Follow-Up to "Playing Poker For A Living"

The following comments were received by "Which," in response to an earlier post about playing poker for a living:

"One thing about turning pro that I was surprised u did not mention was that an aspiring pro does not need to make an either/or decision. If u have a job, and are serious about turning pro, u can start as a part-timer. Play for lots of hours on week ends at a brick and mortar casino. Or take your "vacation" in Vegas this year and see how u stack up vs. the "pros". With the part-time approach your bankroll requirements are also less severe. Just play with what u can afford to lose. And since only "winning players" should consider going pro, the interim part-timing can be a way to build your bank roll to adequate levels, instead of jumping in too quickly and undercapitalized."

I couldn't agree more, and if I didn't make this point stongly enough, thanks to "Which" for pounding it home. If you are contemplating a poekr career, you should spend some time playing where you think you want to live, and playing in the game you will have to beat in order to earn your living. You do not have to make an "either/or" decision, and you can ease your way into the game, and make as seamless a transition as you possibly can.

If you do have a job, especially one that provides benefits, you are waaaaaay better off taking a leave of absence if you can wangle it, than you would be by abruptly quitting and commencing your poker career without a road back home just in case you need it.

Thanks, "Which," for your comments. If any other readers want to share their experience or advice about playing for a living, just submit your comments......

A Game of Skill or A Game of Luck: What's Your Opinion?

The following article was originally posted to my good firend Dave Scharf's blog, and I wanted to bring it to your attention, allong with my (short) comments on the court's ruling in this case. I'd alo like to hear from you, to get player and reader opinions about this issue.

DURHAM -- The expert witnesses came from Las Vegas, the Bahamas and Florida to testify that poker is chiefly a game of skill.But Durham's senior judge wasn't willing to take the gamble.Poker is a game of chance, he ruled, that can get betting players locked up in North Carolina.Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson's decision Monday stymied The Joker Club, which had hoped to open a poker-betting establishment here. A club lawyer indicated that Hudson's decision might be appealed.Hudson said later he is not a poker player himself, but has no moral or religious scruples about the game. He also said a state law against poker betting dates to the 19th century and might be antiquated.

"The culture is different now," he said. "Society is different. The law is ambiguous in a number of different ways."The law says it is illegal to bet on games in which chance "predominates" over skill, Hudson said."[But] how do you measure that?" he asked rhetorically. "If the legislature told us what they had in mind, I'd understand. But they didn't tell us what it means."Still, Hudson said, he was bound to follow the law as it was written.

The Joker Club leased a building on Ferrell Road in November, indicating it wished to open "a business that allows adult persons to play poker against one another and whereby [the club] will retain a portion of funds which are wagered by the players."In its effort to make that happen, the club sued former District Attorney Jim Hardin Jr. after he wrote that poker betting "does not comply with the law." Hardin said he would order police and sheriff's deputies to crack down on any perceived violations.After at least two postponements, the case belatedly found its way into court on Monday. Hardin, now a judge, was not there.

Lawyer Marcus Hill, one of three attorneys representing The Joker Club, argued that 37 states have "some form of" legalized poker."Of course, there is an element of luck in all games," Hill acknowledged. "There is an element of luck in poker. But skill will prevail."Assistant Attorney General David J. Adinolfi II countered that "there are no cases whatsoever that state or imply that poker is anything but illegal" in North Carolina."We're not talking about shuffleboard here," Adinolfi said. "We're not talking about archery. Poker is simply not legal. ... The turn of a card is what settles it all. The best player in the world can get beat by an amateur. Chance predominates. Chance overwhelms skill."The cards are dealt face down. You can be as skilled as possible. You can do all the statistical analyses. But chance predominates when you flip the card over. It's just that simple. You can't will the card to be an ace when it's a deuce."

Adinolfi also said the state Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court previously declared poker betting to be illegal in North Carolina."This court doesn't pass legislation," Adinolfi said of Hudson. "This court can't overrule the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals."In branding poker betting as illegal, the Legislature apparently wanted to protect low- and middle-income players "from getting beaten out of their paychecks every week," Adinolfi added.

The Joker Club pulled some human aces from its sleeve during its unsuccessful court bid on Monday.One of them was Roy Cooke of Las Vegas, a 16-year professional poker player and lead columnist for Card Player Magazine.He said the skills involved in poker include emotional fortitude, statistical expertise and the ability to "read" the minds and mannerisms of opponents."Unskilled players tend to lose their money," Cooke said. "Luck is a neutral factor over the course of time. The person who says he is unlucky year in and year out really doesn't play well and is in denial."

Anthony Lee, vice president of a casino in the Bahamas, also came to Durham to testify on Monday. He acknowledged that he is not a skilled poker player and, as a result, not a good one."I can't bluff," Lee added. "In poker, you need certain skills which I haven't worked on."Frank Martin, a Florida poker consultant and tournament organizer, agreed in testimony that poker "is definitely" a game of skill."Sure, there is an element of chance," he said. "But that's part of the beauty of it. You're using chance to your benefit by understanding what you're dealing with. The chance part of it can be overcome by the fact that you can induce people to fold."

MY COMMENTS: It's easy to argue that poker is a gmae of luck instead of skill, but the error made in doing so is that those who mount this kind of argument are placing poker in a time frame that's far too narrow. It should be abundantly clear to anyone who thinks about it, that the way one bounds or defines a problem goes a long way toward specifing the kind of solution that's developed.

The same is true when one examines poker. Examine one deal, one orbit around the table, one evening's play, or even a month's play (or longer) and it's easy to mount a compelling argument that poker is a game of luck, and that's why amateurs can beat pros on any given night, and do so in a way they never could if they were competing at chess, golf, one-on-one basketball, or trying to hit a major league fastball.

But if you look at poker in the long run, and examine a year's results, or two years, or a lifetime of play, it's very difficult to make the case that guys like Doyle Brunson survived this long only because of a massive run of good fortune. When you look at a career in poker, there's only one possible conclusion to come up with: Poker, in the long run, is a game of skill, just as Roy Cooke said in his testimony.

When courts look at poker with an eye to deciding whether it is a game of luck or a game of skill, they inevitably take too short a look at the game whenever they conclude that luck is the controlling element in the results poker players generally achieve.

What are your thoughts and feelings? Please let me know.

Short Handed Play, My New Book, and The Business of Poker

Yesterday I went over to Agua Caliente Casino for the first time in a long time. In between all the time consumed in filming “Vegas Virgins,” and other projects I have going on, the business of poker has cut deeply into my poker playing, at least as far as playing in brick and mortar casinos goes. I’ve been playing online quite a lot, particularly at the six-handed tables on Royal Vegas Poker.

SHORT HANDED PLAY
Prior to the past six to eight months I had very little shorthanded experience. Most of it was accidental, gained late at night in traditional casinos when games were in the process of dying and the energy level of the players still in their seats was waning. But a lot of very aggressive – well, hyper aggressive is probably a better adjective – six handed play has really fine tuned that aspect of my game, though I had no way to assess it until yesterday.

When I got to the casino, the biggest game was $8-$16, which had no available seats, so I sat in a $4-$8 game, then went over to a $6-$12 Omaha/8 game that was starting and sat there for about an hour without winning a pot until they started a $15-$30 game. We started off the game seven-handed, but instead of filling up, it began to die. Soon we were five-handed and after a series of bad beats a good player in the game busted out and decided to go to the movies. I was tempted to go with him because I wanted to see the new Star Wars flick, and this game looked like it was circling the drain, but I decided to stay and see how well I was able to play in a shorthanded game where I could actually read my opponents physical mannerisms, which is something you can’t do online.

I wound up busting the game. And not through any great hands of my own, either. Instead, I just always knew where each of my opponents stood. One was a loose player, who tended to call far too deeply into hands and to be aggressive when he really shouldn’t have been. The other was predictable. He played in a very straightforward manner. The last player at the table was tricky and deceptive, but extremely social. And when he talked about what he was going to do, “I’ll just have to bet this hand, it's that good” he always had what he was purporting to have, which made him easy to avoid when he was strong and easier to value bet when he had a marginal holding.

The predictable player lost a series of confrontations and got up and left. We played three-handed for 45 minutes longer and busted the too-loose player. He bought in again for another rack of chips but it didn’t last more than another half hour. He got involved in a couple of kill-pots (with only three players pots were being killed more often than not) and his rack was soon depleted and when he got up to go the game died. We even asked if he wanted to remove the kill from the game because with so many hads being killed, it was more like a $30-$60 game than $15-$30. I made the suggestion because I wanted to keep the game going and he was short stacked, but he was the one who vetoed removing the kill, and so was busted more quickly than he would have been otherwise.

I'M NO LONGER IN CARD PLAYER, BUT YOU CAN READ ME IN A FEW OTHER MAGAZINES
While I was there I had a chance to pick up the new issue of Bluff Magazine at the casino. It’s the June issue, and marks my debut in that publication, so I didn’t miss a beat because the last issue of Card Player was the first one without my column. I’ll be in the next issue of Fifth Street Magazine too, so I’m still easily found, albeit at different locations.

UPDATE ON MY NEW BOOK PROJECT
For those of you who have inquired about my new book, here's the latest update: My coauthor, Sheree Bykofsky, and I have gotten the first draft written, and are now going thorugh the book and reorganizing it to make it more readable. Then we'll polish up the language, grammer, and syntax, and add materiaql where necessaryl. Then it's off to the publisher. Sheree is my literary agent (she's the literary agent for any number of poker authors, having represented Phil Hellmuth, the late Andy Glazer, Henry Stephenson, and others) as well as a terrific poker player in her own right. She's the author of 17 books, including "The Idiot's Guide To Getting Publihsed," which is the bible for aspiring authors. Our new book will be titled, "Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker," and I'll keep everyone apprised about our progress right here on this blog.

So the beat goes on, as does the business of poker. The games go on too, both online and in traditional casinos, and the lessons learned in one venue often prove helpful in others.

Is Online Poker Rigged?

This is a question that gets asked all the time, sometimes out of frustration, and often out of a sincere belief that these big, faceless sites located somewhere in cyberspace just have it in for the average player. Here's an excerpt from an email I received today:

“But when I play internet poker some of the strangest things happen, people holding cards that nobody would play in Vegas WIN! I’ve lost holding hands that would win in a live casino At the free tables I win a lot, but at the money tables it seems like everyone gets a pat hand and every one bets. Three of a kind doesn't mean much on the internet. Can you tell me what the difference is? I think internet poker is rigged. So more people get better hands so they’ll bet more so the site can get more rakes per hand.”

And here's how I responded:

For whatever reason, players are more aggressive online, and you’ll find more players per hand than you will in Las Vegas. That means hand values can differ from what you find in traditional, conservative, casino games, and you might want to consider making a few adjustments to the hands you play. Play pocket pairs in hopes of flopping a set or getting out (and from late position you can play any pocket pair as long as you can see the flop for one bet), play A-x suited for one bet only in late position, and avoid getting involved with the majority of hands you’re dealt from early position because it can be difficult to determine where you're at relative to opponents who act after you. If that’s not bad enough, you'll be out of position the entire hand.

If you’re playing in five-and six-handed games online, the guidelines change even more dramatically, because in these games any ace can be playable and you’ll have to gamble more. With the blinds coming around much more rapidly in short handed games, there are a number of other adjustments you’ll need to make too. But online poker is not rigged, believe me; it's just a different game and a lot more like poker in California than poker in Las Vegas. The leading sites, Party Poker, PokerStars, the Prima Network (including Royal Vegas Poker, where I’m the host), are all making money and it's in their interests to maintain the most scrupulously honest game they can.

You are dealt so many more hands per hour online than you are in a traditional casino, and you can double or triple the number of hands you see per hour if you’re playing multiple games. You’ll see more of everything: the good, the bad, the boring, and the ugly. But it’s the unusual or extremes that stick in the memory, and that’s one of the reasons players think online poker must be rigged. It isn’t. The seven or eight leading sites are all growing so fast that their challenge is creating software robust enough to accommodate all their players, not figuring how to tweak games to retain them on a one-player-at-a-time basis.

Playing Poker For A Living

One question I'm frequently asked relates to playing poker for a living. With poker's new-found populkarity, there's no shortage of people who want to play professionally. If you're one of these guys, please give this some thought before heading off to the nearest casino to make your living at the poker tables:

If you’re playing for a living at casinos that are not located in major poker centers, you will have a hard time finding games at higher limits. You might find that the biggest game in a casino near you might be $10-$20 or smaller, and then the “big game” might not be spread on a 24/7 basis. If you want to live where you now reside and there’s not a big enough game around to support your lifestyle, you’ll either have to move to a locale that has big games on a regular basis, or adjust your life style to meet the realities of a smaller income.

If you want to play very big games, such as $80-$160 and above, you will have to relocate to a major poker center, such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or Atlantic City -- or else you’ll have to go online to find the high stakes games you need in cyberspace. Are there high stakes games online? You bet. I’ve seen $200-$400 no-limit games on a few sites, and these are very big games indeed.

You’ll need an adequate bankroll to sustain your efforts, and that may be more money than you think you’ll need and probably more than you have on hand. You should have at least 300 to 400 big bets as a poker bankroll, and 500 to 600 is better yet, particularly when you first begin your poker-playing career. This bankroll is for poker only; it’s not for food, rent, utilities, clothing, or your car payment. You’ll need a separate bankroll for that, and while it may sound like a lot, you should have 12 to 18 months worth of expenses in store to cover these costs. At the end of a year to a year-and-a-half of playing professionally you should be earning enough to allow you to treat some of your winnings as income. Once you’re able to do that, you can consider yourself a real professional. Up until that point, you’re on probation.

If you think these requirements are restrictive, bear in mind that most new businesses that fail do so because they are undercapitalized, not because the product is inferior, the sales and marketing effort is less than adequate, and the management is poor. If you are serious about playing poker for a living, you need to view poker not so much as a game, but as a new business. In that regard you’re no different from the guy starting a restaurant or opening up a barbershop. If you are undercapitalized, you significantly increase your risk of ruin, and why would you want to do that? Instead, just continue to build your bankroll until you are adequately capitalized. The give it a go. You’ll give yourself the best chance to succeed if you do.

A Week of Strang Hands

Things always seem to run in cycles, and this has been a week of really unusual hands for me. In an online Omaha/8 game, I raised before the flop with A-A-2-5 and was called in two places. The flop was A-Q-9, giving me a set of aces. One player checked, the other bet, and I raised. The third player folded and I was reraised by the intitial better. I capped it at four bets. Why not? I had the best hand and there were no apparent draws. The turn was another ace, giving me four aces and eliminating any worries about someone backing into a low hand to snatch half the pot out from under my nose. I had all of this baby, and my only thoughs now were concerned with how to maximize my win. Turns out I didn't have to think too long or hard about that either.

We went four bets again on the turn, and four more on the river. The best he could have been holding was a pair of queens in his hand for a full house, but even queens full could have been beaten by aces full or quads, and with me going four bets on every betting round, at some point he should have put me on a hand that might, just might, have been better than his. But he never did and I loved the action.

I also caught pocket aces back-to-back in a tournament last week. In other games I made a straight flush and I also ran into a straight flush on the river to beat my ace-high flush and take a nice pot away from me.

In another Omaha/8 game, I was dealt T-T-T-T and had to fold those beautiful looking but absolutely worthless quads. Talk about redundancy. All I really had was a pocket pair of tens, with no draws, no hopes for improvement, and my chances of winning an Omaha/8 pot with that holding were pretty close to nil.

But not all quads are redundant. I called from late position with four callers already in the pot with 8-8, only to have the button fire in a raise. We all called. We all prayed, and I was miraculously rewarded with the best of all possible flops: 8-8-A. I was in hog heaven. Someone had an ace, surely; and the fact that two of the board cards were hearts had me hoping for a flush draw or two as well. What was really nice about this hand is that the big blind came out betting, was called by two others, and I called too. The button hesitated and finally just called. I wasn't sure whether his hesitation meant he was pondering whether to call or decideing whether to call now and raise on the turn or to fire a raise at the pot right now.

The turn card was a queen and once again the big blind bet out. One player called. I was ready to raise, but decided against it, because I was hoping that the button actually held a raising hand and was preparing to pull the trigger. He didn't disappoint and both the big blind and the other active player called his raised. Now I reraised, and was called in three places. I bet the river but only the button looked me up. I'll never know what he had because he mucked and I won a big pot for my quads.

Sometimes you don't win much at all with a hand that good because you have so much of the flop that there's not much left in the feeding trough for your opponents. But I was lucky. As I said, it was a strange week for hands. The odds against pocket aces back-to-back are astonishingly high, and some of the other hands I was dealt were very unusual too.

All of my poker this week was online because I'm housebound, diligently working on my new book. My coauthor on this book is Sheree Bykofsky, who is also my literary agent. Sherry is a good torunament poker player, a terrific scrabble player, and the author of 17 other books, including one that every writer has, or should have, in his or her library: The Idiot's Guide to Getting Published.

We're on the first draft of this book, and at 68,700 words. We're aiming at approximately 80,000 words, and when we reach that total, we'll probably sit back, take an editing pass at our first draft, and then do whatever reorganization of material seems necessary before we add, supplement, and fill in whatever gaps we discover in the original manuscript.

Once all that's done, off it goes to the publisher, and the process of responding to "editorial queries" begins. It's usaully a process of editing, making poker terminology clear to non-poker readers, and responding to the suggestions of the publisher's editorial staff. Some of the suggestions will be spot-on, and we'll gladly address them. Others we'll discuss and probably reach a compromise, while a few will make us stand our ground on and make no changes. At some point the publisher notifies us that they are going with the manuscript in hand, going to produce an index, and then going to production. Other than responding to their cover suggestions, it's out of our hands at that point and all we do is await our final advance payments and delivery of however many free copies we're entitled to according to our contract with the publisher.

That's the way books are published. It's a pretty logical, straightforward sequence, and if you're dealing with a competent editorial staff it can be a pleasure.

The weather bureau is calling for record high temperatures this weekend in the desert, and it may get up as high as 113, which is quite high for this time of year, and much more typical of August than late May. When it gets that high, the tops go up on convertabiles, not down, and most folks will spend the heat of the day lining up to see the final epsisode of Star Wars. I'll either stay inside oand work on this book, or go to the casino and play some poker.

What Do You Do When There Are Too Many Callers in Every Pot?

Here's a question from a reader that I received earlier today in the form of an e-mail. I think it's something that many players struggle with, so I'm posting it here.

"What is your opinion of calling a raise cold pre-flop in late position withsay Q 10 off or QJ off? The raiser is likely to have anything and there are 5 - 7 players all calling the raise. When I raise in late position with a hand like AK, no one usually gets out. When I raise pre-flop with AK, 5 - 7 people call. If the flop does not hit me, then I am called when I bet the flop, and I am dead on the turn with nothing and usually have to fold. What is your take?"

If I have Q-T or Q-J and have to cold-call a raise in order to play, I'm going to get out and save my money for a better opportunity.

If you're in a game where five to seven players call your raise and the flop misses your hand, it's bound to have hit someone else. In a game like this, you won't win unless you make a hand. If you bet the flop and attract a gaggle of callers, you should usually check the turn and fold to a bet. While you might be able to push an unimproved A-K through one or two opponents, you won't be able to navigate your way through five of them and it's not worth the money you'll have to spend in order to try.

On the other hand, if the flop hits you, you'll be delighted to have so many callers because the pots you win figure to win will be significantly bigger than those where only two or three players routinely take the flop.

When 5 - 7 players call, you can forget about bluffing as a strategy -- you can't bluff your way through that many players -- and the fact that you have that many opponents usually means that any flop missing you helps another player. So bet your good hands for value in games like these, toss out the others, and forget there's even such a thing as bluffing.

Your wallet will love you for it.

It's a Wrap

Friday marked the conclusion of the filming and voiceover work in London. The crew and director hoped to be finished by mid afternoon but the day ran a bit longer than expected and we were not done until early evening. As soon as we wrapped, we headed down to the pub adjacent to the Copthorne Tara Hotel, and had an informal wrap party.

We thought we'd be the loudest group in the pub, but we weren't. Not by a longshot. There were a group of rugby players -- about 20 or 30 in all -- who were there for a reunion. They were all dressed in formal wear but that didn't cut down one iota on their singing, story telling, and general joviality. They were a good group, having a grand time, and they added to the pub's jovial atmosphere.

Following a huge Thai meal at a restaurant a few doors away, I came back to the hotel but found myself too keyed up to sleep, so I played some poker online. That was a mistake. All my good hands were cracked and the only saving grace was that I did not get all that many of them to begin with so my losses weren’t as bad as they might have been. Flopped a set and got beat with it. Had to release a pocket pair of aces on the turn when I suspected I was beaten in two places. Turned the nut straight and lost to a flush. Flopped a king high flush and lost to a bigger one. It was gruesome. That's poker, but it's not fun. I finally got to bed at about 1:00 AM London time, and had to get up at 5:00 AM for the long ride out to Gatwick and my flight home.

I was groggy when I awakened, and it was very disconcerting to think that getting up at 5:00 AM was really getting up at 9:00 PM the night before on California time, and that's what I'd be on when I returned home.

The driver was on time, there wasn't much traffic out to Gatwick, and I was at the airport in plenty of time. Continental Airlines did a good job this time. Check in was quick and easy and I was on the plane and asleep right after takeoff. I slept most of the way across the Atlantic, awakening on the descent into Houston. I had to clear customs and then enter the airport again, passing through security one more time, in order to catch my connecting flight to Palm Springs. But we landed early, I was seated close to the door, so I dashed out dragging my carry-on and was one of the first people through customs. I also lucked out because there were very few people going through security when I had to enter the domestic flights area of the airport again, and so I was able to get to my gate for the Palm Springs flight in plenty of time.

Because it's a small plane from Houston to Palm Springs (a 50-passenger job) it's always gated at the very end of the terminal building, in this case Gate 68 in Terminal B. So I hotfooted it over there and arrived with about 20 minutes to spare (had there been a big line to clear customs, or a big line entering through the security gate again, making my connecting flight would have been dicey at best).

Another flight, another three hours to kill, and another nap. I awakened when we were over the desert, probably less than 50 miles from Palm Springs. I could actually see my new house to the south of us as I looked out the window of the plane as we descended over the Coachella Valley on a straight line west into the Palm Springs airport. I was tired, overdressed because I took only London clothes with me (those are my dead-of-winter desert clothes) and was looking forward to a hot shower or a dip in the pool when I got home.

We even arrived 20 minutes early. A shock. Especially when traveling east to west and into prevailing headwinds. I was outside the airport about 10 minutes before Deirdre pulled up to ferry me home. I was tired, exhausted, glad to be back, and happy now that the work was done and the TV show just needed a bit more editing for all 10 episodes to be complete.

I had seen a few takes from some of the completed episodes and liked the look and feel of the show, so I can't wait until I get a DVD with the entire first season of Vegas Virgins on it. I'm not sure whether I'll watch all 10 shows in one sitting, but I will watch them all.

Next week I can get back to the new book I'm writing, and getting a new column done for The Nevada Sunday, but for now, all I want to do is dissolve into some warm water and let the jet lag drain away so that I can once again be certain of what time it is and whether I should look to the left or the right first before crossing the street.

"VegasVirgins" Voiceovers, Tightrope Walking, and Hands You're Destined to Go Broke On.

Today’s filming went well and it was an easy day. We did a lot of voiceover work, and somehow that seems easier than what we did in-vision, as they say. I even had some down time between segments and was able to zip back to my hotel room to play some online poker.

I suppose there are just some hands one is bound to go broke on, and I had two of them earlier today. Despite this, I had a great day playing six- and five-handed sit-and-go tourneys at Royal Vegas Poker, and I did well in a $15-$30 cash game too. I won two SNGs and finished second in the other two played. I might have even done better, except for fate’s fickle finger.

With three players still alive -- one of them was on life support and circling the drain -- and I had pocket aces. The guy on life support went all-in on his big blind and was raised by the button. I was in the small blind and moved all-in with my aces. The button had me covered, but only by a very few chips. If he wins, I’m out. If I win, he can’t even fully post a small blind. If the guy circling the drain wins, he’s still very short stacked and still not really a factor in this tournament.

The flop was 9-5-3 of mixed suits and I loved it. The guy who was all-in from the big blind had 8-2 and was essentially toast. The button had K-Q. It’s a nice hand to start with but the flop missed him completely. Wouldn’t you know he caught a jack on the turn and a ten on the river for the nut straight and won the tourney, with me finishing second because I entered the pot with more chips than Mr. All-In From the Big Blind.

The other hand I was destined to go broke on occurred when I had Ah-5h and bet about half my stack into a 5d-5c-4s flop. The turn card was an inconsequential eight and I was called when I went all-in. I thought I was in good shape. After all, trips with an ace kicker is a pretty good hand heads-up. But my joy was short lived when my opponent turned over 5-4 for a full house. The river could have saved me with either an ace for the win or an eight for a split, but it didn’t help me at all and I wound up in second place again.

I don’t think there was any way I could have avoided going broke on those hands, particularly when the blinds had escalated to the point where one lost pot puts you in bad shape. I had to commit my chips on both hands. But that’s poker, and woulda, coulda, shoulda doesn’t get you anywhere at the table.

Tomorrow is the last day of filming. We begin at 9:00 AM and will keep at it until we’re finished. Earlier today the director showed me some of the episodes that have already been edited and I liked what I saw, despite a tendency to be hypercritical of myself anytime I’m on camera.

The show has a very cool look to it, and the production values exceeded what I was expecting from a reality show. But the crew that worked on this show also worked on Fear Factor and some other reality shows for a few seasons. As a result, they know what they’re doing, and they do it well.

Today I saw most of the episode where the contestants have to earn chips for the nightly tournament by walking a tightrope suspended below the Fremont Street Experience canopy. Well, “walking” the tightrope is a very loose use of that word. Mostly it involved contestants taking three, four, or five steps out on the wire and then falling off in one direction or another. The suspension harnesses got the best workout that day.

Those who did the best on that task sort of ran out on the wire as fast as they could go, until their forward motion gave way to gravity’s inexorable pull. Since they earned chips for that evening’s poker tournament in proportion to how far they were able to walk across the wire, speed translated into distance, and no points were awarded for style, or deducted for a lack of it.

In any event, I can’t wait to get my DVD of the show, which is supposed to air this summer in the UK, followed by a late summer or early fall run in Canada, and then all ten episodes of Vegas Virgins will be shown in the US later in the year.
We’ve got a pub picked out for our mini wrap party tomorrow evening, and then a Thai restaurant for dinner. Saturday morning the driver picks me up at 6:15 AM and whisks me out to Gatwick for a flight to Houston, where I’ll change planes and arrive in Palm Springs late that afternoon. My goal for the flight is to sleep my way across the ocean, unless there’s a particularly good movie on the flight. But that’s not usually the case, so I’ll count on snoozing my way across the pond.

On the Set in London: Day One

The first half-day of filming is done, and so far, so good. We’re all crowded onto a small set – the production team of Warwick Bank, Tom Williams, Michael Shallvey, Keith Darbyshire and me. I’m able to give them what they want in relatively few takes. One sequence took four takes, but for most of the other sequences it was two takes and out. Some of the takes were voice-overs; others were filmed.

During a break I go back to my room and find a $10-$20 hold’em game online at Royal Vegas Poker. I’m ahead from the get-go with a series of good hands. Then I flop a set of treys on the button. My opponent bets the turn, I raise, and he comes back over the top and three bets me. The board now reads K-7-3-2 and the suits are mixed and immaterial. The deuce that turned obviously couldn’t have helped him or hurt me. What’s more, I know he doesn’t have a big king because the pot was not raised before the flop. He either has K-7, in which case I’m ahead, or he has a set of sevens and I’m way behind. (Yes, he could have slow played a pocket pair of kings and now has a set of cowboys, though the odds are against it; but with bottom set in my hand any other set that flopped has me drawing just as lean.)

I think it was fellow poker author Lee Jones who said that if you don’t lose at least a stack of chips when your set is cracked, you’re playing too conservatively. And when you lose a set-over-set confrontation -- as opposed to a set losing out to a straight, flush, or full house -- you figure to lose even more because you won’t realize that you’re up against another set until you’ve already committed a lot of chips to the pot. With straights, flushes, or full houses, at least the board provides a clue to the possibility of a bigger hand. When it’s set over set in an unraised pot, you’ve no clues whatsoever, outside of the repetitive bets and raises tossed at you by your opponent.

At this point I figure he probably has me beaten and drawing to one out only, so I just call the third raise and call his river bet too. I’m not surprised when my opponent turns over 7-7 for a set-over-set winner.

I lose the next hand I play too. I flopped a straight in the big blind with 5-4 when the flop was 7-6-3 of a beautiful rainbow hue. The turn card is a jack that can’t hurt me, but the river is a six, and my opponent turns over 7-6 for a full house. Instead of beating the game, I’m stuck.

Ten minutes later I win three hands in a row (it’s not all that unusual when the game is six-handed) and I’m back up a few hundred dollars. Then I’m paged back to the set for more filming.

A few more filmed segments. A few more voice overs, and I’m done for the day. Tomorrow it's more of the same. More voice-overs, more filmed segments, and more poker too.

Personal Accountability and a Flight to London

So here I am, at 5:30 AM, second in line at the Palm Springs airport, ready to check in. My routing is from Palm Springs to Houston where I am scheduled to change planes for a flight to London. Unfortunately, that flight to Houston has been canceled. According to The Factotum Behind the Desk, thunderstorms in Houston last evening canceled their scheduled flight into Palm Springs, hence there’s no plane available to fly back to Houston with me and what’s becoming a growing line of irritable passengers beginning to queue up behind me.

The Factotum Behind the Desk offhandedly repeats the thunderstorm story.

Thus begins a conversation:

Me: Were thunderstorms still in the area at 2:00 AM?
The Factotum Behind the Desk: No. The skies were clear then.

Me: So why didn’t Continental send a plane out here so you’d be able to meet this end of your schedule?
The Factotum Behind the Desk: There were thunderstorms.

Me: I thought they were gone by late evening or early morning?
The Factotum Behind the Desk: I just work here. I’m sorry.

Me: But you guys are responsible for meeting your flight schedules, and the airline ought to have some sense of personal accountability.
The Factotum Behind the Desk: It was a thunderstorm. We couldn’t do anything about that.
Me. Sure you could. You could have sent an empty plane from Houston to Palm Springs once the sky was clear so that you could meet your schedule. But you guys decided not to do that. You decided to simply walk away from your obligations to all these passengers. If that’s where your business ethics and sense of customer service stands, it’s as bankrupt as your balance sheet.

The Factotum Behind the Desk: We’ll try to get you on another plane. We don’t have to do that, but we’ll try.
Me: Thanks; they’re reserving a place in heaven for you as we speak.

The Factotum Behind the Desk: No need to be sarcastic; I’m a very nice person.
Me: I’m sure everyone behind me in this rapidly growing line will be happy to know that.

The Factotum Behind the Desk: growls to herself.
Me: ::sigh::

She hands me a piece of paper and I’m off to the Delta Airlines ticket counter to get boarding passes on a flight to Atlanta, where I’ll change planes for a flight to London, arriving at Gatwick a relatively short time after my Continental flight was set to land.

A quick call to the folks at Lion TV and I’m assured they’ll call the driver who’ll meet my arriving flight and get him to show up at the Delta flight, not the flight from Continental.

When I present my boarding pass and passport to the screener, he informs me that I’ve won the lottery and was randomly selected to have my luggage screened. I’m led through a special line where I unpack my laptop, and remove my shoes. That’s no problem because I never fly anywhere these days without wearing my quick-release shoes, but then I’m gone over thoroughly with the screening wand as I watch my clothes being unpacked from my suitcase by another TSA employee and screened very thoroughly.

I asked the screener why I was selected and she informed me that last-minute ticket purchasers meet their selection profile. So there’s the rub. Because Continental was unwilling to honor their obligations by providing the flight I booked and decided instead to make arrangements for me to fly to London on another airline, I’m chosen for a random screening too. When it rains, it pours. I'm sure the Factotum Behind the Desk knew this, and was grinning silently as I walked off from my encounter with her and over to the Delta counter to get my new ticket.

I've always been able to sleep on planes, or anything that moves for that matter, so I nod off right after dinner. The movie wasn't compelling enough to keep me awake and I wanted to get some sleep because when I arrived in London it would be morning and I'd have to function on their time schedule, not mine. So operating on the theory that "When there's nothing to do, do nothing," I scrunched around in my seat and slept most of the night away.

This flight arrived at Gatwick, which is further from downtown London than Heathrow, but seems a more user-friendly airport. At least clearing customs was quick and easy with the exception of a person who got tangled up in Rover's leash, and tripped over the dog who was positioned at a pinch-point in the hallway, sniffing everyone and their bags as they walked by. But the working hound found no drugs on our flight and I optimistically made the odds 3-to-1 that the driver would have gotten the message about my flight change and would be there to meet me. My cell phone isn't enabled for use overseas, so I was really hoping he would, and he was. He made it through rush-hour traffic into London and seemed to know every possible shortcut to avoid traffic congestion on the motorway and deposited me at the Copthorne Tara in Kensington an hour later.

The only thing on the day's agenda was a production meeting, where we reviewed plans to get all the filming done in three days, and scrutinized the detailed call sheets that tell each participant where to be and at what time. I'm to appear on the set at 9:30 AM Wednesday, which means I can sleep in, although my body is still telling me that this rather humane starting time is really 1:30 AM California time.

More play by play to come. Tune in tomorrow............

Up and Down and a Royal Flush

I had a very uneventful week playing poker. One step forward, one step back. I'd win one day only to lose the next and was never ahead or behind more than $400. I wound up the week minus $125, but I did manage to turn a royal flush, my first in a long time.

I was playing in a six-handed $10-$20 hold'em game on Royal Vegas Poker and was dealt Kd-Td in the big blind. One player called, the button raised, the small blind folded and I called the button's raise, since I was getting more than 5-to-1 on my money. The flop was Ad-Qd-4c. It was checked around to the button, and he bet. I called, as did the player to my left. I was hoping for any diamond, or any other jack, when the Jd popped right up on the turn. This was an aggressive, six-handed game, so I came out betting on the turn in hopes that either or both my opponents would think I was representing a flush that I didn't really have.

The guy to my left called (he was suspicious, but not enough to raise me) but the button raised. Now I reraised, which dropped the guy to my left who was caught in the middle. The button called, and also called my bet on the river when an inconsequential rag fell. The button typed, "NH; I had Q-Q." If he really did have a pocket pair of queens and flopped a set of them, I can only wish that the river card was the case queen or otherwise paired the board, because we'd probably still be raising if he did.

This was the first royal I made in well over a year. It's always fun to make the ultimate hand, although in truth, whenever a hand this big is made, there's usually not enough left to go around so the pots tend to be small because no one else generally has much of a hand. I'd love to make a royal flush when someone else makes an ace-high flush or a full-house, but I've never been that fortunate.

I'm off to London day-after-tomorrow. One of the disadvantages of living in a small town is that you almost always have to change planes when traveling any appreciable distance. So I've got to fly from Palm Springs to Houston, and then from Houston to London. My flight leaves PSP at 7:10 AM on Monday, but with the time change and the change of planes, it'll be Tuesday morning when I touch down in London. I have no trouble at all sleeping on planes, so I intend to snooze my way from Palm Springs to Houston, get on the London flight, eat dinner, and then sleep the entire rest of the flight away. If I do this right and there are no screaming babies seated nearby, I should awaken on the descent into Gatwick.

The folks at Lion TV sent me a bunch of still photos from the February Vegas Virgins shoot, along with instructions to pack the very same clothes I wore in all of those pictures, so that any post-production filming done in London can be seamlessly integrated into the footage. I was hoping that this trip would only involve voice-over work, so I could pack and travel with just a couple of changes of clothes, but no such luck. Now I've got to shlep a big suitcase with me.

I'll probably take my laptop with me too, but I may not. I'll make a last minute decision. I probably won't post to my blog until I return, unless I get very bored or find myself unable to sleep. But even if I don't post anything during the week, I'll take notes so I can add whatever thoughts I have about this trip to the blog when I return home.

Meanwhile, those of you who have been following this blog know that we recently moved from Palm Springs to Palm Desert. So we don't know all that many people in the new community, but we did find out that John Elway's mother lives right nearby. I wonder if he'll be here tomorrow for mother's day?

But that's tomorrow. Today is the Kentuckey Derby, and the folks across the street are having a big Derby party. Caterers were all over their house yesterday moving tables and chairs into a place that's at least three times the size of ours, maybe more. We've never met the fpeople who live there (we think they are seasonal people, not full-time residents), but they invited us, so we'll go. Perhaps their invitation was an act of neighborliness, perhaps an act of self defense where the invitation is issued as part of the theory that if you invite the neighbors, they can't bitch about the noise because then they're part of the problem too. In any event, we'll run over there and check it out. Even if the party is boring we can sample the food and see what a 7,000 square foot house looks like.

Stay tuned. More to come. I'll give you a rundown on whether John Elway visits mom tomorrow, what the inside of that posh, 7,000 square foot house is like, and I'll fill you in on my trip to London. If I get incredibly lucky and make another royal flush, I'll fill you in on that too.

Off to London

A few days ago, British TV producer Sean Kneale called and asked if I minded "...popping over to London for a few days, to do some post-production work on Vegas Virgins, the TV series I recently worked on and wrote about in an earlier post. For those of you who might not have read it, here's an encapsulated summary of what this TV series will be all about.

It's a poker-meets-reality-show in which 10 people who have never played casino poker before -- five from the USA and five from the UK -- were whisked away to Las Vegas for three weeks, put up in a first class hotel and provided with poker coaching. That was my job, and it was on camera. A "life coach," in the person of Las Vegas psychologist Sally St. John, worked with each of them on life lessons while I concentrated on making poker players out of absolute newbies.

Each night featured a poker tournament and each evening's winner got to select one player to be tossed off the show. Each day the contestants had to perform a variety of tasks (think Fear Factor: eating duck embryos, walking a tightrope, you get the picture) and each day's the task performance determined how many chips each players started the nightly tournament with. In alternating fashion, they tossed a Brit and then an American, until just one player from each country remained. The two survivors played a heads-up match and the winner was given $5,000 to play poker against a few real "pros," each of whom were be armed with less money. The money discrepancy was designed to level the playing field and give the newbie a fair shot at winning.

Sally and I were on camera for all shows, and I got to give poker lessons and broadcast the play by play of each evening's tournament.

While I'm over there I'll get an opportnity to look at the shows that have already been edited, and at this point I believe they've finished editing the first four or five one-hour shows that will comprise the series. When I get back, I'll share my feelings with you about it.

On one hand, I'll be a bit biased because I'm featured in the show. But then again, I'm very overly critical of myself whenever I've been filmed; there's always something I wish I could have done over and done better.

It's that way with writing too. Whenever I finish a book and it goes to print, I avoid looking at it once it's been published. I always see so much I could have done differently, or better, or written more lucidly. Sometimes I get a chance to correct whatever bothers my heightened sensitivities in second editions, but mainly I have to live with my own words over while realizing there's a huge gap between my work and some of the writers I've always admired.

I should be in London for five or six days, probably beginning May 9, and if there's a gap in my posts to this blog, that'll be the reason why.