Currently, the Swedish Online Championships of Poker are underway at Unibet; four events played so far, with Omaha to follow this evening.

Now I am particularly fond of heads-up poker; as writer Bob Ciaffone once put it, ”poker in its purest form of all”. Once I get heads-up in a sit-and-go, the records I keep show that I will win it twice as often as I will finish second.

What happened day before yesterday was however that I had, as per my contract with Unibet, been given a ”ticket” to the HU Online Championship… which I took to be ”a reserved seat”. When I sat down before my computer with half an hour to go before the tournament, I duly exchanged my ticket for spot number 150 or so; and then, when the tournament started, no table popped up. Confusion, and a telephone call; whereupon I was informed that no, the ”ticket” was not equal to a reserved seat, and that only the 128 first to register (a total of 179 had registered by 8 p.m.) were allowed into the tournament. Had the number of registrations reached 256 (= the next level) or above, then 256 would have taken part.

Understandable in a way, as the players in the current HU format knock each other out according to the reverse progression 256>128>64>32>16>8>4>2>1… but it led me to thinking that it must be possible to arrange a heads-up tournament in such a format that it can accept any number of players.

Also, there would be advantages to this. With the limit set at 128 players in the HU Online Swedish Championship, there was a total of 3712 euros going to the victor; had all 179 registered players been allowed in, first prize would have been over 5000 euros! And, as I said, all registered players would have taken part, causing no disappointment – as it did now – to those 51 who had their money refunded while staring dumbly at their screens.

Now here is my suggestion for a new HU format, for future tournaments:

The basis of my format is the wellknown ”Swiss system”, which since 1895 has been used not only in chess tournaments throughout the world, but also in checkers, oware, Othello and dozens of other games where the players by necessity face off two at a time.

In short, adapted to HU poker for any number of players (but a large starting field), the software (or the tournament director and her/his crew, when playing live) would randomly choose which opponent you would face in the first round. If there is an odd number of entrants, the player who receives a ”bye” (= does not play an opponent in that round) is also chosen randomly.

After this first round of play, half of the players will have won their match (win = 1 point, loss = 0 points), while half of them will have lost. Now the Swiss system kicks in: if you won your first match, you will in your second match face another player who also won his/her first match; and if you lost your first match, you will instead face another ”loser” in the second round.

After the second round, ¼ of the field will have won two matches; ½ will have won one match; and ¼ will have lost two games in a row.

In the third and subsequent rounds, the same principle applies: you will as far as possible meet an opponent who has won the same number of matches that you have. If you have 2 points so far, you will meet an opponent who also has 2 points; if you have 1 point, you will meet an opponent who also has 1 point; etcetera.

And so it goes on, for another 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 rounds (depending on the number of entrants): players with a certain number of points so far will in the next round meet another player with the same number of points. In this way, the Swiss system works like an old-fashioned separator for milk and cream; you climb upwards or descend downwards until you ”have found your level”.

Four basic rules within the Swiss system are that (A) you may never meet the same opponent twice, but must instead as far as possible in each round meet a new opponent with the same number of points that you have; (B) a player who is given a ”bye” (when there is an odd number of entrants) must always be randomly chosen from the group with the lowest number of points so far; (C) that player who receives a ”bye” is given 1 point, quite in accordance with the Swiss system; and (D) a player can only receive one ”bye” in the entire tournament.

After let us say 7 or 8 or 9 matches in total (again depending on the number of entrants), the best players will have risen to the top points-wise. Now the best 16 players (or possibly 32, if the starting field is sufficiently large) are in the money and then play off for the respective prizes in the classical fashion: 16>8>4>2>1 winner.

What happens if you need a tiebreaker to select the 16, because there are several players with the same number of points? In chess and other games it can get a tad complicated here, as you start counting ”sub-points”; basically, if you defeat player A who in turn in his/her matches has defeated better opponents than player B has, then defeating player A is worth more ”sub-points” than defeating player B. While this can of course be calculated at lightning speed by the software, I instead suggest a much simpler and more crystal-clear rule for my format; that in case of equal points, the tiebreaker be the total accumulated time you took to defeat your opponents in the matches that you won (the ones you lost are ignored here). Thus, aggressive play will be rewarded.

The obvious question is of course, how many rounds of play are needed? The rule of thumb within chess etc is that to produce a clear winner with reasonable accuracy, you need the same number of rounds as if it had been a knockout tournament. Thus, with let’s say 193 entrants, you round up to the next multiple which is 256, and find that nine rounds are needed in order to produce a clear winner.

However, we do not need to produce a clear winner in my new HU format (call it the Glimne Heads-Up Format or GHU format for short); rather, we only need to produce the top 16 players, for which seven rounds should be sufficient here. Add a further four rounds to that for the final 16>8>4>2>1 progression, and you have a total of eleven rounds with such a large starting field as 193 in the example here. (Smaller starting fields will of course need fewer rounds.)

It should be pointed out that the proven Swiss system has been used in hundreds of thousands of tournaments since Julius Müller first suggested it and it was put to practice in 1895 in Zürich; and in the GHU format I have adapted it to ”select” those players which will wind up in the money, and then have them fight it out for the top spots – possibly with a ”seeding” built in, so that the players at the very top will start in separate halves of the field.

The advantages of the GHU format are several:
(A) It will adapt to any number of players, instead of stopping at 128 or 256 and shutting out disappointed entrants.
(B)The prize money will be bigger.
(C) Even if you lose a game or possibly two, you still have a chance of winding up in the top 16.
(D) It will be much better at actually selecting the best players, unlike the classic knockout system where all it takes against a worse opponent is a ridiculous two-outer on the river and you will be history – the luck factor is simply lower with the GHU format, since everyone gets to play several rounds.
(E) Each participant will get more play value for his or her money.
(F) The excitement and the hope will last longer, before the top 16 (or whatever number) are eventually chosen.

As for the disadvantages, there is pretty much only one: the GHU format requires another two or three rounds in total, compared to the knockout format. But is that not a reasonable price to pay for a format with more play value, more money (also for the arranging site) and less luck?

Over to you, dear readers…

As my fellow Unibet Ambassador Alex Rousso has pointed out in his recent blog, another scandal – involving not only the young Portuguese José ”Girah” Macedo, but now also wellknown players Haseeb Qureshi and Daniel ”jungleman12” Cates – is not exactly what the poker world needs at this moment.

Both Qureshi and Cates have played on Macedo’s accounts; furthermore, Macedo has – among other things – tricked a number of his poker friends and colleagues into heads-up matches against the alleged fish ”sauron1989”, and stood by via Skype with all kinds of suggestions and ”helpful” advice as to how these friends and colleagues should play their cards. Problem was, it was Macedo himself who was ”sauron1989”, and who had no problem busting his opponents when he had willing cooperation regarding information about their hole cards!

It seems that the list of cheating scams and other ungentlemanly behaviour is steadily growing. On 8th December 2009 Swedish star Viktor ”Isildur1” Blom lost a staggering 4.5 million dollars to Cole South and Brian Hastings… whom, assisted by Brian Townsend, turned out to have shared and analyzed Blom’s hand history in violation of the site’s strict policy. And another Swedish professional – I will not mention his name here – lost over a million dollars to the same online opponent over the course of a few weeks, before he got sufficiently suspicious and took his laptop to a specialist where it was found that ”somebody” had installed a trojan which took six screen dumps per minute and sent them on via the Internet. No wonder the Swedish pro lost, when his oppponent could see his hole cards!

Once in my life, I have seen for myself just how incredibly deadly this particular information can be. It occurred in May 2005, when I was co-hosting the first season of the Swedish poker programme ”Pokermiljonen” for Unibet. On the day before shooting was to begin, my co-host Joakim Geigert and I were in the studio while all the technical stuff was being set up and tested – lights, cameras, and not least the table where all the poker action was going to take place. The head of the production team, Isabelle M., was sitting at the table where there was a mock game with cards and chips going on (no money, of course) and she was via a headset and microphone continually ordering spotlights, sound levels and everything else to be adjusted and finetuned. Via the holecard cameras and a whole row of monitors Joakim and I could follow the mock game in detail, and since only Isabelle could hear us via her headset, we eventually could not resist whispering information to her about what her opponents had in hand.

Now Isabelle M. is a pretty accomplished opponent at the table – but for that half an hour, she played like God: laying it down every time she was an underdog, but relentlessly pressing her advantage every time she had the better hand. All the time she did not for a second reveal what was going on, but instead kept giving orders about camera angles and other details while receiving information about her opponents’ hole cards via her headset; and her chipstack grew by the minute as Joakim and I could feel the hair on our heads standing straight up. Never, never before or since have I seen such a display of crushing, ruthless invincibility at the poker table. That was a stunning insight… until the others eventually got suspicious of her clairvoyant moves, and rumbled us for some relieved laughs.

Anyway.

It is a small consolation that live poker, ever since the game was invented in or around New Orleans circa 1820, has been even more afflicted by rampant cheating, large and small, for those two centuries. Perhaps it is psychologically unavoidable, in a game which is played not only for but primarily WITH money.

Once, during a trial in the 1930’s in the USA concerning the infamous bankrobber Willie Sutton, the judge asked: ”Why do you always go after banks?” Sutton’s reply has become a classic: ”Because that’s where the money is.”

And so it is with poker, as with for example the credit card industry: since that is where the big money is, it is unavoidable that weaker souls will forever try to figure out how to cut a piece of the pie for themselves. They follow Walter Darring’s old adage: ”Get the money and get it honest, but if you can’t get it honest, get it anyway.”

Live poker has throughout its existence attracted swindles, rampant cheating and incorrigible con men. The list is endless – and by the way does not limit itself to poker. In 1886 Oscar Wilde, who at the time was in the US for a lecture tour, got lured into a game of cards in New York City… where everyone at the table, except of course the famous playwright, was in on the scam.

It created a sensation in 2003 when the Russian gymnast and Olympic gold medal winner Vera Shimanskaya was caught by the Spanish police. She and her male partner had won close to a hundred thousand euros playing poker in casinos, by marking the cards during the game. And German player Ali Tekintamgac, I am sure, will not need any introduction to my readers!

Perhaps the time has come to do what the legendary Doyle Brunson once suggested: establishing a ”Poker Hall of Shame”, not least as a warning to others. Brunson even suggested a couple of names for starters: Walter ”Puggy” Pearson (for his occasionally extremely rude behaviour towards both other players and casino staff); John ”Doc” Holliday (who during his career shot and killed several opponents); ”Nigger Nate” Lanette (who once bit off an ear from a dealer at the Stardust); Stu ”The Kid” Ungar (for his generally unsympathetic and unsporting behaviour at the table); Nick Vacchiano (a specialist at positioning himself next to female dealers, insulting them in unspeakable fashion); and Nick ”Shoeshine” Simpson (who organized large-scale cheating during the 1960’s and 1970’s, and once under the table urinated on a dealer who gave him too many bad cards).

And one should keep in mind that not only players, but also the casinos and gaming houses, have many times behaved in immoral fashion – to put it mildly. In his book ”Tales of Old Las Vegas”, Sam O’Connor tells of how it was during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, after the casinos had started using dealers in the poker rooms but before the Nevada Gaming Commission had established rules for how much could be raked from each pot. The visiting tourists would then often find themselves in what on the inside was called ”snatch and grab games”, and which had dealers whose specialty it was to take all they could get away with from the pots, on behalf of the house. It worked best with games such as five-card draw, where the players had a lot more to look at than the chips – in those days often silver dollars – in the middle. As O’Connor ironically and punningly puts it in his book: ”It was too much money to be called a rake; it more closely resembled a shovel.”

O’Connor in particular mentions one Rex Reynolds, who in those days was a dealer at the Fremont Hotel & Casino i Downtown. ”Every bet, every turn of the card brought something new to take the players’ attention away from the dealer and the pot and Rex used all the tools of misdirection that were at his disposal. He pointed to the cards with one hand while the other hand took the money. When the cards were turned over, he helped himself again. His sleight of hand was exceptional. He could hide silver dollars behind the deck. He could palm as many as four or five silver dollars at the opportune moment and slip them noiselessly into the wooden rack. When the winning hand was at last turned over, Rex had taken whatever the lack of player awareness had allowed.”

In interesting account, of the ”snatch games” awaiting unwary tourists in Las Vegas in those days!

But it is in the end important to point out that the game of poker today, thanks to existing rule sets and regulating authorities, despite everything is much LESS riddled with cheating today than ever before – in terms of per player taking part and per dollar wagered. And if we persist in being watchful and sharing information on various forums, the game will hopefully be even cleaner in the future.

DAN GLIMNE

Inevitably, just like in any other game involving the element of chance, good and bad luck play their part in poker; and our obsession with it can sometimes go beyond most limits.

One classic anecdote in this regard concerns Jack Straus, the 1982 world champion. It is the mid-1980’s and Jack is in the middle of a poker game one evening at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas – and stuck for a couple of thousand dollars, after suffering some severe bad luck. There is a phone call for him and Jack goes over to the poker manager’s desk to take it; this is before the age of mobile phones. At the other end of the line is an old friend of Jack’s, who is making his last call from Death Row in one of the prisons down in Texas.

“Jack”, says his friend sorrowfully, “the Governor denied my pardon earlier today, so I’m afraid it’s the electric chair for me tomorrow…”

“Yeah, yeah”, Jack impatiently interrupts him, “just wait until you hear what an unbelievably lousy day I’ve had at the tables…”

The Main Event in this year’s World Series of Poker was a short affair for me: some five hours or so of day 1, and then I was out. When I hit my best hand of the day, a full house, a Japanese player on my immediate left had slowplayed a pair of Kings to sneakily hit a higher full house, which cost me half of my stack to find out; and the rest of my stack vanished when I hit my second-best hand of the day, a King-high flush… which of course right at that moment was up against an Ace-high flush. Bad luck, bad play, bad timing? Whatever the combination of the three, it sent me to the rail.

Play poker long enough, and you will see not only the improbable but also the nearly impossible happen. Mathematically, when playing hold’em, the worst badbeat you can suffer at any given moment is being outdrawn on a 1 in 990 shot: if after the flop you have the stone-cold nuts, and your opponent’s only chance of outdrawing you is hitting the perfect turn card AND the perfect river card in succession. In other words you can have a 99,9% chance of winning the pot, and still lose it. Those are the realities of poker.

Has it happened? Of course: On day 1A of the 2006 Main Event of the WSOP, one player got his chips all-in with a pair of Fives against another with a pair of black Eights, upon which the flop was 5-5-6 with two spades. Nothing less than quads, versus a mere weak overpair; has the player with four Fives won the pot? No, as the turn was the 7 of spades… and the river the 9 of spades, giving the player holding 8-8 a straight flush. Now that’s as bad a beat as it gets.

Another famous hand, but from day 1 of the 2008 Main Event of the WSOP, had the American player Justin Phillips with K-J of diamonds up against the Japanese player Motoyuki Mabuchi holding A-A. The board came A of hearts, Queen of diamonds, 9 of clubs… and then 10 of diamonds on the turn and A of diamonds on the river, and of course the money went all-in since Mabuchi had quad Aces but Phillips had caught the perfect turn and river to make a royal and bust Mabuchi. Ooops.

But wait, it can actually get even worse. Here is an anecdote told by former world champion Greg Raymer to journalists when he visited Oslo in 2005 – and I am not about to argue about how true it is, I am just quoting him:

It is a cashgame in Las Vegas, and two players are all-in before the flop. Even though they do not have to (it is a cashgame), they turn up their cards: one has 7-7, the other has A-A. The dealer turns up the flop… which is 7-7-x!

“Oh well”, the player with the Aces mutters. “I’ve still got two more Aces in the deck.”

“No, you don’t”, replies a third player at the table. “I folded an Ace with a weak kicker when you guys went all-in.”

“So did I”, says a fourth player. “There are no more Aces left in the deck.”

Right then, it happens; at the adjoining table a player wins a huge pot, jumps up to shout with joy… and bumps into a passing waitress so that her tray, drinks and all, spill out over the table with the upturned Sevens and Aces and cause the dealer to drop the cards in hand; in short, everything is a mess. Once things have been mopped up, the floor manager is called over to take a decision. He calls for a new deck, orders the exposed hole cards and the flop to be restored, and the rest of the cards to be shuffled together and the turn and the river to be dealt out to finish the hand. And of course, the turn is… the third Ace, and the river is… the fourth Ace, giving the pot to the player who now has quad Aces.

As the Danish writer H.C. Andersen once said, some stories are so good that they deserve to be true…

But my favourite badbeat story of all times, and a guaranteed true one at that? It has to be this one, from the early 1990’s and once again the legendary casino Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas. In a one-table satellite to the Main Event of the WSOP, there are now only two players left, heads-up: former world champion Jack Keller, and Todd Brunson, son of the famous Doyle Brunson. Todd Brunson is holding the A-K of diamonds, Jack Keller the Queen of spades and the Jack of clubs, all the chips go in before the flop, and the flop is… Queen of diamonds, Jack of diamonds and Two of clubs, giving Keller top two pair but Todd a monster draw. The turn card is… the Ten of diamonds, giving Todd Brunson a royal straight flush!! Keller gets up to shake Todd Brunson’s hand and congratulate him to the victory – but is it all over? Has Keller lost the satellite? Is it really game, set, and match?

No… the river card is a second Jack of diamonds!! “I had never seen anything like that, and still haven’t to this day”, writes Doyle Brunson in his book “My 50 Most Memorable Hands” when he recalls that hand which he witnessed as a spectator. The floor manager of course has no choice but to step in and declare the hand void and the chips returned, so that the match could continue.

As the saying goes, ”It aint over till it’s over…”

So who knows what will happen, with still two live Unibet Open events to go? Remember, a specially engraved Rolex watch will go to the player suffering the worst badbeat during the year’s UO events. And with my luck in Las Vegas to go by, I would not be surprised to find out that it is me in the end… but at least the Rolex watch will be a nice consolation, together with another story afterwards to bore my friends and poker colleagues with.

DAN GLIMNE

The World Poker Championship, the Main Event here at the WSOP, starts tomorrow – and all of us participants know what awaits: blood, toil, sweat, tears, tragedies and triumphs, shouts of joy and hours of inky black depression, here in the poker world’s equivalent of Cannae, Waterloo, Agincourt and Lützen; and all of it in front of the unfeeling television cameras broadcasting everything, along the long, winding road towards that mirage on the horizon – the final table. In a tournament of this size, with ten hours of play every day, the participants will be forced to take between 400 and 500 decisions before they may, just may, advance to another day which will be just as labourous… and all it takes in no-limit is just one single disastrous decision, after which you are history and find yourself dumped out the backdoor in a body bag.

But it is also here in the tournament rooms of the Rio that I have what the Japanese call a ”satori”: a sudden and deep insight.

I have totally missed the big picture.

Whatever the number of participants will be at the end, it is gravely misleading; it is only the tip of the massive iceberg. The total number of hopeful players, across the world, who have done battle with the ambition of making it here to the Main Event of the WSOP must be absolutely staggering.

In well over a hundred countries, in satellites at many, many dozen web sites but also in casinos, card clubs and even in some high-end private homegames, men and women have for nearly a year aimed at and dreamt about a seat in the Main Event. How many can they have been altogether? Only the poker gods themselves can know that number. But the Main Event here at the WSOP is, despite it being the world’s annual most publicized poker event, only the visible top of a gigantic pyramid where perhaps a million individuals make up the base. For each one who will sit down here in the Amazon Room and the Pavilion at the Rio, starting tomorrow, hundreds have fantasized, hoped, tried and failed.

If you consider all of this, the World Poker Championship may very well be the single biggest competitive event on the planet when looking at the total, and I mean the t-o-t-a-l, number of participants.

It is almost beyond what can be intellectually and emotionally grasped. And it will be still more mindboggling when we two weeks from now are down to the ”November Nine”: those nine players who in the end will have accomplished the nearly impossible, making it all the way to the final table. How will they feel inside when they in a few months’ time march onto the stage under the bright lights, to take up the final battle like those gladiators who once walked out onto the sands of the Colosseum? It is perhaps no coincidence that poker tournament tables have the same oval shape as the arenas of Ancient Rome. Hell, Caesar; those who are about to die salute you!

And up on the stage of the Pavilion, in a glass box watched by armed guards, the glittering, massive, diamond-encrusted gold bracelet that is reserved for the eventual winner is on public display; the modern-day wreath of the Olymp. None of us who see it cannot but fantasize about what it would feel like to wear it, as its rightful owner.

DAN GLIMNE

Now it is official – on July 1st next year, in 2012, the most expensive poker tournament in history will commence: with a buy-in of one million dollars. Yup, a cool mil: with that kind of money you could probably feed the entire population of Harare in Zimbabwe for a couple of months. And not only that, a number of other world records and firsts will be established at the same time.

This one-of-a-kind poker (?) poker tourney is the brainchild of Guy Laliberté, the French-Canadian founder of the showbusiness company Cirque du Soleil. He is also chairman of One Drop, a non-governmental charity organization devoted to fighting poverty worldwide by supporting access to water in third-world areas and countries. The aim is therefore to raise money for this cause, so 111,111 dollars out of every buy-in goes towards One Drop… which still leaves a staggering 889,889 dollars for the prize pool.

Leaving aside the charity aspect, fifteen players have already declared that they will take part: Laliberté, naturally, but also Tom ”durrrr” Dwan, Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Tony Gouga and a few others. A couple of businessmen with philantropic interests have also signed up, among them Phil Ruffin who is the owner of the Treasure Island Casino here in Las Vegas. Dwan has incidentally in a recent interview said: ”I am buying in; $1 million has a nice ring to it. It’s so sick, and for such a good cause. Now I just gotta win.”

Sick or not, it will be structured as a three-day tournament. Since a guiding principle here of the WSOP is that the starting stack in any event is always three times the buy-in (4,500 in chips if it is a $1500 event, 30K if it is the $10,000 Main Event, and so on), the players of this million-dollar tournament – officially called both the ”No-Limit Holdem High-Roller WSOP Championship” and ”The Big One For One Drop” – will start with 3,000,000 in chips.

This is of course another world record. Amassing 3M in chips usually takes the participants in the Main Event of the WSOP four or five days of play! Even in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship (Event #55) which started yesterday here at the WSOP, the starting stack is ”only” 150,000 in chips. The one starting stack even coming close that I’ve heard of is the annual local one-off tournament run by a small club up in Northern Sweden every autumn, and in which the players start with 1M in chips – while the blinds start at 25-50! Of course 20,000 x BB is ridiculously deepstacked, but on the other hand the levels escalate quickly in this particular local affair.

In this million-dollar WSOP tournament next year the blinds will start at 3,000-6,000 with a 1,000 ante, so 500 x BB is quite respectably deepstacked as befits the seriousness of the affair. The levels are one hour long each. A cap of 48 players maximum has been set, meaning that – in case this target is reached – the prize pool will then encompass over 42 million dollars, with some 10 million going to the first place finisher. This number is as yet only beaten by Jamie Gold’s 12 million dollars for winning the Main Event in the 2006 WSOP, when 8773 players entered. Heck, a little re-juggling of the numbers and the tournament director could set first prize in this One Drop tournament at 12,5 million dollars… just to capture another mind-boggling world record.

According to the press releases, 20% of the field will be paid: twice the average in ordinary tournaments. And, if there are at least 22 players entering this million-dollar tournament, the winner will receive not an ”ordinary” gold bracelet, but instead a platinum one!

Phew; some staggering numbers and facts awaiting us in 2012. Now let’s get back to those 10- and 20-euro sit-and-gos, shall we?

DAN GLIMNE

To lead into this story, I will have to take you back to my first visit to Japan, back in 1986. During that decade I worked as the product development manager at AB Alga, at the time Scandinavia’s leading company for board games and puzzles. We had business partners here and there in the world including Tsukuda Inc, so there I was in Tokyo for a courtesy visit, and taken out for the evening by a representative of that company.

A car took us to a small, unremarkable backstreet in the Ginza district, and a house with no signs whatsoever on the outside. As we approached the last few metres on foot the door opened and a mama-san, a hostess, welcomed us with a low bow. We took off our shoes, were escorted up some stairs and then along a raised corridor of sorts, flanked on both sides by a number of sliding doors consisting of bamboo and rice paper; straight out of a samurai movie. The hostess slid open one of these doors, and waved us in. Walking down four or five steps we were in a discreetly lit room with no chairs and no table: only a sleek, modern gas stove with adjoining bench in the middle, and so we sat down on our lower legs on the floor. Luckily, I have had some practice in martial arts and was used to sitting in that position.

There were two petite, middle-aged Japanese women in the room, also seated on their lower legs, who after the introductory bows now set about their business of pouring sake and heating thin slices of meat and vegetables on the stove, and which they then served us together with a variety of sauces. The food was superb, but what has really stayed in my mind after all these years was how these two women performed a sort of magical trick: they were both dressed in dark blue kimonos that matched the subdued decor of the room, and every time they had topped up our sake cups or with a minimum of gestures laid more food on our plates, they just leaned back again, folded their arms, lowered their heads, sat in perfect stillness and… disappeared. There is no other appropriate word for this optical illusion they somehow pulled off, right in front of me, leaving me and the Tsukuda rep to carry on our conversation. It must have taken them long training to achieve this blending in with the room; and every time they moved to quietly serve us yet again, always with the most delicate of movements, it was as if they somehow popped back into existence once more. I have never seen anything like it, before or since.

I have no idea of how much that visit cost: no bill was ever presented, no credit cards pulled out. The suspicion that this just possibly may have been the most expensive meal in my life still lingers.

But here in Las Vegas, I am sometimes reminded of this 1986 dinner in Tokyo when I make a point of studying the dealers at the poker tables. Some dealers are flashy, have big gestures to the point of irritating me no end, and some are of the opinion that it is their job to get the table talk going. On occasion it can be entertaining, but my favourite ones resemble those two Japanese women back then. You are not really aware of the presence of the very best dealers, and once they leave your table you have only a very vague recollection of what he or she really looked like, but the job was done to perfection: the cards appeared in front of you accurately and neatly, the chips were handled smoothly, and the whole flow of it let you concentrate fully on the game and your opponents.

That said, when befriending some of the dealers away from the tables they will often have fascinating stories of drama, comedy and tragedy to tell: after all they are there, they watch it all, the triumphs and the humiliation. Here is one of my favourites in retelling:

It is the 2006 WSOP, at the start of the Main Event, and one of the players sitting down to take part is a young man who wastes no time in informing the rest of this dealer’s table that he passed the girl of his dreams walking into the room: the actress Shannon Elizabeth, who is blonde and exceedingly beautiful – and to be fair, an accomplished player to boot. Loudly, the young man complains about The Unfairness of Life and how men like him are never ever given a chance to meet amazing women like her.

Well, as the saying goes: be careful what you wish for.

An hour or so into the first level the player on the young man’s right is knocked out, and after ten minutes’ vacancy a new player is moved to that empty seat. Yes, you’ve already guessed who it is coming to the table: Shannon Elizabeth.

So there she finally is, this lady of the young man’s dreams, giving him a dazzling 500-watt smile when he looks at her and takes in what has actually happened. And the result? The young man’s brain instantly melts down. He cannot say anything intelligent but instead mumbles incoherent phrases, plays like an absolute idiot and is of course knocked out ten minutes later; doing a quite unintended disappearing act of his own.

Keep your mind on the game! And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be back here with more war stories from the green felt that I’ve heard dealers tell.

DAN GLIMNE

Here in the madding crowds of the WSOP in Las Vegas, one runs into many friends and colleagues and interesting conversations take place: a recent one was on how much poker has developed over the last decade, and also on how public these advances in technique are these days.

If you look at the state of the game of yesteryear, skill in poker was either passed on from man to man in discreet talks over whiskey and cigars, or painstakingly acquired through practical play. As Doyle Brunson so descriptively once put it: ”It cost me the price of a Cadillac to get good at poker.”

Leafing through one of the early classics on the subject, ”The Education of a Poker Player” from 1957 by the US cryptographer Herbert O. Yardley, it is strikingly clear that the author – although chiefly discussing draw and stud which were in vogue at the time – recommends an extremely tight ABC poker: wait for good cards and good situations, and only then do you pull the trigger. To be sure, that style must have worked well in its day, when the common man had at best very vague opinions on what constituted hand selection, bet-sizing and the inherent mathematics of the game.

The next notable milestone was ”Super System” from 1978 by Doyle Brunson (and a number of co-authors). Already here can readily be seen that the recommended range of hands has widened considerably: it is for example in this book that we find ”revealed” for the first time in print how you in certain situations profitably can play suited connectors, such as 7-8 of spades. It is also clear that the authors insist on a considerably higher degree of aggressiveness than Yardley would ever have dreamt of.

Since then poker has developed at a breath-taking speed, and moves and countermoves alternate. One example is the ”c-bet”, the continuation bet: Once the majority of players during the early 2000’s had picked up on that a raise pre-flop ”must” be followed by betting out after the flop, once the opponent nervously has checked, the post-flop checkraise was developed as the countermove – the opponent checked the flop, the preflop raiser bet out, and NOW the opponent raised in order to put the preflop raiser in a difficult position. Today, even that countermove has met its counter-countermove, in the form of ”the delayed c-bet”: if you are the preflop raiser and the flop has landed on the table and your opponent checks ahead of you, you now also check behind, in order to sidestep the potential checkraise and aiming to get in a bet after the turn card.

This is just to pick one example of where move and countermove and counter-countermove have developed rapidly! It is also clear how the aggression factor – especially online – has been raised just over the past three or four years, and how the ”hyper-LAG” style dominates more and more. There is a growing number of players willing to ”four-bet light” when holding deep stacks, meaning even with highly dubious cards such as for example 9-7 off, in order to represent first-class tickets and get the opponent to give up and fold. If you look in the recent strategy book ”The Raiser’s Edge” by Bertrand ”ElkY” Grospellier and several co-authors, even the five-bet move as a weapon is discussed! But perhaps these steadily rising levels of pre-flop aggression have now reached the end of their usefulness: that same book also advises using pot-control by calling down such maniacs and hyper-LAGs instead, and waiting for the turn or the river to make a countermove.

The flood of good poker literature in the past decade, plus a plethora of discussion and education online sites devoted to poker, have in any case lowered the cost of getting good at poker. The bottom line is of course still that there is no substitute for practical experience against real human opponents, but obtaining a summa cum laude in poker no longer requires the price of a Cadillac: a dozen carefully chosen poker books, coupled with diligent studies and experience via the Internet, need not cost more than a good-quality bicycle.

DAN GLIMNE

… the girl in the coffee shop says ”Good Luck at the tables!” while she gives you your change

… you can do your Christmas shopping at three in the morning

… the menu in the restaurant unashamedly describes their chocolate dessert with the word ”decadent”

… the car rental company asks you ”Would you like to upgrade to a Ferrari, sir?”

… the ”We’re Open” sign does not hang on the inside of the door but instead is screwed onto the wall outside

… your entrance ticket has the words ”No Unauthorized Weddings” at the bottom

… your waiter does not even raise an eyebrow when you and your company order breakfast at eight o’clock in the evening

… the grocery store sells sunglasses shaped like Elvis’ guitar

… you buy a Chapstick and can choose between the flavours piña colada and margarita

… you find yourself all the time riding in taxicabs with signs like Ace Cab and Lucky Limousine on the doors

… the sign outside the gas station at the same time advertises their price per gallon and the payback percentage on their one-armed bandits.

And in case you are wondering: yes, all the above examples are taken from real life, here in the city that is like no other…

DAN GLIMNE

Here in Las Vegas the World Series of Poker fever is running high – perhaps even higher than the outside temperature which is over +40 centigrades, here in the Mojave desert.

And interestingly enough, the recent FBI and Department of Justice strike against the online sites Poker Stars, Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker seems not to have affected the starting fields of the WSOP too greatly. The Cassandras of the poker world had predicted that 25% or more would be gone when compared to the numbers of last year, in view of that many players have their bankrolls frozen at these sites. Attendance however has actually gone up in the smaller buy-in events, and in some cases broken records. In the high buy-in events though, the numbers are slightly down since some of the highrollers are either – as in the case of Phil Ivey – boycotting the WSOP, or have reputedly gone into hiding.

And speaking of the aftermath of Black Friday, my mobile rang at an ungodly hour in the a.m. today, Vegas time, with a Swedish poker news site wanting comment on the fact that the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) has suspended Full Tilt’s licence and ordered them to immediately cease operations.

Of course I had to turn on my laptop while asking them for time to wake up and check out facts, and there it was: Full Tilt has indeed been forbidden from registering new customers, accepting deposits, allowing customers to withdraw funds, and in general hosting any poker games at all. Furthermore, the AGCC states that “the decision to suspend these licenses follows a special investigation prompted by the indictments unsealed by US Attorney General’s Office in the Southern District of New York on 15 April 2011, during which grounds were found to indicate that these licensees and their business associates were operating contrary to Alderney legislation. The nature of the findings necessitated the taking of immediate action in the public interest.”

Immediate action and in the public interest, indeed. Well, let me very briefly explain – in case you did not already know it – how an honest online poker room conducts operations: the money deposited by the players is kept in an account from which withdrawals are also made, while the money that is charged, via rakes and tournament fees, is transferred into a second and strictly separate account which is used to run the operations. It is basically no more complicated than that.

It seems that the charges levied by the FBI and the DoJ are true: that less-than-ethical money and banking practices have been going on, and that the money belonging to the players and the money belonging to Full Tilt have been shuffled together into one sordid mix. Apparently, FTP is also seriously running short of funds, as they are either unable or unwilling to return money to US players, and in far too many cases also European players.

Furthermore, Full Tilt has stated that they will not answer questions because of “the current legal situation”. Most interesting, as they certainly did not hesitate in levying countercharges against Phil Ivey when he filed to sue them. In fact, there is absolutely no gag order from any court which prevents Full Tilt from stating their point of view. Well, FTP cannot have it both ways: if they can comment on Phil Ivey’s lawsuit, they can certainly comment on other issues that have been pointedly raised, and pertinent questions that have been asked. Even Baghdad Bob did a better job for Saddam Hussein during the second Gulf War.

It is known that Full Tilt has been looking for an investor to come up with 100-150 million dollars to repay the US players, but the outlook on that front now seems bleak. And yesterday’s action by the AGCC is close to a knockout blow for Full Tilt, which since Black Friday has already lost half of its customer base after shutting out all US players. Now that operations have ceased completely – unless FTP miraculously pulls a backup licence in another jurisdiction from out of its sleeve – for a whole month until a hearing that the AGCC has set for July 26th, the company will be in even direr straits. Is it then the end for Full Tilt? It is too early to say – but if someone were to put a gun to my head and demand a bet from me, I would say that no, FTP will not survive this.

This recent development is of course very, very bad news for the whole player community. A tenth of the online poker economy is locked up awaiting developments, and Full Tilt still keeps its mouth tightly shut while slowly sliding towards the abyss. But with every crisis come opportunities: reputable European online poker sites, such as Unibet, now have their chance to further increase their player base – and to reinstate a trust in the industry. We players all need exactly that.

Within the poker community, the debate whether to prohibit the use of sunglasses or not at the tables flares up every now and then. I shall set aside that particular discussion for now, other than to briefly mention that if you start by banning sunglasses, you will soon face near-impossible situations: where do you draw the line between chromatic eyeglasses and sunglasses? Should men then be allowed to have thick beards covering half their faces as well as their necks? What about polo-neck sweaters, covering the pulse beats in your throat? Or long-haired women who can hide their faces by looking down at their cards, thereby letting their curls fall forward like a curtain?

The advances of technology will however soon have us grappling with opponents whose “enhancements” by comparison will make the sunglasses debate look like a storm in a teacup. I am talking about the poker players of the future.

The reason for the philosophical discussion I am about to embark upon, is that I recently purchased my first robot. Yes, after computers, faxes, mobile phones and sundry other acquisitions, it was time for this step. To be sure, my robot will do no more than quietly mowe my lawn between the hours of 0900 and 2030 here in this laid-back suburb, running about by itself, but it nevertheless represents a milestone in life: the kind of technology that would have gotten me burned at the stake in the 1400’s for witchcraft, I now buy across the counter at my local friendly dealer.

This whole thing has made me think about how the world changes, the way it has always done. Two thousand years ago, the average person saw maybe one major technical innovation achieve a breakthrough, such as the art of making paper. Within the history of military warfare, there are no more than a dozen or so innovations which have really changed the way we conduct our conflicts. One unexpected case in point: the stirrup, which allowed riders not only to ride faster and longer than before, but also to fight much more efficiently with sword, lance, spear and bow from horseback. Some historians have pointed at this simple innovation as the basis for the rise of feudalism: with it a much greater difference in fighting capability between cavalry and infantry was achieved, and thus it made possible a warrior caste – the nobility – which could rule society through violence.

Today however new and major innovations appear every year: the Internet, DNA identification, GPS navigation, online poker. And, judging from solidly researched books and newspaper articles, robots are about to make a mass breakthrough. Among the driving forces behind them are the needs of military forces, across the planet. At the forefront are not unexpectedly the US Armed Forces, who as I write this employ thousands of robots in Iraq and Afghanistan right down to platoon and squad level, for recon and disarming explosive devices and other purposes. Higher up on the strategic level are cruise missiles, which once they have been launched follow rivers and valleys at low height to slip below radar coverage, and can navigate five thousand kilometres by their own accord not only to the right building in the right city, but also to the right window on the right floor.

But what is the connection between this robotic revolution and the poker of the future? It is this: many of the “accessory technologies” employed by robots, can also be used inside or on the outside of the human body – and eventually cause the debate concerning sunglasses to seem laughably unimportant.

A number of previously military technological inventions are rapidly spreading to the civilian sector. One example is the cochleaimplant, which every year is surgically inserted by the thousands into people born deaf: these implants turn sounds into electrical impulses, which are fed directly into the nerves of the inner ear and which in turn the brain can learn to interpret. Another example consists of robot prosthetics replacing arms and legs, and with built-in sophisticated programming to rapidly respond to intended human movement and weight-shifting.

And these prosthetics are now so efficient that the IAAF, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, in 2007 took the milestone decision to prohibit competitors from having “machines in their bodies”! The reason for this decision was that an Italian sprinter who had previously competed in the Paralympics now wanted to compete in the “real” Olympic Games. His leg prostethics of titanium, “cheetah legs” with built-in springs, both weighed less and had less air resistance than legs made of flesh and bone – not to mention such bounce in them that he could take longer steps and therefore was able to run at very competitive times indeed. The IAAF thus decided not to view him as “handicapped”, but instead of as “enhanced” in such a way that it would be unfair to merely human opponents.

Thus the question springs to mind: if no less an august body than the IAAF has taken official steps to ban artificial enhancements of the human body, which problems will the International Federation of Poker face within ten or fifteen years??

But today’s technology is not only about replacing what has been lost, but also about – which may prove far more important – adding that which previously has not existed. The Florida-based company VeriChip have already sold HIRFID (“human-implantable radio-frequency identification”) microchips to over five thousand security companies and government organizations all over the world: microchips which are surgically inserted underneath the skin and will identify you, at security checks at airports for example. Even civilian businesses have made use of this technology: Baja Beach Club, one of the hottest night clubs in Barcelona, is one of VeriChip’s customers and offers these HIRFID chips to their VIP clients; a quick surgical implant – a status symbol, of course – and those customers no longer have to queue outside or carry cash or credit cards to pay at the bar. The same microchip implants have also been used by the weapons manufacturer FN Herstal, to create handguns which can only be fired by a person with a matching ID surgically inserted into his or her palm.

And no doubt we are only seeing the beginning of this development. Why should we humans accept seeing the world as we do, when implants of the future would extend our vision down into infrared and up into ultraviolet?

The research that which right now is carried out in laboratories, at this very moment, can cause frightening – or promising, depending on your viewpoint – visions of what is to be expected in the future. Remember that scene where the character Trinity in the movie Matrix in the midst of battle directly downloads into her brain knowledge about how to fly a helicopter? Such research, under the project name AugCon (for “augmented cognition”) is already going on within the US military organization DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Welcome to the future, baby.

We might as well face the truth: all this technology that already exists, all this military and civilian research which right now goes on, will somewhere, somehow spill over into the domain of poker. Could you outplay an opponent who was wearing hidden sensors and a pair of (sun)glasses where he or she on a display on the inside could continally monitor changes in your pulse, body temperature, breathing and perspiration? You might as well be wired directly into a lie detector. Or what if he/she carried a micro computer which via the inner ear continually whispered information about stack sizes and suggested different moves? Or via implants and sensors gave you access to the same kind of information that Pokertracker and Poker Office already do, ie how often you fold before the flop and what the percentages are concerning your reactions to a re-raise after the turn card? Facing such an “enhanced” opponent would surely give most of us the same difficult-to-describe feelings the Neanderthals must once have felt, the first time they saw Cro Magnon wander into the valley with their higher foreheads, better bodies and superior technology.

You might as well get prepared now, since it will happen in the not-too-distant future. On second thought, parts of that future are already here – and more will follow. Will you be the Neanderthal or the Cro Magnon in the live poker games that are to come?

DAN GLIMNE