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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

May 27, 2006

The Sad State of Some Poker

Hold'em is to stud what chess is to checkers. -- Johnny Moss

It's time for a review of the state of poker from yours truly.

Usually this is the kind of piece everyone would try to write at the end of one year or at the beginning of another year but, I, never having been known as a follower of tradition, decided that mid year, just before the World Series of Poker oozed over the Rio and the adjacent poker rooms at the Palms and the Gold Coast like the Blob (Remember Steve McQueen's first movie?), would be a time that people might want an update on the state of poker from an interested, somewhat detached observer's viewpoint.

First, let's look at whether or not the game has reached a popularity peak, as some pundits think. Card Player magazine, which calls itself the "poker authority," has been testing the waters of poker's popularity (online) for a while. They conducted one online opinion poll to which 1,387 readers responded. The question: Has television poker coverage reached the saturation point? Results indicated that 51.77 % (718) of the respondents thought they'd seen enough poker on TV. Granted, this poll wasn't scientific and the question kind of floats in space on its own but it might have some validity when it comes to the decision-making in the upper echelons of the entertainment media. Personally, I think perhaps the game has peaked as far as TV coverage is concerned but not as far as individual interest goes.

The questions I found more interesting had been asked previously. Voters in the poll preferred no-limit hold'em overwhelmingly over all other forms of poker, although Omaha (especially high-low) was also popular. Few people played stud, fewer played draw and lowball and fewer still played the triple-draw games.

This makes it appear as if the only future for poker is in the gambling games where reading and defeating an opponent is more important than reading cards and defeating opponents. That is, the shift has been far, far away from the intellectual, thinking requirements and into the direction of the manipulation requirements.

Yet a backward direction could be the salvation of poker's waning popularity.

Yes, hold'em is a great game. Hold'em is the game the rounders, the grifters, the old-time cheats, pros and thieves as well as the good guys played. Hold'em is the game specially introduced to fish to reel in the money. (Later they did it with Omaha and Omaha high-low.) And this is not a condemnation of pioneering poker players. This was their way of life.

Eventually the public caught on and began to understand the community card game. But not everybody can excel at hold'em. They can't get over the concept that any two cards except the deuce-seven can make a hand - and even that one could, theoretically, turn into quads or full boats. Consequently, they play any hand, and in some cases the deuce-seven.

When they go broke, they don't necessarily come back. Now, the same question that was asked way back before the poker era is being asked again:

Is there an infinite supply of new players available to contribute to the pot?

Maybe. Probably not. The house will grind the players down like millet, keeping the rake and encouraging losers to go back to the ATM or to Firepay or the credit card advance machine and hurry back. Sooner or later the word will get out that somebody other than the millions of new players is scooping up all the money and the game will begin to suffer.

But there is a solution. Did you ever see the TV ad about the "other white meat?" The one selling pork to the public appetite?

What we need is more attention to the other version of poker. We need to see these pros compete for big money in the thinking-man's game - stud. We need the online poker rooms and the brick-and-mortar outfits to go back to offering stud as something other than filler material. We need the WPT and the WSOP to host a $10,000 and $25,000 buy-in seven-card stud competition. And while they're at it, they can reintroduce draw poker and lowball. I'm thinking that showcasing these versions of poker will bring even more people to play. At the same time, it will suck out much of that luck element and give newcomers a real chance at excellence.

When Johnny Moss made the statement used in the opening of this article, he came up with a great sound bite. Personally, this humble, independent, interested observer thinks he was a little off base.

Hold'em is to stud what any Poker Phil is to Friedrich Nietzsche.