What we see on poker TV doesn’t much resemble what we’re used to from our own games. In fact, it’s a completely different animal.

TV shows have a limited time slot, plus they need to fit in the commercials. If you can only show seven or eight hands from a long tournament, of course it’s going to be big all in confrontations, well known players being eliminated after a bad beat and quite possibly the last hand of the event.

Viewers get to see absolutely nothing of the in-between hands that go raise-reraise-fold or check-bet-fold or bet-call, bet-call, bet-call.

Viewers don’t have access to the large amount of previous action that is vital to understand the decisions being made all the time.

Right now, pot control isn’t being popularized. Building stack is not a concept that works well in short episodes. Balance your three bets and you’ll be cut out of the TV hands.

How can you change this and give viewers access to the bigger picture? The true picture of poker?

Live streams are perfect – for nerds

One possibility is the live streams that are offered in connection with some live events. For poker aficionados, this is great, great poker TV even though you don’t get to see the hole cards.

But for the general public this won’t work at all. It would be like watching these mysterious three-day cricket matches. You have no idea what these guys are doing out here all that time, not to mention the people in the stands.

When ESPN shows the WSOP Main Event over 38 episodes or so, that’s obviously an effort to cover more than the wildest action. And still, not really. Fact is, the main event is so huge that you still can’t cover any one player for a long, unbroken streak of hands.

So what’s to do? Use the poker stats!

Poker stats are the missing piece

With today’s technology you could record everything that goes on at the tables. Each and every bet, every call, every fold. The amounts and percentages of all calls and all plays.

You could show the viewers all kinds of stats about the players at the table. How many hands has this player played so far, how many has that other player raised out of the position he’s in? The third player, how often has she flat called a pre-flop raise in late position?

How often does the original bettor continue bet on the flop? How often does the opponent re-raise or fold after a continuation bet?

By showing players’ VPIP/PFR, percentage of hands won without showdown and so on, you’d move some weight away from the lottery like all-in situations to the studied, long term strategy that lies beneath all that.

Statistics very natural in poker

Other TV sports make a big thing of the various game statistics, why not poker? After all, poker players are notorious number crunchers.

No other gamers that I know of have the kind of scientific tools at hand when playing as do poker players.

Poker TV would still mostly show all in confrontations and big pots, due to the time restraints. But if you garnish the exposition with in-depth stats and a cunning analysis of these, viewers would get that other dimension of poker that’s gone missing in today’s televised poker.

Then people back home would realize Texas Holdem is a fine, fine strategy game.

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Player and blogger at final table

I hate cheaters. Anyone who walks the just path must hate cheaters. They’re pissing at the idea of fair competition and your hard work.

Cheating in poker is doubly bad since every time it happens, poker’s reputation goes down enormously because of the game’s sordid history.

For poker’s reputation to reflect the true conditions in today’s poker, poker needs to be extra clean. To win a reputation similar to chess’, poker needs to be much cleaner than chess.

So how can cheating be stopped? In general it’s very hard, both in live poker and online poker.

But the kind of cheating we’ve seen in PPT and EPT is very easy to stop:

Don’t show your cards!

For a poker player, it should be standard procedure not to show your cards to people behind your back. It’s just a natural instinct.

After all, protecting your cards isn’t that hard. Why would anyone be sloppy with this little detail? Most of all in big tournaments.

If you show your cards, you’re asking to be cheated.

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But I had some totally weird messages that I must share with you. I got them when I tried to register a user name. I find them hilarious. But then I’m pretty nerdy.

The name I wanted to register was “pokerjunkie”. That should make sense to you. If you know where you are.

Anyway, it was taken. (wtf)

So the site presented me with an excuse and a number of suggestions for similar names. That’s standard procedure, I know. It’s just that these suggestions, my god, I don’t know.

See for yourself:

Maybe not hilarous. But a bit sick. You have to give me that.

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November Nine audience

Right from the start it was a matter of debate whether moving the final would make it more or less exciting.

I think the answer is clear now: November Nine is less exciting.

When the Main Event started four months ago, it was the biggest tournament in the world with some 7,000 players. When it starts in November with nine players, it’s the smallest.

While the WSOP Main Event could have ended with a big bang in July, in November it ends with a small thud. I’m sure the winner gets a lot less attention for his win this way.

Exciting set-up

Sure, for the November Niners WSOP final table is probably the thrill of a lifetime. And for the audience in the Penn & Teller Theatre it must be a very satisfying experience.

Maybe the interval as such is good for the finalists too. It gives them a certified spot in the spotlight for a few months. Once the final is over, eight of them won’t get any attention at all.

And hey, I’m sure someone makes a little extra cash thanks to the delay.

Water under the bridges

But for the rest of the world, the WSOP final table in November passes in relative silence.

The WSOP is so far away already. Back in June, some 55 players won their bracelets in the midst of the frantic action at the Rio. At the time it was exciting, you were attuned to following the daily struggle in The Poker Bonanza of the Year.

Since then we’ve seen players winning WSOP-E bracelets. We’ve seen other players winning WSOP Circuit rings. We had a number of new WPT winners, EPT winners and whatnot.

Now, if one more player wins a WSOP bracelet in early November, it’s just not such a big thing.

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But in his blog about the industry overplaying the skill card, the analysis is off mark, I feel. He seems to blame game theory for the fact that most players lose in online poker.

The rake is killing you (Photo by Michal Zacharzewski)

Kim Lund:

“I often call it the greatest game on earth simply because of the depths achieved with such relatively simple game mechanics and rules. And I think it deserves that title. “

Agreed!

“But I also believe that some of the game’s magic has been lost in the online industry’s attempt to exploit one of the game’s most obvious advantages over other gambling games. Skill.”

I’m sure you’re right.

“Now, the problem with poker is that simple game theory will tell you very few players can win money long term.”

Now, this is just wrong.

It’s all about the rake

You’re right, poker is a fantastic game. The focus on skill is unfortunate, for reasons that I’ve laid out in a number of blogs and articles, for example here and here.

Poker is about fair competition and human interaction. Aspects that are missing in lotteries and casino games. This is what makes poker such a great game.

If 90% of the players lose long term, it’s not due to game theory. It’s due to the rake.

If it’s impossible to win, it’s because of the rake.

The rake in online poker is ridiculously high, you have to admit it. Particularly at the lower stakes where most losing players start and end their careers.

Poker a zero sum game

If it wasn’t for the rake, the share of winning players would be close to 50%, I’m sure.

Poker is a zero sum game and we’re dealing with reasonably normal distributions here, when it comes to aggregated results over time.

(Maybe Kim Lund has access to numbers that can prove this: I don’t, so forgive me some speculation.)

Hidden payments generate losers

If the industry doesn’t want to create an army of disappointed losers, they should find a better payment model.

Today, payments in online poker are deducted in a secretive way from players’ winnings. This is what makes a large share of the players feel like losers. This is what makes winning appear impossible.

If you lose 8BB/100 just by sitting at the table, it’s very hard to show a long term profit.

A reasonable payment model should make it clear what the cost is. The player should know how much he or she is actually paying to play online poker.

Then a player could show a small profit at the tables and if the monthly subscription brings her bottom line into the red, she’s still a winning player, psychologically and morally.

A story of greed

I guess online poker operators are a bit greedy. They don’t mind carving out unreasonable, short term profits from a seemingly inexhaustible player pool.

A similar subscription service in other areas would pay, what do I know, $30 a month? That’s what a winning player pays in 300 hands at the micro stakes.

The rest of the rake during that month is “unreasonable”, and if the user experience deteriorates, it’s because of the disproportionate but hidden cost of service.

Marketing poker as a lottery, as Kim Lund suggests, is a terrible idea. Instead, I suggest that the industry introduce a reasonable payment model.

In their marketing they should tell it the way it is: Poker is a mind sport.

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Oh come on. You all knew you weren’t allowed to do that.

Both players and developers knew this. That’s just plain obvious to each and everyone. Hey, in their product information Shanky even advices its customers to rename the executable file in order to avoid detection.

Bots are not in accordance with the poker sites’ terms and conditions that we all have to accept before downloading the poker software.

So come on guys, you’ve been selling and using bots with open eyes and you should take the consequences as men (or women). Anything else is just ridiculous.

I tried out a poker bot a while back. If FTP blocks my account, there’s nothing I can say about it. That’s why I keep a small bankroll in my account. (LOL good one.)

Personally, I’m not hysterical about playing against a bot now and then. I think I can beat them just as well as the rest of the players. (Meaning, I’ll lose at the same rate regardless.)

I base this on an empirical observation: my bot lost my money really quick.

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PS Or am I wrong? Did FTP really have a soft policy vis-à-vis poker bots?

Jay “KRANTZ” Rosenkrantz and Ryan Firpo made the much appreciated “From Busto to Robusto”, a really nice little film about the online poker phenomenon. You can watch it here.

Now they’re upping the ante and set out to produce The Ultimate Documentary of the online poker boom together with Taylor Caby.

They call it the Boom Documentary, and the project sounds really exciting. I for one can’t wait to see what comes out of it.

Read more about BOOM here.

Apparently they have managed to collect most of the required financial backing now and are set to go.

If you think of a player (or operator) they definitely must not overlook in the documentary, now’s the time to tell them.

My vote goes to Isildur1. Time to come out of the Scandinavian closet.

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Can you grind here?

The penalty if you get caught multi-tabling is a $10,000 fine or maximum five years in jail.

No, it’s true!

Allegedly, the law was pushed through by brick and mortar casino operators. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.

I respect your desire to earn a living. That is, to make money on people who don’t grasp basic statistics. Who like to throw their household money into slot machines. By all means, good luck with that.

But making online poker a felony? It’s just not cool.

Sure, the risk of being prosecuted may be low (especially since I’m not living in Washington). But still, this is just too much. It’s uncalled for. It’s wrong.

Wake up, all good people out there. The world is going absolute nuts.

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The question whether skill or chance is the dominating factor in poker is central for legal purposes. But it’s hard to decide by just studying the rules of the game. You end up in questions without answers, such as “how long is the long run?”

Poker isn’t the only game where there’s an element of chance, though. Or uncertainty. Most or all endeavors are affected by some kind of unpredictable events.

In golf, for example, changing winds may mean an extra shot or two for one player compared to the competition.

Judging chance by actual results

So how can we compare poker to golf? Researchers Croson, Fishman and Pope took a clever angle on this matter.*

They looked at the results of poker competitions over a range of years and compared them to golf results over the same time span.

It turns out that poker shows much the same pattern as golf in this respect.

WSOP vs. PGA

They compared 25 years of the World Series of Poker Main Event to 25 years of the golfers’ PGA Championship. This is some facsinating reading.

In 25 years of the WSOP Main Event:

• 21 players won the title.
• One player won three times.
• Three players won twice.
• Three players won back-to-back titles.
• Fourteen of the 21 champions finished top ten in other Main Events.

In 25 years of the PGA Championship:

• 22 players won the title
• Three players won twice.
• One player won back-to-back titles.
• Fifteen of the 22 champions finished top ten in other PGA Championships.

Poker is really a skill game

Judging by these numbers, the results of poker competitions are no more random than those of golf competitions. If anything, they seem less random, but let’s not go there.

In all appearance, skill predominates over chance in poker much to the same degree as in golf.

Then, only one question remains before everything is said and done: Is poker a game of skill – or golf a game of chance?

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* This analysis was used by the Poker Player Association in a paper submitted in connection with court hearings in Massachusetts.

They in turn refer to Croson, Fishman, Pope: “Poker Superstars Skills or Luck?” I haven’t been able to read this paper yet, so I can’t really tell what kind of significance they attach to their findings.

PS  Now I have the text. It turns out it’s the wrong text. Croson, Fishman and Pope have performed a different study, also suggesting that poker and golf are decided by skill to a comparable extent.

Gambling involves betting. You bet money on the outcome of an unpredictable event. Your betting has no influence on the outcome.

That’s how gambling works. In poker, “betting” means something else.

Part of the game mechanism

Placing a bet in poker is a way to influence the game. By well balanced betting you can make opponents behave in ways that suit your strategic plan.

With a strong bet you can make an opponent give up the pot, even though he holds the best hand.

PPA says it well

Or, in the words of the Poker Players’ Association, PPA:

“What is called a bet in poker is really a move, like a move in any other game: it is a strategic maneuver designed to provoke a desired reaction from an opponent.”

That’s a very good distinction. Making a deliberate move in a game of strategy certainly has very little resemblance to buying a lottery ticket and hope to get lucky.

The quote is from a paper written by the PPA in connection with one of the many court trials where the PPA has been active to help courts understand what it’s all about.

Good clarification

I’m not saying poker players should start calling bets “moves”. But I think the distinction between bet and move is a key to the understanding why poker is not gambling.

Well put, PPA.

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