update on florida poker bill

The Florida poker bill situation is heating up; Jeb Bush is being aggressively lobbied by gambling opponents to veto the bill that allows poker games to go from $10 pots to $1-$2 betting. Link

Bush, who has on several occasions said he's opposed to expanding gambling, said he's not necessarily convinced the measure would do that, but said Thursday he hasn't decided whether he'll sign the bill.

Update: the bill passed.

Update: if you're looking for information on Florida poker room locations, the best info I have is here.

exchanges and betting

The recent "terrorist futures" fiasco, which so far has resulted in the resignation of John Poindexter, has also prompted some interesting discussion around the place. Here's a roundup of interesting links associated with the story:

review of stuey

A while back I mentioned the film Stuey, which debuted at the CineVegas film festival. A bunch of news about the film, which I am eagerly awaiting:

foxwoods wins new england poker battle

The Mohegan Sun is throwing in the poker towel and closing their poker room for good, filling it with slot machines. This will make Foxwoods the only New England poker room. Link

paypal pays $10m for gambling transfers

PayPal has agreed to pay the U.S. government $10m to settle allegations that it violated the Wire Wager Act and - get this - the Patriot Act - by transferring funds to offshore gambling sites. Link

This is pretty big news; although it doesn't establish a legal precedent since the case was settled, it does establish a basis for the DOJ to go after other fund transfer operations, makes it less likely that any US bank will approve online gambling transfers, and also could point toward the government eventually going after individuals.

The next step will probably be blackballing offshore payment mediators like Neteller and Firecash, who currently mediate payments between US banks and offshore gambling sites.

poker in hawaii

Hawaii is one of only two states without state-sanctioned gambling of some sort, but today's Honolulu Advertiser has a nice article on the rising popularity of poker in Hawaii, citing televised poker as one of the primary drivers.

"It's not like the movies with imaginary people winning imaginary money," says Lance Tamashiro, 22. "The World Series is real money. You have a guy with a pair in his hand going all in with five cards still left, and it's real money. It's crazy."

upcoming books

I just rolled out another feature courtesy of Amazon Web Services: upcoming books for the same categories as my bestseller lists. They are now permanent fixtures on the left sidebar.

Upcoming poker books
Upcoming blackjack books
Upcoming vegas books
Upcoming gambling books

There are some really interesting books slated for release.

• Poker Face (due August 12) is an autobiography by the sister of Howard Lederer and Annie Duke and sounds fascinating. As far as I know it's the first autobiography about a poker-playing family.
• Sure Bet (due September) is an anthology of gambling crime stories which may prove to be interesting.
• Fellow Austinite blogger Neal Pollack writes one of 52 poker vignettes in A Friendly Game of Poker (due October).
• Mike Cappelletti is coming out with his take on Omaha High-Low this fall.

In other book news, my copy of Dave Schwartz's Suburban Xanadu finally arrived. I'm looking forward to reading it and will post a review here for your reading pleasure.

clicks-and-mortar illegal bookies

The Arizona Republic has an outstanding exclusive with an ex-member of an Arizona betting ring that uses an online site to allow its clients to place bets without a credit card, and settles all payments and collections via cash in person.

The computer kept track of wins and losses. Monday morning Sam knew where he stood. So did his bookie, who had access to Sam's online account.

"The fact you don't have to put up a credit card is perfect," Sam said. "For a gambler, that's the last thing you want to do, leave a paper trail."

gambling field trips

A Philadelphia college professor takes his students on a field trip to Atlantic City (with Bill Kearney in tow) to study gambling up close and personal.

Allen Hornblum teaches urban studies at Temple University. For weeks, he's led discussions about the prospect of gambling in Pennsylvania.

They studied the good (jobs, money for schools), the bad (poor people losing what little they have), and the question marks (how to keep organized crime out of the game).

monopoly for money

I've been known to play Monopoly for money before, but never with the chance to win $100,000 -- the prize being offered in a promotion out of Reno which will be played on the world's largest monopoly board. Link

women and poker

The NY Daily News featured a decent, too-short article on women poker players this weekend.

Having seen the World Poker Tour, many women have gotten the courage that it takes to step over that scary threshold into a bricks-and-mortar casino," says Kathy Raymond, director of poker operations for Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, Conn. Reps for the show says about 30% of its viewership is female. "They're loving it. Women were seen at the final table winning big money and women were talked about as establishing their place in the poker world."

professional online gambler to face charges

In the first case I've ever seen of its kind, a North Dakota man is facing misdemeanor gambling charges for online betting. He became a professional sports gambler almost two years ago, earning enough to support his family and building up a bankroll of over $300,000.

Unfortunately for him, he thought it was legal, and reported his winnings as taxable income. He also hired an accounting firm that specialized in gambling (although evidently not enough to advise him that he was breaking the law).

It sounds like he specialized in middles (an arbitrage play using multiple sportsbooks - see here):

After learning the nuances of sports betting, Trauman discovered he could improve his chances of winning by anticipating shifts in point spreads, or “middling.” Basketball was one of the first sports he wagered on, even though he didn’t know much about the game. It didn’t matter, he told an investigator, because he only worked off the spreads.

more poker-politics analogies

As I Please has a brief history of "the buck stops here" and the current political situation as they relate to poker. Link

poker and iraq

Personally, I find analogies between drawing a good poker hand and killing our enemies in bad taste. There's something wrong about saying "yay, we just killed some more people -- now we have a full house!" But plenty of commentators are saying just that. Debra Pickett is a recent example:

I guess I was kind of squeamish about the whole "Wanted: Dead or Alive" aspect of the idea because the lines between assassination and preemptive "decapitation" strikes seemed so blurry.

But lately, I've started feeling like maybe I should embrace the idea. I decided to learn to play poker.

hard rock casino coming to biloxi

The Mississippi Gaming Commission approved development of a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Biloxi. I've never been to Biloxi; apparently the poker is pretty good down there (although I doubt Hard Rock will be adding a poker room). Link

bad beat stories

You're not a real poker player without a good smattering of bad beat stories. Mr Helpful has posted a good little series of them from his recent tournament play.

Rather than proselytize before the almighty who could easily change my fortunes, it appears I have, instead, been praying to the god of the perpetual second best hand.

the sports guy

ESPN's Bill Simmons, aka The Sports Guy, has written a hilarious column about his gambling ways:

I've wagered on summer league basketball, the NBA draft (pick by pick), USFL rebroadcasts (a personal favorite), the WWE's Royal Rumble, Sopranos deaths and video football, with the computer playing both sides (another favorite). During a Celtics halftime, I even won 20 bucks on the Special Olympics team in the dark unis.

edmonton poker scam

It sounds more like a David Mamet script than a Canadian news piece, but apparently a group of con artists are running a little poker scam in the Edmonton area.

During the course of the game the complainant learns that the tokens are worth real money, and that he stands to win a significant amount of cash due to a streak of good luck. Of course, the good luck turns sour and the complainant ends up losing several thousand dollars to the other players.

cash-transfer ATM

An inventor has announced his latest invention, an ATM that not only dispenses cash but accepts cash to pay for online transactions or transfer cash between people. He makes the point that in over 3/4 of the world, almost all transactions are cash-only. Link

The article makes an offhand mention that the device could be used to pay for online gambling. While that's certainly true, a device like this is not necessary to get around Visa-Mastercard-American Express-Paypal's voluntary ban of online gambling payments; there are dozens of other mediation systems that facilitate credit card payments for online gambling, and any given online gambling site usually has a link to at least one of them.

All the voluntary ban has really done is boost the revenue of offshore payment mediators, many of whom charge pretty hefty percentages on transactions, and are often in jurisdictions with questionable or absent regulation.

kitten poker

Random link of the day -- poker for kittens?!

You will need one fur lined Cat Basket, for the middle of the table, and a good selection of kittens, Kitten values are as follows.

professional video poker, anyone?

News 8 in Vegas reported a story on Monday about a professional video poker player who is now hawking classes and books about video poker:

Professional gambler Bob Dancer says he turned $6,000 into a million with just 6 months of play. At the Fiesta Rancho he's teaching others the strategy he used to cash in.

Let's take a closer look at Bob Dancer's claim anyway. First things first: the statement above is misleading. Bob Dancer's "$6,000 bankroll" is what he claims he arrived in Vegas with almost ten years ago (Link). It's almost impossible to turn $6,000 into $1m in any endeavor, including the highly lucrative field of professional video poker (sarcasm).

He claims that he and his wife won $1 million between September 2000 and March 2001. So while he made the $1m over six months, that was 6 years after he first arrived in Vegas with $6,000 and a dream. Also, does this mean that he made $1 million in profit, or that his winning hands totaled $1 million collected? It's not clear.

Let's assume it was $1 million in profit. Is this even possible? The easy answer is yes, if you're extremely lucky. It would only require a few jackpots at lucrative levels to hit $1m in profit, but you would need to be exceptionally lucky and you would never expect to have the same luck again in your life.

The harder answer is yes, if you're playing the right amount of money, in the right machines, for the right amount of time. Bob Dancer is primarily concerned with that holy grail of video poker: machines with a payout table that optimally pays out 100.76%. These are machines that, if you play perfect strategy, over time (a long time) you are going to make money at.

It's said that a professional video poker player can play around 1,000 hands per hour. If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is. It requires intense concentration to get in almost one hand every three seconds (and not many bathroom / drink breaks!).

Let's say you've found a 100.76% payout machine, and you can play perfect video poker at 1,000 hands per hour. If that is a 25 cent machine, and you play 5 credits per hand, you'll be averaging about $9.50 per hour in profit over the long run. If you are able to play this machine for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks of the year, you will make $1m in profit -- after 105,263,158 hands and 52.63 years.

If it's a $5 machine, and you play five credits per hand, you'll get to $1m much faster -- in 2.63 years. And if it's a $25 machine, you could theoretically be clearing $950 an hour -- and get to $1m in profit in just over six months.

We've made a lot of assumptions so far, about bankroll, machine availability, your playing ability, and the stakes being played. Even if these applied, there's a big obstacle to making insane bank -- your bankroll.

Video poker is not a low-risk game. It is a game with long periods of gradually losing money, punctuated by large jackpots. If you expect to hit a jackpot once every x thousand hands, it may be 2x, 3x or 20x until one actually comes, just as you may sit down and hit one in the first hour.

The Wizard of Odds has posted the best reference I've seen about bankroll size here. It correlates "Risk of Ruin" - the odds of losing your entire stake - with bankroll size.

Let's say you want to start small, at $1.25 per play, to make your $9.50 an hour playing video poker, and you want less than a 1% chance of losing all your hard-earned kwan. You'll need a bankroll of $8,810 dedicated to your "profession." That's just to get $9.50 an hour. If you found a good $125 per play machine and wanted to make your $1m in half a year, you'd need a bankroll of $881,000. Personally, if I already had almost a million dollars, a) I wouldn't be a professional video poker player, and b) I would probably want a less than 1% chance of losing every penny of it! It's also worth mentioning that if you played at that level with a bankroll of less than $132,625 you'd have worse than a 50% likelihood of going bust.

All that said, I don't know if Bob Dancer is selling snake oil or not. His columns on Video Poker actually appear to be very well written, including this one which actually covers one of the common misconceptions about bankrolls. His writings and software appear to be pretty well-regarded online. And although I doubt he's promising this, the news piece made it sound like he was teaching people how to turn $6,000 into $1m in six months, which is most certainly a pipe dream.

Being a professional video poker player appeals to a very narrow set of people, and requires a really specific type of personality and mind. As for me, I'd probably go insane (not to mention deaf and blind) if I tried to make a living by playing 8,000 hands of perfect video poker every day.

update on austin poker club

It's been a little quiet on the Austin Poker Club news front lately (previous news here and here).

I recently received an e-mail from the owner of the APC; the update is that there's nothing much new to report, except that they hope to have their court date set within the next month and he's still feeling very optimistic.

rec.gambling.poker

rec.gambling.poker used to be the best place to discuss poker online. Now it's more like bobbing for apples in a septic tank. (The best online poker discussions these days that I'm aware of are probably at either 2+2 or sometimes liveactionpoker.)

Occasionally, though, the puerile noise renders some funny (but still puerile) exchanges. Here's an example of one recent post and the first five replies:

WHO IS PHIL HELMYOUTH?>>?
IS THIS SOME NEW PLAYER? JUST SAW HIM ON ESPN.
--
he's a good father
--
He's a Bad Motha.
--
Shut Yo' mouth!
--
Shaft!
--
He can read your soul.
And he can read stories.

dallas underground poker

The latest on the radar of mainstream poker writing -- there's a good column in the latest Dallas Observer about an illegal poker game in Dallas:

If you've seen Rounders, a fine poker movie in my opinion, you probably have some romantic notion of underground card rooms--secret knocks, leggy women handing out stacks of heavy clay chips, sleek décor, mad, mobbed-up Russians, the works. That's what I had in mind, too.

This place? This place is a little different.

florida poker gets a boost

A bill just passed in Florida that allows a max bet of $2 in poker rooms, erasing the previous cap which was a max pot of $10. $2 max isn't huge, but it's a good start. Link

"Instead of a $10 pot limit, there will be a $2 bet limit with no more than three raises," Winning said. "We hope this goes through. It could pick things up. The pot could go up anywhere from $20 to $40."

Update: Tyler pointed out that not only has Jeb Bush not signed this bill yet, but he also vetoed a similar bill last year at the last minute. So no Florida poker boost yet.

Update: the bill passed.

Update: if you're looking for information on Florida poker room locations, the best info I have is here.

dream poker game

SFGate.com's Gambling Fool column this week, after a lengthy rant about cycling not being a sport, includes readers' answers to his question last week, "What's your dream poker game?" My favorite answer:

Jim G: "Let me translate your question: Who do we know who's really stupid about his or her money? So I would like Garry St. Jean at the table, along with the owner or general manager of the Portland Trailblazers, Texas Rangers, New York Mets, Baltimore Orioles, and Washington Redskins."

a wynn primer

Guardian article with a good brief history of Steve Wynn's role in the development of Vegas, his art collecting ways, and his new casino project.

By 2005, his most ambitious gamble, a $2.4bn hotel resort - with its own man-made lake and, of course, with its own Ferrari and Maserati dealerships - is due to open. Originally, it was to be named Le Reve, after one of the Picassos that Wynn and his wife own; but, as of last month, it is to be called Wynn Las Vegas, embodying a dream of a different kind.

wsop earlier tonight

Episode #3 of the World Series of Poker tonight is on one hour earlier - at 8pm Eastern / 7pm Central (i.e. it's about to start). If you missed it, don't worry, ESPN has been replaying them at least twice, on Saturdays and Mondays.

sympathy for the numbers

The Bahamas police recently held a press conference to announce a strategic plan to cripple the massive illegal numbers game in the Bahamas, which sounds as old and entrenched there as it is in many nations like the Philippines and Thailand.

This fascinating op-ed from the Nassau Guardian rabidly defends the Bahamian numbers racket as a traditional part of life there, and paints it in a human light, including some cool anecdotes about the bookies and players that populate the primitive underground lottery community.

Then there are those that the police refer to as the "kingpins." Are they a motley crew of nefarious culprits or just entrepreneurs? It's interesting that the first generation of Houses were headed by men. These were men who enjoyed gambling and sought ways to cultivate their interest while earning an income. These pioneers, not unlike their earlier counterparts were pirate like, bootleggers and they built a name and a fat bank account by offering hope to others.

They were however unlike their earlier counterparts in that they seldom dapple in drugs, prostitution or the harder social needs. They are strictly Numbers men.

Hope for them came in the form of poker, other card games and the Numbers Game. They would set up the games, manage the collections and deliver as a guarantee on the monies paid when that "number fell." they were trusted treasurers of the people's purse.

survival of the least risk-averse

There's an interesting brief piece over at SciScoop, "Playing With Poker Chips At The Dawn Of Humanity," that manages to draw parallels between the World Poker Tour, gambling behavior, and evolution -- as well as references to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mario Puzo and skipping stones. Link

poker coding, anyone?

Someone on rentacoder.com is looking for an implementation of an online draw poker game. It won't be played for money - get this - it's webcam strip poker. The next killer app? Link

poker haiku

Poker-themed haiku from the shugars, the blog of an MP3.com employee about waiting to see what happens to his company, which is going through some rough times:

I wait patiently.
Hoping for good River Card.
Corporate Poker.

irish poker school opens

The Fitzwilliam Card Club in Dublin will be opening a "poker school" starting September -- 9 weeks of 90-minute classes. The class costs $200. I'll be interested to hear how the classes are. Example lesson plan:

Week 4 - Recap of Week 3
- Pot Odds v Gambling
- Trips, Straights & Flushes
- Playing a Monster
- Trapping / Slowplaying
- Sandbagging / Semi Bluffs & Bluffs

you gamble long time

Park Place Entertainment, owners of Caesar's Palace, Bally's and a number of other casinos, recently announced they're changing their name to Caesars Entertainment. Unfortunately www.caesarsentertainment.com is taken already -- by a Bangkok massage parlor! Story

Update: Rick over at thechipboard.com has this to say:

PPE is very much aware of this site (I talk to their General Counsel's office) and they are looking into this matter because not only is that Thailand based company using the Caesars name but they are also using the same graphics and fonts as Caesars casino/hotel properties and just a guess but I suspect that PPE will probably go after them for trademark infrigement.

the government made him do it?

A Canadian compulsive gambler, who stole CAD$100,000 from his government job over two years through fraud, was sentenced to 240 hours of community service and 3 years of probation, despite the Ottawa Assistant Crown attorney requesting 12-18 months of jail time.

The judge handing down the sentence essentially blamed the government for promoting gambling, thus creating compulsive gamblers and said the government has to "share some of the responsibility for creating people who fall prey to this addiction".

Which is fine, except this man's crime wasn't being a compulsive gambler. It was stealing large sums of money over an extended period of time through fraud and abuse of power. The National Post has a great op-ed on how ludicrous the opinion is.

And while Bélanger did use the example of cocaine -- which a) the government doesn't sell; and b) does actually make an addict out of everybody who uses it -- the arguments he presented would surely apply more logically, or illogically in this case, to booze.

classic moments in online poker

Classic moment in online poker #315: playing in a pot-limit Omaha tournament, one guy is all-in by the river, which gives me a weak full house. I bet at the pot, and get reraised for a huge amount by the third player. I decide to fold my hand, and he turns over an A-2, thinking we're playing OMAHA HI/LO, and loses to one pair.

bestseller lists!

I just added a brand new feature to love and casino war that I'm excited about -- bestseller lists!

In a previous post, I mentioned the popularity of some poker books on Amazon.com. To compile that list, I had to go through the books on Amazon by hand and look up their Sales Ranks.

After checking out Amazon Web Services I decided that it would be pretty cool to show a regularly updated list of these bestsellers. I started with Incutio's very elegant PHP integration. Feature creep set in and I added a little database on this site to track movement of the books, as well as tracking an approximation of how many books are sold each week. So, I present to you:

Poker Bestsellers
Blackjack Bestsellers
Vegas Bestsellers
Gambling Bestsellers

If you see any books that should be on this list, please let me know. For instance, for some reason Doyle Brunson's Super System doesn't appear in an Amazon search for "Poker" (!) so I added it manually. Also if you'd like to see bestseller lists for anything else let me know too!

These lists are now linked from the left sidebar of the site too.

brag

If you've ever wanted to try out 3-card brag, the English poker-like game depicted in "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", you can download a version here (via Little Teapot). There's a good set of Brag rules here. I don't care much for the game compared to poker, but some people get into it.

binion's convicted killers get new trial

Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, convicted in 2000 for the murder of Binion heir Ted Binion, got their convictions overturned this week when the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that the original judge committed errors that unfairly biased the jury. There will be a retrial.

The justices also took issue with the way the testimony of attorney James Brown was presented to jurors. In an eve-of-death phone call, Binion told Brown of his youthful girlfriend, "Take Sandy out of the will if she doesn't kill me tonight. If I'm dead you'll know what happened."

The justices said Bonaventure should have instructed jurors to consider statements only as evidence of Binion's state of mind, not as fact. "The prejudicial impact was great: The statement strongly implied Murphy killed Binion," the justices wrote.

borgata reports

Here are some early reports from visits to the Borgata, Atlantic City's newest casino:
Allan Baruz | The Illuminated Donkey | Marc Falcone of Deutsche Bank Securities | Philip K | Joe Marley

From all accounts, especially those coming in on rec.gambling.poker, the poker room is really nice, and despite some green dealers is being managed well. Looking good for the success of AC's third real poker room.

40,000 feet below binion's

Ken Goldstein has a good article about low-rolling it up in Vegas during the World Series of Poker.

For those players who can't afford the big-ticket buy-ins there are nightly 11:00 p.m. $225 no-limit Hold 'Em "consolation" events as well as smaller, one-table "satellite" tournaments to raise bucks for the big ones.

And then there was us.

pennsylvania pushing lottery tickets as incentives

In the latest from the front lines of ridiculous gambling promotion by states, the PA government is trying to convince companies to give out lottery tickets as employee incentives. Typically rational indictment of state lotteries from the Motley Fool:

Lottery tickets typically have a payout rate of 50 cents per dollar spent, which means that they are not only among the worst gambling prospects around; they also offer companies one of the worst investing payoffs. This may be exciting and fun for employees, but does that actually double the value of the tickets? We doubt it.

harry s. truman, poker player

I found this great article on Harry S. Truman's poker-playing ways. It includes this story about when Winston Churchill joined in a game in 1946 right before Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain" speech:

As the game progressed, though, Churchill lost steadily, and his stack of chips dwindled. After about an hour of this disastrous play, Churchill left the room for a moment. Truman told his companions that they would have to let up some. "But, Boss, this guy's a pigeon" one of the players, Harry Vaughan, burst out. "If you want us to play our best poker for the nation's honor, we'll have this guy's pants before the evening is over."

The tour of Truman's "Little White House" in Key West, FL includes a view of the presidential poker table, a dining table whose top comes off to reveal a nice poker table beneath. Link

nostalgic story

Harry Bekkar tells a fun little story about strip poker, Jean Harlow and a man in a gray flannel suit in 1936. Link

orleans open

Just got back from the Orleans Open in Vegas this weekend. Wow, what a tournament! The limit hold'em on Saturday got 1,166 players. That's a record, and for the first time in Orleans Open history they actually had to turn away players!

Unfortunately, I didn't make the money. I busted out with about 330 players remaining. I was pretty happy with my performance, but got crippled in the fourth hour when I got outdrawn when I played top pair. It happens.

For those of you who like math, 1,166 seems like an odd number for a capped poker tournament, right? Well they play 11-handed tables in this event. As far as I can tell it didn't change the dynamic too much at the tables I was on.

What would be a trip report without some poker hands?

Hand 1: single table satellite, second hand. Blinds are $10 & $15, I have $500. I am dealt pocket 5's in mid-position, and bring it in for $60. Fold around to the button, who raises another $45. Fold to me, and I call. The flop comes 5-7-8 rainbow. I go all in for about $400 with my trips, am called, and opponent flips over AA. My hand holds up and I double up (ended up coming second and got an $80 booby prize). This hand is an example of why not to underplay AA pre-flop. I would have raised at least $100-200 in his position.

The most interesting hands of the weekend came when I played in an absolutely amazing $15-30 game at the Bellagio on Sunday. This was a loose game, less aggressive than average for $15-30. About 40% of pots were unraised pre-flop and had 6 or more callers. 40% had a single raise and typically 3-6 callers. And 20% had more than one raise, less than 3 callers, or were won before the flop. Almost all hands that had a flop went to the river. Can you say wow? I only played in it for four hours because my flight was leaving, which needless to say I was not happy about! Still, I walked away +$500 which was nice.

Example hand: I play QQ in middle position for a raise and get 4 callers. Flop is Q78 rainbow. It's capped on the flop, I raise on the turn and and get three callers. Blank comes on the river, I bet and all of them call. They turn over middle pair, bottom pair, and pocket 6's and I scoop a huge pot.

Most of my winning hands were this straightforward. But this pair of losing hands still has me kicking myself.

First hand: I have KK in middle position. One caller to me, I raise, the button calls, and the big blind and the original caller calls. The player on the button was the only good player at the table (other than me). He had played straightforward solid poker. I had seen him raise with nothing less than TT, and if he played past the flop he rarely lost. Not too creative but pretty profitable in this game. At least, I thought not too creative until this hand.

The flop came AT3 rainbow. Check-check to me, I bet, and this guy on the button raised. The two players to my right folded, and I called time. After considering the hand, I couldn't think of any hand he could have other than Ax (probably suited, or AT or above) or maybe TT. I folded, and he flipped up pocket Q's! I kicked myself but would not play that hand differently unless I really knew my opponent and put him on a bluff. But this guy, who as far as I could tell had been playing really straightforward best-hand-wins poker totally blew my mind here.

About half an hour later, I got dealt KK again, again in middle position. Two callers to me, and I raised it up. There's one caller to my left, and then the same guy is on the button, again, and this time reraises. The blinds fold, the two guys on my right call, I call, as does the one caller on my left. The flop comes Q73 rainbow. The first player bets, next calls, I raise, then a call, then my nemesis on the button reraises. Two calls to my right, and I call time. Playing the hand back, and the other hands the guy has played, I honestly couldn't put him on any hand other than QQ or AA. There were significant differences between this situation and the last one; more callers, he reraised preflop this time (something he rarely did), and the one spot in his game I thought was a little weak was that he tended to underplay top pair so I had a tough time thinking he had AQ in this situation.

But I had enough confusion in my mind from the earlier hand, so I called his reraise and called down to the end for two more bets. If the earlier hand hadn't happened I definitely would have tossed here, that's how strong my read on this guy had been, but that one play put me so much in doubt I didn't trust my instinct on him. It would have saved me $75, because I called a total of three bets to see QQ.

Those two hands are the most outplayed I've felt at any poker table for at least 6 years. That includes three WSOP events. A big call, but I so rarely have such a strong feeling about a laydown and then see a lesser hand take it down. Really it was that first hand where I was outplayed, and led me to make those poor calls on the later hand. But outside of that one guy, I was happy with my play and did walk away a pretty good winner on the session. Now if only I hadn't taught my friend to play blackjack and craps on Friday night, I would have been up for the trip :)

As an aside, I heard this song on the radio on the way to the airport. I had never noticed the lyrics before, but they were rather appropriate...

Now you swear and kick and beg us
That you're not a gamblin' man
Then you find you're back in Vegas
With a handle in your hand
Your black cards can make you money
So you hide them when you're able
In the land of milk and honey
You must put them on the table

arrrr!

In honor of this weekend, when I'll be in Vegas playing in the Orleans Open and staying at the strip's greatest of pirate hotels...

"The Barbary Coast," wrote Benjamin Estelle Lloyd in his 1878 chronicle, Lights and Shades of San Francisco, "is the haunt of the low and the vile of every kind. The petty thief, the house burglar, the tramp, the whoremonger, lewd women, cutthroats, murderers, all are found here. Dance-halls and concert-saloons, where bleary-eyed men and faded women drink vile liquor, smoke offensive tobacco, engage in vulgar conduct, sing obscene songs, and say and do everything to heap upon themselves more degradation, are numerous. Low gambling houses, thronged with riot-loving rowdies, in all stages of intoxication, are there. Opium dens, where heathen Chinese and God-forsaken men and women are sprawled in miscellaneous confusion, disgustingly drowsy or completely overcome, are there. Licentiousness, debauchery, pollution, loathsome disease, insanity from dissipation, misery, poverty, wealth, profanity, blasphemy, and death, are there. And Hell, yawning to receive the putrid mass, is there also."

poker blogchatter

Wow, that NYT article on poker and AI has generated a good amount of blog chatter (for poker). Here's a brief survey of the posts out there from the last day.

Commentary/Discussion:
Crooked Timber | Slashdot | Alex Jones | Techdirt | Idler Yet

Quick Mentions:
R Perl | Stare | geeknews.net | The Sound and Fury | Mike's Quicklinks | As I Please | seattlepi.com | Steve's No Direction Home Page | Magnetbox | Misanthropyst | ktheory | FactoVision | dangerousmeta | A Complete Waste of Time | Aula | Stupidus | Newmark's Door | Pathologically Polymathic | Sampler | Complexity Digest | Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends

I guess I'm surprised that this article has generated apparently more interest than Moneymaker's win itself, but it's a well-written article and is one of the first I've seen to draw the concrete link between computer simulation and practice and big-money results in real life.

the best game in town

This post comes from guest blogger Neil, my good friend and recent inductee to the world of blogging. Thanks Neil!

How excited would you be about a lottery that paid out more money than it took in and in which your ticket is re-drawn every month? But wait there's more, for your $1^* ticket you can win up to $1 million each month or lots of smaller prizes and the winnings are tax free. As if that wasn't enough, you can take your original dollar back whenever you want -- and all this is guaranteed by the government.

No way, you say! Well check out UK Premium Bonds (Link). The monthly prize pool gives you odds of 30,000 to 1 of winning a prize between $50 and $1 million.

The prize pool is determined by the effective interest rate on the bonds, currently 2.25% per year. All of the interest is divided into three prize pools, Higher, Medium and Lower. The lower band gets 90% of the money and the other two get 5% each. The higher band has one prize of $1 million and the rest of the 5% is divided between $100k, $50k, $25k, $10k and $5k prizes. The next 5% is divided between $1k and $500 prizes. The final 90% is divided between $100 and $50 prizes.

When you buy your Premium Bond it is given a serial number. ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) draws out the numbers (enough to have 1 prize for every 30k bonds) and the prizes are allocated to these numbers. The first number selected by ERNIE wins the million, the next $100k, and so on.

At an annual expected value of $1.0225 per dollar invested, this seems like the best bet in the world. Of course there are two big reasons why it isn't. Each month you have less than a 1 in 19.5 billion chance of winning $1 million per dollar invested, so effectively you are only receiving volatile interest payments. As your returns are more risky from an investment (rather than gambling) point of view, you should expect higher returns. That is why people invest in stocks rather than bonds -- higher volatility but higher returns. $1 invested in 1801 would have returned $1,070 if in bonds or $462,502 in the stock market (Link). But with Premium Bonds, you receive lower returns and higher volatility. You could receive 3.8% in another government account (also tax free) and this interest is guaranteed.

I know a couple of people that have these bonds, one wins often and the other hasn't won in 10 years. On average if you invest the entire $30k maximum you should expect to win once a month. I would be excited to see some company issue 5% corporate bonds that paid interest in this manner, I'm sure they would have no trouble selling them.

Anyway if I could go to Vegas, pay once to play roulette and every 5 minutes I got to bet on a very large roulette table (maybe one with 30,000 numbers) I'd be pretty happy. Especially if I could take my chip off at any time and go home. Of course if there were cocktail waitress with free drinks, I think I might never leave.

(^* this should have all been in British Pounds but that would only complicate the issue.)

"the new card shark"

Excellent article in today's New York Times on how online play and computer simulation is influencing the world of poker. It's one of the best mainstream articles on poker I've seen in a while.

Mr. Moneymaker may never have been in the same room as other players in a tournament of Texas Hold'em poker, but he had played extensively online, where the game is faster but the money is just as real. He was as much a rookie as Ichiro Suzuki, who joined the Seattle Mariners after nine years in the Japanese major leagues.

death of a bookie

An Alaskan newspaper covers the funeral of a bookie in an interesting article with some interesting tidbits.

Years ago, the old bookie organized a junket to Reno for the local players, one of the first gambling charters out of Alaska. Halfway through the flight, the airplane was rocked by severe turbulence. The turbulence worsened. Guys turned ashen, dolls shrieked.

The old bookie prayed: "Oh, Lord, take us if you must. But if you must take us, take us on the flight back. Take us when we are all tapped out."

boxing, 4-H style

This just in from Virginia:

Investigators are looking into allegations that children at a 4-H camp in Franklin County may have been forced into fistfights by camp counselors who charged $1 admission and placed bets on the young fighters.

Update: early interviews have substantiated the allegations. (thanks, Chas!)

review of espn's wsop coverage

We live in a very good time for poker. Between the World Poker Tour, and now the ESPN World Series of Poker program, there has never been better or more insightful poker coverage on TV.

Here are my thought's on last night's first episode of ESPN's WSOP coverage.

First, the production value is much higher than in past years. The commentation was good and in the typical sportscaster style of ESPN, which I prefer to the more conversational style of the World Poker Tour. Like the WPT, they actually also showed cards that weren't shown to other players, which is terrific.

The percentage favorite display they show during the hand is great. I think they should adopt the same thing for the World Poker Tour. They really should also show the current pot and bet size though.

I'm personally ambivalent about the personal profiles they showed during the episode. While I enjoy hearing about poker players' off-table lives, for a 1-hour episode it really detracted from the actual poker shown. But for making the show more accessible to a non-poker audience, I think they're right on the money. They were able to build a pretty nice side story about the tournament essentially being a battle of personalities, which in a lot of ways is what tournaments are about.

I was surprised not to hear any mention of some of the other big names in tournament poker like T.J. Cloutier, Layne Flack, Men Nguyen, John Juanda. Guess they'll discuss them in later episodes.

As far as the poker contained in the episode, again I felt there wasn't enough -- maybe ten hands? For the poker they did show, it was apparently the Robert Varkonyi show. If I did a shot for every time they said "Varkonyi" I'd be dead right now. Yes, he is the defending champion. Yes, he was at the "feature table". It just felt it was a little excessive.

On the other hand, the Varkonyi hands held some valuable lessons for how not to play WSOP poker. I'm sure there'll be enough dissing on Varkonyi on rec.gambling.poker so I'll minimize mine here. His two hands with aces were obviously played very poorly. I know the guy is not a hardcore pro, but his first hand was a textbook example of when not to slowplay. As for his bustout, well AA vs KK or set over set are the easiest ways to exit a no-limit tournament, so there probably wasn't much he could do. It does annoy me when players call huge bets with the worse hand, and then when their opponent turns over aces say "I knew it."

Overall, the program was excellent and I look forward to the next 6 weeks of programming!

As an aside, this program had some great quotes. Here are some of my favorites:

vegas-themed chess pieces

"Sticks", an art / furniture store, has a cool collection of hand-made chess sets, including this Vegas-themed one which features slot machines, performers, casinos and players. Black White (via MetaFilter)

amarillo slim under fire

On Thursday, Amarillo Slim Preston put his promotional tour for his new book in jeopardy when he made an anti-Semitic slur on live radio, thinking that he was off the air. The radio management is alerting his future tour stops about the incident. Link

Suggestion: rather than reserving your slurs for when you think you're off the air, how about just avoiding them altogether.

article on espn wsop coverage

From the Boston Globe. Tonight (9pm ET) is actually the first of seven one-hour episodes ESPN will be airing on the 2003 World Series of Poker. This one will be concentrating on the first-day losers. Link

straight flush story

Alan Bostick describes his second ever straight flush. Link

I said, "I sure hope that somebody has pocket eights!" and tabled my hand.

misleading article on slot machine fairness

The BBC today carried an article on the FairPlay Campaign, a group of people who have observed English slot machine ("fruit machine") behavior through software ROMs and emulators, and claim that the machines are unfair.

Hardware hackers have found that the majority of UK fruit machines pre-determine every turn of the reels to prevent players winning a gamble for a big payout.

Unfortunately, the article has FairPlay's message totally wrong.

The FairPlay Campaign contends that English fruit machines are not fair because their results are predetermined. So, for instance, some machines have a parlay feature where the player guesses whether a number will be higher or lower than some other number. As it turns out, these machines determine, before the player presses high or low, whether the player will win or lose. Then, based on the player's guess, a result is displayed that corresponds to the predetermined outcome.

But while sometimes the machines predetermined results "prevent players winning a gamble for a big payout", at other times they guarantee a big payout.

FairPlay does not contend that the machines are paying out less than they should, or that the slot companies are violating the voluntary 70% payout minimum adopted in England. Instead, they are just saying that the results should not be predetermined, they should be randomly generated at the time of player decision.

While the inner workings of the machines exposed by FairPlay may not mesh with the players' expectations, that does not mean they are unfair. I think FairPlay's research, while somewhat interesting and surprising, is misguided. They should focus on exposing how awful a 70% payout rate is.

The best analogy I've come up with for these machines is this: I have a closed box, with a die inside. I shake it up, and tell you that if you can guess the number the die is showing, I'll pay you $5, otherwise you owe me $1. You take the bet and name a number, and I open the box without showing you the number. Instead of you winning if you guessed the right number, I decide that if the die is showing 6 I'll tell you that you won, otherwise I'll tell you that you lost. So regardless of what number you pick, you're predetermined to either win or lose; but nevertheless the bet is still fair since I'm paying you 5:1 on a 5:1 shot.

It wouldn't matter, fairness-wise, if every spin, option, parlay and result were predetermined (randomly) when the machines shipped; as long as the machine genuinely pays out the advertised amount, and nobody knows the predetermined order (which would allow a cheater to take higher payouts than others) then the results are random.

It's clear the UK gambling industry needs much better regulation, but changing the result algorithm will have zero effect on gamblers if the payout policies are not changed. Right now, the 70% payout minimum is a voluntary measure, with very few guidelines attached to it, including the timeframe to measure 70% in!

Fairplay Campaign Site

This was also discussed on BoingBoing a month ago: BoingBoing Post BoingBoing Discussion

As stated here several times, I strongly advise against ever playing slot machines. They're almost always a terrible bet.

dilbert poker comic

(via LiveJournal Poker Community)

poker tv this week

Over at www.wptfan.com, Easy E has posted a good summary of poker- and gambling-related TV this week. Highlights include the 2003 World Series of Poker program on ESPN, Tuesday 9pm. Link

spotlight on 17th wsop placer

The Billings Gazette has an interesting piece on Bill Jones, a Billings local who came 17th in the WSOP main event for a cool $55,000.

It's generally a good article, although it contains this, one of the most erroneous passages on poker ever written:

If you deal 100 hands, each of the deck's 52 cards should show up about the same number of times. So if you haven't seen an ace for six or seven hands, you can figure one's coming up soon. Good players will keep track of at least the aces and face cards and bet on probabilities.

baby names in the NYT

In my second post on L&CW I talked about the SSA's baby name site, which used to be run by the Wizard of Odds a.k.a. Michael Shackleford.

There's a great 4-page article in the weekend New York Times about this site and baby names, and it includes a rather uncharacteristic shoutout to the Wiz.

Shackleford, incidentally, quit the Social Security Administration in 2000 and moved to Las Vegas, where he has become a gambling consultant known as the Wizard of Odds. His own children are named Melanie, No. 88, and Aidan, No. 63.

just sound advice

"Do not -- I repeat -- do not get involved with a woman who tries to get you to eat cottage cheese and fruit for breakfast and insists that you give up poker night with the guys."

Well said! Link

more atlantic city history

Interesting article that covers some of the changes that the A.C. area has seen since 1990. Did you know that live poker was only introduced to A.C. in 1993? Coincidentally that was the first year I ever went to Atlantic City. Link

From 1994-97, when I was an undergrad at U of Penn, I cut my poker teeth playing - don't laugh - $1-5 7 card stud at Merv Griffin's Resorts Casino, and later "graduating" to $2-4 hold'em at Tropicana.

My most memorable hand from that time was in 1995 at Resorts playing $1-5 stud. There was a guy at the table who looked exactly like Robert De Niro from The Godfather Part II. He had beaten me in a few hands, but was not doing too well at the table.

I played a great starting hand, something like jacks wired. De Niro made a straight in his first five cards, and I made a full house. A lot of raising ensued, and I was terrified even though I knew I had to be good. At the time it was the biggest heads up battle I had been in at a casino. De Niro ended up getting all his chips in, and triumphantly flipping up his straight, expecting to beat me. I took the pot and he left the table.

That's how I beat the godfather at $1-5 seven card stud. It's also the first time I remember thinking to myself "wow, I really love poker."

world poker players conference

The World Poker Players Conference is this Friday, July 11 all day at the Orleans in Vegas. I won't be there, but I will be playing in the Orleans Open on Saturday and possibly Sunday. Wish me luck! Link

borgata opens today

The new $1.1 billion Atlantic City destination has opened today. An excited Courier-Post article describes the hurried last-minute preparation for opening.

This older article says the Borgata will be sporting a 34-table poker room, although it wasn't originally going to have any live poker; the reasons given for reconsidering:

"Say you have four people coming from Philadelphia and three play slots and one plays poker," Rigot said. "If you don't offer poker, they'll go somewhere else, and you'll lose three slot players."

Update: thread on MetaFilter about the Borgata having a no-child policy (except for hotel guests). I think it's a fine policy.

chip juggling

Ugh. I think it's annoying and makes you look like you've spent way too much of your life in a poker room. But for those of you interested in it, you can read these two techniques for chip juggling (via Rough Days for a Gentil Knight)

Update: there is a thread on wptfan.com about chip juggling here.

bowling poker

I'm interested in the various "meta" gambling games that people play. Here's an interesting one from the Palm Beach Post:

Her husband, Rick, 46, who is playing "bowling poker" with Czajka -- two cards for a strike, one card for a spare, best five cards win at the end of the game -- says he liked it.

funny quote

"The other day I was playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." (via Sugarfused)

10:58 syndrome in the WPT

Phil Mushnick, sportswriter for the NY Post, has made the first "official" mention I've seen of the World Poker Tour's "10:58 rule":

While the show is edited for time, its hosts encourage you to stay put as the game builds to its dramatic conclusion. Yet, most sessions can't have dramatic conclusions because one need only to know what time it is in order to know the outcome, well in advance.

I first saw the term "10:58 rule" in this this post by Easy E on wptfan.com:

Uh oh, it's the "WPT 10:58 rule". I turned to my friend, who was commenting on Kirell catching the straight, and said "Alan wins with a full house". I could have BET that freeroll, without even knowing that Alan won the tournament, because it was 10:58. I KNEW the full house was coming (even though I didn't know it beforehand). I had to explain the 10:58 rule to my friend...

adrian mcpherson pleas no contest

Former FSU quarterback Adrian McPherson has pleaded no contest to the charges of gambling and theft against him, getting away with no jail time and just community service, work detail and probation.

Amazingly, this makes him still eligible to play college sports. Being found guilty loses eligibility; pleading no contest does not. And this is after a mistrial in which only one member of the previous jury did not consider him guilty.

It's preposterous to me that McPherson is going to be allowed to play college ball again. We're talking about a guy who has a genuine, full-blown gambling problem.

In addition to gambling on FSU games, he stole a blank check and cashed it for $3,500. That's a felony offense that will get you in jail almost every time -- apparently unless you are a famous college athlete.

As most people know, I have no problem with the concept of sports betting in general. But athletes should NEVER bet on games they play in. McPherson should be either in jail or in gambling counselling, not talking to schools about where he's going to play in the fall.

Link

Update: Good commentary on how lucky McPherson should consider himself.

making it a crime for problem gamblers to gamble

Apparently a South Australian state lawmaker has introduced legislation that would make it a crime for people with a "gambling problem" to enter a gambling establishment! I couldn't find the text of the legislation. Such a measure is so ludicrous I'd like to think it has no chance of passing. But it's certainly possible. Link

livejournal users

If you're a LiveJournal user, you can now access love and casino war through LJ's built-in syndication. Thanks to SongMonk who created the L&CW syndication user for LJ users!

Is there any kind LJ reader who would invite me to join LiveJournal? I'd like to get a free account so I could access some of the poker-related communities, etc.

p-o-k-e-r in the u-s-a

Poker in the USA is about to explode. It has been growing steadily, but you heard it here first: it is about to explode.

The World Poker Tour. Positive World Series of Poker coverage in the NY Times, the New Yorker, etc. Lucky. Poker movies.

But today, via a comment from The Scrolldown, I came across the most significant, quantifiable sign of poker interest in the US booming: Amazon.com sales ranks for poker books are through the roof. Here are the poker books I could find in the top 1,000 sellers on Amazon:

43: Theory of Poker, Sklansky
92: Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players, Sklansky/Malmuth
102: Hold'Em Poker, Sklansky
150: Play Poker Like the Pros, Hellmuth
191: Positively Fifth Street, McManus
426: Winning Low-Limit Hold'em, Jones
613: Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, Sklansky
663: Caro's Book of Poker Tells, Caro

So, you heard it here: interest in poker, specifically Texas Hold'em, is exploding in the US at a rate higher than anyone right now is thinking it is. Look for more huge attendance numbers at the WSOP next year.

Update: coincidentally, yet another piece of evidence appeared on my radar today: searches for "World Series of Poker" ranked 15th on the Yahoo! Buzz Index today, with a +269.83% increase in searches for that term. Most likely caused by the WSOP being the subject of tonight's final episode of Lucky.

lucky on the rocks?

Apparently "Lucky" has gotten pounded in the ratings the past few weeks and seems unlikely for a continuation, unless tonight's finale gets great ratings.

After debuting in the weekly cable top 10 for 25-54s and 18-49s, "Lucky" didn't make either's top 50 last week.

poker journal

SongMonk is a livejournal user who writes about poker, sports, TV shows and pop culture. He just posted a long analysis of the World Poker Tour Invitational episode (the one that ended with Layne Flack vs. Jerry Buss):

I think Jerry's best shot would have been to raise more hands pre-flop and to get the money in pre-flop, if possible, with his big hands. Layne would still likely outplay Jerry in having a much better idea of Jerry's hand strength than Jerry would of Layne's, but I think that was his best shot. Hoping to flop a big hand and trapping Layne just wasn't going to happen. Jerry can't outplay Layne after the flop.