Among my recurring targets as a poker player is to look left as the action gets to me, so that I might get a feel for my opponents’ intentions.

Is he going to fold? Is he going to raise? He looks disinterested, which could mean he is folding, or it could be an act and actually he is raising, but this time it looks legit. I think he is folding. In that case, I will…

Usually, when I look left, I gain nothing. And sometimes I am rewarded with money, when what I see causes me to play better than I would have, had I not looked. I say “play better” because I’m not talking about merely making better betting decisions. It’s also about subtle, important, instant upgrades to my tempo and movements, like the way any athlete reacts. If the situation demands that I raise no matter what I see on my left, then I will raise. But the way I raise might change.

After looking left hundreds of thousands of times, the most important thing I’ve learned is that even after all these years and all this effort, I still don’t look left often enough. And if I’m right in my belief that all poker players can play better by looking left more often, then that means I have some work to do on my game that I know will make me money. I like that.

I know I’m on solid ground with all this looking left business. I know so because of what I saw in England, where they’ve had legal poker rooms dating back to the 20th century. Yes, there is a whole generation of knowledgeable poker Brits over there, and apparently some of them work for the Department of Transport, in the signage division. For if you walk the streets of London, and you actually look at the streets of London, you’ll see this everywhere:

(In other news, I’m selling both my books for the price of one of my books at my new web-store. Personal inscriptions available upon request.)

No more. I only have one objective now when I drive, and that’s to not run into anything. If I decide to slow down or stop when I don’t really need to, that’s always the reason why. (What makes this possible is that I no longer think of time spent waiting for a light to change as being less valuable or less important than time spent with a loved one or playing poker or whatever. Another oldness trait perhaps?)

It’s the same with cooking. I used to be in a hurry to just get it over with. Eating was, in my mind, more often than not, an inconvenience. Now I take my time feeding myself, and my prime objective when working with food is to not draw blood.

And then there’s exercise. My objectives used to be all the usual stuff. Now all I hope for and aim at is to pay enough attention to not injure myself.

If growing old means hurrying less, and risking less, then yes, I am consciously making myself older every day, because I want to acquire more oldness, right away!

We felt that

2012

looks better than

2011

and that

two thousand eleven

doesn’t sound nearly as good as

two thousand twelve

Not that 2011 was a particularly good or bad year, or that 2012 holds any sort of promise. These are numbers. They contribute to the landscape when I see them, they join my thoughtscape when I think of them, and they appear in my soundscape when I type them.

Good morning 2012. I’ll be seeing you around.

I played a lot of Scrabble as a kid, and then I didn’t play at all during my late teens. When I moved out of the homestead at age 20, I made a friend named Ken and we both fell in love with Scrabble all over again together. We played and played a lot of Scrabble for several years. We even got good at it. Mom came to know Ken. Then one winter she blessed our obsession with a bag, and a chosen word.

In case you forgot, a xyst (sounds like zist) is a covered portico used by athletes in ancient Greece and Rome during bad weather.

So why would my mom choose that word to put on this bag? 1) Because it has premium letters in it. 2) Because it is short. 3) And because it’s way cool!

I get swept away by gratitude waves now and then, and they bunch up in December. Right now I’m feeling grateful that somehow, in the great shuffle-up-and-deal called life, I was dealt a mom who made a xyst bag.

Fortunately, I was able to get that picture taken before the bag was consumed by a black monster…

I give you… the accordion player:

Thank you for having condensed a speck of your matter and energy into the temporary little collection of biomass that I affectionately refer to as “me.”

Thank you for all the other living biomasses too. And the dead ones. Especially the ones I eat.

Thank you for all the hardships and hassles and agonies and injustices and all the other shit you constantly dump on me. Without them, how could I ever appreciate this perfectly pain-free moment that me is experiencing right now as me sips yet another glorious coffee? You’re a clever lot, universe. Me knows your game. Thank you for letting me play it long enough to be able to play it well.

Love,

Tommy

My cousin A.J. sent me an email and then called me right away and instructed me to read the email to him over the phone. I faithfully obeyed, and a few minutes later we were both gasping with laughter. The email, below, was written by a friend of AJ’s named Wendy. That’s all I knew. That’s all you need to know. Happy gasping…

Where do I start..this morning my phone seemed to have lost all battery over night.  Charged it about 1/2 and went to work.  Get off at 7:30 PM  check phone..have 2  msgs. Driving, so wait till I get to Target parking lot(had some coupons to redeem) and proceed to check msgs. 1st one from Stephanee, she writes “guess what I’m having for dinner? A bacon wrapped- deep fried- chili cheese hotdog w/onions, mustard, and fritos!” I write back ‘ call the medics’ my phone wont send, says to send again , I do, says it wont send try again, I do,says it wont send try again I do, then I give up and check 2nd message which is from a  number I don’t know, asking if I could keep her cats  for a few hours while she has her air ducts cleaned.  Not sure who this is..write back, “who is this?”  then think probably my neighbor so text again, “Is this you Teri?”  Phone says wont go through try again, I do then close phone..battery almost gone again so leave phone in car while I go shopping.  taking good ole time, no hurry, no worry.  Get to check out, almost through there when a policeman comes up and asks..” are you Wendy Lee?”  Yes  “Are You alright?”   UM..Yeah, why do you ask?

“We got a call from your daughter saying you texted her to call the medics..so she did, they’re checking your house and your daughter is heading to Target to see if you’re okay”   “OMG, I texted her that message cause she told me she was eating crappy food..can you call her? I left my phone in the car”  He gets on his shoulder walkie talkie, they tell Steph I’m at Target and all’s okay..she’s almost there.  We go out to car there’s 2 cop cars, 3 cops,  I tell them how sorry I am about a bazillion times, and I’m telling them about my phone being messed up and finally get to car and actually show them the text Steph sent me and what I sent her…there it all is..her message to me and mine to her..” Call the medics”   THREE TIMES!  One of the policemen jokingly said  ” so this all her fault” I said “of course, if she’d eat healthy this would never have happened” Poor Steph got the messages one after the other..Call the medics, she tried to call me 8 times I never answered (I had left the phone in my car! )

So she called the medics…and  Brandee and Debbie and my neighbor Teri and some other friends before she got call from cops I was at Target.

She pulled up then and we hugged and cried and discussed the events, called Brandee who was trying to book flight out of Dallas, and my Sister Debbie who was in Columbus at Pam’s,(they discussed how they pictured me laying on the floor texting ‘call the medics’) and my neighbor Teri who told me how the fire trucks came and the firemen went through my house looking for my dead body. ( I was very glad I had cleaned my kitchen and made my bed before heading to work this AM!)   so Steph and I are feeling calmer and I remember about the other text about cats and air ducts, so I ask Teri about that and she says she has no idea what I’m talking about!    Finally get home and see new text from my daughter Pam’s cousin who accidentally blanket texted the message about the cats.   Whew.  Alls well that ends well as my son-in-law Jimmy texted me.. actually he wrote   ‘All in all that is funny in the end’ and he didn’t think it sounded right,  ”that would not be your last text to the girls”   I told him he’s right…I would have asked for ‘hot’ medics.  Bottom line my dearest friends, be very careful what you write in your texts..you just don’t know how things will be construed. and remember if something wacky does happen to me.. adios Amigos  .. I Love You All  !!!

Below is the first article I submitted to a poker magazine for publication. That was in 1999. June Field at Poker Digest paid me $100 for it. I still have that check in a frame somewhere. I wonder if it’s still good.

Smoking for Profit (1999)

I make money smoking. Four hundred bucks a month. Take a rash of rationalization, add a therapeutic theory, and anything is possible. At $20-40 limit hold ‘em the blinds total $30 per round. In a nine-handed game, that comes to $3.33 per hand. This simple math suggests any missed hand costs a player $3.33 in dues paid per hand via the blinds. Not so. Later positions are worth more. So let’s assign some reasonable, arbitrary values to each position, make them add up to $30, and see what happens. Remember “weighted sums” from math class? Cost per hand in a $20-40 game:

First seat (small blind) $1.00
Second seat (big blind) $1.50
Third seat $2.00
Fourth $2.50
Fifth $3.00
Sixth $3.50
Seventh $4.50
Eighth $5.50
Ninth (button) $6.50
Total $30.00

In California we smoke outside. It’s a good law. Our food is less ashy and our dealers less ashen. When I go out for a quick one, it’s just that — quick. I miss one hand, sometimes two. I glance at the fifth position hand, muck it, and head for the door. (If that hand is playable, I wait another round to smoke). If I run into any bad-beat storytellers outside, I’ve got an honest out: “Gotta go! It’s my blind!” Which it is, just as I plop back down, having skipped one or two hands under-the-gun.

The table above reduces the conceptual cost of this practice from $3.33 per smoke to $2.00, or from $6.66 to $4.50 if I miss two hands. Yikes! And that’s not even counting the cost of the cigarette. But I just knew this was still not right. I’ve often wondered if it would be profitable to not even look at my hands in front of the blinds, thereby eliminating all temptation to get involved with anything but premium starters. And that is exactly what happens when I go outside. So what gives? How can it cost money to miss hands my trusty instincts say to ignore anyway?

Answer: The weighted sums were not heavy enough. One day it hit me like a gut shot. Why couldn’t the early positions be assigned negative values? Suddenly I had the best possible excuse to remain a smoker. Money. Here’s a new table. Special consideration is given to the blinds. Despite its awkward position, the big blind has an extra playing value in its free-flop potential. As to the small blind, well, I rarely succumb to the seductive Siren’s song, “Two more chips. Only two more chips.” Still, being half in gives the small blind a straightforward discount value when I do pick up a hand. Given my posture on position, (it’s only everything), this is my best-estimate assessment of the cost-per-hand at $20-40.

First seat (small blind) $1.50
Second seat (big blind) $5.00
Third seat **-$2.00**
Fourth **-$1.00**
Fifth $0.50
Sixth $2.00
Seventh $4.50
Eighth $7.50
Ninth (button) $12.00
Total $30.00

I smoke about once every three rounds. They laugh at me outside. Pacing, puffing, extinguishing. Ha! If only they knew I was making three bucks per butt. Seven or eight cigs per day, five days per week, it comes to over $400 per month. Even if you don’t smoke, you most likely pee. Now you can make theoretical money in the bathroom. What a relief.

There are two factors even hazier than the speculations so far. Missing hands costs money since key pots affect style. While I’m outside a player might anchor down, his ship having come in to safe harbor. Another player might go sailing. I need to know these things. Balancing this is the benefit of walking away from the table and collecting my selfs. The math would be too wishy-washy, so I wish to call these a wash.

I play $40-80 sometimes, and even dive into an 80-160 game now and then. Just think, if I played $80-160 everyday, quadrupling everything. $400 x 4 = $1600. I could just about live off the money I make from smoking. Then I could save up the daily-grinded poker money to start my new dream business: Shade-tree tester.

I am a big appreciator of devices, and especially of the people who keep coming up with such useful uses. My device has the same new feature that the guy next to me had. I haven’t yet remembered I have it. I think now I will. Into his device, my neighbor said, “Google search, Tamarine restaurant, Palo Alto.”

Soon, he was about to learn from his device everything he could ever want to know about the relationship between where he was, and where the restaurant was. But not soon enough…

I looked at him, got his attention, pointed, and said, “Cross street. Turn left. 2.5 blocks. Walk time: 1.9 minutes.”

He smiled and put his device away.

Before Joe Tall co-founded Deucescracked.com and became known throughout the land for the poker expert and righteous man that he is, he hired me to coach him. When the initial program was over, I gave him my standard-issue diploma. It looks like this:





Yesterday, Joe sent me a text. It came with a picture. What he wrote was, “Still Tiltless after six years!” And the picture he sent was…

I asked, “How did the part that looks like lava get that way?”

And Joe replied, “The chip has a way of finding me over and over for 6 years now. I usually never worry about its whereabouts. This time, it got caught in the lint filter of the dryer (as it often ends up in the laundry) and the hot air turned it into a ‘plasma’. When I picked it out, I could have folded it in two easily. Now it’s hard as a rock again.”