The second act of the World Series of Poker revealed many things about a lot of familiar players. Players who have spent years on the tournament trail without a WSOP win finally got one, and several added to their collections during the final few weeks.
With so much poker happening in Vegas this summer, the action provided a good barometer of what is happening in the industry. With three different tournament series to choose from and hundreds of events, here is how things shook out.
The first time the word "poker" appeared in print was an account of a cold deck in James Hildreth's memoir, Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains, published in 1836. Hildreth describes a late-night game between two officers not far from their barracks. He reports that the major "lost some cool hundreds last night at poker," then pauses to vaguely define this new term in a footnote: "A favorite game of cards at the south and west."
Recently, I played no-limit hold'em on High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network. The game featured Sammy Farha, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman, Eli Elezra, "Silent Mark," Bob Sufai, Jamie Gold, and I, with appearances by Brandon Adams and Internet star "omgclayaiken."
The main reason that I play in poker tournaments at all is that I think they are a fun and excellent way to compete. They are a great way to test your skills against the best in the world. For me to really enjoy myself in a poker tournament, though, something meaningful and prestigious needs to be associated with the event, a la the World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour, and, of course, the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship.
For those of you who didn't hear about what happened with the sudden emergence of WSOP rule No. 81, here's a recap of what happened. As usual, I was at the epicenter of the incident that stopped the deuce-to-seven tournament and nearly erupted into a row worse than the Watts or Rodney King riots.
I was in the small blind ($20), playing $30-$60 hold'em. Four players called and it was to me. Getting 17-1, all hands are worth a call in that situation; I looked at my hand only to see if I wanted to raise. I peeked down to see 9-7 offsuit. I'd have played stuff much trashier than that in this spot, so I tossed in one chip to call. My friend Glenn, in the big blind, knuckled, and we took the flop off sixhanded.
Well, as I write this, I am still in Vegas for the World Series of Poker, sitting here in the jacuzzi and pondering the differences between live poker and online poker. There are many, and they are larger than I ever really paid attention to. Both in cash games and tournaments, the play is drastically different from live to online.
If you play in shorthanded games frequently, you probably play online, an environment that enables you to track statistics on yourself and your opponents. The following paraphrased excerpt from the soon-to-be-released book Limit Hold'em: Winning Short-handed Strategies, by Terry Borer and Lawrence Mak with Barry Tanenbaum, describes the most important metrics and how to use them.
Some players wait until it is their turn to act to look at their cards, some players look at them right away, and some look somewhere in between. I tend to look immediately. I find that I can picture how the hand is going to play out better if I am watching everyone else while at the same time already knowing what I am going to do. I don't think I can process information quick enough to wait until it is my turn to look at my cards.
