Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

Tweet

So I wrote here just a few weeks ago about NaNoWriMo and how exciting that seemed to me and how I was going to be filling the pages of my blog with all kinds of writing, writing, writing…and then, I didn’t have anything to say.  And then I got so damn depressed pondering the news of this world, the plight of poker, and all the unmitigated crap that happens on a daily basis. A work station with internet access is a very bad thing sometimes.

To top it off, I had three losing sessions at my live cash game and I just woe is me’d myself to death until it got to where the worms in the garden would start laughing every time I came to sit among them and feast. Such a waste of time...there. In the garden. Eating worms.

I went back through my blog one afternoon, trying to see if I could find a spark of inspiration or a way back to where I’d been before. I was trying to find the me who had written about my love affair with poker and the passion that had fueled me year after negative ROI year. In the face of Black Friday, I was wondering if the day had come that my love for the game was just gone…as dead and withered as the worms in the garden after this long, hot Texas summer. 

It took me a long time to admit that what I was feeling, post Black Friday, was a real, deep in the bones depression. Missing the steady habit of grinding a scheduled routine, I was displaced and not really sure what to do with myself. I was surprised, and a little (ok, a lot) embarrassed, about it.  

I know part of it is the death of a dream, and probably an unrealistic dream. Unrealistic because…I mean, come on, look at all these pros out there crushing and killing, taking names and banking cashola. While me…well, I was just starting to get profitable. The road to getting even still stretches before me like an endless painting I can walk forever in and never get to the horizon.

I’ve learned that’s part of the game, though. It is an everlasting walk toward the horizon you’ll never reach because the game is never-ending. You get up from one session only to enter it again the next time you sit down. The button ceaselessly rotating and the cards ever shuffling, your entire life is just one long session. Tommy Angelo describes it better, but this forced hiatus is helping me see it clearer.

Another part of it, though, is the complete and utter tripe that’s come out about the poker community since Black Friday.

Please notice I didn’t say “about poker” or “about the game.”

The NLHE game itself is as it always was and will be: your stack, two hole cards, opponents, the flop, turn, and river.

The poker community, on the other hand, has been nearly laid to waste (EDIT - links to Jesse May's post, which captures everything I, as an outsider, was feeling).

Journalists who used to cover stories about hands and winnings, now hustle from one breaking DOJ story to the next, stopping only to cover the next story of abuse, cheating, or scamming (a la Girah).

Pros who used to crack-wise about balling now bitch and/or take every opportunity to flaunt their flawless judgment and superiority, or use their time to criticize new poker ventures.

New poker ventures get derailed by unclearly adhering to a possibly poorly thought out ethics code of conduct.

Players out money have adorned a lynch mob mentality and use social media to denigrate and threaten the figures they deem to be at fault.

Player organizations sit in their own camps with their thumbs entirely up their asses.

And fans? Well, instead of playing, we sit on the fringe and watch it all play out.

I wonder how many new fans will be up and coming as we wait out this dark season of poker?

The good and bad thing about following a dream is that along the way, two things can happen. You can reach your goal and realize the culmination of all your hard work, and then begin a new path. Or, you can do everything in your power to reach your goal and realize at some point it’s not a goal worth having any more.

If Black Friday had never happened, I wouldn’t be feeling as I do today. I’d still be plugged in, planning my poker work and working my poker plan. But, things are different now.

I hate that Black Friday happened, but with what it’s brought to light, I’m glad it did. But for the DOJ doing its job, we might all still be in the dark about the likes of Nick Rainey and Girah and the what-the-fuckery that has become Full Tilt Poker.

Sometimes, going to the garden to eat worms is a good thing, a healing process. At some point, though, you’ve got to get up. Dust yourself off, make new plans, and open your eyes.

I started the journey with an unabashed love for the game. Along the way, I grew to love from afar some of its heroes. In the face of this dark season, I’ve seen the man behind the curtain and made my peace.

All I have left is my love for the game. 

***

The Ivey Impact

Tweet

Artist, Margaret W. Tarrant

On the day the 2011 World Series of Poker kicked off, its most famous player and the most recognized face of Full Tilt Poker, Mr. Phil Ivey, essentially showed the world poker's ass.  I'm not saying Phil Ivey is an ass. I'm saying that the inability of Ivey and the other powers that be behind Full Tilt to come to an agreement *before* he took to his FB page and filed a lawsuit against his former business partners means that a whole bunch (more) of poker's dirty laundry will soon become fodder for the grist mill. This, in turn, will further blacken the shiner the industry's been sporting since Black Friday.

The DOJ's action on Black Friday (warranted as it was) was bad enough and certainly brought to light some of online poker's worst business practices.  Since then, though, and thanks to Twitter and Quad Jacks, I've learned so much more about some aspects of the poker community and about online poker, in particular, that I'm just pretty much disgusted with the whole thing.

For example, apparently it is actually a lot more common than I thought for pros to multi-account (i.e., cheat).  For every Nick Rainey, how many others *don't* we know about?  I can't help it. After hearing Nick publicly admit to cheating on QuadJacks this week, I am questioning *every* major win online. In my mind, ghosting/multi-accounting in online poker is no different than doping in professional sports and a fail safe mechanism to protect against the activity must be implemented when regs eventually get passed legislating online poker. If you guys want more fish in your pond, then you better clean the freaking lake. If not, how can an amateur like me encourage people like my mom or family members or friends to give it a try when, and if, it ever gets regulated? Right now, I would tell even my worst enemy to avoid online poker like the plague (yes, moot point, I know, but you see what I mean...I hope). And honestly, knowing how well our federal government regulates things...?  Sigh.

But let's look at what else is disgusting...When I first read Ivey's FB page post, I admired his statement and I still do. Dude drew first blood and was able to frame the action in a manner most favorable to him. In the court of public opinion, he aligned himself with, and championed, all players wronged by Full Tilt's horrible business practices. But be clear what he's doing.  This is not about my frozen FT bankroll and it ain't about yours. Nope, this is very much about Ivey protecting what's his, as *any* good businessman should do. As @Grange95 so succinctly put it, "Ivey's lawsuit is 99.44% about Ivey's contract, non-compete clause, & funds on Full Tilt. Other players? Lip service."

For *anyone* to bash Ivey for doing that, they're crazy. He's not your uncle, your counselor, your savior.  He's a brand, a business man, and an entity unto himself. He made that happen. Not FullTilt and not Tony G and not Mike the Mouth or anyone else. If that were you, and your livelihood was on the line - what would you do?  Seriously. Think about it. If you tried to work things out with your partners to no avail, you'd lawyer up. And that's what's happened here.  Litigation, like the making of sausage, is really a gross and unpleasant endeavor and the longer this goes on the more...um...mashed up sausage casing, I guess, we're going to see.  I'm sad that it won't just be us, the poker community, seeing it. I can only hope, though, that all of this will serve as a catalyst to get online poker back up and running in a safe and regulated environment (that is not raked so bad that it becomes cost prohibitive).

This post is not a "Team Ivey" or a "Team whoever" post. It's just my opinion about what I see a businessman doing, which for better or worse has an impact on a lot of other people.  But it's for that reason that I think it's pretty gross to see people in the industry, especially some of the more vocal pros of late, publicly decrying Ivey's actions and laying the groundwork to, in effect, blame him for Full Tilt's failures. Ivey filing this lawsuit, sure, may not have been good for Full Tilt's ability to get funding to pay players back - but how is Full Tilt's inability to pay Ivey's fault? 

Unless it is shown that Ivey is responsible for the entirety of FT's business practices, including drafting, overseeing, and ultimately approving the agreements that allowed the non-segregation of player funds, then this public blamefest is nothing more than form over substance (which, sadly, happens every day when business deals go sour and former partners become locked in a death battle to "get what's theirs").  Do you honestly believe, though, that any of the pros, much less Ivey, were involved to that extent? (Whether they should've been and/or have provisions protecting them from the actions and omissions of their partners is another issue and not the subject of this post.)

I mean, it's like one minute these pros (I'm thinking of a couple) hate each other and are mortal enemies, but the next, they're best friends aligned in support of the hate on Ivey train. Talk about your flip floppers...it's just gross guys, so please stop.  Plus, I honestly can't help but see it as just another PR ploy (akin to Ivey's FB statement, but a day late and a dollar short - because IVEY GOT THERE FIRST) to "manage the damage" in the court of public opinion. 

In life, everyone's always shooting for an angle. Good poker players know this better than the general public and better than even the best of lawyers.  Ivey is, arguably, the best poker player in the world. The impact his most recent actions will have on the poker industry will be worth watching for a long time to come. I, like many, wish those actions could have been observed on the felt rather than in a courtroom, but you tell me, who do we really have to blame for that?