World Series

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

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

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

So, yeah.

Grindapalooza Liveblog

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

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

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.