Hugo's Blogspotting: 22 November

Have You Peaked at 19?

Is poker a sport? Is there more skill than luck? We all know it’s a tough way to make an easy living. Besides knowing all technical maths and strategy stuff what else does it take? Brandon Adams has written an excellent piece entitled Life Cycle of a Poker Player that was put up as a thread on 2p2 via Always Bluff.

“I was talking with a friend of mine who’s one of the best no-limit players in the world. He told me that in two years, the crop of top no-limit players would be scary, much better than those at the top of the game today. I agree with him.”

Yikes, how’s that for starters? You mean to say there’s a bunch of even better players coming along? Marvelous. Having said that though, Adams does think that,

“My observation is that poker has really yet to see a full package of talents. There’s no Roger Federer of poker. Usually the top players excel in one or two aspects of the game, and then are merely very good in the other aspects.”

Yes, even the Phil Ivey’s of this world always seem to have a leak. Adams goes on to compare chess and poker and is of the opinion that no poker player’s achievements match up to Kasparov’s when he was at his peak. Fair enough and probably right. He then makes a very intriguing observation:

“Poker wears people down.”

So true! If you haven’t suffered poker burn-out then you just haven’t been playing long enough. And if you haven’t played that long it’s very likely you don’t know as much about the game as you think you do.

Adams’ theory is slightly dispiriting seeing as I once read an article which said that there was scientific evidence backing the claim that elderly people who took part in activities like card games were “exercising” their brains and thus less likely to succumb to Alzheimer’s. At time I thought, “Great! That’s at least one thing I don’t have to worry about”. According to Adams:

“I think that the chief attraction of the game- it’s ability to kick up adrenaline and other stress chemicals- actually subtly damages the brains of poker players, making it difficult for them to study their game and improve over time. There are mounds of evidence suggesting that even relatively mild stress can damage the brain’s frontal lobes and impair learning and memory.”

The final nail in the coffin (for me at least) is this (forgetting for the moment that part in the article where he says that top poker players peak at around 19 years old; I’m getting depressed here):

“I agree with Patrik Antonius’ view that top players of the future will also need to be extremely fit.”

Great. I’m never going to be any good at this game. I knew that already, but I was happy living in my fantasy world where maybe I had a chance of becoming a better player….

Kudos

Brandon Adams’ article naturally mentions how the internet is such a good training ground for all these up and coming players and while the internet vs live players debate is still quite healthy I believe more and more old timers are less derisive towards their young online rivals these days.

Cue TJ Cloutier who, unusually for a player of his generation, has a few nice things to say about a couple of young hotshots, Nick Schulman and Tom “Durrrr” Dwan.

“I want to give all the kudos I can to these two young players. They played with absolutely no fear, and most of the time they played correct poker… These rising stars have a very good grasp of the game, a feel for poker that most people don't have.”

Let’s face it, poker, especially tournaments, is a young man’s game these days, even a grizzled old veteran like Cloutier is making way for these kids. That’s called respect and I don’t think a player like TJ would have given these guys the time of day a couple of years ago.

Annie Goes to Washington

Meanwhile, what’s the point of becoming a top echelon poker player anyway seeing as many governments want to stop us all from playing? Luckily we have Annie Duke representing us and on her blog (which usually consists of her going on about how she made her kids waffles for breakfast which was awesome and so on) you can see her making her statement to the U.S Congress.

To be fair, she does a pretty good job arguing the case for poker and it was obviously a smart move to have a well-educated mother of four speak for American (and I guess, by default, all of us) poker players. I assume she still has a nice chunk of UltimateBet so I guess her motivation isn’t entirely philanthropic, but that’s fair enough.

Nonsense

I think most people would agree that Annie did a good job, but there’s always room for argument and Gary Carson did not seem that impressed.

“…when you use nonsense to argue on behalf of your favorite illegal activity then you're just spouting nonsense.”

Gary takes issue with Pokerblog.com who say that Annie makes a compelling argument when she says,

“Having the right to continue to pursue my profession, wherever I might choose to pursue it, is very important to me from both a financial standpoint but also from the broader perspective of freedom, personal responsibility and civil liberties.”

Carson’s argument is that Annie chose to take up a profession that was illegal in many states and that arguing about restrictions on her freedom is rubbish. He might have a point, but didn’t Annie Duke play most of her poker in Las Vegas where poker was legal? So what if poker was illegal in other states?

Video Silliness

More video footage is on offer at former poker player turned scrabble player, Paul Phillips’ blog. Phillips' main reason for putting it up is for yet more mocking of Hellmuth who Phillips famously thought of as utterly ridiculous. Hellmuth certainly doesn’t let Phillips down and his white scarf, sunglasses and gesture towards the camera are utterly hilarious. Has Phil never seen himself on TV? Does he not cringe at all at how seriously he takes himself? Did he not notice in this clip that Phil Ivey was obviously trying not to crack up laughing at him?

TV = Positive EV?

Grapsfan at Always Bluff has a blog ruminating on the subject of Hellmuth and the cameras. A while he ago he wrote about Hellmuth taking the worst of it in insurance bets with Ivey during a televised WSOP final table:

“My theory, which I still believe, is that Hellmuth thinks the -EV of those bets is counterbalanced by being seen with “hip” people like Phil Ivey.”

He goes on to talk about a hand where Hellmuth raised pre-flop which cost him half of his stack. He was then re-raised and folded, which most people agree is a pretty bad fold. Of course Hellmuth would say something like, “I’m Phil Hellmuth, I have eleven bracelets. A top player like myself can make this fold and still come back and win the tournament”. Grapsfan has a more interesting and credible theory behind Hellmuth’s poor play:

“There is nothing more important in Phil Hellmuth’s world than being on television... In his mind, the more he’s on TV, the bigger his empire outside of poker can grow.

In keeping with that, I’m sure part of Hellmuth’s decision to fold for the other half of his stack is based on the cameras. Mathematically, against the range of some very loose opponents, it’s a bad fold. In the pseudo-math of TV-time value…it’s a different story.”

I like that, especially the “pseudo-math of TV-time value”. I suspect players such as Humberto Brenes (“here comes de chark!”) and Hevad Khan know a lot about this new mathematical theory too….

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

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