The Ruinous Work of Nostalgia
2007-07-31 15:12:33
By: Gene Bromberg
Something of a strange article at Salon.com the other day. Titled "Requiem for a Poker Game" the author, Robert Burton, laments how players raised on advanced statistics and the Internet have ruined the game. As Burton writes,
"Poker now bears little resemblance to serious cash-game poker once played in a dimly lit Las Vegas backroom by a Damon Runyon-esque collection of high-octane gamblers, bookies, off-season oil riggers, rodeo champs, denizens of the underworld and slumming celebrities who gave poker its color."
I can see where Burton is coming from here. Having spent seven weeks covering the WSOP and seeing logos splashed everywhere and hearing executives talk about the World Series as a "brand" instead of a "poker tournament", much of the romance of the game has been lost. I don't know that Johnny Moss would've appreciated Mr. Peanut walking around Binion's Horseshoe back in the day. And if you read A. Alvarez's The Biggest Game in Town and Anthony Holden's Big Deal, you can see precisely how the game has changed over the last quarter-century. In fact, just read those two books and then move to Holden's recently-released Bigger Deal to learn how drastically the poker universe has changed.
But if the game is different now, it doesn't mean we should look at the past solely as some idealized Golden Era. It's true, poker was once played in underground rooms with Runyonesque characters. It's also true that many of these colorful characters carried guns and weren't afraid to stick them in your face if they felt you'd won a bit too much of their money. In their books Doyle Brunson, T.J. Cloutier and other road gamblers tell countless stories about getting robbed or threatened during games. Trying to figure out how I can get out of a card room alive with my money is a bit more romance than I care for.
There was also quite a bit of cheating going on in games way back when. Johnny Moss famously said that he learned to cheat before he learned to play. And while there are doubtless amoral players around today who collude online and play multiple accounts and try any way they can to beat the system, the fact is that casinos (brick and mortar as well as online) work very hard to ensure their games are fair. It's in their financial interest to do so.
Burton also laments how poker's social dimension has diminished in the online era. After winning a seat tot he 2006 WSOP Main Event, he sat down at his table:
"No one introduced him- or herself. Few bothered to make eye contact, preferring dark glasses and baseball caps, as though hiding in plain sight. During the first day -- 15 hours of grueling play -- I did not hear a single joke, an engaging story or even collegial banter. Once, when a player was criticized by another for endless badmouthing, the player responded by saying, "Hey, I'm not here to make friends. This is all about money."
No doubt there are tables populated by morose, predatory drudges. But every poker table is a unique community, and during the World Series I heard countless hours of interesting table-talk. Players chatted and joked and ragged each other--sometimes to gain an edge, sometimes because it's nearly impossible not to talk to someone you sit next to for 12 consecutive hours. Quite a few players are friendly, interesting, genuinely nice people. Who will check-raise you all-in with a smile on their faces. Burton also laments the fact that players these days are using database mining and game theory to improve their play. Where old-time players were guided by experience and instinct, today's players memorize tables and follow algorithms. Again, I see his point, but I think to some degree those legends were using game theory themselves as they made their incredible players. Doyle Brunson talked about dealing thousands upon thousands of hands to see how they played out, and it's likely that he and savants like Stu Ungar came up with methods on their own that were very similar to what game theorists teach today. It's just that today this information is far more widely known.
I can't say that I agree with Burton's claim that big-time tournament players today don't feel much pressure to perform because they're not playing with their own money. It's of course known that many players have backers, investors who put up part (or all) of a player's buy-in, as well as helping out with expensese, in exchange for a cut of the player's earnings. Of backing, Burton says the following:
"Although seldom discussed, those players who have private backing and can play in a large number of tournaments without risk of personal capital are at a huge advantage. They can readily make the risky calls and bets that someone playing with his or her own hard-earned money is far less likely to make."
Burton then describes a hand that Stu Ungar played against Bobby Baldwin, a hand where Ungar was a 10-1 dog but turned down Baldwin's offer of a partial save. Ungar hit his miracle card to win the pot and Burton writes:Ungar slipped behind a row of slot machines and handed the money to his sponsor, who, in turn, gave Ungar some of the winnings. The game had not been conducted on a level playing field. Baldwin, who would become the president of Mirage Hotels, was an intelligent, conservative player who was playing with his own money. Ungar was a reckless player with nothing at stake. Watch a few TV poker programs today and you will see certain players who make extraordinarily risky calls or bluffs. We wonder how they do it. Well, if you're not calling or betting with your own money, what's the risk? Imagine how different the TV shows would be if we were told which players were playing with their own money and which weren't.
Now, this is a bit silly. The risk to the player is that if you make "extraordinarily risky calls or bluffs" and they don't work out, you might lose your backing. If you know your next ten entry fees are paid for, and you have a decision to make and believe you're a slight favorite, you might be more willing to push your chips forward knowing a bad beat won't put you on the sidelines. That said, a player who makes insane players and donks off his chips is likely to find his backers pulling out and leaving him to his own devices. So while I agree that players who have backers may feel less pressure to perform, that doesn't mean they don't have ANY pressure on them. They've acquired backers because they're good poker players (or, perhaps, the backer THINKS they're a good poker player). They have to crank out results to pay their backers. Backers aren't Fairy Godmothers handing out wads of cash--they expect a return on their investment. The next time you see a well-known pro walking toward the cage to get paid and there are a half-dozen people walking right behind him, you'll know who his backers are.
Burton then makes an argument I strongly disagree with:
As poker moves from seat-of-the-pants play to easily available complex mathematical strategies, the likelihood of great players emerging from the mass of entrants will dramatically decline. More and more tournaments will be decided by a succession of "coin flips" (competition between two hands of nearly equal value), with results becoming increasingly random.
I think writing the line "easily available complex mathematical strategies" should've given Burton pause. There are scores of books out that will teach you to be a better poker player. Then, how to explain why so many poker players are AWFUL? Well, because these strategies are, well, "complex". They're HARD to learn. And they're HARD to put into practice. Are you willing to put your entire tournament life at stake with Q-5 suited if a slightly-shorter stack moves all in from the small blind? These are the decisions game theory helps players make...and they aren't easy. You need to have heart to make big plays like that. Heart like...Johnny Moss and Stu Ungar had.
See, you can learn the math, you can absorb the theories...but if you get spooked when a big-name players stares you down, you won't win. If you lack the conviction to make a big raise with an Ace on the board, if your hands shake when you're bluffing, if the idea of cashing makes you throw away pocket Queens on the button...no book or theory can save you. Poker is still a people game. And that's why there ARE great poker players. There's a reason why Phil Hellmuth won his 11th bracelet this year and cashed six times. There's a reason why Tom Schneider won two bracelets during the recent World Series and Allen Cunningham won a title for the third year in a row. They're very, very good poker players.
Burton closes by saying:
A generation of young kids is being seduced into believing in the easy life. Many drop out of school to pursue a misrepresented dream. In the process, they ignore productive careers in order to chase a mirage, an illusion that is in the process of unraveling...(F)or those with a good memory, poker will have been a great pastime. For those who are new to the game, it will be a sorry disappointment.
I think it's a considerable overstatement to say that a "generation" of kids are being seduced into poker, and it's also a bit hysterical to say "(M)any drop out of school". Really? How many? Where did you arrive at this conclusion? But I do agree that anyone considering becoming playing poker seriously understand that it is NOT an easy life. Poker does not suffer fools--the game is filled with hypercompetitive and extremely intelligent people, and poker itself is an endless Darwinian struggle of dog-eat-dog.That said, the game today is filled with thousands of players who DON'T play poker seriously. Poker is still, and always will be, a fun and exciting game to play. With friends, in a card room, in a World Series of Poker tournament. That's why thousands of players file into the Rio every year, and why tens of thousands play online. Has the game lost some of it's romantic sheen with the introduction of online play and corporate oversight? Yes. But the Good Old Days weren't always Good. In so many ways poker is much, much better today than it was thirty years ago. And I think there are millions of poker players around the world who would agree.
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