Walking the Halls at the WSOP, Part One

July 4th, 2011 2 comments

This might look like a photograph of a third-floor hallway at the Rio in Las Vegas, where I am living for a couple weeks, at the World Series of Poker. But it’s more than that. It’s where I go when I want to feel like I’m not going anywhere, but it’s hard to, because I’m always on the way to somewhere, or am I? See, I told you it wasn’t just a hallway.

Curious as to just how much walking I was doing, I did some pacing off. I happen to know how to walk so that each step is very close to one yard. I did that, while counting. Here’s my data:

My hotel room door is at the end of the hall. From my door to the elevators is 120 yards.

From the elevators to table 225 in the cash-game area – which is right in the heart of the $5-10 no-limit hold’em area, which is where I camp out – is 250 yards. Most of that is walking down a long, wide hallway to the convention area.

Total yards from door to table: 370.

I typically play three sets of poker per day. A set is about 100 minutes of playing. In between sets, I walk the halls. I go back to my room and dawdle and yoga and then walk back to the poker room. After the last set, I hall-walk back to my room. That’s six one-way walks per day.

370 yards x 6 = 2220 yards.

That’s 1.25 miles. Not bad, for a stationary activity. I’m going to add this on to my list of things I love about poker at the WSOP. It provides exercise!

It was delightful to play lots of poker with my good friend Matt Flynn. We had not played together for years, after playing together for years. Last week we played $5-10 NLHE several times, followed by leisurely debrief sessions about the hands, just like old times!

At the start of the first session, I pulled out my chapstick – the basic black and white kind – and balmed myself. I looked at Matt. He had the smuggest look on his face as he somewhat flamboyantly reached into his pocket. We didn’t make eye contact. I knew he would come out with his own classic chapstick and get balmed. A day or two later, when we played again, we did the same ritual. And then, last Thursday, at the DeucesCracked home game, we got in the same game, and without a word or a look, we exchanged our secret salute. Poker is fun.

One more Matt story. Our first session together was a magical day. We sat at either end of the table, and we played for seven hours. We both played our best and ran well and scored well. This one hand, I had 85 offsuit, and I folded before the flop. I am a graceful, efficient folder, and I had been stylistically folding all day long, showing off for my buddy Matt. When I folded the 85 offsuit, it was one of my standard moves where I lead the dealer’s swooping hand – like a quarterback leading a receiver – so that my cards disappear under the dealer’s moving hand without the hand needing to change course or speed. But something went slightly wrong this time, and my cards flipped up.

Matt said, “Bad fold.”

The guy next to Matt said, “Huh? He folded 85o. What’s bad about that?”

Matt didn’t reply. He knew that I knew what he meant.

Elements of Poker goes Russian

July 2nd, 2011 2 comments

My plan for global domination is moving along quite nicely. :-)

That’s a picture of what just came in the mail. It’s the Russian version of my first book. You can get yours here:

http://books.all-games.ru/?hormenu

My deepest thanks goes to my good friend and fellow poker writer, Alan Schoonmaker, who has and continues to help me make publishing connections around the world.

Hourglass Poker

June 12th, 2011 10 comments

I don’t mind slow. I’ve had James training. James is the slowest player in the universe and I used to play no-limit with him often, years back. A slow poker game is good for me because if I become impatient because of the slowness, I remind myself that the problem is not the slowness, the problem is my impatience, and then I am in position to go to work to fix the real problem on the spot, rather than grumble inside about a perceived problem that is really an illusion. So like I said, I don’t mind slow.

Last week I played $5-10 no-limit hold’em for five days at the WSOP at the Rio in Vegas. Roundabout day three, I had a conversation with a friend during which he complained harshly about the exceptionally slow pace of $5-10 games. Many players did lots of long delays, much longer than is necessary to make betting decisions. It seemed to feed on itself. Because so many players were taking so long, others would do it do, when they otherwise wouldn’t have if the pace had been more in keeping with the time actually needed to decide what to do.

The next day, while playing poker, and calmly appreciating my existence while a player waited several minutes before folding, I had an idea.

Hourglass Poker

The details and mechanics can be worked on and improved over time. The basic drift is like this:

After a player makes his betting action, the next player has a set amount of time to act. If he does not act during that time, then that is a fold. His hand is dead. This concept will be familiar to online players. All I’m suggesting here is that we explore ways to go live with it.

Imagine a small hourglass that only takes about a minute for all the sand to go through. When it’s my turn, the hourglass is restarted and put in front of me. When I make my betting action, I turn the hourglass over and sit it in front of the next player. If the pot is headsup, I just pass it to my opponent.

This would obviously be way too much hour-glass passing, say, before the flop, when the action whips around the table so quickly. A practical deployment of the hourglass would involve some evolved protocols, and the dealer. For example, the hourglass could stay in the dealer tray, and the only time it would be used is after someone thinks for 5 seconds or so. That way, the typical in-tempo actions of folding and checking would not have their rhythm broken by hourglass activity.

If this idea were to catch on, it would probably be done with a digital clock that all can see. Either way, using electricity or gravity, Hourglass Poker would speed up the games, make the house more money, and give the players more of what they came for.

Two Amusing Signs

April 27th, 2011 2 comments

Kay and I went on a little getaway for a few days north of San Francisco and during our adventures we saw two signs that made me glad I carry a camera in my pocket cleverly disguised as a phone. This first sign was on a wall that was in front of some dumpsters:

On our way home, Kay was driving, and we had time and energy for exploring. In that condition, we’re quick to pull off the road to go check something out. So when we came upon a sign that said, “Spirit Rock Meditation Center,” the car practically slowed down and turned off the main road on its own.

Along a narrow signless road we drove. And then, up ahead, we saw some yellow at the top of a pole. Yes, it’s a sign, no doubt. Whatever might a sign want to tell us clear out here? There are no buildings in sight. No turns to make. Just more trees and grass and sky and such. We moved closer, and closer, and then, when we could read the text, the car knew to stop for the photo op:

Howard “Tahoe” Andrew is a funny man

April 16th, 2011 3 comments

I went to a party recently where I ran into John Mugnani, floorman extraordinaire at the California Grand Casino. The next day John sent me an email with a story about our mutual ancient friend, Tahoe.

A guy walks up to Tahoe and says, “Listen to this terrible bad beat story that just happened to me.”

Tahoe says, “Did you lose with a royal flush?”

The guys says, “No.”

Tahoe replies, “Then I’ve heard it before.”

What the hell, as long we we’re here sharing Tahoe stories, this is a paragraph I wrote about Tahoe in 2001 in an article I wrote while I was at the WSOP:

Before the Senior’s event, Howard “Tahoe” Andrew said that no medication or walkers would be allowed during the tournament and that whoever was still breathing at the end would be the winner. Tahoe said he’s not taking any “last longer” bets.

A Client’s Poem

March 29th, 2011 3 comments

Today’s post is a poem a client wrote and sent to me. I asked if I could blog it. He said, “Yes, but please don’t include my name.”

Here it is…

Morning practice

I wake up, groggy and confused

Is it really time to get up?

I don’t want to

I turn over and sigh

When I get out of bed I have to be mindful

It always takes me a few minutes

The long process of coming out of hibernation

I rise and dress; go to the bathroom

I take my mat and my bench

and assume the position

I breathe in, and calm my body

I breathe out and smile

I try to be mindful first thing in the morning

For at least 10 minutes

Its not as easy as it sounds

Your body plays tricks on you

My forehead starts to itch, or I feel like I need to use the bathroom

Even though I just did

These things used to annoy me

Why are you fighting me, mind?

Now though, they just make me smile

I smile at the things my mind throws in my way

And I smile at myself

I know there is no fight here, except the one that I start

Baby You Can Drive My Site

March 7th, 2011 2 comments

I have a new website.

It has these really cool sliding thingies.

“Beep beep, beep beep, YEAH!”

The major new items at my new home page are:

What’s New – info and links about my latest books and projects

In Progress – projects in motion

Mailing List – sign up to get an occasional newsletter from me

It all started one year ago, with an email from Tom Fuertes. Tom wrote to request an inscribed copy of Elements of Poker. Then he made an offer I’d’ve been a fool to refuse.

Tom described himself as a “nerd barterer.” He offered a website upgrade in exchange for poker coaching. My site was old and clunky and in much need of modernization. Tom was young and spunky and ready to go full-time with poker. And now, one year later, Tom is playing poker for a living, and I love my new website. So at least one of us has been relieved from suffering.

Wendelin Montciel is known to most of the world as the artist who did the drawings for my “The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment” series. She also designed the book cover for “A Rubber Band Story and Other Poker Tales” which you can see at the new In Progress pane.  And she provided much aesthetic oversight to my new website. Je t’aime bien, Wendelin!

Please feel free to come on by and kick the tires and look under the hood and take it for a spin, but please, whatever you do, don’t text and drive.

www.tommyangelo.com

My Clients Make Me POOP

February 3rd, 2011 3 comments

I have played a great deal of poker vicariously, through my clients. They send me hands they played, and we talk about them. All clients send me hands at the beginning, and some of them send me hands for years. I ask that the hands be written up in prose form, with analysis and feelings and whatever else thrown in. I ask for hands that went well, and hands that didn’t.

I study the hands and the comments, and I make some notes. Then we go over the hands in person or on the phone. I often talk about position at some point, working from my basic outline:

LAST = GOOD
NOT LAST = NOT GOOD

Which makes it even more surprising that it took me 7 years and 80 clients to spot this pattern: When a client tells me about a betting situation that was “uncomfortable,” or “annoying,” or “without good options,” chances are very good that the hand was POOP (Played Out Of Position, as in, not last).

As it happens, I’m not playing much poker these days, so when I analyze and discuss hands with a client, it gets my poker fever up. The old love blossoms. Just one problem. When I play poker, I am accustomed to being last to act on more streets than not. That’s how I like it. It’s easier and more profitable than the other way. But when I play poker vicariously through my clients, I’m usually POOP.

Or so it seemed. Not one to trust myself on this type of pattern discernment, I went in search of certainty. I thought about researching my suspicion by trolling client files and reading old hands. Then I thought of a less cumbersome way that could be fun and maybe even helpful.

The next three times that a client was about to send me some hands, I requested three uncomfortable hands. Hands that stuck in your craw, chapped your ass, made you wonder which end is up.

Of the nine hands sent to me, six were played out of position.

The first client sent three problem hands that were all POOP. I was happy to have the supporting data, and I was delighted to deliver my prepared bla bla bombastically: “Let this fact – that your problem hands are likely to be out of position hands – be a lesson to you about the true and inescapable nature of last and not-last!”

The second client, same thing. He POOPed on all three hands.

The third client, well, all three of his problem hands were hands he played on the button. His problem, according to him, was that he had been drinking too much and too often from the last-to-act bottle, before and after the flop. This struck me as analogous to someone eating too many vegetables.

“Okay,” I said. “So you were out of line on these hands and you made some negative EV plays that you knew were bad.”

“Right.”

“What I want to know is… Were you uncomfortable during the play of the hands? Did these hands meet the criteria I laid out?”

“No, they didn’t.” He said. “All three hands were relatively easy to play once I decided to play them.”

“Then I’d like to thank you twice. Once for providing data that I was able to twist until it supported my little conjecture. And also for sending me some hands on the button! POOP sucks, even on the phone!”

Nostalgia Corner: The 5 (and a bit) Stages Of Your Poker Career

January 13th, 2011 4 comments

Today’s post was written by guest writer Greg Walker.  This article is highly funny and relatable, if you happen to be an online poker degen. Greg runs thepokerbank.com, a Texas Hold’em strategy site.  Thanks Greg!

Nostalgia Corner: The 5 (and a bit) Stages Of Your Poker Career

Do you remember your early days of poker?

Either underage or barely legal, trying something new for the first time, desperate to earn some money on the side.

But that’s quite enough about my search history.

It was way before your $50 faux leather desk chair developed its groove (Moses couldn’t part foam padding like online poker can). The time when you had more real-life friends than “Internet friends”. It was also before your poker skills became inversely proportional to your general levels of health and fitness (you’ve still got the looks though – nothing’s ever going to take those looks away).

Yep, those days.

Feel free to brace yourself and join me for an awkward fumble through the past, present and future of your poker career, starting with…

1) Making your first deposit.

Hands up; who was thinking about the movie “Rounders” whilst they were making their first deposit? To be more specific, who was thinking about the “Judge’s game” scene?

Due to one of the small flaws of writing articles for the Internet, I can’t see or hear all your responses. However, I’ll safely assume that we just shared a collective sigh of agreement.

With more ambition than Hitler, you decided you were going to take over the poker world with your mad undiscovered poker skills. Not even legal gambling age laws were going to stop you.

This first deposit was a uniquely exciting and life-shifting experience for all of us. I’m sure you wonder what things would be like if you never dropped $50 at Party Poker. Probably not that much different if we’re being honest, but we can all dream. Either way, you certainly wouldn’t have experienced the pleasures of…

2) Losing your first deposit.

Damn.

How can you go from winning a steady $14/hour over 318 hands to losing everything? It was all going so swimmingly.

2a) Vowing to never play online poker again.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m wiping Party Poker off my PC completely.” *Drags Party Poker desktop shortcut to the Recycle Bin.*

For most of us this period lasted a few weeks at best. The problem was that you just couldn’t stop dreaming about outplaying opponents with absurd all-in shoves on the flop, not to mention cunning open limps with pocket aces UTG.

Thoughts of these devious, masterful plays build up until…

3) Your first comeback.

After skimming through a perfectly legal copy of Doyle Brunson’s Super System, you’re back.

Unfortunately, after a decent 2-week long run you end up losing another $50. Sorry, Doyle, but I don’t think JT suited is as invincible as you suggested. Nonetheless, the seed of degeneracy has been sown.

Figuratively speaking, you’ve opened that bag of Doritos and you’ve been stopped half way through. Not even a lack of hot salsa dip is going to prevent the inevitability of…

4) Your next comeback (with added seriousness).

This time, playing poker and learning strategy becomes an addiction.

You can’t stop yourself from consuming more and more poker until you’re a mental mess (or more so than usual). Countless hours are spent browsing/refreshing the 2p2 forums. You begin buying more books from Amazon than you’ve ever actually bought in your entire life. “2am” is now referred to as an “early night.”

You also no longer have to lock your door before “researching” something on Google. Well, not as much as before anyway.

I’m sure we’d all like to think that this super comeback was reminiscent of the cheesy Rocky IV montage of Stallone training in the wilderness. However, I don’t believe scenes consisting of being slouched in a desk chair surrounded by Subway wrappers would look quite as epic with “Hearts On Fire” in the background.

Nonetheless, the bottom line is your poker game improved significantly, even if everything else in your life regressed. In fairness though, it’s an impressive development when you look back at it from a hard-work and commitment point of view.

5+) The grind.

You’ve now “found your groove”, which is a euphemism for “hit a massive life plateau”.

Dreams of Champagne, Lobster and Cirque du Soleil turn into Red Bull, Ramen Noodles and Xbox.

The fact that the inside of your mouse now contains more dust than an urn is causing a slightly annoying tracking problem. The keyboard characters; p, m and / no longer work, but that’s okay because none of those are needed to type “wtf”, “fish”, “blonde” or “hardcore” anyway.

Your username is becoming more famous than your real name, and if you printed out a screenshot of your 2p2 post count you’d consider sticking it on the fridge with your other lifetime achievements.

Congratulations, you’re a reg.

Final thoughts.

Thanks for joining me for the uneasy shuffle down Memory Lane. I hope you didn’t mind the lengthy detour through Disappointment Avenue.

Not to worry though, you’re only ever one PokerStars Sunday Million away from greatness.

Now anyway, I have to head off. I believe my search history needs some deleting.

In Gratitude of Gratefulness

December 24th, 2010 17 comments

“Finish your food! Think of the starving children in China!”

That was a typical thing for parents like mine to say to kids like me as I poked at the mucoid vegetables on my plate.

“Think of the starving children in China.”

That saying failed utterly at its purpose. All it did was make me resent the alleged starving Chinese children as much as I resented being forced to eat snot. And the resentment was just getting warmed up. For the next few decades, when someone said something about how I should be grateful or thankful or whatever, I resented them for even suggesting such a thing. First, I always had lots of problems: work problems, money problems, car problems, friend problems, lover (or lack of lover) problems, etc. I kept track of and organized my problems. You want me to be thankful? Have you seen my list of problems lately?

Second, that’s just peachy that you’re so happy that you can sit around talking about how grateful and thankful you are. But if it’s all the same to you, how about if you just shut up already, all right?

It wasn’t until age 45 or so that I started to get it. I had figured out that being grateful for what is makes me much happier than longing for what isn’t. And I was ripe for more input on this matter. I read something by Thich Nhat Hahn at that time that stuck. In my words it goes like this…

Imagine yourself with a terrible toothache. Now picture yourself moments after the toothache goes away. “Thank goodness the pain is gone! I am so grateful right now that my tooth does not ache!” But why should I only be grateful for painless teeth for such a brief moment? Isn’t it equally wonderful every moment that my teeth don’t ache? Right now, for example, I am ache-free. I can be grateful for that.

What a brilliant idea. The logic resonated with me. If I could train myself to remember to be grateful for bad stuff that was missing from my life, I would have an infinite and ever-ready pool of gratitude to drink from.

And then there’s possessions, belongings, stuff. After decades of obsessing over what I didn’t have, I began to gradually improve my ability to appreciate and enjoy what I do have. This created thousands of opportunities to smile inside rather than frown.

Carrying that view beyond material things made way for adjustments like this one: I just lost a huge pot playing poker. Ouch! That hurts! Oh woe is me. I’m so unlucky. Life is so unfair. But wait, I don’t have to do that to myself anymore because I am learning gratitude. How fortunate I am to have the time and money to be able to play the game I love so much!

Then there’s the starving-children theory of gratefulness: “At least I’m not as bad off as [fill in the blank].” The Bible’s version, translated to secularity by me, goes like this: “There but for the grace of the universe go I.” I think this is a rational and useful way to transform a moment of discontentment into one of gratefulness. But it’s not my favorite. These days, my go-to reminder (and I need lots of reminders) is to recite these words in my mind:

On behalf of those who do not have what I have, I will appreciate this [fill in the blank].

For example, water. How many billions of people and animals and plants have craved that essential fluid, but were unable, in their moment of greatest need, to have it? I try to remember to stop, each time, before the water goes in, and say to myself, “On behalf of every organism that has or will experience a moment of desperate dehydration, I will appreciate this water.”

When I am able to put myself in that place, even over-cooked bland vegetables are delicious.

The ultimate landing place on this path is a phrase that I resisted strongly, just because it sounded hokey, and it was so over-worked: “Be grateful to be alive!”

Even that makes sense to me now. It isn’t so much that “I” am grateful that “I” am alive. It’s more like I am grateful that life itself happens to exist, and that I have by some amazing fluke happened to have temporarily sprung from it. In this case, the word “gratefulness” means about the same to me as “wow.”

I think of gratefulness now as an acquired skill, like say, playing guitar. There was a time I didn’t know how to do it. Then there was a time I began to learn how to do it. And now it’s a simple case of the more I do it, the better I get at it, and the better I get at it, the happier I am. And the happier I am, the happier the people around me are.

Which brings me to the title of this essay. On top of the stuff and people and experiences and health that I have that I can be grateful for, and on top of the infinite amount of bad stuff that I don’t have and haven’t experienced that I can grateful for, sits this new thing: I am grateful that I am learning how to be grateful.