Quick and Dirty

I have no time or enthusiasm for blogging anymore, obviously. But I just can't bring myself to shut this place down. So, we do a quick and dirty update since the last post pre-vacation:

* I played in one poker tournament in Biloxi. Finished somewhere in the high 40's, and top 27 got paid. I had terrible cards for most of the day so even lasting that long was really surprising, and actually made me feel pretty good about my effort. I had nothing to work with, but I made it work well enough to outlast some really good players.

* The sexism in poker still gets to me, but I'm finally used to it now. I actually had a guy lay down pocket queens to my bet, and it was an older guy who had been super-flirty with me to that point. (He saw me on my cell phone at the break and asked if I was "texting with my boyfriend," kept calling me "hot stuff," etc.) Now he said he was laying them down because he had gotten burned with them several times already, and I think that was at least partially true. But I also think he was trying to do me a favor, which is fairly condescending. Of course, I had pocket jacks so I was happy for the fold, but I didn't tell him that. He had been very chatty with the whole table, trying to play the "I'm just a dumb first timer, you must be really good at this" role...meanwhile before the tournament started he was bitching about how lousy the comps were for poker players when he had gambled over $2mil. in MGM owned casinos in the last year. So, notsomuch.

* It was raining when I got to Pensacola the first day of my vacation, so I decided not to play in the Tuesday poker tournament and instead stayed all morning in Fla. to get a nice long walk on the beach in before I had to leave. It was wonderful. Despite normally not being a big Hampton Inn fan, I have to give it up for the Hampton Inn on Pensacola Beach--it is way nicer than most of the chain and I would totally stay there again. Although their "heated pool" was so cold I nearly died.

* I ate at a restaurant on the beach called Peg Leg Pete's--also highly recommended. The food was delicious and the company was good too. However, I did have an older retired couple from GA there start talking to me about why they moved to Pensacola, and at one point the guy did a quick look around the bar and then just launched into an incredibly racist statement. (Something about how the locals all call this one beach "chicken wing beach" because "that kind" hang out there.) I hate it when things like this happen, because I realize it would do no good to chide him for saying it, but I also don't want to be complicit in his racism and act like it doesn't bother me. So, inevitably, I end up sitting there with an uncomfortable look on my face, hoping he will realize he shouldn't have said it but that I am too polite or weak or whatever to flat out call him out for it. And then I wrapped up my drinking and left soon thereafter.

* In Biloxi, I lost a lot of money and ate a wonderful meal at Mary Mahoney's, as is my annual tradition. Still the best seafood gumbo I have EVER had. However, they cannot make a gimlet to save their damn lives. Here's a hint: it should not be over ice, and it should not be fizzy.

* After Biloxi, I drove back to attend a friend's show at Smith's, and the next morning on little sleep and much hangover, I flew to Vegas. We stayed at the Mandalay Bay this time, and I much preferred it to the MGM Grand where I stayed in May. I again lost money, but had a couple big slot machine wins ($350 oncer, $200 at the airport) and some good blackjack play. However, overall the trip was pricey because my gambling would swing hard in both directions. Not as bad as T., who was with us, and who lost $800 in about 20 minutes on 8 $100 hands of blackjack! LIVING THE DREAM.

* We ate our way through Vegas, and that seriously has to be the best foodie town in the universe. First night we had Border Grill mexican food that was delicious, the next day we had Burger Bar for lunch (it says a lot that this very tasty meal ended up being the least impressive of the trip but was still good), then Nobu for dinner where SOME PEOPLE ordered kobe beef steaks cooked over hot rocks at $32 an ounce, then the next day for lunch I had a lamb burger and fried dill pickles at BLT Burger that was TO DIE FOR, and finally we finished it off with an excellent Russian fusion tasting menu at Red Square. All of it was yummy.

* Good thing I went on that "crash vegas" diet...I lost 7 pounds in 17 days, and I wasn't even trying that hard for the last week or so. But I gained 4 right back in Vegas! (I've taken off 2 of those in the last week since I've been back and hitting the treadmill again.) This really inspired me to rededicate, because I do feel so much better when I am working out 4 days a week at least. Also, with the cooler weather, I am going to try walking outside on weekends more often. I still hope to get myself half-marathon ready by January...

* The craziest moment of the entire Vegas experience was when I realized while eating lunch at BLT Burger in the Mirage that my wallet was gone. I didn't know if I had dropped it, been pickpocketed, or left it in the cab I had arrived in 45 minutes earlier. I have to give major, major props to the staff of the Mirage, who got the security folks to find the cab number of the cab I got out of through their security camera footage, called the cab company and fought their way through the labyrynthic maze to reach the driver, and discovered that he had my wallet and made arrangements for him to bring it back to me. It completely saved my vacation, and then I tipped the entire world for their help. I will also probably stay at the Mirage next time I am in town, because I feel like I owe them for going over the top for me when I was not even a guest on their property.

* Speaking of next time, there is already a movement afoot to go back for Thanksgiving. I don't think I can afford it!

* This was only my second "real vacation" (i.e. not a long weekend or Christmas/Thanksgiving holiday trips home to family) since I graduated from law school. Twice I have managed to take an entire week off from work, in 10 years. This is sad. This needs to be remedied.

Gone fishin'

I'm headed today to Pensacola Beach, FL for one night, then tomorrow for Biloxi for my third year playing in the Gulf Coast Poker Championship. I'll be back briefly on Thursday night to see a friend's bluegrass band play at Smith's Olde Bar (come join us!) and then on Friday morning I head to Vegas.

I hope to have interesting tales to tell next week. And to not be completely broke ass.

Vacation Plans Update

So, things changed a little bit in the last couple weeks as I planned my vacation for the last week of August. I am probably NOT going to the Florida gulf coast because cost has become somewhat prohibitive. (Beach house rentals in FL are EXPENSIVE despite the whole oil spill thingee!) Instead, I will probably drive or fly straight to Biloxi on Monday for 3 days of poker tournament goodness and fun with my friend Susan (and technically it's on a beach so that should fulfill my beach-fix) thanks to free airfare and hotel deals from the Beau Rivage. I'll come back on Thursday, in time to see an awesome bluegrass band, Whoa Nelly, play at Smith's. (You should come if you're here in the ATL. Seriously. They are great.) And then early the next morning, I'll fly to Vegas for Labor Day weekend with some friends. I have free hotel offers there, too, so the only question is whether the airfare will become semi-reasonable before I give up and book a ticket. I may not even gamble all that much this time out...I probably will just hang by the pool during the days so that I resist the urge to give MGM/Mirage Corp. my hard-earned dollars. (Yeah, right.)

Woot! I'm looking forward to an entire week off. I just told my boss about it today, and she didn't balk. So it's as good as set in stone.

My un-recipe for perfect peach pie

For Labor Day weekend, I traveled to Biloxi to play some poker. (I haven't been able to bring myself to write about the trip yet, and maybe never will. It wasn't bad at all, but stuck alone with my thoughts for the weekend and the long drive back, I feel like I have already done more than enough self-analysis about the trip.) When I returned, I discovered four huge, perfect Georgia peaches sitting in my refrigerator just begging to be eaten or cooked. I decided that since it was Labor Day, and I was in Georgia after all, the only answer was to make peach pie.

I didn't really have a recipe, but I was undeterred. First, I decided to try peeling the peaches with a carrot peeler rather than using the traditional boil then plunge into ice water method of peeling. This worked beautifully! I will always peel peaches this way from now on, and they are much easier to slice when still firm and cold. I peeled, pitted and sliced the four peaches and added them to a bowl. In with the peaches went the juice of one lemon, an eyeball approximation of roughly 3/4 a cup of brown sugar, a splash of almond extract, a healthy dose of cinnamon, 4 heaping spoonfuls of flour, and what was left of a stick of butter. (I think it was about 5 tablespoons' worth, softened.) I mixed all of this with a spatula until the peaches were completely coated, and let it sit for a few minutes.

I had a Pillsbury pie crust in the fridge, so I cheated on this part rather than making my own. I rolled out the bottom crust and pressed into a pie plate. Then I re-mixed the peaches mixture one more time, and poured it into the pie plate while making sure the peaches were as level as possible. I rolled out the top crust and put it over the peaches, carefully pressing the sides and fluting the edges. I cut four small vents in the crust, and placed into a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes. After that, I turned the oven down to 350 and baked for another 45 minutes, until the pie was just golden brown.

This was the end result:



I was a bit nervous about how well the pie turned out, given that I had completely made up the recipe for the filling from nothing. When I finally tried it...holy jeebus this was good. I warmed a slice in the microwave with a scoop of ice cream and then tried not to die from the deliciousness of it all. Seriously, if every food this tasty were this easy to make, I would weigh 300 pounds.

So now, you too can make perfect peach pie before the peaches go out of season!

Today's Video Interlude (contains NSFW language)

"What, you're not hungry?"

What's the Matter with Georgia?

Despite the creeping approach of legalized gambling along Georgia's borders with North Carolina, Alabama and Florida, our state continues to steadfastly oppose legalized gambling initiatives. The closest we have come to anything approximating a casino in Georgia is the proposed revamping of Underground Atlanta into an awful place filled with "video lottery terminals" that vaguely resemble slot machines, but even that half ass idea has failed to make any progress (thankfully, because it would have been a disaster).

Meanwhile, the state so controlled by religious conservatives that it was the subject of a nonfiction bestseller about everything that's wrong with it is preparing to open state-owned casinos to bring in new revenues. Kansas, the home of Operation Rescue, the state that voted evolution out of the educational curriculum, the state that only legalized drinking in the last 50 years, is getting into the casino business.

Admittedly, Kansas conservatives' opposition likely softened a great deal due to the arrival in the 90's of casinos owned by federally-recognized Indian tribes. It was probably tough for state politicians and residents to watch those tribes rake in bajillions of dollars over the last 15 years without virtually any of it going to the state, so it is only natural that they eventually came to crave their share for state coffers. In contrast, Georgia has no federally-recognized Indian tribes who could legally open a casino here, and thus the only way that any casino is coming to this state is through either a statewide ballot initiative (virtually impossible) or legislation redefining the lottery's authority to regulate gambling. This is ultimately the approach that Kansas utilized to legalize state-owned casinos through a narrow vote of the legislature in 2007.

Realistically, given the annual defeat of local control of alcohol sales on Sundays, it's probably unlikely that Georgia will seriously consider allowing REAL gambling anytime soon. But if Kansas' powerful and vocal religious conservatives couldn't prevent the passage of laws expanding revenues by opening state-owned casinos, why should we preemptively assume that Georgia's conservative base can kill this idea before it even gets serious consideration by the legislature, particularly in a year of state budget deficits, hiring freezes, furloughs, falling revenues, and no real end in sight?

It's something that smart politicians should consider embracing and taking the lead on pushing for serious consideration in the legislature. If it worked in Kansas, it can work anywhere.

(Update: As Richard noted in the comments, the Georgia constitution contains a prohibition on casino gambling that Kansas does not have. This probably raises a bigger legal/constitutional hurdle to expanding lottery powers to include running casinos than what Kansas faced.)

The Professionals Strike Back?

Imagine, if you will, that the U.S. Open golf tournament did not have a qualification process. Imagine that any amateur player willing to plop down $10,000 could gain entry to this tournament and take their shot alongside Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Now imagine that it had been this way for more than a decade, and that in that decade not a single big name professional player had won the U.S. Open, and only a handful had even been in contention on the final day.

This is about where we find ourselves in the World Series of Poker. No professional poker player has won the title since Carlos Mortensen in 2001. In 2002 virtual unknown Robert Varkyoni won the title from nowhere, and about the same time ESPN began televising the tournament with the revolutionary "hole card cam" that allows home viewers to see each player's hole cards. Amateurs began flooding to the sport and to the tournament, and for each of the last seven years we have seen people we've never heard of take home millions of dollars from the Main Event.

Now, you might argue that my analogy fails because golf is an actual sport based solely on talent and skill. Luck plays very little role in deciding whether your shot goes into a sandtrap or lands on the green, beyond perhaps a gust of wind or an errant bird getting in the way. Poker is not really a sport, despite being broadcast by ESPN. It is a game of both skill and chance, and thus far less predictable. But it has still been a frustrating thing for those who love the game and its particular nuances and challenges to watch it be flooded by nobodies who have managed to muscle the well known players out of the limelight at the Main Event every year. Perhaps that's precisely because the fall of the professionals has suggested that luck plays a far bigger role than skill in determining who wins and who loses. If skill were that important, the naysayers argue, then the highly skilled and proven professionals should be able to beat the lucky noobs. So, the naysayers ask, why the hell haven't these highly skill pros won another one yet?

This year may be the professionals' answer to those naysayers. For the first time since 2003, two well known professional poker players have made the final table of 9 who will regroup in November to battle it out for the World Championship in the Main Event. Every single person in that nine has already guaranteed himself (no ladies at the final table this year, yet again) at least a million dollars, but to Phil Ivey and Jeff Shulman the $8.5 million for first place is probabaly not as important as you'd expect, compared to the title and what it would mean for the discouraged ranks of professional players cheering them on.

"You have no idea how bad I want this," said Ivey. "I can taste it now."

Ivey has come close to the final table before, bubbling in 2003. (For poker novices out there, the last person who is eliminated before the final table or before the money is known as "the Bubble" slot, a particularly painful experience for the person who can practically taste the cash and glory but falls just shy.) He is considered by many to be the best poker player alive today, and is known as the "Tiger Woods of poker." Shulman made the final table in 2000 but finished in seventh place after once holding a massive chip stack lead. These two have not just the notoriety of television exposure and poker website sponsorship, but also a proven record of success in the form of World Series bracelets and millions of dollars won.

You might assume an amateur player like me, who has only been playing poker for a few years myself and has lost far more than I've won in casino play, would be rooting for the anonymous inexperienced and unknown poker players who have flooded the game. It would make sense since I am one of them, but you'd be wrong. I want one of the pros to win it all again this year, even though I recognize the odds are long for both. Why? It's hard to explain. Maybe it's that I need to believe that skill will triumph over luck at least half of the time, that making the right decisions still counts for something in this game. Maybe it's that I feel burned by the volatility and danger that inexperienced players bring to the sport, so I am hoping that the re-emergence of pros would diminish that to a degree. Maybe it's that I still want to have idols, people who I can look up to because they are better than I am at something that I love. I really don't know if I can articulate it.

Whatever the reason, I'll be watching in November and sweating Ivey and Shulman. I also think their success this year has reinvigorated my own love for poker and my desire to work towards being a better player through discipline, study, and effort. When I started playing in casino tournaments I wasn't really ready, and perhaps I'm still not. I had come a long way from when I started playing but I still had much to learn. Like many of those wide-eyed amateurs, I walked into a casino and threw away my money hoping that luck would take me the rest of the way when skill could not. Some people who did the very same thing have made fortunes, but in doing so and giving people the impression that anyone can do this thing they cheapened the game. I'm going to recommit myself to doing it the right way. I guess I have embraced the possibly foolhardy belief that eventually skill should triumph over luck in this game, and that thankfully skill is the only part of the game that can be intentionally acquired. But a little luck wouldn't hurt either.

Poker comes closer to Atlanta

While Atlanta waits with baited breath to find out if we'll be building the world's dumbest video lottery casino at what is now Underground, real casino poker has come much closer to the gambling hordes who live here.

For years, the only legal poker rooms available to Atlantans have been at least a six hour drive away in Florida, Mississippi, or Louisiana. While the closest casino to Atlanta is in Cherokee, NC approximately 2.5 hours away, North Carolina law forbade card games anywhere in the casino, so Cherokee only had slot machines, video poker, and electronic table games. The casino broke ground on a poker room in 2006, but its opening had been held up for years by unsuccessful efforts to change North Carolina's law to allow for poker in the casino.

In the meantime, technology caught up to the casino and made a change in the law unnecessary. PokerTek has been manufacturing electronic poker tables, which bridge the gap between live play and online by giving each seat an electronically dealt hand and the ability to bet on an individual computer screen. Reviews I have seen from professional players say that the tables are fairly easy to use, and have the added incentive of bringing more novices to the table because they can figure out the interface more quickly than if they had to know all the rules and customs of actual live play. Novices = ripe for the taking!

Harrah's Cherokee has now installed five such poker tables in their poker room, bringing live casino poker for the first time to within 3 hours of Atlanta. The poker room just opened last month, and is presently offering cash games with the hopes of adding tournaments in the near future. One big downside so far, though, is that Harrah's Cherokee does not serve alcohol. So far, the reviews at Two Plus Two are fairly positive.

This means that for the first time, if you can get over the discomfort of an electronic dealerless table and playing beer-free, a day trip to play legal casino poker is finally possible for us Atlantans who need a fix. I think I will try it out next weekend when I'm at my parents' house just an hour's drive from Cherokee. I will let you know my impressions then. In the meantime, if you've tried Cherokee's poker room in the last month, give us your thoughts in the comments.

The world's dullest casino

Griftdrift writes about Atlanta's annoying tendency to do things half-ass and completely miss the target, and the frightening possibility that we might be about to do this again with a "casino" in downtown that will have nothing but video lottery terminals. Even as someone who actually plays slot machines in a casino, this sounds like the single most boring and unappealing casino in the whole entire world. So far commenters of every political stripe have agreed it is a terrible idea....which has me good and frightened that it will actually come to fruition. When this lamefest fails, as it inevitably will, it will just embolden the opponents to real casinos in Atlanta and prevent us from ever getting the kind of glitzy moneymaking projects that have been a boon to other cities. That's why I'd prefer they built nothing at all, rather than wasting money and energy on this clunker.

Highlights from the Biloxi trip

In an effort to beat Hurricane Gustav to the gulf coast, we left Thursday afternoon headed to Biloxi, MS for the Gulf Coast Poker Championship. We made it to Saraland, AL, a suburb of Mobile with not much in it other than a Wal-mart and a few restaurants. Sadly, I was unable to aquire a Saraland T-shirt before we departed.

Friday morning we realized the need to gas up before hitting the road for the last hour's drive to Biloxi. Unfortunately, everyone else in the gulf coast realized about the same time that getting gas was a really good idea in advance of a hurricane. The pumps were all full of people not only filling their cars but filling extra gas cans and generators. A bad sign. But still, we made it to the Beau Rivage with about half an hour to spare before the tournament started.

We both felt a little off our game from being so rushed to get there, and it didn't help when the person I went with ended up seated randomly next to me at our first table! In these events, the computer is supposed to assign each player to a random seat, so it was very surprising that out of 469 players we ended up next to each other. It threw me off a little, and unfortunately I was largely card dead while at that table. When we got moved to our next table, I was a little under my starting stack size about 3 levels in. I picked up pocket aces about halfway through the next round while at my new table, and managed to get my chips all in with them only to lose to K-Q when the other guy picked up two pair. Normally I would have been frustrated as hell, but I was actually very zen about it all. At least I got my money in with the best starting hand in poker, and after that there was nothing I could do.

Friday night after we were both out of the tournament, we tried a famous Biloxi restaurant that I'd read about and really wanted to go to: Mary Mahoney's. Right on the strip of Beach Blvd, the restaurant is in an old New Orleans style building with a beautiful courtyard and various signs marking the high water point from Katrina...on the second floor. The food did not disappoint, as the gumbo was probably the best I've ever had. My entree was very strange, but I think that was just because I chose poorly. I tasted the crawfish etoufee and a stuffed red snapper, and both were fantastic.

We had a strange little bar downstairs from our hotel, and it proved entertaining. We were across from the Beau Rivage, and all of the tournament dealers were apparently staying at our same hotel. There was much discussion of whether play would resume on Saturday or if the casino would close so that everyone could evacuate. We talked about leaving the next day, but decided we would see if the tournament would take place and would stay and play one more day if it did.

Saturday the casino was a ghost town, but the tournament did occur. After some discussion, we decided to play. They ended up getting 300 players, and I made it about halfway through that. I had a table made up largely of very good players and a few assholes, but I just couldn't get anything going against them. I did find a slot machine that was very good to me, and EXTREMELY good to the person I traveled with...to the tune of about $500.

Overall, the Beau Rivage is a beautiful hotel and I would love to go play in the casino again when it's not hurricane season. Their slots leave something to be desired, but that's probably for the best so that I don't waste money. Biloxi itself is not the shithole I'd heard it was, and the beach that we saw on our drives down both ends of US 90 looked like a lovely place to spend an afternoon.

We considered leaving Saturday night but unfortunately had a bit to drink and didn't end up making it out of town. Instead, we awoke very early Sunday to try and get the hell out of dodge ahead of the storm. Unfortunately, everyone had the same idea. We pulled onto the bridge out of Biloxi and came to a dead stop, with people getting out of their cars and wandering around. For a minute or two, I became terrified that this was the evacuation traffic and that we would take hours just to get away from the coast. It turned out that the bridge was a drawbridge and it was up to allow all the shrimp boats to come in from the coast and hunker down for the storm. After a 30 minute parade of shrimp boats and watching the craziest amalgamation of redneckdom ever assembled walking around the bridge, we started finally moving again.

We figured that once we made it to Mobile, traffic would lessen and it would be a smooth drive back to Atlanta. Sadly, this was completely wrong. It took us nearly 2.5 hours to make it to Mobile, but even after that point we were only averaging about 20 miles an hour except for a few brief spurts of faster movement. In the first 4 hours on the road, we traveled less than 150 miles. About 20 miles outside Mobile, after having eaten no breakfast and seeing the gas tank nearly on empty, we decided we would stop at the next exit. Both restaurants there were closed, one because according to the sign on the door they were out of food. The gas stations were packed, but it wasn't clear if they had any gas. We got back on the highway and crawled the 24 miles to the next exit. We were told that this exit had both gas and food by some large emergency signs in the median. Apparently the wave of evacuees was overtaking every exit along I-65 and cleaning them out of food and gasoline.

We realized we would have this problem all the way up I-65 to Montgomery, and decided that we would prefer to risk it on backroads. We took the next exit and headed into a small town with a name like Greenview or Evergreen. We were able to gas up and get something to eat, and then we plotted our course around Montgomery. We traveled through beautiful back country, and saw both Troy and Luverne, the latter of which is home of the world's largest peanut boil. Some 3 hours after we exited the highway, we emerged onto I-85 to find that the traffic was still heavy but moving fast, and we drove the rest of the way back to Atlanta. The entire trip took 10.5 hours, to go 370 miles. It was utterly exhausting, and I understand why hurricane evacuees are so reluctant to leave and go through such an ordeal.

However, seeing the pictures of the hurricane damage to Biloxi makes me mighty happy we got the hell out, too.

Just call me Jim Cantore

Even though there's really no way of knowing where Gustav will be headed and when it will arrive, I'm feeling a little crazy. I'm going to Biloxi to play poker.

Depending on how nuts it gets, I may have interesting tales from the bullseye. See you next week.

Like a hurricane

I have dumb luck sometimes. I began thinking almost a month ago of going to Biloxi over Labor Day weekend in order to play poker. Everything was booked before it all sold out, vacation days were reserved at the office, money set aside, and it looked like everything was going to line up perfectly.

Including, apparently, a big ol' hurricane Gustav churning its way through the Carribean and headed straight for the gulf coast, if the computer forecast models are to be believed. Some of those models have Gustav hitting Category 5 strength once it gets into the warm waters of the Gulf.

What are the odds, right? I still want to go on the trip, presuming that usually the models are unreliable and change often, so the storm will ultimately end up hitting Texas or Florida. But if not, if that sucker heads straight for the Mississippi gulf coast like a Katrina part 2, I'm going to be mighty pissed.

Math is HARD

This post by a professional poker player in Vegas gives an excellent glimpse into all the factors that go into one hand of poker. Even if you've never played the game, this should give you an idea of just how difficult the game can be. Even people who have played professionally for 20 years would argue about whether to push or fold in this situation.

Apparently, later today we will find out what the player in question actually did and how it turned out. In the meantime, the comments also show how hotly disputed one hand can be.

Reading this stuff is getting me amped up for my next tournament and the exhilaration and frustration that will inevitably come with it.

UPDATE: Here's what actually happened.

Chick Poker, or why I have mixed feelings about the success of Tiffany Michelle (Updated)

(Update: Tiffany Michelle was just eliminated from the WSOP main event in 17th place. Everything below was written this morning before today's action began, and when Michelle was third in chips. Ah well, it was fun to dream while it lasted.)

There's a potential new earthquake underway in the poker world, if one young actress known as "Hot Chips" can hang on to make the final table of this year's World Series of Poker main event. Tiffany Michelle, unknown to most as both actress and poker player, is currently third in chips with 27 players remaining, and is now the great hope of female poker players everywhere. Only one woman has ever made the main event final table (Barbara Enright in 1995), and no woman has ever won the main event.

During my few forays so far into playing in World Series circuit events, I have been disheartened both by the lack of female players and the lack of respect shown by our male opponents. I could recount at least a half dozen incidents of being marginalized both by other players and dealers who referred to me as sweetheart, good looking, or some other trivial tag that was not assigned to male players. I have been hit on at the poker table by both dealers and other players. I have witnessed a poker room manager who refused to run a single table satellite for the ladies only tournament because he thought it was "stupid." I have heard even men who do not appear to be sexist pigs use unfortunate terminology to describe female players who they know nothing about beyond their gender.

Most importantly, I have both seen and been victim time and time again as male players simply refuse to respect the play of female players...calling raises with bad cards, not believing that a woman might actually be playing the best hand, becoming almost reflexively hyper-aggressive when a woman is in the pot in a bizzare form of basic animal behavior. Overall, I have felt like I have made a few mistakes during my tournament play, but I have taken a lot more bad beats from players who I really suspect would not have made the same decisions to call my raises or stay in hands against me had they been facing a male player. The notion that female players are either stupid or can be easily pushed around is pervasive amongst male players, and the lack of strong female players at these events does little to prove them wrong.

While I think an influx of female players into the world of poker would be a positive development and would hopefully lessen the extent to which we feel like novelties that are never taken seriously, I don't know that an influx of the "hot chick poker player" types will be a positive development overall. For better or worse, it is easier for a man to assume an attractive woman is dumb, particularly if she is young and dressed to maximize her assets. Most likely, newcomers in the mold of Tiffany Michelle will only continue to be treated like pieces of meat who are ogled and harassed and not taken seriously. Many such women will quickly lose interest in the game after a few instances of experiencing that behavior. And the more that the new women players can be written off as "getting lucky" or only doing well because all the men want to sleep with them, the less it will help our overall image problem within the sport. Basically, we need some old, ugly women to start winning some tournaments!

Tiffany Michelle's buy-in for the main event was paid by two other individuals, and she now will only take home 1/3 of her actual winnings. She has already taken heat for her decision of which poker website to allow to sponsor her, and all it takes is reading this post about sponsorship rights over Tiffany's breasts to see that her success is not being taken as seriously as it would be were she a male player. She is a novelty, and will continue to be treated as one unless and until she either wins the main event or makes the final table AND makes it far in a few other events to prove she's not a flash in the pan. Even then, some will discount her poker skills simply because she's 24, female, and hot. The double standards are still there, and if she makes the final table I fear it may get worse for the lady poker players before it gets better. I might see a lot more women the next time I go play a WSOP circuit event, but that doesn't mean we will have earned overnight the respect that has been withheld so far, and there may be a backlash to the arrival of a wave of poker chicks.

I have played poker with some excellent female players during my three tournament experiences. I have not seen bad play out of any of them. I have seen them mistreated, disrespected, and underestimated. I know very few men who are able to overcome their natural biases and treat women as formidable foes on equal footing with their male counterparts. I would love to see a woman win the main event, and I hope Tiffany Michelle is the first to accomplish that feat. This is a year of firsts, so it seems only fitting.

It has come to this?

The World Series of Poker main event is underway, and professional player Phil Laak is apparently playing incognito with a wig and prosthetics to hide his true appearance. He is hoping that it will help his play if the others at his table do not know who he is.

Since the rise of the amateur qualifier to this event, it is rare if more than one well known and successful professional even makes the final table, and none have won the event in several years. Certainly, the saturation of poker on television and the familiarity it brings with a player's particular style have played a part in this change. But will playing incognito really help pros like Laak make it farther in the tournament? Or will it just be another spectacle?

Sadly, despite winning my way into a couple online qualifiers earlier this year, I didn't win my entry to the main event. Honestly I'm not even sure if I will try next year. I've about hit my limit with online play which is the easiest way to qualify, and barring a sudden windfall I don't think I could ever plunk down $10K just for one tournament. But still, because I find it fascinating I will definitely be watching when the final table is broadcast live in November (yes, this year they changed things so that there will be a four month delay between the start of the tournament and the final table).

Freaky

Casinos either have the best targeted marketing team ever, or they employ psychics. This is what I have decided after I arrived home today to find an offer for a $139 package deal for airfare and a room at the Beau Rivage waiting in my mailbox. See, lately I've been thinking of taking a trip to Biloxi for the weekend because I wanted to combine both a little poker and a little beach time. I twittered about it last week or earlier this week, but after looking at hotel rooms and seeing the exorbitant prices they wanted for July 4th weekend, I nixed the urge. Now, suddenly this arrives in the mail, when I've never been to the Beau Rivage or anywhere in Biloxi? Weird.

This is also compounded by the fact that after returning from New Orleans, I was interested in playing in an event in Tunica last month and remembered that somewhere I had floating around an old certificate for 2 nights comped at the Gold Strike. I went to find the certificate and realized it was expired, and then the very same day a new comp certificate showed up in the mail from the Gold Strike for the month of June. It was like they could predict the future!

How do you think they do it--they employ marketers to read gamblers' blogs and see when they have the jones, or they have a team of psychics designed to give them names of people thinking of taking a casino trip?

Now I have to decide if I want to try and take this trip in July or August. $139 for airfare and a room for 2 nights is a pretty sweet deal!

The only poker update I'll be giving

It was uneventful in all the good ways, and eventful in all the bad ways. Saturday, in a $500 tournament I almost didn't enter due to a bad premonition, I had my nightmare scenario: I went out of a tournament in about 20 minutes when my pocket Kings ran into pocket Aces. I've obsessed about that one enough for 10 lifetimes, so I won't be talking about it any more.

Sunday, I played a single table and then I played in a $200 tournament that started at 10pm. I know that my poker brain shuts down at about 1am, so I probably should have avoided this one. Ultimately it wasn't fatigue but cold cards and an inability to get anyone to respect my bets that put me out. However, my friend Richard was playing in only his second tournament and came in 11th, netting $324, so that was the one high point of the trip from a poker perspective.

Monday I played in one single table and came the closest I've been to winning. Ultimately, I was ganged up on by 2 little snot nosed kids from UGA who had traveled there together and all but openly conspired to put me out so that they could chop the win. But I played it as well as I could, and that was all I could ask for.

Yesterday, I played in a $300 event. This was the best poker I have ever played in one of these things, and for the first time I actually felt like I was getting respect at the table other than in a Ladies' Tournament. There were several excellent players at my table and I had built my stack up nicely, until a hand that I should have played but didn't because I was scared of having 4 people in the pot when I only had pocket 7's. In retrospect, I think I should have reraised to isolate the smaller stack who had pushed in front of me, and hopefully forced out the other 2 players. I would have doubled up, and would not have been in a position to have to fold when my big bet with 99 was reraised all in, or pushing with a short stack when my JJ was beaten by QQ. Drastically crippled, in my final hand I had 6-7 suited versus not one but two sets of pocket aces.

Despite not winning anything, the last tournament was significant for me. I can hold my head high on that one because with the one exception of one hand I was too cautious, I played everything else perfectly and I made it at least to halfway in a tournament of nearly 400 players. Even if I didn't make money, I finally got to feel like I knew what I was doing.

Other than the poker, the trip was the mixture of fun, dirt, beauty, sleaze and sadness that is New Orleans these days. There are far too many high points to mention, but a list that includes riding the streetcar on Monday for 3 hours, Antoine's for brunch, a lovely blues club on Frenchmen Street called DBA, and good times with good friends would be a good start.

On the downside, my hotel room had bedbugs (before I got moved to another room) and so I shall now commence to being paranoid that I am going to accidentally bring them into my house through my luggage. Which is still in my car. For this very reason.

Gone Fishin'

I'm headed to New Orleans to play in my third WSOP circuit event, or rather the numbered daily tournaments that lead up to the WSOP circuit event. I will be back in town on Wednesday but may not be back on the blog until Thursday. I haven't decided if I will recap my progress here or not...sort of depends on how I do.

When I return I will be in mourning for my youth as I turn 33 next week, so tread lightly around my fragile psyche. All I want for my birthday is a Hillary Clinton drop out!

Another Sunday, another WSOP qualifier

I won another seat in FullTilt's $535 Sunday WSOP qualifier tournament. As I did last week, I'll twitter it live...check the sidebar for the latest. After doing fairly well last week, I have a bad feeling about my prospects this week. I probably should have cashed out the $500.

Update: My premonition was accurate. Second or third hand, I got pocket aces. This is always scary because I normally try to avoid big pots early on until I get my legs under me, and I had a bad feeling about this one. I made the standard 3 times the big blind bet, and was re-raised (by someone I later figured out was a wild player.) I called, and the flop was 3 spades. I had the ace of spades, so I felt like I was in decent shape and bet out again. He called. The turn was not a spade. I bet out again and was called. The river was also not a spade. At this point I was pretty sure he'd flushed, and because he'd re-raised me initially I was very worried it was a high enough flush that I couldn't bet him off of it. Thankfully we both checked it down--and it turned out he had flopped the flush with 6-7 of spades. That cost me $1100 out of my starting stack. I never could get anything going after that because every time I raised I was folded to and would only take the blinds. I ended up somewhere in the 150s out of 240. I probably could have lasted longer but I got annoyed with all the idiots at my table who bet stupid amounts like 299 (there were at least 3 of them) and just decided to roll the dice. Oh well.

And yes, I recognize that my error was not coming over the top pre-flop with the aces. Why this idiot was betting 6-7 suited so hard I do not know, but it worked out for him.

Let's try this again

It's spring, and in addition to being the time when plants start blooming again and baseball returns to our ballparks, it's also when the online qualifying for the World Series of Poker main event begins anew. Last year you may recall I made it to 5 or 6 qualifiers but never really survived beyond the halfway mark and never legitimately threatened to win a seat. This year, I'm giving it another shot. Today I won a seat in a $500 qualifier that starts in a little under an hour. I'll probably try to live Twitter it, so check the sidebar for updates. I know I'm a better player now than I was last year at this point, but I still am not expecting much. At least I know it will be good practice for the next poker tournament in New Orleans in May.

My goal this year is to win a seat in the main event or a bracelet event, though admittedly that's a pipe dream.

Update: I played well, but ultimately went out on a bad break when I had JJ against A-10 and the other guy rivered his Ace. I was 82nd out of 225, which is better than I've finished before. I felt like I could have gone deep if I could just have gotten one lucky break...if those Jacks had held up, for example. But I was still very encouraged by how much better I played as compared to last year's qualifiers. And I'm already racking up satellite tokens to try again!