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

Draftkings update (I piss excellence)

rest assured, fellow gambolers, as we traverse deeper into the NBA playoffs, that I continue to book only the plussest EV sports bets.

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Glad to hear you'll be able to refill your water bottle so well.

by bob_124 m

Draftkings update (I piss excellence)

rest assured, fellow gambolers, as we traverse deeper into the NBA playoffs, that I continue to book only the plussest EV sports bets.

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Congrats on the the 5x parlay

As for myself, I will find myself with the option to hedge quite profitably after this game, but might just hedge a little, depending on the line laid for Minnesota for the series... What would Ben do with a 13k bet on SA : ride it to max profit (4.3k), hedge it completely (probably guaranteeing a 2.5k+ profit as opposed to 4.3k) or hedging it partially for like 8k Minnesota, thus netting a 3.2k profit if SA wins...??? I ask you, because you were the one that foresaw Toronto not only defeating Milwaukee in 2019, but Golden State as well

Live updates incoming

Thanks for the good wishes dubn 😀 more bad decisions rewarded!

As for your bet, I'd probably just ride or die with it. Hard to imagine a spurs collapse, although of course [insert Kevin Garnett meme] anything's possible.

Giddyup!

What Kind of Game Are You Playing? (Part 1)

“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” — Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper

I grew up around games. Physical or mental, indoors or out, by myself or with others—I loved them all. I lived on a street that was one mile up a steep winding road, the kind of rustic nook where houses were separated by half-acres of lush woods. There was plenty of time and space for hide-and-seek and snowball fights and backyard football with my best friends—three boys my age—and their older brothers.

At home, I usually played with my younger brother. There were bedroom sheet-forts, Lincoln Logs, army men, matchbox cars, and wooden blocks, but our crown jewels were Legos of the medieval variety. Over the years, after enough beedays and Christmases, we accumulated enough pieces to construct a pirate ship and half a dozen castles, which we outfitted with hundreds of sword- and bow-slinging knights and Robin Hood men. Then the storytelling would begin.

As I got a little older, video and computer games took center stage. There’s a photo of me from my eighth or ninth beeday, holding an unopened Nintendo Entertainment System over my head, my bright blue eyes jamboreeing with glee. My brother and I loved to play so much that, as a way of instituting some gaming guardrails, my parents doled out Nintendo Time: thirty minutes per day during the week, one hour per day on weekends. On the best days, snow days, Nintendo Time was unlimited.

I have a clear memory of the first time I played the classic turn-based strategy game Civilization. On Tuesday nights my mom drove me to church for Christian Service Brigade, a sort of religious boy scouts where we learned how to tie knots and memorized Bible verses and played basketball. At the end of one Tuesday night, my buddy Tony told me that he wanted to show me something. We crept upstairs to a dark empty classroom, and he flicked on an old PC and loaded up Civ. After we were prompted to pick our tribe—we called ourselves the Toniben—we were transported back to 4,000 B.C, with only a lone prairie wagon that was surrounded by darkness.

Who could say what dangers and what bounty lurked within all that darkness?

We built a city and a few militia to explore, and we even came into contact with a rival civilization, the Germans, who begrudgingly accepted our offer of peace. But just when things were getting interesting—we planned to sack the Germans with a band of horsemen when they least expected it—somebody downstairs yelled that my mom was here. It was time to go.

It wasn’t until a few years later, in high school, when I really got into Civ. By then my Dad had replaced an old Apple IIe with an IBM desktop that could handle Civ 2, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and even a few real-time action games like Command and Conquer. Despite being a little older, there was the usual push-and-pull over our access to games. Depending on his mood, my dad would lock the door to his study before leaving for work, depriving us of our beloved Civ during the week. Naturally, I schemed a workaround. At night, when everyone was upstairs watching the evening news, I slinked down to the study and unlocked its small ground-floor window. The next afternoon, after the bus dropped me off, I scooched behind some bushes, opened the window, and shimmied carefully inside to enjoy an hour or two of uninterrupted gaming bliss.

I got caught, of course. Maybe I tracked some dirt onto my dad’s desk or my brother spilled the beans, I don’t know, but this is the moment, looking back, that proved that I really was a gaming fiend. Banished to the world of the Super NES, I specialized in Mario Kart, Street Fighter II, and The Secret of Mana.Playing Mana, especially, might have been the first time where I became conscious of just how much time I was spending—my parents might have said wasting—on "unnecessary obstacles" that, when completed, gave me a tiny shiver of satisfaction. When South Park’s infamous World of Warcraft episode came out, I nodded knowingly. If things had gone a little differently—if I hadn't pivoted at some point from video games to sports—that could have been me in one of those chairs, slouching beside Kenny and Cartman, my entire existence reduced to slaying scores of wild boars.

Steve Kerr knows his TayTay

Any Warrior/Bulls/beeball fans might appreciate Wright Thompson's (possibly tldr) ESPN profile of Steve Kerr. One especially juicy tidbit didn't fail to escape this reader's attention:

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With scores of Swifties on the job, I have little doubt that Steve's "All Too Well" press conference montage is imminent. Will happily do the Lord's work and keep everything updated itt

My stepdaughters are big Swifties, so that kinda got my wife into her too, and they all went to the big show last year when she came thru town (actually profiting on it due to getting lucky enough to get multiple extra tickets and reselling at *insane* prices). She makes up a huge percentage of my wife's car playlist. NFL / Chiefs viewership in the household went from 0% to 100%, lol. Wife actually dragged me out to a much earlier show of hers when she was touring with Ed Sheeran (for me, she came across as insufferably calculated and coy, with Sheeran being refreshing sincere and wide eyed fun, although quite early days). No songs on the iPod for me, just really doesn't do anything for me.

GcluelessculturalphenomnoobG

I've been listening to her a lot less lately, in part because I thought her last album was a dud. But I imagine I'll rejoin Swiftie Nation when the time is right.

ez money!

Sweet Relief

Steve the Cop’s in Seat 3, sitting on a little over a gee. Behind his two stacks of red and two stacks of green is a pint glass holding an ice-filled plastic bag. Between hands he leans back in his seat, eyes closed, meditating on who knows what. For twenty minutes I watch the untouched ice melt. Finally he takes the ice bag and presses it against his sweaty brown forehead. So cold, such sweet relief.

Bob's Spring Minichallenge
[39/150]

All I Do is Print Money

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by bob_124 m

All I Do is Print Money

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Hummm, that 3 pt buzzer beater at the end of the 1st quarter that extended the lead to 9 might be a bad omen for the Pistons...

Plenty of time 😀

Very optimistic! Cavs -550 now in 2nd with 18 pts lead!

Deuces Wild

“How many deuces are in this deck?” Gandalf asks. He’s sitting on my left with his craggy nose and bushy white hair and beard, wearing a snazzy checked gray dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up his hairy forearms.

“There’s forty,” Mr. Roy says from the 2 Seat. Another southern oldster, polite and charming, always in the room. “If deuces were wild, we’d own this casino.” Roy and Gandalf swap commiserating smiles. A few minutes later, when the 1 Seat leaves, Roy moves over. “I’m a sit next to Shenia, so when I get a bad hand I can hit her.” She smiles sweetly at him and pitches us another hand.

Saturday afternoon, I’m in a $1/$3 right behind the registration podium. It’s day 3 of the WSOP Circuit Event, and I can’t help but compare it to the pre-pandemic days when there was action, action, action in both the main cardroom and the big ballroom. Now we can barely get a $2/$5 going, not that I’d play.

“Beverages, cocktails, water, drinks,” Server Terry croons.

“PLO, let’s go, where’s my brush?” Supervisor Roy says from the podium. The PA clicks on, and Chip Runner Lajuana announces Table 12 for $5/$5 PLO, that’s table Twelve, Mr. Clean and Mihail and all the others make their way over .

“Who hit the nines last night?" Roy asks. I look up at one of the flatscreens showing the current promotion: 396 bucks for hitting quads, with the caveat being that you need to be dealt a pocket pair. I shrug. Gandalf reaches into the pocket of his blue jeans and takes out a gold pocket watch, I tell him that’s something you don’t see every day. “I got 3:20, is that correct?” I tell him that it is. “This is my grandfather’s watch,” he says.

One hand, two hands, three hands, four. “Five hands, and I never saw a picture card,” Gandalf says. He takes a sip of coffee, scratches his nose, waits for another, checks his cards, tosses them, says soberly, “I got two of the same suit that time.”

Short stroll to the casino for a piss, wash my hands, fill my water bottle with water from the water fountain and take a picture for posterity (has anyone ever taken a picture of this fountain? Surely not)

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A few minutes after I get back to my seat the guy on my right, a friendly veteran who’s visiting from Chicago, pops open a to-go box of chicken wings and Dealer Darlene shuts him down. No eating in the cardroom. Story time, it turns out. Back in the day at Magic Casino in Bay St. Louis, Gandalf tells us, every seat had a tray affixed beneath the cardtable, so whenever you were having a bite you just swiveled out your traytable and presto, easy game. “People were pretty decent because they’d wipe their fingers off. I went over to Boomtown one time, they were eating greasy fried chicken—you should have seen the chips. The cards were sticking together.”

“That’s why they stopped it here,” Roy says.

Gandalf chuckles to himself. “The other day, they got chewing gum on the table. Right over there.” He nods behind him.

“It’s like elementary school,” I say. “You look under the desks, they’re caked with gum.”

Bob's Spring Minichallenge
[42/150]

I believe Duchamp got there first, although I'm not sure if this is intended as art for the savy or evidence for the defence.

whether or not "Doosh" snapped a pic, I'm sure he would have been impressed by the new Harrahdise aesthetic

Captain Penis on Back

An another extreme rec table, not too many hands to speak of, only three $1/$3s going on a Monday night. Grim and pleasant at the same time.

I’m wondering if I’ll last another hour to the Spurs-Thunder tipoff when Captain P.O.B. shuffles in. Hang around long enough and you’re sure to see him at one of the Circuit Events, burnishing his niche poker-celebrity status in one of his infamous vintage jackets. Today he’s wearing a red Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame windbreaker, a black money belt slung around red gym shorts, sagging white ankle socks, and gray slippers. For a moment I hope he’s sent over here so I can marvel at how well he’s perfected his resting predatory face, cultivated from decades of spending most of his waking hours in casino cardrooms, but then I come to my senses. I’ve played with him before. I’m sure I’d spend most of our table time resisting the urge to ask if the name Brandi Hawbaker rings a bell.

A smidge of rungood: Captain P.O.B. installs himself in a nearby 1 Seat, looking disdainfully over his black-rimmed classes like some debauched English professor, his white goatee drooping into a perpetual frown.

“Ace-King of hearts,” our one Seat tells us as he racks up. That’s the hand that he folded once, because everyone knows it’s bad luck to play out of a rack. Queen, Jack, Ten of hearts, right away: he would have flopped a royal. He shakes his hand and sighs. “Man, I still think about that at night.”

Replacing the almost-royal-flush-flopper is a chatty soccer fan. Ace-Ten off, good enough, raisy daisy. I’m called by the button and the soccer fan, who’s asking Dealer Jackie, one of the true OGs, where she got started. “Star Casino,” she says as she spreads a King-Ten all-spade flop.

We wait expectantly. "It was a small casino," she continues.

“We distracted you. I’m sorry. You only pulled two off,” the soccer fan says. There’s some hooting and apologizing and then, after telling us she’s not good at multitasking, Jackie gives us a third card—the four of hearts. The button and the soccer fan end up playing a big one, and I tap the table as the soccer fan scoops. It’s something I do every now and then, lightly rapping the baize once, then twice: nice hand, in the parlance of poker, or take care if someone’s leaving. One of the few gestures of generosity available to us.

At the top of the hour Jay’s waiting behind Jackie, tip box in hand. “I wasn’t giving you a warning,” he tells her with a grin. “I was giving the table hope.”

“I got two words for you, and it ain’t Happy Birthday,” Jackie replies. “Figure it out!”

Bob's Spring Minichallenge
[42/150]

All I Do is Break Even

Two absolutely bonkers NBA playoff games to start the series. Instant classic between the Spurs-OKC, with Wembee inspiring awe among the common folk.

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ship it

Last night, meanwhile, I did what I suspect many others did a few minutes into the fourth quarter of the Knicks-Cavs: turned the game off and chuckled to all the lolKnicks fans out there who were already debating how their scrappy team might upset whoever they faced in the Finals. Imagine my surprise an hour or so later when I learned about their 22-point comeback OT win.

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horseshoes and hand grenades

despite my best efforts to incinerate marknfw's future account balance, we're still plenty healthy. Good luck to us tonight!

Lol, how did Captain Penis on Back get his nickname?

GI'minstantlyregrettingthisquestionG

the answer is in the poast. I'll wait to see if any poker history sleuths chime in before taking you into the darkness.

Ah, I did a little sleuthing, now I get it. It's amazing what you can find via Google with simply a name and the phrase "penis on back".

GcluelesssadstorynoobG

No shyt! and I thought the first round of the playoffs was already completely bonkers (and to a lesser extent the 2nd round)!!! Now imagine if you had parlayed a 40-20 along with a Spurs win... 😮:shocked:😉

Yup, and I gave up in the 3rd quarter despite having a significant bet on the game (Knicks) and a sizeable one on the series (also Knicks), only to jump back into the game with 3 minutes left in Overtime 🙄

Your post also made me google his name and even Hendonmob him!!!