Episode #481 - November 16th, 2017

Live from the Two Plus Two Studios - On this episode of the Pokercast: Lots of poker world drama between Daniel Negreanu & James Woods, plus Leon Tsoukernik & Matt Kirk can't settle another huge debt. To begin the guys chat about AM radio before we jump into the news. Leon Tsoukernik is again front and centre after yet another handshake deal (for $3 Million this time) goes wrong, the lender was Aussie Matt Kirk. We break down the report provided by Rob Yong and what we know about the deal. Then Daniel Negreanu calls out actor and recreational poker player James Woods for his reported sexual misconduct, we talk about the twitter reactions from the controversy. Other stories include Party Poker removing their account inactivity fees. We then get into 140 (280?) or less with some great tweets from the last week, and your Mail! We get to some questions about Chris Ferguson potentially data mining Full Tilt and Poker Pro appearance fees before we wrap things up.

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ta da

1. Wristwatches are DEFINITELY useless.
2. I still wear one.

Terrence,

Amateur Life Ethicist take summary: your friends are alright

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In the show, you noted your non-poker playing friends were aghast and mystified at 6 figure and up handshake deals and that your non-poker playing friends didn't appreciate the ethical complexity here. Because in the high stakes poker industry, that's the norm.

From everything I heard, Leon is in the wrong and I loved your analogy about driving your car to the bad part of town, leaving it unlocked and then having it stolen. That doesn't excuse the thief. Therefore we can see by way of analogy Leon still did wrong even if the high stakes poker industry standards are exotic and hard for normal people to understand.

HOWEVER, that is and of itself a *problem* for high stakes poker. Sometimes if outsiders look into your group, industry sector, niche thing, etc. and wonder aloud about the norms, that's a valid red flag for insiders.

That is, I think your friends have their moral intuition landing in the right place and you shouldn't dismiss their argument. At least we should reflect on it. You see this argument commonly in the payday loan lending industry where critics will point out there's a lot of usury and payday loan lenders are preying on poor people and that's unseemly; sometimes defenders and apologists will just say "welp, that's the industry norm." Sometimes retailers with bad websites and lax data security will get hacked, or have credit card data stolen, and eventually they land on "well, we need to keep transactions fluid, otherwise we would lose business. That's the norm in our industry to have low standards, we just know some bad incidents will happen." The whole PCI data security standards movement (initiated by the credit card companies and banks themselves) are to create incentives and an environment where retailers can't pivot to this norm if they want to continue to be able to authorize credit cards.

So I think that "it's just the norm" is basically non-responsive or a non-sequitur. Sure, it might be the industry norm. I'm sure you're correct million dollar handshake loans are common enough in high stakes poker. But that's also why the show description for this episode is "yet another handshake deal ...goes wrong."

Bad norms are problems to solve.

Obviously if high stakes poker players don't care that much about fixing the problem, and then just calculate this as part of doing business and it becomes an EV calculation for them because some amount of unscrupulous angle shooting and welching is baked into the transaction, then sure, fine -- carry on. But then the discussion about the ethics of it are pretty banal. Leon is in the wrong, but why would any one on the outside *really* care? It doesn't really sound like a problem to solve then.

The rest of the world has contracts and a whole host of ethical, professional, legal, and business standards around them (e.g., the six elements of a valid contract, a process of management to execute the contract and reduce financial risk, lawyers and courts to help adjudicate disputes). If high stakes poker players eschew this sort of thing as a norm to keep things fluid, why does anyone really care about the ethics? We know people are going to angle-shoot, to welch, to be unscrupulous. So do high stakes poker players apparently. Formal contracts and the host of accompanying 'norms' in all other industries exists to solve this exact thing. It seems like a valid enough choice to go without them, but then the ethical quagmires will persist and will basically be unsolvable.

tl;dr summary:

- you're correct Leon did wrong from what I can see.
- have some patience for your non-poker playing friends, handshake loan deals for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are inscrutable for almost everyone. We have workable solutions for these problems; the high stakes community makes a choice not to use them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

These are all fair comments but I wasn't referring to random non-poker playing friends. If that's what you heard, then I probably phrased myself poorly. I'm talking about people more or less in the poker world. Take a look at the NVG thread or say, responses to the Daniel Negreanu tweets on the topic to see how many people who do play poker taking this, "why didn't you get it in writing"/"why would you loan someone money to gamble" line.

I see.

I guess we expect poker players to realize it's basically an EV calculation like any other. And that's fair.

And I would *not* say categorically never to loan people money to gamble. Gambling can be like any other venture for someone with capital. I get that.

And I'd repeat that in the context of understanding the existing norms and conventions in high stakes poker, we absolutely should not spare Leon condemnation for his welching / angle shot simply because the deal wasn't put in writing. Like you said, someone being insecure with their car doesn't give you the right to steal it.

But: I am but an amateur / low stakes donk, and I can appreciate the high stakes communities norms and why they operate without deals in writing, contracts, or formality.

Still, in the context of how to improve this going forward, I maintain "put five figure plus loans in writing" remains the optimal solution that serves like every other industry and walk of life. So long as the sums of money are vast, counting on honor and handshakes and informal standards are a recipe for the incentives of the large sum of money overriding any decency or norms.

That is: it seems like a bad norm and most of the problems that spring forth are predictable. Doesn't necessarily reduce my sympathy for the guys getting screwed or reduce the guilt of the offenders.

Minor retort to my response: I do make some exception for the people who are loaning money to impulsive/desperate/drunk people to gamble against themselves. It's one thing to say, for instance, stake an impulsive friend and root them on even if you think it's sort of -EV or a bad idea. And then you expect the money back because you're friends. You still expect your friend to honor their word. The dude lending the money should not expect to be stiffed.

However if you're loaning money to a guy who is on tilt, desperate, buzzed, etc. and then you play him on credit, that can devolve into excessively predatory. Poker is necessarily a game of predation but norms should include limits. This is very, very situational / contextual though.

I wish there'd been more back and forth between Negreanu and James Woods so you could revive the Twitter beef live reenactments.

Sure, unless you want to know the time instantly. People will reply saying "I have a phone" for reasons I don't quite understand, as if they seriously believe that getting a phone out of your pocket and pressing a button is somehow that much more convenient than looking at your wrist.

Furthermore, a wristwatch is basically the only socially-acceptable fashion accessory for men in the western world; its serving a highly practical purpose is handy as well.

This episode was good but I'm not sure if it was worth publishing it twice ;-) It showed up today in my feeds as new...

second

Interesting 4 & 4/7 chat:

The decimal expansions of sevenths are all generated by the string 142857 - you repeat the string, starting from a different number for each seventh.

1/7 is 0.142857142857...
2/7 is 0.285714285714...
3/7 is 0.428571428571...
& so on.

Why wouldn't 8 month pregnant women do math. Math was the only thing keeping me sane during those months resembling a ball.

Yeah, I probably should have said "unnecessary" rather than "useless." Everything you wrote here is pretty much the reason I still wear a watch.

Incidentally, I don't think anyone would say looking at the phone is "that much more convenient." They would probably say it is "equally convenient," or more likely, "slightly inconvenient but no so much that it warrants having a wristwatch."

changing fractions to decimals is usually a really unnecessary and annoying thing.

What's 7 divided by 13?

That would be seven thirteenths

I just got to the end of this - when it comes to missing planes, it’s all fine if you’re stuck in traffic and never even check in, but I’m not sure what punishment is severe enough for the douchbags who make everyone wait sat on the plane while they’re pissing about somewhere else in the terminal.

If your talking Hollywood sex scandal, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t forget about Danny Masterson.

Sorry to ask a question here but Mr. DVaut1 doesn’t accept PM’s. Mr. DVaut1 : where do you play and do you ever post in the Detroit thread ?

Were you guys talking about A&W or did I hear you wrong (even though I rewound and listened again). This place? https://www.awrestaurants.com/ Were you just trolling Ross?
These are everywhere in the USofA.
Although I do see now in the Wiki that, "A&W restaurants in Canada have been part of a separate and unaffiliated chain since 1972."