't particularly care for their software, frequent network problems, customer support, or sit-n-go structures. It has always struck me as unfortunate that a site with better management didn't have the foresight to advertise during the WPT; if Stars, Paradise, or UB had put out some good commercials, then they'd be the biggest site out there but they'd have good software and management, too.

My point is not to knock P/E. It's a damn fishy site, and if you enjoy playing there, more power to you. My point is that clearly many other sites have plenty of fishy players and are plenty profitable. So this post is not directed at P/E devotees, but at any players out there who are frustrated as hell with P/E. To those players: Try somewhere else! There are plenty of soft games to be found at other sites.

The Variance of Party

Specifically, I believe that the .50/$1 games ar particulary bad at Party/Empire, because of the maniacs. I plan to never play .50/$1 there again. There's just too much damn variance. Another blogger, I forget who, once called it "poker slots" and that's what it feels like to me. I was winning there for a while last summer, but I had to adapt my play to a style (only suited cards, don't push top pair very hard) that works nowehere but at P/E--and just wasn't fun.

One point in Party/Empire's favor: I think they much better game selection at unusual hours than other sites. During the day or past 1am, the games at Paradise get too tight for my tastes. As I said, I like a table with players-seeing-the-flop between about 38 and 55 percent, and a lot of games at Paradise are at 30 or below. I do love the player-per-flop stat, and its absence on Party is one more thing I don't like about the site. I admit, however, that I may be becoming overly dependent on that stat -- see Sloejack's thoughts on game selection at P/E.

I may give $1/$2 or $2/$4 at P/E a try sometime in the future. But I honestly believe that for the new player, or players like me with a smaller bankroll, the .50/$1 tables at Party are definitely not the best way to build that bankroll.
posted by JD at 1:26 PM

DD Tournament Poker: No-Limit Texas Hold'Em
I was browsing Amazon the other day and the Amazon main page recommended an interesting product to me -- software called "DD Tournament Poker: No Limit Texas Hold'Em." I doubt I will be purchasing it, both because I'm not that interested in tournaments and I assume that the Wilson software is better (though 3 times the price). Still, I found the product featured on Amazon interesting for two reasons.

The first is the product description on Amazon. Specifically, the description (presumably from the back of the box) compares their software directly to free online play:

Tired of playing with cheesy players who talk to you and having to order ""virtual drinks?"" Want a modern interface that lets you decide the size of the window? DD Tournament Poker is the best choice of software that let's you have the most fun playing no limit Texas hold'em. . . . Unlike online casinos where you have to risk real money or use ""play money"" tables where the opponents don't necessarily act rationally, DD Tournament Poker lets you hone your skills against computer opponents who behave as if there is something at stake.

Their basic product pitch is geared at players who have tried online poker; I take this as just another sign of how mainstream online poker is becoming. On a more amusing level: The bit about about "players who talk to you"--oh, the horror! And I like the order-a-virtual-drink thing! Why would someone be "tired" of that particular aspect of online play?

Second, this software is a neat little link between poker and my other hobby, strategy board games. Eagle Games publishes the DD software. They made a name for themselves in the board game community a couple years ago with the publication of a board game version of Sid Meier's computer game, Civilization. Unfortunately that game takes way too long to play, but their subsquent games have improved somewhat, with their board game version of Age of Mythology being pretty good. (I'm also looking forward to their board game version of Sid Meier's Pirates!, which was my absolute favorite when I was about 11 years old.) DD Tournament Poker marks their second computer game effort.

Interestingly, in the product description on the Eagle Games website, they take a shot at the Wilson software:

If you want to practice no limit hold'em tournaments, your pickings are slim. The one relatively well known offering is expensive (over $60) and out-dated (designed originally in the mid-90s, it has very frustrating and counter-intuitive controls). The other relatively unknown offering has a DOS like interface and is also quite expensive.

I would give the benefit of the doubt to the Wilson software, but I could see how the Eagle/DD software might be better for the casual player, if only because because it's probably less intimidating, and certainly cheaper. The description of the DD features sounds pretty decent, particularly this bit:

Get advice on poker etiquette and tips for hosting your own poker tournament. Run a mini-tournament during your weekly poker night! DD Tournament poker is a full featured home version of the software used to run major tournaments like you have seen on TV. To get started, you define the tournament by specifying the buy-in amount, rebuys, add-ons, blind structure, level time limit and payout amounts. You can save tournament formats and re-use them from week to week (no need to re-enter data!) DD Tournament Poker makes running a home game mini-tournament easy and fun. In addition, the extensive documentation and FAQ are good tools to resolve rules disputes during the game and keep everyone happy. You can change the tournament settings while it is in progress--in case you need to speed things up. Enter the amount collected during the game and automatically calculate prize payouts.

Having hosted several home tourneys with newbie players, I know that they think I'm speaking Greek when I talk about stuff like blind structures, rebuys, the dead button rule, etc. I'm sure players who haven't done the basic research on how to host a tourney (try homepokertourney.com) would greatly benefit from having a computer program do some of the work for them.

In the end I guess I offer neither a recommendation to buy nor a true review; just blogging about one more by-product of the continuing poker craze, like Poker Beer and dealer buttons at Walgreens. The 50-cent word that might apply to some of these bits of pop culture is "ephemera," as in things of an ephemeral or transitory nature, not meant to last.
posted by JD at 5:00 PM

Absolute O
A goal I've been pursuing for a few months has been to accumulate 10,000 Absolute Rewards Points at Absolute Poker so that I can attain "VIP" status and host private single-table tournaments there.

This is hard to do when you're as a cheap as I am. I was playing cheap sit-n-gos for a while, earning no points at all, then I played a few thousands hands of .25/.50 -- where I racked up an 11.5 BB/100 hands win rate but only cleared a few hundred ARPs. AP rarely has .50/$1games that aren't 6-max, so I am currently playing $1/$2 (866 hands so far) and am at about 3,000 points.

I had discussed the private tourney thing with my good buddy Odog, and we agreed it would be a cool way to keep our regular poker game going in the online world (Odog recently moved from Boston to DC). I warned him, however, that it might take me the whole summer to get to 10,000-point VIP status.

Silly me--last week Odog became a VIP. He's been playing $2/$4 and $3/$6, and lots of it, earning points at at least 4 times my rate. Right now we're recruiting all our home-game buddies, trying to convince them to buy-in at AP for real money just so we can do a weekly, cheap-buy-in, single-table tourney and talk trash with one another. (As long as you have one person who's a VIP, they can set up the tourney and invite non-VIPs.)

Anyway, here is the official Cheap Thrills JD Congratulations and Thank You to Odog :) I am over my initial jealousy and am now looking forward to taking your $2 on a weekly basis!!

In other cool Odog news, the man is getting married and it looks like his bachelor party is going to be in Las Vegas this September! B and I already have our late-August Las vegas trip scheduled, so this means two trips to Vegas in two months for yours truly. Cheap Thrills will be entering serious trip report territory. Woo-hoo!
posted by JD at 12:16 PM

Poker Motivations in Rounders
I posted recently about how I prefer ring games to tourneys. This post is partly a follow-up to those thoughts (hopefully a final one, since I feel I am beginning to beat the dead horse on this issue). However, my recent readings and thoughts on tourney frustration led to some other thoughts, and hey, that's the point of the whole blog thing. So here we go.

Several poker bloggers, myself included, have tackled the fundamental question of "why do I play poker?"

The three main answers seem to be:

1. Profit
2. Fun, Excitement, and the Thrill of the Gamble
3. Competition; the Idea of Poker as Sport (the hardest part to describe, it encompasses the appeal of challenging oneself; improving one's game through competition; and striving against others to determine which player is best)

These three ideas are in very interrelated. For example, winning is both fun and profitable, and winning requires being willing to gamble, but only true competitors, serious about improving their game, win consistently.

These three themes are represented in the movie Rounders in the characters of Knish, Worm, and Mike McDermott.

Knish is the Grinder. The script basically beats you over the head with this one: "I'm not playing for the thrill of fucking victory here. I owe rent, alimony, child support. I play for money. My kids eat. I got stones enough not to chase cards, actions, or fucking pipe dreams of winning the World Series on ESPN."

Knish plays poker because for him it is a source of steady income. And Knish provides both stability and income (albeit a small one) to Mike: In the initial scene of the movie, after Mike loses $30,000 to Teddy KGB, Knish is there for support, and he helps Mike pay the bills by allowing him to drive his truck for a living. Later he boasts "I was giving you a living, Mike. Showing you the playbook I put together off my own beats."

While Mike thinks of driving Knish's truck as "humping a crappy job," it's clear that Knish did not force it on Mike. After Mike loses to KGB, Knish offers to stake him, but Mike says "I'd just throw it away." Unlike Mike's girlfriend, Knish accepts Mike as a poker player--he just believes that poker should be played a certain way: sensibly, conservatively, and for profit above all else. When it's clear to Knish that that is not why Mike is playing, he refuses to give Mike any money--"Nah, I give to ya I'm wasting it."

Worm is the Gambler. He represents the "fun and exciting" aspect of poker, although his role is not so obvious as Knish's.

This aspect of Worm's role in the movie is obscured by his cheating, which is emphasized throughout the film. Worm also talks a lot about how he'll do whatever it takes to win--"I see a mark, I take him down. . . That's the way I live." So on first viewing it seems that Worm is even more obsessed with winning than Mike is (since Mike won't cheat to win).

However, if you think about the plot of the film, Worm's cheating plays a very minor role. Sure, there's the great scene, one of my favorites in the film, where Worm gets caught bottom dealing in a room full of cops. They get beat up, and lose all the money they were trying to make to pay back Grandma and Teddy KGB.

But if Worm's such a winning (sometimes through cheating) poker player, why was he in debt to a gangster in the first place? Sure, there could be explanations outside of poker--maybe involving his briefly mentioend credit-card scam. But in a movie that's all about poker, let's assume that the explanation for Worm's debt is poker-related--that is, he was losing.

Worm as a losing player? Hmm . . . we do see Worm winning in prison, and against the frat boys in the mansion scene, and at the Chesterfield. But it's not hard to imagine Worm losing against better opponents. It would fit perfectly with Worm's character to assume that he's in debt because he was playing too much poker, for limits that were too high ("we gotta get in the bigger game"), and in too risky a manner.

Worm wins a lot, but not enough to have gotten out of debt before heading to prison. And Worm doesn't really care. He craves the action that poker provides--so much so that it becomes a destructive force in both his and Mike's lives.

If it seems like I'm painting Worm as more of a degenerate than "fun," I guess I am. Worm represents the "fun" element carried too far--but he still represents the "fun" element. How so? Because it is Worm who rekindles Mike's love of the game: "At least you're rounding again, right? You're gonna thank me for that someday."

Finally, Mike is the Competitor. Mike's realization of this is basically the point of the movie. Mike doesn't seem to care so much about the money he wins, nor does he seem to live for the "action" of it quite so much as Worm does. Mike's primary goal as a poker player is not to make money or enjoy himself--it is to be the best, period, even if that means taking big risks. In pursuit of his goal, Mike sits down with known sharks--namely, Teddy KGB and Johnny Chan (for one hand)--risks that disappoint Knish and impress Worm.

Interestingly, going back to Worm's cheating, it's pretty clear in the movie that Mike won't cheat, not because he feels cheating is wrong ("You know I have no problem with the way you help yourself"), but because he wants to prove he doesn't need to cheat to win.

Mike's desire to be the best is of course demonstarted at the end of the film with his decision to move to Las Vegas and play in the World Series of Poker. It's the World Series part that's most important. It would be one thing (and probably more realistic) if Mike just had the realization that "hey, I'm a really good poker player, and I want o move to Vegas and make aliving at it, law school be damned." But that's not what he does. He wants to play with the very best.

Mike as a Tourney Player

In ring games, you generally make money if there are players at the table who are worse than you; in tourneys, you generally don't make money unless you are among the best players in the tournament. I think of myself as a ring game player because I'd rather walk away a winner from a single table than try to beat out a out a field of hundreds for a larger prize. (Nor am I generally capable of the latter.) Of course I want to improve as a player, but I doubt I'll ever really be world-class, and I love poker anyway.

In realizing that I don't wholeheartedly share Mike's drive to take big risks and be the best, I also realized that Mike is, at heart, a tournament player. This is not say that all poker Competitors are tourney players, not hardly. I'm sure many ring game players play for the love of competition as much as for profit, just as many tourney players play largely for the profit motive. And tons of fun and "action" is to be found in both formats. However, the drive to not just be great, but to be the best and prove it, is a distinguishing characteristic of the tourney player.

So then I thought, well, if I'm not a tournament player like Mike, am I a grinder like Knish? I do try to follow Knish's advice to play smart and stick to beatable games--but in the movie, Knish represents the unexciting, un-fun side of poker. Then I got to thinking about whether I was at all like Worm, and I realized that the part of his character that I identify with most is his energetic, infectious enjoyment of the game. I identify with all 3 characters to different degrees, because all 3 represent a part of poker.

All of this still doesn't explain how Mike can spurn Petra's advances, though.
posted by JD at 4:15 PM

The Crossover Appeal of Poker and Horseracing
I stumbled upon this Daily Racing Form article mostly by accident. It talks about the crossover appeal of poker and horseracing (both are games that can be beat with study and smart decision-making) and asks, "With the aforementioned crossover appeal of poker and horseracing, could handicapping tournaments also make for good TV?" My first thought: No direct confrontations between handicappers = no drama. I'm sure some smart TV exec could surprise me, though, and make handicapping somehow more "extreme."

After finishing Ainslie's Complete Guide to Throughbred Racing, I've been practicing handicapping with the June 19 Daily Racing Form I picked up last time I was at Foxwoods. Examine past performance records, pick your bet, then go to the DRF website and look up who actually won. So far it's providing concrete evidence that horses are not something I should be large sums on. I did really enjoy Ainslie's book, though, and am looking forward to wagering small sums next month in Saratoga.

And because I simply could not put up a post on horses and poker without a link to Boy Genius, here you go!
posted by JD at 2:13 PM

Rounders Collector's Edition September 7
I posted about this a while back. Now DVD Answers reports that a new DVD edition of Rounders will be released September 7. Cool.
posted by JD at 1:25 AM

JBISMM
My posts have been a little on the serious side lately, so here's some lighter content to balance things out. As I've mentioned before, B and I got married in Las Vegas this past October. We had 50 guests, and I set up a wedding website with traditional stuff like pictures of the wedding party, links to our registry, etc., and also a mini-Vegas guide with info on all the things to see and do in that great city.

For the casino-clueless, I included a gambling primer with info on basic blackjack and video poker strategy, as well as a few very basic gambling tips such as "set a limit on how much you are willing to lose," "don't gamble it all in one session," etc. I ended with a recommendation to quit while you're ahead. This was pretty dry stuff so I tried to throw in some funny. Here's an excerpt:

Walk away a winner. . . . The casinos don't mind when people win big, because they know that most people will lose that money back to the house, sometimes in a matter of minutes. Yet few gamblers want to stop when they're on a winning streak. As Martinez writes in 24/7: "That's the thing with gambling: You're never fully satisfied. Unless you're painfully aware that you walked away from the table too late, you're bound to wonder whether you walked away too soon."

The JBISSM System

To get around this conundrum we recommend JD and B's Incredibly Sophisticated Money Management system, or JBISMM. The JBISMM system is virtually guaranteed* to help you win millions!!

*Guarantee is an attempt at humor and is not valid anywhere.

The key to JBISMM is pockets. The well-prepared gambler will have at least 5 pockets (4 from shorts/slacks, one from your Hawaiian shirt, and then there's always your socks). For the ladies, a purse is also acceptable, if it has multiple compartments for storing quarters (for machine games) and casino chips (for table games).

When the JBISMM player wins money, he will take some of that money and put in one of his pockets. The chosen pocket will thereafter be designated as "deposit only." Chips are rather cumbersome, so multiple deposit-only pockets (DOPs) may be needed. Chips are never removed from DOPs at the table, but instead only extracted at the cashier window, where said chips are exchanged for cold hard cash. For slots and video poker players, money should only be removed from DOPs in one's hotel room or at the cashier if you have won enough that it's too heavy to walk with.

Some JBISMM players follow the rule of "Up 12, Pocket 4." If, for example, such a player has won $24 at a $2 blackjack table, he will put $8 into a DOP. Any similar chant (e.g., "Up 15, pocket 5," "Up 5, pocket 1," will also work, just pick one that you like and can remember.)

The dream of every JBISMM player is to stuff all available DOPs with money and/or chips. At the end of the evening, successful JBISMM players get to experience the joy of counting up what has accumulated in DOPs. The results are often surprising, particularly for those players who tend to take the cocktail waitress up on her constant offers of free drinks, and therefore may lose track of all the various pocket deposits made in the course of an evening.

I really do like to do the pocket thing when I'm drinking and gambling in Las Vegas. Of course, it's illegal at the poker table. I had actually forgotten about the JBISMM silliness until a friend mentioned it the other day.

Also Las Vegas is has been very much on my mind lately. B just finished buying the tickets for our trip to San Francisco in late August. We're heading out on a Thursday, staying in San Fran til Monday night, then on the way back to Providence we're stopping in Las Vegas for an almost-3-day stay, leaving Thursday afternoon!! Rather than non-stop drinking and blackjack as we've done on many a Vegas trip in the past, this time we plan to do several of things we didn't manage to squeeze in during our wedding trip, and on the top of that list is PLAY MORE POKER! Ital and all caps--that's how excited I am.

We're also going to eat at Nobu (our stomachs were not up to novu sushi after all the wedding craziness) and as parrotheads we must also spend some time at the new Margaritaville Cafe in the Flamingo (it was not open yet when we were there in October). Hmmm, gonna have to get some margaritas and rum drinks there . . . I guess there'll be some drinking :)

Okay, gonna go play some poker now. My hope is that online players around the country spent the 4th of July drinking beer and eating hot dogs, and with tomorrow off are now logging on, ready to gambool it up.
posted by JD at 11:38 PM

Quick Saturday Morning Thoughts
So in my last post I went on about how I find large tourneys to be very frustrating. Upon reading blogs yesterday, I discover that Glenn (of married-to-Fleicia-Lee fame) has a post in a similar vein, and in quoting Tommy Angelo, he points out a fundamental truth about tourneys: By design, they force you to go up against the best players to get the money. Whereas in ring games, you make most of your money off the worst players at the table. This is a very interesting point that I plan to explore in a future post.

For now I'll just add that that Tommy Angelo site is great. I'd never heard of the guy before (I'm sure there are many writers and other big names in poker that I haven't heard of, post-Rounders/WPT enthusiast that I am), so thanks to Glenn for pointing him out. In the same article that Glenn quoted, in which T.A. explains his dislike of tourneys, he also has this bit of wry wisdom on keeping records:

I'm not much into keeping score at poker because I never know if the numbers should make me happy or terrified, so I try my best to ignore them altogether. . . . And what's it matter anyway? I'm either broke or I'm not. That's the only score I need to know, and I always know it. Meanwhile, why put any special emphasis on any particular results during any particular length of time? Will it guide me to good choices when it's my turn to bet? Will it help me quit when I'm playing bad?

Angelo's full thoughts on the issue are actually pretty funny, but I don't want to post the guy's entire article on my blog; follow Glenn's advice and head over to www.tommyangelo.com.

Anyway, Angelo's article got me thinking about my own ambivalence about keeping records. Despite Angelo's comments, I feel there is a point to keeping records: It's not to make sure you're winning (cause as Aneglo points oput, I probably wouldn't stop playing if I was losing), but rather too see when, where, and at what limits you win or lose. And with really detailed records, like those in PokerTracker, you can identify all kinds of leaks.

The point I take away from Angelo's comments is one that we're all familiar with: There is little to be learned from short-term results. And the danger of record-keeping is that it can get you focusing on short terms results. Double Through had a good post on this a couple weeks back:

When I was keeping proper, detailed records I would get far too hung up on my hourly rate, in a way that adversely affected my game. If it were dipping then I would get into a defensive-poker funk. If it was soaring then I would often get into the over-confident, loose frame of mind that I have mentioned before and which would cost me a ton of chips.

The same thing happened to me, and I confess, still happens to me. It's hard to log a losing session and not have it affect your confidence and thus your game. Not being so results-oriented is one of the many things I'm still working on, and I imagine I will be "working on it" for as long as I play poker.

Okay, gotta go prepare to barbeque now . . .
posted by JD at 10:47 AM

The Thing about Tourneys
So last Thursday I played my first tournament in over a month and finished in the money, happily turning my $10+1 into $83. Last night I played in the same tourney, but this time I was reminded of why I had taken a month-long break from tourneys in the first place.

I finished 97th out of 539; top 45 paid. I lost when my AKo paired on the flop; my very big-stacked opponent had pocket 2s and made a full house.

For some reason that beat really, really pissed me off. I paced the house for a good ten minutes, just calming myself down. But what was I so angry at? Not my opponent: He had a huge stack and was muscling well. And in the annals of poker history--even in just my own experience--it was hardly a very bad beat. Was I angry at myself? Maybe--it's possible that I could have played the hand better, raising more preflop.

But pretty much my anger had no real direction. That's called frustration.

And that's the thing about tournaments: More often than not, tournament poker a very frustrating experience. Cause the hard cold truth about a tourney is that unless you win it, you lose it. There's different kinds of losing: Getting blinded down, getting outplayed, suffering a bad beat, making the right play at the wrong time, etc. And there's a happy kind of losing called "finishing in the money." But none of those things come close to truly winning. And since no one can win anywhere close to half of the tourneys they play in, most of the time they end in frustration.

My point is not to knock tournament poker. My point is that I think tournament poker may not really be my thing, simply because I don't like losing that often, even if the occasional money-finish makes up for the repeated strings of losses. (My tournament record so far, including sit-n-gos, is +$80 over a pretty small sample size of only 40 events. Obviously I was only break-even before that $83 win last week.)

Now, I read a lot of poker blogs, and I would approximate that fully two-thirds of the bloggers I read play tourney poker as much as -- and in many cases more than -- they play ring games. However, these poker bloggers seem to be playing mostly sit-n-gos and not multi-table events. I read these bloggers partly because I want to learn from them; if they say sit-n-gos are where the money is at, I can't doubt them.

Rather than give up on tourney poker, I think I will make a renewed effort at sit-n-gos. Part of my frustration in the mult-table event last night was the feeling that I had come so far and outlasted so many players, only to come away with nothing. When I come in 4th in a sit-n-go, I don't feel nearly as frustrated.*

Still, I've read that you're doing well if you win a sit-n-gos a fifth of the time. So losing is still very much a part of single-table tourney poker. I think that, long term, tourney poker may remain something I only dabble in.

*Why Sit-n-Gos Feel Less Frustrating

The feeling that sit-n-goes are less frustrating than multi-table tourneys is an interesting thing (and really I could broaden it to say that tourneys with smaller fields are less frustrating than tourneys with larger fields). Mrs. Cheap Thrills pointed out that I busted out about 1:40 into last night's event -- which is not a whole lot longer than the average sit-n-go on Absolute. So it's not that fewer players make an event go that much quicker.

Rather than the time commitment, I think it has more to do with how your chances of winning often start small and stay small for much longer in larger events. For example, a big thing I don't like about large tourneys is that often you play well, stay ahead of the blinds, and don't get too-short-stacked -- only to find yourself at a table with a couple guys who have enormous stacks and are not going to give much respect to any raise you make (yup, I'm still reliving last night :). This doesn't happen as much at sit-n-gos, and when it does, you have the ability to watch that big-stacked guy for the entire length of the event and figure out ways to outplay him. In a large event the players often come and go so quickly that they are more anonymous.

I took my month-long break from tourneys in part because I had decided I had gone on "tourney tilt." I was playing in Paradise's Big Buck event a lot, and getting sick of spending 2 hours playing only to run into huge stacks late in the event and finish barely in the money (for a win of only a few dollars) or on the bubble. I decided that I needed to be one of those bigger stacks. I tried to play more loosely and aggressively early on, aware that that would mean more early bust-outs but hopefully more big stacks for me. The problem was that I found the early finishes too frustrating, and couldn't really accept the idea that going all-in more often -- risking my tourney survival when I didn't have to -- was OK. Again, I'm having trouble embracing the basic idea that losing a lot is OK as long as you win big now and then.

OK, this is starting to get a little rambly. In summation: tourneys frustrating, me no likey losing, me more good at ring games, but I not totally give up on tourneys yet.

Follow-Up Post: Poker Motivations in Rounders (how I respect Mike McD but am more like Knish)
posted by JD at 11:54 AM

VVP Quote of the Week: Season 2 WPT Championship
Regarding last night's WPT championship event, it was very disappointing that none of the previous "champions" were at the championship final table. Sure this had a huge prize pool, but doesn't the WPT realize that America wants to see the players they've seen win before compete against one another? I certainly hope that they'll have another "tournament of champions" as they did for last year's Super Bowl, but just from a ratings standpoint, I think the "tournament of champions" ought to be the WPT championship event. Even Mike Sexton, when presenting the "WPT Player of the Year" award to Erick Lindgren, said something like "In my opinion this is the most prestigious award in poker," thus inadvertently slighting the championship event.

I figured I'd revive the Vince Van Patten Quote of the Week for the WPT championship. Vince's quote of the week was a line he's used before. When Richard Grijalva had K-10 and Hasan Habib had KK, the board came 9-high. Hassan bet, and Richard went all-in and lost. Mike Sexton commented that Grijalva's bluff wasn't that bad a play, and Vince quipped that

He made the right move at the wrong time.

This is basically what Lancey Howard says to The Cincinnnati Kid in the final scene of that classic film, and that's why it received "quote of the week" status.

Click here for the last VVPQotW.
posted by JD at 11:08 AM

Bonuses bonuses bonuses
In my last post I went on for quite a bit about how I've gotten one hell of a lot more money through bonuses than I have through actual poker play. The moral of the story is that I'd like my poker "earnings" figure to be a lot higher than it is. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to be racking up the bonuses where I can. With the 4th of July this weekend, there's a lot to choose from.

First and foremost, I got a snail-mail coupon from Absolute Poker (I'm a member of the "Absolute rewards program") that will give me a 40 percent bonus on a deposit of $250. That's $100, plus I get 4 Absolute player points for every $1 deposited, so I'll have 1,000 more of those. At 10,000 I can host private tourneys, which I think will be very cool. This "hump-day" coupon is good on any deposit made on a Wednesday through July 14th.

But there's also a 30 percent deposit available on deposits made today. Should I deposit some now, clear the bonus, withdraw the money, and then deposit again on the 14th? That would also mean more points for the private tourney thing.

Also Paradise has a 20 percent deposit available for the 4th of July weekend, as I expect most of the poker sites do. They're still my go-to site for 7-card stud (I'm up $75 on their .50/$1 tables since I started playing on June 18).

Decisions decisions.

Aside from alerting anyone who may be interested in these bonuses, I guess I just want to emphasize one point that I was trying to get at in my last post, but which may have gotten lost in all my number-crunching: For the truly low limit player -- $1/$2 and under -- the bonuses that are available out there, properly managed, can dwarf what you're likely to win at the tables if you're just casually playing for a few hours each week. The upside is obvious: Online poker more than pays for itself as a hobby. The downside (for the poker play looking to improve his game): These bonuses can more than compensate for bad play.

I've heard many a blogger wonder how the really fishy, throwing-away-money players on Party and elsewhere can play the way they do--don't these fish realize how much money they're losing? One answer: They're playing with "free money." I think many of the loose-aggressive low-limit players have just discovered online poker; they've gone bonus-whoring mad and gotten hundreds of dollars in bonuses (don't froget refer-a-friends); and then they sit down at the lowest limits looking to dominate the table with aggression. This is more than just a theory . . . as I described in my last post, I was guilty of this behavior on 3 or 4 beer-soaked evenings last summer. The good news for serious players is that the bonus chasers' "free" money becomes your poker earnings.

More bonus & overlay info: For anyone who hasn't played on Absolute Poker yet, they're offering a 35 percent initial deposit bonus throughout the month of July. They've also got the Thursday night $10 NL Hold'em tourney with $4,000 added, and this Sunday, the 4th of July, they will be holding a $5 tourney with $4,000 guaranteed in the prize pool. I don't mean to sound like a shill, but I like the site, and I feel like AP is really making an effort to attract new players with good deals. Aside from whatever small compensation I get if you click on the link at the right, I would really just like to see more players on the site.
posted by JD at 12:48 PM

Back in the Black
I won $73.29 last night in Absolute Poker's $10+1, $3,000 added multi-table NL Hold'em tourney. I finished 16 out of 429 (actually I played on my wife's more-stable computer and accidentally signed on as her, so it's her username in the standings, but I earned the win :). I am particularly happy about this for two reasons:

1. It was the first multi-table tourney I've played in over a month. I had decided that tourneys aren't really my thing and that I should concentrate most of my attention on improving my limit ring game. I still believe this, but it's nice to think that I can hold my own in a NL tourney anyway.
   
2. The $73 win puts me back in the black in terms of overall poker earnings.

"But JD," you ask, "I'm surprised to hear that you were in the red to begin with." Well readers, if you go back to my second-ever post, you'll see that at the time I said I was "up" $354.83, but that $454.10 of that was really bonus money, so technically I was "down" $99.27. I had a really bad run at Paradise the very same week that I started the blog, and I was soon down more than $150.

Let me explain. I assume that most people calculate their online poker winnings pretty straightforwardly:

(money I currently have in the sites) + (money I've taken out of the sites) - (money I put into the sites) = (net winnings)

Sounds simple enough, right? Plugging my numbers into that equation, my net winnings since I started in April 2003 equal $630.81.

I am very happy about this figure. Most hobbies cost money, but online poker pays me an average of $42 a month!

When most people talk about the size of their poker bankroll, I assume they are using this "net winnings" figure. However, the "net winnings" figure includes bonuses. This raises the question, how much I have actually won playing poker? How much have I actually earned the hard way, grinding it out, against other players and the rake? Let's call this new figure "poker earnings." We can calculate it easily enough:

(net winnings) - (bonuses) = (net earnings)

My net earnings are a whopping $1.71, because I have cleared $629.10 in bonuses. The hard truth is that in terms of pure poker play, I'm only breaking even. (Ouch, truth-in-blogging hurts!)

I actually believe that the picture is quite a bit brighter than this. The $1.71 earnings figure is since the very first day I played online. I made some really bonehead plays in the my first couple months, while I was still learning not just how to play the cards well, but also how to manage the highs and lows of the game. There were a couple weekends last summer where I just went on tilt, playing way too much and going through $80+ in a weekend. I also lost about $50 in a failed attempt to master Omaha 8 Hi-Lo. But mostly these disasters were beer-related. Here's what happens when I sit down to play online poker after a night at the bars:

1. My attention span is nil. Folding is boring. I start playing bad hands.
2. Aggression goes way up. You're raising me?! I reraise!
3. Alcohol-induced false confidence. "This .50/$1 is a waste of time. I know I can beat $2/$4" . . .

What would generally happen was that if I cleared a really big bonus, I'd step up to $1/$2 or even $2/$4 and get my ass handed to me, often after I'd had a few beers. By getting large bonuses and losing them, my earnings dipped way into the negative--to the tune of negative $200 at several points, even as my winnings continued to grow. Amazingly, my poker winnings have never been negative, ever, since I started playing online. That is what I meant when I said in my "my poker background" post that "Bonuses are great, but they are contributing to the major weakness in my game, which is that I often don't take online play seriously enough."

I also stated in that post that "This blog is part of my plan to rededicate myself to improving my game." I've stopped the foolishness. Getting back into the black has been my primary goal for the past couple months, and I am very happy to report success.

A more comforting number is my poker earnings since I started using PokerTracker on May 19: $159.71.

My buddy Odog is arriving at Providence airport in a couple hours, for a mutual friend's wedding tomorrow night, so I won't post or play poker again until Sunday. But I feel that my next post should be on setting some new poker goals for myself. Primarily, I want to move up in limits--the devil is in the details. More next time . . .
posted by JD at 1:10 PM

Ashley Adams's Winning 7-Card Stud
A couple weeks ago I posted about my purchase of Ashley Adams's Winning 7-Card Stud. I finished it very quickly, as it's an easy read, but figured I'd wait to post my thoughts about the book until I had put its lessons to the test a few times. (So far I've played 5 sessions of .50/$1 7-Stud on Paradise, maybe 3.5 hours total, and I'm up $59. It's not statistically significant or anything, but it is confidence-building :)

First off, when I mentioned buying a 7-Card Stud book, I got this comment from Felicia: "Please buy Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players. Please, please! Take my word for it. Don't mess around with anything else." Rest assured that I will be purchasing Sklansky et al.'s book, for three reasons:

1. 7-Card Stud is turning out to be far more fun to play online that I'd thought it would be.
2. Adams's book is strictly for beginners, and it's left me wanting to learn more.
3. Felicia, probably the best 7-Card Stud player among the many poker bloggers I read, recommended it!

That said, I am glad to have read a beginner's book on Stud, both because I wanted to make sure I knew the basic strategy of the game, and because I assume that Sklansky et al.'s book will be geared for higher limits and more sophisticated players than I'm likely to face anytime soon.

Winning 7-Card Stud was probably a little more oriented to beginners than I really needed--Adams's first chapter is directed at someone who's never played casino poker before. I think it does a very good job in this respect: If I had a friend who was just dying to play poker in a casino ASAP, I might give them this book. (Of course, said friend would probably only want to play Hold'em, but after reading Adams's book I think 7-Card Stud might be the more appropriate game for the complete newbie.) Throughout the book, Adams doesn't just discuss strategy--he also incorporates advice on casino etiquette, how much money to sit down with, the different types of players you're likely to face, dealing with losses and tilt, etc.

Adams's second chapter, appropriately titled "A Winning Basic Strategy," is the real meat of the book, where he prescribes minimum starting hands and how to play them. It's far and away the longest chapter in the book. Some of his teachings I'd read elsewhere, in general how-to poker books such as Edwin Silberstang's The Winner's Guide to Casino Poker and Andy Nelson's Poker: A Winner's Guide. But it was nice to see the bare-bones info I'd read elsewhere fleshed out. Adams's basic strategy is a lot simpler than I would've thought. I know 7-Card Stud is a complex game and that there are tons of levels I have yet to aspire to, but just reading through the tight, straightforward style that Adams's recommends made me feel confident that at the low-limit level, there's not a whole lot of mystery as to how to play: Fold, fold, fold, and bet when you have it.

The remaining chapters of the the book are titled "Deception," "Putting people on Hands," "Expanding Your Repertoire," and "General Poker Concepts." None of these chapters were as useful. They deal with topics such as bluffing, semi-bluffing, the free card, etc., concepts which I am familiar with from Hold'em and are covered in far more depth in Sklansky's Theory of Poker. But again, this might be great reading for the beginner, and reinforced my view that Winning 7-Card Stud could make a very good introduction-to-poker book.

One of the final sections of the last chapter is subtitled "Taking It to the Next Level," where Adams says that his book is not intended to help one beat the higher limits, and that for that the reader should turn to Sklansky et al.'s book.

Early on in Winning 7-Card Stud I was reminded of Lee Jones's Winning Low Limit Hold'Em, and the comparison stuck with me throughout. Jones's book is the one that helped me start beating the low limits, and it remains the #1 book I recommend to new Hold'em players. Later I read Sklansky and Malmuth's Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players, and I really haven't stopped rereading it since.

Is Ashley Adams to 7-Card Stud what Lee Jones is to Texas Hold'em? And if so, is Winning 7-Card Stud to Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players what Winning Low Limit Hold'Em is to Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players? And why has this post suddenly started to sound like the SAT exam?

To sum up: I liked Winning 7-Card Stud, and I am really liking winning at 7-Card Stud. But as in Hold'em, the basics only give you the ability to beat bad, loose players. So I'll be buying Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players.

A Couple Notes

Notes? Geez, what is this, a research paper? . . .

1. Paradise .50/$1 has no ante. Easy to sit there and wait for the right starting hands. On Absolute (the only other place I've played 7-Stud so far) there is a nickel ante, and not only did that damn nickel make it harder for me to sit there and fold, it made it so that most of the players saw 4th and 5th street, cause "hey, I'm already invested for a nickel." Party pots = more variance.

2. I may purchase Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players through this deal. (I already have an account on Pacific Poker, but Mrs. Cheap Thrills doesn't.)
posted by JD at 1:21 AM

Speaking of ESPN . . .
A new poker article today on ESPN's Page 2, not by Jackpot Jay: Jeff Merron writes about Rounders. Also Liam McHugh writes about gambling moments in television (warning: very little poker or gambling content in that one).

Also let me add my thundering agreement with Anisotropy about how upset I am at the sheer ignorance of the game displayed in Bill "The Sport Guy" Simmons's recent article, where he insinuates that professional poker is all luck. Of course we all know that luck is a big part, but the short shrift that Simmons gives the issue is just awful. Go and read Anisotropy for a better critique.
posted by JD at 11:20 AM

WPT Reno Thoughts
The World Poker Tour needs to introduce a variable ending. Wouldn't it be cool if one week it just ended at 10:49, on a hand you thought couldn't possibly be the last hand because of the clock? They could fill the reminaing 11 minutes with Shana Hiatt frolicking on a beach or something.

Cause I gotta say, the heads-up portion of the show is getting to be the least interesting for me, especially when it starts rather early in the program. You know that neither of the final two players will be busting out until 11:56 or so.

Last night I was rooting for Paul "Eskimo" Clark the whole way, in large part because they introduced him as a "high-stakes cash game" player. I like the idea of the grizzled high-stakes player coming in and teaching the tournament players a lesson. Eskimo quote: "I'm as cool as I can be. You gotta be cool to bust people."

Being a fellow A-Team fan, I almost starting pulling for Harry "I love it when a plan comes together" Knoll, but then I remembered how Harry had slowplayed AA, not raising preflop, and inviting Eskimo to draw out on him. He did do a marvelous job of talking so much that he got Peter Muller to call top pair with nothing. Still don't know what "Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon" means, but I'm gonna start using it.

I didn't have a "Vince Van Patten Quote of the Week" for last week's "Crusin' Mexico" episode (aka the Party Poker Million), and I don't have one for this week. I don't know if VVP got less funny or I got jaded or what, but I suspect that VVP's commentary is less looney this season because of the show's success--gotta figure they're doing a better job of editing the show and partially scripting VVP.

Mike Sexton had the best line about the Reno winner, midwesterner Michael Kinney: "Count your potatos if you live up there in Idaho."

The Legality Issue

While I'm at it, a comment about last week's episode. How about that "poker is a party" Shana Hiatt segment, featuring several pros saying thing like "I love a party!" and "I've been playing at the party for a while"? First, I love the wink-wink advertising for Party Poker. But I couldn't help but start to wonder about how the World Poker Tour TV show (and the soon-to-be-televised WSOP) is going to affect the debate over online poker/gambling in the long term. The WPT has contract with the Travel Channel through something like 2009. The 2003 ESPN WSOP broadcast has been getting great ratings and the 2004 likely will too. Raymer and Moneymaker both qualified online, as have many WPT contestants, and the hosts of these shows make frequent mention of that.

Yet the FCC won't let Party Poker and other online poker rooms advertise on TV, and Harrah's and the WPT have prohibited the wearing of online poker room logos, perhaps because of legal concerns? How ridiculous is this? As flipchipro put a few weeks back: "Come on people, let’s give credit where credit is due. If not for online casinos and television the World Series of Poker would continue to be played in a tent under the valet parking veranda by a group of old dudes that no one outside the industry knows."

I do not expect that online poker/casinos will become explicitly legal anytime soon, since there are so many forces (principally brick & mortar casinos) arrayed against it. (For background, the PokerProf has a good post on the legality of online poker.) The "it's there, it's illegal, but we can't really stop it" mentality about online gambling has been around for several years. But not until this past year and a half have there been two hit shows on network cable bringing the issue into the spotlight. While TV pundits liken the poker shows to "reality TV" and Jay Lovinger debates whether poker is a sport, the fact is that the WSOP and WPT are making it obvious--to million of Americans who whould have never thought about it otherwise--that lots of people are playing poker online, legally or illegally, and some of them are winning lots of money and getting 15 minutes of fame doing it.

Will there be a mainstream debate about online poker's technically-illegal-but-mainstream status anytime soon? I don't know, but that "poker is a party!" Shana Hiatt segment sure did get me thinking about it.
posted by JD at 11:03 AM

Doubled Up at Foxwoods -- Woo-Hoo!
A few weeks ago I posted about a Friday night that B (Mrs. Cheap Thrills) and I spent at Foxwoods. In that post I wrote about how few hours I've put into live casino poker as compared to online play. I am becoming a very confident online Hold'em player, but sitting down at a real casino card table I still feel a bit like a newbie. Well, that won't do at all, so I've committed myself to heading down to Foxwoods at least once every 6 weeks, and hopefully once a month.

This weekend B was out of town, so I cruised down to Foxwoods Friday night. Last time we had set out at 4pm; this time I ate a good dinner beforehand and didn't leave until 6:30. For some reason the traffic was actually a little worse, but the wait at the cardroom was still a mere 20 minutes and I was seated by 8pm. I bought in for $100 at the $2/$4 table.

Irrational Jitters

I have to admit that I still got a bit nervous when I first sat down at the table. I guess it's just the hustle and bustle of the busy Foxwoods cardroom, coupled with the anticipation of playing--my adrenaline level just seems to go up when those first cards are dealt to me. I was seated at the uncomfortable 1 position, with the dealer toke box jamming into my right thigh. Also during my 20 minute wait I couldn't find an issue of Cardplayer to read, so instead I had purchased a Daily Racing Form--which is about twice the size of a standard magazine--and I was having a hard time finding somewhere to put the damn thing as I sat down.

So I'm feeling nervous, uncomfortable, and awkward. Also mildy paranoid. The 4 guys at one end of the table (in the 7, 8, 9, and 10 seats) seemed to know each other, and I start worrying about whether they'll be trying to raise people out of pots or otherwise engage in collusion.

This state of heightened nervousness only lasted 10 minutes or so. I forced myself to calm down and get comfortable. And I quickly realized that my nervousness and paranoia were completely irrational. The 4 guys on the end may know each other, but they're joking around and having a good time. Surely that's a better sign than if they were sitting there all silent and intense-like. And as I actually begin to concentrate on the game I see that only 3 other players seem to be remotely tight. Even better, there's very little raising. Also, the cocktail waitress finally notices me, and the cold beer is very soothing, even if there's only 8 ounces of it.

After I'm there for a couple hands the 4 guys at the end of the table notice me. "Hey, new guy! How ya doin?" "Whoa, Hawaii 5-0, that's a nice shirt. You can tell this guy's on vacation!" (I like to wear a Hawaiian shirt at the casino; it reminds me of being in Las Vegas.) For the rest of the night the guys refer to me as "Hawaii." One of the guys was a real class-clown type, and throughout the evening he was giving funny little nicknames to new players as they sat down, flirting with female dealers, etc.

Good Cards, Loose Players

The first pot I won was with K-10 suited. It had been 3-bet preflop, I made the flush on the turn, and had like 3 callers on the river. Big pot. The next hand I won was with a pair of 8s when I made my set on the flop. Bigger pot. Then my big slick paired a King on the flop and it held up. Small pot. I was at the table for at least 2 hours and had taken 5 pots before I lost a showdown.

Turns out the 4 guys on the end were just about as loose as can be. Let me state the obvious: Players who are fun, friendly, and loose-passive make for a freakin' great table. If there was any collusion going on, it was that they would only fold on the river if one of them had already called, so that they could all see the winning hand. I think they might have been there for a convention or something; one of them had a sticker on his chest. Whatever the case, they didn't come to fold and they didn't seem to care about the money. The clowny guy must've burned through $200 just in the time I was there. Boy was I a moron for getting nervous about them.

The 10-seat had called me down on my first 3 winning hands. It was kind of funny because we couldn't really see each other well, with the dealer between us, and on the hand after I had raised/bet him the whole way with AK, he bet out on the next hand, then asked the other guys "Did Hawaii raise again? Jeez, that guy's scaring the crap out of me." He was just kidding, and showing he wasn't angry about the previous loss. They were all pretty funny guys and gracious losers. I consciously reminded myself not to get ego-inflated and to just play smart and tight.

And it was good that I did continue to play tight, because my rush was over. I won a few more hands, but no more really big pots. I had doubled up, though!

Still Learning the Finer Points of Not Looking Like an Idiot at the Casino

I didn't like being in the 1-seat, so when the 6-seat opened up I asked for a seat change. At the time we had a dealer who didn't speak English well, and she told me no, trying to explain that I would need to pay the big blind again if I moved. By the time I made it clear that I didn't care about the $2, could I just please take the better seat, the seat was taken by a new player. Then she gave me the "seat change" button and I eventually relocated to the 4-seat. This is the kind of thing I need to learn: Next time I'm in a bad seat I'll just ask for the seat change button immediately.

Relocating to the 4-seat was awkward for a couple of reasons. First, I had about $210 in $2 chips, and I laboriously moved them stack by stack across the the table from the 1 to the 4-seat, with the whole table watching me. I should have gone and gotten a rack, but I was worried the new player would arrive and take the seat. Next time I'll just throw my Cardplayer or whatever out there to claim the seat. Second, I don't think the 3-seat cared for me moving to his left, and he mumbled something to that effect. He actually turned out to be pretty cool, and later we shared a couple "oh the humanity" moments at the awful play going on at the other end of the table. However, I should be prepared from now on to that kind of reaction to my seat change and 1) do my seat change ASAP after sitting down and 2) not give a flying f*** if anybody gives me a hard time about it.

Another thing about casino play--the novelty of not being sure exactly how much money is in front of you. I can't help buy hear Kenny Rogers singing "you never count your money . . . " but that's exactly what I had to do several times. That's another thing I need to stay on top of.

Deciding When to Quit

At one point in the evening I was up to $250. I made decision that I'm still a little ambivalent about--having more than doubled up, I determined that I wasn't going to let my stack dip below $200. Overall I think this was a sensible decision, but I could also hear a little shark on my shoulder yelling "What are you, a wuss? This isn't blackjack, it's poker, and this is the juciest table you've ever seen!" However, by 11:00 the shoulder shark was quieting down. I kept getting decent cards and having the flop miss me entirely, which is course worse than just getting lousy hole cards. Also several players left and the table mood began to change. In particular, the calling-station 10-seat was replaced by a silent, older, Asian gentleman who had "I am not a fish" tattooed on his forehead. I am kidding about that last part.

The last straw was that a dealer with short arms sat down at our table. By "a dealer with short arms" I mean that the dealer sat down and when it came time to pull in bets or folded cards she announced "I have short arms" and those of us on the ends hand to push in the chips and cards for her. This is the second time in 2 visits that I have been a short-armed dealer's table. It kind of reminds me of when you get a customer service representatiove on the phone who doesn't speak English well--it just seems like a serious impediment to the job. Don't get me wrong, I understand that a dealer's job is difficult--dealing poker seems much more difficult than dealing other games--but that's why I tip. Having the dealer admonish "push em in, fellas" every hand and every round of betting is just one more distraction at the table.

With the cold cards, the new players, and the short-armed dealer, I decided it was about time to go. I saw the flop one more time with Ax suited, it missed entirely, and I stood up. I had $202. With exactly $200 fitting in the rack, the extra $2 went to Short Arms.

Victorious JD

I had won $100. I know that's not much in the grand scheme of things, but for yours truly of the Cheap Thrills it was the biggest casino casino win--in fact, the biggest single-session poker win--I've ever had. (I paid $15 in dealer and cocktail waitress tips, so I guess I could call it a $115 win.)

I got home by 12:15am, and after a few minutes of the Victorious JD dance, I hopped onto Paradise Poker. I won $25 at .50/$1 Hold'em and $20 at .50/$1 7-Card Stud before hitting the hay. I had never even played .50/$1 7-Card Stud before! I went to bed confident that I was either 1) a Complete Poker Bad-Ass or 2) having a really lucky night. I think it was probably #2, but the little shark on my shoulder was screaming "You're #1! You're #1!"

A Note on the Rake

Seriously though, I had great cards and a great table at Foxwoods, and I know that won't happen all the time. Another consideration is that I actually paid attention to the rake this time, after Chris Halverson had commented on my previous post that being down $15 over 6 hours is actually slightly "up" due to the rake. I meant to ask the dealer about the rake but forgot. I am surprised that I cannot find specific rake info on the Foxwoods website. A search of "Foxwoods rake" on Google turns up one guy saying "[At $2/$4] they rake $1 for evey $10 in the pot capped at $4," and on RGP Ashley Adams says that it's "10 percent with a $4 max." I'm pretty sure the dealer was taking $2 off the flop on Friday. I'll definitely ask for specifics next time I'm there.

Anyway, the point is that $2/$4 at Foxwoods just may not be very profitable over the long term. Clearly I should move up to $4/$8 ASAP, where the rake would still be $4 but the pots would be bigger. However, I don't want to jump up in limits after just one win. I'll do a few more sessions at $2/$4 and work on getting really comfortable at the casino first.

Another consideration: B and I are headed out to San Francisco in August. She's got a convention to go to; for me it'll be pure vacation. I'm thinking about hitting a California cardroom (Bay 101?) and we are also considering doing a 1 or 2 night stopover in Las Vegas on the way back. (Woo-hoo!) So I better get ready to play some $3/$6 and $4/8.
posted by JD at 1:25 PM