Meadowlands....

Sometimes, just when you think life can't get any better, it does.

Yesterday was a red letter day. I'd been doing some research into domain names and found out that last September, the number of registered domain names containing the word "poker" in them surpassed the number of names containing the word "casino". I know that might now sound very exciting... unless you're a hopeless domainaholic like I am. Then my friend Melissa comes over and said she was going to Pure and asked if I wanted to chill. I wasn't feeling it. Then she told me that Jamie-Lynn Sigler, one of the stars from the Sopranos (one of my favorite shows), was celebrating her birthday there.

I've always had a little star-crush on Jamie-Lynn Sigler... ever since I read an interview she gave. She was asked if she was worried that she'd get typecasted as an Italian girl for her work on the Sopranos, and she answered like it was the most obvious answer ever. "Well no... because I'm Greek." Love her. So I started feeling it and we headed out.

First, though, we stopped to see the American Storm show... if any of my guy friends who are reading this are planning a trip to Vegas, they should definitely go. It's got the best guy:girl ratio I've ever seen at a vegas show. I got to meet some of the entertainers afterwards at Pure. A couple of them live on the same block as Joey. They told me how much of a pain in the ass neighbor he is because of all the noise pollution coming out of those little mini crotch rockets. But I digress...

The goal of the night was to meet Jamie-Lynn Sigler. We didn't have any problem getting into the club last-minute because Melissa works at the cardroom and knows a lot of the bouncers. But getting into the VIP area where Jamie-Lynn Sigler was going to be was a trick. So I shot a line out to David Williams because I figured he doesn't have a problem getting in anywhere. He showed up at the club and sure enough knew both of the hosts working the VIP area.

So I was in. And that's when I got to meet Jamie-Lynn Sigler. I saw her sitting on a couch talking to someone. She was wearing a black and white dress. I went up and had a great talk with her. I'll never forget the conversation. It went like this :

Me (interrupting some conversation she's having) : Hey Jamie-Lynn. Big fan... love your work. I wanted to come over and meet you. My name's Dutch.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler : Ohhhhhh... nice to meet you.

Me : I also wanted to wish you a happy birthday!

Jamie-Lynn Sigler : But it's not my birthday... I don't know why people keep saying that.

Me : Oh. Ummmmmm..... (pause) well when's your bir-

I was going to say "Well, when's your birthday?" as a lame way of keeping our moment going... but before I could finish, the bouncer grabbed my arm and not too subtly led me away from Jamie-Lynn (I'm dropping the Sigler. I feel like I know her well enough now to just call her Jamie-Lynn).

I asked a few of the bouncers if Robert Iler was around... he's the guy who plays A.J. on the show and he's supposedly really big into poker. The story I heard was that he was in one of the underground cardrooms in NYC when the police raided and closed it down. He got a little bad press out of it... kind of a "when child stars go bad" spin. But then he got a sponsorship/endorsement deal with Bodog. With poker being as big of a fad as it is, it was probably a good career move (if it actually happened).

I was really hoping that Robert Iler would be celebrating Jamie-Lynn's birthday with her and I'd get to meet him and trade poker tips for Sopranos spoilers. Then we'd be friends and hang out and stuff. And he'd bring me to the set sometimes (maybe even get me a small role in an episode with poker in it). I'd meet the cast. He'd do some acting while I watched on the sidelines... telling jokes with Jamie-Lynn and playing gin with Stu Unger. And after every take, I'd yell "Good scene, Bobby! Good scene!"

He didn't turn out be at the birthday celebration... so maybe the night didn't live up to the high hopes that I had. But I did get to meet Jamie-Lynn.

One other rant before I drop the subject. Something I admire about Jamie-Lynn Sigler is that she spoke out about eating disorders. I know that must have been tough for her... I was in the same spot when I was first speaking out about bi-polar disorder. Some fears creep up... like you're on on your first five minutes of your fifteen of fame, and if you associate yourself with a problem, you'll fill your remaining ten minutes up as the poster-child for whatever. So yeah... hats off to her. Good times.

Last thought.... One of the producers for the Sopranos is named Gianna Smart... and every time I watch an episode of that show I think to myself... "You know... Gianna *is* smart." Sigh.

Poker Condoms

I kind of want a few packs... check it.

Poker = Dying Fad

The New York Post had a pretty stupid article up today with the headline "Pepsi's Poker Ad Dooms Fad". In it, the writer talks about how the over-commercialization of poker is the start of the fad dying. He quotes a "creative director of buzz" named Ryan Berger.

"Poker was a real underground trend, but now it has become so commercialized that the game's lost the gritty flavor that made it attractive," said Ryan Berger, Euro RSCG's creative director of buzz.

I don't know what the guy is talking about, because I think poker is so much more attractive now then it was back when it had "the gritty flavor". I don't think people are getting into poker now because they have this Roundersesque idea of the experience. No. People are getting into poker now because the successful players (which are not as few and far between anymore) are making sick money and living like rockstars.

I remember back when it was gritty. Pros would lie about what they did for a living. If you were trying to pick up a girl, being a poker player would kill the deal right off the bat. I knew guys who told their parents that they were "investment consultants". It wasn't a cool thing to do.

Enter online poker. Enter ESPN and the WPT. Enter the whole final table of the WSOP making a million. Enter Pepsi.

It's not going to be too long before you see nike swoops all over the top names and hearing about eight-figure endorsement deals. I predict in the future more people will play poker than the stock market. We're not talking pogs here, people. Poker is not a fad.

Happy St. Patty's Day

Hope you all have a fun and safe holiday. Don't drink and drive. And make sure you buckle up, because accidents happen! Case in point... The other day, Joey bought four mini crotch rockets. Today he is in bed with a broken collarbone. Really sucks, too, because the poker player insurance plan isn't what it used to be. And now I don't have anybody to go see V for Vendetta with.

My plans for tonight are just to stay in and grind out a thousand or two hands online. Probably check out the new Dr. Who series on SciFi tonight. And hold my breath to see if my weekend movie bets come through. I put a $50 over on V for Vendetta doing better than $32m this weekend, and $100 under on She's the Man not clearing $9m. It's true... I've got leaks. But it could be worse, right? I could be sportsbetting.

When I was a kid, I went to a St. Pat's party. I remember we played this little game where we got into teams of three and tried to come up with as many words as we could using the letters in "St. Patrick's Day". After we played that fun little gem, we all had green macaroni and cheese. I remember it so vividly, because a few hours after eating that green goo I got about as sick as I've ever gotten in my life... and for years I really believed that I was severely allergic to green food coloring. True story. Good times.

So yeah... if you do end up going out tonight, pinch a couple girls for me.

Gigabet is my hero...

I posted something on a CardPlayer forum... figured I'd repost it here on my blog. The full thread can be found at CardPlayer.com.


A lot of people on this thread have looked at a few things I said in interviews and on the site and somehow came to the conclusion that I don't think poker is beatable. I've never said that. I know for a fact that poker is beatable. I've sustained myself just on poker for the last five years. I do think anybody trying to beat this game for a living, though, is doing themselves a huge disservice if they are playing small and medium stakes in live casinos.

Here are a couple interesting things to think about :

1) CardPlayer had a survey a few years ago where they asked readers whether they were up or down overall. If I remember right, only 20% of readers responded that they were down... 25% were beating the game and 55% were breaking even. Poker is a great game like that because it is SOOOO easy to trick yourself into thinking you're winning. A lot of times I'll catch myself after a losing session excusing the loss.

"Well, if those Kings had held up, I'd be winning for the session... so I'm not really down. Plus I got $50 in the mail for my birthday from my uncle... so really, I'm up for the day."

2) There was an anthropology book written about poker back in the 70s by a guy named David Hayano. He broke down four different types of "professional" poker players. These types were all players who were trying to make their money exclusively by poker. He found that most "pro" players drift back and forth between real jobs and poker because they would continue to go broke. That doesn't necessarily mean that most of these pros this guy studied were losing players... it does mean, though, that they weren't making enough at poker to sustain themselves.

3) A few people have talked about how the stakes effect the beatability of the game. I don't think there is any player out there who could consistently beat a 2/4 limit game in California for anything over minimum wage. In California, they take a drop instead of a rake... so the house takes $3 out of every hand regardless of how big the pot gets. The rake ends up being a lot higher than 10% of the pot. Then you add in the dealer tokes. Bottom line is when I was propping the games in San Jose, none of the props were beating the 2/4 game. The 3/6 game is where it started getting beatable for most of us... but not for a lot. Online, however a 2/4 game is quite beatable. The rake structure is different and you don't have to worry about dealer tokes. The percentage of players who beat the 2/4 limit games online, though, is lower than the percentage of players who beat the 20/40 limit games online. The reason for this is NOT because the players at the lower limit games play too fishy and your aces are more likely to get cracked. The reason is because the rake paid is a smaller percentage of each pot, of each big blind, and of each average buyin... which leaves more money on the table to be thrown around between the winning players.

4) After spending years making my money playing poker, I can say definitively that the best way to make money for a medium stakes player (anybody playing less than 100-200 limit) is multi-tabling the limit games online. There are hundreds of online players making six-figure a year incomes and a handful of players making seven. I personally have come to the conclusion that limit holdem games is the way to go... sit-n-gos, tournaments, nl games, non-holdem games... they are all beatable. But they aren't beatable for as much as the boring but trusty limit holdem game.

5) If you are a good limit holdem player, you'll win around 60% of your sessions. Let's suppose you're like me, though, and only win about 55% of your sessions. That means the chances of any one session being a losing session is 45%, the chances of any two sessions both being losers is .45 x .45. Stay with me now... this is going somewhere. The chances of any four sessions all being losing sessions is .45 x .45 x .45 x .45 = roughly 4%. What I take this to mean is that if you have four sessions in a row where you lose, it is much more likely that you are a playing with a negative ev than that you are just getting unlucky. Going even further with this... if you put in a solid week of online limit play and multitable, it's not that hard to get in 5 or 6 thousand hands a week. This is the equivilent of a month's worth of live play. Being positive after a 5000 hand week for a winning player is a lot more likely than being positive after a single session... I'd estimate somewhere in the 80 - 90 % range. If you have two weeks back to back that you're down even though you've gotten in > 5000 hands, the sad truth is it is statistically improbable that you are just on a bad run. You are much more likely a losing poker player.

IN CONCLUSION :

Something went very wrong with poker. Back in the day there must have been some guy with a lot of time on his hands who came up with this game and played it out in some field somewhere with his buddies. Then some other guy saw them playing and decided he could make a decent chunk of money charging all of them to come inside and play in his bar. That's where poker went wrong.

Poker was supposed to be an even-sum game... like chess, scrabble, backgammon, bowling, pool, etc. Somewhere something got screwed up, and operators saw poker more like blackjack or slots. I blame Vegas and the whole $/sq ft mentality. A rake is easy to justify, though, because you have so many people to pay... dealers, security, floorpeople, brushes, cashiers, cocktail waitresses, electricity, etc.

Then back in around 1997, it got even worse with online poker. Here was a completely different business model then the live counterparts... yet everyone based their revenue model on what was already out there. The first, Planet Poker, based their pricing model on the live counterparts... then every online cardroom that came after based it on the existing online operations. Overhead is SOOOOOO much lower online. And what's more is the games are played so much quicker, so the cost/hr is higher for the players. The rake structure online is based on what players are willing to pay, and not what operators can reasonably afford to offer. There should not be a rake in online poker.

The rake is what makes poker a hard game to beat. It's not enough to be better than average to beat the game as it currently is... you have to never be worse than the 3rd best player at your table. If it weren't for the rake, more than 50% of players would be winning players. Losing players would last longer. All of the games would be softer at every limit. You'd have multitabling 2/4 online players making six figures a year and 15/30 players making over a million a year. Poker would explode and become more popular than anybody could ever imagine. This is the way poker can be and should be. RakeFree.

- Dutch Boyd

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One more thing... however you might feel about me personally, the idea of eliminating the rake is good on its own merits. There are plenty of bad people in history who desired world peace... it does not mean that world peace is a bad idea. RakeFree is a good idea.