The Nevada Sunday

There's a new Sunday newspaper in Las Vegas, and it's called The Nevada Sunday, and it's gearing up to provide 21 colorful and interesting sections for its readers. They've asked me to be the paper's poker columnist, and I was in there for the first issue that hit the streets and intend to continue writing for them each and every Sunday.

Mine will be a 500-word column, a typical length for newspaper columns, though somewhat shorter than I'm used to producing for magazines. But that's OK. It will hone my style, and the need to get it done in 500 words will make for more concise, pithier prose.

This may be the only poker column in a major American newspaper (I know there are gaming columns in some newspapers, but I don't know of any columnists writing only about poker), and it's something I wanted to do ever since learning that the late David Spanier had a poker column every Sunday in the UK. I tried. I sent sample columns to newspaper syndicators and to newspapers themselves, but never got a bite. Because times have changed and poker is a lot hotter and more mainstream than it was a few years ago, a poker column in a major newspaper no longer seems unusual. It seems like a natural thing.

Poker deserves a space in newspapers at least as much as chess and bridge do. More so, probably. Poker is more popular than either of those games.

If you live in the Las Vegas area, or are visiting, pick up a copy of The Nevada Sunday and look for my poker column. It'll be short, to the point, and provide both coverage of major poker events as well as hints designed to help players raise their games. All in a few short words.

A Target On My Back

Every Wednesday evening, at 8:00 Eastern Time, I play on Royal Vegas Poker's "Play the Experts" tournament. It's not a large event; you can buy in for $20 and there are rebuys during the first hour and one optional add-on when the rebuy period ends.

A $50 bounty is on my head, and on the heads of Barbara Enright, Max Shapiro, Mike Cappelletti, Rose Richie, Dr. Al Schoonmaker, and Matt Lessinger. If you knock any of us out but we rebuy, you don't win the bounty, so the real chase begins once the rebuy period is over. Then the chase begins and the targets on our backs seem to be illuminated.

It is very different playing with a bounty on your head, because winning $50 along with a T-shirt proclaiming "I knocked out the expert," along with a book if the expert is also an author, gets a lot of players more interested in claiming a bounty than placing in the tournament.

For me it means that everytime I go all-in after the rebuy period ends, I can count on being called, even when I'm hoping I'm not. Regardless of the hands I go all-in with -- even twhen I go all-in with the very best of them -- I continue to get called. I may win most of these confrontations, but someone is eventually going to send me to the rail. I've been knocked out in recent weeks with K-K three times and A-A once. And there's nothing I can do about it.

Last week I managed to hang around and finish ninth, and I don't even remember what did me in. It wasn't important. What was important was the penultimate hand, in which I went from an upper rung on the ladder to a very short stack in one hand. The ultimate confrontation was actually anticlimactic, and the guy delivering the knockout blow was able to do so without even putting too many of his chips at risk.

I suppose the good thing about being a bounty is that you have a chance to really accumulate some chips, because if you bet, you will be called -- and sometimes by more than one opponent too. If you get lucky, you can generate a commanding chip lead. But what usually happens is an inevitable fall back to earth when someone takes either all or most of your hcips, and then you are a short-stack and really a target.

I'm not sure how I'd characterize it, but playing as a marked man is very different than the anonymity when there's no additional financial benefit accruing to anyone taking you out. We'll see if tonight is any different. It may be, but I doubt it.

How Aggressive is Too Aggressive?

It was a six-handed $15-$30 online hold'em game, and I raised from late position with pocket queens. The button made it three bets and the big blind made it four bets, capping the action.

Three rags fell and the big blind came out betting. I wasn't sure about what the guys had who three and four bet, but from the five minutes or so that I was at the table watching them play, they seemed overly aggressive, even maniacal. I called the big blind's bet on the flop. Once again the button raised and the big blind reraised. I called two additional bets, unsure of whether I was ahead or behind at that point.

The turn was another blank, and I was busily revising my estimate of what my opponents might be holding, so when the big blind checked, I checked too. But the button bet, the big blind called and so did I. The river paired one of the baby cards on board.

At this point I thought my queens might be good, and if they weren't, I was only beaten in one place, not two. So I bet and was called by both opponents. I turned over my queens, and pocket pairs of aces and kings I had begun to suspect my opponents might have never materialized and I won the pot.

Another hand similar to this one developed five minutes later. This time I had a pair of jacks and won another nice pot when neither of my opponents had a bigger pair, even when a king turned.

One of these guys went broke on this hand and left the table. The other went broke about five minutes later and he left too. I realize that short handed games are much more aggressive online than in traditional casinos, but I've seldom played in a game that aggressive. Without a few good clues about just how overly aggressive these two guys were, I'd have slowed down quite a bit in the hands that I described.

So what do you all think? How much more aggressive do you find online games when compared to those played in brick and mortar casinos? Do you find them much more aggressive -- aggressive to the point of maniacal?

And what's your basic playing strategy for games like these?

Moving Up: Is a 300 Big-Bet Bankroll Enough?

A player recently posted this question to the Internet newsgroup rec.gambling.poker, and it's one I'm asked all the time, so I thought I'd answer it here, as well as on RGP.

His concerns were over the nubmner of big bets your bankroll should have when moving up in limits, and he wondered whether the generally accepted 300 big-bet bankroll was sufficient.
Here's how I respopnded:

The oft quoted 300 big bet requirement for a given limit is an ESTIMATE, not a FORMULA. Is it enough? It depends on a number of things.

First, if you are not a winning player 300 big bets will never be enough. Neither will 500. In fact, if you can't beat the game you'll need enough big bets to outlast your life expectency.

Second, if you can really pound the game and win at the rate of two BB per hour or more, you'll probably need significantly less than you would if you're just managing to keep your head above water, perhaps to the tune of 1/4 BB per hour.

Third, if the game is very volatile, you'll probably need a bigger stake to outlast the variance you can expect to encounter, as compared to the significantly less volatility you can expect to find in a very tame game where you'd expect to find only a few players in each pot, not much rasing, and most of your opponents calling far too deep into a hand once they decide to play. Of course, there are very few games like this, but it's an example of how the texture of a game can play a part in determining the amount you'll need to sustain yourself in the game.

If I recall correctly, the 300 big bet estimate was first promulgated by David Sklansky or Mason Malmuth, and I believe they qualified the estimate and never said that it was a formula that could be applied by every player in every game. But I'm not sure. It's been a while since I read that and I don't recall where I read it. Perhaps one of them can comment on the "300 BB" estimate, if they were the ones who developed this estimate in the first place.

My own suggestion to the moving up question is to simply take a shot at a bigger game, and here's the best way to do it. Many of the regulars at any limit will also play one notch above and one notch below their limit of choice some of the time, depending on whether a game looks soft, how well funded they are, and on such prosaic matters as where the open seats are. Thus you'll find $20-$40 players sitting in $15-$30 games, as well as in $30-$60 and $40-$80 games too.

Why not wait until you find a bigger game with a few players you know from your game, and take a shot at that one? At least some of your opponents won't be a mystery to you, and that ought to help you navigate your way into a comfort zone at those limits.

If you take a shot a few times and feel comfortable in the game and figure you can beat it, then it might be time to give yourself a promotion.

Do any of you have any comments about moving up in limits, and how large a bankroll you'd recommend for players thinking of promoting themselves?

Distractions

I'm working on a new book that's being coauthored by Sheree Bykofsky, who is also my agent as well as the author of seventeen other books, but today I'm fighting distractions. Trouble is, all of them are self imposed. That means I'm having a tough time getting started and that's just something that doesn't happen to me very often.

So far today I've busied myself with reading rec.gambling.poker, visiting a bunch of different online poker forums, chatted with Kevin the pool guy about how he blew the engine in his red jeep, and spent some time deciding if the second cup of tea I was brewing should be Barry's Gold Blend, Peppermint, or Orange Spice. I had Orange spice for breakfast, so Barry's won out and the peppermint tea will have to wait for another day.

I've also checked my bank account online and balanced the damn thing to the penny while making a list of all the articles I have to write and their due dates, so I know how much time I can allocate to this book.

Yesterday was a better day for writing and I was able to add an additional 3,000 words to the manuscript, but so far today I've managed to add zilch. Zero. Nothing. Nada. Not a word. Nary a one. Still, the manuscript is now at 43,000 words and climbing. We are shooting for an 80,000 word book, so we're half way to producing a first draft. Well, almost. After we produce the requisite number of words, the first draft can't really be considered complete until we make an editing pass, rearrange material that might appear to be better placed in another section of the book, and sit down and discuss whether we've hit the right tone and given proper weight to all of the topics we intended to cover when we began the writing process. But I'm quibbling; it's about half way to a first draft no matter how you slice it.

But I'm still sitting here obsessing about my inability to get started. My mind wanders and now I'm resisiting the temptation to play poker online because that will kill even more of the time that my sense of guilt and obligation suggests would be better spent writing.

Yet I can sit down here at the same keyboard and effortlessly put together this blog post while I sip my tea. I'm even feeling guilty about what to do for lunch. Here are my choices: Drive 12 miles to Tyler's in downtown Palm Srpings (this will consume the better part of two hours); drive 1 mile to Joe's Sushi (1 hour and all-you-can-eat for $17.95); or walk into the kitchen and fix some stuffed zucchini that I bought at Ralph's (10 minutes -- at most). I'm probably going to opt for the stuffed zucchini but it's not lunch time yet, so I still have some time until I cross that particular bridge.

I'm also thinking about poker. I'm wondering whether one of the side effects I don't particularly like about the explosion of interest in poker is that everyone seems interested in playing Texas hold'em and doing so to the exclusion of all other games. Sure, hold'em ascended to poker's primacy even before they started televising it regularly, but now no one seems very interested in any other game. Walk in to most casinos and you'll have a tough time finding an Omahas/8 game, never mind Omaha high-only, 7-card stud, 7-stud/8, razz, lowball, deuce-to-seven, or any of the other variants that used to be played on occasion. You can find some of these games, to be sure, but you won't find them at a variety of betting limits as you will with hold'em. Texas hold'em is poker's version of a kudzu vine. It's choking the life out of all other forms of poker.

I love hold'em. Don't get me wrong. It's just that establishing a monoculture of poker games doesn't seem to be as fulfilling as having players with a broadly based interest in a variety of games.

That's the end of this rant. I don't want to go on and on about the downsides of the boom in poker popularity because I firmly beleive the upsides far outweight any of the problems lurking in the shadows. But I have been thinking about this and wanted to get it off my chest. If any of you want to share your opinions, just let me know.

OK. I'm gonna get back to work now. No more distractions. No more delays. I mean it. Really. Except for that final decision on where to go for lunch.

2nd Poker Forum Challenge

The 2nd quarterly Poker Forum Challenge 2005 will be played Friday, June 24th. For players to be eligible they must register by Tuesday, June 21st, 2005.

For full details and the prize pools, see: www.pokerforumchallenge.com

Poker Room: Royal Vegas Poker
Tournament Date: Friday, June 24th, 2005
Tournament Time: 8:00 PM EST
Game Type: No-Limit Texas Hold'em

Prizes:
· Player Prizes
o $5,000 GUARANTEED
o $50 Bounties on the Forum Hosts:
- 1st Poker Analysis: Ellen R
- 2nd Poker Cartel: Billy B
- 3rd Womens Poker: Maryann M

· Forum Prizes - $2,500
o Win 1 of 3 $500 Freerolls
$1,000 in cash to the top forums

Registration will open end of next week.

Rose Richie's Incredible WSOP Performance

With the World Series of Poker fast approaching and threatening to bring more than 5,000 players to the tables, I was just sitting here thinking about Rose Richie's grand performance during the 2004 event.

This Florida mom was the only female to make it to the 3rd day of competition, outlasting a gaggle of better known female poker players. Not only did Rose have to beat back a couple of thousand opponents to achieve her feat, she had to overcome a significant medical problem too. Since 1988, Rose Richie has suffered from Lupus - a disease that can affect any system in the body.

Lupus regularly leaves one drained and bereft of energy, which is what led Rose to begin playing poker from the comfort of her home, where she logged on to Royal Vegas Poker. Internet poker allowed her to play when she felt well, and to play as long as she felt comfortable at the table. She could quit and rest anytime she had to. When fighting Lupus, that's precisely what Rose needed to do in order to incorporate poker into her lifestyle while dealing with her ailment.

She played in online cash games and tournaments too, where she won a seat to the 2004 WSOP. The World Series is a marathon; everyone who bellys up to the table to play will attest to that. Rose knew it too. She braced herself for an enervating event and took the plunge despite some trepidation. After all, the WSOP is a series of long, hard, stress-filled days, and regardless of one's stamina, you have to keep playing until each day's session ends. Rose knew that going in. She just didn't know whether or not she'd be able to handle the tournament's rigors.

The 2004 World Series of Poker was the first land based poker event Rose entered, although she first played poker in 1978. While she found it difficult to cope with the 3-day ordeal, Rose persevered and came out on top. Now she uses her story to inspire other Lupus sufferers.

With that kind of performance, and her inspriational story, Rose was featured on a number of radio and TV shows, and "promoted" from player to "expert" at Royal Vegas Poker,where she plays each week under the screen name "Rosebud17," along with Alan Schoonmaker, Mike Cappelletti, Max Shapiro, Barbara Enright, Matt Lessinger, and me. Knock any of us out of Royal Vegas Poker's weekly "Play the Experts" tournament (every Wednesday at 8:00 PM Eastern Time) and you'll win a $50 bounty, a T-shirt proclaiming "I knocked out the expert," and if the expert is also an author, you'll win a book too.

Rose and I have been friends for a year now, and I'm a fan of her poker game and even greater admirerer of her pluck, determination, and composure at the table. I'm wish her all the best in 2005.

Today I Resigned From Card Player Magazine.

Although I've written more than 300 columns for Card Player since 1992, the time had come for me to pursue other opportunities and I submitted my resignation earlier today to Card Player Magazine.

My reasons for leaving involve a desire to write for publications aimed more toward recreational poker players because I believe this market is both rapidly growing and underserved, and I'm eager to appear in mainstream outlets such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Wal-Mart where some of these magazines are distributed, as well as continuing to appear in casinos and poker rooms too. I have also been asked to write a poker column for Nevada Sunday, the new weekly newspaper published in Las Vegas that made it's debut April 3.

With these opportunities in hand, a new book in the offing, a chance to do some TV work in the future, as well as continuing to serve as host for Royal Vegas Poker and for the College Poker Championship, it was best that I left Card Player Magazine. I hope they continue to serve the industry and the players as poker grows into an ever brighter future.

I was privileged to be a columnist for Card Player Magazine, but now it's time to move in new directions. Soon you'll be able to read my articles in Bluff Magazine, in 5th Street Magazine, in NevadaSunday, in Canadian Poker Player, occasionally in Midwest Gaming and Travel, and you'll also be able to listen to me on the radio in each of the markets where Tipshop is syndicated, or to listen to my weekly segment on Tipshop.com's web site.

I wrote for Card Player for a long time, since 1992 to be exact, with only a short break during the time I left to write for the now defunct Poker Digest. Deciding to leave was not an easy choice to make and it's neither money nor personalities that led me down this path. Instead, it was a case of what I believe will be best for me in the long run.

When I first started out writing it was always a case of looking for any additional opportunity to get something in print. Now that I'm established as a writer, and lucky enough to write about a topic that has generated interest faster than anyone could realistically imagine just a few years ago, it's much more a matter of picking and choosing my spots. If I wasn't selective about the writing assignments I took on, I'd be writing 24 hours a day, and that's a prescription for insanity or an early grave.

So my decision is made. By closing one door I've opened up some others, and it's time to turn in a new direction and face the future. I'm moving on.

Even More Poker on Television

Two weeks ago I attneded the National Cable and Telecommunications Association's conference in San Francisco. Unless you're in the TV biz, you've probably never heard of it, but it's a big thing to those in the industry. Fully 17,000 people attended the conference, and it spanned both halls of the City's Moscone Convention Center.

I was there at the invitiation of the folks at CGTV, the Casino and Gaming TV Network, a new television network that will go live in Canada later this spring and plans to launch in the US later in the year. CGTV was one of the sponsors of "Vegas Virgins," which was where our connection was made.

To give you an idea of the size and shape of the convention itself, CGTV's booth was sized at 80 x 100 feet, and resembled a small version of the Bellagio's casino, complete with poker table, craps pit, roulette wheels, blackjack tables along with a conference room and a sitting area. It wasn't the largest booth in the room either. Right next to it were booths from ESPN and from Disney and they were even larger. The exhibitors at this conference don't scrimp on the exhibits they put in place. It is a big prodcution.

CGTV's booth attracted a significant amount of attention,. Even the founders of Google walked through it at different times, as did a variety of well-known folks in the cable TV biz.

Although CGTV is not yet airing in the United States, its very presence speaks volumes about the social acceptance of gaming, casinos, wagering, and games of skill and of chance, simply by virtue of the fact that a network can be built on this theme alone. Poker will be a staple of CGTV, and they plan to offer instructional material on their network as well as provide coverage of gaming, poker, and other similar events.

San Francisco based poker player John McCutcheon and I were staffing their poker set up at the conference, and hostesses garbed as Vegas showgirls - complete with feathery headdresses - were distributing chips to passers by. When they learned they could sit down and play poker and that John and I would be helping them learn the game, the table was always full and we had to ask some players to get up and go after they'd been there a while to give others a chance to sit down and play.

So popular was poker that some conference attendees were ditching sessions they had planned to attend because they preferred to sit and learn how to play a game they had become fascinated with, but had never really had a chance to play. John and I did our best to demystify the game, and as players grew familiar with the mechanics of the game, how the blinds worked and how the dealer button moved around the table, they grew in confidcecne and many said they felt ready to either go online or venture out to a traditional casino to play. When I told people they could also play poker for real money or play money on the internet and handed them a CD to download Royal Vegas Poker's software, they were looking to go back to their hotel rooms, insert that puppy into their laptops, and give it a go.

I had the distinct feeling I was watching the growth of poker before my eyes. Newbies were sitting down, playing a few dozen hands, and feeling like they were getting the hang of it. Everyone, and I mean everyone who sat down, seemned to enjoy time at the table. There wasn't a soul there who tried poker and said, "I don't really like it," or "I'm just not getting it." They all got it. And it was nice to see.

I didn't have any expectations before I attended NCTA. I'm not in the cable industry and never thought much about it before I met some of the CGTV principals while I was filming "Vegas Virgins." But I was amazed at the size and scope of this conference, of some of the new and innovative directions cable TV is heading into. But more than anything else, I was stunned at the interest everyone has in poker. And much of the interest I saw wasn't simply a business interest either. It was personal.

Like folks everywhere, these people like poker. And they wanted to play. Even if the chips didn't represent real money at all, and could only be exchanged for CGTV logo gear like T-shirts and ball caps, these players took the game seriously. They took it to heart and into their hearts too. If I harbored any thoughts at all that the interest in poker might be near peaking and that the arc might have crested, I was sadly mistaken. It's still ramping up; the arc is heading north, and more and more people are just itching to get in the game. And ain't that grand?

first post to my blog

Welcome to my poker blog. This is my first effort at blogging, but I intend to keep this blog fairly well up-to-date by including information about the poker world, my poker playing, and all of the other activities I've been involved in. And that inlcudes a lot.

I recently completed filming "Vegas Virgins," a show that will air in the U.K. late srping and in Canada this summer. It should be shown in the USA this fall.

Here's the show's concept in a nutshell: It's a poker-meets-reality-show in which 10 people who have never played casino poker before -- five from the USA and five from the UK -- were whisked away to Las Vegas for three weeks, put up in a first class hotel and provided with poker coaching. That was my job, and it was on camera. They'll also provided a "life coach" for the players in the person of Las Vegas psychologist Dr. Sally St. John, who worked with each of them on life lessons while I concentrated on making poker players out of absolute newbies.

Each night featured a poker tournament and each evening's winner got to select one player to be tossed off the show. Each day the contestants had to perform a variety of tasks (think "Fear Factor:" eating duck embryo, walking a tightrope, you get the picture) and each day's the task performance determined how many chips each players started the nightly tournament with.

In alternating fashion, they tossed a Brit and then an American, until just one player from each country remained. The two survivors played a heasds-up match and the winner was given $5000 to play poker against a few real "pros," each of whom were be armed with less money. The money discrepancy was designed to level the playing field and give the newbie a fair shot at winning.

Sally St. John and I were on camera for all shows, and I got to give poker lessons and broadcast the play by play of each evening's tournament. Not only was this enjoyable work to do, it also provided an opportunity to talk up my books, as well as Royal Vegas Poker and the College Poker Championship.

Prior to this show I had never been involved with any sort of TV production. Filming ran 18 days. There was a day off in the middle, and we were off on Super Bowel Sunday too, but I was in the process of buying a new house and selling my old one, and had to use that off-day to go out to the local Las Vegas branch of the title company handling the sale and sign a bunch of loan documents. Not the best way to spend a day off, but at least it was better than having to drive 275 miles to Palm Springs and sign docs, then turn right around and return to Las Vegas.

The days were long. We generally began between 8:00 and 9:00 AM, and with a poker lesson, tasks for the contestants to perform, and a nightly tournament, filming generally didn't end until midnight. The crew was terrific and so were the contestants for the most part. Still, with that kind of filming schedule (we shot at the Orleans, at a TV production studio nearby, and at a variety of locations in and around Las Vegas) I had a chance to play poker only three or four times during my entire stay.

But I can play poker anytime. I don't get a chance to do this every day. And from what the guys in London who are editing the show tell me, it looks great. They've finished editing the first three episodes, and are busily boiling down 400 hours of film into ten, 46-minute segments (a show is 46 minutes long; the rest of the time is for commercials), and they need to be finished in a month or so in order to get the show on the air in the UK.

I even passed an audition of sorts without realizing it. One night some of the folks from the soon-to-launch Casino and Gaming TV Network (who invested in the show) were on hand and were sufficiently impressed with my work on camera to ask me to film a series of poker tutorials for them that will air when the network goes live later on this summer.

At this point I hope it's a big hit so I can come back for a second season. Some poker purists won't like the show because the players are inexperienced, but you have to take this in context. It's not exclusively a poker show. It's a reality show with poker mixed into the stew, and it has some terrific dramatic moments you won't want to miss. When they're finished editing this, I'm in line for a DVD with all 10 episodes, so I can watch it unfold and provide my (somewhat biased) review right here on this blog.

In subsequent editions of this blog, I'll talk about a new book I'm writing, my new gig as a Sunday poker columnist for a newspaper, and the trials and tribulations of buying a new house, fixing it up, selling athe old one, and doing all of that while trying to manage the rest of my life.

OK..............that's it for the frist blog. More to come.