The Poker Project (playing and writing about poker in the U.S.)
I've learned a bunch from the strategy/life posts on 2+2 over the years and want to involve others in my own poker-related goal: to play, write about, and better understand poker in the U.S. By "better understand poker" I don't mean learning when to reshove with 20BBs vs. a loose opener. I'm more interested in the tougher-to-answer questions that you may have asked yourself from time to time. How is poker important to me? Why does my family discourage (or support) poker as a hobby/profession? What does poker mean to different parts of America and to different parts of the poker-playing community? How does poker appear in literature and film? Why do so many players write about their experiences (insanepoker7, anotherkidanotherdream)? What can we make of this impulse for storytelling?
My Goals
Contribute to the (more or less nonexistent) academic literature on poker
I'm a teacher-researcher who studies literature, narrative, and American culture. In the fall I'll be starting a two-year post-doc in which, as a kind of secondary project, I plan to write about poker. I have two pretty clear ideas for articles and one big, hazy idea for a book. This thread will hopefully serve as a journal/blog/place to brainstorm and hear from 2+2ers.
Become a better poker player
I'll detail my poker story in the next post. The cliffs is: found poker around 2005, played semi-seriously online from 2007-2011, and transitioned to live cash around 2010 (1/2NL, very part-time). For me, getting better means more creativity and rigor in my approach to the game; developing a more intuitive grasp of poker fundamentals, esp math; and moving up in limits (2/5 and 5/10, if the bankroll allows).
With these goals in mind, you can expect a few different kinds of posts in this thread:
Session reports
I should play a decent bit this summer and hope to recount some of my sessions. The content will be similar to my trip reports from Nola (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/27/bri...) and Florida (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/27/bri...). The goal is to write entertaining stories with some strategy mixed in. My "home base" for playing will be in the Gulf Coast area: Houston, Lake Charles, Nola, and Biloxi.
Book Reviews
I plan to review both poker fiction and non-fiction. These posts will probably include a brief summary, my assessment of the book (if I like/dislike, whether it's "well-written"), and questions to think about.
Links to worthwhile poker content
Like this!: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9286...
Thematic Posts
on topics like tilt, storytelling, aging, regionalism, literature, strategy--whatever comes to mind!
I'm starting this thread rather than a blog because it encourages dialogue. Part of why I like poker is because it's rooted in stories and people. I'd love to ask and receive questions from you guys for as long as this thread exists. Lookin fwd to it!
I reckon someone should write a novel about what's contained in Dubnjoy000's 2nd spoiler ...
This is hanging on my wall
Spoiler
He told me - now this was quite a few years ago... - that he had (just about) completed all 3 volumes simultaneously and all that was missing was final touches... Which is also why I always figured that he was playing the cliff hanger card...
makes sense. I think I agree with G's take that at some point the cliffhanger angle reaches an expiration date.
Such a shame one has to be "a vector of shame". I'd whisper "there's a pp", whenever I was out and about with my partner, trying not to make eye contact. I wish it weren't the case but suspect it always will be: is poker part of society or what?
Yeah. I've experienced a wide range of encounters, as I wrote about above, and most of them have been harmless/amusing. But it can also be tricky to navigate, as you/GG/Dubn are mentioning.
What was absolutely different about grinding in little ole Dawson City for so many years (population of 2k) as opposed to say Montreal or Vancouver - or any other city for that matter -, is that it would be impossible not to cross paths with the poker regs all over town : at the grocery store, at the bars, restaurants etc. So you actually got to know them personally, on and off the felt. And at times to find out about personal details that you wish you didn't know... like how the maniac had t
Nola seems squarely in the "small city" category: small enough that bump-ins occur with some frequency, but not so small that you're constantly encoutering regs. One of the other things you're touching on—getting to know cardplayers well off the felt—is especially interesting to me. How friendship operates in the poker world, in other words, and how knowing the intimate details of a fellow reg's life complicates how you deal with them/exploit them on the felt.
It's interesting to think about how cardplayers create cliques and self-segregate. Yes, birds of a feather flock together, so winners will "naturally and inadvertently" mesh well, but friendships can obviously develop for plenty of other reasons—type of games and higher/lower steaks being chief factors, I think.
And then there's the bullshit cameraderie that's different from what you're describing: regs "befriending" donators in order to poach them for private games, etc.
Anyway, forgive my rambling. Some food for future thought 😀
FYP
January Recap
Looking back, local historians will no doubt highlight the Great Sneauxpocalypse of 2025. "Magical" is an overused word, especially in Nola, but it really was a magical few days.
Sledding on the Levee
Spoiler
Road Trip Frenemies
Spoiler
Poker Cats and Dogs
Spoiler
Another January, another Heater
Spoiler
what are your thoughts on this thread?
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/ne...
As promised, here's a link to the
in which GCP's co-founders and I discuss the allegations (@45 min mark). Not much new being said imo
With Operation (re)Deny marknfw successfully completed, the question is whether or not to run it back. To which I say
Spoiler
That said, I might impose a mini-challenge or two this year, on the poker and/or the writing front. For now, though, I have two familiar February goals:
[ ] run 200 miles
[ ] survive Mardi Gras
Hope everyone's year is off to a good start!
Mr. Bumblebee
It’s Sunday afternoon, the last day of the Nola Circuit Event, and I’m already armed with a second cup of coffee. The WSOP’s black-and-white poker chip logo is on every chairback, above the flatscreens on the faux-French Quarter balconies, beneath the check-in podium’s glossy black tabletop. The room is near-packed, sixteen tables are going, and Supervisor Fozzy’s being ambushed on three sides by would-be players and table-changers, his eyes darting between computer monitors as he manages the waitlists. After a fifteen-minute wait I’m sent to a $1/$3 on Table 7, across from Buddha; when a seat opens on his direct right, I take it. “How was the party?” he asks. He’s chip-shuffling with one hand hand and playing Candy Crush with the other.
“Good,” I say. “Total shitshow.”
Last night, for my friend's 28th beeday, there was a party bus in the Quarter and fireworks in City Park and karaoke at Kajun’s. I made it to karaoke after wrapping up a long session here. “How’d your night end up?” I ask. “I looked for you as I was leaving, but didn’t see you.”
“It went really well. Unexpected spaz at a pretty tight table put me up $700 for the night.” Buddha checks his card, folds, gives me a look. “Any party that you can show up at 1 a.m. for should be a little bit of a **** show.”
I’d arrived right as my friends were spilling out of the bus onto St. Claude, yelling and laughing and sipping go-cups of beer and wine. The birthday girl pulled two of her besties onto the sidewalk and they huddled together, heads close, powdering their noses before scampering with their glittery purses into Kajun's.
“So just my typical weekend around Becca then?”
“I hope that’s a joke,” I say.
Buddha grins and says, “She knows lots of people who do blow. Obviously not me. Like the drug dealer who lives next to Maggie.”
“Of course,” I say. “I played with him the other night.”
We’d played together a half-dozen times or so, but we’d met outside the cardroom, during one of the parades. Outside Becca’s sister’s Chewbacchus party, a big burly guy was standing on the sidewalk wearing big black glasses and a bushy beard, dressed exactly like the tapdancing little girl in Blind Melon’s music video No Rain: yellow-black headpiece and arm warmers and tutu, black tights, black shoes with yellow bow ties. He even had fake pigtails, although his dark chest hair and manboobs were real.
The first time we’d played together, Mr. Bumblebee was sitting on a few grand, whaling around and cracking jokes with the same merriment he’d had on the street. He was dressed in a blue short-sleeved shirt and a gray bowler cap that covered his big bald head. I sat on his left in the 1 Seat with a grand, and at an opportune moment I slinked over to the cage, slid the cashier five hundos, and plopped a purple chip onto my stack. Seeing this, Mr. Bumblebee made a joky comment that the pros were here, **** was about to really get real, etc etc, and I couldn't come up with a witty reply. Although I wasn't a pro, he wasn't wrong about my intentions. I'd decided that the gee in front of me was insufficient for extracting max value: I wanted more. To be precise, I wanted every chip in front of the table's resident whale. Mr. Bumblebee, recognizing this, was letting me know that he knew what I was trying to do.
I didn't stack Mr. Bumblebee that day, and he didn't stack me. Over the years we played together a handful of other times, he was at most a semi-reg, and we’d never had a real conversation. I figured I was the only one who remembered our fleeting street encounter.
On his phone, Buddha wordlessly shows me one of Mr. Bumblebee’s Facebook pics, with the caption, Killa? lol
I recognize the cardplayer in the photo. He’s a run-of-the-mill white guy wearing a tan hoodie, a UTC trucker cap, and a look of abject misery on his face that says, Do you see how much I’m suffering? He’s peering at the middle of the table, presumably deep in thought, surrounded by other stoic chipshuffling misregs.
The misreg looks like Dirk Nowitski.
The misreg is me.
“So random,” I say, glancing at Buddha. “I had no idea he knows who I am.”
“I don’t think he does. Just a coincidence I’m pretty sure.”
I take out my phone and within a minute find Mr. Bumblebee’s account—in his profile pic he's wearing the bee costume—scroll down to my pic, and read the comments. The consensus is that I’m not, in fact, a killa. Ew. No. Lol, someone replies. Someone else posts a pic of a redneck zombie. I take a moment to appreciate the unsolicited, unfiltered, unflatting image of myself that I've stumbled on, for the rest of the world to see. I’d like to be able to tell you that I’m always good for the game, that I treat others with respect and kindness, even when I’m losing, that I bring a breath of fresh air to whatever table I sit at. How nice that would be if it were true.
I scroll through some more photos and find some chip porn. There’s one of a fat stack at Harrahdise with the caption, At the office grinding it out. There’s one at the Beau of Mr. Bumblebee holding four cards high above the table so that a bewildered service dog in the next seat can take a look. There’s one of a fat stack of hundos, four 1K yellows, and a VIP room key, with the caption, crushing the Beau. Part of me wants to put him on blast, to post on his Facebook wall, hey brah, Harrahdise killa here, you know where a guy can score some blow?
“I’ll have to friend him,” I say, putting my phone away.
“Maybe don’t friend him,” Buddha says.
“C’mon,” I say. “Where will I get my coke?”
Lol'ed at running into poker players in the outside world.
I remember running into a long time reg (who I actually sat beside my last session out) about a decade ago, in a lineup with my wife at Tim Horton's. It's like, um, do I introduce this guy to my wife or is that weird? Like any other person I'd run into it obviously normal ("hey wife, this is Ken, he's on my hockey team!") but a guy I gambol with at the poker table seemed... odd. I remember it being an awkward couple of minutes.
I also
I was at a restaurant with my wife and kids when this reg came up to me and asked if I’m going back to Atlantic City this weekend. Got me in trouble. Don’t be that guy.
Damn misregs!
Go to karaoke songs?
Ghasonlykaraoke'doutofthecountryasmysingingisthatbadG
What a magnificent page and a half itt.
It's like he should write a book or something.
Are these book excerpts?
GcluelessingeneralnoobG
In other news, after yesterday's Super Bowl (which I didn't watch) and today's news (which are omnipresent), I can finally say that I do believe I would have a fair chance of recognizing Taylor Swift in a picture... And I did have the pleasure of talking to quite a few (Latino and Quebecois) friends about how the subject came up with a poster ITT (a couple of years ago...?) that he did not believe me that I would not recognize her ; we all had a good lol 🙄
Sorry for the derail Ben!
