Storm Puts Brakes on Poker Jones

A TROPICAL STORM APPROACHES the area, threatening rain, wind, and flooding. I haven't wandered next door to the supermarket to engage in the ritual pre-storm purchase of milk yet. I used to wonder why folks swarmed the milk before hurricanes and snowstorms, but then I began drinking coffee, and then I Understood. Don't keep the residents of America's hurricane belt away from the morning joe, and maybe a nail to suck down while nervously eyeing the Weather Channel.

Aside from a catastrophic rainstorm back in 1994, I've lucked out during recent weather upheavals. Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999 laid waste to any parts of Bergen County near streams or rivers. An apartment complex owned by my landlord took on water to the second floor. Businesses near this building were saturated to the ceilings and condemned. All of this was only a couple hundred yards from my digs. While riding the bus on the Garden State Parkway the next day, I could see water shimmering in an unbroken sheet across the backyards of houses along the highway. Mere feet from my previous place of residence in Hackensack, Route 17 had become an inland sea through its Lodi–Rochelle Park stretch.

It's a stone bummer I won't be able to travel this weekend, but there's nothing out there that won't wait until fairer skies make my drive easier. I've got an itch to hit one of the local casinos. I haven't visited a cardroom since my return from Las Vegas. The Borgata is hosting a series of poker tournaments, which has the benefit of bringing out more crummy players, and would offer me another chance to say hi to the one and only Dr. Pauly of Tao of Poker, who is down there covering the tourneys. But that would take me straight down the barrel of the storm.

Heading north to Connecticut is the other option, but then I'd get tagged by Hannah's remnants while driving home in the dark. I do want to check out the expanded New England poker market soon. After missing out on the hold'em craze nearly from Day One by closing its poker room 5 years ago, Mohegan Sun launched a new cardroom this Labor Day. I've been giving them some time to get their shit together . . . and from the looks of this thread on the 2+2 Forums, they still have some glitches to shake loose. I hope they do.

It does seem they're trying to distinguish themselves from the 100-table poker room down the road at Foxwoods. From what I've read, poker dealers at Mohegan Sun keep their own tips, rather than following the lead of Foxwoods poker dealers many years ago to pool their tips with those earned by the rest of the casino's dealers. Nearly alone among the nation's poker dealers in this practice, Foxwoods' dealers occasionally get accused of being less committed to customer service. Insofar as the tips they're earning through good performance aren't entirely "theirs," they're perceived as not working for them as hard as Vegas or Atlantic City dealers do. I've seen dealers of every level of dedication at the Woods, both at poker tables and the regular casino games, but the rep was strong enough to motivate Big Mo's card-slingers to follow the example of their colleagues across the country and hang onto the chips they pick up during their downs.

Even grading the reactions of 2+2's posters on the usual curve for Internet opinions, there still seem to be some areas where the Mohegan Sun management can improve: selection of table limits, confused floor staff, the announcement system (i.e., the PA that calls players to games), weird cards. Plus they may have overtaxed their greenhorn dealers by soft-launching on a holiday weekend, which is going to stress even a veteran crew. Their official launch is said to be in October sometime. Still, even a couple of weeks' duty will tighten the operation, assuming the management is observant and attends to the real issues (and doesn't give in to any little nitty twitch of the notoriously fussy poker community). I'm looking forward to visiting, now that buying gasoline only requires a single kidney for collateral rather than both lungs or a leg. I like the ambience at Big Mo more than the mall-with-gambling feel of their older cousin down the road, Foxwoods. Granted the latter has upgraded its apparatus, pairing up with casino giants MGM Mirage to open a new wing. I haven't seen either the new Sun poker room or the Foxwoods expansion yet, and I'd like to take a day to explore them both.

This month will be a travel-packed cavalcade of whimsy, though. Two days in Central City midmonth, then four days at an industry convention in the final full week of September. Keeping the weekends free might be the only thing that keeps me sane amid this, and I might end up preferring just hanging locally for a boardgame night or run to a local eatery. We'll see how weekend plans pan out as this summer lashes us with its final few weeks of spiteful heat and hurricanes, before yielding to the welcoming embrace of autumn.

Seat Open, Table One

MIGHT AS WELL TAKE A moment, while my wash is sudsing itself to cleanliness, and I'm taking my weekly dose of political discourse via Face the Nation, to update the masses on how things progress in life.

I had the pleasure this week of returning to the weekly poker game. I'd been absent since late November, due to time pressure from planning the holiday party and staying late at work to get the magazine out — if not on time, then less late. At the turn of the year, I made the decision not to stay after regular working hours unless it directly served me. For example, I enjoy updating the website and writing, both of which are best accomplished without interruption; I've done both either before or after regular hours. But, I take that time back by snipping it from another day or tacking it onto a lunch hour.

My former supervisor was redlining herself for months by working 1 or 2 hours after hours, affecting her health in the process. That's not for me. As passionate as I may be about something in my life, be it labor or leisure, nothing is ever going to be worth my physical or mental health. I've seen both sacrificed for jobs. That won't be me.

Having made this resolution, I took advantage of not being directly supervised to say yes to the weekly card game for the first time in almost 2 months. I simply couldn't have fit it in before the end of the year, and had trouble justifying the time after making the committment not to stay late. And there was a question of balance. I didn't want to stagger in Friday mornings looking less than ready to contribute. It wasn't necessary for me to distort the all-important weekend by staying all night at the game Thursday. It's part of trying to achieve balance across all areas of my life so I don't have to do catch-up work to address someplace I've been less attentive. With exercise, nutrition, cleaning my apartment, writing, and leisure, everything should have its place.

To that end, I've been thinking about my trips to Atlantic City. Not my group gambling binges of late, but rather my solo poker trips. With other folks in the car, you can at least keep up a conversation and keep the driver from drowsing off. Pulling driving duty alone twice in 24 hours is rough; that last hour during the drive home can get dangerous. Now, Harrah's has been sending me room-rate offers since November, some of which are quite attractive, especially when contrasted to the cost of an accident while falling asleep at the wheel.

It's not necessary to stay until the bitter end at poker night and arrive home at 3:30 a.m. on a weekday. It's something different to jam all night at the felt on a Friday or Saturday, when I can sleep in the next day, and my gym trip isn't scheduled until the afternoon. If I'm up late on Thursday, however, it takes me through Sunday to make up that sleep deficit. When I was out of work, it was easier to plan that sort of thing out and get my job-hunting done during the first four days of the week, then grab a nice 8-hour chunk of poker for myself and cruise home under tweeting birds. With the current workout schedule, it's better to make an earlier night of things so I can still make it to the gym on Friday.

Still, new habits take a while to establish themselves, and this one is no different. I thought I might ease back into things last Thursday with a 2- or 3-hour spin 'round the tables. Betting was more aggressive than I remembered it during the early hours of the game, so I strapped in tight and waited for a good hand.

Well, the hands did come, but not until 1:00 a.m. Unlike most of the players, I hadn't had to rebuy through that point. I was feeling quite comfortable and having a load of fun. More surprising, I felt more awake later into the evening than I usually do at the game. Could be due to better sleeping habits and regular exercise. All the more noteworthy from my having avoided caffeine that night.

Between taking down two all-in bets with the nuts and catching a miracle river card on a third contest, I finished comfortably into the black, even if my sleep meter was finally verging into the red at the 3:00 hour. Perhaps not the wisest move, seeing as I was backing out of a mild cold I'd picked up on Wednesday. And I faced a full slate of work the next day, which began in less than 4 hours from my return home. But I tell ya, I was feeling strong through Friday, and I even tacked 30 minutes of work onto the end of the day to compensate for a late arrival Wednesday due to said cold.

So next time I will play through about 10:30 or 11:00 or so, and with any luck still make a full day of it, from gym to commute home, that following Friday. I did miss my few hours at the game each week, and I think a break actually made my play better.

Of course, balance is relative. One of the players, having had a monster week after big wins that night and on Monday, made good on his seeming jest that he would book a flight to Los Angeles to play in the Saturday no-limit hold'em tournament at the Commerce card room. Just up and zapped out to the Coast. As much as I am clawing at the walls to get back out to Las Vegas, even I'm not quite that crazy.

I mean, I'd at least water my plants first.

Sprinting Toward Deadlines

I HATE TO DISGORGE week-in-review posts rather than sharing smaller items of interest during the week, but the job has been keeping me later due to the rush to press of the current issue. Also, I have been getting up at 5:00 to 5:30 a.m. successfully for the entire week to get to the gym before the rush, which causes my string to run out by about nine at night. I didn't even do too much to plan for the party, which will make this weekend a goatdance.

Let's start with Monday. As I described here, one of the team members on my magazine left that day. For breakfast, many of us brought in food. I snagged a cheese danish ring from the local bakery (which, by the way, I escaped without buying anything for myself). The managing editor was in the office that day, and took us all out for a goodbye lunch. This after we had been told the week before that we couldn't go out because the issue is late and we need to concentrate on it. The ME had said she would bring in sandwiches from the local joint, but when the day arrived, she seemed to remember this as a nebulous request that we arrange this. You might have picked up that we occasionally have to work around this person. Still beats the other job by a parsec, but a bit maddening when you need to expend the effort to out-think and anticipate. So we ended up burning extra time out eating lunches that put us to sleep in the afternoon, just when we needed to push hard on the issue and send it out the door.

I ended up staying about an extra hour four days of the five to get this done. Not worthy of a medal in the grand cosmic scheme of things. However, I did note the amount of extra time so I could take it back at a future time. Give nothing to an employer without receiving something tangible. Keep in mind that we are now down one person. My services are now even more in demand. It gives me leverage, at least until we fill that spot and the new person gets up to speed. You never like to look at things in this sort of a mercenary way, but fundamentally, unless you're self-employed, you're just an SSN in an Excel spreadsheet. The moment your financial liability (pay, benefits, training, equipment, etc.) no longer brings a company profit, you're expendable. That I have my fingers in a few crucial pies right now is comforting, but what I really need to do is develop skills that can't be outsourced.

One of these is writing. Foreign companies can compose Web pages, lay out text, even edit in a rudimentary fashion. They will never be as skilled a writer as a native with an ear for the subtleties of the language and an eye on the marketplace. When I started at the new place, I was given a writing assignment within days. I had to interview a source, flesh out her proposal into an actual article, and write it in the magazine's idiom and with the available column inches in mind. I succeeded in all three areas. But it's just a start.

With the departure of my coworker, comes the chance to do more writing of this kind. I've been composing short report-type items for columns that contain industry updates for our specialist readership. It keeps my hand moving. I've also had the privilege of heavily editing or rewriting some of our more personal columns, reminiscences from people about their profession: moments that defined their careers, inspirations that might resonate for others, success stories, and the like. These folks tend not to be writers, and the pieces need a good edit at minimum. I've been careful to be sensitive with them, though, because you don't want to bruise someone's treasured memories in the process of crafting them structurally into a more potent piece of writing. I believe I'm succeeding at that; the contributors have been strongly positive over how I've polished their work. I've done the same for a new fitness columnist whose work we've been running. Though there is less potential emotion wrapped up in each piece, and she's more practiced as a writer than the folks I just mentioned, it's still someone else's work, and I've endeavored to let her passion shine through any stylistic or grammatical revisions I've had to make.

None of these pieces carry my byline, however. I want to produce another piece like my first one, or more if possible, so I can show future employers or possible providers of freelance-work my clips. I recall that in my career exercise, I envisioned being a bylined writer. Perhaps it's not as farfetched as I thought it was, upon writing it, back in April. It's still an impressive list of goals.

Now that I think of it, perhaps this exposure to amateur writing, and the work needed to improve it, is an education in how to produce copy that editors will seek out because it spares them the effort of polishing it. Line up three equally qualified freelance creatives before a deadline-haunted editor. Two produce work that needs tweaking or refinement. One hits the marks nearly every time. Who has the edge for future business from this stressed editor? I recall the very first meeting I had with the career counselor, my first workday of joblessness, in which he said our job was to find ways to convince rich people that giving us money makes their lives easier. The statement as phrased struck me then as a touch "classist," but I understood him to intend rich as "able to purchase your goods, services, or expertise." Then as now, it also strikes me as true.

Back to last week. We all said a regretful "see you later" to our departing coworker. Her office is close by, and two former employees of my company are there and still in close contact with folks at their former workplace, so future group lunches are in the offing. Plus we exchanged email addresses, so I can continue to call upon her experience and good spirits as the months at my current place, I hope, become at least a year or two.

Tuesday through Thursday were blurs of fitting copy, writing last-minute pieces, and getting them down to the artist before having them go through the approval process. Copy was still being approved on Wednesday, and even on Thursday, I had to compose and stick in one more small (100-word) item because the ME thought we needed more in one column. I also secretly wrote a second short piece in case this one didn't work out. (I can use it next issue, though.) This was the craziest schedule since we redesigned the magazine in September. I am told we used to have considerably more time to assemble issues, and I'm not sure how we might reverse the current just-in-time trend, what with one seat unfilled now. I barely have time to plot out items for future issues while racing through the copy for the current ones. I'm sure there's some way to render that state of affairs into a positive resume entry. I did manage to make up a couple of schedules for myself, so pieces get produced and sent around for approval at regular intervals. Such a schedule has been used some months before my arrival, but when they were down one person (sound familiar?) it went off course. I hope to avoid that fate by structuring the production of copy very rigidly, so I don't have to hustle as much and potentially trip while sprinting toward the finish and wreck a deadline. Further.

The ME was in the office through Wednesday before returning to Maryland. We spent Thursday sending PDFs to prepress and approving them via an online proofing system. My immediate supervisor was out taking a much-needed day off, and our other editor was working from home to push a late piece out, so in contrast to the rest of the week, Friday was far more relaxed. My task that day was to compose a spreadsheet of all the articles for the outsourcing folks to make our Quark docs into Internet files. Next week, I will spend two days working on the Website reviewing this work and approving or tinkering with it, then make the site live. My first couple of trips through this process reminded of the last bit of Star Trek II, when Spock has uncorked the Enterprise's reactor and is diddling with its innards while getting a gamma-ray facial. I had instructions for what to, and they seemed to make sense, but Jeebus, do they really want me noodling around the front page only 2 months into my stay? Don't they know I know nothing? Evidently I knew enough, as the process worked, and the calls for assistance I've had to make during the procedure have been getting less frequent.

The only snag is that this sheet is now being reviewed by the ME, who has two other whole magazines to work on in addition to ours. Last time, she took 2½ days to approve it, sending it back at the useless time of 4:00 on a Friday. How do I forward this to the next guy and say with a straight face, "Can you get this out before you go?" I've repeatedly stressed that I will be out of the office (and unlike her, not working while out) next Friday and Monday, so I hope this lights the right kind of fire under her progress.

The exercise plan has been progressing without flaw. When I weighed myself Monday morning, after the siege of Thanksgiving calories, I was gratified to see I had lost a pound since the pre-holiday weigh-in. No small feat, what with my diabolical mother replenishing the M&M dish each time I came back to their house. (She has sequestered several tons of holiday M&Ms in a bag of holding.) I followed the same schedule this week, hitting the gym slightly late only on Wednesday, and only because I decided to take some of the time I'd been spending at work back and get in a half hour late. I regretted it: The gym was significantly more populated. Best to arrive at five. I cannot argue with the results.

I didn't even have to decide whether to play cards or exercise. Either the game didn't roll, or I was left off the invite list for this week. I'd said last Saturday afternoon that I'd play in the usual game, which hadn't rolled Thursday due to the holiday, but by the evening, I was exhausted, so I canceled. The host sounded pissed, but he only had six people to begin with, and he has an unrealistic sense of optimism during busy weekends like this one when he tries to assemble an off-schedule game. One of the players who'd committed did not want to play if we only had five players, which my cancellation caused, but I refuse to play if I'm too tired to make good decisions, and I don't much care for short tables myself. Besides, I was (and still am) mulling a trip to Atlantic City on an upcoming weekend (or may be going there as part of a bachelor party; still in flux at this point). Why play tired, at a short game where the blinds are gonna peck me to death like an insistent duck, with some of the superior players in the gang, when I can just wait until another Thursday or play against certified mongoloids at AC or Foxwoods?

The game might actually be slowing down. Full tables have been less common. As I mentioned in my last post, losses have caused some of our regulars to call a temporary or permanent halt. The host has not grasped the power of restraint, in that he has sometimes hosted two or even three times in a week, which accelerates whatever win–loss trends are present in a group. He needs a little help with impulse control (which admittedly proves profitable at the table sometimes). My own impulse-control problems mostly have resulted in me being a fatass. My job now is to reverse this trend. The cards will come when they come, and they'll be sweeter when they do. If I put my ass in a seat after a long drought of no play, and I've gotta wait an hour for a playable hand, so be it. I'll wait. Let the losers toss chips in on every marginal holding just because they haven't seen a pocket pair all day.

For that matter, let the losers eat all of the holiday sweets that will roll into the office between now and 2008. I've got three scheduled binges: the company party, my own, and Christmas. Outside of them, I will rein in my impulses and enter the new year feeling better than ever.

Today brings a binge of cleaning and party prep. And maybe a little food shopping too: Tomorrow is supposed to be a genuinely foul, wintry day. Good for staying in and writing some Christmas cards while brewing chili and watching the local football teams founder. With the bright sky beckoning me into the cold afternoon, I will get my ass in gear and enjoy being my own boss for a couple of days.

Two Weeks of Exercise Boot Camp

I JUST COMPLETED TWO solid weeks of gym attendance. Seven days per week. Four days of weights, three of cardiovascular-machine work. A fortnight of fitness.

In October, I had been hitting a rut — progress had slowed, and my home nutrition was shaky. By early November, after missing 5 days to dodge a cold, and ending up feeling like shit due to nonattendance, I took a solid look at my gym routine to see if it was part of the problem.

I concluded that it was. My three-day split was not making things any easier. By split I mean the division of exercises for different body regions over a training period. I had been doing back and biceps on the first day, legs and shoulders the second, and chest and triceps the third. Abs got in there every two days . . . usually.

Not a bad arrangement, but I was wasting a lot of time with more exercise movements per body part than I really needed. I was doing two movements for my chest (dumbbell press and pectoral-fly machine) but three for my shoulders, and six for my legs. The legs/shoulders day felt like a deathmarch as a result, and the chest/triceps day left me wondering if I'd actually done any work at all. Plus I was doing very little cardio work aside from 10 minutes of warmup before hitting the iron.

In mid-November, with about 6 weeks of potentially unhealthful food pouring into the office, and Thanksgiving, my party, and Christmas looming, I decided I needed to simplify that weight-training schedule while stepping up the cardio. I dropped back to only a few motions per region (my legs were most appreciative), made my abdominal exercises part of two specific days on the calendar, and simplified the whole affair by deciding to make every day a gym day:

SAT: Abdominals and cardio (30 minutes elliptical)
SUN: Cardio (20 min each of treadmill, elliptical, and ski machine, in whatever order)
MON: 10 min cardio warmup; back (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and chest (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
TUES: 10 min cardio warmup; legs (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and shoulders (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
WED: Abdominals and cardio (30 minutes elliptical)
THURS: 10 min cardio warmup; back (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and chest (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
FRI: 10 min cardio warmup; legs (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and shoulders (2 exercises, 3 sets each)

This schedule also offers me the flexibility to switch the two consecutive cardio days with the single one in the middle of the week, or to skip one of them, in case I feel like I'm verging on overtraining (which stems from not giving muscles sufficient time to recover between workouts).

Combining this with proper nutrition at home is critical, as I've found that to be the real barrier to progress. Avoiding spare Halloween candy at work is enough of a pain. Sidetracking myself with a crappy dinner is terrible, though. If I can hold to this discipline, I will shake off the negative effects of the holidays, build stamina for putting the party together (last year I was in awful shape heading into the party, and nearly fell asleep halfway through the actual event from exhaustion), and keep my immune system vibrant as cold season flares in full.

A bonus: The workplace has a positive attitude toward employee health. They're hosting a health assessment 2 weeks from now, with tests for bodyfat percentage (I hope they bring the big calipers), blood sugar, and nonfasting cholesterol. Participants get gift cards and can win iPods. Better still, they might be considering some reimbursement for gym fees, and they claim that any net savings in employee healthcare costs as a factor of our combined efforts will come back to us in some fashion. This is on top of offering free flu shots in early November, something the management at my last job unwisely neglected to do.

My target arrival time has been first thing in the morning on weekdays and Saturdays. During my joblessness, I had made 3 p.m. my target time, which worked great. The gym was sparsely populated, teens were still in school and not dawdling on the equipment (which happens at night), and plenty of parking. When the weather was nice, I could even walk it. The only thing to slow me down now has been the need to defrost my car. On Saturdays, the place is jammed at all times except at the open and the last couple of hours, at which point I'm usually doing chores on the road someplace. As for Sundays, with only cardio scheduled, I can get there in time for the 1:00 football game and find whichever machine I want.

One side effect of my efforts has been skipping poker night. This is possibly worth a full post, but lately the host down in Maywood has been having trouble assembling a full table. Successive losses have sidelined some of our regulars, and some folks can only arrive after 11:00 or so. I can't stay that late any more. During the last four months of my previous job and the next three on the bricks, it was easier to attend and play through 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Now, with a job I care about, and a morning training routine I feel is more important, I have cut way back on both my attendance and how late I stay when I go. I've learned to leave after my attention flags — a key skill when in Vegas, land of a million distractions — or when certain players leave for the night, taking their easier money with them, and are replaced by stronger poker talents. So between the occasional no-show night when the host cancels, and my more selective attendance, I've freed up time for the all-important sleep that I need to let muscles heal.

I'm proud to have completed two full weeks on this new schedule, but I have a very long way to go. It can't just be through the end of the year; it's got to be for life. Creating a more flexible, yet more easily followed, schedule of activity is one step. Minding all of the other factors contributing to fitness is the biggie. I'm tracking my progress in a notebook, along with commentary on how much weight I might be able to add next time, quality of reps, etc., so these individual workouts don't exist in a void. I may never fit into size 34 pants again, but I can keep my heart healthy, my bones and joints strong and young, and my mind clear. And maybe when I do get back out to Vegas next year, I'll fill less of the plane seat. At least on the trip out. The buffets out there play havoc with the acreage of my ass.

Rambling(s) About the Home Base

UNLIKE MANY OF MY fellow Tri-Staters, I tend to spend Memorial and Labor Days close to home. Furthest I usually go is to a friend's house for a cookout, or perhaps the local malls if a household need coincides with a sale. This stems from my loathing of stand-still traffic.

I am a veteran of yearly childhood trips with my parents to the Jersey Shore and countless weekend transits across the George Washington Bridge to visit my grandparents. I've therefore done my time sitting in bumper-to-bumper shore and Yankees traffic. I could paint from memory a portait of the white knuckles of my father, wrapped around a steering wheel. All that might vary would be the backdrop: the ominous rise of the Driscoll Bridge, abandoned tenements as viewed from the Cross Bronx Expressway, or one of the many tollbooth bottlenecks along the Garden State Parkway. Perhaps a whiff of exhaust to lend a realistic air.

I broke my rule once. I took Friday before Labor Day off to go to Foxwoods. Even hitting the road at 2:00 p.m. wasn't early enough to prevent me from becoming embedded in a matrix of slow-moving vehicles. Running narratives on the overhanging LED road signs told of delays through all urban chokepoints of the Connecticut Turnpike. A dedicated degenerate can make the Foxwoods Run at dawn in just 2 hours with no Imperial entanglements. Not so that Friday. It was damn near six when I rolled onto the Happy Punting Grounds. For the record, I lost. To quote the immortal Rodney Dangerfield, "I shoulda stayed at home and played with myself!"

Now, no more. Out to Rockaway along 80 for a BBQ, sure. Down to Hoboken to harass the mighty Billhouse in his riverside fastness, absolutely, especially now that Bergen County will run weekend trains. Other than that, these long weekends tend to be self-directed. Good targets for raising a mighty mass of pasta sauce or chili with the aid of the kitchen spirits (or failing that, the spirits in the liquor cabinet).

Yesterday came to a rolling start . . . a slow one. The usual poker game went off on Wednesday instead of Thursday, because the host had plans to participate in his office fantasy football draft on Thursday. With a short table looming, I joined in to get the minimum number of players for a decent game. (Playing hold'em with six or fewer people is a discipline in and of itself and not to everyone's liking.) The evening ran long, something I hadn't done routinely since being unemployed. I stumbled through Thursday in a daze, with Friday being little better. So Saturday I paid the piper.

I crept out of bed much later than planned. Although I got over to the gym and put in 40 good minutes on the aerobic machines, I hadn't been there since Wednesday morning, and I could feel the sluggish muscles protesting even then my planned return in the afternoon to lift. After a couple of hours at home reading in the sweet Saturday sun, I was inclined to agree. My engine was clicking on empty, possibly because of the lack of exercise in the previous two days, and the poor nutrition I pursued on Thursday in my semiconscious state.

By late afternoon, I felt ready for a nap. Uncharacteristic. Typically when I feel like this, I ought to just go to sleep and just call the rest of the day a wash. In past cases like this, I have slept for 14 hours straight. I spend most attempts at napping for the usual hour or half-hour trying to fall asleep. When I "wake up" from these naps, I usually feel worse: fatigued, frustrated, and washed out, like an overbleached T-shirt. I felt I was paying the piper on the late Wednesday and crummy nutrition since then, so I tried it out.

This experience was no different. I roused myself an hour later from fitful fading in and out, and shuffled out of the bedroom, moving like a hypoglycemic septuagenarian, feeling stupid for having backed myself into this corner on such a gorgeous day. Yeah, I had been outside for a good stretch, but I felt like I hadn't done anything. This from someone who fences off what vacation and personal time he gets from the encroachment of work with miserly fervor. Now I felt even more tired than before the nap . . . with a gnawing hunger and a touch of a caffeine headache to boot.

Fuck this, I thought, it's time to get out of this furniture-filled mausoleum. So I showered again, dressed, and boomed over to the Blue Moon Mexican joint a couple of towns north. I briefly considered Friendly's, but thought the impact of grease and sugar on my depleted carcass would just take me from one worn-out feeling to another when the fat and glucose highs crapped out. The Mex grub at Blue Moon is fairly healthful as that cuisine goes. Well, except for their Buffalo wings, but I had no intention of demolishing a plate of those that afternoon. Maybe well into the football season, as I did during one Jets game, stripping wing after wing from the end of the deserted bar one December as the big screen depicted Herman Edwards suffering one of his last defeats in green and white. But not now.

One chicken quesadilla and two Diet Cokes later, I felt like Popeye after clearcutting a spinach field. Simple enough solution to the problem, eh? I felt peppy enough to cut over to 9W and head south to the Edgewater Whole Foods.

So that's how Saturday went. The lessons concern both food and evening divertiments. For one, I feel the Thursday poker nights can no longer go much past midnight for me anymore. On the weekends, sure; in fact, plans are afoot for an evening of hold'em tonight. But I have all of Monday to recover. Not so Thursday, or Wednesday as was the case last week. Maybe I'm taking on a feline cast to my sleep habits. Tacking an extra hour or so on might be the thing. As for poker night, I can try cutting it off "early." After about 1:00, unless I'm up big and juiced on adrenaline, I'm basically treading water, and there's no way my judgment is as sharp. This affects driving as well as poker, surely with more dire consequences for an error; and the need to stop for Dunkin Donuts on the way home does me no physical favors. If the need for an extended binge presents itself, as winter approaches the weekend rates on AC motels and even some of the casino hotels will drop; I can shack up, sleep off the late night, and motor home with a clear head and an empty road.

And of course that brings me to food. My dining habits were too heavy with simple carbs and deli food on Thursday and Friday to allow a decent recovery either from the workout or the late night. I've had great success with all meals but dinner in the past several weeks. I bring lunch and snacks like fruit, healthful nuts, or homemade protein "bars" to work, so my dose is fairly evenly titrated. Once I get home, unless I've got chili or something like that cued up, my discipline wanders . . . in many cases to some of the instant and less beneficial choices at the Trader Joe's next door. That place is a trove of inexpensive nutrition, but there's still a fair amount of crap, and I can't rely on that unless I want the work I do at the gym during the morning to be undone at night. Preparing some easily reheated protein-based food ahead of time, plus fresh veggies, or even a second complex-carb-based breakfast or an omelet if I haven't gone the egg route that day yet, is a better way to go.

So those are the two course corrections I have set for the fall as it washes across the area in a pageant of color and crisp nights. For the rest of today, I believe another stretch of peaceful reading and WFMU listening on my complex lawn is in order, then a run over to the gym for a session of twisting and lifting and such. When football season returns for true, my Sunday afternoon watch-and-cycle routine will as well, so time to get some two-a-days of my own in. From there, dinner with the family, possibly followed by a round of hold'em after sundown, when the gambling vampires ride free. As for Monday, I shall celebrate that Labor Day with enlightened self-interest . . . but close to home.

Real-Life Banhammer at the Poker Game

IT'S NEVER EASY TO tell someone to get the hell out of your house. Even when it's warranted, most folks are unaccustomed to confrontation and will go to great lengths to get the offender to right his or her course. In cases when the message just isn't getting through, however, sometimes one just has to point out the shortest path between their ass and the door and urge the jerk to use it.

Such a situation arose last night at the poker game. For the size of our player pool, we've had surprisingly few confrontations and, up until yesterday, only one ban. Even that one took several weeks to become necessary, because amid his faults — abysmal dealing skills, being a poor winner, telling annoying stories all night, rubbing his bluffs in people's faces — he was a borderline-retarded poker player and routinely left $300 to $500 behind each visit. (By comparison, the maximum initial buy-in is $100.) We did warn him to clean up his act with declining measures of diplomacy. He shined us on with his irritating chuckle and continued to offend.

Only when he began angleshooting — engaging in actions that bordered on cheating — did the host, Danny, step in. After a night when he deliberately misdealt to confuse an opponent, clumsily colluded with a friend of his at the table, and first denied that he had gone all in, and then attempted to short the pot when we forced him to commit, Danny finally told him not to return. It was in this guy's interest to heed the warning; at least three of the players were as willing to kick his ass as they were to bankrupt it.

The only other player who came close to evoking this much wrath was Craig. Craig was out to have a good time, both in his carefree play and his prodigious thirst. He played hunches, raised heavily with crap to throw folks off, and chattered constantly to those in the hand or, when he had folded, to his seatmates. Craig could easily down 10 beers over the course of an evening, and often showed up already tipsy. I feared letting him leave when I hosted, despite assurances that he was okay to drive. I relaxed when Danny took over as primary game host.

Between talking all the time and getting progressively drunker over the evening, Craig routinely committed a mortal sin of poker: He slowed down the game. We have a system for sending two active decks around the table so there's almost never a time when a new dealer can't pick up a shuffled, cut deck and get 'em in the air. We see more hands per hour than many casino players, even as one or two conversations roll on. But chitchat takes a weak second when a pot gets big or several players are seeing the river card. So when Craig, well into his second six-pack, would begin slurring through a defense of his questionable play while holding the deck, as players are itching to see the last card, there would arise a chorus of, "Next card, Craig," "Let's see a turn, Craig," "Craig! Deal!" like an Apostles' Creed for edgy poker degenerates.

Between his repeated delay-of-game penalties and his nonsensical play, Craig was sinking in popularity fast. An absence of a few months eased folks' ire, though if you slowed down the action, you still risked being called "Craig."

The real Craig showed up uninvited last night, after calling Danny to see if there was a seat available. As we were on the verge of spreading to two tables with 11 people already, Danny — who sometimes has trouble saying "no," said to come over. This put some folks on edge, as for a while we would be playing six-handed. Playing at a short table involves some changes in tactics, and some folks flat out don't like the more aggressive style it requires, nor the lesser chance of getting proper odds for draws. So Craig had already gotten under some skins without even appearing. He finally arrived already drunk.

Also simmering with one guy was a confrontation he and Craig had lit at my place several months ago. After Craig got this guy, Greg — himself an often unpredictable and temperamental card player — to call an all-in bet, Craig showed a terrible hand, which hit big on the river and busted Greg out. Greg freaked, yelling, "You are the worst fucking player in the game!" as he slapped his losing cards into the muck. Craig, rather than backing off and letting Greg yell his steam out, instead egged him on, capping his "yeah, yeah" routine with the old Henry Hill classic, "Fuck you, pay me." Greg threw his remaining chips across the table at Craig, leading the guy sitting between the two to wonder if he was about to be trampled in the rush to fisticuffs. I intervened at this point, telling them both to knock the shit off, and Greg took that moment to leave. Craig spent the remaining half hour in complete oblivion of what he had done to make the fight worse.

Despite a later reconciliation, Greg had no particular interest in hearing several hours' more of Craig's boozy ramblings. Naturally, when Craig drew for tables, he got to sit right next to Greg. I watched Greg's face grow steadily redder as Craig blew beer breath at him for a couple of hours, while repeating (as drunks will) his desire to have Greg, a money manager, become his primary investment guru. Greg was an exemplar of placation as he "uh-huh"'ed Craig stoically, his frustration flaring across his features.

True to form, Craig had to be prodded like a reluctant walrus to keep the game moving. He flipped cards face-up while dealing them to players two seats away. He fumbled with his chips while trying to get them all in one of his anesthetized hands for a bet. His cards sat idle as he got up for one beer after another, crashing through two or three forgotten empties around his chair each time. And of course, the dealing delays. He'd put the deck down to babble about something, and the "Deal, Craig!" chorus would begin. Danny joined in with an edge in his voice that stood out against his usual relaxed but firm management of the game. Those of use who heard it knew Dan's fuse was getting short, and we also knew who had lit it.

After three hours of this, Craig knocked a beer onto the poker table. He was the last to notice this, even as his neighbors scrambled to get their chips clear. With alcoholic sloth, he righted the can, and tried to drag the beer back off the table with his fingers, which forced it deeper into the padding. Then with his dripping hands he picked up the cards, soaking them in Miller Genuine Draft. Fortunately, we use casino-grade plastic cards, but that deck was now unusable until dried. I grabbed it and spread the cards over the second poker table, dabbing them dry with toweling as Danny yelled at Craig. Things had gotten hot quickly.

"Danny, you know I don't disrespect you."

"You slow down the fucking game!"

"Hey — look, you know I don't disrepect you."

"You're always drunk. You take a fucking year to deal the cards!"

It ended with Danny telling Craig to count out his chips. "You're throwing me out?" asked Craig. "Why do you keep emailing me if you don't want me here?"

"I didn't email you — you just showed up!"

"All right, I've got other places to play." Craig passed his stack over to Danny, who counted it down and tossed the requisite bills onto the table next to the beer stain.

The rest of us were silent as we watched Craig retrieve his jacket and pick up the cash. "G'night, everyone." We replied in kind, as though we were going to see him next week.

Danny moved from tolerating Craig's bullshit to cutting it off so rapidly that most of us didn't have a chance to react until Craig lumbered out the door. Greg soon breathed a sigh of relief, and the rest of us moved around the table to snatch up the space Craig's departure had created. Play continued, much more swiftly. Sympathy was muted at best.

Early-Spring Raid on Atlantic City: Part II

AFTER A DELI LUNCH (mental note: Pickles's pastrami is just a touch fatty; try the corned beef), Dave (aka the mighty Felix) and I had the yen to try our luck again. We paid, headed out to the Boardwalk, huddled into our coats amid the cold early-afternoon air, and tromped back north to Resorts and the Trump Taj Mahal, for craps and poker, respectively.

The casino was much busier, and the poker room looked full. Still, seats open constantly at no-limit hold'em tables, and I had a choice of several open chairs. I sat at a different table than the first time, with a new bunch of chips and hope in my veins.

So imagine my happy surprise when I looked down at my second hand and found Aces! After a few people limped into the hand, I raised to $10. I only got one call. The flop came Queen high, with 2 spades and a Ten. I bet $30 to deter a draw to the flush, but he calls after a few moments' thought. Considering he didn't enter for a raise preflop, I had to doubt he had two Queens in the hole. I also couldn't put him on Jack-Nine — giving him an open-ended straight draw — which you wouldn't call a single raise with preflop. (Maybe a Foxwoods player would.)

The turn was a blank, making neither the straight nor the flush more possible. I bet $65 to give him no odds to justify continuing with the hand. If he called here, either he was slowplaying a set, had Ace-Queen with a spade on one or both and was ignorant of the crappy odds I was giving him to see the river, or was doing the same with Ace-King with one or two spades. He thought for a long while, then called.

The river was the Eight of Spades. I immediately cut out a stack of red, $100, and pushed it forward. An instant call or raise here would mean he hit his flush. Based on how I had trashed his pot odds for draws on both flop and turn, I couldn't put him on a flush, much less a straight. I also wanted my swift bet to represent a made flush. The other player muttered as much to himself as he thought about a call. That he had to think gave me optimism that my Aces were good.

After a couple of minutes, during which he kept agonizing about losing to a flush and how the call would be stupid, he called. "Do you have the flush?" he asked?

"No, Aces."

"Oh, I win." He showed Ten of Spades with an Eight. The Eight of Spades had given him two pair. He had called this far on a gutshot spade draw and second pair. Unlike my earlier loss that day, this was a bad beat, a suckout on the part of a donkey who had no right to call my three aggressive bets. Sickening.

I gritted my teeth, said nothing, and peeled 10 $20s off of my roll to bring me back up to $300. I watched him do the same thing against another player with Aces in the hole a couple of hands later, so I was hopeful I might get some of the money back. Alas, he and his two friends at the table racked up their chips and left shortly thereafter. Very frustrating.

I got little chance to replenish my deficit from the other players, as Felix appeared at one of the exits, lacking some of the usual spring in his step. The dice were just as cruel this round as they were the first time. The only mark in the plus column was my hit-and-run on Resorts earlier that day. Thus it was that we, two whipping boys for the cruel lash of probability, headed back to my car and hit the road.

Despite the losses, it was a fun trip. I hadn't seen Dave for some time, so we got a chance to rap about this and that for an extended stretch without worrying about our employers wondering why our emails had nothing to do with work. (Granted, I am on my way out, but Felix just might want to retain his position for a little more time.) We returned to Bergen County in fine time, and I bade him goodbye as I returned to my apartment. . . .

. . . to inquire more closely about a call I had received from Danny, the co-host of the regular Thursday poker game, to see if the match was still on for tonight. Yes, I had decided to continue my binge. My mishaps earlier that day were neither demoralizing nor costly enough to deter my last-waltz binge of poker that weekend. Danny told me the game would be held at the home of a fellow player, so I grabbed some makeshift dinner, rested a bit, and eventually sped north to Rockland County and my third game of the day.


SEVEN OF US MET in the host's basement, a full-foundation unfinished cellar cluttered with the usual trappings of suburban life, plus a few unusual items: a dusty, half-stripped old jukebox; a wall of streamers, Mylar balloons, tassels, and other party supplies; a tank of helium for said balloons; the remnants of a home office, complete with a white board bearing the ghostly traces of some meeting notes; and in the center, the bright green felt of a poker table. The host permitted his players to smoke, so he and a couple of them lit up, passing a coffee can for ashes, as the nonsmokers among us grabbed sodas and frozen beers stacked on an end table nearby.

It stood in stark contrast to the waitresses, bowtied dealers, and bright lights and wide space of the Taj poker room, but in its social-club ambience, it was damn perfect.

With less than the usual 10 players, sometimes it makes sense to step up one's aggression a touch. I did so, raising with a wider range of starting hands, like suited Kings or Aces, or even suited connecting cards like Jack-Ten, to throw folks off. Twice, this style of play forced me to fold when the board made hands stronger than mine almost certain winners, and I had to toss my cards to big bets. I rebought for $45 twice. In the back of my mind, I made some calculations about how much I was down for the weekend, but I resolved not to let these rebuys deter me from my style of play. In the right circumstances, it could pay off.

I soon had an opportunity. I bided my time, watching my poker buddies spar while waiting for decent hands to begin working. Two players eventually busted out, leaving five total. Getting hands to be heads-up between me and only one player would therefore be easier. I was dealt Ace-King of the same suit, and I raised, only to have Danny reraise me. I called, and we both went to the flop, which contained a King. I bet out, trying to take the pot down. Danny called. The turn was a blank, at which we both checked, but the river put a possible flush out there. I decided to end the hand or at least clarify it by going all in.

This knocked Danny for a loop. He knew I was the type to bet out if my small-to-middle pocket pair caught a set on the flop. There was a smaller chance I might have either hit the set on the turn, or actually might have bet top set, three Kings, on the flop. Danny began to doubt that he was good. I made it worse by posing the possibility that, with the table short on players and my starting hand range wider, perhaps I raised with two connecting flush cards and semibluffed on the flop to represent the King.

Now, I rarely speak in these sorts of confrontations. I learned this from one of the younger, yet most skilled, players in the game. He, too, is usually silent in big pots when folks are contemplating calling his all-in bets. One time, when he spoke, it threw the opponent completely for a loop. In fact, that opponent was the same one I faced in this hand, Danny, and my speaking had the same effect on him. Wondering if he was still ahead, he turned up his hand without folding. Pocket Aces. He held the winning hand, but he did not call, instead testing my reaction.

Think back to Star Wars. Obi-Wan Kenobi is dueling his former student, Darth Vader. Kenobi sees he is hemmed in by a phalanx of stormtroopers, but that his young charges are on the verge of escape. He makes his decision, based on a deeper wisdom Vader can never understand. Kenobi offers Vader one last, knowing smile before he accepts his fate.

I looked at Danny and smiled that very smile.

Twenty seconds later, Danny set the chips in his hand back down, picked up his cards, and tossed them into the muck.

Naturally, I flipped up my hand before pulling in the chips.

Seeing Big Slick there haunted Danny for the rest of the night.

The other big hand came when we had dropped down to four players. I looked down to find AA, which I raised. At this point in the evening, at least one person was raising per hand, and getting a call about 50% of the time. This time, I was raised from my nominal $5 to $12. The raise came from Paul, who had the biggest stack of chips in the game.

No way was I folding, but I didn't want to scare off a potential payoff from KK or QQ by acting too swiftly. I looked at him, checked out the pot, "thought" a moment, then reraised him, replacing my red $5 chip with a green $25 one.

Paul also took some time to think, then declared another raise, to $50. A minimum raise, or "minraise," in this spot could only be KK or, perhaps, Ace-King suited. Now, some of the players in our game have a superstition about pocket Aces, in that they prefer to see a hand end before the flop if it means avoiding having the opponent crack their Aces by catching three of a kind in the next five cards. Mathematically, AA beats KK by the river 81% of the time, so this is specious reasoning. I therefore felt I had a chance to extract some more money from Paul, so I minraised back, dropping two more green chips into the pot.

Now Paul went into the tank, genuinely fearing AA. With a massive stack behind him, the individual call of $50 wasn't so much. With a nonthreatening flop, however, or one with an Ace, he had to know I would get the money into the center at some point. This was exactly true, with my preference being to go all in on any flop with no King. Still, the gears turned in his head. With what other hand could I minraise him back? Me, one of the tightest players in the game? After surely turning these details around in his head a thousand times, he made the call.

The flop came maybe Eight high, no pair. I went all in. Again, to theatricize things uncharacteristically, I shoved my chips in slow motion, humming the Imperial March as they approached the $200 already in the pot. Calling my bet would cost Paul about another $115. It represented about 20% of his huge chip stack. Still, nobody wants to undo some of the good play they've executed all night, not even if all of their gains have come on a single buy-in.

Paul thought long and hard, decided he might have a chance, and called, tossing his Kings face up in front of him. I obliged his suspicions with my Aces.

The host, who was dealing the hand, initially gave Paul and me heart attacks when he dealt out two Kings for the turn and river, but these were from the second deck not in use, through which he had dug in anticipation of seeing one of us show Kings. The real turn and river were of no threat to me. I dragged in a pot considerably bigger than my losses for the day.

I ended the night a winner, even after losing $100 to Danny when his two pair partly avenged my earlier bluff on him. I dug my way out of the $90 hole at this game, and put myself within $15 of even (with my craps win) for the weekend. I staggered off to my car, leaving behind some players incredulous at the style of play I had exhibited that night, and drove through the early morning back to my welcoming bed.

I hope all of the players from Saturday night will be there on this coming Thursday for the regular game. I want to use this recent experience to leave them guessing as to what sort of game I'm playing. I know Danny will still be tilting from folding the winning hand, and Paul may overplay a strong hand while looking for some payback. I will do my best to handle both with the unusually sharp perception I showed, even in the depths of a long day and a deep evening, that night.

Early-Spring Raid on Atlantic City

WHO HERE IS SICK of hearing me natter on about work? Yes, I thought so. Why not a short recounting of my weekend of gambling degeneracy, from the glittering towers of Atlantic City to the smoky basements of Rockland County? Yes, that will provide a fine change of topic and tone.

Dave (aka the mighty Felix) and Steve were set to join me this Saturday for a raid on New Jersey casino center by the sea. Sadly, at the last minute, fate intervened and prevented a direct reprise of our excursion last June. Felix called to report that Steve was "not so much hung over, as still drunk." So it fell to Dave and myself to forge ahead.

Now half of a duo, I grabbed my copy of the soundtrack to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and motored over with my co-conspirator to the traditional pit stop of the Emerson Dunkin' Donuts. From there, we made fantastic time zooming south through the cool morning air of early spring, reaching AC without so much as a rest break — an amazing feat, considering both of us pounded caffeine on the way.

Once again, we parked at Resorts for our initial foray. Dave has been hot for a rematch here for some time now, and my plan was to let him and Steve damage the casino's P&L statement with some dice while I sought out prey at the poker rooms at the nearby Trump Taj Mahal or Showboat. With Steve gone, I felt bad about leaving Felix alone right off the bat. Not that he'd really be lonely; craps is a social game, so one finds friends quickly, especially during a profitable roll.

Despite my preference for games with an edge in the house's favor, I felt a yen to join in. I wasn't going to return to Las Vegas until 2008 at the earliest. The job hunt beckoned as well, making East Coast casino trips doubtful. If my search were to take a long time, I would certainly cut out my local poker game as well. This was really my last chance for a while to have some fun smacking money and the laws of probability together to strike sparks. With a "what the hell" shrug, I yanked out my bankroll and peeled off $200, much to Felix's approval.

I decided to start slowly, with only two bets working during a roll. The man to Felix's right sevened out, as did we, but the next guy went on a nice tear, putting me back to even and $103 ahead. When he finally rolled a seven, I decided to take the wisdom of one of my poker gang to heart. This guy has a habit of taking a hundred or two of a respectable poker win to the craps table to see if he can make the pile a little bigger. If he gets another C-note or so, he just calls it a night and runs to the cage. With more willpower than I have ever exerted at a craps table, I placed my now-healthy pile of chips on the felt and said, "Color me up!" Three black and three white checks in hand, I bade Dave good luck and made for the cage like a shot.

My next destination was the House of Blues poker room at the Showboat. I spent a good (and profitable) few hours there last year, but this time, only two $1/$2 no-limit hold'em tables were running, and the table they were just starting was a $2/$5 table clearly full of local players who all knew one another. I knew how that script would end. I might as well have gone to the men's room, written SUCKER on the mirror, and positioned my reflection under it. I bailed on the Boat and took my freeroll C-note over to the Taj.

Considerably larger than the House of Blues room, the Taj poker room was already lively in the late morning. Several $1/$2 no-limit games were running, and I was quickly seated. I found the table passive, with an average of six players merely calling the preflop bet of $2. I felt like I might be able to do some good here.

I did pick up a healthy pot with a flush about a half hour in, when I was dealt a pair of Tens in the hole. Two players had called ahead of me, so I raised to $10, getting a cold call from one behind, and calls from the other two already in for $2. The flop came Q 9 T, with no matching suits, giving me a set of Tens. One of the players ahead of me bet, I raised to $70, and got two calls. By now, there was about $250 in the pot.

The turn was the worst card I could see: a Jack. From watching the other two players in this hand, I knew either of them was capable of hanging onto a lone King, either with a suited card, or another straight card of a different suit, through a preflop raise. I knew one of these guys was going to show me a straight at the end of the hand. The first player to act checked, the next one went all in for $79 to kick the pot up to about $340, and I called without hesitation. I knew the third guy was, at minimum, going to call his straight here, rather than reraise all in, for fear of scaring me, his only customer with more chips, out. So I could count his $79 call as part of my pot odds of about $420 to my $79, or 5.25:1. There were 10 cards that could help me by making a full house or quads: the fourth Ten, any Queen, any 9, or any Jack. My odds against hitting these hands were 4.6:1. Furthermore, I had a strong feeling I could pull at least another $100 out of the other opponent, if not another $300 (the size of my remaining stack) if I could get him to call an all-in with his straight. I was in a better spot than it might look.

Sadly, a 4 of diamonds hit, and I checked back when my opponent checked. Sure enough, he had the straight, and a monstrous pot was shipped the opposite way. I still had the vast majority of my starting chips, but losing the money I had made up with the flush was a bummer.

I didn't have a chance to try and get it back at this table, because Felix manifested, low on funds and ready for lunch. The table had been no kinder after I had left. I endorsed this lunch idea, so I cashed out my stacks, and we noshed at the Pickles deli at Bally's, plotting our next move.

More details tomorrow!

Staying on the Rail Due to Work

GAMBLING EXPERTS WILL TELL you it's unwise to head to the local casino or card game under certain circumstances. Almost every introductory book I've read on poker or gambling recommends that one should steer clear if one is sick, in a negative emotional state (angry, depressed, etc.), drunk, or high. I have seen players violate just about every one of these conditions, sometimes two or more at once, in their haste to wedge into a busy poker table. In my case, however, heeding this rule has kept me from plunging straight into the financial basement on more than one occasion.

I declined to play poker this week, the second Thursday in two that I have opted out, for just this reason. It's been a very trying week at work, even with Tuesday off. After a few days of having virtually nothing to do, I have gotten considerably busier. The outsourcing geeks have somehow managed to commit multiple simultaneous errors, all of them in areas where we have administered lessons on how to do these things correctly. Worse, it looks like we are being lied to on the question of whether they have switched away from their piece-of-shit proprietary software and to the big-label package we've used in house and in which we were promised they would typeset materials from the get-go.

From a couple of cubes away, my supervisor and I probably sound like we're reading the script to Casino or Glengarry Glen Ross, based on the oaths and obscenities with which we've been fogging the air. Early in the process of uploading our archives to the outsourcing FTP site, she shared with me and the two junior designers how much resistance she had gotten from our old boss and the director to get details on what would be expected of us. She swore more in those 15 minutes than I had heard her swear in the previous year. As time wore on, and as we realized just how much of a line of shit had been sold to our bosses about the competency of the offshore type-twits, this frank and blue lingo began emanating from our respective cubes. Keep in mind we were switching printers at the same time. I actually dropped the C-bomb when my super showed me one of the print rep's antagonistic, cc:'d-to-everyone replies to her email. That it was not cited as out of line, or even noticed, shows you how angry my super also may have been.

What doesn't help is that our current boss is now juggling our woes, the hapless efforts of the person who will traffic all of the jobs after we're gone, and a full roster of responsibilities that preceded our move to her part of the org chart. She is overwhelmed. Our emails about problems are a few of several hundred she gets per day. She is routinely about five emails behind the current state of any problem, so it's better to address any glitches verbally. This leaves no paper trail, though, which above and beyond the horse-shit cowardice of the modern workplace this represents, denies us the simple ability to figure out just what the fuck we've done to solve any given problem unless we take notes. Also, she simply has no feel for the finer aspects of our jobs. On one hand, she is expected to enact our director's desire to have the offshore group replicate our jobs, but on the other they conflate the jobs of compositor (which is all the people who lay out our lackluster books can really be called) and designer (which more accurately represents the range of duties in executing attractive, print-ready newsletters). We bring concerns about poor quality to their attention, but we are told not to worry about such details. Yet when the trafficker-to-be complains that she doesn't know how to train her design staff (which, being hired by her, must have questionable skill), suddenly our expertise has to be transmitted in haste.

I watched my supervisor write a sharply worded note to our boss and this trafficker to highlight how deeply they are screwed if they think they can get by with a superficial knowledge of what we do. I've mentioned to her that our bosses are best served by making a list of those points and skills most important for them to know before we leave, and I think she's made this point to them. No reply. Nor do I anticipate any.

What worries me is that I am having great difficulty in keeping my anger at the situation from spilling over to other aspects. People braying into cellphones on the train, once merely vexing, now make my blood boil. Certified assholes at work are in increasing danger of getting a very honest, terse assessment from me of exactly what I think of them. As I ride the PATH into the city, my reflection is sullen, eyes glowering from above dark bags. On the routine trip, the reflection looks defeated and tired. I can't keep letting my system rev itself up with such fury. And I am sick and tired of filling this innocent blog with this shit. I only have so many words I can record before I am done, even if that moment is decades away. I cannot wait for this pointless job to cease monopolizing my existence.

Once that's squared away, maybe then I can settle back into my appointed seat at the poker table and enjoy some relaxing hours of cards. I would much prefer the reason my heart rate goes off the scales to be flopping a full house.

Poker Dealer for a Day

WHEN TEXAS HOLD'EM SURGED into popularity through 2003 and especially into 2004, with back-to-back World Series wins by everyman players Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer, people founded home games and held amateur tournaments in droves, as I have mentioned previously. In most of these cases, the players ran and dealt the games themselves. Some planners, however, turned to professionals to set up and staff hold'em tourneys at corporate gatherings, private parties, or charity casino nights. Here's the story of how I spent a day and made a little money teaching folks to play at a birthday hold'em party.

I built my home poker game from an ad on the Internet. Others did the same, either on homepokergames.com or Craigslist. I had seen folks post ads offering their services as dealers for private games, either at someone's home or office or at an underground poker club. One day in July 2004, I noticed an ad for someone seeking dealers for a birthday party. The job was to teach folks the basics of playing hold'em and then deal the game, for which the dealer would be paid. Continuing my streak of somewhat foolhardy acceptance of Internet-based poker ads at face value, I dropped the person an email with my qualifications.

She responded enthusiastically and said I sounded more than qualified to do this job. In a subsequent phone conversation, she said she was recruiting a total of three dealers to help host a surprise poker party for her husband at their home in Rutherford, NJ. As described, we would simply give a lesson, deal, and help folks have fun. No real money would be involved. It didn't seem to pose the same danger as, say, dealing to Silvio Dante or Paulie Walnuts at the Executive Game. For this effort, I could graze on the party food and drink, and I would be paid a C-note.

I accepted. The hostess was thrilled, and had only one minor request: Could I dress up in a white shirt and black pants like a casino poker dealer? I happily agreed. I've flirted with going for Halloween as a casino dealer, so it wasn't that outrageous an idea. She did note that I could bring clothing more appropriate to the season — dead summer heat — because their place was the top floor of a multifamily house, and once the gig got rolling, the place would probably heat up. Once I had made my initial impression, I could change if the joint began roasting.

With her address plotted on Mapquest, I found myself the next Saturday heading down a sun-drenched Route 17 to the intersection with Route 3, hard by Rutherford town. It's a charming suburban burg, and their house was on a broad, tree-bowered avenue that could have appeared in a commercial. As I pulled up, incongruously in my black Dockers and white dress shirt. I noticed a second person, similarly attired, considerably more obese, heading up the driveway of the three-story house. Intros were exchanged, and he turned out to be much like myself, a player in home and casino poker who spotted the ad while looking for a new game. We entered the house from the rear, squeezing up a twisting stairway that emitted ominous creaks as my companion preceded me up to the top floor, where the hostess, a woman in her late twenties, happily welcomed us in.

This floor probably began life as the house's attic when it was a single-family domicile. Once the building had been subdivided, the owners retrofitted interior walls around the perimeter to partition a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, but they left the bulk of the attic open as a common area. This space was heavily decorated with both birthday and gambling party trappings. Somehow, they had stolen or otherwise acquired a large World Poker Tour banner, which hung over the food table. Three long tables, each covered in felt and ringed with folding chairs, awaited the players. It was behind one of these tables that we met our third dealer, a New York City policeman from Staten Island. I recognized him as a frequent advertiser on Craigslist offering his poker-dealing services. The three of us discussed what we would teach the newbies and how to run the game — the hostess hadn't really specified what we were to play — to ensure that folks had a fair shot at the prizes. The hostess had explained that she had three Texas hold'em chip sets, one for the winner on each table. We decided to let folks play regular ring hold'em until the alarm went off, at which point the chip leader on each table would win their poker set. Fairly simple.

Even with only about five party guests in addition to the hostess and the dealers, the attic was already quite warm. I had brought a T-shirt and shorts up with me in a gym bag, as had the guy who arrived at the same time as I did. Noticing this, the hostess apologized for the heat and stressed again that we could change when we got too hot. I suspected this would come sooner rather than later. For the moment, I grabbed a soda and got my table in order, stacking chips for the players, spreading the deck face up to show the full spread, and waiting for the rest of the guests to arrive.

As guests filtered in, they marveled at the whole setup, and did double-takes at the fact that she had recruited dealers. I greeted anyone who strolled by my table, hoping the fact that I was sweating more with each new source of heat that walked up the stairs with a gift or bottle. The air conditioners were on, but were not equal to the task of chilling this top-of-the-building hot box. I opened a second Diet Coke and got a water bottle in reserve ready for any dizzy spells.

Presently, the birthday boy arrived, completely surprised and stunned at the whole setup. The hostess then divided the crowd among the three tables, and gave us some time to introduce our players to the game. I'm a fairly effective trainer, and no small ham, so having a captive and slightly tipsy audience was right up my alley. I've also sat in at a couple of casino poker lessons. Plus, I find the whole procedure of being a dealer fascinating. I was very much "on" as I explained what the blinds were, how the board cards would combine with their hole cards to make hands, and how the betting would progress. I dealt a few practice hands face up for them, and I gave a rudimentary lesson on the importance of position. Nothing too deep or math heavy. By the time the hostess started the clock, they had the basics roughly down, and enough alcohol to make any mistakes humorous.

I truly enjoy dealing poker, so the mechanical aspect of it, aside from the liters of sweat rolling down my back, was a blast. The players were gloriously green — showing one another their cards, betting with anything, saying "All in!' when they shoved in their last chips — and had a ball. The time passed very swiftly, another marker of how much fun it was, and soon we were awarding the hold'em sets to the lucky degenerates at each table with the biggest piles of chips.

At this point, I changed out of my sopping dealer duds and into the amazing comfort of my dry, baggy T-shirt and shorts combo. I lingered and shot the shit with folks for a while, finally feeling a little out of place. Most of these folks were about 10 years younger than me, and somewhat to my right politically. No matter. When the hostess handed us each an envelope, I saw five portraits of that upstanding Democrat-Republican Andrew Jackson, and was quite happy to cast my ballot for that worthy, if unbalanced, dead president.

I stayed for no longer than another half hour. I was ravenously hungry, but I was wary of the food that had been provided, which, though tasty earlier in the day, by then had been marinating in the heat for hours and was no doubt host to some fascinating microorganisms. So I thanked the hostess for the gig, accepted in turn her profuse thanks, congratulated her husband on his birthday and on having such an excellent spouse, and then threaded my way down the narrow stairs into the comparatively cool July afternoon. Not even in Vegas had an open car window and a highway breeze felt so refreshing on my face.

Sometimes I look back and wonder at the boldness I exhibited in accepting players and a job like this from faceless ads on the Internet. I can't claim this success had anything to do with the legendary gambler's honor of which old-timers like Doyle Brunson wax rhapsodic. All I know is that the home game I assembled from scratch on the Internet is still going, in a different venue, and has engendered friendships that might never have coalesced. And aside from dropping about 10 pounds of water weight, I suffered no ill consequences from my day as a dealer. I hope to recapture some of that willingness to venture forth from my shell in the job hunt. If nothing else, this incident gives me an answer to an employer's question of what my most unusual job might have been.

Thou Shalt Not Fold: Poker Tourney Part II

Note: The first part of this saga, and capsule descriptions of the players named below, can be found here.

THE CARDS WENT IN the air shortly after 1 p.m. I wiped my moist palms dry on my slacks and took a peek at my first starting hand of the day: a Jack and a 7 of different suits. Easy fold there. Half the table placed two chips in the pot, indicating that they were as loose and fold resistant as I had anticipated. I intended to play very tightly until I had a starting read on how my tablemates truly played. Opening impressions, as I had gleaned from our pregame table chat, were only the beginning. I was going to have to see some play before settling on how best to handle them when we got into a hand together.

For the first few hands, my cards obliged that goal. They were all trash, most of them including a Jack and a small card. I folded dutifully, even on the big blind, when the Club Player raised and I had to toss a lone Ace with a 5. No free flop for me. The Club Player and the AC Player both tended to raise the proper amount and with pocket pairs, whereas the 18-Year-Old called with just about any two cards, raised weakly, and bled off his chips over the course of the first 20-minute round. The Fat Guy was willing to call raises with any piece of the board. Jack and the Mystery Man both tended to get out of trouble when it reared its head, though the latter did take a good hit early on when he failed to notice a flush draw that came in and took a third of his stack. The Filipina seemed to have been trained by AC, but was less skilled in betting in ways that denied drawing hands the proper odds to keep going and to fold instead.

And me? What info was I giving my tablemates? Not precious much aside from folding just about every hand. In three rotations of the deal, I saw exactly one pocket pair, 66 in the small blind, for which I completed the bet (the pot was unraised) with the hopes of catching a 6 on the flop. No such luck: Jack Queen King, with two spades. No point in proceeding here. I tossed it to the first bet. What I was getting a lot of, was Jack-rag, both suited and unsuited. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I saw a shitty Jack combo at least a dozen times in an hour.

In the four levels I spent at that table, from the 1/2 starting blinds to 10/20 later on, I had exactly two chances to make decent hands. They were both suited Aces, with which, at this table, with this many potential callers, I would have taken to the river had I hit a mere Ace on the flop with one or more suited cards. Instead, both times, the flop came all the wrong suit, in one case all spades when I held A9 of diamonds. With no Ace on the board, I was done. Between abortive starts like this, and some straight draws that never came through and for which I had to fold against massive raises, my starting stack of 150 was half gone by the 10/20 level.

This was exacerbated by some poor tournament administration. When a swift loss of players at one table leaves a significant deficit as compared to the remaining tables in the game, the director is supposed to take one or two replacements to keep the afflicted table full or close to full. In our case, we started with eight players (vs. the nine on the remaining tables), and lost two within 10 minutes (Mystery Man and, as he predicted, the 18-Year-Old). With fewer players, the button will rotate faster relative to the other tables, thus unfairly forcing more frequent payment of blinds. (Mathematically, one can also make the case that it forces a change of play style, as with fewer players, the chance of having enough preflop limpers to allow odds to bet a starting hand with straight or flush potential will be smaller than at a full table. This cuts down your starting hand range.)

With the tournament director also a player, we had a problem getting her attention to address this deficit. The Club Player and I saw eye to eye on how damaging this situation was, and we both tried to get it fixed. No dice; the director's table had the same problem, and she seemed to have a lot of folks there who needed significant hand-holding to get through the basics of poker, so her attention was not on the larger tournament. This points up the need for directors in large groups like this to be nonplayers. With two or three tables, as with the tourney I used to attend in Wyckoff, the host handled these issues with no problem at all (he actually had comprehensive, printed tournament rules). In our case, we went just about a full round of 20 minutes without it being addressed. With blinds of 10/20, this was cutting into my already diminished stack. I sensed an early exit.

At the break, our table was broken up, with three pairs of players sitting in at tables with open seats. Again, this could have been handled more easily by randomly choosing a table to send one or two players over. There is an accepted tournament procedure for selecting the exact person to send to a player-deficient table, down to selecting someone from the same position to assure continuity of deal. Not a concern in this event, it seemed. As it turned out, I and the Filipina sat down at an adjacent table, where mine was one of the two shortest stacks.

With a stack of about 85 chips, and the need to pay in 30 per round even if I did nothing but fold, I was going to have to make a move quickly. I thought my chance had come when I looked down two hands in to see my second pair of the day, Queens. Against a raise and a call, I reraised all in. To my disappointment, both opponents folded. I picked up a few more chips, though.

My end came quickly. After giving those chips right back with absolute crap in the blinds (a raise knocked me off of the big blind, and in the small blind, I got another goddamn Jack-rag), I caught King-Ten of clubs in the cutoff. The first player in raised, all others folded, and I decided to push. He flipped up Aces, actually the first rockets I'd seen all day. I caught precisely one club toward the flush draw, shipped him my remaining 64 chips, wished the table luck, and headed to the food table to recoup my losses calorically.

I would like to find some flaw in my play, but in this case, I truly had lousy cards from the first deal. With the blinds representing more than 30% of my stack on that last hand, and a strong late-position holding, an all-in was the only option. My opponent, roughly my peer, said he would have done the same. Even when I had chips, one thing I knew about this crowd was that bluffing was not going to get a fold-around if they had a remote chance of hitting the flop. I've always gotten at least one person to call, and then either I had to hit a great flop or go all-in regardless of what fell. And third-tier hands like King Queen offsuit were death against this sort of player, who is going to hang onto any Ace, and when one comes on the flop, what then?

So for now, it's back to the usual cash games for now. I did have fun, even if my cards were deader than Elvis. My urge to hit Atlantic City or Foxwoods is still there, if only to make up the $25 fee for the tournament. Felix is brewing a plan for our return to AC, possibly in late March. If I can make some solid headway on the job horizon between now and then, I will be able to reward myself with a relaxing, guilt-free trip to the gamble palaces. If I can find a cash-game table made up of some of the less-skilled players I met at the tournament, I might be able to supplement my severance pay through the fall.

Thou Shalt Not Fold: Poker Tourney Part I

I ROLLED SOUTH UNDER a grey late-February sky that, local weather-watchers claimed, would entomb the region that evening in snow and ice. With any luck, I would drive home through it, after hours of masterful poker play, flush with my winnings from the tournament awaiting me at a south Bergen County Jewish community center. The snow was the easiest barrier I might face that night. Seventy-five other players, all vying for the chance to make that final table and maybe even the top prize, proved to be a more formidable obstacle.

This new venue for the regular tournament was considerably larger. The old place was just a single synagogue, albeit with a finished basement. This complex housed at least three prayer halls, a basketball court, and two large basement activity rooms. Both were to be used today. I entered one of them with a confident stride to my step, noting with approval the 10 or 11 tables all set up, each with a hefty bowl of bagels and spreads as a centerpiece. One of the few folks already there noticed me counting the tables and chairs, as I calculated how many players we might have, and thus how large the prize pool would be. When I expressed satisfaction over this to her, she said, "This is children's ceramics. Poker is down the hall." It was then that I noticed she was spreading newspaper on one of the tables. Oops. I backed out and went one door down.

There, standing next to a table full of neatly stacked poker chips, I immediately spotted the player from my home poker game who had inaugurated this tournament. He had sold his chips and supplies to a tourney regular, because he found running the game and playing too burdensome. Now he was content to enjoy a solid streak of making the final pay spots and socialize between hands. I, on the other hand, sought contentment from the 6-foot submarine sandwich being unwrapped on the buffet table. After watching three women debate the proper order in which the dishes of salads should be placed, I ended the debate by grabbing a plate and a big wedge of sandwich, slathering it with Russian dressing, and scampering back to my assigned table with a Diet Pepsi (the horrors!).

In time, my table filled in, as folks slowly drifted from their cliques, to the food, and finally to their assigned seats. The demographic skews older than myself in this group by at least 20 years. I noticed a few of my peers, along with two college-age kids, one of whom had been bought into the tourney as an 18th-birthday present from his father. They sat at my table for a while, discussing Blazing Saddles, which they had seen, along with the 1968 Producers, that weekend for the first time. I thought back to when I had first seen both of these films, and I know it was because my parents, having introduced me to Woody Allen's early comedies, knew I would also love these. It is difficult to imagine a time when I didn't have these cultural signifiers as part of my DNA.

The 18-year-old remained at my table as the hostess called for folks to take their seats for a read-through of the rules. Aside from myself, my table had seven other players. Going clockwise:

Jack: Stereotypical balding, slight-framed, retirement-age Jewish man, not unlike Lee Strasberg in The Godfather Part II. Friendly guy who expressed, along with some others at my table, a preference for seven-card stud, now somewhat overshadowed by hold'em, but once the poker game. Enjoyed TV poker, and joked that he was tempted to wear a hooded sweatshirt so he could hide like the Unabomber, Phil Laak.

AC Player: Twentysomething man in a faded Itchy & Scratchy T-shirt. I mention Atlantic City because he mentioned a procedure on misdeals as being the way things were done in AC. I made a mental note to take this guy's actions a little more seriously.

Fat Guy: Outweighed my by at least 150 lbs., which is saying something, this guy appeared to know what he was doing with a deck of cards. (Side note: There were some morbidly obese people at this game. Not merely fat like myself, but guys who, when viewed from the side, appeared to have little flipper arms, and women who would never be able to sit in coach. I did 50 minutes of cardio-machine work before I came over b/c I figured the deli noshing would kibosh my nutrition for the day, and a look at this crowd made me unique in that activity. One younger guy of normal weight for his height looked, by comparison, to have survived a hunger strike.)

18-Year-Old: Carried on a conversation before the game about his college costs and course selections while fiddling with a knockoff MP3 player, which he claimed was cheaper and better than the iPod. Ah, the vain beliefs of youth. Said he played $5 tournaments with his friends, but that he went on tilt very easily.

Club Player: I call him this because he was the one who provoked AC Player's commentary when he accidentally flipped up a card during the deal. He replied that in his experience playing in clubs, the procedure he followed (it was after the first two blind cards, so became the burn card) was standard, and continued the deal. By "clubs," I interpreted this as possibly being the underground Manhattan card parlors that quietly schooled such future legends as Erik Seidel, Howard Lederer, and Stu Ungar, such as the Mayfair and the Diamond Club. Another player to keep an eye on.

Filipina: Mind-numbingly hot American-bred Filipina nursing student. Knew the AC Player, and had a better-than-beginner's understanding of the game. Still got hung up on advanced-beginner stuff like figuring the winner when two players paired the high board card and handling blinds when someone was busted out. I graded these slight gaffes on a curve, usually one of her own.

Mohegan: Taciturn player to my right who wore a Mohegan Sun pullover. I tried to crack the ice by commenting that the casino was finally reversing its mistake of eliminating the poker room, but aside from expressing a preference, as did Jack, for stud, I didn't get to know him all that well. Too bad, as I like to know my neighbors' style of play somewhat before making the plunge into a big pot with them.

And, out of fairness . . .

Me: Seasoned no-limit ring-game specialist who trails his regular home game in skill but can ably bring home the bacon against the fish now flooding into casino $1/$2 no-limit games. Tournament newbie, especially among loose, no-fold'em hold'em players like these. Kept things light and chatty, despite my Binions visor and Caesars Palace T-shirt.

Would I hold my ground against these strangers and take their chips to the final table? Tomorrow's pulse-pounding conclusion will tell all. . . .

See You in Poker Shul

SUCCESSFULLY SUPPRESSED AN URGE to visit one of our local casino emporia this weekend. I was in the mood for some hold'em, possibly at Foxwoods, where the maximum $1/$2 no-limit game finally has been raised to match that in Atlantic City ($300). Foxwoods takes a time charge per half hour at this game, instead of a rake from each pot as is typical in Vegas or AC, and when the max buy-in was $100, throwing $10 to the house each hour took a big chunk out of your stack. Plus, many of the dealers are slow to get the cards out and do little to quicken the pace of the game. However, combine this with the generally craptacular skill level of the $1/$2 NL players there, and it now has the potential to be quite tasty.

My reason for restraining myself is that I am returning, after a long hiatus, to a regular tournament offered at a Bergen County synagogue. One of the earliest regulars in my poker game had started running this tourney sometime before joining my crowd, and he extended an invitation to those playing. I tried it for the first time in September 2004, and I have returned a few times since. I'm not a strong tournament player, but I alternated for a couple of years between this one and a private home tourney in Wyckoff that, to my regret, broke off sometime early last year. I prefer low-entry-fee tournaments, because I'm not the best tourney player in the world. Aside from a couple of low-priced matches at the Plaza Las Vegas, my meager experience has been amateur-run events among folks who mostly know one another.

And I have to admit I prefer it this way. In a casino, I would be playing against a roomful of strangers. Playing tournament hold'em correctly, at which the wrong move can send all of your chips to another player and your ass back to the parking lot, can be a lonely, tiring experience. In the early stages, you are playing only the best starting hands, which inevitably will be separated by long minutes of tossing crappy cards in the muck, scrutinizing the play styles of your tablemates, and ignoring the many distractions casinos have to offer. And you're doing this among folks who have no reason to extend you any good will or even to recognize your existence past being a possible source of tournament chips.

The amateur matches in which I've played are quite different. They emerged as part of the great flowering of home games in 2003 with Chris Moneymaker's win at the WSOP and the debut of the World Poker Tour. Existing poker games began dealing hold'em, and groups of friends new to poker wanted to give the "TV poker" a try. The more enterprising among them tried the tournament format, and guides for running such games began to appear on the Internet. Soon, you couldn't play in a home game without one of the players mentioning an upcoming tourney with a few open seats. Most folks knew one another at these tournaments, so you could at least have some fun and not entirely feel like a ribeye in a shark tank.

The tournament I will play in tomorrow had the added unity of featuring folks belonging to or friends/related to members of the same synagogue. If they don't already see one another socially, they at least meet up once a week for services. So it's more like playing in a club full of folks out to have fun and, maybe, make a little poker money. Although there were a number of nonmembers there to play, few stood out as outsiders, just because this was such a congenial bunch. One or two went the whole sunglasses-and-hat routine and played the tourney like poker robots, and in turn wasted the chance to have a good time.

I haven't won yet in this series of tournaments. The players are, on average, not skilled at this style of poker. A few of them who have played some form of poker for decades are repeat winners. The majority are calling stations, to use the poker lingo for a player who will call any reasonable bet and who are difficult to chase out of pots with raises. When you have a strong but vulnerable hand, like Jacks, you want to get those dealt a single, higher court card out, because you could be behind a single Queen on the flop. Some of the folks I will see tomorrow will simply call, and each successive call represents further odds justification for the next person to stay in. This is how I've been busted out sometimes. If the occasion weren't so much fun to attend, it would be vexing. Still, when you have to reraise with Queens because nobody folded to the first player's raise, and your reraise gets four calls, you kinda cross your fingers and toes before the flop comes down.

I hadn't played for some months because the local no-limit ring game was kicking my ass through the late summer, and I was questioning whether I was playing this game remotely correctly. Through fall and the beginning of winter, however, I made a huge comeback, beating both the local game and tables I've raided at Atlantic City. It's been ages since I played any tournament at all, so when I got word the event was on again, I registered. Last time I played, they got 64 players, each of whom paid $25 into the prize pool. I believe first place gets 40% or 50%. So at minimum, the winner got $640. If the new hall can hold even more people, that grand prize will be sweeter still.

So we'll see how well I make out tomorrow. I can't claim to be the best player in the room, but I intend to have the most fun. After these past couple of weeks, it will be welcome.