Two weekends ago Janeen and I took a trip to Atlantic City with a big group of friends.  I have been traveling to gambling destinations with these friends for many years, but this trip was among my first as a professional gambler.  And, as I’ve learned in the past year and a half, that changes things.

Typically the highlight of these short trips with friends–whether to Vegas, Atlantic City, or Connecticut–has been our time spent at the craps table, where we have a good time risking a few hundred dollars, having free drinks and loudly blurting out a bunch of strange private jokes.  It’s always been fun for me.  Until recently.

The problem with craps, as with all other casino table games, is that you are expected to (and eventually will) lose.  As a reasonably intelligent person, I have always understood this.  Long before I became a Sklansky disciple capable of calculating expected value and hourly rate of return, I innately understood that craps was a game in which these numbers were negative.  When I was drawing a salary like most of the other people in the world, I viewed game’s negative expectation as a sort of entertainment cost.  I learned how to mitigate the game’s negative expectation, and the fact that i was a 2% dog didn’t bother me because I was having fun gambling.

Nowadays, the concept of “having fun gambling” holds much less appeal and is amusing in its redundancy, as I already spend half my waking hours gambling.   I do not draw a salary.  As a matter of fact, my living is derived from continuously playing poker with a small statistical edge against my opponents.  This edge, not so ironically, is almost identical to the one the casino exerts on the scores of people stupid enough to plunk their money down at the craps table (actually, it’s a lot smaller than the casino’s edge against the average craps player, who commits quick fiscal suicide through moronic bets like the “hard way” wagers).  So when I choose to play craps in my leisure time, I am essentially taking time off from being a small favorite in exchange for time being a small underdog.  It makes a lot less sense than it used to.

Despite losing my desire to shoot craps after becoming a professional poker player, I have nevertheless indulged in an occasional session.  The reasons vary:  sometimes I have played for companionship.  Sometimes I have played to maintain comp status at a particular casino (they hardly rate you for poker).  And sometimes I have played out of a combination convenience and sheer boredom.  Throughout 2006, despite drawing almost no pleasure from the game, I was remarkably lucky at craps.  However, unsurprisingly, things have changed this year.  Nearly all of my sessions have been losers, including my latest foray with my buddies in Atlantic City, which was abominable.  My craps playing has not grown to the level of a “leak,” but losing money at a game that you don’t even enjoy playing is… the opposite of fun. 

For years, I’ve trained myself to gamble in spots where I have the edge and milk those spots for all they are worth.  Being a voluntary underdog?  I’m through with it.  Sklansky would be proud.

That said, I’m off to the Kentucky Derby the day after tomorrow.  -EV for sure, but a novel enough experience to retain its entertainment value.

Last night, knowing that I’d be taking this weekend off from poker (I’m traveling to Atlantic City for non-poker related fun), I sat down for a night of online tournaments.  I fired up the TV (Mets game) and the computer (poker programs) and sat got down to business.

I selected four 7:00 tournaments.  A $160 World Series Double Shootout on Pokerstars, a $109 multitable tournament on Pokerstars, a $75 multitable tournament on Full Tilt, and to round things out, a $16 World Series turbo double shootout satellite on Pokerstars.  This turned out to be one of the rare occasions where everything would start out well.  I quickly amassed a big stack in the $109, won the first table of the turbo, and I was plugging along in the $75 and the WSOP double shootout.  And the Mets were crushing the Marlins.  I was in the internet poker zone, cursor darting all over, mouse furiously clicking away.

Fast forward another hour.  I won the turbo double shoootout, so I was down to three open tables:  1) the second table of the WSOP qualifier (I won the first table); 2) the $109, where I was chip leader with 50 out of 235 players remaining; and 3) the $75, where I was in the middle of the pack as the field approached the bubble.

Fast forward another thirty minutes.  I am now four-handed for a WSOP seat with the chip lead, about 15th in chips in the $109 right on the bubble, and still in the middle of the pack in the $75, also on the bubble.  I shift 90% of my focus to the WSOP qualifier, as the $12,000 package is the largest prize i’m playing for.  I manage to bob and weave until I find myself heads up, playing mano-a-mano for the WSOP seat.  Meanwhile, right on the bubble of the $109, I find AK in middle position and openshove for 12 big blinds.  All fold to the big blind, who is among the chipleaders in the tournament, and he snapcalls with JJ.  The board bricks and I’m down to two open tables.  Blech.  I’m really sweating the heads-up match, but out of the corner of my eye, I notice that in the $75, my AdKd flops a flush against AsKh all in preflop, vaulting me out of nowhere to the chip lead with only 30 players left.

Playing heads up for a WSOP seat in a double shootout is about as big as it gets in online tournament play.  The difference in value between first and second place is $12,000:  the first place finisher gets the seat, the weeklong hotel stay and the $1,000 cash and second place gets nothing.  Heads up went well at first.  I chipped away at my opponent until i had about a 3 to 2 chip lead on him.  I then checkraised all in, holding K2 on a K-5-4 flop only to discover that I was up against K9.  I was now outchipped, and things began to go downhill.  I battled for awhile longer, but eventually got all my chips in with Q6 on an 8-8-6 flop.  My opponent called and showed me pocket aces, and that was all she wrote.  Ouch.  Unbelievably, this was my fourth or fifth career second-place finish in a Pokerstars World Series double shootout, so at least the pain was familiar.  Intense but familiar.

One of the hallmarks of an experienced player is being able to turn the page after a tough loss, and I am happy to say that I managed to do so.  Having paid almost no attention to it for about three hours, I finally took a serious look at the $75 Full Tilt tournament.  I made the final table in fourth place, drew a good seat (immediately to the left of the chipleader) and picked my way through the crowd until I was left heads up once again.  This time my opponent was an inexperienced player, and even though he had a few more chips than me, I wasn’t dealing.  I was playing for first, and first only.  I ground him down and won with relative ease, salvaging the night.

I ended up showing a very nice profit for the evening.  For those of you keeping score at home, between the $75 tourney win and turbo double shootout wins, it was a little bit short of a haircut.  But I was so close to a really, really monstrous night.  Ah well. 

My day will come.  And hair will be shorn. 

I was a huge fan of the New York Knicks during their successful run throughout the 1990’s.  If you’ll recall, those teams were led by Patrick Ewing and an unlikely supporting cast which Pat Riley (and later Jeff Van Gundy) cobbled together and crafted into a cohesive unit.  Today, those teams are usually remembered for never quite getting over the hump–Michael Jordan (or, during God’s brief retirement, some other circumstance) always got in the way.  However, I personally remember those teams for their consistent tenacity, incredible toughness and unrelenting spirit.  And I fondly remember how they gave their fans a long playoff run each and every year, without fail.

Although Ewing was the star of those Knick teams, no player was more emblematic of what those teams stood for than John Starks.  His unlikely rise from obscurity to the NBA spotlight was partially orchestrated by Riley but was made possible only by his own fierce determination.  That same determination was on display in every game he played.  Starks had boundless energy on the court.  Seemingly always matched up on defense with the opposing team’s leading scorer (frequently Jordan or Reggie Miller), he spent half the game imposing Riley’s defensive mantra:  tirelssly chasing down and pestering the opposing team’s shooting guard.  And on the offensive end, Starks was the Knicks’ unquestioned second option.  A shooter who lacked a conscience, Starks was totally fearless.  He took big shots:  threes that he’d pop off the dribble, pull-up jumpers, kamikaze drives to the rack.  Ask anyone about Starks’ game and you’ll always get one of two answers:  “John Starks had a big heart,” or “John Starks had big balls.”  Both are serious basketball compliments.

Today, Starks runs a charity for underprivileged inner city children.  When, back in December, I was asked to be a guest speaker at the First Annual John Starks Charity Casino Night, I happily agreed.  The event took place last night at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square and I had a blast.  It was situated in a ballroom which had a casino setup, and the casino had a couple of Texas Hold’ Em tables.   I gave a short beginner’s tutorial on how to play hold ’em to the assembled poker players, and when I finished up, it was time to play.  Two one-table shootouts were contested.  All the players seemed to have a great time, espeically John Starks, who loves poker.  En route to winning it, John stacked a couple of players early in the second shootout and was quite pleased with himself!

I want to thank Jennifer Alpert for inviting me to last night’s event and for allowing my family to attend.  I also want to thank my friend Lee Herman for making my participation possible.  It was a lot of fun to share my passion for poker with some new faces.

For me personally, the experience was really positive beacuse it gave me a fresh perspective on my job.  When I’m immersed in the daily grind, I completely lose sight of how different, how challenging and how exciting my life is.  Last night allowed me to take a much-needed step back to take stock of who I am.  At the charity event, fliers were distributed sharing my attorney-to-poker pro story and listing some of my accomplishments, both of which I recounted at the start of my tutorial.  People seemed genuinely fascinated.  And during my unscripted speech, I found that I was really connecting with those who were listening to me describe the ins-and-out of basic hold ’em.  It reminded me of how much I love the game, and it reminded me of how lucky I am to be making a living playing it.           

Here are a few good shots of me at the event (note the flowing locks).  All three photos are courtesy of shelbychan.com.

The time has come for me to give up a long term addiction.  My name is David Zeitlin, and I am an addict.  For about a decade, I have been addicted to AOL Instant Messenger.

I discovered this computer program when I was an intern at a law firm in the summer of 1997.  Unbeknownst to the law firm’s elders, AIM quickly became a favored form of secret communication between and amongst the younger associates.  When I graduated law school and took a job at that same firm–a shitty job that placed me in front of a computer all day–I needed something to keep me sane.  Enter AOL Instant Messenger.

I despise the telephone.  So since 1998, it is not an exaggeration to say that I have typed more words into AIM message boxes in the aggregate than I have spoken.  I’m not kidding. 

It started at the big law firm.  There, my addiction was both born and nurtured.  It took management several years to discover that most of its employees under the age of 30 were stealing paychecks whist LOL’ing their days away, with yours truly leading the charge.  Screw the water cooler–we didn’t have to even leave our chairs to bullshit with one another.  And the network of bullshitters extended far beyond the firm’s office walls; it included all the other offices in the world with internet servers!  It was AIM that brought the art of bullshitting into the modern era.  Inevitably, the firm made an attempt to firewall AIM, but we were crafty.  We figured a way around it and continued firing yellow smiley faces at one another to our hearts’ content.  By the time I left the big firm, I was so addicted to AIM that I had my father’s internet system upgraded upon my arrival.

Over AIM, I have conducted business, argued with family members, shared secrets, fallen in love, broken up with girlfriends, even maintained entire relationships that never existed anywhere outside of that little chat box.  But mostly, I have filled my AIM chatboxes with the inane small talk that is otherwise conspicuously absent from the rest of my life.  It is my main form of communication with pretty much everyone, all the way down to my mother and my girlfriend.  My list of AIM contacts is insanely long–it has to be seen to be believed.  If AIM had a list of its best clients and/or most frequent users, I guarantee you I’d be near the top of it.

Unfortunately, AOL Instant Messenger has a deleterious effect on my ability to concentrate while I’m playing online poker.  Three active poker tables is enough to clog one’s monitor and mind; five additional flashing boxes filled with and “yo what up’s,” “BRBs,” and “wheeeeeees” make optimal poker decision making nearly impossible.  Going forward, I can no longer answer my friend’s inquiries regarding the roster of the 1987 New York Knicks, my girlfriend’s sage observations from the prior night’s American Idol and my mother’s investigative reports on my dinner plans for the week while simultaneously deciding whether or not I should checkraise “BigErn420” all-in with an open ended straight draw on table three. 

The worst AIM/poker mishap, of course, is the dreaded misclick:   this occurs when a contested hand is abruptly interrupted by an AOL window at the very moment that i’m selecting a course of action, and inadvertantly redirects my cursor as I point and click.  It’s nice to hear from an old friend on AIM, but when the price is an accidental preflop reraise with 10-4 offsuit, it kind of ruins things. 

It has taken me a very long time to do something about it, but I am not working at 100% capacity with AIM open.  It is time for a change (you are free to observe that I never even considered this measure in my former profession).  In the next few days, I will cease using AOL Instant Messenger while I play poker online.  My fellow AIM users:  if you see me online, it means I’m not playing poker.  And I’m always playing poker.  I expect to suffer severe withdrawal, so wish me luck, but it has to be done.  Bye, everyone.  😦

And another change is afoot:  Starting this week, I will be gracing New York City’s poker clubs much more regularly.  I have been passing up the free money that flies around in these joints for far too long.  This decision is based on a single hand that I witnessed last week at a certain midtown card club.  I decided to accompany my friend Jon to the club, and I sat down in the 2-5 NL game.  Then this transpired:

Player A is in late position with approximately $2000.  Player B is on the button with approximately $1200.  Both are playing normally until this hand is dealt.  All fold to Player A, who makes it $35 to go.  I am sitting between them and fold.  Player A reraises to $70, and the blinds fold.  Player B puts in the third raise, to $250.  Player B calls.  The flop comes A-K-10 rainbow.  Player A bets $50 into the $500 pot.  Player B raises to $200.  Player A calls.  The turn is another ace.  Player A bets $250.  Player B calls.  The river is a four, so the board is A-A-K-10-4.  Player A puts Player B all in for aobut $450 more, and Player B instantly calls.  Player A turns over pocket kings, for a full house, kings full of aces, and player B gets pissed and fires his cards face up into the muck:  pocket dueces.

I ought to be playing in these games more often.