Tommy Angelo

“I started paying attention to my breathing and it made everything worse.”

I just got off the phone with a mouse smasher. Or you could call him a mouse masher. (It sounds the same either way, whether you are saying it, or doing it.) I’m going to call him Humphrey. The topic was poker coaching. During the conversation, Humphrey asked some questions I had heard before:

Q: Did you really fold pocket aces before the flop just for the hell of it?

A: Yes. Can you think of a better reason?

Q: I tilt. Can you straighten me out?

A: No. But you can.

Q: What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?

A: I don’t know. And I don’t care.

Okay, I admit. Nobody has asked me that last question. But I’m ready if they do!

I asked Humphrey to elaborate on his tilting. Here’s what he told me…

“Usually my tilt is merely a percolating, churning, grinding, retching, undercurrent of suckiness and ill-being.”

“You don’t say.”

“But sometimes,” said Humphrey, “it gets really bad. It’s as if a tightly coiled spring of Reardon metal suddenly unwinds at the speed of insanity. The metal impales my arm and seizes control. My hand grabs my mouse, and then, with the zip and accuracy of a third baseman throwing to first, I fling the mouse at the wall and – kaBLAM, chinkle tink thunk – the mouse comes to rest, in pieces, on the floor, as do I.”

“And you call that tilt?”

“Of course it’s tilt! What the hell would you call it?”

“I’d call it a religious experience.”

“A what?”

“Think about it. You were redeemed. You were liberated. You were saved. Sounds like religious talk to me.”

“I wasn’t saved! I was violently enraged!”

::: insert soothing exhale here :::

“Let me ask you something.”

“Okay,” said Humphrey.

“How much is your typical win or loss per session?”

“I’d say it’s in the $200-$400 range.”

“Let’s say that instead of smashing your mouse, you had sat there and kept playing, swimming against your undercurrent of suckiness. What do you think your EV would have been for the rest of that session?”

“Not good. At all.”

“Okay. One more question. How much does a mouse cost?”

::: pause :::

“You’re right, I was saved,” said Humphrey.

“Yes you were. This time. But from here on in, it won’t be so easy. Now that you have seen The Way, you will need to develop an entirely new disciplinary practice, one that has never before existed on this earth. Are you ready for a challenge?”

“Possibly. What is it?”

“When you venture forth to acquire your replacement mouse, you will be tempted by the tilt demon. You must be prepared to defend, like a warrior, or else you will surely be slain.”

“Go on.”

“Hanging in the aisles of merchandise, or browsing through an online store, you will see many mice before you. But you must purchase only one. For if you were to…”

“Okay, okay, I get it. You’re saying that if I’m such a tilt monkey that it’s sometimes hugely plus EV for me to smash my mouse, that I should embrace my rodent-killing ways. And to ensure I make money from mouse smashing, I must never buy more than one at a time. This isn’t the world’s most complicated idea.”

“True. Yet there are few master mouse smashers.”

“So is that it? Aren’t you going to break into some speech about how I shouldn’t let myself get that tilted in the first place?”

“Sounds like you already know that to me.”

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Lee Jones sent me this screenshot. He added the comment in red and the two red boxes. You can click on the image to see a larger version.

That’s my book, right between the laser mouse and the lens cleaner. At the top is the item Lee was shopping for, a 30-inch monitor. That’s the item for which it is true that: Customers who bought this item also bought Elements of Poker.

Why would people who buy big monitors buy poker books? It’s because when you play poker on the internet, you can do what’s called “multi-tabling.” That means playing in more than one poker game at the same time. It’s like what Bobby Fisher used to do at chess, except multi-tabling is spectacularly faster, and it’s for money, and you can bluff, and everybody can play as many games as they want. Okay, so it’s barely like what chess masters do. It’s more like what video gamers do, which is: AS MUCH AND AS FAST AS POSSIBLE OF COURSE!!!

How many games do people play? The most I’ve ever heard of is 16. Lots of online poker players play 10 tables or more. To those people, square inchage is vital. Imagine if you had a dozen programs open and you needed to see them all at the same time. That’s how it is when you multi-table. What would you do if increasing your visual real estate would increase your income? You’d buy a bigger monitor, or two. Which is exactly what many poker players have done, and do.

So it’s not all that surprising that a poker book would show up in a “Customers who bought this item also bought” section at Amazon when “this item” is a 30-inch monitor. But why my book? Yes, it’s well regarded and selling well, but that’s true of dozens of other poker books. Why would poker players who are expanding their playing capacity buy my

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Lee’s email to me contained the only plausible answer to the question. Lee imagined being inside the mind of the professional poker player who just added more monitor space to his poker command center:

“Hmmm. I’m going to be playing a lot of tables at once. Now more than ever, I need to tilt less…” голова болит секс

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The meaning of “reconcile” in play here is “to make consistent or congruous.” In other words… How can someone walk the path of harmlessness if it has poker tables on it?

I anticipated that I would be asked this question after The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment Restless Natives rip came out. The title alone begs the question. Yesterday I was asked the question twice. In the previous weeks, about five other times. During the previous 6 years or so, I have asked myself the same question a few times.

Let’s say there’s a guy who plays poker, and he starts meditating every morning and doing mindfulness stuff all day long and reading about it and talking to knowledgeable people about it. He goes all-in with the practice and the teachings. He learns about harmlessness, intellectually, and it makes sense. He learns about harmlessness, experientially, and he watches himself and his world change. He likes where it’s leading. Eventually a day comes when there are no poker tables on his path. It might have happened suddenly, a quick turn: “Poker harms me and others! Therefore I shall no longer do it!” Or it might have happened gradually, with no forethought, just a naturally weaning. In either case, it was the move toward a life guided in part by an attitude of harmlessness that made him move away from poker, which, by his definition, causes harm.

Let’s look at another guy. He is a poker player, and last week he heard some things about meditation. He heard it would improve his concentration and make him less emotionally reactive. He thinks this would be great for his poker game. So he learns more, and he starts doing some of the practices, the ones that he thinks will help him focus better and therefore do better at poker. Over the next ten years, he builds his repertoire of mindful breathing and concentration exercises that he does while he plays poker, and he occasionally does them in regular life during high-stress situations. He and his life are made better (more tiltless) by the practices that he rightly thinks of as stemming from his poker life, in the same way that a businessman might think of poker as something that hones his people-reading skills. The concept of “harmlessness” is nowhere in the mix. Yet when he plays poker now, he harms himself much less than he used to. And when he plays poker, he harms his opponents less than he used to. The things he says. The things he does. The things he thinks. The vibe he sends out. The bitterness is gone. The meanness is gone. The need to make others small is gone.

The first guy quit poker. The second guy has no plans to quit poker. Both are walking the path of harmlessness.

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Did a fun interview last night with Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz at TwoPlusTwo.com Pokercast. My second time of probably many. As one of the original disciples of the Temple of 2+2, it is dreamlike to be a guest on that show. (Special thanks and howdy to Steven (*TT*), the maker of things that happen.)

Here’s a link to the interview:

http://pokercast.twoplustwo.com/pokercast.php?pokercast=88

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I am the second guest. My segment starts at 1:14:04 and ends at 2:03:30. We talk aboutThe Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment

and miscellaneous topics. I think my favorite line of the whole thing is just a few seconds before the end, when Mike plugs my book. He says:

“The book is “Elements of Poker” and if you haven’t read that, what have you been doing?”

If playing poker and coaching poker and writing about poker don’t work out for me, I think I could get a job as a wildlife photographer. As my resume, I would submit the spectacular sequence of photographs you are about to see.

To be an expert in this field, you must have incredible patience. You must anticipate accurately, and react instantly. These are skills I have honed at the poker table, and I believe they would serve me well in the wild. For example, on the day I took these pictures, I cunningly opened the front door, knowing that this would lure Max the Cat out onto his favorite hunting ground.

I crouched down and hid behind my iphone, in perfect position to take the perfect action shot of the kill strike. I can barely bear the anticipation even now, just writing about it.

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In the photograph above, we see the prey being lulled into complacency by the uncanny ability of the hunter to slip into his satori, just moments before the lunge. Below, the mighty beast vanishes like the wind.

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Sated, and victorious, the vanquisher retracts:

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In full and constant awareness, the being turns quickly to a new sound:

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I went to a restaurant with a person. When it came time to order the entrees, the person could not decide between the salmon or the halibut. I suggested a coin flip. “Heads, halibut. Tails salmon,” said the person.

The coin came up tails. The person ordered the salmon, and I did too.

I watched a server approach our table carrying two plates of food. The food on the plates was not the same. Uh-oh. I had been in situations like this with this person before. We were headed for a showdown.

The server sat one of the plates in front of me. On the plate was a warm, beautiful, fragrant collection of foods, including a piece of salmon. As the other plate was being lowered in front of my tablemate, a predictable exclamation was heard:

“This is halibut! I ordered the salmon!” barked the person to the server.

The server bowed. Nervously, and graciously, he said, “Please, yes, I will get your waiter.”

I said, “It’s okay, don’t worry about it, we’ll just trade.”

“No.”

“Let it slide, dude! Just pretend the server sat the salmon in front of you. Here, give me your plate.” I extended both hands. One to offer a plate, the other to receive.

“No. It’s not right. We should be able get what we ordered.”

This totally tilted me and I got rough. “You’re right,” I said. “This is inexcusable, and heads are going to roll. The first guy we’re taking down is that asshole who brought your food.”

The person would have none of my jocularity. “Hey, it’s not my fault that these people are incompetent.”

“May I remind the court,” I said, “that your food selection was decided by a coin toss. And that you refused to trade plates, thereby establishing as fact that whatever factors may be in play here, none of them are the food.”

I paused to re-establish my authority.

“If you complain when the waiter comes,” I continued, “the effects will be: ONE: a few ruffled feathers in the kitchen, TWO: your tantrum will eventually run its course. If, however, you choose to hold it in and zip it up and put it aside – if you can summon up a “Yes” when the waiter asks, “Is everything okay?” – then that alone would improve the universe. If, however, you can say yes and mean it, then all sentient beings of the universe shall be redeemed and recombined into the primordial gazpacho.”

“Very funny. Okay. I will spare them my wrath.”

“Thank God,” I said. “All I really wanted was to start eating.”

“Not so fast. My fish looks nasty.” The person slid the halibut toward me. “I’ll take that salmon now.”

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The title of today’s post is still the most clever name I’ve heard for “big boobs.”

Moving on…

This is a picture I took at Point Reyes. I like this picture because it started out to be a picture of the grass and flowers, and it ended up being a picture in which to my eye Kay looks really hot.

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In my opinion — meaning, in the ever-shifting unique reality that arises between my ears, which includes a vast accumulation of opinions that my reality has been exposed to — the United States recently went from having very poor leaders, to having very good ones, and an exceptionally good one at the top. We went from terrible to terrific, which according to the reckoning in my reality, is the best possible improvement. If I can’t be content when the best possible outcome takes place, then that means I am pre-wired to never be content no matter what. And that doesn’t seem wise. So I’ve decided to settle on “best possible improvement” as being good enough for me.

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A few days ago, I was watching an interview on TV, and I heard the phrase “slow food” go by. I’d never heard it before. Immediately, this meme was lodged firmly in a fertile part of my mind and it grew rapidly on its own, with no explanations needed from the speakers. Slow food. Produced and prepared slow — many implications there. Eaten slowly — another set of excellent meaning there as well. This was a fine phrase indeed.

One of the speakers gave me an aha moment when she said that part of the meaning of “slow” in “slow food” is that the only way to use ingredients right from the earth, and eat at home, is to actually cook, which takes time, energy, and knowledge. She said that this is a high hurdle for many people who want to eat better in ways that are least harmful to the planet, but can’t quite pull it off because their current habits are/seem unbreakable.

I Googled “slow food” and learned about an organization called “Slow Food” that’s been around a long time. During my brief stay at their site I got the strong impression that if there is such a thing as good guys and bad guys, these are good guys.

I read about “slow food” as it pertains to food production, and food preparation, but I didn’t see anything about rate of intake. Too bad really, since this is yet another way that fast food loses to slow food.

I’m always looking for reminders to slow down when I’m in mid glut. And this phrase has already proved its worth by coming to my rescue last night. It was like my entire arm-to-jaw feeding system was a horse. I was riding the horse. The name of the horse was, “Food.” We were galloping along, and suddenly, I said the words, and the horse obeyed: “Sloooow Food. That’s it. Slow down. Good boy.”

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