Rain Men

Today I listened to the Pokerroad Radio interview of Josh “JJProdigy” Field. JJProdigy is famous for two things – being one of the top online tournament players long before his 18^th birthday, which arrived two months ago, and multiaccounting – playing the same poker tournament using several accounts at the same time. Field is especially reviled in the poker industry because he confessed to continuing his multiaccounting practices, without remorse, even after getting caught and kicked off prominent online poker sites.

In the interview, Field came off as inarticulate, one-dimensional, and not very thoughtful. A few of the lowlights:

On multiaccounting – “I don’t see that much wrong with it.”

On getting caught multiaccounting and then continuing to do it knowing it was against the rules – “Well I did, I’m guilty of that, I have nothing else to say.”

And “I didn’t care if I was playing four accounts, six accounts, I was a wanted person already, so, might as well just go for it.”

On ghosting (purchasing the rights to someone’s account late in a poker tournament) – “I think almost everyone’s doing that.”

On Greg Raymer blasting him for cheating – “For him to judge me just based on my actions…is kind of ridiculous.”

On Gavin Smith’s assertion that he should give some of his money to charity to help repair some of the damage he has done – “Considering donating – that’s not something I’ve really thought about.”

At the DoubleTree hotel where we stayed for the LAPC, I went to the gym three times. I saw a total of five people in these three trips – including Toph and Mike Matusow, interestingly enough – though the hotel was packed with poker players, the facility was more than decent and I went at peak hours. It’s not like the other players were off exercising somewhere else, running outside or something – we were in Commerce, CA and it was raining most of the time. Most poker players just don’t really exercise, even though it is easy, convenient, and unquestionably beneficial for a poker player’s lifestyle.

Jonathan Little recently lost his sponsorship with Full Tilt Poker because he was allowing friends to play on his account. One instance was when Little's Full Tilt account was in use at the same time he was playing at Caesar’s in the NBC National Heads Up Championship. The smack-your-forehead stupidity of this one obviously speaks for itself – I have nothing to add.

We had a house all set up for the World Series this summer. It was my responsibility to complete the lease agreement and pay for the place. This would require, at most, a thirty minute trip to Kinko’s. For whatever reason, I didn’t do it for three weeks and the house was eventually claimed by a different group of gamblers.

What I’m getting at is that most poker players are idiots. There is a rudimentary skill set that we seem to lack. The fascinating thing to think about is how brilliantly some of these guys are in a poker context. Field had the game figured out better at fifteen than most players who had devoted the last thirty years to it. Little will likely be the Player of the Year for Season Six of the WPT.

One year at summer camp, they arranged for Kim Peek, the Rain Man himself, to come and give a talk. He performed a staple of parlor tricks – identifying what town people were from based on their phone number, reciting passages from books on demand – before telling his life’s story. It actually wasn’t very entertaining, because Peek had poor public speaking skills. The “idiot savant” concept was endlessly intriguing to me though, and I think about it all the time. It’s incredibly fascinating to think about people who can be so mentally gifted in one area and so staggeringly retarded in others.