Inaugural M&M home game

Never play poker with a guy named Doc, they say, so maybe our first mistake was inviting Rayo “Doc” Inouye to our little card game at Casa M&M on Friday night.

Rayo, a retired copy desk chief at the Seattle Times, is now a semipro poker player whose identity as Doc is so ingrained in local card rooms that, as we laughed about again the other night, he was once called upon to perform CPR at a table-side medical emergency. He’s a fun guy to have in a home game, full of stories about the old days in newspapers and gambling halls.

It was about time that Michelle and I reciprocated by inviting some journo friends over for a game here. We’ve been mooching off pals like P-I managing editor David McCumber and Seattle Timesers Jim Simon and Jack Broom for years -- in fact I played with Jack and Rayo in a regular game 20 years ago -- and when we lived in LA we had a semi-regular game that always seemed to be at the home of our friends Donna Wares and Ed Humes, never at ours. Some kind of Matassalosi aversion to cleaning, I suspect.

This time Broom, Simon, Rayo, McCumber and former P-I sports editor Nick Rousso all came out to West Seattle -- and everyone brought something to eat or drink, including some splendid salmon and delicious salami under McCumber's arm. It was quite the party.

Also a great seven-handed poker game. Michelle, unsurprisingly, drank the other six of us grizzled old-school reporter/editor types under the table and took our money too. My kind of chick.

Doc made it through the night without being called upon to practice medicine. But his poker skills were scalpel-sharp; he was the game’s biggest winner.

We’re hoping to make it a regular M&M event, even if that means we have to tidy up every few weeks.

SOML

President Obama is about to deliver his first speech to Congress, an appearance they’re not calling a State of the Union address -- or SOTU, as headline writers sometimes abbreviate it -- but that will feel like one. Last month, here in Washington state, Gov. Christine Gregoire gave the first State of the State (SOTS) of her second term, and a week ago today Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels offered his own State of the City (SOTC) address.

It’s that time of year. So, in the spirit of the season I’m pausing a minute for a personal assessment: the SOML, or State of My Life. Ahem. Lapel pin adjusted. Ready the teleprompters!

Although the SOTUs themselves can drone on, presidential speechwriters often include one line that cuts to the chase. Something like: Tonight, the state of the union is ... sound, challenged, hopeful, whatever the case may be.

Tonight, the state of my life is ... a mix of chaos and stasis. Staos?

In some senses very little has changed, or changes. Approaching two and a half years now since I left work to deal with my health, I remain unemployed, on medical disability, seeing doctors, popping pills, checking months off my chemo calendar. At the same time life feels like it’s changing crazily. The Seattle P-I, where I used to work and Michelle still does, is likely to close in a few weeks. But we have no official word about whether an online version of the paper will survive as rumored or, if so, whether Michelle will grab one of the few musical-chair jobs left to be had.

It’s impossible to say with any certainty what we’ll be doing three months from now or even where we’ll be living. We’re both looking for work here in Seattle, where I have family and prefer to stay, but we agree that this is no time to insist on a specific job in a specific city. As cool as the Excellent Element is, neither of us wants to live in it. So we’re looking elsewhere as well. Turbulence creates downdrafts, and I wouldn’t be surprised if M&M winds up relocating, maybe back to Los Angeles, as early as this summer.

All that’s enough to give a guy a case of the chaotics.

Partly to brace for the financial hit, and in recognition that the various federal bailouts will bail out every sector except that of dopes like us who bought a house we could afford on a loan we were qualified to receive, Michelle and I have reassessed our household budget and made significant cuts in our lifestyle. Again stupidly responsible, no doubt. To be clear, I don’t mean to whine, as we’ve merely ratcheted down to moderately conservative from comfortably affluent. I mean, we are the rock’n’rollers who spent two Pie in the Sky months on the road last year, just a couple of months after spending two weeks in Paris and Rome. We’ve had it pretty good. Ew, did you drop your caviar in my champagne? But we have made adjustments. We’re not taking any trips this year that weren’t already planned, like the April pilgrimage to New Orleans for Freda’s 70th birthday. We’re limiting ourselves to one movie outing a month. We cut back to basic cable. We’ve stopped dining out. We’re making each gin bottle last twice as long (ouch). And I’ve stopped playing poker, on the theory that you should never bet what you can’t afford to lose. That one really hurts.

In support of the new budget plan we’ve combined finances more fully than ever before. That’s a net financial gain for me but a change that makes me cringe. I’ve been financially independent now for more than 30 years and hate to surrender the feeling. Ving Rhames tells Bruce Willis in “Pulp Fiction,” “That’s pride fuckin’ with ya,” and I know that’s true. Still.

I could go on. There are indignities on the job-search front, worries on the family front, frustrations on the medical front.

A friend asked the other day about my health, and I described how at this point the effects of brain cancer feel less physical and more psychological and emotional. I struggle sometimes to think of myself as the same capable, confident person who 17 months ago spazzed out of one familiar life and into this new weird one.

Even so, as I’m sure the president is saying right about now (we’re Tivo’ing the non-SOTU), out of hardship comes opportunity. Hope and recovery are ahead. Trite as these pat lines are, I believe there is truth in them, for the individual as well as the nation.

Personally, I have much to give me strength and hope. Despite some growing pains of adolescence Gina and Franny are awesome, inspiring kids and actually fun to be around. Lovergirl Michelle and I remain totally solid, in spite of the understandable stress we both face.

I don’t know where we’ll be this time next year -- or next month for that matter. But we’ll be here. M&M abides, and the SOML is, staotic though it may be, still pretty good.

OK. Off to watch the speech. Good night, and God bless America! Please comment on Obama’s address here.

Photo credit: Top photo via whitehouse.gov on Creative Commons license.

Poker and politics

A week or so ago, after the first presidential debate but before the veeps traded winks and gaffes, I sat down at the poker table next to Lynn, a 60s-ish regular player who always wears an oversize Barack Obama campaign button. Well, I said, how do you think he did?

She knew immediately that I was talking about Obama's performance in the debate and didn't miss a beat.

"He was OK," she said, "but I think it was a missed opportunity."

That had been my take too, just as a nonpartisan political reporter type, and I was struck that a true-believer fan would reach the same conclusion.

Our little exchange -- and that's about all there was to it -- touched off a few minutes of political table-talk, which is unusual in a poker game. At one point, a bit later, someone called the dealer Wilma by name but sort of mumbled it.

"Did you call me Obama," she asked. "Am I that bad?"

That led to a few oohs and ahs and a cross-examination of Wilma, who reversed course and said she liked Obama a lot; in fact she had just registered for the first time in her life so she could vote for him.

A few minutes later, as the conversation continued, Wilma seemed a bit embarrassed about having revived the topic.

"I'm probably going to get in trouble," she said. "They tell us there are three subjects we're not supposed to talk about: politics, religion and ... I can never remember what the third one is."

At that, a 20-something kid -- kind of an angry-looker with a little hipster stache/beard and barbed-wire tats on his biceps -- volunteered the missing subject. "Prolly women's rights," he said, and he got up to go have a smoke.

Uh, that would probably qualify as politics, I said as he walked away. Wilma, nervous: "Yeah, that wasn't it."

Whatever training the dealers get, this week the players again had politics in mind. Or at least the economy. In one game I asked my casual friend Stan, a financial adviser, how the market collapse and bailout were likely to affect his business. "People are nervous," he said. "I think it'll be good for business; everyone wants a new financial adviser. In fact, I should be at the office right now instead of playing cards."

That prompted a bit of speculation around the table about the economic elasticity of the casino biz. "This place is recession proof," someone said. "No matter how bad it gets people will think they can get lucky and win it all back."

Nods of agreement. Tales of woe. Someone mentioned the progressive bad-beat jackpot in the poker room, now up to an enticing $40,000 or so. The middle-aged grouse in Seat 9 looked at the number flashing on the screen and shook his head.

"Even if I won it," he said, "it wouldn't make up for what I lost in the market this week."

Everybody sighed. I was having a losing session, and after a couple of big winners got up and cashed out it seemed like everyone else at the table was stuck.

I have an idea, I said. At the end of the night let's see if Congress will pass a new bill and bail us all out.

Fish Nazi and The Unabomber

With Kaye and Val in town, we went yesterday afternoon to one of our favorite West Seattle hangs, Sunfish on Alki, for a lunch of oysters and fish and chips.

I love the cod there, fresh and flaky, and the simple atmosphere of the small beach-side space. But there's something about the brothers who run the joint that always has reminded me of that famous "Seinfeld" episode, "The Soup Nazi" -- about the demanding guy with the perfect soup who would punish offending customers by shouting, "No soup for you!"

Here's a sample:



Nothing quite that extreme at Sunfish, but the brothers (I'm sorry I don't know their names) are pretty stern dudes, and woe betide the poor newbie who whips out a credit card or asks for more than one tartar sauce.

The last time I was there, a month or so ago, the owner was unaccountably nice to me. Nothing unusual by normal business standards, but he smiled and asked how my day was going. I even mentioned it to Michelle that night, that's how out of character it was.

So cut to yesterday. As I put in our order, the Fish Nazi smiled again (what?) and asked if I like to go to Las Vegas and play in poker tournaments. Wowie, he's looking into my soul! But then I remembered I was wearing my gray hooded sweatshirt with the World Poker Tour logo. When I said that yeah, I do like to play cards in Vegas, he got all excited.

"You're that guy with the sweatshirt, on the TV. With the name ... what is it?"

Oh, I said, you mean The Unabomber? That would be Phil Laak, the poker pro known as The Unabomber for his standard getup of hoodie and sunglasses. Other than the sweatshirt there's really not much resemblance and I told Fish Nazi that I'm not him, but he got all excited and asked a bunch of questions about poker and pointed me out to his brother, busy cooking.

"It's that poker guy."

Weirdly, the little episode of mistaken identity made my day. That and the fish and chips and the nice company. I went out to the Muck last night, while Michelle and Kaye were having a girl date, and nobody there mistook me for a poker pro. If anything I was the fish with chips. I lost nearly $150, never really got close to winning.

No soup for me.

That's a lot of zeroes

As we speak the House just rejected the big bailout plan and congressional leaders are trying to line up a second vote. I'm no economist but I'm sure not convinced that this plan is a good idea, and I still haven't seen anyone attempt the story I suggested last week, explaining in simple terms what would happen if we taxpayers don't give these well-dressed thieves $700 billion or more of our money.

There were a couple of smart op-ed columns in the New York Times last week at least raising questions about all of this.

Thomas Friedman made the good point that one of things weakening the U.S. economy is that it's built on fluff, not stuff:

We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.

And Maureen Dowd had a smart observation: "Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers?"

What I do know is that $700 billion is a lot of money. That's $700,000,000,000. A 7 with 11 zeroes. Yike. Here in Seattle, where officials and voters have been wringing their hands for years about how to replace the crumbling highway on the downtown waterfront, you could buy 300 new viadcuts for $700 billion.

As Jon Stewart famously put it last week (mocking a real TV news report, actually), that figure amounts to 2,000 McDonald's apple pies for every man, woman and child in the United States. Michelle and I don't eat at Mickey D's, but putting it in terms that matter to the M&M economy, our "apple pie" share of the bailout equals 10 buy-ins to our regular poker game, 10 bottles of Bombay Sapphire (the good shit, in the big bottle), 50 pounds of Starbucks French Roast and one iPhone for good measure. Each.

So, like, a couple of weeks of fun.

I know the world financial markets may hang in the balance, but I'm not sure it's a good trade.

In case you missed it, here's Stewart's riff from last week:




Update: Oh my god, I watched this and found myself agreeing with George Will. "We're getting dangerously close to the truth," he said in this panel discussion, "which is that the sainted American people are the problem here."

Will mentions the 105 billion credit cards held by Americans, the self-reported credit card debt of $12,000 per household, and the fact that total household debt is 139 percent of household income.

"The refusal to defer gratification is a fundamental attribute of childishness," he said.

This show, "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," was pretty good show all around. More clips here. I wonder whether now that Russert's gone Stephanopoulos will take over as the must-see Sunday morning news show.

Poker hall of mirrors

As Michelle's cool Google news reader pointed out this morning, Stuart "Pay The" Pfeifer's excellent poker story -- and, even cooler, M&M's backstory version of it -- were picked up on a site called Fishbowl LA, by editor Mayrav Saar, whom Michelle worked with back in the day in OC.

Mayrav mentions yesterday's post, and then does a quickie Q&A with Stu, in which he confirms (whew) that I did in fact introduce him to casino gambling. My favorite question: "Do you curse his name for having introduced you to this?"

It's all kind of fun. At one point Stuart says of me, "So I really owe all this to him." Cool, so where's my cut, sucker.

I had lunch with Mich yesterday. Her two-word review of the entire post: "He's cute."

My vicarious life

I know the feeling. My friend Stuart Pfeifer got in his car in Los Angeles and headed toward Las Vegas, $1,500 in his pocket ("money that could be spent on something useful") and dreams of the World Series of Poker dancing in his head.

"The odds were so bad," Stuart writes, "that I might as well roll my window down and toss my hard-earned money into the blazing desert."

Except that he doesn't do that. He goes through with it, as I did last summer, entering a World Series event and taking his chances against 2,700 players including some of the pastime's biggest names. Happily, he fared much better than I did. He not only lived to tell about it, in an excellent first-person story in Saturday's LA Times, but he finished in the money, for a profit of about $7,000. Awesome.

I'm happy for him, and also unaccountably proud. I had nothing to do with his success, of course, but Michelle and I played with Stu in a home game a couple of times, and introduced him and another LAT colleague and friend, Joel Rubin, to the addictive, stressful (at first) fun of playing poker in a casino.

Safe to say they've both gotten over those early-days jitters. Stu and I played at the Commerce in April on an early Pie-in-the-Sky stop (he cleaned my clock; I snapped the above photo moments later), and Joel recently sent a hilarious recounting of his bad-beat exit from a tournament at Hollywood Park in LA. "My nemesis?," he said in an email. "I am told later his name in Sam Simon -- one of the creators of 'The Simpsons.' Worth, literally, a billion dollars. He cashed at the 2007 WSOP and was married to Miss January."

Anyway, I'm happy for Stuart. Great finish, great story.

Maybe next year Michelle and I and Stahlberg and McCumber and Sam Skolnik (our P-I friend now working and winning in Vegas) will meet Stu and Joel at the final table.

I even wore my lucky green shirt

Stahlberg flew up from Eugene, McCumber broke free for the afternoon, Michelle finished reading "Harrington," and the four of us showed up with bells on this morning to play in the big $500 buy-in no-limit hold 'em tournament at the Muck.

The "papers" have been running pretty good for all of us -- Michelle or I have cashed in the last three tournaments we've played; McCumber's a card rack; Stahlberg's a poker Zen master -- so I sorta liked our chances to pick up part of the Muckleshoot Casino's advertised $100,000 prize pool.

Mom, writing a good luck e-mail this morning, instructed me to wear my lucky green shirt from last year's World Series of Poker. So I did. (Although, come to think of it, it really wasn't all that lucky last year.)

Before the tournament started, like there wasn't already enough money on the line, the four of us agreed to a "last longer" bet. Whichever of us lasted longest in the tournament would collect five dollars apiece from the others. It's all about bragging rights, baby.

We trundled off to our various seat assignments, four of 157 contestants, all looking over our shoulder once in a while to make sure we were all still in. Before long David stopped by my table to report he was out; his two pair got whapped by three-of-a-kind. I caught no cards but survived the first few rounds and then picked up some pots by exploiting my squeaky tight image. On a break Mike and Michelle both reported they had a little less than the average chip stack, but were hanging in there too.

Three hours in, it was time for a half-hour break and the complimentary "players buffet" -- a nice smorgasbord of prime rib, fish, veggies, fruit, dessert; not bad -- and then we got back to business. After starting with $10,000 in chips, I had about $23k, Michelle and Mike both about 15.

Cards came and went. I treaded water until our table was broken up with players moved to other tables. Walking by Michelle I noticed her stack had grown impressively. I was seated at the same table as Mike and found he now had me covered as well. Before too long I pushed all-in with pocket jacks, against one player with ace-king and another with ace-queen. Pretty good spot to be in. I had a chance to triple up and be back in contention, but when a king fell on the turn I was out in 50th place.

A couple of hands later Mike busted out too, I believe in 49th. He tried to steal the blinds with ace-jack, but was called by a guy with pocket kings. Ouch.

"I stopped by and gave Michelle her five bucks," he said. So I did the same.

Mike and I dealt ourselves in to a $4/8 cash game in the main card room and crossed our fingers for Michelle. She'd need to last nearly 30 players longer than we did -- to 20th place -- to make a profit. First place paid something like $25,000.

A while later I went to check on Michelle's progress and saw her stacking chips while some guy got up from the table and walked away, obviously busted out by her winning hand. "Fucking women," he muttered graciously. I asked what happened and he complained about Michelle's play, but when I heard the hand recounted, by both of them, I thought they both deserved what they got.

An hour later I checked on her again. By now the blinds and antes were huge -- she was all-in just posting the big blind and ante -- and she missed doubling up when her heart draw fell short. Damn. Out in 27th place, seven shy of the money.

Well, it was fun. Michelle was the big "winner," I guess, since she cleared $15 in fivers from David, Mike and me, but we all had a good time.

No final table, but not a bad $550 free lunch.

In lieu of the World Series

Somewhere out there on the road, the Pie in the Sky tour took the wind out of the M&M poker sails. Still not sure what happened -- some bad cards, some bad beats, some bad play -- but we didn't exactly set the world on fire. That's not the only reason we cut our trip a bit short without a return to Las Vegas, but let's just say our vision of capturing the World Series of Poker was requiring rosier glasses than we had packed in the Excellent Element.

When we got home though, Michelle set to work on a screenplay idea she's been kicking around that involves a poker tournament. As part of her research she began reading the three volumes of "Harrington on Hold 'em," the bibles of tournament poker. It all must have rekindled an interest, or maybe she just needed some color for her story, but a few weeks ago Michelle suggested we drive down to the Muck to play in one of their Tuesday night tournaments.

Supportive guy that I am, I agreed to go play.

Michelle has always been a good tournament player -- better in tourneys than in live cash games -- and I wasn't at all surprised when she began building a formidable chip stack and scaring the bejezus out of her opponents, me included, with her ice-cold staredown from behind and under big black sunglasses and that shock of crazy hair. Also the giant raises.

Before too long I busted out, in about 20th place, and went to play in my normal $4/8 cash game. But hours passed and still Michelle was in the tournament. Finally I went back to check on her and she had made the final table, where she played like one of those cancer patients you read about in the newspaper (she fought courageously, battled tenaciously, blah blah blah) before eventually finishing in fifth place, good for $125. Nice little return on the $65 buy-in, and an excellent showing against the 50-player field.

At the casino we heard about a larger promotional tournament scheduled for later this month, July 20, with a $500 buy-in and a $100,000 prize pool including $30,000 for first place and $20,000 for second.

We also began to catch wind of some friends' recent success in tournaments. David McCumber, who has been on fire all year, consistently has been making the money at Diamond Lil's here in Seattle, and my pal Joel Rubin in L.A. has made a couple tasty little scores against the degenerates there. Best of all, our former P-I reporter colleague Sam Skolnik, who now works at the Las Vegas Sun, has broken through with several final-table finishes at Caesars, Bellagio and elsewhere, taking down wins in the five figures and barely missing six figures or more. He even has an official ranking now in Card Player Magazine's "Player of the Year" contest.

Michelle and I looked at each other. Sammy's pretty good -- we've both played with him plenty -- but he's not that good. If he and Joel and David can consistently beat these games maybe, with a little practice, we can do the same.

So we decided to try again a couple of nights later, at one of the Muck's $70 buy-in events, this time with 97 entrants. It would be like practice. And who knows, if we felt confident and made a few bucks, maybe we'd take a shot at the July 20 event.

We both did well again, with me outlasting Michelle this time and making the final table myself. I finished in eighth place, with a payout of about $180.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks to last night. The big July 20 event is approaching -- that's this Sunday -- and we wanted one more practice session at the lower stakes. When we got there and were assigned our seats I gave Michelle a little fist bump and said, "See you at the final table."

Lo, as players busted out to the left and right of us, every time I looked over my shoulder Michelle was stacking chips. And I got off to a great start, more than doubling up on the first hand of the tournament with pocket aces. A few hours later, as six tables were combined to five, and then to four, three, two, we found ourselves still in the game. Before long we were drawing for seats at the final table, just as we had "predicted."

Michelle, unfortunately, came in with a short stack among those 10 players and finished in ninth, good enough to get her buy-in back but not to make a profit. I had a healthier chip stack but played poorly in the final few rounds and felt almost lucky to exit in sixth place, with a $160 payout.

We didn't pull down giant wins -- and in fact we both could have made a larger profit if I had agreed to a proposal to "chop" the total prize pool 10 ways (stubbornness, greed) -- but we feel like we're playing in a different universe than we did out on the road.

Who knows what this weekend will bring. My good friend Mike Stahlberg, who taught me this stupid game, is planning to come up from Eugene to play on Sunday, and I think McCumber's going to give it a shot too.

We'll see each other at the final table, I'm sure. And if the subject comes up, I'll vote in favor of the chop.

You Deserved It, Part 2

I sat down in the $4/8 game at the Commerce Casino and looked over my opponents.

A typical crowd of Los Angeles degenerates (the main Commerce room is pictured above): a couple of young Asian dudes with big chip stacks (probably aggressive players, I noted to myself); a white guy in a baseball jersey to my immediate right, in Seat 8; the middle-aged black dude I’d played with two days before; an old lady with dyed red hair, a chronic table-changer and complainer, who also had made a brief stop at my previous table; some chips at Seat 7 but no player (must be taking a break); and across from me, in Seat 6, a squat, square man with gray hair and a bushy gray mustache, of uncertain Eastern European heritage, possibly Albanian, nursing a small stack of chips, and of a type in looks and, probably, playing style that I’ve encountered a lot at the Commerce.

I hadn’t seen a hand yet but I felt I had a beginning on getting my bearings. I posted behind the button. At the Commerce, as at many casinos, you must put up the equivalent of a big blind, in this case $4, before you are dealt a hand. I could have waited for the blinds to get to me, possibly saving a bet and getting a chance to watch some play for free, but I decided to post. There’s always a lot of action at the Commerce, and I didn’t want my first impression to be as a nit, someone who was going to sit there waiting for big hands, who was afraid to mix it up.

Despite my long losing slide at home this spring, I got to Los Angeles feeling good about my poker game. The recent attaboy conversations with Stahlberg and McCumber had helped, and I was returning to a place where I’d had plenty of success. When we were here last fall I started with a $3/6 game at the Hustler, quickly moved through the $4/8 and “$4/8 kill” levels, and ended up playing $9/18 and, briefly, $20/40 at the Commerce. Profitably. I got out of town about $2,500 to the good.

So, I thought, this was a good place to begin the Pie in the Sky poker tour, to get my game back on track.

My first Commerce game the other day, on April 23, had been a one-rack loser (that’s a rack of 100 $1 chips), but I wasn’t at all concerned. It was a toe back in the water, and the game seemed good to me. A lot of action, a good mix of aggressive and inexperienced players – the kind of table that, with some patience and a few good cards, you might pull down a big win. I had several big hands outdrawn right away and I wasn’t able to stay long enough to make a comeback, but I liked my chances. That night Michelle and I went together to the Hustler and we both won; I more than covered my one-rack loss in the afternoon. That's her at the Hustler, below.


Now, back at the Commerce on Friday afternoon, with more time to play and no worries, I sat down, looked over the cast of degenerates and posted. No cards those first few hands: fold, fold, fold, fold, fold.

And that’s when the hand that gave these posts their headline, “You deserved it,” came about.

It came around to my blinds – first the $4 “big blind” (I forget what happened that hand) and then the $2 small blind. The idea of the blinds is to kick-start some action. When the two face-down hole cards are dealt, the two players to the immediate left of the nominal dealer (the player with the rotating “dealer” button) post the blinds. At that point subsequent players can call the blind $4 bet, raise or fold (but not check, since there’s already a bet out there). When action returns to the small blind, he can fold, complete the bet to $4 or raise. The big blind also has an option to raise his own blind bet if it hasn’t already been raised.

This elaborate scheme ensures that, almost all the time, the pot will be contested and there will be a flop. Although sometimes – rarely at the Commerce – nobody will call the big blind bet. When that happens the small and big blinds are given the option of taking back their involuntary bets – “chopping the blinds,” it’s called in the card rooms – and a new hand is dealt without the casino raking any chips from the uncontested pot.

OK. So I put up my $2 small blind and, as I did so, the missing Seat 7 player returned to the table and posted both his missed blinds – $4, which would be treated exactly like a big blind, with an option to raise when the action got to him, and the $2 small blind, which went into the center of the table and was considered “dead” money (part of the pot, but not available for this player to use as part of a bet or raise).

Now, unexpectedly, the action folded all the way around the table to Seat 7, who could have raised, hoping to steal the blinds. Instead, he asked if we wanted to chop. I thought for a second that he was offering to let the big blind in Seat 1 and me chop our blinds plus his $6, which wouldn’t have made much sense. I looked at the dealer.

“Do you want to chop, sir,” she said to me. “You can all take your money back.”

She’s explaining a chop to me like I’ve never played before, but as far as I’m concerned she’s got the rules wrong. You can’t chop three ways, especially when there’s dead money in the pot. In my mind, this is a situation that calls for folding or playing, but not chopping. Which is what I said. The dealer shrugged.

Mind you, I hadn’t looked at my cards yet, and never do before the action gets to me. In fact, I hate it when players decide whether they’ll chop only after checking their hand. To me, that’s angle-shooting. My feeling is you should always chop or always play, and there have been many times when I’ve agreed to chop only to turn over my cards to see pocket aces or kings; them’s the breaks.

But this was different, I thought. It wasn’t even a legitimate chop situation. So I looked at my hand: Ace-3 of hearts, not a bad hand at a short-handed table, especially when no one has shown any strength at all and the only other two hands are forced to be there; they could be any two cards.

“I raise,” I said, and made it $8 to go.

Immediately, the guy to my right, in the baseball jersey, and the old man across the table, neither of whom was in the pot, both shook their head. The old guy actually wagged his finger at me.

“Don’t do that,” he said in his thick accent. “Is very bad luck.”

I owed nobody an explanation but tried to explain anyway. This isn’t a chop, it’s three-handed, I’m going to play my hand. The old man shook his head again.

Sadly, both players called (I was hoping to maybe steal the pot right there or at least lose one of the players). But brilliantly, the flop came A-8-3. I had two pair.

“Bet,” I said. “I ain’t scared.” A little extra bravado, I thought, might look false and get them both to call. Which it did. The turn was a blank, a duece, I bet again, and was called again by both players. Good little start to my session, I thought to myself. Already more than $50 in this pot and still one more betting round to go.

The river was a 6. A board now of A-8-3-2-6. Well, who knows, I thought, but everybody has kept calling, maybe that last card hit someone somehow, or maybe someone flopped a set and has been slow-playing to teach me a lesson. I’ll just check it down and scoop my little pot.

But when I checked the guy to my left bet! What?!

Seat 7 folded, and I looked around. My opponent was a blank slate. The old guy, not in the hand, was smiling below his bushy mustache.

“I ought to raise,” I said, “but I’ll just call.”

Seat 1 turned over – argh! – the 5-4 of hearts, for a weird, runner-runner straight and a nice pot. How he called the flop bet, or even the pre-flop raise, I couldn’t imagine, but there it was, the well hidden winner trumping my pretty two pair.

“Shoulda chopped,” was all he said.

Now the old guy across from me was actually laughing. “You deserved it,” he said to me. “Very bad luck.”

I guess it was an omen. My aggressive play seemed to mark me as a bully to be taught a lesson, and one with deservedly bad karma to boot. I don’t know if I deserved it – maybe so – but I know I never did recover. In fact I posted my worst loss of the trip so far, $300.

Better sessions were to come.

You Deserved It, Part 1

One thing I've noticed in my long, middling side-career of playing poker is that most gamblers, me included, tend to think that it's bad luck when they lose but terrific skill when they win.

If you're playing well and winning and some donkey makes an obviously ill-timed bluff and your clearly superior hand takes down the pot, you might think to yourself, you deserved it. And you'd be thinking of both yourself and your witless opponent. Running bad, though – let’s say the same donkey makes the same play with his same lousy hand, but somehow catches the miracle river card that gives him the pot – and you think a version of the same thing: You deserved it (meaning, this time, that you deserved to win, although you didn’t).

That a poker player can think both these things without any sense of irony is probably the central delusion that keeps this game running. The one constant so far on our trip across this vast land is that winners are geniuses and losers are unlucky. Just ask them.

As we began this trip a few weeks ago I was deep in a long losing slide. Some of it, despite all the throat-clearing above, really was bad luck. I’ve had this uncanny run of flopping a set – that’s a pair in my hand matching a card on the board for three-of-a-kind – only to lose to two crazy, improbable running cards that make my opponent a straight or flush. I’ve had big pairs lose to smaller ones, and even full houses lose on the end to bigger ones. It can drive you crazy.

I also know, though, that not all bad luck is bad luck. Sometimes, as my brother-in-law Manuel likes to say (though not about poker), “You brought that shit on yourself.”

So back in Seattle I did some hard thinking about my game and made some adjustments. Maybe I’ve allowed myself to get too loose, I thought for a while, so I tightened up, playing fewer hands, taking fewer chances on straight or flush draws, and getting out of the way when another player showed a lot of strength. No help. If anything, the changes marked me as a weak player and I started getting pushed around in hands I ought’ve played much stronger. So I went the other way, raising a bit more liberally, reraising on the come, representing strength even sometimes when I didn’t (yet) have the goods. What the hell, I figured, if the donks can suck out on the end maybe I can too. And in the meantime I’ll pick up a few pots when they fold to my aggression. And if they do call and I make my hand, so much the better. As my poker mentor Mike Stahlberg always coached me, “The less you bet, the more you lose when you win.”

Again, though, no good. The better players figured out what I was doing; the marks didn’t notice, but their hands held up anyway. Session after session I’d get behind and then struggle, usually unsuccessfully, to come back. Occasionally I’d start out strong but inevitably give back my winnings.

I asked my friend David McCumber, pictured above, to clock my game. We’d play together at the Muck, I suggested, and he could give me an honest appraisal afterward if he was able to spot something I was doing wrong. Which he sort of did; he said I’m most effective when I’m aggressive and that I had seemed a little passive the last couple of times we played. But being McCumber, the world’s nicest guy, he wrapped it all up in a bow so pretty it was almost hard to see anything else:

“The last two times I've gotten to play with you you've been a little more passive than usual, which I put down to bad cards,” he said in an email after our game. “Your play is so solid and good that I've tried to model my own game after yours. You'll do very well.”

When we got to Eugene on the first day of Pie in the Sky II, after dinner at Mom’s Michelle and I went over to visit the Stahlbergs, Mike and Karen, pictured below. I explained the dillio to my guru.

“Ever read ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’?,” Mike said. “It sounds like you need a little more Zen in your game. You’ve got to roll with it.”

Good advice, surely. But as we began the trip I didn’t feel Zen. I felt like a baseball player who has tinkered with his swing so much he can’t remember how to hit the ball.

Plus my bankroll was hurting. I keep a separate stash of money for poker, trying not to borrow from it for luxuries like a dinner out or the movies – to say nothing of the essential bills – and also trying not to add to it from the “real money” in my bank account. The poker bankroll goes up and down. It was seriously depleted when I treated myself last July (with major help from my “Team Mark” backers) to an entry in the $10,000 main event at the World Series of Poker. But it went up by several thousand last fall during a successful trip to Los Angeles card rooms, and it fluctuated normally back at home in the couple months after L.A.

This spring, though, as I said, the long slide has taken its toll. I began Pie in the Sky II with a stake of only $1,100 – not enough, really, to play my normal $4/8 game comfortably, let alone to take shots around the country at World Series satellite tournaments, which generally cost several hundred bucks each.

So I left Seattle with biggish goals but conservative expectations: I’d still like to play in the World Series come July. The main event seems ridiculously out of reach, although a smaller event – they have some tournaments with a $1,000 or $1,500 entry – may be doable. Also, you never know, I could enter a satellite for a couple hundred and get lucky.

My plan was to start off playing in my normal low-limit hold 'em games and hope to move up in limits or tourney entries as my bankroll grew around the country.

Coming up: My results so far, including some memorable poker characters across the Southwest and the South -- Walnut, Pleasant, Pro, J.R., Hurricane Hero and Hollywood.

Pie in the Sky, Parts I and II

Several mentions here recently about the big Pie in the Sky II road trip, and since the Excellent Element hits the highway a week from today I figure it's time to tell how the voyage got that name, and when and where we're going.

It all started seven years ago, actually, when Miriam rescued me from unemployment and potential bankruptcy by offering me a job at the Los Angeles Times. That story here. I was scheduled to start work in mid-October that year, 2001, so Michelle and I decided to leave a month early and take the long route from Seattle to LA ... via Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington, Louisville, Denver, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.

We both always had wanted to take a cross-country road trip and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. When I called Mom to tell her about the plan, though, she thought it sounded over-ambitious.

"That sounds a little pie-in-the-sky to me, Mark," she said.

Well that cracked me up, so we immediately dubbed our trip the Pie in the Sky Tour, and made concert-style t-shirts, complete with projected tour stops on the back, to commemorate the adventure. I still wear mine.










Amazingly, the day of our scheduled departure -- with the moving van showing up early that morning -- was Sept. 11. Yes, that Sept. 11: 9/11. The moving dudes knocked on our door at about 7:30 and asked if we were watching TV. No, we said, and we turned it on to see the footage of planes flying into the World Trade Center. And then the moving guys unplugged our TV to load it onto the truck and Michelle and I climbed into my old Honda Civic wagon and we started driving east.

Weird. No planes in the sky and by the time we got past Spokane, a couple hundred miles east of Seattle, no solid radio signal either. We went for hours at a time without any news about what was going on.

And yet, we managed to have a great trip. We camped in Yellowstone, played cards in Deadwood, ate dinner with a bunch of flag-waving patriots in a small red-state diner someplace and then, later that same day, cruised into the liberal college town of Mankato, Minn., to find a peacenik coffee shop still open at midnight. Trippy.

Our plan had been to see ballgames in some classic parks like Wrigley Field, but the terrorist attacks suspended the baseball season. Some guy in a poker game in Shakopee, Minn., was raving about the beauty of the northern shores of the Great Lakes around that time of year, so we decided to blow off Chicago and head north instead, through Duluth and into Canada. That leg of the trip truly was as beautiful as advertised, but strange too. That's where we ran into Canadians, including the proprietor of a B&B where we stayed, who told us Americans had the attacks coming and almost seemed to hold us responsible.

Eventually we made our way through Niagara Falls and Boston and into New York, where we visited the less-than-two-week-old Ground Zero -- eerie, upsetting and unforgettable -- before moving onto happier destinations.

Some of the coolest parts of Pie in the Sky I were hooking up with friends and family, including M&M regulars Ronelle and her crew in New Jersey and Janice (below) and hers in Louisville, as well as Michelle's sister Renee and her family in Colorado. We also loved the Grand Canyon and the area around Moab, Utah (top picture). All those stops will be part of Pie in the Sky II as well.

Although we had tour dates on our t-shirts, we didn't really have a set agenda for that first trip, and that was a lot of its charm. The Canada detour was just one example of our spontaneity. We had a big Rand McNally atlas with us, and we traced our path in pen as we went -- it still hangs on our wall.

For this trip, with three times as much time on the road, our plans are even less set -- really, really, pie-in-the-sky, Mom -- except for the first two weeks, which are planned. We're leaving next Saturday, heading for Mom's place in Eugene; then to San Francisco, where Michelle has a speaking gig at the San Francisco Chronicle; to Santa Barbara, where she booked us an awesome camping spot on the beach; to Los Angeles, where she's speaking at a Cal State Fullerton writer's conference; to Las Vegas for a night; and then to New Orleans for JazzFest.

After that, wide open. We know we want to see some friends and hit some card rooms. We both kind of want to see the Florida Keys and Maine, where we've never been, and we hope to stay off the interstates and travel the smaller highways and back roads. The beauty of a long break. We'll camp and sleep in the tricked-out car when we can, grab a motel room if we absolutely need a shower.

Overly ambitious? Pie in the sky? Maybe, but something tells me we'll pull it off. With stories to tell.

Mother knows best

I just got a St. Paddy's Day email from my mom: "This is the-luck-of-the-Irish-day so wear green and go play poker."

Now that's some good advice. I found my lucky green shirt I wore at the World Series of Poker and now I'm off to the Muck.



Lucky for me Mom didn't suggest I celebrate by having some corned beef and cabbage.

Update, 6 p.m.: The luck o' the Irish held up. I won a $500 jackpot for having the highest hand of the hour in the entire cardroom, aces full of eights. When they brought me my bonus money I bought a round of drinks for the other players at the table, and they half-applauded -- grateful for the drink, I think, but envious of my win.

Nobody was else was wearing green, I noticed. "My mom told me to wear a lucky St. Paddy's Day shirt," I said. That got a laugh.

In other cardroom news, Barry was Mr. Popularity today, with other players walking up all afternoon to congratulate him on Saturday's nice write-up in the P-I. A couple of the floor supervisors were even passing around copies for people to read.

"I owe it all to Mark," Barry sorta shouted in his funny way, which I thought was nice but embarrassing, and strictly speaking not true. I didn't really do much.

"I'll buy you a drink," he said to me, "are you ready?"

This was at 2:30 in the afternoon. I looked at him. Thanks, Barry, I said, but it's not 5 o'clock. yet.

Don't you know who I am?!

One of the regulars at the Muckleshoot Casino, where I like to play cards, is a 60-ish character named Barry, a nice guy and a decent player who through some physical and personality peculiarities stands out even in this large room of outsize degenerates.

Because of some kind of stroke or disease, I've never been sure which, Barry walks with a severe limp and can't fully open his hands (he needs help stacking his chips, which he gathers from the pot just a little too often to suit me), and he talks in a loud, nasally and slurred voice. He's a tireless flirt, often exacting a bonus kiss on the cheek from the cute young chip runners who help him stack his winnings, and his drinking habits are so regular and well known that precisely at 5 p.m. every day, Darla or Cheryl or Anna will wander over to his table and say, "It's 5 o'clock, Barry, are you ready for your martini?"

My kinda guy, in other words.

When Barry's in a pot it can be hard to put him on a hand. He plays a solid game and when he bets or raises it usually means he's got the goods. In fact he milks this image, with an expression that has become a standard Muck joke. If Barry bets or raises and then gets reraised by another player he'll stare down the competitor and then exclaim in his loud, funny-talking voice:

"Don't you know who I am?!"

The thing is, Barry doesn't always have what he's representing. He bluffs just often enough -- probably intimidating some players with his famous speech -- that he gets paid off with his big hands. That's what makes him a winning small-stakes player.

By this point most of us have heard Barry's signature line so often that sometimes we'll use it too. Sometimes you'll hear, from across the room, Barry's booming "Don't you know who I am?" and everyone in the place will laugh. Sometimes when I call Barry's bet I beat him to the punch: "I'm only calling, Barry, because I know who you are."

One day I was sitting next to him and Barry asked me what I was listening to on my iPod. He told me he owns a record store -- Sound Sounds, I thought he said -- and we chatted about music. I took the store's name to be a clever play off the Puget Sound, and Barry's little custom-made card protector, a half-dollar-size piece of coral encased in acrylic, seemed to fit the store's name. (It reminds me of the above photo, although the pic actually is a sea urchin and comes from Picasa user John, a local photographer.)

So, Barry and I became friendly over the months. He told me about growing up in Los Angeles and starting his first record store there; I told him we used to live in Belmont Shore. I told him about working at newspapers up and down the West Coast. When Michelle and I watched "The Godfather" and the Moe Green character gave Pacino the ol' "Do you know who I am?" speech, I mentioned that to Barry and he got a big kick out of it.

Barry and Moe Green, don't mess with either of them.

A couple of weeks ago Barry asked me if I knew anybody in the P-I's business news department; he wanted to gauge interest in a story about his shop for the paper's weekly small-retail column. Yeah, I said, I used to be their stupid boss. Without promising him anything I gave him a couple of numbers and wished him luck.

So this morning I pick up the paper to find Barry staring up at me from the Biz front. It turns out his full name is Barry Reisman, that he has cerebral palsy and that his store is Soundsations, not Sound Sounds (which would be a better name, I think). It's a nice little puff piece. I'm sure it'll help his struggling business.

Meanwhile, in an only marginally related story, I was playing at the Muck one day last week and as I got up to leave a guy I've seen there for years, Rich, asked me if I knew someone named Michelle. Well, yeah, I said, I live with her.

"Oh, you live with her?" he said, kinda nervous-like.

Yeah, why? A lot of people there know Michelle and ask about her since she doesn't play as much as she used to.

Rich muttered something and tried to change the subject but I eventually got him to spill: Um, he said, it must be a different Michelle. The one I was thinking of lives with one guy but is dating another.

"It's not her," I said, trying to sound sure.

He must not know who I am.

I can't find the battery charger

... for my camera. That bums me out on several fronts:

-- I like having the little digital camera in my back pocket in case I see something I want to photograph for the blog. It's out of juice.

-- I get anxious when I can't find stuff. Probably a half-repressed childhood fear of getting in trouble for losing things.

-- Connectedly, since I usually know where everything is, if I can't find something that's a pretty good indication that this place is a mess. It means there's stuff to put away, things to clean.

And so, I guess I'll do whatever I do when there's housework to be done: go play cards.

I'll find the charger later.

Chapter One: No Luck

When we leave next month for our "Pie in the Sky II" road trip, part of the plan is to play poker across the country, hoping to qualify somehow for this summer's World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. If all goes well, we've thought, maybe we'll write a book about the experience.

On Sunday, in kind of a pre-trip prep run, we drove down to our favorite local cardroom, the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn, to play in one of their monthly World Series "satellite" tournaments. You pay $170 to enter. If you're lucky or skillful enough to win, the prize is a seat in the $10,000 entry-fee World Series main event, the same tournament I played last July with help from Team Mark.

It's a long shot, but hey. Hitting the jackpot before we even hit the road would be a pretty good start.

On the 45-minute drive down to Auburn we talked tournament strategy and quizzed each other with problems from "Harrington on Hold 'Em, Vol. III." You know: You're dealt the ace and queen of clubs in late position and two players before you "limp in" to the pot (calling the blinds without raising); do you fold, call $60, raise to $240 or push all-in? Stuff like that. We had a similar conversation last summer, when Michelle gave me her pre-tourney pop quiz: If you're dealt pocket kings on the first hand and another player goes all-in do you call or fold? We disagreed about that one.

Ever the optimist, Michelle blurted out halfway to the Muck on Sunday: "OK baby, you know this is the first chapter of your book ..."

Well, I don't know about that, but I did see a pretty close approximation of Michelle's pocket-kings pop quiz. I wasn't involved in the hand, unfortunately or fortunately, but it was interesting to watch.

In the second hand of the tournament, a woman who I hadn't seen before and who didn't seem very experienced tossed a $100 chip in front of her before the flop, clearly intending to raise to $100. But the rules of tournament poker state that unless you explicitly announce the amount of your raise, any single chip bet will be assumed to be a call, not a raise. So the Seat 5 woman was forced to merely call the $50 big blind. The action folded around to Bonnie, a Muckleshoot regular and a good tournament player, who might have missed the other lady's bungled raise. Bonnie popped it to $500 and the other woman pushed all-in. Bonnie immediately called.

What disappointment and horror she must have felt when she proudly flipped over her pocket kings -- the second best hand possible before the flop -- only to find that Accidental Caller Lady had inadvertently "limped" with pocket aces. The rockets held up and Bonnie was out on the tourney's second hand.

Me, I didn't have any such close calls, or even difficult decisions. I folded hand after hand for two hours, seeing nothing even to get out of line with. I won one small pot with an offsuit 5-2 in the big blind, when no one raised and I flopped two pair. Eventually the rising blinds nicked away at my chip stack and, in the fourth round, I went out when my best starting hand of the day -- ace-king -- lost an all-in bet to a guy with pocket queens. Ah well.

Michelle, at an adjacent table, lasted about half an hour longer than I did. She said later she didn't get many good cards either. Sometimes it goes like that.

Further evidence of poker's whims: When I busted out I went to join my friend David in a live game. In the first three hands I was dealt I saw better cards than in my entire two hours of the tournament. I cashed out a $180 winner -- enough to cover my tourney entry and buy my standard Muck lunch, seafood fried rice.

Chapter One will have to wait for another day.

It's only logical

One of the anticipated highlights of our Paris trip was a visit to the Aviation Club de France, a relatively new card room on the Champs Elysees which is part of the World Poker Tour on TV and boasts of having "the best cash games in Europe." Okeydoke, I don't know how to say deal me in in French, but deal me in.

So on the Friday that we were in town, after spending most of the morning and afternoon at the Louvre (that's it in the picture above), we walked the rest of the way up the Right Bank (listen to me) and after asking directions a couple of times found the place.

It was just a single door front, no big glitzy casino neon, and a single doorman/bouncer/guard. He allowed us in and we walked up a flight of carpeted stairs to find a guy in a suit sitting at a desk at the front of a hallway, with the den of iniquity apparently hidden (quietly) somewhere behind him. The Bellagio this wasn't.

When we inquired about playing poker the desk dude asked if we had passports. Mine was in my day pack, no sweat, but Michelle had left hers back at the hotel. I'm sorry, he said, without a passport you can't play here.

Michelle asked if she could just watch while I played for a little while.

No, the man said, with a sarcastic (I thought) Frenchy smile. "If you need zee passport to enter zee casino then of course I cannot allow you into zee casino to watch without zee passport. It is only logical."

"Yeah," I said to Michelle, using the double-reverse head-fake mock tone that I knew she would recognize but that he wouldn't, "It's only logical."

Dumbass Frenchman smiled in my direction as if to say: Women, what're ya gonna do.

So, although we were tired from our long walk and Michelle was catching a cold and wanted to sit down, we seemed out of options. We thanked Frenchy for his time and walked back outside. On the sidewalk Michelle suggested that I go back in and play for a few hours. She could take the Metro back to the hotel, she said, and I could meet her back there later. Good girlfriend.

When I walked back upstairs the guy gave me a knowing smile. "Ah, you're back," he said. "Maybe madame will return later."

Yeah, I thought, and maybe she'll kick your sorry logical ass for you. But I dutifully handed over my passport, filled out a little form and waited to be escorted down the secret hallway to the poker action.

Frenchy came around the desk, looked me over and stopped dead in his tracks. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't notice. We're going to have to find you some shoes. It is a house rule."

I had already checked to make sure this wasn't some kind of 007, tuxedos-only joint, and nobody had said anything about my casual (but neat and clean) travel attire. Now, though, my trusty REI hiking boots were a problem.

"Do not worry," Frenchy continued, "we can take care of you."

He walked me into a tiny coat closet, invited me to hang up my rain jacket and backpack, and suggested that I pick out some dress shoes from the back of the closet. What difference my footwear could possibly make -- in a few minutes it would be invisible under the poker table -- I couldn't imagine, but whatever. When in Paris.

Maybe now you're picturing a neat row of nice, shiny oxfords and loafers to choose from. Nopey, not quite. Instead, on the floor, under the hanging overcoats and rain gear was a medium-size pile of beat-up street shoes -- a helter-skelter leather pyramid -- that looked like it might have come from the Goodwill, or Dachau.

None of the shoes were in pairs, and none had laces. "We don't want you to 'forget' and walk back to your hotel in our shoes," the coat-check man explained.

I tried on a dozen shoes and finally found one that was only a half-size too small, then spent several more minutes looking for its mate. Finally I emerged from the closet, two scuffed, dusty, pinching, laceless "dress shoes" on my feet, wondering how this look conceivably could be more presentable than my nice $250 hikers. I did not see the logic. But OK, another hurdle cleared.

Now I was escorted back to the poker area, which consisted of about 10 or 12 tables spread among two small parlor rooms and a connecting hallway, but with games in progress at only four of them. I asked the host what limits were being spread -- what was the size of the games being offered -- and he informed me that they didn't play any structured-limit games like the ones Michelle and I usually play. The only options were no-limit games -- the stuff of old Western movies and big-money tournaments like the World Series of Poker -- with minimum buy-ins of either 50 or 100 euros, about $80 to $160.

There was a long waiting list, he said, but he'd be happy to put me on the board. He wrote down "MM (UK)" -- close enough; whatever the actual nationality, I was the English-speaking foreigner with the loaners on my feet.

Now I saw that there were literally 30 people ahead of me on the board and for the first time noticed all the men (only two women in the whole club) standing around waiting to get into a game. Why they didn't start two or three new games, like they'd do here at the Muck or in any other card room I've visited, I couldn't guess. It was going to be a long wait, and if I hadn't been tired from our day of walking and museum-touring, I might have bailed right then.

Eventually, about an hour later, I got a seat in the bigger of the two games, the 100-e minimum buy-in with blinds of e5 and e10.

Now, no-limit hold 'em, despite being the king of poker, really isn't my game. I've logged thousands more hours in small- to medium-stakes limit games, and I feel like the rhythms, betting patterns and mathematical calculations of those structured games have become second nature to me. I sometimes lose and I sometimes make a mistake, but I think I always know the best play, or can figure it out if I take a minute. My experience in no-limit is much narrower. I've played it in tournaments but only once or twice in a live game like this, and with much less confidence than I'd normally have.

Still, I'd been watching as I was waiting and I could see that this game was soft. Nobody was raising, especially before the flop, and too many players were playing too many hands. They may have been splendidly shod, but they were making beaucoup mathematical and strategic errors that even I could see from the rail.

I decided to buy in for the minimum 100 euros and see what developed. This, I knew, was not a good game plan. Since the game had been going a while several players had much more money than that in front of them; in a no-limit game you don't want to be short-stacked against an opponent, who can use that advantage to push you out of pots. Smart no-limit players buy in for as much as they need to match the big stacks at the table. But Europe's expensive with the weak dollar right now and I didn't come here to win or lose a fortune. I just wanted to experience some Paris-style poker and have some fun. If I caught some cards and won a little money, great. If I lost my e100, so be it; my bankroll would live to fight another day.

On the second hand I was dealt, what do you know: pocket aces!

It was only now that I realized, hey, everyone's speaking French, which I don't understand, and no one, including the dealer, seems to understand any English.

"Raise," I said -- what the hell, it's an American game -- and I made it e30 to go. What? A raise? This seemed to break the friendly vibe. I heard a lot of under-their-breath French muttering and half expected to be marched back to the coat closet. But two players called, and one -- a young sunglasses-wearing guy of a poker type I'd recognize in any language -- stared at me, hard.

They have no idea what I'm up to, I thought. I'm a crazy foreigner, and I could have any two cards.

The flop brought an ace to give me three of a kind, beautiful, and no apparent flush or straight draws. I bet out, about a third of the pot, inviting callers. Only the starer called. The turn paired the board, giving me a full house. Now I was truly golden, unless the other guy held exactly 7-7 for quads. I checked and he checked behind me. On the river, a blank, I bet most but not all of my remaining chips, he called, and I scooped a nice pot to about double my chip stack.

The Frenchies muttered some more. "Nothing to it," I said in loud, annoying English. I thought maybe I'd put them all on Froggy tilt and walk out with all their euros.

For the next hour I didn't see any decent cards and didn't play a hand, but I kept up my chatter, just to make it seem like I was part of the game and to see if I could provoke any reactions. If nothing else, I thought, I'll remind these guys that Texas hold 'em is an American (not French or even UK) game, and maybe lay some universal poker expressions on them.

When one guy made his straight draw on the end but didn't bet, unsuccessfully trying for a check-raise against a wise or gun-shy opponent, I gave him my standard needle: "Whassamatter man, you don't like money? Bet your own damn hands!"

Another guy in another pot checked, hoping for a free card, but ran into a big bet. "Check your hat!" I said. "Cash money!"

This was entertaining to no one but me, but I didn't care. I was money ahead, playing poker in Paris and except for my feet about as comfy as I could be.

Finally I got another hand to play, ace-king, and raised to my standard 30 euros. This time several players called, and although I caught a king on the flop sunglasses kid caught two running cards to make a straight, and I was back down to less than my original buy-in.

A few hands later I had pocket 8s, raised all in and was called by one player with pocket 5s. He caught a 5 on the river and I was out of chips.

In some circumstances I might have bought in again -- I still liked my chances in this game -- but I'd lost what I had budgeted and had some fun along the way. Good time to head back across the river and find Michelle, I figured. It was only logical.

No senior discount

Yesterday, hot to press my 2008-long winning streak at the tables, I drove down to the Muck for some afternoon poker action. I've been building big chip stacks lately and so playing with a lot of confidence -- the winning and the confidence can multiply each other -- and this looked like a juicy game: a couple of tight old farts (usually a sign they can be pushed off a pot) and a bunch of overeager youngsters, including several I've played with before and knew to be beatable (wait for a hand and let them overplay their cards).

But from the beginning my session didn't go well. The kids were hitting their unlikely draws, the old guys were standing firm to notch me with a better kicker, and my cards were going dead when I needed help. Losing, like winning, can build on itself, and it wasn't long before I needed to rebuy. It was a good game, I still thought, but it was slowly dawning on me that I was the player making it good ... for everyone else.

In one hand I flopped four cards to a flush. Normally I might bet out, hoping to pick up the pot right then or, even if I were called, expecting to collect even more when my strong draw came through on the turn or river. I was feeling cautious, though, afraid my bet might be raised by one of the young aggressives, so I just checked, hoping to get a free card.

"No way," said the punk in Seat 8, flipping out four white chips, "no senior discount."

Ouch. Ow.

So I'm not a young gun, or even a savvy middle-aged player to be reckoned with. I'm another pathetic pensioner bleeding off chips.

The old guys at the table looked at me with ... not sympathy exactly, more like camaraderie. Yeah, it's annoying, isn't it, they seemed to be saying. Not bad enough that we're old guys, but these damn whippersnappers have to dangle it right here in our wrinkled old faces. Welcome to our world.

Needless to say, my draw failed to come in, again, and I had to put two more bets into Seat 8's pot.

Here's where a wise old man might have sussed out the situation with its dwindling prospects and called it a day. Me, stubborn beyond my years, I ran through another rack of chips looking for a chance to wipe the smirks off all that peach fuzz. Never happened. No senior discount, or comeback either.


All the major food groups

Tonight we get another chance, and with like-aged pals and the friendly setting of a reporter's home game. Michelle and I are invited to play at Jack Broom's house with a couple of old Times colleagues, including my friend Jim Simon, and Michelle's boss from the P-I, David McCumber. It's a reprise of a game we had a few months back at Simon's house, and I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone and trading stories over a deck of cards.

Jack's a great guy and was the first member of Team Mark, my financial backers and rooting section last summer for the World Series of Poker. We've been playing cards together, off and on, for 20 years.

I asked him what we could bring tonight and he said he's already covered on cards, poker chips and drinks. So I walked up to the Junction just now and bought a can of nuts and a bag of chips. Then, as I was walking past the donut case I noticed a chocolate raised calling out to me. I decided to break my weeks-long donut fast, what the heck, and take it home to have with a cup of coffee.

When I got to the counter the checkout lady rang up my order and half-smiled at me: "This is a healthy-looking meal if I've ever seen one."

Man, you'd think they'd train the employees not to mock the customers. Yeah, I said, you gotta take care of yourself.

When she asked for my Safeway Club Card I half expected her to offer a senior discount too. But no. Healthy eating is its own reward, I guess.

"Have a nice day, sir," she said. Close enough.

'OK,' Gina said ...

"... I'm now officially sick of Martin Luther King."

We were eating dinner the other night, and what prompted this politically incorrect outburst, apparently, was yet another -- one too many -- lectures at school that day about King. By the ninth grade now, Gina was saying, how many times can you hear the same thing?

On cross-examination she conceded that she wasn't so sick of him that she'd insist on going to school today, but I kind of get what she was saying. Sainthood gets boring. Even the stupid presidential candidates can't agree on whether MLK or LBJ should get credit for the big 1960s civil rights reforms -- and those are the Democrats!

When I was working for a living I always appreciated the paid day off but I also felt, especially as a manager, that it was best to work on MLK Day. That way you could get a bunch of stuff done in a relatively quiet office and save the paid holiday to take another time. Sweet. That's what Michelle's doing today.

Me, I'm planning to celebrate in my own fashion. I have a dream of pocket kings, or of flopping a pair with an open-end straight-flush draw -- something like holding the king and queen of spades on a board of 10 and jack of spades and queen of diamonds -- so I'm going to drive down to the Muck and see how many degenerates are there blowing their day off.

Unlike Gina, I'm officially not sick of Martin Luther King. As King himself surely must have said sometime, "Deal me in."

Today's word is... le indicazioni

That means directions, or information.

As in, "can you give me directions to a casino that is not full of idiots who call three bets cold and catch impossible cards on the river, and take all of your money?"

Mom, can you translate that for me?