Hard-Boiled Poker

Just had a chance to read and enjoy Phil Galfond’s latest blog post, the first part of a kind of mini-memoir detailing his path to becoming a poker pro. He’s titled it “My Poker (+other) Story.”

If you’ve read Galfond’s blog before, you know he’s a thoughtful, smart guy and a good writer, too. Thus does it come as no surprise to see the discussion of his journey extend beyond the same-old-move-up-through-the-stakes tale so many other online grinders have told.

And really, it’s usually the “(+other)” stuff that makes any poker player’s story more interesting, isn’t it? More human.

I’ll just mention a few reflections I had as I read, then let you go check out the post yourself.

One was how easy it is for me to identify with Galfond, despite the fact that his achievements as a player obviously dwarf my own.

He talks about being obsessive, sort of an introvert (but still social), and intellectually curious. He mentions both friendships and family and makes it clear how important relationships with others are to him. And he also shows a well-founded appreciation of the need for balance between work (or pursuing one’s personal goals, such as in poker) and leisure.

All stuff I can understand and relate to, for sure. You, too, I’ll bet.

His post additionally covers his college career and how his pursuit of a philosophy degree was cut short by poker. He talks a lot about classes that interested him and other aspects of the academic life that did not.

Here is where Galfond and I went in somewhat different directions. I’m one who ended up going on with higher education as far as it would take me, getting graduate degrees and eventually teaching at the college level. And even though I got a ton of value out of taking that path and have no regrets about doing so, I share some of Galfond’s cynicism about the importance of degrees and grades and other ways we use higher education to measure ourselves against one another.

I like Galfond saying how he decided to be a philosophy major simply because the classes were interesting, and not worrying about where such a degree might take him, career-wise. “I didn’t know what it would lead to in life,” he says, “and I didn’t much care.”

I’ve had a lot of experience advising college students. While I always try to be practical with my recommendations to them, I also always attempt to make sure they understand that whatever major they choose, it had better be in something they find interesting. If they have some ability in that field and can do well in those classes, so much the better. But they gotta like it... at least something about it.

Thus when students ask me about being an English major, I ask them if they love to read literature and write about it. If the answer is yes to that, then we can talk about how you don’t have to be an low-earning English teacher after graduating with an English degree. In fact, you can do just about anything in which being able to read and write is needed.

I never tell students it doesn’t matter whatsoever what major they choose -- they don’t want to hear that -- but I have thought it numerous times. Because really it doesn’t. Not that much.

People joke about the relative value of humanities degrees a lot. Even Galfond parenthetically asks later on when talking about not graduating “what’s a Philosophy degree worth anyways?” But he’s not talking about translating the degree into any dollar amount or other measure of value, a mistake some students make that all but ensures they’ll get as little as possible out of their college years. Not entirely (I don’t think).

No, Galfond is talking about finding something interesting and worthwhile, and continuing with it until it stops being either. The classes were worth it for him, for a while, anyway. Finishing and meeting arbitrary requirements for a degree was not.

I had one other, more personal thought when reading Galfond’s post, namely the memory of having been there at the Rio back in 2008 when he won his WSOP bracelet in the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha event (with rebuys). That was my first WSOP with PokerNews, and it just so happened Galfond’s win came at one of the first final tables on which I had ever reported. Change100 and I were there for that one.

I’d have to go back through the blog to recall details of the tourney and final table, but I remember it being a fairly dominating performance by the guy we kinda vaguely knew at the time as that “OMGClayAiken” dude who crushed online.

So I’m looking forward to Galfond getting to that part of the story, too, so as to learn more about what the experience was like for him that night. And to learn more about both the “pro poker player” and the “person,” as Galfond describes himself atop his blog.

Labels: *the rumble, 2008 WSOP, Change100, Phil Galfond, PokerNews

One of my favorite shows as a kid was Sanford and Son starring Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford and Demond Wilson as his son, Lamont. The sitcom about a widower junk dealer and his son ran from 1972-1977, and reruns were on for many years after that, which is when I ended up catching them.

It wasn’t until many years later I found out Foxx had produced a ton of comedy LPs during the late ’50s and ’60s from his nightclub act, so-called “party records” with material too risque for kids. Had a roommate in college who had one and later on heard several, discovering them all to be uniformly hilarious.

Hadn’t really thought about the show for a while, but amid doing some other poker-related scrounging on the web I realized there were a few episodes of Sanford and Son featuring poker that I’d forgotten about. All are on YouTube in their entirety.

The first titled “The Card Sharps” came early in the second season, initially airing on October 27, 1972. Like most episodes, it begins with Fred slacking off (in this case sleeping), Lamont coming home, then Fred pretending like he was hard at work.

Lamont explains he has plans that night to have a group over for a poker game, and Fred objects. “Not in my house,” says Fred. “You know what your mother called cards? Fifty-two devils in Satan’s army!”

He goes on to explain to Lamont how his mother made him swear off cards before she died. Lamont isn’t deterred, however, pointing out how the only reason his mother made Fred promise not to play was because he was terrible and always lost.

Lamont explains that he’s played once before with the guys coming over, including one, Skeeter (Thalmus Rasulala) who apparently just got out of jail. “How much did you win?” asks Fred. “How did you know I won?” asks Lamont. Fred goes on to explain how “it’s the oldest trick in the business,” that is, to let a sucker win once, then the next time “break him… take everything they got.”

Fred immediately warns Lamont not to play with Skeeter and the others, knowing for certain they’ll cheat his son. He offers to watch the game and signal with a flyswatter if anything fishy arises.

The guys arrive, and once Skeeter produces his own deck with which to play and suggestions are made to raise the stakes from what they played the last time, Fred becomes increasingly concerned. Thus it’s no surprise that when Skeeter gives himself an ace when determining who will deal, the signaling starts even before the first hand (see left).

The game they play is five-card draw, and Lamont starts losing right away, including one hand in which Skeeter beats his full house with a straight flush. “Flush is right,” says Fred to Lamont. “Yo’ money going right down the toilet.”

Check out the episode if you’re curious to see how it goes. I won’t give away the ending, except to share Fred claiming to quote scripture near the end: “Deal unto others as they have dealt unto you.”

Later in season 2 came another episode with poker, this one called “The Kid” (first airing March 9, 1973). This time the show begins with Fred playing solitaire -- and cheating -- rather than working, and when Lamont gets home Fred hastily hides the cards inside an accounting ledger, which Lamont immediately finds.

“Bookmark,” explains Fred. “Fifty-two of them?” asks Lamont. “I lose my place a lot,” says Fred with a sheepish grin.

This episode involves a young nine-year-old named Jason (Lincoln Kilpatrick, Jr.) who comes around wanting to hang out at the junkyard. Against Fred’s wishes, Lamont invites Jason to stay for dinner and even to spend the night when Jason explains he has no father and his mother is working.

When Lamont offers Jason some milk to go with his dinner, Fred offers him an alternative. “What about a beer?” he suggests. “Pop, children do not drink beer,” says Lamont. “What's wrong with that? It’s just got some barley and some grain and stuff in it. You know, it’s just corn flakes in a can!”

Fred eventually decides he likes Jason, and the next day they play some five-card draw, keeping track of how much they are winning and losing on a notepad.

A hand arises in which Jason discards four. “Four?” asks Fred incredulously. “That ain’t no way to play poker. Only a dummy would draw four cards.”

Predictably, Jason wins the hand, ending with four kings, and Fred now owes him $650 according to their tally. Fred then hastily suggests a new game.

Fred deals Jason three cards, then four for himself, then two more for Jason, then three more for himself. A betting round follows, and Jason is confused.

“How do you know who wins?” the kid asks. “How many cards you got?” says Fred. “Five,” answers Jason.

“I got seven, I win.”

A third episode with poker came late in the fourth season, one titled “The Stung” (from February 28, 1975). This one features another poker night with Lamont inviting series regulars Julio (Gregory Sierra) and Rollo (Nathaniel Taylor) over, and they bring along a brawny buddy appropriately named Arms (George Reynolds).

Meanwhile, Fred’s old friend Al Banks (Richard Ward) turns up, who just happens to have been a professional gambler, and the two of them cook up a scheme to win back money Fred has lost to the fellows over recent weeks -- or if not at least to have some amusement at their expense.

Like the other two episodes, this one has lots of funny lines throughout, such as when Fred is plotting his scheme and Al says he knows he’s up to no good from the look in his eye.

“I’m past no good,” explains Fred. “I’m up to evil… and approaching treachery!”

Later when Julio arrives, he apparently is wearing a shirt he literally won off of Fred at an earlier game, and Fred facetiously compliments him by telling him it looks good on him.

“It would even look better if you washed it,” he continues. “And starched it. And ironed it. And then folded it up real neat… and shoved it up your nose.”

There’s less actual poker shown in this episode -- the game they introduce early on is seven-card stud, but we never see a hand play out. In any case, I’ll let you take a look at the episode rather than give away how Fred and Al’s “sting” turns out.

Maybe it’s a bit of nostalgia tugging at me, causing me to laugh a little more loudly than some might at these shows. But there’s just something about Foxx and his delivery that instantly makes me smile. And Fred Sanford was a perfect match of a character for him, too.

The dude was aces.

Labels: *the rumble, Redd Foxx, Sanford and Son, television

Catch that news item over the weekend with the eye-catching headline “Monks Resign Over Poker Scandal”? Had to click on that, right?

Reading more, we learn that the monks were Buddhist, part of the Jogye order in South Korea. A video was surreptitiously shot of a group of monks -- leaders in the order, apparently -- playing poker. The video shows them in a hotel room sitting cross-legged around what looks like a bedsheet with chips and cards in the middle, smoking and drinking as they play, and appearing to laugh as one drags a pot.

Hey, at least they weren’t rubbing a laughing Buddha’s belly for good luck.

At first glance, it looks like just another private game. That said, according to one report “Seongho, a senior monk, said the stakes for the gambling were about $875,300.” Another article in The Korea Times says the money with which they were playing “is believed to be from donations from believers.” Also read that the group was engaged in a "marathon 13-hour game” in the Janseong hotel room, with the monks having gathered there for a memorial service.

Six of those who participated in the game have since resigned from the Jogye order. All of this is happening just a few days before South Korea celebrates “Chopail” or the birth of Buddha on May 28.

Apparently the game and the secret video are all part of a larger political struggle involving the Jogye order and its leadership, a big deal for the 10 million or so adherents of the order.

Not entirely sure about how it all fits together, but it sounds like this Seongho had been among the candidates to become head of the order a couple of years ago, but another monk, Jaseung, was elected. Seongho was eventually expelled from the order for defamation against its new leader, and subsequently brought a complaint against the order that included the gambling charge.

The article in The Korea Times explains that Seongho “claimed he found a USB drive containing the footage on the floor of his temple.” I don’t believe it has been made clear as yet who shot the video. I have seen references both to it having been from a hidden surveillance camera as well as the suggestion that it was shot by someone who was present at the game.

Meanwhile, the leader Jaseung has apologized to the Jogye adherents, saying that “his order will conduct a 108-bows ritual for 100 days starting next Tuesday to repent the misbehavior of the monks.” Who knows what will eventually happen with regard to the DOJ trying to resolve the cases associated with the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint, but I’m going to guess no bowing rituals will be part of any negotiated settlement.

Buddha -- i.e., the spiritual leader (Guatama), not the laughing one (Budai) -- was no fan of gambling. The Sigalovada Sutta, one of the scriptures in which Buddha imparts wisdom to a young man named Sigala, includes a discussion of gambling, there listed as one of six ways of squandering wealth.

According to Buddha, there are “six dangers of being addicted to gambling.” There's the fact that “in winning one begets hatred.” There’s the danger of losing wealth, of course, plus the additional danger that “in losing one mourns the loss of one’s wealth.” There’s the effect that being a gambler can have on your perceived character, since “one’s word is not accepted in court.” Gambling also leads to isolation, as “one is avoided by both friends and officials.” Finally, by gambling “one is not sought after for marriage because people say a gambler cannot support a wife.”

In practice, though, I think Buddhists are somewhat tolerant of recreational gambling (as opposed to the addictive variety). Meanwhile, with drinking alcohol or taking drugs there's less wiggle room; thus did those monks passing the bottle around in the video compound their troubles significantly. And I guess Buddha also talked about monks being forbidden from handling money at all -- which is obviously happening in the poker game -- although that's not really a rule followed by monks today.

Interesting stuff, and as full of political intrigue, possible corruption, and church-and-state conflict as any scandal on this side of the globe.

Labels: *the rumble, Buddhism, gambling

For those of us of a certain age, the title of this post automatically makes us think of that Carly Simon song from the ’70s. Which in turn makes us think of Heinz ketchup. And absurd exchanges between children about whether or not their mothers buy them Heinz ketchup for their burgers and fries.

That’s because those ads were pounded into all our consciousnesses relentlessly during our formative years sitting in front of the tube, a.k.a., the “electronic babysitter.” Kind of like those multiple Geico campaigns from which there presently appears no escape.

Between the World Series of Poker being just a little over two weeks away, the big finale of the World Poker Tour’s Season X coming up before that, suggestive hints about the PokerStars-Full Tilt Poker-DOJ deal possibly edging toward completion, other legal machinations regarding online poker currently being advanced, and even the imminent return of the Two Plus Two forums (tomorrow?), the word seems most apt to describe the poker world at the present moment.

It’s like watching Tom Dwan holding out chips, hesitating before releasing them onto the felt. Like were all just waiting for something to happen. Soon. And perhaps something big.

Perhaps we’re also conditioned a bit by the fact that over the last year or so -- really the last several years -- there hasn’t been a stretch of more than a couple or three months to go by without some “bombshell” going off somewhere in the poker world. So after a period of relative calm, we brace ourselves, expecting something to happen yet again to cause us to rethink pretty much everything we thought we knew before.

I guess as poker players we all kind of hunger for such news, too... not unlike we crave “action” at the tables. All of which makes the feeling of anticipation that much stronger.

We’ll see what happens, and if we have to wait much longer. Meanwhile, I’m hungry. Who else wants to go for a burger?

Labels: *the rumble, 2012 WSOP, Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, Two Plus Two

Kind of wiped out today thanks to a late night following some of these marathon SCOOP tourneys on PokerStars. Meaning there ain’t a lot in the tank for posting here at the moment. So let me send you over to another blog for an interesting read.

Not long ago I had the chance to read Zach Elwood’s new book Reading Poker Tells and ended up reviewing it over at Betfair. I enjoyed the book quite a bit, which does a neat job categorizing and describing a number of revealing behaviors at the poker tables. Check out my review for a full run down of what the book covers.

Zach also keeps a blog where he posts further on the subject of tells in poker. Over the last few months he’s posted some interesting analyses of the Pius Heinz-Martin Staszko heads-up battle for the 2011 WSOP Main Event bracelet. Those are some interesting reads, especially for those of us who watched that more-than-six-hour heads-up match play out on ESPN last November.

Anyhow, yesterday Zach published a post discussing tells in Rounders, going beyond the one we all remember -- Teddy KGB and his Oreos -- to point out others exhibited by both Teddy and Mike McDermott. Both characters are pretty transparent, really, with regard to their tells, although as Zach points out in his post the characters’ failings in this regard could well be considered part of the film makers’ intentions to convey certain things to the audience, including the non-poker people watching.

Thanks to my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course, I’ve been watching Rounders over and over again for the last few semesters as one of the films I assign to my class. Thus have I become pretty familiar with the tells Zach is describing in his post, as well as some other idiosyncracies in the presentation of poker scenes that may or may not have been intended.

I’m also picking up on other small things with each viewing, such as the neat symmetry between the backstory about Mike and Worm being involved in fixing a basketball game back at prep school and the later scene in the church gym. As back at prep school, Mike agrees one last time to team up with his friend in a plan to make some scratch, although like before things won’t work out.

Anyhow, check out Zach’s analysis of some tells in Rounders. Kind of thing would be neat to do with a lot of poker films, actually, since there is lot of overlap -- potentially -- between the non-verbal types of communication that happens at the poker tables and the language of cinema.

Labels: *the rumble, Poker in American Film and Culture, Reading Poker Tells, Rounders, Zach Elwood

As happens every year around this time, the World Series of Poker held a conference call yesterday for media to talk about the upcoming WSOP and give writers things to hype up here during the last few days before the sucker starts.

It’s getting close. Sunday, May 27 is when things get going for real at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. That’s when the first two events start up, the Casino Employees Event (No. 1) and the first of many $1,500 no-limit hold’em tourneys (Event No. 2).

You can find plenty of “live blogs” and other articles running down what was covered yesterday, so I’ll pass on that sort of thing here. I suppose the biggest “news” concerned some rule changes regarding player conduct, including allowing players more freedom when it comes to table talk as well as celebrating. The former sounded a bit like an invitation to engage in Jamie Gold-like banter (“I said top top!”), while the latter reminded some of Hevad Khan (“Bulldozer!”).

Speaking of speaking at the table, another rule that will likely get some pushback from players is one requiring those at televised feature tables to announce their action verbally. Not everyone plays poker this way, with many just letting the chips and cards do their talking for them, and so some have already begun to voice displeasure over Twitter regarding having different requirements for feature-table players than for the rest of the field.

There was other stuff about the “Big One” (the $1 million buy-in event), the new WSOP APAC, the ladies event and men playing, and so on. Like I say, you can easily find news on that elsewhere. Next week the media guide comes out, and I assume we’ll get a look at the official new rules soon as well, so there will be continued buzz going forward.

Someone brought up the topic of the huge banners of past WSOP Main Event champions that decorate the Amazon Room each year, asking in particular whether 2000 ME champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson’s banner might be obscured given the Black Friday-related charges against him and all the other Full Tilt Poker folderol.

The reply was that the WSOP would not be doing anything with the banners that might resemble any sort of statement of position on Ferguson. (A similar issue has been raised in the past with regard to 1994 ME champ and Russ Hamilton and his involvement in the UltimateBet insider cheating scandal and cover up.)

I’m with the WSOP on this one, by the way. The banners are meant to refer to WSOP’s history, and it’s not like you can change the past. If a past champion was found later to have cheated in order to win, that’s a different story. But it’s silly for the WSOP to get into the business each year of casting judgment on past champions. I say hang those banners and let the people looking up at those faces form their own opinions about each one.

In delivering that response, Executive Director Ty Stewart pointedly noted that the WSOP didn’t “want to get into having a standards and ethics committee,” an unsubtle jab at their ex-colleague Jeffrey Pollack, Annie Duke, and the Epic Poker League. As if that weren’t clear enough, a further dig came when it was unnecessarily noted that “wsop.com” didn’t stand for “wicked series of poker” -- a reference to that domain URL purchasing business and the early plan pursued by the EPL to try to name itself the Wicked Poker League.

We’ve already seen evidence of the WSOP’s dislike of the EPL. Whether it derives from personal animosity toward Pollack, irritation at what was perhaps once perceived a competitor, or other behind-the-scenes stuff we haven’t heard about, there’s something a little unseemly about it coming up unprovoked like this in the context of the annual conference call.

Don’t get me wrong -- Epic is most certainly deserving of criticism, and my six-month tenure as a contributor to the EPL blog hardly prevents me not only from believing that, but from voicing such criticism myself. But to me the WSOP might do better to continue to try to appear above all that applesauce.

Still, the call worked well enough to get me excited about it all again. Am starting to think about my return to the Rio this summer, and my instinct is to think that whatever this new loosening up of restrictions regarding player talk and behavior will do to the game, it will likely help create more interesting stories to report.

So maybe I shouldn’t criticize the WSOP for its own “loose talk.” As Dashiell Hammett’s Op says in Red Harvest (1929), “sometimes stirring things up is all right.”

Labels: *the rumble, 2012 WSOP, Epic Poker, Ty Stewart

Yesterday I was caught in one of those crazy need-to-be-in-two-places-at-once situations we all sometimes find ourselves. What comes from juggling several different work assignments. Thankfully I have some super cool and supportive colleagues who helped make the whole day a lot less stressful than it might have been otherwise, and I made it through in one piece.

Got me thinking a little about the “virtual” world of online communications and how all of us kind of “exist” in multiple places these days. I guess my thoughts are also leaning in that direction because I’m planning to teach my poker class online this summer, and in fact will be away on one poker-related trip at the start of the session, and by the end I’ll be in Vegas for the WSOP. (Is the Series really less than three weeks from starting?)

I’ll be plotting my strategy for that soon. Likely I’ll be trying to manage things so that I’ll be “teaching” my class an hour or so each day (plus the added time I’ll spend grading essays), meaning that wherever I am, as long as I can get to the web I’ll be all right.

Kind of looking forward to managing a course this way, which after many years of “face-to-face” classes will be a first for me. I certainly like the idea of omitting the commute back and forth to teach, but I know I’m going to miss the classroom interaction, too. (By the way, anyone with experience teaching online courses with handy tips or advice, please share.)

Anyhow, getting back to the idea of being in two places at once... it’s not an original observation, I know, but damn it seems like we’re all always “multi-tasking” these days. I mean you’re reading this blog post right now, but I’m sure you have other tabs open, too, yes? And checking that Twitter feed and/or Facebook. And probably doing three or four other things as well, am I right?

I can’t be too offended. I mean if I’m going to be honest, I have to admit I’m also doing other things -- some work-related, some not so much -- while writing this.

Vera and I were sitting in front of the teevee the other night and I brought up how way back when -- before the internet came along to try to consume us, that is -- it was possible to do nothing but watch television. For hours. I mean watch without doing anything else. Or, you know, read a book start to finish. Or just listen to an LP, first one side, then the other. I mean really listen....

Ah, I’ve got too much to do today. But I think I can spare 20 minutes before splitting myself up again into all those selves. We all need to take the time to unplug now and then.

If you’re trying to reach me... don’t fret. I’ll get back to you shortly. Just taking a little break. To slow down. To listen...

Labels: *shots in the dark, Miles Davis

Was hearing a bit over the weekend about this Lock Poker move away from the Merge Network, a move which also appears to involve Lock acquiring the Cake Poker Network and renaming the whole kit-and-kaboodle the Revolution Gaming Network.

The weekend rumors appear to have been backed up with more official word this morning from the concerned parties. There’s presser from Cake reporting it “is in the process of selling selected assets” to Lock, and mirror-image one from Lock saying it “is in the process of acquiring assets from Cake.” The latter also notes how the transition will officially be occurring on May 31, at which time players on the sites will encounter “a simple software update” reflecting the newly-created partnership between the Cake network sites and Lock.

I’m a bit swamped at the moment -- caught between SCOOP stuff and wrapping up my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course -- and so can’t really spend too much time pondering this here development. Truth be told, it kind of feels a bit like talking about a trade involving minor league players or future draft picks. In other words, just a faint echo of the “big league” talk from a couple of weeks ago concerning the possible purchase of Full Tilt Poker by PokerStars, even if here we have actual quotes and such rather than all the second- and third-hand fuzziness.

Certainly seems as though Lock’s decision to break away from Merge might have had something to do with that brouhaha a couple of weeks ago over the LOCKOPS tournament series the skin had been planning but the network cancelled. Not completely up on all of the details there, although it did sound as though approval to run the series had been given to Lock, then taken away somewhat surprisingly.

Was reading one article about the Lock-Cake partnership (I realize I’m weirdly avoiding using the word “merger” so as to avoid a pun) that referred to Lock as the “largest US-friendly poker room... on the largest US-friendly poker network,” namely Merge.

The article also suggests the deal and creation of the new Revolution Gaming Network “will likely tip the scales of power for the current US online poker industry,” an impressive-sounding suggestion when one doesn’t think too specifically about how little traffic all of those involved actually get.

Merge is certainly the largest U.S.-facing network, but its 60-plus skins together only attract a fraction of the traffic on other small networks like iPoker and Ongame, all of whom are of course just teeny, tiny blips compared to PokerStars. And Lock is certainly the biggest skin on Merge, accounting for something like 40% of the traffic there from what I’ve read.

It looks like from PokerScout’s numbers that the Cake network only grabs a third or less of the traffic Merge as a whole did -- probably something similar to Lock’s total traffic, which would mean the joining of the two would indeed create a player pool that would jump ahead of Merge’s after losing Lock.

But still, we’re talking about just a few hundred cash game players total. Meanwhile, yesterday’s first day of SCOOP events saw nearly 70,000 entrants signing up for the six tournaments on offer there.

So sure, I guess Lock acquiring Cake does “tip the scales of power” in a relative sense -- as far as U.S.-facing online poker sites go. But globally speaking, online poker has for a good while already been... well... locked up.

(Got over that pun-shyness PDQ.)

Labels: *the rumble, Cake Poker, Lock Poker, Merge Network

As evidenced by all of the excited tweets in my timeline this morning, PokerStars’ 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker kicks off in just a couple of hours.

Am recalling that feeling back in early September 2011 when the first World Championship of Online Poker (the WCOOP) without Americans got going on PokerStars. Feeling a little bit of the same there’s-a-party-happening-and-we’re-not-invited vibe, I guess, although not as strongly as before.

The SCOOP, of course, is the one with three separate tournaments -- “low,” “medium,” and “high” stakes -- for each event. Event No. 1, a six-handed no-limit hold’em event, starts in about an hour with $22, $215, and $2,100 buy-ins. A little later today comes Event No. 2, a full-ring NLHE event, featuring the same buy-ins.

There are a total of 40 events scheduled, meaning 120 tournaments altogether, culminating in the big Main Event on May 20. Several of the tourneys are scheduled as two-day tournaments, and even the one-day tourneys look as though they’ll be attracting big fields and thus go on for many, many hours.

The overall guaranteed prize pool for the all of the 2012 SCOOP events totals $30 million. The 2011 series -- which happened just a few weeks after Black Friday -- had 114 total tourneys the prize pools for which added up to $43,165,800.

The 2011 SCOOP did feel the hit of Black Friday somewhat, as the previous year saw $63,802,405 in prize money awarded in 114 tourneys. The series began in 2009 when just 22 events (66 tourneys) were played with the prize pools adding up to $38,324,830.

A little over half of the SCOOP events are no-limit hold’em only, but all other games are in the mix as well, including stud, stud/8, Omaha/8, PLO, PLO/8, triple draw 2-7, razz, five-card draw, Badugi, and the mixed events (8-game, H.O.R.S.E.).

For a lot of non-Americans -- as well as those “expats” currently living abroad in order to play at PokerStars -- the SCOOP has become not just an important part of the online poker tourney calendar, but a meaningful warm-up for the World Series of Poker, too.

The WSOP continues to distinguish itself by including so many non-hold’em tourneys on the schedule, and for a lot of players getting to jump into some large field non-hold’em events with big prize pools during SCOOP provides a needed tune-up in those other games.

Can’t play myself, of course, although I’ll be following a lot of what happens with SCOOP over the next couple of weeks. I’m guessing those guarantees will probably be exceeded in most if not all 120 of the events this time around. Will be doing a bit of reporting on SCOOP here and there as well. Kind of a tune-up of my own, I suppose, as the plan is for me to be back in Vegas and reporting from the World Series of Poker this summer (more on that to come).

Labels: *the rumble, PokerStars, SCOOP

This week I realized a few days late that the blog had turned six years old. First time I’ve managed to let one of those anniversary milestones slip by without some sort of introspective bit of rambling here. As far as I remember, anyhow.

When I noticed the date (April 28) had passed, I sent a tweet remarking how I’d forgotten. And how I should be forgiven “as six is like a hundred in blog years.”

Stepping back it’s tempting to compare the blogging thing and my experience of it to the trajectory taken by some poker players. Or, to be more specific, how my relationship to the act of keeping the blog over a lengthy period of time might resemble how a lot of us experience poker’s oft-evoked “long run.”

At first, we’re fascinated by the game, always wanting to play and never getting enough. With experience comes learning, too, and so we recognize ourselves getting better. For many that encourages exerting still more effort to try to improve our skills further and thus better our performance.

Eventually most of us discover our games leveling off at some point, likely well shy of once-dreamed-of goals. Our infatuation levels off as well, at least for a lot of us. Nothing seems especially new anymore, or at least we start having a hard time recognizing that which is.

For some what once seemed play perhaps becomes more like work. The player becomes a grinder. Who, depending on how things go from there, might well become a former player.

Like I say, pursuing such an analogy is tempting. And there’s more to it, of course. But after six-plus years of writing a poker blog, well, I have already written more than a few times about how writing and poker compare.

Obviously the game -- both games -- still inspire me enough to keep grinding. As do those of you who keep reading. Big thanks once again, all.

Labels: *the rumble, blogging, writing