The Birds: Part I

I am not a morning person and for the last few weeks my dislike of getting out of bed has been intensified by the prospect of being dive-bombed by birds.

The problem started soon after the heavy snowfall we enjoyed on Christmas Eve. Following my usual routine of staggering downstairs to make coffee, I was greeted in the kitchen by a bird sitting on my coffee-maker. The bird and I exchanged puzzled looks, then the bird swooped in my general direction and flapped into the living room where it bounced off a window, squawked, and settled on the ceiling fan. I loaded the coffee-maker and returned upstairs to get my hat.

This is not the first time The Kattery has been infested by wildlife. A possum appeared in the basement a few years ago. It turns out that "shoo!" is completely ineffective when attempting to evict possums, so I called Animal Control. I was informed that possums were not included in the list of animals they controlled, presumably because possums are bad-tempered, ugly, disease-ridden beasts and Animal Control is far more interested in controlling small, affectionate puppies.

My next phone call was to my neighbor who is a Kansas native and part-time organic farmer.

"Hey Jake, there's a possum in my basement."

"Uh huh."

"I'd like it out of my basement."

"You got a gun?"

"No."

"Tire iron?"

Realizing that Kansans and Londoners had markedly different approaches to possum removal, I decided "trapping" was more my speed. Armed with a dog carrier and organic sprayer filled with soapy water I returned to the basement.

Note: I don't own a dog, but the size of my cats necessitates a dog carrier rather than a cat carrier.

The possum played into my hands at this point by running behind the furnace. Placing the open dog carrier at one end of the space between the wall and furnace, I took up position at the other end behind the possum and started dousing it in soapy water. The plan worked almost flawlessly. The possum ran forwards in the direction of the waiting trap. And got stuck. At least it appeared to be completely filling the available space and its forward progress had ceased.

Note: One cannot rule out the possibility the possum was faking being stuck and just remaining very still. I have been told they do that.

Not to be deterred I switched the dog carrier from one side of the furnace to the other and started spraying the possum from the opposite direction. The results again have a bearing on whether or not the possum was genuinely stuck. After a few good shots of soap to the face the possum began backing up. My instincts tell me that its renewed ability to move was the result of the now drenched possum being sufficiently lubricated by the soap.

Much to my amazement, some more spraying saw the possum retreat into the dog carrier. I ran round the furnace and slammed the door shut. It was at this point that I discovered possums are only slow-moving when they choose to be. The dog carrier began bouncing across the floor of the basement following a trajectory that physicists would immediately identify as a random walk.

After a few minutes the motion of the dog carrier had subsided to occasional jerks, so I decided it was time to return the possum to the wild. Picking the carrier up produced a new round of high-speed possum activity, but for the first time in our relationship I finally felt confident that I was in charge of the situation and got the possum outside. I unlatched the carrier door with a broom handle, eased the door open, and ran indoors.

The whole procedure from possum discovery to possum liberation took seven hours. But once complete I felt a sense of accomplishment, particularly because I had neither shot nor clubbed to death the possum, as is apparently the tradition in this part of the world.

I imagine there are Kansans who can recognize individual possums. Indeed some in the heartland probably keep them as pets. I confess that, to my eyes, one possum is indistinguishable from another. Consequently I am in no position to say whether the possum I found squashed in the street a couple of days after this episode was "my" possum or one of its cousins, and whether I simply imagined that it was emitting a faint aroma of soap.

Third-Graders Behind Nationwide Extortion Ring

When I lived in London I dated a girl who had a couple of uncles. They were well-dressed men with heavy East End accents whose line of business was not discussed in polite company. Their main income derived from visiting pubs and inquiring if the landlord had fire insurance. When, as was usually the case, the landlord replied that he had, the uncles would recommend that he got more. From them. Now. Because, well, you know John, these old pubs, bloody tinderbox, know what I mean? All these cigarettes, right, mean to say, one match, whole place could go up, couldn't it?

It turns out that this particular method of selling fire insurance is regarded as illegal in most countries, including the United Kingdom. I was under the impression that extortion was also a crime in the U.S., but there appears to be a loophole. Specifically, every October 31st hordes of heavily-disguised children, aided and abetted in the conspiracy by their parents, extort candy and assorted novelty items from anyone owning or renting a home.

"Trick or treat?"

Or as the uncles might have put it "Fire or money?"

I have never been fond of Halloween since the year my ex-wife decided we would stick a rotting pumpkin on the front steps and stock the shelves with candy. I felt it wise to feign enthusiasm for the project and thus, when the doorbell was accompanied by the sound of young voices, I opened the door with a bucket of treats.

I should explain at this point that on this particular Halloween I was considerably lighter than my usual 140 lbs due to a recent jaw infection. At just over six feet tall the term "thin" didn't come close to describing my build. As a heavy smoker I also have sunken cheeks. My usual attire in the evening is a three-quarter length tux, shades, and black hat. I think I look pretty cool. The trick-or-treaters apparently did not. One boy screamed, a second ran away, and the unfortunate girl dressed as a cat peed her pants.

Their parents, who were sitting in a heavily-armored SUV a few feet away, were absolutely furious. As mother comforted her distraught offspring, father stomped up to my door and in a menacing tone asked me "what the 'H' 'E' double hockey sticks" I thought I was doing. When I realized that I could shut the front door before he could get his foot in it I told him to fuck off.

It still baffles me that trick-or-treating maintains its nationwide popularity despite razor blades in Twinkies and people like me. This year I was considering putting out a pumpkin and leaving the light on. And when the brats mumbled "trick or treat" I was going to say "trick, please," mostly out of curiosity. What cunning trick would they play on me? I abandoned the project because I suspect even a third-grader has enough of a grasp of risk-reward and hourly rate that performing a trick is, for them, a negative expectation value proposition.

But I'm still going to put out a pumpkin or three.

Happy Halloween.

December 1st Doomsday?

The first freeze hit the U.S. Midwest last week reminding us that this could be a long, cold winter for online poker. UIGEA is scheduled to be enforced on December 1st and while the ramifications of this are still unclear the poker world is more than jittery. So what are the best-case and worst-case scenarios when we wake up on the first day of Advent?

To address this question, recall the scope of the UIGEA. This act demands that banks prohibit transactions that place wagers (or deposit funds) on internet gaming sites. Horse racing is, for obvious reasons, excluded. [1] An important point that is often overlooked is that there is nothing in the legislation about banks accepting winnings from online wagers and gaming. Thus, based on the actual content of the UIGEA, the often-expressed fear of winning poker players that they will not be able to access their funds is unfounded.

With this in mind, how bad could the situation become in December? The complete Doomsday Scenario is that PokerStars, Full Tilt, and the other major sites decide they no longer want to deal with Department of Justice stormtroopers and withdraw from the U.S. market. Is this likely? I feel that it is not. Multibillion dollar industries are not in the habit of throwing up their hands, dismantling their operations, and opening a chain of casual dining restaurants instead.

What about financial institutions? Will they feel sufficiently intimidated by the UIGEA that they decide to block incoming funds that have been withdrawn from online sites? Again, we feel this is extremely unlikely. First, historical precedent indicates that banks rarely say "no thanks" to money. They have, as it were, a self-interest in the interest. Al Capone had a bank account. Second, with withdrawals from poker sites being processed via third party intermediaries there is no obvious way that banks can distinguish between poker winnings and proceeds gained through the sale of garden gnomes.

This second point also pertains to the ability of players to deposit funds at poker sites. If this, the only limitation imposed by UIGEA, actually occurs, the ramifications for winning players are clearly serious. But with third-party processing and the vested interest poker sites have in keeping fresh money flowing in, can such a law be enforced? It is difficult to see how.

With all these factors in mind, the best-case scenario for December 1st is that nothing will change at all. However, it would be foolish to assume that this will be the case. Even if the legislation proves to be unenforceable in principle, it seems inevitable that fear of UIGEA will decrease the amount of money deposited at poker sites. Simply increasing obstacles to deposits at sites will reduce action from losing U.S. players. This is a sufficient reason for poker players to continue to protest and fight UIGEA in any way they can. A broader reason is that the U.S. has a written constitution that protects its citizens and residents from this kind of bullshit.


[1] The most obvious of the obvious reasons being that assholes who have been in the Senate for decades and who are about to step down can pass whatever bizarre, inconsistent, flawed legislation they please, and thus trample on the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents before putting their feet up and living off the fat pension being paid for by the aforementioned American citizens and residents.

It is what it is

I have long held the opinion that interviewing sportsmen and women immediately after they have completed a match, round, race or game is as useful as asking your cat what it would like for breakfast. Why, for example, do we need a quarterback to describe the winning touchdown when we have seen nineteen replays of the event from twelve different angles? "I threw the ball to a wide receiver in the back of the end-zone who caught it." Right. We knew that already.

Lucrative sponsorship deals have compelled many athletes to develop their public speaking skills with varying degrees of success. The Peyton Mannings and Michael Jordans of the sports world have an easy, polished delivery. Occasionally they even say something interesting. But many athletes employ a mode of speech that seems to have evolved in an environment free of natural predators, so that redundancy flourishes like a bizarre marsupial. Semi-rhetorical questions such as "you know," "know what I mean," and "you know what I'm saying," are used as commas and periods. We are told by announcers "that's a wonderful golf shot," presumably to eliminate any confusion in our mind that we might be watching hockey.

Even the most engaging speakers are frequently forced to sound like total twits due to the aforementioned sponsorship deals.

"Jeff, a great race today. Tell us about the closing laps."

"Thanks Rusty. I'd like to thank God, my crew, Ricky-Raccoon-Racing, Goodyear, Chevrolet, Castrol, Viagra, Pepsi, Branflakes, Southwest Airlines, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Tampax, Slim Jim, Joe's Laundromat and Bait Shop..."

Perhaps because I am older than most such interviewees I tend to attribute these "sportsisms" to a disease of youth. Two hours ago, however, I was forced to revise that opinion thanks to an in-game interview with Detroit Tigers' manager Jim Leyland. Leyland, now in his early nineties, is old school in every sense of the term. I was therefore horrified when he responded to one of the announcer's questions with "It is what it is." My first reaction was that I must have misheard him. The Metrodome is notoriously noisy and Leyland had added to the problem by choosing to position the microphone on his headset directly over his nose. However, a few sentences later he repeated the phrase.

"WHAT IS IT?" I screamed at the screen. At some level I think I just felt left out. Apparently everyone other than me knows what "it" is.

I suppose if one is generous one can view "it is what it is" as a modern incarnation of the once popular "que sera, sera." The latter, however, in employing the future tense at least offers the hope that we may at some point discover what it is (or, to be pedantic, what will be). Further, despite being fundamentally self-evident, the phrase does communicate the concept of kizmit and has the added benefit of being foreign and thus sophisticated.

For reasons that defy my understanding, the directors and producers of televised poker events have concluded that the ideal time to interview a poker player is immediately after he or she has busted out from a tournament. At such times the last thing I want to do is talk to anyone about anything. But even fellow players can be staggeringly oblivious. Immediately after I busted out of the 2006 WSOP Main Event and was heading through the Rio labyrinth to find an exit so I could kill myself through chain smoking I was intercepted by a poker-playing colleague. He offered a few brief words of condolence about the $10k that I had yesterday but didn't have today, then asked me if I wanted to split cab fare to go to the nearest Office Max so he could get a new battery for his laptop. I haven't spoken to him since.

One of the advantages of being a low-profile poker player is that I have never been confronted by Norm Chad stuffing a microphone under my snout and asking me how I feel about suddenly being poorer. There are players, of course, who provide wonderful TV on such occasions. Hellmuth's rants about the stupidity of his opponents and his abysmal luck are invariably entertaining. I could listen for hours to a David "Devilfish" Ulliot interview as he meanders effortlessly from how his aces got cracked to the fact his girlfriend is the third most attractive woman in China and that his uncle was rescued from a desert island by the Titanic. It is a great shame that less than five per cent of Americans can understand more than a few words of what David says.

Alas the ipso busto facto interview can also unleash the phrase that I dislike above all others. It is our equivalent, I suppose, of "it is what it is," but irks me far more for the simple reason that I dislike a representative of my profession sounding like a complete asshat.

"So, John, tell us about that last hand."

"Well Norm, I picked up AK under the gun, shoved, got called by Annie in the big blind with AQ, and she flopped a Q. But... You know... That's poker."

Indeed it is.

Raymer's Shades

In my never-ending search for a poker edge I've been considering new angles for my appearance. As is the case for CEOs, a disproportionate number of WSOP ME winners are above average height. Because stopping smoking at my age is unlikely to lead to a sudden growth spurt I did what I could in this area and started wearing 2" Cuban heels and a hat.

Greg Raymer, of course, is above average width, and it is not clear to me that this leads to any particularly intimidatory advantage. However, I do find those voluminous cargo shorts that he wears to be unsettling. Somehow they communicate the idea of camping and I do poorly when asked to sleep in the wilderness when I know there's a perfectly good Marriott within twenty miles. Greg also has the worst nickname in the poker world. He gave himself the handle of "Fossilman" and frankly it's so naff that a strange feeling (maybe it's 'sympathy'?) creeps up my neck when I see him, potentially taking my head out of the game.

But when it comes to clothes and accessories, Raymer is best known for the shades he wore when he won the big one. Many of his opponents have stated that the holographic monsters not only made Raymer harder to read but were simply unpleasant to look at. Indeed I suspect the slightly mesmerizing effects of these shades may have inspired some of the avatars used by players at PokerStars. The timing could have been a coincidence, but immediately after Raymer's ME win there was an outbreak of out-of-focus, double exposed, swirly things that could lead to migraines. None are as disturbing as the ever-popular, ever-nauseating baby pictures, of course, but whatever the nastiness presented in the little Stars' circle I have the ability to block the horrid thing. Something that cannot be done live without drawing undue attention to oneself with masks, fans, and so forth.

To simply imitate Raymer and wear holographic shades is clearly not an option here. But this is an angle I want to shoot. So I have been experimenting with high-wattage halogen lamps tucked into the inside pockets of my double-breasted jacket, pointing them upwards in the traditional manner used for telling scary stories around the camp-fire. There are still a few practical issues to iron out in order to use the set up in a casino, but I am pleased with the initial results...

The benefits of (nearly) going broke

Some time last year my poker results started declining. My tournament ROI dropped and I stopped making significant money in cash games. In April of this year I had enough stats to know that unless there was a sudden upswing in my earn I was going to go broke.

I still haven't completely figured out what happened. The number of hands and tournaments is too great to attribute the downswing to variance, although I think it played a part. My current guess is I started playing bad as a result of running bad. Not stupid "let's try and get back a chunk of the roll at once by playing limits I can't afford," but that creeping disease of semi-tilt.

The situation led to considerable reflection and some tough decisions. First, I realized that I didn't quit a well-paying job to "become" a poker player. I was already a poker player and to make my living in any other manner was going to make me unhappy. I also concluded that five winning years provided convincing evidence that fundamentally I am a winning player provided I play my best and keep working on improving my game. This optimism was aided by a former poker student telling me "you're too good to not be making money."

None of this altered the fact that I was a few weeks away from going busto.

So I put a plan together. I got a long-term backer as well as other stakers to make sure that I could stay in the game. This also meant I had to work twice as hard for the same earn, but the alternative was unacceptable. I also started paying more attention to the small edges. Sitting out of a cash game when it got too tight to be profitable; changing my sleep schedule to target easier times of day; focusing on my strongest forms and structures of poker. And perhaps most importantly working my ass off through training sites, forums, books and other resources to make my game stronger.

I still don't know how this story is going to play out because I am still working with a worryingly thin bankroll and my house is falling down. My feeling (supported by steadily-improving results) is that I've turned the corner. One thing I know for sure is that nearly going broke has forced me to greatly improve my game and my approach to playing poker. And those of you who have accused me in the past, rightly, of being arrogant, may be pleased to know that this episode has also given me a little humility. Not a lot. But a little.

Sympathy for Myself

I’ve never understood all the fuss
About my disguises
The word now carries a sense of deceit
But the fake fur and eyelashes
Came from a sense of fun
The same with the clues
Muddle metaphysicians
And find mystics in a heap
A wizard who lives backwards
And doesn’t sleep?
Invert nil REM
It’s easy
Mallory got that one anachronistically
Give him a hint and he’ll create a novel
And thus a world

Ours is dying
We’re promised a technological cure
And told that the medicine
Is a dose of Vitamin C and not clap sans frontieres
Similar promises accompanied pox-filled blankets
Terra Incognita became terror known
To those who saw the New World as old
Age provides perspective.
Four hundred years for Rome
Less here I think.
Caligula may have looked impassively at the decapitated head of his nephew
(Will that child not stop coughing?)
But he would blush today.

According to an ex-colleague of mine
It was people who screwed up the deal from the get-go.
He forgets that I was there and saw
Eve's alleged mistake
She wanted to exile ignorance.
But the snake
(When straight, the perpendicular pronoun, wink wink)
Was a liberator
A facilitator of education.
The one thing that He despises most.
Knowledge is the antithesis of faith.
And what’s the price for suppressing it?
Hope and Charity locked out of the house.
Silly girls asked questions.
Original thought is original sin

So with snakes out of favor it was time for geometry
Got Descartes thinking
Produced axes and soon thereafter
Died in Sweden thanks to the negligence of Queen Christina
(There's that name again, feminized)
He says, 'thou shalt not know,' and strikes down one of the Enlightened.
But the first half of the secret slipped out.
I think, therefore I am.
A good start
And yet the species is reluctant to end its childhood
And accept that the Cartesian axiom for an individual also applies to a society, planetwide.

He’s the master of confusion
His lawyers successfully turned the World upside down.
War, they claim, is the domain of the Dark Angel, for our Lord is Light
(Blitzkrieg almost gave the game away, but they got the Big Lie guy on board)
The Lightning strike of the Stukas was His idea, not mine.
The Crusades didn’t end.
The theocratic clash echoes down the centuries and Force Majeure still rules
But knightly armor is now Armani and an alligator smile.

Funny thing.
We’re told, by the latest lead attorney
As he stuffs his old clothes in the closet
And puts on a funny hat
That the one without toes is behind all this
(The only inconvenience concerning the toes, incidentally, being a slight numbness in the feet, but an aspirin a day works wonders)
I’ve also been implicated in famine
But have you once heard me say ‘go forth and multiply.’
No. That was one of His.
And don’t worry about the consequences for He will provide… Starvation?
And if all this gets you down remember
Death ain’t so bad.
Heaven on Earth is a blink away.

But a cat has two eyelids, blinks twice.
The second one a Darwinian marvel evolved to block His Light.
It’s why felines need nine lives
They’ve used those eyes to peek behind the curtain and so He keeps trying to bump them off.
Exterminated by the Inquisition in millions.
Know why?
The cats were killing the rats.
Slowed the spread of the Black Death.
He got pissed.
Plague fills the churches faster than plenty.
Fear populates the pews.

I'll give Him this, He has a certain ingenuity.
But even He can’t suppress the curiosity characteristic of cats and sometimes seen in people.
He’d like to because you are (He claims) His children.
(Technically adopted; He bends the truth.)
He tried to head-off the desire for knowledge through his Killing Joke
Claiming the Son was a teacher
Teacher? A teacher of blind obedience.
Follow me for I am the path and through me, The One
(The cats call him the One Third)
You will learn not to think.
Here endeth the lesson.
Well, with the Father's pitiful bill of goods, what other lesson could there be?
The three of them, you see, they don't want to let you go.
They like having kids, whereas I’ve never been comfortable around children.
That's why they threw me out.
And why, eventually
(I have to confess, it's taking a while)
I will bring Childhood's End.