Wednesday, May 31: Comisery

Interesting to see that last post prompt some philosophical debate...I guess it's just further incentive to keep posting here: I try to be nothing, if not thought-provoking.

It's been a whirlwind first 5 months to the year...my poker goal at the outset of this semester was to try and get in 20,000 hands / month...with all the trips I took, I think I came in at around 15 to 18 thousand / month, which I think is just fine, considering I have kept up the winrate I had hoped for. Went to the big 5-year college reunion last weekend, an environment ripe for life stock-taking and nostalgia. Surprisingly, very few people had changed much from what I remembered...many were married, and some were pregnant, but on the whole people looked quite similar to how I remembered them. What I found interesting, though, was that the 5-year reunion registration table was right next to the 10-year reunion table, and I thought those coming back for their 10-year looked noticeably older than us...they looked like -- dare I say -- grown-ups. Full beards, thinning hair, baby strollers -- is that really going to be us in just 5 short years?!?? My least favorite aspect of the reunion was a heavy dose of something that I really thought my classmates had done a good job avoiding in our 4 years of college: a real sense of smug self-importance, almost snobbery. I guess it's to be expected when we all come together for the first time in 5 years, and only have 36 hours (or a 5-minute conversation) to bring each other up to date on what we've been doing since graduation: it's only natural to 'hit the high notes', so to speak. But I just didn't like it: I'm already starting to see that 'cocktail party elitism' that I always found so unattractive when I'd overhear adults at dinner parties, or running into each other on the street when I was younger. Who they worked for, when they got their last promotion, what vacation they have planned for the upcoming year (vacatioN? singular??? I've taken a half dozen in the first 5 months of this year alone! Ugh, depressing.) My own story that I had to tell was pretty unassailable: 2 years of consulting, followed by law school...pretty airtight for a superficial 3-minute rendez-vous with ex-classmates, but I think it still masks to some extent the fact that I have no idea what I would be doing with my life if it were not for poker. My parents, in case you were wondering, are more or less as supportive as 2 neurotic Jewish parents can be: they recognize the fact that with undergraduate and law degrees from two of the country's great schools, I'm not the type who's going to end up homeless on the street...they're happy that I've found something I enjoy doing (between my poker play, and internet businesses), but recognize, as do I, that neither is any kind of long-term career. One of my fraternity brothers I saw at the 5-year, who is actually doing quite well himself (objectively speaking) and is close to being named a VP at his investment bank at the age of 27, heard my story of incessant head-butting with higher-ups at the last couple corporate companies I've worked for (most recently my law firm from last summer), and asked incredulously why I couldn't have just "toughed it out and flown straight" for a measly 3 months instead of being generally unenthused and indifferent toward work that summer. The short answer is: I have no idea -- I seem incapable of feigning interest for work that doesn't fuel any kind of internal passion. I wondered: is this world simply full of people "toughing it out" in jobs that don't stimulate them intellectually? (Not everybody...I know there are a lucky few who can't wait to get up in the morning and get to work, but are the vast majority simply doomed to work in unstimulating careers for the steady paycheck?) And more to the point: without poker (which may or may not be being dealt a blow with the latest proposed bill to regulate internet gambling), would I be resigned to a similar fate? (Or will the revelations about these issues that I've found thanks to poker, and which I've written about here, help me avoid that well-worn and unfulfilling path?)

The fact of the matter is that I actually happen to be extraordinarily happy right now. An odd thing to say, I know, since admitting to being happy seems to be almost taboo in today's culture, which seems to overtly encourage people to commiserate over all the things going wrong in their lives. I can't help but notice that people seem to naturally gravitate toward comparing all of their life miseries: how much they dislike their jobs, how their back is acting up so they can't lift weights anymore, how they hate seeing all of their friends get married, their terrible boss, the fact they had to cancel their vacation last-minute because of work...why is everyone trying to one-up each other with stories of unhappiness and despair? I feel almost ostracized for admitting that I'm pretty happy with how things are going. I've had one hell of a start to the year: A trip to Vegas during the tech and porn conventions (also saw Ludacris do a surprise 30-minute set at a Vegas club), went to the infamous Wing Bowl in Philadelphia, Took a week trip to South Beach for a friend's engagement party followed by a week-long Party Poker Million cruise + tournament in the Carribean, and smaller trips to my friend's farmhouse in upstate NY, the Preakness stakes for a bachelor party, a Yanks-Sox game at Fenway, Chicago (which I had never been to) and a game at Wrigley, Virginia for a softball tournament, Atlantic City, and off to Australia in a few short weeks...I really feel blessed to have had these opportunities, but at the same time it's hard to talk about how great these experiences have been without coming across as a little spoiled, or snobby. But there you have it: Im really happy with how this year's gone so far and not, as it happens, for any poker-related achievements (although they have undoubtedly helped me finance some of the above experiences). I have a few more things to write on these topics, + a post I'd like to make about poker and the (perhaps faux) sense of financial security that accompanies it, but I have to run for now; Chicago beckons.

Saturday, May 20: Hard Work and Leverage

So I went to my law school's graduation ceremonies yesterday: a lot of pomp and circumstance and old men wearing flowery robes: all the accoutrements you'd expect from an elite 170-some odd year old law school. Although I wasn't graduating myself, I figured it would be nice to go and support all my friends who were...I felt a little left out of everything, but they're all equally jealous of my plans to do my last semester in Sydney this Fall while they're slaving away for Big Law. They handed out a graduation pamphlet and an insert at the ceremony that listed all the additional academic honors and individual prizes that were handed out to my classmates, and I started wondering whether I had perhaps done myself a disservice by "mailing it in" during the last year or two of law school. I've sailed along earning mostly B+'s and A-'s, but never really made any effort to go the extra mile, as had many of my peers who took home magna cum laude awards, and other miscellaneous accolades...and I wondered just how different a course my life might have taken these past 3 years had I scaled back on all the fun I had partying with my friends and kept poker only as an occasional diversion instead of an admittedly-serious pastime that occupied a lot of my time. All my law school peers who slaved away such long hours in the library at the expense of their social lives would undoubtedly make better lawyers than me (if I had any inclination toward that profession), but how about in the grander scheme of life? Were the sacrifices I made, and did not make, all worth it?

Poker, as I've written before, really is an absurd anomoly among income-producing activities, in that it really doesn't require much hard work at all...that's not to say my journey from 3/6 to 100/200 hasn't been difficult. In fact, I really pride myself on the studious and intellectual approach I've taken to the game: I've spent countless hours reading a slew of books, learn about the latest electronic tools like PT, PAH and others, analyzing my game for leaks, and practicing, practicing, practicing. But the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of online poker players don't go to these lengths, and even the more time-consuming efforts of players such as myself pale starkly when compared to the long and dedicated hours my law school peers will be required to put in at their firm jobs. If I could be assured, for example, that online poker would continue in its present state for the next 30 years, there is absolutely no reason why it couldn't help me build a nestegg and retire young. That's a very, very flawed assumption, of course, but I'm just trying to illustrate the following: poker has led me to get pretty damn lazy, and I don't like it.

One of my favorite movies is Comedian, a documentary-style movie featuring Jerry Seinfeld, which chronicles his experiences as he "retires" all of his old material and writes / practices / refines a new act from scratch. I've always had a real interest in stand-up comedy (and even did a couple open-mic sets for fun, which was a blast), and one of my favorite parts of the movie is a scene in which Jerry comments on his reputation within the industry as one of the hardest-working comics, with respect to the time he puts into writing and practicing his material. He tells about a revelation that he had one day when he was in his early twenties and spending just a few hours writing every week, as was more or less the norm among comedians at the time. He describes witnessing a group of construction workers trudging back to their worksite after lunch on a cold and rainy day, and thinking to himself: "Look at those guys. They don't want to go back to work after lunch. But they're going. Because that's their job. If they can exhibit that kind of dedication to their construction jobs, there's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to summon the same kind of dedication for my line of work." And that's when he started sitting and writing for 6 to 8 hours every day. On the directors' commentary, the directors both admit that it's a story that really struck a chord them when they heard it as well. Comedy, like poker, is a field in which a lot of people slide by doing very minimal work -- simply because they can -- but if there's anything that I think I can take from these thoughts and the questions I asked myself watching some of my law school peers be recognized for their scholastic accomplishments, it's that nobody, myself included, should ever let the fact that they can get by in their line of work with reduced effort prevent them from applying their skill set to the fullest. I have been extraordinarily fortunate that poker and my internet business have provided me with a decent income stream without ever having to subject myself to 12 to 16-hour days, but at times like this I like to reaffirm my contempt for complacency: I don't like going to sleep at night knowing that I could have worked harder to improve any of my life domains -- be it family, friends, work, spirituality -- and it's something for which my poker successes have led me to be all the more vigilant.

The above musings on hard work led me to think about why it took an event as irrelevant as a law school graduation ceremony to influence me to re-commit myself to something that I've always had the ability to do!! I couldn't help but think about the leverage that important (and sometimes tragic) external events take in shaping the direction of our lives by impelling us towards change. The other day, for example, I had an argument with my girlfriend as I tried to convince her to give up smoking for good (even though she only smokes about a pack / week right now.) How many times have you heard the story of the 2 pack/day smoker who quits cold turkey after painfully watching his/her spouse or other close relative die after an extended and excruciating battle with lung cancer? Or how about people you might know who have had their fathers die, which led them to resolve to get healthy, be kinder to people, or otherwise take positive steps to live a more fulfilling life. It struck me that all these external events that open our minds and give us the leverage to make positive changes are all so artificial. I don't mean, of course, to trivialize the death of loved ones, but ask yourself: just where is this stoic resolve toward change coming from?? It's not some ethereal entity created when we're visited by death, or some other dramatic event. It comes, always, from within us, meaning that we must have the power to create it any time we choose. It's all about leverage. Why should we wait until a loved one contracts lung cancer to quit smoking? Why should our father have to die from a heart-attack at 45 before we resolve to start exercising more? Why should a sibling have to get killed by a drunken driver before we decide to start telling them that we love them more often?? Why, for that matter, should I need a meaningless law school graduation ceremony to remind me that hard work is sacred, and the freedom to love and work in good health is a benefit enjoyed by so very few people on the planet?? Once again: it's all about leverage, and the question, then, is how do we create leverage toward positive change in our lives without having to wait for tragedy to come knocking and do it for us? What can I say: I wish I had a good answer to this, but I don't. If I were an advanced student of neurolinguistic-programming techniques, I might go on to tell you that the first step in creating the aforementioned leverage is to assocate the idea of *not* changing with extraordinary amounts of hurt and pain, and then give you an address to which you can send $49.99 (+ S&H) to get my series of tapes so that you too can live a life as fulfilling a life as me. But I digress...another lesson for another day perhaps. All I can do for now, perhaps, is continue to do my best to recognize opportunities for growth when they present themselves, and hope that others do the same before their hand is forced, so to speak, by events beyond their control.

Wednesday, May 10: What's next?

While it's true that I've been utterly swamped with law school exams lately, the slightly longer time between posts might also be symptomatic of something more worrying: I find I'm simply running out of things to write about. I look back on the early entries in this blog from Fall 2004, and think it's really cool how this thing started out as something of a journal from a guy who wanted to see if he could make a healthy income from poker, and so many of the early posts were just writing about the psychological ups and downs of winning and losing $x in a day...and then gradually it became more of a mouthpiece and psychological outlet for me to discuss things more philosophical in nature, such as where poker might fit into my broader life perspective. There are dozens of blogs out there that talk about nothing except how much the author won or lost, and frankly the last thing I want is for this to turn into one of those trite endeavors, because at the end of the day, who really cares about how much I win or lose at a silly card game?

Anyway, I'm glad that I didn't end the blog last December, which some of you may remember that I was contemplating...I think there have been some really worthwhile posts since the new year. But once again I find myself wondering just how much I have left to say about this poker thing. One of the "revelations", if you can call it that, that the past couple years of poker has given me is that this game, while profitable and usually enjoyable, isn't an answer to any of the *big* life questions...it may be something of a 'facilitator' to allow me to enjoy some of the more fun things in life, but its importance is still dwarfed by the questions of how you can best live a fulfilling life and who you want to spend it with. It's funny: I hardly even talk about poker with my friends at all anymore...to the point where many of them even ask me whether I still play at all (I am indeed playing more than ever...I've just come to appreciate that in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty boring topic, and at the risk of sounding a tad arrogant, there really aren't many people around with whom I can converse about it on my level.)

Anyway, while I don't expect this blog to be ending any time soon, just wanted to explain that the lagtime in posts reflects only the fact that I don't want to let this thing sink to the level of any of the more generic miscellaneous poker blogs out there.

What's next for me

As of this afternoon, I officially found out that I have accumulated enough law school credits to do my last semester in Australia this Fall, and am incredibly excited about it -- I've always wanted to go, and can't wait to be hitting the Aussie beaches as an alternative to slaving away for Big Law, which is the fate that awaits most of my graduating peers. I'm also going to be occupying my time this summer working on an idea I had about a website that I am planning on creating in the next couple months. In one sense it will be an extension of my affiliate business, but I also envision it becoming a humorous, helpful, and very-highly visited website in its own right. To say that I have high hopes for this venture would be one of the biggest understatements I could make...if you've followed this blog for a while, I'm sure you've picked up the theme that I lean a tad more toward entrepreneurial ventures than more traditional and stable employment, and every last one of my entrepreneurial Spidey-fibers is tingling with this idea...I don't mean to be too coy, but I'm not going to talk about it much more until it's launched, hopefully by the end of the month...but I will definitely be floating it here in the coming weeks, and even soliciting feedback on how I can improve it, maybe dangling some incentives for people who shoot some good ideas my way (I've got a few unopened iPods lying around (don't ask me why), and some other rather valuable stuff. Anyway, stay tuned...

On top of the poker world...

Yesterday I had what you might call not a bad day at the office. I also call it a pretty ridiculous day of online poker. PT stats here:



And it struck me that while my ascension up the poker ranks from multi-tabling 2/4 and 3/6 as late as January 2005 has been a series of smallish victories, I really felt like yesterday was a coronation of sorts -- I thought to myself that it was quite possible that very, very few people on the entire planet won more online than did I yesterday. (There are, of course, a subset of poker professionals who play $4,000 / $8,000 or $250 / $500 NL games for which I'm sure this amount changes hands in single hands, but I decided to discount that group of individuals for the purposes of my self-aggrandization.) The above was no doubt a product of running exceptionally well but it's still a nice little anecdote for my poker records, I suppose.

And lastly, a little update on how my NL progress is going overall since I decided to try and learn how to actually play without using a short-stack bitch strategy -- I'm really, really happy with how it's going, and have actually begun looking for good NL tables before scouting out juicy LHE tables (perhaps because it's so much easier to take advantage of fish mistakes...which also makes it somewhat harder to find exceptionally juicy high-stakes NL tables: the fish simply bust out too fast.) Anyway, while 15,000 hands certainly do not a NL shark make, take the following for whatever you think it's worth. It's still quite a ways from the winrates of people whom I'm consider to be the best NL players, but I won't belittle my results too much...it's clearly going well.