Good luck and good night
OK, so Bill Simmons is joining the rest of the fish at the World Series of Poker this summer, even though it seems like he doesn't realize it. And while he goes on about his story of winning money in Vegas after watching Rounders (phase one in the mainstreaming of poker) and seeing some young kids get smoked at the tables, it seems like he's completely overlooking the on-line phenomenon where millions of people can get lots of real action (see Franz Lidz's story about the 18-year-old WCOP champ) -- and get their way into the main event. Sure, they may be fooling themselves into thinking they're good, but does Simmons really think he's much better? (Thankfully, he doesn't.)

When it comes to the WSOP, experience only matters so much because the amateurs will do lots of weird things the seasoned pros wouldn't do. Sometimes the fish get burned, other times, they'll beat the pros. You just don't know. With the numbers growing each year, the odds that a seasoned pro is going to win the whole thing get worse.

However, he does make a good point that bad beat poker stories are just as repetitive and annoying as stories about people's fantasy teams. Which leads me to ...

The recently released book Fantasyland, a chronicle of Wall Street Journal writer Sam Walker's foray into Rotisserie baseball via the Tout Wars experts league.

As might be expected, some of the stories of how his players get hot or run cold before or after key trades can get tiresome (as was Walker's talking to players, coaches and scouts about his team during the season), but it was amusing to see his braintrust (a former NASA engineer now working for the Cardinals and a guy who's appeared on my site) battle over concocting draft strategy -- the clash between classic scouting and the numbers game.

Thankfully, getting a full season's worth of stories about the league's participants, including a couple of colleagues I work with extensively (Jason Grey and Matt Berry) does provide for plenty of entertainment, although I guess it helps to know them.

The most interesting part of the book, though, in my opinion, is seeing the very strange rift between Ron Shandler and SABR, which in a way is indicative of the odd feud between fantasy players/experts/etc. and the growing class of baseball statistical analysts, despite both relying heavily on numbers to reach similar aims.

If you're into the baseball numbers game, fantasy or otherwise, it's an interesting read, but I think it'd be hard to get into it if it's not your cup of tea.