EPT Deauville Day 2 and Day 3

Day 2 of the EPT’s Deauville stop was an action packed poker bonanza from the get go. The 284 players who survived Day 1A and Day 1B of the event wasted no time and were at each other’s throats from the very first hands dealt. David ‘Devilfish’ Ulliot started the day in the chip lead, after he had a great run in the closing stages of Day 1B and gathered up a 120,000 stack. Second in stack size at the beginning of Day 2 was Jonathan Abdellatif who had 105,000 chips, followed in third by Alessio Isaia who also managed to crawl past the 100,000 mark. All the other players were far behind this trio, the best of the field had around 80,000 chips.

8 levels of play were originally scheduled for the day or play would’ve gone on until there were 32 players left. The size of the starting field made it doubtful that enough players would head to the rail by the end of the 8th level, but given the intensity of the action, only 47 were left by the day’s end so the organizers had indeed assessed the situation well.
The man with the goods at the end of the day proved to be Germany’s Moritz Kranich, who swung his stack well several times throughout the day, and thanks to skill as well as to Lady Luck’s personal intervention on his behalf, wielded a 517,000 large stack at the end of the day. Given that the person in second place on the provisional leader board, Michel Abecassis only held around 300,000, the German was considered a favorite for reaching the final table.

Many of the ‘name’ pros who started the competition made it to Day 2, but only a few of them would move on to Day 3. Isabelle Mercier, Freddy Deeb, Vanessa Rousso and Ludovic Lacay were not among the lucky ones.
David Ulliott managed to preserve his Day2 starting stack and he even added some to it to finish the day with 143,000 chips. Ivo Donev and Mika Pasasonen also moved on.

4 players returned to the tables of the Barriere Casino for Day 3 of the EPT’s Deauville Main Event. The structure of the event meant that plenty of the players were quite deep-stacked at the beginning of the day. This fact did little to discourage aggression though. Eager to cut as big a share of the generous prize-pool as possible, players threw themselves into the fray with ardor and heads started rolling left and right soon.

Michel Abecassis was a member of the French contingent working to keep the prize at home so to speak, and despite the fact that he had started Day3 on a respectable stack, he busted out about midway through.
Dave Uliott was also one of the players everyone watched, and despite the fact that he got off to a flying Day3 start, he too was sent to the rail after almost making the top 20.
The Day3 chip lead would end up in possession of 19 year old Frenchman, Tristan Clemencon, who played aggressively and cut through the opposition like a hot knife through butter.

The player who started the day with a more than comfortable chip lead, Germany’s Moritz Kranich managed to acquire further additions to his stack, and finished the day in second place behind the young Frenchman.
The other final table participants were: Jorn Walthaus, Jonathan Azoulay, Thomas Delattre, Bruno Launais, Arnaud Esquevin and Andrea Benelli.
With the French contingent present in such solid numbers at the final table, a large part of the prize-pool will certainly stay at home, whether or not the winner will be a home team player too, remains to be seen.

Online poker ruled a game of skill by a US judge

The battle for the legalization of online poker has been given a tug in the right direction last Friday, when a Pennsylvania judge ruled that poker was a game of skill rather than one of chance and that defendants Walter Watkins and Diane Cent, who were under investigation on 20 charges for running a game of NL Texas Holdem in their garage, were to be cleared on all accounts.

The judged analyzed the issue and came to the conclusion that even though there was an element of chance involved in online poker, that of skill was prevalent and because of that, the game itself couldn’t be considered one of chance. The judge quoted several sources on which he based his decision. Mike Caro’s ‘Secrets of Winning Poker’ and ‘Explaining Poker: a Data Mining Approach’ were among the offline sources he mentioned. The judge even quoted an excerpt from Caro’s book in which the flow of money from the bad players towards the strong players was suggestively described.

The defendants said they found it extremely distressing to be forced to go through the ordeals they had to deal with for the simple fact that they hosted a game of poker in which no rake had even been taken.

Although the case wasn’t exactly a high-profile court battle, the decision may prove extremely important in the future as it set a precedent in the ever raging debate on whether or not poker is a game of skill and thus exempt from under the restrictions and regulations put forth in the UIGEA. It also raises another question which – for some reason – is never really brought up by anti-UIGEA partisans: isn’t breaking the link to online gambling the most straightforward way to have online poker legalized in the USA? If poker does gain nation-wide acceptance as a game of skill (based on judge Thomas A James Jr’s ruling too), does that mean that online gambling tags along for a ride? I hardly think so. Because of the house edge they feature, online and offline gambling games will never pass as games of skill and therefore they may not be able to follow poker on the road to legality.

Online poker’s fight for a legal foothold in the US has gained yet another shove forward last week when a 3-judge panel of the Kentucky Court of appeals dismissed Judge Thomas D. Wingate’s ruling for the seizure of 141 internet domains belonging to some of the biggest online poker and gambling operators. The ruling – a natural one according to most experts – denied the Commonwealth of Kentucky to go through with a move that would’ve set an extremely dangerous and confusing precedent concerning internet freedom and the right to conduct business online anywhere in the word.

Judge Michelle M Keller has declared that an internet domain name cannot possibly be categorized as a ‘gambling device’ under any circumstances because it doesn’t really have anything in common with a mechanical or otherwise device primarily designed and manufactured for gaming and gambling purposes.

According to the judge, internet domain names do not fall under the ‘gambling devices’ category in the Kentucky state law, and even though the law could’ve been amended to include them, lawmakers hadn’t considered it necessary.

The PPA hailed the ruling as a major victory not just for online poker but for internet freedom and basic human rights as well. The judge who disagreed with the ruling stated that the domain names were in fact parts of a larger gambling device, one that included internet access and computers as well.

I wonder whether they’ll try to outlaw computers or internet access for Kentucky residents as well. After all, under this definition, they too qualify as gambling devices under the law.

Durrrr’s $1 million challenge

If you’re interested in poker and online poker, you probably know about the $1 million challenge that durrrr (Tom Dwan) has issued a few weeks ago, to all players with the exception of Phil Galfond.
Poker sites everywhere jumped all over the challenge and picked it apart eager to dissect its every detail. There’s so much hype surrounding the whole issue that inevitably meanings were found in details that were probably never meant to carry any. Such a detail is the fact that Dwan’s challenge is open to all comers, that he’s ready to take on the whole world all by himself. While this picture of Dwan against the world may be appealing to many, the truth is the challenge isn’t really aimed at the entire world. There are only a few people with the means to take Dwan up on his challenge, and there are even fewer people out there willing to put that sort of money on the line in a poker game. Yes, we will hopefully see some pretty exciting match-ups between durrrr and whoever decides to accept his challenge, but we need to be aware of the fact that it’s not really ‘Dwan against the world’ that we’re about to witness.

Another thing which is currently given too much weight to is the exclusion of Phil Galfond. At first sight, that may seem like a huge amount of credit given to Galfond’s poker skills by Dwan, probably based on something mysterious the public doesn’t know about. For those who are familiar with the relationship between the two players though, there may not be any mystery in this exclusion at all. The two are good friends, which could be more than enough reason for Dwan not to aim to take his buddy’s money away.

The 3-1 odds that Dwan is willing to give his opponent(s) on the side-bet have also been analyzed and re-analyzed countless times. Some experts and most on-and-off poker players believe there’s serious calculus behind the numbers involved in the side-bet.
The truth is probably a lot less exciting in this respect as well. Dwan is probably just fairly certain he’ll be able to beat anyone heads-up at four tables over a meaningful period of time. The side-bet is only thrown in to make sure he will indeed get some action. While players like Phil Ivey are probably better than Dwan heads-up at a single table, he’s probably considering that they may not be able to beat him at 4 tables.
Bottom line: Dwan just really wants to play some high stakes poker and he just wants to make sure he’ll find opponents.

The challenge is indeed a world’s first in several respects, but as far as the core idea behind it goes, it is not that unusual at all. Professional poker players have always been involved in such challenges. The best of the best have been playing above their bankrolls and going bust. It has never been done in public like this though, so yes, in that respect we’re sure to get our money’s worth railbirding this one.

The fact that Dwan decided to go public with his challenge may have other – publicity related – motivations too. Something of this amplitude is sure to stir some waves well beyond the poker community, possibly raising interest in people not yet involved with online gaming. With the online poker industry on the ropes due to the soon to be enforced restrictions of the UIGEA, a publicity stunt like this may be a breath a fresh air for all those involved in poker.

Now that we know that Ivey is probably going to take durrrr up on his challenge, the only question that remains is how fast he will be able to adjust to playing 4 tables instead of just one, on which – in my humble opinion – he’d probably kick durrrr’s can.

The size of the antes/blinds

I’m quite sure that if you’ve ever read any sort of poker strategy, you’ve already come across the expression “the blinds/antes are the catalysts of poker”. All poker action starts as a battle for the antes, and in some cases that’s exactly where it ends too.
It’s not true that poker wouldn’t exist without these compulsory bets. As a matter of fact, I’m quite certain that some people would play anyway, their actions undisturbed by the lack of the blinds. Such a setup however would offer an almost insurmountable edge for good poker players. These guys would simply wait for the nut hands and shove as much money in as possible every time they got it. If all players at a table were good enough, the action would degenerate into some sort of tag, at the end of which there would be no winners or losers. There would be no point in playing anything else but the nuts because by playing other hands, one would expose him/herself to losing to a player who did in fact play the nuts.
The bottom line is, reasonable poker action is only possible through the presence of the blinds or antes.

Extremely huge blinds (huge in relation to the average bet sizes) represent the other extreme, and they too would make reasonable play impossible. Huge blinds provide excellent pot odds for all players involved. This means that everyone would play every single hand because the pot odds justify it. This way, the game would degenerate into roulette, with each player tossing in his small bets time and time again on all sorts of rags just to get a shot at the pot made huge by the blinds.

Now then, what conclusions should you draw from all of the above? Obviously, there’s a pattern emerging as far as the blinds/antes’ sizes are concerned and play strategy. The smaller the forced bets are in relation to the size of the average bet, the tighter you should play. The larger the forced bet sizes in comparison to the average bets, the looser your approach should be, taking full advantage of the favorable pot odds.
If you think about the mathematical formula which is behind the expected value (the pot odds compared to the odds of you making your hand) the above statement makes perfect sense form that perspective as well. The better your pot odds are, the larger the selection of hands that you can afford to attempt to make for the price of an average bet.

As you can see, the theory clicks nicely. What about practice though? What should you consider a large ante and what should you consider a small one? Generally speaking, up to 5% of the average future bet is considered to be a small ante, more than 15% is a large one.
One instance in which you can put the above theory to the test and eventually to use, is in poker tournaments, both STTs and MTTs. In the beginning, when the blinds are small and your stack size is big, the recommended course of action is tight aggressive play. As you near the bubble, stealing blinds becomes essential to your survival and a correct course of action as well, because the blinds’ sizes (and the pot odds they give you) justify the extra risks you take.

You probably heard poker professionals (like Daniel Negreanu) talk about how the closing stages of MTTs degenerate into a crapshoot. Well, that’s because of the blinds that go way up by then. That’s exactly why ultra loose and aggressive is the way to tackle the short handed and heads-up stages of a tournament.

A closer look at the Anurag Dikshit deal

About a week ago I wrote my little news-piece about the settlement that Party Poker co-founder, Anurag Dikshit has struck with the US Department of Justice, a move which cost the Indian billionaire more than $300 million. At the time, buried in the intricacies and chores of everyday life I couldn’t afford the luxury to ponder on about the subject, but a thought did cross my mind: what exactly did this man do to deserve such a positively obscene punishment. As far as I knew he was one of the owners of Party Gaming, and he had conducted a perfectly legal business which happened to attract thousands of American players at the time. What’s more, the company on behalf of which he took the blow has retreated from the US market following the 2006 UIGEA, so quite frankly, I didn’t understand how the whole thing made any kind of sense at all. I just figured they tied Dikshit to some sort of criminal activity, something I didn’t know about and moved on.

The curiosity of what this guy had done to deserve such a horribly steep fine gave me no peace though, so I decided to take a closer look at the issue and read up on Anurag Dikshit’s past. Turns out, the guy is no criminal and he hasn’t channeled funds to terrorists either. He just happens to have been the co-founder of probably the most successful online poker operation in the world, and as such one of the biggest success stories of internet-based gaming. Being one of the very few such companies in the world at the time of its inception, Party Poker acted as a natural magnet for US based players who showed interest in this sort of activity. The guy isn’t even a US citizen…On what grounds did the DoJ go after him then, most importantly, why did he yield to this obviously abusive pressure and why did he agree to have the “issue” settled this way?

They say he violated one count of the 1961 Wire Act. Come again? How could he have violated through his internet based enterprise an Act adopted way back when the notion of the entity that the internet is didn’t even exist. On top of it all, it is not 100% clear to this day whether poker is indeed a game of skill rather than a game of chance, so it isn’t clear either whether the Wire Act forbids it or not to begin with.
It would appear the Mr. Dikshit decided to go for the settlement instead of pursuing legal action against the abusive and unilateral measures set forth in the UIGEA, in order to aid some unknown interest of his own. According to experts, the case would’ve been winnable, and it would’ve cost far less than the sum Dikshit agreed to pay out.

Following the ominous settlement, Party Gaming released a statement in which it specified that the settlement was in fact Dikshit’s own initiative and thus his sole responsibility.

Accused of lack of integrity and cowardice by the industry’s experts and leading voices, Dikshit has in fact made a fortune on the backs of poker players whom he seems to have promptly turned his back on now that he accepted the proposed deal and set a dangerous precedent in the matter.