Looking forward to seeing it published, so I can read it!

soon, I hope!

here's a hand a buddy of mine played that I find interesting b/c of stack sizes and metagame.

Context

This hand went down in Baton Rouge, a small room where hero is a regular. Hero has played extensively, probably hundreds of hours, with the first two villains, who view hero as nitty. My own view of hero (we've also played a bunch together) is that he favors "safe" plays, which often means taking overly passive lines and flatting more than he should.

UTG (1K): nitty OMC ("the kind of nit who limps TT-AQ and pops JJ+, AK")

MP (1K): a "good player."

HJ: (500) loose fish.

Button (500): Hero

The Hand

1/3 NL. UTG opens to 15, MP 3bets to 50, fish flats, hero is OTB with KK and 500 effective.

Made me think of a couple things.
What's our plan pf?
Does our plan change if the fish isn't in the hand?
From a range perspective, with which hands should we flat vs 4bet/fold vs 4bet/call?

Last nite was an historic evening. Despite my dislike for KTF scoring 60 points on 34354652435 shots was pretty amusing, and his legacy is firmly intact. Whatever the haters may say, winning five rings is incredible and he's gotta be a top 10 player, though I can't imagine him in my top five.

As for the Warriors, I was happy to see them get the record, especially when it seemed like they'd run out of steam with 5-6 games to go. That said, I'm firmly in the Jordan camp when it comes to GOAT teams. IF the Warriors pull out title #2 this year and win a few more the next 5 or so years, then I'd be willing to rethink. I'll be rooting for the Spurs/Lehhbron this playoffs (don't really think the Cavs have a chance; I think Pop has a real shot).

In my not so humble opinion , Kobe is outside the top 10 and likely between 14-20.

Spurs v Cavs is my realistic dream too

Don't hate you know you're secretly a Cavs fan now after watching some of the finals with me in Vegas last year

somebody's been drinking too much Haterade! Please explain to me how he's not top ten.

I think one could argue that Kobe's a top-five player: he's pretty clearly behind MJ and Wilt, but on par with the usual guys in the conversation (Magic, Larry, Kareem, Shaq, Lehhbron). In the post-MJ era I think he ranks highest b/c of his five titles, although I think Lehhbron is better.

A few miscreants have even attempted to claim that Kobe is GOAT and I was like, ha! ha! ha! That said, he's gotta be top ten.
heh, I enjoyed that very much (despite the Cavs loss) and hope it happens again this summer. I've been rooting for Lehhbron all season and will root for him in the Finals, should he play the Cavs. Honestly not sure

Not necessarily in order

Kareem
Wilt
Jordan
LeBron
Magic
Bird
Admiral
Big O
Shaq
Duncan
Karl Malone
Stockton
Paul (if no big drop off)
Garnett
Novitzki
Russell

FYP weeeeeee

Next Level with Reggie Miller, Barkley and the dream

My thinking is that flatting with KK is best here, given Hero's nitty image. OMC is folding everything but AA to a 4bet and MP is pretty much folding all the time as well, since he's probably only 3betting to isolate OMC and stop the fish on his left from creating a multiway pot. I prefer a 4bet from Hero with a value range that blocks OMC's defending/shoving hands (AQ-AK/KQ) and creates a situation where Hero might be heads-up, in position, against the fish. The only advantage of 4betting KK here is the possibility that both OMC and MP fold and the fish decides to call, but this is only happening maybe 20% of the time, at a guess. If the fish has a history of overcalling in these 4bet spots, then, of course, 4betting KK is most likely the way to go, although I would be sizing the bet low (e.g. $140-160), so I can comfortably fold to a shove from OMC.

(NB. I know nothing about basketball except that it's difficult to get the ball in the basket sometimes.)

I shipped my first harradise donkament yesterday. The structure was hyper-fast at the final table, leading to a table of <5bb stacks and <3bbs HU. But people were still folding to shoves! #foldequityftw

confirmed. Both players later told hero that they were snap-folding all but AA to his 4bet. which makes for a pretty interesting scenario with hands that are for value vs. the fish and "bluffs"/blockers vs. UTG and MP.

Assuming a standard fish, I'd guess he'd be call-happy with anything that flats 50 cold. So I also like a small 4bet/fold here, to 125 or so. In theory this has to be profitable: if both UTG and MP are raise/folding JJ-QQ and AK, that's 34/40 combos or 85% folds apiece.

In practice, though, I could see UTG or MP thinking, "meh, only 75 to me, I have a strong hand, let's see a flop." Plus KK blocks AK, making it less likely they'll fold, blah blah.

Without the fish in the hand, seems like flatting KK is better and 4bet/folding a hand like A3 is, in theory, very profitable.

Unless you're Steph Curry, this is very true!

are we talking best players or color commentators? Barkley GOAT?

Nice! Those tourneys are fun even if fast structured, as you noted 5BB can lead to glory. Did you win a seat to a WSOPC event or was that only an earlier promo?

Nate Silver on the Longform Podcast

He talks about poker and 2+2 for a few minutes near the beginning: https://longform.org/posts/longform-...88-nate-silver

Yeah won a seat. They're still giving one away per tourney.

David Foster Wallace, Tennis, and when Bob Picked up a Racket

An interesting essay on DFW and Tennis came out recently. I've mentioned Wallace (and also John Jeremiah Sullivan) itt but don't think his tennis writing has come up, although it should, and it is, because they're some of my favorites, specifically these two:

on Michael Joyce (that you haven't heard of him is part of the point):

on Roger Federer (calling Fed the Kobe Bryant of tennis would be an insult):

Why was tennis so appealing to a consummate intellectual like Wallace? Here's Sullivan's take:

"It is perhaps not far-fetched to imagine Wallace’s noticing early on that tennis is a good sport for literary types and purposes. It draws the obsessive and brooding. It is perhaps the most isolating of games. Even boxers have a corner, but in professional tennis it is a rules violation for your coach to communicate with you beyond polite encouragement, and spectators are asked to keep silent while you play. Your opponent is far away, or, if near, is indifferently hostile. It may be as close as we come to physical chess, or a kind of chess in which the mind and body are at one in attacking essentially mathematical problems. So, a good game not just for writers but for philosophers, too. The perfect game for Wallace."

Of course poker, like chess, is a game of isolation and mental warfare.
While I don't have much to say about tennis's relationship to poker--for that, check out Scansion's exceptional thread--I can share my inglorious descent into the world of competitive recreational tennis.

I grew up playing tennis, but never competitively. Thanks to decent hand-eye coordination and go-go-gadget arms, I usually beat my mediocre opponents--family, friends, the occasional ex-highschool-varsity-player who overestimated his skill.

In spring senior year, a buddy mentioned that his fraternity, Chi Phi, was hosting a charity tennis tournament. I entered on a whim. Strolling onto the court in bulky basketball shoes and a weathered racket, I sized up my first-round opponent: a bespectacled buffoon in khaki shorts and squeaky-white sneaks whose tennis bag held not one but three gleaming rackets. The guy looked like an athletic dweeb--the kind who takes lessons at a country club and hits thousands of practice balls with calculating, mechanical strokes. I expected to lose, and fast.

But no. Somehow I beat the dweeb. Then I beat my next opponent--a short, fat, deceptively athletic man--and the next. I won again, and again--was this really possible?--and suddenly found myself in the championship match. There the weirdness ended: an alum from our D1 tennis team destroyed me in straight sets.

Nevertheless, my confidence was at an all-time high. I returned home to upstate New York and entered a local charity tournament. The organizer greeted me and pointed to a bent, grizzled man in his fifties who was sitting Indian-style on the far court. "You're playing Whitney in the first round," she said. "Good luck."

I strolled towards my opponent. I was young and strong; he was old and weak. A lucky draw had given me what was, effectively, a first-round bye.

That wasn't quite how things turned out. As we started playing, something was wrong. Whitney reached every ball with ease, no matter how well-placed. He ran me ragged across the court. He hit booming serves with sick spin. I couldn't return any of them! Suddenly I was down 4-0. Then I was down a set. Before I knew it, the match was over.

Drenched in sweat, I staggered to the net, where Whitney met me with a smile.

"Thanks for playing!" he said. "This match was great for my confidence!"

Maybe it was the pained look in my eyes, but Whitney told me not to worry, that he'd probably played more in the last month than I had in my whole life. Which was probably true. As I drove home that day, the sting started to fade when, in a flash of insight, I realized a convenient truth: no one had to know about this. I got home and my mom asked, in passing, how that tennis thing went.

Fine, I said. It went fine.

The next morning I rose late and poured myself some cereal in the kitchen. The phone rang; it was my friend Brian.

"Dude, this is how you come back home for the summer?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Have you seen the paper?"

I hadn't. A copy of The Times-Herald Record rested on the counter. Flipping the paper over, I skimmed the headlines to the sports section. There it was, in bold print:

Whitney Johnson Defeats bob_124 6-0, 6-0 in the Sullivan County Charity Tennis Tournament

What the ****! Why had the paper bothered to cover a measly charity tournament? And why had my match been chosen for the headline?

The answers would remain a mystery. But one thing was certain: I had played my last tennis tournament.

I really enjoyed that tennis story.

I agree that we could easily substitute poker for tennis here---especially on account of the lack of "a corner" and presence of "indifferently hostile" opponents. I've just finished reading DFW's two books of non-fiction, over the last few months; it is an understatement to say that the essays are on tennis particularly suited to his voice. That a tennis court is a geometrically uniform space would seem essential, insofar as it enables him to show how tennis players must think strategically---literally on-their-feet---and constantly adjust to their opponents. The inner-demon thing about tennis players---the sense of them always being on the brink of existential crisis---is also explored perfectly by him. The key difference between poker and tennis, though, is the lack of time for hindsight bias in the latter, and the opportunity for limiting psychological flow in the former. I was going to say that poker players would benefit from learning how tennis players operate, but then just remembered that Boris Becker walked into our poker room a few months ago (just days before his star pupil won another title) and I recall seeing the delight in some poker pros' eyes---although maybe I'm just being biased and unkind.

Glad you enjoyed it Arty!

I think that DFW's preoccupation with tennis, and esp with elite players like Fed, has to do with playing "in flow." The best athletes seem to occupy a kind of supra-rational space in which thought not only doesn't matter but actually hampers one's ability to perform. As Wallace himself admits, one reason why he was good-but-not-great in tennis is his tendency to over-analyze stuff. This is also a point of frustration in talking with elite players about their craft (and also why post-game interviews are so mindnumbingly cliched and boring): there's no way for these athletes, or perhaps anyone, to articulate their experience.

Seems like playing in flow in poker is very tough. Those players who can do it have a huge edge over their opponents. Scansion talks about this specifically in relation to online heads-up, a format that's certainly closer to tennis than most other formats. And the reason isn't just because it's 1-on-1, but also because the constant decision-making makes it easier to get "in the zone."

And then there's live full-ring LOLimit Omaha hi!

Thinking about tennis and flow and literary writing makes me want to post one of my favorite poems, "Tennis" by Margaret Avison.

Service is joy, to see or swing. Allow
All tumult to subside. Then tensest winds
Buffet, brace, viol, and sweeping bow.
Courts are for love and volley. No one minds
The cruel ellipse of service and return,
Dancing white galliards at tape or net
Till point, on the wire's tip, or the long burn-
ing arc to nethercourt marks game and set.
Purpose apart, perched like an umpire, dozes,
Dreams golden balls whirring through indigo.
Clay blurs the whitewash but day still encloses
The albinos, bonded in their flick and flow.
Playing in musicked gravity, the pair
Score liquid Euclids in foolscaps of air.

"B-I-N-Geeoh, B-I-N-Geeoh.."

One of our dealers was literally singing the Bingo song yesterday afternoon--that's how gambly and fun our table was.

Can Bob play 25 hours in 3 days to hit his monthly goal? Let's find out!

Thanks for poasting, Russell! the bolded is my favorite part.

Yes. And I also quite like that last line, which picks up the "elipse" of the ball's motion as it forms geometric figures on the foolscap-shaped paper of the courts ...

Just ordered some books for my summer read, but unfortunately, I have gone through the bulk of non-fiction poker, leaving me with Bigger Deal to read So I ordered a few math related suggestions from the Muffin Man thread (have you checked it out?) :

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...-more-1528126/

- The Black Swan
- Antifragile
- Thinking, Fast and Slow

Heard of any of these? And Spurs looking pretty darn good now that Curry is down!!! (I will be sweating the Raptors tonight...).

I think everyone should read Thinking, Fast and Slow. I haven't read The Black Swan but some of the reviews I've read have made me think it might be superficial.

I finished Thinking Fast and Slow earlier in the year. Will probably dip in again before the year's over: highly applicable to poker and decision making in general. Taleb's Fooled by Randomness is worth reading for similar reasons, although the Kahneman text is better organised, more concise and supported by a longer line of research in behavioural psychology.

Interview with Hei "Sol Reader"

I spoke with PGC hero Hei "Sol Reader" this month. We discussed the transition to live poker, making exploitative adjustments, the aesthetics of fashion, living a polyamorous lifestyle, and Hei’s hopes and concerns for the LGBTQ community. This was a very wide-ranging interview and Sol Reader offers some excellent strategy advice imo.: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...-faces-hei.php.

Thanks for linking MuffinMan's thread, I'll take a look.

Multiple people messaged me last night to rave about how good the Spurs looked vs. OKC. I think they're still a dog to a healthy Golden State team, but with Curry's status so questionable who knows? Can't wait for that series.

I read the intro a few years ago. Never got through the whole book. Along with Thinking Fast and Slow, a few books I've been meaning to read:

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport.

Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, Doug Swanson. This one may appeal to you Dubn! Good poker (or gambling) nonfiction, it seems.

Anton Chekhov, Sakhalin Island. I'm about a hundred pages into this one, the more I read Chekhov the more I admire him as both a person and a writer. I'd give him top three GOAT.

Addendum to Sol Reader Interview (On Polyamorous Relationships)

One of Hei's responses was chopped off during our email exchange; here it is in full.

You also say that “I am not into polyamory as much as I am into non-monogamy.” Why is that distinction important to you?

There are many ways to be polyamorous, and without saying that some ways are right or wrong, I treat it first and foremost as a rejection of relationship norms, and this means possessiveness, jealousy, and unhealthy restrictions. Having multiple partners is just a possible result of that. To me, being with only one partner is perfectly valid and healthy option, but I don't believe the reasons should stem from being socialized to accept monogamy as the norm; if I were to ask you why you are in an exclusive relationship, there can be many reasons, but "because that's the way it's done" shouldn't be one of them. For people who are able to be completely or adequately satisfied with one partner, sexually, intellectually, emotionally, and logistically (some people might have multiple partners purely on the basis of living far apart or having to travel, and I think that is an absolutely valid reason), there might be no reason to have more than one partner, but I think it's clear that this is usually not the case. Does not being entirely satisfied mean one must have multiple partners? No, life is not perfect, and compromise is part of it, but polyamory is a valid option for many people that is usually rejected out of hand.

I've known, first, second, and third hand, of people who think it's better to cheat in a monogamous relationship, rather than to openly admit their incompatibilities with a monogamous lifestyle and just be poly or have an open relationship, and that confuses me greatly, and convinces me how much people's objection to polyamory is not of the substance of polyamory, in its myriad of forms, but because any open acceptance of a lifestyle that deviates fundamentally from the golden standard of heteronormative relationships is the same as failure.

And because of this, I think it's important to focus not on how many relationships one has, but on the erosion of unhealthy and toxic boundaries or expectations, especially those linked with traditional monogamy, thus why I think it's more accurate to refer to my philosophy as "non-monogamy" as opposed to "polyamory". If one feels compelled to have multiple partners just because they are poly, as some people are, then that's also restrictive and unhealthy. I know of people who try to guilt others into relationships by saying that it's narrowminded of them to say no, or that they aren't really poly if they have qualms over dating someone due to the misgivings of another partner--polyamory, of course, doesn't necessarily mean ignoring the feelings of your partners, or rejection of all rules and boundaries. For me, at least, it's about communication and honesty, and working out fair and healthy boundaries for its participants, and not relying on preset rules, like monogamy, that might be a "safe" basis of relationship for society at large (especially in the past), but are likely not the optimal relationship set up for individuals.

I'm a big fan of this interview with Sol Reader, even though I'm relatively naive about the social and gender issues he discusses. While I can't comment on polyamorous relationships or the LGBTQ community with any authority, it's reassuring to see the topic discussed in a poker forum. The historical fact is that poker is a male dominated environment, and, often, in my experience at least, subject to some "toxic" hetro-norms. It's fascinating to think through all the possible connections between Hei "Sol Reader's" views on social identity and poker theory, for, as anyone who has read his PGC (or watched the video interview with Aesah) could verify, he certainly thinks deeply about the game, sometimes in ways that are productively non-conventional, and, at other times, in ways that are relatively conservative, as with, for example, his take on shot-taking and bankroll management. I guess what I'm getting at is that there seems to be a kind of reciprocal relationship between his natural willingness to break with some deeply entrenched social norms and the practice of innovative thinking at the poker table.