Q: Is it possible for an asset to lose more value in an instant than Enron stock?

A: Yes.

We keep missing these blogger tournaments. There is another tonight, but I will be at dinner.

I am past the hurt and can now laugh at our failure in the World Series.

There are some good nitpicks on Rounders here. Kinda funny to print out and have handy while you watch the movie (for the 100th time).

This is pretty funny. I am sure JJF would understand the humor.

As a lot of you know, I grew up in Texas but I attended college out of state, at a certain small school in a Boston suburb. I cheer for the Longhorns every Saturday, mainly because they’re on TV and because I would have gone to school there had I not gotten into Harvard or had Fred Goldsmith not rescinded his verbal offer of a football scholarship to Rice when he found out I had already been admitted academically (what an asshole to do that to an 18 yr old kid! But I digress…).

Anyway, the point of this post is that while none of Harvard’s games are on TV (the team is better than when I was there but they have their own asshole coach these days), they have always been a good deal of fun to attend in person – even when the team was losing – because, being a private school, alcohol consumption wasn’t regulated by a bunch of ninnies in the state government and the administrators tended to look the other way. ( We would even pass around a bottle in the stands on occasion! Try that at a UT or A&M game…) By far, the most fun was the annual Yale game (”The Game”) because the parties and tailgates were so good. So good in fact, the it was common not to even go into the stadium for the game because the parties were still going on. Well, last year I heard Harvard put some clamps on the parties, including shutting them down at halftime. That wasn’t disturbing, because it was always more fun to travel than to stay home, but now Yale is reciprocating just in time for this year’s game and the days of the super duper Kegs-and-Eggs-in-a-rented-Ryder-Truck appear to be over. Very disappointing.

Last night I stopped by Js for a little 2-5 NL and did quite well. In stark contrast to last week, I was very focused. I was early enough to have my choice of seats and strategically found a spot with a maniac to my right and the best player to my left.

Fairly early on, I was dealt 55. Roy raised preflop and I called. I flopped a set, checked to Roy and called his bet. On the turn, I made a boat, checked, Roy bet, and I called. The river brought a third diamond. I thought that if he had something decent, it was irrelevant if I bet or checked – either way, he would end up all in (another $85). But if he held something like AA, he would be unlikely to bet if I checked. I decided to bet and determined I had to go all-in to give the appearance that I could be on a steal. I did, he went back and forth and finally called. He had AA and I won a $500 pot.

I won two other big pots with mediocre hands, but both times I did the same thing. Doofus raised pre-flop and I re-raised him to go heads-up. I knew that Doofus would raise with absolutely anything, so I figured going headsup with a mediocre hand (I think it was QJ once and A9 once….both times he had complete rags) would probably make me the favorite. I was right. The table was shocked, “Why did you re-raise with QJ?” Yet another example of why playing mechanically means missing oportunities in NL.

I went home booking a $400 profit.

I would take “professional” over “amateur” today.

I crunched through the schedule, and I find it difficult to avoid having to take AT LEAST 64 hours of vacation to play in it…and that’s counting weekdays as 8 hours and not counting Fridays.
(I work 9-hour days, with every other Friday off, so I’m not counting any Fridays, but 9-hours for weekdays)

Therefore, let me suggest that instead of increasing the entry fee to $25,000 in attempt to keep out the riff-raff, Harrah’s has created such a format that most amateurs won’t be able to adhere to.

1. This format lends itself to locals in Las Vegas
2. This format lends itself to professional poker players that don’t have X number of vacation hours per year
3. This format lends itself to people that work for themselves (crack dealers and college students welcome!!)

They are prepping for 8,800, but I will be shocked if they get near that. The number of days just isn’t in the realm of possibility for most amateurs. What you might find is a lot of people qualifying online, then canceling once they realized the depth of the tourney.

Who wins?

The online poker sites that have players cancel. They already have the vig from the satellites, and now they’ll get to keep the $10K, flight costs, and 14-night hotel costs. Be sure to notice if you have a choice of entry vs. cash when you attempt to qualify online.

At 2:00 yesterday afternoon, Kirk called me and said he had two tickets to the game. You can obviously guess what my answer was. It was fun, although the outcome was disappointing but not necessarily unexpected. That’s the thing about the World Series – when you’re down 3-0 you have a chance to adjust your expectations. Yes, it would have been nice to win the World Series, but if you remember just how bad this team was in May, I am willing to give them a pass this October. I might not be so understanding next time, but for now it was a hell of a nice ride.