And then i decide to sit down at the 1-2 NL table. And I get a horrible beat on a stupid stupid STUPID move by a horrible player, go on tilt (after losing $600 to him that hand), and then proceed to lose $1750 on the cash game table.

Really bad.

And this after losing some dumb money over the weekend that I shouldn't have, and an internet session that went from being up $250 playing 3-6 limit to being even to being down $300 playing 5-10 limit. So, basically I pissed away $2000 over the last couple of days.

And then I get bored and put $50 online, to just play 1-2 limit and waste some time while doing other things. First hand I get AA, and it loses. Next hand I limp with A5diamonds, flop a gutshot and a flush draw, hit the flush on the turn, and the guy hits a boat on the river. The next hand I limp on the button with K3 hearts. The flop comes 2 hearts, including the Ahearts. No flush this time, and I fold on the river. Two hands later I limp with A10spades, the flop comes with the Kspades and Qspades, I ram and jam the pot until I get all-in, but... no flush, no straight, no straight flush. Seven hands of 1-2, down $54.

Amazing.

--------

Finally saw "Brokeback Mountain" last night. Definitely been thinking about it a lot, but haven't really formed my opinion of it yet. One thing going against it is that afterwards I read the Alice Munro short story "Wenlock Edge" in The New Yorker from two weeks ago. It's one of the finest pieces she's ever done, and in some way it's triggered some of the same synapses to fire.

Which also leads me to such an obvious question: why hasn't any of Alice Munro's stuff been converted to screenplay? I mean, I know most of her stories involve flashback, internal monologue. But converting the story being told in a character's head into a story being viewed by an outside observer... It IS possible. I'm guessing Brokeback Mountain in the original short story form may be quite similar. It could be something along the lines of Robert Altman turning Raymond Carver short stories into "Shortcuts", or something like Wallace Shawn's rendering of "The Designated Mourner" (or even this: watched the PBS taping of the original John Malkovich + Gary Sinise version of Sam Shepherd's "True West" and was spellbound). As I'm thinking about trying my hand at a screenplay of some sort, this just seems like an idea that could be done. And NEEDS to be done.

Speaking of "True West": it IS amazing just how much of "Adaptation" is taken from "True West". The base / criminal brother showing up, writing a cliched "modern western" screenplay, the conflict between the two. I'm shocked nobody seems to have picked up on it, at least in the reviews I ever read. A quick google search for "true west adaptation charlie kaufmann" does kick up a bunch of responses, but... it's weird how nobody called it out immediately.

--------

I've never been so ashamed of my state, or of my college. The whole Dover School District "intelligent design" case. At least the judge (and the Dover voters) did the right thing. But not until one of the leading "scientists" for the intelligent design cause, a professor at Lehigh University, made me cringe a million times over. Combine that with the fact that the sophomore class president of Lehigh robbed a bank last week, apparently to pay off online poker debts, and I'm definitely... ashamed. Ashamed is the right word, too. Makes my skin crawl.

Nick Drake		Black Eyed Dog
Otis Redding		These Arms of Mine
Steely Dan		Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Talk Talk		Ascension Day
Bob Dylan		It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Simon & Garfunkel		Mrs. Robinson
Willie Nelson		Pick Up The Tempo / Phase And Stages (Theme)
Francoise Hardy		Loving You
Johnny Cash		Oh Lonesome Me
The Concretes		Say Something New
The Velvet Underground		Sweet Jane (Full Length Version)
Squeeze		Tempted
Spoon		Car Radio
Sea Ray		Revelry
Monsieur Mo Rio		Bonne Chance (Good Luck)
The Waterboys		Fisherman's Blues
The Aluminum Group		Easy On Your Eyes
Leona Naess		Learning As We Go
Van Morrison		Caravan
Brian Eno		Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
The National		Daughters Of The Soho Riots
Django Reinhardt		Brazil
Antonio Carols Jobim & Luiz Bonfa		Samba de Orfu
Amadeus Quartet		Brahms - Streichquartett a-moll, op. 51 No. 1 - 1.
Amadeus Quartet		Brahms - Streichquartett a-moll, op. 51 No. 1 - 2.
Amadeus Quartet		Brahms - Streichquartett a-moll, op. 51 No. 1 - 3.
Amadeus Quartet		Brahms - Streichquartett a-moll, op. 51 No. 1 - 4.
Amadeus String Quartet		Brahms - Quintett f-moll, op. 34 - 1.
Amadeus String Quartet		Brahms - Quintett f-moll, op. 34 - 2.
Amadeus String Quartet		Brahms - Quintett f-moll, op. 34 - 3.
Amadeus String Quartet		Brahms - Quintett f-moll, op. 34 - 4.
Cowboy Junkies		Blue Moon Revisited
Bedroom Walls		I've Been Thinking A Lot About Dots On The Wall
The Magnetic Fields		Busby Berkeley Dreams
Aretha Franklin		Since You've Been Gone
Charles Wright & Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band		Love Land
Jamie Lidell		Multiply
Shrimp Boat		Honeyside
Tom Waits		Downtown Train
David Bowie		Changes
The Coral		Dreaming Of You
Neil Young		Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Billy Bragg		Greetings to the New Brunette
Pixies		Dig For Fire
Electric Light Orchestra		Mr. Blue Sky
Modest Mouse		Paper Thin Walls
Pavement		Silence Kit
Ride		Vapour Trail
The Kinks		The Village Green Preservation Society
Ladytron		Blue Jeans
The Cure		A Forest
Creedence Clearwater Revival		Bad Moon Rising
Bloc Party		Banquet
The Replacements		Can't Hardly Wait
The Who		I Can't Explain
Violent Femmes		I Held Her In My Arms
Neutral Milk Hotel		Holland, 1945
The Go-Betweens		Spring Rain
The Cult		She Sells Sanctuary
Jawbox		Savory
The Pogues		Haunted
Mercury Rev		Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp
Ike & Tina Turner		Bold Soul Sister
Four Tet		A Joy
Hüsker Dü		Green Eyes
The Replacements		Alex Chilton
Blur		There's No Other Way
The Psychedelic Furs		Pretty in Pink
My Morning Jacket		Lowdown
New Order		Ceremony
T.Rex		The Slider
Broken Social Scene		Lover's Spit
The Kinks		Waterloo Sunset
Nick Drake		Hazy Jane II
Built To Spill		Car
Elliott Smith		A Fond Farewell
This Mortal Coil		You and Your Sister
Echo & The Bunnymen		Bring On The Dancing Horses
The Magnetic Fields		100,000 Fireflies
Clearlake		I Dreamt That You Died
Shrimp Boat		Small Wonder
The Left Banke		Walk Away Renee
Leadbelly		Goodnight Irene

90 songs, 6.2 hours. Started at 7 PM, and kicked Jon Manders out the door when "Goodnight Irene" came on. He would make a good Irene should he decide to go transgender someday.

Oh, well. I played well, so I can’t complain. But I am.

--------

So… I just made a few new web pages. I’m finally releasing it to the world: For your consumption (and poker playing pleasure), the best poker game ever: Newmyer's Seven Nuts.

Level 1 – What do I think he has?
Level 2 – What does he think I have?
Level 3 – What does he think I think he has?
Level 4 – What does he think I think he thinks I have?

Confused? You should be. Getting to #3 is relatively easy, at least if you play enough. Making the leap to #4 is the equivalent of the difference between being good at table tennis to being AMAZING at table tennis. It’s a whole different physics, mentality, chessmatch, whatever. It’s an entirely different plane of meaning.

I bring that up because it’s something that’s been haunting me lately, but also because I just read Count d’Orgel’s Ball by Raymond Radiquet, and that’s what it’s all about.

Two people fall in love, and the way one of them acts makes the other one think that they haven’t read the letter the woman sent, but really the man is just acting that way because he knows he must act as if he hasn’t read the letter, but instead of having the desired effect, it makes the woman feel like he is cold and unfeeling, which in turn causes him to behave in a (yet-again) different manner. For example (kinda).

At first I didn’t think I liked the book, but eventually it spiraled outwards quite nicely, and came to a satisfying end.

Maybe it helped my poker playing, too. I went to RRRR and took $810 off the table in a short short session. But probably not really. I flopped three sets in an hour (all of them held up), and I induced two bluffs in all of that and made nice calls. I also flopped trip 7s and took down KK (had I known he had KK [he didn't raise pre-flop] I could have taken all his chips, but instead I did get $175 from the guy), and then next hand I had KK and won a small pot of like $20 profit. I also limped with K8clubs in the big blind, the flop came two clubs, everybody checked around, the turn came an A, everybody checked around, and the river came a third club, I checked (there’s $12 in the pot), some guy bets $30, I raise to $65 (if somebody in late position had the Ace high flush draw AND a pair of aces, I think they would have bet on the turn), it folds to me, I raise to $65, and the guy goes all-in for $120. I call immediately and call out "second nuts", and take him for his entire short stack in an un-raised pot. Free money! He had two pair (Aces and 5s), but... what a dumb all-in.

So, I don’t know if I really played that well, per se. I was just getting good cards and people handed me their money. Can’t complain about that.

-------

Back to that whole "levels of thinking" thing, above. It's been what's been haunting me since the trip to Atlantic City that Mitch and I took two weeks ago. I've not been able to write about that trip yet, because it's just so painful and awful. So many bad decisions, so much money lost. But there's still one hand that has haunted me, and it's haunted me because I was thinking on three or four levels, but I made a critical mistake: I was playing against a woman (and i feel bad, in a way, that it was a woman, because I feel that this will sound sexist), who wasn't even thinking on the first level. And therefore, trying to apply higher levels of thinking just doesn't work. This woman was only playing her own cards, and making a move on her was a bad idea. Well, it was a good idea, but I got an unlucky card on the river that made her make an unbelievably bad call, which just so happened to be correct.

Anyway, if you were holding A8, would you call a $320 all-in bet on the river into a $380 pot when the board is showing:

???

I don't think any poker players I know would, but she did. And she sent me to my room at 6 AM because she did. Here's how the hand played out:

I limped with 56diamonds, one of the blinds raises to $12, a couple of callers, I call. 4 players to the flop, $50 in the pot. On the flop the original raiser in first position bets $30, the woman to my right calls, and I call. My preliminary guess is the first guy has AK or AQ and missed, and the woman to my right also has a flush draw (which means my flush draw is dead, but I still have a gutshot and a straight flush draw. So I look forward to seeing what happens on the turn. 3 players, $140 in the pot.

The turn pairs the 2, and I think it's no help for either of them. Sure enough, the first guy checks, and the woman bets $30. I'm positive my read on both of them is correct, so I decide that I'm going to try to bluff and either take the pot down right here, or on the river. I raise to $120. First guy folds quickly, woman calls pretty immediately. Her call makes me think I'm correct (i probably should have raised more on the turn, but... I also made a raise that looks like I have a great hand and i WANT her to call. Too many levels of thought. I pray for a 3 or a blank on the river. Two players, $380 in the pot.

The river comes a black 8. A total blank. Sure enough, she checks. I figure I'm going to take the pot down right here. I go all-in for $320. She starts pulling chips out from her stack and placing them in front of her cards, while asking how much it is. Her chips are all scattered in different piles of denominations. The dealer says "if you want to call, you can just say call". She says "call", and I throw my cards away as she turns over A8diamonds. My read was perfect. Just somehow she hit that 8 on the river, and thought it was good. At least two players on the table make eye contact with me and roll their eyes in shock. Both in shock that I didn't have a boat or trip 2s, and also that she called with a pair of 8s. More that she called with a pair of 8s. I started that hand with $500. I should have ended it with $700. Instead, I go home down $1500 for the night. I played everything perfectly. So so SO well. Except for the fact that I was playing an idiot, and then nothing else matters. It's one of the two basic rules of poker:

1. If you look around the table and can't spot the chump, you're the chump.
2. Never bluff an idiot.

I think I finally learned the latter.

Copyright 2005 The Self-Starter Foundation

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Copyright 2005 The Self-Starter Foundation

All rights reserved.

All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of The Self-Starter Foundation. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.

However, you may download material from The Self-Starter Foundation website (one machine readable copy and one print copy per page) for your personal, noncommercial use only.

For further information, please contact The Self-Starter Foundation.

(And with all of that said, go ahead and cut and paste whatever you want, just give the proper credit and a link, ok?)