FTF Tournaments
May. 1st, 2008 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksThe skillsets required to become a long-term winner in the live tournament field just shifted a further large step away from the talents required to win in cash (online and offline) and tournaments (online MTTs and sit'n'goes).
ESPN is to broadcast the final table of the WSOP Main Event live, at the end of its series on the WSOP. The only slight drawback here is that the series is broadcast up to mid-November, and the Final Table bubble boy in the Main Event will be knocked out some months earlier. It will make for the longest toilet break in history.
I'm sure that the implications of this will be discussed at great lengths on all those fora that I cannot access at work. And yet I predict that there will still be an unintended consequence that no-one foresees or prepares for.
Walking away from the whole principle of the thing. Hell, if I enter the WSOP Main Event, it's my money at stake. And my 9% or whatever is being deducted. How much is ESPN adding? No, let's not worry about that. Let's just look at the practical implications.
1) Illness/death. There was a lovely story about a guy buying tickets to see George Burns when the guy was still performing in LV. The customer asked whether he should take the 7pm show or the 10pm show. The salesperson said: "He's 98. best to go for the 7pm show". It strikes me as a mite unfair that the sole allowance here is that a no-shower will be blinded off. For once, actuarial factors have to be considered.
2) Collusion/soft play/secret deals. Almost an inevitability, I would have thought, even if the hands are being televised live.
3) Coaching. Almost guaranteed that any player who lucks into the final table will be a very different player when the final table starts. It's like a satellite tournament and a single table tournament with different starting stacks. You will not be playing the "same" players.
Fortunately (for me), I'm not a live tournament specialist, but I do wonder how far away from cash poker it has to go before it's accepted that it is a completely different game. (Although, as I've said, I think there are bits which transfer over that many people ignore).
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The French government is to allow La Poste to sell insurance through Banque Postale, which has 17,000 outlets. The Association of Tied Agents in France has objected to this on the grounds that it could have "a destabilising effect".
Only in France, one might think, but, sadly, it's not the case. People can say with a straight face "it will be destabilising, so we shouldn't do it", with a straight face. Why doesn't a reporter ask them about the invention of the motor car, or fire, or the wheel, or the farm tractor? All of these had a "destabilising effect". Did that make them bad in principle?
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Still in the land of insurance, Japan's Aioi is to fine 17 of its senior executives for their roles in investing in subprime derivatives. The CEO will lose the equivalent of one month's salary over the next two months. I eagerly await similar statements from RBS and HBOS.
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ESPN is to broadcast the final table of the WSOP Main Event live, at the end of its series on the WSOP. The only slight drawback here is that the series is broadcast up to mid-November, and the Final Table bubble boy in the Main Event will be knocked out some months earlier. It will make for the longest toilet break in history.
I'm sure that the implications of this will be discussed at great lengths on all those fora that I cannot access at work. And yet I predict that there will still be an unintended consequence that no-one foresees or prepares for.
Walking away from the whole principle of the thing. Hell, if I enter the WSOP Main Event, it's my money at stake. And my 9% or whatever is being deducted. How much is ESPN adding? No, let's not worry about that. Let's just look at the practical implications.
1) Illness/death. There was a lovely story about a guy buying tickets to see George Burns when the guy was still performing in LV. The customer asked whether he should take the 7pm show or the 10pm show. The salesperson said: "He's 98. best to go for the 7pm show". It strikes me as a mite unfair that the sole allowance here is that a no-shower will be blinded off. For once, actuarial factors have to be considered.
2) Collusion/soft play/secret deals. Almost an inevitability, I would have thought, even if the hands are being televised live.
3) Coaching. Almost guaranteed that any player who lucks into the final table will be a very different player when the final table starts. It's like a satellite tournament and a single table tournament with different starting stacks. You will not be playing the "same" players.
Fortunately (for me), I'm not a live tournament specialist, but I do wonder how far away from cash poker it has to go before it's accepted that it is a completely different game. (Although, as I've said, I think there are bits which transfer over that many people ignore).
++++++++
The French government is to allow La Poste to sell insurance through Banque Postale, which has 17,000 outlets. The Association of Tied Agents in France has objected to this on the grounds that it could have "a destabilising effect".
Only in France, one might think, but, sadly, it's not the case. People can say with a straight face "it will be destabilising, so we shouldn't do it", with a straight face. Why doesn't a reporter ask them about the invention of the motor car, or fire, or the wheel, or the farm tractor? All of these had a "destabilising effect". Did that make them bad in principle?
+++++++++++
Still in the land of insurance, Japan's Aioi is to fine 17 of its senior executives for their roles in investing in subprime derivatives. The CEO will lose the equivalent of one month's salary over the next two months. I eagerly await similar statements from RBS and HBOS.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 11:22 am (UTC)ESPN are, of course (I say "of course", when I mean "I assume", of course) paying bundles for this. The bundles are just not being added to the prize pool - they're going to WSOP Inc (or LLP or whatever they are). If there was, say, an extra half-million bucks thrown in for each player making the final table, that might be different. In fact, the final table merchants should be paid 9th place money without delay, since it's the minimum they can earn. Waiting an extra day or two to get paid is one thing, waiting months is another entirely.
I shall have to consider seriously whether or not I shall play this year's Main Event.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 02:59 pm (UTC)I really hope that the players boycott this one.
DY
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 04:43 pm (UTC)As a matter of fact, I consider it rather infra dig. Still, infra dig, infra hole in the ground, that's what I always think.
I'm beginning to think that the only important issue with Latin/Greek/other plurals in the English language is when one wishes to avoid eliding the original sense. This usually happens in the opposite direction, when one is using the plural as the singular; "data" and "datum" being an obvious example.
Fascinating stuff on poker tournaments, btw.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 05:57 pm (UTC)As for the Nevada Gaming rules -- well, the final has been broadcast live via an Internet stream, so I suspect that more at stake here is audience numbers rather than regulatory restrictions.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 05:58 pm (UTC)I always associate forum with stratum, for some strange reason. So I tend to write fora (although I probably say forums).
PJ
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 06:02 pm (UTC)Yes, I hadn't thought of that point. You have to conclude here that the Americans concerned are either of the stupid self-centred school (i.e., none of the problems associated with overseas and east US coast players has occurred to them) or they are of the Millwall school ("everyone hates us and we don't care").
I suspect the former because nearly all of the Americans I have met desperately want to be loved by the rest of the world. Some of them are then puzzled when actions such as this cause resentment.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 08:13 pm (UTC)The difference between the written 'fora' and the written 'strata,' etc, is quite simple, and follows on from my mild complaint about 'data.' Quite simply, meaning is potentially elided, because there's a silent space. (As in, "In space, nobody gives a fuck whether or not you can construct the singular and plural nominative forms of the second declension neuter." Let alone the vocative, accusative, dative, genitive or ablative, which I believe we can put aside for a rainy Throgday afternoon.)
No, the silent space is quite obvious, when you think about it. Nobody in their right mind -- and, not being entirely up on psycho-linguistic theory, I can't remember whether the relevant part of the mind is sited in the hippocampus or elsewhere -- would read 'strata' as 'strat a.'
Many innocent souls, however, would read 'fora' as 'for a.'
Especially in these digital times wherein we live, this is to be discouraged. If necessary, at the knobbly end of a knobkerrie.
I trust I have sorted this out to our mutual satisfaction.
I vote for this time's obvious response to be: "Well, what if you read 'for um' as a hesitation?" I'm foxed on that one.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 08:21 pm (UTC)Oo-err, missus.
Mind you, if for some reason you were in a room with several delectable young things, each called "Flora," you wouldn't refer to them as "Florae," would you?
Not unless you're Evelyn Waugh. Whose first wife, interestingly enough, was also called Evelyn. I have no idea what the correct Anglo-Norman plural of "Evelyn" would be, so I believe I'll stop at this point.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 11:05 pm (UTC)Perhaps why there are few (or no) happy marriages in his books.
Titmus