January…oh January.
The month when the awards rain down on our spongy fontenalle. The time of the year when the elite stand up and stare at their shiny shoes. I’m talking about the people responsible for the top grossing movie of the year, the biggest selling console game, the most popular music album, the sexiest selfie, and who topped the online poker rankings.
According to statistics collated by HighStakesDB, the online poker ranking supremos, the German online high stakes grinder Niklas ‘ragen70’ Heinecker was the year’s biggest winner with $6,190,599 in winnings, over a sample of 65,577 hands, giving him a profit of $94.40 per hand.
Nice.
Unfortunately, this is nothing more than a best guess, because there aren’t any laws that bind poker players when it comes to baring their financial soul to the world. Instead, they can opt-out, effectively barring anyone from displaying long-term wins or losses.
Both Alexander “PostFlopAction” Kostritsyn, and Kyle “cottonseed1’ Hendon have shared Heinecker’s hot seat during the online battles of 2013, and yet they don’t figure in the end of year scoreboard because they chose to exercise this option.
The data is as dirty as a chimney sweep and as fragmented as the Rubik Cube that I am fiddling with in between sentences. As a Manchester United fan I am suddenly struck with optimism. Perhaps, Arsenal, Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton and Tottenham will all opt-out of the Premier League and my £500 bet on them finishing in the top two will look a little more likely.
So the online scorecard doesn’t mean Jack, and the only loser in this debacle is the fan of poker. But when you think about it, is it really a surprise that players are taking the Kostritsyn and Hendon route?
If you are a professional poker player then having your profit and loss account displayed on HighStakesDB, is no different to my former Railway boss displaying my year-end earnings on my Facebook page.
In my experience, the automated response to a discussion on earnings is silence. People don’t like to talk about how much they earn, because most people would like to earn more than they do. It’s a pissing contest and nobody wants to get the yellow stuff over their brown suede shoes.
Why should players have to opt-out in the first place?
Surely, the financial status of an online poker account should be kept private, and players should be asked to opt-in instead of having to write an e-mail to the customer services rep, that doesn’t care about customers, if they can opt-out.
There are a multitude of reasons why a poker player shouldn’t want their results known, and only one that I can think of that would warrant the ruffling of their perfect peacock plumage.
EGO
Why would you want the world to know that you win or lose millions of dollars, playing online poker, other than to massage your ego and extend that metaphorical Pinocchio nose growing in the underpants region?
Even losses that run into the millions is a sick and twisted brag, and therefore still an extension of ego.
The decision to allow tracking sites to display your wins and losses can also have disastrous connotations.
Take Gus Hansen as an example.
If the likes of HighStakesDB is to be believed, then the Great Dane has lost over $18m spondoolas playing online poker. By my reckoning this must mean he is either the unluckiest player in the history of the online game, or he is pretty shit at what he does.
Imagine that it’s the latter. That he is just getting outclassed each time that he sits down to play, then why would anyone want to have his name associated with the campaign to promote their company within the circles of online poker?
When you pick up a copy of FIFA14 you know you are going to see the faces of Lionel Messi and Cristian Ronaldo. They are the world’s best players and the most deserved when it comes to promoting the game of football. They aren’t going to be showcasing the likes of Tom Huddlestone and Jonathan Walters.
And where on earth does anyone get $18m from anyway?
It get’s me thinking about Hansen’s business. I check out his Hendon Mob stats and see he has $11m in live tournaments, then I mentally subtract his costs, bits and pieces that people have off him, and it doesn’t leave much.
So where does he find $18m?
You see the problem?
It’s none of my goddam business where he found $18m?
Perhaps, he was traveling around the Las Vegas Strip and some high stakes poker player was idiotic enough to leave it in the back of a taxi with the lackadaisical attitude of a person losing a glove?
It doesn’t matter if Hansen is the most genial hard working employee Full Tilt Poker (FTP) have ever known. It doesn’t matter if he brought the boss an apple every day that he was a Professional. The world knows he lost $18m and a company with a vision to be amongst the elite cannot be spearheaded by a loser.
I can hear the final boardroom nail being hammered from here.
“If only people didn’t know Gus…if only you had opted out.”