This week's LVW Col: #Poker + #Twitter

Within the past year, I've declared both poker and Twitter dead or dying. But now I'm not so sure and I think they have quite a lot to offer one another. Here's this week's "Strip Sense" column on the nexus between two significant pop culture forces working hard not to become pet rocks. -sf

Raise, Fold or ... Tweet
Twitter is giving new life to the World Series of Poker
By STEVE FRIESS (a.k.a. @TheStripPodcast)

On Saturday, when I had planned to hang out at the Rio taking in some World Series of Poker action, I found myself stuck in the squalid Meineke waiting area, learning that my long-term neglect of my brakes and muffler was going to cost me dearly.

There was, however, a bright spot. As it happened, Saturday was the day at the World Series’ $10,000 Buy-In No-Limit Texas Hold ’Em Main Event when the “money bubble” burst—when the field was reduced to the point where everyone still in the tournament is guaranteed to receive at least $21,365. In this case, it was when the field of 6,494 players had been whittled to just 648. It’s a pretty fun moment of celebration when the 649th-place player busts out and everyone left cheers their common successes.

I wasn’t there, but I had the next best thing: World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack’s Twitter feed. In real time, @JeffreyPollack was blasting out 140-character-or-less updates on what was happening. It got interesting, too, as the field narrowed and then hung at 649 through 12 tense hands during which nobody was eliminated. None of the details about the game mattered so much as the suspense, that feeling that something important—to someone, anyhow—was about to happen, and that if we couldn’t be there, this was the next best thing.

In the modern poker era, there have been several developments responsible for the game’s enormous growth and maturity. The film Rounders made it cool among college kids. The hole-card camera made it interesting for TV viewers. The Internet made it easy for millions to play. And everyman Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 WSOP championship made it an accessible glory for all of the above.

Now, I submit, the rise of tweeting poker players will someday be viewed as another turning point. Twitter solves some important problems for the WSOP. First, it gives people who cannot attend an easy, brief and mobile way to keep up as the action is happening, important because you can usually watch every other sport on TV live during the competition, but not poker, because gambling laws prohibit that. Suddenly, the WSOP isn’t something for just the heartiest fans to follow on poker sites but an event revealing itself as we go about our days.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.com.

Cinevegas + WSOP = All In

As folks following my Tweets and Facebook statuses know, I've been running around like mad the past few days, working on a new piece for the Times that has sucked up a huge amount of time away from the computer and I've also been trying to keep tabs on Cinevegas because the lineup is the most interesting in all the years I've covered it.

I was a little concerned, though, after "Saint John of Las Vegas" yesterday. The opening night premiere, starring Steve Buscemi and Sarah Silverman, was a weird little flick that just didn't engage me and that distracted me by the several smaller details about its titular city that it got wrong.

But I knew there were a number of really good pictures in the lineup because I'd already seen all the gay-related ones for this Advocate.Com piece. In particular, "It Came From Kuchar" is wonderful and I'm looking forward to Friday's premiere and the Q-and-A session with the Kuchars on Sunday at 9 p.m.

Still, I was unprepared for how much I enjoyed "All In: The Poker Movie" tonight. Premiering as it did during the early stages of the 2009 World Series of Poker across the street from the Palms at the Rio, it drew some poker stars who are also in the film including WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and two-time bracelet winner Howard Lederer...



Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth were supposed to be there, too, but they were doing so well in one of the WSOP tourneys they couldn't. Occupational hazard. Amarillo Slim was there, however.

As for the film itself, let me first say that I'm someone who became interested in poker in the first place because it's a perennial story that someone is asks me to cover each year. We also get huge download numbers whenever we have poker stars on "The Strip." (We've had Chris Moneymaker, Jamie Gold, Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, Phil Hellmuth, Jennifer Tilly, Joe Hachem, Jerry Yang and Greg Raymer over the years, all of which can be found at TheStripPodcast.Com.)

But "All In" tonight really taught me something else: The poker boom is about as American as anything ever was. The variation on the game itself -- Texas Hold 'Em -- is an American invention. Risk-taking is the foundation of our capitalist society. And the ingredients that turned it into what it is today include new technology (hole-card cams, Web poker) and anyone-can-succeed chutzpah (Moneymaker) that have deep roots in our national traditions.

It wasn't just that it was a sweeping, artful film. It was that, although some of the blurry camera angles and odd tics of speakers could be grating. But from dignified Doris Kearns Goodwin to cool-cat Matt Damon, from Southern-fried Slim to lovably goofy Phil Laak, from scholarly Dr Dave Schwartz to curmudgeonly Frank DeFord, documentarian Douglas Tirola really cast a very wide net of diverse voices to explain where this phenomenon came from and who it impacts. I also appreciate that not everyone is likeable -- World Poker Tour's Steve Lipscomb comes across as a total, arrogant prick -- and that not everything is positive, as when Tirola delves (briefly) into recent online poker cheating scandals.

That said, there are gaps: No discussion of problem gambling or sexism in the game, no serious effort to allow anyone who objects to online gambling or gambling in general to offer a cogent argument for their side. And Ira Glass? Really? Blech.

But even without all that -- it's not a Ken Burns PBS special after all -- it's really a compelling movie that needed to be done and done with this sort of maturity. If you're near the Palms on Friday at 12:30 p.m., check it out. Too bad it's not on over the weekend. Also too bad I cannot find a YouTube trailer of this film or even a website to point you to.

Meanwhile, Cinevegas has really taken over the Palms. The Lounge, where we did the Vegas Podcast-a-Palooza (and are waiting for the OK to do again in October) last year has been transformed into a headquarters for media and film folks. There's video games...


...and a pool table...


...and music...

...and fun couches.


Finally and appropriately, I was stuck behind this on the way home...

What's New For the 40th World Series of Poker...

There's a press conference on Tuesday for journalists to discuss with World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack what's new about this year's richest tournament in gambling or individual sports, but they've already released a press kit that does not in any way appear to be embargoed.

So far, this is what I've gleaned:

* November Nine, Again, With a Twist. The bifurcated $10,000 Buy-In No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em Main Event continues for a second year with some tweaks. Last time, they played it down to two finalists on Nov. 9 and then brought them back on Nov. 10 to finish up. This year, they'll play down from the Final Table of nine in July, have that bunch play down to the final two on Sat., Nov. 7, and then give them some days off before resuming play on Tues., Nov. 10. I'm not sure what the point of all that is, exactly, except that it gives the folks at ESPN more time to edit down the Nov. 7 play. They'll show all the final table action -- meaning Nov. 7 and Nov. 10 -- in a two-hour finale on ESPN on Nov. 10 from 9-11 p.m. ET. So I assume play starts pretty early on Nov. 10. No word if they're using the Penn & Teller Theater again for the Final Table. Probably, though.

* 40th Anniversary No-Limit. They've added a four-day $40,000 buy-in No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em tournament to the roster to honor the 40th anniversary of the event from May 28-31, the first event open to whomever wants to buy in.

* Champions' Tourney. They've also added a Champions Invitational. They're hoping to round up the 27 living champions of the Main Event. There's no money or bracelet at stake, just something they invented called the Binion Cup and a car. Jack Binion will be there to award the winner.

* One-Billionth Dollar Served! They don't tout this in the press material, but it does seem like this will be the year the WSOP hits the billion-dollar mark for amount given away in prize money. The fact sheet says $867 million has already been awarded and last year they gave away $180 million. They only need $133 million to hit that figure. Something tells me they've got some sort of award for being the one who hits that for them. If not, call it the Friess Cup!

Finally, I noticed something kinda funny. The WSOP pays out the 9th-place winning amounts to all of the nine members of the Final Table; last year that was about $900,000. So it's funny that they feel compelled to promise -- as they do, according to this document -- an all-expense-paid trip for two for their return to Las Vegas in November for the end of the tournament. Surely these guys can afford to come back -- and bring their significant others!

The tournament, which includes 57 different events, begins May 28 at the Rio.