Hellmuth number fourteen number one

$10,000 entry Razz Final Table

I had the privilege of being one of the three dealers to deal the final table of Event 17, the Razz Championship. It is not only a "Bracelet Event" but it is also considered a "World Championship" as are all events at the WSOP that have a $10,000 entry fee.

The three of us, Eric Green, Shaun Harris and I, began setting up two tables for the last sixteen players at about 1:30 pm and finished up a little after midnight.

What is Razz?  It is a variation of 7-Card Stud lowball. It is dealt like 7-Card Stud but the winning hand is the lowest combination of five cards, the best being A-2-3-4-5-x-x. Straights and Flushes have no bearing on the hand value. Some say it is not really Poker because it does not use the conventional poker rank of hands but the essential elements of poker are there: the ability to win pots with the best hand at showdown and the ability to win by betting to convince your opponent to fold.

We started the day with two tabes in the northeast corner of the Amazon Room. Shaun was on 446, Eric on 449 and I was on first break.  Every half hour we rotate, so we do 30 minutes at 446, 30 minutes on 449 followed by a 30 minute break. We ran this rotation until around 3:30 when the seventh player had busted out losing all of his chips. With 9 players left we took a quick break and moved our table into the Amazon Arena, the stadium like setup where Championship final tables are broadcast live on the Internet, recorded and archived.

Dealers stay in the same rotation but responsibilities change. One dealer is at the table, one acts as a runner assisting the floor and players with whatever is needed and escorting any player busting out to the payout clerk for processing, and the third on break. The difference is that when on a final table, you get paid for all three positions as if you were dealing continuously.

That is the rotation we were in. The extra money isn't really important to me, although I appreciate being fairly compensated for my labor, I get great personal satisfaction from being in the center of the arena, on camera, with a lot on the line and proving to myself that I can perform well under the stress.   On this day, I was quick, accurate, precise and my procedures were by the book right down to clearing my hand after the cut (a procedure many dealers fail to perform). It can be tough. You have an earpiece in your ear with a producer giving some instructions as you deal. There are many spectators in the stadium all watching your moves with multiple video screens showing every action and a set of video cameras with potentially thousands of viewers all around the world watching the game you are running. Seeing that I do this part-time as a hobby rather than for a living, I'm pretty proud of being able to perform in the arena.

But enough about me. Phil Hellmuth, who has won the Main Event and won more WSOP Bracelets than any other captured his 14th bracelet by winning this 2015 World Championship Razz Event. Eric Green had the privilege of dealing the final winning hand.

Reports of the Death of Poker are Greatly Exaggerated

Poker seems to be alive and well.  Last week the World Series of Poker held a tournament marketed to the masses. They called it The Colossus. At $565 it was the lowest entry fee of any event the WSOP has ever held where the winner receives one of the coveted gold bracelets in addition to the prize money. The result was the largest field ever for a live poker tournament. 22,374 entries were sold with multiple starting times over two days with the stipulation that if you busted out of one flight you could enter again into one of the later flights.  Unknown how many re-entries were logged. First prize was the bracelet and $638,880 of the over $11 million prize pool.

The popularity of the event also boosted the success of poker at other venues. WSOP's own 3PM Deepstack tournament set a record with 2149 entries. Planet Hollywood and the Golden Nugget were scrambling for dealers for their tournaments that run simultaneously with the WSOP. At the Wynn Poker Room their tournament was sold out and for the seven or eight tables of $1-$3 No Limit Hold'em there were 91 people on the waiting list to get a seat.

As the tournament was marketed to more recreational players, it was not without controversy. When the prize pool payouts were announced Twitter exploded. Many were incensed that the winner wouldn't come close to winning a million dollars. The structure that was used, like all other bracelet events, paid out to all who made it into the top 10%. Spreading out $11 million to over 2200 winners looked nice to the guy that finished in 1000th place but many were still disappointed that it works out that the winner would "only" get about 6% of the total prize pool.

The other controversy is with the dealer pay. A portion of the dealer's pay is determined by a small percentage of the entry fee, known as "tokes", divided up by all the dealers according to how much time they spent dealing. Looking at the small fee and the slow structure of the tournament, many dealers were worried that the toke rate would be very low. In fact when it was announced, dealers were in an uproar over the smallest toke rate in the history of the WSOP. It was about 30% lower than previous rates. One of the best paid dealer jobs in town had become one of the worst. The upside was that there was a lot of work. Many dealers were able to work double shifts with overtime making less per hour than elsewhere but logging many more hours. All in all if the toke rate goes back up next week, it will be an anomaly.

Seeing the WSOP set records and seeing poker rooms all over town overflowing with poker players makes me feel pretty good about the state of poker these days.

2015 World Series of Poker begins today 5/27/2015

Good post in Poker News. Poker News Daily click here

Holding 2♥ -2♦, how often do you flop a set?

There are a number of ways to figure this out.  Figure out how many possible combinations of cards there are on a flop and, of those, figure out how many of them contain the cards you are looking for.

You could make a list and start counting, but that would take a long time.  Better to use a little math to figure it out.  Of course, somebody has already figured this out, like some ancient mathematician trying to figure out how many color combinations you could weave into a rug with a given set of colored yarns.    If you let n be the number of cards left in the deck to choose from and let k be the number of cards you are choosing, then the number of possible combinations you can get (without regard to the order of the cards) can be represented by a formula that looks like n! / k!(n-k)!.   

Fortunately, we have Google.  We don't need to multiply out all of those factorials.  We don't even need to know the formula or call it the binomial coefficient.  We just need to know how many cards we are choosing from the deck and how many cards are in the deck.

Google built a tool right into their search engine to make it easy for us. Just type in "50 choose 3" where 50 is the number of cards in the deck and 3 is the number of cards.  It will return the number of possible combinations.

We can use this handy tool to help us figure out our solution

How many possible flop combinations are there?  There are 52 cards in the deck and we are holding two of them.  The flop contains 3 cards,chosen from the remaining 50 so:

50 Choose 3 = 19,600  The number of possible flop combinations

Seeking 2♣ plus any combination of any of the other 49 cards

49 choose 2 = 1176

Seeking 2♠ plus any combination of any of the other 49 cards

49 choose 2 = 1176

Note that 1176 contains flops that have both 2's and another card and 2♣-2♠-X is the same as 2♠-2♣-X so we need to pull out the duplicates.

Subtract out duplicates of 2♣-2♠ plus any of remaining 48 = 48

1176 + 1176 – 48 = 2304

So now we know that of a possible 19,600 flops, 2,304 of them contain one or two deuces and give us a very strong hand.

 2304 /19,600 = 11.755%

Of course, there is more than one way to skin a cat.  My old poker buddy who was a college professor and did a lot of research using statistics and probability didn't like my alternative method because it was subject to a tiny little bit of rounding error.  But it works.  It is a method of figuring out how many times you miss catching a deuce on the flop and simply subtracting that from 100% to see how often you hit it.

Alternate method:

2 of 50 is 4%, so 96% of the time, the first card misses.

Of the 96% of the time that the first card misses, 47 of 49 or 95.92% of the time second card also misses and 95.92% of 96% is 92.08% of the time.

Of the 92.08% of the time that the first two miss, 46 of 48 or 95.83% of the time the third card misses also. This means that 95.83% of the 92.08% or 88.24% of the time all three miss which means that 11.76% of the time, you flop three or four of a kind.

By either method, you will flop a set or quads about once every 8.5 times you see a flop or, saying it another way, the odds against flopping a set are 7 ½ to 1.

The Colossus of Poker

The WSOP begins on Wednesday, May 27th with the Casino Employees' No Limit Hold'Em Tournament. The event is limited to people who work in the industry. Even the dealers hired to work the WSOP are eligible to enter. In fact, upon being hired dealers are asked for their shift preference (Days, Swing, Graveyard) and if they plan to play in the employee event. It is a way to ease into the summer's biggest poker festival with a "soft opening" and test all the systems for registration as well as all of the support needed to put the entire event together. Despite the limited nature of the field, last year there were 876 players entered. 

While there are some smaller events scheduled for Thursday, the real kickoff is on Friday with the "Colossus". This tournament is projected to be the largest ever live poker tournament in the history of poker. To start with, the "Colossus" has a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million and an entry fee of only $565, the lowest entry fee of any WSOP Bracelet event. In order to clear the guarantee, the tournament will need 10,000 entrants.

 The tournament is set up with four starting flights to accommodate the anticipated crowds. The concept is that players may enter any flight and if they unfortunately get eliminated they will be allowed to re-enter in a subsequent flight. Pre-registration is open for all four flights, so a player wanting to make sure that they have every possible chance to get their share of that $5 million can register in advance for all four flights. Any unused entries are refunded. Flights will begin play at 10 AM and 6 PM on Friday and Saturday. Players remaining from the four flights will be combined on Sunday and play will continue through Monday with the final table of nine players on Tuesday.  According to a report from Card Player Magazine, The Colossus may already have enough entries to be the largest field of players in the history of poker.

Link to Card Player Magazine Article

WSOP 2015

Yes, it is getting to be that time of year again. WSOP 2015 is just around the corner. Got my invite back. It included a note that my driver's license on file had expired and I needed to visit Human Resources in person to update it and update the I-9 form that goes with it. This little visit to HR entails a 5 hour drive from Scottsdale as well as a return. I shouldn't complain. A couple years ago that was an airplane flight from Tampa which is a lot more expensive than the tank of gas or two I'll burn up. My sister, Terrie, who lives in Sun City volunteered to keep me company on the drive, so I booked a room at the Orleans for us (no rooms available that week at the Rio) and we headed up through the desert. I spent my 15 minutes in HR, they were quick and efficient, and headed out to find some discount show tickets. Tix 4 Tonight had some discounted seats available for "Showstoppers" at the Wynn. The show was entertaining. It should be. It was a compilation of great musical numbers from Broadway shows in the recent and the distant past. I really enjoyed the "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago. If you are one of those people that hates Broadway musicals, you would really detest this show. Me, on the other hand, I've had an interest in musical theatre ever since I saw my sister (yes, Terrie, my travel companion) in "West Side Story" when we were kids. So I have been "processed". Orientation is Sunday, May 24th, and the first tournament begins May 27th. Official link to the WSOP Schedule here.