Last night, knowing that I’d be taking this weekend off from poker (I’m traveling to Atlantic City for non-poker related fun), I sat down for a night of online tournaments.  I fired up the TV (Mets game) and the computer (poker programs) and sat got down to business.

I selected four 7:00 tournaments.  A $160 World Series Double Shootout on Pokerstars, a $109 multitable tournament on Pokerstars, a $75 multitable tournament on Full Tilt, and to round things out, a $16 World Series turbo double shootout satellite on Pokerstars.  This turned out to be one of the rare occasions where everything would start out well.  I quickly amassed a big stack in the $109, won the first table of the turbo, and I was plugging along in the $75 and the WSOP double shootout.  And the Mets were crushing the Marlins.  I was in the internet poker zone, cursor darting all over, mouse furiously clicking away.

Fast forward another hour.  I won the turbo double shoootout, so I was down to three open tables:  1) the second table of the WSOP qualifier (I won the first table); 2) the $109, where I was chip leader with 50 out of 235 players remaining; and 3) the $75, where I was in the middle of the pack as the field approached the bubble.

Fast forward another thirty minutes.  I am now four-handed for a WSOP seat with the chip lead, about 15th in chips in the $109 right on the bubble, and still in the middle of the pack in the $75, also on the bubble.  I shift 90% of my focus to the WSOP qualifier, as the $12,000 package is the largest prize i’m playing for.  I manage to bob and weave until I find myself heads up, playing mano-a-mano for the WSOP seat.  Meanwhile, right on the bubble of the $109, I find AK in middle position and openshove for 12 big blinds.  All fold to the big blind, who is among the chipleaders in the tournament, and he snapcalls with JJ.  The board bricks and I’m down to two open tables.  Blech.  I’m really sweating the heads-up match, but out of the corner of my eye, I notice that in the $75, my AdKd flops a flush against AsKh all in preflop, vaulting me out of nowhere to the chip lead with only 30 players left.

Playing heads up for a WSOP seat in a double shootout is about as big as it gets in online tournament play.  The difference in value between first and second place is $12,000:  the first place finisher gets the seat, the weeklong hotel stay and the $1,000 cash and second place gets nothing.  Heads up went well at first.  I chipped away at my opponent until i had about a 3 to 2 chip lead on him.  I then checkraised all in, holding K2 on a K-5-4 flop only to discover that I was up against K9.  I was now outchipped, and things began to go downhill.  I battled for awhile longer, but eventually got all my chips in with Q6 on an 8-8-6 flop.  My opponent called and showed me pocket aces, and that was all she wrote.  Ouch.  Unbelievably, this was my fourth or fifth career second-place finish in a Pokerstars World Series double shootout, so at least the pain was familiar.  Intense but familiar.

One of the hallmarks of an experienced player is being able to turn the page after a tough loss, and I am happy to say that I managed to do so.  Having paid almost no attention to it for about three hours, I finally took a serious look at the $75 Full Tilt tournament.  I made the final table in fourth place, drew a good seat (immediately to the left of the chipleader) and picked my way through the crowd until I was left heads up once again.  This time my opponent was an inexperienced player, and even though he had a few more chips than me, I wasn’t dealing.  I was playing for first, and first only.  I ground him down and won with relative ease, salvaging the night.

I ended up showing a very nice profit for the evening.  For those of you keeping score at home, between the $75 tourney win and turbo double shootout wins, it was a little bit short of a haircut.  But I was so close to a really, really monstrous night.  Ah well. 

My day will come.  And hair will be shorn. 

I was a huge fan of the New York Knicks during their successful run throughout the 1990’s.  If you’ll recall, those teams were led by Patrick Ewing and an unlikely supporting cast which Pat Riley (and later Jeff Van Gundy) cobbled together and crafted into a cohesive unit.  Today, those teams are usually remembered for never quite getting over the hump–Michael Jordan (or, during God’s brief retirement, some other circumstance) always got in the way.  However, I personally remember those teams for their consistent tenacity, incredible toughness and unrelenting spirit.  And I fondly remember how they gave their fans a long playoff run each and every year, without fail.

Although Ewing was the star of those Knick teams, no player was more emblematic of what those teams stood for than John Starks.  His unlikely rise from obscurity to the NBA spotlight was partially orchestrated by Riley but was made possible only by his own fierce determination.  That same determination was on display in every game he played.  Starks had boundless energy on the court.  Seemingly always matched up on defense with the opposing team’s leading scorer (frequently Jordan or Reggie Miller), he spent half the game imposing Riley’s defensive mantra:  tirelssly chasing down and pestering the opposing team’s shooting guard.  And on the offensive end, Starks was the Knicks’ unquestioned second option.  A shooter who lacked a conscience, Starks was totally fearless.  He took big shots:  threes that he’d pop off the dribble, pull-up jumpers, kamikaze drives to the rack.  Ask anyone about Starks’ game and you’ll always get one of two answers:  “John Starks had a big heart,” or “John Starks had big balls.”  Both are serious basketball compliments.

Today, Starks runs a charity for underprivileged inner city children.  When, back in December, I was asked to be a guest speaker at the First Annual John Starks Charity Casino Night, I happily agreed.  The event took place last night at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square and I had a blast.  It was situated in a ballroom which had a casino setup, and the casino had a couple of Texas Hold’ Em tables.   I gave a short beginner’s tutorial on how to play hold ’em to the assembled poker players, and when I finished up, it was time to play.  Two one-table shootouts were contested.  All the players seemed to have a great time, espeically John Starks, who loves poker.  En route to winning it, John stacked a couple of players early in the second shootout and was quite pleased with himself!

I want to thank Jennifer Alpert for inviting me to last night’s event and for allowing my family to attend.  I also want to thank my friend Lee Herman for making my participation possible.  It was a lot of fun to share my passion for poker with some new faces.

For me personally, the experience was really positive beacuse it gave me a fresh perspective on my job.  When I’m immersed in the daily grind, I completely lose sight of how different, how challenging and how exciting my life is.  Last night allowed me to take a much-needed step back to take stock of who I am.  At the charity event, fliers were distributed sharing my attorney-to-poker pro story and listing some of my accomplishments, both of which I recounted at the start of my tutorial.  People seemed genuinely fascinated.  And during my unscripted speech, I found that I was really connecting with those who were listening to me describe the ins-and-out of basic hold ’em.  It reminded me of how much I love the game, and it reminded me of how lucky I am to be making a living playing it.           

Here are a few good shots of me at the event (note the flowing locks).  All three photos are courtesy of shelbychan.com.

The time has come for me to give up a long term addiction.  My name is David Zeitlin, and I am an addict.  For about a decade, I have been addicted to AOL Instant Messenger.

I discovered this computer program when I was an intern at a law firm in the summer of 1997.  Unbeknownst to the law firm’s elders, AIM quickly became a favored form of secret communication between and amongst the younger associates.  When I graduated law school and took a job at that same firm–a shitty job that placed me in front of a computer all day–I needed something to keep me sane.  Enter AOL Instant Messenger.

I despise the telephone.  So since 1998, it is not an exaggeration to say that I have typed more words into AIM message boxes in the aggregate than I have spoken.  I’m not kidding. 

It started at the big law firm.  There, my addiction was both born and nurtured.  It took management several years to discover that most of its employees under the age of 30 were stealing paychecks whist LOL’ing their days away, with yours truly leading the charge.  Screw the water cooler–we didn’t have to even leave our chairs to bullshit with one another.  And the network of bullshitters extended far beyond the firm’s office walls; it included all the other offices in the world with internet servers!  It was AIM that brought the art of bullshitting into the modern era.  Inevitably, the firm made an attempt to firewall AIM, but we were crafty.  We figured a way around it and continued firing yellow smiley faces at one another to our hearts’ content.  By the time I left the big firm, I was so addicted to AIM that I had my father’s internet system upgraded upon my arrival.

Over AIM, I have conducted business, argued with family members, shared secrets, fallen in love, broken up with girlfriends, even maintained entire relationships that never existed anywhere outside of that little chat box.  But mostly, I have filled my AIM chatboxes with the inane small talk that is otherwise conspicuously absent from the rest of my life.  It is my main form of communication with pretty much everyone, all the way down to my mother and my girlfriend.  My list of AIM contacts is insanely long–it has to be seen to be believed.  If AIM had a list of its best clients and/or most frequent users, I guarantee you I’d be near the top of it.

Unfortunately, AOL Instant Messenger has a deleterious effect on my ability to concentrate while I’m playing online poker.  Three active poker tables is enough to clog one’s monitor and mind; five additional flashing boxes filled with and “yo what up’s,” “BRBs,” and “wheeeeeees” make optimal poker decision making nearly impossible.  Going forward, I can no longer answer my friend’s inquiries regarding the roster of the 1987 New York Knicks, my girlfriend’s sage observations from the prior night’s American Idol and my mother’s investigative reports on my dinner plans for the week while simultaneously deciding whether or not I should checkraise “BigErn420” all-in with an open ended straight draw on table three. 

The worst AIM/poker mishap, of course, is the dreaded misclick:   this occurs when a contested hand is abruptly interrupted by an AOL window at the very moment that i’m selecting a course of action, and inadvertantly redirects my cursor as I point and click.  It’s nice to hear from an old friend on AIM, but when the price is an accidental preflop reraise with 10-4 offsuit, it kind of ruins things. 

It has taken me a very long time to do something about it, but I am not working at 100% capacity with AIM open.  It is time for a change (you are free to observe that I never even considered this measure in my former profession).  In the next few days, I will cease using AOL Instant Messenger while I play poker online.  My fellow AIM users:  if you see me online, it means I’m not playing poker.  And I’m always playing poker.  I expect to suffer severe withdrawal, so wish me luck, but it has to be done.  Bye, everyone.  😦

And another change is afoot:  Starting this week, I will be gracing New York City’s poker clubs much more regularly.  I have been passing up the free money that flies around in these joints for far too long.  This decision is based on a single hand that I witnessed last week at a certain midtown card club.  I decided to accompany my friend Jon to the club, and I sat down in the 2-5 NL game.  Then this transpired:

Player A is in late position with approximately $2000.  Player B is on the button with approximately $1200.  Both are playing normally until this hand is dealt.  All fold to Player A, who makes it $35 to go.  I am sitting between them and fold.  Player A reraises to $70, and the blinds fold.  Player B puts in the third raise, to $250.  Player B calls.  The flop comes A-K-10 rainbow.  Player A bets $50 into the $500 pot.  Player B raises to $200.  Player A calls.  The turn is another ace.  Player A bets $250.  Player B calls.  The river is a four, so the board is A-A-K-10-4.  Player A puts Player B all in for aobut $450 more, and Player B instantly calls.  Player A turns over pocket kings, for a full house, kings full of aces, and player B gets pissed and fires his cards face up into the muck:  pocket dueces.

I ought to be playing in these games more often.

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

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

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

-Furry Sug 

*unless Janeen makes me.

My title defense up here at Foxwoods ended with failure.

How it went down: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some significant developments in the last week, during which I’ve averaged over 12 hours of poker per day:

-I’m getting much better at multitabling online poker.  Actually paying attention, i.e., not surfing the net or IMing with five different people, helps.  Who knew?

-I’ve been profitable.  I’ve made several final tables in the past week, but the big score has eluded me.  I do feel my tournament game is as sharp as it’s ever been, as my stats attest, and that something very large is inevitable.  Also, I’ve been kicking ass in sit n’ gos:  for some reason, I currently can do no wrong in one table tourneys.  Not sure if that’s due to positive variance or if something has clicked.  Probably just running good. 

-I am consistently getting my ass kicked in cash games.  I decided to mix in some 6-max NL cash games, and I’ve had maybe one or two winning sessions out of perhaps 15.  The freakin’ cash games are the only thing that has kept this week from being a huge step forward.  There is definitely something wrong with the way I play 6-max NLHE.  My current theory is that I’m too aggressive, both preflop and postflop.  I’m going to try a more conservative approach.  If that doesn’t work, I’ll either have to take it all the way back to the drawing board or say goodbye to online cash games.

-Poker Ace HUD rules.  I have no idea why it took me so long to add it to my repertoire, but I finally have, and it’s great.  For those who have no idea what i’m talking about, Poker Ace HUD is a PokerTracker companion program that puts your opponents’ statistics on the screen while you play.  While PokerTracker (a very standard poker databasing program that I’ve used for a long time) continually compiles statistics, Poker Ace HUD goes a step farther and prints your opponent’s tendencies (for instance, how often he/she raises preflop and how often he/she fires a continuation bet) right there on the screen next to their name.  Is it unfair to have this information?  I’m not sure, and I don’t care.  It’s available and I’m using it.  I’ve found that Poker Ace HUD is a non-factor for about 98% of the hands dealt, but that around 2% of the time, it has helped me make some very close decisions easier.  And that very slim edge makes it totally worth having.

-I’m tired.  Working hard is working hard, whether you’re digging ditches, drafting a brief or playing poker.  Anything for 12 hours per day is tough.  So I’m beat.  But for the most part, it’s a good feeling.  Nobody is asking me to work so hard, I’m self-motivated.  I think they call it being driven.  The bottom line is that I’m dedicated to being the best poker player I can be and that this is another stage in my development.  I’ve rarely been fully committed to much of anything, so it’s actually refreshing to be working so hard (although I still get pretty upset when some schmuckhole sucks out on me in the sixth hour of a hard-fought tournament).  Despite playing 12+ hours per day, I find myself thinking about the game during my non-playing waking hours (poor Janeen, hehe), which is proof of my passion. 

-I’m aware of how physically out of shape I am.  Despite doing a decent job of not eating junk, I am still a schlub.  I’ve never been an exerciser, but at my old desk jobs, I’d at least walk to court, walk to lunch, walk to the subway, etc.  Now I don’t even do that.  When I’m putting in long days playing online poker, my daily exercise is a one-block walk to get coffee in the morning (note:  “morning” here is defined very loosely), and occasional walks to the bathroom (I haven’t resorted to the deskside bedpan just yet!).  My body does absolutely nothing all day.  I’m a sloth.  It’s a little bit depressing.  I hereby vow to start off half my days by going for a jog in the park once the weather permits. 

Okay, that’s all for now.  I think I’ll play some online poker. 

While I have no interest in renewing the “big law firm” debate from a couple of weeks ago, I do want to take the liberty of making an analogy using the same model.

I’ve made a decision to enter a period of hyperactivity.  I’m going to be multitabling online or playing live poker for at least 12 hours per day for the next couple of weeks.  I am very determined to re-establish my profitability as a player right now, and bombarding my statistics with man-hours seems to be the best way to do that.

It’s gonna be just like there’s a big motion due when I was working at the firm!  OMG OMG OMG OMG!  Footnote #2 is spaced wrong.  No wait, it’s okay.  Wait wait wait… the appendices are all off.  Somebody needs to bluebook Section four!!!  And so forth. 

Sigh… at least my billables for February and March will look good!

I am back from Puerto Rico, which was a good vacation.  Great weather, lots of fun places to party and practice my gringo-level espanol.  And my crew unwittingly booked ourselves at the hotel with Puerto Rico’s best poker room, the Intercontinental. 

The Intercontinental runs decent no-limit tournaments throughout the weekend, and all of Puerto Rico’s finest poker players show up for them.  On Sunday afternoon, in particular, I was surprised at the number of serious poker players who attended.  I was not the most accomplished tournament pro in the room–a gentleman whom I vagulely reognized was there.  It turns out he was Karlo Lopez, who has had quite a bit of success in the WSOP and other major events.  Anyway, the Intercontinental is a very nice place and offers a bonus to those who enjoy poker.  Highly recommended.

Today, since baseball’s spring training is now well underway (sports fans are in the midst of that awful dead spot between the Super Bowl and March Madness), I thought I’d write a piece comparing baseball to tournament poker.  It’s especially apropos for me since I have just gone through dry spell, which is common to both sports (yes, I’m employing the word “sports” very loosely with respect to poker).  It’s also especially apropos for me because my grandfather taught me everything he knew about both poker and baseball when I was just a lad.  I was basically reared on both games.

Oh, and yeah, I know.   Baseball as a metaphor for pretty much everything else in the world has already been done.  Whatever.  My blog. 

In both baseball and poker tournaments, failure is the norm.  The very best batters only reach base safely roughly 40% of the time, and the very best tournament poker players only cash roughly 20% of the time.  An at bat or tournament finish results in nothing spectacular on all but a few occasions.  Thus, neither hitting nor tourney poker are healthy for people who can’t cope with frustration.  See O’Neill, Paul and Hellmuth, Phil, both of whom probably have shorter life expectancies than you or I.

Both pursuits reward patience and discipline.  Most successful batters succeed by forcing the pitcher into a spot where the pitcher must throw a hittable pitch, then seizing that opportunity when it finally arrives.  Skilled hitting is both a science and an art form:  the very best hitters systematically destroy a pitcher during each at bat by fouling off or taking the difficult pitches, then finally, once the pitcher exhibits some vulnerability, smashing the ball.  Likewise, a good tournament poker player often lays in wait, sometimes for very long periods of time, observing his opponents.  Then when an opponent eventually makes a mistake, the good poker player is there to exploit it.  A good example of this is a big preflop bluff executed by a tight player against a very loose, wild opponent.  The loose opponent may steal the observant player’s blinds many times over the course of a couple of hours, but when there is a lot of loose money trapped in the middle, the skilled player finally pounces.

There is yet another way that batting and tournament poker are very analogous:  in both fields it is very important not to be results-oriented in the short term.  In the short term, there is a tremendous amout of luck involved in both pursuits.  All baseball fans know all about “hittin’ ’em where they ain’t” (shoutout to Wee Willie Keeler)–wicked line drives frequently become outs, and broken bat dribblers frequently become base hits.  And all poker players know that pocket aces sometimes get cracked, and that sometimes seven-four offsuit rivers a straight.  Some of the greatest plays in baseball history have involved unlikely sequences (like say, a series of soft base hits culminating with a slow dribbler going through an opponent’s legs on a certain October night in 1986), and some of the greatest moments in poker history have likewise involved some very strange doings.  In baseball and poker, for brief glimpses, it can sometimes be better to be lucky than good. 

However, in the long run, in both baseball and poker, it is always better to be good.  That’s because everyone is equally lucky in the aggregate.  Taking this long view is difficult, since we all live our daily lives from moment to moment, a.k.a. the short term.  Even a lifetime .320 hitter gets really pissed off when he lines into a double play with the bases loaded in the ninth inning.  And even hardened poker pros ask God “why!?” when they lose with pocket kings against pocket sixes all-in preflop on the final table bubble.

In order to stay sane and continue to improve, I try to distinguish between my “bad slumps” and “variance slumps.”  I presume baseball players do the same thing.  We’ve all seen hitters in the throws of a bad slump.  They are off balance at the plate, taking pitches down the middle, and flailing at pitches in the dirt.  Hitters in bad slumps go 1 for 28 without hitting the ball out of the infield.  A poker player in a bad slump is consistently getting his money in the pot when he’s behind and/or failing to put money in the pot when he’s ahead.

Bad slumps require self-analysis and correction.  A hitter in a bad slump will take extra batting practice or perhaps revamp his stance or approach.  A poker player in a bad slump likewise must take the time to examine his game and figure out what he’s doing wrong.  In a way, the badly slumping baseball player probably is better off than the poker player.  Being sent to the minors can’t suck as badly as losing your bankroll.

Then we have the variance slump, probably the more frequent type of slump in both baseball and poker.  In baseball, the victim of a variance slump is doing nothing wrong mentally or mechanically.  The balls he hits are simply landing in the wrong places, usually his opponents’ gloves.  Everyone familiar with baseball knows that it is very common to hit line drives all over the yard yet finish the night 0-5.  I’ve seen players go through week-long slumps without ever having a bad at bat.  As a matter of fact, it is Joe DiMaggio’s miraculous defiance of baseball’s natural variance, not merely his supreme skill, that makes baseball’s record 56-game hitting streak such an astounding achievement.  It’s the baseball equivalent of winning an all-in with AK over a pocket pair 20 straight times.

In poker, the variance slump is such a common phenomenon that it’s barely worth citing examples of it.  On a personal level, I can tell you that I’ve been through multiple week-plus periods this year without earning any money.  And after careful, painstaking, Tony Gwynn-like examination of all the videotape, I have determined that I’ve only had a couple of bad at bats.  Tough?  Yes.  Typical?  Also yes. 

Lemme tells ya kid, it ain’t easy up here in the bigs. 

::Spits, adjusts cup::

Writing that made me hungry for some baseball. 

Let’s Go Mets!