Busto

I busted out of my first (and it's looking like only, for this year at least), World Series event last night. It was the 1k No Limit Hold'em event. I had some butterflies before it started, but once the cards were shuffled up I quickly got comfortable. I got my starting stack of 3k chips all the way up to 30k, mostly playing solid poker and getting dealt some good hands. I ran one big (but high percentage, I think) bluff that worked and profited from opponents spazzing out in some weird spots.

In the hand I busted out, I took an aggressive line that I'm confident would win chips on average, but was probably too risky for that stage of the tournament. I ended up getting all-in with 88 against AQ pre-flop, about a 55-45 favorite, but I lost the hand and was out. If I had won I would have had a big stack and been in a great position to go deep into the tournament. I definitely made some mistakes, but overall I was pretty happy with how I played. I thought I might play too timidly because I don't have a lot of experience in big tournaments, but if anything I was over-aggressive. I could have picked my spots a little better.

Going in I didn't really expect much -- only 10% of the field cashes, and of those only the top few make a lot of money. Still, it started well and I was starting to think maybe things would really go my way. I woke up at 7:30 the next morning not knowing where I was. Then I remembered and was disappointed again. Then I went back to sleep until noon.

Oh the Humanity

This probably isn't interesting if you don't play poker, but I have to relay a hand I saw played today. It was three players to the flop and all three flopped a set on an innocuous board. The action from there:
Flop: checks through
Turn: bet, call, call
River: checks through
No one else at the table seemed very surprised.

Delroy Lindo

Delroy Lindo is best known for his role in Spike Lee's Malcolm X. Also, for not losing his stack when he gets dealt kings against my aces. He just calls my raise preflop, then makes the minimum raise over my continuation bet on a paired board. Since he's played passively so far, I consider trips a definite possibility and just call. The turn checks through. Now I think he was either bluffing on the flop, in which case he won't bluff the river, or else he has a weak pair, so I make a small bet of about a quarter of the pot, hoping to get called. He quickly calls and turns over kings. GODDAMNIT!!!!!!!!!

There are few sure things in poker, but one is that when you get dealt kings against aces you're supposed to lose your whole stack. The way he played the hand was bad, ridiculous really, but in this case it worked perfectly. You got me, Delroy.

Actually I've never heard of Delroy Lindo, but Steven, the mid-30s online poker pro/yoga instructor sitting to my left, has informed me that that's who it is. He recognized him right away but couldn't remember his name, so he surreptitiously took a picture with his phone and sent it to his brother. Neither of us have told Delroy Lindo that he is Delroy Lindo, because we're respecting his privacy.

Meanwhile, I'm having one of the best sessions of my life. All my bluffs are working and when I make a big hand I'm getting paid off. I have total command of the table. In a couple hours playing 1-2 I'm up over a thousand. No one at the table knows how to deal with my aggression.

That changes when a beautiful 20-something blonde sits down to my right. She's wearing a sleek dress and carrying what looks like a very expensive bag. She's definitely out of place in Bally's lackluster poker room, a few tables of tourists and senior citizens. She orders a beer and sets about crushing the table. She's playing almost every hand and winning most of them. In less than an hour she's up over 500.

To my left, Steven says he has her pegged for an off-work dealer. I disagree. I've noticed that her bet sizing and her read on the other players seem very strong. While she's clearly playing a lot of sub-par hands, she's playing them perfectly. I think she's probably a slumming high stakes pro.

With the blonde at the table I have less opportunities to play pots. Often by the time the action gets to me she's already put in a big raise. Nonetheless I pick my spots and my stack continues to grow. When she raises in early position I come over the top with a big raise with king seven suited. She calls, but folds to my continuation bet on the flop. I'd like to believe she knows I'm the only player at the table who can keep up with her and she doesn't want to fuck with me, but it's probably wishful thinking.

The rest of the table is as intrigued as I am and is peppering her with questions. Where's she from? What does she do? How'd she learn to play? My suspicions are confirmed: she's a live poker pro living in Vegas. She says her dad taught her the game. The table wants to know who her dad is. She doesn't want to say, but after a lot of pestering gives up that he's Oklahoma Johnny. I don't know Oklahoma Johnny any more than I know Delroy Lindo, but some of the other players seem to recognize the name.

My eyes start to droop. Still on Michigan time, I woke up at 8 a.m. It's now past 3 a.m. in the night. As tired as I am, I'm still having fun. For the first time I see what Vegas is all about. I have a mountain of chips in front of me and I'm playing with a movie star and a glamorous high roller. I wonder what it would be like if this was my reality every night. I imagine playing all night and into the next day, taking shots at higher stakes, going out to expensive bars. I imagine never leaving Vegas.

Then I think about going back to Michigan. I have to be back by the first of the month to move all my stuff out  of my room. The inspectors are coming by and the attic is not technically a legal living space. I have to teach a week-long chess camp. I have to think about moving somewhere online poker is legal, or getting a real job. I have $1500 sitting in front of me. That's real money to me. I don't even like bars.

Meanwhile I recognize the table has gotten worse. Steven, the tight but competent online pro is still to my left. A jolly but sly Swede has joined the table and has been making some cunning moves. The dangerous blonde has accumulated a stack almost as big as mine and at some point I'll have to play a big pot against her. The biggest fish have long since perished in these dangerous waters. Those who remain have watched their stacks dwindle, their eyes darting around the table in fear and bewilderment. Regretfully I get three racks and pack up my chips.

Delroy left a little while before me. When he stood up, Steven couldn't contain himself any longer and said, "Tell me this. Did you really have that number?"

It was Lindo's big line from Malcolm X. Lindo looked confused.

"Tell me this," Steven repeated, "Did you really have that number?"

"You know," said Lindo, "a lot of people confuse me for Delroy Lindo. My name's Jackson."

It's a mirage, but it's a beautiful mirage.

Stuff Old People Say

"I understand the math, I'm just tired of it."

(While re-raising) "I read about this on the internet."

(Referring to the jaw-droppingly huge poker room in the Rio) "What they need is bathrooms!"

Poker Room

If your experience of Vegas is through movies, you might think poker is where it's at. Suave high-rollers, beautiful women, James Bond, etc. But in terms of floor space, poker is usually a small part of what casinos do. Mostly they are endless expanses of old carpeting, slot machines, and very depressing people. Marc Maron, podcasting from Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, put it memorably:

"Who the fuck comes to these places, where do these people come from, do cracks in the Earth open and release these people, these troll-like, obese people, these people dragging oxygen tanks behind them...I can't even explain the people who are up here, but they all seem to have something in common. That is, they seem to have given up on themselves."

I'd make the case that poker is a little less depressing, because A. it involves human interaction and B. if you're good you can be a favorite to win money, which of course is impossible when you play against the house.

In any case, the poker room is typically a small area tucked away in the corner of the casino. Thus the poker room that the Rio set up for the WSOP is both unusual and impressive. They've filled a room the size of an airport hangar with poker tables. Many are for the tournaments that run constantly, but a lot are for cash games as well. The room is filled with the tinkling of chips being shuffled.

It reminds me of my middle school years, when I used to go to huge national chess tournaments. Everything set up, an eerie calm, the magnetic field of thousands of brains working very hard.

What Happens in Vegas Something Something

After getting settled in the hotel I decided to dip my foot into the shallow end of Bally's modest poker room, playing some 1-2 No Limit. In about 2 hours I ran $200 up to about $850, basically winning every time I put money in the pot. It was nice to start with a good session, but I wished I had it at 2-5.

There are a lot of differences between online and live poker, but I'm starting to feel like the biggest is that live players are far more honest. If you ask me, poker is a game of deception. It's all about misleading your opponents as to what cards you really have. Most online players would agree with me. But most live players cheerfully tell you exactly what they have with their bets. Strong hand? Bet a lot. Medium hand? Bet a little. Weak hand? Check and fold. I guess they don't see poker as a strategy game so much as a casino game where the cards fall however they fall and whoever has the best hand gets the money. There may also be a moral grounding behind the honest approach. When Michael showed a bluff in the Motor City game, a large woman of color opined, "He plays that bullshit poker."

After my session I met up with Michael and Blinder for dinner at American Fish in ARIA where I had one of the finest (and most expensive) meals of my life: Kobe beef and abalone shabu shabu, various shellfish, and cornmeal-crusted rainbow trout. We then smoked some cigars outside, another new one for me. Finally I tagged along as they tried their luck at the craps table.

Even though table games generally don't do it for me, craps is definitely one of the better ones. It's actually a brilliantly designed game. Even though, as with all table games, you get the short end of the odds, there are enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. The best part is that the table plays together, as a team, which creates a nice community experience.

Vegas

A minute before the plane is about to touch down, I realize I haven't seen a single person on the ground. I start scanning sidewalks and parking lots, to no avail. Plenty of cars, but no people. Just before we land I spot two figures on a baseball mound engaging in a lonely conference; there's no one else on the diamond.

While waiting for the hotel shuttle in XXX 92 degrees, I strike up a conversation with a 60-ish woman from New Zealand. We chat in the shade from a pillar while her husband stands stoically in the sun, arms crossed. They're on a five-city tour of the United States: Los Angelos, Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco. I suggest that starting with LA and Vegas is a sort of trial by fire approach to exploring the US and their later destinations ought to be more relaxed. "That'll be nice," she says.

I step into my big, 19th-floor, air-conditioned room and wonder what I'm doing here. Seeing some friends, gathering experiences to write about should I manage to sell a book, playing some poker. I figure it's about time I take a real shot at live poker and see how it suits me.

Bally's, it turns out, charges $13.99/day for in-room internet access, so I'm writing this from Cafe Madeleine at next-door Paris. Going from Bally's to Paris whisks one, Midnight in Paris-like, to the City of Lights, if the City of Lights were contained entirely in a mid-priced hotel.

Off to the tables. Game on.

The King Reflects

When time ran out on the Miami Heat, Lebron James didn't collapse in tears like his teammate, Chris Bosh. Nor did he stay on the court to congratulate the Dallas Mavericks, like Dwayne Wade. He left the court swiftly and without incident. As he made his way toward the locker room, he didn't kick over chairs or shove away reporters. While he walked he calmly removed a wrap from his wrist.

James lost the same way he does just about everything: impassively, professionally. As usual, he gave away nothing. But for a moment I thought I saw a look of bewilderment in his eyes. Bewilderment that his plans could be derailed by something as trivial as basketball.

James came into the league as a teenager with more hype than any other player in the history of basketball and immediately set about fulfilling it. His game has no flaws: he excels as a passer, a scorer, a rebounder, and a defender. Unlike many other rising stars who entered the game young he stayed out of trouble. He's more likely to get press for an exquisitely tailored suit than for an ill-considered remark. Though not without struggle (he was shackled to a moribund franchise and hopeless teammates in Cleveland) his ascent to the top of basketball has been remarkably smooth.

Along the way he's built a formidable business empire. In 2005 he said, "In the next 15 or 20 years, I hope I'll be the richest man in the world. That's one of my goals." He has endorsement contracts with Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and many others. The website celebritynetworth.com says he's currently worth $90 million -- nowhere near the world's richest man, but not exactly sweating it either. He has deals in the works to own part of a European football club and grow his brand in China. For all James' accomplishments, he'll never achieve his goals if he can't win a championship.

Last year I played more than a million hands of poker. That's enough time to see some crazy stuff. When two perfect cards fall, a 1-in-a-thousand shot, there's no shock, no joy for the winner, no anger for the loser, at least not right away. In the moment all you feel is a slowing down of time. Just after, a sense that what you saw was both impossible and inevitable. I think Lebron James experienced something like that when the Heat lost. He built a mansion only to see a basketball, of all things, crash through the window. Not even the King can control everything.

Or maybe I only imagined it. James gives away nothing.

Midnight in Paris

I just got back from seeing the new Woody Allen comedy Midnight in Paris, with mixed feelings. The bad news was that the movie does one of my least favorite things a movie can do. The good news was that I still enjoyed it pretty much.

Let's start with the good news. One of the fun parts of the movie is getting to see famous people pretend to be other famous people, in particular Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali. The movie is probably better the more you know about Paris in the 1920s, which in my case is not much. I got the feeling I was missing out on a lot of in jokes. Nonetheless, scenes with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein were a lot of fun.

Getting back to the bad news. The movie is set up as a conflict between romanticism and pragmatism, with Owen Wilson's screenwriter-turned-novelist representing romanticism and his fiance, Rachel McAdams, representing pragmatism. But that's putting it charitably; really, Allen writes McAdams' character as a shrew with no redeeming qualities. Right from the very first scene we see her crapping all over Wilson and his dreams, which seems to me to be a big mistake from a storytelling perspective. If they started out happy and in love, there would be a real conflict. Instead we spend the whole movie waiting for him to dump her. It's too bad because I really like Rachel McAdams. It says something that her role in Mean Girls as "evil takes a human form in Regina George" was far more sympathetic than her character in Midnight. The thing the movie does that I really don't like is that it sets up an argument, but represents one side in such a bad light that there's really no argument at all. There's something to be said for romanticism and something to be said for pragmatism, but not as embodied by McAdams in this movie.

Tangles are Bullshit

I put my iPod chord in my backpack. When I take it out a few minutes later, it's an elaborate maze of knots, twists, overpasses, and loop-the-loops. I'm pretty sure God is fucking with me.

By which I mean, the speed and intricacy of this tangling seems a bit implausible. I bet if I installed a camera inside my backpack and kept an eye on things that chord would come out as lithe and unencumbered as a leopard's tail.

Related: You think you are on the eighth floor of a hotel and decide to take the stairs to the lobby. The floors are unmarked. Actually you're on a higher floor. How many flights do you descend before you suspect something is up?

How much should a teacher know?

As much as possible, right? I don't think so. I've noticed that the best chess players rarely make the best teachers.

Consider the bishop and knight. According to the point value system taught to beginners, the bishop and the knight are the only two pieces with the same value: three points each, with a pawn being worth one. This point system isn't written into the rules of chess, it's just a simple guideline to beginners to know if a trade is good or bad. The easiest thing, then, would be to tell the student that the bishop and knight are equally valuable.

Only, they're not. Certain kinds of positions favor bishops, other kinds favor knights. Most grandmasters would probably tell you that bishops are a little better than knights in general. In a database survey one of the programmers for Rybka, a chess computer program, found that the advantage of the bishop pair (having both bishops) is worth about half a pawn, but otherwise bishops and knights are roughly equal. Masters have known for a long time that having the bishop pair is good, but no one really knows why. It could be that the two bishops coordinate particularly well, or it could be that the bishop's move is inherently more powerful than the knight's, but it's counterbalanced by a single bishop only being able to go to half the squares on the board (a bishop that starts on a light square can never travel to a dark square). In any case, the bishop pair is one of the hardest concepts to explain (and use), and it's hard to know what to say when the student inevitably asks why it's an advantage.

And that's just the beginning. How much should you divulge in the first class? How quickly should you add new information? If you simplify too much, the information you give will be inaccurate and misleading. If you give away too much right away, all the information will blur together and the student won't come away with anything at all.

Beginners will often trade a bishop for a knight at random without any particular reason -- usually a mistake. Michigan's only homegrown grandmaster, Ben Finegold, used to tell his students, "Never trade." A ridiculous rule on the face of it, but surprisingly canny. Beginners in general are often too willing to trade. They trade because they can, because they don't know what else to do, or because they want to simplify the position, even if the simplification does not favor them objectively. The "never trade" rule is partly a corrective for this tendency. In practice, it plays out as, "Never trade unless you have a good reason to," but sounds stronger and more memorable.

It seems for many strong players their knowledge is a handicap when it comes to teaching. For everyone, concepts that they've long been familiar with seem obvious and hardly worth explaining. It's easy to forget that for beginners these concepts are the ones that require the most attention. Really strong players tend to introduce too much information too quickly, in too much detail.

The best teachers are masters of simplification -- either experts who have learned how to prune their knowledge on the fly, or not-so-experts who have embraced a simplified version of the facts that proves easy to grasp and helpful, at least as a stepping stone.

Running Bad, Running Good

The government shut down my livelihood and now I don't have a job. That was the bad news. The good news was, I got all my money. Pokerstars (which, by the way, has the best customer service I've ever encountered, except for maybe my old employer Zingerman's) called me the day after the news broke to assure me my money was safe. A little over a week later, the money showed up in my bank account.


Players at Full Tilt, one of the other sites shut down, weren't so lucky. They still haven't gotten their money and about a week ago FT released a statement saying they're "raising capital to ensure that the US players are paid out in full as quickly as possible."


Yowza. Whatever else that might mean, it seems to mean they don't have the money. And Full Tilt players are still better off that people who trusted their money with Absolute Poker, the third site shut down. Although reports that they had declared bankruptcy, reproduced widely online, proved to be false, Absolute Poker has done little to reassure US players that they will get their money -- ever. At least Full Tilt says they're trying to pay the money back.


This is one thing I think about when considering whether or not to put money on some of the poker sites still operating in the US. Before the crackdown, in terms of size, credibility, and trust, Pokerstars was number one, Full Tilt a pretty close second, and Absolute a distant third. Those rankings turned out to be all too accurate when the shit hit the fan. So I have some reservations about committing money to other sites far more obscure than Absolute. Then again, sometimes it's worth it to take a risk, especially if it's the only way to get in business.

Chore -> Ritual

I used to make my coffee with a cheap coffee machine I got from the mall. I would buy pre-ground beans whenever I was shopping for food and happened to think of it. The result had a coffee-like appearance, but didn't taste like much.

Then I started upgrading. I got a one cup ceramic coffee filter and some filter papers, a coffee grinder, and a kettle with a narrow spout. I started buying my coffee beans whole from Comet in Ann Arbor, which has the best coffee I've tasted anywhere. In my new routine I boil some water, grind enough coffee for one cup, and pour the water over the coffee grounds by hand. I've been working on my pouring technique -- they say it's best to dampen the grounds with a light pour first, then pour in the rest of the hot water in a circular motion around the outside of the filter. I don't really know how much these finesses matter, but they give me something to think about and my coffee has certainly improved. I probably spend two or three minutes more making coffee than I used to, but for me it's definitely worth it.

I started to think I could do something similar with other parts of my life -- turn chores into rituals. The idea is that with enough care tasks that were once repetitive and boring become engaging and rewarding. I was going to do it with shaving (straight razor, badger brush, etc.), but then I just stopped shaving. Now I'm thinking about getting really good at ironing clothes.

Nit-rolled

With online poker out of the picture I've been trying my hand at live poker. I don't see myself pursuing it as a full-time job, but there are worse ways to make some money on the side. It is, of course, very different.

I was playing in a 1-2 game at the Heidelberg, a bar in Ann Arbor. I opened to $10 under the gun with queens and got two callers. Then one of the blinds 3bet to 25. The raiser was a kid in his early twenties, wearing a hat and listening to headphones, so he had probably watched some poker on TV and thought he knew what he was doing. The size of his raise, though, is ridiculous -- with 40 already in the pot raising only 15 more gives me the correct odds to call with pretty much any two cards. Since the whole idea of poker is to get your opponents to make mistakes -- fold when they should call, or call when they don't have the right odds -- giving someone a price like that rarely makes sense. I had about $150 on the table. Against a competent, aggressive opponent it would be the easiest all-in in the world. I have the third-best starting hand in hold'em. But live players are typically very passive and I had a suspicion he might be the kind of player who would 3bet only with exactly kings or aces. Nonetheless given the strength of my hand, my stack size, and the amount of money already in the pot I couldn't talk myself into any other than a shove. The two callers quickly folded and the raiser started to think. I mentally pumped the fist. Obviously if he had aces or kings he would instantly snap it off and those are the only two hands that beat me. So now either he folds and I get the money in the pot or he calls and I get my whole stack in ahead. After awhile he decides to call. The flop comes ace-high all clubs. Immediately he slumps in his chair and says, "I'm pretty sure I'm dead now." I figure he has something like tens with no club. I even have the queen of clubs, which would mean he's drawing to only one out in the deck. The turn is another ace and the river is a brick. I flip my queens and get ready to scoop the pot. He flips over two kings.

From the other side of the table, one of the good players at the table yells, "You got nit-rolled, bro!" This is a combination of two pieces of poker terminology. A nit is a derogatory term for a risk-averse player. Slow-rolling is when you delay calling or revealing your cards, typically to annoy or embarrass your opponent. For example, if your opponent went all-in and you had the nuts (the best possible hand) and you pretended to think for a long time before calling that would be a slow-roll. Hence nit-roll: the kid had a slam dunk call, but was such a nit that he thought for a long time, making me think I must have the best hand.

At Such a Price

In a picture of a barber shop from 1935, I saw a slogan for Fatima cigarettes: "There is no other cigarette of such quality at such a price."

The statement is long, measured, modest, and possibly even true. In other words, the opposite of modern advertising. That type of literalism is long gone, replaced by insinuations of grandeur. Not only would a modern advertisement never qualify its claims with a phrase like "at such a price," being the finest cigarette at any price would not be enough unless it also allowed you to leap over buildings and fuck whoever you want.

As BS Fest 2012 approaches, I was thinking that maybe the price we pay for unprecedented affluence and being able to say pretty much whatever we want without being shot or imprisoned is the creeping of advertising into every part of our lives, politics very much so. Capitalism is the best system, at such a price.

A Polarizing Situation

There is nothing worse than a line for tip amount on your credit card receipt at the yogurt shop. No one would think any less of you for not tipping on yogurt, but a question once asked cannot be unasked. Now you have two choices: tip or don't tip. But the choice you don't have is to do nothing, to never think of it at all. They've taken that choice from you.

Why not just leave the tip line blank? Because diabolical yogurt agents could fill in that line with anything they damn well please.

There's no avoiding it. You have to choose. If you choose not to tip, you can either write in the zeros, or draw a slash through the line. The slash is particularly dismissive. I don't have the time to write a few zeros, which, by the way, is what you'll be getting from me: nothing. But the zeros are hardly better. Either way it's obvious you thought about it and chose to give nothing. You came. You saw. You stiffed.

If you tip, not only are you out the money, you look like a sap. Tipping for yogurt! You could split the difference and tip a smaller fraction, but that just raises more problems. They'll assume you're a cheapskate, that 7% is your standard tip. Or is it 7% What will you choose to give once unmoored from the convention of 15%-20%? That question alone could occupy your whole afternoon.

Tipping something is too generous, tipping nothing is nasty. I don't want to be an asshole, but I don't want to be that nice either.