PokerNews article #16

In a departure from my usual general subject matter, I wrote (at the request of my editor) about my first WSOP experience:

http://learn.pokernews.com/poker-strategy-theory/it-gets-better-the-story-of-a-not-so-succesful-wsop-debut-4141.htm

PokerNews article #15

Finishing up the five-part series on cards, this article is a few more tidbits on protecting your hand:

http://learn.pokernews.com/poker-strategy-theory/all-about-cards-part-5-covering-when-to-keep-em-covered-4086.htm

My Sunday Puzzle submission

I often spend some time on Sunday mornings trying to solve Will Shortz's weekly puzzle from "Weekend Edition Sunday" on National Public Radio.

This week, instead of a puzzle with one correct answer, he invites listeners to submit their best constructions of a particular type of puzzle for other listeners. He gives this description and example:

On-air challenge: Every answer is a five-letter word. You will be given a clue for the word. Besides describing the answer, the clue will also contain the answer in consecutive letters. For example, given "It's near the planet Mars," you would say, "Earth."  

Next week's challenge (Please note this is a two-week challenge): Write a clue for a word in the style of today's on-air puzzle, in which the answer has six or more letters. The clue should both define or describe the answer and contain the answer in consecutive letters.  

Entries will be judged on accuracy of the cluing, specificity, naturalness of syntax and overall elegance. You may submit up to three clues in your entry. The person who sends the best clue in the judgment of Will Shortz will appear on the program in two weeks. And some of the runner-up entries will be used on the air.

Here are my three submissions. I'll put the answers in the first comment, so you won't see them until you click on "comments."

1. Last fall, I blew another chance at impressing my boss when I missed my big project's deadline.

2. As if Thoreau wrote of bustling urban life at Walden, I also often say the opposite of what is true.

3. In order to succeed, a magician must will us--or you!--to see what is not really there.

PokerNews article #14

Part 4 of 5 on cards generally, and the first of two articles on protecting your hand.

http://learn.pokernews.com/poker-strategy-theory/all-about-cards-part-4-the-many-meanings-of-protect-your-han-4029.htm

"The biggest kettle of fish in North America"

That's how David Samuels, writing for The Atlantic, describes Maryland Live, the new 52-table poker room. It's a good read on the ecology of a new, large poker room, opening in what had been basically a poker desert.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/where-the-card-sharks-feed/359807/

PokerNews article #13

This is part 3 of 5 on cards and associated rules and procedures.

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/04/all-about-cards-part-3-exposed-or-boxed-cards-fouled-decks-m-3961.htm

Poker gems, #470

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, March 19, 2014 (vol. 27, #6), pp. 41-42.


Winning poker requires high aggression and much risk-taking. You cannot systematically reduce the risk and still play a strong game. It can't be done.

Elite players...play a particularly high-variance style because that's the best, most profitable way to play. If you intentionally try to reduce your variance, you must accept that you will never play well.

Biltmore Estate

For my birthday Thursday, Nina and I spent a couple of hours roaming Biltmore Estate during its spring flower display, then saw "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (outstanding in every way), and had dinner at my favorite pizza place. Lovely day.

It was my first chance to experiment outdoors with the new camera I bought about two months ago. It's a Sony NEX-3NL, which I snagged while Amazon briefly had it for the ridiculously low price of $298.

None of these pictures will win a National Geographic contest, but they at least show a bit of the beauty of Biltmore. They also make me think the camera was a good choice; with the camera in full auto mode, it seems to have done a nice job with focus, exposure, etc., even when I went out of my way to give it difficult situations. Color rendition looks remarkably good to me, including some tricky flower colors that my Nikon point-and-shoot could never get right (especially the purple of some of the orchids). The sharpness and detail, too, are great improvements on the Nikon.

Right-click on a photo to see larger versions, though they're still only about 2 megapixels, compared to the 16 of the originals. (Blogspot automatically shrinks pictures to its predetermined limit.)

PokerNews article #12

This is part 2 (out of 5), telling you everything you need to know about the cards used in poker rooms.

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/04/all-about-cards-part-2-new-setups-marked-cards-shufflers-3863.htm

PokerNews series on poker rules

I just discovered a great series of articles on the same site that I've been writing for recently--learn.pokernews.com. It's by Linda Geenen and it's called "A Look at House Rules." She covers all sorts of rules for live poker games. She gets into some really arcane stuff, such as insurance, sleepers, and "the rock." It's like crack cocaine for oddballs like me who read rule books as recreation.

Take a gander, if this kind of thing interests you:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/a-look-at-house-rules/

PokerNews article #11

New article at PokerNews is the first of four parts about poker room playing cards, specifically, taking advantage of their plasticity to prevent others from peeking at them.

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/04/all-about-cards-part-1-protecting-your-hand-from-prying-eyes-3807.htm

Running into my past

Some of Nina's friends were visiting from out of town this weekend. The four of us spent much of the afternoon today at the Asheville Art Museum, where I had never been before.

In one gallery, I came across a framed collage dating from the 1940s (I think). It was untitled, but the central item was a photograph of a white church, cut out of a magazine. The adjacent sign about the piece said that they had not been able to identify the structure, but thought it was a Catholic mission-style church from the American southwest.

Well, I was pretty sure I recognized it quite specifically. I Googled a bit on my phone to call up other photographs of the building I had in mind, and sure enough, they were the same.

It's the building in which I got married in 1984, at the tender age of 23, in St. George, Utah.

This was one of those odd, unsettling moments in which one is involuntarily picked up by a tornado of nostalgia from out of the blue. As I was explaining the strange sensation to my friends, one of the museum's docents wandered by. I asked if she had the means to pass information on to the curator. She did, so I told her what the building was, and showed her other photos of it on my phone as confirmation. I also pointed out how some other parts of the collage were thematically related to it in ways that had nothing to do with Catholicism (and, frankly, in ways that would have tipped off anybody who had looked closely at the piece). She dutifully wrote a note about it.

Maybe in a few months I'll go back and see if they have changed the sign. My guess is that they won't bother, but perhaps they'll surprise me.

PokerNews article #10

The last of my four-part series on poker-table buttons is now up:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/03/casino-poker-for-beginners-lammers-and-a-few-more-buttons-3689.htm

PokerNews article #9

This is the third of a four-part mini-series on the various kinds of buttons used in casino poker games:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/03/casino-poker-for-beginners-all-in-call-buttons-more-3584.htm

PokerNews article #8

Now posted here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/03/casino-poker-for-beginners-more-buttons-3498.htm

This is the second of four articles about all the buttons at a casino poker table.

Next PokerNews article

These usually come out on Tuesdays, either weekly or every other week (depending on the site's needs and my ambition), but today is an oddball posting day.

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/03/casino-poker-for-beginners-buttons-buttons-more-buttons-3464.htm

This is the first of what will be four--count 'em, FOUR--articles about all the buttons deployed in casino poker games.

Index to all of my articles is here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/casino-poker-for-beginners/

Superfocus busto

I liked my Superfocus glasses. I really did. It was great being able to turn a little dial and have anything at any distance be in perfect focus with the entirety of both lenses--something no single-vision, bifocal, trifocal, or progressive glasses can do.

But surely you noticed that the verbs in that paragraph are in the past tense. "Loved," not "love." "It was great," not "it is great."

About three weeks ago, I started noticing that the rear surface of the left flexible lens had a stubborn oily smear on it when I tried to clean the glasses every morning. It took me several days of dealing with this before it dawned on me what it was: it was the fluid leaking out. The reasons this wasn't immediately obvious were (1) it wasn't noticeably changing the optical characteristics, and (2) all the photos I had seen online of people with leaky lenses showed an obvious bubble in the fluid, which I did not have.

But after a week or so, enough fluid had been lost that the left lens was no longer focusing correctly. That got worse day by day. Now, after about two weeks of daily degradation, it's completely intolerable. My left and right lenses are focusing at completely different distances. If my right lens is set for computer distance, the left is focusing about 12 feet away. If they are relaxed all the way out for distance vision, the right is perfect, but the left actually adds a negative lens (i.e., concave) to my regular prescription, which is the last thing I need. It's driving me bug-nutty.

Well, I thinks, this is just a bump in the road. They have a one-year warranty against defects. So I'll send them back, have them repaired or replaced, and all will be well again. I tried calling the manufacturer to make arrangements for the work to be done.

But I kept getting their after-hours recorded message--even in the middle of the day--and nobody returned the calls. I tried their email customer service--no response.

I called my local authorized vendor. They had not heard of any trouble at Superfocus headquarters. (This brand is just a tiny part of their business. One of their employees once told me that they sell just three or four pairs a year there.) But they were happy to try to get me help. They have been calling and emailing for a week now. Nothing. When a company's factory-authorized retailers can't get messages returned, you know there's trouble in River City, trouble with a capital T.

The author of one of the reviews of the glasses I had relied on had been having some issues with Superfocus customer service, so I looked back at his blog to check for any updates. What I found was not comforting:

Update 2/27/2014. Those seeking information on SuperFocus glasses should take note of the following. At the present time it appears that Superfocus has ceased operation, or at least has paused operation while it "takes stock" in itself. I have absolutely no information about what is happening, however as of 2/24 Superfocus has declined to answer any phone calls or emails, and while their web site is still up, the "Shop" portion is inoperative. Multiple customers have stated that they had shipped their glasses to Superfocus for service and now are unable to get them back. It is my sincere hope that Superfocus will emerge from their current crisis in better, stronger condition, because their product is too good and game changing to be allowed to fail without a fight.

A commenter to this post added this:

I sent back, at SF request, two pair of Bauhaus frames and leaking lenses both tinted and clear about 3 weeks ago. As of last Thursday, when I called for a status update, I had to leave a message…no response. I called again today twice to hear a recording that I had reached them “after hours” when it was clearly during business hours. I again left a detailed message. It is my opinion that SF has gone out of business and left their customers “high and dry”. So, I am out about $2,000. I also have two pair or Leonardo frames. If anyone has any intel on what has become of SF, please post so we can all understand the situation/status of SF. 

And this:

Yes, something is definitely going on at SF, and it can’t be good. I had shipped my Leonardo focusing module to them two weeks ago to look at a coating issue. When I called yesterday to check on status, the recording said they would be “closed for inventory” from 02-24 to 03-03, and for “reconsidering our structure” or something like that. The message today is different – just saying it’s after normal working hours, which of course it is not. My first order of business is to get my focusing module back, not only because it is valuable, but because there is no other source for it. My second order of business is to hope they get their act together because I really don’t want to go back to progressives. I have left a message, sent a web site comment, and sent an email, so far without results. I also sent an email directly to the customer service rep I had been working with, and also no response. Most likely he is out of a job and has more to worry about than my focusing module. 

And this:

My situation is nearly identical. I sent back my Leonardo’s – which kept popping out of the frame – and spoke with someone two days after I sent them via Priority Mail. Now, it is simply a recording – and no “live chat” or anything else available. I am bummed. The investment is one thing — but then to NOT HAVE MY GLASSES RETURNED after I was coached to return them? That is a double-whammy. Our best bet may be to use Twitter, Facebook etc to call them out. 

I have left a message on the Superfocus Facebook page (at which time I noticed that they had linked to my November blog post describing my first month of use), asking point-blank whether they were still in business. No reply from the company, though somebody I don't know posted this response:

They seem to be RIP. They were open on 2/20 when I placed my order and by 2/24 gone. Meanwhile they went ahead and billed my flex spending.

I asked on Twitter. Nothing. I even tweeted Penn Jillette to ask if he had heard anything about the company's status. No reply. I have done a daily Google News search, hoping that I could learn of a bankruptcy filing, or a corporate takeover, or some sort of formal announcement that the company regretted that they were unable to continue in business and had laid off staff. Something. Anything. But no.

My problem is the not knowing. If I knew for sure that they were belly-up and there was no chance of getting my glasses repaired or replaced, I'd start the process of getting myself different ones. But I don't want to do that if Superfocus is just having some sort of temporary difficulty and will be back on its feet soon. Of course, if that were the case, you'd think that they'd be responding to their customers--or at least to their vendors--with some sort of hopeful message and a target date. The stone-cold silence can really only mean one thing, I'm afraid.

Still, I have two last slivers of hope. First, I'm having the local retail shop contact several others to ask whether their experience is the same and if they know anything about the situation. Second, I'm hoping that one of my readers in Southern California will do me the great favor of going to the company's street address and just seeing if there's anybody there in the middle of the day. Are the lights on? Door open? Mail piling up outside? If there is somebody there, what do they have to say about the deafening silence?

The address is 7065-2 Hayvenhurst Avenue, Van Nuys, CA, 91406. I've looked on Google Street View, and it's an ordinary office-type building, obviously not a factory. If anybody is willing to do that for me, I'd be most grateful. The not knowing is driving me crazy.

But I'm about 95% sure that the answer is going to be that they have just shut everything down with no notice--which is a pretty scummy way to exit, leaving everybody in a lurch. Even if a small miracle occurs and they come back from the dead and repair or replace my glasses, I'll never be able to recommend that anybody else take the risk of buying a pair because of the distaste, distrust, and uncertainty this will have left me with.

It's so sad. It was such a great idea, the first real game-changer in glasses since progressive lenses came along. I'm sorry that they apparently had pervasive engineering/design/manufacturing troubles and sales insufficient to sustain ongoing growth and improvement. I had really thought and hoped that I'd be wearing and promoting these things for years to come.



ADDENDUM, 3/8/2014 

My friend Rob was kind enough to take time to explore the street address when he was in the area on other business Friday. Here's his report:

Went by there this afternoon. The address is a 2 story suite of offices, maybe 10-12.  

Every single office appeared to be vacant. The specific address had no sign, no name on the door, no evidence that there had been a business there recently.  

But then, that was the case with EVERY office in the building. I am wondering if they had the whole property and just use "2" as the main office for mail & such.  

There was only one car in the lot--ONE. It was 4PM on a Friday afternoon. In Southern California finding any parking lot that time of day with so many empty spaces if virtually impossible.  

I did try the door and of course it was locked. Nothing (mail or whatever) piled up outside the door.    

Really no evidence that there had been any kind of active business there in quite some time. 

So that about tears it.

I went shopping for more conventional glasses Friday, and the optometrist at another local shop said she had heard through the professional grapevine that SF had gone out of business. I don't know why it's so hard to find information on the subject if it's common knowledge in the field.

Stupid is not malicious

Last week, the Palm Beach Kennel Club, which had hosted a WSOP circuit event, announced the results of their investigation into the unauthorized removal of a tournament chip from play when it was down to the last two players. You can read their announcement here, and the PokerNews article about the situation here.

Basically, the casino concluded that the player who won the tournament, Chan Pelton--whom I do not know and had never heard of before last week--removed a T25,000 chip to keep as a souvenir. It seems important to emphasize that the investigation determined that "the integrity of the event was in no way compromised, and the impact of the incident only caused harm to the perpetrator himself."

In spite of that conclusion, the club lowered the boom on Pelton. He was stripped of the title and the prize money, and banned from the property. Caesars, which owns the WSOP, compounded the punishment by imposing an indefinite exclusion from all their properties worldwide. Short of additionally turning him over to law enforcement on charges of theft and/or fraud, there is nothing more that they could have done to him.

And therein lies the problem, as I see it.

When I first saw the announcement on Twitter, I dashed off something about it seeming harsh, but then didn't think much more about it until Monday, when my friend Jennifer Newell addressed the subject in her column for poker.co.uk, here. She wholeheartedly approves of the maximum punishment handed out. Upon reading that piece, I knew that I disagreed, but it took some mulling before I figured out how to articulate what I think the problem is.

Let me do it point by point.

1. There should be no tolerance for cheating. 

To quote Mike Caro, "I have long-ago stated that poker cheaters should be boiled and eaten. If you think I’m not serious, you boil; I’ll eat."

Even long-time readers of mine will probably have forgotten that early in my Vegas years I was very nearly the victim of a poker tournament cheater. I still think it's a pretty interesting story, and my only personal experience with this sort of thing, so go read about it here. I cite this incident in order to quote my 2007 self, to prove that I've long been on record as advocating the severest possible penalties for actual cheating in poker:

He was, of course, disqualified from the event. I’m guessing that he is also banned from the premises permanently. I hope that he also goes into the infamous big black book of barred persons that the casinos share. In fact, I hope that they turned him over to the police and that he gets charged with criminal fraud—which this surely was. I wouldn’t even shed a tear if I learned that he received a bit of the old-school-Vegas back-room security “treatment” to help the lesson sink in a little deeper.

If there were substantial reason to believe that Pelton had broken the rules in an attempt to dishonestly boost his chances of winning, I'd be right there with the villagers, pitchfork and torch in hand, ready to burn the monster alive. But as far as I can tell from news accounts, that is not the case.

2. Pocketing the chip was monumentally stupid. 

This guy is no newbie. He has apparently won at least one WCOP circuit event plus other tournaments before. He knows the rules. He also must know that security cameras capture everything that happens on the tables. Furthermore, he's experienced enough that he surely understands the reasons behind the rule. For one with his level of knowledge and experience, stealing that chip can only be chalked up to world-class stupidity and hubris.

But.

3. Stupidity is not cheating. 

There is a fundamental difference between the act of a major-league dunderhead and the act of a cheater. To fail to recognize this is to make a category error, and a serious one at that.

Because the club and Caesars have imposed every penalty they have at their disposal, the result is that they have no harsher punishment to hand out to a player who is caught actually cheating. And the consequence of that is that it puts these institutions in the indefensible position of saying that (or at least acting as if) there is no meaningful difference between breaking a rule in order to gain an unfair advantage--an act of cheating--and breaking it in order to take home a souvenir--an act of stupidity.

Granted, one cannot always tell the difference with perfect clarity. But here his story of seeking a souvenir checks out. Yes, it is at least theoretically possible that he intended to introduce the chip into play to his advantage in some later tournament, or that he is part of a conspiracy ring to create a bunch of counterfeits. But those seem unlikely, given the circumstances. Though one cannot achieve 100% certainty, I think we can reach a reasonable level of confidence that his actions are much more consistent with his claimed intention than one more nefarious.

4. Stupidity should not be treated like cheating. 

The most troubling part of the club's announcement is this:

The player’s intent in taking the chip is not considered by the WSOP Tournament Rules.

True enough. But they seem to be implying that, therefore, they are not allowed to take "intent" into account in setting a punishment. That is not the case. Tournament rules do not prescribe a fixed penalty for any violation. In fact, they take great pains to ensure that the tournament staff have maximal flexibility to assign variable penalties for infractions of the rules depending on circumstances. For all sorts of rules violations, it is commonplace for the tournament director to modulate the penalty imposed based on whether the offense was deliberate versus inadvertent, whether it was a first violation versus a second or third, whether the player is a newcomer who didn't know a rule versus an old pro who damn well did, whether any other player was disadvantaged by the action, whether the violator is being apologetic or defiant, and so on. This is all as it should be.

To treat an act of stupidity as being indistinguishable from an act of outright cheating--which is what the casino and Caesars are doing here--is akin to the moronic zero-tolerance policies of schools that fail to make a distinction between the kid who yells "bang" while making a finger-gun, and the kid who actually brings a gun to school intending to kill a teacher. It is akin to being unable or unwilling to distinguish premeditated murder from involuntary manslaughter (i.e., an act of reckless endangerment resulting in a death).

Were I in charge, I would have favored lesser punishments: perhaps knocking him down to second place instead of first (since he had apparently already earned at least second-place money when the incident occurred), maybe combined with a one-year exclusion from any Caesars-sponsored poker tournaments. But I don't think I'd go so far as to make him forfeit all the prize money, nor bar him from setting foot in Caesars properties, nor make his exclusion from participation permanent.

Those are the kinds of maximum penalties that should be reserved for the worst offenses, which this was not, and the worst offenders, which Pelton is not.

Rusty

I played in a home game last night in a top-secret location. Not even the NSA knows about it.

I put in a lackluster performance, to put it the kindest possible terms. I ended up a small winner for the night (+ $140), but only because I lucked out in the biggest pot of the night--around $800. It was all in pre-flop, with my AK versus KK (making me about a 2:1 underdog), and I binked not just one but TWO aces on the board. I was not proud of myself.

That may not have even been the worst of it. I lost my whole first buy-in on a shove over another guy's raise in a situation in which--as I realized about a microsecond after announcing my all-in--he would only call with a better hand than mine. Which he had. Specifically, quads to my full house. I could have saved a decent chunk of money by just calling.

My physical actions were not nearly as consistent and unreadable as I like them to be; I felt like I was a tell-box, announcing what I was doing loudly and clearly to anybody who was paying attention.

I failed to pull the trigger in a couple of spots where I had a strong sense that it was the right thing to do, and was proven correct after folding.

I was disregarding position to a dangerous degree.

Now, any one of these things I might have done just as badly on any given night back in Vegas. But to cluster them all together in one session is pretty painful to watch in myself.

The trouble is compounded by the difficulty of leaving. It's quite a drive to get to the game, and it's only held occasionally. It's not like in Vegas, where I could realize I wasn't playing my best, be home in 15 minutes, and return fresh at my leisure the next day.

This is all quite disconcerting, and I'm not sure what to do about it, other than stew for a while.

"Reading his book is more fun than playing poker"

Ira Glass, of "This American Life," on poker and poker books:

BOOKS: When’s the last time you had time for your own reading? 

GLASS: Christmas. My wife had to work so I went to Vegas for five days. And Vegas for me means I play poker for an hour or two. Then I go to movies, restaurants, and the gym, and I read books. While I was there I finished Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.” That book takes you inside this world of very poor people in India but has none of that National Geographic quality, like someone doing anthropology. You have the same experience you have with great fiction. I also read “Phil Gordon’s Little Blue Book.” That’s my favorite poker book, and I’ve read a lot of poker books. Reading his book is more fun than playing poker. 

BOOKS: How long have you been reading poker books? 

GLASS: I don’t read them very often now, but when I was first learning poker I read all the standards: “Doyle Brunson’s Super System,” “Harrington on Hold ’em” by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie, and “The Theory of Poker” by David Sklansky. He’s like the Euclid of poker.

Whole thing here.

Ignorance of politicians

Jon Ralston, a long-time political reporter in Nevada, has a blog post about the remarkable week Senator Dean Heller had recently--remarkable in terms of the public display of his ignorance, untrustworthiness, inconsistency, pandering, and prejudices.

Here's my favorite part, on the subject of Internet gaming:

When he subsequently did an interview with Amy Tarkanian and Jeff Gillan on KSNV, Heller made it crystal clear he has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to the substance of the issue:  

“First of all we have to understand where we are today,” he said. “There’s something called the Wire Act passed a dozen or so years ago. That specifically said you can't gamble online.”  

The only facts he got wrong here are every one he stated.  

First, the Wire Act was passed in 1961, slightly more than a dozen years ago and was an attempt by Robert Kennedy to outlaw interstate gambling. Second, since the Internet did not exist, it did not say, “specifically you can’t gamble online.”  

Folks, this is a United States senator explaining his tortured position on an issue and clearly having no clue. None.

Whole thing here.

This is not just a United States senator; it's a United States senator representing Nevada, a state where gambling is the leading industry. A state that recently legalized in-state online poker and, just a few days ago, expanded that to interstate by entering a compact with Delaware to share player pools. And at least one of its two senators has no idea what the status of the law is on that subject.

It's not just that he doesn't know; it's that he's fully willing to put his ignorance on public display, apparently proud of it. It would be far more respectable if he would have said, "Y'know, that's something that I really should have a better handle on, but I have to admit I don't. Tell you what--let me bone up on the subject and then invite you to do a follow-up interview when I'm better prepared to discuss the details." But he doesn't even have the decency to be ashamed of his ignorance.

I was living in Minnesota when the state passed a law legalizing poker at horse racing tracks. But the legislature did something strange: they capped the betting at $60 per bet. This was explicitly done for the purpose of protecting citizens from losing too much money. (The worst abuses of liberty nearly always come in the guise of protecting people from themselves.)

Here's the perverse effect of that law: The racinos (the stupid word they came up with for the hybrid creatures) can spread $30-60 limit games, but not $1-2 no-limit games, even with a capped buy-in. Now, my readers are pretty well-informed about poker. So tell me: in which game do you think you can lose your life savings more quickly: a $1-2 NLHE game with a capped buy-in of, say, $500, or a FLHE $30-60 game?

Even though I think I'd have an edge on the competition, I wouldn't touch a $30-60 game, because I know how a fairly unremarkable streak of bad luck could wipe me out.

The point is this: the Minnesota legislature collectively knew nothing about poker, so they passed a law that makes no sense, simply because it sort of sounded like it might be a sensible thing.

This is no rarity. The great majority of legislators voting on the great majority of legislation know nothing or next to nothing about the subject of the bill. And they are not even a little bit embarrassed about their ignorance. They don't need to be, because most of their constituents are even less informed, so there's not much danger of being outed as an ignoramus among the people whose opinions matter. Most politicians care much more about image than fact. They care far more about what sound bites might make them look good or bad, as a result of a particular vote, than what the actual effects of the bill will be.

I could multiply examples endlessly, were I to go to another subject that I know pretty well--gun control. The stupidity of most firearms legislation might shock you, if you've never had it explained to you before. As just one fine example, here is an exhaustive, devastating analysis of everything that was wrong with the "assault weapons" ban proposed last year by Senator Dianne Feinstein. If you actually read that analysis, you will know more about the subject than most of the members of Congress who cast a vote on it.

I write all of this just to remind you of an important lesson: Most politicians are self-absorbed, ignorant, lying weasels whose main focus nearly all of the time is getting themselves reelected, not what's sensible or good for their state or nation, nor what's constitutional, nor what best promotes freedom and prosperity. It is vital to keep this in mind, so that you're never tempted to give them any more power, money, or control over your life than they currently have.


ADDENDUM 

Just a few minutes after posting this, I remembered an even better example that I wish I had used instead. A few years ago, Representative Carolyn McCarthy, one of the most persistent gun banners in Congress, proposed her own version of an "assault weapons" ban. Remember--this was her own bill, not just one that she was voting for. Yet Tucker Carlson asked her to explain some of the specific things that her proposed legislation would outlaw--and she didn't know what they were!

The most famous example from this interview is when he asked her to define a "barrel shroud," which her bill would have made illegal. A barrel shroud is simply a heat shield around a rifle barrel, so that you don't burn your hand on the gun when the barrel gets hot. It changes not one blessed thing about how far, how fast, or how accurately you can shoot a gun. It looks like this:

Now watch Rep. McCarthy flounder, then take a wild stab at guessing what it was that she wanted to ban:




Did you catch that? Carlson talks over her, so it's easy to miss it, but she says that a barrel shroud is the "shoulder thing that goes up."

Which led somebody to post this epic lampooning of her ignorance:

Has she been voted out of office by a constituency shocked by the humiliating sight of a member of Congress caught knowing nothing about her own proposed legislation? Nope. She still gets to cast one ignorant vote after another, and propose one stupid law after another.

Casino poker for beginners, #6

New post is up at PokerNews. It's the final of a three-part series on everything you need to know about poker chips.

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/02/casino-poker-for-beginners-all-about-chips-part-3-3363.htm

All of my articles are collected here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/casino-poker-for-beginners/

Poker gems, #469

Andrew Brokos, in Card Player magazine column, January 22, 2014 (vol. 27, #2), page 42.


There's nothing fishier than getting upset about how someone else plays. If you think I'm playing badly, then exploit me and take my money. If I'm giving you tough decisions, then by definition I'm doing something right. Either way, shut up and play the game.

Don't postpone joy

Laurey Masterton died yesterday. You've probably never heard of her. I'd like to correct that.

She was an Asheville institution--a chef, restaurant owner, author, activist, beekeeper, teacher, cyclist, and more.

I first heard of her last year, a few months after moving to Asheville, when her last book was published: The Fresh Honey Cookbook: 84 Recipes from a Beekeeper's Kitchen. I read this article/interview about it in a local paper and was intrigued, so I ordered a copy and read it. It's a cookbook of sorts, with all of the recipes using either honey or ingredients that depend on bees for pollination. But it's more than that. It's a primer on bees and beekeeping, plus an introduction to the wide variety of honeys, how they differ, and how to use each kind to its best advantage.

Of course I've long known that some people get deeply into wine, beer, coffee, or any of a number of other foodstuffs for which there are endless varieties and a wealth of accumulated intricate knowledge to master. But I had no idea that honey was among the items for which one could develop a refined palate. This idea fascinated me. I have always liked honey (who doesn't?), but I had never paid the subject any attention, and always just grabbed the cheapest stuff on the grocery store shelf, figuring that it was all pretty much the same.

Boy, was I wrong.

Masterton's book caused me to become slightly obsessed with finding some locally produced honey to sample. After failing to find any in the grocery stores, I started going to farmer's markets, and finally ran into a beekeeper from a nearby town who was selling jars of the honey he had collected from his own hives. It was $12 a jar, which was three or four times what you'd pay for the same amount of Sue Bee. But I bought it anyway.

It was a revelation. I was bowled over by how good this stuff was. It was light but rich, complex, aromatic, intensely floral. Literally with one taste it permanently ruined ordinary honey for me; I can never again be satisfied with the mass-market swill.

I found the same beekeeper at the next farmer's market, and bought three more jars to get me through the winter, plus three to send to family members as Christmas gifts--and I included copies of Masterton's book to help explain why I was suddenly excited about honey.

I kept meaning to stop in at Laurey's Cafe in downtown Asheville for a meal, and hope that she was there so that I could thank her for opening my eyes to an interesting (and delicious) subject I barely knew existed. But I never followed through. The one time I was about to go, I checked the web site just before I left the house, and found that they were closed that day.

Now she has died, succombing finally to the ovarian cancer that she had been dealing with for many years, and my procrastination caused me to miss the chance to thank her. This post is my small attempt to make up for that fault. It's ironic--or perhaps fitting--because her life's motto was "Don't postpone joy." She might have added, "Don't postpone giving thanks where it's due." Without even knowing I existed, she made my life a little bit richer just by sharing what she was passionate about.

You can read more about Masterton here and here and here. And so that you can hear her voice and see her face, here's a talk she gave in 2010 at TEDx Asheville about what she learned from the bees she kept:

Casino poker for beginners, #5

The next article in my series for PokerNews is now up:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/02/casino-poker-for-beginners-all-about-chips-part-2-3295.htm

As always, the whole series is indexed here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/casino-poker-for-beginners/

Beautiful quads

Or at least they WOULD be beautiful...

If this hadn't been *&$%^@# RAZZ!

Does a pair of D's beat a pair of R's?

An amusing and instructive post from Tommy Angelo, about how an experienced player can be yanked back to the anxiety of a newcomer:

http://learn.pokernews.com/poker-strategy-theory/tilt-for-beginners-miffed-in-montreal-2856.htm

Poker gems, #468

Andrew Brokos, in Card Player magazine column, February 5, 2014 (vol. 27, #3), page 46.


If you aren't comfortable backing your reads with the money you have on the table, then you have too much money on the table.

Next PokerNews article

My latest article for PokerNews has been posted today:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/02/casino-poker-for-beginners-all-about-chips-part-1-3230.htm

It's the first of a three-part series: all you need to know about poker chips.

Don't get tilted about the rules...

...no matter how stupid they may be. Excellent advice in a new blog post from Tommy Angelo.

http://learn.pokernews.com/poker-strategy-theory/tilt-for-beginners-writhing-over-rules-3157.htm

Superb Owl poker (conclusion)

I finally decided to call. I can't give you even a lick of math to justify it, but my sense was that the number of ways I could be ahead, the number of ways I could catch up if I were behind, and the size of the pot made it worth the further investment.

Our hole cards were revealed, and he had almost the worst possible cards: J-10. (The worst would have been 9-9, which would leave me with 8 cards for a chop, just 1 for the win.) So he had, in fact, done what I had quickly concluded he almost surely had not done--paid $25 for just a gutshot straight draw. Of course, they were soooooted, which explains his pre-flop call.

The odds were, obviously, not in my favor at this point. The Poker Pro table stats showed him at 77% to win, me only 23%.

But once in a while, the good guys win in spite of blundering. A beautiful, beautiful 6 hit the river, giving me a full house and my biggest pot of the night--about $375.

New article at PokerNews

My third article for PokerNews has now been posted:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/02/casino-poker-for-beginners-your-first-round-of-play-3170.htm

As always, the whole series can be found here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/casino-poker-for-beginners/

Superb Owl poker*

Yesterday Nina (aka Cardgrrl) and I drove out to Harrah's Cherokee. My idea of poker rooms during the big game was formed by years in Vegas--promotions galore, every table full, action to beat the band.

Alas, I learned last night that things are just not the same in a casino without a sports book. Apparently, if people can't bet on the game, they're not much interested in watching the game from a casino. Huh. Who knew? (This is the kind of thing that you might think would be obvious to me in advance, but since I don't engage in other forms of gambling, it isn't. I'm generally pretty ignorant about how most people approach gambling.)

The poker room had only two $1-2 tables going, and they were heavily populated with the local regulars--not what I had had in mind.

It has been a very long time since I posted about a difficult decision and let you, my adoring readers, ponder what you would do in my place. Last night I had a hand that might make for a good one.

I had bought in for $200, and at this point in the festivities was up to about $325. I was under the gun with 8c-8d and made a small raise, to $6. A few people called before the small blind (who had me covered by $100 or so) reraised to $13. She was the tightest player at the table, and I had never seen her three-bet before. That she would do it from bad position made it even more obvious that she had one of only three hands: Q-Q, K-K, or A-A.

However, her raise was small enough and her stack big enough to make it worth set-mining, so I called. One other player called behind me--by far the most inexperienced and erratic player in the game. I had already stacked him once when I made a straight and he wouldn't fold two pair to my all-in check-raise. So we're taking the flop three ways, with a pot of about $50.

The flop was 6h-7d-9c, giving me an open-ended straight draw, and mostly extinguishing my worries of getting on the wrong end of set over set. Small blind bet $25. Both of us called, pushing the pot to about $125.

Turn was the 8h, giving me a set and putting a second heart on the board. Small blind checked. I checked, too, suddenly unsure of where things stood. Rookie immediately clicked all in for about $125, just about the size of the pot. Small blind sighed and folded.

So it was to me. What should I do? What does he have? Is it worth risking that much when I could be way behind? I had about $285 left at this point; losing another $125 wouldn't break me, but it would wipe out all my profit for the session plus some, and would be pretty demoralizing.

Of course with four to a straight on the board, I had to consider the possibility that he already had a straight. But as I tanked, I kept coming back to the fact that if he had a straight, he had to have either flopped and slow-played it with 10-8 or 5-8, or he had paid $25 on the flop to draw to a gutshot. In the latter case, he could have any hand with a 10 in it (A-10 down to 10-10), or perhaps 5-5. But despite his general inexperience, I just didn't think he would put in $25 to hit one of four outs, when he had to expect that he would be charged an even heftier price to see the river. Nor did I think that he would have stuck with 10-8 or 5-8 after a preflop reraise. (I'm not going to explore what he might have thought his two opponents had, because I think he was at the level of basically playing just the strength of his own cards, and had almost no hand-reading skill.)

But if both of those surmises were correct, then what was he doing? Did he flop and slow-play a set? Two pair, perhaps having started with 6-7 suited connectors? (After all, in our earlier clash, he had proven himself willing to go to the mat for two pair when every other player at that table would have known it was no good.) Maybe he had 9-10 suited for flopped top pair and gutshot and that had been enough to keep him interested. Starting with 4-5 would have given him a flopped OESD, but surely he would have seen that hitting an 8 would make his hand yet still cause him to lose to anybody holding a 10--effectively making him want only four outs (the treys), same as a gutshot draw. Or maybe he had 8-9 suited connectors, and now had two pair and the straight draw, which might be enough to make him decide to push his hand when both of us checked in front of him. That might make sense, as flopping top pair and open-ender might be enough to get him to pay $25 for another card. But on the other hand, that theory required him to have the only 8 not accounted for, which seemed improbable.

If he had any two-pair combination, I was in excellent shape against him. If he had another set it was about 67% to be lower than mine and 33% to be higher. If he had any pair and draw combination, he might have a decent number of outs, but the math would be in my favor. But weighed against all of that, if he already had a straight, then I would be drawing to just nine or ten outs to hit a full house or quads ( the number depending on whether he had a pair to go with his straight). And, of course, a 10 hitting the river would put a straight on the board and chop the pot between us, unless he had a jack. A five would also put a straight on the board, but again could be no good for a chop if he held a 10.

In short, the whole situation was a damned mess. I didn't know if I was ahead or behind, and if I was behind I didn't know how many different river cards might save me--and for some of them it might be for only half of the pot. If you can mentally crunch the numbers on a situation like that, you're way smarter than I am.

So, dear readers--what do you think he had? And what would you have done? What do you think I did? What do you think the outcome was? (Remember that often I tell these stories not knowing the answers because I end up folding, with no revelation of the villain's cards. No promises of a satisfying resolution to the story!)

I'm going to go write the follow-up post now, set to appear in 24 hours. Get your answers in via the comments before then.



*Titled so as not to run afoul of any copyright issues.

When do you need to think hard?

Jen Shahade is an interesting person. I had the privilege of having breakfast with her during the WSOP two or three years ago, so can report that she is bright, funny, and charming. She plays poker well, but chess even better. Today she presented at TedX Baltimore, addresing a phenomenon common to both poker and chess, specifically, that sometimes it is necessary to think long and hard about a decision, and other times it is to your advantage to think very little and very quickly about a decision--even falling back onto a well-rehearsed default plan. Given that time and thought energy are limited resources, how do you know how much thinking a specific decision calls for?

You can watch her 11-minute presentation here:

http://new.livestream.com/tedx/baltimore2014

Go to about the 49:00 mark.

(Hat tip: @writerjen.)

More actual poker

I again woke up feeling like playing some poker, so once again I traipsed to Harrah's Cherokee. I lost $200 quickly though a combination of sub-par play on my part, better-than-average opponents, and bad luck. But then the better players left, and I started the long slog to rebuild my stack. It took another four hours, but I left ahead by $252. Because of the weird psychology of poker sessions, this actually felt like a $450 win.

Sadly, again this week there were no hands that struck me as sufficiently interesting to recount in detail.

I did very much like the screen name for the Poker Pro tables chosen by the player next to me, though you'll probably have to have seen the movie "Rounders" to get the joke:

I think I might have to do this "poker" thing more often. It's fun AND profitable! Who knew?

Very Josie has a favor to ask of you

Go read about it here: 

http://veryjosie.blogspot.com/2014/01/ahem-its-very-josie.html

Casino Poker for Beginners, part 2

It's now posted on PokerNews, here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/01/casino-poker-for-beginners-keeping-and-changing-seats-3023.htm

The whole series, as it unfolds, will be found here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/casino-poker-for-beginners/

MLK Day poker

I woke up today feeling like I needed a dose of poker, not another day of my usual work. So I drove out to Harrah's Cherokee and played for about four hours, taking home several $100 bills that had not been mine when I arrived.

In one hand, it really paid off to have been keeping track of my opponents' patterns. One older gentleman across the table from me just adored under-representing his big hands, then letting another player do the betting for him. I lost about $50 to him in a very early hand because of that. But once I adjusted to what he was doing--i.e., the fact that if he stayed in a pot he usually had a significantly stronger hand than he was letting on--it was pretty easy to handle him. And about two hours into the session, it led to an opportunity to double my money.

I had Q-9 of diamonds on the button. Several limped in ahead of me (it was a chronically passive limpfest), so I raised to $8. (All dollar amounts in this post are approximate; I did not take notes.) Mr. Passive was my only caller.

The flop was Qh-8c-3h. He checked. I bet $11 into the $21 pot. He called.

The turn was another queen. Excellent. He checked again. I bet $22. He called. This mostly ruled out the possibility that he was on a flush draw. He might pay to see one card, but he was too tight to pay to see the river if he had nothing but a draw--even a good one. There were no hands that would have flopped two pair that he would have played from early position, especially after my raise. So I could pretty much narrow his holdings down to an overpair (A-A or K-K, and yes, he would play them in this odd way) or a queen. If he had a queen, he had me beat, because I was confident he would not have called my pre-flop raise with anything less than a jack kicker, and probably not less than a king kicker.

This meant that I would have a potentially tricky decision on the river: Do I assume he has an overpair and will pay off my trips a third time, or do I assume he has a queen with a better kicker, and hope to just check it down?

Just as I was wrestling with this problem, the PokerPro table flashed the nine of hearts for our final board card, giving me the nuts. It was perfect. He probably wouldn't put me on a flush draw, and if I had been wrong about his drawing propensity, he had just gotten to the hand he wanted, not knowing it was now a loser. If he had an overpair, it probably didn't change anything. But if he had been slow-playing a bigger queen, he was sunk.

He checked again. The pot was now about $85. I had about $160 left, and Mr. Passive had me covered by just a few bucks. How much would he pay off?

Well, another factor came into play. I had twice gotten lucky after playing speculative hands aggressively, with the hands shown. Once I raised a short-stacked opponent all-in on the flop with just a baby flush draw and got there, besting her top/top. Another time I did it with my suited connectors having only flopped second pair, and the other guy called me with top pair, only to see me hit trips on the turn. So I knew that Mr. Passive might be looking to catch me trying to blow him off of a decent hand with an all-in bluff. That was the deciding factor: I was going to go for the gold and hope that he read me as being out of line again. I can no longer remember who it was, but a blogger I used to read, who played mostly online, loved the phrase, "Overbet for value," and that was screaming inside my head. It's pretty rare that I'll shove double the size of the pot on the river, but this seemed like a damned good time to make an exception.

I tapped the "all in" and "confirm" buttons, and less than two seconds later he had registered his call. He had A-Q, and had been well ahead until my lucky three-outer on the river.

Maybe the surgeon general should issue a stern proclamation to be posted in poker rooms around the country: "WARNING: SLOW-PLAYING MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH."

Rare hand

At first glance, this appears to be two pretty ordinary fouled hands in a game of open-face Chinese poker.

But look again. There's something peculiar about the hand on the right. Go ahead--take a closer look. I'll wait.




Do you see it? She got 13 cards with no pair--a 13-card straight!

If you dealt out 13 cards from a well-shuffled deck, what is the probability that you'd get that result? I don't know, but let's figure it out.

The first card can obviously be anything. To state the trivially obvious, the probability of getting a non-pairing first card is 1.00, or 100%. The second card can be anything except a pair to the first. So with 51 cards left in the deck, 3 kill our hopes for the Big Straight, and 48 keep it going. The probability of a card that doesn't pair the first one, then, is 48/51, or 0.941, or 94.1%.

The third card must not pair either of the first two. There are 50 cards left in the deck, of which 6 will create a pair and 44 will not. So the probability of getting a non-pairing card is 44/50, or 0.880, or 88.0%.

We continue this pattern. When we're ready to deal the 13th card, there are 40 cards left in the deck, of which just 4 will complete our lovely 13-card straight, while 36 will pair one of the first 12 cards now on the board. The probability of hitting one of our "outs" is therefore 4/40, or 0.100, or 10.0%.

Because every one of the 13 events we've described must occur in order to end up with the 13-card-no-pair hand, we multiply all of the individual probabilities together: 1.00 x 0.941 x 0.880 ... x 0.100. The final product, if I didn't screw up the calculation, is 0.000106, or 0.0106%. To put it in the conceptually easiest terms, this will occur about 1 in 9460 hands. If I've ever seen this happen before in an OFC game, I didn't notice it.

You may be tempted to think that knowing 13 other cards along the way (i.e., the ones dealt to me in the picture above) changes this probability, but it doesn't. It would change our ongoing estimate, card by card, as to whether this hand will play out as a 13-card straight. But the question I've really asked is how often the deck will have been arranged by a random shuffle so the 13 cards destined to go to player X will contain no pairs. When asked that way, it makes no difference what happens to the other 39 cards, whether they are seen or unseen. The answer does change if instead we ask the probability of a shuffled deck yielding a 13-card straight to somebody when two (or three, or four) players are dealt in, but it makes my head hurt to think about how to calculate that, so I'll leave it to somebody else.

New series for PokerNews

I'm visiting family in Utah this week, but I had to pop in to announce that I'm going to be writing about poker again on a semi-regular basis. Several months ago PokerNews launched a new section for beginning players: learn.pokernews.com. I've been invited to contribute articles introducing new players to the ways in which poker in casinos differs from home games and online games. That is, my goal is to clue people in to what to expect before their first casino poker trip, if their only previous experience is either online or in casual home games. Tentative plans are for me to do a new article every two weeks. 


I think that most of my readers are well past the point of needing the tutorials that this series will offer, but if you're curious how I'll address a different audience, take a look. The first installment went live earlier today, here:

http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/01/casino-poker-for-beginners-getting-into-the-game-2956.htm 

I would have put this announcement up sooner, but I was driving to Greenville, SC, then flying from there to Salt Lake City.

Gratuitous cat photos

Lucy is usually camera-shy; as soon as she sees me pointing the thing at her, she walks away, or at least stops doing the cute thing she had been doing up to that point. Today, however, she lay down in a nice beam of morning sunlight from the window, and calmly let me snap a few shots showing off how beautiful she is. I couldn't pick just one favorite, so I'm posting all four, like a ridiculously proud cat-daddy. 

A trip to Harrah's Cherokee--with poker content!

Today I drove out to the only legal poker room in North Carolina, Harrah's Cherokee, and played some $1-2 NLHE for five hours or so on one of their Poker Pro electronic tables. It's the first time I had been there since September, and also the first time I've gone there without Nina. I had a nice drive, listening to some podcasts of "This American Life" in the car. The game was reasonably fun and easy. I left with a couple hundred bucks more than I started with, which is always nice. Sadly, there were no hands of sufficient interest to post histories/discussions, other than the brief accounts I posted to Twitter:

On the way back home, I stopped briefly at a roadside curiosity: The Hemlock Motel. Not a name I ever would have chosen for a business. As you can tell, it's no longer in business. Strangely, some of the rooms are wide open.

I blame my girlfriend for infecting me with her fascination with buildings and objects displaying rust, decay, and abandonment.

As the name implies, the casino is on the Cherokee Indian reservation. One of the interesting things about the town of Cherokee is that the street signs have the street names in both English and Cherokee, like this:

(For more on the language and writing system, see here.) About four years ago, Nina and I were privileged to get a look inside the periodicals vault at the Library of Congress. (I wrote about that here.) One of the things we saw on the "recent acquisitions" shelf was a collection of the earliest editions of the first American newspaper printed in Cherokee. I wonder how many people are still fluent in that language and its notation. Not many, I'd guess.

All in all, it was such a nice day that it made me think I should repeat the experience more often than I have been.

Merry Christmas

Christmas this year finds me more generally content with my life than I have been in a dozen years. I hope the same is true of you and yours.

One of this year's new contributors to my happiness continues to be my kitty, Lucy. Here's a video of her that only her daddy could love--her Christmas present. It's a big hunk of freeze-dried turkey. Usually she gets these (her favorite treats) only a one-bite size piece at a time, but today I gave her a whole one. I had hoped to be amused by watching her claw it open, but her reaction was a little underwhelming. Oh well. As you can see at the very end, she went kind of bonkers once I helped her get past the wrapping.

Kennections

I like the "Kennections" puzzles that Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings does twice a week for Parade.com. You answer five trivia questions, then have to figure out what theme all five answers have in common.

For a while, they accepted reader submissions. The ones that Ken liked best would run on the web site, and the authors would receive copies of Ken's books. I submitted four, none of which was ever selected. Rigged, obviously.

Anyway, last night I thought up another one--my best yet. I got the questions typed up just right, then went to fill in the submission form on the Parade web site. I was dismayed to discover that they have terminated the reader contribution feature.

But I can't just let this go unused. So I'm putting it here for your amusement. (It has nothing to do with poker.) I can't do the nifty magically-appearing answers like Parade does. I'll just have to rely on big blocks of blank text, forcing you to scroll down for the answers. I'll give you the five trivia questions, then a blank space, then the answers to those questions, then another blank space, then the answer to what the five answers have in common--the thing that Parade calls the "Kennection" between them.

Here we go.

1. Earth’s southernmost active volcano, Mt. Erebus, is found on which continent?

2. What December 23^rd (hey, that's today!) holiday does a famous 1997 episode of “Seinfeld” describe as Frank Costanza’s alternative to an overly commercialized Christmas?

3. “Sweet Adelines” is the name for the female counterpart to what form of male quartet?

4. What type of public school uses a specialized curriculum to attract students from across geographically defined district borders?

5. In what city’s shipyards did electrician Lech Walesa become a trade union activist, leading to the formation of the Solidarity movement?

Scroll down for the answers. 

1. Antarctica. 

2. Festivus. 

3. Barbershop. 

4. Magnet. 

5. Gdansk. 

Now, figure out what those five answers have in common, then scroll down for the answer. 

They all have poles. (Or, in the case of Gdansk, Poles.)

How did you do?

Pearl Harbor

Long before my six years in Vegas that recently ended, I lived there for two years, 1980-82. During that time, I got to know a man in Henderson named Ralph Briggs. He told me once that he had been a Navy radio operator. He said that several days before December 7, 1941, he had intercepted a message from the Japanese fleet about an attack soon to be launched. He dutifully passed the message up the chain of command, then was on leave when the attack occurred. He later learned that the message he had intercepted had been ignored, and, as a result, Pearl Harbor was not at all prepared for the attack.

Even though I judged him to be an exceptionally honest, honorable man, frankly I assumed that he must be pulling my leg--not because I knew anything about the subject, but just because it seemed astronomically unlikely that I happened to know the one guy whose message, if heeded, would have changed the outcome of the single most pivotal event in 20th-century history. There are always more pretenders than real heroes, more people claiming to have been watching the JFK motorcade in Dallas than were actually there, etc.

Many years later, I was watching a string of History Channel documentaries that they were showing on an anniversary date. (It was probably 2001, on the 60th anniversary.) There on the screen was Ralph Briggs, telling the same story, which was being treated as a fully credible and factual account. I'm not entirely sure which program it was, because now I know that he's been in at least a couple, but it may well have been this BBC-produced show, "Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor." Start watching at about 53:00 to hear Ralph. (The screen capture above is from this video.)

I have since learned that his story is hotly disputed. Some writers take him at his word, and accept that the lack of expected documentary evidence to support his account is because of later tampering with the records as part of a cover-up. See, for example, a relatively short book chapter devoted to the whole affair, readable via Google Books here. On the other extreme, some say that his account is "too full of holes to hold up to much scrutiny."

I have no way of knowing where the truth lies. Maybe he really was the Paul Revere of his time whose message was tragically disregarded. Maybe he was a crackpot, trying to claim for himself a place in history that he didn't deserve. Maybe he was sincere but wrong, as memories can become distorted by time and subsequent events. For example, maybe he really did intercept and pass on a message, but it was rightly ignored because it was not, in fact, anything of military significance, and he retrospectively imbued it with content and/or meaning that it did not have. Whatever the truth, it is, at least, an interesting story. In fact, that we cannot now know what really happened kind of makes it more interesting.

Absent strong evidence, which seems unlikely ever to come forth, I would never swallow the extreme conspiracy theory that Franklin Roosevelt had specific knowledge of the impending attack and squelched it so that Americans would be provoked into supporting his desire to get involved in WWII. However, I find it entirely plausible that, as with September 11, 2001, there were a multitude of clues which our various intelligence services failed to assemble and interpret correctly. I also think it's plausible that some such clues were later swept away to prevent political embarrassment. I certainly don't know that this happened, but it would hardly be the most nefarious thing the military brass ever did.

Today I got wondering if Ralph was still alive. It seemed unlikely. Sure enough, I found his 1998 obituary in the Chicago Tribune, here. So he was already dead by the time I was discovering that I was far from the only one who had heard his claims. It is, in fact, a well-known little curiosity among both conspiracy buffs and serious historians of that chapter of American history.

I spent a few hours again today watching some documentaries on Pearl Harbor, which is what prompted this little trip down memory lane. I think it's impossible not to be moved by the stories of both heroism and loss. To all those, living and dead, who experienced that awful day firsthand, and to the memory of Ralph Briggs, I offer my thanks.