The Poker Project (playing and writing about poker in the U.S.)
11-03-2018
, 01:29 AM
11-29-2018
, 09:38 PM
November Results, December Goals
Bagged $132K
You know girls like crowns
Hope I can make it to the final
—Katie Pansano
Well, the first Poker Gras was a success. The highlight for me was seeing Katie finish 19/279 and earn a crown as Queen of Poker Gras (aka last woman standing).
Overall, numbers were good and this event will almost definitely expand in the future. While the industry seems to be trending downward in many respects, it seems like our local poker scene is humming along nicely.
[134 ] Play 130 hours
Here's a new one from last week: there's a dude who wants to reload for a hundo, but he can't find his bill. He searches, searches...realizes it's in his mouth.
[42] Write 50 hours
I've been vomiting words most mornings, before the teaching/pokering kicks in. Also discovered a new (for me) writer, Brian Phillips, whose essay collection Impossible Owls is stellar. Here are two good ones:
Out in the Great Alone (the Iditarod)
Lost Highway (aliens, Area 51, Roswell)
I also read In Shock, an illness narrative in which the author, Dr. Rana Awdish, becomes a patient in her own hospital and experiences lots of terrible ****.
December Goals
[ ] play 153 hours
This will get me to over 800 hours for the year. I really want to hit this goal and win my volume bet. Not long ago I was very confident; now, as fatigue and other obligations pile up, I'm not sure if I can do it. But I am gonna try.
Florabama Thanksgiving
Bagged $132K
You know girls like crowns
Hope I can make it to the final
—Katie Pansano
Well, the first Poker Gras was a success. The highlight for me was seeing Katie finish 19/279 and earn a crown as Queen of Poker Gras (aka last woman standing).
Overall, numbers were good and this event will almost definitely expand in the future. While the industry seems to be trending downward in many respects, it seems like our local poker scene is humming along nicely.
[134 ] Play 130 hours
Here's a new one from last week: there's a dude who wants to reload for a hundo, but he can't find his bill. He searches, searches...realizes it's in his mouth.
Spoiler:
[42] Write 50 hours
I've been vomiting words most mornings, before the teaching/pokering kicks in. Also discovered a new (for me) writer, Brian Phillips, whose essay collection Impossible Owls is stellar. Here are two good ones:
Out in the Great Alone (the Iditarod)
Lost Highway (aliens, Area 51, Roswell)
I also read In Shock, an illness narrative in which the author, Dr. Rana Awdish, becomes a patient in her own hospital and experiences lots of terrible ****.
December Goals
[ ] play 153 hours
This will get me to over 800 hours for the year. I really want to hit this goal and win my volume bet. Not long ago I was very confident; now, as fatigue and other obligations pile up, I'm not sure if I can do it. But I am gonna try.
Spoiler:
Florabama Thanksgiving
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
12-31-2018
, 02:43 PM
December Results
It’s not age that makes you an adult, I see now, or even most of the experiences that age brings. What finally does it is the things you lose along the way. A parent dies; you don’t get the girl. And you are wrecked. And you are less for these losses. What makes you an adult, finally, is that you choose to keep going afterward.
Christopher Solomon, "When Your Body Says No"
"It’s a Fibonacci." The man sitting to my left pointed to his sequentially arranged white chips—3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on, depending on how many he could win.
"It looks like a winding staircase," I said.
Robert nodded proudly. He looked like a chic academic: thin glasses, blue suit jacket, pink Bose headphones squeezed atop a newsboy cap, a nattily knotted scarf. He was chatty and inquisitive. Was I familiar with the University of Chicago? I was, vaguely. He wanted to study German medievalism there if he couldn’t get into a German university. "I’m partial to post-Kantian positivism,” he said, as if that explained things. The queries continued. Had I played poker in Germany? Had I read Joyce?
Meeting out-of-towners like Robert reminded me that there was a wide world outside our twenty-table cardroom. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to care. Apart from teaching and word-vomiting, the month had been one long slog for poker volume, and I was in the home stretch. It was Saturday evening, and I still needed fifteen hours before I left town at dawn’s butt-crack on Monday.
Twelve hours earlier, the day had started like most others: parking my bike beneath a gaudy purple globe.
I was inside by eight and headed for Table 19, way in the back corner. I took my seat next to AG—that’s short for Arch-Grinder—a guy who seemingly never sleeps. Dressed like he was about to lead an expedition into the Arctic, AG had installed himself as a fixture in this room. I was often here; AG was always here.
AG aside, the table was filled sleepy tourists and drunks. I reminded myself to be patient, to value-bet. Within minutes, I ran a failed bluff and a Maurice Hawkins-look-a-like sang me a nursery rhyme:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
At 11 I hopped in the Weekly, a $100 +30 donkament that was essentially a ****ty-structured rake-trap, but I didn’t care. I liked the regs, and it broke up the cash grind. I busted around two. Ready for a break, I walked into the Quarter and explored Beckham’s Bookshop, one of those used troves with a white-haired owner and a sleepy, distinguished feel. I found myself on the second floor in front of an arcane shelf titled Equestrian, searching for a book called Laughing in the Hills, I don’t know why. I was constantly thinking about writing about poker and gambling. It was a compulsion.
There were six copies of Seabiscuit, but no Laughing in the Hills. I walked another block to Cafe Envie, ordered a latte, and headed back to Harrahdise, slowly. Whenever I took a break from grinding, I felt like I was tethered to a bungee that tautened whenever I strayed too far—to Felipe’s for a Super Burrito, to the benches along the river, to some cafe for caffeine. It was a mild cloudless afternoon, and I didn’t want to go back inside.
I went back inside. Do you know that 3pm on a blue-skied Saturday is the most depressing time to inhabit a poker room? Fortunately one of my favorite regulars, Miss Mary, was in a LOLimit game, and there was an open seat. Part of my affection for Mary was that she reminded me of my grandmother: wiry, curly gray hair, a harsh accent straight from the Bronx. I can still remember childhood afternoons in my grandparents’ living room, when Nanny fixed me triangular salami sandwiches and we watched Days of Our Lives on TV. During a commercial she’d leave her easy chair, throw open the wide window that looked out on the Hudson Valley, and cry out: I...love...Bob! I squealed in feigned horror and groped for her hands, her mouth, any way to silence her. But she always managed to free herself, cup both hands around her mouth, and yell out the window.
I...love...Bob!
Mary and I chatted about the usual. Sitting next to her in late December in my favorite seat—the two seat, which was roomy and faced away from the glass partition so that I wouldn’t watch spectators watch me like I was some rare zoo animal—I realized something: the two of us had been sitting here, at this very table, in these very seats, almost one year to the day, when we’d hit the jackpot.
When I told her this, Mary’s eyes narrowed and she smiled, leaned in, and whispered: “Let’s do it again!”
Six hours later, and I was sitting on Robert’s right. “We have the same amount of chips, you know,” he said, pointing first to his Fibonacci creation and then to my unimaginative stack. “$1260. I counted.”
We grinded for a while in silence. People came and went. A regular I’ll call DG—Degen Grinder—took the seat to my right. Thirtyish, paunchy, with a thinning faux-hawk and an expression of smarmy ennui, he looked like some unfortunate hipster whom poker had corrupted. The thing is, DG wasn’t only detestable; he knew that he was detestable and, as part of his poker persona, he invented methods to monetize his detestability. Tilt, #hateequity, that kind of thing. Not long ago, on some Wednesday morning, DG had casually called AG a rat, a snake, a subhuman piece of ****, who knows why. There was obviously some deep history between them.
DG ordered two Aquafinas and a Red Bull and debated the color of his striped Adidas sweatpants with our resident chip-architect (“that’s a burnt orange,” Robert declared). Sitting between them, I was privy to every word of their conversation.
“A few days ago I was playing," DG said, "and a guy next to me said, ‘You’re stupid.’ He said it like that. Bothered me for three days. Then I saw him in the bathroom and I asked him, ‘Hey. Did you call me stupid the other day?’ He said, ‘Yeah. I was probably high.’ DG laughed, and sipped Aquafina. “I’ve got a lot of frenemies in this place.”
I groped in my pocket for temporary salvation, my phone, and found an amusing video on social media. LG—Lanky Grinder—was filming selfie-style in the Harrahdise parking garage. From his phone’s vantage point, you could see his grizzled face outside the driver’s side window as he explained the ish to his Facebook fam. Have you been inside the Harrahdise garage? If you have, then you know there’s only one way out. If one car stops, all the others are trapped. So what happens when someone impatiently beeps at the car in front of him? Well—LG tilted his phone to capture the brown minivan trapped behind him—then that fool is about to learn a lesson. He's going to wait. And wait. And wait. LG extended a long middle finger in the air, daring the once-brash driver to respond, and glared into the camera. Don’t ever try to guess what some mother****a’s going through, you hear me?
Chuckling to myself, I glanced up from my phone and folded Q2o. To my left, Robert was in Bose-headphones heaven, eyes shut, air-drumming to “Stairway to Heaven.” To my right, DG was asking a waitress if it bothered her when he called her “doll.” It was almost ten, and the room was buzzing with the energy of a Saturday night. Tourists and regs of all kinds streamed into the room to get their grinds on. VG—Vampire Grinder—came over to say whattup. We fist-bumped. “You still here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I'm still here.”
Around midnight I racked up and glanced into the back room at Table 19. AG was hunched in the 10 seat, earbuds in, ensconced in a charcoal hoodie and a black beanie, grinding.
I returned Sunday afternoon. AG was still in the room, on Table 6, grinding alongside Robert. Of course he was. We were like a pack of cards, to be shuffled and distributed around the room in various configurations, over and over and over. Hopefully I wasn't the Joker.
I was distributed to Table 2, seat 2. Suddenly—was this even possible? Of course it was—DG appeared like an apparition on my direct right. He unracked three stacks, ordered two Aquafinas and a Red Bull, and asked me for a white chip—to tip his doll. “I'll give it right back,” he said.
I tossed him a white. He never gave it back.
***
[
] ship my volume bet
Heading into the the New Year, I'm hardly wrecked. Bruised, maybe, and weak (I lost fifteen pounds in the last month or two, who woulda guessed?), but also optimistic. A lot was accomplished this fall. I probably spent more time in the poker room than I ever will again.
I’m writing this from AZ, where I’ve enjoyed some nice R&R and logged my last sesh of the year at Casino Del LOL. I’ll poast an end of year review soon, but the basic goal moving forward is: less time pretending to be a grinder; more time pretending to be a writer; the same amount of time trawling the internet for fluffey puppies. Hope yall had a great holiday!
xtra creddit #puppyselfie
It’s not age that makes you an adult, I see now, or even most of the experiences that age brings. What finally does it is the things you lose along the way. A parent dies; you don’t get the girl. And you are wrecked. And you are less for these losses. What makes you an adult, finally, is that you choose to keep going afterward.
Christopher Solomon, "When Your Body Says No"
"It’s a Fibonacci." The man sitting to my left pointed to his sequentially arranged white chips—3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on, depending on how many he could win.
"It looks like a winding staircase," I said.
Robert nodded proudly. He looked like a chic academic: thin glasses, blue suit jacket, pink Bose headphones squeezed atop a newsboy cap, a nattily knotted scarf. He was chatty and inquisitive. Was I familiar with the University of Chicago? I was, vaguely. He wanted to study German medievalism there if he couldn’t get into a German university. "I’m partial to post-Kantian positivism,” he said, as if that explained things. The queries continued. Had I played poker in Germany? Had I read Joyce?
Meeting out-of-towners like Robert reminded me that there was a wide world outside our twenty-table cardroom. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to care. Apart from teaching and word-vomiting, the month had been one long slog for poker volume, and I was in the home stretch. It was Saturday evening, and I still needed fifteen hours before I left town at dawn’s butt-crack on Monday.
Twelve hours earlier, the day had started like most others: parking my bike beneath a gaudy purple globe.
Spoiler:
I was inside by eight and headed for Table 19, way in the back corner. I took my seat next to AG—that’s short for Arch-Grinder—a guy who seemingly never sleeps. Dressed like he was about to lead an expedition into the Arctic, AG had installed himself as a fixture in this room. I was often here; AG was always here.
AG aside, the table was filled sleepy tourists and drunks. I reminded myself to be patient, to value-bet. Within minutes, I ran a failed bluff and a Maurice Hawkins-look-a-like sang me a nursery rhyme:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
At 11 I hopped in the Weekly, a $100 +30 donkament that was essentially a ****ty-structured rake-trap, but I didn’t care. I liked the regs, and it broke up the cash grind. I busted around two. Ready for a break, I walked into the Quarter and explored Beckham’s Bookshop, one of those used troves with a white-haired owner and a sleepy, distinguished feel. I found myself on the second floor in front of an arcane shelf titled Equestrian, searching for a book called Laughing in the Hills, I don’t know why. I was constantly thinking about writing about poker and gambling. It was a compulsion.
There were six copies of Seabiscuit, but no Laughing in the Hills. I walked another block to Cafe Envie, ordered a latte, and headed back to Harrahdise, slowly. Whenever I took a break from grinding, I felt like I was tethered to a bungee that tautened whenever I strayed too far—to Felipe’s for a Super Burrito, to the benches along the river, to some cafe for caffeine. It was a mild cloudless afternoon, and I didn’t want to go back inside.
I went back inside. Do you know that 3pm on a blue-skied Saturday is the most depressing time to inhabit a poker room? Fortunately one of my favorite regulars, Miss Mary, was in a LOLimit game, and there was an open seat. Part of my affection for Mary was that she reminded me of my grandmother: wiry, curly gray hair, a harsh accent straight from the Bronx. I can still remember childhood afternoons in my grandparents’ living room, when Nanny fixed me triangular salami sandwiches and we watched Days of Our Lives on TV. During a commercial she’d leave her easy chair, throw open the wide window that looked out on the Hudson Valley, and cry out: I...love...Bob! I squealed in feigned horror and groped for her hands, her mouth, any way to silence her. But she always managed to free herself, cup both hands around her mouth, and yell out the window.
I...love...Bob!
Mary and I chatted about the usual. Sitting next to her in late December in my favorite seat—the two seat, which was roomy and faced away from the glass partition so that I wouldn’t watch spectators watch me like I was some rare zoo animal—I realized something: the two of us had been sitting here, at this very table, in these very seats, almost one year to the day, when we’d hit the jackpot.
When I told her this, Mary’s eyes narrowed and she smiled, leaned in, and whispered: “Let’s do it again!”
Six hours later, and I was sitting on Robert’s right. “We have the same amount of chips, you know,” he said, pointing first to his Fibonacci creation and then to my unimaginative stack. “$1260. I counted.”
We grinded for a while in silence. People came and went. A regular I’ll call DG—Degen Grinder—took the seat to my right. Thirtyish, paunchy, with a thinning faux-hawk and an expression of smarmy ennui, he looked like some unfortunate hipster whom poker had corrupted. The thing is, DG wasn’t only detestable; he knew that he was detestable and, as part of his poker persona, he invented methods to monetize his detestability. Tilt, #hateequity, that kind of thing. Not long ago, on some Wednesday morning, DG had casually called AG a rat, a snake, a subhuman piece of ****, who knows why. There was obviously some deep history between them.
DG ordered two Aquafinas and a Red Bull and debated the color of his striped Adidas sweatpants with our resident chip-architect (“that’s a burnt orange,” Robert declared). Sitting between them, I was privy to every word of their conversation.
“A few days ago I was playing," DG said, "and a guy next to me said, ‘You’re stupid.’ He said it like that. Bothered me for three days. Then I saw him in the bathroom and I asked him, ‘Hey. Did you call me stupid the other day?’ He said, ‘Yeah. I was probably high.’ DG laughed, and sipped Aquafina. “I’ve got a lot of frenemies in this place.”
I groped in my pocket for temporary salvation, my phone, and found an amusing video on social media. LG—Lanky Grinder—was filming selfie-style in the Harrahdise parking garage. From his phone’s vantage point, you could see his grizzled face outside the driver’s side window as he explained the ish to his Facebook fam. Have you been inside the Harrahdise garage? If you have, then you know there’s only one way out. If one car stops, all the others are trapped. So what happens when someone impatiently beeps at the car in front of him? Well—LG tilted his phone to capture the brown minivan trapped behind him—then that fool is about to learn a lesson. He's going to wait. And wait. And wait. LG extended a long middle finger in the air, daring the once-brash driver to respond, and glared into the camera. Don’t ever try to guess what some mother****a’s going through, you hear me?
Chuckling to myself, I glanced up from my phone and folded Q2o. To my left, Robert was in Bose-headphones heaven, eyes shut, air-drumming to “Stairway to Heaven.” To my right, DG was asking a waitress if it bothered her when he called her “doll.” It was almost ten, and the room was buzzing with the energy of a Saturday night. Tourists and regs of all kinds streamed into the room to get their grinds on. VG—Vampire Grinder—came over to say whattup. We fist-bumped. “You still here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I'm still here.”
Around midnight I racked up and glanced into the back room at Table 19. AG was hunched in the 10 seat, earbuds in, ensconced in a charcoal hoodie and a black beanie, grinding.
I returned Sunday afternoon. AG was still in the room, on Table 6, grinding alongside Robert. Of course he was. We were like a pack of cards, to be shuffled and distributed around the room in various configurations, over and over and over. Hopefully I wasn't the Joker.
I was distributed to Table 2, seat 2. Suddenly—was this even possible? Of course it was—DG appeared like an apparition on my direct right. He unracked three stacks, ordered two Aquafinas and a Red Bull, and asked me for a white chip—to tip his doll. “I'll give it right back,” he said.
I tossed him a white. He never gave it back.
***
[
] ship my volume betHeading into the the New Year, I'm hardly wrecked. Bruised, maybe, and weak (I lost fifteen pounds in the last month or two, who woulda guessed?), but also optimistic. A lot was accomplished this fall. I probably spent more time in the poker room than I ever will again.
I’m writing this from AZ, where I’ve enjoyed some nice R&R and logged my last sesh of the year at Casino Del LOL. I’ll poast an end of year review soon, but the basic goal moving forward is: less time pretending to be a grinder; more time pretending to be a writer; the same amount of time trawling the internet for fluffey puppies. Hope yall had a great holiday!
Spoiler:
xtra creddit #puppyselfie
Spoiler:
Last edited by bob_124; 12-31-2018 at 03:02 PM.
12-31-2018
, 04:49 PM
01-01-2019
, 12:30 PM
Harrahdise is my main squeeze, of course, but I like to think of CDS as my poker home away from home. Even if the game was a bit tame, it's still impressive that you guys can get a biggish game on the regular. And more importantly, it's filled with good peeps. (meeting Garrett's dad was cool too. I've played with him a bunch of times). Thanks phellas! Happy NY
01-01-2019
, 01:35 PM
2018 Year in Review
[800] Play 800 hours
125 hours of LOLimit
513 hours of 1/2 and 1/3
85 hours of 2/5 and 5/10
76 hours donkaments
I was profitable in all variants of cash, and had a crummy year in donkaments. Despite or because of this, I'm most enthusiastic about playing more donkaments.
My game may have improved slightly, or not at all. Tough to say. I managed to fit in some studying in the spring and the fall, but was ultimately pulled in too many other directions. Although I dislike grinding, I enjoy studying and plan to devote more time to away-from-table improvement (and possibly some online volume).
PGC remains my favorite part of 2+2. Without listing the popular threads that most of y'all will know, here are two slightly under-the-radar gems that you might have missed:
msnl to nosebleeds, by purplefartbubble. absurd how quickly this guy rose through the ranks.
HS live cash guy spending a year learning MTTs from scratch, by MossBoss. Stone cold crusha
[785] Write 800 hours
In contrast to pokering, writing volume came rather easily. I usually found myself eager to write immediately when I woke up, which is obv a good sign. Much of the year was spent journaling about random **** that went down at Harrahdise or the Rio or wherever I found myself. Hopefully, upon reflection, a narrative arc will present itself. IMO it already has
I did publish a good bit of poker-related stuff. My favorite 2019 piece is probably my interview with WSOP OG Carl McKelvey. I remain fascinated and humbled by all the awesome people in the poker world. And to all the degens, the goofballs, the stewards of broken dreams: I love you too.
[15] Read 36 books
Weak, for the most part. I preferred to read lots of longform nonfiction, which is more easily digestible for me than book-length narratives. If I had to pick one book that jumped out this year, it would be Bill Buford's Among the Thugs.
***
Overall playing took a backseat to writing—which is probably as it should be—and I made significant strides to completing my lil poker project (although there's still a looooong way to go
).
Unfortunately, there were long stretches when I was simply overwhelmed with various commitments, and my health and relationships suffered as a result. There's simply for excuse for this, especially if you believe, as I do, that people/experiences > work/things.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed 2018 and am looking forward to the New Year! Will have more to say about it soon. GL GL
[800] Play 800 hours
125 hours of LOLimit
513 hours of 1/2 and 1/3
85 hours of 2/5 and 5/10
76 hours donkaments
I was profitable in all variants of cash, and had a crummy year in donkaments. Despite or because of this, I'm most enthusiastic about playing more donkaments.
My game may have improved slightly, or not at all. Tough to say. I managed to fit in some studying in the spring and the fall, but was ultimately pulled in too many other directions. Although I dislike grinding, I enjoy studying and plan to devote more time to away-from-table improvement (and possibly some online volume).
PGC remains my favorite part of 2+2. Without listing the popular threads that most of y'all will know, here are two slightly under-the-radar gems that you might have missed:
msnl to nosebleeds, by purplefartbubble. absurd how quickly this guy rose through the ranks.
HS live cash guy spending a year learning MTTs from scratch, by MossBoss. Stone cold crusha
[785] Write 800 hours
In contrast to pokering, writing volume came rather easily. I usually found myself eager to write immediately when I woke up, which is obv a good sign. Much of the year was spent journaling about random **** that went down at Harrahdise or the Rio or wherever I found myself. Hopefully, upon reflection, a narrative arc will present itself. IMO it already has
I did publish a good bit of poker-related stuff. My favorite 2019 piece is probably my interview with WSOP OG Carl McKelvey. I remain fascinated and humbled by all the awesome people in the poker world. And to all the degens, the goofballs, the stewards of broken dreams: I love you too.
[15] Read 36 books
Weak, for the most part. I preferred to read lots of longform nonfiction, which is more easily digestible for me than book-length narratives. If I had to pick one book that jumped out this year, it would be Bill Buford's Among the Thugs.
***
Overall playing took a backseat to writing—which is probably as it should be—and I made significant strides to completing my lil poker project (although there's still a looooong way to go
). Unfortunately, there were long stretches when I was simply overwhelmed with various commitments, and my health and relationships suffered as a result. There's simply for excuse for this, especially if you believe, as I do, that people/experiences > work/things.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed 2018 and am looking forward to the New Year! Will have more to say about it soon. GL GL
01-01-2019
, 10:02 PM
01-03-2019
, 12:05 AM
Quote:
Congratulations on reaching your poker volume goal! Also, great work in all of your goal areas. Thanks for all of the great material you present here in your thread and across the spectrum of 2+2.
Thought that last narrative of yours that you poasted was kick-ass, very enjoyable to read. Keep up the great work!
Thought that last narrative of yours that you poasted was kick-ass, very enjoyable to read. Keep up the great work!
I think that’s the first time someone has failed to return one of my white chip loans. Tilting, for sure.
freeeeeeee
freerollin
Maybe I’m deluding myself, but I like to think that ppl are more likely to forget to return a white than to purposely fail to return it . Which still sucks and is tilting, obv, but less so because ignorance > spite/malevolence/ego.