Hello everybody. As this is my first post, I am going to introduce myself to you all by regailing you with a story that I always tell when the conversation turns to either poker or Star Trek.

 ”Star Trek? what does poker have to do with start trek?” you say

“I’m glad you asked” I reply, “Let me tell you”

 It’s the early 90’s. I am far too young to care much about poker or gambling yet. However, as I was quite a little nerd, I loved star trek. My Mom, who played poker for a living at that time, was playing in the poker room at the Trump Taj Majal in Atlantic City. She was doing fairly well getting herself ready for a tournament later that weekend. The place was not very crowded when suddenly a bit of a crowd began to form by the door. Being the very intense and focused type (which added quite a lot to her success as a card player) she hardly noticed. But, as the crowd parted, a small cadre of people could be seen coming through. leading the pack was none other than… (more…)

I’m a little disappointed with a July 26 article from the NYTimes, written by John Markoff, titled “In Poker Match Against a Machine, Humans Are Better Bluffers“.  According to the article, on July 25th, Phil Laak (aka the Unabomber - see pic above from NYTimes - go here and see a pic of his professional poker-playing girlfriend Jennifer Tilly, aka the Unabombshell) and Ali Eslami beat Polaris, the Texas Hold’em playing computer built by the computer science team at University of Alberta.   So far so good.  Then Markoff writes in the article that ”After four rounds of 500 hands each, lasting about four hours, the player with the most money is declared the winner.”  But he doesn’t say who won more money, Laak or Eslami.   Nor does he say how much money was won.  Rather, he says that the first round was a tie, the second was won by Polaris, the third and fourth won by Laak and Eslami.  When I first read this, I assumed that Polaris lost because it won fewer of the rounds.   Which is it - rounds or money?

My second gripe with Markoff’s article is with the title.  It suggests that in this match humans are better at bluffing than Polaris.  This may be true, but nowhere in the article does Markoff make this claim.  After all, Laak and/or Eslami may be better than Polaris at betting in poker, given that they beat the computer in this match.  But this does not mean that they are better at bluffing.  If they are better at bluffing, then it would have been nice to see some reason to believe that this is true.   

I can understand peoples’ fascination with celebrities. I ocassionally like to check out a little PopCrunch. But what’s with watching this celebrity poker? These people don’t know what they’re doing. It’s so painful to watch. It’s almost as painful to watch as it is to listen to celebrities pontificating about politics. You hear me, Ms. Steisand and Mr. Penn. The pain. The pain. I hope there is some way to cope with the pain.

Are people (women) so starving for celebrity gossip that they’re willing to watch these poker neophytes talk utter unfunny nonsense while they show their utter lack of talent for poker? No one who is any good at poker can watch this stuff. But I’m sure anyone who is any good at poker would love to play with these celebrity fish.

Enough kvetching. Back to reading about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and American Idol gossip on Popcrunch.