stevesbets

I went to Foxwoods last week with high hopes, returning to the venue where I first went deep in a WPT event (10th place in 2005 in a mega field of over 800). Back then, I met many players who I had played countless heads-up matches against online. These included Alex “Yahtzem” Jacobs and Nick “TheTakeover” Schulman. Nick went on to win the event for over 2 million and Alex has had astounding tournament results since then.  I find it amusing when I reminisce just how many matches I played against these two young pros who really I can’t possibly have much edge on.

Anyway, the first thing that I remembered upon arriving was what a miserable place Foxwoods is to stay at. There is a long long walk from the hotel to the poker room, its in the middle of nowhere and it feels like you’re marooned in some sort of awful resort. The second thing I noticed was that poker really is dying. The night before the tournament the biggest game was 75 150 and the tournament turned out to be only about 400 players.

Onto my day 1. We started out with 30k in chips. My table was mostly young pros who all knew what they were doing whcih is never a positive sight on day 1 of a tournament. There was an interesting hand at first between the man to my right in seat 1 and someone named Jason Potter (he told me I could use his name even though he knew that the story wouldn’t put him in the best light). Potter was clearly someone who had been around the tournament circuit and knew what he was doing and all about proper etiquette. In one hand, Seat 1 raised to 1200, someone else called and Potter reraised to something like 6k from the small blind (very big reraise this early in the tournament). Seat 1 called and the other guy folded. The flop came Kd 4d 2d and Potter bet out small (something like 5k) and Seat 1 Called. The turn was the 7h and Potter bet out 8k and Seat 1 instantly moved in (Potter had about 15k more and Seat 1 had him slightly covered). Potter exhaled and exclaimed to himself the moment Seat 1 moved all in “damn did u really hit the nut flush…just calling the flop…taking one off…u have to think i have kk…wow…etc etc laboring the decision for what had to be 3 or 4 minutes. My personal opinion on calling the clock and the amount of time people take during live poker I’ll blog about another time, but since it was a big decision, people let him take his time. Seat 1 peaked at his cards and I caught a glimpse of Ad Kc. To me this seemed well ahead of Potter’s range given that he was thinking for so long about calling his last 15k into a 60k+ pot. Finally he called and turned over 6d 9d which held up. The fact that he would reraise this to steal preflop is not really that big a deal, but to even contemplate folding it after reraisign 20% of his stack preflop and FLOPPING A FLUSH is beyond absurd. Someone yelled out “slowroll alert” followed by a quick “just kidding” and Potter shook his head, exclaimed how he would never do that and how he really wasn’t sure. I couldn’t help but speak up and say that there was no way he was folding his hand and I was going to blog about it. It’s worthy of note here that I found Potter to be an affable guy and I hold no ill will towards him whatsoever and the following analysis is based purely on his actions.

A player as accoplished as Jason Potter is (I looked him up on cardplayer), knows about relative hand values, knows about odds and knows about slowrolling. The amount of time he took is absolutely positively unaccpetable. Live poker is totally ruined by players taking far more time than they should for god knows why. Maybe they enjoy being the center of the table’s attention, I don’t know, but in a case like this, Potter had to either know he was almost certainly ahead and clearly had odds to call in which case it was a malicious slowroll or he didn’t and really needed to consider that there may be a greater than 4 to 1 chance that Seat 1 flopped a higher flush after calling 6k preflop. Potter’s likeable persona means the first option is probably not the case and his poker knowledge indicates that the second option is not the case as surely only a TOTAL POKER NOVICE or out and out dunce would need to think more than a nanosecond before making that call. This leads me to the third utterly nonsensical option that I’m convinced is true. People like to seem smart and therefore they like to pretend to think. They usually have their decision made up right away, we all play by our knowledge and our gut. By pretending to think, if by chance our opponents hand is at the very top of their possible range and they are ahead of us, we save face by thinking long showing that “I might have folded”. I find this pretend thinking really annoying and out and out bad for poker. There really needs to be penalties for when Potter and everyone else do things like that.

Now onto my hand. I was up to 55k in chips which was certainly well above average as the tournament was still in it’s infancy. Potter was running really hot and had over 100k and was most likely the chip leader of the room. I have TT in middle position and raise to 700, everyone folds to Potter in the BB who calls. Flop is Qd Th 2d and Potter check raises me. I had 3bet bluffed him on a flop before so I decided to 3 bet right there which he quickly 4 bet huge. I was counting the chips in my head as I went all in but after he snapcalled and turned up qq all in one motion i felt punched in the gut and headed for the doors. I quickly cancelled the rest of my reservation and left foxwoods, it felt good to get home.

My midterms just finished up last week, it’s very strange being a student again and having a “busy season”. For the people that have my freeroll, you are not looking too good on the academic front but you certainly have a chance on the fitness end as it seems like I may struggle to reach my goals. (If you don’t know about the freeroll see here). So midterms went well, although I haven’t gotten my management one back yet, and if you see my old blog about my classes, my first impression of that teacher was correct. She is so unorganized and loopy that it is truly amazing she teaches at a Business school. The test included 50 multiple choice quesitons all about various management theories that aside from being worthless memorization, wasn’t at all in the spirit of the class. It is not surprising that her test does not follow her teaching style though since that very style is wacky, clueless and out of touch. The fact that I am paying $3000 for that class really irks me.

On a different note, I am not afraid to admit that I really like some of the reality shows on TV. I watch American Idol, Survivor, Real World and even some of the less popular ones like The Pick Up Artist and Beauty and the Geek.  I only have one thing to say about these shows for the purposes of the blog and that is that I REALLY don’t understand how everyone is so weepy (across all reality shows it seems). They all cry so much, sometimes over the most mundane things. The best example of this is on Survivor when they get “letters from home”. A letter from the loved ones of the castaways almost always brings them to tears, and heroic words about how they “are going through it all for them”. Whenever I see that I want to yell at the screen, “you’ve been away from them and on the island for 11 freaking days!!”. Missing people is fine and natural, but to be moved to the point of tears because you’ve been away shooting a popular tv show for a couple weeks is ridiculous.

I know this blog entry is long and I appreciate those of you that made it to the end. Here I’ll make my political comment for the day (really just a funny daily show quote). For those of you who don’t know, proposition 8 passed narrowly in California making same sex marriage unconstitutional. The passage of this proposition was largely attributed to the very high turnout of black (christian) voters energized by Obama. Jon Stewart pointed out the irony, “We finally have a black president, yay! equal rights!! but wait…gay marraige…we can’t stand for that…waaaatch out, the oppressees have become the opressors”. I’ll let his quote speak for itself. Have a good Monday!

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly (my favorite author) just hit the shelves. I have read all of his books and had preordered this one. His novels are always so great because they are fast paced mysteries with interesting, complex heroes and multiple layers of endings that always leave the reader deeply satisfied. The Brass Verdict was no exception. I started reading it at 1 am one night, planning to go to bed by 2. I was still reading it at 9 am when i sleepily dropped it down and went to bed happy and finished. If you are into mysteries and thrillers I highly recommend starting Michael Connelly at the beginning with The Black Echo and going all the way through.

The first line of the novel goes “Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.” This leads nicely into what I have to say about the Brian Townsend/stellarnebula mess (see my blog below for the story to date). A representative from Full tilt called me up to discuss the situation with me. The fact that they called me as opposed to emailing was odd to begin with, I assume it’s so they could more fully deal with the problem, though a cynic may say it’s so I don’t have any of their response in writing. I spoke with the guy for about 45 minutes and he made it clear that while he totally agrees with almost every point I made about why Townsend’s actions were unaccpetable and effectively stole EV (and therefore money) from his opponents, full tilt simply will not reimburse people that are the “victims” of multi accouting. He made no real effort to explain why the site’s pros aren’t held to higher standards andhe kept insisting that Townsend did receive a major penalty by losing his pro status for 6 months. When I explained that while I understood it hurts him, it doenst help anyone who had a long history with him who would have played him differently or not at all in the very high stakes nosebleed cash games had they known the truth. He acted understanding but in the end Full Tilt clearly will take no action and this  is unacceptable to me. I could go on forever about this, but the fact is there is limited competition of big good sites and I need to play on Full Tilt so in the end there is not much I can do about it.

With that said, I can write here exactly how this makes me feel about Townsend, a player who I respected who had even blogged about having good games with me back when he played on his real account. He was someone who pretty much has been given everything in life. He comes from (what I’ve heard) is an extremely wealthy family, he made more than pretty much anyone for a long stretch playing online poker and received countless endorsements and opportunities as a result, including coveted deals with Cardrunners and Full Tilt Poker. All of this was not enough for him and he felt the need to play on a secret name because he claims he “enjoys anonymity”. In an online poker era where JJprodigy and his associates are constantly getting busted, where Zeejustin was branded a cheater and an outcast for several years due to multiaccounting, where mrcasino was just permanently banned from stars for playing on a different account solely because his real account was banned for 3 months, Townsend really has absolutely no excuse. He did not play on stellarnebula because he “enjoys anonymity”. I find that statement so highly offensive and insulting to the intelligence of all his readers. He did not do it because it was his only way to play or any other semi-legit reason. He did it for one reason and one reason alone. He knows in the long run he will win more money that way, it was greed, pure and simple and the fact that he doenst have to pay for it is a huge black eye for online poker. All of these others have been severely punished and their reputations have been ruined for what are in my view far more minor transgressions than what Townsend did to high stakes heads up players like me.

It bares repeating that this guy was/is one of the most highly respected and successful poker players in the world.  He had NO NEED WHATSOEVER to lie and cheat, yet he pays no monetary price aside from losing some opportunity cost (his pro status for 6 months), and the site that employs him refuses to provide a remedy. I don’t understand how every single person that lost money to stellarnebula (or even won money from him) isn’t totally outraged.

In the end though, as Connelly aptly points out, everybody lies. His reputation, his well to do background and the respect others have for him did not stop him from lying to and stealing from other players. When I first got into poker I read a book called Poker Nation and I remember there being a line about how a poker room was filled with liars, theives, dupes and morons and the deeper I get into it the more I learn it’s true. I have often been flamed for not being more a part of “the poker community” but the fact is that if people like Townsend are at the core of that community (he was a twoplustwo hero for ages), I want no part in it.