Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Coach (and size isn't everything)

When I set out to a live tournament, the first challenge is getting there. A few years ago, I made myself the laughing stock of Irish poker by turning up at the wrong hotel in the wrong part of Dublin for JP's mini WSOP. This time, I got the hotel (the Regency) right and turned up for the European Deepstack thinking I was 2 hours late (I didn't see the point of the early levels) but actually 22 hours early. As I walked around the empty poker room initially believing it must be a break, the lack of dealers or even chips on the table eventually made me realise I must have got the day wrong. So a quick text to Mrs Doke just in time before she made it back to the M50 and I was on my way back home, listening to her muttering under her breath. Couldn't quite catch what she was saying, but pretty sure it wasn't how wonderful it is to be married to me.

So, the following day, I was back for take 2. My table was entirely foreign (there didn't seem to be as many French around but lots of Scandis, Belgians and Germans) and I made easy early progress from 100k starting stack (not a typo) to 135k or so. I then made one of the biggest fold I have ever made (second nuts on the river) after the longest tank of my career. Thankfully I was shown the nuts so despite finishing the day with just over half a starting stack I was able to sleep that night feeling like I played as well as I could.

Day 2 got off to a great start and before I knew it I had increased my stack from 60k to over 350k when I made a mistake due to a temporary lapse of concentration. Sometimes my mind wanders a bit when I play live (I think a lot of online players used to having to make 50 decisions a minute do when suddenly they only have to make one every few minutes). So I was daydreaming briefly when I became aware of the dealer looking at me expectantly. A quick glance round the table revealed no visible cards or bet so I assumed it had been folded around to me in the hijack. I find jacks so I push out enough chips for a min raise. At this point the dealer tells me the short stack between me and her is already all in (apparently he had turned to her and announced this without moving any chips forward). Since I didn't say raise, I now have to put in enough chips for the flat call. No biggie, since I do have jacks. The button then confirmed I had flat called the shove and also called. Now it's a little wonky as I have about a quarter of my stack in, so I'm not committed and could have a tough flop decision if overcards come. The flop came Q73cc, so I check to see what the button does. He instantly shoves for several times pot. I don't think too long before folding, figuring he should never be bluffing with no side pot so either has KK or AA, or has made a slightly speculative call pre with AQ or KQ. I therefore was somewhat dismayed when he flipped over AK. Had I made the call. I would suddenly have been up to 750k, but to be honest I'm fine with the fold, I think long term it's the correct decision. My mistake was the loss of concentration preflop (although the result would probably have been the same as I would have flatted the shove).

I don't think I won a pot after that and withered down to the point where it became shove or fold. Eventually I ran qjs into qq. I flopped the world, or a royal flush draw to be precise, but it wasn't to be.

Back next day for the 300 side event. First table was a dream, all foreign recreational players. Despite this I managed to lose about 75% of my stack in the first level, mostly the result of a failed bluff against a gentleman from the UK. I joked on Twitter that I had broken my golden rule of never trying to bluff someone with visible tattoos. There's no real reasoning behind this: it's purely based on experience as I don't think I've ever successfully bluffed anyone with visible tattoos. My mood wasn't improved by the table talk, centered around my new nemesis (who I mentally dubbed Coach, after he sought me out at a break to tell me how badly I played, and why I would never win anything in poker playing the way I do). He was holding a strategy symposium, dissecting every hand focusing in particular on how well he had played it (and he was playing every hand) and how badly everyone else had. I declined to engage, contenting myself to stay silent while I flicked about on Facebook and Twitter, but I won't pretend I was unhappy when our table broke.

I picked up a few chips at my new table before the break. At the break, I had the aforementioned pep talk from "Coach", explaining why I had to play more hands and be less ABC. Armed with my new found knowledge, I went on a tear from 10k to bag up nearly 200k, to be 4/44 overnight. Or maybe I just ignored everything Coach told me, sat there folding patiently for hours, and got it in 70/30 ahead 4 times (holding each time). The second of these double ups came courtesy of Gavin "Gavonator" O'Rourke. After I got moved to his table (my third), he asked me if I would mention him in the blog if he doubled me up. I proomised I would, or alternatively if he dogged me. Ever the gentleman, Gav took the double up route rather than the dogging one. Biggest laugh of the weekend also courtesy of Gav: at the break I was telling Gary Clarke Gav had doubled me up to get mentioned in the blog. Gary then offered to devote an entire blog to him if he doubled him up. Without a moment's hesitation, Gav came out with the zinger "But way more people read Doke's blog".

While I can't say I enjoyed most of the day (I didn't play very well early on which always annoys me, and didn't enjoy the company with the notable exception of Gav and a few other Irish on my tables), I was very pleased to have ground it out. A few of my Facebook friends and Twitter followers apparently thought I was on tilt given the grumpy nature of most of my tweets, but to be honest I was kind of hamming it up for my own (and hopefully others) amusement. That's the great thing about social networks: it means you are not forced to interact with people you have nothing in common with beyond being seated at the table but can socialise with people who aren't even there. One tabling live when you are not enjoying the company is pretty boring, especially when short stacked, but I pride myself on never tilting while still involved in any tournament no matter how small (post bust out is a different story). I think the fact I grinded the short stack for hours on end when my equity in the tournament was less than 100 euro waiting for optimal spots rather than just flicking it in proves I didn't let my mood affect my performance.

I quickly chipped up on day 2 and was probably chipleader within the first hour. Everything was going great until I called a shove with jacks two tables out. Jacks would normally be strong enough to call an open shove by anyone in these things, but particularly when it's a Norwegian who is trying to bust (he had already shoved Q4o over an utg raise) so he can make his flight. I was therefore disappointed to find myself in a plain old flip (versus AQ), and even more disappointed to lose it. For the third time this tourney, that meant grinding 6 big blinds again for a while, which I did until I decided KJ utg was strong enough to push with. King jack off is a mucky enough hand with a whole table to pass through (you're going to be dominated a lot when called) but the blinds were about to rise so if I let it pass and the blinds went through, I'd suddenly be down to 3 bigs and no longer have fold equity on my shoves. When I got called and reshoved on, things weren't looking good, but when the hands went over it was about as good as I could have hoped for. I had one live card v two opponents who had queens and eights. The king came through for me to put me back in the game.

By the time we got down to final table, I was 5 or 6/9. Firm mate Daragh Davey was there too, 4/9. I don't remember the last time we've gone to a festival without at least one of the Firm making a final table, but it's been a while since I made one alongside another Firmy. The stacks were very flat and in the not much wiggle room zone (20 to 30 big blinds) which made for cagey going early on, and unfortunately Daragh was coolered when he reshoved jacks over a spewy youngster who was raise folding a lot but ran into queens in the big blind. The final table was a bit of a grind for me, and another lost flip saw me grinding 6 bigs for the fourth time this tournament. With 5 left I was a very distant 5th, but then two of the big stacks clashed. David Caffrey came off the worst to bust in 5th, and no sooner was I feeling good about having ladder to 4th and a 5k payday than I suddenly doubled up twice to be right back in the mix, 3/4. First double up was courtesy of AQ holding versus 97, second came when I exploited a tendency I had picked up on one guy. After he peeled from the blinds, and donked flop and turn (which I had concluded based on observation he would never do with a strong hand as he tended to get all trappy and slowplay then), I went with my read and piled over his turn lead with air. After some thought (or maybe Hollywood) he passed.

My hopes of the win were dashed with nines in the small blind. I raised to induce the big blind to shove and snapped when he did, expecting to be ahead. I was not ahead. His queens held and I was left with under 2 bigs. After folding one hand, the rest went in with K5s and I was called by both blinds. The flop was favourable (middle pair and a flush draw) but an offsuit ace on the river sent me packing to the rail. I was pretty gutted as about ten minutes earlier I was feeling like I could win the whole thing but you have to take the positives. In the last year, I have played very few side events, having decided to stick to main events rather than waste my time playing every 100 quid side, time that could be spent more profitably and enjoyably grinding online. However, having climbed into the top 10 of the overall UKIPT leaderboard without grinding sides, I decided I better start playing them (at UKIPTs at least) to give myself a decent shot at the leaderboard. So it was heartening to see I can still bring my best game to a side event these days even if I'm not enjoying the experience early on and in the back of my mind I'm thinking I'd be better off playing online at home. Also it's only February and I've already maintained my record of making a live final table every year since I started playing.

As I was queueing to cash out, Cathal Shine (who had just won the main) started chatting to me. Cathal is one of the unsung heroes of Irish poker, he's been crushing online quietly for years, and a nicer sounder lad you could not meet. So it was great not only to see an Irish winner in the event, but one of Cathal's calibre and class. As I was chatting to him, I was already late regging a UKIPT Nottingham satellite on my phone. I played it in the car on the drive home (I wasn't driving, I hasten to add), much to the amusement of Daragh Davey who was on my table for the second time that day. I ended up winning the satellite which was a nice end to the day.

Online I got off to a downswingy start this year, losing about 10k in January. I bounced back this month (about 25k up so far), and also qualified for EPT Vienna by mistake. I regged a 3x feeder sat on Stars Fr not realizing it would run into the target sat, so when I won the 3x, I got thrown in. There was only one seat for 20 something runners so I was cursing my mistake, but ended up winning the sat and the seat, so I'm off to Vienna for my first EPT this year, and very much looking forward to it. I definitely feel my live mojo has returned and a big result could be just round the corner. Before that, there's the small matter of UKIPT Dublin this week. I'm roomsharing in Vienna with the Drumlish legend himself Smidge.



This was my first time playing the Euro Deepstack in a few years, due to clashes with other events (Deauville last year, for example). It's always an emotional return for me ever since I was crowned champion at the first running. Talking to runner up Gary Clarke (who also finalled the 300 side), we reminded each other that at the time the final table was seen as one top class English pro (Joe Beevers) and a bunch of almost unknown Irish novices. It was the first Hendon mob result not just for myself and Gary, but also Marc McDonnell, Pete "Multi" Murphy and Tony Baitson. Down the years the character of the event has changed dramatically. From a 1500 buyin with under 200 runners, the buyin dropped but the numbers increased dramatically as the French arrived in force the following year. That year I mounted a reasonable defence of the crown going out on the second last table, and my Firm mate Jason Tompkins announced his arrival on the scene by chopping it headsup (with Francis "Wally" McCormack). The following year the numbers grew further as the French arrived in even more force to the point where French became the principal language of the tournament (you haven't lived til you've heard JP's Tallaght French), and both myself and Jason made our second final table. As I said I missed it in recent years, but this year the French were notable by their absence. Still mostly continentals, but it was good to see quite a few Irish consistent performers go deep apart from Cathal. Tom Kitt had another rollercoaster ride, and Keith Cummins gave his investors on IPB a great sweat for their money all the way to the final table. Eoin Starr was also involved at the business end. Eoin's a young lad who has probably attracted more stick from certain quarters than anyone else in Irish poker (I personally think a lot of people need to remember how young he is, and how all of us pretty much did some silly stuff at that age), and I think he'd be the first to admit he hasn't always put his best foot forward, but he is making a habit of going deep in events and clearly possesses natural raw talent and tremendous enthusiasm for the game (I don't know of anyone in Ireland who rails more online poker). People like that tend to keep improving and I think we have yet to see how good Eoin could be. He was on my table in the 300 side, and I believe he also final tabled the 200 side, so respect for his ability to keep grinding and plugging away after the disappointment of busting the main.

Kudos to everyone involved for a really well run event. Mike and Brian do sterling work bringing soft recreational fields to our shores, and deserve more local support for their tourneys. A couple of minor gripes: when I posted a picture of the chip counts from the excellent Vegas Nights site, a German friend immediately remarked on the very high rake for the side event. This is the way it's been going in Ireland, and I appreciate it costs more to run a well structured 2 day side event than it does a nightly turbo, but it's reaching the point where many of us who play for profit rather than fun are voting with our feet. My other gripe concerns the main event structure. This has been tweaked quite a lot down the years, but I believe this year's structure was the worst. The 100k starting stack is simply too big and makes the early levels virtually meaningless. I didn't reg til the end of level 2, and was still the first Firmy to take to the felt. What you have now is a few hours of pointlessness, and then to get things moving along, the structure suddenly starts to resemble a deepstack hyper with skipped levels and big antes. By the time we got near the money on day 2, there was less play than in a "normal" tourney like the Irish Open or a UKIPT. I gather the structure got better again later (the duration of the final table backs this up) which is a positive, but I think the structure needs more tweaking to ensure more play in the middle and less at the start. If levels have to be skipped, I'd rather it was 150/300 rather than 500/1000. I personally think the 50k starting stack is ample, and early antes could force the pace a bit earlier. I think people in this part of the world misunderstand what makes a good structure, equating a big starting stack (bigger the better) to "good". But length of clock and included levels are actually more important. People who have never played WSOP side events tend to assume the 3k or 4500 starting stacks mean they are crapshoots, but actually for that type of event it's perfect. With a one hour clock from the start, you have 1 hour with a 120 or 180 nig blind starting stack, and another with 60 or 90. At that point people have to start moving rather than sitting on their hands, but that's fine, as a slew of bustouts keeps the average stack healthy and actually makes for lots of play throughout the whole tourney.

However, these are minor gripes and as I say, well done to everyone involved. One final shoutout to the online beast that is Paul "uwannaloan", who was third in the Sky event over in Nottingham at the weekend. Him and his crew (which includes Sunday Million and Supersonic winner weesh and datwilldopig) now need a name (the turtle lovers? the animals?) as they are amassing a sick run of results, and further proof that all the most exciting talents in Irish poker right now are emerging from the online scene.





Thursday, February 6, 2014

Old school, new school or back to school?

A recent Joe Hachem interview in which he essentially took a pop at the younger generation of primarily online players (dismissing them as personality impaired drones that ordinary people couldn't relate to) has sparked a fair amount of reaction and debate, including in this thread at IPB. I was going to write a lengthy blog in response to it, but fair play to John O'Shea who basically made all the major points I was going to make (and much more succinctly than I would have managed) in his blog. So I will just make a few mainly tangential points on the debate.

Firstly, I fundamentally disagree with the viewpoint that the old school pros were all great fun, great characters, while the so called "hoodie brigade" lack personality diversity. They may look and sound alike, but when you take the trouble to get to know them, you quickly discover that as a group they are actually a lot more diverse and (in my opinion at least) interesting than the typical old school player, most of whom were middle aged blokes whose only major passion was gambling. Obviously this isn't true for everyone, but for me, given a choice between hanging out with Paul "uwannaloan" Delaney, Tim "timmmy" Davie, Tom "jabracada" Hall, Neil "hefs" Raine, Martin "moertelmu" Mulsow or Devilfish....well, Devilfish would be a very distant seventh (behind even "none of the above"). And yes, I have spent quite some time in Devilfish's company at poker tables, and can't say I ever really enjoyed his boorish racist chauvinistic macho shtick. However, I know there are many who do, and I'm not going to judge anyone for the company they like to keep.

In response to comments made by Lappin, Chris Dowling tweeted:
" the average guy who goes to a poker club doesn't know a bunch of people to real off hand history's to on skype, he is out to get away from the wife without going to the pub, maybe win a few bob & have a chat about the football while doing so and he couldn't give a toss about balancing his range versus a utg lag".

If this is true (and I have no reason to believe it isn't, at least for the clubs Chris started out in), then it pretty much illustrates the point that the so called "good old days" when there were lots of different characters never really existed. What did exist was a time when poker drew from a pretty narrow demographic of men of a certain age in less than ideal marriages who liked a bit of a gamble in the company of other men with similar interests (primarily footie). The game still appeals to this demographic, but also thankfully to other wider demographics. When I started playing live, it was immediately shocking to me how few young people and women played the game. Coming from running where you meet a genuine cross section of ages of both gender, live poker did really seem like the last old boys club. The culture and "banter" of the time also reflected this, mostly consisting of (to quote David Lappin) "smart ass old dudes recounting withered tales from their stockpile of anecdotes about the time they got one over on another fella". Diversity? I think not. Live poker was (and still is to a very large extent) such a male and macho culture that not only did most women not want to play, they didn't even want to be around it. My wife accompanied me to all my races during my running career. She enjoyed meeting the other runners we met. She enjoyed the camaraderie and banter unique to distance runners. She tried the same approach when I moved into poker, but quickly decided it wasn't for her.

Even if more young people are now playing live, it's a shame live poker is still so male dominated. Most of the females that I know who play poker only do so online, as they find the very macho atmosphere that surrounds live poker events in these two islands very off putting. So instead of yearning for a return to the days when it was all middle aged fellas complaining about the missus and talking about the football, I personally would rather see us leave them behind even quicker than we seem to be doing.

Essentially this debate resolves to a culture clash between two groups that have almost nothing in common outside of poker, and therefore will tend to dismiss each other as boring or one dimensional. On one side, you have guys like Joe Hachem who play maybe 30 live tournaments a year and therefore have to depend on other income streams such as sponsorships, ambassadorial roles and media work while they hope to run way above expectation again over a tiny sample. On the other, you have the young who have inherited the poker earth, or rather claimed it through a combination of smarts, drive and work ethic. Where poker used to attract lazy sods who didn't want to have to work for a living, it is now dominated by driven young geniuses who, to quote Nicky Power, play 30 tournaments every night. They have worked to hone their game to a point that far surpasses anything the old school ever achieved, and they are prepared to put in the volume to take luck (or variance as they call it) out of the equation entirely, rather than simply hoping to run good.

Whenever I hear old timers like Joe Hachem bemoaning the passing of the guard and berating the generation that took over, I am transported back to school, to the derision of the kids in the back rows who sneered at the swots and the nerds who paid attention in class and did their homework. It was childish and ultimately self defeating back then, and it still is now. It serves no other purpose but to give someone like Hachem the appearance of relevance in a world that has clearly passed him by. I would be willing to take his views much more seriously if they didn't come across as entirely self serving ("guy who makes his money from being a so called ambassador for the game talks about how important ambassadors are"), and if it wasn't for the fact that I have never met a single Aussie with a single good word to say about ambassador Hachem. Or, for that matter, anyone who has ever sat at a table and had to listen to him moan about beats and how bad he runs, something he is so famous for that the term for someone who displays a feeling of entitlement, also marked by a complete lack of perspective and a high level of delusion, that originates from running insanely good is "Hachem syndrome". I don't begrudge Joe his continued living from the game based on selling a fantasy of a time when the game was all about "characters", but please Joe, spare us the swipes at the young guys who work hard for their living. They may seem like swots and nerds to you, but if you took the trouble to get to know them, you might realise that they are a more diverse and rounded lot than you think. And you might start to understand why they now dominate the world of poker, both live and online.

People are holding snooker up as an example of how poker is going, citing a passing of the guard from "characters" to "driven drones" that they claim has reduced the popularity of the game. But it seems every "sport" has to go through the same development curve. Roger Bannister once explained how when he was training to run the first 4 minute mile, he did all his training in secret, alone, mostly in the dark. The reason? The prevailing English culture at the time lauded achievement without effort, an entitled world view that persisted from a Victorian era when the rich lived privileged lives for no other reason than they supposedly deserved it, while the lower classes toiled out miserable lives of servitude. In this culture, work was associated with poverty, and idleness with grace. English athletes looked down with scorn on Olympic champions like Emil Zatopek who ran more in training in a week than they did in a year as "journeymen", his unprecendented successes diminished rather than embiggened in their eyes by the efforts he went to to achieve them. English athletes eventually copped themselves on, as did English sports in general, and it was only when they came to see toil and training as noble rather than ignoble that they became a world class sporting nation. Yet this same view of lazy success being better than success that had to be worked for persisted longer in other sports like football (and clearly still exists in poker). As the Premiership transitioned from fat lads who liked a pint to sleek slim foreign pros who thought of themselves as athletes and lived accordingly, many fans bemoaned the loss of people they could identify with. Yet the Premiership survived and flourished through the transition, and now when they show old football matches on TV, what's remarkable is how out of shape, slow and unathletic the game used to be when it was heavy drinkers plodding around after a ball.

When I first read the IPB thread bemoaning the lack of personalities and characters in the game, I joked to the rest of the Firm on Skype that I wanted everyone to have developed a personality by the weekend. That's perhaps too much to ask, so instead I got my friend Willie Elliot to design a new group image for us. Willie never fails to deliver, and here's what he came up with based on a Snow White theme.

Willie is also emblematic of a shift in poker. Those who claim it's no longer social don't understand what social is these days. It's not just the same old jokes and withered anecdotes endlessly repeated at live poker tables. It's Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, blogs, forums, Viber, Snapchat, Whatsapp. Every day I interact with people like Willie, people I genuinely like and care about and share interests with rather than just random people I got drawn at a poker table with and have to find some way to put up with for a few hours. TrueIrishBaller tweeted:
"I have been berated more times by so called 'rec players' than I have by any pro. At least when the good players berate you they have substance.  A high % of recreational players are horrible, degen scum that I want absolutely nothing to do with. #headphonesplease"

The view that the young online players are all arrogant pricks compared to the old pros who were all great craic and all about keeping the fish happy just doesn't hold up in my court. And as Baller rightly points out, a minority of recreational players are the absolute worst for berating other players at the table. As anyone who follows me on Twitter will know, one of the things I do to relieve the tedium of the online grind is to tweet chatbox abuse directed at me. It genuinely amuses me to see how worked up some people get when my ace queen outdraws their ace king. These people are always, without exception, recreational players. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, as I said I find it amusing, and if it makes them feel better about themselves to think that the only reason I make money from poker and the only reason they lose is luck, then I'm quite happy for them to go on believing that. But don't tell me it's just young pros who are abusing people. The worst verbal shellacking I ever saw handed out by a pro at a table was by an old school live pro (already named in this blog) who berated a girl after she successfully bluffed him using very ungentlemanly language that included the statement "the reason God gave women vaginas is to make up for not giving them any brains". What a "character".

And spare me the whining about how much camaraderie and banter there was in the good old days. The first time I played live poker, it was a most unenjoyable experience marred by the impatience of a bunch of grumpy old men with the new guy at the table who wasn't acting fast enough and was fumbling with his chips. Not a single player said a friendly or welcoming word to me all night, or tried to engage me in conversation. If I wasn't as thick skinned as I am, that would also have been my last ever live poker experience. Good old days? Trust me, there wasn't much good about them at all.

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