The State of Modern Pop Poker

HISTORY WILL REVEAL that the height of the poker boom coincided with the last days of Shana Hiatt as the perky sideline commentator for the World Poker Tour. The decline of the modern poker era begins exactly with the announcement that Shana was leaving the WPT.

This is not to suggest that there is necessarily a causal relationship between these two events, although her departure may have played some role, however slight. Shana’s departure started the revolving door of beautiful but ignorant WPT sideline commentators, punctuated by the world’s worst interview question posed by replacement Courtney Friel as players were eliminated from a WPT final table: “So how did you feel when you busted out?”

Although hardcore poker players may have been reluctant to admit it, Season 4 of the WPT was a watershed event for poker in one primary respect – its when we all fully realized that the WPT format was really boring. The accelerated blind schedule in the final stages of a WPT tournament reduced the options of the world’s most highly skilled poker experts to a single action – push all-in or fold.

It was at this point that poker aficionados started skipping the weekly WPT broadcast in favor of logging on to their favorite internet poker site and playing a few more sit-n-goes before bedtime. We had all become educated regarding how to play final tables, and we could experience more real action in an on-line sit-n-go instead of watching six pudgy unknown dudes in shades and ball caps or beanies sit and try to act stoic while masking sheer televised terror, a la David Williams heads-up final table play at the WSOP 2004 Main Event. The WPT may have been on the tube in the background as viewers/players battled for their own personal final table victory on PokerStars, but they were no longer really paying attention to the WPT. Today, the WPT has moved to a second network, and has already started shopping for a third. The WPT’s days are numbered.

Along comes High Stakes Poker, televised cash game poker at its finest. Compared to the WPT, this show was exciting – real players it a cozy back-room lounge setting, exchanging barbs and playing for “cold hard cash,” as we were constantly reminded by AJ Benza. We watched Daniel Negreanu repeatedly call off fifteen WPT tournament buy-ins on the river as he explained with perfect accuracy how his flopped straight had been crushed by lucky a suckout. We could see he was beat, he know he was beat, he explained to the table and the audience how he was beat, and he still called. A player with crystal clear poker vision going completely blind in the heat of battle. This was poker excitement.

But then even High Stakes Poker outgrew its own skin. The stakes were raised as players bought in for a brain-melting $500,000 to $1 million, fueled by higher blinds and double-blind straddles. The stakes were clearly too high for certain participants, as they routinely started to “run it three times” in order to reduce variance and generate split pots.

High Stakes Poker bottomed out when Guy Laliberte graciously wrote off significant equity as he agreed to split a very large pot with David Benyamine to prevent a significant financial impact to Benyamine. Doyle Brunson summed up the hand by noting that it represented just another pot to Laliberte but a “lifetime” to Benyamine. Even if an exaggeration, we knew that this was painful for Benyamine.

These split pot bail-outs were contrary to the very spirit of poker. Poker is a zero-sum game of clear winners and losers. You make a bet, put your chips in the middle, and deal with the outcome. Someone wins the pot, and the rest lose. In America, we want touchdowns, home runs, grand slams and bust outs! We will not tolerate exciting foreplay followed by a limp-dicked fade-out.

So that brings us to the WSOP in 2008. We are nearly one year from the most boring final table in the history of the WSOP, where Jerry Yang hijacked the table by invoking the Almighty Himself to make the correct cards appear on the board. His empassioned appeals to God were almost drowned out by the wife of Lee Watkinson, who was likewise pleading to a higher power in favor of her husband over the small, undeserving, anonymous amateur.

The highlight of the 2008 WSOP appears to be poker players as gamblers, who are so bored with the game of poker that they require side action in the form of prop bets that exceed the value of the prize pools for which they compete. The world’s best players have sucked so much money out of the poker economy that the tournament stakes no longer bring the buzz that made the first season of the WPT so terribly exciting.

Harrahs and the other gaming corporations have co-opted the world of tournament poker because they remain true to the secret ingredient of gaming: lots of money in a casino means higher profits. By all means necessary, the casino corporations’ collective goal is to bring more money from the poker economy onto the casino property. There, creative gamblers will find ways to empty their pockets. Even the cream of the poker crop – none other than Phil Ivey – boasts about his million-dollar losses at the craps table in the form of shaky hand-held videos shot by Barry Greenstein. The new cool is not just to win at poker, but take your poker winnings and piss them away to the casino.

Harrahs has done a masterful job of ensuring maximum revenue from the WSOP. They run six tournaments simultaneously in multiple conference rooms to ensure that all tables are filled to capacity at all times. To ensure maximum excitement for the Series, Harrahs has managed, either by design or happenstance, to have created a fever among the top tier of the poker community for one magic talisman – bracelets!

The players have a seemingly unquenchable thirst for more bracelets. Who has the most bracelets? Who won the most bracelets last year? Who’s going to win the most bracelets this year? Who has the most prop bets for bracelets? Money is no longer the most important method of keeping score in poker. The poker world needs more bracelets!

To satisfy this new demand, Harrahs offers more tournaments, giving players even more opportunities to collect more bracelets – and allowing Harrahs to collect more juice. Players are bewildered by the flurry of overlapping tournaments, while Harrahs ensures that juice is being collected from every chair at every table in every room, every day and all day from the start of the tournament until the final bracelet is handed out. And, they even run added tournaments after the Main Event has started, to keep the busted players in a chair with the juice running. A player watching the final table of the WSOP represents lost potential revenue – put them in a seat and charge the juice one more time.

So we have been conditioned to love poker through television broadcasts, and to pay homage to the victors. Harrahs has finally figured out how to wring the most money from the poker community, and the players are willing, if unwitting, accomplices in their zeal to rack up tournament wins and then donate significant portions to the casino. The victors boast of their wins to the omnipresent poker media, who are eager to report chip counts, tournament results, and outrageous prop bets that keep the poker community entertained.

And we will still continue to play, regardless. Because underneath it all, we still love the game of poker, even if it has become too mainstream.

Math and other stuff

WATCHING the Life of Ivey videos on PokerRoad, I realize something. There are lot of players that have substantial talent, but his extra strength seems to be the complete and absolute disregard for the real value of money. If you're a natural and you don't care about the money -- I mean really don't care -- then you can play without an ounce of fear. There are a lot of legendary gamblers, but Ivey seems to be in that extremely rare class that just does not care about the value of money even a little bit and is therefore devoid of any fear while playing at any level.

I've come close to this feeling on a few occasions, in my little corner of the poker world. When playing in the Ameristar Thursday night tournament (the only tournament in town worth playing), there have been a few nights where I was completely ambivalent about my outcome in the tournament. I had a medium to shortish stack in the middle stages, and the NL cash tables were bursting with the donks that had already busted out.

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POKER MEDIA PEOPLE, please stop interviewing Durrrr. He may be the latest poker prodigy, but he interviews poorly and has nothing to offer the audience.

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THE EGO OF POKER PLAYERS is starting to really show. Everyone has a writing blog or a video blog or a website or is being interviewed for their amazing and outlandish prop bets during the WSOP. For some its just a natural method of expression. For many others, its a pure ego trip to get their face on the tube and be watched by others.

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Listening to PokerRoad, I get the impression that a good number of players just sign up and play the WSOP tournaments, but don't regularly study the game or take the time to analyze their own game and improve, fill their leaks, etc. Its amazing how many buy-ins appear to be carelessly pissed away by careless play. Its as if some of the players are treating each tournament like just another boring day at the office rather than giving it the focus and attention needed to succeed on a continuous basis. Not everyone, but a lot of them.

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And now let's play -- Did I Play AK Like Donk?

Potentially big hand at the Main Table from this session, for which some math is required.

Villain plays with Team Yellow but has shown a propensity for overly tight play recently. I started with him at the Feeder Table and he was much more loose back then. I think his natural tendency is looser play, but has felt a bit ‘snake bit’ by this table. He has $435 and I have $1800. We are in the later part of my session and I am table boss.

Villain raises UTG to $35. Standard opening PF raise has been to $20 or $25 and I have been calling raises with a frustrating frequency to the other players. If Villain had a bigger stack I think a raise to $35 would signal a wider range of hands (including medium pocket pairs) but because he has recently lost several hundred and is visibly frustrated by his results at this table, my instinct is that he is protecting a genuinely big hand with the extra large raise.

One MP players calls. I have AK-spades in the CO an raise to $135. Its folded to Villain and he quickly pushes for about $300 over my raise. Squeezed caller in between us folds, and now its up to me.

Pot is 35 + 35 + 135 + 5 + 400 = $610. I am getting just over 2 to 1. What is his range of hands?

I think he has AA, KK, maybe QQ or JJ. I can put him on QQ or JJ only if I think he is extra frustrated and because he thinks I am bullying the table too much. His actions seem genuine, like he finally has the goods and is not afraid of the action. I do not see him doing this with AK, and absolutely not AQ or worse. He is clearly a cash game player, and is not treating this like a tournament.

So, I settle on 75% AA or KK and 25% QQ, possibly JJ. I fold, doing some quick calculations and deciding that the $300 call is better left in my stack against a close decision. Should I have called?

My equity against AA and KK is 77%/23%:
77% x -$300 = -$231
23% x $610 = $140
Total EV against AA and KK is -$91

My equity against QQ and JJ is 54%/46%:
54% x -$300 = -$162
46% x $610 = $280
Total EV against QQ and JJ is $118

75% x -$91 = -$68
25% x $118 = $30

Total EV against his weighted hand range is -$38. Yeah, I can find better situations for my chips.

This would become a +$18 EV if I think there is an equal chance he has AA, KK, QQ and JJ. Still not very good for my $300 call, compared to how I have been running this table.. I should be able to turn $300 into $500 based on how this table has been treating me.

I folded face down and said I had JJ, thinking that this lie would make it more likely for him to disclose his real hand if it beat mine. (The psychology of this lie is that he would have less inclination to lie that he had a bigger hand then he really did.) Villain did not show, but later said that he had QQ and did not want a call. Over the course of the next few hands, several other players at the table said they think he was lying about QQ and thought he had AA or KK, supporting my evaluation of the hand.

If I knew that he actually had exactly QQ, the EV of my call is $118, which is a clear call even considering how I was dominating this table. But I think he was lying, and not just as a rationalization of my calculations.

I Play Live

As sad as my on-line results have been, my live play continues in the opposite direction.

Harrahs $2/5 NLHE last night, bought in for $500, cashed out for $2209. Sweet night. I had a dead-on read on every player at the table at all times. I can just feel where players are at when I am focused. I made three of my best reads ever for river calls with weakish hands.

As I was driving home I realized something -- I did not lose even one hand at showdown all night. I bailed before the river, bluffed before the river or won at showdown. That is a receipe for running a table.

I so wish I could jump on a plane and hit the Rio cash games right now.

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As for on-line play, I've found a game that is profitable -- 2-7 triple draw. Its actually a fun game, and not filled with sharks. I'm not sure who plays this, but the majority are weak players. I would assume anyone spending a significant amount of time playing this would know what they're doing, but I guess not.

This game seems intuitive for me, and I ran some calculations on Friday to get a better grasp on the math of the game. I don't have the math completely figured out, but I think I've got a lot of it. I reviewed this section in Super/System and I will read some more.

Game Over

I am ready to formally announce that the on-line games have gone bad. Real bad.

Two years ago, every low level SNG (up to around the $20 level, and maybe higher) was composed of maybe 5 donks, 2-3 decent to good players and 1-2 solid players. Usually someone, and maybe more than 1 player, was gone after 5-10 hands. After 20 hands, you might have lost 2 or 3. The 50-100 of the 75-150 level was the money bubble.

I've been playing in $30 to $50 SNGs, and I've hit a cold streak. So, like a good bankroll manager, I dropped down to the $20 SNGs. I am in one right now and every player is still in the game at the 60/120 level. Everyone is playing a solid, basic, winning SNG strategy.

And now we're at the 80/160 level with 7 players left and they are all playing solid pushbot strategy. There are no clear donks.

The UIGEA has eviscerated on-line poker.