Hellmuth and the Hoi Polloi

Haven’t really been watching the WSOP broadcasts on ESPN that closely this summer. The Main Event coverage has been on for the last couple of weeks. I know this is becoming kind of an annual refrain from me, but with every passing year I’ve moved further and further from wanting to spend a couple of hours on a weeknight watching the WSOP ME.

There are a few reasons for my edging away from being a regular viewer, one of which I was writing about last Friday -- namely, playing less poker (I believe) makes one less enthused to watch others play. With the WSOP ME, of course, I have a particular, personal reason to be a little less inspired to watch after having been there all summer reporting on the sucker. Sort of thing cuts into the suspense more than a little, although it’s still kind of fun occasionally to tune in and search backgrounds for familiar faces.

I did happen to catch part of the first hour the other night, however, which found ESPN showing more from Day 3. Much of that hour was devoted to featuring Phil Hellmuth nursing a short stack, then finally getting eliminated.

At one point we see Hellmuth play a hand versus Dennis Reyes. Both are sitting with below average stacks, and when they get to the turn on a nine-high board Reyes shoves with pocket jacks. Hellmuth -- with king-high and a flush draw -- takes a big bite of his sandwich, offers a short speech, then folds. Then he continues to talk to Reyes through a mouthful of food, delivering the usual low estimate of his opponent’s ability while chompingly championing his own.

That’s when the show cuts to a one-minute long segment labeled “Side Action” in which Hellmuth and last year’s Main Event runner-up Jesse Sylvia are shown playing in a low stakes no-limit hold’em game over in the poker room on the other side of the Rio.

Watching this segment caused me to remember having witnessed some discussion of this little idea last month. It was Day 6, I think, well after both Hellmuth and Sylvia had been eliminated from the ME. I recall overhearing folks in the Amazon Room talking about getting Hellmuth down into the poker room, including making sure it would be cool to shoot video there.

I didn’t realize then that Sylvia was going to be recruited to appear in the segment as well. Anyhow, I know I’m not surprising anyone to report it having been somewhat plotted out ahead of time. In other words, I doubt anyone watching the segment would actually think Hellmuth and Sylvia had randomly decided to play in the game and the cameras just happened to be there to catch it.

As shown in the segment, Hellmuth and Sylvia take a couple of seats at a $1/$3 NLHE table and appear to have fun playing with those who are gathered there. While we can’t really follow any hands, the pair are apparently losing. Eventually Hellmuth orders some Dom Pérignon for the table, then after saying “you guys are a little bit too tough for us” wishes everyone luck and they depart.

It looked like those involved enjoyed the visit, which I’m going to guess probably didn’t last more than an orbit or two. I suppose it might seem a little patronizing -- the high rollers stooping to join the hoi polloi -- though I can imagine worse. Hard not to roll the eyes a little, though, when watching Hellmuth play-acting as the life-of-the-party, lovable loser in the $1/$3 game since that character contrasts so markedly with the sniping, unfriendly self he typically appears as when playing “real” poker.

(Yeah, I know... “the hoi polloi” is redundant. But it makes a weird phrase sound even weirder to omit the article.)

Bags of Dreams

You might have heard something over the last few days about this strange eBay auction in which a seller has been attempting to find someone willing to purchase “FINAL TABLE 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event HEADS UP CHIP BAGS.” That’s right, the lot includes the two big plastic bags in which Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov collected their chips prior to their heads-up duel five years ago.

The seller, a fellow named Scott Neuman, created an elaborate eBay listing that features a couple of pictures of the bags and about a dozen of himself. Also included is the story of how Neuman secured these precious commodities, having bid on the bags himself in an auction for charity conducted by the WSOP following the conclusion of the 2008 Main Event.

Neuman’s auction probably wouldn’t have gotten much attention in the poker world if not for the fact that someone started a thread regarding it over in Two Plus Two. And that person probably wouldn’t have found the auction or started the thread if it weren’t for the fact that Neuman’s listing price for the two ripped open clear plastic bags was just a little higher than one might expect...

$15,000! No shinola.

Alas for Neuman, his auction concluded this morning without a sale. That is to say, he was left holding the bags.

It looks like there were two offers, both declined. It’s been a number of years since I bought or sold anything on eBay and so I’m not up on how things work there these days, but I assume the offers probably came in a bit below the asking price.

But wait... good news! He has relisted them! And still at the same bargain price!

Actually, reading the auction listing more carefully shows that Neuman appears to be attempting to sell the bags as an indirect way of drumming up a kind of backing for his right-on-the-verge-of-finally-breaking-through poker career. Actually, the whole scheme isn’t just indirect, it’s pretty much transparent.

You know, like the bags.

As he explains, he intends to use the $15,000 to buy into unspecified poker tournaments. Again, I’m not up on eBay’s policies at the moment, but I’m guessing offering the bags as the nominal sale item is a kind of work-around to simply asking for money to pay for entry fees.

Additionally, the person forking over the $15K not only gets the bags but the chance at scoring some percentage of Neuman’s winnings from those tourneys, too -- i.e., “a bonus that is completely up to me.” Of course, Neumann can’t specify the amount of that bonus. Nor can he even guarantee there would even be one. Indeed, as he says two times -- the second time using all caps for emphasis -- “I CAN NOT PROMISE I WILL CASH.”

Caveat emptor, then. The bonus isn’t in the bag.

Obviously there’s more to the story of this eccentric entrepreneur, and a few idle searches online make it sound like he’s been up to similar shenanigans for a number of years, with a couple of other weird-seeming sponsorship arrangements among his bag of tricks (and only a few modest results over that period).

Not too interested, really, to discover anything more about this particular character. That is to say, I don’t really care one way or the other what his bag really is.

Have to admit, though, it’s kind of inspired... this idea to try to sell bags full of nothing.

The Judges’ Game

It was almost a year ago that a federal district court judge gave the “poker is a skill game” crowd a rare piece of good news by tossing out the conviction of someone for illegal gambling specifically because the game involved was poker and in the judge’s view poker “is not predominantly a game of chance.”

The judge was U.S. federal judge Jack B. Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York and the case concerned a defendant named Lawrence DiCristina who had been accused of running an illegal gambling club out of a Staten Island warehouse. DiCristina had been convicted a month earlier for violating the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA), but Weinstein’s ruling overturned the conviction while offering copious argument for poker’s skill component.

The 120-page ruling was notable for a few reasons, one being the fact that it represented a first instance in a federal court of poker being distinguished as a skill game and thus different from certain other types of gambling. Within the ruling appeared discussion from economists arguing both sides of the skill-vs.-luck debate, with the Poker Players Alliance being involved as well as a supplier of briefs and testimony, playing “a central role in the case” (as they later pointed out in their press release).

For nearly 12 months the case has been brought up repeatedly by the PPA and others who champion the cause of poker being a skill game and thus to be regarded differently from a legal standpoint than other types of gambling. Put together with that Department of Justice memo from late 2011 specifying that the Wire Act only covered sports betting, the DiCristina ruling has sometimes been alluded to amid forecasts for a possibly rosy future for online poker.

Shortly after we learned of Weinstein’s ruling, our friend Grange95 wrote a thoughtful response over on his crAAKKer blog in which he considered its importance as far as precedents were concerned while also speculating about the likelihood of the ruling surviving appeal. He allowed there was a slim possibility it could be upheld, although ultimately had to conclude it probably would not. “If I were a betting man,” wrote Grange95, “I would wager that the decision is ultimately reversed on appeal” he decided.

Last week came the news that in fact the appellate court had overturned the ruling, with the three-judge panel reading the IGBA as unambiguously covering the type of activity DiCristina engaged in with his underground poker games.

Reading through the 23-page decision reversing the earlier ruling, the three judges point out how the IGBA “clearly outlines the activity that it proscribes,” listing its “three elements: (1) the gambling business violates the law of the state in which the business is conducted; (2) the business involves five or more persons who conduct, finance, manage, supervise, direct, or own all or part of such business; and (3) the business has been or remains in substantially continuous operation for a period in excess of thirty days or has a gross revenue of $2,000 in any single day.”

That the latter two elements were illustrated by DiCristina’s operation were undisputed facts of his case, as the games involved enough people, had gone on long enough, and were of high enough stakes to satisfy each of those. Meanwhile, the first element of the IGBA points back to each state’s definition of illegal gambling, something the IGBA expressly avoids defining itself.

From what I can tell, the judges weren’t too swayed by the idea put forth in the Weinstein ruling that poker -- or Texas hold’em in particular -- wasn’t to be considered gambling under New York state law, spending some space during the first half of the reversal to point to precedents suggesting otherwise. Ultimately, though, the judges pointed out the whole “skill-vs.-luck” issue was moot here, or “inapposite to this appeal” (to use their phrase).

While making their case, the judges jump on that part of the Weinstein ruling that tried to say “Only ‘Games of Chance’ are Gambling Under IGBA.” The earlier ruling acknowledged that the “IGBA does not provide explicit criteria for what constitutes gambling,” then decided to do a little reading between the lines to say the various acts that are listed by the IGBA as examples of operating an “illegal gambling business” are unified into a “cohesive group” as “all of the enumerated games are ‘house-banked’ and that chance predominates over skill of the players in determining the outcome.”

Incidentally those acts listed by the IGBA come in a subsection stating that “‘gambling’ includes but is not limited to pool-selling, bookmaking, maintaining slot machines, roulette wheels or dice tables, and conducting lotteries, policy, bolita, or numbers games, or selling chances therein.”

The earlier ruling goes on to argue that all of those examples refer to chance-based games. (“Bolita,” by the way, is Spanish for “little ball” and refers to a kind of lottery once popular in Cuba and which was played illegally in Florida during the early-to-mid 20th century.) Coming after the lengthy argument that poker is not a chance-based game, it is concluded that the IGBA doesn’t apply to poker and thus DiCristina can’t be charged with violating the IGBA if poker was the game on offer in his warehouse (“Poker is Not Gambling Under IGBA”).

But the appellate judges see this whole argument as irrelevant, and for a few reasons. For one, it stubbornly tries to make the IGBA define what gambling is when the IGBA expressly leaves that to the states to decide. It doesn’t matter if poker is gambling or not under the IGBA, the judges point out, because the IGBA leaves that up to the states.

Secondly, that collection of gambling-related acts isn’t meant to be comprehensive, only offering a sampling of gambling-related activities that “includes but is not limited to” those appearing on the list.

Furthermore (say the three-judge panel), the list enumerates “acts of running a gambling business,” not acts of gambling. Look back at the list -- it isn’t a list of games, but of examples of running games. “Had Congress intended to limit the reach of the IGBA to businesses operating games of chance,” explain the judges, “it could have done so by inserting that language in subsection.”

Thus did the judges conclude “we do not need to decide whether poker -- or any other type of gambling -- is sufficiently like the enumerated games to fall within the IGBA. Rather, the gambling activity must only be prohibited by state law and meet the additional criteria set forth in the IGBA.”

Grange95 pointed out a year ago that even if the DiCristina decision were reversed on appeal -- as has now happened -- “the portion of the decision analyzing the ‘skill game’ argument would potentially still have precedential value.” In other words, future lawyers could still bring it up and point out that the case in which the argument appeared was “reversed on other grounds,” although he points out, too, that in many states the whole skill-vs.-luck issue in poker has been made irrelevant with poker’s grouping with other forms of gambling already having been decided.

Unlike Grange95 I’m no lawyer, and thus I necessarily feel a little at sea sometimes when trying to parse out meaning from court documents such as these. But I think I understand how this appellate court reversal of the DiCristina case highlights how little the “skill game” argument for poker matters, legally speaking. Right now, anyway.

Meanwhile, the apparent ease with which Weinstein’s ruling was reversed sure makes what the judges are doing seem like a “skill game.” I mean despite a year’s worth of happy references to Weinstein’s ruling, was there ever really much chance of DiCristina getting lucky here?

When Everything Seems Like Everything Else

Last Friday I was writing in part about feeling a little distanced from poker at the moment, pointing out how not playing regularly has lessened my enthusiasm somewhat when it comes to watching others play. Yesterday I found myself again kind of in a position of sitting over to the side while others collectively enjoyed participating in a different sort of shared activity.

It started early yesterday morning on my Twitter feed, countless references to the upcoming episode of Breaking Bad scheduled to premiere on AMC later in the evening. They continued throughout the day, then intensified during the airing of the show and afterwards, with nearly everyone (save a few outliers) in unanimous agreement that it was pretty much the greatest thing ever in the history of everything.

My tone likely gives away the fact that I’m not a watcher of the show. The fact is, over the last couple of decades I’ve kind of fallen out of the habit of watching TV altogether, other than sports or news. Or, when Vera’s on the couch next to me, various programs about buying or renovating houses on HGTV.

I can’t even remember the last non-sitcom I made it a point to watch regularly. The old Barry Levinson-produced Homicide: Life on the Street from the 1990s springs to mind as a possible candidate. I seem to remember watching almost all of that first season of Survivor back in 2000, but didn’t continue with it after that and never got into any of the myriad other “reality” shows that have come to dominate since. I always preferred less intense comedies, although even there I never did follow too many, and even fewer today. I’ll burn a half-hour with Family Guy or old eps of Seinfeld or Cheers when they run, but that’s about it.

For me watching TV remains a non-immersive activity. I never made the transition over to the sort of “binge watching” of TV series that has become the most popular means by which viewers now tend to consume TV shows. We don’t even have DVR, so when we do turn on the tube we’re stuck watching whatever happens to be on at the time (and it has never seemed a burden). We do have a VCR, actually, still hooked up and ready to tape programs, if desired, although we almost never do.

That said, this weekend I did in fact tape and watch that CNN Films presentation Our Nixon over the weekend, which was kind of intriguing in the way it was driven by Tricky Dick’s supporting cast (Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin) and the home movies each had taken during their years working for him. So it isn’t like I avoided TV altogether. In fact, I even sent a tweet yesterday about the documentary, commending the choice of Kirsty MacColl’s transporting “They Don’t Know” to accompany the opening credits.

Like everyone else seemed to be doing for much of the rest of the day, I wanted to share with others something about what I was watching on television, I guess in part to see if anyone else was watching, too.

But all of this about my own TV-consuming habits is really just a digression from the primary point I meant to make regarding all of those Breaking Bad tweets. Obviously they held less meaning for someone who doesn’t watch the show. But I realized something kind of interesting, nonetheless, about the tweets people were sending.

All wanted to communicate to their followers that they were watching the show, with some going further to praise it within Twitter’s familiar constraints, the character limit presenting an obvious obstacle to more in-depth evaluations or analyses. All were further restricted as well by the need not to speak directly about the episode’s plot or be detailed enough to introduce any “spoilers” for other potential viewers.

We’re all now well accustomed to the “Spoiler Alert” disclaimer borne from the new way of consuming cultural products like television shows, movies, video games, sports, and other varieties of entertainment. Since everything is more or less “on demand” -- aside from those rare instances when everyone is made to wait for a particular time before first being able to see an episode of their favorite show -- the collective experience of, say, a new show is accompanied by a lot of tiptoeing and whispering as individuals strive to avoid being too detailed about what it is they are experiencing.

Eventually time passes and people begin to share thoughts and responses more openly with one another, but during that earlier moment in the life of the cultural product, the community’s response to it is marked by a couple of curious traits -- namely, that everyone seems to be talking about it while no one is actually saying anything specific about it.

I suspect the catching up that happens later is also full of problems in communication, with the different methods of viewing and varying degrees of attention given to the show introducing various gaps when it comes to sharing ideas about it afterwards with others. Like a poker hand which every player at the table experiences from a different point of view, so, too, do these seemingly “shared” moments get fragmented into all sorts of experiences that are related but not identical.

One of those I follow on Twitter who was not tweeting about Breaking Bad last night was the fiction writer Joyce Carol Oates. She’s an interesting follow, full of opinions and insights and seemingly quite comfortable with delivering pithy, maxim-like thoughts about culture, politics, literature, or anything else. I’m convinced some Ph.D. student has already come up with a dissertation topic focusing primarily on her tweets and using them as a lens through which to study her novels and stories.

Anyhow, about a week ago Oates offered an observation that in part covers all of these online interactions passing through our consciousness such as occur on Twitter:

“Perhaps it’s a superficial aesthetic but online everything looks, feels, behaves, ‘seems’ like everything else,” she wrote. “Print culture more diverse.”

All of those tweets from yesterday certainly seemed alike, especially to this non-Breaking Bad viewer. But like I say, that was largely due to the fact that while everyone wanted to talk about the same thing, everyone couldn’t talk about it, too. Not really.

I guess again watching those tweets go by was sort of like watching others play a poker game. Everyone looked pretty much the same and seemed to be doing pretty much the same sort of thing. And no one could really tell me what they were experiencing as it happened, either, because to do so would ruin the game.

Falling Out of Sync

Spent a little time this afternoon looking in on this live streaming cash game from the Turning Stone Resort Casino over on the Poker Night site involving Kristy Arnett, Tom Schneider, Mike Matusow, Greg Mueller, Shaun Deeb, David Levi, and some others. Or trying to, anyhow.

As anyone who has taken a peek at the webcast knows, there have been some technical difficulties with the presentation. The audio has been about 15-20 minutes ahead of the video and the onscreen graphics describing the hands are not always matching up, either. I am sure they will get these issues resolved eventually, but for now these difficulties are making it hard to stick with the show for very long.

The various elements of the webcast falling out of sync got me thinking momentarily about each of those elements individually, perhaps more so than I would have otherwise. I was thinking about the importance of seeing the hole cards and how that affects one’s enjoyment when watching others play poker. I also was considering separately the value of commentary, hearing table talk, and other aspects of the show.

Meanwhile I had the PGA Championship playing on the television, too, which I also was following only in a vague way, looking up now and then to see a shot and learn how certain players were doing thus far today in the tournament’s second round. Obviously the production and presentation of that broadcast was much better handled for the TNT network, although like I say I was only really following it intermittently and without any serious concentration.

I guess you could call my viewing of both events “passive” insofar as I was watching without any serious rooting interest or even curiosity about results. The coincidence of having both on at once reminded me a little of a post I wrote a little over a year ago about how golf somehow attracts my interest as a spectator even though I don’t play the game.

That post was written while watching the Masters that spring and was titled “A Tradition That’s Totally Way, Way Different From All the Other Ones.” I contrasted golf’s success at attracting non-golfers to watch with the special challenge poker faces when it comes to getting non-poker players to find a reason to be interested in watching others play.

In the end I concluded the two weren’t really so comparable -- not just “apples and oranges,” but “apples and orangutans” -- the main difference being, I decided, that when it comes to poker nearly everyone who finds the game interesting to watch plays the game in some fashion, whereas such is not the case for golf.

Without online poker for the last two-plus years, I now most often speak of myself as someone who “used to play” poker. Sure, I played this summer in Vegas and will play again in the future when given the opportunity, but for the most part I’m not identifying myself as an active player these days. And I’m starting to recognize that because of that my interest in watching others play via a webcast or on television has been severely limited.

It’s much different watching poker as a reporter, where I’m locked into what’s happening in a much more direct way. As a non-playing spectator -- or a non-active player who is watching -- I feel kind of “out of sync” with the game in a way that significantly affects my interest level. Perhaps it has something to do with not really identifying with or feeling invested in the players’ decisions or the outcomes, because I don’t really see myself playing hands and facing similar decisions myself anytime soon.

In any case, as time goes by and I slide further and further “out of sync” from those who are playing the game, I’m sensing more and more how much harder it becomes to remained tuned in.

Radio Show Revival

This week’s posts -- about Richard Nixon, then the one noting the 2,000th post milestone -- have had me spending time looking back into history, generally speaking, as well as the history of the blog.

When perusing some of the old posts from years ago I was reminded yet again of my excursion into poker podcasting which ultimately saw me producing 20 episodes of something called The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show. It’s been a good while since the last one. Indeed, over on the HBPRS website I’ve had a post promising a “Season Two” up for a long time now and still haven’t delivered.

But for various reasons I’m starting to think it might be fun to revive the podcast, and even have a plan for Episode 21 which I might try to pull together in the next few days.

Those who heard the show before will remember how it was primarily based around presenting programs from the so-called “Golden Age of Radio” that began way back in the 1920s and lasted into the 1950s until television came along. Each episode of the HBPRS would feature at least one of those old shows, picked because it featured poker and/or gambling in some fashion.

There’s a pretty good variety represented in those 20 episodes with lots of mysteries, some comedies, a few westerns, and other types of old shows. In fact, if I’m remembering correctly I don’t think I even repeated any specific radio show along the way. Thus if you went through and listened to all of the HBPRS episodes you’d get a wide exposure to old time radio and its stars, generally speaking.

The podcast also often featured poker-themed songs and some other examples of cultural productions in which poker figured in some fashion. I had guests occasionally contributing to the show as well, especially early on, although for the most part it was just me introducing and discussing the various segments.

Like I say, I have an idea for a new episode and some enthusiasm to get the show up and running once again, perhaps to aim for producing at least a few more episodes of it and see where it goes. So as a further means to motivate myself I thought I’d post about this idea to revive the show here today, and ask for suggestions, too.

I think I’d like to keep old time radio as part of the format going forward, although I’m open to incorporating other things, too, in order to keep the show interesting and also not be limited to a certain kind of show -- one of the reasons, really, why I “pod-faded” (as they say) and let the show fall into this extended hiatus.

It would be fun, for instance, to feature segments that present and perhaps build on some of the topics I’ve written about in the past and for various outlets under the heading of “poker and pop culture.”

For example, long ago I wrote a lengthy piece for PokerNews about poker’s prominence on Star Trek: The Next Generation, going through pretty much all of the episodes in which poker came up (and there were a lot of them). I’ve had a number of ST:TNG fans who play poker mention that piece to me over the years, and it could be fun to do an episode talking about the show and perhaps including some clips along the way.

I can also definitely imagine venturing into other kinds of segments, such as one sharing some of this material about Nixon and his poker playing that I have been gathering of late.

One other reason why I found it hard to keep doing the show was the fact that I was flying solo, and thus there wasn’t anyone else to motivate me to keep making the shows. I’m thinking if I do revive it I’d like to have more involvement from others, if possible, perhaps as guests coming on to talk about various topics or to contribute in other ways.

For example, with this ST:TNG idea, I could have a devotee of that show come on to comment further on those poker-themed episodes while also maybe giving more context for them that I can as someone who didn’t necessarily follow the entire series as closely as some. Same for other topics in which others have a particular interest.

Anyhow, like I say I am posting this as both a way to motivate myself to get going again and to ask for suggestions as well. And if you have an idea and perhaps want to contribute in some fashion to the HBPRS revival, too, by all means let me know either with a comment or by dropping me a note at shortstackedshamus at gmail dot com.

Incidentally, if anyone who never heard the show before is curious, all 20 of the episodes are still there and downloadable. You can get to them through the HBPRS website and they are on iTunes, too. (The sound quality on some of the early ones is a little sketchy, so you might start with one of the later ones where the audio is definitely improved.)

Two Thousand Posts Later

The other day I was in what has become a very typical position for me these days, sitting on the couch in the living room writing on my laptop. I have an office and do work there some, but more often than not I’ll be in the other room, preferring not to be squirreled away and alone but out where I can interact with Vera more readily.

Spotting me typing furiously, Vera jokingly began to deliver a kind of play-by-play commentary on what she saw, hyping up her description in a way that made it sound a little like a movie trailer.

“He’s typing so fast,” she began. “He wants to stop... but... he can’t!”

I started to grin. I did not, however, stop typing. She continued.

“His eyes are tired. His hands are starting to cramp. But if he stops... he.. will... die!”

At that I did stop. And no, I didn’t expire, but instead burst into laughter along with Vera.

Today marks the 2,000th post on Hard-Boiled Poker. When I first started the blog in April 2006, I obviously had little thought about even reaching a hundred posts. When in early November of that year I did look up to see I was writing Post No. 100, I proudly marked the occasion in a post titled “Milestones.”

By then I’d built up enough momentum to know for sure I’d be continuing for some time afterwards, although the prospect of reaching other milestones wasn’t really something I consciously considered. But I did recognize a kind of achievement in having stuck with something that long, something of which I’d already begun to realize had started to become important to me.

Taking the occasion to reflect on the blog -- an indulgence I’d already allowed myself more than once within those first 100 posts -- I wrote about how observing such milestones in a way helped define the whole activity:

Like record-keeping, the blog helps document certain stages in the life of a poker player. At times the blog even helps foster the sense that he might actually be getting somewhere and not simply “running in a circle.” Or endlessly pushing that stone up the mountain like Sisyphus, only to have it roll back down again. Albert Camus describes Sisyphus as one who has, despite evidence to the contrary, somehow managed to create meaning from his plight. Rather than believe the godless world is “sterile or futile,” he knows that “each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world.”

Camus goes so far as to conclude we “must imagine Sisyphus as happy.” I think he’s right. As grave as such milestones might make us feel, they also go a long way toward helping us with the old problem of “meaning-making.” And that makes us happy for a while. And encourages us to keep going.

And so I will.

I’d continue to observe such milestones going forward such as in “Two Hundred Posts Later” (from May 2007) although with the next few milestones I was hit-or-miss with even catching them going by.

The 500th post happened while I was at the 2008 World Series of Poker (my first), and I only barely mentioned it. I did mark other milestones more thoroughly, including the moment when I’d arrived at “Post No. 1,000” (in February 2010).

Then I talked about how hard it was to sum up what the experience of writing the blog had meant to me at that point. “When you’ve written a thousand friggin’ posts, you’ve said and done a lot of things before,” I said, stating the obvious. I went on to mention how great it was to have become part of a larger community of writers and readers joined by a common interest in poker, then concluded by thanking all of those who’ve taken the time to stop by here over the years.

I mean, really, there’s no way I get this far along without help. You can’t play poker by yourself. Not really. And while you can write for yourself, the meaning of what you write grows with every reader.

A thousand thanks, everybody, for helping give all these words more meaning.

The journey through these last thousand posts has seemed much shorter than the one through the first thousand. It took a few months less, I suppose, but the time has seemed to have raced by much, more more quickly. As we all recognize as we get older, time has a way of appearing to speed up, and when we stop to look around and happen to notice how much has passed, there’s always a little bit of misgiving as we’re made to acknowledge we’re closer to the end than we were before.

While Vera was joking, there was certainly a small bit of truth tucked away inside of her play-by-play. I think knowing that made us laugh even longer. You know, that idea that as long as one continues to press forward, one continues to live.

Looking back through the older posts a couple of thoughts occur to me. One is to marvel at the energy on display early on, and really through most of the first few years of the blog. Posts are longer, and even paragraphs go on and on sometimes, the writer keyed up to tackle whatever it is he has chosen to write about in comprehensive fashion, with extra context and research coming in frequently to flesh out the point being made or topic being explored.

That energy still comes now and then, though I’ll admit after 2,000 posts it isn’t as frequent or consistent. I’m affected these days both by having written so much before -- thus leaving myself fewer and fewer untouched subjects -- and by other writing obligations having crowded the schedule as well as the jingle-brain of this scribbling sap.

When I look back I also realize how not every post reflects my current thinking about poker (or other aspects of our existence), and there are plenty of instances where I see myself as having been a little too raw or naive about whatever it is I’ve decided to address. But I don’t mind that so much, as seeing such provides me evidence that I’ve indeed changed. Or maybe... possibly... that I’ve even learned something.

There’s little about poker or the crazy, confused world surrounding the game that is without ambiguity. The detective-writer metaphor has always been especially apt, as mysteries abound. I think I’ve stumbled on some important clues here and there and even drawn some decent conclusions, but a lot of the investigations remain open, even if I might sound at times as though I’ve closed them.

In other words, the old problem of meaning-making remains.

Up top is a picture of my cat, Sweetie, that I took a couple of weeks ago, who can be more than a little mysterious, too, sometimes. And who can make me feel like Sisyphus every now and then, such as in that photo. Look closely, she’s there. (Click the pic to enlarge, if needed.)

Here’s another one of Sweetie which Vera took shortly after I returned from Las Vegas after that long summer. I’m there, too, in my usual spot, having finally stopped typing for a while. (You can click and make this one bigger as well.)

Do I have to keep writing? Do I want to? Yes and yes.

Meanwhile, I know you don’t have to read, and so thanks once again for wanting to do so.

Sticking It To Nixon

As I’ve written about off-and-on here for the last several months, I have become increasingly interested in researching and learning more about America’s least beloved president, Richard Milhous Nixon. For example, here’s a post from a few months back in which I talked about both Nixon and my developing curiosity.

My interest in Nixon was initially piqued by all of the stories of his poker playing, with the teaching of my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class having inspired me to see what else I could find regarding that part of his biography. If you’ve heard those stories you know that Nixon had a reputation of being a great poker player, having won considerably from his fellow officers when serving in the Navy during WWII.

I’ve since read several Nixon bios as well as his own Six Crises (published in 1962), plus numerous articles and other sources of information. Nixon is such an endlessly complicated character about whom so much has been written it is easy to feel oneself slipping down the rabbit hole where such study seems as though it may never end. The amount of material about Watergate alone is overwhelming, and so much of it is filled with jaw-droppingly fascinating twists and turns that makes it hard not to want to keep digging.

That Nixon chose to call that early memoir Six Crises kind of indicates how he seems to have viewed his own existence as a series of conflicts with others, and as we well know he’d go on to experience many more crises after his failed presidential bid in 1960.

I also am a fan of old comedy LPs, and all of this reading about Nixon has led me to listen back to some of the records I’d collected over the years as well as to track down some new ones. It just so happens that Nixon’s political rise and fall coincided exactly with what one might describe as the “golden age” of comedy records, a category that really didn’t come into prominence until the late 1950s and early 1960s, then kind of died down by the 1980s and 1990s.

I’m talking about a period when popular comedy LPs would sell as much or more than most pop and rock records did, which is why if you ever visit used record stores you still see the comedy sections stuffed full. My favorite discs have always been by acts like the Firesign Theater, the Credibility Gap, National Lampoon, and solo artists like Lenny Bruce, Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Richard Pryor, Albert Brooks, George Carlin, and later on Bill Hicks. But I find pretty much all of it interesting and with older stuff especially enjoy hearing the comedians’ unique angle of entry into history and/or politics.

The Nixon binge got me listening to the Lenny Bruce discs again, as he has a few tracks where he talks about Nixon from his days as Eisenhower’s VP. He also mentions his contemporary, Mort Sahl, a few times (and is very complimentary). That got me finally to sit down and really listen to Sahl’s collection of what were really groundbreaking albums from the late ’50s and early ’60s, as well as his fantastic later LP from 1973 called Sing a Song of Watergate.

The first time through listening to an early Sahl disc I have to admit I found him kind of incomprehensible. And while I have a decent understanding of U.S. history and the political scene of Sahl’s day, I’ll admit to being a little lost with a few of his allusions here and there. But after a while I began to appreciate the logic behind his often idiosyncratic chains of association, and some of his insights are especially prescient. I’m not exactly busting a gut laughing when I listen, but I do find myself smiling and nodding a lot.

The Watergate LP from 1973 came after about a decade during which Sahl didn’t produce any new LPs, a career turn that most attribute to Sahl becoming so engrossed in the Kennedy assassination and seeking the truth of what happened while debunking the Warren Commission’s report that it negatively affected his success as a performer. As it happened Sahl had the unique experience of riding on Air Force One once with JFK and later with Nixon (as a member of the press), and among the gems on Sing a Song of Watergate is Sahl telling the stories of both trips to provide a fascinating contrast between the two.

But the whole reason I’m even bringing up this topic is to talk about another comic recording artist whom I’ve only recently had a chance to appreciate more fully, David Frye. By the time Nixon became president in 1969, Frye began essentially devoting his entire career to lampooning him. In fact Frye made four LPs altogether that targeted Nixon, each more devastating than the last: I Am the President (1969), Radio Free Nixon (1971), Richard Nixon Superstar (1971), and Richard Nixon: A Fantasy (1973).

Frye was an impressionist, and while he does a great Nixon the records also show he could do dozens of other famous figures of the day including Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert and Ted Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller, Billy Graham, William F. Buckley, Truman Capote, Henry Fonda, George C. Scott, among many others. He was also a skewering satirist, and the records help spell out how much of the public tended to view the president they’d elected.

Here’s one clip from the first LP in which Frye’s Nixon tries marijuana in order to be better informed before considering drug-related legislation.

The 1973 LP called Richard Nixon: A Fantasy appeared after the Watergate scandal had broken wide open, and in it Frye casts Nixon as a gangster-like character (code name “Five O’Clock Shadow”) who in fact plotted the entire break-in, led the “plumbers” to the job, then was the only one of them to escape arrest. Early on he meets with Don Corleone to ask for help (with Frye doing Brando’s Godfather), and the Don asks him “You want justice?”

“Not necessarily,” answers Nixon.

The president is on the lam for much of the record, only eventually to be caught, tried, and imprisoned. Then he escapes and after shooting some guards faces the electric chair. The whole thing is as over-the-top as it sounds, and even though the whole “fantasy” is outrageous it adds up to a revealing critique of Nixon, not just for the Watergate cover-up but for other offenses, too.

Right near the end there is a sequence leading up to the execution. A big crowd has assembled, carnival music is playing, and someone is selling programs. A pre-execution eulogy begins to be delivered over the public address system.

“As Richard Nixon leaves us,” it begins, “we shall always remember this man.” When the voice describes him as a “great man,” there is much laughter amid the cacophony. A few more comments are added, then comes the conclusion:

“But I still say... years from now Richard Nixon will be remembered most of all for being a great poker player!”

There’s more laughter at that moment, the anticlimactic pronouncement of Nixon being a great poker player clearly intended as a double-edged jab meant both to belittle his accomplishments in politics and as president and to evoke negative connotations associated with poker, a game so seemingly suitable to “Tricky Dick.”

You can hear the whole Richard Nixon: A Fantasy LP over at the Internet Archive. Frye’s celebrity would soon after Nixon’s ouster, although he’d continue to record and perform thereafter. He died a couple of years ago in Las Vegas, and from what I can find online it sounds as though not a great deal is known of his last days. I’d be curious to hear if anyone in LV perhaps knows if he had been performing at all.

Will update further about this project as it develops, but for now I’m glad to have been more fully introduced to Mort Sahl and David Frye, and definitely recommend both to fans of comedy and/or political commentary from that earlier era.

(By the way, as I publish I am realizing this is my 1,999th post on Hard-Boiled Poker. That is a damn lot of scribbling. What to do for #2,000?)

Travel Report: LAPT6 Peru, Day 4 -- The Final Fifth Street, then Pizza Street

The fourth and final day of the Season 6 Latin American Poker Tour Peru Main Event -- the fifth one, in truth, because of the two Day 1 flights -- was the shortest of them all, clocking in at less than five hours. It wasn’t such a surprise, as the stacks were already starting to get shallow soon after play began, and sure enough the day was punctuated by one all-in after another as the final eight played down to a winner, Patricio Rojas of Chile.

On his bio sheet, Rojas had described himself as more of an online player -- indeed, like many he’d qualified for the event on PokerStars -- and in fact also noted that this was both his first LAPT event and first live tourney final table. He had the chip lead going in, lost it a couple of times along the way though always had a big stack, and by the time they’d gotten down to three-handed he had the majority of chips and eventually was able to withstand the others’ all-ins to win.

The runner-up, Rafael Pardo of Colombia, had made his fourth LAPT final table. He finished seventh twice (including at the very first LAPT event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2008), and third once earlier this year (again in Brazil, at Sao Paulo). That’s one behind the record of five LAPT final tables of Jose “Nacho” Barbero.

Pardo was way behind Rojas chip-wise to start heads up play and through a couple of dozen hands he couldn’t narrow the gap. Then came one in which both were dealt aces but Rojas had the better kicker, and when the final fifth street of the tourney fell the title was his. Not nearly as mind-boggling a finish as they had at APPT Queenstown this week (as I mentioned yesterday), but exciting nonetheless.

One interesting development yesterday saw the final seven players decide to flatten out the payouts considerably (which were quite steep). Here’s a post explaining what they did, which more or less amounted to taking a big chunk off the top and spreading it out among the other six spots.

Play ended late afternoon and after another couple of hours of tying up loose ends then a little longer to wait out the end of the High Roller event, a group of us were able to go back out into the Lima evening with its ever-present mist and find another good dinner.

We went to the famed Calle de las Pizzas or “Pizza Street” in downtown Miraflores which features a collection of restaurants -- many featuring gourmet pizzas -- with bars, music, and dancing. Was fun just walking up and down the street with Reinaldo, Maria, and Mario to look in on the various scenes while also being petitioned aggressively by those stationed outside each establishment wanting us to choose them. We finally settled on a place called La Glorietta, and Reinaldo and I split a pie with a host of toppings including asparagus and pineapple.

Was kind of funny to think I’d followed up my night of eating a hamburger with pizza while in Peru, but having been a few times now it was interesting to see a different part of Miraflores.

The dinner was lots of fun, and the pizza quite good as we ate while shooing away the men trying to sell us roses or play a song on the guitar. We also laughed a lot Mario told us a kind of incredible story about his trip to Wimbledon a few weeks ago. (Might be sharing more of that one later on... stay tuned.)

We ended up back at the Atlantic City Casino for some ice cream and more relaxing, then I cabbed it back to the hotel to get to sleep by midnight as I had to leave at 6:30 a.m. for the airport.

Am now all of the way back home after another long day of traveling -- hence the late posting -- and am going to sign off here for now and see if I can’t tame all of these still racing thoughts about the tourney and trip and get some sleep. Was another great experience, and I’m so grateful not only to have these opportunities but also to get to work with so many great, interesting people on the LAPT who couldn’t be more helpful.

If you’re curious you can check the PokerStars blog to see all of the posts from the five days of the tourney. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to you all mañana.

Travel Report: LAPT6 Peru, Day 3 -- One Tasty Burger

Blindingly fast day yesterday in terms of the pace of play at Day 3 of the Latin American Poker Tour Peru Main Event. It took less than six one-hour levels for 27 players to play down to eight, the only real slowdown coming near the end when it took a little over a half-hour to get from nine to eight.

Patricio Rojas of Chile leads with eight left, while the Argentinian Julian Menendez is also still in the hunt as the 24-year-old seeks a second LAPT title. Also, the Colombian Rafael Pardo though short-stacked will be playing at his fourth career LAPT final table today where he hopes to improve on his best-ever finish of third at LAPT Brazil a few months ago.

Within a few minutes of the start today the average will be down to about 23 big blinds per stack or so, and so it’ll probably be a fast start at least today for the eight-handed final table, and perhaps a fast finish, too. In which case we may get to enjoy one last meal in Lima, where it is difficult to go wrong food-wise in a city some call the “gastronomical capital of South America.”

Sergio and I were walking in today and talking about various meals we’ve had this trip, and he pointed out how when it comes to picking a place to eat in Lima, you can think about price or the kinds of food being offered, but there’s really no need to worry about quality because it is consistently high just about everywhere.

Our early finish last night enabled us to grab dinner at Papacho’s, a gourmet burger place located not from the Atlantic City Casino. The place was packed and in fact we had more than an hour wait to get a table, but that wasn’t such a bother as we’d had late lunches, anyway, and it was enjoyable just to relax and chat as we waited.

There were Beatles LPs on the walls and lots of Beatles tunes among the pop/rock soundtrack, and the menus were huge square cardboards with every inch covered by a myriad of burger types on offer. More American than Peruvian, really, but the massive Papacha I selected (with blue cheese and assorted toppings) was -- insert Jules Winnfield voice -- one tasty burger.

Had another good meal this morning at the hotel, a much lighter breakfast of a poached egg and salmon, and am now sitting near the main stage where preparations are being made for the final table to begin.

Looking forward to an exciting conclusion, although looking over Heath Chick’s report from the APPT Queenstown final table that played out overnight, I can’t imagine we’ll match the finish they had. Have you heard? The winner Jonathan Bredin won the final hand with , then revealed he had that same hand tattooed on his arm! No shinola!

Now that I think about it, maybe we should check to see if our final eight players have any tattoos before play begins today in Lima. Check over at the PokerStars blog where I’ll definitely let you know if we find out anything along those lines.