Props to Good WSOP Coverage

Other than the usual media outlets, and of course Dr. Pauly's excellent coverage year-in and year-out from the Rio, I thought I would give some props today to a blogger who has been putting out quality content almost every single day here during the 2010 World Series of Poker -- F-Train. I've been a reader of F-Train's blog for some time, but probably never so much as I have become over the last few weeks since the WSOP started. In a world where so much is made of every single poker tournament played at the Rio over a six-week period, many of which are openly referred to as "donkaments" by those in the know, in largely shallow-stacked events where luck predominates over skill in the eyes of anyone who really understands how mtt's work, F-Train has had very little trouble finding something interesting, well thought-out and well-reasoned to say about the Series almost every single day.

One thing F-Train has been doing is keeping track of the number of players this year as compared to last year in the corresponding WSOP events. A couple of weeks back when F-Train started tracking this, a disturbing trend appeared -- and one that surprised me to be honest, given the (somewhat) improved economic situation both in the U.S. and abroad as compared to last year -- each of the first five events of the 2010 WSOP was down in participation from the corresponding events in 2009. In fact, 8 of the first 12 events saw a drop in attendance since last year. I was really surprised -- even having just been out in Vegas, at the Rio in fact, and remarking here on how incredibly slow Vegas was in general as compared to prior years in the summer -- because I just didn't get how fewer people could be playing in the Series this year given the general improvement in the global economy over the past 11 or 12 months. Last year, the WSOP started just two months away from those disgusting March 2009 lows in the stock market, and just a month or two away from the four and five hundred thousand jobs lost every single month, and in general the market was what, a full 35% or so lower than it is today? How could more people have plunked down between $1500 and $10,000 on a luck-dependent poker tournament last year than this year?

Well, I was less surprised to see F-Train's recent updated post on this topic, where this strange trend seems to have reversed itself, in line with all logic and reason. Since Event #14, 11 of the last 12 WSOP tournaments have recorded increases in attendance since the same event in 2009. What started out as a strange, somewhat inexplicable dropoff in participation has proven to be just a slow start to the 2010 WSOP, and it appears now that we are going to come in I bet between 5 and 10% up for WSOP participation overall this year as compared to last. So far F-Train is the only real media outlet I have seen keeping close track of these numbers, and it's been an interesting angle that has made for some interesting posts and thoughts during the WSOP this year.

Similarly, F-Train had some excellent coverage on the scandal with the WSOP Ladies Event this year, a nice post detailing the truth about the behavior of Men Nguyen when he won his 7th bracelet earlier this month, and of course some excellent reports of the Tom Dwan circus when Durrrrr managed to steal the center of attention from the entire Amazon room when he played his way to heads-up in Event #7.

As I mentioned above, F-Train has found a way to provide interesting content related to the WSOP on a daily basis to a poker tournament loving guy like me. You should check it out if you haven't been already.

Tournament Reporting

In the wake of the fiasco with fellow blogger F-Train and some ludicrous statements apparently made by him on a recent PokerRoad Radio podcast, I had some thoughts that frankly I have wondered about for a long time. In short, for those of you who didn't hear about it, the guys on a show called "The B-Team" on PokerRoad Radio, a podcast that presumably gets some amount of regular downloaders / listeners, basically took issue with the way that F-Train reported on the final table of the NAPT Venetian tournament that went down last week in Las Vegas.

The guys started off by claiming that F-Train was the same guy -- who they went on to disparage on their show for about five minutes -- who wrote some tongue-in-cheek posts a year or two ago about Daniel Negreanu going busto, among other things. Personally I never heard of these posts and I do not read the website where these were apparently written, but F-Train was quick to point out that it was not he who wrote the posts. Although the radio show hosts were clear at first in a throwaway kind of statement that they were not 100% certain if this person has been F-Train, as I mentioned they then went on for five minutes to put down F-Train by name, calling him all sorts of names and insulting him any number of ways for those posts that it turns out were not even written by him.

Obviously, this is ridiculously unprofessional behavior for anyone in any media context if you ask me, and it's a shame that these guys will I am sure never really get their comeuppance for their shoddy reporting. It does look like two of the three hosts of the show have left apologetic comments on F-Train's blog over the past couple of days, but frankly I think that is obviously an insufficient method of making amends for what they did. At the very least, they owe F-Train a specific correction on their radio show, as close as possible to the time of the original airing. I think the apologies in F-Train's comments from the radio hosts indicated that they are not regular hosts on the show and therefore don't know if or when they would be able to correct the problem. That, my friends, is bullshit. In a nutshell, if PokerRoad Radio does not publicly correct what they said about F-Train having authored those previous posts, in the very next broadcast made by PokerRoad Radio, then they are doing F-Train a disservice (whether he admits it or not), and, if I were in the habit of listening to this show (which I'm not), I would stop paying them any attention whatsoever, because they are showing just how little they know about "journalism" in any sense of the word. In fact, when other bloggers and other websites out there have written things about me that have been pure, unadulterated bullshit that even a cursory review of the facts would have indicated to be flat-out incorrect or misleading, that's exactly the policy I have followed, and as a result I don't read a few blogs anymore that I know I am missing out on some great writing at. But the bottom line is, when someone is willing to go out in a public forum and make an accusation or statement that is derogatory towards someone and later is proven to be totally false, that person ought to be man or woman enough to fix the mistake as quickly and efficiently as possible, and to do so in the same medium in which the original statements were published. In my view, apologizing in F-Train's blog comments -- while far better than nothing, don't get me wrong -- is totally insufficient and should not be considered addressing the issue in any meaningful or professional way. Imagine if I slam on someone for doing something in my blog, broadcasting it out to 500 people, and then later when it turns out I baldfaced lied, I simply send an email to the individual I lied about to say I am sorry. Sorry guys, that's just not enough, and it's not even close.

But the more interest aspect of the PokerRoad guys' comments about F-Train related to his commentary on Sam Stein's play at the final table, as detailed in this post here. Basically, F-Train describes a couple of "hero calls" Stein made at the final table that eventually cost him the chip lead he had held for two days straight, and then eventually the title once down to heads-up play. And, given the way F-Train describes the hands in question, I don't see how anyone can get up in his mug about his characterization of them as "hero calls". They are really, really light calls, both of which cost him and, frankly, both of which I assume most of us out there would agree were not Stein's finest moments in this tournament by a longshot. I think the point of the hosts on PokerRoad with respect to these statements is that it's bush league for F-Train to make these kinds of conclusions because he can't possibly get into the head of Sam Stein or anyone else at the final table. Which clearly, by the way, he can't. Nonetheless, a media outlet is paying F-Train to report on the final table, and that's exactly what he's doing. I mean, it's one thing if a guy characterizes Sam Stein as "an evil person" or "a horrible player" generally, etc. -- in other words, generalizations about the man which one reporter cannot possibly expect to be able to reliably make based on covering him in just this one tournament. But if someone thinks calling down for a large portion of a tournament-leading stack at a major final table with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake with 4th pair is "hero calling" and says so in a piece he is being paid to write about that event, then what's the problem? In this case, I cannot imagine what the real issue is with anything F-Train said about Stein's play, and I would have said the same thing about it -- in my blog or otherwise -- had I been paying attention I am quite sure. Even if someone does not agree with the characterization of these moves as "hero calls", in my view clearly that characterization is supported by sufficient evidence to not be attacked as being totally off base or something like that.

But then this got me thinking. Why aren't more poker tournament reporters accomplished poker tournament players themselves in the game they are covering? Wouldn't this make for more powerful tournament reporting, at least in the sense of being able to explain, understand and analyze what truly goes on at a final table like this? I mean no disparagement whatsoever to F-Train's poker play, but I do not know of him ever sitting down after four long days of nothing but aggressive, pressure-cooker no-limit holdem and trying to play a big stack through 7 other guys with again literally hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on every decision. Wouldn't an analysis done by, say, Erik Seidel, or da_professional or someone similar necessarily be "better" in that these guys have been in that spot before, know what it's like making decisions which directly and quite literally will impact the financial future of the players making those calls? That they have each many times taken a gigantic stack into a major final table, and had the experience of both blowing that chip lead and also riding that chip lead to a major poker title and 6-figure score? Isn't this exactly why shows like High Stakes Poker and even ESPN get people like Mike Sexton and Gabe Kaplan involved, because these guys have had some real poker tournament success and thus are able to offer insights that others are not?

I'll be honest. I've had the opportunity to have a few of my larger tournament scores chronicled in various media outlets, by virtue of them having occurred in major tournament series run by some of the biggest poker outlets in the world (none of these involving F-Train whatsoever, to be clear). Now, while there have surely been various levels of involvement and care put into these recaps, the bottom line is that, when I read the analyses of the hands in which I was involved, it is shocking how off-base sometimes the writer has been about either my intentions, the cards I was holding, and/or the strategy I was adopting on the hand or hands in question. Invariably then I go look to see who wrote the article, and immediately it becomes clear to me why the piece reads the way it does -- because this writer has no comprehension whatsoever of what playing winning poker deep in a large mtt is like. You've got a guy whose largest all-time mtt cash is a 3rd place in a 180-man sitngo on pokerstars -- three or four years ago at that -- being asked to comment on why I folded five consecutive hands to reraises before the flop when down to six players in a large mtt? No wonder he's going to conclude that I got over-aggressive, that I "donked" out, that I lost control, you name it. Because that's the only understanding he or she has of what I must have been doing there, even though it could not be further from the truth.

If you haven't had a lot of large-field mtt success, there is just no way your understanding of what is really happening at a large final table will even approach that of someone who's been there, done that before. Even just from the humble success I have achieved in my mtt history, it is clear as a bell that it's a whole different game -- literally -- being played when you're down to the final table and there's several tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) at stake. The amount of aggression that is required just to get you to that point, let alone to stay ahead of the blinds and antes, and more importantly, to react appropriately to the aggression that your opponents also have had to ratchet up, most likely for the past two full days or more already at that point, is completely and utterly different from the pressure and the decisions and the stategies that one uses in winning a 180-man sng or even in running to 39th place in a 2500-player nightly mtt with a $25 buyin on full tilt or pokerstars. It's not even close.

So wouldn't accomplished tournament players make better tournament reporters than accomplished reporters do?