poker

[Bravo Zulu]

A big deal
Dec 19th 2007
Poker is getting younger, cleverer, duller and much, much richer


DOYLE BRUNSON (above, left) is a poker legend. Twice winner of the game's most prestigious annual tournament, the World Series of Poker (WSOP), held in Las Vegas, the cowboy-hat-clad southerner affectionately known as Texas Dolly also wrote what many consider to be the bible of poker theory, “Super System: A Course in Power Poker”. His reputation among card-shufflers borders on the superhuman. Indeed, after fighting off supposedly terminal cancer in the 1960s, he celebrated his return to the cardrooms with 53 straight wins. Adding to the mystique, both of his World Series titles were won with exactly the same cards: a full house of tens over twos.

Now in his mid-70s, Mr Brunson is still going strong. But not strong enough for Annette Obrestad (above, right), who beat the old master and 361 other entrants in September to win the first ever WSOP event held outside America. Miss Obrestad's victory, which netted her £1m ($2m), shows how much poker has changed since the days when Texas Dolly, Amarillo Slim Preston and Jack “Treetops” Straus held sway. She is only 19 (making her the youngest ever winner of a World Series bracelet) and she is, of course, a woman. She hails from Norway, not Nevada. And though she had previously won over $800,000 in internet tournaments, the event at London's Empire Casino was the first time she had encountered serious opposition in the flesh. The poker press refers to her by her online moniker, annette_15.

Miss Obrestad's route to the grand prize—dumped on the final table in bundles of $50 notes, as is the World Series tradition—required her to see off such modern-day poker luminaries as Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, a hirsute scholar of game theory, Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, a somewhat less cerebral but wily British professional who wears diamond-encrusted knuckledusters, and Phil “Poker Brat” Hellmuth, arguably the most celebrated (not least by himself) modern player. Jim McManus, a poker player and historian, describes the young Scandinavian's win as a “startling milestone”.
Yet it is also part of a trend. Youngsters are flocking to poker as never before, attracted by its growing cachet and the ever-expanding pots. The plethora of books, blogs and DVDs now easily accessible, and the rapid growth of poker online, means newcomers can learn the art much more quickly than in earlier eras. “When I started out it took years of hard grind at the table to get good. Now the learning curve is much steeper,” says Howard “The Professor” Lederer, a professional player. It is often said that while Texas Hold 'Em, the most popular version of poker, may take only minutes to learn, it takes a lifetime to master. Annette_15 may beg to differ.

The threat to the old guard from quick-learning online players first became apparent in 2003, when the aptly named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series after qualifying through a satellite tournament for players on a poker website. He turned his $40 fee (a tiny fraction of the $10,000 “buy-in” for the pros) into $2.5m, finishing off his final opponent with a colossal bluff. This year's winner in Vegas, Jerry Yang, qualified the same way. After two weeks of intense play, with daily sessions lasting up to 16 hours, the 39-year-old psychologist went home $8.25m richer, promising to give much of it to charity. No other sporting competition (if poker can be called a sport) offers the same reward.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10281315

[lapfog_1]

1. To be fair... Chris Moneymaker is NOT a great poker player

not taking away from some of the other "young guns" now on the tour...

He was incredibly lucky (actually, anyone who wins has to be a bit lucky, or as I like to say "You gotta survive bad beats and give bad beats to win")... one of his pivotal hands was AQ against Phil Ivey (one of the very very best in the world)... Phil had pocket nines. The flop came Q9rag and Chris bet big, Phil moved all in and Chris called for all of his chips (Phil had him covered, I think... doing this from memory). Anyway, the only way for Chris to win is to make a bigger full house than Phil after the flop, a very highly improbable thing to do. Two cards to go (45 unknown cards for the turn, 44 for the river). Chris has 5 outs to catch on that turn FOLLOWED by catching four outs on the river or 5/45 X 4/44 or about 99 to 1 against. In other words, if the weather man said there was a 99 percent chance of rain today, Chris got the one day when it didn't rain. He had some other very lucky hands as well, including one inexplicable bluff at the final table... He bluffed all in with nothing but a draw, and his opponent, Sammy Farha, folded what he had to know was the best hand (a set). Farha made a huge mental blunder in that hand, which allowed Chris to go on to win the tournament.

Chris is a decent player, and a nice guy (as is his dad as well), but I wouldn't rank him with the best poker players.

Poker is still mostly a game of skill, otherwise how would the best players end up at the final table time after time... still, to win, you have to be lucky.

Television, and the internet explosion, have made the life of the average tournament pro very, very difficult.