Riding the F Train

The Experiment Continues

2009-11-25T10:52:00.001-08:00

I had a great idea for a post the other day but I didn't write it down. The idea has since vanished into the ether. You would think that, as a writer, I'd have learned by now to write down my ideas.

One idea that I had a month ago that I didn't need to write down was to tinker with playing NLHE cash games instead of LHE cash games. CK has had more success here in Vegas with NLHE than I've had with LHE, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find LHE games bigger than $4-$8 in Vegas (Venetian promotion notwithstanding) that have a favorable balance of decent-to-bad players.

Years ago Vegas turned over from a LHE town into a NLHE town. The range of games and the juicy action of L.A.- or A.C.-style LHE doesn't exist here. For a long time I stubbornly tried to fight it but early indications of my NLHE experiment suggest that I was an idiot to do so.

Am I running good right now? Maybe a little. Two nights ago a decent portion of my profit came by turning a two-outer against two players who both slow-played flopped trips against my top pair+board pair and then couldn't get away when I made a bigger full house on the turn. Last night I flopped quads and managed to stack a guy for $200.

But I also feel that in NLHE I do not find myself in marginal spots as frequently as in LHE. I can control my variance much more easily and, because of the player caliber and the betting structure, am more easily able to narrow an opponent's range. It also doesn't hurt that many NLHE players will happily stack off with one pair.

That's easy money.

The Airplane Talker

2009-11-19T12:06:00.000-08:00

CK posted something to Twitter this morning about airplane tilt. It reminded me about the last leg of my flight home from Cebu -- the LAX to LAS leg.

First of all, I had a middle seat. Unless I'm traveling with friends, I normally go for a window because I want the ability to curl up in a ball and fall asleep without having people clambering over me. For the 11-hour flight from Taipei to LA I didn't get out of my seat once. That's the way I like it. Toss and turn a bit, sure, but sleep as much as I can. It makes the flight pass much more quickly.

I didn't bother to change my middle seat for the flight from LAX to LAS because it's a 45-minute flight. I can handle a middle seat for 45 minutes. But then this guy sat down on my right.

It's been my experience that "talkers" on airplanes are slightly-older-than-middle-aged, unmarried and usually men. My neighbor was all of those things. And it's not to say that he wasn't a pleasant individual. But my terse responses to his remarks and questions didn't serve as the indication that I wasn't interested in a conversation that I had hoped they would. Instead they encouraged him. (And for the record, when I noticed no wedding band, I couldn't resist sating my curiosity and asked if he was married. In fact, he was not.)

On the one hand, I don't want to be a dick to someone who's being friendly, right? These "talkers" are just lonely people who don't get to have much other interaction with new people in their daily lives. On the other hand, I had a book I wanted to read or a nap I wanted to take. It's not my job to entertain.

New Yorkers, maybe, feel differently about this than most people. New Yorkers spend so much time as a "captive audience" -- because of their daily use of mass transit -- that they observe an unwritten protocol of not forcing a lengthy conversation on another person just because that person is seated nearby. And that's not to say I've never struck up a conversation with a stranger on the subway or responded to one. They tend to be brief, limited to something particular like a book someone is reading. The conversation quickly hits a natural lull and that's the end.

For this flight, for 45 minutes, I suffered silently. But when it gets really bad, I take out my noise-canceling headphones, put them on and open a book. Maybe that makes me a jerk, but according to Dawn Summers I'm the original assface. I may as well live up to my rep.

A Shame to Be Home

2009-11-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

Last night I arrived home, after 28 hours, from Cebu. Cebu is the "second city" of the Philippines and played host to a 2009 APPT stop. In 2008 I referred to the Philippines as the Mexico of Asia (or, at the very least, Manila as the Tijuana of the Philippines). The location where the APPT event was held in 2007 and 2008, in the heart of the Malate section of Manila, could charitably be described as "sketchy" outside the walls of the hotel. This year the event was at a resort in Cebu. It sounded great in theory, but after my experiences at the "resort" in Cyprus for WPT Cyprus, I was skeptical that the Cebu resort would live up to the hype.

Boy was I wrong.

Everything about the week -- from the room, to the food, to the entertainment and the service -- was over-the-top amazing. Things kicked off on Tuesday night with one of the better PokerStars parties I've been to (and I've been to a score of EPT, LAPT and APPT parties). It was beach-side, with live music, fireworks, fire dancers, APPT models for company, a full open bar and more food than I would have believed possible. There was a whole roast pig AND a whole roast calf. The party was followed up by an after-party at another spot on the resort where a DJ mixed dance music for a few more hours.

We then had two nights "off" -- one I spent at the resort, the other in Cebu City with Mark Vos, Tony Dunst and a few random poker players -- before a party on Friday night at a club in Cebu City that was hosted by the Metro Card Club, a local partner of the APPT and the FPT. Saturday and Sunday nights wound up being late nights at the resort's ocean-front bar, soft ocean breezes keep things just cool enough.

We even had the added benefit of the Pacquiao-Cotto fight, on a large projection screen, in the tournament room Sunday morning before the final table began.

Of course the poker itself was exactly what we've come to expect from TD Danny McDonagh and his team. Cash games were running non-stop allowing with side events and a Main Event with an excellent structure that made for nine-hour working days. In the poker industry, a nine-hour day is blessedly brief.

My hat's off the APPT President Jeffrey Haas and his crew for putting together an outstanding and wildly successful event. The general consensus amongst many of the players was that Cebu would be an event they would not miss next year. Haas himself said he would be willing to be that the APPT could improve on this year's 319 players and top 500 next year.

I wouldn't be surprised at all.

November Nine Errata

2009-11-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in a noodle shop in Taiwan (no, really) waiting for a flight to Manila so that I can connect with a puddle-jumper to Cebu. While I wait to play my next leg of Asian hopscotch, I'll download a few lingering thoughts from... whatever day that was that that the final table of the WSOP was played.

* WSOP and Harrah's made a *significant* improvement in stage design this year. Last year, people in the audience of the theater couldn't see the table at all. Instead they were forced to watch the action on two projection screens set up to the sides of the stage. This year it was done right -- the table was brought front and center on the stage so that everyone had a decent view of the action.

* If this were 2005, this final table would have LOL DONKAMENTS written all over it. If you were all in with the best hand, you were almost certainly doomed. I thought my proximity to the table might have something to do with it (I was sitting fifteen feet away and my cooler powers are legendary) until I remembered that no, poker is just a gross game sometimes.

* Did they or didn't they? After the elimination of Eric Buchman in fourth place, there was a very long break -- longer than typical for the usual bust-out interviews. When play resumed, all three players came back to the table together. Just saying...

* Phil Ivey is impervious to excitement or adrenalin. He was all-in with ace-king against ace-queen and didn't even flinch when Moon flopped a queen (of course he did!). In fact, Ivey reached over to a side table, picked up n apple he was eating, and took another bite out of it.

* The Handshaking Issue: You'll see on the broadcast that Darvin Moon eliminates three people: Phil Ivey, Steve Begleiter and Eric Buchman. What you won't see is Moon shake hands with Ivey or Begleiter. I have no idea why. If Phil Ivey was the picture of calm, Moon might have been asleep or dead. He beat Ivey (AQ v AK) and Begleiter (AQ v QQ) from behind, then sat stone still at the table when his miracle card hit and his opponent stood up to shakes hands and make his exit. Moon did, however, offer a handshake and a few words to Buchman.

* Despite eliminating three player, Moon finished the day with almost exactly the same number of chips that he had at the start of the day. That's because of two different mind-bogglingly bad raises: one with a total airball when Antoine Saout had already committed 60% of his chips to the pot, and the other with... ? (we'll find out tomorrow) when he check-raised Steve Begleiter from 5MM to 15MM and then folded to Begleiter's shove for 6MM more. As Joe Sebok said on the live Bluff audio commentary, Moon "could have had a Tarot card and a Snickers wrapper" and he still should have called.

That's all I've got for now. It was an honor to be that close to the action for the second year in a row. I hope everyone who followed along with the live coverage at PokerNews enjoyed my and FerricRamsium's efforts!

T Minus One

2009-11-06T10:46:00.001-08:00

The long wait for the 2009 November Nine is almost over. Tomorrow at noon local time, the WSOP Main Event resumes from the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio. I'll be on hand as a last-minute addition to help PokerNews provide Live Reporting.

Last year the atmosphere outside the theater before the final table began was more akin to a live sporting event than a multi-million dollar poker tournament. As I described it in the PokerNews live-reporting blog that morning,

The day dawned gray and rainy in Las Vegas, but that hasn't dampened spirits in the hallway outside the Penn & Teller Theater. Spectators were lining up hours in advance of the official 9:30am opening of the theater to the general public, stretching almost all the way to Buzio's seafood restaurant. Nobody was tailgating in the parking lot outside, but there were people downing a breakfast of barbecued meats; people carrying giant foam hands and thunder-sticks; an army of people dressed as Dennis Phillips (red St. Louis Cardinals caps and white button-down shirts) and the usual assortment of attractive models hawking poker-related products. The Starbucks outside the theater was doing a brisk business.

Last year was the first time the November Nine concept had been tried. Most would agree it was a rousing success: there was significantly more interest in the live proceedings than was previously the case and ESPN's television ratings for the final episodes of its WSOP coverage showed a marked increase over 2007.

The 2008 November Nine spectacle gave us the Dennis Phillips Army with its truck horn and the Ooba! Ooba! chant of Peter Eastgate's entourage. What will this year bring? We're all going to find out in less than 24 hours.

On Phil Ivey, Full Tilt and ESPN

2009-11-03T16:46:00.000-08:00

I found myself home between 4pm and 5pm today and, thanks to Elaine, turned on my TV in time to catch Chad Millman's E:60 segment on Phil Ivey.

I haven't read the article that Millman wrote for ESPN the Magazine, but I knew the basic premise. Millman accompanied Ivey on a four-city, three-day jaunt to Foxwoods, then Montreal, and then Amsterdam before arriving in Salzburg, Austria for the Full Tilt Million Euro Challenge. Ivey diced for 30 minutes at Foxwoods, where he won about a quarter million, and 30 minutes in Montreal, where he won three-quarters of a million despite the fact that he let Millman throw the dice with $240,000 on the table and Millman sevened out. The segment included some clips of Ivey dicing, shots of private villas, private jets, fancy cars and all of the extravagances that you would expect along with such a lifestyle, and interviews with a childhood friend and Ivey's mother. There was also the story of Ivey's early days in NJ, his move to Vegas, and his success in Larry Flynt's high-stakes stud game in LA.

One thing that was missing? Almost any mention of Full Tilt Poker.

Sure, there were shots of various Team Full Tilters wearing the logo. There was an interview with Howard Lederer in front of a Full Tilt step-and-repeat (probably from Salzburg). And there was a throwaway line at the end of the segment about Ivey "building his image as the face of Full Tilt Poker". But that was it.

I know that Ivey's success in poker is what's driven him as far as he's gone in life, and Millman makes sure to point out that Ivey was reputed to have made $7 million playing online poker last year. But to me it's irresponsible journalism not to mention that Ivey is reputed to earn $1.5 million a MONTH from his association with FTP. That's $18 million a year, more than twice Ivey's take from cash games last year, and an amount that surely helps Ivey not to care about how much money he throws around when dicing or playing poker.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Ivey's poker accomplishments. He is without a doubt one of the very best (if not the best) players in the world and definitely the most feared player in the world. But by ignoring this major income source, ESPN paints a misleading image of a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants gambler. Ivey may be willing to go broke -- admitting there were some nights that he went broke and slept under the Boardwalk in AC are testament to that -- but unless his -EV gambling gets wildly out of control, Ivey doesn't have to WORRY about going broke ever again. ESPN gets a big demerit for missing (or choosing not to report) that angle of the story.

Still, despite that flaw, I'd recommend the segment. It's a glimpse of something most of us are never likely to see.

Laugh and the World Laughs With You

2009-10-30T17:08:00.001-07:00

Last night I played some more NLHE at Venetian and found myself in an enviable position: on the immediate left of an extremely nice fellow who was an absolutely horrible poker player. It gave me an opportunity to practice making a losing player feel like he was having fun. I chatted about his home, his work, his Vegas trip and anything else I could. It was effective enough that after I stacked him a second time, we had a good laugh about it. He raised preflop and noted that I hadn't seen a flop in a while. I told him just for that I'd call him. I flopped top two and got his whole stack, with a teasing admonition afterwards to "Be careful what you wish for!" that made him laugh.

Stony-faced seriousness tends to be off-putting to recreational 1-2 NLHE players. They don't like it, they don't enjoy it and I've seen it drive them away from a table. Since they're the majority of the softest ranks in Vegas NLHE, it makes sense to ditch that mentality and try to laugh it up with them so that they relax and enjoy their losing.

My new friend, a Subway franchise operator in Charlotte, stayed in the game until 5am. I can't tell you how much he was stuck. I tagged him twice and I wasn't the only one. But when he left he couldn't have been in a better mood. And with $1,002 of profit, neither could I.

Big-Bet Poker

2009-10-25T12:48:00.001-07:00

In what I'm sure will come as blasphemy to certain parties, I've been playing a bit of NLHE lately. I think I've become an action junkie because after all the LHE I've played, NLHE seems dull.

Dull but profitable, that is.

I had forgotten how poorly typical $1-$2 players play. At Borgata in 2007 the $10-$20 players were just as awful as the $1-$2 players, and in many cases worse. In Vegas today the small pool of LHE players is made up mainly of LHE diehards. They may not be great but they're more skilled than Random JoeDonkey.

$1-$2 games, on the other hand, are full of terribad spewtards. Sorry, sir, bottom pair is no good. Oh, Mr. D-bag, you have an overpair? Then you have ze nuts! Look, madam, I know an ace is a pretty card but the books do not recommend taking A-2 up against two preflop all-in bets for $150. What's that? You'd like to make a complete non-sensical and hopeless all-in bluff on the river? Thanks for your chips!

I haven't given up on LHE. Venetian had three $8-$16 games last night at one point, providing more hope that they can breathe life into he Vegas LHE scene. But variety never hurt anybody or anything -- especially my bankroll.

All Atwitter

2009-10-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

I make my living writing. It's something I love and something that constantly presents challenges. One of the beliefs I've long held about writing -- even before I made it a profession -- is that the best writing is collaborative. An extra set of eyes will make any piece of writing significantly stronger than it would otherwise be without those eyes. I can't count how many times CK has given me suggestions, guidance, or constructive criticism on my own work that has made it immensely better than it would have been without her feedback. Whatever opinion people have of the pieces I've produced would be much lower if CK did not read my work before it is published.

Like Otis, Pauly, and Gene before me (to name three), I got into my current profession through blogging. Blogging is a solitary pursuit. Even on team blogs, the posts that are produced are written by one person. That person might spend a lengthy amount of time writing the post but in the end it is his/her creation alone. That's why I feel that blogging can't supplant more polished forms of writing. Blogging is the instant ramen of writing: it's quick and it can be tasty but it will never rise to the level of gourmet cuisine.

Blogs were the pre-cursor to Twitter. The problem that blog-writers encountered -- which Twitter users do not -- is that the act of writing something that people will want to read requires (1) passable writing skills, (2) a good writing voice, and (3) something interesting to say (or an interesting way to say something otherwise mundane). The vast majority of bloggers lacked one or more of those three attributes and as a result had difficulties finding and maintaining an audience. There's the added problem of a lack of collaboration in blog-writing, which tends to make the writing of a lesser quality than you can find at more traditional sources.

Twitter, with its 140-character limit, doesn't demand much in the way of skill, voice, or even interest. That has allowed Twitter to develop a larger userbase than blogging did and, like many things in life, for those individuals Twitter has become what they made of it. There's no "right" way to use Twitter. Some people use it as a public IM service among a group of friends; others use it as a self-promotional or marketing tool. A third group might find it best-suited for random thoughts or quips while still others think it is perfect for social and cultural commentary. Let's not forget poker players who use it to update tournament progress or whine about bad beats. Still, Twitter "writing" is limited to 140 characters. If blogging is a bowl of instant ramen, Twitter-ing is the powder packet in the ramen package. It instantly provide flavor but is otherwise unrecognizable as food.

Blogging and Twitter-ing have become entrenched elements of the poker community, for which I'm grateful. They have certainly enriched that community. The problem with them is that they have pushed the community to clamor for more content faster. It seems to me that we may be crossing a tipping point where polished, high-quality writing -- the type that is collaborative and takes more time, voice and skill to produce -- is receding in prominence in favor of instant ramen. And while most people will admit to the guilty pleasure of a bowl of ramen now and again, a diet solely of ramen and the chemicals in a ramen flavor package are not enough nourishment to sustain a healthy body.

Oh Danny Boy

2009-10-22T12:22:00.001-07:00

Years ago when I lived in NYC, I played at a weekly poker game with a bunch of improvisors and comedians. At its height, our silly little $10 freezout and $25 cash game regularly boasted about 30 players in attendance.

Somewhere along the way, the organizer of the tournament got the idea to start tournament stat-tracking. I believe we used a points formula based on finishing position and number of players; I know for sure we tracked money in and money out.

What I observed at the Above Malibu game -- and what I have observed with every public stat-tracking of its kind since then -- is that most of the players were happy to show up and lose before the stat-tracking started. They didn't think much about it. If they made the money one week, they were very happy to do so. But after the stat-tracking was implemented, those players stopped showing up after being presented with the cold hard data of their (net losing) performance over time.

So it was with some interest that I read a recent blog post by Daniel Negreanu in which he performs some analysis on WPT results using the WPT stats database. Nothing about Negreanu's analysis strikes me as terribly wrong. I think he makes some excellent points. But I also think he mis-stepped by naming names of many of the WPT's net losers.

Rule Number One in the winning poker player's handbook is "Don't tap the glass." Negreanu's point about the WPT's need for a satellite system could have just as easily been made without naming actual names of net losers. By doing so he's put those people on direct, unavoidable notice that they are net losers on the WPT over 30 events. Will that encourage those people to play more events? If they stop playing, doesn't that make the fields tougher for the people who already are net winners?

Some might say "but tournament results databases have existed on the internet for a long time." Of course they have. But the fallacy of sites like The Hendon Mob is that you don't see a player's net results, only their cashes. You might see that Doyle Brunson has cashes of $135,203 in 2009, but without some work it's difficult to determine: (1) what his net on those cashes was (about $97,000); (2) how much money he spent on buy-ins for other tournaments where he didn't cash; and therefore (3) whether he is a net overall winner or loser in tournaments in 2009. Those omissions make results databases mostly harmless -- perhaps even helpful, because they tend to paint a rosier picture of a player's results than is actually the case.

On the other hand, comprehensive, net-result-based public stat-tracking in poker is a terrible, terrible idea. It only serves to dry up the pond. I have always been struck by a quote Nat Arem, a founder of PokerDB, gave to PokerNews in early 2009. Nat was asked, "If you could, what one thing that could be attributed to poker's "boom" would you prevent or change?" His reply:

I wish that all of the things that made the poker world less fishy would've never developed. That would include things like datamining stuff, like what we do at the PokerDB... It would also include CardRunners... [and] StoxPoker [and OPR and PXF}... [and] things like rakeback. ... The reason why is because it turns poker into this business that essentially exists entirely for the good players to extract money as quickly as possible from the bad players...

Tapping the glass doesn't just take the form of berating a bad player for sucking out with a bad play. Like tilt and many other elements of poker, it can often take more insidious forms. Scare the fish away and after long enough they'll stay away.

Method and Discipline

2009-10-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

--Sun-tzu, The Art of War

Discipline is the key to successful poker. With discipline, you have a fighting chance to make money. Without discipline it is merely a matter of time before you spew away your chips. Tilt-control. Knowing where and how you tilt -- make bad decisions for bad reasons -- and discovering where and how your opponents tilt is one of the keys to success in the game.

Last night I played some NLHE at Venetian. About two hours in I hit one of those stretches where seemingly every hand I was dealt was an offsuit deuce or trey. I'm used to those stretches by now but they're easier to weather when you're up. (Everything's easier to weather when you're up.) At the time I was breaking even. I folded and folded and folded some more, looking for my spot to amass chips.

Eventually a hand developed on my small blind where three or four people limped in front of my red aces. I raised to $14 and got the desired result when only one of the limpers called. This player was what I would consider to be your standard $1-$2 NLHE tourist: married, late 30s, and far too passive to have much success in the game. He was the type of player whose preflop raising range is AK and TT+ and whose standard line after the flop is either to call or to check-call.

It was the two of us and I had to act first on a highly-coordinated flop, 5c-6s-7c. With $34 in the pot I bet $25. For the first time in more than an hour, I heard him speak. "Raise," he said. He made a minimum-raise to $50.

A few things struck me here.

* A middle-position preflop limper could easily be all over that board.
* Passive players don't raise the flop without strong hands.
* When a non-tricky player who hasn't said a word in more than an hour suddenly announces, "Raise," I usually take it as strength. Not just because he's raising, but also because of the tone and inflection of the announcement.

I peeked back at my hand. Yup, still two red aces. Flargh. I went to another one of the weapons in my arsenal and asked how much he had behind. I like to do this not only so I know how much I'm playing for but also as a body-language assessor. Simple acts like the way a person counts out and announces how many remaining chips he has can sometimes be helpful clues to how strong he is. My opponent had a confident $106 behind his $50.

One of my leaks -- one of the ways in which I make bad decisions for bad reasons -- is that in situations like this where I have been card-dead I assess a likely range of hands for my opponent. If I find one single hand in that range that I can beat I sometimes talk myself into continuing with the hand. In this spot I began to think that my opponent might be on a draw or even a pair-draw combo. As I considered that I remembered something CK reminded me about last week.

"The average $1-$2 NLHE player in Vegas plays very straightforward," she said. "You'll be able to spot the tricky players early."

This guy was not tricky. He was a straightforward player. He did not raise his draws, he called with them. He was not going to attack on coordinated boards because he was afraid of coordinated boards. For him to raise that kind of flop he would need a very strong hand. I finally pushed my red aces into the muck.

I was confident it was the right move -- even moreso when my opponent opened his hand to show 8c-9c for a flopped nut straight with a club re-draw.

You might think this was an easy fold. I had only one pair and all of the signs pointed to the fact that I was beat. But when you're stuck in a card-dead zone for an hour and finally take a strong starting hand to a heads-up flop against a much weaker opponent, sometimes it's hard to accept that you won't win the hand.

That's where the discipline comes into play. If you know your own weaknesses and your opponent's weaknesses, "you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." The chips will eventually be yours.

Square Pegs in Round Holes

2009-10-15T09:47:00.001-07:00

At my last job as a lawyer at an investment company in NYC, I spent too much time helping our paralegal deal with "Know Your Customer" documentation for the banks we used. It wasn't his fault; he was extremely competent at his job. The problem was that our operations used a layered, convoluted and unorthodox corporate structure that didn't jive with the expectations of the bank. We used to joke that bank KYC officers had a "standard" checklist for KYC and were trying to check off all of the boxes on their standard checklist -- even if those boxes didn't apply to our situation. We called it "Check The Box Syndrome". (Some other time I'll tell you about the "Clerk of the Day Rule".)

Check the Box Syndrome is an excuse for laziness and an unwillingness to apply critical thought and inductive reasoning to a scenario or problem. It is also currently the bane of my existence in a number of ways. But it serves as a good reminder that, at the poker table, there's no standard checklist for how to play any particular hand. And as soon as you fall into the trap of automatically trying to take the "standard" line -- even if that might be correct for the particular situation! -- you're regressing into lazy thinking that at some point down the road is going to bite you in the ass.

Speaking of critical thinking, a quick update on Rev. AlCantHang's "Challenge CK!!!!" NFL suicide pool after five weeks:

* 43 teams entered
* 5 teams were disqualified for failing to make a pick in the first week
* 4 other teams were disqualified for failing to make a pick in a subsequent week
* That leaves 34 valid entries.
* StB, 23skidoo, Drizz and DD List were eliminated in Week 2.
* APOSEC72, CaityCaity, tfennell and Dawn Summers (hahahaha, Steelers) were eliminated in Week 3.
* No one was eliminated in Week 4.
* Ruthless Aggression was eliminated in Week 5.

By my count, that leaves 25 teams (including CK) still standing, with Al already owing CK 9 shots. We'll probably make it through the next two weeks without too many eliminations, but Week 8 looms as a bloodbath...

The Unseen Football League

2009-10-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Look, UFL. I went to your and inaugural game last night at Sam Boyd Stadium and gave you a chance. Really I did. But if you want to successfully put the "U" (that's me) in UFL, then heed what I'm about to tell you.

1. You need to market your league better. I live in Las Vegas. I watch sports on Las Vegas TV. But if it hadn't been for (a) CK mentioning the "new football league with a team in Las Vegas" to me, and (b) me finding a pair of promotional tickets to your inaugural game laying unclaimed on a table in the Red Rock Casino sports book during last Sunday's Jets game, I never would have known about the UFL, the Las Vegas Locomotives or the fact that a semi-professional football game was being played last night about 25 miles from my home.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I'm your target demographic -- male, 18-35 years old, sports aficianado, lover of football and Asian women, and with no way to actually see anything remotely resembling a professional-quality football game. If you can't find a way to reach me, your target demographic, your league is doomed no matter how great it is.

[Also -- if you're going to give away tickets to your game, try to give them to your target demographic, instead of people who will laugh and then leave them laying unclaimed on a table in the Red Rock Casino sports book.]

2. You need to establish team identities. This is kind of an offshoot of point #1. I get that someone in your league front office thought it would be cute and show league unity if the team logos and the colors of the uniforms in your four-team league all shared elements of the league logo. But when I watch a game (either in-person or on television), I don't want to have to strain to figure out which team is which. And if it's confusing for me watching, I can't imagine what it's like for poor maligned J.P. Losman trying to throw the ball. At least he'll have an honest excuse this time around when he throws it to the wrong team.

Team identity is crucial to building a fanbase. If all of the teams look and feel interchangeable, nobody will give a rat's ass about any of them.

3. Don't lie to the fans. You should assume that even the average fan is able to put two and two together. If you announce the crowd at 15,000 when everyone can see it's probably closer to 8,000, and then add that all seats for next week's game are $10, we're going to do the math and realize that you're already hitting the PANIC button.

4. Don't schedule against behemoths. You're already in the position of trying to capture a small slice of the sporting public. Don't further handicap yourself by: (a) scheduling your inaugural game against the MLB playoffs or (b) scheduling your championship game for noon PT on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I can assure you that nobody will be watching either game.

Those are just some friendly tips to get you started. It's up to you, UFL, where you go from here. Hopefully you've already learned your lesson from the NFL about parity. I'd hate to see all four teams in your four-team league finish the first season with identical 3-3 records.

Find an Inefficiency and Make It More Efficient

2009-10-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I never posted part 3 from the Venetian. Oh well. Suffice it to say, Hero goes on a sick run and wins a rack in an hour after dinner, the end.

Lately I've been thinking about inefficiencies. (Long story.) One that really irks me -- and here is where I give a nod of the head to the legendary "real" Dawn Summers, not because she clued me in to it but because she mirrors my feelings on this issue -- is how the NFL broadcasts games.

Dawn is an unabashed bandwagon New England Patriots fan, the most vile kind of football fan there is. Yesterday she wanted to watch her team beat up on the Baltimore Ravens from the comforts of her high-rise apartment in Brooklyn on her 50" flat-panel television. But because she lives in NYC Dawn couldn't do that. Dawn was stuck watching whichever games the local CBS and FOX affiliates chose to broadcast (presumably the Giants-Kansas City game, the Jets-New Orleans games, and perhaps one other). She posted on twitter: "Dear NFL, that you haven't figured out a way to charge me some dollar amt so I could see Pats games from my NYC apt is #MAJORCAPITALISMFAIL"

Of course Dawn's not entirely accurate. If she really wanted to she could spend $300 to purchase the NFL Sunday Ticket -- assuming she first agrees to become a DirecTV subscriber -- which would give Dawn access to all the NFL games she wants. Including those of her beloved "Riots". But that's not efficient in any sense of the word. Dawn's not interested in watching Buffalo Bills games unless they're getting blown out by the Patriots. She wants to watch Patriots games and only Patriots games.

The problem is that the NFL is using a business model from 40 years ago, when the US population was not nearly as mobile as it is today. Back then, if you were born in New Jersey you probably died in New Jersey or somewhere close by. Thus the NFL didn't have to worry about catering to out-of-market fans -- they were a very small segment of NFL fans that could effectively be ignored. Instead the NFL and its teams could set up agreements with major networks and their local television affiliates to broadcast the games in local areas only with the provision in some markets that the games could be blacked-out if the game wasn't sold out.

Fast forward 40 years. How many people do you know that have spent all of their lives in one location? I grew up in New Jersey, but: my parents moved to South Carolina; one brother is in South Carolina; another is in Colorado; I'm in Las Vegas and my sister is in Connecticut. People don't stay in their "home" regions anymore, but fans are made when people are young. Why should anyone be forced to change their allegiance to a local team just because they move?

You can also add fantasy football to this mix. The explosion in the ranks of fantasy football players in the last five years (thanks, internet!) has made football fans much more interested in watching out-of-market games so that they can see how their fantasy players are performing. Except those fans are limited to whatever games their local affiliates have chosen to broadcast that week.

Enter the internet to fill the out-of-market game void. Every Sunday enterprising individuals set up streams of football games on the internet, supported by ads, so that out-of-market fans can watch the games they want to watch. And every Sunday many of those streams are shut down -- either by site operators, internet access providers, local television affiliates or the NFL itself -- for copyright violation. The NFL and the networks have to spend their time damming these streams because they're locked into contracts and business models that are no longer relevant in a mobile, digital world.

Inefficiency No. 2 for the day -- television again. Today's L.A. Times features a story entitled "Will Hulu make you pay to watch?". The authors of the article buried the lede a bit so let me quote the relevant portion for this discussion:

Comcast is in talks with NBC Universal about pooling their entertainment assets into a new company that would own 30% of Hulu in addition to the NBC network and cable channels such as Bravo, E! and Syfy. Comcast would control the new entity and possibly have the clout to push Hulu to begin charging for access to some of its most popular shows

It's another flavor of the NFL problem. Comcast is upset because the inefficiency of their business model -- charging a subscriber a monthly fee for access to a package of channels and the shows thereon -- is being challenged by Hulu's model of letting viewers watch only what they want to watch, ad-supported.

You can have ALL of the shows (games) if you pay $100 / month. But you can't pick and choose which shows (games) you want. So along comes someone who figures out how to give people what they really want -- the freedom of choice to watch only what they want to watch, supported by ads -- and the reaction of the establishment is predictable: buy out (shut down) the offender and ram the inefficient business model down people's throats.

My first day in my Real Property class in law school, my professor described property rights as a bundle of sticks. Individual sticks could be distributed out to different people on different terms. Television, it seems, wants viewers to buy the whole bundle of sticks even if those viewers are only interested in one or two sticks. Television learned nothing from the travails of the music industry over the last ten years. But if history and the success of the iTunes store are any guide, television won't be able to hold back the tide for long. Its business models are about to undergo radical change, like it or not.

Venetian $8-$16, Act II

2009-10-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

[Read Act I.]

In the typical three-act structure, the first act is devoted to introducing the cast of characters. Check. The second act is where the hero (yours truly) encounters some sort of problem that requires resolution or an obstacle to be overcome.

You might not have noticed, but that was "foreshadowing", a hallmark of literary genius for centuries. I'm really working it here for you people.

Where did we leave off?

7:30pm -- I'm up $77 after the first hour of play. Nothing too crazy is going on. There are two locals at the table: Bill, the mid-60s version of me; and Tim, the too-tight guy who is the small blind when I'm the cutoff. Tim is bald, in his mid-40s, and looks like he has somewhere else to be.

(Did you catch the foreshadowing? Did you?)

7:42pm -- Two hands in rapid succession go nowhere. I make a mistake by limping QJo from early position, the pot gets raised, and I wind up check-folding the flop. A few hands later I'm in the big blind with 9h8d. There's a raise and three callers. I can close the action for one bet at 9-to-1. Am I supposed to play or pass here?

I read an article online once upon a time, somewhere, called the Myth of Suited Connectors. I believe it was right above an article entitled "Nabokov in the Postmodernist Land" and right below the Myth of Sisyphus. Anyway, if suited connectors are mythological -- and the theory was that it's not the suited connectors themselves, but the papal status conferred upon them as a starting hand -- then where do unsuited connectors fall getting 9-to-1 out of position? I wound up folding.

7:50pm -- Oh dear. I get pocket kings in first position and somehow nobody calls my pre-flop raise. Did I miss something? When did the table move to Bizarro World?

8:11pm -- My notes are getting a little spotty here because I was folding so much. There's a real tendency for my attention to be stolen by other things in the room when I hit card-dead stretches: a TV, the cute Asian massage girl really getting into the massage she's giving, or even playing with the features of my phone (note-taking, twitter, music, etc. No porn though -- I haven't yet reached a Johnny Chan-level of degeneracy.) My lack of attention is a bad habit. Not not-brushing-your-teeth bad. More like playing-video-games-at-2pm bad. It's not a productive use of my time.

8:30pm -- Disaster strikes. Ok, disaster is a bit of an overstatement. No tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, Dawn Summers playing Stud Hi/Lo's or other natural disasters were involved in the hand. It starts out simply enough. I'm the small blind with Kc5c, there are eleventy billion limpers and I limp as well. I'm excited to see a 4d-8c-4c flop because CK has indoctrinated me with the belief that clubs always get there.

The person who takes the betting lead in this hand is a woman who starred in The Dark Crystal. She's got facial features that make you think, "Yeah, I could totally see her as an alien witch-puppet in a Jim Henson production". She is also a very predictable player, the type who would not bet a naked four in this spot because she believes she's flopped a monster. (We can also rule out a full house.) So the most likely hand she's betting in this limped pot is an 8. I think I am the only caller but there might have been one other.

The turn 7h gives me a gutshot straight draw to go along with my clubs and, given the range I assign Aughra I think my king could also be good. This time I am definitely the only caller. There's no sense in betting or check-raising here; Aughra will never let go of top pair.

The river falls 9c because clubs always get there. Hooray! CK's theory is once again validated. I lead out, prepared to fold if Aughra raises since a fold will surely signify a full house. And she does raise. The thing is, for the life of me I cannot figure out what full house she could possibly have that makes sense given her tight-weak nature and the betting in the hand. She bet the flop and turn. 7-4 and 9-4 seem so unlikely. Could she have been betting clubs the whole time? Would she raise clubs?

When I'm confused I call. I was confused so I called. She showed 9-9. Bad call, Bobo. Bad call.

By hitting the sole "bad" out of my 15 outs I'm now underwater for the first time all night at -$32. Aughra asks me afterwards what I had. I respond, "It doesn't matter what I had. Nice hand."

9:10pm -- I don't think I've played past the flop in the last forty minutes. I'm at -$77 now but I do get the satisfaction of seeing Tim and Aughra bust on the same hand and being replaced by far looser, equally-as-passive players.

When you spend lots of time watching poker you develop an appreciation for the rhythms of the game. I've always felt it's easier to see what's going on in a hand as an observer than it is playing the hand. That might be because, as a player, you have too much information. The two extra pieces of information you have as a player -- your own starting cards -- can cloud your judgment about what's going on around you. As an observer you don't have that distraction. You can channel your inner Ty Webb and "be the ball".

Tim opens from under the gun. His tightness makes that the sign of Big Hand #1. Aughra three-bets from UTG+1. Her tightness makes that the sign of KK/AA. Then an odd thing happens. Three other people call three cold, none of whom I would characterize as the type of player to "get out of line". I have an easy fold from the small blind, punctuated by a declaration of, "Well I don't have a pair so I guess I have to fold." The action winds up five-bet-capped five-ways.

The flop is 5-8-9. I turn to Mr. Late 30s on my right and say, "One of those three just flopped a set, probably 8s or 9s." Tim bets, Aughra raises, one player folds, two players call, Tim 3-bets, Aughra 4-bets and then one of the cold callers 5-bet-caps. He chases the other cold caller out but Tim calls and Aughra calls all in. Tim check-calls the rest of the way, winding up all in at the river. His QQ is behind Aughra's AA which is behind the third player's set of eights, 88.

Seven bets with one pair. I sigh a little sigh and wish people would play that horribly against me.

9:21pm -- Some musical chairs. Half of the table has turned over in the last twenty minutes, with replacements coming from the must-move table. The two guys on my right are mid-50s Canadians from Calgary that are involved, in some capacity, in the oil business. I think that means that they laugh all the way to the bank at us sucker Americans and our dependence on foreign oil but I'm not really sure.

A bunch of us play another one of those multi-way limped pots. I'm on the button. Five or six of us check through Ad-Th-5d. Action on the 4h turn checks to Canadian #1. He takes a stab at the pot. I raise, driving everyone out of the hand, including Canadian #1. He squeezes his cards, shakes his head "Nope!" and mucks.

5h-3h is the new 2c-4c.

9:30pm -- I hit a rush of small pots (three in an orbit) to restore my stack to +$98. It's been a frustrating break-even two hours and now I'm hungry. I head off with a comp to the Grand Lux Cafe, where I scarf down a cheeseburger and box up a slice of key lime pie for breakfast tomorrow. The "real" Dawn Summers has somehow insidiously linked herself to key lime pie so that I am forever doomed to think of her when I order it.

To be continued...

Venetian $8-$16, A Play in Three Acts

2009-09-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

In honor of the legendary "real" Dawn Summers I'm going to live-blog a session from the Venetian's $8-$16 limit hold'em game. And when I say live-blog what I really mean is that I played the session last night and will be writing about it after the fact to make myself seem more spontaneously witty. Pretty sure that's what Hemmingway did.

6:30pm -- Here we are on Table 40, right by the poker room front desk. I like being so close to the rail. This way, when I play horribly, everyone will be able to witness it without having to crane their necks.

Last week I was pondering what I've been doing less than optimally over the course of the last month. CK suggested I should "try playing a lower-variance style for a while". It is a brilliantly simple suggestion that once again proves: (1) how much smarter she is than me; and (2) how much better my life is with her in it. As I'm unracking my blue $4 chips I remind myself to remind myself in about an hour that I'm supposed to be playing lower-variance poker.

6:31pm -- No posting at the Venetian. My first hand in the cutoff immediately puts my lower-variance resolution to the test. I play like the true tight-weakie that lurks in my soul and fold 55 after nobody enters the pot ahead of me. It's been said that limit hold'em starts off as a battle for the blinds but if the table conditions are right I shouldn't need to worry about battling for the blinds. Also, the ink's not really dry on that lower-variance resolution yet and I try to wait at least a few days (hands?) before breaking resolutions.

[Results-oriented analysis: the small blind had 66 and flopped a set. Presto was no goot!]

6:41pm -- Look at me! I've folded for a whole orbit now. I don't think anyone else has noticed.

6:42pm -- It's my cutoff again. This time I have QsJs. I can't fold a decent-ish hand from the cutoff in an unopened pot two orbits in a row, can I?

6:42:15pm -- No I can't. I open for a raise and get two callers. An ace and two spades flop followed by a turn king... but I don't get there. A tight player in the small blind bets the river dark. I'm willing to give him credit for another set because I have never seen him bet dark before and he really is that tight.

There are times when I might piss and moan about missing double-digit draws but not today. I am a Buddhist monk. Also we're only ten minutes into the day. There's still plenty of time for my inner rage-aholic to assert itself. After all, F-Train tilt makes flowers grow and who doesn't like flowers?

[CK can refrain from responding. That was a rhetorical question.]

6:50pm -- My opponents must be great. Their play is at such a genius level that I am completely confused by it. A guy who looks and drinks like he fought in the Greatest War opens from under-the-gun and is called by the button. I also call from the big blind with 9d8d, then make my first mistake of the night by not betting a 6-7-9r flop. Instead I get caught up in Fancy Play Syndrome and try to check-raise the inevitable continuation bet. It turns out that the inevitable continuation bet is not so inevitable. The flop checks through to an ugly Ac on the turn. I can't bet this card -- it's too likely to have hit the pre-flop raiser. I check and both opponents also check again(?). I finally pull the trigger when the river falls Ts to make my straight. They both fold. Way to extract value!

6:55pm -- Seems my commitment to a lower-variance style lasted all of 25 minutes. When action folds to my cutoff, I raise Ts9s. Everyone folds, saving me from myself.

6:59pm -- A co-worker from the WSOP wanders by the table. He's on a break from the final table of the Venetian noon tournament and watches me limp JsTs from MP after two limpers. I have position for a four-way flop of Th-8d-4d.

The big blind is an old guy with thin gray hair and rheumy eyes. He plays all of the Vegas mid-limit games, usually dressed in a light white jacket. Although he almost never talks at the table I know his name is Bill and I'm willing to bet he's unmarried. Bill gives me a shudder every time I see him because it's not hard for me to imagine myself turning into Bill in thirty years -- quiet, miserable, alone and grinding away at pointless mid-limit hold'em games.

I've never been able to tell if Bill is a long-term winner. He has more heart than many of the passive players who populate these limits but he also tends to overplay one pair and to make some patently hopeless bets and calls (pot, kettle). When he leads this flop it can mean just about anything -- pair, draw, air.

A guy in his late 30s is on my right. He calls after one player folds. He has been playing *very* tight poker while chasing the $25 bonus comp that the Venetian is offering in an effort to attract first-time mid-limit players (you have to play one hour to get the comp). His call puts my jack-ten in a weird spot but, with position, I raise. They both call.

The turn's a blank, the 3h. Action checks to me. I bet, they both call. We all check the 2h river. I announce "pair of tens", prompting Bill to quickly turn over Td9h as if it might be any good. Sorry Bill. I chop the pot with the guy on my right, who also has jack-ten. Anthony, my co-worker from the WSOP, shakes his head and goes back to his final table.

"You didn't think your nine was any good, did you?" I ask Bill. True to form, he smiles without saying a word in reply.

Seriously. Thirty years. I make my second resolution of the night.

7:08pm -- Bill gets his revenge. I raise AcQc from middle position and get 3 callers, including Bill from the big blind. We all check all the way down after the flop comes K-K-Jr. Bill takes the pot with J-T. You might think this is weak play from me -- and it is! -- but I'm back in the lower-variance boat and saw no need to bet a flop that likely hit someone else. They're calling with their jacks all the way whether I bet or not. In fact Bill probably would have check-raised either the flop or the turn. I'd rather just take my free looks.

7:14pm -- I have the button. I also have pocket aces. Good for me, bad for my one opponent who flops top pair. Bad for me, good for my one opponent that she only has $4 behind after calling my pre-flop raise. She would be the first of three players at this table throughout the course of the night who would (functionally) be all-in pre-flop and would reload after the hand. This is the caliber of player I've been struggling to beat recently.

7:26pm -- Almost an hour in now. The table has been weak and passive. There are two other locals in the game but everyone else is unknown to me -- a welcome change from what the $10-$20 game at Mirage has become. When it goes. Which is less and less frequently. Alas, poor $10-$20, I knew it, readers, a game of infinite profit potential, of most awful play.

I open KcQd from middle position. Flops at this table are ranging from three- to five-handed so no surprise that the button and the big blind call. The button is a younger Asian guy but he's no Crazian. In fact he's the complete opposite of Crazian (which probably makes him me). He's the only one to call my bet on the Qs-Tc-8c flop. It's not a good sign, even less so when the turn is a third club, 7c. I check-call with my own club draw.

The "real" Dawn Summers will tell you that clubs are shiftless and lazy and never get there no matter what CK tries to make people believe. CK would say that clubs already got there on the turn and what more can I expect at this point? That's my way of explaining that the fourth club does not hit the river. Buuuuuuut, I make top two pair with the Kh. This is one of those situations where I probably have to bet and fold to a raise. Bet, because I'm trying to extract value from hands like QT, T8, 87, and all one-pair hands that might check behind if I check. Fold to a raise because Mr. Anti-Crazian isn't raising with less than a flush here. He looks confused by my bet but calls anyway. His AdQd is no good. Variance is on my side for a change. Nice!

7:30pm -- One hour in, only $77 to the good and needing to cut short this post. To be continued...

Housing Market Postcard

2009-09-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I was happily reading some news websites when the doorbell rang. Because I hate people (or maybe because people hate me) I do not ordinarily have guests. Because I don't ordinarily have guests I don't usually expect the doorbell to ring. I react to the doorbell the same way casino gamblers react to a fire alarm: pause briefly, arch an eyebrow, and then go right back to what I was doing.

Because I don't expect the doorbell to ring I never open the door when the doorbell does ring. This, even though the function of the doorbell is to inform that there is someone on the other side of the door seeking an audience. Living in NYC for almost fifteen years contributed to that little neurosis. We don't open the door unless we're expecting someone.

Yesterday, however, I was expecting some DVDs and thought the person on the other side of the door might be the mailman/woman/person leaving the DVDs on the front step. Instead when I opened the door I was greeted by a short troll of a woman with a wizened, harried face. Her thin, ratty hair was tucked under a lime-green baseball cap and she was carrying a clipboard.

"Lur... ma... na Talia?" she asked, looking up at me hopefully.

"Sorry," I replied. "He owns the house but I'm not him."

Her face brightened. "Oh, well I need to give you this then." She removed a sheaf of papers from the clipboard. Having worked in enough law offices in my time I knew what to say.

"I can't take it," I said, holding up a hand and backing away from the door threshold slightly. "I'm not authorized to accept anything on his behalf. I'm just a renter. He's the landlord." I paused a moment, then added, "Anyway, he's dead."

[Funny story: The last time the doorbell rang unexpectedly it was the landlord's adult son Richard, come to tell me that his dad had a heart attack and dropped dead. Richard's mother also had a heart attack when she heard the news. She lived. Of course, I didn't open the door for Richard anymore than I open it for anyone else and as a result didn't learn those nuggets of information until much later.]

"Well, I'm going to have to tape this to the door then," the troll told me, tapping her papers.

I realize that process service is a necessary job in our society but I can't muster up much love for the people that do it. They are messengers of ill will, bearers of bad tidings. Nothing good ever comes from the appearance of process servers in your life. They're like the wife or girlfriend who fixes you in the eye one day and says, "We need to talk." This is not a good thing. The subject-matter of the talk is not going to be that the wife or girlfriend feels she's not giving you enough blow jobs. Thus I was quite curt with the troll.

"Do whatever you need to do," I told her. Then I shut the door.

After the coast was clear I went back to see what the troll had taped to my front door. It was a foreclosure notice informing the owner that the house would be sold in 60 days.

Back before he died, "Dave" (as he called himself) told me that he was trying to get his home loan modified. Although I didn't know it for certain at the time, the house had to be underwater. Dave paid $420,000 for it back in 2004 but comps in the neighborhood were on the market for anywhere from $225,000 to $275,000. With the diminished equity in the house and interest rates markedly lower, Dave was hoping to get some leeway from his bank. The bank, however, was making him play a silly game.

See, because Dave was current on his mortgage payments the bank didn't see any need to grant him any loan modification. They believed that his "current" status meant that he was theoretically able to afford his payment, no matter the changed housing circumstances overall. Thus in order to get the bank to even talk about loan modification Dave had to stop paying the mortgage for roughly six months. Once the mortgage was in arrears the bank was only too happy to discuss modification since, by not paying for six months, Dave demonstrated that he can't afford his current payment. Brilliant.

The two parties apparently negotiated new loan terms that everyone could live with. But before he received the bank's final approval for the loan modification, Dave died. His estate has been in probate since then with nobody yet having the appropriate powers to finalize the loan modification. Meanwhile, because the loan modification isn't in place payments still aren't being made on the existing mortgage, now in arrears for ten months. Red flags automatically go up at the bank, setting in motion the foreclosure process, beginning with the taping to my front door of a foreclosure notice by an unlovable troll in a lime-green baseball cap.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is bureaucracy that would have made Douglas Adams proud.

As for its effect on me, the current lease is up on November 15, just inside the 60-day window. I'm not really sure yet what the next step is but I do know that staying in this house wasn't part of the picture even before this latest turn. It's just another wrinkle in what has been an interesting few months. And I mean "interesting" in the Confucian sense of the word.

Dave's son Richard is maintaining his sense of humor in the face of all of these challenges. "I'm sure my dad's FICO score is shot to shit," he said, "but I don't think he really cares anymore."

Back to School

2009-09-19T05:42:00.001-07:00

This will be a long post.

Tonight I played LHE at the Venetian for the first time. The $8-$16 game got up at 8:15pm, right when I got there, and broke at about 5:15am. I was in it the whole time and I left down. Again. I'm on a bad... whatever the opposite of a heater is. In the last five live sessions I've lost a combined 80 big bets. Tack on another 25 playing online. Sure, 100-big-bet swings are not uncommon in LHE. But any time I go through one, I pull on the thinking cap and try to re-tool my way through it.

First let my illustrate how wild the game was.

Example 1: It's early. Guy on my right has been opening light repeatedly. He opens the cutoff and I pop him with 22, trying to isolate. It fails. Both blinds take three to the face, he makes it four bets and we all call. We cap the flop four-ways. I finally slow down on the turn because, even though I flopped a set, I had the sinking feeling someone else did too. Last I checked there weren't any cards smaller than a deuce. Goodbye, 7.5 big bets.

Example 2: Not yet having learned my lesson from earlier, same guy opens for like the 486th time. I 3-ball him with KQ. Two people behind me call 3 cold, the small blind calls, and he calls. So we are -- count 'em -- five-handed to the queen-high all-club flop. I chase out two with a bet but because clubs always get there the fourth club hits the turn. I don't have a club. One of the other guys does.

Example 3: Much later in the game now. I've realized that the table is basically crazy and that I need to make hands to win. I'm in the small blind. The preflop action in front of me goes: (1) limp, (2) raise, (3) call 2 cold, (4) 3-bet, (5) call 3 cold. To be honest, I don't know what kind of hand I want to see in this spot. It feels like suited connectors are the best option. I look down at AsKc and say, "Fuck." Out loud. Literally.

Now, against five totally random hands, PokerStove tells me I have 28% equity here. Two times out of seven, my ace-king should be the winner against five random hands. There are two problems. First, I'm badly out of position. This will make it much, much more difficult for me to play my hand, especially if I miss the flop. (My 28% equity is to the river, after all.) Second, my variance is through the roof. Technically with five other players in the pot I shouldn't mind calling three cold or even raising. But putting four bets in preflop out of position against five players who -- trust me -- are all calling is the kind of variance that makes your teeth hurt.

I also have to consider that their hands aren't *totally* random. They're probably not playing the junkiest of the junk hands, and I might have one or two dominated -- good if we're heads-up, bad if we're 6-handed since that makes it less likely we'll flop something and more likely someone else will.

This type of table comes down to how much variance you're willing to tolerate. Extremely straightforward play will win its share of the money. But the swings along the way will be brutal. To wit, my stack went: even, -300, even, +200, even, -250. The last two hours I couldn't win without bribing my opponents to fold. If they were drawing at 3 outs, they got there. If I was drawing at potentially as many as 18 outs, say on a board of 5s 6c 8c against four opponents, then 8h-2d was the nuts. You think I'm kidding.

The long and short of it is I lost again, my fourth losing session in my last five. I really need to think about what I'm doing wrong. Some questions I have:

1. Do I play too long when I'm not winning? Tonight was my longest session in more than a year. These days, with poker so close by, my sessions are typically four to five hours. Today I played nine hours. Interesting to note that after six I was even. I chased a win for another three hours. Three card-dead, you-too-can-outdraw-me-from-three-states-away hours. Was the quality of my decisions affected by the frustration of being in the game that long and not being ahead? Maybe. I started to play more suited gappers -- but I'm not sure that's wrong at a crazy table where every flop is five- or six-handed. I just never hit. Still...

2. Do I show down too much? I really think the river is my worst street. Pre-flop, I might err on the side of tight but in the long run that won't cost me much. I think I have a good handle on the flop and the turn. But the river...

Here's an example from the other night. Pot is probably five handed. I'm in the blinds with 6-7. Flop Q-5-8, one spade. I usually bet this (with a good draw against four opponents I want money in the pot) but here I check. It checks around. Turn Q, second spade, checks around again. River is the 4 of spades. I lead out, get one fold and then somebody raises.

The question is, what can I beat? For him to raise here, he basically has to have a flush or a full house. Right? Does he raise a straight here against four opponents on a paired, flushing board? Does he raise a naked queen after checking two streets againt four opponents? Even though my hand looks like it has showdown value, I'm not sure that it does. I called anyway, he flipped 44.

I seem to find myself in these situations quite often. That is, calling down in spots where it is extremely unlikely that my opponent is bluffing or raising a worse hand. And the flip of it is that I sometimes get gun-shy about betting the river with certain hands that, given the course of the action, should have decent showdown value. So not only am I giving bets away where I shouldn't, I might be missing bets where I'm best.

The solution here is to incorporate more thought into my decisions on the river -- don't act so quickly -- and to bet-fold where appropriate. That is, most players in the games I play are not capable of raising the river on a bluff. Even though I'm often getting very good odds to call that last bet, maybe nine-to-one, the likelihood of my hand being ahead is less than that in most circumstances. I need to be more willing to bet and fold to a raise. Bet, because it helps me to gain value where value is to be had. Fold, so I'm preserving bets where it is extremely unlikely I'm ahead.

3. Am I better off avoiding crazy tables? After I posted on twitter about the KQ hand described in Example 2 above, DocChako replied "Run! Table too loose." I don't believe in the concept of a table that's "too loose". Yes, there's less skill involved and it's more like playing two-card bingo when every flop is taken six-handed. It makes almost any hand in the deck an underdog to the field and anyone with any kind of draw bigger than two cards is more or less correct to call one time and maybe even two. But the times when the "good" hands win, the pot size makes up for the losers. It comes down to how much variance you can stomach.

Given the style that I prefer to play it might make sense to avoid these crazy tables. But I should also be a good enough player to adapt my style to at least have a fighting chance when any two cards are the nuts.

Ok, time for bed. I'm up too long especially given I'm playing golf tomorrow. All thoughts welcome in comment-land. This has been a trying couple of weeks, poker-wise.

Run So Bad Returns

2009-09-17T04:29:00.001-07:00

Monday's post seems almost prophetic now. Tonight I had my worst session ever. Not worst session this year. Not worst session at the Mirage. Worst. Session. Ever. By the end I was definitely tilted. The last $100 I lost was pure tilt and the way I know is by a simple example.

Early in the session, I raised JJ from late position. A bit of a nit three-bet the small blind and was called by a decent player in the big blind. I called also. When an ace hit the flop, the small blind bet and the big blind called, I found an easy muck. It was mildly irritating to see that they both had A-K -- not because of how they played it, but because it made it less likely for an ace or king to flop.

Late in the session, after getting battered rapidly and repeatedly in some grotesque ways, I opened QQ from the button. The small blind three-bet, the big blind called and I called. This time when an ace hit the flop, the small blind bet and the big blind called, I made a horrible, spew-y frustration raise. Turns out the small blind had A-K and the big blind had A-J. The big blind won the hand by turning a flush.

That right there is the very definition of tilt. I played a hand sub-optimally because I was frustrated.

The whole session reminded me of a 10-20 session from Borgata, long-ago, that I semi-live-blogged, the previous worst-ever record-holder. Basically each session was a perfect storm of awfulness:

* big pairs don't hold;
* flopped hands get run down;
* made draws make bigger, slim draws for someone else;
* big draws don't come in; and
* it seems like the only way to win is by flopping the nuts, and when you do you won't get much action.

Sessions like tonight can be frustrating and extremely demoralizing. I won exactly one pot at showdown in five hours. That's tough. I kept thinking it would turn around -- limit holdem is prone to tons of variance and there have been plenty of times I started out in a hole before it turned around -- but it never did.

Sure I can back-up the lens to include all of my post-WSOP play (and the run-good that I had) and see that I'm still positive for that time period. But nights like this can make you second-guess just how good your chops really are. You want to accept losing, but you don't want to accept losing as badly as I did tonight. And it's hard to see the difference between when you're frustrated and playing poorly and just frustrated, waiting for things to turn your way.

I'll feel better after some sleep but this one definitely stings.

Acceptance Isn't the Same as Approval

2009-09-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

I've written before how I believe that the most dangerous attitude a poker player can have is the attitude that the player should and will win every time out. Why? Because losing is part of the game for *every* poker player -- long-term winners and long-term losers. As soon as a player expects to win every time out, they have put themselves into a mindset where the inevitable losing session or losing streak will be very, very ugly and will negatively impact the detachment needed to persevere and continue to play a solid game. I was actually happy, after booking my worst losing session of the year just before leaving for Cyprus, that I was able to shrug it off with an, "Oh well. Can't win 'em all."

The hardest part of being a winning poker player is accepting losing. Nobody sits down at the table and says, "Geez, I really hope I lose tonight." This applies doubly when table conditions seem ideal for booking a big win. The problem is that nobody wins 100% of the time. If I look at my spreadsheet for my 22 $10-$20 sessions at the Mirage this year, I see that I have three sessions that were <$80 winners and two that were <$20 losers. Treating those sessions as (more or less) break-even leaves me with 17 other sessions. 13 were winners, 4 were losers. Thus consider my track record this year in the Mirage $10-$20 game to be 13-4-5. That means about 40% of the time I'm breaking even or losing. This, for a player who is averaging winnings of $33 per hour in the game.

Of course, you could say that if I played better I might have better results. I don't argue with that. I am not the best limit holdem player. There are plenty of nights when I'm not even the best player at the table. But I'm good enough to be beating the game for 1.65 big bets per hour and even so I still break even or lose 40% of the time.

That statistic is why I try not to let it go to my head too much if I have a two- or three-week period where I'm winning every day and try not to worry too much if I have a two- or three-week period where I'm losing every day. In each case I analyze my play as objectively as possible, looking for leaks. That's the only objective analysis to be made. Using the results of a two-week stretch of poker for any other analysis is folly at best.

Consider last summer. CK hit a rough-stretch playing NLHE at Venetian where, it seems two or three nights a week, she came home and told me about how someone had 2-outered her for a massive pot after all the money got in on the flop. She took more 2-out beats in that month than most people take in a year.

Sure, it's easy to look at a 2-outer and say, "Well obviously she got unlucky there," but the point illustrates why making results-based judgments about the quality of a player is useless. If you looked at her results for that month you might think she was a terrible player. That's why, when I'm at the table, I'm much more interested in the kind and quality of decisions a player is making. When I see people over-calling multiple streets with a hand that has to go runner-runner to even have a shot at winning the pot I don't care what kind of results they're having. I just want them to stay at the table as long as possible so that I have the best shot at their chips.

Intuitively all successful poker players know (and agree) with this kind of logic. But getting our brains to accept it is a different matter. It doesn't feel "just" to see players that we consider to be inferior players winning while we're losing.

Obviously I struggle with this concept sometimes too. CK used to call me "Cranky Man" when playing online, and a few weeks ago I had a rare outburst at the Mirage that I wrote about. The only thing to do is keep plugging away at it. Last year I wrote about a player named Vince who is a regular in the Mirage game. I have never seen Vince react in any emotionally demonstrable way to taking a bad beat. I'm still striving to emulate him because, while I don't *approve* of losing, I know I need to accept it.

WPT Cyprus: Ready to Come Home

2009-09-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

Over the last two days in Cyprus, we've played a total of five levels of poker to go from 21 players to the 6-handed TV table. I know there are reasons for that but I really wish a day had been trimmed from the schedule. I've been ready to go home for a while now.

One more day, and then homeward bound on Sunday. Monday I start the Great Weight Gain Challenge II. I tried starting GWGC2 back in August a week before I left for Macau. The two weeks I spent in Macau were a setback in the challenge mainly due to poor food options, the bad eating habits that usually accompany my work schedule, and an unprecedented level of stress. Stress makes me not eat.

Back from Macau I had only three days before leaving for Cyprus and decided it would just be easier to start fresh when I came home. I don't think I'll be doing any traveling for a while after this trip so I'll be able to lock in the regimented eating and exercise schedule that will be necessary for me to put a few pounds back on. Here's hoping that come December I'll weigh even more than I did after GWGC1 in 2007.

No prop bets this time -- I'm doing this for me.

Attention All Vegas-Bound Limit Holdem Players

2009-09-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months, in this space and in my Twitter feed, I have railed on about the dearth of limit hold'em games in Las Vegas that are bigger than $4-$8. For the medium stakes, the options are: (1) a $10-$20 game at Mirage that is not as reliable as it once was; (2) usually one or maybe two $15-$30 games at Bellagio, and (3) one or maybe two $30-$60 games at Bellagio. That's it.

I was therefore delighted to recently read that arguably the best poker room on the Strip, the Venetian Poker Room, is going to try to attract medium stakes limit hold'em players. They've stated that they typically get four or five $4-$8 games and are looking to expand higher. Specifically,

Starting ASAP, the Venetian is making an aggressive push to attract more limit games, including $8/16, $15/30, and $30/60.

We understand that finding good, mid-limit games around town is a hard thing to do, so, we are offering $2 max rake, $1.50 an hour in comps, and a $25 food comp for every new player that comes in to play.

The full text of the announcement can be found on the AVP forums. (Scroll down a bit.)

Here's hoping that the Venetian is successful in their mission. Having another place to play mid-stakes LHE in Las Vegas, specifically in the nicest room out there, would be fantastic.

WPT Cyprus: Problems All Around

2009-09-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

There's no reason for me to be awake right now (I knocked back two tall, stiff vodka tonics before bed) but here I am. It's the Macau problem all over. In Macau I even tried some Tylenol PM, usually a sure way to knock me out for a while. They may as well have been sugar pills. Since I can't sleep again and already know the Tylenol PM won't work I'll update the goings-on at WPT Cyprus.

Turn-out for the tournament was "below expectation". The two Day 1 flights combined to put only 181 players in the field. Players were given 90-minute levels and a completely unnecessary 400-big-blind starting stack. 125 remain after five full levels of play. John Tabatabai(!) is chip leader, followed by... Phil Gordon?! What year is this?

The player count wouldn't be much of an issue but for the fact that the tournament is scheduled to take five more days to complete. By my gorilla math, the final table will be reached in Level 19. If the tournament sticks to a five-levels-per-day format, that means the final table will be set one day ahead of schedule. Another option is to only play four levels per day, although that will still make for a short Day 5.

Either way, this doesn't bode well for future WPT Cyprus events. There are several fundamental problems here: (1) there hasn't been enough poker exposure in the region for a tournament of this magnitude ($10,300); (2) Cyprus is not a "destination" that extra-regional players will want to visit the way London, Sydney, or Los Angeles is; (3) on top of that, the actual site of the tournament is fairly remote to the airport at 90 minutes by car; and (4) scheduling against the EPT juggernaut taking place at the western end of the Mediterranean (Barcelona) was definitely a mistake.

Don't even get me started on the resort itself. My opinion of this place may have been colored by the fact that, after 30 straight hours of traveling to get here, I was told that the hotel didn't have a room for me nor a record of a reservation in my name. It eventually got straightened out but I was not amused.

It seems like I'm not amused by much these days.

Don't Tap the Glass You Stupid Fucking Moron

2009-09-02T23:57:00.001-07:00

I'm back from Macau just long enough to get my bearings before it's off to Cyprus. I had the pleasure of dropping a full buy-in at the B's 15-30 on Monday night (run-good long over) and then playing 10-20 at Mirage with Cardgrrl last night. It was her first time dipping a toe into the $10-$20 LHE pool. I wish it had gone better for her but I think she could see that the game was good and beatable.

Cardgrrl did witness one or two poor displays from me. I have learned, through many hours at the table, to channel most of my rage at donkeys inwards. But last night it boiled out. One instance I didn't care; the guy was the biggest douchebag toolbox asshole that I've ever seen in the 10-20 game -- and I've seen a bunch. Blowing off some rage at that kind of a person is warranted.

The other instance was bad form by me. It was a terrible player who just didn't know how bad he was and I let fly some poor words. It was a fairly straightforward hand. I raised QQ, there was a 3-bet from a person who doesn't 3-bet light, and then the button called three cold. Let's stop it right there.

In my experience in the 10-20 game, when a player calls three cold like that (esp. in position) it's because they have a pocket pair that they just can't bear to fold. Usually something in the range of 88-JJ because QQ-AA will four-bet. So right away I narrowed my ranges to TT-AA, AQ+ for the woman and medium pair for the button. I called, 10 small bets in the pot.

The flop was K-4-2. I checked, the woman bet, the button called. I wasn't ready to give up just yet without further confirmation that I was beat. I called to the turn, which was another king that pretty much took KK out of the woman's range and probably also killed A-K. My new ranges were: TT-JJ/AA, AQ for the woman and 88-JJ for the button. I had a feeling that the second king would check through and I preferred that not to happen. Plus if I bet I would be representing a hand like K-Q or A-K for myself.

So I bet. Woman called (that's good; for sure she can only have one hand that's beating me now) and the button over-called. That was a little confusing. I didn't like the fact that the pot was still three-ways going into the river 5 so I checked it figuring a free showdown was coming. Woman checked also (right) and then the button bet?!

"Did you really call three cold with ace-king?" I asked him. "I just don't believe it." I called and the woman over-called.

Now, as it turns out, the woman had aces and I was behind the whole way. I'm fine with that. It happens. But when the button turned over pocket 5s for a rivered full house, fives full of kings, I couldn't contain myself.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked him. "Do you hate money?"

Sigh. Not one of my finer moments. But let's analyze the donkery of the button's play, street by street.

PREFLOP: calling three cold with 55 in a pot that is likely to be 3-handed -- and in which you don't even close the action -- is a huge leak. You can only know where you are if you flop a set (roughly 1 in 8 times). For it to be break-even you need to get your opponents to put another $140 in the pot after you hit your set. 7 times you miss you lose $210 total; 1 time you hit there is $70 from your opponents already in the pot. In order to get them to put another $140 into the middle you need them to go to war on the flop and both go to showdown. And that's just to break-even. So really you're better off dumping 55 preflop here.

FLOP: I'm not sure what you're beating on the flop. Every pair except 3s has you beat. Every king (plenty of those in my range as first raiser) has you beat. I guess if both players have unimproved aces you might be in the lead but in a three-way, three-bet pot this is almost always a fold. You might raise to represent the king and try to drive out pairs < K and unimproved aces. Maybe. But calling is the worst of the three choices as peeling one time for a set is massively -EV, even with the possibility of a runner-runner straight.

TURN: The worst street by far. You now have a pre-flop raiser who called a bet on the flop leading the K-4-2-K turn AND being called by the pre-flop re-raiser. There is no way in hell you can over-call here as you are absolutely 100% drawing to two outs and raising is a total spew bluff that will not succeed.

RIVER: Well now you look like a fucking genius.

I might have a chance for one more session tomorrow. Maybe, maybe not. I'm trying to get my departure schedule for Friday morning squared away and that will impact my Thursday night schedule. If I don't get another session in I'll have a week and a half in Cyprus to channel my inner Buddha and to learn to bite my tongue before I say stupid things at the table.

Turbojet Strikes Again

2009-08-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

Well I made it to Hong Kong Airport. But not without incident. Just once I'd like to have a pleasant experience with Turbojet.

Upon arriving at the Macau Ferry Terminal this morning I felt nothing could go wrong. I was there 35 minutes before my ferry. I just needed to clear immigration and get on the boat. As I approached the immigration checkpoint, a security officer asked for my ticket. He took a look at it and said I needed to get a stamp from the window. Fine. I assumed it was some sort of travel document check.

Over to the window I went. Begin shenanigans.

TJ: "Can we see your itinerary please?"

Me: "What do you need my itinerary for? You already sold me the ticket."

TJ: "It's our company policy. We have to see the confirmation number of the ticket."

Me: "It's an e-ticket."

TJ: "Do you have a printout?"

Me: "No, it's an e-ticket. The whole point of an e-ticket is that you don't need any printouts. Anyway last week when you sold me the ticket you said you just needed the flight number."

TJ: "Do you have some internet or something? We have to see your confirmation number."

Commence banging of the head.

I finally convinced the woman to take me into a back office, where I used an office computer to pull up the United website and show them my confirmed ticket. And the absolute utter stupidity of this is that the women just looked at the screen, said ok, stamped my ferry ticket and sent me on my way.

God forbid I ever have any dealings with this company ever again.