a) I hate poker
b) I thought my blog was going to show the ups and downs in poker not some endless low – limit grind
c) I haven’t recovered from moving back to Philly and I’m totally discombobulated
d) Dealing with this real estate property has been a nightmare and had me too stressed to write about it
e) once you stop blogging for a while its real easy to get lazy and stay lazy

Back to the tournament …. btw I placed 23rd in the Parx Big Stax $500 buy-in for $1770 last Thursday so I’m in tournament mode ….

the main event was going along OK …. I had chips early …. I got in a big hand with some of the dead money in the tournament early and doubled up from the original 50 K to 100 k by level 4 ….

I proceeded to try and box and weave for the rest of the day without any real hands and I was taking the worst out of it but still hanging in there ….. Then I get Kings on the button and 3 bet the player who just moved to my table …. he had Aces and I lose that pot …. this is significant because ?

I start the day 2 with 50 k by a major miracle ,,,,,, I am the shortest stack in the tournament with 85 players left ….. I grind it up to 350 K with 32 players left when I get 2 kings on the buttton and 3 bet the player to my left who opened with a raise to 25K when the blinds where 6- 12K … I made it 75 K with the idea of taking it down right there … The small blind (who has knocked out 2 players at our table and has played 8 out of the last 12 hands) now goes all – in and has me covered.

I felt like the guy had 2 aces and I could be jammed again because the action happened pretty quickly but in poker you are dealing with incomplete information and you never can be sure so I called pretty quickly …. I felt like the player was a donkey anyway ( it’s some one I had a history with) and even though he was running hot I’m not sure I could ever fold two Kings to him …. He had two Aces and I got no help although I did flop some kind of straight draw ….

I went home thinking about if I was exceptional player I would have folded those 2 kings but I’m just not that good yet ….. I was 5 places away from the money and the 27th place prize was $4k …. In a cash game if someone went all-in after a raise and a re-raise by me and we were 4 grand deep I would sail those 2 kings in the muck like two frisbees ……

So why didn’t i do it ? I couldn’t believe that something that unlikely ( Aces vs Kings) could happen to the same person in the same spot twice in 24 hours …. I let the actions from the previous day influence the decision I had to make today which is retarded because poker is about managing random events ….

I remember when one of the O.G.’s (original gamblers) I talked to coming up told me he ran bad for 3 years …. it was funny and poignant at the same time because I remember thinking in my head there’s no way you can run bad for 3 years —- I wanted to tell the guy “you must have been playing bad” …. i never forget it because whe he said I ran bad for 3 years he named the years like “I ran bad from 1988 to 1991″ — I always remember he said the years out loud ….

I feel like I’m in the zone … I can see the hands happening in slow motion …. I have a real good read on what’s happening on almost all the hands I see whether I’m playing them or watching them …. but I can’t get in a good run at the end of a tournament to save my life and there is really no law that says that’s going to change …. people are conditioned to think positive and believe good things are supposed to happen in the long run but we all think the long run is short … the long run is the long run

Session Notes:

I have a piece of real estate that I am trying to sell.

The problem is I have to make some moves to make it happen. I’m getting hit with property taxes and transfer taxes and it’s a train wreck cuz it’s depleting my funds. The situation is a real powder keg because I have to make it happen in a short time frame or it could blow up completely.

Today I tried to transfer the property but it didn’t work. I have to get in touch with a real estate lawyer.

Session Notes:

Yesterday was the 16th annniversary of the death of the Notorius B.I.G, who combination of wit, charm, vocal prescence, flow, storytelling and gangsta imagery was so powerful that it was actually responsible for his own untimely demise. Not many people can say they ran their mouth so well that it killed them.
Hot 97 in New York City was playing all the BIGGIE joints last night, the rare and underground ones along with the more popular ones and I stayed up overnight listening to them (Wunder Radio App on the Iphone).
Biggie was the best. It’s not even close. Listening to his body of work is like watching Micheal Jordan in his prime or Mike Tyson when he was knocking everybody the “fu–” out. It’s something that can’t be re-captured and you just have to be glad that you were part of witnessing something special.
I realize now even the hip-hop game isn’t as relevant as it was back then ; time marches on and music changes along with the rest of life. Last night, however, I got to re-capture some of my youth for a second. Rest in peace Big Poppa.

Session Notes:

I got the following letter from a kid who reads my blog and I asked him to re-print it along with my response below ( I actually didn’t realize I said as much as did til I saw it in print on the blog) :

I’m 22 and I am having a hard time right now building a bankroll from
scratch again. I had a bankroll of about 200K but blew it on many non
poker related things and now I am running really bad and can’t get my
mind off of the money that I had. Any advice?

Sorry to hear about situation ….

first thing you need to realize is it’s not uncommon …. it happens all the time but relatively few people talk about it openly ….. realizing it’s not uncommon will help you to stop punishing yourself

for a skill set ( managing a large bankroll) that you don’t really get any practice using until it’s too late …. It’s sort of like learning how to be a trapeze artist and then wondering how you fell …..

The second thing is to completely forget that you ever had 200k …. You have whatever you have now ….. don’t think about getting the money back —- that is a recipe for disaster …..

look at it like you were struck by lightning and now you are walking around wondering or trying to figure out how to get struck by lightning again …. and tournament variance is so random at this point that is literally what

you would be doing if you try to plot on when the next time 200K is going to fall out the sky like the day it did when you hit the tournament ….

Play games according to the bankroll limits that you can afford now ….. don’t play higher because it would be embarrassing not to — that is more recipe for disaster —- drop to whatever level is comfortable even if it’s 1-2 no limit

cuz you cannot play when you head isn’t right …. Poker is either zero sum game meaning you are either winning or losing ….. Winning a small amount consistently is really good for clearing your head ….

if you can’t win …. take time off ….. more than likely what is happening is you cannot concentrate ….. you ‘re mind is so pre-occupied with losing that you decision – making is poor and you don’t know how to trust your own judgement ….

When the money starts disappearing as fast as it came in you get caught up in what I call the “toilet bowl effect” …. it’s when the water starts swirling around the bowl and anything that’s caught up in the cycle is going down …..

You wanna try to pull yourself out of that downward spiral and only being honest the odds are against u …. Imagine how hard it is for an insect to get out the that swirl once someone flushes the toilet on him …

What you will get out of this experience is a greater appreciation for money and an understanding that winning 200k is a freak occurence and may not happen any more in your lifetime ….

I understand that is morbid way to think but that’s the mind frame you need to go forward …. Matt Glantz said the same thing to me about winning the tournament I hit in 2007 (that it might not happen again) ….

It’s not the end of the world …. as you can very well see you can spend money on a lot of stuff you don’t really need … when it’s all said and done you usually want the money and the security and opportunity that it represents

more than the stuff you actually purchase ……

In closing it’s a recession ….. everyone is restructuring thier finances due to economic pressure ….. like I said when I opened the conversation don’t punish yourself …. most of the world has fucked up money in some fashion over the

last decade ….. you are not alone ….. the important thing is what you learn and how you react …..

Session Notes:

New Jersey is headed for Internet gaming. I can’t tell whether this is good or bad. I don’t think about things for myself as much anymore as I do for society as a whole. I gotta believe it’s bad. I have doubts about trusting that the players won’t be cheating in a way that’s synonymous with breathing. I don’t trust it. I think it’s gonna destroy alot of lives. I don’t trust that people, particularly young people, will have the disciplne or the sense required to deal with Internet gambling. As far as I’m concerned Online is the Devil.

That has to sound absurd coming from someone who gambles for a living when gambling is available now. The difference is it’s monitored for adults. Also we are in or coming out of a recession. People will be more inclined to cheat due to financial pressures and the fact that the cheating scandals were fueled by the online community themselves (aka Full Tilt).

The states are gonna tax the winnings on the computer up front and to the fullest extent. The beauty of gambling up until this point was that there are no taxes involved until you report them. That may be a selfish point.

The larger problem is that our government can’t find ways to tax the public so one solution is to make gambling available in everyone’s home all behind the idea of generating revenue. I’ve been gambling long enough to know that there will be casualties. If anyone thinks that people won’t be negatively affected by government endorsed gambling in everyones home with a computer they are sadly naive.

Let’s take the alcohol argument. You can have a drink in your own home until your hearts content. Everyone knows there are alcoholics though because not everyone can handle that freedom. The same will be said for gambling.

As I get older sometimes I realize that one day I’m gonna die and this stuff is not gonna be my problem. I wonder if that’s how our lawmakers see it sometimes. I’m not saying they are being irresponsible —- it’s just I know that when it comes to gambling everyone can’t win. It doesn’t work that way. Survival of the fittest ? Survival of the luckiest? I guess we are gonna find out.

Session Notes:

Today I lost the most money I’ve ever lost in this  particular game. I call those days “Blow Out” days because u lose the biggest chunks of your whole bankroll on those days when absolute nothing goes right cardwise and you don’t have the sense to get the hell up. My personality doesn’t bode well for those type of sessions either because I tend to wanna play until I win a hand. The more I play I realize that my life would be totally different if I had the sense to cut those days short. Every gambler remembers the days they got “blown out” and had their hugest hits on the Richter Scale.

Today was significant because I’m actually trying to follow some bankroll strategy and play in the smallest, most stable game I can find. Even on top of that I realize you have to have some sort of stop loss strategy because your income is based on random events that can go negative at any moment.  I have a “stop loss” strategy but I ignored it today and I let players who don’t normally beat me tune me up. There are some characteristics of losing sessions , particularly “Blow Out” sessions that are common in nature but I’m gonna save them for my consulting phone line. What I will say is that if it stands that you will have days where you win big due to random events falling in your favor the opposite holds to be true. The question is whether you can recognize both and stay longer on the hand and leave early on the other.

Session Notes:

Today I had an incident where I moved from the must-move game to main game and I spilled my salad on the floor in the process. I had been saving the salad (grilled chicken w/ garden vegetables) and I was pissed when it spilled on the floor, mainly because the guy next to me in the game was trying to move into my seat so fast that he helped me spill it —- then started looking at the ceiling like he was Stevie Wonder.

Meanwhile I moved to the main game and left the spill on the floor. It wasn’t a huge spill but it was large enough to look real ghetto, complete with salad dressing as well as vegetables.  I got caught up the my first hand at the main table and never went to clean it up. It turned to into a huge CNN news story after five minutes — when one of the players stood up and says ” Who does that ? “

That’s when I realized that I had left it on the floor.

In the back of my mind I was thinking the people that work here would clean it up — they are always running around grabbing your food while it’s on the tray before you’re actually finished eating so I didn’t think there was any way they would not get to this huge opportunity to clean up some trash.

After the huge outcry “WHO DOES THAT!?” I felt pretty embarrassed because I was the only black guy in the game and I had left the floor dirty with chicken salad. Now I would have to go clean it up like Aunt Jemima in front of the whole table (obviously it was my mess) and for some reason I couldn’t move my ass from the seat. It was pretty traumatic. I’ve heard the tone on those “Who Does That?!” public outcries and I swear I thought I was on the set of the Color Purple.

As it turns out the person who wanted to sit in the seat wound up cleaning it up and I later apologized to them because I didn’t clean it up myself. I couldn’t explain what had happened — it was like 33% — I really had forgot , 33% — I was pissed I lost my salad and 33% — I thought the cleaning people would get it.  It all happened really fast but became this huge incident complete with racial overtones.

It wasn’t funny at the time but it’s funny now as I read it back.

Session Notes:
Can’t even talk about these stupid tournaments …. this kid goes aggro at the end — wins a coin flip when he four-bet shoves his king queen ….. that takes the majority of my stack and it’s downhill one hand later from there ….

Running good at the end of a tournament cant be overstated … especially when it doesn’t happen for a couple of years

Back to the cash games … wishing I could get lobotomized and never remember than I even played the tournament

P.S.  After this tournament I was out of it for the next couple of weeks , no blogging , no record – keeping (I’m pretty sure I was depressed) … Between the Borgota / Parx tournaments I had played a lot of hours — I was exhausted physically and mentally drained and I wound up with less money than I started a month ago.  I had hoped to make a score (even a small one) so I could take time off and work on music.

The title says it all …. the hand you went out on is driving you nuts —- u gotta listen to the players in a $1-2 no limit utter nonsense …. Fortunately I doubled up in the $1-2 game quickly so I didn’t have to physically hurt myself.

I went to the $6-12 game thinking about the $40,000 dollar first prize from the tourney and whether it would be possible to pick up $40,000 in the $6-12 O.E. game ….

I don’t get into hands cuz I don’t like educating the poker community (about how to play poker). The reason why there is so much tournament variance now is because after every hand players explain to their opponents how they would’ve gotten a couple of extra chips from them by doing this or betting this way. It’s the dumbest show on earth.

I was getting ready to talk about hand I went out on but after reading what I just wrote I changed my mind.

I will say that in the 300 series event I erred on the side of caution and I felt like it cost me and then in the 500 series event I played for the win and I felt like that cost me. Hopefully I get a sense of balance for the BIG STAX 1500 event coming up this weekend .