Vishy Anand fails the test

Yesterday, Viswanathan Anand capped a disappointing performance in his World Championship match against Boris Gelfand by playing out a draw that felt like a defeat. Vishy has been undisputed chess World Champion for five years. He won the title in 2007, defended it the following year against Vladimir Kramnik, and again two years ago in an exciting match against Veselin Topalov. In both those playoffs, Anand went into the match as an underdog or, at best, a very narrow favourite. His third defence was supposed to be easier, since he faced the relatively low-ranked Boris Gelfand. It hasn't turned out that way. The 12 match series started with six draws before Gelfand took the lead in the seventh. Vishy played brilliantly to equalise with white pieces in the eighth. Three more draws followed, leaving the players tied at 5.5 points with just one more game to play, a game in which Anand had the advantage of white.
The champion produced a novelty on the sixth move that put Gelfand in the tank for nearly an hour. Anand had given up a pawn, but gained compensation by messing up his opponent's position. None of Gelfand's pieces could move freely, his bishops were tied up behind doubled pawns, and Anand had all the initiative.
On his tenth move, Gelfand offered Anand two pawns in return for freedom of movement. It wasn't necessarily the best play available, but the challenger made it in the belief, correct as it turned out, that it would throw Anand off his prepared line. Between moves five and ten, Anand had been comfortably parlaying a line analysed carefully with his seconds in preparing for the world championship. He was banging out his moves instantly while his opponent had to improvise on the board. It was the equivalent of being in a section of a maze that Anand had traversed dozens of times, but which Gelfand was trying to figure out as he went along. After move ten, both players were in an unfamiliar section of the maze.
Gelfand had been put to a huge test, and had seemed for some time to be sinking into a mire of self-doubt and despondency,  but had emerged creditably.
He was, nevertheless, under some time pressure and a pawn down. He now had to simplify the position and hope his paired bishops would compensate for Anand's small material advantage. On his twelfth move. Gelfand offered an exchange of queens as part of his simplifying tactics. Anand had two options: the first was to take the queen and go into an endgame in which he couldn't lose, but had a very small chance of winning. The second was to reject the queen swap and instead push his queen sideways one square. That would create a double-edged position in which Anand had a far greater chance of winning, but could lose if he played a couple of sub-optimal moves.
The queen exchange was what a club class player like myself would choose almost every time. Not having the ability to think through every possible variation in complex positions, I would take the no risk - low reward option and try to press home that pawn advantage in a simple endgame. I would expect a World Champion to pick the slightly riskier move.
Anand played safe. He exchanged queens and, a few moves later, the consensus among experts was that there was about 95% chance of a draw and a 5% chance of Anand winning. That 5% chance, I figured, was sufficient for Anand to keep the pressure on Gelfand. It's difficult, psychologically, to play when you know your best hope is to draw. On move 20, Gelfand pushed a pawn and seemed immediately to regret it. Horrible blunders have been made under the pressure of playing in the World Championships, blunders no Grandmaster would make in less important games. It seemed possible the challenger would crack.

After playing move 22, though, Anand offered a draw. It left the commentators gobsmacked. Accepting a draw would have been bad enough, but offering a draw? Come on!
Chess etiquette demands players don't continue games when a draw is almost inevitable; but this was the final game of the World Championship, and the challenger was behind on material and in some time trouble. Nobody would have blamed Anand for pressing on at that stage. Offering a draw in that position was being Mr. Nice Guy to a ridiculous degree.
Maybe it wasn't just out of niceness. Anand, in the moments he spent at the table after the truce was signed, looked spent, almost dazed. Maybe he just ran out of steam. Which isn't a happy thought either.

There will now be a tie-breaker of four rapid games. Anand is generally considered among the two or three best players in this format in history, so everybody expects him to win. However, should he lose, I will not mourn, though I've been a fan of his for the longest time. To be a World Champion, after all, is not just about gaining a point more than your opponent, it's about courage, imagination and determination. I'm afraid Viswanathan Anand failed that test yesterday.

Murder Incorporated

Syed Modi, who was born poor in a small town in Uttar Pradesh in 1962, broke free of his circumstances by excelling at badminton. He won the national championship at the age of eighteen, beating the great Prakash Padukone who was then at his peak. While junior national champion in 1978, Modi travelled to Beijing for an international tournament. A Bombay girl named Amita Kulkarni was in the women's team, and, as the Supreme Court would later record, "there arose intimacy between the two". Neither the Modis nor the Kulkarnis were thrilled with the idea of the North Indian Muslim boy marrying the upper-class Marathi girl, but the couple resisted family pressure, and wed six years later.
They had a daughter not long afterwards and, while Amita's badminton career was put on hold, Syed continued to rack up titles, winning his eighth consecutive national trophy in 1987. In July 1988, Modi was heading home after a practice session when he was shot dead on a street outside the K D Singh Babu stadium in Lucknow.
The UP police made little headway with the case, and the CBI was called in. They found an eye-witness who had not only seen the shooter but recognised him. They discovered that Amita Modi was having an affair with a state minister named Sanjay Singh, who was descended from the erstwhile royal family of Amethi. Sanjay Singh, in the CBI's view, had instructed a goon-politician named Akhilesh Singh to get Syed Modi killed. Four people were arrested for committing the murder, and Sanjay and Amita spent a small time behind bars. A few months after Modi's death, Sanjay Singh, who had a wife named Garima, married Amita Kulkarni-Modi. He didn't feel the need to hide the relationship, though it was the only imaginable motive behind the murder of a man whose friends described him as a mild guy with no enemies. By 1990, Sanjay Singh had left the Indian National Congress and was a central minister in V P Singh's new government (Sanjay and V P Singh were related). He later moved to the BJP and then back to the Congress. He's currently a Congress MP, but is showing signs of wanting to defect again. His wife, Amita Singh, just lost the election for the state assembly from Amethi, a stronghold of the Gandhi family dating back to the Indira Gandhi days.
It's obvious from this account that Sanjay and Amita were not convicted of plotting to murder Syed Modi. After making bold announcements of having cracked the case, the CBI began chasing its own tail instead of making any further headway. Last year, the former CBI Director Sumit Kumar Dutta published a memoir called Top Cop Recalls. He wrote, about the Syed Modi case: "One day, I received a telephone call from an officer close to the Cabinet Secretary that hearing for framing of the charge in the case was being preponed from the day already fixed for hearing and I should agree to it and not oppose the move. I said that it was not possible as our special counsel was in Mumbai and it was not possible for him to come earlier as there was no time for that.... next thing that came to my notice was that the Director was told to change our special counsel...".
Dutta and the then CBI Director Rajendar Shekhar resolved not to let political interference cloud the case. "He (Shekhar) told me that the Government wanted to know whether the Director would change the counsel. He wanted my views. I told him it was not possible in principle. He agreed with me. He asked me if I was prepared to put in my papers if the counsel was changed. I said ‘yes.’ He felt happy, as he too had decided to do so...Next thing that happened was something unheard of. All of a sudden, in the name of economy, the Government issued an order cancelling the appointments of all special counsels engaged by various departments to deal with their court cases. Therefore, our special counsel’s appointment was automatically terminated. All were surprised, but did not know the real reason."
When the Syed Modi case came to court, all the accused were let off, apart from the shooter identified by the eye-witness. Two acquitted underlings were soon found shot to death themselves. Needless to say, those murders have never been solved.
Sanjay Singh was in the news a few months ago, opposing his own party's decision to allow foreign investment in retail. Singh said the measure would hurt the poor, who are always foremost in his mind. Amita just gave an interview to NDTV speaking of how times have changed and dynasties like the Gandhis don't matter any more. The two will doubtless be welcomed into whichever party they decide to join next.
I've met taxi drivers from the Amethi region who speak of Sanjay Singh's power. Locals, they say, might be beaten for even looking him in the eye, men have to keep their head bowed in his presence. Syed Modi obviously got uppity, and paid the price.

Federer and Ali

Roger Federer has often won matches that seemed lost. Two days ago, he lost a match that seemed won. He later came across as oddly complacent about the game, saying his opponent Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had played too well. It's a sign he's losing the edge. Which is OK, you're entitled to lose your edge after winning 16 grand slams and holding the number one spot for some 300 weeks.
What dismayed me was Federer's lack of tactical insight. It's clear to even a cursory observer that Tsonga has an iffy backhand. For some reason, Roger refused to focus on attacking his opponent's weakness. It's like he believes his opponent's playing style is irrelevant, that he can win on the basis of his own talent. Rafael Nadal is different, cannier in approach. He attacks Federer's backhand relentlessly on clay with deep, viciously kicking topspin. He can probably defeat Federer on clay even without adopting this strategy, but he keeps to what is tried and tested.
Yesterday, with the Haye-Klitschko fight approaching, I watched a few older bouts on YouTube. I started with Klitscko-Lennox Lewis, but it was so boring I needed the energy boost of a few Golden Age matches. I viewed Foreman's demolition of Frazier and Norton; and then the Rumble in the Jungle for about the tenth time. Ali was commentating on the Frazier -Foreman fight, and Frazier on the Ali- Foreman fight. Their approach was strikingly different. Ali kept stressing Frazier should not go ahead like a bull against Foreman's fearsome punches. "He should back up", he said repeatedly. Frazier didn't back up, and got clobbered. Frazier, on the other hand, had no tactical advice for Ali, which was fine because Ali didn't need any. He played his opponent like a master, taking every advantage of Foreman's amateurish technique to launch stinging attacks, while evading his clubbing blows by leaning back against the ring's loose ropes.
Ali had a famously big mouth, but he knew his limitations pretty well (at least until he came back from retirement twice too often). He never ever tried to go toe-to-toe with a superior puncher. In that sense, he was a more humble sportsman than Roger Federer.

Djokovic rejuvenates tennis

I can't remember the last time I watched a tennis match, outside of Grand Slams, that didn't involve Rafael Nadal playing Roger Federer. After years of those two dominating the game, there's finally somebody else to look out for. Last night I watched a tired Novak Djokovic summon up the strength to beat Nadal for the fourth successive time, and for the second time on clay, Nadal's favourite surface.
Djokovic's accomplishment eluded Roger Federer even at his best. That's because Federer's game has always had one slight weakness Nadal could exploit on clay. The Swiss master finds it difficult to hit high bouncing balls for winners from the baseline on his backhand. That chink in his armour was exploited for years by Nadal to get out of tough spots; anytime Federer seemed to be taking charge of a rally, Nadal would go deep to the backhand corner; he could hit the ball relatively slowly and gain the fraction of a second he needed to recover position, knowing Federer was unlikely to hit a clean winner in response. Djokovic nullified that tactic last evening, repeatedly climbing on high balls and crashing double handed backhands cross-court with tremendous power and accuracy.
The final was patchy, with phases of sublimity followed by some ordinary shot-making. I felt that Djokovic, exhausted from his semi-final win over Andy Murray, needed to close the match in two sets; had it gone to the decider, Nadal would've been the favourite. Despite squandering three match points, Djokovic pulled off an incredible win.

The new Australia

It was a painful experience that recurred over a number of years. I'd wake up, switch on the television and find Australia on approximately 165 for 1 on the first day of a Test match. By the end of the day, typically, the team would have put on something like 350 for 3, with Ricky Ponting 85 not out. On the odd occasion when early wickets fell, Adam Gilchrist or Andrew Symonds hit a run-a-ball century and the home team would get to 400 before the opposition fully understood the balance had shifted. Then, McGrath, Brett Lee and Warne would use the pressure of that first innings total to squash visiting batsmen.
It's all different now. Missing an established opening pair, and with middle order stalwarts out of form, Australia typically lose half their side before hitting 200, and it's left to Hussey to play the kind of role VVS Laxman did for India before Dhoni's emergence, and Steve Waugh adopted during the early phase of Aussie dominance (though Waugh, typically, took a tally from big to enormous, rather than from meager to respectable).
Out in South Africa, India can only pray for more rain after the first day of the first Test. I didn't watch any part of that match because it's on a new channel called Ten Cricket. I've already paid for Ten Sports, and now the firm has shifted some of its previously acquired and advertised properties to a new channel and is charging separately for them. How is this allowed?
There's also a channel called Ten Action which I can't get because TataSky has a problem with it. There's no point asking any customer service chaps what the issue is, they don't know, or won't tell. Ten Action was previously Zee Sports; TataSky cut deals with every Zee channel except Zee Sports, and the stalemate has evidently continued after the channel's change of name.
Ten Action broadcasts La Liga, which means I miss watching the two best football teams on earth. On the bright side, it also means I get a little more sleep.

Of Football, Potholes and Britishness

My Yahoo! column for the fortnight can be read here. It's about football, powdered eggs, textile mills, John Lennon, and majoritarianism, among other things.

Commonwealth Games

Suresh Kalmadi's definitely not going to survive as chair of the Commonwealth Games organising committee. So who can take over with just a few weeks left? My money's on Rahul Gandhi following in the footsteps of his father Rajiv, who helmed preparations for the Asian Games of 1982. Rajiv, of course, had two years in charge. With just two months to go, it's unlikely that even the clout of a Gandhi will make a huge difference.
Still, Dimples appears the natural choice. Alternate suggestions, anybody?

Football and fast twitch muscle

Today's column for Yahoo! India can be read here.

Poker in Goa

I’m back from a three day poker trip, and sort of rested, although the ground still moves under my feet every now and then. That’s to be expected after sitting through three straight nights in the bottom deck of a floating casino.
Along with about twenty of the players who travelled to Goa for the India Poker Championship, I opted to stay at the local Ginger, part of the Tata Group’s budget business hotel venture modelled on chains like Ibis and Holiday Inn Express. Ginger offers a good deal for single travellers, unlike other hotels in Goa that shave just 10 or 15 percent off their double occupancy rate. Rooms are clean and neatly designed, the aircon and plumbing work, and breakfast is included. On the downside, the Wi-Fi rate is extortionate, at over 100 rupees and hour, and coverage is pretty bad in the rooms. I took my laptop along, but preferred to stroll across to a cybercafe to blog and check my email.
I was surprised to see a number of holidaying families staying at the hotel, a sterile building within the most sterile precinct in all Goa. Last time I was there, during the previous IPC in March, I even noticed a honeymooning couple at breakfast. Makes me wonder what experience such people are looking for when they come to Goa. It isn’t the beaches, booze and nightlife; it isn’t the atmospheric lanes of Fontainhas and the architecture of Old Goa; it isn’t the lush landscape of palms, cashews and paddy fields. What, then, draws them to the state?
The draw for me this time was poker and nothing but poker. The rest of this post will concentrate on that, and will sound like Greek to those unfamiliar with the game. You have been warned.


I didn’t suffer any huge bad beats like I had last time round. In fact, during one cash game, I hit a set of queens to crack pocket aces. It’s just that I didn’t win coin flips when I most needed to. During the 10K tourney I had pocket 5s against my friend Sam Rattonsey’s AK offsuit; we both had medium stacks, but the blinds were getting uncomfortable. I pushed from the button and of course he called from the small blind. He hit a king and went on to place first, which made me glad he’d won that hand and not I.
I played a few interesting hands in the late stages of the 20K tourney.
Hand 1:
I’d built my stack to 15000 when the blinds were 300 / 600. Under the gun, I was dealt pocket queens and raised to 1800. A guy in middle position reraised to 5000. He was on tilt a bit because he’d split a pot holding aces against pocket tens, all chips in pre-flop, when the board showed a spade flush and neither player held a spade. Still, I felt I was probably beat, putting him on kings, with a small chance I was racing against AK. If he had kings, all his money was almost certain to go in on the flop. If I hit a set of queens, I would definitely double up. I was getting about 6 to 1 implied odds, which didn’t justify a call when the odds were 7.5 to 1 against hitting that set. I called mainly because I had to factor in the possibility that he had AK. A queen did show up on the flop, and I did double up, and was in a pretty strong position at that point with 30K chips.

Hand 2:
I was in the big blind, still at 30,000 odd, with the blinds at 1000 / 2000 and about fifteen players left. Chap in early position limped, as did the short stacked small blind. My hand was A 10. The limper, whose name was also Girish, had about 11,000 left over. I’d been at the same cash table with him the previous night, and knew his style well. He was, basically, the biggest calling station I have seen in my life. He paid me off a number of times, but his most remarkable calls were against other players. One time, he called a preflop raise, a bet on the flop, and an all-in bet on the turn with K Q, having hit neither card, and having no draw. Another time, he called someone down to the river and called a huge river bet with just ace high. So basically I knew I was getting a call from him. I figured A 10 was good and pushed. He called with K Q and rivered a queen. I lost about half my stack in that hand.

Hand 3:
The very next hand, a player from my Bombay group, Masood, shoved with about 15,000 from middle position. I was in the small blind and again had A 10. I felt Masood was weak, and was hoping he had A 9 or A 8, which would make me a 7 : 3 favourite; in any case I was sure I was ahead and called. He showed K Q, which meant I was a 6 : 4 favourite like in the previous hand. Unfortunately, he turned a queen, and left me with just one small blind worth of chips, which lasted four more hands before I was eliminated.

It’s been six IPC events without a cash, which is a bit frustrating. Luckily my success at the cash game tables allowed me to more than cover my buy-ins for all those events, plus travel and accommodation expenses.

Vishy's greatest win

It wasn't a beautiful match, the just-concluded World Championship between the reigning champion Viswanathan Anand and his Bulgarian challenger Veselin Topalov. I suspect only one of the twelve games, Game 4, which Vishy won with the white pieces, will be remembered as a classic. That game was the kind professionals dream about, where the opponent makes no obvious blunders but nevertheless finds himself down a point at the end.
Despite the relative paucity of classical elegance, this is probably Anand's greatest win because the match was an ordeal, a test of mental strength and, at the end of it, Anand stands like one of those epic heroes who triumphs over everything thrown at him, not without luck, not without having vulnerabilities exposed, but having demonstrated an inspiring combination of courage, will power, grit and ability.
The first reason the match qualified as an ordeal was that Topalov committed himself to the so-called Sofia rules, which meant no light draws were offered, play continued till the position was completely dead. Instead of getting the occasional easy day, where after 25 moves both players say, "this position is more or less equal, let's not bother trying to find a win", Anand had to play endgame after endgame precisely. One slightly inexact move at that level can turn a draw into a loss. In the end it turned out that the challenger was as mentally drained by his self-imposed commitment as the champion.
Secondly, Anand was delayed getting to Sofia because of the Icelandic volcano. He had a 40 hour road trip to cope with, and asked for a three day postponement, but was given only a day's extra time. He lost the first game, possibly because he was still suffering the effects of his journey. Being down a point in a twelve game match is serious; it means that, in eleven games, you have to win two more than your opponent.
The match swung Vishy's way by Game 5, after he won his first two games with white. He then had an opportunity to virtually seal a victory in games 6 and 7, in both of which he had white pieces. A win in one of those would have put the match beyond Topalov's reach, but the challenger played magnificently and almost defeated the champ playing black. Then Anand made a huge mistake and allowed Topalov to equalise the score. At this point the momentum had swung entirely to Topalov, and I felt Anand might not have any reserve of energy within him. Instead, it was the challenger who seemed to succumb to exhaustion in the final games. Playing white in Game 12, with the scores equal, he made a massive error and let Anand take the match without the necessity of a tie-breaker. Later he claimed that he was superstitious about playing the tie-break on May 13, and therefore wanted to finish it off in game 12 itself.
If that's true, Anand should be happy he got only a day's postponement and not the three he'd asked for.

El Clásico

On May 2 last year, Jabeen and I were waiting at Esfahan's bus terminal for our overnight coach to Tehran. On a snowy television set, a maulana droned a sermon watched by two or three pious travellers but ignored by the majority in the room. Suddenly the picture changed to a football match, and the excited commentary got everyone's attention. Once people saw FC Barcelona were playing Real Madrid, they gravitated to the TV, and soon the seats in front of the screen were all taken. Madrid went ahead to cheers from some of the viewers, then Henry scored for Barca to even greater applause, and Puyol followed up with a goal immediately after. When the bus came in a few minutes later, the rapt audience was reluctant to board. Messi put in a third goal just as we exited the terminal, and a home defeat seemed certain for Madrid.
That match ended 6-2 in Barcelona's favour, and pretty much decided last year's winners. El Clásico returns today as Barcelona travel to the Bernabeu, and the two Spanish footballing monsters are closer than ever in the league. After 30 games, they are tied on 77 points, and Madrid leads the standings by virtue of the slimmest of goal differences: 57 to Barca's 56. To get an impression of how far ahead of their other opponents these two are, consider that third placed Valencia are over 20 points behind; and Sevilla, in fourth, are on 48 points, virtually 30 points adrift of the league leaders.
Here's the bummer: I will not get to watch the match tonight because no Indian satellite channel has shelled out the million dollar asking prize for La Liga telecast rights. It's a travesty, really. I mean, what's a million dollars for networks like Star Sports? For years, one could tune to Ten Sports or ESPN around midnight and find Zidane or Eto'o or Ronaldinho working their magic. These days I take for granted that any event in any sport I want to watch will be streaming on one of the eight or nine sports channels to which I subscribe. Hamilton, Federer, Kobe, Tiger, they're all out there. But Messi and Christiano Ronaldo are not. Makes me wish I was in Iran again.
When I wake, I'll go to YouTube and watch the goals. So, go Barca, teach the fat cats at Real that money isn't everything.
UPDATE: They did it, 2-0, helped by two brilliant passes by Xavi. The first came from a one-two with Messi. Two Barcelona forwards were offside, and so Real's defenders thought they had everything under control. But they didn't catch the tiny guy whizzing by to chest the ball down and score with his weaker right foot. The second came when Madrid were pushing forward to equalise and got caught on the break.

Decline of the IPL

The recent auctions of new teams and raising of salary caps marks the beginning of the end of the Indian Premier League. All the revenues imaginable are being squeezed from the jamboree: endorsements on every square inch of clothing; television commercials beamed not just between overs but between balls; and aggressive merchandising of team shirts. Despite this, all but two of the eight teams have suffered losses during the initial years of the IPL's existence.
Now, the Sahara group has bid 370 million dollars for the Pune franchise, and a consortium named Rendezvous World Sport 333 million dollars for Kochi. This means the two will pay the Board of Control for Cricket in India four or five times as much each year as the other franchisees. Nobody has been able to figure out how these businesses propose to turn a profit given the way IPL finances are split. You can read detailed analyses of the issue here and here.
The Sahara people, having made a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, appear bent on squandering it at the top, having lost money on their airline, television company and, probably, luxury township projects. For those who bought franchises in the first round, this is probably the best time to sell and walk out with a handsome profit.
What irks me about the IPL is its lack of quality. Each team is composed of, maybe, three good foreign players and three good Indian ones; a couple of journeymen; and two or three guys who are just there to make up the numbers. This was exposed during the Champions League, when not a single IPL team reached the semi-finals despite having home advantage. With two more teams to contend with, local talent is going to be stretched even thinner. How long before the public realises that excitement is no substitute for excellence?

The World Series of Poker

For the past week, I've been tracking the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, highlight of the international poker tournament calendar. Anyone willing to shell out the 10,000 dollar entry fee can play the Main Event; about 6500 people did this year, meaning top prize will be over 8 million dollars. I'm excited because, with the field down to 27 after seven tough days of play, one of my favourite professionals, Phil Ivey, is still in the hunt, and among the chip leaders.
Poker has exploded in popularity in the past decade,thanks to three interlinked revolutions: the television revolution, the internet revolution and the Moneymaker revolution. The game comes in many variations but, in most of these, players are dealt two or more cards face down, and have to match them with community cards dealt face up to form a hand. Betting happens in stages, and at each stage players try to guess hands their opponents hold while disguising their own. The guessing and disguise is skill, but the cards dealt are a matter of luck. Poker is unique in being a form of gambling where skill can assure a player better than even chances of winning in the long run.
It was difficult for the game to develop into a spectator sport because most hands end without a showdown of cards. One player, convinced an opponent has a better hand, chooses to fold rather than call a bet. Till the late 1990s, viewers could only guess at the hole cards of the antagonists. This situation changed when cameras grew tiny enough to be embedded in tables and capture face down cards as players peeked at them.


Suddenly the art in every hand became manifest and sports channels began devoting hours to poker coverage, bringing new enthusiasts to the felt tables.
Not long after this, gaming became big on the Web. Poker sites drew thousands of novices eager to start with small stakes and graduate to the big league. The sites ran satellites offering entry to major live tournaments: put down 550 dollars and you could participate in an online tourney offering a Main Event package. If that was too steep, you could try your luck in a satellite to this satellite, and so on down to super super satellites where entry was just a couple of bucks.
In 2003, an Atlanta accountant with the portentous name Chris Moneymaker played a 39 dollar satellite on PokerStars, the most popular poker site in the world. He won a seat to a more expensive online tourney, and placed well enough in that to win a Main Event package. He went on to win the Main Event itself, turning his initial 40 buck investment into 2.5 million dollars.


News of his extraordinary ride sparked a new rush to poker sites, which meant fields for major live tournaments grew ever larger, the top prizes on offer juicier. By 2006, James Bond was playing poker in Casino Royale, instead of baccarat as in Ian Fleming's novel, and a Hollywood talent agent named Jamie Gold was winning 12 million dollars at the Main Event. It was a world away from the seedy backrooms described in Kenny Rogers' famous song, The Gambler: "You gotta know when to hold 'em / know when to fold 'em / know when to walk away / and know when to run".
For professionals, there was a significant upside to the poker boom: lots of mediocre players willing to gift their money ('fish', in poker parlance). On the other hand, navigating the waters of massive tournaments became difficult even for sharks: there were too many accidents waiting to happen between the first cry of "shuffle up and deal" and the crowning of a new champion. Those who'd gained entry through super satellites had little to lose and would frequently make crazy bets or calls and get lucky when the final community card was dealt. The Main Event became a professional's graveyard and the buzz went round that no top pro would ever win again.
The odds themselves told a different story. If one were to assume 200 well-known pros in a field of 6000, and give each pro three times the winning odds of an amateur, that would make for a top pro as champ once every ten years or so. Apart from the odds, grumblers also ignored the fact that many unknowns had built successful pro careers after a Main Event triumph, among them 2004 champ Greg Raymer, 2005's top man Joe Hachem, and last year's winner Peter Eastgate.
Chris Moneymaker, though, cannot be counted among those names. He has returned to the Main Event each year since 2003, but failed to make an impression. Back in his wonder year, he got very lucky late in the tourney against two pros, Humberto Brenes and Phil Ivey. In each case, Moneymaker was far behind when all the chips went in, and caught an unlikely card to come out on top. The brutal hand against Phil Ivey can be seen here. Moneymaker is a 6 to 1 underdog with a single card to come, but spikes an ace to send Ivey home in 10th place.
Perhaps that hand had something to do with Phil Ivey's attitude to the WSOP in the following years. After he burst on the scene in the early part of this decade, his aggression, ability to read opponents and, well, ethnicity, made him known as the Tiger Woods of poker. Over time he appeared to lose interest in tournaments and concentrated on high stakes cash games at the Bellagio in Vegas and online at the website Full Tilt.
2009 has been different. He appears to have realised that winning major tournaments grants a place in poker history, while cash games offer only cash (OK, that's not strictly true, cash games have their own history and Ivey made some of it when he took businessman Andy Beal for over 16 million dollars back in 2006). Ivey's won two subsidiary events already at this years world series, and is in a promising position as the Main Event reaches its temporary conclusion (once just nine entrants remain, play adjourns till November, by which time ESPN's weekly coverage will reach its climax, allowing for the final table to be broadcast live).
The Moneymaker revolution was excellent for poker in its time, but an Ivey win might be equally significant in the current situation. The United States has clamped down on gaming sites, and poker buffs are petitioning the government to exclude their favourite game from the purview of the legislation, arguing that poker is a game of skill rather than chance. Were a top professional to win the most prestigious prize in poker, their argument would be bolstered considerably.
Ending on a light note, here's an amusing commercial for the website Full Tilt, featuring Phil Ivey.

Update: Ivey made the final table, but has a short stack and will need a lot of luck to win in November.

Roger Federer: My vote for GOAT

So much has been written about Roger Federer's victory at the French Open, there's little left to add. I'm going to take the easy approach by quoting from the inimitable Bobilli, to whom I have devoted an entire post back in April. In Monday morning's Times of India, he writes, "Oh yes, Federer does not have the smouldering serve of a Sampras, the booming return of an Agassi, the allround play of a Borg."
Hold on, did he mention the 'allround' play of Borg? Bjorn Borg was one of my childhood idols, but even his most fanatical followers would not consider him an 'allround' player. In his early days, he approached the net with about the enthusiasm of a man with toothache approaching the dentist's chair. Later on, he learned to get volleys over the net more often than not, but he never pounced and put them away with conviction.
If one quality marks Federer out from those who are bracketed with him in lists of the greatest of all time (GOAT), it is his excellence in every department of the game. Jimmy Connors is the only other player I can think of with similar all-court ability, but his weak serve compromises his claim to be the GOAT.
Federer's all round ability is proven by his astonishing record in Grand Slams: 20 consecutive semi-finals. That, I believe, is a feat nobody will ever beat. It requires enormous talent, of course, but also incredible consistency, fitness, and commitment. Sampras was barely competetive at the French, Borg burned out at 26, and Nadal's picked up his first serious injury at 22. Whatever Bobilli may say, it is for his all round capability that Roger Federer has my vote for GOAT.