The Poker Project (playing and writing about poker in the U.S.)

"[ ...] a weird community growing old together --- [ ...] sagging biceps". Wondering whether the "sagging bicep" is a poker specific malady. I mean, undoubtedly not (as with being desensitised to major life events) --- just want it to be, that's all. Maybe poker merely brings such things into relief a little more than other pastimes do. I saw an older type in a cap yesterday that had "Vietnam Vet" on it. He was in the poker room, of course, waiting for an open seat.

Got me to thinking of all the old timers who have passed away recently in our room. And those I haven't seen in a while and wondering what their fate has been; just moved on... or "moved on"? And thinking of how I'll be remembered (if at all) in our room when I eventually do the same.

GifearthefootprintileavebehindmaybeanextremelyfaintonewhichwillveryquicklyerodeawayG

I somehow missed this on my last readthru. Congrats! Any idea what kind?

I hear you. I think most of my emails are, for reasons of formatting/importing from other addresses/who knows what else, "unread" rather than unread. I guess my email management is purely aesthetic--having a nice round number to look at when I open gmail. That said, you might have inspired me to winnow the number down to an even 34K, or maybe even 30K 😀

there's lots of talk these days about the manosphere, alpha maleness, "toxic" masculinity, etc.

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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/06/the-camps-promising-to-turn-you-or-your-son-into-an-alpha-male

The New Yorker

The Camps Promising to Turn You—or Your Son—Into an Alpha Male

I agree with you that the "sagging bicep" isn't a poker-specific malady, but all the competition and tribalism and homosocializing would seem to make cardrooms an ideal testing ground for people wanting to know more about "what it means to be a man."

I remember having exactly this conversation at the table with a reg, way back in the prepandemic days, after another reg had passed away. To the extent that we're immortal, maybe we live on through the memories of other people: a comforting or distressing thought.

March Recap

Poker, as I mentioned in my last poast, didn't figure much into the month. We'll see how I do in April and May, but I suspect that volume might be a struggle. If only I'd booked yet another reverse freeroll!

Bob's Books [10/50]

Continuing on my quest to read more graphic novels/memoirs, I read the first volume of Ice Cream Man and plan to read the next two.

Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

[quote=]The Egyptian on duty gave me my coffees for free that night becasuse the ATM had run out of cash. Stacks of old, unsold newspapers were piled up against a broken window next to the fridge of milk and sodas. I read the headlines slowly, my eyes blurring and crossing as I stared. The new president was going to be hard on terrorists. A Harlem teenager had thrown her newborn baby down a sewage drain. A mine caved in somewhere in South America. A local councilman was caught having gay sex with an illegal immigrant. Someone who used to be fat was now extremely thin. Mariah Carey gave Christmas gifts to orphans in the Dominican Republic. A survivor of the Titanic died in a car crash. I had a vague notion that Reva was coming over that night. She probably wanted to pretend to want to cheer me up.[/quote]

Alex Chee, How to Read an Autobiographical Novel

[quote=]We are not what we think we are. The stories we tell of ourselves are like thin trails across something that is more like the ocean. A mask afloat on the open sea. There were moments before the memory’s return when I experienced what I now understand as its absence as not a gap but a whole other self, a whole other me. As if a copy of me had secretly replaced me. An android of me moving through the landscape, independent of the other me, exactly like me but not me. Every now and then, I could see the distance between us. Three times, in particular, this other self had appeared before me.[/quote]

Beeday sooshi

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storage unit party

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jackson square second line

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frenemy number 1

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frenemy number 2

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ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

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I was in a very reflective mood that last post as I had come from a celebration of life the day before. I didn't know the guy at all (I think I met/interacted with him twice) but given the many kind words from many different people in varied walks of life, it sort of astounded me the far reaching affect he seemed to have had. And made me sort of reflect on how I'm living my life.

Gbutthefeelingwasfleeting,andI'vealreadyhappilymovedontojustbeingG

I smell an Email Reduction Double Reverse Freeroll Challenge in the making!

What is a storage unit party?

By the looks of it, fluffball is excitedly waiting to see if his bid for an abandoned storage unit is the winning one?

Gihopestherelotsandlotsofbonesandsquishytoys!G

Wonderful album. I quasi-saw Spirtualised in Melbourne a while back. For 40 mins or so, Jason Pierce, lead singer and guitarist, tried to get his guitar pedals to work, gave up and walked -off stage. I can still feel the mutual disappoint in the audience.

I'm also a fan of this album by his former band https://youtu.be/bv1xRbKlt0Y?si=ubJIgse3...

don't tempt me!

partial credit for GG. The party was dreamed up by a buddhistic anthropologist friend of mine, who proposed that everyone in attendance put on a short "performance" (skit, reading, anything at all), so her storage unit door functioned as a sort of theater curtain. Was strange in the best kind of way.

Yeah, love em. Will check out that album rec and report back!

Also planning to work through Kurt Cobain's favorite albums

Yup, I also was a fan back in the 90s and saw them open for Radiohead in Montreal

No idea yet, but my preference would be a Labrador, albeit I will focus more on the connection that I will have with the puppy in question. And my gf prefers to get a female, so... Either way, I will definitely pop up with a pic ITT in due time

Excellent! looking forward to some pics

Too Many Outs

Stuck inside—or it is gifted?—the time loop. French Quarterfest Friday, thousands of sweaty camping chair-toting festers roaming the raucous streets. Popping inside Harrahdise to briefly beat the heat, the short walk to the cardroom, a little money-related anxiety: hoping to leave with more money than you came with.

I'm sent to a $1/$3 on Table 7 in the middle of the room. The Owl's limping around with no apparent purpose. We lock eyes and shake hands, he says, with that usual smartass glint in his eyes, "How you been?"

"How you been?"

Mike G's one table away. Miss Nikki's one table away. For no good reason, I order a coffee with cream.

Jack-Ten off: slightly appealing, but I'm UTG+1 at a full table. Toss.

Now that I'm settled in I scan the lineup, three regs in a row. In Seat 3's June’s husband, a pleasant bald white guy I once bumped into Whole Foods, but he didn't see me, or pretended not to. In Seat 4's Steve, a burly white guy who was, or is, in the film industry. Once, late in the pandemic, he bought me a slice of pizza at the food court and we shared a meal. In the 5's Vu, a perennial candidate for the Who-Loves-It-More award. Black ski vest, thinning black hair pointing raggedly at the ceiling, staring despondently at nothing. Homesick for another world.

I flop a set of fives on the button, Steve blasts the flop, blasts the turn, checks the river. I bet one-fiddy and he snapcalls, which tells me that I missed value.

Young tatted dude sits on my left, pleasant, chatty, constantly laughing good-naturedly, in town for a few weeks with the military. "I know that guy," he says, nodding at another muscly younghead across the table. "No friends at the poker table." I walk across the playing floor for a quick piss, fill my water bottle with water from the water fountain, when I get back the two youngheads are in a big one—pocket Aces against Six-Four of spades on 9♠3♠4♦. "Dream flop," the guy on my left's saying after he loses. "Any spade, any five, any three. Half the deck! How do I not get there? That's disgusting."

"Too many outs," I say.

He can't stop laughing. "Oh, it's so gross. It's so gross. Cole, you owe me now. I'm gonna get it back now. I did it right, man. That's all I could do." One minute later: "That's so gross. I can't get over it. I can't get over it. How do I miss, right? Way too many outs."

Bob's Spring Minichallenge
[33/150]

Lol, this is my awkward line too when running into poker at-best-arms-length-aquaintances in real life, especially with family in tow.

Ghuh,what,who,where,ohyeah,yeah,um,thepokerroom,right?G

the hustle don't stop til we pick up loot on every block

Flat bicycle tire, don’t feel like driving, plus it’s a nice day. Seems like a good opportunity for a stroll.

The walk from St. Roch to Canal feels longer than it is—two miles, only 25-30 minutes at a steady pace. My pace is more meandering, though, meant to soak up the sights and sounds and smells. I’m wearing a pair of running sneaks and cargo shorts and a Chewbacca teeshirt and bringing along—as one must—a maroon hoodie for battling Harrahdise’s frigid temps (“they could hang meat in here,” one of the super-regs will say later).

Down St. Roch Avenue to the Tavern, with its CASH ONLY sign in the window and a royal flush—the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Ten of hearts—fanned out on the sign above the entrance. Then past Kebab and Hi-Ho and Siberia on St. Claude. On Elysian, outside the Phoenix, a cardboard sign’s duct-taped to a Toyota Tacoma’s driver’s side windshield.

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wouldn’t two of of five Yelp stars indicate slightly *below* average BJs?

I mosey down Frenchmen, past the Spotted Cat and Bamboula’s and Rare Form, thinking about the time when, on this very sidewalk, my parents got hustled by a hat guy. His spiritual spiel included the words “Jesus” and “charity” and "donation," and as soon as he saw my mom’s puppydog eyes, I knew that he knew he had his prey. I ponied up a twenty to get rid of him, and he handed me the cheap NOLA trucker cap that I’m wearing today.

If you stop thinking about someone, do they cease to exist?

A few minutes later, outside the Jazz Museum, I run into him again. He looks exactly as I remember him: a twinkly blue-eyed white guy in his sixties, wearing sandals and shorts and a floppy blue sunhat and wheeling a black airport bag and carrying, as always, dozens of cheap hats. For a moment I stalk him down the street, eavesdropping a few feet away from three of his favorite targets—middle-aged white women. “Can I give you ten? I have two fives,” one of them says.

He nods eagerly, smiles, and tells her that she has nice teeth.

“You got one. Good job!” one of the other women says.

After they part ways, the hat guy unzips the airport bag and removes a bottled water and takes a long swig. For a moment his chipper demeanor fades, and he looks hot and tired and old in the 85-degree heat. Then he collects himself, grabs his hats, and wheels his airport bag across the red cobbled sidewalk to Frenchmen.

The hat guy, it turns out, has been plying his trade in the Quarter for twenty-five years and counting, and he’s not alone: all across the Quarter, from Esplanade to Bourbon to Canal to Rampart, the hustlers are hustling. There are the bead-hawkers and the balloon sellers, the soap-mongers and the shoe guys, the homeless hippies and the gutterpunks, the mimes and the statue people, the shot girls and the “check-out-my-music” rappers, the bucket drum kids and Coke can shoe-tappers, the street poets and the Weed World van drivers, the snake boys and the parakeet peddlers, the fake monks and the non-profit donation seekers, the pedicabbers and the party police. Every hustle has its unique joys and frustrations, but what unites the pros, I think, is the grinding repetition: showing up day after day, rain or shine, afternoon or evening, in summers so steamy it feels like you’re wading through peanut butter, in winter sleet that chills you to the bone, always chasing that paper. A few blocks down Decatur, a white-haired guy in a red beret is perched behind a cafeteria-style table with a sign that reads US CHESS MASTER JUDE ACERS: PLAY THE LIVING LEGEND ($5). Over a forty-year span Jude claims to have won hundreds of thousands—an endless stream of crumpled five-dollar bills from drunks and tourists. “The important thing is to do it all the time,” he once said. “You think you need days off. You will find if you get enough sleep, you can go a hundred days in a row without any days off, unless you absolutely have to take them. But I do this every day. I never get tired of it.”

Five bucks: good for a game with Jude or, according to a sign outside the Abbey, a beer and a shot.

I catch a strong whiff of French onion soup a block or so later. Lots of cigarette and cigar smoke. A smidge of stale vomit.

In the corner of Jackson Square one of the statue people is standing motionless, painted head to toe in silver paint. I wonder how long I could stand there like that, stoic and motionless. Four hours? Six? Eight? I recently heard a story about a guy who got fed up with the statue grind and hatched a next-level hustle. Every morning he would put the silver statue of a man in this very spot, impersonating the statue people who were themselves impersonating statues. He would stay within a block or two to make sure that nobody messed with the tip bucket. Anyone who's fooled into tipping an actual statue, thinking it’s fake—that's on them.

Suddenly I’m in the mood to get hustled. I take a five out of my wallet and cross the street. Outside Cafe Du Monde, a fake monk’s offering people bracelets beside a muscly busker singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I head up the wheelchair ramp to Washington Artillery Park, where I look for the Quarter's most infamous hustlers—the "I know-where-you-got-dem" shoe guys. They’re notoriously aggressive and insulting and—today, at least—nowhere to be found. A little disappointed, I take a seat on a bench facing the Cathedral.

For a while I soak in the view, thinking about what it even means to be a hustler. The difference between hard and soft hustles, or between a hustle and a scam. The question of whether, and how, to lump people like Jude—a master of his craft—with raggedy grifters. The way that a hustle, for most folks, implies something negative, something deceptive, and where we might look for more positive understandings of the term, a healthier hustle that's connected to our old port-city expertise of welcoming people from far-away places.

For example: if you hang out in this park long enough, you might find a gentle smiling Grampa hanging out on one of the benches. He waits for a couple to take a picture in front of the Cathedral, the classic Nola postcard view. Then he offers to take their picture with (1) a non-threatening manner that suggests he won't run off; and (2) a set routine of three pics and three poses. He casually drops hints about his grandkids or some health problems. Everyone sorts of starts giggling because they know an ask is coming. And when it does, a tip feels reasonable, because it's win-win: the tourists get great pics, and Grampa gets some coin. Maybe this is the softest, sweetest expression of New Orleans hospitality and hustle. Gramps wants money, sure, but he also wants fellowship, validation, and good times.

Another fake monk arrives. My mind was set on getting hustled by one of the shoe guys, and so instead of my five-spot I take out a granola bar, for bartering, but he doesn’t approach me. I wonder if it’s because I give off the whiff of a local or that he knows better than to approach strange solo men.

I finish my granola bar just as yet another fake monk arrives, dressed like all the others in orange Buddhist robes and sneakers, but also with a ballcap.

Five black women stroll past wearing the same bright red teeshirt that reads, TEAM BRIDE.

I head to Harrahdise. On upper Decatur, I pass by a white-bearded black guy clutching a tiny sign that says HOMELESS, HUNGRY, and give him a granola bar. Seeing him reminds me of a homeless woman I’ve seen hundreds of times over the years—always in the same spot, across the street from Coyote Ugly. She's an anti-hustler—no sign, no spiel, no smile, just sitting alone on the cobbled sidewalk with her blanket and her buzz-cut, softly muttering to herself. One time I bought her a Super Burrito from Felipes. The last time I saw her was a month or so ago.

Today, she isn’t here.

Bob's Spring Minichallenge
[36/150]

If I hold on to this job long enough, I'll be in New Orleans for a bizness trip in February of 2028. Looking forward to it after reading that story.

GcluelessNOLAnoobG

splendid 😀 I, and legions of hustlers, eagerly await your presence!

April Recap

A lot of sweetness this month, but I'll start with the bitter. A second Nola fluffball, Queen Sadie, is resting in peace this month. She was a 16-year-old pit mix who discerning readers might recognize from various cameos over the years, when I had the privilege of housesitting for her owner. Here's Sadie in her younger years

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and one from last month. The good news is that, although there were clear signs of decline, she was never in much if any pain. RIP Sadiegirl

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A bit of poker content. First, one of the best sole reeds I've seen in a lonnggg time, courtesy of the one and only Nick Schulman. Just making the call at all is impressive, but calling out villain's exact hand? Really?

And second, a live stream that's actually fun to watch. I say "actually" because maybe I've become a bit of a hater, or maybe I'm just less interested in live streamed cash games, but even the industry standards like High Steaks Poker have devolved into predictable lineups featuring the same billionaire businessman and a handful of recpros. Which brings me to this stream, which features a bunch of Chinese action gamblers and some good commentary.

A few essays and articles. This Baffler essay collection, "The Profession That Does Not Exist," hit hard, not so much because I've ever aspired to be a "pro" writer, but because I'm a supporter of the arts, and it's disheartening to see just how radically our culture devalues a lot of stuff that I hold dear. Cliffs: unless you come from money or win the proverbial lottery, it's pretty much impossible to make a living through full-time writing. Most of the collection delves into various side hustles and weird jobs that writers suffer through in order to make ends meet—fire tower lookout, professional cuddler, waiter.

[quote=Chris Rose]
Some folks looked confused. Some looked angry. Some just looked sad. “But you’re still writing, aren’t you?” they would inquire—very hopefully—of me. “Yes,” I would tell them, pulling out my notepad and pen. “I am still writing. How about I start with your drink order?” Pause. Then smile. Always smile. Put them at ease. They were here for a night on the town, not my pity party. Don’t let it ruin their meal, I’d tell myself. Do that Chris Rose thing that you do so well. Ease their troubled minds. A world away from my newspaper columns of righteous civic advocacy, confirmations and consolations, here I was still trying to make my people feel better. The culinary avenging angel of the 504.[/quote]

"High-speed accidents, crooked lawyers, and poor people desperate for cash—it was the kind of scheme that could have been cooked up only in the Big Easy." Favorite thing I read this month was The Car Crash Conspiracy, a stupendously entertaining and well-reported story by one of the lottery winners, Patrick Radden Keefe, who writes full-time for the New Yorker.

[quote=]Smashing into a speeding truck is obviously dangerous, but the fraudsters sought to mitigate the chance of fatalities by appointing designated drivers who were skillful enough to hit a truck with sufficient force to cause damage to their own car—but not so much that they would end up getting flattened. Such drivers came to be known, in the vernacular of this criminal ecosystem, as “slammers.” In New Orleans, one of the earliest slammers was a jovial fellow named Damian Labeaud, who, starting in 2010, recruited passengers from the local community with the promise of insurance payouts, then took them hunting on the freeway for a truck.

“Watching and seeing, that’s the only training I had,” Labeaud subsequently recalled. “You got to know how an eighteen-wheeler move.” You must also drive with utmost precision, he pointed out, so that “you don’t get killed.” (Labeaud has pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in staging accidents, and is currently awaiting sentencing.) As a slammer, he worked closely with crooked lawyers, communicating in a rudimentary code. “I’m about to go fishing,” he’d tell them. “Want me to bring you some lunch?”[/quote]

I'm struggling to remember any books that I read this month, aside from two more volumes of Ice Cream Man, which is quite possibly the bleakest content I've encountered in a long while, and that's saying something. The graphic novels function as a sort of miniseries with a few recurring characters, it's all hit-or-miss for me, but I like the illustrations and one story in particular, Strange Neopolitan, is living rent-free in my head.

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Bob's Books [11/50]

percy quinn state park

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FQfest

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hat guy in action

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]

blackwater state park

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how did it come to this

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first-ever booktruck sighting

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new frenemy

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I've cooked up a new May mini-challenge (and a reverse freeroll for yall) but this update's getting long, so will save for tomorrow. In the meantime: who knew the Strokes are still doing their thing

I always appreciate a Kerouacian stroll, that perspective of the melancholic flaneur, wistfully hoping for, while at once regretting the passing of, a better world (a state-of-being I repeatedly sought to occupy back in the day when riding through the French Quarter, which unfortunately I never managed to document satisfactorily document).

I think you're right, though, however sarcastic I may seem. It can be a joyous thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFzMs2SN...

If you had your poker rather than your trucking hat on and wore rather than carried that hoodie, then, well, allowing yourself to be hustled would've been equivalent to defending AQ OOP v an OMC in a 3bet pot: existential death and eternal banishment to the poker abyss.

So glad you're able to see beyond the moral confines of zero-sum and share a granola bar.

never say never, Dr....Nola is always only a quick plane/train/kangaroo ride away!

*thumbs-up.gif*

I've been teetering on the brink of the poker abyss for some time now. Let's see how today's session goes

it's what Claude would do.

May mini-challenge and reverse freeroll opportunity

It's clear, with one month to go in my lolpokervolume challenge, that I'm poised to fall short (hopefully not too far short, as the WSOP Circuit will be here for 10ish days and I'll be playing a bit). So here's another mini-challenge, meant to keep the poker and writing wheels turning before I disappear into another Vermont summer:

Bob's May Mini-challenge: poast every day itt
penalty for failure: ship one lucky reader the entirety of my Draftkings balance

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Attentive readers might note that this screenshot is from last night, before the Lakers took care of bizness

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In the spirit of previous challenges + the NBA playoffs, I'll award this reverse freeroll to the first person who poasts a Lehhbron puppy pic itt.

A caveat: I'll be continuing to fire laughably terrible NBA bets all month, so any gamboling advice would be much appreciated!

Let's make this a great month.

Let's go!

Edit: When/if I finally win one of these, I will split my winnings with the first person who posts a pic of Luca with a puppy and has a Draft Kings account to receive our winnings. LOLTEXAS

let the games begin!

The Emperor's Challenge

Ten minutes after not seeing the homeless woman outside Coyote Ugly, I’m unable to make it to the podium before the first bad beat story. “Blinds are two and four.” Sam's a friendly white guy in his forties, bespectacled and rolly-polly, who I had breakfast with one time in Pearl River. We've been poker pals ever since. “I bet fifty thousand. Guy shoves on me, I snap him off. He’s got King-Queen suited and runs out a flush.”

Aces cracked. Uninteresting but efficiently told. I’d give it a six out of ten.

“That put me down to thirty. I got like 70K right now.”

“So it didn’t kill you,” I say.

“Almost."

Today's the fourth flight of the $500 Emperor’s Challenge, an-house donkament that our cardroom manager cooked up. The winner will get not only a small five-figure score, but a sword—like, an actual six-foot saber that’s hanging in a glass case beside the podium.

The Butler comes up to me and points to a burly middle-aged dude with a silver ponytail, sitting at one of the tables. “Is that not a Jeter look-a-like right there?”

I chuckle and nod. If there’s a decent donkament on the Gulf Coast, there’s a decent chance Jeter will be firing. But not today. “It does look just like him.”

“OK, I’m just gonna throw a hundred buck in the slot,” Sam says, and then he’s gone, along with a few dozen others who are scurrying this way and that, trying to make the most of the fifteen-minute break.

“Hey! How are you!” Dealer Danielle tells me at the podium. “How long are you here for this time?"

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you don’t come in here no more!”

"This month, a good bit,” I say, unsure if that's a bluff. A few feet away, Bad Beat Bruce is hovering over a few of his cash game pals, his Popeye-arms bulging out of a snug blue-button down. I sneak over and ask if this is the troublemaker’s corner.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Bruce says. With each “hey” he fake-punches my belly. “How you been, my brother?” He tells me they’re down to seventeen in the donkament. “I didn’t even realize it was happening. I walked in to play the Saturday morning, I gave Danielle $200, she says, ‘it’s not $200.’”

“Bob, give me some money so I can get you a seat,” Danielle calls to me.

“Give me some money!” Bruce says, grinningly imitating her. She smiles and takes my purple chip and goes off to get me change.

“Good to see you, my brother,” Bruce tells me. “Good luck.”

"You too."