I 4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 OPINION 6l 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 opinion.michigandaily.com tothedaily@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JORDAN SCHRADER Editor in Chief JASON Z. PESICK Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE That sounds like a police agency that's thrown its hands in the air." - Lance Smith, a director at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, referring to the hour-long prayer sessions that took place in all 13 Detroit Police Department precincts yesterday, in response to the recent rash of violence in the city, as reported yesterday by the Detroit Free Press. SAM BUTLER T'HE SOAPBOX 1 i l \ o I v J 0 6 Alift \,\ha+ do Q y ur'ea I Wta)Ofl 'That's no limit holdem, baby' D.C. LEE 2L COOL J ast year in the World Series of Poker, Scotty Nguyen bet $100,000 into a pre-flop raiser with nothing but an unsuited 3-8. That's only marginally better than 2- 7 offsuit, the worst pos- sible starting hand. As he raked in the chips, having forced tour- nament professional Humberto Brenes to fold an A-10, Scotty found the nearest ESPN camera, looked directly into the lens and said, "That's no limit holdem, baby." Ten years ago, not many people would have predicted that ESPN would be tele- vising a card game. But things have changed. In 1998, Matt Damon let the world know in the movie "Rounders" that poker is not like other forms of gambling. It's a "skill game." In 2002, Robert Varkonyi shocked the professional card- playing world when he won the World Series as an amateur. Q-10, the hand that beat top professionals Phil Hellmuth and Julian Gardner, has affectionately been called "the Varkonyi" ever since. In 2003, Chris Moneymaker solidified the notion that "anyone can win" when he won the championship event and took home a cash prize of $2.5 million. He won his seat and $10,000 buy-in by winning a $40 satellite tournament on ultimatebet.com, an online gaming program. These are some of reasons I started playing more seriously four years ago, and many of you can probably relate. Names like Varkonyi and Moneymaker have done wonders for the popularity of the game, but being the next amateur champion is the not the only reason people around the world are falling in love with No Limit Texas Holdem. The first thing you notice about No Limit Texas Holdem is that it's structured differently than most other games in two important respects. First, each player at the table is dealt only two cards, face-down. The remaining five cards are placed face-up in the middle of the table as community cards (three on "the flop," one on "the turn," and one on "the river"). The goal is to make your best five-card poker hand with your two down cards and the five community cards. Combine the almost incalculable number of hands your opponents could be holding with the second important structural difference of this game - that you can bet any amount at any given point - and you have a game that takes a paragraph to explain and a lifetime to master. This is why a veteran player like Scotty Nguyen, who is just as likely to show down "the nuts" (the best possible hand) as he is to bluff with nothing, can bet $100,000 into Humberto Brenes with an unsuited 3-8. That's no limit holdem, baby. The second thing you notice about No Limit Texas Holdem is that because of its structure and because the players can agree to play for whatever stakes they chose, it can be both fun and disturbing. Over spring break, I played in a game at Caesar's in Bridgeport, Ind., during which I stood up and asked the dealer to deal me out because I had to use the restroom. He inad- vertently dealt me in anyway, so I looked at my hole cards and found a suited A-Q. I played the hand and won a $232 pot with a flush, ace high. The gentleman to my right said "That was almost the most expensive piss you ever took." That's the fun part. Later that night, a gentleman across the table lost his last $120 (he was already down $380 at that point) when his pocket queens got beat by a suited 8-9. The flop came 10-J-Q, and the turn and the river were no help to the man with Q-Q. Still steaming from the loss, he jacked up the table, tore his cards in half and swore off everyone at the table. Security led him out, and the rest of us continued playing with a new setup. That's the disturbing part. On a larger scale, scenes like these have been replayed time and time again on ESPN at the World Series of Poker. Just tune in on a random weekday or weekend afternoon, and there's a good change it will be on. But, just in case ESPN decides not to run anymore World Series reruns, and you're looking for something to do, I'm going to take the initiative to organize the first annual World Series of Michigan tournament: $100 + 1 (for the trophy) buy- in gets you 1,000 in tournament chips; no re-buys and payouts according to number of entrants. With 100 entrants, we can have a prize pool totaling $10,000. Interested? E-mail me. We'll figure it out. I'll see you at the tables. Lee can be reached at leedc@umich.edu. Don't rob me of my Naked Mile SRAVYA CHIRUMAMILLA WEAVING THE HANDBASKET F or my cousin's down on the participants, arresting stu- dents in 2004 are as far from the liberal wedding a couple dents who then faced misdemeanor and independent students from the 1990's of years ago, his charges as well as thousands of dollars in as we are from the radicals of the 1960's. friends made a brief fees. What was once a cry of freedom not That our representatives in MSA have video of his college years. only brought about restraints from the failed to even mention an event that once The slides were accompa- police, but also embarrassing repercus- was a prominent milestone in students' nied with some funny sions on the Internet. Soon, the Naked lives shows their disconnect. quotes and even the senti- Mile was dead and the only people who Secret e-mails have been floating mental Green Day song, were willing to run were students in around for the past couple of weeks talk- "Good Riddance (Time of bathing suits who were brave enough to ing about the resurrection of the Naked Your Life)." To the horror weather the cold. Mile. Students want to participate and and amusement of the 600 guests at the Contrary to some people's belief that I want to do it in a safe environment. wedding reception, they included a picture am just interested in seeing a bunch of naked Instead of wasting their time and our of his back as he whipped by the camera people (I can do that any day on the Inter- money voting on insubstantial national during the Naked Mile. net), I am moved to write about this because proposals, MSA should think about It was just something they did back the administration and police's powers annoy answering the students' concerns. Willing then. Seniors would shed their clothes to me. This was our event. We wanted to do runners await if they can do it without the celebrate their final escape from this insti- something silly and refreshing and were threat of serious prosecution and with the tution and before they were forced into the bogged down by the powers that be. protection of some security. Until recently, restraints of the "real world." The route In the years prior to the administra- the AAPD was a surprisingly rational from Washtenaw Avenue to the Cube tion's smear campaign, the administration department that protected and served stu- would be filled with supporters and drunk- and the Michigan Student Assembly dents fairly. It should not be difficult to en onlookers who also were celebrating the worked together to provide Naked Mile persuade it or the administration to serve arrival of spring and the completion of yet security. Students wore brightly colored students' needs by just letting us do our another semester at the University. shirts and kept the crowd in check. Run- own, harmless event. It was something Ann Arbor was known ners were not afraid of being molested and Unfortunately, MSA's thumb-twiddling for in the 1990's and like all other things in were less bothered by the police. The sto- and administration brown-nosing have the city that were once thought of with nos- ries from last year's Naked Mile on the become all too familiar. Instead of just talgia and pride, it too was corrupted by peo- other hand, are completely disheartening. looking back with longing, we have only ple who should have had no control over it. The only humorous comments were those one option, though technically illegal, to The administration set up fliers all remarking on the speed of certain students take back the freedoms that are rightfully across the campus announcing the dangers running from the police who were chasing ours. I invite the brave and righteous to get of the Naked Mile. We were told that stu- them on bicycles. naked, strap on the saran wrap, run the dents would be abused and fondled and That the administration can squash mile and bring back our Naked Mile. that their pictures would be placed on the something in which students willingly par- Internet for all to see. The Ann Arbor ticipated without even minimal student Chirumamilla can be reached at Police Department also started cracking response shows that the University stu- schiruma@umich.edu. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Lecturers asked to bear unfair burden by 'U' TO THE DAILY: One of the central issues at stake in the cur- rent struggle between University administrators and union leaders for LEO is job security. Uni- versity lecturers are often hired on a year-by- year or even term-by-term basis; they want a contract that acknowledges their commitment to the University and their teaching as something more than temporary and disposable. The Uni- versity's main response to lecturers' request for a contract that would ensure two- or three-year appointments is that departments need to make such short appointments because of fluctuating it over to lecturers - the administration con- stantly asks lecturers to take huge risks: If you wait, we might hire you. If you will teach one semester, we might hire you next semester. The situation is both bad for lecturers and bad for students, who are taught then by instructors who work in an environment of little or no profes- sional acknowledgment and support. It seems that the administration is wildly irresponsible in asking lecturers to bear almost completely the risk that it has to manage. If there is no better way to predict and/or facilitate enrollment numbers in classes, then the Univer- sity and its departments and schools must devel- op a more sophisticated mechanism for managing that risk on their own. Whether they will admit it or not, the University has in the disempowering their teachers, and our teaching staff is too valuable to be treated so unfairly. University administrators should agree to a con- tract that increases job security for and acknowl- edges the importance of its lecturers. Refusing to do so might drive away some of our best teachers, and the quality of the University's undergraduate education should be its primary objective. ARIc KNUTH Lecturer, Department of English DAILY OPINION: WS OUR HOT 4 I Z1i llJi i LT.E U1 L L L.1.! EL4Tv # < A