"I was born very far from where I was supposed to be so I've always been on my way home."
Bob Dylan
No Direction Home is Martin Scorsese's recently released film biography of Bob Dylan. Highly recommended.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
The Playthings of Meaninglessness
I read Crime and Punishment this summer. It's a great book. I mention this because it is not related to poker.
If you don't play for a living it is all new and fun, but professional poker players can find themselves stuck in that movie Groundhog's Day. When they are not reading the same poker book they've been reading forever they sit at the same table with the same people and eat the same meals and drink the same drinks and say the same things while being dealt the same cards, which they play the same exact way, and then they go home and wake up and do it again.
What I don't understand is the people who play every day out of choice and not necessity. There is a group of wealthy retirees who convene in the afternoons and play a Hi/Lo game at a local casino. They have nothing to do so they play poker. They have nothing of interest to talk about, but they talk anyway. Listening to this septuagenarian cluster of dullards is like being tortured with a slow, sporadic assault of ping pong balls. They rarely raise before the flop and after the flop they usually check their hands down without even betting. If one of them happens to bet he will show his cards to ensure his buddy that he was not bluffing him, as if this is the way gentlemen are supposed to play poker. Someone once stood up in disgust and said, "This is like watching old men die," and left.
I read somewhere of a suggestion for a poker doll. You could pull a string for the appropriate situation, such as the time two players end up splitting a pot with the exact same cards and one of them invariably says, "You play that shit?" I've heard this same comment countless times. It would be nice to be able to pull out that doll and yank the cord at the right moment. "You play that shit?"
A wise man once said there are two roads in life. One leads to immediate extinction. The other is excrutiatingly painful and long.
Pray that you choose wisely.
If you don't play for a living it is all new and fun, but professional poker players can find themselves stuck in that movie Groundhog's Day. When they are not reading the same poker book they've been reading forever they sit at the same table with the same people and eat the same meals and drink the same drinks and say the same things while being dealt the same cards, which they play the same exact way, and then they go home and wake up and do it again.
What I don't understand is the people who play every day out of choice and not necessity. There is a group of wealthy retirees who convene in the afternoons and play a Hi/Lo game at a local casino. They have nothing to do so they play poker. They have nothing of interest to talk about, but they talk anyway. Listening to this septuagenarian cluster of dullards is like being tortured with a slow, sporadic assault of ping pong balls. They rarely raise before the flop and after the flop they usually check their hands down without even betting. If one of them happens to bet he will show his cards to ensure his buddy that he was not bluffing him, as if this is the way gentlemen are supposed to play poker. Someone once stood up in disgust and said, "This is like watching old men die," and left.
I read somewhere of a suggestion for a poker doll. You could pull a string for the appropriate situation, such as the time two players end up splitting a pot with the exact same cards and one of them invariably says, "You play that shit?" I've heard this same comment countless times. It would be nice to be able to pull out that doll and yank the cord at the right moment. "You play that shit?"
A wise man once said there are two roads in life. One leads to immediate extinction. The other is excrutiatingly painful and long.
Pray that you choose wisely.
Monday, September 19, 2005
A Battle of Good and Evil
Poker games can often be a battle of good and evil. You will see people do evil things for absolutely no reason at the poker table. My friend related to me the following story yesterday, which I will paraphrase here and change the names to protect the guilty.
Luke is a professional player. He plays at Casino X frequently with a man named Darth. Darth has the annoying habit of always asking to see player's cards after he defeats them. It's generally accepted that if you beat some one you won't humiliate them by forcing them to expose their cards. For one thing, you may cause a weaker player to leave the game or, worse, become aware of how bad he is playing. Secondly, a solid player's holding will rarely surprise and therefore has little to no informational value.
But Darth is a little man with a superior opinion of himself that he continually seeks to validate.
Eventually Luke ends up in a hand with Darth. Luke flops 3 of a kind and he checks and calls Darth on the flop, turn and river. Then Luke tells the dealer not to muck his hand. Darth shows him 2 pair. Luke nods, says, "Good hand," and pushes his cards forward. Darth points to Luke's cards. "Dealer, I'd like to see those cards." The dealer flips up 3 of a kind, a winner. "Oh," Luke says, pretending to be surprised. "I thought I only had one pair."
The dealer starts to push the pot to Luke. Darth hits the roof. "Call the floor! That's bullshit! He mucked his cards!" The floor is called, but the ruling stands. The cards speak, the hand is live and Luke is the winner. Darth is led to believe if he had just kept his mouth shut he'd be $400 richer. His face turns red, smoke comes out of his ears and he proceeds to go on tilt and ends up losing 2k.
One for for the good guys.
Luke is a professional player. He plays at Casino X frequently with a man named Darth. Darth has the annoying habit of always asking to see player's cards after he defeats them. It's generally accepted that if you beat some one you won't humiliate them by forcing them to expose their cards. For one thing, you may cause a weaker player to leave the game or, worse, become aware of how bad he is playing. Secondly, a solid player's holding will rarely surprise and therefore has little to no informational value.
But Darth is a little man with a superior opinion of himself that he continually seeks to validate.
Eventually Luke ends up in a hand with Darth. Luke flops 3 of a kind and he checks and calls Darth on the flop, turn and river. Then Luke tells the dealer not to muck his hand. Darth shows him 2 pair. Luke nods, says, "Good hand," and pushes his cards forward. Darth points to Luke's cards. "Dealer, I'd like to see those cards." The dealer flips up 3 of a kind, a winner. "Oh," Luke says, pretending to be surprised. "I thought I only had one pair."
The dealer starts to push the pot to Luke. Darth hits the roof. "Call the floor! That's bullshit! He mucked his cards!" The floor is called, but the ruling stands. The cards speak, the hand is live and Luke is the winner. Darth is led to believe if he had just kept his mouth shut he'd be $400 richer. His face turns red, smoke comes out of his ears and he proceeds to go on tilt and ends up losing 2k.
One for for the good guys.
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