We've got a new page up--it's a quick guide to which of the 20 biggest metropolitan areas in the US have casinos, and what kind of casinos they have:
http://gaming.unlv.edu/media/top_20.pdf
http://gaming.unlv.edu/media/top_20.pdf
Recently in article Category
One of the more common themes you will find in Card Player are articles that describe poker hands. Sometimes these are instructive in nature, and sometimes they are just describing a dramatic situation, especially an important hand played late in a tournament where much money was at stake.
In fact, a few of these articles have been written by me, and I enjoy reading many of them. They are informative, in many instances illustrate the dramatics and complexities of poker, and help to explain why this wonderful game keeps all of us occupied to some degree.
But it turns out that among all the poker hands ever played and written about, there is one particular hand whose importance is probably far more significant than all other poker hands ever played put together. Now that's a mouthful, and the real shame is that most of you who will read this essay don't know anything about it. Of course, that will soon be corrected.
First some background. The year was 1864 and the United States Civil War was nearing its climax. Even though the North was winning, it was not winning by enough to assure that the war would end with a favorable conclusion for the Union side. The Confederate Army led by Robert E. Lee in Northern Virginia had frustrated all Northern attempts to capture the city of Richmond, and the price the North would have to pay for total victory seemed to great for many people. This meant that there was a good chance that Lincoln would not be reelected, and that his opponent, General George B. McClellan would be the new president in 1865. There was also much speculation that McClellan would end the killing and split the United States into two countries.
However, the war in the West had gone much better for the North. The Confederacy had been split in two with the capture of Vicksburg, and they had a large army in Northern Georgia that was headed towards Atlanta. But there were still problems. The Confederate Army of The Tennesse was in its way.
This army also had a new commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, an extraordinary defensive tactician. Johnston understood that as long as his army survived, the Southern nation would survive, and didn't want to fight unless he had a clear advantage.
Thus a war of maneuver began where the two armies "danced" their way towards the city of Atlanta.
In addition, Johnston knew what might happen in the election of 1864. If he could hold out against Sherman, and not allow him that ultimate victory the North so badly needed, then Lincoln might be defeated at the polls. This was literally the best chance the South had.
Unfortunately for Johnston, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, did not see things quite the same way. Davis wanted the invader brought to battle and defeated. So at the outskirts of Atlanta, Johnston was relieved of his command and was replaced by the aggressive and courageous fighter General John B. Hood
Now some of you might be wondering what all this has to do with a poker hand. Well, a curious event now occurred. One of Sherman's subordinates, whose name I have never seen in my reading, related a story to his commander about Hood playing in a poker game many years before the Civil War began. Apparently, Hood had bet $2,500, a very large sum in those days, with "nary a pair" in his hand. Sherman immediately understood what this meant. Instead of being against a defensive tactician who was forcing him to fight a war of maneuver, the Union Army should brace itself for an attack. Sherman correctly assumed that someone's aggressive tendencies were as likely to show up at the poker table as they were on the battlefield. He now knew that he was against a fighter, not a tactician.
In fact, if his army was still on maneuver and was hit directly in the "side," the Confederates could punch a hole in his lines, separate his forces, and perhaps even defeat the whole Union cause. The dance was now over, and big betting would begin.
As suspected, the attack soon came, and after several vicious battles, including the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman - who had correctly predicted his opponent's intention all because of a poker game held many years before - finally achieved the decisive victory that the North and President Lincoln so badly needed.
So how important was this poker hand. Well, if it hadn't been played, there might not have been a United States as we know it, and all of world history might have been different. So don't let anyone ever tell you that poker isn't important, or that they just played a hand of a lifetime. I don't care what they might claim, the results can't compare to that hand played perhaps over 150 years ago.
Finally, a few of things that we don't know:
1. We don't know what form of poker Hood was playing. My guess would be some form of no limit draw poker, but that doesn't have to be the case.
2. We don't know if Hood was caught bluffing or showed the hand after raking in a big pot.
3. We don't know if this was a well thought out play on Hood's part or whether he was just steaming.
4. We have no idea as to how good a poker player Hood might have been. But I do suspect that Sherman would have been very good if he ever sat at the poker table.
by Mason Malmuth
In fact, a few of these articles have been written by me, and I enjoy reading many of them. They are informative, in many instances illustrate the dramatics and complexities of poker, and help to explain why this wonderful game keeps all of us occupied to some degree.
But it turns out that among all the poker hands ever played and written about, there is one particular hand whose importance is probably far more significant than all other poker hands ever played put together. Now that's a mouthful, and the real shame is that most of you who will read this essay don't know anything about it. Of course, that will soon be corrected.
First some background. The year was 1864 and the United States Civil War was nearing its climax. Even though the North was winning, it was not winning by enough to assure that the war would end with a favorable conclusion for the Union side. The Confederate Army led by Robert E. Lee in Northern Virginia had frustrated all Northern attempts to capture the city of Richmond, and the price the North would have to pay for total victory seemed to great for many people. This meant that there was a good chance that Lincoln would not be reelected, and that his opponent, General George B. McClellan would be the new president in 1865. There was also much speculation that McClellan would end the killing and split the United States into two countries.
However, the war in the West had gone much better for the North. The Confederacy had been split in two with the capture of Vicksburg, and they had a large army in Northern Georgia that was headed towards Atlanta. But there were still problems. The Confederate Army of The Tennesse was in its way.
This army also had a new commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, an extraordinary defensive tactician. Johnston understood that as long as his army survived, the Southern nation would survive, and didn't want to fight unless he had a clear advantage.
Thus a war of maneuver began where the two armies "danced" their way towards the city of Atlanta.
In addition, Johnston knew what might happen in the election of 1864. If he could hold out against Sherman, and not allow him that ultimate victory the North so badly needed, then Lincoln might be defeated at the polls. This was literally the best chance the South had.
Unfortunately for Johnston, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, did not see things quite the same way. Davis wanted the invader brought to battle and defeated. So at the outskirts of Atlanta, Johnston was relieved of his command and was replaced by the aggressive and courageous fighter General John B. Hood
Now some of you might be wondering what all this has to do with a poker hand. Well, a curious event now occurred. One of Sherman's subordinates, whose name I have never seen in my reading, related a story to his commander about Hood playing in a poker game many years before the Civil War began. Apparently, Hood had bet $2,500, a very large sum in those days, with "nary a pair" in his hand. Sherman immediately understood what this meant. Instead of being against a defensive tactician who was forcing him to fight a war of maneuver, the Union Army should brace itself for an attack. Sherman correctly assumed that someone's aggressive tendencies were as likely to show up at the poker table as they were on the battlefield. He now knew that he was against a fighter, not a tactician.
In fact, if his army was still on maneuver and was hit directly in the "side," the Confederates could punch a hole in his lines, separate his forces, and perhaps even defeat the whole Union cause. The dance was now over, and big betting would begin.
As suspected, the attack soon came, and after several vicious battles, including the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman - who had correctly predicted his opponent's intention all because of a poker game held many years before - finally achieved the decisive victory that the North and President Lincoln so badly needed.
So how important was this poker hand. Well, if it hadn't been played, there might not have been a United States as we know it, and all of world history might have been different. So don't let anyone ever tell you that poker isn't important, or that they just played a hand of a lifetime. I don't care what they might claim, the results can't compare to that hand played perhaps over 150 years ago.
Finally, a few of things that we don't know:
1. We don't know what form of poker Hood was playing. My guess would be some form of no limit draw poker, but that doesn't have to be the case.
2. We don't know if Hood was caught bluffing or showed the hand after raking in a big pot.
3. We don't know if this was a well thought out play on Hood's part or whether he was just steaming.
4. We have no idea as to how good a poker player Hood might have been. But I do suspect that Sherman would have been very good if he ever sat at the poker table.
by Mason Malmuth
This is a paper that Stephanie Neidig of Princeton University wrote a while back about the impact of California Indian gaming on crime rates. It's well-researched. Click to title to download a pdf:
My son Howard Lederer and daughter Annie Duke live and move and
have their beings in that windowless, clockless pleasure dome known as
Las Vegas. I'm pleased to report that they are the only sibling pair
ever both to reach the final day of a World Series of Poker event and
to have won national tournaments with capacious and impressive names,
such as the Diamond Jim Brady Texas Hold'em Shootout, the Four Queens
Poker Classic in High-Limit Omaha, and the Hall of Fame Classic
Deuce-to-Seven Lowball Draw No-Limit. Phew.
My children's achievements in the gaming halls inspire me to deal from a full deck of vivid words and phrases that have made the trip from the poker table into our everyday conversation and writing. The color and high-risk excitement of poker have made the language of the game one of the most pervasive metaphors in our language.
The basic elements of poker are the cards, the chips, and the play of the hand, and each has become embedded in our daily parlance. Beginning with the cards themselves, the verb to discard descends from decard, "away card," and first meant to reject a card from one's hand. Gradually, the meaning of discard has broadened to include rejection beyond card-playing. A cardsharp who is out to cheat you may be dealing from the bottom of the deck and giving you a fast shuffle, in which case you may get lost in the shuffle. You might call such a low-down skunk a four-flusher. Flush, a hand of five cards that are all of one suit, flows from the Latin fluxus because all the cards flow together. Four-flusher characterizes a poker player who pretends to such good fortune but in fact holds a worthless hand of four same-suit cards and one that doesn't match.
All of these terms originated with poker and other betting card games and have undergone a process that linguists call broadening. A good example of movement from one specific argot to another is wild card berth or wild card player as used in football and tennis. In these sports, a team hopes for back-to-back victories - from a fortuitous ace-down-ace-up as the first two cards in a game of five-card stud.
Now that I've laid my cards on the table, let's see what happens when the chips are down. Why do we call a gilt-edged, sure-thing stock a blue-chip stock? Because poker chips are white, red, and blue, and the blue ones are the most valuable. Why, when we compare the value and power of two things, do we often ask how one stacks up against the other, as in "How do the Red Sox stack up against the Yankees?" Here the reference is to the columns of chips piled up before the players around a poker table. These stacks of plastic betting markers also account for the expressions bottom dollar and top dollar. Betting one's bottom dollar means wagering the entire stack, and the top dollar, or chip, is the one that sits atop the highest pile on the table. Indeed, the metaphor of poker chips is so powerful that one of the euphemisms we use for death is cashing in one's chips.
The guts of poker is the betting. You bet! has become a standard affirmative in American English, and it is far from being the only betting metaphor that has traveled from the gaming halls to our common vocabulary. If you want to call my bluff on that one and insist that I put up or shut up, I'll be happy to put my money where my mouth is.
Say you're involved in a big business deal. You let the other guy know that you're not a piker running a penny ante operation and that he'd better ante up big. One theory traces piker, one who habitually makes small bets, to westward migrants from Pike County, Missouri. These small farmers were less inclined than hardened veterans to risk high stakes, and the county name became eponymously synonymous with penny-pinching cheapness. Ante, from the Latin for "before," refers to chips placed in the middle of the poker table before the betting begins, so a penny ante game is fit only for pikers.
The negotiations continue, and you sweeten the pot by upping the stakes. You don't want to blow your wad and go in the hole or in hock, but you don't want to stand pat either. Rather than passing the buck, you play it close to the vest without showing your hand, maintain an inscrutable poker face, keep everything aboveboard, and hope to hit the jackpot.
The hole in the phrase in the hole refers to a slot cut in the middle of poker tables through which checks and cash are deposited into a box, to be transferred later to the coffers of the house. In hock descends from the game of faro, a cousin of poker. The last card in the box was known as the hocketty card. The player who bet that card was said to be in hock, at a disadvantage that could lose him his shirt.
Stand pat comes from the strategy of keeping one's original (pat) hand in draw poker rather than making an exchange. Because card sharps are known to engage in chicanery when their hands are out of sight and under the table, or board, aboveboard has come to mean open honesty and under the table the opposite. Playing it close to the vest ensures that no one else will peek at the contents of a player's hand. Jackpot originally described the reward to the big winner in a game of progressive poker, in which you need a pair of jacks or better to "open the pot." Because the stakes grow higher until the requisite pair is dealt, jackpot has gradually expanded to include the pots of gold in slot machines, game shows, and state lotteries.
Pass the buck is a common cliché that means "to shift responsibility." But why, you may have asked yourself, should handing someone a dollar bill indicate that responsibility is in any way transferred? Once again the answer can be found in high-stakes gaming halls and riverboats. The buck in pass the buck was originally a poker term designating a marker that was placed in front of the player whose turn it was to deal the next hand. This was done to vary the order of betting and to keep one person from dealing all the time, thus transferring the disadvantages of being the first to wager and cutting down on the chances of cheating. During the heyday of poker in the nineteenth century, the marker was often a hunting knife whose handle was made of a buck's horn. The marker defined the game as Buckhorn Poker or Buck Poker and gave us the expression pass the buck.
In the Old West, silver dollars often replaced buckhorn knives as tokens, and these coins took on the slang name buck for their own. Former president Harry S Truman, reputed to be a skillful poker player, adopted the now-famous motto "The buck stops here," meaning that the ultimate responsibility rested with the president.
The cleverest application of poker terminology that I have ever encountered appears on the truck of a New Hampshire plumbing company: "A Flush Is Better Than a Full House." In poker that isn't true, but a homeowner would recognize its wisdom.
Great poker players must have a firm grounding in
the statistics of card distribution and probability. But, as my son and
daughter the poker champions explain, "To play poker at the highest
level is to read people - their faces, their body language, and their
behavior patterns." Language and people are inextricably intertwined.
The democratic poetry of poker that pervades our American language is a
vivid emblem of the games that we, as a civilization, watch and play.
It's in the cards. You can bet on it.
Kelvin Morrin's
Impact of a Finite Bankroll on an Even-Money
Game deals with gambler's ruin and other mathematical phenomena:
Download a pdf here.
Calculating the average cost of playing a table game is usually equated to the product of the
house edge, the average wager and the number of hands played. A linear amount that is static, providing that the player has enough financial resources to play for the specified duration. However, in the twilight of a healthy wallet, the probability of survival creeps into the equation, creating the associated cost of not having enough capital to guarantee play for the intended length of the session.
Download a pdf here.
Rob Jay submitted a brief paper. Here's an excerpt:
Click Profile of the Online Gambler (pdf) to read the whole thing
Online gambling on sports in America has surpassed the total handle of Las
Vegas casino-based sports books.
A December, 2002 Congressional Report by the US General Accounting Office stated
that online gaming reached new heights in 2002 as worldwide revenues topped $4 billion.
Of that amount, over $2 billion was wagered by US residents. Bear Stearns backed up
these findings by estimating the worldwide market would have been in excess of $5
billion had many American credit card providers not discontinued offering transfers to
offshore sports books. Meanwhile, the Nevada handle on sports books was less than $2
billion in 2002; this is the first time in a decade that the Nevada handle dropped below $2
billion.
Certainly, part of the decline in the Nevada handle can be blamed on less Americans
traveling and an overall downturn in the economy. Perhaps an even bigger factor,
however, is the proliferation of slot machines in Nevada casinos. Slots now represent
70% of the profits of Nevada casinos and offer a 6% hold while sports books have an
average 3% hold. Thus, it is not surprising that sports books are losing square footage
overall in casinos while slots are gaining in space allocated to them.
Click Profile of the Online Gambler (pdf) to read the whole thing
