My Underwear as it Relates to the Inevitable Destruction of the Poker Industry

As if I didn’t have enough to irrationally fear: the bird flu, religio-fascism of various brands, Vice-Presidential buck shot. It’s a scary world out there. And apparently to add to all this I now have to worry that my sole source of income will be completely eradicated. Lately it seems that every other month there’s a new rash of mainstream headlines assuring me that the poker industry is going the way of $0.99 gas and Lawn Jarts.

This doesn’t make me all that happy. Among the many things that the poker industry has done for me over the years there are two that are paramount. It has allowed me to live in Manhattan without government assistance, and it has made me even more unemployable than I might otherwise have been. Now, I’m not saying I haven’t learned anything from poker. I’m just saying that I don’t know how the lessons I’ve learned would look translated into black and white words on a resume. I mean, I’m sorry, but I don’t know how many HR people are going to be so blown away by my ability to not overplay Ace-Queen under the gun.

So naturally all these Casandraesque headlines were a little disturbing. Luckily though I took the time to read one of the actual articles the other day and I feel a little better. Apparently, these "Dismal Outlook for Poker Industry" articles were talking not about poker players but rather the people who rushed in to exploit poker players. It turns out that, surprisingly enough, there is not quite the market for Hold ‘Em branded car seats that some people thought there would be.

As it is with many issues, I think my underwear might help to elucidate things. A while back Christi, as she is wont to do, bought me some underwear. In particular "Texas Hold ‘Em" boxers. I’ll try to keep this rant to a minimum because I’ve posted similar sentiments before, but it’s just that I still find this mainstreaming of poker fascinating.

I remember the first time I found Doyle’s original Super System in a Barnes and Noble. Since you used to have to call up the Gambler’s Book Shop in Vegas to find it I was pretty surprised. And the first time I saw an entire 11 book Poker display prominently placed near the checkout line I was blown away. Then it just started to get strange.

I walked into a local grocery store a Christmas or two ago. Standing among the various tomatoes and Twinkies there was a large display with exactly two items. These two items had nothing to do with groceries at all. If you’ve ever been to a local Manhattan grocery then you know how tiny and cramped they tend to be and what a premium there is on space. Yet the owner of the store had figured that if there were any non-food items in the world that he might be able to hawk it would be these two: the new Harry Potter novel and of course a set of Texas Hold ‘em poker chips.

Unfortunately, due to technical issues I can’t post the picture I took of that display. Also currently undisplayable is the picture of the poker cologne set I took at J.C. Penny. I guess nothing says sexy odors quite like poker players do. But of course nothing says inappropriate over-branding quite like the one photo that I can display, the Hold ‘em gum ball machine. Not since the creation of the candy cigarette has there been as clear a statement on responsible marketing.

What does this have to do with my poker branded underthings? Well, in this case it’s not so much how responsible it is as just how sloppy. Whoever designed these boxers either has a wonderfully dry sense of humor or is an idiot. If you look closely at my undershorts you’ll notice that it’s populated entirely with power hands like the King Fiver, and the Jack Seven off. Not quite the iconic celebrity hands, the Ace-Ace or even the Jack-Ten suited, that one tends to link with Hold ‘em.

Now, as it happens I would love to live in a world were I could believe that the designer of this garment wanted to show the actual type of poker hands that you will most often see and by extension was making a deft statement about the less compelling negative space that lies between the rarer moments of excitement that make up our lives, a reflection on the sheer volume and therefore the existential importance of the mundane. However, this may be a bad read.

Possibly more likely, I would imagine a designer who has no concept of poker at all and asks his boss to explain what the eff Texas hold-them is. "I don’t know, it’s some game where you get two cards. And I think the two cards sometimes burst into flames and/or sprout wings. Just run with it."

And I like to hope that it is this type of gratuitous over-branding that is getting people into trouble. Poker as a fad more than poker as an industry, the idea that if I include the word "poker" on my cologne I can sell more. Reaching a saturation point in mainstream penetration is not actually the same as a complete industry wide collapse.

There was a period in the late 90's when CNBC became like ESPN, with throngs of unfinancial-type people following and betting on their favorite stocks like they were sports teams. At the time this may not have done much for the stability of the stock market. But while there were a few post millennial corrections there actually is still a stock market and some of the smart people still do make money.

For better or for worse I think we are stuck with poker for a while. I mean people still haven’t gotten bored with golf and I don’t believe that that’s a bad analogy to draw.

Now don’t get me wrong I am still quite confident that a harsh rain’s a-gonna fall. The poker correction is coming. I’m already hearing anecdotal stories of parents getting calls from Vegas requesting a plane ticket home. Hindsight might show dropping out of college and moving into the Orleans as possibly not the single most farsighted career plan ever.

I don’t think that anyone in the know believes the current environment is completely sustainable. Obviously the majority of truly bad players have to either become better or become broke. But the total apocalypse may still be a while off. And one way or another I still can’t wait to see what the Poker Lifestyles Expo will bring to us this year.

Timely Valentines Day Post

So I run into Dollie, of Jane and Dollie fame, and she tells me that she has been reading my blog. My particular type of narcism being driven by insecurity, I ask her what she thought of it.

Dollie- "Oh, I loved it!"
Me- "Oh yeah."
Dollie- "Yep. No it was good. I mean, you know, I liked it. I mean I didn’t read the whole thing."
Me- "No?"
Dollie- "No. It was just kind of like, you know, it was kind of like a lot of... long."
Me- "Oh"
Dollie- "Yeah, I mean I guess it makes sense. You’re always, you know with the stories, and they kind of...you know they kind of... Oh yeah, I liked it. It was just... you know, a lot."

All right, all right. In an attempt to keep the Blah, Blah, Jibber-Jabber down a little I’ve decided to run this year’s Valentines’ Photos with only minimal commentary. Instead of going to a swanky restaurant this year, we went to a fancy pants hotel for Valentines Day. A special thanks to Jor for getting us a decent rate at the Standard in downtown Los Angeles. I told Nick Dileo we were staying at the Standard and he told me how much he despised it. It’s one of the new breed of "hip" hotels and I can imagine it being a love-it-or-hate-it kind of place. I don’t remember whether Nicky hated it because it was too pretentious or because it was too silly. But the more I think about it, that’s probably exactly why Christi and I liked it. Somehow it was able to be both pretentious and silly at the same time, which isn’t so easy. Anyway, with far less commentary than the Japanese photos, here are a couple shots from Valentines day at the Standard.

Scenic rooftop pool:

The cabanas were these funky molded red plastic things that for some reason all had actual waterbeds in them:
From here we could wave at Jor across the street in his oversized window office:

Luckily since this is minimal commentary I will not have to explain why there might be a giant black foam foot in our bathroom:

And of course, in case there was any confusion, this is the paper you use when you take a poo:

Bada Butt

A couple months back I’m having dinner with Gene, a friend of the family, and obviously I get peppered with some poker questions. Gene is not really a player but he does ask an astute question. With these new tournament fields being as large as they are, he says, you probably are not going to sit down with many people you know at all. So if that’s the case then how can you cater your game to someone’s style of play if you know absolutely nothing about them or how they play?

I allowed that he had a point. It is very different than even a couple years ago when the band of nomads traveling from tournament to tournament wasn’t quite so large. I remember TJ writing about what an advantage he had because he could remember every player he’s ever played with and how they played. Still though, I explained to Gene, you never know absolutely nothing about the people you see. The second someone sits down at your table they are generally drenched with information of some sort or another. What they’re wearing, who they’re talking to, how they hold themself, it all helps to give some sense of how they might play.

For instance, if you are sitting down to the first day of the 2006 World Series of Poker and the guy next to you is wearing a souvenir 2006 World Series of Poker shirt, 2006 WSOP jacket, 2006 WSOP baseball cap and has a plastic WSOP card protector, there’s a decent possibility that he may not be a stone cold 20 year veteran of the series. (Of course if you sit down to a similarly attired player 6 or more weeks into the series it may have less to do with the fact that he’s a star struck 1st year player and more to do with the possibility that this guy just hasn’t left the casino in 40 days and is too lazy to do laundry.) Likewise, if you sit down and the guy to your left spends 5 minutes dissecting a hand he played last night in a home game with Lee Watkinson this is also going to give you some insight about what level of game he plays. Obviously these are not things that will tell you the full story of how someone plays, but they do give you a starting point to think of their game.

This conversation that I had a few months ago, on the information that players wear, was at the forefront of my mind last night. You see I missed something about an opponent at my table that may have been more informative than any tell I’ve ever run across before, and more obvious than any tell I’ll ever run across again. Having played the poker circuit off and on for a couple years I pride myself on being able to size up an opponent fairly quickly. The more subtle cues may occasionally elude me but I have no trouble catching the obvious stuff. Or so I thought.

So I’m playing a single table satellite last night and across the table from me is a young woman, cute, short hair, spaghetti string top revealing a somewhat tattooed left shoulder. I play with her for about 35 minutes or so until she calls all-in on the river with no pair/jack high and, not surprisingly, gets knocked out. Well, at this point she gets up from the table and being the Clouseauesque master of observation that I am I just then notice the one thing about her that probably would have told me everything I might ever need to know about her game. As she walks away from the table and towards the bathroom, what I so keenly observe is that the woman just happens to not be wearing pants. Yep, no jopke, staring right back at me, nothing but bare ass. When I see this, the all in call with jack high starts to make a little more sense.

I had a friend who once used the phrase "it was like playing in a dealer’s game" i.e. that it was a game where all the players were professional poker dealers, i.e. that it was supposed to be a soft game. See, the general belief is that if a poker dealer were a good enough player then they wouldn’t have to deal to make a living. Therefore poker dealers are lousy players. Beyond just being condescending this is a characterization that just isn’t true. Michael "The Grinder" Mizrazi, Mike Matasow, Robert Hanley, Scotty Nguyen, a number of the best players in the world were all once dealers. In fact to make such a broad generalization about any diverse group of players is obviously dangerous. With all that in mind though I will still give you one piece of infallible advice. If anyone ever offers you the opportunity to play in a high stakes strippers’ game then by all means run, don’t walk, to the nearest pawn shop and hock whatever you have to to buy in, strippers not generally being know for their keen understanding of implied pot odds.

Now, why am I playing poker with a stripper? Well, that has to do with something called (the oddly apostrophied) Bar Poker Pro’s.

Having slogged from sterile hotel to hotel, grinding out this "easy living" for so long I sometimes forget that a lot of people actually like to play poker. They actually do it not for the rent but rather for some kind of fun. And that’s the idea behind http://www.barpokerpros.com/ a business that offers poker as entertainment. Instead of hiring a band or a DJ to get people into a bar or restaurant you hire a poker game. The Bar Poker people bring a table and a dealer and they advertise for a game. People who might not have frequented your establishment come by to play poker and while they’re there they of course might buy a few beers, order a burger, whatever. Playing is free. You get league points for how high you finish and at the end of the season there is a championship for the people with the highest point totals. Then the winner of the end of the season tournament gets a WSOP seat.

They run these little games throughout South Florida, in various bars and restaurants. Next week the game closest to my father is at a fancy steak house. This week however the closest game happened to be at a rustic little pub by the name of Bada Bing. Now I was not familiar with the Bada Bing chain before this and I’m not even sure if it is a chain. For all I know it may just be an unrelated group of bars that haven’t gotten around to suing each other for having the same name. I didn’t ask.

Anyway, I pull up to the Bada Bing with my father and the first thing that I notice about the decor is what looks to be a homeless man sleeping in front of the building. Upon closer inspection though I see that said man is not moving and the police tape cordoning him off would seem to imply that the gentleman is not sleeping so much as dead. Finally though under closer closer inspection I realize that said man is not only not alive but is actually not even a man. It’s actually just a mannequin dressed up to look like a dead guy.

See the Bada Bing is not only a nudie bar but a nudie theme bar, the theme being gangsters chic. You walk in and all the TVs are playing old gangster movies, the VIP room is called the Godfather Suite, etc, etc. Of course my favorite decorative touch was not gangster specific. It was in the bathroom where someone had taken the time to take a red cloth napkin and place it on top of the toilet. For some reason this just really impressed me. I mean I’m lazy. I know lazy when I see it. Sometimes though I find myself impressed by a sheer artistry of sloth and it sticks with me. It was obvious that someone cared enough to think "what might make this space more inviting?" They might have thought about maybe putting plants in there or repainting it or even just occasionally mopping it, but no. Out of all the things that could improve the aesthetics of a dank and dingy space someone said "yep, red napkin, that’s definitively the way to go. Problem solved," and walked away.

Of course I don’t imagine that environmental aesthetics are really what draw most people into strip clubs. It’s all about the ladies, which Bada Bing had plenty of. In fact when we arrived at around 8 o’clock there had to be more performers than patrons. And to make matters worse the six or so patrons that were there were poker players. As the evening went on the place filled up a little more but at first it was just six patrons and two off duty strippers sitting at a poker table.

This of course didn’t turn out to be too profitable for the working strippers since poker players can be a little single minded during a game. When you’re in a hand, once the flop comes out, everything outside of the game temporarily goes blank and ceases to exist. I’ve long believed that a monkey and a one armed midget could be having a knife fight and once that flop comes out not an eye would be on them. While I haven’t had the chance to test this particular hypothesis yet, I can give you one piece of empirically proven truth, cards do seem to trump boobs. Two feet in front of our table: nubile young womany parts; Two feet to the side of our table: another stage with another woman jiggling her junk. Yet not once did I see a player even look up from the game much less miss a hand due to the nudeness around them. Poker players are strange people.

And the really weird thing was that everyone seemed to be having fun, even without playing for cash. I mean no one was losing grotesque amounts of money and yet everyone was still smiling. Strange people indeed.

Meta-MiniPost 1.2

All right hopefully this will be my last meta-post for a little bit. However I think it’s important to mention that I’ve actually started to read a few of the blogs I spam and I think I may have found 3 that I am perfectly comfortable with giving the Mike May Seal of Blogpproval (by which I mean 3 more blogs that linked to me with only a moderate amount of groveling on my part.) The three lucky recipients of these kudos (of a verbal kind as opposed to the more desirably chocolate coated kind, sorry) are the too cute to be playing poker Jodi, the too wealthy to still be blogging Chris, and the very much way too cool to be linking me Jane. I hope the sudden tsunami of readers that will come from this high profile publicity doesn’t collapse their respective servers.

Mission Accomplished!! (Metapost 1.1)

Unfurl the banners. I’m proclaiming Operation Back Door Thunder (as outlined in the last post) to be a resounding success. The hard work of putting random comments on random other blogs has paid off generously, to the tune of one pity link from Ross on a Rush. The chemist/poker player market is not an easy one to penetrate but with this new link I now consider it conquered and will move on to other markets. Of course the fact that I was originally linked as http://http://mikemay.blogspot.com/ instead of the correct http://mikemay.blogspot.com/ makes the utility of this new link a little suspect but I will take my victories where I can. Break out the champagne, the battle is joined.