An entertainment interlude

Yesterday I put in a marathon poker session at the Venetian. I came away up by a couple hundred bucks, but other than that there isn't much to report about it. However, in the middle of it I did have a memorable entertainment interlude.

There are four shows on the Discovery Channel that I watch regularly: Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Sons of Guns, and American Guns. The last two are, oddly, both reality shows about gunsmith shops, the former in Louisiana and the latter in Colorado. Both places create custom firearms and do restoration work on classic and antique guns. I like tinkering with my own guns (mostly Glocks and Smith & Wesson revolvers, which hardly qualifies me as a proper gunsmith, since those may be the two easiest kinds of guns to work on), so I enjoy watching these programs.

The two main Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, have been doing a touring stage show called "Behind the Myths." I've seen every episode of their TV show over its ten-year run, most of them more than once. It's easily one of the best non-fiction shows ever aired--interesting, funny, and creative. So when I heard that it was coming to Vegas, it was pretty much a no-brainer that I would be going to see it. I hooked up with two of my buddies from the poker world, Missing Flops and ApolloAVP, to buy tickets the first day they went on sale. (As it turned out, we should not have been so afraid of missing our chance due to an early sell-out. They had so many tickets left unsold that they later began offering them at a two-for-one sale. Oh well.)

I actually found the show a tad disappointing. It wasn't terrible, but it was kind of ho-hum. Being an avid fan, I've seen all the outtake compilations and many, many interviews with the principals. A good portion of the stage show is video montages and audience Q&A, and I don't think I heard or saw anything that was new to me in those segments.

But there were a few cool things:

1. Blendo was on stage. Blendo was a bot that Jamie and Adam designed and built in the early days of the fighting-robot craze. It was one of the first to be really, really violent to its opponents, so much so that after a few appearances, show organizers realized that the thing put audiences in danger, because the early arenas did not have sufficiently strong containment mechanisms. Blendo spun hardened steel appendages really fast, and they ripped huge pieces off of opponents' machines, hurling them in all directions. Here is a YouTube video from 1997 of Jamie and Adam being awarded the heavyweight championship of Robot Wars without even doing a single match, because the organizers could not ensure the safety of the gathered crowd, so menacing a machine was Blendo. Blendo was a real benchmark in the development of fighting robots, and it was neat to see it there on stage. Incidentally, Jamie mentioned last night that Blendo was how they got introduced to the producer of a documentary on fighting robots, which led to their later collaboration to create Mythbusters.

2. They had a sound system installed by Dolby Labs with mega-enhancement of the lowest frequencies, so that when they played a montage of explosions done on the TV show, the audience members got a better visceral sense of the body-shaking reverberations that one would experience seeing them go off in person.

3. Jamie had built a four-barrel paintball machine gun about the size of a VW Beetle. They put a brave audience member inside Adam's own medieval-style knight's armor, and unleashed hundreds of paintballs at him in an unbelievable barrage. If you don't find that entertaining, I don't think we can be friends.

It's not a show I would be interested in seeing a second time, but I'm glad I saw it once.

While I was waiting for my two companions to arrive, a familiar face passed by me. It took me a few seconds to place where I recognized him from--you know that sense of disorientation when you see somebody you know in an unexpected context. Was he another poker player? A dealer? Somebody I used to know in Minnesota? Nope. Then it dawned on me--it was Joe, one of the gunsmiths on "Sons of Guns." (And, actually, my favorite of the bunch. He is quiet, shy, cerebral, and methodical, kind of like Jamie--not your usual reality show personality.) I saw him sit down at a bar a few steps from where I was standing, and then quickly realized that two of the people he was with were Kris and Stephanie, also from the show. Kris is another gunsmith. Stephanie is the receptionist/bookkeeper. She is also the daughter of the shop's owner, Will Hayden. She and Kris got married--in Las Vegas--at the end of the second season. (Because of this, I think the show should now be titled "Son-in-Law of Guns." But they didn't ask me.) Stephanie also happens to be an experienced shooter in her own right. She has designed several "package" gun modifications to appeal both stylistically and functionally to the tastes and needs of female shooters, which Will tends to dismiss with a sneer until he realizes how big that potential market is.

I don't usually bother famous (or even semi-famous) people when they're out in public on their own time, i.e., not in a deliberate meet-and-greet mode. In fact, I don't think I've ever done so before. But on a whim last night I decided to approach and ask if I could snap a photo of them. They were incredibly nice and accommodating. They wouldn't just let me take their picture. Kris said, "It's weird if you do that without being in the shot." So they recruited a passing cocktail waitress to handle my cell phone camera (which, sadly, is really crummy). The first shot was nearly black because of the dim light, so then they insisted on staging it again where the light was better. I was by this point highly embarrassed to be intruding so much on their time, but they wanted it to turn out right.

Well, it didn't, really, because of the camera's lack of flash, low resolution, and the nice young lady's unsteady hands. But here's what resulted:

That's Joe, me, Stephanie, and Kris. And yes, Stephanie's breasts did brush up against my arm, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. I know you're all jealous.

I assumed that their presence near the Mythbusters show was no coincidence. I asked if they were involved somehow, and they said no, just there to watch. Their presence in the audience was mentioned in passing from the stage, but as far as I could tell they weren't involved in any other way.

An unrelated side note: While waiting for my table at the Venetian poker room (temporarily at the Palazzo during renovations), I saw this guy:

Of course, I've seen these enormously long booze glasses around town many, many times before. But I've not previously stopped to contemplate the physics of drinking from one. He was intermittently sucking on that gargantuan straw that's sticking out from the top. It seemed to take him a long time to get any of the liquid. This strikes me as a really bizarre and difficult way to get a drink. You have to create enough negative pressure to evacuate a large volume of air above the liquid before it will rise to your mouth. This seems to require sucking some air out, pinching off the straw, exhaling, sucking again, etc. All for the "pleasure" of consuming a large quantity of alcohol from an absurdly designed, impractical souvenir vessel.

Add this to the list of peculiar things about Vegas that I just don't get, even after six years of living here.

Attention, readers in New York

Ira Glass is hosting a charity tournament Saturday. See details here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/02/nyc-come-beat-ira-in-poker

Ira Glass on poker books

Wil Wheaton mentioned in passing on his blog today something about Ira Glass and storytelling. I'm a hard-core Ira Glass fan, so I clicked on the link, which took me to a series of four YouTube segments, totaling about 17 minutes, in which Glass expounds on the building blocks of good storytelling. If you're interested in doing anything creative--whether or not it involves storytelling per se--I think you should watch them. After discussing what makes a good story, he shares keen insights into how long it takes to get good, and how much crap you have to produce in order to make something really worthwhile.

After I had watched those clips, I started clicking around the related videos, and found this one, in which Glass takes us around a Borders bookstore, highlighting some of his favorite items. In the first two minutes or so, he discusses the poker books he has read that have helped his game the most:

Ambien poker

I've written about blogging while under the influence of Ambien, but I've never played poker in that condition. Apparently Steve Martin has. While browsing YouTube looking for something else, I happened upon this short clip:

Charlie Sheen: Tiger blood and Adonis DNA

My friend Jennifer posted on her blog a thoughtful critique of the seemingly cavalier attitude many people have about watching what she perceives as the self-destruction of Charlie Sheen. I started writing a comment to that post, but as it grew far longer than is appropriate for a comment to a blog post, I decided to put it here instead, even though it has nothing to do with poker.

Jen:

I understand your perspective, and I'm not totally unsympathetic to it.

But.

I don't think that even the broad, generic diagnosis of "illness" is certain here. I'm not wearing rose-colored glasses. What I see in that clip (which I had not seen before) and what I’ve heard in other snippets in news media is absolutely consistent with the manic phase of a bipolar disorder, among other possible diagnoses. If he were to get put on lithium, calm down, look back at the record he left this month, and say, “Wow, I was SO out of it,” well, that wouldn’t surprise me.

I don’t go as far as Thomas Szasz and say (in essence) that there is no such thing as mental illness. But I definitely think that there is a lot of gray between the white of “normal” and the black of “mentally ill,” and within the gray zone I’m not sure how to label things.

As I’m sure you know, there is a long history of association between bizarre personalities and amazing creativity. From what I can tell from other sources, Mozart really was rather as he is portrayed in “Amadeus,” and surely the same uniquely connected network of neurons was ultimately responsible for both his shocking conduct and his unparalleled musical genius. It’s easy to blame Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson’s strangeness on drugs, but maybe not. Maybe their quirks were hard-wired in, tightly bound with their literary creativity, and the drugs were either self-medication or just amplifying already-present characteristics.

Vincent Van Gogh. David Foster Wallace. Sylvia Plath. Ernest Hemingway. Charlie Parker. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. It’s almost trivially easy to reel off a list of people who have had both staggering talent and terrible demons. For them, it may be that the one could not exist without the other.

I remember reading, in Oliver Sacks’s “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” the story of his patient with Tourette’s syndrome. He could squelch the tics and verbal outbursts with antipsychotic medications, but when he did so, he lost his ability to improvise as a professional jazz musician. His melodic creativity and his Tourette’s were inextricably linked.

What I’m getting at is this: Sheen’s recent rants, while far from being immortal prose that will be studied for centuries, display undeniable creativity. He has single-handedly put a couple dozen new, interesting, catchy memes and phrases into the language and culture. (To be sure, there’s a lot of bile mixed in, too.) I don’t think that appreciating such a burst of originality is clearly wrong, in the same way that it would be, say, to gawk or even laugh at somebody self-immolating himself in the town square without trying to stop him or call for help.

Perhaps the most useful criterion for judging how far toward black the gray of startlingly odd conduct—a label that clearly fits the recent Sheen—is becoming is that of function. Is the person able to perform the activities of daily living—food acquisition, preparation, and consumption, maintaining shelter, at least rudimentary personal hygiene, etc.? If not, if he or she is clearly failing in such a way as to be in real danger, then it really doesn’t matter whether the lapse is due to drug usage, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s dementia, depression, or whatever—friends, family, and society in general should intervene. At some point, we have to value preserving life and health over autonomy and leaving each other alone to lead our own lives. The threshold should be high, but it does exist.

I don’t know how Sheen would come out on such a test. It’s certainly true that with enough money you can hide or disguise terrible dysfunction a lot longer. If I reliably knew that he was setting fires in his home and narrowly escaping the resulting carnage, or cutting his wrists, or whatever, then yeah, my ambivalence would turn to sympathy and a wish that he would be given help—involuntarily, if necessary. But I place a high enough value on the liberty of an individual to be himself, even if his behavior is well off the reservation, that I’m not yet ready to declare Sheen at the point of imminent harm where we collectively say “enough” and move to get him help that he doesn’t seem to want.

For now, he appears to be enjoying himself. I’m not convinced it’s wrong to enjoy the ride along with him. I would agree that for those who are persuaded that he is mentally ill and heading rapidly over the waterfall, pointing and laughing at the spectacle is pretty reprehensible. For that reason, I admire the consistency between your analysis that he is, in some way, sick, and your condemnation of those who are looking forward to watching the train run off the tracks. I’m just not sure that that conclusion is correct. For all we know, this could all be an elaborate piece of performance art, like Joaquin Phoenix.

Perhaps he’s in much more immediate danger of serious harm than I think. If it turns out that that is so, I’ll join you in doing the little that I can, which is to turn away and not reward him with yet another audience member. But for now, I’m inclined to sit back and watch (though not much; a little bit of wound-up Sheen goes a long way for me), wonder what’s going on, laugh at the bits I find funny, cringe at some of the rest, and hope that the high-wire act ends well and without irreversible damage. (I suppose you could say that killing his show is already irreversible damage. But I never cared for that show, he doesn’t need the money, and, besides, it is the fate of nearly all TV shows to end somewhere around the seven-year mark anyway, if not long before.) He wants to be a spectacle; in the absence of evidence that he’s really in danger, I don’t feel guilty doing a little spectating.

(A bit of credit: My thinking along these lines was prompted by a thoughtful monologue that Dennis Miller did on his radio show a few days ago.)

Surrounded by celebrities

The Imperial Palace is famous for its "Dealertainers," celebrity impersonators who deal blackjack for you, then get up on a little stage and sing a song or two. Just last night during the few hours I was in the poker room, we heard from the likes of Elvis Presley, Madonna, Garth Brooks, Beyonce, Tony Orlando, and Lady Gaga.

But what you might not know about the Palace is that it also features Playertainers. Here's the proof. At my table last night we had Brett Favre:



Dennis Rodman:



and, at the next table over, Senator Harry Reid:

Ed Miller

I played at the Venetian yesterday afternoon. My first table was all deadly serious players trying hard to win--hard place to make money. I noticed that the next one over was much more jovial, so when a seat opened up I got permission to move.

I realized that one player looked familiar, but it took me a few minutes to figure out why. He looked like Ed Miller, columnist for Card Player magazine and Sklansky's co-author on No Limit Hold'em Theory and Practice. I wasn't sure it was him at first, so snapped the above picture and asked Twitter for opinions. Nobody responded, but over time conversation made clear that I was right. I may have impressed him (in a strange way) by being the only one at the table who knew that he had once been on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

I wish I had some great story to tell--me making a phenomenal play against him, or us forming a lifelong friendship, or discovering that he is a devoted reader of this blog, or whatever. But truth is, it was kind of a boring session with not much interesting happening. Sorry.

Define "celebrity"

There's a full-page ad in the current issue of Card Player magazine for a "Celebrity Poker Tournament" to be held at the Firelake Grand Casino in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Here's who they boast will be attending:

• "General Larry Platt, Americal Idol, Pants On The Ground"
• "Norm Macdonald, Comedian" (should be "MacDonald," not "Macdonald")
• "Jaime Edmondson, Playboy Playmate" (January, 2010; she was also half of the runner-up team on The Amazing Race last year)
• "Chicken George, Big Brother" (contestant on the first season, 2000)
• "Theo Vonn" (I'm guessing they mean Theo Von, who was on MTV's Road Rules in 2000, plus a couple of other reality shows since then)
• "Kevin O'Conner" (probably means Kevin O'Connor, but even so I can't tell which of several people by that name it might be; Wikipedia lists two Irish footballers, an American actor, the co-founder of DoubleClick, an Amazing Race contestant, the general manager of the Utah Jazz, and the host of This Old House)
• "Mark 'The Chinaman' Britten" (stand-up comic)

Wow. Hoo boy, that is one impressive line-up.

Look, I'm an old fuddy-duddy, hardly the most up-to-date on who's who. I saw Twitter messages yesterday pleading to "free Snooki," and had no idea who that was until I Googled the name. So maybe I'm a bad standard by which to judge relative degrees of fame.

But even if we give them a pass on misspelling three--THREE--out of the seven names (budget wouldn't allow for a proofreader, apparently), what kind of "celebrity" list is this? Norm MacDonald? OK, I'll give you that one, as kind of a B-list or C-list guy. I saw Platt on Idol. I saw Edmondson on Amazing Race, though I didn't know she had subsequently done Playboy, and wouldn't have remembered her from the show. I saw Chicken George on Big Brother way back when, but had no idea he was still stretching out his 15 minutes of fame from that. The other three are completely unknown to me, and, as indicated above, I can't even tell which O'Connor they have in mind.

At the very bottom of the ad, it says that there will be "over 20 celebrities playing in the tournament." One has to assume that for purposes of the ad they picked the biggest names that they had from their list, which means that you can expect to see some 13 "celebrities" even less famous than these.

I sure hope they have a crack team of security experts to keep the multitudes of overexcited fans at bay.

Opportunity Village tournament

I just got back from playing at Caesars Palace. One of the reasons I chose it for today's session was that I knew the charity tournament for Opportunity Village would be going on, and I thought it might be fun to keep an eye on that. It was.

I took several breaks from my game and wandered around. My pictures, taken with my puny little Nikon point-and-shoot, won't be nearly as good as others will put up, but I bet mine get posted first! I arrived when the tournament had already been running for nearly two hours, so I'm sure many photo-worthy people had left by then.

Howard Lederer (at the end of the table):




Melissa Hayden:




Allen Cunningham:




Steve Zolotow and Howard Lederer:




This young woman played with a severe disadvantage: a tiara perched atop her head. This is something I've never tried. It's Christina Keegan, Miss Nevada 2010. From what I overhead, the men to the right of her in the photo are cast members from Jersey Boys at the Venetian, though I've never seen the show, so I can't verify their identifies.




But if Miss Nevada had trouble playing poker while wearing a tiara, it was nothing compared to this young woman's handicap. Yes, based on the overhead announcements, she really did play in full showgirl regalia. (They were announcing her elimination just as I took this photo of her on her way out.)




Perry Friedman and Adam Savage. What? You don't know who Adam Savage is? He's only the co-host of my favorite show on television, Mythbusters. Hands-down, he and his partner have the coolest jobs on the planet. They get to build stuff, explore interesting and amusing questions and problems, go to exciting places, and blow up a whole lot of stuff. There are not many people whose lives I envy, but he's on the short list:




Adam Savage and, in the white shirt, my friend Jon Katkin, of the Chaos Theory poker blog:




That shot was taken as the dealer was sorting out the pot in a big three-way all-in confrontation. I think it was Q-Q versus J-J and 6-6. Savage was on the low end of that deal, and was knocked out shortly thereafter. He was a good sport and gave an interview. He was thanked for helping Opportunity Village, and he responded with, "I helped them by losing?!" Funny moment.




Jon made the final table (last six shown here). He was among the final five when I left a few minutes later. I'm sure a full accounting of the day's adventures will be forthcoming on his blog. [Edit: Post just put up here.]




A Twitter message a short time ago announced that the tournament was won by Jeremy Jenson, whom I do not know. I'm not even sure which one he is in the photo above.

There were many cool things offered in an accompanying silent auction, including these:






And, completely unrelated to any of the foregoing, this man, who was just waiting for a seat in a cash game, graciously consented to pose for a picture when I told him how much I liked his T-shirt. I gotta get me one of those!

Celebrity sighting

I was playing at Planet Hollywood this afternoon when a bunch of people started coming in and setting up equipment around the next table over. Lots of cameras and lighting equipment was being brought out, so clearly some sort of shoot was about to get underway. I asked the dealer what was on the agenda. He didn't know.

A short time later I looked over my shoulder again, and saw Holly Madison sitting at the table--clearly the object of the shoot. She had a couple of her dogs with her. Over time, I deduced from wisps of overheard conversation that she is promoting "I Love Dogs Diamonds," boutique jewelry for canines.

All I know is this: when C.M. Coolidge painted his famous pictures, the dogs playing poker were NOT wearing diamonds.

Charity tournament at Binion's

Mere minutes ago I was at Binion's. I happened to hear the announcement of the start of a charity poker tournament, so I wandered over to see who might be playing. It was a small event--just three tables.









You might be able to spot Todd Brunson, Angela Brunson (second photo, back to camera, black leather jacket and beret, next to photographer), Tom McEvoy, Hoyt Corkins, T. J. Cloutier, Kathy Liebert, and Amir Vahedi. Barbara Enright was also there, but hidden behind other people so she didn't show up in any of the pics I took. (See the guy with the green and white striped shirt in the second photo? See half of a platinum-blondish looking head just past him? That's her.)

My life is just endless excitement, as you can plainly see.


Addendum

LOL. I posted the above, then went to check my Twitter feeds. Got these two right at the top:

ToddBrunson I'm at Binions playing a charity tournament 10 minutes
ago from txt

ToddBrunson Playing with Tom macavoy, Tj cloutier, Cathy liebert, Barbara
enright, max, some wife and vinnie Favorito 7 minutes ago from txt

(Todd could use a little work on his spelling.)

When what to my wondering eyes should appear...

Mere minutes ago I was walking home after a short but successful session at Binion's (I have a big task at home that I've been procrastinating for too long, and simply must tackle it tonight, so I had to settle for a hit-and-run), when I noticed a video camera and spotlight trained on somebody, with a small crowd gathering around. I stopped to see what was going on.

It was none other than Mr. Las Vegas himself, Wayne Newton.










As I overheard it, the crew was from "CBS Sunday Morning," doing a feature on Newton because there is some sort of museum or display--in New York City, I think--opening this week that has him in it. Sorry I can't give you more details; they weren't exactly handing out press releases, I had to just hear snippets of information here and there. It's entirely possible I got caught in the background in some shots, though I wasn't trying to--I was trying to get on the same side of him as the camera!

I lived in Las Vegas for two years back in 1980-1982, and even then I remember hearing rumors that Newton was starting every show with an apology for his raspy voice, blaming it on a "cold." Apparently his singing voice has completely fallen apart over the ensuing years. The critics are not being kind to his latest (and allegedly last) show, at the Tropicana. This one notes that he heard Newton make excuses for the rough voice back in 1995, while this one says that the voice is "ghastly," "like the Vegas Chainsaw Massacre," and notes that the man "can barely speak, let along sing."

It's sad. Every time I walk to or from one of the downtown poker rooms I pass this plaque in the street, at the southwest corner of Fremont and 7th:





Fifty years is a long time to be performing more or less continuously, at one venue or another, in Vegas. Gotta give the guy credit for longevity, and for knowing how to stretch his time well past the allotted 15 minutes of fame.

Then again, there's something to be said for a dignified retirement. One of the keys to successfully playing poker for a living is knowing how to quit while you're ahead. I'm guessing that Wayne Newton doesn't play a lot of poker.

Celebrity sighting

Soon after starting a session at Mandalay Bay today, I noticed a guy playing very erratically. He was making bets and calls that made no sense. For example, on the river he had two pair but check-raised a tight player who just had to have a straight, because there were four consecutive cards on the board. The odd thing was that it was a minimum check-raise, virtually guaranteed a call or a reraise. Very peculiar. (Actually, because of the complete inscrutibility of his actions, I completely misread him at one point and he took most of my first buy-in. So once in a while it did benefit him.) He was even quieter than me; I'm not sure he ever uttered a word in the hour or so I was at the table with him.

Finally he lost most of his stack and was ready to leave. He pushed his last $35 or so to the dealer. The dealer understandably assumed the guy was trying to cash out, pushed the chips back, and directed him to the desk. The player, though, said, "No, man, that's a tip for you." Now that was peculiar--a tip that size upon leaving a $1-2 game, after losing his last hand?

After he was out of earshot, one of the other players commented on how odd that was. Somebody else said, "That was Adrian Peterson. He doesn't care about the money."

Apparently that one other player and I were the only clueless ones there. I had never even heard of Adrian Peterson, let alone be able to recognize him. I was a little embarrassed to learn that he played for the Vikings, since I moved here from the Twin Cities three years ago. Now, however, upon arriving home, I read that he joined the team the year after I left, so maybe I can be forgiven for my ignorance--although, to tell the truth, it's entirely possible that I still wouldn't have heard of him even if I had stayed in Minnesota.

Anyway, I am led to understand that he is something of a superstar in the NFL. If you had not previously been able to judge the level of complete inattention and apathy that I have for sports, maybe this will tell you.

Those who had been at the table longer than I had been said that he spewed around $1000 over two or three hours. Dang--wish I had been there to take a chunk of it.

So I had a celebrity sighting today, and didn't even know it until it was over.

Recap of my week

It has been a quiet week in Lake... Oh, wait--that's somebody else's opening line.

It has been a busy week in Las Vegas. Both Shamus and Cardgrrl have been in town for my birthday. Well, they each claim that something else brought them here--poker tournaments and some equestrian stuff, blah, blah, blah. But we all know the truth.

Wednesday Shamus and I went to the Wednesday Poker Discussion Group at Binion's. As you all know by now, I live about five blocks from there. I've been meaning to get to those meetings for, oh, two years or so now, and then always either forget or have something else come up. It took an out-of-town visitor to finally get my butt in a seat there. Glad I did--it was actually interesting. I wouldn't have thought that you could discuss one poker hand for 90 minutes, but we did. It was one of those weird hands in which you could make a pretty reasonable case for folding, calling, or raising at every decision point, and advocates for each approach were not shy about explaining their preferences.

The presenter, a guy named Alan (Allen?), had played the hand at a $2-5 game at the Wynn. I'll spare you the details, but he took a mediocre starting hand (Q-8) hand up against two unknown, drunk opponents from out of position, and used a completely weak/passive line, largely based on his interpretation of an odd comment the main opponent made early in the hand--a pretty dicey proposition on every front. But (1) it worked out for him, and (2) I had to admit that I could imagine myself making exactly the same decisions. Yeah, it was lousy poker by conventional standards. But sometimes you don't have to play brilliantly to win--you just have to play somewhat less badly than your opponents.

I was reminded of a line that I didn't think I'd ever end up quoting in earnest: Barry Greenstein's "Math is idiotic." His point was that sometimes it all comes down to deciding whether the guy has it or not, and nothing about numbers will solve that riddle for you. That's what Alan was facing, and he got it right. Good for him.

That evening I had a delightful dinner with Cardgrrl, Shamus, F-Train, and BWoP. Pity poor Vera, Shamus's wife, who had to endure a couple of hours with five poker bloggers. Most would consider that a fate worse than death. But we did actually manage to pretend to be normal humans to the extent of finding a few topics other than poker to discuss.

Been hanging out with Cardgrrl a lot, continuing to find her smart, funny, and interesting. Well, except for the nasty little habit of forgetting where she might have left her glasses, necessitating the search of the entirety of one of the largest hotel/casino/resort/convention center complexes on the planet (with the initials M.B.)--y'know, only a few square miles or so.

Late Wednesday night we were playing at Harrah's when our table was joined by a guy with one of the strangest hats I've ever seen. He was black, with apparently a huge afro. But it was all stuffed inside a knit cap that was about ten times the size of his head. Every time I looked at it, it reminded me of a Jiffy Pop container about to burst. Cardgrrl said that it reminded her of Star Trek or some other sci-fi show, with a big-headed alien.

Friday night was Tony Roma's for birthday ribs with my best friend, then "The Sting." It has probably been 20 years since I saw this last, so it was a real treat. I loved Paul Newman, as Henry Gondorff, getting cold-decked by the bad guy with quad threes, with which he was supposed to lose everything to his opponent's quad nines--but then Gondorff turns over quad jacks instead! (See Shamus's take on the scene here.) This leads to a great line of dialog:

Floyd: Doyle, I KNOW I gave him four THREES. He had to make a SWITCH. We
can't let him get away with that.

Doyle Lonnegan: What was I supposed to do - call him for cheating better
than me, in front of the others?

Last night Cardgrrl and I were playing at Mandalay Bay in a rather boring, sedate game, when suddenly I became aware of a familiar face standing behind and chatting with a couple of the other players. He soon joined our game:



That's right--it was Cory Zeidman, he of the infamous straight-flush hand against Jennifer Harman. (See here for a bit of discussion of that, with relevant links.) Also, he of the incredibly tedius, meandering recount of said hand during Phil Gordon's live broadcast of the 2007 Main Event--a story that started with a trip to the dentist, his observations about the dentist's office's furnishings, etc., all interspersed with regular promises that, yes, this background was indeed all relevant to the story of the straight flush. Yeah, right. This had all predisposed me not to like the guy, until he showed up on Poker After Dark recently, so skillfully skewering Phil Hellmuth that I did an about-face and began liking him.

Literally as soon as he sat down, the nature of our game changed. He hadn't even received his chips yet, and he raised the first hand, eventually showing that he had pocket 10s and flopped a set. He quickly became the center of both action and conversation. I found him to be funny and likable--and, obviously, quite a decent player. I had hoped to get him in a situation where I could make a comment about going sightseeing if I lost the hand, but it never happened.

Zeidman quickly ran up against the quirky house rules of the Mandalay poker room. (See here for more on that.) First the dealer made three players remove their cell phones from the table. Not allowed. Then they wouldn't let Zeidman read a poker magazine when he wasn't in a hand. That led to a prolonged discussion with the floor person. It's a little hard to describe the tone of that conversation. Zeidman managed to convey with zero ambiguity how stupid he thought the rule was, all the while maintaining a genuine smile and good humor. He finally found a loophole: The shift manager tried zinging him with the observation that she knew he didn't know how to read anyway, so it shouldn't matter. He acknowledged that this was true, which then meant that they couldn't accuse him of reading the magazine. Instead, he just "looked at the pictures" between hands. They left him alone after that.

These exchanges led to a running joke at the table about other rules. When he ordered a bottle of water and set it down in the appropriate place, I told him in my best faux-serious tone of voice, "Hey, no using the cupholders at the table!" When he was talking during a hand, I snapped, "No talking during a hand. House rule." Well, at least I was having fun with it.

He stayed only an hour or so, but it was definitely an enjoyable short visit.

Poker? Well, poker this week has basically sucked. E.g., playing at the Venetian and being the fourth one to call a raise, with 8h-6h on the button, seeing a gorgeous flop of 6-6-8, and losing it all to a guy holding pocket eights. FML. A "S.I.G.H." if ever there was one. That's how my poker week has been.

But all the other pleasant and interesting stuff happening this week have been almost enough to make up for that kind of thing.

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.

Of poker and porn stars

Last night I played what is for me a marathon-ish session at the Venetian--just shy of eight hours.

This is always an odd and amusing time of year here in Vegas, with the confluence of the Consumer Electronics Show and the Adult Video News conference. Let me tell you: it is usually not difficult to tell who is in town for which meeting.

Take this guy, for example, who was sitting next to me at the poker table:




Zoom in on that wrist band and the pink emblem on it. Does that look to you like something issued by the CES? I think not.

Of course, if you saw the rest of him, you wouldn't need the wrist band to confirm your impression. That black shirt is tailored and pressed, topped by a chic gray Euro-scarf around the neck. This is not an electronics geek.

You could also note that his European wife or girlfriend, in the seat to his right, was wearing no bra, and a blouse open enough to make that fact clear. Again, not your typical peddler of the latest whiz-bang pocket computer. (Though, for all I know, whizzing and banging are, in fact, key elements of her job.)

I should note that the gentleman in the black shirt was an incredibly good sport. I put horrendous beats on him twice. First, my jacks cracked his aces when I flopped a set. But at least on that occasion I had the best hand when all the money went in. Unlike the second occasion. There, I had K-J on a jack-high flop and was confident I had the best hand. But he had limped in with pocket queens, presumably to deceive me in exactly the manner that it did. We got it all in, and I caught a third jack on the river to save my sorry butt. He just shook my hand and laughed it off. Whew! I think the typical CES attendee would be a little more uptight about such matters.

Sometimes you don't need to be sitting right next to people to be able to tell which meeting they're here for. Take a gander at this couple:



They appear to divide their income equally between gym memberships, plastic surgeons, and manicurists. (You can't see it in this photo, but the dude has perfect nails, including clear nail polish.)

Over the course of the night, I learned that the young woman--whose cups overfloweth, if you catch my drift, much more than you might think from how things look in this photo--goes by the name of "Phoenix Marie." I won't provide a link, but you can Google it. Be prepared for some VVVVVNSFW results, however.* The gentleman declined to give his name or say what movies he has been in (he was pestered on these questions to the point of rudeness by a young female dealer who had to wear a bib to keep from drooling all over the cards), but he is clearly "in the industry." His reticence was not because of general shyness, but a bit of gallantry. He said that he was here to support his girlfriend's career, and didn't want to divert attention away from her and to himself. They were both very nice, and he was definitely better at poker than the average tourist.

Incidentally, Ms. Marie is a stunningly beautiful young woman. I looked around for a few minutes at some of her photos and video clips, and they really don't do her justice. She's one of those people who turns out to be far more attractive in person than on film, for whatever reason.

When deciding on the Venetian for the night, I had thought that I would mainly be facing egghead engineering types flashing the latest gadgets. It was true that the halls and casino floor had more than the usual percentage of young Asian males flashing cutting-edge cell phones, but my particular poker table, at least, was attracting players who were here for the other convention.

I can't say that was entirely a bad thing. It did, however, make for some, uh, interesting table conversation. It also provided new shades of meaning to otherwise innocuous poker terminology. For example, when the dealer announces, "Three-way action".... oh, never mind.


*He told us this name while she was briefly away from the table. It sounded so obviously fake that I thought he might be pulling our legs, so I Googled the name from my spiffy new web-enabled cell phone. An image quickly popped up that was, well, the first of that genre to appear on my new phone. It did so just as a couple of people were walking behind me, so I quickly had to turn the phone face down on my lap. Not that those people likely would have either noticed or cared, but I really don't want to get known as the guy who is so pathetic that he surfs the net for porn on his cell phone between poker hands.

My night at Caesars Palace

Celebrity sighting #1

I hit Caesars Palace last night. As usual, I didn't have any particular reason for choosing it--nothing better than "I haven't played there in a while." I'm glad I did. Here's what happened.

I'm one of eight people starting up a new $1-3 NLHE game. Within the first few hands, I don't like the table. There are too many very good players here, no obvious soft spots. Nobody is chatting, nobody is drinking, everybody looks like they're here to take other people's money, and nothing will distract or deter them from that goal. Frankly, they're all too much like me!

At the next table over, there is drinking and laughing galore. There are at least three players that I can see even from this distance have little experience in casino poker. Shots are being ordered for the whole table. No question about it: That is where I need to be. Fortunately, just as I'm realizing this, one player there gets up to leave and I hear the dealer announce, "Two seats open on table 7." Since we have just one open seat, that means they should allow me to move. They do, and I do.

Within two minutes of arriving at my new home for the night, a familiar face takes the second empty seat at the far end of the table. It takes me a few seconds to place it, but I'm pretty sure it's Ira Glass, host of my favorite radio program, This American Life. (How do I know the face from radio? Well, they have also done two seasons of a television version of the show for Showtime.) But you know how people look somewhat different in real life than in photos or on TV--so I wasn't completely sure it was him. The voice would have given it away, but he was chatting softly with the people near him, and I couldn't hear well enough to tell. So I asked where he was visiting from, and he said, "I live in New York now. Moved there a couple of years ago from Chicago."

Oh yeah, that's definitely a voice I recognize. I said, "From Chicago Public Radio!" He looked surprised, but said yes.

We ended up playing together for about six hours, most of it with just one other player between us. He was a delight. He kindly posed for the photo above before leaving, and gave me permission to post it. I was thrilled to have this completely unexpected chance to tell him how much I love the show. I'm not easily star-struck, but I've been listening to this program for several years now, and it's simply the best thing on the radio.

The situation was a bit weird, though, because I sensed that I was at an unfair social advantage. In the course of telling a story or making a point for the show, Ira often talks about his own life, so I realized that I knew all sorts of strange odds and ends about him: his testosterone level, what TV theme songs he sings along with when his favorite programs come on, his father's former radio career, how he can't admit to his wife that he is ever wrong, etc. Yet he knew nothing about me, save what I chose to reveal.

He quickly caught on to the fact that I play for a living. It's not something I usually disclose at the table, but I remembered having heard a segment on his show about poker, in which he revealed his secret longing to ditch the day job and play poker for a living. (You can--and should--listen to it here, Act Two, starting at about 20:45. Great piece on what it's really like to play for a living, though it primarily focuses on the highest-stakes players, not the groundskimming grinders like me.) As he said to me at one point, "You're living one of my dreams." He seemed every bit as interested in my job as I was in his, so I got to ask about how they find thematic stories and about the future of the Showtime series, and more, and he got to ask about beating passive games, how much I make, what books he should read, where I played, and more.

He engaged in a lengthy discussion about politics with the woman sitting between us, a self-proclaimed right-winger who was now completely disenchanted with politics and refused to listen to the news, and had even given up listening to her beloved Rush Limbaugh because of how she hated the November election results. At one point, she spouted the standard line from conservative talk radio about how the current financial downtown was due to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac trying to be politically correct and extend mortgages to people who really couldn't afford the houses they were buying. I knew what was coming, and couldn't help smiling. Boy, did she pick the wrong person to lay that on! For those who don't know, This American Life earlier this year did a whole hour on how the mess evolved, and it's all far more complex and global and interesting than that quite wrong-headed explanation. (That particular episode has, I understand, become moderately famous in its own right. If you haven't heard it, and feel like you still don't have a grasp on what triggered the crisis, you owe it to yourself to listen to it here. While you're at it, take in the follow-up show here.) It was impressive hearing Ira tell this woman of things of which she had no inkling, and I felt unduly smug for having heard it all before.

Back to the poker. I was initially pleased that I was playing well and catching good cards, making money quite rapidly--making winning look easy. In fact, it was shaping up to be one of the best nights I've had in a few months. I had worked my initial $200 up to about $600 in just a couple of hours. (That included a $100 high-hand jackpot for hitting quad 7s.)

Then disaster struck, and I lost about $550 of that in one horrendous hand. It was one of the three or four largest single-hand losses I've ever experienced, and it was witnessed by a guy who thinks I have a great life, and who, moreover, might find occasion to tell the story to a national radio audience. (Actually, Ira, it's fine if you do, should the subject ever come up. After all, I'm telling it here.) The details don't really matter, but I pushed all-in, over the top of his $100 bet, with an open-ended straight draw as a semi-bluff against a guy who I was nearly certain had no more than one pair, and that lower than the highest card on the board. (Flop had been 6-4-?, turn a jack. I had 5-7.) I was right about his hand--he had pocket 9s--but dead wrong about what he would do. He called rather quickly. I still don't understand that call. I had shown down nothing but strong winners all night, had engaged in hardly any bluffing and had not shown a single one of them, and was playing mostly classic tight-aggressive poker. I also think it's unlikely I have any tell of such predictive power that he would rely on it for a pot of that size. Finally, in an unusual tactical slip-up for me, I had told him honestly not too long before this that I didn't want to play a big pot, as I was getting ready to call it a night. I regretted saying that instantly, and he had responded to it by starting to raise me more frequently and aggressively--a smart adjustment, given what I had carelessly revealed to him. But I thought that that slip would actually work in favor of making him fold in the big hand. Not so, apparently. I would love to have asked the guy what he thought I had there, but didn't think I'd get a straight answer. Nothing about it makes sense to me still.

Anyway, I was acutely aware that Ira would now be watching me to see how I handled it. A couple of months ago, a reader of this blog with whom I was playing told me that it helped him to have me there; it prevented him from doing anything stupid for fear that he'd have to read about it the next day. (Story here.) I felt the same way with Ira scrutinizing me for how I'd handle this setback. Fortunately, though it felt like getting kicked in the stomach, I didn't go on tilt. I kept playing reasonably well, but in the end another three hours or so passed without making any significant progress monetarily, so I took the occasion of Ira's leaving to catch his plane as my excuse to leave simultaneously. Sorry I couldn't put on a better show for you, sir. But there's the reality of poker--sometimes it hurts like hell and you go home with less than you started the day with, wondering why you bothered.

Now here's the weird part. I listen to This American Life via its podcasts, usually while I'm washing dishes. A couple of months ago, Ira introduced three consecutive episodes with a special plea, only for the podcast listeners, to contribute just a few bucks to help defray the cost of the enormous amount of bandwidth they have to use. He had said that even $5 or $10 would pay for the listener's use, plus that of a couple of other people, too. That small amount, he had said, would make you a "hero" to the program. Yeah, of course it's hyperbole, but the message was effective, and I decided to do it. I imagined that in some random encounter, I'd run into Ira Glass, and I'd joke, "Hey, I'm one of the 'heroes' who paid for bandwidth for some other listeners!" For three weeks in a row, upon hearing that, I told myself that I'd make a small contribution as soon as I was done with the show and the dishes. And, predictably, three weeks in a row I got busy with something else and forgot all about it.

And then, in a completely random encounter, as you now know, I actually did run into Ira Glass! But instead of being able to tell him that I donated to the cause, I had to confess that I had procrastinated it to the point of neglecting it altogether.

So there's your lesson. Contribute to whatever worthy cause you choose now, before you have a random run-in with somebody associated with it and have to say that you intended to send them money, but never quite got around to it--because you really, truly might have such an unexpected meeting.

Ira, I have now made my penitance complete, I hope--I just charged $20 to my credit card at this site, linked to on your show's home page. And yes, that stupid little story is really true, and yes, you can use it if you think it would be helpful and/or amusing to others.


Celebrity sighting #2

Lacey Jones was playing at the table next to mine. She appears to be as attractive in person as in photos, which isn't always the case with model types. (Here is what she looked like posing in her undies for the cover of Bluff magazine a couple of months ago, and here is what she looks like wearing nothing but body paint.)


The nutjob

For the last maybe 90 minutes of my session, we were joined by a nutjob. A crankcase. A wackadoo. A looney. A fruitcake.

We all first became aware of his loose screw when he started screaming--not the "screaming" that people say in exaggeration to make the subject of the story look bad, but literally screaming, loud enough that that entire, large poker room could hear--about how he got screwed out of a pot by an unlucky card because of the automatic shuffling machine. It seems that he had, a short time before, busted out of a tournament on some sort of bad beat. He shouted, "They don't use those machines back in the tournament area! It's the dealer! And that guy was a MECHANIC! A MECHANIC, I'm telling you!" This was so over-the-top that I was prepared to laugh at his antics, until I looked at him and realized that he was not trying to be funny in the least. He was livid. (The rant didn't really make any logical sense. He was simultaneously angry at our table's autoshuffler, but at the same time saying that it's worse being at a table without one, because you might get a crooked dealer who deliberately cold-decks you. Whatever, dude.)

When he entered a pot, it was usually for a raise to $30, a ridiculous amount in a $1-3 game. When he won a hand at a showdown, he would usually celebrate it by standing up and whooping, just like the showboating morons at the WSOP, but louder. When he won by making a bet that his opponent wouldn't call, he would taunt for no reason, yelling about how the other player had no "balls."

When he lost a pot, on one occasion, he fumed that he didn't care about the money. "I've got hundred-dollar bills coming out of my ASS!" There's a lovely image. (When Ira busted him once, I said, "Oh great. Now he's going to have to pull out the ass money.")

But as obnoxious as he was, nobody really wanted him to leave, because he was giving his money away faster than any other player. Tangling with him was classic high-variance poker, because he would shove it all in just as willingly with nothing as with the nuts, and all you could do was pick a spot and hope that it was one of the former rather than the latter. This isn't poker in any meaningful sense, but it can be very profitable. (It wasn't for me; I won one big one and lost one big one, roughly evening out in the end.)

He did not seem to me to be drunk, nor did I notice him consuming any booze. As far as I could tell, this was just his usual baseline personality disorder.

The man was in need of some heavy-duty psychotropic medication.


The deuce-four claims more victims

Yes, the mighty deuce-four struck again! I raised with it in late position and got two callers. The flop was 8-9-2. It was checked around. The turn was a third 2 for me. I was ecstatic, because I knew that my opponents would never suspect I was sitting on trips. One opponent bet, the other folded, and I raised. She called. The river was an ace--as it turned out, a terrible card for my lone remaining opponent, because she had A-8 in the hole, and had now made two pairs. She checked. I bet $50. She raised to $100. I just called, because she had been a consistently very solid player, and her check-raise gave me some concern that she had slow-played pocket 8s or 9s. That may have been the biggest pot I won in the session, thanks to the ol' 2-4 offsuit!


The new phone comes in handy

I mentioned earlier this month that I was upgrading my cell phone to one that had a web browser. I don't think I really need such a thing, but there are plenty of occasions when it would be handy.

A few days ago, I used it to look up a sports score that another guy at the table was interested in. But tonight it had the first moderately interesting application. A young man, who wasn't at our table for long, said that his name was Matthew. He claimed that this name meant "son of Christ." I was highly confident from my years of religious training that this was wrong, though I couldn't recall offhand what the real translation was. I whipped out the new toy, called up Wikipedia, and found this:

Matthew
Given Name
Gender Male
Meaning "Gift of God"
Origin Hebrew

I showed this to Ira and to Matt, who said, "Yeah, see? That's what I told you." Uh, no, not quite. But have it your way, sir. It didn't seem like a point worth arguing any further.

Anyway, the phone lived up to what I had hoped it could do when I'm away from my computer. I was pleased with that.



I wish I had some clever punchline with which to wrap everything up and close this post. I don't. Sometimes the story just ends where it ends. I'm too sleepy to wait for a brilliant summation of some sort to occur to me.


Addendum, January 1, 2009

I realize that I forgot a really, really embarrassing element of the first story. Back at the point where I was doing well, Ira asked me something--I don't remember the exact question. But I remember answering that often winning is relatively easy, and the hard part is not giving it all back through sloppy play.

I may not be a great poker player, but at least I possess considerable self-knowledge!

Celebrity sighting

Somebody gave me a ticket for a free preview showing of "Valkyrie" at the theater at the Palms tonight. Have I mentioned sufficiently often how much I like free stuff?

I went (by myself--how pathetic is my life?), and saw none other than Andy Bloch a short distance ahead of me in line.

They ran out of seats for "Valkyrie," but offered instead to let the rest of us see "Yes Man." I had intended to see it anyway, so I accepted. It was as funny as a Jim Carrey movie should be, though pretty predictable. I haven't paid much attention to Zooey Deschanel before, but she stole my heart in this film--and such a cool name.

Celebrity sighting

I drove out to South Point last night, since it is a hotbed of rodeo-related events. As I had hoped, the place was lousy with cowboy hats. Strangly, though, there were virtually none in the poker room. My table had more of them than any other when its Cowboy Hat index briefly reached 2, but most of the time it was 1 or even 0. Disappointing. After a couple of hours, I headed off to the Orleans, and it was the same--cowboy hats everywhere except in the poker room. I don't get it.

Anyway, about halfway through my time at South Point our table was joined by the very minor poker celebrity pictured below. That's Antonio Esfandiari's father on the left, with his hand on his chin. I suppose he picked South Point because of its association with "High Stakes Poker" (though I understand production is being moved back to the Golden Nugget for next season).



Mr. Esfandiari is not as good a poker player as his son. I busted him with A-Q on a queen-high flop. I bet, he raised all-in for only about 50% more, I called. When all the cards were out, he saw my hand and mucked without showing. He left before I got a chance to tell him that I enjoy his occasional appearances on "I Bet You" (which is one of the greatest concepts for a reality TV show ever). He was perfectly polite and very quiet his whole time at our table.


South Point has issued its first commemorative poker chips for this year's big rodeo celebration. Previously, it was one of the few casinos that had no special chips anywhere in sight--just complete uniformity of generic chips. (Others that I can think of offhand include Binion's, Golden Nugget, and Sahara, and Excalibur before the electronic tables.)

Celebrity sighting

As I was cashing out my chips at the Venetian tonight, I peeked into the high-stakes "salon" poker room and saw Teddy "Iceman" Monroe sitting there.

Sometimes my life is so exciting that I can hardly stand it.