The drought is over.  I have my first substantial live tournament cash of 2007. 

It came in the $1,000 buy in event at the Harrah’s WSOP Warmup yesterday.  This tournament was seriously under advertised, and the 1k event drew only 58 players.  The field consisted of mostly Atlantic City regulars and young internet pros (no fewer than three fielded calls from their mothers in my presence), with a smattering of dead money types.  I have a small edge in this situation, as I’m both a quiet player and a relative nobody, but one that knows the names, repuations and playing styles of many internet players.  I’ve played with all of them online and know who they are.  But they have no idea who I am.

I came in fourth in the tournament.  In light of that, the following were unusual: 

-I showed down only one hand before the final table.  At the final table, other than situations where I called an all-in, I showed down exactly one hand.

-I was never dealt pocket aces, pocket queens, or pocket jacks.  I was dealt KK once and got no action.  I held AK twice.  The classic chip-accumulater, where someone runs into your monster hand, never happened. 

In other words, I won no huge pots.  I won many smallish to medium sized pots with continuation bets.  I bluffed postflop more than I typically do.  A few interesting hands and situations:

At my first table, at the 100-200 level, a TAG player limped in middle position and I overlimped right behind him with the KdJd.  Both blinds called.  The flop came Q-J-4 with one diamond.  It was checked around.  The turn was the six of diamonds.  The blinds checked to the MP limper and he bet 600.  I put him on a jack, a middle pair, or some kind of a draw and raised to 1400.  The blinds folded, MP limper said “queen-jack, eh?” and folded.  Thus began my ascent. 

Ari Engel, a.k.a. ‘Bodog Ari’ was at my first table.  He’s an amazing tournament pro who until recently was too young to play live events.  He’s a nice jewish kid from Brooklyn with a very quiet, semi-nebbishy demeanor.  He’s too young to grow a beard, but he’s trying.  The result is a scraggly little mess that he nervously plays with.  His vocal announcements at the table (e.g. “raise,” “reraise,” etc.) are barely audible.  It’s his play that establishes his presence.  He gets leverage in many pots by raising in position, especially if a player or two limps in front of him.  He’s also very dangerous after the flop and will test his opponent, even if he isn’t holding much of a hand.  Thankfully he was two seats to my right, so I had position on him.  We never really tangled.  I did see him make an amazing call later in the tournament: 

When we redrew for seats with 2 tables left, Ari once again ended up at my table.  We were down to around 14 players with the top 9 making the money.  Ari was on the button, and it was folded to the cutoff, who made a very large openshove for about twelve big blinds, or around eight times the pot.  Ari just barely had the cutoff covered and contemplated for around a minute and a half before silently reraising all in and turning over Ah7h.  The cutoff grimaced and tabled KQo.  In Ari’s position, I’d fold without much thought, because my tournament would be on the line and I’d assume that bigger aces are a major part of the shover’s range.   But i’m not Bodog Ari.  The flop brought a king and Ari was out of the tournament a few minutes later.  A few players at the table were critical of Ari’s play in this hand, but in my opinion, it was an amazing call.  Ari obviously plays tournaments to win, not to cash, which increases his overall equity.  He somehow correctly deduced that he was a favorite against the shover’s range, and he was in fact favored to win the hand.  The detractors criticized the concept of calling off all your chips as a 60-40 favorite, but an edge is an edge, and it is safe to assume that Ari would have been very difficult to deal with if he acquired a big stack on the bubble.     

Another interesting hand I played occurred when we were down to three tables.  The blinds were at 100-200 with a 25 ante, and I was on the button.  I called a raise from a player I recognized as “Hoodini2810” from Pokerstars on the button with the 54 of spades.  The blinds folded and we played heads up as the flop came A-8-3 rainbow.  My opponent bet 1000.   I knew he’d fire at this flop with or without an ace, so I floated and waited to see what the turn would bring.  The turn was a deuce.  My opponent checked, and I took down the pot with a bet of 2500.  It was only after I had thrown the chips into the pot that I realized that I had hit a gutshot wheel draw and was holding the current nuts.  Oops.  I probably would have bet the turn either way, as we were both relatively deep stacked.

At the final table I drew a very good seat, in only 5th position in chips but seated to the immediate left of the two chipleaders.  We reached the money when I made a big blind math call against a shortstack (the aforementioned ‘Hoodini’) with Q3 and sucked out against Q9.  We then played two full levels (over two hours of poker) 8-handed before the next elimination.  This was a grueling period during which I played normal ABC poker, picking up chips by stealing from the tighter players, and staying out of the way of the aggressive guys, with an occasional resteal against them.  I had a tight image and used that to my advantage on a couple of occasions where I made continuation bets with nothing against tight guys, and one large resteal with nothing against the most agressive player at the table.  Then, with 6 players remaining, I won my first and only classic race of the tournament with 1010 against a shorter stack’s AQs. 

Eventually, the tournament worked its way down to four players:  1) the very tough, very solid Joe Brooks, a.k.a. ‘JOEYTHEB,’ who was second in chips; 2) the shortest stack, a young, very LAG-y player named Kyle, seated to my right; and 3) the chipleader, seated to my left.  More on the chipleader:  I mentioned earlier that there was a smattering of dead money in the tournament.  Well, one of the dead money guys managed to have the chiplead when we were four handed.

This guy was one of the funniest nits I’ve ever played with.  He both resembled and had the mannerisms of the character “Milton” from the movie Office Space.  Yep, the guy who loves his stapler and ends up blowing up the building.  He had super-thick glasses that made his eyes appear very large, a strange nervous stutter, ill-fitting clothes, and a habit of involuntarily rocking in his chair (think Leo Mazzone) whilst muttering to himself.  I hadn’t sat with him until the final table, but he apparently had engineered a huge suckout to get there.  Then, at the final table, here is how he acquired the chiplead:  first having played about 2% of the hands for three hours, he was down to about 10 big blinds and was seated in the big blind when I was in the small blind.  I had J10s and shoved him, presuming no resistance.  Instead, he checked his hole cards and practically spilled his drink getting his chips in.  He had pocket aces, and they held up.  For his next trick, after folding his big blind to the LAG-y player’s raise about ten consecutive times, he finally reshoved Mr. LAG and was instacalled.  This time LAG had a hand:  QQ.  Milton had A7o.  But the flop came 7-7-x, and voila, new chipleader.

Unfortunately, I did not have position on Milton, and I was card dead.  Not a good combination.  Both Brooks and the LAG recognized that Milton was a total nit, and began to reshove Milton’s hesitant steal attempts.  Each time, he’d pause, say “I know I have the best hand,” and then toss his cards into the muck with trembly hands.  I really needed him to call these shoves with his monstrous stack, but he was not experienced enough to realize that neither Brooks nor the LAG had to have a hand to make their shoves.  So he slowly leaked chips to them until I was the lone shortstack.  On my final hand, I was down to about five times the pot, was seated in the big blind with KQo, and I beat LAG into the pot on his obvious ‘any two’ shove from the small blind.  He had a live J7 and flopped two pair.  Adios.  On Cardplayer, the nit is listed as the winner, but i’m not sure whether or not they made a deal after I got bounced.  If not, Milton is one very unlikely tournament winner.

I cashed for a relatively paltry $4,400, which is not a big payout in a $1,000 tournament.  But I feel this cash might turn out to be an important one.  The schneid is finally over.  It is very hard not to be results-oriented in tournament poker.  The correct way to measure your ability and progress is by examing tournaments on a hand-by-hand basis, and digging for weaknesses in your playing patterns.  I have been doing this all year, and despite having no cashes to my credit, I honestly felt that I was playing well.  I never sit there blinding myself off.  I adapt well to the other players at my table.  I have put my money in as a favorite in almost all of my elimination hands.  The one place where I didn’t love my game was in my lack in inventiveness in postflop play. 

For the most part, it’s been a pretty simple diagnosis:  I’ve run bad.  That’s the unfortunate thing about tournament poker:  you’re always a dog to cash, and droughts are simply part of the landscape.  Still, no matter how well-adjusted, rational and analytical you are, continuous failure is bound to toy with your confidence, and I’m afraid that I’m no exception to this rule.  The most important thing I am taking away from yesterday’s tournament is the knowledge that I still know what I’m doing.   

From Tuesday May 1, 2007 through Sunday May 6, 2007, I played no poker whatsoever.  This was my longest poker hiatus in at least a year and a half.  The reason for the break was a gift my sister, brother-in-law and I gave to my parents last Christmas:  a vacation to Nashville, Tennessee and to the Kentucky Derby.  We selected Nashville because it was the birthplace and childhood home of my paternal grandfather.  We selected the Kentucky Derby because it seemed fun.

I’ve been really uninspired blogwise lately, so I will just provide some short snippets of information about the vacation, broken down by day.

Tuesday:  The vacation hadn’t started yet, but it was my birthday.  In November, I managed to secure a reservation for four at Rao’s, an old Italian restaurant up in East Harlem.  After hearing a bunch of lukewarm reviews, I was very happily surprised.  It is a true old school experience.  There is no menu, the manager comes out and tells you what he has that night.  There are only two seatings per night.  The food is simple but delicious.  Almost everyone in the place is obviously a “regular,” and throughout the meal several of the proprietors come over to introduce themselves.  Around 11:00, they turn on a jukebox and a bunch of old mafioso types sing along to the doo-wop songs.  It’s a totally authentic, unique experience.  I can’t recommend this restaurant highly enough.  Good times.

Wednesday:  the crew consists of my parents, my sister, my brother in law, my 10-month old nephew, Janeen and I.  The evening flight goes off without a hitch, but when we land and go to the rental car counter, it occurs to me that this vacation will be reminiscent of the old childhood stationwagon tour:  we’ve rented a massive Dodge Caravan, and the seven of us (and our luggage) fill the entire thing to the brim.  Ezra (my nephew) has an ungodly amount of accoutremont:  a stroller, a car seat, a bunch of other stuff.  I’m a bit apprehensive about the trip, as I have not spent four consecutive days with my parents (or anyone, for that matter) in many, many years.  Partly to minimize the amount I’ll have to interact with everyone, and partly because I like driving, I unilaterally decide that I’ll be the family chauffer for the entire trip.  Once we’re inside the truck, I discover that my father has brought his GPS, which is an amazing invention.  On the vacation it ends up saving us countless minutes and a lot of aggravation.

Thursday:  Time to explore Nashville.  First stop was Andrew Jackson’s plantation.  To the curators’ credit, they didn’t sugarcoat anything:  we learned that Andrew Jackson was the largest slaveholder in the region, and a generally nasty one.  His mansion has no bathrooms.  He shat in a pan then called upon his house slaves, who dumped it out back.  I also learned that our forefathers bathed only 3 or 4 times a year.  We had a nice steak dinner at Ruth’s Chris. 

Later on, everyon except Ezra and my parents decided to grab a beer in Nashville’s famous nightlife district, which is nothing more than 2 blocks of bars.  Living in NYC really skews one perspective of what constitutes “urban.”  By my standards, Nashville is tiny.  It is also, quite apparently, the place where many Southern musicians migrate to “make it.”  We discovered this by stumbling into a karaoke bar, where any thoughts of performing were quickly squelched by a long string of pro-level performances of country hits by struggling Nashville singers.  I have to give the local karaoke mavens credit.  They were all blasted and having a good ‘ol time.  Some of the performances were quite memorable in both their quality and hilarity.   Here’s a snippet of video from a guy we called “Soggybottom” singing something about his boogie-woogie choo-choo baby, or something. 

[janeen’s video goes here]

From there, we bounced around from bar to bar.  Suzanne (my sister) wanted to see line dancing, but there was no line dancing to be had.  Just a string of very large places, all featuring stages, live country/rock music and patrons of all ages drinking one of the three bottled beers available:  Bud, Bud Light, or Coors Light.

Friday:  Janeen and I got up much later than everyone else (I was still on poker time) and discovered that everyone else had consumed a big southern breakfast in the hotel.  This was not a problem, as there were at least six fast food places within a half mile of our hotel.  At noon, each one had a drive thru line over 10 cars long.  People in Nashville–and, I suspect, the entire South–love fast food in a way northeastern Americans don’t.  Maybe it’s because they have fewer options, maybe it’s some other reason, but the fast food joints in and around Nashville were always packed.  So if you’re gonna open a Wendy’s franchise, do it down South. 

Next, we toured Nashville.  We took a bus tour, which took us all over the city:  past the bars we had frequented the night before, past all the run-down country music studios, past an area which was virtually all hospitals (Nashville is the health care capital of the South), and through the park where my grandfather rode his horse every weekend as a child.  Once the bus tour was over, we hit the Country Music Hall of Fame.  While I am not a fan of America’s favorite genre of music, I was able to appreciate the musem, which had a lot of cool listening stations.  I confirmed what I had already suspected:  I like bluegrass, I like Johnny Cash, I like old ratty steel guitar songs… but I despise modern country music.  We had some authentic BBQ at some dirty little place after the museum. 

The next stop was the Grand Ol’ Opry, but we had a few hours to kill and no hotel room, so we drove to the mall at Opry Mills and did nothing.  After successfully killing the requisite time, it was Opry time.  To put it bluntly, the Grand Ol’ Opry is a place for geriatrics to hear old country music by old washed up country stars in a genteel environment.  The most interesting thing about the Opry is that it is a live radio show, with live commercials read on the air in between songs.  We were subjected to the same commercials for Cracker Barrel, U.S. Bank and Vietti Chili (“it’s a kick in a can!”) over and over again.  In between the commercials, crusty old country crooners were trotted out on stage, and they sang, as best they could, their old hit(s).  It was all very subdued:  the only time the crowd got a little rowdy was when an old dude called Mel McDaniels impolored them to “stand up for America” accompanied by a video of Old Glory waving in the breeze.  The absolute lowlight was a group of white men in traditional Mexican attire doing a cheesed-up set of mariachi songs in “honor” of Cinco de Mayo.

Thus ended phase one of the trip.  It was around midnight, and it was time to hightail it to rural Bardstown, Kentucky, where we had booked a bed & breakfast for the remainder of the trip.  The trip took us up Interstate 65 and then some very dark highway, and it was longer than expected.  It didn’t help that we passed from the central time zone back into the eastern time zone on this journey, so an hour of sleep got flushed.  The GPS also screwed up for the first and only time, and we lost an additional half hour driving in a circle in the middle of nowhere.  By the time we pulled up at the bed & breakfast, and fumbled our way into our hostess’ house, it was around 3:00 AM.    Breakfast was going to be served at 8:45.  Crash.

Saturday:  Derby Day started off with a southern breakfast, consisting of a lot of eggs and pork, served by the owner of the quaint bed & breakfast.  The hostess made things significantly less quaint by gratuitously mentioning that she was no longer married, had buried both of her children, and was only running the bed & breakfast because she needed the money.  Gulp.  Pass the butter. 

We were about 40 minutes away from Louisville and left for the Derby bright and early.  My father, my brother in law and I were dressed in jackets and ties.  My sister, my mother and Janeen wore dresses, heels and big goofy hats.  I had heard numerous reports on both Louisville and the Kentucky Derby, so when we got to the Derby, none of the following facts surprised me:

-Louisville, Ky. is a DUMP.

-Churchill Downs is massive.  Over 150,00 people show up.  Over half this many drink heavily.

-Various small industries spring up around the Derby.  Louisville residents charge Derby-goers to park on their lawns, and residents turn their cars into cabs for the day, as your parking spot is unlikely to be anywhere near the track.

Our day at the races was pleasant enough.  Our tickets were for a pavilion off to the side of the track (literally built on top of the parking lot), so we had a private seating area in a tent, open bar, and our own mutuel windows.  While this setup was away from the action, it was perfect for Ezra and my parents.  In any event, being away from the “action” was all right by me.  At the Kentucky Derby, “action” entails standing in unbearable crowds, avoiding fistfights and vomit, and pondering exactly who these trashy people are, so it was all good.  It’s not that I have a huge problem with drunk rednecks, I really don’t.  It’s more about my rather NYC-centric idea of partying, which is at direct odds with Kentucky Derby partying.  I like to have my fun late at night, when the rest of the world is asleep.  This preference is likely honed from years of living in New York.  In my world, the days are for working or relaxing, they’re not for getting fucked up.  That’s what God made nighttime for.  The sea of trashed humanity on display at 2:00 pm at the Kentucky Derby does not appeal to me.      

Anyway, I hit a nice exacta in the fourth race, but lost thereafter, having picked the horse that ran second in the Derby.

Leaving the track and getting to the car was the lowlight of the trip.  I’m not providing any details.  Suffice to say it was a major pain in the ass.  When we finally got to the vacationmobile, we drove back to the bed & breakfast, ordered pizza, ate it, and crashed.

Sunday:  The last day of the trip was a quirky haphazard tour of rural Kentucky.  First stop was a down-home Civil War museum, which featured a lot of authentic artifacts and interesting information about the battles in the western theater.  Next, we made a stop on Kentucky’s “Bourbon Trail,” which is a series of bourbon distilleries.  Think wine tour, but with whiskey.  We went to the Maker’s Mark distillery, where we saw each of the various stages of bourbon production.  Then, headed for the highway, we came upon a small parking lot on the side of the road, behind which sat an old log cabin.  The sign said “Lincoln’s Childhood Home.”  Okay, why not.  We stopped for 10 minutes.

The last stop was for food at a Cracker Barrel.  For those unfamiliar, Cracker Barrel is a peculiar little chain of diners that serves Southern comfort food and always has a general store attached to it.  Here is Ezra, the world’s happiest baby–he didn’t cry for the entire trip, enduring a full four days in the back of a minivan–having some fun at Cracker Barrel.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/lteQIv36nuQ” width=”480″ height=”360″ /]

And that was more or less it.  Griswald adventure complete.  Back to poker! 

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.

I’ve tried everything else.  At this point, I’ve been running bad for so long that it’s time for a desperation move:  yes, that’s right.  A dumb, superstitious game!

I hereby announce that I will not cut my hair until I show a five-figure profit in a single day.*  Here’s the already unkempt starting point for your viewing pleasure.

In other news, I am just about finishing rereading the book that planted the “go pro” seed in my head way back in 2002:  The Big Deal by Anthony Holden.  It’s a quality book.  The all-time poker masterpiece is A. Alvarez’s Biggest Game In Town, but The Big Deal is quite good as well.  And the sequel will be published in May.

-Furry Sug 

*unless Janeen makes me.

My title defense up here at Foxwoods ended with failure.

How it went down: 

I played some good poker and slowly built my starting stack of 5,o00 to around 30,000 with about 200 players out of 950 left.  Along the way I made a big hand when I flopped top set with 99 and filled up on the turn.  I was moved to a table where a player had a huge stack of around 80 or 90k, and I promptly got in a few confrontations with him.  This player was playing classic big stack poker, playing practically every pot in position, then putting his opponents all in.  It was obvious that he didn’t always have a hand when he did this.  The last of our confrontations before my final hand depleted my stack to around 22,000.

Just before the hand that busted me, another large stack was moved to my table.  I had no read on him, but he was older, scruffy-looking guy with around 30,000 chips.  With the blinds at 600-1200 with an ante, I picked up AK offsuit in early position and made a standard raise to 3600.  The giant stack, sitting two seats to my left, called (of course) and the new guy completed from the big blind.  The flop came K-7-4 with two spades, and the big blind checked.  I was virtually positive that the bully sitting on my left would bet if I checked to him, and I wanted to get all my chips in on this hand, so I checked as well.  The big stack did exactly what I expected and hoped:  he made a 10,000 chip bet.  Then the the big blind called the 10,000 cold.  This was a bizarre play; he was calling off almost half his remaing stack.  I surmised that this guy was either slowplaying a set or more likely was a very bad player with a spade draw or medium strength made hand. 

Either way, I knew I was ahead of the bully and I was probably favored against the scruffy guy, so it wasn’t time to turn back.  So I moved all in for my remaining 18,000.  The bully folded, but the big blind called immediately and flipped over the 6-2 of spades.  I personally wouldn’t bother with the 6-2 of spades preflop, but I guess Scruffball was getting decent pot odds.  Playing 6-2 suited as part of a loose strategy, especially with the giant stack involved in the hand, is defensible.  The postflop play, on the other hand, was just plain awful.  Once Scruffy flopped a baby spade draw, he has to either lead out or check with the intention of either folding or checkraising all-in.  When the bully bet 10k, calling off almost half your stack with a weak draw?  Very bad poker.  

In any event, the flop had been dealt, half the table was visibly and audibly shocked by the hand Scruffy had staked his tournament on, and Scruffy was out of his seat screaming for a spade.  I sat there impassively.  The turn brought a safe card.  Now Scruffy was realy yelling for a spade.  I shot him a dirty look and muttered “put a red card up there” to the dealer.   Thee quarters of the field in the tournament was gone, and I was about to win a huge pot and have a serious pile of chips shoved my way.  Then I was going to take this tournament over.  No spade….  The dealer burned and turned…. the nine of spades. 

Scruffy was very happy.  I was not.  I walked off without saying a word.  No repeat.

Since I was a lazy student and an indifferent lawyer, the only thing I’d ever been the reigning champion of was my fantasy football league.  That is, until last March, when I made the biggest score of my then nascent career, winning the $600 NL event at the 2006 Foxwoods Poker Classic.

The 2007 edition of this event starts Wednesday morning.  I’d like to say that everyone will be gunning for the champ, but the truth is that I’ll be just another face in a huge field of players.  Which is just fine by me.  A repeat would be great, but I’ll settle for merely cashing.  I’ll let everyone knows what happens.

Poker is out of control, and my four years of experience has rendered me a jaded, grouchy veteran of the scene.

Over the weekend, I decided that I was going to play a $300 preliminary tournament at the WSOP Circuit at Caesar’s Atlantic City on Monday.  So on Sunday night, I made a hotel reservation and set my alarm clock.  I woke up bright and early, hopped in my car and sped down the Garden State Parkway, arriving at Caesars’s at 11:00 for the 12:00 tournament.  Plenty of time to spare, right?  Wrong. 

Upon arriving in the tournament area, I was greeted by a line that would make Six Flags blush.  There was a train of human beings wrapped along all four walls of a large ballroom, inching its way towards an overcrowded cashier area, where the line doubled back on itself numerous times in a chained off maze-like formation, just like it would at an amusement park.  There had to be 800 people waiting to register for the tournament.  After creeping forward towards the cashier for over an hour, I finally made it within striking distance, at which point I was informed that the tournament was sold out and that I would be alternate #42.  This means that I would not be permitted to join the festivities until 42 players busted out.  Knowing that check-in time at the hotel was four hours away, and having already dedicated an early morning and several transit hours towards getting to this tournament, I reluctantly agreed to start things off on the bench, but I was pissed.

I was also annoyed at Caesars for failing to anticipate this shitshow.  There were a total of 94 tournament tables (read: tournament dealers) available, so the tournament was capped at 940 players.  This didn’t stop them from allowing over 150 alternates to sign up, of course.  I waited through nearly the entire first level of the tournament before my number was finally called.  Normally, I wouldn’t say that missing level one is too big a deal, but in this tournament, it was.  My skill level advantage over this field was immense, and the odds that I could have trapped someone for a lot of chips during level one was pretty high.

Already ticked off because I was forced to wait on the sidelines for 40 minutes while I could have been accumulating chips, I became downright incensed when I was sent not to a table in the tournament area, but to a table in Caesar’s poker room to begin play.  This required a ten-minute walk downstairs, which not only allowed alternates 43 through 50 to begin play before me, but cost me still more time during which I could have been doing damage and/or getting a read on the players at my table.  When I finally got to my table, I was not especially surprised to find that no one there knew how to play.

I have a theory:  No limit tournament poker is currently where blackjack was in the 1980’s.  Back in the 80’s, casino gambling had just been made legal for the first time on the east coast, and it was beginning to emerge as one of our country’s favorite pastimes.  Of course, the cornerstone of all casino table games, and the only one that requires the player to make any independent decisions, is blackjack.  People began to play blackjack recreationally, and many had no idea what they were doing.  This led to hundreds of books being published on the “proper” (read:  “least damaging”) way to play blackjack, and what resulted was the advent of a “basic strategy” for blackjack, which you often see suckers holding in the form of laminated business card-sized charts nowadays.  But even though this information became readily available, players continued to make mathematically nonsensical decisions.  To this day, one still regularly sees people at the blackjack table hitting 14 against a dealer showing a six, even though it is long established that this violates basic strategy.  I have to assume that the frequency of these misplays was even greater back in the 80’s, when much of America was first discovering casino gambling.

Which brings me to no limit hold ’em in 2007.  While poker is over 150 years old, and while no limit hold ’em tournaments have existed for over 30 years now, their relatively recent surge in popularity (thanks to television and the internet) has made them the gambling game of choice for many people who otherwise would be sitting at the blackjack table with their little laminated cards.  And just as they did for blackjack in the 1980’s, hundreds of books on basic no limit hold ’em strategy have flooded the market.  But that doesn’t stop entirely clueless players from entering $300 WSOP Circuit events.  After all, $300 isn’t a particularly large sum in the gambling world. 

Which brings me back to my assigned table this past Monday.  It didn’t take me long to get a line on most of the participants, many of whom were caricature-level examples of different categories of mistake prone players.  There was the older Asian guy who played every hand for any price.  There was the younger Asian guy who was a “slider”:  he’d indiscrimately move all-in if you checked to him on the turn or river.   Then there were the super-scared nits direcly to either side of me:  one wouldn’t put a dime in the pot after the flop without at least top pair.  The other didn’t know that raising preflop was an option.  He would either open-limp or call, even with big pocket pairs.  Overall, bluffing most of these players was out of the question, but the table was still ripe for the picking.  That didn’t stop me from immediately losing half my stack with AK against a player holding A4 offsuit on an A-x-x-4-x board.  When the guy turned over his two pair, i responded by not simply mucking my cards, but by winding up and firing them frisbee-style to the far end of the table, nearly putting out the eyes of an unsuspecting competitor.  And from that point forward, I was no longer quietly miffed.  What had previously been simmering inside me was brought to a boil, and I ceased to bother pretending I wasn’t grouchy.  I became that guy, the one who barks instructions at the dealers, rolls his eyes at other players’ ineptitude and openly criticizes their misplays.  Mr. Grouchy Know-It-All.

I did not, however, tilt.  I played well.  I trapped the habitual bluffer, thereby doubling up and disdainfully raking his chips toward me and loudly stacking them whilst frowning and shaking my head.  But my already sour attitude still went further south when they moved our entire table, en masse, upstairs.  The tournament director had us bag up all our chips, label the bags, and follow some floor personnel up an escalator and across the casino floor, all while the tournament clock ran.  This resulted in another fifteen minute delay and more missed hands.  Upstairs we were greeted by an altogether too common sight in these larger tournaments:  a dealer with virtually no clue what the hell he was doing.  The demand for tournament dealers still outstrips the supply, so a combination of total novices and complete idiots are pressed into duty when a big event rolls into town.  It’s ugly.  Between the move upstairs and the utter incompetence of the dealer, we played about four hands over the course of the next half hour.  I continued to stew.

Meanwhile the tournament levels were going by, and I was biding my time waiting for a hand that would stand up against a calling station.  I sat at three separate tables that were broken before I finally found a few opportunities.  At the dinner break I was somehow sitting on an average stack, and my grumpiness was finally subsiding.

After dinner, with many of the looser players in the field long gone, and with the blinds and antes now at respectable levels, I finally opened up and began to make a move.  Despite continuing to hold trash, I chipped up with surprising ease.  I was moved to yet another table, where I continued to pick spots and somehow found myself up in the top 10 or 20% of the remaining field, which was now pared down to around 150.  The money bubble was lurking at spot #81 and I was relishing my chance to run people over when it come a bit closer.  My new table had a very chatty, exciteable, trash-talking kid at it, who I was especially looking forward to tormenting.  But the most important character at this table was sitting a couple of seats to my right.  It was a guido-type kid with a very unlikely huge stack.  I am calling his stack unlikely because this guy was a huge underdog to have even survived as far as he had.  He was open-raising roughly 50% of the hands played, and when he showed down his cards, they were usually rags.  He appeared to be on a mission to either collect every chip in play or crash and burn.  I was more than happy to help him along if his fate turned out to be the latter.  All I needed was some kind of hand to attack him with.

Alas, he began to crash before I could do anything.  He lost a series of pots to the more astute players surrounding him and rapidly descended from the table’s boss stack to a medium/short stack.  This didn’t stop him from continuing his open-raising assault, however.  And it also didn’t stop him from growing visibly frustrated.  Now his raises took on a more emphatic, desperate quality, as he began muttering under his breath, all the while slamming and splashing chips toward the center.  And then we finally tangled. 

At this point his stack was roughly half the size of mine.  I was in the big blind and he was on the button, and he open raised.  I looked down at AQ, and knowing I was waaaay ahead of his range, I put him all in.  He was obviously ready to go home, because he instacalled and turned over 7-6 offsuit.  The flop came A-9-2, and I prepared to bid my guido friend arriverderci.  But the turn and river came a miracle 8-5, giving him a straight.  Ouch.  I was done in  a mere three hands later, when I looked down and found my first big pair of the entire tournament.  Aces.  I open-raised in the cutoff and got called by the big blind.  The flop came Q-x-x and I made a small continuation bet.  The big blind inhaled deeply, exhaled, shot me a faux-weak look and said “all in.”  I responded a nanosecond later with “call,” and tabled the aces.  My opponent turned over K-Q.  The turn was a blank, but the river was a  queen.  My opponent, a nice middle-aged man who was probably playing his first tournament, gave the board another look before it slowly dawned on him.  He then stood up, pumped both fists spastically and yelled “YES! TRIP QUEENS, BABY!” at the top of his lungs.  Yes.  Trip queens. 

I shook his hand, gathered my things and exited the shitshow stage left.  I had spent 95% of the day looking at trash hands and being angry.  When I finally cheered up, I was rewarded with two playable hands, both of which blew up in my face.  Is there a lesson in there somewhere?  I didn’t think so.