Glad you enjoyed Dubn! A different kind of grind, for sure.

I wasn't tempted all that much. I learned pretty quickly that quantity and precision > depth and sophistication. The biggest deterrent to nuance, irony, double-voiced discourse, etc., is simply time. With so much to do, the GTO reporting strat is to produce terse, accurate HHs; there's no upside to doing anything else (which is partly why I'm not attracted to short-form journalism where the main goal seems to be churning out content). That said, a great way to vivify a HH is to quote other players at the table. It's hard to find a more opinionated group than a table full of cardplayers, as we all know, and a juicy observation ("you play SO BAD!" etc etc) can go a long way.

+1

Gmoar!G

August Recap


%chance that the NBA finishes its season?

Assuming that we have a Finals, I predict the Clips > whoever. Hopefully the Raps so that we can enjoy max drama.

I finally read Molly's Game. Poorly written, but Bloom had a great story to tell. Reads to me like a People Magazine account of the poker world's rarefied private scene. I also read Lost Vegas, which is about Paul "Dr. Pauly" Mcguire's adventures as a full-time freelancer and part-time degen during the 2005-2008 WSOP. The writing is less bad than Bloom’s, and some sections are compelling, but overall I thought that this was a pretty weak effort. For all his candor, Dr. Pauly seems to enjoy reveling in squalor, and everything seems to wilt beneath his pessimistic gaze.

And so on. Most of the book is predictably provocative, plotless, and occasionally informative. If you’re looking for a Bukowskian romp through Vegas, you could certainly do worse. And better.

I read Tara Westover's Educated, which was quite a sensation when it came out a few years ago. It's a beautifully written book about family, fundamentalism, money, knowledge, and wounded men who can survive only by dominating the women around them. Westover is physically and mentally abused by an older brother, and part of her growth involves an ability to assert, through writing, the reality of what she experiences.

I read Ottessa Moshfegh's short story collection Homesick for Another World. She's sort of our generation's Flannery O'Connor, but even more honest and depraved. I want to read everything she writes.

Finally, I read some of Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of his mid 20th century journalism about NYC, and will probably keep dipping into it for a long time. "Joe Gould's Secret" might be the best profile I've ever read. Gould is a destitute bohemian who's obsessed with completing a gargantuan Oral History of NYC

Gould, Mitchell's relationship with Gould, and Mitchell himself—who infamously suffered a 30-year writer's block while working at The New Yorker—have all become mythologized. A good intro to all of this is Jill Lepore's "Joe Gould's Teeth"
Gulf Coast Sunset

Respect Spread Rhythm

Mischievous Fluffballs

Operation Deny Garick
[852/1200]
Bsoon!B

Pretty high, given that the King's body has an upcoming expiry date...



You listened to DGAF's podcast with Irieguy Ben? Irieguy was one of the characters in the Holla Bolla book (with Dwan, Robl etc.) and gave us the best description and insights - at least that I have encountered - of nosebleed HS private games. GOAT af 2 episodes : https://dgaf-sessions.libsyn.com
This week's podcasts of Garrett Adelstein also worth a listen

the King's demands MUST be appeased!

Yes, and I agree with your assessment. To have somebody speak so openly and at length about nosebleed private games is a real treat. In particular, his story about the sunrunning dealer with the sick sneakers collection was fantastic. That story gets to the heart of something central to certain parts of the poker world imo: the mythical godlike aura that someone can possess during a good run of cards, how Sunrunner Status is conferred by a player pool that collectively can't believe its eyes, how sunrunning can utterly transform someone's persona, and how all of it can vanish in an instant.


I'm halfway through GEEMAN week. Enjoying it so far. Not as much detail about private games (which is understandable) but lots of insights about positive psychology and friendship. Bro therapy ftw!

Poker Faces in the Crowd: Mr. Green

In this month's issue of 2p2 Mag, I wrote about some adventures in Limitland, status-mongering, and a railbird named Mr. Green.

^^^^

In our poker room's heyday (a decade ago?) it offered a couple different Limit stakes, a couple different NL stakes, and both morning and nightly tournaments. The hierarchies / ranks / pecking orders were exactly as described above.

For at least a couple of years now, our poker room now only offers 1/3 NL (I've lobbied for a poker room sign a la Henry Ford "You can play any poker game you want, so long as it is 1/3 NL"). And now all of the players play at the exact same table (although many from the past have been left behind). It's a weird environment, with the old guy I played 2/4 Limit with back in '06 to my left and one of the latest backpack kids to my right and everyone else inbetween.

Ghasn'tplayedahandofpokerinalmost6monthsG

GL bob! You seem like a really good writer. Take it easy on your poor wrists my friend.

Glad to hear that the piece rings true in that respect. I've never been a reg at a room anywhere other than Nola, but I've played in dozens and dozens of room around the country, and it's striking how much continuity there is when it comes to cardroom culture/norms/hierarchies. I *don't* have much experience internationally—I've only played in Macau—but everything that I've seen and heard suggests that the same is true elsewhere, too.
Likewise. But guess whose room is REOPENING on Friday?

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately I think I'm a lost cause—just another scribbler with a dream. That's why I like threads like yours: I get to live vicariously through your poker journey. Hope the grind is treating you well so far (I've popped into your thread and iirc you're in LA?)

don’t say that man. Likewise, I appreciate the feels as well sir. Didn’t know you followed.

Grind is good: I feel like I’m progressing at a fast rate and living a life that’s difficult wrt achieving financial abundance, but simultaneously also one that I’ve envisioned for myself ever since I was young.

I am. LA County, to be more specific.

glgl

I assume you listened to Adelstein's podcast on Joey Ingram months/a year back? If not, it is a MUST listen.

Also of interest and of similar tone, A Hero's Journey on youtube dives into the inner-world (and battles) of some HS players. Here are the links to the ones I thought to be the most interesting :

Mohsin Charania : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EKWmuWKK1Y

Matt Berkey : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FmC5rpezCM

Wow. If that sample was less bad than Bloom's writing, I don't even want to think how bad Molly's Game was.

Trending back up!

Oh, I'm in there. Good PGCs are tuff to find these days—especially from folks starting from zero with lofty aspirations—so consider me part of your rooting section.
Glad to hear things are going well so far. Given the current climate, I think you're wise to pursue both live and online games. Adaptability is an important skill these days.
Appreciate the links as always, Dubn. I've listened to the Joey-GEEMAN convo and agree that it's a must-listen. Will check out the Mohsin interview for sure, as he's someone who's always seemed smart and even-keeled. I like Berkey, too, but have listened to a bunch of his content recently (his online WSOP sweats were fun to follow).

It's pretty bad. That said, there are good aspects to her book (some of the stories, her vulnerability, marketing savvy) so props to her.

Vegas Scribbling, Part 3

In the spring, I got word about the upcoming 2017 WSOP. After a two-year hiatus, PokerNews was once again the official reporting partner for the tournament series, and they wanted me to join the team. As soon as I saw their all-in offer—seven weeks of balls-to-the-wall reporting or nothing, take it or leave it—I knew that my live reporting days were over.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work hard or that I didn’t need money. It was that live reporting prevented me from doing the sort of work that I valued most. Poker, as you all know, is a slow burn, a pressure cooker. I’m interested in how the game challenges and changes people—not in one little hand or donkament, but over the long haul. For most of the 2016 WSOP, I'd essentially been on reportorial lockdown, tethered to Amazon Gold or Pavilion White or wherever I happened to be assigned. One moment in particular brought my lack of autonomy into focus. On Day 1A of the 2016 Main, as I was reporting inside Amazon Tan, I stumbled across Johnny Chan sitting with The Blaster, a Nola entrepreneur whose progress I’d been following for over a year. All day, sitting at that table, he was living out a rec player’s dream: here was a chance to be Mike McD in Rounders, to outwit or outluck a legend of the game. This was a sweet opportunity for me, too, as a scribbler looking to maximize #storyequity. But there was no time to cover such confrontations; I had chip stacks to count and hand histories to write. I reluctantly scurried back to my laptop.

This summer, I decided, would be different. I committed to writing a few WSOP-related strategy articles for PokerNews. The gig would yield crumbs, money-wise, but at least I'd have a media badge with which to freely roam the playing floor.

I got to Vegas at the end of June. As I headed to the Rio’s poker wing, past Hash House and the pool and Starbucks and the registration area, it was striking how little things had changed. A man zipped down the hallway on a motorized scooter with an unlit cigar. A roped-off orange Lamborghini L640 tempted visitors with an invitation. Bad Beat? Now Try your Luck on the Streets. 4 Hours Starting at $399. All around us were resources that, for a price, might keep bad beats at bay. Massage therapy. The Serenity Oxygen Bar. Vending stations with Visine, DayQuil, Afrin, Advil, Budweiser tallboys. RunGoodGear hats and hoodies. The RunItOnce training booth. Phone accessories peddled by impossibly relentless salesmen (“Charging case? Charging case? Charging case?”).

Paradise Regained.

Stepping inside Pavilion, I walked past the new King’s Lounge and across the huge echoey ballroom. On the main stage, away from all the poker-playing, seven of Monkey’s Minions chatted casually around a banquet table; the eighth was stuck in traffic near Los Angeles. Presiding over the group was Monkey himself, a gruff gangly guy in a pink button-down and a Seattle Mariners cap. He was video-chatting with his five-year-old. “Daddy’s having an important meeting right now,” he told her. “Can I call you back in a little while?” He blew her a kiss and turned to business: seven thick bundles of cash, tossed in turn to his Minions. “Please count your brick,” he told them. “I don’t want you coming back and telling me it’s two or three hundred dollars light.” They peeled off ten hundreds at a time, the bills making a flip-flip-flip sound as they counted and recounted them. In a few minutes, after a photo op by the giant WSOP sign, each of them would exchange his fat stack of cash for one glorious entry ticket. Hope on a piece of paper.

Next Monkey distributed contracts that formalized the details of their staking arrangement. 135 investors had collectively raised $80,000—ten grand per Minion—in exchange for a cut of any profits. “Is The Jack Effel Clause still in effect?” Wild Bill, a four-time Minion, asked.

“Yes,” Monkey said. “I know that one of you is going deep, so listen: do not **** me on that.” He appraised each face at the table and settled his gaze on a sad-eyed guy who looked like a chubby Sean Payton. A New Orleans Saints Superfan, Coach spent home games diligently aping Payton and his outfit: black visor and windbreaker, silver Motorola headset, clipboard, red challenge flag.

This summer, as a first-time Minion, Coach had exchanged one outfit for another: cargo shorts, a gray hoodie, silver mirror shades, and a bulky black backpack. “When you get down to four tables,” Monkey said, “request Effel’s presence and tell him”—he waved himself off and added gruffly—“He knows. Effel knows what’s going on.”

Five years earlier, Monkey had been banned from all Caesars properties. "The Jack Effel Clause” was his Machiavellian Hail Mary attempt to get back into the action. If a Minion advanced to the final 27 players, he’s contractually bound to summon Effel and make him the following offer: Immediately reinstate Monkey to all WSOP events and the Minions will leave a 5% tip for the dealers that will come out of the investors’ 65% share. “It’s a great bargaining tool,” Monkey explained. “If he says no, then he just cost his staff, potentially, $400K in tips. He’ll have a mutiny on his ass. Especially because,” he added, side-eyeing me conspiratorially, “we have a media guy in our foxhole.”

Wait, what? I tried to keep a straight face. Even if one of the Minions mustered an uber-deep run, reached the final twenty-seven players, and bellowed out his Monkey-decreed demand (GIVE ME EFFEL!), the idea that I could editorially lean on the WSOP Tournament Director was ridiculous. All of it, I remember thinking—the bricks of cash and the magical thinking and the custom-made tees with a smirking simian emblazoned atop a poker chip (Monkey’s WSOP Grinders 2017)—was beyond outrageous. And yet I couldn’t deny Monkey's magnetism. I watched him in the way that you admire a bottle rocket’s ascent, bursting and fizzing in that glorious moment before it explodes, wondering if he’d carry his Minions straight into poker’s stratosphere. Here, surfing the wave of his optimism, a big score seemed doable. Probable, even. “If you guys go deep and don’t do it,” Monkey said mildly, “it’s a breach of contract.”

“Oh, you know I’m gonna say something,” Rob, a two-time Minion, said. “For sure.”

After dinner at Maggianos on the Strip, we went back to our various crash pads. This year I was staying at a seven-bedroom condo near UNLV that we’d dubbed The Nola House. Ever the entrepreneur, The Blaster had rented out rooms for a flat rate of fifty bucks a night—a solid option for folks who wanted to fly in for the Colossus or the Milly Maker or some other donkament that struck their fancy. Wild Bill, Trucker Kenny, The Blaster, and Coach were staying at the house and playing the Main. My plan was to follow their progress wire-to-wire, along with the rest of the Minions and any other Gulf Coasters who went deep.

On the morning of July 11th, Coach and I pulled into the Rio’s packed parking lot fifteen minutes late for his Day 1C flight. He didn’t seemed concerned. With his gray hoodie and clunky black backpack, he reminded me of an oversized middle schooler lumbering to class. In a way, Coach had been preparing for this walk his whole life. On August 2nd, 1975, the day before the Superdome opened, his dad was gambling in the back of a New Orleans restaurant. A mean Cajun woman named Sunshine barged inside and told her grandson that he was a father. Like his dad, Coach couldn’t resist a good card game. For years he played with Whistle Monsta, a fellow Superfan, and other locally-famous New Orleanians like Kermit Ruffins and Steve Gleason. He’d hosted tiny $20 games at Mick’s, his favorite pub, for eight years, six nights a week, the evenings blurry with booze until, in 2015, he quit drinking to give poker his best shot. In two years as a full-time pro, he didn’t have any significant results. He was just another MAWG with a dream, a Chris Moneymaker from the South—and yet Monkey believed in him. His fellow Minions and the investors believed in him. His wife believed in him. More than anything, he didn’t want to let them down. “I’m really lucky to be doing this, you know?” Coach finally said. “Playing the game I love in an air-conditioned room in the desert. The chance to win big money.”

“I’ll try to make vlogs next year,” he added, as we trotted up the Rio’s iconic red WSOP steps. “But I don’t want to document misery.” I asked if he was talking about the summer’s results. The Nola House had experienced a colossal case of runbad; they were collectively mid-five figures in the hole, with no significant cashes. “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t want to document losses. I want to document wins.”

I didn’t need to tell Coach that the Main was the ultimate Summer Saver. That was the hope, at least. As we entered the Amazon Room, a whole world rose up before us. The walls echoed with chip-whispers. Waitresses and photographers and ESPN camera crews roiled in narrow gaps between hundreds of poker tables. Coach stepped into the velvet roped-off playing area and looked for Table 50, Seat 4. I hung back on the rail, searching for parting advice. There was only one thing to say, really.

“Good luck.”

***

Day 3. 2,572 out of the original 7,221 players remained. The members of The Nola House were still alive. Despite a few casualties, Monkey was optimistic. With a couple breaks, we could literally be taking all 8 Minions to Day 3, he wrote on the Minions Facebook Page. But to have 5 out of 8? That’s unbelievably impressive! I have total outsiders now asking to be a part of this group because the buzz is growing! Do you all feel it? Something special is happening here!!! Today and tomorrow are about to be REALLY exciting!!! Investors? This is what you signed up for!!! Players? This is what we as poker players play for!!!! Play well. Have fun. Enjoy the moment!!!! Have a GREAT EFFING DAY EVERYONE!!!!!!

As soon as play began, there was an epidemic. A busting epidemic. Eliminated players staggered from their seats, despair etched into their faces, and wobbled to an exit. Winners consolidated fallen foes’ chips into their own towering stacks. Live reporters, faced with the impossible task of chip accounting, furiously scribbled the details of one bustout, then another, then another, and trotted to their laptops. Railbirds trafficked in the language of illness.

“If anyone can beat these odds, it’s you.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“She’s on life support!”

With potential eliminations arriving at any moment, I ping-ponged from one of Amazon’s quadrants to another, checking on The Blaster and Wild Bill (in Gold), Coach (in Purple) and Trucker Kenny (in Tan). In the early afternoon, I visited Wild Bill’s table and found an empty seat. Maybe he’d been assigned to a new table, but I knew what his absence most likely meant: a one-way ticket to Bustoville. After nursing a short stack for most of the day, The Blaster busted in the early evening, a few hundreds spots outside the money. For him that meant three summers, three Mains, zero cashes. A demoralizing finish to a demoralizing summer.

Around midnight, there were 1,100 remaining players; 1,084 would earn at least a $15,000 mincash. On Table 121, Kenny’s MT TRUCK SERVICE hat rested atop his gray-haired head. The summer's adversity and frustration and symbolic death—busting out of tournaments over and over and over—reminded him of the military. Eleven months, twenty-nine days, and sixteen hours—that’s how much time he spent in Vietnam, carrying an M16 and guarding an air base in Danang. "I never saw who I shot at," he told me once. "Most of the time I was shooting at flashes." On weekends they played seven-card stud, split pot games, high-low Chicago. No Hold ‘em, but the game was the same: there were sharks and there were fish, sergeants who would lose their whole paychecks. Now, haggard and hunched stoically at a table full of would-be poker murderers, he looked strangely at peace, like there was nowhere he’d rather be.

Kenny busted a few spots outside the money.

By Day 4, Coach was the Nola House’s lone survivor; two other Minions remained. I drove to the Rio in the late morning, repeating the same routine for the sixth consecutive day, and headed down the lonely Rio hallway. The Brasilia Room was chip-whispery and movie-theater dim. Beside ESPN’s Secondary Feature Table, I joined Trucker Kenny and The Blaster on the rail. Maybe they would have preferred to be somewhere else, nursing their wounds, feeling sorry for themselves, tilt-shottaking another donkament. But no. A member of their poker fam was still alive, and they would root him on.

Coach was in the 2 seat, shrouded beneath silver shades and jumbo headphones squeezed atop a gray Minion’s hoodie. Sitting across from him was Jake Balsiger, the 3rd-place finisher in the 2014 Main. As the action got underway, I obsessively checked the WSOP live updates and the Minions Facebook Page. Sorry investors, Christian, a two-time Minion, wrote. I shoved 59,000 with ace-ten and Jeff Lisandro busted me in 1048th place. Thank you for the opportunity, glad I cashed both times I was a Minion. Maybe the 3rd time will be a charm!

Busted the Main Event in 806th place, Dave, a first-time Minion, wrote. Was shortstacked with JQ on J22 flop and committed my chips on the 7 turn. He had 77. Thanks so much for the support.

Upon seeing these bustouts, Coach told me later, he felt a stab of anxiety, and then a stab of relief. He was the last Minion standing. Everyone’s hopes rested on him. He wanted to go hard, to make something happen. Just pulled a huge all-in bluff on Balsiger, he wrote a few minutes later. The investors went wild.
Yeah baby!
You da man!
That will work!
Doing it and doing it and doing it well!
Yes sir!!!
Emboldened by his burgeoning stack, Coach raised again with two nines and Padraig O’Neill, an Irish pro who looked like Harry Potter, called from the big blind. The flop came ten, seven, seven, of different suits. He found himself betting, raising, trying to win the hand through brute force. Suddenly he was all-in. O’Neill quickly called and tabled his cards. Coach stood up and removed his shades, peering in disbelief at O’Neill’s hand—nine-seven, for three-of-a-kind. Only one card in the deck, the nine of spades, would save him from a crippling loss. The dealer burned and turned the ten of hearts, then the ace of spades. No miracle nine.

With his stack reduced to crumbs, he went all-in with ace-deuce and faced an opponent’s two queens. No ace. In the blink of an eye, his Main Event was over. Rising from his seat, he exchanged handshakes with the table and took his payout ticket—520th place, good for $24,867. There would be no Minion at the final four tables stopping play and demanding, amid an incredulous frothing media, “Give me Effel!” Monkey would have to wait another year for reinstatement.

Lingering beside his table and scanning the rail with a what-do-I-do-now expression, Coach saw his friends smiling sadly and waving. He went over and hugged The Blaster. “I feel like I blew it,” Coach told him.
“No, man,” The Blaster said. “You had an awesome run. Enjoy it.”
“Give it forty-eight hours,” Kenny quietly told Coach. “The pain eases in time.”

Vegas Scribbling, Part 4

From a table at the Rio Starbucks, I counted fourteen models outfitted in gold tiaras, red breastplates, fishnet tights, red knee-high boots, and black-and-white shields: Wonder Women, heading to the WSOP.

“Probably for Hellmuth,” someone at a nearby table said.

He was right. Hellmuth had been known to arrive in costume on Day One of the Main since 2007, the year when he dressed as an Ultimate Bet race car driver and totaled a yellow-black car in the Rio parking lot (as Hellmuth stepped gingerly out of the ruined vehicle, one onlooker claimed that he quipped, “Well, you can’t win every race”). This year he’d arrived as Thor, wearing a sleeveless black armor, a red cape, a silver helmet with a DECENT.BET insignia, and a hammer bearing the name of the cryptocurrency VeChain. To the delight and the chagrin of dozens of camera-snapping onlookers, Hellmuth and his superheroic retinue marched to Amazon, where he would compete in Day 1C of the Main.

As Hellmuth took his seat at the Secondary Feature Table, I headed to the Pavilion with a costumeless Nola crew that included The Blaster, PJ, and Tennis Marc. This summer at the WSOP, my fourth, I would be joining Pokernews’s editorial team to cover the latter stages of the Main. In addition to the usual media circus surrounding the final table, the WSOP had scheduled over a dozen events after the Main, and things were likely to get chaotic. We’ll have our live reporters on hand, a senior editor told me over email, but we’ll need people on the floor to be on top of things. If Matusow flips over a table, we’d want an interview with him and people at the table. If Hellmuth wins bracelet number 15, we’d want an interview with him as well. I was spending the early phases of the tournament keeping tabs on Gulf Coasters. Having survived Day 1A, The Blaster was in a good mood, and he crooned a tune as we ambled through the registration area. “You haven’t heard of Jim Stafford?” he said, looking at me with playful disapproval and then launching back into song. “All good things gotta come to an end, and it’s the same with the wildwood weed.”

The Pavilion was more crowded than I’d ever seen it—an ocean of grinders, 4,571 here and elsewhere, making Day 1C the biggest single flight in WSOP history after organizers began divvying up the field into multiple starting days. Throughout the casino, players were being crammed into Miranda, the Poker Kitchen, El Burro, the Rio cardroom, wherever there was free space. The GOAT himself, Phil Ivey, had been relegated to the bowling-alley-turned-storage-room that had barely been used all summer. Standing on the rail along Pavilion Green, The Blaster scanned the section for familiar faces. “Look at your boy with his headphones and his ponytail!” he said, pointing to Jeter, a burly bluff Circuit grinder with stringy gray hair and a BAMA JUST DO IT tee. “JETER!” Jeter grinningly removed his headphones and flashed us a thumbs-up. Despite the gravity of a 10K buy-in tourney, the atmosphere felt carnivalesque. It was early. Stacks were deep. There wasn’t pressure to “make a move.” Gathered a few feet away from us were a band of gray-suited WSOP floormen that included Jack Effel. “Would Monkey flip his **** if I got him back in?” The Blaster asked us. “Should I put a word in for him?”

“Might be easier if he wasn’t surrounded by five suits,” PJ said. As we continued on our way toward Pavilion White, The Blaster impulsively called out to the WSOP Tournament Director who’d 86’ed Monkey from all Caesars properties. His tone was polite. “We’d love to see Monkey back in the Main Event, Mr. Effel.”

“Tell him to send me a nice, sincere note,” Effel answered. “The last one didn’t seem very sincere to me.”

“I’ll do that,” The Blaster replied. “Thank you, sir.”

“Monkey won’t believe that,” PJ said, shaking his head in disbelief. To put it mildly, there wasn’t any love lost between Monkey and The Blaster.

“It’s an abuse of power,” The Blaster replied. “Kick him out for a couple of years, fine. But for life? That’s just not right.”

We covered the entire rail, scoping out tables for more familiar faces. There was Minnesota Molly, Smiley, the Choff. We spotted Notables who looked weathered in comparison to younger versions of themselves who beamed triumphantly from ginormous banners on the walls—Allen Cunningham, Chris Ferguson. Kwong, a Gulf Coaster, texted me that he was on Table 706 inside The King's Cash Game Lounge. I wondered if he’d already busted—was he already playing high-stakes cash?—but no, even the Lounge was filled with Main Eventers. Kwong was sitting in one of the comfy vanilla-colored recliners, casually chip-shuffling and chatting with the guy next to him. Unlike the rest of the table, which was filled with hoodies, ballcaps, and shades, he wore a logoless blue tee-shirt. “I recognize him,” PJ said, studying Kwong. “But I don’t know him.”

“He’s a big-stack player,” The Blaster said. “I think he plays more outside of New Orleans, right?”

I nodded. A savvy grinder who’d caught the PLO bug, Kwong chased action across the country. He rarely played tournaments, but the Main was too juicy to pass up. One table away, seven players had paid $30 for the privilege of flipping for a Main Event seat: one hand, all-in pre, the winner gets a seat to the Main. They were waiting for three more. “That’s just sick, man,” The Blaster said, shaking his head. “That’s just gambling.” He gave me a sly look. “Of course, I could make my whole summer if I just won this flip.”

“Famous last words,” I said, and we shared a laugh.


Six days later, The Blaster and I were back on the rail beside Amazon Tan, where 310 survivors started the day. The last week had been filled with an inevitable litany of bustouts. Trucker Kenny was the first Minion to bust, on Day 1, followed by a slew of others, including Coach and The Blaster, on Day 2. Wild Bill busted on Day 3. By Day 4 almost every Gulf Coaster I knew had been eliminated—Alabama Tara, PJ, the Choff, Bad Off Cauf, Bearbuck, Jefe, P, Anderson, the list went on. Kwong, the jetsetting PLO specialist, was the last Gulf Coaster standing, busting in 208th place for $49,335; busting a few spots earlier was Carwash, the final Minion. And just like that, Monkey wrote on the Minions Facebook Page, it’s OVER. Sadness ensues. That familiar empty feeling takes over. Replaying hands in your head is the new normal. Trying to find the motivation to pull yourself out of bed so you can start another“back to the daily grind” list of chores. No trips to the local BMW dealership. No phone calls about that backyard pool the wife and kid want. No big score to take the sting out of all those 2K withdrawals you made in Vegas when you convinced yourself, “It’s all good...in a few days, I’ll be getting it all back anyway!!!

Now, as Day 5 continued, hundreds of railbirds cheered on Notables like Antonio Esfandiari and Joe Cada and Chris Moorman and the last woman standing, Kelly Minkin. The carnivalesque atmosphere on Day 1C was gone. Just standing there, you could feel the tension and nervous excitement, the combination of camaraderie mixed with intense competition. Covering the action, everywhere you looked, hiding in plain sight, were the media.

“Most of the time,” Pauly Mcguire writes in Lost Vegas, “poker writers are little more than fluffers hired to make the entire industry look cool.” Maybe Pauly’s comment is over-the-top—his book is intentionally provocative, as I mentioned recently itt—but he’s not wrong. All around us, the poker media searched for the next Chris Moneymaker. They rewarded entitled whiners like Phil Hellmuth. They—I guess I should say we—ambushed Notables with cameras and recorders and asked inane questions. What were you thinking? How do you feel? We wrote click-baity sales pitches—sometimes without even realizing it. A few years earlier, I'd reviewed Chad Holloway’s World Series of Zombies, a slapstick take on long summers at the WSOP. “For casual readers unfamiliar with or indifferent to poker, there’s nothing new here,” I wrote. “But Holloway wrote this book for and to the poker community, and folks within this niche will be entertained. Go ahead, pick it up.”

When the piece went live, I discovered that my editor had changed the final punctuation from a period to an exclamation mark. In one mere keystroke—Go ahead, pick it up!—the new ending read to me like an essaymercial. I felt like a shill. Now, thinking back, I'm reminded of a passage from David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.”

As the Day 8 final table got going, I felt like my head was most definitely being messed with. My old editor was scurrying around the Thunderdome’s fringes, eagerly gathering biographical catnip for Norman Chad and Lon McEachern’s ESPN telecast. Whenever he paused to savor the action, he gazed at the final table with the awe-drenched eyes of a child on Christmas morning. There was no doubt in my mind, as I watched him watching the Main, that he really believed in the power of poker and the virtue of growing the industry. His whole life appeared to be one big exclamation point.

I was no True Believer. After all I'd seen, convincing me of poker’s unadulterated greatness was about as likely as proving the existence of Santa Claus. Not happening. I was a lost cause—and yet I was here. Why? Here's my best guess: There's something enriching about being around people with deep conviction. I don't think it matters much whether that conviction is directed at God, or Santa Claus, or poker; the effect is the same. We all have our own brands of belief. My favorite player from the 2018 final table is a Houstonian named Michael Dyer, a quiet, nerdy guy in his thirties who looked like he’d emerged from his parents’ basement to play the Main. I love that he hated doing interviews. I also love that, despite his hatred of doing interviews, he nevertheless did them. Doing them, you never know what you'll learn about others or yourself. Late that night, after Dyer had bagged enough chips to advance to Day 9, he couldn't sleep. Tossing and turning in his bed, he grabbed his phone and started searching for advice, consolation, something to soothe an unquiet mind. He found what he was looking for and texted a friend some words from the writer T.E. Lawrence.

Enjoyed the backstory of the home game in the restaurant, around the time when the superdome was built! So often, players have a deeper emotional connection to the game, the origins of which we often take for granted.

Fun read, thanks.

This was an awesome read. The novel deftly weaves together pre- and post-apocalyptic drama + an exploration of the role of art. One of the characters works for years on a series of graphic novels inspired by the GOATest of GOAT comic strips.



glad to hear it, Dr! All too true, and something to keep in mind if we can.
Thanks for reading G

September Recap


Joy and jubilation! The Harrahdise cardroom is open! Action is five-handed, masks are mandatory, and ten tables are running (instead of the usual twenty). I haven't played myself, but my informants tell me that the games have been good. With the Beau Rivage opening this week, it seems that legal Gulf Coast poker is crawling back (private games have been booming since the pandemic started). Still unsure whether I'll play a hand of LOLive poker this year. I'd put the chances at 20%—about the same chance of the Heat beating Lehhbron

Some stuff that's been on my radar, starting with the pokercentric: I stumbled onto a fun vlog, 2 days 2 Million, that capturs Fedor shipping an online HU championship + chopping a highroller. It verges on being a pokermercial, but nevertheless, it's tuff not to like him. I've also been watching some of the recent nosebleed cash games on GG poker (pro tip: watch only the cards-up hands at 2x speed). The main thing that jumps out, within this small pool where's there's clearly tons of meta I'm not privy to, is that nobody, and I mean NO ONE, is interested in hero folding. If someone's forced into a close call/fold spot, he literally always clicks call. Which makes sense, because LOL @ folding!

Wired had a good overview of the Postle scandal a week or so ago that's titled, hyperbolically, "The Cheating Scandal that RIPPED the Poker World Apart."

The host of the Mental Illness Happy Hour is an ex-comic who brings a wide range of guests onto his show, and he recently interviewed poker-pro-turned-therapist Ben Fineman. Good convo for anyone interested in mental health.

Douglas Rushkoff, "The Privileged have Entered their Escape Pods"

Ross Gay, "Have I Told You About the Courts I've Loved?"
how many animals are in this pic?

sunset over cityscape

Harrahdise grinders competing for the "Who Loves it More" Award

Operation Deny Garick
[940/1200]

Poker Faces in the Crowd: Golfer Pat

In this month's issue of 2+2 Mag, I wrote about memory, pain, and a Harrahdise reg named Golfer Pat.

Noice!

Pretty sure it's like one of those magic picture things, where you have to just really zone out and glaze over and then all the other animals will magically come into focus.

ETA: A+ story, really enjoyed that one.

G17?G

Brown dog
White dog tail?
Two potential cats!? (or microscopic cows )
1 human
2 horses

EDIT: this is the kinda content I'm subbed for! <3

BconfirmedopticalillusionB

The bolded is correct! Those two fluffy white dots near each of the horses are cats. Tuff to see from the pic obviously, but very cool to spot in person...the cats just kind of meander around on the grass while the horses chill. That area where I walk is on levee by the Missippi river and there are lots of animals including two goats (not in pic)—a veritable menagerie!

Vegas Scribbling, Part V

July 1, 2019—Las Vegas, NV.—Sometimes it feels like the Rio Convention Center is mistaken for the new Raiders Stadium being built down the street here in Las Vegas, because people keep pouring in by the thousands. We knew the 50th Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) was going to be big, but it has reached historic levels. Through 66 events, the WSOP has already shattered the attendance record, as 147,334 entrants have played in WSOP gold bracelet events. That is already 19% above last year’s record of 123,865—and there are still 24 events remaining. In fact, this year’s participation exceeds the first 36 years of the WSOP combined!

I glanced up from my laptop and scanned the Palma Media Room. Seth Palansky, the author of the email that I was reading—“Dispatch from the Desert Part IV: News & Notes from the 50th World Series of Poker”—was manning his desk in the corner beside Kevmath (the czar of poker Twitter) Rob (my old live reporting editor) and a few bushy-tailed Caesar’s interns. Nowhere in the Dispatch was the news that everyone was talking about. Two days earlier, at four in the morning, a poker pro had been robbed at gunpoint in the Rio parking lot. guy jumped out of car in camouflage, shoved a gun in my face and demanded my backpack with thousands in it and the keys to my car, JoeySal wrote on Twitter. scariest moment of my life.

Been worried about this for years, Greg Merson responded. lack of any security out there is an absolute joke esp when they got rid of valet, just hang people out to dry.

Instead of issuing an apology or even acknowledging the incident, the WSOP’s hype team released more rah-rah emails. It was hardly surprising. Their official version of events was slanted predictably towards selling and growth and fat prize pools. Then there was the unofficial, informal chatter at hundreds of cardtables, the gossipfests at Hash House brunches, the shrillness of disillusioned vloggers, the jabbering of haterade-guzzling keyboard warriors. Time to step it up WSOP! one of them tweeted. We pay $16 for a salad and stand in line like cows at a feeding trough for your shitty gimmick tournaments. The least you can do is have patrol cars 24/7 and better lighting. Now that I was here for another round of summer fun/“fun” at my fifth WSOP, I’d come to expect competing versions of reality. It was easy to get deluded or jaded—or both.

Around dinnertime I left Palma and headed down the long Rio hallway. The left side of the hallway was lined with the usual merch—D+B Publishing, the RunItOnce training booth, a headphone store, the PokerGo shop, and, of course, relentless phone peddlers (“Charging case? Charging case? Charging case?”). Ignoring them, I stepped outside, savoring the pleasant gust of warm air that replaced the frigid AC, and walked to my car. It was just after seven—too early, I reassured myself, for armed robberies. Hopping unscathed into my silver Honda CRV, I got on Sahara Avenue and headed west to the Nola House.

***
Our summer rental was getting swankier every year. This one had six bedrooms, a sprawling kitchen-dining-living room, eight flatscreens, a workout room, a beeball hoop, and an inground pool. If the upward trend continued, I jokingly told The Blaster, I’d be priced out by next summer.

Taped on the dining room wall were poker tournament schedules from the Rio, Planet Hollywood, The Venetian, The Wynn, The Golden Nugget, and other casinos across Vegas. When it came to grinding donkaments, The Blaster and Coach were our mainstays; they were ready to fire relentlessly for seven full weeks, or for as long as their bankrolls and stamina held up. Joining them was Big Beard, a late-twenties Nola pro who looked exactly like Tormund Giantsbane from Game of Thrones. PJ halfheartedly followed suit: he seemed to be more interested in vaping and chilling. Jefe, like me, wasn’t concerned with playing, let alone grinding. A pro for six years, he was migrating into the sports betting scene; most of his days were spent sunbathing by the pool.

Inspired by early Vegas sunrises, I was usually up by six, padding quietly through the living room, brewing coffee, and stepping through the sliding door to a shaded backyard nook. As the sun peeked over the mountains, I started to write. Joining a poker community, I had come to realize, was like showing up to a party that’s been going on for days. The main trouble is figuring out whom to talk to, whom to trust, who has the best stories. Part of the excitement was that you never knew who would be at the center of the story. Last year it had been Kwong, the PLO crusher; the year before that it had been Coach and Monkey's Minions; the year before that, Wild Bill and Trucker Kenny. This year it was 350K Josh, a boisterous young buck from Baton Rouge who, like Big Beard, was taking his first shot in Vegas. After final tabling the Milly Maker and guaranteeing himself a meaty six-figure score, he punted his stack in such a horrific fashion that keyboard warriors were calling it ICM Suicide.

After his bustout, back at the Nola House, Josh drowned his sorrows in beers by the pool, with an expression of forlorn regret so profound that you'd never guess he'd just won 350K. But then he smiled, his face brightened, and you could see that there was pleasure mingling with the pain, along with a kind of uneasy eagerness: the desire to reach another final table, to do it all again.

For weeks our house was a revolving door of Gulf Coasters. We spontaneously gathered in the kitchen and settled into stories, five or six of us taking turns telling at a time. I liked to listen. Five summers of action was a piddly drop in the bucket compared to Wild Bill or Coach or Trucker Kenny, guys who’d been grinding and living in New Orleans for decades. I heard about Captain Tom Franklin, a hustler's hustler. I heard about the time when Bruce the Cop almost tossed The Blaster off the fifth floor of the Harrahdise parking garage. I could fill books with hundreds of hand histories. But the event underpinning them all, the arch-story, the mother of all bad beats, was The Storm and its aftermath. “I heard that the cops basically set up shop in the Quarter as snipers, to protect antique stores and all the money that was there, to the detriment of the city,” Wild Bill said. It was lunchtime, and we were sitting in the kitchen, a few of us on the hightops beside the counter, others in lounge chairs beside the sliding door to the backyard.

“They definitely were taking gas from the car dealerships,” PJ said.

“I took gas from a car dealership,” Coach said. He was sitting at one of the hightops, vaping weed. “It was a huge tank, and we siphoned 150 gallons out of it.”

Despite all the warnings and the concerned phone calls from friends, he had never considered leaving. The night before The Storm, he’d visited a friend’s place in mid-city and, seeing the generators, ice chests, kayaks, canoes—this dude was prepared—Coach asked if he could stay with them. Sixteen people, 8 dogs, 10 cats. A hurricane menagerie.

The day after the storm, an old Black guy across the street handcuffed himself to his porch. They’re not ****ing taking me, he said.

On the third or fourth day, after the flooding had submerged the whole neighborhood with gray, soupy water, Coach canoed up to North Broad and looted a grocery store. They took water and food. Then they snapped the lock off the Don Ford Dealership, built a siphon out of an aquarium pump, and took 150 gallons of gas. That seemed excessive, even at the time. Heading back home, they passed a guy motorboating out of town, and he offered Coach his boat. Coach spent the next four days motorboating around mid-city, plucking bedraggled people out of the soupy water and driving them to Banks Street and the interstate, where they could walk out of the city. He had never felt such a strong sense of purpose. He barely slept—at night he spread out on the roof; it was the coolest place—and he would never sleep well again. For some reason, the breaking point came when he brought home a sack full of cats he'd rescued from the water. When he brought them into the cat room, the other cats had hissed, and he started to cry. He had wanted them to get along.

“Being there was a nervewracking experience,” Coach told us. He took a pull on his weed vape and stared through the sliding doors at our sunkissed inground pool. “It’s dark, there’s water at your chest, you can’t see anything, the police are nowhere to be found, you don’t know how long you’ll be there.”

He stayed for eight days—about as long as it takes to win the Main Event.

In early July, Coach and The Blaster and PJ and Wild Bill and Monkey's Minions (there were ten of them this year) headed to the Rio to take another crack at the world's biggest donkament. Now and then, I slipped a media badge over my neck and wandered through the Rio, drinking in the action. Once, as I was ambling through the Pavilion, a guy I didn't know handed me a slip of paper with his name and chip count. “To keep my investors updated,” he said, and he walked bristly away.

On Day 6, with every Gulf Coaster long busto, I reported to the Rio for four days of editorial work. After the eye-popping numbers throughout the 2019 World Series of Poker (WSOP), Seth Palansky wrote in his fifth Dispatch, it was now up to the WSOP Main Event—the granddaddy of all poker tournaments—to give us the final measuring stick on poker’s health in 2019. Needless to say, poker’s never been better. Who was I to disagree? I sprinkled in a few feel-good stories for the fans. I wrote about Christopher Wynkoop, an Indiana real estate broker who’d spun a $150 satty into a six-figure cash. I tracked down Daniel “Son of Joe” Hachem, who’d made a deep Day 6 run. As the final table began, I profiled Tim Su and Kevin Maahs— Nobodies-turned-Notables. In the meantime, on the fringes of the room, away from the media circus, I changed upon turf wars between the WSOP and ESPN. “This is poker,” Charlie, a firebrand tournament supervisor, snapped at an ESPN cameraman. “Who the **** watches this **** anyway?”

On Day 10, another middle-aged white dude was crowned the champ. Another Main was in the books. On my last day with the editorial crew, I drove to the Rio to track down Joe, a white-haired New Yorker who’s dealt all fifty WSOPs. All fifty WSOPs! A friend had given me his number, but Joe hadn’t answered my calls, which meant that I would have to find him myself. Around eleven in the morning, an hour before the tournaments started, I combed every ballroom in the Rio’s poker wing, my eyes trained on every dealer. As I wandered down every aisle of Pavilion, Brasilia, Amazon, it felt like I was playing Where's Waldo: The WSOP Dealers Edition. In the Dealers Break Room, dozens of white-and-black uniformed WSOP dealers spooned mac and cheese onto their plates before starting their workday. Still no Joe. I did another lap. Back in Miranda, a Denver Broncos fan waved his arms angrily at a donkament supervisor. “Send me to Amazon,” he pleaded loudly. “This is my third ****ing rebuy. I hate this room. Send me to Amazon!”

I never found Joe.

One week later, as I was exploring Lake Tahoe, Joe left me a voicemail. He wanted to talk with me. I didn't call him back right away. There didn't seem to be any rush. After all, I told myself, there was always next summer.