Mike Sexton

Let's leave the whole "End of the Poker World" debate until another day. There are electronic poker tables in some card rooms and there will be more. Play 'em, don't play 'em; your choice. But I would note that the electronic tables have something between "live" play and "online" play when it comes to tells.

Some player believe there are fewer tells online and others think online tells are merely different. Well playing on an electronic table for awhile might convince you differently whatever your opinion.

First, the facts. At an electronic table the action moves from seat to seat, you can't act out of turn because you can't act until it is your turn. Also once you make any betting action, you have to confirm it with a second screen action. Image that you bet 600 in a live action game and instead of saying "600 is the bet" the dealer says "do you wish to bet 600, sir?" You can't string bet, you can't act out of turn; you can stack your chips and then fold and you can talk while you ponder your electric action.

But players sitting at a screen get into a pattern of betting with their hands or as is the case at many electronic tables, players use their players card to touch the screen; hard plastic is recognized easier than your soft finger tip. So if you watch players they will have a pattern to their manipulation of the screen options. When they are "on a hand" or setting up a bluff that routine changes. Players often fumble with the screen action when they are new to the game but once you got it, you got it! So slowing down or resetting the betting screen is a tell. You have to be smooth with the screen, just like you have to be smooth with chips. And it is just as easy to fumble the screen as it is to spill your chips.

Also players get locked in on the screen and forget about the other players. Fewer electronic players watch for tells and therefore they are also less likely to pay attention to their own mannerisms. They play like they are at home, where mumbling "Hot Damn!" when they hit their flush is not giving away anything.

New technology, new players, new tells. All in a electronic day's play, right Hal?

Meanwhile, other online sites engage in big fat game of Hungry Hungry Hippo trying to scoop up Party players, which until today represented 40+ percent of the worldwide online poker market.

Mike Sexton explains Party's U.S. pullout as part of good-corporate-citizen strategy in an effort to set-up a taxably triumphant return ... while Daniel Negreanu respects the move but wonders if they'll ever get back the players left behind.

(I know a couple poker-room guys in Dallas who know the answer to that -- it's possible, but not easy.)

Mike Sexton is heading to Washington DC tomorrow to kick off his ex-post-facto lobbying effort and pro-poker media campaign.

ALT HED: Million-Outs March

Mike Sexton is about to embark on a weeklong "rampage" -- heading to New York and possibly Washington DC to diplomatically blitz the media with declarations of poker injustice. While some may contend that the host of the WPT might have been better off doing this before internet gambling prohibition became a reality ... doing so probably wouldn't have gotten much more notice than Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, and Greg Raymer going to DC -- which was obviously not enough to put a stop the Senate's anti-poker political trickery. At least this way, as the non-poker media is certainly aware of what's going on now, the most significant poker beefs have a better chance of being heard by the largest audience.

While Sexton's ambassadorial megaphone still may not be enough to persuade George Bush to wield his seldom uncapped veto pen, it could go a long way to kicking into gear the necessary mechanisms to get things changed over the next year or two.