Nice thread - love these stories

I enjoyed your review, in part because as a little kid I remember travelling from Houston into Louisiana and staring at the people pumping the levers on slot machines in the diner while eating breakfast with my mother. And it also reminded me of a couple of visits to Harrah's Jazz many years later. But most of all it brought back to mind the several times when, returning to Texas for visits in the late 80s and early 90s, I escaped family for jaunts to the riverboats in Lake Charles. There was only one of the boats spreading poker (limit holdem), and I can no longer recall its name but the games were fun. The big game was $10 limit for the first two rounds, $20 on the turn, and an optional $40 on the river. The last time I played in it a guy who seemed to be a part of the New Orlean Saints roster was there for the night and he kept raising preflop, declaring, "There are no $20 rounds." It was a roller-coaster night.

Around 4 a.m. they announced that no one could leave for the next hour (or was it two?) while they took the boat on its mandatory daily cruise. I wound up playing 37 hours straight, which remains my longest-ever marathon session.

2015 review, 2016 goals

Poker

I logged 603 hours last year without setting a concrete volume goal. My main leak in this area was my average session length, which was lol. This improved towards the end of the year, and I now find it easier to put in longer sessions. Not surprisingly, longer sessions correlated with stronger results.

My 2016 goal is to log 1000 hours of live poker, supplemented by study and some online play. The key to achieving this goal will be improving session length. Going through the same routine—studying, biking downtown, playing, going home—feels just as draining whether I play for five or eight hours. Compartmentalizing poker play/study has been helpful, and I'll continue trying to log most of my hours across only 3-4 days per week. Then when I’m “off” or focusing on writing/teaching, I’ll enjoy more of a poker recharge.

Since I started logging hours in October 2014, I've realized that my enthusiasm for live poker is pretty meh. I certainly don’t dread going to the casino, but I’m also not chomping at the bit to put in hours. It's telling that I'm far more likely leave a session early than to lose sleep playing a marathon sesh. In fact, looking at my tracker, my longest session is only 11 hours!

On the one hand, I have no problem sucking it up and doing what I need to do. On the other, one adjustment I'll be making is to play a wider variety of games and formats. I'll be hopping in some live donkaments starting with next weekend's Million Dollar Heater tournament series. Last month I played in my first live tourney and it reminded me of how much fun tourneys can be. I’ll also be playing some limit variants—more on this soon—and bigger NL games.

I also think that strengthening my mental game--especially cultivating an attentive, mindful, thankful presence at the table--will make the hours easier to put in.

Overall, I'm satisfied with my first full year of semi-serious live poker-playing. I suspected, but couldn't know, that I'd be profitable live, and I feel like I've laid a decent foundation and still have a ton of room for improvement. #LOLsampelsize

Writing

I published 24 poker pieces, one personal essay, two journal articles, and one nonfiction story. I wouldn't have guessed that I'd write almost 50,000 words in a year, but so I have. It helps that I'm writing stuff I enjoy in shorter bursts (1-2k words aren't much but they add up).

[]finish book proposal. I'm curious to see how people who know literally nothing about the game will respond to a book "about" poker. I expect to have some interesting conversations
[]write 15 poker pieces and at least one "crossover" piece that appears in a non-poker magazine. This number is more or less arbitrary, but the main focus is to write fewer short pieces in favor of working on longer stuff.
[]return to Vegas as a writer/reporter/player. Bonus points for taking the train.

A few writings that jump out from last year:

bob_124,Interview with Daniel Jones. We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, which remains one of the highlights of my WSOP trip, and a bunch of nonpoker people mentioned that they enjoyed reading this. (Mario Kart ftw!)

Brad Willis, Bust: An Insider's Account of Greenville's Underground Poker Scene. Parts one and two are especially good.

Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Terrible Beauty of Brain Surgery. Just read this one. Having enjoyed the first volume of My Struggle, I was familiar with Knausgaard and was curious to see how he approached a topic like brain surgery! My guess is that his biggest challenge is to avoid becoming a parody of himself; his style is pretty unique. K seems to have somehow retained a seven-year-old's sense of wonder and earnestness and yet (to me) he doesn't come off as sappy.

Life

I need to think about this a bit, but at the moment:

[]survive Mardi Gras
[]run farther. I think half-marathoning is my sweet spot.
[]take a trip. Thought I'd have my own dog by now, which would inhibit my ability to frolic across the globe, but I've been fortunate to land in a place with Foxy, my roommate's fifteen-year-old mongrel. So the door remains open for a trip somewhere, perhaps in the fall.


TY, Maybe someday I'll have some PLOLOL stories but, for now, you're in charge of those!

I can also remember a few Lake Charles riverboat trips, probably around 2006-7. Before the Isle moved its poker room, they had a huge riverboat room, and the action there was crazy. I can remember playing 2-5-10 for the first time and thinking I was bad-ass.

Not sure when but they closed down the boat and opened a smaller room, which has since shriveled up with the appearance of the L'aberge and the Golden Nugget. Lake Charles game remain good, though, and I'm guessing they always will if it remains the best options for East Texans.

I can't believe I just found this thread. The road trip stories were particulalry enjoyable, but clearly catching up on this thread will be part of how I kill the next month in the desert. Thanks!

What I particularly recall about that marathon session I played there was that around (I think it was) 2 a.m. I said to the person next to me, "Well it looks like the games are drying up for the night," and she said, "Drying up, hell. It's about time for the oil rig workers to get off the graveyard shift." And, shortly after that they did arrive, bringing lots of action (if mostly to the lower limit tables).

I wound up at $2-4 around 4 a.m., that being what was still going, and a 60ish black guy with a very strong cajun accent, whom the others called Mr. Lucky, was on my left. I remember his capping one hand preflop with 42o on the button -- making it an 8-way cap! He took it down on the river when the board ran out something like A3K95 and then turned and smiled at me and said, "I just had a feeling."

I don't believe in that, but that particular night in Louisiana, it actually spooked me a bit.

good to have you aboard! Hopefully we find ourselves seated next to each other at next year's LLSNL cashstravaganza.

OMG. I'm a bit spooked myself, especially since I'll be playing a good bit of limit for the next few months. Would be a cruel fate if bob_124 falls at the hands of the 4/8 limit poker gods!

Interview with Pierpaolo Papadia, ESPN Story on Paul Phua

This month I talked with Pierpaolo Papadia, a poker pro from Italy who's currently living in California. We discussed life in Rome, transitioning to live games, the program at ChoiceCenter, and getting slowrolled.

Also stumbled across this long ESPN story on gambling man
Paul Phao , a big-time bookie whom some of you may recognize from nosebleed cash games.

Poker has always been in this place in Australia, except for a brief period after Joe Hasham's WSOP win. I'm always one who prefers culture at the margins, although what is marginal is sometimes worth debating, especially if "marginal things" have scarcity value. I'm guessing that if anyone's an expert in this area it would be Martin Harris: he sounds convincing to me. Ironically enough, I'm still an advocate of the making-poker-legitimate argument, too, in which players are prized for their strategic acumen rather than their outlaw status. Not sure if I'm contradicting myself or not, but it's fair to say, as Harris suggests, that the image of poker is relatively complicated at the moment.

I like this plan and the idea of you "sucking it in" and playing more. I'm still trying to plan my year, particularly so I can find more time for writing. Your approach seems to have worked, especially in terms of achieving writing goals, so hoping I can follow-suit to a degree. There's definitely scope for poker and writing routines to be mutually reinforcing, particularly as both activities involve the quest for long lines of concentration!

I don't think there's any denying that, since Black Friday, the game has been pushed back towards the margins. A more interesting question, for me, is whether it's possible to reconcile the contradiction, or tension, between "legitimizing" poker and retaining its status as a countercultural, vaguely transgressive game that evokes gamble-gamble and frontier outlaws. While he concedes that BF led to plenty of bad stuff, Koppelmann thinks that you can't have it both ways, and that BF is good because it has pushed poker back out of the limelight and therefore preserved its counter-cultural appeal.

I'm all for stressing poker as a skill game, which would likely increase its legitimacy, but I also dislike the tendency within much poker media to whitewash or distort the unsavory aspects of the game, which, if revealed, would likely decrease its legitimacy.

A book that's at the top of my "to-read" list is Murikami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a book that stresses the mutually reinforcing relationship between running and writing. I'm guessing there's some useful poker parallels too!

LHEdventures



"Two regulars may frequent the same club for ten years, only twenty feet apart, and yet they may never recognize or interact with each other."

—David Hayano, Poker Faces

I'll be playing 4/8 limit til March. God help me.

Hand of the week:

6 limps, hero 2! JJ otb to 8, 8 calls.

flop JT9, UTG bets, 5 calls, hero 2! to 8, 5 calls.

turn 2, check to hero who bets 8, 2 calls.

river T, UTG checks, MP ch, hero bets 8, UTG 2! to 16, MP fold, hero 3! to 24, UTG snapfolds.

RIP Bowie

I recall you saying you'll be "playing more limit", but why in the world are you stuck with 4-8 limit until March? That sounds like true torture to me.

The sheer noise of the 4/8 table never failed to astound me in Nola. Data rich field, perhaps?

It's really the only stakes that run in Nola (4/8). There's also a 4/8/12 hold'em/omahahaha that runs about half the time, and a 15/30 omahahaha hi on the weekends. Unless you wanna come check out some 10/20 o8 in Biloxi

Limit should help you a lot with fundamentals. Good luck, and I hope you don't pull your hair out before March

On the Pokercast this week they said they'd be interested in a poker writer contacting them about doing some in-depth write ups for their Internet Pokers Wall of Fame if you have some time.

It's a self-imposed challenge that has less to do with "beating the game" than with meeting a new player pool . I also think that taking a break from NL may give me a fresh perspective when I return in March. So far the experience isn't as atrocious as I've expected, and I'm already seeing the room (and others are seeing me) in a new way. my favorite answers to wtf I'm doing in 4/8 are, "sometime you gotta mix it up," and "busto!"

Pretty much this, hard data baybee!

hah thanks, I may jump i the 4/8/12 soon and eventually the 15/30, although I need to brush up on my Omaha game--and by "brush up" I mean learn how to play! I've only dabbled in PLO.

Thanks BK, I'll shoot Adam an email to see what they're looking for.

When I first started playing PLO (and limit Omaha live), I found Hwang's books helpful. You have to adapt them to your own playing style and situation, of course. But they helped me understand starting hands and mindset.

What they didn't help me understand, however, is the mind-numbing variance. But that was my experience on Stars, not live, which can be wonderful.

Thanks, russell. I'll give hwang a look. If anyone else knows of good limit Omaha resources sendem along!

probably the classic resource book for limit omaha hi/lo is Ray Zees' "High Low Split Poker" which covers both o-8 and stud-8. I have a couple of other references that are worth reading - "Winning Omaha-8 poker" by Mark Tenner and Lou Krieger, and Bobby Baldwin's chapter on O-8 in "Supersystem 2". There are others out there but these would be plenty good to get the basics down.

If you happen to be in Tucson I'll loan them to you.

The People's Card Game (no, it isn't poker)

long writeup in the Awl about euchre, a game I don't think I've ever played. "If poker, where every bet is an attempt to bankrupt the other players, promotes cut-throat enterprise," writes the author, "then euchre, where every calculation is made with your partner’s support in mind, embodies small-town communalism": http://www.theawl.com/2015/06/the-peoples-card-game

cool. Thanks again for Ken Lo's book. In my infinite wisdom I either lost it or left it in Tucson

I grew up in Indiana.. certainly more people know how to play Euchre than poker there.

My wife grew up in Ohio and when we visited her folks we often played Euchre - they just called it "cards".

Interview with Joshua Griffith and Sam Golbluff

I interviewed Joshua Griffith and Sam Golbluff, two limit hold 'em specialists. We discussed live and online opening ranges in limit hold ‘em, what poker teaches, and beating Phil Ivey with six-deuce offsuit: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...th-golbuff.php

hmm...sadly, I still suck at limit. I prob need to move up to where people will respeck my raises.

Is it just me or do these limit pros seem more level-headed than most others? I like that both also emphasise freedom, without a hint of "I should doing something else with my life" cynicism. Maybe it's got something to do with their 21% and 26% UTG raising ranges!

January results, February goals

[X] survive Mardi Gras.
[X] submit poker book app
[30] play 50 hours of poker

I snuck to the casino for a few short LHEdventures, but mainly the month was all about writing. Feels good to have some working documents that I'll be able to send out within the next few months.

Despite playing only a few sessions of 4/8, the experience has already been educational and, at times, enjoyable. The playing pool is indeed distinct from the 1/3 and 2/5 games. By far most of the "wat u doinhere" comments have come from the dealers.

As for actually learning how to beat the games, I'm going to read Ed Miller's Small Stakes Hold 'em and work out some opening ranges from different positions . I've also been perusing the Limit subforum and challenging all comers HU4ROLZ on the Stars play money tables. I stumbled across TPiranha's interesting and informative well (limit specialist and SNE who retired from poker to play DFS): http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...-well-1479652/

For the LHE wizards out there: in loose-passive no fold 'em games, do we want an open limping range from EP? I want to work out a strategy for 22-77 and sooted broadways and have no clue whether raise > fold > call etc.

#euchreinthemidwestisdedeveryonessolid

It's comforting to know that guys like this exist. In life, that is. In poker, I'd run in the other direction--straight to the 4/8 limit tables!

February Goals

[ ] Survive Mardi Gras Part 2
[ ] 80 hours of LOLimit
[ ] teach
[ ] read

YouTube Greatness



[X]Survive Mardi Gras

I stumbled onto an awesome Youtube site that posts video game speed records. Their collection is extensive: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCId...AOrOdLdfY1J4VQ

Here are a few of my faves. First--and most important--Contra. I spent many hours mastering the eight levels of this NES Classic, and, while I could never move through the game near as fast, I have beaten the game without dying using only the pea-shooting gun that you start with.



Mario Kart

I preferred Bowser to this guy's Donkey Kong. Either way, the fat guys rule.



Mike Tyson's Punchout. This dude makes it all the way to Tyson--blindfolded!