Ten-Twenty-Five Live

I played about two hours of 10-25 NL at the Rio yesterday. The table wasn't full of spewmonkeys but I wasn't anticipating a lot of tough decisions. Mostly it was just a boring game. I say that, but I did actually bluff my entire $5K stack on my first hand.

Let me tell you another story first though. There was this wealthy Texan at the table who, when I first sat down, was on the phone placing sports bets. That's always a good sign. I later changed seats and ended up with him on my immediate left, meaning I was privy to the next two phone calls he made.

The first was to a woman named "Becky" whom he seemed to select somewhat arbitrarily from his address book. He hadn't seen her in a few months but turns out she was available for dinner on a few hours' notice.

His next call was a voicemail that I'll attempt to transcribe to the best of my memory: "Hey Jimmy, this is Dicky. Happy 20th birthday. That's a bit one. I'm sorry I won't be able to make it for your party tonight, I'm going to be tied up. I've got a little present for you, though- it's $50- you're mother will have that for you. You're growing into a fine young man. Hope you have fun."

Anyway, that big bluff I was talking about: I opened to $75 with AKs in late middle position and got 3-bet to $300 by a familiar-looking player on the button. I couldn't place where I'd seen him before, but he was young and serious-looking, which isn't a good sign. I assumed he was an internet pro whose face I'd randomly seen in a picture or something, but now that I think about it, I may actually have played with him at Foxwoods. It makes a huge difference which he is, but at the time, I was thinking internet, so anyway...

He 3-bets to $300, and I decided to make it $800 and fold to a 4-bet (he had me covered). He thinks for a while and calls. The flop comes down rags with two of my suit. I bet $1200, planning to unhappily call a shove. My hope was that he would just call and then I could shove the turn. That's exactly what happened. He tanked for a while but folded what was probably TT-QQ. I doubt anyone else at the table would make that fold, but then I wouldn't have 4-bet anyone else either.

So I made $2000 on my first hand, but I later misplayed a hand pretty badly and cost myself most of that profit. A new player had just joined the table, an older black man who seemed to be a regular in the Tunica games. He bought in deep enough to cover my nearly $7K stack.

I got AKs UTG+1 and raised to $75. Only the new guy called out of his BB. The flop came 862 and gave me my flush draw. He checked, I bet $125, and he raised to $400. I called. The turn was an off-suit 3, he checked, I bet $525, and he raised to $2000. I folded.

My turn bet is just atrocious. With less showdown value, it might be OK, like if I had a ten-high flush draw or something. But even then, I'm primarily relying on bluffing him off of bluffs, which assumes he's capable of check-raise bluffing the flop against an unknown early position raiser. With AK, I beat his bluffs anyway, so there's little value in betting and risking getting blown off a strong draw.

I ended up nearly dead even on the session and didn't play any other interesting pots.

Imperial Palace Elevator Conversation

For some reason, people in Vegas talk to strangers on the elevator, which is a total 180 from common elevator behavior anywhere else in the world. I think it has something to do with the general mood of the place combined with how crowded the elevators often are.

Usually it's just some lame joke about the crowds or something, but today, while I was waiting for the elevator at the luxurious Imperial Palace when a skinny man who looked to be in his early fifties walked over and pressed the button as well. "Mmm mmm mmm," he groaned, shaking his head at me in frustration.

There are about a million reasons why someone might be feeling that way in Vegas, so I just pursed my lips and snorted sympathetically.

"This my last trip with that woman," he told me. "We get home, I'm gettin' a divorce."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Mmm hmmm. She outta her goddamn mind. I mean she seriously crazy."

"Vegas can bring out the worst in people."

"Naw, man, this been goin' on. 53 years old and she a muthafuckin' streetwalkin' whore."

I sighed along with him as we boarded the elevator, then asked which floor he was going to. He told me, and I pressed the buttons for both of us.

"Up till now, you know, it was workin' out alright for me, but I can't take this shit no more. She is muthafuckin' nuts."

"A lot of them are."

He smiled a bit and laughed for the first time. "You got right, man."

My stop was first. "Best of luck to you," I told him.

"Alright, alright, I appreciate that. You too now," he answered as the doors closed behind me.

Hilarious 1K Single Table Satellite

Most of the money I brought to Vegas came in the form of a cashier's check, which apparently needs to be verified by the bank before I can cash it, so I'm pretty much broke until tomorrow. What else to do than play a 1K Single Table Satellite for the WSOP, then? Those are always a hoot.

The table looks perfect: one wannabe hotshot guy about my age, one middle-aged Israeli, 7 middle-aged white guys. A few of them are talking about having played 10-20 tournaments in the series, but they all suck. The two slightly less terrible guys are on my immediate left, but whatever.

I don't play a hand for the first hour, they are all splashing around a little bit but no one's playing big pots. Blinds 100/200, I have a little less than the 4K starting stack. Action folds to me in SB with hotshot in the big. I open limp, he raises to 825, I shove, he moans and groans and tells me how tight I've been, eventually folding an Ace face up like it's the greatest play ever. I casually show him a deuce, and the table goes wild.

Next orbit folds to me in the small, I open to 1200 with TT, hotshot shoves A9, my hand holds up and he's crippled.

Next orbit it's 150/300 he shoves for 1100 UTG action folds to dude in SB who calls. I shove in 8K with KJ on my BB, SB folds and says he had 76s. I get there vs. 55 to eliminate hotshot in 10th.

Button makes a small raise, I shove JJ in SB, Isreali goes on and on about he has the best hand but he's gonna be conservative and folds 66 face up. I show my JJ cuz now I want some fold equity on my shoves.

We play for a while, nothing much happens, eventually Israeli is getting sort. At 300/600, he shoves from early position for 3600. Action folds to me in the BB and I actually have a bit of a decision with AT. He seems to "get it" a little more than the others and recently lost a pot so I call. He has A6 but hits his 6 on the turn. Board is TT76 so I've got 8 outs on river but can't get there. I pass him his chips with no whining/fanfare.

This pot constitutes about 20% of the chips in play, but I'm still the chipleader even after losing it. I make a small CO raise with 99, SB shoves, naturally I call, but he has AQ and wins the flip.

Now I'm short, and a few hands later I shove 43s for 5x or so. Israeli goes on and on about he's gonna play to win and shoves over the top with KJo in the CO. He's ahead unimproved through the turn, then I bang a 3 on the river and he gets pissed, even though I'm in way better shape than he was with A6 and it's a smaller pot. I don't say a word, and eventually a few of his buddies come over and he recounts the story for them about the guy who goes all in with 4-high. I just shake my head.

Some other crap happened, I won some pots with pre-flop raises/shoves (and pots were tremendous at this point), I lost another flip to the Israeli, my AKs loses to 55, and then blinds are 600/1200. Israeli opens to 3000, guy to his left shoves 6400 total, Israel thinks for a while, which is funny in its own right, and finally folds!

There was also a hand, not involving Isreali, where the Button shoves for like 4BB, the SB reshoves 6BB, and the BB folds AQ face-up.

Action folds to me on Button, I shove 7BB or so with K9, Israeli wakes up with JJ in SB and holds up. Now I've got 1800 total, so there's no such thing as fold equity. I fold 73 and 72, and then I post the BB for 2/3 of my stack. CO shoves, I call blind, he flips K7, I have 74. Lovely. His hand holds, and I go out in 6th.

Tales From a 7-11: Shantel

Shantel was a middle-aged black woman who for some reason developed a sort of matronly affection for me. She always told me that I was her favorite person to work with, but I don't know why and the feeling wasn't mutual. I didn't dislike her, but she was a lot less fun than the employees who were closer to me in age and/or maturity (most of the middle-aged men who worked there were just overgrown teenagers). Frankly she kind of gave me the creeps.

There was a huge ice machine in the back room that occasionally spat out batches of frozen cubes into a giant vat. Once per shift, every employee was supposed to shovel the ice into plastic bags, tie them off, and wheel them up into the front to stack them in a display cooler. It was one of the most hated tasks in the store because it was boring, repetitive, and relatively hard physical labor. Usually you needed to hack at the ice with the metal scoop because it all got frozen together, then you had to spoon heavy scoops of the stuff into a bag whose opening was barely larger than the scoop itself. After a few bags, your fingers would be too stiff with cold to tie a good knot, so from time to time a big would spill and then you'd have to clean that up too.

Once Shantel was bagging ice when I heard a loud crash. I stuck my head back there to see what had happened. She was on her knees in front of the machine with one finger in her mouth wiping up blood from the floor with her other hand. “Are you alright?” I asked nervously.

“Yeah. Lid of that freezer slammed on my finger. It got a piece of my meat.” She proudly displayed the finger, which was indeed missing a chunk the size of a sunflower seed and streaming blood.

“Do you want me to call someone?”

“No, I'm fine.”

I had customers, so I couldn't really argue with her. Eventually she emerged and again displayed the finger, telling me several times how she'd lost some of her “meat”. She'd secured a piece of napkin to the wound with a rubber band, but from time to time she had to replace it when the blood soaked through. I suggested several times that she go home, but she brushed me off, only to arrive at this conclusion herself about half an hour later.

What really made me uncomfortable, though, was when she asked me to cover for her with her abusive husband. She was getting ready to leave him, she told me, and was going to tell him she was working while she went out looking for a new apartment. If he happened to come by looking for her, I was to tell him that the manager had sent her to another location but that I didn't know where. It probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but I was completely unprepared to handle the situation if the guy got angry, which it sounded as if he were prone to do.

Thankfully, it never came up. Given the worry that merely imagining such a situation caused me, I sincerely hope that she did successfully leave him. No one should have to live in constant fear of provoking violent anger from a loved one.

Ballin' in the News

While visiting family in Maryland, I came across an article in the Baltimore Sun that I find funny on multiple levels. The article, entitled "New Meters Paying Off", is about how a switch to centralized parking meters that enable customers to pay with credit cards has generated a big increase in the city's parking fee revenues.

In the first place, it's comically sad that this passes for front page news, albeit below the fold.

What really got me laughing, though, was this awesome quote from a Baltimore balla:

John Furst, who was parking at Broadway Market in Fells Point recently, said he quickly realized that he could buy time on a meter on Eastern Avenue- where the city charges 50 cents an hour- and use that receipt a few blocks over in Fells Point where it costs one dollar an hour to park.

"If you are in the know in Baltimore, you can do well," Furst said.

Way to scam the city out of fifty cents an hour, John, you badass!

Tales From a 7-11: Rat-Man Carl

Our manager was in the store mornings almost every day, but even then he was usually in his office. Store policy was enforced on employees not through regular supervision but by the threat of surprise inspection by Carl, the manager at another branch owned by same person who owned our store. Carl would do his best to sneak into the store unseen and spring himself upon an unsuspecting employee, asking to count how much was in each register (we weren't supposed to have more than $50, or $20 overnight- everything else was dropped into a safe) and to see the checklist that every employee was supposed to keep. I called him Rat Man Carl both because of his function in the company and because of his rodent-like appearance.

I was one of the store's best employees, though it's hard to overstate just how low the bar was set. If I called five minutes before a scheduled shift to say I wasn't coming, they were just impressed that I called. I was a friend of the owner and his daughter, and once in a while old ladies would go out of their way to tell the manager how much they appreciated the nice young man who knew how to count their change back to them. There was zero chance of my being fired or reprimanded in any way, and I knew it. Consequently, I couldn't have cared less about Rat Man Carl and his surprise inspections.

He, one the other hand, took great pride in his work. I'm sure he imagined himself a secret agent as he skulked outside the store, waiting like a savanna cat for me to turn my back so that he could slink into the store and surprise me. It disappointed him to no end that I never displayed the least shock or dismay at his sudden appearance nor at the solemn warnings and stern lectures he delivered in a grave tone.

Carl's son usually worked another store but once had a shift with me. He blatantly stole whatever foodstuffs he wanted and encouraged me to do the same, going to so far as to refuse to ring me up for an ice cream sandwich I ate. I had to ring it up myself, which was itself against company policy but seemed the lesser of two evils.

Several years later I ran into Carl at a Target. We spoke for a minute, and he bragged to me about how he was moving up in the world, making $18/hour as an assistant manager and well on his way to becoming a full-fledged manager. I wished him the best.

Misclicking for Fun and Profit

It never ceases to amuse me when my mistakes make me money. Here I meant to bet $99 on the river and accidentally bet $9. The result was inducing a huge check-raise bluff from a hand that almost certainly would have folded to my intended bet:

Full Tilt Poker, $3/$6 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: $705
SB: $1,359.35
Hero (BB): $1,230
UTG: $1,336.25
MP: $600
CO: $1,828

Pre-Flop: A 7 dealt to Hero (BB)
4 folds, SB calls $3, Hero raises to $18, SB calls $12

Flop: ($36) 3 9 4 (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($36) 8 (2 Players)
SB bets $13, Hero raises to $42, SB calls $29

River: ($120) 3 (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $9, SB raises to $234, Hero calls $225

Results: $588 Pot ($3 Rake)
SB showed T Q (a pair of Threes) and LOST (-$294 NET)
Hero showed A 7 (a flush, Ace high) and WON $585 (+$291 NET)


Unfortunately, I decided to flush the profits and then some on an ill-conceived river check-raise bluff of my own:

Full Tilt Poker, $3/$6 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

CO: $998
BTN: $597
Hero (SB): $1,713.20
BB: $352.10
UTG: $1,896.60

Pre-Flop: 8 8 dealt to Hero (SB)
UTG folds, CO raises to $21, BTN folds, Hero calls $18, BB folds

Flop: ($48) 2 J 5 (2 Players)
Hero checks, CO bets $35, Hero calls $35

Turn: ($118) 5 (2 Players)
Hero checks, CO bets $111, Hero calls $111

River: ($340) 7 (2 Players)
Hero checks, CO bets $200, Hero raises to $1,546.20 and is All-In, CO calls $631 and is All-In

Results: $2,002 Pot ($3 Rake)
CO showed J J (a full house, Jacks full of Fives) and WON $1,999 (+$1,001 NET)
Hero showed 8 8 (two pair, Eights and Fives) and LOST (-$998 NET)


First off, I hate the turn call. My thinking was that his range when he near-pots it is polarized to bluffs and boats, but it's probably so waited towards boats that I don't belong in the hand anyway. Then I disregard that read on the river and decide based on his bet-sizing that he has an overpair after all and maybe I can take him off of it. Pure sloppiness on my part.

Tales From a 7-11: Bear

Bear wasn't an employee, but he was one of our most colorful regular customers. I mean that both figuratively and literally: he was a hulking biker dude covered in ink from head to toe. Rose bushes encircled naked women on his arms, and his shiny bald head was decorated with the snearing face of a bear. Bear was a tattoo artist himself and the proprietor of a tattoo parlor called The Bear's Den.

Bear was easily 6'6, rippling with muscles, and, as I've said, covered in tattoos. Under no circumstances would I have gotten on his bad side, and it's a testament to human stupidity that anyone ever did. He told me a story once about a customer of his who requested a custom-designed tattoo. They negotiated a price, and Bear spent a couple of hours inking him up. When he was finished, the guy reached into his pocket and said, “Oh, shit, I've only got eighty-seven bucks.”

They went back and forth for a bit, but the guy insisted he couldn't get his hands on any more money and pleaded with Bear to accept much less than the price they'd agreed upon. Bear finally relented and told the guy to leave a warm, wet compress on the ink for 24 hours.

“Thing is,” Bear growled to me, “you're only supposed to leave it on for an hour. When he took the compress off, the ink would have run everywhere and left a giant brown smear permanently engraved on his arm.”

Lighting Boston's Official Non-Demoninational Holiday Shrub

This is an honest-to-God quote from the City of Boston's official calendar:

Join the Boston Children’s Chorus (BCC) to kick off the start of the city’s holiday season! The singers will join Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino for one of the city’s most cherished events- the lighting of Boston’s official non-denominational holiday shrub, and trees throughout Boston Common, The Public Garden and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. The BCC is an accomplished children’s singing group with nine choirs and 300 singers ranging from ages seven to eighteen years old. BCC has performed at the Democratic National Convention, Governor Deval Patrick’s Inauguration, and with the Boston Pops.

A few years ago there was a big stink about the City of Boston keeping an official Christmas tree on the Boston Commons. Mayor Menino's decision to keep the tree but not call it a Christmas tree surprisingly drew the ire of the pro-Christmas folks, which I think is pretty stupid. They accused him of bowing to political correctness, but in reality it was more like mooning the PC crowd. Clearly decorating a tree but not calling it a Christmas tree is not in the spirit of what the PC folks were demanding, and the pro-Christmas people got pretty much everything they wanted save the name. I guess the symbolism was important to them.

Anyway, I can't imagine this hilarious title being anything but an attempt to portray the PC demands as absurd. Regardless of what you think about the whole issue, it's pretty badass I think to poke fun at the whole thing in so public and official a fashion.

Tales From a 7-11: Gary

Gary was a tough guy to work with. He had some mental disabilities that prevented him from engaging fully in the idle banter that generally passed between co-workers. Most of the time he did his job just as well as if not better than the other employees, but his strength in this regard was also his weakness.

Gary was a real stickler for directions and procedure. As you might imagine, the operation of a 7-11 is designed to be pretty idiot-proof. There are simple instructions for operating everything and a checklist that every employee is supposed to follow on every shift. Of course, most employees neither used the checklist nor diligently completed all of their tasks, particularly the least popular ones. Gary, however, did everything just as it was supposed to be done every time.

That was all well and good when things were running smoothly. The problem was that Gary had no capacity for troubleshooting or adaptation. He was relieving me once at the end of a shift on the Fourth of July. When doing a shift change, each of the two registers needs to be closed down individually and its contents counted and verified by both employees. Generally this is to be done at a time where there is no line in the store.

That July Fourth was a hot, sunny summer holiday, and we were doing a booming business in ice, charcoal, ketchup, hot dog rolls, and other barbecue accouterments. A line of customers had wrapped halfway around the store since the beginning of my shift, and it was clear to me that there was never going to be a quiet moment for a shift change. We needed to just shut down one register and count the money as quickly as possible despite the line, but convincing Gary to cooperate with this was nearly impossible.

So here I am arguing with this guy who can barely express or comprehend a coherent thought while both of us are trying desperately to keep up with the burgeoning swarm of customers. A kid who looked to be about 15 asked for a pack of cigarettes. I was far from diligent about carding people, but in this case there was a store full of gossipy judgmental soccer moms and a co-worker who was somewhat likely to report me if he noticed, so I asked to see his ID. Plus, the kid looked like an asshole.

He handed me the license of a woman who was several years older than he and looked nothing like him. “Don't waste my time,” I told him, thrusting the license back at him and turning my attention to the next customer. “Next!”

“What? That's my license. Man, sell me some cigarettes.”

I didn't even look up from my next transaction. “That was a woman's license. Get out of here.”

“You better sell me some fucking cigarettes.” Now I looked up.

I didn't feel the least bit threatened in a store full of people, but I didn't want the kid to make a scene or waste any more time. “Do I need to call the police?” I asked, reaching for the phone.

“What the fuck?” he responded.

“Alright, that's enough,” boomed a voice from several spots back in the line. “There are kids in this store.” The voice belonged to a burly guy with a leather jacket and a bandanna wrapped around his head.

The kid headed for the door, but turned back and shouted, “Man, fuck you both.”

“Fuck me? You meet me out in the parking lot, you little shit,” the guy boomed back. Needless to say, the little punk was not in the parking lot when the man left the store. And, I eventually got Gary to comply with the shift change, though he made clear that he was annoyed by it.

Tales From a 7-11: Mark

Mark was our youngest employee. I knew him first as a customer who came in nearly every day and talked about how badly he wanted to work in the store. Sure enough, he started work on his sixteenth birthday.

The 7-11 was just a stepping stone for Mark, though. His real aspiration was to be a police officer. Even before he was working with us, he got to know all of the officers who frequented our store. Once he was working there, it was even worse. If there was a cop in the store, it was nearly impossible to get Mark to do any work. There could an empty cooler and a line a mile-long, and Mark would be over by the coffee counter hounding the officers.

Mark was generally pretty law-abiding himself, but I did once see him sell cigarettes to two girls who were no older than fourteen. After completing the sale, he stepped outside and returned a minute or two later. “Did you sell them cigarettes?" I asked, more surprised than scolding.

He grinned. “They showed me their boobies.”

Mark was working with me one day when a group of guys in their early twenties came into the store asking about Pokemon cards. This was at the height of the game's popularity, and even at $5 a pack we couldn't keep them in stock. We'd just gotten a shipment, though, so when the guys asked if we had any purple packs, I was able to tell them that we did.

It immediately struck me as strange that these young men were asking about the cards. They seemed to old to play but too young to have kids who played. More strangely, they didn't actually want to buy any of the cards. Instead, they asked for a carton of cigarettes, which required me to step away from the counter and dig around in a cabinet for their requested brand.

When I returned, the guys were gone. I quickly checked the box of Pokemon cards which was sitting out on the counter with the other impulse purchase items. I never would have known for sure that they'd taken anything, since I had no idea how many packs there were to begin with, except that there were now no more purple packs. Had the guys not specifically asked about them and had me verify just a minute ago that there had been some, I would have had no way of proving they'd stolen them.

Amazingly, they were still sitting out in the parking lot in their car. I jotted down the license, and more annoyed at the brazenness and stupidity of their crime than anything else, I called the manager.

“How many packs did they take?”

“I don't know.”

“Eight.”

“Huh?”

“They took eight packs. If you don't give the police an exact number, they won't do anything with the report.”

I called the police, and they said they'd send someone by eventually. There was less than an hour left in Mark's shift, but he stuck around for another hour waiting for the police to come. Finally he left but begged me to call him when the police did arrive, which I didn't.

ur running so hot dude

I was feeling so on top of my game the other day. I was just really alert and creative, picking up on a ton of spots where I could steal pots if I applied enough pressure in the right way. This was the best one. Unless they have exactly Khxh, most people aren't going to check call a flush draw on the flop. I bet the flop just to set up an opportunity to steal the pot later. When the flush came in, it was just a matter of pouring on the pressure:

Full Tilt Poker, $3/$6 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (UTG): $2,697.85
CO: $937
BTN: $2,296.05
SB: $2,240.30
BB: $344.80

Pre-Flop: 7 9 dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $21, 2 folds, SB raises to $72, BB folds, Hero calls $51

Flop: ($150) T K 6 (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $88, SB calls $88

Turn: ($326) 2 (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $377, SB calls $377

River: ($1,080) J (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2,160.85 and is All-In, SB folds

Results: $1,080 Pot ($3 Rake)
Hero mucked 7 9 and WON $1,077 (+$540 NET)


The best part of the hand was what my opponent said after he folded:

Villain: aa ur running so hot dude

Tales From a 7-11: Norman

Norman was in his early thirties when I worked with him, and in retrospect a giant fuck-up. He was a lot of fun to work with, though. When we were bored, which of course was quite often, Norman would sporadically break into a verse or two of a self-invented ditty. His most commonly repeated riff was “Noooooooobody loooooooooves old Normannnnnnn,” though he'd sometimes substitute my name or that of another employee. I called him “Stormin' Norman” because he was the kind of guy who needed a nickname.

I don't know the full story of how he ended up working at a 7-11, but over time I learned a few tidbits about him that suggest a more thorough explanation. He'd lost his driver's license to multiple DWI's, for instance, and had to take the bus to work. I lived just across the street from the store, so generally I walked to work, but once I had a car with me for some reason and offered him a ride, which he declined.

From time to time he would recount a ribald tale from one of his recent exploits. Being a teenage boy, I was usually eager to hear more. I asked him if he'd ever been with two women at once. He sighed. “Yeah. Couple of times. It's not all it's cracked up to be, believe me. It's very difficult to attend to two at once. A lot of pressure. I couldn't keep up with them.”

Norm's aspiration, which was common among those for whom 7-11 was part of a career path, was to get a job with one of the many companies that supplied ours and other convenience stores. He always chatted with the vendors who delivered to our store and frequently asked about opportunities. Norm left without any fanfare, which I've always hoped was because he got his dream job wheeling crates of soda or ice cream bars in and out of big white trucks and glass storefronts on a dolly.

Tales From a 7-11: Bear

Bear wasn't an employee, but he was one of our most colorful regular customers. I mean that both figuratively and literally: he was a hulking biker dude covered in ink from head to toe. Rose bushes entangled themselves with naked women on his arms, and his shiny bald head was decorated with the snearing face of a bear. Bear was a tattoo artist himself and the proprietor of a tattoo parlor called The Bear's Den.

Bear was easily 6'6, rippling with muscles, and as I've said, covered in tattoos. Under no circumstances would I have gotten on his bad side, and it's a testament to human stupidity that anyone ever did. He told me a story once about a customer of his who requested a custom-designed tattoo. They negotiated a price, and Bear spent a couple of hours tattooing him. When he was finished, the guy reached into his pocket and said, “Oh, shit, I've only got eighty-seven bucks.”

They went back and forth for a bit, but the guy insisted he couldn't get his hands on any more money and pleaded with Bear to accept much less than the price they'd agreed upon. Bear finally relented and told the guy to leave a warm, wet compress on the ink for 24 hours.

“Thing is,” Bear growled to me, “you're only supposed to leave it on for an hour. When he took the compress off, the ink would have run everywhere and left a giant brown smear permanently engraved on his arm.”

Tales From a 7-11: Hatty

Hatty was about my age, maybe a year older, but very much a teenager. The 7-11 where we worked was in Baltimore County, but it was just over the city line on Edmondson Avenue. Thus, it was quite accessible by public bus, which was how Hatty got there for her shifts.

She was the first person from a vastly different racial and socio-economic background with whom I'd had to interact regularly, but we actually hit it off quite well. She was fun to talk to and laughed at my jokes. Sometimes we played little tricks on each other

When her pregnancy started to show, we talked about the child's father. He was a few years older, but still in the picture. Her man wasn't working at the moment, which was why Hatty carried her unborn child thirty minutes each way on the bus five days a week to a 7-11 out in the county. He was looking for work, though, and she was sure they would get married one day.

Hatty asked if I had a girlfriend, and I fabricated a long story about how I was dating a divorced forty-year old mother of two. I let it slip that my little lady was currently locked up at Jessup but confessed that we had great sex during the bi-weekly conjugal visits she was permitted. I had Hatty going until I tried to tell her that this woman was black. She scoffed and replied, “Pfft, you couldn't get no black girl.”

Hatty left the store when she entered her third trimester, and I never saw her again.

Tales From a 7-11: Sam

I haven't played much poker of late, but for some reason I was compelled recently to write a series of vignettes from my days as a 7-11 employee. I figured I might as well post them here on days that I don't have anything poker-related to say. Please let me know whether or not they are interesting to you; your feedback will determine whether and how I often I post future installments.

Sam

Sam was the store's oldest and longest standing employee. A Vietnam vet in his late fifties, he only worked the overnight shift. I heard rumors that he had money and didn't need to work but was just looking for something to do nights.

The overnight shift could drive you crazy, no doubt, but on the other hand one had to be a bit crazy already to request it. Most of the job was cleaning and organizing the store, receiving deliveries, and standing around idle and lonely (it was the only shift to which just one employee was assigned). The mundanity was punctuated by the occasional visit from the crazies who only come out at night.

Sam was everyone's least favorite employee. He was a grouch and a hard-ass who would savagely berate whomever he was relieving for the smallest infraction: a sticky spot on the floor, a less-than-full freezer, or an insufficient number of milk cartons on display. I was terrified of him.

No one dared to give Sam a nickname, but if I had the opportunity now, I would call him Scrappy. He was short, barely five feet tall, but solidly built and tough as nails. He was balding but wore a Chuck Norris beard and a twenty-four hour sneer.

The manager once showed me security camera footage from a robbery. A little after 2AM, a huge black guy with arms like tree trunks came into the store. He asked for a carton of cigarettes. On the video, you can see Sam step away from the counter and out of view to retrieve them. Chained to the counter was a donation box for the funeral of a police officer who'd been hit by a car during a traffic stop. The thief grabbed the box and ripped it chain and all off the counter, then ran for the door.

The next thing you can see on the video is Sam coming back into view, vaulting over the counter like an Olympic hurdler and sprinting after the guy. I don't know what he thought he was going to do if he caught the guy, which he didn't.

I eventually won Sam's grudging respect via immaculate preparation at the end of my shifts. Everything was all ready for him, we'd change over the registers in a minute flat, and then I'd spend the half hour that we were both in the store bagging ice and filling the coolers. As I left, Sam would thank me, wish me a good night, and occasionally even smile, which was a hell of a lot more than anyone else could get from him.

I Associate With Terrorists

About five years ago, when I was a senior in college, I attended a panel on education reform that a professor of mine had organized. One of the panelists was "domestic terrorist" Bill Ayers. I don't recall what Ayers was bloviating about, but he told some story about seeing a group of big, "thugged out" guys getting interviewed by a reporter at a high school in a rough part of Chicago. He asked if they were the football team and was told that in fact they were the chess team, and that they had won the city championships. He was surprised that that this school with a bad reputation in a bad part of town would be so into chess. I didn't know about the chess championship, but I actually coached debate at the same school.

After the panel, there was a reception. It was a small crowd, and I was one of the only students there, certainly the least consequential person by a mile. My professor called Bill over to introduce him to me, and I began to tell him my story, "I was interested to hear about the [High School] chess team you met, because I actually coach a debate team at that same school. I've had similar-"

Before I finish my second sentence, Bill cuts me off, grabs my hand, says "Great to meet you," turns his back, and goes over to talk to someone else.

So yeah, Bill Ayers is a terrorist. And a douchebag.

Funny Search Terms

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.

Awesome Poker Ad

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."

Two Misclicks

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.

Great 2+2 Photoshop Thread

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:

The Cinqfecta

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....

Review: The Poker World According to Cinch

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.

Famous Players Play Better

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.

Online Poker in The Onion

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."