#231: “A Tale Of Two Paradigms”
A few weeks ago, Dara O’Kearney and I went to Hamburg for the Eureka Poker Festival, a somewhat disappointing affair on the poker front with both of us cashing just one side event apiece. It was, however, a thoroughly enjoyable week spent in a city in which Dara had previously lived and with which he was still pretty familiar. “Es war die beste aller Zeiten, Es war die schlechteste aller Zeiten…”
There was an assiduous assortment of amiable ambulations around the sagaciously sinuous Stadtzentrum, awash with an appropos appreciation of avant-garde architecture and a four flush of feigned intransigent interest in the egregious efficiency and titanic trappings of Hamburg’s Hanseatic Harbour. We also took a fast walk (which in Dara’s case became a sprint) through the Reeperbahn, pitilessly pursued by ladies whose gauche gabbles and tropes, graceless grabbles and gropes drew us to the singular conclusion that The Chip Race must be big in Hamburg.
Like natives, we quaffed our quota of spicy Spätburgunder while I ate my weight in Bismarckhering. Like tourists, we marveled at the idea of a bus-library while I marveled at the exploitability of the honour system for bus-fares. We talked about Dara’s as yet unwritten autobiography and my as yet unfinished pile of scripts. We talked about Dara’s seemingly insatiable hunger for the game of poker and my seemingly insatiable hunger for Currywurst. We talked about the new paradigm into which we are entering; the Amaya era – an uncertain time we pondered for many who make a living from the game.
Poker is in a state of perpetual revolution and it seems as though tournament players at a decent level are verging on equilibrium in all but the most complex of situations. Dara spoke eloquently on his own project to better himself by adopting more GTO (Game Theory Optimal) principles into his own game, to cross over into a new paradigm, essentially working backwards from the river to create perfectly balances ranges on the turn, flop and pre-flop. Remember, this is the guy who had all the Nash Equilibrium charts in his back-pocket over a year before they appeared in ‘Kill Everyone’. This is a man who worked them out from scratch using a labour-heavy process of inference. I admire his dedication. I admire it because it has inspired me to follow suit in the past. I admire it because ambition is raging fire and I am a moth to its flame. I admire it because Dara is an old dog who teaches himself a new trick from first principles and that’s pretty fucking cool.
This year’s WSOP has been compromised of roughly 1% Irish players and there has been an Irishman on 9% of Final Tables. Marc MacDonnell, John O’Shea and Gavin O’Rourke have all come agonisingly close to a bracelet. Last night, (with the benefit of hole cards), I saw first hand how Dara O’Kearney’s game has evolved within this new paradigm, how he has fine-tuned his lines with robotic precision. In doing so, he has put us on the edge of our seats and taken himself to the brink of something truly special.
“… it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”