Ship It, Fish!

I am off to have breakfast and then play in the tourney. The registration took a lot of time, but I got some cash game play in last night too. I'll be doing voiceposts throughout the day.

Back in March, I mentioned that I was hoping to write up various cognitive biases and how they relate to poker. I'd first like to cover the trait ascription bias, because I think it drives at the heart of one of the first things poker books teach us.

All introductory poker books tell us to profile players at our table. Generally, there are four categories: tight-weak, tight-aggressive, loose-passive, and loose-aggressive. We are often encouraged to make these assessments quickly.

However, the trait ascription bias indicates that people are more complicated than that. For new players, these four categories are a way to begin to learn how to classify the play of others. But, if you are finding, as you advance, that you still have only six words you use to describe someone's play, you have fallen into the trait ascription bias.

The answer, of course, is right there in the “other half” of the bias' definition. If you monitor your own play carefully, you'll see that you have probably fallen into every single one of those categories from time to time. Of course, your natural tendency is in one specific place. (Schoonmaker's Psychology of Poker helps you fill out nice charts to understand yours and others natural tendencies.) But, you have the ability to move around in tendencies based on your mood, the game conditions, or even how much sleep you've had.

Other people are like this, too. Greg (of River Street) once told me that he doesn't like to take notes on players online, but rather focus on “session reads” to see where the players are at the given moment. There is some serious value in this, because it helps Greg avoid the trait ascription bias by not stereotyping players.

I have done reasonably well avoiding it, but in a different way. My online notes usually say things like this: I've seen this player do X in situation Y. In other words, I keep track of what I've seen, but don't ascribe to it any particular classification. You begin to understand tendencies when you observe similar behavior over long periods of time, but at each given moment, you have to assume that it is not necessarily a predictor of future behavior until it is observable as a pattern.

Another piece of this trait attribution puzzle is that people learn. I mentioned a while back that I recently played W.D. heads up. I played my usual hyper-aggressive heads-up style against him which failed to work. He's learned a lot of poker since the last time we sat down. I fell into the trait ascription bias by assuming that his skill had stayed static, when of course it hadn't. It had been months since we played heads-up, and I had actually been a witness to his improvement, as we talk about poker almost daily! Trait attribution bias can be quite strong if it can cause someone to hold the bias in a situation that they have personally witnessed change.

I started working on another post about River Street (I promise, it's coming soon, salvelinus), and it got me thinking about poker communities. River Street made my poker life into a community. I honestly have never felt part of a community in poker since then. These days, I am in poker as I am in most things — an outsider looking in.

Poker has become a solitary activity. I do play mostly online at the moment, simply because the EV is better. But, even when I was travelling weekly to Foxwoods or playing a few times a week at the games in NYC, I was generally not part of a specific community.

As an outsider, I often wonder if the poker communities that I see around me are genuine. Are people really friends in poker? How much time do they spend together? How much time do they spend talking about the game? Are their friendships primarily outside of poker or is poker the central commonality that holds the relationships together? I admit that while I can often make great reads of people and their tendencies at the poker table, relationships — even those in poker — have usually remained completely mysterious.

My closest poker-playing friends are simply not as deeply into it as I am (e.g., W.D. and nick_marden), and our relationships are primarily defined in commonalities that are wholly outside of poker. So, I naturally wonder what I'm missing that these seemingly tight nit groups of poker players have. Do players in these groups have an edge over the solitary, self-motivated player? Is there more to be learned by having a group than going it alone? Is poker more fun and less lonely that way?

Oddly, I got seriously into poker primarily as a way to meet people outside of the computer science world and expand my horizons. But, ironically, I don't meet many people anymore in poker. Sure, just like on a plane ride, I meet the occasional “single-serving friend” at the tables, but I rarely ever see that person again. I am certainly not finding friends easily in poker anymore; I am mostly just showing up to take their money.

From time to time, I have thought about getting out there and just building a poker community myself. I was reminded of this when Howard Lederer talked on The Circuit recently about the group that came out of the old Mayfair club right here in NYC. They became some of the best in the world because they came together as part of a group that learned from each other. The NYC poker clubs of today are too transient now to make that happen. Nevertheless, the idea of forming a poker study group has crossed my mind more than twice. I wonder, though, if it would be worth the effort. I doubt that anyone in NYC but me is enough of a poker geek to show up regularly to sit around and talk about poker without even playing it. But, I'm still thinking about it, anyway.

As for online “communities”, like the 2+2 fora, such things aren't for me anymore. As a lifelong computer geek, I've already spent far too much of my life substituting online venues for real life interaction, and I resolved long ago not to do that anymore. It's real life or burst, at least in that arena.

Apparently, I am not part of the puzzle when it comes to group car trips from NYC to Atlantic City. I'll just have to wait for them to build the new train in late 2007; fortunately I'm a poker player and therefore patient. When it's built, it will be reminiscent of, but fortunately much nicer than, my bi-weekly poker bus trips to Foxwoods back when I played $2/$4 and $4/$8 limit HE. These days, I wouldn't consider getting on a Greyhound or Chinatown death-trap just to play poker, and the Philadelphia train connect is too cumbersome and lengthy to bother (hence the casino cash to build the NYC-to-AC weekend train). Perhaps someday they'll be car or train rides with poker chatter all the way down someday, but for the moment, I'll be the usual solitary poker traveler, at least until W.D. and I head to the WSoP.

For this weekend, W.D. talked me out an excursion to the few NYC clubs still running. He pointed out that so many people are leaving the city for various holiday events, that it may not be great game selection at the clubs. He's probably correct, so I didn't go.

But, not to be thwarted, I've decided it's finally time to try the Long Island (Freeport) Poker Cruise. It seems to have mixed reviews, although sometimes the games are apparently rocking. I'm going during the day, given that I don't want to be coming back late from a place that has been robbed in the past.

I note they only run $4/$8 limit on the weekend days, which seems to indicate to me that it will be like Foxwoods during the day — lots of elderly calling stations. They are usually kind people but total fish, which is a real win-win (opposed to the hyper-aggressive jerks who frequent the NYC games). If there are some in the NL game, I'm sure it will be easy pickings, and might even beat the huge rake.

I'll post a full review when I return.

I have always loved games. Card games of all sorts — gin rummy, rummy 500 (the “old lady” version of gin rummy), canasta, hearts, pinochle — I played every last one of them. I could once recite verbatim the rules of every known card game in According to Hoyle.

In high school and college, I got serious about other types of games. I am enough of a geek to admit I played an awful lot of Dungeons and Dragons and similar role playing games. Those have helped my poker immensely, because they are so much more about the psychology of your fellow players and how they are likely to react to your actions.

Games were always a huge part of my life. Even though I admit it's a bit pathetic, the phrase, “it's only a game”, never had any meaning to me. Nothing was ever only a game to me. Games mattered. Playing them correctly and determining the proper way of playing mattered. Winning mattered some, but I never minded if I thought I did the right thing. (I was destine, in other words, to be comfortable with bad beats.)

Of course, by late high school, even though chess was still a big part of my life (admittedly, I was never very good at any game where complete information was available to all players), poker was my preferred game. C.M. (my college poker and chess friend) and I ran the weekly poker games in my college dorm. I (retroactively) call them “$5 buy-in pot limit dealer's choice mixed games&rquo;, but at the time it was just “poker”. I payed for most of my pizza in college with money won in those games; a usual good take was about $15 for an evening — honestly a lot of money for college students in those days.

In graduate school, I got interested some in Diplomacy. Of all the games I've ever played, I think it is most similar to poker. Diplomacy is a board game where the winner is determined by who negotiates best with the other players. There are bluffs (usually called “stabs” in Diplomacy-speak), where you make promises to support another player's armies and then don't. There are moves similar to defensive bets, and over-bets, and slow-plays. Someday, I had actually thought I'd write up a comparison between Diplomacy and poker, but I don't think I ever will. My love for Diplomacy doesn't seem sustainable.

When I took a break from poker recently, I got pretty serious about Diplomacy again. I signed up for a few Internet games. They take a long time to play (usually live games take 7 hours and Internet games, since all communication happens in writing rather than verbal, can take months). I'm still in the two games, but I have all but given up on trying anymore.

I have noticed an old frustration of mine. When there is no external reward (i.e., the money in poker), I find that people don't take the game seriously. And, it has the side-effect of making me want to quit playing. In both my Diplomacy games, two players have quit mid-game. Others had some early losses and gave up rather than play their best. (Comebacks happen often in Diplomacy, so you should never give up.) Others simply lost interest and aren't playing the game fully. Either way, the games turned sour because there was no real competition.

I started to think about why I don't feel this way about poker. The answer is quite obvious, actually. When people don't take poker seriously, I get free money (or, at least, situations with wonderfully positive EV). One of two things happen when you play poker: you are challenged by opponents that you have to work hard to outplay, or you are presented with lots of great EV situations. Either way, you win.

Meanwhile, if you play a game where nothing of value is on the line against opponents who don't take it seriously, what's the point? You get frustrated; well, at least I do. I remember a time in my life when I would get so angry at such a thing — people didn't see the games as important as I did and I couldn't stand it. Since then, two things have happened: (a) I am more likely to realize that I don't have control of other people's actions, so I just quit the game, and (b) I'm usually playing a game (namely, poker) that rewards me no matter what others do. I either get an enjoyable, serious, challenge game, or I get really good EV.

Other games could be like this, I guess. I can imagine a Diplomacy game where the seven players put up money to make a prize pool. Diplomacy even has, as part of its tradition, negotiated settlements (where people agree to end the game with a certain number of players remaining). Those negotiations would be very interesting if there were money to be won. Indeed, I can imagine that people would rediscover the game and how amazing it is if there was serious money in it.

I have to admit, though, a twinge of sadness that games are about money for me now. I guess the truth is that almost all people don't love games the way I do. I'd guess around 1% of the population feels as I do about games. So, odds are that my opponents won't ever have that same love for it, and they won't ever take it as seriously. So, I will usually have to “settle for” playing against players who just don't love the game like I do, and who want to give their money away to better players. It's a nice thing to settle for, but it still leaves some sense of loss.

Going back to Diplomacy reminded me, though, that poker is truly unique. It's an almost magical game of psychology, played for money with cards and chips. No other game really compares to it, because no other game has all these aspects. No other game digs at the deep psychological roots of how people feel about losing and winning money. I could imagine Diplomacy getting the job done in this regard, but I don't think there any high stakes Diplomacy clubs sprouting up soon. It certainly won't be a casino attraction.

So, I'll stick to poker. It's a wonderful game, and while I have a twinge of regret that I won't sit for hours figuring the best opening moves when I've been drawn Austria against an aggressive Turkey, I will still have plenty of game strategy to think about against a nice array of opponents. That is, until the poker bubble bursts.

In Computer Science, there is a classic series academic papers and correspondence between two of the most famous theorists of the field called Goto Considered Harmful. “Considered Harmful” has since become a somewhat clichéd way of opening a discussion pointing out that a certain common component of a given discipline gets in the way of its clear-minded practice.

It is in this spirit that I put forward the idea that bravado — in particular, male bravado — is bad for poker. You might also call it (metaphorically) testosterone, one-up-manship, narcissistic over-confidence, or in the crass words of Mike Matusow, “Greg, I've got big cahones, you've got little, bitty cahones”. Culturally, this tendency is more male than female, and some men have a difficult time clearing their head enough to see past it.

This first came to mind today when I watched a recorded episode of Inside Poker (a low-budget poker show in syndication here in NYC on SNY), where Annie Duke was interviewed by Matt Savage. Matt asked Annie the usual annoying questions about women in poker are not “winning enough championships”. Annie — being very “on message” about the issue (having surely been asked too often about it) — pointed out that if you look at 2004 WSoP (not counting the women-only event), women made up 5% of the tournament fields, but won 10% of the events. She also added that since men generally give women less respect in the game, they get in better spots because they can trap the (95% male) opponents better.

I really believe that men in our culture have some negative psychological issues with competitiveness. Of course, a reasonable level of competitiveness is good in poker. But, so easily, that competitiveness can go overboard for many men. It's not that it is impossible that women can have the same problem, but I think that cultural conditioning has led many men to think too much in terms of winning and conquering at the expense of clear thinking.

I have experienced this a lot in my own poker life. I have invested a good deal in poker friendships with men who turn out to be a little too obsessed with money, wealth, success and other such Freudian measures of manliness. This works out ok for me when they are better players, as I am clearly not the alpha male in the situation. I then have an opportunity to learn from them. However, in those situations where it begins to seem that maybe I'm a better player than they are, things get creepy.

Some men just have this need to dominate other men. They tend to want to surround themselves with with people that they just barely outrank — perhaps just below their par. Then, they can feel challenged, but still dominate. Such men have the hardest time taking criticism or a loss, and then look for ways to embarrass, insult, needle or mistreat the other when it doesn't seem they can prove their dominance in another way. Other times, they become obsessed with showing off how “successful” they are away from the poker table.

I've ended up in more than one relationship like that. I've learned to break them off when they turn ugly, rather than forgive and forget, only to be mistreated again. Usually, the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back isn't a big one, so I wouldn't be surprised if the perception is that I have flaked rather than terminated an obvious bad relationship. I've tried to be more explicit, but it doesn't seem to help with people so obsessed with competitiveness.

Of course, being that way negatively impacts one's poker game. If you are that type of man, you are going to end up pushing away the people who can really teach you something and draw closer those that you can beat. I'm all for once in a while sitting down in a lower-stakes, ultra-soft game of strangers to help build your confidence (I actually did that recently myself, more on that later), but doing so among your circle of friends speaks to some degree of sickness.

Not only that, but you are simply not going to properly see when their are leaks in your game. This over-competitiveness exacerbates the tendency for weak players to obsessively blame luck and mentally block the idea that they could play badly. You won't hear the advice when someone points out mistakes. This is precisely why I always assume all losses in poker are my fault until I can prove beyond all reasonable doubt that I've done the right thing. Assuming yourself guilty until proven innocent in poker is always a good plan.

Not only that, but the best friendships are built from mutual respect and admiration. Focusing on beating your friends isn't going to keep them engaged. It's wonderful for me to know nick_marden, who started out (like the rest of us) as a total fish. He's now a substantially better tournament player than I ever was, and he's helping me train for the WSoP. Last week, I played W.D. in a heads-up NL HE cash game, and he beat me, somewhat easily. He's completely adjusted to my overly aggressive heads-up style and traps me for big pots with ease. I don't even know if I have the best of it anymore against him! Rather than being threatened, I think this is just great!

The bravado that so many men bring to the poker table holds them back and makes the game about their own psychology rather than the external psychological and game theoretical aspects of the game. In The Godfather, when Michael says, “It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business.”, he's showing that self-delusion that keeps poker players from seeing what is really going on with their game. It is personal for so many men; it's about personal power, individual domination, and control. You need a healthy dose of those qualities to win, but you can easily overdose.

Honestly, as politically incorrect as it might be to say so, I have to wonder if this is the reason women players often seem to do better than most men. Women seem to better manage a healthy sense of those things without going overboard, and successful female players like Jennifer Harman and Annie Duke indicate that this is sometimes a contributing factor to their success. Too many men make it all about their ego. Poker players are famous for having egos too big for them, and it's often the cause of their biggest leaks. It's also part of the puzzle why it seems that so many “friendships” in the poker world are a bit of a sham, looking more like a pack of wolves than a meeting of the minds by caring and kind human beings.

Anyway, so many times at the poker table, when my id is telling me to raise it up every time, and my ego says “don't let that jock come over the top of you again”, I am grateful for my overdeveloped superego that tells me actually analyze the situation and make the right play. And, I'm even more grateful that same level of self-control helps me make some real poker friends to help me analyze the play honestly.

Ok, enough pop psychology for the day.

I got this email this morning that explains the details of the WSoP entry from Full Tilt:

Congratulations on your finish in our “Race For Bracelets” tournament. We are pleased to tell you that $500 has been placed in your account, and that you can collect your $1500 in World Series of Poker tournament chips at Full Tilt Poker's hospitality suite at Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. These tournament chips can be put toward the entry fee for any of the WSOP's tournaments, including the Main Event.

Please note, you are responsible for your own travel arrangements and expenses. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Also make sure that you are aware of the identification requirements that need to be met to receive your prize. You can find all of the information at the link below: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/wsopseats.html

You can pick up the chips in our hospitality suite. The suite will be across from the main tournament area in the convention center space of the Rio.

[ Details of how to find the suite and when it is open. ]

Also please note, that Full Tilt Poker will not be pre-registering players for any of the preliminary events.

A few interesting things to note here:

• will not be pre-registering players: This is somewhat annoying, although the events are highly unlikely to sell out, I assume. There is, in fact, no indication that there are entrant number caps on any of the events. And, hey, if they are setup to have 8,000 or more in the main event, they surely have room and staff to accommodate the smaller events.
• can be put toward the entry fee for any of the WSOP's tournaments, including the Main Event: this is really interesting. You could actually just win seven of these little ones and get a main event seat instead. However, I was playing this specifically because I wanted to be in a smaller event, so I am not going to chase more of these little ones to try and do that. Besides, winning seven would be tough.
• These tournament chips: cute. I guess I didn't realize that there was WSoP “funny money”. It makes sense, though — it's an easy to pay out satellite winners of all sorts. However, if they are as good as cash when it comes to entry in WSoP events, it contradicts this part from the rules and regulations page: any WSOP entry ... won at Full Tilt Poker is non-transferable. If you cannot use your entry, it cannot be given away. Once I have the tourney chips, couldn't I give them away? Or, are they just using term loosely?
• Also from rules page, The name you registered with Full Tilt Poker is the same as the name on your license or passport: Phew, I'm glad that I registered under my real name on Full Tilt.

I am strongly leaning toward playing event 37, which is a three-day NL HE tournament starting on Tuesday 25 July 2006. Here are my reasons:

• NL HE is currently by far my best game. I used to be much better at limit HE, but I am so out of practice, and I don't think I could get up to speed quickly enough to make my limit HE skills match my NL HE skills.
• According to last years' entrant count, Event 37 had only 863 entrants. This was the smallest $1,500 NL HE field by at least 150 at the 2005 WSoP. My feeling is that I have more of a shot to cash in a smaller field. (And, I must be realistic that my goal is to cash, not make a final table.) While the scores are bigger with larger fields, when you only have one shot, you have better odds with a smaller field.
• I theorize that Event 37 attracts fewer pros. 37's final table is the day before Day 1A of the main event. The pros have been playing events of this magnitude all month. If they're going to sit one out, it's probably going to be this one, to give themselves a rest before playing the Big One. I wish I could confirm this theory, but I haven't been able to find lists of registrants' names to the 2005 WSoP events online; I presume it's not published.
• I have decided, given my excitement of this win, to play some main event satellites now. If I do get very lucky and win a main event seat too, it will be easy to extend my trip if my plan is to be there just before it.

This whole thing just has me so excited. I know that I'll be a underdog to the field; tournament poker is generally not my thing. But, it's just so much fun. I feel like I used to when I first started going to my first computer conferences as a young undergraduate. It's just so much fun to go see a “convention” of something that really interests you.

To be clear: I do not have a seat in the “main event”, the $10,000 buy-in NL HE tournament that most people think of when they first hear about the World Series of Poker. The WSoP is actually a month-long series of different tournaments, each with different buy-ins and prize pools. I am excited to announce that on Full Tilt Poker, I won a $4+.40 satellite, which got me into a $24+2 satellite. I won that (first place), which gives me a $2,000 prize package to go to Las Vegas for any of the $1,500 buy-in events (the extra $500 is for expenses).

I have no details as of yet, because I'm actually still playing right now in two different main event satellite freerolls. I'll post more later when I have more information. The news as of now: I'm making my first trip to Las Vegas as a WSoP tournament entrant!

Like most people of reasonable intelligence who have a disdain for the corporate world, I spent far too much time in the academic world. I have an utterly useless Master's degree in Computer Science, that I pursued only because corporate technology jobs were sucking my will to live and I couldn't think of anything else to do. During my time in graduate school, I also spent a year teaching high school. I got out of the whole experience alive, without spending years of my life writing a PhD dissertation that only five people would ever read. I sometimes consider it a narrow escape.

There are, however, certain principles of academic work that create useful lifelong habits. Frankly, the academic “skill” of pouring over mounds of seemingly useless information, condensing it into something vaguely applicable, and then going out and trying to make something of it has served me well in life, and in poker, especially. There are certain ways in which a rigorous pursuit poker success is like the academic lifestyle.

The most obvious graduate school principle that applies to poker is the need for constant yet independent study. There is rarely heavy structure in graduate programs, and so it is in poker. You can hire a coach (adviser), you can talk about hands with friends online and offline (study groups), but you are more or less on your own to learn.

But, the most interesting aspect of my years as teacher and student that have helped my poker game relates to development of “level 2” play. For those who aren't familiar with the term (or are more familiar with different phrasing), I'll digress a bit to define these so-called levels of play:

Level 1:

Knowing what hand you have (and its relative strength in given situations).

Level 2:

Knowing what hand your opponent has.

Level 3:

Knowing what hand your opponent thinks you have.

Level 4:

Knowing what hand your opponent thinks you think that he has.

Popular theories state that your best edge comes when you are thinking one level deeper than your opponent. (Personally, I think anything past level-3 is pure game theory, and it isn't worth psyching yourself out with it — if your opponent is that tough, just make the play that a rigorous game theoretical analysis suggests instead.)

I admit that I spent probably a year or two skating between levels 1 and 2. Not that I wasn't capable of deep thought, and even hitting the magical level-4 on occasion against players I knew well. However, your poker results come not from your maximal capability, but the skills you can sustain constantly for the duration of many sessions. For a long time, I spent most of my time on level-1, and my results showed it.

These days, I'm on level-2 consistently. (And, with good game selection, I rarely encounter opponents who spend most of their session on level-2, thus limiting my need for level-3.) I got there by slowly building level-1 thinking into my hypothalamus, so that it never becomes conscious enough to cloud my active mind, which remains focused on level-2. My goal, of course, is to make that level-2 thinking as solid and ingrained as my level-1 thinking has become. Lately, I've thought about how my academic experiences aid in this process.

The connection wasn't obvious at first. I put it together when listening closely to whiny rants of “good players”, complaining that games with too many “donkeys” aren't beatable because these “donkeys” play too illogically. I can't possibly put them on that hand, these “good players” lament. I always thought such statements were ludicrous: if a player has less skill in this game of skill, you should beat him in the long run, right? Of course! It's not that level-2 thinking doesn't work here, it's that you have to work (ironically) a bit harder at it.

When I'm playing against weak, level-1-struggling opponents, it's much like being a graduate student in a room full of undergraduates, or, in the most extreme cases, like standing in front of my high school students as a young Computer Science teacher. Do you remember, by the way, that excellent TA you had your freshman year, who made everything so clear? How about the terrible one who was useless in the problem sessions because everything he said was over your head? And in high school: remember that teacher that droned on Ben-Stein-style, and the one who dynamically engaged the students?

What often separates good TA's from bad ones, and good teachers from bad ones is their ability to have some level-2 thinking about their students. The best teachers reach back to the time in their lives when they didn't understand the material. Every teacher was once a student, it's just that most of them have forgotten what it was like. Wisdom and knowledge have replaced that confusion, that flawed logic, and that unclear reasoning. However, the best teachers that can revisit that spot in their past, and walk the student through the jumble into clarity.

When you are up against clueless “donks”, who are still struggling to understand when to raise or fold holding top pair, you have to get down to their level. They don't think the way you think; you've progressed beyond their level-1 thinking and have ingrained good, strong level-1 thought into your routine. But, for you to properly use your level-2 edge against them, you have to trace their flawed thought patterns. Like the teacher guiding students through murky, complicated new material, you have to set aside your own deep knowledge of the game and think like they think.

If nothing else, it will keep your game fresh. Sure, there are only so many “right ways” for you to play a flopped set on a two-tone board. You probably know and have tried them all and know the trade-offs. But, that guy across the table from you hasn't. He may still think min-raising is the right play. He might think slow-playing is correct. He might even be so confused, and not even realize the strength of his hand at all, and just call on every street!

It's your job to think like he does, not try to to graft your logic onto his play. Don't rhetorically ask What was he thinking!?! in pure disgust; instead, ask yourself that question seriously. It's your job as a good player to have a reasonable response. Indeed, if you're playing your best game, you should be able to give a dissertation on his muddled sophistry.

---

Hmm, maybe my narrow escape from obscure academic knowledge wasn't as clean as I thought. I'll ponder that the next time I'm writing the 20-page psychology thesis in my mind's eye entitled: Tonight's Big Fish: How he Overplays Top Pair but Only on Boards With Straight Draws.

I'll be playing in the PokerStars' so-called World Blogger Championship of Online Poker.

(My Registration code was: 5259066)

It's a marketing thing, obviously, for PokerStars, but like any good poker player, I won't pass up a freeroll. It's a NL HE event exclusive to Bloggers, which they check manually, looking for a post like this in the blog.