No. There's some AK in his range. Mostly cowboys, though.

I think he also plays AA this way.

I also thought he'd play either of these hands (esp AA) the same way.

Results

"You got me," Villain says, showing 45. "Since I'm 3-betting the flop with 3 combinations of KK, I decided to mix in a few bluff combos for balance purposes. Nice hand!"

I finished reading it this morning. It's not a poker novel but a crime novel with significant poker content (maybe KoaSM was too; it's been twenty years) but it's really well done and I quite enjoyed it.

It's self-published. I'm not sure why (it certainly didn't have to be), but I'm guessing, given what Bennet writes in that link, that he wasn't patient enough to go through the usual submission and editorial processes and so he took the quick route. For a self-published book it's unusually clean, though there are some floating commas and the like.

Bennett manages a complex plot skilfully, paints a very authentic picture of Baltimore streets and of the gambling world just before online kicked in, and creates very realistic characters. (Pinocchio Joe returns from King of a Small World.)

September Results, October Goals



[34] Play 30-40 hours

Volume was easy to hit this month. I enjoyed playing and was focused on plenty of other stuff, mainly travel, which included a trip to see my gf in Chattanooga, a Biloxi poker weekend, and a week-long visit to Maine/Boston for my brother's wedding. Overall it was a great month.

Had the chance to make a Foxwoods day trip. The room seems nice. The action, not so much

read

[X] Ed Miller's Poker's 1%

Really enjoyed Miller's book and will be rereading it this month. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a readable (albeit imprecise, as Miller himself admits) intro to optimal play. Seems like a good place to start before moving on to Matthew Janda or Will Tipton's work. #douevenGTObro?

[X] Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child.
[ ] James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
[ ] Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
[X] Cal Newport, Deep Work
[X] Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

write

[X] write one rough story/essay/interview per week, most are poker-related so will be poasting here.[/QUOTE]

October Goals

[ ] Play 100 hours

Finally, a high-volume month! Am aiming for 100 hours in both October and November, and will be playing primarily deep 1/3 and 2/5. Let's see if I can bust this roll!

Read

[ ] The Myth of Poker Talent, by Alexander Fitzgerald
[ ] Once a Gambler, Part II, by Miikka Anttonnen

I'm looking forward to reading this! Will prob reread King of a Small world since it's been so long.

Looking forward to reading The Baltimore Truth, thx for the link Did Miikka send you a version of his part 2, as it seems as the release is delayed by his bad health lately...

not yet, should be getting it soon. By the way, congrats on finishing your challenge!

Is this out yet? Hadn't seen an announcement.

not yet. My understanding is that it'll be out within the next few months. I'm gonna review pt. 2 so will hopefully have a copy soon.

Elena Ferrante's Identity Revealed! (?)



Ferrante's Neopolitan novels are really good, probably the best thing I've read in a while. Part of my enjoyment stemmed from the fact that the author's identity remained anonymous. It seems that Ferrante has, like Batman, been unmasked as Italian translator Anita Raja!

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/10...nte-an-answer/

Thanks for sharing that link. Interesting stuff, albeit I ultimately felt a little guilty for reading it given that I respect the author's wishes for anonymity/privacy. The novels have been my favorite reading of the year, too.

Also, thanks for your review of Deep Work and for sharing the link to my review of the same. Really glad that you checked it out. I found myself thinking about it the other week when I went to see Werner Herzog's latest documentary, Lo and Behold, about the past, present, and future of technology. As Newport writes, the changing landscape of things make deep work both increasingly necessary yet increasingly elusive.

Finally, nice job getting things done this past month and best of luck meeting your goals in October!

Interview with Molly Mossey

Last summer I worked alongside Molly Anne Mossey as a live reporter for the WSOP. We recently chatted about highlights from the summer, the perks and perils of live reporting, and life on the road: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...lly-mossey.php

I'm disappointed in the decision to "out" her, although I've enjoyed the subsequent discussion about privacy/anonymity. The backlash against Gatti, the investigative journalist who broke story, is also interesting. I'm wondering how all this will play out.

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for putting it on my radar! Hope your month's going well.

I enjoyed the interview with Molly.
My poker brain got very confused when it appeared that she went to a place called Council Bluffs in Omaha, but evidently (I had to look it up, as I'm 4000 miles away) it's on the other side of the Missouri in Iowa. I've been reading Bill Bryson's 'The Lost Continent' (in which he passes through many small towns with odd names) and it occurs to me that a travelogue of a touring poker reporter might be more interesting than I thought.

By the way, I was amused by BJ Nemeth's accidental micro-aggression yesterday because he uses hotkeys to speed up his reporting on the WPT updates: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ct-w1rzWcAAhZRU.jpg

Glad you liked it. I'm sure that a travelogue by a live reporter--or a circuit grinder--would be enjoyable and revealing, if done well. I'm guessing you're familiar with Martin Harris's blog; if not, he offers a nice glimpse into the roaming reporter's grind--often at international stops.

That is just lol. I hope BJ hasn't been tarred and feathered on Poker Twitter!

Yeah, I read Martin's blog from time to time. I also really like Dara O' Kearney's blog, which is obviously from the point of view of a player. Today on twitter he was showing how glamorous the last ever stop of the UKIPT was by posting a photo of the view from his hotel window. It was of a roundabout.
BJN quickly apologised to Cate as soon as he realised his mistake, but I think she saw the funny side.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/bo...ntumaglia.html


I briefly met Dara in Vegas two summers ago, he seems like a cool guy and a first-rate poker player. Have you seen this vid he did with Andrew Brokos? Nice discussion of fast-structured MTT strategy.

I actually watched that video two weeks ago, when it had been on my "watch later" list for about 9 months. It was timely viewing, as I've just started playing tourneys more frequently, and the stacks are often very short on the FT in the satties I play, much like they are in Dara's hypers, so I learned a few things from it.

The Happiest Man in the World, Check-Raising with a Set, and an Indomitable Mongrel


“You’re a dick. Do you know that?”

The five seat, a paunchy forties white guy in a Who Dat? tee, glared to his right. His opponent in the four seat was a trim, smartly dressed black man with glasses who looked like Malcolm X. Five had just folded ace-queen faceup on a queen-hi flop and said to Malcolm, Please. Please tell me you had kings or aces. At least tell me I was beat. But Malcolm sat in stony silence until he quietly announced that, no, he wouldn't say any such thing.

"A dick," Five repeated.

“You can’t insult other players, sir,” said the dealer.

"You know, Fallyn," Five said to the dealer, "a lot of these players belong in the 4/8 game." He glared at Malcolm. "You hear me, buddy? You should be playing 4/8."

Watching their exchange from the ten seat, I was tempted to inform Five about my own LOLimit adventures. But not tonight. I wasn't in a chatty mood. I returned to a story on my smartphone about the so-called happiest man in the world, Matthieu Ricard, a cherubic Nepalese monk who’d written that The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world….It is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. This seemed true. And I wondered: was it instructive to inhabit this space with these people—with Five on his fifth Dos Equis, in his second decade of arrested development, spewing verbal vomit at anyone within spitting distance—in order to stare imperfection in the face? Or was all of it just an insidious kind of mental poison?

I turned off my phone and rose restlessly from my seat. Whenever my mind wandered—which happened often—it was usually best to leave. And that was fine: I had almost hit my modest goal of four hours for the night. Three more hands and I'd rack up.

Looking down at two black eights with 1K effective, I raised to ten from early position. Malcolm ($450) and the Five seat ($600) called, the blinds folded, and I checked the K87flop. Having played maniacally for the last hour, Malcolm struck me as a spazzy thinking recreational—someone who might treat a king as the nuts or, more importantly, barrel off with air. But he checked, too, and Five—whose play was far more conservative than his temperament—bet $25. We both called.

I checked again on the Q turn and this time Malcolm bet $65. Five turbo-mucked and said, “Again? Do you really have it every time?”

Having played my hand this way, it seemed like check-calling or check-raising were both options. I decided that Malcolm, having donked into both Five and me, was more likely to have value (KQ/KJ/AQ) or draws that would bet/call (67 or T9) than complete air. And I did, of course, want to play for stacks. So I raised to $150 total.

"Yeah!" cheered Five. "You like that, bitch?"

"Sir, I will call the floor," said Fallyn.

Ignoring his tablemate, Malcolm brooded in silence. Finally he called.

The river was the 9, and I moved all-in for Malcolm's last $250. He leaned back in his seat and frowned, glancing from his remaining stack to the pot. Doubt was in his eyes. He was fighting that familiar battle—often a losing battle—when a desire to win overwhelms the inconvenient knowledge that, like it or not, you're beat.

With a defeated sigh, Malcolm finally flicked in a white chip. I showed my set of eights and he nodded grimly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he flipped his hand face-up.

Jack-ten. Just the nuts.

My mood swung from shock to sadness to amusement. I could hear Five, his voice shrill and abrasive, asking Malcolm how the hell he could slowroll someone that ****ing hard.

Malcolm grinned and stacked his chips. I folded two more hands, racked up, and headed for the exit.

Just another day in Harradise.

For some reason, as I unlocked my bulky black cruiser and pedaled through the French Quarter, I remembered a dog I'd met over a year ago. I had been bicycling on that day, too, around a rustic village in northern Thailand. Suddenly I saw him sitting on a hill covered in garbage: an indomitable mongrel who surveyed his domain with pride. Who could tell what this dog had been through? Maybe, judging by his rainbow-colored collar, he lived with an owner who fed him scraps every morning. Or maybe not.

I kept pedaling through the Quarter, smiling to myself as the faces of Malcolm, Seat Five, and Matthieu Ricard flickered and faded. And then there was only the image of that dog, perched on some garbage-infested hill, proud and weary and content.

Solid read man, really enjoyed it. Was this a spontaneous post, or part of a bigger project?

Great read. MOAR!

Like it a lot (especially the scent of morality)! Dog looks a little like a dingo to me---superb posture.

ty Dubn! Both spontaneous and part of a bigger project. The long-term goal--which is still years from being finished, I'm guessing--is a book about poker in New Orleans that weaves together narratives from literature, oral and archival history, and my own experiences. I'll be throwing more of this stuff into the blog, I'm sure.

weeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE

ty Dr. Just want you to know that Harradise will be ready when you make your triumphant return!

Loved the story, loooove the dog. What a gorgeous fella.

Andrew Neeme's Poker Vlog

It's early, but Andrew, a Vegas-based mid-stakes pro, brings a lot to his new poker vlogs: nice editing, good humor, a down-to-earth temperament, and a nice mix of poker and non-poker content. Here's his latest from a recent trip to the Horseshoe Hammond:



Vlogging is an interesting medium, and I wonder how it will evolve within the poker world.

TY Chuck! A good fella indeed. Hope he's doing well, wherever he is.

The Myth of Poker Talent: Why Anyone Can Be A Great Poker Player, by Alex Fitzgerald

I reviewed Alex's The Myth of Poker Talent this week. The book offers a spirited, wide-ranging assessment of what it takes to be an elite player (Cliffs: hard work).

shameless brag: I managed to use "prescient min-raisers" in a sentence!