This hand happened to me the other day. Playing $0.25/$0.50 no limit cash game. I just joined and have about $50 in front of me. The other players have me covered. Early limper followed by a minimum raise. I have 3♣3♠. My plan is pretty simple: call and hope for a 3 on the flop. So, I call. Except that someone behind me makes another small reraise. Ordinarily, that’s a fold. Except that the other two players call and this is one of those weak tables where people like to see flops with garbage. That situation and the odds means I’m calling. And the flop comes:

3♥3♦9♦

I’d call that a good flop. The two guys in front of me check. I check. Then, a beautiful thing happens. Guy behind me bets. The original limper re-raises. And the original minimum raiser shoves all his money in the pot. Perfect. I get all my money in and guy who raised on the flop gets all in too. A perfect spot for more than tripling my money. Cards are flipped over and one guy has a flush draw and the guy who shoved his money in has A♥9♥. Imagine my surprise when the turn and river come 9♣9♠.

Getting it all in when you’re a 99.9% favorite and losing to runner – runner. That hand still wakes me up at night. But that’s why it’s gambling.

Masked men rob the poker tour. First, they have machine guns. Then handguns and bombs. Now, knives. Caught on video too.

Update: Now, it’s machine guns, machetes, and grenades.

And I want to gamble with Dennis Overbye

A couple of physicists have theorized (and I am not making this up) that the universe really doesn’t want us smashing up protons in a collider. Seems that they think the universe finds this act abhorrent to nature and so God or time-travelers are trying to stop us from doing that. Because it could kill us all. Such an action could create the Higgs boson, which using my own highly technical physics terms may be either a big ass thing (which it might not be since it’s apparently going to be small) or one of those mathematical concepts that can kill us all. And we know how much I hate those. Anyway, either God or time travelers may be thwarting our attempts at this and I think it’s amusing when physicists talk about God and time travelers.

And the author of the article, Dennis Overbye, writes:

Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Ninomiya have proposed a kind of test: that CERN engage in a game of chance, a “card-drawing” exercise using perhaps a random-number generator, in order to discern bad luck from the future. If the outcome was sufficiently unlikely, say drawing the one spade in a deck with 100 million hearts, the machine would either not run at all, or only at low energies unlikely to find the Higgs.

Sure, it’s crazy, and CERN should not and is not about to mortgage its investment to a coin toss.

He calls odds of 99,999,999:1 a coin flip? I want to gamble with this guy.

Bill to legalize online poker.

Feds seize online poker accounts.

A look at Frank’s bill over at Reason. The US is losing a lot of money due to its ban. And we know that Obama fancies himself a card player too.

In Jackson. In TN, all gambling is technically illegal except certain charitable events. Even your friendly home poker game is illegal. However, the police tend to view it as no problem unless you’re running a for profit gambling operation. This game was charging an entry fee and rake. The authorities tend to take the view that the law, though badly written, was to prevent for profit operations. A lot of leeway there. After all, the police could go arrest Chris Moneymaker for illegal gambling that lead to his win in the WSOP.

Related: Innumeracy tax.

Radley: A jury in Colorado has acquitted a man who organized poker tournaments at a local bar on charges of illegal gambling, apparently agreeing with his defense that poker is primarily a game of skill, not chance.

More on Is Poker a Game of “Chance”?. From a legal standpoint.

As I said, both luck and skill.

Discussion of whether it’s, legally, a game of chance or a game of skill. I can’t figure out why the two are viewed as mutually exclusive.

Another look at the WSOP and taxes. Eastgate has moved to London, possibly to avoid the ridiculous tax.

In other news, regulators have simply given up trying to enforce Bill Frist’s onerous Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

You may have heard that Peter Eastgate won the 2008 World Series Of Poker. Actually, it looks like the real winner was Denmark:

Denmark’s tax agency is called SKAT. Denmark, like the United States, does tax gambling winnings. For casino gambling (which is where I believe this will be classified) the tax rate is 45% on the first 4 million Danish Kroners; it’s 75% on income above that. Today $1 is worth 5.88907 DKK; Mr. Eastgate won 53,899,250.70 DKK before taxes. Mr. Eastgate will owe about 39,224,438 DKK in tax ($6,660,545). Put another way Mr. Eastgate will keep 14,674,813 DKK ($2,491,871) of his winnings—just 27.23% of his prize. Yes, he faces an effective tax rate of 72.77%. Ouch.

Wow.

Meanwhile, former commies have a flat tax:

Russia has a 13% flat tax rate, so Mr. Demidov will owe about $755,247 to the State Taxation Service of Russia.

From reader BWM.

Have you seen him look us in the eyes and lie:

Barack Obama’s hidden talent: He’s a top-notch poker player. Thank goodness—he’ll need it.

Among the countless blessings conferred by the election of Barack Obama is the energizing fact—until now little-known—that poker will be back in the White House for the first time in 35 years.

I think it’s illegal to gamble in DC. And probably illegal to gamble on .gov property.

Still, it’s pretty cool that he plays poker. Maybe we’ll see an end to Frist’s onerous online gambling bill.

An interesting read on some suspicious activity on a political futures exchange.

Seen at the Volokh conspiracy:

The Poker Players Association has an urgent action item:

Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee will review a bill, H.R. 5767, that would block the implementation of UIGEA regulations. In order to get this bill out of Committee on onto the House Floor, we need your help. We need you to contact the committee and express your support for H.R. 5767, as well as the King amendment which will refine the bill language. PPA strongly supports H.R. 5767 and the King amendment, but this important bill and amendment won’t pass without your help!

Call or Fax the House Financial Services Committee* Democrats’ Committee Office:* Ph: (202) 225-4247 – FAX: (202) 225-6952 Republicans’ Committee Office:* Ph: (202) 225-7502 – FAX: (202) 226-4301

At online poker.

Rich notes HR 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act, which would classify poker as a game of skill and exempt it from Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Currently, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act doesn’t even define the illegal gambling it regulates so it could come up as someone’s defense that poker is not gambling and is a game of skill. But that’s gonna be a tough sell. Sure, a skilled player will, on average, make money. But there is an ever present element of luck. If there wasn’t, then there would be no fish.

Overall, the game involves skill but luck is the difference between someone winning a big tournament and not. Don’t believe me? Then let’s play a fun game. It’s a tournament and, lucky you, you will be dealt pocket aces every time. Great! Sign me up! But pocket aces against a random hand still only wins about 85 percent of the time. If you play ten hands in a row, you will lose 1.5 of those hands on average. To win, you’ve probably got to not lose some of that 15 percent of the time. And that involves some luck.

More realistically, though, is that you’ll often be getting all your chips in when you’re about a 70 percent favorite and your hand will have to hold up more often than odds dictate to win a big tournament.

For the record, I think poker is a game of skill but whether or not a court of law would buy it is questionable. So, defining it in the law wouldn’t hurt.

Update and bump: Seems that typing percent signs in wordpress breaks my comment function. Hence, the bump.

Tomorrow, there is a bass tournament held by the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to benefit D.A.R.E. Seems to me that under Tennessee’s gambling statutes, this would be illegal.

More on TN gambling laws here.

Turns out Congress’ half-assed attempt at banning internet gambling by making it unlawful for banks to process transactions to gaming sites is unclear, vague, and almost impossible to implement.

And, as is usually the case, Congress passed a bill it doesn’t understand.

Tennessee’s AG has released an gambling opinion. It is here. Some store in Memphis said that if Memphis wins the title, then the store will give you your furniture free. So, some legislator asked the AG if this was gambling as defined. The AG says of course it is.

Cardplayer.com reports:

A Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) study revealed that the United States has the potential to collect at least $8.7 billion and up to $17.6 billion in the next 10 years if it would tax and regulate online gambling, including poker. And those figures don’t include potential sports wagers.

The study was commissioned by the UC Group, an online payment service provider that currently doesn’t do business with U.S. customers. The UC Group specifically asked PWC to determine how much tax would be generated if two separate bills addressing online gambling in the U.S. were passed: Barney Frank’s H.R. 2046, “Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007” (which would regulate and license online gambling in the U.S.) and Jim McDermott’s H.R. 2607, which would impose a 2 percent licensing fee on online gambling companies who want to operate here. Both bills remain in committee.

Instead, however, your government has decided to sign an agreement to pay billions of your tax dollars to countries that allow online gambling for violating WTO agreements. But you can’t get a copy of the agreement because then the terrorists will win.

Online poker is a threat to national security. Actually, the agreement that the US signed in which (and I am not making this up) they agree to pay billions of your tax dollars to countries that allow online gambling for violating WTO agreements is classified in the name of national security. So, you can’t get a copy under the freedom of information act. Seriously.

Good to see San Mateo County police so hard at work:

Police in San Mateo County, California apparently first spent months investigating the small-stakes poker game. From this firsthand account, it looks like a couple of the officers were playing regularly for several weeks before sending in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week.

It’s a $20 – $50 game. Sebastian asks:

Can someone explain to me why this is a crime?

Depends. In some places, it’s a crime because you’re avoiding taxes and registration. In other places, it’s because you’re too stupid and untrustworthy to decide how to waste your money.

Joe reports that Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have to shell out megabucks to settle a suit that they promoted gambling. And by promote, they mean sold ads too companies that offer online gambling. Ya know, I watched the World Series of Poker on ESPN and every commercial break had an ad for an online gaming site.

Seems the US would rather pay an undisclosed amount than allow people to waste their own money.

You guys know I like to play poker. But I don’t play any underground games and that’s because they keep getting robbed. I stick to the non-raked games at peoples’ houses and not full on gambling enterprises.

Also that Ed Miller notes the madness involved in NY:

In my opinion, NYC government has its head up its ass on this one. Not only are they wasting everyone’s time by “enforcing” the law in a way that annoys people but doesn’t actually change anything, they are creating a very dangerous environment for club management, players, and even those who live and work in the vicinity of the card clubs.

Noted Poker Authority Ed Miller notes that the IRS has issued a bulletin stating that effective March 2008, tournament directors are to withhold taxes from tournament winnings. The impacts on poker tournaments (notably satellites) would be substantial. But, then, that is the point. To make it hard to play poker.

Radley notes that Rep. Ralph Hall is sponsoring a poker night fundraiser. Rep. Hall was a sponsor of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Act.

Earlier, I said:

I’m betting on the man

Should be interesting. I can’t see a computer being bluffed off a hand or slow-played, which is important against a human.

Told ya so:

In a match of wits between man and machine this week, a software program running on an ordinary laptop computer fought a close match, but lost to two well-known professional human poker players.

The contest, which was billed as the “First Man-Machine Poker Championship” and which offered prize money totaling $50,000, pitted two professionals, Phil Laak and Ali Eslami, against a program written by a team of artificial intelligence researchers from the University of Alberta. They gave it a name that probably no gambler would ever choose as a nickname, Polaris.

Poker is thought to be a more difficult challenge for software designers than games like chess and checkers. Computer scientists have to develop different strategies and algorithms to deal with the uncertainties introduced by the hidden cards held by each player as well as difficult-to-quantify risk-taking behaviors such as bluffing.

The AP:

Poker champion Phil Laak has a good chance of winning when he sits down this week to play 2,000 hands of Texas Hold’em — against a computer.

It may be the last chance he gets. Computers have gotten a lot better at poker in recent years; they’re good enough now to challenge top professionals like Laak, who won the World Poker Tour invitational in 2004.

But it’s only a matter of time before the machines take a commanding lead in the war for poker supremacy. Just as they already have in backgammon, checkers and chess, computers are expected to surpass even the best human poker players within a decade. They can already beat virtually any amateur player.

“This match is extremely important, because it’s the first time there’s going to be a man-machine event where there’s going to be a scientific component,” said University of Alberta computing science professor Jonathan Schaeffer.

As to details:

The Alberta researchers have endowed the $50,000 contest with an ingenious design, making this the first man-machine contest to eliminate the luck of the draw as much as possible.

Laak will play with a partner, fellow pro Ali Eslami. The two will be in separate rooms, and their games will be mirror images of one another, with Eslami getting the cards that the computer received in its hands against Laak, and vice versa.

That way, a lousy hand for one human player will result in a correspondingly strong hand for his partner in the other room. At the end of the tournament the chips of both humans will be added together and compared to the computer’s.

Should be interesting. I can’t see a computer being bluffed off a hand or slow-played, which is important against a human.