The complete and total confusion, switcheroo, and just overall donkery of the Bush administration and this recockulous bailout plan continues. And lookie there, the market is tanking again as a result of all the back-and-forth....What a futher mucking shock! Six weeks ago, buying the troubled mortgage assets of our nation's financial institutions wasn't just an idea that was being kicked around by a few people. It was absolutely, positively, vital to keeping the U.S. out of the economic abyss. Now today: "Oh yeah, we changed our minds again!" Fucking fools. I wrote a month ago or so about the absolute, cold, hard fact that confusion and flim-flamming by market regulators and overseers creates panic and fear in the stock market. That wasn't an opinion then, and it still isn't an opinion now.

Facts are facts.

I am speechless. Yes, me. Totally and completely speechless. To think that this administration could still be getting markedly worse by the day, given the depths to which it has plunged already, is truly unthinkable.
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At 10 PM on a Monday night in Las Vegas, two players got together to play some heads up poker. One was from Russia, the other from Denmark. All of the players with big followings of family, friends and fans had been knocked out the day before. This heads up match was going to take place in the 3,000 seat Penn & Teller theatre, which had been a good venue for the nine player final table but was potentially going to be a big empty hall for the late night heads up match.

As the up-close-to-the-stage bleachers were being seated with the remaining friends and family and the ESPN crew got their establishing shots and the Harrah's officials prepared for their last introductions of the very long 2008 World Series.... as all of that preparation went on up on the stage.... Down on media row, I stood there talking with Dr. Pauly, Brad Willis, Michael Craig and Jen Newell. It was about ten minutes before the scheduled start of the Final, no really, Final Table. We all stood there looking up into the vast balconies of the theatre and we shook our collective heads at the sight of the thousands of poker fans who had come out.

I don't know what this says about poker in general or whether the November Nine was a success or not. All I can say is that on a late Monday evening in November, with only two players remaining to play for the World Series of Poker main event championship. There were and are enough poker fans in Las Vegas to fill the theatre and categorically settle all the cynical over/under bets on the crowd size. I don't know how this will all play on ESPN tonight, but at the Rio last night, it was a pretty good show with a great audience.

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In my never-ending attempt to exhibit my authority as a poker expert, I am back today with a review of a really disappointing poker book that I recently completed, although I also just finished a very interesting book that I enjoyed based on a recommendation from a poker blogger who knows the good books from the bad.

First, the bad: Daniel Negreanu's Power Holdem Strategy. This is another book, like Dan Harrington's cash game endeavors, that should be getting a lot of pub, and yet the fact that absolutely nobody ever mentions it or writes about it all as about as telling as the reviews could be on this thing. Negreanu obviously tried to model his tome off of the classic poker text Super/System by Dolye Brunson, in that the books are of very similar size and thickness, and they are set up with different chapters written by different authors covering a wide range of poker topics.

I will admit that I was really excited for this book, both generally, having watched Daniel's truly incredible prowess at hand reading on several televised poker events, and specifically after reading the introduction written by the book's publisher, Avery Cardoza, who obviously has an ongoing feud with 2+2 publishing. The intro begins by proclaiming that Power Holdem Strategy is the third msot influential book of all time in poker literature, starting with Super System (which was awesome, obviously), and then listing my boy Daniel Snyder's The Poker Tournament Formula II as the second, which got me excited because I figured this guy clearly knows his tournament poker books. The publisher goes on to explain that Negreanu's and his co-authors' focus on small ball and other aspects of poker not otherwise written too much about in the other popular literature will surely go on to make Power Holdem Strategy one of the lasting contributors and a book that will seriously change the game of poker forever.

There's just one problem: this book sucks. I mean, it really, seriously sucks. It begins with a chapter on beginner holdem tournament strategy by Evelyn Ng, a chapter which I strongly suggest you skip unless you have more or less never played a poker tournament before in your life, and even then I would skip it as the approach it espouses, Ng freely admits, is only for a beginner to use and not something effective if you have any real understanding of the game. Negreanu's good friend and awesome tournament poker player Erick Lindgren then contributes a chapter specifically on online poker, which should have been the best thing ever to a guy like me, but believe me when I say that chapter could not have been more useless. I mean, how many times am I going to read someone suggesting that you have to loosen up to get calls, and to make sure you're not distracted by other things when playing online? Sheesh. Paul Wasicka then writes about short-handed online holdem games, which is equally and totally worthless, completely devoid of a single idea worth dog-earing in my book as I often do with my poker texts. Todd Brunson then throws in an utterly worthless chapter on high-limit cash games that has no place in this book and offers next to no original advice, with famed foot-lover David Williams then chipping in with a book on loosening up your play, also not very helpful and really I imagine just included to fluff up the book and to provide a decent segue into Negreanu's chapter on small ball.

When it comes right down to it, Negreanu's chapter, although lengthy as far as number of pages involved, does not do much to help other players adopt his small ball strategy successfully. I mean, do we really need 250 pages to tell us to keep preflop raises small, see lots of flops with big-potential hands, make your play hard to read, and never to get it allin without the nuts, or dam close to the nuts? The bottom line is, if you can't read hands with the amazing accuracy that Negreanu can, then you need to be very, very careful playing this keep-the-pots-small strategy, and there is just no way Negreanu is going to be able to impart that incredible skill in this or any book. Negreanu's chapter is easily the best part of this book overall, and to someone who has only read the Super/System's and Harrington's of the world, Daniel does a good job of describing his general approach to the game in a way that is different from what most other well-known poker authors out there are advocating.

In all, though, less than half of this book was written by Negreanu himself, and the problem is that rest of the non-Daniel content is so worthless that it really cheapens the overall value of the book. If you have the misfortune of reading it all, I assure you you will be left with the feeling that Negreanu wrote all he could (or wanted to) about small ball poker, and then his publisher felt it was not big enough to sell in the amount and/or at the price they were seeking, so they went looking for some co-authors to pen some quick and dirty fluff to make the whole book seem longer and sell better. In all, Evelyn Ng's chapter I would give a flat-out 1 out of 5 to, and even Lindgren's online poker treatise -- and I'm a huge Erick Lindgren fan, don't get me wrong -- is generously worth a 2 rating out of 5. Wasicka's shorthanded chapter, as someone myself who plays mostly shorthanded games, is another 1 out of 5, containing basically no new ideas and not even holding a candle to other shorthanded holdem authors (Colin Moshman, for example). Brunon's high-limit cash chapter is no more than a 2 out of 5, and David Williams is definitely a 2 or a 2+, maybe a 3 if I'm feeling in a very generous mood, but surely no better than mediocre. Negreanu's piece is probably worthy of a 3 or 4 out of 5, but like I said, the overall feeling of the book is something akin to 2 stars, nothing more. And I really don't think you will come away from reading it with any more ability to play Daniel's style than you had before you picked the thing up to begin with.

If Negreanu had rushed this book out a couple of years ago when he was still really breaking on to the poker scene, Power Holdem Strategy would probably be a lot better receieved, at least his chapter on small ball. Nowadays, though, Daniel's small ball approach has been well documented and discussed in a number of different forums, and the simple fact is that the concepts behind how to play this strategy are not complex ones. Reading hands like Daniel does with such amazing accuracy, now that is complex, but he does nothing (and really cannot be expected to) more than other well-known poker authors in describing the process of reviewing a hand, playing it backwards and tryingt to intuit your opponent's holdings. As a result, you are left with a book that will be largely devoid of those dog-eared pages I mentioned above, and frankly one which, if you're like me, you will be looking forward to getting through so you can stick it way on top of your bookshelf where you know you will never get it down again. Stay away from Power Holdem Strategy, you won't miss it, trust me.

Tomorrow: the good poker book I read this month that can really help your game if you're not someone who regularly wins mtt's.
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One of our favorite statistics to follow at final tables is the comparison of how starting chip stacks compare to final finishing position. Here are the starting chip stacks for the November Nine. We will update the finishing positions as they occur.

#1 Dennis Phillips 26,295,000 3rd on hand #169
#2 Ivan Demidov 24,400,000 playing 2nd hand #274
#3 Scott Montgomery 19,690,000 5th on hand #119
#4 Peter Eastgate 18,375,000 playing Champion
#5 Ylon Schwartz 12,525,000 4th on hand #155
#6 Darus Suharto 12,520,000 6th Place on hand #105
#7 David Rheem 10,230,000 7th Place on hand #76
#8 Craig Marquis 10,210,000 9th Place on hand #52
#9 Kelly Kim 2,620,000 8th Place on hand #53

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Well the Eagles lost a tough one, 36-31 at home to the Giants on Sunday night on national television. But the real losers in the game were not the Eagles, but once again the referees, as well as one of the two key announcers on the Sunday night games. With the Eagles up 24-20 with 6 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter, Giants quarterback and reigning Superbowl MVP Eli Manning scrambled during a 3rd and 10 play further than he planned to before short-arming a first-down pass to inside the 5-yard line, but then he was called for being past the line of scrimmage when he threw the ball.

Here is the way NFL.com describes the play in question in their writeup of the game:

The Giants went ahead 27-24 two plays after a reversed call gave them a first down at the Eagles' 3. Manning's 17-yard pass to Kevin Boss on third-and-10 was initially ruled illegal because he appeared to release the ball from beyond the line of scrimmage. Replays showed Manning's back foot was behind the line, and Jacobs ran in from the 3 for the go-ahead score.

"I think the way the rule is written, it was worth taking a shot at it," said Manning, who urged Coughlin to challenge the call. "If you have one toe on the line of scrimmage, then it's a legal pass. I thought it was worth the risk."

The Eagles were surprised the play was overturned.

"I don't know what they were looking at," defensive tackle Mike Patterson said.

Here's the video. The offending play is at 2:38 of that video and you can see it for yourself, but there's just one problem: that is the edited-after-the-fact version of the video, where the NFL or NBC (not sure which, who really cares) had re-drawn the red line into the video, moving it back some number of inches such that Manning's back foot can be seen still on the red line when the ball left his hand.

Watching the game in real time as I assume many of you out there did since it was the nationally televised Sunday night game and featured two of the better teams in the NFL in a divisional battle in far and away the best division that football has to offer, it was downright comical, reminding me sadly qutie a bit of watching Joe Fuck and Tim ShitCarver calling the World Series, as I would constantly find myself wondering what the hell game those two baseball clowns could possibly be watching given the drivel coming out of their mouths through the speakers on my tv set. On Sunday night, at least three separate times, Al Michaels, normally just about the best sports announcer on tv as far as I'm concerned, played the replay of Manning's throw, each time freezing the frame with Manning's heel just barely touching a millimeter of the red line and the ball still in Manning's hand. Michaels would then say something like "And here is the ball, out of Eli Manning's hand, and you can see Manning's heel is still just ever so barely touching the red line."

Thankfully, co-host John Madden was having none of it. All three times Michaels tried to pull the wool over the viewers' eyes, Madden chimed in with "Well there's just one problem, Al. The ball is still in Manning's hands in that shot, and his heel is only barely on the line while he's still holding the ball." Three times Michaels showed the same view, commenting on how it proved the refs had made the correct call in overturning the on-the-field call of a penalty on Manning, a loss of down, and requiring the Giants to go for a roughly 41-yard field goal instead of the touchdown they easily scored a few players later after having 1st and Goal from the 3 yard line handed to them. And three times John Madden laughed at Michaels, explaining quite correctly how it is impossible to imagine the referees using that video as the "clear evidence" they need in order to overturn the call on the field in that spot.

The kicker came when the game came back from a commercial break following Brandon Jacobs' eventual touchdown despite triyng to fumble the ball to the Eagles for the fourth time on the night. Just after the break and before the kickoff, there was Michaels again, this time showing the same exact replay, only now you could more or less clearly see that Manning released the ball while not just his heel but the majority of his entire foot was in fact clearly touching the red line indicating the line of scrimmage. I'm looking at this and I'm like "WTF I just watched this replay, ran it back on my dvr four or five times, and this is not the same replay I've been looking at for the past five minutes?!" When John Madden weighs in with the exact same sentiment, this is when Michaels decides to fill in the viewers that actually, during the break NBC had reviewed the placement of the red line on the video, and had changed where they drew in the red line to indicate where the line of scrimmage "really" was.

To which John Madden, bless his bug dumb oafy heart, responds, "Oh well there's just one problem with this. This is the edited version where the red line has been changed to make the call look right. I wanna see the actual red line again!" or something to that effect.

Dumb F-bags. Don't waste your time trying to curry favor from the sport you are calling the games for by trying to obfuscate matters to make the refs look like they didn't blow a call that clearly had a significant impact on the outcome of a huge game between divisional rivials. If you can't think of anything non-idiotic to say, then how about you just shut your piehole and let the viewers see the replay for ourselves and make our own judgments. Don't put up a video that clearly shows the call could not concievably have been overturned, and claim that is clearly shows it should have been overturned. Don't say the ball was out of Eli Manning's hands, when clearly it is still in his hands in the video you're putting up. And please, most of all, do us all the service of not even bothering to show the edited version of the play after the fact, which NBC and the NFL both clearly have an interest in making the refs appear to have made the right call.

Bottom line: you need clear and convincing evidence to overturn a call in the NFL via instant replay, and there was no way no how that such overwhelming evidence existed in this case. You blew the call, you affected the outcome of the game, and it's only the 50 billionth time that has happened in the last few seasons, even with the help of instant replay to help make sure you blindass not-even-knowing-the-rules monkeys can get the shit right. But hey, the New York team won the game with the help of that bullshit, so everything's gonna be alright. Effing unreal.
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First, this was in the way on my way to the office today:

I’m not really sure how the guy managed to do it, but, from what I was told, he fell asleep at the wheel and managed to flip the car.  By the time this picture was taken, he was gone via ambulance, but I am told that he was fine and they were just checking him out to make sure nothing was wrong.  One of my co-workers said he was acting normal but just appeared to be in shock from it.  Apparently there was also someone at the bus stop right there who managed to avoid getting hit by a matter of feet — that must have been scary for her.  It’s just a reminder to never stand on the side of a busy Costa Rican road.

Also, in work-related news, I am just getting a site called Poker Terms off the ground. I’m working on it with a couple other guys and we’re basically going to put together a huge poker dictionary. We’ll be doing terms like “bet”, “check”, “call”, etc along with all of the poker forum lingo. Right now the content is only just getting started — I think we’ve put in the first round of As, Bs and a few random terms. When all is said and done, I expect the site to have over 1000 terms in it. This week, my tasks for Poker Terms are to shore up the admin system a bit, get the “Submit” page working and to get a bunch more terms added.

If you have any really obscure terms that you’d like us to add (don’t bother with the basic terms — we already have a list of them and they’ll be getting entered over the coming weeks), feel free to leave comments here for now. I will look into getting your terms added.

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Just saw the Episode (19 I think) of Poker After Dark’s season 4 and JEZUS FREAKING CHRIST Clonie Gowen looks so hot wearing those glasses. Her breasts look very very nice too in that lovely little white top she’s wearing…

I’m so looking forward to 4 hours of poker, hope Clonie doesn’t bust out first…

On the same note — if you want to see Clonie Gowen naked — check out that post and get your bid in!

PS. Pic is NOT clonie’s look in the show, the only pic i found with glasses though…

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Yes, it is finally here!

Just a few quick notes from inside and outside the Penn & Teller theatre at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

-the place is packed! there are literally hundreds of fans in line for the seats still available;
-final table players have brought large contingents of family and friends;
-the most impressive group has to be the white shirted St. Louis Cardinal red hat wearing Dennis Phillips gang, which easily numbers over 300;
-the press box at the top of the theatre is really a good place to watch the whole scene, but there are really no good media seats in the house, because the main stage is set up for ESPN and the limited audience allowed in the three bleacher sections set up beside it;
-early professional sightings: Phil Gordon, Evelyn Ng, Barry Greenstien, Jerry Yang, Hevad Khan (all the final table players from 2008 were invited to attend);
-the crowd is very noisy, they have even given out those annoying bang sticks, not to mention cow bells and fog horns; this will not be your usual final table.

Cards are in the air at 11:10 AM local time (PST). Read no more today, if you want Tuesday's telecast to be a surprise.

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The 2008 World Series of Poker Final Table is finally here. I want to go on record as repeating my first impressions of the delayed Main Event, I think and thought it as a bad idea. The promotion and hype of the "November Nine" never materialized. No one outside of poker knows this is about to happen and those in and around poker are not exactly enthused. Last Friday night at my regular home game, I gave the boys a short Main Event Final Table quiz.

1. When is the final table showing on ESPN?
2. When is the final table actually being played?
3. Name as many of the participants as you can.

Now my poker buddies read a blog or two; they damn well better read this one. They have been to major tournaments and know a fair amount about big circuit events. So they are average poker fans.

-All but one of the gang knew the ESPN show was this Tuesday.
-No one knew the Sunday-Monday actual play schedule.
-Several knew it was not being played Tuesday but when was anyone's guess.
-They did not know that live blogging was being allowed (so if you want Tuesday night to be a surprise, make this the last poker blog you read until then).
-As for the players? Dennis Phillips is chipleader; Chino Rheem is an L.A. pro; the Russian did good at WSOPE; and, er, umm...six other guys.

The final table begins Sunday morning at 10 AM local Las Vegas time. There will be a lot of live media present. They will continue play from where they stopped in July with the two hour levels and regular breaks until they are down to a heads up match.

The two remaining players start up again at 10 PM (yes that late!) on Monday night and play it out. The ESPN broadcast follows (nearly live) Tuesday evening.

Comments and complaints may be directed to whythehelldidtheydothis@harrahs.com

By the way, the staff of PokerBlog were surveyed and the results are:
Cranky Olde Coot - Against the delayed format.
Poker Shrink - For it and will be present at the final table.
Lindy Librarian - Wants to give it a chance.
Lenny - Will there be free food and booze?

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Poker is bad, especially if you’re playing on a poker machine in Allegheny County. According to the Allegheny County Police, they’ve seized 36 electronic poker machines from three businesses. The raid took place earlier this afternoon and police said they also seized several thousand dollars cash in the effort.

These electronic games allegedly allow players to actually play pokers using coins and a computer screens. That’s what the unsealed indictment against these business state anyways, we thought you could only play on the Internets…

As part of the investigation, they sent an undercover agent to play the games and see if he could get paid his winnings in cash. Apparently he was able to get payment so the gambling charges are now certain to stick in court. The operators of the businesses in question had no comment in the matter.

One challenge the courts may have however is that the original undercover office that conducted the investigation just announced that he’s going to now play online poker at Full Tilt full time now. According to the officer, “It’s more profitable than being a cop”.

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Now that the dust has cleared on the federal elections in the United States, what does the new political line-up in Washington D.C. mean for online poker?

First, the news is mostly good. The democrats will have increased majority is both houses of congress as well as President Obama in the white house. Democrats are generally more favorable to a regulation of online gaming as opposed to a prohibition. Additionally, almost no one wants to put excess regulatory burden on the financial system during the present economic crisis, which is exactly what the draconian provisions of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act attempted to do.

Second, the various congressional committees that dealt with the various potential regulations of the internet and commerce are all in the hands of committee chairmen, who favor online gaming. Also several of those committee will be gaining new members, who politically will be expected to follow the party line on more liberal and open internet gaming politics.

So, what to expect:

-unless the old administration acts before January 20th to get out policies and guidelines based on the two year old UIGEA; expect such rules to never see the light of day under the new administration.
-expect several bills to hit the new congress early in 2009 with slow but steady progress through the cumbersome approval process.
-breakthroughs in trade policy negotiation on online poker with both the European Union and other jurisdictions, like Antigua.

Will it happen soon? No.

Will it happen? Yes, definitely yes.

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Like most poker players, I took the opportunity last night to sweat the election results from the rail last night. Of particular interest (other than the obvious) to me in this election were the races involving “friends” of online poker such as Barney Frank and Ron Paul. It was a good night for Democrats but some Republicans won key spots as well with a few of them being pro-online poker types.

While we’re not sure where Obama stands on the subject, Barney Frank has been vocal about his efforts and support of online poker. He was instrumental in pushing HR 6870, the Payments Systems Protection Act through the House Financial Services Committee. The bill clarified language in the UIGEA regarding payment processors like Neteller and was a small victory for online poker players.

Other wins of interest involved Congressman Pete Sessions, who’s a Republican, believe it or not. Hailing from Texas, a big gambling state, Sessions introduced HR 6663, which tried to carve out an exemption for poker in the UIGEA. Ron Paul was also a big winner, mainly because he was unopposed in his bid for re-election but regardless; he’s a great friend to the online poker community and will hopefully continue to push forward on our behalf.

Overall, it’s clear that these politicians have bigger hurdles to clear before they’re able to tackle the online gambling bits. Here’s to keeping our collective fingers crossed that once they figure out to stimulate the economy and end the war, that we see a win on our behalf soon as well.

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I keep seeing scandal after scandal on poker forums.  And I’m not talking about Absolute Poker or UltimateBet.  I’m talking about all of the varying versions of cheating that are going on.  It bothers me on a few levels.  First, it bothers me that smart and professional online poker players are capable of such enormous lapses in judgment.  I know that everyone makes mistakes and that things happen, but some of the things that have happened lately are simply ridiculous.  Second, it bothers me that some people in the poker community treat all of the possible online poker transgressions as one broad category of “cheating” without any differentiation in terms of severity, punishment or effective harm.  In the same way that I believe a murderer should get a great punishment than someone who takes a t-shirt from Target, I feel that I should present my personal “Hierarchy of Cheating in Poker”.  This refers to online poker and it goes from least serious to most serious.  I am only including things that I can remember actually happening.

1. Playing on more than one account at the high stakes where it’s widely known who is playing on the account.  Examples include David Benyamine and Guy Laliberte.
2. Playing on a second account when people don’t know it’s you playing on the account and the opponents would probably not adjust for your play if they did know it was you.  Examples include the recent incident of Seal playing on “Soiled Deck” and winning a donkament.
3. Playing on a second account when people don’t know it’s you playing on the account and the opponents would adjust for your play if they did know it was you.  An example is what atimos did when he switched accounts.
4. Buying an account that is deep in a tournament when you didn’t play in the tournament.  Examples include the ActionJeff Sunday Million win on Dec 31st, 2006-Jan 1st, 2007.  Note that, at the time, PokerStars did not have a rule against such actions.
5. Buying an account that is deep in a tournament when you did play in the tournament.  An example is JJProdigy.
6. Intentionally entering multiple accounts in a large-field tournament such as the Sunday Million or WCOOP main event.  Examples include JJProdigy or ZeeJustin.
7. Intentionally entering multiple accounts in a small-field tournament such as the 0 rebuy.  I’m not sure of any examples of this, although I know that people suspected redsoxsox of doing this with his account and Opobi43.  I don’t know for sure that it happened.
8. Intentionally sitting multiple accounts at the same cash game table or SNG in order to collude.  I don’t know of people who’ve done this, but obviously it has happened.

Why do I always consider entering multiple accounts to be worse than buying accounts?  Well, I guess because I feel like the worst part of the whole multi-accounting thing is the potential that two of your accounts will end up at the same table.  And obviously the worst case scenario is two or more accounts being at the final table, which completely compromises the most important part of the tournament.  At the very least, with bought accounts, the accounts are simply stealing and deceiving (which albeit is very bad), but there is zero potential for collusion absent other circumstances.  At the end of the day, a non-colluding account buyer still has to play and win.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ve missed some things.  I also know I’m leaving off people who sell accounts or people who help banned players (ie, regarding what happened with JJProdigy’s associates on PokerStars).  But the whole point of this is that I’m really sick of seeing people who fall into #1 being lumped in with people in #5!  It’s absurd to say that Guy Laliberte is as deserving of being banned from online poker as someone like JJProdigy.  It just isn’t on the same level.  Similarly, what Seal did on Soiled Deck is not the same as someone sitting three accounts at a PLO cash table and taking everyone else’s money with zero effort.  It just is NOT the same and I can’t believe how irrational some people on forums are.  Is it cheating?  Sure it is, it’s against the rules.  Therefore it’s cheating.  But stealing a toothpick from your local CVS is a crime.  Rape and murder are also crimes.  Are those crimes equivalent?  Nope.  And the punishments for each crime reflect the seriousness of the offense.

In poker, just because someone pokes their toe over the line of cheating does not mean they should be banned for life from everything related to poker.  Let’s say you’re in a hotel room with your friend and he’s in a tournament and he runs into the bathroom because you guys just got Taco Bell.  Are you allowed to take over for a minute (or 20)?  What if you’re the best tournament player in the world and your friend is a n00b donk?  Does it matter if you play 1 hand or the next 100 and win the tournament?  Where is the line drawn?  These questions are very hard to answer and it’s even harder to deal with the actual situation in real life.  I’m a firm believer that there’s a long continuum of various levels of cheating in poker.  Some I don’t care about (if Guy Laliberte switches accounts every few months).  Some I do care about (people sitting multiple accounts at cash game tables).  So, please, I hope for everyone’s sake that this post can help some people to realize that all cheaters are not equal in the same way that all criminals are not equal.  Let’s treat them as such.

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Well, just like that we are already higher in U.S. unemployment than the peak unemployment of the 2001-2002 recession. The Labor Department announced on Friday morning an absolutely dismal report of not only 240,000 jobs lost in October -- surely the single worst month for the U.S. economy in more than 25 years -- but also downward revisions to the number of jobs lost in August and September in the U.S. Combined with the revisions which added an additional 250,000 jobs lost during the prior two months, this brings the total jobs lost in the U.S. economy during just calendar year 2008 to a sickening 1.2 million. 1.2 million jobs fewer today than on December 31, 2007. Just think about what that means to the economy in this country (and think about how many more middle class jobs will have to be cut by big business if corporations have their taxes hiked). Anyone out there reading this, if you think your job is "safe", odds are siginficantly great that you are deluding yourself. Lord knows my job is at risk, as is the job of just about every one of the what, 12 million people sitting in their offices within a couple miles of me right now in New York City.

Looking back at recent history as a guide, the U.S. unemployment rate, which today spiked unexpectedly strongly to 6.5%, peaked at 6.4% in 2001, and now sits at its highest rate since March 1994. Anybody wondering how bad U.S. unemployment can typically get in good times, in "normal" recessions, and in the bad recessions? Well, I'm your guy. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Here's the chart of historical unemployment rates, by percent of the measured workforce, which are reported monthly by Labor, going back to 1948. The vertical strips on the graph show the economic recessions superimposed on top of the unemployment rate chart below:



Now, as you can see from the chart above, using economists' generally-accepted definition of a recession as two consecutive quarters of shrinking U.S. GDP, there have been ten recessions that have occured since 1948, not counting the one the U.S. is currently in, which will be the 11th. Following are the peak unemployment rates, expressed as percentages, for each of those ten recessions:

1948-49: Oct 1949 7.1%.
1953-54: May 1954 5.9%
1957-58: Jul 1958 7.5%
1960-61: May 1961 7.1%
1969-70: Mar 1971 6.0%
1973-75: May 1975 9.0%
1980-80: Jul 1980 7.8%
1981-82: Dec 1982 10.8%
1990-91: Jun 1992 7.8%
2001-01: Jun 2003 6.3%

So, at 6.5%, we are already ahead of the peak unemployment rate in the brief and shallow recession following 9-11 in late 2001, although interestingly that peak did not occur until summer of 2003, well after the end of that particular recession. We are also ahead of the peak in the 1969-70 recession as well as the 1953-54 trough, both also regarded as relatively shallow recessions from a historical perspective. The Great Depression, not on these lists because the monthly unemployment figures were not officially measured and recorded until after World War II, is widely known to have featured the worst unemployment rates in U.S. history and is clearly the deepest, most sickening recession we have seen, with unemployment widely believed to have peaked just above 25% during 1933. But even with all the financial crisis business going on, there is no reason in my mind to believe we come anywhere remotely close to that level today. But this leaves a lot of room between 6.5% and 25% to try to figure where we land on the unemployment scale.

Assuming this is one of the more severe, deep recessions the U.S. experiences, as is widely believed and which I personally believe to likely be the case as well, we can look to the deeper recessions on the above list as a guideline to the likely landing point for U.S. unemployment. The two longest and deepest recessions in the U.S. measured by U.S. Gross Domestic Product since 1948 occurred in 1973-75 and 1981-82. This should not be surprising, as unemployment rates during those periods peaked at the highest points in the last 60 years as well during those two troughs, at 9.0% in May of 1975 and a whopping 10.8% in November and December of 1982. Those are hideous figures for sure, ones which would mean an increase in total unemployed persons in the U.S. by another 50% or so from current levels.

At this point in time, I can't (or don't want to) think of things getting quite that bad in the recession of 2008-2009. But in even the "normal" recessions -- the things I have written about here that happen with stark regularity as a natural effect of the economic cycles of capitalism -- unemployment has tended to peak somewhere north of 7%. That seems highly likely here. In fact, as this economic trough is likely to be more severe than your average recession, it seems logical to expect a higher than average number of unemployed Americans this time around. Looking at all those figures above, I think a final peak unemployment number of somewhere between 9 and 10% probably seems like a rational, reasonable expectation. As I mentioned, however, that is going to be a major mess for incoming President Barack Obama, as there are already 3.84 million Americans on long-term unemployment with the unemployment rate sitting at 6.1%. Raising that number to 5-6 million people out of work over the long term can only lead to hideosity for the national economy in the short term.

Which is why a story like this is so encouraging. Despite the stated goal of the left in this country to increase redistribution of wealth from the alleged "upper" class to the middle- and lower class, we are at least starting to see some senior Democrats acknowledging what I've been saying for a long time and was in fact calling for here just yesterday. Stimulating the economy needs to be Issue #1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the minds of the leadership of this country right now, and doing that certainly should not include tax hikes, not even on the richie riches of the world. Permanent tax cuts, on the other hand, now that's what I'm talkin about. Not because I want or need to have more money in my own pocket, but rather only because kick starting the economy is crucial for all the people of this country. Maybe Nancy Pelosi actually isn't the biggest fool of all time after all?
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Well, glad to see the stock markets are having a nice, rational reaction to the election of Barack Obama. I have too much going on for a proper post today, but I thought I would check in to note the situation in the market again this week. After a 320-point rally on the Dow on the day before the election, we are now down broadly close to 10% as of early Thursday afternoon over just the two days since the historic election. And from the levels we were at the day of the election -- Dow 9600 or so -- this is a pretty sick drop.

It's not just Obama, although ultimately, as I mentioned the other day, there is ample empirical historical data to show that the few economic policies he has admitted to espousing thus far are not friendly to economic recovery. But it's also the Congress, which, although stopping short of the Democratic supermajority of 60, still picked up seats in both houses, including more importantly an official majority of 54 senators vs. 44 Republicans and two independents. The combination of both an Obama president and a solidly Democratic Congress understandably has the markets spooked, as anyone with an understanding of history and a deep concern about the financial markets should be. And this is not to say that Obama's approach is therefore wrong, but just that we now have leadership across the board in this country that firmly and publicly believes that there are more important things in America right now than propping up the stock market and the economy at large. That's just the way it is.

I do think there is hope right now with the markets tumbling anew following the election. I am thinking, now that Obama has officially won, we have a window here -- in particular if stocks remain weak and low like they are currently -- for Obama to get talked into coming out publicly with a statement that now in fact is not the best time to be raising taxes. In my mind there is nothing wrong with a president having as a goal of his tenure to raise taxes on the rich and on businesses in an attempt to redistribute that income to those who need it, but also to recognize that there may be a better and a worse time to enact such a policy. In fact, that's what I would want any president to do, to be ready, willing and able to adjust his desired policies to the fact of the times.

If Obama would just come out and let the people of America, and the people of the world, know that he is not automatically going balls-out on raising taxes, this could help the stock market, the psyche of the people of this country, and therefore actually help the economy as a whole. It would be the right move and the right decision. And it would not be a bad sign that the man is backing down from his stated goals. It would be a good sign in my view, less because I think raising taxes is a bad idea right now, but more because for a change it would be nice to have a leader in this country who is not going to turn a blind eye to the problems going on and who is willing to be flexible where necessary in the best interests of the country.
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When the new more open U.S. government takes over next year, there is every belief that their national prohibitionist position on online gaming will at some point be reversed. Eventually the U.S. will regulate the online poker industry for U.S. players.

Let me suggest that this will make similar decisions in all parts of the world much more difficult. Let's take Sweden's Svenska Spel gaming monopoly for example. Despite EU pressure Svenska Spel and other national owned and operated gaming monopolies continue to both operate and exclude other online sites from operating within certain geographic boundaries.

There are advantages to government run sites. A uniform, non-English language is often used. Social and moral concerns are addressed within the strictures of a unique cultural set. And the government makes a lot of money on the rake.

But here comes the not too distant crisis of conscience and of pocket book. As far as online poker, the U.S. constitutes the largest revenue stream and dollar for dollar, euro for euro, lira for lira, peso for peso; the Americans gamble for more cash then any other nation on the net. This, of course, has to do with multiple factors of disposable income, as well as high speed internet penetration.

The problem? Do you want to keep these American gamblers out of your market, when they could substantially increase your revenue by inviting them in?

Well no, you say, bring them in to our website.

Here is the problem that all nations will face in the new unfolding open online marketplace. Countries, like the US, will ban your site, if you ban their sites. So Svenska Spel will have to let their citizens out, if they let others in. This will be a hard decision for some national gaming monopolies but the change in the U.S. law will also make the overall EU decision easier. The monster revenue potential of opening to the United States market will be just too much to ignore. What will break down trade barriers is not thoughtful regulation but the specter of lost profits.

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What a day in America.

Anyone looking for a measure of just how much the people despise what George W. Bush has done to this country, anyone wondering exactly how disappointed and let-down the American people feel, got their answer in a big way on Tuesday night in the form of Obama 349, McCain 161, and counting. It's pretty dam near a landslide.

Wanna know just how hated, how reviled our current President is? A black man (and eff this half-black stuff -- just look at the man, he is black!), a a 44-year-old black guy whose name rhymes with Osama and with somewhere between little and no experience whatsoever, a guy who the very people who voted for him actually know shockingly little about, a guy who openly plans to raise taxes on businesses and the rich in the midst of the greatest financial crisis in the world since the Great Depression, absolutely crushed in the U.S. election. 'Nuff said.

Barack. Hussein. Obama. Just repeat that name to yourself a few times. There's your next President. No, not of Kenya, and not of Saudi Arabia or Syria. Barack Hussein Obama is the next President of the United States of America.

What a condemnation of George W. Bush. I mean, what else can you possibly say about it? This was the people giving a major collective middle finger to the man who has led this country into the abyss by a web of lies, misinformation and just general stupidity and denial about the country's problems over the past eight years. It's not the first time the people have lashed out in the voting booths like this, of course. Look back to the 1970's, where republican Richard Nixon was caught in the Watergate scandal and forced to resign, embarrassing our country in front of the world while the American economy began its descent into one of its worst decades of the century. Sound familiar? The American people were so disgusted with that whole thing that, when the next elections rolled around in 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected President by a margin of close to 60 electoral votes, and the Democrats suddenly found themselves with 61 seats in the Senate and 292-143 in the House. Now that right there is what I call a supermajority.

The elections of 2008 will go down in the history books as a similar phenomenon. I mean, this is undeniably the closest America has come to electing a demagogue in any of our lifetimes. I don't pretend to know about the past history of guys who were elected 6o and 70 years ago or more, but the bottom line is, in modern U.S. history, we've never come out and elected a President with quite this balance of smooth talking and oratory on the one hand, combined with a general lack of understanding of his background, and a mix of actual policies that seem more or less incongruous with the situation the U.S. currently finds itself in on the other. And this doesn't mean that Obama won't do a fine job as President -- nobody knows that at this point -- but it is at least in my mind an unbelievable statement by the American people that they vote Obama in by this kind of margin given the circumstances surrounding him.

As I've written about here many times over the past month or two, this election was John McCain's to lose at some point in the fairly recent past, and lose it he sure did. The man tried his damnedest to run on a platform of change, of cutting the reckless and ridickulous overspending that has completely taken over Washington during the current administration, of ending the pork-barrelling and tacking on of bullshit provisions to unrelated bills, but when push came to shove, he showed the American people beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what he is really about, which is, sadly, an extension of the George Bush mantra of overspending and throwing pork around like it's his job. The day that McCain voted in favor of the 0 Wall Street bailout, he was finished. Then when he started talking about spending another 0 billion of taxpayer money on bailing out troubled mortgage owners, you might as well have piled the dirt on his grave. We've already had eight years of a schmuck who thinks throwing hundreds of billions of Americans' money haphazardly and thoughtlessly at our problems is the solution to everything, and despite what McCain's mouth said, his actions with respect to that pork-laden bailout bill, with its tax breaks for wooden arrow makers as well as 0 billion for corporations, told us all everything we needed to know. This country absolutely, positively needed a stark change from the current administration, and boy did we show it on Tuesday night.

So that's my take on the 2008 Presidential election -- it's a vote for change, more than anything else. And one thing I have heard about 85 times since last night, ranging from every talking head on tv to the President-elect himself, that I flat out do not agree with, is that this election is some kind of a victory for race relations in this country. I am not seeing that one. Obviously, the election of a black man as President is a hugely meaningful moment in the history of this country, and in the history of the world, and it shows how far we have come as a nation over the past 150 years, and even just the past 50 years. And that is undeniably a great thing. But any suggestion that the rampant racism that is still out there is somehow going to get better from the election of Barack Obama completely puzzles me. In my opinion and from talking to some of the people who oppose Obama's election, I think it will get worse.

Number one, this country is in dire straits right now economically. That's a fact, and it's going to get worse, probably much worse. Right now the unemployment rate stands at 6.1%, and by all accounts that figure is likely to raise significantly, perhaps as much as 50% higher than current levels, over the next couple of years as the Obama presidency begins. And that is going to be a very, very ugly development for millions of Americans, and for the millions of Americans who depend on those newly-unemployed people for the funds they need for food, for shelter, for life. Odds are several of you reading this right now, including the person writing this very post, will find yourselves out of a job over the next few years, and frankly, the few of Barack Obama's policies he has made us aware of are not going to be helpful to corporations and to small business at all in their attempts to survive and/or to stave off the effects of the siginicant recession facing the country right now. Now of course, when all this happens, the Obama machine will naturally repeatedly and consistently blame the previous administration for 100% of the problems the country experiences during his term in office (simultaneously taking 100% of the credit for all the good things, like any good politician), but the bottom line is that things in this country are likely to get a whole lot worse economically for a ton of people before they get better, and that is only going to fan the flames of racism that unfortunately still burn brightly in many parts of America.

More than that, though, looking at Obama's electoral victory this morning, I can't help but notice something in many of the states thought of as the key "swing states" that Obama ended up mostly winning on Tuesday, and it's something that can't in my view be termed as anything but anti race relations, not pro race relations. In most of these key swing states, Obama won the electoral votes for the state and won the popular vote by a decent margin, and yet when you look at the distribution of the votes in those states, the vast majority of counties and distrcits voted in favor of McCain, while it is the urban districts that voted en masse for Obama and carried him to victory. Let me show you what I mean.

Take a look for example at the key swing state of Pennsylvania map. Obama took this state overall with a pretty whopping 55-44 margin in the overall voting. But look at that electoral map. That small blue area in the southeast is Philadelphia and the surrounding areas, the smaller blue area in the northeast is Scranton / Allentown, and the little blue blip in the west is of course Pittsburgh. Basically, you had the working class, heavily-minority areas turning out huge numbers of voters and electing Barack Obama for the entire state, despite the fact that McCain won more than two-thirds of the districts in the state overall.

Now let's look at Iggy's home state of Ohio. This state went to Obama, 51-47. That's Cleveland in the northeast, Toledo in the northwest, Columbus in the middle and Cincinatti in the southwest. Basically everything else, again more than two-thirds of the state's districts, went to John McCain.

This here is Florida, a state that went to Obama by a 50-48 margin. Again, nearly three-quarters of the distrcits voting for McCain, and yet Tallahassee in the north, Tampa on the west side and of course the Miami area in the southeast carried the state overall for Obama.

Here is Indiana, another swing state often mentioned by the pollsters and talking heads. Obama ends up winning the state's 11 electoral votes, despite losing in nearly 80% of the state's districts. But Gary, Indiana in the north and Indianapolis in the middle were enough to carry the state and keep it blue.

Check out Missouri, which as of Wednesday morning is split 49-49 and still being tallied. Any doubt where St. Louis is on that map? That one is about 90% of districts voting for McCain, and still might end up going to Obama.

And for you Las Vegas lovers out there, here is Nevada's map. Obviously, that's Vegas there at the bottom, and capital Carson City and Reno there on the West and NW. There's five more electoral votes all going to Obama, despite winning less than 20% of the districts in that state.

Here's Maryland, with its 10 electoral votes. In case you're wondering, that blue strip starts right in Baltimore up there in the north, and makes a beeline straight to Washington, DC. Everything else solidly in the red.

Now don't misunderstand me here. I am not saying this is unfair, that Obama didn't "really" win the election, or anything that in any way cheapens Obama's victory here. This is the way elections have always been run, and just because this kind of split is more pronounced in the Obama election doesn't have anything to do with changing the fact that the electoral college system is based on overall state votes, it has been for over 230 years, and it's the best system we have, one which I support 100%. Obama won this election, and won it big time, and he did so fair and square by any possible measure. But, to call this election a victory for race relations in this country is to me stretching the truth qutie a bit. To me it seems that we are going to have tens of millions of voters in America, covering about 80% of the surface area of this country, who are staunchly against Obama, and who know beyond dispute that it was the urban areas that came out in force and en masse and voted Barack Obama into office. Personally, I don't see how this is going to be good for race relations at all in America.

One interesting thing I found while I was looking through that cool state-by-state electoral application on the foxnews site is that exactly one county among all of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut voted for John McCain. New England, once considered the home of the traditional, the Puritanical conservatives among the country, is long gone, replaced now as the greatest bastion of unfettered liberalism this country has to offer. Which is amazing in a way if you live there, because the people of the area -- Massachusetts especially, as I lived there for six years of my life not too long ago, were and continue to be the most provincial, most race-biased group I have ever lived among, to the point that after six years in Boston I could not wait to get the hell out of there and to a more accepting, open-minded city full of people more like me. But you can't find a McCain voter in Massachusetts anywhere, check it out for yourself.

So that's my take on the election. Personally, although I clearly have my doubts about Barack Obama's plans to deal with the economy and just in general the policies he plans to put in place since he's been so opaque about them in general during this election, I am excited -- make that thrilled, even -- for the idea of change coming to this country. What we have gone through with the current President is so redonkulous, especially during the past couple of years but really throughout the entire two terms, that I love seeing the people tell him and his entire party to fuck the hell off and regroup, and I love the thought of a completely new set of people coming in and taking over. A new President, a new Vice President, a new Secretary of State, a new Treasury Secretary, a new SEC chairman, all of that stuff sounds real fuckin good to me right now, and obviously to millions upon millions of other Americans as well. It is official -- George Bush has ruined not just his own legacy but the constitution of his entire political party right now, much as Richard Nixon did in 1974. The republicans will be back of course, but right now the people have spoken and their words are telling the Bush lovers to Get Lost, a chorus in which I willingly chime in.

And for those of you all worried about the Democratic fillbuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, don't worry, it does not look like the people were qutie ready for that yet, which IMO is a very good thing. Based on projections of the still-open races, it appears that the number of Senate Democrats will go from 49 to what right now looks like 56 versus 42 republicans, and in the House, the number of Democrats will increase from from 235 to what looks like 251, versus 173 republicans. Interestingly, these figures are far from what most conservatives viewed as the "nightmare scenario" of the fillibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate -- requiring at least 60 seats controlled by the Democrats -- as well as the more optimistic projections for the House, which had the Democrats picking up as many as 25 or 26 seats instead of the 16 they appear to have won. Still, much like in the mid-1970s, it is a great example of what a truly, sickeningly horrible president can do to an entire political party, and what he can do to the political mindset of an entire nation.

Starting in late January of 2009, this country will embark down a road of liberalism not seen in more than 30 years. It's going to be an interesting ride to say the least. Congratulations to Barack Hussein Obama (no matter how many times I say it , I just cannot get over that a guy with that name is going to be the President of the United States!) and to all those who supported his historic run for office this year.
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Those are good words.  I’m excited to see how Obama and the other Democrats handle their power in Washington.

I don’t usually inject politics, religion and other controversial subjects in my blog because it’s a situation where people have such strong opinions and very few people are willing to bend, so there’s really no point in even arguing about it.  It leads to nowhere except upsetting people.  That being said, here are the primary reasons that I’m happy a Republican (in this case, John McCain) is not going to be President for the next four years (yes, this is more about a dislike for Republicans than support for Obama):

1. Much moreso than Democrats (I know, Steve Beshear, etc), Republicans are enemies of online poker.  Without Republicans leading the way, the UIGEA would not have happened.  In addition, strong supporters of the Republican party (right-wing Christians) are some of the most anti-online gaming voters, so I obviously can’t support people who want to tell me how to live my private life for bullshit morality reasons.
2. I personally believe that George Bush was looking for reasons to invade Iraq, not ways to handle the situation peacefully.  The administration intentionally put Saddam Hussein in an impossible position and decided to invade based off of non-existent/sketchy intel that WMDs were present in Iraq.  And considering that WMDs exist in plenty of hostile countries, I’m not even sure that was a reason to invade.  The war is costing us thousands of lives, billions of dollars and it is making us look terrible in front of the entire world.  It’s an embarrassment.
3. For all of the tough talk on terrorism, the Bush administration failed to catch Osama bin Laden.  It’s absurd that a military that spends billions, has thousands of troops and the most advanced weaponry in the world cannot catch a single person over the course of, approximately, seven years.  It also makes the US look like a bunch of bumbling idiots.
4. I feel that the Bush administration is corrupt and has treated the US Treasury as their personal piggy bank over the course of their office.  Actions like giving out no-bid contracts to their buddies at Halliburton really make my blood boil.  It’s like the Bush administration felt like they were above the law.  Other examples of their extreme arrogance include scandals like the use of personal email servers to avoid the Presidential Records Act or even their treatment of unconvicted prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.  It’s absurd to me that they do things over and over that upset so many people, yet they always have an excuse or they manage to stonewall their way out of situation until people forget about it.  I basically feel like the Bush Administration was an online poker site — no accountability to anyone.
5. Republicans, for years, have claimed they are the party of small government.  Why then has spending increased dramatically under the Republicans even in the face of growing national debt?  I support a small government.  I don’t want some of the socialist-style government features that Obama supports.  But the Republicans don’t do what they say!  If they proved themselves to be capable of reducing spending and making government smaller, then I would be much more likely to support their party.
6. Obama seems to be much more tech-friendly.  I feel like he’ll do things to allow technology to improve our lives.  McCain barely knows how to turn on a computer.  Obama, on the other hand, made excellent use of Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone and many other platforms that didn’t even exist during the last Presidential Election (okay, fine, but Facebook was tiny compared to its size today).  I really hope he continues to make strides in those areas.
7. McCain treated the VP pick like a 100% strategy move instead of thinking at least partially about what might happen if his VP pick ever actually became President.  I know it’s a campaign and that VP picks are partially about strategy and poll boosts, but no one in their right mind can possibly say that Palin is equipped to become President on a moment’s notice starting on Jan 21st, 2009.  And that was a very real possibility.  I felt like his pick was a slap in the face and made me think that he didn’t really care about what might happen to the country if Palin became President.  That made me trust John McCain less.
8. All of the information that was revealed about the McCain campaign’s VP pick selection process made me not trust McCain’s judgment.  They made bad decision after bad decision.  Moves like the whole “suspending the campaign” thing to their obvious lack of research of Sarah Palin made me see John McCain as a stumbling and bumbling old guy.  Over the course of the campaign, Obama made so few mistakes and his whole operation just seemed like they were way better at making decisions.  I know that campaign strategy is different than foreign policy, but I guess I just feel like, if you had to pick between the two camps, Obama’s camp seemed significantly smarter.  I’d rather have smarter people in charge, for obvious reasons.  It didn’t help McCain that Bush’s administration was similarly retarded in a number of ways, so it seemed to me like we’d be re-electing the village idiots when we had some really smart people waiting to step in.

Anyway, I’m sure tons of people will disagree with me and/or find issue with my statements.  It’s politics.  These are just my personal feelings.  And, like I said, I hope Obama and Congress can deliver.  They certainly have the power to do so now.

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Wow! What a set of responses to my actual real life poker question yesterday. Guess maybe I should post a little more about poker, huh? I will see what I can do about that. I am definitely still very interested in the game, and I'm still reading and thinking and playing quite a bit, although the new job combined with the slowing economy definitely has me playing a bit less than I once was. Hopefully both of those factors will start evening out over time, but who knows. In the meantime, I do not think it's a bad thing for me to be writing about topics other than poker, as I do have a lot to say on many other topics, and my readership has surprised me by growing significantly over the past two months since the fall of Lehman Brothers and the historic global stock market crash. And most of all, I find that I have really enjoyed writing about these non-poker topics, which is the best part of all since, as I like to remind everyone from time to time, this is my blog after all. So you can expect more of both in the coming days and weeks as the beat rolls on here at hammerplayer.

OK so back to the hand analysis question I posed yesterday. Now let me begin my saying that like a good little lawyer I chose my words in yesterday's post very deliberately, in that the hand I described did not actually happen to me. But it is a real situation that I read about, and was somewhat shocked at the result. I know last week I had written about the frustrations I was having reading Dan Harrington's Cash Games books, and specifically that I was starting Volume II despite being disappointed in Volume I. Well, the hand from yesterday comes directly out of Harringon Cash Games, Volume II, pages 84-87. I basically reproduced everything more or less directly as described in the book, and posed the question to you all as to how you would handle rivering a set in that hand with a ton of preflop action.

To review, here is a recap of the hand I asked about in yesterday's post:

You're playing in a - no-limit holdem ring cash game, with all the stacks fairly large. The game can be classified as a fairly tough game with mostly good players, mostly fairly tight and aggressive types generally typical of a 5-10 game in my experience. UTG+1 limps for . UTG+2 also limps for . You are UTG+3 with 88, and you opt to raise 5x to . The button reraises to 0. The small blind calls the 0 cold. The first two limpers fold to the 0 double-raise. There is 0 in the pot and it is 0 to you to call with your pocket 8s. As the other two players both have larger stacks than yours (all more than 100 big blinds), you opt to call the reraise and do a little set mining.

The flop comes AQ5 rainbow. The big blind checks, you check given the Ace on board, and the button checks as well.

The turn is an offsuit King. Again the big blind checks. You check as well, knowing you must be behind with all that action before the flop. The button checks as well.

On the river falls an 8, giving you the rivered set. Now the big blind bets out for 0 into the 0 pot.

What do you do here?

So that's the question. The many comments to yesterday's post basically went right on along with my own thoughts on the hand. I figured the rivered 8s was probably ahead, but not definitely since the possibility of a set of Queens, Kings or Aces had to be out there given all the action before the flop in this hand. One thing I thought was that there was a significant possibility that one of these players was sitting on AK, and given all the checking-around on both the flop and the turn in this hand, the raggy 8 on the river would have to make that guy with AK believe he was in the lead. Thus, as I read this hand in Harrington's book, I was torn between flat calling the bet, or possibly putting in a small raise which was designed to elicit a call from the likely player with AK. As I mentioned, this is exactly the range of responses I received to yesterday's post. Almost everyone said to call or perhaps minraise, and I think both of those answers have merit. A number of the commenters hit on the fact that the set of 8s could surely be behind a higher set here, since with all that action preflop anyone holding AA, KK or QQ has you beat, so a raise, or at least a significant raise, is not really in order in a cash game context here, in particular with all players involved holding more than 100 big blinds.

You will notice not a single player suggested that the set of 8s fold his hand at the river. A number of people thought the situation does not bode well for the 8s, but the bottom line is that, with both the flop and the turn checking around, you are a donk if you fold your set of 8s in this spot. To say that such a move is exploitable, weak poker is understating things. Again, I'm not saying that you're definitely ahead with the pocket 8s and you should clearly jam here, but for 0 into the 0 pot at this point, it is very difficult to imagine folding given the absolute dearth of action on both the flop and the turn heading into this river bet. If just the flop had been checked but then the turn was bet and called, that changes things significantly as a big flopped set might quite often bet the hand in just this way. But there is a good reason that not a single commenter, nor myself, thinks that folding the hand to this one nearly half-pot river bet is the right move here.

You want to know why I dislike Harrington's books? Remember I was saying last week how annoying it is that he uses examples where he clearly knows the outcome and uses that knowledge in designing the advice he gives on the hands, thereby making his entire array of advice basically useless and worthless for someone trying to pick his brain about cash games? Well, here's Harrington's response on the hand, directly from page 86:

"On the river, you hit your set and the big blind bets. You're getting 3.4-to-1, but it's actually a very tough call. (Give yourself many demerits if you actually thought about raising.) The big blind probably has a set of kings, and there's a decent chance the button has a set of queens. Your set of eights, in this situation is just a hand with some value. The 3.4-to-1 odds look good, but you can't be sure that another raise isn't coming from behind you. At a loose table I would most likely call here, but at this tight, tough table I'd regrettably let this go.

You fold. The button calls. The big blind shows a set of kings and the button mucks his hand."

What a fucking genius!! How oh how did Harrington know that the button had that set of kings? Is he the best hand reader of all time? Oh no, wait. He knew the answer before he wrote his analysis of this hand! This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about with why Harrington's cash books suck so horribly. In a situation where the call -- albeit a crying call -- is more or less mandatory in reality, in a book that is supposed to be helping the readers with their cash play, Harrington uses his foreknowledge of the other players' holdings to make himself look like a fucking genius and therefore give out the clearly wrong advice under the guise of advocating good, tight play. What an ass.

Do not buy Dan Harrington's cash game books!

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments though, that was really fun. I will get some more hands up here shortly for people to chip in with their thoughts.


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Despite coming off as a weirdo and just “kinda creepy” on the WSOP broadcast on ESPN, Ylon Schwartz (sponsored by PokerStars.com) demonstrated a few good qualities in a recent newspaper interview. While Dennis Phillips has been getting the lions share of face time leading up the November Nine broadcast of the WSOP Final Table, Ylon has been pretty quiet. He tried an Ebay auction that didn’t go off as well as planned but this interview makes him a little more likeable. In summary, he’s pretty much what most of us would probably be if we made enough money gambling to do it full time.

When asked what he would do if he won the 9 million dollar first prize, his reply was that would likely disappear for a long time and, “I would get the best tequila there is and just drink it. I don’t know, be a high-class wino for like the next 10 years. I told all my friends I’m going to go away and please don’t come looking for me.” Couldn’t have said it better, except I’d probably go with a good Scotch.

He’s gone from being a small time chess hustler in New York to the verge of the next poker millionaire/WSOP Champion. He may not be as loveable as last years winner (what was his name again? My point exactly) but he’s down to earth and seems to be an approachable guy.

If I make it out to this years final table, I just hope to be around when he does win. Maybe he’ll treat us all to a round of the expensive Tequila he seems fond of.

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Who isn’t trying to capitalize on the November Nine?  Word comes that the Hard Rock Casino is hosting “The 10K Dennis Phillips Chipleader Challenge” in the hopes of driving more traffic to the off-the-strip casino’s poker room. It’s been widely acknowledged the grand opening of the Hard Rock poker room has been less than a success. They fired the old poker room manager and that didn’t do much to increase traffic, either.

This little stunt makes no sense, really. Taking the chip leader, who hasn’t really won ANYTHING yet and trying to attract players is a risk, at best. At worst it will flop and they won’t even get the 20 players needed to run the tournament. The two table event will pay K to each table winner and then match the two in a heads-up match for the remaining 0K left in the prize pool.

So far the only players confirmed to play are Phillips, Hoyt Corkins, Roy Winston, and the cuddly little combo of David Benyamine and Erica Schoenberg. I’ll seriously be surprised if 15 more folks pony up the 10K to play this event. At least the buy-in comes with a bonus after party invite. I’m sure the 50ish Phillips is a party machine…

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And out of nowhere we're back to a poker question about a cash game hand I recently ran into. I am interested in any of your thoughts on this because there was some disagreement around the table as to the right play to make in this hand. And I will not disclose for now which if any of the players involved was me, because the answer should not be in any way dependent on my level of involvement in the hand but rather purely the poker elements of the situation. I am hopeful that some of our cash game friends can weigh in with what they would do in this spot as I think it an interesting situation that we all have found ourselves in from time to time in some form or another.

OK so you're playing in a - no-limit holdem ring cash game, with all the stacks fairly large. The game can be classified as a fairly tough game with mostly good players, mostly fairly tight and aggressive types generally typical of a 5-10 game in my experience. UTG+1 limps for . UTG+2 also limps for . You are UTG+3 with 88, and you opt to raise 5x to . The button reraises to 0. The small blind calls the 0 cold. The first two limpers fold to the 0 double-raise. There is 0 in the pot and it is 0 to you to call with your pocket 8s. As the other two players both have larger stacks than yours (all more than 100 big blinds), you opt to call the reraise and do a little set mining.

The flop comes AQ5 rainbow. The big blind checks, you check given the Ace on board, and the button checks as well.

The turn is an offsuit King. Again the big blind checks. You check as well, knowing you must be behind with all that action before the flop. The button checks as well.

On the river falls an 8, giving you the rivered set. Now the big blind bets out for 0 into the 0 pot.

What do you do here? Personally I believe decent arguments can be made for all kinds of different moves here, but I am interested in what move you support, and at least as importantly, why, and if you think a raise is in order, how much do you think is the right amount to raise, and again why.

Tomorrow I will be back with some analysis and what actually happened in this spot.
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The European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee will meet next week in Brussels to consider a draft report which seeks a European Parliament Resolution on 'the integrity of online gambling'. The report is clearly not favorable to online gaming and online poker. And although the report is not binding on future Commission action, the report reasserts all of the negatives used by opponents of online gaming and freedom of the internet. Once again we are to be protected from ourselves.

There is a separate political issue involved here that does not get much press and that is the EU Commission and the European Court of Justice are overwhelmed with gaming cases. Every country wants to assert it sovereign rights over gambling issues and every other country wants everyone else to honor those local and jingoistic regulations. Unfortunately, the EU was established, at least in part, to lower such lower tariffs and trade laws but with gambling there is the miasma of the moral and social order to be considered.

Rather than seek to revolve issues of regulation and fair business practices, the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee has chosen to go with the reactionary position of prohibition.

"Member States have a legitimate interest in monitoring and regulating their gambling markets in order to protect consumers against addiction, fraud, money-laundering and fixed games as well as to protect the culturally-built funding structures which finance sports activities and other social causes," and "underlines that online gambling operators should comply with the legislation of the Member State in which they provide their services."

The report goes on site the nebulous fears of all prohibitionists:

"Online gambling is likely to give rise to risks to consumers and that Member States may therefore legitimately restrict the freedom to provide online gambling services in order to protect consumers."

Fortunately, the EU Parliament tends to act in the best interest of the whole of the EU populations, whereas the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee tends to put forward the interests of individual member states, many of which seek to retain their own national gaming monopolies.

Online gaming continues to be the single largest unresolved issue before the EU Commission with no real signs of any movement towards an open market solution at this time.

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This one should make for good photoshop material for people down the line.  I guess I’m an Arab Uncle Sam?

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