Sorry. Been Busy

Would love to post long and interesting updates, but I haven't been home much lately, and I'm on my way out the door again.

I'll catch up on emails and such maybe on Sunday.

Peace.

Mikey

The Wednesday Morning Quickie

Well, I'm glad I got all that extra sleep before my shift late on Tuesday night, but I sure didn't need it.

As soon as I got to the casino, just about the time I stepped onto the elevator from the parking garage, my phone was ringing. Yep, it was the floorman in the poker room. He'd intended on telling me to stay home, but since I was about 45 seconds away, I wandered in anyways. There was a four-handed game going with two very short stacks, so it didn't look like it was gonna go very long. I stuck around, just because a couple of my gals were in the game, and the other dealer said he'd go home and let me have whatever scraps I could scrounge from the table. I dealt two hands before the big stack broke the other two players and that was that. I don't think the other dealer had hit the exit before the game broke, so I made a whopping $2 in tips for the night. Woot!

The floorman and I hurried to close the room and count down all the banks and whatnot, so I was clocked in for a half-hour. Wide awake, with two bucks burning a hole in my pocket, I suggested that we roll over to Sierra Gold and have a beer.

Good thing we did, because as soon as we ordered our first round, I put ten bucks in a 10-cent triple-play machine and was dealt four nines--On the very first hand! Bam! Cash me out for $120. Drinks are on Mikey!

So that sure beat the hell out of working all night...

We hung out for an hour or so, ordered a pizza (half price in the middle of the night), and had a couple of beers. Not a bad way to spend the evening. But I'm home now, and wide awake, so I'll probably stay up for a few hours plowing through the stuff on the DVR and maybe doing a few chores I've neglected these past several days. Other than that, I don't have a damn thing to report.

Mikey out.

A Case of the Tuesdays

It's about four in the afternoon, but I'll be going back to bed soon--I'm tired again. I pretty much paid off my sleep deficit on Monday, but I'm back in the red again today.

I worked last night, and got locked down for the whole shift, which is always nice. But man, as much as I like it, when I'm done, I'm fried. I probably work just as many downs in a five-hour graveyard shift that most full-timers work during the day or on swing shift, because I don't get any breaks. But I'm not complaining--I'd *much* rather be locked down for my entire shift. I don't make any money when I'm on break.

Anyhow, once the game broke and I cashed out, I hung out for a bit having a beer with one of my buddies and the cocktail waitress. I thought about having a second round, but I was just too tired and I had to go do some shopping. I was just about out of hazelnut coffee creamer (and coconut too!) so I needed to head over to Walmart and pick up a few groceries. Brothaman's gotta have his coffee.

Once that chore was done, I came home, made some breakfast, read all the email that's been piling up, and puttered around for a bit. My plan was to stay awake for a couple of hours and then get down to the DMV right as they opened the doors. My tags expired on the 31st, and the busybodies at my apartment complex put one of those impossible-to-remove VIOLATION stickers on my window the night before. I was going down to take care of it this week anyways, so I was pretty pissed about it, because there is a piece-of-shiat truck out in front of the building next to me that hasn't moved in six months, but it's never been towed.

Anyhow, the road to hell and all that, my good intentions were for naught, and I fell asleep. No lining up outside of the DMV first thing in the morning like all the go-getters in their lawn chairs looking like they're trying to score Aerosmith tickets or something.

The only reason I woke up was because my phone was ringing--it was my boss. Not the poker room with it's specific ringtone, but the boss's office. That's never a good sign. The last time that happened, the whole place was in Defcon-2 because I'd wandered off with the keys to all the cash drawers in my pocket. So I figured there was trouble brewin'.

Turns out, my moment of panic was just a jump to conclusions (but honestly, I couldn't think of anything I've done lately to get in trouble), as my boss had an offer for me. No, not a full-time gig--they needed some extra bodies to deal the Main Event of the Heartland Poker Tour this weekend up at Red Rock, so she wanted to know if I'd be willing to do it. Once I found out that it paid more than twice as much as that free-roll I did last weekend, I gladly volunteered. Besides, tournaments are easy money--no rake, no buying and selling of chips when players go broke, and none of that You-gotta-show-yours-first bullshiat that is so prevalent in cash games. Players can't ask for seat changes, new setups, or any of the other little things that slow the game down, so tournaments are actually a nice break.

Once I got off the phone, I realized that I had to get my ass moving. I took a quick shower and got dressed, then headed off towards the DMV. The first thing I did was to take a bottle of Windex and a copper scrubbie to that sticker on my window. It came off with minimal consternation, but still, I was telling myself that if I find the dude who did it, I'm gonna toss a burning tire through his front window. Seriously, there's no need for that shiat. It's not like I was parked illegally or in somebody's spot or had an abandoned vehicle. But the wax-on, wax-off process of scrubbing the sticker off the window made me deal with my anger issues, and I decided against the burning tire. Instead, I decided that I'd rather just get a bunch of my own violation stickers made and cover the dude's windshield, see how he likes it.

Serenity now--I has it!

I almost forgot to get a smog check, but there's a gas station right across the street that does it for twenty bucks. My truck is still so 'new' and with so few miles on it (still less than 24,000) that they didn't even do the 'anal probe' to it. They just plugged in the computer under the dash, let it run for about a minute, and then gave me the printout that said I passed. It couldn't have been easier.

Over at the DMV, however, it was a little more involved. I stood in line for 20 minutes just to get the proper forms to fill out and then get my official line number. I got G-322, and at the time, they were calling out G-235, plus all of the A, B, C, D, E, F, H, and I-numbers, too. It didn't look good. So I found me a seat amongst the huddled masses, filled out my paperwork and hunkered down for the long haul. Instantly I regretted not bringing one of my books with me or even my iPod. I just had to sit there and people watch for a couple of hours, but I guess when you think about it, that has an appeal all it's own.

Finally after more than two hours, they called my number. Now, I have to hand it to the Nevada DMV--all of their employees are friendly and helpful, which is amazing compared to every other state I've ever been to. But I wish that they were just a tad less friendly and worked a little quicker. I had the chattiest clerk in the whole joint, which was ok up to a certain point, but I wanted him to multi-task and type while he talked.

Anyhow, I barely passed the vision test (I had to renew my drivers license at the same time--it was going to expire in April) because I'd been wearing my prescription sun glasses the whole time and my eyes have gotten 'lazy'. I see fine first thing in the morning and all day if I haven't been wearing my glasses, but once I put them on, I have to keep them on or I can't see shiat. And I'd been sitting there with my sunglasses on and my hoodie zipped up because 1) I didn't want to talk to random strangers in there, and 2) I didn't want to be recognized. I've been living and working in this neighborhood for almost five years now, and too many people know me. And I just don't feel like interacting with the public when I'm not required to.

So when I put my face up to the little vision tester thingy, I couldn't read a damn thing. The guy even gave me a few minutes to let my eyes adjust. I passed, barely, and still don't have a restriction on my license. The license only cost $22, but now I'm good for another five years.

Then we moved on to the registration bit. Last year, I was shocked that it cost me a thousand bucks to get my tags renewed (there were some late fees involved, but not that much), so I was prepared to spend at least $800 getting bent over by The Man. As it turns out, I was jumping to conclusions again--it only cost me $398 this time around. Woot! Still, it's four hundred bucks I'd rather keep to myself, but at least now I'm legal in the eyes of the State of Nevada and the Green Sticker Patrol that lurks around my apartment complex.

After writing that check, I went over to get my new picture taken for my new license. That only took a second, but now all new drivers licenses come from Washington DC--I don't get to walk out with my new one. So they took my old license, punched a hole in it, gave me a temporary form, and said my new license will be here in a week or so. Hmmm...

At that point, I was beyond caring--I was just glad that I don't have to go back and endure that torture again for another year. And as much as I love my apartment, I really don't want to move again this summer if only for the fact that I could renew my registration online or through the mail next year and avoid the DMV altogether if I just stayed put. That right there is enough justification for whatever they raise the rent to when my lease is up.

After the beauty pageant of the DMV, I motored over to Barnes & Noble to use a gift card I got for Christmas. I browsed a bit, but settled on three different cookbooks from their big sale shelves up front. I didn't even buy any sailing magazines, although I was tempted.

When I got home, there were stickies on my front door telling me that I had deliveries up at the office that had come while I was out. I opted to just come in and chill for a bit, and I made some lunch and watched a little ESPN before heading back out again.

I made a quick stop at the mailbox, then the office, where I picked up two different boxes, and then I went over to the bank to deposit another small stack of hundies. The check I wrote to the DMV was covered, but knowing myself like I do, it's probably better that I don't carry around $500 in my wallet if all the bills are paid. Besides, I'm working the next couple of nights, so I should easily pick up a few more Benjamins in tips before the weekend.

When I got home, I opened my mail and packages. The first was from my sister Cyndi--she sent me a big throw tapestry with the Rams logo on it. Very cool, and I'm sure nobody else has one. Seriously, there ain't many folks admitting to being Rams fans anymore, but good or bad, they're still my team. So I gladly collect all of their gear. The second box was from reader Paul--in it was a super-secret family Chinese family recipe book with a bunch of other goodies. I can't wait to dive into that stuff with a vengeance. The rest of the mail was the usual stuff--insurance statement, 401k statement, etc., but I got a $10 gift card to Bahama Breeze and a new catalog from JR Cigar. So overall, it's been a pretty good day.

But still, I only got a couple of hours of sleep, and I've got to work tonight, so I'm gonna go back to bed in the next hour or so and get some rest, because I got a feeling, that tonight's gonna be a good night...

Mikey

Something Is Jacked Up

Hey Gang--Happy Monday!

For those of you re-clickers that checked in yesterday, I had a brief post up for several hours, but there was something wrong with it. I couldn't get edits to save and the final posted version didn't look anything like what I'd typed up, so after trying to fix it a couple of times, I just said the hell with it and took it down.

You didn't miss much--it wasn't juicy or scandalous or anything. Just your typical I'm-tired-but-here's-what-I'm-doing post. Feh... I could tell that I was incoherent when I wrote it, so it was just easier to round-file it and start over.

Anyhow.

I finally feel like I'm well rested after walking around in a fog for a couple of days. First of all, I didn't get much sleep at the tail-end of last week, and then all these months of working graveyard make it hard to get up at 7:00 am and work a very long 12-hour day, which I did on Saturday. As tired as I was, I could only manage a couple of two-hour catnaps on Saturday night, and I woke up much too early on Sunday, too, which really farked up my system.

Being so tired, I was on auto-pilot while dealing that free-roll tournament, and thought I messed up on one hand early on during the final session, but I called the floor over to make a ruling and it turns out that I actually did the right thing but one of the players goofed up a raise. No biggie, no harm, no foul, but even as much as I dislike working that big free-roll tourney, I still try and go the entire weekend without screwing anything up or making any errors. I figure that if I have to be there, I might as well try and bat a thousand. I hear about so many mistakes that other dealers make, and I thought it was pretty cool that a couple of players (complete strangers I'd never seen before) complimented me later on how much they enjoyed playing at my table. It's all just part of my evil plan to poach players from other casinos and get them to come and play in my room.

Anyhow, I managed to score the early-out on Sunday and made it back here to the homestead by halftime of the Packers-Cardinals game. As tired as I was, I still watched that game to it's conclusion. Wow--what a classic. I had no dog in that race, but you gotta love Kurt Warner. The guy is incredible.

My plan last night was to sit for several hours and write an almost epic-length rundown of my experiences on Thursday night when I was on a 12-hour poker bender that was just amazing. When I got home on Friday morning, I jotted down a few notes on a legal pad, and I filled up a whole page!

But writing that up is just too much effort for a subject that half of my readers find tedious at best, and as much as I enjoy dealing and playing poker, I don't want this to become a completely poker-centric blog. Hell, I don't even like poker blogs myself, so I try to talk about a variety of subjects. However--I feel like I should share a few things from the experience. We'll talk about cole slaw or something later in the week.

Like I said--I was out playing for 12 hours straight on Thursday night, and it started out ugly for me. In the first game I sat down in, it was kind of a grind and I was only up about $40 after almost three hours. Then, just as the game was about to break up, I lost $160 on one hand where I had top pair-top kicker all the way, paired my Ace on the river, but my opponent back-doored a flush. I made a big bet on the turn that would put him all-in, thinking he'd fold, but he said "Well, I have to leave anyways, so I'll call". Of course that Ace of hearts came out, giving me top two pair (Ace-Queen, of course), but he went runner-runner. The game was already short-handed, so when he got up, the table broke. That sucked, losing a big hand like that with no way to get my money back.

So instead of coming home, I drove over to the M and got into a 1-2 no-limit game over there. I started off pretty well there, recouping my earlier losses on my first two hands, so I thought I was off to the races.

It didn't work out that way, however. I kinda treaded water for a bit, but the around 2:00 in the morning, I took three pretty tough beats right in a row which caused me to lose most of my stack. At that point, I was in for over $300 and was the short-stacked mope at the table. Of course, I refused to re-buy, but it was my goal to make that micro-stack last as long as possible.

On one particular hand, I got all-in for about $40 with pocket Nines, got one caller, and flopped four-of-a-kind! I had gone over eight years without flopping quads, and now I've done it twice in three months. The first one, my Fours on Halloween night, got me a jackpot of $4,444, and I thought that the Nines would net me $1500. Unfortunately, somebody else had already flopped the Nines that week at the M, so all I got was the regular high-hand payoff which was reset to $50 after the Nines hit, and it was was only up to $79 when I caught it. Damn.

But then, not a half-hour later, the guy directly on my left flopped four Threes. It hadn't been hit that week, so he got a $1500 jackpot. You believe that?

With my double up on the quads and the seventy bucks I got from the house, I had a little bit better of a stack to work with. But I was whip-sawed at that table. We were short-handed, there were only five of us left, and it seemed like it was always $7 or $12 to see a flop. I was card dead, so my stack was slowly evaporating into the ether. Around 3:30 in the morning, I was down to $21 left, completely tired, and pissed off that I just couldn't get any cards. So I told the table that I was just going to put my $21 in blind on the next hand. My four opponents all agreed to do the same thing, thinking the game would break, so we decided to just run the board out blind, winner take all. I made two pair, Kings and Jacks, and suddenly I had a hundred bucks in front of me!

The problem was, besides that and the four Nines, I couldn't get a hand to hold up. There was one kid there who just hit every card in the deck and had over a thousand dollars stacked in front of him. He raised every pot pre-flop, called everything, and damn near hit every river. Since I was short-stacked for so long, just kinda hanging around, it didn't bother me too much, but he sure pissed off a couple of the other guys. So the game was more of a grudge match at that point. The kid wasn't playing very well, just getting lucky, so the only reason the the table was still going was because the other guys all wanted to get into his stack.

My hundred bucks got whittled down to $37 and by then, I'd been playing for almost eleven hours and I'd had enough. It just wasn't my night, and what was left of the $350 I'd left the house with earlier the night before was sitting in front of me in the form of seven red chips and two white ones.

I decided to go all-in blind again, got two callers, but I ended up splitting the pot. Grrr. A few hands later, I went all-in preflop with King-Queen of hearts, got called by pocket Jacks, and the dealer ran out five Clubs on the board--split pot again. It seemed that I couldn't win, but then, I couldn't lose either.

I don't remember the details, but I pulled two more quick blind all-ins and got called on both of them, so I doubled up twice, getting me back up to about $130 the next time around the table. I was thinking of cashing out then, happy to only be stuck just over $200 for the night when at one point I was down to the felt.

But I looked down and saw pocket Aces. I raised it to $12 preflop, got a caller, and then the kid who was had the huge stack and was raising every pot made it $27 to go. One other guy called, so I had a decision to make. Normally, I'd smooth-call here and try to make a few bucks, but I was so tired and irritated by that time that I made the angry all-in bet. The big stack snap-called and the other player folded.

He showed me pocket Jacks, but they were no good. My Aces held up and suddenly I was just south of even for the night! Nice... Then I really wanted to cash out and go home, but the other players convinced me to stay a few more minutes because they all agreed to go home at 5:00 am anyways--just a couple more hands.

I agreed to, planning to fold everything and lose my next round of blinds before calling it a night, but just a few hands later, I got pocket Aces again. Same scenario--I raised it to $13 pre-flop, the big stack re-popped me to $30, and another player called. So I said "And a hundred". The big stack called and the other player folded.

For god knows what reason, I turned over my cards to show my Aces, like I was all-in in a tournament. But we weren't in a tournament, and I wasn't even all in, so that's when I realized that I was much too tired to still be playing--talk about a boneheaded mistake. The big stack guy said "Oh, did you just want to check it down?" and having no explanation for showing my hand, I agreed to. I couldn't believe I did that...

The board was all little junk cards, and my opponent said that he wouldn't have called another bet anyways with his King-Jack, but I know better. He would've absolutely called another hundred dollar bet after the flop, so being that tired and out of it cost me some money. Anyhow, I raked another big pot and announced that I was obviously a danger to myself if I stayed, so I was leaving right then and there. I racked up just short of $500, giving me a profit of about $135 for the night after tipping out the dealer and the floorman a few bucks each.

I could not believe my luck--just 45 minutes earlier I only had $37 in front of me, and I parlayed that into almost five hundred bucks. If Wednesday night was all about the skill, well, I will freely admit that Thursday night was all about the luck. I had none early on, but then it hit me with a vengeance that last hour at the table. I survived four blind all-ins and then got pocket Aces twice in ten minutes against a reckless player with a huge stack of chips. NICE!

I drove home, exhausted but keyed up, unable to go to sleep right away. Unfortunately, that kinda messed up my whole weekend because I was unable to relax.

But after the football game yesterday, I finally said enough was enough, and I took a hot shower, turned on the heater, and crawled into bed where I got almost eight straight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I feel much better today, and I'm back on my normal schedule, too. My website might be a little jacked up, but right now, I'm doing fine.

Mikey

Housekeeping!

You want me fluff your pillow?

Ok, so I've got a lot to write about, but I figured I could knock a few things out right now while I'm sitting at home on a Friday night eating my Costco sushi with a salad fork and trying to recover from last night's epic poker bender. I swear I could use another ten hours of uninterrupted sleep just to feel normal again, even though I drank nothing stronger than Bailey's & Coffee--and I only had two of those all night.

Once I got all the parts moving in the same direction this afternoon, I headed out to run a few errands. The first stop was the mailbox, and inside was further evidence of my advancing years--I now own address labels. Never done that before. I was able to do a custom roll of a hundred of them for around twenty bucks, so I uploaded my Hurricane Mikey logo online and ordered a batch last week. I used the first one at the UPS store today when I sent my dad a box of books. I don't know why, but address labels just seems like something your parents would do. On the other hand, it saves time when I'm writing out the monthly bills, and now I have one less excuse for not sending out Christmas cards, too.

After the UPS store, I walked over to the bank and deposited a stack of hundies, the fruits of my labors at the poker tables the past couple of nights. If I lived anywhere else, I'd be afraid that the bank teller would think I'm a drug dealer, wandering in at random times looking like I just got out of bed and depositing a bunch of wrinkled up Benjamins. But this is Vegas, baby--it's a cash town, so nobody gives you a second look. I swear they should just make the state symbol a wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band because that's what drives our economy.

Once business was taken care of at the bank, it was off to Costco to fill up the tank and do some shopping. One thing that cracks me up about getting gas there is watching the chicks who have no clue as to which side of the car the gas tank access door is on. Oh, and I'm not being sexist--it's always women that do this. They just get in the shortest line possible, and once they get to the pump and realize that the tank is on the wrong side, they have to wrestle with the hose to get it to stretch all the way across their car. That's some good, cheap entertainment right there. Unless, of course, you're in line behind them.

I managed to get out of Costco only spending about $130, and I consider it a big win if I get out of there for under two bills each visit. I just bought the normal stuff--a case of Mexican Coke, a 100-pack of 'forever' stamps, teriyaki turkey jerky, a couple gallons of milk, and another case or two of canned beef stew, among other things. Every time I get a few extra bucks, I load up on the canned stuff for when work slows down and I have to go for a few weeks just treading water. Pretty soon I'll have every spare shelf and cabinet in the house completely stocked up, ready for another Y2K scare or zombie apocalypse. (Which reminds me, I need to get a chainsaw...).

Anyhow, it wasn't too crazy there, and I got in and out with minimum consternation, although I swear there is a definite strata of society who only buy Costco memberships so that they can lurk around all day just eating free samples. I really hate the aisle-cloggers, and I'm painfully aware that when I go to Costco, I'm one of the few people in there shopping with a purpose.

But I'm home now and the groceries are put away, I'm sipping on a cold Mexican Coke and relaxing, raising a silent toast to two of my favorite people, Eddie B and Elvis, both of which have a birthday today.

So lets get to it. First of all, I want to offer up a short review of a book I just finished that T-Rev sent me for Christmas. It was on my Wish List, and it looked like it was right up my alley. It's called Hunting Fish--A Cross-Country Search for America's Worst Poker Players, by Jay Greenspan.

Normally when I do a book review, I provide a link to it on Amazon in case anyone is interested in buying it. Not this time. The author, to put it simply, is a prick. I found his style off-putting and condescending, and by the time I finished the book, my only thought was Wow, this guy needs to be kicked in the nuts and told what's what. Basically, the premise is that he goes on a road trip for several weeks, leaving from his home base in New York City (of course) and travels to Foxwoods, Philadelphia, the Carolinas, Tunica, Dallas, Vegas, playing in legitimate casinos and underground card clubs, and then on to the card rooms of California, with the stated goal of making $20,000 in cash and then playing the $10-$20 No Limit game at the Commerce. It sounded interesting to me, but the reality fell flat.

He spends waaaay too much time trying to tell the reader what an upscale, sophisticated, progressive, and socially conscious person he is, but then spends the rest of the book offering up barely-masked contempt for everyone that crosses his path. Maybe it's because I'm a dealer and I see that type of people on occasion--the ones who think a bankroll is a substitute for wisdom--that it just irked me to no end reading his thoughts. And not only that, but the actual poker stories weren't that good. Oh, there were a couple of decent ones in there, but maybe, as an insider, my bullshit detector was supertuned as I was reading it. Not only that, but he spends a couple hundred pages talking about how smart and savvy he is and how he built a $20,000 bankroll, but then when he loses $11,000 of it in just a couple of days, it hardly merits an entire paragraph. But we can attribute that to Poker Players's Disease. When we win, it's all skill, and when we lose, it had to be because of bad luck.

Anyhow, I thought the book was a great concept, but a sucky execution. All it did was piss me off.


********

On to the 'reader mail' from the past couple of days...


Nice win. Maybe you should find a place with a below-average wait staff so you can stay focused.

--Jaxxguy

Well, since the M is my favorite place to play, that seems highly unlikely. Every single one of their waitresses looks like they hang around at The Mansion during their off-time. I don't know where they get 'em, but I sure would like to take a tour of that factory. I guess it's just something I'll have to struggle with...


Mikey, Great Poker story as always ! It gives me the itch to go see the local Indian casino in Oklahoma, which is the closest live Poker to Dallas. I have never played Hold'em there though. Do you know of any of your readers who could comment?

--Barry Miller

Readers? Anyone want to chime in on this? I have no knowledge of anything in Oklahoma, but word on the street is that Dallas has a thriving underground card club culture. I'm sure a few discreet inquiries would point you to a local game. Also, don't they have casinos in Shreveport? Isn't that a suburb of Dallas now?


What kind of "chip protector" do you use Mikey? I gotta get me one.

--Par88

For readers that don't know what a chip protector is, it's basically just a small paperweight that you put on your hole cards when you're playing poker. Anyone who has sat in the seats right next to the dealer and has had their hand accidentally mucked will learn the value of using one. (I learned on a trip to Tunica several years back when I was sitting in the ten-seat and the dealer pulled my unprotected pocket Aces into the muck before the flop!) Also, this happened in the Main Event of the World Series this year. A player went all-in and her cards were unprotected and the dealer pulled them in--AFTER she'd made the bet! What a nightmare.

For a long time I used a polished hematite stone, but somebody stole it last summer. Back in the early days of March Madness, I'd use a miniature bottle of Tabasco sauce, and lately I've been using a round medallion that they give away in our poker room with the company logo on it. But just the other night I got a really cool one from the M. It's solid metal, about the size of a Ghirardelli chocolate square, and it's got a nice solid heft to it:


Honestly, I'd rather go and play without my iPod than play without a chip protector. It's like my glasses and car keys--I don't leave the house without it.


Mikey before getting overly excited about no-limit, have you tried playing a higher limit game like 10-20 or 15-30? Suck outs happen often in those nl games and usually are a lot more expensive.

--Matt R

Hmmm. I'm troubled in overcoming my natural instinct of being a smartass and finding a tactful way to respond to this. The best I can come up with is to quote Floyd from Shawshank Redemption when he said I do believe you're talking out of your ass, Red.

First of all, 10-20 and 15-30 limit games are *much* bigger games than a 1-2 No-Limit. At 90% of the 1-2 games in town, the maximum buy-in is $300. (Some places, like the Wynn and Binion's, have no cap on the amount you can bring to the table, but that's a whole different game). But in a 15-30 game, $300 is only ten big bets--you need a whole lot more bankroll to sit at that table. And in my experience, those bigger 'medium limit' games are a lot more action packed--much much much more sucking out goes on in limit games anyways, no matter what the stakes.

Oh there are still some suckouts in no-limit games, I see it all the time. $300 to me might be a significant hit, but to some people I see on a regular basis, that's just drop in the bucket of their bankroll, so they'll happily call with junk, and if they hit, great, if not, they just re-buy again and again. But if you're in a ram-jam 15-30 game, and every street gets capped, you could be on the hook for $450 on a single hand--hand after hand. Hell, when I play no-limit, I only bring $220 with me to the table each time, and most people only come in with $100 to $150. So with a $300 max buy-in on a 1-2 no-limit game, it kind of keeps things under control. And in all the no-limit cash games I've ever played, my single largest bet ever was only $500, and I've only done that once. (On the other hand, I'm using an extreme example--not all limit games are that crazy with capped flops, but still, you're on the hook for more money, more often, in those games).

If I went to the Mirage and played in the 10-20 game, I'd have to bring a minimum of $300 with me to sit down, but at least $400 to feel comfortable. And the only people that think that river suckouts don't happen as often at higher stakes are people who have never played for higher stakes. It doesn't matter if you're playing 2-4 at the El Cortez or 30-60 at the Bellagio--somebody there has a completely different outlook on the value of money that you do, and they will run you down no matter how much you try and push them off a pot. In a 1-2 no limit game, a $30 bet into a $30 pot shows that you mean business and most opponents will think twice. In a 15-30 game, a $30 bet is just one extra bet, so no problemo--they'll call.

So I shall remain 'excited' about 1-2 no limit for now. Eventually, I'll play some 2-5 to pad the bankroll at a faster pace, but the bottom line is that a 15-30 game is huge stakes compared to the bankroll I'm willing to risk, but 1-2 no-limit is quite comfortable. I hope that makes sense Matt, and no, I don't believe you are talking out of your ass--a lot of people tend to think that 'no limit' means 'unlimited', and 'limit' means cheap, but that's not always the case.

I think that's it for now.

Y'all have a good weekend and try to stay out of trouble.

Mikey

The Best Intentions

Hey Gang...

I know it's late on a Friday afternoon and nobody is around to hear this particular tree falling in the woods, but I'm checking in to say that I *really* wanted to write a nice big long and interesting post today, but I just don't have the strength.

I am so tired right now that I can barely find the motivation to go make a pot of coffee...

Last night, I left the house a little bit after 5:00 pm, intending to go down to the casino and watch the BCS Championship game. But somebody put a poker room right next to the sports book, and there was a brand new 1-2 no limit game starting up when I walked by, so I joined the party.

[Insert story here!]

And I came crawling back home 12 hours later...

Yep, I got home at 5:15 this morning, puttered around for a bit, answered a few emails, and then collapsed into bed. I just woke up and and I've still got that 'Huh?, What?' look going on as I try to orient myself and figure out what I'm gonna do with the rest of my day. When I was driving home, I was thinking I'd stay up for a couple of hours and write about my poker adventures of the night before, however, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak...

Bottom line--it was a profitable night, but there was so much crazy stuff going on that it's gonna take my full concentration, a pot of coffee, and about three hours of uninterrupted keyboard time to tell the whole story. I hope to get to it later, but I make no promises. Also, I won't be doing much writing this weekend because I have to be up in N. Las Vegas at 7:00 am on Saturday morning and spend the next two days working that free-roll tournament. Saturday will be a 12-hour workday for me, Sunday somewhat less, but still, it's gonna drain me and I won't do much but sleep in between.

So I hope to have a nice phat poker-centric post up for you guys on Monday morning, but I just don't know if it's gonna happen. At the very least I also want to answer a few of the reader comments from yesterday's post, plus write a small review of one of the books I got for Christmas that I finished off yesterday.

Anyhow, y'all have a great weekend. I'm out.

Mikey

It Gets Me to the Church On Time

So all day on Wednesday I relished the fact that I didn't have anywhere to be and had the entire day to myself. And since I was actually scheduled 'OFF' on Thursday too, not even On-Call, I knew I'd have the whole night free to do whatever I wanted, unafraid that the cell phone was going to ring and interrupt my wild and crazy evening of reading and channel surfing here at the Batch Pad.

Late in the afternoon, I thought about going out and doing some shopping, but upon further review, that didn't appeal to me. I have plenty of groceries on hand, and I prefer to do my shopping in the middle of the night when chances are slim that I'll be stuck behind some old fart that still hasn't mastered the mysterious world of debit-card technology. I still had plenty of household projects to do that I've been procrastinating for about three weeks now (first and foremost on the list was mopping all the tile in the apartment). In fact, I was all about embracing David Bowie's philosophy of I don't want to go out, I want to stay in; get things done...

Well, that was the plan. But plans like that are just downright boring. Sometime around 6:00 o'clock, I started to get restless. I thought about going to the M and playing a little bit of 4-8, but the foul taste of the bad beat I took over there the other night still lingers. As much as I like to sit and flirt with Sammi and the Cuban cocktail waitress, I was pretty sick of all the ridiculous suck-outs I'd suffered there the past several weeks. And not only that, I hate that drive on St. Rose Parkway, too. It's still under construction, and there's one retarded stoplight at Paseo Verde that is *always* red and takes about six minutes to cycle through. For whatever reason, it's biased to an empty shopping center entrance when there are about thirty or more cars sitting there idling away on St. Rose Parkway. So my mind was made up against driving over to the M.

Instead, I called down to another one of my favorite local rooms to see what kind of game they had going on, and I was told that there were three 4/8 tables and an interest list for a 1-2 No Limit game. So I told the floorman that I'd be down there shortly. I took a shower, shaved, and put on some decent clothes, grabbed my iPod, my wallet, and my chip protector, and headed on down the road.

There was an empty seat at the table I wanted, so I bought in for a hundred and got down to business. I ground away for about an hour, not making any headway at all. I took a couple more river beats, and I found myself down sixty bucks before I raked my first small pot. Not the start I had envisioned.

While I was sitting there, chatting with the gal next to me, I heard some commotion going on over my shoulder. They had started the no-limit game about the same time I arrived, and it was a spirited game to say the least. Lots of action, lots of trash talking. I saw one guy who is a total rock get busted out in less than an hour, so I knew it was a crazy game. In fact, the dealer at my table was saying to me Hey Mikey, you oughta get in that game--it's a good one.

Here's the thing--lately I've been thinking about playing more no-limit anyways. Last summer, when I was on my hugely profitable run, I had about six or seven sessions of no-limit mixed in with all of my nights at the 4-8 table, and I didn't have a single losing session. And lately I've been getting *really* tired of the jackassery and moronitude that goes on in a fixed-limit game. But the problem is, I hate to play No-Limit unless I have $400 or more in my pocket. In a 1-2 game, I always like to buy in for $220, and if I go bust, I have a little reserve. I'd hate to only have a couple hundred on me, take a bad beat, and be done within the first half hour. And I haven't felt justified in bringing $400 with me to the poker room in several months--I've been using my cash for other, more important, things.

However, last night, I just happened to have $500 in my wallet, and just about that time the no-limit game was cranking up to a nice respectable level, my pocket Aces got cracked by some junk hand. That damn near put me over the edge. Suddenly I was stuck a hundred bucks and pissed off, too. I saw that there was an open seat at the no-limit game, along with two players in the game that anyone with the slightest bit of poker skill and confidence would be salivating to play against, so I told the floorman that I wanted to move from the kiddie table over to the adult game.

I took the stack of twenty white chips that I had left in front of me, bought two stacks of red, and moved to the no-limit game. I figured that over there I could make big hands hold up, and people were going to pay dearly for their draws.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way at first. I was playing decently, certainly more disciplined, but I just couldn't get any cards. Any raise I made got me three or four callers, and every time I played a hand, I missed the flop completely. I was spinning my wheels and just couldn't get out of the mud. Bluffing is an option--I can easily bluff one person, and a lot of times I can pull it off against two people, but with three or four opponents, it gets to be hand-in-the-expensive-cookie-jar time. After my first hour at the no limit game, I was circling the bowl and found myself down another $110.

That's about the time the self-doubt started creeping in. Confidence has never been a problem for me at the poker table, but as I sat there I started to wonder if I had turned into a bad player or I was just that easy to read. I hadn't had a decent winning session in a few weeks, and it seemed like I was getting pushed around, if not downright snakebitten. Maybe I was in the middle of one of those huge streaks of bad luck that pros talk about, which would be a nice psychological crutch to use. On the other hand, one piece of advice that has stuck with me is that you should never eliminate 'I just got outplayed' from the list of reasons you're losing.

Maybe it was time to face the music and admit that I was just a sucky poker player.

I wasn't quite ready to go that far with my self-analysis, but those were the thoughts that were creeping in.

I dunno, but sitting there, I decided to try and play my best game, not make the same mistakes that I see other people doing night after night, and not give anything away. I figured that if I lost the rest of that $220 I had left, I'd walk away from the game for at least a month and clear my mind and get my confidence back while letting the bad luck go hover over somebody else for awhile.

But somehow, after that first hour, I really screwed it down, started concentrating, and played with a more determined attitude. I thought I was gonna rake a nice fat pot when I flopped top two pair and got a guy to call my all-in bet after the turn. He ended up having the exact same cards as I did, and we chopped. I made a $6 profit, so I was still a little pissed off, wondering aloud what I had to do to win a decent pot.

I folded pretty much everything for the next round or two, but eventually I caught a few pots. Like I said, there were a couple of really juicy players in the game, and I managed to take a few chips off of them. Sometime later, I found myself up $50, and my new goal was to make another fifty bucks and get myself even for the night, erasing all bad memories of the 4-8 table.

I got extremely lucky at one point, as there was one guy two seats to my right who'd re-bought three or four times already. There was a lot of limping in on one particular hand, and he raised to $12 from the button. I was on the big blind and looked down and saw pocket Sixes, so I made the call, as did a couple other people.

The flop was perfect for me -- 3-3-4. I had an overpair, but I was in early position. So I checked. Everyone else checked, but then the guy on the button bet $25. That tickled my radar a bit. It seemed like a bigger bet than he'd usually make--he had a pattern of raising the blinds by ten bucks every time he had a 'raising' hand, and then he'd always bet another ten bucks on the flop, no matter what. It smelled an awful lot like he Ace-something, and wanted to make a continuation bet and take the pot down right there. I figured I had the best hand, so I raised it to $50 just to see where I was and eliminate the other two players. They folded, just like I thought they would, and the button guy immediately went all-in.

I had thought my hand was good, but the speed at which he came over the top of me gave me a moment's pause.

The thought that maybe I was up against pocket Tens or Jacks crossed my mind, but I couldn't shake the Ace-rag feeling. The thing is, he only had a hundred bucks left, so it was an easy $50 call for me, no matter what.

The turn brought a Four, which double-paired the board, and he gave a little triumphant fist raise, so then I figured I was beaten. But then the river brought my two-outer Six and I said, Sorry dude, you're gonna hate seeing this...

I turned over my sixes for the top full-house, and he mucked Ace-Three offsuit face-up, punched the table, swore, and walked away.

Wow... I sure didn't put him on trips right after the flop, and it was certainly hard for me to imagine anyone betting out with Ace-Three pre-flop. But then, I told myself that not everyone plays the same way I do. Besides, every time I lose a hand with Ace-Rag, I'm always telling myself That's what you get for playing that crap... (You'd think I'd learn, eventually). But one thing I've learned the hard way was illustrated perfectly in that hand--if you flop low trips, they almost never hold up.

But that was a nice pot that put me up above par by a few bucks. Break even? No way--after that hand, it was like the clouds had parted and was on my way back to the promised land of winning.

The next hour or so I took down a few more pots and started building my stack. I didn't get involved in many big hands, but I was playing well--I made a couple of very disciplined laydowns that would've cost me *big* dollars had I stuck around, so I felt like I was playing my A-game. I also managed a great bluff that I couldn't show anybody, but I was playing against a guy who is loose when he's ahead, but he gets extremely tight when he has a short stack--he's basically there playing for points every night, trying to milk his time at the table--I've never seen anybody make $40 last as long at a poker table as this guy does. So I knew that if I were to put him all-in, unless he had the stone cold nuts, he would fold. Which he did.

It was a great play because he had position, and after the flop there were four people in the hand. The other two players checked, as did, I but then he made an obvious I'm-gonna-buy-it bet. The other two players called, both having draws, so I quadrupled his bet with a check-raise. He immediately folded, as did the other two guys, and I scooped a nice little pot. As soon as I mucked my cards, he said Yeah, I figured you had me outkicked, Mikey...

Heh. I nodded and let him believe it.

My night progressed well after that. By then, I had more than doubled up and had the second biggest stack at the table. As long as I didn't tangle with the wrong dude, I could bully some of the more nervous short stacks.

The hand of the night came when I was on the button with 8-10 of clubs. There were about seven players limping in, but the guy in the big blind raised it to $12 to go. Since everyone else called, I was getting 6-to-1 on my money, so I called.

The flop brought three face cards, two of them were Clubs. While it was an ok flop for me, I figured it might get expensive. The big blind bet out $25, and got three callers. I had a great draw and the pot was up to $184, so I called too. The river brought the Ace of Clubs which was bingo for me. Only a Queen-high flush could beat me, and there were all kinds of straight possibilities. The first two guys checked, one guy bet $30, the next guy called, and I thought for a minute and raised it to $130. Everyone folded and I raked a nice fat pot.

With that, I had just under $800 sitting in front of me, which was the biggest stack at the table. Remembering my bad-beat nut-flush that lost to a four-outer on the river that cost me $600 in one hand several months before, I decided to rack up and call it a night. Sitting around with a monster stack is cool and all, but then you've got a huge target on your back as everyone wants to double up through you. I didn't want any part of that, but I also didn't want to be the 'that guy' who rakes a huge pot and then immediately bails out, so I made a show of sitting for two more rounds, limping in occasionally but folding everything. Once my second big blind came around I said goodnight to everyone and cashed out, up almost $500 for the night.

So yeah, after last night I decided that I've had enough of the 4-8 game for awhile. Playing no-limit forced me to be more disciplined and more observant. The other night at the M when I was playing 4-8, I hardly looked at the table--I was gawking at all the eye candy or talking to random people the whole time, not really paying attention. In no-limit, I'm forced to play 'smart'. Somehow, I'd gotten scared and forgotten that while trying to protect the bankroll. But now that I've got my mojo back, I'd kinda like to keep working it, even if it terrifies me...

Mikey

Who Doesn't Love A Hump Day Post First Thing In the Morning?

Everyone loves it!

I just rolled in from a quickie at the casino--There was a decent no-limit game going on when I got there, and I figured it would last all night, but when there is a four-way all-in and the big stack wins, well, that pretty much kills the table. So it was an early night for me.

After closing down the room, AC and I went and grubbed on some free breakfast in the cafe, and then I came home. AC stuck around and hit four Aces on video poker (he just sent me a picture text), so his night was made.

Ok, so what else is new? Well, let's see. First of all, Josie the guest blogger went and won another tournament up at Seabrook the other night (I got a text message when they got down to the money, and a phone call when she won the thing outright!). That was pretty cool--and it makes me proud that she's obviously a much better tournament player than I am--I've never won first place in anything bigger than a sit-n-go, and the closest I came was being 'declared' the winner of a four-way chop at Binion's last year.

Oh, as far as the Henderson Writer's Group goes, I haven't read anything to them yet. First you gotta join and go to a meeting, then you gotta sign up to read at a future meeting (of course, it might help if you had material prepared when you sign up), so no, they haven't yet experienced the awesomeness that is Hurricane Mikey. And while I appreciate the suggestions, most of the ones everyone likes are just waaaaay too long to share with the group. I have to read them out loud, and I only get 15 minutes. And I need a few minutes for feedback at the end, too, so that's why it's gotta be something I can read in like ten or twelve minutes. The Flagstaff trip and the floating craps game posts are just waaaay too long. Oh, and the post about 'My Guitar Gently Weeps' is also a favorite--and I really like that one--but again, too long for my purposes.

There is, however, one that sticks out in my mind that I really like a lot. It's a bit shorter, and although it didn't get the critical acclaim that I thought it would when I wrote it, it's probably one of my all-time favorite posts. I consider it some of my best work. Which one is that? Originally, it was called The Slippery Slope to Old Age, and I wrote it during the holiday season back in 2005. I tweaked it a little bit and re-posted it a year later, and I think I'm gonna tweak it some more and have it be the first one I share. My second choice would be the 'Reggie Miller' story, as some of you like to call it. That was some funny shiat. And if I can get away with it, I'll probably bring along the Dalmation and the vibrator story, too.

Anyhow, that won't be for a few weeks, maybe a month (I only go to the meetings they have at the coffee shop on Horizon Drive, but half the time they're down at the library on Flamingo), but I'll give a full report once it happens.

I've also got to give a shout-out and a word of thanks to reader Brian S--yesterday the UPS man made a surprise visit and dropped off a couple of books to add to my ever-increasing 'to-read' list. I've got another WWII aviation book, along with the original story of the man-eating lions of Tsavo (the movie The Ghost and the Darkness was based on the story). It's kinda funny, because a month ago, all that African safari stuff wasn't even on my radar of interest, and now I can't seem to read enough about it--it all makes for great armchair adventures.

But besides all these great books I have to read, my puzzle is coming along nicely, too, although I'm kind of stuck right now. So I took a break for a couple of days. And I find that I'm getting the itch to get back in the kitchen and bang around. First of all, the other day I was at Costco, browsing their book section (oh yeah, like I don't have enough already!), but there was a whole table full of cookbooks. I looked at several, but my eye kept going back to the Chinese and Thai ones. I love me some good Asian grub, so I think my next purchase will be a wok. And a new cookbook. Besides the normal dishes, I'd really love to crack that walnut-and-honeydew chicken recipe they have at PF Chang's that gives Angy a foodgasm every time she eats it. As they say down south, that is some damn good vittles right there.

I could probably go buy all that stuff today, but I think I may wait a week or two and see how my cash flow is looking. I think I'm done working for the week, except for that big free-roll tournament this weekend. If that's the case, then I'll probably just spend the next few days holed up here in my cabin like the Unabomber, railing against The Establishment and not spending any money. Well, at least not spending any money. I'm cool with The Establishment.

Speaking of which, I just got a notice last night that I need to go and renew my Gaming license. I'm coming up on my fifth anniversary in Vegas, believe it or not, and I guess I have to go pay a fee or something so that I may continue to exercise the privileges of being the casino's whipping boy. Sweet, huh? Hard to believe that I've been here five years already. It doesn't seem like that long ago I was living with the strippers, dealing dice at the Golden Gate, and pimpin' around town in the Ghetto Sled.

Kinda makes me wonder what kind of adventures I'm in for over the next five years.

Mikey

Back To The Real World

So, here we are, the first week back to the grind after the holidays. Welcome to 2010! I'm hoping that all of my readers who have abandoned me these past two weeks find their way back, now that you're all back in your cubes.

From where I sit, 2010 still looks an awful lot like 2009, except for instead of freezing my ass off, it's a balmy 55 degrees here in the cul-de-sac next to America's Playground. I'll take that. Of course, now that the freezing weather has departed, my fleece-lined beanie hat has arrived in the mail. Like Rita Wilson said to Guy Patterson that night in the Blue Spot--You're no good to me now...

I don't have much going on today, except for being thankful that I'm a much better stock picker than I am college football bowl picker. I didn't make any bets this year, but I would've been absolutely taken to the cleaners by picking Oregon, LSU, South Carolina, and Stanford, which I almost did last week. Whew! Dodged a few bullets there. On the other hand, the last two stocks I loaded up on are up 25% (EXAS) and 22% (ETFC) since I pulled the trigger a couple months back. Woot!

Oh and new for 2010, I'll be joining the Henderson Writers Group tonight. Officially joining, not just attending the meetings and offering witty commentary. I figured that I should do it, and Linda Lou has been nagging me to start writing a book, so this is will be the first step in that journey of a thousand miles. Because of that--I need a favor from my long-time readers. Please leave a comment telling me of you favorite posts that I've done over the years. I need material to share with the group, and it would be better if I had an idea of what resonated. But I can't use any of the epic-length stuff--it's got to be something that can be read outloud in under 12 minutes or so. So if anyone has any favorites that fit the criteria, lemme know. If y'all would do that, I'd be most appreciative.

Other than that, I've got absolutely nothing new to report or any long and colorful stories to share today. As much as I hate to admit it, the creative cupboard is bare. Oh, I'm sure I'll be back on pace in a day or two, but for right now, I shall seek inspiration in two of my favorite places--from within the pages of a book that somebody else has written, and in the bottom of a glass.

Mikey

Sleeping In

You ever see those pictures of baby animals, usually kittens or puppies, where they have their eyes half-open and they're looking around with that WTF? Where am I? expression on their face? That's how I feel right about now, except a whole lot less cute. I slept like a rock for about nine hours, not getting out of bed until 11:30 this morning. My arm was wet with drool and I had a big ol' crease embedded in my face from the seam of the pillow. I must've crashed pretty hard, but it sure felt good.

The first order of business this morning was to put on a pot of coffee, and I'm enjoying that very much as I type this. I'm all out of the peppermint mocha holiday creamer, so it's back to hazelnut and coconut until next November (which is also the same time the cocktail waitresses break out the naughty Santa outfits, so hooray for November!).

Since there are no decent bowls being played today, and no NFL games, my Saturday is going to be spent doing household chores. (But didn't they used to always play two NFL games on the last two Saturdays of the season? It seems to me that they used to do that, but I can't quite remember). I've already run the dishwasher, but the whole apartment needs a good vacuuming and my bathroom could use a good scrubbing. I'd rather it smell like an Olympic-sized swimming pool than the current damp-towel and air freshener scent it's got going on right now.

And my dining room is a mess. There's a shelf right next to the front door that has become a catch-all for everything I'm carrying when I come home--junk mail, CDs, random trinkets, pens, receipts, etc. I need to clean that up, and while I'm at it, I'm finally going to get the last of the storage totes out of there and put away. A few weeks ago, when I was looking for Alaska pictures while writing that road-trip post, I pulled all of my Rubbermaid totes out of the storage closet (which were stacked floor-to-ceiling), and emptied them out all over the dining room.

While the pictures weren't in any of the totes--I found them in the coat closet--I never gotten around to putting everything back, and my dining room looks pretty cluttered. But before I do, I'm going to have a document-shredding party that would put the most corrupt politician to shame. I swear, I've got about fifty pounds of old statements and bills and other assorted paperwork that I've been lugging around for years. But no more--today, it all goes to the dumpster. Same thing goes for the twenty-odd March Madness III pint glasses that somehow made it home with me. Seriously, if I'm drinking beer with that many people at the same time, it ain't gonna be in my living room.

I'll tell you what I'm not gonna do tonight, though. I'm not gonna go out and play poker. If last night was any indication of how 2010 is going to be at the poker tables, well, I may as well just retire my iPod and chip protector right now. I went down to the M around 8:30 or so, and managed to win one single big pot in almost four hours of play. The worst was when I raised a Kill Pot with Ace-King of Clubs, got three callers, and the flop came out King-Ace-Four. I bet all the way and one guy kept calling as the turn and river brought running Sevens.

I ended up losing my entire stack when my genius opponent turned over Seven-Four offsuit to show his runner-runner full house. What made it even worse is that my gal 'Sammi' was the one who dealt it. I could see the pained look on her face as she pushed the $180 pot to my opponent, because she knew that if she'd pushed it to me, she would've gotten a whole helluva lot more than the single dollar that the mope who sucked out gave her.

I figured that if the odds were that heavily skewed against me to lose a hand in that manner, there was no point in playing any further. I flipped Sammi a redbird that I had in my pocket (that's casino-speak for a $5 chip) and told her not to worry about it, and I headed for the parking garage. So no more poker for me for at least a week or two--I'm smart enough to know that if I'm running that badly, it's probably time to step away from the table for awhile.

I won't be playing next weekend anyways--I've got to spend two very long days up in North Vegas dealing another one of those semi-annual free roll tournaments. It's not so bad, except that the money is pretty light and it's a couple of very long days. When dealing a normal tournament, we usually make anywhere from $14 to $25 for every half-hour 'down' we spend in the box (except for one I did a few months ago where I made $86 per half hour! That ain't never gonna be topped). But this is a total free roll with hundreds of players, with no add-ons for staff, the structure makes it a total crap-shoot, and the prize money is extremely top-heavy. So hardly any of the players ever tip out--last time we made just $2.17 per down. Ouch. Between that and the 12-hour days, nobody really likes to work it, so those of us at the bottom of the Extra Board are 'given the opportunity' to deal it every time. Even worse, they do it during the NFL playoffs, and I'd much rather be watching the games instead.

On the other hand, the experience is not as bad as it sounds. The contingent from my casino who get the short straw with me are some of my favorite co-workers, and it's got that whole misery-loves-company vibe to it. And the last two times the house stepped up and gave the dealers an extra $75 per day in combat pay. Additionally, I'm qualified to play in it--I've got an invite--but I never get to since I'm working the whole time. However, they give everyone who busts out a minimum of $75 in prize money--even if you're the first guy knocked out, you get $75--so as soon as my table breaks and I don't have a push, I go out to the prize table, show my ID, they mark my name off the list, and give me the cash. So in addition to my minimum wage, overtime, and whatever tokes we may get, I'll make $225 just for showing up. Not exactly a king's ransom, but it takes a little of the sting out of the two-day grind.

Oh--and the best part? I almost forgot--we get to wear short-sleeves when we work. None of those god-awful long-sleeve polyester shirts. Yay! Seriously, y'all have no idea how nice it is to be able to deal while wearing short sleeves.

So besides that tournament next weekend, my schedule this week will keep from spending any time playing, which, like I said, is probably a good thing right now. The poker gods cannot use me as a plaything as long as I stay away from the table... On the other hand, no Sammi and no smokin'-hot Cuban cocktail waitress who flirts with me just enough to make me think I have a shot... (But they all do that, don't they?)

Anyhow, the coffee is running low, and this apartment ain't gonna clean itself, so I need to get up off this chair and get to work. Once the bathroom is clean and shiny and the living room carpet is vacuumed, I'll probably reward my efforts with bacon. Even a sleepy puppy would wake up for that.

Mikey

Ten Years After...

Wow, another decade draws to a close. And spare me that crap about how the new decade doesn't begin until next year--That may be technically right, but nobody cares. (Seriously, people who jump into a conversation with this nugget of 'wisdom' just need to be kicked in the nuts for aggravated dorkiness). But the 'Aughts' are over, and now we get to the 'teens.

Everyone knows that the calendar speeds up as you get older, but damn, it really doesn't feel like it's been ten years since that whole Y2K nonsense went down.

Back in late 1999, when I was working at Schwab, they wasted untold millions of dollars preparing for the digital apocalypse that never came, and as big of a pain in the ass as it was, we managed to have some fun with it. Oh, they sent out tons of mailers in everyone's monthly statements, and then had an entire web page devoted to the steps they were taking and the preparations that were being made. But that didn't matter--we still had several, shall we say, 'experienced' customers who had to be hand-held through the whole process. After awhile, it just got to be a pain in the ass.

There was this one old dude that called in about a dozen times a day because he had nothing better to do, and he was on everybody's "ah crap, there goes a half hour of my day" list. His name was "Brooker" and everyone dreaded the phone call. He was a senile old man, but had just enough marbles left upstairs to be a pain in the ass.

One day during Christmas week, Eddie B and I were wasting time over at our buddy Devin's desk. Work had finally slowed down a bit, so we were goofing off over there talking about all the usual guy stuff--fantasy football, the college bowl games, Leslie in Trade Support's legs...--when Devin's phone rang. We thought it would be a quick 'quote call', but it was Brooker calling in. Devin snapped his fingers at us to get our attention, and he put the call on speaker-phone. The first thing the old guy says is Hey, tell me about this whole Y2K thing.

Not a conversation you want to involve yourself in. If you rise to the challenge, the rest of your day is gone. Eddie and I shook our heads in sympathy, thinking, Oh man, that sucks but on the inside we were thinking Whew--better him than me!

Devin, however was pretty savvy. The first thing he said was Oh yes sir Mr. Brooker, we have a team of specialists that can assist you with all of your questions about that--one second I'll transfer you over.

We thought he was gonna just dump the call back into the general call-center 800-line queue, but instead, he transferred old man Brooker to our Chinese Telebroker line. Yeah, it was a voice activated, menu-driven automated trading line, but all in Mandarin Chinese.

At the time, it was one of the funniest f*cking things I've ever heard. We sat there laughing our asses off for a good ten minutes listening to this guy on speakerphone lose his shit cursing at the disembodied Chinese voice on the conference line. Good times!

It's hard to believe that it was so long ago. It sure doesn't seem like ten years.

I've already mentioned in an earlier post how we all had to work on New Year's Day at 6:00 am, because the geniuses at company HQ just knew we'd be getting thousands of calls that morning. It didn't stop us from having a great time the night before.

I took my psycho-girlfriend-with-the-huge-rack Corinne out to dinner at the Macaroni Grill, then we met up with everyone else over at Devin's house for the big party. We bailed at 12:30, went back to my place to crash for a couple of hours, then got up at five to go to work (yeah, she worked there at Schwab, too). The day was a total waste, but at least misery had company. We sat there throwing the nerf football around the cube farm and setting up a full-on 18-hole putting course to keep ourselves entertained, but none of us took a single call. They cut us loose after just three or four hours.

I remember walking out and getting sidetracked by a couple of my friends, and we ended up sitting in the bar all day after that, drinking pitchers of beer and making jokes about what we were gonna do with all the canned goods and bottled water we'd been stocking up on.

But the year 2000 was memorable for a lot of reasons. I remember teaching one of my famous option trading classes in early April, and that Friday, the 14th, we finished up and the entire class escaped the office and went to lunch at Houston's. We were watching the TV in the bar, tuned to CNBC, and saw that the market was taking a huge dump--down around 500 points with just an hour left until the closing bell. Since we were all in the finance biz, that was the topic of conversation all during lunch, and I remember saying Oh well, it just means that everything will be on sale on Monday!

Boy, was I ever wrong. That was the beginning of the end of the tech bubble that not only cost me my job and my house, but almost $80,000 that I'd saved and invested, too. Damn, my kingdom for a time machine--I'd go back, cash out all that money earlier in the week, and then buy as many Enron puts as I could afford!

Besides the market crash, 2000 was also the year I bought my condo (a perfect place for me, and I wish I still had it), and was also the first year of the Sibling Revelry cruise that became a tradition with me and my sisters. It doesn't matter how many cruises we've been on since then, we all agree that there was something special about that first one, and I don't think it'll ever be topped. It set the bar pretty high, and those memories are some of my favorites.

2001 seemed ok when it started, but it turned out to be a tough one. The marked continued on it's downward spiral for over a year, and on my birthday, I got laid off, along with about 300 of my co-workers. The economy in Phoenix was in the shiatter, but I got such a generous severance package that I didn't worry too much about it. I grew up in the 80's and profited immensely from the go-go late 90's, so I had no idea what a recession was. So I said screw it and took the entire summer off. I didn't even bother looking for a job, figuring that I'd wait until September and waltz right in to something.

So I spent my summer sleeping in late and watching MTV, then in the early afternoon I'd grab a 12-pack of Pacifico and some meat for the grill, and head over to Derek's place, where we'd have a few buddies over to eat, drink, and bitch about the market. Since money wasn't an issue, I spent whatever time I could out in Marina Del Rey, taking sailing classes and hanging out on the beach. Ed W got the bug later in the summer, and he joined me. Those were some great times.

Of course, the big bummer of the year was September 11th, and that put a damper on things, although I had a very memorable cruise just a week later. That also put the economy into a further tailspin, and my plan of finding a job in September came up just a wee bit short. It turns out that I went unemployed for eleven months, not finding another decent job until March of 2002. (Well, I did work for Washington Mutual for a few weeks in that stretch, but oh dear god that was the most horrible work experience I think I've ever had).

Early 2002 was about the toughest stretch I've ever had in my life--I went absolutely broke. My boys had chipped in enough for me to go to Vegas for March Madness, and a hot craps roll on our last night in town gave me enough money to pay the rent for the next month (by then I'd moved out of the condo and was living with Derek) and cover my expenses on an Easter weekend sailing trip to Catalina with my buddies. But after that, I was flat-ass broke. I remember the day vividly that I hit rock bottom.

I literally did not have a dime to my name, no more money in savings, my retirement account was cashed out, no unemployment benefits, I hadn't picked up any temp work in almost three weeks, and I was down to accepting a $10-an-hour call center job at American Express. I hadn't gotten the formal 'offer' yet, but I'd been through all the interviews and hoops and such and was just waiting for a call telling me what day they wanted me to start. At that point I was desperate, so ten bucks an hour was enough to live on until I found a real job.

Oh, they called me one morning, and instead of saying Come in on Monday morning, they told me that as much as they'd like me to join their team, there was a sudden hiring freeze, so they were unable to make me an offer at that time...

I hung up the phone and just laid back on the bed. I must've stared at the ceiling for two hours--I had absolutely no other plan at that point, no options. I think the best I could come up with was to have a garage sale, sell all my stuff, and then just move back to Atlanta and live in my dad's basement for awhile until I got back on my feet. That's the best I could come up with. Months of job searching in Phoenix had come up empty.

Amazingly, just at the depth of my despair, the phone rang again. I'd been putting out resumes and applications for months, casting my net far and wide, but until then, absolutely nothing had come up.

But on that very day when I thought all was lost, I got a call from a recruiter who I hadn't heard from in three months, and he had a lead for me. There was a new start-up tech company that needed non-geek people in a bad way. They offered $12 bucks an hour plus commissions, and then after 90 days, full-time work with benefits and a raise.

Oh hell yeah. Salvation was at hand. The name of the company? GoDaddy.com

I jumped on that job like a Great Dane on a porkchop, thrilled to finally be working again. It turns out that they had all kinds of tech-savvy folks, but nobody that could talk to people--the whole place was full of nerds, and they figured it would be easier to find normal people who could talk and sell and train them in technical matters than it would be to train geeks to talk to normal customers.

Things turned around pretty quickly for me after that. I started making huge commissions, and I also managed to sell my condo for a nice $1000 profit about two weeks ahead of the foreclosure. I took that money and Eddie and I had a helluva great weekend in Vegas. Not only did I triple it, but I hooked up with a cute little blond gal on our last night in town, so it was one of the best Vegas trips ever.

Those huge commissions I was making led to friction, however. Every week, they'd send out a company-wide spreadsheet showing who earned what as far as commissions went, and me and another guy were just crushing everyone else.

It came to a head in October. I had just gotten back from the worst trip to Vegas I'd ever had, and that week we had a big meeting where they told us that they'd be restructuring the commissions the next quarter. That sucked. So I figured it would be time to move on again soon. The week before Christmas, they gave us the bad news. The way they f*cked us over would make me go from making about $500-$800 in commissions every paycheck would knock me down to less than half of that.

I gave my notice less than a week later.

I had a little bit of money in the bank, and after such a tough year, I decided to get out of Phoenix and move back to Nashville.

In January of 2003, I loaded up a U-haul trailer, said goodbye to all my buddies, and Eddie B and I headed east on an epic road trip. We arrived in Nashville 38 hours later in the middle of a blizzard, but we were wearing shorts and flip-flops, having left sunny Phoenix the day before.

It was tough going at first, but I managed to find a decent job on the trading desk of a small brokerage just two months later. I thought it was a great opportunity at first--low stress, good money--but it was the textbook definition of a dead-end job. No bonuses, no chance for advancement, and it turned out to be really boring. Not only that, but I had to put up with the Oxford Mafia. Half the guys who worked there went to Ole Miss, and if you weren't part of the club, well, you weren't part of the club. Besides, living in Nashville was really dull. Aside from the family, I really didn't have any friends or much of a social life besides a regular Tuesday-night card game at the Nashville City Club. That was it--I was bored senseless living there in Tennessee.

I wasn't too upset when less than two years later, the brokerage I was working for got bought out. I was told that I could keep the job, but if I did, I'd have to move to Memphis or Little Rock.

Uh, I'll take "None Of The Above" for $8,000, Alex!

Yep, that's what I got for a severance package, so I decided to take the money and move to Las Vegas and work as a casino dealer. I kicked around doing nothing for a couple of months, and then Amy and I made an epic road trip west in February of 2005. (Oh yeah, that story is another one of those long posts that I'll do someday).

About five weeks later, I got my first job dealing dice at the Golden Gate, and then fell ass-backwards into a real job at a big casino a month after that. I've been at the same place ever since, but a year and a half ago I left the dice, blackjack, and Pai Gow tables for the poker room, and I've not looked back.

I really enjoy dealing poker, and it would be the perfect job if I could just get to do it full-time. But I can't complain too much. There are a lot of pros and cons to working in a casino, and overall, the good outweighs the bad. It must, because this is the longest I've worked for one company in my entire adult life!

But here we are on the cusp of 2010, another decade in the books. It's hard to believe, but I've been living in Las Vegas for going on five years now. If you would've asked me back in 1999 what I'd be doing ten years down the road, I would've said "teaching options classes at Schwab, going to happy hour at Aunt Chilada's every Friday afternoon, and spending all my vacation time sailing to Catalina". Funny how life sometimes throws you a curveball or two. But even with all the ups and downs, Joe Walsh said it best--Life's been good to me so far...

Happy New Year everybody!

Mikey

I Can't Take It No More!

Global Warming?

Can I have some, please? I'm sorry, but from where my freezing ass is sitting, that whole global-warming thing seems like a whole bunch of made-up nonsense that only appeals to oddballs and freaks, like Star Trek or Mormonism. I know, it's much worse for you folks up north, but we haven't seen the far side of fifty degrees in for-f*cking-ever out here in the Mojave desert, which is allegedly the hottest place on the entire continent.

So not only have I turned on the heat for the first time in five years (it's been on for a few weeks now), but I put a sleeping bag and a fleece blanket on the bed, in addition to the flannel sheets. It's been so chilly for so long out here that I also broke down and bought a fleece-lined beanie hat. And I made sure to get one with a Rams logo on it, because nobody would steal that.

I'm ready for spring, if you couldn't tell. Of course, soon enough I'll be bitching about the heat of summer, but at least this year I have a pool--I won't need to sneak into the one at the Paris to cool off.

Anyhow, enough about that. I've been super-lazy as far as writing goes, but I've had a couple of good excuses. One, I've been working a lot. Two, everyone else is still on vacation. I'm cool with the fact that most people read this site while at the office, and this week, my traffic is down by half due to the holidays. No biggie. Since most of my audience is missing in action, I haven't felt the pressure to come up with anything interesting to write about.

Besides that, I just haven't had much of anything interesting to say. But then again, I haven't done anything interesting, either, unless you think going to the bank and the AT&T store are "interesting" (Yep, I now have full-on internet access on my phone. Welcome to the 21st century!).

As far as doing anything interesting goes, I've got New Year's Eve off for the first time in five years, and I have no idea what I'm gonna do. I ran into one of my gals last night, and she was droppin' hints, saying she had no plans for the night, but honestly, I don't know if I want to go that route. Oh, she's nice and fun and easy on the eyes, and the chances of getting some good lovin' are about 110%--BUT, I don't want to get dressed up, try to get a dinner reservation, and spend the money on somebody who I like to hang out with, but that I'm just not that much into.

I dunno, a few years ago, I would've been all over it like a Mississippi leg hound, but I'm just not feeling it. Part of it is because I have to work at 7:00 am on New Years Day, and part of it is that lately I have become somewhat a spendthrift. For awhile now, I've been putting every single extra dime away, and watching it grow has become almost an obsession. And I know that going out on NYE would cost me a couple hundred bucks, minimum. If she was an actual 'girlfriend', I'd have no problem coughing up the money and time, but she's more of a casual aquaintance, so I honestly don't have much of an attention span when it comes to hanging out with her. It's also much easier to take a pass this year since I've missed out on the celebrating for the past four years, too, so it's not like I miss it that much. I dunno, we'll see how I feel tomorrow, but I'm guessing that my New Years Eve will consist of an early game of poker and then coming home and watching the ball drop on TV.

I know--lame huh?

Or... I could work on one of my jigsaw puzzles. I got two big ones as gifts this year, but I told myself that I'm not going to do those until I finish the 'Tahiti' one I started a couple of years ago. I had the entire outside frame done and most of the sailboat put together when I moved out of the Man-Cave I was sharing with Falcon Rob. Then the puzzle sat in the box out in the garage for a year because I didn't have anyplace to set up my work table at my new place. Now that I'm here in my own apartment, I can use my dining room table, so I unpacked the thing the other night and got re-started.

It wasn't like starting from scratch. When I packed the thing up a year and a half ago, I separated the main component pieces into individual ziplock bags. So all the edge pieces and the sailboat were in their own bags, as was the big palm tree.

I worked on it for about three hours, and I've found it's a great way to spend a cold afternoon while one of the Irrelevant Bowls drones on the TV in the background.


I'll probably work on it some more this evening, and my guess is that I'll probably spend my New Years Eve doing the same thing, maybe with a cocktail in my hand. I don't mind. I won't be spending money or having to dodge drunk drivers or cops, so I'm cool with a quiet evening at home.

In the meantime, I'm gonna put on some wool socks, make a pot of hot coffee, and try to keep my fuzzy ass warm, 'cause baby, it's cold outside!


Mikey