Deuce of Spades and Ongoing Card Tricks

What I'm looking at is so far beyond the pale that it precludes randomness, and, as such, is revelatory about the nature of the universe. Another session of it tonight ... 200 and some outs over the course of the session in which zero showed up. Again.

I showed a full wrap with open end straight flush draw to my neighbor, guaranteeing him it couldn't beat two deuce at the end. Correctamoondo. All wraps missed, my flush draws went 0-for-6 while my opponents went 8-for-8.

The game broke for an hour as a huge high hand hour was on. I played one serious hand in the hour: pocket aces. Up against the big blind of 4-8. Flop 6-5-2, rainbow. And of course, of course, of course ... the turn is a 7 and the river is an ace. Just look at how pure that is for a cooler. Perfect turn, perfect river for max loss.

So I go back to PLO where the flushes and wraps all ran out to helll. Then to Ac-2c-3s-4s I flop 4c-5c-As. Nut wheel, straight flush draw, nut flush draw, aces up, and what the heck, back door straight flush draw kicker. LOL. I'm under the gun and check-raise a $50 button bet to 200. Instacall. He has 4-5-10-10. Turn is a 4, we both fill up, mine bigger. River of course a 10.

This started on January 1, 2016 and has continued without interruption. 700-ish sessions. I lost over 50% of my one outer situations over 24 trials. "Show me some more card tricks" has become my beloved line to try to cope mentally with the reality of this streak.

Now sure enough, this run followed one of the great heaters including 10 wins in a row twice, 17-18, and 31 in a row, all separate streaks, in a year of 93 winning sessions, 8 losses. I'm not supposed to win at that rate. I'm a 65% win session over the years. I'm also a big believer in corrections to bubbles are severe in accordance with how big the bubble is, be it stock market, housing market, poker results, etc. But this is something way beyond that.

The point here in the analysis is not the losing, but the anomaly of it. I showed 10 hands to neighbors tonight, massive draws, guaranteeing that they wouldn't beat two deuces in the end. Right every time. This has been going on for 8 years. I made one mistake in adjudging this bizarre anomaly run as 35 times longer (700 sessions versus 20) than any I had ever experienced in 40 years of PLO. That was off because though the sessions really are a factor of 35 more, the amount of hands, which is how you judge it, is only about 15 times that previous death run. Still, virtually impossible randomly.

There's nothing random in this universe, but such is only a shortcut for predicting results with unknown factors, unknown that is, to us. They aren't actually unknown. The quantum count knows and delivers it agenda with intent. When I was beleaguring that deuce of spades and then it was dealt standing face up on the table to me (see picture a few posts above), I knew this thing was getting metaphysical. And it's beautiful, prescient, and wise.

Wow. We're so delusional that if we lose enough that we can't even realistically attribute it to variance, we now attribute it to metaphysics? Occam's razor... Which is more likely? Bad results because of metaphysical,mystical jargon, or because we're simply playing badly. I'd bet the latter, but yeah, blame baal, or Freya, or the fates, or whatever floats your boat.

Playing a little PLO tonight in a must move and the game breaks. I step over to a 2-5 hold'em game waiting for the seat. First hand I have Q-Q and am up against a $10 button straddle. I limp he checks. HU. Flop: A-Q-7 off. I check it over to him and he bets $35. I looked at that flop for a while, ready for another card trick. I make a crying call. Cauz I'm playing bad. The turn comes an ace. I check/over-shove he instacalls. River 9.

He turns over A-9. Why did I always think this situation is ~ 30/1? I just punched it up and it came back I was 98.69%. Lose stack, of course. Playing bad.

Two hands later to 5-8 of clubs flop comes 4-6-7 rainbow. I don't slow it, utg bet and I raised. Dude calls it cold behind me, utg folds. Heads up. Turn 8. He has 9-10. I mean, I have an 8, and there are other cards in the deck besides an 8.

You can run like this for at least 820 sessions, 110K hands.

Move to PLO no winners for 4 hours, then aces unhelped hold up at 700 to go five handed, somehow, on a 7-8-9-10-9 board. Dude turned up kings real fast and the other 3 slowly throw their hands away. I'm last over with aces up winner. It was getting late and short, I dusted a nickel winner.

The freak show bad run still on. Anybody that doesn't think everything under the sun is metaphysics, including poker, is blind, and he mistakes probabilistic shortcuts for reality. Uh-huh. Check.

My third or fourth hand at the hold’em table last night, the button straddles and I’m J-J in middle position. I raise, one straggler, button re-raises. Call, call. Flop 4-6-J off. I lead into it light, looking for you know what. It goes fold, raise. I hem and haw and way overship hoping to look like a BS bluff in this fast game (been sweating it waiting). I’m thinking if he’s a good player AND has balls, he might put me on A-K and call. He did.

I turned away from the table, refused to look at it, and said: “Bring on the card trick.” To the dealer’s credit, imo, he didn’t ship my chips to the other end of the table until I turned back around and looked at the hand, 15 or 20 seconds after the runout. Board: 4-6-J-5-7, opponent’s hand pockets 8s.

98.28% this time. No good. I’ve long had the perhaps skewed idea that you can never get the money back from beats like this, that once they get way past the normal allotment of these it’s lost, dead money. Even stronger I always had this idea about sports beats and losses, way higher in amounts on that. I don’t really know what the actual with regard to that is.

I do know it is possible to get in a vein of these kinds of hands, having luckily over avoided them, probably, for decades. 812 sessions of pure sickness over the last 8 years. Way, way, way beyond bizarre.

Very first hand when I sit at 5-card PLO after waiting for a couple hours for seat:

Me: Ad-Kc-Jc-Jh-10s

50 to go 5-handed.

Flop: 9d-10c-Qc

I lead UTG for the 250. Fold, fold, fold, button raises, and I call my remaining 500.

I forgot to say, "Show me the card trick," but I was sure thinking it. I would be absolutely shocked to win the hand.

Turn 7d

"Did you pick up diamonds," I say. "Nope," he says.

River 7h

He turns over Kh-Jd-9s-7c-2s. and says, "I made a full house."

So I flopped the nuts with redraws open-end royal and climbing wrap. He flops pretty dead nuts with bottom pair. Apparently he had a 3% sweep chance. No problem. Enter the ongoing saga of card tricks. 814 sessions of this. It's really happening. The Trickster reigns.

Had my second or third 1K win in last 820 sessions. Expectation was 2 or 3 hundred of those. I cant begin to describe it other than each session showing up, was that normally 1or 2 % nightmare session. I'd insta bet this streak to be the worst one running on the planet if I had to bet a thousand or so for or against. It's just been too long and perverse ... and 20 times longer than any such streak I've had over the decades. These are kind of half live session, 4 hours average, live play, so only about 110K hands. The fact that it is stretched out over such a long time span -- over 8 years -- is the real mind and life altering component to it. Jammed into 3 months of full time multi-tabling, it would be horrendous but not the same psychological experience. Again, the time factor.

There were 3 little mini winning streaks within it, but all small wins still fighting utter card death but winning a large pot with no loss. My longest stretch of near all losing sessions over the decades previously was about 20 full length sessions, as opposed to this 820 half-length sessions ... so 20 times longer. The 820 sessions has about 1/3 winning sessions, almost an exact flip from the typical 2/3rds established rate. Game is tougher, yes. Outs went to near zero on all classic hand types. Don't really have a feel for how long it takes a modern, full-time multi-tabler to play 110K hands. And I kept saying and saying and saying, "I bet I don't have the nuts on the river in one hand of this session" ... and it kept coming to pass. Still even in this 1K win, no nut hands on river.

If I had to bet say 20% of my bankroll or more I'd have to back off to the more measured position, "Okay, it's only in the 99 percentile, but probably not the worst." The typical run horrendous of 10 to 20 full sessions over the years wasn't a pimple on this things arse. But I have now seen the edges of the bell curve, and it is an illuminating thing.

Another death run. Every run out was death but one. I turned quads and after the crackerjack river I had the 5th nuts and got raised. Everything is death, which is the fourth time I've lost with quads or better in this streak. World's worst streak, nearly certified. Is it at the outer fringes of the bell curve or is it the outer fringe? All live play. No random generators. Don't believe in them.

Three hands from last night:

Holdem: I have 7-10 of spades, flop 8c-9c-Jh. Tightest player in the room min leads out under the gun. My antennae went way up right then. Turn 5h he small balls again, I raise and he hesitates and calls. Somewhat convincing hesitation on his part. River 3d. He small balls again into me after my raise. Odd. I gotta raise a little anyway. He hesitates and shoves and I fold my 7-10 face up. Flop 2nd nuts with no win.

Holdem: Heads up with 8-8. Flop J-J-8. I have no win. Heads up against J-J quads.

PLO: I have A-K-K-Q-9, double suited, no spades. Flop comes 10s-Js-5d. Wrap and kings. Turn is Ks. Top set, straight that's no count. Dude has royal flush and top set has no win.

I had a sick run of all face card hands and aces. Kept showing them zeroing out to player next to me. Not so odd, I said, but 850 sessions of this is odd. Won exactly one hand in which I flopped nothing, everybody kept checking around and took 2 runners to straight flush, everybody insta throws their hand in the muck.

Another session from hell in which of the 200 people in the room, I was again in the no win seat(s).

The hands went from the hundreds, to the thousands, to tens of thousands, to over 100,000 ... of perfect coolers. 850 sessions of it. So it's notable. And enlightening.

"Enantiodromia" and Human Experience

I came across a term in a psychology book the other night which made my jaw fall open with respect to all this. Was pretty much innocently reading along and there it was, in black and white: “enantiodromia.” What?? WTF is this? I’ve been reading psychology books for nearly half a century, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any reference to this. The author – Jung – was referring to a sequence of polar opposites appearing in experience, especially as it pertains to luck.

Many times I had wondered about the combination of the preternatural sun run I had before this supernatural cooler streak, about how that can even be a thing. So stumbling across this word in Jung was rather astounding. I’ve long said that corrections in results tend to be as severe as the bubble preceding it, and though this is along the same lines, it is something deeper. Enantiodromia: the principle that everything makes way for its opposite, as with good and bad luck. “Wow” is a popular saying in poker, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a wow like this … even at 986-to-1 beats and suckouts which I’ve been involved with a few times.

Because immediately preceding this impossible 850 session, 9-year long death run, I was probably one of the hottest players anywhere. In 2015 I had a mini-streak early on in which I won 8 in a row, then a loss, then won 17 of the next 18, then choppy for 4 sessions (2-2), then won 31 in a row. 93-8 for that year, 2015. As that 31-session streak was culminating, and in its aftermath, out of curiosity I began asking players about their longest winning streaks. It wasn’t a brag though they tended to take it that way, it was real curiosity that such a streak had visited me. I heard some surprisingly low numbers about their longest streaks, then I eventually heard some big ones … the biggest one being 24.

I asked a mathematician about the odds of winning 31 sessions in a row over a 4000 session sample with an established 65% win rate. The streak should have been about a 28-3 heater, but at the end of the three near sure losses miracles rained. I knew it was all just a super sun run, but in retrospect I’m not sure I realized just how much of one it was, that is, just how much over expectation I was running, just how much the flops and run outs were going my way. I had been running very good for way too long in this sense, and losses, for years now except for in a handful of months over nearly 30 years, were immediately recovered, rarely losing more than once in a row, and very rarely more than twice in a row. Until.

On January 1st, 2016 (I remember the date because that is bowl day and I’m a much higher sports bettor than poker player, and I never miss bowl day), I kind of had to play against my wishes in a friend’s new home game to support him. It was hold’em (which I don’t like, I play PLO mostly) and I took a 1-outer beat for my stack on a K-9-3 flop, trip kings against trip 3s. Got riverized, pulverized. I left immediately in a very cross mood that I was even there and that I had taken the beat. Little did I know what was coming.

There is or was a thread on 2+2 titled something like, “Why Would Anyone Even Take Up Poker As of 2016?” The game getting too tough and too corrupt, I guess was the idea. Yeah, little did I know how perfectly timed this January 1, 2016 beat was in relation to that thread, and that I would become like the poster child for that thread title.

Enter the almost every single flop utterly misses my hand for 100K hands as if they rooted through the deck to find the 3 most unrelated cards possible over and over and over (“no pair, no draw, no back door draw” became my refrain), maddening to watch it continue over years and hundreds of sessions, and the 1% or so of flops where I did connect zeroed out and/or ran out to murderous beats, including slews of 1-outers. It happened. Is still happening.

Now here is the huge kicker to the story that moves the whole thing into metaphysics. This jackpot Jungian term appeared in a chapter called “The Psychology of the Trickster.” Having long scoffed at the idea of the Trickster, of course without fully understanding it (it’s not an entity but a pattern), during this very phenomenon of the streaks I had researched and incorporated the Trickster, archetype of prescient chaos, into my worldview. Via the incorporation of opposing patterns in the psyche, like poles of a battery, the human drama and reality itself unfolds. In the service of individuation, in the service of the evolution of consciousness, this is a thing.

The Trickster archetype is all about throwing a monkey wrench into things in the service of individuation and evolution. And that is exactly what this experience was … away from “lost in the shuffle” and toward self-knowledge. Poker, after all, has a great escape velocity within the psyche. Only the total and bizarre blocking of expected occurrences could have done the trick. And, voila, The Trickster brought it home in the form of enantiodromia, something that no one but Jung, Heraclitus, and Plato had ever heard of. I’m used to seeing perfect terms land from some of the world’s greatest psychologists and metaphysicians, but this one takes the cake for me.

Tonight's installment:

My first hand of the night, about 4 hands into the session. I have A-J versus Ac-2c. Flop A-J-4, no clubs. I slow play check, call on flop. Comes a 3. I check-raise turn. He calls and it comes a 5 of course. The universe gave him my stack. As I was sitting there after the beat, I was thinking it was 25/1. Then it occurred to me, no, it's about 50/1.

Very next deal I'm on the button with 7-7. I raise, same opponent heads up. Flop 5-6-K, off. He donks into me. I call. Turn 7: the perfect jackpot card. He bets, I raise, he just calls. River, blank Q. He checks. I hesitate big time -- I know how this works -- then I shove and he turns over 3-4 and takes my stack. This hand just so perfectly describes the super cooler set up of everything.

850 sessions of this. Super-cooler bonanza. So, I'm two buy-ins down on sickness. Right there at the table, I started thinking back about the super-heater preceding all this, and remembering that at some point it occurred to me back then, "Jeez, I've been forever without losing an all-in."

Next hand dude shoves over my raise, me with A-K, him with A-Q. Flop 10-J-Q. Turn 3, river K. Chop pot.

I leave the table. Quickly get in PLO. Flop nut trips lose pot, flop full house lose stack on river card.

Now the coup de grace. I've never seen it. I have about 400 in front of me after all the rapes. Last chips for the night. On button I have A-A-4-4 double suited, spades and diamonds. Small blind has A-A-7-7 also double suited. So two players have aces-up in their hand double-suited. Never seen it.

Flop comes 2s-5s-Qd. I have a straight flush draw and aces. The hands are face up. Suddenly it occurs to me that the 7-diamonds is his only win. Turn: 7 diamonds. River: blank.

So the only card in the deck that wins for him gives me both nut flush draws, with a wheel draw. I've played 3 hands with this guy, a pro. He had 2 outs, 2 outs, and this hand ... and he won all three.

The death run outs and card tricks in this streak defy all explanation except one. I'm very grateful for that reason and for the experience. More and more I suspect that the run is the worst on earth, occasionally pulling back from that thinking, nah it is merely in that 1% outer edge of the bell curve. But I've seen a lot of poker, and in decades nothing came within light years of this sickness.

Having long been a religious follower and bettor of sports, I'm suddenly very spotty with it, just dabbing here and there. I was sitting around and it occurred to me that it wasn't going very good. Betting so small and so infrequently that it isn't important, so I hadn't noticed. Here are my last 16 bets going back a few weeks:

Penn St + 4.5 vs. Ohio St.
Penn St -- 1.5 (1H) vs. Ohio St.
Yanks O.C. World Series (when down 3-0)
Yanks Game 5
Yanks -144 Game 3
Bengals -2.5 vs. KC
Cowboys +4.5 vs. San Fran
Missouri +17.5 vs. Bama
Yanks + 170 Game 1 WS
Chargers - 2.5 vs. Zona
U of L + 185 vs. Miami
USC + 150 vs. Penn St.
Bama - 20.5 vs. SCar
Ohio St. --1 versus Oregon
Detroit series outcome
SCar +275 vs. Ole Miss

These bets have something in common. They all lost. 16 in a row. This streak, combined with the poker, is so thick it defies standard models of reality, defies standard deviations by light years. Not because it is 16 straight losing sports bets, but because this coincides with an 850 session poker anomaly. It speaks of a virtual reality, of a non-random substrate to such results and outcomes. Yesterday, apparently there was just utter sickness at the end of both halves to bring the loser home. The announcer said, "Touchdown, Penn St" ... and I just knew that wouldn't stand ... and it didn't. World's most anomalous streak informs me about the nature of reality, you know, because things like poker and sports are part of reality.

This streak rained when I had made a conscious effort to no longer be lost in gambling as a tonic/escape/medication of actual existential realities in the self. And the Trickster, on cue, delivered the agenda to aid the process of self-exploration. This streak cannot happen, and it cannot happen on cue. Unless, unless the nature of things is not the mundane, general model of reality commonly held. The "world" is virtual.

The world turned its back on my reign, this is the flip side, my telomeres are unraveling ... and this is no longer the reality in which I had super heaters, reigned over sports betting, and floated over actual existential truths with the winning moves.

Denver +10 and Boyz +3.5.

18 in a row.

Harris in electoral L

Harris in the popular L

20 straight losers.

FLA + 21.5 L

21 straight.

Michigan + 14.5 W
Clemson - 6 W

The streak ends at 21 straight. Shoot! I wanted to see how far it could go.

First hand tonight:

I'm A-Q suited, bring it for 2x (I like getting action with this hand), get re-popped by the small blind. Call.

Flop: A-A-7. He leads into me, I call. Turn 6. He leads into me again, I raise. He tanks knowing he's in trouble. Very slow call and shove his last 50 or so ott.

River K. He wins with pocket kings. A nice little 2-outer welcome. It didn't faze me in the least, didn't exasperate me in the least. Two people at the table gave a big reaction. I just couldn't be less surprised. 857 sessions of this.

Later I flop a royal draw on a Ad-Ah-Jh flop. I'm 10-Q of hearts. Turn was a king, but not the king of hearts. My straight is crushed by A-K.

Just beautiful, beautiful card tricks. For it to run coolers at me like this for so many sessions is extreme trickeration, for sure.

Flopped six sets and got them all beat, missed every flush draw, missed every straight draw, missed every A-K. None of that is as pertinent as the utter lack of suspense over whether any of these hands are going to win the pot. I have an absolute first timer sitting next to me in the 1-3 game and I can’t get a chip from him. He goes broke and I move up to the 2-5. First hand I have Q-Q, button has a straddle on. Dude limps, I limp hoping for it, and he does, he busts it open for 50. Dude in between us starts counting out 1$ chips over and over and over up past the line, and at some point I had to assume it was a call. I make it 200 then look up there and he has never called. I’ve re-raised out of turn. So he folds and I’m heads up with the button who turns A-K face up and folds. What?? Bizarre. A-K straddle on the button folds for a re-raise.

It isn’t 15 minutes till they call the big stack to the main, down to 4-handed now and breaking. Last deal I have 7-7, make it 25 to go. Button calls, same guy with the white chip BS fiasco. Flop comes 6-7-9, off. He has 5-8 and it blanks out and I lose my stack. Just super cooler setups over and over and over and over. And to watch the board blank out to your hand for 9 years is something I recommend highly to all players. 868 sessions now of this kind of death.

New table and I have a blithering drunk boozing it up trying to convince everyone he is a billionaire. They start calling him Bill Gates. I take off with A-K of spades against him, 50 to go 3-handed, flop comes 8-8-9 two spades. Check to me on the button, bet 125. One fold, drunk calls. Turn 2-hearts. Check to me, bet 275. Drunk calls, totally clueless and so slow that people are complaining about him even though he is the worst player we’ve ever seen. River is 5 off. Check to me I bet my last 125. He instacalls and turns over A-5 winner. Utterly bizarre.

Then I flopped trips and flush draw in PLO against a naked off-suit queen draw. He hit it … then the blank to my 20-outer post his gut shot perfect. Then a better one: I’m heads up with button raiser, a tight hold’em player trying his hand at PLO. He raised on button. Flop of 9-7-5, giving me 3-pair. Turn Q giving me a flush draw and straight draw. So I have the situation of drawing at all 3 classic hands – full house, flush and straight – while my opponent is drawing at none of them. Yet he wins my stack with 3-outer. He has A-A-10-10, but the 10s make me the nut straight, and one of the aces makes me a flush. He has two queens and an ace to win my stack with. Don’t worry.

To have these kinds of hands waiting for you for 868 sessions is mind altering, reality radicalizing, and more than anything it is the fact that it is spread over almost 9 years that adds such weightiness to the experience. It is like someone is writing a farcical comedy with the deck, and it’s like that because that is actually what it is. The Trickster is in my house, coming out of my ears, up my kazoo, etc. I’ve heard of these kinds of streaks before, seen other players going thru them where it looked like black magic against them. My turn. Thinking back to a couple of those instances. In one of them, the dude got everything beat for months and months of every night play, then flopped quads one night and some drunk gambling irrespective of what his hole cards or the flop was, took 2 runners to a straight flush and beat him. I stared at that hand and thought about it for quite a while. The scenario was weird. The other dude I saw running like this went on all year then he took 1-outer beats in consecutive pots (I did the second one). Again, I stared. What is this kind of streak?

Anyway IT gave me 31 wins in a row as not even a favorite, and IT knows it. This is the reckoning. Anybody who doesn’t see the mystical nature of things isn’t playing with a full deck, is stuck in “rational” mode that is a caricature of rational. IT is the quantum field. I rest my case.

It's trying to teach me something about reality, about so-called randomness, and in particular, about my posture toward the games.