Hugo's Blogspotting: 29 August

Rules Is Rules

Whenever you play somewhere new for the first time you always have to ask the rules. Every poker player worth a lick knows that. It may be that 8c 9h 3d 2d Ks is the nuts in this particular card room. Hmmm, isn’t there a joke along those lines?

John Tabatabai is in Portugal for some big time Portugese donkament and to relax he thought he’d play some cash (what else is a poker player going to do?).

“Max buyin 1k, minimum buyin 75 euros. Blinds 5 - 10 euro. BUT, every hour there is a 5 minute break and a redraw for seats and tables!!!! WHAT??? If that is not enough to tilt you, every hour when they have the redraw you can only start the session with a max of 1k.”

Ok, well, you better not run some mad meta-game bluff in the hopes of getting paid off later I suppose. They do things funny in these foreign countries. Mind you, I like the idea of having a break every hour, it’s almost civilized.

“The second night I played, I wanted to leave at about 1am or so to attend the Betfair Welcome Party at the local nightclub which was situated 5 metres off the beach, I was told I wasnt allowed to leave the table until the session had ended. I thought it was a joke but they were deadly serious. I would have had to leave my chips there and collected them the next day if i needed to leave. They also blind you away in the cash games if you go to the toilet or need to leave.”

Makes you wonder how they run their tournaments over there. Maybe the blinds never go up and you can wander off for a half hour smoke break….I guess if they structure the cash games the same way they would a tournament, players over there probably don’t realise there’s a difference between the two disciplines.

I remember being in a casino in Madrid a few years ago where they have similar rules. The extra twist was that action went in an anti-clockwise direction. Where the hell did they get that idea from? I could understand action going in the opposite direction of everwhere else if I was talking about China, but Spain? I knew that would do my head in so I went off and played blackjack instead. The game looked terrible anyway, bloody Spanish nits….

Play For Today

Because poker sometimes involves large sums of money we have to take the game seriously, sometimes too seriously. Ultimately though we are all just playing. I guess this would explain why so many poker players are so quick to act like children. It also explains why some of the best players can be child-like in nature and why some of the big winners are at their best when they are having fun. Didn’t many of us get into the game because it was fun?

Doyle Brunson’s latest blog shows he has lost none of his youthful exuberance. He has been in Montana where he has noticed that in one of the towns there they put a dummy in a police car and leave it parked in various spots around the town as a sneaky way of getting people to drive safely.

Doyle being the shrewdie that he is noticed this and decided to play a prank on a couple of his buddies.

“When I picked up two of my ex-basketball buddies, we drove down the main street. I swerved over toward the dummy policeman, honked my horn, called him a dumb a-hole, shot him the finger and drove away. My friends started yelling at me, calling me crazy and said they were going to throw us under the jail.”

I don’t know about you, but I find that really funny. The idea of our elder statesman of poker behaving like a teenager and freaking out his upstanding friends gives me great hope for my old age. Surely it’s all that poker playing that has kept Doyle young at heart. I just hope I’m still in action when I get to his age.

Etiquette For Scoundrels

People are still going on about Scotty Nguyen’s behaviour on ESPN and perhaps the best comments about it come from Andy Ward. He’s not really talked about Scotty as such, but more a general blog about poker etiquette.

It has to be said that etiquette is a big deal in the poker world, especially since the advent of online players coming to live card rooms and pissing off the regulars with all their various high-fiving and post-mortems after a big hand.

Andy makes the excellent observation that,

“The disconnect seems to be all about what "etiquette" actually means. Most people in the real world would think that it means being polite, and nice to people, in the hope that we can all get along with basic respect for each other. People like Hellmuth, on the other hand, use the word with a very specific meaning of "following pre-determined, almost arbitrary, unspoken conventions in certain situations regarding the procedure of betting and concluding a hand"

Yes, that is spot on. It’s amazing the amount of times you’ll hear some total scumbag go out of his way to let you know that he has done the “correct” thing. In fact, I would venture that the players who are most obsessed with etiquette are usually the ones who are most likely to twist it in their favour in order to shoot some angle.

They will make a big deal out of the fact that they accidentally saw one of your cards flash as it was being dealt, but would have no problem keeping their mouths shut if you table your cards and miss the fact that you have the best hand.

Hellmuth On UB

Andy cites Hellmuth as the perfect example of one who is quick to complain about others’ etiquette when it suits him. As we all know Hellmuth can be very vocal when he wants to be and he was noticeably quiet over the UB scandal.

He has finally addressed that scandal in his blog where he writes about UB’s new COO, one Paul Leggett. I have no idea what this guy is like and have no comment on his posting. Phil is in no doubt though:

“When a cloud appears like the scandals, you have to look for the silver linings. Yes, the scandals are ugly, and yes, the sites would have been much better without them. However, one good thing to come out of all of this is that UB and AP are committed to doing the right thing. They will refund all of the players affected, and redouble (or retriple) their efforts to maintain a safe and secure environment. One great thing to come out of all this is Paul Leggett. UB and AP will merge soon into one mega-site and Leggett will take the reins.”

Sounds good, but, hold on, haven’t Ultimatebet and Absolute Poker already merged? I believe the new site is called Cereus. You would think Hellmuth would know. Ok, I just checked and only the announcement of the merger has been made, but still, the news of Cereus’ launch was made weeks ago. Was Phil not around for that?

Perhaps he’s annoyed that he’ll have to stop wearing that ridiculous yellow and black PH/UltimateBet football/hockey jersey. I for one can’t wait to see what the new Cereus/PH jersey is going to look like.

Seeing as this is the first time that Hellmuth has publicly acknowledged the UB scandal does he express any embarrassment, sadness or rage over what happened? Not really. What’s pathetic is his attempt to tar other poker sites with the same cheating brush.

“I need to point out that almost every site in the industry has had security scandals (and refunds to their players), but the UB and AP scandals are the ones that became the most public.”

But the point, Phil, is that the other sites dealt with their problems quickly and decisively – they didn’t piss about because they were trying to cover up the fact that senior management could have been involved. There’s a reason the UB and AP scandals became the “most public”.

I suspect Hellmuth was one of the superuser’s victims and I also suspect that his (Hellmuth) ego would have him believe that he would’ve spotted another player trying to cheat him. But of course he didn’t.

The Multi-Faceted Life of Brian

Speaking of egos and improper conduct Brian Townsend has admitted to multi-accounting on Full Tilt and PokerStars. Considering he is a “red name” pro on Full Tilt that seems pretty low. It’s not just the old boys who are looking for an edge. In case you’re wondering he was Stellarnebula on FT and makersmark66 on Stars (usually he’s Brian Townsend and aba20 respectively on those sites).

There’s a few cynical souls in the poker community who think he has only come out and admitted these misdemeanours because somebody on 2p2 figured it out, so now he’s trying to cut his losses.

So what were his reasons for creating extra accounts?

“The reason why I created these accounts was because I enjoy anonymity when playing smaller and am very prideful in what I do. The past two years I have made a lot of money playing poker. This year I have been breakeven. For me it’s correct to play smaller when things aren’t going well….

….I used to think that playing 25/50, 50/100, and 100/200 was a failure because I wasn’t playing the largest limits. I am smart enough to move down when things aren’t going well; I was just too prideful to make it public.”

I can actually believe that. But if you are playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars you must know that at some point you’re gonna lose. When you have a stratospheric rise gravity will inevitably take its course. The beauty of poker is that no matter how good you are you cannot win every time. I guess Townsend has only just learnt that lesson.

What’s strange is that Townsend had no problem writing about a big losing session in his blog, so what’s the big deal about dropping down a few limits? Every single poker pro has gone through a similar phase in their career. As I have said before, a true player never feels any shame playing smaller limits. It’s all action, ain’t it?

Townsend’s blog is just the latest in a recent trend I have noticed of young hotshot players who have won a terrific amount of money in a relatively short time, but are now complaining about experiencing a downswing. Many are not sure if they can face dropping down from the heady world of 200/400 blinds. Welcome to the real world boys.

Bogged Down

At least Townsend is trying to make amends for his mistakes I guess. One person still paying the price for his is Lucky Jim. As you may recall Jim has been looking for somewhere to live. He’s still on the hunt and is staying on the sofa of a fellow cycle courier in Woolwich.

“The toilet in his flat doesn't work. The flush is broken, and the council take time to fix it. To flush it, he said, I'd have to fill a nearby bucket with water and pour it into the bowl. That'd push all the waste through the U-bed. And there was no toilet paper. If I wanted to do a shit, he said, I'd have to wash my arse in the sink with my hands.”

I don’t think Lucky Jim is too worried about playing a smaller game than usual…

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin