The most fun you'll have playing poker this year

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.

I was so, so wrong.

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.

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.

[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.]

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

2003 was my first year as a real member of the BARGE community. 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.

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:

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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 clicking here. [NOTE: this link was changed to reflect the correct 2015 registration page.]

And make sure to come find me. I'll be the bald guy playing Binglaha.

Six ways Caesars screwed up the World Series of Poker

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 of any kind in the world. It's bigger than anything on the PGA circuit, the professional tennis circuit, any 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.

With total prize money up by almost 900%, how outrageous is my claim that Caesars (then Harrah's) has screwed up the WSOP?

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. 

[Note: for a counterpoint to this article, see my later two-part post, starting here: How Caesars saved the World Series of Poker.]

So what exactly did they do wrong?

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.

[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.]

1. Prices. 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. 

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.

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.

2. Rake. 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, including uncalled bets. 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.

(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 lose $1 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.)

3. Marginal staff. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

4. Pervasive lack of understanding of poker. Many of the problems at the Rio during the WSOP track back to a simple fact: Caesars doesn't understand poker. 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. 

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.

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.

(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 embroidered 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.)

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. 




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:



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.

One last fun fact, which really shows carelessness rather than lack of understanding of poker. Here's a larger version of the card back:



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.

5. Break time clusterf***. 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.

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.

6. Hallway gauntlet. 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."


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.

Are you listening, Caesars?

Lee Jones and the Switch of Doom

During my tenure at PokerStars, the four questions I was asked most often were:

1. Is there a cashout curse?
2. Is the software random?
3. Can you see my cards?
4. Is there a doom switch?

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.").

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.

Is there a cashout curse?

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.

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.

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.

Verdict: No cashout curse.

Is the software random?

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.

The usual reason I hear for the alleged lack of randomness is rake churn. 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.

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:

"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

                                                              -Benjamin Franklin


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 n 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.

The email, which I saved, said:

Dear Fuckstars, 

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.

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:

Won: 18

Lost: 4

Tied: 1

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.

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 that hand in his email. I never checked, but I suspect that the holder of the Kh Qh probably sent us a different excoriating email.

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.

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.

Verdict: Yes, the software is random.

Can you see my cards?

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.

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.

Verdict: On PokerStars, no one can see your cards.

Is there a doom switch?

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.

                                 That's Lee with the hat.

Verdict: No, there's no doom switch.

A few more stories from the felt

I realized after my last post that I had suggested previously that I'd tell a Dave Foley story, and forgot. Here's that one and a few other poker/gambling stories:

Commerce Casino, February 2004
By February, 2004, Sharon was tearing up pretty much every game and tournament she played. After a huge showing at the WSOP 2003 (no cashes, but massive returns in smaller tournaments, side games and satellites), she posted nine consecutive months of profitable play, mostly in cash games at The Hustler and Hollywood Park. She was also killing online poker, mostly playing nosebleed stakes on UltimateBet. 

In February 2004, Sharon played in a satellite on PartyPoker, attempting to win a seat in the World Poker Tour $25,000 Main Event. After an epic struggle, Sharon won the satellite. As relative newcomers to the World Poker Tour (PokerStars had just conducted our first WPT event a few weeks earlier), neither of us realized that every player who buys into or wins a satellite into the WPT Main Event is invited to play in the WPT Celebrity Invitational Tournament, a $200,000 freeroll with an entertaining blend of celebrity dead money and professional poker players. 

About 15 minutes after Sharon won, our phone rang. It was 2:00a, a time that might be shocking for others to receive a phone call, but we're poker players. It was Linda Johnson, often called the "First Lady of Poker" (a misnomer - first ladies are typically standing next to the big star, whereas Linda was always the star on her own). Linda and I had played Omaha High/Low together over the years at the Mirage, but we had really gotten to know her during the PokerStars WPT cruise the prior month.

"I was sweating Sharon during this tournament," Linda said. "Please put her on so I can congratulate her." Turns out that she had more than congratulations - the Celebrity Invitational was the following day, and Linda was calling to invite Sharon to play. 

I'll write more about the Invitational itself another time. Suffice to say for now that Sharon had both a great time and an impressive run. I couldn't stand to watch, so my friends/coworkers Lee Jones and Rich Korbin went out for dinner at a nearby steakhouse. When we returned, the ten tables we had left were pared down to two 6-handed tables. Sharon had Dave Foley to her immediate left, and was in a paroxysm of hysterical laughter when I arrived. 

"Oh my God, he is the funniest person on the planet," Sharon whispered to me as the next hand was dealt. Sharon folded, Foley raised and only Antonio Esfandiari called from the big blind.

The flop came (I have no recollection of the cards), Esfandiari checked and Foley made a sizable bet. Esfandiari called, and the turn card was delivered.

Esfandiari checked again, and this time Foley went all in, a huge overbet to the pot. Esfandiari went deep into the tank for what seemed like two or three minutes (eons at the poker table). He finally did what he always does in these situations - he tried to get his opponent to talk. 

After a few minutes of this, Foley, who was quite drunk, stood up, spread his hands in a gesture of supplication and said, "Don't bother trying to pick something up on me. I'm an idiot."

Esfandiari folded.


The Mirage, September 1997
I had made trips to Las Vegas pretty regularly starting in mid-1996, visiting a woman I was dating there, and then going just to have fun and play poker. I had played some Omaha High-Low over the years, but was far from being even a respectable player - I still really had no idea what a good starting hand was. That may explain the following hand, which I'll charitably describe as "despicable."

Back in 1997, The Mirage was at the very center of poker in the US - that's where everyone played when they went to Las Vegas, and it's where all of the big boys played. There was a railed-off area in the corner with a few tables where there was always a 200-400 or higher game going.

I had been doing quite well in my consulting business, and was playing 10-20 to 20-40 limit hold 'em pretty regularly (also doing well). I had hoped to play at those limits, but the lists were 30 or more names deep for every game up to 80-160. Just as I was considering going elsewhere, I heard an announcement: "Seat open, 15-30 Omaha High Low." I (thought I) knew how to play that game. I called "lock it up," headed for the table and bought in for $1,000, which looked about right based on the rest of the stacks. The dealer informed me that the game had a 2/3 kill (meaning that the stakes went to 25-50 on the next hand if a player scooped the entire pot).

The game appeared to be driven by a few super-aggressive locals, who regularly raised and reraised. I didn't realize at the time that the rest of the seats were occupied by crazy, drunken marginal players who were there mostly to gamble it up and consume as many free drinks as possible. I blame them for what happened next.

I won a few hands in my first round, and was up to about $1,500 when this hand developed. I was in the big blind, and by the time the action came back to me, it was capped (four raises had already been put in). Someone had scooped the previous hand, so this was a kill pot, and all nine other players were involved. It was about to cost me $100 just to see the flop, but it was clear that everyone was calling all bets, so the pot would be $1,250, offering me a very nice price. I called with 7d 7h 8d 8h, a hand that any sane Omaha High Low player would toss in the muck for a single raise, although I think I could still defend my play to this point.

The flop came a very interesting 9h 9d Td. I had flopped an open-ended straight flush draw. The small blind and I checked, someone bet, and by the time the action was back on me it had been capped once again - and everyone was still in. It was going to cost me $125, but there was now $2,500 in the pot, meaning that I was getting 20:1 odds to make my draw. I was a 22:1 underdog to make a straight flush on the next card, so I wasn't exactly getting the right price to make the call, but I rationalized a few reasons for doing so: (1) I'd get some considerable action if I did hit my hand, and (2) I really, really wanted to play. There's also the fact that I was pot-blind at the absurd size of the pot. The game was played with $5 chips, and there was already the equivalent of five full racks of chips in the pot. I called.

The turn was the somewhat surprising Th. I now had two straight flush draws. The action went pretty much the same way, although when it was my turn to act, there were only four players remaining besides me. There was now about $3,500 in the pot and it would cost me $250 to call. I was an 11:1 dog, but the pot was laying me 14:1, and besides, holy shit, there was a lot of money in the pot. I called.

The river was the incredibly beautiful 6d, giving me the nut straight flush. I bet, and almost immediately the guy to my left, who had his chips stacked in gigantic towers of at least 50 chips each, knocked most of them over. Someone jokingly said that it seemed like an awfully big raise. He did, in fact, raise, as did the next guy. I dutifully put in the fourth bet, and now, for the first time, both of the other players just called. I proudly tabled my hand and said "Straight flush."

I wish I had words to describe the next few seconds. The table, previously raucous, went deadly silent. The chip tower guy to my left didn't move a muscle, but I saw his jaw drop a little. The guy to his left said, "Don't say a word. I have you beat, too." 

Chip tower guy said, "Oh yeah? Can you beat quad nines. douchebag?" and tabled 99xx for flopped quads.

The guy to his left didn't say anything, but quietly showed pocket tens for a flopped full house and one-outer quads on the turn.

The dealer shoved me the pot, but "shoved" doesn't really describe it. By this time, the pot had swelled to nearly $5,000, ten racks of red chips. I pushed a stack, $100, to the dealer. As I did, the player to my right, who had been in the small blind, said, "You had less outs than you think." He then told me that he had folded Jd Qd - he had also flopped a straight flush draw, but I had one of his cards and he had one of mine.

OK, it was ugly. I'll still take it.


Four Queens, May 2004
Pai Gow has long been one of my favorite casino table games. It's an easy, fun game, and there is almost no amount of alcohol that can make you play badly - if you don't know what to do, you can just put your hand down face up and the dealer will tell you how the house plays it.

In case you don't know the game, here's a simple summary: you are dealt seven cards, and you split the cards into a five card poker hand and a two card poker hand. The two card hand is composed only of high cards and pairs (no straights, flushes, etc.). The only rule is that your five card hand must outrank your two card hand. To win, you must win both hands; to lose, you must lose both. The house wins ties, so if you lose one and tie one, you lose.

In most casinos, there is an additional bet you can make called the Fortune Bonus. If you make any hand higher than two pair, you are paid odds on the Fortune Bonus hand. The odds aren't very high for most hands, but there are some that pay nicely.

Sharon has never shared my affection for the game, but if she ever had any positive thoughts about Pai Gow, this hand cured her. We were in the middle of the World Series of Poker, and had decided to take a night and have dinner and some fun. We went to Hugo's Cellar for dinner, our favorite restaurant in Las Vegas to this day. We had a few bottles of wine with some friends, and a few drinks, and decided to play Pai Gow.

On one of our first hands, Sharon was dealt a hand that I have only seen once before - quads and a pair of Aces. The complete hand was 9999AAK. This hand is an absolute monster in Pai Gow - being dealt quads is rare enough, but being dealt the best possible 'front' (two card) hand along with it is stunning. It's a no-lose hand...almost. There was a lot of chatter at the table about what an amazing hand it was. I have absolutely no recollection of my hand.

After everyone had a chance to admire the beauty of this stunning hand, the dealer turned over her cards. The 'window' card (the first one you see) was the Joker, which isn't good - it can be used as an Ace, or to complete any straight or flush. When she spread the rest of the cards, they were all red, and it took me a few seconds to work out what she had - in fact, it took her a few, as well. Not only were they all red, but they were all hearts, including an Ace. She didn't touch the cards for a minute as we all reordered them in our heads. 

Sharon was the first person at the table to work out what had happened. "You can't be fucking serious," she said. The dealer tentatively started rearranging the cards. The pit boss came over to watch as she moved the Ah and the joker to the top (front hand) and rearranged the rest of the hearts. At first, it just looked like an ugly tie for Sharon - Sharon won the back hand with quads over a flush, and the dealer won the front hand with AA vs AA. But as the dealer rearranged the back cards in order, we all realized what Sharon had seen immediately - the dealer had an even more shocking eight-high straight flush plus AA.

The worst part of this story: not all casinos had implemented the Fortune Bonus bet yet (almost all have now), and the Four Queens was one of the holdouts. Sharon lost the hand straight-up with one of the best hands you can be dealt in this game.

It was almost five years before Sharon played another hand of Pai Gow.

Odd stuff in poker and elsewhere

First, if you read this blog regularly you know that I have really been trying to get into the habit of posting at least weekly. In fact, I created a penalty for myself - anyone who catches me going more than a week gets to donate $100 of my money to the charity of their choice. This worked for quite a few months, and then the run-up to the World Series of Poker started. This has cost me $300 so far, and since it's likely to get worse as the WSOP goes on, I'm temporarily calling off the $100 penalty, so as not to have to go on food stamps before the summer ends.

As a further excuse for this past two weeks, I have played in 4 WSOP events - the Casino Emloyees $500 event, a $1,500 NLHE, the $1,500 Pot Limit Hold 'em and the Seniors event. The first two were a complete bust - I didn't make it to the dinner break in either. I felt only a tiny bit better about the $1,500 NLHE event because I had nearly freerolled into it - I won a seat on WSOP.com.

After that event, I had no intention of playing anything else other than the Seniors event, which I think is the best value at the WSOP if you're 50+. But then I won ANOTHER seat on WSOP.com into my very favorite game, Pot Limit Hold 'em. And not only did I go deep, but I made my first final table ever at the WSOP. I finished 6th for just under $29,000, which is good in any case but terrific for a $63 investment. The final table was the most fun I've ever had playing poker - if you watched the video stream, you probably noticed that I had my hand over my mouth most of the time. That was to hide the giant grin that was there throughout. I even had a terrific surprise - in addition to the 30 or so people railing me from the grandstands, Sharon surprised me and showed up, even though she had told me the night before that she wasn't coming (which was actually my suggestion). 

Less than 24 hours after that final table, I started the Seniors event. I went deep there, as well, finishing 160th for just under $3,000. I should have gone deeper, but that will wait for another day. My friend Dennis Phillips went VERY deep, finishing 5th for $154,000. And a very old friend from my Hollywood Park days, David Tran, also made the final table, finishing just behind Dennis in 6th. David and I were at the same table for most of Day 1, and I came very close to busting him, so I feel like I had some part in his outstanding finish - I way underbet a full house on the river, underestimating the strength of his hand. I had TT on a T5232 board, and it turned out that he had KK. My river bet was about 1/3 of the pot, and he later told me that he would have called off his whole stack.

And now on to the promised poker/gambling weirdness discussion.


Commerce Casino, February 2004
The poker boom was in full swing by the time the Commerce Casino's annual LA Poker Classic started in early February 2004. Two things were obvious at this point - (1) poker was huge and about to be much bigger, and (2) celebrities had discovered poker. 

On a typical day at the Commerce, the Bicycle Club, Hollywood Park and the Hustler, it wasn't unusual to see Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire, Norm Macdonald, Sam Simon (co-creator of "The Simpsons"), James Woods and a host of other celebs playing anywhere between very small and very big stakes. On this particular day, I was on the board waiting for a $5-10 No Limit Hold 'em game when they started a must-move game (a 'feeder' game for the established games - if they call you for the established game, you're forced to move). The game started short-handed - there were five of us, including Tobey Maguire.

I had played with Tobey before, and found him particularly thoughtful and conservative, given that the total amount of money on the table in this game was roughly 0.005% of his paycheck for his last movie. We had been playing for about 30 minutes when the following hand came up.

I was in the big blind, and Tobey was to my immediate left. He raised, everyone else folded and I looked down to find a hand nicknamed "presto" - pocket fives. I called and the flop came down just as I had hoped - Q85. I checked, he bet and I called. I checked the turn, hoping to get a check-raise in, and fortunately for me, he bet again. I put in a medium-sized raise, the same size raise I would make in any case (real hand or bluff). 

At this point, Tobey went into the tank for a very long time, so long that he apologized to the rest of the table for taking so long. I realized at this point that he had a real hand, either AA or KK, and was trying to work out whether i had flopped a set on him. After what had to be three or four minutes, eons at the poker table, he flipped up AA, folded and tapped the table (poker players' way of saying "nice hand").

Just to be clear here, the amount of my raise was something like $500, an amount of money that he might have set on fire without remembering he had done so. I was surprised and impressed.

Epilogue: Two years later, I formally met Tobey when Nolan Dalla and I were attempting to negotiate a deal to get him on Team PokerStars. After Nolan introduced us, he looked at me for a bit and said, "I know you. We've played together." I nodded, and mentioned that he had folded AA face up when I check-raised him.

His response: "I remember. You flopped a set on me."

MGM Grand, June 2006
The 2006 World Series of Poker was among the most surreal and absurd experiences of my life. The poker boom had gripped the US to the point where you couldn't really go anywhere without seeing it. The 7-11 around the corner from my house had an entire display dedicated just to chips and cards. My gas station sold WSOP shirts. And the World Poker Tour was everywhere.

We decided to be even more aggressive at PokerStars to make sure we had a stranglehold on WSOP entries. We had lost a bidding war for the WSOP felt to PartyPoker (another story), and needed our presence at the WSOP to be wide and deep. And it was - by the time the first hand was dealt, we had over 1,600 players in the event, about 18% of the field (see The Girl With the $16,000,000 Purse and other posts here for more details). 

All of this was managed by Sharon and a team of friends and family she brought to Las Vegas. The key people were Sharon's sister Marie, plus Shaena and Steve, two friends of ours who lived with us for the summer to help manage the massive amount of money and swag. Everyone was working 16-18 hours a day, and by the time early July rolled around, we all needed a break. Sharon suggested dinner and gambling somewhere away from the Rio, and we ended up at the MGM Grand.

I'm not sure exactly how we decided what to play, but we ended up at a Let It Ride table. By the time we got there, we were all pretty toasted, making lots of noise and generally disturbing the peace of everyone around us. I was playing much bigger at this game than I usually did - $25 a spot. 

Short explanation if you don't already know the game - the object of the game is to make at least a pair of tens. You aren't competing against the house or other players - if you make at least a pair of tens, you win. But if you make something bigger, you win more - up to a royal flush, which can pay as much as $100,000 when you're playing $25 a spot. You start with three cards, and have the option of removing one of your three $25 bets if you don't like your hand. The dealer exposes a card, then you can remove one more $25 bet if you want. The last $25 bet always stays.

On this hand, I started with a terrific hand for this game - TJQ, all diamonds. This is a perfect hand to 'let it ride' - that is, not to remove the first $25 bet. I did. The dealer then exposed the stunningly beautiful King of diamonds.

Summary: I now have a 1 in 48 chance to win about $100,000. The three $25 bets pay 1,000:1 for a royal flush, plus a bonus bet and a few other payoffs. But in addition, I also have a 1 in 48 chance to hit the 9 of diamonds for a straight flush (200:1 payoff), a 7 in 48 chance to make a flush (8:1 payoff), a 6 in 48 chance to make a straight (5:1) and a 12 in 48 chance to make a pair for even money. Total: 27 of the remaining 48 cards pay me something.

The dealer, who was a lot of fun and had been playing along with our obnoxious behavior, decided to have some fun himself. Instead of turning up the last card, he slipped the cut card under it and then turned it over, so the cut card completely obscured the final card. He then pulled it down ever so slowly. At first, I saw a red, pointy-tipped card - there are only 4 cards in the deck that look like that (red 4s and red Aces). As he pulled it down a little further, we all realized it was a red Ace.

Now there was some real excitement at the table. The last card could only be either the Ace of hearts (paying a paltry 5:1 plus a few bonuses, or around $600 total) or the Ace of diamonds, the monster card that would net me nearly $100,000. The dealer called a floorman over to watch - since he had done something that was not quite by the book, he didn't want to have the hand disqualified. He told the floorman what had happened and the floorman nodded, so all appeared to be OK.

The dealer then started slipping the cut card sideways. If you're a poker player, you know that you can distinguish a heart from a diamond with only a tiny speck of the card exposed - if there's a point, it's a diamond. He squeezed a millimeter at a time. No point. Another millimeter, still nothing. Finally, he exposed enough of the card that we could all see that it was, alas, the Ace of hearts and not diamonds. By this time a crowd had formed (this whole thing took quite a while), and everyone sighed their disappointment.

But the story's not over. The dealer then said, "Let's see where it was," and turned over and spread the deck. After a minute of looking, we all realized the same thing - there was no Ace of diamonds in the deck.

We all just sat there, looking, sure we had missed it. Finally I realized what had happened, and pointed to the discard tray. The game is dealt with a shuffler, which deals three cards at a time. But the game calls for only two cards to be dealt to the board, so the dealer discards one of them. The three cards in the board hand were A of hearts, A of diamonds and K of diamonds. It was that close.

The result was far from what we wanted, but it created a lasting moment of excitement.