From the Desk of the Poker Philosopher

In the wake of last year's legislation, there was some concern that Harrah's would not accept internet qualifiers into the World Series of Poker this year. Then again, this has apparently technically been their policy for a long time, and the sites have simply had some third party pay the entrance fee for players who qualify through them. It's still not clear exactly how things will shake out this year, but Poker Stars has started running Main Event satellites with the same terms as last year. They've always been very generous and accomodating to their qualifiers, so I'm confident that somehow, they'll take care of us as always. Click here for more information about the Poker Stars satellites.

The WSOP satellites and sub-satellites can be tremendous cash cows for skilled players, for a few reasons:

1. They entice relatively poor players to play at larger stakes than they ordinarily would. Given that as little as $2 can theoretically set someone on the road to the WSOP, there are a lot of ways for players who usually make their bets with decimal points to find themselves making three-, four-, or even five-figure decisions. Their inevitable mistakes will be tremendously costly.

2. Between tournaments that guarantee a certain number of seats and other benefits, such as sponsorship, that sites offer to entice players into their satellites, there's a lot of overlay to be had. Bodog's satellites were notorious for this last year, but since one of their players won the 2006 main event, that may not be the case this year. Poker Stars pretty much always makes their guarantees, but occasionally a $30 rebuy has been known to run some overlay. However, since winning a Poker Stars satellite also qualifies you for $1000 or free hotel as part of a sponsorship deal, there's effectively 9% overlay guaranteed in all of their satellites (enough to cancel out the rake and make these an even-money proposition for a player of average skill).

3. Satellites that may multiple spots give smart players an extra edge. Even good players often fail to adapt properly to satellite bubble situations, where seemingly bizarre plays such as folding AA pre-flop can be correct. Adanthar, one of the best tournament players online, made a great post about this on 2+2 last year.

I'm generally very conservative with my bankroll management. For tournaments that I play regularly, I generally want to have 200 buy-ins in my bankroll. However, I made an exception for WSOP satellites last year and would recommend that others do the same this year. For one thing, you can expect a higher than average Return on Investment (ROI) and thus lower variance.

For another, playing in the WSOP is just a fantastic experience, both enjoyable in its own right and a great way to improve as a poker player. With its great structure, you really get your money's worth of play, and once again, can expect a higher ROI.

If I had to give you a rule, I'd say you could get away with having just 100 buyins in your bankroll for the satellite you want to play. The only caveat is that you need to be confident that the money which will be on the line if you do qualify for the WSOP will not affect your play. You can't allow a fear of busting out early from the main event prevent you from playing your best.

So far I've been talking about the direct satellites to the main event, but for those with smaller bankrolls, the sub-satellites can be cash cows in their own right, since Stars will allow you to unregister and collect $W for any seat you win. You're still restricted in how you use the $W, but it can go towards preliminary WSOP events, satellites to other live events, or World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) tournaments. If you accumulate enough of it, you might even want to take a few shots at the direct qualifiers.

Labels: poker, poker strategy, wsop

Stumble It!

First, it sounds like Full Tilt will once again be able to offer withdrawal by check to its US customers. According to FTPSean, their rep on the 2+2 message boards,

"Starting this week, our check service will be upgraded in the following ways:

* Checks delivered by regular mail should be received within 10 business days instead of our previous 25 business day time frame.

* Players have the option of requesting overnight delivery for a charge of $25 instead of the previous $33.50 fee. (The 10 days above includes a 1-3 day processing time that would apply to overnight checks as well. So total time to have a check in your hands when choosing overnight would be 2 to 4 business days.)

* Checks issued for $2,500 or more will be sent by overnight delivery free of charge.

* The minimum amount for a check is now $150 instead of the previous $300.

Checks sent outside of the continental US may take a little bit longer."

The only issue more important to me than how the fish can keep putting money online is how I can get mine off. It will be great to have checks available again from FTP, because recently, they haven't had a cashout option with which I felt comfortable.

Still open is the question of why this took so long, given that Poker Stars and Ultimate Bet have been able to process checks with hardly any delay at all, but for now, I'll just be glad to have checks back.

Labels: poker

Stumble It!

I know I said I wasn't going to use the blog to whine about stuff, but I'm making an exception, you'll see why. The last few Saturdays I've either been out of town or had Boston Debate League obligations, so this was the first time in like a month that I'd gotten to play poker. Saturday is special because Poker Stars and Full Tilt both offer special weekly $320 tournaments, and Poker Stars also has its weekly $475 satellites for the European Poker Tour.

I was excited to play these, firing up the EPT Dortmund satellite at 11:15, the EPT Warsaw satellite at noon, the Poker Stars $320 and $109 tournaments at 1:00, and the Ultimate Bet $109 at 2:00.

Everything got off to a good start: I doubled up early on in the Dortmund satellite when there was a raise to 90, two calls, and then I made it 500 to go with AK in the Big Blind. The raiser folded, and the first caller thought for a moment before putting me all in for about 2000 more. I figured he had something, but could definitely be playing back at me a little light since it was a good spot for me to squeeze. Since he didn't reraise the first raiser, I slightly discounted big pairs like AA and KK, figuring his most likely holding to be a good medium pair like 88-JJ. I called and out-raced his QQ.

I got knocked out of the Stars $300 almost immediately. Still in level 1, I called a late position raise with A4s in the CO. The BB called as well, and the flop came Q53, giving me a flush draw, a gut shot, and an overcard to the board. The CO overbet the pot for like 220, which was not a good sign for me. He likely had top pair with a good kicker and wants to get the money in. But if he has KQ, I'm a decent favorite, and even if he has AQ, I've got the equity to get it in. So I raise to 750, and to my surprise the BB hesitates and cold calls. I'm not sure what to make of that, but it's probably good for me, since even if he has a set it doesn't hurt my equity enough to counteract the added benefit of having better odds to chase my draws.

The first player now moved all in for 2500. I was definitely priced in to call, and the BB tanked before coming along as well. The BB had AQ and the other guy had KQ, a good situation for me, though I ended up missing everying and getting eliminated. But if anyone was wondering, yes, the Saturday $300 has some bad players in it.

In the Warsaw satellite, I lost a sizeable pot early on to a terrible player. Some guy in late position open limped, the terrible guy completed from the SB, and I checked A7 in the BB. The flop was J72r, and the SB min-bet for 30. I raised to 90 to chase out the limper behind me and see how the SB would respond. He called. The turn was an A, giving me two pair. He min-bet again, and this time I raised close to the size of the pot, making it 250 to go. He called again. The river was an 8, and he bet out 100. I really didn't see how I could be beat here, and this guy seemed like a calling station, so I raised to 500, and he called with T9 for a rivered nut straight. Yes, he chased a gut shot on the flop and turn, then when he made the best possible hand on the river, he just called my raise. I was mad to lose the pot, but was licking my chops at the prospect of abusing this calling station, who was to my immediate right (best place for him).

The next few times he open limped I raised 5x with whatever cards I had (the EPT satellites have a great structure, so even after losing that big pot, there was still room for deep-stacked play). Generally he folded pre-flop or check-folded the flop. Eventually, I got the opportunity to make a big bluff that only kind of involved this guy but made me really happy anyway.

I raised 33 UTG to 90, the Button called, and the calling station called from the BB. On a Qs9x5s flop, he makes another stupid little min bet of 30 into a pot of 285. There weren't a lot of draws for him to have, but whatever he had, I was pretty sure he was weak, so I made it 120, again to chase out the guy behind me and see how SB responded. Unfortunately, the Button called after some hesitation, and the SB called. Just from the timing of the Button's call, I had a feeling he was weak and just didn't think I had anything.

The turn was an off-suit deuce. SB checked, and I checked as well, looking to see what the Button would tell me about his hand. If his bet looked weak, I was planning to check-raise him all in. Sure enough, he bet 300 into a pot of 645. The SB folded, and I moved all in for 1890, forcing the Button to throw away whatever mediocre hand he had. That's another nice thing about the EPT satellites: because they are a pretty big buy-in and have a good structure, people aren't as willing to gamble for all their chips as they are in regular tournaments.

Anyway, I got up a nice stack in the Warsaw tournament, then got blinded down and ended up moving all in with AQs for 5x, only to be called by K8s in the BB. I flopped top pair but he turned a flush to knock me out.

By that time, though, I was in good shape in the other tournaments I was playing and not that disappointed. The guy whose QQ had lost to my AK some time ago in the Dortmund was still at the table, and he would berate me from time to time for my "stupid call." Even though he'd recovered nicely and had a lot of chips, I could tell he was still angry.

At the 50/100 level, I picked up AK UTG and raised to 300. My little friend called on the Button, and we saw a lovely flop of K25r. I bet 450 and he called. The turn was a 9 and he called a bet of 1100. The river was an offsuit 4, and I put him all in for his last 3000 chips. He thought for two minutes before calling with TT. After that I was over 10K in chips and one of the top 10 stacks.

A while later I was moved to another table with a couple other top 10 stacks. I lost a few medium pots early on to a player on my left who clearly thought I was too aggressive. At the 100/200 level, I raised to 600 UTG+1 with 99, and the guy to my left immediately make it 1600. With his less than 3x reraise, I put him on a big pair, probably Aces. I had 12000 chips and he had me covered, so I could afford to call and try to hit my 9. Sure enough, flop is 9JcKc. This actually isn't the best flop in the world, because if he does had KK or JJ, I'm in serious trouble, but there's no getting away now. I lead out for 2400, he min-raises to 4800, I move all in and he calls a bit reluctantly with his AA. Now with 25K chips, I was in the top 3, though there were still some 40 players left, with 8 seats worth nearly $9000 a piece to be paid out.

Around this time, I realized I'd forgotten to register for the $320 Full Tilt tournament at 3:00. Oh well, I should focus on my Dortmund satellite anyway.

I tightened up quite a bit at this point, as smaller stacks were moving all in nearly every time I raised. This is a good strategy on their part, because with a big stack and a flat payout structure, I've got very little incentive to make a heroic call. Anyway, we get down to the final two tables and I am still sitting on 24K chips, which is about average. Blinds are 400/800, and it folds all the way around to me in the SB where I have Q5s. I don't really want to fold when I'm ahead of a random hand, but if I just call, the BB, who has me covered will almost certainly raise. I guess I could have limp-raised all in, but I didn't think of it at the time.

Anyhow, I was curious to know how he would respond to a raise anyway, so I made it 2400. He reraised to 7200, and I saw immediately that he had left the door open for me to run him over. He could fold to an all in and still be in the top 5 out of the 18 remaining, in very good shape to win a package. He certainly doesn't need a big hand to reraise me, since he knows I don't need a big hand to raise him and ought to be afraid of being eliminated myself. I move all in for 24,000, and he folds.

At that point I was in the top 5 and planning to hunker down for a while to see how everyone else was playing. If the play was wild, I might be able to fold my way into a seat at EPT Dortmund, or very nearly anyway. But it was not to be: the next orbit, I got QQ and raised to 2400. The same player reraised to 6000, and I got the sense that he felt he had a license to resteal from me this time, since there's no way that I'd be gutsy enough to 4-bet bluff him again. He was right, except that this time I had the third best hand in poker. I moved in, forcing him to fold again. That was fine by me, as I had just moved up to 3rd place without a showdown. Had he called, I could expect to be ahead, but not far enough ahead that I'd want to risk being eliminated so close to the prize.

OK, now it was time to hunker down. Except that next orbit I got AA. The UTG player raised 4x to 4800, leaving himself about 14K behind. I moved all in, and he wisely folded. I'm pretty sure AA is the only hand I could have here. I may have folded KK rather than risk going to showdown for 40% of my monster stack against someone who could easily have a live Ace.

Now time to take it easy? Nope: next orbit UTG+1 raises to 3200, leaving himself about 12K, or 10 BB's, behind. I have KK in the SB, and I actually considered folding, since I was in such good shape that I thought I might be able to avoid playing any more pots, or at least any more showdowns. I would have folded QQ, but since I was going to be risking only 20% of my stack, I decided to move all in. Unfortunately, he had AA, and I lost a big pot, though I was still in 3rd place.

I finally did hunker down for a long time, watching several short stacks go out. Unfortunately, in these satellite bubble situations, the trend is towards the middle. That is, big stacks like me tighten up and shorter stacks are forced to make moves, either doubling up and become big stacks or busting out. So with 10 players left, I found myself in 7th place, with the 3 stacks shorter than mine nipping at my heels.

Blinds were up to 800/1600, and for some time now I'd been folding most of the time and occasionally open shoving for like 16x or so. There was a lot of restealing going on, and I just wanted to win the pots I entered. Even with AA, I didn't want to raise and call an all in from someone who could cripple me. So when I did get AA UTG, I just shoved in for 27K. Everyone folded, which was fine, and I showed the hand, so that they would be less inclined to call me in the future.

Twice, short stacks got all in and I was praying for them to bust, but both times they doubled up instead, putting me in bad shape. The first time, a guy raised ATs UTG and called an all in from the BB, who had AJs. The turn was T. The second time a short stack at my table open shoved 7 for 22K or so, and the chipleader made an absolutely atrocious (and instant) call with AJ. Unfortunately the 7's held up.

This turned out to be foreshadowing. A few orbits later, I was up to 6/10, with 8 seats to be paid. The prize for 10th was about 5% of the prize for the 8th, and no one had less than 75% of my stack. I got 99 UTG at a 5-handed table and moved all in for 30K. The Button called me instantly with AK for basically his entire stack (it left him less than 2BB's). I figured I was toast, but he flipped over AKs, which is an awful call. I think it probably would have been correct for him to fold KK and maybe even AA there, not that I'd expect him to.

I cursed him and held my breath. The flop was 567, a good one for me. My girlfriend sitting next to me held my hand and her breath. The turn was a King. I screamed and covered my face with my hands, sending my glasses flying off onto my keyboard. "Stupid @#$%!" I started shouting at this idiot who had just made a call that cost both of us equity to the benefit of the other 8 players in the tournament, would be one spot closer to winning a seat no matter which one of us lost the all in confrontation.

By the time I got my glasses back on the hand was over, my table had been closed, and Poker Stars was congratulating me on "winning" $475 (which was really just my entry fee returned to me, a hollow prize compared to the 9K seat that would have been a lock had I won that coin flip). I continued to stare, shell-shocked at the screen, not even caring as my AQ lost to KJ to put me out on the bubble of the Ultimate Bet $109 final table.

My girlfriend was quiet, not really sure what to say, I guess. Eventually she patted my arm. "It's okay," I told her. "I'm fine." I probably should have apologized for blowing up, too (not that it was at her or anything). So much for my resolution to respond less emotionally when things go wrong.

Labels: poker

Stumble It!

My friend Logan is a third-year law student at Harvard and hosts a poker game most Wednesday nights. This is the third year he's had it, and it's evolution has been interesting. Three years ago, it was a $.25/$.50 Pot Limit Hold 'Em game with a $25 buy-in. I remember once losing more than $50 there and losing sleep over it.

At that time, I was the only non-HLS student there, and though I was better than the average player in the game, I was quite bad. There was only one guy there, Paul, who could be called a poker player. He was a semi-professional, having made a few thousand playing 8/16 Fixed Limit Hold 'Em at Commerce the previous summer. He made good reads, knew how to play position and manipulate pot size, etc. He consistently got the best of us and rarely had a losing night. I don't remember how I did overall for that first year, which means I probably lost money. The only people I was beating consistently were some frat boy types who showed up mostly to drink the free beer and would literally give their money away.

The next year was a whole new ballgame. By that time I had started playing poker seriously, and though I was still at small stakes, I had improved a ton. I used to be a very predictable tight aggressive (bordering on tight-weak) player. But I came back to the game in September with a loose and aggressive streak in me. I had just re-read Doyle Brunson's Super/System and was really starting to get the importance of implied odds and mixing up my play.

I took a lot of people by surprise the first few weeks, before they realized I had a brand new game. Logan toughened up a lot, some of the wildest players from the previous year were gone, and the ones who remained were like the old me: overly tight and predictable, "solid" in the bad sense of the word. A new player named Darren took over the role of wildcard, often showing up with complete garbage after putting in the 4th bet preflop or check-raising the flop and shoving the turn. At first I figured him for a fish, but eventually I came to respect his game. As we became better friends, he revealed that he won at as high as 5/10 NL online and had played in the WSOP main event.

By the beginning of 2006, the game had turned into a sawmill. We raised the buyin to $50 and made the game No Limit. Darren, Paul, Logan, and I collectively broke most of the other regulars to the point where they stopped showing up. Logan started reaching out to new poker communities, recruiting players from some underground clubs in Boston and from e-mail lists at other universities.

By this point the stakes were insignificant enough compared to what we were making online that we didn't bother to try to rope in any new players. Sometimes someone would catch some beginner's luck and leave their first night in the game as a winner, but if they started coming regularly, they always lost it back with interest. Most came once, lost a few buyins, and never came back.

It's been more of the same this year. Paul hasn't been playing much poker and has probably fallen behind the learning curve relative to the rest of us. He's shown up maybe twice. The game now has a $60 buy-in, increasing to $100 later in the night, when stacks are deep. Logan, Darren, and I all play pretty maniacally, which has chased away most of the remaining solid regulars. New, less experienced players trickle in from time to time but generally don't last long. The only regulars we've gained are Justin, a law school student a year or two behind Logan, and Todd, a semi-pro whom I know from the 2+2 message boards (TedTodd is his name on there).

Justin is a smart player who either underestimated us initially or just didn't have a lot of experience playing in a superaggressive game. Anyway, he was a little too predictable at first, but has adapted well. He could still stand to be a bit more creative, but he's been improving quickly and could easily become one of the best players in the game. I can't say as much about Todd because he's only played twice so far, but he seems pretty good and will definitely improve by playing in our game.

And improvement is what our poker night is about. Most of these guys are much better than the regulars I play with at stakes ten times as high. I do win money at this game, but I could win a lot more playing a lot of other games. This game gives me a chance to practice playing very deep-stacked poker against good, tricky players at stakes where I don't mind taking risks and trying new things.

Labels: personal, poker

Stumble It!

After my most recent post about trying to limit the influence that day-to-day poker swings have on my mood and emotional state, I found two interesting comments on the blogs of other poker players. The first is from Curtains:

"Probably the true key is to stop getting happy when I win money? That's an emotion that you generally pass off as being okay, because it feels good and how can anything be bad if it feels good? However it's generally impossible to be very happy about winning money, without being really unhappy when you lose money. If I eliminate the good feelings that come with making money, I am pretty sure I wouldn't allow myself to feel the bad feelings when I lose. So basically I have to not be happy when I win, and this way I am the big winner because my poker results will have absolutely no bearing on my happiness level, with the modest assumption that I make at least enough or close to enough to cover my monthly expenses. Yes I've decided that this is the key. From now on when I win, I will force myself to not care and not be happy, giddy etc etc. "

The second comes from Ansky:

"Emotions are the bane of poker players. We want to make rational and unbiased decisions at the table. Emotions just get in the way. The more and more we play, the more we become inoculated against variance and tilt. But that has dramatic side effects in other parts of our lives. I felt nothing as my car temporarily skidded out of control in an ice storm. Nothing. It's just not the way life is meant to be lived. "

They've both got basically the same criticism of how poker encourages you to make important decisions (decisions affecting thousands of dollars, in the case of these players) without resort to emotion. They worry that training themselves to think this way at the poker table spills over to the rest of their lives, kind of numbing them from experiencing emotions in other contexts.

This is sort of the mirror image of what I was talking about, which was letting excitement or frustration from poker affect my mood outside of the game. Maybe my plan to try to react more emotionlessly to my poker results is not such a good one after all? I guess the real trick is to compartmentalize it so that win or lose, the results of any given poker session are just another day at the office and something to be left behind when not playing poker.

For more reading on this topic, there's also a thread in the 2+2 Psychology forum.

Labels: poker

Stumble It!

I'm just back from a week out West with Emily. Though we flew in and out of Vegas and stayed there Friday night, I didn't end up playing any poker. Mostly we were there hiking, enjoying some warm weather (while Boston was getting nailed with the worst they've had all winter), and spend some quality time together.

We left Boston early Monday morning so that I could play all of the big online poker tournaments on Sunday. I figured I'd either get eliminated early and get some sleep or stay up all night making a big score. I ended up splitting it right down the middle, spending seven hours on a $300 tournament (part of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series and one of the largest online tournaments there is) only to finish 61st out of 2755 players. Combined with some other wins I had that night, it was enough to pay for the vacation, but it was still a very disappointing finish.

This can be difficult for non-poker players to understand, but opportunities to make a really high finish in a large field, large buy-in tournament don't come around all that often, and it's important to make the most of them. Though winning five or six times your buy-in can net you a substantial sum, in actuality it's barely enough to cover entry fees you've paid into other big tournaments where you didn't do so well. Basically these medium-sized scores keep you afloat between big wins, which can be weeks or months apart. Having already finished 24th out of 1922 in the first FTOPS event, I was really hoping to take down a big prize this time, or at least get some sleep. Oh well.

I ended up sleeping less than three hours, and Emily, who was still packing when I went to bed, got even less. We both suck at sleeping on planes, so we were dead tired when we got into the airport, though we still had to catch a cab to a nearby hotel to pick up our rental car (this was much cheaper than renting at the airport). We drove down to Henderson, Nevada, checked into our hotel (The Hampton Inn and Suites Henderson, highly recommended), and rested up for a bit. The staff at the Hampton were, without exception, the nicest I've ever encountered at a hotel. Everyone was extremely friendly, polite, helpful, charming, etc. We were ready to cancel out room in Vegas Friday night to stay there again, but they were booked solid.

Anyway, we spent Monday afternoon at a chocolate factory and cactus garden. It was definitely an odd combination, but enjoyable. Cacti are really very interesting, and I'd never appreciated how many different kinds there are. There wasn't much going on at the chocolate factory, but we did get some free samples and bought a few delicious pieces. There's a lot of good sightseeing and exploring to do within a few hours of Vegas, so I can't say that I'd suggest prioritizing Ethel M's, but if you're ever looking for something more low key, it's a good place to spend an hour or two and is only about thirty minutes from the Strip.

After dinner we hit the pool and hot tub. I was ready to crash, but Emily really wanted to watch Studio 60, so we stayed up. Well, she did. I fell asleep for at least half of it, and still didn't feel like I missed much. I like Aaron Sorkin, but Studio 60 just isn't doing it for me.

(Edit: Somehow these next three paragraphs got deleted when I first posted this, so my apologies to those of you who missed it.) The next day we drove about an hour to the Valley of Fire. I'd been there with my father and brother during my WSOP trip in July, but then it had been so hot that we'd barely left the car. The weather was quite mild this time, even threatening rain, so Emily and I got to do some hiking off the road and see more of the valley.

Our favorite excursion was into a beautiful canyon with views of astoundingly colorful mountains. Along the way we stopped to scramble up some of the lower ledges of the surrounding cliffs. We took a rock climbing class last year, but this was first opportunity to try out our skills on real rock. We only made it about thirty feet on terrain that even a novice climber could have covered in five minutes, but we were proud of ourselves.

Unfortunately, we had to rush the latter half of the hike, as it was beginning to rain, and a slot canyon is not where you want to be when there is any risk of flash floods. Driving back through the rain, I got to thinking about how amazing the plants and animals that live in the desert are. It requires incredible resourcefulness and resilience to survive in such a hostile climate, and they have evolved fascinating means to ensure that not a single drop of water is ever wasted. I read about these rodents, kangaroo rats I think, that have special membranes in their noses to re-absorb moisture from their breath so that no water is lost when they exhale. I'm pretty sure there's a lesson there for poker players.

Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley. It was a bit on the expensive side, but it's basically the only place to stay in Death Valley, which is definitely worth doing. After dropping off our things, we drove out to a vista known as Dante's Peak. It's an extraordinary view of the salt flats and surrounding mountains and a great place to watch the sun set on Valentine's Day. Even in February Death Valley is hot, but it was plenty cold on the top of that mountain after the sun went down.

After driving back from Dante's Peak, we showered and got cleaned up for Valentine's Day dinner at the Furnace Creek Inn, where we sampled cactus and rattlesnake. It was a very nice meal at a charming restaurant, and our waitress was good but a bit stiff. On the way back, we stopped to look at the stars. Having lived in a big city the last seven years of my life (and Baltimore County before that, not the most rural of settings), I hadn't seen so many in a long time. It's weird to think that a few hundred years ago, that's how the sky looked to everyone everywhere, and now so many people live in places where you can hardly see the stars at all.

On Thursday we woke up early to see the sunrise at Zabriskie Point, but thanks to a poor choice of trail to the top, we only caught the tail end of it. A fair number of people showed up to photograph the rising sun, and an older woman kept shooting dirty looks at Emily for some reason we never did figure out. My guess is that the old broad took a shining to yours truly and was sizing up the competition.

After breakfast and a brief nap, we went into some canyon for our second hike of the day. The entrance was amazing, a really narrow path through polychromatic rock walls and over stones that had been rubbed smooth by the feet of tourists and the occasional rain. Unfortunately the trail got less interesting after that, and we ended up doing some more scrambling and then heading back to the car.

The last stop for the day was Stovepipe Wells, were a sea of sand dunes wait to be explored. We saw some people with sandboards, but none of them seemed very good at "surfing" on the dunes. The plan was to watch the sun set on the dunes, but I was getting hot and tired, so we turned back early and were back at the car by the time the sun was setting.

Friday morning we saw a bit more of Death Valley, mostly from the car, then drove back to Vegas to check-in at the Luxor. We knew this weekend was the NBA All-Star game at Mandalay Bay, but we had underestimated just how insane the city would be as a result. Traffic was a nightmare, people were everywhere, and it took us better than half an hour to check-in at the Luxor, which is right next door to Mandalay Bay.

Dinner reservations proved to be a challenge, and we ended up at Restaurant RM, a seafood place at Mandalay Bay that was suspiciously uncrowded. It was considerably more expensive than we had planned, but it was also some of the best food I've ever had. I took a chance on sturgeon and loved it, and Emily's swordfish was delicious as well. I can't comment on appetizers or dessert, as I was too cheap to spring for those. I would have been willing if there were something looked particularly good, but nothing jumped out at me. The restaurant gave us each a piece of sushi and some chocolates on the house anyway, and both were pretty good, though probably not worth whatever is usually charged for them.

The plan was for me to play poker in the evening at the MGM, but I decided against it. Though I enjoy it, poker has really started to feel like a job to me. I play forty hours and usually six or seven days a week. Although I don't get many opportunities to play live, I don't enjoy it that much either, and even at higher stakes than I would play online, I don't make as much per hour because I can't play on multiple tables at once. It was a beautiful evening, so I decided instead to walk around the Strip with Emily, who had never been to Vegas before.

Traffic was so bad the next morning that we were nearly late for our flight. Getting to the airport was a harrowing adventure at the time, but probably wouldn't be too interesting in the retelling. Suffice it to say that we got back safely but not until 1AM.

Today (Sunday), it was business as usual. I played a bunch of the big poker tournaments that run every Sunday, including the $500 FTOPS main event, and didn't have a single cash. This is why I say that it's frustrating to do well but not quite well enough in a big tournament. Everyone hears about your big wins and gets the impression that you're making ridiculous money playing poker, but they don't hear as much about the times you play all day only to end up a good deal broker than you were when you started.

The ups and downs (well, the downs, really) are the toughest part about being a serious poker player. The game isn't that difficult to learn, but maintaining the mental toughness to endure seemingly endless bad luck and losing streaks is a constant struggle. It's easy to get down when things aren't going your way, and obviously it's bad business to let that affect your play. But it's also bad to let it affect your personal life. A major goal of mine for this year was to be more level-headed about everything poker-related and to keep both the highs and lows from influencing my mood away from the tables. I don't do much to celebrate big wins anymore and I try not to let big losses make me grumpy. It was nice to get away from it all for a little while.

Emily's pictures from Death Valley and Las Vegas

Labels: narrative, personal, trip report

Stumble It!

I wake early on Saturday morning in order to get to Faneuil Hall by 8:45. The event doesn’t start until 11, but I’ve arranged for the debaters to come in early in order to work with some volunteers who will help them “put finishing touches” on their presentations. This is a nice way of saying that I have reason to think some of them will be massively underprepared, and I don’t want them to embarrass themselves (or, by extension, me).

I’m on my way out the door when my phone rings. I’m terrified that this will be someone canceling on me at the last minute, but it’s just Ho asking for directions by public transportation.

When I get to Faneuil Hall, I’m relieved to see that Carla, who I am expecting to be the least prepared, is first to arrive. Better yet, she tells me she’s got her whole first speech written and wants me to look at it.

It turns out to be a very detailed and dry history of Supreme Court litigation concerning school segregation. A lot of it does not appear to be in her words, though there are no quotes or citations. (By the way, I hesitate to call this plagiarism, though I guess technically it is, because I don’t believe it was her intent to pass off the work as her own. When I pointed out that she needed to cite her sources, she was happy to do so, and in general I’ve noticed a lack of knowledge about proper research and citation among the students I’ve worked with. Once teacher showed me papers he was grading where bibliographies included sources such as “termpapers.com”.)

I explain to Carla that she needs to cut out a lot of the history and focus more on making arguments about the current state of affairs. She’s surprisingly calm about the fact that I’ve just told her to rewrite her speech two hours before show time. Conveniently enough, the volunteer I wanted to have work with her shows up just then, so I introduce the two of them and then get to work preparing the stage for the public debates.

The good folks at Faneuil Hall have provided us with two long tables and a beautifully carved wooden podium. I ask if it’s alright to move the podium, and the property manager tells me, “Just be careful, it’s only held together by wooden pegs.” I shove it gingerly across the stage, all the while worrying that with my luck, I’ll be the one to destroy Samuel Adams’ lectern.

Surveying the stage now, it occurs to me that a single high school student might get pretty nervous sitting at the long table all by herself with dozens of people staring at her. So even though these debates will be one on one (unlike most of our competitions, which are two on two), I decide to suggest that each debater invite another student from her school to sit at the table with her during her debate for moral support. Carla in particular looks relieved when I suggest this.

It’s now 9:15, and nine of my ten debaters are here. The only one missing is Ho. His teacher is here, but she hasn’t heard from him. Just then, my phone rings again, and I answer to hear Ho tell me, “I just want to tell you, I am going to be fifteen minutes late.”

“You’re fifteen minutes late now, Ho.”

He’s silent for a minute. “I am going to be thirty minutes late.”

“Alright,” I can’t help but laugh. I know he’s plenty prepared already, so I’m not too worried about it, though Carla is really antsy to meet him and find out what exactly he’ll be arguing. Unlike the regular debate tournaments our students attend, this event is intended to be more about drama than debate. I don’t want the students worrying about who wins or trying to make each other look stupid on stage, so I’m giving them a chance to meet their opponents and run through their debates ahead of time. This proves very popular, as everyone is nervous and quite willing to strike a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” deal with her opponent.

When Ho finally arrives (nearly an hour late), he is looking very sharp in a dark suit and handsome tie. I’m wearing a Brooks Brothers that set me back a couple hundred dollars at 50% off, but I can’t disagree when he looks me up and down, straightens his tie, smiles, and says, “Ah ha, now I show you up!”

With about a half hour to go, I take all the students up on stage with me to show them where they’ll sit and stand and when. The sound guy we hired gives them a quick tutorial on how to adjust the height of the microphones, how close to put their mouths to them, etc., which is a great idea and something that hadn’t occurred to me. As he pointed out, it’s one less thing for them to be nervous about when they’re up there.

The last thing I explain is how to handle the audience. They are accustomed to being cross-examined by their opponents after a speech. For the public debate, however, the audience will also have the opportunity to ask questions, which means they could be asked pretty much anything. We go over some strategies for dealing with off-the-wall questions or things they just don’t know how to answer.

“First off, don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. If a question is really tangential, everyone will realize that, and you won’t look bad for saying, ‘I’m not prepared to answer that,’ or, ‘I’m afraid I don’t have that information,’ or something along those lines.

The other thing you can do is have some talking points. Have you ever seen politicians answer questions? “

“They don’t,” Ho interjects.

“Exactly. They smile, nod, say ‘Very good question,’ and then just say whatever they want to say, even if it has nothing to do with the question. So I’d suggest that you each think about important points you want to emphasize during cross-examination, and then if you get any questions out of left field, you can just brush it off and go to your talking points.”

As of 11AM, our scheduled start time, we still don’t have much of an audience. I take a look outside, and heavy winds are gusting heavy snowflakes through the crisp Boston air. Nothing’s sticking on the ground, but it looks and feels like a blizzard. No wonder so few people have chosen to come out. Oh well.

The emcee for the event, the headmaster of one of the schools in the League, thanks everyone for coming and then introduces the guest moderator for the first debate. As much preparation as we’ve done with the students in the debate, we’ve done very little with the guest moderators, and it shows. Despite my wild gesticulating from the back of the room, she lets the cross-examination of the first speaker go on for way too long, then thanks the students for a great debate and starts giving her closing remarks.

I run over to the foot of the stage and wait for an opportunity to interrupt her and tell her there are still three more speeches left. She blushes a bit and introduces the second speaker, who gives her four minute speech and then takes some questions from the audience. Now, with two speeches left to go, the moderator says, “Sorry about trying to cut you off prematurely before, now thank you both for a great debate,” and starts to leave the stage. I don’t have the heart to embarrass her again, and we’re already behind schedule, so I just mouth, “Don’t worry about it,” to the students on stage, who are shooting me confuzzled looks. Neither seems too disappointed to leave the stage without delivering a rebuttal speech, though.

After that things go smoothly, and the audience fills out a bit more. Mostly they are friends and family of the people in the debate, but occasionally some tourists come in and sit for a speech or two, which is very cool. Faneuil Hall is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Boston, and though it’s technically closed to them for our event today, we told the officers outside to invite anyone who came to see the building to come in and watch a bit of the debates. Faneuil Hall is, after all, of interest to the tourists precisely because it was a public forum where issues of pressing national importance were debated.

As the fourth debate is drawing to a close, I pull Carla and Ho out of the audience and line them up at the foot of the stage, ready to be introduced. Ho is fine about going up on stage alone, but Carla, even with a friend at her side, is shaking like a leaf. “Andrew, I don’t know this!” she whines. It’s very, very tempting to make a comment about she maybe could have started preparing before last night, but that’s not going to make a difference now, so I just tell her she’ll be fine. She looks less than reassured as the guest moderator for her debate announces her name and she takes the stage, clutching at her friend’s hand.

Ho is the first to speak, and he does a great job. We worked together on a brief opening, but he’s revised it since Thursday, and it’s better than ever. He introduces himself and his school, provides some quick background on the desegregation cases now before the Supreme Court, and dives right into his arguments against forced integration.

“Although forced integration schemes were intended to desegregate schools, the have ironically caused more segregation by driving students out of urban school systems,” he begins, and I smile. “Take my school, for example. In the 1970’s it was a white school, like 90%. Now, only 7% of students are white.”

This is killer stuff. For these debates, I tried to choose topics that were of national interest and importance but still personal and relevant to the students. Frankly, there’s nothing all that special about getting some people to talk about a random issue. This event is supposed to be a celebration of the voices and opinions of Boston’s young people, and it’s really, really good to hear some personal experiences brought into the debate.

When his four minutes are up, Ho confidently announces, “I am open for cross-examination.” Carla lobs him a few softball questions, and I can see immediately that his answers are scripted. Fine by me, but as soon as the floor is opened to the audience, things get rough. One of Ho’s teachers is in attendance, and with an impish grin, he rises from his seat.

“You argue that as America becomes more diverse, schools will naturally become more integrated. But the country is much more diverse than it was in 1954, yet schools have not been as segregated as they are now since the Brown decision. How can you be sure that this trend will change in the next fifty years?”

“Could you repeat that please?” I know damn well that Ho understood the question the first time, and I can see the wheels spinning in his head as his teacher struggles to rephrase.

“What assurance do you have that more diversity in the country will mean more integration in schools? Haven’t we seen just the opposite in the last fifty years?”

“Ah! That is a very good question. But I feel it is better to let integration happen naturally, because when you force it, you can actually make schools more segregated.”

With a knowing smile, the teacher sits back down, seemingly satisfied with his student’s stalling and evasion tactics.

Now it’s Carla’s turn to speak, and there’s an awkward silence as she fumbles to adjust the microphone. Once she starts talking, though, she sounds good, real good. Remnants of the history lesson, with proper citation, remain, but her speech is now chock full of strong arguments as well. The only indication of her nervousness is some slightly excessive pausing between sentences, and I’m confident that 75% of the audience doesn’t even notice.

Carla handles her cross-examination gracefully, turns over the floor to Ho for his rebuttal, and then concludes the debate with a strong rebuttal of her own. Now it’s my turn to take the stage for the first time all day to join Alan Khazei, co-founder of City Year and keynote speaker at the event, in handing out medals to all of the participants. “Nice job,” I tell Carla as I shake her hand and Dr. Khazei drapes a medal around her neck.

“Shut up, I sucked,” she smiles, taking her place alongside the others.

Afterwards, there is a lot of milling around and picture taking. As a way of reassuring them, I had promised the debaters that they’d have a sympathetic audience, since everyone would be there because they were interested in the debates. That turned out to be not entirely true, as Ho’s teacher had offered extra credit to her students if they came to the event. About half a dozen of them showed up and were (understandably) completely disinterested in the debates, sleeping or whispering quietly to each other the entire time. I didn’t really care since they filled out the audience and weren’t disruptive.

What was surprising was the way they treated Ho afterwards. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was a rock star: they all wanted to have their picture taken with him, shake his hand, congratulate him, etc. To the best of my knowledge, these were not friends of Ho’s or members of the debate team or even honors students, they were just random kids who knew him from school.

It’s a common assumption, one that I’ll admit to harboring when I first started working with the Chicago Debate League, that urban public schools students would have no interest in a debate team. In an environment where kids are supposed to be ‘hard’ and show no interest in academics or education, who would want to join a debate team? Even other nerds at my suburban high school poked fun at me on occasion.

But the truth is that you’ll find as many bright, articulate, outgoing, and/or intellectual students as you would anywhere else. And unlike at schools in more affluent areas, where college-bound students are offered multiple AP courses and a bevy of academically-oriented after-school activities, these students have fewer outlets. Sometimes you get these kids, sometimes even ones who have never done well in school before, who just fall in love to with debate because it is so different from anything that’s been available to them before. It’s tough and rigorous but it also very open-ended, so they can pursue arguments they are interested in and really be in control of what they are learning and doing in ways that they can’t in a classroom.

OK, tangent over. Bottom line: the event went well in a lot of ways, and the students surprised me by demonstrating some skills that I wasn’t sure they had acquired. I wish there was more of an audience, but now that we’ve done it once and ironed out the kinks, hopefully in future years we can put more effort into publicizing it.

Labels: boston debate league, narrative, personal, race, urban debate league

Stumble It!

The next day, I’m headed to Charlestown High School to meet with Carla’s opponent in the desegregation debate. I’m waiting for the bus when I get a call from the reporter. Turns out she was really fascinated by the League and thinks there is “more to the story.” Rather than rush something to air in time for the public debate, she wants to follow the students she met yesterday to a real competition, meet their families, etc. It sounds good, but we need the publicity for the public debate, too. “Are these ideas mutually exclusive?” I ask her.

She hems and haws for a minute and finally just says, “Yeah. If we run a story on the public debate, we won’t be able to do anything else.”

I agree to the larger story she’s got in mind and tell her I’ll call her tomorrow, as my bus has just arrived.

Along with Southie, Charlestown was the other epicenter of Boston’s busing riots. Much of the area has been gentrified in the last few decades, and rents have skyrocketed, but the population of the high school, situated in the midst of a strip of public housing units, has become largely non-white students from low income families. Entering the school is like invading a castle: I have to circle a five-story building the size of a city block and climb a wide ramp, painted an ugly, peeling orange, that doubles back on itself twice, then either get lucky enough to arrive at the two sets of eight-foot high double doors at the same time that someone is leaving or ring the bell and hope that someone is in the vicinity of the front office.

School just let out about ten minutes ago, so I have to weave my way through dozens of congregated students (generally not an issue, just don’t push anyone) and up five flights of stairs to the debate coach’s classroom to where Ho (not his real name) is waiting for me.

Ho is one of the most senior debaters in the League, having joined his school’s debate team as a sophomore three school years ago. Of the ten tournaments we’ve had since then, I don’t think he’s missed more than one, if any. Two years ago, he was one of the youngest students in the League, fairly new to the English language, and consequently pretty shy. But he kept at it, and although he still speaks kind of slowly and with a pretty heavy accent, his vocabulary probably exceeds that of 75% of native English speakers in the US.

“Heeeey,” he grins broadly when I walk through the door. “You take the day off just to see me?”

“Just for you, Ho.”

“Oh, ha ha. I am so flattered,” he ribs me.

I take a seat next to him, and he (first generation Chinese), his coach (one white parent and one black is my guess, though I’ve never asked), and I (generic white guy) spend the next hour talking about segregation.

Ho has actually done his reading, so he gets a lot of the arguments we talk about right away. His strategy is not to argue in favor of segregation, but rather to contend that integration will happen on its own as the US becomes an increasingly diverse country, and that forcing the issue can actually make segregation worse. He is struggling to put the argument into words, and as he tries to explain back to me, he pauses for nearly two minutes. I’m about to help him along with the English when he says, “How about: ‘Although forced integration schemes were intended to desegregate schools, the have ironically caused more segregation by driving students out of urban school systems.”

Damn. I’m still staring in surprise when he continues, “Students will go to Newton and other suburbs, and it will be like an invasion of minorities all over Massachusetts.” Now both his teacher and I can’t help but burst out laughing.

“Ho, you should use a word other than invasion,” she explains, still smiling. “That has kind of a negative meaning to it.”

“Oh, ha ha, thank you. I do not want the people to throw tomatoes at me!” Seeing us laugh, he continues, “Faneuil Hall, it is just across the street from the market. It would be easy for them to get tomatoes, if they do not like my speech.”

“One more question, before you go,” Ho’s teacher asks. “He asked me whether he should dress up, and I told him to wear a tie.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to wear, Ho, but I’ll tell you this: I’m going to be wearing a suit. Are you lookin’ to get shown up by me?”

He laughs knowingly, and I’m sure he’ll find something appropriate to wear.

The next day, I call the reporter, who doesn’t have time to talk. There’s been a stabbing at a nearby high school, and she’s going to be covering that all day. It’s frustrating that every news outlet in the state is going to cover this stabbing, but I can’t get a single radio station to do more than one story on something positive that’s going on in the state’s troubled public high school system.

I’m still a little worried about the level of preparation of some of the students, but there’s nothing more I can do about it now. I’ve done my part, and now I just have to hope that eventually their fear of being embarrassed in public will motivate them to put some work into this.

I’m also a little worried, despite her teacher’s assurances, that Carla, who hasn’t been in school all week, isn’t going to show tomorrow. So I’m initially relieved when I answer my phone at about 9PM and hear her voice say, “Andrew, I’ve got a question about tomorrow.” However, it’s more than a little discouraging when the next thing she says is, “What side of the debate am I on again?”

Doing my best to remain calm, I walk her through the issue of desegregation again. Her gut reaction is to say it’s stupid for a school system to tell a student she can’t go to a certain school because of the color of her skin (ie the opposite side of the case she’s arguing), so I try to help her think about the possible benefits of integrated schools.

“Like, you get to meet different people and expand your horizons and stuff?”

“Yeah, and when would that be useful?”

“I don’t know, just like, to know more about different types of stuff.”

Hmmm, time for dealing with kids 101: make your examples specific to them. “What do you think it would be like if you were to a school with all Hispanic kids.”

“Hmmm. You mean, like, if you put a whole bunch of Spanish kids in one school, everybody would just act all crazy and stuff?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think that’s what you want to argue.”

“Well, I guess if you never had any experience with different types of people, you couldn’t like, get along with them later.”

“Like if you’re at your job and you have to work with a black person or a white person or something.”

“Yeah, alright, I get you.”

“Remember, Carla, show up early tomorrow morning. We’re going to have some volunteers from college debate teams to help you put the finishing touches on your speech.”

“I’m going to write my speech tonight, Andrew. Sorry to call you so late.”

“It’s alright, you can call me again if you need anything. Whatever time, I’ll keep my phone on all night.” I’m not sure if it’s a good sign or not, but my phone doesn’t ring again.

Labels: boston debate league, narrative, personal, race, urban debate league

Stumble It!