Tommy Angelo

I started playing gin a few years after I had become entrenched in the Columbus poker scene. One night I’m sitting around before the poker game, playing gin, and Hanz walks in. Hanz was this ancient Jewish guy. He had some great lines. They all had a certain Hanziness to them. For example, at the end of a hand, when a player gets caught bluffing, lots of times you’ll hear them say, “I got nothing.” Anytime Hanzie heard someone say that at the end of a hand, he would always say, “You got nutting? You can sleep wid my wife!”

I had recently started playing gin, and I’m sitting there playing, and Hanzie walks in. He looks at me real surprised.

“Since when did you start playing gin?”

There was something pushy about his tone, so I reacted accordingly. “I been playing a little while. What’s the big deal?”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well,” he said. “I just can’t believe you would play a game where you can’t fold.”

Many of my conversations with my buddy Alex begin similarly:

Hi. Whatsup. How you doing.

It doesn’t matter who starts the initial hellos. All that matters is who ends them. If I start talking next, the conversation can start anywhere and go anywhere. If Alex starts talking next, it goes like this:

HIM: … sigh… I got my money in with the best of it 4 out of the last 5 big pots, and lost them all but one.

ME: So how much are you ahead?

See, he always starts out with a negative report of some kind. Every single time. When he tells me about a hand, it’s always a hand he lost. And when it comes to patterns in the data, it’s like this: He might be in the middle of his best session of the year, and he will extract losing stats. Alex can change black into red.

Sometimes, seriously though, its hurts to hear it. He really gets himself worked up over absolutely nothing. And the sick part is, he knows it. He knows it’s 100% mind clatter. He knows he can … poof … make it go away, and he knows exactly how.

One day I was thinking about Alex and I thought man it’d be nice if I could come up with a gimmick or something that worked like a faucet. If only I could turn off the flow of sewage going through his mind and out his mouth, just for a few seconds now and then. Hmmm. Okay! I have it! What is the source of his suffering? It’s the thinking he does about bits of negative cash flow. So I’ll just offer him positive cash flow, to think about positive cash flow! I’ll pay him money every time he tells me about a hand he won. This is brilliant! And it’s guaranteed to work. There is no way he can be in the middle of telling me about a pot he won, while at exactly the same time be dwelling in misery and woe over a pot he lost.

Just one problem. It wouldn’t work. Well, it wouldn’t work at a price that I was willing to pay. Which is entirely the point of all this. How many dollars would it take to get Alex to tell a good win story? I was in position to force him to put a price on his addiction to his pain.

What I really wanted to do, besides tighten the faucet if possible, was to show him what he already knows – that he’s a total fucking moron for suffering like he does.

So here’s the deal I offered.

“Hey Alex.”

“What.”

“I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Every time you tell me about a hand you’ve won, I will pay you $10.”

::: suspicious silence from alex :::

I continued on…

“And there’s more. You can just tell the hands to my voice mail. As many as you want. And you can tell them real fast, like, “I had pocket aces and won.” That would be a whole hand.”

At this point, a frenzy was mounting, as we both realized how completely Alex was in the process of being had.

“And, if you want, you can just make up the hands. You don’t even have to have played them. The bottom line is – for every hand you tell me about that ends with you winning the pot, I will pay you $10. If you tell me 100 hands, I will pay you $1,000 cash.”

It was a couple months ago that I made this offer. I’m still even.

I’ve made a new friend at Lucky Chances. His name is Django. (Pronounced Jango.) He’s a young, instantly likable player, very sharp and well-respected. The first dozen times we played together was in early 2007 when I played a few times a week for a few months. It was right after my book came out. I hadn’t played for a year and a half. During that time, he had become an established regular in the big no-limit game at LC.

One day, I raised preflop, he called from the blind, he checked the flop, I bet the flop, he checkraised, and I folded.

Another day, the same thing happened.

During those sessions I saw him do the same thing a couple times with draws.

So the next time I went up to play, I decided in the car that if this pattern came up again, I was going all the way with my hand if I had a pair.

And sure enough, it happened again. I had a pair (a pocket pair of eights), I opened for $120 preflop, he called from the big blind, he checked the flop, I bet $200, he made it $700, I called, he bet $1100 on the turn, I called, he bet $1700 on the river, I called, and he mucked. I won and no cards were shown.

(The flop was 9-4-2 rainbow. The turn was a queen and the river was a jack.)

He took a break right away. When he came back, he started talking to me about the hand. I knew right away I must really like this guy because I spoke.

“What’d you have?” he asked.

“I would like to answer your question, really I would, but I am incapable of telling the truth in situations like this, so there’s really no point in me saying anything.”

“You had pocket kings.” He said.

Fastforward to last week.

I hadn’t been to LC for about a year. I had been playing for a few hours, when Django took a seat in the game, across the table from me. Right away he started talking about the hand from a year ago. He asked if I remembered the hand.

“Yes.” I said. “The flop was 9-4-2 rainbow.” Before that sentence, it had been five or six years at least since I had mentioned actual cards at a poker table.

“Wow! Nice memory!” he said.

He said some more stuff about the hand that I didn’t reply to. A couple hours later, he moved to a seat right next to me. We chatted a little bit about this and that, and then he brought up the hand again.

“I’ll tell you what I had.” I said. “I had pocket threes. I decided in the car, on the way to the casino, that I was going to call you down with any pair if that pattern came up again.”

“I don’t believe you.” he said.

“I believe you.” I said.

“You believe that I don’t believe you?”

“Right.”

“Well, I had K6. Totally nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.” I said.

“Huh? Are you calling me a liar?”

“Yes. That’s what ‘I don’t believe you’ means. It means I think you are lying.”

“Well, I didn’t really mean it when I said I believed you had pocket threes.”

“I believe you.”

“But before you said you believed that I believed you had pocket threes?”

“But you forgot something.”

“What?”

“That I am incapable of telling the truth when it comes to talking about hands, or talking about talking about hands.”

“You’re a sick fuck.”

“I believe you.”

Dear Reader,

Let me end this little intro with my current perspective. Led Zeppelin summed it up succinctly in the title of a song. These days, anytime I get upset about anything, I know that “It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine”. Here’s the story…

Rita Wrecks Me

Me and Rita had a dang near perfect thing going. That’s because she was dang near perfect, except for the gambling. We’d been to Atlantic City and Vegas a couple times each and I vowed never again because it was such a strain. See, I went to casinos to try to make a buck at poker. Rita went because that’s where Miss Jekyll turned into Miss Hyde. And she liked being Miss Hyde, a lot.

She pestered me into a quick trip to Vegas and we decided this time it’d be different. No gambling. That was the plan. This time around we would go and see stuff, like maybe Hoover Dam or Red Rock Canyon, and there was a new strip hotel to check out, the Monte Carlo, and we’d heard about this huge new canopy thing downtown made of light bulbs. We were both really looking forward to pretending we were like normal people. So the plan was Friday night to Sunday night and poof – back home. I would bring just enough money for food and a rental car and that’s it. Rita would bring no money as usual which was fine by me because she’d be bringing her enthusiasm, her charm, and that laugh.

Our flight was detoured to Phoenix because of a flash flood in Vegas. It was only two days after TWA flight 800 blew up in mid-air and nobody knew if it was a terrorist attack or what. To be on the safe side, President Clinton had put sudden and severe emergency security measures in place at airports and everybody was jumpy, especially employees.

So we’re sitting inside a tube on wheels full of people itching to do the Vegas thing, at midnight, in Phoenix. Someone came on the microphone and told us the situation was not good. They told us there were ten other planes like ours in Phoenix that had been diverted from Vegas, and that the airport was way too understaffed to deal with all the extra planes and people and luggage and headaches until the morning crew came in. They told us that if we stayed on the plane, they would take us to Vegas in about nine hours, probably, and that if we got off the plane, we could not get back on, period. We would be totally on our own, with very little hope of getting a different flight out in the morning on any airline.

It so happens Rita and I were carry-on mobile. No checked luggage. We had the same thought at the same time. Let’s grab our bags and get the hell off this plane. Doesn’t matter what we do, let’s just do it elsewhere. How about we rent a car and stop by the Grand Canyon on the way to Vegas? Cool! Great plan! So just like that we were off the plane and skipping through the empty airport all giddy.

We were heading north on Route 17 in Arizona both yakking and driving at 100 miles per hour, in the dark, with no cars anywhere, and feeling like we were getting away with something. No dumb rainstorm hundreds of miles away was going to slow us down. No way.

Our timing was astronomically awesome. We reached the Grand Canyon just as the sun came up, making long shadows and saying good morning to the rocks and lizards and hawks inch by inch without even leaving spots in our eyes. I love sunrise, especially over a sharp horizon. We just stood there, quiet, in that piney western air. Watching that sun come up and looking into the canyon. We hung around for an hour or three. Hard to say with us and time standing still like that.

We stopped at Hoover Dam and went wow but we were now too close to Vegas and too slap-happy from sleeplessness to chill out. An hour later we were cruising The Strip. That place is energizing, like having one pot of coffee dumped down your throat and another one on your head. It’s like, Hello! I’m here!

We had a room reserved at The Mirage. After abusing the buffet we finally slept for probably not that long. It’s hard to rest in Vegas, no matter how tired. When we woke up it was like Hey babe! We’re in Vegas! And we were loving it that we had arrived basically broke and that this time we wouldn’t be getting all hissy over money stuff.

Everything was cool until Sunday night. Our flight home was a few hours away. Oh no. Here it goes. Here it comes. She’s got a ticket to Hyde, and she don’t care. Rita started freaking. She started out all bubbly and then popped.

Hey Tommy. Let’s use your credit card and get a few bucks and play a little blackjack before we leave. Okay? Please please Pleeeze?

I was thinking good lord, here we go again. A perfect trip with the perfect person about to turn into a perfect hell. She had me in the car with no escape when this went down. Man she sure knew how to put the pressure on at just the right time. No I said. No no no no no.

C’mon! Just take out a few hundred and let’s play a little blackjack. No biggy. Right? Sheesh, you’re such a grump.

Rita is a gal who gets her way. No amount of resolve can withstand her power. First she tried sulking and when that didn’t work she got desperate. I knew better than to fight on her turf but this time I was determined. It wasn’t just the money. It was a power thing. We were having our first real showdown because this time, for the first time, I was determined to not give in no matter what.

I got angry. I didn’t like it, but there I was, raising my voice and ranting about how it’s easiest to hurt those closest to you and asking Why are you doing this? Rita countered by turning the volume up to hysterical.

She had me on full tilt so I threw her a wicked but wild curve ball. Okay Rita, here’s the deal. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll take out $1000 on my credit card. Yup. You heard right. One thousand. We’ll go down to the Horseshoe…

That was her favorite place to play blackjack or anything else because she’s stayed and gambled there about a million times. She knows the staff by name without even looking at their badges and they know her, and she’d get all decked out and she was so hot when she did that, real easy to look at and everybody did.

After I said the bit about getting money out on the credit card, she didn’t care what came after. We were going to gamble. Rita was no different than any other addict looking as far ahead as the next fix and absolutely no farther. I told her my contingency plan anyway to make it official. Honey? You want to see some gamble? From a tight-ass poker player? Well, you got it.

I told her we’d go to the Horseshoe and play roulette. We’ll bet all $1000 on one spin, on red. If we lose that spin, we’re done. You can hate me all the way home if you want to for blowing the money before you could properly play princess, but you’ll love me again after a few days and it’ll be okay and we’ll laugh about it eventually.

Then came the devious part. I told Rita that if we win that first spin, we’re going to let it ride. We’ll bet all $2000 on the next spin, on red. If we win that second spin, we’ll have $4000, and we’ll stay in Vegas and gamble and party and have a terminal blast until the money is all gone or until we win so much it’s stupid.

She was thrilled, of course, and terrified too. See, it wasn’t like I was rolling in dough or anything. If I lost a grand, especially at a pure gamble and not at poker where I mustered an edge, it would hurt me. I mean rent-wise hurt, and emotionally too for pissing it away. Only Rita could rock me one instant and wreck me the next. Only she could tilt me till I toppled. That scared her and she said so. But for now we were going to gamble and that’s what mattered more.

We went to the Horseshoe and even though Fremont Street had recently been, like, totally covered for five blocks by an indescribable Vegas-sized semi-circular awning, we barely looked up and we went straight to the cage. I did the deed and we bee-lined to the nearest roulette table. I put down $1000 in cash on red and said all of it, roll the ball. The dealer called the pit boss over to verify what was going down. These guys have seen everything but they still have to watch. Knowing Rita’s ways, I told the pit boss that the money was all mine. Right Rita? Rita reluctantly nodded.

WHIRRerrERRRerrr. The ball went round and round in time with that Steely Dan song, “Then you find yourself in Vegas, with a gambler in your hand.” Okay, so the actual lyrics are “handle in your hand.” What’s the dif. Round and round went Rita. She was jittery and pacing and mutilating a cigarette and totally freaking out. And there I was with my money sitting there on the altar like a sacrifice to the glittering gods of tinsel town. And I didn’t even care. In my mind that money was already gone. I was stabilized now. I was making a statement about how Yeah, I love you babe, but when it comes to money and gambling, from now on, don’t dare mess with me anymore, please, alright?

Clickety clickety click click click. Red. The ball stopped on red. Rita erupted. Let’s go! Let’s stop now! C’mon Tommy! We got $2000! Let’s just get a room right here right now and slow down for a while. C’mon hon. Let’s quit.

She was tugging hard on my arm. The strange thing was that it was still my money. My $2000. But she totally felt that she had rights over half of it because without her pestering I never would have risked $1000 in the first place. This was typical Ritalogic.

Let it ride, I said, all of it, $2000, on red. The dealer couldn’t help but pause for a moment before spinning the wheel with Rita screaming in his face, No! No! No! Stop! Stop! Stop! The pit boss thought he had seen everything but now for sure he knew he had.

WHIRerrERRerr, clickety click click. Red. We won. The ball stopped on red. Rita exploded. I mean, she did. Right there. You’d think she had just, well, I can’t think of an analogy. There isn’t one, since no one could ever be that tense and knotted up and then that relieved in that short of time over anything, except for Rita, in exactly this spot.

I said we’re done and I gave the dealer $100. I still didn’t give a rip about the money. I had made a deal with Rita and I was plenty happy to make good and live it up in Vegas and not fret. This was going to be fun. We had $4000 that was already gone, just a matter of when, and she knew it. My god she was the happiest person on the planet ever. Being around someone who is that happy you can’t help but be bigtime happy too, doesn’t matter what they’re happy about.

So there we were all zippity-do-da with a wad of cash and no certain day we had to get back home and we’re in Vegas babe, we’re going to do this town up right. And we did. We even saw a show.

It’s true what they say about not trying to change people. A few days later, we were sitting in the Vegas airport waiting to board the plane home, tired and sated like after a long fine meal with extra dessert and wine. Rita asked if we had enough money to rent movie headphones and buy beers on the plane. I pulled out seventy bucks. Is that it? That’s it. She kissed my cheek while she gently removed the cash from my unresisting hand. Then she bounced up, and off she went to the airport slot machines. Hey Rita! Save enough for the parking garage when we get home! She waved without turning or slowing down.

Since the dawn of DeucesCracked.com, I have been singing their praises. I know all five founders well. I’ve played poker with them. I’ve hung out with them. I’ve coached a couple of them. I’ve watched the videos they make. I know how they think, how they work, who they are, and how they are. I see the community they have built and the dedication of their faithful. Being part of the DeucesCracked family is a source of joy and gratitude for me. And now that I have a video airing, I feel like I’ve been promoted from cousin to brother.

The only way to see the videos is the be a DeucesCracked subscriber. If you decide to do that, and you use this link to DeucesCracked.com, I will get a piece of your action.

The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment — EPTPE, pronounced rapidly like so: eh-puh-tuh-puh — is an eight-part video series that, according to these people who have seen the first episode and written about it in the EPTPE thread at the DeucesCracked forums, is really good. I of course have no opinion on such matters since I am opinionless. (This is when my partner in the series, Wayne Lively, would call bullshit.)

Speaking of Wayne, he’s the reason this whole thing happened. Back when he had his own poker show on Hold’em Radio, he had the idea of me coaching him on the air. This was an especially good idea because not only does Wayne have an awesome voice and great microphone sense, he also exhibits some behaviors and attitudes that make him ripe for my coaching.

Well, Wayne’s tenure with Hold’em Radio came to an end right about the same time the idea was bouncing around about me doing a video series for DeucesCracked. When I learned that the DC videos are released in eight-episode-long seasons, it was an instant slam dunk idea for me to use Buddha’s eightfold path as an outline for a series, and just start filling in the blanks from there.

Wayne and I kicked lots of ideas around on the way to settling on having the audio portion of the series be improvised conversations on pre-determined topics. That’s the meat of it. Wayne and I talking. For flavoring, I decided to put short bits of piano music in between the conversations. I played all of the 100 or so piano inserts. Some of them I “made up” and others are excerpts borrowed from classical composers such as Mozart and Neil Young.

The poker talk covers a lot of ground, with the recurring theme being: How can we play our A-game more often, and have more fun (or less agony) doing it? Along the way there are many how-to’s that pertain more directly to modifying thoughts and actions that will lead directly to more profit (or less loss). Wayne came up with the best way to summarize the series: “It’s not about how to play poker. It’s about becoming a poker player.”

The visuals of the videos have been an absolute blast to think up. We use text, sparingly, to let the viewer know what topic we are on, and to emphasize an occasional spoken phrase, and to create a humorous wise-cracking third character. We use original drawings by my good friend Wendelin Montciel that capture ideas with grace and levity. We use occasional photographs, cartoon images, and flash movies, to drive home key points and to keep you from nodding off during Wayne’s long boring parts.

Two words: Rob Cole. Also known as Entity. If EPTPE is a house, Rob is the carpenter. He’s the brains and the brawn behind assembling the pieces, while adding much artistic input along the way. Basically, EPTPE is a three-man job. Me, Wayne, and Rob.

The reason EPTPE exists is because I went from being a self-destructive tilt monkey to being pretty much stable. And I want to increase the probability that you will do the same thing.

Is being in the future bad? Not if done mindfully.

A couple weeks ago, Kay and I were on our 4th anniversary vacation, and one morning we talked about our future vacations. Already in the plan was to do one driving vacation each year on our anniversary. For our fifth trip, next year, we decided we would go to Hawaii and revisit the scene of our marriage. “How about Florence?” We’d been thinking of going there. “We’ll do that on our 10th anniversary,” we decided. “We’ll stay for a month.” That made us think of doing an extra-special anniversary trip every five years. “What an excellent plan of plans!” we thought.

The next morning during my meditation it occurred to me that none of the plans we had made mean diddly squat to me. In fact no plan I ever make holds control over my happiness. What a wonderful realization and condition. For example, let’s say I plan on finishing a project – large or small – by this afternoon or next year or whatever. I will do my best to satisfy obligations I have made to others, but as to the obligation I made to myself, well, there simply isn’t one. If the project gets done, “early,” I don’t rejoice, and if the project takes longer than projected, I don’t suffer. Even if it peters out and doesn’t happen at all, no problem.

But it didn’t used to be that way. Just the opposite. I used to be totally at the mercy of my hopes and expectations of the future. If I planned a cookout, I’d worry about rain. If it rained, I suffered. If it didn’t rain, I wouldn’t slow down; I was on to some other idea of what would make me happy or unhappy down the road. It literally never stopped. And I believe it never would have stopped if I had not taken up the practice of stopping, as in, meditating.

That’s not to say I do any less planning than before. I still make many, many plans. I plan for the next second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, and years. The difference is that now my plans come with some assumptions that make the whole process free and easy.

The main assumption I always make is that I might die before the plan has a chance to happen. I know that a day will come when I make a plan that goes unfulfilled because I died before the, uh, deadline. And I never know when my death will cause a plan to not go as planned. So when I say to you, “I’ll meet you for lunch tomorrow,” I actually do think to myself, “Unless I die first,” but I don’t bother to say that. It’s just assumed.

Another assumption I make is that sometimes I will not be physically able to fulfill a plan, which is really just a subset of the whole dying thing. It’s not as certain as dying, that is, I might die suddenly and never miss a plan because of injury or illness. But still, I consciously accept the inevitability of injury and illness as something that will inevitably interfere with my plans. And that way, when I do have to change my plans because of injury or illness, it’s okay, because mentally, I planned for it.

Another assumption I make is that sometimes there will be a priority shift between the time when the plan is made and when it comes due. For example, I might plan to start writing an article tomorrow called, “How to Plan Stuff Without All the Agony,” and then something might come up that’s more important or appealing or whatever, and I do that instead.

Another assumption I make is that my financial situation will never be static, and that sometimes I will make a plan based on reasonable financial projections that don’t pan out. I remain ever-ready to change plans accordingly. For example, in 2015, because of our finances at that time, Kay and I might not take a month-long vacation to Florence as we recently planned. Maybe we’ll go for week. Maybe we’ll go for a year. Maybe we won’t go at all. However it goes, if I’m alive in April of 2015, my plan will be to be grateful in May of 2015.

Another assumption I make is that sometimes things out of my control will happen that cause a change in plans. For example, you might invite me to lunch tomorrow, and then die tonight. Or maybe you just forgot the appointment. Does it really matter? Either way, I eat alone, when that was not the plan. It doesn’t matter to me why you aren’t there because as I place food in my mouth, the most important thing to me will be the food in my mouth. Later, I will find out if you are dead or delinquent. Until then, it is irrelevant. And in either case, I won’t hold you accountable for having foiled my plan.

Another assumption I make is that it’s never my fault. Let’s revisit our lunch date, but this time, it’s you who are sitting alone in the restaurant half an hour after the time we agreed to meet there. Various feelings may have passed through you in that time: frustration, anger, confusion, worry. When next we speak, I will never begin with, “I’m sorry.” If, after we begin to talk, it becomes clear to me that you believe that my tardiness caused you grief, there is now a slightly greater than zero chance that the words “I’m sorry” will come out of me. But if they do, it won’t mean what you think it means. The translation goes like this, “As spokesperson for the universe, I’m sorry that you have not yet learned how to just eat.” In other words, I am no more responsible for your happiness or your unhappiness than a distant planet. It’s never my fault when a failed plan makes you unhappy.

So really we could boil all this down to three things that can cause one of my plans to not go as planned. I might die, or circumstances might change, or I might change my mind. What makes all this extremely refreshing and a source of shockingly rich freedom and joy is that when I am making a plan, I am actually just making the plan. I’m not entangled in or reliant on the plan itself. I am not at the mercy of its fruition. I just make the plan, now. And if and when the plan comes to be, then I will experience it, now, as in, then, which will at that time be now. So really there’s no break from now, even with all this planning. And if the plan doesn’t happen, there is no loss, because at the moment that the plan is not happening, I’m still just me, now, and whatever now is happening then will always be just as now as if it was planned or not. So I’m free. Free to plan. Free to change plans. Free to not have plans. Free to not have plans go as planned. It’s all just part of the same bowl of soup. And it’s tasty.

The first time Andy slithered into our little snake pit, he had no chance. Not because he was drooping around like someone who had washed down his quaaludes with Jack Daniels, and not because he lacked basic card sense. There was no way to tell if he did or not. That’s because this was his first time ever playing poker for money, as in, ever. Have you read the part of “Shut Up and Deal” by Jesse May, toward the front, where he talks about poker being an easy game to play? Jesse makes the point that because of the assistance that dealers and players can give to other players, all you really have to be able to do is not fall out of your chair, and you can play poker. Andy was still in his chair.

Let’s set the scene. The year: 1991. The place: a home game with a house dealer that ran almost every night. The stakes: $3-6 limit. The games: hold’em and Omaha, alternating each round. The things you might not have heard of before: The Omaha was not hi-lo. We’re talking high-only limit Omaha here, a sickly gumbo of gamble.

And there was no checking. Yup you heard right. You could bet, or raise, or call, or fold. And that’s it. No checking. The only name for this structure I’ve ever heard is “bet or get,” meaning, when you are first to act, your options are to bet, or fold. This structure was so common in the games around town that when Columbus did start having games with checking, it was considered by many to be violently rude to check-raise. Which of course made me want to do it all the more.

(Here’s the details on “bet or get,” included for inquiring minds who want to know, and also because it’s slightly germane to the plot. In “bet or get,” the button effectively moves on every street. Let’s say seat 3 is first to act on the flop. On the turn, first action would be on seat 4, or whoever the next player to the left is. On the river, same thing, first to act moves to the next player to the left. This means that the catbird seat is being first to act on the turn, which means you’ll be last to act on the river. Also good is first to act on the flop, which makes you last to act on the turn, and either last or next-to last on the river depending on what your left-hand opponent does on the turn.)

These games were loose. How loose you ask? I’ve played in games where folding was frowned on. This player pool was so loose and loving that if you folded before the hand was over, you got genuine sympathy. If you’re getting the feeling that these games were chip-hurling brawls, like poker carnivals with a double shot of ruKus, then you have it pictured exactly right. Let’s get back to Andy…

After a couple rounds, Andy had settled into a betting strategy everyone else was happy with. Every time it was his turn, we would tell Andy how many chips to put into the pot to call, and then he’d do it. He never raised and he never folded. Andy was kind of slow with the chips, so we did not wait for him to finish his calling before the action moved on. The result was that Andy was pretty much continuously putting chips into the pot on every hand. I was sitting next to Andy and I oftentimes helped him with the betting and showing down and tipping and such.

And then, this hand came up…

The game was Omaha. The hand ended with one of the most spectacular rounds of river betting I have ever seen. Andy was last to act. There were two other players in the hand, we’ll call them A and B. Player A was first, which meant he had to either bet $6 or fold. He folded. Player B was next. Player B was facing an opponent who only on occasion had a vague sense of what he had. Player B folded. Andy won the pot without a showdown. The dealer started to push the pot to Andy, and a proud smile moved onto Andy’s face. Andy snatched up one of his cards off the table. He cupped it secretly in his hands and he showed it to me, and only me – the ace of hearts. (There were no aces or hearts on the board, but hey.)

Immediately the howls came forth from the throngs: “SHOW ONE SHOW ALL! SHOW ONE SHOW ALL!”

Andy of course had never heard of this common, ancient rule, which states, “If you show someone your uncalled hand, then everyone is entitled to see it, but only after they do the show-one-show-all chant with disdain.”

Puzzled, but still able to understand English, and knowing that he had done something terribly wrong, Andy followed the instructions he had been given. He picked up his other three cards, and he showed them to me.

My friend Arthur Reber has given me many things. He has given me aha moments with his big-picture perspectives, particularly in the way be explains the origins and causes of various human behaviors and attitudes. He has given me many smiles, mostly with his wit, and also with the way he gets tilty over poker even though his understanding of tilt is so rich and deep. (This always reminds me that there is always more to know, and that knowledge is not the cure.) And now, with his pen, he has given me the greatest gift that one writer can give to another… being cited!

Arthur writes for www.pokerlistings.com. I’d like to share three articles he has written that are related to things I have written.

The first one is about a simple, explorable concept I termed “reciprocality.”

http://www.pokerlistings.com/strategy/psychology/reciprocality-your-bottom-line-decoded

The second is one is about quitting.

http://www.pokerlistings.com/strategy/psychology/the-last-word-on-quitting

And the third is a review of my book. (One look at the title of this article and you’ll see the real reason I call Arthur a friend. Shhh. Don’t let him know that. He still thinks it’s because of his jokes.)

http://www.pokerlistings.com/strategy/psychology/the-best-book-ever-written-about-poker

Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out.
In this way, I train myself.
Breathing in, I am aware that I am sitting at a poker table.
Breathing out, I smile to the poker universe.
Breathing in, I watch the cards being dealt.
Breathing out, I observe the players on my left.
Breathing in, I look at my cards.
Breathing out, I fold.

Breathing in, I watch the hand play out.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.
Breathing in, I am aware that air is entering my body.
Breathing out, I notice my fingers.
Breathing in, I am aware that a player is thinking about his decision on the river.
Breathing out, I watch him call.
Breathing in, I watch the called player turn over the nuts.
Breathing out, I hear the caller curse briefly.
Breathing in, I am aware that I understand the cause of the caller’s discomfort.
Breathing out, I send him some ease.
Breathing in, I erect my spine and I know that I am preparing myself to receive the next hand.
Breathing out, I am perfect and I notice the sounds of poker.

Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in a short breath.
Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out a short breath.
Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in a long breath.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out a long breath.
Breathing in, I calm my mind.
Breathing out, I calm my body.
In this way, I train myself.

Breathing in, I look at my cards.
Breathing out, I know that one is an ace and the other a king.
Breathing in, I move chips from my stack across the betting line.
Breathing out, I await and observe the decisions of my opponents.
Breathing in, I see them folding.
Breathing out, I see the player on my right raise.
Breathing in, I call.
Breathing out, I see the dealer thumbroll an aceless, kingless flop.
Breathing in, I watch the player on my right prepare to bet.
Breathing out, with anticipation, I time it so that at the moment he bets, my lungs are empty, and I dispatch my cards into the muck with the tip of my thumb, expending the least possible energy.

Breathing in, I am completely aware that I am breathing in and that my lungs are inflating.
Breathing out, I know that right now I am breathing out.
In this way, I train myself.

Breathing in, I post a big blind.
Breathing out, I see the player on my left post a straddle.
Breathing in, I hear the cards coming off the deck.
Breathing out, I look at my cards and I determine that I will fold when it is my turn.
Breathing in, I am grateful for this opportunity to relax and be still.
Breathing out, I fold and I notice my own gratefulness.

Breathing in, I see a player bet the flop.
Breathing out, I see the other players in the pot fold.
Breathing in, I hear the winner’s remark and a reply.
Breathing out, I intentionally shape my body as I please.
Breathing in, I post a small blind.
Breathing out, I watch the dealer’s hands deliver the cards.
Breathing in, I look at the big blind as he looks at his cards.
Breathing out, I look at my cards – 9-4 off-suit.
Breathing in, I decide to pay close attention to the action and to not decide yet what I will do at my turn.
Breathing out, I watch a player raise. Breathing in, I decide now not to reraise.
Breathing out, it is my turn, and I fold.

Breathing in, I pay attention to my in-breath at my nose.
Breathing out, I make my out-breath even and long.
In this way, I train myself.
Breathing in, I am aware that I have the button.
Breathing out, I perfect myself, I hear the poker sounds, I look at my cards – 8-6 of clubs – a vulnerable player limps, I look to the left as the action approaches me, I raise, the small blind calls, the big blind folds, the limper calls, the flop comes, they check to me, I bet, the small blind calls, the limper folds, the turn comes, the small blind checks, I check, the river comes, he bets, I call, he says “You got me,” I show my cards, he mucks, I hear someone say “He’s a moron,” the dealer’s eyes smile at mine as I tip, the next hand is dealt, I’m in the cutoff, I look at my cards – A-5 off-suit – the same player limps, I look left, the button indicates that he is folding, I raise, the button folds, the small blind folds, the big blind reraises, the opener folds, I fold, I sit back, and…

Breathing in, I notice that I have not noticed my breathing for a while.
Breathing out, I remind myself to remind myself to do better at reminding myself to remember to remember to remember to, ah, to remember. With each aware breath, I rejoin, I recombine, I become a member again, I re-member.

Breathing in, I know that I am breath taking.
Breathing out, I know that everything is breathtaking.
Until death do I live.

My friend Wayne told me that it’s important for a writer to be able to “kill his babies.” When he told me this, I knew exactly what he meant. And I was pleased, because when it comes to my babies, I am a brutal serial killer. Take the carcass below for example. It used to have four siblings, quintuplets they were. These clumps of text grew up together under the article title: “Data Minding” which I just sent in to BLUFF Magazine. What these cute little infants had in common was the theme of keeping records at poker. But collectively, they grew too big. There was not enough room for everyone, so someone had to die. Naturally I did what any ruthless son of a bitch would do, and I murdered the weakest one of the lot. They don’t call it the cutting room floor for nothing. It’s bloody down there. If you can stand to look at such a sight, here’s a dead baby:

When 3 = 370

So far, I have been using the time unit called “a year” because everyone else does. But really, I have to contort my mind to fit it into that box. Just when exactly does this thing called “a year” start anyway? January first? Says who? Like I’m supposed to wake up on a winter’s day and just because some farmers who lived thousands of miles away and thousands of years ago figured out that celestial motions are patterned and predictable, I’m supposed to feel like today is the start of something? And that the numbers on my poker tally sheet for precisely the previous 365 days hold some special meaning?

Seems to me there’s a better way. If the objective is to use our collected data to “see how we did” over the span of 365 days in order to draw statistically viable, meaningful, and useful conclusions about past performance and future expectations, then yes, I do believe there is a better way. And here it is:

Instead of waiting a year for a year’s worth of data, try this. Tally your results from, say, January 1 to January 1, then tally your results from January 2 to January 2, then January 3 to January 3, and so on. Do that everyday.

Let’s look at what you have after three years. If you do your tallying the traditional way, you’ll end up with at least 3 numbers and at most 5 numbers for each year:

• Your total amount won or lost. (1 number)

• Your total hours played, or your total hands played, or both. (1 or 2 numbers)

• Your rate of winning or losing, which could use the time unit “hour” or “100 hands.” You could do either, or both – for example, if you play multiple tables online, you might want to know your hourly rate, and also your “per 100 hands” rate. (1 or 2 numbers)

So after three years of keeping score, you’d have at least 9 and at most 15 numbers to show for it. That’s not much grist for the number mill. Hardly enough for data mining, more like data dipping. If you want to dig deep into numbers, you need lots of them, like, thousands of them. And doing it my way, that’s what you’ll have:

• 365 = the number of days in a year.

• 365 x 2 = 730 = the number of days in two years.

• 730 = the number of days in a three-year span that have at least 365 days after them. In other words, every three-year span has 730 years inside it.

• 3 = the minimum number of numbers per “year” that you use. (win/loss amount, amount played, win/loss rate.)

• 5 = the maximum number of numbers per “year” that you use. (This applies to those who use both “hours” and “hands” as units for “amount played.”)

• 730 x 3 = 2190 = the minimum # of #’s you’ll have after three years.

• 730 x 5 = 3650 = the maximum # of #’s you’ll have after three years.

Now that’s what I call a deep mine.