Michael Craig's Journal

I think the articles by Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli on Pokernews.com represent as positive a development as the poker media could hope for. I haven’t seen Harrah’s response yet, though Amy and Tim separately told me they were going to essentially agree with the articles’ explanation about where the 2 million extra chips came from. Simultaneous to that, the September 13 Card Player is now littering poker rooms.

Let’s first talk about the Pokernews.com articles. Here is what is important about them:

1. This is a phenomenally important issue. Thousands of people playing in this year’s WSOP complained about Harrah’s. Hundreds of people covering it complained about Harrah’s. Calistri and Lavalli alone stepped up and backed up all that talk with some research, investigation, time-commitment, etc. Poker players complain about a lot but do almost nothing about it. This was the exception.

2. Apart from the let’s-do-something-about-Harrah’s issue, the honesty and integrity of tournament poker is the goose that’s laying the golden eggs. It’s really not possible, with all the opportunities for error and chicanery, for poker to be 99 44/100% pure. But for this bandwagon to keep supporting more people jumping on, it has to be clear that poker is PRETTY clean, and everyone in a position of influence is motivated to MAKE it cleaner. Harrah’s commitment was, at best, lukewarm. It’s taken conspiracy theorists to explain how Harrah’s was cheating or knowingly, maliciously helping cheaters, but it’s hard to combat the conclusion that their greed and incompetence - if not designed to MAKE the games dishonest - started the tournament sliding down a slippery slope. The Calistri-Lavalli articles are the best defense so far against poker continuing to slide.

I don’t think the people at Harrah’s are necessarily evil. They are capitalists and I applaud that. But are they make-every-dime-we-can-and-get-out-of-town-before-sundown capitalists, or make-a-shitload-of-money-and-keep-’em-coming-back-for-more capitalists? Their behavior during the Series was too often the former, too rarely the latter. This exposure and the debates I hope is spawns and the changes I hope it leads to will, if we are lucky, turn them into the latter type of capitalist. Then we can complain forever more about their greed while knowing that at least some of those riches are going toward making the tournament something we’re still going to play.

3. This was a hard, hard job that the authors took on. The tediousness of figuring out the holes in the race-off excuse kept me from devoting time to it. They had to comb over the written tournament record, both from 2006 and 2005, for several of their findings. They had to contact the people involved, on the periphery, and who “knew something” or “heard something.” That’s a lot of people and I can’t imagine anyone being real forthcoming.

This is all real journalism, and its reward, unfortunately, often isn’t anything more than a job well done, and is often not even that. They put themselves in the path of a lot of criticism and potential ostacism from the World Series. People have gotten barred from the Series for less. Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli are writing about poker because they love the game. By taking on Harrah’s, they were jeopardizing their ability to continue writing about poker. But they did it - because they love the game.

What are my criticisms?

1. Too long - The 3 pieces are 8,000 words. Some of the material is very dense but I worry a lot of people who SHOULD read these pieces won’t have the attention span, especially because the really brilliant stuff is in Part III. This is excusable because the pieces were originally intended to run at 3 different times, so each had to stand alone and have sufficient weight. They could also count on maintaining a shorter-attention span with the articles in pieces. I understand that at the last minute, because of the gravity of the issue, it was decided to run all three together. I know there wouldn’t have been time to re-edit, but it would be cool if they edited down a Cliff Notes version.

2. Too nice to Harrah’s - There are a few instances where they cut Harrah’s some slack, blaming them for errors/negligence/incompetence but also cushioning the criticism. I would have probably done the same thing, but it still sounds a little too nice. I want Harrah’s to do things like hire a new tournament director, release the video of the 22 minutes and surrounding period (or have some third party review it) to see which players counted their chips and knew they were receiving extra chips, and who benefitted by how much. I want Harrah’s to consider this a wake-up call to change/create a lot of procedures to insure the integrity of the the tournaments it hosts. I’m afraid they’ll fall back on some biggest-tournament-in-history-and-we-were-perfect-except-for-one-excusable-error philosophy and do nothing different in the future.

3. Possible cover for cheaters - The chip overage was 2.4 million. The explanation as to why the 2 million on 3-table-day couldn’t have been from cheaters is brilliant, and clearly correct. But there’s still another 400-500k in extra chips, probably from earlier days, that is unexplained. I don’t want to let Harrah’s off the hook for their OTHER lax procedures that allowed potential cheating to occur.

But that’s it. Great, great effort and a terrific result by Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli. When Amy described it to me yesterday when I was driving to Scottsdale from Vegas, I concluded by saying, “I just want you to know I’m incredibly jealous that you and Tim did it and I didn’t.”

This is giant for poker, and poker journalism.

… Speaking of poker journalism, I picked up the September 13 Card Player while in Vegas. The cover photo is of a woman with the world’s most obvious boob job in a tee-shirt and panties. “NakedPoker.com Drives Poker’s Erotica Push.”

1. Card Player at least corrected the Barbara Enright gaffe of the previous issue. No apologies to Susie Isaacs or acknowledgement of the ridiculous notion that Annie Duke busted her brother out of 4 WSOP events in one year. And no apology for “The bouncer soon became the bounced.”

2. I guess NakedPoker.com is poker’s SECOND dynasty. It’s no secret that Full Tilt paid Card Player a fortune during the Series. They not only got to bombard people with ads in the magazine and web site during the Series, but Card Player also compromised its mag/net coverage toward Full Tilt: a cover story, daily 4-sheet updates during the Series covering Full Tilt players to the exclusion of nearly everyone else, and similar treatment on the web site.

I applaud Full Tilt for doing this. Their job is to get exposure and they did it. But shame on Card Player for taking that money and not just selling ad pages BUT SELLING CONTENT AS WELL. Believe it or not, The New York Times is in the same business as Card Player, the business of selling ads. The newspaper is just a come-on to get people to look at the ads.

The real media, however, avoid this by separating the editorial and advertising functions, and the reason is to assure that the content won’t be tainted by the advertisers. That’s not just out of respect for the first amendment, but because THE PRODUCT WILL BE BETTER if editors and writers use their best judgment about what will make the most interesting product. Usually, they will do a better job of deciding what will encourage people to read the publication than the advertiser will.

NakedPoker.com also ponied up some dough, so they get a cover and a respectful feature.

Card Player is now no better than a VAL-PAK, that throwaway you get in the mail with a packet of cards with ads on them. They should give up even pretending that they cover poker. They have too many nice people working for them who have this illusion that their work matters.

Lisa Wheeler, the poker media’s Emma Peel, was working 15 hours a day during the Series. They should support her better than to let some of the stuff in her Shannon Shorr article get into print unedited:

“Shorr wasn’t intimidated, as he had cakedwalked his way to the final table”.

“Shorr used a wireless keyboard and a big-screen TV to hone his poker skills to blue-ribbon status”.

“On Jan. 19, Shorr surreptitiously made his way to the final table”.

“But if Shorr wanted to carve out a name for himself, he’d have to outshine thousands of other hopeful challengers.”

There is also reference is “another young gun, Jeff Madsen”, “another brass ring“, and “the early chidings of Mrs. Shorr.”

This is what editors are for. VAL-PAK doesn’t have editors, but Card Player still does. Either honestly try to make a good product or give up the illusion of trying.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 3:19 pm and is filed under My favourites:.