You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure

Viva Mexico: Team Online Short Film

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:14:00 +0000

My PokerStars Team Online short film has been released, and I've been warmed by the positive reaction. That's a credit to the director Ryan Firpo (who also directed the forthcoming documentary about the poker room, Bet Raise Fold, which looks excellent). I was really impressed by how he captured a large chunk of the arc of my life and created a film that incorporates some of the past, the present and the future, as all good art does.

I wrote a little about the making of the film recently on the PokersStars Blog, and now I want to compare some of the themes from the video to my current relationship with poker.

The truth is, despite the fact that I am proud of the end result of the project, the video is hard for me to watch. Not just because hearing my own voice will always make me cringe, nor that the camera adds 10 lbs. in addition to the fact that I was 10 lbs. heavier when the filming took place last year. The main reason the video is tough to process is because right now I am closer to the feeling of bottomed-out despair from 2010 than I am to the triumphant feeling of having a proper identity within the game, sorta where the video ends.

Plenty of people watched the video and assumed that because it ends on a high note that I am in a good place, spiritually and emotionally, with poker, but what the video really depicts is my ongoing cyclical struggle with poker, and I have to report I am not in the "up" part of the cycle right now.

Most poker-related media focuses on the sexier aspects of the game, the extravagant sums of money in play, the exotic locations poker players travel to and the joyful spirit of being able to "play a game for a living."

That's actually a fine representation of reality for a lot of players I know: The best, most elite players definitely live a life that's thoroughly comfortable and relatively glamorous. They understood and practiced the single most important aspect of the game--bankroll management--and created a comfortable, steady living, year after year, largely immune to risk of ruin and the short term swings that plague less disciplined players like me.

But for many other players, poker is a struggle in too many ways to mention. It is for me still after more than eight years in the game, anyway. So when it comes time to represent my poker experience, I guess my writing instincts take over, and I find catharsis in telling the story as clearly and honestly as possible. It's somehow easier for me to face failure and disappointment than try to embrace the smoke-and-mirrors that the poker life affords. Not that there's anything wrong with the smoke-and-mirrors, I think poker as escapism is one of its finer qualities. I just usually lean towards my familiar approach, what I've been doing since my teen years--trying to create a narrative that expresses as much of a complete picture as possible, putting the past, present and future in the same picture.

***

It's also not exactly accurate to compare my current state of affairs with the anxiety I was feeling in 2010, because I'm experiencing a new manifestation of the pain of this poker life, and it revolves around a concept that even the most elite pros encounter: the struggle to balance poker with regular everyday life. How to be all-consumed by a game of small edges while still being present for people and things that exist in the non-poker world.

It also eventually relates back to the fact that the DOJ fucked us hard with Black Friday and has made the already difficult balancing act of being a poker pro much harder for those who felt compelled to leave the country in order to continue playing online.

For a while last year, I was in a good zone that allowed me to focus a lot of energy on poker and also spend time back in California. At first it felt really disheartening to drive through Southern California on the way to Mexico and see all the houses filled with people whose jobs didn't involved driving three hours south to a foreign country in order to generate income. Then I got over that and accepted the joyful mess and embraced the weirdness.

At times, I felt stretched a little thin by the need to drive to Mexico to play and my desire to drive back to Los Angeles to see my girlfriend and enjoy what I considered my "real life," but after a while that too went away. I had established what I thought was a good balance. I was at peace with the events of Black Friday and had gotten over the overwhelmed feeling of being displaced. Maybe I even felt lucky that I could keep one foot in each of my worlds while others had to give up their home life completely. I also acknowledged that it had been good to get out of my comfort zone.

And then, sometime towards the end of last year, my whole perception changed: I suddenly felt that I wasn't living a good balanced life at all, and that perhaps instead of getting the best of both worlds, I was getting nothing in either world. I decided to refine the balance, spend an extra day each week in California, be more present and available for my girlfriend in the hopes of creating a life that wasn't defined by long isolated stretches of playing online poker in a Mexican ghost town.

Again, a poker player needs to be fully dedicated to the game to perform at his best. Balance is the enemy of dedication, and my recent attempts at balance seem to have failed.

I still have the discipline and drive to try and get it right, and in order to do that I have had to embrace more contradictions. When you're on a downswing or not loving the game, many people advise you to take a break, take a step back and player lower stakes, fewer tables, study more. That conflicts with the instinct to just keep grinding and try to simply end the downswing and re-find the game. Like I said in the video, sometimes you have to give something up in order to get it back, and I'm learning that again.

So I'm working through it. Consciously taking steps to reform and reinvent myself. Seeing a shrink about my anxiety. I still feel blessed to be able to spend any amount time in California with the love of my life (I consider both my girlfriend and California itself to be the loves of my life), and to be able to play online poker just three hours away in Mexico, but it has become increasingly difficult to feel completely engaged wherever I am.

See, I still love grinding a Sunday on PokerStars, but it's just not the same without my girlfriend sleeping in the next room, getting up after I'd been working for a few hours to make me bacon and eggs. It's not the same without being able to walk outside on a sync break for a smoke and see random people walking, jogging, panhandling, living life. That balancing act was hard enough in itself--spending 8-12 hours every day, clicking buttons and maintaining a relationship--but now, with a bowl of hastily prepared cereal in the place of bacon and eggs, separated from my friends and loved ones by hundreds of miles and an international border--it also feels bleak.

In other words, not longer after I overcame the anxiety of compartmentalizing my life, a new anxiety replaced it, arising from the fact that I was longer living an integrated life. I am once again envious as I drive by the homes of Southern California residents with their Southern California jobs.

***

A lot of people commented on how nice my apartment looked in the film and how cool the pool looks, but that's sort of another example of smoke and mirrors: You could think of it just as easily as high-end solitary confinement. It's a modern, beautifully assembled condo building, 18 stories high and packed with amenities, but on any given night when you look up from my deck at the large mass of apartments, you will almost never see more than three other lights on. It's largely vacant. This conforms to the general vibe of Rosarito: A sprawled out coastal landscape with a lot of rough, unfinished edges, a stretched out ghost-town, a cartoon-ish underworld compared to its neighbor in the north.

On the same grounds, right next to my building, is a condo building that remains incomplete, a vertical concrete slab of darkness that will likely never be built. They were planning to build four identical building in total and couldn't even complete the second one. That is why the pool is so cool-looking: If you are planning to accommodate four-buildings' worth of people, an Olympic-sized pool (in addition to the outdoor infinity pool) is a good idea. Then when the economy collapses and the media starts to depict Mexico as a land of random drug-related beheadings, and everyone leaves--now you don't have enough people to fill a pool, nor even the ability to keep the hot-tub going seven days a week (it's only heated on the weekends).

Really, it has nothing to with amenities or square footage or the state of tourism in Baja Norte, and everything to do with the problems of living in an isolated environment in order to work an isolating profession.

So, I want to be back in Santa Monica again, watching sailboats out my window while I play the Sunday Warmup, waiting for my woman to wake up and make bacon and eggs. Or lox and bagels. In the meantime I have to find a way to reconcile the struggle and find a new balance in order to live either (let alone both) parts of my life correctly. Maybe with the perspective of the video, I can also carry the awareness that this is just one short, painful chapter in a long story that's been filled with a lot of funnier and more glorious chapters.

Stay tuned for the sequel I suppose!

Bring the Noise

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:25:00 +0000

It's appropriate for Barack Obama to apologize for calling attorney general Kamala Harris the "by far the best-looking attorney general in the country" for exactly one reason: It was a statement guaranteed to be misconstrued, and as a public figure, he should be savvy enough to censor himself and avoid the ruckus.

(Arguably I should be too, but I haven't been inspired to write about much recently--well, nothing--so I figured I might as well take a detour and rant about the various things that tilted me about this Gawker piece by Tom Scocca I just read).

I appreciate the fact that Obama apologized for the "distraction" created by the comment and not the comment itself, because there was nothing inherently offensive, degrading, or minimizing about what he said. It was, in essence, a charming remark, and, considering the context is an interaction between two politicians, a humanizing exchange.

This is how Scocca (a man) explains why it's not cool to tell women they're attractive: "Because it's rude, you idiots. Because what you're saying is: Let's stop thinking about her and start looking at her—everybody here in this room, have a look, check her out. Check it out."

I believe Obama's comment (again, had it been delivered in an appropriate context and not from the President in a public forum) can just as easily be interpreted in a strictly positive light, with a subtext that reads more along the lines of: "Since my professional respect for you goes without saying, please take this old-fashioned compliment in the most flattering possible way." It's the sort of kindness that is easily communicated and understood between friends or associates with a history, who are secure in their gender identities.

The smart women I've encountered in this lifetime have don't have a problem making these kinds of distinctions.

Love how this argues that women are individuals too and then puts them all in a box - gawker.com/5993807/manspl…
— Sanat Gersappa (@sanatgersappa) April 7, 2013

***

The person I know best in this world, the person I would call my soulmate, is a woman. It's not an overstatement to say that my greatest pride in this life has been witnessing her extraordinary success in business. I don't say "extraordinary success" because she's a woman, but relative to the thousands of people I've known and observed in this world (and myself), our trajectories and ability to harness talent and ambition efficiently. She is a woman who proved to me that "there are no second acts in American lives" is complete and total bullshit.

She built much of her career at a company that is known for being a "boys club." Would it really shock you to learn that she has had to field a range of compliments and come-ons in her rise to the top? Do we really expect that in her years working in a male-dominated environment, that no one noticed (or--gasp--mentioned) that in addition to having the brains and the talent to do the job better than anyone else around, she also has a nice rack?

Should she feel objectified by flattery? Or empowered by it? Or maybe she just work with the fact that her physical presence as a woman is necessarily an aspect of how men perceive her, and maybe that's not so bad.

She doesn't have to rely on her attractiveness to get the job--the work speaks for itself--but she doesn't have to let thousands of years of biological hard-wiring bum her out, either. The reaction that men have towards women is far more pure and genuine that the convoluted sexual politics we pile on top of it.

***

The more intellectually annoying aspect of the media blowup after Obama's comment is how it once again demonstrates the increasing importance we place in reacting, in advancing theories based on emotion and half-thought out arguments instead of reasonable, measured contemplation. The need to say something is stronger than the need to say something that's actually true. (I'm guilty of it, too, of course).

This erodes our ability to connect with each other as humans as opposed to socio-political constructs, of living breathing creatures and not merely creations of social media. I'd say the only thing that allows us to engage in a meaningful way is our ability to filter out immediate feelings and emotions through a rational eye. It is the basis for empathy.

But the die has been cast, and our ability to communicate in a calm and intelligent way is not-so-gradually becoming whitewashed and muddled.

(Of course, there is plenty value in our current ability to react quickly and incisively: the above imbedded tweet probably summarizes the confused, creepy nature of Scoccia's piece better than I will, no matter how many words I spew).

***

"Mansplaining," as far as I know, is a recently popular term meant to denote the condescending way that men explain certain things to women, so I guess by re-appropriating this fad term, the editors of Gawker are hoping to create some sort of high-minded unified understanding of women's issues. Or generate page views, whatever.

The thing is, I don't need to be explained anything by Gawker editors about modern-day feminism or the antiquated architecture of sexual politics or the inequities women continue to face.

I don't need a Buzzeed reaction piece to (an intentionally provocative comment by) Adam Carolla to be informed there are funny female comedians. That's because I've been listening to funny female comedians since I was a child, and I never made the distinction before the media invented the distinction. (I also happen to think my girlfriend is the funniest person on the planet of either gender).

Of course, I'm not automatically hip to all the issues that women face. I hear my female peers in the poker world tell me that they still run into situations at the table where male players say stupid or offensive shit or otherwise make women uncomfortable. So, I understand that the poisons of old, oppressive attitudes still linger in various ways, and I realize it's important to be vigilant, cognitive, sensitive, and open-minded.

The difference is, I try to get my information by listening to actual women talk about their actual problems and emotions and not from the groupthink that persistently seeps out of the new media culture.

"Casinos Without Borders" -- Verge Piece by Trent Wolbe

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:57:00 +0000

Last week an editor at Slate contacted me about doing a followup piece to my story on Black Friday from 2011, but I realized that the piece he wanted had already been written by my friend Trent Wolbe for the online tech publication, The Verge.

I also realized I neglected to post a link here. Enjoy:

Casinos without borders: 'I moved to Mexico to keep my job playing online poker' by Trent Wolbe

Gowanus Dolphin Jumps Shark

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 20:14:00 +0000

Dolphins have jumped the shark.
— Neal Brennan (@nealbrennan) January 26, 2013

By the end of the yesterday, I figured out that it's OK to piss off a group of internet cognoscenti as long as you make your girlfriend laugh.

I am among the luckiest of all Twitter users for having a girlfriend who doesn't check Twitter (and also has nearly zero awareness of internet meme culture). So when we sat down to dinner last night, I assumed her reaction after I explained that day's adventures with my Twitter parody account the @GowanusDolphin would be a mix of a) not really understanding what I was talking about and then b) making fun of me for my geeky behavior.

Instead, she got a surprisingly hearty laugh out of the whole thing and thought the idea of a dolphin lamenting about being unable to find the South Street Seaport was funny.

Granted, we were a couple of glasses of wine into dinner, but anyone who has been in a relationship for several years might agree that it's not an insignificant accomplishment to elicit a genuine guttural laugh from your partner.

***

@shaneschleger you were genuinely trying to enjoy the internet sans cynicism and that's a sin to them haha. keep your chin up.
— Cuck Grassley (@80want) January 25, 2013

can we save our vitriol for actual bad people instead of people who genuinely enjoy something one irony level below us like @shaneschleger?
— Cuck Grassley (@80want) January 25, 2013

I was appreciative for this person not just for his kind words but for helping me understand where it was I went wrong.

Based on the reactions and conversations I had on Twitter yesterday, I learned that my transgression was not being crass about the plight of the unfortunate dolphin but being lame and unfunny according to the standards of people who spend all day on the internet deciphering the value of internet memes. Turns out that parody accounts are offensive on principle to certain people, in and of themselves, regardless of the content. I ran into a pack of viral meme watchdogs, and they were happy to rip me to shreds.

I guess I have a very simple sense of humor, and to me the idea of a dolphin getting stranded in the Gowanus Canal, setting up a Twitter account and then asking to be put on the guest list at the Barclay Center is just fucking funny to me. In other words, my sense of humor has not evolved much since my father showed me a VHS tape of "Land Shark."

In any case, when some of these professional internet crawlers discovered that I wrote a blog about the parody account, I found out that that was yet an even greater offense to their sensibilities, and they were not shy to express it and pile on me a bit:

for what its worth this shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2013/01/if-you… ONLY MAKES THE PARODY ACCOUNT WORSE
— max read (@max_read) January 25, 2013

This is the cool guy who made the dolphin parody twitter. Very funny. Love parody accounts: @shaneschleger
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) January 25, 2013

The guy who created the dolphin parody account also runs @p_funk_bot, which tweets random lyrics to Parliment Funkadelic songs. lmao
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) January 25, 2013

I follow some of these people, and actually consistently enjoy Katie Notopoulos' content, but I didn't really understand what I did to bother her so profoundly that she'd take time out of her day to basically harass me, so I asked:

@shaneschleger i'm sorry, i'm just grouchy over this whole bangwithfriends.com debacle
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) January 25, 2013

Apology accepted I guess? I have no idea what she's referring to regarding "bang with friends," but I realize that when you spend all day on the internet, standard interactions can become difficult to navigate. The value in determining whether or not you're attacking someone for being an actual asshole or just because you are having a bad day is minimal, but the value in reacting quickly and decisively and broadcasting it is high.

Of course I find it especially bothersome that Notopoulos would attack @p_funk_bot which has done her no harm and has brought some level of joy to many of the thousands of people it has interacted with.

At times, I've been an asshole on the internet myself, but for the most part I apply "anti-Internet Tough Guy" rules to my dealings online: If I wouldn't say it to your face, I probably won't say it to you on the internet.

It's very easy to make your own point of view seem correct in 140 characters and a lot harder to take a step back and analyze a situation intelligently. And since it's also not much harder to take someone to task directly on Twitter, rather than harass them in the abstract like Max Read and Notopooulos did, I can't say I have much respect for their approach.

People on the internet pretend to care about bullying, but as one of my favorite comedians Neal Brennan has pointed out, no one actual gives a shit about bullying on principle, they just don't want to be part of the group that's bullied. The corollary to that is when it comes time to dish out some bullying, it's easy to get on board.

***

Not clear on how this Twitter parody account warranted suspension. Did the real Gowanus Dolphin complain? dailydot.com/society/gowanu…
— David Gallagher (@davidfg) January 25, 2013

This might be the only actually halfway interesting issue in the aftermath of the @GowanusDolphin Debacle. When I told my girlfriend that the account was suspended, she (as a totally distant, relatively objective observer of the events) thought it was outrageous that they would ban the parody account and said it's "almost an issue of free speech."

At the time the account was banned, I didn't care. It started out as an unfunny gag and wasn't likely to get much funnier, so it's probably good that they pulled the plug early.

But why exactly did they pull the plug? Of the people who came out to criticize me, no one actually admitted to being offended by the parody of a struggling dolphin, but many of them stood behind the principle that I was a in the wrong for creating something that was not cool on the internet. The only clearly outlined offense was creating something that was deemed not funny and not hip according to advanced standards of irony perpetuated by a certain clique of neo-journalists on Twitter..

There really was is not a valid reason to have banned that particular parody account on Twitter. Plenty of parody accounts thrive, and plenty of legitimately offensive real accounts as well, and parody in general is a well integrated aspect of pop culture. So, my hunch is that I actually did offend someone (or a large enough group of people) on the basis of making fun of a dolphin's suffering within the first 10 minutes of the story breaking.

I can only assume this is a peripheral effect of the viral media's obsession with the cuteness of animals, as evidenced by the abundance of feline- and canine-related pictures and memes that get circulated constantly by people who are influential on Twitter and in the new media. It seems Buzzfeed writers and their ilk have an easier time relating to animals on the internet than to people.

I'm the Jerk Behind @GowanusDolphin

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:24:00 +0000

If you were watching the news or following Twitter this morning, you might know that a dolphin was stuck in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

Killing time on a rainy day, I decided to do something I've never done before: start a Twitter parody account (@GowanusDolphin), along the lines of the Bronx Zoo Cobra thing. While I don't consider the suffering of a friendly animal to be a laughing matter in general, I also didn't think the subject was so taboo that it couldn't be parodied.

I was partly goofing around to see if I could be the first person in the race to create the inevitable Twitter parody that would exist. I think anyone who knows me knows I wouldn't create something in order to offend people, but despite trying to keep it light and funny, I crossed the lines of good taste according to several people.

That was FAST RT @gowanusdolphin: How do I get verified?
— HuffPost New York (@HuffPostNY) January 25, 2013

If you create a parody account within fifteen minutes of a news event you are the worst person on the planet and I hate you.
— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) January 25, 2013

Looks like I am now included in a sweeping indictment that covers everyone who ever created a timely parody account on Twitter, and I'd just like to know why.

The account was suspended within a half hour or so, so I can't easily retrieve the content I wrote, but for whatever it's worth, I wasn't making obscene or tasteless jokes about tuna fish, The Cove or anything like that. I just decided to use the occasion to combine my love/hate feelings towards New York and my naturally goofy approach towards social media.

My first tweet said something like, "I will survive this, thanks for the support." Another tweet I wrote asked if The Barclay Center could put me (the dolphin) on tonight's guest list. Another tweet just randomly referenced the Talking Heads, "this is not my beautiful house..."

Hipster dolphins are the worst. RT @buzzfeedandrew DOLPHIN STRANDED IN BROOKLYN CANAL! SAVE IT! twitter.com/michaelhayes/s…
— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) January 25, 2013

And while many other people on Twitter joked generically about dolphins in Brooklyn, hipsters, etc., apparently it was my full-fledged parody that crossed the line:

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this @gowanusdolphin account is far worse than the Holocaust.
— Joel Johnson (@joeljohnson) January 25, 2013

So I suppose making a parody account about a suffering animal is more offensive to some than creating a casual reference point to an event in which millions of people, including some of my direct ancestors, were tortured and murdered! I wonder how many of Joel Johnson's family had to flee Germany or hide out in bunkers in the Ukraine during the great Dolphin Holocaust of WWII, but I can tell him some of my own family history if he's curious.

Or was he just making a joke, and one that I can say is basically funny and well-phrased and acceptable if I don't overthink it? Maybe I should just lighten the fuck up.

***

Of course plenty of people played along with the joke, and I got dozens of follows, favorites and RTs within a twenty minute period. A few even lamented the quick coming and going of the account:

How is @gowanusdolphin already a suspended account? Damn, haters!
— GabeR (@widestance) January 25, 2013

And the best observation was:

sad news -- it appears that Twitter suspended @gowanusdolphin's account. Probably because it was fake.
— colbyhall (@colbyhall) January 25, 2013

***

But the negative feedback stung so much harder than any amount of positive encouragement, so I think I got a taste of why entertainers are sensitive to negative commentary and so immune to the joy of positive feedback. Also, how frustrating it is when people "can't take a joke."

So I'm writing this blog for two reasons:

1) Although I believe anonymity is an important part of the Internet, I also believe in taking responsibility for things that offend people. I do not want to hide behind the mask of anonymity in order to make any kind of point, but especially not to disgust or piss off people.

As I said earlier, I would have never started the account if I had thought it would have registered with so many people as tasteless. Maybe this points to my own flawed moral compass, but that's a different issue.

2) I was genuinely upset at some of the reactions that came my way, because I think it's weird our viral culture makes it taboo to goof on an animal but completely OK to say awful things to other people. One girl I follow on my real account and who follows me back called me something along the lines of "human scum" for having created the account.

While many of people registering disapproval in my @-mentions deemed it inappropriate for me to mock a dolphin, they had no problem calling the human behind the account all sorts of horrible things.

Anyway, my bad I guess!

Ocrowe and the PCA

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:48:00 +0000

One of my closest friends, Owen "Ocrowe" Crowe, took fifth in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event on Sunday, cashing for $435,000 and getting his year off to a very nice start.

I met Ocrowe in April of 2005 in Foxwoods, when we were both relatively new to poker. Crowe had just come off a chop in an NEPC preliminary event, splitting the prizepool three-handed with Curt Kohlberg and Anthony Snyder (son of Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder) for what seemed like a lot of money at the time, probably $50-60K. (Wait, that still is a lot of money!)

Crowe and I were seated together late in the day during the next prelim event, when we chatted and quickly became friendly. Also at the table were Gavin Smith (a month before his seven-figure breakout score at the Mirage), Chris Bell and Brett "Get Crunk" Richey.

Ocrowe making a run at some WSOP event. 25K denomination chips in play!

Richey and Crowe both had a big stack on the bubble, and when they got involved in a hand together, I took the opportunity to sneak out for a smoke. As I made my way back into the room a minute later, Crowe, to my surprise, was making his exit, saying, "nice to meet you, good luck" as he passed. He and Richey had played a huge flip (one of them had AQ and the other had JJ), Crowe lost and was heading to the rail. It seemed like a shockingly big pot to play on the bubble, but today it would probably be standard.

***

Our friendship was solidified throughout that year, and in 2013 I consider Owen among a very small handful of people in this world with whom I have a genuinely strong connection and mutual understanding.

He's one of the few people I can travel with happily, which might not sound like anything special, but it's rare to find someone I can trust implicitly, tolerate as a hotel roommate, tolerate when he's drunk, and with whom I can generally enjoy the daily grind of being on the road. Over the past eight years, we've experienced both gloriously high points together and some distinctly low times, plus plenty of misadventures that I won't be writing about in this blog.

In 2011, our career paths diverged distinctly. Prior to Black Friday, as I was rededicating myself to online poker, Crowe was venturing into the arena of live cash games in local California cardrooms, and when Black Friday gave me a clear reason to relocate out of the US and play online, it gave him an equally clear objective to continue grinding live.

Still, we've both been "on tour" to some extent for the better part of the last decade, and while Owen has achieved much better results over the years (notice his ability to snap off 6-figure scores in large field donkaments, year after year), it's fair to say we have both been chasing the possibility of a life-altering 7-figure score for a similar amount of time.

So it was with a great amount of pride and awe that I watched as my friend seemed to glide through a field of nearly 1,000 players to final table of one of the biggest tournaments of the year, and to my mind, the best one to hit a score in, since it takes place so early in the year.

There are few tournaments these days that pay seven figures to the top two spots, and witnessing Owen have a shot at the big dollars was exciting and nerve-wracking, if also for the fact that I had a 2% financial interest in his success.

When 2% of first place amounts to a significant amount of money for me (going into the final table, I was guaranteed to win around $3K with an upside of $36K if Crowe scooped), the scale is exponentially more profound in real life terms for the person playing for the other 98%.

***

In other words, while it requires a lot of luck, talent, timing and psychological presence to make the final table of a 900+ player tournament and not much more of the same to win the entire thing, the difference between those two results can be the difference between paying off a few bills and a career-making score. This is the case even when the player is not playing for 98% (and it's rare that anyone is playing for that much of his own action).

Without getting into the particulars of Ocrowe's financial arrangements, a typical tournament grinder can easily find himself coming into the final table with a makeup figure of $125K (this would not be an extraordinary figure either, it would actually be on the low side of things for a player who grinds the circuit full time and hasn't had a six-figure score recently).

The prize for 8th place in this tenth anniversary PCA was $165K. A grinder with a makeup deal might have 50% of his action after makeup, so after his backer recoups the $125K red-figure and they split the $40k remaining profit, the horse is walking home with $20,000 in cash. Nothing to sneeze at, but also not an amount of money that would meaningfully impact the life of a professional poker player.

Sliding further up the pay scale, a fourth place finish, for a gross cash of $560K, would leave the same player with $217,000. That's enough money to replenish a bankroll and maybe create the maneuverability to structure a more desirable backing arrangement than the one I described (despite how common these deals are, I would say it's advisable for a player to avoid makeup deals). It's a fair amount of security and a huge psychological boost, but it's only partially "life changing."

If that same player outlasts just three more players instead of busting fourth, well, now we're talking: $1.8M is a lot of money for the win (so is nearly $1.2M for second). Even after paying off the makeup, splitting the profits with a backer, paying off trades, paying off taxes, accounting for a relatively spendthrift lifestyle--with a modicum of money management, a poker player could almost be said to be "set for life" with that type of score.

There's no moral to the story, but I will take any opportunity I find to illustrate the severe vicissitudes, the constant narrow misses, embedded into the life of a tournament poker pro. How close to a life-changing score you can get while still winding up so far away.

Well, the real moral to the story is: Big ups to Owen, who finished 5th for a gross cash of $435,000! That's a huge start to the year, even after you break it down according to your own imagination based on the above Field Guide to MTT Division.


Owen Crowe, pictured at the PCA 2013 final table. (Third from left, wearing a hockey jersey because he is Canadian).

***

My PCA experience was considerably more lackluster than Owen's, but as the running joke with a friend of his and mine goes, if it hadn't been for the "butterfly effect" of my busting the tournament on day one and leaving the Bahamas earlier than scheduled, who knows, maybe Owen would not have made his run.

I sincerely love the PCA, and I hope to play it every year for as long as it exists, but to play a live poker tournament optimally requires a certain amount of motivation and passion, and after two months of traveling, I was perhaps lacking that complete sense of enthusiasm for the mission.

I am always a bit perplexed when I read people bemoan their table draw and cite 5-6 great players at their table. What about the other 2-3 players? That's where the value comes from and always has! Sure, in 2007 the proportion might have been closer to 2-3 great players, but that's the natural evolution of things. The game ain't changed, it just got harder.

In 2013, it's completely common to draw a table with at least five good-to-great players, and my starting table had WSOP Champion Huck Seed on my direct left and on his left, Dwyte Pilgrim, who personifies the level of passionate motivation for live tournaments that I mentioned.

This is Dwyte Piligrim's table presence.

Still, there were at least two or three weaker players at the table and that means it was a fine table draw. I didn't get much going, and other than two river calls that I sort of regret, I was not too unhappy with how I played. I got my last 23 BBs (7K at 150/300) in with AK vs KQ and busted near the end of level 5.

***

I wasn't in the mood to hang around and grind the live side events, so I decided to change my flight home from Monday to Friday. It was Wednesday then, still in the early stages of the tournament. If Crowe had been deep in the event (and despite the fact that Crowe actually almost called his shot, telling me, "I'm sticking around and winning this thing"), I would have hung out. But my post-bustout instinct to flee towards home took over, and I curtailed the trip.

As in 2012, I had a great time seeing my friends and acquaintances and with the other member of PokerStars Team Online. I did the one requisite run down the steep waterslide, but the only real exercise I got all week was during a quasi rematch in tennis vs. a couple other PSTO guys, Tyler Frost and Richard Veenman. My partner Roy Bahsin acquitted himself nicely during the match (at least from the baseline), but ultimately the southpaw Frosty proved too strong a competitor (and too much of a nit to allow himself to lose $50), and Roy and I were defeated 6-1, 6-4.

My Kinda, Sorta 2012 Year in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 20:37:00 +0000

It's mostly a celebration of an arbitrary passage of time, but I still enjoy the New Year. There is an inescapable collective feeling that one chapter is closing and in its place the illusory promise of opening a better, more interesting chapter.

As for recapping my own 2012, there is no succinct takeaway. It seems the narrative of my life often veers off-course, and I usually only have the slightest ability to control it. I think I've also let go of the futile pretension that I can. I believe we create our own realities, but it seems the individual components of that reality can take many forms along the way.

When I got signed to become a member of Team Online in 2011, I thought the narrative would be mostly about enjoying my life in Santa Monica and becoming a true professional poker player, after 7 years in the game correcting all the mistakes of my career and perhaps fulfilling my potential.

Then Black Friday happened, I had to leave Santa Monica if I wanted to still be an online poker player, and, well, what's the proverb? "Man plans, god laughs."

The narrative then became about re-establishing myself, not in the poker world but in the world itself. Not just geographically but emotionally too. I eventually found the initial trauma of having my life uprooted to be liberating, and the post-Black Friday upheaval ultimately helped make me feel like a more autonomous, cognizant member of the world.

***

I did grind hard on PokerStars for the first 10 months of the year, and I was planning on going even harder for the last couple months, eying a reasonable shot at hitting 400K VPPs for a solid income boost to the year.

Then, some stuff changed, and the narrative became about: Making an impromptu visit to a close friend in Maryland who has cancer; followed by an even more spontaneous vacation with my girlfriend to Tulum, Mexico. Then it was time to spend a couple days with friends and family back in New York over Thanksgiving.

I did make it back to my home in Baja Norte for a post-Thanksgiving Sunday grind, but shortly after that it was time to go on a long-planned trip to Israel. After all the spontaneous traveling I had done, I would have been inclined to cancel the trip, but it had been 30 years since I visited the country where my mother grew up. More importantly, I wanted to see my friend David, with whom I originally relocated to Canada, who is now living in Tel Aviv.

So I guess my current narrative is: Grind hard when the grinding is good but don't be reluctant to drop out when the pain and joy of real life takes you away from it. I guess it's another version of the elusive concept of "balance" to which poker players often pay lip-service.

The only problem with achieving that balance is reflected in something that Jerry Seinfeld mentioned in his recent NYT Magazine profile:

I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down.

It applies to poker too. Maybe not to all types of players, but for me at least, there's something about playing at my highest level that requires playing in an all-consuming way. The confidence I need to play my best poker comes from knowing that I made good decisions the day before (or knowing that I made bad decisions that I need to correct). It's a major challenge for me to recreate that confidence when I am only squeezing in occasional Sunday grinds. Slowly easing back into a good grinding schedule is my current priority for the upcoming year.

***

My proposed narrative for 2013 is not setting goals. Maybe to my detriment, I've never been much of a "goals oriented" person. For a vocation that is as tumultuous as poker, it seems almost foolish to establish rigid goals. Let's say your goal was to make 110K in 2012, but you only made 85K. Did you fail? What if you had a losing year? In most scenarios, the only thing you can really do is keep on grinding.

Of course, I have more serious hopes and ambitions, plans and dreams, for the upcoming year, but when I think of discussing those, I just think about this thing Bob Dylan said on 60 Minutes in 2004 when asked what "destiny" means to him:

It's a feeling you have that you know something about yourself - nobody else does - the picture you have in your mind of what you're about will come true. It's kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling. And if you put it out there, somebody will kill it. So, it’s best to keep that all inside.

***

Oh wow, I almost forgot to mention: I will be continuing on with PokerStars Team Online for 2013, my third year as part of the team. Happy, grateful, and honored to have the opportunity. Actually, I can say that last sentence applies to how I feel about most aspects of my life.

Happy New Year everybody, and good luck in 2013!

The Weekend in Online Poker

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:30:00 +0000

I had a very good, but nearly amazing, weekend in online poker: I won the elusive Saturday Splash, a $2.22 turbo rebuy that draws a 10,000+ player field every week and this week paid $18K to 1st.

I have really been wanting to crack one of these off ever since I started playing them regularly last September. There are two $1 versions of the same tournament every day that also have huge prizepools (my friend and I nicknamed them "The Mythical" and "Mythical Jr."), and it's a fast and loose structure, with lots of chips in play, and the opponents are not the high- and mid-stakes tournament experts I am often facing off against. It's basically just a lot of fun to go deep and pick up a stack in these things, and to actually outright win is disproportionately satisfying.

Below is a screenshot I took of my first ever 9-figure stack in a poker tournament, which I acquired after doubling with AA vs 88. Also note that Mr Swatch, who wound up taking second, is one of the original MTT players on Stars, and he said he thinks he won the first $109 turbo the site ever spread.

Then, as the day was winding down, I found myself deep in the Quarterly Supernova Freeroll, a tournament I try never to miss, since it only takes place four times a year and has a $1M prizepool and a field limited to Supernova+ VIPs and a few satellite winners. In the very early stages of the tournament, I spiked a miracle king on the flop after getting it in preflop with KK vs. AA, and I continued accumulating as the field whittled down.

By the time we were down to two tables, I have to confess I was feeling the pressure. The $100K first prize (I had traded 35% with friends so actually stood to win a maximum of $65K) would have been significant money for me, and when it all came to an end, we were not playing very deep at all. I was 2/13 in chips and only had 20 big blinds.

With two tables left, I lost a pot with AK to QT that would have put me at 7M chips but instead left me with 3M or so. I then spiked the "heroic ace of justice" on the flop after getting it in with AK vs. KK, which brought my stack back up to a healthy at 5M chips.

The table draws were non-ideal, with all the relatively healthy 15-20 BB stacks at my table and several 10-12BB stacks on the other. With 13 players left in this spot, I am generally looking good to make the final table and have a great shot a the glory. Then the button opened (same guy who won QT over AK), and in that situation AQo was just too good of a hand to fold from the big blind (with 20BBs). I shoved, he called with TT, and it wound being a spot where I had to win a coinflip for a whole lot of equity. I finished 12th for (65% of) $9K.

It's as good an example of any of the vicissitudes of tournament poker, and I got a quick couple more (AKA "bad beat stories"):

Tonight, as Sunday was winding down, I was still in the Sunday 500 with three tables left and lost with AA to 99 for a 60BB pot. This is the second time that's happened in the same tournament since August. Last time if I remember right it was two tables left and my QQ lost to 77.

If it sounds like I'm complaining after having a profitable weekend, think of it more like...lamenting what coulda been.

***

The weird undercurrent to the past couple days is that I've been dealing with some fairly intense emotional stress. It's not the sort of stuff that I'm going to write about here, more the sort of stuff that causes me to lose hours sleep and much of my appetite.

Despite feeling like I could barely think or breath properly half the time, I was completely zoned in on poker. It's a phenomenon of some sort, or a developing theory maybe, but I have observed poker players who are experiencing extreme swings in their personal lives often get super-focused and manage to put up incredible results.

I remember a good friend who endured the devastating loss of a family member and went on to crush tournaments for the next week. I also remembered that Phil Ivey made the final table of a WPT event shortly after his father died.

I have nowhere else to go with that tangent for now, but, yeah, that was my weekend in online poker.

Wakeskating By

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:00:00 +0000

"You're either living or you're writing," a wise old friend once told me, so I'll offer that as a substitute to the loathsome blogger apologia that usually reads, "sorry for the lack of updates, but...and..."

I have, in fact, been running through a pretty full schedule, putting in my share of hours online in Mexico and fine tuning the stops of my weekly travels up and down the West Coast.

I try to take advantage of the bells and whistles that Southern California has to offer whenever possible, and to that end, the best idea I've had in a long time was to find a place to go waterskiing in San Diego. I used to be pretty good on a slalom ski in my younger, summer camp days, but for many years I haven't had regular access to the sport at all, except for some one-off shots in Lake Mead and Aruba.

I found the Mission Bay Aquatic Center in Pacific Beach was exactly what I was looking for. For a non-exorbitant amount of money, you can get into a whole variety of water sports. It's really an amazing resource. Until December I will be part of a college class (apparently at UCSD you can get a college credit for wake-boarding) that meets every Friday for a couple hours and guarantees you two passes around the bay each session.

It turns out that a boat dragging me on a slalom ski at 28 MPH has a significantly more taxing effect on my body than it did when I was 14 years old. It kicks my ass thoroughly every week, but I love it just as thoroughly.

I'm also loving the newest variation to the sport that I've been experimenting with--Wakeskating--which is like wakeboarding, but on a smaller board and with no bindings! It's like riding a skateboard on the water, and it's super cool, the most fun I've had in a while.


A picture of someone who is not me on a wakeskate.

After class ends on Friday, I slowly make my way back down to Mexico. Sometimes, I'll wait out rush hour either grabbing some bar food in PB or going to a movie; other times I'll just do my grocery shopping and get down to Mexico right away, soak my sore bones in the hot tub and try to get an early bedtime for the weekend action online.

For the next four days of the week, Saturday through Tuesday, I am completely immersed in the online poker grind, and then Tuesday it's time to head back, cross the border to the USA, and start the cycle all over: Wednesday, I chill out do some errands in Santa Monica, usually take a nap, watch TV, sometimes go to a movie. Thursday, I play tennis and usually repeat the same nap/TV program. Friday morning, it's time to hit the road again and go back down to San Diego for my "class."

***

Poker itself has been mostly unremarkable. I lost money during WCOOP in September, but I did make a highly improbable run at defending my 2011 WCOOP title in the 2-7 Triple Draw event, taking 3rd in the exact same tournament this year for $14K or so. That, plus some decent results on the last two days of the series, prevented the WCOOP from being complete bloodbath, but it wasn't a good month at all, and the weeks since then have been somewhat frustratingly breakeven.

Overall, though, I think I am in a good groove, approaching the game every day with a clear head and putting myself in the right frame of mind to play mistake-free poker for many hours at a time and to even enjoy some of the quotidian aspects of the lifestyle. That's as close as I'll ever claim to the cliched poker player's affirmation, "I'm playing the best poker of my life."

On the other hand, the grind can certainly wear on me, and somewhere amidst the emotional and financial swings of the game, there is a spiritual monotony to the life of a poker player. I relate to plenty of what Olivier Busquet wrote in a blog back in June, and I often feel that playing poker for a living amounts to an ongoing flirtation with an existential crisis. It's an occupation, and I guess you can call it a profession, but is it "work?" It's a larger subject for a different time, but it sometimes feel like a fine line between a groove and a rut, and as a poker player, I often feel like I'm on it.

One of the things that keeps me going is that I feel I haven't accomplished what I'm capable of accomplishing, and I still want to "get it right." I guess I also still enjoy playing MTTs on the internet, I really do. I still possess a level of excitement for the game, and I'm truly looking forward to a weekend like this one coming up, when my part-time roommate Jordan comes down from Oklahoma, and there's some special stuff on Stars, including the $1M Supernova Freeroll on Sarturday and Double Vision Sunday.

I also realize that having an occupation which allows me to indulge in a sentiment like "flirting with an existential crisis" is a huge luxury to begin with, and I could be stuck in a variety of equally, or less, fulfilling occupations, most of which wouldn't allow me the freedom to play tennis and go waterskiing every week.

One Year Relocation Reflections; DaWarsaw Short Film by PokerStars

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:49:00 +0000

After my trip to the ear doctor in Geneva, I stopped in Amsterdam for a few days to revisit a city that has had a mythical place in my heart for at least 15 years since I first traveled there. Also, after missing two Sundays of online poker, I was champing at the bit to get back in action, and I didn't want to miss the quarterly $1M Supernova freeroll on Saturday the 18th either. In this post-Black Friday, increasingly regulated online poker world, it makes plenty of logistical sense when traveling to put in sessions whenever the opportunity to log on to pokerstars(.com) presents itself.

On the first night there, I caught up with fellow Team Online member Richard Veenman on the evening before he headed off to a vacation in the Alps. Richard grew up in the Netherlands, not far from Amsterdam, and he is a great conversationalist. We went for a long walk, had a nice steak dinner, and on the way back saw a large audience sprawled around the side of a canal listening to a band perform. It was the ideal way to get acclimated to that heady city.

***

Then, my friend David, my initial relocation partner and former Canadian roommate, joined me. He was playing the poker festival in Barcelona and after busting the Estrellas main event, he was able to squeeze in a couple days off to come hang with me in a rented apartment near the Red Light District before going back to Spain for the EPT €5K.

It was great to see him, a refreshing reunion and a chance to reflect on how much has happened in the year since we relocated. It was a year to the day that he began his journey by car from his house in Silver Lake to our shitty highrise rental in Yaletown and the anniversary of the highest point of my anxiety, as I reluctantly packed up my California apartment and moved uncertainly towards a new life in Vancouver that didn't seem real (and, as it turns out, wasn't).

For his part, after the Canada debacle was over, David went on a journey of epic magnitude. First, he drove from British Columbia to Portland, OR, then flew to Mexico where he spent a couple weeks in Cabo, killing time and grinding online poker before his planned Birthright trip in November of last year.

He came back to the States in early 2012, picking up the pieces of his relocation journey up to that point: He retrieved his car that he had stashed with a friend in Portland, then drove to Los Angeles where he rented an apartment so he could spend the month unloading a storage locker full of the possessions of his pre-Black Friday life. During that month, he would come down to my apartment in Mexico to play online poker. All this in preparation for his next, and current, move--going back to Israel to make "Aliyah."

***

The arc of my story is not quite as sprawling or lively, so when I look at my overall relocation experience I simply take away something that has always been my favorite aspect of the poker life, which is how it has allowed me to see many different aspects of the world, often taking me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to face harsh or strange realities, and in the process demystifying some of those harsh, strange realities.

For instance, I never thought I'd be living in a "third world country," much less traveling to and from it with similar ease to the daily commute that people make from the suburbs. I was once a very closed-in New Yorker. I had traveled a little bit (mostly by road in the US), and I had met many different kinds of people in my teens and twenties; I considered myself worldly, but in reality I was rather provincial, like a small town kid who never left his town. In a way, it wasn't until I became a poker player that I started fully seeing the world, uncovering a fuller scope of how ambitiously people lived and traveled.

I go through phases where I have plenty of mixed feelings about poker as a lifestyle and an occupation, but I am unequivocally grateful for the way it opened me up to new ways of exploring life.

***

For me, the hidden backbone of this story is my association with PokerStars. Being offered a spot on Team Online in 2011, then the opportunity to continue with them if I relocated after Black Friday, was the clear tipping point in my decision, the one thing that made relocating a no-brainer. If it wasn't for Stars, I could see myself trying (however miserably) to be a live poker pro or looking for even more soul-sucking work.

The opportunity to represent a company that holds itself to the highest possible standard of quality is extremely rare, and I am grateful for my association with Stars for more than the obvious reasons that having an endorsement deal is pretty sweet. Since the day I first played on the site, I have always felt that it's one of the best products I've ever used in any industry, in any capacity. Everything since then has reinforced that feeling. The way PokerStars has handled its business since Black Friday has been nothing short of inspiring, and the news of July 31st is still mind-blowing to me.

***

This spirit of quality and care carries over to Team Online, which, I discovered during our training session at the PCA, consists of a bunch of interesting individuals. I am not generally a "team player" kind of person, to some degree I'm a loner who thinks of himself as an "individualist," but I was instantly taken in by the sense of community that was fostered by the lineup of Team Online. It's clear that Stars put a lot energy and effort into selecting a team of unique personalities rather than just looking for a handful of automatons to spam affiliate links on Twitter.

Just the fact that I would voluntarily seek out the company of Richard Veenman while I was traveling (I'm somewhat reclusive if not completely socially awkward) speaks volumes about the immediate connection many of us made after just spending a few hours together in the Bahamas.

Another team member I met in the Bahamas was Grzegorz “DaWarsaw” Mikielewicz. If there is one quality I could point to about Gregorz as immediately apparent, it's that he possesses a genuine interest in whomever he encounters and what they have to say.

Sometimes, when I am winding down my session in the sunset hours on the pacific coast, I think about what it must be like to be a version of me in an alternate universe--what it's like to be playing poker at 4AM on the streets of a cold Eastern European city. The latest PokerStars short film by Ryan Firpo is sort of like an actual glimpse into the reality I'm usually just daydreaming about. It's a compelling, endearing story about Grzegorz' triumphs, struggles, and ongoing progress as one of the first poker professionals in Poland. There's also a bunch of bowling and some go-karting. Enjoy:

Adventures in Middle Ear Pt II (Prognosis: Hopeful)

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0000

I went to see the doctor this morning and came out of the consultation with more hope than I have had since my ears clogged up back in May of 2011.

The air-conditioning in the doctor's office was broken, but everything else about the visit made me feel very comfortable and confident. The doctor seemed to really know his stuff regarding the middle ear, had a great bedside manner, and is pioneer in the field of Eustachian tube surgery. After sticking various instruments in my ear, nose and throat and having me swallow and yawn, he sat me down and patiently explained a bunch of stuff to me about how the middle ear works and interacts with my body. I tried to absorb as much of the information as I could while sweating through my t-shirt.

The absurd part: He thinks the problem is related to acid reflux and that with a treatment of a proton pump inhibitor like Omeprazole, plus some changes to my diet (less chocolate and dairy, no raw veggies or salad at night), the symptoms should disappear in a matter of weeks or months.

If it doesn't work, it's possible some laser surgery will be needed, but overall he indicated that he thinks the problem with my middle is not severe or incurable, at least not compared to other Eustachian tube problems he has seen.

***

It seems a bit crazy that I traveled 6,000 miles just to be told that I need to treat my acid reflux, but if it winds up being the solution, the trip was well worth it.

My father passed on this tale from my grandmother:

Oma had read somewhere about a guy who had a medical problem that baffled every doctor he had seen. Somebody sent him to some hospital for tests and the guy is sitting in the hallway. Another doctor passes him, stops, takes a look at his face, and says “Hello, malaria.”

Point being the guy worked in Africa, knew the look. Most other docs would have had no idea.

Interestingly enough he also said that smoking (while obviously unhealthy in a number of ways) is not known to exacerbate the problem, which contradicts the hack-y advice that some doctors in California gave me.

Nothing has physically changed yet, the optimism I'm experiencing right now is hard to quantify. Also, I appreciate the many offers of "good luck" I received from friends, family and blog readers. I felt I needed a lot of luck and may have just gotten some. A few months time should tell.

Now, time to get to Amsterdam for a few days of proper vacation and the $1M Supernova freeroll this Saturday!

Adventures in Middle Ear (or Why I Traveled Halfway Across the World to See a Doctor)

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 21:29:00 +0000

In May of 2011 I was stricken with a vicious head cold. Unlike my typical colds, wherein minor symptoms appear in the morning then gradually progress throughout the day, this one came at me during the middle of the day as a full-blown attack on my system.

And then my ears clogged up.

I knew right away it was bad news (just imagine the feeling of your ears getting pressurized on an airplane or elevator and not budging back), but I had no inkling that more than a year later I would still be suffering from it and willing to travel great distances for just the possibility of a cure.

My basic understanding is that the Eustachian tube is one of the small canals in the middle of our ears that helps keep pressure equalized. It seems my Eustachian tube is damaged, or at least "dysfunctional," and there has not been any sign of healing in the 15 months since the problem started.

I have seen several doctors in the States already--I think the exact number is six--and none of the treatments that ENTs usually employ (steroid packs, nasal sprays, PE tube) have had any effect

Which brings me to Geneva, Switzerland, where I am sitting in a hotel room, anxiously anticipating a consultation with one of the few doctors in the world who specializes in Eustachian tube dysfunction.

For 800 CHF (money is no object at this point--I would take a vow of poverty in exchange for a cure), the doctor says he will spend approximately 90 minutes examining my ear. I am hoping (hoping against hope, maybe) that this Swiss doctor will have insight into the problem and, then, some possibility for a cure. It's hard to be optimistic at this point, but I know I must at least exhaust every possible avenue of treatment, so I am here.

***

It's difficult to describe exactly what it feels (or sounds) like in my head, but the Eustachian tube dysfunction causes a rotating slew of unpleasant sensations. I could try to describe it a couple ways:

- If you've ever eaten pop rocks, imagine that crackling, exploding sensation that hits the back of your throat when you eat them--but inside your ear and with no way of swallowing.

- Did you ever have a record player that didn't automatically lift the arm when it got to the end of the side? It just spun around and around, the stylus making only a dull, repetitive, static-y sound on the vinyl surface. The sounds in my ear are kind of like that.

- Sometimes it feels even more tight in there, like there's a piece of stiff rubber lodged inside my head that just spins around in a futile attempt to escape.

It's not a painful situation, but it is constantly bothersome and sometimes feels like a form of mental imprisonment or mild torture.

The only time I get complete relief from the strange sounds and pressure in my ear is when I fall sleep (which I'm grateful to be able to do). During daylight hours, the best it gets for me is being able to forget about the problem for some amount of time. Luckily, I guess, it seems that playing poker helps provide the distraction necessary to create those burden-free moments, but those moments last minutes, not hours.

Although I sleep well, the clicking and the static are very present as I lay in bed drifting off. It's there again if I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and again when I wake up in the morning. Every day for 15 months.

The worst part is that I feel it's affecting my personality and my creativity, my joie de vivre. Oftentimes in the middle of a conversation, I will find myself distracted, focused on the annoying scratchy crunchiness inside my head and unable to engage dynamically with whomever I'm talking to. When I think about plans or ambitions for my future (immediate or longterm) I wind up being bummed out by the reality that I might be dealing with this--all day, every day--for the rest of my life.

I certainly know things could be worse--I have always had a lot of sympathy for people with actual significant physical handicaps--but that doesn't really make my situation any more pleasant. I am just hoping that my nonfiction version of Dr. Emil Shuffhausen will tell me something good tomorrow.

May/June Review, WSOP Main Event

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:23:00 +0000

SCOOP 2012 took a lot out of me. The $700 PLO8 final table was the only five-figure cash I had in the entire 15-day series, and the overall results were not pretty, an almost $60K losing May and the worst possible warmup for the WSOP. By the time May was over, I was questioning whether or not I should even show up for the WSOP, and if so, for how long.


SCOOP'd

If you are coming out for the full stretch of the WSOP, I think the only way to maximize your potential is to have a) some significant amount of money to invest in yourself b) a positive expectation in some of the non-NLHE tournaments and c) something else to grind (cash games, SNGs) when you're not in tournaments.

I basically didn't have any of that going for me: I didn't have the roll to invest in a high percentage of myself over many tournaments, and I don't feel my mixed game skills are where I need them to be to enter a bunch of bracelet events. And while I do technically like playing single-table satellites at the Rio, realistically I have limited patience for the live grind. I'm just not one of those guys who's going to play 150-200 SNGs in a summer.

Meanwhile, with many world class tournament grinders chasing WSOP glory in Vegas, playing online MTTs becomes a very attractive proposition in June. The absence of hundreds of MTT experts, who crawl out of the woodwork for an event like SCOOP and then move on to the WSOP, makes the online tournaments much easier to beat.

***

I did wind up coming out to Vegas for some WSOP events--nine in total, less than half the number I usually play. I've been coming here eight years now, and I guess I enjoy being here on a traditional level. With the need to live in Mexico in order to maintain an already isolated online poker lifestyle, I felt it was necessary to get out and enjoy the usual WSOP atmosphere: seeing lots of friends, even if only for a moment or two in the Rio hallway, grabbing a nice meal on dinner break, rooting people on during their deep runs, kibitzing about players' results and the poker world in general, complaining about the Rio.

After playing a few events, I found myself once again despising the live grind. The heat and dryness of Vegas is incredibly draining, and just the walk from the parking lot to the Rio convention center saps a lot of my energy. Then I play a tournament, bust the tournament, play a SNG, bust the SNG, and I'm considerably more drained and somewhat demoralized. Even if I can stay steady on the grind and maybe play the 8PM mega, I look back on a day of slow, relatively action-less poker where I only played a few tournaments.

I was fiending to get back to playing 50-60 MTTs in a day, 8-12 at a time, and I just wanted--needed--to put up a winning session to reverse the tide. So I left Vegas, drove to Mexico, set up in front of my computer overlooking the Pacific, and had probably the best four-day run in my online poker career, a blur of turbo wins and final tables that ended with a fifth place finish in the Super Tuesday for $20K. When it was all said and done, I had recovered almost completely from my awful May results.

June recovery.

***

And now I'm in the middle of the main event, the $10,000 buyin that concludes the Series every year. I made day two with 20K in chips. It's plenty to work with, and I am actually happy to have rebuilt from a major cooler (JJ vs KK on a KcJxTc flop) that left me with 5,000 after dinner, at the 150/300/25 level.

I'm also happy with my decision to play Day 1c, the last starting day. I was originally planning to register for Day 1a, Saturday, but I gave it a second thought and realized that part of the reason I wanted to play that day was because I had a subconscious desire to get out of Vegas as quickly as possible after being here on-and-off for a month.

Since this is a terrible way to approach an opportunity like the WSOP main event, I decided to take the smarter, more disciplined approach and sign up to play Monday and spend the two days in between going back to Santa Monica to reset and come back to play the main event as relaxed and clearheaded as possible.

Now, I am feeling poised to play well, make no mistakes and give myself the best shot to win. And if it doesn't work out, well, hey the Micro Millions is taking place this month on PokerStars!

Border Crossings

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:01:00 +0000

It's 3:35 right now, and I am in a sort of no man's land.

I started playing online at 8AM almost 20 hours ago, and didn't get done until just a few minutes ago when I took 5th in SCOOP event #11, $700 PLO8 6-max. It was a $13K cash, which doesn't get me even for the series, but it was the first decent uptick this week.

After four days of SCOOP--long, losing days--I was already pretty tired to start the day (yesterday), but determined to keep playing good poker and pull out of the downswing. Then, tomorrow (today), the plan was to go meet my girlfriend in Seattle for a few days together at the great Edgewater Hotel. She has been in Siberia and Alaska working on television productions, and I haven't seen her in weeks.

I had planned to hop over the border last night, fade the border traffic, sleep in a hotel and then fly tomorrow at 1PM after a leisurely morning in San Diego. I still plan to make my flight, but it won't be possible to get a decent night of sleep, and the border traffic will be unavoidable.

***

As far as crossing the border goes, you can find sometimes find a sweet spot (Tuesdays after 9PM are my go-to), but it's very unpredictable. As of the last update on the government's website for border wait times, the San Ysidro border crossing is listed as a one-hour wait time, and the usually more tame Otay Mesa crossing is showing 40 minutes--at 3AM!

This isn't even that bad--San Ysidro wait times routinely stretch past two hour wait times and the border crossing can stay jammed for days at a time. I'm tempted to shave, brew some coffee and try to beat the thicker traffic coming up later in the morning, but even a 40-minute wait makes the idea less appealing.

What is more likely to wind up happening is I will sleep for 4-5 hours and wait at the Otay Mesa crossing tomorrow for over an hour while listening to Howard Stern and hoping to make my flight.

In any case, I am looking forward to getting out of here for a few days, and with that little final table morale boost, also looking forward to getting back here for the solid eight day stretch to finish out SCOOP.

SCOOP-L Leaderboard Pool

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Wed, 02 May 2012 17:24:00 +0000

The 2+2 forums have been down for a little while and might be down through beginning of the SCOOP series, so I am going to try to continue the leader-board contest that we started over there in this space.

We are running a $500 pool determined by the player who finishes highest on the SCOOP-L leaderboard. Only results from tournaments in the Low tier of the series count and the results are measured according the to leaderboard that Stars has established for this event.

Payouts as follows:

1-10 players - Winner take all
11-20 players - 2 spots paid - 80/20
21-30 players - 3 spots paid - 70/20/10

Current participants:

shaniac
a.S.e High
StatusUp
Squee451
Vingtcent
moonwatch79
Goral
BigRiskky
bearsfan775
cal42688
Jorj95

Current pool total: $5,500

- To participate, you must send $500 to shaniac on PokerStars (location: Mexico) before Sunday May 6th at 8AM PT (the start of the first SCOOP 2012 event).

- I will update this blog post as I get sent entry fees.

- Only one entry per person and you may only bet on yourself.

- If you have any questions, you can find me on twitter: @ShaneSchleger

Good luck!

Black Friday, One Year Later

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 04:11:00 +0000

One year ago tonight, I was in NYC on vacation. I had just completed my first two months as a Team Online player for PokerStars. My poker results were solid for the calendar year, and I was having fun with all of it. I appeared on a radio show that I had listened to since I was a teenager and played Indian Poker with the hosts. Everything seemed to be clicking.

After a couple weeks in New York, I was anxious to get back to California, to my one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica, my monolithic 30" monitor setup, and to continue doing the only thing I really knew how to do for income--play online poker. "And then," as the song goes, "Oh so suddenly, none of these things were mine. Then all that I had left was time, lots of time."

I remember that stunned feeling of helplessness and confusion as I heard the news on Friday, April 15th, wandering out into Central Park thinking, "this can't be life." Black Friday put an abrupt end to the universe I had inhabited full time since 2005. Or so I thought.

***

Once the anguish and confusion had dissipated, dwelling on my fate for months, stressing the future, I eventually discovered that even extremely trying situations can be improved with a few simple adjustments. I can't say I am happier to be exiled in Mexico than I would have been back in Santa Monica, but I now appreciate how it took me out of my comfort zone and forced me to face a different reality. I think it's a lesson I will carry with me--when things seem smooth and lovely, be prepared to adapt if it all comes crashing down.

My father recently decided to start reading my blog, and here was his take on one recent entry:

"It is ironic that you feel dislocated in Mexico or Canada when you come from a family that has been dislocated and did well. Oma had no choice, your mother did. We live in a country of relocation. How many people actually started in Santa Monica? I wonder what it was like in NY after Berlin. Never asked."

He's right. During the time I was lamenting my options in the after Black Friday, I would occasionally darkly joke, "my grandparents fled Nazi Germany, I really should not be so upset about moving to the Pacific Northwest."

One of my grandmothers ("Safta") hid out in a dank, underground basement in the Ukraine for years during WWII. I've seen the bunker. My other grandmother ("Oma") was a passenger on the MS St. Louis AKA the Voyage of the Damned. Even knowing the details, it's hard to comprehend what it must have been like to be a Jewish refugee during the Holocaust.

Jewish refugees on the MS St. Louis

I am reluctant to trivialize the struggle of my ancestors by comparing it to mine--the stakes they were playing for were no less than life and death, fleeing their homeland in order to preserve their lives and their history. I simply needed to find a new country to set up a computer and click buttons again.

But there is a parallel there, a common takeaway from both situations: When someone attacks your existence, your essence--that thing that makes you what you are--you find ways to fight it, to carry on, and to survive.

Mexicali Blues, PCA Recap

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 05:01:00 +0000

I've established a decent schedule over the past couple months, putting in a healthy week of grinding in Rosarito Beach and still spending a few days each week in Santa Monica, but in the constant motion I know that one of the things I've been neglecting is this blog. In other words, I am coming close to breaking one of my unwritten rules about blogging: don't apologize for your lack of content, just write.

I guess one part of my creative inertia is rooted in an all-consuming routine that I've discussed before. When I'm in Mexico, all my energy is devoted to playing online poker and trying to feed myself during five minute breaks every hour, and when I'm back in Santa Monica, I spend a lot of time organizing my next jaunt to Mexico, making sure all my bills are paid and that the bed is made before my girlfriend gets home from work. I wind up spending a lot of time getting from point A to point B, and when I'm not running around organizing the next stretch of my life, I try to enjoy my downtime. However, I am pretty bad with budgeting my time, and I don't even get to the movies much.

I've also been dealing with a health problem in my middle ear (yes, there's a "middle ear") for several months now, and it has consumed a lot of time, energy and money. It's a story for another time, but the short version is that there is constant medley of annoying sounds and weird pressure in my ear, and pretty much the only time I can completely ignore it is when I sleep. I'm not in pain, but a sort of constant state of discomfort and distraction.

***

To start off the year, I was fortunate enough to unburden myself of most of the above with a trip to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), which is held every January at the Atlantis Resort in Paradise Island, Bahamas. If memory serves me right, this was the fifth time I've been since 2005 ('06, '09, '10 and '12 were the other four), and I really think it's the best possible way to start the year off as a poker player. I'm not a particularly social person, but for some reason I always enjoy the time I spend hanging out with other poker players in the Bahamas.

I think the good vibes might be attributable to the fact that it's early in the year, and the collective optimism of the poker community is at its peak. There's a sense of rungood to come, a sense that "this is gonna be our year" that doesn't have a chance to get too badly shattered in that 10-day stretch in January.

The view from our hotel room at the Atlantis Resort.

This year, though, there was certainly a more subdued atmosphere due to the lower number of Americans who showed up in the wake of Black Friday. The lobbies of the Coral and Royal Towers, which are usually bursting at the seams with online poker players on their laptops, were pretty much empty this year on Sunday. It was noticeable and definitely a little sad when I thought of all the friends of mine who would have made the trip if it hadn't been for Black Friday.

Oh, I also played a few poker tournaments: In the $10K main event, I wasn't happy with how I played on day one, but came back decidedly more focused on day 2. I won two huge flip early in the day against Jamie Rosen, and more or less coasted the rest of the way to day 3. On day 3, getting close to the bubble, I ran AK into AA, and had to sit pretty snug on my <20BB stack. After we made the money, I got moved tables and shoved allin with A4s from the SB against a player's cutoff open. David Peters found jacks in the BB, and I busted in 156th place, a min-cash of $15,000.

The other notable tournament I played was the $10K 6-Max "High Roller" event, which was one of the sickest events I've ever played, in terms of tense fun and the ability to win over $200K in about seven hours of poker. They paid 10 spots, and I busted around 22nd place, losing the crucial flip with A7 to KT of Stefan Huber, who went on to chop the tournament with Shawn Buchanan and Andrew Chen.

I did get to bask in some old glory though, and on my penultimate night in Atlantis, before the PCA closing party, PokerStars held a bracelet ceremony for 2011 WCOOP winners. Here I am showing off the jewelry I got for winning the 2-7 TD WCOOP event in September.

***

One of the surprise pleasures of the trip was meeting the other members of PokerStars Team: Online. Most of us were in attendance to participate in the PCA Scavenger Hunt and for a sort of corporate training seminar, which was a lot less onerous than it sounds. We sat around a conference room and spent the day acquainting ourselves with one another and learning a few things about how Stars works.

I am not inclined towards a sense of team spirit by default, but I wound up genuinely liking all of the personalities in the room and voluntarily spending time with many of them throughout the week. As my former fellow "teammate" Andrew Brokos wrote in his excellent recap, "They were a fascinating bunch of people, and I loved spending the week with them." At the end of the trip, more than a dozen of us got together for a meal at Nobu, an Richard Veenman wound up losing a sizable $1300 credit card roulette spin to pay for most of it.

Earleir in the week, we played a doubles match, and Richard and I got our asses handed to us by the team of and Diego Brunelli (who is a legitimately good tennis player) and Tyler Frost. Tyler is also the latest team member to have a short film released on him (there will eventually be one on me, too), and you can check it out below:

WBCOOP 2012 (or, How to Turn 500 Words into $5,000)

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:37:00 +0000

PokerStars' World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (#WBCOOP) begins February 23rd, and the deadline for a qualifying blog submission Tuesday, February 21st. Full details can be found here. One of the juiciest shots is the $5,000 prize awarded for "Best WBCOOP Blogger." There will also be $1,000 for the "Best Live Tweeter."

All qualifying bloggers will be credited 10 tickets to play in any of the 30 WBCOOP events running until March 3rd, all of which award tickets for PokerStars' Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) for top finishers. If you cash in any WBCOOP event, you get your seat in the March 4th main event with a $5,000 prizepool. There is a also a WBCOOP leader board prize that will award a package to a live event worth up to $7,000 and a trophy.

All it takes to qualify for the $5,000 is a 500-word-miniumm blog (or 60-second-maximum video blog) explaining, well, what you'd do with the $5,000. Just paste the URL of your blog on the WBCOOP main page (again, found here) to become part of the festivities.

***

Unlike my counterpart Dale Philip, I can't say I ever aspired to be the "best" poker blogger. If I remember right, I began writing this thing at a Foxwoods tournament in 2005 just hoping to be able to express myself occasionally and to chronicle anything that stood out along the way in what was a new and exciting experience, inside and out poker life.

Since then, it's been a rare privilege to be able to encounter people in the poker world who have reacted positively to my stories and who have journeyed with me down a path that has included at least a few fun highs, as well as some distinctly painful lows. A poker blog can be the perfect outlet for expressing very heartfelt ideas and very banal concepts alike.

***

As for what I'd do with the $5,000--well, realistically, I would consider myself a bigger favorite to hit the $1,000 prize for best live tweeter. I also can't compete with fellow PSTO Tyler Frost's idea to use the $5,000 to stake 23 of his followers in the Sunday Million. Well done, Frosty, that is a great plan! Even better than Dale's idea to stake his pet stuffed monkey in the APPT.

It's not going to sound too exciting to anyone out there, but I got to keep it real: Since I wasn't around for Valentine's Day (I was playing online poker in Mexico, of course), I will be compelled to take any of my WBCOOP winnings and spend them taking my girlfriend out to a nice dinner.

Lost Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:58:00 +0000

I've gotten used to my strange new routine, to the point where it feels sort of like a rhythm, and where I am constantly looking forward to the next step in the journey. When I am in Mexico grinding online, I can't wait to make the trek back up to California to see my girlfriend and spend time in a less desolate coastal area. After a couple of days on the beach in Santa Monica, doing errands, riding my bike, eating burgers, I am anxious to get back down to Mexico to play more online poker.

I'll leave LA on a Thursday or Friday afternoon, stop in San Diego for groceries, and be at my seaside condo south of Rosarito by Friday evening, well rested for the big weekend action on Stars. I'll stay until Tuesday or Wednesday, and I will often drive back to the US after my last session, since the wait at the border becomes relatively tolerable late at night.

I have come a long way from the dread and anxiety that consumed me throughout the middle part of 2011, after Black Friday but before I finally got off my ass to relocate (and even after that, throughout the Canada debacle). I am comfortable with my decisions and the basic pace of my life, but my weird new setup is definitely still a little weird. I sometimes feel like the character from Lost who had to come down to a strange bunker in order to push a button on a computer every day.

Playing online poker tournaments 40+ hours a week is a fairly isolating experience in and of itself, and doing it in a foreign country tends to compound the effect. I do not feel integrated with local life at all. The essential things I need are facilitated by an English-speaking concierge in my building, my helpful realtor and a woman who cooks for me a few times a week. Sometimes, a friend will come down and visit, and I have a part-time roommate. Beyond that, my life is totally self-contained. The scenery where I live in Mexico is great, and having a self-contained existence is exactly why I relocated, so I am not complaining, but it certainly gets a little lonely.

I'd love to learn Spanish, but realistically it's not likely to happen soon. When I am in Mexico, my life is pretty much focused on putting in MTT volume, and after a 10+ hour session, I am apt to cook some pasta, sit on the couch and watch TV. I still struggle with the basics of unplugging and finding a balance in my routine--time for reading, exercise, and socializing, three things I constantly neglect--so I am not sure when I'll find the time to learn Spanish.

Just to reiterate, I am happy with the current setup of my life--surprisingly happy, actually--but there's also a bizarre, compartmentalized aspect of the situation that never quite allows me to relax and just get comfortable where I am.

***

There have been a couple of other blogs I found interesting by online players who relocated and their struggles adapting to their new relocated lives. I may have posted this link before, but this one by fellow tournament grinder Marthy Mathis summed up a lot of what I was feeling at the time (my anxiety has since eased a fair amount). And a recent one from high stakes legend Phil Galfond in which he discusses his logistical and emotional conflicts.

***

One thing that will help punctuate my back and forth Cali-to-Mexico grind this year is a few well-timed poker trips. For the most part, I am going to be focused on putting in days down in Mexico in front of the computer, but I plan to play the LAPC main event later this month. I'm also legitimately stoked that the EPT Grand Final is returning to Monte Carlo, its rightful home, and I plan on being there for a third time in late April.

I also had a really good time at the PCA, which took up most of the first couple weeks in January in the Bahamas, and I'll try to write up a trip report on that for my next blog entry.

Podcasting Call

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:09:00 +0000

My friend used to say that Howard Stern was the "perfect background noise" for grinding online poker, and I tend to agree that talk radio really is the best form of entertainment to get through the solitary nature of playing poker all day on the internet.

Of course I need a high volume of music in my life, but listening to a conversation, a rant, or an interview allows the hours to go by more seamlessly. I wind up feeling somewhat engaged with the outside world, and for whatever reasons, it also helps me focus on the game I'm playing.

Luckily for me, we are in the midst of a podcasting boom, with dozens of mostly comedic personalities engaging in DIY broadcasting and the end product showing up on your iTunes folder on a regular basis.

Julie Klausner - How Was Your Week?

What I like: Klausner is the best thing going in podcasting right now. Her broadcasting style manages to be both stream-of-consciousness and intensely focused. It's a rundown of everything that interests her culturally and philosophically, whether it's feminism or Judaism, Broadway productions or reality TV. She's also extremely witty.

She often invites a guest on the show to focus on a single tangent, like the time she had Patton Oswalt on to discuss the themes and mores in the movie Splash. Ultimately, you get the sense that you are eavesdropping on a couple of intelligent New Yorkers having a fully enriched conversation about whatever.

What I don't like: The bed music she uses reminds me of "We Didn't Start the Fire," which then gets stuck in my head.

Marc Maron - WTF With Marc Maron

What I like: Maron's twice-weekly podcast might as well be the blueprint for the current day comedian's podcast. It mostly consists of him having conversations with a variety of comic and show-business personalities, and the results are usually very funny, often poignant, and occasionally enlightening.

Embracing a heart-on-his-sleeve neurosis and not shying away from the ever-present existential crisis that seems to occupy his headspace, he has shared the triumphs and failures of his career with the audience along the way. It's actually been pretty great to see Maron (whose comedy I loved back during the "alternative comedy" boom) reemerge in this format as a serious and successful interviewer who manages to hit upon both the sublime and the mundane aspects of his guests' life with equal clarity.

What I don't like: Sometimes, Maron's interviews feel too agenda-driven, and there are times when I'd like him to let the conversation breath a little bit more.

Nikki Glaser and Sara Schaefer - You Had to Be There

What I like: Unabashedly raunchy, loosely formatted, this podcast is like listening to two women have a conversation in which they're grappling with their insecurities while simultaneously shedding those insecurities, leaving behind raw, hilarious honesty.

Their guests are often lesser known comedians, some of whom are still working day jobs, and I especially relate to Glaser as a sort of long lost sister, as she reports on the low-lights of her journey through life, like getting arrested for smoking pot outside of a NYC club or having to move back in with her parents as she struggles with life as a road comic.

What I don't like: Inconsistency. Lately, the show has not been popping up in my iTunes according to its regular schedule, and that is a fairly important aspect of podcasting.

The Sklar Brothers - Sklarbro Country

What I like: Comedy meets sports meets referential humor, with a send-up to close out each episode. The twins Randy and Jason Sklar have a really enjoyable flow, and you certainly don't need to be a sports fan to enjoy this show. In reality, sports is just a starting point for the brothers to riff endlessly.

What I don't like: Sometimes, it can be hard to focus on the comedic content as they vigorously run down news items on the absurd behavior of professional athletes, and I'll have to rewind to catch the subtleties.

Jesse Thorn - Bullseye with Jesse Thorn (formerly The Sound of Young America)

What I like: Straightforward, well-structured interviews with the gamut of entertainers. Whether he's talking to Weird Al or Carrie Fisher, Dick Cavett or Daryl Hall, Thorn really knows his interview subject, and results are predictably engaging. He generally doesn't plumb the depths of the human condition like Marc Maron, but the subject matter is so rich in and of itself, he doesn't really need to. His breadth of knowledge is nothing short of impressive.

What I don't like: That breadth of knowledge comes off too polished sometimes, and as a result, his level of engagement can feel a bit stuffy.

Tom Scharpling, Maggie Serota and Daniel Ralston - Low Times Podcast

What I like: A newcomer in the field with only a few episodes on iTunes so far, this biweekly podcast features interviews with a variety of musical personalities by each of the hosts. Tom Scharpling (whose Best Show on WFMU, also a podcast, would make the list if it were not a terrestrial radio show) is something of a renaissance man and a living legend of underground broadcasting.

So far, Scharpling and his co-hosts Maggie Serota and Daniel Ralston have produced some excellent interviews with a variety of musical personalities whose music they clearly know well and love.

What I don't like: I'm not exactly on the cutting edge of new music these days, and I'm often not familiar with the music beforehand, so I am not as immediately interested in the subjects.

***
Honorable mentions: Doug Loves Movies, This American Life (not great for poker but great), Walking the Room, Fitzdog Radio.

What are your favorites?

2012 PCA Scavenger Hunt

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:04:00 +0000

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has always occupied a special place in my heart. In 2005, when I was just starting out as a full time poker player, I made a last minute decision to play the event, and the experience really helped broaden my horizons, giving me a taste of the independent lifestyle of a poker player as well as introducing me to a wide cross-section of fellow online players who were also embarking on their poker careers.

I have missed a couple of years since 2005, but I always try to come back to the PCA. It's a truly great way to start the year, a gigantic poker tournament in a beautiful island setting, and it still plays like a fun, communal experience with my peers. I have made dozens, if not hundreds, of friends and acquaintances in January in the Bahamas.

Given my longstanding fondness for this event, I am especially proud to be at my first PCA event as a member of Team: Online. This year, there will be a fun, non-poker related side event to tie in to the relaxed, freewheeling spirit of this poker festival in the Bahamas: The 2012 PCA Scavenger Hunt will start this coming Monday, January 9th, and promises to be a cool way for PokerStars VIPs to interact with member of Team: Online and, more importantly, possibly win some significant prizes.

If you are a PokerStars VIP with a SilverStar status or higher, you will have the chance to win a $10,200 seat to the 6max High Roller event taking place on our last day here, January 14th.

The "hunt" requires VIPs find members of Team Online to stamp their Scavenger Hunt Card; six players who collect 15 unique stamps as part of the scavenger hunt will compete in a freeroll that pays a $10,200 seat and $1,000 bonus to the winner (2nd-6th places also receive bonuses between $250 and $750, and if you don't collect 15 stamps, you can still earn prizes with as few as three stamps).

It should really be a good time, and I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of people who are semi-frantically running around Atlantis, trying to get those 15 unique stamps as quickly as possible to lock up their spot in the freeroll.

Happy hunting!

January 1st, 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:12:00 +0000

The coolest feature of relocating to Baja Norte is my ability to maintain a life in Los Angeles. Aside from the sometimes painful wait to cross the border back into the USA through Tijuana, it's amazingly convenient to get into my car after a week of grinding online poker and be back in Santa Monica with my girlfriend a few hours later.

The challenging aspect of the setup is trying to balance my desire to spend time in California with the necessity of being in front of a computer that is not on US soil. The absurdity of not being able to play online poker on this laptop as I write from Santa Monica, but being able to do it 150 miles away, is rarely lost on me.

I like to play poker, and I need to put in hours to make a living, so it becomes frustrating to be separated from my profession on occasions when I want to spend time with family during the holidays, or when I need to find a new apartment with my girlfriend, or when I need to do a variety of errands that require me to be in LA.

Getting back to the advantageous aspect, it was not too difficult to justify a one-day getaway to my enclave in Rosarito Beach in order to play a full Sunday schedule on January 1st, 2012. I had already missed the action the week before on Christmas Day, and I generally can't stand missing Sundays, so I was champing at the bit to play some Sunday tournaments.

We had to be back on Monday, but we went down Saturday night anyway, New Year's Eve, and had a low-key night at home. We went to the hot tub on the property, overlooking the ocean on an extremely foggy night. Later, Sheila made delicious salmon and rice and string beans, and we were in bed before midnight.

I overslept slightly and didn't start grinding until 9AM (I usually like to start by 8:30AM, and sometimes as early as 6:30AM on Sundays), but 13-14 hours later I found myself at the final table of the Sunday Million, which has been the biggest Sunday tournament for years.


The screenshot the DOJ doesn't want you to see.

There is absolutely no better way to start a new year than by final tabling the Sunday Million on New Year's Day. (We wound up chopping 7-handed, see below for more detail). If I had to write Shaniac: The Movie, I could not have scripted it better.

More broadly, it felt like a result that came from my dedication to the online grind, to play poker on days when poker pros are hungover and watching too much football, and an overall validation of the strange choices I have been forced to make in the past 7 months since the Dept. of Justice wedged PokerStars, and me, out of the United States.

***

Some notes about the tournament:

- In the spirit of reporting the often sobering reality of my nice-looking tournament results, I'll break this one down for you: I had sold 60% of my action for the month of January, so I was playing for 40% of my cash, and the score made me about a $30K winner on the day after taking into account ~$5k in buyins. Which is still awesome, and nothing to sneeze at. But the other reality is that I had been on a solid 5-figure downswing to finish off 2011 (the reason I decided to sell a large chunk of January action to begin with).

So it's worth remembering that, for many MTT players, amazing results are often a relatively small part of the big picture, in which we are trying to apply a small but consistent edge and accumulate enough money to avoid going broke while playing all the big-buyin tournaments we have that edge in.

- Chopping 7-handed was a new one to me. In fact, in my seven-plus years playing online tournaments, hundreds of final tables and headsup encounters, I think I have chopped at most two times. Truly, I can't even think of one instance of chopping before this past Sunday, but I am leaving room for error in my memory.

It's not even a hard-and-fast rule, like Daniel Negreanu has on the issue. It just rarely comes up and, when it does, I decline to consider it. I can only remember one time recently when I even agreed to look at chop numbers (3-handed in the $8 2x turbo that runs at 10:45AM PST), then got so frustrated with the process and trying to figure out what my edge is vs. what my payout edge in should be in a chop, that I pretty quickly just said, "let's play."

It goes back to something an acquaintance told me in 2004,when he won a big online tournament. He said he didn't want to think about a chop because that would take him out of the zone he had been in up to that point, in which he was focused entirely on winning. I usually just apply that philosophy and it seems to work out well.

In this case though, I was down to 12BBs and the chip leader was on my direct left, playing well. Although I had a lot more experience and better results than my opponents, I am all too familiar with what can happen with 12BBs, no matter how significant your edge is, and I didn't feel I could compromise the utility of being able to lock up (40% of) $84K relative to the chance of busting 7th and getting (40% of) ] $31K.

If we had not have made a deal, there's no doubt the cosmic card distribution and actions of the players would have been different, but I did wind up losing AJ to A6 and then allin KK to QQ, with my opponent spiking a queen on the river, to take 7th place and miss my shot at the $20K that was left on the table for the winner.

- Maybe the most interesting side note to this whole thing is that it is my biggest score by a small margin (about 11 months ago, I won ~76K in the Sunday $109 rebuy) and that it shares a very peculiar similarity with the second-biggest score:

On both occasions, the result came exactly two weeks after I had quit a lengthy smoking habit. It's uncanny really, and corresponds with my belief that it takes two weeks for a serious scumbag smoker like I am to stop craving a cigarette in the morning and start functioning semi-normally day-to-day.

Last time, in Feburuary, I went out that same night and bought a pack of cigarettes to celebrate. This time, I am still trying to tough it out, even though I can feel the surge of craving rising in me now as I complete this blog entry...just like I could feel it surging on Sunday on occasions like when I won the crucial coinflip with less than 50 players left that gave me the chiplead to coast to the final table.

Smokers take note: I think two weeks is all it takes to detox and hit a 75K+ score on a Sunday.

***

Here's wishing you and yours (and me) the best of luck in 2012. Happy New Year!

Au Revoir 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:17:00 +0000

I was reminded in 2011 that as soon as you think you have some of your problems solved, a whole new set of problems will come along and take their place. When the year began, it felt like I was in phase of relative stability, which soon enough turned out to be the farthest thing from reality. In the end it seems I spent most of the year just trying to get back to a life that even resembled that illusion of stability.

To briefly recap: the year began with me at an all-time-high, starting a sponsorship deal with PokerStars Team Online that ushered in a renewed confidence and passion for the game of poker. I was energized, motivated, looking forward to doing things right as a poker player, a blogger and a human being.

Then on April 15th, Poker's Black Friday took place, in which the DOJ unsealed an indictment against PokerStars that forced them to stop offering games in the United States, and I went into a funk. I wrote about the situation for Slate.com, played the WSOP that summer, but otherwise spent most of the several months feeling directionless and overwhelmed.

I finally moved to Canada in September in order to play on PokerStars again, and it was a good experience overall, even though I was planning on staying for six months but wound up staying for only three weeks. I then moved to Mexico, where I am living now, basically attempting to pick up where I left off during this time last year, just under slightly more surreal circumstances.

I am not feeling overly sentimental towards the year that has passed, because it feels just like a bridge in the ongoing arc of my life, just an arbitrary period of time that doesn't encapsulate anything in particular other than a fair amount of chaos. And it feels like 2011 kicked my ass. It was a humbling year, and I am just looking forward to moving on.

***

One thing I regret is not mobilizing more quickly after Black Friday. For a while, I didn't even feel capable of leaving my Southern California comfort zone, even though I was totally unproductive in the absence of online poker. Somehow, during the four months I spent contemplating my options, I wasn't even aware that Rosarito Beach, three hours away from Los Angeles, was a relocation option for poker players. I am just a bit disappointed that it took me several months of listlessly moping around, dwelling in the sense of crisis, before I could finally motivate to improve my situation.

I guess I also learned (as evidenced by the paragraph above) that I am too hard on myself, that I have a hard time relaxing and keeping things in perspective. Overall, my timing was reasonable: I waited until my lease was up in Santa Monica in August, which coincided with the start of WCOOP, and chose a decent time to make the move. Black Friday was traumatic for a lot of the poker world, and in the end I did prove myself adaptable. I was able to follow the objective advice of friends, as well as basic common sense, that moving to a new country to continue playing online was both my best option and an option that I was very lucky to have.

***

I'll be going to the Bahamas next week to play in the PCA, which is traditionally a great way to start the year, and my life is more streamlined now than it was at any point since March. So, I am cautiously optimistic about everything, looking forward to a new year, another shot to get my poker career in focus, establish some stability for myself and just keep working towards whatever it is I am working towards.

The reality is I can't even think in lofty terms or hope to establish about term goals. Going into 2012, I will be happy to establish a routine and see what develops.

Poker Update and Red Spade Open

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 05:10:00 +0000

Poker has been pretty brutal the last couple of weeks. In a repetition of a classic pattern, I was up a decent amount of money since my relocation to Canada, then withdrew some money to pay expenses and debts and buy a laptop. Then, during the last couple weeks in Mexico, I went on an ugly downswing, and now my bankroll is hurting again.

Due to a wedding and other obligations back in the States, I didn't even have the chance to put in as many days this month as I would have liked, yet I still managed to lose a lot. The difficulties of maintaining a semblance of a life back in the USA and also getting in the work I need to do in front of my computer in Mexico is a subject for my next blog.

The only significant upwards spike in the below graph of the past few weeks is a satellite win for a seat in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, an annual live event that takes place January of every year and is basically a fabulous way to start the year as a poker player. Winning the seat was great in terms of morale and also securing the expensive tournament package, but that win is not cash, and the ~$16K uptick is locked up in tournament equity and a hefty hotel allocation. So, the graph below represents the results of a pretty violent downswing. When I come back from my Thanksgiving break, I will likely step down in stakes or seek out backing options, neither of which I am too excited to do.

November 2011

Still, I am up "for the trip" overall (below is my post-relocation graph), and I am aware that the reason I find myself in precarious financial situations is the result years of bad bankroll management and the compounding effects of living underwater financially. It's just a reminder of how far I have to go to set straight the mistakes of my poker career and correct my inherent personality flaws, like my poor money management.

Graph since my September relocation

***

I'm also aware of how lucky I am to still be in the game, especially playing under the banner of PokerStars Team Online. My association with Stars was the clear deciding factor that made relocating worthwhile, and I am not quick to forget that.

It was really frustrating to sit on the sidelines when Stars unveiled its Red Spade Open back in July, when I couldn't play online poker, so it's a tangible reminder of how lucky I am overall that I did get myself set up in time to play the second one, tomorrow at 12:00 PST.

Stars manages to draw impressive crowds when they create these MTT promos, and I anticipate that well over 20,000 players will participate, and the $1M guarantee (with $200K being paid to first on a $55 entry fee) will easily be surpassed. As per the theme of the event, there will also be a $100 bounty for knocking out any member of Stars Team Pro and Team Online (I love making that distinction whenever someone mocks me in chat for being a "pro" after I make a bad play).

Hopefully I can have a big day before I head back to the States again for Thanksgiving, and that will allow me to erase the sting of the past couple weeks. If not, I hope you get my $100 bounty.

Eastbound and Down (Pt 3: The Second Coming)

noreply@blogger.com (Shane Schleger) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:15:00 +0000

I learned through my experiences traveling for poker tournaments just how easy it is to get around the world. Thanks to technology and the itinerant nature of the poker world, I discovered you could get pretty much anywhere you wanted to go if you had an internet connection and a passport. Follow the blue dot on your iPhone, and you just somehow wind up where you were headed.

So I was fairly well prepared for the basics of portioning off a portable version of my existence to transport to Canada. Then, when it was time to move on to Mexico, the journey was mapped out pretty smoothly again. I had learned about a beach town near Tijuana called Rosarito Beach, and I found a thread on 2+2 informing me that several online poker players had made the move. The most baffling thing was that I had not heard about Rosarito whatsoever in four months of trying to figure out relocation possibilities (and six years living in Southern California prior to that).

Thanks to those pioneering online poker grinders who had already made the move down here, I was able to create an easily executable timeline within a matter of hours, a plan that would take me from Canada to Santa Monica to the Baja peninsula in the course of a week. I drove from Vancouver to Seattle, stopped in Portland, OR and Multnomah Falls on the way to Bend, where I spent the second night. The next morning I had breakfast with one of my original poker heroes, Paul Phillips, who left the poker world behind a while ago to raise a family and work on a computer programming language called Scala.

I stopped at Crater Lake National Park on my way out of Oregon, spent the night in the Bay Area and, after a gorgeous afternoon drive down the coast through Big Sur, I was back in Santa Monica, CA the next afternoon.

Christ of the Sacred Heart, a few KM from where I now live.

I left Canada on a Tuesday and was looking at furnished rentals in Mexico by the following Tuesday. I went back up to California to get my desk chair and my down blanket from my storage space, switched my phone plan from the "AT&T Nation with Canada" package to the "AT&T Viva Mexico" plan, and a week after that I was re-approved by PokerStars to play from my new location in Mexico.

***

A surprising number of random acquaintances recently have told me they "used to go to Rosarito Beach" either with their family or during college party weekends. It is a town that clearly could have been a contender, before the double-whammy of the recession and the (media coverage of) violence in Mexico caused some very ambitious development plans to come to a halt. There are innumerable half-finished unfinished luxury condos, looming over the sort of picturesque mountainous seaside that you might associate with Malibu, CA or the Great Ocean Road in Australia.

I live in one of the half-finished condo projects, in the one completed tower out of four that were planned (still displayed in the model in the lobby). The second of the four towers has been constructed right next door, but is nothing more than a hollow concrete slab, and it doesn't look like construction is going to resume any time soon. In San Diego, my apartment would cost several times than what it does down here, but most nights there is, at most, one other light on my side of the tower when I look up from my first-floor apartment to the 20-stories above. It gives the feeling of a ghost town transposed onto a resort town.

Although Rosarito Beach might be down, it's not quite out. There are a few ex-pat subset communities, some full time retirees, some surfers who seem to have been around a while. And now there is the burgeoning online poker community, which by my estimate is at least 30 people strong (possibly more like 50), mostly young white guys in their 20s and 30s who all play online poker for a living. My apartment is several KM south of the town and where most of my fellow Poker Exiles are located, and interacting with my peers is tough after playing 10-12 hours of MTTs and not particularly wanting to drive 30 minutes at night on a poorly paved road.

The challenge of integrating with my fellow poker ex-pats, much less with the actual local community, is significant, but a major improvement just occurred when three grinders from the USA moved into an apartment upstairs from me. One of them had already relocated (to the Philippines) after PokerStars stopped offering real money games in their home state, Washington, due to legislation. Anyway, these guys seem to be laid back and funny, but most importantly, they play tennis (I am an avid "parks player"), and we have a tennis court in from of our building (the surface seems to be some hybrid of turf and dirt). And in December, my friend Jordan plans to become my roommate, which should be the next major improvement to day-to-day life and combating the isolating nature of the online poker lifestyle.

So, even though I am on a vicious downswing in poker (the first real "run bad" since relocating, so I have actually been very lucky overall), I am feeling more positive about the actual conditions of daily life in Rosarito and dreading the future less and less all the time.

***

Next time I'll try to discuss more about adjusting to life down here, the solitary work environment, and why I am looking forward to going home this Thanksgiving more than ever before. In the meantime, check out this blog by fellow Poker Exile Marty Mathis, who already wrote most of what I was going to say on the subject of adjustment, perspective and the nagging knowledge that "you can never go home."