constant crises

i was plugging away on the treadmill at work just now, watching a little wsop coverage on espn. they were showing phil hellmuth at the featured table of the first day of the main event, when i saw some young kid in seat seven squeeze four chips into the pot in the MOST familiar way. when i saw his last name pop up next to his cards i did a double-take: he's a guy that i played with in a bunch of homegames while at school. i came home and checked up his name on cardplayer.com, finding him in the player database with four recent tournament cashes... these moments always give me pause. as i spent my time at the company gym, trying to work off thanksgiving turkey, he was probably sitting behind deep stacks in a nice cash game somewhere. strange the routes that our lives take us. is he envious of me? i'm envious of him...

so just got back from booking a nice win at garden city. i arrived around 8:30pm and found a ridiculous list on every game but 6-12, so i was quickly sitting at (seriously) one of the BEST limit hold'em tables i've ever seen. anyhow, rather than regale you with silly stories of donkey players, i'll just recount one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me at a poker table (good story, even for non-poker players): about 90 minutes into the session, a young asian guy (YAG) sits down to my left. i can pretty much tell right away that he's at least a pretty good player, just by the way he handles his chips. well, no matter, because the other 7 at the table are all TERRIBLE with deep pockets and we can both pick on them. yet somehow, YAG has some bizarre alpha male syndrome, where he resents all other decent players at the table. very strange. he's constantly re-raising me and trying to bully me, which i just decide to let happen for a while. anyhow, in one key hand, he sucks out on my QdQs by hitting a pair of aces on the turn (with A5 after re-raising me preflop and calling two bets on the flop). when i re-suck out on the river by hitting a flush to win a monster pot, he starts mouthing off about how lucky i got. whatever, i'll take the pot and he can talk more. but wait, that's not the GOOD part. so if you read my post on "ship it!", you'll know how much i detest the phrase. anyhow, we get caught up in a pot. i make it three bets on the button with AhJh and he calls out of the small blind, (as do like twenty other players, many of whom run from other tables just to call me). the flop comes Kh2hTs, probably as good as a flop as i can get without hitting a pair. after it gets checked around to me and i bet, YAG's the only caller. the turn is a blank (6c), he checks, i bet, he calls. at this point i'm pretty sure he has a shit hand, but he thinks that i've been on steal the whole way and is going to call me down no matter what. the Th comes on the river which is a gin card since it makes me the nut flush and he might've even improved his shit hand. he checks, i put on the full slow pause and act like i'm thinking about bluffing one last bullet. finally i bet and he insta-calls. i flip up the nut flush and the dealer says "he's got the ace-high." at this point, YAG proceeds to proudly flip up his Ac2s (ragged pair of deuces), standing up and screaming "sorry, BUDDY (sarcastic)... ship it!" he yells it so loud that people from other tables come over to see what happened. in fact, he even starts to reach for the chips in the middle until the dealer grabs his wrist and says, "i'm sorry sir, but he has the ace-high FLUSH." at this point YAG looks at the board with pure bewilderment on his face. i look at him, smiling while some of the onlookers laugh, and mutter "nice call." hilarious. moral of the story: never use the phrase "ship it!" you might look like an ass.

of all the heinous things to say at a poker table, by FAR the most obnoxious/asshole-like is the phrase: "ship it!" for those of you that have never sat at a live poker table (and don't realize how mean-spirited this phrase is), let me explain: literally, the phrase "ship it!" is an order to an opponent and/or the dealer to 'ship' the chips in the player's direction. seems pretty harmless, right? when would you use a term like this instead of saying, "excuse me sir, would you please graciously pass me the chips that i have just won from you?" well let me tell you: THE SUCK OUT: you're sitting in a no limit hold'em game (cash game, tournament, doesn't matter), and the meathead down across the table with the cut-off t-shirt, jersey accent, and body odor is annoying everyone at the table. you finally get him to stick all his money in as a huge underdog, and he hits a suckout of epic proportions. maybe he hits a straight-flush against your boat, drawing to one card. you're slightly stunned, and then he says it: "ship it, baby!" THE FEUD: you've been verbally sparring with another player for about an hour. he's a real jerk and won't get over the argument. he also happens to have a yankees hat on his head, a duke basketball sweatshirt on his torso, bright yellow lakers sweats on his legs, and a 2cm penis above his peanut balls. you get involved in a hand against him and he comes out victorious. to needle you, he slow-rolls you while flipping over the nuts and, with a dirty smirk on his face, says the words "ship it!" while motioning with both hands towards himself. THE ASSHOLE FRIEND (less frequent): one of the above two morons (Moron) does not actually use the term "ship it!" himself. instead, one of his drunk idiot friends is standing behind him and has been bragging to the entire poker room for the past ten minutes about how he just made out with a really hot chick at the club. Moron wins a pot and drunk guy stands behind him yelling out the phrase while Moron rakes in the chips. it's pretty much guaranteed that anytime you hear the phrase "ship it!" at a poker table, the words will be uttered by someone who is a) angry at his opponent in the hand, or b) a complete asshole. so what's the best way to deal with a "ship it" guy? after all, getting pissed (because you will) really doesn't solve the problem, as you'll either a) go on tilt and dump off all your chips to the rest of the table, or b) jump across the table and try to strangle "ship it!" guy (don't laugh, i've seen at least five people get kicked out of high-class poker rooms for this exact scenario). i've developed a method for online play that is so ridiculous that it is failsafe (and yes, this did happen an hour ago, verbatim): flop comes AcJhQd, i have JsQh, my opponent (aka Moron) has Ah9d. we get all the money in the middle. final board: AcJhQd5s5d. i lose about $85. and then this occurs in the chatbox: Moron: ship it! smallchou: awesome! Moron: yeah baby smallchou: great! i'm so happy for you! Moron: ? Moron: are you talking to me? smallchou: yeah! you're awesome. i just wanted you to know that. that's why i shipped the chips to you! Moron: ok buddy, whatever [edit: for dane cook fans, you will recognize that "buddy"] smallchou: "whatever"! you're a genius! Moron: ? smallchou: i love playing poker with you! Moron: shut up smallchou: oh sorry, i thought you were really excited about sucking out on me. i just wanted to be excited with you. Other Player 1: lol Other Player 2: hilarious Moron: go fck yourself first of all, doing this usually gets me into a really good mood again, if i felt like the beat was actually going to get on my nerves. this particular Moron was of the angry variety, but sometimes you can actually get the moron to laugh and say he's sorry for the suckout. the angry ones are the funniest though, because suddenly THEY actually get on tilt. then maybe YOU will be the one with the chance to say "ship it!" back. while this option will feel remarkably satisfying, i encourage you to take the high road and just smile. don't be the "ship it!" guy...

Prohibition II: Good Grief When government restricts Americans' choices, ostensibly for their own good, someone is going to profit from the paternalism. By George F. Will Newsweek Oct. 23, 2006 issue - Perhaps Prohibition II is being launched because Prohibition I worked so well at getting rid of gin. Or maybe the point is to reassure social conservatives that Republicans remain resolved to purify Americans' behavior. Incorrigible cynics will say Prohibition II is being undertaken because someone stands to make money from interfering with other people making money. For whatever reason, last Friday the president signed into law Prohibition II. You almost have to admire the government's plucky refusal to heed history's warnings about the probable futility of this adventure. This time the government is prohibiting Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks or credit-card companies to process payments to online gambling operations on a list the government will prepare. Last year about 12 million Americans wagered $6 billion online. But after Congress, 32 minutes before adjourning, passed its ban, the stock of the largest online-gambling business, Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, which gets 85 percent of its $1 billion annual revenue from Americans, declined 58 percent in one day, wiping out about $5 billion in market value. The stock of a British company, World Gaming PLC, which gets about 95 percent of its revenue from Americans, plunged 88 percent. The industry, which has some 2,300 Web sites and did half of its business last year with Americans, has lost $8 billion in market value because of the new law. And you thought the 109th Congress did not accomplish anything. Supporters of the new law say it merely strengthens enforcement; they claim that Internet gambling is illegal under the Wire Act enacted in 1961, before Al Gore, who was then 13, had invented the Internet. But not all courts agree. Supporters of the new law say online gambling sends billions of dollars overseas. But the way to keep the money here is to decriminalize the activity. The number of online American gamblers, although just one sixth the number of Americans who visit real casinos annually, doubled in the last year. This competition alarms the nation's biggest gambling interests-state governments. It is an iron law: When government uses laws, tariffs and regulations to restrict the choices of Americans, ostensibly for their own good, someone is going to make money from the paternalism. One of the big winners from the government's action against online gambling will be the state governments that are America's most relentless promoters of gambling. Forty-eight states (all but Hawaii and Utah) have some form of legalized gambling. Forty-two states have lottery monopolies. Thirty-four states rake in part of the take from casino gambling, slot machines or video poker. The new law actually legalizes online betting on horse racing, Internet state lotteries and some fantasy sports. The horse-racing industry is a powerful interest. The solidarity of the political class prevents the federal officials from interfering with state officials' lucrative gambling. And woe unto the politicians who get between a sports fan and his fun. In the private sector, where realism prevails, casino operators are not hot for criminalizing Internet gambling. This is so for two reasons: It is not in their interest for government to wax censorious. And online gambling might whet the appetites of millions for the real casino experience. Granted, some people gamble too much. And some people eat too many cheeseburgers. But who wants to live in a society that protects the weak-willed by criminalizing cheeseburgers? Besides, the problems-frequently exaggerated-of criminal involvement in gambling, and of underage and addictive gamblers, can be best dealt with by legalization and regulation utilizing new software solutions. Furthermore, taxation of online poker and other gambling could generate billions for governments. Prohibition I was a porous wall between Americans and their martinis, giving rise to bad gin supplied by bad people. Prohibition II will provoke imaginative evasions as the market supplies what gamblers will demand-payment methods beyond the reach of Congress. But governments and sundry busybodies seem affronted by the Internet, as they are by any unregulated sphere of life. The speech police are itching to bring bloggers under campaign-finance laws that control the quantity, content and timing of political discourse. And now, by banning a particular behavior-the entertainment some people choose, using their own money-government has advanced its mother-hen agenda of putting a saddle and bridle on the Internet.

my name is jack. i have a blog that, like, ten of my friends read. i almost forgot about it anyhow, sorry for the lack of updates lately. things have been moving fast and it feels good. one of the underrated experiences in the world is being busy and booked enough to feel full. i think that's a good way to say it. for some reason i was never the type of person to feel stressed about things. it was always, "ok, let's get organized and pack my schedule in a little tighter." that always felt good and "right" to me. it sounds kind of sick, but in high school i was always invigorated by returning home late (7pm) after basketball practice and needing to finish hours and hours of homework before heading to bed. it made me feel accomplished and 'in motion'. i can only remember once when i felt truly overwhelmed, but that's when i was a freshman in college and on medication. we'll write it off to those two reasons. i'm heading to las vegas on friday, for actually only the fourth time this year. this comes after a 2005 in which i went around eight or nine times (that's a lot). interestingly enough, this'll also probably be the last large-scale vegas soiree that i try to direct. by now i generally have an idea of who actually enjoys going to vegas, who doesn't, and who doesn't but thinks he does. like chris noted the other day, "you shouldn't have to CONVINCE people to go to las vegas." he's right: vegas sucks if you don't have the right interests. there's no need to try to pull those people in. for degenerate gamblers like myself it's awesome :). seeing a lot of wsop coverage on espn the last few weeks has been jogging my memory back to july when, if you don't recall, i parked my ass at harrah's on the strip for an entire week and did nothing but play poker. i think the biggest overriding lesson (besides "Tell Better Stories", "A Healthy Disregard for Money", and "Poker is Tiring") is that i could never play poker for a living for a lifetime-significant period of time. the reason i use that wording is that i could imagine doing it for a constrained period of time (and i imagine i will at some point). but honestly? there are a lot of things to do in the world and i'd be unfulfilled playing poker every day for the rest of my life. i think that's a message that has needed a few months of reflection to properly drill into my head, but it's there now. i'm glad i know. but for now, i'll be happy to do my weekend trips 4-8 times a year and perhaps take a week off in the summer to play a bit of the wsop every year. i think that's enough for me. playing poker for a living? mm, no thanks... on that note: vegas, here i come...

so sad day for the online poker world today. apparently the us senate decided to stick a little provision into the defense bill that aims to stop online gambling. it is yet to be seen how this will actually affect online poker, but one the world's largest online poker site (party poker) has already said that they'll stop operations if/when bush signs the bill into law. full tilt published a little bit more contentious of a response today on their blog. you probably know where i stand on the question of whether poker is a game of skill or a game of chance (there's chance involved, but anyone who believes it is solely gambling wasn't sitting at the same stud eight-or-better table as me tonight). but let's not even get into that. let's get into how ridiculous it is to outlaw online gambling, when i can walk down to garden city today and chuck hundreds of dollars into live poker games or (even worse) california blackjack. i guess the only good thing is that banning online poker might drive a lot of these online players into real cardrooms on real felt. that should prove pretty lucrative for those of us who play live regularly for a while. i can't wait to see the numerous beginners' tells i'll get to see at garden city in the next few months...

chuck klosterman's team usa proposal is not only entertaining, but also (honestly) pretty damn intriguing as a real option for our national basketball team. what i see when i watch our guys out on the court (in the world championships or anywhere else) is a group of players that are playing scared to fail. if dwyane wade, lebron, and company go off and win the olympics, the collective response from americans will be, "about damn time! sheesh, when were those greedy players ever going to get off their asses to not embarrass us?" if they lose at the olympics, the collective response from americans will be, "again? when will those greedy players ever get off their asses to not embarrass us?" in case you've never played sports, this is what we call a "no-win situation" ========= main event chips fiasco: somehow, at the main event of the world series of poker this year, two million random chips were thrown into the prize pool at some point. let me repeat that: two million random chips showed up between day one and the end of the tournament. i'm glad that the writers figured out where those came from. now we just have to figure out how harrah's can stop screwing things up. of course television has been integral in the poker boom, but just as important were the rise of honest card rooms, tournaments, and internet sites that let people play the game without feeling like they might get cheated... ========= businessweek wrote an article on the best places to launch a career and i almost puked on myself (even though my new employer made the list, though since i didn't start my career there i'm completely screwed). lists like this are so absurd that i can't don't even want to start getting into the utter uselessness of them. how exactly do you judge the best places to launch a career? here are the criteria, in their words:

With this ranking, BusinessWeek has put together a guide to the employers that really shine. Unlike other such rankings, BusinessWeek's incorporates feedback from three different sources. First we surveyed directors of undergraduate career services to find out which employers were creating buzz on campus. Next we asked those finalists to complete a questionnaire about pay, benefits, retention, and training programs, which we then compared with other employers in the same industry. Finally we asked Universum Communications to supply data from its survey of more than 37,000 U.S. undergrads about the finalists at the top of their list of most desirable employers.

great. so 2/3 of your feedback is going to come from people who are students (who haven't even started a career), from people who listen to what those students tell them, and from the companies themselves. shouldn't they rename the article to "places that college students most want to work at"? i guess that wouldn't have the same ring... ========= honestly, i think we'd be better off getting life and career advice from people like gene weingarten at the washington post. i especially like number five, about how using the bathroom will eventually become more satisfying for me than using the bedroom. great. looking forward to it... ========= you're crazy if you thought i wasn't going to at least MENTION opening weekend of the nfl season. the niners looked ok which, believe me, is an enormous step up from the vomit that built up every time i thought about them last year. one of these years, i'm going to actually fulfill a life dream of finding some way to watch every single nfl game in real-time on the first day of the season. it'll be a complicated plan that will involve getting all of my friends to bring over their own tv's while i configure an intricate wiring scheme to turn the directv signal into ten separate games, all at the same time. hopefully my niners'll be winning again by then...

a few months ago, i wrote a post entitled Short stack is power? in which i discussed a theory that i had involving the power of a short stack (i.e. 40-50x the big blind) in a no limit hold'em cash game. in my experience up to that point, playing with a short stack in a no limit cash game had been profitable and i concluded that having a short stack in a no limit cash game, where blinds are non-escalating and create no additional pressure on the players, is the optimal way to play. interestingly enough, over the past few months as i've built greater discipline and self-reflection in my poker game, i've come to realize that the short stack approach is, in fact, not always optimal. like everything in poker, there are situations at the table where starting with a substantial stack is truly beneficial for cash game play. let's take a quick example hand from my week-long vegas trip in july. i was playing in a $5-$10 no limit game and was sitting with around my starting stack at the table. i had bought in for $400 and had lost a small pot to leave me with $370. certainly 37 big blinds fell well within my range of 'small stack cash game play', so i was fine. in late position, i picked up AcJs behind an extremely loose player who had raised to $30. he had me covered by a lot and i felt that i had a good read on his style of play. i called in position and the big blind called as well. the flop came down Jc-3d-4h. a great flop with me, with no flush draw and no real straight draws. after the big blind checked, the loose player put out a bet of $90. i was certain that i had the best hand given the player's style and figured that i was looking at a J with a worse kicker. the big blind looked as though he was ready to fold. in thinking over the situation, i debated between calling his bet of $90 (leaving me with $250 behind) or raising him immediately. i elected to call, wanting to make sure that i got all my money in against his probable 2- or 3-outter. this is, in fact, the small stack approach: find places to double through other players at the table. when the turn came with a blank and he stuck a bet of $150, i moved in for $100 more and he quickly called. he did, in fact, have J9 and i doubled up. hooray, right? a couple of weeks later, as i thought about the play of the hand, i started to realize where the 'small stack cash game' approach fails. in the hand described above, i had a great read on the player and the amount of money that i won was capped only by the size of my stack. if i had started the hand with $500, i probably would also have been able to double through him. in fact, even if i had started the hand with $800, i might have been able to double through him. my edge over him was substantial, but i had handcuffed myself by limiting my own value in the hand by having a small stack. at the same time, the opposite is also true. if my opponent had held a hand like QQ, leaving my stack size at $350 would have limited my loss in the hand. but when you have great positive EV in a game or against a player, why would you be interested in limiting the magnitude of your wins? as i thought back on my no limit cash game play from the week, the first things i remembered were the horrific bad beats. but as i reviewed the play further, i came to realize that the size of those bad beats were huge because i didn't always get full value out of other hands where i was certain to be a huge favorite. poker's a difficult game with lots of ambiguity. in the cases where you know and like where you stand, wouldn't it make sense to get as much of your money out there as possible? playing with a large stack takes careful understanding of the intricacies of hands. it's substantially more difficult than playing a small stack in a cash game. but if you're comfortable with your standing in the game, buying in for a substantial stack can make more sense because of the added value from your winning hands. at the end of the day, it depends. the size of your buy-in for a cash game is contingent upon not just the size of the blinds, but on your playing style, your edge in the game, and your ability to skirt past tricky hands. there are many factors to consider and i was wrong: a short stack is not always power...

it's late, er, early and i can't sleep. time to do some writing instead, since i've been neglecting all of you out in reader land: firefox 2 beta 2 - mozilla firefox 2 is finally in a decently-stable beta form and 700 tech nerds spread out all over the bay area are rejoicing. in all honesty though, there are some nice things about the beta. for one, they finally got the closing of tabs right. also, subscribing to rss feeds is now a seamless user experience (big win). oh, and it looks nice. i'm still waiting for some really new sizeable innovations, but it's a nice upgrade from firefox 1. and... now that i've written this, i'm not sure how it's actually important to your life. but hey, it's 4am so you should be happy you're getting anything legible. moving again - i'm moving. again. it seems like i've spent the last six years of my life carting things around from place to place. you would think that doing so much moving would make me pack lightly, but you would be oh so wrong. somehow, such choice items as my dead ikea wall clock and a busted electric toothbrush have continued to make the cut every move. this time i'll be taking residence in a nice 4-bedroom house in mountain view. each room has its own shade of nice new paint (i'm staring down the barrel of green, blue, or red) and there's a quiet patio out back, perfect for barbeques. anyone who enjoys lifting heavy things should contact me soon :). financial nerdiness - i think one sign that you've become a personal finance nerd is if you actually think the following sentence to yourself when reviewing your new employer's benefits: "oh sweet, we offer a roth 401(k). this is so fucking bomb." note to self: describing a roth 401(k) as 'fucking bomb' is not only strange, but also probably inaccurate. i'm not sure where that tidbit was going, but hey, it's 4:17am. poker's easy. sometimes. - i was playing in a 45-person sit-and-go to kill some time this afternoon, when i found 3d3h on the button with two limpers in front of me. i limped, the small blind called, and the big blind checked. as i looked back at the table a few seconds later, i did a double-take as i saw the flop 3c-2s-3s. yahtzee! but all four player checked to me. i tossed in a bet of about 1/4 of the pot to get the action going and had three callers. as i worried about how to get all of the money into the middle (we were pretty deep-stacked and i had all three players covered), the As rolled off on the turn, putting three spades on the board. before i even had a chance to act, the small blind pushed all-in (for about 3 times the pot), and the next two players also pushed all of their money into the pot. after i paused to make sure i wasn't seeing things, i called and saw them flip over (in succession) KsQs, 2d2c, AdAc. amazing. sometimes poker's so easy :). filed under 'cool': flickr geotagging - i know that it's officially part of the enemy, but i'm still a flickr user. and, as a flickr user, i have to admit that i think the new 'geo-tagging' functionality is, for lack of a better word, 'cool'. i just happen to hate the name (geo-tagging? can't there be a better name than that?). i'd tell you what it is, but maybe it's easier to just show you my photo map. note that not all my photos are geo-tagged yet, but i think it's pretty neat anyway. it's not going to change anybody's life, but (as you all know) i love visualizing information in clever ways. this would qualify. australia, here i come! - and i'll leave you with this sobering news article. yes, i am actually going to be in port douglas in, oh, about three weeks. really good for the worry-meter there...

one thing that i've learned in the first few days of work is that i'll be needing to make copious use of the gym facilities here. remember when you got to school freshman year and suddenly all of the food was prepaid and all-you-can-eat? and you summarily packed on 10 pounds chewing on rubbery chicken tenders and sucking down beer by the gallon? well, my new job is like that, but there are no nightly keggers and the food is really good. in other words: food budget down, new balance running shoe budget up. so i haven't discussed it on here yet, but in a few weeks i'll be trekking to australia to visit for the first time. it should be a really great experience and i'm excited about it. the itinerary for me? sydney (described by my new cubemate as a cleaner version of san francisco, fused with socal beach culture) and then cairns (only as a pitstop to the whitsunday islands and port douglas). my fourth continent and my first real travels since europe (no, walking from the venetian to paris on the strip doesn't count). time to get my camera ready... not much to report on the poker front. i've been playing low-limit omaha-8 and stud-8 online. i'll also be instituting a new evening for garden city trips (wednesdays are now shot), which should be easier now that i'm closer. this sunday i'll probably make a run to the good old gc, or maybe a jaunt up for the 6pm no limit hold'em tournament at artichoke joe's. i haven't played in that tourney in a while. in any case, time to get back at it this weekend. as with all returns to the felt, i'll be instituting my "play four orbits, take a one orbit break" rule to keep focused. eventually, i think i want to get up to that 20-40 game at gc. first stop back: the 8-16 w/ half kill... more writing to come this weekend... maybe.

the wsop main event final table is today and jamie gold, the chipleader, is apparently quite the winning personality. every time i've read a cardplayer hand history, it's been some ridiculous hand like 'jamie gold calls off a bunch of chips with 78 and flops a straight.' that's the thing about poker though: sometimes you just out-flop people... for eight days straight...

i think anyone who follows poker is probably rooting for allen cunningham. espn did a nice feature story on cunningham a few days ago, but people who follow poker already knew him to be one of the best players in the world, adept at every game and experienced in every situation. it'd also be great to see such a seemingly nice guy and quiet personality win the main event, after seeing how many asshole poker players are out there these days (check out shane schleger's post for an example). it'd be nice to see a good guy like cunningham win.

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so if you're a little confused about how i went from the statement that 'my whole trip was this amazing experience that i haven't digested yet' to 'the two lessons i learned from my trip are that poker is tiring and you need to not care about money,' then this post is for you.

between my week spent in chicago catching up with the stoopsons (stoops, will, pseudostoops, and baby stoops) and my week spent in las vegas, i had a host of small experiences that made me realize one thing: i'm way too young to be doing things that i don't want to do. i think this was really driven home when stoops told me about a man we'll call 'father of pseudostoops'. most notably i was startled to find out that, before becoming a very successful business man, 'father of pseudostoops' played several years of beach volleyball for a living. i'm not quite sure why i was so stunned by that fact, though i have a theory. somewhere in my life i became convinced that if i wanted a 'successful career,' i had better get my ass out there right out of the gate. i never really argued this fact in my head; i just took it as fact. considering that being a professional beach volleyball player is probably not 'career-advancing' for anyone besides beach volleyball players, i suddenly found myself thinking about things differently. i mean, if pseudostoops' dad could play beach volleyball for several years before launching into a wildly successful professional career, what exactly did that say about the necessity of getting on the corporate ladder as soon as possible?

what does that have to do with a week of poker? a few months ago, i had a conversation with a few friends where i noted that i hadn't done very many 'notable things' (actual words) since i left school. i felt like i could count the number of such events on one hand. as you can imagine, that was in fact the conversation that sparked my plan to live in las vegas for a week, and it worked. twenty years from now, i'll look back on the week that i spent living out of a suitcase in harrah's as a great experience. i'll fondly recount the time that i got all my chips into a huge pot as a 9:1 favorite and subsequently got crushed. well, maybe not fondly, but you know what i mean. i'm glad i spent that week because i was doing something notable (in my own mind) that i loved. sure i was in a rush to win chips, but it's more that i was in a rush to do something that i wanted to do. i'm pretty sure 'father of pseudostoops' didn't think he'd be playing beach volleyball for his whole life, but it was something he wanted to do.

now all of that is great, but what's the actual implication for me? well, i used to at least believe in the idea of a Deferred Life plan. 'save now so you can enjoy it later.' 'put in time at work now while you're young.' 'get started on your career early.' 'work here for a few years until you're ready to go to business school. THEN you can do whatever it is you want.' actually pretty much anything that starts with 'do this for a few _______ until you ______.' all of these ideas are some variant of a Deferred Life plan. and i now think they are all bullshit. working in a job that you don't like for some kind of other benefit (money, ladder-climbing, early retirement, etc.)? that's bullshit. when i'm 60 years old, i'm not really interested in sitting around sunning myself in my huge mansion, happy that i saved so much money in my 20's. i'm not into Deferred Life plans anymore. money is far less important than not wasting time. the tagline i like the most? Tell Better Stories.

so what am i planning in the next couple of months to not let that time slip away?

• taking a new job (more on that later)
  
• visiting a new continent
• playing more poker

there'll be a time in my life when i'll have to do lots of things that i don't want to do. there'll be time for compromises and sacrifices. i'm 24, that time's not now. i'm way too young to be doing things that i don't want to do.

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oh! i almost forgot about the best hand of the week last week, when my own girlfriend busted me in a big $3-$6 pot. i thought i should write about this since you would all find it so amusing.

ivy wanted to get started in poker, so she sat down in the 1 seat of a $3-$6 game and i sat in seat 2, giving her advice on hands to play. i told her i wasn't going to soft-play her in hands, since she needed to learn, so when i picked up AhQh on the button, i raised her limp. the two blinds called and she called. $24 in the pot.

the flop came 8-8-3, with one heart. everyone checked to me and i made a standard bet with position. all the players called. $36 in the pot.

the turn came with the A of spades. gin! i thought i probably had the best hand even on the flop, but i'd find out now for sure. the blinds checked and ivy checked. i, of course, bet and got one caller from the blinds and ivy sneakily flat-called me. $54 in the pot.

on the river came a 9. clearly i was going to bet here for value when it inevitably checked around to me... until ivy bet INTO me. what the hell? i looked at her trying to see if she had slowplayed an 8. i thought i told her not to play most hands with an 8 or lower in it. could she have 99 and hit a boat? maybe a worse A? she bum-rushed me into calling by laughing at me (clearly a sophisticated reverse tell) and dragged the $66 pot when she showed me the stone-cold cooler of A8.

kids these days, they learn so fast...

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phil ivey said on the circuit yesterday that, "if you're not willing to take a thousand dollars out of your wallet right now and set it on fire, then you shouldn't even consider playing poker." while this is being said by a guy that plays $4000-$8000 every day, meaning that the exact sum is probably not applicable to players at lower limits, the point is valid: you need a disregard for the amount of money you're playing for to be successful.

it's actually rather ironic when you think about it: poker players spend all day pursuing large amounts of money, it would seem that the money is important to them. in fact, at the table, the opposite is true. to play effectively and play un-scared, a poker player needs to have a disregard for the amount of money he has on the table. it's meaningful only in terms of acquiring more chips. now this is something i read about in numerous books, but i didn't really understand it until last week.

i sat down at a $5-$10 NL cash game last tuesday at the wynn, and immediately the difference from 2-5 was evident. guys were sitting at the table with mounds of chips, and 3-inch thick wads of 100's behind them. i asked one player how much he had back there, and he absentmindedly replied, "about 25." that's not 25 hundred (incidentally, i realized quickly that my 'short-stack' thoughts on cash games is slightly incorrect. i'd write on this, but you'd be bored).

in the first hand i watched, i got some insight into what ivey meant. two players raised and re-raised each other before the flop and saw an AKQ flop. the first player, clearly a high-action asian guy of about 21, pushed in for about $900 into a $600 pot and the other player (an older tight guy) called instantly. i was positive that they would be flipping over set vs. set, or at the very least AK, which is in fact what the tight player showed. i jumped out of my chair when the asian guy flipped over 9T and rivered a J. he justified the play by saying,  "i thought he had jacks or tens," while he nonchalantly stacked about $2000 in chips.

now i'm not saying that 9T guy made a good play that will be profitable in the long run. he made a play at a pot with four outs. it was reckless and he got lucky. but he made a play at a pot without fear, based purely on a (very incorrect) read. is it a much more reasonable play with a flop like 673? probably. but his disregard for $1200 of his own money was telling.

after a few hours, i was finally comfortable at the stakes. but in retrospect, comfortable isn't the right word. it's just that i had "forgotten" the stakes that were in play. i know it sounds weird, but once you've been in the game for a few hours, you no longer worry about how much you bought in for. you just play poker. i'm not sure if that's the disregard for money that phil ivey was talking about, but i think it might be.

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the first thing i learned from last week is that being a full-time poker player is tiring. really tiring. sure, it's not in a physical sense (because, after all, i sat around a table all day), but it is in a type of mental exhaustion that i've never felt before. i can remember spending hours studying for a class while in school and never feeling NEARLY as zombie-like as i felt every day last week after playing 10+ hours of poker. you can ask skratch, but when i got up from the table each night i could barely focus on talking about anything. part of that may have been the taxing emotional bad beats that i took (for personally disturbing amounts of money), but i think most of that was all of the time spent THINKING. why did he bet that much? what kind of hand would play that way? how should i play this hand? how much is in the pot? how little should i bet? who's this new guy? how does that person play? when you sit at a table for ten hours a day thinking through all of these decisions in your head non-stop, you start getting tired, even when you don't know it.

on wednesday i played at caesar's. i spent about three hours trying to set up this over-aggressive player who would overcall lots of hand. this guy was so hellbent on getting broke with one pair that i just needed to find the right spot. i eventually got a sizeable stack (about $450) into the pot very good against him and he sucked out on me HARD. so hard that even the dealer said, "wow, that's pretty rough." it's fine. it happens. but in thinking back on the day, i was sick about what happened AFTER the hand.

about twenty minutes later, with another reasonable stack, i re-raised the hyper-aggressive norwegian guy on my right (Norway, for short) to $65 with KK, after he had raised to $20 with (probably) a shit hand. i knew Norway was an idiot and was glad to play my whole stack against him when (i imagined) he would inevitably push me in for $200. but things changed when the solid player in the SB (Solid, for short) re-raised to $250 even in the easiest motion i had ever seen. as Norway decided whether or not to call with KcTc (by the way kids, KT is a crap hand), i studied Solid, trying to figure out if he was strong or just trying to re-steal (since i very well could have been stealing from the donkey). he looked very strong.

because this is a story about how being tired can affect your play, you obviously know what happened. Norway laid down his monster two-card royal flush draw and i stuck my chips in the pot senselessly as a heavy dog. if there was ever a time to lay down kings before the flop, this was it. given a fresh brain with my read on the situation, KK is a tough but sensible fold. given a tired brain twenty minutes after a sick beat, KK is unfortunately an instant call. and subsequently an instant loss. i actually knew even before my chips got into the pot: poker is tiring and i can never get kings to catch up on aces.

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one play that i've tried to introduce into my play is the idea of inducing bluffs. 'inducing a bluff' means that you find a way to encourage a player to bluff at a pot when you're fairly certain that you have the best hand. it's another way to extract value out of a hand.

layne flack (clearly a greatly superior poker player to me) wrote an interesting tip about the idea of inducing a bluff in this full tilt poker tip, but reading the article didn't necessarily help me much because what he is really talking about is inducing a bluff when you have a monster. the example he gives (flopping the K-high flush and extracting chips) is so rare that it's hard to incorporate it consistently into your game.

lately though, i've noticed online that there are many situations to induce a bluff out of a reckless opponent (of which there are certainly MANY online) when you have just a semi-strong hand. last night i observed the following hand in a $1-$2 NLH game on full tilt:

player A was a reckless maniac on the big blind. the kind of player who makes huge bets at unreasonable pots, playing hyper-aggressively. he had shown little ability to slow himself down. he had about $150 in front of him. player B seemed to me to be a solid player who was making good decisions and playing tightly. he was on the button and had about $250.

all the players folded around to player B, who raised to $6. a standard play from the button, he really could be raising with many hands. even for a player as tight as he was, i could imagine a raise with any decent ace, KQ, JT, etc. and any pair larger than 66. (it turned out that he had AcTc)

player A was the only caller. as i noted, being a maniac means that he would defend his blind with a call with really any hand. he would re-raise with most any decent pair or overcards (maybe even all-in), because (of course) he is a maniac. also, player B could be fairly certain that the maniac would throw out a huge overbet of the pot after the flop no matter what. it turned out that he had 8h5h. it's important to note right here that defending his blind with a hand like this is really not all THAT unreasonable, even against a tight player on the button. it's very likely that he has two live cards and the pot is laying him better than 2:1. what he did next, though, IS unreasonable.

the flop came AsKs2c, and player A immediately bet out $27. now leading out with a $27 bet into a $13 pot should really never happen. against hands that can't call, a $10-$13 bet would accomplish the same thing. against hands that can call or raise, you're just giving away money. it's also idiotic because the flop hit so many hands that player B could have.

now the natural reaction if i was player B, would be to raise. the only hands that i could imagine the maniac having to beat me right now are A2, 22, and K2, none of which he would bet that way. considering that information against the flush draw on board, i would be inclined to raise.

but there are a couple of factors to weigh here:

- if he has a flush draw, he's a maniac and will either call without pot odds or re-raise all-in, putting me at a tricky decision. and while the odds would probably dictate a call, who likes to gamble against a flush draw? against a maniac you can still make a lot of money (on this hand or later hands)

- there are lots of hands much worse than mine that he would fold or re-raise all-in with.

when you add all of these things up, it makes a lot of sense to just call and control the pot size. it also adds some deception to your hand. this is exactly what player B did.

on the turn, the 3h came off the deck. and player A checked. now here's where player B induced the bluff. after calling on the flop, he checks behind on the turn. a normal player would probably then put player B (as a tight player) on a weak ace hoping to check the pot down, but certainly willing to call a maniac. the maniac sees this as a chance to rip at the pot. and when the 6c falls on the river, player A puts in an overbet of $100. player B makes a relatively easy call, given the action and has successfully induced a ridiculous bluff by the maniac.

now i don't know whether this method of inducing bluffs is really the correct way to play. the majority of the time i would prefer to raise on the flop and take the pot down with a hand like AT. but it certainly turned out to be the perfect play for player B in this particular hand and it deserves some thinking over. instead of gambling with the maniac, he was able to control the size of the pot until he was fairly certain he had the best hand and induce a bluff out of the maniac player with no outs. that sounds like a pretty good way to play poker to me...

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unfortunately, another tournament, another finish short. with the proper hours to think about my effort now, i'm pretty happy with how i played, but disappointed in the finish. rough one :|. next time...

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when i was in eighth grade, i couldn't sleep. i went through a period of about six months where i (literally) could not, for the life of me, fall asleep. every night i would roll around anxiously waiting for The Anvil of Sleep to drop on my head. the wait would ultimately culminate in a bizarre panic over my insomnia, which would (of course) keep me awake.

my brother thought i was a little bit crazy. he eventually took to telling me to get the hell out of his room (where i would sit late at night complaining about my lack of sleep while he plugged away at high school homework). eventually my mom took me to the doctor, where it was determined that i needed to 'calm the hell down and get some damned sleep'. i'm paraphrasing, of course.

interestingly enough, the doctor made some assumption that i was depressed, probably due to the enormous bags under my eyes and how insanely tired i was (hey, you try not sleeping for a week). apparently, instead of jotting down "can't fall asleep," he wrote "mild depression," meaning that even today when i go to any doctor, he/she asks me if i feel depressed these days. instead of going into a long tirade like: "no, i don't feel depressed. and i never did feel depressed. i just couldn't friggin fall asleep!" which would probably make him jot 'extreme violent tendencies to accompany his depression,' i just politely say "no, i'm feeling great these days." it's much easier that way.

the funny thing was, of course, that i was the furthest thing from depressed in eighth grade. i had blossomed into a reasonably good athlete while being honestly disappointed by any score less than 100 on tests. and (strange for an eighth grade boy) i wasn't uncomfortable about my laughable ineptitude around girls. no, depressed was not the term for me, nor was it the reason for my lack of sleep. if anything, i was mentally excited. TOO excited to get to sleep, i think. eventually i got over my insomnia by 'calming the hell down', and since then i've slept like a log.

i bring this up because last night was the first time i've been completely unable to sleep because of excitement since eighth grade. maybe it's my upcoming two-week july trip to chicago and las vegas (though i'm not sure how i'll keep up my workouts while i'm there there. pseudostoops, is there a gym in your building?). or maybe it's my planned september trip to the Lost island. or maybe it's yesterday's realization that i'm 24 and can recount only five *really* notable things from the past two years since i went to europe. whatever it is, i'm feeling kind of excited. bring it.

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