Laugh and the World Laughs With You

Last night I played some more NLHE at Venetian and found myself in an enviable position: on the immediate left of an extremely nice fellow who was an absolutely horrible poker player. It gave me an opportunity to practice making a losing player feel like he was having fun. I chatted about his home, his work, his Vegas trip and anything else I could. It was effective enough that after I stacked him a second time, we had a good laugh about it. He raised preflop and noted that I hadn't seen a flop in a while. I told him just for that I'd call him. I flopped top two and got his whole stack, with a teasing admonition afterwards to "Be careful what you wish for!" that made him laugh.

Stony-faced seriousness tends to be off-putting to recreational 1-2 NLHE players. They don't like it, they don't enjoy it and I've seen it drive them away from a table. Since they're the majority of the softest ranks in Vegas NLHE, it makes sense to ditch that mentality and try to laugh it up with them so that they relax and enjoy their losing.

My new friend, a Subway franchise operator in Charlotte, stayed in the game until 5am. I can't tell you how much he was stuck. I tagged him twice and I wasn't the only one. But when he left he couldn't have been in a better mood. And with $1,002 of profit, neither could I.

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Big-Bet Poker

In what I'm sure will come as blasphemy to certain parties, I've been playing a bit of NLHE lately. I think I've become an action junkie because after all the LHE I've played, NLHE seems dull.

Dull but profitable, that is.

I had forgotten how poorly typical $1-$2 players play. At Borgata in 2007 the $10-$20 players were just as awful as the $1-$2 players, and in many cases worse. In Vegas today the small pool of LHE players is made up mainly of LHE diehards. They may not be great but they're more skilled than Random JoeDonkey.

$1-$2 games, on the other hand, are full of terribad spewtards. Sorry, sir, bottom pair is no good. Oh, Mr. D-bag, you have an overpair? Then you have ze nuts! Look, madam, I know an ace is a pretty card but the books do not recommend taking A-2 up against two preflop all-in bets for $150. What's that? You'd like to make a complete non-sensical and hopeless all-in bluff on the river? Thanks for your chips!

I haven't given up on LHE. Venetian had three $8-$16 games last night at one point, providing more hope that they can breathe life into he Vegas LHE scene. But variety never hurt anybody or anything -- especially my bankroll.

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All Atwitter

I make my living writing. It's something I love and something that constantly presents challenges. One of the beliefs I've long held about writing -- even before I made it a profession -- is that the best writing is collaborative. An extra set of eyes will make any piece of writing significantly stronger than it would otherwise be without those eyes. I can't count how many times CK has given me suggestions, guidance, or constructive criticism on my own work that has made it immensely better than it would have been without her feedback. Whatever opinion people have of the pieces I've produced would be much lower if CK did not read my work before it is published.

Like Otis, Pauly, and Gene before me (to name three), I got into my current profession through blogging. Blogging is a solitary pursuit. Even on team blogs, the posts that are produced are written by one person. That person might spend a lengthy amount of time writing the post but in the end it is his/her creation alone. That's why I feel that blogging can't supplant more polished forms of writing. Blogging is the instant ramen of writing: it's quick and it can be tasty but it will never rise to the level of gourmet cuisine.

Blogs were the pre-cursor to Twitter. The problem that blog-writers encountered -- which Twitter users do not -- is that the act of writing something that people will want to read requires (1) passable writing skills, (2) a good writing voice, and (3) something interesting to say (or an interesting way to say something otherwise mundane). The vast majority of bloggers lacked one or more of those three attributes and as a result had difficulties finding and maintaining an audience. There's the added problem of a lack of collaboration in blog-writing, which tends to make the writing of a lesser quality than you can find at more traditional sources.

Twitter, with its 140-character limit, doesn't demand much in the way of skill, voice, or even interest. That has allowed Twitter to develop a larger userbase than blogging did and, like many things in life, for those individuals Twitter has become what they made of it. There's no "right" way to use Twitter. Some people use it as a public IM service among a group of friends; others use it as a self-promotional or marketing tool. A third group might find it best-suited for random thoughts or quips while still others think it is perfect for social and cultural commentary. Let's not forget poker players who use it to update tournament progress or whine about bad beats. Still, Twitter "writing" is limited to 140 characters. If blogging is a bowl of instant ramen, Twitter-ing is the powder packet in the ramen package. It instantly provide flavor but is otherwise unrecognizable as food.

Blogging and Twitter-ing have become entrenched elements of the poker community, for which I'm grateful. They have certainly enriched that community. The problem with them is that they have pushed the community to clamor for more content faster. It seems to me that we may be crossing a tipping point where polished, high-quality writing -- the type that is collaborative and takes more time, voice and skill to produce -- is receding in prominence in favor of instant ramen. And while most people will admit to the guilty pleasure of a bowl of ramen now and again, a diet solely of ramen and the chemicals in a ramen flavor package are not enough nourishment to sustain a healthy body.

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Oh Danny Boy

Years ago when I lived in NYC, I played at a weekly poker game with a bunch of improvisors and comedians. At its height, our silly little $10 freezout and $25 cash game regularly boasted about 30 players in attendance.

Somewhere along the way, the organizer of the tournament got the idea to start tournament stat-tracking. I believe we used a points formula based on finishing position and number of players; I know for sure we tracked money in and money out.

What I observed at the Above Malibu game -- and what I have observed with every public stat-tracking of its kind since then -- is that most of the players were happy to show up and lose before the stat-tracking started. They didn't think much about it. If they made the money one week, they were very happy to do so. But after the stat-tracking was implemented, those players stopped showing up after being presented with the cold hard data of their (net losing) performance over time.

So it was with some interest that I read a recent blog post by Daniel Negreanu in which he performs some analysis on WPT results using the WPT stats database. Nothing about Negreanu's analysis strikes me as terribly wrong. I think he makes some excellent points. But I also think he mis-stepped by naming names of many of the WPT's net losers.

Rule Number One in the winning poker player's handbook is "Don't tap the glass." Negreanu's point about the WPT's need for a satellite system could have just as easily been made without naming actual names of net losers. By doing so he's put those people on direct, unavoidable notice that they are net losers on the WPT over 30 events. Will that encourage those people to play more events? If they stop playing, doesn't that make the fields tougher for the people who already are net winners?

Some might say "but tournament results databases have existed on the internet for a long time." Of course they have. But the fallacy of sites like The Hendon Mob is that you don't see a player's net results, only their cashes. You might see that Doyle Brunson has cashes of $135,203 in 2009, but without some work it's difficult to determine: (1) what his net on those cashes was (about $97,000); (2) how much money he spent on buy-ins for other tournaments where he didn't cash; and therefore (3) whether he is a net overall winner or loser in tournaments in 2009. Those omissions make results databases mostly harmless -- perhaps even helpful, because they tend to paint a rosier picture of a player's results than is actually the case.

On the other hand, comprehensive, net-result-based public stat-tracking in poker is a terrible, terrible idea. It only serves to dry up the pond. I have always been struck by a quote Nat Arem, a founder of PokerDB, gave to PokerNews in early 2009. Nat was asked, "If you could, what one thing that could be attributed to poker's "boom" would you prevent or change?" His reply:

I wish that all of the things that made the poker world less fishy would've never developed. That would include things like datamining stuff, like what we do at the PokerDB... It would also include CardRunners... [and] StoxPoker [and OPR and PXF}... [and] things like rakeback. ... The reason why is because it turns poker into this business that essentially exists entirely for the good players to extract money as quickly as possible from the bad players...

Tapping the glass doesn't just take the form of berating a bad player for sucking out with a bad play. Like tilt and many other elements of poker, it can often take more insidious forms. Scare the fish away and after long enough they'll stay away.

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Method and Discipline

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

--Sun-tzu, The Art of War

Discipline is the key to successful poker. With discipline, you have a fighting chance to make money. Without discipline it is merely a matter of time before you spew away your chips. Tilt-control. Knowing where and how you tilt -- make bad decisions for bad reasons -- and discovering where and how your opponents tilt is one of the keys to success in the game.

Last night I played some NLHE at Venetian. About two hours in I hit one of those stretches where seemingly every hand I was dealt was an offsuit deuce or trey. I'm used to those stretches by now but they're easier to weather when you're up. (Everything's easier to weather when you're up.) At the time I was breaking even. I folded and folded and folded some more, looking for my spot to amass chips.

Eventually a hand developed on my small blind where three or four people limped in front of my red aces. I raised to $14 and got the desired result when only one of the limpers called. This player was what I would consider to be your standard $1-$2 NLHE tourist: married, late 30s, and far too passive to have much success in the game. He was the type of player whose preflop raising range is AK and TT+ and whose standard line after the flop is either to call or to check-call.

It was the two of us and I had to act first on a highly-coordinated flop, 5c-6s-7c. With $34 in the pot I bet $25. For the first time in more than an hour, I heard him speak. "Raise," he said. He made a minimum-raise to $50.

A few things struck me here.

* A middle-position preflop limper could easily be all over that board.
* Passive players don't raise the flop without strong hands.
* When a non-tricky player who hasn't said a word in more than an hour suddenly announces, "Raise," I usually take it as strength. Not just because he's raising, but also because of the tone and inflection of the announcement.

I peeked back at my hand. Yup, still two red aces. Flargh. I went to another one of the weapons in my arsenal and asked how much he had behind. I like to do this not only so I know how much I'm playing for but also as a body-language assessor. Simple acts like the way a person counts out and announces how many remaining chips he has can sometimes be helpful clues to how strong he is. My opponent had a confident $106 behind his $50.

One of my leaks -- one of the ways in which I make bad decisions for bad reasons -- is that in situations like this where I have been card-dead I assess a likely range of hands for my opponent. If I find one single hand in that range that I can beat I sometimes talk myself into continuing with the hand. In this spot I began to think that my opponent might be on a draw or even a pair-draw combo. As I considered that I remembered something CK reminded me about last week.

"The average $1-$2 NLHE player in Vegas plays very straightforward," she said. "You'll be able to spot the tricky players early."

This guy was not tricky. He was a straightforward player. He did not raise his draws, he called with them. He was not going to attack on coordinated boards because he was afraid of coordinated boards. For him to raise that kind of flop he would need a very strong hand. I finally pushed my red aces into the muck.

I was confident it was the right move -- even moreso when my opponent opened his hand to show 8c-9c for a flopped nut straight with a club re-draw.

You might think this was an easy fold. I had only one pair and all of the signs pointed to the fact that I was beat. But when you're stuck in a card-dead zone for an hour and finally take a strong starting hand to a heads-up flop against a much weaker opponent, sometimes it's hard to accept that you won't win the hand.

That's where the discipline comes into play. If you know your own weaknesses and your opponent's weaknesses, "you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." The chips will eventually be yours.

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Square Pegs in Round Holes

At my last job as a lawyer at an investment company in NYC, I spent too much time helping our paralegal deal with "Know Your Customer" documentation for the banks we used. It wasn't his fault; he was extremely competent at his job. The problem was that our operations used a layered, convoluted and unorthodox corporate structure that didn't jive with the expectations of the bank. We used to joke that bank KYC officers had a "standard" checklist for KYC and were trying to check off all of the boxes on their standard checklist -- even if those boxes didn't apply to our situation. We called it "Check The Box Syndrome". (Some other time I'll tell you about the "Clerk of the Day Rule".)

Check the Box Syndrome is an excuse for laziness and an unwillingness to apply critical thought and inductive reasoning to a scenario or problem. It is also currently the bane of my existence in a number of ways. But it serves as a good reminder that, at the poker table, there's no standard checklist for how to play any particular hand. And as soon as you fall into the trap of automatically trying to take the "standard" line -- even if that might be correct for the particular situation! -- you're regressing into lazy thinking that at some point down the road is going to bite you in the ass.

Speaking of critical thinking, a quick update on Rev. AlCantHang's "Challenge CK!!!!" NFL suicide pool after five weeks:

* 43 teams entered
* 5 teams were disqualified for failing to make a pick in the first week
* 4 other teams were disqualified for failing to make a pick in a subsequent week
* That leaves 34 valid entries.
* StB, 23skidoo, Drizz and DD List were eliminated in Week 2.
* APOSEC72, CaityCaity, tfennell and Dawn Summers (hahahaha, Steelers) were eliminated in Week 3.
* No one was eliminated in Week 4.
* Ruthless Aggression was eliminated in Week 5.

By my count, that leaves 25 teams (including CK) still standing, with Al already owing CK 9 shots. We'll probably make it through the next two weeks without too many eliminations, but Week 8 looms as a bloodbath...

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The Unseen Football League

Look, UFL. I went to your and inaugural game last night at Sam Boyd Stadium and gave you a chance. Really I did. But if you want to successfully put the "U" (that's me) in UFL, then heed what I'm about to tell you.

1. You need to market your league better. I live in Las Vegas. I watch sports on Las Vegas TV. But if it hadn't been for (a) CK mentioning the "new football league with a team in Las Vegas" to me, and (b) me finding a pair of promotional tickets to your inaugural game laying unclaimed on a table in the Red Rock Casino sports book during last Sunday's Jets game, I never would have known about the UFL, the Las Vegas Locomotives or the fact that a semi-professional football game was being played last night about 25 miles from my home.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I'm your target demographic -- male, 18-35 years old, sports aficianado, lover of football and Asian women, and with no way to actually see anything remotely resembling a professional-quality football game. If you can't find a way to reach me, your target demographic, your league is doomed no matter how great it is.

[Also -- if you're going to give away tickets to your game, try to give them to your target demographic, instead of people who will laugh and then leave them laying unclaimed on a table in the Red Rock Casino sports book.]

2. You need to establish team identities. This is kind of an offshoot of point #1. I get that someone in your league front office thought it would be cute and show league unity if the team logos and the colors of the uniforms in your four-team league all shared elements of the league logo. But when I watch a game (either in-person or on television), I don't want to have to strain to figure out which team is which. And if it's confusing for me watching, I can't imagine what it's like for poor maligned J.P. Losman trying to throw the ball. At least he'll have an honest excuse this time around when he throws it to the wrong team.

Team identity is crucial to building a fanbase. If all of the teams look and feel interchangeable, nobody will give a rat's ass about any of them.

3. Don't lie to the fans. You should assume that even the average fan is able to put two and two together. If you announce the crowd at 15,000 when everyone can see it's probably closer to 8,000, and then add that all seats for next week's game are $10, we're going to do the math and realize that you're already hitting the PANIC button.

4. Don't schedule against behemoths. You're already in the position of trying to capture a small slice of the sporting public. Don't further handicap yourself by: (a) scheduling your inaugural game against the MLB playoffs or (b) scheduling your championship game for noon PT on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I can assure you that nobody will be watching either game.

Those are just some friendly tips to get you started. It's up to you, UFL, where you go from here. Hopefully you've already learned your lesson from the NFL about parity. I'd hate to see all four teams in your four-team league finish the first season with identical 3-3 records.

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Find an Inefficiency and Make It More Efficient

Hmm, I never posted part 3 from the Venetian. Oh well. Suffice it to say, Hero goes on a sick run and wins a rack in an hour after dinner, the end.

Lately I've been thinking about inefficiencies. (Long story.) One that really irks me -- and here is where I give a nod of the head to the legendary "real" Dawn Summers, not because she clued me in to it but because she mirrors my feelings on this issue -- is how the NFL broadcasts games.

Dawn is an unabashed bandwagon New England Patriots fan, the most vile kind of football fan there is. Yesterday she wanted to watch her team beat up on the Baltimore Ravens from the comforts of her high-rise apartment in Brooklyn on her 50" flat-panel television. But because she lives in NYC Dawn couldn't do that. Dawn was stuck watching whichever games the local CBS and FOX affiliates chose to broadcast (presumably the Giants-Kansas City game, the Jets-New Orleans games, and perhaps one other). She posted on twitter: "Dear NFL, that you haven't figured out a way to charge me some dollar amt so I could see Pats games from my NYC apt is #MAJORCAPITALISMFAIL"

Of course Dawn's not entirely accurate. If she really wanted to she could spend $300 to purchase the NFL Sunday Ticket -- assuming she first agrees to become a DirecTV subscriber -- which would give Dawn access to all the NFL games she wants. Including those of her beloved "Riots". But that's not efficient in any sense of the word. Dawn's not interested in watching Buffalo Bills games unless they're getting blown out by the Patriots. She wants to watch Patriots games and only Patriots games.

The problem is that the NFL is using a business model from 40 years ago, when the US population was not nearly as mobile as it is today. Back then, if you were born in New Jersey you probably died in New Jersey or somewhere close by. Thus the NFL didn't have to worry about catering to out-of-market fans -- they were a very small segment of NFL fans that could effectively be ignored. Instead the NFL and its teams could set up agreements with major networks and their local television affiliates to broadcast the games in local areas only with the provision in some markets that the games could be blacked-out if the game wasn't sold out.

Fast forward 40 years. How many people do you know that have spent all of their lives in one location? I grew up in New Jersey, but: my parents moved to South Carolina; one brother is in South Carolina; another is in Colorado; I'm in Las Vegas and my sister is in Connecticut. People don't stay in their "home" regions anymore, but fans are made when people are young. Why should anyone be forced to change their allegiance to a local team just because they move?

You can also add fantasy football to this mix. The explosion in the ranks of fantasy football players in the last five years (thanks, internet!) has made football fans much more interested in watching out-of-market games so that they can see how their fantasy players are performing. Except those fans are limited to whatever games their local affiliates have chosen to broadcast that week.

Enter the internet to fill the out-of-market game void. Every Sunday enterprising individuals set up streams of football games on the internet, supported by ads, so that out-of-market fans can watch the games they want to watch. And every Sunday many of those streams are shut down -- either by site operators, internet access providers, local television affiliates or the NFL itself -- for copyright violation. The NFL and the networks have to spend their time damming these streams because they're locked into contracts and business models that are no longer relevant in a mobile, digital world.

Inefficiency No. 2 for the day -- television again. Today's L.A. Times features a story entitled "Will Hulu make you pay to watch?". The authors of the article buried the lede a bit so let me quote the relevant portion for this discussion:

Comcast is in talks with NBC Universal about pooling their entertainment assets into a new company that would own 30% of Hulu in addition to the NBC network and cable channels such as Bravo, E! and Syfy. Comcast would control the new entity and possibly have the clout to push Hulu to begin charging for access to some of its most popular shows

It's another flavor of the NFL problem. Comcast is upset because the inefficiency of their business model -- charging a subscriber a monthly fee for access to a package of channels and the shows thereon -- is being challenged by Hulu's model of letting viewers watch only what they want to watch, ad-supported.

You can have ALL of the shows (games) if you pay $100 / month. But you can't pick and choose which shows (games) you want. So along comes someone who figures out how to give people what they really want -- the freedom of choice to watch only what they want to watch, supported by ads -- and the reaction of the establishment is predictable: buy out (shut down) the offender and ram the inefficient business model down people's throats.

My first day in my Real Property class in law school, my professor described property rights as a bundle of sticks. Individual sticks could be distributed out to different people on different terms. Television, it seems, wants viewers to buy the whole bundle of sticks even if those viewers are only interested in one or two sticks. Television learned nothing from the travails of the music industry over the last ten years. But if history and the success of the iTunes store are any guide, television won't be able to hold back the tide for long. Its business models are about to undergo radical change, like it or not.

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Venetian $8-$16, Act II

[Read Act I.]

In the typical three-act structure, the first act is devoted to introducing the cast of characters. Check. The second act is where the hero (yours truly) encounters some sort of problem that requires resolution or an obstacle to be overcome.

You might not have noticed, but that was "foreshadowing", a hallmark of literary genius for centuries. I'm really working it here for you people.

Where did we leave off?

7:30pm -- I'm up $77 after the first hour of play. Nothing too crazy is going on. There are two locals at the table: Bill, the mid-60s version of me; and Tim, the too-tight guy who is the small blind when I'm the cutoff. Tim is bald, in his mid-40s, and looks like he has somewhere else to be.

(Did you catch the foreshadowing? Did you?)

7:42pm -- Two hands in rapid succession go nowhere. I make a mistake by limping QJo from early position, the pot gets raised, and I wind up check-folding the flop. A few hands later I'm in the big blind with 9h8d. There's a raise and three callers. I can close the action for one bet at 9-to-1. Am I supposed to play or pass here?

I read an article online once upon a time, somewhere, called the Myth of Suited Connectors. I believe it was right above an article entitled "Nabokov in the Postmodernist Land" and right below the Myth of Sisyphus. Anyway, if suited connectors are mythological -- and the theory was that it's not the suited connectors themselves, but the papal status conferred upon them as a starting hand -- then where do unsuited connectors fall getting 9-to-1 out of position? I wound up folding.

7:50pm -- Oh dear. I get pocket kings in first position and somehow nobody calls my pre-flop raise. Did I miss something? When did the table move to Bizarro World?

8:11pm -- My notes are getting a little spotty here because I was folding so much. There's a real tendency for my attention to be stolen by other things in the room when I hit card-dead stretches: a TV, the cute Asian massage girl really getting into the massage she's giving, or even playing with the features of my phone (note-taking, twitter, music, etc. No porn though -- I haven't yet reached a Johnny Chan-level of degeneracy.) My lack of attention is a bad habit. Not not-brushing-your-teeth bad. More like playing-video-games-at-2pm bad. It's not a productive use of my time.

8:30pm -- Disaster strikes. Ok, disaster is a bit of an overstatement. No tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, Dawn Summers playing Stud Hi/Lo's or other natural disasters were involved in the hand. It starts out simply enough. I'm the small blind with Kc5c, there are eleventy billion limpers and I limp as well. I'm excited to see a 4d-8c-4c flop because CK has indoctrinated me with the belief that clubs always get there.

The person who takes the betting lead in this hand is a woman who starred in The Dark Crystal. She's got facial features that make you think, "Yeah, I could totally see her as an alien witch-puppet in a Jim Henson production". She is also a very predictable player, the type who would not bet a naked four in this spot because she believes she's flopped a monster. (We can also rule out a full house.) So the most likely hand she's betting in this limped pot is an 8. I think I am the only caller but there might have been one other.

The turn 7h gives me a gutshot straight draw to go along with my clubs and, given the range I assign Aughra I think my king could also be good. This time I am definitely the only caller. There's no sense in betting or check-raising here; Aughra will never let go of top pair.

The river falls 9c because clubs always get there. Hooray! CK's theory is once again validated. I lead out, prepared to fold if Aughra raises since a fold will surely signify a full house. And she does raise. The thing is, for the life of me I cannot figure out what full house she could possibly have that makes sense given her tight-weak nature and the betting in the hand. She bet the flop and turn. 7-4 and 9-4 seem so unlikely. Could she have been betting clubs the whole time? Would she raise clubs?

When I'm confused I call. I was confused so I called. She showed 9-9. Bad call, Bobo. Bad call.

By hitting the sole "bad" out of my 15 outs I'm now underwater for the first time all night at -$32. Aughra asks me afterwards what I had. I respond, "It doesn't matter what I had. Nice hand."

9:10pm -- I don't think I've played past the flop in the last forty minutes. I'm at -$77 now but I do get the satisfaction of seeing Tim and Aughra bust on the same hand and being replaced by far looser, equally-as-passive players.

When you spend lots of time watching poker you develop an appreciation for the rhythms of the game. I've always felt it's easier to see what's going on in a hand as an observer than it is playing the hand. That might be because, as a player, you have too much information. The two extra pieces of information you have as a player -- your own starting cards -- can cloud your judgment about what's going on around you. As an observer you don't have that distraction. You can channel your inner Ty Webb and "be the ball".

Tim opens from under the gun. His tightness makes that the sign of Big Hand #1. Aughra three-bets from UTG+1. Her tightness makes that the sign of KK/AA. Then an odd thing happens. Three other people call three cold, none of whom I would characterize as the type of player to "get out of line". I have an easy fold from the small blind, punctuated by a declaration of, "Well I don't have a pair so I guess I have to fold." The action winds up five-bet-capped five-ways.

The flop is 5-8-9. I turn to Mr. Late 30s on my right and say, "One of those three just flopped a set, probably 8s or 9s." Tim bets, Aughra raises, one player folds, two players call, Tim 3-bets, Aughra 4-bets and then one of the cold callers 5-bet-caps. He chases the other cold caller out but Tim calls and Aughra calls all in. Tim check-calls the rest of the way, winding up all in at the river. His QQ is behind Aughra's AA which is behind the third player's set of eights, 88.

Seven bets with one pair. I sigh a little sigh and wish people would play that horribly against me.

9:21pm -- Some musical chairs. Half of the table has turned over in the last twenty minutes, with replacements coming from the must-move table. The two guys on my right are mid-50s Canadians from Calgary that are involved, in some capacity, in the oil business. I think that means that they laugh all the way to the bank at us sucker Americans and our dependence on foreign oil but I'm not really sure.

A bunch of us play another one of those multi-way limped pots. I'm on the button. Five or six of us check through Ad-Th-5d. Action on the 4h turn checks to Canadian #1. He takes a stab at the pot. I raise, driving everyone out of the hand, including Canadian #1. He squeezes his cards, shakes his head "Nope!" and mucks.

5h-3h is the new 2c-4c.

9:30pm -- I hit a rush of small pots (three in an orbit) to restore my stack to +$98. It's been a frustrating break-even two hours and now I'm hungry. I head off with a comp to the Grand Lux Cafe, where I scarf down a cheeseburger and box up a slice of key lime pie for breakfast tomorrow. The "real" Dawn Summers has somehow insidiously linked herself to key lime pie so that I am forever doomed to think of her when I order it.

To be continued...

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