Pair of 3s

Hold'em Hold-up

2006-06-11T20:33:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in the New York Times today about a college student who held up a bank allegedly to get money to play on-line poker. A number of weeks ago, the Hartford Courant has another morality tale about a college student losing all his money playing on-line poker. For my comments, see the end of article.

June 11, 2006
Chapter 2: The Gambler
The Hold-'Em Holdup
By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ
Greg Hogan Jr. was on tilt. For months now, Hogan, a 19-year-old Lehigh University sophomore, had been on tilt, and he would remain on tilt for weeks to come. Alone at the computer, usually near the end of one of his long online gambling sessions, the thought "I'm on tilt" would occur to him. Dude, he'd tell himself, you gotta stop. These thoughts sounded the way a distant fire alarm sounds in the middle of a warm bath. He would ignore them and go back to playing poker. "The side of me that said, 'Just one more hand,' was the side that always won," he told me months later. "I couldn't get away from it, not until all my money was gone." In a little more than a year, he had lost $7,500 playing poker online.

"Tilt" is the poker term for a spell of insanity that often follows a run of bad luck. The tilter goes berserk, blindly betting away whatever capital he has left in an attempt to recoup his losses. Severe tilt can spill over past the poker table, resulting in reputations, careers and marriages being tossed away like so many chips. This is the kind of tilt Hogan had, tilt so indiscriminate that one Friday afternoon this past December, while on his way to see "The Chronicles of Narnia" with two of his closest friends, he cast aside the Greg Hogan everyone knew — class president, chaplain's assistant, son of a Baptist minister — and became Greg Hogan, the bank robber.

On Dec. 9, 2005, Hogan went to see "Narnia" with Kip Wallen, Lehigh's student-senate president, and Matt Montgomery, Hogan's best friend, in Wallen's black Ford Explorer. Hogan, who was sitting in front, asked Wallen to find a bank so he could cash a check, and Wallen pulled over at a small, oatmeal-colored Wachovia. Inside, Hogan paused at the counter for a moment and then joined the line. He handed the teller a note that said he had a gun, which was a bluff. "Are you kidding?" her face seemed to say. He did his best to look as if he weren't. With agonizing slowness, she began assembling the money. Moments later, a thin sheaf of bills appeared in the tray: $2,871. Hogan stuffed it into his backpack, turned around and walked back out to the car.

Wallen drove on to the theater, unaware of what had just happened. The three friends were soon settling into 135 minutes of "Narnia." Hogan found he couldn't concentrate on the movie. He was certain that he'd seen someone writing down the license of Wallen's Explorer outside the bank. He wondered what his father's congregation back in Barberton, Ohio, would say when they heard what had become of their pastor's eldest son.

The movie ended, and the trio returned to campus. Hogan went immediately to Sigma Phi Epsilon, his fraternity, and used some of the stolen money to pay back brothers who had lent him hundreds of dollars. He then joined a few friends at an off-campus pizzeria for dinner. Someone's cellphone rang, with the news that police had stormed the Sig Ep house. No one knew why. Hogan stayed silent. After dinner, his friends dropped him off at orchestra practice. Allentown police officers were waiting for him. They handcuffed him and took him to headquarters, where he confessed almost immediately.

Hogan's first call was to his parents back home in Ohio. They had just finished eating dinner at T.G.I. Friday's. "He was at the end of himself," Greg Hogan Sr. told me. "He couldn't believe he had done it. Not that he was denying anything, but he felt like he was watching another person's life."

o wired college students today, Internet gambling is as familiar as beer, late-night pizza and the Saturday night hook-up. Poker — particularly Texas hold 'em — is the game of choice. Freshmen arrive already schooled by ESPN in the legend of Chris Moneymaker, the dough-faced 27-year-old accountant who deposited $40 into his PokerStars.com account and parlayed it into a $2.5 million win at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Throughout the dorms and computer labs and the back rows of 100-level lecture halls you can hear the crisp wsshhp, wsshhp, wsshhp of electronic hands being dealt as more than $2 billion in untaxed revenue is sucked into overseas accounts each year.

Researchers say that Internet poker is addictive. Players say that it's addictive. The federal government says that it's illegal. But colleges have done little to stop its spread on campus. Administrators who would never consider letting Budweiser install taps in dorm rooms have made high-speed Internet access a standard amenity, putting every student with a credit card minutes away from 24-hour high-stakes gambling. Online casinos advertise heavily on sites directed at college students like CollegeHumor.com, where students post pictures of themselves playing online poker during lectures with captions like: "Gambling while in class. Who doesn't think that wireless Internet is the greatest invention ever?" Some schools have allowed sites to establish a physical on-campus presence by sponsoring live cash tournaments; the sites partner with fraternities and sports teams, even give away a semester's tuition, all as inducements to convert the casual dorm-lounge poker player to a steady online customer. An unregulated network of offshore businesses has been given unfettered access to students, and the students have been given every possible accommodation to bet and lose to their hearts' content. Never before have the means to lose so much been so available to so many at such a young age.

An estimated 1.6 million of 17 million U.S. college students gambled online last year, mostly on poker. According to a study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, the number of college males who reported gambling online once a week or more quadrupled in the last year alone. "The kids really think they can log on and become the next world champion," says Jeffrey Derevensky, who studies youth problem gambling at McGill University in Montreal. "This is an enormous social experiment. We don't really know what's going to happen."

Greg Hogan is far from the only college student to see the game's role in his life grow from a hobby to a destructive obsession. Researchers from the University of Connecticut Health Center interviewed a random sample of 880 college students and found that 1 out of every 4 of the 160 or so online gamblers in the study fit the clinical definition of a pathological gambler, suggesting that college online-poker addicts may number in the hundreds of thousands. Many, like Lauren Patrizi, a 21-year-old senior at Loyola University in Chicago, have had weeks when they're playing poker during most of their waking hours. Rarely leaving their rooms, they take their laptops with them to bed, fall asleep each night in the middle of a hand and think, talk and dream nothing but poker. By the time Patrizi finally quit, the game seemed to be both the cause of all her problems and her only means of escaping them. "I kept on playing so I wouldn't have to look at what poker had done to my bank account, my relationships, my life," she told me.

Other addicts, like Alex Alkula, a 19-year-old living outside Columbus, Ohio, decide to "go pro," drop out of school and wind up broke and sleeping on their friends' couches. Alkula, who left the Art Institute of Pittsburgh after five months, now makes his living dealing hold 'em in private home games and organizing tournaments in bars. Having overdrawn four bank accounts, Alkula can no longer play online himself. But when he gets home from work at 3 or 4 in the morning, he turns on his computer, clicks on Full Tilt Poker and watches the players' cards flicker on the screen until dawn. "I can't get away from it," he told me. "And really, I don't want to. I'll keep playing poker even if it means being broke for the rest of my life. I've fallen in love with the game."

In its outline, Hogan's story closely resembles that of the stereotypical compulsive gambler. Before the rise of online poker, however, such a story typically involved a man in his 30's or 40's and took a decade or more to run its course. Greg Hogan, on the other hand, went from class president to bank robber in 16 months. His fall took place not at the blackjack table or the track but within the familiar privacy of his computer screen, where he was seldom more than a minute away from his next hand of poker. He'd been brought up too well to waste himself in some smoky gambling den and knew too much to play a mere game of chance. He wanted to compete against his peers, to see his superior abilities yield dollars for the first time, a transaction he equated with adulthood. His stubborn faith in his own ability — a trait that had served him so well through his first 19 years — proved to be his undoing.

Today's ruined gamblers are often too young to know any better — too young, in fact, to legally gamble in most U.S. casinos. Until now, these young addicts were ignored by the news media, which swooned over the top of the poker pyramid, the Chris Moneymakers and the ESPN heroes, the guys in the wraparound sunglasses and the cowboy hats who made the hustler's art seem somehow noble and athletic. No one was interested in whose losses keep the poker economy humming, not until a Baptist minister's son robbed a bank.

A minister's eldest boy learns to perform early in life. On Sundays, Greg's mother, Karen, would dress him and his two brothers in matching slacks and blazers and take them and their sister to hear Greg Sr. preach. The congregation looked on as the boys followed Greg Jr.'s polite, attentive example. Schooled at home through eighth grade, the straw-haired, blue-eyed boy emulated his father's steady gaze, the soft but firm quality in his voice. He saw that others would come to rely on him if he revealed only his strongest side. When Greg Sr. ran for City Council, Greg Jr. enlisted his playmates to help him campaign door to door. Neighbors began calling Greg "the General." When it came to music, Greg was like a boat on a still pond — one small push from his parents and he'd glide on toward the goal. Karen, a psychiatric nurse, started him on the piano at 5. Greg Sr. worked a second job to help pay for $50-an-hour private music lessons for his daughter and three boys. By 13, Greg had twice played onstage at Carnegie Hall. Music won him a scholarship to the prestigious University School, a day school outside Cleveland, where his classmates noticed his oddly mature ways and dubbed him "the 30-year-old man." By graduation, he'd developed something of an ego. "Greg will always be a people person," wrote his adviser in an evaluation letter. "Perhaps he should set his sights a little lower and just become president of the United States."

For college, he chose Lehigh, a school of 6,600 overlooking Bethlehem, Pa., across the river from Allentown, the crumbling county seat, which has pinned its hopes of revival on a new slots casino set to open by 2008. Lehigh's campus is laid out like a Swiss ski village. Long, winding roads curve up past the library and the chapel to the giant Greek houses, the centers of the campus's social life. Scattered among them are parking lots filled with Nissans, Infinitis and a smattering of Audis, BMW's and Hummers. Text messages fly between cellphones, lighting up with news of which parties are still live and which have been shut down, as many have been since Lehigh was recently named America's No. 3 party school by The Princeton Review. Fraternities now post sentries outside their houses on weekend nights, with the threat of a raid generally intensifying the partying within.

Hogan, who had palled around with the sons of bank executives at his high school, threw himself into this new environment. Even before his father had said goodbye to head back to Ohio, Greg announced his plan to run for class president. He played his first hands of live hold 'em with real money that night, a way to break the ice with the guys from his hall in the dorm lounge. A few weeks later, guided by one of his roommate's friends, Hogan opened his first online-poker account at PokerStars.com. He chose a screen name that would carry his new school's banner all around the world: geelehigh. He'd met someone from two floors down who had lost $100 — a fortune, it seemed — online. He decided to stick to the play-money tables. Within 10 minutes, Hogan was playing his first online hands.

A few days later he met another friend of his roommate's. Hogan claims that he remembers only his nickname, Phys. When he turned 21, Phys told Hogan, he would plunk down $10,000 and become the youngest player ever to win poker's greatest prize — the World Series of Poker No Limit Texas Hold 'Em bracelet. He then showed Hogan where he planned on getting that kind of money. He clicked on the PokerStars icon on Hogan's computer, typed in a user name and password, clicked on "Cashier." And there it was, Phys's "real money" balance: more than $160,000. Hogan clucked his tongue. "Un-be-lievable," he said, almost to himself. He knew that the money was indeed real. All Phys had to do was click on the "Cash Out" button and wait two weeks, and he'd receive a six-figure check in the mail. Four years' tuition, sitting there like a high score. It was absurd.

The next week, geelehigh used his debit card to make a $75 PokerStars deposit. He received a $25 "deposit bonus," which wouldn't clear until he'd played several hundred hands. The money was real now, but it still felt as ephemeral as it did at the play-money tables: $100 was a digitized chip icon, an oval of black pixels on his computer screen. Green ovals were $25, red ovals $5. All were smaller than a grain of rice. When Hogan clicked on the "Bet" or "Raise" buttons, the chips made a chik sound and floated across the glowing table before melting into the pot. These tiny digital chips represented money controlled by a corporation in Costa Rica. The "cards" themselves were really just bits of data, "shuffled" by a random-number generator on a Mohawk Indian reservation in Quebec. The nine players at Hogan's table were scattered all over the world, each sitting alone at his screen, trying to take money from the other eight. Eventually, in chunks of $50, then $100, he took two summers' earnings, money his parents had given him for books and expenses, hundreds of dollars in loans from friends, $2,000 in savings bonds bought in his name (bonds he took from the family safe) and turned it into digital chips: $7,500 in all.

Online, Hogan would play 60 to 100 hands an hour — three times the number of his live games. There was no more shuffling between hands, no more 30-second gaps to chat with his friends or consider quitting. Each hand interlocked with the next. The effect was paralyzing, narcotic. "Internet poker induces a trancelike state," says Derevensky, the McGill professor, who once treated a 17-year-old Canadian boy who lost $30,000, much of it at PokerStars. "The player loses all track of time, where they are, what they're doing." When I spoke with an online hold-'em player from Florida who had lost a whopping $250,000 online, he told me: "It fried my brain. I would roll out of bed, go to my computer and stay there for 20 hours. One night after I went to sleep, my dad called. I woke up instantly, picked up the phone and said, 'I raise.' "

The money that poker players win and lose comes from bets made by other players. The house makes its money from the "rake," a small commission (usually between 2.5 percent and 5 percent) taken out of every pot. To be a long-term winner, you have to take money away from the other players faster than the rake takes it away from you, a feat accomplished by 1 in 10 poker players at the most. The other 90 percent wind up losers. The worst of these losers are known as "fish," players who are so new to poker that they haven't yet realized how much they have to learn.

A raked poker game cannot survive unless some players either overestimate their abilities or are willing to keep playing despite consistent losses. Fish, then, are the chum that keeps the rest of the poker ecosystem alive. Poker message boards monitor which sites are teeming with geelehighs and which have been leached dry. To stay in business, sites must attract fish, hold them for as long as possible and replace them when they go broke. According to Mike Shichtman, a professional gambler who consults for the online site Pacific Poker, there is "giant concern" in the industry that the total number of fish may be dwindling. It is, he adds, a trend that can be reversed only by tapping new markets.

In a few weeks, Hogan had run his initial $75 up to $300. Then, in November, came "the hand that got me hooked." Hogan drew a king-high flush and bet all $300. When his opponent called the bet and showed his ace-high flush, Hogan felt an impotent rage that broke on his forehead and coursed through his body. Tilt. He cursed, shut down the program in disgust and vowed never to play online again. Four days later, however, he felt the traces of an urge as visceral as the need to eat.

Hogan was craving "action," the gambler's drug. "Getting action" is the act of placing a bet; being "in action" is the high that follows, a state of arousal that neurologists have likened to doing a line of cocaine. Blood rushes to the face, the hands moisten, the mouth dries up. Time slows down to a continuous present, an unending series of build-ups and climaxes. The gains and losses begin to feel the same. Action had already appeared intermittently in Hogan's life — when he cheered the Ohio State Buckeyes through the last seconds of overtime, when his father called him with Lehigh's admissions decision in hand. Poker gave him the same rush whenever he wanted it, for hours on end.

Most winning poker players are either immune to the action rush or know to keep their cravings in check: they fold between 60 and 80 percent of their hands without making a single bet. When the desire for immediate action overrides the desire to hang onto one's money, players will tilt, playing too many hands and putting in too many bets, even when it's apparent that they have little chance of winning. "Trying to win money with lucky cards" is how Hogan remembers it. Lacking the equanimity to deal with clusters of bad luck and "cold," unplayable cards, he fell into a vicious cycle of increased losses and erratic play.

Back in Ohio, Hogan's October bank statement arrived with two $50 PSTARS withdrawals. His father called, asked why he'd waste money like that. Greg promised to stop. He played again that day. He had not and would not read any of the half-dozen books that together give a rough grasp of how hard hold 'em is to master. He had no idea that many of his opponents were self-styled professionals using a special program called Poker Tracker to analyze betting patterns and seek out fish like geelehigh. There were always some of these pros online, some playing 8 or 12 tables at once to leverage their advantage. They were waiting for him the night Lehigh's football team lost to rival Lafayette, when Hogan, who'd organized a cheering section, felt a little down and once again pushed aside his father's warnings. They followed him home over Thanksgiving weekend in November 2004, where, amid the clutter of his father's small basement office, he watched the World Series of Poker on TV, never changed out of his pajamas and played online for 10 hours a day. He lost $1,500, every penny he'd taken to school with him. Upstairs, the Hogans wondered what was wrong with their son.

"It's just play money, Dad," he told his father, who learned the truth when an overdraft notice arrived from Greg's bank. Greg Jr.'s phone rang the moment he returned to Lehigh. It was Greg Sr., who reminded Greg that the $1,500 had come from friends and relatives who didn't give it to him so he could gamble it. Hogan, distraught, e-mailed Phys and begged him to cover the loss. Phys agreed, so long as Greg would stop playing. "You're a fish," he said. "You need to stop."

Greg had begun to daydream about poker during student-council meetings, at orchestra practice, whenever he had a free moment. Soon, Phys's $1,500 had melted away. Hogan's parents arranged for him to meet with a Lehigh counselor. He was told that live poker was harmless but to stay away from online. For a time, the counseling worked. Hogan did not gamble during spring semester. But that summer, back at home in Ohio, Hogan was checking up on his friends at Facebook.com when he saw a PartyPoker ad: make a $50 deposit, get a $50 bonus. He'd been coveting a red Jeep and remembered the times he'd run $100 up to $500. Ten $500 sessions, get the Cherokee, don't tilt and quit. And he did win, at first. Then, as always, his opponents began to outmaneuver him. "I kept going back online, depositing another $50, winning, withdrawing," he recalls. "It happened a few times, but then I wouldn't be withdrawing. And then I'd just keep putting money in 'cause I kept losing."

In July, at his parents' behest, Hogan attended a few Cleveland-area Gamblers Anonymous meetings, which proved handy when a friend took him to a Canadian casino to play live poker. He found it easy to play a disciplined game under the appraising eyes of older strangers and won $500. The G.A. meetings had taught him to recognize the fish at the table. Except for the one sitting in his seat.

Back at Lehigh that September, Hogan sometimes found himself shoehorning counseling meetings between online-poker sessions. To his friends and professors he was a terrific success, the easygoing leader who organized landscaping projects around the Sig Ep house and hobnobbed with Lehigh's wealthy trustees at dinner parties. But to his parents, his situation was growing desperate. Hogan had reneged on his promise to attend G.A. meetings in Bethlehem. Withdrawals and overdrafts continued to appear on his bank statements. "I really don't want to do this anymore, but I don't know how to stop," Greg told his father. Greg Sr. then made the six-hour drive from Ohio to install a $99 program called GamBlock on his son's computer. Highly regarded among gambling counselors, GamBlock makes it impossible for users to access any Internet casinos. (The company's founder, David Warr, says that half of his customer base, which he will only put in the "thousands," is connected to a college or university.)

Hogan soon found a way to circumvent GamBlock, gambling by night in the library's computer lounges. "It was funny to see how many other kids were playing," he says. "By this point I didn't really care so much who saw me." Greg Sr. realized what was happening and asked the administration to lock poker sites out of the public terminals. He says he was told that nothing could be done. As November approached, the wall Hogan had built between his Lehigh life and his poker life had begun to crack. He would borrow $100 or $200 from his fraternity brothers and fail to pay them back by his self-imposed deadlines. He would skip classes and meetings for long binges in the fraternity lounge, gambling through the night and catching a few hours' sleep before noon. People he hardly knew were asking him what was the matter. On Oct. 19, when a fellow Sig Ep sent the house an e-mail asking if anyone wanted to try to hit a record Powerball jackpot, Greg sent this reply, a message that went to all 60 of his brothers: "O what the hell, maybe my bad luck can change??? Please God??"

The end came quickly, a weeklong series of 14-hour binges at the end of November. "There was very little thinking," he told me. "I'd get up and lose it. Get up, make another deposit, lose it again. As soon as I lost, I had to get more money in my account immediately. My whole body was shaking as I waited for the program to load, I wanted to play so badly." On Nov. 30, 2005, he lost the last $150 in his account during a six-hour session in the Sig Ep lounge that ended when a friend told him dinner was ready. "I was up about $500, and I was like, 'I'll play two more hands,' " Hogan says. "Then one more hand, and one more after that. And in those last three or four hands, I lost it all. All the muscles in my body gave way." He fell asleep, completely broke. All his poker accounts were at zero. His checking account had a negative balance. At the Sig Ep winter social, the fraternity treasurer told Hogan he would be kicked out if he failed to come up with $200 in social fees. Having bailed him out twice before, Greg's parents refused to give him the money and were considering pulling him out of Lehigh altogether. Hogan spent the next week wandering around the Sig Ep house in a daze, skipping classes and drinking himself into a stupor each night.

"It was the weirdest thing I've ever experienced in my life," he said. "Like an out-of-body experience. I was watching myself walk around. Watching myself go and eat food. Watching myself take a shower, but not actually doing those things. I remember looking in the mirror, and it was not me I was seeing in the reflection."

The night before the bank robbery, Greg spoke with his father one last time. Greg Sr. remembers what he heard in his son's voice. The tiredness. The lack of presence.

"Greg," he asked, "are you gambling?"

Greg said what he always said.

"Nah, Dad. It's been a while since I've done any of that."

Greg Sr. had gotten used to his son's half-truths, the "wishing out loud," as he calls it. He knew it was useless to press further.

"O.K., Gregory. I love you. Good night."

I met Greg Hogan Jr. for breakfast one morning this spring, at a diner a few miles from Lehigh. (As Hogan was in the process of negotiating a plea with the county's D.A., I agreed to ask him only about poker and refer all questions about the day of the bank robbery to his attorney.) He had recently completed an inpatient gambling-treatment program in Louisiana, where he wasn't allowed to have more than $5 on him at any time. "I haven't played a hand of poker in 90 days," he said, with a recovering addict's confessional cheer. He is 20, but his jowly face and all-business baritone make him seem much older. Take away the American Eagle shirt and the Ohio State Buckeyes cap and he'd resemble a young, pale Harry Truman.

Beside us sat Greg Sr. and Karen, still fuming over media accounts that they are "affluent." On the contrary, they have scrimped to put children through college. After paying Greg's treatment costs, legal fees and bank debts, they expect to be out $35,000. Hogan's lawyer has been fielding calls from bookers at "Oprah," "Montel" and "Good Morning America," all drawn in by the irresistible "good kid robs bank" story.

With the spring semester well under way, the shock of Hogan's arrest was already beginning to fade from the memory of Lehigh students. Sigma Phi Epsilon has been using humor to heal the fresh wound, throwing a party where drinks were served from behind a barrier made up to look like a bank counter. The satirical "Lock Up the Poker Thief" Facebook group has 58 members and counting. As for Greg's friends Kip and Matt, prosectors say they do not believe they knew anything about the robbery, and they do not face any charges. Meanwhile, a Lehigh spokeswoman told the Allentown newspaper The Morning Call that the school does not have a gambling problem, its only official response to date. And yet in Lehigh's libraries and dorms, the wsshhp, wsshhp, wsshhp never stops.

Some $60 billion was bet last year in online poker games, two-thirds of which came from the United States. The vast majority of this money moves from player to player. About $3 billion wound up as revenue in the form of rake, a figure that is growing by about 20 percent per year, making poker the fastest-growing segment of the $12 billion online-gambling industry. Unlike their brick-and-mortar counterparts, online casinos don't have to pay for dealers, free drinks or air-conditioning, and they enjoy profit margins as high as 60 percent.

There are more than 400 online card rooms operating today, offering every variety of poker game and every level of stakes. Hold 'em, the most popular game, can be played for anywhere from pennies to tens of thousands of dollars a hand. Like pornography before it, gambling is shedding its stigma, transitioning from the black market to Wall Street, from a back-room vice to ubiquitous "content." PartyGaming, the largest operator, is valued at about $10 billion on the London Stock Exchange. Its shares are held by Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other top Wall Street firms. Five years from now, if the plans of PartyGaming and other Internet casinos come to pass, consumers will be able to place bets on their cellphones and P.D.A.'s while waiting for a table in a restaurant.

The public visibility of online-poker seems to be growing as fast as its revenues. Calvin Ayre, the globetrotting founder of the online card room and sports-betting site Bodog.com, spends $50 million a year promoting himself and his company as a Hefner-like lifestyle brand. He has run ads in Esquire and Vice magazine and on Gawker Media's sites in which Ayre himself often appears as a dapper, rakish bachelor, personally embodying both the new poker wealth and the rewards his younger customers hope the game might bring. The image has caught on — this March he appeared on the cover of Forbes's Billionaires issue.

While the Department of Justice maintains that online poker violates U.S. laws, not a single player or site has been indicted, and online gambling remains as available as pirated music. To shut down Internet gambling, the D.O.J. would either have to start monitoring what we download from the Internet or raid legal, licensed businesses in Antigua, Britain, Costa Rica and other countries where it has no jurisdiction. The D.O.J. has succeeded in persuading some credit-card companies to stop financing online-poker accounts, but this hasn't stopped the flow of rake overseas. U.S. players simply move funds through offshore third-party "e-wallets" like Neteller and Firepay, which charge a small fee and then pass the money on to the sites.

"The Department of Justice takes the position that online poker is illegal," says the former U.S. attorney Jim Martin, who led the first phases of the department's campaign against online-gambling advertising. "But I don't think they have much of a motive to go after individual bettors at all."

Analysts say that online gambling's gray legal status allows operators to avoid paying more than $7 billion a year in federal taxes. And $7 billion is a lot of tax money to leave on the table — nearly half of NASA's budget for next year. It's probably too much for this ambiguous state of affairs to continue for much longer. Late last month, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill introduced by Representative Bob Goodlatte that would make it harder — but far from impossible —for players to move their money offshore, while leaving the question of domestic online gambling to the states. With Congress unlikely to pass any law authorizing federal oversight of our online activities, Internet gambling's near future appears as healthy as illegal downloading's. In the long term, the federal government's response is likely to resemble either its response to tobacco, with high taxes and more rigorous controls over marketing and access to young people, or to marijuana, a costly and mostly fruitless campaign to eradicate a demand-driven business by cutting off the supply.

With plenty of disposable income and spare time, college students constitute one of the gambling industry's most coveted demographics. "We've been surprised by this natural, organic groundswell of demand from the college audience," says Jason Reindorp, marketing director for AbsolutePoker.com, which gave away a semester's tuition to the winner of a college-only online tournament and promoted its Web site at halftime during N.C.A.A. basketball tournament games. Like many sites, AbsolutePoker.com enlists players in multilevel marketing programs. Known as "affiliates," players are rewarded with a $75 bonus or a percentage of the rake each time they find AbsolutePoker a new customer. Reindorp says that AbsolutePoker relies on students to make sure all this jibes with campus policy. "The student audience is very responsible," he says. "They know how to avoid getting into trouble by breaking their school's rules, just like they know how to avoid playing beyond their means."

osses as high as $7,500 are rare on today's campus poker scene, but they are by no means extraordinary. One evening I stopped in for a snack at Pacific Smoothie, a shop two blocks away from Lehigh's main entrance, where by chance I met Ross Johnson, a junior wearing flip-flops and sunglasses who looked as if he'd stepped off the page of a J. Crew catalog. Like most online-poker players, Ross says he knows a few fish personally but does not consider himself one. "I still play," he said, "but I've cut back. I used to play too much. I mean, I'm definitely ahead in the long run, but I've lost $2,000, easy, on a single hand before, and made like $4,000 or $5,000 in a single night."

I'd heard the same from almost every online player I'd spoken with: I lose big, I win big, but at the end of the day, I come out ahead. Johnson did know one losing player who'd lost several thousand dollars and had to take a $6.25-an-hour job at this very smoothie shop to pay for his books.

Johnson said Hogan never had much of a reputation among Lehigh's hard-core poker players. "The funny thing is, he wasn't even in that deep," he told me. "Five thousand is nothing. I know whole halls full of kids who play the thousand-dollar buy-in No Limit tables. If everyone did the same thing when they lost five large," he added with a chuckle, "well, there'd be a lot more bank robberies."

Mattathias Schwartz founded The Philadelphia Independent, a monthly newspaper. He writes for Philadelphia magazine and other publications.

The last paragraph somewhat reedems the story. This kid had problems aside from on-line poker.

I love on-line poker. Why? Because I have studied and exerted discipline, and shown patience and thus am a winner. I only play tables I can beat. I take advantage of casino bonuses. I learn from my mistakes.

Poker is not gambling. Playing poker badly is. A good poker player only puts money in when he is getting the best of it. You do that in the long term and you will win as sure as the casinos win with their edge in all their games (poker aside where they simply take a portion of the pot.)

I don't think government should become a nanny in all aspects of our lives. When government allows lotteries where the odds are horrible, when they allow people to drink and smoke cigarettes, which reek far more havoc than on-line poker, they have no business taking away people's right to play a traditional American game.

Pot Limit

2006-02-12T12:35:00.000-05:00

Had a good month in January.

I have found my game -- Pot-Limit Omaha High-Low.

It rewards discipline and patience, and it is not as mindnumbing as limit High-Low. You can see the flop cheaply, and then you just wait for it to hit you just right. Ideally you have either the nut high or a good high along with the nut low, and then you trap your opponent with a potsized bet on the turn. Too many people hang in with just a low draw. Even if they hit their low on the river, you quarter them because you have the same A2 low plus the high.

I love the thrill of the big pot.

This is not all to say that I don't occasionally make a bad play myself or get rivered by a lucky person who's bad play paid off them with longshot hitting.

On the bad plays, what is good about potlimit -- not to be a masochist, but when you make a bad play, you are punished for it. It keeps you line. Forces discipline on you.

The threat and the reward are what make poker interesting.

Adios

2005-10-24T07:11:00.000-04:00

Well out of 1470 or so players I got knocked out somewhere around 1040. Only two hands worth mentioning. I called an all-in bet with 77, deciding I might as well take a gamble and get some chips. The raiser had KQo -- the same hand that beat me at FARGO.

The flop came 7 9 J

The turn was a 10.

The river a 4.

Dropped my stack from 2000 to 1000.

A few minutes later I went all in with JJ.

I was called by AA.

And that was it for me.

Adios.

Online Poker Blogger Championship

2005-10-21T15:22:00.000-04:00

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 3146257

FARGO 2005

2005-10-04T14:30:00.000-04:00

FARGO 2005 -- my what has become a once a year trip to Foxwoods to play poker even though I only live an hour and fifteen minutes away. I work too much to take the time to go there, and online play can easily fulfill my poker needs. Sure, its fun to drive down and play in a tournament, but with unlimited overtime at my job, I am faced with the choice of making guaranteed money versus questionable money, and I play at low enough limits that even a nice win is likely less than what I'll earn for a 12 hour overtime shift.

My goal for FARGO is to win one of the tournaments, but lacking that to finish in the money. This year I will play in three tournaments, and since I am being accompanied by a nonpoker playing friend, the tournaments are all I will be playing. No ring games this year.

In a email sent to us prior to FARGO I scan the list of players who need partners for the Pairs Tournament and spy the name of a ringer -- one of the most underrated players at FARGO each year --Tim W, who I struck up a friendship with over breakfast at the Buffet a couple years ago. I email him reintroducing myself and ask if he would like to pair with me, and I am thrilled that he says yes. I will be playing Omaha and he will handle the Hold'em end. The night before the tournament I study the Omaha section of Supersystem, but it is late so I don't read the How to Play Shorthanded section (Hint).

In another prefargo email, I see that he and I actually have odds laid on us at 35-1, which are not as good as the top teams, but is better than teams put at 40-1, and is better than being a team lumped in as the field.

We don't start off very well. I can't win a hand. I get dealt A237 double suited and flop KQJ non of my suit. Every time I get the stack I lose chips, except the one round I don't even play a hand, starting out as the button, and ending up under the gun due to one 15 minute long hand with multiple side pots and high low splits. Tim either holds his own or adds. I go all in with an A2 on the last hand of my round and am spared by winning the low in a multiple person pot. Tim then goes on quite a run, playing solid poker, hitting flops and stealing pots with positional raises.

There are 43 teams, and the tournament is paying 5 places. We get down to 6 and it takes forever for someone to bubble. We go from a semi-big stack to the low stack, but survive as another team is taken out. We end up in 4th. Not much to play at the end. We collect $585 to split between us.

We celebrate at the banquet at Custy's the all-You Can Eat Lobster and Steak Buffett down the road from the casino. The food is fantastic. I am glad when Tim proposes that we pair again next year.

The next day is the No Limit Tourney. I play as well as I ever have and after starting with 105, we are down to 12 and I have a decent stack. I am moved to the 2nd table, where on the second hand I get QQ. I go all in and the superaggressive player with a giant stack calls me from late position. He turns over KQo. Before I can even get psyched that I am such a favorite a King hits on the flop, and I am a moment later out. 12th place -- $76. While I am in line, Time comes up behind me. He has just also been knocked out by the same player calling his allin. I am thrilled to have gotten in the money, but I am in a state of shock about getting knocked out like that. I go down to the pool and take a hot tub and do the steam room, and all the time i am thinking over the hand. If I had won, I would have had a huge stack, been at the final table and maybe even had a chance to win. What could I have done different. If I had made a smaller raise, he would still have called. The king would still have hit on the flop and I would have either folded, disgusted that I had not gone all-in preflop or gone all in and been disgusted I had not gone all-in preflop. I tell myself I shouldn't whine. I survived a couple coin flip all-ins. It wasn't like I hadn't had some luck. Still...

The next day I enter the Mixed Event and am out right before the first break. No cards. I play all right with what I have, but miss a crucial opportunity (albeit from early position)to try to steal the antes in Stud High Low when up card is an ace. But for some reason I fold.

Always next year.

Las Vegas -- BARGE 2005

2005-08-09T15:26:00.000-04:00

It is my first trip to Las Vegas, and as a recently divorced man, my first big trip with a new girlfriend. My ex-wife had many admirable qualities, among them, she was a poker player, which made a poker trip a poker trip. The new girlfriend, who also has many admirable qualities, doesn't know a flush from a straight, so I am planning to limit my time at the tables to just the tournies I have signed up for -- the rest of the time will be spent exploring the city.

When we arrive at the Plaza, as we are lugging our suitcases through the casino, who do I see but Greg Raymer. I mutter hello, but he is lost in thought, probably thinking, "The next time Daniel raises me on the flop, I'm going to cold call him, then come back over him on the turn..."

I know that guy, I tell my girlfriend. He's the champ, he won $5 million."

"Sure, you know him," she says.

"I've played with him, he's a nice guy."

"I'm sure," she says.

***

At the seven card stud shootout, I see Greg again, and we talk briefly. I know him through FARGO and playing in his annual headsup tournament once before. "I didn't know you were so tall," he says. "Normally we're sitting next to each other, you don't look so tall at the table."

I am tempted to say, "that's because you can't see over your mountains of chips," buy I just mumble and nodd. I actually want to congratulate him on how well he played at the World Series of Poker and tell him what a great champion he is, but someone else is talking to him, and the moment passes.

The stud tournament is unremarkable for me. I get knocked out. I head upstairs.

***

I have bought a tour book and my girlfriend and I try to do as many things as possible. In the course of our five days in the city we eat the 99 cent Shrimp cocktail at the Golden Gate, visit a pawn shop, go into Binions and see the gallery of poker champions, we watch the show on Freemont Street, walk up and down the Strip. We do the gondola ride at the Venetian, see the Lions at the MGM, I peer in the poker room at the Bellagio, hoping to glimpse the big game in the back room. We eat at number of buffetts, see a circus olay show "Ka" which is amazing, go to the new Wynn casino, see the Luxor, Mandalay Bay, a host of others, go to the Gambler's General Store.

***

I am actually doing well in the multiple events tourney because my head really isn't in to poker, so I am playing very aggressively -- survival is not on my mind. The results are excellent. I'm winning losts of pots, causing better hands no doubt to fold. Then with an hour to go to the break, I notice I have a fairly decent chip stack, and think I may have a chance for the money. I immediately play more cautiously. Instead of raising, I call. No way to play poker. My chip stack is not so big, I shove it all in just before the break, raising to get heads up and hope for the best. Either I double up or I get knocked out. I'm not waiting two and a half hours to come back with a small stack. I get knocked out. Although I have paid for the symposium, my girlfriend and I head down to the Golden Nugget for the buffett, then catch a cab and head back to the strip.

***

We've just watched the volcano blow in front of the Mirage, then watched the Pirate Show at Treasure Island when we are walking across the street and I hear crash and a police siren. I look up and see a car approaching, running on its rims, followed by
police car. I realize the car is not stopping. It crashes into a car waiting at the light, then the driver leaps out and starts running, followed by the police officer who has leapt out of his car. The man turns the corner, slips, then the police officer is on him, and another officer appears. They have drawn guns. I can see a red laser light on the man's chest, then suddenly, he is jumping up, then I hear a dull firecracker sound, and see the man holding his arm, and then I am swept up in a crowd.

The whole time I am thinking, wow, I'm in the middle of a Cops episode. Police cars are screaming in from all directions. Pretty cool effects.

I look in the paper the next day to see if there are any accounts of the shooting, but I don't see anything.

***

In the No Limit tournament, midway through my AKs is reraised. I go all-in. End of the trail.

***

Its off to the Rio for the all-you can eat seafood buffett. The night ends back on Freemont Street, drinking Coronas.

***

I leave town with two souvenirs -- an Elvis Poker chip I bought for $1.50 and an embroidered Corona tee-shirt that has two aces on it, and says "No Limit."

***

Had a good time. Can't call myself a loser.

Hope to be back next year.

Maybe then my mind will be a little bit more on poker.

The Return of Tilt Man

2005-07-23T10:08:00.000-04:00

What can I say?

I'm only human.

I was up to 1424 last night when the bottom dropped out. A couple miserable beats and I was at 1380, then instead of keeping my cool, I started playing every suited connector, hanging in with AQ betting even when the flop didn't hit. I couldn't win a hand. No flushes. No straights. No sets. No full houses. No two pair. Nothing. Just a lot of frustrated bluffing and chasing. I was down to 1320 in no time. Playing four tables at once.

Out of control.

I was lucky to win a few hands and finish the night around 1338.

It was way past my bedtime and the only reason I quit was there was a power failure and the computer went dark.

Someone telling me to quit.

I am torn between penalizing myself by saying no poker for a week and getting back on the horse, saying over and over DISCIPLINE DISCIPLINE DISCIPLINE.

No Suited Connectors unless multiple callers and I am in Late Position. No Ace suited with small cards unless I am in late position with multiple callers. No playing 55 because its Presto unless I'm in late position with multiple callers. No calling preflop raises with AJ unsuited. No betting with bottom pair on the flop when there are more than two other callers hoping to pick up the pot. It won't happen.

How many bets in my life have I thrown away because I say I know I'm bleeping beat, but the poker gods owe me a river card?

Shame.

Poker's Zenith? -- NY Times

2005-06-29T09:10:00.000-04:00

There is an article in CBS Marketwatch this morning that claims poker has reached its zenith because the New York Times has just started a Poker column. Here's the article:

***

JON FRIEDMAN'S MEDIA WEB

The N.Y. Times discovers poker
Commentary: The game has now achieved a 'market top'

By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
Last Update: 2:01 AM ET June 28, 2005

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- In case you are fretting that the poker craze has gotten hopelessly out of hand in the U.S., fear not.

The New York Times introduced a weekly poker column, written by James McManus, on Saturday.

This is a sure-fire sign that the card game has at last achieved a "market top."

It isn't that McManus is unworthy. After all, the man wrote a book describing how he once won $250,000 at the 2000 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. So, you know that the dude has ample street cred.

Giving McManus the benefit of the doubt, maybe he will go down in history for writing the greatest, most timely column in the history of journalism. Even so, there is no stronger certifiable signal that a fad has reached its zenith than when a national media organization -- and there is no more prominent brand name in journalism than the Times -- tries to exploit it.

As if the newspaper gives a hoot about my carping, though. Give the Times its due this time. The idea is nothing short of brilliant from a financial perspective.

The poker column gives the paper (NYT: news, chart, profile) a terrific business opportunity, following its successes in establishing a brand from its niche-oriented features about bridge and chess. The Times has also claimed a virtual patent, or at least the industry's most authoritative platform, when it comes to such newspaper staples as book reviews and crossword puzzles.

Now, the poker column can help the Times expand its franchise once again and tap a big audience during a wretched period for the newspaper industry -- and quiet the din of the naysayers.

The Times seems to have Saturday on its mind.

Perhaps that's because The Wall Street Journal is preparing to unveil a much-publicized Saturday edition and the Times is determined to fortify its own Saturday paper. (The Journal and MarketWatch, the publisher of this report, are owned by Dow Jones & Co.)

For instance, the Times recently shifted Maureen Dowd's widely read column to appear on Saturdays as well. The editors insisted that the move was a part of a typical rotation of columnists. But conspiracy theorist that I am, I presumed at the time that the Times had wanted to build interest for what is usually considered the quietest publishing day in the newspaper industry.

I'd be amazed if the new poker feature fails to find an audience. If nothing else, it was ingenious of the Times to place the poker column in its sports section. This gives it a tool to woo gamblers from the city's rival tabloids, the New York Post and the Daily News. These have long been more aggressive than the Times to printing waging information and commentary.

So, the latest innovation makes abundant sense. And in his first try at writing the "Poker" column, McManus presented a scholarly, historically-rich, well written article.

And one more thing about the piece: I hated it.

No action

McManus declaimed about poker's "risk-loving bravado" and how its "frontier spirit ... has echoed the way we'd done battle and business." (Huh?)

McManus then suggested America's "Puritan strain" accounts for our unease with the game's popularity. I beg to differ. We're nervous about poker's runaway appeal because the game has been glamorized by ESPN (DIS: news, chart, profile) , Bravo (GE: news, chart, profile) and other cable TV outlets to the point where teenagers are avidly gambling with their friends. Of greatest concern, poker has become a staple of the booming online gambling industry.

McManus's column was reported from the Rio Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, where thousands gathered to square off in 44 preliminary events at the World Series of Poker.

I kept waiting for McManus to lighten up and for the column to explode into drama, too. Uh-uh.

The column was so simplistic that I half-expected the author to explain how players could deal the cards without bending them at the corners; how to cheat without getting caught; how to detect if your opponent is cheating; what finger food should be served so you don't get the cards all sticky and how to stare like Mike Tyson and intimidate your foes.

My biggest gripe is that McManus didn't offer any of his own special experiences. He wrote a primer about poker, which I could have obtained anywhere else. I'd like him to write for people who understand poker and love to play it. He settled for reaching novices, which was too bad.

Hopefully, he simply had a case of opening-night jitters.

Let's hope he loosens up in future columns. I'm guessing he will.

Want to bet?

***

Now I disagree with the claim that poker has topped. Most writers don't understand poker. Here's what they are missing:

1. The key to the poker craze is two fold: The hidden card camera now makes poker great TV and the internet poker rooms enable people to always find a game. These two factors will keep poker thriving. Poker is an awesome game and once people catch the bug, they will be hooked for good.

2. Poker is not gambling(at least not in the long run). It is not a blind roll of the dice, but an exciting game that you can always work on, and always improve your ability.

Where I do tend to agree with the writer is, while I acknowledge McManus is a good writer, I don't like him (at least the personality he projects in his writing). He takes himself way too seriously. I wasn't wild for his book, but I read it because hey! its about poker.

But I did read his column, which I thought was very good. Here it is:

***

June 25, 2005
Inside America's Other Favorite Pastime
By JAMES McMANUS

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn poker. The game, after all, has gone hand in hand with our history for almost two centuries now. Since its development on Mississippi riverboats, poker - with its risk-loving bravado - has echoed the ways we've done battle and business.

With its frontier spirit intact, poker is now our most popular card game - maybe our favorite game, period - though because of our Puritan strain, we remain nervous about it. Judges and presidents play, and tournaments are broadcast on Super Bowl Sunday. In many jurisdictions, however, even low-stakes action is subject to raids by the police.

As I write this first column on the world of poker, thousands have arrived at the Rio Casino and Hotel, just off the Las Vegas Strip, to compete in 44 preliminary events at the World Series of Poker, the first one not held at Binion's Horseshoe. (That downtown casino had been home to the series since 1970, but last year Harrah's, which runs the Rio, bought the rights from the Binion family.)

On June 3 the first open event, no-limit Hold'em with a $1,500 buy-in, drew 2,305 piranhas - maybe 300 tournament pros, the rest inspired amateurs - to the Rio's Amazon Room, a tournament area bigger than a football field. Two days later, Allen Cunningham, a Los Angeles pro, had his third World Series bracelet and the $725,405 first prize. (Results and live updates are available on CardPlayer.com.) More than 6,000 hopefuls are expected to pay $10,000 apiece for a seat in the main event, July 7 to July 15, generating a prize pool of more than $60 million.

Meanwhile, more than 250 online poker sites offer the chance to contest pots with players from Bangalore, India, to Caracas, Venezuela, any time of day or night. Weekly home games also continue to flourish, and this column will cover those, too. I'll report from major tournaments, review instructional primers and try to give a sense of how poker's lore and lingo permeate the action today.

Early on I will focus on Texas Hold'em, the game that transformed a back-room activity into a lucrative spectator sport. Each player gets two cards face down, to be combined with five community cards dealt face up in the middle - the first three simultaneously (called the flop), then a fourth (the turn), then a fifth (the river) - to make the best five-card hand.

It's intrinsically beautiful. Since you share five-sevenths of your cards with your opponents, the difference between the best and the second-best hand - all the difference in the world, bankrollwise - is quite a bit subtler than in seven-card stud. Even more crucial, stud is always played with fixed bet sizes, whereas Hold'em, with four betting rounds instead of five, has traditionally lent itself to a no-limit format.

Hold'em was apparently born in Texas about 80 years ago, when a dozen or so cowboys wanted to play a little poker but found that they had only one deck. The most creative cowboy must have got to thinking: If five cards were shared by all players, each could be dealt a two-card hand. Though poker and its 52-card deck had long roots in France, he probably did not drawl, "Voilá."

The game was brought to Vegas in 1963, and by April 1970 Benny Binion and his fellow high-rolling Texans had chosen it as one of five poker forms in the inaugural World Series. Since 1972, the main event has been a $10,000 no-limit Hold'em freezeout, which continues until one player wins all the chips.

Why no limit? Because when you can bet any amount of your chips in any round, experts have more leverage to win pots without the best hand. A simple but common example: Early in the main event, you raise with pocket kings, also known as wired cowboys or ace magnets.

Everyone else folds but a tough Vegas professional - gulp - who calls. He's not only riffling a tall stack of chips, but he has position on you: acting second in the clockwise rotation, he knows what you've done before he makes his move. And here comes a flop you don't like: eight of diamonds, ace of hearts, ten of clubs. If you check, the pro (with five and four of diamonds) is likely to bet about the size of the pot. If you had bet that amount, he might have folded, but there's also a pretty good chance he would raise enough to put you all-in.
How could he do that with nothing, you ask? Because he knows how to leverage uncertainty. Even when the flop misses his five-four by a mile, he can fairly deduce that it missed yours too: most flops do. He can also sense weakness. A no-limit artist can't peer into your soul to see those kings, but he can often tell when you're less than in love with the flop, since body language and betting patterns betray things like that. He's also inured to risking $10,000 on the turn of a card; you aren't, so your emotional temperature is more apt to spike. He's put you on (made an educated guess that you have a pair below aces), and he's looking to seize the initiative. You know he's probably bluffing, but the ace, plus the genuine possibility that he's flopped two pairs or three of a kind, make it hard to risk your $10,000 buy-in by calling.

In limit Hold'em, or no-limit played for small stakes, he couldn't put you under nearly as much pressure, and that's what his game is about. You might fold your kings when he bets. You could also play a small pot simply by calling him down: checking and calling single bets on the turn and the river.
But if you like more precipitous risk-reward ratios, no-limit freezeouts may be the cure for what ails you. More than 90 percent of entrants lose their buy-in, but the opportunistic (and lucky) players who survive to the end multiply their investment by a very big number. They also get to sport cool gold bracelets.

***

He is also writing a daily poker on-line poker journal for the Times, and while I find his descriptions of his own play, boring, there is some good color in there. And besides, its poker.

Poker Journal

Resolution

2005-06-29T09:05:00.000-04:00

I love reading about poker, but I am somewhat bored reading about individual hands unless they are well explained to make a point. I've just started reading Dan Harrington's No Limit Book and it is excellent in this regard. But when I read someone's trip account, the individual hands don't really do much for me -- maybe that is why I am just a low limit player. What I like to read about is the color -- the story.

So I am resolving to write no more bad beat stories unless I can write it in an amusing colorful way. Who cares that I sat down and got rivered over and over?

That's poker, dummy.

Maybe I won't have anything to write about if I don't write about the hands. Or maybe I will just have to write about them better.

Poker Blogs

2005-06-28T13:32:00.000-04:00

Here is an excellent article about poker blogs:

The Viral Phenomenon of Poker Blogs

Shame

2005-06-26T12:29:00.000-04:00

I am here on this Sunday morning, humbled, my head hung in shame confessing my sins.

Last night I played 16 table hours(4 real hours) of $1-$2 Hold'em at Party Poker. Playing four tables at the same time, drinking a few beers, and trying to play aggressively like suggested in Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play
by Ed Miller, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth.

Bad combination.

Okay, so I never once got aces, got my kings cracked twice, flopped a set of jacks only to loose to a set of queens, had some other bad beats, but the bottom line is I went on tilt.

In the final moments, holding Q9in the big blind. Bet hard on the flop of 99K, reraising. The turn card was another K. Bet, reraise, cap. The river a 3. Same deal. I thought I had the nuts. That was Rolling Rock talking.

Poker is frustrating. One night it is the easiest game in the world, another you get slammed. You have to trust in the long run.

Its okay to loose some when you are experimenting with your play. The problem with the aggressive style is people know I am going to bet, and they call me down or reraise me with better hands. Sure I win a lot of pots I woulnd't have, but I get involved in one on one pots that I have no business being in because people don't fold at low limits.

The only real sin is the playing four tables at the same time and having a few beers, and letting judgement slid.

I am now down 51 for the month, having been up as high as 134.

I must return to what poker is about for me. A Zen like discipline. Nothing matters but solid unemotional play.

Nightly Play

2005-06-17T09:11:00.000-04:00

I'm catching the on-line bug again. I've been playing Hold'em $1-$2 at Party Poker. I'm up about $60 after twenty hours of play or so (playing 4 tables at a time for 1 hour counts as four hours.) Last night I dropped $50 at one table in like no time. It was a combination of bad play, betting out and all the way and getting called down to getting rivered by people who had no business staying in the hands. I stuck with it though, opened up three more tables, then finished up the night with a nice run that brought me even. I've had some nights where I play great and my hands hold up. I am aggressive and win a fair number of pots with semi-bluffs, then I have nights where I am a little timid and get run over. I lost $74 one night when I lost with all of the following AA, KK, QQ, JJ, and AKs. It didn't bother me that much because i didn't play improperly. It just wasn't in the cards for me that night.

What I like about playing is the discipline or the attempt to keep it. I don't care as much about the bad beats if I feel I am playing within myself and not getting on tilt.

I also am really enjoying the pace of Hold'em, and I much prefer it now to Omaha High-Low, which I specialized in for a period there. Talk about a boring game.

I just spent about $100 from Amazon yesterday buying more poker books, even though I have about seventy already.

I bought Doyle Brunson's SuperSystem 2, Dan Harrington's Strategic Play, which I have read is one of the best poker books ever written, and two new instructional books by FARGOers, Matt Matros and Russell Fox. In addition, I bought two non-fiction poker books -- a biography of Stu Unger and a book called The Gambler, The Professor and the Suicide King about a big poker game in Las Vegas.

While I cannot devote the time or money I would like to my study of poker, I can spend some time on it as a hobby because it does bring me pleasure. I am excited about going to FARGO in September.

I've been working six, seven days a week, so an hour or two at the end of the day is very relaxing. I can also read the poker books at work when I am sitting in the ambulance, waiting for a call.

Back at the Tables -- Recreationally

2005-06-10T20:48:00.000-04:00

Okay, so here I am on a Friday night playing $1-$2 Hold'em on Party Poker. Up $8 right now, thank you very much. What happened? Why the drop off in interest?

Well, I did play some in March and for the first time was a loser at the low stakes Omaha Hi-Low tables. Sorry for not reporting it. I think I dropped $18 for the month. I don't think I played badly and I didn't lose much. I'm still around $1100 total stake at Party, but the game just sort of lost its appeal. When you don't win, it seems to me like a big waste of time. Plus Omaha is so boring. I've decided to go back to Hold'em.

The World Series is going on out in Las Vegas, and I admit I feel my dream of one day playing in the World Series big event is past. It was one thing to dream when only 400 people were playing, but it has gone up so astronomically -- they are estimating 6000 this year -- I would be dead money lost in the crowd. I had once even wanted to just play in one of the lessor events, maybe lay out $1500, but even now thousands are entering.

I feel the time has passed me by. I got interested in poker a few years before the boom, and I wish it were back then now. What would I do different. I would learn No Limit earlier -- there's the game, and I would have ventured out to Los Vegas for a couple weeks and tried to write a travelogue. Now there are too many people writing about the game, too many reading about it, and too many playing way too much for me to be considered or dream about being anything more than a recreational player and a recreational poker writer.

I am enjoying following news reports from Vegas. Maybe one day I will go out there, just be a tourist, enter a $200 WSOP sattelite.

I do admire people who have gamble. I just can't lay the money down. I would puke if I lost $500 in a day.

In the meantime I can play online occassionally, go down to Foxwoods once or twice a year for a daily tournament. And of course FARGO -- my chance to sit at the table with these guys who are now playing on TV. I'm looking forward to going again this fall. The tournament entry fees are only $70. My level.

I'm just not a gambler.

Poker in the Dominican

2005-05-21T10:24:00.000-04:00

I'm in the Dominican Republic at the tail end of a medical mission, where for the last eight days I have been part of a group providing medical care to the poor in the mountains of the country. The last night we return to Santa Domingo to stay at a nice hotel as a treat for a week of sleeping in mosquito netting. After going out to dinner at a nice restaurant, we mingle in the lobby. It is only then that I notice the hotel is attached to a casino -- The Hispanola.

We wander through the casino, where a live merengue band plays drowning out the ringing of the slots and the shouts from the tables. I notice in the corner there are two poker tables. I haven't played for awhile and I am with a group and while I do speak Spanish, I am not completely fluent by any means.

But that doesn't stop me. After breaking off from my friends, I ask an attendent, "Cuanto dinero neccesito tener para jugar?" How much money do I need to have to play?

Dos mil pesos. Two thousand pesos. About eighty dollars.

I fork the money over and am sitting down to the left of the dealer. "Neccesito un poquito ayuda," I say. "Entiendo poker, pero hablo solamente un pocquito." I need a little help, I know poker, but only speak a little."

She nodds. And directs me to put a 100 pesos chip in front of me.

I am at a No-Limit Hold'em table where there is a 100 peso ante. There is a revolving dealer button, but there are no blinds.

On the first hand I am dealt a pair of sixes. One player bets 100 pesos. There are four callers.

The flop comes 678.

I bet un mil pesos. I get two callers.

A nine hits. I check. Someone has a straight, I'm sure. Another player bets another mil. There is another caller. I call all-in, figuring I have pot odds.

A seven comes on the river, and I flip over my sixes, showing a full house. I rake in a side pot of six mil pesos.

The Dominicans are talking so fast I have a hard time following what they are saying.

I then proceed to get nothing for the next hour. I see the flop for the cost of the ante a few times, but flop nothing. I am amazed at the wildness of the play. People playing and raising with anything. Not one pot is taken that doesn't go to the river. People are constantly going to their wallets and throwing dos mil pesos at the dealer for rebuys. It seems to fold is an insult to your manhood. When someone wins a pot, they get up and do the chucaracha.

I see a flop for free with K2 unsuited. The flop comes K J 10. I check. No one bets. A n 8 comes on the turn. Again no bets. The river is a 2. There is a bet and a caller. I toss my hand. The winner has a pair of tens. The loser a pair of twos. I have tossed the winning hand.

Later, I watch a man slow play AA, and another slow play a flopped full house nines full of twos. The pattern seems to be bet when bluffing, call with a monster. Sometimes the betting more closely resembles a cockfight than a poker game.

The players are all crazy. A man catches a two outer on the river. "Ladron! Ladron!" the other players shout at him. "Thief! Thief!"

I fold over and over, telling myself to be patient. There is no stealing in this game.

I finally get a hand AK suited. There is a small raise in front of me. I bet half my stack. I get one caller who goes all-in with A8 suited. He then flops a flush.

"Te queiro, Maria, te queiro," he professes to the dealer, "I love you! I love you!" then he gets up and does another chucaracha.

A waiter brings out a dish of meat and onions for all the players.

I go back to folding. I'm getting 27 like every hand.

Patience, I tell myself. This game is ripe.

Finally after two hours, I get a 108 clubs and there are no bets so I see a flop.

It comes 9c 7c 3d. A straight flush draw. But I only have 1200 pesos left. I shove all in, and get two callers.

A four of clubs comes on the turn and a blank on the river.

I rake in the pot.

It is now two in the morning, and I have an early plane to catch. I play one more hand.
I look down to find jacks on the button. There are two raises in front of me, and two cold callers. It will cost me half my stack to call and the betting still isn't over. I fold.

One of the cold callers has KK and he takes the pot down.

I cash out my chips, walk past the merengue band, counting my stack of hundred pesos notes on my way out.

More on Cheating

2005-02-12T16:43:00.000-05:00

I found an old link to an interesting discussion of poker cheating by many of the game's top players. Daniel Negreanu accuses Men The Master of cheating. Go to this link:

http://tinyurl.com/4pzak

$55

2005-02-01T23:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I didn't really take a hiatis. I played Omaha Hi-Low on Paradise and won $55 for the month. I played three tables at the same time. I was up $93 on the 50 cent-$1 tables and down $38 on the $1-$2 tables. I played 45 table hours or about 15 real hours.

This month I will try to play only the 50-$1 tables and track every hand with poker stat.

GCA on Tilt

2005-01-18T13:47:00.000-05:00

Attached is the review of Tilt by the Russ G guy I mentioned in my previous post. For me, the most interesting thing is not whether what he writes is true or not but whether this is really where the producers of Tilt got their insiration for the story.

GCA "TILT"From: RussGeorgiev@aol.com (RussGeorgiev@aol.com)

Date Posted: 1/17/2005 12:05:00 PM

TILT

Anyone who's seen the Famous Cheating Tapes that were made on May 10th,2001 and June 9th, 2001 will realize TILT is a show depicting the exact same thing GCA described as being high stakes poker. The interview was done by Mike Caro and his wife, with Bill Nirdlinger, John Martino and myself.

What you saw on TILT, is how we described the world of high stakes poker operates. For about 4 years now, I have been posting this and many keep stating they don't care as the stakes are too high and only apply to 1% or less of the population who play in those games. Yet,when they make a show on the subject, all of you now are experts.

First TILT is like a composite of the Vegas Poker Mafia family, now and for the last twenty years the most dominant one in the world. TheMatador is like a Doyle Brunson-Chip Reese composite, while the manager is like a Bobby Baldwin. The surveillance person is like the head ofthe Bellagio security, Steve Koenig and the floorman was like DougDalton.

For the last four years I have stated this is how high stakes poker operates, yet many refuse to believe. The Nevada State Gaming Control Board has been accused by GCA as having many corrupt officials, asBenny Binion formed this sham about 50 years ago to give the dishonest casinos a little credibility.

On a whole, TILT is right on the money, though most of the dialogue onthe poker tables is rubbish. If you notice the Matador being buddy-buddy with the manager, you'll realize all the high stakes cheats are, as they have been around since these guys first got their jobs. Most were players first, then dealers and then rose through the ranks,most because of the influence and power of the cheats.

The after hours game with guns is a few years old, but this was the waymany private games were a few years ago. I have been shot once and robbed six times in games and many players carried guns as the money was very large. Online poker has eliminated many private games as have the abundance of b&m card rooms, yet the underground games out west were close to what you saw on TV.

Obviously the games played previously wasn't NLH, but this is just something put in. As for as how the show dealt with the operations of high stakes poker, it was as close to being on the money as many could make or conceive.This is a subject I can't even believe is being shown, as watching this show the first week is very close to how things are and were in this business. Even when the Matador goes to the restroom and relieves himself:). Many times I would take a break from the game and go into the managers office and do cocaine with him and have a couple of female employees with us. After all, I paid him as well as many others for decades.

Like it or not, TILT depicts high stakes poker in a very realistic manner, just as it's done in real life. It's all about getting the bigmoney. You didn't notice any $2-$4 tables being shown, did you? Justthe largest game in the casino which was scammed with many players, asI have described for years. Did any of these guys work alone? It was all organized and team work was the key, also as I have stated for years. The only problem was the stakes:). You see the Matador wasn't very happy with winning $8,000. Neither would I in these days ifI was in his position. All get a piece of the pie, some get large slices, however.

You want a realistic show on poker, TILT has shown it's the only one to ever come close. Even the poker hands were great, though the hands were for PL instead of NL. While the weapon of destruction in high stakes PL games is the small straight against the set, the weapon in NL is the set against the higher pair.

I give TILT two thumbs up. I have two thumbs as I have two hands. Iwonder why the other guys don't give four thumbs up?

Russ Georgiev

www.pokermafia.com

ESPN's TILT-First Impressions

2005-01-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

Okay. I liked it. Here's why. It's a TV show and it's about poker.

Not that I like every TV show about poker. If the poker is really stupid, then I don't like it. Or if the drama is really dumb, I don't like it. While the poker in this might not have been the most realistic, it is after all a TV show. I liked the Cinncinati Kid, even though the final hand was sort of ridiculous.

I was reading some of the comments about the show on RGP this morning and I thought jham had the best comment:

From: jham
Subject: Re: My concern about Tilt
OK, here's an idea for a show. It's about this guy, he plays 10-20 and makes about 2 bb/hr. One time he had a really good night and made 3000,he bought everyone drinks at the bar. In later episodes he might move upto 20-40, but only if his bankroll gets big enough. That's the cliffhanger, you want to see if he gets up to 300BB. Did I lose your attention already?
Seriously though, poker is only going to be interesting to the general public if its dramatic and dangerous. When poker is played the right way,it's pretty boring.

Most posters slammed the show, which is typical for RGP people.

Here is a funny though sick review:

Amarillo Slim's Review Of Tilt
From: BillMM
"Hey, where are all these games with 12 year old girls?"

Those who don't know, Amarillo Slim had some trouble with the law concerning improper behavior with a minor girl. In Tilt the female Miami thinks back to the first high stakes game she played when she was 12.

What I thought most interesting about Tilt was guessing where there material came from. I know the producers of the show, who also did Rounders, read RGP. As many know, a guy named RussG has been posting on RGP for years about cheating, including talking about tapes made with some of the cheaters. As I watched, I thought wow, they took the RussG and the GCA tapes stuff right off RGP.

RussG has a website with many fascinating articles about poker cheating. Here's the link:

http://www.pokermafia.com/index.php?action=free

Watching I also wondered who The Matador was modeled after and in the back of my mind I thought, could this be the dark side of Doyle Brunson? I have read rumours, mostly spread by RussG about Brunson being in on cheating scams.

I also wondered about the idea of the big game and all the pros knowing each other and signaling each other as a way to take the money off the tourists. I have heard of the big game at the Bellagio where the top pros play huge stakes and probably no doubt go easy on each other while raking the tourists. I put that together with the rumours about the WSOP tournament of Champions Event where Annie Duke supposedly won the $2 million winner take all, but the rumours had it some of the pros divied up the money in advance and just played for the cameras.

What do I know? I am just a low-limit player who loves playing the game.

I guess my impression was this show may just feed the notion that poker is fixed. There are enough people out there who are convinced internet poker is fixed, but who believe the casino is the only place to get a fair game. But when you look at all the cheating and scandals that go on wherever this money -- Wall Street, City Hall, etc -- there are always scams. Why not high states poker, where collusion is so simple to carry out.

Even I have seen players pawning off chips to each other during tournament breaks. It is very easy to take chips off the table in a lowlimit buy in tournament, then slip those chips into play in a big event. The same chips are used in the Foxwoods $100 Hold'em that are used in the World Poker Finals -- at least in the events I've played in. Say you pay $100 to get in the Monday night Hold'em, you get down to maybe four tables. There is a break, you palm off some big chips, then the next week you are playing in a $2500 event or maybe even in the $10,000 event(I don't know if they bag and staple their chips like I believe they do at the WSOP), and you reach in your pocket durning a table change and add the chips to your rack.

At Mohegan I saw some regulars' stacks increase in curious ways, and as I mentioned, actually saw a serepticous chip exchange in the men's room on a Sunday when they used to play the early-bird tournament there. I know Men the Master has been accused of this, and there was a rumor when his room was raided at Foxwoods a couple years ago, tournament chips were found there. That may explain why he was removed from his seat in the middle of a tournament

Anyway, I will keep watching TILT. I'm a sucker for drama, and for all things poker. The girl Miami is easy on the eyes, and what else do I have to do on a Thursday night. I'm home from work, I'm tired. It's dinner time. Why not sit down in front of the TV with my meal, tune in and enter a state of suspended disbelief?

It's poker.

Hiatus

2005-01-01T22:37:00.000-05:00

It's January 1 and I am vowing a month long hiatus from poker. A time to clean out my system, so I can come back and play more solidly.

See you in February, if not sooner.

Foxwoods

2004-12-24T09:40:00.000-05:00

Drove down to Foxwoods late afternoon. The sun was going down as we went through Norwich and Route 2 was getting fairly icy by our arrival. I later heard they had to close the road down. They had no regular Hi-Low games going so I had to play $4-$8 1/2 Hold'em 1/2 Hi-Low. The game had a lot of old time regulars. I was doing well until one hand. I was in the big blind in an unraised pot. I think I had 4478. The flop came 774. I bet. Got two callers. Then a low card came . I checked. There was a bet and a raise. I called. The river was another low card. I checked. The next guy bet. And we both called. The guy to my right held a 74. The other guy got the low. Maybe I should have folded right off the top, but hey I flopped a full house. I ended up down $28 after two hours. Again I was frustrated I never really had great cards.

My wife was playing $2-$4 Hold'em. I gave her my remaining chips and went to play inthe $100 Hold'em. I guess they had about 130 players. I lasted till there was four tables left. I was lucky to last as long as I did. I didn't get a whole lot to play with, but each time I went all-in or got close, the river would save me. I only had a couple bad beats. On the last hand I went all in with Jacks and lost to queens.

The one hand that I think back on. I had queens in the early posiition. I raised and had one caller. The flop came something like 456 with two clubs. I bet and was reraised. I called. The next card was a 7 of clubs. So there were staight and flush chances on the board. I check, was raised, then tossed my cards. The guy might of had nothing, but for me to call him down I would have gone out. On the other hand, if he was just using position on me, I might have taken down a big pot to have stayed in. I mean what did he call me with. I was guessing either a pair or a suited ace. That's the only hand I sort of wonder about.

It was fun to be back in the casino. I like seeing the players and having the drama of trying to stay alive. It is so much more fun than on-line poker, just not as profitable. By the way I'm up over $1100 on the internet now.

My wife won about $30. She told me a funny story. A girl went bust in her game, then her girlfriend who was also playing bought $20 more in chips and gave her $10. A player complained that you had to buy in for $20. He made a big stink and called the floor. The floor sheepishly said the guy was right. The rules were you had to buy in for $20. So the girl gets up and leaves in a huff. She comes back a half hour later. She just won $1000 playing slots. She gives her friend $100, then buys back in to the poker game. If I had been her I would have bought in for $900. Piled those $2 chips up like mountains.

After I busted out of the tournament we went to the Hard Rock Cafe and I had three large beers. The next morning I went to the Spa, and did the hot tub/cool shower/sauna/cool shower/steam room/ cool shower/hot tub/hot shower and shampoo routine. The shaved, brushed my teeth, had some cranberry juice, and then bought a paper and went to the breakfast buffett. I had an urge to play the slots, but didn't. I'm a poker player and only bet when the odds are in my favor. But then I thought later, I like playing the slots, even if I lose. Going to the casino and playing poker with the house rake has been a losing proposition lately, although its not enough sessions to tell if I'm winning or losing in the long run. Still I like going because its entertainment. I win on-line, but I am frankly bored playing on-line. I do it more for discipline than fun. Plus I like winning.

$20

2004-12-18T09:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't written an entry in nearly a month. Why not? Well, I've been playing steady at the .50 cent-$1 tables Omaha-High Low. I didn't keep records, which is too bad because I would like to see how many table hours I played. The bottom line. I am up $20 from a month ago. I'm at $1067, but talk about a hard slog. The only thing I can think of is every extra stupid 50 cent bet, not that I feel I make too many. I play pretty rigidly, still subtract all the tiny miscues and maybe I am up considerably more. In January I will go back to strict time enty logs.

On another topic, I am hoping to go to Foxwoods on Monday to play $5-$10 High-Low, then play in the $100 Hold'em Tournament. The only hold up will be the snow. I hate driving in snow.

I'm also thinking about going to ATLARGE in March.

In Omaha

2004-11-20T07:58:00.000-05:00

Winning steadily. Up to $1045. Lost a $20 plus pot when I flopped a fullhouse with my pair of kings. Flop was 33K. Got five callers. Bet it all the way with some reraises. Everyone staying in. A 3 came on the river and I fell to quad 3s. Still finished a winner. If only they played as bad at the higher levels as they do at 50 cent-$1. A couple days ago I had one of the classic hands where I have the nut low and a backdoor high heart flush. Got in a three way raising battle and scooped the pot. One guy complains how come he didn't win. He had an ace high flush, he writes. Well, you guessed it, he only had one heart in his hand. He didn't understand. I'm lost he wrote. You're in Omaha, I typed back.

Yes!

2004-11-14T16:21:00.000-05:00

Down at Foxwoods, they are playing the World Poker Finals today. I could have been there. Woulda cost $10,000.

Instead I'm here, battling it out at the Party Poker 50 cent -$1 game. I just topped $1000. I actually got there the other night, and was going to exit all my tables after playing out my free hands, but then I lost a hand or two, and had to keep playing to get back over the top, and got as low as $979 before finally quitting at $983. Now it stands at $1003.13.

Yes!

I'm quitting for the day and am going to try to do some real work.

The Mountain Top

2004-11-11T12:05:00.000-05:00

Total: $991. I'm killing the games. I get to $998. I say I'm just going to get to $1000, then call it a night. It's 9:30 P.M. Playing 4 tables at once. I cannot get over $1000. I spend two hours bouncing between $985 and $998. I play perfectly. I just can't there. I go to bed tired, and today at work, I'm tired. I bet tonight, my first hand, I'll go over.

Making Progess

2004-11-07T19:30:00.000-05:00

I'm up to $922. I'm killing the game today. I had a little set back and dropped to $816. Its easy to lose when you loose up even just a little. Cards are going well. I'm playing well. Only setback today was while playing 4 tables, I reraised an unnoticed straight flush with my Ace high flush. Since October 17, I am averaging $2.52 per table hour. over the last 66 table hours. Two and a half big bets.

The Old Fashioned Way

2004-10-30T20:14:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've gone back to basics. 50 table hours at .50-$1 Omaha Hi-Low at Party Poker. Profit $100. $2 per table hour or $6-$8 an hour depending on whether I'm playing 3 or 4 tables at the same time. Its a start back to respectability. Tight Before the Flop. Fit or Fold After. The Basics. I'm committed to staying at this level until I have won back all the money I lost. Current total $876. Goal $2000.

The Gambler

2004-10-17T10:34:00.000-04:00

I need to read Dostoevsky's The Gambler. I have heard it really captures the head spinning desperation of losing. Suffice to say I started playing $1-$2 and ended up playing $10-$20. I only played a hour of $10-$20. I guess I was hoping to make back my loses in $3-$6. In patrrticular the $100 pot when I had the nut flush on the turn with the nut low draw and a nine landed on the river pairing the board, after I had reraised vigorously on the turn. I didn't play badly at $10-$20. In fact, I was shocked at the hands people were playing at that level. I just didn't get an opportunity to bet. I look at how much was in my account now and compare it to what it was at the start of the day. It's hard to believe it. I wish I could just blink and see $1272 which is where I was at just two days ago. It's not. I'm still playing with house money. I'm still up, but still, woe...
What do I do now? Do I start over at .50-$1? Do I go back to $10-$20? Do I cash out what I have? Jjustr leaving a small amount to build from, but who wants to play 50-$1. I think I do. If I cash out, then I will have a definite win. I do know I need to stop this four tables at once bullshit. I need to take the game more seriously. I also need to cut down on how much I play. I need a plan. I need a vision of what my life means, because I feel sort of lost right now. Obviously, its more than just poker.

The Red Sox got beat 19-8 last night. They're down 3-0. I feel like them. What hit me. I guess I can never be a real champion poker player or gambler because losing means to much. I don't have the courage, the heart. Something I need to work on. Not just in poker, but in life. I need a plan, a vision. I know I'm rambling, stalling, trying to buy time. I need to just face facts. I'm at where I'm at. I have to play the cards I'm being dealt, play them smartly, not anything of this, I'm owed good cards, I'm due, let me just get lucky. I need smarts and cold hearted patientence.

Balance $746

Bad Beats

2004-10-17T02:33:00.000-04:00

October 16, 2004

(delete)

First hand Back

2004-10-16T17:37:00.000-04:00

First hand. The first hand when I return to the tables. I post behind the button. I get 772J. The flop comes 73Q. Its just me and the big blind. He checks. I bet. He calls. Blah blah blah. I'm down $17 when its all over.

A Moment's Inattention

2004-10-15T08:24:00.000-04:00

October 15, 2004

I've been working hard on being disciplined. The last two nights I've played four tables at once, mainly $2-$4. I got my stake up as high as $1274. I'm about ready to call it a night when CNN says they are going to do a segment on the Bill O'Reilly case that just hit the news today. I'm a little curious, but mainly I am looking for an excuse to play another round before going to bed. On one of the tables, I have the second nut low draw, the nut straight draw, and a king high flush draw. I'm clicking my other tables, glancing at the TV, then the six of hearts hits the turn. I've made my nut flush, I think. I raise. I get raised. I reraise. It's capped. The river is a nothing card, my opponent raises. I glance at the cards again and I get a sick feeling. I only have the king high flush. I thought I had the ace high flush. The ace on the board was the straight draw. There's about $100 in the pot. I'm beaten, but I call in case there is another bozo in the hand. There isn't. A night's work undone in a moment's inattention. When I dare to check my cash a few hands later, I'm down to $1226. I'm tired but I want to win some of that back. I get looser, get frustrated. I go to bed fifteen minutes later, down to $1174.

A moment's inattention. Poker is serious and requires serious effort to conquer. If I am going to play 4 tables at once, I need to minimize distractions. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. I get a phone call and then all at once I need to make decisions on three games at once, read the boards, look at my cards, follow the action. Maybe I should just go back to one table. Either that or unplug the TV, disconnect the phone.

Sleepless Night

2004-10-12T20:00:00.000-04:00

I don't want to go into it, but I had a bad day and when I go to bed, I can't sleep. It's too god damned cold in the bedroom. I think my wife left the porch door open. She didn't turn the heat on. I get in bed without socks. I toss and turn, get up put on some wool socks and some sweat pants. The wife is sound asleep. I try to get to sleep but can't. I get another blanket. No go. I watch the clock. I've got to get to work the next morning at five. It's already 1:11.

I get up, go down stairs to my office, wrap myself in the blanket and sign on to Party Poker. I'm down to $1103 in my account. Looks like some good action at the 2-4s. I end up on one .50-$1, one $1-$2, and two $2-$4. What can I say. I'm finally getting some cards. Scooping some pots. By 2:20, I'm up to $1226.

I go back to bed, its takes a little while, but I finally get to sleep. I'm tired when the alarm goes off at 5:00 and I've been dragging all day. Too bad I'm doing a sixteen today and won't get home till past ten, and my first priority is getting in the hot tub because my back is stiff as can be today. I worked a little hard in the gymn yesterday, my first day back in two weeks. Its so stiff I called the wife from work and told her to put the heat up to 102 degrees. I'm thinking about calling and asking her to boot it up to the max 104. I doubt I'll get in any poker tonight, but you never know. Sleeplessness is tough to beat sometimes.

Anyway, the point is, I was just thinking, how great it is to be able to go downstairs and play poker in the middle of the night when life isn't exactly going your way, and how great is it when the cards bestow a little kindness on you when you need it.

To all you politicians out there who want to ban internet poker, shame on you. Do your jobs. Take care of the big stuff like war and poverty. Leave us the little things that get us though the night.

FARGO 2004- Down Goes Fossil Man!

2004-10-05T17:29:00.000-04:00

September 30-October3, 2004

Walking Back to Two Trees

Many poker players have their special hand. Doyle Brunson has 10-2, Phil Hellmuth 9-9. Mine is 3-3. Haven’t won any money with it, but that’s my hand. I’d rather not repeat the full humiliating story of how I once lost with it. Let's just say the last words of my first No-Limit tournament were "A pair of 3s. That's all I've got."

I arrive at Foxwoods -- my first visit since Fargo 2003. I check into the Two Trees Hotel, cross the parking lot, hit the poker room and enter an ACT I. First hand I look down and see 3-3. I must be a special category of honored guest. Others get limo rides from the airport, champagne in their comped rooms. I get 3-3 on my first hand. Not wanting to be ungracious, I limp in under the gun. There’s a raise from the fifth seat and a big reraise from the button. I toss my hand. I know I haven’t earned enough wampum points for the casino to arrange an additional 33 on the flop.

Later in the first round of an Act II, I find my KK raise called all-in by two players. I push my stack forward. One seat shows two paints; the other shows 3-3. I’m already thinking about the seat I’ll earn into the 8:00 P.M. Act III when a 3 splashes on the river.

From now on I’m calling two threes “Two Trees.” Because that’s where I’m headed. Done for the night.

Hypnosis

The thrill of my evening comes in the Act I when the sunglassed youngster to my right tries to look into my soul after I reraise him all-in. I stare back, our noses not six inches apart. I have been studying hypnosis. When you leave the casino, I sublime to him, you will drop down on all fours and bark like a dog.

Christopher Columbus 2004

My wife and I are in the little cafeteria/smoking area between the Race Book and the Poker Room waiting for the noon Pairs tournament to get underway when we are assailed by a diminutive unshaven man with wild eyes, rapidly puffing on a cigarette almost burned down to his fingers. “So you’ve discovered poker, too, huh? Isn’t it great?” Puff. Puff. “It takes me almost four -- sometimes five hours -- to lose a hundred dollars. I play slots --it’s gone in forty minutes. I just keep dropping those quarters, hitting the buttons. Not like poker. I can play four --sometimes five hours -- on a hundred bucks. It’s great!” Puffpufff. “It’s the new game for me, I tell you. Poker.”

The Pairs

I play Omaha, my wife plays Hold’em. In the Hold’em Round she shows her inexperience by trying to fold her unraised blind, a mistake I still occasionally make myself. A first time Fargo member sitting at her table gets up and whispers to his partner, “I thought these FARGO players were supposed to be tough, some don’t even know how to play.”

Later my wife is in a hand with the same player. The board shows the possibility of a straight. The player checks. My wife bets. The player thinks. He grimaces. He rubs his forehead. He stares at the board. Enough time for a TV commercial passes. My wife winks at me. Her opponent disgustedly tosses his hand.

Afterwards my wife tells me it was a complete bluff. “I had a read on him,” she says, smiling. “I had nothing.”

She’s impressed with herself. So am I. It’s the first bluff a member of my family has ever gotten away with.

The Tables

I make $40 in two hours at the $5-$10 Hi-Low Omaha game. My wife has out earned me, winning $50 at $2-$4 Hold’em. It’s her first time in a ring game. “You wouldn’t believe what these people were playing,” she says. “Some of the kids at the table didn’t even look 18. Betting all the way with nothing. I played tight and they were just giving me their money. If I stayed longer I could make serious money.”

I am about to tell her not to get too excited. I am going to explain to her short-term luck versus the long-term effects of the rake and the randomness of the cards. But then she says, "When someone asked me where'd I learn to play so well, I said, 'My husband taught me.' "

"That's right," I say. "Always listen to your husband and you'll go far not just in poker, but in all aspects of life."

"Not," she says.

The Banquet

Joan Hadley -- aka The Queen aka AlwaysAware aka the person who makes FARGO go -- is the best. She and her court put together another great event. The Banquet, sponsored by Poker Stars, represented by nice guy Rich Corbin, is great. My wife and I continue our day of meeting new friends and reacquainting ourselves with old ones. Good company and good food. I always watch what I eat, but I have a bowl of clam chowder, a plateful of salad, pasta, turkey, potatoes and several of the little cannolies, and the other dessert treats.

The speakers are the $5 million World Series of Poker 2004 Champion Greg “The Fossil Man” Raymer and World Poker Tour 2004 Championship final table players, Russell Rosenblum and Matt Matros – all three longtime FARGOers.

Greg cracks us up when asked what he was writing in his notebook after the infamous exchange with Mike Matusow shown during ESPN’s coverage of the WSOP. He says he wasn’t making a note to the hit man he uses. “See Guido—Re: Mike Matusow,” he says as he pantomimes writing in his book. In truth, he says, it was the end of the round and he was just writing down his chip count.

The three poker ambassadors discuss hands and poker philosophy in a thoughtful way that reveals depths to the game that have been beyond my imagination. Russell’s account of how he won a big hand off Greg with only a 10 high is great.

They all stress that with the modern money structure, you should play to win instead of just cashing. Russell says that despite all his top finishes, including at the 2002 WSOP, Matt by virtue of finishing just two places above him at the WPT Championship has far surpassed Russell’s career poker earnings.

My wife says to me “Remind me to ask you about all the strategy stuff later.”

Later when I try to explain my understanding of how great poker players think, at first she is confused, then shortly after, asleep. I think I will just get her Matt and Greg’s books when they come out.

Here’s Matt’s web site: http://www.mattmatros.com/.

Here's Greg's: http://www.fossilmanpoker.com/

The banquet ends with Bill Alan Hafey’s son Tom saying a few remarks about his Dad, the Fargo founder who passed away just days before. I only met Bill Alan a few times. I remembered him as a nice man, who went out of his way to be friendly to a newcomer.

No-Limit

During the No Limit tournament I find myself at the same table with The Fossil Man, Russell, Matt and a host of FARGO championship jacket wearers and other heavyweights like poker author Ashley Adams. It’s a poker player’s nightmare, but a poker fan’s dream. I may be a marginal player, but I am an indisputable fan. And the poker gods reward my enthusiasm with a nice run of cards, while throwing in a couple of tough beats to lesser stacks just to cover their favoritism on this morning.

I flop a flush in the big blind after calling a raise with 10-8 of clubs. I check. Peter “Taki” Caldes checks. I bet the turn, he reraises. I go all-in. He calls. He’s got the nut flush, the A-J of clubs. Fortunately, I still have chips to play.

Shortly after I have an amateur poker player’s fantasy – a showdown with the Champ. Greg, who is also short-stacked goes all-in under the gun. I call him with AJ hoping he’s trying to steal before he has to lay out another blind. He turns over KQs. The flop gives him a Q, and I practice saying, “Well, at least it took the World Champion to knock me out,” then an Ace lands, and for a moment, I hear Howard Cosell exclaim, “Down goes Fossil Man! Down goes Fossil Man!" But he still has a few chips left after our small stacks are compared, and I just have to hope he doesn’t later exact retribution on me.

I’m not certain how he feels about my call. The one play not in his repertoire is Phil Hellmuth’s “I don’t believe this! You called my under the gun all-in with an unsuited AJ! Amateur!” Looks up at the sky. “Why does this always happen to me?”

Part of the challenge of playing with top players is not making bonehead plays. I listen to them talk of proper calls and proper bets. It’s not that I want their respect, I just don’t want to be exposed too badly.

There are degrees of mathematical ability. I know what pot odds are all about, it’s just calculating them that gives me trouble. I’m the kind of guy when I go into the 7-11 to buy a pack of gum, and the cashier says, “Borty-bour cents, sir, if you please,” I just hold the change in my hand and let the guy pick the proper amount out.

Back to the table, where the cards are again going my way. My AQ sucks out against an AK. Then – how great is this -- for the first time I limp in early instead of raising. I absorb a small reraise, then check the flop -- couple low cards and a 10 -- and am raised all-in. How quick can I call as I turn over my 10-10 to make top set over the raiser's 9-9.

It’s usually always me on the other side of a hand like this. Not this time. Believe me, I enjoy it, taking my time raking in my glorious bounty. I’m content to fold the next few hands while I play with the chips like Mr. Magoo in Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. “Jingle Jingle, these coins as they mingle.”

I win another big pot when "Goldie" Stevan Goldman raises. I glance at his stack to see how much he has – see he has more than me, so I just call as does the big blind. The flop comes King high with two clubs. I go all-in. He agonizes, then tosses his pair of queens.

He asks me if I had a king. Now following the early advice I believe I read in my first poker Bible, the esteemed “Dummies Guide to Poker,” I won’t tell him. I never reveal my cards. He reminds me it’s just a fun tournament. “You’re all sharks,” I say, “I need any edge I can get.”

But later at the break, I feel bad, and I do remember how at an earlier FARGO, I reraised him preflop from the button, and then he reraised me all-in, and I tossed my AK, and to my relief and gratitude, he showed me his AA. When I get back to the table, I apologize for not telling him what I had. I tell him he made a nice lay down and we shake hands. I’m hoping next time I reraise him, he’ll again toss his cards. No such luck for me.

One by one the big players leave for the greener fields of their high-stakes ring games. I have a decent stack and am just starting to count the number of players left. Down to 30-40 from 150 or so. Then just like that I’m out. My ears deaf to the traditional FARGO applause for a knocked out player, I’m walking around in circles not twenty feet from my now empty chair. I’m thinking it only happened a moment ago, quick jump into one of those human gerbil running as fast as you can spinning time machines and go back sixty seconds. No one will notice. I’ll fold instead of raising all-in after Goldie’s late position preflop raise. Better yet, go back five minutes, and instead of just bluffing once at the rag flop in the big pot against Regis Donovan and despairing as she makes a reluctant call, I’ll bluff a second time instead of checking with my A-10. I’ll bluff a third time if I have to and I know she’ll fold, because all she has is probably two high cards. But I have no courage in the key moment. We both check and she takes the pot down with AK. If I’d won that pot, I wouldn’t have been so anxious to try to double back up when Goldie raised and I hoped he had high cards or was on a steal. Instead, he thinks long and hard again, then calls me with his A-K and my 8-8 goes down when the cards are dealt out on the green felt.

But I’ve got nothing to complain about. I won more than my share of tossups, got away with most of my bluffs, sucked out a time or two, and only had a couple tough beats. Best of all I outlasted my wife. Still the King in my household.

Hologram Reflection

Joan Hadley plays a practical joke on Greg by giving everyone at his table a pair of hologram glasses to put on for the first hand to surprise Greg, who gets a chuckle out of it. Later Greg is in a confrontation with the tough Scott “Bwana” Byron. Greg is facing a raise. Greg puts on his glasses and takes up his patented pose, face leaning patiently on hand, big holograms eyes staring down his opponent. Bwana puts on his hologram glasses and stares back at Greg. The champ shivers imperceptibly, quickly takes off his glasses and folds. “I guess you’re serious,” he says.

The Tables

I play a couple more hours of $5-$10 Omaha Hi-Low and lose $40. The play at the table I’m at is terrible. But it is so slow and I’m getting nothing to play. We can’t be getting more than 15 hands an hour what with the dealer changes, checking the money, trying to split the pots up, the players trying to tell the new dealers how to read the board and split the money up and everyone arguing, and people staring at their cards forever. I look around to see if maybe there are just three tables left in the big tournament and we were going hand to hand on the payout bubble.

I mean I get bored playing 4 tables of Hi-Low at the same time on Party Poker. This “live” action is terminally insufferable. I struggle to keep from banging my head against the table. What I really want to do is lay down on the felt and say wake me up when you’re ready to play cards. Either that or shoot me, put me out of my misery. I bear the pain in hopes they will give me some cards I can play with. These people are playing every hand, staying with nothing and I’m just a spectator. I get A235 double suited early. I limp. No one raises. The flop comes KK9. Just give me one hand, one big pot to make my time worthwhile. I can’t stand it any longer. I finally get up and leave with some free hands still owed me.

Fossil Man Heads Up Invitational Tournament

The annual FIHUPT is held at the VFW Hall in Preston. When I get there Greg is laying out a spread of potato chips, brownies, peanuts, pretzels and other eats on a big table. I think we end up with 48 people there. Eights flights of six. I’m hoping I will get all the big hitters in my flight so there will be no shame in losing. Instead I get a bunch of stealth sharks who get the scent of my blood and tear me up in a polite frenzy. I’m 1-1 when The Nebraska Kid aka Andy Goesh destroys me while making pleasant small talk. I have my best match with Tom “Rebuy” Goodwin, who nonetheless takes me down. I finish 1-4. At least I showed up and got some free pizza.

Jaypot Jay

At the FHIUPT, I get a chance to meet and talk with Jackpot Jay Lovinger, who writes a column for ESPN and is writing a book on his year as a professional poker player. Interesting guy with some excellent insights into poker. He calls poker a great meritocracy. In the poker world, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, what you do, what you look like, how much money you have in the bank -- all that matters is that you are good at poker. You can read Jay’s columns at

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/archive?columnist=lovinger_jay&root=page2

Little Big Horn

I meet my wife at the Festival Buffet when I get back from the heads up tournament. She reports on her 8 hours, the ups and downs. The best hand, she says, was when she took down the table bully by using his favorite play, the check raise on the river, to reel in another bet and a stunned look of surprise and anguish from the bully. She ends up plus $1 for her two days of play. Now I tell her about the rake and how it takes $80-$100 off the table every hour, and how it makes beating a low-limit game almost impossible in the long run. She is thrilled with her $1 win.

Sitting at the table next to us is a big man in a cowboy hat who looks like Hoss from Bonanza with 100 lbs and another thirty years -- some of them hard with liquor -- added on to his stocky slow-moving frame. He has been listening in on our conversation. “So they got poker here?” he says.

“Yes,” I say.

“They got that Texas Hold’em game?”

“They do.”

“How high do they play?”

“Real high.”

“They got dealers or the players do the dealing?”

“Dealers.”

“Hmm. I’m going to have to try that. Now which direction did just say I’d find that poker room?”

“Just head out thattaway,” I say, pointing, “go through that pass there right by that big Indian with the arrow in his drawn bow. Then keep on going. You can’t miss it.”

“Reckon I will,” he says.

Another cowboy led to the slaughter.

The Spa

Before the last tournament I conduct my daily ritual – going to the Cedar Spa for a hot tub, steam room, shower and shave. I find three gamblers sleeping on the carpeted floor of the darkened locker area, using stacks of green towels as pillows. I guess they lost their room money. Always glad to see someone is losing worse than I am. I tiptoe around them, trying not to disturb their double down dreams.

Mixed Events Tourney

I’ve got The Fossil Man on my left; Matros and a Murder’s Row of FARGOers in the other seats. For the second day in a row casino-goers gather around the table, gawking at Greg, and whispering among themselves. One guy even says to Greg. “Hey, let me see you put your glasses on.” Greg, who is the perfect gentleman to everyone asking him to sign the special FARGO chips with his photo on them, courteously declines the man’s request, and resumes his attention on the game.

He and I have another card confrontation today – something I was afraid of. I raise preflop. He calls me on the button. The flop is low cards. I bet. He calls. I get my lovely queen on the turn and bet. He raises. I reraise. The hand with the WSOP bracelet caps it. I see the straight on the board now, always a little too late to see the obvious. I fear the queen has cuckolded me. Made me believe I was the favorite, while showing favor to another man. Why? Just because he has $5 million and those cool glasses and because he proved by his play in Las Vegas that he does in fact have large cojones and is a good guy to boot? I feel quite small. Still there is hope. The river brings no life raft. I check. He bets. I pay him off. He shows a suited J10. “Good hand,” I mutter. He’s already signing another autograph for a pretty admirer. I’m lucky it’s the still the first round.

I play even tighter than normal, which is not too smart, particuarly with the large ante structure in the stud rounds. The truth is even though I cashed fifth in this same event two years before, I am intimidated. The only problem with being switched to another table an hour into the event is I doubt the new table will have respect for the bluff raise I need to make to keep my stack from shrinking during a run of nothing hands. I struggle the rest of the way, twice surviving death with timely cards, only to die feebly in the last stud round to David Kuznick's kings.

David and I shake hands. The table gently applauds. And I drive home with an empty wallet, and a story of what might have been.

Sing it one more time Howard. "Down Goes Fossil Man! Down Goes Fossil Man!"

Getting Ready for FARGO

2004-09-27T00:40:00.000-04:00

September 2004

Next week I'm going down to Foxwoods -- my first trip in a year. Its time for FARGO. I plan to try my luck in an ACT I, see if I can advance to an Act II, get lucky and win a place in the evening's Act III, where if I am really lucky I could win a seat in the World Poker Tour World Poker Finals $10,000 No-Limit Tournament. That would be incredible. You can buy directly into the Act III for $1050, and while I would love to play, I just can't stomach potentially losing that much in a couple hours. I'm planning to spend as follows Fargo Pairs(Playing with my wife) - $130, Fargo NL-$70, Fargo Mixed Event-$70, The Fossilman HeadsUp Classic - $100(if I have the nerve to play), and $180 for up to 3 Act Is. That leaves $300 for $5-$10 Omaha Hi-Low ring game. And I'm hoping I won't bust in all of those.

Last year I only played in the FARGO events, and while my wife and I came in 9th in the pairs out of maybe 40, I was the middle of the pack in the other events. Other than another pathetic shove-in in NL with the worst hand after being raised, I had no memorable hands.

Each year I plan to play in the Fossilman Heads Up invitational and each year I chicken out because I know nothing about heads up play -- there are no books covering it that I am aware of -- and I have been killed in my few forays into heads up play on Paradise. Last year one of the FARGO guys printed up these cool tee-shirts that everyone who played in the Fossilman's tournamnet got. With the Fossilman winning the WSOP, that would be a very cool t-shirt to wear about town. Much cooler than the Poker Stars shirts they gave us as FARGO souvenirs last year, although very nice shirts to wear, not too cool in the casino. I suppose they are allright if you want to pretend you're Chris Moneymaker on Halloween.

On the internet some people ranked on Fossilman calling him a lucky amatuer, but I remember sitting at the Mohegan Sun years ago and hearing some guy talk about how a guy named the Fossilman had won the Foxwoods weekly no-limit tournament yet again. I've played with him a couple times at FARGO, and the first time he sat next to me, he introduced himself, asked my name and shook hands with me. You remember stuff like that about someone who later becomes famous. A good guy.

When he won the tournament and there were articles in all the local papers about it, my wife was asking me if I knew the guy from Connecticut who won the $5 million. Know him, I said, you sat at the same table with him at FARGO last year. I did? Yeah, remember the guy with the funny glasses and the fossils on the table? That was him? Yeah, the Fossilman. Now all the doctors where she works are impressed because when they talked about the poker on ESPN, she told them, yeah she's sat the poker table and played No Limit Hold'em with The Fossilman.

My Wife

2004-09-12T19:34:00.000-04:00

Fall 2004

I set my wife up with an internet account. She's gotten into poker watching the games on TV. I try not to push her. She played at FARGO last year and in a tournament when we down to Atlantic City this summer, but she has never played in a ring game. We're going to FARGO 2004 in a couple weeks and she wants some practice.

I come home and ask her how her first day went. She won $200 in two hours. I thought you were going to play the 25 cent-50 cent game? She played $3-$6. You have to be careful, I say, unless you have at least $600, its likely you'll go broken at that limit even if you are a winning player. She is unphased. With my luck, I'll be watching her on TV next year.

Grind to Nowhere

2004-09-02T19:39:00.000-04:00

September 2004

The last two months I have stayed at the 50 cent-$1 Omaha high-low tables on Party. I've been bouncing between $1000-$1200 in my account. I'm not playing badly. I only see the flop 15-20% at maximum. I just feel like I can't get a break. I was killing this game. Most of the players are terrible. I'm just not getting any cards, or when I get AA23, the flop comes 9 10 J. Or I flop the nut flush and lose the whole pot to a full house made on the river. This happened night after night. How long with this go on? Was I lucky to have won before? I don't think I'm a fish, at least not in the 50 cent game.

Tilt Boy

2004-07-20T19:41:00.000-04:00

July 2004

I like Omaha Hi-Low so much I sometimes play 4 tables at once. Then the game starts to seem like a grind. Everything is by rote. I have days when I win easily, others were I get killed repeatedly on the flop, causing me to fold, or get killed by a river card.

One night, I decide what the hell, I'll play $3-$6. Yes, I'm having a couple beers. I don't drink much anymore unless I'm at the beach or the ballpark, but once in a long while I enjoy a beer at home. Before I know it I am playing four $3-$6 tables at the same time and have lost $400. The cards aren't hitting and yeah, so I'm a little on tilt -- a rare condition for me, nowdays, particuarly at this game, but I'm frustrated. Where's my discipline? I complain. How come I'm not getting the lucky cards on the end?. Keep playing my luck will change. It's just a bad run.

Within a month, even though I bring no beer to the table, I am down to $1000. Hey, by now, you know I am not a big gambler. I can't lay out the $340 and soon $500 they want for the cheap World Poker Final tournaments nowdays at Foxwoods. I just can't. I'd like to play $10-$20 Hold'em, but each $20 bet is an hour of my labor at regular time. A $1000 loss is a week's pay including mega overtime. I know to be a good poker player, you're not suppossed to care about money. I'd love to prove I can play with the bigger boys, but I see this picture of me on my knees under the moonlight, howling, my wallet empty. Why? Why? Why?

Instead I just sit at the computer and howl Why? Why? Why?

I get A2s56 on the button with five callers. I raise. Everyone calls. The flop comes K103. None of my suit. There is a bet and three callers. I waver. Don't play, don't play. Don't play. I call. The next card is a 7. A bet and a raise. Oh, I know what's going to happen if I call. Don't do it. Don't do it.

Fuck.

Atlantic City

2004-06-26T16:14:00.000-04:00

June 2004

I go to Atlantic City for the first time. I post on RGP to get some ideas of where to stay and where to play, and taking that advice stay at the Borgota, which my wife really likes because she likes things toney.

I play in a No Limit tourney in the afternoon, and do my usual No Limit, play great, command respect, then always in the Big Blind, after calling a bet with a okay hand, thrust my stack all in with a weak hand when my mind is telling me to fold, but my body is acting on its own. I think my KJ had top pair after sixth street with the board showing a straight and a flush possibility. I don't understand it. Bad wiring in the brain.

The next night my wife and I go to the Tropicana to play in the No-Limit tournamnet there. She has only played No limit once before at last year's FARGO, where she did respectfully, finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack, just behind me. She has been watching the poker on TV, and I've taught her a little about the game. Play big cards, Keep position in mind always. Be aggressive, but tight. Put your chips in when you're ahead. Have fun.

There are a couple hundred players, and it is a circus. People shoving all-in right and left with nothing. One guy in a Yankee s muscle shirt at my table rebuys 6 times, before finally winning some miracle pots. I later double up against him when my A9 in the big blind sees an A96 flop and he raises my moderate bet all-in with his A4. I talk to my wife at the break and she is appauled. There are some terrible players here, she says, even I know more than they do. She goes out 50th or so.

I am holding strong with three tables left. I get hurt late when my 55-presto loses to a 22 all-in when a 2 comes on the flop. Now I'm on the bubble, but the low man with chips, and the antes will soon have me broke. The tables are going hand for hand. Everyone's playing cautious. I make an all in move with 109 suited from middle position and everyone folds, except the big blind, who calls me with an 86. He pairs the eight and I'm done.

I'm proud of the way I played. I was patient, hung tough, bet with the odds in my favor. And I didn't just play to get paid. I made my move.

The next day we walk the Boardwalk and go over to the Taj, and I show my wife where they filmed the scenes in Rounders.

I think I'd like to spend a week here in the summer, swimming in the ocean during the day, playing cards at night. The life.

Fish versus The Fishermen

2004-04-09T19:01:00.000-04:00

Spring 2004

I've got a new game. Omaha-Hi Low. Its the perfect game for me. It requires only patience and drawing to the nuts. I feel sometimes that I play just for the discipline. Winning and losing matters less than making the proper play. Mike Cappelli says its the perfect fish versus fisherman game. I read all the books, along with Steve Badger's Play winning poker.com advice and Annie Duke's on Ultimate Bet .com. I make out a cheat sheet detailing how to play. I get an account on Party Poker, where because of all the World Poker Tour watchers who've seen the commercials and signed up, is now the softest internet casino. I play .5-$1. Within six months I am up $2,000.

Paradise

2003-06-26T13:46:00.000-04:00

Spring 2003

I take the plunge. I'm not able to get to the casino as much as I would like, particuarly since The Mohegan Sun poker room has closed. Also, I think I can drive all the way down to the casino, maybe win $100 or maybe lose $100. Probably lose. Instead, I could work an overtime shift and make a certain $360. Up $360 or down $100. That's a $460 difference. I think I'll work. I like the odds better.

So I get an account at Paradise, and lose $300 pretty fast betting AK all the way through the river when the flop doesn't hit and my opponent refuses to fold. Paradise take 2. I have reread all the books. I have my strategy mapped out. Play tight aggressive. I play 50 cent-$1 up to $2-$4. I pick tables where a lot of people see the flop and the pots are large. I buy stat King to track my progress. I win steadily. After a year I am up over $2,000. I play tight. I have good days and bad days, but long term my bankroll shows a steady rise. I learn to play two tables at once. I use Pokerstat. I keep notes. I stalk poor players. When my wife complains that I play poker to much, I say, "I'm paying down the morgage." Every month I write a check to the bank equal to my winnings. That money comes out of my savings. I keep my poker money.

I play at work in between answering emergency calls, until my boss finds out I am playing for real money and tells me not to play anymore.

Wo Fat Bien is my nemesis. We duel in the evenings at the $1-$2 tables. Poker tracker shows he is slightly ahead of me in our confrontations. I get AA. I bet. He raises. I reraise. He caps it. Low cards on the flop. Another bet to the max. On Sixth Street, he bets. I call. On the river comes a K. He bets. I call. He has trip kings. We'll meet again Wo Fat Bien.

Maybe he has Aces

2002-11-18T20:39:00.000-05:00

November 2002

I enter a $150 satellite during the 2002 World Poker Finals. Its seven card stud. Not my game anymore, but I'm down here to play poker and maybe I can get lucky and win some lammers. The first table I'm at, things are going great. I've got a nice stack going, am commanding the table. I can't help but command the table, the deck is hitting me over the head with cards. Kings, Queens, Jacks, Flushes made on 5th Street. Then I'm high carded off the table. They send me to my new seat. I nodd to the players at the table, who eye my chips. I'm not the big stack at the table, he's sitting to my left, but I'm pretty close. I think I'm going to be playing for awhile.

I look down at my cards. I got a queen up. I lift the other two. Oh, yeah baby. Two more ladies. Queens rolled up. Wired. As I heard another poker player say one time. Only thing better than a menagiaes a trois is six hooters. I'm not tossing them. Player on the right brings it in with his four. I just call. Then the big stack, the guy with the slicked back hair, shark tooth around his neck, who looks like Mickey Rourke reraises with his seven. A guy with a ten calls. I call. Mickey looks at me and says. "You aren't slow playing a pair of queens are you?" I don't answer. Wouldn't you really like to know.

The next card comes. A jack hits me. An ace hits Mickey. The other guy folds when Mickey bets with his ace. I reraise. Mickey gives me an "oh really?" look. He reraises. I reraise. He smiles. He reraises. I have read my books. The way to win is agression. Raise when you have the best of it. I reraise. He reraises. People are paying attention now. "Can I just go all in?" I say to the dealer. "No," he says. "Let's just count it out," Mickey says, and as I lay out the rest of my chips, I begin to wonder what he might have. I start to feel a little on the stupid side.

The chips piled in the center of the table. The next cards hit. Another jack for me. Yes! I say inside, trying to not to show any emotion.

"Motherfucker!" Mickey says under his breath.

The cards play out. He gets rags, then the last card face down. I think I have survived, but then my opponent shouts "Yes!" He leaps to his feet, and throws his cards down triumphantly in front of me. "Four aces, you fuck! That's right I had trip aces!"

"Did the kid have the cards? someone asks.

My full house lays in front me.

I get up from the table saying nothing and stumble away.

I could say it was a bad beat, but it wasn't. It was cruel, but it wasn't a bad beat. Though I had him by fifth street, he had me when the money went in. I go up to my room and lay down and look at the cieling. I don't play any more poker that night. I don't enter the tournament the next day. I think I'm not cut out for this game.

Later I run the numbers on Wilson Turbo. When I put the money in my queens were something like a 27%-73% dog to his aces.

You fuck.

See His Name See My Name

2002-10-07T01:28:00.000-04:00

Fall 2002

Its my second year at FARGO. I gets some good cards, play well and end up at the final table of the Mixed Event, sitting with Andy Bloch and Russell Rosenblum. Russell goes out before me. I get knocked out when my QJsuited all-in gets called by a Q10. The flop shows a ten, another ten comes on the next card. And I am out. An honorable loss. $210 for 5th place. (I finish 7th in the FARGO Best All-Around Player Standings).

What's nice about FARGO is when you lose, everyone stands and applauds. Not like in the real games where you cease to exist with your card death.

The best part of my final table finish is I get mentioned on the Poker Pages tournament results page.

1 - Andy Bloch - $1,275. 5 - Me --$230. 8. Russell Rosenblum - $106

I exist in the poker world.

I also print out the page from the 2002 World Series of Poker Main Event. It lists Russell Rosenblum 6th - $150,000.

See, I tell people, I finished ahead of the guy who came in 6th at the World Series of Poker Final in Las Vegas. See his name. See my name.

Pair of 3s

2002-03-25T19:29:00.000-05:00

March 2002

TheNew England Poker Classic. My first No Limit Tournament. The cards are going my way. I'm playing aggressive, raising with AQ and AJ from middle position. Hitting a lot of flops, raking in the chips. I get AA under the gun, make my usual raise 3X the big blind( like it said to do in the book I read the day before). Another guy goes all in. I call. Sorry AK. Too bad for you.

I think, you know I like it when people look at me and say to themselves, "I got to watch out for the big guy, he knows how to play this game." On the other hand, I don't know if my people reading skills are so good that I could differentiate respect and awe from the sight of wolves licking their chops.

Hours go by. An old bald guy who looks like a frog has been struggling. He finally gets AA and doubles up. He's the only one at the table who really worries me. During the breaks, I can see the reverence others give him in the smoking area like he's a real player. I think I've got to be careful with him.

Late in the afternoon. The field has already been cut in half. My stack is not quite as big as it was. So I called an all-in reraise with AJ and lost half my stack to KK. What are you going to do.

I'm the big blind. Froggyman makes a small bet up front 2x the blind. It is folded around to me. I look down and find 33. I call. I mean what the heck. Maybe I'll hit a 3.

The flop comes 10s 7c 2c.

No three for me. I check. Froggy makes a small probing bet. He's got AK I think. How or why I have no idea. I just think AK. I call his bet. I want another chance at a 3 so I can stuff him.

All I know is the next card isn't a three. That's all I'm even looking at. I check. He makes another small bet. I find myself calling. I want a 3. It is my destiny.

The last card hits. No idea what it is, but its not a three. I am really disgusted and unhappy, miserably unhappy. I shake my head, then for some odd reason, I thrust my stack forward. "I'm all-in," I declare.

Froggy stares at me. I feel myself wilting. A wry smile breaks across his face. "I think I'll call," he says.

He turns over his cards. "3 tens," he says. Or maybe he says, "A flush." I don't really remember. All I remember is everyone looks at me, and what I turn over as I stand. "All I got is a pair of 3s," I say.

Froggy collects the chips, I don't even know if people are looking at me. I think they are. I think they are shaking their heads. Already the dealer is spinning out the cards for the next hand. Now I feel invisible.

I collect the plastic bag under my seat that holds my New England Poker Classic souvenier tee-shirt. I turn and walk out, passing other tables, then going through the section where people are playing blackjack and roulette. I walk on through the long hallway pasts the shops toward the garage.

I'm out. I was doing great. I was a player, then just like that I'm out. Not just out, but exposed. My vision blurrs. I feel dizzy. I feel very very tired.

I make it to my car. Start it up and drive home up route 2, toward Hartford. It seems like I'm the only car on the road. I never even turn the radio on. What was I thinking? A pair of 3s. What came over me?

I don't show my face back at Foxwoods for almost six months. When I do see Froggy again talking to a player with lots of jewlery on his fingers, I slink behind him so he won't see me.

World Poker Finals

2001-11-04T18:15:00.000-05:00

World Poker Finals - 2001

I lay down a couple hundreds to play in the cheapest of the World Poker Finals Hold'em tournaments. I get the poker discount for a night's stay at the Cedars. Before the tournament, I go to the spa in what will become a ritual. I take a hot tub and then sit in the steam room.

I think of myself as the out-of-town pro, in town to play in the World Championships. This is one of the nicer stops on the road I think -- the long road I've traveled, places like Abiliene, Tulsa, Dallas, Amarillo, Fort Worth in the old days, replaced more recently by Gardenia, Reno, Tunica, Atlantic City. It doesn't metter -- what it always comes down to is you and another man, the deck of cards, the mettle in your heart (the delusions in my mind), the steel in your eye.

I prepare my thoughts, my strategy for the Big Event. Play smart, aggressive. Put them to the test for all their chips if I have too. I shower and shave, use the disposable toothbrush and razor, splash on the aftershave. I'm rested, ready to hear those words that are chorous to all my days. Shuffle up and Deal.

Two hours after the first card hits the felt, I'm walking home. (Well, driving actually.)

Foxwoods, I'll see you next year.

Hold'em

2001-09-25T17:24:00.000-04:00

Fall 2001

Everybody's talking about hold'em. They say once you've played it you'll never go back to stud. I've watched the game a little and don't quite get. I read some Sklanky or is it Mason Malmuth on the difference between the games and I like the fact that I don't have to memorize what cards have been played. I get the Wilson Hold'em software and practice. I actually do okay on the software unlike the stud program, which I can't beat.

I give the game a try. At Mohegan, the game is $3-$6 and it is packed with regulars. Some maniacs who play everything, some rocks who only play with the nuts. I walk out two hours later with $165. What I like about the game most is the social aspect. Stud, if I'm not in the hand, I don't pay much attention. I know I should, but its gets boring. Hold'em. Everyone is watching the flop, guessing what people have, commenting on the play, cursing that they folded or glad they did. Razzing the loser, complementing the winner.

After a week, I'm a net loser by a couple hundred dollars, but I enjoy it more. I play a Saturday Hold'em tournament and come in 4th. I've read Lee Jones, Krieger, and Sklansky. The new game for me. Too bad, my wrist is better and I'm back at work. I play Turbo Hold'em every day and am still a winner though I admit to occasionaly cheating, looking at my oppomnet's cards before folding or raising. Even with that I sometimes stay in when I shouldn't, and end up losing.

Dooh! Dooh! Dooh! All the Way Home!

2001-09-12T12:06:00.000-04:00

Fall 2001

Okay, so sometimes I lose. I try the $1-5 stud, but the antes eat me alive because I play too tight and am too sheepish to try to steal. I try $5-10 stud and lose $300 like that. Okay, so the cards weren't running and the big guy with the beard and the cowboy hat had my number from the get go. I'm still new to this game. I'm starting to recognize my weaknesses. Like I'm too predictable. Like I can't keep track of cards that have been played. Like I can be bluffed just about every time, and when I try to bluff I get called or reraised and end up folding. I reread the books. I practice with the Wilson Seven Card Stud Software. I go back to the 1-3 no ante game. I'm back to winning.

Sunday mornings I play the Mohegan Sun 7-card study early bird tournament. For $35 , I get 2000 in chips and a coupon for the buffett. Usually about 200 people play. I make the final table a couple times, come in 5th. Good for a couple hundred bucks. I'm happy. I get another 2nd in the Tuesday night game. People notice me after awhile. I think I get some respect. People tell me their bad beat stories. I commiserate. The tournaments always end one of two ways. I go down with the best of it, and I think, damn bad luck, but I played well. Or I make a mistake and go Dooh! Dooh! Dooh! idiot all the way home.

Poker - Yeah Uh Huh

2001-07-25T11:40:00.000-04:00

Summer 2001

Soon I am driving down a couple times a week. The Mohegan Sun is about fifteen minutes closer, so I end up going there instead. I get out of my car and find myself walking fast just to get to the poker room. I try to time it to get there at the same time as the Senior buses. I realize now I wasn't playing properly my first time out, and a voracious reader, I soon have Seven Stud The Waiting Game and Low Limit Seven Card Stud: Casino Strategy memorized, along with Yardley's The Education of a Poker Player. And at the no ante tables, I am a rock. Fold fold fold. Get a high pair, raise, unless its aces and I'm in early position, then I just call not to chase everyone out. I play by the book. I learn to recognize a couple other rocks at the table. They fold when I raise. I fold when they raise. There is a comraderie amongst us. We give each other knowing nodds when a kid or a drunken businessman at the table falls into our midst.

I have the good fortune to break my hand, playing softball, going from first to third on a single in my Sunday softball league, so I am out of work for six weeks. Now, I'm at the Sun every day. I'm winning $20 -$80 a day. So I'm at the tables ten straight hours with only quick bathroom breaks so as not to miss a big hand. Every night I buy a hot dog and diet Pepsi to get me through the dark ride home. One Friday I make nearly $200, of course there was a drunken crowd and I had a run of cards that had everyone congratulating me. Still, I'm liking it. I've added Mike Caro to my library. I look around and think I know the secrets of winning poker and you don't.

I enter a Tuesday night 7 Stud tournament and come in 2nd out of 45. Now its true I hit a few river cards and enter the final table with the lowest chip stack and sit there folding while everyone else goes out till its just me and the big stack, who makes quick work of me. Still its $440. I drive home and wake my wife up. I turn on the light, and she looks with squinted eyes, as I count out the $100 bills on the pillow. "Meet Mr. Franklin," I say. "And his identical twin brothers. Who's the man? I'm the man!"

She is impressed all right and shows me some love.

Poker. Yeah. Uh huh.

The Better Hand?

2001-01-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

January 2001

I buy The Dummies Guide to Poker. It straightens me out about the key question that has been troubling me: Which is the better hand -- a straight or a flush? After a quick review I leave the book in the car. I make my way into the casino and ask directions to the poker room.

I walk around the outskirts of the table area, casing the place while trying to get my nerve up. The players look confident studying their cards, flinging the chips, joking with each other, getting drinks from the waitresses, comfortable like this place is their second home. I go play slot machines for awhile. Whimp.

I go back to the poker room. "Can I help you?" a suited man with a walkie talkie asks, "What are you looking to play?"

"Seven card stud," I spurt out.

Right this way. He takes me to what I learn is a 1-3 stud table.

I lay out twenty dollars and get some chips from the dealer. I repeat in my head the order of best hands. ....four of a kind, full house...ah...

A half hour later, I take out another 20. I'm not winning much, but I'm having fun. It seems like I'm always just one card away from taking down the pot. There are a couple guys who look like they stepped out of a Pearl Harbor Reuinon picture with crew cuts and old faded tattoos on the their arms. They don't play many hands, but they take down the ones they do. There are a couple old ladies who seem to play every pot.

I get a pair of 2s in the down cards and a 3 in the upcard. I've got to put the $1 in they tell me. I get a 5 with the next card, but nobody bets. Then I get a 3. That's 2 pair. When the lady with three hearts bets two dollars, I call. I get a 4. She bets three dollars and I call, along with another guy. Its almost time to meet my wife so I will take this last hand to the end. Maybe I'll get a straight and take the pot down. I don't like this lady. She has a nasal voice, is very loud and makes fun of people. The last card is another 2. That I believe is what they call a full house. I bet and she calls. She glares at my hand. "Weren't you lucky?" she says. "Chaser."

Lucky schmucky, I think, I won the pot. I grab my chips and go meet the wife by the big Indian.

"How'd it go?" she asks.

"Great," I said. I think I won money after the $20 I had to put down to play, but they give you chips for that so maybe I lost a little, I don't know. I got a full house and beat an obnoxious lady. "

"Are you going to play again?"

"O --Yeah."

I've got the fever for the chips. What can a poor boy do?

Rat Poison-- My Poker Beginnings

2000-12-30T14:25:00.000-05:00

Christmas 2000

Okay, you're going to think I'm the worst person in the world, but this is a true story.

I'm working the 911 ambulance when we get a call for a woman vomiting up near the city line off Blue Hills Avenue, a lower middle class neighborhood.

We find her in the bathroom. A sixty-eight year old grandmother, and sure enough she's vomiting -- vomiting huge chunks of snow cone blue vomit.

"What'd you eat?" I ask. I've never seen blue vomit before.

"Rat poison," she says in between retches. There is blue vomit all over her clothes and the bathroom floor. Its like Charles Manson in blue has been there.

"I lost six hundred dollars," she cries.

"Did you tell the police?"

"No," She pukes again. "I lost it at the casino." I get hit with the next blast. "I want to die," she gasps.

"This stuff will do it," I say, "But you're not dying today. We need to get you going with us."

While she tells me her sad tale, I put her on oxygen, pop in an IV line, and hook up the heart monitor. We take her in lights and sirens wailing.

At the hospital the medical staff shoves a long plastic tube into the woman's stomach to pump the poison out.

"Why would a nice old lady want to eat rat poison," the triage nurse asks me after I wheel my stretcher out of the room.

"She lost all her money playing poker at Foxwoods," I tell her.

"That's terrible."

"Last week I had another old lady -- dehydrated with altered mental status. Her daughter told me she'd been at Foxwoods playing poker for four days straight and hadn't eaten or taken her medicine."

"They shouldn't let people like that gamble."

"I don't know," I say. "I'm thinking about going down to Foxwoods myself. I don't know anything about poker, but I'm liking my chances if my competition is ladies like those two."

"You're awful," she says, "By the way you've got blue vomit on your pants," the nurse says.

***

Hey, call me cold-hearted, but that's the story of how I came to sit at the tables. I may not be able to bluff T.J. Cloutier, make a read on Doyle Brunson, or outthink Howard Lederer, but when it comes to checkraising old ladies, I show no hesitation. No hesitation.