Thanks, glad you liked it. Credit Aesah for that: he was very open to talking about anything, including strategy his downswing (which many would conceal/distort).

I need more content! To any poker playas, ballas, and shot-callas currently in Vegas:

If you'd like to share your poker story--or if you know of someone who has an interesting story to share--please shoot me a pm. Drinks/food on me

Vegas WSOP: Tha Pokerz



Got in last Friday and played the Colossus on Sat at 10. My table was extremely weak, like much weaker than I would have guessed. About fifteen players rotated to my starting table, and maybe one of them was a pro (and even he paid off an old man who never bluffs river on AAJ24 with TT). Despite the soft table, the 5K starting stack didn't provide much maneuverability, and I found myself on 20bbs pretty quickly. I took a few shove spots and busted when I shoved 33 from the cutoff and the BB woke up with 88, GG ME.

I've also been playing some low-stakes cash on the Strip. I'm not particularly happy with my play. Here are three hands in which I hero folded/hero called.

Hand One:

effective stack 300, I raise two limpers to 17 with ATo. The BB, MP1, and MP2 all call. BB and MP are stations, MP2 is a nit limping 100% of his range, if it matters to them my image is prob TAG.

Flop JJ4 (70), I bet 25, planning to barrel if the BB or MP1 call. BB and MP2 call

Turn K (120), checks thru.
River Q, BB checks, MP1 bets 100 quickly. MP has all full houses, even KK-QQ (21 combos), compared to AJ/JT that he might overvalue (7 combos). He had shown previous aggression only with nuttish hands and hadn't bluffed at any point, so I folded.

Hand Two

Villain is another old man, more loose and aggro than villain above but still on the tight side. He has 300 and I cover. He makes it 8 over a limp--a sizing that he used with KK--and I call with 33 from the sb.

Four of us see a 358 flop (35). I lead 15, small sizing that's intended to induce, as I had seen him spazz with an overpair earlier in the session. But he just calls.

Turn K (65), I bet 40, he calls.

River Q (145), I bet 70, planning to bet/fold. I can get value from AK, AA, AQss, KQss, KJss. He ships pretty quickly and I do fold. He later claimed 88.

Check/raising flop may be better than bet/3betting, since both lines are strong and my image was LAG.

Hand Three

loose/splashy younger guy limps UTG, I make it 12 with KJo, only he calls. We played a previous hand in which he limp/called my open, donked out on a Qxx flop, check/called a bet when I had QJ. River went c/c, he claimed a draw and mucked.

Flop 367 (25), he c/c 15.

Turn 7 (55), he leads 15. I think he'll do this with marginal pairs, FDs, 89, 9T, so I call.

River 6 (85), he bets 25, I call pretty quickly. He shakes his head sadly and shows

I'm still hanging in Have played so far at the V, Harrahs, Ballys, Planet Hollywood, the Golden Nugget, Flamingos. Will prob try to play at every room in Vegas. Not surprisingly wait lists have been huge all over town.

There he is! Good to have you aboard buddy.
I also usually just call flop. There are three reasons for raising that blur together/are at odds with each other: the two you mentioned + seizing the initiative and collecting the dead money in the middle. There are many turns cards that we have to fold to (any A, K, spade) and my goal was to take small raise will take down considerable dead money. It did not work!

Tomorrow I'll write an update on the reporting/writing side of things.

Oh wait- your QJss isn't the Queen Jack of spades? I thought we had TP and a FD. In which case, that changes everything.

Can't wait to hear an update. Also- great interview with Aesah!

Vegas WSOP: Tha Stories



A few big stories have already hit the WSOP.

The first one, obviously, is the Colossus. In terms of numbers, the event was a huge success. But there was a controversy surrounding the payout structure, which awarded the winner “only” 600K, and long lines for paying early bustouts. Two Houston-based roommates finished first and third, which is pretty mind-blowing: http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...nt-for-638-880

A second interesting story came from the 10K heads-up championship, an event that, with the exception of the Main and the 50K Horse, is probably the most prestigious bracelet event. Connor Drinan tweeted that he felt “superused” by a guy who had previously been caught cheating: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...0k-hu-1537175/. The investigation is ongoing: http://www.pokernews.com/news/2015/0...s-up-21771.htm

A third story is the WSOP coverage itself. The WSOP has opted to do in-house reporting instead of hiring PokerNews to cover the event. I met Rob Kirschen, the WSOP Circuit director of Media Content, when we were both in Nola, and he seemed excited and daunted by the challenge. A few players have written/tweeted about how this year’s coverage is falling short of years past, but it seems too early to tell so far. What do you guys think?

More generally, it’s been great to be around for the WSOP. Nothing like it. I’ll be grinding and writing a lot for the next week and attending the LLSNL meetup next Wednesday. Already had the chance to meet two poker wizards, Dr. TJO and Scansion, whose threads are well worth your time:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...015-a-1500273/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...op-tr-1224895/

Not to mention: SOOOOOSHI!

This is at Umayi, an all-you-can-eat place close to the RIO. My buddy doubted my sooshi-eating skills; now he’s a believer.

ooops yes, that does change things. If I have TP + FD I'm even more inclined to flat.

here's a mini-update for ya: played another session at the Golden Nugget today and observed a 2/5 uncapped in which at least four players had > 20K, and one guy had a 50K brick. Apparently a 240K pot was played last week!

I also ran into a memorable character from my Vegas trip in the fall. Jerry was back, slouching in the same seat with his cane and bushy eyebrows! http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=367

I also ran a failed bluff.

effectives $500, I open A3 UTG to 8, folds to SB, an old man who had been limping/folding pre. He makes it 25 and I flat. I believe that he does this with KK-AA only, and maybe QQ. Calling seems trivial given stack sizes and his face-up range.

Flop 683 (50), he bets 30 I call. I'm planning to bink or rep good turns/rivers.

Turn 7 ($80), he checks, I check. I believe he's checking to check/call, as he'd never just pitch AA-KK on this board. When I check behind, my hand looks like a single pair, I think, since I'd bet all sets on the turn.

River 5, he checks I fire 80, he SNAPCALLS and I lose. Couldn't resist stabbing on the river given the runout. My value hands in this spot are 44 and 99, obviously, and rivered 79s, 56s, 57s, 9Ts.

This is like the fourth bluff where I've got instasnappcalled so I should probably stop bluffing or stop giving off tells.

Ship It Holla Ballas!: How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become Poker's Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew by Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback (St. Martin's Griffin 2014, 336 pages)



"Four years ago I was sitting in a friend's basement, playing some .25/.50 poker and shooting some bull**** with my friends while watching Chris Moneymaker win the 2004 WSOP when I thought, Wouldn't this be a cool way to make a living? And a dream was born.

Since then poker has made me a millionaire. I've made (and am making) more money than I ever thought possible. But I'm starting to wonder, Did I have the right dream?" —Andrew Robl

Amazon blurb: "Don't let the title throw you off: Ship It, Holla Ballas! is not about raising the precocious young poker star to the status of folk hero. Rather, the narrative reads straight out of Greek tragedy (or Scarface): Guys with a natural affinity for probabilities stumble across online poker; hone their skills and fill their bank accounts; call themselves the "Holla Ballas" and sort of successfully reinvent themselves as hard-partying rock stars; and lose it all through a combination of bad decisions and a government crackdown. Although poker brought them together, they get into trouble according to their personalities: Some decide to dive with sharks and (unsuccessfully) try to pick up Playboy playmates; others invest in TempurPedic mattresses and home cooking. This breezy but electrifying read is a tale of greed, hubris, and how the ability to make a lot of money does not always come with the ability to handle it—or yourself—responsibly."

Meh, the players certainly don't "lose it all," as the blurb suggests, but you get the idea.

The two main Ballas are Andrew “good2cu” Robl, an awkward but inspired youngster from Michigan; and David “Raptor” Benefield, a baseball star from Fort Worth who, after a nasty injury, turned to poker. The authors were very fortunate to get the cooperation of both talented players, who stand as foils to each other for much of the book.

One of the odd things about the book is that it refers to its main characters by their screen names. As Grotenstein explained in an NPR interview (http://www.npr.org/2013/01/26/170183...-youngest-crew), this strategy was meant to convey some of the strangeness of the online forum subculture, in which people do indeed call each other by their screen names (I’ve been called Bob more than a few times myself ).

The real-life identities of the Ballas were Peter “Apathy” Jetten, Kevin “Bonafone” Boudreau, Mario “Deuce2High” Silvestri, Alan “TheUsher” Sass, Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little, Travis “TravestyFund” Rice, Blake “EmpireMaker2” Stevenson, and Alec “Traheho” Torelli.



Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Phil “gman” Galfond were also connected to this crew, although neither spoke with the authors or accepted their "Balla" status. In fact, it seems like only Robl embraced the label: http://shipitholla.com/making-money-i-am-balla/

All of the Ballas were loosely united by an older med student, Dave “Irieguy” Elliott, who learned sit-n-go strategy in the late 1990s. They traded strategies on 2+2, planned a Vegas trip, met in person, and commenced printing money. Much of the narrative—and lots of pictures, which go far in establishing the credibility of otherwise-unbelievable events—detail the lavish lifestyle of these youngsters: living in mansions, epic parties, lots of drinking. And showdowns with poker’s old guard.

Old School/New School

“We were both calling the other side bad, but for different reasons. They were calling us bad because we gave off stuff or acted like nerds or whatever, and they were terrible because they were actually terrible." —David Benefield

The book offers a kind of cultural history of the poker boom in the early 2000s, which was more or less the Wild West for online poker. Nothing was legislated, players were atrocious, people got superused—a far cry from online poker today, where nine-man SNGs have virtually been solved, and a “good” ROI is around 3-5%. These were smart, motivated kids who got into poker at precisely the right time. A clash with the older generation of poker pros was inevitable.

One of the best OS-NS confrontations is between durrrr and Phil Helmuth at the NBC Heads-Up Championship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-hz4HRcbzM)

And here's a good Poker After Dark Episode entitled "Nets vs. Vets": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veOmcPYT3yA

Postmodern Gatsbys

As the partying and pokering grow stale, both Ballas search for life balance. Here's Robl's ideal schedule, which he strives to implement in Vegas:

9:15-10:00am: Go to gym downstairs and do some cardio
10:00-10:45: Showever, eat, sauna, steam room, etc.
10:45-5:00pm: Play online/live, read, run errands
5:00-7:00; Dinner with friends
7:00-10:00: Play more poker
10:00-11:00: Weight room
11L00-12:30am: Review hands, read, write
12:30-9:00: Sleep

Sound familiar?

The problem is that Robl's schedule isn’t making him happy. “You guys might recall a post a few months ago about moving to Las Vegas and implementing new habits,” he wrote on his website. “Well, I worked my plan and achieved results that surpassed even my lofty skills (in just a span of a few months), and still found myself uncontent.”

Raptor, too, is obsessively committed to self-improvement. But unlike his friend, whose end game seems to involve mo money, mo women, and higher stakes, Benefield pursues a more rounded approach:
“Do yoga, eat healthy, and stay in good shape. Read often, write even more. Ask everyone you meet what their favorite books are. Go to more ballgames and play more golf with your dad. Stop worrying so much about having ‘x’ amount of money in the bank, because x will forever be increasing and focusing on such a hopeless pursuit will suck the life out of you.” At root, the book expresses a familiar moral: money doesn’t buy happiness.

Fortunately there’s no Gatsby-like tragedy at the end of the book. The worst that happens to Robl and Benefield are precipitous downswings, and both of them seem to have made it out of their twenties a lot richer and a little wiser. These days Robl can be found in nosebleed stakes around the world. And Benefield recently graduated from Columbia: https://twitter.com/DWBenefield/stat...56839201632256
Maybe the darkest story is Dwan's, who’s reputed to owe millions of dollars to shady businessmen (at the very least, he owes a bunch to Jungleman). But who really knows?

The one thing that's certain, the authors tell us, is that this era of online poker is gone forever. Fortunately, they've preserved a piece of it in the form of a breezy, enjoyable narrative.

Cliffs: Ship it Holla Ballas tells the story of a peculiar subculture through a handful of its most successful players. Credit the authors, Grotenstein and Reback, for explaining Black Friday, basic sit-n-go strategy, and a host of other poker-specific topics with clarity. It would have been nice if Galfond and Dwan were represented more fully, but you can't have everything. This is a breezy, enjoyable read that's perhaps the best single portrait of the online poker boom.

Vegas Update

A lot's happened since my last update. After my two friends were in town for the Colossus and the early part of the WSOP, I took a break from the Strip and stayed near downtown, where I planned to write and grind at the Golden Nugget (one of my favorite places to play in Vegas, for some reason). There were some absurdly deep 2/5 games running during the Series. One guy at my table claimed that a 240K pot was played!

I also like what's happening on Fremont Street. It's a nice contrast to the Strip, it's cheaper, and a few developers have been trying to encourage local business growth: http://downtowncontainerpark.com/

Playing did not go well. This isn't because of results--I finished slightly above breakeven for the trip--but because of a general feeling of uncertainty and a a lack of motivation to play. Put simply, my intuition felt off. The most glaring example: 1/3 at Harrahs, I'm playing a little over a 300$ stack and isolate a mid-position limper to 12 with QJ. The limper, a wiry graybeard in his fifties who just sat down, runs his fingers up and down his stack, hesitates, and cuts out raising chips. He makes it 32 total and I call, expecting his limp-reraise to be a AA-KK (or possibly AK), as it usually is from an older unknown player.

The flop is KT4 ($65) and he bets 25, I call. The turn is a low diamond, and he bets 40 into 105 after some deliberation. I call again. The river is a brick--I think an offsuit 3--and he thinks for a bit and checks. At this point, looking at the 185 pot with about 200 behind, I weigh bluffing opportunities and conclude that, even though he's likely capped at an overpair of aces or top pair with AK, he still might not fold to a shove. I sigh and check back, and he shows A6 for complete air! I shake my head and muck. Guy to my left pats me on the back and says, "I bet you'll be thinking about this pot for the rest of your life!"

Probably not, sir, but the hand has been on my mind for a few weeks. Immediately afterward I felt discouraged and didn't want to play. I felt (and still feel) that it would have been better to "show heart" and bluff the river, even if that meant getting tank-called by AK. This sense of being lost at the table and an indifference to playing lasted for much of the week that I was downtown.

My response, which is definitely some form of a mental game leak, was to avoid poker to focus on writing, meet up with 2+2ers, and do some interviews. The LLSNL meetup, a 1/1 game at Planet Hollywood, was lots of fun. Met Garick (who organized the even), BigSkip, 11T, Bip, NeverlosesatPoker, Lapidator, Snowball/catlady, Bluegrassplayer, and a bunch of others. The game was a nice mix of fun and friendly competition, and I managed to book my biggest winning session of the trip.

One highlight of the month has been interviewing lesser-known or unknown poker players, with the intention of publishing the most interesting parts of each conversation in a Q&A format. I had already done a few of these interviews and have come to really enjoy this process. I feel like I have a knack for fostering a real conversation--rather than the stilted ping-pong of question-answer that you find in some interviews--and I've also been fortunate to find some very interesting characters out here. I'm excited to share this content as it comes out.

Going into this trip, I didn't have sets goal about playing, writing, or networking. I mainly came to Vegas out of curiosity and an obligation to "be around" for the WSOP and see what parts of it resonate with me. Having wandered around the Rio for a few weeks--usually with my media badge, which makes me feel like an amused imposter--the experience has helped me better define what I like about playing and writing about poker. For example, one thing I definitely don't want to do is tournament reporting; I can't imagine a more tedious or thankless job. Which is why any criticism of the WSOP's tournament coverage should be tempered, imo, by an appreciation of the difficulty of that kind of work.

My favorite part of the trip, which was both a wake-up call and a cause for motivation, involved talking strategy with two extremely good players. One of them, a guy who's a top Vegas reg in the 2/5 and 5/10 games, has massive life leaks and was remarkably open about all facets of his life. The other player was, in the early 2000s, one of the best heads-up no-limit players in the world; now he destroys live cash and plans to move to Macau. It was enlightening and humbling to hear these guys talk through hands, and it reminded me of a quote from John McPhee's Levels of the Game:"Tennis is a game of levels, and it is practically impossible for a player who is on one level to play successfully with a player on any other". Being in Vegas has allowed me to meet players on many different levels, and it's motivated me to improve my own game.

I have some good pics from my camping trip which I'll post in the next update!

Cash on the table still plays at Golden Nugget? That has been eliminated from everywhere on the Strip I played last week.

Yep, cash still plays at the nugget. And binions too I think

I think you have the parallel for a kernel of an idea for a novel. Gatsby in the 21st century.....just a thought. Far more interesting than another iteration of poker-player as Western cowboy aka ideal American male.

Interview with Tim "The Trooper97" Watts

Just interviewed an interesting poker pro who, for the last year or so, has been vlogging about his life in Vegas: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...poker-1492434/

here it is: http://cardplayerlifestyle.com/poker...ooper97-watts/

I don't have aspirations to write a novel, but I just met someone who might just be able to pull off that kind off book. It could be done I think!

Would love to do this myself (not the live reporting though; yuck!)... hopefully next year!

Camping

After two weeks on the Strip, I was ready to get out of Vegas for a while. I succeeded. Here's some camping pics!

Red Rocks


Death Valley
actually tent-camped at the bottom of Death Valley. Somehow the campsite, which was basically a dirt patch and picnic table, was full. No clue how but I slept for a few hours.

Yosemite

Campfire


Mono Lake



Your time will come!

I'm heading back to Vegas on Sunday for the Main, another week of pokering, and another hiking trip near Flagstaff.

Good stuff man. I'm yearning for an outdoor trip like that. Glad you were able to get away from the hustle and bustle of the Vegas Valley and see some breathtaking scenery. Hope everything goes well during your last week of play. I'll be in touch soon!

Interview with Jay Anderson

I recently interviewed Nawlins pro Jay Anderson about poker and life with ulcerative colitis, a disease that affects an estimated 1.6 million Americans. I enjoyed this one a lot because it offered a chance to link my interests in poker and medical humanities: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...y-anderson.php

Yeah it was a great trip. I'll post some pics of the Flagstaff hikes too, once that happens. Thanks again for doing the interview. I wanted to put this guy in!

Nothing like finding Chance in the bathroom sink, unphased by the water from the faucet, haha.

Thanks for giving me a platform to discuss my unique situation. I hope others can take something positive from it.

Looking forward to the Flagstaff pics. I remember thinking how beautiful the area was while driving through it a couple years ago. Pretty decent summer weather as well.

Interview with Steve Bierman

Steve is a nawlins-based regular who won a seat to the main event. This interview follows his first day: http://cardplayerlifestyle.com/poker...steve-bierman/.

About to sneak in an hour of playing before I continue roaming the rio. Time to dubble up!

for whatever reason, the last few sessions have seen me fire a few (unsuccessful) bluffs. Nothing crazy, just spots where I've sensed weakness and an opportunity to apply some pressure.

For instance, after a BB led into the field in a limped pot, I flatted a 48 7flop with A3, planning to raise a turn. A heart did come, the BB bet again, and I raised, only to see him ship relatively quickly with (he showed with a grin) Q6.

I don't hate the semibluff--or any of the others, really--but habitually making these plays is a leak b/c they violate a fundamental rule of LLSNL: bet (or raise) for value.

Keeping this is mind, I played my best session in a while last night, focusing on betting thinly for value vs. calling stations. I had two things going for me: a massive fish to my right, and the good fortune of actually making hands that held. This resulted in a big win and a nice start to a week that will hopefully include playing some poker!

WSOP Main Event

Hard to describe just how fun it was to cover the WSOP Main Event—my first ever—but I’ll try. I got into town last Sunday and, because of a delayed flight, missed the 2+2 party, which apparently was lame. I did manage to trek to the Gold Coast on Monday morning, where I met Andrew Brokos, Nate Meyvis, and Carlos Welch, three good guys from The Thinking Poker Podcast. Also met Alex “Assasinato” Fitzgerald, who I’ve been listening to and reading for years.

The best part of covering the Main was following a few friends and acquaintances who made semi-deep runs. After winning a free seat in a satellite, my friend Steve was thrilled and nervous to play in his first ME. I follow his Day 1 experience here: http://cardplayerlifestyle.com/poker...steve-bierman/. His bustout hand, which came courtesy of Chris Moorman, is pretty interesting: http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/upda...-moormans-pot/. Steve and I talked for a while about this hand with "Wild" Bill Phillips, Steve’s coach and friend (more on Bill soon), and we both agreed that preflop is probably a mistake. Given that the sb had been very aggressive pre, our thinking was that fold > 4bet > call with AJss. As played, Steve’s flop shove is good, I think, given the looseness of the PF opener and stack sizes. The most interesting part of the hand imo is Moorman’s willingness to call all-in with his combo draw and a player to act behind. His decision certainly goes against the conventional wisdom that pros should avoid high-variance spots vs. amateurs in favor of the gradual chip-up. On the other hand, he's Moorman and probably knew that binkage was imminent!

Sadly, 2+2er karamazonk may have endured the most painful exit: bubbling on Day 3. We'd met a few days earlier for an interview, which was one of the most enjoyable and insightful conversations I’ve had in a while. Along with poker-talk, we discussed mindfulness and spirituality, topics that have rarely come up in other interviews. You can read karamazonk's wsop account at the end of his excellent PG&C: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...-life-1500581/

The next bustout was Zach (“Scansion” on 2+2), who amassed a massive Day 1 stack and was very healthy on Days two and three. But QQ < KK on day four and that was that. As usual, he took the bustout with his characteristic humility and stoicism.

The two guys who went the deepest were "Wild" Bill Phillips and Kenny Milam, two Nola regs who survived through day four and entered day five with short stacks.


Unfornately, Bill busted KK < AQ all-in pre, and Kenny lost with KK to QJ on Q458 board. An exciting run and disappointing finish for both.

Aside from the Media Freeroll tourney, which I promptly busted, I didn't play much poker. One interesting spot comes to mind from a 1/3 sesh at the Rio. The villain is a bald 40s white guy who seems like a strong player. He's been raising limpers in position and playing a tad too aggressive but it's working for him. I've seen him iso-raise to 15 with QTss and open uncontested pots to 12, 14, and 15 from EP. He's fairly new to the table and probably perceives me as tight straightforward. I had squeezed AQo on the button and got all-in with a short stack, but I'm not sure if he was around for that.

He opens UTG to seven and MP, a weak player who looks ready to punt off his $70 short stack, flats. I raise AdQd to 25, I often flat this because it plays fine multiway in position but I felt villain's sizing was weak and the most likely result would be that he'd fold and v2 would punt with whatever. As played, the opposite of what I'd hoped for happens: villain stares me down, looks uncertain, says "want to have some fun?" and eventually flats, and V2 folds.

Flop AT7 ($60), check check.

Turn Q, villain pots it for 50, I flat.

River 8 ($160), villain jams for my remaining stack of 275ish rather quickly.

My bankroll has been growing, albeit at a glacial pace. I'm almost to the point where I'll start shot-taking 2/5 when games are good. One nice result of talking so much poker has been renewed motivation to study and log more hours.

My overall impression of the Main was very positive. I met a ton of fascinating, supportive people on both the playing and the media side of the game. Although the experience hasn't sunk in fully, I can't imagine missing the Series next summer.

After an eventful week at the Rio, I hopped on a bus to Flagstaff for some hiking.

Best thread I have read in a while. So much eye opening material and life altering passages. There's real life lessons to be learned in these 38 pages. Love it. Keep up the reporting and thanks for shedding a little light for us.

Sincerely,

-SpadeWar

Humphreys Peak

After arriving in Flagstaff, my dad and I knocked off Humphreys Peak, the highest mountain in Arizona, and some other mountain.
On the trail

Butterlies fluttering in a dewy meadow

On the summit

Am now back in Arizona, where I have lots of work to catch up on. This was waiting for me in the mail

Thanks Spade! Your comments mean a lot.

The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, by Josh Waitzkin (Free Press, 2008, 228 pages)



“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.”

I had heard about this book from a few poker players and am glad that I finally had read it.

Amazon blurb: Waitzkin's name may sound familiar—back in 1993, his father wrote about Josh's early years as a chess prodigy in Searching for Bobby Fischer. Now 31, Waitzkin revisits that story from his own perspective and reveals how the fame that followed the movie based on his father's book became one of several obstacles to his further development as a chess master. He turned to tai chi to learn how to relax and feel comfortable in his body, but then his instructor suggested a more competitive form of the discipline called "push hands." Once again, he proved a quick study, and has earned more than a dozen championships in tournament play. Using examples from both his chess and martial arts backgrounds, Waitzkin draws out a series of principles for improving performance in any field.

Here’s a fascinating video in which Waitzkin talks through the final match in that film, when he beat fellow prodigy Jeff Sarwer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHE9kgXX1YA. Makes me want to play chess.

By his late teens/early twenties, Waitzkin left competitive chess and began competing in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands. He excelled in that, too, winning a 2004 World Championship. While Waitzkin never ascended to the status of a Bobby Fischer or Gary Kasparov, the book isn’t really about how to master chess (or martial arts). “What I have realized is that what I am best at is not Tai Chi, and it is not chess,” he writes. “What I am best at is the art of learning. This book is the story of my method” (xxi).

Entity and Incremental Approaches to Learning

Despite an emphasis on “flow,” “feel,” “intuition,” and other abstract concepts, one of the merits of this book is its clarity (he's also a good storyteller). Waitzkin defines these and other terms and translates fuzzy concepts into practical application. He begins by distinguishing between two approaches to learning.

Entity theory says that children tend to view their intelligence or skill as a concrete thing—an entity—that’s fixed or static. You either have it or you don’t. The problem is that this discourages growth. In chess, as struggles become more intense and opponents put up serious resistance, players start to lose interest in the game. Their confidence weakens. They avoid challenges. Losing is always a crisis instead of an opportunity for improvement—if they were a winner because they won, the losing must make them a loser (37).

Incremental or “learning” theorists, on the other hand, sense that difficult material can be grasped through slow, steady, deliberate hard work. “The key to pursing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety” (33).

Numbers to Leave Numbers

The process in which technical information is integrated into what feels like natural intelligence—what Waitzkin calls “numbers to leave numbers”—is a crucial part of incremental learning. This idea evokes both the notion of “unconscious competence” in developmental psychology and the “10,000” hours rule in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. The idea is that, through lots of practice, you learn the mathematics underpinnings of a game--think pushbotting charts, pot odds, EV calcs in poker--in order to forget them: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...-nlhe-1107105/. “Eventually," Waitzkin writes, "the foundation is so deeply internalized that it is no longer consciously considered, but is lived” (73-74).

I can remember a comment that Justin Bonomo made about how, after playing thousands of sit-n-gos, he'd developed a level of precision where he simply knew that, from a certain position and with a certain stack size, K7o was a push and K6o was a fold. The cool thing about acquiring this internalized knowledge, as Waitzkin observes later, is that experts can actually "see" more and work less. Ever watch Roger Federer play tennis? I'm not sure if the guy sweats during a match!

Chess as a Window into Personality

As he continued to play, Waitzkin’s study of chess became a form of psychoanalysis. Chess paralleled life. “The game had become endlessly fascinating to me,” Waitzkin writes, “and its implications stretched far beyond winning and losing—I was no longer primarily refining the skill of playing chess, but was discovering myself through chess” (77). Waitzkin’s own predisposition tended toward chaos and love of the unknown. This, in turn, allowed him to exploit opponents. If someone was a controlling person who liked to calculate everything, he made the chess position chaotic, beyond calculation, so he had to make that uncomfortable leap into the unknown. If an opponent was intuitive and fast, he’d make the position precise, so that the only solution was through slow, mind-numbing math.

Identifying your personality and harmonizing it with your discipline is crucial. “There will inevitably be times when we need to try new ideas, release our current knowledge to take in new information, "Waitzkin adds, "but it is critical to integrate this new information in a manner that does not violate who we are” (80).

Notes and Questions

Losing to Win—Taking breaks from your pursuit, which renews you. the ocean.
The Soft Zone—Flexibility (52-3)

Cliffs: The Art of Learning is applicable to poker and indeed to any competitive pursuit. The best thing about this book isn’t its content—there’s really nothing new here—but how Waitzkin skillfully tells his life story. He retains a humble and tranquil tone throughout the book—a tough task for someone who destroyed his competition in not one but two fields! If not for this narrative grace, the book could easily fall into the dubious “self-help” genre. Instead,The Art of Learning is an autobiography, a learner’s manual, and a helpful meditation on identity and self-knowledge.

World Series of Zombies, by Chad Holloway(https://www.comixology.com/World-Ser...l-comic/225781)



Zombification

Vegas, early July. You’ve been at the Rio for a full month, grinding hard, pining for that elusive WSOP bracelet. Fourteen-hour days blur together. You stop thinking. You stop showering. After another bad beat (do aces ever beat kings?) you drag yourself from the Brasilia Room to the toilet (as usual, the line stretches out the door) to the Poker Kitchen, where you force another greasy, overpriced burger down your throat. Staggering towards the Amazon Room, you feel like…a zombie or something.

This is the idea behind Chad Holloway’s World Series of Zombies, a sixteen-page comic book inspired by the long hours that players (and reporters) endure at the WSOP. Holloway, a senior editor with PokerNews, is no stranger to the slog. This is his sixth summer stalking the drafty Rio hallways. “I’m a big comic book fan. I’m obviously a big poker fan,” Holloway told me at his WSOZ booth. “So when I decided I’d like to do a project to combine the two, I thought to myself: why not set it to the backdrop of a zombie outbreak during the World Series of Poker?”



A Slim Narrative

The story begins in a packed Amazon Room during the Main Event, where thousands of unhygienic grinders compete for money. A generic-looking dude named Dalton is in a pot with Mike Matusow, who suddenly grimaces, folds his hand, and limps towards the exit. Is he tired? Tilted? Hungry for another pricy burger? Nope. When Mike the Mouth returns he’s—GASP—a zombie!

For the rest of the slim narrative Dalton and prominent poker pros battle the zombie horde. “I wanted to use pros that the general public—not just hard-core poker fans—would recognize: people like Mike the Mouth Matusow, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Helmuth,” Holloway said. He throws in a few lesser-known faces, too, like “Mad” Marvin Rettenmaier, David “Doc” Sands, and Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler. Yes, Allen does get to wield a chainsaw.

I’ll admit it: I’m not much into zombies. Give me a Hobbit or a lightsaber instead. But one thing I do appreciate about lighter parts of the genre—and this book—is its campiness. WSOZ doesn’t take itself seriously: think Shaun of the Dead, not 28 Days Later. My favorite moment is when Vanessa Selbst scrapes off a zombie-face with a familiar gardening tool and, snarling with glee, says, “You can never beat the rake!”

Another bright spot is WSOZ's illustrations. Terry Huddleston has done a fine job bringing these poker personalities to life (and to death). And Erik Reichenbach, an artist and Survivor contestant, completed a variant cover featuring Daniel Negreanu—a timely tribute for the almost-November-Niner.

Poker-Zombie-Pop-Culture Mashup
The ending features a showdown between a zombified Phil Helmuth and the book’s hero—could it be anyone else?—Phil Ivey. After Helmuth delivers his trademark “I can dodge bullets” line, Ivey, in a subtle nod to The Matrix, extends a double-barreled shotgun and calmly responds, “Dodge this!”

These amusing encounters are a strength and weakness of WSOZ, which is essentially a mashup of scenes from comic books, film, and pop culture. For casual readers unfamiliar with or indifferent to poker, there’s not much new here.

But Holloway wrote this book for and to the poker community, and folks within this niche will be entertained. Go ahead, pick it up. World Series of Zombies evokes the madness and monotony inside those drafty Rio hallways: you’ll remember why you booked that ticket to go bracelet hunting, why you're sick of hearing "so sick" after another bustout (seriously, do aces ever beat kings?), why you’re done with sweaty summers in Vegas. And why, next year, you’ll go back.

Strategy Interview with Sangni Zhao, More Musings

I interviewed Sangni Zhao, a Las Vegas pro who’s been destroying the 2/5 games in Vegas. His approach is the perfect example of playing exploitatively against players who won't exploit you. We discussed bet sizing, turn and river aggression, and the importance of playing against ranges: http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/si...zhao-22330.htm.

I hadn't intended to contribute strategy articles, but that's what the editor needed so that's what I prepared. What do you guys think? Is the Q+A format good for strategy discussion?

Talking with Sangni was both fascinating and disturbing. He has a high-octane poker mind and is a very strange dude. The most interesting/disturbing parts of our conversation never made it into the interview. Maybe it's for the best: who really wants to read about hookers, strip clubs, fundamentalist Christianity, and mental illness? Hmm...maybe I'll find a place for all that elsewhere.

Things are moving along very well on the poker writing front. I have tons of content from my month in Vegas, which I'll be able to use in the coming months. A longer piece that I’ve been working on—remember that poker-poet guy Joel Dias-Porter?—should also be out in the fall. The next step will be getting a book proposal ready, which will hopefully happen by the fall or spring. I’m consciously moving slowly on that project, since I’m still new to Nola and have lots of learning and exploring to do.

I’ve also been dipping into some great non-poker books lately. Reading Chekhov has been fun, and I discovered James Salter’s work when I was perusing the 2p2 Books thread. A Sport and a Pastime has to have the best writing about sex that I’ve ever read. I can remember reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover and thinking, meh. Well, Salter's on another level. Also starting David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner, which were both adapted to TV before The Wire.

There’s no question that my recent focus on writing and networking has hampered my playing, both in terms of quality and volume. With a bit of time before heading east, I’ll be studying a bunch for the next week or two. Having read The Art of Learning and going through my notes, I think the key is obvious: spending an hour or two most days on fundamentals, especially thinking in terms of ranges. My conversation with Sangni and one other poker wizard were “aha” moments in this respect. I’ve already started working with Flopzilla and will return to a few Ed Miller books, which are tedious but important. To anyone frequenting the Stars play money tables: Beware!

Just about everyone

Format seemed fine and actually thought the strategy part was pretty darn interesting (which is rare for... you know... a strategy article ).

OK, good to know. Most of the comments have focused on Sangni's overconfident attitude, which doesn't surprise me (I legit LOLd when he called his friends "poker minions").

How are you Dubn? Didn't realize you'd started a new 25K challenge, GL!