On Lindgren and “Rehab”

Over the weekend BLUFF magazine posted an interview with Erick Lindgren focusing primarily on the poker player’s significant sports-betting woes. Titled “Broken: The Erick Lindgren Story,” the article by BLUFF Editor in Chief Lance Bradley relates how Lindgren recently spent two weeks in a California rehab facility “trying to work through his addiction to gambling.”

The piece describes how Lindgren, once something of a favorite among poker-TV celebs thanks both to his amiable personality and talents at the table, has seen his reputation plummet of late following reports of his multi-million dollar gambling losses and comprehensive failure to cover debts.

Reference is made to last spring’s revelations regarding the extent of Lindgren’s losses/debts, which at the time were much greater than most realized. I wrote a post then titled “Hero Call” that discusses what was being said about Lindgren while also reflecting on how his story had become yet another example of a one-time popular figure in poker proving disappointing to some.

Clearly an action junkie who cannot help himself when it comes to sports betting, Lindgren speaks in the BLUFF article of having “the degenerate gene” and thus having had a goal of “removing” it via his stay at the rehab facility. The article explains how as a member of Team Full Tilt, Lindgren received payments “upward of $250,000 per month,” all of which (it seems) was squandered via betting on sports and participation in high-stakes fantasy leagues. And then some.

When the dividends stopped coming following Black Friday, Lindgren’s ability to make payments and/or hold off creditors lessened considerably. According to Lindgren, his gambling debts total about $3 million at present, although at one time he had been more than $10 million in the hole. He is also currently in the process of filing for bankruptcy.

The mention of “rehab” and the acknowledgment of having “degenerate” tendencies perhaps suggest that Lindgren is looking for a way to stop gambling entirely, much like an alcoholic might try once and for all to give up drinking. But that is not the case, as Lindgren describes himself at the end of the piece having “been staked in poker and some sports (betting) to try and raise some money.” As Bradley puts it earlier, “Lindgren wasn’t in rehab to cure him of gambling -- that’s his day job and he knows he needs to continue to play poker and work in Las Vegas if he has any hope of paying all his debts and beginning the process of repairing his name.”

It all sounds very odd and not at all encouraging. A cynical response would be to say that the primary goal of the two-week stay -- not to mention submitting to the interview -- was to rehabilitate Lindgren’s reputation, not really to try to help him directly address his gambling addiction (and thus, by improving his reputation, improve his shot at finding backers). But even a more generous reading of Lindgren’s words and situation has to be filled with trepidation thanks to the obvious disconnect between addressing one’s gambling problem by formulating plans to figure out how to continue gambling.

Thanks to Bradley’s balanced approach, the reader is allowed to form his or her own opinions regarding Lindgren and his plight. As Lindgren’s example well proves, the poker world tends to enable such “degen” behavior, allowing those who are self-destructive to continue down the same path as long as doing so doesn’t negatively affect others too greatly. And in some cases those who write and report on poker might be said to contribute even further to the process of enabling by romanticizing wild, reckless gambling without acknowledging the damage often done. But Bradley avoids that tendency in the article, mostly letting Lindgren speak for himself and thereby allowing readers to make their own judgments regarding the poker player’s future prospects.

While I’m as hopeful as anyone that Lindgren makes good, it seems to me that most who read “Broken” and respond rationally will probably come to a similar conclusion regarding Lindgren’s proposed method of recovery.

Not to bet on it.

Hand for Hand, Play by Play, Frame by Frame

Have been spending the morning reading tweets from folks heading south to the Bahamas for the 10th annual PokerStars Caribbean Adventure that gets underway tomorrow. Have never made that trip myself, but would like to do so at least once some day. I know the Atlantis is insanely expensive, but I imagine it wouldn’t be so bad to spend part of the winter in such a place.

Lots of players are tweeting, but so are a number of my poker-reporting colleagues as the PCA will be getting extensive coverage. I was thinking this week again a little about how poker reporting has changed over recent years, as well as how all kinds of other reporting and/or analysis of other cultural events/products has evolved of late.

Back in October I wrote a post about reporting from the World Series of Poker Main Event in which I made reference to the stark contrast between the way tourneys were reported on a few decades ago and what we now experience. The big difference, of course, concerns the amount of detail provided by the coverage today.

Indeed, between the nearly instantaneous tweets from a variety of sources, the hand-for-hand reporting on PokerNews, and ESPN’s “almost live” start-to-finish coverage, the amount of information available from the 2012 WSOP ME final table was nearly overwhelming. Incidentally, as I mentioned in the last of my recaps earlier in the week, I went through and compiled all of the hole cards from that final table that were shown on ESPN, then posted them here. That’s obviously another added dimension to poker tourney coverage that wasn’t part of the equation back in the day.

Like I say, I was thinking about how the growth of various forms of media and technology have changed our level of access to just about everything in our culture, both in terms of how we experience, say, a poker tournament or sporting event (or just about anything) as well as how the greater level of detail invites closer, more precise scrutiny when it comes to subsequent analysis. Those wishing to study and interpret players’ decisions at that most recent WSOP ME final table, for example, have a lot more information available to them than was the case even just a few years ago.

This week I caught the better part of a replay of the 1973 Sugar Bowl on one of the ESPN networks, shown as kind of a preview of the upcoming Alabama-Notre Dame BCS Championship. The game from three decades ago also saw the Crimson Tide and the Irish playing what was essentially a national championship game, ultimately won by Notre Dame 24-23.

The replay was of ABC’s original broadcast of the game, and of course featured very few onscreen graphics and only a small fraction of the copious statistical information we are accustomed to today. Only a few cameras were employed, and I can’t even remember if any replays were shown (perhaps there were a few). In fact, rather than show the score or time on screen there were frequent shots of the scoreboard (especially near the end) to let us know how much time was left as well as the down and distance. (Here is a video compiling some highlights from the game in which you can see what I am talking about with regard to the way the broadcast went.)

As those of us old enough to remember watching sports on TV a few decades ago remember, the experience was really much more akin to watching a game live than what we get today. And of course no one was recording the sucker to watch again later, either. Today everyone is DVR-ing everything, with all plays documented in precise detail and available for close study later to those who make it their business to analyze and interpret statistical data from sporting events. The same goes for other types of research and study, too.

I sometimes write about film, and over the years I have managed to place a few articles in academic journals that included detailed analyses of films. These articles all were written within the last decade, and so I obviously benefited from having personal copies of the films about which I was writing, enabling me to look at them repeatedly and examine them closely for potentially relevant details.

Speaking of, I have a film article coming out in the new issue Paracinema, a print publication that features in-depth studies of all sorts of off-the-beaten-path films and cinema-related subjects.

My article actually looks at five different films, all produced by Universal in the early 1970s as part of a “youth division” within the big studio designed to make low-budgeted, quasi-“indie” films. The movies I discuss are Taking Off (1971, dir. Milos Forman), The Hired Hand (1971, dir. Peter Fonda), The Last Movie (1971, dir. Dennis Hopper), Silent Running (1972, dir. Donald Trumbull), and American Graffiti (1973, dir. George Lucas). Mine is just one of a dozen essays in the issue (No. 18), which you can order for just $7 over at the Paracinema website, if you’re interested. (Shipping is free!)

(As it happens, poker is played in four of the five films I discuss -- not that I focus on that in my article. Only in Graffiti is there no poker. Then again, only in Graffiti is there the awesome Wolfman Jack!)

In writing about those films made 40 or so years ago, I read a number of contemporary reviews and was reminded of how those who wrote about film in the early 1970s generally didn’t have personal copies to consult, and instead had to watch the films in the theaters. Indeed, if you spend any time at all reading film reviews or criticism written during that era or before, you frequently encounter all sorts of inaccuracies regarding plots, dialogue, and other specifics, errors which readers often weren’t able to notice or challenge as they, too, were limited as far as their access to the films was concerned.

But today we live in an age of “total access” (relatively speaking), with technology enabling us to control and manage our reception of a poker tourney or sporting event or film or just about any other cultural product with incredible precision, the difference affecting both our initial experiences of those products as well as later reflections.

There’s more to say along these lines, but instead I’ll leave it there and let you reread, parse, scrutinize, dissect, evaluate, and reflect as much or as little as you wish.

Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High

A little over a week ago, Gus Hansen fired off three tweets from his Twitter account.*

The first came on Christmas evening. “Never underestimate stupid people in large groups,” wrote Hansen, cryptically adding that an “explanation will follow.” Without any context -- and given the date of posting -- it initially came off like some sort of complaint about Christmas shoppers or perhaps some weird, unflattering reference to religion.

But Hansen wasn’t talking about either, as he made clear with a second tweet about 20 minutes later, then a third the following morning:



Talk about Christmas spirit! In less than 280 characters, one of the new Full Tilt Poker’s ambassadors -- or “Professionals,” as they’ve dubbed them -- offered a sweeping condemnation of pretty much the entire poker community, characterizing those who are critical of Howard Lederer and his involvement in the Full Tilt Poker fiasco as “stupid,” needing to “get a fu**ing grip,” and perhaps so deeply under the spell of a couple of other poker pros that they are unable to form opinions of their own.

It’s a strange, highly off-putting message Hansen has sent the poker community. My first thought when reading the tweets was to think how utterly far removed Hansen’s world is from the one I inhabit, and I’m not just talking about the way he routinely wins and loses millions within the space of mere days or even hours. No, it’s a complete disconnect, a huge divide over which something resembling “sympathy” has little chance of crossing.

Seriously, how could Hansen sympathize with anyone whose bankroll of a few hundred -- or a few thousand, or even tens of thousands -- has been inaccessible for what is now going on two years (as is the case for us American players)?

Among the responses to Hansen’s tweet was a predictably diffuse 2+2 thread, a thoughtful commentary by Haley Hintze for Flushdraw, and an expression of justifiable bafflement from Dan Katz over at PokerNews Daily. There was also some back-and-forthing on Twitter, too -- mostly anti-Gus, though not entirely.

Meanwhile, Daniel Negreanu posted his most recent YouTube “rant” yesterday, and when I dialed it up I half-expected to hear some sort of rejoinder to Hansen’s suggestion that Negreanu’s influence in Lederer-related matters is suspect. In fact, Negreanu doesn’t even mention Hansen in his video, and instead begins by listing as a “number one goal” for the new year “to do everything I can to help the poker community be shed in a much better light than it was in 2012 and 2011... and also the people in it.”

Negreanu goes on to explain his meaning, that really he’s thinking primarily of certain individuals who have gotten “off track” somehow and become destructive to themselves or to others in the poker community. Even so, it’s hard not to hear an extreme contrast between the messages of Negreanu (to engage and unite) and Hansen (to divide and estrange).

When I think of this disconnect between the great majority of us -- we “amateurs” or recreational players who love poker yet do not experience the game in the way “Professionals” like Hansen do -- I think back to how things were five or six years ago, during the height of the “boom” in online poker. Even though it was all mostly illusory, there was nonetheless a real sense felt by most of us pushing quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies back and forth online that we really did have something in common with players like Hansen and others we saw on television or railed online.

In truth, this idea of a connection between the pros and the rest of the poker community was part of FTP’s marketing strategy as it helped to concoct the Frankenstein monster known as the “poker celebrity.” Sure, in retrospect it is easier to see how such a ploy was probably driven more by ad-exec-inspired, promotional phony baloney than by genuine community building, but it nonetheless worked. We heeded the call to “learn, chat, and play with the pros.” Even if the connection was more perceived than actual, the sense that we were all playing the same game improved the experience for many.

When Full Tilt Poker 2.0 launched, reports soon followed that Hansen was losing hundreds of thousands within the first few days. According to HighStakes Database (from which that graphic to the left comes), Hansen lost $1.84 million on Full Tilt Poker in November, then about $1.4 million more in December. Hansen additionally lost over $1 million on PokerStars during 2012 (as “broksi”). And he has dropped another $100K during the first two days of 2013 on FTP, too.

As a Team Full Tilter, Hansen earned big time dividends throughout FTP’s rise and fall. Haley points out how “Hansen should clearly know by now that a good chunk of what he was paid -- from late 2010 until Black Friday -- came during a period when Howard Lederer knew that Full Tilt Poker was underwater, with hundreds of millions in unpaid debt and uncollected deposits.”

In other words, while there’s no emotional connection left between Gus Hansen and most of us (the “stupid people in large groups” who played on Full Tilt Poker), there is still one other way we might connect ourselves with the “Great Dane.”

It has to do with the $159 million or so U.S. players thought they had in their accounts on the morning of April 15, 2011. (You’re welcome, Gus.)

*At the time this post was written, Hansen’s verified Twitter account had been under the “@RealGusHansen” handle. Soon after it was changed to simply “@GusHansen,” where one can still read the three tweets discussed above here, here, and here.

Hard-Boiled Poker 2012 Year in Review (3 of 3)

Okay, one more day of recapping before moving on to new adventures. On Monday I highlighted posts from January-April, and yesterday May-August. Here’s a look at some of what was happening on Hard-Boiled Poker during the last four months of 2012.

September

A post early in the month titled “It Was the Third of September, That Day I’ll Always Remember” veered toward existential brooding about poker and life in the context of thinking about the great Temptations song. A week later the 9/11 anniversary prompted similarly-styled musings in “A Meaningful Interruption.”

“No PPT For You!” and “Partouche Postscript” both addressed the guaranteed-prize-pool controversy at the Partouche Poker Tour and apparent decision to shut down the tour altogether. Then on the poker in popular culture front, in “Playing Poker with Truman and Churchill” I wrote about the famous poker game that preceded the British stateman’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946. And later in the month I wrote a post of praise for a favorite sitcom, “Here’s to Cheers,” that discussed a particular episode in which poker was featured.

Andy Bloch gave a long interview to Diamond Flush Poker (another of the nominees for Favorite Poker Blog in the 2013 BLUFF Reader’s Choice Awards), and I responded at length here in a post titled “Full Tilters Talking.” The next day I wrote about another big interview of a poker player -- this time from the mainstream -- in “Esfandiari on Stern.”

Then came Howard Lederer’s big interview with PokerNews, a huge deal at the time, but in retrospect an obviously self-serving first move in a mini-publicity tour designed to reposition him somehow within the poker community after his having been largely responsible for doing serious damage to it over the last several years.

I had written critically of Lederer earlier in the month in a post titled “Bad Cell” which among other topics talks about the 2012 Audi A8 L Quattro that Howard Lederer bought for $156,549 two-and-a-half months after Black Friday. (No shinola.) Then after “The Lederer Files” (the austere title PN gave the lengthy interview) began to appear, I wrote an early reaction in “On the Lederer Files: The ‘Professor’ and the ‘Culture’ of Poker” which took issue with a wild and wholly inaccurate claim by Lederer regarding online poker, ca. 2004-2008.

A few days later in “The Mis-Lederer Files,” I wrote about the interview as a whole, making the overall point that while Lederer appeared desirous to hammer home some thesis about his having been misled, the fact was he was intimately involved in misleading others throughout the FTP fiasco, an effort that continued in part through the PokerNews interview, too.

Also, as a kind of “Lederer Files” postscript, I found an old podcast from either late 2005 or early 2006 and wrote a quick synopsis/review of it here in “Poker Podcast Review: Full Tilt Poker’s Tips from the Pros, Episode 5 -- Your Online Poker Bankroll feat. Howard Lederer.” A short show, but stuffed with ironies in the post-BF, post-“Ponzi” aftermath of the implosion of Full Tilt Poker Version 1.0.

Finally, football (and picking NFL games) became a returned-to topic in September, kicked off (so to speak) in a post titled “Giants or Cowboys?” I also talked about the unforgettable “Fail Mary” climax of that replacement ref controversy in “Everything Is Wild: On the Packers-Seahawks Game; or, Simultaneous Botch.”

October

There were a couple more NFL posts in October: “Icing the Kicker and Running It Twice” and “You Got to Know When to Hold’em, Know When to Punt.” The 1960 Presidential campaign was the focus of “‘We’re not now talking about a poker game’ (Kennedy & Nixon).” And physics, poker, and the usefulness of higher education were discussed in “The Boeree Principle.”

The WSOPE finished up in Cannes in early October, with Phil Hellmuth earning his 13th bracelet by taking down the Main Event. I wrote about him a couple of times, first in “What the Hellmuth?! 2012 WSOP Europe Main Event Nears Finish.” Then in “Hellmuth and the WSOP” I talk about the Poker Brat’s tourney triumphs while also noting how relatively speaking he ain’t such a great ambassador for our favorite card game.

Mid-month I appeared as a guest on “The Thinking Poker Podcast.” I was invited once again this year to participate as a voter for the Poker Hall of Fame, and in “Apples, Oranges, and the Poker Hall of Fame” I offered some thoughts about the process, nominees, and this year’s winners. Full Tilt Poker came up again a couple of times in October in “Fact-Checking; or, The Professor’s Plight” and “Full Tilt Poker Relaunch Soon (No Shinola).” And I also made a brief excursion to discuss (again) federal legislation (that again, ain’t happening) in “Meanwhile, Reid-Kyl.”

When the teaser for Full House with Johnny Chan appeared on YouTube, I couldn’t help but respond in “Here’s Johnny, Welcoming Us to His Mansion.” I would actually get a chance to ask Chan about the show a couple of weeks later in Macau, although he told me (with a laugh) that he couldn’t really discuss it.

October ended with the WSOP Main Event final table, and in the days leading up to it I wrote a post titled “For the Record: Keeping Score at the WSOP” which addressed the value and significance of hand-for-hand reporting. I then wrote about an interesting hand from 10-handed play that became even more so once we got to see everyone’s hole cards on ESPN in “Poker’s Possible Worlds; or, ‘Easy Fold for Jesse.’”

I scribbled some reactions to both days of play in “2012 WSOP Main Event Final Table (Day 1 of 2)” and “2012 WSOP Main Event Final Table (2 of 2).” Then after going back through all 399 hands of the final table and comparing ESPN’s “almost live” coverage with PokerNews’ reporting, I pulled together a mammoth post listing all of the hole cards that were revealed on the broadcast, “2012 WSOP Main Event Final Table Hole Cards (Complete).”

November

November began with something altogether new for your humble scribe, a trip all of the way to Macau to cover a couple of Asia Championship of Poker events.

It was a memorable trip, including a little bit of sight-seeing in between working nine straight (long) days. I did get to visit the Venetian Macao, the world’s largest casino. And the ACOP Main Event ended most strangely, with two players ending six hours’ worth of heads-up play by shoving all-in blind and splitting the prize money.

I posted here all along the way, starting out by sharing some “Traveling Travails” (i.e., a canceled flight adding an extra day to the journey over). I finally arrived at my destination more than 8,000 miles from home, then covered the ACOP Warm-Up event (Days 1a, 1b, 2, and 3) and the Main Event (Days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). Then in “Skipping Steps (Leaving Macau)” I wrote about the journey home.

Once back in the U.S. I again complained about not really having much in the way of online poker to enjoy in “Faraway Poker,” although my mood improved when I considered the comments of a political prognosticator and poker player in “A (Nate) Silver Lining for Online Poker.”

Pretty soon I was back in front of the set watching NFL football and “Talkin’ Thanksgiving and ‘Hero Picks’” and about a wild play that happened on “Fourth and 29.” And perhaps because I was again focused on picking football games, I was inspired to consider “Gambling as an Object of Inquiry.”

That post about gambling took me back to California Split screenwriter Joseph Walsh’s fun memoir, Gambler on the Loose, which in turn led to another exchange of emails with the writer that resulted in my sharing “A Slim Story from Joseph Walsh” (about “Amarillo Slim” Preston).

December

Last month began sadly with the news that poker author and podcaster Lou Krieger had passed away following a brief, valiant fight with cancer. Even for those of us who knew of his condition, it was a sudden shock, and the poker world will greatly miss such an important contributor to our community. I tried in “Lou Krieger” to sum up some thoughts about my friend.

In December I wrote about 16th-century French literature in “Gargantua’s Games,” the latest poker craze in “Eating It Up: Open-Face Chinese Poker,” and Richard Nixon (again) in “More On Tricky Dick.”

The month also saw me make a couple more tourney reporting trips. I first helped cover the WSOP Circuit event at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City for PokerNews, reporting back here as I did (Days 1, 2, and 3). Then I went right back out on another PN assignment to help cover the Sands Bethlehem DeepStack Extravaganza Main Event in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (Days 1a, 1b, 2, and 3). Both were fun events, and while the workdays were super-long (as usual), I greatly enjoyed working with my long-time colleague Mickey Doft on both, as well as with rock star photographer Joe Giron in Bethlehem.

Back home, I had a chance to interview for PokerListings one of my favorite poker writers, Anthony Holden (Big Deal, Bigger Deal, Holden on Hold’em), and mentioned that here in a post titled “Holden On...”

Once back I also got to jump online a little to mess around on Hero Poker, that is until Hero decided to close shop as I noted in “A Hero-ic Effort (Hero Poker Steps Aside).” I had my balance shipped over to another Merge site, Carbon Poker, thus compelling me to write a couple of related posts -- “2013 and the Fall and Rise of Online Poker in the U.S.” and “Merge Move and Super Stretchy Screaming Monkeys.”

I always feel a little bit of dread whenever I begin these end-of-year recap posts, caused both by anticipating the tedium of the compiling process and a touch of self-loathing associated with looking back and reading my own words. (Really, who but the most vain among us can stand looking in the mirror for so long?) But as has been the case in past years, I end the task feeling somewhat content about it all, even reassured that amid all the quantity there might well have been a few instances of quality popping up here and there.

Again, thanks to all who’ve spent any time at all reading Hard-Boiled Poker in 2012. I hope you found the visits worthwhile.

Hard-Boiled Poker 2012 Year in Review (2 of 3)

Happy New Year, all. Am continuing with the recapping business today, after yesterday moving through January-April Gonna minimize the ado, and just do it.

May

Started the month “Talkin’ Titanic” while alluding to another Pop Poker piece over on PokerListings looking at various poker-related stories connected to the doomed passenger liner and blockbuster film. Also on the pop culture front, a little later I was writing about “Rounders’ Game of Tell and Show” as well as “Playing Poker with Sanford and Son.”

As the month went by I commented on various news of the day in posts like “WSOP Asia Pacific Adds More Bracelets,” “WSOP Stirring Things Up for 2012,” and “Buddhist Monks Busted.” Also talked about Lock Poker leaving Merge for its own network in “A Necessarily Small Revolution.”

In “Human Interest” I reflected on a thoughtful blog post by Phil Galfond (someone whose blog probably should’ve been nominated this year for the BLUFF Reader’s Choice Awards’ Favorite Poker Blog). And “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forums” gave me another chance to practice some photoshopping skills while commenting on 2+2 still being down.

Then late in the month I had the opportunity to make a return trip down to Punta del Este, Uruguay to cover another LAPT event, and so spent a week writing about packing, arriving, the “pregame,” covering Days 1, 2, 3, and 4, then finally departing. It was a great time and again I loved the chance to work with some terrific folks. I say that despite the fact that the trip home was unexpectedly arduous, with two canceled flights, a lot of poor communication and handling by American Airlines, and a frustrated Shamus getting back home to write a post about AA titled “The Best Hand in Hold’em, the Worst in Air Travel.”

June

As was the case in 2011, I’d spend the first part of the WSOP at home, then traveled out to Las Vegas in mid-June to help PokerNews cover the last month of the WSOP.

The first couple of weeks of the month thus saw me frequently commenting on the Series from afar, such as in “The Big One for One Drop One Month Away,” “WSOP Weekend: Beefs, Blunders, and Bloch,” “Six-Bet Shove Surprise, Redux,” “Everyone Following the Phils,” “Matros Exceeds Expectations,” and “Hellmuth, Again.” I also offered an early comparison addressing turnouts at this year’s Series in a post titled “Spot the Differences (Comparing 2011 & 2012 WSOPs).”

Meanwhile, I continued to express frustration about the lack of online options for U.S. poker players in “Looking for a Game.” And I used a birthday and visit to the eye doctor as an excuse for some “shot in the dark”-style meditation in “A Momentary Loss of Focus.”

Once I arrived in Vegas, I began the daily reports as usual, beginning with a flight shared with a dangerously drunk passenger recounted in “Everybody Hang On!!!” After that I was “Easing In” to the heavy work schedule, describing “The Vibe” at my fifth consecutive WSOP, and listening to the cocktail waiter’s call of “‘WHATTTAREDBOOOOLLLL!’”

In “The Future Is Now,” I reported on that ultimately unsuccessful “ChipTic” experiment tried at this year’s WSOP. I got to cover Norman Chad’s final table and found it especially entertaining to watch “Adults Playing Games.” And I shared my thoughts about a controversial hand in the $50K Players Championship in “Attempts at Time Travel at the WSOP.”

After working a week without a break, my buddy F-Train took me up to Red Rock Canyon for a hike, which after all of those days inside the Rio felt kind of like visiting the moon. I talked about the day and shared some pics in “Hot Rocks.” Then the next day the always perceptive Tommy Angelo knew what I’d done without my even telling him, as I reported in a post called “In Which My Shoes Give Away Where I Have Been.”

From there the Series kept “Cruising Along,” leading up to my covering the Ladies Event and lamenting the decision by a few men to play in “That’s a Bummer, Man (Men in the Ladies Event).”

July

On a day in early July I started out helping cover the conclusion of the Ladies event, then moved over to assist with the reporting on the “Big One for One Drop.” Made for a unique day, and I shared some thoughts about the contrast between the two events in “Same But Different.” I was then off on the day the “Big One” concluded, but did go watch the finale in person and reported on the spectacle in a post titled after the first-prize amount, “$18,346,873.”

I commented on a minor WSOP-related debate in “Cheering Is Allowed and Encouraged.” Pretty soon the Main Event had begun and was quickly “Flying Along” with another big turnout, the final total discussed in part in “And Doyle Makes 6,598.”

I had one last day off and was able to play in a tournament myself -- discussed in “H.O.R.S.E. Play” -- then came the final stretch run to the end of play in mid-July. On Day 2c, I had a chance to spend some time “Blogging Blom.” On Day 4 the cash bubble burst, discussed in “Atmospheric Disturbances.” And by Day 6 we were “Racing to the End,” that being the day of The Great WSOP Media Chair Race in which B.J. Nemeth demonstrated an uncanny knack for impersonating Evel Knievel.

In “C’est Fini” I described the utterly wild final day of play in July that saw the last two women, Gaelle Baumann and Elisabeth Hille, “double bubble” the final table by going out in 10th and 11th. It was easily the most dramatic day of the summer, and one of the most intriguing I’ve experienced at the WSOP in the last five years. Then after offering a postlude in “Like a Dream,” I closed my “Reporter’s Notebook” and headed home.

After I got back, a post about “ROI at the WSOP” ended up being one of the most read of the year here at HBP. The last days of July saw me create my Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games, something I talked about in “Home Game Hijinks,” then comment on a few news items in “Tar Heel Poker” and “Black Friday Defendants Behind Bars.” The big news story of the summer then arrived at month’s end when PokerStars settled with the DOJ, acquiring Full Tilt Poker in the process, as discussed in “Reporting from the Echo Chamber” and “PokerStars Standing Tall in the Saddle.”

August

That Stars-DOJ-FTP deal made headlines in the mainstream, and as always tends to happen in these cases the story (and poker, generally speaking) was presented in some creative and occasionally wildly inaccurate ways, as noted in “A Complicated Deal: Reporting on the Stars-DOJ-FTP Agreement.”

Meanwhile, the summer Olympics had begun, and soon I was “Defending Dressage” against detractors (a sport in which my beloved Vera competes). Was talking about horses some more in a post called “Poker, John Wayne, and Law and Order,” before turning back to the Olympics in “Tuning Into the Human Race” and “Closing Thoughts (NBC & Olympics).”

It was in early August that I first wrote about the Epic Poker League website having been deleted altogether, something that had actually happened a few weeks before following FS+G’s sale of its meager assets. In “We Are Sorry, www.epicpoker.com Cannot Be Found” I talked about how the removal of the site disappointed me personally, since I’d contributed more than two dozen pieces about poker and popular culture there. (I plan to repost a number of them in 2013, by the way, either here or perhaps elsewhere.) Speaking of, I did post another short one about “Poker in the Movies” here.

Further consequences of the Stars-DOJ-FTP deal were addressed in “Not-So-Easy Money (On U.S. Players Withdrawing from Full Tilt Poker)” and “Exit FTPDoug, Enter FTPMarkus.” I offered another somewhat cynical op-ed regarding the Poker Players Alliance in “On the PPA; or, Fight, Fight Fight!” I also talked about what appears to be a very weird (and highly blinkered) angle being taken by Bringing Down the House author Ben Mezrich with regard to his new book project about the Absolute Poker boys in “The ‘Very American’ Story of Online Poker.”

The “skill-vs.-luck” debate then came up in a couple of posts near the end of the month, “Poker Wins One (Luck or Skill?)” and “More on Luck vs. Skill in Poker: Two New Academic Studies Reach Opposite Conclusions.” With the elections starting to near I wrote about “Platforms and Parties.” And I finally read Moneyball by Michael Lewis, then wrote two posts spelling out why I think poker players would like the book -- “More Than Meets the Eye: Moneyball and Poker” and “More on Moneyball.”

All right, that’s two out of three. Back tomorrow with September through December, then we can all stop looking back and start moving forward.

Hard-Boiled Poker 2012 Year in Review (1 of 3)

At the end of 2011, I was expressing uncertainty over whether or not I was going to continue with the same new-post-every-weekday schedule I’ve followed for quite a while now. I kept on thinking out loud about “scaling back” during the year, too. As I’d always been more of an online player than live, my poker playing had already been scaled back (by necessity) post-Black Friday. Made me wonder if I’d have reason to keep writing so frequently about poker going forward.

But the end of 2012 has arrived, and somehow I never did slow my posting pace. For the fifth year running, I continued to post each weekday, plus on the weekends, too, such as when away on various tourney reporting trips. Added up to 281 posts, including this one.

As I’ve said before, that’s a damn lot of scribbling. But as I’ve also said before, quantity ain’t necessarily quality. Always cringe a little at writers boasting of having written so many thousand words, as if they’re accumulating poker chips or something. Writing more words isn’t hard. Writing more words worth reading is.

All of which is to say, for those who’ve stuck with me over the years -- as well as the new readers who’ve only found the blog over the last 12 months -- thanks a ton for reading. And I hope that somewhere in all this scribbling there has been something worthwhile for you.

I had considered handling this “year in review” business in a single post today rather than divide it up as I have done in the past. But in the name of keeping things a manageable length, I’m scrapping that ideer and again presenting my recap of 2012 in three posts. Here’s January through April...

January

The year began with my being unable to resist sharing the news that I’d won Pauly’s Pub “Pigskin Pick’em” football pool, something I vainly discussed in the first post of 2012, “Page 2 of 366; or, Following the Crowd.” Came up short in the pool this year, by the way, ultimately finishing five games back after making a lot of chancy choices yesterday in an effort to close the gap. Ended up only picking 166 of 256 games correctly, with the two co-leaders getting 171. Looking back, I see I somehow got 180 of 256 a year ago to win the pool by three games, although I think the difference can probably be explained by there having been more “chalk” last year and more surprises in 2012.

Was soon after writing about “A Cure for Pokeritis (1912),” a 100-year-old poker movie. Actually in that post I was pointing to a column I’d written for the Epic Poker League blog about the film which just a few months later was scrubbed from the internet entirely (more on that below -- see March). Then came a post asking “New Jersey to Join the Online Poker Race?” (today that seems closer to happening), a topic that came up again a couple of weeks later in “Patchwork Poker.”

Along the way came a post comparing “The Hunger Games and Poker Tournaments,” then another one called “The Hangover’s Game of Chicken” in which I talked about a non sequitur from the film in poker terms. I wrote one of several 2012 posts about my noodling around with a small roll online in “Still About Even.” (I’m still noodling... and still about even.) And in “A Thousand Words (or So) About Bill Simmons,” a post that among other things addresses that issue of prolixity I bring up above.

As the month came to a close, I found myself posting more than once about my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class. I reported on a conversation I had with another college teacher who’d also taught a poker-themed course (in probability) in “Teachers Talking Out of School.” And I shared a crazy “Stranger Than Fiction” story from my class in which we played a hand of poker that both defied probability and uncannily resembled a famous poker hand from the movies.

February

I began 2012 dropping various hints about a new novel on which I was working, also brought up in post titled “On Endings, Wished For and Otherwise.” Just to report back on that project, I did manage to finish an initial draft of the sucker during the year, and am now moving into the final edits and revising with an eye toward publication in the spring. This’ll be my second, following Same Difference. (And no, it isn’t a sequel.)

Of course, the sordid story of Full Tilt Poker (Version 1.0) continued to dominate headlines during the year. Still is, really. In fact just yesterday Matt Glantz was tweeting to an oblivious-seeming Phil Gordon regarding FTP’s implosion, and at one point Glantz referred to “the way u orangutans managed to drive that cash machine 6ft under.” An apt characterization of what happened, I’d say.

I couldn’t avoid writing about FTP a lot during 2012, including in February referring to a Glantz-authored post about the issue in “A Glantz-ing Blow: Making Noise About Full Tilt’s Silence.” In another post titled “Playing By a Different Set of Rules” I juxtaposed the FTP saga with an anecdote from an 1899 collection of poker-related tales titled Queer Luck. Later in the month I shared another story from the same collection in a post titled “Crossing the Boarder-Line of Dishonour” and in that instance let the reader draw the FTP connections. The topic also came up in a short one about Daniel Negreanu’s FTP-directed vitriol, “Kid Poker Not Kidding Around,” and another about Doyle Brunson with the self-explanatory title “Daniel Damns, Doyle Defends.”

Meanwhile the Super Bowl came along to distract us all, and I wrote about the wild ending of that game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots in “Logic and Emotion, Poker and the Super Bowl.”

“Subject:Poker Signs Off” addressed the much-talked-about poker news blog and its decision to shut down after nine months of posting. Then in “Online Gaming in the U.S.: Reservations from the Reservations” I talked about a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in which the subject of online gambling was the focus. That post also refers to my having appeared on the podcast “Keep Flopping Aces,” co-hosted by Lou Krieger. Sadly Lou passed away earlier this month, one of several losses the poker community suffered in 2012, including that of the popular Russian player Nikolay Evdakov who died in February.

In “Recommended Reading for Poker Writers” I pointed readers to an interesting series of posts by Barry Carter. I addressed Jason Somerville’s courageous decision to make his sexual orientation public in “The Challenge to Look at Ourselves.” And the topic of online poker legislation came up again in “2013,” the title of which alludes to a target date many were then bringing up in that context.

March

On the last day of February -- leap day, in fact -- the Epic Poker League’s parent company, Federated Sports + Gaming, filed for bankruptcy. Soon it was revealed the EPL had accumulated over $8 million in debt in just over a year. At the time the filing was made public, FS+G Executive Chairman Jeffrey Pollack said the league would continue and still planned to stage its fourth Season 1 tourney and the $1 million freeroll “championship.” Thus did I title my March 1st post “Epic Limbo,” although as we soon learned this was no “limbo” -- it was the end.

Back in 2011, I’d been asked to contribute to the EPL blog. For about six months I wrote a weekly column about poker and popular culture, and when EPL went under they still owed me for a few of the last pieces, thereby making me one of the dozens of creditors included in their filing. The money I lost wasn’t that significant, but I was disappointed soon after when the entire EPL website -- including the 26 pieces I’d written -- was deleted. (See the August section of tomorrow’s post for more on that.)

More sour news followed with Full Tilt Poker CEO Ray Bitar offering a short, unenlightening interview that I discussed in “A Bitar Taste.” On 3/14 I wrote about Kate Bush and a mathematical constant in “Humble π.” In “Poker, the Antisocial Social Game” I talk about one of poker’s many paradoxes, then try to focus on another one in “What You See Is What You Get.” Erick “E-Dog” Lindgren’s gambling debts are addressed in “Hero Call.” And in “Sports Talk: Reality and Romance” I complain a little about how so much sports commentary favors talking about feelings rather than facts (something that happens a lot in poker, too).

Near the month’s conclusion an interesting poker documentary premiered, and I discussed it a couple of times in “All In: The Poker Movie Premieres Today” and “More Thoughts on All In: The Poker Movie: Building a Boom.” Meanwhile, I was writing about the lottery in “Mega Madness” and NCAA basketball pools in “Breaking Down My Broken Bracket” and “A Meteoric Rise, NCAA-Pool Wise,” further evidence that I was playing less poker and instead dabbling in other forms of low-stakes gambling.

April

Speaking of, I somehow staged a ridiculously lucky comeback in my NCAA pool to win the sucker, and so had to report on that in “Not Winning-the-Lottery Lucky, But Still...”

Following the EPL fizzle, PokerListings invited me to carry my poker in popular culture column to them. It had been called “Community Cards” on the EPL blog, but we gave it a new name over on PL -- “Pop Poker.”

And while we’re on the subject of comparing poker to other parts of the culture, I wrote a post talking about the relative popularity of poker and golf, goofily titled “A Tradition That’s Totally Way, Way Different From All the Other Ones.” I also would talk more about two of my favorite poker movies in April in posts titled “Does the Kid Know Jack?” and “Selling Stories in California Split.”

The one-year anniversary of Black Friday came around, inspiring a lengthy reflection, “Black Friday Stories; or, Where Were You?” plus a second shorter one, “One Year Later.” I discussed more Epic Poker League fallout in “Epic URLs; or, Something Wicked That Way Went.” And on a happier note, a nifty video about an inventive kid and his games inspired “Take the Fun Pass.”

After a few months of silence over at Tao of Poker, our buddy Dr. Pauly popped up in April to tell us he was checking out from the poker-writing scene for a while. Readers of this blog know how much of a kindred spirit I consider the good doctor, and so I couldn’t let that occasion pass without some notice here -- “Positively Pauly” (published on 4/20, natch).

“Sexton’s Scolding” addressed the WPT host’s opinions on poker player fashion. In “Developing: PokerStars to Buy Full Tilt Poker?” and “Seeing Stars, Tapie Taps Out,” I opined at length about the big story of the day. And in “Sources Are Reporting,” I opined some more about how that story was being reported.

Poker’s most popular forum went down for a couple of weeks, which caused me to exercise my own photoshop skills for a post titled “Someone Figured Out Two Plus Two.” And I offered my own thoughts regarding the passing of a controversial yet undeniably important figure in the history of poker in “‘Amarillo Slim’ Preston (1928-2012).”

Back tomorrow with May through August. Meanwhile, for those who’ve gotten all of the way to the end of this one, I’ll point you to the 2013 BLUFF Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Awards where you can vote for Hard-Boiled Poker for Favorite Poker Blog if you’re so inclined.

More on Tricky Dick

I was talking about Garry Wills’s excellent Nixon Agonistes last month, a book written and published during Nixon’s first term as president (i.e., prior to Watergate). The book is about a lot more than Nixon, actually, providing a comprehensive examination of American history and politics as well as other aspects of the culture. It’s a dense, scholarly book, and I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in the subject and/or era.

Have since picked up a few other Nixon-related titles, including a couple at a used bookstore this week. While I was there I saw taped to a bookcase that picture above featuring a creative use of a Nixon postage stamp (no shinola). Also have spent a few hours here and there listening to some of the Nixon tapes online and marveling at the wealth of other resources available regarding his presidency.

I’m not quite old enough to remember him as president, and so didn’t form any impressions of him until well after his fall. Such a complicated figure, endlessly fascinating yet almost never sympathetic (at least not to me).

In my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class we do discuss Nixon, primarily focusing on the much-repeated tale of his having been a successful poker player while serving in the Navy during World War II. James McManus frontloads his history of poker, Cowboys Full, with a catalogue of stories of U.S. presidents playing poker, and since we use McManus’s book as kind of a core text for the first part of the course, we focus a lot of energy early on thinking about some of those stories, a few of which come up again later on in the semester, too.

Earlier this week Bob Pajich pulled together a nice piece for Card Player in which he goes over the story of Nixon’s poker playing, titled “Men of Action -- Richard ‘The Big Bluffer’ Nixon.” Pajich draws on various sources including a 1983 interview in which Nixon addressed the idea that being a skillful poker player might be of special use to a president. Such is an argument advanced by McManus, too, at the start of Cowboys Full, and thus is one we consider as a class when we read and discuss that first chapter.

As Pajich points out, the place of poker in Nixon’s story is primarily confined to that early period prior to having begun his long, arduous ascent to the White House. It’s interesting, though, to overlay various poker-related strategies to his later political career, including the various ways he misplayed his “big stack” once he became president.

It was John Mitchell, Nixon’s first Attorney General who became part of the notorious Committee to Re-Elect the President (and who’d eventually serve prison time for his role in the Watergate cover-up), who characterized the many abuses of power during Nixon’s presidency as “the White House horrors.” And really, the more one reads and learns about all that was happening during that period, the more horrific it all seems. Talk about putting one’s “stamp” on the presidency (pun intended). It is amazing (and I guess, kind of heartening) to think how the U.S. government was able to survive a Nixon administration.

Like I say, though, the man himself is uncannily captivating. In his book, Wills characterizes Nixon as “the least ‘authentic’ man alive,” a “plastic man” who “does not exist outside his role, apart from politics.” “He lives in a cleared circle, an emotional DMZ, space razed and defoliated, so he cannot be ‘got to’ unexpectedly.” Referring to the ubiquitous Nixon masks that were already beginning to appear at the time of Nixon’s first inauguration (and would become especially popular during Watergate as a countercultural symbol), Wills describes the new president’s uneasy relationship with the youth of his day.

“At the 1969 inauguration,” Wills writes, “the streets were full of ashen Nixons. Kids in town to cause trouble wore crinkly white masks with that undeniable nose. But Nixon’s car sped past their jeering ranks, and, up on the reviewing stand, his face bunched in its instant toothed smile, so circumspect, so vulnerable.”

Then comes the devastating punchline: “He had this in common with the kids; he wears a Nixon mask.”

From the perspective of a poker player, being able to interact with others while existing within an “emotional DMZ” might seem favorable. Always being “circumspect” with regard to how others view you -- i.e., being cognizant of one’s own “image” and how others are responding to it -- is a much-needed ability at the tables, too. I’ve even heard poker players sometimes talk about playing as though they were wearing a “mask,” that is, kind of employing a bit of self-delusion as part of a strategy to prevent revealing too much to others.

But Nixon was “vulnerable,” too (surmises Wills), and while he may have consistently won in those stud games with fellow Naval officers -- and later on, as well, in the other “games” he played within the GOP establishment and the American voters -- there was a lot of uncertainty and self-doubt in his play, too, especially after he took office as president.

I was saying before how I might like to write some sort of short monograph about “Tricky Dick” that focused on his poker playing and perhaps tried to discuss some of these later episodes through the lens of poker. I may still do something along these lines, although now I’m thinking I’ll more likely try to create a kind of textbook for my class that looks at poker in American culture more broadly, perhaps with a Nixon chapter along the way. (Such a book would certainly attract a wider audience, I think.)

So I’ll add working that project to the growing list of goals for the new year. Sort of feeling like Nixon a little bit, who also tended to study and plan a lot before acting. Such was how he learned poker, working diligently away from the table to devise strategies he would then later employ. And as a politician, too, he studied and developed a complicated theory of leadership he then carried to his duties.

But there was a pretty severe disconnect between theory and practice in the latter case for Nixon, I think, wherein the application of his ideas failed. Hopefully I’ll avoid that misstep in the execution of my plans.

Talkin’ Teamwork

Still enjoying some down time here as the year comes to a close. Mostly lazing about reading some, writing some, and watching a lot of hoops on the teevee.

After indulging in that NBA marathon on Christmas day -- a quintuple-header’s worth of games of which I watch parts of all five -- I tuned in last night to watch my Charlotte Bobcats lose their 16th straight game, this one to the Miami Heat. The Boobcats (as Vera and I like to call them) did cut Miami’s lead to two about halfway through the fourth quarter, but in truth the outcome was never in doubt. Was sort of like watching a big brother playing against a little brother, only trying enough to ensure the victory.

Of course, last season Charlotte had a record-setting year for woefulness, going a miserable 7-59 to set a new standard for lowest winning percentage ever. This year began promisingly, with the ’Cats equaling that total of seven wins in the first dozen games, racing out to a 7-5 mark. But they’re now 7-21, and if they lose a few more talk will surface regarding whether or not they’ll exceed that 23-game losing streak with which they concluded the 2011-12 season.

Since I live in the Bobcats’ market, I end up getting to see a lot of their games and thus have probably spent more time than most contemplating the causes for their mediocrity. Talent-wise, they’re well obviously behind most other teams, lacking at pretty much every position. But while each player is often a step behind his counterpart in a given game, the Charlotte team often seems not to work together especially well either, which tends to make the whole feel that much less than the sum of the parts.

The inability to work together is most obvious on the offensive end, where plays are constantly breaking down prior to a decent shot being attempted. There was an article in the Charlotte Observer just a few days ago documenting how the “Shot clock has become Bobcats’ worst enemy.” They lead the league in shot-clock violations (by a lot), and Bobcats beat writer Rick Bonnell offers several theories for why the team has so much trouble working together to get a shot off.

Basketball is a game that often rewards players being able to work together effectively, whether by passing well, creating good spacing, or just understanding and fulfilling given roles in an effective way. It reminds me a little of a game like Omaha in which you want the four cards in your hand to “work together” (so to speak), complementing each other in a way that gives you the greatest chance for success. And having just one “dangler” or odd card that doesn’t really fit with the other three can significantly lessen the potential of the entire hand.

Part of me wants to single out Gerald Henderson as the Bobcats’ “dangler,” actually. Although he’s ostensibly one of the top three or so players on the squad, it seems like at times the team functions less well when he’s part of the mix. I suppose one could analyze various stats to help support or disprove the idea, but the fact is the ’Cats have done a lot worse overall when he’s played than when he hasn’t. This year they’re 6-8 with Henderson out of the line-up, and 1-13 when he plays. (They were also 1-7 in the preseason, when he played every game.)

Then again, it’s probably putting a little much on Henderson’s shoulders to pursue such a theory, as there’s a lot else to complain about when it comes to the team’s failure to function. Still, as a Bobcats fan, it would be nice to stop getting dealt crap hands like over and over again.

Merge Move and Super Stretchy Screaming Monkeys

Had a great Christmas day watching the NBA marathon of games, eating off and on all day, exchanging more gifts, and hanging out with family. I especially enjoyed goofing around with my three-year-old nephew. We split time racing toy cars and tossing around Amazing Super Stretchy Screaming Monkeys that release hilarious-sounding howls when they land.

Around dinner time yesterday I noticed I’d received an email from Merge Gaming regarding my request to transfer the balance from my Hero Poker account over to Carbon Poker. I’d made the request five days ago, shortly after Hero went dark and instructed its players they’d have to choose from one of three different Merge skins as a destination for their funds.

The email was entirely generic (addressed to “Valued player”). It was also a little ambiguous (and grammatically suspect) when it stated that the “Accounting Department will credit the funds to your account at anytime [sic].



” I logged in over at Carbon to find no funds had been transferred as yet, but a little scouting around on relevant forum threads suggested that if I waited a few hours the money would soon appear. Sure enough, this morning I see my balance has indeed been shipped over to Carbon, and thus I’m able once more to play.

Traffic on Merge remains meager. In fact according to the current numbers over at PokerScout, Merge has dropped well behind both Revolution Gaming (where Lock Poker now highlights a list of about 70 skins) and Bodog among other online poker choices still available to U.S. players. Over the last few months (when playing via Hero), almost anything other than no-limit hold’em has been pretty much a wasteland, with only one or two tables going here and there for my preferred stakes/games, if that.

The forum threads suggest that players are still successfully cashing out from Carbon (with a few weeks’ wait), although as always the situation appears highly tenuous. Of course, that won’t be a concern for me unless I somehow manage to run up my modest roll.

A more likely future for me on Merge will be a few more months of low-limit, break-even nickel-and-diming, probably destined to end with some sort of mildly frustrating, faint echo of Black Friday when Carbon and/or the network as a whole suddenly becomes unavailable.

In other words, I’ll just be passing a few chips back and forth with a small group of others. Pretty much the equivalent of tossing the amazing super stretchy monkeys with my nephew, really. Only I have to make my own screaming sounds.

Season’s Greetings

In the midst of running around the moment, visiting family, exchanging gifts, and enjoying each other’s company. Had a great time yesterday seeing folks on my side of the tree, and today will be moving over to hang with those on Vera’s side.

One highlight yesterday was my brother giving lottery tickets out as gifts, and my Pop -- notoriously averse to the lottery as tax-on-the-dumb waste -- managing to win $50. I won $5, actually (the price of the ticket). Our successes failed to convince anyone that scratching is a skill game, though.

As always happens when we get to the bottom row of the calendar’s last page like this, I’m starting to think back on the last twelve months and the whole “So this is Christmas and what have you done?” question.

Seems like this year has simply flown by, really, which in one respect is probably a good thing as it means I’ve kept busy throughout. Am happy and grateful to still be writing about poker, for sure, even if I’d like to be playing it more than was the case even a year ago (never mind way back when I began the blog). And it does genuinely seem like prospects going forward are looking up for the industry as a whole, suggesting 2013 is going to be another busy one.

Have to cut it short here but did want to wish everyone a happy holiday and safe travels. And that your day is a winner.