The Poker Project (playing and writing about poker in the U.S.)
I've learned a bunch from the strategy/life posts on 2+2 over the years and want to involve others in my own poker-relat
Not sure who enjoys our walks more, me or our dog... although she definitely poops more on them.
GR.I.P.Max,imoG
What kind ya got GG? (pup not poop)
Many thanks for the photo! They look like wonderful border collies--and great that they had each other to romp with.
This is our Buttercup, she's a Golden Doodle that's almost 4:
GcluelesspetlifenoobG
heckuva run indeed
Buttercup, like all doodles, is foolishly cute!
Is This Really the Game You Want to Be Playing?
I just started C. Thi Nguyen's The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. I'd heard of him before by way of his previous book (Games: Agency as Art, or something like that), but this one seems really important for my purposes, as someone who's always loved games and who sometimes, as with poker, frames his life in terms of games. Here's an interview that offers a good overview of the book and to his thought.
In the book's first chapter (and at the end of his interview with Pablo), Nguyen tells the story of student who emailed him after she attended one of his lectures. His talk had pulled her out of a five-year depressive spiral.
She turned out to be a lot like me: an Asian American kid, the child of immigrants, pushed by her parents to keep a perfect 4.0 GPA and get into the most highly ranked college. She was also an athlete, a competitive golfer. And, she said, she’d been struggling with anorexia, obsessed with her BMI.
She said my talk had made her realize that she’d been trapped in all kinds of bad games. Life had given her some scoring systems and she’d just been trying to get as high a score as she could, without wondering if she should have accepted them into her heart in the first place. Thinking about these things as games, she said, had helped her get some distance from the rankings and metrics. She could step back and ask herself if she actually wanted to accept these systems, if they really mattered to her. She sent me a picture of her phone. She’d changed the default background so it gave her a message, a reminder, every time she looked at it.
Her phone says, “Is this the game you really want to be playing?”
As someone who's also been trapped inside "bad games," this feels like exactly the question to be asking these days, in our era of gamification. Always facing pressure to level up, to set goals, to "win" the argument or the day. I'm only just starting Nguyen's book, but I want to read it slowly—just as I want to read slowly in general, to avoid the pitfall of checking off books merely for the sake of another pointless list—and I'll report back in a month or two. But wanted to drop it here before I get going.
Here's another, more philosophically-inflected interview with Nguyen. Happy gaming!
Very apt description. 😀
We have to give her a haircut every couple of months. After her haircut she looks like a prim and proper lady. But I much prefer her disheveled mischievous tomboy look.
Gbothforherandme,lolG
February Recap
The goal is always the same—survive Mardi Gras. Mission accomplished!
stilts
Spoiler
rainbow cannon
Spoiler
I also participated, as usual, in my workout group's month-long running challenge (not quite at the level of the Barkley Marathon), and unfortunately came down with a minor foot injury, probably from overuse. As a result I only made it to the Pacific Ocean.
Spoiler
After reading the first 100 pages and getting derailed by something I can't recall, I finally returned to Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger, a sort of 1980s New Orleans novel with lots going on, from long digressions about theoretical physics to a government conspiracy whodunnit. At its core, though, it's about love and grief between two genius siblings. Despite lapsing into a parody of himself at times, McCarthy pulls off something special. An incredible achievement for anyone, let alone an almost-nonagarian. The second book, Stella Maris, is a slim, all-dialogue companion to The Passenger and probably doesn't stand alone. Not quite done with this one, but it's less compelling to me. Still plenty good, though.
Also read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night and Mira Jacobs's graphic memoir Good Talk. Both enjoyable, and I plan to read more Vonnegut and more graphic novels/memoirs soon.
Probably the best thing I read this month was Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, a sci-fish novel better experienced than described.
[quote=]Perhaps I have tried to create time through writing these pages. I begin, I fill them with words, I pile them up, and I still don’t exist because nobody is reading them. I am writing them for some unknown reader who will probably never come—I am not even sure that humanity has survived that mysterious event that governed my life. But if that person comes, they will read them and I will have a time in their mind. They will have my thoughts in them. The reader and I thus mingled will constitute something living, that will not be me, because I will be dead, and will not be that person as they were before reading, because my story, added to their mind, will then become part of their thinking. I will only be truly dead if nobody ever comes, if the centuries, then the millennia go by for so long that this planet, which I no longer believe is Earth, no longer exists. As long as the sheets of paper covered in my handwriting lie on this table, I can become a reality in someone’s mind. Then everything will be obliterated, the suns will burn out and I will disappear like the universe.[/quote]
Bob's Books [8/50]
A few short pieces:
Sam Kriss, Child's Play
[quote=]Roy Lee is not like other people. He belongs to a new and possibly permanent overclass. One of the pervasive new doctrines of Silicon Valley is that we’re in the early stages of a bifurcation event. Some people will do incredibly well in the new AI era. They will become rich and powerful beyond anything we can currently imagine. But other people—a lot of other people—will become useless. They will be consigned to the same miserable fate as the people currently muttering on the streets of San Francisco, cold and helpless in a world they no longer understand. The skills that could lift you out of the new permanent underclass are not the skills that mattered before. For a long time, the tech industry liked to think of itself as a meritocracy: it rewarded qualities like intelligence, competence, and expertise. But all that barely matters anymore. Even at big firms like Google, a quarter of the code is now written by AI. Individual intelligence will mean nothing once we have superhuman AI, at which point the difference between an obscenely talented giga-nerd and an ordinary six-pack-drinking bozo will be about as meaningful as the difference between any two ants. If what you do involves anything related to the human capacity for reason, reflection, insight, creativity, or thought, you will be meat for the coltan mines.[/quote]
Tyler Austin Harper's essay on the Mellon Foundation and the lolhumanities
[quote=]
The humanities are in the mess they’re in because of federal budget cuts, and because of administrators who care more about the football team than about William Faulkner, and because of the toxic pragmatism of an American culture that has a hard time valuing anything that is not immediately, aggressively useful. But the humanities are also in this mess because those of us who care about them have often preferred hunkering down in a defensive crouch, rattling our donation jars and begging for scraps, to serious soul-searching about the real purpose of American arts and letters. We have been too reluctant, or perhaps too ashamed, to consider whether we have betrayed the humanities’ very spirit in our mad, ever more futile quest to keep them financially solvent.[/quote]
Mark Brazaitis, The Dead of Dream Town
[quote=]My mother is the mayor: her intelligence, diligence, and creativity extolled, in contrast to how she was treated by her final employer in life. Depending on the night, she’ll greet me in the house—or the apartment, or the cottage—where she lives and offer me something she’s made: a slice of carrot cake, a cup of coffee, a candle. Once, she presented me with a drink composed of strawberries. “It’ll help you stop missing me,” she said. Although I love strawberries, I didn’t take even a sip, fearing that to stop missing her would be to forget her. I’d rather live with the ache of her absence.[/quote]
No hours played this month, although I did set foot in a casino and watch friends win at blackjack, so I have that going for me.
Bob's Spring Mini-Challenge
[7/150]
Dogs Rule
Spoiler
Last but not least, in homage to an artist whose sounds haven't graced this blog (as far as I can recall): I stumbled onto this long, excellent oral history of Elliot Smith and briefly fell back down the rabbit hole of his music. Smith's stuff is almost overwhelmingly poignant, to the point that I don't like to inhabit such a melancholy sensibility for too long, but every so often it's nice. Happy March, fellow degen travelers. Hope it's a good one!
Elliott Smith was definitely one of my fave artists. I would still consider his version of Big Star's "Thirteen" as one of my all-time fave songs. He was probably one of the single biggest sparks to spur me into my own DIY home recording hobby which I still do to this day. His line in "Pitseleh" of "they say that god makes problems just to see what you can stand before you do as the devil pleases" is a constant theme in a lot of the stuff I do.
I'll admit I have a somewhat tougher time listening to his stuff nowadays. Perhaps it is knowing how it all ends for him (oddly still on the books as a homicide I believe?). Although probably moreso the fact that his music occurred in another lifetime for me. I can't quite grasp how quickly time is moving when I consider all his non-posthumous albums were released over a quarter a century ago... all from a guy born in the same year as myself (yikes, imo).
GcluelessElliottSmithnoobG
My respect and love for both Elliot Smith and DFW remains as strong as ever. Haven't read the New Yorker article on IJ's 30th but read one with a similar title in The Conversation :
I don't agree with the above author's conclusion ... it's very much a hedged position. My two-cents: writing a book like IJ ain't like shelling peas. A further two-cents: telling someone they must respect and love a book or piece of music because of x,y or z is like trying to convince a whale to fold 76s preflop. The logic of your argument will be countered with a shrug, half a smile and joys of selective hearing.
The New Yorker essay is far more in tune with my thoughts than the Conversation piece. The ethic of "not bigness as brag but duration as discipline" is appropriate, along with the gesture to George Eliot.
(Not ashamed to celebrate the aesthetics of the long sentence and the melancholic mode.)
My respect and love for both Elliot Smith and DFW remains as strong as ever. Haven't read the New Yorker article on IJ's 30th but read one with a similar title in The Conversation :
I don't agree with the above author's conclusion ... it's very much aYeah I'm not a big fan of that Conversation essay. Both the estimation of the book and of Wallace's posthumous legacy seem inaccurate to me. What I like about the New Yorker piece is how it captures the ambivalence of DFW's legacy, how the mere sight of his tome out in the wild evokes admiration or dread, depending on who's looking.
I read IJ years ago, during an online community readalong called Infinite Summer.. Reading the book piecemeal with a group of likeminded DFW enthusiasts really helped, and I came away deeply appreciating parts of the book and also feeling like swaths of it were too tedious or arcane. Which is probably how a lot of big books are for a lot of people.
In recent years I've mostly stopped reading Wallace, in part because his stuff is (like Elliott Smith's) so damn sad, and also because of his problematic legacy. That said, I recently taught his cruise ship essay—paired with this "sequel" by Lauren Oyler,
—and I love returning to his nonfiction from time to time. I doubt I'll read IJ again, but never say never, I suppose.
Welcome Back
It's both comforting and depressing to return to your home cardroom and discover, after a long layoff, that absolutely nothing has changed. The same regs playing in the same games at the same tables. Same ****, different day—Friday, it turns out.
Supervisor Stephen waves me in, at the podium I hand Chip Runner Lajuana two purples instead of my usual one—reserve ammo needed—and without asking what I'd like she colors me down to reds and a bunch of greens. I'd prefer some black chips but I don't bother to ask, I just stuff a bunch of greens in my maroon hoodie’s pocket and take $500 over to Table 7, Seat 1, beside a bald black guy I’ve played with countless times, although we’ve never had a real conversation. He sort of looks like a beleaguered Floyd Mayweather. Miss Nikki limps from the cutoff, the Greek limps the button, Floyd calls from the small, I check. “It’s been too long,” I tell Nikki, and she smiles. She’s wearing a vanilla sailor cap and a frilly black suit jacket with burnt orange flowers on the sleeves.
Biloxi Jenny rolls into the 9, greets me Mo and the Greek and Nikki as she sits down. Her presence tells me that Mike G can’t be far, and I scan the room: he's at the podium in a black checked shirt, giving someone a half-hug. A few minutes later I feel his sturdy hands massaging my shoulders. “ A dollar a minute,” Mike tells me.
“I tip well,” I say.
I’m folding, trying to be social in between typing up these notes. This morning I pulled up a few GTOWizard blog articles, re-installed DriveHUD, clicked buttons on Ignition. None of it was any good. I realized a few hours later that it's unlikely I’ll have the desire, let alone the mental bandwidth, to do any meaningful studying in between playing and writing. Not that I’ll need to, to stay afloat in these LOLowsteaks games. Proably the most important stuff, far more important than knowing if Jack-Nine sooted is an open from the Lowjack, is everything outside the game: getting rest, exercising, staying alert, and—the perennial challenge—paying attention. After an orbit or so on my phone, I put it away, tell myself no phone except when I’m UTG+1 or UTG, I’ve been here before.
Waitress Chastity brings my coffee with cream. Her employee card is tucked snugly beside her left boob.
Belatedly, I start my first session on a new bankroll tracking app. A few weeks back I got a new phone and briefly tried to import my old stats, to no avail. Part of me likes starting from scratch.
Mo raises utg, gets three calls, The Ace hi flop checks thru. Jenny bombs the turn, only Mo calls. River brick, check check. Jenny shows Ace-Queen, Mo shows Ace-Ace, after the friendship checkdown they share a chuckle.
Button straddle, three limps, I bump it up with King-Queen off, only Floyd calls. He’s got a tall stack of reds, easily enough to cover me. Flop Ace-Jack-three rainbow, he checks, I bet small, he calls. Already I’m planning to triple barrel on a bunch of runouts, but the turn is the glorious Ten, and now I have to decide how much to bet to keep him around. I settle on $90 into $160, and he tanks. He seems annoyed, or fake-annoyed. He tank-jams and I snap. “Gotta gamble,” he says with a shrug. The river’s a board-pairing Ace, probably the worst card in the deck, but this guy could have anything, and he does: pocket Tens, for a boat. I thank the poker gods for the nice welcome back.
I take out one of my reserve purples and hand it to Floyd, who pays me back with my old chips. A few minutes later, he’s gone, and Jenny moves to my right.
I lock eyes with the Owl a few tables away—white hair, hooked nose, bronze bowler hat. We both smile and nod knowingly. A few minutes later, Mike table changes next to the Owl. They’re chatting, leaning in beside each other, smiling, pleasantly frittering away the afternoon until dinner time. This, I think, more than winning or losing, is the essence of cardroom life.
One of the OG railbirds is here. East Asian, slick black hair, backpack, gold chain falling across a t-shirt with a topless model in white panties, with the t-shirt's caption blocking her nipples. From my seat, I can't make out what the caption says, but the t-shirts of naked women is what he's known for—that, and hanging on the fringes of the room, always waiting for something. Always by himself. Rarely plays, although a few minutes after I note his presence he'll sit down in a fresh $1/$3. For now he's glancing casually around the room, hand in the pockets of his whitewashed jeans, an perfect picture of masculine nonchalance.
I play until a little before ten—ten minutes longer than my goal of four hours. After getting stuck a quick nickel, the rest of the session has been a slow and steady regrind. Three hands before I rack up, I win a small pot that puts me twenty-six bucks into the green. Ship it.
Bob's Spring Mini-Challenge
[11/150]
I've had one poker tracking app but then couldn't use it after I updated my iPhone... to my current iPhone 5s (lol @ me, ldo). Thankfully even when using the app I still tracked all my results in my original Excel spreadsheet, and so that's what I'm just going to continue to do.
My spreadsheet tells me I played my 1000th session of 1/3 NL last time out. Started off that session getting stacked with AA by KK, lol, is that a good sign? But then continued 2026's sunrun by somehow bouncing back and booking my second biggest win of the year to date (not quite 3 of my shortstack BIs, again, lol @ me, ldo).
Had a reg return to the fold after self-banning herself from the casino for 6 months. Can you self-ban down there? It's an option up here that some take advantage of from time to time. But there she was, back at the table after 6 months, with the exact same people and table chatter as there had always been, as if she hadn't missed a single day.
GcluelessLLSNLnoobG
I've had one poker tracking app but then couldn't use it after I updated my iPhone... to my current iPhone 5s (lol @ me, ldo). Thankfully even when using the app I still tracked all my results in my original Excel spreadsheet, and so that's what I'm just going to continue to do.My spreadsheet tells me I played my 1000th session of 1/3 NL last time out. Started off that sessio
congrats on number 1000 and the sunrun! Now you've got me wondering how many sessions I logged.
Just looked it up: 1111 total sessions, give or take. I lost a few months of data at one point. I'd guess 2/3 of my volume has been at $1/$3, so still behind you on that count.
Among the OGs
“No tournament today? The water’s fine.” Bread Truck 2.0 Junior says with a sly grin.
“I’ll let you do your thing,” I tell him from my $1/$3 seat.
It’s the first break of the $500 Gladiator, Harrahdise’s “big” monthly donkament, and most of the fifty runners are out of their seats, heading to the bathroom or to scarf a snack. But not everyone. Mikhail, the King of the Rebuyers, takes the open seat on my left and speedily buys in for eight bills. “I’m here for ten minutes. Time to win a buy-in." His eyes are gleaming behind his glasses, he’s burly with a bushy gray beard. “It’s either here or the pits. A better return here.”
Tai, an OG PLO reg, does a double take when he gets back to his seat on my direct right. “Shee-it, we gotta donkey on the table now. Let’s make some money, baby.”
“Wassup, buddy? You got eight minutes left.”
“Eight minutes is all I need!”
Tai straddles back into the action, I put out the blind $12, Mikhail puts out the blind $18, and for eight glorious minutes we’re off to the races. Then Mikhail's gone, Tiny takes his place, and we’re back to reg-drenched afternoon snoozefest.
Server Terry swoops in, I flag him down. Less than two minutes later I feel a light tap on my left shoulder. “That has to be some kind of record,” I tell him, handing him a dollar bill.
“I wanted to get you before I get tied up back there." Terry nods at the Gladiator crowd. “They’re back from break.”
Tai’s dressed in black athleisure, fiftyish and east-Asian. His black manbag’s slung snugly behind his seat, the most distinctive thing about him are his snazzy silver-rimmed glasses. He appraises the room, looking from table to table—for his PLO pals, probably—and calls out to a white guy in his seventies with wispy white hair. “Why you here so early, Willy Mac?”
As usual Willy’s dressed like he’s going to a Jimmy Buffet concert, teal beach shirt with orange starfish and blue sea turtles. “I needed to get some ink for my printer.”
“And what, you got lost?” Willy shrugs and stands a few feet behind us, asks if Tai’s winning all the money. Tai's sitting on seven or eight stacks of red, two stacks of green, a few blacks crowning the tops. “I learned from you, Willy Mac." Then Tai says, to the table, “He’s a legend. That’s a legend, right there!”
“Old and senile,” Willy says, with a glimmer in his eye.
“Back in the nineties he wiped every player out. Every player here.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“So now it’s the other way around. We get to wipe his ass out now.”
“Every night I cry myself to sleep."
For a while they gossip about last night’s PLO game, mentioning names I’ve vaguely heard before—who was stuck, who managed to get unstuck. “It was a good game,” Tai says. “Especially at the end of the night, when the money started piling up.”
“Did Rich make it out of the trap?”
“He did, believe it or not.”
“He must have a lot of money.”
“He hit the Powerball.”
Willy’s eyes are wide. “He hit the Powerball? You’re kidding.”
“You didn’t know about that?”
Willy shakes his head. “I figured it's gotta be something like that. He plays in some big games. He plays with Cough and Helper. You ever play with those guys? Out at the Crab Shack?”
“No. I know you can easily lose ten, twenty thousand in that game. Easy.”
“So he must have hit the Powerball.”
"Somebody told me he hit the Powerball, so he gets a check every month. That’s what I heard.”
Today, Tai says, Rich is taking a break. “I know he isn't feeling good about that. You don’t play poker for a day, you don’t feel good either, right, Willy Mac?”
Willy shakes his head. “If I don’t play poker for three or four days, I feel much better.” He leans in, scans Tai’s stack. “Looks like you play all the games.”
“I play everything now. I have no choice. I’m jobless right now.”
“You don’t have a wife or anything?”
“I got a wife. I don’t know how long she gonna be my wife if I don’t go back to work.”
“You make any more money, you can get a younger version.”
“No, I don’t need no younger version. I can’t handle no younger version. You can handle a younger version, Willy Mac?” Willy shakes his head, and Tai nods appreciatively. “That’s what I’m saying! You gotta be honest with yourself, man!”
“That’s right,” Tiny says. He’s a huge black guy dressed in a nice black shirt and slacks. “And you know what else? You don’t want to handle it either. You don’t even wanna try. You know what that comes with.”
“Tiny been around! He knows!” Tai says.
Willy asks Tai if he's from New Orleans.
“I’m from where Jake and MJ are, down the bayou.”
“Houma.”
“Yeah. We used to go out in the shrimp boat, catch the shrimp and play poker. That’s how we learned to play.”
“The cards must have gotten all slimy.”
“They did get slimy, but we still had to do something fun out there.”
“It might be fun if you played a hand.”
“I don’t play a hand,” Tai says, with more tired sarcasm. “I play one or two hands an hour.”
“Only when he’s forced to,” I say, “and then he flops a full house." I recount the hand that went down a few minutes earlier, the first one that Mikhail played: Straddle, blind raise, blind raise, flop Four-Three-Three, river Four. “And this guy has Four-Three. That’s how he wins the money. That’s a true story.”
“That is a true story,” Tai admits.
“We got witnesses,” I say.
“I was there,” the guy on Tai’s right says with a grin.
Bob's Spring Mini-Challenge
[15/150]
congrats on number 1000 and the sunrun! Now you've got me wondering how many sessions I logged.
Just looked it up: 1111 total sessions, give or take. I lost a few months of data at one point. I'd guess 2/3 of my volume has been at $1/$3, so still behind you on that count.
Congrats/condolences on 1111 fellow lolliverecpokrplayer!
My Excel sheet has all my stats going back to 2006 when I first got into live Texas Hold'em and wanting to keep track of how much I lost. A quick glance has my totals as 491 Limit sessions + 1050 NL sessions = 1541, although about ~100 of those Limit sessions were less than one hour while waiting for a NL seat.
GcluelessstattrackingnoobG
Congrats/condolences on 1111 fellow lolliverecpokrplayer!My Excel sheet has all my stats going back to 2006 when I first got into live Texas Hold'em and wanting to keep track of how much I lost. A quick glance has my totals as 491 Limit sessions + 1050 NL sessions = 1541, although about ~100 of those Limit sessions were less than one hour while waiting for a NL seat.Gcluelesss
Please continue doing the Lord's work. 2K sessions will be here before you know it.
2006-2014 was a black hole for my lolive stats. I played consistently and intermittently for years. Never tracked, I don't think, maybe because my focus was online. I'd guess I played less than 100 sessions total and was slightly profitable, but I'll never know.
Take the Long View
The line for the Beau Rivage’s buffet is 100 deep. I get carded for the first time in ages, security asks me if someone checked my bag, I tell him I only have a water bottle, he waves me through.
I’m learning something new every day: the Buffalo Zone isn’t the slots area beside the buffet, but actually the smaller raised slots area directly beside the cardroom. I know this because there’s a huge sign that says BUFFALO ZONE as you walk up the steps. I’ve probably seen the sign a hundred times, but it never registered until now.
Floorman Kyle greets me enthusiastically, sends me to an open $1/$3 seat. Eight games are going, filled mostly with cardplayers I don't know. I lock eyes with Gump, a Nola superreg who plays big hold ‘em here on the weekends, he’s a tatted-up younghead who can be cringily social sometimes, acting like he cares about you when what he really cares about is your money, although that might be a cynical bad read on my part. He makes it a point to walk around two cardtables to grinningly shake my hand.
My table’s a male mashup of hoodies, ball caps, and golf polos. An hour passes, mostly folding, I can feel my attention slipping, boredom creeping in. I pull up an old Reddit thread about at-the-table meditation. The most important thing that I do to keep my sanity at the tables, the top comment reads, is every time I absorb a bad beat, I mercilessly berate the fish. This way I can preserve my fragile ego. It has worked wonders for me.
I skim a few of the other troll poasts. Smoke a joint beforehand. Chug spiked beer. Moon your tablemates and chuck your shoes at the dealer. Adderall. A few lines of coke in the wash room, then some mother****ing sushi for sustenance.
Eight-Deuce: fold. Ten-Six: fold. King-Four: fold. The best thing to do, a serious poaster writes, is focus on your breathing while the dealer is shuffling cards and dealing them. You’re doing a mini meditation session between every hand. When you focus on your breathing, you aren’t focusing on the bad beat or the person you want to get back or whatever else might tilt you. The goal is you completely reset yourself before every hand starts. Every hand is new and the past is behind you.
King-Deuce off: fold. I get in four deep breaths as our dealer, a friendly southerner whose long auburn hair blocks her name tag, pitches us cards. Ace-Two of clubs, I limp along and flop nothing.
Queen-Six off: another fold, but also a win: my coffee with cream has arrived.
Out of curiosity and boredom, I pull up my digital well-being app to see today’s number of phone unlocks (46) and catch myself checking my fantasy beeball score (I’m losing). I give myself a one-orbit phone penalty.
During the next two orbits I play one significant hand, squeezing with King-Queen against an early position opener and some callers. Only the original raiser calls, and I win the hand. I’m a winner.
I play a few more small ones. My coffee is, somewhat surprisingly, excellent. I’m feeling better. Up a bit. Almost ready to take a break. Spurs-Rockets game incoming. When I’m back in my Phone Zone, I pull up another Reddit meditation-themed thread featuring a chapter from Zen and the Art of Poker called “Take the Long View.” The OP uploaded two pages from the chapter, with a few sentences highlighted in orange: Because poker isn't about one hand or one session but one continuous game, the author writes, "you don't defeat others in poker one-on-one 'heads-up' in a hand (this is the way it may seem to a casual onlooker). Rather, you defeat them on one hundred different occassions." WOW!, the OP writes in the margin.
Spoiler
I suffer two bad beats: our table’s shorthanded around seven, so I can’t time my break with the sunset; and the Spurs-Rockets game is on Peacock, which the Beau, or at least the Beau’s cardroom, doesn’t have. Six-handed action is nice, though. Selfishly, if I could wave a magic wand and make one change to cardroom culture, tables would have a maximum of six seats and everyone, even GG’s nitty uncle, would enthusiastically embrace short-handed play.
World peace would also be nice.
We stay short-handed, but the game gets terrible. Everyone appears to be folding in order to hang around for the game to fill back up. Then we’re five-handed and four-handed and the game breaks, I’m sent to another $1/$3 right behind me, which I mistakenly thought was a $2/$5 because of the deep stacks (and in fact, it might have been a $2/$5 downgraded to a $1/$3). The action is grim. Geezers with mountains of greens and blacks limping in for three bucks and minbetting flops. I table change to another $1/$3 beside a friendly sports bettor I’ve played with once before, ask what bets he’s got going. “Ima show you,” he says, taking out his wallet and sifting through a bunch of betting slips. He proudly hands me his crown jewel: fifty bucks on the Lakers to ship the chip. “Fifty to win 5K,” I say approvingly. “You’re a dreamer!”
At 8:30, I head outside to the outdoor balcony. It's quiet and calm, the red lights of invisible ships blinking in the blackness. I think about Walter Anderson, the nature-loving artist who liked to paddle his skiff out to Horn Island and sleep beside the birds and the beasts, what he would think now of what we've done to the coast. Probably better that he's gone.
More run good: it turns out the Beau does have Peacock, and the second half of the Spurs-Rockets is on one of the flat screens, which I can watch while half-turned in my seat. The chipper sports-bettor leaves, I bump it up with King-Queen over a straddle and some limps, suddenly there's over a hundred in there, flop Queen-Jack-Nine, one of the limpers fires $90 and another limper's all-in for two-fiddy.
"My bad," a new player says as he accidentally bumps me as he's settling into the seat on my right. He looks like the platonic ideal of the southern bro: mid-forties, bushy beard, trucker cap, beer in hand. I tell him no worries and playfully ask if he'll give me some advice, flashing him my top pear before tossing it away. His eyes widen in disbelief. "You folded that? Damn! I could never lay that down!" He eyes me slyly. "I'm glad I have position on you. I was gonna take the seat on your left, but it's good I didn't."
It'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Bob's Spring Minichallenge
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Been playing the Big Adventures tournament on and off and it’s been a pretty cool event overall. Recently saw that the grand prize draw for the Maldives trip will happen live.
Apparently one of the Top 100 players will be chosen randomly.
I didn’t grind enough to make the list but I’m still interested to see who ends up winning. Anyone here in the Top 100?
I feel I have been somewhat subjected to that introspection in regards to poker recently as I feel I am nearing the end line of my professional poker career... You see, back almost a decade ago when I started moving up to mid-highstakes, I made a conscious decision at the time to not aim any higher, but prioritize balance in my life instead, as I had already attained a better than anticipated hourly. I have accumulated a decent amount of monies, but still nothing compared to a couple of friends of mine from Montreal who through life balance out the window in favour of populating their Hendon Mob's with multiple low and middling 6 digit scores!!! I guess we did not answer the same the question "Is this really the game you want to be playing" and now is not a time to regret my decision neither, however introspective I might feel 😉
Sorry for your loss Ben and am loving as always your blog, journey and dog pics, of course (I will also be getting a dog this year with my gf ♥).
I get carded for the first time in ages, security asks me if someone checked my bag, I tell him I only have a water bottle, he waves me through.
I'm assuming he only waved you thru after you clearly explained how you fill said water bottle?
Six-handed action is nice, though. Selfishly, if I could wave a magic wand and make one change to cardroom culture, tables would have a maximum of six seats and everyone, even GG’s nitty uncle, would enthusiastically embrace short-handed play.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. If tables could be enlarged for all to sit comfortably enough, I'm pretty sure I would prefer 12 handed, for realz. Our tables were 10 handed until I believe some time in 2024 IIRC, when they finally dropped to 9 handed. Had a slightly above average 2024, a slightly below average 2025, and currently sun running ~2x average in 2026, so I guess jury is still out on long term affect, but overall I'm convinced it is bad for my style.
Typical casino long-term losing player walks by the table, only-a-matter-of-time-before-they're-all-gone rack of chips in hand, and enthusiastically asks "hey, can I sit down and play poker with you guys?"
Everyone else at the table: "Sorry bud, we've already got 6 players."
Me: *sad face*
He eyes me slyly. "I'm glad I have position on you. I was gonna take the seat on your left, but it's good I didn't."
Lol'ed. 😀
GactuallysoundslikesomethingIwouldsayG
I feel I have been somewhat subjected to that introspection in regards to poker recently as I feel I am nearing the end line of my professional poker career... You see, back almost a decade ago when I started moving up to mid-highstakes, I made a conscious decision at the time to not aim any higher, but prioritize balance in my life instead, as I had already attained a better
I can certainly relate to the balace-vs-excellence dilemma, Dubn. When I was in grad school, bowled over by just how specialized you needed to be to do research and get a job, it occurred to me at some point that I'm by nature a generalist: I like knowing a little about a lot, rather than a lot about a little. That put me in somewhat of a pickle, professionally speaking, but I don't regret embracing hyperspecialization for the sake of chiseling out a "good" career.
I've been the same way with poker, I think, preferring to dabble in lots of different games rather than just one (albeit almost exclusively in NLHE). As you know from this thread, I've never considered playing professionally, but anyone who plays a lot still needs to game select, and a core question involves how and where you'll spend time in the room, which is something I still struggle with at times. I can imagine it's easy have FOMO about "failing" to advance up poker's ladder, but it seems unbelievably hard to (a) actually rise up the ranks and (b) feel fulfilled/happy while doing so. Seems like you've carved out a nice little space for yourself in this world 😀
I'm assuming he only waved you thru after you clearly explained how you fill said water bottle?
no. it's our secret in here.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. If tables could be enlarged for all to sit comfortably enough, I'm pretty sure I would prefer 12 handed, for realz. Our tables were 10 handed until I believe some time in 2024 IIRC, when they finally dropped to 9 handed. Had a slightly above average 2024, a slightly below average 2025, and currently sun running ~2x average in 2026, so I guess
Part of my magic-wand-waving-ability would be not just to limit tables to six max, but also to transform the player pool into people who actually *want* to play short-handed. Pure fancy, I know.
Typical casino long-term losing player walks by the table, only-a-matter-of-time-before-they're-all-gone rack of chips in hand, and enthusiastically asks "hey, can I sit down and play poker with you guys?"
Everyone else at the table: "Sorry bud, we've already got 6 players."
a local endboss I know told me about a simple, effective solution whenever this situation comes up (or when a known whale is next on the waitlist): everyone at the table draws a card. Low card racks up, allowing the whale to join. (admittedly this requires both self-awareness and cooperation, which is something you see more of in small, higher-steaks pools)
Fragments of a Meandering Month
At the end of the night, I slide my rack of chips to the Beau Rivage’s cashier. “That was quick,” she tells me, looking approvingly at all the reds, greens, and a few blacks. “Enough to make some money.”
“I wish that was true,” I tell her, and she chuckles, wise enough not to say more.
Poker, like any sort of social activity, is always about role-playing. Tonight, gifted the god seat beside a whale who was quite possibly the best loser I've ever met, I was cast as a prospective punt-catcher. If things go badly, the important thing is to ask yourself if you're comfortable in the role you're playing. So after he stacked me and I reloaded with the crumbs in my wallet and lost some more, I had to decide if I wanted this little song and dance to continue.
I did. It felt like a major mistake to stop playing. On top of that, I didn't feel like I had to play; I wanted to play. So I did something I hadn't done in God knows how long, I took the walk of shame to an ATM. The most painful part of the night, probably, wasn’t the gee that I incinerated at the tables; it was the $7.50 ATM maintenance fee.
As I'm walking to my car, I think about how I insisted on setting the record straight, telling the cashier that I didn't win money, I lost money. Why? From another perspective, her comment was an invitation to mythologize, to forget (apart from a few strangers, who would remember the hand for more than a few minutes?), to transform a loss into a win, a quick hit-and-run.
***
Reading Alex Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. People asking him, as they sometimes ask me, about the difference between fiction and nonfiction, all the concerned posturing and theorizing. "But I know what people want to know," Chee writes. "Is this true. Did the thing really happen, is what they want to know. And the answer is yes."
***
A few days later, I scoop up my friend and his younger brother and we drive to the Westbank for pickup beeball. Last I heard their dad’s in hospice, liable to die at any moment, but I don’t ask them about him, at least not at first. “Man, poker desensitizes you to emotion,” my friend says, before I’ve driven a block. He goes on to talk about how the game deadens you to the swings, how it makes it hard for you to feel anything.
“You mean in poker, or in life?” I ask.
“Everything. When my dad died, I didn't cry. I didn’t feel anything.”
“Me neither,” my friend’s brother says from the back seat. “And I don’t even play poker.”
***
Not much volume this month. Popping back into the room a few times during March Madness, five or six short sessions at Harrahdise. One encounter sticks out from a week or two ago, on a Friday or a Saturday night, I was just coming in when I saw someone waving to me from a $1/$3 table—an old white southerner with a scraggly gray beard and a faded black ballcap with a small American flag cross pinned to the brim, in between yellow lettering that read VIETNAM VETERAN and AIR FORCE. I went over to John F. and gave his arm a squeeze, asked how he’s doing. Terrible, he told me with a glimmer in his eyes. I’m not well!
Years earlier, almost a decade by now, the two of us were waiting for hold ‘em seats, scanning all the familiar faces as John told me about Nam. He didn’t like to wear his hat because of all the Asians in the room. I said something to the effect of: you should wear the hat, if you want to. You earned the right to.
A few days later, John was wearing his Vietnam hat.
Over the years we had a dozen or so pleasant superficial conversations that skimmed over the surface of our lives. John was an elevator repairman. He had kids. He mostly stuck to the red chip games, but for a while he sat with the Big Boys. You could tell that the jump in stakes mattered to him, there was a certain gravity in the way that he racked up from $1/$3 and marched over to the $2/$5, sitting for hours without so much as a smile or a word. He was, it seemed to me, a bad nit: folding for hours and then raising huge with pocket Jacks and monkey-betting into four players on an Ace-high flop because that’s what you do after raising pre—you c-bet. He didn't last long in the Big Boys Game.
More time passed. John and I and hundreds of others showed up some days and not others, our seasons lightly stamped by the poker calender, a weird community growing older together—graying hair, saggy biceps, canes—until one day, on the other side of the pandemic, John was desperately waving to me from the podium. He looked skeletal. Our interaction was so jarring that, afterward, I jotted down some fragments in my Spring 2024 Journal.
[quote=]Saw John F, he looks terrible, sunken cheeks, dark-ringed eyes, reddish scar poking out of his green button down.
“You know I had a heart attack, right?” I didn’t know.
“Was a year ago. Went through four surgeries.” The doctor told him they had his heart out on the table. Most people get a pig's valve. They gave him a cow's valve.
He unbuttoned his shirt and traced the scar down his chest with two bony fingers. "I'm skinnier now. My clothes don't fit. My belt doesn't work.”
“I'm alone most of the time. I go days without seeing anyone. My daughter took my guns away.”
"Today I told myself, You're going to the cardroom." He was crying now. I put my hand on John's back and told him that we were happy he was here. "I know it," he said.
I told John that I had been thinking about him. And it was true. I hadn't seen him around, just as I hadn't seen Amir, or Wayne, or some of the others, and I found myself wondering what those people were up to. If they were alive.
For a few minutes John told me about the old days at The Grand. Treva had the best legs in the poker room. He would show up and she'd ask him if he was hungry. He would take a break and watch the big pot limit games. "Have you ever seen what a brick of cash looks like? Guys would wrap their bricks around their stacks. Playing for forty or fifty grand, easy."
Miss Nikki walked by, we waved to her and she waved back. A few weeks ago, she was mugged in the garage on her way home.
John told me about Milton, a big country boy who looked like the jolly green giant. "I'm not racist, but it was a black guy who followed Milton back to his hotel room. Milton wouldn't let him inside, because his grandson was sleeping in the bed. They fought in the hallway. Milton had a gun."
Gets ready to show me a picture from his phone, from the war, but then an announcement that a new game is starting. Table 2.
John's shirtsleeves were too big, they drooped over his wrists. But he shuffled chips well in his right hand while his left hand rested palm down on the table.
How you doing, John. Not so good, Darlene.
He limped A4o in early position and made a full house. Just like the old days, he said as he dragged the pot.[/quote]
These are the sort of images that I can't unsee, that I don't know what to do with. Mapping decline over a decade. Part of me was sure that John was gone, so it's a delight to see the glimmer in his eyes as he tells me that he's doing terrible. Nowadays, these chance encounters are the main reason I go to the cardroom.
***
Yesterday I saw that I had 34,377 unread emails. For a long time the number was at 34,380, but I accidentally went into a sub-folder and clicked on a few bolded subject lines, changing the emails from "unread" to "read." Trying to winnow the number down to a rounder and more visually appealing 34,370, I clicked the “oldest” tab and was transported back to 2007, when I was a grad student living in Houston. Many of these ancient emails are “unread,” for some reason, so I clicked on a few, noting wistfully the dear friends from whom I’ve been separated by time and circumstance. The title of one bolded email looked intriguing—A Good Quote—so I clicked on it and read the message from an old roommate. "In light of some of our conversations," he wrote, "I thought you might like this quote. It has been really meaningful to me."
[quote=]One ought to move freely into risks and crisis because he knows that in—and perhaps only in—crisis and disaster is there prospect of new revelation and new creation and new relation…Even when the risk turns out badly, as apparently it often does, there is still more real selfhood—which is itself a kind of faithfulness to the Creative God—than without the risk” (p. 100) —James Dittes, Minister on the Spot[/quote]
Immediately I wondered if I had read the quote before, or if this was an email that really was “unread." And then I wondered if there was some reason, beyond pure chance, that I was reading it now.
Bob's Spring Minichallenge
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34k unread. No ****ing way for me. I'd really prefer to have a zero inbox, but I'll settle for zero unread, lol. I do keep a zero inbox in my business email, can't seem to get there on the personal.
