Celebrity Charity Poker Tournament at Fantasy Springs

Yesterday Jill Cohen — who writes a weekly poker column under the byline, “The Queen of Hearts,” in the Desert Sun, which is the local newspaper in the Palm Springs area — and I were guests on “Valley Views,” a local TV show hosted by Pattie Daly Caruso (she’s Carson Daly’s mom). We were there to talk about the growth of poker, and to plug Jill’s column and my books.

Dick Van Patten happened to be a guest on the show too, in the segment just before ours. He was plugging a celebrity charity poker tournament at Fantasy Springs Resort and Casino October 21-23.

The event includes an estimated $50,000 no-limit Texas hold’em poker tournament and celebrity celebration banquet, with proceeds from the banquet going for a Christmas party for spouses and children of marines who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and who are based at the nearby 29 Palms Marine Corps Base.

The weekend event includes a celebrity and VIP player cocktail party from 7:00 PM to midnight on Friday October 21, with play beginning at 10:00 AM October 22. The finals begin at 10:00 AM Sunday, October 23, and that’s followed by a celebrity celebration banquet from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

The tournament’s total purse will be based on 200 entries at $250, and the entry fee includes a seat at the banquet, with extra banquet tickets available at $75 per person. To confirm a seat, visit the Fantasy Springs poker room or call the resort box office at 1.800.827.2946. Fantasy Springs is located just north of Interstate 10 at the Golf Center Parkway exit, approximately 22 miles east of Palm Springs.

I’m not sure of the celebrities who will attend, although I recall Dick mentioning that Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Tilly, Dom DeLuise, Vince Van Patten, and Jerry Buss will be there. There are more, but those are all I remember from a relatively short conversation we had as he was leaving the studio and I was getting ready for my segment.

I’m planning to play in this tournament, and I thought I’d blog what I know about it in case any readers are interested in playing too. I just found out about it yesterday and don’t know much more about it than what’s posted above, however, there’s probably more information available at www.fantasypringsresort.com

I’ll post a reminder as the tournament date draws near.

Learning to be Philosophical About Three-Outers

Last night I played, as I usually do, in the Royal Vegas Poker’s weekly Play the Experts tournament, where entrants who knock out Mike Cappelletti, Max Shapiro, Barbara Enright, Matt Lessinger, Rose Richie, Dr. Al Schoonmaker, or me win a $50 bounty, a T-shirt saying “I knocked out the expert,” and a book.

As much as I realize that we’re wearing targets on our back, it is always frustrating when someone catches a three-outer to KO me. That happened again last night. I was holding Ad-Kd and went all-in with about 5,000 chips and was called by one of the chip leaders who had 20,000 chips. He called with K-3 offsuit. The flop was K-9-4 of mixed suits; the turn was a 7, and the river was another trey. It paired his kicker at odds slightly greater than 14-to-1 and I was eliminated.

The lesson in all of this is that when you’re a bounty, you can expect to be called in situations where another player would not be. The cash bounty, the T-shirt, and the autographed book are all a form of laying odds and often makes it correct for opponents to call you in situations where they would fold if those additional goodies weren’t tossed into the hopper.

It’s also taught me that going all-in is riskier than one might imagine, because the more you risk all your chips, the more likely it is that you’ll lose them. After all, it’s simple arithmetic. If I have a 70 percent chance of winning a given encounter, that looks pretty good. But if I take that risk just twice, I figure to lose one of them. Just multiply. 70 percent times 70 percent is 49 percent, and the sad truth inside the numbers is that I don’t figure to survive two attempts to win confrontations where I have a seventy percent chance of winning either one of them, when they are considered individually.

If I go in with far the best of it — a 70 percent chance of winning is clearly very favorable — and repeat this situation four times, the prognostication becomes dismal: I figure to survive all four confrontations a bit less than one-quarter of the time.

The message in this bottle is to be very careful about going all-in when you think you will be called because the reward is only a few more chips — or maybe even a lot more chips — but so what? The potential loss is your tournament life. Even the situation I was in, where my opponent would be a 7-to-1 underdog from the flop to the river, was dangerous. Nevertheless, with odds that good it’s a play you’d have to make every time if you knew what your opponent’s cards were because you figure to win 87.5 percent of the time, and you’d have to play through this same scenario six times until you are statistically less than even money to win all of them.

Probability is a funny thing. Sometimes a circumstance that is statistically very favorable in any given instance figures to knock you flat on your ass if you repeat it a sufficient number of times. What’s worse is that the sufficient number of times may only be two or three.

From Palm Springs to Penn State and back again

It’s a real pain in the neck to fly from one small city to another, especially when they’re nearly a continent apart. I did that Thursday, when I flew from Palm Springs to State College, PA and the flight involved three segments: Palm Springs to Salt Lake City, SLC to Cincinnati, and Cinci to State College. With the layovers, it’s all day, a real grind. The only saving grace is that both Cincinnati and Salt Lake City have nice, clean, not-too-crowded airports with good restaurants, so hanging around is less onerous than it would be in an overcrowded airport like Washington National, or Houston.

I wound up with a three hour layover in Cincinnati on my flight home, so I sat at the bar in the airport’s Outback Steakhouse, had a grilled salmon and watched an exciting Minnesota-Purdue football game with a bunch of other travelers who were waiting for connecting flights, just as I was.

I went all that way in my capacity as volunteer host of the College Poker Championship to present a trophy to the Penn State’s Gaming Club, which topped the 2005, and although Chad Flood from the University of Minnesota was the overall winner, Penn State beat out 2,400 schools from 55 countries to take the Campus Rivalry Championship.

Lotus Public Relations had set up an interview for me with State College Magazine, as well as a few radio interviews and an interview with a reporter from the Penn State University newspaper. State College is a nice small town, dominated by the college, with a few streets filled with restaurants, bars, trendy shops, and a gazillion students and a nice place to walk around.

The trophy presentation was set for 10:00 PM in the Student Activities Building. A poker tournament was scheduled for that evening, and I presented the trophy to the Gaming Club immediately before the tournament began while folks from Lotus were handing out T-shirts and ball caps.

If I were handicapping the 2006 event, I’d make Penn State even money to repeat as champion. They have all the attributes to do it: a large student body population, an active gaming club with scads of poker players, and they are in the right time and weather zones too. Qualifying tournaments are played every Sunday at 4:00 EST. At Penn State, it’s already dark when the event begins and it’s cold outside too. For students at schools like USC and UCLA, it’s 1:00 on Sunday afternoon when the tournament begins and the weather is a lot more conducive to being outdoors than it is back East and in the Midwest. Sunday night is fast becoming poker night on college campuses, and playing poker is a lot more desirable than the other traditional Sunday evening campus activity: doing laundry.

If you’re a college student and are interested in playing, there’s never a cost to play and this year more than $200,000 in scholarship money will be given away, as well as money to be given to winners’ designated charities, and four new cars will be given away – one at every eight week interval. To find out more, just go to www.collegepoker.com

College Poker Championship 2005-06

I haven't blogged for a few days and won't for the next three, so I'll squeeze this one in now, while I have the time.

Tomorrow I'm off to State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University. Penn State topped the leaderboard in the 2004-05 College Poker Championship among all participating college and universities. Since the 2005-06 College Poker Championship is kicking off now, I'm off to present a trophy to the school and host a poker tournament on campus.

If you are a student, full-time or part-time, undregraduate or in grad school or a professional school such as an MBA program, law school, or med school, you're eligible to take part in this seasons College Poker Championship.

There's NEVER any cost to participate and last years overall champion, Chad Flood of the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus won himself $41,000, and some more money for the charity of his choice. Chad will be back to defend his championship this year and is eager to start playing.

You can enroll by going to www.collegepoker.com, downloading the software and signing up. Every Sunday is poker night on campus, so come play in this year's College Poker Championship. I love this tournament. It lasts for six months, provides money to fund education in the same manner as a Pell Grant -- money right in your hand to use any way you wish as long as you're a qualified student -- and it provvides money for a variety of charaties too.

I am the volunteer host for this event, so pardon me if I take up my own space to promote it. I believe in the CPC, and if you are a poker playing college student anywhere in the world, c'mon and sign up and log on. It's all free, and all good.

Cover Art For New Book

Cover Art For My New Book:
I just got the cover art for my next book, "Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker," and while I don't like to beat the drum for books before they come out, I really like the bright red cover and thought I'd share it with the world.

Sheree Bykofsky is my coauthor on this book, in addition to being my literary agent -- and the agent for a number of poker authors. Sheree's a poker player, a scrabble players, and has written more 17 or 18 books, including "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Published," which is the definitive book of it's kind.

This book should be out sometime in the winter or spring; it's not even available yet for advance ordering at Amazon. So stay tuned; I'll be back beating the drum for this book once it goes to press and is available in stores.

I'm Really Busy Since I returned From Las Vegas:
I was in Las Vegas this past weekend to meet the new CEO of Royal Vegas Poker as well as a bunch of affiliates who were in town. I was very ahppy with the plans and directions they shared with me, and I loved playing poker at the Wynn. Terrific room, great chairs, good lighting and the games were OK -- although I'd have been happier if they had a $30-$60 or $40-$80 game but the biggest they had while I was there was $15-$30.

I got home and had to get to work on four different magazine articles that are due and I really need to get to work on some new material for Poker Magazine.com, but there's no deadline for them, so I'll do a piece for them over the weekend or next week.

The Desert "A-List":
Jill Cohen, who writes a weekly poker column for "The Desert Sun," the local newspaper here in my corner of the world, did a profile piece on me a few weeks ago. Now I'm an "A-List" celebrity, at least I am when it comes to poker in the Coachella Valley. I've been invited to do a half-hour interview on a local TV show, and invited to a celebrity poker tournament and dinner. The tournament is OK, but I'm thinking I'll actually have to wear shoes for the dinner. I haven't worn anything dressier than sandals and shorts since April, so I think I'll have to get my shoes shined for the occasion. I dunno....maybe the price of fame is too high.

Here's the cover art for my next book, "Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker." 

Canceled: My Short Stint as Executive Editor Comes to an End

About a month ago I was also asked to serve as guest executive editor of Poker Pro Magazine. My goal was to keep the magazine content rich, organized and to encourage as much good journalism as possible. Whether or not this "guest" stint would develop into anything permanent was an open question; it was a one-issue assignment and I loved it.

But Poker Pro's ownership decided they wanted someone on board full-time, 40 - 60 hours per week, and my deal was predicasted on working half-time for them. So things didn't work out the way I hoped, and they will seek a full-time editor and although I will continue to write for them, I will not have any further editorial duties.

That's too bad for me. I would have loved to stay on as Executive Editor on a permanent, part-time basis and I think I could have done a bang-up job for them under those conditions. But it's their call, not mine, and they've got to make decisions they're comfortable with -- even if it's not the same decision I would have made.

I accomplised a lot in one issue. Most notable was bringing a spate of talented writers on board, including: Dr. Arthur Reber (my coauthor on Gambling For Dummies), Kathy Watterson (who wrote Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games with me), Mark Tenner (my coauthor on Winning Omaha/8 Poker), Dave Scharf (founder and former publisher of Canadian Poker Player), Amy Calistri, and Barbara Conners. This team will keep the magazine content rich, readable, and entertaining.

I'll be there too, writing an article on poker strategy each month. But I must admit, now that I have a short editing stint under my belt, it's somethin g I'd love to do again, though not on a full-time, 40+ hours a week basis.

First Visit to the Wynn Poker Room

I played at the Wynn today for the first time. I like the room...a lot. Great chairs, comfy and you're able to adjust the height. They had a lot of games going yet the room was quiet, and it's right next to the self-parking area at the north end of the casino.

The biggest game they had was $15-$30. They also had a list for a $30-$60 game but there was only one other player on the list in addition to me and one of the players tole me they seldom get that game going. The game itself was pretty typical for Las Vegas: five locals, two of whom played well and three didn't, one tourist who played pretty well and one who plaed almost every hand, some kid who watched too much poker on TV because he was fond of studying the board in really obivious situations and grimacing while he was deciding what to do. He was hotdogging for cameras that weren't even present.

The cameras were in another corner of the room, filming a DVD that Daniel Negreanu is making.

In a nutshell: great room, good game, pleasant people, a great poker manager in Deborah Giardina, good dealers, brushes, and management, an altogether pleasant place to play and the game was good too because the players who couldn't play well were all making the same error: They called one and sometimes two streets too deep into the hand, adding weak money into the pot. I recommend the room.

The Hurricane was so horrific, so distructive, and the initial efforts by local, state, and federal officials so pathetic, that's its all deserves a little laugh. 

It Was Never a Mystery At All

Sometimes a poker hand is played so predictably that both players might as well have their cards face up. I witnessed a hand like that yesterday.

But before I describe it, it’s important to remember that the players must be predictable in order for this to occur. If they are unpredictable, then the range of hands played under the circumstances you witness are likely to be too broad to accurately assign determine their hands. If they are real fish, or complete maniacs, who could be playing anything, then putting them on a hand with any degree of accuracy is nearly impossible.

Let’s call these players Predictable Polly and Reliable Ray, both of whom play good hands, play by the book, don’t go on tilt, and don’t bluff very often. So when they play a hand, you can usually assign them to a range of hands based on their betting patterns. Here’s what happened.

Predictable Polly opened the pot by calling from middle position and Reliable Ray raised from the button. Both the big blind and Polly called.

The flop was T-4-2 of mixed suits. The big blind checked, Polly led with a bet and Ray raised. The big blind folded and Polly called. At this point, I knew Polly’s bet was telling the world that she had a hand like A-T or T-J suited, and that Reliable Ray’s raise meant that he could beat a pair of tens and because he held a bigger pair. And it didn’t matter whether that pair was J-J, Q-Q, K-K, or A-A. Any of those hands could beat Polly’s hand right now.

I was certain Predictable Polly did not have two pair, because she never would have entered the pot with T-4, T-2, or 4-2. What’s more, Polly did not have a set because she would have opened for a raise with any pair she was willing to play in the situation she found herself in before the flop. She had to have a ten in her hand with either a big kicker or a connecting kicker, but in any event, she had a pair of tens — nothing less and nothing more.

Reliable Ray would have raised before the flop with two big cards as well as a big pocket pair, and while he might have called Polly’s bet on the flop with A-K, he wouldn’t have raised without a better hand because he also knew that Polly probably flopped top pair and would not fold to a raise. By raising, Reliable Ray was saying, “I can beat a pair of tens right now.”

The turn card was a nine, and while two hearts were now on the board, I didn’t believe the presence of two suited cards was significant at all, since the chance that it elevated Predictable Polly’s backdoor flush draw to a flush draw were slim. Polly checked, then called Ray’s bet.

At this point I knew that Polly believed Ray was ahead of her, but she wasn’t about to release top pair on the chance that she might either outdraw Ray by catching another ten or pairing her kicker on the river, or that Ray was pushing A-K and she had the best hand right now.

The river was an offsuit jack. Polly checked, Ray bet, and Polly raised. Ray called, suspecting he was probably beaten, and I knew he was. He the look on his face of a man who just had aces cracked, and that’s exactly what happened. Predictable Polly had J-T and made two pair on the river. Reliable Ray had a pocket pair of aces which were skewered by Polly’s two pair.

The way the hand unfolded made it clear what the players held, and while different players might have had different hands in that situation — there are legions of players who would have continued to bet A-K into that board if they were in Ray’s position — when these two players were in the hand, there was never any mystery at all.

I Put a Bounty on Myself for Tonight's Hurricane Relief Tourney

I'm placing a bounty on myself tonight. If you knock me out of tonight's Hurricane Relief Charity Tournament tonight, I wll donate $100 in your name and send you a copy of an autographed book of your choice.

Poker Tournament to Benefit Hurricane Relief

I posted this information last Friday, but I'm going to post it again, today:

Royal Vegas Poker is hosting a tournament to benefit victims of the hurricane. It's set for today, Tuesday, September 6 at 9:00 PM EST. The buy in is only $25, and even if you’ve already made a donation to help the refugees, this is another opportunity to contribute some more money and enjoy a poker tournament in the process.

I’ll be playing in this event and I hope you will too. America is an incredibly generous country, and I’ve always believed that we are quick to respond during moments of need. And there have never been a greater time of need than right now.

Even though poker players would take their grandmother’s last dime at the poker table, we are among the most giving people anywhere when it comes to helping people who really need our assistance.Won’t you please join me Tuesday evening to help those who truly need whatever assistance we can render?

Barbara Enright sent me this picture a few months ago. I think it's time to share it with the world. 

How I Misplayed a Pocket Pair of Aces

Here’s a hand I misplayed in an online cash game a few days ago. It started off nicely. I raised in middle position with a pocket pair of aces and was called by a guy in the cutoff seat. The big blind called and the small blind folded, so we were three handed when we saw the flop, which was Q-9-4 of mixed suits.

It appeared completely safe for me. I bet when the big blind checked and was called by both opponents. The turn was another benign card, an offsuit deuce, which meant no flush, no flush draw, and a straight or a straight draw was very unlikely too.

I bet the turn when the big blind checked, only to find myself raised by the guy in the cutoff seat. I did not want to lay down aces to a board that was now Q-9-4-2. After all, what could the raiser have? Two pair was pretty unlikely, and even if he did have two pair I had a redraw of sorts to a set or a bigger two pair.

He could have flopped or turned a set, but would he have cold called with a pair of fours or a pair of deuces before the flop? I don’t think so. He probably would have cold-called my initial raise with a pair of nines, but a pair of queens seemed unlikely because reraising with a pair of queens is almost mandatory in order to define your hand and provide an opportunity to get heads up with a player who is a lot more likely to have A-K, A-Q, J-J, T-T, or 9-9, than he is to have a pocket pair of kings or aces.

Still, this board was so unthreatening that I should have completely discounted the possibility that my opponent was bluffing into a board with a straight draw, and a flush was no longer even a remote possibility. The board was so unthreatening that my opponent could not logically be representing any hand other than one that would be way ahead of my aces, regardless of how much a longshot it might have been.

Nevertheless, I called, and I called another bet on the river too, only to look at a set of queens at the showdown.

He played his queens a lot differently than I would have. If I were in his position — in the cutoff seat and facing a raise — I’d have made it three bets in a heartbeat to drive out the big blind so I could play heads-up against the original raiser. And if the original raiser made it four bets, I would have a much better idea about the quality of his hand as long as I had some clue about his playing style.

In other words, if he played like I do and made it four bets, I’d have given him credit for a big pair — aces or kings — and played accordingly. If he were a maniac, I’d have discounted his hand quite a bit and figured that it was probably even money at that point as to who had the better hand, and if that were the case, you could argue all night about whether checking-and-calling or betting and raising would be the best way to play the hand from the flop to the river.

I think my opponent erred in not reraising with a pair of queens because he did nothing to define his hand while allowing the big blind to see the flop for a bargain price of one additional bet. He got lucky and flopped a set, and once he did that, his preflop reluctance to three-bet the pot worked to his favor because his set of queens was completely disguised.

In hindsight, I should have released my aces on the turn. With the quality of that board, the only hand he could have was one that could beat me, unless he was just taking a stab at the pot with nothing, and representing nothing at the same time. I had not played with him before, but in the short time we were at the same table, he did not impress me as someone who raised on inadequate values – another reason to credit him with a hand when he made what I considered initially to be an unlikely raise with an improbable hand.

Oh well, it cost me two bets I should not have lost, but it’s another one of those poker lessons you have to learn over and over again, or so it seems.

Would any of you have played this hand differently?

Poker Tournament to Benefit Hurricane Victims

We’re having a poker tournament on Royal Vegas Poker to benefit victims of the Hurricane. It takes place Tuesday, September 6 at 9:00 PM EST. The buy in is only $25, and even if you’ve already made a donation to help the refugees, this is another opportunity to contribute some more money and enjoy a poker tournament in the process.

I’ll be playing in this event and I hope you will too.

America is an incredibly generous country, and I’ve always believed that we are quick to respond during moments of need. And there have never been a greater time of need than right now. Even though poker players would take their grandmother’s last dime at the poker table, we are among the most giving people anywhere when it comes to helping people who really need our assistance.

Won’t you please join me Tuesday evening to help those who truly need whatever assistance we can render?

The Hurricane

I was gonna write about some poker hands today, but I've been spending too much of my time watching televised coverage of the disaster that's New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf. It's compelling, overwhelming, and too big a disaster to really take in emotionally in one fell swoop, which is why I'm watching this footage over and over again until it seeps into my brain and I can begin to make some sense of it all.

One of the guys many of us know quite well from the Internet poker newsgroup rec.gambling.poker is Rick "The Voice of Poker" Charles, a guy I've played poker with and been a guest on his internet radio broadcasts. He's a friend. Now he's in North Carolina where he went to outrun the storm, and his house -- located about two blocks from the water in Biloxi -- is toothpicks.

He's down to the clothes on his back, and can't even access his own money. He had it in a local Biloxi credit union that's a stack of toothpicks too, so he won't be able to get his own money until the credit union gets a new site and retreives it's offsite backup data. In the meantime, Nolan Dalla has started collecting funds for Rick and his family and it seems the entire poker community is responding with aid as quickly as they can. I guess all things are relative, and this makes Rick much better off than a lot of people I've seen on TV who don't have the support group he has, and are left with the clothes on their backs and no one to help them out.

This is the biggest disaster I've seen in the United States. I think New Orleans will take months before they can even start to rebuild. First they have to stabilize the levees, then pump out the water, and then make sure there's electricity and that the potable water system is OK. The flooding in New Orleans is not just a problem with water because the city is ringed by petrochemical plants so the flood waters in the city carry all the chemicals that have leeched into the soil and the flood is really a toxic waste soup.

It's a nightmare of disease waiting to happen and evacuating the entire city for as many months as it takes to get an infrasructure back in place seems to be the best approach. I'm guessing that many of the refugees from New Orleans will never return. After three to six motnhs in another place, you begin to build roots there, get jobs, find a place to live and when you consider that there's nothing for them to come back to, I'm guessing that the population of New Orleans will drop by a third to a half.

If you're a poker player and were going to go to the tables today, take the sum of your normal buy-in and give it to flood relief. If you know Rick Charles, you might just want to contact Nolan Dalla at nolandalla@aol.com and see about helping Rick out. If you don't know Rick, find a charity that's involved in this and send them some money.

One thing about Americans: we're a generous people in times of crisis. And that's what this is. It's a disaster of unmitigated proportions. And we can all afford to help. Even a little multiplied by many makes a lot.

thank you...........