Thursday, March 30th: Gettin' older

Just nice to be settling back into the poker groove after taking most of March off (because of various travels and the PPM cruise.) Funny thing about the 3 week break: I didn't miss poker one bit. It was a great break, and I'm pleased that I brought a non-poker playing guest on the cruise; kept me out of the ship's poker room.

As I enter the twilight of my law school career (for any newcomers: I originally titled this blog "The Law School Dropout's Poker Blog" because I did leave law school in Fall of 2004 to play full time, only to decide later to re-enroll and finish up), I am pleased to say that I'm pretty happy I returned to school, even while I'm pretty sure I won't be practicing law when I'm done. The fact is that I'm extraordinarily happy with nearly every facet of my life right now: I've got some financial security for the first time, I'm about to get a JD from an elite law school, I've got a group of great friends I feel truly blessed to have met, and all is well on the family front. Although I have never been all that religious, I even feel that I've gotten somewhat more philosophical and spiritual recently, a benefit that I think I owe largely to keeping this blog: it has really allow me to explore the values and beliefs that have played a huge role in my life (and I thank you for following along.) There's a well-known book (whose title escapes me right now) that analogizes all the various domains of one's life to pie-shaped slices of a circle...and roughly speaking encourages readers not to neglect any one domain, so that you can "fill in" each slice of pie to complete the circle and "roll" merrily down the path of life. Slightly juvenile perhaps, but it's just another way of expressing the importance of maintaining a well-balanced life...and I do indeed feel like I'm living a rich and fortunate existence at this time in all respects, save one: the romantic domain. It's a theme that I did not plan on discussing here in this semi-public forum, but I don't think that I can neglect it in good conscience, because it plays just as central a role as do the other life themes I've discussed here. Nothwithstanding my efforts to sidestep the topic, many people have recently left comments hinting that my thought process regarding many of the ideas I've discussed here would change drastically once I had a family of my own to support -- I think despite my initial reluctance, I should address this topic here.

While most I think would agree that at 26, I'm still quite young, the fact of the matter is that I'm not 17 anymore, and I've recently begun to feel a stronger and stronger impulse to find love and have a family. It's been a really confusing, and in many respects difficult last few years. As strange as it seems to admit, I've simply become bored with miscellaneous hook-ups; I don't even 'try' all that hard anymore when I go out with my friends, and even when things fall right into my lap, so to speak, I'm not even all that enthused about them. Whether this is just a function of 'growing up' or something else, I don't know if I've ever been more cognizant of a shift in life goals and attitudes. I've never really had much trouble meeting and dating women, but damn -- when I think about it, it's been an awful long time since I've been in a serious relationship with a girl I really cared about; call me sappy, perhaps, but I miss being in love, and I agree wholeheartedly that the views I've expressed here have been made almost exclusively from the vantage-point of "single-guy," and I'm sure can't be cleanly extrapolated to a life comprising the richness of the marriage and child-rearing experience. Do these themes have anything to do with my poker experiences to date? Not quite sure -- but if there's one comment from the hundreds that have been left in this blog with which I think I can safely say I most identify, it's the one that offerred bluntly: "Find and marry a good woman. The rest will take care of itself." As much of a blessing as poker has been in my life to this date, proving both financially and often intellectually rewarding, I can't escape the thought that any happiness it has brought me will be dwarfed many times over by the fulfillment of finding a soulmate ("a", not "the" -- or at least that's how I look at things), and raising children. I'm sure the preceding has been partly fueled by the fact that most of my friends are either married, engaged, or in long-term relationship, and as any man will attest: the 'relationship' grass is always greener on the other side. Age is a funny thing -- from the time a man reaches his early 20s onward, there's really no concrete reason why the number of days he's been on the planet should have much of a bearing on what his life aspirations should be, and yet it seems that society rigorously dictates what is supposed to happen, and when. You're 'supposed' to graduate from college in your early 20s, take an entry-level position in your field of choice, get married in your mid 20s to early 30s, throw yourself full-force into your career to build up a nest-egg, maybe buy a house, then procreate sometime from your late 20s to late 30s. I often ask myself what would happen if my parents told me one day that I actually wasn't born in 1979, but rather in 1976 -- which would make me 29, when I had believed this whole time that I was 26. Would that change who I am, fundamentally? Would it have a bearing on how I evaluate what I've achieved to this point in my life, or what I haven't achieved? Of course not, but it's so hard not to fall into the mindset of dwelling on where along the life continuum you're supposed to be, given your age. And right now, the relationship bug is weighing heavily on my mind.

The above are thoughts that I had kept mostly to myself, simply because, well, they're private, and self-actualized though I am, nobody likes to put their insecurities on display for all to see. Last year I watched Comedy Central's "Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet" special (before he died, of course), and while it didn't feature Pryor at all because of his failing health, it had a lot of other comedians commenting on his work. One of the comments that stuck in my mind was a guy who said that what he admired most about Richard Pryor was that while most comedians (and in fact most people period) do everything in their power to hide their faults, Pryor seemed most comfortable when he was standing up on stage confessing his own fears and insecurities to an audience of thousands. He was, in a word, real. Leaving poker for a moment, I think one of the biggest epiphanies I ever had in my life -- probably around the age of 18 or 19, was realizing that everyone is insecure. It had been so easy, until then, to imagine that I was the only one who was unsure or embarrassed about my shortcomings -- how was it that everyone else, so it seemed, talked and acted so confidently and effortlessly?? But it's all just an illusion -- everyone is insecure about some facets of their personality or life; it's just that some people have learned to hide it better, and it's that ability to conceal that our backwards society often rewards because so many people mistake it for underlying self-assurance. I think I've tended to gravitate in life toward those people who are candid and forthcoming in their interactions, even if it means they risk people rejecting them, and it's something I've worked to improve myself, which I'm sure has been evident in parts of this blog, this post included.

Monday, March 27th: is this possible??

Talk about "shoulda stayed in bed". Man, oh man, I defy anyone to show me a worse day than this. Seriously. I am going to try not to think about how much money this was, or how few hands I actually played, go to the gym, and wake up tomorrow and pretend this never happened.

Saturday, Match 25th: Hard Hands

I had an interesting experience today (over the course of losing $4,000, although I suppose that’s only 75 – 100 BBs, and I shouldn’t stress too much over it, even though it’s not too fun.) Previously, I had slotted my downswings into three fairly identifiable pattern groups: (i) a prolonged stretch of being card-dead (frustrating, although there’s really nothing you can do except wait it out secure in knowing that the deck will eventually turn around, (ii) a series of so-called “bad beats”, where opponents seem to catch miracle card after miracle card on you (undoubtedly one of the most frustrating features of the dreaded downswing), and (iii) a long string of second-best hands (probably the most costly of the three). Viewed in the macro sense, of course, downswings are always made up of a combination of the above three, even though one usually seems more prevalent than the others in any given bad stretch. Today, though, I realized that there’s a 4^th, slightly more subtle pattern – I suppose it’s somewhat of a spin-off of the “second-best hand” pattern, but I maintain that there’s a noticeable difference, and it’s the following: today, my losses were the result of being dealt an inordinate number of hands that were simply hard to play. That may seem like a somewhat nebulous concept, but unlike the standard 2+2 refrain that there is always an optimal way to play a hand and any deviation therefrom is necessarily incorrect, that simply isn’t true. There is, as Sklansky has written, an optimal way to play, and that is the way you would play if you knew your opponent’s cards. Given that poker is a game of imperfect information, of course, you don’t know them, and thus there simply isn’t an optimal strategy for any given situation (unless of course you have the absolute nuts, and your opponent bets into you on the river.)

Anyway, back to this 4^th “losing” pattern: over the course of 500 hands today, I simply got dealt hand after hand where I felt opponents were taking shots at me (and it was across all my tables, so it wasn’t just the case of opportunistic opponents trying to run over a guy who was having a rough go of it that day) and I was pretty helpless to do anything about it. I would get check-raised when a scare-card hit on the turn, and decide to call-down only to be shown a turned two-pair. It seemed like a majority of my reads were simply flat wrong. Every time I’d try a re-steal with a very legitimate holding from one of the blinds, the stealer would either hit, or throw his hand away without putting in any more money on the flop. In fact, that last point is a pretty important feature of the dreaded downswing as well: when your winning hands drag miniscule pots. The ideal flop, of course, is not only one that hits you in the face, but also gives your opponents a little something they want to continue with. I won a decent number of pots today, but never really got paid off, and it left me scratching my head wondering whether I should have played my hand differently (when the truth was that I probably simply wasn’t going to make any money off the hand anyway since it completely missed my opponent.)

Whether this little ‘discovery’ actually proves useful to any extent (either for myself or anyone else), or whether it’s merely a pointless exercise in semantics remains to be seen, I guess. If anything can be learned from this, I suppose, it’s this: I’ve often thought of myself as pretty much as tilt-proof as they come. I’m very patient when I go card-dead, and really don’t let bad beats or 2^nd best hands get to me all that much, understanding that a “bad” beat, by definition means that I wanted my donkey of an opponent to continue with his hand. But this 4^th scenario is perhaps the one that has in the past had the potential to really make me consider changing my style (which would be quite irresponsible, considering my long-term winrate.) Now when I get dealt a high number of hands that are simply hard to play, and I feel unable to get a good read on how to deal with opponents I’m pretty sure are just taking shots at me, I’ve got a new strategy: just leave the table. Seriously. I was sitting at a few 50/100 shorthanded tables today that ordinarily I’d slobber over. 2 or 3 laggy fish at each, but I was just getting hammered, which was encouraging the fish to get unpredictable on me, which I simply had a hard time dealing with. So I just left, and took the rest of the day off, leaving behind two pretty juicy tables. So I suppose the following is directed at people who are already proven winners, although there’s probably something anyone can take away from it: with some downswings, there’s nothing you can do except smile and shake your head at how unlucky it was that you got hardly any playable hands, or that your opponent caught some miracle cards, secure in the knowledge that you played every street correctly. Other putrid stretches have more insidious, and potentially detrimental, features…ones that aren’t necessarily apparent at first glance, and might make you wonder whether there is some more serious flaw you need to address. Some hands are simply tough to play correctly (for anyone, myself included), and have the effect of shaking your confidence and leading you to wonder whether you need to change your style. Luckily, however, they’re typically rather few and far between. But sometimes (just like the stretches where you go a few thousand hands without seeing aces), they present themselves in higher concentrations – while I’ve found these stretches to be a little more trying than those in which my opponents simply catch the cards they need, I thought perhaps that addressing it here might help some others to at the very least recognize this pattern of tough luck, and maybe keep a little more of a level head about it. In looking back over this post, I'm not quite sure I described what I was going for as clearly as I think I initially had hoped for, but I hope it will prove insightful to some nonetheless.

Sunday, March 19th: Cruise over

PPM - Day 1

Boarded cruise ship, and I'll say this. I hate Party Poker with every fiber of my being, but they've done a pretty damn good job putting this thing together. The cruise ship is gigantic and really really nice, and the 4 meals I had this first day were all excellent. I am going to get uber-fat on this trip. I suppose, however, that it's really Holland American and CardPlayer Cruises who have been great -- I'll reserve judgement on Party Poker until after I see how the tournament and side games are run.

After settling in, I attended a 2+2 cocktail party put together by one 2p2'er, which was pretty well attended -- maybe 40 people or so. I didn't really know any other 2p2'er by face or name...just by their posts, and I'm not all that active a contributor there anyway (at 1,500 posts, I guess I was still on the lower end of those attending). I have to say that I was expecting a far more socially inept group of internet nerds, and told my cruise guest (who isn't even a poker player, let alone a 2p2'er) to expect a pretty lame gathering. But I was wrong -- had a good time, and the 2p2'ers there were pretty down-to-earth and more or less normal. Good showing!

At night, I played a couple hours of 20/40 and the competition was just awful...pretty much what you'd expect for a bunch of internet qualifiers. Unfortunately, the rumor that Phil Ivey had bought into the tournament last minute appears to be just a rumor -- the only well-known pro's I think i heard people mention were aboard are Barry Greenstein, something Bellande, Michael Gracz (who won it last year) and a few other names I recognized. Everyone's been extraordinarily friendly thus far -- I guess that's what you get when you meet people on their vacations...just good moods all around. My first day in the tournament isn't until Day 3 -- I'm still not optimistic about my chances...I've thought about it quite a bit recently and I just don't think, as I wrote before, that my advantage over the field is enough to separate myself from the pack in just 300 hands, or however many I'm going to get in in the tournament.

PPM - Day 2

Really enjoying this thing so far -- the food is outstanding, and all the cruise staff are extremely friendly and accomodating. We've even got a pretty nice little cabin, although I'm jealous of all the 2p2'ers who reported getting randomly upgraded to the nicer suites. I also started to wonder as I was playing in the cash games last night just how much of my objectively impressive winrate online is due to my poker skill, and how much of it is due to maxing out all the technological advantages that are part and parcel of online play. I mean, they're spreading 100/200 and 200/400 games here, and they had a ton of people on the list for them. They didn't appeal to me at all for a few reasons: a) I didn't bring all that much money, b) I came here to have a fun cruise experience, not to waste too much time playing poker, other than the tournament, and c) even if the above 2 weren't true, I'm simply not convinced I have an overwhelming skill advantage over the type of guy who sits down at a 100/200 live game. I mean it's LIMIT for god sakes - once you reach a certain level, there simply isn't as much difference in skill between the excellent players and the expert players (another reason I'm not all that optimistic about my chances in the tourney tomorrow). So I look at my 3.5BB/100 winrate over my last few hundred thousand hands, and I have come to the conclusion that I owe a ton of it to maximizing my use and understanding of things like PokerTracker, PAHUD, mining applications (before they were incapacitated by the latest Party upgrade, although I'm aware of a few grey-market mining app's that some people are producing). I'm somewhat of a computer nerd, and -- in my prime; aka the time I took off from school for poker a year ago -- I devoted probably 5 to 10 hours / week to really understanding

PPM - Day 3

No happy endings this time around: I'm out of the tournament. 260 people played on the second day, and we were playing down until around 100 people were left -- I busted out with around 140 remaining. I'm very happy with the way I played; just didn't get the cards. We started out with T-10,000 in chips. I started out winning exactly 0 hands out of the first 50 or so that we played, but then bounced around between T-7000 and T-12,000 for the first few levels of blinds. I played around 240 hands and the best hand I was dealt was a pair of Jacks (and a few AQs). Didn't see QQ, KK, AA, or AK all day so like I said, I'm very happy with how I played -- really maximized what few playable hands I had. Well, the preceding is only actually true for the first 239 hands. Lamenting the fact that I had had to make do without any premium hands, I was finally fortunate enough to look down and see Aces with the blinds at T-300/T-600 (playing T-600/T-1,200), with my card-deadness having me down to only T-8,200 in chips. Pretty weak older guy raised UTG w/ Ks,Ts, I three-bet from the SB - flop came Js, 3h, 4s, and the rest his history. So I went out with Aces, which is the way to go, I suppose. Like I said, I played nearly as well as I could have without being dealt any premium hands -- I worry that I might have played a little weak-tight owing to some initial nerves; out of the 240 hands, my stats were probably down near around 15/9. and only won 14 or 15 hands, fewer than 5 of them actually going to showdown. I hit one flush, but beyond that never even had more than one pair. Of the 25 or so people I played, 2 of them impressed me, but the rest were just a bunch of 14/7 tighties. Anyway, that's the end of that; kinda bummed right now, but I'm sure our stops in Jamaica tomorrow and Grand Cayman the next will help me get over it.

PPM - Day 6

Final table just ended with 2p2'er Mike Schneider (aka "Schneids") besting Kenna James heads-up for the title. A gang of 20 2p2'ers rushed the stage when it was all over to congratulate him. I'll post some pictures when I get the time. I'm happy to report I played a total of only 4 hours of poker this cruise (other than the tournament) -- there was just all too much I wanted to do (and too much food to eat) to waste time in the poker room. Plus, this little break will be good for me. Has just been a great trip so far. Last poker-related tidbit I'll write for now is something that just reinforces things I've written about before: the perils of relying too heavily on so-called 'expert' advice from bulletin boards (read: 2+2). I've listend to altogether too much hand analysis this trip. It's incredibly annoying, by the way to overhear 20 conversations per hour that start out "Dude, so I had XYZ under the gun and riase, and this guy...blah, blah, blah". Anyway, although I've written that the 2p2'ers that I've met this trip have been quite affable and friendly, I've heard a ton of absolutely absurd hand analysis out of the mouths of otherwise "respected" 2p2'ers. The most frequent flaw (in advice I've overheard here, and read on 2+2) is this: everyone seems to approach hand analysis wondering "What action on my part gives me the greatest chance to win this hand?". When of course that question is preposterous. The winning player asks himself "What action on my part will maximize my expected value in situations like this one in the long run?" So you've got tons of posts advocating hopeless bluff check-raising and 3-betting against opponents who will hardly EVER fold given their previous action from the hand. One high-posting 2+2'er actually engaged another in a debate over whether it was correct to 5-bet the river heads-up or just fold his draw that had obviously missed. OK - I guess only re-raising in that situation gives you any folding equity (e.g. chance your opponent will fold), and I suppose is technically the only chance you actually stand of winning THAT hand -- but that's just flushing money down the drain. All you need to do is find somewhere to save one big bet every hundred or so hands to drive your winrate through the roof -- from 1.0 to 2.0, 1.5 to 2.5, or whatever. The difference between those two numbers may seem like the difference between a very good player and an expert, but in limit hold'em, it's just one tiny little big bet saved per 100. Find it.

I'm by no means bashing 2+2. It's helped immensely in my development. By all means, read the 2p2 forums, post your own hands for analysis, and read the responses with an open mind. But after that, USE YOUR OWN GOD-GIVEN ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES. One of the biggest steps forward my game ever took was when I learned to disregard the overwhelming volume of bullshit that flows so freely on the 2p2 forums, which by the way are populated mostly by 18 to 22 year olds. Not that 18 to 22 year olds can't be excellent player (see "Schneids" above). But understand that the anonymity of the internet unfortunately allows people with all of 6-12 months of poker under their belt to offer hand analysis as if it were given to them by God himself. You've got to learn to parse the good information from the BS.

Saturday, March 11th: Deep Thoughts, Part II

Well it's cool to hear that people actually consider this blog itself to be a contribution...because when I started it in Fall 2004, I don't think I ever envisioned that it would ever be considered as such: rather it was simply an outlet for my thoughts and frustrations that I had difficulty discussing with my law school peers, who all appeared to have been brainwashed into a one-track mindset of law school >> law firm associate >> marriage?? >> partner track/in-house counsel/some other law-related job >> retirement. To say that they had trouble even understanding how anyone could leave law school to play poker and try to start an internet business would be an understatement indeed. We might as well have been speaking different languages.

I think some commenters have pointed out a frustrating paradox that I have always felt illustrates a gross inconsistency: that many of the professions that are, quote, "well-respected" provide very little in the way of societal worth (even though their practitioners may have convinced themselves otherwise). These jobs may have "cocktail party cache", but are otherwise hollow. If I go home and tell my parents that I just got a job as a day-trader, they'd probably beam with pride and tell their dinner-party friends about how I've got some big important job on Wall Street. Never mind the fact that I do nothing but squeeze out profits from other less active traders -- although ask a day trader and he'll probably feed you some drivel about how he and his peers play an important role by smoothing out inefficiencies in the market. If I meet some pretty co-ed in a bar and tell her I'm a lawyer at some top law firm, her eyes might widen with admiration before she scurries back to her girlfriends to tell them about the lawyer who was just chatting her up as they nod approvingly. Never mind the fact that your first two years at any top law firm are spent writing memos on topics the firm already has 10 memos about, transcribing depositions (also known as copying), and proofreading motions (also known as spell-checking). What entity decreed from on high that these would be designated the respected positions in our society, the signposts of success, the roadmap to prosperity and female companionship? I'm not ragging on these two professions in particular, nor upon the number of others whose contribution to our society's progress is dubious at best -- after all, many people subscribe to country singer Montgomery Gentry's paradigm: " That's something to be proud of, That's a life you can hang your hat on, You don't need to make a million, Just be thankful to be workin', If you're doing what you're able, And putting food there on the table, And providing for the family that you love, That's something to be proud of. And if all you ever really do is the best you can, Well, you did it man." Maybe -- so goes the argument -- propagation of the species is truly enough.

But You want a truly worthwhile job? The guy from Triple-A I had to call to start my car in a bad neighborhood in -10 degree temperature when I had absentmindedly left my inside carlight on. The sewer inspectors who wade through other people's feces from 10pm til 6am so that you can flush your toilet in the morning. The city's electrical engineers who are literally on call 24/7, frequently dragged out of bed at 3am to fix the power lines the evening storm had knocked out. But I'm sure as hell not going to face the shitstorm that would result if I took my 2 ivy-league degrees and accepted one of those jobs. But are those simply my own insecurities about not being considered "enough"?? I once asked a former co-worker who was returning to grad school what she was looking for in a career that would make her happy, and she replied with an answer that I'm not so sure I've yet heard improved upon: she said she simply wanted a career that presented challenges that allowed her to feel as though she were applying all of her talents and abilities to their fullest. And the closest I've come to that is the feeling that I've gotten coupling a) improving my poker game and turning it into a lucrative pastime, and b) starting and growing my affiliate business.

The somewhat ironic thing about this post is that I can remember writing something similar (about the frustration that 'respected' jobs in our society only rarely align with those that are most 'worthwhile' or vital) over a year ago in this blog, when I was just beginning to explore some of these ideas. Some might say that's called repeating yourself. But for some reason it's got a whole new feel to me now, perhaps because I've now got a new perspective to write from: that of a guy who's actually worked the mind-numbing law firm job, and also thrown himself into and achieved success at high-stakes poker, and yet found each somewhat lacking, though in different respects.


PPM Cruise - Day 0

Enough mental masturbation for now. The Party Poker Million cruise departs tomorrow. Rumor has it that Phil Ivey bought in directly and will be playing. Pretty cool. I was sort of caught half way between hoping there might be some star-power I could mingle with on the cruise, and lamenting the same, wishing instead for a tournament field full of online qualifier donkeys.

The more I think about my prospects in this $10,000 buy-in tournament, the less optimistic I am about placing highly. Ironic, I suppose, because I can't imagine that (arrogance alert!) in this 500 person field there will be more than a dozen players who will be better than me to any meaningful degree. I just think that a limit tournament with a quickly escalating blind structure isn't really a sufficient time frame for the cream to really rise to the top. In the long run, I think I'd enjoy a significant advantage over most other entrants, but just how many hands can I expect to get in during this tourney? 300? 500?? Considering that I've gone through break-even stretches of 15,000 hands, I just don't know if I've got enough of a skill advantage (nor if ANYONE possibly could in a limit tourney) to have a significant edge in this thing. So I'm keeping my expectations rather low and just trying to enjoy the experience as much as I can. In fact, my guest isn't even a poker player at all, which will hopefully keep me grounded and enjoying as much of the NON-poker activities as possible. I suppose the optimist's way of looking at this is that I have as good a chance as anyone else to win the $1.5 Million first place prize.

Thursday, March 9th: Deep Thoughts, Part I

There are 2 topics I've had on my mind about which I know I need to write about before the sun sets on this blog, but I haven't quite figured out in what order I should address them, nor in what context. They are a) just how "fulfulling" poker might be as not only a hobby, but a life pursuit, and b) the wicked curveball that is the financial success that comes along with winning mid-to-high stakes poker, not only for myself, but for a whole generation of young adults. The more thought I put into these topics, though, the more I realize that (for me) they're very much intertwined. So I'm going to stop wasting energy trying to parse them into separate subjects, and simply begin with the former to see where it leads -- even if it means having to tolerate some digressions in thought or disorganization of ideas.

I remember in the Fall of 2004, when I first left law school to play 2/4 and 3/6 poker, I was so excited by the fact that even playing just those low stakes, I might eek out a 6-figure annual income (comparable, at least initially) to what they were paying young attorneys. But at least poker, I reasoned, I enjoyed, unlike the brutal hours and mundane tasks associated with practicing law straight out of school. How paradoxical, then, that now that I find myself playing at stakes over 10 times as high (with the commensurate increase in potential earnings), that I've started to come to appreciate that poker simply ISN'T something I really could see myself doing for any significant chunk of my life.

Just how useful are poker players to society? Are they completely irrelevant? If I played poker into middle age and retired at 40 with 10 million dollars in the bank, would I be happy? Fulfilled? I've recently begun to think a lot more about the people I come across who have become experts in their field and/or very well-respected by their peers. For example, the orthodontist and oral surgeon who worked on me for my surgery last year both came very very very highly-recommended, and the orthodontist in particular is, I am convinced, one of the top 2 or 3 guys in all of Manhattan. Just brilliant. These are men who devoted their entire lives to becoming masters of their craft, and I'm sure have been very well compensated for it. To take another example, I recently went to see a one-man play in Toronto, and couldn't get over how much hard work the star must have had to put in to perform for us. In fact, we all probably run across at least a few people every single week who you might say have truly achieved excellence in their life pursuits, typically through decades of dedication, and above all: hard work.

And that's the maddening oddity about my poker success, and why I'm having trouble envisioning myself playing for all that much longer: I think I've achieved extraordinary success to this point, and I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I put my excellence (in my "field") on par with the excellence of any top practitioners in their respective fields (be they medical, artistic, cultural, professional, or athletic), and yet I've gotten there putting in only a fraction of the time and effort of those other professionals. I realize I probably didn't win any points for modesty in writing the preceding passage, but I'm not going to waste any space here debating the strengths and weaknesses of my poker game. There's no doubt that I have a lot to learn, but my results have also been phenomenal to this point.

When I was 13, I remember my dad giving a speech telling me that there were no short-cuts in life. I think he probably saw that I really enjoyed finding ways to create efficiencies and exploit every opportunity I could, especially for financial gain. I was the kid who brought a cooler full of Cokes to middle school and set up shop next to the school's vending machine during recess selling cans for half the vending-machine price and making a tidy $20 / day (a fortune to a young adolescent) until I was told to cease and desist by the principal. I was also the kid who complained a little too loudly that the school's "fast food / pizza days" (where you could pay $10 for a few slices of pizza and a soda) were a complete rip-off, and again got into a little bit of trouble. Anyway, I digress: the point is that my parents no doubt saw the propensity I had toward finding shortcuts to "easy street" in life, and thought it wise to remind me that there were no such shortcuts: that the surefire way to success and happiness was through applying myself to a passionate pursuit so that I could support a family some day (and undoubtedly counsel my own children about the virtues of hard work, and the perils of ventures of fancy.)

Then along comes this poker thing, which I have trouble characterizing as anything BUT a shortcut. All of a sudden, you've got a bunch of 19 - 25 year olds running around with 6 figure bank accounts, never really having had to labor through 5 to 10 years of miserable office work, and thinking these "good times" will last forever. As much as I've enjoyed my poker success to date, I'm starting to think that maybe the "downside" to this apparent 'shortcut' is that it might result in an incredibly unfulfulling life. I'm 26 and a half. Sure, I'm still young, but hell, I'm not 17 anymore either. I picture myself waking up one morning as a 45-year old in a nice 3-story house in a gated community with a couple nice cars in the driveway, but otherwise living a frighteningly shallow existence. Is the man with a $250,000 bank account balance really any "better" a human being than the man with a $200,000 balance? How about the guy with $10 Million in the bank -- what really distinguishes him from the guy with $3 Million? We might be tempted to say "nothing", but $7 Million is a hell of a lot of money...is the conclusion simply that you will eventually reach a point where you have attained a minimum baseline level of financial comfort beyond which incremental increases simply don't matter all that much? Regardless, all I guess I'm getting at is that I want to have a hell of a lot more to hang my hat on in my forties and fifties than a healthy savings account and a Rolex watch.

I suppose this is where the idea of "value to society" comes in, but man am I having a difficult time wrapping my head around it. Think, perhaps about Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negraneau, or any number of other well-known poker professionals. Have they actually contributed anything of value to our society? I think 'yes', but I also think there's ample room there for a counter-argument. Are they living happy, fulfilling lives, simply because they happen to be at the top of their "profession"? Many months ago, I wrote about an interesting perspective that one reader had offerred me via email about the writings of philosopher Joseph Campbell, which argued roughly (and apologies to any Campbell buffs who I'm sure think I'm bastardizing these ideas) that each of our duties was to live an AUTHENTIC life. In other words (or at least what I took that to mean), as long as we were pursuing something we felt passionate about, or perhaps that we felt was our true calling, we could justify that as a suitably authentic and worthwhile existence. I think that perspective has a certaind degree of intuitive appeal to me, because it more or less absolved me of having to consider nor meet anybody ELSE'S expectations, as long as I can maintain that I am living authentically. But I wonder: is that just a cop-out? Is it just a simple feel-good semantic snippet that allows us to be momentarily selfish, but which we will regret on our deathbed?

My dad once asked me what my ideal job is, and I answered truthfully: a professional baseball player. He then said to me: "OK, would you still be a baseball player if I told you that you woulnd't be a Hall of Famer?"
"Of course," I answered.
"Alright, what if you weren't even going to make an All-Star Team?"
The answer was still yes, simply because the prospect of fame and a nice-sized paycheck, coupled with playing a sport I love appealed to me so much (and still does.)
I would want to be a baseball player even if I were going to be no more than a utility player who spends most of the season on the end of the bench. My dad continued with the hypotheticals: What about, though, if I were going to be a career minor-leaguer, shuttling about on a minor league bus from game-to-game, never tasting the big leagues, and earning $60,000 / year or something. Hmmm...now things start getting a little dicey, and where perhaps the "authentic living" parable starts to break down. I've always had a very strong drive to be "the best" at whatever it is that I do. Sure, there's something to be said about choosing a career that's well-respected by one's peers, but I think the reason this poker thing's been so appealing to me thus far is that I can say, at a relatively young age, "wow, I've reached the upper echelons of my 'trade'", so to speak. Yet I can't kick this nagging feeling that I was meant for 'greater' things...and it's here, at this intersection of monetary remuneration, societal worth, and personal fulfillment that I'm currently spinning my wheels.

I realize that I posed a hell of a lot more questions than I provided answers in my little monologue above, but I simply don't profess to be any closer to solving the above questions than any other Tom, Dick, or Jane. But one of the more worthwhile contributions poker has made to my life is that it's allowed me to thoughtfully consider the preceding queries. I'm not quite sure I would have had the right perspective to even know what questions to ask, had I not been exposed to the life experiences I've detailed to this point in this blog. Perspective. I guess that's what it comes down to. These are big, important life questions. Poker itself might be nothing more than an insignificant game of chance played with slips of paper with different colors and numbers, but the persepctive that it's afforded me in exploring my own values, ambitions, and even insecurities has really been a blessing. I have no idea how disorganized the above must have come across -- I feel as though it addressed only 10% of the things that I've got swirling around in my head, but it's a start.

I've got the Party Poker cruise coming up in a few days, which will allow me to write more about poker proper, if the above philosophical crap was nothing more than an annoyance.