The WSOP has been decided (spoiler alert if you’re timeshifting). Note that if you read the action in the first few paragraphs closely, what the reporter describes happening is actually impossible: you can’t eliminate someone if you are the one risking all of your chips unless you have identical stacks. Perhaps the term “cementing” gives the logic enough wiggle room to be technically true tho.

First prize was an off-peak $8.7 milli, second $5M and change. That doesn’t seem like enough of a percentage bump between first and second to me but I’m sure the winner isn’t complaining [Update: just checked my math on that -- it's actually totally fine. First "should" be about 60% of the pool of first + second. In this case it's about 61%].

A few years ago the Series, which starts in late May, decided to delay the final table of the main event until November — giving them time to hype the “November Nine” in the sporting press and to help with narrative tension during the editing of the footage from the Summer for ESPN (why watch the edited coverage if you’ve watched the play-by-play-per-view and already know who wins). It lets them show the final table “live” with a tape delay to mitigate information leakage to the game itself — but there is still a feedback loop.

So the tournament, which started in May, is over now and starts again in a couple of months.

Vegas went well.

When McLuhan writes that humans use technology to create the environment, that electrical technology in particular provides a medium whose content is a previous medium, and that the medium is itself the message, you’d think he grew up in Vegas instead of Western Canada.

Vegas exists because of technology, mostly electric light and air conditioning. As a city it contains multiple duplicates of other cities (some fictional): New York, Venice, Paris, Cairo, Rome, Camelot. It celebrates spectacle, is itself a spectacle, and there is only one message: money.

Vegas is so hyperreal and other-worldly that not only is technology environment, environment becomes technology: they pump oxygen into the gambling area to keep everyone happy, awake, and satiated (though it seems the oxygen bar fad has now passed). You don’t get tired or hungry in Vegas, not without outsized effort.

My occasional forays into the ultra-capitalist environment almost always end up philosophical. Last time a buddy and I walked down The Strip waving off the ubiquitous offers of “LIVE GIRLS DIRECT TO YOUR ROOM” and discussed L’Étranger and the relative benefits of a flight to Las Vegas versus a pair of skinny jeans (a purely academic point in my case).

This time another friend and I wondered at the sameness of utilitarian capitalism and Canada’s workaday socialism. Whereas socialists like public transportation so people can get to places where they’re economically useful, cheaply; the ultra-capitalist casinos offer complimentary transportation to get people to places where they’re more economically useful, cheaply. Indoctrination runs deep on both sides: no judgements.

I learned some new facets of my game of choice: table selection really IS that important, worth approx. 500x the big blind over a session, or about $100/hr in real terms; my comfortable game requires the maximum buy-in; and sometimes people give off weak tells when they miss the board and decide to hang on — bullying them based on their stink of fear, alone, isn’t enough (sometimes the big dog actually has to kill).

One thing Vegas should do, really my only critique, is legalize drugs. I’m too terrified of the prison-industrial complex to actually break the law down there, but I always find myself wanting something more than caffeine, cigars, and alcohol. I’m sure I could find it, but I’d rather not have to.

Via BB, it turns out that cannabis hyper-primes your brain [Narco Polo, see refs], making it easier to see distant connections.

Jill would be the first to jump in here: neuroscience doesn’t make subjective experience more real, it just makes it easier to write papers about because scientists prefer certain kinds of evidence.

What if “high thinking” didn’t make sense when you were sober because you had become too stupid to understand it? How’s that for a narrative shift? Plus, I can certainly imagine that a hyper-primed state would be more paranoiac — you’d be stretching towards connections that might not be there.

It would also explain why, anecdotally, several poker players I know find multi-level thinking (I know that you know that I know that you…) ridiculously simple on cannabis. My largest tournament wins have come when I was high, f’real.

No, not really. The US Government accused Full Tilt of being a ponzi scheme, it lost its gaming license, and now it’s been acquired by a man with a history of corruption and gambling-related fraud.

The poker community has a strange relationship with trust. Within the confines of the game all kinds of dishonesty is allowed and accepted. The rules of the game are simple, and players are expected to push them to their absolute limits. Perhaps a bit beyond: I know white players in Richmond who learned enough Mandarin and Cantonese to gain an advantage over Chinese players who racistly and illegally discussed their cards with each other at the table. Two wrongs sorta make a right there: cheaters get punished for stepping outside of the rules.

Perhaps because of the inherent untrustworthiness of the table, the community around the game is obsessed with honour. It polices trust with shunning. Rigged games are avoided, cheating players aren’t told of new games, deadbeats are never loaned money again. This is out of a desire to avoid escalation to actual violence (which is never very far away) and due to the underground nature of the economy: gambling being quasi-illegal it is often difficult or undesirable to involve the authorities in dispute resolution. Better to just chalk up small losses to “tuition” — an education about someone’s trustworthiness.

Which is why, if it isn’t obvious, an alleged ponzi scheme run by a convicted felon should set off some serious “fool me once” bells — no player can be faulted for avoiding it like poo-slinging AIDS monkeys.

Here’s their plan to get members back…

… which looks nothing like giant tournaments in actuality. Film is a lie, sure, but there are ways of making it look truthful — to allow it to help rebuild trust — this isn’t that. Also, putting the dollar sign at the end of a figure, while community-correct, looks exceedingly cheap for a multimillion dollar organization.

That said, maybe this all means the new Full Tilt will end up stuffed full of naive fish: easy pickings. But at the end of the action could you get the money out? I certainly wouldn’t keep a roll of any meaningful size on Full Tilt. In terms of overall risk exposure it just doesn’t make sense.

Via Coach Jimmy, it turns out that Full Tilt Poker might have been a giant international ponzi scheme. Tough to say for sure, but oh well — I lost nothing but expected value.

Here’s Andy Black in 2005 on a British poker talk show: part 1, part 2 (embedding was a no-go).

tlrw; The strategy book he mentions is The Diamond Cutter, which I imagine is based on The Diamond Cutter of Perfect Wisdom.

The Million Dollar Deal is a documentary that followed Black’s first attempt at the WSOP, where he met, befriended, and lost to Stu Ungar before giving up all of his worldly possessions and entering a Buddhist monastery.

Black says that Ungar used to look for something in his opponents to hate, and that was how he got the motivation to destroy them (and perhaps, in the end, himself — that much hate can’t be good for you). Black offers the buddha-dharma not-opposite approach: that it’s just a game (this is harder to believe than one might think).

Sometimes I feel very close to awakened mindfulness, and sometimes I feel very far away.

This morning, over waffles and wonderful coffee — from Lunenburg: The Laughing Whale; slightly fish-scented, the coffee, not the waffles — I was having some difficult feelings and I complained:

I don’t get what’s so great about being in the moment. I’ve been in the moment plenty of times: when I had a headache, a hangover. Have you ever had a breakup or a depression so bad that minutes passed like hours? It doesn’t feel good — it’s not like I was experiencing the moment, it’s more like I was trapped in it.

Jill:

Mindfulness isn’t about feeling good. Expecting it to be something in particular is another trap keeping us in saṃsāra. If you feel pain, sit with it and let it wash over you.

Last night I was watching the “live” coverage of this year’s World Series of Poker (and finished top 0.5% in a small tourney of my own). “Live”, in quotes, because not only is the coverage delayed a half-hour for gameplay reasons, but also because I’ve timeshifted the heck out of it. Anyway.

At one point one of the announcers made a comment that reminded me of the wheel of dharma. A player had just busted and Lon McEachern said:

And the great wheel of poker turns. Hello, welcome to the game, goodbye, thanks for playing.

This, in turn, reminded me of Amy Winehouse with echoes of Heath Ledger. I’ve been vaguely happy for her since I heard of her death, for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on — “fullness” — but anyway, suddenly I was quite sad at the turning of that wheel. It’s exacerbated by the media, but it seems like the death-moment is so fragile and temporary and permanent. One minute here, one gone forever, and the wheel rolls on.

But time is an illusion, another of those saṃsāric traps. I’m beginning to get a better handle on that, the existence of only one, knife-edge moment.

If you never paid attention to Winehouse grab her albums now. I did, they’re fantastic, she was worth the media attention, and her karmic contributions to The Great Mandala are percolating.

☸ Anyway, peace. Love you all. ☸

Really? Really? You can’t take a Coca-Cola from the casino to your room?

Customer service FAIL. Don’t stay here — they claim to have poker, but they mean that they have one empty table and no room manager.

Just awful.

First, basic strategy involves playing tight — try to start with three card badugis and improve. I like to look for three card hands where there is an obvious discard which will defacto improve you — it’s better to have As 2c 3d 7s than As 2s 3d 7h. In the first case your discard is the 7, and any heart you draw gives you a four-card (which you have a 21% chance of doing, or 50% if you stay in until the end).

Don’t draw if you need to drop two or more cards — fold at first chance.

Showing down three-cards, online, is a fool’s game. At best they are a backup plan — always try to show four card lows. Remember to stand pat and charge draws hard. People sticking around drawing only one card are dangerous if they’ve shown a propensity to show four card hands. Ideally you want them to make their hand, stand pat, and still lose to yours. Generally you want a 7-low or better, with rough eights* being reasonable.

This is all feel stuff, quick notes, no math

* A rough eight would be 5s 6d 7c 8h (you lose to any other 8-low badugi), a smooth eight would be As 2d 3c 8h (the nut eight-low).