Showing my work

I've been trying for a week to write this post about the incredibly smooth run I've had playing poker in LA this past year (my previous time in casino poker in Vegas was just as smooth as well).*  It was supposed to be about how running good for so long has its own set of challenges.  But everything I wrote felt long-winded and inauthentic. Apparently, it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to try to frame running good in a negative light.  That's why they call it running "good".  Yes, there are psychological attachments that need to be guarded against, and it's not all free puppy dogs and red balloons, but mostly running good is pretty sweet. 

What this piece really needs to be about is what it's like to run good when lazy and reliant on a unique skill set.  I was lukewarm on poker when I moved to Madison in 2009, and I decided to coast on my poker skills while I pursued more interesting subjects like counseling.  When Black Friday hit, I knew I had to put the brakes on my counseling path and spend more time playing poker, but I wasn't sure whether I just needed to shuffle my priorities and move poker to the forefront in terms of study and improvement.

I can think of probably two dozen players who play in my games who I would like to tag in to make my check/bet/call/fold/raise decisions during hands.  I don't think I'm particularly good at this aspect of poker, and I think most if not all of those two dozen players would agree with me on this assertion.  I don't really know what to say about this.  I have a decent brain in my head, and I could probably get really good at the k/b/c/f/r stuff if I wanted, but times when I enjoy thinking about that stuff are fleeting.  When I moved to LA, I realized that I might have to spend some time on raw strategy study just to regain competence at a form of poker I hadn't played in 4 years, so I begrudgingly put time into that stuff for a couple months.  This probably helped me start winning at a decent clip, but it also really wore on me.  I was away from home, I was putting energy into something I didn't really enjoy, and I spent most of my time in a toxic casino environment.  By Thanksgiving, I almost completely stopped studying strategy and re-focused on stuff outside of poker (I'll write about that in one of my next posts).  I was content to leave my k/b/c/f/r skills where they were.  The poker skills I developed since then are mostly higher-level operational skills (as opposed to the tactical k/b/c/f/r skills) and are mostly psychological in nature.  This happened naturally... when left to it's own devices, my mind typically splits time evenly between figuring out how minds work, boobies, and imagining what it's like to be Jack White. 

So this is the part where I say my poker results during my first 12 months out here would almost certainly fit right in with the aforementioned 24 players.  That my results are comparable with an "expert's" expectation would, I imagine, be surprising to many of these players.  For all but a few extreme cases (e.g., extreme tilters, world-class zen master types), I think poker players believe that skill level in the k/b/c/f/r tactical arena is the primary factor in determining a player's true win rate.**

(By the way, I imagine plenty of players are now clamoring for their LOLSampleSize Pitchforks and Torches)

Here's the center of the matter.  I would really like to take credit for my results this year.  I have an ego that needs feeding.  But anyone with an understanding of statistics would be quick to point out that a player with a true win rate half the size of my actual win rate has a ~4% chance of having similar results over this sample (statisticians say that number has to be under 2.5% to be 'significant', though the distinction is pretty arbitrary).  I think most of my peers would point to this tail of the distribution curve and use it as the primary explanation for my results.  I have to concede that I have been probably been somewhere between lucky and astronomically lucky this year.  This is the trump card that can be played on any claim I make from here on out.  In return, they would probably concede that my stronger operational skills probably plays some sort of role.  As almost always when we seek explanations for results in poker, "It's probably a little bit of both."  

I'm going to let my ego state its case for "Why operational skills are marginalized and undervalued."  I'm doing this because:

1)    A year is a long fucking time to constantly tell myself "I know you think you 'earned' this money, but really you just 'won' it." Sometimes I slip up and let my ego convince me I'm earning what I'm winning

2)    Sometimes I actually think my ego has a good point

3)    Fuck everybody anyways

 The tactical skill sets are definitely the biggest barrier to entry for poker players.  Any player who can't be bothered with studying and understanding stuff like FTOP, preflop strategy, pot odds, etc. isn't going to make it longterm.  And this stuff isn't easy for most people.  In order to even jump to Level 1*** as a poker player, you must have some vision to comprehend the underlying math/logic that drives the game.  It's a necessary (but insufficient) skill set to be a winning player.  That comprehension is part of the poker gene.     

My ego wants to argue that this basic trait that is present in every winning poker player influences the collective poker belief system more than we would like to admit.  Tactical strategy is one ingredient that can be manipulated, tested, and proven right or wrong.  This appeals to that part of us that was capable of grasping Level 1 concepts during our poker infancy.  In a psychological sense, this ability to understand, predict, and control aspects of our environment is important in establishing our identities.  The first question out of our mouths when we meet someone new usually is "What do you do?"  That's not an accident.  For most people in our culture, choice of occupation is the single biggest aspect of their identities that they control.  For the sake of our identities, it makes sense to focus on the more controllable, measurable variables within the profession (in poker's case, this is tactical strategy), since it offers the best evidence that we are "good" at what we do.  Putting work into tactical strategy offers consistent positive return on investment... it is hard to get measurably worse or even measurably stagnant at tactical strategy through study. 

Most of my work this year has been in areas much less measurable.  I have different criteria for game and seat selection than what is commonly accepted.  I have thought long and hard about what makes a losing player stay at the table longer and what I can do to foster that attachment.  I have a better idea of what I want people to notice and not notice in regards to my play, and I have a better idea of how to elicit the desired notice/don't notice response.  I am (and always have been) a great quitter.  I think I'm great at neutralizing hostile table environments and eliciting more docile, predictable play.

For the most part, operational strategies are too chaotic to measure.  Because I can't really measure stuff like how much longer a losing player stays at my table due to my efforts to emotionally engage him, my identity as a poker player is put into a tenuous position.  My focus is on a lot of shit that most players don't focus on.  I'm tinkering with new ideas and concepts with no real way of measuring whether the old or the new idea works better.   All I can go by for feedback is my results, and every poker player will tell you it's dangerous to read too much into results, especially over a sample like 1500 hours of casino poker.  Honestly, it sorta sucks this is the case.  I'd love to point to my results as proof of concept.  But I know I can't.  Even if these results hold up for a sample deemed to be significant, it still proves jack shit.  Working within the unmeasurable human element necessarily dismisses the entire concept of proof and scientific method. 

I would really like to not give a shit about this stuff.  Why should I need to prove that my efforts are good?  I know I'm not "supposed" to care.  The fact that I wrote this piece shows I haven't fully bought in to the Poker is Art paradigm.  Artists don't try to sort out cause and effect.  They don't try to understand what it is about them that makes them successful.  They just do what they do until they can't or don't want to.  I guess that's probably what I need to take from this.  Maybe I need to just trust the process.  Trust the inner voice that guides me.  Trust that the universe is playing out the way it needs to.

 *Worst downswing in 3 years: 200BB.  # Of losing months: 1 (-50BBs).  The typical professional player in today's environment will experience troughs in the 300-500BB range, with several instances of players having 500-1000 bet downswings.  Worst months (out of a 36 month sample) typically weigh in at -100 to -300 bets, and losing months typically occur at least once per year. 

 ** Maybe it's more accurate to say they believe many skills besides k/b/c/f/r are crucial to success, but that they also think there is much less disparity amongst pros with respect to skills such as quitting, game selection, and table talk. 

*** In poker parlance, a player at Level 0 never considers the perceived strength of his opponent's hand when making decisions.  A player at Level 1 considers the strength of his own hand and the perceived strength of his opponent's hand in decision-making.  A player at Level 2 takes into account how strong his hand looks to his opponent; a "I think that he thinks my hand is strong/weak" dynamic.  Levels 3 and up are iterations "I think that he thinks that I think....." cycle

I Criticize Something I Found on the Internet - Episode 1

I want to know the point this article is trying to make. It says we feel entitled to knowledge. He then goes on to describe events that, had they taken place pre-internet era, might not have been noticed by the world. Or incidents where the dissemination of information actually was the event.

He implies that it's wrong to have this feeling of entitlement, but he never really explains why. I think there's actually a lot of merit to the idea that we are entitled to knowledge, and I intend to write reams about that in the coming weeks and months*, but I caught something in this article that gave me pause. The author didn't actually make the point I'm bringing up, and I'm not sure he himself caught this point. But I think it might be the best selling point against our entitled feelings toward knowledge.

The poor raped 5-year old girl who may never get her anonymity back. The father who will constantly be reminded that he killed a man with his bare hands in a fit of rage. The journalist raped in Libya whose video was used as a rallying point for activists. Victims 1-10 in the Sandusky trial. I think the author lost sight of the fact that these are the pressing figures in these cases. In each case, there's an episode of loss of control in the victim's life, and that feeling of powerlessness threatens to be perpetuated by the online community.

The question in my mind is whether or not this media exposure of the victimized is necessarily a bad thing. What happens to these people? I would like to think that it turns out to be a net positive... that good people reach out to help the victim heal. That other victims of similar situations reach out and diminish the feelings of isolation. That weakness is transmuted into strength through the shedding of light.

But that hasn't been the case for Erin Andrews. And I'm guessing that other publicized victims have had rough gos of it as well... the internet is a harsh, cynical place. If the internet exacerbates victimhood, is there anything we can do about it? Sadly, it's been a while since I posted anything and I wanted to post something even though I didn't have the time to put in more than cursory research (I was cherry-picking games in LA all weekend while so many pros are/were in Vegas for the WSOP). But be on alert, because this thing is a thing I'm gonna do some things with.

 EDIT: This is sort of a counterpoint, in that she finds the spotlight to be healing, though it's not really the same since she had control over the dissemination of the information.

* As some of you know, I'm planning on writing a novel centered around a thought experiment called Radical Transparency. I want to explore what happens in a world where everything we say and do is captured and documented and rendered retrievable by all other people through a comprehensive search engine. In other words, the complete eradication of privacy. I'll explore many of these concepts on my blog as well.

Cherry Butchering and My Frosted Side

I wrote this three years ago during my last few months living in Vegas, and I never really shared it with anyone. I'm always reminded of it when I'm eating cherries, which is an event that happened this morning. I've mostly lost touch with that fully-immersed feeling I describe in the story. Re-reading this makes me miss that state of mind. I also haven't had a green smoothie in a year or two, and I miss those now too.

 

Cherry Butchering and My Frosted Side

I have recently got into the habit of drinking green smoothies, which are these wonderful concoctions made by haphazardly throwing random leafy greens into a blender, and then adding enough other fruits and vegetables to mask the fact that you’re about to consume more leafy greens than you normally would in the course of a week. Then you add some water and blend it until the motor burns out, and you get a frothy, creamy, green beverage that tastes better than you could imagine a green, creamy, frothy beverage could taste (honestly, it tastes...okay, but that's still pretty good, right?)

Aside from doing a better job of masking the taste of the vile weeds than salad dressing could ever do, blending has the added benefit of pre-chewing your food for you. See, Jane Goodall learned from her chimps that primates in the wild chew their food more so than humans are even capable of doing (due to weak jawbone structure). Furthermore, most present-day Americans take less than 1/4 of the chews they are capable of with each bite. The tragic part of all this, from a scientific standpoint, is we don’t break down our food enough to gain all the nutrients from the food we consume. Those crafty monkeys have been showing us how do it for so long, but we just arrogantly watched them fling dung at each other and decided they have nothing of value to teach us. Especially in the case of leafy greens, deposits of nutrients are stored within the cell structure, which must be ruptured to access the nutrients. Our stomach acids can break down those cell structures to an extent, but not even Popeye can produce enough stomach acid to unleash the awesome power of spinach if its consumed in dime-sized chunks. So blending your greens offers that straight-from-mama-bird goodness that you just can’t give to yourself.

I find a great deal of joy in preparing my smoothies every morning. There’s something about performing a series of simple tasks in the morning that resonates within me (maybe it’s that farmer blood again). I’ve gone so far as to typically eschew the prepared fruits, choosing to behead my own strawberries and peel and pit my own mangoes. The more complicated the fruit, the better. Apples, oranges, peaches… they are all too simple to turn from raw to blender-ready. Bring me your watermelons, your honeydews, your pineapples. These are fruits I get to know very well before I put them into my person.

 

My favorite of all fruits for my morning tasks are cherries. Maybe that’s because it seems like half my childhood summers were spent pitting those delectable fruits originating from Door County (that’s the thumb of Wisconsin, for the unenlightened amongst you). I bought a cherry pitter, which looks and operates like a big hole punch, to help me with the task. I have to admit, my frosted side found great joy in making my cherries look like I just blasted them with a miniature hollow point, spraying its little pit brain and a splatter of cherry juice all over the paper towel, leaving a very satisfying-looking hole at the bottom the fruit. But my whole-wheat side wasn’t happy. So I put away my cherry gun and went back to my weapon of choice from my childhood, the bobby pin.

You see, the bobby pin allows me to really get to know my cherry, to feel it and understand it before I remove its reproductive organ and consume its remains. When I’m really immersed in my task, I can feel exactly where the pit is inside the cherry by feeling for the different densities within the cherry. My bobby pin probes the surface of the cherry, feeling for the proper entry point and angle to make my move. When it is time, the bobby pin breaks the skin and the dismembering is swift, efficient, painless. The pit is removed with only the slightest amount of juice and meat lost. And my whole-wheat side hums with satisfaction.

When painted in the right light, the whole process reminds me of Cook Ting, the royal butcher for Lord Yen-hui around the same time Confucius was doing his thing. Lord Yen-hui happened to be watching Cook Ting one day as he was slaughtering an ox. The slaughter was such a beautiful, skillful, efficient affair it compelled Lord Yen-hui to ask “Cook Ting, how the fuck did you get so good at chopping up an ox?”

Cook Ting say –

“What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.



“A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room, more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.”

I’m clearly no Cook Ting, but I think it’s a noble vision to aspire toward.

 

 

Artistic Temperament

As it currently stands, I think I’m pretty bad at telling stories.  I used to be decent at it, and I hope to be decent again, but for right now, I think my eye for detail has atrophied from underuse.  I doubt this blog is going to morph into me filling everyone in on what has happened in my life since the last time I blogged.  I tend to think everyone (not almost everyone...EVERYONE) leads an interesting life, and the corollary to that thought is that I also must lead an interesting life, but damned if I know which details to capture to make my life look interesting to others. 

But I'm gonna try some storytime today. 

I walk in to Commerce this morning at my usual time (7am).

(Coming from good, rural midwestern stock, my farmer genetics have forced me awake at the crack of dawn for as long as I remember.  The latest I could ever sleep, even in college, was 8am.  This doesn't mean I'm always productive at the crack of dawn, or that I even could drag my ass out of bed in time to catch the Price is Right, but I meet the minimum requirements for the label of "conscious" earlier in the day than most people twice my age.) 

(Also, poker rooms are fun at this time of day.  80% of the players have been playing all night, and most of the other 20% have been playing for 2 or more straight days.  Peels of spontaneous laughter never bubble up from any of the tables, because almost no one is in a happy place.  One of the great little joys in my life is to plunk down in my seat, freshly showered and shaved, in a clean, crisp button-down shirt and slacks, and deliver a strong, full-bodied "GOOD MORNING" to my 8 bleary-eyed, whatever-is-the-opposite-of-bushy-tailed friends at my table.)

Before I could even get out the iPad to pass the time before I got my seat, a screaming match broke out in the 60/120 game.  While this is not rare at all for the Commerce, it is sort of out of character for the time of day.  If you're the type to scream and make a scene in public, you're typically going to struggle to hold in your rant for a full night in an environment as stressful as a poker room.  That said, your handsome reward for accomplishing this feat of energetic dexterity at Commerce is a dead-silent echo chamber in which you can express your rage to an audience too tired to even tune you out. 

Player A accomplished this feat this morning, although he was docked for degree of difficulty since he actually just finished his second full night of poker and his reasoning system (which is balky in the first place) gave out several hours prior.  The injustice that drew his rage?  Another player gets up to smoke a cigarette, and (probably jokingly) instructs the dealer to deal slowly so he doesn't miss as many hands.  The dealer deals some cards, and Player A decides that....poker...wasn't....Happening....FAST....ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Background on Player A: This guy is a regular, and is routinely abusive to players and staff.  He also loses as much as anyone, so everyone puts up with him.  He comes from a family with money, and he once told me, without a hint of sarcasm, "I don't even want this $7000.  I would throw it in the trash, but I'd be afraid some porter or someone would get it.  If I knew Donald Trump's kid would get it, I would just throw this shit away and go home".  I told him he sounded like Ted DiBiase.)

Anywho, this dealing injustice evidently is not going to stand, and the dealer escalates things by arguing with the player (big no-no).  This is a tough situation for the floorman.  He knows our anti-hero is the only thing keeping this game running, but not everyone else at the table understands this, so showing favoritism toward this guy may elicit future behavioral outbursts by players with under-exercised inner children.

Player A chooses the time-tested debate technique of making the same point over and over again, ONLY LOUDER EACH TIME, until he achieves a proper level of vein-popping red-facedness.  The floorman does his best impersonation of France.  Player B, fresh off his cigarette, loudly asks the floorman if he's going to do anything about this lunacy.  The floorman, now yelling like everyone else, asks "WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT?" because that's how an authority figure gets control of a situation.  I'm honestly not sure whether or not he is aware that he is the guy who has to make a decision here.  His question is probably a genuine one... In the real world, this guy would be out on his ass without question, but in poker rooms, special people get special exceptions, and he'd probably like to take the other players' temperatures before taking action.  I'll say this... the first player to speak up would probably seal the fate of Player A.  But it's 7am, and every player's internal debate of "do I want to put up with this prick in the name of more dollars?" takes a little while to complete. 

So Player A makes it easy for everyone and kicks his chair.  The bosses don't like furniture replacement or personal injury lawsuits, so Player A gets a mandatory timeout while the floorman calls his boss to discuss if the guy just needs to be kicked out or if he needs further disciplining.  Apparently, the timeout corner is right where I am sitting, because Player A is headed in my direction.

Now, until recently, I would watch this dude with fascination right up until the minute he looked in my direction, and then I'd avoid eye contact like a good, judgmental midwesterner.  Today, I'm looking at him from the second he leaves his game and as he makes his way toward me, I ask "Rough morning, _____?"  This is part of my new job description, as laid out in my last post.

He paces around and fills me in on what got him so upset, because I might have been two counties away and out of earshot while all this drama was going down.  I empathize. I tell him that if the dealer was dealing slowly, that would be really unprofessional.  I tell him that yes, getting hands dealt in a time game is important.  I ask him how long he's been awake.  I ask him if he thinks they'll kick him out...

He is convinced that once the supervisor hears about this grave injustice imposed upon him and his fellow players, the supervisor will completely exonerate him.  He says "What the hell else can they do?  How else am I supposed to act around this bullshit?"  I nod thoughtfully and just let those words hang there, mostly because I have no retort.  Silence is no good for him right now, so he decides it's time to make a phone call and wanders off. 

Things cool down for a few minutes and I wander by his old table, filling everyone in that they should expect A's triumphant return momentarily, because he was totally justified in his behavior.  As I'm walking back to my empty table in the timeout corner, a younger guy with an Eastern European accent gets up from his seat in the 40/80 game and pulls me aside.

Euro: You are full-time pro here, yes? 

Me: That's the goal anyways.

Euro: Let me ask you kvestion... What you do when game is like deess?

I give his game a quick once-over.  To me the game looks decidedly average, but I understand what is going on here.  This guy is new to town, or just visiting, and the games here are decidedly juicier than what's available back in Lithukhazakistaniaberg or wherever.  He's been playing this dream game all night, hoping beyond hope that the table will not turn into a pumpkin before his body gives out on him. 

Euro: How much you kill yourself to stay in game?  Do I must stay awake forever for deess game?  They have so much bad play!

Me (smiling): How long have you been playing here?

Euro: Deess my second time here

Me (giggling, putting my arm on his shoulder): My friend, this game is here every day.   It's often even better than this.  I would never stay up all night to stay in this game.  It will be here again tomorrow. 

The look on his face made me realize why people want to have children.  Everything is now going to be okay in his world, just because I told him it would be okay.  He thanks me, sits down, and racks up to leave five minutes later, about to sleep one of the best sleeps of his life.  I look back at the 60/120 game, and it has evaporated into thin air.  I never even got to say goodbye to Player A. 

Frameworks, Part 3

I recently found this post on my twitter feed.  Those of you who have known me for a while know that I have struggled with these exact same problems of "What value does a poker player contribute to society?" and "why do poker players never collaborate?"  As it stands right now, my current conclusion is a little bit different from Olivier Busquet’s. I don't want to suggest that I found my own personal "final answer” just yet, as I am still grappling with these problems, but I think I have something worthwhile to say all the same.  

OB suggests that you must look outside of poker to find the answers and the value system that he craves. 

"Playing poker is essentially a selfish pursuit.  It's completely individual and poker players play solely for their own personal success".

He is saying that there is an essential quality to poker, an unchanging and unchangeable quality that coerces players into a selfish, money-driven mindset.  And I think I get what he's saying.  Poker is a game, and the object of that game is to make money.  In a theoretical sense, he's exactly right.  Poker is an individual endeavor and a zero-sum game... there is nothing inherent to poker that makes the world a better place.  The entire Commerce Casino does less to add value to the world than the homeless guy at the bus stop, assuming he recycles at least one glass bottle for the 10-cent return fee.  And I suspect these qualities will sooner or later lead me to placing poker in a smaller role than it plays right now.

But I haven't given up on poker just yet.  This piece is about my latest and last shot to find meaning and fulfillment in poker. 

Just like poker has no theoretically "good" qualities, it doesn't have any "bad" qualities either.  It's just a set of rules that Augustus C. Hoyle wrote down a long time ago.  It's only in practice that we decided poker is best played for cash money.  And it's only in practice that some players decided it was wise to use poker as a means to take advantage of people with self-destructive habits.  These traits are not essential to the game as much as they are commonly accepted best practices. 

OB does hastily bring up and dispose the idea that poker might provide a little bit of "entertainment value".  I’ve started to dislike the analogy, and I dislike that this is the way we choose to interpret our poker environment.  I dislike that the analogy makes perfect sense.  Most (non-internet) poker players can relate to the experience of placating poorer players, either reassuring them that they are good players who have just gotten unlucky or accepting their childish, boorish behavior.  I could probably buy a new macbook with all the money I have slipped to floorpeople and dealers over the years, pleading with them to not do anything drastic like getting this dude thrown out just because he lost another hand, ate his cards and told the dealer that everyone in her family is a slanty-eyed cunt.  It's a mostly-unspoken truth in the poker world that the worse a guy is at poker, the more the other players at the table should and will tolerate his bullshit.  This is done because it's the best way to make the most money, and that's the object of the game, right?  When The Professional walks through the doors of the casino, He seeks to become a vessel for moneymaking decisions and actions; He is an emotionless machine, ready for war.  This is the gold standard ideal True Professionals strive for.  

Well, sort of.  As poker started to strive for legitimacy, mainstream acceptance/growth, and long-term health, Professionals realized the Professional mentality could go too far in finding loopholes in the rules and blatantly exploiting naivety of inexperienced and inattentive players.  The Professionals named these dubious maneuvers "angle shots", and the poker community now marginalizes the most egregious of angle shooters.  They aren't excommunicated from the Church of Gambool the way straight-up cheaters are, but their paths to poker glory and riches are rife with new obstacles.  They often ruin the fun and drive off weaker players who don't like egg on their face, and their conniving ways guarantee that Professionals become even more alert and focused on the task at hand when at the same table.  You can probably eke out a living shooting angles, but the odds are stacked against you achieving anything noteworthy in the game.

The point is, Professionals don't really walk through the door with their mind on their money and their money on their mind.  There's a human element to the game that deserves and receives acknowledgement.  But for many, it seems that acknowledgement stops at 0.  As in, don't be a negative.  As long as we're not hurting the poker environment, poker's cultural norms tolerate and accept all manner of selfish, moneymaking behavior. 

And that's fine. If that mindset works for you, great.  That sounds a little dismissive, so I'll hammer it home:  I really, honestly do think it's great that you love poker for the competitive, adversarial aspects, and it's great if you see it simply as the financial engine that drives the You vehicle.  There's no rule that says poker has to be anything more than a game where the object is winning all the dollars.  If that resonates with you, you can stop reading now.  The rest of this post is dedicated to those who are struggling with the conundrums that Busquet and I and countless others are experiencing.  I don't think less of you as a human being if you aren't having these existential crises.

This year, I decided to go past 0.  Money is not necessarily the object of my game.  Don't get me wrong, I still make my check/bet/raise/call/fold decisions based on what's going to make the most money.  And I reserve the right to lie about what hand I had if you ask.  But while my hand-level tactics remain the same, my game-level tactics have been changing to reflect my lower regard for money.   Instead of being the money-driven Professional, my goal this year is to inject as many positive vibes and meaningful connections into the poker environment as possible.  For simplicity's sake, I still refer to myself as a professional poker player.  But this year, I am playing poker. 

Funny things have started happening since I began using this more-amateurish, playful approach.  I started believing in my "product."  I stopped wanting to be the entertainer, because the entertainer asks you to not look behind the curtain.  Instead, I'm just a player.  Just like the next guy.  

This message is for you, Fellow Poker Player.  I am going to assume you are here for play as well, and that you stepping in to this poker room is just another positive decision in a string of positive decisions in your life.  I am going to think of you as a good person who lives an awesomely different and meaningful life that just so happened to intersect with my own life.  Connecting with you on this plane is going to be a genuinely worthwhile and enjoyable experience.  Like two six-year olds racing to the flagpole, we will be fellow players.  At times, we can pit our strategies against each other and see what happens.  And if you hit a ridiculous off-balance jumpshot to beat me, I might be incredulous, I might laugh, I might even get a little pissed if you hit a bunch in a row, but I'm not going to be pissed at you, because I know what it's like to hit that ridiculous jumpshot... It's all part of the game.  And if you happen to hit that jumpshot at the buzzer in biggest game of our lives, I might even pull a Craig Ehlo and get sad and hide under some chairs while you pump your fist and scream in all your primal glory.  Because for me (and probably you as well), that's part of the fun of games.  It's fun to explore emotional range in the context of games. Mountains need their valleys.  The Tommy Angelo mum-poker stoic response might keep my head the coolest and make me the most money, but it's not the most fun.  Regardless, no matter what I experience emotionally, I won't let that change how I feel about my fellow competitor. 

At other times, we can sit around and bullshit and talk about sports or women or music or whatever else we can find to connect.  That's gonna be cool too.  And if you don't want to talk, that's cool too.  And I'm going to root for you, even if you're a miserable, dealer-abusing prick with no discernible moral direction.  Because you're trying to build a meaningful, happy life for yourself, just the same as me... you just learned to use a different set of assumptions.  And I don't want you to act in a self-destructive manner.  I'd prefer you not bury yourself under a mountain of gambling debt.  If there's something more fulfilling out there that you're ignoring in the name of playing one more hand, I'd prefer you get out and go live your life.

Again, I'm assuming your decision to be here with me is a positive decision you've made for yourself.  So I'm not going to proactively say something to you, even if I get the sense that your demons are winning the battle in your head.  But if your decisions start skewing self-destructively, I hope that the basic, unconditional human respect and decency I'm giving to you can be a reminder that you deserve a life guided by your own positive decisions.  And I hope my behavior conveys that if you ever need to talk, I'll be here to listen.  If you ask for advice, I'll try to give you the best advice I can, not the advice that extracts the money out of your pocket, because how I deal with others is more important to me than my bankroll.  No matter who you are or what you've done, you deserve that much.  And I deserve that much as well.  I don't deserve to be in an environment where I feel compelled to look at anyone as anything less than a fellow human being.

Frameworks, Part 2

Soul-searching occurred after my DUI, and I grew a lot as a person.  Some day, I'll write more about that.  Poker-wise, I scrapped the "booze and schmooze", business-like approach to developing my game, and I retreated to a much more hermetic approach to poker and life.  This led to the second shift in my poker-perspective... I started looking at poker less as a business and more as a science.  I was going to start finding the answers on my own, in the underlying math and logic of the game.  I learned two things.

1.    The science of poker gets difficult in a hurry

2.    I didn't have the drive to achieve excellence in poker using this approach

The next couple years were mostly about using poker to make money while occasionally working on the math-y aspects and mostly focused on getting my life together.  It was boring and I'm not going to write much about it.  I didn't love poker and started looking for ways out.  I eventually returned to school to become a counselor, while playing part-time.  Then the Black Friday happened, and a big chunk of my tuition disappeared into the intertubes while I simultaneously lost my main source of income, so I decided to close up shop at school and return to casino poker. 

Having spent long periods of time playing both, I developed a preference for internet poker over casino poker.  I was fond of telling people that the people you meet in casinos are some of the worst people in the world.  And in a sense, that's pretty true.  As a group, casino poker players tend to mostly be some combination of selfish, immature, and scummy.  Internet poker players are like that too, but you never have to deal with any aspect of their personalities if you don’t want to.  It can be very draining on the soul to be in a poker room several hours a day.  It sucked to have Internet poker taken away from me.

I moved to California to start this new chapter, and the first few months were a difficult adjustment period.  Every day chipped away at my psyche as I dealt with the self-destructive and anti-social habits that Southern California casinos incubate so well in their players.  By December of last year, I had had enough, and went on a mini-rant at the poker table about having to be around all of this, which led to a conversation with fellow pro Mike L (Mike Landucci) that helped spark my next shift in perspective. 

I wrote the third and final post of Frameworks as a stand-alone post that I hope gets shared with the poker community at large.  It won't as much about my growth or my story, so I’ll sum up that part here.  Briefly put, my third perspective shift is from Poker as Science to Poker as Artistry, and it's my attempt to create something beautiful and meaningful, for its own sake, outside of a profit motive.  Since it's very idealistic and, by extension, paints me in an idealistic light, I want to put my caveats and disclaimers in this post. 

- I'm human and I sometimes act in contradiction to my principles.

- I still experience negative feelings when people act like jerks.

- I still sometimes hide under my headphones or just go silent and choose not to practice my "art" while at the poker table.

- My win rate has not suffered from this perspective shift, and I'm not sure how I would feel if about this shift if the financial ramifications were different.  It's easier to be idealistic when money is more abundant.

- Even though I don't refer to poker as "art" in that post, it really is the single word I would use to summarize my perspective on poker right now (it just seemed to clash with my little rant against "entertaining").

Frameworks, Part 1

My thinking about my relationship with poker shifted dramatically around the beginning of this year.  I've been playing poker professionally for eight years now, and I'd say I've been through three such shifts, and those shifts are the first things I consider when I reflect upon my poker career.

When I started playing part-time in college, I treated poker like a competition.  For a long time, I wasn't making a meaningful amount of money, and, more than the money, I was consumed with earning the respect of fellow players from the 2+2 community (for non-poker players, this is/was the largest online poker forum and in 2004 was the best place to learn poker strategy as a layperson).  Even when the money started to matter, my ego was more attached to how my posts were received on 2+2 than my results at the table.

The first shift in my thinking came right before I graduated, and it wasn't a revelation as much as it was a gradual admission to myself about who I was and what I cared about.  Instead of being a competition about "who played this hand better?", poker became a business competition, with the battle taking place at a higher level.  I remember realizing that my online persona (screen name: gonores) had actual, real-money value.  How I managed the gonores brand influenced several aspects of my poker career...
- Which top poker minds would discuss strategy with me
- Which players (and how many players) would loan me money in a pinch or take a piece of me in a bigger game
- Access to juicy private games

 So I studied the best "brands" on 2+2 and started acting like them.  That feels like kind of a douchey thing to admit to, but mimicking others on an online forum was actually a good learning experience for me, in that the real life version of me actually became more comfortable using gonores's voice than my own.  Maybe some day I'll write more about that...

 Anywho, the point is that, to an extent, gonores was a vehicle to aid my progress as a poker player.  It's not that I was being inauthentic or misleading, but I was concealing parts of myself from the online poker world, and I was doing it consciously to improve my image.

And it worked.  Despite having what I consider to be a lackluster poker strategy mind*, I was able to connect with some very brilliant players and glean knowledge from them (that includes some of you reading this, I would imagine).  I had a couple things going for me to help connect with such intelligent players: 1) I was a witty internet forum writer willing to work hard and share myself and my stories with others 2) I liked drinking and having fun and 3) I was good at studying what these people liked.

That led to this night. This is when the line between gonores and myself started getting blurred.  Part of me enjoyed having such a fun night bonding with good people, but another part of me stayed conscious of the fact that this was really fucking good for my career.  Not surprisingly, being good at creating a good time is a GREAT way to bond with people.

For the next 14 months, that was my game.  Go have good times, write about these good times, get others to want to have good times with me, go have good times with others, rinse, repeat, eventually trick others into talking about poker with me.  The summer after that post, I moved to Vegas.  For those of you with business skillz, this is fucking synergy at its finest.  My proclivity for a good time and Vegas's proclivity for facilitating good times led to A WHOLE FUCKING LOT OF GOOD TIMES.  Gonores gave way to a new alter-ego, Doug Fucking Meyer: one-man poker circus (who happens to say "fuck" a lot), and my strategy yielded my highest grossing poker year to date (though the income statement might have gotten a little less flashy after factoring in strip clubs and Strip clubs).

And then shit got all E! True Hollywood Story on me.  Out one night with friends, I had exactly one too many glasses of wine with dinner when the girl I was dating texted me to go meet up with her.  On the way, I rear-ended a pickup truck containing a mother and daughter (they were unhurt, luckily).  Cops showed up, I blew .08 (.077, actually, but considering I rear-ended someone, officers' discretion led to rounding up).  Having $10k in cash on me probably didn't earn me much sympathy, because I was never offered an opportunity to post my own bail, my one phone call was botched, and I ended up spending the weekend in an orange jumpsuit at Clark County Detention Center.  If you ever want to seriously re-evaluate your life and values, I suggest wearing an orange jumpsuit, preferably with stiff, cheap, county-issued mesh underwear. Suddenly I didn't like being Doug Fucking Meyer any more...



*No, seriously, I don't think I ever meaningfully expanded the "Should I bet/raise/check/fold/call in this situation" discourse.  I do think I've contributed to the poker world in a "What's the best way to learn about poker" sense, but brilliant poker minds rarely need help in that department. 

Why I don’t want to watch the NFL this year

I’m assuming that anyone who considers himself a fan of the NFL has had conversation with fellow fans about their personal stance on brain injuries and the NFL’s effort to curtail them.  I also assume that the half-informed decisions that adults make about what they do to their bodies can generally be accepted as a philosophical gray area.  There are no easy answers for addressing the NFL’s concussion problems, and the title of this post isn’t in reference to these issues. 

What does bother me about this episode and episodes prior (player conduct/Vick/Roethlisberger, steroids, Spygate) is the systematic resistance to transparency the NFL uses to address the issues.  When fans are shielded from information, we don’t get to meaningfully participate in the discussion.  In fact, the NFL is almost actively asking us to NOT take part in debating the value of artistic/strategic/competitive expression vs sacrifices in quality of life.  We cannot truly choose to “vote with our feet” unless we know and they know why we are or aren’t choosing to give the NFL our entertainment dollar.

Since I started caring about the NFL (approximately the same time as the start of the 24/7 media coverage era), I cannot think of a single issue where the NFL or Roger Goodell has stepped forward and said “This is our problem.  It’s not [player X’s] problem or [team Y’s] problem, but a problem within the culture of the entire league that we should correct.”  This culture of example-making casts the spotlight off the organization itself, in an effort to keep us, the players, the media from contemplating the value system of the organization itself.  Why have a debate over murky issues like player safety or what is or isn’t “cheating”?  It’s so much easier to vilify individuals such as Michael Vick, Bill Belichick, and Gregg Williams.  Of course our values are congruent when it comes to these guys! 

When it comes to Spygate and BountyGate, it’s also important to realize that the NFL sat on information for years before handing down punishments, and were preceded by attempts to handle the violations internally, with no media attention.  The punishments became public only after the Patriots/Saints tried to cover up their transgressions.  Both Spygate and Bountygate involve elaborate attempts by the teams to deceive the NFL, and I suspect this is what brought down the Goodell Hammer.  In any event, it makes me wonder how many other teams have gotten off lightly by coming clean to the commissioner. Obviously, a guy like this can only get a job as coveted as NFL Defensive Coordinator (not to mention NFL Head Coach) in an environment that at least tolerates if not supports the behavior. Again, weighting player safety vs winning is really tricky, so I don’t condemn the NFL for elevating this person in the face of this behavior.  But selling the idea that this guy operated in a vacuum, as a lone rebel, is preposterous.  Players move around the league.  Coaches copy things that work.  And Williams' shit worked (he was the highest-paid assistant coach in league in Washington, and Sean Payton took a pay cut to hire him).  

Why did we never follow up with guys like this?

Trevor Pryce, who played on the defensive line for the New York Jets, Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos, told The New York Times that bounty programs are common in the NFL, with players pledging cash to reward big plays in a game.

"It's pretty much standard operating procedure," the retired Pryce told the newspaper. "It made our special teams better. I know dudes who doubled their salary from it. Trust me, it happens in some form in any locker room. It's like a democracy, the inmates governing themselves."

Where were the journalists lining up to talk to Trevor Pryce after that quote?  Why not flesh that quote out a little bit?  Evidently no one came knocking, because he published an article 3 days later on an obscure NBC News website focused on African American issues.

Note that the article received 0 comments, 0 likes, 0 retweets.  The guy clearly had something to say, but he couldn’t find anyone to listen. 

Another example: 

@KawikaMitchell – former Saint, played exactly 1 game during the Williams tenure (in week 15, 2010), recorded a sack, and then, according to his wiki page, retired with 2 weeks left in the season.  That one game was his first in over a year after sustaining an injury in Buffalo, so it’s possible re-aggravation prompted his early “retirement”.  He appears to be working out for teams as a UFA this summer.

"Dominate""Swarm&Punish""Stomp their bitch ass"(homie)"Seek&Destroy""Punish them"U hear it on TV. Not just wordsMindset u need to play D
— Kawika Mitchell (@KawikaMitchell) March 5, 2012

Violent people play this Great but Violent game.Taught by people who enjoy the thinking side of the game as well as the Violence.
— Kawika Mitchell (@KawikaMitchell) March 5, 2012

Sucks fans are hearing about stuff that has always existed in football. Right or wrong, it's a matter of being in or out of a culture.
— Kawika Mitchell (@KawikaMitchell) April 5, 2012

Let’s be clear on this.  Kawika Mitchell played one game for Gregg Williams, presumably played decent (1 sack, 2 tackles in limited playing time) in a HUGE game (New Orleans was 10-3, Baltimore 9-4 going in to the game), promptly retired, said this stuff a year and a half later, and no one reached out to him?  Like Pryce, he seemed to want to say something.  He has a weekly radio spot in Orlando that he has plugged religiously on his twitter feed, and mentioned discussing bounties on his appearance.  He wants to talk, but apparently this guy doesn’t have something compelling enough to say in the national news media?

Plenty of former and current players weighed in on this issue, some appalled by bounty-hunting behavior, some confused by all the hubbub.  None got traction.  And that feels fishy as hell.  Is the NFL truly concerned with player safety?  With cheating?  With player conduct?  Or only their image?  Or money?  Does it matter? If the NFL’s values and my values are aligned, why are these guys who want to discuss institutional values and “culture” being held at arm’s length by media outlets? 

For me, it takes the fewest leaps in logic to conclude that the NFL values its own health and well-being (and profits) over any of these sticky subjects.  It certainly provides explanation for their behavior over the past decade.  Implementing league-wide measures to ensure player safety (reduced preseason games, extra bye weeks, mandatory mouthguards/helmets) is more costly and more damaging to brand equity than finding witches and burning them. 

Am I basing this at least somewhat on conjecture?  Sure.  I’m certain my arguments can be picked apart with proper diligence.  But this isn’t a court of law.  It’s business.  And when I can, I try to do business with organizations that have similar values to my own.  If the NFL wants my entertainment dollar, the impetus is on them to prove their values through transparency of process. 

Will I still watch football this season?  *Sigh* probably.  At the end of the day, it might worth the cognitive dissonance to watch such amazing displays of athleticism and gamesmanship.  But maybe I won’t.  Or maybe not as much.  I don’t know yet.  I just know I don’t like being a pawn, and I'm going to think twice any time the NFL asks me to open up my wallet.  

Dougie Starts

If I tried to synopsize the purpose of this blog in the introductory post, I would probably never be happy with it.  Furthermore, this will probably morph into something else in the coming weeks and months anyways.  I have things I want to write, and maybe I have an audience.  That should be enough to start. 

I live in Long Beach, CA.  I play poker professionally.  I am constantly wondering about how our minds work. 

Further bulletins as warranted.