Columnist Jeff Haney: Looking into the dark side of televised poker tournaments — grandstanders showing off for the cameras, bugging oldtimers

By Jeff Haney (contact)

Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005 | 8:42 a.m.

Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Monday, Friday (gaming) and Wednesday (poker). Reach him at (702) 259-4041 or haney@lasvegassun.com.

The influx of new players into poker -- many of them young and influenced by TV coverage -- is breeding two varieties of bad behavior at the tables, professional gambler Alan Boston says.

The first, easier to identify, entails showboating by players -- jumping around to celebrate a winning hand, mugging for the cameras, talking trash.

Boston has no use for such players, dismissing them as "media whores."

The second kind of poor behavior is subtler but more nefarious, Boston says. It involves overacting at the table, or "Hollywooding." As an extreme example, say a player has an unbeatable hand after all the cards are on the table -- yet he decides to wait several minutes to call his opponent's all-in bet, just to watch the other guy squirm.

"In my eyes it's offensive, it's inconsiderate and it shouldn't be allowed," said Boston, a veteran of poker tournaments and live cash games in Las Vegas. "There's no place for that in poker."

After playing a key hand against an overacting opponent in a big no-limit Texas hold 'em tournament recently, Boston said he was so disgusted he almost felt like knocking the guy out. And he didn't mean out of the tournament.

The hand began with Boston's opponent (the "villain," in poker parlance) raising a moderate amount and Boston, holding pocket kings, re-raising.

"Then the guy goes into the tank (thinking mode) for five minutes before he calls," Boston said. "That was totally unnecessary. It doesn't matter how long he thinks -- what matters is whether he puts the money in the pot. Once he does that, I know he has a real (strong) hand."

When his opponent called, Boston said he knew the villain held one of four possible hands: pocket aces, ace-king, pocket kings or pocket queens.

"It doesn't matter if he waited five seconds or five hours," Boston said. "He thinks because he Hollywoods it up I'm going to think he doesn't have a hand. Actually, the longer he waits, the more obvious it becomes to me he has aces."

The villain put on his Hollywood act on each of the subsequent betting rounds, Boston said, and his pocket aces held up against Boston's kings to win the hand.

"He didn't have the courtesy to call right away," Boston said. "He waited 30 seconds before he turned over the aces. No consideration!

"That's the way these kids are, acting like they're on TV. And the fact is, most of them can't play poker worth a (hoot)."

Boston makes no secret of his nostalgia for poker before it was cool.

"To me, poker in its purest form is using logic to try to out-think your opponent, with none of that other (nonsense)," Boston said. "There's definitely more of that stuff now than in the old days -- guys acting up, making a scene, hoping the camera will find them.

"It was a more gentlemanly game in the old days. Even when they cheated, they cheated like gentlemen."

But is Boston looking back through rose-colored, Moneymaker-style wraparound shades to a supposed golden age that never really existed?

In his 1994 book "Gambling Theory and Other Topics," Mason Malmuth described a vintage example of the kind of misbehavior that burns Boston up. It took place well before the poker boom in a game of lowball draw, where the best possible hand is a "wheel," or an ace-to-5 straight.

After the draw, one player bet, got called, then crumpled up his cards in disgust -- "to the utter joy of his opponent," Malmuth wrote.

But before the dealer could award either player the pot, the original bettor slowly turned over each of his crumpled cards, revealing an unbeatable wheel. It was a sadistic move designed just to see his opponent suffer.

These days, TV poker shows place too much emphasis on outrageous behavior by players, Malmuth said recently at the Bellagio poker room. He compared their antics to those of professional wrestlers.

"A lot of these decisions (in tournaments) are hard, and you do need time to think them over," Malmuth said. "But I also think some of the behavior, in terms of leaping around, is unbecoming."

Although, Malmuth said, "maybe it makes it more interesting for people watching on TV."