The last week of my life has been dedicated to getting moved and settled into my new apartment in Carroll Gardens.   Although Janeen and I just arrived, and despite the place’s current cardboard box motif, I can tell we’re going to love it here. 

This neighborhood and this apartment make me feel like a real New Yorker for perhaps the first time.  Better late than never, I guess.  The view at my old place was seaside:  a turbulent sea of grim-faced suits streaming through the shadows cast by stupid monstrous slabs of concrete.   For a brief time I felt energized by that scenery, but I soon discovered that I was only forcing myself to experience a cliched rite of passage into a world I quickly learned to tolerate rather than enjoy.  For years, I had occasionally experienced a palpable feeling of dread upon striding out my front door.

Relatively speaking, my Brooklyn view is pastoral.  My block has trees, squat chocolate brownstones and a lower volume but wider variety of passerby.  It’s not the size, shape and color of the people that distinguishes them, it’s the obvious lack of commonality in their stories.  My old neighborhood had two categories of residents:  the smaller group was made up of old rich people and the predominant group were new to New York City–cogs in Manhattan’s midtown and Wall Street machines.  Carroll Gardens has these, but also many other categories of residents, categories too numerous and nuanced to accurately list here.  I think people usually sum up my new neighborhood by saying it’s got “character.”  All I know is that after ten years at my old address, stepping outside is now a quasi-literal breath of fresh air.

It also doesn’t hurt that my new place dwarfs my old one in size, so much so that feels like an actual home–it has… gasp… more than one room.  Even though I barely realized it, a small studio apartment was a stifling place to live, and an especially stifling one to work from.  I’m writing this blog entry from my comfortably sized “office,” a room clearly distinguishable from our bedroom and our living room (as well as our “other bedroom”).  Pretty cool.

So hello Brooklyn and goodbye Manhattan.  I was so ready to go that upon packing up and leaving my old place, I felt none of the expected regret or uncertainty, just a prevailing wistfulness.  A wistfulness brought on by a flood of memories, good and bad, made in that small space over an extended period in my life during which everything changed more than once.

This is not just a happy time for me but also a strange one, since our landmark relocation cannot be celebrated in a traditional way.  I’m off to Chicago and then Las Vegas starting tomorrow, and I won’t be returning to my new digs for over three, possibly four, weeks. 

In Chicago I will be attending my first celebrity wedding, as Janeen’s brother and his fiancee are tying the knot.  They would both undoubtedly insist that they are unfamous (not infamous but unfamous) if they read that, but they both have achieved the world’s grand, undisputed, official gauge of fame:  entries on Wikipedia.  I’m lucky, both these future in-laws are likable cool people, and I’m looking forward to the wedding.

From Chicago I will be embarking on what will likely turn out to be the busiest month of my poker career.  Thanks to a surprisingly (and gratifyingly) successful first foray into the world of staking, I have collected enough money to comfortably play almost all the World Series of Poker tournaments I desire.  And I intend to play as many as possible.  For the next month, I will be playing large poker tournaments on a nearly daily basis.  I will not be an easy out.

And, as a presumably welcome change of pace, I’ll update my blog frequently from poker’s mecca during it’s most meccalicious month.   

I have decided to accept some staking in the preliminary World Series of Poker Events this year.
 
If you are interested in receiving the full details of what I’m offering and you’re someone I know and trust, please contact me and I’ll provide you with the prospectus.   🙂

-DZ

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

That was a popular refrain in grade school, and it effectively kept me from making fun of the kid with the nosepicking habit.  Lately though, it has also applied here.  I’ve been quiet on the blogging front because there’s really nothing good to report in pokerland.  But this thing is supposed to be about my trials and tribulations, not only my triumphs, so here you go.

While this is a very exciting, satisfying time in my life–Janeen and I just had a great engagement party and we’re closing on our new apartment tomorrow–I’m also withstanding an extended period of losing while playing fairly high volume online.

It’s the same old story:  I am having a very hard time getting over the hump in online tournaments.  The problem is crystal clear.  The intuition I have in brick & mortar settings is missing from my online game.  Yes, the competition, on average, is worse in live tournaments, but I’m certain that the issue runs deeper than that.  I simply make better reads live.  Of all the “sick laydowns” or “sick calls” or sick plays of any kind I’ve ever made, 95% of them have been live.  I just think with much greater clarity when my opponent is sitting there in front of me in the flesh. 

The solution is something I’ve been pondering for a very long time.  I’ve thought of everything:  switch to cash games, play sit ‘n go’s exclusively, take more notes, take fewer notes, use tracking programs, quit using tracking programs, play more volume, play less volume, play lower stakes, play higher stakes, add another monitor… I’ve thought of everything, although I’ve implemented relatively few changes.  The changes I have implemented have been ineffective.  Particularly embarrassing is the fact that my ROI (roughly “rate of return” for those of you who don’t speak pokernerd) in Pokerstars tournaments has slipped into negative figures over a very long period of time.  I’m still doing fine in sit ‘n go’s and on Full Tilt, so I’m not losing a ton of money, but Pokerstars tournaments, which were once my bread and butter, have become impossible for me to crack.

My recent failures are having a negative impact on my psyche.  It’s getting bad.  I have found myself screaming obscenities and throwing tantrums, which is pretty unusual for me.  These episodes are surely amusing to look at, but unfortunately I don’t get to witness them, so they don’t help me in any capacity. 

This is no way to warm up for the World Series of Poker.  So for the time being, I’m going back to basics.  I’m going to play online tournaments of all stake levels until my confidence is restored.  Final tabling a $10 tournament after 7.5 hours of play and walking away with $438 might feel kind of futile to someone who has several six-figure scores to his credit, but I need to remind myself that I still know what I’m doing, dammit. 

What are the odds of the two most momentous personal events in your lifetime occurring on consecutive days? 

If you’re me, your odds (while still miniscule) just became higher than most.  The buzz in the poker world right now is about Harrah’s decision to move the WSOP Main Event’s final table to November, several months after the rest of the tournament is completed.  The reason they’re doing this is obvious:  to market the crap out of the final table and its participants and build yet more hype around the tournament.  The drawbacks are also fairly obvious:  the amateurs that make the final table can spend months prepping, thereby leveling the playing field, collusion will become a greater possibility, and of course what if someone dies in the interim?!

For me, the most interesting fact about the new final table date is that it’s the day after my wedding.  So in the extremely unlikely event that I make the final table, Janeen and I will become instant celebrities and the world will undoubtedly follow along as I hightail it out of Chicago the morning after my own wedding to go become a millionaire.  The ESPN camera crew will be a welcome addition to the reception.  😉

“Sick” might be the most overused word in poker.  But I mean it literally.

Around 2:00 p.m. on Friday, right in the middle of a couple of online tournaments, I began to feel ill.  And thus began a yucky weekend during which I could barely move.  It is only now, about halfway through Monday, that I am beginning to feel semi-normal again.  This past weekend was lost to the worst illness I’ve had in several years–a bacterial infection that left me bedridden with a continuous fever and sore throat.  Really gross.

I’m going to conveniently ignore the myriad of practical reasons why I may have been beset with a debilitating illness during a weekend when I had a lot of things planned.  Instead, I’m going to assume that I was smitten by an angry God (it’s easier that way!).  And through some thorough investigation, I’ve narrowed it down to two suspects:

–The Vengeful Belligerent Jew God.  While I did attend two seders on the appropriate dates, this year, even though I don’t fit into either of the exempted categories (children and the infirm elderly), I didn’t even consider observing one of my people’s oldest customs, “keeping passover,” a.k.a., forgoing leavened bread for a week.  Honestly, I didn’t even consider it for a single second.  I like bread; matzoh sucks.  Bad Jew.  The Jew God does not take this kind of thing lightly, it seems.  Oy vey.  I’m sorry, Vengeful Belligerent Jew God.  😦

Or was it…

–The God of Schlubs.  After countless years of being a Grade A, never exercising, just sitting there on my fat ass schlub, in recent weeks I have attempted to turn a new leaf by starting a jogging regimen.  I have to admit, it feels pretty good.  And on the very morning of the day that I got sick, I ran over 1.5 miles, my longest distance to date.  Alas, the God of Schlubs sees all, and it seems he was insulted by my insolent attempt to desert his ranks.  He is not going to let me leave without a fight.  Bad schlub.  I’m sorry, God of Schlubs.  I’ll go back to being a lazy piece of shit.

Anyway, I think I feel well enough to play poker again (you’ll notice that I find it unlikely that God would punish me for gambling, that would be pretty lame)! 

PS:  thank you Janeen for taking care of me.  🙂

With the current lull in poker action worth updating, I thought this might be a nice time to mention that my website is being advertised for the very first time.

The images you have just viewed are of friend of DZ.com Matthew Catapano sporting the very first davidzeitlin.com t-shirt (yes, that is me depicted in the second shot and on the t-shirt).

Actually the term “friend of DZ.com” might be a bit of a misnomer, and that t-shirt is not so much an advertisement as a not-very-subtle shot at me. In truth, ever since I began this website Matt has mercilessly made fun of me for it. His patented way of doing this is to say “dear blogisphere!” in a wistful, high-pitched tone anytime the subject arises. The implication, I think, is that blogs are for pretentious teenage girls, not middle aged men. Matt apparently does not believe that my daily doings are worthy of international broadcast, which is a decent point.

Still, the incredible irony of Matt’s derision should not be lost on anyone who knows him. This is because Matt calling someone else an attention whore is hilarious. You see, to say that Matt is an attention whore would be doing that term a grave injustice. Matt is no mere attention whore; he has raised the art of attention-grabbing to an art form. Amongst Matt’s favorite pastimes, in no particular order:

-growing out odd anachronistic hairdos;

-yelling “makeout session!” into the faces of all liplocked strangers;

-persistent use of alternative modes of transportation. These change nearly yearly and get progressively more bizarre. He currently rides a pea green Vespa around New York City;

-wasting an alarming amount of time on MySpace and Facebook;

-dressing up like an elf for the entire month of December.

There’s much more, but that gives you a general outline of what we’re dealing with. Oh, by the way: Matt is no spring chicken, he’s about to celebrate his 35th birthday.

Now that I’ve ripped him a new one, let me stop to say that Matt is my oldest friend in the world and we’ll always be boys. I am not afraid to admit that I’ve happily joined him in my share of infantile shenanigans, and there are doubtless many more to come. I’ll also reluctantly admit that I’ve passed on some of the infantile shenanigans because I just don’t have Matt’s balls (Matt was born without a sense of shame and never developed one to speak of, I cannot claim the same). So no offense buddy, it’s just that the time for retribution for “dear blogisphere” has arrived!

Also, I am fine with the free advertising.

Happy 35th birthday to my VP of Marketing, Matt Catapano.

So I’m back from Foxwoods.  There are a couple of new things about Foxwoods these days.  One is that it the entire facility will soon be taken over by MGM/Mirage.  Sometime in the middle of May, Foxwoods will become known as the “MGM Grand at Foxwoods.”  I can only presume that this takeover is considered legal because the Mashantucket Pequot Indian tribe (all three of them!) will retain ownership of the place after management (not ownership) changes hands.  I am not sure what, if anything, will change from the point of view of Foxwoods’ customers.  I’m guessing that the thriving poker operation will remain exactly the same.

The other new addition at Foxwoods is a sports bar.  Other than the ballsy inclusion of a tote board (with odds posted for “informational purposes only,” of course), the defining characteristic of the Stadium, as it is called, is the section of it known as the “Rivalry Bar.”  The Rivalry Bar is a barroom split sharply down the middle, with its two halves distinguished by color scheme.  The right side of the bar is painted blue and white, with the Yankees’ retired numbers prominently on display in neat little white circles on the wall.  The left side of the bar is painted red and white, with the Red Sox’ retired numbers similarly displayed.  My Mets, shockingly, were deemed unworthy of inclusion in this motif.  The Rivalry Bar has been pretty quiet throughout my stay, but it will undoubtedly play host to much douchey drunken posturing once the Yankees and Red Sox renew their ancient hostilities.

It’s not hard to imagine how some marketing genius came up with the idea for the Rivalry Bar.  The stretch of Interstate 95 that separates Boston and Foxwoods is roughly equal in length to the stretch of Interstate 95 that I’ve been wearing out over the past two weeks.  Foxwoods is situated at the geographical midpoint between what are arguably America’s two most baseball-crazed cities, and at the epicenter of what is certainly the fiercest rivalry in Major League Baseball.

But this symmetry is not reflected in the general allegiance of the Foxwoods clientele.  The reality is that Foxwoods is an outpost of Red Sox Nation.  Boston Red Sox fans and their clothing are everywhere up here, but nary a Yankees (or Mets or Jets or Giants, for that matter) hat or jacket is on display.  The ubiquity of Red Sox clothing is so overwhelming that it feels like it was secretly coordinated; I have yet to sit at a poker table without the quota of at least one Red Sox article being met.  There are probably a few reasons for this vast imbalance. 

One is Atlantic City’s presence a few hours south of New York.  While New York sports fans have gambling options to both the north and south, New Englanders have only Foxwoods and neighboring Mohegan Sun to satisfy their degenerate urges.  The poker tables are thus dominated by men uttering pokerisms in New England’s peculiar dialect; there are lots of “shit caahds,” flushes in “hahts,” and “chawped pots” going on.  Another obvious reason that Red Sox (and notably, the Pats, Bruins and Celtics not so much) stuff is worn proudly at Foxwoods is that the Red Sox are baseball’s reigning champs.  Happy fans wear their teams’ colors, disgruntled fans generally do not.

But my theory is that the main reason for all the Sawx gear is that New Englanders feel a sense of civic pride about the Red Sox that is just not matched by New Yorkers.  Boston, at heart, is a small town.  Boston’s suburbs, in many cases, seem to be insular communities with a lot of long term residents.  These are people who grew up with and are very proud of their Red Sox.  Also, the long drought that preceded the Red Sox’ 2004 championship has not been forgotten, and the result seems to be a continuous, four-year outpouring of affection for the team now that it is finally producing after nearly a century of futility.  Incidentally, one might think that fans who have endured an epic century-long struggle would present themselves as humble winners, but Red Sox fans, while they are certainly proud of their newfound glory, are also generally quite obnoxious.   Either way, New England is currently identifying with its baseball team in a way that New York has not for a couple of generations, and that is why there is such an alarming, overwhelming number of people are wearing Red Sox clothing at Foxwoods nowadays.  I’m seeing that “B” insignia in my sleep after two weeks up there.          

And now let’s talk about poker.  I haven’t talked in detail about my poker playing a whole lot recently.  This is partially because my accumulated experience leaves me feeling fascinated by fewer and fewer of the individual hands I’ve played (I’m not bored with poker, just less fascinated by scenarios I’ve seen before).  Even in the analysis that is about to follow, I don’t imagine that I will get too specific about the situations I’m discussing.  But feel free to ask for illustrations if you’re curious and I’ll provide them.  

About a year ago I wrote a blog entry which reflected on a drought I was then enduring.  In it, I surmised that I was still playing pretty well but experiencing bad luck.  I then made the mistake of calling attention to that blog entry on a poker message board and was promptly taken to task by a pokernerd for not being honest with myself about my deficiencies.  The pokernerd’s lecture was entirely unnecessary–no one ruminates more about his weaknesses and deficiencies than I do.  Still, that experience makes me hesitant to write what I’m about to, but I am quite convinced of the accuracy of what I’m about to say, so I’m saying it anyway. 

The fundamentals of tournament No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em are now second nature to me.  I’m by no means an ultra elite player, and I still have much to learn, especially in postflop play, but I’ve gotten very good, maybe even scary good.  My game is way more advanced than it was only a year ago, and it is light years ahead of where it was two years ago.  It is fair to say that I’m an expert at playing the game now. 

Tournament No Limit Hold ‘Em is a wonderfully complex game.  Every single hand presents the possibility of an entire flow chart/maze-like group of decisions to be considered.  And part of the beauty of the game is that there is no single “right” way to play; countless strategies and counter-strategies can be effective.  There are, however, certain objectively wrong ways to play.  What I mean by this is that certain moves–especially in preflop action–are always mistakes, and have been proven as such through mathematical analysis.  Many of these mistakes are commonplace, and I witness them from my opponents all the time.  These particular mistakes once plagued me but now have been completely excised from my game.  I am happy to declare that I am through making simple mistakes, It’s been a long time since I gave away my chips that way.  This was not always the case, of course.  This blog–especially some of the earliest entries–is rife with hand analyses that I now find utterly embarrassing.  Do NOT search the archives of this blog looking for awesome hand histories, some of it is really ugly.  Many of the hands that I have proudly discussed in this space feature hideous basic mistakes on my part.  No more.

So if the tenets of basic preflop play in all tournament situations are now hardwired into my DNA while many of my opponents are unable of accomplishing the same, where does that leave me?  In a pretty good place.

I’ve now played tournament poker, at all stake levels, with everyone, from bumbling first-timers to the most respected players on the circuit.  This may come across as haughty or arrogant, but I’m generally unimpressed.  In my early professional days, the presence of an opponent of even moderate renown at my table was enough to intimidate me and make me all fumbly with my chips.  It took entirely too long, but I’m now way past the point where anyone scares me.  I’ve seen too much, I know too much, and I’ve won too much.  Until proven otherwise, I now assume that I’m the boss of my table.  I honestly cannot remember the last time I sat at a table that featured three players who I felt were better than me.  

On a related note, I’ve come to the realization that success on the live tournament circuit is often achieved through nothing more than simple, solid, unspectacular play.  So many players make such frequent rudimentary errors that merely avoiding such errors while occasionally capitalizing on them when others make them is enough to make a decent disciplined player a big winner.  Some of the biggest, baddest tournament players alive are not really higher-level thinkers.  They’re just experts at exploiting fish, and there is a vast abundance of fish in the live tournament world. 

So now that I’ve proclaimed myself a mistake-free poker expert and intimated that I’m a better player than many of the world’s best, I must be practically printing money right?  Alas, It’s not that simple.

First of all, there’s variance.  Presuming that I do in fact have an edge over almost all of my opponents, it’s still only a very slight edge.  I work on very small margins in this business.  One of the crazy things about poker is that sitting down at a table with inferior opponents is only part of the battle.  An actual opportunity to outwit those players and take some of their chips might only surface once (or less) in a long session.  In fact, it is perfectly normal for such an opportunity to never present itself.  And, when the opportunity does arise, the inferior opponent still might get lucky and completely foil the entire operation.  Frustrating, to say the least (handling frustration is another poker necessity, but that’s another topic).   

Second, I’ve begun to make a curious new type of error.  Poker is a dynamic game, and becoming more knowledgeable about it creates problems when evaluating unknown opponents.  Lately, I’ve found myself making poor reads because I am overestimating my opponents.  That is, I am frequently screwing up because I am ascribing a level of sophistication to certain players that they are incapable of.  This can be a critical error. 

As I said earlier, certain precepts of the game have become second nature knowledge of mine.  Because these precepts are so thoroughly drilled into my head, I tend to assume that others are also well versed in them.  Big mistake.  So, for instance, when an unknown opponent makes a play that I would never make without pocket queens, kings or aces, I find myself putting that opponent on pocket queens, kings or aces, then find myself in a state of shock when that opponent shows up with A-9 offsuit.  In many instances, my level of expertise has actually hindered my ability to evaluate my opponents.  I often play better poker against stronger players than I do against amateurs.  It’s just not as easy for me to crawl inside an amateur’s head.  The ability to read poor inexperienced players is a big reason why some merely decent players continually do very well in tournaments.   

So what does all of that mean for me?  Well, it should be obvious from my lack of “gooo me!” posts in recent days that I didn’t do much at Foxwoods this time around.  I survived by logging a million hours of sit ‘n go’s and quietly cashing in the $1000 event.  I failed in both of my attempts to satellite into the main event (I still need a backer, dammit).  At no time did I feel outplayed, but I did make a couple of silly errors attributable to senseless aggression.  And for good measure I tacked on a couple of other errors of the aforementioned “falsely assume the opponent is not a donkey” variety.  By doing this, I suffered the stinging embarrassment of losing some big pots to some crappy Foxwoods regulars.  My money will surely be recycled in the form of more Red Sox caps.

Since my last personal update, I failed to cash in the main event at Caesar’s, then mostly banged my head against a wall, i.e., played a lot of online poker.

Now I’m back at the familiar scene of many triumphs (including my first big score) and failures (including my one true meltdown).  Foxwoods.

This place has a lot of perks.  Free internet, donks a-plenty, good food options, nice accomodations, and professionally run tournamnets.

Also there are drawbacks.  They never comp me a room up here, I’m stuck paying the poker rate, which is a still rather steep $150 per on weeknights.  The tournaments start at an hour that many poker players, including myself, are unaccostomed to:  10:00 AM.  And there is nothing to see or do when I’m not playing poker.  At least in Atlantic City I can go to the White House or walk around on the boardwalk.  Here, the options are 1) play poker and 2) sleep. 

Speaking of sleep, I need some badly right now.  I woke up at an unnatural hour so that I could get up here in time for today’s event, a $300 shootout.  All for naught, as I quickly went bust in the first round of the thing.  Oh well.

I usually leave this place with more money than I came with.  Hopefully this trip is no exception.  

I’m no fashion plate. When it comes to clothing and accessories, I’m a member of the “less is more” school of thought. My only indulgences are designer jeans and kitchy t-shirts. The defining element of my wardrobe is probably my undying devotion to Puma sneakers. Not real exciting.

Still, my lack of inspiration when it comes to my own clothes does not disqualify me from being a fashion critic. And so, having qualified myself by spending upwards of two years on semi-continuous poker tour, I bring you my guide to poker fashion.

The following are just a few of the mainstays of poker fashion, presented in no particular order.

The Hoodie. Previously found only in the closets of robbery suspects and Bill Belichick, the hooded sweatshirt is now the singular item that can rightfully be called the official attire of the poker player. Whichever companies produce these things owe a great debt to the poker boom. Look around any poker room and you will hardly be able to keep count of the ubiquitous hoodies slumped around each and every table in the room. It does make some sense, as hoodies serve a dual function. Casinos are cold and poker players don’t want to exhibit tells. Hoodies solve both problems in one fell swoop. They’re warm, and when worn properly (hood on, hunched posture, sunglasses optional), no one can see muchof you. I particularly like when older guys wear them. It’s like playing poker with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The Non-Ironic Goatee. Where I come from, the goatee went out of style in the mid 1990’s. It has made a small comeback–along with the mullet, trucker hats (see below) and skinny jeans–among hipsters, on whom goatees are a sardonic throwback. But amongst us regular folk, the pattern of facial hair commonly known as a goatee is decidedly out of style. The poker world, however, never got the memo. Sadly, the likelihood that a poker player is sporting a goatee seems to be inversely proportional to the likelihood that he is otherwise attractive. Maybe this is actually a good thing, as the goatee’s primary purpose may be to deflect attention from butt ugliness. I am not sure.

Tracksuits. Emerging from the shadowy confines of the wardrobes of guidos and retirees in Florida, the tracksuit now appeals to a third category of person: the poker player. These things have become almost as popular as hoodies. I’ll admit it, I’m a tracksuit proponent; I own a few warmup jackets. When playing poker, I personally wear the top half of a tracksuit quite frequently. Like the hoodie, a partial tracksuit serves multiple purposes: it’s warm, it has pockets for your junk, and you look ever so sleek and athletic wearing one.

Sports Jerseys. Fifteen years ago, sports jerseys were throwback chic. But when hip-hop culture went mainstream, so did the sports jersey. Now everyone and their mother has a T.J. Houshmandzadeh uniform top. Jerseys are quite popular within the poker populace, which is not surprising, as the demographic that likes sitting on his couch watching sports all day happens to intersect with the demographic that likes sitting around playing cards all day. For whatever reason, the sports jersey is particularly popular with the morbidly obese—another category of person that there is no shortage of in the poker world. Apparently the fact that 300-pound men wear teal shirts on a football field makes them a natural fit for gigantic poker-playing fatasses.

Huge Headphones. If you’ve ever played serious tournament poker, you know that many players drown out the chatter at the table by listening to music. I’m not a proponent of this, but after two years of politely listening to inane babble, I can understand the appeal. As of late, especially amongst younger players, it is no longer enough to wear the earphones that come with your iPod. Nor is it enough to upgrade to nice, mid-sized Bose headphones. Instead, what you apparently really need are gigantic hubcap-sized headphones, bigger than the ones that plugged into 1978 HiFi systems. These things undoubtedly cost thousands of dollars. Four digits to look like an asshat. Quite a bargain!

Cowboy Hats. Discovering that many grown men wear cowboy hats on days other than Halloween was quite a revelation for me. What can I say, I’m from New York City; we don’t see many cowboy hats around here. Out in Vegas (and probably in Tunica, but I’ve never been), a lot of people wear them. This strikes me as unusual, since the original functions of the cowboy hat (to wit: protecting your face from the sun, fanning campfires, waving to other cowboys across the plains, smacking your horse’s ass) have no application in poker. The one reliable function cowboy hats seem to have in poker is to tell everyone that you lack skill. Other than Doyle Brunson and Hoyt Corkins, no man in the world who regularly wears a cowboy hat can play poker well.

Sunglasses: Perhaps the only bad part of the Chris Moneymaker Effect is the sunglasses. The popularity of wearing sunglasses whilst playing poker is slowly waning, but it still feels like some kind of edict was issued in 2003: “wear sunglasses to hide your tells from the big bad pros or perish!” Having had a lot of experience in the New York City dance club scene, when I came to poker I was not a stranger to the use of sunglasses indoors. And they’re used in both realms for the same purpose: to avoid looking nervous, sweaty and weird. There’s nothing like sitting down to play a $300 tournament and being surrounded by chip-riffling mirror-faced flies.

Those weird visor thingies: Closely related to but infinitely dorkier than sunglasses, some guys opt for the retarded spaceman look. This one is even more reliable than a cowboy hat. If you’re wearing this apparatus, you suck at poker.

Bad Jewelry: Poker is filled with men wearing gross jewelry. I’m admittedly a bit biased about this one, as I believe that jewelry looks bizarre on a man to begin with. It doesn’t help that the bracelets and rings awarded by the WSOP are butt-ugly eyesores. Everyone that’s ever won one of these things wears it whenever they play poker, and the number of guys who have won a WSOP event of some kind is increasing on an almost daily basis. On top of the braggarts wearing these trophies, you have various other bejeweled players: Your young guns showing off their “baller watches,” your older guys with their garish pinky rings, your gangstas with their diamond-encrusted medallions and earrings, and so on. I get the feeling that a lot of poker players are “ghetto rich.” No money in the bank, but wearing 50 large in clothes and jewels. Classy.

Toothpicks: Guilty as charged. There’s nothing cool looking about having a toothpick in your mouth, but I’ll be damned if I don’t feel more comfortable that way. I’ve been called “the toothpick guy” more times than I’d care to count. I’m writing this blog entry to rip on others, not myself, so let’s move on.

All Over Print Hoodies: I’ve made this fashion abomination a separate category from the regular hoodie because it needs to be said: these things are dreadful. They’ve become very prominent in the past two years or so, and like sports jerseys, they’re especially popular amongst the morbidly obese. This is peculiar. If I weighed 400 pounds, I would try my best to blend in. My idea of blending in is not a massive flourescent green tarp with thousands of little New York Yankee emblems on it. Bonus points with a matching ugly cap!

Marijuana gear: In 1992, Dr. Dre released a watershed album (okay, a compact disc) with a pot leaf on it. Almost immediately, clothing with hemp leaves and other allusions to weed become all the rage. Teenagers all over America started wearing that stuff. It is now 2008, and in my estimation, any man who enters a poker tournament wearing a weed shirt is both behind the times and too old for it. Something like 75% of the kids in America go through a phase where they’re infatuated with smoking weed, it’s really not a big deal. It’s fine if you continue to smoke weed in your adulthood, also not a big deal. But if you’re in your twenties and think your “look at me, I’m high” shirt is still cool, I’ve got some bad news for you. You’re just advertising the fact that you’ve yet to outgrow a phase that most of us are done with. I bet you’ve got a really cool bong behind your couch, too. Wow. Congrats.

T-Shirts with poker quips on them:

You’re probably bluffing? You don’t chop? You’ve got the nuts?! Kiss your ace?!! Very clever.

That Bellagio t-shirt: What is it with this shirt? Everyone has one. It’s a white, long-sleeved t-shirt with “Bellagio” printed in huge blue block letters in an arc across the back, up by the shoulders. Does owning this shirt signify something I should be aware of? Go away, Bellagio shirt.

Cell phone, clipped to the outside, not in the pocket: Do I even have to elaborate on this one? See the non-ironic goatee description but multiply everything I said by 200. Some serious doofballs play poker.

Spinning card protector: Miraculously, some company actually sells a lot of these trinkets. There are hundreds of dudes out there who receive their hole cards, place them neatly face down in front of them, then proceed to put this little metallic apparatus on top of them, then spin the thing like a top. There goes two seconds of your life that you could have used more productively, Mr. Spinny.

Very expensive designer t-shirts: These are popular with younger Russian-American players and Scandinavian players of all ages. They show up to play in simple but wildly expensive clothing: designer jeans and an Armani Exchange t-shirt that costs over $200. This is a subtle way of telling everyone that you’re baller, I guess. It says “I know that a cotton t-shirt normally retails for $5.00, but I’ve won so much money playing poker that I can afford this tight, high priced number you see me wearing.” That’s intimidating.

Spiky hair: This one heavily correlates with the designer t-shirt, but is even more popular. I guess spiked hair is just big across the board with men in their young 20’s? I’m anti-hair products, but I admittedly went through a heavy gelling phase back in the day. I generally feel like an old fart when I see spiky hair at my table.

The non-ironic trucker hat: Like goatees, the trucker hat was co-opted by hipsters around five years ago, and the look has gained such prominence that the trucker hat (defined as a baseball cap that is comprised of over 50% mesh material) in its ironic format has practically gone mainstream. The idea behind this fashion statement, as the name implies, is irony. Since no one in their right mind would wear such an eyesore, it’s cool to wear it! But when it comes to trucker hats, what the poker world occasionally bestows upon us is something much more extraordinary: the non-ironic trucker hat. Yes, that’s right—at a poker table you will occasionally see an old guy wearing a trucker hat not because of the snarky fashion value, not because he saw Ashton Kutcher wearing one, and not because his girlfriend gave him a piece of shit that says “Von Dutch” on it. The old guy is wearing the trucker hat because it’s his hat, and he likes his hat. He might even be an actual trucker! Incidentally, old guys in non-ironic trucker hats only raise with pocket aces.

Signed WSOP gear: I’ve saved the best (read: worst) for last! Every now and then, another player at my tournament table will show up wearing a hat or t-shirt with the WSOP emblem, signed by one or more professional poker players. Poker celebrities and those who admire them enough to seek their autographs are strange to begin with.  Donning their autographs for a poker tournament is downright crazy. Perhaps these walking dotted lines think that wearing the autograph will imbue them with the signer’s talent? I wonder if the autograph wearers realize that half of poker’s great pros are deadbeats, degenerates, or otherwise of questionable moral character. I need to get me a NYSGOV hat signed by Elliot Spitzer.

I just finished third in the Caesars event.  This tacks another $20,000 score onto my resume, but I feel a stronger sense of disappointment than accomplishment in the wake of the tournament.  I honestly thought I was going to win the thing.  Am I turning into a spoiled brat?

When play resumed with 12 players left, I was the chip leader.  I won two sizable pots immediately, and when we settled in to play the final table, I was way out ahead of the field.  Then, seated at a full final table with a gradually graded prize structure, I struggled through a long drought of trash hands.  I surmised that the only proper strategy was patience.  I picked a few spots here and there and mostly withstood my restealing urges, basically folding my way down to three-handed.

At that point in time, I was the second largest stack.  In the very first hand of three-handed play, with the blinds at 16,000-32,000 I openraised the button to 85,000 with A-8 offsuit, and the small stack in the big blind shoved for around 350,000.  I was sitting on around 700,000, which turned out to be the deciding factor in my decision to gamble with the short stack, who had been playing pretty tight.  I made the call.  The small stack (and eventual winner) had A-J, and it held up.  A few hands later I ran another A-8 into A-K, and that was all she wrote. 

I feel like a lot of less accomplished players might have donked off their chips earlier.  Still, I felt like I was the chalk in this thing and should have figured out a way to win it.

Oh, and for those of you keeping score at home, I drove through a nasty storm and made it to Philly just in time for tipoff.  Cornell beat Penn in a squeaker before a surprisingly fiesty crowd at the Palestra. 

And thus ends a blog entry by a guy whining about winning 20 grand.  🙂