July 31, 2007
TLDNR
by Otis
"What hath God wrought."
It's what I wished I'd been quick enough to say that night in Las Vegas.
I was in the seven seat and on the heater of my trip. It was one of those gorgeous nights where nothing goes wrong, aces hold up, draws get there, and the other players are either scared or vindictive enough to try to make moves.
The guy in the two seat was playing badly. He'd just come over from a different game and it was obvious he was playing on the last money in his pocket. He wore a hooded sweatshirt, a flat-billed cap, and a pair of dark shades.
He hadn't been sitting at the table for a full orbit and had yet to play a hand with me when he came in for a raise. I called in position and flopped open-ended. When he made his continuation bet, I made the call. He checked the turn and I checked behind. The river paired me and he checked again. This time I bet out. He scowled and folded, saying as he mucked his cards, "If I were you, I'd kill myself."
I was actually surprised at how speechless I was. I'd heard and read the same phrase before, but it had never been directed at me. If it was an attempt at tilting me, it was fruitless, as I was running well and in a good mood. If it was an attempt at bravado, whatever he gained was short-lived. He busted soon after and I never saw him again.
Still, I had no response. Yet, today, I still think about that guy, not because he was a good poker player, but because he didn't think twice about throwing out a line like that after playing his hand the way he did and losing.
I was me and I didn't want to kill myself. This guy, however, seemed pretty sure of himself.
And he's not alone.
***
Several months ago I spent a lot of time reading 2+2. While I got a lot of enjoyment and a sense of community from reading poker blogs, I felt like there were a lot of other voices and ideas in forum communities. I never posted on 2+2, but spent a lot of time lurking around the legislative and online poker forums.
One day, there was a particularly good post about the legal implications of the NETeller pull-out and what it meant for online poker players. It stretched down the page longer than the average forum post, but was insightful and I felt more educated for having read it.
The very next post in the thread spanned five letters: TLDNR.
I looked at the acronym and felt old. I had no idea what it meant. I checked in with Google and discovered the acronym stood for "Too long, did not read."
I sighed. A lost, illiterate soul, I figured. That was until I scrolled down further and found several people offering a heartfelt, "LOL" about the "TLDNR." I scrolled down a little more and found several people asking for a summary of the post.
Before long--much like seeing a new car for the first time and then seeing it eight times in the same day--I started seeing the same acronym and the same tired requests for summaries in posts all over 2+2.
It was not a lost, illiterate soul. It was a growing subculture that lived under a banner of "I don't have time for your shit. Either give it to me or get the fuck out of my way."
***
My work has offered me both the privilege of seeing some of the best things about poker and the sickness of seeing some of the worst. I've written in depth about the good things I've seen. Whether to protect my tenuous position in the industry or out of some hope I was wrong, I've never written much about the young guns.
I've been back from the World Series for a couple of weeks now and hoped it would be enough time to cool me off. Human Head might say it's given me time to get properly indignant, like a reformed smoker or drinker who spends hours telling you how you're killing yourself. I'm not sure either has happened. I'm not properly cool, nor am I indignant (even if I'm coming across as such). I'm just worried.
See, if you didn't know, "What hath God wrought" were the first words Samuel Morse sent across telegraph lines. It was a form of communication that required shorthand like SOS, 73 (best wishes), and 30 (the end). There was an economy of time based on how slow the new fast process was.
Once an indispensible form of communication, the Pony Express and other advanced systems of communication sent Morse shorthand the way of the dodo a long time ago. Now we live a century later and have more ways to communicate than we need. People like me like to think we've gained a lot more knowledge through technology. However, there are a lot of folks out there that may be suffering the opposite effect. Today, short-hand is not because of a literal lack of time. It's laziness and a feeling that our time is much better spent doing something other than actually communicating.
Now, you'd think this is the middle of a long rant about the kids refusing to read anything that takes more than five minutes to shove in their brain. However, it's not. The refusal to read is a mere symptom of a larger problem.
***
I need to preface the following with a pretty obvious statement. There are some damned good kids out there playing poker today. By that, I don't mean they are just good poker players. They are good people. The most obvious example is Jason Strasser. If you don't know him, look him up. The kid is ten years younger than I am and more mature by just as many. He knows his place in poker and he's finding his place in the world.
One night, he and I stood at the literal crossroads in the Amazon Room at the WSOP. We had a discussion that lasted longer than it should've based on how long he had during his tournament break. However, during that time, Strasser managed to reveal a lot about himself. Despite being wildly successful in poker, he's leaving the life for a while to try out a life on Wall Street. As we parted, he said something to the effect of, "I will still be able to play poker in three years. If I wait on Wall Street, I may miss that opportunity." Though Strasser has made more money in poker than he stands to make on Wall Street in his first year, he's looking for something else for a while.
Strasser is just one example. There are several other young guys out there who have made an honorable life for themselves in poker or businesses surrounding poker. Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Nat Arem, and Luca Pagano come to mind, as well as several others you likely have never heard of. However, for every one of the good kids, there seems to be five others who have fallen victim to the TLDNR culture.
Now, you might think this is a rail-job on poker. It's not, per se. I see it everywhere. It just so happens that most of the kids I meet, I meet at the poker tables.
Unlike naming the good kids above, I'm not going to call out names on the bad ones. If you're not part of the world, you wouldn't recognize the names anyway. If you are part of the world, you know who I'm talking about. But what am I talking about? I'm talking about a subsection of the 19-28 year olds who believe that they are entitled to whatever they can win, borrow, or steal. Their grasp on morality, etiquette, and the golden rule is as weak as their handshake. If there is a gray line, they are happy to cross it if they believe they can benefit from it financially. What's more, they feel more than entitled in doing so.
In most industries, these traits will get you fired, get you arrested, or turn you into a pariah fast enough. Only in the entertainment industry and poker can you be an immoral, egomaniacal kid and find quick success. And the success, it can get you high faster than any drug. I can't speak personally about the kind of success the kids are having these days, but there was a year or two when I was playing the biggest games online. When I was winning, I thought I was King fucking Kong. I discovered quickly enough that success can be fleeting. I figured it out before I went poker-broke, thankfully. Still, I know what winning feels like and, like Chris Rock says, "I understand."
I was fortunate enough to have a few things on which to fall back. I'm not sure that a lot of the younger folks do. Many of them are winning insane amounts of money right now. Many of them are buying $30,000 watches, $100,000 cars, and who knows what else.
I don't begrudge their winning. For their sake, I hope it continues. However, it might be good if they look around and see what guys just a few years their senior are in the middle of right now. Like, without naming names, one known pro standing on the rail at the WSOP and repeatedly pestering another known pro because the latter is into him for more than a hundred grand and refuses to pay back the money. Or another known pro who is well-known for his big cash play who is spending more time hawking a D-list energy drink at the WSOP than he is playing poker. Why? Well, you can guess the rumors. That's not even to mention the Vinnie Vinh and Eskimo Clark stories.
As you might imagine, though, I'm not writing this entirely out of an altruistic worry for the up-and-coming generation. I mean, really, as a poker player, I should be happy if these guys continue to play and refund the poker economy. My greater worry is this: in ten or fifteen years, if nothing changes, a majority of the poker world will be made up of the kind of people I'm talking about. They are people who don't think multi-accounting is wrong because other people do it. They are people who believe collusion is okay if they can get away with it. They are people who think it is okay to borrow money and disappear. They are the people who feel it is completely appropriate to write (a honest to goodness line from a poker forum), "I would have put up the money to abort you."
In a game that is so great on so many levels, they are the people who represent everything that's wrong with it. It would be different if they were dinosaurs we were sending out to pasture (pardon the mixed metaphor, but it sort of fit, I think). However, they're not. They are Generation Next.
Maybe my worry is unfounded. Maybe I just haven't met enough of the Jason Strassers and Eric Lynchs to make me believe it's all going to be okay. Over my few years in the business, I've put my faith in a few of the young guns. Out of four I honestly, truly believed in, two have held my faith and two have broken my heart. I'm tired of putting my money in on coin flips.
And, of course, I hope to be wrong. I hope the above is just the late-night ramblings of a guy who needs a serious break from everything. Poker has been so good to me and it's a game I hope to play for the rest of my life. I hope poker's success live and online will continue unabated for as long as any of us care to play. I simply hope that there are enough good people out there to keep an eye on a generation in which I've lost a lot of faith.
The thing about the poker world is that it lets anybody with money in. There is not a sign at the door, a test to take, a guaranteed mentor to follow, or a list of terms and conditions anybody has to sign. Even if there were, most of the people I'm talking about would just scroll to the bottom and sign their name without reading.
I figure I've run the risk of offending some folks with this post. I've nearly deleted it twice now. However, I finally decided that no one I'm talking about will have read far enough to see any of this.
And if they did, it will just have been to scroll down far enough to comment, "TLDNR."
>> I simply hope that there are enough good people out there to keep an eye on a generation in which I've lost a lot of faith.
I thought that having these thoughts was just a symptom of my "getting old." I'm afraid that it's not.
It's not just in poker. It's everywhere. (I teach at a local college). It's unsettling.
Frightening, even.
I agree.
But, then, I'm getting older too.
Very good article! I mean - VGA!
does it make me a curmudgeonly old man to agree with this fine post?
I've their blogs and wonder if they are no better then the punks who vandelize a local school because there was nothing better to do.
Do they throw bricks of cash around the tables, strip clubs, and new "bling" simply because in their minds there's nothing better to do with it?
Would a "Scared Straight" type wake up call ground them? Maybe a walk in Vinny Vinh's shoes would do it.
We talk about this as people who have solid family lives or a network of friends to reach out to. What happens when that network contains nothing but the "bad kids" mentioned in the post?
Personally, I feel lucky for what poker has/will provided, not so much the extra cash to get dessert for my kids at Applebee's, but for social aspects that many players take for granted.
Awesome post Otis, and hope you're enjoy the "normal" life again :)
I work for a local YMCA and deal with kids of all ages and some days I worry. I worry because I also get to know the parents and I realize it is more than the next generation, it's every one. It's the level of entitlement that concerns me most.
I also get to meet some great kids that I actually enjoy their company and am happy to have made their acquaintance and seen them grow in to decent young adults. They are out there and it gives me hope, it keeps me coming back to work every day.
"Their grasp on morality, etiquette, and the golden rule is as weak as their handshake."
Fantastic sentence.
I don't understand why as I'm getting *older*, I find that I fall victim to TLDNR. I guess I attribute some of it to sensory overload when it comes to the amount of stuff available to read, watch, and listen to in this multimedia world. Another part I attribute to the fact my tolerence level for idiots is inversely proportional to the amount of idiots I run across. With more of those idiots having a voice thanks to our fiberoptic forums, I find they are now the norm -- and the good writers are the nuggets you have to pan for, sometimes for hours. That's a lot of sifting.
Everyday life does its part too. In fact, just as I typed this, someone sent me a manifesto I know I have to peruse for work. I won't stamp it with a TLDNR, but will probably give it the LGFME (Looks Good From My End)... a certain sign that I read the topic sentences and skipped past the babbling gibberish.
Who's going to change my mind? IDK, my BFF Jill?
90% of me agrees with you, wholeheartedly, but there's a part of me that can't help but wonder what sort of fucktard I'd have been if, at that same age and point of development, I'd have been able to make millions of dollars from essentially playing a video game.
It was very easy for me to be a responsible, thrifty teenager, watching every penny, because pennies were all that I had. Inject many bricks of cash into the equation (with a seeemingly endless supply of more that required little effort on my part to acquire) and I imagine my true inner immature asshattery would have been exposed.
It doesn't excuse the atrocious behavior, from the viewpoint of older, mature souls, but it somewhat explains it. Maybe.
Fantastic post. I think that this is what is wrong with this younger Generation in general.
No respect for anyone else other than themselves.
No humility either.
Namaste
Wwonka
Drop the Hammer
Interestingly, I came across the multi-accounting/collusion angle over 15 years ago when I was administering a MUD: people would connect with more than one player and help themselves through the game in order to succeed. I have no doubt it continues today in the MMORPG genre. It's certainly not isolated to online poker.
I always wondered if it was the anonymity of the technology that bred this mindset. It's definitely something that's easy to pick out when you meet someone online: skirting the norms to benefit from it is a nonissue for them.
And this is the exact mindset that carries into live games: boisterous railbirds hooting and hollering; trash talking across the felt for no reason than because they can; running the cards or pulling mucked cards to show others around them.
Internet "culture" is ruining the world. Mark my words! Or archive them, whatever. ;-)
CRUSH!MASH!SLAY! Great post, man.
GREAT post! I often find myself losing faith in human nature as I witness atrocities of etiquette from all kinds. And I too am afraid the great examples of positive, mature, responsible, humankind, (e.g. Eric Lynch) are becoming more and more 'the exception' rather than the standard. Great post!
Otis, your come-back to the suicide guy is a little too sophisticated. I prefer these come-backs:
“Oh yeah, your grandmother is loose passive. And she plays limit.”
“Kill yourself? Really? Wouldn’t you stack all these chips first?”
“A lot of yak coming from a small stack.”
(Of course, I never win a pot or say a word at the table. But my thoughts are vicious. Vicious, I tell you.)
I think this is selection bias. There have always been idiots playing poker, people who don't know how to react to the money or the stresses or the variance. Now these people can post on 2 + 2 (or whatever) for everyone to see. Ten years ago, they didn't have that outlet.
The world always looks better in the past than it does today.
I think kids today are just an indication of how society is slipping into relative morality. It's not whether something is right or wrong anymore, it's whether or not it's worse than what the other guy is doing. That's the way things work now.
Otis, you talk about these young poker players and their willingness to exploit grey areas. Not to play the devil's advocate or anything, but if they came up through on-line poker, they owe their whole career to operating in a grey area. No wonder they carry that over into the rest of their lives.
As for their lack of respect and etiquitte, I think that's a manifestation of being able to learn their craft in the privacy of their own homes, without having to experience their failures publicly like the older players did. If they experienced a big loss on-line, they can stomp around the house and throw a tantrum if they want, and no one will ever see it. They can curse the other players out without having to worry about getting punched in the face or thrown out the card room. They can make a total ass out of themselves and nobody knows who they are. By the time they begin to win consistently, they can continue to throw these tantrums in public and people will put up with it.
There are plenty of good "kids" out there, though. Just like any generation. I would think that you probably see the worst of it in your profession.
Hey Otis, Iggy sent me over.
The conflict between the younger poker players and the older generation is the major theme of my novel which should be out in a few months. People act differently in illegal home games, casino live poker, the Internet, and the talk on the forums. I am a big champion of the twentysomethings. They act great in person, and have proved their poker ability at the hightest levels.
I will never understand writing tl:dr, meaning too long, didn't read. Why comment?
Some folks make all their posts about hating. On 2 plus 2, this one guy wrote he was "going to deal with my with extreme prejudice." which may be a death threat. He got a ond day suspension. He changed his name and attacked on other web sites. I had written about a poker game robbery in Beeville, outside Corpus Christi, TX. Doyle Brunson had written about a different robbery in a different town. This fellow was convinced I was lying because of Doyle.
I would guess that some of the people that are vicious behind a fake name are nice in casinos. The best behavior is in the outlaw games in Texas. If you talked like some of the new players talk, your body might or might not be found in a remote Texas county with under two thousand population, and a Sheriff that might think you probably needed killing. One of the major reasons I was very courteous at the poker table was my devout fear of the real tough guys, which I was not one of.
I would also guess that the major haters are suckers, losers at poker.
As for people borrowing and stiffing others, that has gone on since cave men bet on throwing rocks. The Internet allows one to gossip and warn others about the dead beats. That still makes me laugh and laugh. One guy kicked a couple of plastic chip racks toward a guy that had stiffed him and that he had been badmouthing on the Internet. The guy who stiffed him made illegal threats, over the net, against several players. I will definately bet I hurt myself worse shaving than any of these guys will ever hurt each other.
On one site, this guy has written many verses of poetry and limericks to attack me for being old. Good jokes about the nursing home I'm not in, Meals on Wheels, drooling. When they run off the best posters on the smaller sites, it leaves the tl;dr crowd. If we met in person, he would never say any of those things or act that way. The Internet promotes and accepts this behavior.
I'm against cell phones, slow rolling, trash talking, high-fives, saying ship it, gloating, whining, and basically not being a man. This goes for women too. If you knew your opponent had already killed one asshole that you knew of, it really does wonders for your table manners.
It used to be that live poker was incredibly civil. I played with pimps, bank robbers, killers, ex-cons, lawyers, loan sharks, and bookmakers. People acted nicer at the poker than anywhere else in life. Folks who were expert cheaters were afraid to cheat the bigger games. Folks who robbed others wouldn't dare try the big game. Folks who acted tough around the worst bloody-bucket honky-tonks were meek as a lamb around the bigger games. Poker is special. It should require a better standard of behavior than any other endeavor because bets are verbal and the money is real. Every body is watching everything all the time. I would wager that more people have been killed who were suspected of cheating than who were actually cheating.
Johnny Hughes
I love this. This is a post that I wanted to type but couldn't. I think it whenever I go to a live poker game or casino lately...I just couldn't put it into words like you did. I call it generation E....for entitlement. It's born of the PC movement....fear of offending anybody....fear of rewarding people who deserve rewards....fear of non-inclusion....fear of making anybody feel like an individual...fear of...well you get the picture....
I made some similar observations on my last trip to Vegas during the Winter WPBT a couple years back.
Previous trips to Vegas had their share of nits, but by and large all the games were fun and friendly - with tourists and folks having fun - a married couple sitting in the same seat trading off every 10 hands -
last time I was there I saw a fight/security called every night of the three I was there. The new attitude is leading a lot of players into thinking they can be a prick and try to put people on tilt cause it'll win them money.
and the reading thing is symptomatic of a larger issue - Read Al Gore's new book for a good discourse on how TV has taken over the print world. The written word is becoming a secondary communication form, and with it, the age of reason is becoming less so as the images on a TV screen bypass certain logic centers that wouldn't be bypassed if you were reading unsubstantiated claims in a newspaper, for example.
I worry about this world
rb
You've written something that resonates with not just me, but clearly many of us. And though every generation sees the next one as lost, the situation is indeed particularly ugly in the poker world--in not only the massive casinos of Las Vegas, but also in the tiny poker rooms of rural areas.
And Mr Hughes, "It used to be that live poker was incredibly civil."
It's not anymore. I place *all* the blame television's glorification of bad manners at the poker table.
Excellent post. Since early May I've been meaning to write a post about how incensed I was to see that Justin Buomo was writing for Bluff Magazine (he was later featured on a WSOP cover of the same magazine). Here was a proven and confessed cheater who was being glorified in a magazine all about the game that he disgraced. In this post you've said all, and more, than I wanted to say - and you've written it with grace.
There's no accountability for these type of people. Until there is accountability, they will have motivation to change.
Is this for real? Every single response is intelligent, persuavive, and adds to the discourse. Stop for a minute and imagine the responses on the largest forums.
Kids these days? (and the music, or what passes for music, or what is sold as, and labeled, as actually being music) Good post, hits a nerve.
It is fitting to have this discussion interupted by the totally shameless and clueless. (Spam commenting Johnny was referencing have been deleted)
TMS ... too much spam.
Otis, while I agree with most of what you are saying about the Generation Punk-Bitch, don't fault anyone for not reading something on a website just because it is too long. I mean shizznit, remember when USA TODAY was all the rage right about the time we were in J-school?
And yet, even with declarations of the decline of literature, blogs emerged, having people read more than they ever imagined. (Not to mention surging sales of the New Yorker.)
What we all compete for on the internet isn't traffic ... it's people's time. And if some guy at the office gives himself 20 minutes to read poker sites on the internet every day, then who are we to judge if he doesn't want to spend half of his allotted time on a single post that may or may not be good?
And really, isn't it on the writer to write good enough to carry you all the way through? That's what you do. I would never make it to the end of ANY of your long-winded posts like this one if the words you chose didn't pull me through every step of the way.
But surely you understand why not everyone else is capable of doing the same.
TTYL!
This is my first visit to your blog. Awesome post. Not to get all political, but the unexamined sense of entitlement and privelege that many of these kids (and a good deal of older people, as well) have is symptomatic of what is going on in our larger culture. It's all about what you can get away with, and never about what's right. How can we expect anyone brought up comfortably in such an environment to have any sort of strong sense of ethics?
