Zimba’s poker blog

I wanted to share an exchange I had with a forum poster on one of the sites that I contribute poker content. Although I have lots of additional thoughts and details to support my thinking and response, I’ll let the exchange speak for itself.

His original post:

Hey guys. Im xxxxxx.

I had been living and working as a poker player for the past 3 or so years (this was about 4-4.5 years ago) . In those 3 years I about $75k, and lived like a king. Now I was always part of a religious family and they would pressure me to stop playing poker, but time and time again, the thought of playing a game online for highstake money, always came first. After these 3 years I realized that I wasn’t doing anything of substance, I was like a stock trader or a con-man, In that I did not create, anything tangible or beneficial to the world, but rather, lived off of others. I was was rich and without a purpose, I became a heavy drinker and started abusing marijuana. Currently (for the most part) I have sorted out my life, I have not drank a drop of alcohol in a year, or played poker in 6 months. Even though I didn’t loose money (as i still have the large winnings) I still regret my years of playing poker. Not because I was addicted, or because I lost money, but rather because the lifestyle and concept of poker as a career is wrong. I sold out my beliefs and took money from others (in an albeit fair and consensual way).

I write this primarily to help you, young up-and-coming poker players, and tell you guys that from my experience, poker is one of the worse life choices I have made, and I regret it every day of my life.

I know this is not a popular view (especially on these forums) but I will feel satisfied if i convince, just one of you kids to just not play poker.

I would have rather earned 2k as a McDonald’s worker, over 3 years, Then have earned 75k at poker, as at least one is a honest living, where you contribute to society.

Thank you.

My initial response:

Thanks for sharing your story, xxxxxx. Everyone has a different story to tell on their journey playing a game, whether it’s dota, SC2 or poker.

The thing I would say is that I know of many people who have found poker to be a positive experience because they came into poker with a good attitude to use its benefits of money and freedom to grow as people. Aspects like traveling, encountering new cultures, making friends, investing in businesses and maturing in the poker world were all benefits to these players.

It’s not so much what you do to make a living, as to what you do with your living that matters. Some successful friends have gone on to great things as a result of their time in poker. After 3 years at McDonald’s I’m not sure you could say the same thing.

If you are able to use your $75k wisely to your benefit or to the benefit of society, you may change your perspective about the value of your time spent in poker. Many players struggle with balance and perspective when they are playing and I’m not at all surprised to hear that you did too.

Best of luck to you in your future.

His response:

Zimba you do indeed raise some valid points. The way you put it, there is nothing wrong with someone who plays poker within the setup you mentioned, and like you said, it can even be beneficial for the person. But the thing I was trying to get at (and perhaps I didn’t explain this well enough) Is that I fell into a rut in my poker career, wherein, I allowed poker to impact my life negatively and where I virtually did nothing but sit in front of a computer all day. It is for this reason, that I did not grow as a person. However I think that someone who can find a balance, where they focus on growing as a person and being productive through poker, and not just seeing it as a linear gambling career, will be successful and happy as a poker player.

To reiterate, being a poker pro isnt bad, but if you allow it to effect you in any way, where you do not feel like it is right, or that it is not helping you, then I would suggest people to stop, and live without regrets

My second response:

Thanks for your additional post, xxxxxx. Making those clarifications is important in my opinion. Poker is just a game that can be played for money. It is not more inherently good or bad than another activity. It is what players bring to the game that matters. I agree that the game allows and in some instances encourages some negative activity in the pursuit of money, but that isn’t necessary if players develop balance and perspective. The same can be said for any activity that takes over your life. Addiction is a human quality that gets attached to all kinds of activities in our lives whether it be eating, drinking, gaming or even sex.

It sounds like if you were to start poker again, with the knowledge and experience you have now you would handle your playing and life differently. I touched upon the idea of being too young to play poker earlier today in my Zimba blog on Cognitive Dissonance.

His final contribution:

Indeed. I’ve read a lot of your articles, and I have found them to be very nice (bring back a lot of old memories) Also Zimba, I think its great that there is a poker writer who is as passionate and as committed to the game as a concept. I admire you, as you seem to have something, some spark that I never did, back when I played. Thanks for the feed back, and it’s a really nice poker section you have put together here

My sophomore year in college (1986-7) I had a RD (resident director of my dorm) who had a significant impact on me. He was a 24-year-old Psychology graduate student. He was tall, Italian and liked to run. He drove a Camaro. He oozed confidence and had more than his fair share of girls on campus pay attention to him despite not being the most handsome guy around. As we became friends over the year, I approached him at one point to ask the secret of his success with girls, as I was having little. He informed me of a psychology concept that explained a lot of his success - cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. People who experience cognitive dissonance have a strong desire to reduce dissonance. They accomplish this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. The can employ rationalization, confirmation bias or more negatively by blaming, and denying. Leon Festinger coined the term in his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, which related how followers of a UFO cult actions changed as reality clashed with their fervent beliefs of an end of days. The classic example offered by Wikipedia is of Aesop’s The Fox and the Grapes tale where a fox sees some high-hanging grapes and wishes to eat them. When the fox is unable to think of a way to reach them, he surmises that the grapes are probably not worth eating, as they must not be ripe or that they are sour (the origin of the term “sour grapes”). The fox reduced the desire for something that seemed unattainable by criticizing it.

In my old college relational setting, my RD friend kept himself unpredictable and a bit shocking to girls around him. As an enigma, he created dissonance and confusion for these girls. Instead of the usual pattern of rejection or acceptance, they chose non-traditional methods to try to resolve the dissonance, trying to “understand” or “solve” him which led to further interest and opportunities for him to date or play with them.

Cognitive dissonance can be readily found in the poker world as well. I recall reading a fascinating article from a while back by Kim Lund of Infinite Edge blog who stated that much of the addiction in the gaming world was created by a form of cognitive dissonance. It was the confusion and reaction created from player’s expectations of winning and their losing results that kept them coming back again in again, against most reason. A player that loses faces feelings that vary from surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. People are biased to think of their choices as correct, despite any contrary evidence. So they return again and again trying to demonstrate their superiority in the face of rational evidence that indicates their actions are both irrational and destructive.

When playing poker, cognitive dissonance rears its head continually. Each time you make a play like calling in a spot where you are likely beat, but call anyway, it can create tremendous dissonance. To deal with your blunder you rationalize that he could have been bluffing or value betting too thinly. You focus on the few times where your hero call was correct to justify all the times when you are beat and claim you were simply unlucky to run into a hand.

Two recent examples of cognitive dissonance displayed in the poker community come from the two touchstone issues from the past couple weeks; reaction to the Epic Poker League and the Macedo/Qureshi/Cates cheating scandal. The dissonance from these events has generated tremendous reaction from the general public, no matter where you come down on each issue.

The Epic Poker League created dissonance for people by introducing a new (technically not new, but first/best effort in last five years) PGA-type exclusive membership league that featured no rake with added value for players. It generated significant hype amongst some players and industry types for its departure from the expected tournament norm and thus forced players and fans to try to process that dissonance. Passionate pro and con opinions have been formed, many biased by their own prisms. Many focused their attention on the dissonance created by not understanding the financial model. As someone with no dog in the fight, I’ve found the strong opinions expressed only coming from those with history or allegiances that color their present opinions.

The more sensational poker community issue has been the ongoing revelations associated with the Macedo/Qureshi/Cates cheating scandal. On the weekends, and for a few hours today, I’ve been following the drama as it unfolded. The driving force for many forum posters over this arduous process has been a desire to understand the situation to their satisfaction. Beyond a simple drive for facts or even punishment is a motivation to fully understand how and why the different parties acted. Any dissonance created from the two not comporting to poster’s understanding of how people should act fuels their hunger for more information, revelations and explanation. The actions and deceptions of these seemingly bright, motivated and wealthy young poker players created tremendous dissonance for fans, friends, and critics.

As Jeff218 expressed in his blog today, the answer to why Macedo/Qureshi/Cates made such deceptive and poor decisions is as much a function of their age and immaturity as it is of anything else. It is a strong argument in support of the notion forwarded in potential U.S. poker legislation that Internet poker won’t be allowed for those under 21. While players can be strategically successful in the game well before that, as seen by hundreds of successful players over the last half decade, these young players typically don’t exhibit the necessary discipline, developed moral compass and self awareness to avoid making tons of poor and rash decisions.

Looking back, I can’t claim to have ever mastered the cognitive dissonance theory to help with girls, but it is a fascinating psychological concept that does begin to explain some interesting human reactions and behavior. As you face any confusing dissonance, your mind is compelled to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs to in some way reconcile this conflict.Coming to understand that process and its affect on you can increase your self-awareness and lead to better decision making in all areas of your life.

As we have reached the end of the summer portion of the World Series of Poker, I thought I would share 15 impressions of the WSOP experience as an independent media member.

1. The World Series of Poker is a powerful brand - Despite dire predictions for the series as a result of massive online poker concerns, the WSOP set records in many events and experienced average improvements in number of entrants and prizepools of 8%. The six week series distracted the poker world from their online concerns while creating a new crop of poker heroes. The true test will likely be next year when over a year’s worth of reduced online poker options and the trickle down effect will have played out more fully. Not without fault or room for further improvement, give the WSOP credit as they continue to tweak their schedule and offerings each year taking in player and industry feedback.

2. The mothership has landed - The ESPN/PokerPROductions team put together a much improved and professional featured TV table. More work needs to be done on where to place it so it doesn’t negatively affect the Amazon room flow and dynamic, but it was a big step forward overall. Similar, if lesser treatment, needs to be done for the secondary and tertiary featured tables.

3. Celebrations and bringing attention to yourself is down - There was a very noticeable trend to players bringing less attention to themselves by their costumes and garb, or more importantly by their demeanor at the table. Wins were celebrated more calmly, and bad beats were handles more maturely.

4. Kudos to the Poker Kitchen - Although they could tweak the pricing and offerings a bit, the Poker Kitchen works remarkably well during the series. You can get a quick meal, from great salads to sandwiches, soup, pizza, Mexican and even good sushi from Sen of Japan. I can admit I miss the days of of the press room having catered food for media, I can live with my daily $10 voucher to pick a meal during the long hours in the Amazon and Pavilion rooms.

5. Cash games, Satellites and Deep Stacks blow up - With no significant U.S. internet poker options, live satellites, daily tournaments, and cash games at the Rio were bustling the entire series like never before. Hundreds and thousands participated in the cavernous Pavilion room but better effort next year could go to defining, differentiating and marketing these parts of the overall WSOP experience to casual fans and players.

6. Less festive Vegas - The party options for those not privately partying or celebrating a big win were very limited this year. In the current murky environment, none of the traditional blow-out parties were in evidence around the Main Event. Even the parties that were held were less lavish and much mellower than in years past.

7. Meetings and Interviews are always a challenge during the series - Each year I try to arrange a number of meetings and interviews that fall through for multiple reasons. Vegas is such a frenetic environment during the WSOP and players and industry players are constantly making and breaking arrangements as conditions or their mood changes. For instance, three of my arranged interviews were canceled because the players were no longer in the mood after busting prematurely.

8. Figure out the smoking area - The area just beyond the exit leading to the Taxi stop and parking area has become a gross transition not only to the heat but all the individuals who congregate to grab a smoke. This could be significantly improved.

9. Poker swag is a good thing - Poker players and fans like mementos of their WSOP experience. The reality is most poker players head home with nothing more than a lighter wallet. This year, Dearfoam slippers stepped up in a big way to give away many thousands of quality slippers to players, staff and media. If the glory days of poker vendors and promoters giving away a lot of poker swag in the Poker/Living Expo it would be nice to build on the Dearfoam experience this year for people to return home with some tangible association with their experience.

10. Strides made in the established media realm - The hardcore established poker media can feel very tight knit and exclusive to the independent members. This year I was able to meet and befriend a number of the main players, gaining new perspectives on their particular poker voices in the industry. This was the first year that media who had never met me knew of me as Zimba, the guy who blogs, tweets and creates interesting poker content.

11. No gambol once again - I was a huge disappointment to the mighty gambling machine that is Las Vegas because I abstained from any gambling endeavors despite railing friends playing poker and Pai Gow.

12. Epic Poker League could be epic - I had the opportunity to speak with Annie Duke one night for over a half hour and Michael Craig who leads their poker content team for an hour on what the EPL wants to do and accomplish. Based off the history of previous attempts, I was a skeptic previously. There are some great aspects to this effort that could finally create a PGA type league that has player’s interests at heart; rake-free tournaments, valued added to tournaments, transparent and fair qualification process, players share 5% of gross profits, and a promising GPI dynamic tournament player ranking system. The FS+G see themselves as a social media marketing company more than a poker company and will move along the lines of Zynga to monetize the concept. The are close to announcing a a major TV partner that will bring the EPL serious credibility and visibility. They have partnered with the Heartland Poker Tour and are looking at other opportunities to expand their brand and reach in the poker world. The first of four scheduled tournament series begins in August.

13. Streaming and expanded near-live coverage is the future - We live in a here and now world. Although I haven’t seen any ratings numbers yet, the streaming and ESPN coverage was universally hailed and appreciated in the poker community. I’ve always disliked the decision to create the November 9 and long delayed ESPN episodes as sapping the momentum of the Main Event. I think this years near live coverage experiment from Day 3 on can show the way to replace that flawed model in the coming years and usher in a new more competitive, vital and youthful coverage of the series to fans and casual watchers around the world.

14. Big names need to prosper - As I discussed in my last blog, for the health of the WSOP and poker in general “big” online and live poker players need to go deep and do well in the tournaments. Poker will never reach its potential if no-names win most of the tournaments each year, especially the Main Event.

15. Roll Call - Lastly, and most importantly, I wanted to share a list of poker friends and acquaintances who I enjoyed meeting and talking to on my 2011 WSOP ME trip. Relationships made and kept will always outlive any media coverage of a tournament.

Media (will use their Twitter handles)
@taopoker
@ftrainpoker
@WhoJedi
@casinocityvin
@hardboiledpoker
@AlCantHang
@MarieLizette-Acoba
@merchdawg
@Kevmath
@BJNemeth
@pkrgssp
@WriterJen
@AnnieDuke
@tuckonsports
@michaelcraigh
@oskargarcia
@lizzy_harrison

Poker Players (ladies first, of course)
Danielle Andersen
Mary Ann Hisel
Jen Shahade
Katie Stone
Kara Scott
Laurence Grondin
Carol - the lawyer
Vanessa Peng
Annette Obrestad

Gui Guignac
Brian Hastings
John Wray
Jeff Miller
Frank Rusnack
Benny Spindler
Troy Gamble
Joe Ward
Shane Schleger
Micheal Berra
Taylor Caby
Cole South
Lee Childs
Sol Bergren
Jason Rosenkrantz
Dave Rogowski
Mickey Petersen
Ryan Daut
Raymond Davis
Johnathan Little
Scott Montgomery
Olivier Busquet’s manager Arie

Late last night, I tweeted about how disappointed I was in the potential  “November 9” makeup.

To be exact, I said “If Devo, Collins or Lamb don’t make ME Final Table, I’ll doubt I’ll even watch it. #Starpowerisgone #Pokerneedsmarketableplayersattheend

Most of the recognizable names were eliminated on Day 6 and 7 (Erick Lindgren, Allen Cunningham, Eli Elezra, Jean-Robert Bellande, Sorel Mizzi, Aaron Jones, Sami Kelopuro, Tony Hachem, Joseph Cheong, Christian Harder, Peter Feldman, Steve Brecher, David Bach, John Esposito and the heart warming last couple standing of David Sands and Erika Moutinho) and there weren’t any big draws amongst the final 22 players. That isn’t to say that there aren’t great players remaining or that they don’t each have a compelling story to tell. Certainly Ben Lamb is a great story as the current Player of the Year points leader after a tremendous series, but who in the general public had heard of Ben Lamb before this year. No disrespect to any of the remaining players, but if our collective goal is to grow poker, then having a final table of previous unknowns doesn’t help our cause.  While I’m happy for them, I’m sad for poker as a whole.

In these distressing times with uncertain legislative support for online poker, we want as many eyeballs witnessing our game. We want as much of the general public to embrace and support our efforts to return online poker, and poker in general to its rightful place in the United States. I appreciate that a couple people responded last night that there were good players and potentially good stories to come out of the remaining players. I even liked the one suggestion of creating 30 minute bio shows of all nine players. Although I doubt that would ever fly, maybe a one hour preview show giving background on all nine might. But bottom line, I don’t think you can take nine unknowns and sell them to the public beforehand. To me it is not enough that hardcore fans are passionate about the game it has to appeal to the casual fan or those who aren’t even fans.

The WSOP Main Event is our Super Bowl and we want it to be seen by as many people as possible. Tweaking the presentation and schedule can help incrementally, but having star power makes a bigger difference.

It’s well established that celebrity sells. If you look at pro sports, the biggest franchises (i.e. Yankees/RedSox, Boston/Lakers,  Cowboys/Steelers) always pull the biggest ratings. The biggest individual stars always increase ratings (i.e. Tom Brady/Manning, Lebron/Wade, Jeter/Rodriguez/Pujols). When big poker stars like Ivey, Dwan, Brunson, Hansen, Antonius, Seidel, and Ferguson don’t go far, it hurts poker. When Negreanu, Hellmuth, Lindgren, Cunningham and Elezra go far, but miss making the November 9, it hurts poker. It’s not that you need a table full of poker celebrities, but the overall viewing experienced is enriched by having the magnetism and personality of an established star. Even one of the large crop of online whiz kids that are taking over in the live tournament world would bring their own following and personality. Each has seen the bright lights before and realizes that poker is more than just playing well. It is a performance. When poker is on TV, it is entertainment.

Those in the know realize the variance of tournament poker. Those in the know realize that no matter how well you play you need considerable luck to get through a field of 6,865 players. But those not in the know are confused when no recognizable top player can make the final table. It undermines the credibility of the game when every player at the end has never made it there before. It takes away from the image of the game if previous winners can’t get back there again. Where are the dynasties? Where are the power franchises? Where are the great stars exhibiting their dominating ways?

If our collective goal is to grow the popularity of poker, then we naturally want some of the games bigger names to participate. It both legitimizes the Main Event as the biggest stage of poker and draws people in for the charisma and appeal of poker’s bigger names.

Each year, ESPN and the WSOP tweak the TV coverage and schedule of the tournaments with one goal in mind. They want to improve the Nielsen ratings. Having more players and rake is appreciated and a sign of a positive poker economy, but increased ratings and improved demographics translate directly into much more money for themselves and poker in general. Historically, TV poker hasn’t been a big relative draw. The ratings for the WSOP have never been huge.

ESPN has covered the World Series of Poker for many years. In fact, ESPN has a deal to air the WSOP through 2017. Each year since the Moneymaker boom of 2003, they have made adjustments to try to improve the ratings. Some of the biggest changes arrived in 2008, after a down year in ratings when Jerry Yang won. ESPN and the WSOP decided to delay the final table play out four months until November so that people wouldn’t know in advance of the close-to-live TV coverage who won.  They shifted the final table venue to the more dramatic and larger venue of the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio. The Nielsen ratings for the Peter Eastgate win improved 46% over 2007 for the final table to 2.4 million viewers (1.9 Nielsen rating). The 2009 WSOP coverage improved 7-9% with Phil Ivey joining the Joe Cada-won final table, but drifted badly in 2010 when Jonathan Duhamel won.

For the 2011 WSOP, long time production partner Poker 411 was replaced by Poker PROductions, who produce many of the made for TV poker shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark. A more professional and sophisticated featured table was created with “the mothership” design. New announcers and 30 min. delayed live ESPN2 and ESPN3.com streaming coverage was initiated to give more immediate coverage and help “get younger.” On ESPN, regular coverage will be limited to the $50k Player’s Championship and expanded coverage of the Main Event to focus on the two marquee events with the greatest concentration of big names, celebrity and drama.

Examining the final 14 players in the Main Event, there are five players from USA, and one each from the Ukraine, Ireland, Costa Rica, Germany, S.Africa, United Kingdom, Czech, Canada and Belize. The one positive might be that the international draw and appeal could increase, but none of those players are established stars in their respective countries yet.

Given the choice, every fan would construct their own ideal final table made up of their favorite players. I know mine would include many of my poker pro friends in the poker world. But in a desire to appeal to the widest demographic, I feel strongly that televised poker and thus the overall image in the general public’s eye will continue to struggle when established charismatic stars don’t make the final table of our greatest tournament.

Each day I wake up and write about poker pros toiling long hours at the World Series of Poker or some poker tournament around the world. But that isn’t reality for most of you reading this. We don’t travel the world playing live poker for hundreds of thousands of dollars. At least I don’t. I’m an amateur U.S.-based internet poker player. I’ve always been that and I like it that way. I don’t want playing poker to take over my life, nor do I want it to disappear completely like it has for the last ten weeks.

I work for a living (if you can call writing all day about poker a living) and I enjoy playing online poker at my convenience when I find some down time. I enjoy the flexibility to play at micro-limits or whatever my online bankroll allows (i.e using responsible bankroll management so I never have to re-deposit). I like wearing what I want, making whatever gesture I want, listening to whatever music I like, while eating or drinking what I like as I play. I don’t want to drive to a casino, deal with people and staff I don’t want to deal with, and play slow live poker. I get my socializing in away from the poker table where I don’t feel the added pressure of winning or losing money to strangers or especially to my friends.

On Friday, I learned that the latest and most positive sounding attempt to return me to playing online poker again was initiated. Rep. Barton (R-Tex.) introduced the Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection, and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2011. The number that jumped out at me and created the inspiration for this blog was Barton’s call for a 180 day period, once signed by the president, for the three government agencies (i.e. Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of the Treasury, and Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) tasked with regulating and enforcing federal gambling policy to complete their amendments and prescribe final regulations before licensing begins. So while I understand that passing the bill through congress and having it signed by the president could take 6 weeks, 6 months or never happen at all, if/when it’s passed the soonest that new poker sites could be licensed would be 180 days later.

Now let’s take that 180 days figure and convert it into degrees. Starting from the point on a metaphorical “circle of your ability to play online poker”, you navigate exactly half-way around the circle to the opposite side of the circle. You are now back on the same plane (i.e. being able to play poker) but your perspective and relative position has change dramatically. That is the metaphor I am creating to describe the new environment that U.S. online poker player will find ourselves.

While, if successful, the Barton bill will make online poker fully legal, licensed and regulated, it will not be the same online poker that we’ve known over the last few years. According to the bill in its present draft status, which will likely see some revisions as it makes its way through Congress, here are some of the changes to which we will need to adjust.

1. Online poker will no longer be a global game - Although not explicitly banned as in the Reid Bill, it is presumed that in order to pass Congress U.S. poker players will be segregated from the former fairly open world pool of players that we’ve become accustomed to playing. No longer will there be country flags flying amongst our tournament and cash game opponents. Our competition will be focused on domestic opponents exclusively, missing out on the richness of style and experience that comes with playing against players from across the globe.

2. Individual states can opt out - This will open up a whole new battleground where each of the 50 states must decide for themselves if online poker is to be allowed for their residents. States like Washington who have already made it illegal may maintain that stance despite the new legislative environment. Individual state populations will have to wrestle with the issue, although I suspect that federal regulation and the opportunity for increased revenue possibilities will sway most states if state’s concerns are managed.

3. Cheating opportunities should be lessened - While this is an area that hasn’t yet been defined closely, the goal is to create an industry wide higher threshold of what constitutes cheating. The plan is to incorporate significant fines for violators with the goal to remove issues of bots and collusion. Issues like HUD’s, special poker software, data-mining and tracking software aren’t explicitly detailed in the legislation yet. A higher standard to combat cheating would be a big positive restoring confidence to many fearful and concerned players, but there are still many gray areas that need to be addressed to fully remove the specter of cheating from online poker.

4. Big established gaming companies will own and run the new sites - Gone are the days of unknown poker rooms, skins, and start ups with an unproven history offering online poker. The initial licensed poker sites will be run by large gaming entities that are already well established in the U.S. (i.e. Caesars, MGM etc.). After the first two/three years, the requirements for licensing can be amended to allow for smaller or less established entities to be licensed. While the creativity, innovation and flexibility coming from these larger corporations creating poker sites might be less than we’ve come to expect, their bigger size and financial stability along with greater overall safety and security should be a boon to all players.

5. No one under 21 can play online poker - Online poker has always been fueled by a youthful core of under 21-year-old players, who some might argue have been most adept at taking advantage of the online dynamics like speed, dexterity, concentration and stamina involved in many hours of mass tabling online. Many of today’s most successful poker players honed their skills and developed their games well before their 21st birthday. At this point, I’m not sure how effectively the new regulations will be able to enforce the minimum age of 21 provision, but there are already specifications in the bill that when caught, underage players would not be able to collect any winning and yet be responsible for any losses. If effectively blocked, removing all players under 21 from the player pool could significantly affect current play and damage prospects for developing future U.S. talent on a similar pattern as has been in place since the Moneymaker effect.

6. Problem gambler self-exclusion strengthened - For the minority of players that have trouble controlling their play, the bill will allow players to self-exclude themselves for various time periods, going so far as to create a master list for those who choose that would excluded them from all licensed sites at once.

7. More American gamblers and players playing poker - As the only legislated and regulated form of online gambling, poker should get a large boost from all types of American gamblers who will look to avoid tougher policing of other forms of online gambling while embracing the heavily promoted new “sport of gamblers.”. Once given Federal permission and support, much as happened with state lotteries, poker will become more socially accepted and heavily promoted and marketed to the general public which should lead to a broader range of U.S. players to embrace the game.

8. No child support delinquents - People who owe money for child support would not be allowed to play online poker on licensed sites. Similar to underage players if they did manage to play, they would be responsible for any losses but would not be allowed to collect any winnings if caught.

9. No credit cards to be used for funding accounts - The bill, as presently written, would explicitly ban the acceptance of credit card payments by licensed online poker sites. It would further ban the licensed poker sites from accepting deposits from a payment processor that accepts credit card payments. Protecting the possibility of poker players funding accounts with money they don’t already own is a big priority for supporters of UIGEA. It will have some limiting effects, but in the end it should only encourage other funding options like direct deposit, Paypal, and possibly debit cards to be prioritized and developed.

Without a doubt, the player pool and dynamics of the newly legislated and regulated U.S. online poker environment will be different than what we have become accustomed to over the last few years. Using my overly simplistic metaphor, I am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to shift 180 degrees in 180 days to the new poker world.

Rep. Joe Barton, playing the part of a confident Washington politician well in drumming up optimism in the press and poker community has indicated that if he can get his online poker bill to a vote, it will pass.

“I think this bill is going to benefit from a lot of spade-work that’s been done the past two or three Congresses,” said Barton, a senior member of the House’s energy and commerce committee. He explained that the bill has 11 co-sponsors including seven Democrats.

“We’re going to try to get a bill on the president’s desk in this Congress,” Barton said.

As Rep. Anthony Weiner’s resignation last week demonstrated for the umpteenth time, public individuals are not typically brought down by their misdeeds, but rather their attempts to deny and cover up for their misdeeds. Pretty much everyone accepts that we are fallible beings prone to poor judgment and moments of weakness in our lives. But the public is very unforgiving of those who instead of accepting culpability with humility and honesty, chooses to deny, lie and obfuscate. In those moments, public ire is agitated to such a point where we lose the ability to forgive the hypocrisy.

Much like Rep. Weiner’s fall from grace, Full Tilt Poker (FTP) is falling in a similar pattern in the poker world. FTP has exhibited a woeful public relations campaign since the Black Friday indictments of April 15th. A once proud company that had a pretty stellar reputation amongst the public and its customers is being humbled by regular news of prior misdeeds while being unable to responsibly return U.S. player funds reputed to be between $100-$150 million. Instead of regularly delivering honest assessments of its status, it is playing the defensive, misleading and irregular communications game meant to buy time and placate the public until it can sort out some solution to its mess. If not for the massive attention that the World Series of Poker garners each year, FTP would be continuing to receive a pounding in the poker media. PokerStars, on the other hand, faced their obligations to U.S. players in two weeks. Two months later Full Tilt Poker appears as confused as ever in how to manage their public relations or how to emerge from their quagmire. It’s a truly sad story for a once proud company.

As an amateur poker player, when I made my move to Full Tilt Poker several years ago, the online poker room had everything I was looking for. FTP had a good volume of players and options of games to play. They innovated new games and features; my favorite being Rush. They showcased the biggest cash games online that I enjoyed railing. Their large stable of sponsored pros was very likable. As a casual player who simply wanted to grow my online bankroll, I had little reason to test their reputed lethargic customer service, one of their few negative public reputations. I couldn’t have been much happier or satisfied. They seemed like a reliable, reputable, and ambitious company that took a calculated risk to keep serving U.S. players post UIGEA.

To most of us, it appeared that Full Tilt Poker had a plan. Full Tilt Poker was a site purported to be owned and run by poker players for poker players, right? Isn’t that what all good poker players have? A plan for their hand, thought out in advance and ready to handle any deviations as they came. FTP understood that they were taking calculated risk in continuing to serve the U.S. market and they had made business decisions accordingly, right?

Sadly, this was not the case.

As a proper detailed recap of all Full Tilt Poker’s moves and their rumored misdeeds since April 15th would make a massive blog, I’ll try to briefly restate some of the biggest issues that have come to light:

- Full Tilt Poker’s initial public statement set the tone for all that was to follow. It was a concerning sign that they expressed sadness and surprise at the indictment when they had to have seen it coming at some point. They also claimed to have been “always abiding by the law.”

- Ray Bitar and Nelson Burtnick were the only owners indicted, although much speculation has gone into who the other owners and responsible parties must be; specifically high profile poker players like Lederer, Ivey, Ferguson, Seidel, Juanda and Bloch.

- The April 15th DOJ indictment indicated FTP engaged in massive bank fraud; by miscoding transactions, bribing bank officials, purchasing a bank and generally attempting to avoiding UIGEA sanctions.

- FTP press releases since April 15th have been few and far between to the media or directly to their customers. Their main and irregular source of information has been the FTPDoug updates on 2p2. Even the FTPDoug account’s identity has been called into question, further highlighting the opaque methods that FTP is using to communicate to part of the public. Instead of a Doug, it is now assumed that communications are coming from FTP spokesperson Michelle Clayborne.

- FTP has made infrequent updates on the FTP that while sounding on the surface like progress was being made, simply were administrative steps of calculating and converting bonuses, T$, FPP’s and rakeback into as yet untouchable player accounts. No communicated on the larger issue of return of player funds has been communicated.

- FTP took full advantage of Irish-based Alderney Gaming commission’s regulations allowing commingling of player and operational funds. This commingling has created a massive unresolved issue of what were player funds or FTP operational funds amongst the many DOJ seized bank accounts.

- Within Bradley Franzen’s guilty plea and cooperation with the DOJ was acknowledgment that roughly $60 million had been forwarded to player’s accounts by FTP which they were unable to collect from player’s bank accounts/deposits.

- Phil Ivey, FTP’s most visible pro, pulled out of the entire World Series of Poker while initiating a $150 million lawsuit against FTP for breaching their contract by not indicating that FTP had been informed previously by the DOJ that it was engaging in illegal activity. Ivey wants release from his non compete contract provision and relief for damages to his reputation and future opportunities.

- Despite taking weeks and months to respond to customers and the public, FTP fired off a quick acerbic response to Phil Ivey’s $150 million lawsuit that was posted in the middle of the night and began “Contrary to his sanctimonious public statements, Phil Ivey’s meritless lawsuit is about helping just one player - himself.”

- Rumors from inside FTP indicated that high level ownership rejected the notion of playing players at the expense of owners.

- At the WSOP, tension, debate and vitriol has followed the issue of red pros wearing Full Tilt patches. Many Red pros have opted not to wear patches rather than face the wrath or attention. Some Team Full Tilt and select other pros have worn them. All have been urged not to discuss Full Tilt publicly by FTP. One example, Brandon Adams, indicated he would keep wearing his patch out of loyalty and fear of what might happen if Full Tilt dissolves. He indicated that we should give time for FTP to overcome the amateurish management mistakes and government seizures

- Rumors surfaced; multi-accounting amongst the top pros like Benyamine, Antonius, and Guy Laliberte was more prevalent that originally feared, Full Tilt pocketed instead of redistributing $300k in funds seized from a player accused of having his account ghosted, some prominent players borrowed (i.e. had accounts “topped off”) significant sums in the millions and losing thus requiring a messy result, 100% rakeback accounts being sold for up to $50k.

- Individuals within FTP indicated that they had one large Bank of Ireland company account released that held more than $30 million. It was not one of the DOJ seized accounts, but had been frozen out of concern that it might be related.

- More recently individual poker pros have spotted Ray Bitar, Chris Ferguson, and Howard Lederer in Las Vegas, eating around town late at night but not having any public appearances, playing the WSOP, or making any statements.

- Old FTP lawsuits have resurfaced; Jason “JDN” Newitt’s wrongful termination and seized ownership lawsuit and Clonie Gowen’s lawsuit was reinstated where she accused FTP of reneging on 1% ownership she was orally given (rumors of that offer being given while she was dating Chris Ferguson).

The Full Tilt Poker saga continues with no end in sight. The last public statement from FTP indicated “We still do not have a specific time frame for this. There has been, and remains, no bigger priority than getting US players paid as soon as possible, and we have been working around the clock to get this done.” They are attempting to raise capital, but rumor has it have rejected offers that would have given up control of the company to outside investors.

Full Tilt Poker’s sole acknowledgement of their failings stated “we understand — and have always understood — the effect that our brief statements have had not only on our customers, but also on our reputation. It has not been easy to stay silent and watch the damage being done to our company brand and personal reputations, but we need to be mindful of the complicated and serious legal issues raised in the pending cases.”

Full Tilt Poker could have chosen a different path. A path of clarity and transparency. They could have communicated regularly and honestly with their customers and the public. They could have owned up to their mistakes, mismanagement, and misdeeds. But just as Rep. Weiner and countless public figures and companies have done before them, they have dug a bigger hole for themselves. They have misled and delayed. They have hidden behind the legalese.

Although the charges by the U.S. DOJ were very serious and substantive in nature, it could be argued that the response by Full Tilt Poker over the last couple months has devalued the company even more so. In the face of crisis, Full Tilt Poker has been exposed as a poorly run company that didn’t plan well for what many have could have predicted was in their future. The damage to their reputation amongst players around the world is even greater than the loss of 39% of their player traffic. Full Tilt’s lack of a reasonable plan for their hand has cost U.S. players significantly. Whether Full Tilt Poker can survive their mismanagement has yet to be seen.

Despite the negative circumstances surrounding Full Tilt Poker and the return of U.S. player funds, there is one new ray of hope that may occur as early as this week. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) could introduce legislation through the more favorable House Energy and Commerce Committee, that would legalize online poker and create a federal regulatory body to oversee future U.S. poker sites. He has the support of the AGA, PPA and some powerful politicians who previously were against poker legislation. Momentum is building that could finally put the wheels in motion to create an regulated environment where U.S. poker players will be able to play online poker without the fear of a company like Full Tilt poker misplaying their hand so badly.

Can you think of any significant poker forum that hasn’t had a very popular thread that features “hot girls of poker?” The appeal is completely understandable. Guys make up the vast majority of poker players, online and live. They invest tremendous amounts of time into the game amongst other similarly consumed and competitive guys. Who doesn’t appreciate seeing pictures of some lovely girls and fantasizing a bit.

It’s very apparent that sex sells. The poker world is rife with examples of poker rooms using lovely young women to help promote their brands. Some try to do it subtly, others throw away any pretenses as this video demonstrates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-O8A0sGTos

Sites like WickedChopsPoker have built their entire identity around capitalizing on the attractiveness of women to promote their poker news and perspective.

Being older, married and with a newly turned 14 year old daughter, I try to temper my enthusiasm for such blatant objectification. But I won’t deny the strong appeal of appreciating the opposite sex.

Roughly eight months ago, I began the task of developing a poker section from scratch for a thriving gaming site. I contribute poker strategy, news, player profiles, blogs and a forum. I waited for six months before I began our “hot girls of poker” forum post for several reasons.

1) I wanted to demonstrate that poker has a serious informational foundation that isn’t to be trivialized if you want to play the game profitably.

2) I didn’t want to take the easy route of throwing up the same sensationalizing pics of the same 25 women that are shown on every other forum.

3) When I got around to creating our “hot girls of poker” I wanted it to be different from any that had come before.

I wanted our “hot girls of poker” to celebrate the beauty of women in poker. That beauty comes in many forms; young and old, any ethnicity, size or shape. Contributions towards poker beauty can come from all areas of the poker world; from poker pro to poker amateur, poker model/hostess to poker reporter/insider. Any woman who contributes to the entirety of the poker world we all enjoy is eligible.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been researching women in poker to the point where we have 220 women represented from all over the poker world. The forum post is constantly growing as I find time on top of my other primary responsibilities, but I would assert that it is the most diverse collection of “hot girls of poker” found anywhere in one concentrated format. One thing impressed me as I dug further and further, that for every beautiful woman that has been heavily promoted within the industry, there is one or more who is equally or more beautiful who chooses to play the game without the same attention.

Each “hot girl of poker” contributes her smile, her wit, and yes her curves to making poker a more beautiful place. In a cutthroat game where there is little mercy for the loser which makes up many more of us than the winners, there is solace in appreciating the beauty around us.

Enjoy the PICS

Here is one pic (ty BJNemeth) from last night at Maria Ho’s NikkiBeach party celebration of her WSOP 2nd place $540k finish with lots of her female poker friends. Most of these women are featured in the thread.

Yesterday, seeing the Twitter picture that Daniel Negreanu posted of his six previous World Series of Poker bracelets got me to thinking about the value of the coveted WSOP bracelet. So many poker players dream of winning a WSOP bracelet, often elevating its worth above the prize money won. Why do they do so?

Determining the value of anything is not an easy subject. How do you attribute a monetary worth to something? One needs to ask many questions to arrive at its worth. How rare is it? How important? How special? How useful is it? Lastly, how important it is to your values as a person?

How rare is it?

Since 1976 a bracelet has been awarded to the winner of every sanctioned WSOP event. That first year eight bracelets were awarded, including to Doyle Brunson who won two that year including the main event. At the time he almost forgot to collect them as he considered them nearly worthless in comparison to the prize money.

In 1990, there were just 14 bracelet events.

By 2000, that number increased to 24.

By 2005, that number was up to 45.

In 2010, there were 57 bracelets awarded in Las Vegas and four at the World Series of Poker Europe.

For this year’s WSOP, there will be 58 bracelet events, with six more at the World Series of Poker Europe.

Roughly 800 WSOP bracelets have been won over the last 35 years.

How important is it?

The World Series of Poker has been the world’s top poker tournament series for decades. It is considered the most prestigious, especially the $10,000 Main Event.

For most poker pros, the WSOP bracelet symbolizes what they strive for in poker; success, victory, glory, and validation.

For experienced poker pros, the question isn’t whether you have won a bracelet but how many that determines your success. We all know the top bracelet winners…

Bracelets Player
11 Phil Hellmuth
10 Johnny Chan
10 Doyle Brunson
9 Johnny Moss
8 Erik Seidel
8 Phil Ivey

It’s impossible to overstate the value of a World Series of Poker gold bracelet to anyone who takes the game seriously,” stated former World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack “It is the equivalent of winning the Stanley Cup in hockey or the Lombardi Trophy in football.

How special is it?

The materials used in making the bracelet have mainly been gold with some other metals and jewels to accent it. Starting from the first bracelet in 1976 that cost roughly $500 and looked like gold nuggets kind of hammered flat, WSOP bracelet has seen many versions over the years. Special attention is given to the Main Event bracelet to distinguish its important, often adding many small diamonds.

In an economic sense, supply and demand are the classic intersecting economic indices that help us determine value. But there haven’t been many WSOP bracelets put on the market and the few that have sold for a few thousand dollars at most. The one notable case of a Main Event winner selling their bracelet had 2008 WSOP Main Event winner Peter Eastgate donate the winning bid of $147,500 to charity after he retired briefly and saw little personal value for the bracelet.

How useful is it?

Frankly, not very. It is rare for any poker player to wear their bracelet in public, except for the occasional promotional event or special poker tournament where they want to get noticed or send an intimidating message to opponents. The bracelets typically aren’t considered fashionable as an everyday jewelry item, and seen as gaudy by many. So the reality is the bracelets are either kept away for safe-keeping or occasionally on display as a sign of prior achievement.

How important it is to your values as a person?

If you talk to many established long time poker pros, winning a WSOP bracelet is prized above all else. The WSOP bracelets give each player a lasting legacy. They have climbed the heights that poker provides and claimed the prize. Whereas money won and lost can be tough to compare, bracelets won serve as a strong measuring stick. Winning multiple bracelets confirms your strength as a player, whereas winning just one bracelet ever may be diminished as you could luckbox your way to a lone victory.

Each player and the poker community as a whole values WSOP bracelets differently. Smaller buy-in events bracelets (e.g. $1k-$1,500) may be valued less than big buy in events. There is a different view of large No Limit Hold’em events versus smaller field non-NLHE events. But without a doubt, the Main Event bracelet holds the greatest prestige of all.

When Steve Lipscomb, founder of the WPT, introduced bracelets for WPT winners modeled after the success of the WSOP bracelet, he said “the championship bracelet has become synonymous with poker as a symbol of achievement and respect.”

Many poker players struggle for meaning when faced solely with playing a card game that involves just winning and losing money. The value of money becomes diminished and there lacks any long lasting legacy to consider. Add in the prospect of a WSOP bracelet, with the accompanying fame and glory and suddenly the poker player is inspired. The WSOP bracelet acts as a symbolic form of validation for each poker player’s hard work and struggles.

Suitably inspired? Go out and win one this summer!

In the wake of the Black Friday indictments, we’ve heard several poker rooms indicate that they are closing off access to new American players. On Monday, Hero Poker became the latest poker room to announce it, while adding in similar fashion to the other poker rooms that they will continue to serve existing U.S. players. What they seem to be evoking is that these earlier players are essentially “grandfathered in.” Although I’m not a lawyer, this has never made any sense to me. Either it’s legal and prudent to serve American players or it’s not. How are long standing players any different than new sign ups? Either you shun all U.S. players or you take your chances much as the Merge network has and serve everyone.

The legal concept and history of being “grandfathered in” has a uniquely American angle. According to Wikipedia, it originated in the 1890’s as the Southern United States tried to prevent blacks, Mexican Americans and certain whites from voting by making voter registration available to those who had eligible grandfathers. The original grandfather clauses were eventually ruled unconstitutional. Despite the pejorative and manipulative origins the “grandfathered in” concept grew in popularity as a vehicle to create a cutoff date for new action to be implemented which allowed those prior adherents access but denied all future participants. There are many state and federal law implementations (e.g.  weapons ban, drinking age, interstate highway act, FCC laws etc.) that have utilized a “grandfathered in” date into their legislation.

In the sports world, there are many instances of grandfathered new regulations:

1. In 2004, the NFL outlawed the one-bar facemask but allowed existing users to continue to wear them.
2. In 2006, NASCAR passed a rule that required teams to field no more than four cars. Since Roush Racing had five cars, they could continue to field five cars until the end of 2009.
3. The National Hot Rod Association is enforcing a grandfather clause banning energy drink sponsors from entering the sport if they were not sponsoring cars as of April 24, 2008, pursuant to the five-year extension of its sponsorship with Coca-Cola, which is changing the title sponsorship from Powerade to Full Throttle Energy Drink.
4. Major League Baseball rule 1.16 requires players who were not in the major leagues before 1983 to wear a batting helmet with at least one earflap. The last player to wear a flapless helmet was the Florida Marlins’ Tim Raines in 2002 (career began in 1979).

It is natural in all areas of business that long standing customers of a service request or demand that they get “grandfathered in” to a certain pricing or service packages out of loyalty when the terms changed.

I don’t understand why U.S. facing poker rooms are utilizing a similar approach to treat long standing poker players differently than new sign ups due to increasing pressure from the U.S. authorities, I think it’s a faulty approach that won’t bear fruit. Sure the poker rooms don’t want to lose loyal long standing customers, but the hope that by creating an arbitrary cutoff date and shutting out all future U.S. players will mitigate their legal exposure is a faulty one in my opinion.

Whereas there was significant speculation that U.S. authorities were only targeting the largest poker rooms, today’s Maryland indictments of U.S. facing sportsbooks and poker rooms on the much smaller Yatahay network indicates that no one is free from investigation.

The “grandfathered in” concept may be popular and have considerable history in the U.S., but I don’t feel it is applicable in any way nor make any sense for the remaining U.S. facing poker rooms.

People I encounter naturally ask what I do. To some I say I’m a writer. To some I say I’m a reporter. To others I say I manage some websites.  It would be more accurate to say I develop poker content for several websites, but that always requires further explanation.

The writer evokes the romantic scenario of being relatively broke but sharing their their creative musings for the love of it. The reporter portrays the practical journalism that fills our newspapers, airwaves and online. Managing websites seems to confuse more than clarify. In my case, I create a mix of news articles, strategy pieces, player profiles, interviews and blogs on poker related topics while fostering community.

Within that range of writing, I definitely enjoy the more creative work. On the whole, I find the most interesting and compelling poker content involves opinion and analysis. But much of what I enjoy deviates from strict reporting of news. Writing another Day 2 report from some random tournament is rarely interesting or creative, but it probably qualifies as one of the purest forms of poker news. The reality is that by mainstream traditional news media standards, it is almost a misnomer to call much of what is presented at poker news sites as news. If you were to remove anything that contained opinion, promotion, commentary, or advertisement, there would be very little left.

There is a significant tension at poker news sites in determining what they should present and report. I’ll give a couple examples to illustrate this point. Recently we learned of the 18 year-old Portuguese Prodigy Jose “Girah” Macedo. Once the public learned of his success on poker forums, he made the podcast rounds to share his compelling success story which was well received. Soon after he became a sponsored Lock Poker pro. He belatedly participated in their recent Lock Poker Pro Challenge promotion.

Items that came out:

News #1 - Macedo wins Lock Poker Challenge with late surge (from Lock Poker)
News #2 - Macedo disqualified from Lock Poker Challenge for multi-accounting (from Lock Poker)
News #3 - Macedo accepts responsibility saying he earned the win, but his backer played on his account one night so he accepts his disqualification (from Macedo blog).
News #4 - Macedo is accused of possible chip dumping and collusion. Lock poker player feels Macedo’s playing should be questioned as he won the contest with late month activity, by playing high stakes games that almost never run on Lock and with large wins against two new players that appeared out of seeming nowhere, one being Portuguese. (Posted on a couple of poker forums by a reputed regular Lock Poker player)

Which of these stories represents the true news? Which of those stories is newsworthy and worth sharing? At different points in time, each may tell a valuable side of the story or may be a complete falsehood. Is it up to the writer or the reader to decide which is more believable and worthy? Is the writer simply to pass along the information that is presented to them without questioning?

A similar tension can be found in the regular conflicting news associated with UB/AP since Black Friday. There are multiple individual sources presenting information that portrays UB/AP as corrupt, likely to not return player money, and in turmoil and near collapse, while official press releases from UB/AP paint a reasoned cheery portrayal of corporate events in response to Black Friday.

Should a companies press release be more or less scrutinized than that of an independent critic or observer? Are we to share all perspectives and allow time and further discovery determine the ultimate truth? Is it irresponsible to air items that are more than likely to be untrue?

The tension I see in the “poker news” world is one reason I don’t call myself a poker journalist. I have yet to find in the poker news world where the selection of what stories to cover and their resulting slant isn’t influenced by internal and external business relationship considerations.

Thankfully at the sites I work with I have reasonable freedom within a certain “business framework” to prepare a range of poker content. I try to create poker content that is interesting and educational, entertaining and informative. My goal is to share more than just news, but different perspectives. Even in the news business, it’s tough to have the answer. So I see value in sharing the different perspectives and allowing the reader to sift through them to determine what rings true.