Shabbir's Diary

And it was good.

So very soon I get a new, hopefully permanent office.

I currently work either at home, where I have poor output because I refuse to be dismissive of my son when he comes into my office, or at Starbucks where you can't hear me on the phone because of their music, or downtown in an office suite where there's a different desk for me every day.  I don't want a perm. office downtown since I'd have to be $2k for a crappy little room that I'd have to fight commuters daily for.

So instead I've just been waiting....and waiting....and waiting.  Finally something opened up in my neighborhood, 4.5 blocks from my house and right past my favorite little diner.  My dream life involves me going to breakfast at a diner super early reading the newspaper, then going to work, all of it walking, no car or metro involved.  I was happy to walk as far as 20 or more blocks to work, but finding something just down the street pretty much made it nirvana for me.  It's also pretty cheap as far as offices go.

Weirdly enough I just saw "American Gangster" on the plane the other night coming back from DC.  In it Denzel Washington's character has this pattern of going to breakfast at a little diner in Harlem and then starting work.  I thought it was was funny we had the same idea of perfect.

Funniest thing I heard all day

Some of you know that I take my poker game very seriously.  I've been working for four years on my game, through books, occasional coaches, analysis, and tons of practice.  I recently picked up a new poker coach and he said something that I found hysterical.

"If you enter the pot and your opponents aren't afraid of you, then you shouldn't enter the pot."

He didn't mean that my opponents should be afraid of my big cards.  He meant that they needed to have no idea what I might be playing and be unable to deduce my hand, and therefore not know how to play their own cards.

He advocates a play style that I recognize from watching from Sam Farha on High Stakes Poker, where he can just as easily be betting absolutely nothing as much as the stone cold nuts.  He analyzed about 5,000 hands and told me I'm not bluffing enough (if ever) and that I should really be mixing up my game.  The problem being that when I enter a pot and people know I'm strong, they know to fold.  Playing with me for an hour or two and being slightly observant will tell you this.

So his point was that I'm predictable.  Being predictable makes it easy to play around me. 

And he gave me homework.  I don't mind.

Crushing the $3/$6 tables

It being his birthday, I'm going to give my buddy Chris Hannigan an unusual present.  I'm going to freely admit now that in the past, when I said, "You can't make money at $3/$6 limit poker", I was full of crap.  Chris always disagreed with me. 

I dropped down to the $3/$6 tables the other night when I couldn't get a seat at the $6/$12 tables and ran into a hot deck of cards that I knew how to play well.  I really have, for years, said that $3/$6 couldn't beat the rake, but that's really code for "it's hard for good hands to live until the river".  Which is entirely true.  You may have a set on the flop, but someone with a gutshot straight draw will call you all the way down with their four outs.

So I made a lot of money that session, but I have no illusions that betting a made hand hard to the river with two, three, or four callers is mentally healthy.  Lots of hands will get cracked over time, I just happened to get lucky that night.  What I really appreciated was that the mistakes at that level stand out so well, that I really enjoyed cataloging them and was able to keep multiple player profiles in my head.

(As an aside, I think I saw someone take chips off the table again, but I didn't catch him in the act, so I kept my mouth shut)

Some of the mistakes I saw at this level included:

1. Drawing without sufficient pot odds
2. Playing a made hand without being able to read the board and realize there are lots of other better potential made hands out there
3. Never releasing big pairs
4. Not seeing three cards of the same suit on the board (flush) and betting anyway
5. Not taking into account another player's tightness/looseness

I have to say, it's much more enjoyable studying my opponents when I'm winning money than when I'm losing it. And yet after about 3 hours I found myself getting tired and playing my cards mechanically, so I left.

I think I'll stay down here a while.

My first 90 days of an iPhone

I traded my Cingular 8125 (an HTC product based around Windows Mobile) for an Apple iPhone.  Despite the fact that the 8125 perfectly integrates with my Microsoft Exchange server and my iPhone does not, I'm thrilled with the switch.  Here's a quick summary of my behavior changes and what I like about the new phone.

Podcasts
Despite owning several iPods I've never really gotten into the habit of storing up and listening to podcasts, despite being deeply appreciative of radio.  I switched to the iPhone and set it to take podcasts on a daily basis and I'm entirely hooked.  When I'm commuting for any trip longer than 10 minutes I've got the headphones in my ear and I'm listening to one of these podcasts.  Note that I'm partial to long form radio stories, not breaking news.  I tried listening to the "news of the hour" but scanning the page of Google news (on my iPhone's browser) is always more efficient than listening to a podcast.  However the long form of things like "This American Life" work perfectly for the medium on a lot of levels.

My current favorite podcasts from most to least favorite are:

• This American Life
• Fresh Air (NPR)
• 60 Minutes (direct audio recording of the show)
• The Moth Podcast (true life standup comedy pieces of 10 minutes or so)
• Two Plus Two poker podcast
• Radiolab
• PRI's Studio 360
• American Public Media's Marketplace
• Newsweek On Air

Websurfing
I surf like a fiend now.  All the issues that exist with a small screen go away with Safari's ability to "stretch" a screen with your fingertips.  Websites not designed for the iPhone are effectively surfed with the browser, and websites designed for the iPhone look beautiful.

E-mail and scheduling
Though my old phone could schedule from the device and perfectly send and receive e-mail, it turns out that the function of "accepting a meeting" was not something that I really needed to do immediately when someone invited me to something.  I just save those for when I can get to a computer and so far the world hasn't ended.  I've also been running my e-mail through Gmail and syncing it to the iPhone and it's been working fine.

Weirdly, my schedule is updated whenever I dock the phone with my laptop, and you might think that's insufficient, but I've found it works just fine for me.

SMS
The iPhone lets you maintain multiple simultaneous conversations over SMS.  It makes SMS a pleasure to use, and maintains the context of the conversation over time.  Beautiful.

Google Maps
Are you insane?  This is great.  It triangulates your location with celltowers.  I've ridden down Market Street in San Francisco in a cab, watching it update my location accurately over and over again.  I used it to locate casinos on the strip for upcoming trips.

And on top of all that, the interface is pleasurable to use, even for the simplest tasks.  It's a million times more reliable than my Windows Mobile device.  I won't ever go back.

Nap + Kidtime + Dogs + Wife = good

Last Saturday was one of those litmus days for what kind of person you are.

I woke up with Moishe and took him to the Chinese bakery for dim sum for breakfast and some gear from the hardware store for some home improvement projects.  Then we came home and Sarah woke up, cobbled together something to eat and we munched, hung out, and I took the dogs for their walk.   We then all took a nap in our big bed.  We rolled out of bed around 4 or 4:30pm and went down to Mountain View for a friend's birthday party with lots of other toddlers.  Low key, and we rolled out of there after 3 or 4 hours, came back home and Sarah and I put Moishe to bed and watched a little tv while knitting.  I think I played poker online and then we went to bed.

Every day can't be like that or I'd go crazy from lack of accomplishment, but a few days later when I looked back on it, it was darn good.  I caught one of my favorite cartoonists saying you should live each day as if it was your last, and I was reminded of the famous Japanese film, Afterlife that Sarah rented it a few years ago.   "Afterlife" suggested that when people die they have to re-enact their favorite moment of life, film it, and that's the only memory they take with them to eternity. 

I thought that day would have made a pretty good Afterlife film.

O'Shea's Casino and the Vegas Carnival

When I say Vegas is like a carnival, it was never more obvious to me than at O'Shea's casino.  I was sitting at a $1/$2 no limit table, waiting for the poker tournament to start.  I had just cracked a guy's Aces with 76o and two pair when I saw a "little person" walk by me out of the casino with a microphone.  He was headed to the strip, and since I was sitting at the poker table at the front of the casino, he was right behind me.  I thought, "Man, Vegas must be a good place to get work as a little person."  He stands outside the casino and beckons people in with drink specials and stories of casino-sponsored "beer pong".  (private wagering only)

I then turned back to my game and realized that it was a mix of locals who were not drinking and tourists who were drinking.  The money was flowing in the expected direction.  When the tournament started it just got worse, as I went to a room with mirrored walls where I was obsessively hiding my cards while I tried to avoid the calling station tourists who never fold and sometimes catch hands. 

An off-shift dealer played in the game in the seat next to me and told me that the off-duty dealers often win their tournaments.  (He got put out, though)   Rule infractions were awful and fully 30% of the $45 entry fee went straight to the house.  (I took third place)

This was probably the easiest place I played, and the worst environment for poker.  Hard to complain too much when you cash though.

Vegas recap

I'll post the third day wrapup later, but the upshot on Vegas is that I made a total net of $544 on tournament wins, and I lost net $158 on the cash games I played waiting for tournaments to start, or waiting for Tim or Katie to finish a tourney they were in.  Those are really good results for a trip where I was planning on losing money.  Here's a chart.

This is part of an overall trend where my cash game is in freefall and I'm not sure what to do about it.  I'm basically net zero for the year.  Over and over again in Vegas people (not just Tim and Katie, but others) kept telling me I was a good tournament player.

The truth is I'm a better tournament player than people who don't have much experience or skill.  This includes all tourists, anyone who doesn't catch cards, anyone who doesn't know how to play a short stack, and people who play a lot but don't study their play and make changes and improvements.  That's a lot of people, and as you can see, when I run into them or I catch a few cards I can be dangerous.  There's a classic poker archetype of the retiree who plays poker for fun and whose game never changes.  I often played circles around them, though they probably play tournaments twice a week.

But up against real competition, which of all places was most fierce at the Treasure Island 10pm tournament, I'm an underdog.

And so I think the smart thing to do is start changing my poker night and my poker time allocation to include time for tournaments.  I find that I can spend more time analyzing the hand rationally when the tournament chips are in fact not real money and I know the blinds are increasing.  I can happily avoid a confrontation with a difficult decision knowing that when we get into a clutch situation and the blinds get high, I can put my opponent to a more difficult decision earlier in the hand. 

That doesn't mean I can't play deep stack tournaments.  I think I found that in the deep stack tourneys I played at the Rio that my amateur opponents made more mistakes the longer they had for levels.  As it started I explained to Tim and Katie my theory on it and I ended up being right as I exploited players who seemed willing to push all their chips in with KK in the first two hours.

The one overarching lesson I learned was that generally you are your own worst enemy in a poker tournament.  You put yourself out, rarely does somebody else.  Every confrontation you find yourself in is one of your own making.  Only you can put your chips in the pot, and while I got put out of one tournament with a 20 to 1 longshot by my opponents, it's still the exception rather than the rule.

It's also true that you can mentally put yourself out.  Both Tim and I watched opponents who wanted to be somewhere else simply implode at the final table, either through lack of confidence or patience.

And finally a note on Vegas: I spent a lot of time in close proximity to locals either at the poker table or speaking to the dealers.  I had the overwhelming feeling of being around a lot of carnies.  The atmosphere of Vegas certainly is carnival-like with it's amusements, but that's not what I mean.  It's like being around a set of people who have their own code and traditions and don't take well to outsiders.  None of the Vegas locals who work in the casino industry seemed to have anything but tolerance for the tourists, and quite a few had difficulty hiding their disdain.  After three very long days in Vegas I felt literally like a mark, waiting to be seperated from my money.  I never felt this as much as I did at the Treasure Island tournament which was populated with locals just getting off work at 10pm.

I also noticed this playing at the MGM Grand a few years ago with Katie.  All the off duty dealers would sit and play poker together with their friends who were on duty, and at some point it was palpable that there was a cameraderie you weren't part of.  Subtle forms of cheating in that situation from "checking it down with your friends" to "raising the monkey/tourist in the middle" are indetectable by the outsider.

It's not a feeling I enjoyed, and I'm not sure how to get rid of it.

Safdar Poker Tournament Boot Camp, Day Two

Today was also a lot of fun though less lucrative.

9am: Rio $35+rebuys tournament, came in 2nd out of 10 for prize of $304
After an attempt to hit the 8am Stratosphere tournament, we discovered it didn't exist and went to Rio for the 9am $35 NL.  After I buy rebuys and addons repeatedly, I was into it for $120.  I thought the dealing was poor, and once I caught a guy losing a pot to me and try to take 2,400 in chips back instead of giving me my pot.  I started picking up chips and when it was down to three something cool happened.

One of my opponents tried to get us to agree to recut the prize money for first and second to create a third place prize.  I refused, and I heard him ask for a place in the cash game at the next table.  I knew his heart wasn't in it, and I figured I had a good chance at outplaying him.  We started in at the next level and I realized that I was at a table with two weak players, so i started raising every hand.  I won pot after pot, and finally the dealmaker was put out by my opponent.  He was weak, so I raised every hand heads up and only folded when he pushed all in.  Finally he minimum raised, I called, and my J6 hit on a JT3 flop.  I pushed and he showed KQ.  The river brought an Ace and I took second.

Noon: Rio $105 NL Hold'em Freezeout, came in 5th out of 30 for no prize.
This was a great tournament, and took about 4 hours to finish.  I created a sizable stack and never looked back.  Once we hit the final table I had a big problem in that the big stack was on my left and wouldn't let me get away with anything.  When we were in the bathroom during the break he asked Tim and I to chop.  I refused and we started up the game with the last five of us. 

I had been waiting for a hand where I could induce an all-in from Big Stack while I held a better hand, and I found my opportunity.  I had JJ and made a raise that looked like a steal.  Big stack obliged me by re-raising me all in and I pushed my stack.  He showed 99 and I figured I had executed by strategy perfectly.  Imagine my surprise when the board came Ten-Seven-Six-Seven-Eight and his straight put me out in fifth place.  Doh.  I was in with the best of it and clearly manipulating the situation, so I couldn't complain too much.  Tim was put out two hands later with an also unlikely board.  He and I got up and the remaining three players immediately made a deal and ended the tournament.

Side trip: We took a side trip to the Wynn to play $4/$8 limit hold'em and I dropped $105 while I practiced extreme aggression.  I won a lot of hands, but I also got taken to the cleaners on a couple.

7:30pm: Paris $65 NL Hold'em Freezeout, came in 7th out of 30 for no prize
This was a hard tournament.  I was dealt QQ early in the first hour and made a sizable raise.  I got a caller and we saw a flop of AK9.  My opponent checked and so I sent out a bet for half my remaining chips and he raised me all in.  I folded my queens face up and lamented my crippled stack of 700 chips when the blinds were 75-150.  Over the next hour I rebuilt my stack and made the final table but couldn't find any way to double up and got put out 7th.

10pm: Treasure Island $65 NL Hold'em with rebuys, came in 16th out of 45 for no prize
This is a crazy tournament with a lot of talent.   You can re-enter for the first hour as much as you want, and they'll actually open new tables if enough latecomers show up.  I also had a big stack on my left but never found a hand to execute a strategy against him with.   He put himself out and when were got combined down to the final two tables I got four hands in a row after no playing anything for two levels.

After a long dry spell I saw a flop with A2s on the big blind with three others and it came 347 (two hearts).  Though I didn't have hearts, I thought I might be able to steal it.  Unfortunately my opponent with 56 felt like the straight he flopped was good and I got put out. 

This failed steal attempt is everything that's both right and wrong with my tournament game.  My aggression needs some help with timing, but I'm not playing passive like many of the people I see get blinded out of tournaments when they don't catch cards.

That's it for the day.  I'm doing some work tomorrow, and probably won't get much poker in.

Finally I had him figured out and I found my oppo

I'm looking forward to Gus Hansen's upcoming book: Every Hand Revealed

"Every Hand Revealed" is a hand-by-hand explanation of how he won a multi-day tournament.  The technique of recording every hand with a pocket tape recorder is just as interesting to me as what I'm likely to learn about his thinking throughout the tournament.

I am a little self-conscious of the fact that I've got three poker tournament strategy books on my shelf that I've only read twice now.  (It takes several reads to sink in...)

 

Safdar Poker Tournament Boot Camp, Day One

(Some of the terms in this post refer to the concept of "M" from Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie's seminal 3 volume set on poker tournament strategy.  When sitting in a tournament, "M" is the cost to sit at the table for one orbit, and includes both blinds and the antes.  Depending on your M, you need to shift your play radically.)

9:30am: $65 NL Hold'em freezeout at the Paris, placed 3rd out of 15 players for $188 prize
I played well in the first tournament of the trip.  Spent a lot of time between 5 and 11 M and appropriately I tended to push my stack in instead of trying to limp into a flop and crippling my stack when it missed me.  I dodged a big bullet early on when I raised, got 4 callers, and then watched the flop pair up and bring two flush cards.  Both those hands were out there, and both of them beat me.  I calmly let the hand go, and man was I smart about that.  It was the second level and if I'd gotten married to it I would have been out.

When down to 3 people I was the most aggressive.  I finally got put out when I pushed another player all in and we showed her J9 vs my QJ.  The flop brought a Jack, but the river brought a 9 and I was out in 3rd place.  Cashing on my first tournament was sweet.

Noon: $33 NL Hold'em Freezeout at Luxor, placed 25th out of 30 for $0
This tournament is basically a live turbo.  I didn't adjust well and got caught when the blinds went up before I noticed and was immediately down to 2 M (2 orbits).  I had nothing to maneuver with, and I was out when the two random cards I pushed in failed to hit anything.

1:30pm: $65 NL Hold'em Freezeout at Paris, placed 1st out of 30 for $709 prize
This tournament clinched my status as a poker jerk.  I was by far the most aggressive player at the table, and spent two long spans as chipleader.  When it was down to four (top five got paid) the other chipleader and I ended up putting the small stacks all in and then checking down the hand.  Finally when it was just the two of us he begged me to chop the prizes.  I refused over and over again.  (If you know me, you know I want to play it out, I never want to make a deal.  It's not the money, I want first place.)

Thing is, we both had to pee really badly, and they weren't doing breaks any more.  At the start of each hand I'd take a bottle of water the waitress brought me and shake it loudly, so he could hear the sound of water.  It was in jest, but I was also outplaying him.  I pushed almost every hand, and he folded to half of them, which meant I was constantly accumulating chips, which let me come back twice when he caught a hand on the board.

Finally I agreed to let him take a break and we both agreed to come out of the bathroom at the same time, with the obligatory, "no, you first...oh no, I couldn't, you first."  We were gone long enough that they dealt out one of our hands for us (I lost).  Finally I pushed him in with two random cards and hit the higher one, and I was the winner.  I bought him a shot of my favorite (cold patron silver tequila) where he told me that all poker tournaments are a crapshoot.

No, not exactly.  Your mileage may vary.

6:00pm: $80 NL Hold'em Freezeout at the Mandalay Bay, placed 5th out of 20 for no prize
This was a hard tournament.  You get 1,000 chips at 25/50 blinds to start, which means that you begin the tournament in the Orange zone, and immediately lose the ability to limp with small or medium pairs.  I ended up doing well though, pushing while my stack was big enough to scare people, and slowplaying quads to double up at one point.  (I actually induced a bluff with quads.  I so rock.)

By the final table I was stuck acting behind the big stack and it really warped my game.  He was raising a lot to the point where my all in moves really functioned just as calls, and would only encourage others into the pot, as opposed to winning it right there.  I played aggressively through the bubble and ended up going out 5th when I had an M of 2 and no good options.  They paid 4 places and so I got a reason to beat myself up for the rest of the night since I made it pretty deep but didn't win any money.

All in all a good day.  I'm going to try to hit tournaments at 8am (Stratosphere), 11am (Sahara), 2pm (Planet Hollywood), and 7pm tomorrow.