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The Poker Ethicist: Sebok Signs with UB

Edit: My girlfriend has just pointed out to me that, as a self-styled poker journalist, Sebok might well be held to a standard of journalistic ethics as well. In that light, endorsing a particular internet poker site might not be appropriate. But that's beyond the scope of this article, as I mean to look more broadly about the ethics of any professional poker accepting sponsorship from them.

Joe Sebok, CEO of Poker Road Radio and step-son of Barry Greenstein, is the latest poker pro to sign with Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker since the full extent of the cheating on those sites came to light. The company, ostensibly under new ownership, has conducted a major blitz to refurbish its image, signing well-known players like Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy, Adam "Roothlus" Levy (who told me, when I gave him a hard time about his UB patch during the 2008 WSOP, that after learning more about the situation he was having second thoughts about what was then a very minor affiliation with them), and briefly, Eric "Rizen" Lynch. It's also credibly rumored that during the 2009 WSOP, they were offering considerably more than any other site to players willing to wear their logo at a TV table.

Needless to say, Sebok has caught a lot of flak for this decision on 2+2 and probably elsewhere as well. Many people view this as selling out, compromising his personal integrity for the sake of a lucrative sponsorship. In Sebok's defense, he claims that his involvement was conditional on two things:

1) They always allowed me to speak my mind 100%.  I would never be a P.R. spinning machine for them and they shouldn't expect that.  If something were to go down at Ub while I am there, I will be the first to blow the whistle and force the company to be accountable, not the last. 

2) They also agreed to create a role for me within Ub that was more than just sponsored player. I would never be comfortable with Ub's history unless I could have a direct impact on making sure that it never happened again.  With that said, I will also still be running PokerRoad obviously, but will also be taking part in reviewing their processes and adding my opinions as a formal consultant with the team over there as the "Media &
Operations Consultant"

Having given myself the title "Poker Philosopher", I'm going to follow after one of my favorite non-poker blogs and consider the ethics of endorsing UB/AP.

First off, a professional poker player endorsing UB/AP is qualitatively different from a random actor, athelete, or other celebrity endorsing, say, an insurance company or a soft drink. The latter is a relatively transparent financial transaction, and at least in our media savvy culture, most people understand that Britney Spears might not actually be as excited about Pepsi as she seems to be in their commercials. Though she might be able to coo some sugary lyrics, no one expects her to be an expert on sugary beverages. It is understood that she is lending her celebrity, not her expertise, to the product when she endorses it.

This doesn't mean she is entirely off the hook ethically. If Pepsi were proven to contain a carcinogen or to employ child labor, Ms. Spears might reasonably be taken to task for endorsing it. In fact, such a strategy was employed when activists suspected that a line of clothing bearing Kathy Lee Gifford's name was manufactured using sweat shop labor.

When a celebrity lends his or her name to a product closely related to his or her field of expertise, that celebrity must be held to a higher standard. We expect the Air Jordan to be not only free of grievous defect and grossly abusive factory conditions but also to be generally excellent athletic footwear. Michael Jordan has a responsibility to understand why Nike seeks his endorsement and how the
general public will perceive it.

Similarly, a professional poker player has a responsibility to understand why UB/AP is so much more generous and aggressive than the other sites in recruiting sponsored players. They are trying to repair a tarnished image, and they are looking for players well-respected in the poker community to lend them credibility.

These players have an obligation to understand that by signing with UB/AP, they are endorsing the site as a safe place to play. There are many people, or at least UB/AP hopes there are many people, who will decide it is safe to play there because a trusted poker celebrity represents them. Intentional or not (and Sebok at least certainly seems to understand this), any player who accepts sponsorship from UB/AP is
saying that is safe to play there. He (or she- I'm looking at you, Annie Duke) must be held to the same standard of truth as if s/he were literally saying this.

This means that Sebok or any other player has an obligation not only to ask about security measures but to establish affirmatively, to his own satisfaction, that there is no further cheating going on and that the past issues have been 100% resolved. If the company cannot provide him with proof of both of these things, then he cannot ethically endorse them or accept their sponsorship.

Sebok seems to understand this as well and certainly has been far more proactive in addressing these matters than have UB's other sponsored players. If he really has done due diligence in verifying the current security of the games and the satisfactory resolution of the past issues, then ethically he is in the clear.

So has he? Some new information has emerged this week, including a (supposedly) comprehensive list of all of the superuser accounts. Sebok's claims to the contrary, it does not seem that affected players have received full histories of their play that they can review for themselves, and there certainly seems to be insufficient transparency regarding the oversight that will be provided by the "regulatory authority" of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. Nor is there sufficient transparency about who currently owns UB/AP and what happened to the "old owners" who are supposedly solely responsible for the cheating
that occurred.

If Sebok has good reason to believe that his involvement with UB/AP can produce all of this information, then his decision to endorse them is an ethical one. But I have my doubts.

The last argument I want to address is one that's come up a lot on 2+2, not only from random trolls but from some pretty good and well-known players. As an example, here's an excerpt from a recent post by Jason "JP OSU" Potter, who incidentally was the victim of far-more direct theft himself:

"Not to mention all these nvgtards trashing for someone for taking a lucrative financial opportunity that would never be
possible for them. It's really easy to get on your high horse and bash someone from behind your keyboard, but what it comes down to is the fact that playing tournament poker for a living is really ****ing hard, not to mention at the same time attempting to swing a flailing business into profitability at the same time. How could any of you (save a very select few) ever know what your decision would be in that scenario when you're getting paid an exorbitant sum of money to wear a ****ing patch?"

In other words, tournament poker is a rough way to make a living (or, in an alternate formulation, sponsorship is an essential part of making a living on the live poker circuit), and therefore a player cannot be judged for looking out for his own financial interests first. For what it's worth, I dispute both that poker is a particularly
difficult or demanding profession and that sponsorship is a necessity. But that's beside the point.

Financial hardship is not an excuse for unethical behavior. And if one's career necessitates unethical behavior, then that proves only that one has chosen an unethical career. Being a mobster is not an easy way to make a living, and it definitely requires whacking people when the boss gives the order, but does not excuse murder-for-hire.

Who are we to judge? We, the community of online poker players, are the ones at whom Sebok's sponsorship is aimed. We are the ones to whom he is making a claim about the safety of the games at UB/AP. If it turns out that he has not verified their integrity, then he is, if not outright lying to us, at least risking the possibility of lying to us by not verifying the accuracy of his claims. Many people, including some professionals, will be making significant financial decisions based in part on Sebok's endorsement. He has an obligation not to abuse that trust, and we have every right to evaluate whether he is meeting this obligation in accepting sponsorship from UB/AP.

Online Poker Is Rigged

Bathroom Ethics Fail

Emily and I are currently camping in Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod. It's a huge campground with hundreds of sites, and even past peak season it's nearly at capacity. There just a few building with showers for the entire campground. The other night I visited one of them for the first time.

Inside, three shower stalls lined the back wall. Only one other person was in the men's room, and he was in the middle of the three stalls. "Fish," I thought to myself as I, seeing no other option, selected the cleaner of the two adjacent stalls.

With nothing better to think about as I showered, I contemplated his serious breach of bathroom ethics. Every man deserving of the name knows that when three adjacent stalls/urinals are available, you take one of the ones on the end so that should a second man enter, he doesn't have to stand/sit immediately next to you. Only the most conniving, under-handed homosexual would do otherwise.

It was at about this time that I noticed four more, completely empty shower stalls on the opposite wall and realized the gravity of my error. While casting aspersions upon this other gentleman's bathroom ethics, I'd committed a far more egregious breach myself. Despite a room full of empty stalls, I'd selected the one that brought me into closest proximity to his wet, naked body. If was now standing over in his stall contemplating what a creepy, possibly dangerous sexual deviant I must be, well, he could hardly be blamed.

Double Double

Relative Happiness, Part 2

As I ended Part 1, my girlfriend and I had just driven home a virtually new car (2009 Subaru Forester with about 4000 miles on it), but we weren't as happy/excited about this as I felt we should be. I was aware that a great many people in the world would love to be in a financial situation where they are able to pay cash up front for such a nice vehicle, but the process had been stressful and annoying enough to swamp what ought to have been an objectively exciting situation.

It was now 8PM Friday night. According to a sternly worded letter from our landlord, which was most likely a bluff, we would face stiff fines if our apartment wasn't empty and spotless by 10 PM Monday. We had no new apartment to move into, but we did have a 5×5 cell in a self-storage facility and now a new car that we'd be living out of for
the next four months. All that stood between us and the freedom of the open road was an apartment absolutely jammed to the gills with stuff.

With the exception of our computers, very little of it was valuable. Even our furniture was mostly 5-year old junk from Ikea. We sold what we could on Craig's List and planned to throw the rest out. All day Saturday and Sunday was spent boxing up the stuff we did care about to get it ready for storage. On Sunday, we donated a carload of stuff to Salvation Army, dropped some nicer clothes off with a charity that provides office attire for low-income women to wear to job interviews and such, and then brought another carload out to the self-storage
facility. There was still a lot to do, even if we pulled an all-nighter, but I was feeling good about our progress. If we could keep working as efficiently as we had been, I was confident we'd get it done.

The storage facility has a number of "loading bays" with garage-style doors large enough to back a car into. We backed our Forester up to one of the bays, opened the hatchback, unloaded some boxes onto a cart, and then I took the cart up to the second floor on the elevator while Emily began loading up a second cart. By the time I returned, she was ready to take her cart upstairs, and I started putting the last of our stuff on my cart.

A grinding sound caught my attention, and I turned to see the loading bay door closing down on the open hatch of the car. There was an emergency stop for the garage door inside, but getting to it would require running Indiana Jones-style under the closing door, which didn't seem safe. I opted instead to hop into the driver's seat and pull the car out from under the closing door as quickly as I could. I pulled forward about 6 inches, which was all it took, but as I did so I heard a horrible crashing sound as the closing door shattered the glass in the rear window. Then I heard a scream, which was apparently Emily coming off of the elevator just in time to see the garage door closing amidst a rain of shattered glass.

We spent a few minutes staring at the glass and broken rear window in shock, contemplating just how fucked we were. There didn't appear to be much damage to the car aside from the window, but we needed the car to move, and we absolutely did not have time to deal with this.

I walked around to the front of the facility. It was about 9:30, well past the hours when the office was open, but I was looking for a number to call in case of an emergency. All I could find was an (800) number for the national office, which was also not open and did not provide so much as an opportunity to leave a voice mail.

Inside the facility, there was a button to press for assistance, but no one responded to that. The "Call for Assistance" button on the keypad for the parking lot gate was similarly useless. We even tried calling the local police, who had no way of contacting the owner or manager and said they wouldn't come for a report because the damage occurred on private property.

Eventually, we decided to put the rest of our stuff in our storage unit, then use some plastic we had to cover up the back window and drive home. This we did, only to find that after 10PM, the parking lot gate would not open even from the inside. There was a small gate we could walk out of, but the car was stuck outside until morning. This
made it even more infuriating that we had no way of getting in touch with the manager.

With no other options available to us, we caught a cab at a gas station across the street and went back to our apartment. At this point, sleep was out of the question. We'd wasted far too much time already and would have to spend even more tomorrow trying to find a car to rent on the busiest moving day in Boston, dealing with insurance, etc.

After a little more griping about how fucked we were, I walked over to the 7-11 to pick up some caffeine. It was a pleasant night, warm but not humid and with a nice breeze, and the walk was calming. This particular 7-11 nearly always has panhandlers outside, some of them quite aggressive, but I was not feeling very generous.

When I got to the door, though, the only person there was a friendly-looking guy in his early 50's seated near the door. He greeted me pleasantly and asked if I could spare any change. I told him I'd get him on the way out, and he answered happily, "That'd be just perfect."

I decided I could use a little karma, so I gave him a dollar bill in addition to the change. "Heeey!" he smiled, seeming genuinely impressed. "That's just great, thanks. You have a good night."

"Yeah, you too." I also needed to pick up some packing tape at CVS, and I was getting such a good vibe from this guy that I decided I'd bring him the change from that purchase as well. "Found some more
change," I told him upon my return.

"Ah, aren't you the best! Take care," he called cheerily after me.

I know it's trite to say, but it struck me just how relative happiness is. Here I am in a shit mood because my new car just got damaged and I have all these belongings I have to deal with before
embarking on what is essentially a four-month-long vacation. Meanwhile,
a guy who has nothing and is out on the street begging is in a good mood because the weather is nice and someone just gave him $1.73.

Fast forward to 6PM the next day. Emily was up all night, I slept for less than three hours and have been on my feet carrying out trash and tearing apart furniture too large to fit through the door (remember it's Ikea stuff so it came in in pieces and was assembled inside) for hours upon hours. My back is sore, my feet are killing me, and the box spring from our bed is absolutely not going to fit down the back stairs of the apartment building. Nor, for that matter, is there anywhere to put it behind our building.

It's one of the only items too heavy and bulky for me to carry by myself, so we end up half-carrying, half-dragging it out the front door of our building, then balancing it on a skateboard and rolling it around to the alley. Most of the alley is consumed by parking spaces,
but the portions closest to the streets at either end of the alley are just unadorned brick wall. This is the best, perhaps the only, place to leave an item of this size, and we are in the process of doing exactly that when a WASPy forty-something pauses to stick her nose in.

Let me interrupt here with a little background information about Back Bay, the neighborhood where I live. It's an upscale neighborhood, in a very convenient location, comprised of beautiful old brownstone rowhomes. Some of them have been chopped up into 10-12 apartments that are rented by students and young professionals such as ourselves, and others are sold as condos for $750K+. As you might imagine, this creates a pretty clear divide between the renters, who often don't have a lot of disposable income or a long-term stake in the neighborhood, and the owners, who are quite wealthy and have a strong financial interest in the feel and appearance of the neighborhood.

From her dress and demeanor, this woman seemed to be an owner, and she was none too happy about this large piece of garbage being dumped behind her building.

"Excuse me. What building do you live in?" she asked in a superficially polite tone that bubbled and popped with thinly veiled perturbation.

Emily answered her honestly, and the woman clucked her tongue and nodded. "Mmm hmm. You know you're not supposed to put garbage out until garbage day?" she said, voice fraught with faux friendliness.

"Well, we have to move out today," Emily explained testily.

The woman smiled a wolf's gin. "You couldn't have done that this morning?"

"Believe me, we've been at this since well before morning."

Obviously, the woman could care less. "Can you at least put it behind your own building?"

"There's nowhere to put it without squeezing between 3 BMW's and an Audi," Emily told her.

"Well, you aren't supposed to put garbage out until garbage day," the woman explained to us again.

"I understand that, but I'm explaining to you why we don't really have an option here."

The woman clucked her tongue and pursed her lips into an awkwardly forced smile. "I think you do have an option."

"Sorry, I don't see what else we can do."

The woman shook her head again, still smiling at us, "Mmmmm, I think you do have an option. Put it behind your own building."

"You're welcome to move it down there if you want," Emily told her, turning her back.

"I can also file a complaint with a specific description of the offenders. You'll be fined," the woman threatened, turning openly aggressive for the first time.

"You do that," I suggested over my shoulder.

"OK."

"OK."

It's not that the woman doesn't have a point or a legitimate complaint. We were imposing a very small cost (a few unsightly days) on our neighbors in the interest of avoiding a very large cost to ourselves (in the form of a fee imposed by our landlord) if we left
furniture in the apartment. I felt badly about it, and it wasn't anything we'd done in the five years since we'd lived there, but in this specific situation it was just something I was going to do.

The thing that gets me is just the sheer pettiness of the very rich. I feel like a woman who lives in a million dollar home ought to have
better things to do than stand in allies enforcing local garbage
disposal ordnances. In the last few years, as I've found myself with
some money in my pocket (thank you, poker), one of my top priorities
has been eliminating petty irritations from my life. I don't own expensive furniture, a luxury car, or a fancy watch, but I don't drive 10 miles out of my way to save $.05/gallon on gas, and when I fly to Las Vegas on Jet Blue, I put up the extra $40 for extended leg room.

There's actually an emerging academic field called "Happiness Studies" that applies psychological, sociological, and philosophical perspectives to the study of happiness. As I understand it, the best way to summarize the research on the correlation between money and
happiness is to say that for the most part, you can't buy happiness, but you can buy your way out of unhappiness.

Happiness is strongly correlated to a sense of control over your life and your surroundings but only weakly correlated to material belongings. To the extent that money enables you to know where your next meal will come from, where you will sleep tonight, and perhaps even where and how you will be living next year, it can buy you
happiness.

However, for people who already enjoy this minimum level of freedom
and control, more money brings only fleeting happiness. Even lottery
winners enjoy a "happiness spike" that lasts only about a year before returning to roughly the same level of happiness that they had before they became millionaires. The lesson is that once basic needs are satisfied, people very quickly become accustomed to new and improved material conditions.

The other major, seemingly paradoxical lesson from the research is that the more people think about themselves, the less happy they tend to be. It seems that virtually everyone is his own worst critic and tends to find someone to whom he can negatively compare himself. Thus, no matter how rich or successful you are, your natural temptation will be to worry that you are not as rich or successful as so-and-so and that you really ought to work harder or be smarter or spend more time at the gym or whatever.

Most people are happiest when they are focused on others. I'm sure we all know of exceptions, but on the whole married people are happier than singles, people with children are happier than those without, and people who volunteer or otherwise help others are happier than those who do not. The key here is where your mental energy is focused, so
while donating money to charity is nice and has some happiness benefits, time spent helping others is what really yields significant happiness.

This has certainly been my experience. One of the largest purchases I've ever made has already proved to be a hassle and a headache, and I am certainly looking forward to getting away, at least for a while, from having so much "stuff". In the longer term, I'm looking forward to spending more time helping others access the opportunities that have enriched my life and less time in back allies arguing with bitter old rich ladies.

I Don’t Buy It

WSOP Trip Report, Part 2: Jack Link’s and Beef Jerkey

My latest poker article, WSOP Trip Report Part 2: Jack Link's and Beef Jerky, is now appearing in the September issue of 2+2 Magazine. Here's an excerpt:

"I was pretty sure I was going to fold. It was the toughest decision
I'd had all day, and I spent a good five minutes thinking and staring
my opponent down. He was impassive, leaning forwards with hands
covering his mouth and eyes revealing nothing. I'd nearly talked myself
into a fold, but I decided to count out the chips for a call and see
how my opponent responded to that. I slowly stacked up the 7,000 chips
I would need, which at that point was about 1/3 of what I had left, and
watched for a reaction. Still nothing."

Enjoy!

Relative Happiness, Part 1

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I actually have some
pretty exciting news to report, which will make clear why I've been
busy.

As of today, my girlfriend and I are officially homeless. No, I'm
not busto. She's currently between jobs, and I can play poker from
anywhere, so we decided to go (at least) a few months without a
permanent residence. The plan was to buy a large car, throw most of our
belongings into a storage facility, and then travel the country doing
some combination of camping and short-term rentals. There are some cool
websites where you can find people either looking to rent out their
apartments for a week to a month or a so while they are on vacation or
who just have an extra room that they rent out for far cheaper than
you'd pay at a hotel.

Buying the car was a really unpleasant experience, which is annoying
because it's such a major purchase and an important decision. I feel
like it ought to be fun and exciting instead of stressful and
high-pressure. We even made an effort to visit only dealerships with a
reputation for not being particularly sleazy or pulling standard car
dealer tactics. We thought we'd found a place we liked, and while we
were test driving, our interactions with the salespeople were far more
comfortable and pleasant than they'd been at any other dealership.
Truthfully, that might actually be a liability, as I at least would
probably have an easier time negotiating a price with a sleazy used car
salesman than with a sweet, grandmotherly woman or chummy outdoorsy guy.

Anyway, we finally made a decision about the car we wanted. This
place bragged loudly and often about being an "Undealership" where they
didn't play a lot of games, but the second we started talking about
money, the whole tenor of the conversation changed. We sat down, I made
an offer that was deliberately low but not absurd, and the heretofore
friendly guy who'd shown us the car basically snapped at me and gave
me, in a very condescending tone, an explanation of their pricing.

I made a slightly higher offer, with the promise to buy on the spot
at that price, and he warmed up immediately but did the whole "take it
to the manager routine". He left us waiting for 15-20 minutes, then
came back, in an aggressive mood, with a price that was $100 below
sticker. When we balked at this and asked a question about the car, he
basically told us he wasn't going to waste any more time with us if we
weren't serious. Even though we really had little option but to buy
this car very soon, we walked out.

On the drive home, I was visibly shaking and could feel the
adrenaline coursing through my body. Frankly, as a poker player, I was
ashamed. I've kept my composure when bluffing for thousands of dollars
or playing for far more than that at the WSOP, but I get worked up
about haggling over a couple hundred dollars? Something about the whole
experience was just really upsetting to me, and I think it has to do
with the nature of the "game" being played.

At the poker table, deception is entirely expected and accepted as a
legitimate tactic. Thus, I'm perfectly comfortable bluffing or
blatantly staring down an opponent to figure out whether he is trying
to deceive me. I think I would feel similarly comfortable if I were
negotiating at a dealership where, although they certainly don't say
it, they don't really make a secret of the fact that you're going to
have to put up a fight if you want a good price (though maybe not- I
understand they can be quite adept at making you uncomfortable).

Outside of such situations, though, etiquette and social norms exist
that discourage this kind of behavior. When interacting with others, I
strive to be friendly, polite, honest, and to put my interlocutors at
ease. These social conventions exist for a reason. Even though it might
benefit an individual to behave otherwise in any given situation, we
generally recognize that human society functions better when everyone
adheres to these standards of behavior.

When people exploit these norms for their own advantage, I feel
taken advantage of and it upsets me. It's like angleshooting at the
poker table. I'm comporting myself in a particular way in good faith
that those around me will reciprocate. When they don't, and especially
when they take advantage of the fact that I am being presumptively
courteous to them, it pisses me off. If it were clear to me up front
that this was going to be no-holds-barred negotiation, I would have
been a lot less forthcoming during our preliminary conversations and
opened with a much lower offer. I took them at their word, and was
literally speechless when it became clear to me that that had been
unreliable.I think that I was so upset not so much because of the
stress of the situation as because I felt betrayed.

I should add that the next day, we got a follow-up call from the
guy's supervisor and worked out an acceptable price over the phone. I
think it was no more than $300 more than what would have been their
lowest price had it not become clear to them that we were set on buying
this car. There wasn't any pressure to buy an extended warrant or rust
coating or any of that bullshit, and we actually managed to get the
paperwork and what not done rather efficiently, so it wasn't an
entirely negative experience. I am confident that there aren't going to
be any unpleasant surprises with the car now that we have it, which has
to be a consideration when buying a used car.

This is getting long, so check back soon for Part 2, when the title
of this post will make more sense. Thanks for reading, if you made it
this far!

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