I'm back

With respect to gambling of any kind, there are basically two diametrically opposed philosophies, which are respectively held by my wife and me:

Lisa - You can't lose any money if you don't gamble.

Me - You can't win any money if you don't gamble.

Seems like this would be the definition of an irreconcilable difference in a marriage, except that Lisa and I agree on one greater principle:

You should not gamble any more money than you can afford to lose.  Ever.

I first learned that principle playing Guts in college with my buddies.  A match the pot game, Guts tantalized you with potential riches, but the size of the pots often forced you to bet more than you had in your pocket.  Looking down at a pair of kings and at a giant pot, you were already spending the winnings on cases of expensive beer and Chicago-style pizza, and you would declare yourself "in" only to see the one hand you didn't want to see - the dreaded aces - forcing you to admit you were actually light and that you would have to put a humiliating IOU in the pot until you could go to the bank the next day to withdraw funds to settle your gambling debt (because they had not yet invented ATMs yet in those days), unless you didn't have any money in the bank, in which case you went into hiding for a while from your friends until you cashed your next pitiful paycheck from your gig as a columnist for the school newspaper.  

Fortunately, there were no leg breakers among my friends, just a lot of guys giving me the side-eye until the debt got paid.

I didn't do any serious gambling again until one long weekend in 1996 when I travelled to the Coushatta casino with my friends Gary and Keno to play some blackjack.  I took $200 with me and, in an epic run of good luck, turned that into $700.  Gary still remembers me in a blackjack trance, varying my bets, hitting big hands, losing the minimum on other hands.  As gamblers do, I immediately spent the winnings, bringing home a PlayStation 2 and the latest Madden game, convinced that this was just found money, not real, and that there was more money to be collected at the casino when I needed it, because I had a System.

The next year, I brought $400 and again rode the blackjack wave, making $1200.  My System abided.  After all, it's not really gambling if you never lose.

This led to my second life lesson.  

In 1999, my friend Jack Zimmermann asked me to speak at a three-day legal conference at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas.  At that time, I had not been to Vegas since driving through as a kid with my family on the way to California, too young to gamble, but old enough to goggle at the sights.  While we walked through downtown, my dad played some blackjack.  We didn't stay long.  I don't remember whether he won or lost, but he almost certainly didn't have much to bet, especially with my mother standing over his shoulder.

I was looking forward to testing my System in Vegas.  As I was packing for the conference, my four-year-old daughter Sarah watched me count out $700 from a bank envelope.  "Don't tell Mom," I said.  She ran out of the room.  Lisa came in with her and took $400 out of my wallet, along with my ATM card.  She smiled while she did it.

With my remaining $300 in cash, I arrived at the Monte Carlo on Sunday afternoon and went directly to the blackjack table, where I promptly lost $100.  My System did not abide.

I then played $1-2 hold 'em in the Monte Carlo poker room and lost $190 in about two hours.  It turns out that flushes beat straights in Las Vegas too. 

Because I needed my remaining $10 cash for the cab drive to the airport on Wednesday morning, I went to the cashier and asked for a cash advance on my American Express card.

"Your PIN, please," she asked.

PIN?  I didn't have a PIN.  So I retreated to my hotel room and called American Express, confident that if Karl Malden could get them to send him cash to escape bad guys in Asia like I'd seen in commercials my whole life, I could get them to wire me a measly $500 to give me another chance to validate my blackjack system.

"Your PIN, please," the operator asked.

"I don't have it," I said.

"That's not a problem," she said.  "We will mail a PIN to your home address.  It usually gets there in about two or three days."

It was a problem.  I couldn't ask Zimmerman for an advance on my speaker fee - too humiliating.  I couldn't ask my wife to wire me money - this was precisely why she cut my budget.  I didn't know any loan sharks or bookies or even how to meet one, as thrilling as that prospect sounded to me.

So it ended up being the exact opposite of the dream Vegas vacation.  I was alone in Las Vegas with $10 and a credit card for my meals for the next three days, teaching law in a conference room and doing no gambling at all.

I did not return to Las Vegas for fifteen years.

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In the 2010s, I started playing serious poker when my friend Bert told me about a poker game he regularly attended, playing with guys who had nicknames like Candy Man, Roncho, Helen, Sheriff and Floppy.  They played tournaments every other Tuesday along with every fifth Tuesday in a month, and kept stats, and had a big Christmas tournament every year where your starting stack of chips corresponded with your performance over the course of the year.  It seemed illicit and secretive and clubby and I desperately wanted to play too, but I didn't know anyone other than Bert in the game and he seemed reluctant to recommend me because, I guess, he wasn't sure whether he could bring a guest and he didn't want to screw up his fun.

Despite this, after each Tuesday, Bert would come to my office to discuss at length his performance in the game and the sequence of events that inevitably sent him packing.  We would dissect the play and I would drop another hint about playing that would go unacknowledged and then he would ask me, "What if I win?  Don't I have to declare that?  You know, on my taxes?"  I eventually began to suspect he was self-sabotaging because he was terrified about all the legal consequences of actually winning money in the game.

Then one day, Bert told me that I was in.  He gave me an address and told me to be there at 6:30.

When I got there, there were cars up and down the street, but no neon marquees, no criss-crossing searchlights, no tuxedos and champagne.  Just some guys playing cards in a house in Bellaire.  Three tables, about 25 guys, playing hold 'em.  Strict poker etiquette - no acting out of turn, no string bets, no pulling cards out of the muck - but a pleasant camaraderie between men who obviously knew each other well.

I don't remember much about that first tournament, except that I had the bad habit of overbetting my hands, whether good or bad.  "Why so much?" Roncho asked me when I pushed all of my chips into the middle for the fourth or fifth time.  I kept a poker face because I thought that was what you do and he laughed.  Eventually, my reckless betting caught up with me and I was out, early in the tournament.  But the host, Jimmy, was kind and invited me to come again.

So I did and have kept coming back.  The guys (and women) in the game are my dear friends now, and we have travelled many times together to Las Vegas and Durant and Louisiana to play poker and watch Carrot Top and Penn & Teller and eat hamburgers at French bistros and order expensive sushi while mind-bendingly drunk.

That game led to another game, which I will discuss another time, which led to this upcoming week, when I will be playing in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, a tournament with a rich history that costs $10,000 to enter.  

The idea that I am playing in a $10,000 tournament - $10,000 - is almost too absurd to believe.  For fun, I sometimes like to convert my poker bets into the real-life equivalent of the money to remind my opponents that the chips are not abstract tokens, but actually mean something.

"15 dollars to go.  That's a Wendy's double, a spicy chicken sandwich, fries and a Frosty," I will say.  

No one really wants to hear that because good poker players cannot care about the real money at stake.  They have to play their hand, even if it means that they might lose the equivalent of a hotel room at the Four Seasons with champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries for a weekend with their wife.  Caring about the actual money paralyzes your play - there is always time for regret later.

And if you are playing within your means, you don't mind losing because you're not gambling money you cannot afford to lose.

But $10,000.

$10,000.

I can't worry about losing it because you can't win if you're afraid to lose.

Fortunately, it's not really my money.  If I win next week, I share my winnings with the other people in the other game.  If I don't (or won't) play, my seat goes to the next person in line.  

And fortunately, I'm ready to play in this tournament.  I earned this seat by being consistently good enough in my other game.  My good play wasn't luck:  I've played six WSOP events for smaller amounts and cashed in four of them.

That means that in 66 percent of the events, I have finished in the top 15 percent, and I actually made the final table in one of them.

I can do this.

To prepare, I'm falling back on my touchstones from the other WSOP tournaments I've cashed in.  I will be wearing a new black suit and new black tie with a white shirt and Texas flag cufflinks.  I will have my lucky card protector.  

And I will, as I have done in years past, live-blog the game to keep my thoughts organized and to keep my imagination from getting too frisky as the hours slog on.  Boredom - and poker tournaments are really boring - leads to playing marginal hands, and playing marginal hands is what gets you bounced. Taking notes for the blog keeps me occupied in a good way.

This may be a short blog - I could lose all of my chips on the first hand.  I probably won't because I am a great poker player.  But I can't be afraid to push it into the middle if that's what I have to do.

And at least I won't have to write an IOU if I lose!