tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89096972486844766682024-03-18T02:48:03.614-07:00Braindump v1.0I'm Dan Goldman, poker player, marketer, geek. These are my stories.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-6851491672814547092021-01-25T14:54:00.004-08:002022-04-28T12:54:27.929-07:00I am not a dog person<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I grew up with a love/hate relationship with dogs. My sister, brother and I grew up with dogs - my earliest memories include an eating and pooping machine named Tammy. That would have been fine had Tammy also been a fun, kid-friendly dog. She was neither of these things. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tammy, a poodle-mix mutt, was a 50-pound doorstop whose best day was when someone inadvertently left an outside door ajar. When this happened, Tammy turned from languorous sausage into fleet-footed roadrunner, moving at a speed that was incomprehensible given her size and distinct resemblance to the Hindenburg. The next hour was typically consumed by our entire family scouring the neighborhood for our missing blob. I passingly considered what it meant that we owned a dog whose greatest passion was for getting away from us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">My mother, with what I know were the best intentions, insisted on taking in the dogs that no one else wanted. We adopted Piddle, whose name accurately described her from the day we got her. Piddle was another black dog, this one a little smaller and of entirely indeterminate breed. Piddle ran a bit faster but was otherwise indistinguishable from the other black lump. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">And there was Tigger, some sort of mid-size mutt who had distemper as a puppy and suffered substantial brain damage as a result. Tigger had a significant twitch that made her look like she was doubting each word spoken to her. She tolerated all of us, but for reasons none of us understood, she adored my dad. And my dad, like me, was not a dog person. This made her insistence on jumping up in his lap and sitting up proudly even funnier, especially since she was a good-size dog. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">My mother always used to give the dogs a treat before bed. With Tigger, it was usually a piece of white bread, which she would dutifully carry to her little scrap of carpet to eat. As she got older and brain damage became dementia, she still took the piece of bread, but no longer remembered what to do with it. She'd walk around the kitchen, proudly sporting her slice of bread, and in the morning we'd invariably find it somewhere with a Tigger-mouth-shaped piece missing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It was against this backdrop that I was forced to consider this suggestion from Sharon: "We should get a dog." I had long since figured out that not all dogs were the amorphous masses I grew up with. We had some friends living with us for a while who had a beagle puppy, and I admit that I liked having him around. But there was a big difference between someone else's dog and <i>my </i>dog.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I should also mention here that I have always seen myself as a cat person. We didn't have cats when I was a kid (except for a few brief stints), but I got a cat as soon as I moved out of the house and have had at least one ever since. Cats are my sort of pet - show them the litterbox once and they know where to go for life, and otherwise all I need to remember is to feed them. My cats have always had their share of love and attention, but they've also been entirely independent, deigning to let me pet and scratch them on their schedule. This has always been fine with me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Not a dog person.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Twelve years ago, I was on a business trip in Sweden. On my second day there, I had a dream that Sharon called me and said, "I adopted two dogs." I decided to call her before leaving for my first meeting of the day just to make sure it was a dream, and when she picked up the phone, I couldn't hear her at all - all I could hear was yipping. I hadn't been dreaming. I was now a dog owner.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">(In fairness to Sharon, we had discussed getting a dog for a long time. I wasn't ready, but Sharon correctly pointed out that, given my dog history, I probably wouldn't ever be ready.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm not going to write a lot here about Inigo and Buttercup, the two black lab shelter dogs that Sharon adopted. I will just say this - I had no idea what dogs were all about until we had these two. It never occurred to me that I could have a relationship with a dog that involved more than food and poop. I am pretty sure they both knew that dogs weren't my preferred pet, and they did everything in their power to wheedle themselves into my reluctant brain. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">By the time they were a year old, I couldn't imagine being without them. In fact, I suggested to Sharon that, since they both loved sleeping on the bed, maybe we should let them sleep with us every now and then. They became a permanent fixture, not an inconsiderable thing given their combined weight of 175 pounds.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I was still not a dog person.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Earlier this year, we decided to get a third dog after a great deal of agonizing. We adopted an adorable 6-year-old Mastiff, a puppy mill dog that had had at least five litters of puppies. The day after we adopted Morgan, Buttercup died. We were heartbroken and once again back to two dogs. We started talking about getting another dog, but really needed to get over Buttercup. We started looking anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">We really wanted another big dog - a Lab, Great Dane or something in that giant dog range. We had never considered German Shepherds, but one of the shelters we found had a litter of five Shepherd puppies being fostered. We decided to have a look.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is where this story takes an odd turn. Inigo and Buttercup were Sharon's dogs. She trained them, spent more time with them than I did (I was traveling for work about 75% of the time) and was clearly the Alpha for them. I had, somewhat jokingly, suggested to Sharon that this dog should be mine. She took this suggestion very seriously. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">We went to visit the foster home, who had a dog run and pens in the back of their house. The foster mom let the puppies out, and three of them came charging over to where I sat on the ground near their pen. Two of them jumped, snapped, barked, bit and scratched in an attempt to get my attention. The third butted her head up against my chest, curled up in my lap and went to sleep. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I know how this is going to sound, but I am going to tell you what happened next anyway. I heard a voice in my head that said, "I'm Lana." I hadn't thought for an instant about dog names, or even whether this was the dog I wanted. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sharon, who was checking out the other two dogs, heard all the noise and came over to see.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">All I could say was, "This is Lana, and she's my new dog." And then I burst into tears for no reason I could define then or now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-eqG9i2BUhio/YA9M_aQRCBI/AAAAAAAAoQI/SqmyrCRinXQnnArPOLvRMdW_LY_xarYZgCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1775" data-original-width="1737" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-eqG9i2BUhio/YA9M_aQRCBI/AAAAAAAAoQI/SqmyrCRinXQnnArPOLvRMdW_LY_xarYZgCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="235" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Lana</span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">That was September 25. Two days later, Lana was looking and acting sick. After a few discussions on the phone, we took her to the vet and she was diagnosed with parvovirus, a highly contagious virus that has a spectacularly high mortality rate in puppies. There is a vaccine, but Lana had not been old enough to get it yet. We talked to the foster family and learned that every dog in the litter had parvo.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The current strain of this virus has about a 50% mortality rate. It is so serious that the vet went out of her way to remind us that Lana might well not survive the week. They strongly recommended that we bring Lana to them so they could watch her closely 24/7.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sharon and I talked about it, and I couldn't even conceive of giving her to someone else to care for. My dog was sick, maybe dying, and there was no fucking way anyone else could care for her better than I could. I found myself contemplating the deals we all consider when tragedy raises its head - "Let her live and I'll...". I looked at this sickly 18 pound animal and thought, "Is it possible to love something as much as I love this furball?" Two days. <i>Two days</i> is all it took for her to worm her way into my heart in a way that made it inconceivable for us to be apart.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">And <i>that </i>is when I became a dog person.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is probably a good time to mention that Lana hasn't spoken to me since that first day. It doesn't matter. She needed me to know her name, and that's all she had to say. Everything else, she has said by sleeping on my feet, curling up in my lap and licking my face. And I know exactly what she's saying.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-47800140707587408512018-10-31T10:14:00.001-07:002018-10-31T10:32:29.826-07:0010 things I want Trump supporters to know about me<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I regularly engage in political discussions, here on Facebook and elsewhere. I’ve noticed a number of common themes in these discussions, so I thought I could save a lot of time and energy by establishing some of my positions in advance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">1. I don’t hate you. You may find this hard to believe, but I can and do separate my political beliefs from my personal relationships. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />2. I don’t hate America. This is one I hear all the time: “All liberals hate America” or other variants, along with variants on “Obama tried to bring down democracy” and “Obama hated America.” I love this country, and I know you do, too. The way I show my love for my country is personal to me, just like yours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />3. I don’t want to ban guns. If we could do it all over again, I’d rather that we view guns the way the UK does (pretty much no one has them), but I know that ship sailed 240 years ago. I am not at all opposed to private gun ownership. You and I might disagree about whether you need a 30-round clip, but I support your right to own guns and ammunition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />4. I accept that Clinton may have done bad stuff. However, I don’t believe that any of the bad stuff she did is relevant to *today’s political situation*. If you want to see her prosecuted for crimes she may have committed, I accept that. Just don’t conflate it with anything that might be going on *today*.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />5. I don’t think you’re stupid. This comes up way too often in political discussions. I very much want to know what you’re thinking and why. If I sound dismissive of your opinions, that’s bad, and I truly hope I don’t. But you will never, ever hear me dismiss your opinions because I don’t think you’re smart enough to express them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />6. I will never call you names, and I expect the same from you. I’m not a libtard. I’m not a Dumbocrat. I’m not an “idiot lefty” (something I was just called a few minutes ago). If you call me names, don’t expect me to engage you in any discussion. I won’t pigeonhole or generalize about you; please show me that same respect.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />7. In the context of a discussion about Trump, I don’t care what you think about Obama. Everything else I’ve said here probably sounds reasonable and measured, and this doesn’t. I’m really, really big on staying on topic. If you want to discuss Obama, feel free to bring it up in its own context and I’m happy to discuss. But whatever Obama may or may not have done is only relevant if the underlying issue specifically relates to the current discussion (and this also applies to anything Bill Clinton did). It doesn’t excuse any actions by Trump, nor does it diminish such actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />8. You can support your guy without defending everything he does. I voted for Obama, but there were plenty of things he did that I opposed, some vocally and vehemently. I suspect that, even if you are Trump’s most ardent supporter, you’ve seen him say or do things that you don’t agree with. Your support for him isn’t diminished if you don’t come to his defense when he’s wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />9. I am over the election. I was honestly appalled that Trump won, and there was a long period, well after his inauguration, during which I remained incredulous that he was president. But the election is over, he won and I accept that. I am intensely opposed to many of his policies and actions, and I’ll express these as I see them. I felt the same way about many of the things that GWB did, although I felt less passionately about them than I do about Trump. But just to be clear – if you believe that I feel the way I do on any given topic because I’m butthurt over Trump’s win, you’re missing the point.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />10. You and I want the same things – we just see a different path to get there. I'll do my best to keep this in mind when we talk, and I'd appreciate if you would do the same.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-47851116890650215572018-06-12T17:52:00.003-07:002018-06-12T18:03:07.533-07:00Why WSOP.com barred me, and why they might bar you, too<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have been playing on the World Series of Poker's online poker site, wsop.com, for five years. I have done well, winning a number of WSOP entries (including three in one year), mostly playing before and during the WSOP.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Until today, that is. Today, WSOP.com barred me because they don't like the way I talked to them. And if you happen to say the wrong thing - you could easily be next.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This all started this morning, when I received this email from J'Cory at WSOP.com:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Dear Dan,<br /><br />To ensure we are meeting all regulations, we continually monitor for suspicious geo-location behavior. Recently there was potentially suspicious location activity on your WSOP.com account in which we detected the use of the following blocked software, Vysor, on your device which is prohibited. We have made the decision to keep your account open on the condition that in the future you do not log-in and/or play on WSOP.com from any devices running these software/program(s).<br /><br />If it is detected that you are using a device with any of the above moving forward, we reserve the right to take action up to permanently closing your account. Should this happen you will not be permitted to create new accounts with any Caesars Interactive Entertainment, Inc. licensed brands.<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />J'Cory</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The program J'Cory mentioned, Vysor, is software that allows you to mirror your Android phone on your computer. I did, in fact, use this software several years (and several computers) ago; however, I haven't used it in a long time and have never used it on this computer. It's not possible that I used it on my phone, because, as I explain below, wsop.com incorrectly locates me when I use my phone and claims I'm out of the country.<br /><br />I also didn't exactly love the attitude. My response:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4f4f4f; font-size: 14px;">(06/12/2018 10:00 PM)</span></div>
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Let me be sure I understand - I am one of your longest-standing customers. You somehow believe (wrongly) that I am using some software that you don't like, and you think the best way to deal with this is to threaten me?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Here are some facts:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
1. You believe that my computer has a program on it called Vysor. I do not have and do not use such a program. 2. Vysor is, in fact, a program that allows a user to control their Android phone from a computer. I do have Vysor installed on my phone. However, it is not<br />
possible that you discovered Vysor on my phone. Why? Because WSOP.com incorrectly identifies my Android phone as not being located in Nevada, and I have never been able to play from it as a result. I have tried about 10 times to log onto WSOP.com from my phone. I no longer bother to try. I get this message:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
"Sorry, due to existing regulation (sic), we cannot allow member (sic) from your country of residence to play for real money with us. You are still able to cash out your funds at any time. For<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
assistance please contact customer support."<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Just to be clear - your email indicates that you are going to bar me if I log on again using the Vysor software - since I don't have it installed, I can't do anything differently from what I do now. If that means you're going to bar me for software I don't own, have at it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Customer support at WSOP.com has never been good, but this sets a new low. If you *believe* that a customer is running software that violates your Terms of Service, I respectfully suggest<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
that you do some research before accusing and threatening your customers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Dan Goldman<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Their response:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4f4f4f; font-size: 14px;">(06/12/2018 10:45 PM)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hey smalltalkdan,<br /><br />Thanks for contacting us; my name is Cadeem and I'll be helping you today.<br /><br />Please note that the email wasn't a threat it was just advising you that the software is not allowed and not to use it again.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br /><br />I know you said you don't have it installed but just double check again before login so we don't have to close your account.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br /><br />We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience in this matter.<br /><br />Best,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So in my email, I made it clear that I had never used the software they claimed I had. Their response was to tell me "[do] not use it again." If you have ever met me, you know how something like this goes over with me. This is especially true because I have relentlessly skewered Caesars and WSOP.com's terrible customer service on this blog - <i>and that is, in fact, the reason I was barred</i>. They're sick of me. I would be, too. But if it were me, I'd say to myself, "OK, why is this happening? This guy is a tool, but does he have a point?" Caesars and wsop.com think it's a better idea to just make me go away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My response to that missive:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4f4f4f; font-size: 14px;">(06/13/2018 12:15 AM)</span></div>
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So just to be clear - I told you that I am not using this software, but you are advising me "not to use it again." I AM NOT USING THIS SOFTWARE. NOT USING IT. Is there some part of "I'm not using this" that you don't understand? Here is a clip from my list of installed programs. No Vysor.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> [clip removed]</span><br />
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You can dress up your words any way you like, but where I come from, if you say, "Don't do this again or we'll close your account," that's a threat. It's particularly egregious in this case because YOU'RE WRONG. I am<br />
looking forward to your actually closing my account for this bogus reason; if you do, the 20,000 readers of my blog (<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/" style="color: blue; cursor: pointer;" title="Click to open in a new window or tab
www.smalltalkdan.com">www.smalltalkdan.com</a>), almost all poker players, will be very interested. Just in case this is unclear - yes, this is a threat.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Dan Goldman<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">OK, I stepped over the line there and challenged them to do what they ultimately did. If you're thinking I deserved it, you might have a case. However, these guys continually dish up marginal-at-best customer service and know that 99% of players will just take it. Apparently they deal with the 1% by making them go away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Their final email:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #4f4f4f;">(06/13/2018 03:54 AM)</span></div>
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Dear Dan,<br />
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This is Brandon B. from the Support Department at WSOP.com. I am writing to you regarding your account with username "smalltalkdan".<br />
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Please be advised, your account has been permanently closed based on a decision by our management.<br />
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Your remaining balance of $895.40 will be sent to your registered address via a mailed check (bank draft).<br />
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Best,<br />
<br />
Brandon B.<br />
Player Support Representative</div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yup. Tell them they're wrong, and their response is to bar you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have appealed this to the few people at WSOP.com I know, but the chances they will relent are roughly zero. I am a squeaky wheel. Caesars and the WSOP like people who do what they're told. That is as far from me as you can get.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But it's not over. It's far from over. Stay tuned.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-76442383111159289002017-10-23T16:40:00.000-07:002017-10-23T16:40:15.079-07:00The best awful week of my life (part 4)<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">[Note: Reminder that we're trying to raise $5,000 for Team Rubicon's continuing good works, and we're a few thousand short. </span><a href="https://fundraise.teamrubiconusa.org/fundraiser/1125353" style="color: #4d469c; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Please click here to donate</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">, and remember that TR is a 501(c)(3) charity that qualifies for most companies' matching contribution programs.]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">It's taken me a while to write this next piece. It's partially laziness, but it's mostly because this day, our second in the field, was emotionally wrenching for me and it's been difficult to revisit it. My apologies for taking so long.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">At the end of my last post, we had just finished our first day in the field. I haven't talked much about the facilities, other than to mention sleeping dormitory-style, and this deserves a mention. We were housed in the Calvary Baptist Church, which had become the de facto headquarters for hurricane relief in Beaumont, TX. The church pretty much turned the entire facility, which encompassed a number of buildings on about three acres, over to relief agencies, particularly Team Rubicon. But they didn't just hand us the property - they were right there with us, working side-by-side. I mentioned cooking, shower and laundry facilities that various other Baptist ministries had contributed - the staff of this church, along with many others, also operated those facilities. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">For example, at the end of each day, we were all entirely soaked through. Both Sharon and I had packed very judiciously, since we had to be able to travel with everything we owned in our backpacks. This means that we didn't bring a week's worth of underwear and socks. Fortunately, one of the church teams ran a laundry facility in the parking lot. At the end of each exhausting day, I went to the shower facility, peeled off layers of drenched clothing and put them in a bag. After showering, I dropped them off at the laundry, which was conveniently located right next to the showers. By the next afternoon, they were returned, cleaned and folded. There were four relief workers doing laundry for about 120 people every day, and they did it efficiently and with smiles on their faces. And remember that they were washing clothes that had pretty much every awful thing you can imagine on them, from mold to Ebola. OK, maybe not Ebola, but you get the idea.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">At the end of our first day in the field, we previewed the house we would work on the following day. The homeowners had set up some folding tables just outside their garage, where they were sorting through the very small amount of their belongings that were salvageable. The wife, who I'll call Helen, was a delightful, funny woman of about 75 years who insisted on hugging each of us when we arrived. I should note here that each of us had been mucking out a different house, in 90° heat and 90% humidity, for the previous 8 hours. I found it hard enough simply being in my own body, smelling the way I did, but Helen didn't care a whit. We had done nothing yet, but she couldn't stop telling us how grateful she was that (1) she and her husband David were still alive and (2) we were there to help. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">We spent only about two hours at her house that day. The house was a relatively small one-story with a recently-renovated kitchen and a massively-equipped workshop in the garage. This neighborhood was one of the unfortunate ones that was the victim of intentional flooding - the Army Corp of Engineers determined that they needed to release water from nearby Steinhagen Lake to prevent catastrophic damage to the dams. We quickly realized that this house had been almost completely submerged as a result. We spent most of our time organizing and planning a strategy for removing the remaining furniture and stripping the rest of the interior. We assured Helen and David that we would return bright and early the following morning, and headed back to our FOB (forward operating base).</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Closing out each day was more than just a matter of returning a truck. We made a pretty massive mess of everything we worked with - trucks, equipment and people - and in military fashion, the day wasn't over until everything was in pristene condition for the next day. When we returned to the FOB, we removed all of our considerable equipment from the truck and power-washed both the equipment and the truck. We then power-washed and disinfected everyone's boots, which were left outside to dry, and headed for the aforementioned showers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">I mentioned in Part 3 that each day ended with a debriefing and campfire. This took place after dinner, which was typically a high-carbohydrate, mass-produced meal. There were a handful of fast-food places nearby that had reopened (at this point, 11 days after the waters receded, only about 25% of businesses were open), but no one had the energy to do much of anything but drag ourselves to dinner and the debrief.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">The daily debriefing consisted mostly of our command updating us on our progess thus far - how many homes we had worked on, how many our assessment teams had evaluated and what was expected for the following day. Staff provided a small amount of beer, rationing everyone to two beers maximum. At the end of the debrief, our unit commander said, "Tell me a story." After a long pause, someone raised a hand, which opened the floodgates. For the next 90 minutes, many of my co-volunteers told stories of destruction and hope. As exhausted as I was, I still wanted to hear every single one. When we ran out of stories, Sharon and I dragged ourselves up to our cots. I looked at my phone and realized that it was 9.15pm. I'm pretty sure the last time I went to sleep at 9.15pm was never; Sharon agreed.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">The next morning came far too quickly for all of us. We were all up by 6.15am - since about 50 of us were sharing 3 sinks, we needed plenty of time so we could get on the road by 7.30am. I had awakened at around 3 convinced that I would have to take the day off - my shoulder, which has been a lifetime problem, was in very bad shape as a result of my holding a 10 lb. crowbar over my head for 8 hours. But by 6 I was OK, so I took some ibuprofen and decided I could at least make it until lunch.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">After some surprisingly good sausage and biscuits and a half-gallon of coffee, I was ready to get moving. Team Charlie piled into our truck and drove the 10 minutes to Helen and David's house, who were waiting for us along with their daughter. "What do y'all feel like for lunch today?" she asked. I told her that we had brought lunch along, and she asked what we had. "Mostly military MREs, and some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches," I responded. She made a little motion with her hand, as though she were gently brushing the MREs off her work table. "We'd like to buy you lunch. What do you want?" There was some discussion, but no one wanted to volunteer an idea. Helen knew I used to live in Houston, and asked me what my favorite fast food was when I lived there. Before I could stop the words from escaping, "Church's fried chicken!" came out. Helen nodded and said that was also her favorite, especially with the squeeze of jalapeno juice (if you've had Church's, you know what I mean).</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">The first two hours consisted of deciding exactly how much of the sheetrock we needed to remove. After some debate, we decided that cutting the sheetrock didn't make much sense - the room that fared the best had water damage up to 7 feet. We decided to strip the whole house, except for the ceilings, down to the studs.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">One of the other volunteers and I decided to take on the kitchen. Everything needed to go, including built-in cabinets and all of the appliances. Most of it was awful but pretty straightforward until we got to the range. We muscled it out away from the wall, no simple feat as it was shockingly heavy. But we got it positioned to move, and I got a hand cart from the truck. We slid it into place. I was pretty sure I could handle the weight, but one of the other volunteers came over to help. My work partner gave us a little boost and we tilted the range back onto the hand cart.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">This was when we learned why the range was so heavy. It was an almost-new Kenmore range/oven combination, and apparently one of its features is its airtight seal. Water had somehow gotten into the oven opening and was unable to escape. In the next few seconds, my helper and I were drenched from the chest down with two-week-old dirty flood water. The smell was indescribable - I was sure something had died in that oven. Unfortunately, there was really nothing we could do at that point other than return to base for a change of clothes, which we opted not to do. We already smelled pretty bad; how much worse would another hew hours be?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">We moved along to the cabinets, which were an experience in themselves for a different reason. Helen had several drawers in the kitchen that contained photos, documents and bundles of letters. These were almost all beyond salvage, but we took our time and went through everything to see if there were anything worth keeping. We did find a few things, and both Helen and David treated each like Christmas gifts. I found it hard to understand how they could keep a positive outlook when they had lost almost everything. Helen explained it very simply: "We already thought everything was gone. Anything you find is a gift."</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>Next: It finally all gets to me.</i></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-31834740346771403382017-09-28T18:10:00.000-07:002017-09-28T18:16:35.604-07:00The best awful week of my life (part 3)<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">[Note: Reminder that we're trying to raise $5,000 for Team Rubicon's continuing good works. <a href="https://fundraise.teamrubiconusa.org/fundraiser/1125353" target="_blank">Click here to donate</a>, and remember that TR is a 501(c)(3) charity that qualifies for most companies' matching contribution programs.]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Our first day in the field was Sunday, September 10. I had a pretty terrible night's sleep. I'm spoiled - I am accustomed to sleeping in a king-size, soft bed with Sharon, a pillow and some dogs. I woke about every hour or so, owing to nothing in particular except the fact that I was sleeping on an army cot in a sleeping bag in a huge room with 25 other people, most of whom snored. The snoring itself didn't bother me all that much - I usually wear earphones - but when you've already been awakened and are pretty sure there's no more sleep in store for you, snoring is just one more thing.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We had been told in our briefing the previous night that breakfast was served beginning at 6.00am, and that we had a mandatory morning briefing at 7.30am. I had unnecessarily set the alarm on my phone for 6.00am. When it went off, I was already awake and considered briefly letting Sharon sleep for a bit longer, but then realized that she was awake and reading. We both did an awkward in-sleeping-bag shuffle to put underwear and pants on. This is funny to look back on now, as five days' hence we pretty much just jumped out of bed with no regard for who was looking (which was no one). By 6.30am, we had our gear on and were, more or less, ready to greet day 1.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">We left the building that served as our dormitory and walked to the hastily-constructed chow hall, which serves as a basketball court in brighter days. We hadn't really noticed the night before, but there were no less than 20 trailers spotted around the parking lot. The vast majority were emblazoned with other church organizations' logos (the Chicago Baptist Ministry, the Baptist Ministry of Alabama and the Southern Baptist Convention are three I recall). These were dedicated disaster relief trailers of one sort or another. Over the next week, I learned that two of these were shower facilities (one had eiight showers, one had four), several housed cooking facilities for large groups and one contained washers and dryers. At least five others held field equipment, water and food.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">We got styrofoam box trays (so we could take food with us if needed) and lined up. The first day's breakfast was Southern standard - biscuits, gravy, sausage and cheesy grits. This was an ongoing theme - breakfasts were heavily carb-laden. We found a few people we had met the night before, wolfed down food, orange juice and coffee with them and made our way back over to the arena where the prior night's briefing had taken place. The morning briefing was much more structured than the prior night's - each key department (planning, logistics, safety, equipment) reported on their status and each had their own first-timer lecture (more than half of us were first-time TR volunteers). They stressed that we were heading for an eye-opening experience, and that safety was paramount. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">We divided into six strike teams of six people each. The strike teams are the groups that actually do the physical labor in the field - the rest of the team is there to support the strike teams. Sharon was assigned to Strike Team Delta; I was on Team Charlie. We found our assigned Ford F-250, which was already fully loaded with our gear for the day - tools of various kinds, safety gear, wheelbarrows and hand carts. We drove around to the food supply truck, where we picked up lunch for the group - this day, lunch was an assortment of sandwiches plus a mind-boggling array of chips, energy bars, nuts, fruit, gum, cookies and, incomprehensibly, chocolate bars (remember we're in east Texas in early September - daytime temperatures are high 80s to mid 90s). We also loaded 120 water bottles and 40 bottles of Gatorade. I incorrectly believed that this was about twice what we needed - we ran out before day's end.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">The teams piled into the trucks and took off for our first house. For the first four miles or so, things really didn't look all that bad. There was a lot of debris on the road, but it wasn't until we got off the main highways that we began to get some sense of just how tragic the situation was. Here's an example of a very typical house in Bevil Oaks, a little town abutting Beaumont on the east. [Note: we were told on several occasions each day that we weren't 'disaster tourists,' and were cautioned against taking photos and putting them on social media, making a terrible problem even worse. This is one of only a small number I took, and in each case I got permission from the owners after agreeing to remove anything that might identify them.]</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">One of hundreds of piles we saw in front of almost all houses.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Most of this pile is in a drainage culvert that you can't see in this picture, so it actually represents a pile about eight feet high. Nothing that you see here is salvageable. Just to be clear - in this neighborhood, <i style="background-color: transparent;">every single house</i> had a pile at least this big in front of it. Well, that's not entirely true - some of the residents hadn't returned yet, so relief crews hadn't processed them yet. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"><br />We arrived at our first house just before 8.00am. The house was in what used to be a lovely neighborhood, with almost every home sitting on a half-acre or more of dense woods. From the outside, if you ignored the mountain of furniture, appliances and personal goods, it looked pretty much like a house. It wasn't until we got inside that we had our first look at the real disaster Harvey had wreaked.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">The house was a two-story, somewhat unusual for east Texas, with living areas and bedrooms downstairs and the kitchen, dining room and master upstairs. The homeowners, a Beaumont police officer, his wife and two children, had taken much of the moveable stuff out to the street already. This included wall-to-wall carpet that they had cut into small pieces because it was all still drenched, moldy and too heavy to carry in larger pieces. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">I should note here that the worst of the hurricane had passed nine days earlier, but the water was so high in many areas that residents couldn't return for as long as two weeks. This was one of those homes - it had taken on six feet of water and then stewed in 90° heat and 100% humidity for seven days. The stench was hard to describe, and I won't try. We all knew there was bad stuff in the air.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">Our strike team leader collected us outside and gave us a rundown of what he believed we could accomplish. Since the homeowners had already do a lot of the work, most of our job was to get the house to the point where, once everything dried out, construction could start. Since this place had been under so much water, the assessment team (who precedes us at every house - more on this later) determined that we needed to strip the ground floor down to the studs up to a height of 6.5 feet. We broke into two-person teams, and I got my first lesson in demolition - the gentle art of removing sopping wet drywall in as few pieces as possible.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">I say this last somewhat facetiously, but there is in fact an art to this process. One of our team leads came through the house with a Sawzall (if you don't know what this is but like destroying things, I suggest you buy one right now) and cut the sheetrock at 6.5'. This allowed us to come through with prybars and gently pull the sheetrock away from the wall. In many cases, the sheetrock was still so drenched that it was impossible to remove it in pieces bigger than about a foot square. But we did find at least a few spots where, with the proper soft touch, we were able to remove drywall segments almost intact. It became a sort of game, albeit one that was highly frustrating most of the time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">The foundation of the house, like most in Texas, is a slab of concrete. Drywall is really just gypsum plaster between sheets of paper. In very little time, every room we were in developed a dangerously slippery coating of wet plaster, requiring us to stop and scrape the floors every few minutes to prevent falls. We began to realize that the way we were organized was actually standing in the way of getting the job done, so we switched to 3-person teams. This allowed us to assign one person to scrape up the wet plaster while the other two took down the drywall. We each found at the end of the day that we were about 1" taller, owing entirely to the collected, hardened plaster on our work boots.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">Since the damage in this house was limited to less than half of the living space (because of the second story and the garage), things moved along pretty quickly. We had found black mold in several of the walls, so everyone on the team wore masks - this in addition to work pants, hardhats, rubber gloves and work gloves. The result was that we were all literally soaked through with perspiration, in addition to the various other liquids we slogged through or had splashed on us. We stopped every 30 minutes or so to chug water or Gatorade. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">We began to see something that took us by surprise. On a regular basis, someone would drive by - sometimes the Red Cross, sometimes church volunteers, sometimes just neighbors - and ask if we were hungry. Inevitably, someone said yes, and we were treated to fried chicken, cold cut sandwiches, sometimes just fruit or cookies. The last time this happened on this first day, it was a neighbor who had gone to a relief center set up by his church and had taken too many sandwiches. He dropped off the five he knew he couldn't eat.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">I thought this first house was pretty grim. The mother had collected Christmas ornaments all her life, and about 90% of them were ruined. Not gone, mind you - that would have been easier. They were there, and in some cases intact, but were covered in mold and other unmentionable stuff. I found a box in a closet crawlspace, and when I opened it I found about fifty of those old yellow Kodak photograph folders. There were about a thousand photos in the box. I found one of the kids (they were teenagers) and suggested that he separate as many as he could before they dried together. By the time we were ready to leave, he had rescued a few dozen; my guess is that about 10% of them could be saved.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">By about 3.00pm, we had done all we could. We pulled our equipment outside and back to the truck, loaded up and each guzzled another water before heading out. The homeowners came out to thank us. Our team leader mentioned that their house was unusually well-constructed (more on this later, also - we got to see a lot of the shortcuts that unscrupulous builders take), and that this meant that rebuilding was entirely reasonable. They were surprised - they had been under the impression that they would need to get lucky not to have to tear it down. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">We decided to do a quick preview of our next house - we knew we couldn't get anything substantial done in the two hours we had left. What I said before about this first house being grim was wrong. The first house had minor damage compared to the next one, which had been almost completely submerged. We also met the homeowners, two of the most delightful and unique people I've ever met. Much more on them in the next entry.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">We dragged out a few of the larger items and then needed to pack up to get back in time for dinner and our evening briefing. Once we returned, we power-washed every piece of equipment, inventoried it, washed out the truck, scraped plaster off our boots, were sprayed with disinfectant and were then off to the showers. I can honestly say that I have never had a more satisfying shower, despite it being five minutes' duration and mostly cold. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;">The rest of the evening consisted of an unmemorable but welcome dinner, followed by an evening debriefing around a small campfire. Once business was done, the Beer Flag was raised, meaning that we could each partake of our allotment of two beers. There's more to tell on this topic, but I am nearly as exhausted telling this story as I was working this day, so it will wait until the next entry.<br /><br /><i>Next up: The worst of times, and the best of people.</i></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-10924684807601235832017-09-26T16:34:00.002-07:002017-09-26T17:37:58.403-07:00The best awful week of my life (part 2)<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Note 1: This post will make a lot more sense if you read </span><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2017/09/the-best-awful-week-of-my-life-part-1.html" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Part 1</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> first.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Note 2: Team Rubicon could <i style="font-weight: bold;">really</i> use your help to keep doing good works. Please consider donating to our <a href="https://fundraise.teamrubiconusa.org/fundraiser/1125353" target="_blank">Team Rubicon fundraising page</a>.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's 4.15am on Saturday, September 9. If you've ever met either Sharon or me, you know that 4.15am is a time for going to sleep, not one for waking up. The absurd hour is made considerably worse by our having had a few too many drinks with our closest friends the night before.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My phone alarm pipes up with a gentle yet profoundly annoying four bars of jazz music. Sharon hates this ringtone, and frankly I don't care much for it either, so it makes for an effective awakening. I snooze it for five minutes and prod Sharon gently. She mumbles something that sounded like "luck cough." I may have heard this incorrectly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We're at the Crowne Plaza at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). While absolutely nothing, either in the hotel or nearby, is open at this unseemly hour, our room comes equipped with a coffee machine of sorts and Pike Place blend. I drag my entirely unprepared 62-year-old self out of bed, put coffee on, perform my morning ablutions and start to get organized. Fortunately, we had done most of the organizing yesterday, so this consists mostly of making sure I haven't dropped anything. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The smell of coffee rouses Sharon slightly. "Dime zit" probably means "What time is it?" to which I respond, "It's twenty after four." This was followed by more incomprehensible likely obscenities, which I opt not to attempt to translate. Sharon stumbles to the bathroom. I turn on the lights, since even the sun has the good sense not to make an appearance yet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After our excursions to REI, et al, on Thursday, Sharon and I washed all of our new gear and packed our full camping packs and day packs. We were, in fact, ready to go on Friday afternoon, which is more than I can say for us in our current state. We are supposed to meet up with other Team Rubicon members at 5.00am at the Team Rubicon headquarters, which is less than a block from the hotel (and also less than a block from the building in which I worked from 1988-1992, but that's another story). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Once we've each had a cup of coffee, we're more or less functional. We strap on our camping packs, which turn out to be considerably more unwieldy than expected, especially for me. After a few minutes of strapping and restrapping some of the several thousand straps, catches, ropes and fasteners on this highly complex piece of equipment, Sharon points out that my pack has a waist strap. This makes all the difference, and I go from a 105° angle to nearly perpendicular with the ground. We both totter a bit on the way to the elevator, but by the time we reach the lobby we're relatively stable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Team Rubicon office is as close as advertised, although it isn't terribly obvious where it is. We stand on Century Boulevard, in the dark, looking a little confused at not seeing a sign that said 6171, when some people working on a nearby construction site ask if we needed help. They tell us that the TR offices are right where we are standing, more or less, and point us to a side entrance. A few people with similar packs are just emerging, and they point us around the corner to the spot where we are to be picked up. A few minutes later, a shuttle bus arrives. We stow our gear and hop aboard. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The bus takes us to the American Airlines terminal at LAX, which is unsurprisingly abandoned at this early hour. American has already ticketed all of us for the charter, and their staff people wander through our group, asking for identification and providing us with tickets. They gather us together, show us where to check our luggage (with a counter dedicated to us, a nice touch even though there are exactly zero other travelers) and pack us off to security. We pass through without incident, and are delighted to discover that Starbucks is open. 300mg of caffeine later, we are as ready as we're going to be.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/WzQivmAffZ-iGLfGI5CZzQhRIPkWnCodKhgdfCP5uU-snWYsRwIK9cn_QVdSb9hq6zUv7Eh-1vV8Pj1XORIe_iXs3zATz0SOdoKAxlpOj7tE4CSFhIL_we_LeeR3yasDdeXSFmpfoh6etZgfuJXq6UaUyvqTPRNzy1SukPO1S1_nXtPYViXMoYIskvcdsTVTBinDnvJrd_483waD16NIeJDotfXmYCAhr34iAJrp9tSS-rCF-soFy1HZTUUG2EA_6yxEHkrtflzKLcfpktWMl_oK__dbWmrCc5-f6o0_ycgiBWPm0q5akqJWknSVvVElcVJ5O56Q3WU6F-_yiFr0j5Qki3f_ef6m3PwE7RA29gYBQ7Um0AgSYVgTOMLiMG4ygM9vntRti6isiCJLadIzFhRmsJ1PuzJo-5116xEXrrIHPoBRo7UuSAuMQZWeyvFn8iVq3PBfIDdDPnYkm_hVON9zDI7GK8b35dNjuWrfw13DOHHHHXMP62q5XryEwY5PNyIijvPwq5kYp4HtJirotW7P2ymuGFp2PtqM8QR8cfdwccqLGEgblDdDvtEfjaqb-1ezTFtJF1TGKcksWSfCj9tu_ibpmZvf6wXD9YBT72E=w1058-h793-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1057" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/WzQivmAffZ-iGLfGI5CZzQhRIPkWnCodKhgdfCP5uU-snWYsRwIK9cn_QVdSb9hq6zUv7Eh-1vV8Pj1XORIe_iXs3zATz0SOdoKAxlpOj7tE4CSFhIL_we_LeeR3yasDdeXSFmpfoh6etZgfuJXq6UaUyvqTPRNzy1SukPO1S1_nXtPYViXMoYIskvcdsTVTBinDnvJrd_483waD16NIeJDotfXmYCAhr34iAJrp9tSS-rCF-soFy1HZTUUG2EA_6yxEHkrtflzKLcfpktWMl_oK__dbWmrCc5-f6o0_ycgiBWPm0q5akqJWknSVvVElcVJ5O56Q3WU6F-_yiFr0j5Qki3f_ef6m3PwE7RA29gYBQ7Um0AgSYVgTOMLiMG4ygM9vntRti6isiCJLadIzFhRmsJ1PuzJo-5116xEXrrIHPoBRo7UuSAuMQZWeyvFn8iVq3PBfIDdDPnYkm_hVON9zDI7GK8b35dNjuWrfw13DOHHHHXMP62q5XryEwY5PNyIijvPwq5kYp4HtJirotW7P2ymuGFp2PtqM8QR8cfdwccqLGEgblDdDvtEfjaqb-1ezTFtJF1TGKcksWSfCj9tu_ibpmZvf6wXD9YBT72E=w1058-h793-no" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Just in case you are unclear on Sharon's feelings about our 4.15am wakeup call.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The next few hours are uneventful. As it turns out, our flight isn't scheduled to depart until 9.00am; the 5.00am meet time is fairly typical military planning. We drink coffee, find a place that is open for breakfast, meet a few people and even doze off for a few minutes. We weren't sure exactly what was going to be happening when we arrived, so we wore our work gear, plus our brand-new Team Rubicon shirts.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/SzVlc5ief_pDu5j8VyF_xUZK2758vrtW05cZLL1CtO97r4-xvQ56dFN2_Temog1vWg6ZCWKZ855Djz2dxbxqZxuj3GiQCdCT9VA5-F0xNykG0sdy88NSumrK3IaGCxumJCCXsmVXw_9TEHN6PIZYug0dgh3woMp1MQH3WZqVBrm3Nco3XVqp3yu4YOdypj4-iZZ16Y1kVbwoI8O8q8m3YNBEBw81TpvR52_CmBX-l9AjbMTuwAl5xnzoiX6rhkI26egCZxSBHYmwp7oWN3hl8iaMQ2YlG6iXqcHBj0Ytaxlf2z855Z_cAgn-gUR71lMf8fP-t7ljR2lnofIDXOpHiE3C_bgxUycLfua2lcmEplTDBf909dqyjcM972uLXRXWRZLCdSgnPThuDjYWIh1Kypkct2Zwj6VkfqXKf25Mr2QXsF-lFzmd8AX7uZta2p8QdIJT1rVxkXrVn_xVuiJW2v3feCgSx8GaYcZbSJU0iBYvYY_U8LIQVE8O9D11A3unT3lW0bHUD_uzZq67wmTPeY1XTp8-uLT1qyxnR0XCmm0BV4nwua8kzT53R7IeK5c2SzdBwhts6XDAQBYTJ-YcFM4MAtH-sGXYvP0VDIPTlv8=w1410-h794-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1410" height="179" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/SzVlc5ief_pDu5j8VyF_xUZK2758vrtW05cZLL1CtO97r4-xvQ56dFN2_Temog1vWg6ZCWKZ855Djz2dxbxqZxuj3GiQCdCT9VA5-F0xNykG0sdy88NSumrK3IaGCxumJCCXsmVXw_9TEHN6PIZYug0dgh3woMp1MQH3WZqVBrm3Nco3XVqp3yu4YOdypj4-iZZ16Y1kVbwoI8O8q8m3YNBEBw81TpvR52_CmBX-l9AjbMTuwAl5xnzoiX6rhkI26egCZxSBHYmwp7oWN3hl8iaMQ2YlG6iXqcHBj0Ytaxlf2z855Z_cAgn-gUR71lMf8fP-t7ljR2lnofIDXOpHiE3C_bgxUycLfua2lcmEplTDBf909dqyjcM972uLXRXWRZLCdSgnPThuDjYWIh1Kypkct2Zwj6VkfqXKf25Mr2QXsF-lFzmd8AX7uZta2p8QdIJT1rVxkXrVn_xVuiJW2v3feCgSx8GaYcZbSJU0iBYvYY_U8LIQVE8O9D11A3unT3lW0bHUD_uzZq67wmTPeY1XTp8-uLT1qyxnR0XCmm0BV4nwua8kzT53R7IeK5c2SzdBwhts6XDAQBYTJ-YcFM4MAtH-sGXYvP0VDIPTlv8=w1410-h794-no" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">They will never look like this again.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We depart promptly at 9.00am. Once we reach altitude, the captain comes on, but doesn't deliver the typical "We know you have choices, thanks for flying American" blah blah. Instead, he thanks us profusely for taking time out of our schedules to help with the disaster in Houston. He then tells us that his wife is an elementary school teacher who has told her class about Team Rubicon's mission, and that her husband is flying the first-ever Team Rubicon charter. The class of 6- and 7-year-olds decided to make cards to send along with the pilot.</span><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/3vCiUn_iepsXuVOa5_X4wiuJ4EKU_qhkVsAAwVggDBdZfhnJWQoMCAjzwimWZcxB2r0ofLWOwUi_UwqFFStqWM5Nvyf90BW9N3axpKGRNbrURQW7biRUYucsWDbLEvU3h3ih3Xhu8CdVRxZKbQb4wO08qc2hFIwfuV_KinMoJX0GtJcdt1zo4ErxUyXI_acVp2Jo-DSF1FFag4lyKBm8knKX2sZahh3Xek7BefSFTMUZjW3x4VXO6ceLRatZz0VkSCbmq28YqYsTOSsYkGyzkmJ40SA0mNrQEaeQyrZnHWtYu-sQnzzM6X1qZwt3-GYjFBpSA2H9eRLoAXpzlzUwrAhoyRg3Ddm09SwKDHPgpmdbM7tX7CsgocSO9skelxcpWp01f4Tr9cJ2pHaI3H7wbO8X6ARYqodbmzRdpx_LB3VbNCHFNbRb221AU8TRox9WC9rICl1aF3dVSBQ3VmMotPsJM60iHm20QswXChyb8yIRTJcOVNwFIdhDqOe3-X_XLcH3mIBvWRqAf_r2SorfEBtVNc3lA6uCC4WZXlrd4ToHKT4iPnWcr7f2zW1tKis1QKtEB-D5g1YoXQ47busRK2XTaA5L26HeGDLy64IqeEE=w475-h793-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/3vCiUn_iepsXuVOa5_X4wiuJ4EKU_qhkVsAAwVggDBdZfhnJWQoMCAjzwimWZcxB2r0ofLWOwUi_UwqFFStqWM5Nvyf90BW9N3axpKGRNbrURQW7biRUYucsWDbLEvU3h3ih3Xhu8CdVRxZKbQb4wO08qc2hFIwfuV_KinMoJX0GtJcdt1zo4ErxUyXI_acVp2Jo-DSF1FFag4lyKBm8knKX2sZahh3Xek7BefSFTMUZjW3x4VXO6ceLRatZz0VkSCbmq28YqYsTOSsYkGyzkmJ40SA0mNrQEaeQyrZnHWtYu-sQnzzM6X1qZwt3-GYjFBpSA2H9eRLoAXpzlzUwrAhoyRg3Ddm09SwKDHPgpmdbM7tX7CsgocSO9skelxcpWp01f4Tr9cJ2pHaI3H7wbO8X6ARYqodbmzRdpx_LB3VbNCHFNbRb221AU8TRox9WC9rICl1aF3dVSBQ3VmMotPsJM60iHm20QswXChyb8yIRTJcOVNwFIdhDqOe3-X_XLcH3mIBvWRqAf_r2SorfEBtVNc3lA6uCC4WZXlrd4ToHKT4iPnWcr7f2zW1tKis1QKtEB-D5g1YoXQ47busRK2XTaA5L26HeGDLy64IqeEE=w475-h793-no" width="191" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/1O3Y9Q9AJCRWEvBPpnlwrPm2dzGmDnre7Di7Q-ZWsQB3w22TbBaMDfr92Tme5tmzIHB_s7CQ2j98CH8t37QHRO-I140NwTEpu7YWEmkOkTgx9OeZ7yrhyzjjjzS-AYTesGSDopF6TzoyuFaLo47ka7mP6yuSA5_BKQxu0a9MZOBoSt123fkNdumPpMgF2V544EiaVxAZO327H1Ss8A6jkl1ObMtHlXzwRyMEEZFBGumzNvlMG_LKXIveViB1plWLEKDpw2WeEtoB_5I8nj8MmyqjYmyXTioJ2I0hHGUmYp20JogBUq1R8G589pbbEv2gdfMO9wOhR3cQkV5iClAn6TQrSrrUBuiOy82S5W3m_Kvh85hTlyjB7OxZ9D1j-3zG3IDeCezbAVJItxJ62Cs9n-bVuGgLuZfRjZ2oubiJGxZCBUnoYekyizFaGlSNkK1Gs8a_hnoKHgqoK7SaKpK88qSrj1zssQt3aJ7uLrLt59Lf_p4uLba84hozaeGqOPBg6vhRuMbjyIjGsI4CFKXxZGPIu6PMegiefSb3zPuQp8zdfTxona6sRPjShixlacdC6Xt1hOzM8peVRtfypfmG_rQVD_A-Q3oDPLSXINYiBwM=w1281-h793-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1281" height="198" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/1O3Y9Q9AJCRWEvBPpnlwrPm2dzGmDnre7Di7Q-ZWsQB3w22TbBaMDfr92Tme5tmzIHB_s7CQ2j98CH8t37QHRO-I140NwTEpu7YWEmkOkTgx9OeZ7yrhyzjjjzS-AYTesGSDopF6TzoyuFaLo47ka7mP6yuSA5_BKQxu0a9MZOBoSt123fkNdumPpMgF2V544EiaVxAZO327H1Ss8A6jkl1ObMtHlXzwRyMEEZFBGumzNvlMG_LKXIveViB1plWLEKDpw2WeEtoB_5I8nj8MmyqjYmyXTioJ2I0hHGUmYp20JogBUq1R8G589pbbEv2gdfMO9wOhR3cQkV5iClAn6TQrSrrUBuiOy82S5W3m_Kvh85hTlyjB7OxZ9D1j-3zG3IDeCezbAVJItxJ62Cs9n-bVuGgLuZfRjZ2oubiJGxZCBUnoYekyizFaGlSNkK1Gs8a_hnoKHgqoK7SaKpK88qSrj1zssQt3aJ7uLrLt59Lf_p4uLba84hozaeGqOPBg6vhRuMbjyIjGsI4CFKXxZGPIu6PMegiefSb3zPuQp8zdfTxona6sRPjShixlacdC6Xt1hOzM8peVRtfypfmG_rQVD_A-Q3oDPLSXINYiBwM=w1281-h793-no" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've gotten something in my eye that I'm having some trouble dealing with. I look around and realize it's not just me. Even the normally stoic Sharon chokes up a little. One after another, these little gems circulate, each one different and each one very personal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The next few hours pass uneventfully. At one point, our Incident Commander (the big boss), Mike, reads off names of who is going where once we land. We learn that Sharon has been assigned to Friendswood, a city about 30 miles south of Houston, and I have been assigned to Beaumont, a city about 90 miles east (near the Louisiana border). We mention this to Mike, who doesn't ask what our preference is - he just says, "Handled." <br /><br />We both nod off, and at around 2.30pm Central Daylight Time we land in Houston. After some taxiing delays and a few publicity shots (there was a local news crew and a 60 Minutes crew awaiting us), we are loaded on a bus and taken to a hangar that has been donated by Southwest Airlines. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img align="center" class="mcnImage" height="133" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/35d83ace49fd3b83e06fddf82/images/9f988419-df23-4dc7-bb35-2d4f92720a43.jpg" style="border-width: 0in; display: inline; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 600px; outline: none; padding-bottom: 0in; vertical-align: bottom;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Team Rubicon's first charter</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We are surprised and delighted to find a crew of kids from a local church there to greet us with cheers and signs. We unload our gear and file into the hangar, and learn to our delight that this group of kids (with some help, presumably) have packed a few hundred sack lunches of chicken and burgers. We each grab one.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/j35zmYDLE8anptn95v6F1BK4tQ7d2BuYkpP6yRy9RgRue2QBf19kPEUSzleaqxiVcto1Ho20ROYuLx9lkaZvmNifJlK6vdFng14g--4I_hjk1XDo8rwTKUAVgbeWIYbncifDRE8NcyxVP55O-KtelEGyks2P0PEqpuZ6X-9ZP1p064VwdbXVOg7oz9gDekpYN_fcdQkrqHsUrRj-J78OOp9fAIGVlg2FI51WGv7QTiqaKVQ-VkR-aCPv5ZFWWPhm1_skpe1FSKgtBBOjtrVTgkEGieTmAmodMcIlj0eMnFEJ-pCM6tTG-IjyaM1LTshsLmI1na27peC2UdekFH5x-oo8uQ9e1eso4MqzLZ4K8AZ3FitJHXphMJlLVl3CA7QVqQGHnx4itPNZ933xToVxUEeL_H4nQjiBcArBQa9sXfo4i1_x9zRyAmaFYN4B3pO1OrFQRmvMjjKxOfqeWcddRXj0eL75_JnEMnu0RRlzowRtbtGeXow4VanM66jX0KKEw2eoW3_vTBwS19T9xnmfqRgjYYoKIWP--6W3OTAj9eFebTIZh7_djcy0YZ1ozvwrg5Wq27R36shIC-RHwpeK9E7PqqPCw8UICgEsWg_jEjA=w1410-h794-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1410" height="179" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/j35zmYDLE8anptn95v6F1BK4tQ7d2BuYkpP6yRy9RgRue2QBf19kPEUSzleaqxiVcto1Ho20ROYuLx9lkaZvmNifJlK6vdFng14g--4I_hjk1XDo8rwTKUAVgbeWIYbncifDRE8NcyxVP55O-KtelEGyks2P0PEqpuZ6X-9ZP1p064VwdbXVOg7oz9gDekpYN_fcdQkrqHsUrRj-J78OOp9fAIGVlg2FI51WGv7QTiqaKVQ-VkR-aCPv5ZFWWPhm1_skpe1FSKgtBBOjtrVTgkEGieTmAmodMcIlj0eMnFEJ-pCM6tTG-IjyaM1LTshsLmI1na27peC2UdekFH5x-oo8uQ9e1eso4MqzLZ4K8AZ3FitJHXphMJlLVl3CA7QVqQGHnx4itPNZ933xToVxUEeL_H4nQjiBcArBQa9sXfo4i1_x9zRyAmaFYN4B3pO1OrFQRmvMjjKxOfqeWcddRXj0eL75_JnEMnu0RRlzowRtbtGeXow4VanM66jX0KKEw2eoW3_vTBwS19T9xnmfqRgjYYoKIWP--6W3OTAj9eFebTIZh7_djcy0YZ1ozvwrg5Wq27R36shIC-RHwpeK9E7PqqPCw8UICgEsWg_jEjA=w1410-h794-no" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The welcoming committee.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We're asked to check in at the desk for the area to which we've been assigned. Sharon goes to the Friendswood desk, I head for the Beaumont desk. We quickly learn that, just as Mike said, our issue had been handled - we were both assigned to Beaumont.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The next few hours are all organizational stuff. We have to sign waivers, get security badges and organize the gear they are providing for us (hardhats, gloves, caps). It's all organized with unsurprisingly military precision - after all, this group is about 75% current or ex-military. Finally, around 6.00pm, we split into groups of six and head for our work vehicles (donated by several rental car companies). We meet a few members of our team and start out on the 2.5 hour drive to Beaumont.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We arrive at our home for the next eight days, the Calvary Baptist Church in Beaumont. I will be saying a lot more about this church, their people and their parent organization in future posts, but for now, all you need to know is that they turned their entire church property (about five buildings on three acres) over to us and then provided extraordinary help to us throughout. We are directed to one of a half-dozen large dormitory-style rooms (there are also some classrooms that were converted into smaller living spaces). </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/bdMdnFt318mQaTTfSBnskwzvnSNvmB7I1JHByZUgQ7gHiy6O_wTRdHrFAC0gYMnGx_KyuKnyc4cvzQpkywmVUVBwLAxILsfABLR4wobhWwylzLRZ8EDK3nsTgTg8t6vMJlEewo3_rBPfn6hS59JXXMtvCsYF5oGcmpTG5axrvgJgK32yiQSP0SGkqCshuJNboqG64d3smh-oiXKTGA9UnhBwuMbOkzhyN1wn0k4MdCa4ueTEOIQrDtGYGvgnv1vIblbj0ig7B2PA0FXsEuCgjCIM6e1iMcbf3Ik-6uLQpnD1sWL5i6rIy8mkQex2XTqkCLMJoMHC3dQOKsougLB3cSuun4v778_mLhFijCzVtnVktpiSFGVgvdwk8ZQOotIzFIKUR27HlUNyIHgZUH66F9RzOtZ3VfvxRXEvzuVstNn-ZhFgpLti_Bnhbrzd2wjdElaSkspAb-Lo1nVkdvp_n3rJq3xaZpG39vpx8xTbW3Z9Xig1eddjFQhXz7oHv7GFN0wHM2XDptPhnW6jhD47TTSNzw9PWICzW2iygPXwpSqIwR6E9jYxpKiOb-H6NqgSdDQUfISgQhQ65miB3jIy-_9RnDuaOb6VoG6hb96fI6Y=w1410-h794-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1410" height="179" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/bdMdnFt318mQaTTfSBnskwzvnSNvmB7I1JHByZUgQ7gHiy6O_wTRdHrFAC0gYMnGx_KyuKnyc4cvzQpkywmVUVBwLAxILsfABLR4wobhWwylzLRZ8EDK3nsTgTg8t6vMJlEewo3_rBPfn6hS59JXXMtvCsYF5oGcmpTG5axrvgJgK32yiQSP0SGkqCshuJNboqG64d3smh-oiXKTGA9UnhBwuMbOkzhyN1wn0k4MdCa4ueTEOIQrDtGYGvgnv1vIblbj0ig7B2PA0FXsEuCgjCIM6e1iMcbf3Ik-6uLQpnD1sWL5i6rIy8mkQex2XTqkCLMJoMHC3dQOKsougLB3cSuun4v778_mLhFijCzVtnVktpiSFGVgvdwk8ZQOotIzFIKUR27HlUNyIHgZUH66F9RzOtZ3VfvxRXEvzuVstNn-ZhFgpLti_Bnhbrzd2wjdElaSkspAb-Lo1nVkdvp_n3rJq3xaZpG39vpx8xTbW3Z9Xig1eddjFQhXz7oHv7GFN0wHM2XDptPhnW6jhD47TTSNzw9PWICzW2iygPXwpSqIwR6E9jYxpKiOb-H6NqgSdDQUfISgQhQ65miB3jIy-_9RnDuaOb6VoG6hb96fI6Y=w1410-h794-no" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Our double accommodations, complete with nightstand.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Once we drop off our gear, we are all herded to a small arena that has been set up outside as our meeting space/launch point. Mike (Incident Commander) and the rest of the Team Rubicon crew gives us a short briefing on what we should expect beginning at 6.00am the next day (reminder: that's 4.00am Sharon time). They strongly suggest we go to bed. It's 9.45pm, 7.45pm body time, and we've slept several times already. We stay up and meet a lot of our new team members, including an absolutely delightful group of Israeli volunteers from an amazing organization called </span><a href="http://www.israaid.co.il/" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">IsraAid</a><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> (more about them tomorrow).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By 11.30, we know the wise choice is to go to sleep. We, so used to real beds on real mattresses, attempt to do so.</span><br />
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<i style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.15px;">Tomorrow: Our wildest imagination proves inadequate. </i><br />
<i style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.15px;">(yes, I know I said this yesterday. I forgot how much more there was to say.)</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-26123569566872889342017-09-25T13:03:00.003-07:002017-09-26T22:19:25.489-07:00The best awful week of my life (part 1)<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Note: many people have called, emailed and texted asking how to donate to the amazing organization with which we volunteered - Team Rubicon. We have set up a <a href="https://fundraise.teamrubiconusa.org/SharonAndDanGoldman" target="_blank">fundraising page</a>, and would truly appreciate any and all donations of any amount. We've set a goal of $5,000.]</span></div>
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It's been 12 years since the US was hit with a truly disastrous hurricane. As Sharon and I watched the reports of Hurricane Harvey approaching, we were as concerned as everyone, and it was made more personal because we've both lived in Texas (1980-86 in Houston for me, 1996-98 in Dallas for Sharon). </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By August 29, the extent of the catastrophe in East Texas was apparent and sobering. By August 30, along with the rest of the country, we realized that this was a hundred-year - perhaps thousand-year - storm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sharon and I have been the beneficiaries of extraordinary good fortune over the years, and we know it. As we realized the extent of the tragedy in and around Houston, we also realized that it came at a time when, for the first time in years, we both had a big opening in our calendars. We had the briefest of conversations that went like this:<br /><br />Dan: <i>We should be doing something for Hurricane Harvey relief. I want to give [$amount] to JJ Watt's fundraiser.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sharon: <i>OK. What else can we do?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Dan: <i>I have nothing on my calendar for the next two weeks. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Sharon: <i>Me either. We should go to Houston.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Decision made, we then needed to figure out just what "going to Houston" meant. Among the many Harvey posts on Facebook, I saw a friend and former business colleague, Sue Schneider, mention that she was heading to Texas to join the relief effort. We had this conversation on Facebook on August 31:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dan: </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Y</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">ou are heading to Houston, I assume? I may be able to take some time next week. Thoughts on how to volunteer? Red Cross site still down [their site was down periodically throughout the first week of the aftermath].</span></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Sue:<i> </i></span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Flying in to Dallas tonite. You really can't get to Houston at the moment but they're doing a megashelter in Dallas and some in other communities since people have emigrated. I'll know more once I get there.</i></span></span></div>
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Dan: <i>Please do.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sue: </span></span><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> <i>you might want to consider Team Rubicon which goes to help in the neighborhoods. I can hook you up with a friend (who's an affiliate in our biz) and she can fill you in. Let me know.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As promised, Sue connected me with Christine, who recommended <a href="http://www.samaritanspurse.org/" target="_blank">Samaritan's Purse</a>, an evangelical Christian relief charity, and <a href="https://teamrubiconusa.org/" target="_blank">Team Rubicon</a>, a volunteer organization composed mostly of military/ex-military, first responders and law enforcement. We had already read a little about Team Rubicon, and decided to volunteer. We both assumed that volunteering meant us telling them we were available, and them telling us when and how to go to Houston.
Well, not exactly. As it turns out, Team Rubicon is a very different sort of volunteer organization. The first thing we learned when we applied: they really aren't looking for people to dish out food at the local shelter. On the <a href="https://teamrubiconusa.org/join-the-team/down-n-dirty/volunteer/" target="_blank">Volunteer page of the TR web site</a>, they say this:
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #252525; font-weight: 600; letter-spacing: 0.25px; text-align: center;">We are looking for the types of individuals below…</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-weight: 600; letter-spacing: 0.15px;">Military Veterans: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.15px;"><span style="color: red;">Active Duty, Reserve, National Guard, Retired, Medically Retired </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.15px;"><b style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.15px;">Kickass Civilians: </b><span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.15px;"><span style="color: red;">First Responders, Medical Professionals, Emergency Managers, Others with Applicable Skills</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; letter-spacing: 0.25px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sharon had worked in the ER at Children's Medical Center in Dallas. I figured that something in my past had to be considered an "applicable skill." And we think we're pretty kickass. We applied. The questionnaire that followed asked for a lot more information than either of us expected, but we dutifully completed it. That's when we learned that, to be part of Team Rubicon, we needed (a) to take safety courses and pass TR exams, (b) get FEMA certifications that required taking a series of online courses and (c) get background checks. Serious ones. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; letter-spacing: 0.25px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.15px;">On September 1, we both submitted the necessary documentation for the background check and started taking the online courses. The courses were primarily to familiarize non-military people to the command structure used in FEMA rescue and relief operations, and included surprisingly difficult, detailed exams. We took the courses and all of the exams and submitted them on September 3.<br /><br />Late on September 5, we both received notice that we had passed both the online courses and the background checks. Within an hour, we received deployment notices: we would be deployed to Houston within five days, and could have as little as five hours' notice. We also received equipment lists, and after sorting through stuff, we learned that we had roughly 2% of the gear they suggested. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; letter-spacing: 0.25px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.15px;">The morning of September 6 we headed into San Diego, planning stops at REI, Big 5, Sears and a few other places. Seven hours and about $1,000 later, we came home with backpacks, day packs, sleeping bags, steel-toe work boots, gloves, first aid kits and a vast array of stuff we couldn't imagine actually using. We cut the tags off of everything, made sure it all fit in the backpacks and sat tight waiting for travel details.</span></span></span></div>
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The wait was short. The morning of Thursday, September 7, we received notice that American Airlines had donated a charter flight from LAX, and that we were to report to the Team Rubicon HQ offices near LAX at 5.00am (ick) on Saturday, September 9.</div>
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Total elapsed time from volunteering to taking off: 9 days.</div>
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<i>Tomorrow: The calm before the storm after the storm.</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-8918255918774613512017-07-18T11:37:00.000-07:002017-07-18T11:37:28.579-07:00Why I respect Trump supporters, but not Trump<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have to get a few things off my chest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">During the election, I regularly sparred with Trump supporters on a variety of topics. My sense back then, which hasn't changed much, is that there are three types of people who support Donald Trump:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>People who legitimately want change. </b>There are a lot of people that fit in this category across the political spectrum. They believe that Washington has become a vast wasteland filled with politicians who no longer understand what we, as citizens, truly need. They see our system trip over itself repeatedly. They watch the US struggling to maintain its position as the world's only superpower. They want the America that our parents and grandparents fought for in World War II. And they believe that the best way to accomplish this is to brush aside the way things have been done and bring in an outsider who isn't bound by tradition and rules. These people may identify as members of any party, although for the most part they're disaffected Republicans who feel like their party no longer speaks for them. They have been looking for a voice that speaks to their ideals without the political rhetoric.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>People who hate Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.</b> I originally separated these two, but realized that there's a near-100% overlap. There are plenty of reasons to despise Hillary Clinton that don't involve ideology. They range from the legitimate (concerns about dynasties) to the questionable (she was unwise in how she handled her private email server) to the ridiculous (she callously and intentionally left Americans to die at Benghazi) to the borderline-insane (her campaign manager and implicitly Clinton herself ran a child sex-trafficking ring out of pizza shops). And there are similar reasons why Obama is hated - he swung the country further left, polarized the relationship between police and citizens, enacted a healthcare system that is being crushed under its own weight. For this group, voting for Clinton was simply never, ever going to happen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>People who felt disenfranchised. </b>This group has a lot of overlap with the previous groups (particularly the Clinton/Obama-haters). They have watched what they perceive as political correctness weaken their standing in their communities and in the world at large. They have long believed that immigrants were at the heart of the American problem, having watched both legal and illegal immigrants lower overall income by accepting lower wages. They've been waiting for someone to stand up for them, to say, "We're looking out for American citizens. You're first on our agenda. Yes, we know America is a country of immigrants, but you were here first."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have a lot of trouble arguing with any of these positions (although the last one makes me a little ill). I disagree with them in general, but having spent considerable time thinking about each position, I realized that it's not the positions I have trouble accepting. I agree that our political system has become a swamp, and all sides (Democratic, Republican, Independent, others) have contributed to the overall swampiness. I agree that our status as leader of the free world is in danger.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 2016, we were all unfortunate enough to have perhaps the two worst candidates for President in the history of US presidential elections. I'm not going to defend Hillary Clinton, even though I voted for her - I would have been much happier voting for Bernie Sanders, who I believed (and still believe) is the closest thing to a legitimate "people's candidate" that we've ever seen. Clinton had much going for her, but she was a distant candidate who was difficult to love or even like, and she carried a veritable Tumi warehouse of baggage from both her political past and her husband's.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All of that having been said, there's a fundamental point that the Administration's opposition clearly understands, but that Trump supporters have yet to realize (for the most part). There is a system in Washington that has developed over our 241 years. It's very far from perfect, but it protects us from tyranny by distributing power among three branches of government. There are many cases in which that very system has been responsible for gross inaction (see the housing collapse of 2007) or action that was poorly planned and executed (see Obamacare). But the solution to that problem isn't to put the system to death (see Trump's 100+ executive orders since his inauguration).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Trump decided a long time ago, certainly well before his election, that the United States isn't all that different from a big company. It has income, expenses and employees. Flying over it at 30,000 feet, it certainly <i>looks</i> like a business. It therefore makes some sense that applying sound business principles to government could help right the ship. In practice, though, the United States only <i>looks</i> like a business. In business, if the strategic and/or tactical groups fail, leadership replaces management or the entire team. In government, the team isn't hired by leadership, and can't be fired by them. Trump has attempted to end-around this problem via (a) executive orders, (b) harassing, demeaning and threatening Congress, even within his own party and (c) ignoring sound principles of government that have, for better or worse, worked for 200+ years.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There's an important underlying lesson here, and I hope that at least a few Trump supporters have made it far enough to hear this. Those of us who oppose Trump do not - repeat do <i>not</i> - necessarily disagree with any of the three points I made above. Washington has, in fact, become a vast swamp. It was a swamp when Democrats controlled both Congress and the presidency. It was a swamp when power was split. It's a swamp now. No one was thrilled with our choices in 2016. And we have all felt disenfranchised to one degree or another.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The problem we have isn't with the issues that brought you to support someone who wasn't Clinton. And the problem isn't with you, the Trump supporter, either. The problem we have is with the specific person that became the only viable alternative to Clinton. You may believe at some level that he represents you, but you also know that a guy who grew up with nannies and servants is probably fundamentally different from you, and is unlikely to truly empathize with your plight.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We will always disagree on ideology. Some of us believe that abortion should be a woman's choice; some don't. We want our economy to be strong, but disagree on the means to accomplish that. We want the world to respect (and in some cases fear) us, but we want to be neither the world's policeman nor its bully. When I argue with you about Trump, it's not because I don't respect your deeply-held beliefs (I may disagree, but that's different). It's because the person who is carrying the standard for your beliefs is far less believable, far less trustworthy and far less deserving of my respect than you are. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bottom line: we don't disagree as much as you think. So let's make a deal moving forward. I won't call you racist or socially irresponsible. You don't call me a snowflake and stop saying "yeah, but Clinton" every time I criticize the president. And let's agree that, regardless of who's on top, regardless of who's in the swamp, we're all in this together, and tearing one another apart is never going to result in something better.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-38024953037532600622017-05-30T13:56:00.000-07:002017-06-01T10:27:10.544-07:00I'm sure Caesars could be more dense, but I'm not sure how<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have spent my entire life in marketing. Marketing is one of those broad job categories that not everyone understands - if I were an accountant, you could make a decent guess about what my typical day is like, but as a marketing guy I doubt you have much idea what I do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Marketing is pretty simple at its heart - it's all about shaping ideas. If I want you to think positively about Coca-Cola, I create images related to Coke that you already have a positive sense about. We all like friendships, love and cute animals. If I can weave Coca-Cola into those things you already like, you'll start to like Coca-Cola by association, or at least have a positive feeling when you see the Coca-Cola brand.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then you have Caesars, the parent company of the World Series of Poker and the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. I can honestly say that I have never seen a major, worldwide brand more intent on destroying its own image than this company. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have written quite a bit about this over the years, including:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/8-ways-caesars-screwed-up-world-series.html">Six ways Caesars screwed up the World Series of Poker</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2015/06/just-before-main-event-last-year-i.html">WSOP 2015: Has anything changed?</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2015/06/are-you-there-caesars-its-me-dan.html">Are you there, Caesars? It's me, Dan.</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And just so you don't think I'm entirely biased against Caesars, I also wrote this:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/how-caesars-saved-world-series-of-poker.html">How Caesars saved the World Series of Poker</a> (2 parts)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The first story must have struck a nerve, because I received a flood of email from various senior WSOP people that sounded like Sean Spicer attempting to justify a 4am tweetstorm. That story was written three years ago, and despite its having gotten some high-level attention, exactly none of the six things I mentioned were acted upon. Caesars knows that they have a captive audience for six weeks every summer, so they feel safe in charging $12 for a hot dog and $2.50 for a banana.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This sort of callous attitude towards players has been a hallmark of Caesars' relationship with poker players since they first took over the WSOP in 2004. The most egregrious display of their insensitivity to their customers (in my opinion) was the decision to adopt the November Nine format. Caesars contributed exactly zero to either the prize pool or the players, but decided that, <i>to achieve their own marketing objectives</i>, they would call a halt to play for three months at the end of the world's largest tournament. They have done plenty of other things to offend and alienate players, but this was emblematic of their utter disregard for anything other than their own interests.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At this point, you might suggest that acting in their own interest is what business is all about, and you'd be right. But there is a unique synergy that is particular to the WSOP - players put up all of their own money. This is a company that is contributing nothing but a venue and media coverage, yet they are dictating how a tournament should play out for millions of dollars. And in the process, they are fundamentally changing the game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[In their defense, the November Nine format has finally been deep-sixed.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So what does this have to do with marketing?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There is a specialty of marketing called <i>branding</i>. My one-sentence definition of this highly complex topic is <i>creating a unique name and image that presents a significant and differentiated market presence.</i> Examples of companies that have done this extraordinarily well: Coca-Cola, Amazon, Geico and Apple - just reading each of those names likely stimulated images in your head. Example of a company that did this stunningly well in the poker market: PokerStars (although that has dramatically changed since their acquisition by Amaya).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Caesars has done the opposite. Their hard-nosed belief in their entrenched and safe position in the market has left hundreds of thousands of poker players with the most negative impression possible - one that convinces players that Caesars cares only about Caesars to the detriment of its players.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'll give you two examples of this. As you probably know, MGM Resorts casinos began charging for parking last year, and Caesars properties decided to follow this unpleasant trend. They originally did something everyone thought was positive - the Rio was exempted. But last week they undid all of that by announcing that there will no longer be valet parking for the WSOP. Note that they didn't start charging for valet parking - they just stopped offering it except at the main entrance. They attempted to sell this as a benefit, claiming that the WSOP "still offers free valet parking," but since it's a roughly 1/3 mile walk from the casino entrance to the WSOP area, this is a specious claim.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is bad for so many reasons that I'm not sure where to start, but I'll mention only one for now. Players leave the WSOP area at all hours of the night with substantial amounts of money. When there's valet service, a player can feel safe with a few thousand dollars. When the only option is a several-acre sea of cars with nonexistent security, it is only a matter of time before someone is attacked and robbed. If Caesars is lucky, no one will be killed, but I wouldn't want to take that bet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The second example is even more specific, but it will give you a sense of just how little Caesars thinks of its players. Before I relate this - I won't spend a lot of time tooting my own horn here, but marketing, and online poker marketing in particular, is what I do. I have had a successful career at it, and I know what I'm talking about. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have talked for a long time about how the WSOP's online poker site seems to have no idea what poker players really want or look for. I finally decided to take some time and tell them exactly why I felt this way. I went back over my notes and composed a lengthy email to Bill Rini, the head of online poker for Caesars Interactive. Here's the email I sent:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<b><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">From:</span></b><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Dan Goldman<br />
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, February 15, 2017 11:02 AM<br />
<b>To:</b> Bill Rini<br />
<b>Subject:</b> Comments on WSOP.com</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-left: 1in;">
Hi Bill,<br />
<br />
I asked [mutual friend] for your contact information because I really want WSOP.com to succeed, since it’s my only online poker alternative in Las Vegas. I realized as I was putting my comments together that I was actually giving you marketing advice, which I don’t really want to do. Instead, I want to point out a few things that I see through the eyes of both a player and a guy who’s managed a highly successful online poker operation before. I trust they will be taken in the intended spirit.<br />
<br />
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in;">Whoever does your satellite planning and scheduling, particularly for the WSOP, doesn’t seem to play much poker. WSOP.com is an amazing mouthpiece for the WSOP brand, but satellites are treated almost as an afterthought. Here are just a few examples:</li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="circle">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in;">During the WSOP, you have a massive, captive audience for online poker. You do a reasonable (not great, but reasonable) job of promoting WSOP.com within the venue. But if you launch the client, it’s hard to know that the world’s largest poker tournament is even going on. I made this comment on my blog in 2015: <i>“Let's use today as an example. It's Wednesday, and on Friday you have one of your biggest events, the Monster Stack. There are exactly ZERO upcoming satellites for the Monster Stack (OK, there was one at 4p. 4p, really?). Tomorrow, the day before the event, there are two. You should be running dozens.”</i> Nothing changed at all in 2016. I spoke with other players, who all agreed that they would have played in as many Monster Stack satellites as they could – but there just weren’t any. The situation with other big events was the same. This is a massive waste of a marketing opportunity, both live and online.</li>
</ul>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="circle">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in;">You run 1-2 $10 rebuy satellites a day in which you guarantee (2) $500 lammers. This is a pretty good idea, and they are well-attended. Why two lammers? I suspect that your typical player is depositing $50-100. Why not have satellites that guarantee one lammer, and make them $3 rebuys? Or even $1 or $2? You could run a lot more of them, and I can almost guarantee that you’d never miss a guarantee.</li>
</ul>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in;">This next item is appalling, even more so because it has now happened to me twice, once in 2015 and once in 2016. Here’s a complete description that I posted on my blog:</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>In a classic case of the left hand not having any idea what the right hand is doing - I won an online satellite for an event the following day, and didn't receive anything (no email confirmation, no call, nothing) about how to claim it. So I emailed support at about 1a, and immediately received an auto-responder saying you'd get back to me within 24 hours. I got no further response, so I called the support line at 9a. The first response from the woman who answered (who had to consult someone else) was, "Follow the instructions in the email we sent." Well, OK, but you didn't send one. "Oh, OK, hold on." A few minutes later, she returned and said (seriously), "We'll have someone get back to you within 24 hours." When I explained that the tournament was in 3 hours, she asked me to hold again. When she returned, she said, "Just go over to the WSOP and go up to the second floor." I explained to her that there was no second floor. Her response: "I don't know what to tell you. That's what they told me."</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>When I went to the Rio, there was absolutely no one who had any idea how to process my win. I got lucky and ran into Johnny, a WSOP.com guy who was very helpful last year, and he was a superstar. He stayed with me until they got my ticket, which took close to an hour.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This is <i>inexcusable.</i> Coordinating something like this is trivial. There is absolutely no reason why your onsite staff didn’t get this right the first time, and it wasn’t the only time it happened. I won 3 seats in 2015, and it happened every single time. Then, I won one in 2016 and waited in line for over an hour with a whole group of disgruntled WSOP.com satellite winners. I promise you that not one of them came away feeling better about the WSOP brand after this experience. And the fact that your telephone support staff doesn’t even know there isn’t a second floor at the venue makes it clear that you hired the cheapest possible labor and didn’t train them.</blockquote>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in;">It appears that your operations staff is equally out of touch with the realities of online poker. As an example, yesterday many players received an email from WSOP.com that said, among other things (this is condensed):</li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>You have not logged into your account for more than 9 months and as a result, we will begin to implement our dormant account procedure on 2/1/2017. The twelve-month period triggering dormant status is calculated from the date you last logged into your WSOP.com account.</i><i> </i><i>Once your WSOP.com account enters the dormant account period the account will be closed and <span style="color: red;">we will charge a monthly administration fee of $4.99</span>. The administration fee will be deducted from the dormant account balance once each month and will continue to be deducted until the balance of the account has reached zero.</i><i> </i>When my daughter, who lives in LV but only plays online during the WSOP, sent me this, I thought it was a joke. This is horrifying customer service. Yes, I am aware that it’s in your house rules (<a href="http://www.wsop.com/legal/house-rules.asp" target="_blank">http://www.wsop.com/legal/house-rules.asp</a> - btw, go have a look at this page, which was apparently last changed on August 4, <span style="color: red;">2104</span>). Maintaining a dormant account <i>doesn’t cost you anything</i>. In fact, you’re getting interest-free money from these players, some of whom have probably forgotten that it’s there. You have a significant number of players who only come to LV for the WSOP. Why not use this as a marketing opportunity instead of instantly offending every player who gets this? (In case you don’t already know, the damage from this absurd email has already been done, as it’s circulating on message boards.)</blockquote>
When a company behaves like this, its customers know they aren’t important. The WSOP itself already does plenty of this (see <i><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/8-ways-caesars-screwed-up-world-series.html" target="_blank">Six ways Caesars screwed up the World Series of Poker</a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2015/06/are-you-there-caesars-its-me-dan.html" target="_blank">Are you there, Caesars? It’s me, Dan</a></i> for some examples). WSOP.com is, perhaps inadvertently, reinforcing the arrogance and near-hostility that virtually every WSOP player feels. The pervading sense is that Caesars believes that the WSOP brand is invulnerable. It’s not. As I mentioned in one of my posts, look at America Online or Paradise Poker as examples of what happens to dominant brands that don’t take care of their base.<br />
<br />
This has gone on much longer than I intended. I have high hopes for WSOP.com, but unless you guys get in tune with your players, I don’t think you have much of a chance.<br />
<br />
Regards…dan</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here is the response I got from Bill about two hours later:</span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">From:</span></b><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Bill Rini<br /><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, February 15, 2017 11:02 AM<br /><b>To:</b> Dan Goldman<br /><b>Subject:</b> Comments on WSOP.com</span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, February 15, 2017 11:02 AM</span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>To:</b> Dan Goldman</span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Subject:</b> Comments on WSOP.com</span><o:p> </o:p><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hi Dan,<br /> </span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Thanks for taking your
time to share your thoughts. We'll take them into consideration.</span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Best,</span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "tahoma" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bill</span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">OK, did I expect Bill to jump into action? Of course not. These are suggestions, but they all make sense from a poker player's perspective, and none challenge the base marketing concepts of the WSOP. Here's a perfect example: Today is May 30. The WSOP begins <i>tomorrow</i>. Here is the satellite schedule from WSOP.com:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eBgrHgU0E9Q/WS3R-ei0XdI/AAAAAAAARdk/3A9hwwsS5DUOtQMctAOR9iT1cSaC_mfhACLcB/s1600/Capture.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="1484" height="251" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eBgrHgU0E9Q/WS3R-ei0XdI/AAAAAAAARdk/3A9hwwsS5DUOtQMctAOR9iT1cSaC_mfhACLcB/s640/Capture.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That's right - there are thousands of players here for the beginning of the WSOP, and there is exactly <b>one satellite</b> running between now and Saturday - and it's for the Employee Event, in which most people can't play.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This isn't rocket science. If you have thousands of your best customers in town for a huge poker event, and you have an online poker site, you promote your big event on your poker site. Marketing isn't hard; most of marketing is very easy: <i>give people what they are willing to pay money for, and they will pay you money</i>. You have the simplest possible task, with a year to prepare for it - how could you possibly be this dense?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Side note: to reinforce how little attention my email actually received, you will note that I pointed out a typo on the WSOP.com web site, in which they say that the last time their terms were updated was 87 years in the future (August 4, <span style="color: red;">2104</span>). If you <a href="http://www.wsop.com/legal/house-rules.asp">click here</a>, you'll see that page is still there, with the same typo.] </span><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[UPDATE: Caesars finally fixed this typo on June 1, 2017.]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My marketing career has mostly consisted of not making the little mistakes that kill companies. Caesars, up to now, has had success with the WSOP while continually tripping over its own feet. I had hoped this was the year when they got smarter, but it looks like we'll have to wait for at least one more.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-14660423037377192292015-08-13T15:01:00.001-07:002015-08-13T15:19:31.682-07:00Sen. Feinstein responds (sort of)<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A few weeks ago, I posted a letter that I had sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein regarding her surprising support of the Sheldon Adelson-sponsored (some would say "bought") <i>Restoration of America's Wire Act</i>, a Federal bill designed to extend the powers of the Wire Act far beyond its authors' intent. I finally received a response today. While I didn't expect a personal reply, I honestly expected better than what I got - a form-letter response that reiterates her position and makes it clear that she's consumed a large dose of Adelson Kool-Aid. Her response follows, with my further response below.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For more on Adelson's attempt to buy Congressional support for this absurd bill, <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2015/06/why-sheldon-adelson-is-lying-sack-of.html">click here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #76a5af; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dear Daniel:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #76a5af; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thank you for contacting me to express your support for Internet poker. I appreciate knowing your views, and apologize for the delay in my response.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #76a5af; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On February 4, 2015, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced the "Restoration of America's Wire Act" (H.R. 707), which would update the Wire Act to cover a broad range of Internet gambling. The bill would thus return the statute to the interpretation given to it by the Department of Justice prior to 2011. As you may know, I am a cosponsor of legislation (S. 1668) in the Senate.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #76a5af; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I understand that you support the legalization of Internet poker. I am afraid that this is an issue on which we must agree to disagree. The dangers of Internet gambling have long been an area of concern for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. I share their view that Internet gambling is too easily accessible to minors; subject to fraud, money laundering, and criminal misuse; and too easily used as a tool to evade state gambling laws.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #76a5af; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The "Restoration of America's Wire Act" has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Please know that while we may not agree on the legalization of Internet gambling, it is helpful for me to hear your perspective on this issue. I respect your opinion, and will keep it in mind should the "Restoration of America's Wire Act" come before me in the Senate.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #76a5af; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Once again, thank you for writing. I hope you will continue to be in touch on issues that matter to you. Should you have any additional comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #76a5af; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sincerely yours,<br /><br /><br /> Dianne Feinstein<br /> United States Senator</span></center>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">============================================</span></center>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dear Sen. Feinstein,<br /><br />I find your response disturbing in the extreme. It's OK with me that you sent a form letter response - I know that you must get thousands of emails every month. But a form letter, three weeks after my original email, that clearly doesn't address the issues at hand, is surprising and unacceptable from my elected Senator. I would hope that you have a human being who reads your email, but apparently either that's not the case, or someone decided that the issues I raised aren't worthy of comment. Either of these is disappointing and unacceptable.<br /><br />On the assumption that perhaps a human reads THIS email - the views you describe in your response are quite out of touch with reality. What you said was:</span><blockquote style="border: none; color: #222222; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<span style="text-indent: 48px;">I share [the FBI and other law enforcement agencies'] view that Internet gambling is too easily accessible to minors; subject to fraud, money laundering, and criminal misuse; and too easily used as a tool to evade state gambling laws."</span></span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The view of law enforcement is only barely relevant. Law enforcement in the 1950s largely supported segregation, also. This is a legislative matter, not a law enforcement one (and it does not reflect the current position of either the Department of Justice or the FBI). The issues are far larger than this, and in fact each of the views you describe have been dealt with by the dozens of countries in which online gambling is legal. Specifically:</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Underage gambling</b>: There is no question that this is a key issue in this discussion. Industry estimates of underage gambling range from 1-2% of all online players - roughly the same percentage as the estimates for underage gambling in live casinos. And the means of verification and enforcement are far better online than in live casinos, who often let underage players play until they win, and then deny claims.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Subject to fraud</b>: Having been in the industry for many years, I can tell you first-hand that online fraud (specifically credit card fraud, which I believe is what you refer to) is substantially lower than live credit card fraud. This is a regulatory and enforcement issue, and makes little sense as an argument against the industry at large.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Money laundering</b>: This is certainly the most laughable of your claims, although it's been part of Sheldon Adelson's playbook since his campaign against online gambling started five years ago. Live casinos accept cash for over 90% of their transactions, making them far more vulnerable to money laundering than online casinos and poker rooms, whose money sources are nearly 100% traceable. As a glaring example, Mr. Adelson's own company settled a huge money-laundering claim in 2013 as a result of The Venetian's acceptance of $45 million in <i>cash</i> from a known drug trafficker. This crime could not have taken place online, as transactions as small as $10,000 are routinely examined and audited.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 48px;"><b>Tool to evade state gambling laws</b>: I'm honestly not sure what this means. The vast majority of US casinos support legalization of online gambling. Properly implemented, online gambling can easily be restricted to defined state borders. This has been accomplished in Western Europe, where most countries have legal, regulated online gambling, as well as the three US states that have legal, regulated online gambling. What is your actual concern?</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The bottom line is that a majority of your constituents, as well as a majority of casinos, support online gambling. Your arguments against legalization, while they may read well as bullet points, don't hold up to even the lightest scrutiny. If you have someone on your staff who actually understands these issues, I strongly urge you to have them either (1) articulate arguments against legalization that represent legitimate concerns that can't be resolved by regulation and stringent enforcement, or (2) stop obfuscating with irrelevant arguments.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Your position on this matter continues to make no sense. I look forward to hearing any reasonable arguments you have that support your arcane position on this matter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Sincerely,</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222;">
<span style="text-indent: 48px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Daniel Goldman</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-72052559647975034002015-07-21T13:23:00.003-07:002015-07-21T13:33:15.335-07:00An open letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I received an email today from the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), asking me to email my senator, Dianne Feinstein, about her support of the Sheldon Adelson-sponsored Restoration of America's Wire Act (RAWA). Since this is an issue that's close to my heart - I've previously written some <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2015/06/why-sheldon-adelson-is-lying-sack-of.html">analysis of Adelson's anti-online gambling stance</a> - I decided that a personal letter made a lot more sense than the canned one the PPA asked me to send. That letter follows. Please feel free to <strike>plagiarize</strike> use any part of this you think appropriate if you contact your own Senator or Representative. If you want to use the PPA's form letter, which is pretty good, you can find it <a href="http://theppa.org/act-today/">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dear Senator
Feinstein,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have been
an ardent supporter of yours since your run for Governor in 1990, voting for
you then and in each of your campaigns for the Senate. I considered you a
strong, fearless advocate, something that is quite rare in today's political
climate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Until now,
that is. I find your support of Sen. Graham's Restoration of America's Wire Act
reprehensible and irresponsible. I will set aside for now the discussion of the
original 1961 Wire Act, which (despite your DOJ letter to the contrary) was
never intended to regulate anything other than sports betting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The real
question here is the issue of online gambling and the impact of either
regulation or a ban. The position you have taken on this issue is a nearly
word-for-word copy of Sheldon Adelson's widely circulated opinion, which I find
troubling in the extreme. Mr. Adelson has reversed his position on this matter
since I first did business with him in 2006; at that time, he not only
supported online gambling, but accepted millions of dollars from PokerStars
(for whom I worked at the time). At that time, Mr. Adelson believed enough in
online gambling that he allowed us to conduct a televised event at the
Venetian, with both the Venetian and PokerStars logos on the table. I
participated in a conference call in which Mr. Adelson participated discussing
this event, so there is no question that he was both aware and supportive of
it, which netted his company nearly $2 million.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the
intervening years, Mr. Adelson has changed his mind, and decided that online
gambling is evil and destructive. Unfortunately, the data he has used to
support this position is almost entirely fabricated. He has pointed to surveys
showing a dramatic increase in gambling addiction in European countries that
have legalized online gambling (which is most of Europe); however, the actual
data shows the opposite. He has stated that live casino business suffers by as much as 20% when online gambling is introduced, even though published data shows a measurable <i>increase</i>. He takes the position that his and other casino
companies can detect people with gaming problems and bar them, but this is far
from the truth - casinos take almost no steps to control people with gambling
addictions unless their problems disturb the casino floor. And he has taken the
almost ridiculous position that his casinos can detect money laundering,
despite the fact that the vast majority of live gambling is done with cash, the
most easily exploitable means by which money is laundered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The single
area in which Mr. Adelson's arguments make a little sense is in underage
gambling. This is a real problem, both in live and online gambling. However, banning
online gambling doesn't solve this problem; in fact, it enables far more
underage gambling by pushing the problem to unregulated non-US gambling sites,
which have virtually no regulatory oversight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I find your
position on this subject particularly troubling because I have long respected
your thoughtful positions on such issues as the assault weapons ban and medical
marijuana for veterans. The position RAWA takes on online gambling is
unsupported by almost 20 years of industry data, including over 10 years in
legal, regulated markets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As my
Senator, I expect you to be the voice of reason in a Congress that often veers
far from the course of reasonable choices. If you truly believe the position
you have taken on RAWA, I strongly urge you to examine the easily-available
data that exposes Mr. Adelson's position as nothing but a predatory business
position. Absent this careful study, which your staff clearly hasn't done, your
position is irresponsible and contrary to the facts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As a
constituent and long-time supporter, I respectfully request that you reconsider
your position on this important issue.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sincerely,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Daniel Goldman</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-43710956125264987092015-06-25T18:25:00.004-07:002021-05-18T10:43:53.513-07:00Why Sheldon Adelson is a lying sack of mule muffins<div style="background-color: white;">
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<span style="font-family: verdana;"><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif">Sheldon Adelson is chairman and the largest shareholder of Las Vegas Sands, the world's largest casino gambling company. About three years ago, Adelson decided that Internet gambling is the root of all evil in the world, and pledged to stamp it out. </span><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Coming from almost anyone else in the world, this pledge would hold little water. But this one comes from a guy who has the 12th deepest pockets in the world (according to the 2014 Forbes Magazine Forbes 400), <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">with an estimated net worth of $28 billion</a>. Rest assured that this guy has undue influence over American politics, having contributed over $100 million to various campaigns in the 2012 election. Adelson said a few years ago that he was willing to spend $100 million to wipe out Internet gambling; in a recent Bloomberg News interview, he revised that number to "whatever it takes" (more on this in a minute).</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Adelson is a smart guy. He has long supported conservative Republican candidates, some of whom don't have strong feelings about Internet gambling. But an aspiring presidential candidate without strong feelings on this topic can easily be swayed by a fraction of the money Adelson is willing to spend on this campaign. Take Marco Rubio (R-FL) as an example. Three years ago, his stance on Internet gambling consisted of his saying, "I'm not a big fan." Now, after having passed the gauntlet of the Sheldon Adelson Primary (a gathering at the Venetian, technically called the Republican Jewish Coalition Spring Meeting, but widely acknowledged as a tryout for Republicans looking for Adelson's support), Rubio is not only rabidly anti-Internet gambling; he's cosponsoring Adelson's attempt to ban online gambling at the federal level.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">A little history here: back in 1961, the Interstate Wire Act was passed and signed into law. The intent of the law was to restrict transmission of sports gambling information across state lines. Over the 25 years or so since the Internet became part of our lives, there have been repeated efforts to use the Wire Act to threaten or prosecute online gambling sites other than sports, although none has been successful (more on this in a lengthy 2-part article <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">here</a>).</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">In 2011, less than a year after Black Friday shut down the world's most popular online poker sites (PokerStars and Full Tilt), the Department of Justice issued a stunning opinion letter in response to a state-level request for clarification about selling lottery tickets online. The key sentence in this letter, from US Deputy Attorney General James Cole, read:</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="color: #444444; font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 24.64px;">“The Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) has analyzed the scope of the Wire Act, 18 U.S.c § 1084, and concluded that it is limited only to sports betting.”</span></blockquote>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Anyone who read the Wire Act already knew this, but the DOJ's formal renunciation of their former interpretation of the Act left the US with no federal-level legislation that directly impacted online gambling except the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The UIGEA, contrary to popular belief, didn't make any form of online gambling illegal. All it did was make financial transactions for <i>illegal Internet gambling</i> illegal, and it never defined what constituted illegal Internet gambling.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">The heart of Adelson's anti-online-gambling campaign is a piece of legislation called the "Restoration of America's Wire Act." Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this story.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Let's go back in time a few years. In 2010, PokerStars was attempting to re-establish their presence in the US. One of these efforts was the North American Poker Tour, which was to consist of a series of events in the US and Canada. I have first-hand knowledge of this, because my wife Sharon and I both consulted with PokerStars on the project and were involved in the operation of the event.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">When we first started discussions with the Venetian, Sharon and I met with Kathy Raymond, then-Director of Poker Operations for the Venetian. Before we had any serious discussions, Kathy informed us that the somewhat sensitive nature of PokerStars' involvement meant that their CEO needed to approve. That, of course, was Sheldon Adelson, and he did in fact approve PokerStars' participation. 872 players participated, generating a prize pool of over $4 million, of which over $200,000 went to the Venetian. But that was far from all - including rooms, events, meals, parties and all of the other revenue generated by an event this size, The Venetian took in no less than $1.5 million.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">In fairness to Adelson, things did change after this, most notably Black Friday. I suppose Adelson could argue that Black Friday changed his thinking. But given his almost religious rhetoric describing online gambling as "sin," this seems unlikely. Somewhere along the line, Adelson became convinced that online gambling threatened his business, and took it on as a cause.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">I'm not going to attempt to take a stand here - I think my attitude about online gambling is clear. But I'm going to dissect a very short video interview that Bloomberg's Betty Liu conducted with Adelson a few months ago to give you a sense of who this kingmaker is, and what he does with the truth (hint: it's not "telling it").</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Here's the interview. I suggest you watch it, and then return when you stop laughing.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Following are my comments on this laughable effort to justify his position.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>00:01</b></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "Why don't we legalize prostitution? ...Why don't we legalize drug addiction?"</i></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Good questions, but they have nothing to do with this discussion. Gambling is a form of entertainment that is already legal, in one way or another, in 48 states. Neither prostitution nor drugs are.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>00:15</b></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "The [air quotes] sin activity should be controlled."</i></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">OK. Which sins? Gambling? Oh, you mean just that online gambling stuff; never mind.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>00:41</b></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "For instance, here in the land-based casinos, we're required to have the dealers shuffle a certain way. How do you do that in...on the Internet?"</i></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">This actually made me laugh out loud. (1) Allowing dealers to shuffle cards may be the individual biggest source of employee cheating in any casino. (2) Sands properties use ShuffleMaster machines extensively. What they do is nearly identical to the way cards are shuffled online. </span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>00:51</b></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "Here we're not supposed to allow underage people to gamble. How do you do that in (sic) the Internet? There's no technology a kid can't get around."</i></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">While it's true that no technology is unbeatable, there's another fundamental truth here: Every single player who plays online has to prove their identity and age. In live casinos, players at table games are often (not always) asked for ID, but players on slots are rarely asked - unless they win, in which case the win is voided if the player is found to be underage.</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>01:05</b></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Liu: "But maybe, maybe, maybe the regulations have to catch up with the growth of the market."</i></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "No. There's nothing to regulate. I'm regulated in four jurisdictions. I don't know of one regulation that would apply to Internet gaming."</i></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Once again, I had to choke back a laugh. That's true in the US, Sheldon. How about the United Kingdom? France? Australia? Your interpretation translates to, "We shouldn't regulate Internet gambling because there are no regulations."</span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>02:01</b></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Liu: "Your detractors say, look, the people that we've seen so far go online gambling, right, they're not visiting regular casinos."</i>(We can debate the silliness of this statement another time.)</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "Because they're too poor."</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">Seriously, he said this. Can you conceive of anyone on the planet that is this tone-deaf? My best guess is that at least 50% of people who play online have visited a casino at least once. I'm probably off by a significant number, and it isn't down.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>02:42</b></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Liu: "Who's to say that's exploitation?"</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "I'm saying. And I'm the biggest guy in the industry."</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">I'm pretty sure I don't need to comment on that. The only thing he didn't say is, "I have $30 billion, and I say so."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>03:33</b></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "Why should poor people, who cannot afford to lose that kind of money, be tempted with that kind of activity?"</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">This is a good reason for Adelson to shut down all of his casinos, no? Unless he's checking the bank accounts of every player who sits down to gamble at Sands properties, this is up there among his most disingenuous statements.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>03:52</b></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "I can't tell (over the Internet) who's got financial difficulties. I can't tell who is not gaming responsibly. I can't tell whether money is being laundered. I can in the casino."</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">I'll give Adelson this one, provided that he tells me exactly what he does to find out if the guy playing $25 blackjack has financial difficulties. I'm pretty sure that I can just sit down at a table at The Venetian without providing a financial statement. He's right in the large - he can prevent money laundering to an extent, although his recent $27 million fine for money laundering says otherwise. But that is an issue for bigger gamblers - "poor people" aren't using the Internet to launder their money.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><b>04:30</b></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Adelson: "Do you think I'm bringing in unfortunate people to be exploited?"</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">I put that one in as a closing laugh.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">What I've listed above is just a fraction of the blather that Adelson has spouted over the years. Here is another one that I'll let you watch on your own:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dmRuZzsZ68w/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dmRuZzsZ68w?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">My favorite quote from that interview is one that will resonate with every poker player in the world. When asked about a carveout for poker because it's a skill game, his response was, "that (poker is) skill-based is just a bunch of baloney."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">[Side note: keep an eye on the news for coverage of the upcoming trial of the lawsuit filed against Adelson by Steve Jacobs, former CEO of his Asian operation. Jacobs is suing for wrongful termination, accusing Adelson of money laundering (for which Sands Asia has already paid a $27 million fine), bribing public officials, having ties to the Chinese Mafia and...prostitution. None of these charges are proven, but the trial should be fun to watch.]</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">I know that everyone is entitled to their opinion. But this is a dangerous guy for our industry and our game. He has a personal, likely hidden, agenda, and he has limitless funds with which to implement it. There are bigger issues at stake than just poker - Adelson is a $30 billion blowhard intent on having his way. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana;">He's sure fun to watch, though.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: verdana;"><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><br /></span>
<br /></span>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-14964257012719259032015-06-10T21:03:00.000-07:002015-06-10T21:03:58.984-07:00Are you there, Caesars? It's me, Dan.
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">I've written several articles about Caesars' handling of the World
Series of Poker, some critical ("<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/8-ways-caesars-screwed-up-world-series.html"><span style="color: blue;">Six ways Caesars screwed up the WSOP</span></a>") and
some not ("<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/how-caesars-saved-world-series-of-poker.html"><span style="color: blue;">How Caesars saved the WSOP</span></a>"). I see myself
as uniquely qualified to critique Caesars' performance for several reasons: (1)
I'm a longtime poker player, (2) I've been playing in the WSOP for 14 years,
having played in 44 events, (3) I'm a marketing guy and (4) I have a lot of
operations experience, some in casinos. So with that having been said:</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">Dear Caesars,</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">It's me, Dan. I know you've heard me complain before, but since we
have a long-term relationship, I hope you hear what I'm about to say in its
intended spirit, which is entirely constructive.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">First, let me compliment you on a few things. You pulled off an
impressive coup two weeks ago, running the largest tournament in the history of
poker tournaments with surprisingly few logistical problems. You've improved
the bathroom situation to an extent. And I can't say enough good things about
your adoption of the "no flop, no drop" rule in cash games.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">But before your head gets too big, I need to tell you that you
have a very, <i>very</i> long way to go before your handling of the
World Series of Poker moves up into the acceptable range. I know that gaming
restrictions prevent you from changing much this year, but I hope you'll listen
not just to me, but to the thousands of players who have rightly skewered you
on social media. We're not just whiners. You've got work to do. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">Let me start by telling you that I know poker players are easy to
ignore as a group. We whine about everything. Regardless of how good a job you
do, we're always going to believe that you're just in this to fuck us. It's not
a great starting position for a relationship. But we're the pretty girl and you
want us at the prom, so get ready to know what it's going to take.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">1. You came into this relationship at a disadvantage. Not only are
we whiners, but we're predisposed to believe that you don't know poker, you
don't give a rat's ass about what players think and you make decisions in a
vacuum. I don't necessarily believe all of those things, but you need to know
that this is the filter through which I'm going to judge you, as are my fellow
fickle poker players. It's going to amplify the things you do wrong, and
minimize the things you do well (unless they're amazing).</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">2. You have a lot of tangent points with your players, key of
which are registration, cashouts, food venues and bathrooms. If you can create good
experiences in each of these areas, you'll have leaped a giant hurdle in
creating good feelings among your players. Unfortunately, even though you've
now been at this for twelve years, I'd give you no higher than 5 on a 1-10
scale in any of these areas.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">3. The first contact you usually have with players is
registration, whether online or in person. Online registration is conceptually
a very smart idea, but you've implemented it so poorly that it is just not
worth the effort. It saves players no time, and in some cases causes them to
wait even longer than players who just walk in cold. This is not terribly hard
to fix - all you need to do is (a) come up with a means by which players can
pay online (like PayPal), and (b) allow players to print their own tickets.
Given the volume you do in a very short period, I suspect PayPal would be happy
to work with you on rates. And your players may even be willing to pay some or
all of that. I'd happily pay an additional 1% not to have to stand in line for
an hour or more.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">4. Cashouts have been a disaster this year, which is surprising,
because in the past they've just been poor. I never expected that it could get
worse. Now, I cut you a little slack because you ran the Colossus and had more
people cashing out than you have registered for many events. But that excuse is
only good for two days. I made my <i>fifth</i> trip today and was
finally able to cash out, and even though there were only two people ahead of
me, it took close to an hour.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">One of your supervisors told me a few weeks ago that your typical
cashout takes 12 minutes. That's unacceptably long, and having cashed out
today, I can see where at least some of the problems are. One very obvious one:
there's no reason why you need to scan every player's ID every time they cash
out. It doesn't help a lot, but if it cuts a minute out of the process, that's
an 8.5% improvement.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">Related problem: you have, for some inexplicable reason,
instructed your cashout clerks that every player cashing out must have their
player's card. This makes <i>absolutely no sense</i>. I needed my player's
card to register, so you know I have one. You know who I am, because you have
(needlessly) scanned my ID dozens of times. If I have my card number, that
should be more than sufficient. There's no legal, gaming or practical reason
for this; in fact, when I asked a supervisor why this was a requirement, she very
honestly replied, "I have absolutely no idea."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt;">It would also help if you suggest that your cashout people not act
like jackboot soldiers. When I finally sat down today to cash out from the
Colossus, and told the clerk that I had my number but not my card, he said
(this is an exact quote that I transcribed while I sat there), <span style="background: white;">"</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I don't need the number, I
need YOUR CARD, SIR. Go get a player's card and get back in line."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
5. There's been a lot of discussion over the past year about WSOP.com. I know
it's been somewhat less than the stellar performer you expected it to be when
you launched. I can't speak to the rest of the year, but I can tell you that
you've completely, and I mean <i>completely</i>, missed the boat in properly tying WSOP.com to the live WSOP. Three examples:<br />
<br />
(a) You have thousands of players in Las Vegas for the WSOP. Many of them, like
me, will play cash games and satellites at the Rio, but we would also play in
satellites online - if you'd schedule them. It's crystal clear looking at the
WSOP.com satellite schedule that the people who created it aren't talking to
you guys. Let's use today as an example. It's Wednesday, and on Friday you have
one of your biggest events, the Mega Stack. There are exactly ZERO satellites
for the Mega Stack (OK, there was one at 4p. 4p, really?). Tomorrow, the day
before the event, there are two. You should be running dozens. You don't have
to guarantee them all, which I assume is the reason there are so few.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(b) In
addition to the satellites I mentioned, you have started running satellites
that award two $500 lammers. That's a great idea. Why not extend that great
idea and run satellites that award ONE lammer? You could run more of them, even
with a one-lammer guarantee, and they'd fill up.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(c) In a
classic case of the left hand not having any idea what the right hand is doing
- I won an online satellite two weeks ago for an event the following day, and didn't receive anything (no
email confirmation, no call, nothing) about how to claim it. So I emailed
support at about 1a, and immediately received an auto-responder saying you'd
get back to me within 24 hours. I got no response, so I called the support line
at 9a. The first response from the woman who answered (who had to consult
someone else) was, "Follow the instructions in the email we sent."
Well, OK, but you didn't send one. "Oh, OK, hold on." A few minutes
later, she returned and said (seriously), "We'll have someone get back to
you within 24 hours." When I explained that the tournament was in 3 hours,
she asked me to hold again. When she returned, she said, "Just go over to
the WSOP and go up to the second floor." I explained to her that there was
no second floor. Her response: "I don't know what to tell you. That's what
they told me."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I
went to the Rio, there was absolutely no one who had any idea how to process my
win. I got lucky and ran into Johnny, a WSOP.com guy who was very helpful last
year, and he was a superstar. He stayed with me until they got my ticket, which
took close to an hour.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I sympathize with the difficulty in running a huge poker event - I've run a few, including the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. There are thousands of little details, any one of which can trip you up. But we're not talking about those details here - we're talking the big things, the ones you guys should have spent 10.5 months out of every year since 2004 getting right. Yes, you've improved some things. But you've also made some worse. And until you get the big things right, your <i>customers</i> (because that's what we are - we're players, but we're your customers) are going to continue to hold your feet to the fire.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In closing, I'd like to remind you of something that you will probably laugh at. The WSOP is the gorilla that makes 900 pound gorillas look like capuchine monkeys. But so was Ashton-Tate, who in 1986 was in a virtual tie with Microsoft for the world's largest software company. Or here's one you've heard of: America Online. Or Paradise Poker, who owned the online poker market with more than 80% market share in 2002, and was effectively gone in 2004. </span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You know what killed those companies? <i>Arrogance</i>. It can happen to you, too.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We've had a good run at this relationship. I hope it survives, because I do still love you. But you better get some counseling.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Regards...dan</span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-12875583670511983062015-06-02T20:54:00.000-07:002015-06-03T08:35:39.126-07:00WSOP 2015: Has anything changed?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just before the Main Event last year, I wrote a post called "<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/8-ways-caesars-screwed-up-world-series.html" target="_blank">Six ways Caesars screwed up the World Series of Poker</a>." It was one of my most popular posts, and even attracted the attention of some people in senior management at the WSOP (who, needless to say, disagreed with much of what I had to say). As the WSOP has just gotten underway, I thought this was a good time to revisit that post and see what's changed, and to add some new grist to the mill.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Prices.</b> Not only has nothing changed here, but the problem has, in fact, gotten slightly worse. I didn't realize that the $1.50 banana I whined about was a bargain - it turned out that there was only one venue that didn't charge $2.50, and I hit it. This year, $2.50 is the going rate. That's right - for one banana.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But just to be sure that you don't think I chose an isolated case - there are practically no meals you can buy in the Poker Kitchen that cost less than $10. I bolted in on a break from the Colossus to grab something, since we didn't have a dinner break, and paid $12.50 for an Italian sub. It was good, but had roughly the same amount of meat as the Italian BMT you can buy at Subway for $5. Add a drink and you're up to $15; add a bag of M&Ms and it's $18.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, I recognize that the WSOP is an expensive event to run. But seriously, Caesars, you're making some really decent rake on this event; there's absolutely no reason to pretend that you're an airport - except that you can. And bear in mind that, because all of the regular restaurant venues are jammed during the WSOP and it's not practical to go somewhere else, the meal choices on breaks are very limited. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Rake.</b> This has, surprisingly, gotten better, although I'm not sure that it's intentional. I played a few hours of cash games on two different days, and both times it was no flop, no drop. (Last year, it was possible to win a pot and lose money because of their policy to take the full rake even on uncalled bets.) <strike>But since I played only on the first few days, it's possible that this was an aberration - please chime in if you know what the official policy is this year.</strike> [This is now <a href="http://www.2015wsopdealersandstaff.com/dealer-information.html" target="_blank">official policy</a> - thanks, Bart.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Marginal staff.</b> This has gotten considerably worse at the dealer level. As I did in my article last year, though, I'll cut Caesars a little slack, since the WSOP is an almost unimaginable poker resource hog. And this year it seems like there are more tournaments in other rooms, so an already thin resource pool is even leaner.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That having been said, I've seen some absolutely appalling things. Example: a player bet 800 (in a tournament), comprised of one pink 500 chip and three black 100 chips. The next player put in one orange chip (5,000) and three black chips. As soon as he released them, he realized his mistake and said, "I only meant to call." The dealer pushed the orange chip back and motioned for the player to put in a pink chip to correct the action. There was a moment of silence, after which I said, "I think you better call the floor." The dealer actually looked at me and said, "Why?" I let the rest of the table pounce.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was standing in line waiting for a payout today and another player told me about three veteran dealers from his home club in Washington state who drove to Las Vegas, hoping to deal the WSOP. They auditioned and all three were rejected. Yesterday, while playing in the nightly Deep Stack, that player had a dealer tell him that 4 days ago, he was working in the Poker Kitchen. A shift manager came in and said, "Anyone want a crash course in dealing poker?" He said yes, and 48 hours later he was dealing. (Note that I can't confirm this story, but it sounds credible.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The one piece of good news is that the floor staff seems to have gotten considerably better. I didn't see a single bad decision; by this point last year I had seen at least 5.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One suggestion that Caesars won't like, but that they need to consider: they shouldn't attempt to run a massive event like Colossus until their staff is up to speed. Many of the problems we saw just wouldn't have happened had staff gotten a little experience under their belts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pervasive lack of understanding of poker</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. It's hard to tell whether this has gotten better, although the Colossus payout situation (see below) certainly indicates otherwise. I still vehemently object to the array of logos on the table in areas that can cause confusion, particularly large black logos (since they almost completely obscure black chips). To Caesars' credit, they changed card vendors this year, switching to Modiano cards, which I think are far better. Dealers think so too; some initially complained because the cards are thinner, but soon realized that they are, in fact, very easy to shuffle and rarely show wear or cracks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Break time clusterf***</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. This seems to have gotten worse, but that may well be because of the Colossus event, which had about 13,000 unique players. The big problem is that there is simply no way to get to the bathroom and back in 20 minutes unless you leave before the break starts. I suggested last year that they consider staggering breaks in big events to help deal with this problem.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hallway gauntlet.</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> This problem is much better this year. Last year, vendors who rented hall space to hawk their wares acted exactly like the spice vendors in the bazaar in Marrakech. It was bad enough that I took my complaints up the ladder at the WSOP - vendors were actually interfering with players' ability to get back to their tables. Someone clearly laid down some rules, which I acknowledge and applaud.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So what new things has Caesars done for which they deserve criticism?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was only at the WSOP for 6 days (returning in 2 weeks), but there are two glaring things that Caesars urgently needs to address:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Registration.</b> As they have in prior years, Caesars allows players to register in advance and then wire funds. However, players who have pre-registered still need to stand in line to pick up seat assignments, and in many cases the lines still took upwards of an hour. I can think of at least one way to handle this that's much better: let players print their own tickets. I don't think the Bravo system allows for this, but it's not rocket science. This problem will only get worse.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Payouts.</b> Each payout takes about 12 minutes, according to the payout supervisor I spoke with this morning. That's an appalling number. I made my third trip to the payout line today to attempt to collect my winnings from the Colossus, and even though there were only about 150 people in line, WSOP staff warned us that it would still be at least a two hour wait. This is entirely unacceptable. I have no idea what to suggest here, but they need to both streamline the process and add staff.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One last rant: there has been an ongoing controversy since payouts were announced for the Colossus. In case you have been under a rock, here's the short version: the prize pool for Colossus was about $11 million, and players just assumed that first place would be in the $1-1.5 million range. Two things went wrong here: (1) first place was, in fact, $630,000, and (2) the prize distribution was announced, literally, 15 minutes before we reached the money.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As soon as players started complaining on Twitter, both Seth Palansky (VP of Corporate Communications) and Ty Stewart (Executive Director of the WSOP) responded with stunningly defensive and tone-deaf tweets. The most appalling of those came from Palansky, who said, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><i>"Anyone who doesn't want to accept 1,130 times their investment, I guess they can go put their money in an interest bearing CD and good luck."</i></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 22px;">And this wasn't the only incomprehensible comment from Palansky, who is well-known for using the WSOP Twitter account to express controversial and less-than-professional opinions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;">The bottom-line issue regarding payouts for Colossus is that the WSOP didn't bother telling anyone in advance that this was their plan. I don't love that they chose to pay 5.6% for first place, but I can live with it. Their thinking is that they wanted to spread the money out to make more players happy and recirculate more money back into the WSOP economy, which is a noble goal. But <i>they needed to tell us a long time ago</i>. In one of his many ham-fisted comments on Twitter, Palansky somewhat snidely declared that the payouts have been on the WSOP site for months. If they're there, I couldn't find them, and as far as I know, no one else can either.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;">There is no major tournament in history that has paid less than 10% for first place. If they wanted to spread the wealth, they needed to let players know so they could make informed decisions. Instead, they brought a massive controversy on themselves, and then handled it as badly as they possibly could.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;">My guess is that Caesars will gross somewhere in the $50-60 million range for the WSOP this year, including everything (rake, entry fees, broadcast rights, food, swag, etc.). They clearly realize that they have a monopoly, and don't appear to be making any great strides to satisfy their customers. As I said last year:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"We have a right to demand a high level of service, and Caesars has had more than enough time to get this right."</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Caesars, please let us know that you remember the lessons of AOL and Paradise Poker. Your customers aren't going to let you push us around forever.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-76005050218637622002015-05-16T11:25:00.001-07:002019-02-21T12:25:14.169-08:00The Wire Act, the UIGEA and other silliness (Part 2)<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 24.0pt; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Part 1 of this post, I traced
the history of anti-Internet gaming laws up through passage of the Unlawful
Internet Gaming Enforcement Act in the fall of 2006. The UIGEA was essentially
a toothless law - it made financial transactions for the purpose of
"unlawful Internet gambling" illegal, but since it relied on existing
laws to define what was illegal, it really didn't change anything. However,
the <i>perception</i>, particularly among banks and the media, was that
the UIGEA made online poker and other forms of online gambling illegal.<br />
<br />
This perception was so pervasive that it was accepted as fact, even by media
outlets that are usually known for diligently checking facts. Example: the New
York Times called me for some background on an article on Internet gambling in
early September 2006, just before the UIGEA passed. The article never ran, but
the reporter called me just after then-President George W. Bush signed the
UIGEA, and had only one question: "What are you going to do now that your
company's business is illegal in the US?"<br />
<br />
As I mentioned in Part 1 of this post, the Department of Justice, along with
the overzealous New York State Attorney General's office (then headed by Eliot
Spitzer), used subterfuge to support their campaigns against Internet gambling.
This included informal briefings and briefing documents that either intimated
or stated explicitly that all forms of online gambling were illegal in the US,
and therefore any online gambling transactions could be prosecuted under the
UIGEA. This was the same tactic that the DOJ used in the 2003 June Letter (also
discussed in Part 1) - while they had no legal support for their contentions,
merely raising them was enough to persuade the traditionally conservative
banking industry to stay away.<br />
<br />
This chicanery chilled the Internet gambling market from late 2006 through
2008. The UIGEA contained a provision requiring regulations to be drafted
within nine months of its passage into law, but everyone in the industry knew
this was unrealistic. Regulators were quite surprised to discover that banks
were among the most strident critics of the regulations, mostly because even
the most conservative estimates pegged the cost at $1 billion, all of which
would be borne, without relief, by the banks.<br />
<br />
The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve adopted final regulations in
November, 2008, and were implemented in January, 2009, nearly 30 months after
passage of the law. By that time, the online poker companies that chose to
remain in the US, including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, UltimateBet,
AbsolutePoker and a few more, were once again firmly established. And while
processing credit card transactions was still very difficult in the US, each of
these companies had means to accept deposits via the Automated Clearing House
(ACH) system, meaning they could accept virtual checks from their players.<br />
<br />
And so it was, pretty much, until April 2011. There were no significant
indictments or prosecutions, and exactly zero prosecutions under the UIGEA.
Despite this, the publicly-traded companies that withdrew from the US market
saw their shares languish, having lost close to $20 billion in market value,
mostly equity belonging to US investors.<br />
<br />
And then, out of nowhere, and with not even a vague hint that it was coming,
the DOJ took its most draconian action. On March 10, 2011, a secret grand jury
handed down sealed indictments, charging the principals of PokerStars,
Full Tilt Poker and Cereus (owners of UltimateBet and Absolute Poker) with bank
fraud, UIGEA violations and violations related to the obscure Illegal Gambling
Business Act of 1955 (a bill passed largely to control illegal casinos).
On April 15, 2011, the indictments were unsealed and, court orders in
hand, the DOJ seized the web domains and financial assets of these companies
and effectively shut down their US operations. Overnight, an estimated 9
million US players no longer had anywhere to play online (sort of - more on
that in a future column). Within a few days, poker players had dubbed the day
"Black Friday."<br />
<br />
Once the indictments were unsealed, PokerStars immediately began efforts to
fully reimburse players for funds on deposit. Within four weeks, all PokerStars
players in the US had access to their accounts and were able to withdraw. In a
shocking development, Full Tilt Poker players learned within a few days of
Black Friday that they weren't nearly so lucky.<br />
<br />
While they were experiencing constant growth, Full Tilt was able to process
cashouts from new player deposits, the online poker version of a Ponzi scheme.
It was later revealed that many of the founders of Full Tilt Poker, several of
whom were household names in poker (Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, among
others), had paid themselves outsized bonuses totaling hundreds of millions of
dollars. Ultimately PokerStars bought their largest rival for $731 million and
reimbursed all player deposits, an amount totaling nearly $400 million.<br />
<br />
The impact of Black Friday is nearly impossible to estimate. There is no
question that it cost US broadcast companies over $200 million a year in
television advertising revenue. PokerStars and Full Tilt both underwrote
television shows for the US market, costing an estimated $40 million a year.
The episodes that had been shot were aired, but production on these shows came
to a screeching halt. And both companies had US employees, as well as US
players on their sponsorship teams. The vast majority of US employees left the
companies in the days following Black Friday, and many of the sponsored players
were either let go or saw their sponsorship money dramatically reduced.<br />
<br />
And so the online poker industry was decimated a second time by the United
States, first by legislation, then by law enforcement. But the story didn't
even end there - it then took a turn that many would describe as incredible,
but for many in the industry it was simply another head-shaking turn in online
poker's turbulent seventeen year history.<br />
<br />
On December 23, 2011, just eight months after Black Friday, the Department of
Justice's Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion letter regarding the Wire
Act that changed the landscape of online poker once again. The letter
essentially admitted that the DOJ's prior interpretations of the Wire Act's
applicability to online gaming were incorrect. The key line in the letter from
US Deputy Attorney General James Cole:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">“The Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) has
analyzed the scope of the Wire Act, 18 U.S.c § 1084, and concluded that
it is limited only to sports betting.”</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This letter represented a sea change in the thinking of the
DOJ. Ever since online gaming first took hold during the Clinton
Administration, the DOJ had use the Wire Act as its legal justification for its
pursuit of online gaming. It even quoted the Wire Act in its 2003 June Letter
(see Part 1 of this article for more on this). And suddenly, or so it seemed,
all that had changed.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"><br />
The real story is that this wasn't all that sudden. The first rumblings that
something might change happened on July 14, 2011, when two odd bedfellows,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"><span style="color: windowtext;">sent a joint letter to US
Attorney General Eric Holder</span></a>. </span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><br />
While the letter itself appears to ask the DOJ to take a harder line regarding
online gaming prosecutions, the odd tone of the letter led many to believe that
Reid and Kyl had made a deal. Both knew that the DOJ's reliance on the Wire Act
was weak and was unlikely to withstand a serious legal challenge. Reid's
primary campaign contributors (Las Vegas casinos) supported online gaming in
general, but were willing to settle for online poker as a start. Kyl, a
longtime opponent of online gaming, had announced his retirement, and observers
speculated that his cooperation with Reid in writing this letter was political
payback (although no one knew for what).</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><br />
On September 20, 2011, the DOJ issued a <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"><span style="color: windowtext;">13-page legal opinion</span></a> regarding a
years-old request by New York and Illinois for clarification regarding the
legality of selling lottery tickets online using out-of-state payment
processors. The letter, which was not publicly released until December, did
away with the Wire Act's applicability to Internet gaming in two sentences:</span><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">"Interstate
transmissions of wire communications that do not relate to a 'sporting event or
contest' fall outside the reach of the Wire Act. Because the proposed New York
and Illinois lottery proposals do not involve wagering on sporting events or
contests, the Wire Act does not prohibit them."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">With this opinion, the DOJ formalized what online gaming supporters had
contended for fifteen years - the language of the Wire Act was only intended to
deal with sports betting. The opinion was released on December 23, 2011, the
same day that Ron Weich, Assistant Attorney General, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"><span style="color: windowtext;">sent letters to both Reid and Kyl</span></a>, stating
unconditionally that the Wire Act did not in fact make Internet gambling
illegal, opening the door for states to enact intrastate online gambling at
their option.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"><br />
Many believed that this would start a gold rush, with many states passing laws
to regulate Internet gaming. But through this writing, only three states have
done so - Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware. And it is clear that until a few key
states legalize and regulate online gaming, particularly California, New York
and Florida, online poker won't flourish - it needs the liquidity (players)
that these big states can provide.</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><br />
And this brings us to 2015. A number of states have online gaming bills up for
consideration, although few (if any) will pass this year. The latest cloud on
the horizon of online gaming: Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas
Sands, who has taken on the industry with almost religious fervor, pledging to
spend "$100 million, $500 million, whatever it takes," to make online
gaming illegal at the Federal level. I'll take Sheldon on in a future column.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-4279961627504900492015-04-28T19:01:00.004-07:002019-04-03T10:46:06.580-07:00The Wire Act, the UIGEA and other silliness (Part 1)<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">First, an apology. For quite a while, I tried to post here at least once a week. I found that to be manageable for a while, but since I always try to write at least 1,500 words, I can't just sit down and bang it out. I end up spending 4-5 hours on each post, including research, checking links, etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Couple that with some tumultuous times elsewhere, the past few months have been a challenge. I'll be able to talk more next week about those issues (and I promise to do so), but in the meantime I had a few things that I thought I could get through today. We'll see.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In <a href="http://www.nolandalla.com/" target="_blank">Nolan Dalla's excellent blog</a> today, he says an inordinate number of kind things about me, some of which relate to Fleet Street Games. Sharon and I attempted to start a subscription poker site back in 2008-2009, and had some success, but our funding ran out and we were unable to raise money to continue operations (a common story for 2008). One of the things we did was to develop a short series of TV spots that focused on the absurdity of federal and state crackdowns on online poker, which you can see at the links below. These spots featured a lovable schlub named Bean, who just wants to play online poker but has a succession of terrible things happen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKm3XOUq9Zo" target="_blank">Bean Gets Busted</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVT4m12Q-jE" target="_blank">Bean Goes to Jail</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8WSraor6TQ" target="_blank">Bean Gets Fried</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksdWIVKh0ts&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Bean in Heaven </a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[There's also a long-form version that we intended to use as a viral video - you can see that one <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw8AcSxtdC8" target="_blank">here</a>. It's about three minutes long.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The theme is simple: why are we treating online poker players like hardened criminals, instead of dealing with hardened criminals?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I came to that way of thinking after several years as an online poker player (1999-2002) and as an online gaming marketer (2002-present). And it occurred to me as I thought about this that there is a massive amount of incorrect information out there about how we got to this point, so I thought I'd collect it all in one place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, although I often talk like one. I do have a thorough understanding of the laws I'm going to discuss here, but don't take me to task if I get something wrong, unless it's something big.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Way back in 1961, Congress passed the Interstate Wire Act. The intent of the bill was simple: make it illegal to transmit information across state lines for the purpose of sports betting. This was part of a much larger effort by then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to crack down on organized crime.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The federal government has been careful over the years not to attempt to pass legislation regarding gambling, which has traditionally been left to the individual states. The Wire Act was not an attempt to change this; it was the Fed's way of ensuring that they had jurisdiction in cases where gambling wasn't taking place in a specific state, but crossed state boundaries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Spin forward many years, to the Early Middle Ages of the Internet (1998). The first online poker site emerged that year, Planet Poker. There were already a few sites that allowed casino games of various types, but since they are in a different category (more on that in a minute) I'm not going to try to deal with them in this discussion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In 1999, Congress attempted to pass the </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;"><i>Internet Gambling Prohibition Act</i>, which was intended to do exactly what it sounds like. This was the first of many annual attempts to ban Internet gambling in the United States. The bills rarely made it past committee review, and none made it to the House or Senate floor for a vote. [Amusing side note: the primary driver behind the defeat of the <i>Internet Gambling Prohibition Act</i> was Jack Abramoff. If you don't know who he is, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff" target="_blank">click here</a>, but be prepared to go down a rabbit hole.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;">In 2002, after several attempts by the Bush Administration's attorney general, John Ashcroft to use the Wire Act against online gambling advertisers, the US Fifth Circuit narrowly interpreted the Wire Act, ruling that the statute could only be applied to sporting events and contests.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;">Other than a few aborted attempts, there was little legislative activity in the online gambling space until 2003, when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Moneymaker" target="_blank">Chris Moneymaker</a> won the World Series of Poker after winning an $82 satellite on PokerStars.com. Chris's win generated a huge amount of publicity, mostly because he was the first online qualifier to win the WSOP.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;">Around that time, PokerStars, PartyPoker, UltimateBet and other sites began advertising on television, further raising their profile. John Ashcroft realized that he had very little legal standing to prevent these ads, as well as the tens of millions of dollars in advertising for online sites in print and other media. So he took a creative, although deceptive, approach to the problem - he went directly to the media with a chilling scare tactic. In a letter dated June 11, 2003 (signed by his deputy, John Malcolm), Ashcroft and the DOJ claimed that Internet gambling was illegal, regardless of what the courts or other interpretations said. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 1.3;">The full text of what became known as the June Letter is available <a href="http://www.commlawcenter.com/files/2014/02/NAB_letter-030611.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. But the key issues are covered in just a few sentences:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"> "</span>the public [has been led to believe] that such [Internet] gambling is legal, when in fact, it
is not."</i></li>
<li><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> "...individuals that accept and run such
advertisements may be aiding and abetting these illegal activities."</i></li>
<li><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> "...state and federal
laws prohibit the operation of sportsbooks and Internet gambling within the United States."</span></i></li>
<li><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> "</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Internet gambling and offshore sportsbook
operations that accept bets from customers in the United States violate Sections 1084, 1952, and 1955 of
Title 18 of the United States Code, each of which is a Class E felony." </i>[note: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">18 US Code § 1084 is the Wire Act]</span></span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Each of these statements is false, but that didn't stop the Department of Justice. It was a scare tactic, pure and simple, and it was backed up by this incredible statement:</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"...any person Or entity who aids or abets in the commission of any of the
above-listed offenses is punishable as a principal violator of those statutes."</i></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Translation: If you [NBC/ESPN/Travel Channel) allow these ads to run, we are going to charge you with a Federal crime <i>just exactly as though you were running the site yourself. </i>Ashcroft was furious with the Fifth Circuit for emasculating the Wire Act, so he decided to just ignore it and wave a big stick at broadcasters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />It worked, at least to a degree. Broadcasters suddenly and dramatically raised their prices to online gaming companies, or refused to run their ads. They imposed draconian rules on what could and could not be said in ads, even though there was no basis in law (and no other advertiser was subject to this treatment). This was one of the principal reasons that the World Poker Tour took the branding off the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure broadcast in early 2004. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The next few years saw a flurry of anti-Internet gambling legislation, each of which was introduced by a Republican. I found this very surprising, since I was under the impression that one of the founding principles of the Republican party was less regulation and smaller government. But this has continued to be true - each piece of legislation introduced to ban Internet gambling at the Federal level has been introduced by Republicans. If I'm showing bias here (I am not a Republican), my apologies, but it's hard to interpret this fact.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">All of these attempts failed until late September 2006. Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) was then the Senate Majority Leader and had aspirations for the presidency. He had been an opponent of Internet gambling, and was listed as a cosponsor of some previous bills, but was never particularly vocal. However, he found what he thought was a cause that could propel him to the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In what is known on Capitol Hill as a "midnight drop," Frist inserted a series of clauses, known as the <i>Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA)</i>, into a larger bill, the <i>Security and Accountability for Every Port (SAFE) Act. </i>The SAFE Port Act was a "must-pass" bill that itself was introduced very late in the legislative process, and as a result had not been thoroughly reviewed by either house of Congress. The UIGEA clauses were introduced just hours before the bill came up for a vote. The UIGEA itself was never debated or even officially read into the Congressional record. The <i>SAFE Port Act</i> was approved by voice vote in both the Senate and the House, and was signed into law on October 13, 2006.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is where a lot of confusion and obfuscation began about just what the UIGEA was. The UIGEA is, at heart, a very simple piece of legislation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What the UIGEA <i>does:</i> it makes banking transactions for the purpose of "illegal Internet gambling" illegal. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What the UIGEA <i>doesn't do:</i> it doesn't make any form of Internet or other gambling illegal. In fact, the bill explicitly states that its intent is to cover only transactions for Internet gambling that are <i>already illegal under State or Federal law.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Over the next year, I can't tell you how often this law was misinterpreted, misquoted or misapplied. I made no less than 100 calls to the press in the wake of the UIGEA, and roughly 90% of the reporters I talked to were under the impression that the UIGEA made online poker illegal. I later learned that at least some of this 'misunderstanding' came from an informal DOJ briefing document that explicitly stated that online poker was covered under the Wire Act and was therefore "illegal Internet gambling."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Getting back to October 2006: in the wake of the UIGEA, Sharon and I were expatriates, and maybe worse (more on this <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/03/70000-drunks-clinging-to-rock-part-2.html" target="_blank">here </a>and <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/04/70000-drunks-clinging-to-rock-part-3.html" target="_blank">here</a>). It wasn't at all clear that we could return to the US without my being arrested. And our plight paled in comparison with others - for example, PartyPoker, which had gone public on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 with a valuation greater than British Airways, saw its market capitalization drop from over $12 billion to less than $1 billion in a matter of days. It's safe to say that there was no one involved in the Internet gaming business that wasn't affected in a significant way by one man's attempt to become President.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next up: Black Friday, the December letter and where we are now.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-50991912181311299352014-12-20T13:40:00.005-08:002014-12-20T13:40:39.051-08:00My name is Bond. My word, not so much.<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Winter 2006</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By late 2005, the battle for the online poker market was all but resolved. PartyPoker was the clear leader, although their lead over PokerStars was steadily diminishing. In early 2004, the PartyPoker/PokerStars ratio was about 5:1; by December 2005 it was just under 2.5:1. Full Tilt Poker was a clear threat, but they were well behind the two leaders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In January 2006, PokerStars held its second WPT event at the Atlantis Resort & Casino (actually our WPT third event; the first one was on a cruise ship). The people at Atlantis, who didn't take us seriously enough to even talk to us about an event in 2004, had become believers - in fact, one of their executives told me in a meeting just before our 2006 event that we were one of Atlantis' five largest customers. We were working closely with Atlantis on several fronts, including their attempts to bring other major poker tournaments to the resort. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It was in this mindset that this same executive mentioned to me during our 2006 event that Atlantis was working with Eon Productions on the upcoming James Bond movie, <i>Casino Royale</i>. In fact, part of the movie was being shot at The Ocean Club, the upscale neighbor/partner resort to Atlantis (as well as other locations in and around Nassau, Grand Bahamas). Then, as if planned (which it may have been), the senior marketing guy for Eon walked by, and my Atlantis contact pulled him over for an introduction. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the interest of not being sued, I'm going to call this guy Gene Voltshiker.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gene was one of the savviest marketing guys I'd ever met. He started by telling me that, unlike the original <i>Casino Royale</i>, the new film's climactic gambling scene would be poker, not baccarat. Within just a few minutes, Gene and I were discussing with increasing excitement the possibilities that this presented for a partnership between PokerStars and Eon. We decided that we each needed a little time to think about this further, but agreed we should get together for lunch the following day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the next day, I had roughed out an idea in my head for a series of online tournaments, culminating in a final table held at the very same table and location as the climactic Bond-Le Chiffre scene. When Gene and I met at the Atlas Bar & Grill at Atlantis for lunch, I led with this. Unsurprisingly, Gene had a similar idea. Of course, he wanted it to be a $100 million tournament just like in the movie, which wasn't going to happen, but I loved his enthusiasm and was thrilled that we might have a chance to participate with one of the most iconic brands of the past fifty years.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We concluded our lunch by agreeing that we should talk the following week, once the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure was over and we could all dedicate the time to this idea that it deserved. I made a note to myself to formalize the idea and send something to Gene the following week.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gene beat me to the punch. Two days after I returned to the Isle of Man, he called asking if I had plans for the first week in February. The "Bond Partners" were meeting at Atlantis to craft a unified marketing plan. I asked who the partners were. Gene told me that the list hadn't been finalized, but the confirmed partners were Aston Martin, Sony, Omega, Heineken, Smirnoff, British Airways, Atlantis, Sunseeker Yachts, Brioni and Electronic Arts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No, I told Gene, I wasn't busy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I quickly sketched out my ideas for the poker tournament and a variety of other ways we could take advantage of the Bond brand. I set up a meeting with Isai and Mark (CEO and COO of PokerStars) and outlined the ideas I had come up with. For the very first time since I had started with PokerStars, Isai and Mark greeted an idea with unbridled enthusiasm. They understood the value this association could bring us, and were willing to commit to it as long as we were a full marketing partner.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I returned to my office and checked my email, and to my surprise, I found a 51-slide PowerPoint deck from Gene outlining some of his ideas for the tournament and an overall partnership. He had already spoken with Atlantis about the tournament, and they were over-the-moon excited about the prospect. In fact, Atlantis agreed to store <i>the entire final table set</i>, which we would use to produce a truly one-of-a-kind live final table. And he had already booked travel for me to attend the partner meeting.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Over the next three weeks, the project took on even more massive proportions. I asked Gene about product placement in the movie, which was quite rare in Bond films, and without actually committing to it, he indicated that it was a possibility. He suggested that there were many obvious partnerships we could develop, which made the partner meeting even more critical. And while we hadn't signed anything, it was becoming very clear that this deal was not a pipe dream - it was happening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The partner meeting was perhaps the most energetic and exciting marketing event I've ever been involved with. There were 21 official Bond partners - including PokerStars, which was prominently featured in all of the promotional materials and PowerPoint decks we saw over the course of the three-day meeting. I was stunned at how many of the partners were lining up to associate with PokerStars, including Sony (who wanted to discuss an ongoing TV series), Aston Martin (who wanted us to sponsor a racing team) and Omega (who wanted to produce a limited-edition Omega/PokerStars watch). Meetings with various potential partners stretched way into the nights. By the time I left, I was in the enviable position of having to choose which of the powerhouse brands we really wanted to do business with, since we clearly couldn't do them all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Side note: The Eon team went far over the top to impress us. We were all put up in massive suites at Atlantis. Each dinner was more spectacular than the one before. On the second day, we were all instructed to meet at the yacht pier, where three yachts (serious yachts - 100+ feet each) ferried us to a location shoot. That same night, they ran a casino night during which they gave away about $20,000 in prizes (I won a one-pound Sony computer worth about $2,500). And just wandering around with the rest of the guests were Daniel Craig, Caterina Murino (who played Solange) and Giancarlo Giannini. I'm not that easily impressed, but I was <i>impressed</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I returned to PokerStars headquarters, I was still having trouble figuring out how we were going to choose who to work with. I expressed this concern to Isai and Mark, who thought I was crazy. "This is an easy problem," Isai said. "We work with all of them."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The marketing department at PokerStars had grown substantially, but we still only had about 20 people, and there was no way we could handle this. But the potential was so great that Isai suggested I recruit a branding guru to run the Bond relationship, and hire as many people as we needed to extract the maximum from the relationship. I was fortunate enough to find Stefan Kovach, a recognized brand expert whose CV included Virgin Atlantic Airways and Beenz (an early Internet affinity marketing company).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stefan saw Aston Martin as having the greatest potential for us. Within a few weeks of hire, Stefan negotiated deals with Aston Martin that gave us sponsorship of one of their racing teams, as well as the first new DB9 to come off the assembly line (which we gave to one of our players). </span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PJhqspp26WE/VJXrXt6J5FI/AAAAAAAAAyk/Rg49VifevX4/s1600/PokerStars%2BAston%2BMartin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PJhqspp26WE/VJXrXt6J5FI/AAAAAAAAAyk/Rg49VifevX4/s1600/PokerStars%2BAston%2BMartin.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stefan and I also negotiated deals with several of the Bond partners who wanted PokerStars to run tournaments for them during the year, including Heineken, Sony and Smirnoff. And we moved forward with integrating the Bond name and logo into the site throughout the year.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-75H3niKN7GM/VJXe8GcFU1I/AAAAAAAAAyU/YzmAjltgDXA/s1600/007%2Blobby.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-75H3niKN7GM/VJXe8GcFU1I/AAAAAAAAAyU/YzmAjltgDXA/s1600/007%2Blobby.JPG" height="287" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps most importantly, we started working on the tournament at Atlantis. Sony got involved in the discussion at this point - they had been looking for a way to get involved in the massive popularity of poker on television, and were willing to pay some significant money for the exclusive right to broadcast this event. We settled on a $10 million guarantee tournament, with $2 million for first place, making it the third largest tournament in the world (behind the World Series of Poker Main Event and the World Poker Tour Championship).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By March 2006, we had spent about $300,000 on this project, not including the salaries of the various people we had hired to work on different aspects of the event. We had signed a 'heads of agreement' letter (the UK equivalent of a letter of intent), and were hammering out the final details of the contract. I traveled to London to meet with the Eon legal people, and all seemed to be well. I was even treated to a short meeting in the coolest office I've ever seen - the 5,000 square foot office of Barbara Broccoli, Eon CEO, producer and daughter of Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, the genius behind the Bond movies. The office, in a 200 year old building with a view of Buckingham Palace, featured a fireplace that could hold 16' logs (which I think should properly be referred to as "trees").</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We had a short vacation scheduled in April 2006 - our friends Shaena and Steve were getting married in Hawaii, so we planned to take a week to attend their wedding. Shaena has played a part elsewhere in this saga, including "<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/03/the-girl-with-16000000-purse.html" target="_blank">The girl with the $16 million purse</a>" and "<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/04/70000-drunks-clinging-to-rock-part-3.html" target="_blank">70,000 drunks clinging to a rock</a>." I was a little nervous about leaving - we were very deep into the Bond project, and our WSOP presence was looking to be massive (over 1,000 players had already qualified), but we had committed to attending. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By early April, the final contract still wasn't done. More troublesome - the Eon lawyers were taking their good-natured time completing it, which was very scary - we intended to launch satellites at the very end of the WSOP, which was less than three months away. And even more ominous: starting the first week in April, I could no longer get Gene on the phone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Prior to early April, Gene and I had spoken every day, sometimes more than once. We were coordinating the activities of a number of large companies (Sony, Atlantis, Aston Martin and others), and our own companies had their own bureaucracies, so getting all of the moving parts to work in coordination with one another was no simple task. I wasn't particularly alarmed at first; we were all busy, hurtling at high speed down a path that would ultimately lead to huge opportunities for everyone involved.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We were scheduled to leave for Hawaii around April 15, and by the day before we left, Gene had gone dark for 10 days. Isai, Mark, our lawyers and I discussed this regularly - we had been confident that the HOA we had signed would turn into a contract, but the Eon lawyers weren't giving us much, and Gene even less. By this point, we had not only a big investment in money, but in time and marketing efforts. If this event didn't happen, we had a huge hole in our marketing plans for the second half of 2006. And we had already finalized and signed contracts with Aston Martin and others, some of which were dependent on the tournament taking place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I spent almost the entire week of our vacation (except the wedding itself) emailing and calling Gene and others, attempting to figure out what was going on. By the time the second full week of silence had passed, it was clear that something was terribly wrong. I finally left Gene the message I had been avoiding, which went something like "Look, if you're backing out, at least have the decency to call and tell me so." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When even this didn't work, we collectively decided that we needed to do something. We went quietly to a few of the partners, each of which also had a substantial investment in the tournament, and asked them to press Gene on our behalf. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This worked. Gene finally called me on our last day in Hawaii to inform me that Eon's outside counsel believed that Eon was taking a substantial risk in a partnership with us, and as a result, we would not be participating in <i>Casino Royale</i> in any way. As further insult, the day I returned to the Isle of Man, I received a letter from said outside counsel, warning me that our right to use the Bond name, trademarks and logos had been revoked. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By this point, we had hired five people for the project, and had spent countless hours of other peoples' time building marketing materials and tournament plans. None of it was usable. I even received a veiled threat from Eon that our relationship with Aston Martin might be in violation of Eon's rules for partners (fortunately, the president of Aston Martin intervened on our behalf).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a way, this ended up being a blessing rather than a curse. When the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) passed in September 2006, Eon would have been forced to terminate our relationship anyway, and by that point we would have spent $5 million or more that we couldn't recoup. But there's a valuable lesson here that we all knew, but ignored: don't spend money until you have it in writing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the way, I might have fired me had I been Isai or Mark. But they knew that we had all gotten swept up in the excitement, and everything we did was with their knowledge and approval. Which brings to mind a quote from <i>Die Another Day</i> that sums this up:</span><br />
<table style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 10px 0px;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="font-weight: bold; min-width: 120px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; width: 125px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bond:</span></td><td><q><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Do you believe in bad luck?</span></q></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-weight: bold; min-width: 120px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; width: 125px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jinx:</span></td><td><q><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Let's just say my relationships don't seem to last.</span></q></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-weight: bold; min-width: 120px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; width: 125px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bond:</span></td><td><q><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I know the feeling.</span></q></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-79671028046186808812014-11-16T11:58:00.000-08:002015-03-26T13:39:34.142-07:00What happens when you give marketing guys too much money (Part 3)<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The 2006 WSOP was the year of the most conspicuous marketing excess in online poker. Every online site had a huge presence during the Main Event. PokerStars had a monstrously large presence with 1,624 players, but we were far from alone - collectively, PokerStars, PartyPoker, UltimateBet and Full Tilt Poker were responsible for over 40% of the prize pool that year - a staggering $32 million.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And with that came massive spending surrounding the WSOP. PokerStars was the biggest player on an unimaginably big stage, and we weren't going to let any opportunity pass us by if it meant more exposure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first example is small in relative terms, but it's a good example. I've talked before about Rich Korbin, my marketing director and overall superhero. When we realized in March 2006 just how big our WSOP presence would be, Rich set out to provide PokerStars players with the most outrageous experience possible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of Rich's responsibilities was the player swag bag, something we started doing in 2003 that became increasingly elaborate in subsequent years. For the 2006 WSOP, Rich went far beyond anything he had come up with before. He had a roller bag designed with the PokerStars logo, and had each bag individually embroidered with the player's name (I still have mine). In the bag was a mind-boggling assortment of PokerStars gear, including baseball jerseys, football jerseys, hockey jerseys, hats, golf shirts, t-shirts, even headphones. And he had one-ounce silver commemorative coins minted for each player as card cappers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When Rich came to me with his plan, I did a quick calculation based on our projected number of players (which in March 2006 we thought would be around 1,400). He was talking about spending $700,000 on swag. I got it - he wanted to do two things: (1) ensure that the PokerStars logo was visible any time an ESPN camera was running, and (2) dazzle players so completely that they'd proselytize PokerStars even more than they already did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The only problem here was budget. While PokerStars grew explosively from 2003-2006, it wasn't until late 2005 that we brought someone in to put financial controls in place. It's not that we didn't do budgets - we did - but budgets were quite fluid in the early days. I had done my 2006 budget in the fall of 2005, and it now looked like I had underestimated our WSOP presence significantly. I needed money.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I went to Isai Scheinberg (PokerStars CEO, my boss) with Rich's proposal. We were talking about spending $500 on each player, and even in these excessive times, Isai thought this was over the top. I had asked Rich to send a sample bag to the Isle of Man offices, and I started our discussion by heaving the 25 pound bag onto his desk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Isai went through the items one by one. Isai pulled out a commemorative baseball Rich had made, encased in a Lucite box. "Do we really need this?" he asked. I didn't say anything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He then pulled out one of the hockey jerseys. These were truly works of art - they were made by the same company that makes jerseys for the NHL, with the PokerStars logo on the front and the players' names embroidered on the back, with the number "06." He held it up, then laid it on his desk and examined it more closely.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"These are really nice. How much are we paying?" I told him, fully expecting him to veto it right there - the jerseys were about $60. Rather than trying to get any of the 20-odd items in the bag cheaper, Isai surprised me by asking, "Can we get the total cost down to $450?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We could, and we did. In the end, we spent over $730,000 on gear for players that year. And it's a source of pride to me when I see players still wearing the hockey jerseys, which happened as recently as a month ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By April 2006, I had gotten used to being approached with outrageous marketing opportunities for PokerStars. We came very close to sponsoring a Bon Jovi tour. We talked about (and eventually passed on) being a name sponsor of the Bonnaroo Festival. We spent millions producing amazing TV spots and much more getting them on the air. But the proposal that came to me that April surpassed anything we had even considered in the past.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I got a call from a representative of the William Morris Agency - I'll call him Bill, as I don't recall his name and don't have it in any of my notes. He had been hired by Harrah's to sell what is arguably the single best marketing property in all of poker: the WSOP table felt. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is considerable value in the table felt just as a marketing tool for players - every player in the WSOP sees the felt for many hours each day, and I would guess that there were about 75,000 unique players in WSOP events that year. But the real value of the table felt was ESPN's TV coverage - every shot on every table would display the logo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I pumped Bill for as much information as I could get, and he was surprisingly forthcoming. The other major sites, PartyPoker, Full Tilt Poker and UltimateBet, were all being approached. They were all interested. And two other non-poker properties were planning to make offers. Harrah's was accepting a single, sealed bid from each interested party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Oh, and the floor was $3 million.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My first reaction to this number wasn't shock. In fact, I thought $3 million was a bargain. I then started thinking about how we could weave this into our marketing, and perhaps how we could use it to extend our WSOP presence. I called Bill back and asked if we could include other WSOP properties in our bid, particularly the WSOP scoreboard. Bill told me that Harrah's was open to whatever we proposed as part of our bid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I gave this considerable thought before I took it to Isai and his son Mark, who ran and essentially owned PokerStars. I knew that $3 million was far from the final number, but I was having trouble working out just how far. I tried applying typical marketing principles to this calculation, but it was just too hard to quantify. Whatever we did was going to be a guess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I decided that this was going to require a different approach. I was used to going to Isai and Mark with some hare-brained idea more or less ad hoc. But this was a lot of money, and had far-reaching implications for us. So I did something I only did once at PokerStars - I put a PowerPoint deck together to pitch them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The deck consisted of only four slides. On the last slide, I revealed what I thought would be the winning bid: $8 million. I brought my laptop into Isai's office, made my presentation and watched for a reaction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Neither of them were shocked, although they were as surprised as I that Harrah's, who clearly didn't like us much, was interested in our name on their felt. We talked logistics. We talked about how many actual impressions we'd get. We bounced around the many things a huge check might buy us (cosponsoring the WSOP? allowing players to register on-site with PokerStars money?). Isai and Mark then decided that they wanted to talk about it, so I went back to my office.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My phone rang about ten minutes later - they were ready to talk again. I returned to Isai's office.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Put in a bid for $10 million." As he had so many times in the past, Isai wanted to come in proactively high, attempting to cut off any chance of being outbid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We had tossed around large sums in the past, but I can honestly say that this staggered me. It was a gigantic risk, and we had little, if any, way to measure its success. But I thought the upside was potentially huge. I was in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I submitted our bid via DHL the following day. Things went quiet for quite a while - I didn't hear anything more from Bill for almost two weeks. Finally, the first week in May 2006, he called. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Is this your absolutely top number?" he asked. We had discussed this possibility, and had decided that $10 million was probably more than the felt was worth. We weren't going any higher.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Yes," I said, "You asked for a single bid, and told us there wouldn't be an auction."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"There's no auction," Bill replied. "But I can tell you that one of your competitors has put in a bid that we are inclined to take."<br /><br />"Is it more than $10 million?" I asked. I assumed that Full Tilt or PartyPoker might have come up with some sort of package deal that included other exposure (like wrapping the outside of the Rio, for example, something Harrah's had pitched us before for $1 million).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"I can't say, but I can tell you that their proposal nets Harrah's more money." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I went back to Isai and Mark. I was concerned that we were already too exposed, and couldn't see offering any more. They agreed. Isai suggested that we could consider going back to them with a multi-year offer, but that it should either be for less money, or give us some option to get out, since no one had any clue about the impact.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The following week, PartyPoker got the felt deal. I spoke with Bill several times after this, and finally cajoled him into telling me what they paid. It was $19 million, but for a two-year guaranteed deal. Isai had been on the right track.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As it turns out, I'm vastly relieved that we didn't get this one. First, I'm not convinced of the value, although that's more in hindsight. Second, since the UIGEA passed a few months later, I don't know what would have happened with the second year payment - since PartyPoker withdrew from the US, they were able to continue as a sponsor in 2007. And lastly, Harrah's and ESPN ended up in a lawsuit with Everest Poker a few years later when they took over the felt sponsorship, in which Everest complained that Harrah's replaced the Everest logo with Full Tilt's in international markets. I could easily have seen us in their place given the contentious relationship between Harrah's and PokerStars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There was a valuable lesson in this for me. While I was initially hesitant about this, I got swept up in the massive potential of the deal, and I think I paid a price in perspective. Almost any time I brought some huge proposal to Isai, he asked the same question: "What if we just gave that money to our players?" For some reason, he didn't ask it this time, and I wish he had. While the deal would have gotten us great exposure on ESPN, giving $10 million to players would have, too.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-7945811272826601732014-11-09T13:02:00.002-08:002017-01-24T12:46:01.030-08:00What happens when you give marketing guys too much money (Part 2)<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The first part of this story was pretty easy to write. There were two stories that I thought were a good representation of how money started to flow freely once PokerStars took off. This second part - not so much. And it's not because of a lack of subject matter - it's exactly the opposite.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am a pack rat, something that drives my wife Sharon out of her mind. As an example, I have every ticket for every significant event I've been to in my adult life. I'm talking sporting events, concerts, plays, trade shows - everything. This extends to my computers - I have every email I've ever sent or received, and historical files from most of the places I've worked. I have every document and every proposal I ever reviewed at PokerStars, and the number is mind-boggling - a quick count put just the number of rejected proposals at 1,200. That's a lot of material to choose from. And the selection ranges from the absurd (a poker-based reality show featuring homeless people) to the outrageous (a $1 million buy-in tournament with two years of qualifiers).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Having said that, I'll warn you - a few of these were obvious inclusions, but the rest were a random draw. The best part of this, of course, is that I have a rich source of material for the future. The following story deserves some detail, so it's the sole subject of this post.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From 2005 to 2011, NBC produced and broadcast my very favorite poker show: the <i>National Heads-Up Poker Championship</i>. I admit to some bias, because I had a hand in this project. But when some of the smartest and most creative minds in the business got involved, this show/event became what poker television should be: fun, understandable and dramatic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In early 2004, I got a call from Jamie Horowitz, an associate producer for NBC Sports. He had a germ of an idea for a poker show, and wanted to know if there was any interest at PokerStars in a sponsorship role. The poker boom had firmly taken hold, the World Poker Tour was getting very respectable ratings, even in reruns, in its first season and NBC had taken notice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This was the first of about a dozen calls between Jamie and me, talking through not just PokerStars' role but the structure of the show itself. I was a huge fan of the concept. Poker television was chock-full of shows that featured only a handful of key hands, which jaded the audience's view of what tournament poker is really like. This seemed like a chance to show what top-shelf poker really looks like - smart and creative poker players making magic with ordinary cards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I didn't discuss the concept with Isai (the CEO of PokerStars, and my boss) just yet. He liked to get involved in the details of projects like this, and I had no objection to this in general, but I wanted his first look at the NHUC to have some substance. I did tell him that I was in discussions with NBC about a new concept for poker programming, and he was satisfied to wait until there was something substantive to look at.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jamie wanted to bring in someone with poker production expertise, and chose Mori Eskandani, who had just produced the surprisingly successful Poker SuperStars broadcast on NBC. Mori proved to be an invaluable asset in the creation of this event - he was both an experienced television producer and a respected high-limit poker player. Mori would go on to produce some of the best and most successful poker shows during the boom, including Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By the fall of 2004, the show was taking shape, and I liked it much more than I had when Jamie first called me (which is saying a lot). There was one more component that I wanted in place before I presented it to Isai - I wanted to figure out some means of limiting the exposure our competitors could gain in the show. All of the major sites had at least a few pros in their stables at that point, and I knew NBC would be inviting them all. And I knew that I couldn't keep PartyPoker, Full Tilt and UltimateBet from advertising on the show.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I also knew something I shouldn't have - a source close to some senior people at NBC leaked to me that their management was concerned about production costs, which were looking like they might exceed $2 million. So I took a leap and called Jamie with a proposition: what if PokerStars guaranteed NBC a profit by underwriting the production costs?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jamie was all over the idea. We quickly hammered out deal points to make PokerStars the presenting sponsor of NHUC. Our name would appear on the opening credits, at all of the breaks and on the felt. We would buy a substantial chunk of the 18 minutes of network spots each hour. We even agreed to be a contributing sponsor for Arena Football, a pet project of NBC's Senior VP of Sports Programming, Jon Miller.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After some wrangling, we established a price: $2.7 million. And to my utter shock, NBC agreed to a term that I had included with no hope of survival: exclusivity. PartyPoker, Full Tilt and UltimateBet were out. They would have players in logo gear playing in the event, but we owned the breaks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Now</i> I was ready to present it to Isai.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I expected there to be some selling involved. To my surprise, Isai was much more interested in how we could use this as a keystone project, anchoring our marketing around the WPT and NHUC. There were a few things he wanted to add (like some ratings guarantees, which we had gotten from the WPT and The Travel Channel), but for the most part he was in. There was no discussion of price - Isai knew that I had gotten everything I could before bringing this to him and had negotiated the best deal I could.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">NBC quickly agreed to the few additional terms Isai asked for, and just before Christmas 2004, we exchanged deal point drafts. And then, in two disastrous strokes during the first week of January, everything fell apart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The first of these was a call from my old friend/nemesis at the World Poker Tour, Steve Lipscomb. He had heard rumblings of what was happening with NHUC, which alarmed him - this was the first poker broadcast that had a chance to challenge the WPT and WSOP. He pointed me to an obscure clause in our 30+ page contract with the WPT that he believed precluded us from top-line sponsorship of a competing show.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">24 hours later, while I was still reeling from this development, I got even worse news. NBC's Standards & Practices group had gotten their hands on one of the deal memo drafts, and determined that any production credit for PokerStars put them in danger, based on their continuing fear of the Department of Justice. I discussed various scenarios with Jamie and Jon so we could salvage the show, but it looked like NHUC was never going to air.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I still wasn't sure where we stood with NBC when I spoke with the WPT next, but I wasn't going to tell <i>them </i>that. There were a few conference calls that included lawyers on both sides, and while I usually like being involved in this sort of thing, I just didn't have time. We were a few days away from our first event at the Atlantis Resort (see "<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/03/in-which-we-learn-what-expensive-really.html" target="_blank">In which we learn what expensive really means</a>") and I was swamped. But PokerStars had some really smart lawyers, and I knew they had this well in hand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Later that day, Jamie called me with some relatively good news. While Standards & Practices wouldn't allow PokerStars to be the presenting sponsor of NHUC, they were still willing to take at least some of our money. Jamie asked if we would be interested in a 'cooperative arrangement' rather than sponsorship - we would guarantee NBC a certain amount of revenue in return for both spots on the show and other promotional consideration. I used this as an opportunity to squeeze one more PokerStars player onto the show (Greg Raymer and Chris Moneymaker had already been invited; we added Tom McEvoy). We went back and forth on a few other issues, but in the end we signed a $1.4 million deal that gave NBC sufficient guarantees to move forward with the show.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And the rest, as they say, is poker history. The National Heads-Up Poker Championship was a modest success for NBC and a huge success for poker overall. The show aired from 2005 to 2011, then returned for one more season in 2013. I hear rumors that it's coming back in 2015, and I truly hope this is true - it's the best poker show on TV.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Three endnotes to this story:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">- We ended up with not three, but four players in the 64 player field for this event. The night before the first match, NBC held a huge cocktail party/match-up draw at the Golden Nugget, where the first event was filmed. Rich Korbin (my Director of Marketing and overall right-hand guy) called me that morning, telling me that Evelyn Ng was playing in the event and wasn't affiliated with a site. I was in LA, planning to go to Las Vegas the following day, but I printed a contract, jumped on a plane and tracked Evelyn down at the cocktail party. She signed the contract and was wearing PokerStars gear the next day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">- Team PokerStars didn't fare particularly well in this first year of the NHUC. Evelyn beat Bobby Baldwin pretty handily in the first round, only to be crushed by Carlos Mortensen. Greg Raymer beat Kathy Leibert in round one, but lost an excellent match to Huck Seed (1996 WSOP champion) in round two. Chris Moneymaker, who would go on to the finals of this event in 2011, also won his first round match (vs. Eli Elezra) and also fell in round two, to Mimi Tran, who had taken out our fourth player, Tom McEvoy, in round one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">- I haven't stayed in touch with Jamie Horowitz since I left PokerStars in 2007, so I thought I'd look him up for some background for this story. He's come a long way since his associate producer days at NBC - he left for ESPN, where he launched and produced Keith Olbermann's show, but returned to NBC in May 2014, where he <strike>has taken over as Senior VP/General Manager of </strike><i style="text-decoration: line-through;">The Today Show</i> briefly took over as Senior VP/General Manager, only to be fired weeks later. I hope he's off enjoying the $3.3 million that NBC was required to pay him as a contract buyout.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Update: As I should have expected, Jamie landed on his feet. In May, 2016, Fox Sports hired him as their new President.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/11/what-happens-when-you-give-marketing_16.html">Click here for Part 3.</a></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-21372696501915006372014-11-05T20:06:00.002-08:002020-09-03T08:55:40.005-07:00What happens when you give marketing guys too much money (Part 1)<span face="">When I interviewed with PokerStars (more on this <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/03/the-long-shot-part-1.html" target="_blank">here </a>and <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/03/the-long-shot-part-2.html" target="_blank">here</a>), one of my concerns was that the company was attempting to go up against the well-established 900 pound gorilla (which was Paradise Poker back then in 2002). The big issue with attempting to fight a 900 pound gorilla is that you need to be able to act like a roughly 900 pound gorilla yourself. Popping a few ads into Card Player wasn't going to be sufficient - we were going to need to be very creative, and in this context, there's a pretty simple equation: </span><br />
<span face=""><br /></span>
<span face="">creativity = lots of money</span><br />
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<span face="">One of the tasks I performed for Isai before he hired me was to create a marketing plan - not a full-fledged plan, but he wanted me to sketch out details about how I would go about launching the company. As part of this exercise, I created a marketing budget, which involved spending about $600,000 on marketing in year one. I had no idea what PokerStars' financial backing looked like, nor did I know at the time who the owners/investors were other than Isai. I wasn't thrilled with where I was working, but leaving a reasonably well-paid position with an up-and-coming Internet company for a startup was already going to be a challenge - I needed to know that they had deep enough pockets to have a chance in the market.</span><br />
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<span face="">At some point in the interview process, Isai asked me if I had any questions. I asked, "You've read my marketing plan. Do you have $600,000 to spend on marketing in year one?" </span><span face="">Without skipping a beat, Isai said, "We have the money we need to properly launch this company."</span><br />
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<span face="">Had this been anyone else, I would have had a lot more questions. But there was something about Isai that I simply trusted implicitly. This may seem naive from a nearly-fifty-year-old (at the time), but I've come to rely on my business sense, and there was no doubt in my mind that PokerStars had the resources to carry out an audacious plan.</span><br />
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<span face="">I'll start with a modest example. After Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker, I was constantly looking for ways to capitalize on his extraordinary accomplishment, and to leverage his name (which was, frankly, a dream for a marketing guy). After the first few broadcasts of Chris' final table, he was instantly recognizable, so one thought was to experiment with some pure branding around his name. I had this idea for a billboard that would directly tie Chris' success to his experience on PokerStars. I took one of our standard layouts, played with it a little and came up with this:</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HGjxTPOhXwc/VFrj3cBDFcI/AAAAAAAAAxk/rigXbqLPamE/s1600/MoneymakerBillboard%2Bfinal.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="116" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HGjxTPOhXwc/VFrj3cBDFcI/AAAAAAAAAxk/rigXbqLPamE/s1600/MoneymakerBillboard%2Bfinal.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span face="">I thought the tagline was one of my best - it directly linked Chris with PokerStars, broadly implying that he won the WSOP because of us. I sent the design off to our staff artist and started shopping around for billboard locations around LA, thinking that we would use one of the world's largest poker markets as a test.</span><br />
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<span face="">Around this same time, we got into some very contentious discussions with the owner of the Bicycle Casino, Haig Kelegian. Kelegian owned the Bike, Oceans' Eleven near San Diego and part (later most) of the Commerce Casino, and was an insufferable jerk of almost unimaginable proportions. The last meeting we had started off with Kelegian, in front of five of his own staff, saying, "Companies like yours are illegal, and I can put you out of business with a few phone calls." This pronouncement, I kid you not, was immediately followed by his request (through Kelley O'Hara, his marketing director) that PokerStars run satellites for the Bike's upcoming tournament series.</span><br />
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<span face="">If that's not outrageous enough, what followed literally made my jaw drop. I told Kelegian, O'Hara and the rest of his team that we might be willing to run satellites for them, but that we needed to work out how we could mesh the brands together so we could each gain some benefit. Kelegian then told me that we couldn't use the Bicycle Casino's name or logo to advertise satellites. When I asked him why we would send a few hundred thousand dollars of our liquidity to the Bike for essentially no return, he said the following: "Your players will know, and our players will know. You should be happy just </span><span face="">to</span><span face=""> </span><span face="">be associated with us."</span><br />
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<span face="">No shit, he actually said this.</span><br />
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<span face="">In the car on the way home from this complete waste of time, I got a call from Marc Chessen, who owned a media company we had done some business with. I had asked him to look into the cost of a small number of billboards that we could use as a test. He was calling to give me the estimate, and to tell me that there were two particular billboards we might like - they were on the 710 Freeway, on the approaches to the Bike from both north and south. </span><br />
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<span face="">"How far are they from the Bike?" I asked.</span><br />
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<span face="">"You could throw a rock from either one and hit the Bike," Marc answered.</span><br />
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<span face="">Life isn't always perfect, but then there are moments like this. </span><br />
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<span face="">"I'll take both of them," I said. Marc pointed out to me that he hadn't told me the price. It didn't matter. Three weeks later, Haig Kelegian got to look at this on his way to the office.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wdsRKSN2ESw/VFroEHqPoBI/AAAAAAAAAxw/q_rLihApyGM/s1600/MM%2BBillboard%2B5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wdsRKSN2ESw/VFroEHqPoBI/AAAAAAAAAxw/q_rLihApyGM/s1600/MM%2BBillboard%2B5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span face="">This escapade cost PokerStars $30,000 a month, plus the cost of the boards (we did a total of six, including one at the exit from the Commerce). Isai wasn't convinced about doing a branding campaign - he believed that our money was better spent in direct response until we were better-known. But I believed that Moneymaker's brand would help us rise to the top, and was willing to take a chance.</span><br />
<span face=""><br /></span>
<span face="">There's a nice epilogue to this story. We regularly surveyed our players to find out how they had heard about us and what made them sign up. Within a few days of putting up the billboards, we started to see measurable numbers of players saying that they first learned of PokerStars from the billboards. By the end of the first full month, over 200 players claimed that the billboards brought them to PokerStars. My branding campaign had, inexplicably, become a direct response campaign.</span><br />
<span face=""><br /></span>
<span face="">And there's one final, satisfying note. It was a few years before we tried to do anything with the Bike again, and this time it was them approaching us. By 2005, we had three WSOP champions in our stable, were one of the three dominant brands (along with PartyPoker and Full Tilt) and were, in real dollars, larger than the Bike by a substantial margin. Kelley O'Hara asked us to work with them on satellites and other promotional opportunities surrounding their World Poker Tour event, which we did (and used their name). In the last meeting before we launched, we hammered out the final details and I thought we were done. As I was packing up, Rick Cloward (who, I think, was VP Operations) asked if he could speak with me privately. When we reached his office, he closed the door and said just one thing: "Would you <i>please</i> take down those fucking billboards?"</span><br />
<span face=""><br /></span>
<span face=""><br /></span>
<span face="">I have written before about the horrific series of events leading up to our first World Poker Tour event, conducted on a cruise ship in January 2004 (see "</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/how-i-almost-went-to-jail-as-terrorist.html" target="_blank">How I almost went to jail as a terrorist</a>," "<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/revenge-of-girlfriend.html" target="_blank">Revenge of the Girlfriend</a>" and other related stories). Without rehashing those stories much, I'll mention that I had to fire our travel agent a few weeks before the event, which meant taking on far more work than our microscopic staff was able to handle. We were all working 18 hours a day with no respite in sight until after the cruise.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;">In the middle of all of this panic, I got an MSN Messenger message from Isai (this was our preferred means of communication for most things). He had heard that Sharon had played quite a bit of poker with Ben Affleck, and asked me if I thought she could get him to come on the cruise. I told Isai that I doubted that Sharon knew him well enough, but I'd ask her opinion.</span></span><br />
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;">The next time we went to the Hustler to play, there was Ben. Sharon approached him with the idea, and much to our surprise, he was not only interested, but seemed excited at the prospect. He gave Sharon his agent's contact information and told us to work out the details with him.</span></span><br />
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;">I called the agent the following day, and he took my call immediately - Ben had already told him to expect my call. I gave him my pitch, he asked a lot of questions and then said he'd talk to Ben and get back to me.</span></span><br />
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;">The next morning, he called. Ben would love to go on the cruise, and he had just enough time in his schedule to do it. And then he dropped a bomb - he wanted a $1 million appearance fee. </span></span><br />
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;">There was no way this was going to happen. $1 million was a very measurable chunk of my marketing budget, and I honestly didn't think there was anywhere near that much value in having him along. But I told the agent we'd talk about it. I hung up and called Isai.</span></span><br />
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span face="" style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;">"OK, I talked to Ben Affleck's agent. He wants a $1 million appearance fee." </span></span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">Without missing more than a half-beat, Isai said, "OK, work out the details," and hung up.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">So now, in addition to personally making travel plans for the roughly 600 people going on the cruise with us, I now got to negotiate and execute a seven-figure deal with arguably the biggest star in the world. I got to work on the contract with our lawyers, and started working out the logistics. I called the agent after we sent the contract along, and he dropped the next few bombs.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">"Ben doesn't travel commercial. You need to fly him from LA on a private jet. I'll send you the specs," he said. They arrived while we were talking - Gulfstream IV or comparable, two wait staff, no one else other than the pilots and whoever Ben brought along.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">"OK," I said, having no idea whether or not this was OK. "What else?"</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">"Ben doesn't want to board with the rest of the passengers on the cruise." I told him that wasn't a problem - we'd board him first, or last, whatever he preferred.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">"No, he doesn't want to board at the pier. You need to arrange to fly him to the ship."</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">By this time, I was in so far over my head that a little more wasn't going to change things much. "OK, what else?"</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">He sent me a list of relatively minor things - his cabin requirements, getting him from the hotel to the ship, stuff that seemed downright trivial in the face of hiring a helicopter to fly to a moving cruise ship. I told him I'd call him back later in the day.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">My first call was to Royal Caribbean. I had no idea if landing a helicopter on a cruise ship was even conceivable. As it turned out, they had done it before, more than once, and yes, it could be done. However, there were two other things that we needed to consider:</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">(1) They don't allow helicopters to land while the ship is moving except in dire emergencies. So, they would stop the ship for the landing, but it takes an hour to come to a full stop and an hour to get moving again. Cost to us: $200,000.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">(2) We needed a permit from Homeland Security, which normally took a minimum of two months. However, my RCCL rep knew someone at DHS and thought she could get it through.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">I called Isai again with some revised numbers. Including Ben's appearance fee and all of his demands, the cost of bringing him on the cruise was now just over $1.4 million. </span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">"OK, do it," he said. Just like that. And my first thought was <i>what's it like to spend $1.4 million by just saying "Do it?"</i></span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">In the end, we didn't do it. The DHS security certificate was most of the reason - despite my RCCL guy's assurance, there was no guarantee we'd get the permit in time, and we might easily be committed to over a million dollars in expenses and no way to get Ben onto the ship. I breathed a huge sigh of relief - I was never really sold on the idea in the first place, and honestly didn't know if I'd get through the whole experience without having a stroke.</span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/11/what-happens-when-you-give-marketing_9.html">Click here for Part 2.</a></span><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com203tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-66588879478736793862014-08-30T11:40:00.001-07:002015-03-02T20:08:36.748-08:00How Caesars saved the World Series of Poker (Part 2 of 2)<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[Note: regular readers of my blog know that I made a commitment a while back about posting at least once a week, with the penalty being a $100 contribution to charity. I backed off on this during the WSOP, as that is my busiest time of year, and continued to slack through BARGE (my favorite week of the year - more about BARGE <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/the-most-fun-youll-have-playing-poker.html" target="_blank">here</a>). But I'm back now, and the charity penalty is back in effect. If more than a week passes between posts, email me or post a message here; the first one to catch me can designate the charity to which I'll contribute $100. Oh, and don't get a stick up your butt about "a week" - if I post something on September 2 at 3p, don't start emailing me at 3:05 on September 9. 12:01 on September 10 is acceptable.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is no generally accepted date on which the poker boom started. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you asked me, I'd say the the seed of the boom was
planted the day the first hand of online poker was dealt, it took root the day
of the first World Poker Tour (WPT) broadcast (March 30, 2003) and sprouted the
day Chris Moneymaker's World Series of Poker win was first broadcast (August
2003, although I'm unable to find the exact date). </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But in fairness, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) has always been at the heart of the poker boom. Had it not been for Harrah's, that heart would have stopped beating on January 9, 2004, when Binion's was raided by the IRS, the Nevada Gaming Commission and Federal marshals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>[Kudos to Keith F. for a clever edit of the above paragraph.]</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I described some of this in <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/how-caesars-saved-world-series-of-poker.html" target="_blank">Part 1 of this article</a>. The timing of the Binion's raid was bad for all involved - it was less than four months before the 2004 WSOP (which always ended the Friday before Memorial Day back then) and just a few weeks before the first regular episode airing of WPT Season 2. And if you think this is a spurious detail, remember that booms and busts turn on small matters - and these weren't exactly tiny.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From my perspective, this was bad for different reasons. PokerStars had just achieved a monumental success at the 2003 WSOP, had just been invited to join the WPT and were just days away from our first WPT event on a cruise ship, some of which you'll find chronicled <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/how-i-almost-went-to-jail-as-terrorist.html" target="_blank">here </a>and <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/revenge-of-girlfriend.html" target="_blank">here</a>. We had massive promotions planned for the 2004 WSOP, which were scheduled to launch in early February. As far as I knew, we might be running satellites to a tournament that wouldn't happen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lee Jones and I sat down to discuss this possibility during the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure cruise. We came to the conclusion that <i>someone</i> would rescue Binion's and the WSOP. We briefly speculated on who might come forward, if anyone. Our plan was to launch satellites for the 2004 WSOP as soon as the cruise was over, which would include $10,000 Main Event entries plus cash. We decided that, in the worst case (no WSOP), we would just give players $10,000 in cash.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To our great relief, Binion's reopened under the temporary management of Harrah's on April Fool's Day 2004. It really wasn't clear in those first few days what Harrah's plans were - they weren't exactly a power in the Las Vegas poker scene. We really weren't even sure if they understood the value of the WSOP property they had bought along with the casino. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Fortunately, it immediately became obvious to all of us that both Harrah's and ESPN were taking the WSOP very, <i>very</i> seriously. The first hint we had of this: Lee and I were invited to a meeting at Binion's in mid-April to help Harrah's and ESPN figure out (1) which WSOP events made sense to broadcast, and (2) how to show non-hold'em events on television.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ESPN brought their heavy hitters to the meeting, including Matt Maranz, the self-effacing head of the WSOP production company (441 Productions). Harrah's sent a team of executives, most likely the engineers of the acquisition. And Harrah's did something that I found extraordinary, especially given the scope of the investment they were making: they just shut up and listened to the experts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Harrah's was in a very interesting spot. By April 2004, all the symptoms of a boom were popping up. 7-11 and Wal-Mart were selling cards and chips. Poker books became best-sellers on Amazon. Hastily produced poker television had already popped up in the form of poorly produced and not very interesting (US Poker Championships), decent concept with poor execution (Poker Royale) and downright silly (Celebrity Poker Showdown). And celebrities were emerging, complete with nicknames. Suddenly, normal human beings knew names like Howard "The Professor" Lederer, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Barry "Robin Hood" Greenstein, Phil "Poker Brat" Hellmuth and Men "The Master" Nguyen. Harrah's knew that there was, at least in the short term, a nearly insatiable appetite for poker on TV.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The executives at Harrah's patiently watched us audition more than a dozen different poker variants beyond no limit hold 'em, all of which were regular WSOP events (limit and pot limit hold 'em, Omaha, Deuce to Seven No Limit Draw, Seven Card Stud, Razz and more). No one was sure that events like these, particularly the lowball variants, could even be shown on TV in a manner that made sense. Perhaps the biggest problem was that each broadcast of a non-hold 'em game would need to teach the game to the audience, a daunting task for some of the more esoteric games.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But to Harrah's credit, they took the plunge, as did ESPN. The 2004 WSOP broadcasts were esoteric but instructional (which, as ESPN found, is good if you have a poker audience, but not this early in the boom), and included an extraordinary range of games. In addition to 'specialty' events like the $1,000 buy-in No Limit Hold 'em Ladies' Event, ESPN and Harrah's produced and broadcast events featuring Pot Limit Omaha, Seven Card Stud High, Limit Hold 'em, Razz and even Kansas City Lowball (Deuce to Seven Lowball, single draw, played no-limit).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have to admit that I was very skeptical about these shows. And I was proven wrong - they were surprisingly popular, possibly as a result of final tables like the $5,000 rebuy Kansas City Lowball event. This table of seven included Howard Lederer (2 WSOP bracelets at that point), Chris Ferguson (five, including the 2000 Main Event), Barry Greenstein (who would win the first of his four in this event), Steve Zolotow (not as well known as the others, but should be, with two WSOP bracelets), Chau Giang (three) and Lyle Berman, founder of the World Poker Tour (three). The game itself might have been obscure and confusing, but the players were smart and entertaining, and it made for good television.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[Note: despite respectable ratings for the non-hold 'em events, this was the only year in which ESPN broadcast this many of them. As it was explained to me, the combination of more expensive production and some confusion on the part of viewers convinced them to focus on hold 'em and Omaha (although they did broadcast some Stud events moving forward).]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Harrah's made the decision before the 2004 WSOP to seek high-end sponsors for the event, something Binion's never had the marketing savvy to consider. This was the first ambitious step towards making the WSOP a top-tier sporting event. Many of us laughed at their first sponsor - the prescription erectile disfunction drug Levitra. The range of Levitra jokes seemed limitless - "please hold up, please hold up," "I've got a big one!" - but the truth is that with Levitra, Harrah's reeled in a deep-pocketed sponsor in GlaxoSmithKline and set the stage for even bigger sponsorships as the WSOP grew.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the most common criticisms of Harrah's and the WSOP in the years since 2004 has been that, while they have landed high-end sponsors willing to spend millions (GlaxoSmithKline, Milwaukee's Best, Jack Link's Beef Jerky and others), they haven't shared this largesse with players, who put up their own money to play in the WSOP. This is an oddly misplaced criticism. The WSOP grew astronomically from 2004 (2,576) to 2006 (8,773), and even at 2014's lower numbers (6,683) it's still the largest prize event of any kind anywhere in the world. This didn't happen by accident. Harrah's poured tens of millions of dollars and the effort and time of thousands of people to make the WSOP the monumental event it is today. And this, in turn, created massive opportunities for poker players, both in WSOP events and in the thousands of other tournaments and cash games that now happen in conjunction with the "WSOP season."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's an example of a savvy decision Harrah's made back in 2005, the first year that the WSOP was played at the Rio (other than the final table, which was at Binion's one last time). They gave the Rio Convention Center to the WSOP, knowing that they were likely to see 5,000 or more players in the Main Event. But in addition, they dedicated 60,000 square feet of convention space to the (somewhat unfortunately named) WSOP Lifestyle Expo. The Expo was a trade show for the poker business - online sites, clothing companies, chip and card makers and dozens of other companies showing off their wares during the first few days of the Main Event. And they did participating companies a huge favor by routing all WSOP traffic through the Expo area before reaching the gaming floor, ensuring that every player and spectator at the WSOP was exposed to the Expo floor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And the floor was, in fact, pretty compelling. Almost every online site was represented in a big way. Bodog, for example, had a two-floor booth featuring Calvin Ayre's Harley-Davidson on the first floor and a gigantic bed, complete with models in nighties, on the second floor (I understand there were pillow fights involved, but I have no personal knowledge of this). The Expo became a gigantic, excessive party celebrating the peak of the poker boom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Everyone benefited from this smart marketing by Harrah's. While floor space was quite expensive, the sheer volume of traffic (estimated at 30,000 people per day) made it a winner for vendors. Spectators and players alike loved it, since they were able to find WSOP souvenirs, chips, cards, books, table covers, poker tables and pretty much anything poker related all under one roof. And it raised awareness of poker even higher than it already was. It was the Ringling Brothers of Poker, a true circus atmosphere for a game that richly deserved a giant, gaudy party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Viewed from the outside, it's easy to second-guess Harrah's decision to buy the WSOP and market it - they cherry-picked the best poker property in the world and commercialized it. But the massive investment they made in this property is only a slam-dunk when viewed from the present. Harrah's took a huge risk, both financially and in reputation, by taking on the WSOP. The World Poker Tour had momentum, attention and money, and the WPT Championship (a $25,000 buy-in event) was growing at a similar rate to the WSOP Main Event. But Harrah's made the WSOP a global property, and a global brand, through smart marketing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you read this blog regularly, you know that I am not Harrah's (eventually Caesar's) biggest fan. If you want an example of the sort of torture we endured from Harrah's back in the boom days, read <i><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/03/the-girl-with-16000000-purse.html" target="_blank">The Girl with the $16,000,000 purse</a></i>. But the truth is that Harrah's saved the world's foremost poker tournament from obscurity, and then turned it into every poker player's dream. And for that, all poker players, even me, should take our hats off.</span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-24538390310413945422014-07-18T15:59:00.001-07:002015-03-02T20:09:14.520-08:00How Caesars saved the World Series of Poker (Part 1 of 2)<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>[Author's note: I have received many emails, tweets and texts about my last post, which excoriated Caesars for its management of the World Series of Poker. One thing that I need to make crystal clear: I no longer work for PokerStars, and have no dog in this hunt. My reactions to Caesars' WSOP issues is partly personal (as a player) and partly professional (as a marketer). As I left PokerStars many years ago - in 2007 - none of my comments are biased by my position as a competitor. In fact, since I would have had no credibility, I would never have written any of this during my tenure at PokerStars.]</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A few weeks ago, I posted a story entitled "<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/8-ways-caesars-screwed-up-world-series.html" target="_blank">Six ways Caesars screwed up the World Series of Poker</a>," which has become the second most popular post on this blog (after "<a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/armadillo-tim-and-threat-of-death.html" target="_blank">Armadillo Tim and the Threat of Death</a>," which has now had almost <strike>50,000</strike> 60,000 page views). I've gotten more emails about this story than any other. The story came mostly out of my frustration with Caesars' lack of understanding of their players. I have no problem with the blatant commercialism of the WSOP, as some have suggested; it's not a religion, it's a <i>game</i>. Commercialize it all you want, Caesars - just remember who brung you to the dance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are two sides to most stories, and there are two sides to this one, as well. This time around, I want to give Caesars (then Harrah's) credit for rescuing a storied franchise from what might have been obscurity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The WSOP has been around since 1970, although arguably it really started in 1971 - the 1970 WSOP consisted of seven players, who played cash games and then voted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_moss" target="_blank">Johnny Moss</a> as the champion. It was the brainchild of Benny Binion, legendary gambler, entrepreneur and convicted murderer, who never lacked clever and creative ways to draw attention to Binion's Horseshoe. Prior to the WSOP, Binion's primary claims to fame were its display of $1 million in cash (a hundred $10,000 bills, at the time the largest private collection of the rare bills) and Benny's willingness to take a bet of almost any size.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>[Historical note: before you email me to suggest that the famous heads-up match between Johnny Moss and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Dandolos" target="_blank">Nick "The Greek" Dandalos</a> was the third notable event at Binion's - most historical accounts agree that the match probably took place in 1949, two years prior to the opening of Binion's Horseshoe. It was most likely played at the Las Vegas Club, in which Benny Binion had a significant interest.]</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The WSOP began as an event for the world's elite poker players. The $10,000 buy-in Main Event grew very gradually from its inception in 1971 through 1983, when Eric Drache, cardroom manager at Binion's and tournament director for the WSOP, came up with the ground-breaking concept of satellite tournaments, in which players could play for much smaller amounts, as low as $200, and win entries into the Main Event. This boosted WSOP Main Event entries in a big way - from 1983 to 2002, entries in this prestigious event grew from 108 to 631.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2003 saw a huge jump in registrations, owing almost entirely to online poker sites like PokerStars and PartyPoker contributing substantial numbers of entrants. When cards went in the air for the 2003 Main Event, 839 players had registered, nearly eight times the total number of players in 1983.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The 2003 World Series of Poker kicked off the poker boom in earnest. I won't retell that story here; if you've been under a rock for the last eleven years, you can Google "2003 WSOP" for more information. You can also find a number of my stories from that year in these prior posts:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/dancing-with-moneymaker.html" target="_blank">Dancing with Moneymaker</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/how-olof-thorson-broke-my-heart-and.html" target="_blank">How Olof Thorson broke my heart, and made history</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/01/2003-wsop-last-lap-to-final-table.html" target="_blank">2003 WSOP: The last lap to the final table</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/02/pokers-tipping-point-2003-wsop-final.html" target="_blank">Poker's tipping point: the 2003 WSOP final table</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2013/03/how-moneymaker-effect-almost-didnt.html" target="_blank">How the Moneymaker Effect almost didn't happen</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By January 2004, poker rooms all over the world were operating beyond capacity. Casinos in Las Vegas that had shuttered their (largely unprofitable) rooms years ago reopened. The World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker TV broadcasts were returning astounding numbers. It was a unique time to be in the poker business...unless you were Binion's Horseshoe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For years, Binion's had been in trouble with the IRS and the Nevada Gaming Commission for a wide variety of offenses, including non-payment of taxes, non-payment of pension and insurance benefits, allowing barred individuals on property (including Nick Behnen, the husband of Becky Binion Behnen) and failure to maintain regulatory minimum cash balances. So it was disturbing but not shocking when, on January 9, 2004, a joint task force composed of IRS agents, federal marshals and representatives of the NGC stormed Binion's and shut down the casino and hotel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Everyone wondered if this was the end of the storied World Series of Poker, but we only had to wait two days to learn that the legendary tournament would, in fact, survive. On January 12, Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. (the predecessor of what is now known as Caesars Entertainment) announced that it had acquired Binion's, would take full responsibility for its debts, would reopen the casino and would conduct the 2004 WSOP. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Uneasy weeks passed with Binion's remaining shuttered. Harrah's made reassuring statements, but it was unclear what the impact would be on the WSOP and the Binion's property. As Harrah's delved more deeply into the assets of the troubled property, they made a shocking discovery: not only did Binion's not own the land on which the Horseshoe resided, portions of it were owned by nearly 100 separate entities, some individuals and some corporations. These entities has all signed 100-year leases which were now called into question as a result of the raid and subsequent acquisition.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Harrah's never intended to maintain ownership of Binion's. Within days of the January 12 deal, rumors circulated that Harrah's intended to sell the casino to MTR Gaming Group, owners of the Speedway Casino in North Las Vegas as well as two out-of-state racetracks. On February 20, details of the mess with land leases emerged, as did more information about Harrah's plans - they had agreed to operate the casino for MTR for one year, with two one-year extensions, and would keep the WSOP downtown until 2005, the year of Las Vegas' Centennial. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some light peeked through the end of the tunnel on March 4, when the Nevada Gaming Control Board and the Nevada Gaming Commission, who had worked with unprecedented haste, approved the sale of Binion's to Harrah's and MTR. The land issues still hadn't been worked out, though, and Binion's remained closed. The land problem appeared to be getting worse, though, with rumors (later found to be true) circulating that a single landowner holdout was demanding a massive payout.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And just as suddenly as Binion's closure, the logjam broke. Details are hard to come by, but on March 28, just weeks before the 2004 WSOP, the sale closed, and three days later (yes, on April 1), Binion's reopened for business. The 2004 WSOP would, in fact, happen, and its growth from 2003 would stun the industry, and perhaps Harrah's most of all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Next: Harrah's turns the WSOP into a franchise</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com192tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-51675896415059083562014-07-06T12:25:00.001-07:002019-07-19T10:47:02.513-07:00The most fun you'll have playing poker this year<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've been playing poker for more years than I really want to think about. I've played in home games, casinos, poker rooms, parties, even hospital rooms. I've played in tournaments and cash games, live and online. So when my friend and fellow poker player Lou Krieger started pushing me to go to a poker convention called BARGE, I couldn't imagine that there was anything I'd experience there that was substantially different.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was so, <i>so</i> wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lou started cajoling me about going to BARGE back in 1997, when we were both playing regularly in limit hold 'em games at Hollywood Park. I had several friends that went every year. I finally got a little taste of what I might be missing when I attended ESCARGOT, a smaller version of BARGE held at Crystal Park in 1999. It consisted of about 60 people, all rabid poker players, who were there for one reason: to have fun playing poker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From 1997 to 1999, I made a substantial part of my living playing poker. One of the unfortunate side effects of playing poker for a living is that the game loses most of its fun aspects - it's a living, not a game. ESCARGOT reminded me that poker can, in fact, be a lot of fun. But it was three more years before I attended BARGE and finally got what all the fuss was about.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Historical note: BARGE stands for Big August Rec Gambling Excursion. BARGE originated with a handful of members of a Usenet newsgroup, rec.gambling.poker, or RGP, in the early 90s. RGP still exists, although the signal-to-noise ratio is so low that it's no longer a good source of information about poker. But BARGE, thankfully, survived.]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I had started working for PokerStars in early 2002, and during the summer a friend mentioned that there was an opportunity to sponsor BARGE. BARGE consisted of about 200 poker players, a small audience, but clearly an influential one. I seized the opportunity. I didn't attend the entire event, but the organizers gave me a chance to speak a few times (I was giving away nice PokerStars swag). What I saw during the BARGE Main Event convinced me that I had to attend the next year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There was a surprising number of well-known poker players who were part of this group. I recall seeing Andy Bloch, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Russ Rosenblum (fresh from his WSOP Main Event final table appearance that year), a few members of a group of crazy gamblers called the TiltBoys and other recognizable faces. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As I watched these guys and the rest of the community play, I realized that I was watching world-class players playing a $100 event with just as much intensity as they played in the WSOP.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Shortly after the Main Event started, I heard some applause start, and eventually it became cheers and loud applause. I asked someone what that was about, and he told me that someone had just busted out. A BARGE tradition is to applaud players as they bust out, and it's done in an almost entirely sincere and respectful way. The first bustout seems to get substantially more applause, ostensibly because the rest of the group is relieved not to be out first.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As I walked around the tables, I noticed that many players had one or more trinkets on the table, and I'm not talking about card cappers. There were stuffed animals, CDs, DVDs, pieces of jewelry, shot glasses, goofy Las Vegas tourist items - and no common thread. I couldn't figure out what this was all about, so I asked, and learned about another BARGE tradition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />"Those are bustout gifts," another BARGEr patiently explained to me. "When a player busts out of the Main Event, he or she gives the bustout gift they've brought to the person who busted them." I found this charming, and oddly moving. It showed respect for the game and the other players, something sorely lacking in the games I was used to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">BARGE is held at Binion's in downtown Las Vegas. It's been moved around a few times, mostly because of the problems Binion's had in the mid-2000s, but it's been at Binion's consistently since 2007.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2003 was my first year as a real member of the BARGE community.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The 'formal' part of BARGE consisted of a handful of tournaments, mostly games I knew - there was a Tournament of Champions format event (limit stud, limit hold 'em, limit Omaha High/Low), a California Lowball event, a video poker tournament, a few others that I don't recall and a No Limit Hold 'em "Main Event." None of the tournaments had buy-ins higher than $100; if I recall correctly, my total outlay for all of the tournaments I played was about $300.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When tournaments weren't going on, there were non-stop cash games, some the usual limit hold 'em, some pretty unusual. That first year, I learned one new game, a bizarre variant on Hold 'em called Chowaha. Chowaha is usually played with two cards, just like Hold 'em, but you have to use both of your hole cards. The dealer then deals three flops, after which there's a round of betting. Then there are two turns and one river, each followed by a betting round. At the end, the board looks like this:</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hHc2805-UQk/U7mcWmlm0kI/AAAAAAAAAw0/fvLT9hl5fXA/s1600/Screenshot+2014-07-06+11.57.20.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hHc2805-UQk/U7mcWmlm0kI/AAAAAAAAAw0/fvLT9hl5fXA/s1600/Screenshot+2014-07-06+11.57.20.png" width="275" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You can play any of the three flops. If you play the top flop, you can play the top turn card; if you play the bottom flop, you can play the bottom turn card. If you play the middle flop, you can choose from either turn card, and in any case you use the single river card.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Over the years, many additional strange games have been added to the mix, some with obvious names (Second Best Hold 'em), some with entirely inscrutable names (Scrotum, which is played either N or N-2, Oklahoma). I was even involved in the creation of one of these games - Binglaha, which is Pot Limit Omaha, but whether you're playing high-only or high-low is determined by a die roll after the flop betting is complete.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In addition to the scheduled events, there is a wide range of unofficial, sometimes ad hoc events. There's a midnight $1 craps crawl. There's a breakfast at a classic Las Vegas place called The Egg and I. There's a sushi dinner, and an Ethiopian dinner. There's a Fun Run (although what's fun about running in 100 degree Las Vegas heat is beyond me). There's a cigar smoking/bourbon tasting event. And new things spring up all the time, shaped by the varying personalities of the group. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And there's a notable appearance of anarchy that I have always found particularly charming. There's no registration desk - you pick up your badge from the desk at the poker room. There are no opening or closing ceremonies. BARGE starts when people arrive, and ends when they leave. It's very well-organized, but the machinery is so well hidden from attendees that it appears to run itself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Since 2003, while Sharon and I have been inconsistent about taking vacations, the one week we always take off is the first week in August. It is, without a doubt, the most fun I have playing poker all year. I can't recommend BARGE highly enough - many of my closest friends have come from this group, and while we may only see one another once a year, it's during a week of a game we love, playing for bragging rights and pure enjoyment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If this post has developed as an obvious ploy to promote BARGE, I offer no apologies. Come join us. You'll thank me. You can register for BARGE by <a href="https://www.barge.org/" target="_blank">clicking here</a>. [NOTE: this link was changed to reflect the correct 2015 registration page.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And make sure to come find me. I'll be the bald guy playing Binglaha.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-31698427578738781662014-07-03T12:22:00.003-07:002017-01-27T16:41:17.390-08:00Six ways Caesars screwed up the World Series of Poker<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Every June, the biggest event in the poker world kicks off at the Rio in Las Vegas. In fact, not only is the World Series of Poker the largest poker tournament in the world, it's the largest tournament <i>of any kind</i> in the world. It's bigger than anything on the PGA circuit, the professional tennis circuit, <i>any</i> circuit. In 2013, the WSOP edged very close to $200 million in total prize money. This number is even more staggering when compared to the paltry $22 million in total prize money in 2003, the last year the WSOP was owned and operated by Binion's Horseshoe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">With total prize money up by almost 900%, how outrageous is my claim that Caesars (then Harrah's) has screwed up the WSOP?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Looking at the WSOP purely from a numbers perspective, the WSOP has been a massive success for Caesars. But don't let those numbers fool you into thinking that Caesars stewardship of the WSOP since 2004 has been all, or even mostly, good for players. A substantial part of the massive growth of the WSOP would have happened regardless of management of the event - you only need to look back to 2005's Celebrity Poker Showdown to realize that anything containing the word "poker" succeeded during the heart of the poker boom. Caesars didn't create the poker boom. They were, I admit, smart enough to recognize its potential, and did use their considerable market heft to bring it more into the mainstream. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Note: for a counterpoint to this article, see my later two-part post, starting here: <a href="http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/07/how-caesars-saved-world-series-of-poker.html" target="_blank">How Caesars saved the World Series of Poker</a>.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So what exactly did they do wrong?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Following is a far-from-exhaustive list of the mistakes that Caesars has made in managing the WSOP. There are many more; I chose these because they are the easiest to see if you're a first-time visitor to the event, and they're the major irritants that I hear about most from players. These are listed in no particular order.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Note: in the first draft of this article, I listed eight mistakes, but in re-reading them, I decided that two of them were petty and removed them. I'm only mentioning this because the permalink for this page says "8 ways...," which is how I saved the first draft - the permalink can't be edited.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">1. <b>Prices</b>. The Rio has made it very clear to poker players that they are there to squeeze every possible dollar out of the player. You'll see this the first time you buy a $1.50 banana [SteveB notes that several venues charge $2.50] or a $2.50 bag of M&Ms. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I don't begrudge the Rio for charging exorbitant prices for swag - that's what swag is for. Be prepared to pay $30 for a t-shirt and $25 for a hat. If you go to the Bellagio gift shop, you'll pay $25 for a hat, too. But many poker players are at the Rio for extended periods during the summer, and at $10+ for a hot dog, their outrageous prices add up.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been a player revolt over this. The first year the WSOP was held at the Rio (2005, except for the final table), they tried to charge players for drinks, but that was short-lived as a result of massive backlash from players.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2. <b>Rake.</b> This could be combined with #1. The Rio charges 10% rake up to $5 (vs. the $4 max in their regular poker room), but that's not the bad part. If there is money put in the pot voluntarily, they rake the pot for the full rake, <i>including uncalled bets</i>. For example, let's say you're playing $2-5. One person limps, then you make it $30. Everyone folds. From the Rio's point of view, there is $42 in the pot, and they rake $4, even though $30 of it is your uncalled bet. So the part of the pot that represents money won by you is $12 (the blinds plus the limper), and the Rio takes 1/3 of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(Related note: I played $1-3 a few days ago while waiting for another game, and it was in this game that I became aware of this problem. Players in the $1-3 game, for whatever reason, tend to raise a larger multiple of the big blind than in most games, and in this case, a player made it $42 to go. Everyone folded. The dealer took $5 from the player and put it on the drop slot. I stopped him and said, "Is this really the rule here? This player is going to <i>lose $1</i> because you're raking a bet that no one called." He said yes, and I asked him to call the floor, who happened to be someone I know. The floor confirmed that this was the rule, but in this case chose to return the $5 to the player.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">3. <b>Marginal staff.</b> I'm going to admit up front that this is a tough one. The WSOP drains every poker resource within 400 miles of Las Vegas, and regardless of any criticisms I may make, pulling off 65 bracelet events, hundreds of side tournaments, satellites, cash games and everything else is a Herculean task. I know, because I've done it on a smaller (but still substantial) scale during five years of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That having been said, Caesars owes it to the poker community, which contributes millions to Caesars during the WSOP, to get this right. For the most part, dealers this year are average, which is a huge leap from prior years. I still saw dozens of dealers who barely understood poker, much less dealing. In a particularly egregious example, I played 5-5 Pot Limit Omaha a few weeks ago with a dealer who came into the box, looked at the game plaque and said, "What's pot limit mean?" We patiently explained, finally telling her that we would just tell her what to do. At the end of her down, she pushed to the top section 10-25-50 PLO game. I suspect she was never heard from again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Floor staff is a much bigger problem. While I have seen a number of floor people that I know this year, the sheer numbers that the WSOP requires creates situations in which inexperienced floor staff make offhand, incorrect decisions that can cost players thousands.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One example: a coworker of mine played in Event #1, the Casino Employees Event, and had gone quite deep - when this hand happened, there were about 50 players remaining of the starting field of about 850. He was pretty short-stacked, with about 20 big blinds, and was waiting to pick up a hand. It was folded to him in the hijack, he raised with AKs, everyone folded and the dealer pushed him the pot and took his cards (in that order). The dealer then realized that there was, in fact, an early position limper who hadn't acted and still had cards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The dealer called the floor. The floor's ruling: since the limper was the only player who still had cards, the pot was his. This notwithstanding the fact that (1) my coworker didn't release his hand until the pot was pushed to him, and (2) about half the pot was already in his stack. The floor had the dealer recreate the action from my coworker's chips and then awarded the pot to the limper.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aside from this ruling being completely wrong, the floor should have enough common sense to know that this was wrong even if it complied with the rules (which it didn't). At the very least, he should have consulted with another floorman. We're dealing with large amounts of money here, and we deserve way better than this. I spoke with Jack Effel after this happened and he confirmed that the floor made a mistake here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Related note: I talked to a floorman about a different egregious decision and received a response I can only describe as "tepid." I commented on the fact that floorpeople really should care about these issues, since these are their customers. The floorman's response: "We don't get paid enough to care."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">4. <b>Pervasive lack of understanding of poker</b>. Many of the problems at the Rio during the WSOP track back to a simple fact: <i>Caesars doesn't understand poker</i>. Say what you will about Binion's, even in its death throes in 2003-4, but poker was in their DNA. They understood the game and the players, and made decisions accordingly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have dozens of examples, but this is one that goes right to the heart of the problem. Caesars has, for 10 years, chosen to use the table felt to promote various stuff (The Rio, Caesars Entertainment, Jack Link Beef Jerky, etc.). In principle I have no problem with this - it's valuable real estate on display on hundreds of tables, for tens of thousands to see during the six weeks of the WSOP. But if they're going to do this, they need to remember that this is the playing surface on which decisions worth thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions will be made. I don't think it's too much to ask that marketing on the felt not interfere with the game.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's been worse in prior years, but this year the Rio decided to add a multi-color, red-white-black "10 Year Anniversary" logo on one end of the table. At some point, someone at Caesars must have realized that they have black chips in play, but decided this was OK anyway. I have seen no less than 20 situations over the past month in which a player at the opposite end of the table was unable to see one or more black chips that were obscured by the logo. This is bad in tournaments, but at least in that case the problem goes away once the $100 chips are out of play. But in cash games, not seeing a $100 cash chip can be a very expensive oversight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(Amusing historical note: the first year the WSOP was held at the Rio, one of the companies Caesars sold marketing rights to was PartyPoker. They <i>embroidered</i> a four-color logo on one end of the felt. The first time I sat at a table, on Day 1 of the WSOP, I saw this and offered a prop bet to another player - I set the line at 15 minutes before the dealer pitched a card that hit the embroidery and turned over. I got no action. The dealer shuffled and began dealing, and the very first card to pass over the embroidery flipped over. By Day 2 that year, the embroidery had started to unravel on most tables. On Day 3, the Rio replaced them all.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In a similar case of a lack of understanding of poker, in 2007 the Rio introduced the "WSOP Poker Peek" deck. The first time I saw them, I had two reactions: (1) I like that they're using a large index card (I'm getting older) and (2) these cards are ugly and busy. </span><br />
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<img src="https://www.kardwell.com/images/world-series-poker-peek-page.jpg" /><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The idea behind these cards is that players like to peel up a corner of the card to look at it, which makes it harder for other players to see. Good concept. But take a look at the sixes and nines:</span><br />
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<img src="http://blog.joonsookim.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/g2_123_newcards-0101.jpg" /><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Someone apparently didn't realize that, in this context, with the numbers tilted, players have no way to distinguish a 6 from a 9. Had Caesars put these decks in the hands of just a few poker players, they would have caught this before they produced over 100,000 decks. The final result: they dumped all of these decks and had an emergency shipment of decks shipped from Kem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One last fun fact, which really shows carelessness rather than lack of understanding of poker. Here's a larger version of the card back:</span><br />
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<img alt="Kem WSOP back" src="http://www.homepokertourney.com/images/Cards/kem-wsop-back-big.jpg" /><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In 2006, the WSOP created the position of "Commissioner of the WSOP" and appointed Jeffrey Pollack as its first (and last) commissioner. Jeffrey's name and signature are on these cards, but if you look closely, you'll note that his name is spelled "Jeffery." I don't think there was much chance that these cards would have survived because of the 6/9 issue in any case, but with the Commish's name spelled wrong, they were doomed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">5. <b>Break time clusterf***</b>. I may be hypercritical here, but when you have 5,000+ people in a confined space, there are logistical issues that really need care. I don't know that there's a good way to handle tournament breaks during the huge events at the WSOP - if you have an event with 4,000 players, and there's a break after two hours, 3,500 of those players will still be in, and at least half of them will need to pee (more in the Seniors event). But with breaks of only 20 minutes, there is no chance that players can make it to the bathroom and back. And to make the problem worse, no one has coordinated the breaks of the side events (multi-table satellites, deep stack tourneys) with the breaks of the main events, so it's entirely possible that you'll be lined up with far more players than if there were some planning. In every event I played, we had at least one and sometimes as many as four empty seats when we restarted after the break.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One possible solution: in large events, have two breaks. Table numbers 100-250 go on break now, 251-400 go on break 20 minutes into the level.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">6. <b>Hallway gauntlet.</b> This problem got slightly better towards the end of this year's WSOP, due in part, I suspect, to my friend Nolan Dalla's intervention. Caesars has rented out space in the WSOP hallway to a variety of vendors over the years, and I'm not opposed to the idea; many of them have interesting stuff to sell. But most of the time when I'm walking down that hallway, it's either to get to the bathroom or to get back to an event. The last thing I want is to run a gauntlet that looks more like the Spice Market in Marrakech than a hallway at the WSOP. The first few days of the WSOP this year, vendors at several of the booths employed identical tactics to those that solicitors at airports use: "Excuse me, sir, is this your phone?" You look up, the guy catches your eye and now you're stuck. The other one that I heard no less than ten times during the first few days of the WSOP: "Excuse me, is that a Mophie case?" (It's an extended battery for my phone.) When I said yes the first time, I got the beginning of a pitch about how his extended battery was better. I excused myself. A few hours later, same guy, same pitch. Around the 10th time, I said, "Yes, it's still a Mophie case, just like it was when you asked me at the last break, and the previous one, and yesterday."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So given my acknowledgement of the horrifyingly complex logistics of the WSOP, is it fair or reasonable for me to level these kinds of criticism at Caesars? I think the answer is a resounding yes. From tournaments alone this year, the Rio will gross about $12 million in fees. I would guess they snare more than that in rake, although I've never estimated it. Add in food, swag, fees from vendors, ESPN broadcast rights fees and all of the other associated revenue streams, and you have a business that grosses $50 million or more over a six week period, almost all of which comes directly from the pockets of the players. We have a right to demand a high level of service, and Caesars has had more than enough time to get this right.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Are you listening, Caesars?</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8909697248684476668.post-57149668046518593682014-06-12T16:56:00.001-07:002020-04-24T15:05:47.548-07:00Lee Jones and the Switch of Doom<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="DOOMSWITCH - PokerGround.com" height="339" 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" width="400" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">During my tenure at PokerStars, the four questions I was asked most often were:</span><br />
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<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is there a cashout curse?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is the software random?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Can you see my cards?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is there a doom switch?</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Of course, these questions generally didn't take exactly these forms - they were generally expressed as facts ("Yeah, I'm running really bad on RiverStars right now because I just cashed out, but that will get better in a week or so.").</span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I have a great deal of respect and affection for PokerStars, even though I left the company more than seven years ago. But I suspect that you also realize that I shoot pretty straight. And since, as they say in Texas, I don't have a dog in this hunt, you should assume that the following is a mostly unbiased assessment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Is there a cashout curse?</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I definitely understand why players have come to believe this. The assumption behind the notion of a cashout curse is that online sites want to discourage players from cashing out. Using this type of indirect negative feedback could have nothing but disastrous results for us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The two possible outcomes if we did rig the software in this way are (1) players wouldn't realize that they were being discouraged, in which case they would just decide that they were running bad, the software was rigged or (rarely) that they couldn't beat the game, or (2) players would realize that there was a 'curse,' in which case the more diligent players would start tracking it seriously, giving them evidence they could provide to the community at large.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My experience is that recreational players tend to play considerably looser once they have money in their accounts, particularly if it got there suddenly (like a big tournament win). As an example, a guy who plays small stakes cash and tournaments, who is used to having $100-300 in his account, plays the $10 rebuy tournament and wins $5,000. Most don't cash out right away; they may play bigger, or play more games, or play looser, or a combination of all of those things. Then he decides to cash out $4,000, but he doesn't revert to his prior style of play immediately. If he's a typical recreational player, he has a negative expectation, and that -EV is amplified by the fact that he's effectively playing bigger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Verdict: No cashout curse.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Is the software random?</b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We struggled with this one from day one, as all online poker sites have. I've heard hundreds of stories purporting to be definitive proof that [fill in site name here]'s random number generator (RNG) isn't random, or that boards are somehow being rigged.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The usual reason I hear for the alleged lack of randomness is <i>rake churn</i>. It's better for [site] to have all players win roughly the same percentage of the time. The result is that all of the money circulates, but it generates more rake as it's circulating. So it's in [site]'s best interest to make sure that all players win and lose about the same amount, so the only negative liquidity is rake. The reasoning is wrong but sound, which makes the argument considerably harder to refute.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here's the big problem with this (also with most of the other alleged means of rigging games): either (1) the software would all have to be written by Isai Scheinberg himself, (2) PokerStars would have to pay its programmers $10 million/year to keep the secret or (3) they'd have to have them all killed immediately after the code was finished. This is the problem with any conspiracy theory: it's hard to keep a secret. I can't say it any better than this:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Three can keep a secret</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">, if two of them are dead."</span></i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> -Benjamin Franklin</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">One of my favorite stories related to this comes from one of my shifts in support. All PokerStars employees were required to take at least two hours of support shifts per week, a brilliant idea that really opened my eyes. I cherry-picked the questions I answered, and always looked for the ones with topics like "Got my AA cracked for the 20th time." We heard things like this so often that the programmers added a tool to the back-end system, allowing a support person to enter any hand and see the player's last </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">n</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> results with that hand. For example, I could specify that I wanted to see a player's last 20 hands where he started with AA.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The email, which I saved, said:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dear Fuckstars,</span> </i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>I just lost my 23rd straight hand with AA and you can stick your fucking rigged piece of shit site up your cheating fucking assholes. I also lost 12 straight flips and 6 hands in a row with AK vs A and some turd. I don't know how the fuck you guys stay in business, but you can suck my dick.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">While I wasn't going to act on his suggestion, I did decide to take this particular support request. Here are his results on the preceding 23 hands in which he had AA:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Won: 18</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lost: 4</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tied: 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That put his win rate with AA at 78%, which is pretty damn good. Oddly, his 18 wins were consecutive - meaning that he had just lost four times in a row (the tie was the last hand). That explained the tone - those four losses became amplified, and in fairness to him, the last one was excruciatingly ugly (he flopped a set vs. TT, but the board ran out four flush cards). The tie was similar - AA vs. JJ, the board ran out five cards of a suit neither had.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I examined each hand to see if there was anything specific I should mention, and I did find one fun hand in a $1-2 NLHE cash game: he had three-bet preflop and got called with two black aces. His opponent check-raised him on a flop of 678 of hearts, he reraised and the guy jammed almost $300 into a pot of less than $100. Our AA player called and found he was looking at Kh Qh, making him about a 32:1 dog. But the board ran out 8s 8c and he won; of course, he didn't mention <i>that</i> hand in his email. I never checked, but I suspect that the holder of the Kh Qh probably sent us a different excoriating email.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I sent him a very detailed analysis of his last 23 AA hands. Just for kicks, I also ran his last 23 KK hands. Not a whole lot there, except that he was up against AA in two of them, and managed to win them both, once flopping quads and once flopping a flush draw that came in. I mentioned this to one of our support supervisors, who said, "You'll never hear from him again, and he'll keep playing." She was right on both accounts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On a related matter, on more than one occasion, we submitted large numbers of hands to a third party for analysis as to randomness. We're talking tens of millions of hands here, and in each case, the result was the same: there was no evidence of the hands being anything other than entirely random. And contrary to Sheldon Adelson's contention to the contrary, random number generators are able to randomize a deck of cards far better than a live dealer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Verdict: Yes, the software is random.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Can you see my cards?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is a tough one, and I was tempted not to even approach it. I can only answer this for PokerStars, and the answer is no. At Isai's explicit instruction, the programmers made certain that no one could see cards while hands were in progress. The tools the support team used relied on what was committed to the database, and hands weren't committed to the database until the hand was completed. To be completely honest, though, I've seen programmers do some stunning stuff over the years, so it would be disingenuous for me to say it's impossible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The counterexample to this is UltimateBet, which was involved in the most well-publicized cheating scandal in the short history of online poker. As the story goes, their programmers created some 'superuser' accounts in the development stage so they could observe hands playing out in real time. These accounts were disabled but never fully removed from the system, and at least one of them was used by various nefarious types in the clumsiest cheating effort imaginable. So while I can speak to how PokerStars dealt with this, there's no question that there is at least some risk, particularly at sites with less to lose than PokerStars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Verdict: On PokerStars, no one can see your cards.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Is there a doom switch?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Every time I heard this, I imagined Lee Jones in a giant, Willy Wonka-type construct, with a huge green switch, wearing a headset and awaiting instructions about who to hose. This is, in reality, the same question as "Is there a cashout curse," although it's a little more personal. Poker players need to find a reason why they're losing. The players who blame the dealer when they play live are the players who blame the software when they play online. No, Victoria, there's no doom switch, although I think Lee in a velvet coat with a giant lever in his hand is an awe-worthy image.</span></div>
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<img alt="" src="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI3NzY1NDcxMl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTcxNTIyMw@@._V1__SX1399_SY804_.jpg" height="272" title="That's Lee with the hat." width="400" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"> That's Lee with the hat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Verdict: No, there's no doom switch.</i></span></div>
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