Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to poker Mr. Dwight Hiward — someone with the clever foresight to have been named after what would become a plausibly convenient typo for a popular basketball player’s name. A couple clicks reveal @pokerati’s new follower is way into poker. And hey, if his actual tweets turn out to be some new style of poker metaphor, gotta say … a little rough, but I think I like where you’re going with that, kid!
The Internet never forgets … at least if you leave your abandoned Twitter account alive and public. Thanks to that decision from former Full Tilt Poker muckity-muck Howard Lederer, we were able to comb through his tweets from the past to bring you these nuggets that are vastly more entertaining now in light of Full Tilt’s purported foibles.
Twitter is an ideal communication tool for poker players. The sleek interface makes it perfect for mobile devices at the table and the 140 character limit works well for tournament updates. When major poker events like the WSOP come around though, many casual followers get frustrated by the constant tournament updates cluttering their timeline.
Daniel Negreanu came up with a clever solution to this problem by using the @mention function as a filter. If you wanted to see his updates, in addition to his main @realkidpoker account, you also had to follow @dnchips. Whenever he sent out a tournament tweet he would start it with “@dnchips” and these tweets would only be seen by followers of both accounts.
This was a solid innovation and one that has allowed twitter users with non-poker followers to effectively compartmentalize their tournament reports. The idea has gained traction over the last year with many poker players adding a second account to separate their updates. This solution works well if you only want to follow a few players, but if you want to follow a large group of players things become more complicated.
With so many players making these new accounts it’s getting harder to keep up with them. When I want to follow a new player at an event, not only do I have to dig up their twitter account, then I have to find their chip account as well. This isn’t terrible for one player, but doing it ten times is annoying.
Check it out, blast from the past … just 2.5 years ago today, only some 30 months ago, Kevmath was reporting on this newfangled medium emerging in poker called “Twitter”. It was a global chip-count texting machine, this Twitter, and it was catching on way bigger than our version here at Pokerati (called CSR, Citizen Stack Reporter, ahead of its time, obv since abandoned).
I’d say in some ways yes … but in other ways no, it’s just changed how many do their jobs. But Twitter’s still got a ways to go before the #hashtag officially usurps the adjective, and I still haven’t seen the concept really work for anyone who’s tried to possess it … so there’s gotta be a reason @KevMath has more Klout than the rest of us.
The 2011 WSOP wouldn’t be the 2011 WSOP without chatter about Full Tilt. And here, on the last day, Howard Lederer makes another appearance in Las Vegas, apparently at another Asian restaurant. But this time it was none other than Todd Brunson who had the unexpected run-in with the once-proud father-figure of Full Tilt Poker.
And Brunson reports — via the often unreliable Twitter — that he got paid his Full Tilt balance of about $150k … in a way that suggests Lederer is either going door-to-door making payouts (perhaps tidying up affairs before he has to “go away”?) or possibly just living out of his car …
Either way, the stress seems to be doing Lederer right, physically at least, as the previous poster boy for the well-fed high-stakes “poker body” seems to have shed a few (dozen?) pounds around the saddle.
Persona non grata: You mean you haven’t been paid yet? Have you submitted your W-9?
And while it would be nice if someone really did get their Full Tilt balance refunded … it can’t be an ideal structure for payouts when they’re happening out of the trunk of a car, even if it is a $250k Audi.
Doyle said to have been buying up Full Tilt dollars at a discount
Meanwhile, since we’re relying on Twitter here … this seems as good a time to pass on a “rumor” that I feel confident enough about the source — someone inside Bobby’s Room — that it might reveal why Brunson’s father, Doyle, has been extra sour on poker as of late.
Supposedly, a few weeks ago, Doyle was playing in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio, and he was tweeting about his slaughter of Billy Baxter. Soon, talk shifted (off-Twitter) to Full Tilt’s money problems. Brunson reportedly said he was confident they intended to pay, and believed they eventually would … and with that began buying up Full Tilt accounts for about 60 cents on the dollar. Can’t confirm the exact amount he purchased … but the kinda money that people playing in the highest-stakes cash game in Vegas might have on Full Tilt Poker.
The next day, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission suspended Full Tilt’s license, effectively shutting the site down indefinitely.
We have few rules here at Pokerati, just possible guidelines. But with that, the few that we do have tend to be important, and one I’ve told contributors before: Twitter is not a primary source. You’d think I woulda listened to my own advice and known better than to report something that came from a single source on Twitter, even if it was from a verified account. But it was Doyle! @TexDolly! Aren’t we supposed to believe everything most of what he says?
Well apparently the Grand Ole Man of Poker has had a change of heart. Not a medical transplant mind you, and frankly, based on his latest tweet, not even a change of heart about playing per se … but he does report his own change of mind, saying he’ll be there, in the 2011 WSOP main event … he just won’t be happy about it. And he did use the word “official”, too.
No tweets on who’s putting him in and what kinda “good for poker” guilt trip anybody or corporate entity may or may not have put on him.
Barack Obama was taking questions from the masses today in 140 characters or less. It really is a rather unique evolution in political communication. It’s not too different from standing on a soapbox back in the day … except here the crowd is millions strong, and – bo has enabled his @replies.
The PPA rallied the troops to make sure that of the millionstens of thousands of people jumping up and raising their hands with a question, at least one that got heard was about online poker:
Don’t forget today at 2PM EDT, President Obama will be hosting a Twitter town hall and answering questions tweeted to him. Please take a moment to use Twitter to submit a question asking the President if he supports licensing and regulating online poker by clicking here. To follow the Town Hall as it happens, please click here.
Let’s make our voices heard. Tweet your question to President Obama now!
Proud to play,
Drew Lesofski
Director, Grassroots and External Affairs
I sent mine in. No answer … but we’ll see if @BarackObama maybe includes @Pokerati in his next #FollowFriday.
Something in the Pokerati Twitter feed made me pause earlier today … huh … who woulda thought we’d ever see the day where a Full Tilt Mini Series of Poker PLO Event would be hyped with just a $10k guarantee?
Mini Series of Poker Event 31 starts at 15:20 ET. $30+$3 Pot Limit Omaha. $10,000 guaranteed. – http://ow.ly/5e5mF – 3 hours ago
Whether or not they crush the guarantee or there’s an overlay doesn’t really matter. But it does reveal something about Full Tilt’s confidence level, and imho shows a once-powerful entity crippled, having lost a few previous zeroes.
Just as a quick heads-up, there will be a LOT of twittering between Dan and myself today. If you dont know the accounts by now, be sure to follow @Pokerati and @Mark_Gahagan for up to the minute updates from the Pokerati crew.
Stuart Hoegner is quickly becoming something akin to the Joe Navarro of online-centric, international casino and gambling law. Though I’m sure @GamingCounsel on Twitter would never claim to be anything close to an @Kevmath for poker-related legal and legislative matters, this independent barrister and solicitor (they say things funny in Canadian) has in due process become a go-to voice of info about the latest legal and political shifts affecting 10s of millions of people in our multibillion-dollar industry.
While in town a few weeks ago, he sat for an episode of Jon Friedberg’s UTG, where they tackled some challenging questions for the Poker Industry as a whole in these undeniably tumultuous legal times — for anything connected to online gambling:
Ahh, remember how cute it was when Poker’s primary response to any insinuation of illegality was simply: “Whatever, game-a-skill.”
GamingCounsel has also become a regular guest on a podcast called CEM Audio Edge (Casino Enterprises Management), where he has broken down in great detail for CEMers matters of Canadian gaming code as well as effective use of Twitter:
Speaking of laws and Twitter, while we’re at it here are some quick story-worthy links — all ganked highlighted from @GamingCounsel’s feed:
With the £10,000 + 350 Main Event scheduled to start at 12pm London time Thursday, the final prelim event, £10,000 + 350 High Roller No-Limit Holdem Heads-Up will come to its conclusion at 3pm. Four players remain with the two winners playing a best-of-three final shortly after both matches are completed.
Gus Hansen v Andrew Feldman
Jim Collopy v Ram Vaswani
For results from day 2, check out PokerNews or WSOP.com.
Elsewhere …
WPT Borgata Poker Open – 10 players, including Dwyte Pilgrim and Lee Childs, remain as they play down to the TV final table. Defending champion Olivier Busquet finishes 25th, Mike Sexton finishes 20th. WPT Live Updates
UPDATE: Here’s the final table, starting at 4pm ET Thursday:
PokerStars LAPT Grande Final – Rosario, Argentina :: Final stop of season 3 features a $5,000 Main Event. Can Jose “Nacho” Barbero win his 3rd LAPT event this season? PokerNews and the PokerStars Blog provide updates throughout the tournament.
November Niner Matt Jarvis tweeted over the weekend that Sorel Mizzi would coach him in preparation for the WSOP ME final table.
Love a good Twitter fight … but sometimes social media can hurt!
Was gettin’ all geared up for an exciting #FollowFriday when I got this reminder of how much things have changed. Alas …
But hey, I’ll always have this bit of inspiration — recorded during the 2006 WPBT Winter Classic, shortly after passage of the UIGEA … a time when Twitter hardly existed and I believed, along with Phil Hellmuth, that poker’s future was in ringtones:
The Main Event will resume around 8:30pm with 42 players remaining, playing down to 27. The chip leader is Cuong Nguyen, who won the biggest pot of the tournament so far off of Theo Jorgensen on the last hand before the break when his Kh-Jc outflopped Jorgensen’s Ac-3c when it came down Kc-5h-9c to take the lead with 19,520,000 in chips. Joseph “subiime” Cheong is 2nd with 14,000,000 in chips. Play resumes at 8:30 with the start of level 29 with the blinds at 50/100/10k, follow the updates over at wsop.com
Notables:
William Thorson – 12,290,000
John Racener – 9,275,000
Bryn Kenney – 7,400,000
Matt Affleck – 5,535,000
Adam Levy – 5,180,000
Scott Clements – 4,200,000
Michael Mizrachi – 3,655,000
Johnny Lodden – 3,495,000
David Baker – 2,960,000
Theo Jorgensen 2,300,000
Hasan Habib – 520,000
Notable Eliminations:
Jacobo Fernandez
Tony Dunst
Alexander Kostritsyn
Peter Jetten
David Benyamine
Eric Baldwin
Jean-Robert Bellande
A few quicklinks, as I clean off my desktop while getting ready for the pseudo-final stage of the 2010 WSOP, which got started pretty much earlier today …
Do we have to fear the WSOP-Media event becoming the next ladies event? Technically it’s discriminatory and demeaning to media. But for some reason far fewer protested when Michael Craig’s assistant Shauna took his seat to play her first ever poker event.
