Poker's Greatest All-Time Whales: Barkley, Jordan and A-Rod

It's the holy grail of poker - a big-moneyed, amateur poker player with a bottomless bankroll, an eye for the gamble and next-to-no sense of what's truly happening on the felt.
In honor of the Discovery Channel's Shark Week guest blogger James Guill breaks down some of poker's biggest-ever donators in a five-part series we've dubbed #WhaleWeek.
Next up: An off-the-poker-path trio that includes Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan and Alex Rodriguez.
By James Guill
The world of professional gambling is marked cards often compared to the world of professional sports thanks to the adrenaline rushes you get gambling for large sums of money.
Given their competitive drive, generous salaries and large amounts of downtime, it's little surprise major sports figures can become some of gambling's biggest whales.

Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley is one of the more colorful characters in NBA history. Always brash and outspoken the 11-time all-star had a 17-year career split between the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets.
"Sir Charles" may be one of the biggest sports whales in the history of the game. Barkley once admitted to ESPN that he has dropped over $10 million gambling with his largest single loss $2.5 million during a six-hour blackjack session.
While, granted, not much of his $10 million in losses may have been at the poker tables but Barkley is known to play poker and uses his skills to benefit charity.
He's entered numerous charity poker events in the past including the $5,000 Ante-Up for Africa Charity Event at both the 2008 and 2009 World Series of Poker. Spike Lee, as you see in the clip above, can also vouch he's dropped a few dollars at the poker table.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan is considered by most to be the greatest basketball player of all-time. Winning three NBA Championships with the Chicago Bulls from 1991 to 1993, Jordan retired from the game after the murder of his father only to come back in 1995.
He went on to lead the Bulls to three more titles from 1996 through 1998.
His Airness definitely classifies as a celebrity whale. His gambling exploits caused major controversy during the early 1990s when it was revealed he had multi-million dollar losses in golf, baccarat and blackjack.
Jordan also likes to play high-stakes poker on occasion. As Spike Lee shares in the clip above, at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics Jordan was reportedly more interested in gambling than in playing basketball.
After watching him virtually cripple two NBA franchises in the past decade from the front office, we also have little doubt Jordan was not the smartest player at the tables.

Alex Rodriguez

Love him or hate him Alex Rodriguez is certainly one of the most talented baseball players in Major League history.
A-Rod has put up impressive numbers throughout his career bu tunfortunately his link with performance enhancing drugs has resulted in a long-term ban from the game which he is currently appealing.
Connections with PEDs are not the only blemish on his record as MLB has long been keeping an eye on him due to his connection with gambling infrared contactlenses.
Rodriguez has long been connected to the world of underground high-stakes poker games in New York and Los Angeles. Major League Baseball has investigated his poker play on multiple occasions, most recently his involvement with an illegal New York poker ring run by Russian gangsters.
Rodriguez has been a participant in various underground poker games since 2007 and even Major League Baseball has warned him that participating in underground games could lead to trouble
Back in August the Federal government indicted 40 people connected with an underground game that was described as "poker on steroids." Rodriguez was one of the whales that the group catered too.
The group laundered over $100 million in the games, making one wonder just how high A-Rod was playing (and losing).

 

The Naked Raise Plus: Post-Flop Play Part III

Let's continue our overview of post-flop play. In the past two columns we looked at eight fundamental strategic moves.
Here are four more.
IX. The naked raise on the flop.
This ploy is a variation on the float play (see Part II) in that it takes advantage of an aggressive player who has likely missed the flop.
The principle behind it is the same one that motivates the float: most flops miss most hands. However, instead of flat-calling the pre-flop raiser's continuation bet, you raise marked cards.
The move will be either a bluff or a semi-bluff, depending on whether you caught a piece of the flop yourself.
The success of this gambit depends largely on the texture of the flop and your sense of the range of hands your opponent might have raised with pre-flop. Since the move is essentially a steal, it's more likely to succeed on raggedy boards.
Interestingly, it won't matter all that much what your table image is here. If you're seen as loosey-goosey, your opponent is going to wonder about a possible two-pair on a flop like T♣ 8♦ 5♠
If you've established a tight, conservative image, flops like this invite thoughts about flopped sets.
There are also other boards that invite this move, including what you may think as unlikely ones like three suited cards or three mid-sized connectors. They work because your opponent has to worry about you having hit the flop hard.
How much to raise will be an issue and there are no unmessy ways to determine this. Factors such as your image, your opponent's tendencies, your positions, stack sizes and the like will come into play.
Generally, you want to use the smallest raise that looks like it will work since if you get called or re-popped you're almost certainly going to have to let the hand go.
The naked raise isn't a move for every hand. In fact, it should be employed judiciously.
X. Pay attention to players on your left. They will often have tells about planned action.
Numerous columns have been written about this, yet surprisingly, many players fail to use it after the flop - especially one that has been seen by several players.
The most costly outcome of this failure is to make a modest bet, say half the pot, and then look left and see that your opponent has already picked up a stack and is moving in for the kill.
Having to dump a half-pot bet into the ether once or twice a night can be expensive.
XI. In most situations, the value of a made infrared marked cards hand diminishes with each new card. I know, this is obvious, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to forget it under pressure.
I have no hard data on this but as we noted earlier (Part II), I suspect that more money is lost in NLH with flops that give you either top-pair top-kicker or bottom-two than any other holdings.
They are highly vulnerable hands just because they're unlikely to improve, whereas there are myriad holdings that can run them down - and when they do, it can hurt.
The problem is it's so easy to get emotionally attached to strong hands ("get married" is the tag line often heard). The solution is to remember that their strength diminishes with each new card that hits the board.
Make sure you think through each situation. Try to calculate the likelihood that your hand is still best or whether flop texture, betting, position and your opponent's likely hand range shout out warnings.
XII. Learn how to counter "standard" gambits like c-bets, traps and float plays.
Most winning players know the standard ploys and use them advantageously. However, many have not dug sufficiently into the ways to counter them.
There are no algorithms here but some tricks that work are known. For example, you're reasonably sure your opponent's call on the flop is the first move in a float play. Instead of checking the turn, fire a second bullet or, even more aggressively, check-raise.
The "naked raise" move discussed above can also be used to neutralize the continuation bet. When you raise a c-bet from a typical player you are accomplishing several things.
First, you're shaping your image as a focused and aggressive player. You're telling the table that they're not always going to get away with a simple c-bet.
Second, you're introducing an element that will play an important part of the meta-game. It can get you a free card that a less-aggressive player won't.
It can also provide you with the opportunity to take control of a hand by removing the initiative.
More in a later column.

Don't Let Imitation Ruin Your Game

There's a time and a place for emulating your poker-player heroes, but take it too far at the table and you could be harming your chances of winning. Why do people do it?
We Homo sapiens are an imitative species. A trip to the zoo will reveal that we share this tendency with our closest relatives (as in "monkey see, monkey do"). Infants imitate others as soon as they can; three-day-olds will stick out their tongues if they see an adult do it.
A huge amount of what we learn comes from observing others and marked cards, as we grow and mature, our role models become touchstones for our own developing selves. We like movies and television and love to imagine ourselves as our heroes; we want to be like that dude up there on screen.
But imitation has limitations. It works best when learning something new. It helps you get started because you focus on the important stuff and there is less to learn on your own. But if you hope to become an expert, you must leave off copying others and develop your own skills --- and this brings us to poker.
The poker landscape has undergone seismic changes in just a few years, much of it due to TV. The exposure has created stars. Guys who, a couple of years ago, were crawling the dusty roads from one underground game to another now have agents, personal trainers and their own Web sites.
Twenty-somethings who were sitting in front of their computers in their tighty whities eking out gas money in $1/$2 games are now tooling around in Porsches. This is great and I wish them the very best - and I hope they're doing the right thing for their futures, 'cause it's real tough to stay in the limelight for long.
Of course, as most realize, watching poker on TV isn't really watching poker played on TV. It's an edited show. Compelling scenes have been selected; the dross has landed on the metaphoric cutting room floor. It is entertainment.
It has to be. It has to sell advertising time and it has to draw an audience. It has done both, more than anyone (including the producers) ever imagined. But it is not poker, not really - although some shows, like High Stakes Poker, get close.
Poker, according to the late, great Jack Straus, is "hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." Boredom don't sell beer.
These stars have become role models and, predictably, have spawned legions of imitators, players who seem to think they gain something by acting like their heroes. They don't. They look like bozos and it hurts their game.
When good players see this kind of posturing, they work to unpack the offender's game. They aren't impressed; they just think you're a bad joke. Here are three of the worst. If you see yourself below, do yourself and the rest of us a favor: stop it.
Hollywooding
We've all watched Sammy Farha "contemplate" a big bet by counting out his chips, stacking and restacking them, riffling them over and over, counting them again, flipping them, stacking... gag!
Of course, then he folds. There are reasons for this act. It has a touch of drama. Sammy and the unlit cigarette stay marked cards contactlenses on camera and it has secondary gain in that it annoys opponents who are likely to tilt.
I'm tired of Sammy's act but I understand it. But I've had it with kids imitating it in my game. There is no camera my friends, no air time and no agents will be calling. You're wasting everyone's time and you're not gaining an edge on me. I have labeled you a "bozo" and I like to play with bozos.
And, while you're at, stop tying to dress like Phil Laak. Dump the hoodie.
The Stare
Phil Hilm got himself a lot of TV exposure during last year's WSOP finals. I suspect he's a decent enough player (he apparently has done well in European events), although his meltdown at the final table was stunning.
But no matter. The fascination with Hilm was "The Stare." Every time he had to act he would turn and rivet his opponent with an icy, focused glare. Like Sammy's Hollywood gambit, it got him air time.
Hilm's stare isn't anything new, of course. His was just the most recent and one of the more penetrating of the genre. But these peering, leering, staring, glaring clowns keep showing up in my games.

If you've become a practitioner of The Stare, here are some things to know. First, as noted in an earlier piece of mine, few if any tells are picked up this way. Tells are garnered from patterns of betting, talking and larger physical bodily actions.
Second, staring this way is a tell. It usually reflects uncertainty.
Third, I think it's funny and I have taken to snickering when opponents do it.
And, while contemplating this, please dump the shades. If you haven't noticed, many pros who wear them take them off in critical moments when they need to get all the information they can. I watched a poseur with aviators get stacked when he misread the board. The glasses went into his pocket on the very next hand.
Hand Reading
I love watching Daniel Negreanu smile, lean forward and say something like, "Man, you called with J-9o and hit that second pair." And, of course, because we know the hole cards, we see that he was exactly right. In fact, the commentators often remark about Daniel's seemingly occult hand reading skills.
Daniel is good at this, among the best. It is an important element in his success. But, keep in mind that the show you are watching is edited and a dead-on read like this is a "TV moment." Missed reads aren't.
Hand reading has a lot in common with picking up tells. It's based on detecting patterns over time. It is also not aimed at putting an opponent on a specific hand, although occasionally that is possible.
Hand reading begins with educated guesses about a range of hands an opponent could be holding and, as more information becomes available, progresses to a gradual narrowing of that range. When you know precisely what an opponent has, your grandma knows too.
Take-home message: Imitation is, indeed, a sincere form of flattery. It helps develop skills, and picking the right role model can be critical in the life choices we make.
But to really excel in anything we must go beyond emulating others. Find your own way. Stop the Hollywood gambit, dump The Stare and don't make a dunce out of yourself telling me I'm playing A-Js when I'm on a stone-cold bluff.