Requiem for a poker game
Poker has been spoiled by TV tournaments and players schooled online. In the battle for the big payoff, wit and camaraderie have been trumped by computer logic and greed.
By Robert Burton
July 28, 2007 | A week and a half ago, Jerry Yang, a 39-year-old Southern California psychologist and social worker, won the 2007 World Series of Poker championship -- and $8.25 million. A pretty impressive feat, considering that Yang has played poker for only two years, and won his $10,000 entry fee via a local Indian casino $225 satellite tournament (a spectacular parlay in which winning a smaller tournament provided the entry fee for the larger tournament). Like the other winners in the past four years, he was a relative novice who honed his successful aggressive style by playing online poker.
Winning the World Series of Poker championship is every poker player's dream. When you have outplayed over 6,000 players, you are, if only until the next tournament, "the world's best." Unlike soon-to-be-anonymous lottery winners, the WSOP champion is guaranteed a life-altering series of financial arrangements, ranging from online poker site endorsements that have paid millions per year, to $50,000-a-day corporate guest appearances, to a free Las Vegas penthouse condominium in return for plastering one's face on Vegas airport billboards. Tournament-winning players like the notoriously self-marketing Phil Hellmuth have become household names, hustling everything from poker video games to instructional DVDs on how to beat other players selling similar DVDs. In the few years since poker has been prominently televised, major U.S. poker tournaments have become the third most-watched "sport" on TV, trailing football and NASCAR.
But this is not the same game that once was America's Friday-night kitchen table staple -- a group of guys and gals gathered over chips, beer, cigars and swaggers, laughing and bluffing. Poker now bears little resemblance to serious cash-game poker once played in a dimly lit Las Vegas backroom by a Damon Runyon-esque collection of high-octane gamblers, bookies, off-season oil riggers, rodeo champs, denizens of the underworld and slumming celebrities who gave poker its color. That was a time when the best players were those who knew both cards and people, sly self-promoters like Amarillo Slim and Stu Ungar who lived off their wits and cunning, including peddling the romantic image of the professional gambler.
Back then, those of us who loved poker would fly to Las Vegas to learn the game from the best, patiently watching and gathering experience, studying how Johnny Moss or Jack Strauss played a particular hand, until we had our personal memorized database of what was thought to be optimal play. Experience was considered a form of wisdom; improving one's game required much face-to-face poker playing, observation of players' styles, patterns of betting, tells, and sharing of stories and strategies. Poker was a social game; good playing required an understanding of probabilities and psychology. Equally important were the social skills that would attract lesser (losing) players.
Not anymore. The vast majority of new young players have primarily learned to play poker online. They have honed their skills with the aid of computer simulations and data mining -- complex software programs that monitor the play of their opponents and provide a detailed categorization of each style of play. This new breed of successful players comes from the virtual arena; they are likely to spend most of their playing time either alone or with similarly inclined computer geeks. As people do in the digital community Second Life, players develop virtual personas, fictitious avatars and cartoonish social skills, and are seldom accountable for their behavior. Other players aren't colleagues, comrades in crime or even casual social acquaintances; they are obstacles to be overcome on the way to the big score.
The massive popularity of tournament poker has irreparably altered the tenor of the game by introducing the lottery aspect of the big win. Unlike cash games in which you can quit whenever you want, in tournament poker, all entrants pay a single entry fee. You cash out only by beating at least 90 percent of the field; only the top 1 percent of participants get a significant payout. To create exciting megaprizes, tournaments are structured to pay huge sums to the top few finishers, while leaving the rest empty-handed -- a sharp contrast with traditional poker games, in which a single table can host multiple winners.
Last year, in bed delirious with the flu, I entered and won a $39 online satellite tournament to the 2006 WSOP main event. A couple of days later, still feverish, I found myself at a table with nine strangers. No one introduced him- or herself. Few bothered to make eye contact, preferring dark glasses and baseball caps, as though hiding in plain sight. During the first day -- 15 hours of grueling play -- I did not hear a single joke, an engaging story or even collegial banter. Once, when a player was criticized by another for endless badmouthing, the player responded by saying, "Hey, I'm not here to make friends. This is all about money."
Next page: Although seldom discussed, star players have private backing and can bet with impunity