Sunday, March 29, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Tens of millions of Americans play poker every year and so it comes as no surprise that the game fits nicely within our cultural mainstream. But with poker facing so many legal and political challenges the last few years it’s always good to be reminded that people play poker, people love poker, and people are fascinated by poker, across just about every demographic line you care to draw.
This past week The New Yorker featured an article by Alec Wilkinson about poker, one that focused primarily on Chris Ferguson but also discussed the UIGEA and the legal issues surrounding the game (you need to register to read the full article). That the pre-eminent literary magazine in the land published a positive article about poker doesn’t mean the UIGEA will repealed this afternoon (there are members of Congress who probably balk at reading so much as the back of a cereal box) but it adds to the groundswell of support poker has received in the media the last year or so.
The New Yorker has actually published a number of major articles about poker in the past, most notably two pieces by the English poet/critic A. Alvarez that he later expanded into The Biggest Game in Town, one of the leading works in the poker canon. If you haven’t read Alvarez’s articles, or The Biggest Game in Town, and you consider yourself a poker fan, shame on you.
Alvarez wrote those articles (and the book) in 1983. In 1994 he returned to World Series and wrote about fulfilling a lifelong dream–playing in the Main Event. These days it almost seems quaint that taking a seat in the Main Event would seem like such an ambitious gamble, but this was long before you had online qualifiers swelling the field into the thousands. That year there were 268 entrants and many of the players Alvarez writes about (Chan, Ungar, Hellmuth) are still well-known in the poker world today.
Alvarez wrote that article a bit less than fifteen years ago, a fact that hit me broadsides because reading that piece planted the seeds of my later love affair with the game. I actually clipped that article out of the magazine and kept it in a folder with other poker stories I came across over the years. And it was eight years later, in 2002, that I read an article that transformed my interest in poker into something akin to an obsession. Joseph Epstein reviewed Andy Bellin’s Poker Nation, Epstein first writing about his own experience playing poker while growing up in Chicago before turning to Bellin’s examination of underground New York card clubs and the current poker universe.
I devoured Poker Nation (several times, actually) and later that year something called the World Poker Tour debuted on the Travel Channel. As I watched the WPT from week-to-week I learned that thousands of folks were playing poker online, and as I considered dipping my toe into that vast aquarium some guy named Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event and $2.5 million. Poker may have suffered some legislative and political bad beats the last few years, but I think the perfect storm of the WPT, the advent of the digital world, and the Moneymaker Effect rather makes up for that. Should the UIGEA be repealed (and allegedly Barney Frank will be introducing just such a bill in early April) it might not usher in a new Golden Age of Poker…it might just help perpetuate the one we’re in right now. Five (or fifteen) years from now some budding poker player may read Wilkinson’s article and find all this UIGEA hullaballo rather silly. Let’s hope so.
Tags: a. alvarez, al alvarez, alec wilkinson, andy bellin, biggest game in town, Chris Ferguson, moneymaker effect, new yorker poker, poker nation, Poker Poker Poker, the new yorker, the new yorker poker, uigea, World Poker Tour
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Sunday, March 1, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Not so long ago you couldn’t turn on the TV without quickly coming across a poker show. Some of these were good (the World Poker Tour, ESPN’s World Series coverage), some were bad (Poker Royale: Battle of the Sexes, which is to my mind the Worst Show in the History of Mankind). The thing is just about EVERYONE had a poker show. I think at one point even the Food Network had a poker pilot in production.
And then, almost as quickly, poker seemed to vanish from the tube. The market was probably oversaturated for a time and the game’s popularity leveled after years of explosive growth. But new shows continued to debut–The Best Damn Poker Show, of course, and the canonical High Stakes Poker–and if you do some channel surfing tonight you might think we’ve flashed back to the halcyon days of 2004.
That’s because there’s a metric ton of pokery goodness on TV tonight, including two big debuts–Annie Duke begins weeks of ruthless boardroom battling on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, and High Stakes Poker makes it’s long-awaited return for it’s fifth season. ESPN is showing the final table of the World Series of Poker-Europe, and both GSN and FSN will be showing World Poker Tour events. If you’re confused about which shows will be airing when (and where), here are the listings, with the new episodes bolded:
6 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
7 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
8 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
9pm
NBC – Celebrity Apprentice
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – High Stakes Poker
10 pm
NBC – Celebrity Apprentice
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – World Poker Tour
11 pm
ESPN2 – WSOP Europe
GSN – World Poker Tour
FSN – World Poker Tour
12 midnight
GSN – High Stakes Poker
1 am
GSN – World Poker Tour
2 am
GSN – World Poker Tour
I’m almost giddy with excitement as High Stakes Poker is one of my favorite shows of all time, one that saw Gabe Kaplan retake his rightful place in American pop culture. I’m not much of a fanboy, I don’t get all giggly around the high and mighty, but in 2007 my buddy Craig was covering the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event and Kaplan was trying (and failing) to get a cocktail server’s attention. Craig asked Kaplan what he wanted and headed out of the Amazon Room to secure the desired bottle of Gatorade. Gabe tried to give Craig a tip but as a working journalist he declined. After he told the story I breathlessly asked “Did you grab the bottle when he finished??? Did you get it autographed??”
“You’re pathetic,” Craig said, disgusted.
And perhaps Craig is right. Perhaps. But I for one will not feel pathetic as I pop the corn and snuggle into my comfyiest chair to indulge in a night of non-stop poker programming.
Tags: annie duke celebrity apprentice, annie duke on the apprentice, Celebrity Apprentice, gabe kaplan, high stakes poker, poker royale worst show in history, the apprentice, World Poker Tour, world series of poker europe, world series of poker europe final table, WPT
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Saturday, February 7, 2009 - Phil Hellmuth
Plenty of history and prestige were at stake at the World Poker Tour’s no-limit Hold’em Championship at the Bellagio in December 2004, not to mention a first-place prize of $1.8 million dollars. On the third day of the five-day marathon tournament, the following hand came up between Player X (an amateur) and me.
Everyone had been randomly reshuffled to new tables at the $15,000 buy-in event, with 45 players remaining (out of 400 entrants). With the blinds (required bets) at $3,000-$6,000 and a $500 a man ante, Player X (with $164,500 in chips) opened for $15,000 in the 7-seat, and, sitting in the 3-seat, I looked down at K-K (holding $285,000 in chips).
What to do? Although I loved having pocket kings, I couldn’t decide how to play them. Should I “smooth call” (underbid) the bet and hope to extract a lot of chips from my opponent later on in the hand? Or should I re-raise the bet before the flop and give the amateur a chance to re-raise me?
On the one hand, smooth calling entailed merely calling the current $15,000 bet in order to disguise the strength of my hand and make it seem much weaker than it was. Later on in the hand, I would try to draw another $40,000 to $120,000 into the pot when everyone would assume my hand was weak. However, a re-raise before the flop would alert my opponent to the strength of my hand and likely cause him to fold before the flop. The benefit of the re-raise was that it might cause my opponent to move all-in with a hand like J-J, Q-Q, A-K, or worse; thus causing me to be a huge favorite for a ton of chips.
Finally, I chose an extremely safe play. I would make a huge re-raise before the flop for two reasons. First, I wanted to protect my hand from being beat (in case players with weak yet still potentially winning hands decide to wait for the extra cards given the relatively low stakes). Second, I wanted to simply move all-in for the rest of my chips on the flop, in the event Player X called the massive re-raise, and a non-ace flop hit (such as Q-9-4 or 2-2-7) — thus protecting my hand from losing one more time. So I raised the bet up to $80,000, making a relatively huge $65,000 re-raise into the $40,000 pot.
One minute later my opponent moved all-in for $164,500. “I call” I immediately announced and turned my K-K face up. My opponent’s face looked ashen as he showed me Ad-Jd (I was a now a 2.5-to-1 statistical favorite). Then the flop came down K-Q-J, and I was about to take the chip lead with $460,000 — the $340,000 in the pot plus the $120,000 I still had in my pile — when the turn card came in as a 10 for him to make straight (K-Q-J-10). I still thought that I would win the hand with a king, queen, jack, or 10, but alas, the last card was an eight.
Oh well, that’s poker!
RAISE OR FOLD
The benefit of re-raising with K-K before the flop is:
a) You take a big chance
b) Risky plays work well
c) You protect your hand from losing
d) All of the above
Answer: C
Tags: Bellagio, pocket kings, Poker Poker Poker, Poker Strategy, World Poker Tour, WPT
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