Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound"Like most New Y...

Born to Gamble Part II: Southbound

"Like most New Yorkers, my family did not believe that a glass of beer or a game of cards imperiled their souls, and there was something ugly and silly about those who insisted they did." - Edward Conlon, Blue Blood

When my internship at the NY Commodities Exchange ended in late May, I was offered a full time position with the brokerage house that I had been working with. At the age of 17, I made $500 a week plus overtime. That seemed like all the money in the world to me. (The sad part is that a decade later at age 27 as a struggling writer and artist, I'd make substantially less per week including inflation than when I was 17.)

I picked up at least $40 a day in prop bets on the floor of the exchange. For $20 a pop, I'd make crank calls to brokers' ex-wives and ex-girlfriends. I'd willingly say things like, "How would you like to make $14 the hard way?" or "How many cocks have you sucked today, you dirty slut whore?"

Most of the time, I pretended to be a doctor suggesting that one of their ex-lovers tested positive for the AIDS virus and that they should get tested immediately. It was a fucked up thing to do, but I was 17 years old and that was probably the least crazy thing I did. After work, I would go to the bars with the other brokers and clerks. Yeah, I wish I was 17 again drinking $1 mugs of beer at the Dugout in the East Village and trying to pick up rich stoner girls from schools like Fieldston or Chapin.

During my last week of work in August of 1990, the markets went completely crazy. The stock market and gold market were at new highs and oil futures went through the roof when some insane guy in Iraq named Saddam invaded an oil rich neighboring country. That was the first time I understood how international politics and war affected the financial markets. I saw it with my own eyes. During the seven months I worked on the floor, I never witnessed that much chaos as I did when Saddam attacked Kuwait. Everyone who had an account was gambling on the future. War is good for the economy and everyone was trying to position themselves to earn as much (or lose as little) money as possible during the impending showdown in the first Gulf War.

"You're lucky you're going to college," my supsenders-wearing boss with slicked back hair told me, "otherwise they'd be shipping your ass off to the desert."

* * * * *
Parts of college were a blur for me. I blame the mushrooms and Jim Beam, which caused partial memory loss. I didn't learn all that much in Atlanta while I dabbled in hedonism for four straight years. Although you can make a solid argument that 16 years later, I'm still caught up in my Dionysian lifestyle. The foundation of my intellectual knowledge was given to me by the Jesuits who taught me a classical education in high school which included learning four languages (Latin, French, Russian, and Greek), while studying Russian, Victorian, and early American literature, Advanced Calculus, Economics, and four years of theology.

Since my prep school was so rigorous academically, my classes in college were a joke. I took classes like Bowling, Stress Reduction and Flexibility, Social Problems in Modern Society, and the Presidency. No wonder I'd show up to class stoned, drunk, or both.

I wasn't challenged. College reminded me of watching Wheel of Fortune just after watching Jeopardy. It was a waste of time. I spent less time in classes and most of my time drinking in Atlanta bars, sitting on the porch of my fraternity house make cat calls at the sorority girls who jogged down Fraternity Row, or roadtripping to New Orleans or following the Grateful Dead throughout the South.

I also gambled in my late teens. Heavily.

My fraternity held a football pool and a March Madness pool, and I was in contention for both every year. I won the March Madness pool when UNLV beat Duke and guys in my house were verbally abusing Christian Laettner as they shouted homophobic references at the TV about his "close relationship" with point guard Bobby Hurley.

Most of us gambled on football every weekend. I had a bookie back home in NYC. Karate Tony started his own book during college and we used his services. My buddy Chicago Bob had a bookie in Atlanta and we'd phone up both bookies and go with the one who had the better spread. During my senior year, we had an amazing run and won seven weekends in a row. I have still yet to match that rush.

Sometimes on weekends when there wasn't anything going on, we'd roadtrip down to the riverboats in Biloxi, Mississippi to play blackjack. That's the first time I played poker in a casino, was on a riverboat. I was down to my last $30, so Chicago Bob and I played Seven-card Stud with a bunch of WWII vets.

During senior year, eight of us rented an RV and drove to Mardi Gras. We parked the large beast on Chartes Street in front of a church and went on a three day bender which included the consumption of massive qauntities of liquor, narcotics, and groping half-naked college girls from Texas. On the way back to Atlanta, we stopped off in Biloxi and headed to a riverboat casino. We needed to win enough money at the tables to pay for gas for the ride back.

My friends and fellow fraternity brothers started asking me to place bets for them. I would phone in their bets to Karate Tony or Chicago Bob's bookie. They lost more than they won and I started booking their action... myself. I stopped passing the bet along to Karate Tony unless it was so huge that I was afraid to cover it myself. Although I had one or two problems collecting money (and it was always from the rich kid who drove a nice car that refused to pay), I made enough scratch that I quit my part-time job cold calling alumni for donations. At best, I was a low level thug making a couple of hundred bucks of the degeneracy of the rich kids in my fraternity who would drop $100 on the Eagles because they were rooting for their hometown Philly team and betting with their hearts instead of their brain. All my bookie money went to pay my bar tab at Dooley's Tavern and to pay for tickets to Grateful Dead shows.

We played cards all the time in my fraternity house. There was a period of time when everyone played Spades and we even had a house-wide tournament. Spades is played with four players comprised of two-person teams. Rib was my partner and we were one of the best teams in the entire house. We would spend hours and hours playing and drinking cheap beer and smoking bad weed while listening to Widespread Panic bootlegs on the stereo in Rib's room.

We would play drinking games with freshmen girls who would wander down to the house. We'd try to get them hammered drinking Malibu Rum or some other conncoction that I came up with... lemonade and Southern Comfort. We'd play Asshole most of the time and some of the girls would be doing the "Walk of Shame" sometime around 8am.

We also played poker in college and the games were intense. We'd play in the living room of our fraternity house. One weekend we had a huge party where a band played in the formal room. After the party ended, we left the stage there for a week maybe longer. We threw green felt over one of the dinner tables and we started a poker game. That game lasted for a week straight as brothers and friends of ours would sit down and play rotating in and out. It was our version of the Big Game. Playing up on the stage under the bright lights with a small crowd gathered around made the players in the game feel like they were doing something extra special. We'd drink Jim Beam like it was water and chug Beast Lite, tossing empties into the fireplace or out the window. We made pledges go fetch us food, buy us more liquor, and clean out the gravity bong for us. Guys were afraid to go to class, take a nap, or have lunch with their girlfriends because they were worried they'd lose their seat in the game.

When it got too big we moved the game off campus. One of the dorky brothers in my fraternity complained that we were gambling in the open and that we could get our charter revoked for such aberrant behavior. It was just cards and not a big deal, but we got yelled at anyway. I thought it was a hypocritical decision since our other degenerate behavior was still allowed like the rampant drug abuse, giving our pledges alcohol poisoning, and the occasional date rapes.

My buddy Jerry lived off campus with Rib and his three-legged cat, Smooth, that was addicted to marijuana smoke. I guess if you were missing a leg, you'd get stoned all the time too. During the spring of 1994, two NYC teams were in the playoffs. The Rangers ended their 44 year drought and brought home the Stanley Cup. And the Knicks were bounced by the Houston Rockets in the NBA finals after John Starks went 1-87 from the floor in game 7.

Every night for a month straight, a NY team was playing in the playoffs so there was a different game to watch on TV. We'd be huddled around the TV and when the games ended, we'd play poker until sunrise. There would be 14-16 people playing with two tables going. The girls who lived across the hall got hooked. This went on all summer long.

We played dealer's choice with the emphasis on a four card guts game called Four Barrel where 4s and 8s were wild and flushes and straights don't count. Those games would get ugly and it would not be uncommon to lose a couple of hundred dollars in a Four Barrel pot. This was a lot of money considering we'd start out the night with nickel and dime antes. Even the sorority girls across the hall were hooked on Four Barrel. The second table would break around 2am when the people with "real jobs" had to crash. The first table would continue until sunrise when we'd go back to campus, pass out, then wake and bake and start the routine all over again.

I didn't work at all that summer. During Memorial Day, I went on a rush and won $2K playing two hands of blackjack at the same time at the Casino Magic in Biloxi. I made enough money to cover rent and food for the entire summer. I guess you can say that my first job out of college was being a professional gambler.

One guy in our game had spiraled into in a big losing streak. Dutch lost so much money that he had to use IOUs, which he scribbled on yellow Post-It notes. We nicknamed those IOUs "Dutch Bucks." They were as good as gold. My friends and I would use Dutch Bucks as currency. If Jerry bought me a twelve pack of Beast, I'd pay him with $5 in Dutch Bucks. At one point I had almost $200 in Dutch Bucks and I traded that in for a free round of golf (cart included) at Pinehurst, NC, a ticket to a Phish concert, and a big bag of mushrooms.

We'd all bring cash or jars of change to play in Jerry's homegame. Dutch would bring Post-Its. I still have a few Dutch Bucks to this day.

One night Teddy B (our version of G-Rob) got so drunk that he gambled away gift certificates that his girlfriend gave him for his birthday. She was still in school and didn't have much money. She knew Teddy B loved watching flicks, so she bought him $50 in gift certificates at Blockbuster. He was stuck pretty bad one night trying to bluff at a big pot in Four Barrel and "Zeke" got the best of him. He didn't have cash to buy back in and busted out the book of gift certificates. He promptly lost every single one. When his girlfriend found out she was furious. When we offered to give them back, she refused to accept them.

"Don't give them back. Let him learn this valuable lesson," she said. They broke up soon after.

... to be continued


Editor's Note: FYI, check out Born to Gamble Part I: Where It All Begins if you haven't read it already. Part III of the Born to Gamble series will be posted on Monday.

The Big Slick Assumption

Had a goofy hand yesterday swimming with the fishes in a game of $0.50/$1.00 6-handed limit over on Party. The kind of thing one sees fairly regularly in that particular aquarium, actually. The hand itself doesn’t have a lot to offer in terms of life lessons, but it did get me thinking a bit about how certain players -- chiefly inexperienced ones -- tend to interpret preflop raises in limit.

We had two empty seats at the time, actually, so there were only four of us for this particular hand. I was on the button where I was dealt Ac Kc. UTG folded, I raised, the SB folded, and the BB called. So far so what. The flop comes 7c Jh Tc and the SB open bets. Looking at the nut flush draw, a gutshot draw, and two overcards (a whopping 18 outs, potentially), I decide to raise. The SB reraises, quickly erasing from my mind the 4 outs represented by the non-club aces or kings. Still, I figure I’m close to 50-50 here even if my friend has 98 and has flopped a straight, and so I decide to cap it. (Checking later on CardPlayer’s Texas Hold ‘em Calculator, I see I’m 47% to win if my opponent indeed has 98 and no clubs.)

I’ll make this play occasionally with a strong draw and position with the hope of misleading my opponent into thinking I already have a made hand and am protecting. The SB calls, of course, and there is $6.25 in the pot when the Qc charmingly falls on the turn, giving me my nut flush.

My initial response to seeing the queen was mixed. After all, if my opponent only has a pair (the most likely hand), the queen should scare him or her away. My mood changed quickly, however, when my opponent again open bet. Must really have the 98, I think gleefully as I raise, am reraised, and then cap again. The pot is up to $14.25 when the river brings the Ks. Finally my opponent slows down and checks. I bet, s/he calls, and I collared $15.50 (minus the rake), netting 7.5 BB all told.

What did my opponent have? 10d 5c. I jive you not. Either s/he was completely wet behind the ears (a definite possibility), or perhaps believed on the turn that even if those crummy tens were no longer good there was the possibility of a fourth club and a hand-winning flush on the river. Hey, it could happen. And NBA refs’ll start calling travelling once we get to the finals.












The hand made me think of how when I first started playing limit I would routinely put preflop raisers on AK. Only after a few months of disillusionment did I realize how damaging to one’s stack such reflexive “putting-on-a-hand” can be. The Big Slick Assumption is directly consequent to wishful thinking about one’s pocket pair or the pair one flops after calling the preraise. You’ve seen it, I know. It’s heads-up after the preraise, the board shows no A or K, and the preflop caller commences to duel with the raiser. As I said, I’ve been guilty, too (though hopefully less often now than when I first began playing).

The hand seemed remarkable to me precisely because my opponent appeared not to have made the Big Slick Assumption (acting utterly unfazed with QJT on board). Perhaps s/he has yet even to reach that stage of development as a player, not yet ready to make reads or assumptions at all. In any event, while the hand itself was hardly special, it did remind me of at least two truths for microlimit play: (1) When you’ve hit your hand, bet bet bet (avoid slow-playing, check-raising, or other examples of “Fancy Play Syndrome” as Mike Caro puts it). (2) Don’t let the Big Slick Assumption talk you into thinking your bottom pair is going to be enough to beat the preflop raiser. Especially if he raises you on the turn.

Memorial Day..

Warning: Non-poker related post (rare for me)

So in the last 24 hours, I have corresponded with / run into two very interesting people.

I have often traded tv shows with people on tape and DVD. I love rare stuff, especially from Japan, or shows I loved as a kid but would like to see again. Sometimes you get lucky, like with Columbo, and they come out on DVD. I hear Brisco County is coming out this summer (via the Bruce Campbell web site). Other times you need to be more createive. (see my lists at www.eifco.org/tapetrade)

So I end up trading my copy of "It's your move" to a guy in Austrailia. Nice guy and a big fan of the show like me. (the show stared Jason Bateman as a kid who was the ultimate scammer. The writers created Married with Children after this show.)

This Aussie kid is such a big fan in fact, that he somehow TRACKS DOWN one of the child actors from the show (Eli). I get an email telling me that he wants a copy of the show. There is no way I could charge this guy or ask for a trade, so I simple ask him for a story about working on the show instead. And he wrote me one. Now that was a fair trade. I really enjoyed hearing about the back stage antics, and how auditioning was and how much his parents hated the idea. So funny. So, I am sending him of DVDs of his own show. How cool is that?

So, I am walking back to my hotel room and who do I run into but comedic genius Richard Jeni. (The BEST of the "no sitcom yet" comics in America). I met Richard about 12 years ago at Comedy Castle back when I did stand up. He did not remember me (nor should he), but he was very personable and asked me about what I did now for a living and even asked some more in-depth questions about it. So after the brief conversation, I sort of switch sides of the hallway (from his right to his left) so he can continue talking to the other guy he was walking with. But he says, "what was that? switching sides?" I said "I was shifting over to another location so that you would not feel obligated to keep talking to me." He thought that was funny. "First of all that isnt going to work. and second, I dont mind at all. But it was polite of you." Funny how some people are genuinely approachable and don't do it just for the act of doing it. We talked about how he used to drive the staff crazy by doing 180 minutes instead of 90 (he doesnt do that anymore) and his gigs at the comedy castle (positive, although now its meadbowbrook, a concert venue). He is performing tonight as a special treat to the attendees of this confernce, so I get to see his show.

All in all, A blue ribbon day. Oh by the way, I am on Vegas in business. I will have a long poker post about Vegas when I return. Long and detailed.

This weekend its camping. Memorial Day camping. Up in the great white north (well upper michigan at least). 3 days with no electronics. Wish me Good Luck.

Average Price Chart

Pity

Been in DC for the past week

Your got Questions? We got Answers!

Questions courtesy of http://www.tripjax.com/

1. What is the biggest mistake people make at a NL table?
Playing. Poker is -EV.
Secondly, they don't control the size of the pot properly. They win only when others make bigger mistakes than their own.

2. What is the biggest mistake people make at a Limit table?
Pretneding that limit is anything other than a math game.

3. Why do you play poker?
I have been a game player since I was a kid. Computer games, war games, parlor games, even road rallies, but not games of chance. To this day, I have no taste for table games. But poker is a battle of wits without a huge learning curve in explaining the rules. I would have just as much fun if I did not play for money (assuming everyone else took it seriously).

4. If you weren't playing poker, what would you be doing?
Some other battle of wits. Before I found poker, I hosted a weekly game night on Saturdays. We also drank alot of Mai Tais. I even have a published board game under my belt. ("Bootleggers" is available at Barnes and Noble this fall.)

5. What is your favorite poker book and why?
Harrington's book on NLHE. Far and away the easiest system to understand and implement. After that, I like "the 48 laws of power". I mean, lets face it. When *I* watch survivor, I fast forward through those stupid competitions and just watch the politics. Now that is riviting.

6. Who is your favorite poker player and why?
Phil Hellmuth. He isn't afraid of expressing his frustrations which I consider ammusing.

7. Which poker player do you dislike the most and why?
Annie Duke. Because I met her. Nuff said.

8. Do your coworkers know about your blog?
Few if any.

9. What is the most you have won in a cash game or MTT (both live and online)?
I won a nice $600+ purse once in a local $40 tournamnet.

10. What is the most you have lost in a cash game or in one day total (both live and online)?
$200 at the castle at the winter WPBT. The guy on my left was lying in wait and I got caught with second nuts, TWICE. My loses never had previously nor since have ever gone into 3 digits.

11. Who was your first poker blog read?
It was the Lord Admiral poker podcast!!!

12. What satisfies you more, your aces holding up for a big pot or a bluff working for a big pot?
Neither. I like a well plaid hand. Period. One where I correctly work out if I am ahead or behind and make the correct move.
Ok, that is bullshit. Its a big bluff baby!

13. Why do you blog?
I have always been a closet writer. Comes from my years in comdey (improv and standup). But I feel that immersion in something is good for the brain. Helps it commit to learning things... and stuff.

14. Do you read blogs from an RSS reader like bloglines or do you visit each blog?
RSS only. No time for browsing. I got a life. -Ok, I have a job.

15. Would you rather play poker for a living than do what you currently do for a living?
I think if I played for a living, all the fun would be drained out of it. I enjoy it as a hobby.

16. Do you wear a tin foil hat on occasion?
I am not superstitious, but I did once exercise my suck-out demons with a sacrifice.

17. If you had to pin it down to one specific trait, what does a great poker player have (or do) that separates them from an average player?
"They know where they are at." (Mike Madasow)
I think in terms of Brain attributes, they are adept at "complex pattern recognition".

18. Is Drizz the coolest person on the planet for naming his baby Vegas?
I hope so. They might have said that decades ago about the Hiltons.

19. What is your primary poker goal and are you close to accomplishing it?
I am always on the cusp of achieving my goal. To become a consistent whining (sic) player.

20. What is your primary online site and why?
Poker Stars. I feel it offers the highest level of competition.

21. What site do you dislike and why?
Party. There are too many to list.

On the Road and Quality Posts I won $40 in an Ame...

On the Road and Quality Posts

I won $40 in an American Legion daily raffle last week. I usually win once a year. The most I ever picked up in one drawing was $100. The Bronx County American Legion mailed me a check and everything. I guess I'm feeling lucky. My mother had a free room at Showboat in Atlantic City and left this morning. I almost went with her but I'm flying out to the left coast in a few hours. I'm heading out of pollen-drenched NYC and going to Hollyweird for several days. I'll be at the Knitting Factory in West Hollywood on Friday night to catch Knit Ball which is a collection of several groups of the space porn genre, including two of my favorite bands Particle and Lotus.

Last night, I dropped a buy-in playing 10-20 on Party Poker even though I cracked A-A with J-J and busted A-K with A-Qs. I dropped down in levels and won it all back. Go figure. I lost a PLO SNG when I flopped quads and made a terrible decision and slow played them only to get busted by runner runner quads over quads.

I also watched some of the WPT Borgata Winter Open last night. The Grinder beat Erick Lindgren heads up this past February and I caught the action live from media row. Check out my live blogging coverage of the WPT Borgata final table which includes photos. John D'Agstino made a huge laydown with 10-10. The board was all rags, but Lindgren flopped a set of 4s. He raised two million and D'Ags eventually mucked. The dealer rabbit hunted and Lindgren would have rivered quads.

The new WPT hostess and former model Sabina Gadecki

By the way, Flipchip took this photo of the new WPT hostess Sabina Gadeki last night during the taping of the final table of the WPT Mirage Showdown. He posted it over at Las Vegas and Poker Blog. Thanks for the pic! BJ posted something called Introducing Sabina Gadecki. Take a peek.

Check out Grubby's Red Rock Casino Poker Room Tips. He offers some great advice including some food tips! Grubby and I played at Red Rock on my last night in Las Vegas. It's one of the few places on the planet that spreads Omaha Hi. I can't wait to return and win my money back from Capt. Glass Eye.

Yesterday, I cleaned up the side bar and added several posts to my Quality Posts and Best of the Tao of Poker category. There are over 30+ posts in there. Here are the new additions:

Haleywood Homegame
Hammers, Hilton Sisters, Dial-a-Shots, and other Post-Modern Poker Vernacular
Circles & Poker
Bloggers in Wonderland: Part 4
Turn This Mother Out
Gilligan's Island and Poker
Market Corrections, Bozos, and Bolos
Bukowski & Poker
Strippers & Blow
April Sojourn
2006 WPT Championship
Glass Eyes and Red Rocks
Taoism and Bruce Lee Part I
Through the Looking Glass: April Maelstrom
Wall St. Game

Those quality posts are why Felicia mentioned me in her recent post where she listed her favorite poker blogs. She admits, "He writes the way I like. He runs the gamut of writing styles, maybe because he's stoned all the time, go figure."

I wonder if my bad allergies can qualify me for a medicinal marijuana card in California?

ready, touchdown... hut,hut,hut, HIKE!

Ok, fellow amateurs, lend me your ears. The level of competition out there is getting better as more and more of the "players who saw poker on TV" get bored of losing and stop playing.

So, what are you doing to improve your game? Are you the type of player who PRACTICES poker by scrimmaging, or do you just show to play on game day? If you are not performing drills nor finding ways to practice elements of the game, then either you are already to good for it to matter or you are not getting better.

With that in mind, here are the top 3 poker drills you can practice this week. I went through a bad spell recently and went back to drills. I cashed in 2/3 of my last tournaments after running dry for weeks.

Drill #1: Make a list of top 10 rules YOU WILL NEVER BREAK. Write them down. Tape them to the monitor. Now play. DONT BREAK THE RULES.

Drill #2: Tighten up. I mean "beginner tight". You must play 12% or LESS from non-blind positions. In the SB, you MUST fold if you dont have atleast a 2-gapper. NO 3 HOLERS, not even suited. Use the extra time to WATCH the flow of the tournament or table. See how a table ebbs and flows from loose to tight. Not you, the table. Its not always about you. Now, when you see the table start to get foldy, watch THIS TABLE for where a steal would work best. BUT, do not steal. Just watch for validation.

Drill #3(my favorite) : Give yourself THREE chips. Place them next to the keyboard. Each time you bet POST FLOP with not even a pair, discard a chip. When you use up your 3 chips, you are no longer allowed to bet/push post flop without a pair. period. (you may call, but I dont recommend it). This will force you to stop pushing in early rounds from bad posiion. You will be AMAZED at how much further you go in a tournament. (for advanced players, give yourself 1 new chip each level at levels 3+).

I ASSURE you that this will improve your game. Try it and see.

ADDENDUM: Questions related to continuation bets. You may continuation bet and not discard a chip IF:
1. You were the raiser before the flop
2. You isolated to 1 opponent

Donkey challenge update: I am a donkey. 'nuff said. I play way too much for fun and thus my bankroll suffers. I think my $ at PS is down to like $90. Sad really.

...so does the fool to his folly

Why do I keep playing at Poker Stars? I know its the hardest field/engine to beat consistenly! So why do I keep going back? Because I have something to prove. I just hope I figure out what the hell it is.

Mothers day was once again a knees-bent running about day. I visited so many mothers, that there has to be an offensive joke in it somewhere.

I also seem to be perpetually broke, despite making a decent living. Where does it all go? Why does it keep going? Does it have a destination in mind when it leaves?

I bubbled my last two practice sessions at the 45 player SnGs. This time I was in the top 5 most of the way, then my A8s made a steal attempt that was picked off by the BB with A3o. WTF? and... IGHN. Can't be sad though. As TJ says, "you get your money in ahead, its all you can do." Feh!

Klonopin and Kentucky Bourbon I completed a three...

Klonopin and Kentucky Bourbon

I completed a three day, three state bender. No one got arrested. No one puked. The following paragraph is what I scribbled into my notebook. It sums up my last 70+ hours...

5:30am... Sunday... Covington, KY... Daddy hit on 3 different Waffle House waitresses while he devoured a triple order of hashbrowns topped with chili and a pecan waffle on the side... the 20 year old pear-shaped waitress with three kids had a tattoo on her wrist that read "Total Bitch" in faded aqua ink...

I gambled this weekend, playing poker at a riverboat in Southern Indiana and then donking off chips with bloggers in Kentucky. Post pending. You can look at some random pics of the weekend over at the Tao of Pauly.

By the way, thanks to Iggy for making this possible:

Perception, Sometimes

The State of the Bubble in Kingman

The State of the Bubble in Kingman

Hump Day Pimp Day This is barely a post compared ...

Hump Day Pimp Day

This is barely a post compared to my two and three thousand word entries over the past three weeks. I don't have much time this morning since I'm going away on an assignment tomorrow, so I'll be quick.

The Travel Channel is airing the WPT Tunica, MS event tonight (check local listings) that Scotty Nguyen won back in January. Our buddy Gavin Smith also made the final table. In totally unrelated news... I was invited to cover Scotty Nguyen's Poker Challenge II in Tulsa, OK in mid-June. They even offered me a free room! I declined because I'm going to the Bonnaroo music festival instead.

I've been lurking on Party Poker over the past week. I'm making solid decisions and the variance has been tame which is why I booked 17 winning sessions out of my last 20. I played 10-20 full ring and 5-10 shorthanded 6-max all weekend. I even cashed out 1/3 of my Party bankroll after the weekend sessions. I scooped a monster in a six-way pot when I rivered a runner runner flush with AKs. I love chasing nut flushes and hitting on the river in LHE.

Spaceman is in Las Vegas covering the WSOP Circuit event at Caesar's Palace for Bluff Magazine. Check out his photos and coverage. Flipchip took some photos too and posted them over at Las Vegas and Poker Blog.

If you haven't looked at Amy Calistri's blog Aimlessly Chasing Amy, then what are you waiting for? I know Amy is married, but I would casually grope her in the hallways during the 2005 WSOP after drinking Red Stripes at the hooker bar with Otis at dinner break. That is when she wasn't getting hit on by former world champions.

My buddy BJ (who is pictured with me in the photo above) has been working on his website. Expect a guest post from him on the Tao of Poker in the future.

Lou Krieger has been keeping tabs on the Goodlate Bill on his blog. Take a look at what he had to say over the last few weeks.

Quest of a Closet Poker Player recently had an excellent post on Children and Poker.

BG wrote up a kick ass article on the Top 10 Best (and Worst) Hallmarks of the Poker Boom. If you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for?

The dudes at Wicked Chops Poker were just in Las Vegas. Read their trip reports.

Yesterday was Iggy's birthday! And it also marked the second birthday for Derek's blog... Poker in the Weeds. He had some funny things to say in his birthday post, so take a peek. In the immortal words of legendary music writer Lester Bangs, "The only true currency in this bankrupt world... is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."

By the way, I'm having issues with Haloscan, the folks who host my comments. They erased random ones and some are not even being published. The same weirdness happened on Tao of Pauly. Bare with me.

That's it for now. I'll have a special treat for you tomorrow.

What Did Les Have To Say?

High Hopes

Had a joker of a friend once named Tony who whenever the subject of pot odds came up at the home game would crack wise about the chances of him scoring a dimebag within the next day or two. Tony could be a kick in the pants sometimes.

After the shenanigans, though, Tony usually had the right answers to others' questions about the subject, despite being half-snowed half the time. To give you an example, we had a buddy, Dobby, who from time to time would try to argue that when counting outs everyone mistakenly assumes the best-case scenario. Tony knew better, and would invariably respond to such hooey with startling clarity. Here's how Dobby's argument -- one which we all likely have entertained at some (hopefully early) point in our playing lives -- would go.

You count outs to figure your chances to win the hand, then compare them to the odds the pot are giving you. For example, you're in a 10-handed game of $1/$2 limit hold 'em. Everyone folds to you sitting left of cutoff with Qh 9h. You limp, the cutoff folds, the button folds, the SB calls, and the BB checks. There is $6 in the pot when the flop comes Kh 7c 2d. The table checks, then comes the turn, the Ah. The SB bets $2, the BB folds, and now you have to decide whether to chase the nut flush or turn tail.

Now you've had this explained to you a thousand times already. There are 46 unknown cards, 9 of which are hearts. Assuming your opponent just has a pair of kings (or some other hand that can't improve to a full house), if one of those 9 hearts comes, you're a winner. In other words, you're looking at 37-to-9 or a little worse than 4-to-1 against making your flush. The pot is $8 and you have to put in $2 to call, so the pot odds are exactly 4-to-1. (For more, click on Lou Krieger's handy-dandy chart which appears above and/or check out his helpful article, "Pot Odds Made Easy.")

"You're dreaming if you think you really have 9 outs," Dobby would cry. "All 9 ain't left, so if you think you've got 9 ways to win you've got some high hopes."

Technically, the Dobster's right about it being unlikely to have 9 ways to win. Here 24 cards have been dealt (the 10 hands plus the 4 on the board), and so only 28 remain in the deck. On average, only 5 or 6 of those 28 cards will be hearts, with the other 3 or 4 having been dealt and folded. According to Dobby, since we only likely have 5 or 6 winners left, our odds are down (to 8-to-1 or thereabouts). That's where Dobby's line of reasoning goes haywire, of course. You compare the (let's say) 6 hearts left to the 23 other cards left in the deck, not to the total number of other unseen cards (41). Thus the odds remain about 4-to-1; in fact, if 6 hearts are left your odds are slightly better than average here (with about 21.5% of the possible river cards being hearts).

If all 9 hearts are improbably still in the deck, you're about 2-to-1 to hit the flush. If only one is left, you're down to 27-to-1. And if none are left well then you're whistling in the dark like usual.

None of this matters, of course. Unless you're in some kind of bizarro game where all hands are played face up, you have no way of knowing what cards are spent and what cards remain. So note your outs (making sure they really are outs) and the odds of spiking one, figger your pot odds, and make your play.

Or, as Tony would explain with a glassy-eyed twinkle and dismissive shake of the head, "Pass the Doritos."

Where To Sit at the Poker Table?

While this may seem rather silly to some, there is actually merit to the question, "Where is the best place to sit at a poker table?"

No, I'm not talking about closest to the bathroom or to the fridge. I'm talking about where the best place is for you to sit at the poker table in relation to certain types of players.

If you've played poker at all, you know that people approach the game in different ways - some by the seat of their pants, others very carefully. You have experienced players and novices, aggressive types and conservative competitors. Eventually you'll meet them all at the poker table, and knowing which seat offers you the best chance for winning, against whoever you might face, can only improve your game.

There is a general rule when picking your seat that you should always abide by. You want the most difficult players on your right. With that understood, here's where you should try to be for each type of player.

1, Conservative or tight players. These rocks are no real threat to you, so, abiding by the general rule, you shouldn't really care all that much where they sit. Ideally, though, you'd want these players to your left so that you can pick on their blinds. If they happen to play with you when you've entered the pot, you can be sure they have a strong hand. Act accordingly. That wouldn't always be true with the next group of players.

2) Aggressive players. These are the players that you need to worry about. An aggressive player on your left means you're somewhat handcuffed. You have to play a little more conservatively now because having that monster behind you means you don't know what he'll do until after you've acted.

You'll always prefer the aggressive players on your right so that you can keep an eye on them and then spank them when they get out of line! Basically, you'll be able to use your position to exploit the aggressive player.

If you have a seating choice, when facing both an aggressive and a

conservative player, sit right between them with the tighter player on your left.

Things get a bit trickier when you're figuring out where to sit when playing either a novice or an experienced player, since you'll want both of them on your right to some degree.

3) Novice players. If you are playing with a rookie, chances are he's going to make a lot of mistakes, and you want to be in there when he does. So by sitting on his left you'll have the opportunity to see whether or not he enters the pot. Since you'll have position on him you can manipulate the novice much easier and force him into even more mistakes.

According to the general rule, you'll want players you worry about on your right, but in this case you aren't worried about the novice since you can control or exploit him better if you sit on his left.

4) Experienced players. Well this obviously depends on how good the experienced players are, but generally these competitors surprise you less often than a novice player. They will most likely play fundamentally sound, which, while more predictable, doesn't necessarily make it easier for you. You'll want a tough, aggressive experienced player sitting on your right. But against a more conservative experienced player, you'd prefer him on your left rather than the easily exploitable novice.

You're not always going to be able to pick your seat - especially in a tournament - so it's important to know how to play against novice and aggressive opponents when they are seated to your left.

When the novice is on your left, all that really means is you'll have less opportunities to exploit him, but you don't need to make any major strategy adjustments.

With the aggressive player on your left, however, you need to make significant strategy adjustments. You really need to respect the fact that position is power, and since this competitor has it, you must concede your relative weakness a little bit and play accordingly.

From time to time, look to set traps for the aggressive player by slow playing strong hands. This should help keep him from breathing down your neck on a regular basis. Other than that, just tighten up a little bit and wait for a better situation to arise - like maybe, switching seats!

April Numbers