Good Spot

My dog picked a particularly comedic spot to drop his load today.

Gonna Fly Now!

I just got done watching Rocky so I'm all pumped up before bed. What a great movie.

I'm talking to my buddy Ray 'Exitonly' Coburn who was explaining how he played everything in sight today and had 18-19 tables going at a time. After I conveyed my sense of awe at this ability, he told me about how he played in the same room with Shaun Deeb today. If there's anyone in the poker world who doesn't know who Shaun Deeb is, and there probably isn't, he is a sensational young online tournament player who has probably (certainly?) played more multi-table tournaments than anyone ever despite only being ~23. Ray said that Shaun had as many as 40 tables going today at his peak!

I can barely hold a candle to the spotlight that is these guys. Still, a meager Sunday where my peak amount of simultaneous tables was just five yielded a little money. I final tabled the Bodog $100k, now a $150+$12 buy-in with 5,000 starting chips, for I believe the fifth time. I had to settle for 5th for $5,500 after pocket Fours lost a race to Ace-King when a King fell on the river. That was an unfortunate way to watch a day in which I believed I might finally win that tournament end, but it's better than a swift kick in the ass.

Beyond that, I don't have much to say. Life always seems a little blase after the WSOP, so it's hard to convey any sense of excitement about anything. I've been burying myself in the game of golf the past few weeks after finally ordering some clubs made to be swung by someone a little on the tall side. I'm no good, but I suppose I appreciate having a new challenge to engage myself with during a time of boredom.

If life is so much more thrilling in Vegas, why don't I move there? Good question!

Friends Bubbling WSOP FTs and Interesting Biz Models

This entry also appears on my blog at PokerTips.org.

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I haven't made an entry since getting back to Houston because I haven't had much to say. I played online last Sunday and, save for a couple mini-cashes, washed out of everything. That coupled with the Magic failing to win the NBA Finals all but cemented the fact that I won't be returning to Vegas until the Main Event.

I've been following the WSOP action pretty closely since returning home. A couple friends have enjoyed some deep runs that ended in final table bubbles. Leif Force finished 10th in the $2,500 pot-limit Omaha event that had 430 players. He professes to be a very good Omaha player and his live results seem to back that up. I'm hoping he'll let me buy a little of his action in the $10k coming up!

Sebastien Sabic just busted out of the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. event that drew a field of 770 players in 11th place. I know he had to be disappointed with coming so short of the final table, but he has a lot to be proud of with that result. It's not easy having to make decisions in five different games while navigating through a field of donkeys.

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Today, I raided Costco for about $300 worth of bulk merchandise. They have a really interesting business model. Basically, you have to be a member in order to shop there. How do you become a member? By filling out a registration form and paying an annual due of $50. This is a smart business model in a few ways.

First, it caters to people's vanity. Even though anyone with a Ulysses Grant in their pocket can be a member, there's still some magic vanity overlay that a lot of people find in being able to say they're a member of something. Second, it prices people in to feeling like they have to shop there a lot. If you don't know what Costco is, it's basically WalMart on crack. Everything is packaged in bulk and sold at a nice discount. For example, I got a 52 pound bag of dog food today for the cost of about a 24 pound bag from a "regular" store. I got a three-pack of mouthwash for just 150% of the cost that I usually pay for a single bottle. The whole store basically works like this. Items packaged in bulk and sold at a cheap price.

What makes the $50 membership smart is that it probably wouldn't be worth it if you only shopped there once or twice a year. However, it's definitely worth it if you go there once a month (or more). So by getting people to commit to a $50 membership in order to have access to the discounted bulk merchandise, they feel obligated to recoup that upfront expense by shopping there as much as possible. Pretty smart.

Another good business model I saw recently was at Lucky Brand Jeans. I visited them while in Vegas and was informed you get a $25 gift card for every $100 you spend. At first, I assumed this basically equated to $25 off my purchase for every $100 I spend. It was only when I got to the counter with a little over $200 worth of clothes that I learned the $25 gift cards would not become active until a couple of weeks after my purchase. Touche, Lucky Brand.

I visited a Houston-based Lucky Brand today so I could redeem my two $25 gift cards. Of course, I made it to the register with about $70 in merchandise meaning they got another $20 out of me. I thought this was a very smart promotion on their part. In addition to the extra money they got from me, there was some intangible value of getting me to come to their store on a second occasion. This builds familiarity with their product line and a sense of loyalty. They'll probably make even more money off of me in the future just from having priced me in to visiting them more than once and thinking about them on a semi-regular basis as their gift cards sat on my desk serving as a reminder to redeem their value.

The thing that each of these business models have in common is that they "price in" the consumer to making repeat visits. In other words, they make shopping there on multiple occasions a sensible thing to do. Any promotional model that can do this is smart regardless of the current economic state, but it's especially smart during a severe recession when people are looking out for "sensible" shopping options more than they otherwise might.

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Between now and the Main Event, I have a friends' wedding to attend and a family function in Illinois to attend. The family function, my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, actually came at a terrible time. They're having an open house the Wednesday before the Main Event and then the whole family is going to the Ozarks for a weekend on the lake. I told my family that if the lake plans were on literally any other weekend of the year, I'd be there, but I simply can't skip the Main Event just to lay around on a pontoon for three days no matter the occasion. To their credit, most in my family seem to understand this and are appreciative I'm coming up for the open house at the very least.

One Way Ticket to Vegas

I'm heading to Vegas for the World Series of Poker in twelve hours. It still seems surreal to me that it's already WSOP time again. It feels like not more than a month or two ago I was sitting on a sidewalk outside the Rio taking a moment to honor the inevitable emotions one will feel from going deep in the Main Event and having dreams dashed by a three-outter for an average-and-a-half sized stack. But although it feels like just yesterday, it's been a pretty long year for me. I'm not quite as wealthy after losing a small fortune betting on the Presidential election, but I do feel like I've grown up a lot as a person. I'm much more at peace with my thoughts and life, a peace that I hope to maintain through what can be a very emotionally rattling stretch of six weeks.

I've spent most of tonight making sure my iPhone is loaded with music I can use to 'stay in the zone' (a corny, over-used phrase, but one that seems appropriate right now) for a summer of tournaments. The playlist will mostly alternate between hip-hop and trance. This weekend is the $1k 'Stimulus' event. Beyond that, I'm really not sure what I'll play, but the $1,500 6-Max event on Tuesday looks appealing at the moment.

One aspect of this trip I am excited about is the unknown. I have no return flight. I have no hotel accommodation beyond Monday. And I only have enough money for what I would describe as a slightly larger than meager amount of participation in tournaments. Within a week, I could be completely broke and back home or living in a high-rise condo following through on an outside chance to win WSOP Player of the Year thanks to a fantastic start... or anywhere in between.

For the fourth year in a row, I'll be documenting the ups and downs, but hopefully mostly ups, on my WSOP blog at PokerTips.org.

Thanks for reading and may we both have a good summer!

Memorial Day Update

I've been in Indianapolis this weekend visiting friends and family before heading to Vegas next weekend for the WSOP. I skipped online poker yesterday to attend the Indianapolis 500 with a friend and his girlfriend and father. It's a pretty fun event to attend if you ever get the chance. It reminds me some of the WSOP. For those drivers, so much of their lives depend on the outcome of that race, and yet, there's quite a great deal of parity in determining the winner. No matter how good of a driver they are, it definitely takes some good fortune to be standing in the winner's circle at the end. You have to avoid being the victim of an accident despite not making any error of your own (bad beat) and also have to catch the right breaks with the timing of caution flags and integrity of your vehicle (run hot, table draw).

Despite growing up in Indiana, this was only the second time I have attended the 500. You'd definitely be hard pressed to find an event that attracts such a huge and yet nearly non-diverse population. I think something like 300,000 people attend the race annually, and it seemed like probably 299,500 of them were white. The irony is, many of the drivers are foreign. I'd say maybe only like 10 of the 33 drivers are American. There are quite a few Brazilian drivers including Helio Castroneves, the very likable guy who yesterday won his third Indy 500. I did not observe his triumph without some disappointment. To pique my interest in the race, I placed bets on a few drivers who seemed to be under appreciated by the betting market. One such driver was Dan Wheldon who finished second.

I leave Friday for Las Vegas. The $1,000 buy-in 'Stimulus Special' is this weekend. I'm pretty pumped for that event and for the series in general. It'd be really nice to snap off a sizable score right from the get-go and therein be positioned for a more extensive degree of participation for the summer. And that's my 'LDO' statement of the day.

I have an Uncle joining me in Vegas this weekend for his first live tournament. He started playing online last year after hearing about my bits of success and has built up a bankroll somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 despite never having made a deposit. Sometimes I have pointless, ego-driven thoughts like, "I wonder if I'm the best poker tournament player in Houston?" His results make me wonder if I'm even the best player in my family!

Most Ballin' NBA Jersey

My buddy Paul and I had a discussion last night regarding what the most ballin' or cool or gangster (or whatever other adjective you care to use) current NBA player's jersey is to wear. We agreed on a few criteria that should be weighed in reaching this conclusion:

Non-Mainstream

You have to immediately rule out wearing jerseys of super-mainstream guys like Kobe or Lebron. As pimp as those guys might be, if you wear a Kobe jersey, you're not a baller, you're just another donk in a Kobe jersey. In order to wear the most ballin' NBA jersey, you have to go with a player that your Mom has definitely never heard of.

At the same time, you don't want to wear the jersey of someone who is too obscure. People who maintain a casual following of the NBA should have heard of your player before. No one has heard of Damien Wilkins and there's nothing ballin' about wearing his jersey. People will probably just think its one of those lame custom jerseys where people get their own last name printed on it.

Not Too Fresh

One suggestion Paul had for most ballin' NBA jersey was Houston Rockets point guard Aaron Brooks. I objected to this however on the grounds that he's too fresh. A month ago, no one knew who Aaron Brooks was. Fast forward through two playoff series of fantastic play and now he's a pimp. However, I feel like the problem with wearing an Aaron Brooks jersey is that he's too fresh. If you saw a guy wearing an Aaron Brooks jersey, you'd almost want to inquire how he had enough time to cut the tags off. There's just a certain 'trying too hard' element to wearing a jersey of Aaron Brooks at the present moment.

The Team They Play For

One consideration you have to make beyond just the player himself is the team he plays for. In a vacuum, I think Kevin Durant is a very interesting choice for most ballin' NBA jersey, but the problem is, he plays for the unnervingly un-baller Oklahoma City Thunder. The fact that they're in Oklahoma City is bad enough, but on top of that, their jerseys are teal colored. Ouch! On the same grounds, I would rule out Pacers stud Danny Granger who is an otherwise fantastic candidate for this honor. There's nothing baller about Indiana.

On the flip side of the same coin, you don't want to wear a jersey of a guy who is on a team known for having tons of donk fanboys. Sorry Lamar Odom.

Not Too Current

At this very moment, I think you have to rule out wearing the jersey of any player who is still in contention for the NBA title. Wearing a Nuggets, Lakers (though you can never wear a Lakers jersey), Cavs, or Magic jersey is just going to send the message that you're trying to be 'in the moment'. Part of what makes a jersey ballin' is a certain timeless element to it. If you aren't sure what the answer to the question "will this jersey still be ballin' in two months?" is, then you shouldn't wear it.

Upside

Lastly, there should be a lot of upside to the player whose jersey you are wearing. You don't really want to go for a proven veteran. It's too much of a risk-averse, lame decision. The player whose jersey you wear should have a good chance of being much, much more well-known 3-5 years from now than he is currently. The idea is that once he finally reaches Kobesque status, people can look back on your clothing choices from years ago and be like, "damn... he saw this coming!"

With all of that criteria in mind, Paul and I decided that the most ballin' NBA player's jersey you can currently wear is: Andre Iguodala (white home jersey, not black road jersey).



A couple of other guys we considered in addition to Iguodala were Brandon Roy, Kevin Martin, and Devin Harris. Any other suggestions?

What Lodden Thinks

I spent some time with my buddy Dave in Vegas tonight. We played this tournament at Treasure Island called 'Head Hunters'. It's a $125 buy-in: $50 goes to the prize pool, $50 is put on your head as a bounty, and $25 to the house. With only 17 players tonight, it was a pretty friendly and casual game. Since so much of the buy-in consists of a bounty, it basically prices people in to taking thin gambles in hopes of knocking players out of the tournament.

One of Dave's friends in the tournament, a guy known to as 'O.D.', got some 'What Lodden Thinks' action going.

I am not the best source of information on how this game acquired its name. But the gist of it is that some poker players (I want to say Phil Laak was one of the originators) decided to gamble amongst each other on what poker player Johnny Lodden (who was at their table at the time) thinks the answer to a bunch of random questions are. So the game became known as 'What Lodden Thinks' and has retained that title to this day.

Here is an example of how it works:

I suggested to O.D. that we bet on the number of miles per hour that Dave thinks an elephant is capable of running. So Dave thinks of that number in his head and informs us when he has reached a decision. Then O.D. and I set the market in an auction fashion. One person states a number, and the other person can either say "sold" (thus buying the "under") or counter with a higher number.

So with the elephant example, I started the auction at 4 (miles per hour). O.D. countered with something like 10. I countered with 15. He countered with 25 and I said "sold", thereby making it so that if Dave's number is 24 or less, I win, and if it's 26 or more, O.D. wins.

I think in this particular example, Dave's guess was something like 24. Whatever, it doesn't matter. The point was just to explain how the game was played.

Obviously when you get around a bunch of degenerate gamblers, you can start having a lot of fun with this game. O.D. and I kept it friendly and went $5 per prop on a bunch of random stuff. We probably came up with 25 random propositions over the course of the night. Here are some of the memorable ones:

"How much money does [Bystander A] think [Bystander B] has spent in his lifetime on watches?"

"How many trees does Dave think are on Earth?"

"How many miles does Dave think Michael Phelps has swam in his life?"

"On a scale of 0-100, how will our waiter rate Barack Obama's job performance as President?"

"One in how many people will Dave think get struck by lightning in their lifetime?"

"What is the highest number that Dave thinks a human has ever counted to out loud without ever stopping for more than one minute?"

"How many people does Dave think live in Sarasota, Florida?"

"How many WSOP bracelets does Dave think Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, and Allen Cunningham will have in their lifetimes combined?"

What makes this game so fun is that the potential is limitless. You can bet $1,000 on how many M&M's your cocktail waitress thinks are in a standard sized package. An interesting part is that it never matters what the real answer is, it only matters what someone thinks the real answer is. This forces you to factor in variables like the intelligence of the person who is thinking of the number. Because you might know full-well that there are probably ~50 M&M's in a package, but if your cocktail waitress partied a little too hard in her early 20s, she might think there are 600.

With $5 on the line, we asked our waiter at the Grand Lux in Venetian what the most number of T-Rex's he thinks have been alive simultaneously on this planet. I think we had set the number somewhere around 14,000. The waiter's response was 5, as in "five". His logic was that "there could never be that many of them because they would all just eat each other." Needless to say, this game can teach you quite a bit about someone's intelligence and/or reasoning abilities.

The funniest one of the night was when O.D. and I bet on how much money a young guy at our table thinks Britney Spears would want in order to sleep with O.D. with a condition being that she knows no one will ever find out she slept with him, let alone accepted money to do so.

After O.D. and I ran the auction from $20,000 all the way up to $800,000 before one of us bought it, the young guy at the table goes, "man you guys are way off. My guess is $45, the cost of four shots of Patron."