

Twitter employee live-tweets his WSOP ascent - sferik
http://allthingsd.com/20120702/twitter-employee-live-tweets-his-world-series-of-poker-ascent-one-hand-at-a-time/

======
birken
I apologize for at all seeming negative, I just want to clarify a few aspects
of the story which I feel are a little misleading:

"The buy in is a steep $1,000" - Yes, in absolute terms $1,000 buy-in is high,
however by WSOP standards this is the lowest buy-in for an open event (IE
anybody can enter).

"if he took home fourth (the place at which he’s currently ranked), Chan would
take home more than $150,000" - At this stage in the tournament even looking
at the payout for your position is just crazy. Even the first place player
right now would likely be better off taking $150k if somebody offered it to
him right now rather than play on. Right now the 1st place stack has about 12%
of the chips in play (our hero has ~4% of the chips in play). In order to win
you need to get 100% of the chips in play... IE there is a long way to go for
everybody.

"though he’s probably done the best: Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya
took 101st place last year." - This is the most egregious error. Chamath
placed 101st in the WSOP Main Event, the $10,000 buy-in and most prestigious
event in the WSOP series (it is called _main event_ after all). This is just
comparing apples to oranges, the events have completely different buy-ins,
different structures, and of course one is the _main event_ and one isn't. I
think many people would prefer a 101st place finish in the main event rather
than anything short of winning this $1k no limit event from purely a prestige
perspective.

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swang
Whenever I read poker articles by non-poker writers it always makes me cringe.
Kind of like when non-tech writers write articles about the tech industry. Not
exactly, "the internet is a series of tube" cringe worthy, but just annoying
stuff.

1\. The WSOP is a series of events. He is playing in one event, not the actual
World Series of Poker.

2\. $1000, while a lot to most people, is the cheapest event you can buy into
at the WSOP. There is a $1 million buy-in (for charity) and a $50K Player's
Championship and the Main Event which is a $10K buy-in.

3\. It's not a 3 million dollar pot, it's a 3 million dollar prize pool.

4\. Being in place X is completely irrelevant when talking about "how much he
would win in his current spot"

Also where's Ian Chan's results page? Or is this going to be his first live
tournament cash?

~~~
spullara
I'm pretty sure it is his first live tournament cash that would be recorded
for posterity.

Correction on the $1m buy-in tournament. It isn't FOR charity but does give
the rake to charity (~$5m out of $48m).

------
chanian
Evening Hacker News.

:-D

~~~
joewee
Do you play online? How many hours, how often? Multi table SNG...

As someone who wants to play in live tournaments, drop us your preparation
infoz.

~~~
chanian
I played online in college (like 5-6 years ago) back when it wasn't so shady,
haven't played since. I really didn't have much prep other than a bit of
coaching from a few friends who've played a lot. Vegas has tons of lower entry
tournaments to practice on too.

------
spullara
Ian is a great poker player and an even better tweeter. Follow him and his
WSOP tweets here: <https://twitter.com/chanian>

------
ryguytilidie
I'm also live tweeting from the rail if anyone wants pics and stuff.
@ryanjordansf

------
ericflo
It's been fascinating to follow this over the last few days. I almost think
that in some ways, it's more exciting to see it happen via Twitter than it
would be to watch it on video. I wonder why that is.

~~~
timtrueman
Storytelling on Twitter in the first person is filled with suspense, at least
in this case.

His Tweets are filled with the two basic building blocks of great
storytelling, even if only by coincidence:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loxJ3FtCJJA>

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guynamedloren
... so what's to stop an opponent from reading his tweets (in which he shares
his hands)?

edit: i guess he wasn't too worried about it when there were so many players,
but has since stopped sharing his hands now that he has acknowledged others
reading his tweets. that's interesting.

<https://twitter.com/chanian/status/220034966480883712>

~~~
swang
It doesn't matter too much (although silence is probably the better option) as
long as you imply that you may sometimes lie about what you actually had in
the hand (the most important thing is that your opponents know this), which
makes all his tweets about his hands pretty much unusable for information.

Because assuming someone at his table is reading his tweets, once you start
feeding misinformation into a poker player's Internal Bayesian Inference
Engine, then he is going to have the wrong probabilities of what you play in
his head.

But the best option is to stay silent, because if you go with the above
strategy, you now have to deal with figuring out whether or not your opponent
has read your tweets, and whether or not he knows that you have fake hands in
some of those tweets, because then that changes his playing style or the way
you are perceived by him so you now have to start guessing whether or not he
read your tweets.

So yeah, stay silent.

------
Kartificial
Good for him that he is able to play a WSOP-event, but many many poker players
tweet during live tournaments. So from a poker players' perspective this is
not all that interesting.

Good luck to him though, ship it :)

------
kevinburke
It was my understanding you can't use your phone tableside during a
tournament, but he seems to be posting photos frequently from his seat - can
someone clarify?

~~~
sferik
The rules were changed in 2010 to allow texting/tweeting.

Here's a link to this year's official WSOP rules:
<http://www.wsop.com/2012/2012-WSOP-Rules.pdf> (see section 61 on
Communication)

Here's the relevant part: "Participants not involved in a hand (cards in muck)
shall be permitted to text/email at the table, but shall not be permitted to
text/email any other Participant at the table."

Arguably, a public tweet could be interpreted as a text or email to another
participant at the table, but the rules are not enforced that way and tweeting
is a generally accepted practice by pros and amateurs alike.

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suprgeek
As the stakes increase, a smart opponent should start mapping his tweets to
how he subsequently played the hand. Maybe apply some Sentiment Analysis (or
something) to figure out if there is a statistically significant "TELL" :-)

Then figure a out a passive way (three consecutive texts - Good; two texts -
bad, etc) to get this info to one of the players at his table.

~~~
swang
I don't want to continue being, "that guy" but what you actually mean is not a
"TELL" it is how frustrated or emotionally charged a person is, or in poker
parlance, how "tilted" or "steamed" he is.

And you don't need sentiment analysis to tell if someone is tilted, you can
literally look at the player across the way and figure it out.

------
n8agrin
Hand by hand chip counts
[http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/chipcounts.asp?rr=5&grid...](http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/chipcounts.asp?rr=5&grid=887&tid=12154&dayof=)

