At the end of my Vegas trip I was feeling pretty weary and was desperate to get the F out of Dodge. Fortunately degeneracy defeated desperation and I still entered a $500 Event at the Wynn Classic the morning before my red eye left town.  As it turned out, I had to reschedule my flight because I ended up final tabling the thing.  I ran like God during the period following the bubble then ran roughshod through some folks, arriving at the final table third in chips.  The two players who had me outchipped were my talented friend Vinny Pahuja and poker megastar Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier.  We eventually were the last three standing, and for a few brief glimpses I seemed to be on the verge of wresting control of the table from those two very formidable opponents.  However ElkY got the best of me in a couple of big pots, then I met my fate (Pajuhja’d!) by running AQ into Vinny’s AK.  I made $14,000 and certainly cannot complain.

Vinny overcame a short deficit to defeat ElkY, who is widely considered one of the best heads up NLHE players in the world.  This is a terrific accomplishment and another notch in the already heavily notched belt of Vicious Vinny.  Congrats sir!

You may be wondering what the hell ElkY was doing in a $500 Event.  So was I.  I still don’t know the answer.  I do know that he was either unamused by or did not understand the moniker I gave him and repeatedly called him:  “Elkapotamus.”  English is like ElkY’s eleventh language, so my bloated ego likes the latter explanation.  And now for a quick scene from Las Vegas.

I am at the Venetian awaiting the start of the Deep Stack Main Event.  I’ve arrived over an hour early, so I decide to grab a bite at the closest restaurant, which happens to be Grand Luxe Cafe.  I stroll in and decline the hostess’ offer of a table for one and seat myself at the bar.  I peruse the menu for a few moments, decide on the chopped salad, and wait to be served.

The bartender is a sturdy raven-haired woman who looks to be about thirty.  She’s attending to some folks at the other end of the bar.  I can tell by the way she’s effortlessly handling the beverage gun and slinging pints of soda down there that this ain’t her first rodeo.  She faces me and walks over.  She’s healthy and strong, but her face wears the expression of a person who has been dragged through some disappointment or some sleepless nights.  Or both.  I imagine her finishing up her shift, driving her trusty Camry down into Henderson, picking her kid up from day care and fixing him some macaroni and cheese dinner. 

“What can I get you?” she asks with the saccharine Vegas smile that even tired probable single moms are required to wear.  I order my chopped salad and an iced tea.  Before she departs, she glances at my book and breaks into a smaller but more legitimate smile.  

“Is it better than the movie?  I loved the movie.”

I have no absolutely idea what she’s talking about.  It takes me about five seconds before I realize that the book I picked up in the Miami airport on a lark, Into The Wild, must have gotten the motion picture treatment recently.  

“The movie’s probably better, I’m not loving this book,” I answer truthfully.  The bartender shrugs and walks off.  My salad and iced tea arrive less than five minutes later.  I begin to eat, thinking about my early tournament strategy. 

Before long, I realize someone has occupied the seat to my right.  It’s a sprightly blond girl in her early twenties.  She is wearing a grey pantsuit and her hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail.  There is a hole in her left nostril which was recently occupied by a stud of some sort.  She glances around her, then inhales deeply.  She puffs her chest out, then lets loose a sharp, exaggerated exhale.  She’s nervous.  I correctly surmise that she’s not here for lunch.  

“Can I help you?” the bartender asks our new arrival.

“Hi, I’m Amanda.  I’m here for my interview for the hostess position.”  Amanda isn’t doing a great job of concealing her anxiety; she’s got a death grip on the napkin in front of her.

“Oh, okay.  Randy will be back in ten minutes,” says the bartender.  Now she gives Amanda a once-over and a kindhearted grin.  “You new in town?”

“New-ish.  I’ve been here three months,” says Amanda.  “I’m a server right now.”  I presume this means that she fetches drinks in a casino.

“So do you like Vegas?” asks the bartender, drawing slightly closer to Amanda.

“Well…” 

“Tell the truth, don’t bullshit me,” interrupts the bartender.  Amanda gathers her thoughts for a moment before replying.  The bartender clearly wants the answer to be no.

“It’s okay so far.  I’ve met a few nice people, but I miss a lot of things back home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Orlando.  It’s not the same here,” she says wistfully.  “I miss car shows, basketball games, cookouts…. I still don’t feel totally at home here.”

I want to blurt out “Vegas doesn’t have car shows?!” but I just continue staring straight ahead and sip my iced tea.

“And the guys here… I’m not impressed so far.” 

This topic arouses the bartender.  She fixes Amanda with an intense stare that needs no explanation, then makes a gesture with her index finger that I’ve seen from attorneys in courtrooms before.  The bartender has a key point to make. 

“Honey, you don’t know the half.  Let me tell you something.  Vegas guys suck.  Don’t listen to anything they tell you, it’s all lies.  Most of them have just moved here and are dead broke.  They put on their fancy clothes, walk around like they’re hot shit and they all have some kind of dumb hustle going on.  If one more guy tells me he’s a professional poker player I’m going to vomit.”  Upon hearing this comment, I chortle audibly, stop forking around in my salad and glance over at them, but they don’t notice.

“The guys here suck.  Plain and simple,” continues the bartender.  “And the tourists are just as bad.  People are so out of touch.  These people want to tell me stories about how much money they just lost; how they lost it, how bad their luck is.”  She’s on a roll.

“Hello?!  I work twenty feet from the casino floor.  Your story means nothing to me, it’s the same as the last guy’s.  I don’t care!”  she says with wide-eyed amazement.

The bartender’s rant ends at just the right moment.  Randy is on the scene.  Randy shakes Amanda’s little sweaty hand, then she’s off on her interview.  The bartender wishes her luck, Amanda thanks her and I continue eating.  

Less than two minutes later, as if on cue, a man replaces Amanda in the seat next to mine.  He’s middle aged with glasses and a Venetian ball cap.  He arrives quickly and forcefully, almost with determination.  He’s wearing a pair of neatly creased beige shorts.  Tucked into his shorts, with the help of a thick black belt, is a button-down shirt, the kind I wore at my law firm on casual Fridays.  This man is seriously overweight; his shirt is fighting an uphill battle to keep all the gut contained.  Even though he is seated a healthy distance from the bar, his gut/shirt is smushed uncomfortably against the mahogany divider.  He receives his menu, opens it for one second, grimaces, closes it, and places it back on the bar.  I sense some negative energy.

He flags our trusty bartender down.  

“Gimme two eggs, over easy and an order of crispy bacon.  And a coffee…  Does that come with potatoes?”

“Yes, it comes with either…” begins the bartender.

“I don’t want potatoes!”  Fat guy is yelling for no apparent reason.  I instinctively cringe and slide to my left.  “What can i get instead of potatoes?!”

“We have sliced tomatoes,” says the bartender.

“No tomatoes!  I don’t like tomatoes!  What can I get besides potatoes and tomatoes?  Give me something else!”  This fat guy is practically barking.  I’m growing seriously uncomfortable, but the bartender is nonplussed. 

“There aren’t too many other options.  We have different vegetables that I can ask the kitchen if they’ll…”

“What vegetables?!”  he screams.  “I’m done with that menu.  And I’m not a mind reader.  You have to TELL me here.  What vegetables?!”  Spittle is actually flying out of the fat guy’s mouth.

“Broccoli.  We have broccoli.”

“Good, give me broccoli, but steamed.  Don’t overcook it.  EGGS.  CRISPY BACON.  BROCOLI.  And I”m in a hurry.”  

Wow, what a douchebag.  The bartender walks off.

And with that, the fat guy pulls two sheets of paper out of his front pocket, lays them side by side in front of him and attempts to smooth the creases out of them.  He was ordering food only seconds earlier but now fatty is completely engrossed with these sheets.  He’s poring over them with such intensity that he’d probably fail to notice if I smack him in the back of the head, which I have the distinct urge to do.  Fat guy proceeds to pull out a pen and goes to work.  He makes a few X’s.  He makes a couple of circles.  In one particular spot, he makes about sixteen circles for emphasis.  He writes some numbers in the margins.  Fat guy is working these sheets over like a topographer who just discovered a previously unexplored island. What are they?

I take a gander.  One sheet has printed on it the Venetian’s sports book’s NBA offerings for the day, and the other appears to be some kind of tout sheet produced by one of those hacks-about-town handicappers.  He’s divining tonight’s basketball winners by looking at two pieces of paper.  In other words, this fat bastard is exactly what he appears to be:  a self-important loser.  Chalk one up for the bartender.  I finish my food, pay my bill, and leave the idiot to his studies.

End story.

I’m back on the east coast playing some tournies at Caesar’s AC WSOP Circuit now.  I’ve bricked all the daily events but have won a seat in the main event so far.  Also I’m currently winning a prop bet that I will explain in the next entry.

I’ve had limited computer access lately, so I haven’t addressed the blogisphere in awhile.  Here’s my current status:  I’m out in Vegas and can’t wait to come home.  I miss my wife, my apartment, and (of course) my Snuggie.  And the news that a big snowstorm is bearing down on the NYC area has had the unexpected effect of magnifying my homesickness considerably.  I love snowstorms and I’m really regretting the possibility of missing out my first Brooklyn blizzard.  Tomorrow night’s red eye home can’t come soon enough.

Anyway, here’s a tidy summary of the last two weeks.

I started out in Florida, where Janeen and I visited first with her father and then with my grandmother.  We passed the time by taking in the ocean vistas, having a couple of nice dinners and enjoying a bicoastal drive.  All these things were lovely, but the highlight of the Florida trip came when I got slowrolled by a drunk old man in a 2-4 limit game at the Fort Myers dog track.  Amazing!

In South Florida, retirees have nothing better to do than fuss over time, and they’ve turned wasting it into an art form.  So proceeding from that environment directly to the alternate universe of Las Vegas, where time’s very existence is purposely obscured, was a shock to the system.  I arrived late last Sunday, got some sleep, then played the Venetian Deep Stack Main Event.  I played well, made Day Two, got into the money, then promptly went broke.  Two days later, I played the first preliminary event at the Wynn Classic.  Again I played well, made Day Two, eked into the money and promptly went broke.  In each tournament I won a fraction of the buy in, netting a whopping total profit of around $500.

Most tourney players refer to these puny thankless first level payouts as mincashes, but my friend Gordon and I have coined a new term for them:  postcards.  These shitty little tournament cashes are functionally a push; they accomplish absolutely nothing.  They are nonetheless collected by Pokerpages.com and therefore create a new entry on a player’s Pokerpages profile (here’s mine).  These profiles are widely read and serve as the poker world’s official player tracking devices.  When a lousy mincash shows up on your profile, it’s nothing more than an announcement to family, friends and other followers of your whereabouts on a particular date.  Like a stamp on your passport.  Or better yet: a postcard home.  Having a great time, wish you were here!  Another mincash!  Wheeeeeeee!

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.

I am happy to announce that I have become a client of a new poker agency, Poker Players International (PPI).

East Coast tournament pros have received less publicity and fewer sponsorship opportunities than our Vegas-based counterparts, and PPI’s aim is to fill that void.  I was instantly interested in joining PPI’s ranks when Gene Castro, the company’s founder, approached me in December to gauge my interest.  A phone conversation with co-founder Randy Kasper sealed the deal for me a week later.   

I am grateful that Gene and Randy have elected to make me a member of “Team PPI Elite,” the group of players who will initially serve as the face of the company.  I am honored to be placed in this group, alongside some of the best players on the circuit.  I am excited about the opportunity that PPI offers me, as self-promotion is really not my strong suit (despite the existence of this blog!).  

Oh, and it seems that starting a poker agency makes you run gooooot:  Both Gene and Randy won events in the first week of the 2009 Borgata Winter Open.  Congrats guys!

You can check out PPI’s website here:  Poker Players International

Washout!

All tolled, my Gulf Coast adventure was a flop.  I whiffed on all the tournaments I played but I did manage to scratch out a decent profit in the sit ‘n go’s down there.  I made some craptacularly stupid plays in the $1,000 event–it was as if I was temporarily possessed by an evil moron–which sent me into a short but ferocious period of self-loathing, but I recovered and played well in all the other tournaments.  Still I have no positive results to show for it.  Typical. 

We Do Things A Li’l Different Down Here.

In a welcome turn of events, the town of Biloxi actually began to grow on me a bit once the initial wave of culture shock wore off.  Like I said in the prior entry, it’s kind of an odd place for a sheltered Yank like myself to spend a week, but I got the hang of it after awhile.  By the end I had adopted a southern twang of my own.  Ya’ heard?  (or something)

Where else are you gonna meet a guy who calls himself Mudcat?  Yes, a man introduced himself to me as “Mudcat” with a straight face, and I countered with a perfectly natural “nice ta meet ya, Mudcat!” while suppressing the urge to laugh.  In case you’re wondering what Mudcat looked like, close your eyes and envision a guy who calls himself Mudcat.  He looked like that. 

Here’s another amusing exchange I had at the table:

Old guy:  “Where you from, son?”

Me:  “Brooklyn, New York.  How about you?”

Old guy:  “Kershaw, South Car-lina.  You really from Brooklyn?”

Me:  “Yep.”

Old guy:  “Man, I feel sorry for you.  But you have good drankin’ water up there.”

Where else is it appropriate for an old man to say “has anyone told you today how beautiful you are?” to a young female dealer?  Up north, anyone who makes that sort of comment may as well have “PERVERT” printed in red across his forehead.  Down south, it’s neither lecherous nor unusual, it’s just a gentlemanly sort of thing to say. 

Where else does “ladies night” at the club mean this:  a DJ shows up at 10:00 and spins an array of Dirty South hip hop anthems.  Fat white girls in tight dresses get groped by white guys in button down shirts.  Stone-faced black guys with corn rows and necklaces with ugly diamond medallions watch impassively.  The next day, everyone marvels at how late the club stayed open (3:00 is late?).

Where else can you witness good old-fashioned racism like the kind in this scene:

Two young blond girls in miniskirts are waiting for the elevator in the hotel lobby.  They’re obviously coming back from “ladies night,” wasted.  They’re wobbling in their high heels and giggling.  Each is holding the hand of a young black man.  About ten feet away stands a solitary young white guy, and he’s shooting the foursome a sideways look and scowling.

I arrive on the scene, and the white guy mutters to me:  “can you believe this shit?” while nodding in the direction of the two couples.  I have no idea how to reply, so I just shrug.  The elevator arrives and the doors open.  The two girls push their new black friends forward into the elevator, still giggling.  White guy is now mournfully shaking his head as we follow them into the elevator.  I’m closest to the buttons and ask “what floor, y’all?”

White guy says “eight, please.”  I push 8.  I look at the black dudes.  One says “I have no idea” and glances at his date.  She stops giggling long enough to say “Twelve.  We’re bringing THE BROTHAS back for an afta-partayy!”  Then she makes the outdated “fist with protruding pinky and thumb” hip-hop gesture and high fives her friend as they burst into laughter.  The two black kids force small smiles and stare straight ahead as they are groped from behind.  White guy is beet red. 

I say “Okay then!” and push 12.

PLO

For years now, people have been telling me that Pot Limit Omaha is the wave of the poker future.  I hadn’t seen much evidence to that effect until this trip.  All the biggest cash games in the room at the Beau Rivage were PLO games.  I saw a guy drag a $16,000 pot with an unimproved bottom two pair.  I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen in PLO, but I’m a PLO n00b.

Best BBQ Ever! (also Waffle House)

In my last blog entry I bemoaned the lack of stuff to do down on the Gulf Coast.  I really hate staying cooped up in a casino on my trips; I prefer getting out and doing something “local,” or else I eventually lose my mind.  My initial impression was that I would find nothing to my liking down in Biloxi, but it turns out I was off base.  Don’t get me wrong–the entire town closes by midnight (although in fairness it gets more crowded on weekends).  But I found one place that I absolutely loved:  The Shed BBQ in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

I’m neither a foodie nor a true BBQ connoisseur.  I just love BBQ and have had lots of it, including pilgramages to out of the way places in North Carolina and Tennessee, along with all the NYC joints.  On my trips to Turning Stone, a visit to the Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, NY is a requirement.  Even though I can’t tell you in intimate detail why I like a certain BBQ joint, I know what I like.  And The Shed serves the best BBQ I’ve ever had, and is one of the top ten restaurants I’ve ever been to.  I was surprised to see some negative reviews of this place on yelp.com, but I trust my taste buds.  And they approve of The Shed’s BBQ.

The place is pretty out of the way, off of Route 10 (the highway that connects Gulfport and Mobile), and it’s located next to a trailer park.  The place is literally a shedof some sort, with a yard full of junk next to it.  The decor inside is an overwhelming tapestry of more junk; it’s everywhere, on the walls, the floor, the ceiling.  You walk in and a hostess approaches you and chats your face off about what you oughta eat.  Then you stand in line and order it, and then you go sit somewhere amidst the junk and wait.  Chilling along with the other customers there is a small collection of happy homeless-looking men who are apparently either employed by The Shed or just allowed to hang out there.  After awhile, a different chick pops out of the kitchen with a Styrofoam box screaming your name, and when you reply you are presented with the box.

Upon receiving the box, you open it, and inside is the best BBQ ever.  Easily the best ribs i ever had, with meat that falls off the bone.  Your meal includes a couple of sides, and they sold me on the macaroni salad, which i don’t normally like, but this was the best macaroni salad ever.  They also jam a piece of white bread in the styrofoam box, along with a plastic fork.  And to drink they have a gazillion beers and sweet tea.  It comes out to around $12.00.  Unbelievable place.  I didn’t discover it until there were only two days left on my trip, but I made sure to return on my final day in town.  In the event that I ever return to Biloxi, this place will be the reason why. 

Also, I went to a Waffle House for the first time in my life.  If you’re ever on a highway anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, you know from what I’m talking.  Those ubiquitous yellow huts.  Every single freakin’ exit, another yellow hut.  There was one right across from the Beau Rivage, so I figured it was time to finally give it a try.  It’s basically a smaller, cheaper Denny’s (yes, cheaper than Denny’s), which is to say that it’s a greasy little diner.  In downstate New York, diners are never franchised.  They’re all privately owned by Greek people, and some of them serve delicious food.  Elsewhere it seems that folks are stuck with places like Denny’s and Waffle House.  Anyway, Waffle House’s menu is a single laminated page.  The breakfast was decent, but not worth writing home about.  Although I suppose I just did.

Eskimo Clark!

On my first day at the Beau Rivage, I noticed the legendary degenerate Eskimo Clark lurking about.  Sweet!  One of the wonderful things about playing professional poker is that you are exposed to scuzzy yet lovable characters like Eskimo Clark.  You just have to be sure to love them from afar and tread lightly when you’re up close.  Eskimo’s presence was a very exciting development. 

I quietly hoped I would get to sit with him at some point during my stay.  I had no such luck for the first five days, but then came the magic moment:  in a $500 megasatellite to the main event, about halfway through the tournament, I was summarily removed from my seat and moved directly to Eskimo’s left.  Yes!

Eskimo Clark.  A chain smoker sporting a thick, Brillo-like mullet and equally thick beard, he acquired his nickname for his supposedly strong resemblance to the guy depicted in the Alaska Airlines logo.  An interesting looking fellow for sure, but his charm lies more in his persona than his appearance.  Eskimo’s old claim to fame was for being a grizzled old-schooler with three WSOP bracelets who was perpetually broke and smelly, sleeping in his car and constantly angling for a loan that will keep him in action. 

Then in 2007 Eskimo took the term “degenerate” to lofty new heights by refusing to leave his seat during a WSOP Razz Event despite suffering a series of life-threatening strokes at the table.  Several witnesses’ accounts state that Eskimo was almost completely disabled by the strokes, rendered unable to handle his chips and slumped forward onto the table with a vacant look in his eyes.  But Eskimo was the chip leader in the tournament and was going nowhere.  He was lucid enough to angrily wave off the paramedics and sign the waiver of liability that the Harrah’s Corporation put in front of him.  He eventually made the final table before busting.  Although he failed in his quest to win his fourth bracelet, his incredible performance that day earned him a place in the pantheon of all time degens.  Sure, he risked death, but I’m convinced that the St. Peter of poker heaven was watching.  Eskimo is now assured an equally degenerate afterlife.  Needless to say, I was excited to play poker with this sick bastard. 

After a few hands at Table Eskimo, I picked up AK suited in the small blind.  It was folded to Eskimo on the button and he raised to 3.5x the big blind.  I duly shoved all in with my large stack and gave Eskimo a little smile.  He grumbled something unintelligible, then gave me the old “i’m gonna call” pump fake by putting his hands behind his stack, as if ready to push it forward.  Tricky!  I sat there with the same little grin on my face, and Eskimo eventually folded.  I gathered the chips and flipped my cards in face down. 

I wasn’t about to let this golden opportunity to add an Eskimo story to my arsenal go to waste, so I tried to get a little discourse going: 

“Good laydown.”

This perked Ol’ Eskimo up a bit.  “What’d you have?”

“An ace and a king!  Good laydown.”

“Yep, I had king-queen,” said Eskimo.  “I guess I did make a good laydown.”

“Yep, assuming I’m not lying about the ace-king, you made a nice laydown.”

Eskimo grumbled something.

The very next hand I picked up AQ on the button, and when the player two seats to my right opened, I shoved all in again.  This time the big blind woke up with something good and called my shove, as did the original raiser.  I was up against AK and AJ.  Uh-oh.  But the flop came Q-x-x, then the board bricked out, and I won a big pot.

“I run good!” I exclaimed as I dragged the pot.  Now Eskimo was ready to chat.

“You know that Daniel Neg–Neg–Neguno?”

“Daniel Negreanu?  Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”

“Well, yer luckier than he is.  I play him heads up in Reno.  He wins damn near every pot with junk cards.”

Naturally, I was curious about this epic Eskimo-Negreanu confrontation, so I did some googling in my hotel room later that night and discovered that Eskimo was referencing tournament that took place eleven years ago.

That’s my Eskimo Clark story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Love you, Janeen!

I want to close this blog entry with a shout out to my wife.  Most women don’t envision spending this much time apart from their husbands in the first three months of marriage.  I’m writing this from a hotel room in Atlantic City (the Borgata Winter Open just started) and I will not be back in NYC much over the next two weeks.  I miss you hon, thanks for your pep talks and for understanding!  🙂

I’m typing this message from a hotel room in Biloxi, Mississippi, located in the center of a strip of land called the Gulf Coast.  Until yesterday, this part of the globe had somehow escaped my lifelong preternatural obsession with geography.  I’ve always been fairly fascinated by maps.  I can pore over the pages in McNally’s Atlas for thirty minutes without growing bored.  But somehow the Gulf Coast is a place I’d never given so much as a second thought.  Really, all I knew about this place were those nasty Katrina clips from CNN back in 2005.

This is all pretty unfortunate, because the Gulf Coast is a place a guy like me needs to prepare for.  And I was woefully unprepared for this trip.

I was unprepared to travel to begin with.  I had an “extended” New Years Eve night, and at my advanced age, my once formidable regenerative powers are not what they used to be.  Before I dragged myself to the airport on the afternoon of January 2nd, the best I could do was hastily fill a suitcase with random articles of clothing and stuff my laptop into a bag.  Out the door I went.

I was unprepared for a brutal day of air travel.  In an effort to save some money, I declined the more expensive options of flying into Gulfport (the closest airport to Biloxi) or directly to Mobile (the next closest airport).  Instead, I chose an itinerary that included a short layover in Atlanta, followed by the last flight of the night from Atlanta to Mobile, followed by a one hour drive in a rented car from Mobile to Biloxi.  When the inevitable delay caused my plane to touch down in Atlanta only 20 minutes before my connection, my only recourse was a panicked sprint through the massive Hartsfield Airport, my luggage careening behind me on its squeaky worn-out wheels.  Not fun at all, especially in my condition.

Although I made my connection (with under two minutes to spare!), I was unprepared for a short but uncomfortable trip to Mobile in a disquietingly small aircraft with an engine that made an outrageous amount of noise.  I was also unprepared to sit next to a large, talkative bearded man who smelled like regurgitated Southern Comfort.  And upon deplaning, I was certainly unprepared for my second maniacal long distance sprint of the night, this time through pedestrian traffic to the Mobile Airport’s rental car counter, which I reached just as it was closing.  I was the beneficiary of the final rental agreement of the night, which spared me the pleasure of a night in Mobile.

I was unprepared to drive through a dense, persistent fog all the way to Biloxi.  When my GPS instructed me to turn onto a deserted, spooky, unlit two lane road, I presumed it was on the fritz.  It wasn’t.  This was the way to Biloxi.  I was unprepared to witness an alarming amount of roadkill on this portion of my journey, including two dogs, then some other mammalian species I didn’t recognize.

I was unprepared for Biloxi.  Yikes.  I was told that this was one of the nicer stops on tour.  If that assessment is accurate, there are some real serious shithole towns with poker rooms in this country.  To be frank, BIloxi is rather depressing.  The yet-unrepaired damage done by Katrina is evident everywhere, from the vacant weedy lots where businesses obviously once stood, to the limbless drooping trees lining the shorelines, to the presence of shoddily paved roads everywhere.  I did some exploring in my rental car today, and there’s just nothing going on down here, unless a smattering of gas stations and fast food drive-thru’s are your idea of what’s happening.  I came up completely empty on what I thought was a reasonable quest: for a decent place to watch the football games.  No dice.  Plunked down in the middle of the desolation is a series of about ten casinos, some gleaming, others themselves in varying states of disrepair.  They create a visually discordant environment; the casinos look particularly stupid and shameless on this sad beachfront.

After a very short night’s sleep (in one of the lower-end casino/hotels), I thought I was prepared to make it to today’s tournament at the Beau Rivage (a higher-end property) on time.  Alas, no.  Everywhere else I’ve ever played, a 10:15 arrival for a 12:00 start typically gets the job done.  Not here.  The turnout for today’s $300 event was so massive (over 1000 runners) that I waited on line for an hour and a half only to become the 30th alternate entry in a capped tournament field.  Not good, especially when the structure calls for a starting stack of only 5000 chips with forty minute levels.

I was unprepared for the poker players down here.  In the Northeast and in Vegas, I’m accostomed to crafty types at the poker table:  dour asian men imitating lizard statues, studiously unkempt young dudes smirking at everyone in their baggy clothes.  Not down here.  Down here, every poker player has the countenance of a fat kid munching on his cotton candy at the county fair.  I had the urge to blurt out “you’re having a really nice time, ain’t ya?!” no fewer than twenty times today.  And no matter how often you hear the kind of down-home dialect people speak down here on TV, I reckon you’re still unprepared for the real deal.  Yowzers.  I have no idea what anyone’s talking about.  I was also unprepared for the number of cigarette smokers in the tournament field.  The lobby outside the tournament room was straight-up poisonous.

Needless to say, I was also unprepared to perform well in today’s tournament, and I fulfilled my suicide mission pretty quickly after I finally got seated.  But I did notice that the games are real soft, which makes Biloxi a lot more appealing than it othwerise would be.  After a good night’s sleep and a greasy breakfast (the only kind offered, me thinks), I suspect I’ll get more comfortable in these new surroundings soon.  I better, I have a full week to go.

2008 was a momentous and fulfilling year in my personal life.  Janeen and I got engaged.  We purchased,  moved into and furnished a new apartment.  We got married.  We went on an amazing honeymoon (I still plan on blogging about this trip, it was unreal).  My life took the figurative sharp left turn at Albuquerque (big ups to Bugs Bunny).  Things have changed so much this year that the 2007 version of me would probably struggle a bit to recognize the domesticated guy sitting here (in a Snuggie, for the record!) writing this entry.

On the other hand, professionally speaking, my 2008 was the opposite of momentous.  In fact, it was a dud.  My year got off to a fast start when I final tabled two Atlantic City tournaments, winning one of them.  From there it all fell apart.

After the two AC scores, I slowed down a bit.  The purchase of our apartment and our move occupied quite a bit of time, so I decided to take a break and make the WSOP the focal point of my professional year.  When WSOP season arrived, I dove in headfirst.  I stayed in Vegas for the majority of the month of June and played as many tournaments as I could, living and breathing tournament poker for about 40 days straight.  The results were atrocious:  I cashed in one single event and whiffed on everything else, making the 2008 WSOP a financial wipeout of proportions I had never before experienced.  Several other factors exacerbated the situation, turning it from a fiscal disaster into an emotional clusterfuck:  I felt isolated and alone during the extended trip.  I felt a subtle but palpable sense of guilt/embarrassment because I had, for the first time, taken some money from backers, almost all of whom were personal friends or family.  In the end, I was so frustrated by the experience that my drive and desire abandoned me.

I returned home defeated and played almost no poker in July and very little in August; I simply didn’t feel like it.  And then, before I knew it, my wedding date–with all the concomitant planning and fussing–was approaching.  Then the wedding was here.  Then I was on my honeymoon.  Then it was December.

In the end, I played about 33% less poker than I did in 2006 or 2007, earning only a fraction of what I made in those years, and at a lower hourly rate.  Where did the year go?

I’ve mentioned this about 2,000 times now, but it bears repeating.  Playing poker for a living really is nothing like holding a normal job where you draw a salary.  Most of us can sleepwalk through an occasional day or two at work and be none the worse for it; the same paycheck still comes every week or two.  Lord knows that I used to mail it in for weeks at a time when I worked that kind of job.  But I don’t get to mail my days in anymore.  Poker players trade in that luxury for the increased freedom we enjoy.  You have to want it bad in my world or you can’t make money.  If you strip me of my determination to play high-level poker, I’m basically unemployed (or worse, dead money).  And for much of 2008, I either was too disinterested or too distracted to play.  After the WSOP, I went through phases where I alternatively could not summon the desire or could not find the hours to kick it into gear.  It was a lost year.  Yes, I still made a decent living in 2008, but it was nevertheless a major disappointment. 

Although I’ve heard a few people predict that tournament poker will begin to die, thereby erasing my main source of income, I suspect better days are in store.  In December, in fact, the tide has already begun to turn.  I’ve been playing and winning steadily–and more importantly–thoroughly enjoying poker.  I have reason to believe that I’m back in the saddle.  Look out for Sug D in ’09!

Some 2009 Resolutions:

Hit the Tournament Trail:  I play very low volume for a professional.  Time to change that a bit.  I’m going to be busy at the start of 2009.  For the first time in my career, I’m hitting a non-Vegas circuit stop outside of the Northeast (okay, I did the Bahamas once).  On January 2nd I’ll be making my way to down to Biloxi, Mississippi to try my luck against some good ‘ol boys in the Southern Poker Championships at the Beau Rivage.  I’m even breaking with tradition and playing tournaments during the NFL Wildcard Games!  I’m planning on getting all Katrina on their asses down there.  After Biloxi comes the Borgata Winter Open, and after that I will likely play some stuff in Vegas and/or LA.  I’m mindful that balance is required here.  Too much time on the road does not agree with me (nor my new wife).  I will never become a full-time touring pro, but I intend to make a concerted effort to travel the circuit quite a bit in 2009.

No More Taking Stakes:  I’d always been proud of the fact that I only play my own bankroll.  I chose to abandon that strategy in 2008 in an effort to make some big scores at the WSOP and it backfired.  I don’t like feeling financially beholden to anyone else, and I probably put undue pressure on myself at the 2008 WSOP because of it.  I’m done with it.  If this means I have to grind it out in smaller tournaments and 2-5 NL cash games, so be it.  If you see me in a $10k event in 2009, it probably means I won a satellite.

Rebuild my Online Game:  I played very little online poker in 2008 and accomplished next to nothing in this area.  I have lost some confidence in my online play and I still cannot effectively play multiple tables.  I also have found it impossible to summon the willpower to truly concentrate and put in long online sessions.  In an effort to remedy these things, I am going to start from scratch with a two-monitor setup.  I’m taking three steps backwards and playing only small stakes cash games and tournaments online until I prove to myself that I can beat them.  Only then will I move up (Sundays are exempted from this rule, I’ll still play the big Sunday tourneys once the NFL season ends).  At the same time, I’ll be using my dual monitor setup to try and finally teach myself to play my A-game on more than two tables at a time.  I’ll probably be the only touring pro playing $2000 live tournaments on the road and $33 sit ‘n gos at home, but that’s the initial plan for 2009. 

No Ego:  I’ve come to realize that many of the mistakes I make playing poker are ego-driven.  For instance, I frequently misplay hands because I put myself in my opponent’s shoes, assuming he/she is playing a hand the way I would play it.  I ascribe goals and abilities to these opponents that are not present, which leads to terrible misreads.  I need to stop this.  Also, I am going to try my best to avoid unnecessary standoffs and pissing matches.  There’s a difference between aggressive play (necessary to win) and macho bullshit play (detrimental).  I am going to try and be alert but still look at every hand I play with fresh eyes, so to speak. 

And away we go…

Happy New Year everyone!

DZ

In our neverending quest to explain the universe around us, we have picked up an odd habit.  We (us humanoids) try to ascribe causality where there is none.  The more absurd and self-indulgent we are about this, the better.

In the realm of gambling our superstitions are obvious.  Most everyone has a lucky article of clothing.  It seems like most poker players have some kind of lucky chatchka they keep next to them on the felt.  In the pit, it’s even crazier.  Go play craps and try refusing to request the same dice the next time you toss one off the table and see how everyone else there regards you.

Even otherwise rational non-gamblers fall victim to this habit.  We eat the same breakfast every time we take an exam, thinking it will imbue us with the same ability we displayed the first time we ate it and aced a test.  We credit our spotless driving record to the decrepit stuffed animal sitting on our dashboard.  We think that hearing a certain song on the radio guarantees a big night out.  We knock on wood.  We do all sorts of silly stuff; people can (and do) develop obsessive-compulsive disorder keeping track of it all. 

Being a sports fan is no different.  We think that sitting in a particular chair increases the likelihood of a win.  We put on our lucky jersey before we turn on the TV.  We think that we can help our pitcher strike out a tough batter by twirling our hands around in circles.  Just ask that old lady who used to sit behind the plate at Shea Stadium.

I’m certainly not immune to these strange habits, particularly when it comes to the New York Jets.  I’m being perfectly honest and not exaggerating when I say this:  one of my life’s unfulfilled dreams is to see the Jets win the Super Bowl.  I have a hard time accepting the lack of control I have over making this eventually somehow happen, and the fact that the Jets have provided nothing but disappointment and heartbreak since I have been following them (which is a very long time) certainly doesn’t help.  I am quite crazy over this, and I have struggled along with the New York Jets for my entire life in a very real and very personal way.  It’s beyond question that I suffer more profoundly than the players on the New York Jets when the team loses, which is often.  How I got this way is up for debate, but I’m definitely out of my mind.  Should the New York Jets ever win the Super Bowl (this is something I frequently daydream about by the way), I believe my stunned reaction would be equal parts elation and catharsis.

Of course, I’m just as deluded about the Jets as those craps players who think that a red cube bouncing onto the carpet foretells disaster.  I’ve always done whatever I could to control the outcome of Jets games.  For a long time, my father and I agreed that swapping seats at the stadium could reverse three quarters of poor play.  While watching at home as a child, we routinely banished my mother from the room if her presence coincided with a Richard Todd interception.  I’ve tried everything, from articles of clothing too numerous to list, to uttering the same phrase before every play, to closing my eyes before third down plays, to screaming my head off before every snap, to three hour vows of silence.  Never have I managed to create the kind of correlation I’ve been searching for.  Until now.

It turns out that the connection is much simpler than I’d ever imagined.  Almost too simple, in fact.  It seems that I am the Jets’ problem.  That is, my physical presence anywhere in the vicinity of the New York Jets football club causes them to suck.

Witness their 2008 season.  From September through early November they played basic New York Jets football–the middling crappy .500 football to which I am accustomed.  They opened the season 5-3 thanks to a creampuff schedule and weren’t fooling anyone; they were going nowhere.  Then I left for Chicago for my wedding and honeymoon, and what happened?  While I pined away for my Jets and whined like a baby about missing their games for the first time since I was in diapers, they broke loose like an unshackled maniacal inmate.

While boarding the plane bound for my honeymoon, I discovered that the Jets were dismantling the Rams in the first home game I had failed to attend in many moons.  The following Thursday night, as I enjoyed a steak dinner in Mendoza, Argentina, the Jets beat the New England Patriots on the road, in an overtime thriller.  Two Sundays later, as I helplessly sat in a Brazilian airport, the Jets did the unthinkable, delivering a crucial win against the undefeated Titans by thumping them in their building.  The Jets were 8-3.  Logic and the pundits agreed:  this was a team to be reckoned with, headed for the playoffs and likely to do some serious damage once they got there.  While I was pretty upset about having missed their wondrous ascent to the top of the NFL power rankings, I was thrilled that an exciting winter and the possible fulfillment of my lifelong dream laid in store.  Then I came home.

With me back in the fold, the Jets have reverted to form and have DONE NOTHING BUT SUCK DONKEY BALLS FOR A FULL CALENDAR MONTH.  What looked like a great team has collapsed before my unbelieving eyes.  Draw your own conclusions, but the evidence is irrefutable.  I watch every single Jets game from 1979 until the middle of 2008, the Jets lose.  I miss three Jets games and they turn into worldbeaters.  I come back and resume watching, and they stink like a pile of steaming dog shit.  Barring a miracle, there will be no playoffs, no dream fulfillment, not even a little smug satisfaction.  Nope, just the same old, same old:  another Jets season swirling ’round in the toilet.

Sorry everyone.  I doubt you feel worse than me, but still, I’m sorry.  The Jets are in my DNA and I have no plans to move to another continent where American Football is not televised.  We’re all shit out of luck.