Blankets and I have a long and storied history.  My closest childhood companion was a downy soft flower print number that I stole from my sister Suzanne, who was then a toddler.  The blanket’s name (shamelessly lifted from a friend’s little brother’s blanket) was Gully, and Gully was amazing. 

Those were heady times in the young life of DZ.  During my childhood and early adolescence, I was a prodigious sleeper.  Blissfully unaware of grownup concepts like responsibility and worry, I would regularly embark on majestic twelve-plus hour stints of uninterrupted nighttime slumber.  And on top of that, I could (and would) take long satisfying naps wherever and whenever I pleased.  During all of this wonderful sleeping, Gully was there.  I spent my days playing stickball or touch football then taking long naps with Gully.  I spent my nights watching New York Mets games, then memorizing baseball statistics, then sleeping with Gully.  Also at some point going to grade school was involved.  What a life!  Thanks in no small part to Gully.  It was obvious that Gully possessed formidable somniferous powers.  

Alas, in my teen years Gully gradually grew so tattered that it literally began to fade away.  It also occurred to me that owning a blanket covered with pink and powder blue flowers could become a social detriment, so one day I tucked Gully away in the corner of my parents’ linen closet and bid it farewell.  The Gully Years were gone but not forgotten, not by me nor anyone else who experienced them.  In fact, Gully recently made its triumphant return in a memorable and touching speech given by Suzanne on my wedding day.  At its conclusion, I was presented with a framed piece of my sacred blanket.  It sits on a shelf above me in my office as I type this.

Gully's departure was tragic but necessary. Blanket depicted is not Gully.

But I needed no reminder of the awesome power of Gully.  For many years, I had fruitlessly searched for a substitute that might bring me back to my schluffy childhood utopia.  Janeen can attest to this.  Soon after our engagement last year, I was made to endure a rite of passage:  physically going to retail stores to create a wedding registry.  From the safe perch of my married life, with this chore a distant memory, I feel comfortable admitting that I despised creating our wedding registry.  Hated it.  With one important exception.  At each store, I insisted that we register for the fluffiest blanket for sale.  Please do not confuse “blanket” as used in this context with “bedding.”  Bedding is the stuff that goes on and around your bed.  Janeen was in charge of bedding (and most everything else on our registry), and she picked out some very expensive fancy type shit. Blanket is the thing you curl up with on the couch when you’re watching TV.  As part of my decades-long search for the new Gully, blankets are what I personally registered for.  I was quite happy when my specially selected registry blankets eventually arrived in the mail (the Nambé platters, not so much).  I eagerly tried them out in turn, but they were just okay.  I settled in with my just okay blankets and gave up on my search for the sleep inducing Gully of yesteryear.

Fast forward to the winter of 2008.

I was lounging on the couch, watching a rerun of Forensic Files.  I was draped in one of the just okay blankets, minding my own business… and then IT happened.  

And if you don’t know what IT is, you probably live under a rock somewhere.  A rock without a television set.

SNUGGIE!  I had to have it.  For the first time since 1987 (Legend of Zelda, for those keeping score at home) I had a firm answer when my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas.  Resisting the strong temptation to order the pair of Snuggies (and booklight) myself, I permitted my mother the honor.  I found it curious at the time, but Mom told me the Snuggies were actually back-ordered and that mine would not arrive until early January.  But arrive it eventually did, and boy do I love my red Snuggie!  

Everything they say on the commercial is true.  You have the freedom to do all the things you normally do in your blanketless life, but now you’re doing them while you’re enveloped in a soft fluffy blanket!  If that doesn’t sound appealing to you then you probably won’t get it, which is a little bit sad.  Trust me when I tell you that life is better in a Snuggie.  

Drinking coffee AND handling the remote!

Enjoying a refreshing cold beverage but staying warm at the same time!

I haven’t recreated my Gully Days, but Snuggie Days are certainly a close approximation.  Online poker in particular is much nicer in a Snuggie.  Those poker players who have actually read along this far:  get a Snuggie.  Play online.  You’ll thank me.

Sanpped this self-pic as I played an online session. Sunglasses prevent tells.

A funny thing has happened since my Snuggie delivery date:  The Snuggie has become a full-blown cultural phenomenon, with over four million sold.  There are scores of Snuggie devotees out there now.  Of course, as with any new cultural movement, the detractors have come out of the woodwork.  

Sadly, there is a lot of Snuggie hate going on these days.  The preceding video is merely one of many videos and written diatribes that litter the internet, all trashing the Snuggie.  Now you might find this amusing or think that it’s all in good fun, but it’s actually a pretty bad beat for me.  For while I am happy to be counted among the four million strong (and counting!) who have discovered the joy of Snugging, there is a downside to all this popularity.  The lashback is pretty extreme.  There are a lot of people who now assume that I’m a fad-following poseur, but it’s simply not true.  I am a bona fide Snuggie aficionado.  I have been searching a long time for something like the Snuggie, and now it’s here!

The greatest personal tragedy borne from all this Snuggie hate is that I will not be able to fulfill a fleeting but promising vision:  to play a live poker tournament in my Snuggie.  It is obvious that my infectious and unbridled Snuggie love would be misconstrued as a desperate plea for attention.  Desperate pleas for attention are not my style, and I already feel lousy enough when I go bust; I don’t need to be booed out of the room.  I will leave Snuggie’s live poker debut to someone else.  I’ll just keep on keepin’ on, Snugging in the privacy of my home.  🙂

On Tuesday I came unhinged.  I lost my shit.  

Any self respecting tell-all poker blog should include everything.  Not just triumphant recaps of the good times and detached, sterile assessments of the bad times.  A good poker blog ought to include honest accounts of the darkest moments.  So here is a story about me freaking the fuck out.

Important preface:  Bad beat stories are the white noise of the poker world.  They are the dog barking down the block, the clatter of pans in your neighbor’s apartment, a taxi driver’s horn, the subway rumbling by.  Or for those of you who live in more bucolic settings, bad beat stories are those crickets chirping in the night or the rain pelting your window pane.  Almost every tournament ends on some kind of a bad beat or a cooler, yet people never tire of telling the same goddamned stupid stories about running two jacks into ace-ten and seeing an ace flop.  If you travel in the same circles as me, you cannot escape these insipid stories about very standard things.  Do you know someone who is fascinated by the weather and won’t stop talking about it?  It’s like hanging out with that guy every single day.  

“Unseasonably cold?  Yes, I suppose you’re right, it’s kind of chilly today.”   

“Oh wow.  Two jacks?  Yeah, there’s always an ace in the window.  Crazy.”

Yawn…

That said, I’m going to tell a couple of bad beat stories in the paragraphs that follow.  Understand that they are necessary elements in this instance.  I cannot reach the conclusion of this story (i.e., I had a meltdown!) without running through a couple of bad beat stories.  Bear with me.

Like virtually every other non-casual poker player, I’ve been educated in the Sklansky School of poker. Sklansky’s basic concepts are so well known and widely diffused that most poker players aren’t even sure where they originated or why they know them, but everyone knows his stuff.  Sklansky-ism can ultimately be boiled down to a single concept:  Expected Value (EV).  One of the tenets of EV 101, drilled into the head of every poker player worth his salt on Day One of Sklansky School, is that expected value can only be reached in the long run.  And the long run is a long, long time–statistical significance doesn’t kick in until some very large number of poker hands are played.  The short run is nothing more than a series of blips and beeps that only gain relevence when clumped together in such magnitude that they become pieces of the long run.  Think trees/forest or cells/organism here.

Since I graduated from Sklansky School a long time ago and am fully conversant in my professor’s language, I have also mastered the prescribed short run attitude.  Since the short run essentially lacks meaning, I am always stoic in victory (just doin’ my job…) and affable in defeat (“good luck everyone!”).  I don’t complain a lot when I’m visited by the bad beat fairy deep in a tournament, and I don’t thank God Almighty when I suck out in a big spot.  Acting any other way would be “results oriented,” a phrase of extreme derision in the Sklansky world.  Being “results oriented” means you are obsessed with the short term, which of course also means that you simply don’t get it.  Think of how a neo-con reacts when he hears the word “socialist.”  That’s how a true Sklansky-ite feels when he hears “results oriented.”  

But I’m not a perfect Sklansky disciple.  Despite renewed efforts to play high volume, my recent short run has not been pretty, and all those empty blips and beeps have begun to piss me off.  I want to win something soon, if only to validate the sheer number of man-hours I’ve committed to sitting on my man-ass at a table surrounded my all that freakin’ man-meat.  Sitting around and losing gets old.  Forgive me Sir Sklansky, but I need some positive reinforcement every now and then.

The story of my meltdown begins on Wednesday night, when I played my first major online tournament in many months, Full Tilt’s FTOPS Event #1.  It drew over 6,000 runners and first prize was around $250,000.  I put on my Snuggie, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and settled in to play at the 9:00 start time.  As the tournament progressed I was running good and generally having my way.  I managed to cruise into the money with a big stack.  When we were down into the final 120 players, it was about 4:00 am and the blinds were at 4,000 and 8,000 with a 1,000 ante.  I had a healthy stack of over 300,000 chips and thought that perhaps my Snuggie and I were about to witness my next big score.  Then I was moved to a new table, and soon thereafter I picked up pocket aces on the button.  I had yet to play a hand at this new table.  It was folded to the player in the hijack, with whom I had absolutely no history.  I covered him by about 50,000 chips.  He raised to 19,600 and I reraised to 57,400.  It folded back around to him and he 4-bet me, putting in almost his entire stack.  

Realizing that this was a pretty big spot, I paused and stood up to carress my velvety red Snuggie, using gentle downwards strokes, from my neck to my stomach.  “Mr. Snuggie, can my aces hold up here?” I asked aloud as I leaned forward to move the cursor over “all in” and clicked the button.  The stranger in the hijack called and turned over a surprising hand:  Queen-seven offsuit.  Um, Okay.  The board rolled out K-Q-7-x-7.  I sat there in astonished silence, then busted out a few minutes later with AK against Q-3.

The absurdity of the Q-7 hand did not sit well.  I came slightly undone.  I racked my brain for the right words but came up empty.  So I muttered “fuck you… fuck you… fuck you…” repeatedly and paced aimlessly around my apartment, unsure of how to properly release the anger welling up inside of me without waking my wife.  I settled on typing a rant on my favorite messageboard and chugging three beers.  Then I slept for a few hours.

The story resumes at Foxwoods last weekend.  In the $2,000 event, I couldn’t lay down top 2 pair on an A-J-9-3 double suited board.  My opponent had 3-3.  Game over.  In the $500 event, I dusted off my chips pretty quickly, just as Janeen and my parents arrived on the scene to lend support and watch me play.  Instead they witnessed my deteriorating emotional state firsthand as I was detached and unable to engage in normal conversation for a couple of hours.

The story concluded at Mohegan Sun on Tuesday.  The Mohegan Sun is a nice casino with a nice poker room and very nice employees, but the “Winter Chill” poker series drew little interest from the poker community.  I arrived to find very short fields in the main events with little side action.  Still, I figured I’d make the most of it, starting with the $600 Event on Tuesday morning, which drew a paltry 99 runners.  

In that tournament I chipped up during the first two levels, growing my stack to 18,000 by the first break.  I overplayed a couple of hands in levels two and three, and by the time the 150-300 + 25 ante level arrived, my stack was back down near the starting number of 10,000.  At that time a new player was moved to my table, a doughy young kid wearing a backwards cap and some kind of gold medallion.  He was probably the chip leader of the event with around 30,000 chips. The kid proceeded to lose most of those chips in a quick succession of hands, the last of which was a bad beat that tilted him severely.  He said a few angry things that I couldn’t quite make out.  Then he clearly announced:  “I have no idea why I played this stupid thing.  I’m going all in blind on every hand until I’m busted.”

On the next deal he kept his promise, gathering up his chips and dumping them in the middle without looking at his hole cards.  He got no action then he turned his cards face up:  8-5 offsuit.  As the next hand was dealt, he still looked perturbed and was holding his stack in his right hand, which was hovering over the center of the table.  The implication was clear:  once it was his turn to act, he’d be moving all in blind again.  He was in middle position and I was under the gun. Before I peeled my cards, I decided that I’d openlimp Q-8 or better, then call his shove unless there was action behind him.  I looked down, found two red queens (!) and limped in.  The action folded to Tiltboy and he shoved.  Everyone folded back to me and I happily called.  I turned over my queens, then Tiltboy reached down and flipped over… two black aces.  The entire table erupted in cheers, the board bricked out, and the dealer sent Tiltboy most of my chips.  On the next hand, Tiltboy jammed in the dark for a third time.  This time he had 5 high and he gave all his chips (and mine) to a guy who held pocket tens. 

I sat silently in my chair amidst the commotion with a blank expression on my face.  My demeanor didn’t change at all.  In my mind I neither marveled at nor cursed my latest misfortune.  It certainly registered, but something was blocking me from perceiving it normally.  Deep down something odd was happening.  It felt like a series of little clicks and snaps.  They were barely perceptible at first, but grew more intense… click click snap snap snap SNAP…

My sanity was slowly breaking loose from its moorings, teetering unsteadily, then drifting off to sea.  Off it went, disappearing into the horizon.  Wheeeee…. As it happened, I instinctively folded a few unplayable hands.  Then I began to look around.  The dealer was disinterestedly pitching cards around the table, one at a time.  I looked at the other eight faces.  Some of them were still laughing about something.  Probably those pocket aces.  I looked at their eyes.  They were watching each other, then watching the cards fly by, then looking down, then back up again.  Boy, were they eager to pick those cards up and take a peek.  Where was I?  Wheeeeeee…..

On my final hand of the tournament I had J-10 offsuit in the small blind.  I had around 2800 chips left and the blinds were now 200-400 with a 50 ante.  Someone limped in middle position, I completed, and the big blind checked his option.  The flop came Jc-6c-2d, and I got it all in against the big blind, who held 7c2c and covered me easily.  When a club hit the river, the gentleman in the big blind stood up and raised his right fist in the air with his elbow bent, like a home plate umpire confirming a foul-tipped strike three.  Instead of my usual “good game, good luck everyone,” I offered no words.  Instead I stood up, turned to my left and looked the guy right in the face.  I smiled at him, then mocked him by imitating his gesture.  Yer out!  And I was.  Out to lunch.       

I tottered out of the room and meandered back to the parking garage.  I got into the elevator, but I couldn’t remember which floor I had parked on.  Probably Floor 3 or Floor 4.  I tried Floor 4 first.  I got out and walked around.  Nope.  As I walked back to the elevator to try Floor 3, I felt absurd.  Not because I was running bad. And not because I play a card game for a living.  It was because I spend an inordinate amount of time in parking garages.  I wondered how many people in the world spent as much time as I in parking garages. Very few.  Very few indeed.  Not only did I use parking garages frequently, I often could not locate my car, so I walked circles through those parking garages way more than was normal.  I had to be among the world leaders in parking garage time!  Wheeeeeeee…. I eventually found my car, then drove back to my crappy little motel and took a nap.

When I woke up from the nap I felt deceptively normal.  It was around 7:00 and I decided to return to Mohegan Sun to see what was going on.  I found that a $240 sit n’ go satellite to the following day’s $1,100 event was about to go off, so I grabbed a seat.  All ten of us threw in an additional $100 so that we were playing for three seats.  I played normal sit ‘n go poker–which I am capable of doing in any mental state, be it sleepy, drunk, delirious, or in this case, insane–and then we were four handed.  The approximate chip counts were as follows:

Player 1:  14,000

Player 2:  14,000

Player 3 (me):  5,800

Player 4:   6,200

The blinds were 400-800 with no ante.  I was in the small blind and Player 4 was in the big blind.  It was folded to me and I moved all in with 5-3.  This is a standard bubble shove and will work 98% of the time against a player who understands ICM, but the average live player hasn’t the first clue what ICM is supposed to mean.  So I got called by A-10 and bubbled the thing.  This one was my fault, as the mathematically appropriate play does not necessarily equal the optimal play.  It’s opponent-specific, and I didn’t think that situation over well enough.

Wheeeeee….. I made the familiar walk back to the parking garage in a catatonic state.  I found my car quickly this time.  I started it and navigated the winding ramps down to the street.  I turned right onto Route 2A, headed for that shitbag motel.  About two miles from the casino, I regained my senses.  I was present again, but holy shit was I pissed.  The detached feeling was gone, but I was still feeling crazier than a shithouse rat. I had a straitjacket-worthy coniption, thrashing around in the driver’s seat like a lunatic.  Then I let loose a startling, ear-splitting, blood-curdling scream, followed by an epic string of profanity that made the corpse of George Carlin blush.

I’m not sure where this episode ranks on the “results oriented” scale, but at that particular moment in time I would have happily jammed EV up your mother’s ass.  It was a long time coming.  I quit Mohegan Sun for the rest of the meet and drove home the next morning and haven’t played poker since.  Now I feel a bit better.

And that was a chimpanzee riding on a segway!

I’m suffering from a lack of blogger’s motivation right now, so I’m gonna keep this one short.

Loyal readers may remember the days when I used to moan and groan about how impossibly bad I used to run at Borgata.  Well that guy’s back!  The last few weeks were déjà vu all over again.  I’ve stumbled out of the gate in 2009 with poor performances in both Biloxi and AC.  I’ve spent most of January 2009 living out of a suitcase, switching from one hotel room to another while steadily depleting my bankroll.  Sounds fun, doesn’t it?!  Meh.  It’s not the first bad month I’ve had and it won’t be the last.  But a juicy score of some kind sure would hit the spot right about now. 

I came close to throwing my first bona fide live action poker shitfit during the only main event in which I cashed, the $1,000 buy in Event.  The tournament started on Saturday, January 17th–the day before Championship Sunday, when fooball’s AFC and NFC Championship Games are contested.  Championship Sunday is a big day in my world–the final day of real NFL football until the following September (the Super Bowl is Amateur Night).  It is a day that I relish spending with friends on a couch somewhere.  I entered the $1,000 event without securing a Saturday night hotel room, knowing that I’d either bust out then drive home for Championship Sunday or make the money on Saturday and enjoy a big AC payday on Sunday whilst missing Championship Sunday.  Fair tradeoff.

Once the tournament kicked off, I built a big stack and cruised through most of the long first day, but managed to lose most of it in the early morning hours of Championship Sunday as the bubble approached.  I was forced into the role of cockroaching short stack, just looking to sneak into the money.  The Borgata’s Day 1’s typically last until there are 27 players left or 2:00 am, whichever comes first.  But in this particular tournament, the witching hour of 2:00 was fast approaching, and we were still a long way from the bubble.  Before I knew it, I had cockroached my way to 2:15 am.  I was among the shortest stacks in the room and we were four players from the money.  Then the tournament directors announced that play had concluded for the night.  What?!

I was enraged by this development.  The prospect of somehow finding a hotel room, returning the following day, then busting on the bubble and missing the football games loomed large.  My blood was boiling, and I threw a mini-tantrum, bitching at everyone within earshot and kicking an empty chair over.  I sought out the floor manager to protest, but it was the end of the dealers’ shift and nothing could be done.  I was shit out of luck and would have to comb the area for a hotel room, incur that expense, then return the next day with my mini-stack.  Fuck my life!  The Borgata undoubtedly runs tournaments better than pretty much anyone, but this situation seriously pissed me off.  I ended up scrapping my way into the money for a mincash, but I did miss most of the NFL action.  So it goes.

It wasn’t all doom ‘n gloom down in dirty Jerz.  There were some positives to take away from the 2009 Borgata Winter Open, to wit:

-Per usual, I did fairly well in sit ‘n go’s, which limited the hemorrhaging.

-Partially due to the fact that I’ve now achieved the status of reluctant fixture on the East Coast circuit but mostly due to the impressive inroads made by Poker Players International, I made a slew of new friends on this trip.  Truthfully, “friends” is probably a misnomer.  The tournament poker circuit is a hyper-competitive environment filled with hyper-competitive people who are obsessed with their craft.  Poker (laced with base insecurities) permeates every conversation between pros.  Nothing else is ever discussed.  It’s a pretty bizarre environment.  Everyone in the room knows your lifetime tournament earnings, but not a soul in the room has a clue what your wife or kids’ names are.  And no tournament pro thinks anyone else can play a lick; everyone else thinks you’re an absolute donkey and wonders aloud from across the room about how you’ve managed to win half a million dollars.  In that atmosphere, making friends (in the true sense of the word) is a daunting challenge, because the guy who just bought you a beer is ultimately chasing the same dream that you are.  So I’ll just say that I met a bunch of people who didn’t suck (and with whom I wouldn’t mind spending more time) on this trip and leave it at that.   

-I had what can only be described as a conjugal visit when Janeen came down for one night during the second week of the meet.  We had a nice dinner at an old timey AC restaurant I hadn’t tried before, Angelo’s Fairmount Tavern.  It’s a quality, cheap red sauce Italian joint.  Very reminiscent of our home ‘hood of Carroll Gardens.  We stayed at a (non-casino) hotel called the Chelsea, which is part of a recently refurbished high rise near the Tropicana.  Suprisingly swanky accommodations.  After about ten straight days of playing, talking, sleeping and eating poker, it was a breath of fresh air to see my girl and get the hell out of the casino. 

-On route 30 in Absecon, ten minutes from Borgata, I discovered DC and Philly’s answer to In ‘N Out Burger.  It’s called Five Guys Burger and Fries, and it’s a chain that serves food that is remarkably similar to the hallowed In ‘N Out.  Fresh salted meat patties and french fries that are cut up on the premises.  Also great toppings for the burgers like sauteed mushrooms, green peppers and A-1 sauce.  I’ll be back!

-I am functionally retarded when it comes to computers, so I am thrilled to announce that after a long struggle, last night I finally completed my new office setup (thanks to my folks for the X-Mas present and to Christian, Joe and others for helping my dumb ass set everything up).  It features a new machine with two big high-resolution monitors and the new version of Pokertracker.  I’m now officially out of excuses for not making money playing online. 

Yes, that is Freeman McNeil taking a handoff from Richard Todd.

Since I haven’t really discussed any specific hands in this blog for a long time, I’ll close by describing one from the Borgata Main Event:

Day 2 of the tournament.  I have around 90,000 chips, which is slightly above average.  Seated to my direct right is an older guy with about 80,000 who is playing like his hair is on fire.  He’s a very bad player with no concept of position or hand values relative thereto.  He’s getting involved in a lot of hands and his demise is inevitable; it’s only a question of when and to whom will he be dumping his chips.  He’s openlimping a lot (also openraising a lot), and on some of those occasions I have naturally raised to isolate, which has led to a couple of conversations between us.  In short, he’s not liking the pressure I’m putting on him.  The blinds are 500-1000.

I am in third position with AJo.  The player under the gun folds and Hair On Fire raises to 3000.  I’ve seen him show down all sorts of crap on the hands he’s raised, so I repop it to 10,000.  I’m happy when it’s folded all the way back to him.  He calls.  Big pot brewing.  There’s around 22,000 in there.

The flop comes Qs-9h-5h.  I have no hearts.  HOF thinks briefly before moving all in for 70,000.  Yes, 70,000 into a 22,000 pot against a guy who covers him.  Back in the day I’d have folded my hand very quickly, but in the past few years I’ve learned to make big calls in situations like these, where the betting only makes sense as a draw.  Could I pull the trigger here?

My first instinct was “heart draw, call!”  But then I began to think it over, and I decided that this player wasn’t quite good enough to know to checkraise for value with all of his made hands (like AQ) in this spot.  Also, older bad players can have AhKh in their range in this situation since they never 4-bet preflop with AK.  I also felt that a scared pocket pair that didn’t connect like 10-10 was part of a bad player’s formula.  After talking to HOF for about 20 seconds in an effort to elicit information, I decided that made hands and combo draws that crush me (QhJh?  AhKh?) were too prevalent and folded.  As soon as my cards hit the muck, HOF flipped over Ah4h and smiled.  What a muppet.   

That’s all for now.  Next stop:  Connecticut Injun Country.