Guess the casino, #288

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Answer: Bally's

My most expensive dollar ever

Fortunately for me, most days that I play poker I still actually enjoy it. After three years, I'm still not feeling burned out. I like playing, and on any given day I will basically keep playing until the game goes bad, I'm feeling too tired to continue, or I just feel like I want to go home and do something else.

There are days, though, when, for whatever reason, it feels like a grind and I'm just putting in the hours to collect the money. I don't hate the work, but I'm not really having fun, either. Which is, I suppose, how most of the world's population feels about their work most of the time. When I'm having a day like that, my tendency is to set some arbitrary goal for income for the day (usually $100 or $200 or $300--the amount depends on how ambitious and energetic I feel, how the bankroll has been doing lately, how pleasant the poker environment is, and other intangible factors) and call it quits when I get there. I very much like Tommy Angelo's advice: "[I]t's okay to quit while citing this to yourself as the reason: I want to have fun. I am not having fun. So I will stop this unfun activity, now." (See here.)

Yesterday was one of those days. I was at Mandalay Bay again. I made the first $100 fairly quickly--$70 in the first hand, in fact--so I decided that when I got to a $200 profit I'd call it a day, go home, and finish watching a Netflix movie that I was in the middle of.

About two hours into the session I counted my stack after winning a pot and found that I was up by $199. So close. Just one more pot and I'm done, I told myself.

But I lost the next one, and was then at +$183. I thought about leaving, but it felt like it would be lazy to quit short of my goal--like I hadn't really put in my honest day's work. So I kept going.

I lost the next pot, too, and was down to about +$160. Now I was annoyed because of the extra time it was going to take me to grind back to where I wanted to be. But the table was soft, I wasn't especially tired, and there wasn't anything I really needed to be doing anywhere else, so I decided to put my nose to the grindstone for a while longer.

Grindstone? That's the wrong word. Millstone is what I should have said, because there was one tied around my neck and I was sinking. Next time I counted, I was at +$120 or so, then +$101 (I remember that one exactly), then about +$85.

Just. Could. Not. Win. An. Effin'. Pot.

As far as I could tell, nothing had changed. The table had not suddenly gotten tougher. I had not gone on tilt and started seeing promise in trash hands or making desperate calls. My most objective assessment (though I recognize that one's ability to analyze these things deteriorates and may not always be reliable) was that it was just a bad streak: my draws not getting there, opponents' second-best starting hands catching up, being dealt my best hands in worst position, etc.

So I shrugged it off the best that I could and kept playing.

And I kept losing.

+$85, +$60, +$35 came and went. I finally crashed down through the break-even point.

I reassessed, still felt reasonably good about the EV of the situation, so kept going.

Long story short, I bottomed out at about -$80. I seriously thought about quitting then, because this trend showed no signs of reversing. I still couldn't see that there was anything in particular that was wrong. However, I have enough experience with poker to know that sometimes there is something that is adversely affecting me in some insidious manner and I just can't diagnose it in myself until later, in retrospect, when I'm removed from the immediate situation. I was therefore wondering if this was another of those cases, and, if so, whether I should just take my loss and run away before losing the rest of my stack.

Fortunately, right about then, I finally won the first meaningful pot of the last couple of hours, and was back to about -$20. That gave me some sense of confirmation (rightly or wrongly) that I was OK to continue at least for a while more. And, sure enough, I soon thereafter hit another winner that took me back over the most critical psychological threshold. I left with a big $4 profit to show for my 4 1/2 hours of work.

I could have stayed longer, but I had enough uncertainty about whether there was something I wasn't perceiving about my own play or about the situation that I thought discretion was the better part of valor. There's always another game another day. So I left technically a winner for the day, but, of course, feeling like I had actually lost $195. Which sucks.

My buddy Cardgrrl recently had a similar night. As her readers know by now, a few months back she set up for herself an incentive plan to help her get up from the table when she has won enough to be content with. This was to avoid the awful feeling that results from giving it all back. Last week in a cash game she had bought in for $200. Her incentive plan involves doubling the buy-in, so when she was at about +$180, she texted me to say that she should be done and heading home soon. But it was not to be. Just like me, things started heading south. If I remember correctly, over the next few hours she lost not only the accumulated profit but the original buy-in, too. (If I have that wrong, Cardgrrl, my apologies--the days all start to run together in memory after a while.) Had she been content with a $180 profit, instead of chasing that last $20, it would be in her pocket now.

These stories aren't told as criticism of either my own decision or Cardgrrl's decision to stay and win a little bit more. These things just happen sometimes. In both cases, staying was presumably +EV, and just didn't work out as expected. In both cases, the next pot could just as easily have gone my way (or hers) as the other, the goal would have been met, and there would have been joy in Mudville.

That's the thing about poker sessions--kind of like with the stock market, you can't ever tell where the peak is until after it has passed. Especially when playing no-limit, the next pot could double or triple your money, or, conversely, leave you staring at the felt, facing the awful decision whether to rebuy or go home loser for the day, and wishing you had quit one hand earlier. And on the other side of the equation, it's entirely possible that packing up for the day after hitting some arbitrary amount of win is a mistake because the next hand would have doubled your profit for just three more minutes of work. You just never know. There have been plenty of times that I've kicked myself for not leaving when it first occurred to me that I should, but there have also been plenty of times when I've gone on to win a lot more money after that point, and ended up thinking, "Good thing I didn't listen to myself!"

Most of the time I don't have any particular need to employ a stop-loss or stop-win mechanism. (I'm well aware of the arguments for and against such devices, but don't feel like engaging in that discussion at the moment.) But at least for the foreseeable future, I think that when I'm having a "poker is just a grind at the office" kind of day and I have set some arbitrary income amount, I'm going to remember the sting of last night's cost of chasing that last damned dollar, and be willing to cut things short when I get within shouting distance of whatever that amount is.

I've gone viral!

I attended some of the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Championship at Caesars Palace, and wrote up a post about it here. Included were a few video clips I shot of hands being played out. I posted them on YouTube, then embedded them in the blog post.

Well, yesterday YouTube notified me that one of the clips--with Mike Matusow eliminating Tom Dwan--had become very popular. They were inviting me to share in the revenue from ads placed next to it.

This puzzled me, because there's nothing special about that hand or the little video I shot of it. So I went to YouTube to check out the viewing stats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zhqBPkjRQg

Good Lord! The things has been watched 122,000 times!

This completely boggles my mind. I have no idea why it has been hit so often. None of the others that I did at the same time is over 30,000--and even that number startles me.

I didn't know it, but I guess I'm just about the next best thing to the Numa Numa kid!

Guess the casino, #287

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Answer: City Center (Ha! I cheated, using a shot of a casino that isn't even open yet! My game--I get to make and break the rules whenever I feel like it! :-) Thanks to my friend Cardgrrl for snapping this picture as we drove by the place on I-15 in August.)

Who you callin' dumb?

I think I resent this!

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/05/report-vegas-near-bottom-list-smartest-cities/

At this time of year I always wonder

Why isn't there a Nobel Prize for poker? And/or for blogging? Cuz I'd be a shoo-in, right?

Lying and poker

My friend Shamus just put up an interesting post weaving together thoughts about the new Ricky Gervais movie, "The History of Lying," the soon-to-be-released James McManus book on the history of poker, and the role of lying in the game of poker.

These are the two paragraphs that primarily triggered the desire to comment here:

That said, notice how McManus characterizes “good poker” in the
above-quoted passage, which includes hiding one’s tells and knowing how to
bluff. You can’t play poker without lying, even when you aren’t cheating. The
game doesn’t work without it.

In fact, if you think about it, the ability to lie (and to suss out others’
lies) is pretty much what we’re talking about when we argue for the “skill” of
poker. Sure, as McManus notes, “calculating pot odds and value bets” is part of
“good poker,” too. But knowing those things is hardly sufficient. One has to be
able to lie, and lie well, to succeed.

If I'm reading Shamus correctly, he is categorizing bluffing as lying. He would hardly be the first. I've heard this said many times.

I've never felt right about it, though. I would certainly agree that one cannot succeed at poker without being deceptive about one's down cards. That sometimes involves convincing an opponent that one is stronger than is really true (bluffing), sometimes that one is weaker than is really true (slow-playing). But I do not think that this constitutes lying.

Standard dictionary definitions of lie, in the verb form, consistently involve speaking. See, e.g., here. This seems to me a little narrow, since one can obviously also lie in writing. In the noun form, the definitions mostly involve the word statement. A lie is a statement, whether written or spoken.

I think that's the source of my discomfort with the categorization of deceptive poker play as lying: There is no statement being made--at least not necessarily. I virtually never speak during a poker hand. Some people do, and of course I've heard players utter direct lies about their cards and their thoughts, both during and after a hand.

I don't do that. If somebody asks me what I had, I duck the question. I have several stock responses: "If I answered you, I'd just lie about it anyway" (which is basically true). "Sorry, I can't tell you that." "I think I'd better keep that to myself." Etc.

Two of my most common stock responses are, "Gee, now I can't remember," and "Aces, of course. I only play aces." Both are said with such an exaggerated tone of voice and facial expression such that it is unmistakable that the words are false. That is, the listener will know without a doubt that I'm not telling the truth. This isn't lying, exactly, since there is no intent to deceive, which is the sine qua non of a lie.

My point, though, is that not everything that is deceptive is a lie. I would go further and say that not everything that is deceptive is dishonest. Those who argue to the contrary (and I have had this exact conversation any number of times) usually say something like, "If you make a pot-sized bet when you have nothing, it's a lie, because you're telling your opponent that you have something that you don't actually have." I disagree. I don't think that is either the only or the most natural way to characterize such a bet. I think it can just as accurately be understood to be saying, "I don't think your hand is strong enough that you'll be willing to call a bet of this amount." That is an absolutely true statement, so if a bluff can be considered to constitute a statement at all (as necessary for it to potentially be a lie), it is not necessarily a false or deceptive one.

Similarly, checking the nuts could, I suppose, be considered a form of lie if that action is understood to say, "I have nothing." But surely that's far from the only possible message being conveyed. I think it is more accurate to understand a check to be saying simply, "I decline to bet right now." Again, that is an absolutely true statement.

Put another way, every check or bet is, by nature, ambiguous. Ambiguity is not lying. It is not dishonest.

Based on those considerations, I reject the claim that lying is a necessary part of good poker.

But let me take this opportunity to go beyond the question of whether betting actions constitute lying, which is just a debate about definitions and semantics, and talk more generally about the role of lying in the play of a poker game.

I have kind of a strange and, admittedly, not terribly consistent attitude about lying at the poker table. First, I virtually never lie about my hand or what I was thinking or doing--i.e., about what's going on in the game. As mentioned previously, I prefer to shut up about it, and dodge any questions directed my way. If I decide I want somebody to know what cards I had, I will show the cards. If I don't want people to know, I won't tell them anything. I suppose there probably have been a few occasions when I did tell an outright lie about what I had, but they are so few and far between that I really can't remember the last time it may have happened.

This decision on my part is, I think, an extension of how I see lying in life in general. I've told enough lies and gotten into enough trouble from it over the years that I've decided just not to go down that road any more. I lie very rarely these days, and I can't think of any life situation in which I tell a lie that has any significant consequences. On the rare occasions that I lie at all, it's most often to avoid unnecessary complications. For example, yesterday I stopped at a Walgreen's pharmacy to get a flu shot. Among the questions they asked was, "Are you taking any medications?" Well, the fact is that I am, but I know that none of them pose any problem or contraindication to getting the shot, and if I listed them, it would take more time, possibly lead to other irrelevant questions and diversions, while in the end not benefitting either me or Walgreen's. So I lied and said, "No." I would not give the same lie if the situation were, e.g., that I was about to undergo general anesthesia for surgery, in which case the need for the caregivers to know what's in my system has more potentially serious consequences, and is therefore worth disclosing.

I am not comfortable lying. It makes me squirm internally, though I probably have a good enough "poker face" by now that I'm better at disguising any associated body language than most people are. (There's a show on the Fox network called "Lie to Me," which stars Tim Roth as an expert human lie detector. I watched the first few episodes last season. It had some interesting stuff about how people behave when they're lying, but I thought there was too much sameness from one installment to the next. It's kind of a thin premise for sustaining interest over the long haul, it seems to me.) For the most part that feeling extends to the poker table. I don't like to lie. I'd rather not do it if it can be avoided without too much bother. When playing poker, it's usually easy to be able to avoid it, so I do--at least insofar as it comes to the poker itself.

But, like I said, I'm not completely consistent on this subject. Earlier this year I confessed here about the standard BS line I give people when they ask about my job. This is part strategic, but also partly because I just feel like my personal life is nobody's business, so if they go probing about things that they have no call to know about, they get what's coming, which is useless information and a distracting shower of verbal chaff. If I were perfectly consistent, I suppose I would handle this the same way as when asked about what my cards were, with a clear deflection. But social norms being what they are, one's career is generally considered fair game to ask about. It would therefore strike a discordant and antisocial note to tell the truth frankly, which would be, "None of your business." So I lie. It avoids complications and avoids social awkwardness at the same time.

There is yet another type of lie--at least arguably--in which I will engage while playing poker, and that is saying something like, "Nice hand" to a donkey who played horribly and got lucky. Obviously this is strategic, because I want him to continue playing that badly. I think this is less clearly lying than things like baldly naming cards other than what one really had when asked. That's because it's ambiguous: it could be taken to mean, "Nice outcome you got there," or, "Lucky catch on the river." In other words, it doesn't necessarily mean, "You played that well," which would be a clear lie if said in so many words. Again, ambiguity is not lying. If the listener understands from such a vague comment that he is being complimented on his play, well, that's an interpretation to be found only in his mind, not in my words.

So that's my somewhat complicated, odd, and admittedly inconsistent attitude about lying at poker. Others bring to the table a very different ethic. My friend Cardgrrl, for instance, openly admits that when playing poker, "I lie my ass off." (See here.) She has also mentioned a few times how during the latter portion of her most recent Vegas visit she adopted a new, experimental table persona, which involved a fair amount of lying about herself, her career, and her poker experience. (See here and here.) I don't suppose she would mind me revealing that she has also privately warned me that when we're playing together, I'm just as fair game for being lied to at the poker table as any other opponent. Outside of the poker room, though, I know that she is a scrupulously honest person.

A few weeks ago I told her about a situation in which a player I respected was leaving the game, and I took the opportunity to tell him privately about the only big hand in which we had confronted each other. I had raised, not sure whether he had a bigger pocket pair than mine or two unmatched overcards. He folded a higher pair face up. (I think it was queens to my 10s on an all-baby flop, but I no longer remember for sure.) He had been deeply curious about whether he had done the right thing, so as he was leaving I took him aside and told him the truth. I did so because I both liked and respected him. Cardgrrl, I think it fair to say, was at least puzzled and possibly even shocked by this. She told me she would have lied and told him he made a good laydown.

That's just not my style. It's rare that I will take an action such as I did with this guy (it has happened maybe three or four times in my three years here). Most often I will just leave people hanging, forever wondering whether their decision was correct or not. But if I'm going to tell him one way or the other, it will be the truth, not a lie.

I want to be clear that I don't condemn Cardgrrl's attitude here. In fact, I think it's undoubtedly the most common one among poker players. I've heard Daniel Negreanu, for example, say that he considers openly lying at the table, even to his best friends, to be just part of the game. I fully acknowledge that the prevailing view is that the poker table is a zone in which the usual social opprobrium about lying is suspended, and anything goes, on the truth/fiction scale.

I just haven't been able to bring myself to adopt that point of view and the conduct that would go with it. This isn't because I'm morally or ethically superior in any way. I just find it both personally uncomfortable and almost completely unnecessary (with the two general categories of exceptions I detailed above). What's more, I have a nagging fear that if I became more comfortable and free with lying during poker, it could easily start to spill over into other areas of my life--especially considering how much time I spend at poker. That's an outcome I'd like to avoid.

So, to wrap up a post that is already about five times longer than I planned when I started writing it, I respectfully submit my disagreement with my friend Shamus about lying being an intrinsic part of poker, both from the standpoint of whether betting actions constitute lies and whether it is necessary to tell lies verbally (though, in fairness, he didn't directly say anything about the latter).

Comments, as always, are welcome. And I ain't lying.

Guess the casino, #286

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Answer: Bellagio

Unusual rule at Mandalay Bay

The Mandalay Bay poker room is rather notorious for its quirky set of house rules. (See posts here and here and here for examples.) Today I noticed another.

Most must-move games operate first in/first out. That is, the person who has been at the table the longest is forced to move to the regular game when a seat opens up there. Mandalay does it backwards: The person who has been there the longest is given the option of moving, but is not forced to move; if they go down the whole list and nobody wants to go, the last person to have joined the table is the one that will be required to move.

I like this! It is, so far, the only one of the idiosyncratic house rules at Mandalay that I think is superior to the standard procedure. Those who arrived first should be given the option to move or stay; they have the most invested in having observed opponents and having created a table image.

I had noticed the floor staff operating like this at Mandalay previously, but I thought they were just kind of casually bending the rules. Today a comment from the supervisor clued me in that this is, in fact, what their protocols dictate.

Is there any reason this idea should not be implemented universally? I can't see any down side to it. It seems like the way things should be everywhere.

Poker gems, #316

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, p. 272.


7. When You're Not in a Pot and Don't Feel Like Observing--Don't

I believe that one of the main reasons players don't learn observational skills, and thereby sacrifice profits, is that observing constantly is agony. It's better to let your mind rest when it wants to rest. Always observe when you're in a hand. Otherwise, when it's comfortable to observe do; when it's not, don't.

Yes, you can force yourself to concentrate more and play a little better for short periods. But most people will find that they burn out quickly and are unable to play longer sessions in profitable games if they force concentration when their minds rebel. I believe that in those long, profitable games, you should let your brain relax between hands whenever it wants to.

She's got 'em

A woman sitting next to me at Mandalay Bay today had this unusual card protector: two 9mm cartridges welded or soldered together.*

By this means, whenever an opponent asks what she has, she can say, "I've got bullets," and not be lying.**



* You can see by the pierced primers that they have been fired, then reloaded, presumably without gunpowder. If you're knowledgeable about guns, you can even tell that they were fired in a gun with a traditional hammer (e.g., a Browning Hi-Power), rather than in one with an internal striker (e.g., a Glock). This is because the indentation in the primer is round rather than rectangular. If you're truly a gun nut, the kind who loads his own ammunition in the basement, you might even notice that these rounds were badly made and overpressured, probably with an excessive load of powder; the primers are flattened and backed out. If I had made these, I would throw the batch away. Continuing to use them risks blowing up an expensive gun. They're probably pretty safe to use as card protectors, however.


** The shooting enthusiast in me, though, wants to be sure that all understand that it is erroneous, though terribly common, to refer to loaded cartridges as bullets. A bullet is the projectile component of the cartridge, not the cartridge itself.

Guess the casino, #285

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Answer: Rio

Deuce-four is always good, of course...

...but I admit that I've never seen it win quite like this before. See this Twitpic from David Stucke, whose 2-3 made three pair but lost to the mighty 2-4: http://twitpic.com/k4na2

I'm going to Washington, D.C., and Atlantic City

My friend Cardgrrl has kindly invited me to come play some poker on her home turf: an assortment of tournament leagues, private home games, and underground raked cash games in the environs of Washington, D.C. I have accepted the challenge. The games begin Thursday, October 15, and run through Monday, October 26. I understand that I have at least a few readers among the denizens of those games, and it will be fun to meet and play with them. (I briefly met about seven of her "A league" crew when they were out here for the World Series in June, but I'll have to admit I was in a pretty down mood that day and probably didn't make a good first impression. I hope they'll forgive that and give me another chance.)

Plans include a side trip to Atlantic City the first weekend (Saturday, October 17, through Monday, October 19), on one of Cardgrrl's monthly Harrah's-sponsored bus junkets. Harrah's AC will be the main hang-out joint, but I'll see if I can persuade her to take a cab to the other part of town and try playing a bit at Caesars and/or Bally's and/or Showboat, since all should provide equal Harrah's credits. Besides, it will be a chance to add to my poker chip collection.

Any reader tips about the poker rooms, hotel/casino amenities, restaurants, sightseeing (if anything in Atlantic City can be so labeled), etc., will be warmly welcomed in the comments section.

Ever since I moved here, I have thought that I should take a week or at least weekend trip to other poker venues: Reno, L.A., or even little ol' Laughlin. But I just never get around to it. The plethora of poker rooms here just seems too cushy to provide much of an incentive to go anywhere else. I'm glad to finally get--and take--the chance to do so, especially with a travelling companion/poker pal as delightful as Cardgrrl.



(Map shot above nipped from the Atlantic City page of www.thepokeratlas.com.)

Guess the casino, #284

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Answer: M Resort

Guess the casino, #283

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Answer: Fiesta Henderson

Poker gems, #315

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, p. 301.


[M]astering the science of poker, both tactical and psychological, is only half the job. The other half is finding the world's weakest wimps and pouncing.

You can relax now

I'm sure all of you "Guess the casino" fans were sweating, because we were getting close to the end of the batch that I had prepared a couple of months ago. Would there be more? Well, you can breathe easy. I just spent the last couple of hours uploading the next batch. "Guess the casino" is now officially safe. They will continue to deploy one a day, usually at 1:00-2:00 a.m., at least until December 4 now, even if I were to die. (That's not in the plans, but ya never know.)

Poker gems, #314

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, pp. 298-299.


At the first event at the 2006 World Series of Poker, I held 8-8 when the flop was 8-8-6. You're right. I lost to a straight flush. Couple this with a myriad of two- and three-card "miracles" with which opponents recently eliminated me from the rare tournaments I enter and I could get to feeling sorry for myself.

Now, are those sad stories, or what? At least one kibitzer thought so. On my way out the door at a tournament, he commiserated, "I saw that beat you took with the two jacks last time, too. You really get a lot of good hands beat, don't you?"

I said, "I think I get beat, on average, with better hands than almost anyone else."

He seemed surprised that I would say that. "So, you're usually unlucky?"

"No," I corrected, "I'm not unlucky at all."

"But you just said you got beat with big hands."

"That's right," I told him. "But I don't mind."

Moral of the story

Getting beat with bigger hands on average than your opponents is not a sign of misfortune. Aspiring professional players need to understand that. If you play skillfully, if you have a winning game plan, if you succeed, then you will absolutely lose, on average, with bigger hands than your opponents. That's because the hands you play are, on average, stronger.

Players complain about being drawn out on. Even world-class players complain about it. But, if you're a great player, you should be drawn out on much more often than other players. Why? Because you usually have the stronger hand to begin with. In fact, if you always started with the best hand against an opponent, then every single time you lost, you would take a bad beat. How else could you lose?

So, now you have new goals in poker.

Your New Goals

1. To have as many of your losing hands as possible be bad beats, and
2. To never complain about it.

Poker gems, #313

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, p. 296.


I was almost convinced years ago to establish a 900 number that players could use to phone in their most miserable experiences at poker. A fully trained and sympathetic staff would, for $4.95 a minute, listen attentively.

Our skilled Bad Beat hotline employees would know precisely when to sigh empathetically, and when to use one of the three permitted responses: "Oh, my gosh, no!" "That's just awful!" and "I can't believe you didn't kill yourself after that hand!"

I caution players never to talk about their bad luck at the poker table. The reason is simple: Opponents are inspired by your bad luck. They then think of you as someone they can beat, and they play better against you. It's not a good idea to discuss your personal poker misfortunes, because that tends to reinforce the bad experiences, even in your own mind. At my seminars I explain how complaining about missing twenty-seven flushes in a row might actually make you want to miss the twenty-eighth one so that you can show your cards and say, "See, this is what I mean."

Guess the casino, #282

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Answer: Venetian

People are rude and disgusting

No, that's not a new revelation to me. But I was reminded of the fact again tonight during the Mookie.

Look at this. My dear friend Cardgrrl, who got knocked out earlier, was watching me. When it was down to three-handed, it was clear that the other two players had it in for each other. They were raising each other light and shoving light, taunting each other in chat. At the same time, I was going through a card-dead phase: 10-3, 6-2, etc. So I decided to fold a lot more than I usually would, and let those two slug it out for a while. I was perfectly content to sit back and then take on one of them heads-up. Of course, I would have gotten involved if I got dealt something strong enough to go up against both of them with (because neither was in a folding mood), but that wasn't happening.

Anyway, that decision resulted in this chat exchange, spread out over maybe a dozen or so hands:

Full Tilt Poker Game #15046286357: The Mookie (109308627), Table 1

JOELPOKERGOD: Rake well folding up the money ladder like a girl lol
VBPro7 (Observer): yeah he sucks
cardgrrl (Observer): "like a girl"... what are you, an idiot?
cardgrrl (Observer): oh wait...
Rakewell: that would be yes
VBPro7 (Observer): nicejob Rake
VBPro7 (Observer): take these ROOKIES
JOELPOKERGOD: hes a nit
cardgrrl (Observer): better a nit than a not-nice person
cardgrrl (Observer): :)
VBPro7 (Observer): id do cardgrrrl69
JOELPOKERGOD: lol il bluff her azz later
VBPro7 (Observer): i'd rather lick it
cardgrrl (Observer): you all lead very active fantasy lives
cardgrrl (Observer): gl with that
VBPro7 (Observer): she fiesty
VBPro7 (Observer): i wanna oil her up and chase her around
cardgrrl (Observer): better save the oil for your long lonely nights dude

(At this point, Mike Maloney knocks out JOELPOKERGOD.)

Mike_Maloney: I'd say gg, but, you kind of suck
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): Go to hell ealier
VBPro7 (Observer): lol you KINDA suck
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): lol
VBPro7 (Observer): how rude
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): i do suck
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): this is a tough game tho vb
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): lol
VBPro7 (Observer): yeah right
VBPro7 (Observer): im just here for the women
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): Rakewell is really bad


As long as I'll live, I will never understand (1) men being sexually crude to women just because they are women, and (2) people being nasty to each other for no discernible reason at all. It makes me want to shake them and say, "What the hell is wrong with you that you get pleasure from saying things like that?"

For all the good it would do.

And yes, I do realize that this snippet is fairly tame as such things are known to go. But I don't play online much, so I can usually be blissfully unaware of it.

I haven't tried to look up who JOELPOKERGOD or VBPro7 are, or whether they have poker blogs of their own, but really, guys--it's not funny, it's not cute, it doesn't make you look smart, it doesn't make you look superior. You show off what vile, stupid, pathetic, desperate people you are. It's not at all clear to me why you would want to do that. It's a form of psychopathology that I really don't get.

The overwhelming sense conveyed, to me at least, is that these are people who are seriously screwed up, and have somehow developed such a demented, warped view of the world and its inhabitants that they think this type of interaction is normal. Perhaps it's the only way they know of to behave. If so, that's just as sad as it is annoying.

Close, but not quite

I stayed home and played the Mookie tonight. First time I've ever cashed in it, and I came in second. Of course, with only 17 players, it's not exactly a world-class accomplishment.

It's hard to go deep in a tournament without getting insanely lucky at least once, and this one was mine. As far as I know, it was the only time I got a lot of chips in bad:



That guy had been a thorn in my side for a long time. He was always raising my blinds light, so this time I just called with my AK. I shoved the flop, he called, then I caught my 3-outer. Hee hee hee!

Other than that, I thought I played pretty well throughout. I didn't blow up, which is something of a novelty.