Saturday, September 2nd: Poker-boomers, trust fund babies, and bears -- oh my!

Warning: the following is friggin' long. Make coffee.

I recently finished a book that had long been on my poker reading list: The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. It's the story of Andy Beal, a very wealthy Texas entrepreneur who decided that he wanted to challenge poker professionals to the highest-stakes game ever played. He studied the game with unnerving diligence, and became, even by the professionals' standards, one of the best heads-up limit hold'em players on the planet. He reasoned that although the professionals still had a slight skill edge, he might be able to negate the advantage by raising the game stakes to a magnitude that made even rich poker pros nervous, thereby taking them out of their comfort zone and making them 'play scared.' The pros countered his strategy by pooling their money, thereby spreading the risk more broadly among their team. They played as high as $100,000 / $200,000. I'll give the book an 8/10: a compelling read, and I have plenty more to say about it, but have elected to leave that discussion for another day -- it is nonetheless a reasonable segue into what I initially wanted to write about this time around: a discussion of whether the new breed of young rich internet poker players can fairly be compared to or learn anything from another group of young adults with money: those born into it. This is one of those topics that has been on my mind for the better part of 6 months, but I always seem to have difficulty fully wrapping my mind around it and expressing it with any degree of clarity...but I think I'm ready to address it here, although I suspect that you'll have to put up with some degree of opacity and literary inelegance. Bear with me, though, because I think there's something really interesting herein.

I have alluded here and there in my posts to feeling as though I'm experiencing a completely unique situation in that I have a modest degree of financial independence at a relatively young age while expending what most would consider to be minimal effort (at least compared to the 75-hour work weeks that my college friends who are rising through the investment-banking ranks find themselves putting in for similar remuneration.) Perhaps in catering to my own self-importance, I have cast the life questions I'm working through as these epic "never-before-faced" inquiries into the concurrent benefits and challenges associated with having some degree of financial freedom at a relatively young age. These are indeed uncharted waters for this new generation of rising "poker-boomers" -- a really stupid term I coined to refer to those who have exploited the poker scene for financial gain over the last 5 or so years: they're young, have a ton of money, and (with some exceptions) subscribe to the dubious assumption that 'the good times are here to stay'. But this conception vastly overstates the actual originality of the situation: even though I pitch these as issues that have never been contemplated by previous generations , I think that description seriously exaggerates the originality of the situation faced by msyelf, and other younger guys who have been fortunate enough to share in the spoils of the online poker gravy train. There IS, in fact, another group of people who have faced these issues before us, and who continue to do so, although they may never have sat around a poker table, and I discuss them below. (Sidebar: one of the habits you pick up in law school is finding cases that, while perhaps having a slightly different fact pattern, can nevertheless be cited as 'on point' for a particular issue, and that's the general relation that the example I'm about to cite bears to my own situation...it's not an exact mirror, but it shares certain elements, and is ripe for discussion.)

I have a few (non poker-playing) friends who are, to be blunt, set for life. Their parents are exceedingly wealthy and, while they would never come right out and say this, if they didn't want to work for the rest of their lives, they probably wouldn't have to. Just how much money their families are worth I'm not quite sure, but I don't think a $30 to $40 Million figure would be altogether misplaced. They don't flaunt it, and you probably wouldn't be able to pick out who the rich kids were if they were put in a lineup of 10 people and you got to hang out with them all for a night, but it's certainly no secret among their friends that they come from a lot of money and enjoy all the resulting benefits. I remember that when I showed up at my preppy undergrad university, I was immediately introduced to a whole new stratus of wealth. Although I myself came from an upper-middle class household -- I went to a private boys' high school, and my parents could afford to foot a $100,000 college pricetag -- the kind of wealth I was introduced to exceeded any 'privilege' that I had previously contemplated. Their families had summer/winter houses and lakehouses in Aspen, Palm Beach, Europe, and the Carribean. They skipped around town in Lexuses and BMW's, which were usually the 2nd or 3rd cars that their parents had bought for them in their young lives. I always wanted to ask them how it was that these giant new entertainment systems and wardrobes seemed to magically appear in their dorm rooms every couple months, but why bother: I already knew the answer. Even those whose parents didn't spoil them to such an obscene extent were secure in the knowledge that, one day at least, they'd be in line to inherit tens of millions of dollars.

So these fortunate souls, whether they fully appreciate it or not, come from enough money to provide for not only their futures, but most likley their kids' and grandkids' futures as well. So back to the idea that I introduced earlier: this hypothesis that poker-boomers are facing these completely novel situations in being introduced to living with money at a relatively young age -- but these aren't really new questions at all, now are they? Is there a significant difference between a college student who grew up middle-class and now grosses 6-figures from poker, and the rich kid of the same age who has similar financial independence as a result of his parents' wealth? Can the former learn any lessons about happiness and life enjoyment from the latter? Just like the fresh-faced rookie that picks a locker next to the soon-to-retire legend in the hopes of gleaning some of the knowledge and experience from his prolific career, I wonder whether the new poker-boomer generation can soak up worthwhile lessons from these trust fund beneficiaries who have had years and years of 'practice' dealing with situations that the rest of us are contemplating for the very first time.

So the first question I ask of you: has my poker journey to this point been nothing other than playing "catch-up" to these even more fortunate guys who have known wealth their entire lives. Let me pause for a moment to make sure that I'm not misinterpreted here: I'm not suggesting that your bank account balance is the definitive measure by which to evaluate your life's worth (in fact, if you've read this blog from the beginning, you'll recognize that that idea is completely antithetical to my prevailing philosophy.) Rather, I entertain the preceding question to get to the more important inquiry which asks just what, other than money, I've gotten from my poker experiences thus far. Because there IS something else, there must be...if there weren't, then wouldn't you have to concede that I'd be in exactly the same position as I am now had I simply won a modest-sized lottery, or derived a similar financial windfall from an inheritance or the like? If you conceptualize the benefits of poker as only financial, then I think you'd have a hard time denying the "catching up" hypothesis I offerred above, which I reject as insufficient. No, there is something else that I've picked up along the way; something that won't show up on an accounting ledger, but what? Just what are these ethereal benefits that I have drawn from the past few years of poker? Yes, there's the money, all good and well, and the satisfaction that I get from not feeling beholden to any particular employer, be it a giant law factory or something else, but those are the easy answers, and still don't differentiate poker-boomers from other young people with money, like the trust fund babies I pick on above. Well here are a few of the things I've come up with:

1) I have probably spilt more virtual ink writing about this first one than any other because, well, it's the most salient and interesting to talk about: money management skills. And yes, it is a "skill". I'm reminded here of the oft-heard accounts of Powerball lottery winners who are suddenly $35 Million richer, but find themselves dead-broke 5 years later. "How can that be?" you might ask yourself, as I did the first time I started hearing these stories. "How could a coal miner who had lived a comfortable, albeit humble existence on $30,000/yr possibly blow through nearly 1,200 times his previous salary in just 5 years. It practically defies comprehension. The traditional explanation for these tragedies is given in Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series (it was either in those books or The Richest Man in Babylon...I forget which, but read them both, because they're great), and it's that a lot of these people simply never learned how to have money. If you take a guy with poor money management skills, it doesn't matter if you give him $1,000 or $1,000,000 -- it'll all be gone without a lasting trace in short order (says the extreme version of this view.) All that Poker Opportunity Cost stuff I write about isn't just theoretical mumbo-jumbo. It's life management. In many ways, it is life, or at the very least a parable for the value of our short time here on this planet. Individuals born into wealth may know what it's like to be able to buy any trinket they desire, but so very few people will ever be able to say that they know what it's like on both sides of the fence. Was I happy to work 12 hours / week in the campus burger joint for spending money in college or peddling a new energy service door-to-door in high school to annoyed residents, 98% of whom practically slammed the door in my face? Hell no, but they're experiences that I look back on as invaluable in developing my appreciation for what I have now. Listen, I'm not saying I grew up in Cabrini-Green, but I no longer look at my late teens through mid-twenties and contemplate how much better things could have been had I been as financially secure as some of my peers; rather those were fundamentally formative years and I don't think I could possibly have achieved the poker successes I have without an appreciation of what it's like on both sides of the fence.

2) Gratitude: one of the most unexplored, and underappreciated emotions, in my opinion. I have always heard a lot of successful people talk about it: from Oprah to Tony Robbins (a friend of mine took me to one of his seminars a few years ago; pretty cool) to Superbowl MVPs -- and yet I never really "got" what it was they were trying to convey. It's expressed in different terms: sometimes as a feeling of being 'blessed', other times merely 'grateful', 'fortunate', 'lucky', or 'thankful'. It's a sense of humility. A recognition that you're among the most 0.001% fortunate people on the planet. You might think to yourself "yeah, well it's easy to be 'grateful' when you've got fame or fortune", but that's just the rub: this isn't somehow restricted to society's A-list. It's expressed in equal measure by construction men, teachers, heroin addicts, paraplegics, and incarcerated convicts. Isn't it funny how such a motley crew can be united in their appreciation for this emotion, when their lives are as different as you can possibly imagine? Granted, it's probably triggered by different stimuli for each group, but clearly it doesn't depend on any measure of wealth or stature. What is 'gratitude' doing in this list? Well, for the first time in my life, I think I actually "get it." And it's not just a money thing. I find myself walking around actually appreciating my good health, my cohesive and loving family, my supportive friends, the fact that I can play golf on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific while others get dispatched to fight in Iraq with a 1 in 75 chance of returning in a body bag, To give a somewhat silly example, I was walking through a mall the other day, and I thought to myself that I could not think of a single other person in the entire building who I'd rather change places with; I wasn't anywhere close to the wealthiest, smartest, best looking, or most adored individual in there that day, but I was just overcome by a feeling that I was, perhaps for the first time ever, very happy with my lot in life at that particular time. And maybe this has something to do with poker...and maybe it doesn't. But I still felt it belonged in this list, because it's something I'm feeling more and more these days.

3) High-stakes poker, paradoxical though it may seem, has actually lowered my emotional variance in other life domains. The few people who know how high I play usually ask me at some point how I can possibly play my best when there's so much money on the line -- exactly what I used to think, when I'd peer in longingly on the 15/30 game, while I was a 2/4 nit. But just the opposite is true: it's almost pacifying to me, and actually softens my edge. I used to be far more high-strung, walking around with a permanent chip on my shoulder. But when you've dealt with losing 5-figures within an hour or two (an all too regular occurence for me, of late, unfortunately), it's so much easier to keep life's minor annoyances in perspective. When they get your order wrong at a restaurant, fights with your girlfriend, dealing with stupid and/or slow people (what used to drive me up the wall)...none of it really phases me anymore. It's as though I'm on a 24/7 Xanax...but in a good/comfortable way.

4) This one was also pretty big for me, and it ties in to both my poker play, and the work I put into a few affiliate websites. First a very quick story. I had a friend in college who did a 2-year stint at an investment bank after graduation, hated it, and then got a job as an A&R rep for a major music label. His job was to go to 7 to 10 live music shows at seedy New York bars, trying to find and sign undiscovered talent. So his job was to party and schmooze bands (and also do the business thing in a suit when it was called for in the office.) He got paid next to nothing, but I'd never seen him happier in his life. He'd tell me something that I'd heard from a few others from time to time, but never really believed: that he absolutely loved what he did day-in-day-out, and couldn't wait to get to work in the morning. Seemed to me that's what work should feel like, but I'd heard so few people ever gush about their jobs like that, that I wanted to write it off as pure fantasy. Well you know what: I know what he was talking about now. When I took my semester off from law school and worked on my affiliate website(s), I honest-to-God could not WAIT to get up in the morning and start working. And I've felt the same way about playing poker, as I'm sure many of you have. Yes, you could even say I'm passionate about these things, and I've stopped trying to hide it as though it were some sort of deviant lifestyle, even while most of society wants to write it off as just that. I feel as though my eyes have been opened to what work is supposed to feel like. It's kind of like how I went through the first 22 years of my life happily enjoying ice cream, and then I went to Italy and had the authentic gelato there, and had my mind blown. (If you've ever tried it, I know you know what I'm talking about; if you haven't, don't try to imagine it, because you can't.) But here's the most valuable part of the whole thing for me: the take-home benefit wasn't the happiness that I felt playing poker or growing my internet business; rather the real gold nugget was getting to see what was possible. It was knowing that even if you took poker away from me completely, now that I know what it feels like to wake up in the morning excited to get at it -- now that I know that the stories I'd heard about people whose work didn't just get in the way of their enjoying the rest of their lives, but actually was part of that enjoyment weren't just urban legends -- it's just such an empowering feeling. Like I'm in control now. Knowing you don' t have to settle for less. And that's not something you can just get by somebody handing you a plate of money; you've got to learn it for yourself.

You know what I find to be a depressing thought. Consider the following life: Bob goes to college, works for a couple years at an unsatisfying job, goes to law school, goes to work for a law firm for 4 years to pay off his school debts. He's now 32, so he gets married and has a few kids, and finds that to support his family it probably makes most sense to stick around at his law firm where he's now making $250,000 or so per year, which he needs if he's going to foot 3 college tuition bills. Now he's 55, and while he's happy to have a nice house in a nice suburb and well on his way to having enough money to retire, he doesn't understand why he sees a wrinkled shell of his former self looking back at him in the mirror, wondering what happened to all of his idealism and creativity. I'm not crapping on anyone's career choice -- there are actually plenty of people out there for whom what I described above sounds like an absolutley dreamy existence, and practicing law fulfills every one of their intellectual and emotional needs. But this I promise you: the size of that group is dwarfed -- yes, absolutely dwarfed -- by the number of people who don't choose that path, but rather find themselves wandering aimlessly toward it because it's the path of least resistance. The beauty of this journey for me hasn't really been about poker at all...it's been learning to take control of my life. That may sound unbearably self-helpy, but immersed in a discipline like law that turns out so many unhappy practitioners has really driven home just how prevalent career and life dissatisfaction is in our world. I grew to relish the fact that some of my law school peers looked at me like I had 3 heads when I left school -- "What the hell is that kid doing?? Didn't he get the memo that said that we're supposed to do our 6 semesters of law school, and then go out and be important lawyers?? What does he mean you don't have to??"

I had better stop this post here, since it's already way too long and the fact of the matter is that I could probably write an essay-length exposition on each of the numbered points above, but in the interest of time and decency, I will call off the dogs for now. Whew -- well, I take back the caveat that I gave at the outset warning of a disjointed and erratic post...I don't think it came out as garbled as I had feared. In fact, I'm pretty pleased with this entry; it took me the better part of a week to get it all down. Hope it proved worth your time.

Hmmm...this blog has been missing a little flash lately. Too much text, not enough pics. Here's a shot of me climbing the Sydney harbor bridge.

Tuesday, August 29: Six-Figures and Climbing

A relatively useless statistic, perhaps, but this blog has now passed the 100,000 hit mark (and no, I won't indulge you in a debate about the differences between page views and unique visitors. My low-tech hit counter says 100,000+ and I'm happy enough with that.) Hard to believe that I've been at this blog thing for the better part of 2 years now; funny thing is that I don't even remember why I decided to start it up in the first place...nor can I really piece together how or when people started reading it, or when it gained any type of momentum; but here we are, I suppose. There were a couple times that I thought about ending the thing; not because I thought the quality was deteriorating, but rather because I felt like I had discussed everything that I had set out to address...and I liked the idea of 'going out on top', so to speak. But I'm very satisfied with my decision to keep at it. Every so often I'll do some internet searches for mentions of my blog, and it's always gratifying to see that it's something that has actually gained a fair amount of independent momentum as something that other people cite as being helpful or otherwise thought-provoking. That's all I've really ever strived to be. And threads like this one, besides feeding my ego somewhat, always give me a little jolt of adrenaline and remind me that this body of work is something that I'm actually quite proud of. I recently met a guy here in Australia who, upon hearing that I was a law student and played some of poker, commented that there was a blog that I should read that I'd find fascinating, and proceeded to give me the URL to my own blog. I felt a little awkward telling him the truth, so I just told him I'd check it out. Anyhow, enough self-aggrandizement for now.

First off, a section entitled: The Game That Cannot Be Beat. I went to Sydney's resident casino, Star City, yesterday -- a mistake that I guarantee will not be repeated. The rake structure there, although I'd heard rumors about it, is indeed one of the most savage beasts imagineable, such that I don't think the limit games there are even beatable. Just how bad is it? Well, I sat down at a 5/10 table while I waited for something bigger, and the rake was, get this: 10% of the pot, capped at $8 (!!!), in addition to a time charge of $5 / half hour. At most American casinos I've been to, there is either a rake OR a time charge, but both!??? That's just unheard of...not to mention an $8 cap!!! Compare that to a typical online $5/$10 rake, which would be in the neighborhood of 10%, up to a $4 cap. Online you're paying approximately 35 cents to 45 cents per hand dealt (rough calculations). At Star City you pay (by my calc's) between 90 cents and $1.10, or thereabouts. Yes, nearly TRIPLE the rake that you would pay online. So just how good a poker player do you have to be to overcome this additional 60 cents / hand you pay in rake? Well, consider that over the course of 100 hands, you'll be paying the house an additional 60 freakin' bucks. That's 6 BB in a $5/$10 game. So unless you were beating the online game for 6BB/100 or more (which is unheard of, by the way), you'll be in the red at Star City. It's nearly incomprehensible how they get anyone to play there consistently, but I guess when you're the only game in town...I guess all of a sudden the Party Monster extra jackpot drop doesn't look so bad.

Anyway, I was there with an Australian 2+2 acquaintance, and we finally got seats at the $200NL table (which had a similarly preposterous rake structure, by the way: a $1 ante from every player every $@#$%#$ hand), and hmmm....I'm not quite sure how to best sum up what I saw there, but I think the most accurate way of putting it is that I was introduced to what can only be considered an entirely novel card game, based loosely on what we in the West refer to as NL Texas Hold'Em. I could say "the players were bad", but that wouldn't even begin to describe the plays that I saw. At the $5/$10 LHE table, there was ALWAYS at least 6 players, usually 8 or 9 to every flop. One hand had 9 to the flop, and the two hands remaining at showdown were 84 offsuit, which was crushed by 72 offsuit, which had flopped 2-pair. These were not blind hands. They were middle-position limps. At the $200NL table there was typically 5 or 6, and at least every other hand a player would call a pot-sized or all-in bet with second pair or worse. It wasn't a matter of these players ranking low on the NLHE skill-o-meter...rather it was as though they had devised their own completely foreign measure of texas hold'em skill. The blind structure and unspeakably shallow stack sizes were also conducive to crazy action. With a $200 max buy-in, and two five-dollar blinds, a proper raise if there had been a couple limpers in front of you would be up to $40 or $50. If/when that was called by the limpers (it inevitably was), it would leave you with around $150 behind, and the pot was also up in the $120 - $150 range...so you really only had one move: all-in for a pot-sized bet, which would nearly always be called by an opponent if he had a pair or any sort of draw. Long story short, in a little less than 2 hours, I left up $500 or so while my 2+2 compatriate left up $1,200. (Keep in mind this is a $200NL table.) There wasn't a single other player at the table who had won a dime while the two of us were there; we had collectively taken them for around 9 buy-ins, and I'm pretty sure there was no love lost when we decided to pack up and call it a day.

Hmmm....I didn't get to any of the things that had been on my mind that I wanted to write about, but they can wait until later this week.

Friday, August 25: Our New Ambassador

For some reason, blogger was unavailable from my Australian ISP for the last week so I had trouble posting...hopefully this is solved now.

First of all, if you haven't yet listened to (or heard about) the following, if you've got a moment I suggest you listen to the interview with WSOP main even winner Jamie Gold at bigpoker.ca (with which I have no affiliation) -- I was left utterly speechless. Even speaking as a guy who has admittedly never been accused of being too modest, I was practically slack-jawed listening to that interview. This could either be very good for poker in the upcoming year, or very, very bad. We've been blessed with 3 outstanding ambassadors for the game in recent years in the form of Raymer, Moneymaker, and Hachem (in that order, in my own opinion), but this Gold character is a truly horse of a different color. We'll see what comes of this after the ESPN broadcasts...

One of my favorite guilty pleasures on 2+2 is the "Brags, Bad Beats, and Variance" forums. Funny, if you had asked me about how worthwhile such a forum would have been before they created it last year, I would have told you that it was a pretty dumb idea, and would likely be populated by nothing but "online poker is rigged!!" and "check out how bad this beat was" posts. And it IS a dumb idea...but also pretty entertaining to read at times, discussing people's upswings and downswings, and it's somewhat therapeutic when you can read about just how savagely Father Variance can attack even the best players. Whereas most of the other forums retain at least SOME air of decorum and posting etiquette (yes, just a little), the BBV forum is a completely unvarnished smorgasborg of bravado, insult-humor, and pissing contests; a pseudo-Freudian and unapologetic window into posters' poker "ids", and it's occasionally a fun read. One point the forum has really driven home is that the 300-big-bet rule of thumb is very much antiquated. It might be a function of the games getting slightly more difficult, or more aggressive, but I subscribe largely to the belief that it was never really true to begin with, and those suffering downswings greater than the 300BB axiom simply weren't in any rush to divulge it publicly, lest they be labeled big fish. But the BBV forum is now rife with examples that even very good players can and do suffer through 500 to even 1,000 (!) big-bet swoons. Makes me feel a tad better about my recent high-stakes frustrations...I never really calculated just how many BBs it was (my jumps between LHE and NL made that a little complicated), but it was well in excess of the 300BB marker.

I still read the strategy forums every once in a while, but can never seem to muster up the energy to post there...there's just such a thick veil of complete bullshit that permeates nearly every thread. An overwhelming majority of posters simply have no idea what they're talking about, and -- as I've written several times before -- the day my poker education took a huge step forward was the day I stopped treating clueless strategy advice posted by 18-year old Clearasil babies on 2p2 as poker gospel, and realized that I was already playing better than nearly all of them. If you're winning even just 1BB/100, be confident enough in your abilities to realize that you're more skilled than 90% of 2p2'ers, and filter everything you read through your own internal bullshit-meter. One of the biggest problems in strategy threads I believe is the philosophy that there is one, single, correct (or at least most correct) action for every decision point in every hand. That simply isn't true; in fact, an outstanding suggestion that was unfortunately never really adopted on a wide enough scale was the proposal that strategy advice should never be doled out in the form of "this is a clear raise, call, fold", but rather should be given in the form of a ratio like x:y:z corresponding to the percentage of times -- in situations like that -- that one should call:raise:fold. For examnple, imagine a situation where it's folded around to the blinds, the SB completes, the BB raises with AK and the SB calls. Now the flop comes K,7,2 rainbow and the SB leads out with a bet. The BB, sitting there with a very strong holding might make a post on 2+2 wondering how to extract the most from the SB who is unwittingly betting into a very strong hand. The forums are full of knuckle-draggers arguing about the virtues of raising vs. just calling in order to raise on later streets, as though one were correct, and the other were patently retarded. I think a far more illuminating way of approaching the question is an "action ratio" presented in the form of something like 75:25:0, indicating that in situations like this the BB should raise 75% of the time, just call 25%, and never fold. Other, more complex scenarios might produce action rations that look something like 60:30:10.? I think this more appropriately reflects the metagame features of a game of incomplete information; there are substantial advantages to changing up one's style of play, and the stark reality of the situation is that without knowing your opponent's hole cards, there is hardly EVER one clearly-correct course of action in a hand (unless, for example, you hold the nuts and have your opponent betting into you on the river.) Will that "action ratio" proposal ever gain any momentum?? I doubt it; first of all, it relies on the premise that a certain specific scenario could be played out an infinite number of times (or at least with sufficient frequency to be able to employ the ratio with any measure of fidelity). This isn't a Turbo Texas Hold'em environment where one situation can be replayed over-and-over. It's also admittedly difficult to recognize when one decision is 'identical' to a previous one. But most of all, I doubt most 2p2'ers will be ever have the humility to even contemplate that there is nearly always more than one 'correct' course of action -- it's apparently way more fun to respond with "If you think this is a clear raise, you need your head examined, you herpes-ridden douchenozzle."

Tuesday, August 15: Mike Mc-Who?

Far and away, the comment I hear most often from the few people with whom I share my disillusioned-law-student-turns-to-poker story is "oh, you're just like Matt Damon in Rounders." Yep, good ol' Mike McDermott. Hard to believe that movie was made a freakin' decade ago -- I watched it again in its entirety this past weekend and always forget just how eminently watchable it is. In fact, two things struck me about it:
a) just how far ahead of its time it was (I'm not saying it's "1984", but come 'on: it was made when most major casinos didn't have poker rooms, and those that did had just a couple lower-stakes tables in the corner, and it preceded the poker boom by at least 5 years), and
b) just how quickly so many of the scenes in it have been not only mirrored, but even surpassed by current poker trends, to the point of being rendered almost comical in their naivety.

By our contemporary poker standards, is there a more transparent line than Mike's "I'm gonna go all-in because I don't think you have the spades," schtick as he tries to goad Teddy-KGB into calling (presumably with a flush) when he held the 2nd-nut full-houe? I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think the pot was around $5,000 before Teddy led out with a $15,000 bet, Mike saw the $15K and raised an additional $33,000 (into the ~$35,000 pot). Forget for a moment that few expert players will call there with a mere flush on a paired board...but come one: "I don't think you have the spades"? Is any player worth his salt really going to fall for such a first-level-thinking trap thinking: "Guess what? I do have the spade flush, so you're in trouble buddy"!?? Then again, as a novice I never understood any of that stuff, which is probably much closer to the mindset of the average moviegoer, but it's still kind of funny to watch given my current understanding of the high-stakes poker world. It's also cute to see how dominant Mike's poker skill is portrayed: e.g.:
"I didn't have it"
"Since when do you have to 'have it' to take a pot off a hump like that??"

In the montage where he needs to run up $15,000 to avoid having his head smashed in by Gramma/KGB, they cast him as this poker prodigy whose ability is such that he is a mortal lock to eventually bust anyone less skilled than he. Sure, he might be a poker badass, but he's sitting in some pretty tough games...and taking thousands upon thousands out of live $20/$40 games? Really?? And don't get me started on the Johnny Chan scene...I think it's been pointed out on internet forums several times, but they were playing $300/$600 limit. So Johnny Chan 3-bets and folds to Mike's 4-bet, and then asks "did you have it?" Think about that for a second: "Did you have it?"...and remember, it's a LIMIT hold'em game. Seems to imply that 'it' is some sort of made hand such as a straight, flush, or full house...no one would refer to two pair or even a set as "it"..."it", as Chan uses it, clearly implies that there's some obvious texture to the community cards, like 3 to a straight, or flush, and he folds for one additional bet into a pot when it appears as though he's getting at least 10:1 odds?? It's fun to think about, because the more you deconstruct it, the less sense it makes (but still -- awesome scene.) Mike brags with a steely-gaze to Kanish: "I'm gonna outplay this guy, this hand......I sat with the best, and I won!" Uh...yeah, cuz it sounds like your allegedly world-class opponent made an absolutely inexplicable laydown in a limit game. You "won"? Sounds like you took a pot. Uncork the champagne. Anyway, despite the fun that I have at the movie's expense above, it's still got to be one of my favorite flicks to watch start-to-finish.

Non-sequiter: for sports-fans, if you haven't read Bill Simmons' Rounders-inspired article from a few years ago at ESPN here, it's, for my money, one of the best articles by one of the most popular sports-writers of our generation. He also did one Swingers-style, which was equally as enjoyable. I love how he rips on Gretchen Mol as one of the most objectionable girlfriends ever cast on the big screen -- I never realized it until I read Simmons' article, but now every time I watch the movie, I can't help but want to rip her tongue out.
***Damn, I tried to provide links to the Simmons' columns, but it appears as though ESPN, in their infinite wisdom, has made all sorts of back issues, which previously had appeared on the site free of charge, available only to ESPN "Insiders". You need a password now. Sorry...but if you have a password, and want to read them, just google "Bill Simmons" +Rounders and it's like the first result.

More non-sequiter gossip: When I was at the Bellagio earlier this year, I was in a game with a dealer who regularly dealt the "Big Game" in Bobby's Room, and he was telling some great stories about who the biggest winners and losers were in that game. A few tidbits that I remember: Doyle is a modest but steady winner in the game. His son Todd also does well on a consistent basis. David Benyamine is also consistently in the black. Ivey, allegedly, absolutely crushes it. The fish? Dealer told us that Hellmuth regularly gets his ass handed to him, as does Gus Hansen, but that far and away one of the biggest 'fish' in those cash games was Chan...pro's allegedly can't wait to get into the game when Chan sits because he's apparently such an awful cash game player. ("Awful", is of course relative.) Bellande is a complete dick, as is Farha, and most of them are absolute cheap-asses, hardly ever tipping; Dealer mentioned Ivey as a more gentlemanly exception. He also mentioned that all the pro's make huge loans to each other -- think 7-figures -- on an undocumented honor system right across the table in cash/chips. My legal spidey-senses have serious problems with that, and you can bet your ass whn I sit in that game someday I'll put that shit in writing, if for no other reason than not to forget the details. As I was cashing in my measly $2,000 at the window, Gus Hansen comes up beside me and casually drops $800,000 in loose chips from his pockets into his security deposit box. Suddenly my meager successes don't look so impressive.

As for yours-truly as Mike McD: well, the analogy's not altogether misplaced. He's an analytically-minded law student whose legal acumen is vastly outweighed by his poker prowess, played by one of Hollywood's most sought-after ladies'-men...and I'm...well....most of those things. As far as clear progress markers in my poker career, it's been easy to identify the graduated steps as I've moved up through the stakes from 3/6 to 5/10 to 15/30 to 30/60 and even my latest (less succesful) foray into 100/200 and $5,000NL. But I also remember feeling somewhat proud when I eclipsed the poker accomplishments of the vaunted Mike McDermott (or at least matched him in stakes). In the opening scene, he drops his entire $30,000 bankroll (we'll leave a discussion of the wisdom of playing for your entire bankroll 3-handed against other known sharks for another day). A 30-grand downswing? Shit, I've done that 3 times in he last 2 months alone! I remember watching the movie for the first time (not until around 2001) and wondering how a simple law student could lose "3 stacks of high society" and still function as a human being. I mean, 30 grand in the blink of an eye!! You'd have to be nuts to put that much money on the table, right?!! Well now that I'm also 'drinking the Koolaid', so to speak, it's funny that my mindset in viewing that scene has shifted from identifying more with Mike's "$30,000 / life savings goes poof, someone kill me now" to Kanish's more even-keeled reaction of "meh, everyone goes bust every once in a while -- get back on the horse, I'll stake you." (You might also have noticed, as I did, that the big hand he lost was a $100,000 or greater pot, meaning he'd run his initial $30,000 up to at least $50,000 before getting stacked...uh...I'd have been mighty tempted to get up and walk away having nearly doubled my entire bankroll in one night.)

Relatively unnoticed in the last couple years is how rapidly online stakes have risen. A mere 2 years ago, 15/30 was the highest game offerred by Party, and there were only 6 to 8 tables going. (I remember I was playing 2/4 and 3/6 at the time, and occasionally peered in on those games, wondering how anyone could play at stakes that high and not go beserk when they lost to a suckout.) Then they opened up 2 30/60 tables, for which the waitlists were always 20+ people...and my sense of incredulity about the amount of money that was being won and lost increased only further. Hard to believe that just 18 months later, I'm buying into 100/200 games, deigning the 15/30 'microlimits' -- tables that used to represent the highest echelon of online ranks and elicit feelings of wonderment and awe as barely worth my time. That's not intended to be a brag, but more of an observation on how rapidly our standards have changed; sort of reminds me of growing up and playing the old-school Final Fantasy and Zelda video games...after I'd spent weeks playing to build up my characters' strength, agility, and fighting experience, and outfitted them with the most powerful weapons and armor that you could find in the game, I'd go back to the novice-level villages where they start you out at the beginning of the game, and wander around the forest until I was attacked by the 'entry-level' villains like weak imps, orks, and wolves -- bad guys who were actually kind of hard to defeat when you were at the start of the game and didn't have any strength or good equipment -- and I'd beat the living hell out of them with whatever advanced gamma-ray blaster weaponry I had bought for my players in the more advanced levels...alright I'm not sure where I was originally going with this analogy, but I'm sure that anyone who grew up on Final Fantasy knows what I'm talking about appreciates the effort nonetheless.

By the way: RSS set up!
I finally got off my lazy butt to enable an RSS feed for this blog. The address is http://zbasic.com/atom.xml -- don't ask me any RSS questions...I really don't understand what it is or does and can't answer technical questions...but perhaps some of you who do use RSS feeds can confirm for me that it's working properly. I just followed RSS-for-dummy-bloggers instructions.

Friday, August 11th: Higher Stakes gone wrong...

OK, after a couple lifestyle/philosophical posts, back to talking about some poker. So back in early July I proclaimed that I'd grown weary of the 20/40 and 30/60 "microlimits", and vowed to step it up to even higher stakes. After all, I thought, I often see games just as juicy as the ones I play all the way up to $100/$200, and it's the exact same game with the same rules, just with different color chips...and it had sure paid off when I jumped from 3/6 to 15/30, and again when I made the move up to the 20/40 and 30/60 games. So I dove in full speed...not adding one or two tables at a time or anything, I was 4- to 6-tabling 50/100 + and $5,000 NL.

Ouch. Yes, I believe that's the word that best describes my higher-stakes experiment. I think I can best illustrate the results graphically: in a somewhat cruel twist, I've managed to sustain a 3+ BB/100 LHE winrate since my early-June proclamation (same as before)...except those BB's have simply come in the 'wrong' games. Here's 2 charts (in dollars) breaking down my results since June 1st, the first showing the game selection that I was previously most comfortoable with -- 20/40, 30/60, and $1,000NL -- and the latter showing my results from the higher-stakes games I had vowed would be my new stomping ground: 50/100 through 100/200, and 2,000 through 5,000NL. I think those results speak for themselves. So I retreat now to the friendly confines of 30/60, which I hope will welcome me back with open arms.

LOWER STAKES


HIGHER STAKES

P.S. that precipitious drop was the result of getting stacked for $5,500 at a $25/$50NL table...funny, I don't even remember what the hand was...but it's obviously officially the most I've ever lost in a single hand.

So just what went wrong? Hmmm...well, don't really know -- really wish I could point to one thing that was responsible besides running unspeakably bad. Here's one thing that I think might have played a role, although it's a bit of speculation on my part. I never really used to pay attention to how good the good players were at a table I sat down at...the only thing I really cared about was finding tables with a sufficient number of donators -- typically my standards are 2 fish for a 6-max table, or 3 for a 10-max. But in reflecting on my higher-stakes experiences, I realize that I should also be taking a hard look at who the other sharks are at my table...it struck me that a SH table of 1 huge fish, 3 mediocre players and 1 above-average opponent is an entirely different beast than one with 2 big fish and 3 very skilled players...and that's exactly the makeup of the tables I typically found myself at when playing 50/100 and up. There were still the same huge fish (still haven't figured out where they get all their money), but the caliber of non-fish opponent was much higher, and I don't think I properly adjusted to that. The fact of the matter is that as good as a limit player as I think i am, the edge I have over other expert players is really miniscule (that is, if I even have an edge at all). Limit hold'em is just so mechanical, that there simply aren't many decisions to be made; raise, fold, call, or check. That's it. That's the whole game. So I found myself sitting at tables with 4 above-average to expert players, all trying to extract money from the same fish or two, and I don't think I properly adjusted to playing other experts...fact of the matter is that I simply don't get much opportunity to do so, because I have been so judicious about my table-selection at the lower limits...playing at a table with 3 other very skilled players is simply not something I've had much experience doing, because even at stakes as high as 20/40 and 30/60, the "good" players are indeed quite good, but I don't think approach the caliber of players that dominate the highest-stakes games.

That's all that's going on on the poker front for now...I'm living a pretty carefree existence. Taking 3 relatively easy classes, trying to improve my golf game on the nice course right behind my apartment...it's mostly par 3s and 1 par four, although far better maintained than your average pitch-and-put, and I'm shooting mostly 4s and 5s, which -- while it may not sound like much -- is pretty good for me. Taking Muay Thai kickboxing classes, which is making me realize that while I'm pretty strong, my overall fitness leaves a lot to be desired....hmmmm...ordered myself a kettlebell, which I'm pretty excited about, as I hear those things kick absolute ass. Funny thing about being down here too: I don't think I've mentioned poker to a single person. Being transplanted to an entirely new location, where I didn't know anybody, has esentially forced me to go back to Square-1 regarding meeting people and and doing the whole introductory song-and-dance: sharing what you do for fun, work, etc. It's really made me realize what a deviant lifestyle I live. Actually, I shouldn't say that I haven't mentioned poker to anyone...my next-door neighbor is a cool guy from the US who is down here investment banking and I forget how we started talking about poker, but I actually let him watch me play for a half hour or so -- I didn't dare play above 20/40, because I could tell that even a guy who made as much money as he did from work was pretty amazed at how cavalierly (sp?) people won and lost $800 pots online...and I realized that in my life I don't think I'd ever let anyone watch me play -- and I remembered why...I got really self-conscious and (despite winning a tidy $500 in front of him) wondered if he now thought I was some trust fund baby who didn't think twice about winning/losing 4-figures within 20 minutes. For whatever reason, I have a complex about making sure that people understand that I DO value money, and understand that I'm in a very fortunate position to be skilled at something that generates good money with relatively little effort. But somoene who doesn't know that I grinded my way up from the 2/4 and 3/6 tables less than 2 years ago, and just sees me plunk down $1,000 to play 20/40 might think that I really am that capricious with money...which I always thought was a quite negative quality. I've actually got much more to say about this, but I feel like I'm rambling now, so I'll end this post now and pick up in a couple days.

Sunday, August 6: The Great Beyond

10 days ago all of my law school friends brought their scholarly track to a conclusion by taking the bar exam, one of the most daunting challenges in all of academia. The typical course of action is to relax for a couple week in May after finals are over, then begin Bar-Bri, which is basically summer school to prepare you for the bar, consisting of 5 days of 6-hour classes, and (so they recommend) 6 to 8 hours of home study each day. Pretty brutal, and I'm not looking forward to tackling it if I ever sack up and decide to take the bar myself...although I'm somewhat averse to it, I'm slowly coming around to the realization that I should probably do it so that I have something to show for my law school experience...and I know that if I don't take it soon after graduation, I'll probably never get around to doing it. Owing to my semester leave to pursue all things poker, I graduate in December, and would take the bar in February or July next.

So after 8 weeks of Bar preparation courses and few social outings, everyone goes up to Albany, or wherever they're writing their State's bar exam and tries to focus for the 2-day exam, after which they all celebrate by getting blackout drunk and going on what's known as a "bar trip", which is basically a big blow-out travel extravaganza from early August through whenever they have chosen to start working at their law firm...usually in September or October.
The premise of the bar trip is: "this really is our last chance to travel the world before we have to buckle down and start working 12 to 16-hour days 6 days each week as junior associates at our firms." So most of them are currently off on 6-week travel excursions through Europe, Eastern Asia, Hawaii, etc.; a couple are even going to swing down here through Australia and pay me a visit. I find the whole concept of "bar trips" somewhat depressing (although I understand that the modest financial freedom that I get from poker allows me to take that position). While they're generally exciting and carefree (and conveniently bankrolled by $5 - $10K advances from the travelers' employers-to-be), they've got to be colored by a pervasive feeling of dread, like a sword of Damocles constantly reminding them: "this really is the last time I'm going to be able to take a carefree trip like this for a long, long, long time." I shudder just thinking about that.

Sure, some of my classmates are 6-figures in debt and really have no realistic option other than to take a $180,000 salary, which still will only allow them to pay off their loans in 5 to 7 years (I woulda thought sooner, but interest is a killer, so they tell me.) But many others have little to no debt and they're still buying into this whole corporate law thing, even while acknowledging that they're preparing themselves to absolutely hate it. I feel like shouting from the rooftops "You don't have to do this with your lives!!" (In fairness, a few of them are really looking forward to law firm life, and I'm sure will be terrific successes...if they can handle the lifestyle.)

Meanwhle I'm down here in Australia chugging along. It's really curious to watch the busloads of tourists that drive by my apartment, even in the dead of Winter, although it's still in the mid-60s here. The bus stops at the observation deck above the sandy beach, they all disembark with their digital cameras, pose for a few snapshots, some take off their shoes and venture out to the tides in their suit pants, then put their shoes back and get back on the bus, I suppose happily ticking off "see beach" on their vacation's to-do list. It really brings home for me how fortunate I am to literally live somewhere where other people come to vacation...it's an odd dynamic, isn't it? Reminds me of the folk story about the corporate bigwig who takes his family on a Carribean vacation, and the waiter who brings him his drink on the beach hears him complaining to his wife about how many hours he's been putting in at the office, so the waiter asks "Sir, I hope you don't mind me asking, but why is it you work so very hard at a job you appear to dislike?" And the man replies "I work hard because it lets me take vacations like this to beatiful beaches." The waiter, confused, replies "But I serve drinks for only 4 hours per day, and I get to come to this beach 365 days a year." Makes you think about why it is that people assign such a high value to traveling to warm locales just so they can get away from their 'real lives.'

Although I really like the balance that I've found in recent months, and it might seem like I really am 'living the life', it's also eerily isolating...I'm happy and carefree in some respects, but I also feel to some extent like this makes it harder to relate to those who, even against their better judgement, have chosen the corporate rat-race...these are my best friends, and it kind of scares me that our lives seem to be diverging in a rather fundamental way. My experience at the Univ. of Sydney so far has given me a pretty interesting vantage point on this whole thing...see, law school in Australia (in fact in most parts of the world other than North America) isn't 'grad school', as we would think of it in the US where everyone does a 4-year undergraduate degree and then can enroll in a 3-year law school program to get their law degree. Here "law" is more like an undergraduate 'major' that students can enroll in right out of high school, and complete in 4-5 years. So it's populated largely by 19 - 22 year olds...although maybe around 20% of the students are in their mid-twenties like me. So I had a bit of a weird night last weekend, when I was hanging out with a friend from law school here who lives in the school's dorms with a bunch of American study-abroad undergraduate students, so they were mostly 19 to 21, and we went to a houseparty one of them was throwing. It was quite a mindfuck to be surrounded by this whole gaggle of undergrads, and while I don't think I looked all that out of place (since I look pretty young and could probably pass for 20 - 22), it was maybe the first time I've realized that I just don't 'belong' in that scene anymore. I mean, being amonst those undergrads, part of me wanted more than anything to still be that carefree; to still have that set of life priorities; for my goal 4 days out of every week to be to see how drunk I could get and still find my way home; never having to pay a bill of any kind, or wonder what type of career I might find most fulfilling. And so there was one voice telling me "well what the hell's stopping you?? Grab the funnel and relive those glory days." But I couldn't shake the other voice telling me that I just wasn't that guy anymore. I had that window in my life, and I exploited the hell out of it and had an absolute ball...and I don't really know if I want to do it again. To loosely borrow a theory from Floyd in "Dazed and Confused", all I ever really strive for in life is to be able to say 'you know what, I did the absolute best that I was able to, and lived to the fullest during that time in my life, even if I didn't always come out smelling like roses', and I really do think that's a standard I mostly lived up to in law school -- and during most of my undergraduate years (although not so much during my 2 years in New York in between.) And it's just this awfully strange feeling now to be surrounded by images of what I used to be but no longer am, and at the same time see my law school friends go off and start their law-firm lives, all the while not really being drawn to that world either...I've always relished taking the path less trodden, but that approach - bold as it may seem - inevitably comes along with these periods of isolation and doubt, wondering if everything would just be easier if I joined the masses and followed the well-worn path to corporate America that has turned out just fine for generation after generation. Age has always stood apart as one of the more curious labels people seem to get hung up about. We all have these ingrained expectations about things in life we're supposed to have accomplished by certain ages. Education, marriage, employment, promotions, procreation, self-sufficiency, spirituality. I sometimes wonder what I'd feel like if one day I found out that my birth certificate was off by a few years, and I wasn't actually 26 but rather 29. While I currently have all sorts of imagery about what life is supposed to look like at 30, would finding out that I don't actually have 4 years to get there, but rather only 1 change my approach to things, or my assessment of my life's accomplishments to date? People love to remind you that 'life is not a race', but isn't it also undeniable that society attaches certain expectations to your age? Madding in some respects, yes, but if that's 'just the way it is', why should I waste my breath debating the principle's validity? I've written plenty that one of poker's greatest benefits for me has been that I no longer feel beholden to any corporate entity to earn my keep...it's a luxury and a challenge, because making decisions, like it or not, is hard. I don't mean the little "what should I have on my salad?" decisions, but the big ones that shape the direction of your life. My path to this point has been very scripted: finish up high school, go to college (as if that was an option), work a couple years in an office, go to law school...maybe one of the most well worn paths for children of middle-to-upper-class Baby Boomers, and now with mere months to go before I graduate, I find myself reluctantly tip-toeing toward the edge of my known universe and peering out darkly into a world of possibilities that I realize few people on the planet have the good fortune to choose from, and it's exciting, invigorating, and terrifying.

(Oh yeah, I guess this blog is supposed to maintain some poker content. Well, I am retreating from the higher-stakes games with my tail between my legs, back to my 30/60 - 50/100 haunts; details on my painful higher-stakes 'education' to come...)

Thursday, August 3rd: Tournaments are gay.

So I wrote before that one of the few misgivings I had about coming down to Australia was that the start of school down here conflicted with the World Series of Poker, where a few of my friends were playing this week (although to the best of my knowledge, they've all been knocked out of the main event by now, and they're only just now finishing day 2.) I really wish I could have played there, just for the fun experience, but -- in one of my few moments of life lucidity -- I chose school over poker.

I'm not all that bummed, though, because one of my long-standing beliefs is that tournament poker is one of the worst possible measures to assess actual poker skill, but we (or more accurately, the media) have put it up on this pedestal as the ultimate test of poker acumen. I have infinitely more respect for cash game players grinding out profits than I do for nearly anyone who pencils himself in as a poker shark on the basis of one or more big tourney scores. There's a myth out there, perpetuated over the last couple of years in the media, and it's the myth of the marquee poker professional; the one or two "name" players at every final table that TV poker commentators love to point to as evidence that, despite the luck factor in poker, the "cream" ultimately rises to the top. To quote Chris Rock in pretty much any stand-up set he's ever performed: "Please cut the f*@#!$% shit!" The fact of the matter is that the biggest reason for the presence of a few 'name players' at final tables these days is simply the law of large numbers. Think, for a moment, about how many pro poker players you could either name, or whose name/face you would recognize if you saw it...I think that number would probably be around 300 for me...hmmm...maybe that's a bit high...perhaps more like 200-250. Regardless, while TV commentators hurry to point out poker pro's X and Y at the 10-man final table, they discount altogether the hundreds -- yes HUNDREDS -- who have been knocked out to get the that point, whereas 8 complete donkeys remain.

It's easy, of course, to understand why the media has so much invested in perpetuating this myth: the viability of commercializing TV poker depends on it. Who, after all, wants to watch 10 complete unknowns play poker. No, much better to have a few professionals mixed in about whom you can really tell a story. After all, what makes a more compelling story line: Joe Blow, TV repairman battling and Bill Smith, insurance salesman, or Greg Raymer being seated with Mike Matusow, just a year removed from their memorable trash-talking / Matusow crying session in the 2004 WSOP. The popular media need us to believe in this myth of individual poker greatness in order to sell the people -- it's the people and the individual brands they create that boost ratings and sell advertising. I think it entirely possible that the best tournament poker player in the world today (the word "best" is somewhat ambiguous too, but let's just say it means the most technically proficient) has never won a major $5K+ tournament in his life. You may never have even heard of him/her. That's how much luck is involved in tournament poker.

Here's the problem. One of the most important (and at the same time difficult) concepts people need to grasp in order to play winning poker is variance, and just what constitutes the "long term". A popular question on poker bulletin boards is "Just how many hands do I need to play before I can trust my BB/100 number, or know that I'm definitely a winner or loser?" The answer given varies, but usually comes in somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000. I think one of the most insightful (and likely) responses, however, was given by the poster who claimed, somewhat controversially, that the actual number of hands one would need to play in order to establish one's "true" BB/100 was many, many times higher than the oft-quoted 50K - 100K. That poster actually had a sound mathematical basis for making that claim, which included considerations of standard deviation, risk of ruin, etc, etc, but the take-home point was that, in short, it simply takes a helluva lot of hands to reach "the long run". Nearly all poker players will die before ever coming close to approximating what their 'true BB/100' (that is, the BB/100 figure that their current playing skill/style would generate if continued to infinity) actually is. A lot of people have expressed admiration at the high BB/100 I've been able to sustain, but according to those calculations, my 'actual' BB/100 could vary by as much as 2 or 3 whole big bets / 100 from where it stands now (after 500K or so hands).

Anyway, why have I gotten distracted talking about all that long-run 'nonsense'? Because if you're suprised that 500,000 hands might still not yield all that precise a predictive future long-term winrate, do you honestly believe we can make any substantive determinations from the 1,000 or so that will determine this year's WSOP winner? 1,000 hands is nothing, and yet that's exactly what is going to decide who the media annoints as one of the best new poker players on the planet a week from now. How about the poker wunderkind-du-jour, Jeff Madsen who, at 21 years and 7 weeks just won 2 WSOP bracelets, and made 2 more final tables, out of the 6 WSOP events that he entered this year. Simply put, with fields as large as they are this year, that's probably the single most impressive feat in the history of the WSOP. Is Jeff good? Anyone want to drink the Kool-Aid? Not me. Again, I'm not picking on Jeff in particular, just on the folly of drawing conclusions from any time frame so short in duration. Had 1 or 2 of his all-in coin flips gone the other way, and he's back to community college, and you'd have never heard of him. Read his interview with Cardplayer Magazine here; actually an interesting read, if you ask me.
(First of all, I won't rag on the guy too hard, but "I also borrowed money from my college fund that my grandfather had put away for me. I got just enough money to play in six tournaments and make a run for the final event."?? What the F are that kid's parents thinking? -- alright, no more judgements for now.) This kid will now walk around the rest of his life -- yes the rest of his life -- believing he's a poker natural, because in his "long run", he simply had the exceptionally good fortune of having his "hot streak" come near the beginning of his poker career. Last year's WSOP winner, Joe Hachem, for example, will be a "winning poker player" the rest of his life. I'm not picking on him in particular (in fact, he seems like a really nice guy), but I cite him only because he's won the biggest single prize in the history of poker (until another unknown overtakes him in a couple weeks for $12Million). Does that make him good? How about the fact that he's now going to be seen sitting in the highest-stakes cash games at nearly every casino he visits? Are you impressed yet?

Long story short is it's pretty much impossible to ever reach the "long-run" in NL tournament play, and I'm just frustrated with the undue importance placed on individual tournament wins by the media and public at large. There are several very well-known poker pro's who have made a few big scores in NL tournaments, and thus have 7-figure bankrolls, who are, by all accounts, absolutely terrible players, from a technical standpoint. Whenever they sit in the "Big Game" at the Bellagio, the better cash game players lick their chops at the dead money that's sitting down. Is this post an indictment of all tournament professionals? I know it will be taken by some readers as such, but that's not the intention. A lot of the poker pro's themselves realize the razor thin +EV they actually have over even the worst of the worst in NL tournaments. How else do you explain the complaining that's coming more and more these days from pro's who lament that the WSOP fields are just getting "too big", and that the buy-in for the main event should be raised, or the # of entrants capped. From a purely EV standpoint, they should welcome each and every player who plays worse than they do in a given tournament field. But they don't. Instead a lot of them complain that it's becoming more or less impossible to navigate through the minefield of thousands of "internet donkeys." That counterintuitive line of reasoning is evidence of the relatively depressing realities of NL tournament play.