The low-stakes life in Las Vegas.
or, What Grows the Game of Poker For those of you who are confused about how to grow the great game (and less great culture) of poker, I’m going to make this simpler than usual. One time! Anything that makes it appear that the public can beat the game and sit with great players, grows…
Recently one of my opponents spent some time at a table with Stephen Chidwick. For some reason it was a surprise that he was pleasant and talkative about his family and their outings: a normal man. Or was this backwards? Because the talk at a regular, low-stakes table is all bad beats and complaining and…
I haven’t won the game. I play the game, yet I don’t play it to win – not exactly. Yet maybe I should. I play for something else. There are moments when the plan fails. When I can’t leave the game I’m hosting despite the horrible beats I’m taking or the bad breath I’m enduring.…
I had recently acquired and dispensed with a taste for bad beats, to the disappointment of several of my most beloved fish-cakes and crab-cutlets. They had turned away, crestfallen and grey, their camp shorts all the more creased, their faces all the more salt and pepper, ready for the eternal grinder. However, I have always…
On account of being a generally spineless poker mop, I was easily bluffed into embracing the Horseshoe’s fifty-hour WSOP promotion by some of my fellow degenerates. Now in exchange for coming mid-strip and putting in all these grimey hours into their recession-themed poker room, I would expect to receive an entry into the Main Event…
I have this parable to tell you. I once had a poker student who came to me for help. I provided some guidance, and he listened carefully. He worked on his issue. Now he plays for a living. Mind blown, right? Wow! I never thought of it that way! Glad to be of service. Now,…
Of late, some in poker have turned away from worrying about strategy advances calcifying our game’s economy. Who can blame them? Not only is it untrue that the games are not beatable, but it is a tendency of the door of opportunity to eventually swing back and close. So, what they are doing is turning…
I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there—the assholes, the flags, the underpants. – Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions I remember the importance of trash day as a child. You had to gather everything on time or else be stuck with it for a whole week. The garbage…