Thursday, November 6, 2014

Keystone XL Pipeline

Is the Keystone XL Pipeline good or bad? I looked at arguments from both sides. The Keystone pipeline already exists and the segment that transports oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico refineries has been in operation since January of this year. XL will roughly double the capacity of the pipeline. The industry wants to build XL while the environmentalists want to stop it. Building it would increase US imports of oil from Canada, specifically from the tar sands of Alberta. This oil is “dirtier” than imported oil from OPEC . The groups seeking to reduce greenhouse gases oppose this project on that basis along with other environmental concerns. The objective of the pipeline is to increase the capacity of the existing pipeline so that more crude oil from Canada (and also Montana, BTW) can be transported to the refineries on the Gulf Coast. Understand that the US gets about half of all the oil it needs from domestic sources and the other half from imports from other countries. Canada and Saudi Arabia are the two largest suppliers of oil to the US by a wide margin. The pipeline project will shift the supply of about 500,000 barrels per day of oil from other sources (including Saudi Arabia and OPEC) to Canada. Per US Energy Information Administration, Canada and OPEC each supply about 3.4 Million barrels of crude oil to the US per day. Shifting that market share from about 50:50 to 40:30 in favor of Canada is a big shift. I favor initiatives that reduce our need to import oil from the Mideast. Blocking the pipeline does not do anything to reduce the demand for oil in the US. We will refine just about the same amount of oil to meet our needs whether we buy it from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela or from Canada. I would rather see the money go to private companies in Canada than to governments in OPEC countries. Will it affect the price of gasoline in the US? Evidence suggests that it will. While there are arguments that it will cause the price to rise, recent developments in the world oil markets suggest otherwise. Recently the price of a barrel of oil has dropped from over $100 to around $75 and the price of gas locally has gone from near $4/gal to around $3. Most people agree that this is a good thing for our economy despite the fact that cheap gas reduces our incentive to lower our overall consumption. The cause of the reduction in price is twofold. There has been a worldwide reduction in the demand for oil and basic economics dictates that when demand slows for any product in a competitive marketplace, the price will fall. More pointedly, it has been widely reported in the financial media that the Saudis perceive the tar sands oil production to be a threat to their share of the world’s oil market. Because oil production from sources such as the tar sands has been increasing, the Saudis have decided to protect their share by reducing the price. Their intent is to reduce the incentive to produce oil from the tar sands by making it less profitable to do so. The Keystone Phase III which only opened in January is already having an effect reducing the amount of money we send to OPEC and we haven’t even started building XL yet. In my opinion, the people trying to block Keystone XL should redirect their efforts at reducing the US consumption of oil in our cars and trucks, in our factories and in our consumer products. That would be a more effective way to combat the expansion of greenhouse gases. If we did things like converting all semi-type trucks to natural gas and all local taxis and delivery vehicles like school buses and mail trucks to electric we could put a huge dent in oil imports while cleaning our air and preserving our environment. In the meantime, we should build the XL expansion to the Keystone Pipeline.

Monday, November 3, 2014

A Republican or Democrat Economy?

Republican or Democrat, which one is better for the economy? It is always an interesting question. Generally speaking, since the Republican party seems to represent “management” and the Democratic party, “labor” it seems logical to assume that the Republicans would be more pro-business and the economy would do better following their policies. That may or may not be the case. I think everyone will agree that when the economy is doing well, things are humming along and unemployment is low and jobs are plentiful. So the Unemployment Rate should be a good indicator. So how has the country done under the different administrations since the 1950’s? I start at the 1950’s because before that there are too many distortions such as World War II and the fact that the parties didn't really line up the same. For instance, Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, however, he was considered a “Progressive” and an “Environmentalist” busting up monopolies and establishing the National Park System to preserve natural habitats which today would likely be leaning more in the Democratic party camp. Since the 1950’s I wanted to look at where the unemployment rate stood during the periods of leadership of our two political parties. Since we are looking at the effect of the party in power, lets look at the unemployment rate at the time each party took office. Here are the results from US bureau Labor Statistics for January of years noted: Eisenhower (R) 1953 to 1961. Unemployment went from 2.9% to 6.6% Kennedy/Johnson (D) 1961 to 1969 Unemployment went from 6.6% to 3.4% Nixon/Ford (R) 1969 to 1977 Unemployment went from 3.4% to 7.5% Carter (D) 1977 to 1981 Unemployment went from 7.5% to 7.5% Reagan/Bush(R) 1981 to 1993 Unemployment went from 7.5% to 7.3% Clinton (D) 1993 to 2001 Unemployment went from 7.3% to 4.2% Bush (R) 2001 to 2009 Unemployment went from 4.2% to 7.8% Obama (D) 2009 to present Unemployment went from 7.8% to 5.9% Weird, huh? When the Democrats are in power, the employment picture gets better or stays the same. When the Republicans are in power, the employment picture either gets worse or stays about the same. You would think the opposite would be true. Oddly, it is a similar situation for the deficit: You would think that conservative minded Republicans would hold the line on spending while the tax-and-spend liberals in the Democratic party would run up the bill. Nope. Recently, during the administrations of Clinton and Obama, the deficits were reduced versus when Reagan, Bush and Bush were in power, deficits skyrocketed. It makes it tough to know who to vote for, doesn't it?

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Some Highlights from WSOP 2014

Just a few work days left to clean up the Main Event. Probably some highlights to come, but here are some of the highlights of my WSOP experience so far:

Dealt H.O.R.S.E. Final Table in the Arena "Thunderdome" where there was prize pool over a million dollars, won by Tommy Hang.

Dealt $1500 Draw Lowball Final Table won by Steve Wolansky.

Dealt $10k Draw Lowball Final Table where Paul Volpe defeated a table of pros including Jason Mercier and Daniel Negreanu to put a cool quarter million dollars in his pocket. During play, when I dealt Daniel a winner, his rooting section starting cheering, "Go Buz! Go Buz!" Daniel remarked, "Wow! Dealer fans. Cool!"

I also dealt the Final Table of the $10k 7-Card Stud World Championship where I dealt the back to back hands that eliminated Phil Hellmuth in sixth place after starting the Final Table third in chips. Matt Grapenthien won it by overcoming Todd Brunson's huge initial chip lead in a marathon heads up battle that lasted long after the evening shift took over.

I know I represent all 1100 WSOP dealers when I do a final table, especially when it's being broadcast. I try to be smooth, precise and professional, and not look too nervous in front of the cameras. I hope I represented you well.

I want to thank the folks like Robbie and Bos who over the years have made suggestions to me on how to be a better, more professional dealer and also my friends, who among them are some of the best Poker dealers in the entire world.
 — feeling blessed.
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Friday, July 4, 2014

2014 WSOP Main Event starts 7/5

So far I've had a pretty productive Series.  Although some weeks were slow and some were crazy busy I got to deal a bunch of fun games. 
I dealt the Final Table of four tournaments: $10,000 2-7 Draw, $1500 HORSE (mixed games Hold'em, Omaha 8, Razz, Stud, Stud 8). $1500 2-7 Draw and the jewel, the $10,000 World Championship 7 Card Stud. Famous-wise, Daniel Negreanu was at the $10k Draw Final and Todd Brunson and Phil Hellmuth squared off at the Stud table.  I also dealt Stud to Gabe Kaplan of "Welcome Back Kotter" fame, the day before the Final. 

The final days of work here begin with the start of the Main Event on Saturday. This is where the lion's share of the money is made. Hopefully I go deep in the event and make it all even sweeter with a nice fat paycheck. 

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Monster, Monster Stack

7862 Unique players. No re-buys, no re-entries. Two flights in one day and several waves added. Everybody started with a full stack. Those who began the day at either 1:00 or 5:00 PM started with the blinds at 25-25.  Later "waves" which began as late as 10:40 PM started with their 15,000 chip stack at whatever level the 5 PM flight was at. Even at level 5, the start of the last wave, the blinds were still at just 100-200 with no ante.

The $1500 entry Monster Stack Tournament at this year's WSOP generated the largest ever field of unique players for a single starting day at a poker tournament.  The prize pool of over $10 million gives $1.3 million to the winner.


Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Fresh Squeezed Lowball


As a dealer at the World Series of Poker, I learn new things every day about Poker and how the pros play this wonderful game. 

As you might know, the WSOP is truly a "Series" in the sense that more than just the Main Event which makes millions for its final table players, there is an entire series of championship poker tournaments. In 2014 there are 65 championship bracelets to be given to winners of tournaments across a wide spectrum of games. 

Today I had the pleasure of dealing the Deuce to Seven Single Draw No Limit World Championship Final Table. It had a buy-in of $10,000 and first prize was the world championship bracelet and over a quarter million dollars. 

When the players arrived to begin the final table of seven, there was quite a lively discussion of the cards being used. Play was going to be streamed live over the Internet and we were set to play it out on the arena stage where, in order to provide the viewing audience with player's hole cards, special cards are used with embedded RFID chips and readers built into the table. The table, however, is really set up for Hold'em, not 5 Card Draw. The RFID cards weren't going to be used to identify cards for this broadcast, but since the automatic shuffler built into the poker table was set up for these larger size cards, the staff assumed it would be fine to just use these cards. 

Interesting fact:  at the World Series of Poker, smaller Bridge size cards are used rather than the larger Poker size cards except at the final table, where this year we are using Poker size cards with jumbo indexes and the embedded RFID chips. Not only are the numbers larger on these cards, but the pips are smaller and framed in the center of the card. The RFID cards are also much thicker and stiffer than the typical cards used throughout the rest of the tournament. 

Before play began, one of the players, Brian Rast, asked about the cards saying that he didn't think they would work very well. Daniel Negreanu added that you couldn't squeeze them. "Squeezing" in poker parlance is looking at the card by bending the long edge up with thumb over the index and first seeing how many pips are in the row before revealing the value of the card. Both the 4 and 5 have 2 pips across, 6 and 7 have 3 and 8, 9 and 10 have 4. Squeezing adds suspense to looking at your hole cards. When I asked for more detail he explained:

"Squeezing is a very important part of this particular game. Let's say I'm drawing one card and I know I need a 4 but a 5 would pair me up and be a very bad card. If I squeeze my card, and I see that it is two across, I know that it's 50-50 that I have the four I need. I can go ahead and bet as if I have it even though there's a 50% chance I'm bluffing. How is my opponent going to be able to tell if I'm bluffing or not when even I don't know if I'm making a value bet or bluffing?"

After that passionate explanation, our Floor Supervisor delayed the start of the tournament so that he could replace the RFID cards with standard WSOP cards from the tournament cage. We hand shuffled the decks for the first 2 levels.  During the player break the auto-shuffler in the table was replaced to accommodate the standard WSOP deck.  Play was pretty normal for a final table after that rocky start. 

Daniel Negreanu took second place behind the eventual winner, Paul Volpe. 

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Poker Timeline

1855 Draw Poker
1945 Stud Poker, 5 card evolves into 7-card 
1965 Hold em
1970 first WSOP
1997 On line poker born
2006 USA bans online poker with UIGEA
2011 USA shuts down poker sites, seizes $$. 
2013 States begin legalizing online poker. First NV, then NJ, soon more. 

Friday, March 14, 2014

The Queen City Classic

Cincinnati, Ohio is known as the Queen City and beginning on March 12th and continuing for the next 12 days, the Horseshoe Cincinnati will be hosting the Queen City Classic Poker Tournament. I don't really know what makes it a classic, but the tournaments are in the format and style of those held at the World Series of Poker.

The view from day one looks like it will be fairly well attended, although primarily by the Midwestern players and not the bigger names from WSOP or even many of the circuit grinders.

I am looking forward to getting out of the weather in Scottsdale for a while. I've been having some of the worst hay fever allergies I can remember.  Hopefully, this will be a brief seasonal thing and things will be better when I return.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Need to Vent. KK vs AA

Sometimes when you play poker, the cards just don't go your way.  Yes, it's a game of skill and you need to think of the "long run" and the odds and the law of large numbers and all that but when the cards go against you in the short run, it sucks.

Recently I was in a tournament and had been running nicely, taking a few pots here and there and building up my stack losing only a few small pots.  Then I was dealt a pocket pair of kings.  KK. Cowboys. The second best starting hand you can have.  You only get pocket kings about once in 220 hands, so when you get them, you want to cash in on them.  The best way is to get an opponent heads-up and as long as he doesn't have pocket aces, you are about a 4 to 1 favorite or better, like 9 to 1.  Of course, if he does have AA in the hole, your kings are about a 4 to 1 underdog, but that doesn't happen very often. Well, at least not to most Texas Hold'em poker players.  Unless, of course, you are me.

Of course, the player in the Small Blind looks at his cards and raises.  I re-raise all in and he calls, showing me his two aces.

So I do the numbers.  It turns out that at a table with 9 players, if you are holding KK, the probability that any one of your opponents is holding AA is about 3.5%.  About 1 out of every 28 or 29 times you have KK you should expect to run into AA.

I had KK three times over the last 6 hours or so that I have played Texas Hold'em.  That in itself is something.  In 6 hours I probably was dealt around 180 hands.  Seeing that you only expect to get KK once every 221 hands, it is a bit unusual to get KK three times in 180 hands.  What is astounding is that 2 of the three times I had KK, I wound up facing an opponent holding AA.  Simply astounding.  To make matters worse, the final time I had KK I improved to three of a kind and was ahead until an ace showed up and my kings were a very strong second place finish - the worst place to be in a poker game.

Hopefully, things will turn around for me.  I hope its in a big money game!!!