The Poker Project (playing and writing about poker in the U.S.)
05-15-2017
, 05:54 PM
Indeed, perhaps my favourite that I have read from you thus far, solid stuff 
05-20-2017
, 05:38 PM
indeed! a few more to go.
Spoiler:
06-03-2017
, 10:26 AM
May Results, June Goals
[152] play 150 hours
Mostly played in deep cashgame donkfests. Made lots of mistakes but others were even worse. Won't be logging significant volume till Oct, probably, so thankful to end the spring on a positive note. I ended my month last Wednesday in the most fitting possible way: (1) shoving rags to bust the Harradise weekly; (2) hopping in 4/8 LOLimit and losing every pot. The heater is real!
[18] study 15 hours
am excited to dip into some new material this summer.
[30] write 15 hours
Playing a lot last month messed up my sleep schedule which helped me write more because if you can’t sleep might as well write rite?
June Goals
[ ] play 50 hours
[ ] study 20 hours
[ ] write 40 hours
Homeless again. In Chatnooga now, will be roaming the country for most of the month and in Vegas for the WSOP (June 28-the Main). Decided against LOLive Reporting/playing the Main in order to focus on the book project. Would love to catch up with folks at the Rio or elsewhere; just hit me up!
[152] play 150 hours
Spoiler:
Mostly played in deep cashgame donkfests. Made lots of mistakes but others were even worse. Won't be logging significant volume till Oct, probably, so thankful to end the spring on a positive note. I ended my month last Wednesday in the most fitting possible way: (1) shoving rags to bust the Harradise weekly; (2) hopping in 4/8 LOLimit and losing every pot. The heater is real!
[18] study 15 hours
am excited to dip into some new material this summer.
[30] write 15 hours
Playing a lot last month messed up my sleep schedule which helped me write more because if you can’t sleep might as well write rite?
June Goals
[ ] play 50 hours
[ ] study 20 hours
[ ] write 40 hours
Homeless again. In Chatnooga now, will be roaming the country for most of the month and in Vegas for the WSOP (June 28-the Main). Decided against LOLive Reporting/playing the Main in order to focus on the book project. Would love to catch up with folks at the Rio or elsewhere; just hit me up!
Spoiler:
Last edited by bob_124; 06-03-2017 at 10:31 AM.
06-05-2017
, 01:56 AM
06-07-2017
, 09:05 AM
Been watching the SHR Bowl and One Drop on Pokergo. All in all I like the service (10$ per month) and will keep it thru the Main.
Also been upping my poker vlogger game, which seems to be taking over as a important medium for capturing the experience of poker-playing. My faves would be:
1. Doug Polk. Can't imagine a better blend of strategy and entertainment, esp now that he's added vlogging to the mix right as he decides to ship the One Drop, ho hum. weeeeeeeeeee!
2. Neeme. Top-notch production and I enjoy his discussion of hands.
***significant dropoff*****
3. Everyone else. Gotta give love to the Trooper but he seems, as the OG poker vlogger, to have paved the way for better, more inventive vloggers to take over. I also enjoyed watching Torelli's channel but unsubscribed after his recent going north/angling scandal.
who am I missing? There seems to be a profusion of vloggers these days and I have no interest in following everyone. Looks like even Negreanu is hopping into the mix, lol. There's a good thread on the subject (albeit Vegas-focused) here.
06-07-2017
, 09:41 AM
What About Bob?
The Texas Medical Center
2014
Bob,
I’m currently on Emergency General Surgery. The attending is Dr. J. We round every day at 7:00 am, except on T/Th at 6:30. I selfishly want you to round with our team this month while I’m on service, but it honestly may be better for you to round with a nonsurgical service (or both!). Surgery rounds are abbreviated though, so it wouldn’t even interfere with your work day. Dr. J. is kinda bad about email, so when I’m back in town, I’ll let him know that you may be interested in joining.
Emma
My minifridge purred pleasantly in the corner. I mean, really, whose office had a minifridge?
Thanks to an abrupt departure by a senior faculty member and the generosity of our Center’s director, Tom, I had been installed in a rather swanky setup complete with a desktop computer, a wraparound mahogany desk, a window that looked onto campus, and enough fridge space to store a large pizza.
I was coming up in the world.
On most days, health care professionals flitted into my office to discuss narrative medicine, the Houston Rockets, or whatever else was worth chatting about in a medical humanities department. Little did they know that, upon entering the room and finding two seat options, they faced a test of character. It was like the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, when Indy and that Nazi dude guess at the identity of the Holy Grail: would my visitors select the plush leather chair (you have chosen...POORLY) or the modest wooden hardback? (you have chosen...wisely!). This was how I amused myself when I wasn’t teaching or tinkering with my barely-revised dissertation. Or thinking about New Orleans and that last outrageous poker session.
Of course I’d caught the 11 p.m. Megabus. Was it really so surprising? That ill-timed fold against Don was merely one drop in a vast ocean of my mistakes. The biggest failure of all, maybe, was my lack of fight. I could have battled Don deep into the night, going blow for blow with him as Destin had. But no. I had no gamble, no pride. Instead I limped out of Harrah’s, stumbled onto to the Megabus, and, clutching my swollen purplish arm, watched the lights of the Superdome fade into the distance. I wanted to stay. Instead I would return to a city, and to a career, that felt increasingly out of place, like a misplaced puzzle piece.
That’s how it all seemed to me, at least, when my minifridge purred pleasantly in my office’s corner in the Texas Medical Center.
One afternoon Emma, a fourth-year med student, popped inside and sat on the wooden hardback. She wore an expression common to most doctors I’d met—a face filled with intelligence, ambition, and despair. Being a doctor was hard. They often came to health care with lofty ideals, hoping to bathe themselves in the fascinating tidbits of their patients’ lives. But there was no time. All too often personal stories disappeared in the wake of impersonal abstraction and corporate greed. Everyone suffered. Rates of burnout, depression, and suicide were sky-high among health professionals, and yet people rarely confronted this fact in a medical culture that, like the military, shunned weakness. How ****ed up was that?
Emma asked me if I still wanted to round with her attending physician’s surgery team. From her description, the guy sounded like a character. Dr. J. was the kind of doctor who worked all day, every day, who really cared about his team, who called his residents after they’d finished a long road race, who was a literary buff in love with short stories (you simply must read Somerset Maugham’s “Rain!") and etymology (do you know that marathon means “fennel seed” in Greek?). After his divorce, Dr. J. had moved to a tiny apartment near NRG Stadium so that he could quickly reach the hospital for emergencies.
“What is he, some kind of medical monk?” I asked.
Emma smiled and said, “You’ll see.”
**
It was still dark as I walked across campus towards the Medical School Building. Even at six a.m. I felt alert with an odd sense of pride, as though I had somehow earned the dark blue scrubs that I was wearing.
Emma, also in scrubs, met me in one of the corridors. She looked tired. I followed her through a maze of hallways and hissing automatic doors until we reached a workstation where, all around me, members of the surgery team studied patient charts, scanned smartphones, sipped coffee. Emma introduced me to Raul, a senior resident who stood at a computer terminal. “So you’re training to be a doctor?” he asked.
I said no, not at all, teacher, humanities, books.
“Good. Now I don’t have to talk you out of it.” I waited for a punch line or the hint of a smile, but Raul soberly scanned the screen and kept typing. He was dead serious.
Suddenly everything was rattle and commotion. A resident barked out assignments and the team splintered into all directions. Already halfway down the hall, Raul took a call on his walkie-talkie and Emma trailed behind. We hustled through more hissing automatic doors, hopped in a few elevators, and ended up on a quiet floor. Surgery. In the hallway, an old Indian man was lathering his hands at a cleaning station and talking softly—to himself, it seemed. Somehow I knew this was Dr. J. When I introduced myself and thanked him for letting me join his team, he smiled and peered at me with bright, flinty eyes. “Tell me, Bob,” Dr. J. said, his forearms foamy with soap, “what can literature give to medicine?”
“That’s a difficult question,” I said. “The thing is...from a certain perspective...one might argue that...”
“You simply must study American medicine,” Dr. J. said. “Do you know why? Because American medicine has no humanity!”
“A person can bring humanity. You can bring humanity,” was all I could manage.
“No,” Dr. J. replied, rinsing his hands, “because we are all crushed by the system!” He shuffled past, chuckling softly, and backstepped his way into the OR.
Feeling out of place and irrelevant, I pulled on a surgical mask and went inside. A patient was on the operating table, completely shrouded in blue except for his caramel-colored midsection. Emma and Raul were already there, readying metallic instruments and peering down at that square piece of flesh; Dr. J took his place beside them. “I been waitin’ on you,” a nurse said in mock exasperation. “I’m dating Dr. J, you know,” another nurse called out from across the room. “He’s cheating on me, though, with all those women he sees every day.” Dr. J nodded sagely.
“You cheatin’ on me, Dr. J.? I knew it!”
“Yes, yes, I admit it,” he said pleasantly. “All men are dogs.”
Everything was ready. A small Indian woman, the anesthesiologist, sat beside the vital-signs machine; I stood to her left, listening to the rhythmic shrill of the heart monitor. “Remember,” Dr. J. said, and I realized that he was talking to me, “If you feel faint, be sure to sit down.”
“Pause,” said the nurse. “The patient is J- R-, sixty years old. He’s consented for 1/27 surgery for exploration and fluid drainage collection.” And then all of it was done with detached attentive precision—the scalpel slicing, blood oozing, smoke curling out of a golfball-sized incision. So that’s what burning flesh smells like, I thought to myself. Dr. J. gently slid a finger inside the incision and moved in sensitive circular motions, like he was removing wet leaves from a gutter. Thick clotted blood came out in blueberry-sized clumps, which he placed onto a silver tray.
“A ninety-year-old rabbi walks into a confessional to see a priest,” Dr. J. said, slipping a finger back inside. ‘Father, I have something to tell you,’ the rabbi says. ‘Last week I slept with a twenty-year-old girl.’ ‘But I don’t understand,’ says the priest. ‘You’re a rabbi. Why did you come to me, a Catholic, to tell me this?’ ‘My friend,’ says the priest, ‘I’ve been going around to everyone I can, telling anyone who will listen!’”
The nurses laughed. Emma suctioned fluid from the patient’s chest into a tube. Blood trickled from the white bedsheet onto the floor. “You have a bucket, love?” asked Dr. J.
One of the nurse’s tennis shoes sloughed across the room, but not fast enough. Suddenly Emma reeled backwards, stripped off her mask, fanned herself with her hand and stumbled against the wall. Dr. J.’s head snapped up, but he kept attending to the patient; one of the nurses helped Emma to a partitioned viewing room, where she sat down, sipped water, and held her head in her hands.
After a few minutes—the surgery was routine; the patient was fine—Dr. J. went over to Emma, removed his mask, knelt beside her. I couldn't hear what he was saying but, judging by the way a smile washed over Emma’s exhausted face, Dr. J. was probably telling a joke. A good one.
The Texas Medical Center
2014
Bob,
I’m currently on Emergency General Surgery. The attending is Dr. J. We round every day at 7:00 am, except on T/Th at 6:30. I selfishly want you to round with our team this month while I’m on service, but it honestly may be better for you to round with a nonsurgical service (or both!). Surgery rounds are abbreviated though, so it wouldn’t even interfere with your work day. Dr. J. is kinda bad about email, so when I’m back in town, I’ll let him know that you may be interested in joining.
Emma
My minifridge purred pleasantly in the corner. I mean, really, whose office had a minifridge?
Spoiler:
I was coming up in the world.
On most days, health care professionals flitted into my office to discuss narrative medicine, the Houston Rockets, or whatever else was worth chatting about in a medical humanities department. Little did they know that, upon entering the room and finding two seat options, they faced a test of character. It was like the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, when Indy and that Nazi dude guess at the identity of the Holy Grail: would my visitors select the plush leather chair (you have chosen...POORLY) or the modest wooden hardback? (you have chosen...wisely!). This was how I amused myself when I wasn’t teaching or tinkering with my barely-revised dissertation. Or thinking about New Orleans and that last outrageous poker session.
Of course I’d caught the 11 p.m. Megabus. Was it really so surprising? That ill-timed fold against Don was merely one drop in a vast ocean of my mistakes. The biggest failure of all, maybe, was my lack of fight. I could have battled Don deep into the night, going blow for blow with him as Destin had. But no. I had no gamble, no pride. Instead I limped out of Harrah’s, stumbled onto to the Megabus, and, clutching my swollen purplish arm, watched the lights of the Superdome fade into the distance. I wanted to stay. Instead I would return to a city, and to a career, that felt increasingly out of place, like a misplaced puzzle piece.
That’s how it all seemed to me, at least, when my minifridge purred pleasantly in my office’s corner in the Texas Medical Center.
One afternoon Emma, a fourth-year med student, popped inside and sat on the wooden hardback. She wore an expression common to most doctors I’d met—a face filled with intelligence, ambition, and despair. Being a doctor was hard. They often came to health care with lofty ideals, hoping to bathe themselves in the fascinating tidbits of their patients’ lives. But there was no time. All too often personal stories disappeared in the wake of impersonal abstraction and corporate greed. Everyone suffered. Rates of burnout, depression, and suicide were sky-high among health professionals, and yet people rarely confronted this fact in a medical culture that, like the military, shunned weakness. How ****ed up was that?
Emma asked me if I still wanted to round with her attending physician’s surgery team. From her description, the guy sounded like a character. Dr. J. was the kind of doctor who worked all day, every day, who really cared about his team, who called his residents after they’d finished a long road race, who was a literary buff in love with short stories (you simply must read Somerset Maugham’s “Rain!") and etymology (do you know that marathon means “fennel seed” in Greek?). After his divorce, Dr. J. had moved to a tiny apartment near NRG Stadium so that he could quickly reach the hospital for emergencies.
“What is he, some kind of medical monk?” I asked.
Emma smiled and said, “You’ll see.”
**
It was still dark as I walked across campus towards the Medical School Building. Even at six a.m. I felt alert with an odd sense of pride, as though I had somehow earned the dark blue scrubs that I was wearing.
Emma, also in scrubs, met me in one of the corridors. She looked tired. I followed her through a maze of hallways and hissing automatic doors until we reached a workstation where, all around me, members of the surgery team studied patient charts, scanned smartphones, sipped coffee. Emma introduced me to Raul, a senior resident who stood at a computer terminal. “So you’re training to be a doctor?” he asked.
I said no, not at all, teacher, humanities, books.
“Good. Now I don’t have to talk you out of it.” I waited for a punch line or the hint of a smile, but Raul soberly scanned the screen and kept typing. He was dead serious.
Suddenly everything was rattle and commotion. A resident barked out assignments and the team splintered into all directions. Already halfway down the hall, Raul took a call on his walkie-talkie and Emma trailed behind. We hustled through more hissing automatic doors, hopped in a few elevators, and ended up on a quiet floor. Surgery. In the hallway, an old Indian man was lathering his hands at a cleaning station and talking softly—to himself, it seemed. Somehow I knew this was Dr. J. When I introduced myself and thanked him for letting me join his team, he smiled and peered at me with bright, flinty eyes. “Tell me, Bob,” Dr. J. said, his forearms foamy with soap, “what can literature give to medicine?”
“That’s a difficult question,” I said. “The thing is...from a certain perspective...one might argue that...”
“You simply must study American medicine,” Dr. J. said. “Do you know why? Because American medicine has no humanity!”
“A person can bring humanity. You can bring humanity,” was all I could manage.
“No,” Dr. J. replied, rinsing his hands, “because we are all crushed by the system!” He shuffled past, chuckling softly, and backstepped his way into the OR.
Feeling out of place and irrelevant, I pulled on a surgical mask and went inside. A patient was on the operating table, completely shrouded in blue except for his caramel-colored midsection. Emma and Raul were already there, readying metallic instruments and peering down at that square piece of flesh; Dr. J took his place beside them. “I been waitin’ on you,” a nurse said in mock exasperation. “I’m dating Dr. J, you know,” another nurse called out from across the room. “He’s cheating on me, though, with all those women he sees every day.” Dr. J nodded sagely.
“You cheatin’ on me, Dr. J.? I knew it!”
“Yes, yes, I admit it,” he said pleasantly. “All men are dogs.”
Everything was ready. A small Indian woman, the anesthesiologist, sat beside the vital-signs machine; I stood to her left, listening to the rhythmic shrill of the heart monitor. “Remember,” Dr. J. said, and I realized that he was talking to me, “If you feel faint, be sure to sit down.”
“Pause,” said the nurse. “The patient is J- R-, sixty years old. He’s consented for 1/27 surgery for exploration and fluid drainage collection.” And then all of it was done with detached attentive precision—the scalpel slicing, blood oozing, smoke curling out of a golfball-sized incision. So that’s what burning flesh smells like, I thought to myself. Dr. J. gently slid a finger inside the incision and moved in sensitive circular motions, like he was removing wet leaves from a gutter. Thick clotted blood came out in blueberry-sized clumps, which he placed onto a silver tray.
“A ninety-year-old rabbi walks into a confessional to see a priest,” Dr. J. said, slipping a finger back inside. ‘Father, I have something to tell you,’ the rabbi says. ‘Last week I slept with a twenty-year-old girl.’ ‘But I don’t understand,’ says the priest. ‘You’re a rabbi. Why did you come to me, a Catholic, to tell me this?’ ‘My friend,’ says the priest, ‘I’ve been going around to everyone I can, telling anyone who will listen!’”
The nurses laughed. Emma suctioned fluid from the patient’s chest into a tube. Blood trickled from the white bedsheet onto the floor. “You have a bucket, love?” asked Dr. J.
One of the nurse’s tennis shoes sloughed across the room, but not fast enough. Suddenly Emma reeled backwards, stripped off her mask, fanned herself with her hand and stumbled against the wall. Dr. J.’s head snapped up, but he kept attending to the patient; one of the nurses helped Emma to a partitioned viewing room, where she sat down, sipped water, and held her head in her hands.
After a few minutes—the surgery was routine; the patient was fine—Dr. J. went over to Emma, removed his mask, knelt beside her. I couldn't hear what he was saying but, judging by the way a smile washed over Emma’s exhausted face, Dr. J. was probably telling a joke. A good one.
Last edited by bob_124; 06-07-2017 at 10:01 AM.
06-07-2017
, 07:57 PM
Nice write-up, as always 
Crazy how the staff in the hospital of my northern small town (in Dawson, home of 1600 souls or so), are all smiles and compassion. Which differs tremendously from what I have seen in the hospitals of bigish (for Canadian standards) cities like Vancouver and Montreal... Yeah, we are spoiled to have a hospital in our tiny village, but Dawson has a ton of ressourcs, tourism, and serves a radium of a few hundred kms (in the Arctic), and the medical staff chose to work in the Grand North I thought I would offer a different perspective 
All the best in Vegas, and might see you in NO this winter...
Crazy how the staff in the hospital of my northern small town (in Dawson, home of 1600 souls or so), are all smiles and compassion. Which differs tremendously from what I have seen in the hospitals of bigish (for Canadian standards) cities like Vancouver and Montreal... Yeah, we are spoiled to have a hospital in our tiny village, but Dawson has a ton of ressourcs, tourism, and serves a radium of a few hundred kms (in the Arctic), and the medical staff chose to work in the Grand North
I thought I would offer a different perspective All the best in Vegas, and might see you in NO this winter...
06-08-2017
, 09:18 AM
Do you even GTO, Bro? A Review of Hunter Cichy's Advanced Concepts in NL Hold 'em
PokerSnowie fans, look no further! I reviewed Hunter Cichy's new book here.
5th level, actually. Which is to say: I'm so advanced that I'm clueless! Standard.
@Garick: that pic was taken in Nola in the Upper Ninth Ward. I tend to poast gratuitous dog pics itt regardless of context or location.
TY Dubn! Lots of good people in health care but many of them are, as Dr. J. said, "crushed by the system." Glad you've had a good experience up north.
Hoping you do indeed make it to Nola. The 4/8 limit games are off da hook!
PokerSnowie fans, look no further! I reviewed Hunter Cichy's new book here.
@Garick: that pic was taken in Nola in the Upper Ninth Ward. I tend to poast gratuitous dog pics itt regardless of context or location.
Quote:
Nice write-up, as always
Crazy how the staff in the hospital of my northern small town (in Dawson, home of 1600 souls or so), are all smiles and compassion. Which differs tremendously from what I have seen in the hospitals of bigish (for Canadian standards) cities like Vancouver and Montreal... Yeah, we are spoiled to have a hospital in our tiny village, but Dawson has a ton of ressourcs, tourism, and serves a radium of a few hundred kms (in the Arctic), and the medical staff chose to work in the Grand North I thought I would offer a different perspective
All the best in Vegas, and might see you in NO this winter...
Crazy how the staff in the hospital of my northern small town (in Dawson, home of 1600 souls or so), are all smiles and compassion. Which differs tremendously from what I have seen in the hospitals of bigish (for Canadian standards) cities like Vancouver and Montreal... Yeah, we are spoiled to have a hospital in our tiny village, but Dawson has a ton of ressourcs, tourism, and serves a radium of a few hundred kms (in the Arctic), and the medical staff chose to work in the Grand North
I thought I would offer a different perspective All the best in Vegas, and might see you in NO this winter...
Hoping you do indeed make it to Nola. The 4/8 limit games are off da hook!
06-08-2017
, 09:38 PM
Quote:
Crazy how the staff in the hospital of my northern small town (in Dawson, home of 1600 souls or so), are all smiles and compassion. Which differs tremendously from what I have seen in the hospitals of bigish (for Canadian standards) cities like Vancouver and Montreal... Yeah, we are spoiled to have a hospital in our tiny village, but Dawson has a ton of resources, tourism, and serves a radium of a few hundred kms (in the Arctic), and the medical staff chose to work in the Grand North I thought I would offer a different perspective
I thought I would offer a different perspective
06-17-2017
, 01:00 AM
Quote:
Sorry to extend this derail but this topic is very meaningful to me just now. I have had a good deal of (unanticipated) interaction with Toronto's hospital and medical care in the last six weeks. I have nothing but praise for the care I've received, the pleasantness of the staff, and the high levels of competence. If I still lived in the US I'd be virtually bankrupt by now but none of this cost me a cent. And, though I was aware that these were people who were very busy and had lots of demands on them, no one seemed crushed by the system.
Hope you're doing well, Russell!
Shark (silver)
whale (blue)
nit (red)
06-18-2017
, 01:56 PM
What About Bob?
Macau
2015
“Visions—they are, so to speak, rags and tatters of other worlds, their beginning. A healthy man, of course, has no reason to see them, because a healthy man is the most earthly of men and so must live only an earthly life, for the sake of completion and orderliness. But as soon as he falls ill, as soon as the normal earthly order in the organism is disturbed, the possibility of another world appears, and the more ill he is, the more contact there is with the other world.” —Svidrigailov
Outside the Wynn Macau, smiling tourists marveled at the evening light and water show—think the Fountains of Bellagio, but with dragons—and strolled along the South China Sea. I felt like death.
I had spent the day exploring the city and gathering information for a piece about poker in “Asia’s Vegas.” I walked through the bustling Cotai Strip, where tourists scurried from one luxury boutique to another and where, everywhere you looked, construction cranes were building more casinos. I walked through the Venetian Sands’s massive gaming floor—the largest in the world—where lobby ceilings soared and crowds jostled for space around baccarat tables. I walked through the Sé, Macau's historical business district. I walked miles and miles, all day, and then it hit me outside the Wynn—a wave of nausea that literally dropped me to my knees. I could only hope I had food poisoning. Anything else was too scary to consider.
I hunched over on a bench and held my head in my hands, feeling warm rain drizzle down my neck. Then I ducked inside the Wynn, stumbled into a swanky bathroom, and puked into one of the fancy toilets. My phone had died hours ago and, for the life of me, I couldn’t recall my hostel's address—or even its name. Did it start with an F? an S?
****.
Lost, sick, and alone, I wandered through steamy streets in the rain. How had it come to this? Maybe my old boss, Tom, had been right after all: it was a mistake to leave Houston, and my postdoc, a year early to move to New Orleans. I don’t remember what I said to him in my defense. Probably something about how minifridges were overrated. The truth, if I was being honest, was that I didn’t fully know my own intentions for leaving. My decision was born out of conviction, dissatisfaction, and more than a little stubbornness—which, come to think of it, ran in my family. Like my dad and my brother—even like our golden retriever, Tyler, who relished life off-leash and routinely plotted devious escapes—I was one mulish mother****er.
Now, one year later, I was getting what I’d asked for and more: roaming the U.S. in a weathered Ford Escort (homeless, jobless), jetsetting to Hong Kong to “write about poker,” stumbling through Macauan streets with no map, no phone, and no friends within thousands of miles. Would I even make it to New Orleans?
First thing first: find my hostel. After thirty minutes of wandering I passed the Lo Kau Mansion, an historical house I’d visited earlier in the day, and felt a pang of hope. But then the nasty churning in my stomach returned, and I had to remind myself: Keep walking.
A few more blocks and I spotted the same wizened street vendor who’d sold me a pile of steaming spicy noodles for lunch. No matter that she’d probably handed me food poisoning on a plate—my hostel was close! Zigzagging through narrow streets, dodging mopeds and barefoot children, I looked for a familiar sign. Finally, mercifully, there it was, the name printed in Chinese and English above a rickety stairway—the Sanva Hotel. Online reviews were terrible, but hey, I wasn’t picky. At least I could rest. I staggered up the wooden steps into a narrow hallway and found my room, a Double Grand Suite that came with a nice perk: it had a sink.
I collapsed on the bed and fell into a fitful sleep.
**
When I woke up, I was soaked in sweat. Everything was quiet. Was it midnight? Three a.m.? I rolled over toward the sink and froze. There, only feet away in the dark, a shadowy figure lounged in the corner.
Someone was in my room.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, it seemed that my visitor was a man, thirtyish with black cropped hair and a dark hoodie. A crimson Full Tilt Poker patch glimmered there like a burning coal. We stared at each other in silence. Finally, with a sly smile in which satisfaction at the misfortune of others is so rudely expressed, he leaned forward and said: “Comfortable?”
“Who—”
“Isn’t it obvious? You probably wondered if you’d find me at the Wynn, or at The Big Game. Not that anyone would let you within ten feet of our table.” He chuckled. “You think you have something to say about poker? You have nothing—nothing—to say about this game. To say something, you’d have to understand it.”
“I’m learning,” I stammered. “Why do you think I’m driving around the country? I’m reading, writing, playing. ‘Know your subject’ and all that.”
“Please! You think rubbing elbows with ordinary grinders will be instructive? All the others have done it better: Alvarez, McManus, Hayano…”
“How the hell do you know David Hayano!” I exploded.
“I’m not always busy turning top pair into a bluff,” he said coolly. “I study and read. I bet I’ve read everything you’ve read. Don’t think that I haven’t. I do things like get in a taxi and say, ‘The library, and step on it.’”
“Bull****! Those words—I’ve heard them somewhere.”
“Let me ask you something,” the man said, his eyes darting around the filthy room. “If the rule you followed brought you to this—of what use was the rule?”
I leaned up on my bed in a sort of fury. “I know what’s happening here! You’re a lie, an illness, a phantom. You’re an incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me...of my ugliest thoughts and feelings. Shut up or...I’ll kick you.”
“Fine with me! Kick me and you admit I’m real. People don’t kick ghosts.”
“Is there a Big Game or not?” I cried with the same savage intensity.
“Ah, so you want to know about The Big Game. Tell me, then, does this mean you believe I’m real?”
“No chance! Although I’d like to believe in you,” I added strangely.
A loud, persistent banging rattled the door, followed by the harsh throaty voice of the night manager:
“Si-lence! Si-lence! Si-lence!”
When I turned back to the sink, my visitor was gone.
Macau
2015
“Visions—they are, so to speak, rags and tatters of other worlds, their beginning. A healthy man, of course, has no reason to see them, because a healthy man is the most earthly of men and so must live only an earthly life, for the sake of completion and orderliness. But as soon as he falls ill, as soon as the normal earthly order in the organism is disturbed, the possibility of another world appears, and the more ill he is, the more contact there is with the other world.” —Svidrigailov
Outside the Wynn Macau, smiling tourists marveled at the evening light and water show—think the Fountains of Bellagio, but with dragons—and strolled along the South China Sea. I felt like death.
I had spent the day exploring the city and gathering information for a piece about poker in “Asia’s Vegas.” I walked through the bustling Cotai Strip, where tourists scurried from one luxury boutique to another and where, everywhere you looked, construction cranes were building more casinos. I walked through the Venetian Sands’s massive gaming floor—the largest in the world—where lobby ceilings soared and crowds jostled for space around baccarat tables. I walked through the Sé, Macau's historical business district. I walked miles and miles, all day, and then it hit me outside the Wynn—a wave of nausea that literally dropped me to my knees. I could only hope I had food poisoning. Anything else was too scary to consider.
I hunched over on a bench and held my head in my hands, feeling warm rain drizzle down my neck. Then I ducked inside the Wynn, stumbled into a swanky bathroom, and puked into one of the fancy toilets. My phone had died hours ago and, for the life of me, I couldn’t recall my hostel's address—or even its name. Did it start with an F? an S?
****.
Lost, sick, and alone, I wandered through steamy streets in the rain. How had it come to this? Maybe my old boss, Tom, had been right after all: it was a mistake to leave Houston, and my postdoc, a year early to move to New Orleans. I don’t remember what I said to him in my defense. Probably something about how minifridges were overrated. The truth, if I was being honest, was that I didn’t fully know my own intentions for leaving. My decision was born out of conviction, dissatisfaction, and more than a little stubbornness—which, come to think of it, ran in my family. Like my dad and my brother—even like our golden retriever, Tyler, who relished life off-leash and routinely plotted devious escapes—I was one mulish mother****er.
Now, one year later, I was getting what I’d asked for and more: roaming the U.S. in a weathered Ford Escort (homeless, jobless), jetsetting to Hong Kong to “write about poker,” stumbling through Macauan streets with no map, no phone, and no friends within thousands of miles. Would I even make it to New Orleans?
First thing first: find my hostel. After thirty minutes of wandering I passed the Lo Kau Mansion, an historical house I’d visited earlier in the day, and felt a pang of hope. But then the nasty churning in my stomach returned, and I had to remind myself: Keep walking.
A few more blocks and I spotted the same wizened street vendor who’d sold me a pile of steaming spicy noodles for lunch. No matter that she’d probably handed me food poisoning on a plate—my hostel was close! Zigzagging through narrow streets, dodging mopeds and barefoot children, I looked for a familiar sign. Finally, mercifully, there it was, the name printed in Chinese and English above a rickety stairway—the Sanva Hotel. Online reviews were terrible, but hey, I wasn’t picky. At least I could rest. I staggered up the wooden steps into a narrow hallway and found my room, a Double Grand Suite that came with a nice perk: it had a sink.
I collapsed on the bed and fell into a fitful sleep.
**
When I woke up, I was soaked in sweat. Everything was quiet. Was it midnight? Three a.m.? I rolled over toward the sink and froze. There, only feet away in the dark, a shadowy figure lounged in the corner.
Someone was in my room.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, it seemed that my visitor was a man, thirtyish with black cropped hair and a dark hoodie. A crimson Full Tilt Poker patch glimmered there like a burning coal. We stared at each other in silence. Finally, with a sly smile in which satisfaction at the misfortune of others is so rudely expressed, he leaned forward and said: “Comfortable?”
“Who—”
“Isn’t it obvious? You probably wondered if you’d find me at the Wynn, or at The Big Game. Not that anyone would let you within ten feet of our table.” He chuckled. “You think you have something to say about poker? You have nothing—nothing—to say about this game. To say something, you’d have to understand it.”
“I’m learning,” I stammered. “Why do you think I’m driving around the country? I’m reading, writing, playing. ‘Know your subject’ and all that.”
“Please! You think rubbing elbows with ordinary grinders will be instructive? All the others have done it better: Alvarez, McManus, Hayano…”
“How the hell do you know David Hayano!” I exploded.
“I’m not always busy turning top pair into a bluff,” he said coolly. “I study and read. I bet I’ve read everything you’ve read. Don’t think that I haven’t. I do things like get in a taxi and say, ‘The library, and step on it.’”
“Bull****! Those words—I’ve heard them somewhere.”
“Let me ask you something,” the man said, his eyes darting around the filthy room. “If the rule you followed brought you to this—of what use was the rule?”
I leaned up on my bed in a sort of fury. “I know what’s happening here! You’re a lie, an illness, a phantom. You’re an incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me...of my ugliest thoughts and feelings. Shut up or...I’ll kick you.”
“Fine with me! Kick me and you admit I’m real. People don’t kick ghosts.”
“Is there a Big Game or not?” I cried with the same savage intensity.
“Ah, so you want to know about The Big Game. Tell me, then, does this mean you believe I’m real?”
“No chance! Although I’d like to believe in you,” I added strangely.
A loud, persistent banging rattled the door, followed by the harsh throaty voice of the night manager:
“Si-lence! Si-lence! Si-lence!”
When I turned back to the sink, my visitor was gone.
Last edited by bob_124; 06-18-2017 at 02:12 PM.
06-19-2017
, 01:04 PM
