POCKET ACES

Veracity Bites

A rumor is one thing that gets thicker instead of thinner as it is spread. -- Richard Armour

One really big problem that comes with using the Internet as a means of getting your news -especially your poker news -- is reliability of the reporters and the reports. Too often attribution is wrong, facts get skewed, and stories become slanted to suit an agenda. Okay, to a certain extent this is true of all other media - everybody has an opinion, after all, and we all like to air it -- but the principal difference between the Net and traditional media is in the shelf life of Internet reports. Whereas a spinning-out-of-control hot news item might have a half life of a month and perhaps be dragged back out from extinction during sweeps week or on an anniversary of the event, an Internet story never fizzles. In fact, it often grows, like the weeds on your lawn, and like those pests, the thing is virtually impossible to kill.

This week's missing wife becomes next week's runaway bride who transforms into the latest UFO or Paris Hilton sighting. Last week's rumor about how a monstrous tournament win turned into a crashing loss becomes a legend about how reckless and stupid this particular winner is, and sometimes this happens within a few weeks then lasts forever because web mongers just won't let it die.

On the web, these news items have the stuff that makes urban legends.

I can't tell you how many times I've received an email requesting my name and location be attached as verified support of a petition that, when the 500th name appears, should be forwarded to President Bush. The subject of the emails is The Social Security Dilution (sic); it show the email addresses of about 130 people (I got the message several months ago and again this month) because most senders don't understand the concept of blind copies, and the message explains that some members of the U.S. Senate recently voted to allow illegal aliens to receive social security benefits. One message listed the names and party affiliation of the "guilty" Senators and it was followed by the names and city/state of each person who "signed" the petition. The first had a list of 350 signatures; the second contained 449 names. One message implored me to remember to vote against these individuals when next they campaigned for reelection.

Sadly, the message is totally out of whack with reality and only partly true. The proposal sited was actually aimed at giving undocumented workers credit for money they had already contributed to social security and the voters listed did not vote for or against the proposal. Their vote was about tabling the whole thing! (See http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/socialsecurity.asp for complete explanation.)

Now, with poker we have very similar situations, especially some that emanate from newsgroups. Sincere questions often receive intentionally false answers from jokesters. Partial truths turn into less-partial truths, get peppered with conjecture, and eventually become the rule according to Hoyle. That idiot who lost his tournament fortune becomes the addicted-to-everything moron who has no self control at all. It is what it is - but not always.

All this is just a way of leading to praise for some really good investigative work about poker.

While trolling around looking for additional information about the "rumored" $2 million in extra chips that showed up at the World Series of Poker Championship this year, I came across reference to an article by Amy Calistri & Tim Lavalli. The thread on rec.gambling.poker referred to the latest update (http://www.pokernews.com/news/2006/9/two-million-questions-poker-responds.htm).

Here is a case the guys and gals at snopes.com would be proud of. It's a four-part series about the extra chips with theories about how they came to show up at the final event but it's followed up with information gathered from the people who were on the scene. Then, it allows for interviews, thoughts and opinions from respected members of the poker community. Not surprisingly, the input even suggests ways to guard against this kind of discrepancy.

The two authors turned a fact away from the rumor mill and put it into perspective with the kind of journalism you won't find in newsgroups and on blogs. (No disrespect intended but blogging isn't usually intended to be journalism).

Lavalli, by the way, does live tournament coverage for pokerpages.com while Calistri has written for that venue and now has her own independent blog. I'm not sure about the rest of you but I've put http://www.aimlesslychasing.com on my favorites menu and intend to watch for her take on the hard news of poker.