poker

Rewind: March 2006

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Priority number one in early March was a trip upstate to Turning Stone casino for their annual March tournaments. These tournaments were not very expensive (the grand finale was only $1,000), so they fit my bankroll nicely. I have a lot to say about the Turning Stone facility and will devote an entire blog entry to it later. The highlights of this trip were a nice cash game session at a table populated by internet kids and Al Krux of 2004 WSOP Main Event final table fame and my car breaking down on the New York State Thru way on its way to the Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse.

OK, the car wasn’t really a highlight; it was awful. I waited over an hour for a tow in 15-degree conditions. A day later, I took a cab to scenic Utica and hopped a bus home to Manhattan. Particularly memorable were the two passengers seated behind me: two hideous biker babes Greyhounding their way to rural South Carolina and the Florida panhandle, respectively. Their conversation, which was inappropriately loud, alternated between stupefying and horrifying. Topics included, but were not limited to, American Idol, tattoos and dildos. Both of these self-described badasses refused to disembark at Port Authority for their half hour layover because they feared they’d get mugged in the big city. I fled to the safety of my apartment.

I returned to online play with uninspiring results. I treaded water for three weeks, notching small wins here and there and then blowing through the profit on new buy-ins. I was still working on a couple of projects for my father, which was growing very tiresome. It was around the middle of the month when I learned of the pending grand opening of PokerXFactor.

PokerXFactor.com is an instructional tournament poker website run by “JohnnyBax” and “Sheets.” In the insular world of online poker, these two guys (those are their Pokerstars screen names) are behemoths, celebrities. I don’t know the exact details of their story, but the general background is this: Sheets (real name Eric Haber) was working on Wall Street and Bax (real name Cliff Josephy) was his client. Both discovered online poker and began playing, discussing it regularly. Soon they were discussing it more than whatever financial stuff they were supposed to be discussing. Both became obsessed, and through their constant play and strategic discussion, they improved drastically. They improved to the point where they became two of the best players on the net. Bax in particular, now a WSOP bracelet holder, he’s basically the Babe Ruth of online tournament poker. Today, both are revered, almost idolized, by scores of online players who aspire to similar success.

I personally witnessed Bax and Sheets’ ascent to the top, having played against both of them a few times prior to, during and after their climb. My reason for liking them runs slightly deeper: both are family guys in their late 30’s or early 40’s residing in Syosset, Long Island, ten minutes from where I grew up. And I have no way of verifying this, but I believe both are non-observant Jews (like me). They’re also funny, personable people (like me!). Through no fault of their own, Bax and Sheets came a little late to the online poker party and are constantly pitted against younger foes (like me). When Bax and Sheets talk (in actuality, type, or “chat”), I feel a kinship, it reads like something I might say. Unfortunately, that’s where the similarities end. I could learn a lot from them. So when I found out about their website, I immediately signed up, despite the pretty steep cost, more than double what similar sites charge.

PokerXFactor allows you to watch tournaments played by the instructors as they narrate along. It’s a great tool. And it immediately plugged a few leaks in my game. Namely, after watching only one or two videos, I learned:

  1. stop stealing so much early in tournaments, particularly with weak aces;
  2. when and why to re-steal (a move I was generally too timid to implement previously); and
  3. how to handle small blind/big blind confrontations late in tournaments.

pretty soon i’d be putting these concepts to work.

David Suffers Rain Shortened Loss

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My least favorite kind of result in baseball is a rain-shortened game. They play six innings, one team leads by two runs, and the skies open. So they put the tarp on the field, the players retreat to the clubhouse, everyone waits around for three hours, someone consults with the weatherman, and finally the umpires cancel the remainder of the game, awarding a win to the team with the lead.

Today, for the first time, I experienced the online equivalent of a rain-shortened loss. I was chugging along in two tournaments when my internet connection went out. I thought it might be the typical hiccup and waited for my connection to be restored. Then I realized that my TV had shut down as well. Not good. A frantic call to the cable company accomplished nothing. I went downstaris and my doorman confirmed the bad news: my entire building had no cable service.

FU Time Warner. Going to my bathroom, dropping $175.00 in the toilet and watching it swirl away would have been more pleasant.

It occurred to me during this episode that I have no “poker friends,” no one I can phone in this kind of situation so that they can log onto my accounts and finish the tournament(s) for me. Anyone wanna be my poker friend?

Rewind: January 2006

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I have a particular way of describing my mental state when I’m on my game in a poker tournament: I call it being “in the moment,” which means that I’m acutely aware of what the players around me are doing and seeking to accomplish. When I’m “in the moment” I seem to rely less on rational thought processes and more on something that can best be described as “intuition” or “feel.” When I’m in the moment close decisions become easy, and I always seem to get my money in as a favorite.

Well, it seems that blogging really needs to take place “in the moment” as well. I am having a difficult time figuring out a way to write about events that took place several months ago. So I guess I’m just gonna go with quick off the cuff monthly summaries and we’ll see where it goes.

January 2006:

I spent most of January splitting time between lawyering and playing poker. After my signoff date at my father’s office, a few cases lingered which only I could take care of. Dad is completely at home in the courtroom, or screaming at opposing counsel over the phone, but when it comes to drafting briefs, he’s lost. So I was stuck with a few research/writing projects which would not go away. I spent most of the month playing a few hours a day on the internet and I managed to build a small bankroll playing sit ‘n go’s (one table tournaments). My biggest score actually came in a live charity tournament that my good friend Craig Sklar managed to get me invited to. I finished second in a field of 65 drunk nitwits, winning four front row seats to a Yankees game. Thanks Craig.

In the meantime, Paris Las Vegas sent me a promotional mailer offering me three free nights at the end of the month if I’d come play in an invitational poker tournament. It didn’t take long for me to RSVP “yes.”

The trip to Vegas accomplished two things: 1) it gave me a much needed respite from the horrible divorce appeal I was drafting, and 2) it gave me my first opportunity to see what I was all about as a poker pro.

The Paris tournament was a joke. It was simply a promotion for the hotel’s customers who spend a lot of money on slots and non-poker table games. Half the field had never played before, and the tournament was structured in a way that it would be over with as soon as possible. In other words, the luck factor was magnified. I was still able to weave my way pretty deep into the tournament, taking advantage of blackjack players who didn’t realize folding was an option. Then a nice asian lady woke up with pocket aces when I had KQ, and I was out.

So I sat down in a 2-5 NL cash game at Paris. Immediately I began to win. I flopped sets, I turned straights, I rivered flushes. Things were just falling my way. Plus, I was better than everyone else at the table, many of whom had just discovered hold ’em in the tournament. I was up about a grand before long. After chipping away a little while longer and working my stack up even farther, the following hand took place.

The under the gun player (who happened to be Bill Frieder, former basketball coach at University of Michigan) brought it in for a raise. He was sitting on a monster stack. A player in middle position, also with a huge stack, called, and I called as well with the 10-7 of spades. The flop came 8-8-5 with one spade, and Mr. Frieder led out with a pot-sized bet. The middle position player called and I decided to call as well. Yes, I called with nothing, intending to outplay both of them on the turn and/or river. The turn brought the 9 of spades, giving me an open-ended straight flush draw. Frieder checked, and the middle position player made a big bet. I quickly called, but when the action got to Frieder, he checkraised!. The middle position player called and there was now a huge pot developing. If I hit a straight or a flush, would it even be any good? I figured I might be up against a made full house, but the fact that Frieder had raised under the gun convinced me otherwise. The middle position player chose to call, and so did I.

The river brought my gin card: the jack of spades, giving me the nuts–a straight flush. Frieder now made a massive bet, and the middle position player called again. I pretended to mull this situation over before finally announcing I was all-in. After a long time Frider folded and MP went into the tank and eventually called. I said “sorry, bud” as I tabled the 10-7, and the dealer shipped me the biggest pot of my young career. Frieder said he folded a full house, but I think he was full of shit. When I cashed out of the game the dealer said he thought it was the biggest win in the history of the Paris’ very new poker room. I remained very calm as I took rack after rack of red chips to the cage (required two separate trips), converted them to cash, then strode slowly to the hotel elevators and watched the doors close. Then, riding up to my room, in the privacy of the elevator, I executed several fist pumps. Hello bankroll.

The next day I went to the old Mecca of poker: Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Vegas. The story of Binion’s has been covered many, many times (most effectively by A. Alvarez in “The Biggest Game in Town”), so I’m not gonna rehash it now. The bottom line is that in its heyday it was very low on glitz and very high on action: a gambler’s place to gamble, a place where more legendary risk-it-all gambling stories took place than the rest of sin city combined. Today, it is simply a dump. Even the “Poker Wall of Fame,” situated in the corner of the room where Doyle, Puggy, Slim and the boys did battle for the better part of three decades, and always prominently featured on all those ESPN telecasts, is vaguely disappointing in person. The carpet is stained and the whole place smells like a stale Winston.

Sold to Harrah’s after coming very close to bankruptcy, Binion’s now appears to make a meager profit cashing in on its legacy as the longstanding home of both the WSOP and the biggest cash games in poker history. Binion’s today sports a huge, drab poker room and promotes its cheap daily tournaments, one of which I entered on January 26. The buy in was small and the competition was weak, and I worked my way to the final table, having outlasted 70 players. But this was no ordinary final table. At Binion’s, once the last 10 players are established, play moves to a special elevated table with brightly lit borders and space on the sides for a crowd to gather and gawk. And gather and gawk they did. A rather scary collection of trashy downtown tourists appeared and hovered around the goofed-up table, making comments (“the fella with the toothpick just busted Jimmy, he’s a tough-‘un”) all the while.

Before I knew it I was heads up with a modern-day Binion’s regular. Not exactly Johnny Moss, he was sporting sunglasses, a visor and a mustache, all likely purchased/cultivated in the 1980’s. He needed some dental work, and he wasn’t very good. I dispatched him and won a decent sum. But who cares about the cash when you also get THIS:

After dumping off a bunch of money in tournaments at Wynn and Bellagio, I wound up my January by notching another very good cash game session at Mandalay Bay.

I flew home from Vegas positively giddy about my performance, ready to put the lingering legal work behind me and really open fire on the poker world.

Live from the beach: Verona, New York

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All poker players know the worn out axiom: “It’s a hard way to make an easy living.” I’m telling you it’s true.
Maybe my extended tour (I have spent 15 of the last 17 nights in a hotel bed) is playing games with my head, but right now I’m exasperated.

Actually it’s not poker per se that is driving me nuts right now, it’s tournament poker. After my score in the Foxwoods tournament (I intend to go through my year in chronological segments on here once I return to NYC, I’m jumping forward right now), I decided to focus more on tournaments and less on cash games.

The problem is this: cash games are to strip mining as tournaments are to wandering up and down the beach with one of those metal detectors. Strip miners unearth something every day. Meanwhile, those wackos on the beach find a lot of aluminum cans, and maybe, just maybe,once a year they’ll find a gold earring.

Right now I’m at Turning Stone casino in upstate New York (more on this wondrous facility later), and I have played a combined 25 hours of poker. I have cashed in both of the events I’ve entered,a pretty difficult feat, each taking up a full day. Even by my lofty standards, I have played awesome poker (if I do say so myself). What do I have to show for it? About $800 profit. Barely covers the overhead.

It’s a tough game. I’m constantly at war with myself (never mind my freakin’ opponents) psychologically. Right now I’m rethinking my approach and might allocate more time to cash games. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that this internal struggle goes with the territory. I think what I mean to say is near misses suck. Details to follow in the appropriate chapter.

Stay tuned and I’ll bring everyone up to speed on January through May. Riveting, isn’t it?

David in Blogland.

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It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’ve officially joined the legion of idiots spewing nonsense into cyperspace. Welcome to my blog.

About me:

I spent my entire childhood and most of my adulthood sidestepping the question of what I wanted to do with my life. As an undergrad, I fancied myself a writer, and was told that becoming a lawyer was a nice way to parlay my supposed skill into a lucrative career.

So I went to a fancy law school. I graduated. I landed a job at a big law firm. And after a few years, I got fired.

None of it resonated. Not the austere law school or its reputable curriculum. Not the diploma with the Latin words on it. Not the pompous law firm or the oversized egos populating it. Not even the experience of being rejected from that culture. I felt nothing. I was nowhere.

I still fancied myself a writer, so for awhile I pretended I’d make a living doing that. It didn’t take long to discover that I lacked the talent and determination to make it happen.

Still directionless, I latched onto my father’s criminal defense practice. As it turns out, I did not inherit my father’s drive or his love for courtroom wrangling. What I did inherit from Dad is his taste for games of chance.

As a child, I can remember working out the odds for blackjack and craps with a paper and pencil. I can also remember possessing an uncanny knack for handicapping professional football games (I trait I think I still possess). And I can remember my time as a childhood bookie, running football pools at an age when most kids could not do long division. And, most importantly, I can remember my late maternal grandfather teaching me the basics of poker, and I can remember using that knowledge to separate my Junior High School friends from their lunch money on a regular basis. I enjoyed that a lot.

My love of poker lied dormant through high school, college, and law school. It was not until sometime in 2001 that it was rekindled. I began to participate in a home game in my neighborhood, and found poker on television (a Travel Channel special airing a luxury cruise line’s tournament won by Kathy Liebert hooked me). I soon found myself buying instructional manuals and thinking strategically about hands I had played in my home game. I also discovered online poker and internet poker newsgroups. Before long, I was a bit of a budding poker know-it-all. Something funny was happening: I felt most alive when I was challenging myself at the poker table. I began to play in much of my spare time: at new home games, in New York’s poker clubs, and online.

Sometime in 2003, I became a consistent winner. Sometime in 2004, I became a prodigious winner relative to the low stakes I was then playing. And in 2005, I qualified for the World Series of Poker’s Main Event online and proceeded to cash in that tournament. At that time, another strange thing happened–I began to consider playing poker professionally. This was not strange because playing poker for a living is so unusual, but because I was taking charge of my life for the first time. I felt energized. In October of 2005, I gave my father notice that I’d be setting off on my own.

I’ve been playing poker for a living since January 2006, and as of the date of this first blog entry (May 16, 2006), it’s been a success. Also, I’m as happy as I can ever remember being.

This website is unlikely to break any new ground, but I feel like I have a lot to share. I hope to use this space to track my progress as a pro, to discuss interesting hands I’ve played, and to arbitrarily discharge my pearls of wisdom and sure-to-be-amusing anecdotes.

I guess I still fancy myself a writer. So hello everyone.

-David Zeitlin