In 1984, then-owner of the New York Jets Leon Hess decided that his franchise needed a new field.  So he made an announcement that saddened my father, who was a relatively new holder of Jets season tickets:  the team’s games would no longer be played in their quirky but cozy Shea Stadium home.  The announcement of the Jets’ new home was as bad as it could be:  far from its fan base (in another state, no less) and already occupied by—and named for—another team.  The commute from my childhood home on Long Island to Shea Stadium was a mere fifteen minutes, and parking at Shea was a breeze if you knew the stadium’s neighborhood well, which my father did.  Even before his first disastrous encounter with the New Jersey Meadowlands’ Byzantine concentric highway parking entanglement, he knew that the average Jets Sundays would become a major hassle.

My dad—who was among the legion of those feeling betrayed by Hess—had a decision to make:  dump the tickets or soldier on.  In the end, he chose to commit:  to his team but mostly to his son.  I was only 11 then but already in the throws of a relationship with the Jets that the word fanaticism doesn’t do justice.  The Jets games were the unquestioned focal point of my existence.  I begged for and received the renewal of our season ticket plan for the 1984 season.

We quickly discovered that Giants Stadium was nothing special; a big ugly concrete oval sporting four ugly spiral concrete ramps.  It was just as windy as Shea, had a hard, ugly Astroturf playing surface, and was outfitted in the Giants’ colors of blue and red.  For the Jets’ home games, exactly two extravagant measures were taken by Mr. Hess:  the blue walls surrounding the playing field were draped in a green fabric, and the turf in the end zones featured the Jets’ logo.  Getting to and from the stadium proved worse than ever imagined.  Our old commute was 40 minutes combined.  Now we suffered through interminable traffic that turned Jets’ Sundays into total washouts.

dump.

The good news was that our seats were slightly better than they were at Shea.  Thanks to some season ticket deserters, our mezzanine level seats were moved up one row, to the very front.  Our blue seats in Section 220 were in the front row, seats 15 (Dad’s) and 16 (mine).  Because my father was then involved in a side business co-owning a photocopy store, I determined that we would imitate the guys at Shea who threw confetti out of the front of the mezzanine whenever the Jets did something good.  On game weeks, Dad and I would visit the copy store and use its giant paper cutters to shred up a week’s worth of New York Daily Newses, the tiny pieces of which were then stuffed into two giant shopping bags.  Before 9/11/01, no one looked at you twice if you carried two large shopping bags full of shredded newspaper into a stadium, and we did so religiously.  I took great pride in covering the entire windswept North end of Giants Stadium in confetti whenever the moment was right, which unfortunately was not very frequently.  Many times our two bags of confetti sat untouched for the duration of the game.  On these occasions Dad and I would unceremoniously dump the full contents of our bags onto the heads of the poor people below us in section 120 after the Jets’ opponent had delivered the game’s coup de grace.  I like to think that on these occasions the confetti dumps served as an announcement that it was time for everyone to head for the exit ramps, get in their cars, and join the traffic delay.

The confetti bags are no longer part of our routine, but my father and I have been to most of the Jets home games at Giants Stadium.  I was a pre-pubescent child when the Jets played their first game there; I am now a middle aged man.  The games remain a crucial part of my life, and while I have learned to temper my emotions in the wakes of wins and losses (mostly losses), a Jets Super Bowl is still my singular fungible lifelong dream; the holy grail of my existence.

Tomorrow night Dad and I will sit in section 220, seats 15 and 16 for the final time.  Giants Stadium is being razed and the Jets are moving into a building that has been built, fittingly, in the Giants Stadium parking lot.  The Jets’ lease of Giants Stadium lasted 25 years, which is a long time.

In the modern world it’s hard to find places that achieve real permanence.  Most of us live transient lives, we move from place to place.  If you remove obligatory gravesite visits from the equation, a quarter of a century is a long time to regularly and repeatedly return to the same exact place.  I’ve heard stories about men who have met to play chess on the same table in the same park every Sunday for 75 years, and of old widows who lived on the same hilltop their entire lives, but I personally don’t know any people like that.  My father and I nearly replicate the feat, always reporting to our two Giants Stadium seats like migrating birds who return to their hatching site.  We’ve sat there in searing heat and bitter cold, through rain and snow (and always) wind.  We’ve seen lots of wins but many more losses.  We’ve seen jubilation and heartbreak (often in the same day, and usually in that order).  Our lives have changed and so has the world around us, but we’ve always returned to our two seats.  A time lapse study (let’s erase the two Giants fans who occupied the same space on the other Sundays from the frame) of the seats would be an interesting watch.  In 1984, I was barely old enough get into my seat without holding Dad’s hand.  Today I can feel a twinge in my back when I ease into #16’s luxurious ass-shaped plastic.  I’ve progressed through adolescence, my college years, post-graduate years, yuppie years, pro gambler years—hell, all of my years— while making my eight yearly visits to my blue Giants Stadium seat.  My father has progressed himself, from a relatively spry fellow only a few years older than I am now to the grey-haired grandfather who sits beside me at the games today.  We are pilgrims.  Tomorrow night is our final visit.

For the record, the Jets closed out Shea Stadium with a loss.  We were there then too.  Jets fans said goodbye to Shea the classy way, by taking mementos.  Seats were ripped from their concrete moorings and thrown, the field was stormed, goalposts were torn down, most of the sod was removed.  The cops just watched.  No such memento-removal will take place tomorrow night.  Not only does the world work differently now; they remember 1984 well enough to make tomorrow night a beer-free event.

While a list of our worst days would likely be longer and more amusing, here are my personal six greatest days at the Meadowlands:

6. January 5, 2003.  Jets 41, Colts 0.  On bizarro-Jets day, the Herm Edwards/Chad Pennington led team can do no wrong in a wild-card game.  It’s hard to fathom right now, but at this stage in his career Peyton Manning was considered a choke artist and everyone laughed at his no-huddle pre-snap histrionics at the line of scrimmage.  The trouncing is highlighted by Manning’s futility and by Richie Anderson taking a little screen pass 80 yards for a touchdown.  The stadium is a party from beginning to end and no one left the building ashamed of thinking that the Jets might go to the Super Bowl.  The Raiders had other ideas the following week.

5. October 23, 2000.  Jets 40, Dolphins 37.  My father and I were treated to a rare Monday Night Jets game.  Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the Jets were not up for the challenge and were trailing 30-7 at the start of the fourth quarter.  Then out of nowhere Vinny Testaverde proceeded to engineer one of the most furious and unlikely comebacks in NFL history, passing the ball at will against the suddenly defenseless Dolphins.  The game-tying touchdown occurred when Wayne Chrebet made a diving catch in the end zone, but the Dolphins quickly retook the lead on a bomb of their own.  The game re-tying touchdown came on a ridiculous tackle-eligible throw to Jumbo Elliot (!).  John Hall’s game winning overtime FG took place well after 1:00 am.  A sad admission must be made here:  my father and I exited the building with the Jets trailing 30-7.  I listened to the Jets’ comeback unfold on the car radio and actually made it home in time to watch overtime on TV.  The old man in Seat #14 (our neighbor for all 25 years) makes fun of us to this day for leaving this game early.  He makes a good point.  Wins like these are few and far between in Jetland.

4. January 10, 1999.  Jets 34, Jaguars 24.  A very chilly but happy day at the Meadowlands.  This game marked the apex of the Bill Parcells era for the Jets as the 1998 team won the AFC East going away and then beat the Jags easily on this day in the Divisional Playoff round.  Keyshawn Johnson tore the Jags up.  The Jets led 17-0 and never turned back.  I left the stadium feeling numb from the cold but deliriously excited.  I began cooking up plans to attend the Super Bowl.  The Jets—of course—had other ideas.  The following week, they wrested control of the AFC Championship game in Denver from the Broncos, then proceeded to play the worst half of football they’d played all season, washing away the Super Bowl dreams.  Testaverde tore his Achilles in the first quarter of the first game in 1999, Belichick didn’t want the job in 2000, and that was that.

3. December 28, 1986.  Jets 35, Chiefs 10. The Jets opened the 1986 season 10-1 and were an honest-to-god juggernaut.  They had a solid defense and an explosive offense with a myriad of weapons.  The long awaited trip to the Super Bowl seemed possible.  Then without warning everything fell apart.  The Jets dropped the final five games on the schedule, looking horrible in the process, and limped into the playoffs to host the Chiefs in the wildcard round.  Coach Joe Walton made a ballsy move, giving the untalented but plucky backup QB Pat Ryan his first start of the year in the game.  Dad and I came in with low expectations but Ryan and the Jets delivered.  Probably my single favorite play to occur on the North (our) end of the Meadowlands field took place in this game:  on the Jets’ first possession of the game, they faced a 4th and 6 at the Chiefs’ 30 yard line.  Walton elected to go for it, and pulled a QB draw out of his nosepicking ass.  The play caught the Chiefs completely by surprise and Ryan executed it perfectly.  He capped the run off by spinning out of a tackle and bulling his way down to the nine yard line.  I nearly jumped out of my skin.  The Jets went on to trounce the Chiefs and re-ignite Jets fans’ hopes that they could go all the way.  The following week they lost an insane double-overtime game in Cleveland that probably ranks as the #1 most disgusting, most hideous loss in my long history of watching them.  Obviously.

2. December 29, 2002.  Jets 42, Packers 17.  The Jets season looked like it was over.  Then they beat the Patriots in Week 16, giving them dim but viable playoff hopes with one week left to play.  But they needed help:  a Pats win over the Dolphins followed by a victory over the Packers was the only way in.  The Pats/Dolphins game was at 1:00 and the Jets/Pack was at 4:00.  My father and I got to the stadium parking lot around 2:00.  Things looked very bleak when the Dolphins took the lead 24-13 with 5:00 left against the Pats in Foxboro, another season down the tubes.  But then the Jets’ fortuned changed.  In 2002, the current all-media Sunday barrage of NFL coverage was just beginning to blossom, and the best I could do to stay abreast of the Pats/Dolphins in real time was watch a TV that was set up in the back of some guy’s Mazda hatchback in the Giants Stadium parking lot.  About forty other chilly Jets fans and I huddled ‘round the back of the Mazda as if a bonfire were burning therein.  We erupted in jubilation as Brady hit Brown for a touchdown and then converted the all-important two-point conversion.  Then Pats got the ball back and got into field goal range.  Was this really happening?!  The hatchback group fell silent as Vinatieri lined up for the game-tying field goal… and went bonkers when he nailed it.  Enlivened, we all sprinted into the stadium as the Pats took the Dolphins to overtime and the Jets and Packers kicked off.  The Pats/Dolphins game was on the luxury box TV’s as Jets/Pack unfolded before us, and at certain points in the game most of my section was facing backwards, glued to the television set in the box rather than the action on the field in front of us.  When Vinatieri beat the Dolphins in OT, the Packers were huddling up before the next play from scrimmage—a lull in the action.  Still, the entire stadium incongruously erupted as if the Jets had just won a football game on an overtime field goal (which they essentially had).  Even the players on the Jets’ sideline were going wild.  The Jets then finished the deed, laying a major smackdown on the Packers, giving them the AFC East title.  Total euphoria.  The Colts win (#6 above) followed, but that was all the Jets had in the tank that year.

1.  September 21, 1986.  Jets 51, Dolphins 45. During his prime, Dan Marino owned the Jets the same way Michael Jordan owned the Cleveland Cavaliers.  But worse, if that’s possible.  When the Jets played the Dolphins the question wasn’t whether Marinso would tear the Jets to pieces, but just how bad it would be.  On this particular day, Ken O’Brien, Al Toon and Wes Walker had an answer to every one of Marino’s darts, and there were lots and lots of darts.  The total passing yardage in this game (around 850 I believe) remains the NFL record.  Despite their best efforts, the Jets tailed by 7 with 1:04 left and started their final possession of regulation on their own 20 yard line.  They hit a big play on a hook-and-ladder, O’Brien to Shuler to Hector, which set up the final play of regulation from the Dolphins’ 21.  Miraculously, O’Brien evaded pressure and then uncorked a bullet that Wesley Walker leapt for and caught in triple coverage at the goal line with the clock at 0:00, forcing an unbelievable game into an unbelievable overtime.  Confetti everywhere.  On the first possession of overtime, O’Brien went for it all and hit Walker with another perfect throw, in full stride down the sideline, and he sprinted in untouched for the score.  Pandemonium.  The confetti bags were already empty.  It took hours for my exhilaration to fade (I probably should have been institutionalized).  Thinking about this game still gives me goose bumps.

Back in August and September a lot of praise and adulation was heaped upon me by my poker playing brethren.  I had just finished final tabling a few tournaments in a short period of time, and members of the East Coast poker community apparently took notice.  I got a lot of “you just ship everything you play, huh?” and “easy game for DZ!” type of stuff on a daily basis.  My studied and ever-so-humble reply to each new compliment was “talk to me at the end of the year after I’ve run dry for three months.”  My predictive powers rival my poker skills—it has come to pass.

This is not the first slump I’ve endured nor will it be the last.  This dry spell finds me in a melancholy mood once again, but the tenor is different this time.  In the past, long losing streaks have led me to wonder about my security in the poker world and prompted periods of agonizing self-doubt.  This time around I’m not experiencing any fear of failure.  In its stead is a distasteful ennui.

After spending much of 2009 on the tournament circuit and finally integrating myself into the “poker community,” I have no lingering skepticism about whether I have the skills to compete.  Poker ain’t rocket science (it ain’t even lawyering).   The people who play poker for a living run the gamut from cerebral to simpleton.  Thankfully for the less intelligent amongst us, poker ability is only loosely correlated with intellect and there are no secret formulas for success.  While I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer I now feel confident that my capacity to selectively apply memorized tournament strategies rivals most pro’s.  After communing with them for a full calendar year, I can say with near certainty that there is nothing especially daunting about my competition.  For me, the challenges in this profession lie elsewhere.

As evidenced by their long term absence on this blog, poker hand histories and strategies are of little interest to me these days.  I’m no longer fascinated by all but the most complex no limit tournament hands, which by nature are almost never very complex.  On the occasions that a recent play of mine has been widely criticized (word of these things boomerangs quite quickly on the circuit), sitting down and running the math has actually proven my intuition correct and my detractors wrong.  My game remains sharp and adaptable.  I’m still a winning player.  So if I’m not scared of slipping, then why am I unhappy right now?  The unfortunate answer is that I’ve grown a bit tired of my day-to-day routine.

It’s less a function of the game than the environment.  There’s been a lot of driving, a lot of hotel rooms, a lot of elevator rides, lots of shitty food, too many zombie-walks through the stupid lights and white noise of your average casino floor.  It gets monotonous, and with so many obsessed, single-minded people around me, there is rarely any relief.  Even with all my new friends—and I’ve met some amazing people this year—the tournament circuit is an isolating environment for an intellectually curious newlywed.  A big part of the disconnect is that I’m simply not poker obsessed.  I struggle to find the motivation to play live cash or online sessions, and I have little desire to talk about poker when I’m not playing.  I can’t relate to someone who gets mesmerized grinding fifteen tables on their laptop; that’s just not me.

Many tournament pros harbor dreams of becoming famous or seem to think that after four thousand live tournaments, the game will magically become easy for them, granting them universal respect and admiration within this community.  But it doesn’t work that way.  It is remarkable how few of my colleagues have internalized and accepted the fact that they have chosen a profession in which they will fail to achieve anything on nine out of ten days.  I’m continually surprised by how few approach variance logically.  Earth to my fellow poker pro:  I am enduring the same daily grind as you, so your temper tantrums come across as absurd and your bi-hourly complaints about bad beats and idle threats about jumping out your hotel room window are falling on deaf ears.

And while my discovery of poker partially cured me of my raging puer aeternus, most touring tourney pros have full-blown, untreated cases.  Many outsiders equate our lifestyle with “living the dream,” so I suppose it’s only natural that the practitioners of this craft spend their lives in LaLa Land.  Some tourney pros are grown men who live at home with their mothers but spend 95% of their waking hours in a casino playing poker, talking poker, just being around poker, oblivious to all else, pausing only to eat, sleep and to occasionally try and get laid.  This kind of a life might be almost acceptable if these guys were prodigal poker talents, but most are not.  They’re just dreamers, plain and simple.  Peter Pan is alive and well on the poker tournament circuit.

Restlessness is a common human condition.  People like new things; people want to find out what comes next.  I am currently wondering if there is something new and next on the horizon for me.  I don’t want to move away from poker entirely.  I just need a change, and winning a tournament isn’t necessarily the answer.  I love the life I’ve created for myself, but it may be time for some new games, new goals, new ideas, new experiences.  At the very least, some new places!  If I have to pull into another casino self park garage I might vomit.

I find myself suddenly motivated to write so maybe I will do a recap of 2009 in the year’s waning days.  It was a pretty interesting year for me.

What’s better than a plate of delicious buffalo wings? Consider that when wings are consumed, beer and football can’t be far behind.  That’s right—wings rule. While other greasy staples like burgers and pizza have long had online publications dedicated in their honor, until recently the interwebz have been suspiciously silent regarding the greatest bar food of all. That is, until my friend Pete created the fabulous Wings & The City, which is now home to Pete’s wingy adventures and witty reviews.

Janeen and I were recently selected to be among Pete’s guests of honor for his review of the wings at one of our local watering holes. Check it out!

Mmmmmmm, wings.

For those keeping score at home, I have done nothing since my incredible August. And I mean “nothing” in one sense only: I haven’t made any money.

The truth is I’ve been working as hard as ever at playing live poker, which makes the “nothing” more frustrating. In my effort to come up with one final big score for the year, from September onward I have been tirelessly traveling the East Coast circuit with nothing to show for it. Since I love my home and my wife’s company, September, October and November have involved an epic amount of driving, mostly up and down I-95 and the Garden State Parkway.

I feel a sharper and more poignant sense of exasperation from a fruitless poker tournament after a 6:00am wakeup and a three hour drive than I do when I simply walk downstairs from my hotel room. Either way, it’s a lonely way to live. The pile of coffee cups and fast food wrappers that reside in front of the passenger seat are a constant reminder that there’s little separating my lifestyle from a traveling salesman’s.

I know that one more final table would erase some of these feelings. I know that I’ve had a great 2009. I know that I don’t want my old life back. But I think I’ve overdone it recently. I’m officially tired of the scene. My days feel monotonous. The same people are always telling me the same stories. The stories always end the same way. I listen dispassionately, sip my second coffee of the day, and walk away.

Lest I forget: the melancholy I’m feeling these says is exacerbated by the near certainty that my Sug D’s sweatshirt is gone. I’d call it my “lucky” sweatshirt, but that’s not quite accurate. I’ve lost my taste for superstition (a.k.a. mild OCD) over the past year or two, but my sentimentality remains. I have worn that Sug D’s sweatshirt for every big moment in my poker life, dating back to the days when poker was not my career. Nearly every picture of me playing cards, in both my times of triumph and failure, finds me in Sug D’s cozy confines. Now it’s gone. I haven’t worn my it since Aruba, and after turning my apartment upside down, I’ve reached the conclusion that it didn’t make the trip home with me from the Caribbean. I feel like I’ve lost a close friend.

I’ve spent most of the past ten days playing cards in a dingy basement called Foxwoods.  I’ve been sick with some kind of persistent cold the entire time.  Sleep has been difficult to come by and I’ve felt distracted and out of focus for much of this trip.  I’m not playing as well as I can; I’ve made some marginal decisions that have cost me in a couple of spots.

None of this would matter much if I’d been running good, which I traditionally do at DumpWoods (the only thing that makes the place tolerable).  Alas, my luckbox has deserted me.  I’ve done nothing in the MTTs I’ve played.  I am having my typical success in sit ‘n go’s, which is keeping my bottom line from looking too ugly.

I’ll be focusing my energy on winning a main event seat for the remainder of my time here, and if I fail to achieve that, at least I can leave!

So Janeen and I arrived in Aruba on Saturday to enjoy some fun, sun and poker. She left earlier today, leaving me all by my lonesome but providing me with time to write a blog entry.

This trip started off well when I made an unexpected and thrilling discovery: Mexican Jumping Beans are for sale in the Jet Blue Terminal at JFK Airport!  On a family vacation during my childhood I was given my first batch of Mexican Jumping Beans, whom I treated like valued pets during that trip (until they sadly perished before our flight home).  For those unfamiliar, MJB’s are little brown nut-like objects harvested in Mexico that bounce around because larvae of some sort live inside them.  Awesome!  When I saw MJB’s on sale at JFK on Saturday, I couldn’t help but flash back to my OCD-level dedication to my very first set of beans and could not resist adopting them.  Janeen was puzzled by all of this until she witnessed these little guys in action!  I’m happy to say that Hopper, Skipper, Jumpy, Bounder and Phil have been clattering way on the nightstand in our hotel room each night and are gleefully leaping about on the table beside me as I type this.  Hooray for my Mexican Jumping Beans!

Aruba is the most developed Caribbean island in the world.  Has to be.  This place is so developed that it shouldn’t be able to call itself Caribbean. Caribbean connotes nice beaches and near-perfect weather that is heavily subsidized by the tourist, who is subjected to impotable water, shitty food, bush league entertainment options and slow-ass service from grumpy locals.  Aruba (“one happy island!”) has none of those things.  Aruba has everything you get in the continental United States, including lots of white residents.  You don’t even need to exchange currency here, they’re happy to take your dollars.  This place is essentially a more tropical Miami.

Among the amenities is a real-deal sports bar called Buster’s Garage, the equal of any place found in New York City.  To Janeen’s delight (love you hon!), I was thrilled to discover that I would be able to watch every NFL game this past Sunday, all on giant HD screens.  Buster’s is owned by an ex-pat New Yorker to boot.  Big up to Al Riccobono for the recommendation and for picking up the tab!

This Sunday brought an extra special treat:  I watched Sunday’s Jets-Saints game in the company of a legendary person—quite possibly the coolest semi-celebrity you could potentially watch a New York Jets game on television with.

As the game was kicking off, I noticed that a couple at the next table were decked in green Jets gear from head to toe.  The man was broad-shouldered, square-jawed and bald, staring intensely at the flat screen TV on the wall in front of him.  He looked a lot like superfan Fireman Ed Anzalone, the guy who leads the “J-E-T-S” chant at the Meadowlands.  Upon closer inspection it was definitely the man himself, down here in Aruba, apparently vacationing with Mrs. Ed.

I had consumed quite a few Balashis by this time, so I quickly ingratiated myself with the Anzalones by commending his recent radio appearance (on Joe Benigno’s radio show, obviously) and flashing my credentials:  season tickets since 1981 (long enough to have witnessed the full evolution of the J-E-T-S chant), a wealth of Jets knowledge and die-hardedness to match his own.  Realizing we were kindred spirits, Ed & wife allowed me to watch the game in their company, and I shot the shit with them for a couple of hours.  Although I have been on record in the past few years as being tired of Fireman Ed, I have now changed my mind.  He’s a nice guy.  The answers to a few of my questions are:  1) no, he is not on the Jets payroll and never has been; 2) no, he has never taken credit for inventing the chant; 3) no, he cannot afford the PSL’s for his two seats, he’s moving upstairs; and 4) the game ball he received on behalf of the fans sits in the team’s training facility, not in his house.

Unfortunately, the Jets were down big in this game from the outset, and there was never occasion for me to hoist Ed onto my shoulders for a Arubian rendition.  Ah well.

Anyway, this has been a nice vacation for Janeen and I.  We’ve walked along pristine beaches, tanned beside a picturesque pool, chatted with tropical birds and iguanas and eaten at gourmet restaurants.  Oh, and there was a poker tournament.

I avoided the poker room until Monday night, when I promptly and rather easily won a supersatellite into the main event by pushbotting into the money without ever having to show down a hand.  The $5,500 buy in for the Main Event was going to be my largest ever unbacked personal outlay for a single tournament, so I was relieved to win a seat in my first and only try.

The supersatellite also allayed my concerns regarding the fields here.  Coming in, I was convinced that everyone here would have either won a seat online or felt comfortable enough to buy directly in to a $5,500 tournament, i.e., they’d all be internet pros or top notch live pros.  Bad read on my part.  The players here fall into one of four categories:

1) internet pros;

2) live pros;

3) non-professional internet qualifier; and

4) local.

Categories 1 and 2 are capable players and difficult to deal with, but the others, particularly category 4, are not. Cateogory 4 is made up of mostly Venezuelan guys who are pretty terrible at poker, and they are here in droves.  These category 4 players create a significant edge for guys like me.  Edges are good.

Day 1 of my Main Event was a lot of fun.  I drew a bad table with no category 3 and 4 players.  Instead I found Shawn Rice, Robert Mizrachi (to my direct right) and Gavin Smith (to my direct left).  I’m past the point of being intimidated by anyone, however, and I did a nice job.  By the end of the day my starting stack of 15,000 was sitting at over 32,000.  Proof that I’ve come a long way in the past few years:  In May of 2006 I was terrified of Gavin Smith; on Tuesday I found myself wondering what he was thinking quite often and I outplayed him in a couple of spots.

Day 2 started out even better.  After I picked up about 6,000 additional chips I was moved to a very soft table, there were no fewer than three 4’s and two 3’s seated there.  It didn’t take me long to tangle with the Venezuelan guy to my left.  With about 38,000 in my stack and the blinds at 200-400 with a 50 ante, I picked up two red eights under the gun and made it 1050.  The Category 4 player to my left (32,000) called and so did the player in the cutoff.  The flop rolled out 9-8-5 rainbow (set alert!) and I bet 1700.  Mr. 4 raised to around 5,500 and the cutoff folded.  I smooth called, knowing I would likely stack the guy if the turn was a safe card.  The turn was indeed a safe card:  a deuce.  I checked.  Mr. 4 bet 12,300 and I quickly moved all in.  I got instacalled by… the old 9-7 of diamonds.

I was licking my chops at the thought of having over 70,000 chips at my disposal at this spectacularly bad table.  All I had to do was fade a six on the river.  The dealer had other ideas, however, and she stuck a six out there.  I got four-outed by a #4.

Adding insult to injury, Mr. 4 was thought he was drawing dead on the river and was sitting there moping even after I tapped the table and said “nice hand.”  It wasn’t until the dealer actually pushed the massive pot to him that he realized that he was not eliminated from the tournament and had sucked out on me.  Must be nice?

The same guy would bust me about a half hour later when I pushed my remaining chips in with A-10 vs. his A-Q.

I’m gonna get a nice tan and dabble in a little more poker before I get out of here on Saturday.

Not much to report right now.

The New York Jets are 3-0, playing way better than I ever expected, and I just had a nice week of handicapping NFL games. However, three of my four fantasy football teams have sub-.500 records.

Things are moving along nicely with Lock Poker.  I recently had a really good conversation with the people who run the show over there and I’m excited about Lock’s future prospects and happy to be part of their crew.  I’m still recruiting new signups if you wanna be part of my posse over there!

I also just noticed that I made a four second appearance on ESPN’s Main Event Day 5 broadcast.  Look for the guy in the beige cap on Bobby Baldwin’s bustout hand.  That would be me.  Wow!

Otherwise I’m just waiting for Saturday, which is when Janeen and I head to Aruba for a mixed business/pleasure trip.  My last “exotic” poker trip was the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure (Bahamas) in January of 2007, and I didn’t love it.   I didn’t cash for a dime playing poker, got bored, and lost way too much money shooting dice (it turned out to be my last significant foray into the pit to this day).  I expect that the 2009 Aruba Poker Classic (or whatever it’s called) will be a better experience.

And here is “Stomp” by the Brothers Johnson and “Groove Line” by Heatwave.  Just because.

Although I am fairly intelligent (thank you very much), I am not a person who frequently contemplates the great philosophical questions of the universe.  I’m happy enough tackling the micro-issues in my micro-life. However I do dabble occasionally.  I dabble often enough to know whether or not I believe in God, and I do not.

I’ve been through four distinct periods in my life in terms of my spirituality.  The first began when I was old enough to contemplate religion (whenever that was) and ended sometime around my 18th birthday. During this time, I was informed that I was a Jewish boy and was sent to Hebrew school for religious training a couple of times a week starting around eight or nine years of age.

I think one of the world’s tragedies is that children are indoctrinated into a particular religion and deprived of the freedom to choose what to believe and what not to believe.  Doing this to our children is terrible, but it is so ingrained in the fabric of modern society that even reading that last sentence may have caused you to scoff at my audacity for implying that children are capable of this choice.  Anyway, my parents did what most other American parents do:  they told me I was a member of my religious sect (Judaism) and sent me to learn all about it.  In fairness, I was really sent to Hebrew school as part of the tragic circle I described above—so that my parents could satisfy my father’s parents, who were expecting a Bar Mitzvah out of me.

I developed a healthy disdain for Hebrew school immediately.  More school (in addition to the regular school I was already enduring) wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time.  But more importantly, even at my young age, I questioned the stories I was being spoon fed at this second school.  I particularly recall wondering what kind of barbaric piece of shit God must have been to order Abraham to murder his son.  I also found it perplexing that the father of my people was stupid enough to actually obey this horrific command, only to be taken off the hook when Yahweh canceled the operation at the last second.  Still, I sat through Hebrew school, proceeded to memorize a few songs in a foreign languageand  then sang them for friends and family at my Bar Mitzvah.  All the while I continued to wonder what the hell the point was.

My second religious phase began when I left home for college.  I was about 18 years old.  Away from my family for the first time, I flaunted my skepticism about Judaism, relished in the act of eating leavened items during Passover and brazenly discussed the obvious stupidity of the Old Testament and mocked the bizarre rituals of the devout.  I was finally speaking my mind.  I was also acting out.  At the time, it seemed cool to reject religion, and I desperately wanted to be cool.  I earned every bit of the scorn many of my Jewish friends heaped upon me.  They called names like me the “worst kind,” a self-hating Jew.  Oy vey.

My third phase followed the death of the most religious Jew in my family, my paternal grandfather.  He died in the summer following my graduation from college, and I spent a lot of time that summer thinking about him and remembering him fondly.  It aroused my curiosity about the things he believed and the tenets that shaped his life, and I began to read up on Judaism.  I read probably four or five books about the religion I was born into, which is a lot of convoluted bullshit to wade through.  While these books did nothing to erase my skepticism, I determined that my prior phase was borne of immaturity and decided to give Judaism another test drive.  I hadn’t been to temple more than two or three times since my Bar Mitzvah; I began to attend occasionally.  I hadn’t been discussing my religious beliefs very often at all; now when the opportunity arose I described the joys of observance.  And I decided to put my money where my mouth was; I even altered my diet, swearing off shellfish and pork.

Even though I was now self-educated about Judaism, I didn’t find my newfound piety particularly satisfying.  Putting on a yarmulke, starving myself for a day, being aware of the Sabbath, not eating pig (or bread during Passover)–all of it still felt silly even after my supposed awakening.  It occurred to me that I hadn’t morphed into a believer.  Really, I was just paying homage to my grandfather.  I had not discovered my inner Jew.  I had no inner Jew.

My final phase began about ten years ago.  It was then that I realized that I didn’t believe in God and decided that belief in God was intellectually dishonest (for me).  Becoming a professional gambler made me more certain of my non-belief.  I find that believing in a higher power and this profession—which boils down to mastering iron-clad mathematical principles—are incompatible.  Becoming a devotee of Richard Dawkins’ writing further cemented things.  I’ve just never felt like openly discussing it until today, so I guess this is my official coming out party:  Hi, I’m an atheist!

This doesn’t take away the fact that I’m fiercely proud of my heritage. Culturally, I identify myself as a Jew.  I continue to enjoy Jewish holidays because I treat them as an opportunity to reaffirm my heritage and spend time with my family.  While I find Jewish (and Christian, and Islamic, and all of the other theistic) dogma repellent, I love who I am and despise anti-Semitism.  If I had married a religious woman, I would likely observe the holidays in deference to her.  Luckily, I did not marry such a woman (although we chose to include several Jewish customs in our wedding ceremony simply to make the ceremoney stand out and to reaffirm our cultural identity).

Of course, the occasion for this announcement is my decision to play poker on Rosh Hashanah for the third straight year.  Trust me, it is not only now that I’m becoming an atheist out of mere convenience.  Even when I choose to observe these “high holy” holidays, I don’t spend even a split second communing with a mythical spirit in the sky.  I’ve been this way for a long time. To me, a Jewish holiday is the same as any other holiday.  If I have the day off from work, I enjoy time with loved ones.  If I have to work, I work.  In this instance, I have to work.  And I’m certain that if I bust on Day 1 of Borgata Main Event, it will be because I either played poorly or was unlucky, not because a magic bearded omniscient sky wizard is punishing me.

But Happy New Year!

Are you ready?

I am!

PS:   JoJo Townsell had 787 yards receiving in 1989.   (But how did I miss Sauer and Moss?)

PPS:  I bought Janeen half a pair of jeans with the $90.