The Pot of a Lifetime

November 16th, 2010 2 comments

Back when I was writing poker articles for magazines, I started about 5 articles for every one I finished. Many of them never grew any longer than a title and an idea. Others I worked on for months, on and off, but they never passed the larval stage. Then there were some, like the article below, that I completed, only to find out that there wasn’t much to say. They came out as dwarf articles, just the kind of thing that would be great for blogging. Except blogs didn’t exist back then. Thank goodness for data storage!

From 2001:

The Pot of a Lifetime

Here’s some twisted thinking that appeals to me on an emotional/romantic level.

I try like heck to operate entirely from cash on hand. By ‘operate’ I mean everything – buy-ins, rent, food, travel, concerts, everything.

When my cash runs out, I have to dig into reserves, and I hate hate hate that. My fear of digging creates an illusionary, arbitrary break point, or rather, broke point: when I won’t actually be broke, but I convince myself that I will be. My mental dance motivates me to take necessary measures – tighten up my game, cut back on frolicky expenditures, pray to the poker gods, even drop down in limit sometimes – whatever it takes, to avoid digging into my reserves.

It so happens I’ve currently gone a year or two without having to reload from the reserves. That is the definition of “success” in my wacky world.

A few weeks ago I was down to $1,300. Danger danger! I sat down to play $20-40 limit hold’em and I bought in for the whole $1,300 (2.6 racks). If I went bust this session, I’d have to dig. A few hours later, I was down to my last $130, planning to finish out the current lap and quit on my next big blind because I was too shortstacked already. I’d be pretty much giving away my last nub if I kept playing. I’ve seen others do it a million times, and I’ve done it plenty too. Looks like tomorrow I’ll be at the bank, reloading. Oh well, so it goes.

I folded the next few hands, and when it was my big blind, I thought, man, I’ve got a firm policy against going all-in at limit, but I sure don’t want to go to the bank, so maybe I’ll get lucky and turn my molehill into a mountain. I folded both blinds before the flop, so now I had $100 left when I picked up king-six suited on the button and five people limped, so I did too. I flopped a flush draw and I was all-in on the turn and bingo, I hit my flush on the river.

Ten hours later, I cashed out $2,000. After that I ran good for a while and now my operational cash is back up to $10,000 or so, and this morning, it occurred to me…

What if I never have to dig into my current reserves again? That would mean I had lived the rest of my life off that last $100. That K6 hand could turn out to be the pot of a lifetime.

Whale Down

October 18th, 2010 5 comments

whale6
The opening statement about blue whales at Wikipedia reduces to:

“The Blue whale is a marine mammal. At over 108 ft. in length and 200 tons in weight, it is the largest animal ever known to have existed.”

Kathleen and I spent a recent day with some friends along the beaches and woods near Pescadero. We were in a random parking lot when a random woman asked me randomly, “Have you seen the dead blue whale? It’s about a mile south of here.”

Minutes later, we were about a mile south of there.

The next picture was our first view. The whale is in the middle of the photo.

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whale1

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The next two shots won the awards for smelliest photos. The stench was unlike any other I had been gagged by. It wasn’t the fish-decaying-in-the-wild smell. I know that one. This was more like the ocean’s version of barnyard bio-rot, stinky for sure, but soon becoming not all that offensive.

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In the next shot, the dark matter in front is rock. Everything else is whale.

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The end:

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Dualities

September 28th, 2010 9 comments

When did hot and cold come to exist on earth? Did they appear suddenly on our planet? Or did they arise gradually?

How about long and short?

Large and small.

Young and old.

Good and bad.

Right and wrong.

Does right and wrong rely on humans for its existence?

How about weeds and non-weeds? If there were no humans, would there still be weeds?

These dualities and thousands like them are all ideas. They are concepts. Notions. They are created by and confined to human minds. Before humans existed, human ideas did not exist, and therefore, before humans existed, dualities such as hot and cold did not exist. These dualities require a discriminating human mind trained by generations to discriminate in this uniquely human way. A bird does not label a mountain “old,” just as the mountain does not call the bird “small.”

If I could step outside of my humanness and observe my own thoughts and feelings and also the sum of all human thinking and feeling from the past, present, and future, I would be watching from a perspective where things like “high and low” and “in and out” do not exist. So too, from this place, all human gain and all human loss would be seen as merely another pair of human labels that fritter about inside human minds. And during those precious moments when the duality of gain and loss collapses – nothing I have or don’t have, had or didn’t have, will have or won’t have – nothing I have done or haven’t done – nothing I will do or won’t do – nothing seen or not seen, heard or not heard, felt or not felt – is able to hurt me.

ZZZ Game

September 14th, 2010 3 comments

Today I would like to share an email I received from my friend Gary Christy.

Gary wrote:

After work last night. Exhausted. Sleepy. Decided to give my poker itch the most minimal scratch—an $11 turbo sit-n-go. Folded twenty or so hands… and fell asleep in my chair, head slumping. My speakers were off, so I wasn’t awakened by any beeps or anything… but I did wake up eventually. There were four of us remaining—I was on the bubble! I was low stack, of course, and my big blind was coming up next. Two red Kings! Wow, what timing! Flop black rags, turn black blank, river black deuce.

Turns out, his pocket deuces were red, too.

You convinced me to work on my A game. You urged me to work on my C game… but you never warned me about my ZZZ game.

Rorschach Fire

September 6th, 2010 9 comments

Kay and I went camping. Our friend Wendelin came by for a visit. She was sitting by the fire. It was time for a log, a chosen log, for her viewing pleasure. I placed a log in the fire and walked away. A few minutes later, Wendelin said, “Come here, look at this. It’s a…”

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The Save

August 25th, 2010 One comment

Dear Readership: I wrote this around 1992.

THE SAVE

Darryl sees the table that his leg is about to bump into but his leg bumps into the table anyway. Crash. Woops. Sorry. He’s thinking damn, what are they doing with those stupid skinny wine glasses in here in the first place? Used to be real country people in this bar. The music that was so country, you could track it in the house. Not this teeniebop crap they make in Nashville now. And as if that wasn’t enough, now they’re drinking out of goddamn wine glasses. It deserved to break. Has no business in here.

He maneuvers onto a barstool. All it takes is a glance and a nod to order a shot of house scotch. “Here ya go, Darryl,” says the bartender. “How goes it?”

“Been better.”

Robbie the singer ends the set on a crowd-pleaser. He bounces down from the stage with the pride of a smoothly dismounted gymnast. Straight to the bar, he stands behind Darryl. A glance, a nod, and a beer is on the way. “Here ya go, Robbie. Great set guy!”

“Thanks man! Feel good look good play good!”

Darryl turns his head just far enough to leer back at Robbie. Robbie gives Darryl his best smile as usual. This time, Darryl accepts the invite.

“My brother and me had a band,” says Darryl.

“Really?”

“Yes really. Damn tight band too. We were supposed to open up for George Jones this one time, except George didn’t show up. My brother wrote a song about the whole mess. The crowd was going damn near riot crazy. The song is called, ‘George You Done Us Wrong.’ Kickass little number. You’d probably like it. Then my brother all a sudden up and leaves the band. Moved to Nashville he did, figuring on maybe getting rich writing songs, so he said. Ha! A year later he kills himself. Too bad he couldn’t write a song about that. Might have been a hit. Dumbass. His timing never was for shit.”

“Uh …”

“Don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I see some of him in you I guess. But it wasn’t all that bad for my little brother. Lotta laughs, like this one time, you wouldn’t believe it, we’re all partying hard with one of Willie Nelson’s roadies, and they start betting on darts, and …”

Robbie’s senses inadvertently drift away. He’s looking at Darryl, but he sees the people just beyond. He hears Darryl, but he’s listening to the jukebox.

“… and next thing you know, Willie Nelson’s roadie is using that very same dart to clean coffee grounds out of his teeth. Never seen nothing like it in all my days.”

“You don’t say,” says Robbie.

Robbie sees Marty the bass player approaching. Their eyes meet. Robbie’s eyes roll toward Darryl, then back to Marty, then at the ceiling. Marty gets the message. He walks up to Robbie and says, “Hey Robbie, sorry to butt in, but we need to check the ohmage on the new monitor amp before the next set.”

Darryl knows what’s on a stage. He knows about amps and ohms and he knows that Marty is full of shit. Darryl also knows about rescuing fellow bandmates from babbling drunks. He remembers, and he grins, and his voice drops a few pitches when he says, “Just one second, boys.”

Robbie and Marty stop.

“I’ve heard you play before and I just want to say that ya’ll play pretty good.” He looks at Robbie. “And your singing’s okay too, I mean, for a kid.” Darryl smiles so the other two do too.

“Thanks, old man!”

“Now go on, git. Make some noise.”

The boys gesture a hasty goodbye and walk away while Darryl finishes, “Just remember that the music is always way bigger than you are. You’ll be alright.”

Medding

August 15th, 2010 10 comments

“Medding” is a word I made up while working on my new book. I needed it to fill a vacancy in my vocabulary. I was missing a catch-all term that included every imaginable awareness-type activity. I’ve been using the term medding for a while now, and test-driving it on other medders, who then start using it right away as if they’d been using it all along. That tells me that this really is a useful word.

MEDDING the noun: Many things are medding. Meditation is medding. Yoga is medding. Medding includes every act of mindfulness, such as mindful standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. And mindful eating and drinking. And mindful hearing and listening. And mindful stopping. And of course it includes any attention you put on your breathing, such as following the ins and outs, or counting, or altering, or belly breathing, or just noticing. Watching your own thoughts and feelings come and go is medding. Basically, any type of intentional coming back to or remaining in the present by way of paying attention to what is observable in the herenow is medding.

MEDDING the verb: It means to do any of that stuff in the previous paragraph.

And now, in keeping with one of the great traditions of wordsmithing, I shall use the word medding in a sentence:

“I was doing some medding the other day, at the grocery store, in the cereal aisle, and I noticed that there were many brightly colored boxes.”

That was fun. How about some more…

“It’s good to start with medding in the morning.”

“Monks are medders who med all day.”

“I haven’t medded all day and I feel like crap.”

“Poker and medding do mix.”

Which will be in my book, now that I have a word for it.

My First Golf Shot in Seven Years

July 30th, 2010 3 comments

I went to a golf course yesterday. Been a while. I got a bucket of balls to hit at the driving range. But first, to my favorite place: the practice green.

I love putting around on a putting green, but what I love even more is pitching and chipping. I sat down my bag, I pulled out my trusty wedge, and I dropped one ball on the ground, on the grass, just off the green. I stood stock still and looked around and got grateful for a moment, then I gripped the grip, eyed the ball, swung the club, and “toonk,” I heard the perfect sound. I watched the ball bounce, and spin, and roll, up the hill, bending right, there it goes, and…

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You can’t see it from this angle, but my ball is in that hole.

Off to the left where that white spot is, that’s about where I hit my ball from.

I looked up to see who saw, as is customary at times like this. As you can see in this next photograph, the other golfers were all acting like they hadn’t even seen my shot.

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But we know what’s in there.

Gee Thanks, Mom

July 14th, 2010 3 comments

I just had a salt shaker explode. All over the counter, and the floor. Damnable contraption. It’s not really even a salt shaker. It’s a rock salt and peppercorn twisting smasher with two secret Rubixic supply compartments designed to keep Indiana Jones out.

I can imagine the conversation between the engineers and designers who birthed this thing:

DESIGNERS: The main thing is that it be pretty. It’s okay if it’s tricky.

ENGINEERS: You heard ‘em boys! They said make it pretty tricky!

Jolly well done then. You got me. Without a care in the world, I had set out to refill the peppercorn chamber, and your clever design tricked me into twisting something too hard, or maybe the wrong way, which caused the salt compartment to detonate. That was somewhat annoying, but I will say, your invention does look nice, even dismantled.

As I surveyed the spillage, I heard a cruel yet loving voice from the past. It was mom, saying what she said at special moments of klutz like this one:

“Why aren’t you doing that over the sink?”