Shabbir's Diary

Subway breakfast sandwiches

Did you know that Subway sells breakfast sandwiches?  Did you ever notice there's never a line in a store in the morning to get one?  Do you want to know why?

Because they suck.

It's not bad enough that it's a pre-processed egg unit on a plain tortilla, but the franchise at 15th and K has employees with awful attitude making them.  My tortilla was still cold after the whole thing was heated up, and the egg and sausage was tasteless.

I love breakfast, so take it from me, stick to the Starbucks breakfast egg, cheese, and sausage sandwich.  It's miles better and the employees try harder.

Yeah Yeah Yeah, it's a love song.

"Wait, they don't love you like I love you"
    The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Maps" from the album "Fever to tell"

This song is so heartbreakingly simple that it's embarassing to tell you how obsessed I am with it.

Another parental milestone crossed.

At our doctor's urging, we just got around to forcing Moishe to sleep in his crib all night.  There was a modicum of crying, but not what you'd expect.  Our actions won't have him in therapy for years during teenagehood, nor will he have abandonment issues because he had to sleep alone.

I think the child-raising industry really makes this one more difficult than it really is with the competing theories about how to handle it ("cry it out" vs. "let them move at their own speed").  Our anticipation of the separation anxiety was much worse than the actual event.  In the end he cried just about as much as he normally does in a night (three times for a total of about 45-50 minutes).

Our night, on the other hand, was wonderful.  I haven't had the bed to just Sarah and I for over a year now.  Though we both slept restlessly, it was nice to get a whole night of sleep.

Full Tilt Poker's No Limit Cap games

Full Tilt Poker recently introduced CAP games.  These games are interesting and require a different sort of aggression style.  Let me set the scene: in a $.50/$1 no limit texas hold'em cap game, nobody may bet more than $30 into the pot.  Once that happens you are considered all in and you can't win or lose any more money.

These games function as a bridge to full No Limit games when you aren't comfortable with games that put your whole stack at risk.

The implications of this fundamentally change the way you bet.  As the pot grows, and people grow closer to the cap, they are more likely to call with any sort of hand.  For example if there are four people in the pot and everyone has put in $20, everyone has $10 left.  It's almost impossible to win that pot without a showdown, because if anyone bets, at least one person will call, which will create a cascade effect and then everyone calls.

That's problematic, and the last thing you want to do is being a hand with 2 or 3 other players with a hand that doesn't play well against draws.  Poker is about adjusting your game to varying conditions, and this is no exception.  No limit cap games means you have to consider pushing your opponents out on the flop or before hand, which requires slightly more expensive raises. 

For drawing hands, of course, you want the opposite.  In a weird way you want to bet your draws in very small amounts, because every time your opponents put money in the pot, they get closer to their cap and their pot odds (and yours improve).  Therefore, they are more likely to pay you off even when you have the best hand.  Think of it as a frog on a hotplate, you want to get your opponents to put in enough money so that calling the rest of the cap looks like an easy decision given the size of the pot. 

I don't think you want to play any looser in a NL CAP game than you would in a normal NL game.  In fact I think you want to play tighter.  Because you've limited your potential upside with big hands, you can't really make as big a score off any hand to make up for all the junk you've been playing.  So you can't afford to waste preflop calls with junk, and definately don't be calling any cold calls preflop without a really good freakin' hand or a stone cold read.

So, to summarize, your opponents will be:

1. playing more hands, because the potential loss is less,
2. paying you off more often, because the potential loss is less, and
3. staying in more hands.

You are going to:

1. play very tight since your upside is limited,
2. bet gently enough to keep players in the hand, but move them closer to the cap, and
3. bet players out of a hand early in order to keep too many from drawing on you since lots of people will cap-call-draw.

Finally, I think it's worth pointing out that these NL CAP games are going to be considered starter No Limit games by a lot of newbie players.  This means you are quite possibly going to be the best player at the table.  This should be enough to convince you to play them.

Good luck out there.

"Can't Get No" by Rick Veitch

I am slightly hesitant to make this comparison, but I think I just read the "Howl" of the 9/11 generation.  Generation is probably an incorrect word, as several generations have been affected by 9/11, but I think it's fair to say that the book I just finished, "Can't Get No", by Rick Veitch is by far the most insightful treatments of modern culture after 9/11 that I'm likely to ever come across.

When I first flipped through the book, it read like a comic and so I bought it without thinking.  When I got it home I realized that Rick Veitch had intertwined an epic poem about modern culture and the death and rebirth of our souls after 9/11 with a graphical tale of one man's journey through the same.  The graphic story and the poem are both linked and separate, and can be read one at a time as well as simultaneously.  I found it all too much to take in at once, and read it for the graphics the first time, and then returned to the story.

There's a lot here.  The roller coaster of emotions we've all felt during and after 9/11, a modern treatment of the spiritual void of consumer culture, the disconnectedness of modern techn-fetishism, and many other angst-ridden elements of our modern life are all treated beautifully.

This will most certainly be the book that defines my adult life for the decade without being so much 9/11 nostalgia.  I recommend you pick it up.

I owe Katie big time.

Katie and I hadn't hung out for a while, so we decided to try a new free NL Hold'em tourney circuit.  There are several of these in the Washington area now, all focused in bars.  On a good night they play two tournaments with 15 minute levels starting at 25-50 with 2,600 in chips.  So it's pretty deep stacked for the first hour.

Katie and I arrived last Saturday at the spot, and frankly it looked closed.  It was a closed restaurant with a side stairway suspiciously open.  We went upstairs and ran into: 1) a guy mopping the floor, though the place still smelled like spilled beer, 2) a 30-ish bartender who wasn't really awake or thrilled about serving us drinks, 3) a DJ, and 4) a couple of poker tables and some guys milling around.

#4 turned out to be an event producer that's got a partnership with the bar to occupy this space 5 or 6 nights a week.  The awful DJ was his problem as well.

We played a goofy no stakes game because the 10 of us around the table were such degenerate gamblers.  I would say that all but 2 of them (plus Katie and I) were really just instinctual players.  As a result their mood wildly affected how they played because they had no math to fall back on.  Katie and I were real wild cards since they all played together several nights a week and knew each others styles, but we were mysteries.  We made that worse by playing pretty tight and showing down almost nothing.

I got whittled away when I called raises that never hit (a bad habit of mine) until I saw a flop with Ace-diamonds-four-clubs.  Five of us saw the flop of Queen clubs-Three diamonds-Five diamonds.  The pot sat at 500 and someone bet out 100 and we all called.  The pot is now 1,000 and my stack is about 900. 

On the turn comes the four of diamonds.  I'm first to act and notice the whole table recoil and several players pick up their cards to fold.  I quickly go all-in with what should be a pretty ballsy bluff.  Quickly at first, and slowly at the last, each player folds their hand and I rake a sizable pot.

I continue amassing chips until I get into a hand with Katie where I'm holding Ace-Five.  She goes all in and I call her and hit my wheel runner-runner, putting her out.  This has become a bad habit, and I've put her out of several tournaments now, one on the bubble, and I'm sure she's keeping track.

We finally get heads up and I take the chip lead.  My opponent hasn't slept in 36 hours after driving straight back from AC after the midnight tourney at the Taj, and clearly hasn't played much heads up.  I come out of my shell and just start raising everything on the button until I have him outchipped 3 to 2.  I then proceed to bluff off all of my chips with crap hands and come in second, which wins me a 128MB MP3 player that I give to Sarah.

I played only half a skilled heads up game, and I hope to not repeat that poor performance next time.

Another week at the beach: Poker at the Tropicana

So I just got back from what was nearly a dream week.  Sarah rented a beachhouse in Brigantine, right next to Atlantic City, and we piled ourselves, Moishe, and the nanny into the mommy-wagon and headed out for a week.  Sarah had just returned from Burning Man, so she was still having re-entry problems, but I was raring to go.  A solid week of 7 card stud online had me excited to play the game live.

That's sort of like saying I had built so many roads playing SimCity I was excited to try ditch-digging myself for real.  Live stud had really none of the excitement of the online game, but more on that later.  After slogging through some positively evil traffic we arrived at the most perfectly chosen house whose only flaw is a lack of high speed Internet.  For that, Sarah had to drive to the Borgata to work all week.

What follows below are the lessons and results of my week in AC.  To save you skipping to the end, my net profit was exactly $1 for 25 hours of play time.  25 hours?  Didn't you say you were there for a week?  Yes, but I had to come back for 2 days mid-week for an important pitch, so it wasn't really a whole week.  In case your math skills are weak, I made four cents an hour playing poker.

I won't be quitting my day job, or if I do, I'll play different games.  But more on that later.

Lesson #1: Get yourself a horse racing sheet
I like to take notes during a game.  Sadly, taking notes freaks people out, so I was thrilled to see an idea from 2+2's forums that suggested you go get a horse racing schedule and take notes on it.  Holy crap, it really works!  Nobody noticed me taking notes, and somebody even asked me who I was going to bet on, and I said, "I haven't really got a read on anyone yet."   The truth!

Horse racing guys, who often make bad players with a lot of gamble in them, often try and strike up conversations about the upcoming races.  I just smile and say I really don't know what I'm doing.

Lesson #2: Improving my 7 card stud play
I played a lot of 7 card stud at the Tropicana.  Twelve hours worth to be exact.  Almost half my play time last week.  Here's what I learned:

1. You need to be at least 60 to play $1-5 spread limit 7 card stud.  If you're not yet retired, you will play worse as a result of being forced lectured to by people 20 years your senior.
2. 7 stud games without antes have very, very small pots.
3. Old people tip for shit.  Dealers who make $5 per hour must hate dealing low stakes stud tables.  When confronted with the challenge of what to tip on a $5 pot when nobody has any fifty cent pieces, the right answer is to tip NOTHING.  Especially if you're over 60.  (I always tipped a dollar while saying my catch phrase, "We all gotta eat.")  When the senior to my left said, "If I tip I won't be able to make money at this game, and how will I know if I'm playing well?" I replied, "You mean you can't analyze your hand after it's done and tell if you played well?"   Nobody was listening to the young whipper-snapper.
4. I bet hidden premium pairs way too much.  Chip Reese says you must pay to make players play against you when you're holding Aces through Jacks.  What he doesn't say is that you must make them pay every street if they don't improve.  Mistake corrected.
5. People reliably bet two pair or trips the same way on the river every time.  If they bet two pair on the river once, at low limits, they will always do it.  If they check it, they always check it.  It's like a big fucking neon sign on their forehead telling you what they have.  This allows you to not only make the wonderful river value bet, but occasionally the river value raise.  That's right, a value freakin' raise.  Unbelievable.

Result: 12 hours of play for -$89

Lesson #3: Low limit Hold'em continues to be a money maker for me
I appear to be a monster at $2/$4 and $4/$8 hold'em.  This is where I made all the money that I pissed away slanging out $5 bluff bets every street at 7 card stud.  I reliably know when to bet, when to raise to create the massive pot in case my hand hits, and how to read my opponents.  However I am still learning new poker techniques, and when my friend from Philly Eric came down to play poker, I wanted to play with him both for the fun and to help coach him if he asked for it.

When Eric arrived, I presented him with a copy of Small Stakes Hold'em that I had bought for myself, but that I thought he would put to better use.  Eric is making plenty of virtual money on the free tables, and after watching him play for a couple of hours I had an epiphany.  Although Eric is several years behind me in his poker development, I wouldn't dream of saying something so condescending like, "He has the making of a great poker player."  Hell, I'm not a great poker player, and to say that kind of thing about somebody else is obnoxious.  I will say this though, Eric is a million times better at this point in his poker career than I was at that stage in mine.  That's almost certainly because he's a freakin' MIT level genius.

When Eric showed up I decided I wanted to play my best game, so we parked ourselves at the Borgata and got to work.  The Drunken Master did not make an appearance.  We ended up at the same table next to each other and began our long session.  We promptly invented a new trick that really improved our play.  Eric counted orbits, while I kept track of every time we voluntarily put money in the pot by making little stacks of chips.

After a while this became a sort of competition, with both of us trying to play tighter than the other while still playing good poker.  Fans of Poker Tracker know that I'm talking about the VP$IP statistic, a measure of how often you voluntarily put money in the pot.  We were computing it manually, and tracking it was having the intended effect.  We were both playing tighter, even folding junk in the small blind because it was such a long shot to hit.

We both played really well, with me telling Eric his pre-flop play was perfect, and more than that, miles ahead of the other players at the table who played 3-5 hands out of every 10.  His post-flop play was where he was really having to work hard, and when I told him to slow down, give the dealer a "time" signal and count his outs, he began playing flawless poker. 

Honestly, he made it look that easy, all while taking some horrific beats (his full house got Katrina'd by quads).

I continued to use this live VP$IP trick through the rest of the trip and it really was an awesome way of assessing my play mid-session.  I highly recommend you steal it wholesale for your own use.

Result: 9 hours of play for $108 profit

Lesson #4: You can spot juicy games, just look!
I had one of those poker epiphanies one day when playing 7 card stud and deciding whether to play in the traditionally wild pink chip ($7.50/$15) game.  Stepping away from my rock garden 7 card stud game, I peeked at the pink chip game and saw a hand developing pre flop.  The blinds were in, an early player called, a middle player raised, and then three other late position players called the $15 bets cold.  Each of these players had at least $400 in front of them, and one had what looked like $1,100.

In that moment I realized I was good enough to detect juicy games and use that kind of knowledge in table select.  (Of course I went and put myself on the list).  I ended up playing just a couple of pink chip sessions that trip and coming in down $18 (about 1 big bet), but I was pretty happy with my play.  My favorite part was when our table broke, and a big winner with $1,400 in chips said, "If you want to play while I'm racking up, I'll stay with you."

I loved this.  He had no idea that I was a heads up fanatic.  I ended up playing an extremely aggressive, knife-edge 15 minute heads up game, trying to learn quickly all his patterns and then exploit them.  In the end I made $15 for my 15 minutes of work, but it was well worth it.

Result: 5 hours of play for -$18

 

And so that's the trip.  I hope to return soon, as this is becoming an excellent vacation spot for us that combines beach and cards in the same place.

3 miles of traffic is wonderful.

Another hurricane and I find myself driving through the bad weather up I-95.Thank god the nanny's in the backseat entertaining Moishe. This could still get ugly.

Betting in the dark

Chris hosted our regular $1/$2 limit hold'em with a full kill tonight at his house in the pouring rain of Hurricane Ernesto's wake.  Everyone at this game is comfortable at higher limits, but everyone plays really hard against each other regardless of the stakes, and it's a very friendly bunch.  Chris has a tight image, and so he cold calls raises with marginal hands in order to thwart that image.  Obviously when he hits he gets paid off, though he has this habit of pretending like he's thinking a long time before laying his junk down.  Everyone knows he's folding, but he puts on a good show.

(Chris has been threatening to start a poker blog for months now.  If he ever starts I'll be link whoring his blog to you all every chance I get)

About an hour into the night the power went out.  I called the babysitter but she was ok.  The baby was asleep and I think she was watching TV.  Without anyone questioning if it was time to go home, we kept on playing as Chris hung flashlights from the chandeleir over the poker table and we continued to play.  It was still dark, even after Chris lit a few candles.  We were all checking our hole cards from the lights on our cellphones.  At one point Mogdan flashed his hand and another player who was still in the hand looked right at it.  Frankly, he couldn't see a thing and it was obvious he was telling the truth.

I lost one pot to Jason because it was too dark to read the board and I didn't see the flush come on the turn.

"Man, we are a bunch of degenerate gamblers," I observed.

"Naw, if the batteries on the flashlights went out, we'd call the game for the night," said someone else.

Somehow I don't think that redeemed us.

Dinner was a real challenge, as the Dominoes had also lost power and wasn't picking up their phone.  We finally got through and though there was no power at Chris', they were back on and we ate our pizzas in the darkened kitchen. 

I was playing lots of trash and getting paid off when I hit, though I was down $35 for the night.  I played a 87s classically, raising and re-raising my draw on the flop, and then getting paid when it hit the turn and my opponent didn't even suspect me.  I think the sickest was when Jason raised in middle position, and I called in the small blind with 62 suited.  I had just won a big pot, and if I won another it would be a kill pot.  Of course I ended up hitting my flush and cracking his big pair.  He just shook his head in disgust.

That of course made one of the few kill pots of the night, and I cackled as I stacked my $2 on the button.  "Look what I did to get a kill pot for you people, I called a raise with 62 out of position!"  Nobody thanked me.

I promptly got taken to school when one of my opponents received Aces and relieved me of $8 before I came to my senses and folded whatever trash I had gotten dealt for the kill.

We broke up around midnight.  Sarah comes home tomorrow (today) which will be good for my sleep schedule.  I really need to be relieved or stop staying up late after Moishe falls asleep.  The big problem I'm having is that I need to spend a little time to myself, playing cards, playing Xbox or surfing the net before I go to sleep.  If I wake up, take care of Moishe, go to work, come home, take care of Moishe, and then fall asleep, I get kind of crabby because I'm neglecting all of my various hobbies.  The result is that I go to sleep at midnight and wake up with Moishe at 6:30am, which isn't enough sleep for me, and it slowly eats away at my joy.  I don't mean to sound dire, I'd adjust my schedule if it was going to be longer, but I figured it was only a day or two more.

Tomorrow (today) that all changes, and I'll be letting Sarah take some slack for a while.  It's been a good week though, and I've run into a number of people who said they were surprised I happily took Moishe for over a week (8 days!) by myself.  I guess it's not something most husbands would do.  (That surprised me)