It's been fascinating to follow this over the last few days. I almost think that in some ways, it's more exciting to see it happen via Twitter than it would be to watch it on video. I wonder why that is.
It was my understanding you can't use your phone tableside during a tournament, but he seems to be posting photos frequently from his seat - can someone clarify?
Here's the relevant part: "Participants not involved in a hand (cards in muck) shall be permitted to text/email at the table, but shall not be permitted to text/email any other Participant at the table."
Arguably, a public tweet could be interpreted as a text or email to another participant at the table, but the rules are not enforced that way and tweeting is a generally accepted practice by pros and amateurs alike.
... so what's to stop an opponent from reading his tweets (in which he shares his hands)?
edit: i guess he wasn't too worried about it when there were so many players, but has since stopped sharing his hands now that he has acknowledged others reading his tweets. that's interesting.
It doesn't matter too much (although silence is probably the better option) as long as you imply that you may sometimes lie about what you actually had in the hand (the most important thing is that your opponents know this), which makes all his tweets about his hands pretty much unusable for information.
Because assuming someone at his table is reading his tweets, once you start feeding misinformation into a poker player's Internal Bayesian Inference Engine, then he is going to have the wrong probabilities of what you play in his head.
But the best option is to stay silent, because if you go with the above strategy, you now have to deal with figuring out whether or not your opponent has read your tweets, and whether or not he knows that you have fake hands in some of those tweets, because then that changes his playing style or the way you are perceived by him so you now have to start guessing whether or not he read your tweets.
Whenever I read poker articles by non-poker writers it always makes me cringe. Kind of like when non-tech writers write articles about the tech industry. Not exactly, "the internet is a series of tube" cringe worthy, but just annoying stuff.
1. The WSOP is a series of events. He is playing in one event, not the actual World Series of Poker.
2. $1000, while a lot to most people, is the cheapest event you can buy into at the WSOP. There is a $1 million buy-in (for charity) and a $50K Player's Championship and the Main Event which is a $10K buy-in.
3. It's not a 3 million dollar pot, it's a 3 million dollar prize pool.
4. Being in place X is completely irrelevant when talking about "how much he would win in his current spot"
Also where's Ian Chan's results page? Or is this going to be his first live tournament cash?
I apologize for at all seeming negative, I just want to clarify a few aspects of the story which I feel are a little misleading:
"The buy in is a steep $1,000" - Yes, in absolute terms $1,000 buy-in is high, however by WSOP standards this is the lowest buy-in for an open event (IE anybody can enter).
"if he took home fourth (the place at which he’s currently ranked), Chan would take home more than $150,000" - At this stage in the tournament even looking at the payout for your position is just crazy. Even the first place player right now would likely be better off taking $150k if somebody offered it to him right now rather than play on. Right now the 1st place stack has about 12% of the chips in play (our hero has ~4% of the chips in play). In order to win you need to get 100% of the chips in play... IE there is a long way to go for everybody.
"though he’s probably done the best: Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya took 101st place last year." - This is the most egregious error. Chamath placed 101st in the WSOP Main Event, the $10,000 buy-in and most prestigious event in the WSOP series (it is called main event after all). This is just comparing apples to oranges, the events have completely different buy-ins, different structures, and of course one is the main event and one isn't. I think many people would prefer a 101st place finish in the main event rather than anything short of winning this $1k no limit event from purely a prestige perspective.
I played online in college (like 5-6 years ago) back when it wasn't so shady, haven't played since. I really didn't have much prep other than a bit of coaching from a few friends who've played a lot. Vegas has tons of lower entry tournaments to practice on too.
As the stakes increase, a smart opponent should start mapping his tweets to how he subsequently played the hand. Maybe apply some Sentiment Analysis (or something) to figure out if there is a statistically significant "TELL" :-)
Then figure a out a passive way (three consecutive texts - Good; two texts - bad, etc) to get this info to one of the players at his table.
I don't want to continue being, "that guy" but what you actually mean is not a "TELL" it is how frustrated or emotionally charged a person is, or in poker parlance, how "tilted" or "steamed" he is.
And you don't need sentiment analysis to tell if someone is tilted, you can literally look at the player across the way and figure it out.
Good for him that he is able to play a WSOP-event, but many many poker players tweet during live tournaments. So from a poker players' perspective this is not all that interesting.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 59.5 ms ] threadHis Tweets are filled with the two basic building blocks of great storytelling, even if only by coincidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loxJ3FtCJJA
Here's a link to this year's official WSOP rules: http://www.wsop.com/2012/2012-WSOP-Rules.pdf (see section 61 on Communication)
Here's the relevant part: "Participants not involved in a hand (cards in muck) shall be permitted to text/email at the table, but shall not be permitted to text/email any other Participant at the table."
Arguably, a public tweet could be interpreted as a text or email to another participant at the table, but the rules are not enforced that way and tweeting is a generally accepted practice by pros and amateurs alike.
edit: i guess he wasn't too worried about it when there were so many players, but has since stopped sharing his hands now that he has acknowledged others reading his tweets. that's interesting.
https://twitter.com/chanian/status/220034966480883712
Because assuming someone at his table is reading his tweets, once you start feeding misinformation into a poker player's Internal Bayesian Inference Engine, then he is going to have the wrong probabilities of what you play in his head.
But the best option is to stay silent, because if you go with the above strategy, you now have to deal with figuring out whether or not your opponent has read your tweets, and whether or not he knows that you have fake hands in some of those tweets, because then that changes his playing style or the way you are perceived by him so you now have to start guessing whether or not he read your tweets.
So yeah, stay silent.
1. The WSOP is a series of events. He is playing in one event, not the actual World Series of Poker.
2. $1000, while a lot to most people, is the cheapest event you can buy into at the WSOP. There is a $1 million buy-in (for charity) and a $50K Player's Championship and the Main Event which is a $10K buy-in.
3. It's not a 3 million dollar pot, it's a 3 million dollar prize pool.
4. Being in place X is completely irrelevant when talking about "how much he would win in his current spot"
Also where's Ian Chan's results page? Or is this going to be his first live tournament cash?
Correction on the $1m buy-in tournament. It isn't FOR charity but does give the rake to charity (~$5m out of $48m).
"The buy in is a steep $1,000" - Yes, in absolute terms $1,000 buy-in is high, however by WSOP standards this is the lowest buy-in for an open event (IE anybody can enter).
"if he took home fourth (the place at which he’s currently ranked), Chan would take home more than $150,000" - At this stage in the tournament even looking at the payout for your position is just crazy. Even the first place player right now would likely be better off taking $150k if somebody offered it to him right now rather than play on. Right now the 1st place stack has about 12% of the chips in play (our hero has ~4% of the chips in play). In order to win you need to get 100% of the chips in play... IE there is a long way to go for everybody.
"though he’s probably done the best: Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya took 101st place last year." - This is the most egregious error. Chamath placed 101st in the WSOP Main Event, the $10,000 buy-in and most prestigious event in the WSOP series (it is called main event after all). This is just comparing apples to oranges, the events have completely different buy-ins, different structures, and of course one is the main event and one isn't. I think many people would prefer a 101st place finish in the main event rather than anything short of winning this $1k no limit event from purely a prestige perspective.
:-D
As someone who wants to play in live tournaments, drop us your preparation infoz.
Then figure a out a passive way (three consecutive texts - Good; two texts - bad, etc) to get this info to one of the players at his table.
And you don't need sentiment analysis to tell if someone is tilted, you can literally look at the player across the way and figure it out.
Good luck to him though, ship it :)