From the Desk of the Poker Philosopher

Didn't get many NLHE cash games in this month. The month started with FTOPS, so I was playing more tournaments than usual. It wasn't a good series for me, but I was doing alright on the side. Then I spent the second half of the month running a summer camp for the BDL (hence the slow pace of posting- that will pick up next week). When I was directing the League, so much of my job was like administration, management, politicking, advocacy, and I rarely spent time actually working with students. Generally, working with them was like the amphetamine that got me excited and kept me going through the more tedious work.

I must admit, though, that spending five hours a day, five days a week in charge of a bunch of teenagers is more than a little exhausting. Even though we had a great group that was for the most part eager to learn about debate and easy to get along with, it was still a lot of work and pretty draining. I was in no mood to play poker at the end of a day, that's for sure.

Here's me taking notes on the board during a short debate two of our students had about the morality of eating meat.

Poker-wise, I ended the month almost exactly dead even after rakeback. I guess that's not too bad given that my several forays into 25-50 resulted in several bad beats to the tune of five figures. I did make more of an effort to learn PLO, watching the PLO Leakfinder series on Cardrunners and the PLO guest series that Tom Chambers did for Poker Savvy Plus. I put in several sessions at 2/4, and even though I was a net loser, I feel like I am getting much better at reading hands and board textures.

The World Championship of Online Poker starts today, but I probably won't begin playing in earnest until next week, so that's when you can expect to see more regular posts. Sorry for the extended silence.

Labels: bad beat, boston debate league, FTOPS, personal, PLO, poker, Poker Savvy, Poker Stars, tournament, urban debate league, WCOOP

Stumble It!

My latest poker article, a strategy-filled narrative from my third and fourth days at the World Series of Poker Main Event, is now appearing in the September Issue of 2+2 Internet Magazine. Here's an excerpt from early on Day 4:

At this point, I was rolling along with a very nice stack, and there were just a few hundred competitors left in the tournament. My girlfriend was about to fly out to Las Vegas to support me. She had just passed through security when it happened.

I raised to 15K first to act with K-J of clubs and got called by a grizzled man who looked to be in his late 50’s or early 60’s. The flop came A-Q-6 with two clubs, giving me a flush draw and a one-card straight draw. Even without all my draws, this is a good flop to bet at, because as the pre-flop raiser, I am more likely to hold an Ace than my opponent who just called a raise. I bet out 35K, and he raised to 75K. I moved all in, and he called with Ace-Queen for top two pair. None of my draws got there, and just like that I was crippled, down to about 150K.

“Nice hand,” I muttered as I pushed my chips to the winner. His withered old man jaws stopped smacking on a wad of gum long enough to thank me.

I stepped away from the table to cool my head and call my girlfriend. I told her what had happened.

“We’re going to be boarding in twenty minutes,” she advised me.

“I’m not sure what to tell you. I have no way of knowing how long I’ll last. It’s going to be touch or go until I either get some more chips or get knocked out.”

If you'd prefer a more visual summary of the tournament, check out Poker Savvy Plus, where I'm working on a series of videos covering these and other hands I played in the 2008 Main Event.

Labels: narrative, NLHE, personal, poker, poker strategy, tournament, trip report, Two Plus Two, wsop

Stumble It!

There's a 15-minute video interview with me over at Poker Savvy Plus that I think came out pretty well. It touches on how I got involved in poker, my playing style, some common mistakes I see, and how poker interacts with my non-profit work.

Labels: personal, poker, Poker Savvy, poker strategy

Stumble It!

I haven't watched or followed much of the DNC Convention, but I've seen enough to make these two observations:

1. Hillary Clinton and the Glass Ceiling. Before Hillary's speech, they did this video montage thing that was all about how she may not shattered the "glass ceiling" that restricts the opportunities available to women in America but she cracked in 1000 places or something. The insinuation was very much that she lost not because Obama was the better candidate but because he was a man and she was a woman and America is unfair. I'm generally fairly sympathetic to that kind of argument, but I don't think it holds much water in this case given that Obama is contending with a glass ceiling of his own.

More importantly, though, this is just the wrong message for her to be sending. She lost the primariy, and her role now is to suck it up and throw her support behind Obama. McCain is proof that candidates who lose in a primary but toe the party line for the general election can still be viable candidates eight years down the road. McCain had much more legitimate grievances in light of the dirty tricks that Bush/Rove employed against him in 2000, but he swallowed his pride, fell into line, and now he's getting his moment.

Clinton claims she is going to play ball, but it's a stretch to say that she is throwing her support behind Obama. It's more like a weak lob. She's taking every opportunity to draw attention to the fact that she thinks she should have won, that she was the better candidate, and that she is only supporting Obama because that's what's required of her now. Of course, such "support" doesn't really count for much when it's accompanied by a wink and a nod designed to let everyone know that in her view, he is not the strongest possible candidate.

2. I turned on the TV today to see Biden's speech, and there was a woman on a red-lit stage singing "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" with a team of background dancers behind her. I assumed this was part of the DNC Convention until I saw Simon Cowell clapping for her. I think it's funny that the conventions have become such an act of political theater that a casual viewer can confuse them with reality television.

Labels: personal, politics

Stumble It!

I was too inconsiderate to order your gift well in advance and too cheap to get expedited shipping, so it may not arrive tomorrow. But it will be there soon. In the meantime, here are photos from Bryce and Zion Canyons. For everyone who wasn't there, I've included the occasional caption. I couldn't recommend these two parks highly enough- some of the most beautiful places I've been. Way better than the Grand Canyon, in my opinion, which is remarkable only because it is big. My father, my brother, and I spent a few days out there between Day 1 and Day 2 of the WSOP.

This one is known as the sinking ship.

You can only see one of them but there were actually three of these little bridges crossing this narrow canyon.














This one looks a lot like a priest, if you zoom in.


My brother and me (unshaven and with hat hair).


My father, who commandeered the straw hat Poker Stars gave me. It definitely looked better on him.

Petrified rock.


Dad playing with his hand-held video camera.

Labels: personal, travel

Stumble It!

As of yesterday, I'm now a Core Pro, as opposed to a Guest Pro, at Poker Savvy Plus. This means I'll be making videos more consistently for them: five times per month, so roughly one a week.

It's a great honor to be affiliated with Poker Savvy Plus, because as far as I'm concerned, this site is at the forefront of poker instruction.

I like that we are moving past the model of "watch me while I play poker and talk about whatever happens" and focusing on the targeted development of specific skills. Don't get me wrong, I've learned a lot from the traditional "sweat" video, and now that I'll be producing videos more regularly, you'll see some of those from me as well. But I also have a background in teaching and working with teachers, and I know that there are much more effective ways of helping people learn. I'm committed to pushing the envelope when it comes to techniques and methods for teaching poker, and I like that Poker Savvy Plus is as well.

Remember, if you want to check out any of my videos, it's free to sign up and you get a 7-day free trial.

Labels: personal, poker, Poker Savvy, poker strategy

Stumble It!

I'm going to be publishing my trip report from my 35th place finish at the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event in three installments in the Two Plus Two Internet Magazine. The first installment, covering Days 1 and 2, has just been published in the August issue.

You can read trip reports from other events, including the 2006 and 2007 WSOP, in their entirety on my website.

Oh and for those of you who have been getting e-mails from me, there is some additional information in this version of the trip report, though not a lot.

Labels: Las Vegas, narrative, personal, poker, poker strategy, tournament, wsop

Stumble It!

I had the best year of my poker career last month :-). Obviously that was thanks to cashing for $193,000 at the WSOP. It's pretty freaky to think that there were several spots in the tournament, most notably when I was all in with AK vs JJ and spiked an Ace on the river, where a single card would have ended up changing my fortune so drastically. Of course I know that's a stupid way of thinking about it, but it's just an eerie feeling.

Here's my year-to-date graph. As you can see from the little blip after the huge spike, I've actually done pretty well in the few hands that I've played since as well.

I actually haven't quite hit my goal for the year yet (yeah, I'm ambitious), but I'm very very close now, so I think I'm actually going to spend less time grinding NLHE. I want to focus my attention now on getting better at some other games, especially PLO. I may even hire a coach- any suggestions?

Labels: personal, poker

Stumble It!

Thanks to everyone who's asked about these, and especially to Nick from London who prompted me to make this post I've been meaning to make. I'm really flattered that you all are so eager to read a trip report from the WSOP. I'm going to be publishing the trip report, probably in three parts, in lieu of my usual strategy articles for 2+2 Internet Magazine. Of course there will still be strategy content, but I hope also to maintain some of the "flavor" of my reporting from earlier WSOPs. The first installment, covering days 1 and 2, should be appearing August 1st- I'll post the link when it's published. If you haven't already, may I suggest reading my reports from the 2006 WSOP and 2007 WSOP in the meantime?

Labels: personal, poker, trip report, wsop

Stumble It!

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

Stumble It!

I'll lead off with the big one. My girlfriend pointed out to me that although a few people posted it as a comment, I hadn't actually made a post that included my finish at the World Series of Poker. Out of 6,844 players, I finished 35th and won $193,000. How sexy is this?


The check is for $191,000 because I left a $2000 tip for the dealers. That might seem like a lot, but 1% is pretty standard, and remember that you only tip when you cash, so in some sense the 10% who make the money are tipping for the 90% who did not as well as for themselves. It's kind of a screwy system, but that's how it works.

The other big news, which would have been the lead item any other week, is that as of August 4th I will no longer be the director of the Boston Debate League. The League is getting larger, serving more students and schools, and partnering with the central administration of the Boston Public Schools. Running it is turning into a full time job for which I have neither the time nor the inclination.

We're very fortunate that the chairman of our Board is also the founder and managing partner of Isaacson, Miller, an international executive search firm for nonprofits. Ordinarily they work with big organizations like museums and universities, but one of their associates, who is also a Board member, helped us conduct a nationwide search for a director. We hired a great candidate who is frankly more qualified than I thought we were going to find. I'll still be working with the League, having a paid, full time employee is going to make a world of difference for us.

July's been an exciting month. I went from being way behind pace for hitting my yearly goal for poker income to being just a hair's breath away. I probably won't end up meeting my goal for hours played since I won't feel like forcing myself to put in hours when I don't feel like playing. On the plus side, I probably will play more non-hold 'em games, and I may even hire a PLO coach.

Labels: boston debate league, personal, poker, wsop

Stumble It!

Frankly, I didn't do a very good job of courting/attracting media attention despite my deep run in the WSOP. But here are a few links to coverage of my play:

Interview with Poker Stars

O By the Way Blog 1

O By the Way Blog 2

PokerNews Photos

Poker Savvy/Cardplayer Round Table

And honorable mention goes to the Hendon Mob, who reported that:

"Only five players -- Andrew Brokos, Pat Dattilo, Marc Friedman, Vinod Jadav, and Stefan Mattsson -- cashed in both the 2006 and 2007 Main Events. All were going for their third consecutive cash this year. However, only one player survived (and is guaranteed to cash). He is Stefan Mattsson, from Stockholm, Sweden – currently in 308th place)."

Really, 308th place? Sick run, Stefan. I'm really surprised there were only five of us who cashed in '06 and '07.

Also according to Hendon Mob, the record for consecutive cashes is held by Bo Sehlstedt, who cashed in 2004-2007 but failed to cash this year. C'mon, Stefan, we can take him.

Labels: Card Player, news, personal, poker, Poker Savvy, tournament, wsop

Stumble It!

The numbers are in, and 6,844 players entered the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event. Fewer than half survived Day 1, and only about 1/3 of those will survive Day 2. Hopefully I will be among them.

I've done some research to learn my Day 2 seating assignment along with the players and chip stacks against whom I'll be competing. Here's the table:

George Price 35,700
James Viglizzo 10,900
Bernd Hirschberg 32,750
Thomas Wayne 11,125
Andrew Brokos 67,125
Drew Matheson 64,925
Steve Wong 43,350
Duane Woolsey 44,850
J McLane 16,525

There's a lot of good news here. I've got the most chips of anyone and far more than most. Google wasn't able to turn up much on most of these players, suggesting that they are probably amateurs with limited poker knowledge/experience.

The bad news is that the players who are 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in chips are all lined up on my left. This means I will have to act before them in most pots, putting me at a distinct disadvantage against them. There are also not that many chips at our table. While that means there are fewer threats to my survival, there are also fewer chips for me to win. There's no prize for surviving Day 2, and if I do survive, I'm going to need every chip I can get for future days.

The only recognizable player here is Steve Wong. Steve is a professional originally from Hoofdorp, outside of Amsterdam. He was a very successful tournament player online and has now had a lot of live success as well. There's an interview with him on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F9YV6vC6cM.

Be sure to check out the comments to this post throughout the day, as I'm going to ask a few friends to post comments with update chip counts and maybe some key hands as well.

Labels: NLHE, personal, poker, tournament, wsop

Stumble It!

Even though I eventually won a WSOP seat through Stars, they were out of hotel rooms at the Palms, so my only option was to take $1000 in exchange for their sponsorship. Cheapskate that I am, I spent my first few nights at the Imperial Palace. The room was nothing special, but it was better than I expected. It even had a little balcony with a decent view of Caesar's and Bellagio:


Having survived Day 1, I decided to treat myself on subsequent days. I booked a suite at the Rio, which was remarkably cheap (I'm paying barely more than I did at AP), and is way bigger and more badass:


It has a slightly better view as well:

Labels: Imperial Palace, Las Vegas, personal, Rio, wsop

Stumble It!

I came out to Vegas a few days early to get into the swing of things, to see some friends with whom I play and talk poker regularly online but rarely see in real life, and to take care of some business. This will be my third time playing in the main event, and it amazes me how much has changed since I first came to Las Vegas two years ago. In 2006, I was a nervous kid who knew no one, was known by no one, and was in awe of every famous player I'd seen on TV.

I can't claim to be a poker celebrity, but yesterday I got a taste of what that would be like. After waking early, going for a swim, having breakfast, and putting in some non-poker work at my computer, I made my first trip to the Rio. I wasn't going to play but to meet up with Bill Ordine, a reporter from my hometown paper, the Baltimore Sun, who is working on an article on poker and philanthropy. He'd already interviewed Barry Greenstein, who's known as “the Robin Hood of Poker” for donating over a million dollars in tournament winnings to a children's charity, and Annie Duke, who organized a $5000 buy-in charity tournament called Ante Up for Africa to coincide with the WSOP.

My own story is a little different. I've donated only a little more than 5% of my poker winnings to the non-profit organization that I founded, the Boston Debate League (BDL). My real contribution is all of the time and work that I put into it. Poker is what enables me to do that. I average 20-25 hours of work per week for each, and I make enough playing poker that I can afford to put that kind of time into the BDL.

It's great that Bill is doing this article, because poker sometimes gets a bad rap among the general public. People tend to believe, not entirely without reason, that poker encourages a cut-throat, every-man-for-himself mindset and that it rewards lying, treachery, and deceit. Hopefully an article in a major newspaper that focuses on the good that poker enables people to do will help to clean up that image.

Poker hasn't just given me the financial freedom to do “good work”. It's also taught me valuable skills that a liberal arts education did not. To paraphrase Ms. Duke, poker isn't fundamentally a game of lying, it's a game of pricing and negotiation. I do feel it's given me some business sense that has proven useful in meetings with foundations, prospective donors, the Boston Public Schools, and other individuals and institutions with which the BDL works.

Largely, the interaction between my poker “work” and my urban debate work has been a one-way street. That is, poker gave me the skills and financial freedom to grow the Boston Debate League, but the latter didn't do much for my poker game, except maybe making me feel less of a leech on society by gambling for a living.

Recently, however, that's started to change. In addition to playing, I now make money by coaching poker as well. Sometimes this is with individual students who pay me by the hour, but I also work for a video training site called Poker Savvy Plus. They pay me to record videos of myself playing or talking about poker and then offer these videos on a subscription basis to people who want to improve their game. My experience teaching debate and working with professional teachers has definitely made me a more successful and popular poker coach.

Yesterday, I got to meet my co-workers at Poker Savvy for the first time (in most cases- there were a few I already knew). But first, I had about an hour to kill between my interview with Bill and my meet-up with Poker Savvy. So, I headed down to the Amazon Room, the convention center at the Rio Hotel & Casino where the WSOP is held. I was hoping I might see someone I knew, but the odds were slim. Actually, the odds were good that I'd see someone I knew but slim that I'd recognize them. Since I play poker almost exclusively online, I plenty of people by their screen names but have no clue what most of them look like.

As luck would have it, though, I was spotted by my friend Richard almost immediately. Richard goes by Shorty both because of his last name is and because he is immensely tall. He was just starting a 20-minute break from a tournament he was playing, so I accompanied him for a quick bite at the WSOP Poker Kitchen while he told me how things had been going for him so far in Las Vegas. Mostly he raved about how soft and juicy the side games were and asked what I was planning on playing.

I told him the truth, which is that I had exactly $10,000 in cash on me, which I needed to buy into the main event. My plan was to play $5/$10 or $10/$25 games, hope for the best, and then find a Bank of America (there are none on the Strip, so I'd have to take a cab there and back) to withdraw more if I didn't win. Shorty told me that he was leaving town that night and would be happy to lend me some cash since he wouldn't need it. We exchanged phone numbers so that we could meet up when he was finished playing that night, and then he got back to his tournament.

I wandered around for a bit longer and then headed up to the suite in the Rio that Cardplayer magazine had converted into a studio for the duration of the WSOP. This is where I'd be meeting everyone else from Poker Savvy to record a roundtable Q&A session where we discussed poker topics submitted by Cardplayer readers.

Since I arrived about fifteen minutes early, I had some time to hang out with the Cardplayer crew, including the main reporters/hosts for their internet content: Shawn Green and Lizzie Harrison. Those of you who follow the poker scene may know these two, and those of you who don't probably won't be surprised to learn that Lizzie is an attractive and buxom twenty-something. Her looks have earned her a bit of a cult following on internet poker forums, and I can assure you that she is at least twice as hot in real life. But she, Shawn, and the rest of the Cardplayer crew were also very down to earth and fun to shoot the breeze with.

After about twenty minutes, the other Poker Savvy people started to arrive: Justin “Jurollo” Rollo, Dani “Ansky” Stern, Isaac “Ike” Haxton, Chris “Tribefan” Rhodes, Tony “Bond18” Dunst, and some of the behind-the-scenes guys. We took our seats and waited for the star of the show, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, to join us during his break from the Ante Up for Poker tournament.

For those who don't know, Mike is, to understate the matter, a character. Though he's had tremendous success as a poker player, winning multiple WSOP bracelets and several six-figure prizes, he's also lost a lot of money to compulsive gambling and spent some time in jail for possession of cocaine. He's called “The Mouth” because he talks non-stop at the table, often berating his opponents' play, singing his own praises, or just generally calling attention to himself.

Lately, he's made some impressive gains in getting himself together. In the last year, he's dropped over sixty pounds, motivated by a $100,000 prop bet to get from 241 lbs down to 179. Just recently, he won his third WSOP bracelet in the $5000 rebuy 2-7 single draw rebuy event.

So we are all sitting in front of the cameras and waiting for Mike when suddenly there is a loud thump on the door. Someone opens it, and The Mouth comes crashing into the suite like a stampeding rhinoceros. “You all wouldn't believe how f---ing fast I f---ing ran to get up here,” he pants, nostrils flared. “Let's do it! Let's go! Let's get this thing f---ing started!” he shouts, clapping his hands. He takes the last available seat, which is in the back.

I'm wondering if the most famous guy here shouldn't be seated more prominently, but it turns out not to matter, because Mike makes himself the center of attention no matter what. He fields the first question enthusiastically and then interrupts whomever is speaking when he decides he has something to add. When he isn't shouting over us, he is gesticulating wildly to the people off-camera that he has to go in a minute or that he would like a bottle of water. We pass it to him, and he consumes the entire thing in a single ten-second chug, then tosses it haphazardly aside.

I don't imagine that much strategy content slipped past Mike's antics, but the clip should at least be good for comedic value. It doesn't appear to be up on Cardplayer's website yet, but I'll let you know when it is.

After the taping, we went out for drinks sans Mike. Truthfully, an afternoon with a bunch of internet poker players is not generally something I'd look forward to. Most are brash, self-absorbed, whiny, and otherwise annoying. But I must say that to a person, my co-pros at Poker Savvy were a great bunch. They are all very successful at poker and have a lot to brag about, but they don't come across as stuck up or anything, and they have some good stories.

For the full-time professionals, the WSOP is a magical time of year. Groups of guys, from four to ten or more, rent palatial houses in Las Vegas and spend weeks playing poker and partying their asses off. I don't think any of the best stories were intended for public consumption, but you can probably imagine the sort of debauchery that a bunch of guys in their early twenties with way too much money can get up to in Las Vegas. I'm only a few years older than most of them, but that whole lifestyle has never really been my scene. There are times when I feel little pangs of regret and a sense that I could be living a seriously crazy life, but for the most part it doesn't appeal to me. I do love hearing the stories, though.

We left the bar around seven, and I got a ride back to the Rio. I'd had only one drink in anticipation of putting in some hours at the tables that night. As I was waiting for a seat to open up, I ran into Shorty again. He had just been eliminated from his tournament and was going to go pack his bags then bring me some cash before leaving for the airport.

About an hour later, I was seated in a tight but not particularly tough 10/25 game when I spotted Shorty wandering the cash game section. I stood up and waved to catch his attention, played one more hand, then walked away from the table for a minute to speak with him. “Here's $7500,” he greeted me, handing me a roll of $100 bills. I pocketed it as he shared some intel on players at my table whom he'd played with in the last few days, then I wished him a good flight and returned to my game.

This really underscores the value of reputation in the poker community. I've known Shorty for about three years online, but we've met only two or three times in real life. Yet, just as a favor, he's willing to lend me $7500 in cash on the understanding that I'll send him a check when I get back to Boston. It's just a reality of high stakes poker that people often need access to large sums of cash, and now to money on various online poker sites as well, and it's infinitely easier to manage the logistics of moving this money among friends than to deal with the hassle and expense of wire transfers, getting to an off-Strip bank, or withdrawing from an ATM.

Poker friends can also help you raise money by staking you in a juicy game that's beyond your bankroll. They reduce your risk by putting up some of the money you need. Then if you lose, they eat the loss, and if you win, they get a cut. In fact, I was up on the WSOP before I even got to Las Vegas as a result of buying 10% of a friend who has had a phenomenal run, making two final tables.

Of course there are scumbags who take advantage of people, borrow money they can't or won't pay back, and rip off their investors. But reputation spreads quickly, and these people can quickly be cut off from the world of poker financing. Because I have been an active and ethical member of the poker community for several years, I know many people who would lend me money in a pinch, stake me for nearly any tournament I wanted to play, or help me transfer funds between online poker sites. And there are plenty of people for whom I would do the same.

Labels: gambling, Las Vegas, Mike Matusow, news, personal, poker, Poker Savvy, trip report, wsop

Stumble It!

Hey, a winning month! Maybe I am not so bad at this game after all. There are still a few days to go, but I probably won't be playing much if at all. As you may have noticed, I haven't been playing the last few days either. I leave for Las Vegas on July 1st, and once out there I'll obviously be devoting quite a lot of time to poker, so I'm buckling down now on some of my other projects.

Granted I'm about to turn around and spend all of June's winnings in Las Vegas, but I was going to play the main event anyway, so the winnings are still very meaningful. And if you count staking profits, June turns into a damn fine month.

I was playing smaller stakes, though deep-stacked, and ran at about 4 BB/100 over 19K hands.

Non-poker stuff, which is where I devoted a lot of my time, is going great as well. The school system is really excited about the debate league and committed to investing in it, and we're very close to hiring an extremely qualified new director. I wish I had a bit more time for poker, but as I said, the first part of July will be dedicated to it, and once there's a paid employee working on the debate stuff, I should have more free time as well.

Labels: boston debate league, personal, poker, urban debate league

Stumble It!

After spending more than enough money to buy in directly, I finally won a freaking main event seat in one of the last $650 satellites Stars will be running. Counting the spending money and sponsorship deal that comes with the package, I think that I ended up breaking even on satellites almost to the dollar.

It wasn't a particularly interesting tournament, but I did make one tight fold fairly early on. I raised QQ UTG, and the BB min-re-raised me. I didn't have quite the right odds to chase a set, but I called anyway and then folded when he bet half his stack on a ragged flop. Obviously I'm not 100% sure I was beat, and the guy did turn out to be a pretty aggressive player, but I still have my doubts about just how wide his range is for min-re-raising an UTG raise.

I also found myself folding both AK and KK preflop much later in the tournament, but those were actually trivially easy situations. In both cases I had a safe stack, we were one player away from the bubble, and there was a massive chipleader open shoving every hand. There was just no reason to get involved, even with AA.

Speaking of which, here was an interesting spot that I saw at another table on the bubble:

Poker Stars, $615 + $35 NL Hold'em Tournament, 3,500/7,000 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG: 42,162
UTG+1: 52,824
UTG+2: 56,370
MP1: 88,111
MP2: 84,791
CO: 12,672
BTN: 169,828
SB: 18,412
BB: 59,926

Pre-Flop: (16,800)
5 folds, CO raises to 11,972 and is All-In, BTN calls 11,972, SB folds, BB calls 4,972

Flop: (45,716) T 8 8 (3 Players - 1 is All-In)
BB checks, BTN checks

Turn: (45,716) 6 (3 Players - 1 is All-In)
BB checks, BTN checks

River: (45,716) T (3 Players - 1 is All-In)
BB checks, BTN checks

Results: 45,716 Pot
CO showed A A (two pair, Aces and Tens) and WON 22,858 (+10,186 NET)
BTN mucked and LOST (-12,672 NET)
BB showed A A (two pair, Aces and Tens) and WON 22,858 (+10,186 NET)


It's to the BB's credit that he played this correctly. I think a lot of people would have reshoved with AA there, but he's much better guaranteeing that the BTN goes to showdown and increasing the odds of the short stack getting eliminated.

Feels good to win this, because now I don't have to waste time and effort booking a hotel, finding someone to pay me to wear their clothing, etc. Just nice to have all that stuff taken care of.

Labels: Las Vegas, NLHE, personal, poker, Poker Stars, poker strategy, tournament, wsop

Stumble It!

My dad keeps up with the blog, so I figured I'd make a post to wish him a Happy Father's Day. I didn't see him today, since he's in Maryland and I'm in Boston, but he'll be coming out to Las Vegas for the WSOP as he has for the last two years. After my first day (1C), we're going to Bryce Canyon for two nights before I (hopefully) play Day 2B. Happy Father's Day, dad.

On the same theme, here's a great story about being a father from 2+2 poster "Marlow":

In the months leading up the birth of my daughter, just about everyone who had the chance told me that my life was going to change. Of course they were right, but it's interesting that no one ever asserted that I was going to change. Beyond the impact my daughter has had on my sleep schedule, ability to play cards, drink, watch football, and travel - the greatest changes have all been to my personality and outlook. Before, I was a walking existential crisis. So much of my life was devoted to exploring my place in the world, and what the whole "meaning of life" is. But after she arrived, I stopped asking these questions. I'm no longer tortured by all of that. I’m satisfied. I can't say that I know definitively what the meaning of life is, but my need to ask the question of myself and the world has ceased completely.

Anyway, I have a story I'd like to share. Yesterday my daughter turned 3. In addition to the books, toys, and other presents that we've given her, we also let her choose where we ate dinner. She decided on ice cream first, then miso soup and sushi at the Japanese restaurant next door. She loves this place because not only does she love the food, but they have a small pond with dozens of koi fish in the middle of the room. She can walk right up to the pond and peer over the side to watch the fish swim up to her in the hope that they'll be fed. For a 3 year-old, this is the best. As an added bonus, she usually meets and plays with other kids who are there, too. So last night she's there looking at and talking to the fish when three older (probably 5 years old) boys came over to the pond and start to blow on the fish as they swim by. Clearly the fish did not like this. When they were blown on, they'd quickly swim off. The boys, being boys, were delighted that they were able to agitate these creatures. My daughter watched this for a minute or so, and I could almost see her thought process: "They are older, so should I do this too? The fish don't like this, though - and I like the fish. I don't know what to do." But then she made her decision for the welfare of the fish. So she marched over to these three kids who were significantly bigger than she was and started saying "don't blow on those fish!" over and over. They paid no attention, and after a few minutes, she came back to me exasperated. I suggested that she ask more politely. Of course, I knew that this would have no effect on them, but I wanted her to keep trying, to keep doing what she thought was the right thing. I didn't want to step in and teach her that justice only happens when you turn to an authority figure. I wanted her to feel as though she could do something for a cause that was important to her. To her credit, she started to ask politely. Then they started laughing and mocking her. This only spurred her on. She was getting angry, and started slapping her knees and shouting "stop, stop, stop, blowing on those fishies!!" again and again.

At this point I'm practically in tears I'm so happy. She is demonstrating empathy for the fish. She's standing up for what she believes in, even though the boys must have been very intimidating to her, and she did not resort to violence when she became frustrated. Eventually, one of the boys started clapping aggressively close to her, and I had to step in to protect her and scold him. The kid's father then materialized and ushered him away. The episode ended, but my wife and I praised her for the rest of the night.

But this was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I was and still am bursting with pride. To me, this is what parenthood and life is all about.

Labels: narrative, personal

Stumble It!

As some of you know, my poker playing for the last few years has supported not only myself but a debate league in the Boston Public Schools. It started as just a volunteer thing that I did with a few teachers, but we soon realized that it had potential to help a lot of students if we could make it better. The key to that has been getting the administration of BPS to take some ownership of it, so that it would become part of the school system and not just an outside program.

I'm very excited that after months of meetings, the superintendent and her staff have agreed to invest $50,000 in the League. This is actually less than I was hoping, but it's still a huge improvement from nothing and will hopefully get us a foot in the door. Everyone I've met in the administration has seemed genuinely taken with the program. Now we'll have access to data such as debaters' GPA and test scores (this will be part of our deal with BPS), the numbers will back up our claims about how participation in debate can improve confidence, academic achievement, critical thinking, literacy, etc. It seems very plausible to me that there could be debate teams in every high school in the city, and maybe middle schools as well, within ten years.

It's kind of sad that I'll probably be leaving Boston just as this thing really takes off. I'll still be involved as a member of the Board, but we're hiring a full time person to direct the League.

This afternoon, I attended an end-of-the-year banquet and awards ceremony for one of my debate teams. In addition to awards for all the debaters, they had one for me in honor of my last year as director. Though it was technically from the whole team, I know that the coach and one student in particular were behind it. These two are respectively among the most extraordinary of the dozens of teachers and hundreds of students I've worked with in my seven years in the urban debate field, and their respect means the world to me.

Here's the trophy, which I'm sure will become one of my most cherished possessions:


Actually the aforementioned student just found this blog recently. When she saw me today, the first thing she said was, "Hey I googled your name."

Uh oh, I know where this is going. "Yeah?"

"I didn't know about all that poker stuff."

"Yeah I don't really make a big deal about it at work."

"That's pretty neat. So you are like a beginner?"

"Uh, I didn't say that. Where'd you get that from?"

"Some article from the Baltimore Sun said it was like your second time or you made money for the second time or something."

"Yeah, my second time making money... at the world championships."

"Oh. That's pretty good."

And a close-up of the engraving:

Labels: boston debate league, personal, urban debate league

Stumble It!

A few days ago, as part of our cross-country road trip, Emily and I spend the better part of a day in Little Rock, Arkansas. I found it to be quite an interesting place, kind of a hip and relatively liberal mecca in a region of the US often stereotyped as backwards and conservative. Presumably Bill Clinton's legacy and influence have something to do with this, but I imagine the man was equally a product of the place.

After setting up our tent, our first stop was a scenic overlook at a nearby state park. As we were doing our best to point a camera at ourselves blindly with one hand, another couple arrived and offered to take our picture. They were a 'classic' Arkansas couple: he a straggly white guy sporting a goatee and a Home Depot polo, she a slender black woman with a pronounced posterior, and both exceedingly friendly and polite.

The man asked where we were from, and after I gave him a brief synopsis, I asked if they lived around here. He positively swelled with pride and drawled, "Why, yes sir, we do!"

"You're lucky," I told him, nodding at the sprawling, tree-covered delta spread out below us. They both smiled and offered some suggestions of things to see in the area, most notably the Big Dam Bridge.

I mention their races because it reinforces something I've noticed in my limited time in the American South. Despite northern stereotypes about racist hillbillies, Southern cities seem to be a lot more socially integrated than those in the North. I've seen many more inter-racial couples or even just groups of friends having dinner or coffee together than I do in places like Boston or Chicago.

Then again, that's only half of the story. I've also heard it said that, "In the South, they don't care how close you get, as long as you don't get too big; in the North, they don't care how big you get, as long as you don't get too close." It may be that opportunities for higher-level education, employment, and economic success are harder for many blacks to come by in the South; I'm really not in a position to say. And of course the Klan is still alive and well in many Southern states. But issues of racial equality, justice, and segregation are very important to me, and I'm always particularly mindful of them when traveling in a new region or culture.

On that note, we also visited Central High School in Little Rock, which in 1957 was the site of a riot that attracted international attention. The Supreme Court had recently declared the racial segregation of public schools to be illegal, but when nine black students attempted to enter Central High School in September, they were turned away by the Arkansas National Guard on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus.

A federal judge then ordered the school integrated. Faubus withdrew the National Guard, but a crowd of over a thousand angry whites gathered to prevent the Little Rock Nine from entering the school. The mayor of Little Rock wrote President Eisenhower for help, and he responded by federalizing the Guard and sending 100 members of the 101st Airborne Division to support the local police in maintaining order. A violent riot ensued. The students were threatened, and many reporters were beaten.

Eventually, the riot ended and the Little Rock Nine did attend school that year, with the only senior among them becoming the first black student to graduate from Central High School. The next year, however, Governor Faubus closed the state's three high schools rather than proceed with their integration, and students of all colors were forced to find new schools.

It's sad but important to realize that this was not the work of one misguided governor or a small but loud minority of virulent segregationists. Even after closing down the public high schools altogether, a Gallup poll found that Faubus was one of the ten men most admired by Americans in 1958.

One thing I find interesting about the civil rights movement is the role that pictures and other forms of media coverage have played in its successes. The style of nonviolent resistance popularized by Gandhi and King relies heavily on appealing to the conscience, not only of the oppressors, but of the world at large. You may have seen this powerful image from the Little Rock riot before:


It's one thing to have a political disagreement about whether schools ought to be integrated. Personally, I don't consider it a matter, like tax cuts, on which reasonable people can disagree. But especially in that era it kind of was, and regardless, there is such a world of difference between disagreeing with the decision of a judge or politician and cursing, spitting at, and attacking children.

Here we see a crowd of angry adults who are both older and far more numerous than the teenagers trying to do nothing more than attend a school that the highest court in the land has told them they have the right to attend. A lone girl walks calmly and bravely past a mob driven wild by hate, epitomized by the sneer on one woman's face.

Images like these provoked a kind of moral crisis for white Americans. They were able to overlook or make excuses for the fear, mistrust, hatred, and racism that informed their own support for segregation. But an angry mob attacking children cannot be interpreted as anything but a moral failing of the highest order. Over time, images such as this forced many people to change their opinions and drop their support for many of the most overt forms of discrimination.

This creates an interesting phenomenon where a town like Little Rock, which once festered with racism, can in many ways end up being less racist, or at least more conscious of its enduring racism, than more progressive cities that never saw such a singularly explosive incident of racism.

The epilogue to the picture above is that the the two women, the black teenager and the sneering white woman, met at Central High forty years later to reconcile. There was another moving photo (I couldn't find it online) of them standing arm in arm. The white woman was in tears.

When a woman, and more broadly a city, is so dramatically confronted with her own racism and forced to acknowledge their wrongdoings, they can ultimately end up more sensitive to the issue and conscious of the need to work actively to overcome it. For the millions who witnessed the Little Rock spectacle and others like it on television, however, it can have the opposite effect: they externalize racism as a belief held by redneck hillbillies who are not at all like themselves. They are inclined to think that if they are not burning crosses or shouting racial epithets, then they are not part of the problem.

Later the same day, we passed through Memphis, but didn't have much time to spend there. That's a shame, because I really would have liked to have visited some of the civil rights sites there. It's a part of American culture that I find really interesting both historically and as a lesson for today. Despite the progress that has been made, so many of the problems targeted by the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's, such as segregation and educational inequality, persist today. Yet there is no movement on the scale that there was 40-50 years ago. Why not? Which of those strategies can and should be revived? Which failed? Which need to be adapted for contemporary America?

If any of you have made it through this rant and want to hear yet more of what I have to say on the subject, you might be interested in my review of Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities.

Labels: narrative, personal, race, trip report

Stumble It!

I'd forgotten about this, but apparently I knocked an FTP pro out of some long ago tournament. Recently I got this t-shirt in the mail:

And here it is displayed along with my other trophies, an autographed picture of the toeker player I eliminated from the 2006 WSOP and my autographed copy of Ace on the River that I got from Barry Greenstein at the 2007 WSOP:

Labels: personal, poker

Stumble It!

I'm taking tomorrow off, so I guess I just played my last hand for April. I put in about 20K hands over 50 hours this month. That's about half of my monthly goal, but this was a particularly busy month for the Boston Debate League (just under 100 hours): I was in Chicago for a few days for the UDL Nationals, then we had our City Championships as well.

The month got off to a rough start, but I recovered reasonable well. I ran at nearly 2 BB/100, but because my win rate was best at smaller stakes, I was actually in the red for the month, though not by a lot.

I played a touch of PLO and Stud/8, but not enough to be worth talking about. I will say though that I need to realize that those games require a lot more focus, both because I have a lot less experience in them and because there are fewer automatic decisions than in NLHE. Playing three tables of Stud/8 and talking on the phone is not going to work, even though that's no sweat at almost any stakes in NLHE (unless I'm playing HU).

Most importantly, I accomplished one of my New Year's Resolutions by getting affiliated with Poker Savvy Plus. My first three videos, which comprised a series on Flop Fundamentals, was well received, and it looks like I'll be doing some more.

April Graph:

Aren't I supposed to be winning money? Here's to a better May....

Labels: personal, poker

Stumble It!

This week I watched the second-to-last Sopranos, which I'd never seen, and re-watched the final episode. I recall going to considerable length to see the finale and being thoroughly disappointed, not just by the final seconds, but by the entire thing. Basically the whole season 6 (the part after the break, anyway) was boring. It constantly followed plots I didn't care about it and created new subplots (Tony's gambling) when I wanted them to be building to something.

As I said, I hadn't seen the second-to-last episode, and man did I love it. But there was so much good stuff rushed into one episode- it could have been expanded into a whole season.

The season should have opened with the Italians being flown in and killing the wrong guy. Then one or two episodes later, New York goes after Sylvio and Bobby. The whole season is full of feuding with Phil Leotardo. Tony kills Chris in a more climactic way. Throw an AJ episode in there somewhere, maybe one dedicated to Melfi "dumping" him, then in the second-to-last episode they learn Phil's location and have the meeting to flip his guy. Final episode opens with Phil's execution, then most of it is dedicated to Carlo going missing and the FBI getting grand jury testimony.

I've taken him this far. Now David Chase just needs to go back to the drawing board AND WRITE ME A FUCKING ENDING! No, I can't come up with anything better. That doesn't mean he shouldn't. I'm not the series creator- it's not my job.

I liked the rest of that episode better this time around. I really like what happened to AJ, I just wish they hadn't crammed it all into the last episode. The scene with Tony and Janice is one of the only scenes of hers that don't make me grit my teeth. It's the first and only time I understood the connection between the two of them and why Tony keeps supporting her.

The encounter with Junior was good, too. And Paulie with the cat was hysterical. "Those things are like snakes with fur."

But I'm still not happy with the ending. I just think his pretentious "commentary" on television went on for too long. He didn't need a precious little device to do that: the whole season was anti-climactic, highlighted by the treatment of Christopher's death. The gag ending was just a cheap shot, as far I'm concerned.

Go ahead, someone leave me a comment saying I didn't understand it. Tell me your deep thoughts about how "we got to feel how he has to live the rest of his in paranoia". Please.

Labels: personal

Stumble It!

I don't know how he did it, but Bryan Clark (AKA Dynasty, the editor of 2+2 Magazine) managed to defuse Mason Malmuth's temper. In both our public and private communications, he gave no ground whatsoever and continued to insist that I deliberately misrepresented the Harrington on Cash series in my reviews. (For those who need the backstory on this, see my post from two days ago).

He was demanding a retraction, which I was obviously not going to do, and I was ready to give him a piece of my mind. I'm sure whatever I said would have closed the door on my ever writing for the magazine again, but that seemed like a fait accompli at that point anyway. However, Bryan convinced me to hold my tongue until he spoke with Mason again. I wasn't optimistic, but I let him do his thing, and boy did he ever come through. Apparently, though he still insists that my reviews misrepresent the contents of the books, Mason no longer believes that this was deliberate on my part and he is OK with my continuing to write for the magazine.

In his defense, Mason apparently did not know that Foucault the 2+2 poster was Andrew Brokos the magazine author. This makes it somewhat more reasonable for him to reach the conclusion that I had malicious intent in reviewing the books. Though I still don't think it's an appropriate conclusion for him to jump to, it's more understandable and I am no longer particularly insulted. I mostly just want the whole thing to blow over at this point, which seems to be his preference as well.

Except that he wants me to meet with him, Bryan, Dan Harrington, and Bill Robertie this summer when I'm in Vegas for the WSOP. Under different circumstances, that would be very cool, but since they all have good reason to be feeling antagonistic towards me, I'm pretty sure it's going to be uncomfortable.

But whatever, I wouldn't have put it in writing if I wasn't willing to defend it to the authors' faces. I do regret that the tone of the reviews was so hostile, but so far I haven't been convinced that any of my actual arguments are wrong. And I certainly owe it to Bryan to attend, assuming the meeting ever actually happens, because I get the sense that he stuck his neck out a bit to keep me on the magazine.

Though I asked him not to, I'm glad that he did. It's -EV, but I've enjoyed writing for the magazine anyway. Looks like I'll have an article in the May issue after all. Thanks Bryan.

Oh and I appreciate the support that you all have shown in the comments here and in the 2+2 thread, but please don't post in it now. Like I said, I want this to blow over. Thanks.

Labels: book review, personal, poker

Stumble It!