Monday, May 14, 2012



I call it "Here comes everybody"...
I'm two thirds of the way finished with The Sex of Poker-- It's about how not to be a sucker to the unexpected and the unknown. It's The New Poker Lobotomy.
It's not so much about "counting your outs" and "folding AK in a raise, re-raised pot"-- that cause-effect relationship stuff. It's more about the anti-poker game--situations. A collection of situations you haven't played yet; of the things you don't know. there is a massive collection of unknowledge,the anti-hands that contain all the hands that may still change your poker life.
The Sex Of Poker logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know. I considered that many of my Jackpots and big hands were caused and accelerated by their being unexpected.---of me being an anti-gambler. The upshot is that:Knowledge leads to action but lack of knowledge can also lead to action. At least, that was the case when I qualified for The Legends Of Poker on the WPT.
What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure. Poker is no miraculous exeption. One in a million is not one in a thousand, yet we confuse them as we focus on the payoff. It's charged. Get lucky or bluff or...
9/11 or Virginia Tech,... we retrofit a narrative to tell ourselves that someone should have seen it coming because we ourselves could not have been that stupid. And yet, we are no better prepared for the next one.
Economically important things are consistently unexpected, in that people underestimate, on average, the probability and impact of improbable events We are chronic explainers-one an event happens we try our hardest to say I told you so and explain it...
The Sex of Poker...
Buying into a poker game , unlike buying a car is a gamble that the future will represent an improved version of the past. And who knows whether that will be true? When it comes to NLH, what you don’t know is far more relevant than what you do know. Consider that many huge hands can be caused and sped up by their being unexpected, that case eight on the river for a suck out, a four card flush free roll.
Poker doesn't think.
So many utopian ideas are about Finite Games: End Cancer, solve global warming, get people to be more rational, reduce violence, and so on. As wonderful as all those Quixotic achievements would (will!) be, there is something missing from them. Finite Game optimism suggests a circumscribed utopia, without frontier or mystery. The result isn't sufficiently inspiring for me- and I turned to poker because poker doesn't think! It is an infinite game;the overall phenomenon of NLH has no end. It is always a frontier, always on the edge.
I consider myself an average player, except for the fact that I consider myself an average player. NLH is too random to be left up to chance-Unplanned discoveries--you can't predict them but you know where they can come from and you know how they will affect you.
Poker is cool because the "greed is good" meme in the 80s, and the "rules don't apply to the rich" 90s (think Enron, Worldcom, dotcom). don't apply.Poker is the new Religion, astrology and magic It helps us with our daily problems by teaching us how to avoid misfortune and how to account for it when it strikes.
Some notes...
Poker is too random to be left up to chance...
Pig Lipstick---renaming something unpleasant to get more mileage outof it... AKA, putting lipstick on a pig. Poker is too random to be leftup to chance---I was fooled by randomness. I needed a miracle, a shift in thinking about my unknown unknows in my game.that retrofitting of stories we create to explain my loses becausemy brain wasn't a laptop.
The tip of another iceberg: the knowledge of uncertainty that built my winning streak, that beginner's luck...
.Pain For Sale
The Longest Journey begins with...a cash advance from Bank Of America.
"Money can't buy happiness but it can buy chips which is kinda the same thing"-
The sex of Poker is really a game of mistakes and the greatest one is rooted in pleasure. The fine line we walk between success and self-destruction comes down to asking that one dirty (Harry) question rooted in the loner cop’s message of personal freedom, “Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”
Poker is a game of situations. Winning poker is about making good decisions Feeling lucky and going to a casino is like feeling athletic and going to a sports bar. It’s a bad decision. It is the in to your sane, a kind of voluntary madness. The surest way of getting nothing from something. The road less traveled-the psycho path!
In Blackjack, there is always a correct decision, a perfect strategy. NLH, on the other hand, is a game of completing the puzzle of partial information; where players make inferences and “investments” under uncertainty. Fixed strategies don’t work because players don’t always act perfectly. You are, above all else, playing against other people, and conditions change.
No Limit Hold ‘em or NLH is designed to have a high luck factor that can quite easily lead to a sort of pathological optimism. It’s a fast, easy to understand game that pulls down huge bucketfuls of short-term luck. In fact, playing because you are “feeling lucky” is (almost) the right way to play.
Yet, the right way to play NLH and (almost) the right way to play is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. I don’t want to steal your thunder but that’s what luck is--- the Thunder. Thunder is a good thing , thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work and gets the job done, and it doesn’t strike twice in the same place because the same place isn’t there anymore.
The sex of poker therefore can be misery. It no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it. The remarkable thing about luck is no matter how bad it gets, it can always get worse. Luck is a strange teacher. It gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. Luck is your university. The chips are your report card. Everything proceeds from there.
While it is true that it is the mark of an inexperienced player not to believe in luck, luck doesn’t always believe in you--- Luck is pauperized ecstasy because it lends but never gives. When you’re buying in to feeling lucky, there is plenty of pain for sale. It is easier to change your religion than your diet, and in the buffet of luck may have no calories, but everyone eventually goes home hungry.
If Pain is weakness leaving the body, then Poker pain is weakness leaving your game. It is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into--- the poker frequency. Do you play in-frequently? Is that one word or two?
Playing too many starting hands in a standard $2-$4 NL game is weakness. You should have a 20-30% view of the flop percentage. This means folding, saying “No” to AJ in first position, KT in middle position and QT in late position Just saying `no', to every hand, however prevents bad playing the way “Have a nice day” cures chronic depression. A Jackass who persists in his recklessness, nevertheless becomes a smartass.
You can't spell Manslaughter without laughter, so when you eat what you kill, make sure your neighbors are having a good time. It’s not some felony conviction; more of a firm belief in magic, the process of putting the con back in confidence and creating community, paying them off with social currency.
You are not keeping up with the Joneses. You’re dragging them down to your level on the green felt jungle. It’s not how good you are. It’s how bad you want it. The quest is in the question of not, “ Who is going to let me?” Rather, “Who is going to stop me?” Power is never given. Power is taken.
Losing Holdem ASAP is about putting that monkey on your opponents back; the “hundredth monkey” that creates a critical mass of change in how they view your “table Presence” As they start believing your own B.S., your third eye and turd eye are one--- Shift Happens! Poker appears to be ’ user friendly. After all, it takes a minute to learn …and a lifetime to master. It isn’t user friendly, it’s user illusionary.
The cards are just there to confuse the bad players, the Hellen Keller’s. It’s not what you look at that matters but what you see. You don’t need cards to win. You need cards to lose. Try=Fail.The illusion of control is like pushing an elevator button and thinking it will arrive faster. You can however push people’s buttons, and get them to do things faster, like calling your “All in” when you flop the nuts, an unbeatable hand, or folding when they have the best hand. Your mind can't tell the difference between what it sees and what it remembers. Nerons that wire together fire together. You have this social situation, where you get to create your own reality, your own table presence.
The Playah puts the odds back into God--- a Megalomaniac who not only must confuse his thoughts with gods, but gets you to believe in his thoughts. Your reality check will not bounce because you create your own reality. It’s your world, others are just a tourist in it and eventually, their own. They believe a monster truck is coming toward them, they will always jump out of the way. So keep on truckin, They have been gas lighted. “Let there be flop”….
In poker, "the nuts" refers to not only an unbeatable hand, It is also an unbeatable style of playah, a raisey-crazy one -man asylum., whose default mode of betting suffers from Jim Carey’s “advanced delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage.” An adrenaline junkie with demented energy, grandiose plans, he like being feared. It imbues him with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. The Playah is inebriated by the looks of horror or repulsion on people's faces, as they fold with the best hand as you bluff--The poisoned joy to the poker world of depriving others of what you don’t have, a legitimate hand.
The crime and punishment for playing with the Playah is a malignant optimism. He plays a one-handed game of "Good Cop, Bad Cop" with different people. Stiring the pot, triangulating and pitting one against another. Gossip may be false intimacy but Torture is the ultimate act of his perverted intimacy. A kind of Traumatic bonding", akin to the Stockholm Syndrome, takes place… You are his “Supply” he is your change agent—He find you; gets you,to love him; make you eventually hate him. That’s fine with him---He love to be hated and he hate to be loved The Playah uses use up other people like candy bars, and when he’s finished eating , he throw away the wrappers. Disposable relationships. No deposit. No return.
In RL (Real Life), When you define me you negate me, but in NLH, --- Love Thy Label As Thy Self. This Perception Shifting is the Most Promising to Define a New Space for winning at NLH. . Playahs need a reputation to live up to and tend to become whomever people see us as. Most of life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Players tend to confuse habits with identity. When asked WHO they are, most people resort to communicating their habits. Get into rearranging. Native American Indians on Caribbean Islands couldn't see Columbus's ships sitting on the horizon because they were beyond their knowledge. You don’t see it then believe it. You believe it then you see it.
Poker is a struggle for silence, and never interrupt an opponent when he is making a mistake. With the license of the brothel and the silence of the cloister, the Playah provides the loophole that allows the whore to climb into your game. With your Wal-Mart table presence-- huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, the Playah devours all his ” rivals in his lust to expand. You operates in a world of overwhelming force, supply and command, While the TV audience supplies new players who demand action. Without new players, good Playahs wouldn’t make any profit.
A “rush” is a winning streak. When you are on one, it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. Everybody knows you can’t park anywhere near that place. There is a certain larceny in getting more for less, a bit of cheating when the money faucet is Niagara Falls. You have no reason to believe the well will ever dry up. So you drive the bus, by looking in the rear view mirror. Caution, objects appear closer than they actually are!
How you do chips is how you do life. Chips are congeled energy and releasing them releases holdem’s possibilities. Energy, however follows the path of least resistance, and most beginning players are calling stations, and/or over bet preflop, and under bet post flop.
Being normal. It is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful and unimaginative. Ask your mother. Normal is the setting on her washing machine. Normal isn't a virtue. It denotes a lack of poker courage. You have to be Madonna, constantly reinventing yourself. Otherwise, it’s a vast, conforming suburb of the soul. You don’t want to be normal. Normal people spend their lives avoiding tense situation, Poker Playahs spend their lives getting into them. The whole upshot of NLH is that it be a perpetual crisis that you create. The Phish is the last one to know it is in the ocean. Phush swim in it. Players surf on it. Failure to plan creates crisis in RL (Real Life) In NLH, planning for crisis eliminates failure. This is a Poker Mini-Satori- You abhor monotony and constancy, equating them, in your mind, with death. Seek upheaval, drama, and change.
God may play dice with the universe,, but this ain’t no metaphysical crapshoot, it’s NLH. If you want to have “fun” then spin the wheel of fortune, phone a friend, buy a vowel, and get voted off the island. Deal or No Deal. If you want an “experience”, play NLH. It’s not a sport, it’s a concussion! Good NLH poker is not a "A-ha" experience, it is more of a "holy-shit" experience. Most playahs are experience rich and technique poor. Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. Someday, this books will start to read like one long typographical error, and you come away thinking, “From now on, I'll connect the dots my own way”. 'It’s like football - if you don't wear a helmet and pads, you're going to get hurt.. This book is your equipment. It is a contact sport, and the more contact you have with other players, the more you will win.
You simply can’t play a solid, safe game. Anyone who plays poker within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. You have to get in there and gamble.. Aggression makes you money. And the trouble with NLH is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. Poker very simply, rewards aggression. Aggression is the main source of energy for the NL playah.. NLH is about aggression and domination- it’s a playah’s only redeeming qualities. When everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough. Due to the effect of community cards, hold'em is a game of "domination. A hand is dominated if it has 3 or fewer outs against another, like AQ against AK.
The price of aggression, however, is not cheap. You have to be willing to lose in order to win. Aggression causes trouble. The trouble is you must use extreme self-discipline. If you cannot obey yourself you will be commanded by someone else’s play You cannot control the luck factor, but skill is something over which you have control, and you have the power to gain yet greater skill by becoming a Playah. A playah is just looking for opportunities, not guarantees. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t amateur hour, this is gambling. All of life is risk exercise. It’s the only way to live more freely and interesting. Dream with your eyes open.
Aggression causes pressure and pressure makes diamonds and diamonds last forever--- It creates the mutant ability to do the impossible, win consistently at NLH. You deserve to win consistently, and the minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. But you don’t get what you deserve in poker, you get what you negotiate, and you better be good at negotiating risk.
In NLH, betting is far better than calling. That’s aggression. When you bet, you can win if you have the better hand or if your opponent folds. If you call, you can only win if you have your opponent beaten. If you bet, you determine the bet size. You determine the pot odds. If you call, you are accepting someone else's odds.
If you bet, you force people to pay you off when you have a good hand. If you are a caller, you have to hope someone else will willingly pay you off. The importance of aggression is why tight-passive players can win a lot more at Limit than No-Limit. If you were arrested for aggression would there be enough evidence for the poker police to convict you?
The gambling world is a kind of gambling kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "Poker" with the wrong blocks.. You got “T” testosterone, that’s good, you’re gonna want that, You got “A”, aggression , that's even better you're gonna want and need that, too. You can’t spell danger without anger, and every NLH needs to feel dangerous.But any two year old kid can throw a fit! NLH is about controlling that aggression , harnessing that aggression into a series of wins. Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten
The antidote to anger is patience, and as we already know: infinite patience brings immediate results to your game. Yet the opposite of patience is aggression. We have this paradox. We are learning that NLH is more subtle and multiple than conventional 'either-or' limits have allowed. Our imaginations have some catching up to do. The power not of positive thinking but paradoxical thinking. The nearer you are to paradox, the nearer you are to beating the game.
5.The Power of Paradoxical Thinking. Don’t cheng unless you ch’i
If you want to perform optimally at NLH, then you have to be paradoxical . In NLH you have to have your cake and eat it too. This is not either or duals and duality. Welcome to the world of “and”. Doing two things at the same time that apparently negate each other. NLH is 100% skill and 100% luck. The language of "and" is the language of NLH. The language of "and" is the language of passive and active, optimystical and materialistic, hard and soft. There’s a yang for every yin. It’s Fuzzy logic, and everything is a matter of degree and the player is fuzzy wuzzy to the nth degree. Get a clear, sharp view of the fuzzy.
The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water.
Control The Options: Get Others To Play With The Cards You Menally DealGeneration Terrorist- Keep Others In Suspended Terror: Cultivate An Air Of Unpredictability. A placebo ---Latin for "I shall please"
On a psychological level, there are other ways of changing perspective and opening up your game. Getting a miracle case 9 on the river for a full boat-- a dramatic and startling experience can completely alter our understanding of the game, making us into new playah Sometimes the experience can be so overwhelming, it is as if we have shifted into a new dimension, as if our minds have expanded by a Power of 10.
The Strangerhood-
Between the paradox of holding back and holding on comes the midpoints. TheABC midpoints of NLH---The energy of Anger, Boredom and Craze (enthusiasm). Being healthy in poker is having the same diseases as your neighbors. The nearer you are to paradox the nearer you are to healing the hurt that comes from going broke. It’s not either/or. On the one hand, on the other, I’m up, on the other I’m down. It’s one long game. Admit to third options.. Reframe it, You have an an infinite number of third options. IS NLH an all or nothing proposition. different things come from separate places' into 'apparently different things may come from the same place---you may win, you may lose, but what does that really mean. Do not think in extreme "black-or-white" terms but use continuums instead! Do not think in words like "always, never, every time, everyone".
For a Playah, discipline doesn’t mean to punish, it doesn’t even mean to control behavior, when you are self-disiplined you are becoming your own disciple, and your game gets more interesting. It leads to self-respect, and the ability to say no is key----No to playing too many hands first and foremost. No to under-estimating how much of your profit comes from AA,KK,AK, No to playing suited mongo (trash) out of position and for more than one raise outside of your blinds. The key to NLH is laying down big hands no matter what the table encourages you to do. My Bad (My fault) is you don’t remember this one.
We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons."
Go within or go without winning. Live from the inside out. What we know inside always exceeds what we know from the outside. Beliefs are what you learn from the outside; knowledge is what you know from the inside.
6. The randomness of NLH is too important to be left to chance!
NLH is mostly not about cards, it’s about people. To get around this problem, All decisions should be randomly generated. Every time that the same situation occurs, you should act as if it has never occurred before and randomly decide whether to Raise, Fold or Bluff. You might go 10 times in a row or more without bluffing, or you might bluff six times in a row. Choose an action that leaves your opponent with no way to take advantage of it. The mess is the message
The best-kept secret is held by one, but what if you knew all your opponents’ hole cards, all his secrets. Would you have played the same way? If the answer is yes, then they have no secrets to keep and you have profited, they have lost. If the answer is no, if you would have played differently, then they have gained, and you have lost.
More than that, If your opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, they made a mistake and you profit; and if they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, they played correctly, and you lose.
7. Why Be A Man When You Can Be A Success?
Few teams win back- to -back championships. Because nothing fails like success You set yourself up to be your own Judge Judy and executioner. It is the greatest injustice you perpetrate upon yourself when you play in your CZ (Comfort Zone), the safety net of being a winner. If it works, it’s obsolete. Doing things “right” the first time is an obscenity. Built to last I s yesterdays idea, There is no yes in yesterday.If you talk about the past you have no future. It’s a sure fire way to have your winnings sequestered.
Nothing lasts forever in NLH. You might as well get used to the expression, “Don’t worry, and It’ll change”. Getting what you expect is boring.
In the RW(Real World) change is seen as some “thing” containing lastingness, permanent press. Would you rather have a TEMPORARY change to your game that lasts as long as it is useful, or rather a LASTING change that continues to last far beyond any limits of usefulness. A poker game is not static. It's a dynamic, living organism that changes from moment to moment. You have to respond to those changes. You have to be the change you want to see in your poker world. Any given game is a Living system, with environmental conditions, adaptation, life cycles, recycling, needs, homeostasis, evolution, survival of the fittest, health, illness.
Poker is 100% skill and 199% luck. Information is the difference that makes a difference. Information is surprises. We all expect the world to work out in certain ways, but when it does, we're bored. What makes something worth knowing is organized around the concept of expectation failure. You learn something when things don't turn out the way you expected.
The greatest temptation for a winning player is to repeat the things he did to get there. Winning at the poker table is like milk, with an expiration date stamped right on the carton. Pretty soon, you’ll be in deep yogurt. If your game is not broke, break it, and more than that, break it before someone else does. You have to continually switch gears, and mix it up.
Ignorance is blistering. Imagine someone of average intelligence. Now consider that half the Poker world is dumb and dumber. They have put the odd back into god. Laziness is the religion of the 21st century player. Players have more leisure than money. Their cash can’t buy happiness, but it can buy chips which is kinda the same thing.
Happiness, isn’t good enough for the Playah , he demands euphoria. It is a form of energy that tends to make you more of who you already are. Hearing the mantra “Tight is Right” is really “Procrastinate Now” but that’s a “I only want to win” strategy. You”ll be forever in the control of things you can't give up, your chips.
8. Vene, Vidi, Velcro: "I came, I saw, I stuck around” ---Teach Yourself Poker in 10 Years (Why is everybody in such a rush!)
NLH is not that Spanish story about a guy named “Manual”. There are no playbooks, no rules and no rulers. The Playah change the rules. He creates his own game. The Playah is the measure of all things. His money talks. It’s present tense grammar is a slang that spits on the street, rolls up its sleeve and gets to work. The Playah is at the center of gravity, and you are in the vortex of his personal twister, a black hole which sucks your energy and resources dry .The aim of the playahs language is to throw others off the scent and obtain a supply of more chips. When you grow up, do you want to be a Global Village Idiot?
Damn it, this isn’t brain surgery; It’s rocket science! We have guided missiles and misguided players who forget the cards always have the first move. They act, you react. ---a traitorous mistress that sometimes has to be gang raped into submission.You are always in a state of not knowing. You never know how soon is too late because at anytime, anyone, including you, can go “All-In” and risk everything. The important thing, nevertheless, is not to be in the know, but to be in the now. Good poker comes through you not from you. It’s a gift, that’s why they call it, the present. Open it up!
If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, then why practice? There is absolutely no substitute in NLH than for a genuine lack of preparation.. A NLH session is one long conversation run by C students, and Cash is their report card. NLH is like high school with money. Dare to be naïve. This is a world beyond the classroom besides getting the correct answer. Few playahs save for a rainy day. Playahs are perennially ill-prepared. avoided and ignored, rendered transparent by their checkered past.
Keeping players in the dark so that when you spike the bluff, they have that deer in the headlights look---frozen disbelief. Heads or tails? In the dark both are correct. If I turn on the light, I "collapse" the superposition, and force the coin to be either heads or tails by measuring it. Never show your cards.
How to build a time machine…
A broken clock is right twice a day ,just like a square circle no one can win lose all the time. If you play badly long enough sooner or later you will win. The fact that so many people are playing NLH makes unlikely events almost certain.. With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen . The one chance in a million will undoubtedly occur despite extremely long odds, someone will eventually win the WSOP because millions of people play. This is not magical thinking. It’s The Law of truly Large Numbers. The mathematical Law of Large Numbers states in essence that if an event is given enough opportunities to occur, sooner or later it will occur. The one chance in a million will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.'
9. The Free Agency
The casino is the ultimate playground of Free Agency. The plug-and-play low entry point is one that anyone from waitress moms to NASCAR dads can move into and put together a life---or at least a facsimile of a life ---in less than a month. There are charities for the homeless There are charities for the homeless. The casino is for the homely default lottery- Ka-ching- mentality of wish fulfillment, a portable magic. Most want to go through the revolving door of poker on luck’s push. Do yourself a favor and avoid the free ride.
Like Temporary ("flexible") workers you are paid a premium to compensate for not having job security. Like owning your own business, you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours! Got poker? It’s like, Got Milk?” with an expiration date stamped right on the carton. It's never too late to be what you might have been if you start now.
Play Poker It’s like applying for citizenship in the Gaming World. NLH is a form of patriotism, It is not the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the home of the free and brave declaration of independents who stick to the old school values: life, liberty, and the pursuit of a fast buck. There is no treason, You can not be a traitor to anything, except to yourself.
All Players are created unequal. All Playahs are cremated equal. . Being "on fire" is misleading in poker. Usually it's the fire that's on you. It is not some spontaneous combustion, about the match being too close to the gasoline. You must first set yourself on fire. When you released from the burn center, (of bad beats, and your own idiosyncratic mistakes) you start to see things more clearly: This is the Fuzzier Side of the ROI of NLH. Fire can be our friend, whether it's toasting s'mores or raining down on Charlie.
10. Few things are harder to put up with than a good example
The assumption that gambling is bad has outlived its usefulness. If it wasn't for pimps, prostitutes, hustlers, gangsters there wouldn't be any poker. There was a time when one could almost be afraid to call himself a playah because it meant so much kneecapping.
Now anyone can do it with complete ease, because it means nothing at all, thanks to the CNN effect of dealing with everywhere and everything at once, including the WPT and WSOP. You cannot avoid poker paradise. You can only avoid seeing it. The sign in the window reads, “Sorry, we’re open 24/7” The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. NLH is the speed of light. 24 hour casinos-I haven’t got time for that.
11.Are You Experienced?
Wisdom is shared experienced---Thanks for sharing-Phil, Doyle, and David. “Beast Out”-on Helmuth’s tool box, Play Poker Like the Pros and it’s a poor workman who blames his tools of its core message---Only play premium hands and play those hands aggressively. Doyle’s Super System is the Rosetta Stone, the black box,the flight recorder when your game crashes. For all you Pi in the sky math atheists, Sklansky’s, Theory of Poker will make you a believer, deifying pot odds and probability. They are among the best techniques. The sum of their thick information is accurate. Yet everyone of these techniques is a trap. The tricky thing is you have to be trapped by them for them to work. Go into their books knowing you’ll be trapped, with a trust, that once they work, they will self-destruct.
When you played Stratego on a rainy weekend, you were just pretending to take over the world; when you play NLH, you actually are, one player at a time. It’s a game of domination. Is there life before death in poker? If you don’t create your own whole NLH world, you will certainly die in other peoples, NLH is so perplexing to the fish/phish --- he’s not used to being in a situation where he has to figure out what to do each and every moment. For him, NLH is just another way to gamble, one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking, a kind of yuppie version of bulimia for the guy with 3C’s-cash, condo and cars. A Yuppie on a poker table is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so playahs can approach it without fear. There’s no better way of doing that with a raise
Road Dawg’s high-speed chase to nowhere is your now here You’re good at opening up the present---the gift called now. You have found your “Calling Station”. Nothing makes this kind of player more vulnerable than playing every hand to a showdown.
The fish thinks he only has to learn how to play by the rules. He’s wardrobe consists of two t-shirts; the one says “But They Were Suited”, the other, “Take My Money”, He plays like a sledgehammer. Gorden Gekko’s greed is not good.
When all he has is a Sledge-bankroll, every hand to him seems like hours of fun. It’s a poor workman who blames his tools but if the only tool you have is that hammer, then everything you see begins to look like a nail. . The nails that stands up to this kind of player , is not getting pounded down. He ends up buying a new BMW’s and having stock options in (Blue Horse Shoe Loves) Anacot Steel
12. Lack Of Money Is The Root Of All Poker Evil
You can’t play poker without money, and lack of money is the root of all poker evil. "You wanna play NLH? That's gonna take a lot of mirror! Every playah has roots once in a while in an insufficient bankroll. Playing short stacked is the last resort--- like paying for a ten-day vacation and arriving on day seven. It’s like selling the car for gas money. The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. You work yourself up from nothing to a state of supreme poverty with re-buy after re-buy.
It’s not whether the playah loses a hand , but how he loses and how he’s changed because of it and what he take away from it that he never had before, to apply to other hands, other players. This kind of losing, in a curious way, is winning. How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win again. So what--- that you’ve lost all your money. Luckily, you will still have everybody else’s. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. . It is when we lose everything purposefully - that we gain it back.
13. White Angry Hold Em--- My invisible internet friends
Vegas got Amazoned. Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and started all over again in the user-friendly universe of location neutral Casino @nyware. The “Open Source” world that everybody is smarter than anybody doesn’t apply in Internet NLH. One of us is smarter than all of us. The herd is wrong. Let me get ghetto on you-it's the white people version of looting. Home isn’t where their heart is it’s where their computer is,.. The napsterization of cutting out the brick and mortar middleman by partypoker.com and others have created Alpha geek---get rich click-- students and beta freak--tweeds-to-riches—teachers high on silicon crack. While it is true that the quicker you go the longer it can take, when you think long you think wrong— To begin to think is to begin to be undermined. Decisions made very quickly from the gut, in poker can be every bit as good as those made carefully and deliberately! Internet players are no miraculous exception. They make snap judgements and decisions fast. There really is no correlation to time and effort spent on a decision and the outcome. Analysis is paralysis or another why to put it Paralysis by analysis! Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not power, but applied knowledge is. The longer and harder you think about something, we usually assume, the better you think about it, and when you assume you make an ass out of U and ME. Go with your best guess.
Take your hate off Adolph- I was a teanage Nazi sympathizer…Play poker like the Pros….and go broke. If you play like Gus, you will go broke.
You don’t need powerpoint to explain it. You don’t know why you knew but you knew. This feeling of knowing in the first two seconds is not a gift given to the few. What is deeply personal is universal, It can be cultivated. Common sense,, however is not so common. It is possible to know without knowing why you know and accept it. Internet Playahs are capable of making sense of situations based on the thinnest portion of experience. Poker ooms are really in the art business. Limit poker is to NLH poker what paint-by-numbers is to art. NLH artists have to live out loud.That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, er I mean that's just the way the cookie gets completely stomped on and obliterated. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their bad habits. Art is anything you can get away with.
The “Open Source” world that everybody is smarter than anybody doesn’t apply in NLH. One of us is smarter than all of us. The herd is wrong.
This is poker not confession. Poker is a struggle against silence. Betrayal oozes out of every pore, there’s chatter in the finger tips, happy feet, the breath. NLH is fraught with opportunities to keeps one's mouth shut."The little voices inside the playahs head want the other guy to shut up but then you realize--- Never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake. Everything bad is good for you, and NLH is bad to the bone. Most players lead lives of quit desperation. Playahs are artists, and artists have to live out loud. The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in. Be original.
He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the next freeway exit.The poker highway is full of magical rides patiently waiting for our wits to test drive. Bad Beats are the potholes in the road of NLH. The way is to act not compete. You're either part of the steamroller or part of the pavement. Putting the sin back in sincere is not the highway to hell. Its not a major sin, so you only go to heck. It’s just an I’m the boss applesauce tude. Putting the con back in confidence, Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent. If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane. Cowboy up, and Begin again.
14.Last Is Basically Best
Remember, NLH is a game of high cards.. Remember, NLH is a game of high cards. “Let there be flop.” “The geeks shall inherit the earth,” and The first shall be last and the last shall be first. No where is this more true than in holdem. NLH is a game of position.
Last is basically best. Pretty hands turn into pretty ugly hands quickly relative to position. If you're betting in early position, you don't have the information yet on the other hands that someone in late position will have. All good players will tend to play more hands when they are in late position and less hands when they are in early position. A Beginer/limit player has no sense of the importance of (betting) position. The most common trap hands are AT, AJ, KQ, KJ, KT, QJ and QT.from early position.
Many people are overly aggressive and too loose pre flop, and too tight post flop The best position is on the button, right in front of the small blind. It is in this position that you will posses the most information when your turn to act arrives. When sitting on the button you will know how many players are in the pot, if there has been a raise/re-raise, etc. This is most certainly the most profitable position.
I don't suffer from tilt. I am a carrier!!! The Broken Escalator Phenomenon: When Autopilot Takes Over.Ah! The limit Table-- I spent a year there one weekend. It’s All About The Jackson’s’Hell is other people and you can usually find them at the 3/6and 2/4 limit games. A good Limit player is basically a high-functioning autistic who has no idea how NLH people do it . It is a recipe for permanent mediocrity. The middle of the road may be where the white line is, and the limit player walks the walk and talks the talk down that line, but it is the worst place to drive in NLH. Limit is a science, but NLH is an art, the difference between checkers and chess.. If it keeps you awake, it’s art; if it puts you to sleep, it’s a drug. Limit players are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. Everybody pities weak limit players; jealousy you have to earn. For those of you without hope, we have Limit poker rooms with color TV, cable and air conditioning It is the most original torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. I didn’t fully understand the fatal term terminal illness, until I played in a 2/4 limit game.
Bounty after the mutiny. Expecting the other playahs to treat you fairly because you are a good guy is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. Bulls, however, do not win bull fights. It’s all about the Hamilton’s.
15. Instant Poker
Infinite patience brings immediate results to your game. How do you spell success in poker? T.I.M.E. Time is one of your most valuable assets, We Americans are in a time famine, while the rest of the world, (the axis of evil)---the 100 million people on this planet that make less than $2 a day, are time millionaires. Some of them come over here, and make great playahs. Nevertheless, Spontaneity is not random. It is a function of your training, practice. And rehearsal. .Don’t always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily or for there to be some relationship between cause and effect. And when there isn't -- when you win a big jackpot for no apparent reason, or when you make it to the final table in a tournament, don’t be surprised..
Holdem’s Looney-tuned tension gets its storyline from the Cartoon Network. In a New York minute, an ACME anvil pancakes you, and then a split second later, you’re expanded - accordion-style - back to normal, like some tempurpedic mattress. It’s a formula of ins and outs, need and speed, aggravation and acceleration.
NLH is a game of domination. It rewards (selective) aggression. Infinite patience, however, brings immediate results to your game. The game has gotten faster, yet the faster you go, the longer it takes to beat the game. You spell success in NLH, T_I._M_.E_.
In the United States of Unconscious gambling, we Star Strangled Bastards can’t get enough of what we don’t want, don’t need and don’t know. —S.A.D. the Standard American Diet, Uncle Sam’s unhappy default mode of doing the same stuff over and over again; and expecting a different result. NLH really put the c*nt in country, a metaphor for the most valuable thing on the planet Sorry We’re open 24 hours a day---like some vast and unimaginable mall, opening her legs to receive us all. But your quest to beat the game will be turning into 25/8.
16. Drawing to the nuts is napalm
Nothing else in the world smells like that. Smells like victory When you start losing and you hear yourself saying that, it’s the lesser known "I don't have a dream" speech.
You cannot get ahead while you are getting even (Chasing). The word winning would lose its meaning if it weren’t for losing. Losing motivates -- it never compensates. And motivation is the key to NLH. No noose is not good news Nothing focuses the mind as a noose around your neck., like going all-in, and drawing to the nuts. Try it sometime. A flopped set over set situation ranks right up there with the mother of all ex[periences. especially when you have top set, then river quads for basically the stone-cold-mortal nuts.
17.The Secret Of Staying Young----lying about your age.
Happy 120th birthday---Staying healthy may be the slow way to die, but The secret to staying young in NLH is lying about your age! In poker, we’re obsolete at ever-younger ages.NLH, like professional sports, has a way of making 30 year old men feel decrepit. Twenty is the new 30. Your poker life is too short to play bad cards. Stay healthy with strong starting hands AA,KK,QQ,AK Suited. It is the slow way to die. Pay attention to the number of hands going to showdowns. Showdown Percentage is a critical concept in no-limit hold'em. Since no-limit lends itself to bluffing, one can make a lot of money simply by stealing pots if your opponents have a “Right is tight” approach. However, this strategy obviously fails if everyone shows you down at the river.
Gowing old in poker isn’t optional, growing up is. The only thing tender about you is your legal tender. Nothing but frenemies at the table. They are bilingual; they speak English and profanity. Putting the ick in dick, a form of disorderly conduct in which the score is kept with chips. Just like there is no business like showbusiness, that’s right it’s show business, not show friends--- There's No Limit Like No-limit.
It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere. What doesn’t demolish you , makes you tougher. The future is already here it’s just not evenly distributed yet. How do you predict the future? You create it buy sitting at a table with the wallet bearing crowd and exploit their affliction, the “house money effect”. The future you see is the future you get. We are inventing the future of NLH every day we go to play. It will happen with or without us.
Kindly let me help you or you will drown," said the monkey putting the fish safely up in a tree. The ultimate goal is to separate these fish from the sea, leaving them exposed to good play. NLH is designed to achieve an important balance: any Jones (unskilled player) must be able to win just enough hands to keep them at the table rocketing. One of the ways you can recognize a Jones is by what they win with. For a player to win he has to show his cards. If a player wins with a 8 and a 2 off suit, you know you've got low hanging fruit.
The longer the playah lives – the more average he becomes.
18. Winning Is A Way Of Turning Money Into Problems
It’s a misfortune that never misses. It’s the price we pay because we don't want to pay the price to lose. NLH is never finished, only abandoned---It’s a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Chips aren’t lost or made, simply transferred from one Party of One to another. The assumption that gambling is only about the money has outlived its usefulness. A player that count their chips at the table, is like a hooker who looks at her watch. They are missing the point. They see Cindy Crawford, when the reality is only the mole. NLH is not just about money anymore. It’s about winning.
Having a huge chip stack are weapons of mass distraction because the house money effect of playing with “their” chips takes over but there is no their there. It’s all yours. If you don’t figure this out regime change is in the air you’ll run your fortune into a shoestring, trying to prop up your ailing dictatorship, defending your status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status. Nothing says “Obey Me” more, however, than a large chip stack. "In poker, stasis = death."
Motion creates emotion. M.A.D. No nukes is good nukes, Mutual Assured Destruction. When you put emotion into your game, You pull the handgranade and blow up everyone. The herd is usually wrong. Good NLH playahs thinkers are like comedians: they test boundaries and challenge the status quo. Capitalism is often refered to as Creative destruction. Get the wrecking ball ready
A BIG Project is so vastly expensive and complicated that people cannot understand it, so they assume that those working on it understand it. It gets green lit. A big chip stack has the same effect—People back down.
Boredom is the only thing that can help you to make correct decisions. It comes from knowing what you are doing. The cream always rises in boredom; your submerged best play comes to the surface.
Laziness is the religion of the 21st century player. What we have here is a failure to excommunicate the notion that sometimes nothing is a good hand. Our “Procrastinate Now!” Right is tight is wrong. You sit there waiting for the deck to hit you, and it will. Try raising with nothing . You’ve got to get creative. You’ve got to mix it up. The flop misses everybody 2/3 of the time, and NLH lends itself to bluffing a small bet in or out of position can take it down. Playing suited connectors 89 and J10. "Sell the sizzle not the steak," makes everyone a vegetarian for a while. It works great—until the player tries the steak.
The Playah not only puts himself in your shoes before he took your shirt, he waits patiently for that shoe to drop! He knows instant gratification, when it is merchandised as a commodity, takes too long. The Casino is a wish-fulfillment striptease for the all-consuming Afluenza crowd. Leisure is more available than money and money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy chips, which is kind of the same thing. So you dig into your pocket and re-buy.
With the license of the brothel and the silence of the cloister, the Playah provides the loophole that allows the whore to climb into your game. With his Wal-Mart table presence-- huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, he devours all his ” rivals in his lust to expand. The Playah operates in a world of overwhelming force, supply and command, While the poker economy supplies new players who demand action. Without new players, good Playahs wouldn’t make any profit.
19.Get Even — Get Odd! Casual Misanthropy
Henry Ford said you could have the Model T in any color as long as it was black. When you go head to head with the Playah, your “I for an I” will leave you blind in a black room looking for a black car that isn’t there. You may be the engine, but the playah does the steering. Your Blue book value? Nonexistent.
Does he really have that kind of juice? No. He’s altered your thinking. He’s made you a fan. You’ve been played. Hate the game, not the player. It’s poker. He’s a Poker Playah, the opposite of people. Poker is not a civilized situation, it’s an heroic one.We can't all be heroes. Someone has to sit on the curb and clap as you go by. . You could quit anytime, but chooses to call with marginal hands, redoubling their efforts while forgetting their aim which was to win.
If you dream to become the “Dian Fossey” of this NLH poker jungle, to become one of “them”, and then study “their” behavior from the inside and tap into this vibe, then read ,The Sex of Poker. It may not get you in Who’s Who, but it can certainly tell you “What’s What” about the monkey and the business. Drinking the company Kool-Aid and Tattoo the sex of poker logo on your chest. NLH is the modern Greek tragedy. You can basically go from Hero to zero. It’s good to be be king of the hill , married to the queen of the nights, and then, in one moment with one card left to come, all of a sudden, you’re sleeping with your mother and you poke your eyes out.
20.This Is Not That
Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use in NLH. Players seem to be violating the most basic most basic laws of the universe: Cause and effect, sowing and reaping, action and reaction. Even the law of gravity the law of gravity, figuratively jump off a cliff (with any two cards, in RL (Real Life) you’re going to plummet to the Earth below – 100% of the time, not in NLH. just KNOW it, the same way one "knows" about gravity – directly, immediately and assuredly. No cosmic immunity.
You get your Freak-onomics on with more = better. The temptation to get into the action is constant.. After all, in NLH, being safe is risky, and being risky is safe. Sandwiched in between that tipping point of no return and the law of diminishing ones is this one “great mistake” in your game, and this great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied with the simple realization that, sometimes enough is a feast. Because long-term planning is for Communists and poker is the most democratic form of gaming, you continue your casual misanthropy.
Allow me to sound like a thing from another tax bracket, and quote some proud members of the right wing conspiracy, “We rich are different. We know when to leave.” Remember Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing? Most of those guys knew when to bail. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Most poker pigs end up making hogs of themselves. They never get disgruntled. You can never get enough of what you really don't want." If your goal is to "not lose ," you can have continual wins and still not have what you don't want.
Today’s poker is not necessarily a lapse of morality, but the result of a great social injustice. In your “W2” world, you name your own decimal dusted salary. He’s called Vinnie, and Mr. Bag-a-Donuts is always going to be having out of money experiences: because a funny thing happened while homeslice was pressing his nose to the grindstone: His world changed.---his joy-to-stuff ratio got out of balance, his office ennui Dilberted his Type T (Thrill) personality and he turned into an underemployed torpedo. Getting what you expect is boring, and another thing---you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. Garbage hands win. In poker, what's supposed to happen really is happening. There’s the rub.\
.Respond to change. A poker game is not static. It's a dynamic, living organism that changes from moment to moment. You have to respond to those changes. Survival of the fittest. CEO salary distinct or extinct?
We are part of the best entertained and least informed people on the face of the planet, free v to change spouses, jobs, careers, neighborhoods; but the way he gamble? Players don't resist change. They resist being changed! Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget, neither does your house of cards. You have to work hard at failing.
21.Denial Is Not Just a River In Vegas
The “house” takes 5 percent, but what's 5 percent of a dream? A nightmare. There is wise and otherwise--- winners and losers--- AmeriCAN’s and AmeriCANT’s. Video Poker, Caribbean Stud, 4 card and Crazy Poker hijack the game into unrelated territory of luck only. It doesn’t seem right, but NLH is as important cognitively as reading a book or operating a McDonald's cash register, Poker Genius is nothing more than constant attention. Everyone is a genius, it’s just that some of us are too stupid to realize it. It is easy to get de-geniused rapidly with all these house games.
Our national id may have ADD, our shared hallucination of “more” and “any place but here” having instead of being;but our poker idd needs DDD --- deceive, delude and deny. We have to misrepresent or disown what we know to be true, we have to lie to our self, deceiving our self requires that we both know and not-know sometimes. This apparent paradox is one of the keys to understanding how poker-DDD operates . The Self “Flim Flam” startegy. You have just lost $500 in a big hand---Nothing changed except the meaning we associate with our response - and hence everything changes. That's reframing! It's the art of choosing what to give greatest significance to in any situation. It is the art actively choosing our response. It means we do not engage in regretting or resenting.
There’s a yang for every yin. Attention is the strongest currency at your disposal. It’s poker capital. Every moment of our game is of infinite worth in that it has the potential for movement. There is Infinite input at the table. NLH has more to do with a state of mind than the cards.
Now anyone can do it with complete ease, because it means nothing at all, thanks to the CNN effect of dealing with everywhere and everything at once, including the WPT and WSOP. You cannot avoid poker paradise. You can only avoid seeing it. The sign in the window reads, “Sorry, we’re open 24/7” The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. NLH is the speed of light. 24 hour casinos-I haven’t got time for that.
Broadcasting poker let the genie out of the bottle. Thanks to WSOP and WPT enslaving the masses just became easier. It is like randomly mailing automatic rifles to 50 million addresses. This time, You hope some crazy twenty- something trench coat mafia types gets a hold of one, with their fine unwashed arrogance steps into a casino, and go postal as their longest journey begins with cash advance from Bank of America. Fasten your seat belts. There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result. How was the poker game ?" is like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it was - you're lucky to get out alive. Iit’s much easier to SHOOT a bullet than to DODGE a bullet (a If I had three thumbs, I'd put them all up There is absolutely no substitute for a genuine lack of preparation. You need chaos in your soul to play well, and a unit of chaos is called a cao. Playing against these fish is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope . It’s called Texas Holdem not Texas sharpshooting---the guy who shoots holes in the side of a barn and then draws a bull's-eye around the bullet holes.
Today’s poker is not necessarily a lapse of morality, but the result of a great social injustice. In your “W2” world, you name your own decimal dusted salary. He’s called Vinnie, and Mr. Bag-a-Donuts is always going to be having out of money experiences: because a funny thing happened while homeslice was pressing his nose to the grindstone: His world changed.---his joy-to-stuff ratio got out of balance, his office ennui Dilberted his Type T (Thrill) personality and he turned into an underemployed torpedo.
22. Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!
Most Players simply do not know how to behave in a massacre. Poker weakness is pitied, but jealosy, that’s gotta be earned. If you’re not pissing somebody off at the table, you’re not doing your job. A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull flop. If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you. Hate the game not the playah. Get mad at the situation not the playah. Don’t take it personal.
23. Money Costs Too Much
Poker acts. You react. The Cards alway have the first move. Playahs are really living in a state of not knowing. So, you need a Scenerio It might take 15 years to become an “overnight Success” or it might take one tournament. Inspiration, however, is wonderful when it happens, but you have to develop an approach, for the rest of the time. The wait is simply too long. You can just Fake it till you make it. Money costs too much. The road to better play is whatever road you're on and it helps to have a scenario. My overnight success took 10 years-- People tend to overestimate what can be done in one years worth of poker and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years. Failure is not an option in poker. There are only outcomes. It’s like one long day. It’s never a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight .Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day on the felt. NLH’s has this eternal present feel to it.
Create your own system, or be enslaved by another player’s.Check it out--- When you're in a hand against one or more opponents, put them on something. Make your best guess about their holdings in light of their betting. Have a keen sense for the obvious because it is easy get so caught up in our own hands that you don't stop to consider what your frenemies are up to until it's too late. If you have a scenario, you may be wrong but at least you have a chance to be right, and have something left. Count your outs—How many cards can improve your hand.
In Baseball time is measured only in outs. Knowing your “outs” or the cards that will potentially give you a winning hand is the most important aspects of playing winning poker. The amount of outs you have should dictate every move you make when faced with the decision to fold or to continue playing a hand. In a way you spell success in poker T.I.M.E. Infinite patience brings immediate results.
The world needs more of ME---Your education is an STD, It makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you have the urge to pass it on. Every playah has a number: the exact change you need in the bank to walk away. You know that you can lose your job at any moment, that his madness takes its toll on your mind and body and soul, and that the job prepares you to do nothing else. Your career becomes a race to squirrel away a bundle. There is no equivalent to the gold watch, just--a double lobotomy and ten rolls of rubber wallpaper.
24. There’s nothing ethical about the “work ethic” in poker.
That rule that everything worthwhile is a result of struggle is not only false. There’s a bit of larceny in getting more for less, a bit of cheating the “system”. You feel like some black market wheeler-dealer., living in the underground economy of CASH.
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. $100 bucks makes you the corporation . This ain’t no Google this ain’t no Buffetology. There's nothing better to change your moral outlook quicker than cash in large sums.
25. Few things are harder to put up with than a good example
If it wasn't for pimps, prostitutes, hustlers, gangsters there wouldn't be any poker. There was a time when one could almost be afraid to call himself a playah because it meant so much kneecapping. The assumption that gambling is bad has outlived its usefulness.Now anyone can do it with complete ease, because it means nothing at all, thanks to the CNN effect of dealing with everywhere and everything at once, including the WPT and WSOP. When you start to read about the evils of NLH, you have to give up only one thing--- reading.
26.Law of Large Numbers
The future is already here it’s just not evenly distributed yet. How do you predict the future? You create it buy sitting at a table with the wallet bearing crowd and exploit their affliction, the “house money effect”. The future you see is the future you get.
The law of truly large numbers says that with a large enough people playing many odd coincidences are likely to happen. The one chance in a million will undoubtely occur
27. It Ain’t Awful Play, It’s Lawful.
Everyone profession has a blind spot. Players have a mindset, just as lawyers, accountants, bankers, engineers, and scientists have their specific mindsets. He wants to win money, but ends up losing, that’s a problem. These unwanted problems aren’t the problems----they’re attempted solutions. Every behavior has a positive intention.
The lawfulness of poker players behavior. Somebody’s gotta be a sheriff The herd is usually wrong. They don’t play aweful, they play lawfully. They are predictable. They act in certain ways. They act in a cause and effect way. They “take In” the game.
All Phish are made from the same mold, some are moldier than the rest-the sponge pants Bob, the Fred the funnel, Steve the sieve, Sam the strainer. Bob absorbs all! Fred puts the fun in funnel. He’s here to have a good time. The chips pour in at one end and they spill out the other. The strainer lets the juice pass through and is stuck with the pulp. The sieve is the best because it lets out the flour dust and keeps the fine powder.
The so called new ways to play holdem are the old ways heated up in a microwave for 15 seconds. The Playah is devoid of trvia, the structure of one's own skills are frequently invisable to himself. Teach an old dogma new tricks-You never hear of a dog that is failure at being a dog. If yourgame is not broke break it before some one else does
28. The Second Coming
Going For Broke makes you Broken- Having lost everything, the Playah feels that he has found himself, that he has been re-born, that he has been charged with natal energy, able to take on new challenges and to explore new territories.
Think in opposites---Advocating for the Devil’s Advocate
Symptom Prescription-The Cure Is In The Poison.
Do the unwanted habit of folding instead of raising. The cure is in the poison. As long as you’re wanting to change, you won’t. Trying to hard worsens problems, Don’t just schedule in some me time, schedule some worry time. Some forced catastrophes. The blow up method, blown out of proportion. It is important to do what you don't know how to do. your poker skills keep you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.
Paradoxical intention: All In with 74 Off Suit. Bluff off all your chips. Do what you (love) fear and the money will follow.
The world of either or is a world of false dilemma. There is a third option. The world of “and”. It is the difference between a breakdown and a breakthrough. The Pro’s of con ---Confidence and contradiction. to reach beyond what appears to be obvious. Reaching beyond the obvious is the essence of getting creative with NLH..
The statue is not the saint, the menu not the meal, but the map is the territory. out there' in the cards—Go within or go without, without an understanding of players..The poker world isn’t user friendly it’s user illusionary a blur of energies and frequencies. We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea is but one channel from many extracted out of the supermix The Phish is the last one to know it is in this mix.
Sorry we’re open 24 hours a day---like some vast and unimaginable mall, opening her legs to receive us all screaming out, “I’m for sale” I 'm at a seedy Indian Casino in Ft Lauderdale, where I think everyone goes eventually, if they die without Christ. I start to take up second hand smoking, .have a beer, what the hay, it’s only liquid bread. The Brain is like an appendix for these dunces, they don’t even use it. All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me—so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. A bunch of underdogs in this inhumane society. These are working class people. You can’t lie to them. You can never offend them in small ways. It’s all or nothing . I am allergic to civilization. It makes me wake up with headaches. I need to go back into the casino with all these zombies. Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength, and most of these New York transplants wear rudness as a a fashion statement.
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29..A rainbow of chaos
A chao (pronounced "cow") is a single unit of chaos...We have , chaoboys and chaogirls. The wrecking ball swings, out of chaos order, and order chaos. There is order in apparent randomness. Perspective is the key to perceiving order. Crisis is not merely a mindless jiggling, it’s a subtle form of order. Reign Chaos Cow/girls/boys..
30. Your turn....




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