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I’m not the type to buy things. Anything more than $100 is a “major purchase” worthy of study, research and dithering. A lot of dithering.
I first considered purchasing an HDTV in September 2007 before an ill-fated trip to the Borgata on Yom Kippur. At the time I rationalized it as acceptable by using someone else’s money to buy it. So of course that day I had one of my worst losing sessions ever in the $10-$20 LHE game.
After that setback I didn’t actually buy an HDTV until more than two years later. I read all the reviews of the different technologies. I price-compared until my eyes bled. I visited several different stores solely to see differences in picture quality with those same bleeding eyes. When I was finally convinced I had all the facts I walked straight into Best Buy and walked out with a 50-inch television ten minutes later. There was a feeling of satisfaction in knowing that I had made the right purchase at the right price.
It was the same with mattress shopping three years ago. Tons of internet research on the different types of mattresses available. Price comparisons galore. Visits to several stores to take 15-minute naps on different mattresses (making sure to rotate five minutes each left side, stomach, right side because that’s how meticulous I can be). Once I was sure of what I wanted, I walked into Macy’s and ten minutes later was the owner of a new mattress — a mattress which I absolutely love sleeping on.
Don’t even get me started on what I went through with my car.
Yesterday I went appliance shopping. For the life of me, I cannot understand why there is such a huge variation in prices on these things — even after doing the research. I recognize some perform their function better than others and some have more “features” than others. But at the end of the day these are very functional items and for me that’s where the buck stops. A refrigerator is a box for keeping food cold. A washer is a box that cleans your clothes. A dryer is a box that dries them.
My purchase was narrowed down to two identically priced but vastly different items. After thirty minutes of comparison and spot iPhone internet research I couldn’t decide. And so I finally flagged down the salesperson who had already approached me twice asking if I needed help.
Generally I am suspicious of salespeople. Their job, after all, is to sell. Their function is not so much to help you as it is to make you feel more comfortable to part with your cash on a major purchase. Hand holders. Providers of reassurance. The mythical “outside opinion” that makes you feel like you’re not making a mistake.
Now obviously salespeople have reputations too. If they constantly recommend craptactular items it will eventually catch up to them. But any item that’s in a major store probably isn’t the complete worst. So it’s hard for the salespeople to go wrong with recommending anything in the store.
Did the salesperson sell me the proverbial bill of goods? Who knows. In this instance, since each item was priced the same, it didn’t much matter. I asked a few questions; he answered them. I made my choice. And during the course of writing this post, the delivery truck arrived with the goods.
Thankfully, after this there’s only one more major set of purchases to go.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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The 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship ended yesterday at Caesars Palace here in Vegas. Along the way were several exciting matches that should make for good television. I won’t spoil it for you in case you want to watch it except to repeat a comment my good friend Gloria Balding made on Twitter about the finals: “Ah now I can see what poker was like in 1996.”
One thing everyone in the media noticed about the tournament this year was that it lacked the energy of prior years. That started at the bracket party at PURE on Thursday night (where the room emptied not 15 minutes after the brackets were finalized) and extended through each day of the tournament.
It’s hard to know why the tournament didn’t have the zing it’s previously had. Is it that the novelty of the concept has worn off after six years? That the invited players now look at it as just another mandatory marketing appearance for the online poker sites that sponsor them? That the producers have not kept it fresh enough by including more of the young guns, instead choosing the “safe” route with too many pros that have been around, as Gloria suggests, since 1996?
On that last point, one thing that struck me about the semi-final matches and the finals was the average age of the gallery. With space on the set for about 100 spectators, and poker having become predominantly a young person’s game, it was surprising to see that the average spectator was in his or her late 40s or early 50s. I joked with flipchip that producer Mori Eskandani might want to keep a three-foot pole handy to jab in the ribs of any spectator who nodded off during the proceedings. The age of the gallery seemed to be a function of the place in poker of the invited players — generally grizzled veterans of more than a decade, sprinkled in with a few younger players who’ve had significant television exposure already (for example, the WSOP Main Event winners of the last seven years).
The truth is that the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is a six-hour infomercial for the major online poker sites. Those sites want their logo plastered all over your television screen for an hour every Sunday for six weeks. When advertising spots cost $30,000 for 30 seconds, it’s much cheaper for the sites to put a stable of players into the tournament. In any event the tournament wouldn’t work without the sponsored players because few poker players would pay $20,000 to enter what amounts to a six-legged super turbo tournament.
In that regard the producers are handcuffed to inviting players who (1) have already secured a lucrative sponsorship arrangement from a major online poker site, and (2) have some “brand name” recognition with a non-poker viewing audience. That’s the target demographic here, after all. Poker junkies can rightly protest the snubbing of an excellent heads-up player like Vivek Rajkumar but the fact is that the average tv viewer has no idea who Rajkumar is. He’s not a good “draw”.
As long as this tournament keeps making money for NBC, the major online poker sites, and title sponsor GoDaddy.com, don’t expect anything to change. Instead enjoy it as a sort of time machine to what poker was like in 1996.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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You’re probably looking for brackets. I’ll send some love Pokerati’s way. He’s got the brackets here.
The Diamonds bracket is the clear winner for 1st Round intrigue. Barry v. Vanessa; Sammy v. Antonio (I think I’ll set up camp as close to this table as possible for the entirety of the match); Jen Harman v. Jen Tilly; the Raggedy match, Andy v. Annie; and even Gus v. Raymer should be entertaining.
The other brackets each put forth only one or two interesting match-ups. I know a lot of people think Eastgate v. ElkY is a marquee match-up, but neither player is particularly gregarious. Let’s be honest — this tournament is mainly an advertisement for the online poker sites with potentially a lot of entertainment value. The poker component (15-minute levels with a starting stack of 67 blinds) is almost an afterthought.
In Clubs I like Dario v. Jamie Gold and what Ali Nejad called the “You Must Be This Tall to Play This Match” pairing of Erik Seidel and Huck Seed. Spades? Gavin v. Ivey and Phil Gordon v. durrrr. Hearts is by far the least interesting of the brackets, which will probably serve Phil Hellmuth’s One-Man Media Circus well. He drew Howard Lederer.
However things shake out it should be fun. Action starts at 1pm. I’ll be there with Katkin covering the event for PokerNews.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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This weekend is the taping of the 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship at Caesars. My last two experiences at the Caesars poker room were enough to convince me I have no need to ever set foot in the room again. But for purposes of work I am temporarily un-banning myself.
Things kick off tonight with the draw party at PURE. Last year I wasn’t able to attend the party because Caesars allotted only two party passes to PokerNews despite issuing us four press credentials. This year we have three press credentials… and only two party passes. But the ways things have shaken out I’ll be there with digital recorder in hand.
This means that I’m not going to be in South Carolina for some shenanigans this weekend. I didn’t originally intend to go anyway. Traveling on your own dime isn’t cheap and I’ve had some large expenses lately while also being a bit light on work. Then I hung out with Otis a few times during NAPT Venetian and was reminded about the benefits of being around people whose company I truly enjoy and who seem to truly enjoy my company — expenses be damned. By that point I’d already agreed to work NBC. C’est la vie.
Instead I’ll get my drink on at PURE (a place I’ve seen the inside of more than I’d care to admit) and hoist a 2,000-mile toast.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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I’d like to thank everybody who expressed support for me in light of my last post. If you click on the comment thread you’ll see that Bryan Devonshire pops up in there posting as “Devo” with some thoughts on the whole matter. He also apologized on PokerRoad Radio’s 2010 LAPC Main Event Day 2 broadcast last night for, as he put it, “talking out of my ass”. I’d like to thank Devonshire for acknowledging his error and apologizing — I know that can be a difficult thing to do.
Neither Court Harrington nor Jimmy Fricke were on yesterday’s broadcast of PokerRoad Radio and neither one has to my knowledge responded in any way to my previous post.
[Edited at 10:28pm to add: Court Harrington has now responded by leaving a comment to my previous post and apologizing for the whole thing. His apology is accepted and greatly appreciated.]
As I said on Friday, reasonable people can disagree about things: the function of tournament reporters, whether someone deserves more credit for a victory or a loss, and even the analysis of a particular hand of poker. I took no real issue with that. What I objected to most was the besmirching of my name in a very public forum on the basis of incorrect facts (Fricke was just as guilty of this as Devonshire was by badly misquoting my writing). If someone doesn’t have their reputation, they don’t have anything.
Unless I hear anything from Fricke or Harrington I’ll have nothing further to say on this incident. Best of luck to Devonshire at the LAPC Main Event Day 3 today.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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A reporter is only as good as his facts. Get the facts wrong, and everything that follows makes the reporter look foolish.
During the February 25 broadcast of the Poker Road Radio “B Team” program Court Harrington, Bryan Devonshire and Jimmy Fricke took me to task for a few sentences — six total out of everything that I wrote over five days — that I wrote near the conclusion of the NAPT Venetian Main Event. Normally I’d let it roll off my back. Everyone has opinions and far more people criticize poker coverage than praise it. It’s not the first time someone has taken a shot at me and it surely won’t be the last. The problem this time is two-fold: (a) PokerRoad is poker media, so the B Team’s comments pack more punch with me than the comments of a random player, and (b) the “facts” cited in support of my woodshedding by the B Team were completely wrong. Because of those two things and because the B Team calls me out personally by name I feel the need to set the record straight.
Fricke opens the topic by saying that he thought I “acted very unprofessional in the report”. Devonshire then chimes in by saying “Isn’t F-Train the dickwad that wrote all the bullshit a while ago, the one about Daniel being busto or something? That one article that was completely hypothetical that was not based on fact?” Fricke says he’s not sure but Devonshire continues with, “The one that was supposed to be a joke and nobody got it and got all pissed. I think it was that same person.”
Rule number one of character assassination: if you’re going to smear someone’s name you damn well better be 100% certain of your facts. The article that Devonshire is referring to (which is no longer on PokerNews) was written by Dutch reporter Frank Op de Woerd, aka “webjoker”. It was a series of completely unsubstantiated claims about several poker personalities, including a claim that Daniel Negreanu was busto. Op de Woerd later said the claims were intended to be tongue-in-cheek. The problem was that nobody got the joke.
The article caused quite a flap at the time and was a real black eye for both PokerNews and Op de Woerd. I, on the other hand, had absolutely nothing to do with it. I didn’t write it, I didn’t green-light it, I didn’t have my name on it, and in fact I was as surprised as anyone to see it on PokerNews.
Here’s the problem from my end: unless JoeListener KNOWS that Devonshire is flat-out wrong, in JoeListener’s mind I’m now in an extremely negative light. It gives JoeListener a wildly incorrect, extremely negative and unflattering context about me for the segment that Fricke’s going to delve into.
Fricke continues,
the first big pot the guy shoves the river of K-6-5-4-10 or whatever. With K-9. And Sam tanks forever and calls with like fourth pair. And the reporter says something like “He couldn’t have thought that his pair of kings was good but apparently he was as happy as can be as soon as his opponent mucked.” For one that seemed kind of retarded to me.
Pause the tape. Here’s what I actually wrote: “Marchese couldn’t have felt good about turning over Ks9h for a pair of kings. But it turned out that was the best hand — Stein showed Jd5d for just a pair of fives.”
There’s a huge difference between what I wrote and the way Fricke presented it. I can sort of understand what he’s trying to get at. K-9 is fairly strong in that spot because if Stein had a bigger king or a hand better than a pair he probably wouldn’t have check-called all three streets. However, Stein hadn’t made many river mistakes to that point in the tournament. If you’re Marchese and Stein calls, you have to wonder what Stein’s calling such a huge river bet with, don’t you? And at that point one pair — even a strong one pair — starts to look weaker. To me that’s one of those bets where you’re not really sure if you want a call or not.
I admit that the two sentences quoted above are sloppy writing on my part. I’m not proud of it but it happens. The need for speed when covering final tables often means the product is not going to be as polished as people would like it to be. But by mis-quoting those sentences Fricke grossly distorts them to the point of completely demolishing their obvious context.
Back to the broadcast. Fricke also takes issue with a few short sentences I put in the wrap post after the final table was over but again he gets them wrong. He calls it “unprofessional” for me to have written in the wrap post “Sam Stein simply doesn’t like to fold so he exploited his opponent’s big weakness and liked to make big value bets on the river because he was willing to put all his chips at risk.” What I actually wrote:
But one thing we noticed about Stein was that he just doesn’t like to fold. Marchese used that tendency to his advantage to get maximum value for strong but vulnerable hands during the heads-up portion of the final table. It was Marchese’s willingness to put all of his chips in the pot that proved Stein’s undoing. Stein tried to make two massive hero calls against Marchese but each time Marchese showed up with the goods.
Anyone watching that tournament for five days couldn’t help but see that Stein liked to play lots of pots and he liked to play them to lots of streets. Whether he was the aggressor or the caller, Stein did not easily go away on the flop or even on the turn. That was his tendency. Marchese’s willingness to adjust his bet-sizing when he felt he might be value-betting and when he felt Stein was unwilling to fold helped Marchese attain the victory.
I’m told that the NAPT live webcast announcers noticed the same thing that I did — which was that Marchese seemed to be making overly large bets when he had any kind of made hand as compared to his bet sizing during other heads-up hands. To me that’s playing to your opponent’s tendencies and apparently it was the same to the NAPT Live announcers. That’s not to say that the NAPT live webcast announcers were “right”, but I don’t see the B Team taking the NAPT Live announcers to task they way they took me to task.
Fricke then adds that I didn’t “give credit to how good a player Sam Stein is by saying that kind of shit”. But the paragraph isn’t about Stein at all. It’s about Marchese and trying to give Marchese some credit for his victory. Just a few minutes earlier in the broadcast all three of Fricke, Devonshire and Harrington said that Stein “punted” on the heads-up portion of the final table. Stein made mistakes. Nobody is going to argue that. But the B Team doesn’t give any credit to how good a player Marchese might be. They seem to suggest that the only reason Stein lost is because he faltered at the finish line.
Differing people can have differing views about where the credit (or blame) for a victory or loss should go. If the B Team feels it was more Stein’s loss than Marchese’s victory, they’re entitled to that opinion — but that doesn’t make me “unprofessional”. Especially not when the basis for applying that label is a gross mis-characterization and mis-quoting of what I’ve written, along with a mis-identification of something that I didn’t write. Those facts are so simple and easy to verify, but Devonshire, Fricke and Harrington didn’t do it.
In my wrap post at the end of the tournament I drew a handful of brief conclusions based on what I witnessed in the tournament room for five days. Devonshire suggests that as a tournament reporter I should just stick to “the facts”. I disagree. I believe that my job as a tournament reporter, at times, is to bring people into the room with me. If I reduced all of live reporting to a series of flat hand histories, few people would read the coverage. It wouldn’t be interesting. Some context is required to capture the reader’s attention. Generally the best spot for that context is at the beginning or end of a tournament day — which is where the paragraph that offended the B Team was written. The B Team may not agree with me but there’s not a color commentator in any industry that doesn’t have detractors.
Fricke opened the segment by complaining that I was unprofessional. Devonshire closed it by saying, “F-Train, fuck you. You’re a poker fish and a reporting fish.” I guess he’s entitled to his opinion. But if he’s going to spout off on a radio program he could at least get his facts right. Then his listeners can form opinions for themselves on the basis of the truth instead of whatever distorted version he, Fricke and Harrington present.
I’ve always been a big fan of PokerRoad but the utter unprofessionalism of this short segment — not to mention how it’s just flat out wrong — has deeply disappointed me.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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Last night Andrew Feldman of ESPN dragged a couple of us into the hallway outside the NAPT Venetian Main Event final table to tape a quick segment for ESPN’s Inside Deal. Basically we just had to ask Daniel Negreanu questions about anything. Otis set the bar so high that the rest of us, I think, failed miserably.
Negreanu has always struck me as a player in love with the hero call. Given the way the Main Event ended, I might have asked Negreanu a question about hero calls. Sam Stein, the player who had been in control of NAPT Venetian for days, took a big chip lead into heads-up, and had all the momentum. Then twice in twenty minutes he tried to make huge hero calls with fourth pair and both times he was wrong. Those calls ended his tournament and cost him about $300,000.
What is it about the hero call that makes it so alluring? Is it the need to show the world how smart we are? To prove to our opponents that they are not able to run us over? Some sort of misguided desire to squeeze every last drop of value out of even the most marginal hands?
And more to the point, how often does the hero call really work out? It can’t be often enough to offset the cost (in Stein’s case, $300,000) of the times that it doesn’t. But at the Main Event final table, Stein’s image was already well-established in the mind of his opponent, Tom Marchese. How can it ever be worth your whole tournament — especially at that stage! — to make that kind of call with fourth pair, deuce kicker?
Maybe that’s just my inner nit asserting itself. But after a night to sleep on it, I’d bet Sam Stein agrees with me.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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It was a relatively painless Day 4 at NAPT Venetian yesterday. 24 played down to 8 in an orderly fashion over a total of about eight hours. I was home watching High Stakes Poker by 10:30.
Overall the event has been great. I think Venetian learned a few things about some chip issues, and if the event grows in the slightest bit next year they’re going to have to move it to one of the convention rooms. There simply wasn’t any more space around the poker room and I doubt Venetian management is all that thrilled that valuable floor space is being taken up by poker tables.
After today’s final table it looks like the next gig on my calendar is the NBC Heads-Up Championship. It’s a fun event to cover, attracting lots of poker luminaries. Oddly enough it also marks a sad and disappointing personal milestone, one of those mile markers I still wish I had never passed and didn’t think or hope I was ever meant to pass.
But like in poker and most other things in life, there’s only so much that’s in your control. You do what you can and if life takes you past one of those mile markers, so be it. My grandmother would say, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
Go to: Riding the F Train
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Today is Day 4 of the NAPT Venetian Main Event. 24 players remain, with Eric Blair leading the field. It’s also Day 1 of the $25K High Roller Bounty Shootout. Follow all the coverage over on PokerNews.
With all of this poker action going on, NBC and Caesars finally announced the line-up of players for the NBC National Heads-Up Championship, taking place in a week and a half. Here’s a link to the list of players.
The first thing I noticed is that the number of qualifers has increased this year to 7. Last year I believe there were only 4 (2 online qualifiers and 2 live qualifiers from Caesars). While I understand the impetus behing putting random, unknown players into the field, this is a made-for-tv tournament. Television viewers won’t really care about a random qualifier. That number probably should have been kept at 4, assuming that enough “brand name” professionals could be found to fill the field.
The rest of the field seems to have been chosen for a combination of recognition potential and poker ability. Again, since this is a made-for-tv tournament, it’s not surprising that some highly talented, but relatively unknown-outside-poker-circles internet players didn’t make the cut. It’s also not surprising that some players whose results are not as strong as others did make the cut, simply for their marketing and ratings potential. And some of the slots are mandatory exemptions for being a previous winner of certain tournaments. Fine.
But there are a few surprising inclusions on the list (Johnny Chan and Darvin Moon come to mind) and I have to wonder if they were “first choice” invitations or replacements for other people who opted not to play. The field generally seems chosen for a combination of markteting potential, table chatter and poker results, and I think you’d be hard pressed to make a solid case for the inclusion of Chan and Moon.
Generally, though, I’m not one to quibble about such things. I’ll leave that to the talking heads and the forum kids. I’m more interested to see how it all plays out.
Go to: Riding the F Train
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NAPT Venetian started on Saturday. You want to know how big the field was? Nobody in the media spotted Steve Billirakis until Day 2. Admittedly, Billirakis has changed his look a bit…
It’s been an interesting experience stretching my tournament-reporting legs for the first time in three months. The weirdest part is going home every night after the action is done. Sure, I did that for all of the 2008 WSOP and 2009 WSOP. But the WSOP is just… different. It has something to do with the energy of the Amazon Room.
That’s no slight on the NAPT though. By every measure NAPT Venetian is a success. It’s really nice to see non-WSOP tournament poker show such a promising rebound in the United States.
Go to: Riding the F Train
