Technology, globalization, and poker

There’s been a lot of speculation here at Global HQ about just why poker has become so popular. It seems to be on television somewhere at every hour of the day and night. They show poker tournaments, cash poker games, poker played by celebrities. People have always liked poker, but they haven't been gaga over it.

I realized that as a literary man I had an advantage in this discussion, since I had actually once read a book about the world of high-stakes poker as it was before the game became so popular. The book was The Biggest Game in Town by the British writer and poet A. Alvarez. Mr. Alvarez likes to play poker, and in 1981 he took a holiday in Las Vegas at the same time as the World Series of Poker. Like the enterprising writer he is, he got a book out of it.

The main event of the World Series of Poker was already a big deal in those days. In 1981 it attracted 75 entrants, each of whom paid $10,000 to compete. As it is now, the main event, like the other events, was a knockout competition, and the winner was the last player not to go broke. The first prize was $375,000, half the entry fees. Not bad for a few days’ work.

How the world changes, though, eh? In 2006 nearly 9,000 players ponied up the ten grand (or had the ten grand ponied up for them by poker websites at which they had won tournaments), and the first prize was $12 million. The prize for finishing 238th was nearly $43,000.

Even after changes in U. S. law which restricted the ability of poker websites to subsidize entry fees, the 2007 main event still attracted nearly 6,400 players. The first prize shrank to a paltry $8.25 million, in part because a smaller percentage of the entry fees was put into it.

Back in 1981, the game was dominated by a small group of professional players, several of whom Mr. Alvarez interviewed. Surprisingly, most of these players are still active or were active until recently. While Mr. Alvarez’s interviews were somewhat uncritical, he did use them to put together a good picture of the professional players of the time. Almost all of them were men, and all of them had two other important characteristics:

• ready sources of finance
  
• a consuming obsession with poker

The players made their living from high-stakes cash games, and since the luck of the cards can often run the wrong way for a long time, to keep playing in those games they often needed someone to provide a huge bankroll for them when they were broke. Going broke was a frequent danger, because they did little else but play poker. A couple of players (one of them the great Doyle Brunson) observe that in their younger days the only part of the world outside the poker rooms which interested them was the white line they drove along to the next poker room.

Their obsession seems to have had little to do with money. Mr. Alvarez notes that some of the players seemed not to understand the uses of money away from the poker table. The winner of the main event in 1981, Stu Ungar, died broke in 1998, although he had won $30 million at poker tables. A large percentage of that $30 million was simply given away; the rest seems to have been pretty well thrown away.

Nowadays things are different. To get into a tournament you no longer need friends with deep pockets. Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 main event, won his entry fee online, in a tournament he paid $39 to enter. The internet and the knockout tournament format have proven to be an ideal combination for poker. Because people from all over the world are playing at the big poker sites, you can always get a game. The tournament format means that you don’t have to have big money to get into that game, either. Entry fees reportedly start at under a dollar. If you’re playing in a game with a 75-cent entry fee, you won’t be winning much if you finish first, but you’ll have had some pretty cheap fun.

In Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death Alexander Cockburn argued that world chess champions tend to be narcissistic repressed homosexuals with Oedipus complexes – except for one group. The group which consisted of more or less normal people was the group of champions from the Soviet Union. The reason they were different is that they had been selected by the Soviet government because they had the abilities necessary to become a chess champion, then trained to play well, then required to play chess for their country. The chess champions from the rest of the world had not been encouraged by their countries to play chess, but devoted their lives to the game because of their obsession with it.

A similar process seems to have been at work in poker. Although poker players don’t seem to have a pathological or even a standard psychological make-up, in 1981 playing high-stakes poker for a living pretty well required that you be obsessed with the game and be able to get your hands on large sums of money on short notice. These days, though, a Chris Moneymaker can get to the heights of the field while working as an accountant.

Becoming a poker champion is no longer as much trouble, and the field is becoming flooded with normal people who just like to play poker and can now do it without making the personal sacrifices or taking the financial risk they once had to. Doyle Brunson observed to Mr. Alvarez that as the game grew more popular and amateur play became more competent, the professional players would find it difficult to maintain their dominance of tournament play. Since in tournaments you can’t buy more chips when you start to run out of money, the professionals’ big bankrolls wouldn’t help them when they hit an unlucky streak.

Mr. Brunson was right, of course, even though he couldn't have foreseen internet poker in 1981. Today you can play a lot of poker for very little money and develop professional skill. As differences in skill between amateurs and professionals become smaller the outcome of tournaments comes more and more to depend on luck. Amateurs can have good luck as easily as a professional can. No one has won consecutive main events since 1988; between 1970 and 1988 four players won consecutive main events.

So there you have it – poker has been democratized by technology and sound business thinking. The big poker capitalists have been forced to forgo their monopoly control of the big tournaments, and poker proletarians like Mr. Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Jamie Gold, and Jerry Yang have begun taking the World Series of Poker main event.

It’s no wonder the American government is trying to kill internet poker. The idea that technology and globalization might give ordinary people a chance against the big guys is not one the current administration is likely to want to see in general circulation.

But you can fight the Man! Stand up for democracy – shuffle up and deal!

Technology, Globalization, and Poker © John Fitzgerald, 2007

Frank who?

Ever heard of Frank Sprague? Sorry, you're thinking of Howard Sprague.

You may be asking, Why should I have heard of Frank Sprague? There's a good reason, really, which we'll get to after a largely cribbed but lively bio of Himself.

Anyway, Frank was a Connecticut boy who graduated from the United States naval Academy in 1878. He was interested in electricity a bit.

While serving in the navy, for example, he installed the first electric call-bell system on a U. S. Navy ship and invented a new type of dynamo. Okay, there were more types of dynamo still to be invented in those days than now, but there still weren't all that many people inventing them.

In 1883 he was persuaded to resign his commission and sign up with Thomas Edison. Frank introduced mathematical methods to Edison's operation, which until then had proceeded in its work by conducting trial-and-error experiments. Frank showed them how to use mathematics to select the experiments which would be most effective. He also fixed up Edison's system for distributing electricity from a central station.

The year after that – yup, he knocked those achievements off in his first year on the job – he decided he wanted to run his own company, so he resigned and set up Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company.

At the time, electric railways weren't all that profitable an item. The electric streetcar had already been invented, but could only run on single lines – that is, cars couldn't transfer from one line to another. But Frank apparently was confident in his ability to make something out of electric railways, which he did.

But first – he invented the first commercially practical electric motor, which was heavily promoted by Edison, and invented a system for returning electricity from electrical equipment to their main supply systems. Both of these developments are handy if you're interested in making money off electric railways, of course.

In 1888 Frank built the first streetcar network in Richmond, Virginia. People came, people saw, and people wanted to build their own. Electric railways meant people could get to work faster, which meant cities could be bigger, which meant businesses could be concentrated together more effectively. By the end of 1889 one hundred and ten cities around the world had completed or begun Frank-style streetcar systems.

In 1890 Edison, who built most of Frank's equipment, bought Frank out. Frank, you see, was now interested in elevators. He realized that increasing the capacity of elevators would increase the earnings of tall buildings. So he and Charles R. Pratt improved the electric elevator. They invented the automatic elevator, for example. The Sprague-Pratt Electric Elevator ran faster with bigger loads than the hydraulic elevators which were then the standard, so people started queuing up for them, too. Frank then sold his company to Otis Elevator.

For his next trick, Frank turned his attention back to electric railways, devising a system by which electric railway cars could be hooked up in a train and controlled simultaneously by a single motorman in the lead car. People wanted them, too. Trains without locomotives produce more revenue per unit of rolling stock, and run faster and accelerate quicker than trains with locomotives. Frank had invented the subway train.

So, before turning forty Frank had revolutionized urban life. Buildings could be built taller and produce more revenue, and the increased number of workers needed for business districts full of tall buildings could be accommodated in the larger cities which his streetcar and commuter train systems allowed people to build. Along with other pioneers of electrification, Frank invented modern life.

And Frank didn't stop, continuing to improve electric traction, both horizontal and vertical, for the rest of his life. And you'd probably never heard of him until you started reading this article.

Why is Frank an obscure figure today? An important reason is probably his penchant for selling his companies and inventions to other people. Those companies had no reason to promote the achievements of Frank J. Sprague. On the other hand, many of the other giants of the electricity business of Frank's day didn't sell their businesses, and they're no better known today than Frank. What people today think when they see SIEMENS on the side of a factory is probably better left unconsidered.

In the end, though, the reason is simply that we're incurious drones. We're trained by incurious drones to be incurious drones. And really, curiosity is a threat to the stability of society. If everybody was always asking questions about everything, Iraq would hardly ever get invaded and gun registries would never get set up. It's much better for people to abjure curiosity in favour of cheap thrills. Frank's contemporary Lizzie Borden is far better known today than he is, and according to her trial she never did anything. Frank's contemporaries Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth are better known today than he, because they excited people. They electrified crowds in ball parks, and Frank electrified society. We know what we'd rather watch. And who we'd rather honour.
Frank who? © 2005, John FitzGerald

Word up!

We live in the most public age in history, so we have more things to hide than people have ever had before. Since we have more secrets, we have to have more places to keep them. To make sure the secrets stay secret in those places, we need passwords.

I’ve got more passwords than the KGB. I have a password at the public library. I can reserve a book from home now, but only if I do it in secret, through a library account that I can only use if I enter my fourteen-digit library card number and the correct password. Besides that, every couple of years I have to provide proof of my identity.

For the first fifty-odd years of my life no one cared too much about who I was at all; now it seems my library card makes me a prime target for identity theft. But then, think of the havoc terrorists could wreak on the world if they were able to log on to my online library account and reserve whatever book they wanted.

I know, I know. There are good reasons for security precautions. There are bad reasons, too. In Ontario we now have to provide official identification when we vote – or rather, when we vote in person. If you vote by mail you don’t have to. Apparently the danger to the public interest from voter fraud is neatly balanced by the revenue it generates for Canada Post.

But the government also mails you a card, with your name and address on it, which you take to the polling station. Why do we need to provide further identification? Are they afraid we’re going to get mugged for these cards on the way to the polls? It’s not like we’re wearing signs reading I’m going to vote and can’t fight worth a damn.

Whatever your opinion is of the merits of passwords, whether you think all passwords are necessary or, like me, have the correct view of them, you must admit that life has changed considerably over the last twenty-five years or so. In 1980 the only secret number I had to remember was the combination to the lock on my locker in the basement of the building I lived in. Now I spend my days logging in to accounts. And waiting while other people log into accounts while I wait in line behind them.

When I got a letter in the old days, I didn’t have to enter a password to open it, even though in getting it to me the post office had left it vulnerable at several points to interception by the nefariously minded or the royally mounted. In fact, we still require no password to open letters, even though the mail is no better protected. You could open one of those drop boxes for letter carriers with a can opener.

I suppose the problem is that the criminals are becoming as computer-bound as we are. They spend so much time entering passwords and checking e-mail that they just don’t have time to go out and bribe a letter carrier to lend them his or her keys for a few hours. So they end up having to conduct their business through the internet, trying to get e-mail recipients to go to phony websites and innocently enter their credit card numbers – and passwords.

The price of convenience is eternal inconvenience, it seems. In the old days, if I couldn't find a book I wanted at the bookstore, I'd ask the bookstore to order it for me, then go back a week or so later to pick it up.

If I can't find a book I want in the bookstore these days, I search a website or two, find the book, log into my account with my password (if I have one) or create an account (if I don’t), fill out forms, supply my credit card number and the special four-digit code, click a button, print out the receipt, log out, then sit back and wait a week or so for the book to turn up.

I have saved the time I would have spent previously going back to the bookstore. Time is money, and money talks, and talk is cheap, etc. The time I save by using my password I can now use for productive activities, like waiting for hackers to steal my credit card information off the bookstore website. Or making erroneous entries on Wikipedia. Or sitting hunched over my computer, entering more passwords.

Word Up © John FitzGerald, 2007

Techno-morality

This article was first published in 2007. Given the current epidemic of inveighing against greed, it seems relevant again.

To most people, the moral is what they think they can get away with. Consequently, technology plays an important role in morality by enabling people to get away with more, or by forcing them to get away with less.

This view of morality may seem cynical, but it has clear advantages over other definitions. These definitions may be grouped into two types: causal and functional. A causal definition defines something by its antecedents, while a functional definition defines something by its consequences.

Causal definitions of morality hold that behaviour is moral if it is consistent with some standard already established. So Christian morality considers behaviour moral if it is consistent with Christian standards. In general, the idea of any causal definition of morality is that the Good can be defined, and then used as a yardstick against which to measure the ethicality of specific behaviour.

The problem with this approach is that no one agrees about the definition of the Good. Even the Christians cannot agree among themselves about what Christ’s teachings justify. Some Christians, for example, approve of first cousins marrying, while others disapprove.

Most functional definitions of morality define moral behaviour as what promotes the Good. For example, the moral has been defined as what promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Since nobody knows what happiness is, though, that definition has never really flown. Again the problem is that people cannot agree about what the Good is.

The definition I have proposed avoids this problem by being non-prescriptive. The chief effect of other definitions seems to be to promote wrangling about what the Good is, while this definition actually makes falsifiable predictions about behaviour.

For example, in the early 1960s, sexual intercourse between unmarried teenagers was considered tremendously wrong. It often resulted in pregnancy, and pregnant girls were forced to leave school, have their babies somewhere out of town, and then put them up for adoption. Their boyfriends would also be moved out of town so that the couple could not re-unite.

Then came a piece of technology called the birth control pill. Once it became available to teenagers more of them started having sex. Soon enough legislators were worrying (as have members of provincial parliament in Ontario on at least two occasions) about whether measures to control sexually transmitted disease would discourage sexual experimentation by teenagers. Sexual experimentation by teenagers has been transformed by technology, then, into a wholesome developmental experience.

What’s more, eventually teenagers started to get pregnant in large numbers, anyway, and they were not forced to leave town or give up their babies. Having once approved of sex, we decided to treat its consequences as something to be coped with rather than to be punished.

These days people argue the rights and wrongs of violation of copyright. These days many people, if not most, are for it. In the old days, though, people did not advocate the illegal copying and dissemination of recorded music, since disseminating it in a playable form was damnably difficult. This option was chiefly available to people who owned expensive equipment. Denied the opportunity to disseminate music illegally, people were not interested in advocating its desirability.

These days, though, people seem dumfounded when it is suggested that being able to disseminate music illegally does not justify disseminating music illegally. However, the ability to shoot someone with a handgun does not imply the ethicality of actually shooting someone with it. The difference is that most people have no reason to fear that their music will be copied, since they are incompetent to produce any, while there is some probability that someone with a handgun could avail him or herself of the opportunity to pop a few caps in their direction.

Technology may function in another way in changing ideas about morality. The internet, for example, demonstrated that pornography does not have the terrible consequences that many people believed it had. Consequently, people are now able to make legitimate careers in the exciting field of facilitation of masturbation.

Furthermore, the internet has made it easier to apprehend people who disseminate pornography that is the product of sexual abuse or exploitation. Of course, technology can make some breaches of morality more difficult. However, technology is rarely used to turn what is now considered moral behaviour into immoral behaviour. It plays only a defensive role in preventing people from expanding the definition of morality. As I have noted, once sexual intercourse between teenagers was approved, we were not going to return to the days when pregnant teenagers and the boys who got them pregnant were punished.

When we examine the effects of technology on morality we see that it expands moral behaviour when there are few victims of the expansion. Recording companies are few, people who listen to music are many, so it is moral, in the popular mind, to act against the interests of the minority.

However, technology has also allowed people to steal other peoples’ identities more easily. Since the number of potential victims of this development comprises the entire population, this behaviour remains strictly immoral.

So our falsifiable prediction is that the likelihood that a behaviour will be considered moral is proportional to the number of people it benefits and inversely proportional to the number of people it harms. The behaviours which benefit and disadvantage about equal numbers of people (men and women, say) are the ones that are going to be the most hotly debated.

Techno-morality © John FitzGerald, 2007