Live poker and sunglasses

Do you reckon that wearing sunglasses should be accepted as a mainstream practice at live poker tables? Do you wear sunglasses when you play and if so why? The only reason I’m asking these questions is that shades may soon be outlawed at the live poker tables (I bet you’ll still be allowed to wear whatever type and color you like back home in front of your computer), because – according to many – they spoil the game by allowing some of the players to hide behind this wall of partial anonymity.
The whole sunglasses at the poker table debate was started by Daniel Negreanu in a blog post of his in which he expressed joy over the fact that PokerStars’ The Big Game would not allow players to hide “like chickens” behind shades, through a direct rule addressing the issue.

Negreanu went on to detail how none of the top players who rose from among the online ranks wore sunglasses in live poker events. Tom Dwan, Patrick Antonius and Phil Galfond do not resort to such trickery indeed, and neither does Doyle Brunson or Phil Ivey. None of the greats feel the need to hide their eyes from their opponents, but does that mean an everyday Joe should be denied the option too?
After all, Stu Ungar wore sunglasses and Greg Raymer’s reptile-eyes spectacles have become something of a trademark accessory for the big man.
In what ways do shades create an advantage for beginners? First of all: sunglasses boost beginners’ confidence. They feel like they’re not out there naked, faced with the adversity that some of the world’s biggest poker players can bring upon them. I can certainly relate to this view. Even those guys who get used to staring down Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu over time, would certainly appreciate the refuge offered by the shades in the beginning.

Others say that the shades prevent their opponents from seeing when they look at them. That can be important in light of the fact that this way, opponents won’t be able to tell when our man gets a read on them. They basically allow a player to be much more stealthy at the table, kind of like an online player. As uptight and intimidated as they may be early on, as soon as the novelty factor wears off (and we know that happens pretty fast in live poker) people tend to relax. They catch themselves daydreaming at the table waiting for that hand which warrants some chips being pushed in to the middle. Shades prevent their opponents from being able to tell they’re daydreaming. This way, they will not telegraph the fact that they’ve just picked up a play-worthy hand when they finally do.
The advantages that sunglasses offer some players are quite obvious. Sure, they’re not for everybody for sure. A guy like Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu, gains a lot more by letting their opponents know when they look at them than by hiding their gaze. Incidentally, it is these very guys who have a lot to gain from shades being banned, who are against it.

The question of whether or not sunglasses should indeed be banned from competitions boils down to whether or not they threaten the integrity of the game. Many an expert readily admits that having one’s eyes hidden from his/her competitors does in fact facilitate cheating. With that in mind, I suppose I’ll have to back the ban myself, regardless of how cool sunglasses look on some folks at the table. Sunglasses (especially when combined with hoodies) don’t make good poker TV at all – as Negreanu didn’t fail to point out, so if we throw that into the balance as well, the decision is a relatively easy one.

WSOP – a look back at the bracelet events that are no longer around

With the WSOP’s November 9 final table almost upon us, it is time to take a look back at the events that resulted in bracelets for the lucky (and highly skilled) winners, including those that have been banished from the schedule of the world’s largest poker series.
This year, a total of 56 events awarded gold bracelets to their respective winners, spanning a selection of Holdem, Omaha and 7-Card Stud, featuring different betting structures and tournament formats. Because the WSOP is a living, breathing entity rather than a heartless collection of poker tournaments, it has been on a continuous evolutionary process ever since its inception. Various events were added, others were dropped. Various formats have been tried for the Main Event, some of which resulted in failures, while others stuck around.
For the 2010 Series, organizers had once again come up with a few changes to keep up with the public’s needs. One of those changes was the replacing of the HORSE format with an 8-game mix for the Player’s Championship. In order to make some of the Holdem tournaments more accessible for the masses, buy-ins had been lowered for them.
Every year in recent poker history, the WSOP has seen some changes. The Series consisted of only 12 events back in 1986. That number had climbed to 17 by 1999 and it continued to increase every year since. Some events were also dropped in the process though, and there’s no better way to conjure up some WSOP nostalgia than to take a look back at them, so here goes.

The Ace-to-Five Draw event was first introduced in 1971, when Johnny Moss won it for $10k. Ace-to-five Draw plays a lot like 2-7 triple draw, with only a few minor differences. It too is a lowball game, but straights and flushes count, so the best possible Ace-to –Five draw hand is the A,2,3,4,5. The event has had a bunch of noteworthy winners through the years, including Chau Giang, John Juanda and Men Nguyen. The very last such event was held during the 2004 edition of the WSOP, when Norm Ketchum won it for a prize of $84,500. Ketchum bested a starting field of 184 players, the third biggest in the history of the event. 1987 was the year when the event saw the most entrants (216) but that could probably be attributed to the fact that the buy-in was only $1,000 that year.

Fixed Limit Omaha is an event which saw its WSOP demise in 2003. First introduced in 1983, the Limit Omaha event last saw the light of a WSOP day in 2003. The introduction of the event was an obvious response to the newfound popularity that Limit Omaha had enjoyed in the 80s. All that came to an end when PLO took over. The first ever winner of a WSOP Limit Omaha event was none other than David Sklansky, who picked up $25,500 for his efforts. Eduard Scharf was the last one to win a Fixed Limit Omaha event in 2003. He took down $63,600.

Five-Card Stud was one of the most popular poker variants back in the 70s, when the WSOP started, so it was obviously included on the schedule. Despite the relatively large following it enjoyed, 5-Card Stud only appeared 3 times on a WSOP schedule. First introduced in 1971, the event was won all three times by Billy Boyd. The weird thing about the Five-Card Stud event is that Boyd is listed as the winner of the 1973 event, but according to the same records, there was only 1 entrant in that event. Could Boyd have won a WSOP bracelet simply by having entered an event?