Monday, June 22, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
A quick note–the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event is moving to the ESPN Feature Table, and so that’s where I’m going. And when the $1,500 No-Limit Hold-Em event moves to the secondary feature table I’ll bop over there as well. As you might expect I won’t be carrying my laptop with me, and even if that was practical it wouldn’t be permissable because only PokerNews’ folks are allowed to have laptops right there on the floor.
So I will be updating as best I can via Twitter, posting chip counts and notes and photos of rather middling quality. I’ll sprint back to my computer whenever possible, but chances are it won’t often be possible. And you should be following along with us on Twitter anyway because I do post updates there and, anyway, it’s was the cool kids are doing. So tweet along with me and let’s see if Matt Graham and Brandon Cantu can take down a brace of bracelets.
Tags: 2009 twitter, 2009 world series of poker, Brandon Cantu, Matt Graham, poker twitter, twitter wsop, ub twitter, ultimatebet twitter, world series of poker, WSOP, wsop final table twitter updates, wsop twitter, wsop twitter updates
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Saturday, May 16, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
The most obvious difference between live and online poker is that when you play online you ain’t physically sitting at a table with other people. And that can be a good thing–say, when someone you’re playing with is violently ill. Last year at the WSOP I was sitting at a low-limit table a few days before the Main Event when a gent who looked like he hadn’t slept in a week sat down. His salt-and-pepper hair was slick with sweat, his flannel shirt had various stains of indeterminate origin, and his watery eyes were bloodshot.
Now someone looking like that really isn’t THAT unusual for a Vegas cardroom, especially in July when a few minutes under the desert sun would leave Pierce Brosnan looking disheveled. What was unusual was the guy constantly coughing and hacking into a hankercheif he kept pulling out of his front pocket. Polite as it might’ve been to use that disgusting strip of cloth, I don’t think the Center for Disease Control considers a hanky an acceptable way to prevent the spread of germs.
Especially as the guy kept reaching for chips with fingers that had to be swimming with bacteria and virus particles. You never see a sick guy at the poker table playing tight, do you? No, they’re the ones raising every hand, tossing clusters of droplet-spattered chips into the pot to mix with everyone else’s checks. And that’s what this guy was doing, raising and re-raising almost as much as he was gobbing into his hankercheif. It took me about a minute to realize that I wasn’t sitting at a poker table so much as a felt-lined Petri dish. I racked up, bid my tablemates good night, and ran to the bathroom to wash my hands. Up to the elbows.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, last night was UltimateBet’s Follow Friday Freeroll–if you aren’t on Twitter, and don’t know what Follow Friday is, then it’s time to emerge from the cave and get with the times! Twitter has been the big thing in social media for the last month or so and last night was the first freeroll tournament for the folks following UltimateBet on Twitter. And a stunning 564 players took the virtual felt last night, myself included. Even though I’ve been battling the flu for the last two days. To say that I couldn’t have played last night had it been a live tournament is a gross understatement–I’ve been so sick that getting off the couch to get a glass of water seemed a more difficult task that rowing across the Atlantic.
But I was able to roll over on my side and log on last night to play. It’s hard to play inspired, aggressive poker when you want to die, but I did manage to execute one brilliant bluff (making a pot-sized bet on the river with four clubs on the board and nary a club in my hand) before I was sent to the rail in 76th place. I had pocket 7s, DOCGB2000 held A-Q, and the flop came K-J-10. It’s never a good thing when your tournament life hangs in the balance and the other guy flops the nuts, and that was especially so for me last night.
After getting bounced I checked the leaderboard and saw that WHOJEDI was at the top. I knew that nickname, as it belongs to poker journalist Jay Newnum who, as it turns out, wrote an article a month or so ago about how Twitter is changing how poker is covered. He also maintains a list of poker players/personalities/writers on Twitter that would no doubt be of interest to poker fans. I confirmed that this was indeed Jay (through Twitter, natch) and followed along to see if he might be a most-appropriate champion for our initial Follow Friday Freeroll.
Alas, it was not to be, and it was a cruel hand that derailed his chances. After winning a huge pot with pocket Kings against ACTION_JON’s pocket Queens, Jay was all-in with Ah-Kh to DRAWZ1977′S Ad-Kc. A split pot, right? Divvy it up and let’s get back to it. Well, no…
Ugh, the ‘ol runner-runner club flush. That left WHOJEDI will just a few thousand chips and he eventually went out in 15th place–but in the money. Attrition tooks it’s toll and before too long we’d set our final table:
As you can see several of the players were talking about Twittering the fact that they’d made the final table–which is exactly as it should be. The field was thinned down to three players and it looked like KIBLOUCHA would go out in third after he flopped a set of sevens…when DEFEDOG1 flopped a set of Kings. That left KIBLOUCHA with just 50,000 or so but he battled back from the brink and after DEFEDOG1 took out DJFOG86 when the latter’s straight and flush draws didn’t connect after the money went in, we were heads up. And it didn’t take the final two long to discuss making a deal, which seemed an agreeable way to end the evening’s festivities.
So now our beloved readers can follow us on the UB Blog and on Twitter and keep up to date on news and promotions and freerolls. And we’ll be posting even more fantabulous content once the World Series of Poker kicks off in a bit more than a week.
Tags: poker freerolls, poker twitter, Twitter, ub, ub freerolls, ub twitter, ultimatebet, ultimatebet freerolls, ultimatebet twitter
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Sunday, April 5, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Once up a time (ten years ago, say) if you wanted to publish an article or column or amusing anecdote you needed…a publisher. Someone who would read your article/column/anecdote and shout, “Out of the tens of thousands of unsolicited submissions I’ve received this month, THIS will be the one to see the light of day!”
Of course the scenario described above is a joke–publishers NEVER printed unsolicited manuscripts! They only took pieces submitted by an agent, so before you could get something published you needed to get an agent first. And how does one get an agent? By being a successful, published author. You see the Catch-22, yes? You see that getting your brilliant prose in front of the masses was a rather daunting task?
But those days are long gone, thanks to the internet. These days you don’t need to find a publisher because with a few keystrokes you can become a publisher yourself. Anyone can start a blog, and from things I’ve read (online, of course) it seems that just about everyone HAS started a blog. There are approximately eleventy jillion blogs out there (statistics may be fabricated) and while 99.9997% are either pure spam or are never updated or are strangely concerned with the coming hegemony of the Mole Men, there are still millions of blogs out there chock-full of interesting and lively writing, about just about every subject under the sun. Even poker (pointing to myself and coughing quietly). Indeed, both Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth prominently feature their blogs on their recently-relaunched websites.
If you’re a poker fan you’ve no doubt read scores of blogs, especially when a big tournament is running and you’re trying to keep up with the action. Go to any major event and you’ll find dozens of writers posting hand histories and writing up interviews and uploading photos of the action. And of course many of the players themselves post to their own blogs. This all gives the poker fan an incredibly rich and diverse media smorgasbord to pick and choose from.
But this is the internet, where changes in the status quo occur every fifteen minutes. Blogs aren’t going away, heaven forbid, but they’re now jostling with different social media platforms for a share of our limited attention span. I’m sure you’re heard of Facebook, I’m sure you’re on Facebook, I’m sure you’ve been friended by former high-school classmates who wouldn’t even look at you back in the day. Facebook is an enjoyable time-sink that no doubt has contributed to the global economic meltdown, what with everyone taking quizzes about “Which Sex in the City Star Are You??” instead of doing their goddam jobs.
But while my rampant paranoia leads me to blame Facebook for crippling my 401(k), I fear that the advent of Twitter may signal the end of Western Civilization. In case you’ve been lucky enough to be living in a cave the last year or so, Twitter is an application that lets you broadcast messages that are up to 140 characters long. They say that brevity is the soul of wit, and it is possible to be witty in just 140 characters. But being an old fuddy-duddy (and a blogger) I hope that people don’t drift away from reading stuff like, y’know, sentences. And paragraphs. I like me a nice juicy paragraph.
On Twitter you read other folks’ messages by “following” them, and they can read your message by following you. It’s kinda like sending text messages, except that instead of having to pick and choose who to send it to it’s broadcast to all of your followers. And you can embed links in your tweets, post photos, etc.
Twitter is diabolically addictive. And EVERYBODY is doing it. Shaquille O’Neal has built up a massive following, going so far as to tweet his location so fans could meet up with him at a Phoenix diner. Demi Moore found herself in a difficult situation when one of her followers threatened suicide. Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villaneuva got in trouble for posting updates at halftime. Perhaps the most famous use of Twitter came when Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River, as a ferry passenger twitted “There’s a plane in the Hudson” and posted a picture of passengers evacuating the plane.
So what does all this have to do with poker? Well, poker players have embraced Twitter just like everyone else. Maybe even moreseo–go to a poker tournament and you constantly see players stepping away from the table to text and check email. Now these players will also be sending tweets out to their legions of followers. And as poker journalist Jay Newnum recently wrote, this is going to change how poker is covered, and followed. You won’t have to wait for an update to learn Phil Hellmuth is doing in the Main Event–he’ll be tweeting about his big hands and chip counts and bad beat stories.
Because Phil Hellmuth is on Twitter (of course), and so is Annie Duke and Tiffany Michelle and Liv Boeree and Adam “Roothlus” Levy and, gosh, just about everyone. In fact there’s a blog that continually updates its list of poker pros on Twitter. As the World Series of Poker draws closer I think that list is going to dramatically increase, as players realize there’s a massive audience out there anxious to hear from them directly. And players who aren’t famous can let the folks back home know how they’re doing, since they tend to fly under the poker media radar (especially early on).
I agree with Newnum that Twitter won’t replace tournament reporting, nor will Twitter do away with longer-form writing. It’s a communication tool, a unique and very valuable tool, and I’m very curious to see how Twitter changes the way people follow the 2009 WSOP. And I’ll be there, in the middle of it all, posting here on the UB blog and, I’m sure, on Twitter as well. Follow me, and we’ll see where Twitter takes us.
Tags: Annie Duke, annie duke twitter, Phil Hellmuth, phil hellmuth twitter, poker players on twitter, poker twitter, Twitter, twitter 2009 wsop, twitter poker tournaments, twitter wsop, ultimatebet, world series of poker, WSOP
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