Tommy Angelo

An Olive Oil Story

Tommy Angelo — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:02:44 +0000

The year: 1978. I was 21 years old. The place: Big Bear store #1. It was a huge oval building, originally a barn, then a roller rink, then in the 1930’s, it was the first building in the Midwest to have meat and produce and dairy and dry goods for sale under one roof. There was an actual bear there during the first few years — an attraction. Hence the name. Big Bear grew into a large chain of grocery stores. Hence the number.

I was one third of the three-man stock crew that remained unchanged for six years. I have to think that that could be a record for the lifespan of a stock crew at a major grocery store. We each had our aisles. We stocked ‘em, we cleaned ‘em, we did the price changes, we did the ordering, we did the sale-item displays — it was like each of us had our own little kingdom within the domain.

Every week, items would come and go. The three of us would sit in the break room on Fridays and complain about the weekly list of new and discontinued items, and the burdensome changes in the space allocation we would have to make on our beloved shelves.

Store Number One was (it was torn down in the 80’s) on Lane Avenue in Columbus Ohio, right across the street from Ohio State University. Our top selling items were beer, potato chips, Kraft macaroni and cheese dinners, and beer. We didn’t sell very much olive oil. Which is why I practically had a seizure when I saw the new items list that Friday. We were going to be carrying a new size of olive oil. Gallons. For sixteen bucks each. That made it the most expensive item in the store intended for human consumption. And one of the heaviest. Given our clientele, I expected them to sell at a rate of approximately never. Yet I was going to have make space for this monstrously bad use of shelf space in my oil section anyway.

One week later, a case of gallons of olive oil arrived. There’s no way to stop that. They always send at least one case of new items no matter how stupid they are. After that, the power is all mine. The case had four rectangular one-gallon cans it in — they reminded me of gas cans. I already knew I would never order another case, even if all four cans from the initial case sold. I was frowning when I made room for one row of the new item on the bottom shelf by taking some space away from two products that never got dusty: Crisco oil and Wesson oil. (We sold a lot of popcorn too.)

The next day, I went to work, and I walked down my aisles to get to view the past and plan my attack for rebuilding my aisles to pristine condition after they had been viciously violated yet again by all those damn customers. I walked by the oil section. You have to understand the degree to which it is possible to become one with something like an oil section. I could see all and know all with just a glance. I knew what sold, when it sold, why it sold, what they were wearing when they bought it, and which kind of popcorn they intended to use it on. Right away, I noticed something odd, like there was a tooth missing. On the bottom shelf, right in front of three huge cans of olive oil, there was an empty space. Somebody had actually bought one of those suckers!

This was about a year after I had moved away from home. Not that far away. About a mile. And the family homestead was very near the grocery store. So I often stopped by there after work. You know, the free food and all. Apparently I had the poker-pro gene activated inside me all the way back then.

I walked into the family homestead and I headed straight for the kitchen.

And there.

On the counter.

Was a rectangular can.

With a little sticker on top that said “$15.99.”

That I had put there.

Yesterday.

She came in. I said, “Hi mom.”

“Tanoose, look at this!”

She was the only person who ever called me that. It was her grandfather’s name.

“I’m looking!”

“This much olive oil would cost three times as much in those 16 ounce cans!”

We watched the can for a few seconds, each amazed in our own way.

“How long will it take you to use it all?” I asked.

“Not as long as you might think.”

“Great. Would you mind buying the other three?”

On Obama

Tommy Angelo — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:59:44 +0000

On where he came from:

One way to figure this out would be to examine his view, and then try to figure out where you would need to be for things to look like that. I think Obama’s view is spacial, as in, from outer space. I think that might be where he came from. The view from space – taxonomically speaking – is that because all life on earth shares exactly the same digital coding, it could all be reasonably grouped as “one species” (or “one life unit” or whatever words you would like to use to mean “arbitrarily grouped living stuff”). This seems to be how Obama sees things, so he must be from really far away.

On his poker game:

McCain had bad cards and he played bad. When the match was over, he stood up and bid goodnight with a dignified, unifying message. Obama had great cards and he played great. Obama outplayed McCain on almost every street, as he and I expected he would. (I predicted a landslide in the general election as soon as he clinched the nomination.)

I watched Obama play. I was watching close, trying to size up what kind of game he really had. The only way I ever rate players is, “Would I take this guy’s action?” Which is another way of saying, “Would I let him play my cards?” Obama can play my cards anytime.

A Smooth Move

Tommy Angelo — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:50:19 +0000

There was a period of a couple years, around 2000 and 2001, when there was a no-limit hold’em game every night in a poker room in San Mateo called Pacific News. The room only had three tables. One of them was used for newspaper reading and dealer break-taking and players in waiting. The other two poker tables were used for poker – one for $3-6 limit high-low hold’em (<–Yes, that’s exactly what I meant to say) and one for no-limit hold’em. The blinds in the no-limit game were $2-3-5 (you can read about the Bay Area 3-blind structure here), there were two optional kills (which can make the game VERY big) and there was no maximum buy-in. The game started at 7p.m. every night. I was one of the regulars – one of the starters. Another one of the starters – a man I learned as much about no-limit from as from any other person – was Walt Z.

Here’s a hand Walt played that demonstrated the depth of his wisdom, and savvy, and ruthlessness. Walt was in the big blind position, but he had not posted his blind yet when the dealer started dealing. This is a very common situation. I’ve seen it thousands of times. Usually what happens is, when the dealer deals the second card, the player in the big blind is reminded to put his blind out. But sometimes that doesn’t happen, in which case, when the dealer or a player realizes that the big blind has not posted yet, someone says to the big blind, “Don’t muck your hand! You’re in the big blind!”

And sometimes none of that happens, and the big blind, thinking he is first to act, does actually fold. And then someone says something for sure. How it gets resolved at that point, well, it can get gnarly, and it’s not relevant to the story, so let’s move on.

Here’s what happened on this hand. Walt was in the big blind. When the dealing began, Walt was busy talking to someone standing behind him. The dealer dealt both cards, and Walt had still not posted his blind. Then Walt looked at his cards, and folded his hand, about a foot or so in front of him. The dealer said, “Wait! It’s your blind!” Walt was a little embarrassed, and he took his cards back and posted his blind. I’ve seen it work out this way many times, especially when a very experienced player makes the mistake. It’s a courteous way to handle it because it keeps the game moving and no one gets upset.

Here’s how the betting went. It was folded around to the button. The button, the small blind, and Walt all had about $1000. The button was a tight player, and a smart player, plenty smart enough to take advantage of Walt’s telegraphed weakness. The button opened for $30. (The minimum opening bet was $10, so $30 was a normal sized opening amount.) The small blind was another tight, smart player, plenty smart enough to know that the button’s range could be extra wide here because of Walt’s premature fold. The small blind made it $100. Walt looked a little confused, and he raised it to $400.

Right then I knew exactly what had happened. I resisted the urge to stand up and bow reverently toward the Walt.

The button, who as it turned out had AQs, shoved all-in. The small blind folded. Walt called with – have you figured it out yet? – pocket aces.

It was probably accidental that Walt did not post his blind at the right time. Then he looked at his cards quickly and discreetly, saw that he had pocket aces, and now, in full awareness that it was his big blind and that he had not posted it yet, he folded, knowing that the dealer (or someone) would point out that it was supposed to be his blind, and that it would then be perfectly fine and normal for him to grab his hand back, laying a deadly trap from whoever happened to be unlucky enough to be moving around before the flop.

Polehenge

Tommy Angelo — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:30:22 +0000

Here’s a picture I took on my way to Vegas. (You can click on these pictures for full size viewing.) I was on the left side of the plane, heading south. I think this picture is very cool because of the low altitude. My flights to Vegas start out going north from San Francisco Airport, then they break into an immediate 180 degree turn directly over The City and head south, giving me a view of home while the plane is still climbing. I estimate this view is from 8000 feet.

If you head east for about three miles from my place, to where the land casually merges into the bay, you’ll see an art installation I call Polehenge:

The poles are different lengths, but they are all the same height. I mean, the ground has its ups and downs, but the tops of the poles don’t. I mean, if you sat a huge sheet of wood on top of these poles, it would be level. The result is eye candy from every angle.

Polehenge is in Silicon Valley, so it’s not too surprising to find out that these poles are implanted in a high tech landfill. Mountains of trash are covered with earth, in typical landfill fashion, but they do it in a way that recreates wetland, right down to the bugs and birds. Lots and lots of birds come by and act like everything is normal. They pretend not to notice the occasional platter-sized metal plate sitting a couple inches above the grass from which exudes little geyser sounds — pshhhh — pshhhh — evenly spaced. It’s methane belching from below. It’s the earth farting.

Swans and pelicans and geese and grebes and dozens of other kinds of big birds and small birds and fast birds and slow birds and birds birds birds from all over the place come here. Way too many kinds for me to want to learn all their names. Most of them spend some of their time floating around so I just call them all ducks. Some of them zoom around in formation just barely above the water and they remind me of the Starfighters that Luke and his friends flew in Star Wars. I can picture George Lucas sitting in a place like this 40 years ago, watching these birds doing their impressions of fighter jets, thinking, hmmm.

They made a walking path so that I can come and visit the ducks up close. I call it the duck walk. Along the main path there are these little offshoot paths that lead down closer to the waterways where the ducks hang out. At the end of each offshoot path there is a two-tiered wooden deck about the size of two doors. I sit on these decks. Sometimes for a long time.

One day I was sitting on this deck and something funny happened.

You couldn’t see me from the main path because I was at the right end of the deck, behind the bush. I was facing the water, sitting very quietly and very still, and I could hear everything. I could hear the sounds coming from the mouths of two people walking on the main path. I could hear their volume go up as they moved closer. I could hear the sounds of their clothing and I could hear the sounds coming from the ground when their feet were on it. I heard them stop at my little offshoot path. I heard one of them slowly walk toward the water, toward the birds, toward a surprise.

Then I heard the sound of feet making a quick stop on the gravel path. Sounds came from the organism in the form of gaspy, high-pitched, sudden words. “Oh! I’m very sorry to have startled you!”

On the Origin of Names

Tommy Angelo — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:31:29 +0000

It was at a $2-5 blinds no-limit hold’em game in Vegas. The waitress came by. Several players ordered adult beverages. I was in seat one and the waitress was standing behind seat five, so it was well heard when I said to her, “I’d like a glass of milk please.” There were a couple subtle chortles.

When my milk arrived, the player next to me, who was gone from the table when I ordered, asked me what it was.

“Milk,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, “I thought maybe it was some sort of coconut concoction.”

“Nope, just milk.”

Ten minutes later, I had 7-5 on the button. One player limped. I limped. The small blind completed, and the big blind checked. Four players. I had the smallest stack with $500.

The flop was 9-5-5 rainbow. The three of them checked, and somewhere in my mind I think I was thinking of the verb version of my drink, so I checked too.

The turn was a ten, putting two hearts on board. The small blind bet $25. The next two players folded. I called. Headsup now.

The river was the ace of hearts. The small blind bet $40. I called.

“I have an ace,” he said, and I turned over my hand.

At that moment, one of the chatty players who had been paying attention to this hand said to me, “What’s your name friend?”

“Milk,” I said, deadpan.

That was very well received, and my name was Milk for the night.

The Butoff

Tommy Angelo — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:34:05 +0000

(This blog post is an article that is in the October 2008 issue of BLUFF Magazine.)

The Butoff

Words lag behind what they label. For example, the blogosphere was well past infancy before the word “blogosphere” existed. Bad beats were around long before the term “bad beat” was. And “the universe” was here for billions of years before it got its name. So it’s no surprise, given how fast poker is changing and growing, that we are always running behind. That’s why I have taken it upon my magnanimous self, in the spirit of public service, to help us stay caught up, by making up words (or reassigning them) when I notice one is missing.

Most of the words I come up with are like defective genes; they don’t get passed along. Now and then, I coin one that spreads, such as The Hijack seat. And I’m the guy who redeployed the words Twotone and Monotone to refer to non-rainbow flops. Some other children of mine that are surviving in the wild are Table Poker (non-internet poker), Sixth Street (the action after the hand is over), Mum Poker (it’s just what it sounds like), Game Rejection (a form of quitting), Reciprocality (the cause of profit at poker), and Bliscipline (bliss caused by discipline – or is it the other way around?).

And now, I give you: the butoff seat.

There’s a very big difference between butoff and all the other words I have made up in that I didn’t make it up. It came to me. I mean that literally. It came to me in an email from Matts Quiding. All I did was recognize the glorious potential contained within a typo. Here’s the pertinent part from Matts’ email. He was asking me about a betting situation in Limit Hold’em, and I quote:

Hand 9
Betfair – 4-handed
I have 10h-8h in the BB. Very loose cannon who now seems to be raising every hand opens from butoff. Loose-aggressive who realizes this three-bets on the button, SB folds. I’m in the BB. My play here? My calling range for situation?

I saw “butoff” and I did an internal happy dance, which is typically followed by an urge to write to everyone I know and exclaim that I have yet again come across the coolest thing ever. See, I knew instantly what “butoff” meant, what it had always meant, what it was meant to mean. I knew what it was that existed before the word, and now, there was the word, and it was good.

Butoff: A pre-flop position that arises at table poker when the player in the cutoff seat looks left and sees that the button is going to fold. The player in the cutoff will now be last to act for the entire hand and he knows it, even though he doesn’t actually have the button. His position is the butoff. (The abbreviation for the butoff is BO, which fits nicely, as it should, between the abbreviations for the cutoff and the button, thus: CO – BO – BN.)

These are some of the major milestones that have shaped my life: 1) The big bang happened. 2) The solar system happened. 3) Led Zeppelin happened. 4) I happened to notice that the best seat in the house is the one to the right of a tight player who reliably telegraphs his pre-flop action.

So I started moving to the right of guys like that – and looking left a lot – which effectively gave me the button about one and a half times per round. Looking left is huge because when it makes a difference, it makes a huge difference. When I’m in the cutoff and the button gives me the button by indicating that he is folding, I might call when I would have otherwise raised, I might raise when I would have called, I might call instead of folding, and I might raise instead of folding. Those are the biggest strategy alterations possible! Caused entirely by a look left.

You don’t have to believe, like I do, that looking left is in itself totally awesome. The way to think of it is like this: Would it be more profitable for you to not look left? If you think the answer is no, then that means you think that looking left is at worst a freeroll. And if you’re any kind of gambler, you’re supposed to love freerolls.

Okay, for all I know, you might think this is the dumbest idea since nearly-sliced bread (like they serve in restaurants these days). The butoff seat might die right here, right now, and never get reproduced in our meme pool. So be it. All I know is that if you’re sitting on my left and you have the button, and I look over and see that you are about to fold, I know what I’ll be thinking – butt off!

Who Died and Put You in Charge?

Tommy Angelo — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:11:24 +0000

When my dad died in 1996, there was one uproarious moment during the formal mourning period, a story that has been told and retold, tilled and retooled.

First came the evening wake at the funeral home, a highly populated event. The next day there was the funeral at the massive Catholic church with aisles filled. It was our parish church. My siblings and I all went to the grade school next to it. The next day was the burial, a ceremony that began at the church. The immediate family had a final viewing of the body, then we went out the side door of the church to get in a hearse that would lead a procession of cars to the graveyard. There were many emotional spikes during these days, and for me, there were two major ones on this day. One was during the final viewings. The other was the uproarious moment I’m working toward.

My mom died in 1986. Four years later, my dad married an angel. Her name is Jackie. The immediate family that was in the hearse was me, my three siblings — Jude, David, and Paul — Jude’s 16-year-old daughter Josephine, and
Jackie.

The graveyard was several miles due north from the church. But we didn’t take the shortest route. Instead, because of David’s brilliant idea, the caravan went south and west, about a mile, to the fabled Horseshoe Stadium on the campus of Ohio State University, where my dad taught for 31 years without ever missing one day. And he went to every home football game. And he used to play handball with Woody Hayes. People around here like to say “I bleed Scarlet and Grey.” Buckeye fans remind me a little of how poker players can all think they are better than everyone else. I’ve seen Buckeye fans enraged over who is the more maniacally devoted fan. But they’re just fans. They don’t live right next to campus and spend most of their days on it every year for a lifetime. I never saw my dad with an open wound. I can’t help but wonder though, just what color his blood really was.

So this huge trail of cars went down to the stadium and lapped it. It was the right thing to do. No doubt that just like the rest of us, the stadium wanted to say goodbye to Ralph.

Back on High Street, heading north, the mood in the hearse was light. Ups and downs are really just two sides of one coin, I began to notice during this time. We’re driving along, and Josephine said something that was incorrect. I can’t recall what it was. I can’t even recall what kind of error she made. It could have been something grammatical, since that is one of the types of things that people in my family are in the habit of correcting. Or it could have been something stated as a fact that wasn’t. Whatever it was, she said something that was incorrect, and my brother David quickly corrected her.

And Paul said to David, “So who died and put you in charge?”

We laughed and laughed and cried and laughed and did it some more.

Butchering 72o

Tommy Angelo — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:30:44 +0000

Have you ever played a hand so bad that you just can’t let it go? During the session you keep thinking about it. The next day you keep thinking about it. It’s like a festering infection. It’s like the first time somebody put those trick candles in your birthday cake. You blow out the flames, but then they just keep popping back up. At first it’s freaky, and annoying, and everyone is laughing, but I’m not having fun. Playing a hand bad and having it keep coming back in my mind is just like that, except it’s the entire universe laughing at me, and it’s definitely not fun. That’s why, ever since my fifth birthday, I have dedicated my life to gaining the ability to stop the taunting, and I’m pretty far along, but I’m not all the way cured. There are times, like when I totally butcher 72o, a hand that I have misplayed many times, when the coming back keeps comes back.

Like this one time, in Vegas. I was playing in a full $5-10 blinds no-limit hold’em game at The Venetian. Two players folded, and the next player opened for $30. This guy was as reliable as a coin flip. Heads he folds, tails he plays. Yes, he liked to see lots of flops, and yes, his hand range here was very wide, but he was by no means what I would call a donator. He did not get strung out for big money before the flop, or after it, without good cause. Even though he gave himself plenty of rope, he almost never hung himself with it.

Two players called behind him, and the small blind folded. I was in the big blind, and despite having 7-2 offsuit, I folded.

Do I suck or what? My image at the time was very tight, very disciplined, very much like the kind of guy who, if he were to raise from the big blind in this spot, to say, $150, the chances that anyone would call would be dang near zero. That was me. That was who I was at that moment. I was a guy who was looking at one hundred and five dollars sitting in the middle of the table as if it was just sitting there on a sidewalk, and I neglected to pick it up.

Okay, thanks for listening to my bad play story. I think I can let that hand go now.

[This post is still growing, and it will very likely appear in BLUFF Magazine after it matures.]

A Typical Day in Palo Alto

Tommy Angelo — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:31:55 +0000

I was walking through town just now, pretending I had superpowers. It was the coolest thing. I made believe I had this thing called a body, which was basically a self-propelled, self-operated sensory array. The main piece was on top. It was like this orb stuck to the end of a twist-o-flex segmented cable-holding rod thing. The orb had one big hole in the middle, and several pairs of holes, where the magical information would go in. See, the way I was making it up, and I know this is kind of crazy, but there were these weird invisible rays that were basically everywhere, moving around, and they would bounce off anything they came across, and then they’d carry some sort of residual images of objects around. Now, these rays didn’t actually do anything, unless they happened to go through these two tiny holes in the orb that stuck out of the top of my body thing. Oh, I meant to tell you, I wasn’t the only orb toter. Because of the magical information rays and my superpower, I could tell that there were other bodies with orbs and ray holes around me.

Another superpower I gave myself used two of the other holes. They let in a different type of information altogether. It was like, invisible vibrations, that got more intense sometimes, and less sometimes, and they came out of things, and they seemed to sometimes have an upness and downness to them.

And the most tripped out thing I imaged I had was this super flex-o-stretch sheathing of sensing cells that covered my entire body. It allowed me to know, for example, when I came into contact with anything, such as objects, and also I could tell when the stuff that the vibrations moved through was moving.

Bluff Magazine and me

Tommy Angelo — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:19:32 +0000

The first time I got a byline for writing a poker article for a print magazine, Bill Clinton was president. The magazine was Poker Digest. A couple years later, Poker Digest ceased to be, and I haven’t been in print since. Until now. In the September 2008 issue of Bluff Magazine that just came out, you can find the last two pages of my book on page 114. The excerpt is called “A Process of Illumination.”

But it’s nothing new, I mean, it’s not new to me. I wrote it a year ago. And lots of people have read it before it appeared in Bluff. What is new, I mean really new, is the stuff I wrote this morning. Words and ideas that I now get to watch every day as they grow, and shift, and bud-off, and die-off, and mutate into something that wants to be a cohesive whole, but won’t be until I send it to my editor Anna, and then she’ll send me back all sorts of wonderful suggestions using track-changes, and then we’ll talk on the phone, and then I’ll go back into the file and add stuff and remove stuff and change stuff, and I’ll print it out and carry it around with me for a few days while I make little marks on it with my red pen, and then I’ll enter those changes into the file, and then I’ll send it to my buddy Alex, and he’ll tell me which parts totally suck, and then I’ll fix that stuff, and then I’ll read it out loud to my wife, and she’ll say just send it in already, and then I’ll send it to a man I am so very pleased to now know and call a friend — we’ve had a couple very long lunches in Vegas, his name is Matthew Parvis and he’s the editor-in-chief of Bluff Magazine — and after he sees it, he might write back and say something like holy cow man, what’s with the run-ons? which I’ll try to explain away as nothing more than caffeine art, and he’ll probably say okay whatever, I’m printing it, your check’s in the mail, and I’ll be like, oh … my … god, I do so love ink.

My first new-article-in-progress for Bluff Magazine is currently titled, “My under-over line at no-limit.” It’s about certain situations where I drastically underbet the pot on one street followed by a drastic overbet on the next street. I’ll let you know how it turns out. :-)