I just received the following e-mail from Robert Woolley, who’s been doing some exciting stuff in his blog. You can find the blog linked in his e-mail:

“Mr. Wise:

I thought you might be interested in a comment/analysis I just posted on my
blog about your December interview with Jerry Yang:

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/02/jerry-yang-and-questions-still.html”

I wrote an on-the-record response and then realized ‘hey wait, I have a blog too!’ and figured I’d post it here. Here’s what I wrote:

The Yang issue goes to the heart of the difficulties involved with covering this particular industry, where it’s often required to place diplomacy and politicking over dogged inquiry in order to survive.

To this day, a part of me would like to have pressed Jerry further on his answers, but I ultimately decided not to for a couple of reasons;

1) When players like Jerry with massive media demands grant me large chunks of their time, I feel they deserve a certain measure of (admittedly light-stepping) respect with regards to the answers they give. I like to think I ask some questions others don’t in order to give my listeners and readers (and me) the opportunity to get an answer from the horse’s mouth, but ultimately I choose to return the respect by letting their answers speak for themselves.

2) If I had pressed Jerry the way you suggest, I’d have been getting into some very personal matter concerning faith and hypocrisy. The truth is that would likely have been better for stirring up controversy and therefore my number of listens, but there’s a bigger picture at work here.

When players with something to hide start identifying a member of the poker press as inflammatory, there’s suddenly very little incentive for them to co-operate with media requests in the future. ESPN.com, Bluff Magazine, worldseriesofpoker.com and the other entities I provide content to rely on my being able to utilize my familiarity with the assorted major characters within the industry. They can’t rely on me that way if the characters in question feel unsafe inputting their statements in my hands.

For example, say there are two massive superstars of the game who’d shown massive disdain for one another in rec.gambling.poker threads from the 2000-2002 years only to have put on a strong face of friendship for the cameras. Those two stars would obviously have made a mutual decision that the nature of their past relationship could only be harmful for their respective media images. Knowing that, I’d expect that confronting, then pressing them on that relationship would result in their refusal to co-operate with future inquiries where their specific experience is required for the best rendering of a story. If those players were influential members of the community, that refusal might even blanket their closer associates. That would leave me ineffective in just about every capacity. Since I am asking questions others aren’t (and I’d refer you here to my cover article for Bluff this month, where I was fortunate enough to get Doyle Brunson, Lyle Berman, Jack Binion, Bobby Baldwin, Johnny Chan, David Chesnoff, Barry Greenstein and a plethora of others to speak about the passing of Chip Reese, which occurred six days before the article was submitted. ˜Sensitive” is an understatement), I’d rather keep myself in a position to ask those questions. Granted, there’s some self-preservation at work here, but I also think it’s a good thing for the (admittedly very) slow expansion of personalized information made available to the public on the industry’s most public (and generally polished) characters. Jump over the line and you won’t be let back in. Slowly push the line forward and eventually we won’t have to jump over it at all. I admit, this approach makes me a little more toothless than I’d like to be sometimes, but its my belief that the teeth will come with time. Andy Glazer’s place in the game might have afforded him the familiarity to ask those questions. I’m still establishing that familiarity.

Televised poker as an industry is tricky in that it falls somewhere between entertainment and sport. It involves the close examination within a cult of celebrity/personality, with the individuals in question holding more power than athletes in that they don’t operate under the umbrellas of universal entities like the NBA, NFL or even the PGA. I’d point out the respective reactions to Phil Hellmuth’s behavior on the 2002 WSOP broadcast and ARod’s botched free agency announcement during this year’s baseball World Series as examples of the status of the players in poker more closely rivaling that of the game they play than that of the players in organized sport.

The good news is that bloggers with no related professional commitments CAN jump the line. Once they do, it’s far easier for me to close the gaps with the help of the players. When jerry Yang came on my show, he was willing to talk about his prayers at the table in ways he hadn’t previously in public forums because he was advised of my reputation for fairness (most interviews of this sort are arranged through intermediaries) and knew that I wouldn’t jump that line. If you keep jumping (and I think you do a great job of it) and I keep pushing, the gap will continue to close.

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com