A little of the Divine

A friend got some free tickets to Bette Midler's show at Caesars Palace last night, so away we went. I'm not a huge fan, but she's OK. I have exactly one Midler CD in my collection, a "best of" sort of thing.

The show was all right, but not great. The filler to singing ratio was very, very high. Lots of fluff--kind of lame jokes (some old, some about current events), way too many remarks about how old she is getting to be (63), showgirls dancing around (strange sight of the night: 20+ showgirls in mermaid tails driving around the huge stage in motorized wheelchairs. Yeah, really.), and so forth. I'm sure she sang fewer than ten songs in the nearly two-hour show. There was nothing particularly terrible about the whole show, but nothing in it wowed me or made me want to go back and do it again someday.

The photo above is the same one that is on the $5 chips Caesars issued when Bette's show was announced. It always looks to me like she has a plant growing out of her head--especially when the picture is reduced in size to fit on a poker chip. I suppose it's supposed to be a showgirl headdress, but it looks weird.

Guess the casino, #36

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Answer: Mandalay Bay

Guess the casino, #35

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Answer: Luxor

A bit more about Hal Lubarsky

Thursday morning I posted a story about playing poker at Planet Hollywood with Hal Lubarsky.

Today I was checking Google Analytics to see what my blog traffic has been like lately, and was surprised to find that yesterday set a record for number of hits (568). It wasn't obvious to me what would have done it. Usually such spikes happen when one of the more popular bloggers mentions and/or links to something I've written, but a quick Google blog search found nothing like that. So I dug into the Google Analytics report more deeply and discovered what was driving the traffic: somebody on the 2+2 forums posted a link to the Lubarsky story (here).

Now I need to back up a bit and mention another small part of the story that I hadn't thought significant at the time. When talking to Hal about the logistics of how he plays online, he said that he had been multi-tabling under his old, regular account for years, so he and his reader had a good system going and could handle it easily. But then when he became a red pro for Full Tilt, he understandably was suddenly the object of a lot more attention from railbirds. It might have looked to others like he was new to online poker, in which case playing six tables of Omaha-8 right out of the gate would be literally unbelievable. Hal said that some people were questioning whether it was really him doing this.

At the time we had this conversation over the poker table, I did not know that this entire subject was currently under debate on 2+2. I don't read that (or any other) forum regularly. I only got clued in when somebody submitted a comment to my post that alerted me to the 2+2 threads. In retrospect, it makes sense why Hal made what then seemed to me kind of a cryptic and unnecessarily defensive comment about what unnamed "others" thought of his online play. I had no idea that there was a controvery brewing in the poker world on this subject, let alone that I would inadvertantly contribute to it with my post.

It was not at all my intention to heap more trouble onto a guy who has had more than his fair share. I'm not retracting anything I wrote, but I did want to add some thoughts:

1) As is probably obvious, I have absolutely no idea whether Hal has ever let anybody else use his red-pro FTP account (the sin which apparently got Jonathan Little's red status stripped, and which at least a few others in that stable are rumored to do), which is the accusation that started the 2+2 discussions.

2) I find it amazing that anybody could play six tables of Omaha-8 and/or stud games online via use of a human reader/assistant. On 2+2, many participants find it so amazing that they conclude that it's impossible and on that basis accuse Hal of sharing his account, demand that he post a YouTube video showing him in action, etc. I have zero first-hand knowledge of this. But I wouldn't have believed that Hevad Khan could play as many SNGs at a time as he has proven that he can. Furthermore, I've had enough dealings with intelligent blind people in my life to know that they can do many things that I would have thought impossible without sight.

So I'm willing to give Hal the benefit of the doubt. It would be fascinating to watch how he and his reader pull this off, but I'm not going to assume that what is astonishing is also impossible. Go to any Cirque show if you want plenty of evidence that with years of practice people can pull off with apparent ease physical acts you almost can't believe you're seeing. There are any number of places you can watch people perform mental feats (complex mathematical calculations, reciting thousands of pages of memorized material, playing dozens of chess games simulateously, etc.) that invariably make you shake your head and say, "How can they do that?" We humans are pretty incredible, y'know.

I neither believe nor disbelieve Hal, exactly; as with most assertions and claims I hear, for which I have little or no evidence one way or the other, I simply hold it in a kind of agnostic abeyance. I feel no need to come to any firm conclusion. Of course, not everything in that general category is on equal footing. I couldn't quantify it in any meaningful way, but I can say that I am more skeptical of the claim than I would be if he told me that he has a dog named Spot, and less skeptical of the claim than I would be if he told me that he can bend spoons with his mind. If he can multi-table Omaha-8, it's amazing, but it would be far from the most astonishing thing that I've seen proven true.

It would be sad to learn in the end that Hal has misused his red pro account, but it would be sadder still to go through life assuming that just because I can't do something nobody else can do it, either.

3) In case it wasn't clear from my first post, I do not think it is inherently unethical to own more than one account on a given online poker site. It's a step onto a slippery slope, to be sure, but I assume that the vast majority of people manage not to slide down further, and don't do anything problematic. Most, probably, do what I would do--just set up a new one in order to get some scratch back from the site for which they otherwise wouldn't be eligible, and that's the end of it. I haven't taken that plunge yet, but I haven't completely ruled it out, either. If I thought it was wrong in any moral sense, I would easily just dismiss it out of hand. But in my mind it's definitely in the "malum prohibitum" category rather than "malum in se." I'll admit that I'm still on the fence about it, and if the amount of my online play would result in more than a few bucks a month of rakeback, I'd probably already have done it by now. My paucity of play on sites where it could bring me some money has made it easy not to bother, but if I were passing up more money than I am, committing what I consider a minor rule infraction would probably seem worthwhile. (Go ahead and jump on me for this if you want; I'm just telling it like it is.)

Because of the foregoing conclusion, I don't think it's unethical or dishonest for companies to encourage and assist customers of FTP (and other sites) to set up second accounts so as to become eligible for rakeback. Moreover, I suspect that sooner or later FTP will conclude that it's fighting a losing battle by denying the players who have been with it the longest the ability to share in the rewards offered to new players, and will change their policy accordingly.

I don't think Hal is doing anything objectively wrong or immoral or unethical. I simply found surprising the juxtaposition of his status of working for the site while offering to assist its members to break one of its rules--even if it is a rule the infraction of which does not usually affect the integrity of the game.

I neither know nor care whether FTP was aware of Hal's rakeback side business when they signed him, or whether they know about it now. That's entirely between Hal and FTP. I did not think of myself as having broken some shocking news by describing my interaction. On the contrary, I concluded that the assumption that Hal is an ethical, honest person leads to the assumption that he has been open with FTP about his recruitment of customers. Once again, when I have no information or evidence in either direction, I'm willing to assume that Hal is acting above board. That would mean that he has either the implicit or explicit approval of FTP and that, therefore, he could not and would not object to FTP (or anybody else) knowing of our conversation. Indeed, the story he related about the client who was recently allowed by FTP to keep his new account and close the old one strongly implies that FTP knows exactly what Hal is doing, and is OK with it.

If it turns out, contrary to my assumption, that his actions are in some way a violation of the trust of FTP or of his agreement with them (and obviously I have no information on what those terms might be), and I have accidentally "outed" him by relating my story, I will be sad to hear that, but it was not at all my intention. I was simply telling my readers what happened in my poker life, as I do nearly every day. I found the offer surprising to come from a person who publicly represents FTP--which is why I told the story--but not shocking or offensive in any way, or indicative of some kind of personal shadiness on the part of Hal.

Hey, maybe he's guilty as sin on all charges. Maybe he kicks puppies for sick pleasure. I don't know the guy and can't vouch for him. But at the same time, I don't think it's fair to use my previous post to conclude that he deserves shunning or scolding, without a whole lot more evidence than I have seen anybody bring forward so far.

4) I found Hal to be a pleasant, friendly, likable, and interesting person, unobjectionable in every way to have at the table. I know nothing of his personal life aside from the obvious fact that the universe has dealt him a bad hand in many ways and that he seems to be playing it the best he can, for which all credit is due. If the telling of my story has increased his burden in life, I am sorry for that. Such was not my intention, even a little bit. I think that people should lay off of the guy, and let what is rightfully just between him and his employer stay between them, unless and until one or both of them decide that they think something needs to be said publicly. I hate the fact that some 2+2 posters are quoting from my story and demanding that Hal verify whether it's true and explain himself, as if he owes anything to a bunch of vicious strangers hiding behind screen names.

Incidentally, I'm posting this here and not on 2+2 because I think the place is a cesspool. On the few occasions that I've ventured to speak up there I've regretted it, because the ratio of nasty, hurtful, insulting, juvenile, purile, and/or just plain stupid comments to useful, thoughtful ones is in the range of, oh, 100:1 on a good day.

Three sights that have amused me today

The author of this book contacted me and asked if I would like a copy for review. I said sure. It arrived today. As I pulled it out of the container, my eyes were a little unfocused, and those words "a novel" in small print looked like the letter "I," so I thought the title was "POKER ISLAM." View it from across the room, and it definitely looks like "POKER ISLAM." Which would be a pretty interesting book, I think.

Can't tell you a thing about Poker Slam yet, but the graphic design of the cover could have used a few minutes' more thought....





I was out at South Point today. I was greatly amused by the juxtaposition of these two signs, and the fact that both events were being held at the same facility on the same two days. It occured to me that there probably isn't a great deal of overlap in attendance. It's kind of hard to imagine there being a whole bunch of people who were planning their trips for the year, discovered these two things, and said, "Wow! I can go to the bullriding championship AND the tattoo show on the same weekend, and never have to leave the hotel!"

Let me tell you: walking around the place today, it was not particularly difficult to guess who was there for which thing--even easier, in fact, than when the porn stars were sharing the city with the electronics geeks. I think the only ones that would fit in at both events would be the bulls with rings through their noses and brands on their butts.






I started playing poker at the crack of noon today--unusually early for me--at the Venetian. This license plate caught my eye in the parking garage. I've never seen this design before. It must be aimed at the out-of-staters who think our state name is pronounced "ne-VAH-da."

Guess the casino, #34

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Answer: Venetian

Poker gems, #215

Mike Caro, in Bluff magazine column, November, 2008, p. 77.


Another mistake players sometimes make is to play low-quality hands before the flop when many players have already entered the pot. You might assume you're getting good odds, but think about this: Everyone can't be getting good odds, so someone must be taking the worst of it. If you're playing 8-7 off-suit, that someone is you.

A note for the haters and whiners

I just posted this as a reply comment to a message left about this post, but after pounding it out, I thought maybe it would be worth putting up as a post by itself, since the comment I'm responding to is not the first or only one of its kind.



A few thoughts.

1. I personally would think it rude to complain about a free service somebody else was providing me.

2. If it's really such an intolerable amount of work to scroll past a roughly 8-inch post that doesn't interest you once a day, then stop reading.

3. The guess-the-casino posts do not and have never substituted for other content. They're just a little extra bonus, like whipped cream on your hot chocolate. I understand that some people don't like whipped cream. Fine. Scrape it off. Enough other people like it (including the server, in this case) that it's going to continue until I get tired of doing it or run out of ideas for the series. If you find that too horrible to put up with, go away.

4. The rate at which I post other stories varies a lot. It waxes and wanes depending on what happens at the tables, what other demands there are on my time, whether I feel like writing, etc. Some days I have put up half a dozen posts. Once in a while I get writer's block and go a few days without anything to say. That's the way it always has been and always will be. Even before I started putting up one "guess" post a day, I was averaging 100 posts about every 45 days. If you know of any other solo poker blogger who keeps up that kind of posting pace, tell me about him or her; I haven't seen it yet.

And if the volume of material here is not enough for you, well, frankly, tough shit. I write what I feel like writing when I feel like writing it. I'm gratified that so many people seem to enjoy reading enough to keep tuning in. If you don't, OK, I'm not going to be offended if your eyeballs no longer hit my page. But it's a waste of time and breath to try to get me to be something other than what I am, or do something other than what I feel inclined to do. I don't work for you. This is a labor of love. If you like it, great--I'm delighted and flattered. If you don't, wouldn't it be classier to just quietly move on and find other blogs you prefer reading than to bitch that I'm not to your liking?

5. None of this is meant to discourage constructive criticism or reasoned disagreement with some point of view that I've expressed. But that's not what we're dealing with here. At issue is what frankly sounds to me like a 2-year-old crying that he is being served vanilla ice cream when he wants chocolate. For that I have little patience or sympathy.

Celebrity sighting and a peculiar conversation

Last night I played at Planet Hollywood. A new player joined our table. He was accompanied by a woman who sat just beside and behind him--nothing too unusual about that. But on his first hand, I noticed that as he bent up the corner of his hole cards, she whispered something in his ear. That's not kosher, but I let it go, assuming it was an anomaly. Then it happened again on the next hand.

I literally had my mouth open to ask the dealer to please be sure to enforce the one-player-to-a-hand rule, when something clicked in my occasionally slow brain. I had seen this guy before, on television.

It was Hal Lubarsky, who became well known when ESPN extensively covered his deep run at the 2007 World Series of Poker main event--the first blind player with such a performance.

I was one second away from making one of the biggest faux pas of my poker career. Just imagine my embarrassment if I had made a complaint, only to have the dealer respond, "He's blind. Is it OK with you if she tells him what his hole cards are?"

He was not using the good luck charm mentioned in this post.

There was initially a slight problem caused by the amount of room he needed. Obviously he needs space for an assistant. But something that doesn't come across on television is how big Hal is--I'm guessing 350 pounds. So between that and the space for a second chair, he effectively occupies the space of two players. Fortunately, PH plays nine-handed at tables big enough to seat ten, so it wasn't difficult for everybody to scoot a bit and make accommodation.

Hal was the tightest player at the table. He played a hand only every three orbits or so. This surprised me, because I had previously read an account that described him as an action player in the local cash games. He bought in for what appeared to be only $75, and by the time I left a couple of hours later, he seemed to have about the same amount. Predictably, with that style of play, when he would put in a bet or raise, opponents would all scamper away.

He was very friendly. He must play at PH quite a bit, because he seemed to know something about all of the dealers' personal lives, and they all knew him.

Maybe half an hour before I left, he moved to the seat right next to mine, so I introduced myself, shook his hand, etc., which hadn't been feasible when he was on the other side of the table. He was wearing a Full Tilt Poker cap. He mentioned that he was a red pro for them now, an announcement I had missed--see here, and here, e.g. (I guess that's not too surprising. You could practically make a full-time job out of reading press releases of new red pro signups, given the rate at which they're announcing them lately. I count 114 red "friends" here.)

I asked whether he needed an assistant to play online, or whether he could magnify the screen enough that he could play without help. It's the former. It made me wonder how feasible it would be to develop software that would read the cards as they appear and announce them audibly. I also wonder how many visually impaired people there are that would play poker online if such a feature were available. (Oddly, the FTP blurb on Hal here says "To play online at Full Tilt Poker, Hal uses a special computer program which announces his hand and details the action, as well as notifying him of any chat messages." I hadn't heard this before, but Hal seemed to deny that this was the case in our conversation, unless I was misunderstanding him.)

OK, so here's the peculiar conversation. Hal asked me if I play online. I told him that I play an occasional tournament for fun, but most of what I do is low-stakes razz cash games and HORSE STTs, just trying to learn those games. He gave me his business card. His is one of about a bajillion companies that provide rakeback to players.

I have from time to time pondered the possibility of opening a second account on Full Tilt and other sites for which rakeback can be culled. A few months ago I even emailed FTP support to ask about it. The problem is that I signed up for essentially all of the sites then available back in 2003 and 2004, before rakeback was available (or at least widely practiced), and they consider it a violation of the terms of service to open a second account, whether to get rakeback or for any other purpose--a conviction which customer service forcefully reiterated to me in a reply email.

Of course I know that millions of people do it anyway, and very few are caught. There is no punishment involved, either--they just close the new account(s) and ship any money back to the original one. For practical purposes, it's only a problem if you use the multiple accounts to cheat, such as by sitting at the same table with yourself or entering a tournament under more than one screen name.

Still, I don't like knowingly breaking the rules, even if everybody else is doing it, and even if it would be profitable, and even if it wouldn't be for any nefarious purpose, and even if the risk and consequences of being caught are small. I haven't ruled it out categorically for the future, but the whole thing bothers me enough that I've decided against it every time I've considered it.

All of which is a long background to tell you this: Hal Lubarsky actively tried to recruit me to create a second FTP account through his company, even after I told him that I wasn't eligible to do so because of already being an FTP member. He reiterated the points I just made (everybody does it, FTP doesn't really care as long as you don't use both accounts simultaneously, etc.). He even suggested that FTP may be quietly changing their policy on this. He said that when one of his new clients came to FTP's attention for having two accounts, they closed the client's old account and let him keep the new one through which he was receiving the rakeback--a reversal of their previous practice.

I asked Hal if he knew what was happening with Eli Elezra, who famously let it slip on national television that he had 17 (I think that was the number) different FTP accounts, while Howard Lederer was at the table with him. That raised eyebrows all over. As far as I know, the site has not taken any public action about this.

Anyway, it seemed mighty strange to me that a sponsored pro for Full Tilt would be actively, knowingly, and flagrantly encouraging players to violate the site's terms of service by setting up second accounts, while the site itself is telling players that they cannot do so. Not shocking, not evil, but just strange.

That's all. Not much of a story, I admit, but it's all I got out of last night's game. Well, that plus about $400....


Addendum

I forgot to tell a stupidity story on myself.

Last week on this season's first episode of "American Idol," Ryan Seacrest looked like a complete goof when he tried to give a high-five to a blind singer. Well, I joined the goof crowd. At one point last night, it was Hal's turn, but he was chatting with somebody and missed the signal that it was his action. I pointed at him in a vain attempt to let him know that we were waiting for him. That usually works.

D'oh!

Guess the casino, #33

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

(Photo digitally altered to remove the answer!)


Answer: Fitzgeralds

Poker gems, #214

The not-particularly-prescient Phil Hellmuth, spokesman for the deeply troubled UltimateBet, in a 2005 interview with Michael Kaplan, available here.


Look, everything I've touched since 1998 has turned to gold. Wait, not gold—platinum.

Guess the casino, #32

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Answer: Sahara

Kentucky case

I got home from playing poker and found various news sources announcing the appellate decision in the Kentucky case. Excellent news--the court held that the trial court didn't even have jurisdiction over the case in the first place. I composed the outline of a post in my mind, then poked around a bit and found that while I was out playing, Shamus had written pretty much what I would have said. So rather than say it again, I'll just point y'all over there.

I finally found a copy of Card Player

I reported a couple of days ago that something screwy is up with the new issue of Card Player magazine--it seems not to have been delivered to many poker rooms. After writing that, I played at more places, specifically, Monte Carlo, MGM Grand, and Venetian, and none of them had it, either. Finally tonight I was at Imperial Palace and they had three copies left. (I took two.)

So I won't need the charity copies that some people outside of Vegas offered to snag for me. But I'm still wondered what in the world happened with the magazine's distribution system last week. How could some of the biggest poker rooms in the city (Red Rock, Venetian, MGM Grand) not have received it, when the ol' IP did? Weird.

Poker gems, #213

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


Being a predator is not for everyone, and it has its risks. If you are a predator, you trade the joy of poker for the profit. You no longer get to do whatever is the most fun--now you do whatever is the most profitable. Home games might not interest you at all anymore because the money is not big enough or the players are people you don't want to prey on. I don't play with my friends or family for just that reason....

You will have to learn to separate your approach at the tables from the rest of your life, because you do not want to be a predator at the grocery store or with your friends. If you aren't careful, your entire life can become a contest to see how much money you can make in every situation.

If you separate poker from everything else, it becomes easier to become a stone-cold killer at the tables, and easier to keep that killer away from people you like. So keep poker away from the other parts of your life.

Deux deuce-four stories

1. A reader submitted the above screen shot demonstrating the painful consequence when one is unfortunate enough to run into the almighty 2-4. His two pair was no match for its power. This is a good reminder that as more people learn of the Gospel of the Holy Deuce-Four, we are bound to end up on the receiving end of it more frequently. Basically, any time that a 2-4 in an opponent's hand would beat you, you should just fold.

2. Last night I had 2-4 offsuit in the small blind. The pot was unraised, so I tossed in the extra dollar to play my monster. The flop was K-9-5. I confess that with no pair, no draw, bad position, and several opponents, I lost faith and hope for winning this hand, despite what cards I was holding. Oh, the shame of having to admit that! But nobody bet, so we took a free card: ace. It still doesn't look like much, but at least I have four outs to the nuts. Remarkably, once again the action was checked around. Faith in the 2-4 was vindicated when the river came a 3. With no possible flushes on board, I had the absolute nuts! I bet $10. A player at the other end of the table raised to $25. Whee! I rechecked the board to be sure I wasn't missing something, then reraised another $25. My opponent moved all in, and I called, expecting to double up through somebody who had slowplayed two pairs or a set, or perhaps made of one those hands on the river.

Nope. We both had 2-4 for the wheel, and chopped the pot.

I suppose that this, too, is an inevitable consequence of more people joining our church. I had no idea that one of my converts was at the table!

Guess the casino, #31

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Answer: Bally's

Poker gems, #212

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


Predators do not spend time complaining, they spend time improving. Complaining does not win you any chips, while working on your game increases your win rate. That means bad beat stories are out. Don't tell them, and don't listen to them.... If you made the right play, then let it go and move on to the next hand. If you didn't, then learn from it, but don't waste any time lamenting your bad luck.

Pennsylvania court: Poker is a game of skill

On Wednesday of last week a court in Pennsylvania dismissed charges against two defendants who had been charged with running an unlawful gambling operation. The dismissal was based on the court's conclusion that poker (or, more specifically, Texas hold'em) is more a game of skill than chance and therefore not unlawful gambling under state law.

You can read the background facts of the case here. I have posted a copy of the decision and order here. (Thanks to Prof. I. Nelson Rose for sharing the copy of the decision that he received. See his web site here. The archive of his always excellent columns for Poker Player newspaper is here. I think we can expect to see his comments on this case in that space in the near future.)

The case won't actually have any legal precedential value because it comes from a trial court rather than an appellate court. Nevertheless, other defendants similarly situated may be able to use it as "persuasive authority" (depending on local court rules for citing such materials). Will the state appeal the decision, and thus get us an actual precedent, for good or ill? We will have to wait and see.

I'm kind of surprised at the nature of the decision. There is no expert testimony cited. Apparently there was no trial. But I would have expected the judge to require at least a hearing at which relevant facts could be introduced via experts on the witness stand. In short, the parties are supposed to present the facts, and the trier of fact (a judge or jury) is supposed to sift through only those facts that were properly presented in court, decide which to believe or not, and render a verdict. Now, that can be somewhat different when, as appears to be the case here, the judge is presented with what might be considered a mixed question of fact and law. But it seems to me that what this judge has done is essentially to deem the claim that poker is a game of skill as a fact that is within "judicial notice" and therefore not one requiring expert testimony. (That term shows up in a dissenting opinion of an Illinois state case, cited by one of the law review articles on which the Pennsylvania judge relied heavily--see p. 8 of the opinion--but the judge himself doesn't appear to use the phrase explicitly to explain what he's doing, unless I missed it.)

If I'm right to characterize it this way, then it's pretty peculiar. The usual realm of facts considered eligible for recognition under "judicial notice" is those that are widely known and uncontroversial, e.g., "Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japanese war planes on December 7, 1941." That poker involves skill more than chance is, I believe, correct, but is not in the category of "facts" to which no reasonable dispute could be raised by a party. If I'm right about this, the decision may be on shaky grounds if it gets appealed. Maybe, though, I'm misunderstanding what it is that this judge has done.

Anyway, it's a relatively interesting decision, which is why I thought it deserved a wider audience than it has received so far, judging by the paucity of comment in the poker blogosphere and most poker news sites.

Poker fashion mistake

Saturday at the Stratosphere poker room I spotted the guy in the white shirt at the next table. There wasn't much opportunity to sneak a good picture, but I did the best I could under the circumstances. In case it isn't clear, those sunglasses frames of his are entirely covered in rhinestones or sequins or some other similar shiny/shimmery stuff.

I'm no fashion maven; you could call my basic clothing choices "frumpy" and I couldn't rightfully argue. Nevertheless, I can state this with confidence: If you are male, and your sunglasses are covered in sequins or rhinestones, and your name is not "Elton John," you have committed a serious error in your accessorizing.

Guess the casino, #30

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Answer: Venetian

A nice no-poker day

Took Sunday off from poker and went for a drive with a friend along the Red Rock Canyon 15-mile scenic-drive route, about which you can learn all you might want to know here, here, and here. It's a lovely piece of the world, and well worth the short trip west of town. The pictures I took are too big and too numerous to easily post here, so I loaded them onto Flickr, and you can view them here. Nothing spectacular--pretty much the same pictures that every visitor would take, I suppose, but if you've never been out there, take a gander at what you've missed.

What's up with Card Player magazine?

On Tuesday, January 13, a friend in New Mexico emailed me to say that he saw my name in the new issue of Card Player magazine that the casino there had just received. (I submitted a question for Gavin Griffin's Q&A column, and apparently they printed it.) Under usual circumstances, it would have been delivered to the Vegas casinos on either Tuesday or Wednesday of last week.

Since then, I have been to seven poker rooms in Vegas (Tuscany, Wynn, Stratosphere, Red Rock Station, Sunset Station, Binion's, and Golden Nugget), and none of them have had it. In five places, the closest employee didn't know whether they hadn't received it or had received it and all the copies were gone. (It's pretty unusual for them to all be gone in just a few days; in fact, in many rooms there are still copies of the previous issue sitting there when the new one arrives.) In two places, though, somebody who clearly knew the score was very clear that no copies had arrived, and they were actually a bit perturbed about it. One of them even told me that they advertise in the magazine, and weren't at all happy about being skipped for delivery.

So what's going on? Have any other Vegas residents seen the new issue in any local poker rooms? Any sightings, insight, guesses, or information in the comments will be appreciated.

Poker gems, #211

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


A predator also does not sulk or go on tilt after a bad beat, just as a lion does not lay around and sulk after a failed attempt at catching a meal. He keeps hunting, because the next one might be slower or dumber, and the one that got away would not have tasted any better than the meal in front of him. To be a predator you must remember that all the fish are the same, their money spends the same, and if a fish takes a thousand dollars from you in bad beats, it's only because his fish friends have given you two thousand in the past.

World champion wields the 2x4

A reader has scolded me via email for having failed to use the following clip to demonstrate the unbeatable power of the 2-4.




Incidentally, as the post title suggests, I am adopting (or, perhaps, co-opting) the nickname Shamus suggested in a recent comment: "2 x 4." It seems appropriate; fans of the 2-7 call it "the hammer," but swinging a 2 x 4 is clearly more to be feared than swinging a hammer.

Guess the casino, #29

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.



Answer: Tuscany

Poker gems, #210

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


When someone calls me a fish, I revel in it, knowing that they not only think I'm a bad player (most days that's very wrong), but that they probably don't understand my game at all, and they won't be trying to understand it. A predator would dissect my game, trying to figure out why I did something, and if I was really a fish they would either keep quiet about it, or compliment me on my play in a genuine fashion. A predator is happy when his prey is slow and easy to catch, and he doesn't warn them that he's following them or that they could get away from him by behaving in a smarter way.

If you like...

...my "Guess the Casino" posts (and I realize that not all of you do. Tough! They're fun to do, and some people enjoy them.), you might also like the "Where is this?" photo quiz series put up by the folks at Vegas Today and Tomorrow. See here. I have difficulty with them, because they mostly focus on the outside of casinos, to which I pay little attention, plus a bunch of places that ceased to exist before I moved here. Still fun and interesting, though.

Guess the casino, #28

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.



Answer: Bill's

Poker gems, #209

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


Being called a fish at the table is one of my favorite things. It tells me so much about an opponent, and all the news is good. When someone starts to berate me for my play, it almost always means that they are paying more attention to my mistakes than my good play, and they are usually misdiagnosing a play and don't understand what happened or why I made the play I did. It tells me that they will be expecting me to suck out on them, so I can bet out when the flush comes in and I missed my straight, because they will often fold.

Daniel Negreanu is on drugs???

That post title got your attention, didn't it? Hee hee!

Here's what's behind the question. I've mentioned before that I have a mild hand tremor that gets greatly magnified by even small amounts of adrenaline, so before I play poker I take a pill called propranolol to prevent it from becoming a major tell at the table. It's in a class of drugs commonly referred to as beta blockers. I assume that there are other poker players who do the same, though I've never known of any who admit it openly.

But the other day I overheard one player tell another that he had heard Daniel Negreanu say in an interview that he took beta blockers when he played poker, to block the effects of adrenaline. I did a Google search, however, using a bunch of different terms, and couldn't find anything that really matched the claim.

The closest I found was an interview from Bluff magazine in 2005, which includes this exchange:

You like to listen to your iPod at the table. What’s a typical Daniel
Negreanu track list?

It’s funny, and a lot of people don’t believe me, but I often listen to
the sounds of the ocean and birds chirping.

No industrial techno, then?

(Laughs) Late at night, if I need a boost, I’ll throw some Missy Elliot
in there. But usually its like ‘massage music’ - just to keep me relaxed and
focused.

Is that because you get impatient at the table?

Well, It keeps me from getting restless during those mundane, boring
moments that can happen in poker. I’m also taking these new poker vitamins,
which I’ll be endorsing soon – they help too.

Poker vitamins? What the…

It’s a new product. A guy from the auto racing industry approached me
and said: ‘Try this, it will really help you focus.’ It’s got adrenalin blockers
in it and it keeps you really relaxed. It keeps you on an even keel – calm, but
alert. I started taking it and I was like, ‘Wow!’ As a poker player, especially
in long tournaments, the key is to control your adrenalin.

My hunch is that this is, in fact, what the guy at my table had heard or read. The product in question was called "Clear Edge." You can read more about it in a fluff piece fine example of hard-hitting, objective, investigative journalism by PokerNews here. The distributor's web site mentioned in that piece appears to be defunct now, but the product itself (seemingly no longer with Negreanu's endorsement) may still be available at various online sources for dietary supplements, such as here. But note that other supplement sources list nothing under that brand, which makes me suspect that the few that do are simply showing an outdated page, and the stuff really isn't on the market anymore. Not that I really care either way.... Here is one user's experience with trying it.

Anyway, whatever the merits of "Clear Edge," it is definitely not a beta blocker, and any claim that it will actually block the effects of adrenaline as beta blockers do is seriously overwrought.

All of which is a long way of bringing me to this question: Have any readers heard or seen anything from Negreanu (or any other name-brand pro, for that matter) in which it is made clear that he uses a pharmacological beta blocker for poker? I kind of doubt it at this point, but perhaps I missed something, and I'd like to know if it's so.

The game of life is poker

Recently two of my favorite poker bloggers, The Poker Shrink (Tim Lavalli) and Shamus, expressed their dislike for the whole genre of "poker is life" books and articles.

Well, I'm here to disagree. In fact, the first three poker books I read after moving to Vegas were all in that vein: The Tao of Poker and Zen and the Art of Poker, both by Larry W. Phillips, and, most explicitly, Poker as Life: 101 Lessons from the World's Greatest Game, by Lee Robert Schreiber. I enjoyed and learned from all three. Maybe it's because I'm fond of thinking shallowly and over-generally, but I just can't help seeing poker parallels everywhere I look.

Take, for a random example, a jet airliner making an emergency landing in a river. (Everybody seems to be using that word "landing" today without commenting on the oddness of its application to the situation, so I will do the same.*)

We're told that about 1 in 10,000 flights experiences a bird strike, but it is apparently vanishingly rare that a two-engine jet gets both engines taken out simultaneously by a flock, as appears to have been the case yesterday. Convergence of rare, unhappy events? Hmmm. Sounds a bit like poker to me. That plane definitely got bad-beat by a runner-runner, or maybe even a perfect-perfect.

The pilot presumably had a minute or less to evaluate his options--go back to LaGuardia, head for the little airstrip in New Jersey, or ditch in the river. I can only guess at the number of variables that have to go into that kind of calculation. Perhaps the answer could be arrived at by a specifically programmed supercomputer, once you finished entering the hundreds of pieces of relevant data. But, of course, in real life there is no time to resort to such means.

This reminds me of my impressions after reading Tony Guerrera's Poker by the Numbers:

All such exercises have some value in just being able to do them in detail
away from the table, with no time pressures. The practical problem comes in
being able to translate the kind of theoretical exercise that might take an hour
or two to work through into a useful shortcut that you might actually be able to
employ in the 30 seconds or so that you typically have to make a poker decision
in the real world. That is the gap that I had hoped this book would bridge, an
impression that was bolstered by the descriptions of it I read on amazon.com.
But it was not to be. I didn't finish the book feeling any better able to apply
the math at the table than I was before starting it....

When I read through the scenarios, I was able to pretty
quickly come up with a list of possible lines of action to take and a gut sense
of which ones I thought were most profitable. After Guerrera spends pages and
pages slogging through the numbers, his conclusions tended to mirror what I had
already decided would be the best approaches to the hand.

In short, for an experienced player who has played enough that pattern
recognition is already acting as a shortcut substitute for an explicit,
step-by-step, deductive process as to what an opponent has and is likely to do,
KPBTN shouldn't be a step backward, but I also think it's unlikely to be much of
a step forward. If you've never worked through the hard math of a poker problem
decision tree, I think it's probably worth reading this book and forcing
yourself through the calculations, because it makes you think explicitly about
all of the possible outcomes and their relative likelihoods. That is undoubtedly
good brain exercise. I'm just dubious that it will actually improve your
decision-making process the next time you have a tough situation to analyze in
the heat of battle over the green felt.

Maybe it just comes down to me being more of a "feel" player than a "math"
player (which may also relate to why I do so much better live than online). I'm
not intimidated by probability calculations (as I hope I've adequately
demonstrated in previous posts). It's just that I'm not convinced that anything
beyond fairly rudimentary pot-odds math is going to be of much practical help in
most poker situations.

I think "experienced" is the key word there. This pilot apparently was about as well-prepared as one could possibly be, with a background flying fighter jets, 19,000 hours in the cockpit, who-knows-how-much time in simulators handling various emergencies, time spent working with the NTSB on airline safety, and investment in his own company consulting with other industries about how to apply the lessons of commercial airline safety. The guy is apparently a true expert in what happens in terms of psychology and team communications when there is a crisis afoot.

So when the chips were down (so to speak), those decades of experience and thought and preparation all converged in some weird, organic way in his brain, in a manner that no computer could replicate. He was able almost instantly to weigh the myriad pieces of information (speed, altitude, direction, visibility, distances, obstacles, risks to the passengers and people on the ground, etc.), and process them to a conclusion.

Sometimes I watch great poker moves on TV and wonder how the players could arrive at the right decision. It all boils down to experience. Sometimes they are able to dissect and explain the factors that pushed them one way or another (e.g., Gus Hansen's recent book), but other times when they're asked, it just comes down to feel: "I just didn't think he had it." The more poker you play, the better you get at both sides of this kind of thing--explicit, step-by-step analysis, and the gut-level feel for what you need to do, a process that sometimes is greater than the sum of the parts we can neatly identify.

Of course, even after reaching the right conclusion, one has to have the guts to execute it. It would not have done for the pilot to make his snap judgment that he needed to put the bird down in the Hudson, then curl up into a fetal position and start crying. In poker we often talk about the weird sensation of having a strong sense of what the right thing to do is, but then doing something different. Sometimes we lack the courage to "pull the trigger" when we should. Other times we know that folding is the best move, but something else--ego, a craving for action, curiosity, or whatever--interferes, and we get a Matusow-like blow-up as a result. (I love James McManus's description in Positively Fifth Street about how "Good Jim" knew he should fold mediocre starting hands, but the right hand of "Bad Jim" kept pushing chips forward. Been there, done that.)

Sometimes life gives us no genuinely good options, just a bunch of bad ones. In those situations, it does no good to whine and wish for an option that isn't available--you have to accept the reality of the circumstances and go with whatever is least bad. Ya might say that the pilot yesterday had something along those lines: no really good options, just a bunch of bad ones, worse ones, and truly awful ones. It would have done no good for him to waste time lamenting his situation, wishing that he had called in sick that day, or complaining that it was no fair for the damn geese to hit both engines at once.

Poker is like that, too. You're short-stacked in a tournament, the blinds are about to hit you again, you know that mathematically you have to go with any two cards when it is folded to you, and you look down at the 7-2. Ick. No point in wishing it were otherwise; it isn't. You have nothing but bad choices here, and have to pick the one that is least horrible. Sometimes you die anyway, and are left with nothing but the comfort of knowing that you did what you had to do. Sometimes you run into a cold deck, and the best outcome is one of those where all you can do is commend yourself for "losing the least possible." But once in a while a miracle occurs, and you survive, even coming out of it a winner.


I used to be into competitve shooting nearly as intensely as I am now into poker (though without making money from it). Love it though I did, I was not constantly seeing parallels with life. Sure, like any sport, you could draw lessons about focus and preparedness and competitiveness and sportsmanship and stuff like that, but I never found the number or richness of analogies between the game and life that poker provides. I won't bother trying to wax philosophic about why that is, but I will submit that poker is unlike any other game that I know of in its capacity for life analogies both great and small.

Maybe it's superficial of me, but I happen to like that.


*Long ago I saw a very funny routine by a stand-up comic--I saw it just randomly channel-surfing and never caught her name--about this subject. She made it more realistic by repeating the relevant part of the famous flight attendant safety briefing while exaggerating the words water landing and surrounding them with wink-and-a-nod air quotes--basically making the point that it's all nonsense, because we all know that in the event of a "water landing," we're all gonna die. She said something like, "They tell you that in the event of a 'water landing' your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device. Screw that. In the event of a 'water landing,' I'm using mine as a toilet."

Guess the casino, #27

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.



Answer: Golden Nugget

Poker gems, #208

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


This attitude won't make poker more fun; in fact, it will be less fun. You won't get to play a lot of hands, and you won't be able to satisfy many of the social needs that every human has. Things like the desire to be liked, the need for respect, an inherent desire for fairness and justice and a sense of entitlement to some of those pots that you aren't winning when things go badly. You will have to learn to satisfy all of those psychological needs away from the felt (real or virtual), because while you are at the table you can only care about chips, and getting more of them in front of you.

This means that you cannot focus on anyone at the table who makes you angry. Teaching that guy a lesson and dispensing some justice will not get you any chips, so you rein yourself in and don't even think about him, because he doesn't matter. Only chips matter.

How do I disagree? Let me count the ways

In the poker news section at the Card Player web site I found this story about a suggestion submitted to the Barack Obama transition team, which has apparently become one of the most popular ideas for the team's consideration. Here's what the submission says:

Boost America's Economy with Legal Online Poker

Let online poker players in the United States play legally and without fear
of prosecution. Reform the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act to exempt
poker, a game of skill, from the law. Boost the economy by letting American
companies and Ameican (sic) players make money and pay taxes instead of sending
online poker businesses offshore. Protect online poker players by regulating the
industry to ensure that no one is ever cheated.

Obviously I am in support of online poker being legal. Still, it's hard to imagine how I could have more disagreements with such a short request. Let me list them.

1. It's not at all clear to me that changing anything about the UIGEA would "boost America's economy." It's possible that poker--both live and online--could vanish entirely without materially affecting the economy as a whole. Assuming that the great majority of poker money is recreational, it might simply get shifted to other entertainment sources instead.

2. The "legally without fear of prosecution" line implies that (1) playing onling poker is currently illegal and (2) there is fear of prosecution now. Well, I don't have any! The only people who fear prosecution for playing poker online are those who haven't done more than about three seconds of research into the matter. It is not illegal to play poker on any web site. (I'm talking about federal law here. At least one state--Washington--has made participation in Internet gaming a felony, though even there I have not heard of any prosecutions.)

3. I think it's a huge mistake to suggest "reform" of the UIGEA to treat poker differently from other online gaming. This is a question of personal liberty. I happen not to be interested in playing blackjack either live or online, but why should the guy who wants to play blackjack be prevented from doing so any more than I am kept from playing poker?

My other major hobby is competitive handgun shooting. I have for many years watched closely the political machinations surrounding the issue of gun control. Those who want more restrictions on gun ownership always try to fragment their opposition by selecting specific targets. For example, they'll try to pass bans on .50 caliber or larger rifles, because only a small fraction of gun owners have them, so there is less opposition than if they went after ordinary hunting rifles. Or they'll try to make illegal small or low-end handguns, knowing that for the most part only the poorest, least-connected people choose those weapons, and that's a segment of the population that doesn't get much sympathy or put up much of a political fight. In this way, they chip away at gun ownership little by little. Fortunately, organizations such as the NRA and Gun Owners of America and the Second Amendment Foundation recognize the "divide and conquer" approach and oppose all such piecemeal efforts of the gun control fanatics.

The same principles apply here. When we ask for specific exemptions for our preferred game, it's like taking other people that share our lifeboat and throwing them overboard to the sharks.

You've heard the lines that start, "In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist." (See here for history.) That's the situation we have here. It's folly to consider online poker some sort of divine right of man, but be willing to toss blackjack and roulette to the political wolves. We need to stand together on this. It is just as wrong for do-gooders in Washington, D.C., to tell you that you can't play blackjack on your home computer as it is for them to tell you that you can't play poker. It is illogical, morally wrong, and politically foolish, in my opinion, to carve poker out from the rest of online gaming. As Americans we either have the right to engage in private activities with our own time and money that do not hurt others, or we do not. It is short-sighted to plead for special protection for only one such specific pursuit while letting all of the others be taken away.

If we fight for online poker but not other online gaming, it is, in effect, acknowledging that the feds have legitimate reason to criminalize (or at least make difficult) some forms of online gambling, and you are then reduced to arguments about why poker should be made an exception. I recognize no general right or power on the part of the feds to restrict my activities that hurt nobody else. I can't understand why the writer of this proposal implicitly cedes such a power to the government, which it does not rightfully have.

Rather than fighting the entire idea of a nanny-state government, the writer is effectively agreeing to have a nanny, and just begging the nanny to let him keep one particular toy. The whole approach is incredibly wrong-headed.

4. There is a point about taxes being not paid in the U.S. by companies that are forced to locate offshore. But when a point is made about American players not paying taxes, we have different problems. All income is taxable. That includes poker income, even that which comes from playing online at foreign-based sites. Now, it's probably true that not all citizens accurately report all of their poker income. But what is the evidence that that would change even if the UIGEA were repealed or altered? Many people are dishonest in their taxes when they can get away with it, whether that money comes from gambling, tips, contract work, or whatever else. Is the writer here proposing that the government be allowed to monitor all cash in and out of every online gaming site to better prevent tax cheating? If so, I think he is inviting a guest to the party that he will quickly regret having let in.

5. The writer seems to blithely assume that federal regulation of online poker will "ensure that no one is ever cheated." That is sheer idiocy. If the writer actually believes that this will be the result, his glasses are too rose-colored for me or anyone else to save him. Take the securities industry, for example, which is heavily regulated. Anyone hear of Bernard Madoff? Ivan Boesky? Enron? Where is the evidence for such a grandiose claim that cheating will be eradicated? What precedent can the writer cite for an industry that was previously unregulated and full of cheating, then federally regulated and the cheating vanished? Frankly, anybody who thinks that federal regulation will make it impossible for anyone participating in the regulated field to ever get cheated is too stupid to be taken seriously. I don't even know that federal regulation would substantially reduce the possibility of cheating at online poker, let alone make it disappear entirely.

Is this proposal to the Obama transition team really the best that we can come up with in regard to poker? Lordy, I hope not, or we're in serious trouble.


The print shown above is Martin Luther nailing his "95 Theses" to the door of the Wittenberg church, as engraved by Gustav König (1808-1869). You can see the entire set of 48 engravings of Luther's life here (which is where I found them), or look at the entire original book (as preserved by the Google Book project) here.

Guess the casino, #26

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.



Answer: Mandalay Bay

Poker gems, #207

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


If you really want to play poker part or full time as a significant part of your income, you need to become a predator. You need the ability to detach yourself from the game, from the frustrations and from all of your desires....

You are not here to dispense justice or to show that guy to your right who the boss is. You aren't here to gain respect or show off or convince someone that you are a better player than they are. You don't even care if they know you're any good at all. Because you only care about the money. Big piles of chips in front of you, as many as possible, and those chips are the only reason you play this game. Games are too tough these days to play any other way and still expect to win.

Guess the casino, #25

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.



Answer: Caesars Palace

Poker gems, #206

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75. Note: I don't usually find much to like in Poker Pro, but once in a while there something of real value. I thought this column was especially good, so I'm going to post several paragraphs from it, each as a separate entry, on consecutive days.


There are only two attitudes about poker that make sense. Either you are a recreational player and you want to have some fun and see if you are any good, or you are a serious player and you only care about making money. Anything in between the two is a recipe for disaster. Trying to have fun and casually play some cards will guarantee that you lose money, and losing money when you are trying to be serious about winning will ruin your fun.

More things I know are true (but would have a hard time proving)

Not many readers will likely remember, but this is actually the second post I've done on this topic. See here for the first.


1. Jacks are more likely to flop a set than any other pocket pair.

2. There is an inverse relationship between how good a parking spot one finds in the casino's parking garage and how successful the poker session will be. (Note: You cannot take advantage of this fact and manipulate it to success by intentionally parking far from the entrance. Sorry.)

3. Black aces are more powerful than red ones.

4. Even if a particular card room is traditionally a successful one for you, it will cease to be so if you visit it too many times in a row. After two good sessions in a row at one place, you must next play at a different room, or you will score an L. You can have infinitely many winning sessions in a row, as long as no more than two of them consecutively are in the same poker room. It is not possible to have three winning sessions in a row if all of them are in the same room.


Frankly, I don't understand why poker strategy books do not teach these simple facts.

Some sights at the Venetian

Not much about the poker itself to discuss from today's session at the Venetian, but I have a few odd sights to share. Apologies in advance for the fuzzy pictures. I had to take them all quickly, and bad focus and motion artifact were the results.


First, high on the list of things not to do at a poker table: flossing.



Yeah, really--that's what he was doing. Please, folks: Just don't. Srsly. Ew.


This next thing I can't really say is a violation of etiquette. Nor is it terribly uncommon. But I'm still greatly amused by it every time: The gangsta look. Maybe it's a poka gangsta look.





We've got the faux designer shades, the pin-striped baseball cap with the flat, broad brim, the earrings, the mouth-breathing, the wifebeater undershirt with the hoodie over it, complete with dollar signs across the shoulders, and the ho nice young woman waiting subserviently in a chair behind him.

It's all just silly. I'd really love to ask him things such as, what is it that you like about this look? What it is you want people to think about you when you dress yourself this way? And, most of all, do you have any idea how ridiculous you look?

I think that if you're going to attempt this nonsense, you should at least have the guts to go all the way: shift the cap over to the side, get the gold bling around the neck, put rings on every finger, and wear the grille on your teeth. Then you have an actual ensemble. When you go just halfway like this dude, it just screams "wannabe" (though why anybody would wannabe that escapes me).


Finally, just a quickie shot of the final board on one hand. Can you look at this and still doubt the power of the deuce-four? This hand was won by a guy with an A-2. He would have been squashed like a bug by the 2-4.

Guess the casino, #24

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.



Answer: Silverton

Another convert in the making--not!

Thanks to reader Lance Brown for bringing this blog post to my attention. It's a science writer describing a poker session on his recent trip to Vegas:

The rest of the session was pretty uneventful, though it started out kind
of odd. I was dealt deuce-4 the first two hands at the table and folded them
both preflop, of course. The first flop was 2 2 4 and the second flop was 2 2 2. Guess I gotta learn to play crap in early position even when it's raised. Nah, that would be stupid and cost me a lot of money.

See? I try to bring the gospel of the 2-4 to the masses, but they will not listen. The poker gods gave him powerful evidence of the righteousness of the 2-4, and he dismisses it as "stupid."

O ye of little faith!

Book review: The Book of Vice

I like a weekly public radio show called "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me." Its host, Peter Sagal, is a funny and witty guy and does well at bringing out humor from his guests as they poke fun at the news of the week.

He wrote a book recently: The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How to Do Them). I heard him interviewed on the local public radio station when he was doing promotion, and put it on my amazon.com wish list. I got it for Christmas, and have already finished it.

It's not about poker, but much of the research for the book was done in Las Vegas, including the chapters on gambling and strip clubs, and, I suspect (though it is not stated), the one on swinging.

I don't really have a lot to say about the book other than to recommend it for general entertainment. Sagal's naivete about the world's vices is kind of charming. He admits freely that he just doesn't get why people want to indulge in virtually any of the things he writes about, even after exploring the subjects and talking to those involved.

He has a lightly humorous style that I really liked. For example, this on swinging:

We are told, via their occasional interviews in the press, that swingers or
Lifestylers or whatever are no different from you and me...they meet up to
socialize, talk, drink, and dance with their good friends, old and new. And then
they have sex with them. Which makes me stop, and consider the various good
friends my wife and I have, and then consider how it would be if one of our
suburban dinner parties ended with us removing our clothes and performing sexual
acts, and I have to put my head between my knees and take deep breaths.

Here are a few of his musings on gambling:

And why would anybody play slot machines anyway? Particularly the ones that
cost $500 a pull? The only less enjoyable way to dispose of $500 is to have it
taken from you at knifepoint, and even that provides a good story to tell later
on.

...

This is known as either the law of averages or the law of large numbers,
which is the basic principle of nature--not gravity, as you may have
thought--that holds up the big walls at the Bellagio.

...

So all the games they offer have, built into them, a house
edge ... a small probability that the casino will win, eventually. If you happen
to be near a casino roulette table while reading this book, you can actually
walk up and touch that edge with your finger right now ... it's the green 0 and
00 spaces at the wheel side of the felt. Bet black at roulette and you might
think you have a 50 percent chance of winning ... but it's actually about 47
percent, because of those two spaces that are neither red nor black. And those
three points of difference, between a dead-even game and a game that favors the
house by even a tiny margin, are why Steve Wynn has a private jet and you don't.

The most puzzling thing about the book is the selection of "vices." He understandably includes swinging, gambling, pornography, and strip clubs. But the chapters on lying, eating exotic gourmet food, and excessive consumer consumption seem out of place, not even meeting the author's own definition of what constitutes a "vice." Just as puzzling is the omission of other obvious candidates: alcohol, drugs, prostitution. Maybe they're being saved for a sequel.

Despite that, it's a fun read, and you might even learn a thing or two along the way.

Guess the casino, #23

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Paris

The Grump vs. the Geeks

Last night I returned to the Venetian. I knew that the porn stars would all be at Mandalay Bay for the big Adult Video News awards ceremony, and that that would leave just the Consumer Electronics Show attendees. Sure enough, I spotted a few convention ID badges around the necks of my fellow players.

That's right---it was going to be me against the Geeks.

Let me just skip right to the end of the story. I played for exactly three hours, finishing up by $573. I never lost a big pot, never got my money in with the worst of it (except for deliberate bluffs--every one of which was successful). Compare that to Thursday night, playing against the porn stars. My stack fluctuated wildly up and down, finally ending up a fairly pathetic $115 for just under eight hours of play, and even that success was dependent on some lucky flukes.

My conclusion, based on the highly scientific sample size of one table each: Porn stars play better poker than computer geeks. Who knew?!

****

There was one seminal hand worth describing. Our table was blessed with a Geek Maniac. He was the friendliest, chattiest, smilingest guy there, very affable and enjoyable personally. But he was a maniac. He played at least 90% of his starting hands. If nobody raised ahead of him, he would do the job himself virtually 100% of the time. Sometimes it was a min-raise, sometimes to $6, sometimes $8, sometimes $12. As far as I could tell, the amount didn't vary with his hand strength. Rather, he would go in spurts of a certain amount for a while, then change to a different amount for a while, etc. He would always, always, always continuation-bet the flop. He was an inveterate bluffer--as one would have to be playing that way, because you just don't make real hands that often.

As I trust my readers know, it is impossible to play poker profitably this way. Sure, he won about three monster pots during the time I watched him, but, predictably, it would all either bleed away slowly or get lost in another huge confrontation. But he had a big wad of Benjamins and wasn't afraid to dig into it. Excellent! I recognized two other local grinders at the table, and this one guy was feeding all three of us. (We stayed out of each other's way.)

So late in the day, Geek Maniac is under the gun and straddles, as always. I'm in middle position and see my favorite hand, the 2-4 offsuit. Yay! I can't lose! Position isn't perfect, but I've played 2 1/2 hours of rock-solid poker, never showing a bluff, winning every large pot I contest, showing down nothing but strong hands. So the situation should be a good one for either making a completely unreadable hand or making a plausible bluff. I called the $4, knowing that it was just a down payment, because, as he always did, Geek Maniac raised it, this time to $12. I called again.

The flop was A-Q-2 with two hearts. (I had none.) Geek Maniac bet $15. My lowly bottom pair might be good here, and I might improve to two pairs or trips, or be able to represent the flush if another heart were to come, so I called. Besides, I wanted to see what he would do on the turn. (I should mention, perhaps, that Geek Maniac had a major tell in his bet sizing. When he had nothing or something really weak like bottom pair or an underpair to the board, he would repeat his bet size from the flop to the turn, or from the turn to the river. Huge information giveaway.)

Turn was an offsuit 2, giving me trips, which was almost sure to be the winner here. Of course, he plays any two cards this way, and could theoretically have had the case deuce--or even, God forbid, pocket queens or aces for a full house--but that's mathematically unlikely enough that I felt I could safely disregard it unless he showed real strength. (Another facet of his bet-size tell was that he didn't bluff big; his big bets and check-raises were always the real deal.) This time he bet $25, suggesting that he had top pair at least. I raised to $80. He called without too much difficulty, but with definite trepidation. Again, this let me know that he had a real hand, but certainly no monster. He was very easy to read, both from betting patterns and body language.

River was an offsuit 5, completing no possible flush or straight draws. Beautiful! Geek Maniac checked. I bet $100. He hesitated for no more than two seconds before calling, which makes me wonder if I could have squeezed more out of him. But no matter--I showed the ol' 2-4. He nodded unhappily and mucked without showing. I scooped in the roughly $420 pot. Thank you, deuce-four!

***

Geek Maniac left the table quietly maybe ten minutes later. I was surprised at the table talk after he was out of earshot. A young woman two seats to my left (I've played with her before and know her to be good) said, referring to me, "I was so happy when he won with that deuce-four! I was, like, 'Yeah! Take THAT!'" (Geek Maniac had stacked her earlier when he flopped a set of queens to beat her pocket kings.) Even more surprising, the dealer then piped up: "Me, too! I know I'm supposed to be neutral, but I loved seeing him get a dose of his own medicine!" Apparently, despite his personal affability, the Geek Maniac's playing style had been getting on everybody's nerves.

I thought this was really strange. From the dealer's perspective, not only is such an overt display of favoritism highly unprofessional (even after the other guy has left the table), but why should she care who wins or loses, or what anybody's playing style is? I could understand it if the guy was a jerk. Then it would be perfectly natural to wish to see him taken down. But as I've said several times, he was really a charming, happy-go-lucky person whom it would impossible to dislike. He was never rude, never churlish, never a sore loser, always complimenting other players on good hands and good play, an extremely generous tipper, etc.

As for the other players, they should have hated that hand--first, because it made a big chunk of chips a helluva lot harder to win than if they had stayed in Geek Maniac's stack, and, second, because it for the first time revealed me to be a lot more potentially tricky and difficult to put on a hand than they had presumably believed prior to that point. Logically, it made no sense for them to be happy with the outcome. But I guess for some people, the emotional revenge satisfaction factor meant more than the implications for their chances of leaving the game winner. Personally, when I see a big pot go down between other players, I always either love or hate the result based on my assessment of whether that mass of chips just became easier or harder to take home; I'm rooting for the worst player to win. Once again, I guess I have to face the fact that the way I think about things just isn't shared by most of the rest of humanity.

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Just a "BTW" thing that occurred to me for the first time last night: Since "Venetian" is the adjectival form of "Venice," why isn't it spelled "Venecian"?

Poker words, #5

It's been a while since I came across a new poker term, but I liked this one right away: the butoff seat. See here for explanation.

Guess the casino, #22

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Answer: Riviera