From the Desk of the Poker Philosopher

I was looking through my Stat Counter log today for a glimpse of how people were finding my blog, what links and search terms they were using, etc. I came across two funny ones. Well, the first is really more disturbing than funny. One person googled "How to kill everyone with your mind" and found my review of Kill Everyone. I tried it, and I am in fact on the first page of search results for that phrase on Google.

A lot of poker players google their own screen names to see what others are writing about them. I think that's a pretty normal curiosity and not excessively egotistical or anything. But someone, presumably FU_15, searched for "FU_15 keep dominating online poker". That's kind of presumptuous.

Labels: humor, personal

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I've never even heard of this magazine, but their ad is clever and pretty funny. It took me a minute to get it. If you can't read it, the text at the bottom says, "Become the King of Bluff."

Labels: humor, poker

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When you play a lot of tables at once, one thing you need to factor into the decision is that you will occasionally make mistakes. And I don't just mean poker mistakes like missing a value bet, I mean actually "Oh crap I clicked call and meant to click fold" mistakes. It's really pretty ridiculous to think what a mistaken click can cost you, but it's better not think about it that way. Misclicks are just a cost of doing business.

Honestly, I don't make them that often, but in the past week I have had two comical ones. The first was especially cool because I called so quickly on the end. It must have tilted the hell out of the other guy:

Full Tilt Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $10 BB (9 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

MP3 ($866)
CO ($1168.75)
Button ($985)
SB ($481.50)
BB ($1540.50)
UTG ($247.25)
UTG+1 ($1000)
MP1 ($528.25)
Hero ($1047)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with As, Kd.
3 folds, Hero raises to $35, 3 folds, SB calls $30, 1 fold.

Flop: ($80) 7h, 7c, 5d (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks.

Turn: ($80) 6h (2 players)
SB bets $27, Hero raises to $62, SB calls $35.

River: ($204) 3c (2 players)
SB bets $101, Hero calls $101.

Final Pot: $406

Results in white below:

SB has Tc Jh (one pair, sevens).

Hero has As Kd (one pair, sevens).

Outcome: Hero wins $406.

This one I guess is funny if you aren't me. Once again I snap-called the river, this time with the nut low:

Full Tilt Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (5 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

Hero ($1182.50)
SB ($864.90)
BB ($329.70)
UTG ($959.60)
MP ($890)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 4h, 3d.
2 folds, Hero raises to $14, SB calls $12, 1 fold.

Flop: ($32) Qs, 2h, Jd (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks.

Turn: ($32) 5c (2 players)
SB bets $20, Hero raises to $92, SB raises to $220, Hero calls $128.

River: ($472) 5s (2 players)
SB bets $308, Hero calls $308.

Final Pot: $1088

He had a set of deuces.

Labels: humor, poker

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I just came across a hilarious photoshop thread on 2+2 called "If They Never Played Poker..." Here are a few of my favorite pictures; they should give you a pretty good idea of what you'll find in the thread:

Labels: humor, poker

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I wonder if this is a record- I got and hit and run five times by the same guy tonight over the course of about three hours. On several occasions, he bought back within the same amount of money he had when he quit the last time, but I was sitting alone on multiple tables, and eventually he started coming to different tables so he could buy in short. I kept playing him because he sucked and eventually it got to be kind of funny how he kept quitting. Unfortunately he took a non-trivial amount of money from me....

Labels: heads up, humor, poker

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Imagine that you are riding on the subway when a disheveled man wearing dirty clothes and a long, unkempt beard boards your car and begins to rant about how aliens got him and are coming for you too. He is crazy, you think to yourself, and probably you avoid eye contact, turn up the volume on your Ipod, or even more to another car. But he is also intriguing and occasionally funny, if more than a little strange. He’s not like me, you try to tell yourself. But he’s got two eyes, two feet, and a brain made from the same stuff as yours.

For a professional poker player, reading Dave Cinch is more than a little reminiscent of such an experience. His new book, The Poker World According to Cinch, is self-consciously paranoid and egomaniacal, a larger-than-life portrait of his experiences in and around the game of poker and of the worse-than-average luck he’s supposedly experienced. It is occasionally humorous and insightful, though never as often as the author intends. In the end, you’d like to say that your approach to the game has nothing to do with that of this inveterate gambler, but you can’t be so sure.

The Poker World According to Cinch is equal parts memoir, character sketch, and what might generously be called philosophical treatise. Cinch has spent twenty years playing, dealing, and hosting private poker games in Kentucky and at casinos around the country. At times, his tales resemble nothing so much as extended bad beat stories. To his credit, though, he always focuses more on the psychology and the experience of running bad than on the can-you-believe-it aspect (which isn’t to say such self-pity is entirely lacking).

His best tales aren’t even poker stories. Instead, they are about subjects as diverse as kidney stones and shark attacks. There is, however, always a poker analogy or metaphor at the heart of them.

In all cases, Cinch spins his yarns “gambler style”, with a healthy dose of colloquial spelling and grammar meant to evoke the sights and sounds of the gambling hall: “Frosty the Pool Shark got busted by Dusty Roads the horseman, with Dusty singing Christmas carols (“Frosty the Pool Shark”) and happily drawing to a deuce off-suit gutshot! There were seven witnesses to it in the game besides me, plus the dealer- and a flock of railbirds to boot. And I know you’re not gonna say the railbirds would lie. This is the straight scoop, man.” On the whole, this is an effective strategy for transporting the reader into that world, though at times it feels more than a bit forced.

The biggest distraction, however, is the author’s penchant for hyperbole. Everything is the shrewdest hustle, the worst beat, the wildest game ever. If the Guinness Book of World Records gave an award for most references to the Guinness Book of World Records, this one would be a cinch to win it.

Cinch’s sketches of the other characters who populate his world are the highlight of the book. As he explains it, “Poker is more about people than about cards. The people that gravitate towards the gaming sub-culture are the interesting thing, not the odds or the hands.” At his best, Cinch provides an insider’s perspective on this fascinating world, populated by such colorful characters as Cat Doctor, Marijuana Slim, Vic Mobster-elli (aka Baby Blue Eyes), and Fraulein Omaha.

Among them are thieves, hustlers, cheats, and above all degenerates, the kind who take their families’ gift money to the casino on Christmas Eve. Cinch’s portraits are whimsical and voyeuristic, but never judgmental. In fact, he has a special place in his heart for such devoted gamblers, believing that “That kind of gambling deserves it’s own wall in the Hall of Fame. I’m talking about the guys who will get up in there with the worst of it and don’t care.”

You see, Cinch is himself a gambler who just happens to play poker. Nowhere is this more clear than in his treatise on “Special Probability.” This is the bit where, despite the protestations to the contrary and the distinct lack of humor, you really hope he is joking. And the more he insists that he isn’t joking, the more you want to turn up your Ipod and move to a different car.

According to the Cinch Theory of Special Probability, “gambling isn’t science or math—it’s art. To be honest, I experience gambling not as a series of rational decisions, but more as a metaphysical drama—a kind of handicapping of the unfolding of a creative universe. I try to intuit about the nature of the game and the universe itself.” In other words, he believes that certain games, certain dealers, and even certain hands are out to get him. Supposedly he formulated the theory after a streak of losing 100,000 straight hands of Texas Hold ‘Em over a 10 year period.

This isn’t some off-the-cuff musing. Cinch devotes nearly 25% of the book to explaining, justifying, and promoting this theory. I’m not going to try to summarize it here—you’d have to hear it in the author’s own words. Not that I’m recommending that.

Cinch is a good story-teller, but he’s not much of a moralist, metaphysicist, or philosopher. His vignettes are entertaining enough, but they would be better if he would focus on the story rather than trying to extract a morals and truisms about gambling. Still, it makes me shudder to think just how close those of us who spend our time refining mathematically-grounded strategies are to abandoning that project, donning a joker hat, and creating a crackpot theory of the universe in our own images. Cinch seems to understand this dark side of poker all too well.

Labels: book review, humor, narrative, poker

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Terrence Chan recently made the humorous observation that not only is the hand reporting from major poker tournaments largely inaccurate (this is well-known) but that the reporters tend to reconstruct the details in ways that make "name players" look good. He cites two recent examples from his own experience, one in which he was the lesser known player and one where he was the more famous.

Although I thought this was funny and probably not without some truth, it doesn't gel with my own limited experience. For instance, this blurb about me busting Barry Greenstein from the 2007 WSOP main event makes it seem like he made an overly large re-raise with QQ:

"Andrew Brokos made it 6,000 to go and Barry Greenstein raised it to 33,000. Brokos made the call and saw a flop of {J-Diamonds}{10-Diamonds}{7-Clubs}. Greenstein found himself all-in on the flop with pocket queens against Brokos pocket aces. The aces held up and Greenstein was eliminated. After the hand, Brokos is up to 285,000."

In fact, my raise had already been called in front of him, so there was something like 20,000 in the pot already, making his reraise to 33,000 perfectly reasonable.

Labels: humor, poker, wsop

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I was already enjoying The Onion article "Local Girlfriend Always Wants To Do Stuff" when I came across this passage:

Maas' obsession, however, has shown no signs of abating, and on Sunday she volunteered herself and Bertram to walk their neighbors' dog when they go on vacation next week.

"That's three more nights ruined," said Bertram as he toggled between the popular website eBaumsworld.com and a game of online poker. "I could literally be doing anything else, but instead, I'll be walking a dog. I don't need to always be doing stuff, and especially not stuff like that."

Labels: humor, poker

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