Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 9

One more hand from Vegas.  I don't know if I could have played this better or not.  Like to hear some feedback.  Also about the prior post.

Game: 2/5.  We hold about 900$.  Have been at the table about an hour and have not done anything especially exciting.

We're on the button with AA.  One player limps UTG.  Cutoff makes it 25.  We call (?!).  UTG folds.

Flop is: Ah  5c 9d.  

Cutoff bets 40.  We call.

Turn is: Kc.

Cutoff bets 65.  We raise to 150.  Cutoff folds.

Cutoff is the irritating type of player who always can explain to everybody every single strategic move made by two players in hand--and does, as soon as it's over.  (E.g.: "I knew he didn't have an ace because he'd never bet the ace there, he'd just check." OR: "You had to either be betting to push me off a chop or for value and I knew you couldn't be betting for value because I had the ace." etc etc.)  We're only played two prior hands.  In one he raised and I called pre flop, then folded when an ace hit the flop.  (I had JQ).  In the second hand I raised the button with AQ: he called me out of position and then called me down on an AQ high board before making a crying call on the river with what was clearly a bad ace.  (Before he called he said "it feels a lot like you have AQ here."  Then, after making the call he bragged about how clever he'd been to identify my hand).

Anyway, back to this hand.  I smooth called pre in order to disguise my strength, obviously.  The flop was a dream; when he bet both it and the turn, I figured he almost certainly had an Ace.  My hope was that he might have AK and the turn had given him two pair--a hand I didn't see him getting away from very cheaply against my set (especially given how I'd played it).  I guess he must have had a hand like AJ or something, in which case I wonder if I should have smooth called one more street and hoped he maybe made two pair on the river.  I didn't have any real draws to fear--very unlikely he had a backdoor straight or flush draw given the betting.  So, I don't know.  Not sure what to think.

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 8

As promised, a hand I won but misplayed...

The game is 2/5 NL.  We have about 1200$ in front of us, covering the other players in the hand.  We are in MP.  A player limps in front of us.  We look down and find JQs.  We raise to 20.  The button calls and so does the original limper.

The flop comes: 4h 7s 9s.  The EP player checks.  We check.  The button checks.

Thoughts:  This check is non-standard, certainly.  Most players, with two overs and a flush draw, would bet out.  Honestly, I couldn't tell you, now, why I decided to, but in the moment it felt like the right play.  A small part was that the EP player had shown a tendency to play some aggro/tricky poker; I thought he was more than capable of check-raising a c-bet he perceived as weak.  I also think that NOT betting a flush draw actually disguises your hand.  Because everyone "knows" that "good" (by which we mean aggressive) players always bet their draws.   But if you don't bet the draw, you will sometimes find it easier to get paid off when you hit the flush.  Also, betting on a draw has value only if some of the time you can get people to fold without hitting your hand.  And in this case, with two players who'd shown themselves to be fairly 'sticky', I thought that was unlikely.  I could have bet here and it would have been fine, but I didn't.  (This street was not the reason I think I misplayed the hand, btw).

Turn comes: 8s.  EP checks.  I bet 35$.  The button calls.  EP folds.

Thoughts: Clearly, with a Q-high flush, I have to start putting money in the pot.  When the button calls, I assume he has a high spade (Ace or King, obviously) and is calling on a draw.  The button, by the way, is a man in his mid-50s.  He lives in Vegas and is clearly a regular at the Venetian Poker Room.  That said, I'd guess he's a slight loser, lifetime, playing at this level.  He hasn't shown a lot of imagination, and he shares a lot of the flaws of your standard 2/5 player; he overvalues medium-strength hands, he makes bad calls pre flop, and he bluffs in situations where it's obvious he's getting called.  He's not by any means a donkey, but neither is someone we particularly fear.

The river: 6h.  The board now reads: 4h 7s 9s 8s 6h.

I now check.  I've been watching this player for a while, and I've noticed a tendency on his part to bet any river when checked to (he's used this play to pick up a number of pots where, my guess is, he does NOT have the best hand).  So, the odds of him bluffing here aren't terrible.   Recall, too, that my assumption, based on his betting so far, was that he was on a flush draw.  If I lead out, betting into him, his missed flush draw will fold.  However, if I check (representing, maybe, that I too was on a flush draw--remember what I said earlier: everyone assumes that everyone else will always bet their flush draws) there's some chance he might try to bluff me off my missed draw.

So, as noted, I check.  He now bets 75$.  And I make what I decide later is a real mistake.  I call.

Why is this a mistake?  What should I have done?

I'll wait for the inevitable deluge of comments from my legion of rapt readers before I post more.

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 7

We got back from Vegas yesterday afternoon after passing a pleasant weekend sleeping, eating out, and going to the gym.  Yes, I actually went to the gym in Vegas (the wife went twice!)  It's this new health kick I'm on.  It's gotten so I start to feel physically...wrong if I don't do some kind of workout.  I also have less desire to eat rich meals and drink good wine than I used to.  Which makes Vegas a bit of an ill fit, vacation-wise.  But we still had fun.

Another joy that's lessened for me considerably over the years: poker.  I don't know why, but sitting for hours by myself at a poker table no longer holds much excitement for me.  (It's different when I'm with friends.)  This weekend, though, I wanted to play at least six hours; that's what it takes to get a poker room rate for one night at the Venetian.  (Interesting info: they apply the poker room rate to your MOST expensive night.  Which is pretty sporting of them.)

To keep myself from playing "Bored Poker"--in which I raise every hand, pretend I'm Phil Ivey, get called down by a lot of people with middle pairs on four flush boards, and then go on tilt--I played 2/5.  I played a super-tight ABC game; I made only two bluffs the entire seven hours I played (and in one I was probably bluffing with the best hand).  I caught decent cards and ended up winning about 1500$.  And yet, in the end, it wasn't all that much fun.  I mean, yes, it's obviously fun to win (way better than losing) but, I don't know.  2/5 no longer holds much excitement for me.  If I play my game, and I don't get sucked out on, I think over the long run, I can beat that game, in the average Vegas casino.  But "my game", the game I play to win at those stakes, is pretty unimaginative; it basically involves doing what the books all say--trying to only play hands in position, folding a lot pre flop, and basically only betting big when I have a hand that's better than top pair.

And then, too, even when you win, or even when I win, I feel somewhat dissatisfied.  Because you can always play better.  You could have always won MORE.  I made a few mistakes this weekend--I played a B+ game, I'd say--that, had I not made, would have upped my win total to about 2000.

Tomorrow: an example of a hand I won, but, in the end, misplayed.

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 6

I'd like to write about both True Detective and Game of Thrones but I don't have the time or energy to do so now.  The very short version is that I find/found both disappointing, but in different ways.  But I have watched them both, yes.  Yes I have.

We're leaving tomorrow for Las Vegas for Labor Day.  So the blog will be on hiatus for a few days.

I wrote earlier how I'm getting back into tennis.  As a result, I've been especially enjoying the US Open early round matches.  Last night I started imagining what I would do if a genie appeared and offered to make me exactly half as good as Roger Federer is at tennis.  Would that make me better or worse?  I'm a 4.0 on the tennis ranking scale, which is exactly in the middle.  (Novices are 1.0; pros are 7.0  Div I college players are, I think, 6.0?).   So, according to that I'm already slightly better than half as good as Federer; maybe 5/8 as good.  But of course that system is incredibly subjective and imprecise.  My gut says that I'd improve if I were made as half as good as Federer.

I'm leaving aside, of course, the question of how one would measure what 'half as good' means in terms of tennis.  Let's just assume that could be done.  The main question still remains: should I take the genie's offer?

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 5

The newest issue of Rolling Stone (I get it for free: I have no idea why) has on its cover Willie Nelson.  This makes me think of my esteemed friend, Johannes, who bears an unholy hatred of Good Sir Willie.  I don't really know why.  But he does.  Willie Nelson and monkeys--those are two things he hates.  But why?  What has Willie ever done to him?  Or monkeys, for that matter.

I'm going to respond to comments, btw, in subsequent posts.  Of course there have been not many comments yet.  So start commenting!  Is there some topic you'd like to hear me bloviate on?  Suggest it, and away I will bloviate!

The new episode of Hard Knocks is on tonight; that's something to look forward to.  So far I think the highlight of the show is Bryan Cox.  Check that: I know he's the highlight.  In the first episode he explained to his charges (the defensive line players) that the correct way to grab the opposing play was similar to the way that a man should hold a woman's breasts.  I.e. you don't GRAB, but you sort, of...I don't know, really.  His general point was lost on me.  I think it had to do with finesse, maybe?  But anyway, it was really funny.  

I've gotten my wife into it this season, which means that when I watch I get her persecutive.  That's been fun.  

I'm not very impressed with Mike Smith, though.  He doesn't have what it takes to win a Super Bowl.  I'll say that again.

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 4

Part of why I'm taking these occasional breaks is to allow all my many thousand readers to return without being deluged by 30 straight posts.  Thus giving them to absorb all the glory and brilliance these posts contain.

We finished Breaking Bad last night.  We ripped through the first few seasons, but as we got toward the end found ourselves slowing down.  Was this because we wanted to draw out our pleasure or because of how dark and difficult the last seasons became?  I think the latter.  I loved the show, but I don't think I could have taken any more of it.  I'm glad it's over.

BTW, anything I write about BB in this and future posts will assume a readership which has seen the entire series.  So: there will be spoilers.  If you haven't seen the show, you shouldn't read.

I don't place Breaking Bad in the very top tier of TV shows--it's not The Wire or The Sopranos.  It's right below that, though.  Its essential story is Macbeth: "I am too far steeped in blood..."--that should be Walter's motto.  Its brilliance and beauty is diagramming with harrowing precision the inexorable logic that leads Walt from a well-meaning naif who makes meth on weekends to a murderous monster willing to poison a child to further his own aims.  It's almost like a mathematical proof.  Once you accept the first step, the given--producing meth is an acceptable way to make money--the rest seems to follow inevitably.  At every step of Walt's journey, that is, he always seems to be doing what he has to do to preserve what he's already done.  And yet, in that preserving, he keeps being forced towards more and more heinous acts.  It's like the Martingale system for the soul.

It's probably too obvious to spell out, but his alias--Heisenberg--speaks to the bifurcation in his character which is at the heart of the show.  Heisenberg's work dealt with light, and its particle/wave duality.  Light is, somehow, at the same time both a particle and wave.  That seems impossible, and yet's it's so.  Is it therefore possible for a person to be both a devoted loving father and a ruthless and merciless drug lord?  Walt's fundamental error seems to be to think the answer is yes.

Other more random thoughts.

-aside from Bryan Cranston, the best actor on that show was Dean Norris.  Hank was absolutely crucial to that show's success.  He was a great character, and easy to overlook.

-a number of plot holes bothered me, especially toward the end.  How is it possible that Walt has administered the flower-based poison to the little boy Jesses cares for (Barack? Brack?) without the boy knowing who he is?  Similarly, how, at the end, is it possible that Walt has put riacin in Lydia's sweetener packet?  Hard to swallow (no pun intended).  Also hard to swallow, for me, was the scene at the end of the 4th season when Gus returns to his Volvo in the hospital parking lot, after Walt has rigged it with a car bomb.  Gus somehow magically senses something's wrong with the car and walks away.  I didn't buy it.  Although, to their credit, the writers did a great job of playing with this version of Gus--the idea that he was some near-divine unkillable robot--during the sequence when Walt places the bomb in the nursing home.  The moment when Gus walks out of the room, and we see him from profile, and think--somehow--that he's survived.  Fantastic!  My wife compared him in that moment to The Terminator, which I thought was very apt.  (If you don't remember the scene, they then show his other side, where the explosion has ripped all the flesh from his bones.  It's chilling.)

-I think my favorite season was the one where Jesse dates the heroin-addict girl.  I thought their entire relationship was really moving.

Thirty Days: Programming Note

I'm going to do three days on, three days off of blogging, I think.  So I guess it should be called "Thirty Days of Non-Consecutive Blogging."  But it won't be.  But that's what it is.

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 3

Thursday is my day off from caffeine, when I run errands, read, and don't try to do anything creative. Or even mentally taxing.  So, as is always the case, I'm a bit sleep and dispirited.  Mildly, only.

I'm getting back into tennis these last few months.  I found a guy to take lessons from and even bought a ball machine, which I haul out to the local courts once every few days.  As a result, I generally sleep better and feel happier.  Running and lifting weights alone can't compare to the workout you get running around a court for an hour in the heat hitting balls.

I've just finished rereading the first collection of William Trevor's Short Stories (The Collected Stories).  Now I'm starting on his more recent collection.  I'm also reading the mystery novels of Reginald Hill, a British writer who created the detective duo of Dalziel and Pascoe.  Good, page-turning fare.

The wife and I are three episodes away from finishing Breaking Bad.  I'll doubtless have some posts about that to come.

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 2

I thought of this today and decided to post it, as per my legal requirements under the ANCIANT Thirty Days of Internet LLD offshore corporation papers.  Or something.

Thirty Days of Blogging: Day 1

I'm going to post a little bit every day for the next thirty days.  Nothing large or ambitious, sadly, but little bits, at least.

I also wrote a longish rumination on the band Rush: I saw a documentary about them on one of the music stations, and it somehow affected me.  I'm not a fan of their music, especially, but there was something about the way that they portrayed themselves that I found simultaneously moving and irritating.  Neal Peart especially, with all his pompous and adolescent lyrics based on "the Individual vs Society" and "genius vs ordinariness" and all the other tropes that adolescent boys get off on--that got to me.

But that's for the future.  For now a few random thoughts about this and that.

Spoon: I bought the new album because Pitchfork keeps eulogizing their greatness.  I don't find it mind-blowing, but I do like it.  Especially the track "New York Kiss." Which is a great great name for a song, and a great idea.  That a kiss in New York as a meaning unavailable to a kiss in some other city.

Football: I've watched a shameful amount of football preview and roundtable shows this summer.  NFL Insiders on ESPN is a particular favorite.  Two thoughts: 1) Johnny Manziel will prove a disappointment; he won't make it as a starting QB.  2) Mike Smith (the Falcon coach) will never coach a team that wins a Super Bowl.

Milton!

I'm reading Paradise Lost.  Not for the first time, either.  I read it out of a sense of obligation the summer before I started grad school, in Sierra Madre, in 2000.  I had some idea that since I was going to grad school in poetry it would be expected, when I got there, that I had some sense of Milton.  In fact, Milton was referred to only one time during my entire tenure in grad school, by a student describing how a teacher had told him that he wrote like Milton. Which, I question if he did.

But anyway, Milton.  He was a poet.  He wrote, oh, Henry IV, Prometheus Bound, Ode on a Nightingale.  And, of lesser importance--a piece of juvenilia many have called it--Paradise Lost.

Anyway, my previous rencontre with Milton had been, let's say, unappealing.  (There's a much quoted Samuel Johnson line about Paradise Lost--nobody ever wished it longer--that came to me often then).  And I'd sort of accepted that Milton and I were never going to really gibe, as it were, until, somehow, in the last few weeks, returning to PL, I'm just...in awe.  It's like the most jacked up, over-the-top parts of Shakespeare had been filtered through an incredibly convuluted syntax, and then weighted down with a metric ton of massively esoteric Classical allusions.  And yet for all that, it's amazing. It almost makes you want to become a stern judgmental Calvinist Christian.

Here's a taste.  It's in Book Two. The fallen angels are trying to find one of their number to attempt the perilous journey out of Hell, to earth....

all sat mute, [ 420 ]
Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; and each
In others count'nance read his own dismay
Astonisht: none among the choice and prime
Of those Heav'n-warring Champions could be found
So hardie as to proffer or accept [ 425 ]
Alone the dreadful voyage; till at last
Satan, whom now transcendent glory rais'd
Above his fellows, with Monarchal pride
Conscious of highest worth, unmov'd thus spake.

O Progeny of Heav'n, Empyreal Thrones, [ 430 ]
With reason hath deep silence and demurr
Seis'd us, though undismaid: long is the way 
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light;
Our prison strong, this huge convex of Fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round [ 435 ]
Ninefold, and gates of burning Adamant
Barr'd over us prohibit all egress.
These past, if any pass, the void profound
Of unessential Night receives him next
Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being [ 440 ]
Threatens him, plung'd in that abortive gulf.
If thence he scape into whatever world,
Or unknown Region, what remains him less
Then unknown dangers and as hard escape.
But I should ill become this Throne, O Peers, [ 445 ]
And this Imperial Sov'ranty, adorn'd
With splendor, arm'd with power, if aught propos'd
And judg'd of public moment, in the shape
Of difficulty or danger could deterr
Me from attempting.