Jobless

grindrewind

2011-11-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

I've moved to a new location, grindrewind.com. Be there!

Bad Beat Jackpot

2011-09-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

"You can keep playing," said the dealer, "but there won't be any Bad Beat Jackpot."

"What's the point?" said the guy to my left.

At Greektown hitting the Bad Beat Jackpot requires losing with four-of-a-kind to a better four-of-a-kind or a straight flush. I played over a million hands of poker online last year, all of which are recorded in a database. When I did a search for hands that would have satisfied the Bat Beat, I found a grand total of zero. I do seem to remember once losing with quads versus quads though, so maybe I messed up one of the filters. In any case, when you're talking about live poker where you play 30 hands an hour, there's not much difference between zero in a million or one in a million. It's not going to happen.

Plus, it's not that much money. The Bad Beat is currently a little over $100,000. If I remember right, the loser gets half of that, the winner gets a quarter, and the rest is split up between the rest of the table. Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice, but we're not talking about set-you-up-for-life money.

Psychologically though the Bad Beat is brilliant. It takes one of the worst outcomes in poker (you make a really great hand but end up losing a huge pot) and makes it into one of the best. On an emotional level, to someone who doesn't understand the odds, this makes the whole idea of playing poker more appealing. Of course, the Jackpot is funded by money taken out of pots, not all of which gets paid back, so ultimately it's a losing proposition just like every other bet you make with the casino.

So okay, it's a cute promotion, a clever marketing idea, not that big of a deal, right? Nope. It's the single most discussed topic at the poker table and the primary driver of many players' decisions. If the table breaks down to less than five players, the cutoff for awarding the Jackpot, the majority of players will refuse to play for that reason. And many players assign too much value to starting hands, pocket pairs and suited connectors, that are capable of hitting the Bad Beat.

Suck Out

2011-08-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

1-2 No Limit game, Greektown Casino. I open to 15 under the gun with aces, next guy to act raises to 35, everyone else folds. He has about 450, I have him covered. I raise it up to 110 and he calls quickly but not very happily. Flop is Kxx, he lunges forward with his whole body and shoves about 100 in chips into the pot, out of turn. After being warned by the dealer he sheepishly takes his chips back. I check and he makes the same bet. I feel pretty strongly that he has exactly KK. It makes so much sense. But can't he have AK? Maybe even KQ suited? Could even be QQ or JJ played very badly, or a weird bluff. He just called a big river bet against me with ace-high, so he thinks I'm full of shit. Can I really fold aces with a 1.5 pot-sized bet left on the flop? I can't. I go all-in. He calls.

"You have kings?"

"Yeah."

We both flip our cards. The turn is a seven. I don't really see the river, I just hear the table go nuts. He stands up, stares blankly at the table for a few seconds, and walks away. I rake in a $900 pot.

1. Sometimes the biggest pots are the least interesting. There are points where both of us could have played differently, but all the money was going in regardless. Poker is a forest. You learn which plants are good to eat and which are poisonous, how to hunt certain animals and avoid others, but sometimes while you're walking through the forest you get struck by lightning. There's not much you can do about it.

2. I'm told that, according to quantum physics, there exist many alternate realities*. In most of them I don't win that pot. I watch my good session go sour. I take a walk outside and try to figure out if I'm in the right state of mind to keep playing. Maybe I quit or maybe I keep playing. Maybe I go into a tailspin and lose all the cash I brought that day, or maybe I rebound and get back ahead. But today I don't have to deal with that. Today I get to be Nate who won a $900 pot. It's pretty fun.

*As far as I can tell, the work of quantum physicists has mostly to do with balancing complex equations, but the effect of quantum physics on the rest of us is to give quasi-scientific justification to vague, spiritual and/or metaphorical statements, e.g., "Everything is energy." That and the atomic bomb I guess.

The D

2011-08-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

Years ago, in Vegas -- not for poker, but for an ultimate frisbee tournament, in the hotel elevator...

Woman (seemingly drunk, head tilted slightly upwards): So, you like the D?

Nate: What?

W (sd, htsu): You like the D?

N: What?

W: You like the D?

N (realizes he is wearing a Detroit Tigers cap): Oh. Yeah.

Elevator stops. N exits awkwardly.

I'm not sure why this stuck with me. Something about how she said "the D" I think, the repetition of those meaningless (then) syllables working hypnotically, like a watch swinging back and forth. "You like the D?" A koan.

Yesterday I moved my bed into my new place in Detroit, a fifth-floor loft across the street from Greektown Casino and directly above Niki's Lounge, "the place to find all the beautiful people in the city." I've assured my mom, who is afraid I'll be stuck up for my poker roll, that I'll either be in my apartment, in the casino, or sprinting across the street.

After a few months of lounging around, it seems like time to get serious about something, and for now that something is live poker. Unfortunately, it's a big pay cut from online poker. No matter how bad the players are, there's no way to overcome going from 1000 hands/hour to 30 hands/hour. With that in mind, commuting 45 minutes each way from Ann Arbor to the Detroit casinos wasn't going to work, so I bit the bullet and got a place in the city.

So, you like the D? I'm not sure if it's the kind of place you can like. From some angles, it looks like a city; from most, a ghost town. The young transplants are unbearably hip, the outlook almost unbearably bleak. The people who are trying are trying very hard indeed. They have some good BBQ. Well, I'm just getting to know it.

Messages from the Brink

2011-07-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

On February 11, 1963 Sylvia Plath was found dead in her kitchen. She had put her head in the oven with the gas on. Ariel, her collection of poetry, was published posthumously in 1965. The poems, many written shortly before her suicide, dealt with depression and death with an intensity and authority owing both to her brilliance as a writer and the circumstances surrounding her death. She wrote, it seemed, from the brink of death, and knew and expressed things that no living person could.

Amy Winehouse died on Saturday. Her 2006 album "Back to Black" explored drug addiction and abuse, most famously in the single "Rehab." The causes of her death haven't yet been announced, but no one has much doubt they are drug related. For Winehouse's friends, family, and fans her death is very sad. At the same time, it lends a degree of credibility to her music that is almost unheard-of for a pop artist these days.

In 2011 everything is bullshit, but especially pop music. Everything we hear has been Auto-Tuned, packaged, market-tested, honed down to a smooth cog in a machine designed to extract money from us as efficiently as possible. While some of this music is enjoyable, none of it feels very true. There's just so much between the artist and the listener. Beyonce came out with "Single Ladies" years after Jay-Z put a ring on it. A stellar song, it nonetheless screams "target demographic" from the first line ("All the single ladies! All the single ladies!"). I'm not saying, of course, that every song needs to be biographically accurate. Just that you can often feel a certain amount of calculation and bean-counting going on. But after Winehouse wrote "Rehab," she really went to rehab. Someone who willfully hurts herself, the thinking goes, need not be suspected of bullshitting us to help herself.

But this is starting to sound like a whole lot more bullshit. Self-destruction can be as manipulative as anything else (suicide attempts as cries for help, etc.). And if the only way to declare your authenticity is to hurt yourself, that doesn't leave a lot of range for self-expression, does it?

Title Blog

2011-07-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Bad Teacher opened this week. I don't know if it's any good, but I do know what it's about: a bad teacher.

It's just the most recent case in a spate of bluntly named movies. The trend seemed to start with genre-mashup-parodies like Scary Movie and, more depressingly, Date Movie and Epic Movie. Their titles served to indicate their membership in the genre-mashup-parody genre, as well as suggesting some kind of archetypal status, maybe as a curative for their soul-crushing banality.

More recently the convention has spread to movies of all genres. Bad Teacher, Friends with Benefits, Prom, and Babies are just a few examples of successful recent movies with whack-you-over-the-head titles. I assume the convention has to do with selling the movies and more specifically an anxiety that people won't see a movie if they can't figure out exactly what it's about within four milliseconds. The idea that the unknown can be more alluring than the known has apparently been rejected.

Meanwhile the book industry has taken naming in a different direction, but with a similar motivation. Rather than the shotgun blast of ____ Movie, books have embraced catchy titles girded with pedantic subtitles that spell out exactly what the book is about. Like movies they banish any trace of mystery, they're just not into the whole brevity thing.

Busto

2011-06-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-06-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-06-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-04T20:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Intuition

2011-05-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

Hand 1: A player calls a raise out of position with seven-deuce offsuit. He flops a full house and cracks his opponent's aces, winning his whole stack. After the hand he says, "You gotta play when you're feeling it."

Hand 2: The player bets twice the pot on the river. After a long think, his opponent folds. "I knew he didn't have it," he says.

Was either of these plays justified? Both? Neither?

Since most situations in poker cannot be analyzed conclusively, it is both necessary and important to make some decisions intuitively. Equally important is knowing when intuition is valuable and when it is not.

My answer would be that the play in Hand 1 was unequivocally bad, while the play in the second hand may (or may not) have been justified. As usual, thinking in terms of ranges of hands clarifies the issue. 7-2 is the worst hand in poker, so when you call with it, what you're really saying is that you would call with any two cards. It's very, very rare for the game conditions to indicate a call with any two. As far as "feeling" that you would hit the flop, unless you're cheating, you don't have access to any information about what the next card will be, so it's hard to see how you could feel it.

Hand 2 is less clear. While you don't have any information about what the next card will be, you have a lot of information about what your opponent might do when you bet: his previous actions in this hand; how he's played past hands in this session; age, attire, posture...and much more. Any piece of information might be the key to the puzzle, or it might not be. This is where experience becomes incredibly valuable. Without experience, you won't pick up on most of the clues, or know how to interpret those you do see. But if you have a lot of experience, you may be able to synthesize all the information available to you to come to a better decision.

Hand 1 and Hand 2 are completely different situations, but people seem to confuse the two. When someone is able to make a good intuitive decision in a situation like Hand 2, all they see is the result, not the previous work that went into it. They conclude that analysis is unnecessary or even counterproductive, that the way to make good decisions is with your "gut." But intuition isn't a replacement for hard analytical work, it's a reward for having done a lot of it.

The Q Words

2011-05-30T05:14:00.000-07:00

Alone on the rack, the Q stared at me. All his brothers had leapt to the board and in the process built for me a solid lead, but the Q would betray me. He would take 10 of my points and give them to someone else. I looked over the board again. There was nowhere to put it. The Q was going to make me lose. I resolved to look up all the Q words when I got home.

Here is the list of words in the Scrabble dictionary that have a Q but no U:

QI
QAT
QIS
QADI
QAID
QATS
QOPH
FAQIR
QADIS
QAIDS
QANAT
QOPHS
TRANQ
FAQIRS
QABALA
QANATS
QINDAR
QINTAR
QIVIUT
QWERTY
SHEQEL
TRANQS
QABALAH
QABALAS
QINDARS
QINTARS
QIVIUTS
QWERTYS
QABALAHS
MBAQANGA
QINDARKA
SHEQALIM
MBAQANGAS

I haven't memorized them yet. When I saw the list I began to have second thoughts, not because of the tedium of memorizing it, but because of what it would do to the game. The joy of Scrabble, at least for a novice, is in the way it combines culture and competition. It's an opportunity to dust off long-forgotten stores of knowledge, deploy them in a new context, and to show off.

That part of the game dies when you start playing mbaqanga, because despite what the Scrabble Dictionary says, mbaqanga is not a real word. You would never know it if you hadn't learned it specifically for Scrabble. It doesn't signify anything, it's just a token in a game. I was afraid the mbaqanga attitude would infect my whole experience of the game.

The problem is not unique to Scrabble. I've found that becoming expert often impoverishes games from a meaning standpoint. For most, chess is a ruminative pastime, a meeting of the minds between two white-haired men smoking pipes. But what happens when you realize both of them are making blunders, practically throwing the game away on nearly every move?

Scientists have the same problem. As their research becomes more and more specialized, they struggle to make it understandable and relevant to non-scientists. To master something means appreciating the smallest minutia, but finding meaning is all about abstraction.

Levitt on luck vs. skill in poker

2011-05-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

Steven Levitt, the well-known author of Freakonomics, just came out with a paper about the role of skill versus luck in poker. He looks at the performance of skilled players and unskilled players in the World Series of Poker and concludes that the role of skill and luck in poker is comparable to that of professional baseball.

As an unemployed poker player hoping online poker eventually gets legalized, I appreciate the plug from a source as celebrated as Levitt. As he observes, "the single most important factor in determining the legality of poker is whether poker is a game of skill or a game of luck." But as someone who's grappled extensively with the questions he examines in the paper, I don't find many original insights in his approach.

In short, Levitt compiles a list of "skilled" players based on rankings from some poker magazines and past tournament finishes. Then he compares the performance of those players to that of other, presumably "unskilled" players and finds "a substantial role for skill in poker over the time horizon examined."

While this methodology is adequate to establish the presence of at least some skill in poker (as any reasonable approach would be), it has obvious problems. Magazine rankings and past finishes are far from perfect indicators of skill. For example, an unskilled player who rode a streak of good luck to a recent tournament victory could be identified as "skilled," but a highly skilled online professional who rarely plays live could be identified as unskilled.

The comparison to Major League Baseball doesn't say much about the rewards for skill inherent in poker and baseball, because the levels of competition are so different. While the WSOP features the best against the rest, MLB is more a case of the best against the best. You have to be one of the very best baseball players on the planet to play in the Major Leagues at all. A closer baseball analog to the WSOP would be to pit the New York Yankees against your intramural softball team.

While Levitt refers to previous academic research, he never mentions the work of poker players themselves. This is odd because while baseball players, for example, are not typically experts on the statistics of baseball, skilled poker players are experts on the statistics of poker. Understanding statistics and probability is a poker player's bread and butter. So when Levitt says his data set allows him "to compute ROIs for individual players, allowing us to measure poker skill more directly than in previous research," while this may be true of the academic research, he's way behind the game in the poker community (ROI stands for "return on investment," essentially the amount a player expects to profit when he enters a tournament). Professionals track their ROI obsessively over thousands of tournaments. A search for posts titled "ROI" on the poker internet forum 2+2 returns 250 threads. Sites such as sharkscope track the tournament results of online players and display average ROI as a basic statistic for each player. In short, Levitt's paper is a perfunctory stab at something poker players have been mapping extensively for years.

But maybe this is all beside the point. While the paper is a head-scratcher from a statistical perspective, it makes perfect sense as PR. The examples seem selected less for statistical relevance than cultural resonance. Hence the WSOP (poker's most visible event) and MLB (America's pastime). Overall the paper seems designed to demonstrate a non-trivial element of skill in poker to total outsiders, using the most familiar possible reference points, and it does a pretty good job of this.

What then about the original question: is poker a game of luck or a game of skill? Well, it's not at all clear what this means. Implicit in the question is the assumption that a game is made up of some combination of luck and skill, and if you add some of one you must subtract some of the other. This turns out not to be the case.

As the game designer Richard Garfield points out,

"The reward for skill depends on how much luck there is in a game, but a game that is mostly determined by luck can have an enormous amount of skill.

A couple of examples will demonstrate this. The first is rando-chess, which is played as standard chess, but after each turn you roll two dice. Roll 12 and you win! This game has as much skill as chess, but also a lot more luck and much less reward for skill. The second example is pikanumber, in which each player holds out a number of fingers; whoever holds out more wins. There isn't any luck in this game and not much skill, but there is a very high reward for what little skill there is—you never lose. Skillful players will always draw (unless one has more fingers than the other)."

It is obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with poker that it contains a great deal of both skill and luck. Identifying the best play is far from easy, but in any given hand luck is likely to overshadow skill.

When measuring skill against luck, a better question than "How much?" is "How long?" Meaning, how many times would you have to play for the better player to be confident of coming out ahead? Clearly this is a matter of degree - how confident is confident? But it does allow us to get a sense for how games compare to one another. In chess, if one player is significantly more skilled than the other one game would be adequate. For poker it becomes more confusing, because it's not clear what our unit should be. A single hand isn't a self-contained unit like a chess game is -- it's more like a possession in basketball. But larger units like a session or a match don't have a fixed duration. In general, online poker players consider 100,000 hands to give a reasonable idea of your expected win rate in a particular game. For reference that would take almost 140 days playing round-the-clock without breaks in a brick and mortar casino. But the 100,000 number applies to tough games where you have at most a small advantage over your opponents. Against weaker players, a few thousand hands might be enough.

Andriy Slyusarchuk's Wikipedia Page

2011-05-04T05:59:00.000-07:00

You probably haven't heard of Andriy Slyusarchuk -- he's not yet widely known outside of his home country. But he's become a sensation in the Ukrainian media for astonishing displays of mental prowess: memorizing 30 million digits of pi, 20,000 books, and defeating Rybka (one of the strongest chess-playing computer programs) in a blindfold match.

Let's dispense with the obvious. He's a phony, of course. Reciting 30 million digits of pi at the rate of one per second without breaks would take about a year. If you're interested in the history of computer chess (and why Slyusarchuk's claims are implausible), grandmaster and commentator Sergey Shipov has written a pretty good summary.

What's more interesting is Slyusarchuk's reception. Why would anyone believe his claims? He seems to be taken quite seriously in Ukraine, where he even secured a meeting with the President.

In general, his audience can be divided into skeptics and believers. The conflict between the two sides makes for a schizophrenic wikipedia page. Multiple authors are evident in the tone, which alternates between fawning and scathing:

Novy Channel (Новий Канал—one of the major TV channels in Ukraine) has hosted a few TV events in which Andrity Slyusarchuk demonstrated many of his extraordinary abilities...

When he tried to fake Chess position memory on TV, his scam was revealed by chess experts.

But more interesting still is the "talk page" documenting conflicts about what should appear in the Wikipedia entry. It seems that the original, overwhelmingly credulous article is the work of a user called NazarK, who turns out to come from the same town as Slyusarchuk. There seems to be some hometown sentiment at work. When one commenter suggested, "Only some nationalist Ukrainians can believe in that circus," NazarK fired back, "The above unsigned comment seems to come from some nationalist Russians (check IP location) who just hate to accept any human achievement if it comes from Ukraine."

So maybe some people in Ukraine are desperate for a national hero. At the same time, claims about mental achievements may be easier to swallow for many than other kinds of claims. If someone claimed to run a 30-second mile, no one would believe him. But if someone claims to remember 30 million digits of pi, sure, why not? The accepted world record, 67890 digits, is already unbelievably big (although more than 40 times smaller than Slyusarchuk's claim). Likewise, if you don't know much about the history of chess, his claim to beat Rybka in a match seems plausible enough. By making claims at the edge of the average person's range of knowledge -- about things that they are passingly familiar with, but not expert in -- Slyusarchuk manages to seem both plausible and extraordinary.

Obama's Poker Face

2011-05-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

On Sunday American forces stormed a compound in Afghanistan and killed Osama Bin Laden. Barack Obama gave a comedy speech at the White House Correspondents' on Saturday night. Which is to say, he knew. He had to do a comedy routine having given the order for the world's most notorious terrorist to be killed the following day in a risky, complicated operation, the outcome of which would have a great effect both on world politics and his personal legacy.

That to me seems hard. If I fear I've offended someone in an email, I lie down for an hour. I don't think I could have done the comedy speech.

The President has an obligation to oversee weighty decisions, but he also has no end of commitments to trivial fluff. Maybe it is that part of the job -- putting on a placid, confident face -- not the actual decision-making that is hardest. Or at least hardest to fathom.

How not to Give a Gift

2011-04-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

I fancy myself a pretty good gift giver. I look forward to picking out gifts and I think people are usually pretty satisfied with what I give them. But I've noticed that for many gift giving is a source of anxiety, even dread.

It's easier to say what a good gift is not than what it is. With that in mind, here are three common pitfalls.

1. The overly generic gift

I'm talking here about gifts for people you're actually close to, so if it's for a random co-worker or something, sure, get them the Barnes and Noble gift certificate, who cares. But gifts should be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate how well you know someone. Grandparent exemption: if you've already made peace with the fact that you can never understand your grandkids with their videogames and Pokemon, cash is an acceptable backup plan.

2. The gift that is actually for you (the giver, not the giftee)
As usual, The Simpsons provides the classic example. Homer gives Marge a bowling ball already engraved with his name (she's never bowled). That's an obvious example, but it's possible to fall into the same trap in subtler ways, say by getting something associated with a shared activity that you actually enjoy a lot more than the giftee.

3. The gift designed to impose change
The gym membership for someone fat, the kite for someone who spends all their time indoors, the knife for an axe murderer. These are the opposite of gifts. A true gift says, "I appreciate and love you for who you are." These kind of gifts say, "Who you are is unacceptable to me, so I must change you." Yet it's a fine line that separates these non-gifts from the very best gifts. The best gifts are things they would not get for themselves -- things they didn't know they'd love, but would, or things they secretly want, but would never actually buy. The best gifts stretch, but do not change.

Excessive Free Time Death Spiral

2011-04-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

Day 1: Brainstorming options. Many notebook pages filled.

Day 2-4: Spending a lot of time in Starbucks. Podcast consumption multiplied threefold.

Day 5+: 24/7 Magic: The Gathering Online

The End

2011-04-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon - I sipped my coffee, donned my Snuggie, and settled in for my second session of the day. When I tried to sit in at a table, the client informed me that cash games were not available in my area. Thinking it was a glitch, I tried again, but got the same message. I did a few Google searches to figure out what was going on. In the early afternoon only one of the major news services had an article up, but it told me everything I needed to know. Earlier in the days the Feds released a list of charges and rounded up executives from the major US poker sites. Put simply, online poker was over.

Since laws were passed in 2006 restricting the legality of online gambling, the major online sites have maintained an uneasy status quo with law enforcement, working around the laws in ways the government now alleges were illegal. For its part the government chased the money and sometimes shut down third party payment processors, but didn't take sweeping action against the poker sites, until now.

Now there's no going back. There will be a contentious legal battle -- both sides have substantial resources, and neither will feel they can afford to lose. However it turns out, it's hard to imagine the sites ever operating in the US again. If online poker ever returns (which seems likely, given the demand and the incentive to tax it) it will be on different sites, and probably years down the road.

Casual online players have to find a new hobby. Professionals need to turn their lives upside down. In order to keep playing, it will probably be necessary to move out of the country -- not a simple thing to do. There's also the option of switching to brick and mortar casinos, but that involves a big pay cut and lifestyle change. And then, of course, there's getting a real job.

I have mixed feelings. I've been feeling the grind the last few months, so being forced to explore opportunities outside of poker isn't entirely unwelcome. Then again, there's nothing I can do in the short term that will come anywhere close to my hourly wage playing poker.

Anybody hiring?

Bratwurst 3 ways

2011-04-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

1. Put bratwurst on grill. Cook until gas runs out, about one and a half minutes.

2. Move bratwurst to oven. Set broiler to highest setting and cook until bored and hungry.

3. Bite into bratwurst and note raw center. Brush off mustard (optional) and put in microwave. Cook until shriveled and dry.

The Forest or the Streets: Either Way You're in Trouble

2011-02-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2 + 2 = 5 and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."
-Mikhail Tal, World Chess Champion 1960-1961

Chess books say his nickname was "The Magician from Riga," but he was also called "The Claw" because he had only three fingers on his right hand. To call them fingers is misleading: there was the thumb and then two hooks forked like a lobster's tail. He used this alien appendage to play speed chess, smoke a cigarette, and gesticulate all at once.

Tal favored a wild, attacking style, often sacrificing multiple pieces for an attack. Sometimes his moves were shown to be unsound after the fact, but that was scant consolation to opponents who had already been blasted off the board. The Dutch Grandmaster J.H. Donner said he could feel waves of aggression emanating from Tal when they played.

He held the world championship for only a year. After being blindsided by Tal's aggression in their first match, Mikhail Botvinnik, an electrical engineer known for his scientific approach to the game, dissected Tal's style and formed a game plan for the return match. He steered the games into more staid positions and won comfortably. Tal would never regain the championship, but he was no flash in the pan: he remained one of the game's top players for decades.

If there are two fields best known to outsiders as the realm of cold logic, they are chess and computer science. But if anything the rise of strong chess-playing computer programs has upset players' notions of what makes sense on the board. The rules of strategy have been replaced by the simple mandate of Whatever Works. (When in a post-game analysis session an opponent suggested a better defensive move and asked, "But what is your reply to this?" Tal responded, "Who won?") In fact unexpected, seemingly nonsensical moves are now referred to as "computer moves," whether played by silicon or flesh.

The point is not to play moves entirely at random - that wouldn't work. Rather, sometimes the best move is the one that is most useful in this exact position, not the one that conforms to the usual strategic precepts. Computers taught us that some moves and strategies we believed to be logical were merely facile and pretty.

While his uncompromising aggression made Tal an exception in the chess world, such a strategy is the stock in trade of many of the best poker players. In a post on the poker forum 2 + 2, heads-up specialist MagicNinja described a hyper-aggressive strategy as Street Poker:

"Street Poker is all about game flow dynamics. It's impossible to analyse the amount of future winnings you can make after you bluff someone in a spot they would call 80% of the time, or when you call them in a spot you're only good 15% of the time when they shove pot. I'm not supporting these plays, i'm just saying that when you analyse them on a case by case basis, they are bad; i know they're bad; but it is impossible to really quantify their true effects against players who play in many different ways."

The hyper-aggressive approach seems to be all about swashbuckling flair, but its real value lies in an underlying pragmatism. You force your opponent into unfamiliar territory. If you have to make a mistake to get there, that's okay because the mistakes he'll make more than compensate. But only if on the Street (or in the Forest, or whatever) you know what you're doing.

Marshawn Lynch is a video game

2011-01-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

Marshawn Lynch's run from the first round of the playoffs reminded me of Christian Okoye in Tecmo Superbowl. Each player in the game had a set of statistics, one of which determined how hard he was to tackle. Okoye's was off the charts. Against the anemic Colts defense, so long as you avoided diving tackles, he was actually invincible:

Gil Thorp

2011-01-05T23:25:00.000-08:00

As you know, Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez was fired yesterday. Of all the negative newspaper pieces written about Rodriguez over the past few years, this one is not particularly remarkable, except for the fact that its author, Neil Rubin, also writes the comic strip Gil Thorp, which turns out to be very remarkable indeed in its own strange way.

The overall experience of reading Gil Thorp is something like tripping acid in the College Football Hall of Fame. Despite being created "for and about teenagers," the characters do not look or speak like teenagers. The strip mixes references to current TV shows like "Glee" and "Project Runway" with anachronistic elements like milkshake parlors. The artistic rendering of many characters changes drastically not just from year to year, but sometimes week to week. The current villain, improbably named Lini Verde, appears to be popular, gay, and a nerd -- a combination rare in life but rarer still in fiction. The eponymous Gil Thorp helms not only the basketball team, but also the baseball and football squads, so he can be forgiven for not grasping the nuances of each sport. Indeed, Thorp's coaching, at least what we see of it, consists mostly of flinging cliches at his players.

This last point is particularly interesting. A lot of sportswriting is, of course, overrun with cliches, but I always imagined that most sportswriters knew the score: while facile analysis may sell papers (although even that is now very much in doubt), to actually succeed as a coach requires expertise extending well beyond common knowledge. This does not seem to be the view of Mr. Rubin. In his imagined world, Coach Thorp instructs his players with the exact same cliches that the sportswriter deploys in his columns.

Mr. Rubin begins his critique of Rodriguez with a prediction that Michigan will win its bowl game (in the event they were blown out) and piles on with a string of lies, half-truths, and pure gibberish. It wouldn't be worth it to debunk the column paragraph by paragraph, but a simple Google search is enough to overturn nearly every assertion in it.

Maybe in the world of sportswriting there simply is no difference between cliche and truth: if people say something enough it is true, and if something is true it is often said.

Working towards the big picture

2010-12-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

The ultimate "truth" of poker is the answer to the question, does your strategy defeat their strategy? (Or in other words: if you played forever, who would come out ahead?) The challenge is to work towards this truth using the hands you play as evidence. Steps in that direction:

1. Results

Let's take a hand as an example. You're playing 1/2 Hold'em with 50 big blind stacks. It's folded to you in the cutoff and you open KK to $6. Button and small blind fold and big blind raises to $18. You go all-in for $100 and he calls with JJ. He hits a Jack and wins the $201 pot (the $1 is from the small blind). You lose $100. Raw cash results aren't meaningless -- given enough hands, they will begin to approach your expected value in the games you play -- but "enough hands" here means many thousands. In the short term results can be, of course, very misleading.

2. Expected value-adjusted results

This is a simple way to account for one kind of luck. Whenever all the money goes in you calculate your expected value and consider that the result of the hand. In our example hand, all the money went in pre-flop. KK beats JJ 81.5% of the time, so our expected value is .815 * 201 = 163.8. Subtract the $100 we invested, and that means we made $63.80 on this hand. We've stripped away the luck element that kicks in after the money goes in the middle, but there's still a lot of luck in how the cards are dealt out to begin with. We were lucky to get dealt KK, the second-strongest starting hand, and even more lucky that our opponent held JJ, the fourth-strongest. If he had AA we would have gotten all the money in way behind; if he had 72 he would have folded and would have just won the blinds.

3. Our hand v. their range

The concept of a range is probably the most important idea in poker strategy. A range is all possible hands you can hold given your actions. In the example hand, the big blind had JJ, but let's say his range for raising and calling a shove there is pocket pairs tens and better, ace-king, and ace-queen. Our equity against that range is 67.6% -- still ahead, but not by as much. His range still includes JJ, as well as QQ and TT, all of which have only 18% against KK. But he can also have AQs (32%) or even AA (82%). (You can download a free tool for calculating these numbers at pokerstove.com). According to these numbers, our profit for the hand is .676 * 201 -100 = 35.88. Not surprising, given that we had such a good hand.

4. Our range v. their hand

Same concept, but flipped around. Now we'll calculate the equity of our range against his actual hand. Let's say our range for opening the cutoff then shoving over a raise is all pocket pairs, AJ+, and all suited aces. I won't get into the reasoning behind that range, or whether it represents a good strategy right now; but if you're wondering why our range includes so many more hands than the big blind's, it's because we pushed all-in, so our range includes bluffs, but he called an all-in bet, so he doesn't have any bluffs. Anyway, that range has 35.9% equity against JJ. According to this measure, our expected value from the hand is .359 * 201 - 100. So we lost 27.84 on the hand. This makes intuitive sense: in actuality we held KK, the second-strongest starting hand in Hold'em, but our range is comprised mostly of weaker hands. It also suggests something that will be no surprise to experienced players: his strategy of getting it in with jacks 50 big blinds deep is a winning play, even though it didn't appear to work out well in the actual hand.

5. Our range v. their range

Using the ranges described above, the equity of our range against his range is 39.3%. So when all the money goes in, we lose an average of .393 * 201 - 100 = -21. This still isn't the whole story though, because both sides had several opportunities to fold (or just call) along the way. In particular, he had to call our all-in bet to get to showdown. So while we are generally behind when all the money goes in, we should be making money on the hands that don't go to showdown because sometimes our bluffs will work and we'll take down the pot. Whether or not that compensates for the money we lose at showdown depends on just how often he's folding. If he's never folding, we should shrink our range to just the strongest hands. If he's folding a lot, we should expand our range to include more bluffs.

6. Reciprocality: a useful shortcut

This concept doesn't fit neatly into the hand range framework described above, but it can be useful for getting an idea of whether or not you're making money. (Reciprocality isn't a real word, but while reciprocity is, it doesn't mean the right thing, so there you go.) The basic idea is to ask what would happen if you and your opponent switched places. In the example hand, as long as we're both reasonable players, we're probably getting all-in here. Any time you would do the exact same thing with places reversed, no theoretical money changed hands, despite appearances. It's only when your strategy differs from your opponent's that you can make money.

Poker Sucks

2010-12-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

I had half an hour to kill at the auto repair shop so I downloaded a poker app for my phone. It's been a long time since I played one table at a time with nothing at stake, and when played like that -- in other words, when played like most games are played all the time -- poker is incredibly boring. There's a huge amount of down time. When you do get a playable hand the cards fall one way or another and there's not much to do but shrug and move on.

Which isn't to say that I don't like poker. Parts of it are interesting: trying to construct an optimal strategy that your opponents can't beat even if they know what you're doing, and finding ways to adjust that strategy to exploit the mistakes they're making. But these things play out over thousands of hands. One hand at a time you're mostly seeing variance. Playing poker one hand at a time is like studying a great whale through a microscope. You won't have any sense of what you're really looking at unless you already have enough knowledge to recognize the whole from the smallest parts.

As a casual game it doesn't get much worse than Texas Hold'em, which makes me wonder about the allure of the home game. I guess it's mostly an excuse to drink beer and hang out with your friends, but even so, I'd rather do those things while playing Hearts, or Stratego, or Monopoly.

World Series

2010-11-17T22:19:00.000-08:00

There's some guy who played Ultimate Frisbee for Michigan State who did pretty well in the World Series Main Event a few years ago. Now he travels around, plays Ultimate, and plays in a live poker tournament every now and then. People keep telling me about him, and it's kind of driving me crazy. The thing is, he's probably not even good.

Online players have a strange relationship with the World Series, while the World Series has a strange relationship with the poker world as a whole. I can't think of a competition in any other game or sport that occupies quite the same place as the World Series. Maybe the closest is the NBA All-Star Game -- a beloved spectacle, far from meaningless, but equally far from the sport's competitive heights.

Nonetheless, after years of pitching the World Series as poker's ultimate championship, ESPN has made that perception into a sort of reality. The glamor and media coverage make the World Series a favorite of casual players, people who wouldn't put down 10k on any other poker tournament. Which means that, as compared to other poker tournaments with similar buy-ins, the Main Event is distinguished by the low level of competition. And you can turn on your TV at almost any hour of the day or night and see self-serious dorks in sunglasses playing awful poker.

That makes it seem like a great opportunity for good online players to make money, but it's counterbalanced by a number of other factors. First, you have to get yourself physically to Vegas. Second, the tournament features a grueling 12-day schedule. Even if you figured to be worth twice the buy-in (representative of a massive skill advantage), that's still 12 long days' work for 10k, not a spectacular wage by poker standards. Of course, if you bust out early you don't have to stay around for the full 12 days, but the fact remains that the tournament represents a large time commitment. And finally, no matter how good you are, by far the most likely outcome is that you'll walk away out 10k. Only about 10% of the field makes any money back.

Dan Harrington compared playing in big live tournaments to playing the lottery: "If you're bad, you don't have a ticket. If you're average, you have one ticket. If you're good, you have two tickets, and if you're great you have six tickets. But you're still in the lottery."

So I don't see the World Series as a great opportunity to make money. But people still ask me if I've played in it, and I kind of want to be able to say I have. Maybe at some point if my poker job goes well enough I'll be able to justify spending 10k on it.

Party Poker

2010-09-01T22:04:00.000-07:00

Something strange and wonderful happened the other day. Pokerstars had a software glitch that caused the wait list feature to stop working. What's supposed to happen is that when a player leaves the table, the program alerts you and allows you to take your reserved seat. The glitch prevented you from sitting down, but left the seat reserved, blocking all other players from sitting there either. Most regulars play many tables and the easiest way to do this is to join a lot of waiting lists. When the glitch came up, the regulars mostly quit for the day.

But not the fish. They kept happily plugging away at one or two tables. So while finding a seat was more of a challenge than usual, it was well worth the effort. Over the past year I've worked my way up from $.05/$.10 to my standard game now, $1/$2. But after the software glitch the $1/$2 games played like $.05/$.10. It was a nostalgic throwback to those early days and a reminder of how far I've come. Back then, even when I knew my opponents were playing badly, I was often unnerved by the chaos of poker and unsure of my own plays. But now I felt confident, almost giddy. Whatever money they had on the table was mine, it was just a matter of time. As poker players say, it was like printing money.

It's hard to describe the difference between playing against fish and playing against regulars. Most regulars are going to play mostly the same as you do. They're familiar with the math of the game, with all the typical situations that have been endlessly discussed and analyzed. Getting an edge is about making subtle adjustments and counter-adjustments, tweaking your game here and there. But fish often make plays that donate large chunks of money with little effort or adjustment on your part. A typical thought process against a regular: "He's probably noticed that I'm 3betting him a lot, so he's probably adjusting by 4bet bluffing. I'll add some small pocket pairs to my 3betting range with the intention of shoving over his 4bets." A typical thought process against a fish: "I have a good hand. He never folds. Bet bet bet!"

Pros who have been playing for a long time look back fondly to the days of the poker boom, when the games were flooded with fish. They often call those the Party Poker days. Party Poker was the name of the most popular site then (which was later crippled by changes in US online gambling laws, but that's a different story), but it also refers to the general atmosphere of the period. Poker was easy, fun, and lucrative. I missed the Party Poker days, but I got a taste of them when the software broke. It didn't last long, of course -- they fixed the software within an hour. But it was fun while it lasted.

When the Numbers Say Go Nuts

2010-06-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

After explaining what I do for a living, I've had several people ask if I just play "solid poker." What they seem to mean is playing what could be called an honest strategy: betting or raising good cards, checking or folding weak cards.

I'm not sure how I would define "solid poker," but a reasonable definition might be playing in a way that is difficult to exploit. In this sense an honest strategy is not solid because it's very easy to exploit. When they bet or raise, you fold unless you have a very strong hand. When they check, you bet. Their actions translate to reliable information about their hand that you can then act upon.

So while honest play isn't really solid, the association between the two ideas is common and stretches beyond poker. After Bill Belichick went for a controversial and risky fourth down conversion, Tony Dungy criticized the call on ESPN by saying "you have to play the percentages"...even though analysis of the percentages showed that Belichick made the right call by going for it. But to Dungy and many other commentators, "playing the percentages" was synonymous with playing conservatively. The numbers, they felt, would always point to conservative options, while aggressive strategies could only be motivated by emotion.

In poker the opposite often holds true: the numbers suggest a highly aggressive approach, but many players play too conservatively for emotional reasons. In The Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman, the authors find that a "high level of aggression is supported by analysis. When we study toy games [simplified games similar to poker] we are often surprised at how aggressive [the optimal] strategies are." While No Limit Hold'em has not been solved, analysis suggests that a mathematically "correct" strategy would appear to most players to be psychotically aggressive. Nonetheless, many players are reluctant to push their aggression because they're uncomfortable with the risk involved in going for a big bluff. In other words, emotional hangups prevent them from going for the mathematically correct play.

So why the persistent association between analysis and conservative approaches? It may be because the most visible and disastrous examples of under-analysis are often over-aggressive. In poker this would be the "maniac," a player who bets and raises compulsively with too many hands. Not only does this type of player often go broke, he does so with the full attention of everyone at the table. From the analytical point of view, an overly cautious approach is no more correct than a maniacal one, but it's far less conspicuous.

Sorry

2010-03-03T07:04:00.000-08:00

So, yeah.

Grindapalooza Liveblog

2009-12-31T18:31:00.000-08:00

Here we go. Honestly, I'm kind of getting cold feet about not going out tonight, but for now I'm sticking to the plan.

The Details:

I'll start out 4-tabling 100 NL (for the uninitiated, that's a $100 buy-in, blinds are $.50-$1). I may try to add a few tables, but probably won't go above 6 at 100 NL. I might also mix in some 9-tabling at 50 NL. If the games seem extra soft and I'm running well, I might also play some 200 NL later in the night.

I'll be doing hourly liveblog updates.

Gameplan: The whole idea of playing tonight is that people will be drunk and crazy. I expect a lot of people will be looking to gamble, so I don't plan to try to run a lot of bluffs or make any big plays. Barring reads on specific players, I'm mostly looking to get paid off on my big hands.

Goals: Table-select aggressively. Especially tonight, sitting at a table with 6 regulars is really inexcusable. If there's not at least one obvious fish at the table, I'll be looking to switch it out.

Caffeine? Check. New monitor? Check. Snuggie? Check.

See you in an hour.

HOUR 1

Up 350, running REALLY hot, had a few huge suckouts. Will post hands in a minute.

Up about 500 at midnight. Opened KK from CU, got called by BB. Flop is JJ8...He check-raises, I 3bet, he flats. 100 in the pot, 75 behind. Turn is third Jack. He checks, I jam 75 and he calls with 88. Sick suckout, but his turn call seems pretty terrible. Does he think I'm bluffing there? I think he was just frustrated...I sucked out to win another big pot against him a few minutes earlier.

12:48

It's been a weird session. Even though I'm up a couple buy-ins, I haven't really been getting it in good (except for one time when a guy called off his whole stack with 39s against my aces when he paired a 9 on the flop). Mostly I've been really lucky, though. Gotta re-focus and play some better poker. Going downstairs to make some pasta, try to play some more after that.

1:42

Back to it. Hands: 1016 Net: +392 Dr. Peppers: 3

Grindapalooza

2009-12-26T10:06:00.000-08:00

One of the big selling points of playing poker for a living is that you can pick your own hours. But sometimes the game is so good that you pretty much have to play. I haven't been around long enough to know, but they say New Year's Eve is the best day of the year to play poker.

A skeptical friend said, "I wouldn't think sitting in front of a computer would be so popular on New Year's Eve." But the question isn't, "Would I rather go out or sit in front of a computer?" It's, "If I were the sort of person to dump off a load of money playing online poker, would I be more likely to do that on New Year's Eve or a random day?" Apparently the answer is, on New Year's Eve.

With that in mind, I bring you New Year's Eve Grindapalooza 09-10. I'll be liveblogging as I grind it out all night New Year's Eve. I'm playing in an indoor ultimate tournament that day, so the plan is to do that, sleep for a few hours, then start playing around 10 p.m. and keep it going until about 6 a.m., or as long as the games are juicy. I'll keep you updated on all the hands, pots, bluffs, and bad beats, as well as my net for the night and my music mix. Turn on, tune in, suck out.

The Beard Stays

2009-12-17T11:08:00.000-08:00

They have weird power outlets in Europe, so if you want to use an American appliance, you have to use an adapter. You probably knew that. But did you also know that there are different adapters for different voltages? I didn't, which is how I fried my beautiful electric razor, which I bought from Amazon after reading all the customer reviews, and which cut through a thick beard like Uma Thurman through ninjas -- not like your usual commercial variety, which seems to be modeled after the Suck Kut ("It certainly does suck...").

Losing the electric razor disrupted the natural equilibrium that had developed on my face (see Figure 1) and gave way pretty much immediately to a downward spiral (Figure 2).

People always ask, "Are you growing a beard?" like it's something you do, like you sit in front of the mirror and extrude hair from your pores by sheer force of will. I'm not growing a beard, I just stopped shaving. For me the beard is less an ethos than a vestige of laziness.

Brad at Zingerman's suggested that I should strive to see shaving not as a chore, but as a socially acceptable opportunity to pamper oneself. I like that idea. In my freshman year dorm there was a sign posted above the urinal in the men's restroom that read, "No fear, no doubt." My RA put it there after I mentioned to him that the restroom is one of the few places in my life where I experience neither fear nor doubt. I have a lot of experience in there. I've got a system that works.

So rather than strip the shaving process down to its essentials, I'm thinking about ways to build it into a satisfying ritual: straight razor, badger hair brush, maybe some aftershave, whatever the hell that is.

Financial Goals

2009-12-10T20:38:00.000-08:00

I got a sandwich today and I was thinking about getting some onion rings with it. They were only a few dollars. But they would increase the cost of the meal by almost 50%. If I got onion rings every day, how would it affect my finances at the end of the month? In the end I got them, because I like onion rings, but only after some serious hand wringing.

And I fucking hate that.

I want to be able to do stuff like get onion rings, or buy a song on iTunes, or get a few beers at the bar. But more than that, I want to be able to not think about it.

Make It Rain

2009-12-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

It seems like for a lot of folks the phrase "professional poker player" conjures images of wild parties, exclusive night clubs, and stacks of cash to the ceiling. I spend a lot of time explaining that no, I haven't been to Vegas lately, I don't drive a Porsche, it's pretty much like I have a boring desk job.

As a result I've been brainstorming some cost-conscious ways to create the illusion of grotesque wealth and I've come up with something that I think is set to take off: making it rain. For the non-T-Pain fans out there, "making it rain" refers to throwing a wad of bills into the air so that they separate and flutter to the ground. Until now it's mostly been the province of wealthy rappers, but there's no reason they should get to have all the fun.

If you think about it, for a hundred dollars in ones, you can make it rain pretty precipitously. You'd spend that much for dinner for two and a bottle of wine. In a year you won't even remember the restaurant you went to, but making it rain will leave you with a memory that lasts a lifetime.

I'm not suggesting making it rain daily or even weekly. That would be silly. But every once in awhile, on a special occasion, it makes a lot of sense. So for your next birthday, anniversary, or Bar Mitzvah, why not make it rain?

Poker Progress

2009-11-18T07:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took my first whole day off poker in about a month-and-a-half. It was a conscious decision--I actually wanted to play when I got home from Zingerman's, but thought it would be good to give myself a little break.

I started out at $10 no-limit and have moved up to $25 no-limit and now $50 no-limit. I moved up to 50 NL about a week ago and made more in that week than I did in the whole preceding month. I've been beating the game soundly--too soundly, probably, to be sustainable...I've been running well. I almost jumped straight to 100 NL, but decided to cash out some money and take a day off instead.

What's it like playing poker every day? Pretty easy, honestly. But to be clear, I don't mean, "So easy you should quit your day job and take up online poker," I mean, "Pretty easy if playing a strategy game eight hours a day is your idea of fun." I haven't had occasion to question the underlying premise of the whole endeavor, namely that my aptitude for learning the game and adapting will be higher than that of the majority of online poker players. At the same time I've been lucky: I haven't had my mettle tested by a long stretch of bad luck, which is inevitable sooner or later. I'm feeling confident, but between the games getting tougher as I move up and the natural swings of variance, I expect the road to get bumpier.

It's That Time Again...

2009-11-06T09:03:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe it's been a year already. You may remember last year's Movember campaign from posts like this and this. Once again I'm growing a mustache for the month of November to raise money for cancer research. Go ahead, donate.

More to come...

Recognizing Fish: Screen Names

2009-10-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

The online poker community can be divided into two groups: fish and regulars. Regulars are professionals or semi-professionals who take the game seriously and have achieved some level of competency. Fish are casual players gambling for fun. While some regulars are better than others, your win rate against a fish will usually be many times greater than what you could achieve against a decent regular. Thus, it is important to be able to spot the fish. One of the few pieces of information that's always available is the player's screen name. By the end of this post you will know how to use a player's screen name to instantly gauge his ability.

Name Feature: Numbers after name

Example: Mike43975209874592

Indicator: Fish

Reasoning: Not creative enough to come up with an original name, probably not creative enough to come up with a clever line.

Name Feature: Excessively macho name

Example: SkuLLcRushA666

Indicator: Fish, often overly aggressive

Reasoning: Thinks he has to prove something with his screen name.

Name Feature: Girl's name/feminine name

Example: LilJenny

Indicator: Inconclusive

Reasoning: Aware enough to pick a girl's name to try to influence opponents' behavior. Simplistic enough to think that might actually work. (Note: never actually a girl.)

Name Feature: French word/reference to France

Example: FrenchDawg

Indicator: Fish

Reasoning: The French suck at poker, and no one would pretend to be French.

Name Feature: Funny/ironic name

Example: OMGClayAiken, WiltOnTilt

Indicator: Strong player

Reasoning: Someone with the keen sense of irony required to craft a funny screen name is more likely to have the objectivity and outside-the-box thinking required to be a great poker player.

Name Feature: Real-sounding first and last name

Example: FredJohnson

Indicator: Inconclusive

Reasoning: Dull and to-the-point, but may have a certain amount of pride and work ethic.

Job Search

2009-10-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

Looking for a job is a lot like looking for a girlfriend. You endure a lot of rejection for reasons that never become clear. This is turn can affect your confidence and lead into a downward spiral. In reality you're dealing with a problem of scarcity: many applicants, few positions. But however low your chance in any trial, if you run enough trials eventually you will win. Those who succeed are not necessarily the most charming or attractive, but the best equipped to handle rejection. Or at least, that's one view you can take to stay sane.

I applied for a job as a hotel night auditor, imagining playing poker on a laptop all night with occasional breaks to bring a guest an extra toothbrush. Another ad sought out a research assistant with interests in human psychology and math. I sent an email citing my ongoing field study in applied math and human psychology, but never heard back. I saw an ad in the pizza place down the street from my house and filled out an application for a delivery guy, which would have been a disaster since I can't drive three blocks without getting lost.

When I did finally get a job it took me awhile to realize it. Halfway through filling out the paperwork I said, "Wait, so you're hiring me?" to which the human resources lady nodded and returned to examining her nails. I'll be working at Zingerman's Mail Order from November to the end of December. They have a bonanza of orders during the holiday season and need extra people to answer the phones.

Zingerman's is Ann Arbor's food mecca, a deli that has expanded to include a bakery, creamery, roadhouse (a separate restaurant), and the aforementioned mail order division, also housed in its own building. They have a devotion to customer service that is either enthusiastic and fun, or cultish and annoying, depending on your perspective. I'll be striving for the enthusiastic and fun angle. Their catalog features a huge range of oils, vinegars, cheeses, chocolates and other foods that you can't find anywhere else. Their commitment to traditional and authentic preparations can come off as snobbish at times, but they do back it up with some amazing food.

Zingerman's factored into my last job search as well. I was one of two finalists for a position at the meat and cheese counter in the deli, but didn't make it in the end. Oddly enough the person who got the job was my teammate in a paddle boat race (true story). Maybe if I had gotten that job I would still be working there today, never having ventured into gambling, happily plying my trade as a food maven. Or maybe I would have quit after a few weeks, you never know.

In any case a job that involves talking up food is a pretty natural fit for me, and the time frame is convenient as well. If all goes to plan I will be crushing online poker by the new year and won't have to worry about finding another job. I start at Zingerman's at the beginning of November, so I'll be devoting the next two weeks to working on my poker game around the clock.

The Dull Ache of Real Life

2009-10-07T20:44:00.001-07:00

The poof doesn't exactly fit up the stairs to my new attic room, but I decide to try to get it up anyway. Halfway up it gets wedged between the wall and the banister and I pause to rest, leaning forward. I'm Sisyphus, I think, but for me the poof (a ball of stuffed fabric designed for collapsing into) is apter than the rock: my obstacles have not been sharp and heavy but soft and indistinct. Also, it is one of those items of furniture, like a futon, that is perfectly normal at 18, but if you still have it when you're 30 it means something has gone seriously wrong with your life. At 24 I am halfway in between and starting to think about these things.

I am back in the States, renting a room in a house with two other 20-somethings, looking for a day job. I am still playing poker, but without access to multiple monitors or my old Poker Tracker stats I've switched from short stacked multi-tabling to single-tabling heads up sit-and-gos. I'm hoping this will allow me to improve quickly and climb to higher stakes, but for the time being it's slow going, so the prudent course looks like getting a real job. So I'm back where I started, jobless.

Variance 2

2009-10-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

Natural disasters are often called acts of God and many of their victims consider themselves the objects of wrathful intent. I always thought that was silly - of course it's just a matter of luck who gets hit - but losing at poker gave me new respect for the vengeful deity theory. No matter how hard I fought it, I could never completely shake the feeling that when I lost it must mean something. Losing at poker is far less auspicious than having your house blown away by a tornado, but I struggled to internalize the idea that my results depended largely on chance.

Of course variance is easier to swallow when it is the positive kind. Even though I knew I was getting lucky in July, I didn't think about it much. Somehow it seemed fair, well-deserved. But when I started losing in August, I was constantly checking my stats. For a long stretch my bankroll held steady while my performance against expected value plummeted. In other words, I was getting unlucky at exactly the rate I was supposed to be winning. It felt like I had gone from accumulating money to accumulating injustice.

My results drove home the role of luck in poker - and there is no guarantee that it will even out. I had samples of over two hundred thousand hands in which I was significantly above or below expectation. That means, if you are a casual player, your results may diverge widely from expected over your lifetime.

Variance

2009-09-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

In July I had a lot of success pursuing the short stacking strategy I talked about in an earlier post. I made a solid hourly and collected a lot in bonuses. During one stretch I won 19 out of 22 days. Then in August, using the exact same strategy, I started to lose steadily. After losing a few days in a row I would start to get worried and go back over hands and statistics to make sure everything was okay. Once I had convinced myself that it was, I would start a new session feeling optimistic. Then I would lose again. At the end of the month I was way down at the tables and only slightly better than break even after factoring in bonuses.

There are a few explanations. One is simply luck. When you get all your money in you have a certain probability of winning the pot - poker players call this your equity. The size of the pot times your equity is your expected value in the hand, but you will not actually get that amount. You will either win or lose, and scoop the whole pot or none of it. For example, if you get all in pre-flop with pocket queens against ace-king your chance of winning is about 57%. So if there is $50 in the pot, you will on average win 50 x .57 = 28.50. But in any given hand, you will win either $50 or $0. If you win $50, you were $22.50 ahead of expectation for that hand. If you lose, you were $28.50 behind expectation. I have a program that does a similar calculation for every hand in which I get all-in. It turns out I was way ahead of expectation in July and way behind in August.

But that isn't the whole story. There is variance in poker that all-in equity doesn't account for. There is a lot of luck in how the cards are dealt out, but that's harder to measure. In any case, even accounting for the luck I could measure, my margin shrunk from July to August. I was "supposed" to win both months, but less in August. And the closer you get to break even, the more variance you will experience in your results. This is due to rake, the percentage of each pot that the house takes out. Poker players tend to focus on the bottom line, but a more accurate way of looking at results is to separate them into the amount you beat the game by minus the amount you pay in rake. So if you're making a small amount of money, you're actually beating the game by a significant margin, but paying most of it back in rake. If you're exactly break even, you're beating the game by exactly the amount you pay in rake. At that point any difference in how you do in the game will translate to a large difference in your bottom line. As my expectation crept very close to break even, I was more and more susceptible to variance and I happened to get very unlucky over that period.

Why did my edge get smaller? I think it was because I started playing enough volume that all the regulars in the game were forced to pay attention and figure out how to play against me. For example, a lot of the regulars in those games raise a wide range of hands from the button. I would shove a lot of hands from the blinds and win a lot when they folded. But eventually they adjusted by almost never folding to my shoves. They would snap-call with mediocre hands like queen-jack or weak aces, which they were probably always folding previously. I tried to adjust by pushing less hands from the blinds, but the new dynamic seemed to be less profitable than the old one.

Something Important

2009-09-18T16:51:00.000-07:00

Yeah, they were only saving Beyonce's award for the Best Overall category...and yeah, it was the VMAs, so who cares...but Kanye was right, Beyonce's video was better. Its minimalist approach highlighted the retro-funky wardrobe and choreography, subtle but effective fluctuations in lighting and camera angle, and Beyonce's talents as a dancer and singer. In comparison, Taylor's video was kid stuff - and weirdly insidious.

Go ahead, refresh your memory. The setup is an old standard: nerdy girl likes popular guy, but popular guy is going out with popular girl. The video adopts the Superman-Clark Kent conceit that a pair of glasses makes someone totally unrecognizable. Thus we are expected to buy Taylor Swift, adored superstar, as a natty bookworm. But the story's ostensible thrust, that brains and good intentions trump looks and popularity, is undercut by the presence of the immediately recognizable and lovely Swift as the plain girl. For other examples of the same phenomenon, see Rachel Leigh Cook in She's All That or Mandy Moore in A Walk to Remember. Even the creators of Ugly Betty, while daring to cast the non-bulimic America Ferrera in the title role, didn't go near a real uggo.

Why should we care? Consider this passage from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five:

The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.

But the Gospels actually taught this:
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected...

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being of the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought...
Oh, boy -- they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
And then that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected.

Replace "well connected" with "pretty" and you have the "You Belong with Me" video. Before you ostracize someone, make absolutely sure she isn't pretty. They sure picked the wrong girl to ostracize that time - Taylor fucking Swift! But there are right people to ostracize: real ugly people.

"You Belong with Me," like She's All That and A Walk to Remember, would like to say that beauty is more than skin deep, but its presentation of ugliness is not even skin deep. In all of these stories, the female lead's physical beauty is an open secret. The glasses act as a token disguise that fools the other characters (maybe, this is never clear) but not the audience. Interestingly, aggressive makeup and black hair dye make a much more effective disguise - at first I didn't recognize Swift as the hated girlfriend (yes, that's her too). You could argue that that's because Swift's real-life persona is actually closer to nerdy-sweet than bitchy-chic, but I think a more pertinent explanation is that the video's narrative flow and commercial viability depend on Swift being recognizable as the hero, but not necessarily the villain. In any case, evil Taylor's over-the-top makeup and wardrobe choices (her prom dress doesn't have nipple holes, but it might as well) just underline the importance of appearances in the video's world.

Indeed, the story's turning point is expressed visually as well. As Taylor arrives at the dance glasses-free, the camera lingers for a closeup on her soon-to-be boyfriend's unmistakable expression. Swift's beauty, obvious to us all along, is fully revealed to him for the first time. And with appearances perfectly in sync with the truth of things, the story can end. Pretty girl gets pretty boy, mean-looking girl is shunned, and all is right in the universe.

Arguments, Health Care, Ogaga, Jo Bros

2009-09-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

After he retired my grandfather would deliberately park his car in spaces where the street signs were ambiguous so that he could contest the resulting tickets in court. My parents first met competing against each other in high school debate tournaments. My first word, reportedly, was no. So I have a certain pedigree in arguing. As a small child I loved verbal sparring and even through high school I would argue with my teachers when I thought they were wrong. But these days I have pretty much given up on arguing about things that don't involve my personal welfare. If someone says something I disagree with, I usually reply with something like, "You're probably right," and let it rest. An even better idea is to use the Socratic method - ask a series of questions about the other person's position without clarifying where you stand - but this is more difficult.

The problem with arguing is simply that it doesn't work, at least not in the way you would like. Ideally both sides would voice their opinions, consider the other person's position, and arrive at an improved grasp of the overall situation. I have met perhaps a few people in my life who could carry out this kind of a discussion. I am certainly not one of them.

Rarely has this been more evident than in the national health care debate. After Betsy McCaughey appeared on the Daily Show, a reader of James Fallows's blog astutely linked the conversation to Money Python's dead parrot skit:

Cleese's character is armed with all that one could ask for: keen wit, boundless vocabulary, perfect presence of mind, and all the facts on his side. And yet, even he can be played to a draw by a liar who maintains a sufficiently unshakable facade of conviction.

Exactly. In this way, arguments actually matter less than games because they lack any way to determine a winner besides stubbornness. At the same time, the way in which arguments are supposed to matter - as a genuine exchange of ideas - is undermined by people like McCaughey who use language as a tactical battlefield where victory is all that counts. So maybe a more precise way of stating the case would be to say that arguments are games, but games that make unsupportable pretensions to meaning while lacking any clear way to determine a winner. Freestyle RPS is argumentation unafraid to own its silliness.

Along the lines of language-as-tactical-ploy, it is interesting to think about the influence faceless copywriters have had on our recent political history. The current health care measures contain no mention of "death panels," yet that phrase seems to have sparked fear and anger in a large number of Americans. It would be difficult to construe George W. Bush's decisions regarding New Orleans or Guantanamo as "compassionate conservatism," yet the feelings associated with that mellifluous phrase swept him into office. Obama's campaign motto "Yes we can" suggested a revolutionary, power-to-the-people approach that his administration has failed to back up in the fights over the economic crisis or health care reform. In other words, the power of each of these phrases seems to owe to a particular arrangement of words, not to any reality behind them.

As nonsensical and spittle-flecked as the objections to health care reform have been, the arguments in favor have not been any better. I haven't seen Obama (or anyone else) clearly lay out what is wrong with the current system and how the new plan would make it better. Like many, I was deeply disappointed in Obama's decrepitude on this issue. The whole thing is such a big, dumb mess that it makes me glad that I've more or less opted out of American polity (living in France, playing a game for money).

It seems to me that Obama's problem is largely one of image and in this respect he could learn a thing or two from Lady Gaga. Gaga burst onto the music scene with an abundance of rowdy sexual zingers and a paucity of clothes (as measured in amount worn at any given time, not overall range). Whereas Katy Perry, after scoring a number one hit about kissing a girl, primly denied doing anything of the sort, Gaga was refreshingly frank about a variety of sexual experiences and desires. When she said she'd like to have a four-way with the Jonas brothers it was pretty funny, but more importantly it helped establish her image as someone who would say or do anything and not apologize. And she gets away with a lot of provocative behavior with a minimum of media recrimination because she's established provocation as a baseline for dealing with her.

Sidenote: What is the appeal of the Jonas brothers? Are they even good looking? I don't get it. Teenage female readers, chime in!

Nick "The Ivory Douche" Jonas

But Obama has taken the opposite approach of trying not to ruffle anyone's feathers. He got to where he is by being sane in a shitstorm (my personal Obama slogan was not, "Yes we can," but, "Neither a lunatic nor a retard," and that was more than enough) but he seems to be mired in expectations of moderation. I think it would have been better for everyone if, on the day of his inauguration, Obama challenged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to a one-on-one game on the hoop behind the White House and dunked on him. I imagine it going down something like this.

Then Obama could get as crazy as he wanted with health care reform, and no one could say anything but, "At least he's not dunking on McConnell." At this point I don't know how he can turn it around short of sexting pictures of himself to Fox News. But I guess the real take-away is that Obama doesn't want to get that crazy.

Not crazy like, say, Mark Leyner in My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist. In the chapter three, "Fugitive from a Centrifuge," lays out the narrator's life story spanning from his days in the Wilford Military Academy of Beauty ("I'd never forget the Four Cardinal Principles: Teamwork; Positive Attitude; Hair That's Swinging and Bouncy, Not Plastered or Pinned Down; and Hair That's Clean Shiny, and Well-Nourished") to his romance with a woman named Olivia, which goes wrong when she has sex with a vagrant impersonating a delivery man, or perhaps when she buys said vagrant an ultrasonic humidifier instead of a gray turtleneck ("Did I make a mistake?"), to a heist story involving "the DeFrancesco Diamond - a 63.19-carat gem worth $1.5 million" - to the narrator getting the electric chair for allegedly using the DeFrancesco Diamond to bribe the pilot of his transcontinental flight to crash the plane into a cruise ship carrying Olivia and her new boyfriend, and just as I'm wondering what it all means he flashes back to his days at the Wilford Academy...

" We'd been standing under the brutal sun for hours as our drill instructor quizzed us.
"Unwanted facial hair?" he barked.
"Electrolysis, sir!" we chorused.

Well, here I am, sir. The most unwanted hair on the face of the earth."

And I realize that Leyner started with the punchline and worked his way back through the story, crafting every vicissitude to maximize the effect of that unwanted hair line. I don't blame him, it's a killer punchline. And likewise you have already realized that this post had no other purpose besides dissing Nick Jonas. Because he dumped Miley. Dick.

Don't be afraid to use the comments.

A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

2009-08-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

I saw a guy standing on the corner today. A cigarette jutted out from pursed lips, his face a mask of cool indifference obscured by large sunglasses. He surveyed the street impassively in a perfect contrapposto. Then he roller bladed away.

Mike "The Mouth" Matusow

2009-08-16T18:37:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this hand.

Mike Matusow calls a bet on the river by Freddy Charbonara with second pair. Against some opponents Matusow's play might be okay, but Charbonara, the only amateur at the table, had been playing timidly and was extremely unlikely to show up with a crazy bluff. Again though, what happens afterward is more interesting than the hand itself. Phil Laak (the guy in the gray sweatshirt) quickly passes a book across the table and tells Daniel Negreanu to read the entry for "POW."

"Pay off wizard," reads Negreanu, "a player who calls on the river when he is beat." The whole table enjoys a laugh while Matusow simmers. (The video is a little messed up, but you get the idea.) All the other pros have formed an impromptu alliance to get Matusow off his game.

The standard TV characterization of Matusow is of a great player who occasionally makes a big mistake for his whole stack. In the World Series of Poker coverage they once did an entire feature on "Matusow Blow-ups," huge mistakes deep in the tournament. It seems to me that this characterization is an oxymoron. Someone who makes huge mistakes often enough to be known for them isn't a great player with occasional lapses, he's just not a very good player. Emotional stability is such an important part of the game that it can't simply be divided out when looking at someone's overall strength.

The Titillating Lifestyle of an Online Poker Player

2009-08-16T12:57:00.001-07:00

Garfield Minus Garfield

Antonius v. Tilly

2009-08-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Youtube poker clips are crack for poker fans. With knowledge of each player's hole cards, you get to see how the pros handle various situations. Sometimes though the actions surrounding the game are more interesting than the hand itself, as in this clip.

Jennifer Tilly is married to Phil Laak, a well-known poker pro, and has a fair amount of tournament experience herself. She raises from the button with pocket jacks and Patrick Antonius, an extremely formidable high stakes player, calls with 10-8 suited from the small blind. Jennifer Harman folds 2-4 in the big blind, joking with Antonius that he would have played the hand. "Button raises," responds Antonius, "never anything." This is his idea of a zany joke. His actually reasoning is that in order to get involved heads up with Tilly, by far the weakest player at the table, he needs only a remotely playable hand, and 10-8 suited fits the bill.

The flop comes J-10-7, giving Antonius a pair of tens and a gut shot straight draw (a 9 will give him a straight), and Tilly a set of jacks. Antonius checks, Tilly makes a pot-sized bet, and Antonius calls. The turn is a king, Antonius checks again, and now is where the hand starts to get weird. Tilly, her chest heaving visibly, checks back three jacks, an absolutely monstrous hand. The river comes another king and Antonius checks again. The second king gives Tilly a full house, which means she is now beating any straight that Antonius might have. She can only lose to a better full house. Antonius has now checked three streets in a row, giving no indication of strength whatsoever. Tilly's obvious play is to throw in a big bet and hope Antonius has something he can call with. But she just checks again and flips up her jacks.

"Full house?" blurts out Antonius. He hadn't failed to notice that Tilly appeared to be losing her shit, and may have thought he had the best hand. The first reaction of the table to seeing Tilly's hole cards is several seconds of stunned silence. Then, in a brilliantly edited sequence, the camera cuts to each player in turn and you get to see their reactions evolve.

Jennifer Harman, who despite her harmless appearance is one of the toughest and most seasoned live game players in the world, looks down at the table in what seems to be disappointment and embarrassment for the other woman in the game.

Erik Lindgren, who may be a bit of a smartass, turns and shares a smirk with Phil Ivey.

Ivey, who is notorious for being inscrutable at the table, has his chin resting on the felt. After a moment he regains his composure and you can actually see him rebuild his poker face from the bottom up.

The common thread between all three reactions - Harman's embarrassment, Lindgren's derision, Ivey's disbelief - is the care the pros take to hide them from Tilly, as soon as they recover themselves. Only a play as surreally bad as Tilly's could have induced them to break character at all.

Heads up

2009-08-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

Heads up is poker's term for a one-on-one match. Some people say it's the most profitable kind of poker to master, since you can play more hands and if you find a fish you get him all to yourself. That's debatable, but what's not debatable, at least for me, is that is is a lot more interesting than full ring poker. It's very difficult to make money playing more than 20% of hands in a full ring game. Any game where the correct move is to surrender at the outset at least 80% of the time is pretty dumb. But in heads up, not only is it possible to play far more hands than that, you're actually forced to or else you would just be chipped away one blind at a time.

Heads up is intensely psychological. Your play almost always depends on assumptions about how your opponent is playing. Since the most common situation in heads up Hold'em is for both players to have nothing, betting often resembles a game of chicken. There are a lot of he-knows-that-I-know-that-he-knows type situations (poker players call this dynamic "leveling"). From my chess perspective, heads up has a nebulous feel to it. Like Rock Paper Scissors, it balances a mountain of psychological give-and-take atop a wafer-thin game. There are a limited number of starting hands and board textures, but unlimited possibilities for deception and intimidation. You could even argue that this level of abstraction from the game itself makes it the ultimate battle of wits.

Except, of course, that that title belongs to Freestyle Rock Paper Scissors.* FRPS abandons the hackeneyed and stifling trifecta of rock, paper, scissors. You can throw anything you like, so long as you can invent a hand motion for it. And what happens when On Hold With Yo-Yo Customer Service butts heads with William Howard Taft's Handlebar Mustache? When Backpacking In The Australian Outback collides with Japanese Cartoon-Induced Epileptic Seizure? When Mao's Cultural Revolution takes on Thomas Jefferson Crossing Out A Line In The Declaration Of Independence? The battle of wits has begun.

*Thanks go to Sean for teaching me the game.

Guerilla Posts

2009-08-03T19:38:00.001-07:00

Before you know it, they're gone.

What Does That Even Mean?

2009-08-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

What does the "even" in this phrase even mean?

The Least Dignified Profession

2009-08-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

You seek out stupid people. Then you play a game against them. Then, often, you lose.

Game Theory and Poker: Understanding Payoffs

2009-07-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in the last post, I've been listening to the podcast rendering of Ben Polak's introductory game theory course. Game theory encompasses a lot of ideas, but a pretty standard definition would be the study of strategic situations where one's decisions depend on the decisions of others. Obviously this has applications for poker, but I think the most important ones might not be the ones you would expect.

In game theory "any game consists of a set of players , a set of moves (or strategies ) available to those players, and a specification of payoffs for each combination of strategies." There is a lot of discussion about equilibria, situations where no player can profitably deviate from a certain strategy. You can apply this idea to poker to craft "inexploitable" strategies, but this isn't really worthwhile except maybe at the highest levels. Most players play highly exploitable strategies, so what you really want to do is exploit them to the maximum. This will in turn make you exploitable, but the whole idea is to stay one step ahead.

For most games I think it is more valuable to focus on the idea of payoffs. At first the payoffs in poker seem obvious: the money won or lost in the hand. But when you watch people play you start to realize that chips can acquire hugely variable values depending on how they won or lost them. I was struck by this forum post by Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond (it contains some poker jargon, but you will get the idea):

In poker, every player has personal motivations. They're more than the hands they 3bet preflop, their bet sizes, or how well they understand pot odds. Through watching their play, you can get a general feel for what they want, what they fear or worry about, what they are comfortable/uncomfortable with. Most importantly, you get a feel for what they want, at their core...

The loose passive player usually plays for fun. He wants to see flops and wants to showdown his hand. He wants to see if the cards in his hand can match up with the cards on the board, or if they're good enough to rake in a pot. He wants to see your hand.

So let's talk about the bad LAG*. The Bad LAG wants to win THIS POT. RIGHT NOW. Anytime he gives up on a pot it's because he's holding himself back. He likes to gamble, and usually doesn't mind getting his money in without proper odds.

He often (but not always) has pride issues, meaning he wants to show you how big of a man he is. If he trash talks, you can be especially confident that he has pride issues. This means that he very badly doesn't want to be bluffed off of a pot or miss an opportunity to bluff himself. It also means that if you have any history with him, whether you won a big pot, showed a bluff, got bluffed by him, really anything, he's more likely to bluff you or call you down light.

It generally isn't a good idea to follow any strategy that assumes your opponents will operate rationally. In one game covered in the podcast, everyone in the class has to choose a number between 1 and 100. The person whose number is closest to 2/3 times the class's average wins. It doesn't take long to figure out that choosing a number bigger than 66 is ridiculous, because even if for some reason everyone chose 100, you would still be over 2/3 of the average. More technically, 66 "strictly dominates" all numbers higher than 66: it is a better choice no matter what everyone else does, so you can eliminate 66 and higher as possible choices. Now you are playing the same game, but the range of choices has shrunk from 1-100 to 1-66. At this point you can rule out numbers bigger than 44 (2/3 * 66) using the same argument as for 67+. And so on until you get down to 1. But as Polak points out, you would have to assume not only that everyone else will behave rationally, but that they will assume that you will behave rationally, and that's not necessarily a correct assumption. To win this game it is more important to know the other players - Are they familiar with the game? How smart are they? How much time do they have to think about it?

Likewise in poker. Most players don't behave rationally, but that doesn't mean they play randomly. Almost everyone plays according to some set of rules or priorities, no matter how crazy they might be. Beating the game is all about sussing out the twisted logic behind their plays.

*LAG = loose aggressive player. Playing styles are often characterized along two dimensions, loose-tight and passive-aggressive. A loose player plays a lot of hands, a tight player plays few hands. A passive player rarely bets or raises, an aggressive player bets and raises a lot. So a loose passive player is someone who calls a lot of bets with mediocre hands but rarely raises, and a LAG is someone who raises all the time with a wide range of hands.

The SAFE Port Act

2009-07-24T16:18:00.000-07:00

At this moment there are four medium stakes heads up no limit hold'em matches taking place on Pokerstars. Meanwhile, 33 other players sit at tables alone, not playing anyone, just waiting. They don't play each other because they are all regulars. That is, they are professionals who make their living playing heads up at those stakes. They are close enough in skill that if they played each other they would just trade money back and forth. So they sit and wait for a fish, but it seems like the fish are showing up less and less often.

It used to be different. After Chris Moneymaker, an unknown accountant from Tennesee, won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2003, a slew of clueless players flocked to online poker. Experienced pros look back on that period nostalgically. Those were the days when they could "print money" just by playing solid, straightforward poker.

The salad days ended with the passing of the SAFE (Security and Accountability for Every) Port Act in 2006. Mostly concerned with securing ports against terrorist threats, the act also included the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), a last second addition dealing with internet gambling. (The connection between safe ports and online gambling remains murky.) The UIGEA didn't ban online gambling outright, it just prohibited the transfer of funds from a financial institution to an internet gambling site. Players who already had money on the sites could continue playing and withdrawing money if they liked, but no one could deposit money. It was still possible to circumvent the new laws, but the very fact that you now had to jump through hoops to get to the tables weeded out the best customers. On most sites, you could not simply type in your credit card number and start playing. People who would have impulsively lost a few hundred dollars after seeing the World Series of Poker on ESPN were now protected from themselves.

Fast forward to 2009. The majority of the bad players either got good enough to survive or lost all their money years ago. Especially at the higher stakes, the game has shifted from pros fleecing money from hopeless amateurs, to pros searching for an edge against other pros with increasingly subtle adjustments and counteradjustments.

There is legislation in the works that might reverse the UIGEA and make it legal for players to deposit again. Online pros look forward to such an event in the same way that evangelicals look forward to the Second Coming. There are a lot of guys grinding it out for pedestrian earnings right now who could quite conceivably become millionaires if poker returned to where it was in 2003. Whether the legislation will actually pass is another story. Reportedly Obama is a casual poker player, but I would guess opening up online poker is somewhere around 3067th on his list of things to do.

A Typical Day

2009-07-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

I get out of bed around noon or 1:00 so I have enough time to wake up before the live game starts at 2:30. Sometimes I walk to the bakery to get a pain au chocolat, but the last few days I've just been making myself an omelette and coffee in the apartment. If I have to do chores like shopping or cleaning up the apartment I'll try to do that in the morning. Otherwise I do some non-playing poker activity (that is, poker-related but not actually playing) like going through PokerTracker stats, reading 2+2 forum postings, or watching videos on DeucesCracked.

I head over to the live game, which is at a poker club two blocks away from my apartment, around 2:00 to make sure I get a seat. If I get there early I try to speak French with the guys there for a few minutes. Generally I play until the game breaks (usually around 7:00) or until I lose my three 50 euro buy-ins, whichever comes first. My gameplan is to push premium hands hard, either shoving all-in right away or betting big and pushing the rest in on the flop, and fold everything else. I only play about the top 10% of hands so mostly I just sit there and fold. I bring along my iPod and even a book to fend off the boredom. Obviously the optimal thing would be to study the table and pick up on tendencies when I'm not involved in the hand, but watching these guys too much starts to really hurt your brain. If the choices are between reading a book and getting so bored that I start to "get creative" with weak hands, it's better to read the book.

(I almost despaired of getting English-language books in France when my first Amazon order never arrived, but I tried again and some goodies showed up in the mail yesterday: Word Freaks (Fatsis), My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (Leyner), and Freedarko's Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac. I had been miserably slogging through a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.)

After leaving the live game, sometimes I go for a run along the Promenade de Anglais and then cool off in the ocean for a few minutes. Floating around in the ocean is very relaxing. Usually I don't even bring a towel and jog soggily back home.

When I get back, I make myself a sandwich or some pasta. Then between around 7:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. I play several online sessions interspersed with short breaks. I like to have some kind of noise in the background while I play, sometimes music, sometimes podcasts. Rap would seem to be best suited to poker, but I've actually been on a country kick with Neil Young, Ryan Adams, etc. As for podcasts, This American Life and Savage Love are the gold standard. Bart Hanson's Deuce Plays is excellent for hardcore poker fans, and I just found out that Yale's introductory game theory course is available as a podcast. I'm also on the lookout for a good learn-French podcast. I had been listening to the Pimsleur brand tapes, but as the series goes on it acquires more and more of a creepy how-to-date-rape-in-French vibe ("Ask the woman if she would like some beer." ... "She says no. Ask her if she would like some wine." ... "She says no. Ask her if she would like to go back to your place." ...).

I've come up with a variety of break activities. Once a night I will do some kind of exercise like planks or pushups. I am a huge pushup sissy - three sets of 20 is proving to be a significant challenge. Sometimes I go for the solo dance party (Lady Gaga or, of course, MJ). Usually I eat another meal at some point before I go to bed.

I find it hard to go to sleep right after playing poker, so I usually read or watch a movie for awhile before going to bed. I usually pass out around 4:00.

Outsider Mystique

2009-07-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

If you're anything like me, the appeal of Sarah Palin (and George W. Bush before her) is like a dog whistle you just can't hear. Some people watch Bush and see a guy they would like to have a beer with. I see an extraterrestrial. So far as I can tell from reading and listening to what others have to say, the Bush-Palin appeal has to do with perceived authenticity. They keep it real. If so, Palin's resignation speech was when keepin' it real goes wrong.

This article by Victor Davis Hanson, a professor at Stanford's Hoover Institute, is a pretty typical example. (The Hoover Institute is basically a conservative think tank attached to Stanford University. I don't know why Stanford has a conservative think tank.) He presents what I would call the School of Hard Knocks case for Palin: she has been living real fuckin' life while the other candidates have been...well, I don't know exactly. The article is so blatantly stupid in so many ways that it would be silly to spend a lot time discussing it, but one of the strangest things about it has to be the assumption that Obama had everything handed to him on a silver platter. Certainly he had a rougher childhood than Palin. Hanson is also very impressed by Palin's four children, but seems not to be aware that Obama has kids too. I'm guessing his ticket for 2012 is John and Kate Plus Eight.

According to one line of thinking Palin's lack of job-specific qualifications for vice president was actually a plus: she hadn't had a chance to be corrupted by the insidious "culture of Washington." There's an obvious contradiction between criticizing candidates for their lack of experience, as both Obama and Palin were criticized, and at the same time wanting a Washington outsider. You can't have it both ways. The dream of an outsider leader seems like a distinctly American one (think Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), but it actually goes back at least as far as ancient Rome. Considering Hanson is a Classics scholar, I'm surprised he didn't bring up the story of Cincinnatus.

Cincinnatus - the guy Cincinnati is named after - was a Roman politician famous for his crisis intervention skills. Roman law allowed for the appointment of a temporary dictator in emergency situations, the thinking being that when the shit got really deep it was best to cut through the red tape. In one such situation - Rome's enemies, a tribe called the Aequi, were advancing on the city - the Senate tapped Cincinnatus to assume the role of dictator. At the time he was hanging out on his farm and, according to legend, required some arm-twisting to take the job. But once he got in the saddle, he swung into action impressively, instituting a draft of every able-bodied male in Rome (this is 500 B.C., so we're talking city state, not empire). He then personally led his ragtag army into battle against the Aequi and won a crushing victory. The threat averted, he relinquished his powers and returned to his farm after an absence of just 16 days.

This is the dream scenario for the outsider leader, but even the story of Cincinnatus is more complicated than it appears. Most tellings of the story make him out to be a lifelong farmer. In fact, he was a noted policitician, forced to live on a farm because of a strange series of circumstances. This period in Rome's history was marked by struggles for political power between the patricians (the upper class) and the plebeians (the middle class), which at times devolved into little more than a street brawl. Cincinnatus was a patrician and his son Caeso, apparently a big guy, made a name for himself by repeatedly beating the shit out of various plebeians. The plebs succeeded in bringing legal action against Caeso, but rather than hold him until the trial, they set a ridiculously high bail. When Caeso jumped bail Cincinnatus was held responsible and "had to sell all his property and live for some time like a banished man in an out-of-the-way hut on the other side of the Tiber."

Cincinnatus was no rustic, he was a rich politician in exile. Hanson makes the point that a farmer's knowledge of irrigation is just as impressive as a professor's knowledge of ancient Greek. This is true, of course, but the two sets of knowledge are not interchangeable. Put the professor in the field and the farmer in the classroom and neither will have any idea what he's doing. So while Palin's lack of political knowledge doesn't mean she's an idiot, it's certainly relevant to her ability to serve in political office. It's kind of astonishing that the debate came to that, the question of whether or not there are job-specific qualifications for being president. Not just right-wing loonies but mainstream media types were saying things like, "She still has time to learn," or, "Well, she's been cramming a lot..." If Cincinnatus hadn't spent all that time in the political arena, he wouldn't have known what to do when called upon to be dictator. It wasn't his outsider status that qualified him, it was his experience as a leader.

Nor was Cincinnatus a populist. A patrician, not only was he originally shunted across the Tiber on account of his son beating up plebs, years later he received dictatorial powers a second time. This time the danger was not an external enemy, but an internal revolt of the plebs. In essence he built his whole political career around keeping down the lower classes. The image of a rustic outsider was a feature of the narrative created by others, not of Cincinnatus himself. His story was not one of humility called to service, but of privilege occasionally interrupted. Not unlike a certain beauty pageant queen.

Palin Resignation

2009-07-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a few days now since Sarah Palin announced her decision to resign as governor of Alaska. If you haven't watched the video yet, I recommend checking it out. It's the most intense example I've seen of the dynamic that's defined Palin since she stepped onto the national stage: a relentlessly positive person out of her depth and scared shitless. It's in her trademark style, impossibly chipper and totally incoherent. She goes into a digression about basketball that starts out as a nonsensical metaphor, but then starts to make sense - not as a metaphor, just as basketball talk. It drags on. You get the feeling Palin is relieved to just be talking about basketball.

Many people have seen this as the beginning of a presidential bid, but that's not what I see when I watch the video. I see a person under enormous stress. She gasps for air between sentences, apparently on the verge of crying. And if this is the launching off point for her presidential campaign, the reasons she offers for resigning - too much time and energy spent defending herself against lawsuits and personal attacks - seem disastrously miscalculated. The anti-Palin attack ad writes itself: "Sarah Palin thinks she's ready for Washington, but she couldn't even take the heat in Alaska..." Get it? 'Cause it's cold in Alaska? And that ad would kind of have a point.

But the moment that really makes me think this isn't the first step on the presidential trail comes at the end, when the camera swivels around to reveal a handful of people clapping awkwardly, and you realize, this is bush league. Listen, there are plenty of smart people with resources in this country who would love to see Sarah Palin run. They weren't involved in this video. If they were, it would have been professional, crisp, and on message. It was none of those things.

You have to wonder if the scandal-diggers Palin blames for her resignation stumbled on something big, something that convinced her to resign in the hopes that they would call off the dogs. If so, we will probably find out about it soon.

What's next for Palin? Maybe she will run for president after all, despite the weird resignation announcement. Apparently she posted something on facebook about having a "higher calling." Stranger things have happened in politics. Or maybe she'll write a book, or go on a speaking tour, or get a TV gig. And if all that falls through, there's always Playboy.

Christophe

2009-06-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

The time has come to talk about my arch enemy. His name is Christophe and he plays chess at the cafe. He has mousy white-blond hair and perfectly round glasses and goes through life with his eyes squinted and his mouth pursed. It's all a bit too obvious, really. I've come to expect malice to hide itself beneath a charming exterior, but Christophe wears his pettiness on his sleeve. In a movie, he would be perfectly cast as himself. He would be the sort of villain you never meet in real life.

Of the guys who regularly play chess at the cafe all day he is the best and he has a correspondingly high opinion of himself. (As with the guys at the poker club, it is unclear how they support themselves.) He is not accustomed to losing. One thing I have to give Christophe, he is not a quitter. No matter how bad his position is he will fight on to the bitter end. When he has exhausted all of his resources he will sit and scowl his disgust as his clock runs down.

Someone told me he is a master, which is entirely believable. But he is not a great blitz player. He plays a superficial game, always bashing out the most obvious move whether it's right or wrong. This is probably a habit acquired from beating up on weakies all day.

Also, he's a cheater. He cheats in subtle ways, but when you add them up you get a clear picture of someone striving for an unfair advantage. For example, he always starts the opponent's clock first, no matter which color he is. (Really the game should begin with Black starting White's clock.) Sometimes he will take a move back early in the game, only to enforce touch-move on the opponent later on. The touch-move rule says that if you touch a piece you must move it, but it is often disregarded in casual games, whereas "no takebacks" is about as universal as chess rules get.

Like a hairy spider, Christophe would be an amusing malignity, fun to marvel at - if he didn't kind of get to me. I have a positive score against him, but I don't win every game. And no matter how many times I beat him he always seems to find the result unjust, some sort of fluke. When we play I know he is measuring himself against me, placing cosmic significance on the outcome of the game, and it's hard for me to avoid doing the same. I know how much it hurts him to lose and I really want to hurt him. My favorite games are the ones in which I come from behind. Once, having achieved a big opening advantage he actually crowed, "I've got you now!" I had always thought that was a sort of paraphrase of an emotional state, not words to be spoken aloud. He had nothing to say when I won that game.

In another game I built up a crushing position, but let it slip with a careless mistake and he escaped with a draw. According to the house rules at the cafe, in the event of a draw, whoever had black gets to stay on the board and whoever had white has to get up. I had white. As I got up from my chair, Christophe made some jeering comment and I snapped: "Okay then, Christophe," I said, "let's play for money. Fifty euros a game? A hundred?" That wasn't entirely fair. I know Christophe doesn't have much money, and I know I would win. I know that deep in his shriveled heart he knows that. And I know he knows I know. Christophe mumbled something about maybe playing tomorrow, but short of accepting the challenge there was no way he could save face in front of the cafe regulars.

I didn't go back the next day. I'd had enough of the emotional turmoil and I knew he would never play me for money. Now when I go to to the cafe I steer clear of Cristophe. There are a couple of young French-Arab guys, strong players, who I like to play with. We sit out in the sun while, in his own little corner, Christophe holds court with the regulars.

Live Game Update

2009-06-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

I found out one of the regulars owns a limo service in Monaco. That sounds pretty lucrative. And the guy who said his rating was 1600? Turns out that's his Yahoo Chess rating. I don't even know what to say about that.

The Live Game

2009-06-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

I never thought we would actually play for money. He said something about Kasparov, and I asked if he played chess.

"Oui."

"For money?"

"Oui."

Then he asked something in French that I didn't understand, but eventually made out the word "Elo." Elo is another word for chess rating, named after the guy who invented the formula (that's synecdoche).

Alex had told me what to do in a situation like this: just be honest. Explain, simply and clearly, why he has no chance of winning, and he will want to play. So I just said, "Twenty three hundred."

His friend translated, "Deux mille trois cent."

He shook his head. "Impossible (im-pahs-see-bluh)!"

"Deux mille trois cent," I said.

I didn't expect it to work. I figured, if he did play for money, it would be for a nominal sum like a euro a game. It was just easier to tell the truth than to make up a lie.

But the next time I saw him at the club, when I half-jokingly said, "Echecs?" he was all for it. We got out an undersized set they had lying around and started setting up the pieces. We agreed on ten euros per game. I asked what his Elo was, and he said 1600.

When we were about to start, I noticed he had his queen and king on the wrong squares. That set off alarm bells. He couldn't be for real, could he? I started to wonder if this was some kind of elaborate hustle. But I also noticed he took a long time to set up his pieces (the time it takes you to set up the board is closely correlated with your playing strength), and something about the way his fingers moved over the pieces suggested he wasn't a good player. If he was hustling me, he was an exceptionally good actor.

And indeed, he went for Scholar's Mate, a basic opening trap in which white tries to checkmate black in the first four moves. The problem is, so long as black deflects the mate threat, white's position is compromised. In just a few more moves he had slipped into a hopeless position and, as is typical of beginners, started taking a long time on his moves only after the game was already decided.

While he thought I had time to consider the situation. He had clearly lied about his rating. In the context of competitive chess, someone rated 1600 is not a strong player, but it's also a long way from a rank beginner. Assuming you have never played chess seriously, you could study hard for a year and not reach that level. But this guy was a beginner, a real one. I would bet a lot that he had never played in a tournament or cracked a chess book. I was starting to regret bringing up chess in the first place. I was now sure he would quit after at most a few more games and the paltry sum I would win would not be worth damaging my lucrative reputation as the dumb American.

He made a few more moves and resigned when he lost his queen. We played one more game, which he lost just as quickly. After that he suggested playing just for fun, no money. Of course I declined. There are a lot of situations in which I would be happy to play chess for fun, but this is not one of them. In the gambling world, the last thing you can ever do is play a game you've spent years of your life mastering for free against some yokel who wants to try his luck. At that point they have no incentive to play for money. He dug into his pocket for two ten euro notes and forked them over disgustedly. I tried to suggest that he would win the money back at the poker table, but the language barrier intervened again.

I was left with the same question you always confront in gambling: What was he thinking?

My best guess is his reasoning went something like this: This dumb American is lying about his rating. He probably doesn't know anything about chess at all. Neither do I, but I'm smart, and chess is a smart person's game. I always outsmart him at the poker table, so I'll find some way to outsmart him at chess.

Chess and poker share the common characteristic that many people are excessively willing to accept them as metaphors - chess as a metaphor for intelligence, poker as a metaphor for manliness. In this light it is interesting that, while men will generally admit that they are not good chess players, nearly all in their heart of hearts believe themselves to be good poker players. In reality, of course, both chess and poker require specific skill sets that must be learned.

Or maybe he just wanted to play for fun. But that wasn't the feeling I got. I really believe that he thought he would win. He was visibly upset after he lost.

This is a variation on a theme at the poker club. Really it is the theme of the poker club: surface idiocy concealing unfathomable mysteries. The biggest mystery is, Who are these guys? The poker game starts every day at 3:00 (2:00 on the weekend) and often goes late into the night. The regulars show up every day. They can't all be making money. In fact, given the substantial rake the house collects, and the amount of money I am carrying away, hardly any of them can be making money. They don't look like rich guys. They're not especially well-dressed or groomed. And the schedule doesn't leave them much time to have jobs. I know the French welfare system is generous, but I don't see how it can be that generous.

24 Tables

2009-06-10T17:08:00.001-07:00

Synecdoche: Reviews

2009-06-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

I have developed a bad habit with regards to movie watching. After I finish watching a movie the first thing I do, as soon as I have a chance, is get online and read the reviews of it. This is bad because it short-circuits my own response to the movie, as well as betraying a pathetic need for validation. Nonetheless, it is what I do. I was particularly interested to read the reviews for Charlie Kaufman's new-ish movie "Synecdoche: New York."

I found "Synecdoche" to be funny, sad, and wildly creative, but by the last half hour I was preemptively reading reviews online with the DVD player minimized (I was watching it on my laptop). Since this is intended to be a review of the reviews, I will restrain myself from writing my own review of the movie. Mick LaSalle's ambivalent review in the San Francisco Chronicle mirrors my own feelings pretty closely.

But LaSalle was unusual in coming down in the middle. For the most part, the movie divided reviewers into two camps: the first camp felt the movie realized its ambitions, or else were so tickled that a movie with such lofty ambitions managed to exist at all that they happily overlooked its shortcomings; the second camp basically saw it as pretentious crap. As it happened, my two favorite reviewers, Roger Ebert and Stephanie Zacharek, came down on opposite sides.

Ebert is my go-to guy if I want to know whether or not to see a movie. Our tastes usually line up, and I have learned to account for his foibles, like throwing four stars at any halfway decent superhero movie. In his review of "Synecdoche," Ebert calls Kaufman "one of the few truly important writers to make screenplays his medium," and claims the movie "encompasses every life and how it copes and fails." So he liked it.

Zacharek, on the other hand, pans the movie as "an uninteresting mess." She seems to have been nursing a bitter hatred for Kaufman ever since he wrote "Adaptation." Zacharek doesn't use the word "solipsistic" in her piece, but many of the other reviews do, and it does a good job of summing up her problems with Kaufman: his movies exist only for his own pleasure.

But on further examination, solipsism is a tricky charge to make stick on a movie, partly because it makes an allegation about the movie makers' intentions, which are difficult to nail down. The reviewers in question never really lay out their argument, but it seems to rest on three observations:

1. "Synecdoche" centers on a self-absorbed main character, who in some ways resembles the writer Charlie Kaufman.
2. Something about the film's inventiveness suggests that its creators enjoyed making it.
3. The reviewer did not enjoy it.

But no permutation of these observations actually leads to the conclusion that the movie itself is solipsistic. Regarding observation number one, the movie certainly takes self-absorption as one of its subjects, but that does not make the movie itself self-absorbed, any more than a movie about murder is inherently murderous. I think reviewers have been too willing to take the movie's main character, who may be a caricature of Kaufman, as a carbon copy, and ream the real-life writer for all the character's faults. The reviewers then combine observations two and three to conclude that the movie was designed to please its creators and torture its audience (ignoring the viewers who did enjoy the movie (as though it is impossible for a movie to please both its creators and the audience)).

So while the charge of solipsism poses as the cause of the reviewer's negative reaction, it is actually derived from the negative reaction. My main thesis, which I am just now getting to, is that the real reasons we like or dislike movies are mysterious and deeply personal, and the critical vocabulary does a poor job illuminating them.

Movie reviewers by and large have settled on the following template:

1. Initial assessment
2. Plot summary
3. Interpretive tap dance
4. Final verdict

And it is the transition from 3. to 4. where they most often lose me. The analysis never quite seems to add up to the verdict. I remember reading two reviews of "Rushmore," one of which praised it for its "Salingeresque" qualities, the other condemned it as "just another Salingeresque" blah blah blah. Did the movie possess a definable Salingeresque quality which one reviewer liked and the other didn't? Maybe, but I think it's more likely that they formed their opinion about the movie for other reasons, but were both aware they could sound knowedgeable by describing a movie about a male prep school student as "Salingeresque." Again, the critical vocabulary pretends to explain the reactions to a movie, but it is really better at legitimizing preconceived reactions.

Returning to "Synecdoche" - athough their judgments differ, Ebert's and Zacharek's characterizations of the movie are quite similar. They both see it as an attempt to unlock the big secrets of life. The difference is that Ebert believes he is in on the secret, while Zacharek feels she has been left out of the loop. Ebert's review is largely an explanation of the philosophical truths he sees expressed in the movie. Zacharek gives up the game early on when she calls Kaufman "a highly skilled grease monkey, a guy who methodically fits all the parts together and hands you the bill with a smirk, a look that says, 'I can do this and you can't.'" Despite the quotation marks, of course, neither Kaufman nor any of his characters has ever spoken those words. Personally I don't feel this sentiment coming from his movies. Yet it's clear that those same movies feel to Zacharek like a personal attack. We could make up some story about her childhood dreams of becoming a screenwriter never coming to fruition (in fact this is the cliched charge levelled against all critics: those who cannot do...) but that would be beside the point. All I am trying to say is that her stated objections to the movie do not withstand scrutiny and her real reasons for disliking it remain mysterious.

I feel this way about a lot of movies, just not "Synecdoche." For example, I couldn't stand the newest Batman movie. I could talk about the clumsy exposition, the heavy-handed moral sermonizing, or the way the Joker is allowed to literally contrive the plot. I could talk about Christian Bale's monotone performance, or the mistaken tendency to see it as a return to Batman source material, when its real precursors are torture-porn flicks like "Saw." It might even be convincing. But I don't think any or all of that explains why I didn't like the movie. The truth is, it just pissed me off.

Craigslists Killas

2009-05-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, police arrested the man they believe is the "Craigslist Killer," who tied, robbed, and in at least one case shot women he found through craigslist classified ads. The man was six feet tall, well educated, and had no criminal history. The robberies may have been motivated by a need to pay off gambling debts. Friends of the alleged killer expressed shock...though, after reflection, acknowledged there was something vaguely creepy about him all along.

It wasn't me.

My creepiest interaction with craigslist occurred years ago. It was summer vacation and I was living in a big house with nine other college students in California. Two facts came to light about one of our housemates that made the rest of us feel practically obliged to play a prank on him. First, he had a secret crush on a mutual friend of ours who came over to the house sometimes. Second, he browsed and expressed an intention to use the craigslist "casual encounters" section. The idea we came up with was to write our own casual encounters ad with all the characteristics of his crush. Once he responded to the ad, an email correspondence would develop, in the course of which we would release more and more details to convince him he was really talking to the very girl he was lusting after in real life. Finally, we would arrange a meeting and photograph him in a compromising position. Or something. It never got that far.

We abandoned the hoax within hours of its conception, as soon as we checked the email account we had created just for that purpose. There were an astonishing number of responses, more than a hundred, less than a day after posting the ad. But none of them was from our housemate. It seemed we had snared every pervy male within a 50-mile radius...except the one we were after. And then there was the fact that many of the respondents had chosen to include "dick pics."

If creepiness crops up at the border of repression and exhibitionism, which I believe it does, then the craigslist personal ads are its ideal breeding ground. A guy sees a girl at a local restaurant, can't muster the courage to say a word, then pours out his heart and soul to her in an anonymous online posting.

Once, in a writing course, I was assigned to read a collection of real suicide notes. This is very sad stuff, so sad that the teacher warned us not to read too many at once, or to read them alone. To me, the craigslist "missed connections" section is almost that sad. Not that failing to screw the girl at Starbucks is on par with suicide, but just that so many of these posts betray a hopeless, heartbreaking maladjustment to social realities. Here is one chosen at random from craigslist Ann Arbor:

Barry's bagels - m4w - 21 (Ann arbor)

I stopped in today for a bagel for the first time in almost a year at the barry bagels in the westgate shopping center. I've seen you there before and just would love to know your name. Your very cute and very nice. You had a hat on today and your kind of shorter than most the other staff and have a short not yet shoulder length haircut as well. Much tanner then I remember from before but perhaps a nice vacation was your reasoning. Anyways not sure if anyone knows who I am talking about but would love to know her name and maybe have a chat sometime. Would be great. I just wasn't going to get your number nor chat your ear off while in line. Hope to hear some news soon.

Note the feigned casualness: he hasn't been to Barry Bagels for "almost a year," yet he's "seen [her] there before." It's hard to say which would be creepier, remembering the bagel girl for a year, or lying about how frequently he visits the place. Then there's the stalker-ish attention to detail: "Much tanner then [sic] I remember from before but perhaps a nice vacation was your reasoning [sic?]." Haha! A nice vacation! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Next he appeals to anyone else who would be willing to give up her name. And finally he offers this tear-streaked, feces-throwing stab at sanity: "I just wasn't going to get your number nor chat your ear off while in line." Now we understand: waiting until he got home to furtively type out this tortured love note, perhaps taking a break to masturbate to his doll collection, was an act of consideration.

Here's the thing. It's not the guys on either extreme who come off as creepy. (I'm talking now about people within the normal range, not the criminally insane.) With men who will hit on anyone, anywhere, anytime, that quickly becomes part of the accepted ground rules for dealing with them. Their behavior can even acquire a kind of innocent charm. Hey, he's just a guy, right? And then you have your real Boy Scouts, guys who show no interest in sex whatsoever, at least not until they are safely married and comatose. No, it's the tweeners that get under your skin. The ones who have enough shame to keep their desires secret most of the time, but not quite enough shame to bury them completely. Most of the time they keep their feelings hidden, but once in awhile, maybe after a few drinks, they let fly and it's right out there, a dirty little secret, visible to everyone.

Missed connections provides the perfect forum for this kind of outburst. To the desperately repressed, it seems like a happy middle ground between human interaction and hermitry. What it really does is give the rest of us a window into tortured souls. Only, I'm not sure there is a "rest of us" - is anyone immune to these forces? I've never posted a craigslist personal, but there were times when I kind of wanted to. It wasn't decorum that held me back, or fear of being stalked down and killed by a psychotic killer. It was what my friends might think if they found out.

Monaco

2009-05-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Despite living a short train ride away and hearing its name frequently in conversation, for awhile I couldn't figure out what exactly Monaco was. Was it like a country, or a city, or what?

Monaco is an autonomous city-state couched within the borders of France. It covers only two square kilometers but counts a disproportionate share of the world's wealthiest sports stars, businessmen, and gamblers as residents, mostly because it has no income tax.

Like all densely populated areas, Monaco has built itself up vertically, but its contours, an Escher-like maze of hills, terraces, and cliffs, couldn't be more different from the angular skyscrapers of Manhattan.

The architecture, along with a striated social sphere including wealthy transplants, gawky tourists, and native cab drivers and restauranteurs, gives the city an almost feudal feel. At the same time, it is one of the most technologically saturated places in the world. It seems like you can't walk up to a door without it sliding open automatically.

Monaco is a place to see and be seen. In front of the main entrance of the Monte Carlo casino, a crowd mills about twenty four hours a day, hoping to catch a glimpse of the celebrities coming and going. If you happen to drive by, they will peer anxiously at you through the car window, then look away, disappointed.

It is not only people doing the watching. Nearly every square inch of the city is covered by surveillance cameras (the black eight ball-looking kind). Monaco is not a place where you want to try to get away with something.

It's the past and the future. It's opulently luxurious and deeply stressful. It's summer camp meets police state.

The Boys Are Back

2009-04-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

The EPT (European Poker Tour) event in San Remo started this weekend. I wasn't playing - the $5000 entry is a little more than I'm willing to stake on my poker skills just yet - but a lot of friends were and I was looking forward to enjoying a rooting interest deep into the tournament.

Unfortunately everyone I knew busted out: Sander a few minutes after the tournament started, and Eastgate, Christian, and Morty all on the first day. Alex was the only one to make it to day two and looked to be going strong until he got a bad beat with aces against ace-ten, and that was pretty much it.

There's still plenty of gambling to be done. The next EPT is in Monte Carlo next weekend so a lot of the guys are just hanging out until then. Eastgate and Sander are staying, Morty if he can somehow convince his wife, and Falafel is sort of drifting around as usual. Apparently Gus is also here, though I haven't seen him yet, and he brought six (six!) girls with him. The weird part is he met all of them on facebook. You wouldn't think a guy with so much cachet would bother with facebook, but gamblers in general are obsessive facebook addicts. It makes sense since their friends are spread all over the world and most of them carry computers all the time.

Falafal, Sander, and Morty are doing their usual rapid-fire gambling on Premier League football.

"I bet he scores on this free kick. I have a feeling."

"I'll give you eight-to-one."

"Give me ten-to-one. I deserve ten-to-one."

"Wait, on the kick or on the attack?"

"On the attack of course."

"Okay I'll give you nine-to-one."

"Nine-to-one for a hundred."

"For a hundred."

"..."

"I can't believe he didn't score! What'll you give me on no score for the rest of the game?"

And so on.

The soccer matches have been incredible lately with lots of scoring and drama. We watched Arshavin score four goals against Liverpool last night, ruining Jimmy, who had bet something like under three goals (total) on the game. If soccer was always like this I would have to watch all the time. Of course the norm is one-goal yawn-fests.

But the big action right now is a backgammon prop that Alex set up with a Russian gambler named Slava. The deal is that Alex is allowed to use any assistance he wants, human or computer, but he spots Slava 1.5 poins in ten games. They made a contract for a thousand games. I think they're playing for a couple thousand dollars a point all told, but it's hard to keep track since people are constantly jumping on and off both sides.

Alex thinks he might be a small favorite just playing the computer moves, but he can get a big edge by making small errors in the first few moves to complicate the position.

Slava is about forty, slender, with defined cheek bones and salt-and-pepper hair. The first day we played in his hotel room at the Fairmont (he is comped, but currently barred from betting at the casino, "for being too smart," he says). The room is small but meticulously organized. Three pairs of shoes are neatly lined up by the door, and four books in as many languages are carefully stacked on the bedside table (including: The Black Swan, a book of IQ quizzes in Russian, and a French translation of Lolita). The last seems odd. Didn't Nabokov call Lolita his "love affair with English"? Why French?

I later get some insight into Slava's motivation for taking the bet as he harangues Falafel over an owed sum. "All the normal people will be on my side. My side is for people who love life, reading, exercise, and all these things. Their side is the computer monsters!" He's smiling, but he isn't really joking.

American Restaurants in Foreign Lands

2009-04-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

The Cafe McDonald's at the corner of Avenue Jean Médecin and Rue de Belgique has more in common with a traditional French boulangerie than with an American McDonald's. In fact, if not for the golden arches, it would be impossible to identify it as a McDonald's at all. I stood in the doorway, confused, for a moment thinking I had entered the wrong building. From the decor - cubist furniture, restrained color scheme - to the food - croissants, fresh fruits - it is about as far away from familiar fast food as Jean-Paul Sartre from Tucker Max.

This is the first thing you notice about American restaurants in foreign lands: they're a lot nicer. I think this is because they fulfill a different role than at home. In America, McDonald's is the kitchen of the people. Even the poorest can afford to eat there. In other countries it takes on a sense of exoticism that instantly bumps it up in the price range. (The poor of Thailand are not eating McDonald's). In keeping with this status shift, chain restaurants that are typically slovenly in the US are kept pristine elsewhere.

Take, for example, the Sizzler in the electronics mall in Thailand, which looks more like an upclass steakhouse than the generic food-from-a-can-served-with-flair establishments ubiqitous in the US (summed up with droll perfection in Office Space: "I'm going to go next door and get a table." "When you say next door, do you mean Chili's or Flinger's?").

TANGENT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY SKIP IF YOU WANT TO PRESERVE THE FLOW OF THIS POST: You know how sometimes Applebee's is referred to as "Applebee's Neighborhood Grill and Bar"? At first that seems like sleazy advertising at its worst, since Applebee's is clearly the opposite of a "neighborhood" establishment, which to me means a mom-and-pop joint, certainly not a nationwide chain. But in a weird way Applebee's really is in your neighborhood because it's in everyone's neighborhood. I think this says something about the replacement of discrete local communities by a single television-created megacommunity. Fun tidbit: the header for Applebee's website is "Applebee's Generic Menu." Seriously.

Anyway, I didn't eat at the Sizzler. I ate at the Pizza Hut next door. Whoever was in charge had decided to imbue the place with some East-meets-West flair by dressing the waitress in a cowboy outfit, which was odd, since Pizza Hut is many things but Western is not one of them. But if the waitress seemed out of place, the manager - a pinched, efficient-looking over-achiever in glasses - would have been right at home in any Hut in the States. I ordered a personal pepperoni pizza and a Pepsi, which came in a Louisiana Purchase-sized plastic cup. America! Fuck yeah!

I had come across passages in travel accounts wherein the traveler, exhausted and alienated, finally gives in and wanders to - is drawn to - a McDonald's. (I'm pretty sure Anthony Bourdain wrote about going to a McDonald's in Tokyo. And someone named Marisa, who follows this blog and has a blog of her own, wrote about a similar experience in Spain.) I silently scorned these writers, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn't happen to me. Then of course it happened to me.

There really is something about the food of your childhood. Travelling abroad awakens unsuspected, primordial cravings that simply cannot be satisfied by Thai food, no matter how good it is. I really wanted a McDonald's breakfast - the kind you scarf down hot, McBiscuit crumbs grease-glued to your lips, and shoot out your ass like a torpedo half an hour later. Instead I got pain au chocolate.

When I got back to the apartment Alex's one-year-old son Daniel was munching on pain au chocolate himself, looking completely content. He will be so dismayed when he finds out the McDonald's in America doesn't have those.

The Economic Crisis from a Gambling Perspective

2009-04-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

One thing we often hear in the accounts of shell-shocked stock brokers after the bubble bursts is that they were undone by an astronomically unlikely series of events, a "perfect storm." The regularity of such complaints is in itself evidence against their accuracy. The thing about odds that are really astronomical is that we don't ever get to see the underdog win - at least not nearly as often as disabused stock brokers offer up this explanation. Is it really possible that all of our economic bubbles have been pricked by one-in-a-billion events?

That's a bad question. A better one is this: Which is more likely, that we have repeatedly witnessed such events, or that stock brokers have repeatedly underestimated their risk? Now the answer becomes obvious.

An important truth about gambling is that you don't always know what you think you know. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "Certitude is not the test of certainty." This applies especially to proposition bets. Say you are 100 percent certain of some fact. Someone whom you believe to be knowledgeable offers to bet that the opposite is true. Now how would you estimate your chances of being right?

There is a betting scheme called the Martingale system. It entails doubling your bet after every loss and quitting once you win. Some people believe this to be a surefire winning strategy.

Say you are playing Roulette and betting on red. The chance of winning any given bet is 18/38. If you bet n dollars, your expected value is

(18/38)n - (20/38)n = - 0.053n

In other words, every time you bet a dollar on red, you lose on average five cents. But suppose every time you lose you double the stake and play again (the Martingale system). If you ever win, even if it's a single win after many losses, you come out ahead. Obviously, if you can afford to play many times the chance that you win at least once becomes very high. Therefore you have a very high chance of coming out ahead.

So is this a good strategy? Of course not. A series of bets, all of which have negative expectation, cannot add up to a positive expectation. What you are actually doing is balancing a high probability of small to medium gains against a small probability of catastrophic loss. The loss occurs when you use up all your money without winning. If you have a lot of money to start with, the chance of this happening is small, but still big enough that it outweighs the much greater chance of winning a lesser amount.

It seems that this is the kind of game that American stock traders were playing. I'm not saying that they were literally making Martingale bets, but the pattern of their growth resembles that of someone who was. For a long time they won, but when they lost, they lost huge.

As we've seen, over time this strategy will tend to lose. But what if, when you lost big, you didn't have to pay? All of a sudden the strategy becomes enormously profitable because the frequent gains are no longer counterbalanced by the possibility of disastrous loss. By bailing out the gamblers who lost, we are creating exactly this sort of situation. From the perspective of a stock trader, making a Martingale-type bet now looks very good - especially if you are paying yourself bonuses all the while.

Update: some economic crisis links

1. Economist and chess grandmaster (!) Ken Rogoff dishes on the American economic crisis.

2. Iceland is totally fucked. This is slightly less surprising if you know that Bobby Fischer nearly bankrupted said country in the 1970s by threatening to back out of his World Championship match with Boris Spassky.

Platinum

2009-03-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

Poker update:

After a month of the short stacking strategy I am up about $1000. I'm up to playing 13 tables at once (and will be adding a few more once we get back to France and I have more computer monitors) and am making about $20 an hour. I played enough hours this month that I have achieved "Platinum Star VIP Status" which basically means I start getting some bonuses that will add to my hourly.

It's weird to think that all the time I spent working for $10 an hour or less I could have been making twice as much playing a mindless version of poker online. It's weirder that everyone who's working for god knows what in some third world country could be doing the same.

Only they couldn't, really, because even if they had a computer and internet access and were aware of poker, most people wouldn't think of this strategy or have the wherewithal to refine it to the point where it's profitable. Nor would I. Peter did all of the work. In Montana I made a few forays into the smokey live poker games in the bars there and figured out I couldn't be worth more than $10/hour in those games, and that wasn't enough to sit in a smokey room with a bunch of assholes. So I pretty much shelved poker as a money-making idea. It's due to a very particular set of circumstances that I am playing again and making money.

Reading

2009-03-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot lately. I wish I could say this is because I've become more patient, or rediscovered my love for learning, or some crap like that, but mostly it's because the TV in southeast Asia is so bad. That and the music are my two major beefs with the region. The popular culture here seems to have absorbed the look of rock while ignoring the rebellious impulse that inspires its best moments. All the live performances I've seen (and I've seen pretty many, in bars and the like) seem to play at rock, not do rock. There's a lot of preening, a lot of self-conscious joking with the audience. A lot of sunglasses.

The badness of the music and of the TV fuse into an epic horror in the music videos. The standard structure is an angsty love story (guy picks up pen for girl; smiles at girl; contorts face to show he really wishes he talked to girl; randomly sees girl at restaurant; smiles at girl; contorts face...ad nauseum) intercut with the singer wearing sunglasses plucking away at an acoustic guitar (regardless of what instruments happen to be playing in the actual song) and crooning like man, he really gets what it's like to want to talk to that girl whose pen you picked up but you're too much of a pussy to do it. They play videos like this for hours. They jar with my experience of actual courtship in Thailand, which as far as I can tell takes place mostly in bars and discos and is terrifying but pretty straightforward.

I get some sports channels, but they are hamstrung by showing cricket and rugby a significant amount of the time. Maybe this sounds like cultural bigotry. Let me make two points to counteract that assumption. 1. I really like watching soccer. 2. Have you ever tried to watch a game of cricket? They can go for days.

But I was going to talk about reading. I just finished David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which I can't believe I haven't read until now. Astute readers may have noticed me trying to copy Wallace's prose style in my last couple posts. The title resonated with me since I remember saying to my freshman RA (at this time I had never heard of Wallace's book), "Sometimes you have to do something just so you'll never have to do it again."

This is how I feel about pretty much all social engagements. One thing that has often prevented me from enjoying reading is a feeling that I ought to be out doing something. At the age of 23 I will now deliberately go to a party I know I won't enjoy so that after I come home I can read comfortably, knowing that I already tried the alternative. This is the kind of thing that Wallace totally gets and is really good at writing about.

By diagnosing fiction writers as oglers and shut-ins, Wallace even rekindled my hope of one day writing fiction.

"The persons [TV actors] we young fiction writers and assorted shut-ins study, feel for, feel through most intently are, by virtue of a genius for feigned unself-consciousness, fit to stand people's gazes. And we, trying desperately to be nonchalant, perspire creepily on the subway."

My one moment of disappointment with the book came when Wallace recounts losing to a nine-year-old girl at chess. Although the incident contains some classically funny DFW moments ("Deirdre pulls up a chair and says she usually likes to be black and informs me that in lots of cultures black isn't thanatotic or morbid but is the spiritual equivalent of what white is in the U.S. and that in these cultures it's white that's morbid. I tell her I already know all that.") overall it has the showoff-y fascination with technical terms of someone who knows just enough to make an ass of himself. For example: "My first inkling of trouble is on the fourth move, when I fianchetto and Deirdre knows what I'm doing is fianchettoing and uses the term correctly." Fianchetto is a legitimate chess term and it appears that his opponent, Deirdre, is the one who actually says it out loud. What's off-putting is the need to use it twice in one sentence, and his sense that her speaking the term means "trouble." I think someone saying "fianchetto" out loud indicates the opposite. It would be a little like a one-on-one basketball game in which one player attempts a hook shot and the other player says, "Aha! I see you're going for a hook shot." Neither of these guys are Kobe, if you see what I'm saying.

And again: "The Nadir's [the cruise ship] Library's got cheapo Parker Brothers chess sets with hollow plastic pieces, which any good chess player has got to like. [footnote:] Heavy expensive art-carved sets are for dorks." It's true that good chess players hate fancy weird-looking sets, which mess with your carefully developed board sight. It's easier to play in your head than with a set like that. But we hate the cheapo plastic sets almost as much, because the pieces are always falling over, especially in speed chess. Good players tend to use either the practical tournament sets, which include roll-up vinyl boards and plastic pieces with some heft to them, or, if one is a available, a nice wooden board with the classic Staunton piece design.

Is it just bitchy to nitpick Wallace's chess understanding like this? Overall, it's one of my favortie books of all time. I'm justifying it to myself by reasoning that this is kind of a strategy game blog, so it makes sense to focus on that part of the book. The thing is, when an author falls down in your area of expertise, it can make you question what he really knows about everything else.

My dad, an economist, makes this claim about The Economist (which in my experience just about every political science major is prepared to die for). He says the few times the magazine has written on his area of his expertise it has been absolute nonsense, which makes him suspect that the whole thing is just a lot more nonsense disguised beneath a snooty prose style. Can anyone verify/disprove this? Has The Economist ever covered something about which you are extremely knowedglable? How did it do?

Third World

2009-03-15T03:22:00.000-07:00

My first experience back in Bali was getting taken for 10 euros. At the airport, a guy grabs my luggage and hustles me through the bag check. Then he holds out his hand and says simply "tip." The guy has an official-looking airport uniform and I don't want to take any chances. I offer him five euros, the smallest bill in my wallet. "More," he says. His tone manages to be bullying and pathetic at the same time. I look at my friends, still on the other side of the bag check. They smile, oblivious to my dilemma. A sign above the exit warns, "Death penalty for drug traffickers." I decide not to fuck around and give him another five. He nods, unsmiling, and I glare at him as he walks away. There is no good feeling between us either way.

I will soon learn that in Bali ten euros is a large sum. Nonetheless, it was a cheap price to pay to learn the lesson. I have not travelled outside America since a trip to England when I was very young. This is my first time in a country significantly poorer than the United States. In return for being able to buy everything cheaply, you have to endure a constant barrage of sales pitches and hustles. For every beautiful ocean vista there is a guy standing on the beach, right in your field of vision, insistently proffering a selection of fake designer sunglasses.

I periodically remind myself that I have it good, that it is better to be the target of the hustle than to need to hustle. Still...

In Thailand I frequent a Japanese restaurant with outdoor seating. One night, eating alone, I watch the Japanese-kimono-garbed Thai girl who stands outside the restaurant and tries to lure in tourists. Business is slow tonight, and I feel for the girl, not because no one will come in, but because they refuse to even look at her. I want to explain that this is a necessary defensive strategy, that while it is hard to be a Thai girl it is also hard to be a white guy, with people glomming onto you wherever you go, and any crack taken as a sign of weakness or susceptibility, so that an unfortunate guy who caves and buys one rose or necklace or ridged-carved-wooden-frog-sound-maker (hard to describe but ubiquitous) will find himself the locus of a geometrically expanding crowd of glommer-on-ers, which viewed from above might look like water lilies congregating in a pond. I keep this explanation to myself since by now it is clear that it is for my benefit, not hers, and in any case she does not speak so much English.

Often the street goods are sold by very young children, who, like squirrels grown fat from human largesse, display an uncanny fearlessness. Once while I am playing Connect 4 at a bar (a kind of inhibited Western nerd's wet dream: a sea of dolled-up Asian girls who have no choice but to play Connect 4 with you) a little girl selling roses comes right up and leans on my shoulder and starts playing moves. Sometimes I suggest a different move, but she impatiently drops the piece in where she wants. It turns out she is a very good Connect 4 player and I (we? she?) win in a couple more moves. Or, it occurs to me now, maybe the bar girl I am playing against tanks to help the rose girl I am playing with make a sale. In any case, I buy a rose.

Or: walking by the bar at night, a girl calls, "Hello." At first she says it seductively, talismatically - it is perhaps one of the only words in English she knows - with an evident belief in this word's magical power over me. She is a tiny thing, maybe 80 pounds, in a lingerie-ish red dress. Yet there is something about her, mostly in the eyes, hard-looking, as though she is much older than her years. When I keep walking she yells "Hello!" again and actually leaps onto my back. The way she say hello this time is familiar, but not until later do I realize that it is the exact same hello that begins the famous mantra in The Princess Bride: "Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!"

"Hello!..."

Tattoo

2009-03-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

Between me and death: two fistfuls of t-shirt and the friction between by knees and the buttocks of a 16-year-old boy. He is Ya's (Peter's wife) son from a previous marriage. He agreed to take me to get the tattoo since his friend knows a place. We are weaving in between tuk-tuks, trucks, and other scooters. The friend flies past us on the right and eases in front of a car as we accelerate to pass him back. I remember that I have noticed the boy walking with a limp, and Peter said it was related to a scooter accident he had a few months ago. I didn't think to grab a helmet before we left. We approach two cars, side-by-side, a space maybe three feet wide between them. He pauses as though to measure it. Then he goes for it.

Compared to this, I think, the tattoo should be easy.

///

I had wanted to get a tattoo for a long time, but the hard question is not whether to get one, but of what. Then I had a dream in which I told my mom my plan. "Well," she said, "are you just going to get one of a circle?" It was odd her suggesting the idea as a question like that, in the dream. I had never thought of it before, but as soon as she said it I knew that was what I would have to do. I decided it would be on my left shoulder, maybe three inches across and half a centimeter thick.

That was years ago. Time went by and I didn't get the tattoo. When I was living in Montana, working in restaurants, I couldn't justify the cost. I planned to get it for myself as a treat when I got a little money. Also, of course, I was scared.

Then I started to wonder if I had waited too long. I couldn't remember the dream as well, and I questioned what a circle would represent. At first it seemed perfect, grandly symbolic but ambiguous enough to encompass a lifetime of meanings. Any definite symbol, like a Japanese character or a line of poetry, always seemed too confining to graft forever onto one's body. But a circle - a circle could mean everything and nothing.

Then I began to fear it would represent something all too definite: one of the bad versions of myself: pretentious, empty, attention-starved. Would it be anything more than a joke? Would it make me a joke?

///

Ultimately, prosaically, it came down to peer pressure. I told Peter I was thinking about getting a tattoo while I am here. Thailand is the place to get things done - dental work, plastic surgery, wart removal. The quality is good and the prices are low. Peter told Ya and she told her son. Once that had happened it would have been very hard to get out of it.

They have a pipeline of communication that only goes one way. Peter and his wife can communicate in a Thai-English pidgin. Ya speaks to the son in Thai. The son speaks almost no English. Starting a message on this chain is like sending off a carrier pigeon. It may be some time before it arrives at the intended recipient, if it ever does, but in the meanwhile you can do nothing to stop it.

One morning, when the wife was out of town, Peter came down the stairs and asked if I was ready to get my tattoo. "Son and friend will be here in fifteen minutes. That okay?" What could I say?

Peter recommended I draw a picture of what I wanted, since of course the tattoo artist wouldn't speak English either. I realized this would be difficult. Clearly, if I was going to get the tattoo it had to be perfect, but I wasn't sure what that meant. I had a vague mental picture of what I wanted it to look like, but the picture came from a dream. I wasn't sure a tw0-dimensional drawing could be made to duplicate dream geometry. Moreover, I certainly couldn't draw a circle by hand.

At the time I was drinking tea out of a porcelain mug. It looked like the right size. I gulped the rest of the tea and wiped out the mug with a paper towel. Then I planted it upside down on my notebook and traced the outside with a pen. After removing the mug I went around the circle, filling in the line to be a little thicker. It looked about right.

///

The tattoo parlor is divided into two areas: a waiting room with a table and magazines, and a tattoo area with chairs and equipment. In between the two is a small aquarium. The magazines, shelved under the aquarium, feature pictures of designs and their implementation on flesh.

I show my traced circle to the tattoo artist. At first, he either does not understand what I want, or does not want to do it. In his book of designs he has a circle with flames shooting out of it, one with a star shooting through it, but no plain circle. I cover the star with my hand. "Just the outside," I explain. He sighs and shakes his head.

I suspect he would like to sell me a more expensive tattoo. The circle with the flames does look pretty cool. For a moment I waver, but something catches and I know I have to hold firm. After a few minutes of gestured negotiations we get Ya on the phone and she talks to him in Thai. He agrees to do the circle.

///

Every time I am about to get a shot at the doctor's office, I smile smugly, knowing this is the time I have finally overcome my fear of the needle. That's when the dizziness hits.

I can imagine being punctured with perfect equanimity, but somehow the needle itself does something to my body that my mind has no say over. But no matter how many times it happens, I never quite believe it. I always think next time it will not bother me. So I thought the tattoo would be no big deal.

///

I at least have the sense to bring my iPod with me to the chair, clutching it like my last rations. As soon as I sit down, I start to sweat. The tattoo artist's assistant turns up the air conditioning, then brings a fan to bear on me, none of which makes any difference. I use my t-shirt, which I have taken off, to mop the sweat off my face.

He is getting the needle warmed up. It makes a buzzing sound like one of those small portable fans. My body evinces a comical range of reactions, like Elmer Fudd when he is administered to by Bugs Bunny. My hands turn mottled red, then a ghastly pale. My saliva takes on a strange sour taste. Whiteness starts to creep in at the edges of my vision. From getting shots at the doctor's office, I know the thing to do is to try to breathe deeply and evenly.

He makes two orbits around my shoulder. I remember when I was little my mom writing letters on my back with soap in the bathtub, trying to guess them. The first orbit stings a little, the second aches deeply. It would be better if they were reversed, since the pain is a helpful base from which to push against my nausea.

By the end I feel much better. I am even a little bored.

///

At the house I show the tattoo to Ya and the maids. The maids all have the expression I will find everyone has when I show them. The expression says, "That's it?"

"I had it in a dream," I explain to Ya. She translates into Thai for the maids and they all nod seriously. They accept this as a good reason.

///

The tattoo artist gives me some vaseline to protect the tattoo when I get a shower. Now I am standing in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, running my finger in circles around my shoulder. One of the reasons people use, when they try to talk you out of getting a tattoo, is What will you think when you're old? I hope, if I live that long, I'll have found better things to do than worry about a mark on my body. For now, it's too soon to say.

Short Stacking

2009-03-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

Short stacking in poker refers to deliberately playing with a small amount of chips. Why would someone do this? A short stacker has some advantages over other players. Say there are three players at a table, Player A, Player B, and Player C. Player A has 10 chips, player B has 25 chips, and player C has 20 chips. Player A goes all-in for 10 chips. Player B is next to act and has to choose whether or not to play the hand. If he chooses to play, he will be risking not only the 10 chips he needs to call, but also the additional 10 chips that Player C can raise behind him. Sometimes his hand would be good enough to call if he knew that he was only risking 10 chips against Player A, but the threat of Player C going all-in for 20 chips forces him to fold. Player A can use this knowledge to be more aggressive with his all-in plays.

In general, a short stacking strategy is designed to steal the blinds (mandatory opening bets). When you go all-in, the most common result is that everyone folds and you take the blinds without ever having to show your cards. This is an excellent result. The risk is that someone calls with a better hand. When this happens you are likely to lose your whole stack. For this reason, with a large stack, you can usually only go all-in with the very best starting hands, because the risk of getting called and losing your whole stack outweighs the possible benefit of stealing the blinds. But the smaller your stack, the more hands it makes sense to go all-in with, because the value of often stealing the blinds starts to outweigh the risk of losing your whole stack.

Such a strategy will never be as effective as nuanced play by an experienced player, but if designed correctly it can yield a positive expected value. The advantage of short stacking is that all the decisions can be made quickly (either you fold or go all-in, so you never have to see a flop) and mechanically. Players who follow this strategy are sometimes called push bots, not because they are computers (that would be against the rules), but because they might as well be. The way to make money with such a strategy is to learn it well enough that you can play many tables at once. Peter has been developing a system and is up to 24 tables, making more than $100 an hour.

For the last few days I have been working on short stacking. I am up to six tables, with a spreadsheet open in case I need to check the play in a specific situation. Most of the decisions can be arrived at by logical reasoning, but not all of them. For example, when players limp (just call the blinds) in front of you, does that widen or narrow the range of hands you can go all-in with? More limpers means more money in the pot which you can steal, and they probably don't have a great hand or else they would have raised. But it also means a higher chance that you will be called. How does the situation change as the number of limpers increases? You would be hard-pressed to answer these questions, unless you had recorded thousands of hands and analyzed the results. Which Peter has.

Like any mechanical operation, short stacking quickly becomes boring. But the ability to make $100 an hour, from anywhere in the world, at any time of day, cannot be taken lightly.

The short stacker is no one's friend. Casual players like to splash around in lots of hands, and an all-in raise usually ends the action right away. If you call with a speculative hand, hoping to see a flop, the last thing you want to see is someone move all-in behind you. Meanwhile, the pros want to take advantage of the casual players, usually by outplaying them after the flop. They also don't want the hand short-circuited before the flop by an all-in raise.

It would be risky to attempt this strategy at high-stakes tables, where the players are alert and capable of adapting their strategies to exploit what you are doing. It is best confined to low stakes, where the majority of the players are novices and casual players, with only a few professionals mixed in.

To sum up: short stacking is a strategy designed to steal money from stupid people. If you pursue it, you will be reviled by just about everyone.

This definition applies just as well to poker players in general, which raises the question of whether this is an acceptable way of life at all. Playing poker for a living is not a very admirable pursuit. There's no getting around that. You don't produce anything, you don't add anything of value to the world. Some people claim that poker players earn their living as entertainers, like actors or comedians - an argument so obviously phony that it needs no refutation.

So a poker player is not exactly Mother Theresa. Still, I think the part about being widely reviled has less to do with these considerations and more to do with an image of poker players as seedy and dishonest. There are lots of things that could raise the same moral objections as poker, only worse, yet they don't.

The state lottery, for example. If we were going to be honest, we would call the Lotto the Desperation and Stupidity Tax. I saw one commercial for the state lottery in Michigan that featured the slogan, "When you play, everybody wins." The reality is the opposite. Whenever you play, you personally lose. The lottery pays back much less than the total amount paid for tickets. It would be difficult to find worse odds anywhere. Putting your money on the stock market, horses, or coin flips would all be much better ideas. Are you at least subsidizing everyone else? Maybe, although some of that money goes back into the commercials encouraging other saps to do the same. As a policy matter, a tax targeted at the stupid and desperate seems almost as cruel as throwing them to the lions. From the point of view of those who create and peddle it, it would be hard to imagine a form of gambling more insidious and despicable than the state lottery.

None of which exonerates poker players. But we're not the only ones.

Down and Out

2009-03-01T07:56:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I bought a used copy of George Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris. Sadly, one thing that is not cheap in Thailand is books in English. Goods and areas designed for locals are cheaper, of course, while those for tourists are more expensive. And I don't think many locals are interested in books in English. I paid 160 bhat, about five dollars, which would be a mediocre buy at a used bookstore in America.

But what a book! Orwell is funny, humane without preaching, and cruel at the right moments (talking about a friend with whom he travelled for a month: "He had the regular character of a tramp - abject, envious, a jackal's character. Nevertheless, he was a good fellow..."). You hear about compassion being essential to literature, but I think cruelty is just as important. It's what makes Flaubert and Flannery O'Connor great. It's why Biggie will always be infinitely better than Tupac.

Question: What book would you most like to have written?

Answer: Down and Out. I could say Lolita or Moby Dick, but what would be the point? I couldn't write those books and still be me. In fact, I can't wrap my mind around how a human can write a novel, even a bad one. They're so long, and what, you just make it all up? Next time you're reading a novel and reach the end of a page, try pausing and thinking how you would continue the story. When I do this my mind goes completely blank. I can't think of anything at all. But someone like me could, I think, write something like Down and Out. I would have to be very lucky to ever make something a third as good, but the idea of it, the approach, makes sense to me.

Tennis

2009-02-27T06:59:00.000-08:00

I walked down to the tennis courts tonight to hit against the wall. Alex has a loose plan of pitting me against Svobo, another backgammon player, who likes to play tennis and doesn't mind losing a few thousand dollars, at some time in the future. But for now it is nice just to get out of the hotel and do something that transcends language barriers.

But when I show up, a kid is getting a lesson on the court that borders the wall. He is working on his serve and is just getting to the bottom of a basket of balls. I consider asking him to move to the next court over, which is open. I could gather the balls in return for his cooperation. But there is no way I could explain such an intricate plan in Thai. What would likely happen is, he would immediately move, and wouldn't let me pick up the balls, and I would feel bad. So instead I walk around for a few minutes.

The tennis courts are in the middle of a large area devoted to sports, which includes a track and field, basketball courts, and several martial arts gyms. So far it is my favorite place in Chiang Mai. It evokes neither poverty nor tourism, a true rarity. It hums pleasantly at all hours with joggers, pickup basketball players, and street vendors.

There's even a cafe where they play checkers and Thai chess (like the European version, except the pawns all start one square forward, the bishops move differently, and the queen is much weaker). All the guys at the cafe are very keen for me to play. I sit down against an old man and lose by hopelessly misplacing my bishops - I have no intuitive sense of how to use the pieces with unfamiliar moves. Next we try a game of European chess. He moves his f-pawn too early, which would be fine in Thai chess, but here exposes him to a vicious attack from the more powerful European queen and bishop. It's clear that neither of us has a chance at the other's game.

When I get back to the tennis courts the lesson has wrapped up, but I run into another obstacle. A stray cat has curled up about five feet from the wall, right in front of the T in the middle of the drawn on net. It ignores repeated nudges from my foot and racquet. I shrug and start hitting. For the next half hour the cat doesn't budge, and miraculously I never hit it.

On the next court over two pretty good players are hitting, one a young kid. The older guy gets tired and asks if I want a turn. I happily take the chance to hit some struck balls. We hit for awhile - he is much better than me, but I try to get enough balls in to make it worth his time. After awhile his dad shows up and watches. We have a lot of exchanges like this:
-I hit the ball ten feet deep.
-The kid sportingly tries to hit it back but clips the net.
-The dad yells something in Thai and mimes a backhand.

They don't seem to do anything half-ass here. If you play tennis, you had better hit every single shot in.

Losing

2009-02-22T11:14:00.001-08:00

My first foray into online poker didn't go so well. I had $200 to work with. I lost all of it in less than an hour, four buy-ins of $50 playing heads up with $.25/$.50 blinds. It's not the losing that bothers me so much as how I played. I can point to a couple specific plays that were certainly wrong, but it's more an overall sense of unease.

Some poker player said, "The bad part about losing isn't the money, it's the embarrassment." Exactly. Everyone knows the feeling: you're right, but you can't prove it, and nobody knows but you. This happens all the time in regular life, but poker takes it to new heights. Part of my problem was that I felt my opponents were playing badly and I was frustrated that I wasn't beating them. But as soon as you start to feel frustrated, you're the one at risk of losing by making a bad decision.

There's a famous story about Nimzovich, one of the greatest chess theorists and writers, throwing the board and screaming, "How can I lose to this idiot?!" after dropping a game to an inferior player. But this kind of thing happens relatively rarely in chess. This is why, minus some sort of elaborate hustle, you will almost never make real money betting it. If you are a favorite against someone, they probably know it. And if they don't already they certainly will halfway through the first game. Playing chess against someone much better than you is a uniquely oppressive experience: you feel like there's absolutely nothing you can do. And in fact, there isn't. Your lack of understanding dooms you from the start.

Poker is just the opposite. Every play feels like it might work. No one ever thinks they're a dog. You could play someone ten heads up sessions, win seven, and he would likely want to play ten more. This is why poker is profitable. There are people out there who donate money for years and years, thinking they're favorites the whole time.

It also means that, if you play a lot of poker, you will lose to idiots pretty often. This tension exists for any professional poker player. The idea of mastering the game, taken to its logical extreme, would mean winning every time. Yet it's precisely the game's built-in refusal to let anyone reach this summit that makes it profitable.

But I haven't made it there yet. I wasn't even a favorite. They played bad, but I played worse.

The Girls in Thailand

2009-02-20T06:45:00.001-08:00

A common sight in Thailand is a white guy walking hand-in-hand with a Thai girl. At first I naively thought, how are these guys meeting Thai girls?

The girls are professionals, of course. You can tell by how they dress: tight jeans or a short skirt, fashionable top, knock-off designer bag, always a bag, for contraceptives and other necessities.

Some guys hire a girl for a month or however long they're here and she takes care of everything: food, shopping, sex. You wonder what the girl does in the moments she's alone. In a movie she would vomit, or cry in the shower, but I don't think that's what it's like for most of them. Here, sex is only sex. It doesn't represent anything special and it's a way for a lot of people to make a living.

Walking by the bars is a strange experience. They employ girls to lure in the male tourists. As you walk by they hoot at you, and if you walk close enough, even if you're careful to avoid eye contact, one may physically grab you by the arm and try to drag you in. Escaping from a 90-pound Thai girl is harder than you think. Asking politely to be let go certainly won't do the trick. I've developed a kind of swim move, writhing with the arms while driving forward with the legs, followed by a quick burst of speed to deter pursuit. That usually works.

If you read the blog, you know that I'm kind of obsessed with measuring myself by how people, especially girls, respond to me. In a way the rug has been pulled out from under me. Smart or dumb, funny or boring, good-looking or ugly, none of it matters here. You pay you get laid, you don't you don't, simple as that. There's no jealousy, at least not the same kind as in the states. If you see a guy with a hot girl, you know you could have one as hot or hotter for a fixed price. And while I am susceptible to coolness envy, I don't really have any money envy.

Maybe this is a better system than what we have in America. We worry so much about sex, about what people think of us sexually. As a country I would say we have a very unhealthy relationship with sex. In Thailand they remove a lot of the doubt and uncertainty. Every time I think it through, I come to the same conclusion: I should just get drunk and bring home a girl. But I keep chickening out.

Heads up

2009-02-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start playing heads-up (one-on-one, for the uninitiated) poker online. In preparation I've been playing against Falafel. Neither of us is very good, although he thinks he is.

He concedes that he hasn't really studied poker, doesn't play very much, but he still believes he can beat not only me, but also Alex and Peter, who are fairly accomplished poker players. The reasons for this are a bit mysterious. It seems to come down to... he is him. And how could anyone beat him? As usual, Luda put it best: "How you ain't gonna cut? Bitch I'm me..."

The best players in any game tend to have this attitude. I have some of it myself. At one point I had lost a few games in a row and wanted to keep playing. "You're a fighter, that's good. But," he said, "so am I." In backgammon, Falafel has the ability to back it up. He really is one of the very best in the world, maybe even the best. But no amount of confidence can completely overcome a skill deficit and, like I said, neither of us is much of a poker player (I hope to someday become one).

We played about 30 sets total. Going into the last session he was plus two. We were playing for "dinners", a stake which as I pointed out was like giving him three to one, the ratio of our caloric intakes, but it didn't really matter - mostly it was for pride. The whole time we played he would grumble under his breath about how bad I played, how I couldn't possibly win. But when I pressed him for what he thought his chances were, hoping to get an odds bet, he eventually came up with 6-to-5. In heads-up poker with the stack size we were playing (100 chips each, 1-2 blinds) that would indeed be a significant edge, evidence of superior playing, but I'm not sure how he came up with it.

We sat down for one last session a few hours before his flight. Alex and Sergio, a friend and professional poker player who lives in Thailand, were hanging around and watching. I hadn't felt nervous when we played before, probably because we weren't really playing for anything, but this time I had a little buzz because people were watching. As it happened I won four in a row to end up plus two overall. There's no doubt I was lucky, but something else happened as well. Falafel seemed to tighten up his already tight play with Alex and Sergio watching.

In Texas Hold'em poker, most hands miss most flops. That is, with a single opponent, their most likely hand is nothing. This doesn't come into play so much in ring games, where the only players still in the hand are those with the best cards. But in heads-up, usually they just don't have much. So if one player raises every time it's his turn, and the other player folds if he has nothing, the guy who's raising is going to come out ahead.

Falafel thought he could beat me by waiting around until he picked up a really big hand. What he didn't realize was that while he was waiting I was slowly stealing all his chips. And when he did press the action, I could easily give up the hand - unless I had something even bigger.

Props

2009-02-10T02:28:00.000-08:00

The purest form of gambling is the proposition bet. Habitual gamblers will bet on anything that comes up, with stakes hammered out on the spot.

Alex warned me ahead of time to be careful about saying anything on the trip I wasn't sure of, because someone would be quick to jump on it and propose a bet. On the last trip he made $10,000 betting on who sang some 80s tune (no one can remember the song now).

"Can't I just say, no, I don't want to bet?" I asked.

The answer is no, or not without consequences. In this world money stands for everything, but especially integrity. If you're willing to say it, the thinking goes, you should be willing to bet on it. To do otherwise is to admit you are full of shit.

Falafel thought one of the other guys, Henrik, had shorted him some money a few months ago. Henrik offered to bet $5000 that he had not. The original sum they were arguing about was less than a thousand.

Mostly the prop bets tend to be light-hearted though, even when they are for a lot of money. Falafel is currently paying Peter five dollars a day. The bet was over whether Falafel would be married by 40. If he was, Peter would owe him five dollars for the number of days before he turned 40 that Falafel got hitched. If he wasn't, he would pay Peter five every day after forty until he got married. He's a few years past 40 now, and it looks like Peter can count on getting his daily five for some time. Falafel has been pestering Koonie to set him up with an Indonesian girl - not the marrying kind.

Koonie likes to accept a prop by pointing at the person who offered it and shouting, "Down!" He just won a thousand betting on a documentary about Falafel. The film maker had Falafel pretend to read a Kafka novel because he thought a line in it resonated with his life, or something. Naturally Falafel had no interest in the book, and some of the guys were saying he was actually holding it upside-down in one scene. Koonie didn't buy it and even gave them three-to-one on it. It turned out it was right side up the whole time, although the Israeli lettering kind of looks upside-down. The weird thing was that everyone betting on the wrong side was in the movie, whereas Koonie had never even seen it.

Bali: Cast of Characters

2009-02-07T03:57:00.000-08:00

Koonie:

Most famous for losing more of other people's money than anyone else in history (not a hyberbole) in some sort of stock market debacle in England. But not a fat cat. E.M. Forster wrote, "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." I agree with that, and Koonie would be the guy who had the guts. He's the mark, but not in the sense of being dumb. Likes the idea of playing backgammon against the world's best players, understands he's a dog, but wants to play.

Alex:

My boss. Not the best backgammon player, not the best at anything really, but a deceptively shrewd gambler. He beat Koonie for $170,000 in Vegas and set up this trip. The nominal leader of the team playing backgammon against Koonie.

Falafel:

Number one-ranked backgammon player in the world, old friend of Alex. Finds it difficult to restrain himself when others are playing: he can't stand the mistakes they make.

Sander:

One of the very best backgammon players in the world, a high roller. As long as the sums are less than astronomical he doesn't care in the least. I beat him for about $2000 at chess the first night. The next morning, I don't think he even remembered.

Peter:

Along with Falafel and Sander, one of the "three wise men," the three best backgammon players, the people the pro team want sitting opposite Koonie to make maximum profit. Maybe the most naturally gifted player, he almost always plays instantly, and remembers every position from every game played in the night.

Eastgate:

Most recent World Series of Poker champion, a very nice and unassuming kid, my age. The WSOP win is his golden ticket into this world: he gets respect beyond his age and experience. Not a backgammon player, but has a piece of the action.

Humpke:

German backgammon player, a nice guy, so nice that he immediately seems out of place amongst the others and constantly in danger of being shattered.

Morty:

Very strong backgammon player, will bet on anything, anywhere, any time, especially when he's been drinking.

Something Completely Different

2009-01-28T15:41:00.000-08:00

In airport bathrooms from New York to Madrid to Nice, paper towels are out and electric is in. The JFK, in particular, has an interesting apparatus; you put your hands in, fingers down, between two blowers, and slowly draw them out. The idea, I suppose, is that the moisture is sheared off in a neat line. The results are somewhat different.

I can see the thinking behind electric dryers. Their advantages far outnumber the disadvantages, of which there is only one.

Advantages:

Hygienic
Save trees
Look cool

Disadvantages:

Don't dry your hands

There is a philosophical question to be asked here: If electric dryers don't dry your hands, which they don't, in what sense are they dryers at all? You might say they are intended to dry, but even this seems doubtful. Surely the developers tried them at least once. Or you might say, they look like dryers. But to my knowledge there is nothing that looks like an electric dryer that actually dries.

In practice the phrase "electric dryer" is akin to "pretend dryer" or "toy dryer." Airports, at least, seem to have decided that the machine's ostensible purpose is not so important compared to other considerations. It is as if restaurants started selling plastic food because it looks nice and is convenient to prepare.

If I ever own an establishment of any kind, there will be paper towels, and lots of them. Maybe we will kill trees and transmit diseases to one another, but by god our hands will be dry.

Savant

2009-01-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

He lives in a big apartment above a bar, but I don't get the feeling he drinks there very often. In the apartment there is a couch, a basketball hoop, and a refrigerator stocked with Snapples. In his room he has a bed, an office chair, and a computer with two monitors. When we come in he has four tables open, mostly waiting for opponents.

Later, Alex says he has gained 20 pounds since the last time he saw him, but he is still very skinny. He has tousled brown hair and a zit on his temple. His shoulders are acutely curved from staring into the computer screen. He shakes with a limp, clammy hand, but when he speaks it is with a surprisingly deep, confident voice.

He has an unbelievable online read. The only information available to him is his opponents' betting patterns and how long it takes them to act, but he can still call their hands dead on most of the time. His specialty is Pot-limit Omaha.

He wants to move up to the big game, PLO with $500-$1000 blinds. He has watched it a lot and says the regulars play crazy and Gus Hansen is the worst. Alex, who knows Gus and has watched the game too, says it can't possibly be real. Gus and the other regulars must have an agreement to recoup all the money that changes hands in the game.

He doesn't care. He wants to beat Gus.

While we are watching he gets into a big hand, at least $5000 in the pot. On the river he hits the king-high flush. The board hasn't paired; he can only lose to the ace-high flush and the betting sequence of the hand makes it very unlikely his opponent has it. He bets, the guy raises big, and he frowns. I would go all-in here, but then I don't know what the other guy has. He just calls, and sure enough the guy shows two clubs, including the ace.

"That was sick," he says. "That same thing happened to me yesterday."

Bon Voyage

2009-01-21T19:35:00.000-08:00

My career as gambling intern starts in earnest tomorrow. First we drive to New York, where we stay for a few days. Then we fly to Nice with a layover in Madrid. After dropping off a few things in Nice we get set up in Thailand. Not long after that it's on to Bali for a backgammon game. Fasten your seat belts.

Restroom Drama

2009-01-20T16:31:00.000-08:00

Here is the situation: there are four urinals lined up side-by-side. The one closest to the door is out of order. The one farthest from the door is a kiddie-size. Opposite the urinals are three stalls.

When I come in it's all clear, so obviously I take urinal number two, the closest functioning full-sized urinal. Then the next guy walks in. For a moment, time pauses; my stream hangs in the air, motionless. I am thinking: a real man will take urinal number three, enduring the discomfort of peeing right next to someone for the prize of a grownup-sized urinal. A homophobic pussy will take urinal number four, the kiddie urinal, agreeing to pee crouching down just to get a little more distance.

The guy doesn't miss a beat. He strides right into the first stall, pulls up the seat, and lets fly. Society says the urinal is for number one, the stall is for number two; he doesn't care. This is the kind of solution I like best: simple, radical, effective.

Respect.

Rubber Bands Are the New Toga

2009-01-16T11:33:00.001-08:00

These days I find it useful to have a rubber band on me - you know, the one that was holding a wad of cash, or an extra in case I come into a wad of cash - that sort of thing. And I've taken to wearing it on my wrist, something I haven't done in a long time.

The rubber-band-as-bracelet makes a paradoxical fashion statement. It says, "I recognize that there is something called fashion, and I choose to ignore it." By adorning your wrist at all you are making an effort you are not required to make; by choosing a rubber band you are expressing your scorn for effort of all stripes.

The rubber band straddles two opposed conceptions of cool. The first is cool as conformity. Few would avow this kind of cool, but when it comes to what looks cool, what looks right, it is largely a question of what you have seen before. You gain greater visual fluency with a style or pattern each time you see it. This is why a new haircut always looks wrong at first. From beggar to president, everyone has used a rubber band. It is ubiquitous, unassuming, and seemingly non-referential. It embodies cool as conformity.

The second kind of cool is the opposite, cool as precisely what is unusual, unexpected, threatening, and new. The rubber band itself is none of these, but when worn on the wrist it aspires to them in the manner of a found art piece. It is the placement and suggested importance, not the thing itself, that is surprising. The everyday, placed in a new setting, becomes revolutionary.

Like a sweatshirt or a white t-shirt, the rubber band can lay claim to a neutral cultural space. Nothing is cooler than nothing - you can't knock it! The rubber band represents a radical blandness. But it is impossible to say nothing with what you wear. The perceived blandness really means that whatever the rubber band says is positioned squarely within our cultural norms, a matter of time and place. Today, a white toga makes a strong statement: Toga party! In ancient Rome, nothing could be more normal.

So there is something futile and misguided about wearing a rubber band on the wrist, quixotically screaming your silence from the rooftops. But then, that is exactly my style.

Reader Letters!

2009-01-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

To celebrate the tenth follower of this blog (double figures!) I'd like to share with you a small sampling of the outpouring of the fan mail we receive every day here at jobless.

I like the blog, but why do you write about yourself so much? You know what would be really great? A blog about Martin van Buren. His life, his policies, the historical context...I love all that stuff. Only edgy, like ER, you know? And I think it would be cool if it was written entirely in Sanskrit.

-Helpful in Helsinki

Thanks for the feedback, I will think about how I can work those suggestions into the blog.

Miley Cyrus is so lame. But when are you going to write about her again?

-OMG in Omaha

Soon, my friends, soon.

After reading your thoughtful analysis, I realized you are right, Lesley had been sabotaging me for years, so I kicked her to the curb. But now I need a new best friend and I thought of you first. What do you say?

-Lonely in Los Angeles

Although your offer is very tempting, I must decline. I just don't think we have enough in common. Also, the age difference might be weird.

Your blog is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. Why has it been overlooked thus far by the Nobel Prize committee? This is bullshit!

-Confused in Connecticut

I know, right?! Seriously though, it's all politics.

Nice blog, fag.

-Heterosexual in Helena

Thank you.

Games and Fun

2008-12-30T03:45:00.000-08:00

If I let myself do anything, I play games. It's always been that way. Chess is probably my greatest love, but it wasn't the first. Before that there was checkers and Uno and the day I realized I would never, ever lose at tic-tac-toe again.

If they go center, you have to go corner. If they go corner, you have to go center.

I play all out. It doesn't matter if it's a drunken game of Bullshit with nothing on the line, I fight tooth and nail to win until the very end. This is why I value games and why I'm good at them. I can immerse myself totally in a game. The game becomes my whole world. Most people get bored or frustrated or distracted and they check out like when a movie is so silly that you fall out of it and realize you're in a theater watching a screen. That almost never happens to me with games.

So I win most of the time, but of course the joke is usually on me for being so caught up in these little struggles.

Sometimes this worries me. At the very least there's an element of cowardice in my game playing, in preferring challenges with nothing real at stake. Games don't produce anything, usually they don't matter to anyone but you. I used to worry about spending so much time on pursuits that have no value except what I give them.

This is true of games, but it is true of everything else, too. You make the value in whatever you choose to do. If you can play a game wholeheartedly maybe that is okay. I respect professional athletes, for example.

But games have a hermetic quality not common with other pursuits. Even though you are playing with someone, really you are always playing yourself. To me the social component is beside the point. I'm alone with my thoughts and strategies.

Most games, if played enough, bottom out in insipidness. I spent a lot of time in high school playing the board game Risk. There is really only one strategic principle you have to understand in Risk: never attack. If at least one player in your game does not know this, it can still be fun, but if everyone knows it the game becomes very boring.

A few games (chess is one) reveal deeper layers of nuance and subtlety the more you learn. These games are the most interesting, but also the most dangerous. I stopped playing chess competitively in high school, partly because I was sick of it, but partly because I got scared at the extent to which it had colonized my mind. When you are dreaming a game regularly maybe it is time to stop.

If I could choose to be good at something else, I would. I especially envy artists and musicians, who create something that is beautiful to others. This is why I persisted with a creative writing major when it was obvious to everyone I could not write a story.

A few weeks ago my dad and brother left the chess board out in the middle of a game, intending to resume it later. My mom thought they were done and put the board away. I had been watching the game for a minute so I had the position in my head and was able to set it back up. It struck me that I had never before been able to use a talent to help others so directly.

Chess can be beautiful, but it is a very esoteric beauty. I was playing a blitz game and I thrilled when a kibitzer said, "This game has special sauce." There was nothing really special about the game, but I liked that he thought there was.

Once in college someone organized an ultimate frisbee party around a chess theme. Everyone must have thought I was behind it somehow, but I wasn't. I would never have dared. A chess party! I feel this is a fantasy that I will get to act out only once in my life, and it is no accident that it didn't work out.

The idea was that I would play a girl from the women's ultimate team who was also a strong player (I knew her from national high school tournaments). As each person entered the party, they got a chess piece, and they were supposed to drink from their beer each time their piece was moved on the board. She played the opening inaccurately and got a passive, difficult position, whereas my game "played itself." She started to move very slowly. Attention drifted from the game. I was playing all of my moves instantly, but to no avail. I wanted to grab someone by the shoulders and say, "Look, I'm crushing her." But you can't say that, and the party was a failure.

I know better now than to try to quit playing games completely. I have been drawn to them for my whole life. (I have taken three breaks from writing this post to play online chess.) And it's not so bad. I have fun playing games. No, fun is not really the word. I am absorbed. For a few minutes or a few hours I focus totally on a problem. In a way I live in the moment, although that phrase usually means the exact opposite of what I do.

So it is fitting but scary to play games for money. As far as poker goes, I don't especially like it. It depends largely on human interaction, which doesn't appeal to me. The strategic part of the game is easy to learn and what really separates the best players cannot be taught. It is all about intimidation, posturing, and gleaning a little more information about your opponent's hand based on an intuitive "read."

It is probably good that I not like the game I play for money. That can help me establish distance and objectivity. It puts me at a lower risk for becoming addicted, playing compulsively even when there is no profit.

I hope I'm good.

Poker

2008-12-26T00:08:00.000-08:00

My stint at The Earle will end on New Year's Eve. Their business spikes around the holidays, then settles into a winter trough during which they won't need extra bodies clamoring for hours. This was my deal with them from the beginning, it isn't some weird shafting. Still, it's perversely tempting to not show up on New Year's. Basically they've paid me for a month just so I would be trained up for that one night. But I wouldn't do that.

So in less than a week I will be jobless in actuality again (not just jobless at heart). Would you believe I have something else lined up?

I have an old friend from playing chess in Michigan who makes his living as a gambler. I've signed on as his poker intern. So far that means a 10% free roll at the Detroit casino (he fronts all the money; I don't pay anything if I lose; I get 10% of my winnings). But if everything goes well I will go to Nice, France for a few months, where he plays in a fairly high stakes game.

At first I wasn't sure about this plan, but then I started thinking about things I want to do: play games, learn a language, eat good food. And I thought I would be crazy to pass up a free trip to France to play cards.

And it felt pretty good to walk into the casino with a thousand dollars in twenties in my pocket. And I swear after I won a $500 pot the 40-ish drink server started trying to take me home.

One thing is for certain: if it works out, it will make for incredible blogging.

Playoffs?!

2008-12-22T12:37:00.000-08:00

Ah, bowl season, when a sportswriter's fancy turns to bitching about the system currently in place for determining a national champion. Frustrated by the subjectivity of the current BCS system, which chooses two participants in a National Championship game based in part on computer rankings and coaches' polls, many sportswriters are championing a playoff of between four and sixteen teams to determine the champion. Even Barack Obama has thrown his weight behind this proposal.

I too am for a playoff. I think it would be fun to watch, fun to bet on, and would produce more interesting matchups than what we are getting now. I am for a playoff for just about any reason, so long as it does not include fairness. A playoff would not eliminate subjectivity from the picture, it would just rearrange it.

Obama, uncharactaristically tongue-tripped by sports-speak, is "fed up with these computer rankings, and this and that and the other. Get eight teams, the top eight teams right at the end, you got a playoff, decide on a national champion."

But how will you choose the eight teams, Mr. President? The wishy-washy "this that and the other" that afflicts the selection of two teams will apply to picking eight, only worse. If you follow college football, you probably have a good handle on the Texas-Oklahoma controversy. You know the arguments for each team and you have an opinion on who was more deserving to play in the Big 12 Championship (and likely the National Chapmionship). Texas and Oklahoma were competing for the second and third spots. Now quick, who are the eighth and ninth best teams in the country, and why is the eighth better than the ninth? How about the 25th and 26th teams? The farther down you go, the more specious the arguments for preferring one team to another.

Some might argue that getting the eighth team wrong doesn't matter, because they have little to no chance to win anyway. But if they cannot win, why are they in the playoff in the first place? Either they have a chance and choosing the right eighth team matters, or they do not and the playoff is too big.

The truth, of course, is that there is no right choice, just a cluster of similarly qualified teams. Your preference for the eighth team depends on how you value various considerations (head-to-heard record, strength of schedule, point differential, etc.), just like your preference for the best and second best team in the country. Picking the teams for a playoff will suffer from exactly the same issues as picking the teams for a championship game.

Nonetheless, probably the ninth team out will not spark the same amount of sympathy and outrage as the third team does now. Whichever team ends up ninth will have obvious blemishes on their record that inoculate the viewer against a sense of injustice. You will always be able to say about the ninth team, had they played better, won more games, they would have made it.

What really piques some people is the possibility now of an undefeated team being left out of the National Championship game. They did everything they could, the thinking goes, never faltered, and were robbed of their shot at glory by a crooked system. This line of thinking, like arguing for the playoff because it would be more fair, places an undue moral emphasis on winning.

Ignoring the ambiguities of picking eight teams is a minor conceit of the playoff system. The major conceit, which permeates nearly all of sports commentary, is that winning a given game proves which team is best.

It is hard to argue with the idea that the best team is the team that is most likely to win the most games. Once we have accepted this definition, it becomes clear that a team's past record is an imperfect measure of how good they are. As the saying goes, anyone can win on any given Saturday. There is no escaping chance.

So even if it were possible to choose the best eight teams, the playoff between those teams would not prove which team is best, it would just prove who is champion as defined by the accepted rules - the same thing the current system proves. A playoff would not be any more fair in an absolute sense.

But it would be fun.

Prop 8, Part 2

2008-12-18T09:41:00.000-08:00

(continued from Part 1 below)

At the beginning of the segment (linked again), Jon Stewart expresses his confusion at the primacy of gay marriage for the social conservative movement. This is something I've often wondered. Why not poverty? Why not violence? Why not so many things that are infinitely more threatening to our civilization?

And yes, I know there are some social conservatives out there fighting poverty. But the vast majority of the effort, money, and thought seems to go into gay marriage and abortion. After wondering about this for a long time, I think I finally get it.

Everyone agrees that murder is bad. Pretty much everyone agrees that poverty is bad. But a lot of people believe that abortion before a certain point in the pregnancy is not a crime. Many people believe that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. What seems to threaten and galvanize this movement is not sin but disagreement. Its concern is not limiting sinful behavior, but securing the right to define what is and is not considered sinful.

As to what's wrong with gay marriage, Huckabee rehearses several flimsy (but often deployed) arguments before coming to the main point.

1. "But even anatomically, the only way we can create the next generation is though a male-female relationship. For 5000 years of recorded history that's what marriage has meant."

In fact marriage has served many purposes, including a property arrangement and an expression of love, of which reproduction is only one. Today we do not have a problem making enough babies. We kind of have the opposite problem.

2. "There's a big difference between a person being black and a person practicing a [homosexual] lifestyle."

In other words, homosexuality is a choice. But on the subject of what it means to be gay, it seems to me that gay people are the experts. And the vast majority say that homosexuality is not a choice, but an essential part of who they are and who they have always been. Nonetheless, Mike Huckabee and others continue to insist that the opposite is true. It's easy to see why. When Huckabee says homosexuality is a choice, what he really means is it would be more convenient for his side if it were. If god condemns homosexuality, but he makes people the way they are and he has made some people homosexual, that leads to a sticky situation morally. Yet that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in. To continue to deny this state of affairs is disingenuous and an insult to the people living it.

This brings us to the main reason most people have for opposing gay marriage, because the Bible says so. What the Bible really says is not so clear at all, but I think it's counterproductive to argue about it. When you expend a lot of energy arguing that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality, you are also implicitly arguing that, if the Bible did condemn homosexuality, it would be justifiable to deny people rights based on it. The real problem is not that people are interpreting the Bible wrong, it is that they are using murky texts written thousands of years ago to deny rights to people living today.

I will conceed that Christians know more about the Bible than I do. If some of them want it to say that homosexuality is wrong, fine. You cannot argue with someone's faith. Once they have established the Bible as the ultimate source of truth, nothing you say can change their mind, because whatever case you make carries less authority than the Bible itself.

What we can do is fight the most damaging expressions of this faith.

Not so Fast, Mike Huckabee

2008-12-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

Mike Huckabee was on The Daily Show last Tuesday, talking about, among other things, Prop 8. If you don't live in California you might have missed that amidst the Obama fervor California passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Huckabee said, "If a person does not support the idea of changing the definition of marriage, it does not mean they're a homophobe." Throughout the interview he tried to define support of same-sex marriage as an attempt to change the rules of marriage in the eleventh hour, a "redefinition" rejected by the American people.

Jon Stewart, as always, was quick on his feet, and said most of the things I would have wanted him to say. But for some reason he never made the most obvious reply to Huckabee's case.

Who is changing the definition of marriage? Is it the gay community? Or is it the proponents of Prop 8, who created and passed a constitutional amendment literally changing the definition of marriage?

This isn't a case of mere semantics. The whole problem (for the Prop 8 supporters) was that the existing definition of marriage as written, interpreted, and practiced by religious and civil authorities, judges, and married couples did not suit them.

So again: it was Prop 8 that changed the definition of marriage, explicitly and literally.

When Mike Huckabee says that the people in favor of the non-amended definition of marriage are trying to redefine it, he is playing a rhetorical game in which he defines his views as the norm and all others as deviant. Not so fast.

(part 2 coming)