#239: “Poker Players Are Liars”

“Poker players are liars!”, said the dealer, shrugging, as he chopped up the pot.

Let me crash-cut to three minutes earlier.

It’s the early levels of a €330 side event at the EPT and the player Under-The-Gun raised, a player in Mid-Position called, I 3bet from the Hi-Jack, the player in the Small Blind 4bet, the player in the Big Blind shoved, everyone folded back to me and lifting my cards from the felt, I grimaced and looked at my two queens one last time before tossing them away. The player in the small blind called and they both showed Aces.

Before the dealer could deal the flop, there was a request from the player on the Button to see my cards. The dealer obliged and turned over my queens. ‘Woah’, I said, ‘What are you doing?’ The dealer said that I opened my hand, allowing the player in the cut-off to see. As he dealt out the flop, turn and river, I said that if I did, I didn’t do so intentionally and that he could of at least asked the player in the Cut-Off if he saw my cards first.

“All Poker players are liars!”, said the dealer, shrugging, as he chopped up the pot.

The implication was the player in the Cut-Off, or any poker player for that matter, could not be trusted. I was taken aback. “We might all be bluffers”, I replied, “but I’d certainly like to think the vast majority of us aren’t liars”. It turns out I had clumsily flashed one queen to the player in the Cut-Off so it was right that my cards were exposed but it was a little troubling to me that the dealer believed that his presumption was protected by the notion that the nine guys at the table, whose very existence there means he has a job, were fundamentally dishonest people.

I’ll be honest. It kind of pissed me off at first. I understand the contempt some people have for poker players but to have that from a dealer…

Anyway, as the day wore on, it sort of sank in and tried to unpack the dealer’s point of view. We play a game of incomplete information and our objective is to exploit that cleavage in knowledge, misleading and mis-directing our opponents as to our holdings whenever possible. We all acknowledge and accept that any scallywaggery in the name of getting a light call when you have it or a big fold when you don’t is all in the game and nobody would infer that we were dishonest people for playing the game. So let’s put that to one side for now and segue clumsily to another cynical game and one of its newest high stakes players, namely Politics and Donald Trump.

If Trump is the Republican party’s ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’, the aberration resulting from years of obstructionism, fear-mongering and a manifesto that no longer represents the needs of conservative people but only safeguards the interests of big business, then how ironic it is that so many on the right of the political spectrum are now ready to get out and vote for the literal epitome of corporate cronyism; a tumescent mascot of greed and hubris.

But he’s interesting not just because he is a WWE caricature but because of what he and his campaign represent in the evolution of capitalist democracy. There has always been tension between America’s two most cherished guiding principles but Free Market Capitalism and Christianity are now even stranger bedfellows as America’s seemingly irrepressible Capitalist system goes into overdrive, leaving the socialist and egalitarian values of Christianity (and Bernie Sanders) behind. You might be asking at this point how is this relevant? Well I feel like a similar tension exists for poker players, or at least those with a social conscience. We want to make the most money possible at other people’s expense but once we succeed in that endeavour, we want to have a value system that elevates us from this unbridled state of nature, this misanthropic dog-eat-dog world.

Are poker players honest? I’d like to think so but you have to admit that barely a month goes by without some high profile cheating/defrauding/theft scandal. From Sorel Mizzi’s purchase of Chris Vaughn’s account (2007) to Josh Fields’ multi-accounting (2007) to Scott Tom & AJ Green’s all-seeing Ultimate Bet Super-User account POTRIPPER (2005-2008) to Jonathan Little sharing his Red Pro account to steal from Full Tilt (2008) to Brian Hastings use of Brian Townsend’s Hand History Database to exploit Isildur for $4 million (2009) to Shanky Technologies’ Poker Bots (2010) to Sorel Mizzi’s Chinese Poker bottom-dealing (2010) to Ali Tekintamgac’s use of ‘spotters’ on the Partouche Poker Tour (2010) to the Chinese ‘Double or Nothing’ Collusion Ring (2010) to Kadir Karabulut’s use of spotters at the Holland Casino Dom Classic (2011) to Jose Macedo’s cheating of his friends using the dummy ‘sauron1989′ account (2011) to Archie Karas’ blackjack card-marking (2013) to Christian Lusardi’s counterfeit Borgata chips (2014) to Max Heinzelman defrauding dozens of his friends for over €100K (2013-2014) to Brian Hastings playing SCOOP with a VPN as NoelHayes (2015) to Valeriu Coca’s card-marking at the WSOP (2015) to Sorel Mizzi use of the ‘Bindernutnut’ account for the WCOOP Main and the events surrounding the Final Table (2015) to Samuel Touil’s theft of $200K from Phil Galfond (2015), not to mention the multi-accounting of Josh Fields, Brian Townsend, Justin Bonomo, Mark Teltscher, Nick Niergarth and, oh yeah, Sorel Mizzi. I’ve left a lot out here but you get the gist.

Is the poker industry honest? I’d like to think so but barely a year goes by without some poker site screwing its customers in one form or another. From Dutch Boyd and PokerSpot shutting up shop, leaving players on the hook for $400K (2001) to Russ Hamilton defrauding Ultimate Bet players to the tune of $22 million (2005-2008) to Ray Bitar’s misappropriation of Full Tilt player balances (2008-2009) to Annie Duke and Epic Poker’s failure to pay creditors $5 million (2012) to Jen Larson and Lock Poker failing to pay $15 million in player balances (2014) to Pokerstars reneging on promised 2016 Supernova Elite bonuses (2015), not to mention sites like CardSpike, WSEX, ProPoker, ChoicePoker, Luck3, NakedPoker, MillionMinds, TopSpeed, JokerClub and FutureBet, all of whom have failed to honour payments and/or have knowingly facilitated cheating.

It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. The evolution of our little game has mirrored that of Capitalist Democracy, only in hyper-speed. Just as the political system is rigged for corporations and the billionaire class, the poker industry is converging on a virtual monopoly. Just as the media are a cog in that same political machine, the poker media are a shill to that monopoly. Just as the ordinary working and middle class people struggle through a period of austerity in the aftermath of tax-payer bailouts, poker pros are being incrementally culled, crushed under the weight of a shrinking economy and unfavourable systemic changes. Just like the rates of incarceration rise as democracies transform into oligarchies, I feel like a greater numbers of players and the industry itself, are going to be guilty of sharp practices and subterfuge, probably even worse than what has come before.

I recently heard a fellow pro use the term ‘a normal amount of cheating’ when distinguishing multi-accounting from the fucked-up angle by Sorel Mizzi prior to the WCOOP Final Table. I winced at the idea but I got what he meant. There is a gulf between multi-accounting and ghosting. It’s just when we’ve reached the point where there is a perceived acceptable amount of dishonesty, I think we are in serious trouble and maybe, just maybe, that EPT dealer was right.