Your hero, Negative Entropy Man, will be busy this WSOP. Crushed on every front, he’ll be grinding cash throughout the great poker bang to put his universe back together.
How did all this happen? The miserable part is knowing why. And I hate this why. You don’t really want to know, you just think you do.
Negative Entropy Man understands this. He and I know it because losing is an immersive experience. He slept through much of the runbad and dared call it that. I dreamt things I did not want to see after my nights of playing like ass. I have reviewed my life (again) and found all the ugly answers I wanted to bury.
I assume he’s done the same, but I wonder.
Day 1. Steak over pasta. While filet is not the best cut, it does have that famous easy tenderness. Moreover, I had found an unusually fatty one. I don’t know what to make of that; perhaps the cut borders on some other muscle and I benefitted from the error. Running hot in the meat department, collect two hundred calories. I dry two cuts for consecutive days. The second filet burns up especially nicely, blue in the center, black with salt and fat.
On the first day should I not send Negative Entropy Man somewhere with more Series-ee flavor than my usual haunts? David Baker reminds us of the parking; he’s two people too and therefore trustworthy. I head to the Wynn for two-five.
After the downswing, I can barely justify playing this big. Bankroll matters, and Negative Entropy Man does not borrow and does not beg. (Yet.) We use the energy remaining in the universe, which might mean moving down on day two. We bump fists with a floor we inexplicably know and tip; he sends us to the wrong side of the room symbolically because he knows where I belong. It’s really just spillover though: day 1 of the WSOP is packing the rooms.
I get to see one of the many downgraders, this one an obtuse long-time local grinder now snuffling chips at one-three. He’s kind of a disgusting human, so I suppose he could be me in many ways. This downgrader pretends not to know me, as usual. I’m not sure what his particular motivation for this is. I do this sometimes, too, but with very specific people, in particular Sklansky when he was wandering the room: stop doing that shit, even if you are a poker celebrity. Nevertheless, Negative Entropy Man refuses to go backwards or fall apart for at least one day.
The room is full of poker travelers, returning faces. This is business, and business is booming. One bad reg wanders the room, as he always does, searching for that one player worse than him, I suppose: a hard task indeed or a touching tribute to the great author, perhaps.
Mine is a quiet table. When I greet the new dealer or say good-bye to the departing one, I’ll be breaking the silence. One of the jaded dealers who thinks the games exist for him will keep complaining about the floor not feeding us players to keep his tips high. However, the game is good all the same, which is of course the secret Negative Entropy Man uses in times like this. We see an ace turned into a bluff and get itself questionably stacked by a much stronger hand than it was attacking. One of those amazing/incredibly stupid plays that can’t be easily quantified except for one piece of telling forensic evidence: the donkey combo used. Guilty. Good table.
There are cold calls of three bets. I make a sweet fake value bet to get two players to fold in one spot. I’m up. It doesn’t take much to make me happy. That’s how I got here, this is how I win. The big nights I chased during the downfall were part of the problem.
Nothing else goes my way. I can accept that. What I can’t accept the final call I make, squandering my meal. I haven’t been using blockers on the river correctly, and I get justly downgraded to the cost of home filet. Day one is overcooked and rubbery. I find an excellent noodle house and read and brood and plan one more beginning.
+62
