1) Initial tournament will be restricted to 16 teams (32 players) or just 8 teams if that's all we can round up.

2) Teams will sign up as pairs, and to sign up, you email me at Euchre -@- UpForAnything.net. If you do not have a partner, and wish to play, drop your name in the comments and find one that way. You CAN NOT sign up as a team through the comments. You must email me.

3) All games will be played on Yahoo! Games.

4) Initial rounds will be best of 3 games, semi-finals will be best of 5 games and finals will be best of 7 games.

5) Once the tournament kicks off, teams will have one week to finish their round. Results can be posted in comments here or emailed to me at the address above.

6) There is no prize beyond pride in knowing who the best team is. If teams wish to wager amongst themselves, that's their choice.

7) All decisions of the Touranment Commissioner (me) are final.

"Just keep the money off the table," Al had said as he spun in frantic circles from band stage to poker game making sure everyone was happy, everyone was getting drunk, and everyone would at least have the briefest of opportunities to confirm Bobby Bracelet's junk.

I was comfortable from the start of the game. I'd played with several of the guys before, and the others fell into a familiar rhythm quickly. And it was only because The Rooster check-raised me early in the game that I vowed to keep an eye on him.

Something about him was cagey, and I wasn't sure I liked it one bit. Early in the game, as he pecked away at the others stacks, I decided to look him up once. And I saw, he didn't have as many eggs in his basket as he'd been counting on or representing. Cagey, indeed.

***

"The upstairs bar opens at 4pm," Al said and disapeared again in a cloud of smoke and goodwill.

I stood and climbed the Boathouse outdoor stairs. At the bar, Steve stood with two beers and some money in his hand. Al sat at the bar with a shot of Soco in front of him.

I only mention the moment because it was the beginning. Not the beginning where Eva, princess to us all, picked me up at the airport and took me to Delaware for cheese steaks. Not the beginning where she drove me around listening to the Gourds and waiting on BadBlood. Not the beginning where I sat down with The Rooster and the rest of the fowl. But the beginning where I started drinking.

Steve, who had offered to by the first round, walked away with the money and his drinks in his hand muttering something about "being first in line and getting pushed to the back." That's what happens around here, it seems.

***

There have been nights like this in my drinking career, but none I think I enjoyed quite as much. If I were Hunter Thompson, I would make up the things that happened in between the memories and make them sound like I was in control the entire time. However, since I've learned there is both photographic and video evidence to the contrary, I'll just leave those parts out and settle on the highlights.

---- Me: "There is a better than reasonable chance I'm going to fall in love with the lead singer of the band at some point this evening." Someone please e-mail me and tell me if I ever did and, if so, did I ever express it?

---- Big Mike, the most generous man I have ever met, refusing to let me pay for a drink, but at the same time, being understanding enough to let me put as much as I cared to toward the bar staff and charity.

---- Eva has a tattoo

---- Bobby Bracelet is the hardest working man in all of junk confirming. I have never seen such diligence. It was as though if he was not thrice confirmed by sun up, children would die. He really took one for the team this weekend.

---- Me: "What are you guys doing?"
Bloggers: "Paying this girl money to see her boobs."
Me: "All of her boobs or just a portion of her boobs?"
Blogger #1: "She has a really nice bra."
Blogger #2: "Trust me, it's worth it."
Me: "Will ten bucks cover it?"

---- Girl: "Could I get through here?"
Me: "Give me just a second okay?"
Girl: Says something rude and unintelligible
Me: "If you could get through here, what would you want?"
Girl: "A Coors Light."

Moments later, when I have ordered the girl a Coors Light, she is gone. I find her five minutes later.

Me: "You know, I bought you a Coors Light."
Girl: "I see that. (Pause) Can I have it?"
Me: "Um...I don't think so." (Walks off drinking the beer)

----And finally...

Boom shot in from the outside of the bar, rising up above Lewey Hill, through the back entrance, across the hardwood deck, and to the bar. Otis, BadBoood, Big Mike, Al, and Eva are spread out around the bar as Mike writes a check to the Boathouse and makes a joke about it bouncing.

Suddenly, Otis is aware of his surroundings again. He's not sure how long it has been since he was not. All he knows is that someone is talking about the Borgata and his having won a free weekend there.

Otis: "I won what?"

Indeed, it was that kind of night.

***

How did this happen? Well, it happed because of Al, Eva, and Big Mike. You don't know party hosts until you've met these people.

That's the main reason. But there is another reason. And he's cagey.

The game was seven stud. I had TJ/Q on the deal. The Rooster was being aggressive, asserting his cocksure attitude around the table.

Something in my soul told me that this was my hand. Something told me the three card straight would turn into something good. No matter what The Rooster did, I was going to snuff it.

By fifth street, a nine and king had fallen. I was good. Five cards, one straight. The battle between the Rooster and me would soon be over, I thought. Looking at his cards, looking at his face, remembering his betting patterns, I knew one thing. He needed his river card to beat me.

When the river hit, he looked. BadBlood saw it as well as I did. Even when he checked, I didn't believe it. I still put out my bet and called his check-raise.

"You boated up on me on the river, didn't you?" I said.

The Rooster looked up and smiled. "I boated up on you on the river," turning over his hole cards to show the full house.

I stood for a couple of seconds and walked around the deck for a few minutes. The Rooster was a better player than I remembered. His game was more aggressive than I remembered. Even that stroke of luck on the river didn't make him seem lucky. He was, in short, good. And it was me, frankly, who got lucky catching the straight in five cards.

I walked back over to the table and realized that I couldn't play cards any more.

And so, then, friends, I went and got drunk.

Thanks to Al, Eva, Big Mike, and all the folks at the Boathouse for making it a helluva 24 hour run.

I'm going to need a few weeks to recover and a lot of help remembering it all.

***

I'm a wanderlusting Otis. There hasn't been a point in my life when I didn't want to just disappear for a while and tell no one where I was going. When I was a kid, I'd conjure up knapsack trips into the nearby woods. In college, I'd imagine a long cross-country drive that ended in New Orleans or Las Vegas, two cities where I knew I could blend into the melange, just another lost soul. But, I always told myself, I would be the soul that had actually found itself.

These days, adult times to be sure, the dreams rear their little head every once in a while. And, of course, they take me to strange places. Sometimes it's some non-touristy beach in the Caribbean. Sometimes it's somewhere in the American Northwest. It's always somewhere where nobody knows me.

Many people in my life have misunderstood this little revelry as a lack of satisfaction or love for my real life. Nothing could be further from the truth. There have been very few times in my life where I haven't been satisfied with my life. Even now, in what can only be described as the best of times, I still fantasize about running away from time to time.

It's a romantic and mysterious notion to be sure, and one I almost surely will never act on. A man has responsibilities and he would surely miss everything, even if he were only gone for a while. That's why those romantic and mysterious notions are fantasies. Fantasies are fun. I mean, I surely won't end up in bed with a couple of women at once, but that shouldn't stop me from thinking about it every once in a while (or maybe it should, now that I think about it).

***

At the bar, he eventually convinced the bartendress to talk to him. The tourists had long since gone to their hotel rooms to put aloe on their sunburns. The sunset had been as pretty as you might expect. The beer was colder than his romantic notions had allowed, but that was probably better. The island beer tasted a little skunky unless it was exceptionally cold, and thankfully, that's how Lisa kept it.

Yeah, the girl behind the bar's name was Lisa. She wasn't an island girl. She'd made the trek to the island from Southeast Missouri after a life of listening to people pronounce her hometown, Haiti, as HAY-TIE. She played guitar like Sheryl Crow who had grown up just down the highway. Lisa liked ballads about beer, getting lost, and boys who aren't mean.

She'd intended to come to the island and sing at a bar while dark men sipped their drinks and the sun set behind her. When she landed in the airport, the a-string on her guitar broke. That really wasn't the reason she wasn't singing, but that's what she told people who asked. When she first started telling the story, she's said her "g-string" broke, but that got too many snickers from the peanut gallery.

He hadn't made the mistake of mentioning the g-string when she told her story and shared a beer with him. Instead he said, "You have simply impossible legs."

And Lisa didn't seem to mind.

***

So, it happens that I tend to virtually escape for a little while. I let my blogs and the blogs to which I'm supposed to contribute go without my ramblings for a while. Sure, there are reasons. WCOOP kicked my ever-lovin' ass. The rest of work has kicked my ever-lovin' ass. My side projects, including my contributions to DoubleAs Poker Hacks, have not kicked my ass yet, but I figure they will since I have a couple more minutes to dedicate to them.

I've always sort of wondered if I did escape and run off somewhere, how I would talk to people when I got back. Would I tell them about my great adventures and finding myself. Or would I simply show up with long, sun-bleached hair and five months of growth on my face and let people figure it out on their own.

I talk too much, I figure, especially after a few beers. I figure that I'd eventually end up rambling on about where I've been and hw I've changed.

How does that all fit in here? Well, I suppose the biggest way is that I haven't really written much poker content here recently. I'd like to say it has a lot to do with a lack of real poker content in my life, but that's not necessarily true. I've had my share of poker recently, both online and live.

However, I've found that the best stuff I write here is about the new poker lives I find. When I went to The Mark for the first time, it was a wild, new experience. When I sat for hours on end at the $10/$20 games in Vegas, there were always new characters. Hell, when I final tabled in a big online tournament for the first time, it was something new and profitable. Now, when it happens, the same excitement isn't there. I suppose it will take a $20K+ win to really move me to the keyboard.

Jesus, that sounds slimy. Ooooh, Otis doesn't get excited about winning a lot of money.

That's not true. I do. It's just that I can't think of how any emotions I might feel would come out good in writing. And I'm certainly not going to preach strategy when you have DoubleAs, Hank, and, frankly, BadBlood to read. I'll be the first to admit, I know strategy, I employ strategy, but I can't teach it. It's like teaching my wife to ski. Somebody is going to get hurt and it's probably going to be me.

***

"So, sing for me," he said.

"Can't," Lisa said. She was mopping up the bar. She'd been doing it for twenty minutes as an excuse not to look at him. "A-string is broken."

He turned up his beer, swallowed, and looked at her with purpose. "You really think that's funnier than a broken g-string? I really think you're missing an opportunity with that."

She didn't look up from the bar. "I am the queen of missed opportunity."

"That's supposed to sound dark and mysterious, isn't it." He wasn't being mean and Lisa seemed to understand.

"It's from a song," she said.

"What did you rhyme 'opportunity' with?" he said. Now, she could tell, he was poking fun.

"It doesn't rhyme."

Then she leaned over the bar and kissed him.

***

If you care at all, I'm running well right now. Two sizable final tables and a successful run at the $30/$60 limit and $10/$20 NL tables have treated me pretty well. My bankroll is bigger than it has ever been by about 20%. Simply typing that virtually guarantees me a 30% downswing over the next month. I really should learn to never speak when I'm running well.

I've been chatting recently with several people who are just entering the game. They ask how different it is at the higher limits. I admit to them that aggression pays off a lot more at the higher limits, but at the same time, all idiots aren't poor yet. In a $10/20 NL game the other night, I flopped a little set. A guy who had raised pre-flop called me all the way down (pot-sized bets the whole way, including one check-raise). The flop had come king-high and I put the guy on AK. I was feeling sort of bad for him losing nearly all of his buy-in when he called a huge bet on the river. I showed him my set and he mucked. I clicked the hand history to see what he held. Indeed, he had the king. His kicker was an un-paired offsuit ten.

I've also spent some time quietly analyzing the play of people I know and seeing how it stacks up about how I viewed their play before. It's interesting, but I haven't formed any opinion other than, to be honest with yourself about how you play, you have to be honest with the people you tell about your play.

So, what the hell was with the rest of this post?

Sorry, just taking you along for a little ride in my head.

FIRST

There are some wonderfully deep psychological questions here, but Otis will insist I put them on another blog. Until we unveil Up For Headshrinking, I'll have to let them rest. But it its safe to say that just as discipline in any endeavor would bleed into other parts of our life, working on our aggression in poker might impact us in other ways.

I think Daniel-san was probably good at waxing and painting as a result of his karate training.

A similar article in "Cardplayer" magazine wondered, "is an introvert or extrovert better suited for poker." The answer is really the same.

LANGUAGE

First we should clarify our terms. "Aggression" as it applies to poker isn't really arression per se. Instead aggression at the table is a willingness to make the right plays in favorable situations. Think of it like a high school bully. The sitcom episodes where the kid finally stands up to the bully and the bully backs off are probably based in fact. Blossom has a point.

A tough kid in high school gains that reputaion by picking on the weak, the people who are likely to either put up a weak defense or none at all.

In poker we look for players who are either so tight that they'll only play back at us with monster hands, which we can then abandon, or so weak that we can exploit our good hands for maximum payoff. Aggression against someone who is tight but not weak is a different skill.

Eventually our bully gets such a "tough guy" reputation that he rarely fights anyone at all. He is only confronted by people who are CERTAIN of victory, and even a dumb bully can see that coming.

EGO

I think a better way to consider "aggression" is as "confidence." It's been said a million times, sucess in poker is the ability to exploit the tiny advantages to our maximum advantage. A person with high confidence in his reads, when he thinks he has that advantage, will press it. That's AGRESSION.

If I think you're on a draw, I'll make you PAY BIG to catch it.

If I think your hand is weak, and you don't like it, I'll bet big with garbage to make you fold. (NOTE: This strategy does not work well against BadBlood.)

But aggression without knowing your position, your opponent's status, and the relative strenght of your own hand is just foolish.

Even better, once we've been able to show aggression against weaker opponents, it makes them more likely to use unbridled aggression against us.

It's fair to say, the only reason a hack player like me makes ANY money is through people playing back at my early aggression.

LIFE

So does THAT make us more aggressive in life. I can't imagine it doesn't.

For example, some of what I've learned about poker tells has helped my during interviews at work.

The idea that we are able to locate our advantage and have the CONFIDENCE to exploit it is often the formula for greater success in anything we do. It makes sense that a good Tight-aggressive poker player would be more CONFIDENT in business as well.

And, that said, I still suck at poker.

Hope that helps OTIT.

1) Initial tournament will be restricted to 16 teams (32 players)

2) Teams will sign up as pairs, and to sign up, you email me at Euchre -@- UpForAnything.net. If you do not have a partner, and wish to play, drop your name in the comments and find one that way. You CAN NOT sign up as a team through the comments. You must email me.

3) All games will be played on Yahoo! Games.

4) Initial rounds will be best of 3 games, semi-finals will be best of 5 games and finals will be best of 7 games.

5) Once the tournament kicks off, teams will have one week to finish their round. Results can be posted in comments here or emailed to me at the address above.

6) There is no prize beyond pride in knowing who the best team is. If teams wish to wager amongst themselves, that's their choice.

7) All decisions of the Touranment Commissioner (me) are final.

---------------

I will list teams that signup below. If there is a great demand for more teams, I reserve the right to expand the field.

Teams:
1) Heather/CJ
2) Drizz/BG
3) Matt from Austin/Megan from Austin (Readers and ringers?)
4) The Donkey Feltchers: Maudie/Daddy
5) GRob/Uncle Ted from G-Vegas
6) Jim Dingeman/Bob Paschke (readers, presumably, working on that)

Hi-Lo...Hi-Ho

We were down to 5 players and most of us, except one very muscular host, were nursing pretty healthy stacks. The Mark and I were, by that point, getting a bit bored with NLHE and asked to switch games... both suggesting Stud/8b. The table agreed, but we ended up playing dealer's choice instead.

So...

The Mark deals NO LIMIT OMAHA Hi/Lo, which is both sick and silly. I fold pre-flop.

Doc Alan deals NO LIMIT OMAHA Hi/Lo, and I fold pre-flop.

Teddy Ballgame deals NO LIMIT PINEAPPLE and I manage to win the high.

THE GAME

So i dealt a new game...NO LIMIT PY-NIZZLE, that would change our fortunes.

The game:

1) Each player is dealt 5 cards.

2) There is a round of betting.

3) We see a flop.

5) Each player discards 2 cards and keeps three. The player can play 0-3 of those cards to make a winning Hi or Lo hand.

6) A round of silly betting.

7) Turn

8) Betting

9) River

10) Betting.

We played that game 4 times... that's all. I scooped the first two pots.

In the first, I won a $300 pot, when both Blood and Teddy went all-in. I bet $160 into a $22 side pot, while holding the mortal nuts. Teddy called. I had a good night.

Look for more Py-nizzle in the future.

Those blogger tables can be hell. Of course, I lived up to my new nickname, "Only Monsters," and took my fellow bloggers for about $15. And it's always fun to sit down with wil. I do feel bad about cracking Iggy's hammer with cowboys, but that's life at the blogger table. Let's just get started a little earlier so we're not all dragging at work the next day!

Well, a few reasons.

First, I've been thinking a lot recently about the amount of time my head is dedicated to poker. In the past, it was a pastime. Now, it is a profession. Who knew you could have a career in poker without being a professional card player? I've found that I have disengaged my noodle from a lot that is going on around me. That isn't the way I like to live my life.

Second, G-Rob needs another outlet. It's clear G-Rob has more to say than the thematic elements here allow. G-Rob has started a few personal blogs in the past, but has shut them down after a few months. Don't ask why, because I've never been provided a sufficient answer.

Third, we three fish have been fighting in the same bowl for a long time and it's not always been about poker. This will be further explained later. But, we miss it.

So, in the spirit of Up For Poker, but without all the poker, we have created a new blog for ourselves.

Now, I know, many of you are thinking, "Christ, not another damned blog."

I know. There are too many out there as it is. But, give us a try. We may bleed hearts and spades, but we have a few diamonds in the rough as well. Clubs? I gave up clubbing years ago.

Take it for what it is.. We call it...

Tri-Clops.

Killing some time Wednesday night while waiting for WCOOP Event #11 to finish up, I decided to play an event I really enjoy. It's been a while since I made a final table. Felt good to actually succeed in a tournament. Thanks to CJ for the final table sweat. Also, congrats to G-Rob for making a final table in an O8 event just a hour or so after mine.

BLINK

I read a good book, which I'm actually prone to do at times, by Malcolm Gladwell. He's one of these New Yorker guys, with an idea that may confound our poker play.

Here's a bit from the introduction :

"We live in a society dedicated to the idea that we're always better off gathering as much information and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. As children, this lesson is drummed into us again and again: haste makes waste, look before you leap, stop and think. But I don't think this is true. There are lots of situations--particularly at times of high pressure and stress--when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions offer a much better means of making sense of the world."

He makes a compelling case.

In study after study, a part of our unconscious mind made connections and assumptions that our awareness hadn't made. We started avoiding "wrong" decisions without knowing why. Again, those same studies showed, the more time actual experts spend combing over data, the more likely they are to reach the WRONG conclusion. Instead, the snap judgement was correct.

MANIACS COUNT

So what about our SNG? Does the manic have an overpair?

I spent a bit of my "time bank" on this one. I'd watched a dozen orbits with this guy, and the range of hands he MIGHT have held certainly included an overpair. It was also bigger than Greg Raymer himself. I did the reverse read, thinking it WAS me who raised pre-flop, and he, who simply called. I thought he might have unpaired overcards, that seemed the most likely really. It was also quite possible he'd just called with a medium underpair, but that would mean he'd made two SMART moves in a row.

I had a good chance to add chips to my stack and be able to run all over this tournament if I called and won. But I didn't call. He showed his overpair. My "blink" was dead on.

The most impressive part of this phenomenon, is that the EXPERT players would have known the right play in seconds. The newcomer would have done all the right THINKING and may have made the wrong play.

THE CATCH

There is a catch in Gladwell's book. It's the same catch you'll run into at the table. Here's another example from Gladwell:

"One of the stories I tell in "Blink" is about the Emergency Room doctors at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. That's the big public hospital in Chicago, and a few years ago they changed the way they diagnosed heart attacks. They instructed their doctors to gather less information on their patients: they encouraged them to zero in on just a few critical pieces of information about patients suffering from chest pain--like blood pressure and the ECG--while ignoring everything else, like the patient's age and weight and medical history. And what happened? Cook County is now one of the best places in the United States at diagnosing chest pain."

There are more:

Like the art EXPERTS who knew a statue was a fake without supporting knowledge. They were proven correct.

The tennis EXPERT who could tell when a player was about to double fault, even though he couldn't find out what was tipping him off after reviewing hours of tape.

A behavioral EXPERT who could watch very small snippets of conversation between a married couple, and predict divorce with 90% accuracy.

Now what do all our BLINKERS have in common?

That's the catch folks.

STUDY AND STOP

The 4 billion hands we've all palyed on the internet provide one hell of an education. Some of it we learned without much thought. Is it possible that our unconscious mind is making connections that we aren't aware of?

I think a novice player is well served by going through all the levels of thinking, especially on a difficult hand. But for people who have been there, grinding away for years, wouldn't it be better if we made our decisions FASTER and with LESS thought?

It's particularly true in the example I'm using here because, God knows, we've all had that mental flash. Do you trust yours?

I've been trying that idea, of trusting myself online, for a few weeks now. More than anything I've used it in cheaP SNGs. My success rate is significantly up!

Worth a thought.

Or lack thereof.

Back in that first December WPBT event, I was practically blinded off sitting between Max Pescatori and Felicia. I was scared, intimidated, unsure of myself. I was a wimp. I couldn't have been more of a rock if I had rolled off a mountainside.

But that was my game. I played tight. I didn't think I had it in me to play any other way. And frankly, with online poker rooms populated by idiots, tight was profitable. I had fun and made money doing it. ABC poker helped me cash in countless SNG's.

However, I lacked the creativity necessary to compete in multi-table tournaments. While my style often helped me accumulate chips early, better players took advantage of me, and I lacked the necessary skill to change gears. And frankly, things like the "gap concept" and "continuation betting" were just not part of my game.

But you finished 2nd in the WPBT Aladdin Classic!!!!

It was a fluke. I took advantage of a poor blind structure, played more aggressively than I might have otherwise, and caught just enough cards when it mattered. Remember my consecutive blind flushes? Not quite the stuff of Harrington and Chan.

So yesterday was tournament time. It would be the largest tournament I've ever been a part of. And I would miss the entire first hour.

Here's where I extend a huge thanks to Heather. I had hoped to get out of work in time to be online. I was due a break for working 17 straight days at the time. I don't get overtime... so I thought I'd sneak out early. It didn't work out so well. It's kinda hard to leave the station sometimes.

So GRob jumped on the girly-chatty thing and told me Heather was willing to play for me until I got home. I got her my info and crossed my fingers. I knew she'd play better than I would have, but I was hoping she got some cards. There was no way I was going to rebuy, so I needed to get to the first break with enough chips to make an add on worth it.

Heather did more than enough, getting me there with a solid 4060T, just below average stack. She probably could have done even more, but she got moved to a table with a guy who played about a dozen consecutive hands all in. I hate rebuys.

And It Begins...

Heather stuck around with some words of advice and encouragement throughout. I was also happy to see well wishes from Otis, GRob, Pauly and Iggy, among others.

I was about 175T below average when the second hour started. The rebuys and add ons were over, so I didn't have to worry too much about crazy all ins. That meant I could play my game.

It didn't take me long to establish my tight image, and with some continuation bet encouragement from Heather, I was accumulating chips.

An early key hand was the dreaded Hilton Sisters. I bet my standard 3xBB and got two callers. The flop came down K-9-3 rainbow. Ugh. I hate overcards. The first player checked and I threw out a bet about 2/3 of the pot, I think 500T. The player behind me called. The river was another undercard and I lead out with 1500T, and got called.

Now I was worried. When the river was another undercard, I wanted desperately to check, but that would have invited a bet that would force me to fold, whether he had the king or not. Or course, my 1500T bet at the river was its own sign of weakness, but I simply got called, not raised, and my pocket Q's beat A9s. It was a big boost to my stack.

Thankfully, I was moved shortly after that play because I think the way I played the hand gave my opponents too much information. And, frankly, there were some pretty good players at the table. At my new table, I was surrounded by a bunch of medium stacks, and considerably less skill.

Here's where I started playing the kind of poker I've never really played before. Sitting in the BB with K6s, it's folded to the SB who makes a good sized raise. I come right back over the top with a re-raise and he lays it down. I can't remember the last time I protected my blind.

A few hands later, I'm on the button when the glorious HAMMER falls my way. It's folded around to me giving me the opportunity to raise it up and take it down. Otis told me when I showed that Mrs. Otis exclaimed, "Hammer!"

The next break rolls around and I'm to 12060T. It was a strong hour for me and I'm suddenly a few thousand chips above average.

The Ups and Downs

Despite talk from Heather and Otis that I'd eventually have to change gears, all agreed now wasn't the time. I still waited for cards, looked for opportunities to attack medium stacks, and bided my time. I had gotten myself up to roughly 14000T and I was feeling good.

When I looked down at KQo in early position, I made one of my loosest plays, and raised to 3xBB. I suppose I hadn't played many hands, and, frankly, I was rarely getting called. This time I did, by the BB.

The flop came down AKx. My opponent bet just 600T, less than a third of the pot. It seemed to be a pretty good sign of weakness, so I raised it up to 1500T. He called.

The turn was a Q giving me two pair. He lead out again with 600T and this time I raised to 2000T. He called again. The river was a blank, and, yet again, I was faced with a 600T bet. Heather's advice to just call didn't come soon enough, because I raised to 3000T and got called by AQ. I figured the guy for an A, but I didn't put him on two pair. In fact, the way the guy had been playing, I barely gave him credit for an A.

The call was clearly the better play there. The guy was only going to call my raise if he could beat me. The raise was not likely to make me any more money. It was a 3000T lesson. Here was apparently some chat between Otis and Heather:

Otis: What did CJ put him on? AJ?
Heather: No, he put him on STUPID.

That about sums it up. Later the same guy took a shot at a pot with 84o, and sucked out on AK. The guy was not very good, but I still lost a big part of my stack to him.

Sitting at just 8435T I was now back below average. Not a place I like to be. That's when I looked down at a couple of handsome Cowboys. A player in early position raised it from 200 to 500. When it got to me, I pushed it to 1500. I wanted to see where this guy stood and I didn't want a weak ace sticking around.

Unfortunately, as Heather lamented, the raise wasn't big enough because I got a caller before it got back to the original raiser. He, however, immediately pushed it to 3600. That really left me two choices. Assume he has Aces and fold, or push all in. If he had Aces, so be it. I pushed. The third player folded and the original raiser went into the tank.

He used up almost his entire time bank before finally deciding to call and showing JJ. I was a huge favorite. The flop of KQ8 made me a virtual lock, although the J on the turn worried me slightly. The 7 on the river doubled me up and I was back at 16216T, well above average.

I hit a little over 17000T by the next break, my second straight hour in which I added 5000 chips to my stack. I was feeling great.

And It Comes Crashing Down

I'm in the BB (100/200/25) when I see Big Slick. The hand had actually been pretty good to me so far in the tourney. I knew I should have seen it coming.

A solid player in MP raised to 1000. A substantial raise. At that point, I had to see where I stood. I raised to 3000 and got called. The flop was about as good I could hope, A72. I suppose it was a Hammer flop.

I bet about 3/4 of the pot, throwing in 6000. Almost immediately, my opponent raised all in to a little more than 10000. Unless I figured him for Aces (which I didn't because he would likely have reraised me pre-flop), I would have to call his all in. I did, and, unfortunately, he flipped A7o.

Ugh. I never improved and was down to just a thousand chips.

Heather and Otis agreed I "played it perfectly" and said it was a "bad beat," but I wasn't so sure. I was reluctant to call it a bad beat because I was well behind when the money went into the middle. And perhaps I should have raised more preflop or played it differently after the flop.

Of course, I don't really believe any of that second-guessing. I got caught by a guy who called a big raise with A7o. I want him to make that play every single time. Once he makes that call, I put him on a big pair or a big Ace. If he has the last two Aces in the deck, so be it, I'm going home. Otherwise, I'm ahead or tied in the hand.

But he made an ill-advised pre-flop play and then out-flopped me. It was soul-crushing.

A few hands later, I looked down at AJo and reluctantly made my move. Two players got money in the pot before me making my hand that much more vulnerable. A promising board of 554AQ wouldn't be enough to overcome Big Slick, and I went home in 799th place, well out of the money.

The New Tricks

I'm not sure my boring, clinical discussion of my play really explained what I was feeling throughout the tournament. I felt really good about my play. I could sense when people were making a move or when they were showing weakness. I took advantage of openings and easily accumlated chips without putting much of my stack at risk.

I did everything I wanted to. It was probably the best I ever played. I have to give Heather a lot of credit for that because she provided the pushes where I needed them. Now, I just have to make this style a more permanent part of my game. Maybe next time I won't get drilled by A7!

SI

As a certified sports junkie, I subscribe to nearly every sports magazine, watch every sports show, and have 3 of my XM presets tuned to all sports stations. And in every meduim, it's POKER getting the "SPORTS?" treatment. I suppose it's because the WSOP is carried on ESPN. Perhaps it's because the New York Times has added the game to it' "Sport" section. In any event, the big wigs of sport are certainly taking their shots.

The first real salvo, at least the first I saw, came from Rick Reilly. In his usually fantastic column he wrote, "This poker craze is the biggest waste of time since Stevie Wonder went to a mime festival." I almost swore off the poker content based on the stale humor alone.

Here are his major complaints:

1) The game is easy. Chris Moneymaker won a HUGE tournament after "having played the game on the Internet for three years." Can you imagine, asks Reilly with no sense of hyperbole, "somebody taking up basketball three years ago and suddenly becoming the leading scorer in the NBA?"

2) The game is dull. "These people spend more time on their butts than FDR did," he says, finally finding a joke even older than his last.

3) It's bad for Kids. "Is this what we want -- kids who used to be outside on perfect fall afternoons suddenly hunched in the basement like Nathan Detroit's floating crap game? Is it a good thing that my son's buddies are all wearing green eyeshades and taking one another's busboy tips for hours on end while their muscles turn to linguini?"

4) Greg Raymer is fat, and still good at poker.

COSTAS NOW

Bob was really upset about the Times in particular. Again, I like Bob, and I enjoy his show, but he makes what are largely the same lame arguments as Reilly. At least he has better jokes.

1) Poker is bad for kids. "Your 18-year-old kid is somehow hooked on this mind-numbing fare and has blown most of next semester's tuition payment on an online game of Texas Hold'Em."

2) Poker is dull. "I must say I find it hard to get worked up over a sport that boasts all the pageantry and magic of Saturday night at my Uncle Murray's basement"

3) The bottom line. "Look, poker is not a sport... Put it on the Game Show Network and let Chuck Woolery host it."

THE PART WHERE I, RESPECTFULLY, DISAGREE

Let's start point for point. Then we'll draw some real conclusions. I think it's insufficient to debunk poor ideas and say you've proven a point. At least it gives us a place to start.

Reilly is the worst argument, so we'll take him first.

1) The game is easy. I think we all stand on similar ground here, but the point is worth addressing. Most of all, we should mention the Moneymaker example.

It's Reilly's contention that if a relative unknown like Moneymaker, and then Raymer and Hachem, can win the "sport's" most prestigious event, then it can't be that hard. But there are several things that distinguish the WSOP from traditional "Majors."

First and foremost, the WSOP allows ANYONE with the entry fee to sign up and play. That's hardly the case at the Masters. Therefore, you'll always have a field that includes those newcomers who want a shot at the big time. The major pro events that DO allow "Open" registration, actually do have some of the same "nobody" winners.

Todd Hamilton won the British Open in 2004. Have you ever heard of him before or since? He won one of the sport's "Majors" at the age of 38. On his first year of the PGA tour. He'd been playing in Japan.

And does a player's experience really inform us about the nature of a sport? Micheal Jordan was CUT from his high school basketball team, and then won a national championship in college. The best Tight End in the NFL last year was an undrafted rookie named Antonio Gates, he didn't play football in college. He learned the game fast.

I happen to think golf, baseketball, and football all count as sports. Making this argument is akin to saying, "Every 16 year old can drive, so any one of them could compete in the Daytona 500." Which leads us to....

2) The game is dull. At least if you don't like it. I'll refer you to the NASCAR debate. People who like it think the "debate" is laughable. People who don't... don't. You have to admit NASCAR drivers spend a lot of time on their butts. Football players meanwhile spend the overwhelming MAJORITY of their time standing around. So do baseball players.

The truth is, you'll find something dramatic to watch and enjoy on almost every hand of poker. Can the same be said of a soccer game (Sorry Al), where there is only one point scored?

3) It's bad for kids. According to a University of Minnesotta study, "Each year, more than 20 million American youth participate in school or community sports. This results in approximately one million serious sports-related injuries occurring annually, requiring hospitalization, surgery, missed school, or at least a half-day in bed."

Wow. That's a rather shocking 5%. That's from REAL sports mind you, not hemmorhoids from hours of grinding at a 2/4 game. Granted, young players can be at risk of losing every penny they have. But how much money does your kid HAVE in his bankroll? Why?

I'd say its most likely that your kid will lose the money from his allowance or summer job and either get better or stop playing. Not that harmful really. The real fear is that little Jimmy will end up deep in hoc to the local mafia and end up turning tricks for food. I'd say thats far less likely that the chance of Jimmy ending up with a half dozen concussions from football or soccer.

4) Raymer is fat, but good at poker. Sumo wrestlers, by comparison, are svelte. This argument is dumb. Just ask John Kruk.

THE TRUTH

I always like the Otis theory of sports, which I'm somewhat pained to admit. He contends that performances like figure skating and gymnatics are not sports but exhibitions. Why? Because the scoring is purely subjective. How can two people "compete" in a sport in which a third party arbitarily picks a winner? It's silly.

Really, the problem with thse poker vs sports debates is that the opponents on either side generally fail to pinpoint what any sport is. And failing that, you can't tell me what does and does not qualify. If baseball is a sport, why isn't poker? If Billiards, why not poker?

Sorry, Rick and Bob, we excel at a sport you don't understand. I can see why that's trouble for you. But holding on to antiquated notions of what is and is not important won't roll back the tide.

Really, poker is about as glamourous as your Uncle's basement, and basetball is never much more than the noonball pickup game at you local Y. It's still a sport.

WEDNESDAY

I was playing an MTT on Paradise (yes, they still have a site) when Otis popped up on the sissy-girl chatterbox device. It's a good place for ol' Otis, but I feel uncomfortable there.

****** BY THE WAY, SHOULD YOU HEAD TO PARADISE, WHERE THE SOFTWARE IS LOVELY, GRobman SENT YOU ********

Anyhow, I casually mention to Dr. Hairline my desire to play cards. He says, as a temporary bachelor, he'd love to host a game. This was 7:09 PM.

I got on the horn, digitally of course, with BadBlood, The Mark, Chep Shep, and The Tank. We had cards in the air by 8:00.

I should know better than to play that way of course. I'll summarize it thusly,

BB: You ever get so excited to play, that you totally forget how?

BB: Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

That night, I got CRUSHED. I lost buyin after buyin. The first two weren't because the other players sucked out, or because I played the odds and missed. I lost that money because I played like total crap. I knew better, but managed to go on a tilt of now legendary proportions.

NET LOSS : $270.00 (Fake)

THURSDAY

This is the regular game. The local no-limit game. It's played for FAKE CHIPS of course. Once again the usual suspects, and a few extra degenerate (this word is nearing its limit by the way) friends started dealing at 8:00.

This time I brought my chops. In the first 90 minutes I was up 2 buyins. This was the pivotal hand...

PLAYERS : G-Rob, Otis, The Mark

Preflop...

I'm in the big blind for a whopping .50, and The Mark is in middle position.
Mark raises it up to $4.00 and Otis calls.
I found 7,7 and decided to take a ride.

Flop...

Queen, 7, 5!! Payday.

I check the flop and so does Mark, and then Otis gets kinda silly. He bets $15.
I tried to be extra quick into the pot with a min raise to $30. Earlier in the night I pushed BadBlood off a hand with a similar re-raise and then showed my weaker hand. I hoped that the quick move into the pot, a sure sign of a weak hand, combined with that memory would help.

Sure enough, Mark comes over the top all-in, another $29, for a total bet of $59. Otis then went into the tank for a solid 4 days, at one point SCREAMING, I'm not worried about YOU at all (pointing to me), I'm just worried about Mark.

I taunted Otis for a solid 3.5 days, and that cost me money. He folds.

The Mark shows 10,10 and does not improve.

And then I went to work and did the 11PM News.

When I returned to the game, at about midnight I resumed some decent play, winning another 3 buyins before 2AM. That's when Mrs. Blood called, looking for the Mr. and the game suddenly dissolved.

She's a very understanding woman.

FRIDAY

Otis, BadBlood and I went to the Mark for a $40 tourney with a dealers choice cash game afterwards.

Badblood aready wrote up the better hands there.. check out his site

ANYWAY...

I still suck at poker. Thought you'd like to know.

I have a lot on my mind poker-wise...I'll have it here in a day or two. But that's what I've been up to in G-Vegas...the best FAKE MONEY poker around.

Me

Mahogany Fakename-Johnson was the first truly pretty girl who seemed as interested in me as I was in her. She had long brown hair, enormous brown eyes, and an innocent smile that disguised her unusually wild, wild side. She was perfect for a retread like me. So we talked, I got her number, and I wandered off to mingle with friends.

The blast came while I was telling a friend about my pretty conversation. I heard someone yell my name, turned, and took 5 knuckles square to the jaw. I recovered just in time to see a snarling, and very angry, Freshman who, apparently, was in love with Amber too. He lunged to hit me again, and I erased him from the Earth. Meaning in just 10 minutes, I fell in love and won a fight. Does high school get any better?

I dated Amber for the rest of that year, and on into the summer. But that fall, I was off to college, and her family moved to New Orleans. It may have been a youthful illusion, but we were determined to remain a couple. So, that August, in 1992, I flew down to visit for a week, before school in Milwaukee.

The first night, we met a friend of hers, whos name is lost to time, and headed directly downtown. Now, I'd been just a little eccentric, by Eastern Kentucy standards, but Bourbon Street was slightly more. This wasn't Madi Gras or Jazzfest or any of the other ESPECIALLY dazzling times of French Quarter stupidity, but the mid-August tourist season was about all I could take.

The best thing, or so I thought, is that I felt so grown up. A few hundred miles from home, dating a pretty girl, walking into one of the world's gretest parties and nobody seemed to care. Back then the drinking age in the Quarter was just 18, perfect for a new high school grad. I remember buying drinks with no ID, like a real grown up.

I came of age in New Orleans. Of course, I'd been on long trips alone before. I'd climbed the Montana Rockies and partied in Chicago, but it was drenched in "Hand Grenades" and "Huricanes" that I began to feel truly independant. It's as if the freedom, to be as hedonistic as the ADULT losers of the world, made my degenerate behavior more chic. I feel like a man. A drunken, irresponsible, half-witted, Eastern Kentucky man.

WE

Just a few years later, 1995 or 6, I made a triumphant return. Once I left my Milwaukee college and came home to BIG BLUE, I feel deeply into a counter-culture groove. By '94, I was already skipping almost every class for long afternoons of grainy Grateful Dead cassettes and Sega hockey. I met my future wife that year, and once our equally degenrate friends collided, there were too many road trips to count.

I'd fallen for jazz music too. Part of it was a strange facination with Jack Kerouac and the whole beat scene, part was because I loved the improvisation. Genius happens in fits and bursts, and sometimes it only exists for as long as you can blurt it out. Charlie Parker was magic. So when a buddy told me about "Jazzfest", with Phish as a headline act, it was like learning the water fountains were pouring beer. We rented a van.

7 worthless hippies croweded in a van, drove 45 miles per hour from Lexington to the Big Easy. There was nothing easy about that. But vans were more comfortable because I was less fat then. I was also more carfefree. We had reservations at a KOA "Kampground", and serious plans for absolutely nothing.

JazzFest, if you've never been, is loke so many other music festivals. A spread of a half dozen stages, covered by giant white canopys. All of it lies on hard flat gound under a scorching summer sky, in humidty felt only in Lake Pontchartrain's depths. The drinks are always overpriced, the food is unhelthy, bland, and expensive. The music is always sublime.

Phish played a fantastic set. The Funky Meters were there, and I think the Allman Brothers too. I took a lot of flack for skipping that last act. The wife and I went to watch Wynton Marsalis instead. He's a New Orleans native and one of the best musicians alive. Of course, we have another scratchy bootleg tape to remember the music, but my wife has another more awful memory.

At that KOA Kampground, were pitched out tent in a mound of dirty sand, and like many hippy degenerates, we were less careful than we could've been about CLOSING the tent door. So we were devoured by some kind of sand flea, they tore our feet apart. My wife was so miserable she thought about nothing else for the next 2 days. In fact, the next night, she slept in the van.

A few years later, we came back to the city, just the two of us. We sprung for an actual hotel room. That was her memory of New Orleans. So, she still has something. I just remember the best music in the world.

US

I have what, I suspect, is a very typical relationship with my father and brother. For most of my childhood, and still today, my dad and I talk to each other through a sporting code. My mom will call, ask about the family, and then hand the phone to him. He'll then say, "They're (Reds, Bengals, Wildcats) the best team in the world this year." We'll take about that for 30 minutes at a time.

As a kid, my dad used baseball to show his affeciton for his sons. He was a coach on out little leaue teams, and on countless weekends he drive us 3 hours each way, for our regular seats at Riverfront Stadium. When the All Star game came to Cincinnati, he and his partner got 4 tickets to share. My brother and I went while dad satayed home. I always appreciated that. Chris Sabo stole a base that game before disappearing forever.

About 5 years ago we started this new tradition, that gets us back together for sports. We fly down, meet up, and watch every single game of the SEC Basketball tournament. It's in Nashville this year, in Altanta every other year but one. Once, we flew to New Orleans.

That year my brother and I got there a day before dad did. We spent the night admiring the breasts of women in the French Quarter. I mentioned the big parties on Bourbon Street....well the SEC tournament counts too. We even ran in to the Vanderblt team, my brother insulted their best player, at a few minutes after midnight. They lost their game the next morning.

That was before the Harrah's spread poker in NO. I settled for endless sessions of blackjack and coke..err...rum and jack...crap..No not craps. Bah! I had fun at the casino, despite the lack of poker. I actually won money, which is proof that poker was not an option.

We watched the games in the Superdome, which is better than you'd think for basketball. The best games, despite our affiliation, were those in which Kentucky didn't play. As a rule, if there are 25,000 SEC fans, 20,000 have painted their faces blue. At the second Kentucky game, after we'd retreated to our upper level seats, we sat behind a middle aged man who had dyed his entire head blue, and shaved the letters "UK" into his hair. Even his wife was embarrased. During one game he called a friend back home and did an entire half of play-by-play, which must've been helpful. The game was on TV.

THEM

Now the Superdome has no power, no running water, and the toilets have overflowed. 20,000 people are inside and screaming but the tears on their cheeks aren't from laughter.

New Orleans has been good to me. I hope its been good to you. If you have anything to give, contact the American Red Cross. Hell, play in the Poker Stars tournament. That's fun. The death toll here will be staggering.