Hugo's Blogspotting: 22 May

Les Donkaments Sont Fous

Here’s a good one; did you hear about the guy who got knocked out of a tournament with his own chips? Bond 18, blogging at Poker From The Rail, has just been playing at the Aviation Club in Paris where he witnessed this very occurrence.

As we all know, the French, especially Parisians, take their food very seriously and one of the more civilised things about playing tournaments at the Aviation is that they always have an hour's break for dinner, come what may.

Anyway, what happens is that two players come back after the dinner break and sit in each others’ seats without realising it. Naturally a big hand takes place where one player knocks the other one out before they realise they have been playing each others’ chips. “Quelle paire d'ânes” * as they might say in France.

Hmmm, that meal must’ve been delicious, plus of course a few glasses of wine to wash it down. An easy mistake to sit in the wrong seat I reckon. In fact, I’m amazed they got the right table. The best bit about this story is the aftermath. What do all the experts out there reckon the ruling should be?

“So we sit there enduring all this arguing and stoppage of play, with our table debating what exactly should be done about this situation. The arguing at the other table becomes so intense that Aviation Club owner and operator Bruno Fitoussi comes over and angrily kicks everyone out of the room, declaring that we are on a 5 minute break. Those of us standing near the door way during the break are barked at to "LEAVE THE AREA! BREAK!" by Bruno.

Our 5 minute break becomes almost 20 minutes while the guy who was busted by his own stack pleads his case in French, meaning I can't understand a word of what's going on. When the dust finally settles it’s decided that the busted player will stay busted and the guy who sat behind the wrong stack is still in and will incur no penalty. He'll be allowed to keep all the chips he's gained, and basically nothing will change from the status we had half an hour ago except dinner will now be at 11pm. God, live poker is so fucking ridiculous.”

Imagine if that guy now goes onto win the tournament with the wrong chips. Do you think the guy whose chips they originally were should get a percentage? I’m willing to bet he would ask.

25% Of ?

I bring this up because it’s amazing how ambiguous spoken agreements between friends become when gambling and poker become involved. TJ Cloutier illustrates this perfectly with a story on his blog about a couple of good ol’ boys he knew back in the day, Everett Goulsby and George Huber.

Goulsby has fifty percent of Huber in a game and after a while Huber is stuck $2k. Goulsby can’t take it anymore and tells George to stop and that he’s going to play instead.

"Okay," George answers, "but I want 25 percent of you." So Everett gets in the game and before long, he's in $26,000 with only $8,000 left in front of him.”

TJ now irons out Everett with a straight-flush so Everett decides he has had enough and it’s time to go home.

“Everett goes over to George and says, "Okay, George, you owe me 25 percent of $26,000."

"I'm only in for the first $1,000," George says. "And 25 percent of $1,000 is $250." Everett went home, threw George's suitcase out on the front lawn, and that was the end of their relationship.”

George Huber is not alone amongst a certain type of poker player when it comes to these types of arrangements. TJ goes onto write about the first time he came second at the WSOP back in the 1980s.

As we all know, one of the hazards of getting a nice touch in a tournament is all the various railbirds asking you for a loan. Naturally TJ was not immune from this after his good showing in the WSOP; it wasn’t long before he received a phone call from George Huber.

“… …George called me in Dallas wanting to know if I'd loan him $2,000 to play the game in Houston. So I got the guys on the phone that were running the game and told them to give him the $2,000, I'd be there in a few days to pay them back. Later, I heard that George had played two hands, cashed out his chips, and left with my money. And I haven't heard from him since.”

Well, you know what they say, if you never want to see a particular poker player again lend him fifty quid…

Algae

On a more serious note Matt Maroon continues his musings on the legalization of poker in a long and well written blog. He makes the usual points about poker being a pyramid etc, but also makes a nice analogy involving algae.

“Poker is not a true food chain because there's nothing stopping a rich guy from starting off at $50/$100, but it's close enough that it functions like one. So the casual players at the lowest limits provide the same service to the rest of the community that algae does to a lake. They feed the small fish, who in turn feed the medium fish, who then feed the pike. And just like a lake, if you cut down on the algae, you end up with fewer pike. It takes a while for each level of the chain to starve in turn, but it happens, and it has happened ever since the UIGEA (though I'm told some recent advances in payment processing have helped a bit lately, but it won't last). You can see it in the numbers and feel it when you talk to the players.”

For anybody worrying that poker is on the wane and that those crazy days of Party Poker where players were just giving it away are long gone this is the blog for them. Maroon is very confident that the UIGEA will be overturned and that easy money is right around the corner.

“But the UIGEA is just a dam, and behind that there's a river full of algae, entirely unmolested, waiting to pour forth. And that will be the immediate consequence of regulation. Every publicly traded gaming corporation, and even some non-gaming ones (like Yahoo, who dabbles in poker overseas) will apply for licensing at the first possible opportunity. Massive advertising budgets will saturate the internet and the airwaves with poker ads. Ad sources like Google and television, which stopped taking online gaming ads after the Discovery Networks debacle, will open back up.”

Yours For a Dollar

Enough of such seriousness! Back to poker inanity and where better to turn than Phil Hellmuth. UltimateBet has some new auction site, where you use your UB points to bid, and one of the lots for sale was a coaching session with none other than 11 bracelets himself.

Now I would imagine that the Poker Brat would value a training sesh with his Eleveness pretty highly, at least $1,000 an hour, probably more. After all, he is the greatest No Limit Hold’em player of all time. By the way, the private lesson with Phil included air fare to Palo Alto, hotel and $1,000 cash. The bidding must’ve gone sky high, yeah?

“The smart young man that bought it paid $70 for it—he spent the equivalent in points of $70 in cash. That means that he pocketed $930 in cash, flew to sunny Palo Alto, and received private lessons from me! I had suggested minimum bids, but they couldn't do that and keep it an auction.”

I can imagine Hellmuth might feel a bit embarrassed by that, but I reckon there’s quite a few people out there who would say that the winner of the auction paid too much…

Chocolate Pain

Speaking of Hellmuth you may remember a couple of weeks ago I bought you the video of Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot being called “Dave Hellmuth” by Dennis Taylor at the World Snooker Championships. This week’s installment of Devilfish video is even better.

For some reason the ‘Fish has decided to do a version of the song Chocolate Rain. According to some bollocks I read somewhere on the net, Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday is one of the top viral videos of all time or something, so I guess that’s why the Devil has done this. Warning: refrain from drinking whilst watching the following video as choking may occur from hysterical laughter.

* What a pair of donkeys

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

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