Good news:  I’m the chip leader with 12 players left in the $500 Event.  Day 2 starts at 2:00 pm.

Bad news:  The chip leader never wins these things (so says Janeen).

Good news:  I’m about to make some more money.

Bad news:  I might miss the Cornell/Penn game tonight.

Good news:  I played well and ran well yesterday.

Bad news:  I am deliriously tired.  Yet I cannot sleep.

That’s it for today’s news.  Think happy thoughts for me, another big cash would be nice.

Not much to really report these days.  My trip to Vegas featured continuous frustration at the poker table.  I just could not get over the hump in any of the tournaments I entered.  Some were really excruciating and I’d rather just forget about them.

One thing I did notice in my Venetian and Wynn forays is that the bad players were loose/passive players rather than maniacs, who are plentiful in AC and Foxwoods.  As a result, I forced myself to play a low variance form of tournament poker.  This differs from the East Coast game I’ve developed, where I do a lot of restealing on the crazy guys.  I felt I made the transition well, but my results were nevertheless quite poor.  I’m not sure whether this East Coast/maniac, Vegas/loose-passive pattern is a significant trend or an anomaly, but there was a distinct difference in the general style of play in $500-$1000 buyin multitable tournaments on this trip.

One piece of good news:  Just as I was set to completely dismiss square gambling as a life-wasting exercise for morons, I went on a big tear playing craps and blackjack in Vegas.  As I’ve mentioned before, I typically dabble for a few hours on these trips in order to keep the comps coming.  On this particular trip I had a horseshoe wedged in my ass for the duration.  All four of my square gambling sessions were positive.  Included in that mix was a craps roll that lasted over two hours.  That is not an exaggeration or a typo.  A man held the dice for over two hours.  The players relieved the table of all the green, black and purple chips in play twice.  Yes, that fortress of chips that sits in front of the boxman disappeared not once, but twice.  It was an epic roll, and everyone at the table happily missed their dinner reservations.  In my craps heyday I would have made a fortune–the player to my right bought in for $900 and left with over $40,000–but I turned only a fairly modest profit.  Still, it salvaged my trip.

In other news, Janeen and I are planning our wedding.  In order to preserve my sanity, I’ve tried to maintain a safe distance from the trenches, where Janeen and her mother are getting down and dirty with the real decisions.  Still, I’ve been (willingly) dragged into the fray a few times already.  Picking out our registry was an especially metrosexual experience for a guy who wears the same sneakers every day and whose bathroom product collection consists of a bar of soap and toothpaste.  I will never care what my flatware looks like, and I’m thankful for that.

Anyway, I have quite a nice little weekend coming up.  While Janeen is off in Chicago getting our wedding shit in order (thanks Janeeeeeeen!), I’ll be in Atlantic City for the Caesar’s WSOP Circuit Events, with a pit stop in Philly to see my alma mater’s baskeball team (yayy!) take on my other alma mater (blah).  Cornell is NCAA-tournament bound for the first time since 1988, and I’m running a high grade school pride fever for the first time!  Cornell has ZERO history of proficiency at basketball and they stunk for the four years I was there.  The only major sport Cornell has excelled at in the past 20 years is hockey, and I don’t give a crap about hockey.  College hoops, on the other hand, is one of my favorites.  I’m rather excited, to say the least.  Here is some footage of the final moments of the NCAA-clinching game and the postgame net cutting.  Go Big Red!  We’re dancing baby!

-On this trip, I’m reading Blood and Thunder:  The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West, a book written by Hampton Sides during my downtime.  I know I’ve mentioned this a time or two before, but this book reinforces how astonishing modern Las Vegas is.  The fact that every square foot of this town is now crammed full of architectural monstrosities, fat guys and sluts is nothing short of a miracle. 

Las Vegas is located in the corner of the continent that was considered absolutely uninhabitable during Manifest Destiny’s heyday.  The most brutal portion of the trek from the midwest to Southern California was through this area.  Traversing this desert on an animal’s back required stamina and perseverence, and those who successfully passed through seldom returned.  The area was not settled for permanent residence until about 100 years ago, and the early settlers were a few brave souls who lived barbarous, squalid lives.

Today there are but two vestiges of Las Vegas’ early history:  the streets downtown, which are named for the first white people to cross this then-forgettable corner of the globe, and the thin layer of dust that collects on your clothes and in your throat if you walk around for more than ten minutes.   That layer of dust is telling us something.  It’s saying “I would own you if not for the Hoover Dam and modern climate controls.  All those fat guys and sluts would not be possible.  I used to own this town.  Bah!”

 -As I’ve probably mentioned before, I have a friend who now lives in this desert wonderland:  my boy Jonny Y.  And so on this trip I got my very first taste of non-Strip, locally-flavored nightlife.  On Saturday night, Jon, longtime DZ.com contributor Christian and I attended a party for one of Jon’s co-workers at The Griffin, which is a bar in downtown Vegas.  I loved The Griffin.  It stands out in this town for its mere refusal to make any kind of spectacle of itself.  The place has two rooms.  The front area is a tasteful loungy kind of scene, and the back room is a no-frills dance space reminiscent of New York’s Lower East Side venues.  I say that first because there is no decor to speak of, but especially because the Griffin has something I had never experienced anywhere else in Las Vegas:  local DJ’s with a clue!  The dudes in the back room played a very enjoyable mix of old funk and hip hop, and not just the obvious stuff.  Really well done.  I danced my drunk ass off.  Two enthusiastic thumbs up for The Griffin.  Vegas nightlife is NOT one giant cliche.  Who knew?

One place that hasn’t changed in many years was my next stop from Saturday night:  Drai’s afterhours.  Drai’s has serious lasting power, many other late night options have come and gone in the past six years, and Drai’s continues to hold its own.  It still gets rammed full of nutjobs at around 4:00 am.  The one thing that was different this time around was the music:  apparently cheesy remixes  and silly anthems have fallen out of favor with the silicone set (pun intended); the DJ’s at Drai’s now spin numbing tech-house for hours on end.  Go figure.

-I am staying at MGM Grand right now, which of course can mean only one thing:  You can say “this is where 2Pac got shot!” to yourself every time you get into or out of the elevator. 

-I am down to almost zero tolerance for craps (the game).  I used to love shooting craps, but I can’t stand it anymore.  I say this despite being up a few hundred dollars in my two efforts on this trip.  So why do I still play?  Because I suspect that cheap room rate offers would stop appearing in my mailbox if I quit entirely.  The first time I played on this trip, it was so obvious that I wanted to be elsewhere that the dealer on my end said “color coming in” (i.e., that I was cashing out) at the end of a roll, before I had even asked.

-Now that I have been to the actual Bellagio, I find myself pronouncing it the fruity way the guys from the Italian water taxis say it, in instead of the regular American way.

Some poker stuff:

-I am running really, really bad out here so far.  And I don’t mean that I’m playing bad and but sugar coating things by saying that I’m running bad.  I mean that I’m running baaaaad.  I think it has to do with the fact that I’ve been placed in the one or ten seat for every single tournament I’ve entered so far.  This means that I have to use the muscles in my neck instead of just whatever controls my eyeballs if I want to see what other players are doing.  Unpleasant.  Poker players’ neck muscles aren’t made for moving.  Also, it really sucks to play flawlessly (if I do say so myself) for 12 hours and leave a two-day event empty handed.

-You know you’re a professional poker player when you start to recognize at least two or three faces at every table you sit at, even when you’re all the way across the country.  Even when you sit in the MGM Grand’s nightly $125 tournament.

-Speaking of that particular tournament, playing in it was like playing a video game against a blind person.  Well, not really.  My point is that there was no discernable reason for any of the plays these people were making and it ended up confusing the shit out of me.  Sigh….

Okay, that’s all for now.  Bye!

My poker hiatus finally over, I was back in business today.  ‘Twas not a good day. 

For years, I have read on poker forums about how insane online poker Sundays are.  However, I never really experienced it for myself.  During football season I abstain completely, and from Feburary through August I pick out a few tournaments each Sunday and concentrate on those.

Today I decided to treat my Sunday the way real online multitable grinders do:  I fired up all of the good ones and went to work.  Ugh, I wish I hadn’t.  I took the collar.  Yes, 0-fer the entire day.  Although the dent in my bankroll was small, it made me supremely annoyed.  It’s a very unpleasant feeling to play so many of these freakin’ things without so much as a sniff of the money.

I know I am especially upset about today’s whiffage because I just shaved.  This is a strange quirk of mine:  when I am really pissed off, I shave.  Not when my facial hair has grown to a certain length, not when I have a formal event to attend, not Tuesdays Thursdays and alternate Saturdays.  The schedule doesn’t work that way.  I shave when I’m pissed off.  Something about a long hapless day of online poker makes my skin crawl, it makes me physically uncomfortable.  You see, I spend 99% of my life blissfully unaware of what I look like and of how my skin feels.  The other 1% of the time is when I’m very frustrated:  Under those conditions I suddenly cannot stand the whiskers on my face and must remove them at once.  I want to tear my hair out, except it’s the hair on my face.  I do feel a bit better once I’ve shaved.  So if you see me walking around without even a hint of facial growth, feel sorry for me.  It means that some jackass has cracked my pocket aces with 10-8 offsuit in the past couple of hours.   

Next up for me is a long trip to Las Vegas, which will include a welcome return to brick & mortar poker.  The Deep Stack Extravaganza at the Venetian and the Wynn Poker Classic.  This clean shaven online donk wants revenge.

I have played no poker for about two weeks.  Instead, I have been moving forward—quickly–with my personal life.  I have two pieces of good news to share.

First, Janeen and I have bought an apartment in Brooklyn.  It’s been over a year since I initially decided that I’d had enough of my current neighborhood and set Brooklyn as my preferred next destination.  At the same time, Janeen and I were feeling ready to move forward with the relationship, so when I took Janeen on a driving tour of my favorite borough and she decided that many of its neighborhoods remind her of Chicago (her hometown), we started apartment hunting in earnest.  That was around Thanksgiving.

A couple of weeks ago, Janeen found a listing for a converted brownstone on a very nice block in Carroll Gardens.  We took a look at these new condos and we both liked them very much.  They had much more space (three bedrooms) and were much nicer (completely new fixtures) than what we’re used to.  Upon leaving the brownstone, I declared that we would soon be living in it.  And that’s pretty much how I usually roll– I’m not much of a shopper.  Still, I wasn’t sure if my history of impulse purchasing would (or should) apply to real estate.  As it turns out, I was true to my word.  After a bit of haggling, Janeen and I now find ourselves “in contract” for one of the condos, which means that while we don’t officially own it yet, it would be a pretty bad beat if we don’t end up moving into the place in a month or two.

This apartment will be the first truly grownup purchase of my life.  And the majority of the down payment, which is not a small sum of money, has been won playing poker.  It occurred to me that I would never have been able to afford this apartment had I remained a lawyer.  This fact has put my success over the past two years into sharp perspective, and, naturally, made me quite pleased with myself.  Our new home will very much be a poker place:  not only will it be purchased with poker proceeds, the third bedroom will be converted to an office, providing me with an amazing spacious new place from which to play.

The apartment news is big, but it’s not the biggest recent development in my personal life.  I am also happy to announce that Janeen and I are now engaged!

If you watch basketball regularly, you are probably familiar with the following scenario:  one team is leading comfortably with less than a minute to play.  The game’s outcome has been decided.  The fans recognize this and begin to file out.  The players also recognize this, and their intensity wanes as they jog up and down the court going through the motions.  All that really remains is for the clock to expire, and then they’ll all go take showers.  But wait!  What’s this?  Oh no.  The coach of the hopeless team orders his players to intentionally foul the players on the winning team, thereby stopping the game clock and sending the other team to the free throw line.  He’s trying to trade short three point possessions for one or two points on the other end.  This can be very effective in a close game, but it is nothing more than so much futile nonsense in a blowout, and it can extend already-decided games for what feels like ten or fifteen additional minutes.  Many basketball coaches will needlessly employ this strategy even when it is apparent to anyone watching the game that victory has become a mathematical impossibility.  It’s quite annoying.  Okay, so what’s my point? 

In recent months, I had become that stupid coach.  Janeen and I have long ago discovered our love for each other, the mutual trust we share, and our comfort level in our relationship.  Our eventual marriage has been a foregone conclusion for some time.  But the remnants of my old commitment-phobic self had kept me calling silly timeouts even though the game was really over.  On Thursday night, I finally decided to just let the clock roll.

Those who know me well are aware that I’ve historically been somewhat of a wandering soul in general, and a reluctant and sometimes reckless partner in many of my relationships.  I now believe those traits were symptomatic of the discord and dissatisfaction I felt during the eight years that I was unhappy with my job.  My unhappiness never drove me to seek solace in a partner.  I was more inclined to use all of my free time searching.  Ironically, it took a change to professional gambling for a stabilizing effect to occur—the self-satisfaction this switch created put me in a place where I was finally willing to accept (and perhaps was even seeking) permanence in my relationships.  So poker made my engagement possible in a way.

Which is not to say that Janeen isn’t awesome in her own right.  She’s the perfect partner for me, and I’m so happy that I’ve met her.  She’s smart, kind, beautiful, witty, fun and supportive.  She also understands what makes me tick.  While poker may have made my engagement to Janeen possible, I also firmly believe that there is a symbiotic affiliation between the two, because I would not be doing as well as I am at poker without Janeen.  Even though she can barely name the four suits in a deck of playing cards, she’s my official poker coach.  That’s because she instills confidence.  She knows all the right things to say to me when I’m running bad, and she understands and tolerates the lifestyle I’ve chosen.  Having her on my side is the best.  In order to exercise clear thought and sharp decision making, you have to be emotionally at peace with yourself.  Janeen has put me there, and she is an indispensable element of my success.  I love you Janeen!

So how do a pair of new Brooklynites get engaged?  You take a limo to Brooklyn’s quintessential five star restaurant—Junior’s—and order champagne and comfort food.  Duh!

Ghetto fabulous baby!

The Borgata houses the most popular poker room on the East Coast and runs the best attended poker tournaments in America outside of Las Vegas.  Also, the fields in The Borgata’s poker tournaments are notoriously weak.  Despite those facts, heading into the 2008 Borgata Winter Open, I carried with me a nasty, bulging five-digit lifetime deficit on the premises.  Outside of the very obvious (a second place finish in the WSOP bracelet event, duh) my failure to produce even a single tournament cash at Borgata—a.k.a. The Bogata Curse—had been the greatest disappointment of my poker career.  My futility at Borgata had become fairly comical.  Until last week.

I’m pleased to say that the Borgata Curse is no more.  Here’s how it was conquered.

I spent nearly the entirety of the last two weeks at Borgata, making three separate trips down to Atlantic City in the process.  The first trip felt awfully familiar, featuring consistent losing at multitable and single table tournaments with one maddening near-miss, my first ever multitable cash at Borgata, sprinkled in.

Thankfully, I am now past the point in my career where tournament variance, i.e., bad beats and dry spells, give me much pause.  However, I am not (and nor likely will I ever be) past the point where I have any tolerance for tournaments that I flush down the toilet by royally fucking up a hand.  My bustout hand of Event #2 at the Borgata was possibly such an instance, and its aftermath sent me into a nasty psychological tailspin.  Here’s what happened:

I started out Event #2 ($500 +60 NLHE) by surviving the first few levels and then gathering steam towards the middle of the day.  Around the dinner break I was in firm control of my table, and when I was moved to a new table later in the evening I had a large stack with the tournament bubble approaching.

My new table featured eight stacks smaller than mine and one stack, to my immediate left, much larger than mine.  This stack belonged to a reckless, crazy player who I will call IDC (“I don’t care”) for short, in honor of his careless style of play.  IDC was having a grand old time, chatting with the table nonstop whist tossing his chips around.  Within the first few hands after my arrival, I witnessed IDC raise to five times the big blind from under the gun with A-3 offsuit, a play that any pokernerd will tell you is horrible.  I also witnessed the following hand:  everyone folds to IDC on the button and he raises to four times the big blind.  The young player in the big blind promptly reraises all in with a big overbet shove that will cost IDC almost half his stack to call.  IDC thinks for a few seconds before shrugging and calling.  IDC’s K-9 suited holds up over the young player’s Q-2 offsuit.  The first play was hideous, but the second play was a great one, but I don’t believe IDC had any idea why.  He was simply there to gamble.  So that gives you an idea of where IDC’s head was at.

Slowly but surely, I wrested control of IDC’s table from him as he lost several large pots in a row while I was busy accumulating chips, and by the time the tournament bubble burst with 81 players remaining, I had the third or fourth largest stack in the room.  At this point the blinds were 1500-3000 with a 500 chip ante, and I had around 190,000 chips.  IDC had been chopped up pretty badly and had around 50,000 chips.

Soon thereafter, I was on the button and reraised a middle position player’s openraise from 9,0000 to 25,000, and IDC put in the third raise, shoving  from the big blind for his full 50,000.  I had pocket sevens and was committed to call the additional 25,000.  IDC doubled through me with kings.  After losing another small pot and watching IDC win another hand, the balance of power at the table had again shifted.  I now had about 118,000 chips while IDC had me covered with about 160,000 when the fateful hand occurred.

I was in the big blind, and IDC was sitting under the gun, first to act.  He took a quick peek at his cards and openraised to 18,000, slapping the chips sloppily into the pot.  Anyone who has ever played a no limit hold ‘em tournament will tell you that this was a crazy bet.  IDC had raised to six times the big blind, an amount unheard of at this late stage of a tournament.   Once his chips hit the felt, there was already nearly 30,000 chips in the pot, or well over half the average stack in the room.  It was a pretty ridiculous overbet.  Whatever IDC’s hole cards were, he did not want action with them.  I knew I’d be folding all but the most powerful hands to his maniac raise.  But when I looked down at my hole cards, I found a big hand:  pocket tens.  The action folded all the way around to me, and now I was faced with a hard decision.  No fewer than five options flashed through my mind.

1. Just fold.  Simply calling this bet was going to cost me one-fifth of my stack.  I knew I was a much better player than IDC and I theoretically could have waited for a better spot to take care of him.  Also, JJ is the classic hand that many players are stereotypically scared to play after the flop, so JJ made a lot of sense here, and my tens were in bad shape against JJ.

2. “Stop & go” him.  IDC obviously did not have aces or kings; he had a hand that feared action.  I considered the idea of calling and then leading any flop, most of which would contain cards that scared him.

3. Call and reevaluate from there.  Just by calling his massive raise I perhaps could have frozen IDC and later snatched this large pot from him on one of the later streets.

4. “Go & go” him.  I also considered a small reraise to around 60k, followed by betting the remainder of my stack on any flop.  This move clearly screams AA or KK into the earhole of even the stupidest opponent, and IDC would have been hard pressed to call both the reraise and the continuation bet.

5. The final option was to move all in.

After a bit of thought, I went with option #5, and the rationale was as follows.  I felt that the range of hands with which IDC would make this wacky 18,000 chip raise was trailing pocket tens.  I did think that it was obvious that he might be holding two jacks for the reason mentioned above, but based on watching this player for the prior couple of hours, I felt that many other hands were in his range, including AK, AQ, maybe some weaker aces, the other two tens, pocket 9’s, and possibly pocket 8’s.  I had virtually no fear of AA, KK, or QQ because I believed IDC would try to induce action with those hands.  Also, there existed the possibility that IDC would even fold JJ to a shove.  Hence, I gritted my teeth and made the move.

After watching me say “all in” as I carefully pushed everything forward, IDC said “you’re all in!?” I repeated “yup, I am all in.”  Then, for the first time in my limited experience with him, IDC fell completely silent.  The fact that he needed to contemplate his next move made me confident that he was either going to fold or call me with a worse hand, so I sat there quite comfortably awaiting his decision.  Finally, he stood up and put his hand over his mouth, and after about ten more seconds, he removed his hand, shrugged, and said “call.”  I also stood up, glanced at IDC and asked “you have pocket jacks, don’t you?”  He nodded and turned them over.  Ouch.  The flop came A-K-K (i.e., options 1 through 4 above would have worked).  Ouch.  The turn and river were blanks.  Ouch.  I was out, with about $300 profit to show for my twelve hour workday. 

I trudged out of the room in a very foul frame of mind.  This hand did not sit well with me.  I had worked hard and played well, putting myself in position to finally make a big score at the Borgata.  Yes, I had cashed in a Borgata event at long last, but that was small consolation.  Getting to a place in a live tournament where the final table is in clear sight is a difficult achievement in and of itself.  The good players, when they are able to do this, tend to capitalize by playing their best poker from that point in the tournament forward.  I had arguably failed to do that, and I was beyond pissed about it.  I had found myself seated at a table full of novices, all of whom, with one exception, were scared to play a pot with me.  And I had dumped my entire stack into the hands of the one player at the table who didn’t fear me.

I spent the next few days struggling to evaluate my bustout hand.  Pokernerds draw an important distinction between players who are “results oriented” and those who can objectively analyze their play, with “results oriented” categorized as a very negative trait.  “Results oriented” players tend to revise history, and they attribute all of their winning hands to strong play and their losing hands to poor play.   Well, the results of my 10-10 < J-J were bothering me to no end, and I began to terrorize myself to the point that I was having trouble sleeping for the next two nights.  I simply could not decide whether my play was okay or not.  Was I falling into the “results oriented” trap, or had I legitimately botched the hand?  I couldn’t decide, and I hated it.  My self-torment lasted several days—I carried it home to NYC with me for the weekend. 

My stubborn refusal to accept hands that I may have misplayed is probably both a blessing and a curse.  It makes my life suck for awhile, but it also might be responsible for my overall improvement as a player.  In any event, my first week at Borgata was a failure.  I had once again lost money there and was pissed off at myself.

The trip back the next week would go a lot better.  I won Event #9 for over $67,000.  And here is a recap.

I have never run as well in a tournament as I did on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.  Basically, my foes folded to all my bluffs, called me down when I had the goods, and on the three or four occasions where I got my money in bad, I sucked out.  I was blessed the entire time.  My fantasy football friends insist that I lead a charmed existence in our league where my litany of (supposed) lucky breaks have earned me the nickname “Sunny,” as in “the sun always shines” on me.  Well, if any of my SoY brethren are reading this, I’d like you to know that Event #9 of the 2008 Borgata Winter Open was a very sunny poker tournament. 

It was as if all the good fortune so conspicuously absent from hundreds of logged hours at Borgata suddenly materialized and was concentrated into a single tournament.  Witness:

Level two, blinds are 50-100.  There are a couple of loose-passive muppets at my table; they’re playing a lot of hands and are generally clueless.  Also present is a very genial internet player called “SuperTuan.”  Both SuperTuan and I know that we are seated with a few muppets.  One of the muppets openlimps from early position, and I decide to squeeze him from the button, making it 500 to go with KQ.  SuperTuan is in the big blind.  I have about 4500 chips and SuperTuan covers me.  He proceeds to reraise to 1300.  The muppet folds and it’s up to me.  I consider the situation and decide that SuperTuan is making a play:  he knows that I am squeezing with a wide range from the button, so I believe that his re-squeeze could also be quite a few hands, not just premiums.  Under those conditions, I do not hate my KQ.  I therefore call the 800 additional chips and decide to play at pot with him, in position.  The flop comes A-10-x, giving me a gutshot broadway draw, and SuperTuan makes a curiously small bet of 800.  I stick with my read and quickly call, intending to shove the turn if he checks.  The turn is a blank, and he checks, so I do as planned, shoving all in for around 3200, representing AQ/AJ/A10 or a set.  SuperTuan thinks this bet over for a long time, then finally says “eh, it’s a $500 tournament” and calls, showing pocket kings.  My read was way off, and he had made a great call.  I was drawing to four jacks on the river. 

I protect my hole cards with two chips under normal circumstances, but when I am all in, those chips are in the center of the table, so I use my omnipresent toothpick box as a makeshift protector.  During this hand, before the river card was dealt, I did something I very rarely do, my ultimate sign of concession:  I picked up my box of toothpicks, put them in my pocket, and stood up to leave.  So you can imagine my surprise when a jack materialized on the river.  Oh hi!  

I managed to chip up from there, but could only do so much.  I reached the dinner break as a short/medium sized stack of around 17,000.  The blinds when we returned to action were 600-1200 with a good sized ante, so it was time to move.  On the very first hand after dinner, a gentleman in a yarmulke limped under the gun, and it was folded to me on the button with A-10 offsuit.  The big blind had not returned from dinner, so his money was sitting there dead in the pot, and Yarmulke had made a habit of openlimping, so I just stuffed all my chips in, figuring I was ahead.  Nope.  Yarmulke snap-called with KK.  The flop brought rags, but the turn was an ace and the pot was mine.  I told the table that I “hated doing that to a fellow member of the tribe,” but I was now in solid shape for the tournament.

I scratched around until a dry spell left me fairly short stacked at the bubble.  I then began to pick up good hands to move all in with, and by the time the bubble had burst, I was somewhere in the middle of the pack.  As the end of the day’s play (2:00 am) approached, I was in the middle of a pack of about 20 remaining players.  Then, for good measure, on the final hand of the night, I engineered one last suckout.

I had around 200,000 in chips and with the blinds at 3000-6000, I openraised in middle position to 17,000 with two black sixes.  The player to my left who had been quite hesitant to get involved, pushed all in for about 75,000, and it folded back around to me.  I thought it over for a long time then announced that I was making “the worst call ever” and stuck the additional chips in.  I was right, I was behind:  he had pocket jacks, one of which was the jack of diamonds.  The flop came 2, 3, 4, all diamonds.  I didn’t have many outs, but there was one of them on the turn:  a black five!  Woooooot!  I dodged a diamond on the river, and all of the sudden, I had a shit-ton of chips.  The night was over, there were exactly 20 players left, and I was third on your leaderboard, first in your hearts.

The following morning I had my trusty assistant Janeen do some quick research on the other chip leaders and came to the determination that if a bookmaker were to handicap the outcome of tournament, I’d be the favorite.  Of all the players with sizeable Day 2 stacks, my lifetime tournament winnings were easily the highest.  Many of the remaining players did not have any cashes whatsoever on their resume.

I started Day 2 out grinding away, and I chipped up from around 320,000 to about 400,000 when the hand that really won the tournament for me developed.  Despite all the sunshiny lucksacking I’d done to that point, I’m happy to report that I won the tournament’s most crucial hand based on a good read, not divine intervention.

Short stacks had been busting from the tournament, and so we were either 14 or 13 handed.  I was under the gun and the player in the big blind was the tournament chip leader, an inexperienced player who was getting involved in a lot of pots.  He had me covered by a bit.  The blinds were now 5,000-10,000 and I openraised to 30,000 with Q-J offsuit.  It was folded around to the chipleader who chose to defend his blind and call.  The flop came J-3-2 rainbow, which was a good flop for me.  But instead of checking to me, the chipleader led at the pot for 100,000.  Now what the hell was this? 

It is standard for a player in the big blind who hit his hand on this (or any) flop to checkraise in this spot.  Leading at the pot out of position just doesn’t happen a lot in this situation.  If a good player had done this it would set off major alarms in my head, but in my estimation this was not a good player.  His bet had to mean one of the following:

1.  I like my hand, but not enough to checkraise.  Let’s see if David will go away once I take a stab.

2.  I’m gonna bluff here and make David go away.  The flop probably missed him too.

3.  I have flopped a monster and don’t want to win a small pot with a checkraise.  David knows that a lead bet here is usually weak, so let’s induce a raise and trap him for all his chips.

4.  I have nothing here, but David is thinking on a high level and will assume that I am very strong and trapping if I lead out, so this is going to scare the crap out of him and make him fold.
  
I considered my opponent and decided that he was probably not sophisticated enough for #3 or #4 to be accurate.  It was probably #1 or #2, but I was sufficiently scared of #3 (and the flop was dry enough) that I chose to only flat call the 100k bet rather than raising.  I’d reevaluate on the turn.  The turn brought a nine, and the chipleader now repeated the same bet:  another 100k.  This small bet was just plain weird, and I didn’t waste much time trying to decipher it.  I went with my original read and announced that I was raising all in.

Literally before I could pronounce the word “in,” the chipleader blurted out “call!” 

Fuck no.  My heart sank and a feeling of dread washed over me as I realized I had made a big mistake.  Consistent with my longstanding pattern of cold, unsympathetic, harsh self-assessment, during this unpleasant moment I found that I was not disappointed about the prize money I was forgoing, nor was I embarrassed that I had put all my money in with top pair and a weak kicker.  Rather, I was just plain angry at myself for making a bad read in a big spot.  But all the anger was short-lived, as it only took perhaps a second or two for Mr. Snapcall to reveal his hand:

King-ten offsuit.  That’s… king high.  Nothing?  At first it didn’t quite register.  But it was true.  He had called me with an overcard and a gutshot straight draw, also known as nothing.  I was awash with relief.  And then, a few moments later, when the river produced another harmless nine, flooded with chips.  Out of nowhere, I had something like 900,000 chips… over one-third of the chips in play.  Ummm… wow!  Great read, David…

The rest of the tournament posed no problems for me.  I once again ran well, picking up pocket aces three times at the final table, and I tacked on a couple of suckouts in all-in confrontations for good measure.  No one could touch me.  I was both lucky and good.  The idea of a chop arose a few times, but I politely declined when we were four-handed, three-handed and again heads up.  It just didn’t make any sense for me; I had all the chips.  It was just my day.  The final hand occurred when the second place finisher, a nice Long Islander named Sal, moved all in with A-4 and I immediately called him with A-J.  When a jack fell on the turn, he was drawing dead and I was the champ.  I didn’t feel especially excited when the moment arrived, but I did give the assembled crowd a brief clenched fist stare, something like a boxer posing for one of those old-timey black and white photos.  But just for a split second.  The $67,000 and change amounted to my fourth-largest career score.  Not bad.

If I had to pick out any single thing to account for my good luck, I would say that it had something to do with Wednesday also being the day that longtime friends of davidzeitlin.com Kevin Wright and Carrie Corcoran had their first baby, a boy named Griffin.  Many years from now, I will likely tell a bewildered Griffin Wright why his birthday is really the coolest birthday a kid could have as I rub his head in an effort to renew the Griffin Day magic of ’08.  Anyway, congrats guys!

My tournament victory came with a shiny inscribed Tag Heuer watch, which I have promptly gifted to my father.  In the age of cell phones, pinpoint accurate time-telling is sitting right there in your freakin’ pocket, so a watch really amounts to nothing more than jewelry for a man, and I don’t wear jewelry.  My father belongs to a generation where a watch actually served some sort of function, so he gets a pass (and an expensive Tag, lucky guy).  Actually, one of my biggest pet peeves about young poker players is the stupid-ass giant $10,000 watches that they think they look cool wearing (and even worse, constantly talking about, ugh).  Guys, you look (and sound) like idiots.  But that’s another topic.

In my last Borgata foray after winning the $500 tournament, I came within a hair of satelliting into the $10,000 Main Event, which I ended up skipping.  In the interim, it has occurred to me that there is no good reason for me to continue skipping WPT events.  Although I am still unwilling to put up $10,000 of my own money to play them, I feel confident that I can play as well as most of the field in them.  So if anyone looking to stake me in larger events is reading this:  I’d like to talk to you.

Well, that’s all for now.  Bye-bye Borgata hex.  And bring on the rest of 2008! 
 

The Borgata hex has been lifted.  Details to come…

One of the recurring themes of this blog is how poorly I fare at the Borgata. I’m off to play a whole bunch of tournaments there starting tomorrow morning, but I’m going to forgo any further commentary about how awful my results in that building are.

Instead, I’m going to tell you that I’ve come out of the gate firing in 2008 with some very strong results in online play. Also, I’m going to say that I feel that I’m playing very well right now, and that I believe I’ve got a great chance to make some kind of splash in the Borgata Winter Open.

GOODFOOT!

Thank you, James.

Off to Joisey I go…

Another year has come and gone in my world.  Overall, 2007 was probably the best year I’ve ever had, but there were a lot of highs and lows.  In this blog entry I’m going to give it very short shrift, but I will try to give you the general idea.  Also you will see a lot of close-ups of the upper half of my face.  Here goes.

January:  Inauspicious to say the least.  I go to the Bahamas and get slaughtered at poker.  I’m bored, so I proceed to get slaughtered at craps, too.  I come home annoyed.  I finish off the month by playing a few tournaments at the Borgata Winter Open and I don’t win a dime.  My momentum from late 2006 is officially gone. 

February:  I take trips to Vegas and Puerto Rico but neither one has much to do with poker.  When I do manage to play, I continue to hemorrhage money.  I’m not liking 2007 so far.

March:  I go to the WSOP Circuit at Caesar’s AC and to a Foxwoods WPT event.  And I get slaughtered.  Now more worried than annoyed, I’m starting to think that maybe I suck at poker, and I’m out of reasons for why I’m constantly losing, so I do what any rational person would do:  I decide that I won’t cut my hair until I have a five-figure payday.

By the end of the month, I look like this.

April:  I host a poker tutorial and meet John Starks.  Unfortunately, my poker results still resemble his shooting percentage in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals.  I decide to play a lot of online poker and have mixed results.  Nothing near five figures is happening.  2007 is a big washout so far.  Maybe this no-haircut thing wasn’t a great idea.  Now I look like this:

May:  I manage my first substantive cash of the year, but it amounts to peanuts compared to what any self-respecting poker pro should be making, and it ain’t five figures.  The WSOP is coming up soon, and I’ve been a dismal failure for five full months.  I start to experiment with my game, but the results remain the same.  By the end of May, it is time to head for Vegas for the WSOP, and I am bearing an eerie, uncanny, almost prescient resemblence to the bad guy in the yet-to-be released No Country For Old Men.  Oh dear.

June:  I decide that growing out a long, disgusting, greasy head of hair isn’t enough of a reminder of how much I suck, so I pronounce that June 2007 shall be the “month of reckoning.”  This ensures that I will jump out my window if the month ends without some kind of major score.  I guess it was just the kind of pressure I needed, because that was when it happened.  I final table a WSOP Event, come within a rivered two-outer of winning a bracelet, and I take home a quarter million dollars.  A week or two later, I tack on a second sizeable WSOP cash for good measure.  Poker is easy.  Now I look like this:

July:  Newly shorn, I do absolutely nothing in the WSOP Main Event.  Nevertheless, I’m feeling pretty self-satisfied and smug, so I take a long break from poker.

August:  I go to Turning Stone and play quite well, racking up a bunch of wins in multitable satellites, but I don’t do a whole lot in the preliminary or main events up there.  I’m still playing well, so I decide to make a nice online score as well.  Then football season arrives and I forget all about poker for several weeks while I nerd it up in preparation for my fantasy drafts.

September:  Borgata has another WPT Event.  I never win jack shit at Borgata.  Never ever.  I get slaughtered.

October:  Not much poker happens.  I watch football, go to Europe with Janeen and spend the last week of the month finally getting back to business at Foxwoods with mixed results. 

November:  I make my second big score of the year, finishing second in a preliminary event at the Foxwoods WPT.  What a country.  Man, poker is easy.  Now I look like this (I’m the guy on the left):

December:  Nothing good happens.  That’s okay, I’ve had a great year. 

Which brings us to 2008.  My poker goal for 2008 is pretty simple.  Just come close to replicating 2007.  That shouldn’t be a tough assignment, because poker is an easy game.

I’m a huge fantasy football nerd.  I’m practically psychotic about my fantasy football league.  I wasn’t always this way, but I think I know how it happened.

During my childhood, when the topic of David Zeitlin’s future would arise, my mother often recited her version of success, and they were words that this mama’s boy unwittingly took to heart.  Her idea of success was that each successive generation should achieve more than the last.  For me, that was going to be a pretty tall order.  My family tree consisted of great grandfathers who were poor immigrants, hard-working grandfathers who were never wealthy but who provided for their families, and finally a driven, educated father who crafted a busy law practice from scratch.  As the only son in my family, I knew at an early age that my assignment was to keep the graph moving along in the same direction.

It was under those auspices that I arrived, feeling duty-bound by my mother’s precept, at Penn Law School in 1995.  Tragically, when I went through the process of applying to law schools, I never stopped to consider whether I was choosing the right career.  All I knew was that I was supposed to be a bigger, better version of my father.  Not long after my arrival in Philadelphia, I discovered my misstep.

It was the first time in my life that I was truly unhappy.  Unlike my prior problems, experiencing my first law school lectures caused more than a fleeting sense of disappointment.  They brought permanent discord to my life.  It was official:  I hated law school.  Still, I refused to reject my assignment.  I stuck things out.  Rather than quit, I spent three years coping by adopting a studied somnolence, ignoring the plain fact that I did not belong there.  I simply sleepwalked through the entire experience.  I could not have cared less about Mrs. Palsgraf, and in retrospect, it isn’t a surprise that hers is among the very few names I remember from my casebooks. 

As my time in law school wore on, things never improved.  I went to class less and less often.  When I did, I was both bored and confused.  The brown-nosing students who insisted on being heard in every lecture were universally reviled, but I was less disgusted than bewildered by them.  Socially, I adopted an aloof “cool guy” persona that was a caricature of my true feelings.  Seeking a respite from the misery, I kept myself somewhat active socially, but only within a smallish community of other students who were not nutjobs.  In light of the fact that my parents bankrolled my time at Penn (a fact that also undoubtedly contributed to my lasting through three years), and in light of the fact that I graduated and then took a high-paying job, I don’t expect much sympathy, but I was a fish out of water in law school.  

It was in this atmosphere that the fantasy football league State of Yo was born.  I was already a huge pro football fan [see this blog entry] and at that time, fantasy football was a nascent hobby that was just taking hold.  Football fans everywhere were just discovering how great fantasy football was; how well NFL football lent itself to fantasy sports play.  I was no exception–I had limited experience playing myself.  So during the first week of the first semester of my third year at Penn, a group of students decided to form a fantasy football league.  I don’t recall exactly how or why–it probably was both because I was the common link between the law school participants and the college friend I recruited (hi Sherm!) and because I was searching for something–anything–to stimulate my slumbering mind, but I was appointed commissioner. 

The league rules were mostly copied from another league I had played in the prior year, with a baseball-style auction draft slapped on for good measure.  At the inaugural draft, the auctioneer, my good college friend and then-Philly resident Kaushik Datta, repeatedly uttered the name of an obscure Black Sheep song that we both loved, and the league had its name.  State of Yo.

In the inaugural season of State of Yo (also affectionately known as “SoY”)–which incidentally culminated with the crowning of a very unlikely champion who would never be heard from again–the group discovered what an enjoyable diversion fantasy football is.  For me, it was more than merely enjoyable; it was exactly what the doctor ordered.  As silly as it sounds, the league woke me up again.  Here was something I could sink my teeth into.  Yes, law school required analytical thinking, but it required (and taught) a rigid form of analysis–the memorization and application of certain principles.  But the freewheeling speculative analysis required in fantasy football was more up my alley.  Most points won.  Stats created points.  And a myriad of factors:  talent, opportunity, matchup, weather, and so many other things created stats.  Even though I was a work in progress (I had a strange predilection for third down backs in my very early days), I loved the game.   I immediately knew that I could not have enough fantasy football.

Within SoY’s first few weeks, friendly rivalries spontaneously formed, friendships were created and solidified, and best of all, the leaguemates now had something to discuss beside our courses and gossip while cutting class.  Almost out of necessity, SoY took my world by storm.  I thought of little else. 

After the rousing first year, there was little doubt that SoY was more than a passing fad.  It required significant planning and an infusion of new players, but after graduation from law school, SoY moved to New York along with me and my reluctant career.

Nothing about my life improved during this next phase.  I found work as an associate in New York even less palatable than law school.  If I treated Mrs. Palsgraf with indifference, I had outright disdain for my firm’s clients, my bosses, and the steady stream of insipid tasks they burdened me with.  It took very little time for me to grow deeply dissatisfied with my job, which boiled down to a lot of document shuffling and footnote writing.  The confusion and dissatisfaction of law school blossomed into full-blown depression.  Again, I was making a lot of money at this time and had no student loans to pay down, so you are free to regard this as puerile whining.  But I was deeply depressed, self-medicating on weekends, and had no idea how to fix myself.

It was no surprise that SoY flourished and became a massive obsession under these conditions.  My efforts to fulfill my mother’s mandate for generational progress had led me to a life of drudgery and discontent, but I found solace and an outlet for my unquenched competitive spirit in fantasy football.  This was long before I had ever played a serious hand of poker.  So, as sad as this might sound, with so little else to stimulate me, I found meaning in SoY.  Fortunately, many of my leaguemates were just as eager about things as I was.  We filled our days emailing trash talk and good-natured taunts to each other.  Then on the weekends we got together to talk some more about the same things.  We were all desk jockeys using the league as a means to entertain one another.

During this time, SoY adopted numerous changes that made it magnitudes more complex and challenging.  Some of these changes were made possible by the internet, which was then expanding at an ungodly rate (modern fantasy football and poker both owe a great deal to the internet), but most of the changes were engineered by a group of like minded, well educated nutjobs.   Spearheading the changes and summarizing them in a long document forever after called the “League Constitution” (maybe law school was good for something after all) was probably the biggest nutjob of all, me.  In my role as commissioner I often assumed an admittedly heavy-handed posture, acting like something more than a camp counselor but something less than a despot.  I have always preferred to analogize my role to that of the CEO of a small corporation.  The league rules were (and remain) a work in perpetual progress, and they were discussed in boardroom-like meetings where friendly bickering was the order of the day.  Like political issues, each league rule had its own constituency of supporting owners as well as its detractors, and all the arguing over them made SoY a year-round affair.  The result was a complicated (the Preamble to the SoY Constitution warns the reader that ours is “not a novice league”) but well balanced set of guidelines.   In the end, the most significant early rule changes may have been the adoption of tradition-creating conventions such as the establishment of a championship cup (from which the league winner must chug a Zima) and the naming of the league’s two divisions in memorium of SoY’s first (now departed) champion.

By this time (1999 or 2000) we had settled on a group of owners who were mostly like me:  diehards.  The result was that the league, while forging and solidifying friendships, also created fierce rivalries.  My leaguemates, many of whom I now count among my closest friends, lived, died, celebrated and mourned their teams fortunes along with me on our weekly roller coaster ride.  Over the years, the sheer intensity of the league has both attracted owners (we have had a waiting list for many years) and driven owners away.  The league, while creating numerous new friendships, has also been guilty of damaging a couple of relationships.  If nothing else, one thing was clear, and it had less to do with the money at stake (very little) than the egos involved (rather large):  SoY was stirring the desk jockeys’ passions.

It was under these conditions that, to my great satisfaction, I began to dominate SoY.  By 2002, I had won the league title in four of the six years the league had been in existence, and I took great delight in touting myself, at every opportunity, as a natural prodigal fantasy football talent.  Yes, I told everyone:  I am the best there is at predicting the yardage and TD totals of NFL players on a weekly basis!  Silly?  Yes.  But it was a hell of a lot better than trying to impress the partners at my law firm.  Of course, my opinion of myself was almost as overblown as SoY itself, but there was a kernel of truth in there. 

It took the discovery, a little while later, of my own proficiency at poker for me to realize why I was winning at fantasy football:  it’s a game of playing percentages that are hard to quantify.  I am good at doing this.  Fantasy football and poker have much in common.  Luck is a constant, maddening factor in both games.  In poker, you play the percentages and then let fate take over as cards are turned.  In fantasy football, you play the percentages and then leave things to fate on Sunday as you pray for your players’ knees to withstand another week of punishment and for them never to get tackled at the one yard line.  In both games, if you play the percentages correctly often enough, you are rewarded in the long run.

SoY has just completed its eleventh year of operation.  As the years have worn on, there has been a slight but palpable decrease in the intensity with which most of the owners play.  This change was inevitable.  What started out as a group of single students and/or young professional guys has changed over the course of time into a collection of middle aged family men.  While SoY for many of my leaguemates may never have been the all-out saving grace it initially was for me, it was at the very least a welcome diversion.  But life goes on.  The mean number of SoY wives has grown from zero to a number approaching one, and the mean number of SoY children has likewise expanded from zero to a number somewhere between one and two.  Understandably, this has rendered SoY a fun hobby rather than an obsession for most.  However, the crazy early years served as a method of owner imprinting, so everyone still plays hard.  SoY is aging very gracefully.

While I am lagging (perhaps now only slightly) behind my leaguemates in terms of wife collecting and babymaking, my life has also undergone substantial change since SoY’s initial epoch.  Specifically, I have reached a station in life that brings me professional and personal satisfaction.  It took me a long time, but I have discovered the things in life that make me happy, and I now spend the majority of my time and energy focusing on them.  I finally have my own idea of what I’m supposed to be.  This is obviously a significant improvement on my old arrangement, and I am quite content to be working a lot harder than I did as a lawyer.  I don’t often take the time to ponder the changes I’ve undergone in the last few years, but when I do (and it’s frequently in this blog), I am overcome with relief and pride that my old life has been put in my rearview mirror.  New David is way healthier than old David.

However, there is a solitary welcome holdover from old David’s life:  my passion for and competitive drive in SoY.  When it comes to the league–even though I have way less free time and even though my deskjockey days are over–nothing has changed at all on my end.  SoY is no longer an escape for me, but it has become a piece of me.  It just is.  I still feel irrational joy when I win at SoY, and I still feel bitter disappointment when I lose at SoY.  It’s the centerpiece of my fall and winter Sundays.  One day each week, little else matters.  This conversation has happened numerous times:

Janeen:  “How was your Sunday?”

David:  “Fucking awful.”

Janeen:  “Why?  The Jets won!”

David:  “Yes, the Jets won, and I won around $1,000, and I won in my other leagues (I now play in two other fantasy football leagues which are essentially filler), but I’m getting killed again in SoY.  I’m two and four.  My team sucks.  I doubt I’m gonna make the playoffs.  It’s awful.”

Janeen:  “Oh.”

I suppose that brings me to the main point of this essay:  After a two year hiatus, I just won the Yo Bowl again, and it feels about the same as final tabling a $10,000 tournament.  Which is to say that I’m beside myself with glee. 

This championship was different from my prior wins.  My team–the Sugar D’s, natch–didn’t put it all together until very late in the season, and I was a decided underdog against the league’s powerhouse in the finals.  Still, in the days leading up to the big game, I boldly fired off a trash talking diatribe telling my opponents in no uncertain terms that while they may have rollicked through the regular season, they were now squaring off with the man, and there was no way in hell the man would be lying down for them.  And I know that the NFL players that comprise my lineup have no idea that they’re part of the storied Sug D’s, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t each play their best games of the year, allowing me to easily dispatch the bad guys like a piece of unwanted trash.

Yo Bowl.  Ship it.  

(Yeah, I’m a huge nerd.  So?)