The Poker Project (playing and writing about poker in the U.S.)

How many Royals is that for you?

I stoopidly used up all my Royals before our room implemented its high hand promo. I hit my first Royal just 30 hours into tracking my poker results at a 2/4 Limit table. Wow, these things are easy to make. Didn't make another until 1000 hours later. To date, I've made 7... shipping 3 t-shirts, a ballcap, a coffee mug, a beer glass and a Canucks Jersey.

Haven't made any Royals during my rooms high hand promo, which is very annoying as the payout is often a few grand. I've actually only shipped one high hand in the ~2 years my room has had the promo. But I know of one reg who's actually got zero, so lol @ him, ldo. The daytime pro in our 1/3 NL game is sitting at just shy of 40.

GcluelesshighhandnoobG

Three that I can recall. The one that I just binked, one during the pandemic (in Nola, also hit a $500ish dollar promo), and then another years back where I got a Harrahdise windbreaker. Alas, I no longer have it and have no clue what I did with it.

I'm sure I've hit at least a few online, and maybe there have been others that I can't recall.

zero vs forty Royals just goes to show variance rearing its head. It feels to me like I'm running in the middle of the pack/slightly good when it comes to promos and Jackpots. Have hit a number of nice promos, got a nice table share once, but no huge binks.

by bob_124 m

Also just finished the most outrageous book I've read in a while, Tony Tulathimutte's linked short story collection

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/rejection-by-tony-tulathimutte-is-a-story-collection-about-people-who-just-cant-hang

The New Yorker

A Story Collection About People Who Just Can’t Hang

. It's been described as an "incel novel," which I suppose is fair, but it's also concerned with millenials and internet culture. Reminds of David Foster Wallace in certain ways, esp the loneliness and interioriority of some of the characters, but Tulathi... See full post

Added this one to my list. Hadn't heard of Tulathimutte before. I guess starting with Rejection is the way to go? I may not like it at all, but I'm curious.

Yeah, or better yet start here. This is the first story in the collection, apparently it's N+1's most read story ever, it'll give you a sense of his style (although the narrators are quite different across the whole book)

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-35/fiction-drama/the-feminist/

Just to clarify, the 0 vs 1 vs ~40 is with regards to high hand promos over the last two years (not Royals). From talking to others, my lifetime 7 Royal Flushes seems to be an absurd amount.

GrunninggoodateverythingIdoG

But who's Canucks jersey was it and was it during the Sedin era???

Speaking of which, I use to grind a lot and befriended Gino Odjick during the Oh-so-close/1-Game-away-from--the-Stanley-Cup Vancouver Canucks back at the Edgewater in downtown Van ; being the ignorant hockey fan that I am, I had no clue who Gino was - RIP bro ♥ - and how big of a fan favorite he had been during his carear ; it was only after a few weeks and multiple peeps asking me "so you know Gino Odjick?" that I started to clue in how important he had once been... 🙄

Just dropping in to share a gem of a story about this thread’s host.

Sometime last fall, my 83 year old mom said she had never been to NOLA. I said, “we can help you check that box,” so we expanded my annual plans to degen a bit over the opening weekend of the NCAAs, and took Moms to NOLA. Both survived, and Mom even got in some pit action for the first time.

But that’s not this story. This story is about sitting at a 1/3 table and being accused of being a local. I protested that, no, in fact, I was just here a lot, but nowhere near a local. I did eclipse 100 hours lifetime at Harrahdise this trip, so clearly not a local, but also … century achieved. The accuser came back with, “people know you, you talk to them, you’re a local.”

While this is happening, a dealer, who we’ll just call Dee, has a snippy exchange with another dealer as she approaches our table for the push. She’s in full scowl mode, and, in different costume, would not be out of place as a do-not-****-with-me church lady,

I shrug and say, “Yeah, I’ve played here a fair bit, and I think everyone likes a good friend of mine, and that somehow rubs off in how they see me.” Dee hears this as she slides into the box, and cuts me deep with side eye. Like, in danger of bleeding visibly from side eye.

“You think? Who’s your friend?”

“Bob_124.”

“Tall Bob_124?”

“Yeah.”

And her face just broke into this huge, warm smile. Like I swear I felt the temperature rise kind of warm. And she was still smiling two hands later.

For the life of me I can't remember the jersey number / name or if it even had one. I'm sure if it was #16 / Linden I would have considered keeping it. Otherwise it was definitely Sedins era. Wife and I went out to a softball fundraiser afterwards and I just ended up donating it to the cause.

So I'm guessing you played with Gino during the Canucks 2011 run? I heard he was into poker, and may have even played in my outlier room a handful of times, but I never got a chance to play with him. I'm pretty sure he was part of their '94 run (although I'm guessing he may not have gotten into the later round games).

My cousin and I did a road trip in the early 90s, and part of it was taking in a Canucks game in Anaheim (a huge earthquake actually hit after the game, it was an interesting drive home with all the blocked roads). Anyhoo, during quiet moments in the game we'd stand up and let out a "GINO!" at the top of our lungs, to the bewilderment of our neighbours. Gino was a huge fan favourite, as was his relationship with the budding Pavel Bure. RIP.

GcluelessGinoOdjickfanG

It was in 2009 or 2010, if I am not mistaken... Back when the Canucks were on the rise and yearly fringe contenders and that the poker room at the EdgeWater would be quite lively during each Canucks games with comments of "so this is how it feels like to be fan of a good team like Detroit did for a decade+" This was the year before I became a poker pro (in 2011) and I was out there grinding the 1-2 game nightly for at times 20h+ and so was Gino, grinding away at the lowly 1-2 games and oftentimes pulling all-nighters. He was retired at this point and the owner of a golf course. Because we were the only 2 French speakers of the regs at the EdgeWater (he was born in Oka, native land an hour away from my home town in Quebec), we befriended instantly and would always chat-it-up.

Gotcha. Seven is indeed impressive! I'd like to say I'm nipping at your heels, but I don't like my chances of catching you...

Congrats on hitting 100 hours! I'll talk to Dee and see if we can't do some finagling to get you semi-local status.

Seeing you and your Moms degen at roulette was one of the trip's highlights 😀 #Harrahdise #memories #gratitude

The Best Fest

the excitement
the river
the memories
of fortunes won and lost with the roll
of the dice
—D

It’s a perfect Saturday morning, seventy and clear, and the streets are humming with beshaded festers wearing every type of hat, visors and fedoras and bowlers and truckers and derbys and buckets and panamas and boaters and boonies and porkpies, even the occasional sombrero and cowboy hat, anything usefully sun-protecting, although you can still spot plenty of sunburned noses and necks. As I’m locking up my bike a guy in flip flops and a tank top strolls by with two Bloody Marys to the neutral ground, where dozens of festers on camp chairs are listening to a five-piece blues band perform on the Esplanade in the Shade stage outside the U.S. Old Mint. Hands are clapping and feet are tapping and heads are nodding and hips are swaying and booties are shaking. Of all the music festivals that grace this city—twenty? thirty? fifty?—French Quarter Fest is my favorite. True, I never got to see it in its heyday, when everything was better and cheaper, but even so it's free and free-flowing, the Quarter turns into one big party, I'm very much here for it.

For a while I stand in the shade, admiring a trombone solo, then I head to the other side of the Mint, where on a second stage a nine-piece brass band is playing a jazzy rendition of “Stand By Me.” Festers are spilling from the sidewalk to the street, streaming into and out of Cafe Envie. A few blocks down Decatur, Jude Acers is manning his chess board, sitting across from a little boy with a backwards cap and turquoise face paint. A smile is on the little boy’s face, and Jude’s smiling too beneath his bright red beret. Behind them, inside the Market Cafe, a raspy-voiced guitarist is playing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

No matter where you walk, the music follows you everywhere, or maybe you follow the music. At the French Market International Stage, slow soulful singing in time to the tap of tribal tamborines

killin ourselves with pollution…because it costs money, aint got no solution…
the sky is falling, is falling…

At the French Market Traditional Jazz Stage, couples are swing dancing to “It’s a Wonderful World.” In Jackson Square, an eight-piece band is getting ready to go, sound guys are doing mic checks on the stage, flutists and keyboardists are fiddling with their instruments. On Royal, a street performer flaunts baby-blue boots that match her cowboy hat, singing along with her bandmate on the electric guitar. Couples are two-stepping in the street, bubbles are floating down from balconies festooned with flowers, I'm wearing my shades and a tan Northface hoodie with the hood up, feeling the warm bright sun on my back and my bare legs, the heat feels good. Near the Crimestoppers Court House Stage, a woman's holding a frilly white umbrella that looks like a doily. I keep walking and make a left onto Canal. There's no music here. On the pedestrian walkway outside the casino, a bald white guy is speaking into a megaphone about how Christ Jesus saved him simply because he believes the Gospel. I walk past him, noting the look of intense fervor on his bearded face, up the steps to Harrahdise.

There aren’t any impressively behatted festers inside the cardroom, it’s all ballcaps in here, myself included. Three $1/$3s are going, I’m sent to a fresh fourth game on Table 3 and take the 3 Seat, on the Human Solver’s direct right; although the table max is $300 for fresh games, he sits with $600. The very first hand, after a bunch of limps, I limp behind with a sooted connector, the Human Solver makes it $20, we all call, I end up binking a straight on a flush-completing river and the guy on my right, an LA Dodgers fan, bets $50 into $200, I consider raising but just call, he shows the nut flush. “I was chasing,” he says.

“Me too,” I say, and we share a laugh.

Next hand I bump it up with King-Ten of spades over a limp, get one caller from the small blind, c-bet an Ace-high flop and win a small one. Dealer Hugh pushes me a small pile of reds and one white chip, which I place atop my facedown cards and slide over for his tip.

A white woman in her sixties takes the last open seat on my right. She’s got cottony white hair, glasses, and gold fleur-de-lis earrings. Noticing her green sundress, I ask if she’s been festing. She shakes her head, tells me she’s visiting from Houston. "I used to live here years ago. From the seventies all the way till 2006."

On Dealer Hugh’s last hand, the Seat 10 gets stacked, taps the table, and walks away. “All right y’all, that’s my time, good luck good luck,” Hugh says as he gets up.

Dealer Barry, a pleasant Nola native in his fifties, adjusts the dealer's chair, does some chip-accounting, glances at Seat 10, asks if anybody heard if he's coming back. “I remember you,” the Houstonian tells him.

Larry looks confused, but then he laughs and says, “Took me a minute, but I remember you. I’m terrible with names, but I never forget a face.”

“Life before Hurricane Katrina, and life after Hurricane Katrina,” the Houstonian says, smiling.

A few minutes later, after losing a pot, she reloads back to $300 and switches into Seat 10. She gets into another pot with Seat 6, an old Black guy who’s playing bad but running well. They’re betting and raising, the pot swells, on the turn she pushes in a stack of reds. Her opponent stares at the two Jacks on the board, slides in a red stack, and as Barry’s dealing a river says, “I said all-in.”

“You said all-in?” The 6 Seat nods. “I didn’t hear you,” Barry says apologetically. He asks the 7 Seat, who confirms that Six said “all in,” but no one else heard. Barry apologizes again, explaining that he needs at least two people to confirm a verbal action if he doesn't hear it. The guy shrugs, Floorman Binh comes over and upholds Barry’s ruling, Barry reshuffles the false river card back into the deck and deals another. Seat Six shoves for another hundred, the Houstonian folds and reloads for another two.

I fold for two orbits, raise pockets Threes from early position, two players call, flop Ace-Queen-Ten, check-fold.

Facing a $100 river bet from Seat 5, The Human Solver takes out a red die—“Even I call, tails I fold.” He rolls a six, calls, loses, reloads with a purple and some blacks, and continues watching Fox Business on his jumbo smartphone.

I raise Ace-Ten of clubs, whiff. I raise pocket Jacks, whiff. Soon enough I’m ready to gambol again, so I rack up (1:35, -$150). It’s a little warmer now in the mid-afternoon sun. Outside the Acquarium I pass a sunhatted man holding a big white sign that reads

Knowing Therefore the
TERROR OF THE LORD
We Persuade Men
2 CORINTHIANS 5:11

By the river, a reggae band’s playing on the Abita Beer Stage. The lawn and the walkways are littered with festers, vendors are wheeling around huge coolers filled with beer and water, lines for the food and drink tents are thirty and forty deep. You can buy every sort of snack, there’s barbeque shrimp poboys, Pina Colada Jungle Juice ($20 for a car mug, five bucks for an extra shot), Creole cream cheesecake, tomato and crab salad, fried chicken, Jamaican patties, sweet plantains, alligator sausage kebob, redfish cake poboys, crawfish bread, fried shrimp remoulade salad, double chocolate bread pudding, penne pasta with Cajun cream sauce, banana fosters, bloody Marys, seafood pasta, World’s Best Meat Pies, fried chicken and french toast bites, boudin egg rolls, honey glazed wings, spicy butter Gulf shrimp, Creole jerk chicken sausage poboys, multiflavored snowballs, crab cake sliders, crawfish salad rolls, corn and crab bisque, candied pecans, blackberry sorbet, shrimp, crab, and lobster bisque, Creole Cubans, rabbit jambalaya, chicken and andouille gumbo, shrimp and grits, roasted duck poboys, banh mi, crab rangoons, shrimp beignets, oyster patties, shrimp ravigote.

And Abita. Lots of Abita.

It takes me fifteen minutes to reach the Tropical Isle Hand Grenade stage, where a ten-piece band is playing “Rollin’ on the River” in front of the Steamboat Natchez. By now I’m wanting to get away from the crowds—which is impossible—but it’s less congested on the other side of Jackson Square, so I head up to Royal and walk towards my bike. On one of the stages Washboard Chaz is crooning along with a guy playing a mean harmonica.

The old folks got it, the young folks got it
I took you downtown, bought you a diamond ring

Someone on the street catches my eye. A burly Black guy in a UA zipup and Champion sweatpants is sitting behind an old green typewriter and a sign:

WORDSMITH
Prose/Poetry
Smithing
on
the
spot

On a whim, I stop and request a poem—about gambling and New Orleans, naturally.

“Gambling and New Orleans?” he asks, shifting in his camping chair. He's balding, in his forties or fifties, with a black goatee. On his right, in front of a rickety dolly, about a dozen books are stacked atop a black crate.

“I feel like it’s a very broad theme,” I say, “so you can do whatever you want with it.”

“You know, that’s interesting for me to think about,” the wordsmith says. He has a pleasant, unhurried demeanor. “I have family members who came here in the eighties, when there was riverboat gambling. And you know, all that had a certain feel. We sometimes forget that New Orleans was the first Wild Wild West. There wasn’t California. The outskirts of the country was New Orleans."

For a few minutes we chat about Vegas, NYC, sports gambling. Then he takes out the kind of looseleaf notebook that you see middle-schoolers use, tears out a page, and feeds it into the typewriter. As he's tapping away the typewriter eases to the left, he gently pushes it back to the right, keeps tapping, pushes it to the right, keeps tapping. As he’s working on the poem I note his books. The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Warhol and Basquiat. Life Among the Surrealists. Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art.

It takes the wordsmith fifteen minutes to finish. It's a good, sad poem. I thank him, slip him a twenty, we shake hands. “I go by D,” he says, reaching for a black pen. “I’ll sign it for you.”

Pina Colada jungle juice, limp-calling with a suited-connector and a poem all cost the same in Nola: $20. It's likely that all are smart investments even though I'm yet to read the poem or taste the juice.

but you have limp-called with a sooted connector?

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Was assuming you limped rather than rfeyed 4x to save $9, which you could then use to buy 45% of a poem on Frenchman street later that afternoon. A 45% stake in a poem is better than no poem at all, right? Your decision to limp was therefore artistically justifiable and could be considered plus EV (albeit in a non-Human-Solver world).

GOAT reply ♥

the Doctor is IN!

April Recap

Fantastic month, weather-wise, and no complaints overall. Took a short trip to Pensacola and spent most of the month in writing jail, which hasn't been terrible. Fortunately my warden is a reasonable guy.

It occurred to me at some point that, excluding the peak pandemic years, I'm on pace to log incredibly low poker volume this year. In an effort to shift my output from atrocious to merely bad, I've decided to do a May mini-challenge

Bob's May Mini-Challenge
[0/50]

Unlikely I'll reach fifty hours for the month, but I should easily match what I've logged so far.

TV-wise, this month has been a bounty of NBA playoffs and Andor S2. Maybe the HCL Million Dollar Game will unlock a trifecta.

Hope everyone's grinds are going well, both on and off the felt!

Finally, some good AYCE Sooshi

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Slouching Towards Keegan Completism

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Never Forget (#Harrahdise4Eva)

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Jealous Fluffball

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Back in the Saddle @Sneaky Tiki

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Saw the cinematic adaptation (e.g. film) of Small Things Like These the other night. Faithful to the original and well-paced. I still regard the text as a moral tale, which is a major tick in my mind (i.e. ain't easy to do well if you're not being folkloric or religious).

Alas, I was unimpressed with the film, maybe because I hold the book in such high regard. Felt like they botched the flashback scenes involving his mom's death and the mystery of his dad's identity, and the tone was was too self-serious to me, esp. Bill's character. There's more snappiness, even impishness at times, in the book (in his convo with the head nun, for example).

In other Keegan news, I finally picked up her final short story collection So Late in the Day, a slim volume containing three short stories, and quickly discovered that I've read not one, not two,

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but all three stories, which were published in previous collections or independently. Drat!

Fair enough. It's tough to gauge the effectiveness of the flashback scenes having read the book: I doubt the dad's identity, for instance, would've been clear to a non-reader. I hold a low-bar in respect of adaptations because of the obvious time constraints in film. Bill was tending to "self-seriousness" in the book I thought; maybe "preoccupied" by the unjustified shame of his past is more precise. Overall the tone certainly was dark and serious, bleak, even, but it was set during Christmas, so what else can you do?

I have not read the book nor seen the movie, but it made me think of what were the best movie adaptations based on books and this list seemed compelling (minus The Wizard of Oz that was unexplainably absent and arguably deserves the #1 spot) :

https://www.shortlist.com/lists/40-best-film-adaptations

Shortlist

The 53 best book-to-film adaptations ever, ranked

dark and serious, for sure, but offset by brief moments of levity and quippy humor. Would have liked to have seen some of that in the film. In any case, I thought it was a decent movie, 6/10 or so.

I suppose I can declare myself a Keegan completist! Low difficulty level for sure given her slim output. Next up, Stephen King?

by Dubnjoy000 m

I have not read the book nor seen the movie, but it made me think of what were the best movie adaptations based on books and this list seemed compelling (minus The Wizard of Oz that was unexplainably absent and arguably deserves the #1 spot) :

https://www.shortlist.com/lists/40-best-film-adaptations

Shortlist

The 53 best book-to-film adaptations ever, ranked

nice list Dubn! Two films that for my money are better than the book: No Country for Old Men and Shawshank.

I'd like to see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on this list. Wizard of Oz needs to be on there too, for sure.

One of my favorite Stephen King stories is coming to theaters soon, The Long Walk. Hopefully we can add that one to the list as well. I don't think the movie can hold up to the book though. So much of it is internal dialogue.

Wondering how the Wizard of Oz reads. Does it belong to the category of so-so book/masterpiece film (e.g. Godfather)? One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is my pick, having just read the Kesey novel; admire his knotty prose and the fact that he wrote the opening while on peyote. I've a soft spot for To Kill a Mockingbird (and admiration for what Apocalypse Now did to Heart of Darkness). Doctor Zhivago gets a vote, too, for matching the scope of the novel. The Conformist (Bertolucci/Moravia) should be high on that list.