Tommy Angelo

Below is a post I just posted at DeucesCracked.com, where my video series The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment recently won three awards.

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One of my favorite academy award acceptance speeches was from last year, when the Coen brothers won best picture for No Country for Old Men. One of them said something like, “Thank you, academy, for letting us play in our own little corner of your sandbox.”

That’s how I feel right now.

Another thing that was great about their speech is that it was very short. They are probably good at that from having won lots of awards. Well, this is my first time at this. So I’m going to take my time. :-)

Around 2003, in the middle of the poker explosion, when poker websites were sprouting up all over the place, and players and writers who had a name were aligning themselves with websites, I had a conversation with my wife during which I made two predictions:

1) I said that a few years from now, there would be lots of players who had become good at betting since the explosion, and some of them would realize that in order to continue to significantly increase their earn, they would need to move some of their improvement energy away from betting strategy, and divert it to discipline problems they have in areas like tilt, quitting, bankroll, and health, both mental and physical. I decided to become a poker coach, and I based my coaching program in part on that prediction.

2) I said that someday I would probably align myself with a website. I told her I had no idea what type of site it would be, or why it would happen. The main prediction I made to her was that I would only do it once.

A few years later, my good friend Joe Tall called me up to tell me about DeucesCracked. I already knew Chris and Rob from the 2+2 forums and I was a big fan of their writing and thinking and attitude. From my happy little home I watched with great enthusiasm as their company and union grew. And then a while later Joe called me up to tell me about the plans to merge with Jay and Chuck of 3bet.net. I was in on a couple group phone calls where the topic was me. Some brainstorming happened about how I might be involved in some way. Nothing came of it, in terms of action. All I remember was feeling very, very excited about the whole thing. Their vision and maturity and business savvy blew me away. I knew that DC was going to be something very special.

In January of 2008 I met Jay and Chuck in San Francisco and we tooled around for a couple days. Right after that, I talked it over with my wife, and we made one of the easiest big decisions I’ve ever made. There’s only one website for me from here on out. We had no idea in what professional capacity I might be involved with DC, or if I would do anything other than read and write posts. What I knew was that I had a home.

And then along came Wayne, and the idea of the Eightfold Path series, and the many conversations Wayne and I had laying out the outline, and then we did the first recordings, and then I started recording piano bits and inserted them in between our conversations, and then I went to Seattle a couple times to work with Rob and we built the first few episodes, and then more recording with Wayne, and more piano playing, and more audio engineering by me, and Rob and I designed a way to build episodes remotely, and by the summer of 2009, when the last few episodes were coming together, I was in the same kind of groove I was in during the late stages of working on Elements of Poker, which is basically as happy as it is possible for me to be, consumed with and by a project in which I had the support and wisdom of excellent persons to draw on, while I enjoyed the freedom and thrill of making thousands of final decisions.

So that’s one part of the joy of EPTPE and me. The other thing, the bigger thing, is about the message of the series, which is, in my opinion, in a word: peace. Somehow by being battered about by poker, I found myself on a path toward peace. And I wanted to share that journey for the benefit of others. It is a great honor for me, and Wayne, and Rob, to have EPTPE receive three awards. Winning the “Away from the Table” award is awesome. Winning “Best Overall Video” is very awesome. But the one that I’m really excited about is the “Best Episode in a Series” award, for episode 8. There was a couple months between when Wayne and I finished recording the conversations in episode 7, and started recording episode 8. Much extra planning and effort went into E8. My vision was to have it be a stand alone work. Kind of like, “If you are only going to watch one episode of this series, watch this one.” And my primary hope, really my only hope, was that E8 would land on the viewer like a sledgehammer, and like a feather, at the same time, and say hey, wake up, and soften up. I am going to allow myself to believe that because E8 was recognized by this award, my hope came true.

With heaps of gratitude,

Tommy

it was so quiet on my bench just now, it stunned me when it stopped, but not because there were any additional sounds at the end, see, i had unplugged the dvr this morning, something I only do sometimes since its hard to reach the cable to unplug it and even harder to plug it back in, and its across the room from where ive been sitting on my bench lately so in terms of decibels it adds approximately zero, but it’s the loudest thing around so i hear it, unless there has been fallen moisture outside, which there was last night, in which case i hear drops clacking around out there, but i can still easily hear the dvr over that, except for today because i unplugged it, and i can hear the refrigerator make occasional sounds two rooms away, and even though i do these long stretches of sitting on my meditation bench every morning, there are some mornings that are quieter than others, sometimes much quieter, like what happened before I decided to start typing, its a quiet that’s independent of whatever rarefaction and compression travels by way of air onto my eardrums, because the quiet i set out to write about here is aided by silence, but not dependent on it, because its all between my ears, where no actual sound is generated unless you count mental activity as sound, and if you do, you could think of what usually goes on between my ears as noise, kind of like the dvr machine, but way louder than that, and anytime you have a loud sound going, one you barely even notice, and then you notice it, you notice how loud it is, and then if all of a sudden someone turns it off, well, you definitely notice that, funny, it was there, and you dont notice it, then its gone, and you notice it, and its stunning, so much so that you might even want to write about it into cyberspace, but then you might think, hmmm, thats kind of weird, to write about something that isnt even there as if it was so important that it was worth writing about, and thinking that is okay too because really thats just the noise getting in the way of the quiet again as usual, so quiet, it was, this morning

In 2003, I intentionally folded pocket aces before the flop in a live, $20/40 limit hold’em game. It was, according to my meticulous calculations, the worst play ever. But that wasn’t the only reason I did it. I wrote an article at the time in which all is revealed:

http://tommyangelo.com/articles/the_worst_play_ever.htm

Today I am here to claim credit for also having made the second worst play ever. But this time, I had help – or more accurately, I helped. Most of the credit must go to my partner in perversion, Eric.

THE DATE: August 20, 2009

THE PLACE: The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, room 22017

THE PLAYERS: Me, Eric, and an unwitting cohort who shall remain forever oblivious of the gift bestowed upon him by our lunacy.

Eric is a young professional poker player who hired me as his coach. During the first day of a three-day coaching program, Eric told me that my article “The Worst Play Ever” had inspired him to fold pocket aces before the flop too. We briefly discussed the long-range effects that making this outrageous play had on us. Turns out, there aren’t any. But we did note that it gave us a quirky little bond, like two people who bump into each other and spill each other’s coffee.

At the end of the third day, after the official coaching was officially over, we decided to play some low stakes online poker and split our action, just for fun. Minutes later we were playing two tables of 6-max $1/2 no-limit hold’em, with Eric driving. Because my iPhone was still recording the coaching session, these events were etched in silicon.

Eric and I were having a grand time, casting aspersions and making proclamations exactly as I had coached him not to. I did some bold mock-yelling at my faceless opponents after I convinced Eric to call a river bet with ace-high. “You’re all a bunch of ding donks and I hate you all!” Eric did some mock-mocking of me after I talked him into bluff-check-raising the river against a player who happened to have the nuts. “It’s a good thing you charge a lot for your coaching,” he said, “because you suck at playing.”

A couple minutes went by with no interesting betting decisions. Eric was playing on autopilot as we discussed his method for quickly sizing up the skill level of an opponent, when suddenly, the talking stopped, and we both gazed lustfully at our latest hole cards: pocket aces, on the button.

“Now there’s a hand with some creative potential,” I said.

The first two players folded and the cutoff opened for $6. He had $200, as did we.

Eric said, “What are we doing?”

I said, “We’re … calling!”

Eric said, “Okay,” and he called.

Both blinds folded. The pot was now headsup.

Eric said, “Hey, we’re up against the bozo player.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I distinctly remember what I was thinking at the time. I was thinking about the financial and emotional damage we were about to inflict on this poor unsuspecting sap who had chosen to visually represent his being with the image of a mostly squashed cockroach.

Eric, anticipating a continuation bet by the cutoff, asked, “Are we instant calling? Instant raising?” Then he paused, and added, “Or folding?”

I erupted with a big loud laughing AHHHHHH-ha-ha-ha-ha and Eric joined in just as loud, right away. I said, “I like your thinking!”

The flop came out 10-6-2 rainbow. The cutoff bet $12 into the $15 pot.

Eric said, “This’ll be the first time anyone made a play like this, on purpose anyway.”

I said, “Wow, you’re really serious about this? That would be wild.” The tempo and pitch of my voice started going up as I processed what was really going on here: “Go ahead! Do it! Fold it!”

Eric giggled, and…

Click. Aces gone.

SMACK! A stinging high five.

We relished the monumentalness of the moment. This went way beyond coffee spilling. This was more like walking on the moon together and puking up our Tang. I rambled on about the incredible improbability of this event. First, I had to be wacko enough to fold those aces six years ago, and then write about it, and Eric had to read about it, and hire me to coach him, and then we had to share our action, and get pocket aces, and then, Eric had to somehow summon enough awareness to think of folding the aces at that perfectly absurd postflop moment.

That I would enthusiastically say yes to Eric’s suggestion was a given. This is the kind of thing that if you pass it up, you regret it forever. Even if you forget it ever happened, the regret lives on inside you, chewing away at your mind’s lining, dampening your dynamics in that way that makes people who haven’t seen you in a while say things like, “You’ve changed.” But they aren’t smiling. Okay, maybe it’s not like that. But it’s something.

Eric and I have talked and emailed plenty since that day, and the pocket aces hand has never come up. It’s like it never happened. Except it did. It’s like we are no different than before. Except we are. It’s like nothing ever matters, except everything always does.

Have you ever walked out of a concert with an odd sensation in your face and then realized that what you are feeling is muscle strain? Yesterday, Kay and I saw a show in San Francisco that exhausted my face.

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/

Garrison Keillor is one of the most intelligent, funny, and charming performers I have ever seen. His band is stellar. His piano player plays how I play when I have fantasy dreams of me on the piano bench being able to play exactly what is in my head.

Here’s a link from the page above about the band:

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/about/cast/shoe_band.shtml

What you see at a Garrison Keillor concert is a live radio show being produced. The show airs on PBS on Saturdays at 6:00 p.m and is replayed on Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m.

I’ve heard the radio show many times. Watching it happen is something else altogether, especially the hysterical segments where he tells a story while three people stand alongside him doing sound effects, and acting out characters, like old-time radio. The pace is so fast and they are so tight you’d think they’d rehearsed it for months. Except it’s a weekly show, with one actual performance, and that’s it. Never done again. It’s one of the most indescribable things I haven’t tried to describe.

Garrison is a genius writer.

And a graceful performer.

With a heart of gold, and a message of love.

And the music…

In the show we saw, one of his guests was an opera singer, which seemed fitting since we were at the magnificent War Memorial Opera House San Francisco. I’m not a fan of opera. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’ve simply never been to one. Two of the three songs that Raul Melo sang were comical. One was to the tune of some famous opera song, with the words changed. He sang about being a tenor in the opera. One of the repeated lines was “I love to die.”

Melo sang one straight-up opera song, no comedy added. He even brought out his own piano player. I closed my eyes the whole time and listened. I heard the person next to me move, I heard the person behind me clear his throat. I never knew how to temporarily clear my mind out and just listen until I started meditating. I listened to the singing. For the first time I got a glimpse of why some people really like opera.

When Garrison comes to your town, a great deal of the show is about your town. The material he did pertaining to San Francisco had me and the other 3000 people in the sold out show in a state of hilarity that was enough to, well, like I said, make my face ache.

My goal for 2010 is to not set any goals. So far so good. I’ve been up for two hours, and I have not set a single goal yet. Except … Damn! … about 5 minutes ago, I set a goal of writing a blog post this morning. Wow, this living-in-the-moment thing is a bitch! No wonder almost everyone almost never does it. It’s very tricky. I’ll try to demonstrate the basic problem…

I want to live in the moment more often, as in, be right here, right now, wherever and whenever here and now happens to be. I want to be aware of my mind’s activity, aware of my body’s arrangement, aware of my breathing, and aware of my surroundings. But the mere act of thinking those very thoughts takes me away from full awareness. See what I mean? And the act of typing blows any hopes of total awareness out of the water. After six years of meditating every morning and doing many mindfulness practices throughout my days, I am still unable to be aware of my typing fingers and be outside of the thoughts I’m typing about at the same time. The same barrier shows up at the piano. I think if I were ever to remain entirely conscious of my body, mind, and breathing while improvising music, I’d probably just wisp away in a cloud of quarks.

Okay, let’s start again…

My goal for 2010 is to consistently and gradually increase the frequency of goalless moments that I experience. My goal is more goallessness. My challenge is to see nothing as a challenge. Where did that come from? That’s another goal altogether. Let’s see, that would mean I want to see the challenge of goallessness as not being a challenge. Hmmm. Okay, how about this one: My desire is desirelessness. Alright, this is getting ridiculous. 20 minutes ago I set out with one simple goal for 2010, and I’ve blown it already. Stop… breathe… restart… reset. Okay. I am observing. I am observing that my stomach is empty. My goal is to put food into it. Finally! A goal I can sink my teeth into! Bye!

I’ve had many years when this time of year was the worst time of the year for me. Especially from 1990 to 1997. Those were the first seven years of my poker-playing career. I went broke in December every year. Around 1993, I noticed the pattern, vowing to be careful when the trees went bare. But it didn’t matter. Winter would come, and I’d run bad for a day or two, and that would make me play bad for a week or two, and ugh, I’d get despondent, desensitized, depressed. I’d keep playing, and I’d keep losing, and I’d beat myself up for playing bad, and I’d fall into a funk that made no sense and had no hope.

Just when it couldn’t get any worse, it did. On came the pressure. The pressure to buy presents for my family. I was supposed to be generous. And I really wanted to. But I had no money. I was supposed to have on a happy face. But I was fucking miserable. Can’t you just leave me alone? I don’t want to play that game now. Please, not now. Don’t march me through that paltry patronizing parade of pomp and presents again. And don’t even tell me I should be grateful. Not again. That was the worst of all. Listening to little speeches about how great it is just to be alive. Go fuck yourself.

Looking back at those woeful holiday seasons from a dozen years later, I think I can see what was really going on. The problem – as it so often is – was the assumptions that ruled my life, my thinking, and my actions. I assumed that Christmas pressure was real. I assumed that my obligations to shop were so important that it was right and proper that my happiness should depend on my ability and willingness to… to what… buy my dad a tie? I assumed that if I bought stuff and wrapped it up, I deserved to be happy. And if I couldn’t, or didn’t, or if I did and I didn’t feel good about it, then that meant I was a pathetic failure and I deserved to be unhappy.

I assumed that my actual worth was somehow related to my financial worth and the subsequent purchasing power it gave me.

I assumed that in order to give, I had to give a thing.

It never occurred to me to question all these bogus assumptions. That’s because I didn’t even know they were there. Do you ever stop and think, “I assume that if I stand in the rain I will get wet?” Of course not. Some assumptions are so imbedded in us that we don’t even think about them. That’s how it was with my assumptions about giving at Christmas. No awareness of them whatsoever. Total blindness. The result was that by putting so much attention on giving things, I was unable to give myself. But of course I couldn’t see that. Like I said, I was blind.

Since then, my vision has improved. The way I see it now is that the most important present I can give is my presence. Whether I’m talking on the phone with someone, or emailing, or in the same room, I just need to show up, completely – as in not be somewhere else, mentally.

This applies to the moment of physical gifting too. When my mother-in-law opens the gift I bought for her, I shouldn’t be worrying about if she’ll like it. When my brother opens the book I chose for him, I shouldn’t be wondering if he’ll read it. When my wife reads out loud the poem I wrote for her, I shouldn’t be spinning around in my head, thinking that she might think it’s stupid, thinking that she might be disappointed when she realizes I didn’t buy her anything, thinking, thinking, thinking. No. I should just relax, and hear the sound of her voice. I should just settle myself, and listen to the meaning she puts into the words. (And be ready to hand her a hanky.)

As it happens, the best gift I can give – full attention – is the least expensive of all.