Hugo's Blogspotting: 31 July

Helpless Helpless Helpless

Poker. Why do we all play it? To win. To lose. I think it’s because the human condition requires that we are always in action. And in a poker player’s case that action is some form of poker – live cash, online donkament, heads-up, no limit holdem, pot limit Omaha, whatever, as long as there is a game.

This has to be somewhat true because all of us play when we know we shouldn’t. Take Lucky Jim for instance. He’s currently homeless and his job as a cycle courier has slowed down a bit due to the summer holidays. He’s basically potless, but still finds a way to play PLO online.

“Foolishly, I called in at the Gutshot on the way. My friend in Scotland had paid £500 into my bank account that afternoon, money I'd sent him via Neteller. I deposited first £50, then another £100, and then £50 more, and lost it in under half an hour. I was smoking outside when my courier pal saw me and stopped. He said he'd never noticed the Gutshot before. I told him what I'd done, and he was incredulous. "How long would it take you to earn that much money?" Almost a week.”

Oh well Jim, you live and you learn. Presumably Lucky Jim swallowed the losses and went off somewhere to lick his wounds. Well, sort of. He finds himself at a gallery opening, but the restless itch that only a sick gambler can feel gnaws away at his soul.

“I was aware I was in an environment where I couldn't indulge any of my vices. I wasn't gambling, bingeing on food, ogling naked women, or numbing myself on the Net. Since I'm still sober, I didn't have my traditional recourse to alcohol, either. I felt very raw and open. When the crowd moved onto a pub, I made my excuses and left. As I waved goodbye, I was fleetingly aware that, actually, I was happy there with my friends, I was secure, and I really shouldn't be leaving, because I knew what I was going to do next. But I didn't listen.”

I have always thought that gambling is the hardest of the vices to give up. At least when you stop drinking and drugging you actually feel physically better. When you stop gambling there’s no real difference. Apart from feeling jumpy because you’re not in action.

So as you can guess Jim slopes off to an internet café and does his absolute bollocks.

“In less than a couple of hours I was on the street, stunned: "Have I really done this?" The money I needed as a deposit for my flat - the non-existent flat, the impossible-to-find flat - now all gone.”

Stunned is definitely the right word to use in that sort of situation. I can remember times emerging into the dawn after doing my brains and just feeling numb. Did I really play that bad? Was I really that on tilt? The answers were always yes.

You hear a lot players talking about going broke, but it’s usually just an expression. You know they can always pull up and carry on playing. You know they can afford to buy food. Will Lucky Jim’s future blogs be about sleeping underneath the arches in Waterloo station or something? It seems very possible.

Going To The Poorhouse In A Limousine

Another player worried about going broke at the moment is Bodog founder Calvin Ayre. Nat Arem’s latest blog features quotes from a Forbes story about the Canadian tycoon.

“The U.S. government recently seized $24 million from bank accounts linked to Bodog, the giant, illegal-under-U.S.-law Internet gaming operation founded by Canadian tycoon Calvin Ayre.”

If you follow the links from Arem’s blog you’ll read that Ayre lost his billionaire status not long after the UIGEA came into being. I can’t say I feel too sorry for him.

Nat Arem seems to feel the same way and makes some interesting observations about the way people like Ayre court publicity. Basically, when Ayre started raking in the money hand over fist there was a cover story on him in Forbes magazine focusing mainly on his open flouting of U.S gambling laws. The story was entitled Catch Me If You Can.

“That’s dumb. Does he really want to flaunt that sort of thing in front of the American public and humiliate the DOJ? That’s like putting a target squarely on your back. Unless he thought the publicity outweighed the risk somehow, doing a cover like that is really dumb. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the publicity comes close to the risk of a more toned-down interview/cover … or just not doing the story in the first place.”

Obviously Ayre never heard the old adage, and true professional gambler’s code, “Get it quietly”.

Arem goes onto write that his father, who is an attorney, once did some work relating to the gaming industry and,

“…that one of the guys involved was really being dumb when he did all sorts of interviews and generally let every single person possible know about his success (to that point). Lo and behold, the guy gets nailed. So basically, if that wasn’t a lesson to every online gaming exec, this should be. Keep quiet, keep a low profile and hope to avoid attention. Let someone else take the spotlight.”

Well I guess it won’t be long before poor old Calvin Ayre is just a mere millionaire…

Flip-Flop

Back to poker and Steve “MuGGyLICIOus” Sung has been experiencing what is known in the business as swings.

“I was on an up-and-down week being down just a little bit, and then won a little under 900k one day playing 2k 4k HORSE and 2k 4k Omaha hi/lo. THEN, couple days later, i lost a little over 700k mostly from 20k FLIPS! What a bad idea that was! I don't plan on doing that again, because I run so f*#@ing bad! That kinda shook me a bit since I pretty much gave it away for no particular reason.”

Now that’s what I call gambling. It always makes me smile a little when I hear a poker player saying that they don’t gamble, they play poker. I mean poker may seem a little more controlled than, say, betting on the horses, but ultimately it’s still gambling ain’t it?

The paradox of poker is that the Steve Sung types, the ones who can drop a huge number in one night, are the same ones who can win really, really big in one night too. They do so because they aren’t afraid to gamble. I guess “flipping” for $20k at a time is taking that concept a bit too far though.

Stop And Smell The Roses

Finally, and I can never resist these, Wicked Chops posts a link to an Associated Press story about a poker player in Atlantic City who was removed from the game for being too smelly.

Now we all know poker players are not too great on the personal hygiene front and I have talked about this issue before when Doyle Brunson brought it up in a roundabout way. I guess what’s funny about this story is that the locale is Atlantic City – not exactly the most fragrant place on earth. See if you can spot Wicked Chops’ amusing nickname for the historic east coast holiday spot.

“A poker player from Brooklyn named Michael Wax was kicked out of the Borgata Poker Room in Atlantic Shitty the other day after his table mates complained about his body odor.”

One would think that the denizens of a poker room in AC wouldn’t have even noticed some old boy’s BO. I guess it was the Borgata, the “class” of AC – maybe if it had been the Tropicana, nobody would have complained.

The story doesn’t end there though. According to AP, Mr. Wax wants an apology from the Borgata.

“Wax said his instincts tell him to find a different casino to patronize, but he likes gambling at the Borgata. He said the casino was out of line to tell him he stinks in front of other patrons.
"I would like an apology," Wax said.”

Presumably this Wax guy isn’t a big punter. I’m sure if some extremely smelly gambler showed up at the dice tables wanting to bet the maximum the casino wouldn’t mind putting up with him…

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin