DUBLIN BELLYBUSTERS

Waiting for a hand. Waiting for a spot. Waiting. Riffling. That passed the time. It would have passed in any case. Do not speak ill of your table-mates. Do not speak well of them either. Do not speak of them at all. Folding. Mucking. Laying down. Anteing up. Perhaps my premium hands are gone. Dare I bluff? Make a crying call? What’s the bottom of my range? Any ace. Wait. One more orbit. One more lap of the track. I can go on. Laddering. Blinding down. Short-sighted. Short stack.

Under the gun. Underdog. Tight image. Suited connector. Enough. Whence no farther. No more waiting. Must act. At this moment in time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of this hand before it is too late. Move in. Anticipation. Positive expectation. Button call. The consolation of isolation. Villain waking up. Showdown. I am dominated. Flop. Flop nothing. Nothing on the horizon. Burn and turn. Burned by the turn. Drawing dead.

Ever played. Ever failed. Frustration felt. No matter. Rise again. Raise again.

2012 is an election year in the US and that means one thing. Poker on TV hits primetime. Not real poker of course. Real poker is a game in which players are supposed to bluff and mislead. It is also a game that has rules and etiquettes that are rarely broken. The poker we will be watching is the high stakes game of Realpolitik.

Remember that scene you used to see in old Western movies…

Inside a  dusty saloon, a poker game is in progress. A middle-aged gun-toting cowboy raises all-in and despite having the better hand, a younger cowboy is unable to cover the bet and is thus forced to forfeit the pot.

Well that’s a near perfect model for politics in the US and the economic system it has created. Yesterday it was released that 22 people (including the corporations that, since the January 2010 US Supreme Court decision on ‘Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission’ are defined as people) provided half the capital for all the SuperPacs who essentially fund the campaigns of US politicians (and the road trip vacations of half-term Alaskan governers). The game is rigged to benefit the billionaires and multi-millionaires. They pay just 15% in capital gains tax, an anomaly that people like Mitt Romney spent a lot of money lobbying to create. The other day, presumptive vice-presidential nominee Marco Rubio said that America is a country of ‘haves’ and ‘soon-to-haves’ while at the same time in his own state of Florida, they force people on welfare and unemployment benefit to pay for their own mandatory $30 drug tests, a condition of them receiving their $15 a day.

For the next 9 months, we will be treated to the misinformation, exaggeration and empty promises of professional liars. Unless by some miracle, Ron Paul wins the election, it simply doesn’t matter who becomes the 44th President of the USA. Obama said he would close Guantanamo and instead passed the NDAA, expanding the powers of the disgraceful Patriot Act, making it legal to indefinitely detain without trial anyone suspected of terrorism.

America is bankrupt yet it continues to spend billions of dollars that it doesn’t have being the policeman of the world. At the last State of the Union address, Obama said that he would try peaceful negotiations with Iran and got a limp round of applause. He followed up by saying that the use of extreme force was certainly still on the table and received a rapturous standing ovation from both sides of the aisle. The US say that if Iran close the Straits of Hormuz (something they need desperately for their own economy), then that will be an act of war. The sanctions currently being placed upon Iran are the real act of war but you can be sure that in an election year, neither side will talk about peaceful negotiation. It’s simply not good poker. It’s the political equivalent of limping with a marginal hand in the bubble.

_ Having made a New Year’s pledge to play more poker, January went well, culminating in a $16K month. I played 4 live tournaments, 275 online MTTs and 398 online SNGs. This is roughly half of the volume I used to play at my peak but it represents about 110 hours of poker which is exactly the amount of time I want to give to the game.

My general feeling is that I am playing well and running a little below expectation. While I did enjoy a couple of victories in the month, I ran extremely poorly in the late stages of several tournaments. The most significant of these was in Round 2 of the Battle of the Planets tournament on PokerStars. Winning the Round 1 SNG had secured me a min-cash of about $200 but victory in Round 2 would put me into the final SNG where each spot is a ladder rung and there is $36,000 on the table. I was heads-up with a 3:1 chiplead, the effective stack was 10bbs and I called it off with A7o against 66. He won the race and we were level in chips. I grinded him back down to the point where I had a 2-1 lead and we got it in again, my A10s losing to his K8o. Now, he was 2-1 in chips but within 3 hands (and three shoves by me), we were level again. He shoved 13bbs and I called with A8s. He had K6, flopped a King and held to progress. This was a $4K heads-up in effective equity and would have given me a shot at the $12K first prize.

February is going to be busy in terms of live tournaments. The European Deepstacks Championships is next week with the UKIPT Galway the week after. Then on February 25th/26th, there is the Super Poker Event of Europe. My back is still not fully recovered so I’m basically going to hate my life by the end of the month. I was also asked to represent Dublin in the Irish Poker County Championships. This is a 5-man team event being held in Cavan at a time yet to be decided. Team captain Philip Baker surprised me with news of my selection last week. Not being a familiar face on the Irish circuit, I didn’t expect the call-up and not being a lover of live poker, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to participate. My opinion changed, however, when I saw that Phil had opted for a crack-team over a ‘craic-team’. Dara O’Kearney and Rob Taylor (two of my teammates from the Fitzwilliam Festival Team Event which we won in November) will be also be representing Dublin and I hear rumours that our fifth player may be none other than online beast Dan ‘Danloulou’ Smyth.

All 32 counties will be represented, bragging rights are up for grabs and IPB (IrishPokerBoards.ie) is already buzzing with forum posts for last longers and other props. To bastardise Dublin's motto ever so slightly (and make my latin-speaking father proud)...

"Arte Ludum Ludius Urbis Felicitas"
("The Game Player's Skill will be the City's Happiness")

_ My good friend and oldest poker buddy Nick ‘rounder63’ Carrillo has lived a rollercoaster 5 years. Starting out as a losing player, Nick donked off 10K before he finally figured out the game through trial and error. 10,000 games might seem like an awful lot of trial but Nick is stubborn and compulsive and, for the first year, used poker to satiate his gambling thirst.

Cut to September 2007 and Nick was profitably grinding the $24 45mans on Full Tilt. It was the early days of multi-tabling and Nick was able to play a dozen or so of these games simultaneously. At the same time, I was cutting my teeth in the same games so it was not unusual for us make multiple final tables together on a given day. Naturally, we got talking and became friends.

One year later, Nick and I were sitting 1 and 2 on the Sharkscope leaderboard for the $24 45mans. We were both making a living from poker, nothing special but we had both successfully kept the wolf from the door for 12 months. You would be forgiven for thinking that Nick and I must have developed similar styles, given the amount of poker we discussed, but the truth is we couldn’t have played more differently. Nick was a super-loose, super-aggro 3-betting monster who emptied the chamber, willing to bluff off his stack in hand one. I, on the other hand, adopted a more straightforward ‘abc’ tight-aggressive style, saving the fancy plays for the other regulars on the circuit with whom I had history and thus space for some meta-game. Both approaches worked well and yielded very similar ROIs but mine was the road of less variance. Nick’s game resulted in huge feasts but also some significant downswings.

It was in late 2008 that Nick opted to get staked or partially staked. I was not a big fan of this policy but Nick believed that it helped him psychologically. It also enabled him to play higher and embark on an MTT career, the natural progression from multi-table SNGs. Nick moved up to the $69 45mans and started playing 90mans and $20-$75 MTTs. He enjoyed immediate success, having his biggest months to date but within those months, he suffered bigger swings than ever before. He was also not gaining the full value of his upswings because he now had stakers to pay out. The result was a tumultuous 2009 which on paper looked greatly successful as he netted 80K. The reality, however, was that Nick spent the year in a constant state of stress. He made a lot of money for other people, he lost a lot of money on the occasions when he wasn’t backed, he went broke once and almost went broke on another occasion.

By the middle of 2010, Nick had won over 200K online but he was still not adequately rolled for the games he played. He crushed the MTTs $100 or lower but was a significant loser in MTTs above that. He managed himself poorly and still succumbed to the occasional need to gamble recklessly. He chased losses with abandon, moving up in stakes when downswinging rather than coming down. His entire modus operandi was a Matusow-esque recipe for a life of instability. Nick wanted the life of a ‘baller’ but chasing that dream cost him his opportunity to build up a big roll and enjoy the security that comes with that. His friends wondered if he could ever break out of that pattern, knuckle down and grind the most profitable games rather than chase the big score.

The second half of 2010 marked a change in Nick’s personality. Sure, he was still an aggro-maniac on the felt but he seemed to be maturing as a person, better able to manage himself, more in control of his emotions. He was improving as a poker player but more importantly he was making better decisions. This, coupled with his undeniable work ethic, was rewarded with a consistent upswing. 2011 looked set to be a breakout year with Nick healthily rolled to attack the online MTT circuit. In the first three months of the year he banked almost 100K but Black Friday would take the wind out of his sails, relegating him to the sidelines as Americans were excluded from the game they invented. Rather than move to a poker-friendly country, Nick decided to take his roll to Vegas for the WSOP, a high risk move that could make or break him. Sadly the latter was true as he went 60 straight tournaments without cashing. Failing to make important ‘live’ adjustments and just plain running awfully, Nick had undone all his good work and inexplicably ended July substantially in debt.

In November, Nick made the move to Cancun, Mexico so that he could play online once again. Battered, beaten and to use one of his many catchphrases ‘bleeding from the mouth’, he had to rebuild his poker career from scratch. Humbled by all that he had endured, he seemed to have developed a worldliness and discipline I had not seen in him before. Grinding night and day at an average buy-in of just $45, Nick has played almost 5000 tournaments, accumulating a profit of almost 100K in the last 10 weeks. The highlight of this was his TCOOP Event 30 ($10 3x Turbo PLO) victory for over $30K. His next stop is Costa Rica, where he plans to stick to the same sensible formula. An irrepressible force on the tables and a man who deserves his day in the sun, I hope Nick can continue his positive run and finally be the friend to himself that he has always been to other people.

_Influenced by my friend and fellow poker pro Dara O’Kearney, I recently bought PokerTracker for the first time. After some teething issues with the software, I got it up and running and must admit it is a huge aid. It has provoked me to make plays in spots that I previously would have ignored. Some of these plays have back-fired spectacularly but most of them have shown a tidy profit. I pretty much ignore the HUD through the 15-20 tabling portion of my session (generally the first 3 hours) but then as I grind down to my last 10 or so, I have the time to incorporate the basic statistical info displayed. Once my session is down to its remaining 5-6 games (generally the ITM games), I have time to use PokerTracker’s more detailed analysis of my opponents and this is where the real edge is to be found. Tutored on how best to interpret the data by Dara, I have learned how to better exploit the villain’s tendancies, take advantage of his leaks and be better aware of my own image from his POV.

Dara or ‘Doke’ as the Irish poker community know him (but I refuse to call him) is, in my opinion, the real deal. A double threat both live and online, at 46 years old, he might just be the oldest ‘internet kid’. His style resembles that of a hooded, Scandinavian, ‘Beats by Dr Dre’ wearing 21 year old but for two years, his opponents on the live poker circuit mistakenly categorised him as a rock, giving so much more credibility to his maniacal plays than they deserved. He is a Nash Equilibrium expert, playing a flawless short-stack game. He understands game flow and with what I believe is an eidetic memory (essentially a human HUD), he also has this eerie ability to remember all the past hands he has played with his opponents. Most of all, though, Dara is a student of the game, always looking to improve, always analytical and always open-minded to new ideas. He is both humble and sensible and he knows that the most important attributes of a pro are good game selection, disciplined bankroll management and exemplary personal management. It is unsurprising that he counts poker genius and author Bertrand ‘Elky’ Grospelier amongst his poker buddies.

If Dara has any weakness, it is that he is what my grandmother would have called ‘a soft touch’. Off the felt, his non-confrontational approach to life means he entertains far more dribbler bullshit from the dregs of Irish poker life than he should. Whether it is putting his hand in his pocket to ‘loan’ some spastic 50 quid for a buy-in or giving some gobshite the time of day to listen to his bad-beat story. He’ll defend this, telling me it’s all part of the ‘Doke’ brand and I’ll abuse him for speaking in the third person. He will point out that ‘Doke’ is his poker alias and not the same person as Dara and I’ll point out that he’s not David Bowie. 

Dara and I have swapped 10% in every live event we have both played in the past year. He has also bought pieces of me in live events that were outside my bankroll rules. Thus far, he is slightly up on that arrangement but I’m fairly sure I have the best of that deal (see… ‘soft touch’). He has also done me the good deed of agreeing to take a % my action in any online buy-ins over $60 until I get my mojo back after a big break away from full-time grinding. Thus far, this month, I have semi-feasted but not in bigger buy-in games so, until tonight, Dara was down a few hundo on our deal. I managed to reverse that tonight with a deep run in the Sunday Million on PokerStars. 67th place in a field of over 7000 was good for over $2K and his cut more than compensated him for the losses incurred to date. I wish it had been the $200K top prize but it was still a good result and I ran well to get that deep. I normally don’t like to sell action online but I am really happy to lower my exposure in the first few weeks of the year so my plan is to keep this deal in place for at least another month.

Formerly the resident pro for Bruce, media-savvy Dara is now the Team Captain of the ‘Irish Eyes’ skin on the Entraction Network. Thanks to his contacts, we recently commentated together during the JP Masters Final Table, an experience that was loads of fun and something I would like to do more often. Dara has the most widely read blog of any Irish poker professional, a publication which, despite my cease and desist letters, has mentioned me relentlessly for the past 6 months. Then, two weeks ago, I start my blog up again and Dara’s only comments are ‘Why haven’t you mentioned me in it yet? Don’t you know I judge people’s poker blogs by how often I’m mentioned in them’. Well here you go David Bowie – an entire blog dedicated to just you. I assume you will link it to your Facebook, your Twitter and your Irish Eyes Blog and literally within minutes, it become the most widely read entry in my blog’s history.

To use my catchphrase as you recently termed it… “I hate you!"

_ I’m all out of whack this week. A back spasm on Saturday night sent me to the hospital on Sunday where I got ultrasound and was told I had probably damaged a facet joint and the muscular spasm was my body’s way of protecting the injured area. Consequently, I haven’t been able to sleep well and have spent most of the last three days in a daze. Standing and walking is more comfortable than lying or sitting so I been strolling around Dublin in daylight, something I haven’t done in months. Painkillers haven’t made much of a difference but tonight, the pain became more of a dull ache so I think I’m on the mend.

I napped this evening between 5 and 8, waking up hungry and grumpy. I have been on a healthier food kick since new year but last night I needed some Crackbird (posh KFC… but not even that posh) to cheer myself up. The guilt of that prompted me to ditch take-away plans tonight and instead buy some soup and guacamole with crudités. Tasty enough and good brain food for a long session at the tables. I played 29 tourneys, cashed in 6, made 4 final tables and took 2 2nds, banking almost $1600 profit. While I certainly haven’t found my best form yet, I have been playing pretty damn well and I certainly can’t complain with how my return to poker has gone so far. I’m up almost $14K in 15 days and last week, to my surprise, I came 5th in a Weekly PokerStars SNG promotion called Battle of the Planets – Uranus (the $60 level). On top of a $275 cash prize, I have been entered into a $50K Triple Shootout at the end of the month.

_ Between September 2007 and March 2011, I made my living as a poker player yet when asked what I did by strangers, I would respond ‘I’m a writer’. Curiously, since March, I have been working as a writer yet when asked the same question, I respond ‘I’m a poker player’. When I try to deconstruct this, I come to only one conclusion. While I have been very successful in poker, I am not proud of my accomplishments nor do I anticipate a good reponse from others. Now, if I had enjoyed similar success as a writer, I would be proud of that but to my own chagrin, I haven’t.

In 2005 and 2006, I wrote a 60,000 word thesis on Hermeneutic Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Literary Theory (which has thus far been read by 3 people). In 2007, I wrote a TV Show called ‘CIRCUS’ which was commissioned by the Irish National Broadcaster. Unfortunately, three episodes into the six, the project was shelved. In 2008, I wrote a feature film called ‘Nothing Left To See’ but made no effort to get it funded or made. 2009 and 2010 were big years for me in poker so I wrote nothing in that time (apart from this blog) and instead concentrated on an altogether different type of story-telling.

Post Black Friday, I caught the writing bug again and quit full time grinding, putting in less than 15 hours a week on average in the last 9 months. My new baby is ‘ROLL’, a 4-part drama series set in Ireland. It follows the adventures of two immature young adults on the periphery of society who inadvertently become embroiled in the money laundering efforts of a criminal gang. In June, I enlisted my good friend Ray Kane to co-write the show and to date, we have created a cracking Series Bible (a scene for scene breakdown of the entire show). The plan is to get started on a pilot soon but as per my new year’s resolution, I will be putting in more hours at the tables to keep the wolf from the door. If the show gets picked up either here or in the UK, I will be giving it my 100% but until then, it will be a balance of 100 hours of poker with 80 hours of writing each month.

2012 has started brightly with a handful of solid results. Last Wednesday, I won a live satellite to the WPT Main Event (€2500). On Sunday, I took 3rd in the WPT side event (€4250). Then, on Monday, I won two online tournaments on the same night (one on PokerStars and the other on Irish Eyes) for a combined total of almost $3500. I have also had three other modestly profitable sessions on the cyberfelt.

Next week will be more of a writing week as I get started on the script for Episode 1 of ‘ROLL’. Next week, if you ask me, ‘I’m a poker player’.

Ok, so yes there has been a bit of a break since my last post. But you see, I was meant to be moving on to bigger things. Full Tilt Poker commissioned me to write an article for them last month and the very day it was due to go up, BANG, the site is brandishing FBI stickers, having been indicted that very day by the Department of Justice.

It was a nice little piece on the 'Cultural Differences Between Poker in Europe and North America', 800 words of pithy observations and jingoistic abuse that will now be reconciled to my desk drawer to join my TV Series scripts, feature film script and countless other unloved, discarded shreds of dead rainforest that have yet to make the light of day.

Fingers crossed, Full Tilt will find a use for me in the coming months. As my friend Michael Craig pointed out, my value to them should, in theory, have gone up now that the US is no longer a viable market. If they do, I will at least be able to add one more 'difference' to my list.

Fueled by several mojitos, issues of faith, art and the interconnectedness of things were discussed at length (my friends would say 'ad nauseum') over the course of the hours that followed the gig. Were we duped into thinking we were special? Was our night a grandiose fabrication? Did it really matter if what we experienced was a pre-arranged shtick? Inevitably, our answers could be boiled down to our philosophical differences.

As a devout atheist, existentialist, humanist and sceptic, I always want to see behind the curtain. The contempt that accompanied Thomas' incredulity was misplaced. He should have been exalted for doubting, not ridiculed. There is nothing wrong with wanting proof and if none exists, there is nothing wrong with leaving an abyss. There is supposed to be cleavage between the phenomenal and the noumenal. An abyss should not be a canvas for pretty pictures.

I want to find the abyss and stare into it. Not in a morose way, mind you, but in an utterly positive, optimistic way. Sure, I might discover something that shatters a lovely illusion that I was enjoying. I might see that things don't happen for a reason. I might be reminded that I'm going to die. But these revelations or recollections are not -EV. They are just me acknowledging what is real. And by doing so, I can move forward and live a more authentic life.

It's like when a poker buddy reads your hand history and tells you that you should be raising your draws in a specific spot and not calling with them. You tell him that he's wrong, that playing the hand that way has lead to positive results. But then, you run the maths or simulation and it turns out that he is right, that while his way has higher variance, it will lead to more longterm profit. Not only that but his way will prevent you from conceding equity against the better players who will not pay you off when you hit, thus spoiling the implied odds aspect of your line.

You are faced with a simple choice. If you want to improve and make more money, you must plug the leak. If you're content to remain at your current level, make less but endure lower swings, then you can ignore it. This is actually a very common conundrum I encounter when coaching students. Unconsciously, most players like to remain within their comfort zone, the level they know they can beat. It's understandable when you consider how much money and time they had to invest to become profitable at that level. Therefore, it can be a battle to convince them to make adjustments to their games, adjustments that will necessarily mean more variance and thus more frustration. From their perspective, you are espousing a masochistic route and they defend their status quo with comments like "that might work for you but my line more suits my style and image".

Painful and bloodier as this masochistic route might be, it is also the road to self-betterment in the context of the game and from the perspective of one who has made the adjustment, it seems like you were being foolish and closed-minded before. Sure, the swings might be bigger but your long-term expectation has increased. Your horizon has been broadened and your former outlook now appears narrow and ignorant. 

I think 'Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros' are a tremendous band. I think they put on a great show. Were some of the more 'spontaneous' aspects of the night actually pre-orchestrated components of the 'Edward Sharpe' experience. I think so. Does that make them cynical. No more so than any other artists who balance the dual priorities of artistic credibility and commerciality. What about the fact that part of their charm comes from the organic appearance of their composition and behaviour. Well, that just shows that their play their parts extremely well. Does knowing that ruin my experience of them from now on? I don't think so. They are performers and, as such, they are in the business of magic. Do I believe in magic? No. But will I suspend that disbelief when next I attend one of their shows? Absolutely.

Under the dimly-lit archway, Jade played us a song while people sporadically stepped over her, people who had tickets in their hands for her gig. We thanked her and began to make our way into the venue when we realised something rather obvious. If she is sitting here, there's no way she's on stage in there. We politely asked whether she would mind us staying a little longer and she rewarded our interest with a rendition of a song not yet released. It was surreal, a truly memorable few moments shared with an artist of enormous caliber and modesty, a moment that was so authentic... or so it appeared.

The street performance that followed the gig was pretty cool. Alex Ebert wrangled the masses into a 'round the camp-fire' sort of formation. He sang 'Om Nashi Me' and 'Brother' and welcomed a sing-along for every verse. Another magical moment... or so it appeared.

Immediately after the set, people scrambled around, asking for autographs and instigating chats with various members of the band. It was pretty cool of them to be so generous with their time but it was at this moment that the sceptic in me reared its ugly head as I became particularly aware of the camera-crew who were capturing every moment. Come to think of it, Alex's reason for not playing an encore inside the venue seemed a little flimsy. And what's this? As we make our way out of the tunnels, who is sitting in the archway, playing the same song from earlier? Jade. This time for cameras. Replacing us were 5 women, sitting on the steps beside her, steps which were papered, something I noticed but of which I took no notice earlier. Our moment, it now seemed clear, was a rehearsal.

For me, our special memory had been robbed of its authenticity, an opinion that divided Michelle, Toni and Ray. Michelle couldn't have disagreed with me more while the others conceded something small was lost but that I was entirely overstating the stagedness of it all. The problem was I couldn't help it. I saw what I saw and I was responding to what I saw. Something in me necessarily felt betrayed. I felt like a pawn, like my 'magic' moment was merely a component of an artist's greater poetic conceit, the artifice of which was cruelly exposed to me.