Unbearably Bad Poker

So I've been watching a little bit of ESPN's WSOP Main Event coverage from time to time this year, moreso here as we wind down towards the November Nine, and I find myself struck by frankly the same thought that I've had in each and every one of the WSOP Main Events I have ever watched over the past decade or so:

These people absolutely suck shit at poker.

Yeah that's right, I said it. It's true. These people play like absolute anusshit. And that, I think, is being kind.

I mean, this is the biggest tournament of their lives by definition. Each and every one of these guys, once we're down to the final 27 players or so, is for sure playing poker for the most money they have ever played in their lives. There is not just the immediate cash payouts on the line, but the sponsorship opportunities involved with making it to the November Nine final table and with potentially winning the tournament. There is a literal lifetime of playing poker and never having to have a real job again within their grasp. All this and more is at stake here for every single player left as the ESPN coverage worked its way down this week to the final table and a half remaining in the WSOP Main Event.

And what are these players doing with this tremendous opportunity?

They're reraising an early-position raiser preflop from middle position with 42o.

They're calling large bets on the flop for a quarter of their stack with just an overcard and an inside straight draw.

They're reraising allin preflop with A7s.

They're calling allin preflop for 50% of their stack with AQs.

And, my personal favorite, a super aggro guy who's been raising all day raises again preflop, this time with pocket Aces. The guy on the other side of the table reraises with JTs. The guy with AA re-reraises again, a fairly small amount, which itself was a truly bad play because (1) it makes it very, very obvious that he has precisely pocket Aces, and (2) the small raise gives the first player now better than 5-to-1 to call the re-reraise with his JTs, well known as the literal best hand to crack what he now knows his opponent has in pocket Aces.

And then the shithead insta-folds his JTs, getting better than 5 to 1 to call the re-reraise!!!

You could not make this stuff up, and you certainly can't defend these plays from a poker perspective. I've watched the Main Event coverage on ESPN for years, albeit some years more than others. But every single year, my reaction to the quality of play I've seen throughout has been more or less exactly the same.

The Main Event is an absolute donkfest. Sure, good skill will work much better for you than no skill, and a player who has played on the big stage before and knows how to extract chips will always have a better chance of surviving than one who doesn't know shit and is quaking in his boots because of the amount of money on the line. But that increased chance of success is still utterly minuscule, given the field and what it takes to survive the kind of indefensible, thoughtless donkery you will be facing right from the first deal on Day 1A, and clearly lasting all the way up to the final table itself. Last year it was that unthinkable idiot Chino Rheem freaking six-betting allin preflop with Ace-rag with just a few players remaining and directly costing himself probably about $15 million in tournament winnings and sponsorships as a result -- if you don't know you're not only beat but crushed after your opponent re-re-re-re-reraises you preflop and you are holding Ace-rag, then you are absolutely, utterly hopeless as a poker player on the big stage -- and this year the play to make the final table is enough to make just about anyone with half a poker brain scratch their head in amazement.

Somewhere, I imagine Phil Ivey is out there watching this week's coverage with that same absolutely classic look on his face as when Jen Tilly didn't bet her boat on the river against Patrick Antonius and then proclaimed that she thought he had pocket Kings, at 2:03 of the clip below:



All I know is this: the raging clowns playing for the biggest money of their lives at this year's WSOP Main Event are doing nothing to help anyone out there who loves to argue that poker is a game of skill and not luck. Sure, there is more than a little skill involved, but for these players to have lasted this long, and to be playing for this amount of money after surviving some 6600 other entrants, while playing as unmitigatedly horrible poker as they are here even at the end, it's certainly not helping the luck vs. skill debate.

Main Event Busto

Well, so much for the building interest level of the WSOP Main Event that I was talking about last week. Monday was like D-Day for all the notable players and stories remaining in the event, as basically every last one of them was eliminated as we played down from 57 to 22 players remaining out of the 6500+ field that started about a week and a half ago at the Rio in Las Vegas.

First it was Andrew Brokos of Thinking Poker, who was one of the first bustouts of the day on Monday in the low 50's, and a big bummer to me as I long for the day when someone I consider to be an actual poker blogger (as opposed to a pro who also keeps a blog, etc.) wins a gold bracelet somewhere, somehow. Then Erick Lindgren, probably the last widely-recognizable pro remaining and one of the just a couple of full tilt red pros to cash in this year's Main Event, busted in the low 30s a few hours later, leaving us with no really recognizable names left in the field of still four tables remaining at the time.

But even then, there was still at least one interesting story left to me -- Erika Moutinho and David Sands, a boyfriend and girlfriend who not only both cashed in the Main Event, but both ran deep deep deep to the final 30 players and who even sat right next to each other at the ESPN featured table throughout Monday's play. To think that a couple would both survive this deep in such a huge poker tournament is truly unbelievable, and that they got to sit with each other and enjoy this once in a literal lifetime experience just strains all credulity, but it happened. I could not believe what I was seeing, actually -- these two played a few key pots against one another, but for the most part they were whispering to each other what cards they were holding whenever they folded without having to show. Right in front of everybody. I was salivating at the thought of all the media coverage this destined-for-fail pairing was going to bring if they could survive down to the final couple of tables (and obviously at the final table, if that could even be imagined), while at the same time frowning at the tournament director for allowing what was very overtly the sharing of hole card information after the respective hands were played, but which when I have played at the WSOP requires one to tell the entire table what they had if they reveal their hole cards to any one or more players. But somehow, because these two were seated next to each other and allowed to whisper with abandon in between playing hands, I could not believe what I was seeing. Not that I have the perfect answer to this conundrum, but yknow Jack Eiffel, you could have maybe just seated them at different tables -- or at least not directly next to each other -- in the interest of promoting fairness and equality for all the players involved.

In any event, eventually both boyfriend and then girlfriend ended up busting pretty close to each other in the 20s, eliminating what to me was the very last thing worth caring about in the WSOP Main Event this year. Especially since the advent of the ridiculous "November Nine" such that we won't even know which of the unknowns is the eventual winner for another several months here at this point, Monday just took the last scraps of air for me out of this year's World Series of Poker. It's unfortunate really -- I mean, I know some people get off on seeing a bunch of noobs playing it out on live tv for the $8 million first prize, and of course I will be happy for whoever survives to pull off that feat this fall in Vegas, but in reality, there's very little more boring to me than the thought of watching nine total and compelte unknowns whom I never cared about before this tournament and won't care about after this tournament, slinging poker chips around with mostly preflop allins. I'm not saying the WSOP needs to change anything or that this is any kind of an unacceptable outcome, but rather than my level of interest in the WSOP Main Event just fell off a cliff on Monday as the last of the stories fell by the wayside once and for all. Let's just say that I won't have wsop.com on auto-refresh anymore starting today, as there'd be nothing for me to even follow along with that is of any moment to me whatsoever.

And thus ends for me the first WSOP without myself there in participation since 2006. I actually made it through ok, all things considered; no bouts of withdrawal, no urge to jump on a plane and call my wife from the air when it was too late to turn around. Playing that tournament at Foxwoods a couple of weeks ago helped to ease the pain a little bit, and I am planning on a similar outing sometime in August or September as well, probably down to the Borgata to play in the Fall Poker Open or maybe back to Foxwoods to get a little more of my poker on later in the year. But not playing at the WSOP in 2011 was ok in the end, and I certainly do not regret my decision not to throw away a couple grand on a tournament that I am nowhere near practiced-up enough to play my best in. Here's to making it back out to the desert for my annual summer reunion in 2012, when some 15 months of no online poker in the United States is I can only assume set to produce lower fields than the record numbers we saw across the WSOP this time around as players made that extra effort to take their existing rolls out to the WSOP given the shutdown of online poker in April 2011.

November Ivey

Looks like my rant about Pedro Martinez will have to wait for another day. My sense is there will be plenty of apropos opportunities to vent my frustrations with that whole megillah, but something in the poker world is just more interesting to me today.

Phil Ivey did it. He will be among the November Nine, the delayed final table of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker for 2009. Phil Ivey successfully navigated a field of 6,494 and has reached his first Main Event final table, after already scoring two WSOP bracelets this summer. He did it.

Barely.

But I digress. Despite the happy ending with Ivey making the final table, the few other stories with mainstream attraction came to quick endings, with tournament short stack Leo Margets (last woman standing) busted out within half an hour, followed within an hour or so by a few other players including Antonio Esfandiari. You can't kill the Magician for the early bust -- he was real short coming in if you recall, and being a pro he would be well aware of the need to double in order to get back his chances of a deep run instead of just lasting one more payout plateau. Ultimately Antonio was eliminated in 24th place, which was close to his chip position coming in to Day 8. In any event, this basically left Ivey as the sole player left out of 23 remaining who anybody outside of the Amazon Room knew anything at all about. For now.

As I imagine ESPN, the WSOP and basically anything and everything associated with the world of poker are feeling, it is very fortunate that Phil Ivey was able to survive to the final nine players. And I use the word "survive", because after a rocky start that included two early losses with pocket Jacks, Ivey was short-stacked for the entire second half of the day, often within the bottom two or three remaining players. And all the while, previous chip leader Darvin Moon -- easily the coolest name among the remaining players in the tournament -- was growing, growing, growing his stack, capitalizing on a huge 40M+-chip pot around midway through the day to eliminate fellow big stack and former chip leader Billy Kopp. Then, literally just minutes into the final table bubble (10 players remaining), Eric Buchman raised it up to 650k preflop, already big chipleader Moon cold called, and then Jordan Smith reraised it to 2.6 million. Buchman folded, and Moon cold called again with what turned out to be pocket 8s. Moon flopped top set, insta-calling with the mortal nuts when Jordan Smith raised allin on the flop with his pocket Aces, Smith's second pocket Aces of the past hour's action.

Seriously, how's that for a real drag? You're in 4th place out of 10 on the ME final table bubble, and you're dealt pocket Aces for the second time in an hour on one of the very first hands on the bubble. Some guy with a bailout's worth of chips across the table separately cold-calls not one but two raises before the flop against your Aces. You get him to bet out on the all-rags flop, and he calls your all-in flop raise with what is probably some overpair. Whooops! Set of 8s, and since he was chip leader, you go buh-bye and no November Nine for you. See everybody else in four months. Poor guy is all I have to say for him. Poor guy with $896,000 more in his bank account this morning. But I imagine that one is still gonna sting for some time with him, especially come the second week of November.

Anyways, Ivey will be the big story for months in the poker world, and the November Nine may finally actually be watched by some people this year. What's more, wouldn't it be awesome if ESPN decides to hire somebody who knows something about televised poker to figure out the best way to broadcast the November Nine? I mean, could last year's coverage of the final table have realistically been any worse? Both in the selection of hands, the number of hands shown, and the way those hands were portrayed, take your pick. Seriously. No matter how ESPN decides to spin it, though, Phil Ivey is going to have his work cut out for him given the starting stacks of the 2009 November Nine:

Seat 1: Darvin Moon - 58,930,000
Seat 2: James Akenhead - 6,800,000
Seat 3: Phil Ivey - 9,765,000
Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel - 12,390,000
Seat 5: Steven Begleiter - 29,885,000
Seat 6: Eric Buchman - 34,800,000
Seat 7: Joe Cada - 13,215,000
Seat 8: Antoine Saout - 9,500,000
Seat 9: Jeff Shulman - 19,580,000

Let me also list those same people this way, in order of how many chips they hold:

1. Darvin Moon 58.9M
2. Eric Buchman 34.8M
3. Steven Begleiter 29.9M
4. Jeff Shulman 19.5M
5. Joseph Cada 13.2M
6. Kevin Schaffel 12.4M
7. Phil Ivey 9.8M
8. Antoine Saout 9.5M
9. James Akenhead 6.8M

Play stopped with a short time left in Level 33 of the tournament, which means a 30k ante and blinds of 120k-240k. After the resumption in early November -- assuming no changes are made to the structure prior to the tournament resuming -- after a few minutes the cost to play should jump to a 40k ante and 150k-300k blinds. So, just like I said with Antonio Esfandiari coming in to Day 8 (and look how well that turned out!), Ivey is very short stacked but he should still have plenty of room to wait for a good spot to get his chips in for the double-up. Right now he has still just over 40 big blinds, and for the next two hours after the quick level change at the beginning of the final table, he will still have 32 big blinds to play with. Make no mistake, he is not in a good situation, but he is far from hopeless here. My last point will just be to say that, when I look at the chip stacks in order like that above, it is clear to me just how similar a position Ivey is in to the one I was in coming in to Day Two at the Venetian last month. About two-thirds of the way down the leaderboard, surrounded by all the biggest remaining stacks in the tournament, many of them having several multiples of my own chips, and knowing that I basically needed to make a move within the first couple of hours or it wasn't worth fighting for. Ivey should have a little more time than that to hang on, but sooner or later in the first part of that final table, Ivey is going to have to make an attempt to double up in the best spot he can find. And if he can double early -- especially if it's against the chip leader Darvin Moon (can't you just envision that now?) -- the scene should start getting pretty electric early on. I might actually even have to watch the November Nine this year, that's how crazy this is!

A New Era

It seriously is a new era for us poker bloggers.

Five years ago when I first started really getting into poker blogs and eventually poker blogging, we were basically a bunch of misfits and geeks who had a good time getting to know each other while talking and thinking poker. Very few of the guys heavy into poker blogging back in the day were really what I would consider to be any kind of truly serious players. Most people didn't play every day, many didn't play every week even, and there really weren't many stories out there of significant blogger scores in big poker tournaments. Hell, five years ago I don't even remember any of the blogger crew even playing in the World Series of Poker, let alone running deep. I'm sure it happened, don't get me wrong, but it was such a rarity to even have one of us playing in a big spot back in the day, which frankly is why I always loved what Al as able to do, and what Iggy did once back in the day, to organize the group to find a way to send some of us to the WSOP.

Things changed over the ensuing couple years, but very slowly. I remember when I cashed in the WSOP what, two full years ago now, there were at least four bloggers playing in the very event that I played in. Pauly cashed in a later event in the Series, and several other bloggers took a shot as well along the way in the various events. And I know at least three or four who played in the Main Event that year as well. If I had to guess, two years ago we probably had a good 20-25 blogger attempts in WSOP events. That would have been unheard of to all of us who had been blogging for a while already just a few years earlier, I assure you.

My how things have changed.

Just one week ago, sprstoner went on a sick run and finished 3rd in Event #13 of the WSOP. He took home a not-too-shabby 202 Large for his efforts. Two hundred two thousand dollars. Thousand dollars! I have to say, when stoner went on that run, I felt pride at "one of us" going the distance like that in such a big spot. I've never talked to stoner, I've never met him and I don't even know if I've ever commented on his blog (though I do enjoy reading it from time to time), but I still couldn't believe it. I remember when Ryan of absinthetics won the first event of the LA Poker Classic or whatever it was, probably four years ago now at this point. I think he won somewhere around 116k or something, it was sick. And this felt a whole lot like that, only moreso because it was a lot more money and it was at the WSOP (not to take anything away from Ryan, who won his event outright don't get me wrong). The point is, one of us in a large way was out there on the big stage, playing 3-handed for a m'er f'ing bracelet. When the eff did that happen?

And now look at what's happened just since then. CK, fresh off winning 2k from full tilt in the BBT4 Tournament of Champions, rips into the $1500 OE event at the WSOP (Event #25) and plows through more than 90% of the field on her way to her first WSOP cash. And then from Sunday to Tuesday this week, LJ set the blogger world seriously abuzz with an incredible run to m'er f'ing 10th place in WSOP Event #31, in $1500 HORSE. I freely admit it was the only thing I could think about last night. What a run. And in a lot of ways, this hits most of us a lot closer to home even than stoner's news from last week, despite the cash not being for as much from a pure dollars perspective.

Stoner is a blogger, he has a blog, he writes about poker sometimes, and he's played a few blonkaments with us over time. Maybe 5, maybe 10, probably not a whole lot more than that I would guess. But LJ, LJ is a whole different story. She is seriously one of us. She's played a million blogger tournaments and has played cash and chatted on the girly with most of you out there. She's come to multiple blogger get togethers and has met many of you personally, in Vegas or otherwise. She blogs (fairly) regularly and has taken the time to comment many, many times on many of your blogs about all different kinds of topics. She's a "homegrown" as anyone in our community these days when it comes right down to it, in a way that stoner is just not. And LJ just went and ran to 10th place in the WSOP.

I am speechless. Seriously. Those of you who have been around a while I imagine would have to agree with this. To think that in the span of three weeks we would have a 3rd place, a 39th place and a 10th place in WSOP events for people who are basically "regular bloggers", it is just mind-numbing to me. Has the skill level of our group as a whole actually been progressing all along to the point that the best of our group these days seriously are that much better than we were just a few years ago? Shit, a blogger in 3rd and another in 10th place? At the friggin World Series of Poker?!!

In about five years involved in this community, never did I ever think I'd see the day when I could run through 1300 donks on my way to a 27th place finish in the WSOP next week, and it would be pretty much ho-hum at this point. I would be whacking off but the rest of you would be sitting there wondering why I couldn't get past the final three tables in the WSOP and how I managed to donk off my stack that had been so much bigger an hour earlier.

This is going to be a strange visit to Vegas as compared to my last few pilgrimages to the WSOP. I'm sure I'll spend more time on this topic over the next week or so, but where my expectations would probably have been to cash and to make a Day Two for the first time in my life, now the bar has just been set so much higher, by people who admittedly have had more poker tournament success than me already as it is. But if bloggers can really run to the last ten of major WSOP events and be in position to run over the final table with a little bit of luck, then that changes everything, doesn't it?

WSOP Final Table Delay

I was reading again the other day about Harrah's move this year to delay the WSOP Main Event final table a couple of months and then play it live from Las Vegas in early November. I've read a lot of people's opinions on that whole situation, which at first seemed to be somewhat negative, but quickly the majority I read turned generally positive about the change.

I'm here to tell you why it's ghey. Ghey ghey ghey.

It's actually really simple. Anyone who was won a significant poker tournament knows that winning out through any huge field involves a combination of a whole lot of different factors. It's overall skill stuff, like aggression, tightness and hand reading. And there is also a significant luck-based component, involving things like starting cards, hitting draws, avoiding setups, etc. But it's also at least an equal part of other more general things like stamina, concentration, handling of stress, and especially momentum.

The momentum involved with winning a large-field tournament is like the Matrix: it cannot be described, it has to be experienced for itself. Those of you who have been there know just what I mean, and if you've done it in a live tournament context then you doubly especially know exactly what I mean. The stamina and just all-around mental toughness it takes to win a big-field poker tournament is one of the key aspects of any deep run and ultimately plays a huge role in the flow of the tournament and the performance of the individual players. Managing to keep your cool through all the tension generated by a large-field tournament run, resisting tilting after those two suckouts you suffered at the final table to take away your chip lead, fighting off the awfukkkits for those first eight rounds when you had no cards whatsoever to speak of. All that shit is hard work, and it just gets harder as the tournament wears on, your mental acuity slips a bit and those blinds just keep escalating, always threatening you with near-desperation if you don't gamboool to stay ahead.

Breaking the biggest tournament in the world off once the final table is reached in mid-July, sending the players to their respective homes for nearly four months, and then bringing them back to Vegas to play out their remaining chip stacks, completely disrupts this natural order of all poker tournaments. And the primary motivation of course for this whole move is money. Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney. No one even tries to deny it. It is of course being done so that ESPN, and Harrah's who owns the WSOP, can hype the living shitcock out of that final table. There are going to be updates of the contestants on Sportscenter as the final table approaches. There will be promo after promo after promo as ESPN struggles to boost its sagging poker ratings, previously some of their most-watched telecasts. There will be at least one television special detailing the lives of the final tablists and what they've been doing between when the Main Event started in July and when the final table runs on November 9. There will also be ample time for each of the players at the final table to score a potentially very lucrative sponsorship deal (or deals) with major poker sites and other sponsors. Again it all comes down to money. Money money money. It's sick.

So, for the sake of various and sundry money-related issues, the WSOP is going to separate the final table from the entire rest of the Main Event by four months. These players will show up in Vegas on November 9 super well-rested. They won't have any stamina issues, they will be fully refreshed and ready to play some poker. They won't be feeling that crick in their neck, not that pain in their backs that comes from sitting in those chairs playing high-pressure poker for days on end. They won't have the tension headaches, and it will all just be a lot easier for them than if the WSOP kept it real.

What's more, these players will show up in Vegas on November 9 in many cases in entirely different situations than those they left in July upon reaching the pinnacle of nlh poker tournaments at the WSOP ME final table. For one thing, several pros have brought up the rather obvious outcome that many, if not all, of these players will have been significantly coached on how to play this final table as compared to where they were at in July when they reached the last ten people standing in the Main Event. Many of them will have played largely donkish but then received much training heading into the final table during the four-month hiatus. It is likely if not definite that at least some of the final tablists will receive coaching during their time away on how to play against each specific individual at the final table with them, again all knowledge that was not had by them when they actually played the actual WSOP tournament in July. And I haven't even mentioned the non-coaching issues yet. Like, for example, what if someone was on tilt as the final table begins? Then they get four months to cool off, and will show up in November fully refreshed and in the right poker mindset. What if someone had built up a strong tight image and had been set up to take advtange before the four-month layoff? What if one of the players had been poor generally speaking back in July, as is often the case at the WSOP ME final table, but by November they've already recently inked a $500,000 sponsorship deal with some poker site thanks to the time off? Isn't that going to change the way they play the final table and the way they deal with the possibility of winning all that money at stake? If you say no, you delude yourself.

I'm not trying to say that making all of these essential changes to the very nature of tournament poker is "right" or "wrong" per se, but the four-month layoff is undoubtedly significantly and substantively different from how things would have played out, in some very major and relevant ways, had the tournament just been allowed to continue to its conclusion in July like we have every other year since the WSOP first began. That significant changing, I would argue, does make it "wrong" from a poker tournament context in that it eliminates some of the very most important stuff about winning a poker tournament in the first place. The fact that the only motiviation for these changes is money is just all the sicker.

I just wanted to take a second to address my favorite counterargument that I hear all the time about this issue. Some donkeys love to point out that the same exact changes are being enforced on all ten of the final tablers in the Main Event this year, and so thus, since the same changes apply to all the contestants, it is automatically fair. That, my friends, is pure tomfoolery. Just because you make the same change to everyone, that doesn't make this a smart move, an appropriate move, or a "fair" move. Why not just tell everyone they have to play the final table with only one hole card then? That could be applied to everyone equally. Does that make that a fair proposal? Obviously not. And hey why not tie one arm of every contestant behind their back for the final table? That's equal for everyone too, right? But does that make it a smart change, or a fair change, for the WSOP final table? Obviously not.

Changing the essential nature of a poker tournament, doing so all for money, but doing so in a way that screws every contestant equally, is not a good decision. It's a horrible decision. Is it catastrophic? Will it ruin the World Series of Poker brand forever? Obviously not. I'm sure they will change this back in a couple of years when they realize just how ghey the delayed final table is and how much it wrecks what tournament poker is supposed to be all about. This won't have any long-term effect on the WSOP or the world of poker in general, make no mistake. But that doesn't make it a good decision or one that should be made. When you let money corrupt the underlying nature of what you do, you tread on shaky ground. Not all, but I can't help but notice how most of the people who see this change as a good thing are not people who have made a practice of winning large-field poker tournaments. Seems to me that most of those people understand exactly where I am coming from on this, and see the final table delay for just the gimmick that it is.