Have been enjoying the new episodes of the WSOP on ESPN. Brings back the memories … and while tourney officials this year were extra careful about coloring up chips when they got into the big money in the main event, they didn’t make it easy on themselves. When selecting colors for chip denominations, they apparently did so with an old box of Crayolas, choosing off-orange (5k), flesh (25k), and semi-pale pink (50k) to all be on the table at the same time:

Oops.

Tourney Director’s Tip: For the sake of players, dealers, floor staff, and chip counters … limit the total number of chip colors in play at any one time to four (4), and make sure they come from at least three (3) different regions of the rainbow.

Poker must be the most boring activity in the world. Why else would the industry focus its cameras on the most ridiculous people?

We have spelling bees and Scrabble championships on TV and none of the competitors have little “charks” and make munching sounds then yell their name “HUMBERTO, HUMBERTO”. None of them spell a tough word and start making animal sounds while moving their bodies in hunchback dance moves. Could you imagine Humberto as a little kid competing in a spelling bee and yelling his name every time he spelled a word correctly, then getting out a little Power Ranger and acting like he is going to hit the little girl he is competing against?

We as poker players should want nice people with lots of money to come play with us. Do you think when Bill Gates sees Hevad Kahn doing his monkey noises and strange gyrations he says to himself, “boy I want to play with that guy? Maybe I could get that guy to represent Microsoft.” I’m guessing not; however, I guess that’s exactly what Pokerstars says. He is now a face on Pokerstars. Why would any company want to associate with these embarrassing people? Answer, they get a lot of exposure on TV. Michael Vick is getting a ton of exposure, I hear he likes gambling too, and he’s available for about 5-10 years.

Poker is reaching the lowest common denominator, and it’s a joke. I am really tired of people having to exhibit ridiculous behavior in order to get noticed in poker. There was actually a guy at a featured table at the main event who made balloon animals for the other players at the table. Are people really this desperate to get on TV? The answer is clear. Therefore, I have compiled a list of things that I’m willing to do at a featured table next year.

More…

One of the criticisms observations about young-punk online phenoms when they play live tourneys is that they don’t know how to compose themselves when not in front of a computer. Like they struggle when it comes to controlling their physical bodies. Of course plenty don’t really give a shit, either.

Check out this fun video of Hevad Khan gettin’ jiggy with, er, something:

Thanks, Shuttergypsy, for the link!

ALT HED: Automated Tell Machines?

New episode of Beyond the Table is up. Best poker podcast ever recorded on Day 2 of the 2007 WSOP main event — especially when Tom’s wife (shout out Julie!) gets on the air and screams at all things poker media. Click, and enjoy.

Four what, you ask? Since coming home from the WSOP I have had four of my worst live-action, cash poker sessions in a long time. All have been 40+ BB losses. Sure, I have had losses this big in the past…in fact I expect to have one every once in a while. You can play perfectly and they will happen. I never like them…and its not much fun having them come all within a 10-day stretch.

I came home from the WSOP with the plan of rebuilding the portion of my bankroll that was expended in tournament buy-ins over the past two months. I was counting on the super-juicy $40/$80 and $60/$120 limit hold ‘em and mixed games at CA (Casino Arizona) to do the trick. I’m not off to a good start. There is a $1,000 buy-in tournament at CA on August 18, limited to 450 players with a guaranteed $250,000 1st place prize. I am planning on winning, so that just might get me even for the series.

I have always kept perfect records of every session of casino poker I have ever played and whenever I have an especially brutal run, I have found comfort in being able to reflect on the bottom line. As long as I can boot up the spreadsheet and see black ink, I can remind myself that I am a winning player. Individual losses hurt, but it’s one long game.

One of poker’s top female pros, Susie Isaacs will be at the Lake Austin Spa to teach a Texas Hold’em Seminar. I’ve only sped past this spa in my earlier days of wakeboarding but it looks nice and I hear it’s amazing. For those of you or your partner that do the spa thing and have been wanting to learn poker this would be a great opportunity.

Suzie and I played on the same table in the 2007 WSOP ladies event. With so many new ladies to the game, I may have been one of the few to know she had won the ladies event back to back in 1996 and 1997.

From Ms. Poker’s site:

September 6-8 – Lake Austin Spa – I will be teaching a Texas Hold’em Seminar in Texas, Austin to be exact. A fun way to learn the game or improve your game. Packages include being totally pampered all day every day, great food, new friends, and spa treatments. In a word, terrific! Call 1-800-847-5637 for prices.

That’s right folks, there will be two episodes on ESPN tonight starting at 8pm Eastern. Tonight’s episodes will be airing the 2007 WSOP’s $3,000 no-limit hold ‘em (Event 28).

I won’t spoil the show by telling you who won but for those of you that need to know check out the results here from Pokernews.com. This episode should offer some good drama if you know what I mean.
More from the ESPN Poker Club here.

Check it out … Fresh Princess sits down with The Commish (he’s got a new post up on the official WSOP “blog,” btw) and tries to get the biggest suit in poker to loosen up his tie … only to find out he’s not wearing one! A sample of her tête-à-tête with Jeffrey Pollack:

ML: I liked the tent.
JP: You liked the tent. [Knowingly]
ML: I think it would be best for satellites or cash games where people are not there for long and or have the option to get up.
JP: [nodding in agreement] we may do that. Or maybe we’ll have some other temporary structure, a log cabin, I don’t know, an igloo.
[...]
ML: “Games, Girls and Gear,” will the Gaming Life Expo keep this name for next year and if so could we have some male strippers for the ladies…possibly, some of the Chippendale dancers?
JP: If the GLE comes back next year I suspect it would just be “Games and Gear” based on this year’s experience. Some elements of that show were not The Rio’s prouder moments.
[...]
ML: So no more strippers?
JP: No, they won’t be back.
ML: No Chippendales? [Disappointed]
JP: No. Not my style…not my….No.

Good stuff! (Except for maybe the no more strippers part, depending who asks.) Click here to read the full interview.

Mark Cuban has long contended that YouTube is going to run into all sorts of copyright problems, akin to Napster. I hope not, because I love being able to embed YouTube vids and watch them on whatever site I happen to be visiting at the time. But I recently ran across this new-ish site — PokerTube.com — and based on the bulk of their content that provides no benefit to ESPN … I have a hard time seeing how this sorta thing is legal:

NOTE: There seems to be some trouble embedding from Pokertube. Not sure if this is a technical guffaw or related to what we are talking about here.

Don’t get me wrong … I philosophically think it should be legal, or at least appreciate the viewing ease embeddable players provide. But beyond brand recognition, I’m not sure ESPN will see enough value in this form of distribution to stand idly by. I mean heck, what’s to stop a site like, say, Pokerati, from becoming the unofficial home of 12-minute clips of the WSOP, and then profit off the fruits of ESPN’s labor? But PokerTube is based out of Sweden, so how ESPN would be able to enforce their copyright remains to be seen. Interesting international internet economics issues for the 21st century, to be sure.

One short-term solution, of course, would be for ESPN (and any others who have copyrighted video content they are looking to protect) to embrace the embedding — the always cheaper “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” concept — and offer up virtually the same stuff on their own site. They could get the benefit of brand exposure if they made their own RawVegas-style player … and figure out the best way to include their own commercials, which may or may not be different from what airs on TV. So long as they made it easiest for other sites to find (and embed), then there would be no need for internet traffic middlemen to go elsewhere for that content … and they would therefore maintain control of a hypermajority of all the viewings out there.

UPDATE:Click here to watch the episode of the WSOP I was trying to embed, on which Tom makes his first appearance.

And click here to see a really cool interview of Phil Hellmuth auditioning for a role on European TV as a caped Superhero/villain … which would look cooler and get more viewings if folks could watch it right here, instead of one page away.

PokerNews finally has their Jerry Yang post-victory interview up on YouTube, thereby viewable by the click-lazy masses page-load averse. Good stuff, good guy, and praying to the porcelain god(s)? Check it out, for either the first time or second:

LAS VEGAS–Funny how being in Las Vegas has put me so out of touch with all the poker news. I think there are some big tournaments going on, online poker execs in the courts, business deals shaking down, but I’ve got little to report other than poker being played. Still, it’s been kinda interesting to see who you run into at the tables around this town:

The first notable I ran into was OREL HERSHEISER, who apparently just moved here to Las Vegas and sat to my left in a 1/2 NLH game at RED ROCK — fresh after being denied selection into the baseball HALL OF FAME. I tried to play the not-knowing-who-he-is thing — “You lost a vote? Were you running for city council or congress or something?” — but he would end up busting me out when I tried to run a little STOP-N-GO. As I pushed all-in, he asked, “How much money do you have?”

“Um, I’m all-in. About $140 more,” I said, pointing to my stacks.

“No, I mean other money. Because we can make a little side-bet away from the table,” he said, upon showing me THE NUTS.

Red Rock seems to be the OFF-STRIP place to be. On my second post-WSOP outing there, I ran into GARY THOMPSON — World Series of Poker media master and tournament overlord. He was wearing comfortable jeans, loafers, and a button-down shirt while playing 2/5 NLH. With about $800 in front of him, he said he was “down a couple hundred.” But it wouldn’t take long for him to grow his stacks, and a few hours later, he had moved up to the 5/10 game and had what looked to be about $2k.

On that same day, I saw A GUY I BUSTED at the Rio. He was a good player who went with the whole BLACK HOODIE and SUNGLASSES kinda thing, while saying almost nothing and acting with stoic (but angry) CHRIS FERGUSON-like motions. He was playing 1/2 NLH and nursing about $200.

Over at THE VENETIAN in the 2/5 game, I found myself up against a WSOP Dealer — SHAI the ISRAELI GUY. He was sick when I pushed all-in and convinced him to fold his top-pair-top-kicker that would turn into TOP BOAT … only to see the guy who took down the pot from me win with KING-HIGH. A couple hours later I was playing a goofy hand with K-6 offsuit in late position, the flop came K-7-K … he checks, I bet, he raises big, I call. Turn is a 6, he pushes all-in, I call … at which point he shows his POCKET 7s. The table cheers for a FOURTH SEVEN, but it doesn’t come and I send him to the ATM.

One table over, KARINA JETT’S MOTHER was playing — beyond her typical quiet game, she was practically falling asleep at the table (at 3 AM) while nursing about $400. She may not remember this, but she won a $15 PROP BET from me once over a RULES DISPUTE. (My bad … I thought I knew stuff.)

Back at RED ROCK a couple days later, I ran into ABRAHAM, and he really deserves his own post, because he tilted the table unlike anything I had ever seen — and even managed to invoke mockery from a cute young girl who wasn’t playing. Basically imagine the worst personality and poker characteristics of ME, TIM ROGERS and EON MARSHALL all wrapped up into an obnoxious kid who graduated from high school in 2003 and is well aware that he looks like STU UNGAR. Then give him a lot of chips. (His behavior and play was so table-altering it had me interrupting TOM SCHNEIDER’S vacation in ST. THOMAS for some emergency coaching … who advised me well until I played back without paying attention to a guy to my left who had pocket kings.)

I really wanted to KILL THIS KID, or at least make him cry. And so did everyone else — especially the old (presumably) gay man who he busted by calling a $260 raise pre-flop with 2-3 suited only to flop two threes. But he can’t be all that bad, because without provoking from me, he at one point shouted, “THE HAMMER!” with glee. Hey kid, if you are reading this, what I told you at the table after you “bluffed” me with pocket-5s and then taunted (it took me a good five minutes to lay down Ace-high) still applies: “I look forward to seeing you get your education.” Punk-ass. Like seriously, you had at least two of us at the table contemplating how one might go about rolling you in the parking lot.

One of the cool things about Red Rock is that when you need to shake off a bad beat or just step away from a dipshit the table to refocus, you can go BOWL A GAME 24 hours a day — for $3 +$3.50 for shoes. That seems like positive EV.

The picture above is from a day I didn’t actually play poker … but I did walk through the poker room just for funsies after bowling, and whom should I run into but NOLAN DALLA, longtime Dallas poker expat and WSOP media guru, legendary sports handicapper, and Stu Ungar biographer. He was wearing CARGO SHORTS, a frumpled shirt, and seemed pleasantly drinky while playing 5/10 NLH with a couple old friends from POKERSTARS.

“I’m stuck $800 but having a great time!” he screamed upon embracing me with a BEAR HUG. “Isn’t this a great casino!?! Hey everybody, it’s Dan from Pokerati!”

Murmur?

“Oh, right …” Nolan said. “Didn’t mean to blow your cover.”

I also ran into STEVE HALL one night at Red Rock, too. He was playing PENNY VIDEO SLOTS. He had a big hit of some sort of crazy picture combinations that won him about $60.

And then to top it all off, I went to CAESAR’S PALACE with DON JONES (of Rounder Club fame), LEIGH & BRIAN from the Poker Atlas , DOCTOR STEVE, and former Absolute Poker marketing chick JEN TIDWELL to play in their 50-player-max $65 tourney. We all had 10 percent of each other, which proved irrelevant as our top player would bubble.

I was the first to bust out (of the tournament) and would take a seat playing some 2/5. Of all the poker tables in Las Vegas … what are the chances that DAN BALLENGER (aka HONG KONG SUE, father of SON OF SUE) would get seated at my table? It would take more than a full orbit before he realized he was sitting with a fellow BATFACE. He bought in for $500 and cashed out a couple hours later for a little less than that. HKS got most of those chips from me … calling a $100 bluff with second-pair-no-kicker (what was I THINKING!?!) … and then bluffing me out of a $400+ pot on the river, getting me to lay down aces. He mucked at the time, but told me as he left that he pushed all-in for his remaining $135 with an underpair. Wish I hadn’t asked, because it had me semi-tilting for a good 30 minutes or more. I know he was just trying to be nice, but still …

Then JASON from JACKIE’S (in Dallas) and “RICKY ZILEM” showed up. They were just walking through checking out the action. Fancy running into these guys here. Chris/Ricky, said, “I did what nobody does when they first land in Vegas and took a nap.”

Ah, indeed.

Small world. Good times.

LAS VEGAS–Just looking at a little more thorough analysis of all my gambly activity over the past two months — including what went down before I began formal experimentation — and it’s pretty interesting, if not accurate. The numbers below represent a total of 144 hours with something at stake … spread across 56 various sessions. Still not exactly adequate sample sizes — but the numbers do give me an idea about the tables where I may or may not want to be spending my time:

Total Amount Won or Lost / hours played

2/5 NLH +$5,819 / 74.5
NLH Tourneys +$1,550 / 15
1 to 1000 +$190 / na
1/3 NLH +$134 / 8.5
4/8 OHL +$108 / 3
Lime Tossing +$80 / 0.5
——————————————
Bowling -$10 / 2
Video Poker -$190 / 2.5
Paigow -$220 / 0.5
1/2 NLH -$1,481 / 24
Blackjack -$2,169 / 13

Hourly Rate*

Lime Tossing: $160
NLH Tourneys: $103.67
2/5 NLH: $78.10
4/8 OHL: $36
1/3 NLH: $15.76
——————————————
Bowling: -$5
1/2 NLH: -$61.71
Video Poker: -$76
Blackjack: -$166.85
Paigow: -$440

*hourly rate not calculated for 1-to-1000, because everyone’s gotta eat/drink

Some other interesting related stats … based on 13 sessions, a typical 2/5 sitting nets me $448 … while 1/2, based on eight sessions, costs me about $185 each time I play. (I suspect most Dallas players can confirm this is in line with my their expectations every time I show up at a game.)

Blackjack … wow, might I actually remove this long-beloved pastime from my arsenal, considering I lose roughly $217 every time I get the itch to double down?

Clearly the moral of this story is that I need to be tossing more limes.

LAS VEGAS–This post woulda been much more timely and sensible had it appeared a week ago, but hey, sometimes what happens in Vegas takes a little while before it becomes public. Anyhow, the last day of the World Series is the point where all unofficial media outlets have to take a back seat in terms of coverage. Understandable considering that, for the first time in nearly seven weeks, all eyes are focussed on a single table … and it just won’t be possible for all interested parties to sit ringside until Brobdingnagian dominance forces Harrah’s to make structural changes to the TV stage.

So that left most of us doing what you were doing … following some rather exciting coverage of a relatively unexciting, straightforward final table on PokerNews while listening to play-by-play on Bluff Radio (which was being piped into the media room) while watching live-camera coverage on a flat-screen monitor.

The media room, anytime there was an all-in and a call. CardPlayer decides not to run with the hedline: ESPN blogger violates Rio chair-standing policy

Actually, large-scale LCD screens were sprinkled throughout the hallways and the Amazon itself, so we could watch the overhead cam pretty much anywhere we went. We just couldn’t camp out for more than a few minutes near the real action. But that was fine by me, because we’ll all get to see The Jerry Yang Show soon enough on TV, and the World Series really is about so much more than just poker. As it turned out, there was lots of fun stuff going on away from the table that provided a little insight into how the poker industry really works …

More…

Some of you say that you want to get a breakdown of what Harrah’s takes out of the pot and how much the dealers make. It’s none of your business. Some of you have done some horrendous math which indicates that dealers for the main event only made $10.15 per hour, hogwash. Hey, I’ve never used that word before. That was fun. How can you divide the total tip by 700 people working 11 days? I didn’t notice 700 dealers at the final table.

Do you know how much the person at the Gap makes when you go in to buy your plaid shorts? Do you know how much the guy makes that is changing the oil in your Yugo? How much does the Slot Manager at Caesar’s Palace make? Who cares about any of this, and who cares how much dealers make except for dealers and the people hiring them?

What should a dealer make? I say pay them whatever they need to be paid to attract reasonably talented people. The answer I’m guessing is probably somewhere between $20 and $35 per hour. For a full time employee, that’s an annual salary between $41,600 and $72,800.

Excepting errors, does the dealer have anything to do with me winning or losing a tournament? If you say yes, start collecting stamps not playing poker. Since the answer is no, why should I tip them? Do I want them to make a good wage? Of course I do. So here’s the plan. In this plan I will use the WSOP as the example:

More…

The following question was posed on 2+2 and I really liked it. “Who Should Be the Player of the Year”? Here are the five that they proposed as possible candidates. For those of you that don’t know, I won; however I’m not saying that I should have and I’m not asking for your support; however, I think the debate is interesting. Here are the results for each of the players that they listed including total cash won, finishing position, number of entrants and event. If there are others that are worthy of consideration, please review their results for the assignment that I am going to give you.

Tom Schneider ($416,829):
Event 5: 1st/327 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better
Event 16: 4th/382 H.O.R.S.E.
Event 46: 1st/668 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better

Jeff Lisandro ($457,309):
Event 7: 13/145 Pot Limit Omaha W/Rebuys
Event 13: 2nd/398 World Championship Pot Limit Hold’em
Event 32: 1st/213 Seven Card Stud
Event 40: 18/620 Mixed Hold’em limit/no-limit
Event 46: 62/668 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better

Robert Mizrachi ($861,138)
Event 5: 26/327 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better
Event 9: 40/690 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better
Event 16: 6th/382 H.O.R.S.E.
Event 26: 5th/192 H.O.R.S.E.
Event 50: 1st/314 World Championship Pot-Limit Omaha

Phil Hellmuth ($738,724)
Event 10: 104/1,531 No-Limit Hold’em
Event 15: 1st/2,628 No-Limit Hold’em
Event 28: 6th/827 No-Limit Hold’em
Event 34: 25th/296 Limit Hold’em
Event 45: 31st/728 No-Limit Hold’em / Six Handed
Event 52: 95/1,048 No Limit Holdem w/ rebuys

Freddy Deeb ($2,291,489)
Event 4: 45/481 Pot Limit Hold’em
Event 30: 27/847 No-Limit Hold’em / Six Handed
Event 39: 1st/148 World Championship H.O.R.S.E.

More…