It’s probably because I’ve spent the last three weeks blogging from morning until night and talking non-stop with others who love baseball, but I had no idea that there was a negative sentiment out there toward the quality of this postseason. At least that’s what they were saying when I tuned in my local sportstalk radio show — I know, my first mistake — this afternoon. It was the same usual complaints — TV broadcasts, teams involved, etc. — so I won’t go into detail here.

All I can say is that I’ve enjoyed pretty much every series so far, even though none of them have gone the distance. There have, however, been enough great performances from Philadelphia and Tampa Bay to keep me intrigued and I think we’ll be in for an interesting World Series if the LCS hold firm. No, it won’t quite be Boston versus L.A. or Chicago versus Chicago, but it’ll be the two best teams at this point in time. That’s all you can ask for. 

But first things first. The Phillies first chance at match point comes tonight out in Los Angeles. Ace lefty Cole Hamels is taking the mound for the The Fightins’ while Chad Billingsley tries to rebound from his historically bad performance in Game 2. 

AP preview is here,  AP feature on Matt Stairs is here, Tony Gwynn and Jeff Passan getting their video is here and Tim Brown’s column about Billingsley’s chance for redemption is here.

Your in-game comments are below.

Well they did it again. The ESPN coverage of Day Five of the main event of the World Series of Poker has changed the events as they actually happened. I am referring to the last five minutes where they show Phil Hellmuth going “Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” on Cristian Dragomir. They got the hand, they got about 50% of Phil’s antics and all of Dragomir’s reation. They missed the great sideshow with the audience taunting Phil and they missed Mike Matusow, who first laughs hysterically and then later tells Phil he is “way out of line” and he should stop.

I understand they have to edit something out but they completely ignored the penalty given to Phil for his behavior. It was a one orbit penalty, which would have meant over 80,000 of Phil’s remaining stack of 720,000 would be blinded off before he was allowed to take this seat the next day. The penalty was a one orbit or nine hand infraction.

But overnight, after an early morning meeting with WSOP commissioner Jeffery Pollack and Tournament Director Jack Effel, the Hellmuth penalty was lifted. Now the Poker Shrink will tell you that the penalty should never have been given and I am not going to argue with him because he was at the feature table at the end of play on Day Five. My complaint is not with the penalty or the reversal of the penalty. I want to know why ESPN is ignoring it.

They had no problem listing Chino Rheem’s police record during the show and mentioning Mike Matusow’s now five year old run in with the law but a penalty given to albeit the biggest name in poker is not worth mentioning? So much for independent coverage of the Series. Just who is in who’s back pocket here?

This particular mistake is one that many starting players seem to make - and is one that will cost you a fortune if you don’t recognise it and adjust to it. I used to habitually make this mistake until I read some of the work of the great high stakes player Barry Greenstein, who in simple terms explained what the problem is and how math is often misused in poker. The problem surrounds pre flop odds when in the blinds, and it has key implications on your game.

Say that you are playing $5/$10 limit hold’em and you are in the big blind with a junk hand. The button raises to $20. You are getting 3 to 1 odds on your money if you call. No hand is a three to one underdog to the buttons raising range (which is very large) - so you should call right? Wrong.

The problem is that although you are getting great odds on your money at this point in the hand, for the rest of the hand you will not be. As once you are on the flop all the money will be bet in equal units you can start to see the problem. 99% of the time the hand will not be checked down, so in order to get to a showdown you will have to call bets laying you much worse odds.

In fact, if you were to call down every street with a junk hand, you are putting in six units to win eight - which is around 1.3 to 1 - a much worse price than the initial 3 to 1 that enticed you to call (notice this is not the right price to call a raise pre flop with junk against the buttons range of hands as well).

This is a basic trick of psychology, and one that is used constantly by banks, and has basically caused the sub prime mortgage crisis. Banks offer you a great introductory offer (the pre flop price), on a house you can’t really afford to buy (the hand that is too weak to play), and then jack up your mortgage rate for the most part of the mortgage (all the subsequent streets of betting), leaving you with equally unpalatable options - either selling your house and losing everything (folding your hand), or trying to pay over the top rates in the vain hope that you will be able to possibly keep your house (calling down and hoping to win).

As we can see from the sub prime crisis, this is not a very good idea in any walk of life, and in poker it is a major leak that has to be noticed and recognised. Always think about not only about the price you are being given at the time, but about the price of the whole hand - it may be that you are digging a hole you could easily have avoided.

Most poker players will declare that there is more to the game (or indeed sport depending on your viewpoint) than just luck as many would have you believe, but there appears to be a growing change in official eyes, writes Rob Eddy.

Not so long ago, Russia recently decided that poker should be classed as a sport in the country, rather than a game of chance. They may well be onto something considering the performance of their players Ivan Demidov and Stanislav Alekhin (Flickr link), who finished third and second respectively in the recent World Series of Poker Europe, while the former is also preparing himself for the final table of the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas.

The Czech Republic then decided to review its classification and now it appears the debate has been re-opened in Holland - and there is even a formula to prove the point.

Two professors, Ben van der Genugten (probability and mathematical statistics) and Peter Borm (mathematics and game theory), came up with a rather simple formula, which determines a skill value or skill ratio. The formula being:-

Skill = Learning Effect / (Learning Effect + Chance Effect)

According to their formula, the learning effect is the difference in the outcome of a game between an optimum player and a beginner. The result quantifies skill and the smaller the role chance plays in a game, the higher the skill value.

A game of total chance, such as roulette, has a ’skill rating’ of zero, while a game of pure skill would have a ’skill value’ of 1, and Van der Genugten has now openly criticised the official position as poker, under the formula, has a skill rating of 0.4.

This figure may not seem like a lot but it actually is significantly higher than games that have been classed as games of skill, such as fantasy sports games (0.3), and is closer to chess or bridge.

However, poker is not yet classed as a game of skill and the calls are growing to have its case re-examined, particularly as Van der Genugten has appeared as an expert witness in a number of cases in court.

Whether or not it is reclassified remains to be seen but I am sure this is by no means the end of the debate.

Awful
Announcing has been all over a miniature war of words going on between
ex-quarterbacks turned-commentators Boomer Esiason and Troy Aikman. Boomer, for
reasons I can’t imagine, got things started by going off on Troy Aikman on
WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan Show. Boomer feels like Aikman
was a little too pro-Cowboy in his commentary on FOX.

"It was the first time that I heard a legitimate bias from one Troy Aikman
towards the Dallas Cowboys. You would’ve thought that the Arizona Cardinals
weren’t even in the building. I was taken back by some of the things that Troy
was saying, and I like Troy. I really do. He’s a very bright broadcaster, but
the bias that was coming from him yesterday was actually stunning."

What I find stunning is that Boomer Esiason appointed himself ombudsman of
NFL broadcasters. Why he feels like it’s his place to tell other analysts how to
do their job, I couldn’t tell you. More on that in a second. Here
was Aikman’s response, as
e-mailed to Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News:

"Well, I’m glad Boomer is watching the NFL on Fox. I take great pride in not showing a bias towards any team that I am broadcasting and I’m confident the teams that I have covered over the last eight seasons would agree that I’ve been balanced and fair with my coverage. Also, I never much got into critiquing other quarterbacks when I played and I don’t get too wrapped up in critiquing broadcasters now."

The first thought I have here is that I’ve never found Aikman to be at all
pro-Cowboy. It’s not like he shows up in the booth wearing his old jersey, with
a pair of leather boots and a Cowboy hat. If there’s any bias there, he does a
good job of hiding it. I think it’s the kind of thing where if you’re listening
for it, you’ll probably be able to find examples of it. If you’re not, you
probably won’t.

But I think the bigger point is this: So what if Aikman did have a
Cowboys bias? I expect analysts to talk about what they know, and spending his
entire career as a Cowboy, yeah, Aikman might have a little bit of attachment to
the organization. He’s human. It happens.

Everyone’s got biases. Am I to believe that Boomer Esiason played 14 years in
the NFL and never liked or disliked anyone? And that every day he walks into the
CBS studio or the Westwood One booth, he just checks those feelings at the door?
What is he, a cyborg?

That’s the thing about biases. They’re there, whether you want them to be or
not. And that’s okay. You do your best to call things down the middle and you
try to be perfectly fair, but there’s always a human element involved. Let’s
embrace it, not stifle it.

Does anyone else feel like Boomer does, that Aikman is too pro-Cowboy? Are
there any other announcers who lean to much in a certain direction?