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I can’t say I’m surprised.

After putting us all through the ”will he or won’t he charade all over again, Brett Favre decided that he will postpone retirement and play for the Minnesota Vikings for the 2010 NFL football season after all.

And just to show how sure he was this time, he expressed a desire to play in Sunday’s preseason game at San Francisco a day after rejoining the Minnesota Vikings. On Friday, coach Brad Childress said that wish will be granted.

You read it, Brett Favre will play a series or possibly two during the nationally televised prime-time game on NBC. Childress said ideally the first series would go 10 plays for Favre because, “that’s what he needs right now and all he’s ready for right now.”

“I think he’s doing a good job of rounding into” form, Childress said. “He has been throwing the football, there is no question about that. Just conditioning his legs. … He’s versed in our system and our calls.”

Tarvaris Jackson will take over for Favre and play past halftime and then be replaced by Sage Rosenfels. Childress said he does not know whether rookie Joe Webb will get in the game. The rest of the first-team offense will play the first quarter.

Middle linebacker E.J. Henderson, who suffered a fractured femur last December, will make his first appearance this preseason and play with most of the defensive starters in the first quarter.

The rotation at the cornerback spots will be a bit different…

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Had a fun weekend with Vera Valmore at a horse show. It was a lot of fun to get away and be off the “grid” for a couple of days.

I’ve written before about how Vera competes in dressage, that equestrian sport that involves training a horse to perform various gaits and movements — e.g., walk, trot, canter, passage, piaffe, pirouette, etc. Sometimes dressage gets referred to as “horse ballet” or compared to gymnastics, although the judging (in my opinion), while necessarily subjective, is much more heavily technique-based. (That’s a diagram of a dressage ring, by the way.)

Vera had a couple of nice rides this weekend, although her competitiveness and drive necessarily caused her to think she could have done better. We were at the show with some other riders, one of whom did particularly well in her two rides, netting a couple of high scores and first-place finishes in her classes. After her first ride, our friend came away expressing surprise that she had scored so well.

“It’s such a crapshoot,” she said, although I think she was being mostly humble.

Like I say, the scoring is somewhat subjective — it has to be, to some extent. But I do think that since the scoring is so carefully managed by a detailed score sheet on which judges mark the quality of every prescribed movement in a given ride, it really isn’t as much of a “crapshoot” as is the case in other kinds of competition.

That said, like in poker, there is definitely a “chance” element that can have something to do with how riders end up doing. At this particular event, one of the rings in which riders rode was unfortunately close to a nearby highway. Thus would the passing of a loud truck or some other traffic noise potentially startle the horses, and thus perhaps negatively affect a ride. Even just a stray rock stepped on by the horse during a ride can upset things in a significant way.

We were all talking at the show at one point when someone mentioned poker. I had brought some cards and a chip set, and eventually had fun teaching one of the other husbands there how to play no-limit hold’em. Without knowing what I’ve been up to this summer or over the last few years, the woman who had had the good rides then mentioned how her employer had gone to Las Vegas recently.

“Yeah, he played in this… what was it? World Series or something? World Series of Poker?”

I laughed and nodded. Did he play in the Main Event, I asked? She wasn’t sure. Was it a $10,000 buy-in event? Yes, it was. Indeed, he’d played in the ME, busting on one of the Day Ones.

I told her how I’d been there reporting on the Series, and while I didn’t recognize her employer’s name from the thousands who’d played the ME, I told her how he and I may very well have crossed paths at some point when he was there.

She went on to say how her understanding was that he is a very good player, although his credentials primarily consisted of his being a card counter. “He was even banned from one of the casinos because he was so good,” she said. I didn’t explain how card counting wasn’t so relevant in poker, but assumed that indeed the fellow probably had at least some acumen when it came to poker.

“Small world,” I thought, additionally considering how people from all sorts of backgrounds and locations go to Las Vegas each summer expressly to compete in the WSOP Main Event.

On the way home, I chatted some with the fellow to whom I had taught hold’em this weekend about how the ME worked. He was surprised to learn that only the top 10% of finishers got paid.

“Kind of like buying a lottery ticket, huh?” he asked, and I had to agree that in some respects it was. Though I did go on to explain that while one did probably have to get lucky to get all of the way to the final table and the millions of dollars waiting there, like with dressage, it wasn’t quite right to call it a complete “crapshoot.”

Then again, I guess just about anything — especially any competitive endeavor — could be regarded as a “crapshoot,” depending on one’s perspective.

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Today my review of Paul “Dr. Pauly” McGuire’s Lost Vegas appeared over on the Betfair Poker site. For those of you who haven’t picked up a copy yet, check out the review to learn what the book covers and my overall take.

Book reviews are always a bit challenging to write, for a variety of reasons. One problem I always end up facing is having to choose between several different points I want to make about the book. That is, I can’t reasonably share every little response or observation I might have had while reading the sucker, so I have to be selective and often end up setting aside certain points in order to keep the review at a manageable length.

One point about Pauly’s book I had written down but didn’t end up including in the review regarded his account of the 2005 WSOP, in particular his description of Binion’s Horseshoe where the Main Event was concluded — the last time the WSOP was played there.

As is the case throughout Lost Vegas, Pauly doesn’t shy away from telling it like it is when it comes to describing Binion’s, noting how the place had deteriorated by then into a less than desirable destination for anyone traveling to Vegas, let alone for the WSOP.

However, as Pauly notes, “What Binion’s lacked in class, it made up for in character.” Here Pauly ends up writing a nifty little elegy to the Horseshoe, a tribute of sorts to the birthplace of the WSOP focusing on the moment the WSOP left it for good. Rather than go on at length here, I’ll let those of you who have picked up the book read what Pauly has to say about how “Benny’s Bullpen was a post-modern version of the Roman Coliseum where gladiators fought to the death.”

Like I say, I ended up leaving that comment about Pauly’s discussion of Binion’s out of my review. I was thinking about it again this morning, though, as I read some of the rumors about Harrah’s having finally sold the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.

Some are saying the deal has been done, and thus the WSOP will necessarily be looking for a new home in 2011. Pokerati’s short blurb about the sale a couple of days ago appears to have gotten the rumor mill churning in earnest this week. However, the official word from the WSOP appears to be that as far as its concerned the Rio remains a Harrah’s property and thus plans for the 2011 WSOP — at the Rio — continue to proceed.

Actually, rumors about the WSOP leaving the Rio began back in the spring, and there was a lot of talk this summer about where it might possibly go. When I interviewed Nolan Dalla, the WSOP Media Director, for Betfair last month, I asked him about the rumors, knowing full well that even if he knew anything he wouldn’t be able to tell me one way or the other what was up.

Dalla’s answer to me was nevertheless forthright. He said to me that “anybody who thinks they know the answer to that question [then, in early July] doesn’t know what they are talking about.” He added that the issue would be examined by Harrah’s soon after the WSOP concluded, but that “those discussions really haven’t started that much yet.”

Whatever happens with the WSOP in 2011, I think it is interesting to compare what people are saying about the WSOP perhaps leaving the Rio with the often nostalgia-tinged sentiments expressed back in 2005 when the Series left Binion’s.

Of course, for me the WSOP and the Rio will always be closely associated, given that I’ve never had the chance to see it played anywhere else. I haven’t any particular fondness for the place, but it has seemed to me a suitable enough location to accommodate the spectacle the WSOP has currently become.

Will be curious, though, to see what happens next for the WSOP. And — if it does leave the Rio — what sort of “elegies” (if any) will be written about the WSOP during the Rio years.

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“Back to quits” is one of my favorite poker expressions, although I don’t think it is one that is all that commonly known or used. I don’t see it in The Official Dictionary Poker by Michael Weisenberg, accessible online over at Mike Caro’s site. Nor does it appear in The Poker Encyclopedia compiled by Ethan Allan and Hannah Mackay.

Can’t recall exactly where I first encountered it. I know Anthony Holden uses the phrase in Big Deal, which is why I think of it as probably more of a British term — like calling a player a “punter” or the pot the “pool.” Early in the book, Holden describes starting out his year-long experiment as a poker professional with some losses, followed by a couple of cashes in small tourneys and “a run of cards in a £5-and-£10 Hold ’Em side game, which got my bankroll back to quits.”

The meaning of the phrase is clear enough, I assume — getting back to even. I like the way the phrase connotes that irrational feeling we’ve all had that makes recovering one’s starting stack a requirement for leaving the game.

We know it’s wrong to think this way. “Perhaps the stupidest words in poker are ‘I’ve got to get even,” writes Al Schoonmaker in Your Worst Poker Enemy. “When you feel that way, you are in danger of turning an unpleasant loss into a catastrophe,” explains the psychologist. “You can get further off balance, play more poorly or perhaps go to a larger game or the craps table, desperately trying to get even.”

Thus do I like calling it getting “back to quits” rather than getting even, because the phrase tends to remind me that my real goal is simply to leave the game — which perhaps I should consider going ahead and doing rather than pressuring myself to recoup my losses. In other words, realizing that I’m simply trying to get “back to quits” sometimes helps me get up from the table sooner — not always easy to do. (Wrote about that a couple of times before, actually, in “Poker Sisyphean Challenge” and “The Long Goodbye”).

I sometimes marvel at how this mindfulness of how much I am up or down perfectly evokes the existentialist idea of “making meaning” — in this case, interpreting the meaning of my play according to what is necessarily a wholly subjective criterion that only really matters to me. In fact, depending on how aware my opponents are, sometimes I might be the only one who even knows if I’m up or down. And even if others are aware, they haven’t a true idea what the significance of being up or down (by a lot or a little) means to me, anyway.

It was during another session of Rush Poker (pot-limit Omaha, six-handed, $25 buy-in) that I found myself thinking about all of these things once again. Despite playing a few hands well early on, I’d taken a couple of unfortunate beats, then made a couple of missteps to take me nearly two buy-ins down. I gradually fought back, and without winning any large pots managed to get almost “back to quits” before signing off.

As those who have played Rush Poker know, with each new hand you are taken to a new table. After a while, you do start to see the same players, and it is even possible to get reads and use them (especially if you are a note-taker). But a lot of what happens in each individual hand happens without the usual contextual info of the standard game.

I realized absolutely no one knew whether I was up or down during my session. In fact, towards the end I was sitting with a fairly big stack (nearly three buy-ins deep), but was still down a couple of bucks. Nor did anyone know if I’d been playing well or poorly.

A hand came up where it folded to me on the button and I raised pot with a trash hand. As I did, I momentarily thought of my “image” and its significance (or lack thereof). My opponents didn’t really know if I was the sort of player who sometimes would raise with bad cards there. But I did.

As I waited for the blinds to act, I began involuntarily thinking about how I’d played the last couple of times it had folded to me on the button, actually considering — and maybe even being slightly affected by — the patterns in my own play. Patterns I had noticed, but no one else had.

The existentialist recognizes that while we play with each other, what the game means is necessarily going to be different to each of the players. And if for you getting to the end means returning to the beginning, well, only you may see the meaning of within.

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I occasionally talk here about how impatient I sometimes get with poker-related analogies. For instance, about a year ago I referred to the Poker Shrink noting how he wasn’t “a big fan of the ‘Poker is like Life’ books and articles” because, in his view, most of them end up being “too general to carry any more wisdom than a dribble glass.” I agreed with the Shrink in saying I also didn’t care much for these analogies — most particularly when they end up making one’s meaning more vague rather than helping clarify what it is one is trying to express.

In other words, I ain’t too keen on someone proclaiming “Poker is like life” and leaving it at that, though I do often appreciate the many ways poker presents us with situations that resemble those we face elsewhere, and thus occasionally provides interesting ways to talk about and assess those non-poker situations. And yeah, I, too, will indulge in such making comparisons now and again, as it is both fun and occasionally even useful.

That said, one has to be careful not to introduce unwanted vagueness when making such comparisons. Another danger one faces when choosing to employ poker-related metaphors is to fall into stale, overused phrases and clichés — also not recommended if the goal is to engage an audience.

The abundance of poker terms and phrases in everyday English is testament to the game’s popularity and significance. But this abundance also means many of these terms and phrases have become pretty well worn by now. People everywhere are constantly bluffing each other. Or upping the ante. Or noting when the chips are down. Or passing the buck. Or trying their hand at something. Or singing that he can’t read my, can’t read my, no he can’t read my poker face. Or warning you about that guy being a wild card, with an ace in the hole. Or up his sleeve. Or simply being an ace.

I’m reminded of George Orwell’s still relevant 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” in which he laments the decline of the language in various contexts, but most especially in political speech and writing. Among his many warnings listed there, Orwell advises readers to avoid “dying metaphors” if at all possible. In his list of examples Orwell does include one poker-related one — “playing into the hands of” — and I’d imagine he’d list most of those appearing in the previous paragraph, too, as often introducing an unwanted “loss of vividness” in one’s language.

Last week Tiffany Michelle appeared on Fox News to chat with Neil Cavuto, ostensibly to discuss the current status of President Obama’s efforts to introduce health care reform and all of the legislative tangling — and political fallout — that has occurred in connection to those efforts thus far. Why Michelle? Well, because she’s “a professional black jack and poker player” — i.e., a gambler — and someone thought it would be a good idea for a person who understands risks and rewards to comment.

Bill Rini wrote a bit about the segment last week in a post that also has the embedded video. Then he came back and transcribed the whole sucker. As Rini points out, the conversation between Cavuto and Michelle — coming in at just under five minutes — is more than a little cringe-worthy, primarily because of the not terribly successful attempt to describe everything in terms of poker or gambling metaphors.

It appears that Cavuto (and Fox) mainly wanted to say that Obama has “a bad hand” here and should fold. And perhaps — as Cavuto hastily adds at the end — also to charge that the President isn’t playing with his own money, but with the taxpayers’. So they brought Michelle on to help communicate that message, but Cavuto’s questions were so imprecise those (essentially banal) observations barely came through, if at all.

If you’re curious, check out Rini’s transcript and/or watch the video. I actually wouldn’t fault Michelle too much here — she does pretty well, I think, to try to respond to Cavuto’s garbled clichés, and in fact probably saves the whole segment from becoming utterly inscrutable.

The hosts of The Poker Beat discussed the segment a bit on their show last week, and there tourney reporter B.J. Nemeth did a good job summarizing why it failed — and why I am sometimes impatient with poker-related metaphors that tend to obscure more than clarify. “The whole point of an analogy is to try and make something easier to understand,” said Nemeth, “and I think what they did is took something the [viewers] had some grasp of and made it incomprehensible.”

Then again, as Orwell notes, what Nemeth is describing is often what happens when language is employed for political purposes. Writing in the wake of the second World War, Orwell notes how “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Perhaps the stakes were a bit higher then (to use a dying metaphor). But Orwell’s desire for us to view “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought” is still worth reiterating.

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