REAWAKENING

After some deliberation, I have decided to dedicate this blog to the following four topics: American Idol, poker, squash and fantasy baseball. These four activities have come to consume an embarassing amount of my time; and I've found in the past that writing through some of my stranger obsessions can often be the path to recovery. But first and foremost, it will be a forum for me to complain.

2/23/05
Self-appointed semi-semi-pro status:

At 9:45 last night, I split out on the last ten minutes of the Idol results show to head downtown to the weekly Wednesday UCB Poker Tournament. After purchasing 2 hotdogs and a Mountain Dew at Chelsea Papaya, I headed up to the UCB office, only to find that the tournament had been canceled for the week. Frustrated and bored, I sat down at a bench in the 23rd street 1/9 station and had the following conversation with myself.
"I really wanted to play poker."
"But you have a free night now. You should go home and work on your increasingly failing novel."
"But I had already slated tonight to play poker, so it somehow seems wrong that I don't play poker, actually, perhaps there is a moral element to this, certainly Boethius would disapprove, he would send Lady Philosophy to come down light a fire underneath me, a gambling fire. Also, according to the Bhagavad Gita, if you feel as if it is your duty to play poker tonight, which it is, then you should allow no circumstance or sentimentality to interfere with your duty."
"Yes, you are right. Let's take out $200 and go to the Manhattan Poker Players Club."

The talk around the 1/2 No-Limit Table was mostly about Macaulay Culkin's recent appearance at the club, to participate in one of the club's nightly rebuy No-Limit Hold-Em tournaments. I sat directly to the right of the dealer, a position that I hate because I have terrible eyesight and have trouble reading the flop. Ideally, I like to sit in one of the corners, and from the little that I've observed of the semi-pros at the club (a term which I'll discuss later...), they tend to sit in these positions as well. Everyone at the table looked to be between the ages of 18 and 30, which is usually a good sign that you're going to be up against tight, methodical players. The largest stack at the table was this kid who was a dead ringer for Dustin Diamond. He had about $400, but the rest of the table was sitting somewhere between $50-$300, which meant that my $200 buy-in was relatively well-protected.

On the third hand of the night, after missing a AhKh flop, I was in the big blind with 8-4. The flop came up 8-4-7. The small blind checked and I bet $7. There was one caller, I think, and the guy to the right of the button raised to $15. I put him on A-8, K-8 suited. Had had about $40 behind him, so I pushed him all in. The next two cards were J-J, two horrible cards for me, because they counterfeited my pair of 4s. Of course, because I am a prideful and oftentimes stupid man, it didn't occur to me at the time that I was, at best, looking at a split pot, and more likely, at a situation where I was out-kicked. So, when the kid at the other end of the table blurted out, "I just boated you," and flipped over his J-8, I yelled, "That was a terrible call on your part," and was officially went on tilt.

On tilt, I started playing terrible cards K-Q, A-7, etc. and kept missing flops. After an hour, with only $90 left in front of me, a pro at the club who I will only refer to as The Answer, came and sat down directly to my left. There are several personalities at the club, including the overweight autistic man I played with last time, but few are as compellingly bizarre as The Answer. He is a tiny Chinese man, probably 5'6", 90 pounds, with long, shamanistic hair. At times during the night, he would sit perched on his chair like an owl, with his feet flat on the sitting surface (there must be some better term for this) and his shoulders squared directly over his knees. He hardly said a word throughout the entire time we played, but steadily increased his stack in the true fashion of a patient grinder: someone who has the reads and can play agressively, but would rather just take advantage of bad players.

On the third hand dealt after The Answer's arrival, I was dealt JJ in the cut-off position. I immediately raised to $20. The Answer gave me a quizzical look--if I were Plimpton writing about the great Sidd Finch, I would have called it the look a master Yogi might give his pupil when posing the classic koan question, "How do you get the goose out of a bottle?"--cocked his head back and forth a couple of times, and promptly re-raised me to $50. The rest of the table folded. I deliberated whether I should just push in my remaining $70, but didn't, because the only hand he could have been representing there, in which I would have been ahead, would have been AK. I didn't put him on AK, so I knew I was probably slaughtered. But I called the bet anyway, because I had no idea how this guy played at that point, except that he was a pro, and I was worried that he might be bullying me off the best hand. The flop, of course, came K-Q-7, which is probably the worst flop that can come for pocket jacks against a re-raise. I checked, The Answer bet $50 and I folded. A few hands later, I went all-in on pocket 7s. When a guy in late position called me--after about 2 minutes of deliberation--I thought I at least had a race, probably 77 vs. A-Q. But--not that it really mattered--my read was wrong as he flipped over pocket 10s, busting me out of my first $200.

I took a walk around the block, already knowing that I'd hit up the ATM in the Korean grocery downstairs, but as I turned the corner on 71st, I realized that I had never really gotten off tilt from that first bad beat. At a 10 person No-Limit table, my style is generally to patiently wait for a top 10 hand, to sit for at least 2 hours to get a feel for the players at the table, and to start betting bigger once I feel confident about my reads. But after getting "boated" by someone who hit 2 out of his 3 outs, I immediately went into "scared and angry" mode. The correct play against The Answer would have either been to fold or to push all-in. If I pushed, I would have at least gotten him off a bluff. At worst, if he had an overpair, I'd be drawing 4:1 into a pretty decent two-way pot, which, given my chip stack at the time, probably wasn't as bad as it sounds. By just calling his re-raise and then checking the K-Q-7, I was basically just giving up my $50 pre-flop bet. If I weren't scared, I would've pushed. If I weren't angry, I would have folded when he re-raised.

When I got back to the table, a corner position had opened up on a side of the table that was filled with young college kids. I changed seats and was immediately dealt pocket Aces in bad position. I raised to $6, hoping to entice a re-raise. The guy immediately to my right re-raised to $25 and after some acting--I kept checking my cards and grimacing, as if I had some tough decision to make, an act which I hoped would cause him to think I was sitting on AK--I re-raised to $50, hoping that he had pocket Kings and would push all-in. When the button called my re-raise, I pretty much jumped out of my chair, anticipating 3-way action and a massive pot. The guy to my right folded his AK, meaning that he didn't buy my whole act. The flop came J-8-4 and I pushed all in. The button shrugged his shoulders, said, "what the hell," and pushed all in as well, slipping over a K-9 suited. The next two cards were rags and I took down about a $360 pot. After that, I started playing much better, was much more confident in my reads and built up another $100, leaving at 4 AM with $460, or $60 above my buy-in.

Anyway, the whole experience convinced me that I probably have a gambling problem--had the club not closed at 4, I would have stayed until 6 AM. And the fact that I, who am unwilling to pay 25 more cents to have plantains added to my $4 rice and beans lunch special, would be willing to wager 1/3 of my total worth at a poker table suggests a deepening addiction and a loss of rationality.

But (to quote Mark Slouka, that ass...) here's the thing: I think I'm a pretty decent poker player, at least for someone who has played somewhat sporadically for only a year. And given the long hours I put in staring at a computer, trying to save my novel from its imminent failure, I feel as if I need some sort of adrenaline release. And Idol 3 times a week just doesn't quite cut it.

So, with all this in mind, I declare my semi-semi-pro poker status, meaning that I will play in my Monday $10 game with Jewmanji, on Wednesday nights at the UCB and once every two weeks, I will either go to the Manhattan Poker Club, or I will play in a 3/6 limit game. I will be using this blog to track my semi-semi-pro status, and because I am feeling OK about my comeback last night, I'll afford myself the luxury of starting my stats with last night's win. So...

Semi-semi pro career earnings to date: $62