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Running 2006 World Series Of Poker Thread

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Satchel Pooch, Jul 26, 2006.

  1. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    It wouldn't be the first time a poker pro lost his winnings on another form of gambling.

    TJ Cloutier is/was a prolific craps player and has lost a ton there. Doyle Brunson is/was a big sports bettor. And they all try to hustle each other on the golf course for serious money.
     
  2. spinning27

    spinning27 New Member

    When an ESPN announcer says a guy is a "Professional Poker Player," what he really means is "Professional Gambler."  So by definition there are a high percentage of lowlifes and degenerates in that world.  Stu Ungar is regarded as perhaps the greatest ever, and he died broke.  These guys can win a fortune in a tournament and lose it in cash games or playing craps just as quickly.  

    It would be interesting to know how many of them do have legitimate wealth that they've acquired playing poker and have protected.  Guys like Lederer and Hellmuth have turned themselves into corporations by exploiting the poker boom.  But most of those guys have to sustain themselves solely on gambling.
     
  3. Jones

    Jones Active Member

    If Moneymaker had to rely solely on his post-WSOP poker winnings to get by, he'd be stone-cold broke, too.

    Ace, to answer your question in a completely waffley way: For some of these guys -- pros and amateurs -- it's an act, or at least a blown-up version of their real personality, in an effort to gain an advantage at the table. Getting under someone's skin is a good way to make them play badly -- or at least super-aggressively, and then you just have to wait and pick your spot against them.

    At the same time, some of these guys are genuine assholes -- arrogant, dark-hearted degenerates. Pure gamblers, in other words. For all its recent glossing up, poker is still a card game that is usually played in back rooms and illegal clubs. Those places don't attract Ward Cleaver.

    Where I play most often, there's a real mix of people... Good guys and pricks, but in a game based mostly on bravado, most of them turn into some degree of prick once the cards hit the table.

    EDIT: Wrote this when spinning was writing his. I think we're on the same page. Sorry for the repeats.
     
  4. rascalface

    rascalface Member

    Not all of them. See Raymer, Greg, and Greenstein, Barry.
     
  5. Lester Bangs

    Lester Bangs Active Member

    Since the shows are accumulations of hours upon hours of footage, you'd think it's a pretty good indicator of their personalities.
     
  6. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Bigtime gamblers don't see money the way we do. To them, it's just a way of keeping score.

    Also, I think it's very interesting the way the pros support each other. When one gets stuck, somebody else will spot him $100k to get through the lean times. I've even seen it on a smaller level in Vegas. A regular is having a bad run and another regular peels $1,000 off his roll to help him get by. And these guys aren't friends, they're just poker room acquaintances.
     
  7. Satchel Pooch

    Satchel Pooch Member

    The Useless has a special section devoted to the WSOP today!!! Woo-hoo!!!

    There were two pretty good gambling stories I heard while watching the poker shows this week: Gavin Smith bet a friend that if he, Gavin, won the event his friend would have to pay him 700K over 10 years. If his friend wins, Gavin would have to pay 1 million over 10 years.

    Smith blew a huge chip stack and finished second.

    The other one was a guy whose friends bet he couldn't break 100 on a course he was playing for the first time. He holed one from 50 yards to make 99.

    I love poker and all of the dirtball shenanigans that go with it. Let's deal!
     
  8. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    Going back to the Pocket Rockets pre-flop argument, Aces are not always as good as 80-20 odds. If you get aces against a suited connector, like say 9-8, it's actually about 77-23 because of the drawing possibilities. In fact, 9-8 suited is a better hand against Aces than K-Q suited. That said, Aces are still an absolutely dominant hand.

    And, yes, there are pros who will throw them away pre-flop, but almost never heads-up. If there's three people already in and the pro has to go all-in to call early in the tourney, someone might throw them away because the chances of the Aces getting cracked are exponentially higher when playing against three opponents instead of one.

    It's like any other hand in poker, how you play it at one point in the tournament is going to be completely different at another. It all depends on the situation -- stack size, number of opponents, who the opponents are, how big their stacks are, blind structure, etc.



    Oh, and that gamer on Hellmuth's win was an enjoyable read.
     
  9. Satchel Pooch

    Satchel Pooch Member

    Yeah but, a) I doubt even the most rank amateur is going to initiate an all-in with 9-8 suited on the first hand of the WSOP. Someone could conceivably go all in with KK, which aces would have covered, I think 82-18.

    b) If three people go all in ahead of you and you're holding aces in the BB you're getting better than 3-1 and I can't believe that even in a three-way pot aces would be 25% to win, which is the cutoff point for pot odds.
     
  10. Del_B_Vista

    Del_B_Vista Active Member

    The flipside to that argument is that the producers have hours upon hours of footage to pull clips that accent a storyline they want to develop. Might not actually reflect the person's table persona. I'm not accusing ESPN of misrepresenting folks, but it's a pretty common occurrence in reality TV.
     
  11. Lester Bangs

    Lester Bangs Active Member

    Good point on the multiple players. If you are facing a bunch of donkeys who are all shooting at different draws, your odds are dropping in a hurry as there are more ways for a simple pair to get cracked (suited connectors, another pocket pair, etc.) Odds are, four handed, somebody will pull a hand stronger than a pair of aces. I guess I was stuck on a "one-idiot against one-pro" scenario. There are two schools of thought at play here ... take the idiot's money or better to avoid the idiots for fear of getting clocked by a random stooge's roundhouse ... see Kanter, Aaron.
     
  12. Satchel Pooch

    Satchel Pooch Member

    How many minutes in will the first person be eliminated? Man, that would suck out loud.
     
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