The hand I hate most?

A9o.

For the uninitiated–who don’t know the notation–that’s Ace-Nine of different suits, such as Ace of spades and Nine of hearts.

Now, I don’t hate A9o all the time. Short-handed, or heads-up, i.e., mano a mano, or even from late position–when I’m trying to steal the blinds–it can be a real powerhouse. (When I’m trying to steal the blinds and one or both of the blinds call, at least I have something to play if they disappoint me and call. But I’m still hoping they don’t call.)

72o is reputed to be the worst hand in hold’em, at least in a ring game. (A ring game is a game with a full table. In heads-up play, 32o is actually the worst.) However, though it may be annoying to get dealt 72o, I know what to almost always do with that hand: Fold. And, if I happen to play it (yeah, there are times I play it, but that’s fodder for another post), it’s not that bad because on the rare times it hits it can do two things:

• 1) It can score a large pot.
• 2) If the hand makes it to a showdown, it leaves my opponents wondering, "Just what it is that he plays?"

How can it score a big pot? I’ve had flops of 72x and 227 fall and no one believed I hit. Made a lot of money each time.

However, that said, I still don’t play 72o much at all.

But, when A9o falls in my hole cards…

It looks so tempting. But what are its strengths?

• It has an Ace.

One the other hand, what drawbacks does it have?

• If you hit an Ace, you have a middling kicker. What can you do with it? Any kind of betting means you’re probably beaten.
• If a Nine falls, you have to worry about higher cards falling (other than another Ace) that can make a better pair.
• It takes four cards on the board to make either a straight or a flush.

The only time you can feel comfortable is if an Ace and Nine fall together on the flop giving you two pairs, or a pair of Nines fall giving you trips with best kicker. And, if two Aces fall, good. But if someone else is holding an Ace with a better kicker…

I hate it more than I hate K9o. K9o isn’t as tempting as A9o. It’s easier for me to fold. And, if I do play it, the flop can make me a miracle straight.

So, from most positions, I’d rather be dealt 72o than A9o. As I said, at least I know what to do with 72o.

Being dealt A9s (that’s Ace-Nine of the same suit) is another story. I can play that like any Axs, where "x" is a low-card kicker, and, with enough callers I’m hoping to hit the flush or the flush draw with the added benefit of hitting two pairs or trips.

As I learn more about no-limit hold’em, my least favorite hand may change. But this is it, for now.

What’s the hand you hate most?

It seems that the latest and greatest on the Internet is that by punching the wrong key on their computers, government bureaucrats wind up "killing" people. Not literally, of course, but figuratively is just as good when it comes to dealing with the government. I’ve seen several of these stories in just the last few weeks.

Once you’re "dead" in the bureaucratic system, it doesn’t matter how much you breathe or how much you get screwed over by the system, you’re going to stay dead.

And the problem can go on and on and on, for years. And who’s held responsible? No one.

When an insurance company, bank, or any other corporation screws you over through incompetence and shoddy work, then doesn’t respond to your complaints and make a real effort to fix it, they get fined millions and millions of dollars, may find themselves on the losing ends of gigantic civil lawsuits, people can get fired, reputations can get fried. And the watchdogs follow their later work, sometimes for years.

But when it happens because of "public servants" (an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one), it’s business as usual. No one loses his or her job, people actually get promoted, and it’s more than just possible that you’re going to think that, just because you’ve been told the problem has been solved, the problem will continue to rise from the dead (even if you don’t) until…well, you’re really dead.

And even when you’re told it’s been solved, you’re going to need more lives than a cat because you’re more than likely to find out you’re dead again and again and again as the news of your "demise" spreads through the system like mold across an old piece of bread.

And the problem isn’t rare. Estimates are that there are tens of thousands of living people erroneously reported as dead by government bureaucrats, and there are at least another 35 new zombies every day. And for these new 35, as I said, their nightmares can go on for years and years and years…

In the meantime, the people who make these mistakes and the people who are supposed to fix them go home at night, get a good night’s sleep, pay their bills, go on vacations, and otherwise have pleasant lives. For the victims, it can mean tax refunds (and tax rebates) that never come; Social Security (including Social Security disability) checks that are discontinued; bills that don’t get paid, so utilities get shut off; credit cards that get cancelled; your life history is now an open book leaving you completely exposed to identity theft; health insurance and Medicare are cancelled so real and life-threatening ailments can’t get treated…the list goes on.

What can we do? There will never be a solution to bureaucratic stupidity, inefficiency, and incompetence until people are held accountable. And do you you know what that’s going to take? You.

And look at you. There you are, still sitting on your big butt doing nothing about it. Do something. Write or call your Congressman. Demand bureaucratic responsibility. And don’t desist in your efforts, even if they tell you they don’t have to listen to you because someone hit the wrong button and you’re dead.

Let me start this out by saying, I don’t care for the current President, George W. Bush. I believe he’s on track to be the second worst President this country has ever had, right after Franklin Roosevelt.

Having said that, let me, in his “defense,” try to put something to rest. I’m going to try to euthanize an opinion that won’t die. But even after I kill it, it’ll probably keep coming back like Freddy Kruger of Elm Street, Michael Myers of Halloween, and Kenny McCormnik of South Park.

Ready?

Bush isn’t stupid.

Over the last seven years, his critics, mostly his liberal critics, have taken some kind of comfort in making that assertion. And what do they have as evidence? As near as I can tell, it’s his malapropisms. Oh, and then there’s the widely circulated e-mail from the once fictitious Lovenstein Institute of Scranton purporting that he has the lowest I.Q. of any U.S. President in the last 50 years. (I say once fictitious because soon after the hoax was exposed, and it was shown the Lovenstein Institute didn’t exist, someone registered it on the Internet and now it does “exist” somewhere out in cyberspace.)

The problem with using his speaking ineptitude as evidence of a less than stellar IQ is that there are members of Mensa who speak like that. Yeah, I know one: Dave Duffy, the publisher of Backwoods Home Magazine. He’s a Mensa member, runs a successful magazine, and is one of the smartest people I know, but still says things a la Bush, that even after knowing him for over forty years leave me gasping for air.

Let me offer some real evidence that belies the rants of Bush’s critics:
He graduated from Yale. Yeah, daddy might have gotten him in, but he had to get himself out. And he might not have graduated at the top of his class, but he graduated.

He has an MBA from Harvard. Some have suggested daddy bought him the degree. Unless you can provide evidence, I’ve got to discount that assertion as more useless ranting. Besides, I’m going to ask you to provide a list of the Harvard professors who were bought off. There would then be a scandal here and it should be exposed.

He piloted an F-106. Yes, you can say he didn’t complete his National Guard obligation. I don’t know whether he did or not. But he did fly a complicated modern jet fighter. That’s not a piece of equipment you’re going to put an idiot at the controls of.

He speaks a second language. Now, I understand that even retarded people can speak, but not many are multilingual and none have graduated from Yale, Harvard Business School, or flown a modern jet fighter.

And this is what pisses me off the most: Time that could have and should have been spent criticizing his policies or rectifying some of the mistakes he made were spent on the self-serving fiction that he’s stupid. I’ve come to think of those who have let this supposed lack of mental acuity distract them as being the real idiots.

Duffy, if you happen to read this, I’ve changed my mind. I think you’re an idiot, after all. (Hey, having never complimented him in over forty years, I’m not going to start now.)

I saw a thing on the Internet the other day about mpg (miles per gallon) vs mpd (miles per dollar). What the guy did was a gasoline-consumption comparison between different models of vehicles. But the real cost per mile to drive a car should include the cost of the car, the cost of maintenance, insurance, and various other costs. That’s what the government does when it gives mileage allowances to those who use their own vehicles in service of the government. As of 1 February 2007, the allowance was $0.485 for the average car–almost 50 cents a mile–and as of 1 January 2008, almost a year later, the IRS allows $0.505, just a smidgen over a half a buck.

But, if you already own a car, that kind of comparison is more or less meaningless. What you might want to do is figure out how to buy gas when you already have the car. And that’s what I’m about to do.

I once watched the love of my life (she’s gone, now) pump gas at a self-serve. She was buying the 87 octane because it was "cheaper"–about a dime cheaper than the 89 octane and 20 cents cheaper than the 91. I asked her if she ever tested her Ford Aerostar to see if it was cheaper per mile with the 87 octane, 89 octane, or 91 octane. I explained that with my car (a 1995 Honda Civic) I got something like 11 percent better mileage with the 91 than I did with the 89 while the difference in price between the two grades, at the time, was something like 7 percent. I said the comparable difference between the 91 and the 87 was greater. She looked at me as if I were an idiot.

Now, she was bright, perhaps the brightest woman I’ve ever had a relationship with. In fact, she was working toward a degree in mathematics. Yet, my question was lost on her and, not being one to bang my head against a wall (okay, sometimes I do that), I let it go.

Nowadays, I own a 2003 Honda Accord. The price of gas, in the meantime, has risen. But I’ve noticed that the difference in price among gasoline grades has more or less remained a constant 10 cents–the 91 (92 octane here in Oregon) is still about a dime more expensive than the 89 and 20 cents more expensive than the 87. But, with the price of premium hovering in the mid-three-dollar range, the percentage of increase in price is now down around 3 percent but my increase in mileage is around 10 percent. That means that while the cost of gasoline has gone up, the mileage I’m getting from the different grades has remained more or less constant. So, ironically my savings while using the "expensive" gasoline has become considerable.

In fact, for each thousand miles I drive, I’m saving about $11. Besides that, I have to make fewer fueling stops, and I hate stopping for gas unless the attendant is of the female persuasion and cute. On top of that, I notice my car performs a little better

So, I’m suggesting that if you want to save some money when you buy gas, find out how much you spend per mile of driving or, as I did it, how much I save per thousand miles of driving. To do this, let your tank run close to empty, then fill it with one grade. Note the price. Then, when you’re close to empty, again, figure out how many miles you get to the gallon. Now, fill it with the second grade, note the price and, when you fill up, again, also note how many miles you got to the gallon. Repeat this with the third grade. Now you can figure out how much 1,000 miles of driving costs with each grade.

(By the way, with the price of a gallon of gasoline shifting the way it does nowadays, write down the price of each grade each time because when you do your final calculations you want to be comparing the cost if you’d bought one of the other grades that day.)

Say you get:
24.9 with the 87 octane
26.4 with the 89 octane
29.8 with the 92 octane

In the first case, divide 1,000 by the 24.9 and that figures to 40.16 gallons of gas to drive 1,000 miles. If gas is $3.299, it’s costing you $132.39 to drive 1,000 miles on 87 octane.

In the second case, divide 1,000 by 26.4 and that figures to 37.88 gallons which if the 89 octane is a dime more expensive means it costs $128.75 to drive 1,000 miles.

In the last example, divide 1,000 by 29.8 and that figures out to be 33.56 gallons of gas and, if the dime difference holds true, it costs $117.42 to drive 1,000 mile on the 92 octane.

You can see the savings per thousand miles. Estimate how many miles you drive annually and you can figure out roughly what it costs to drive and calculate your yearly savings.

But, once again, as I said, when you calculate the savings, use the same-day price from the three grades. E.g., if the price of all three grades have moved ups 20 cents, do the calculations with the latest figures so you can do an accurate comparison.

Yesterday, on the CNN website, there was a poll asking:

Have you listened to or watched any speeches or debates by the presidential candidates?

The choices were:

Speeches
Debates
Both
Neither

I voted. I checked “neither.”

Then I viewed the results. Here they were as of the moment I voted:

Percent # votes
Speeches 3% 536
Debates 14% 2374
Both 38% 6455
Neither 44% 7493
Total Votes: 16858

Those percentages will hold pretty constant even with thousands of more votes.

Why, you may ask, do I not bother to listen to the candidates’ debates nor their speeches?

Quite simply because what they say is more often than not meaningless. They say whatever they think they have to say to get elected. Often, what they say depends on who they are talking to. It often depends on what the polls say prospective voters want to hear. (It means these politicians are not standing on principles, they’re saying whatever the have to to get elected.)

I remember a long-ago speech, before tobacco farmers by Al Gore in which he promised them his support. This contradicted anti-smoking speeches he made both before and after that speech, anti-smoking speeches he made to groups that were clearly against tobacco. Like most politicians, he was firmly in the camp of the wishy-washies.

I also recall that in 1980, friends urged me to vote for Reagan, instead of the Libertarian candidate, Ed Clark, because we had to get a liberal like Carter out and a conservative like Reagan in. I said I couldn’t vote for Reagan because he wasn’t a conservative, he was a big-government Republican. I based my opinion on what he did as governor of California and not on what he said in his campaign speeches. And, as it turned out, I was right.

After listening to these guys for years, I realize if there is any positive the correlation between what they say and what they do when they get into office it is more a matter of chance and coincidence than a matter of them keeping their promises.

They all promise smaller government, lower taxes, peace, etc. But, once in, those speeches and promises are forgotten.

As an aside, I thought it was laughable when Clinton ran for reelection, in 1996, and simply appropriated the Republican platform. Not that he intended to carry out any of the promises for smaller government, lower taxes, etc., that he ran on. It was just neat stuff to say. And, when he was reelected? All the promises were forgotten–by both the voters and the press.

I even asked liberal friends why they were voting for him when he was backing away from the liberal agenda. They, of course, didn’t answer and Bill, as I said, abandoned all the small-government rhetoric he’d gulled the swing voters with. I knew he’d do so. I imagine even his supporters knew his speeches were bullshit–lies–but they didn’t care.

However, if you really want to know where a candidate stands, and assuming he was previously in an elective office, look at his voting record in whatever legislative bodies he may have been in, look at his track record if he was a governor. What they’ve done in the past, they’re very likely to do in the future.

Only one of the candidates says what he means and means what he says, and that’s Ron Paul. His voting record in Congress is a reflection of his campaign speeches and what he says in the so-called “debates.” But I don’t listen to him, either, because I already know what he’ll do if elected. He’s not going to say anything in his speeches or the debates that he hasn’t said and done before. He’s the only one there I trust. He’s the only one up there not trying to snow you. I’ll vote for him even if he doesn’t run.

This morning I woke up to a headline on CNN that read: Renewed ethnic clashes hit Kenya.

Why am I not surprised?

Many of the “nations” of Africa are going to be basket cases for generations to come. This has nothing to do with poverty, democracy, global warming, Jesus Christ, Allah, the surfeit or the lack of any of those things. It has everything to do with tribalism and the way the colonial powers, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal etc., that once ruled Africa, set up many of the new nations that now exist when they withdrew and went home to Europe.

Colonialism in Africa did not occur along tribal lines. That is, the European powers that invaded the continent, drew up colonial boundaries that suited their purposes–without regard to tribal boundaries–then ruled them as they saw fit. The result was that tribes were often split between two or more colonies, and the colonies often included several tribes under one umbrella. Often, the tribes within a colony, such as Kenya, had antagonisms against each other that predated the coming of the Europeans.

Then, in the 20th century, when the the Europeans left, they left behind a bunch of fledgling nations that today have as their national borders the same borders the old colonies once had. This left fractured many of the tribes, and because the nations were formed along colonial rather than tribal lines, the “countries” formed now contain ethnic groups that still have the same age-old animosities toward each other.

Examples of the problems this has caused abound on the continent and include what’s happening in Kenya.

The largest ethnic group in Kenya is is the Kikuyu. Next in numbers are the Luhya then the Luo. But there are also the Kalenjin, Kamba, Kisii. and a host of others including Somalis. (A map showing the ethnic divisions in Kenya can be found in Wikipedia. It’s a nightmare.) Though there are shifting alliances among these groups, there is very little love between any of them and frequently a great deal of animosity. What is happening in Kenya is that large gangs of Kikuyu are finding single or small gangs of Luo and are either maiming them or hacking them to death with machetes. In the meantime, houses are set on fire as part of another age-old dispute: who owns what land?

Another example is seen in the clashes between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi, clashes that, occasionally, still fill the news. In Rwanda the Tutsis once ruled, though the Hutus were the majority. But when the Hutus came into control of the country, through “democratic” elections there was little the Tutsis could do when Hutu militias decided their country needed an ethnic cleansing–genocide along tribal lines. The result was the slaughter of at least 500,000 Tutsis and perhaps as many as a million. Along with them, thousands of “moderate” Hutus, who wanted to stop the slaughter, also died.

In neighboring Burundi, where the Hutus are the majority, ethnic cleansing goes the other way.

I remember back in the late ‘60s the attempt by the Ibo, in Nigeria, to secede and form their own country, that would include only them and their ancestral homelands. What followed was a bloody civil war that saw the Ibos decimated.

Forming the countries “correctly” would not have solved everything. There still would be wars. But had those countries been formed along tribal or ethnic lines instead of colonial line, or had the Europeans simply left and let the Africans settle the boundaries themselves, there would be many fewer internecine struggles and civil wars which, unfortunately, are going to continue unabated into the foreseeable future. But the Europeans couldn’t leave sensibly because their first concerns were the spheres of influence they wanted to maintain. They hoped to keep old allegiances and controls. The Belgians with what was once known as the Belgian congo, the French with Nigeria, the English with Kenya, etc. They each wanted to keep some kind of trading agreements that would satisfy themselves and to hell with the Africans.

Well, the Africans will pay the price for that into the foreseeable future. Ethnic wars will continue and millions–men, women, and children–will die.

w00t—pronounced as if it rhymes with boot. But what does it mean? It’s the Merriam-Webster 2007 “word of the year.” It’s spelled with the letter “w”, the number “0″, another “0″, and finally a “t”. It more of less means “Yay!” and apparently it originated as an acronym for “we own the other team,” but it came to be spelled with two zeros instead of with a pair of the letter “O” and it’s now quite popular with gamers on the Internet and is merely an expression of joy. For example, one gamer might text another, “I just reached Level 12 in Blow the World to Hell. W00t!”

Runner-up for word of the year was facebook, which is a verb among whose various meanings is “to upload a person’s photo to the website facebook.com.” E.G., “I’m going to facebook that cute girl I met this afternoon when I get on line, tonight.” And then there was another word being considered, blamestorm, which means more or less what brainstorm means, but it’s a brainstorming session whose sole intent to to find someone to blame when things are going wrong. At one time or another, we’ve all been there for such a blamestorm session, now we have a name for it.

These aren’t the only words popping into—and often out of—the vernacular.

In the past I’ve heard people use conversate, which means to have a conversation with; and flustrate, which is a combination of “fluster” and “frustrate”–you can imagine how it’s used. I hate the word, but it describes the way I feel when I hear a friend use it.

The question is, are any of these words? Many ask that question. I even saw a segment on the evening news where a trio of newscasters debated that very question in regards to “w00t”, with the distaff member of that trio asking, “But is it a real word?”

How you answer that question—whether any of these are real “words” or not—says a lot about you. First, it reveals whether you think dictionaries are prescriptive or descriptive. If you view them as prescriptive, then you believe a dictionary describes how you should speak and write. It’s kind of what the French do. They—or at least those Frenchmen who think their language should be kept pure, such as the 40 members of L’Académie française, the so-called guardians of French—are convinced the language should be regulated, and that neologisms, especially those coined from other languages (and the French seem to have a special problem with words coming from American-English) should be exorcised. On top of that, there are even French laws mandating French be used, or at least used in conjunction with other languages, for many purposes. One American company, GE Medical Systems, found itself fined 500,000 euros, plus another 20,000 euros a day, for having the temerity to have violated laws guarding the language because of some documentation and software it provided to its French subsidiary, despite the fact only technical people were going to see or use it. I guess they gotta protect the children.

The problem with this French approach (and the French approach is a prescriptive approach) is that when you use it, you are always fighting a losing battle. As words (especially those damned American words) survive attempts to expunge them, the guardians of that language find themselves having to give many of the offensive words an official stamp of approval. This gesture allows them to save face rather than having to admit that they can’t win. Just consider the fruits of their labors: what did they do with American words like e-mail, golden boy, and stock-option? They turned them into le email, la stock-option, and le golden boy. Yeah, now they’re French words. Le bullshit. In the meantime, they’ve tried to keep words like “software” out of their language by substituting “logiciel,” but with only limited success.

Likewise, in this country, many take the same prescriptive approach the French take and deem a neologism “not a word” if it doesn’t appear in a dictionary.

Of course, there are some logical problems with this approach. One is that of the approximately 6,800 languages in the world, about 3,400 are unwritten. To deem a word as a “real” only if it appears in a dictionary, means that none of those languages have real words. It also denies there were any “real” words in English before Samuel Johnson created the first English dictionary. Another problem concerns words that are part of the vernacular or slang that do make it into a dictionary. Do they appear there because the makers of the dictionary recognize them as “real” words, or does their appearance somehow magically and mystically transform them into “real”? Another problem is, what happens to the words that are dropped from dictionaries (and they are generally dropped because dictionaries have limited space and real production costs)? Are they no longer words. Another problem I’ll mention is what of the thousands of words used everyday, names of, e.g., chemical compounds that will never appear in a dictionary—even chemical dictionaries? Last, with today’s Internet, and the appearance of online dictionaries, new words are appearing in these dictionaries almost as fast as they are coined. So the prescriptive approach is dead–or, a least, severely limping.

On the other hand, if you view dictionaries as “descriptive,” you are not passing judgment on a words status as “real” or not and you see the dictionary as merely describing usage of those words the editors chose to include. But, taking the descriptive approach doesn’t mean you intend ever to use any of those words.

I, myself, prefer the descriptive approach. My reasoning, which is not without merit, says that no one owns the language. Not Congress, not your high school English teacher who always corrected you, not the folks at Merriam-Webster (who, by the way, take the descriptive approach). It also admits to the language’s malleability and the fact that it grows, shrinks, and otherwise changes no matter what any of us, as individuals, thinks.

The closest you can ever come to owning any part of a language is to trademark a word. And, even then, you only own a particular word, or combination of words, in a particular context. For example, I can’t go out and start another magazine and call it Time, or market another laundry detergent and call it Tide. At least not in this country. Those names are taken. On the other hand, neither Time Warner, the publisher of Time, nor Procter & Gamble, the manufacturer of Tide detergent, own the words when they are used in their general linguistic senses. “Time and tide wait for no man.” Those two words are not “owned” in that sense.

So, where do most new words come from? Until recently, from the black and gay communities. However, nowadays, many come from technology, especially the computer world. Words like software, Internet, freeware, website, blog, and laptop are new and are now indispensable to the English language, as are words like window, Windows, and hacker, which have taken on new meanings not intended when those words were first coined.

But who was the greatest single inventor of words in the English language? Most likely, William Shakespeare. Yes, The Bard invented at least 1,700 words (some say as many as 10,000) and lent new meanings to countless other words that already existed in his time. He did so because English, which was considered a backwater language until his day, didn’t have enough words for him to express himself. Today, English just wouldn’t be the grand language it is without him and the countless others who, down through the ages and even today, have molded it and taken into directions that could not have been imagined in the 16th century.

Will I use any of the words recently coined? Usually, I don’t. Like the word snobs, I feel uneasy with them. Many are just fads and will be gone with the crew cuts, bell-bottoms, and bubble hairdos of yesteryear. (Bubble hairdos are gone, aren’t they? Tell me they are.)

But I will admit that, after having resisted using one word for years, when I finally did say it, the webmaster of this site told me it was already passé. That was over 30 years ago. The word? “Groovy.” May I be struck dead if I ever use it again.

On the other hand, I find it very easy to use the word “google” to mean I looked something up on line, regardless of what search engine I used. It’s a good word. Everyone knows what I’m saying when I say it. Will it be here 10 years from now? No one knows.

However, I do not use the word “xerox” indiscriminately. I say “photocopy.” So, I have my limits.

Now, I’ll answer the question I asked earlier in this post and say w00t is a word. I’m not going to use it but, yeah, it is a word. Will I ever use it? Dunno.

Last, have I, myself, ever invented a word or introduced a new meaning to an already established word? Yes. When I’m trying to summarize something, instead of telling my listener that I’m going to give an abbreviated, abridged, or shortened version, I often say, “Let me give you ‘the Reader’s Digest’ version,” meaning I’ll “cut to the chase” and give only the pertinent facts. I don’t know if anyone else has ever used it, but when I preface what I’m going to say with those words, everyone has understood what I mean.

Long post? Yeah. Too bad I didn’t give you the Reader’s Digest version.

I carry concealed. About once a year, maybe less, someone who doesn’t likes guns asks me, “Why do you need a gun?”

No two of the ensuing conversations are exactly alike, but they all run something like this:

I tell them, “I don’t.”

There’s usually a little pause. Then I’m asked, “Then why do you carry one?”

“I carry one for the same reason I have car insurance.”

This usually evokes a comment like, “But you need car insurance.”

“No you don’t.”

“What if you get into an accident?”

“Then I need it.”

If that doesn’t clear things up, I add, “I don’t need car insurance until I’m in an accident. Then I need it. I really need it.”

This sometimes elicits the following comment, “Well, in this state you need it.”

“No you don’t.”

My incredulous acquaintance will then ask, “What if you get pulled over by a cop, and he asks for proof of insurance?”

“I need it then, too, but I don’t need it until I’m asked for it.”

If they can’t figure out what I’m trying to tell them by this time, I explain: “What I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t need car insurance unless I’m in an accident or I’m pulled over by a cop. Until one of those incidents, I don’t need it. And it’s the same thing with the gun I carry. I don’t need it until I need it, and if that happens, I’ll really need it and I’ll be glad I carry one. But, until then…”

I’ll often also sum it up: “What I’m hoping you’ll understand is that I carry for the same reason I keep my car insured at all times, because I don’t know when I’ll need a gun, or have an accident, or get pulled over.”

Some people see what I’m saying; others think I’m just being a smart ass. What can I do?

I’m still going to finish my post about sleep and poker, but I wanted to talk about something else, first.

Here’s what it is: My poker playing sucks. Yeah, it out-and-out sucks like a tornado going through a trailer park.

Here’s why I say so.

I played several heads-up matches over the last few days day. I won all but one of them, but that’s not what’s important. (Remember, I keep saying, “It’s not about the money–yet,” because it’s not about winning, yet, it’s about learning.) What is important is my play and, given what happened in one of those matches, I hope I’ve learned something because, after analyzing my play, I’m not proud of what I did.

The match only lasted two deals, and here’s what happened:

On the first deal I was dealt 9c4h. I was the small blind. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know I come out swinging to see if my opponent is going to let me push him around.

With the blinds at 10/20, I made it 40 to go. He called.

The flop was Ac 4s Td.

Now, if you’ve been reading my stuff, in heads-up play if I raise preflop I usually (not always) make continuation bets, and I also usually (not always) bet out if I catch a piece of the flop. Here, both had happened, i.e., I’d raised preflop and I’d made bottom pair.

The pot was 80, so I made it 60 more to go. He folded.

Good start. Is he going to succumb to my bullying?

The next deal, I received TcTs. He was the small blind. He made it 40 to go. I reraised another 20, making it 60. He reraised all-in.

All-in? With my Tens, I called.

The computer revealed our hands. He held 9s9d.

I’m starting to say, “No Nine, no Nine, no Nine…”

The flop came 4s 8d 8c.

“…no nine…”

The turn was 5h.

“…no nine…”

The river was Th.

I won with trip Tens.

But was my call correct?

No. (If your answer was “yes,” go to your room. And especially if you said it was the right play just because I won, go to you room and quit playing poker.)

My call was wrong. Here’s why it was incorrect–actually, why it was stupid, stupid, stupid–even though I’d won:

What could he have gone all-in with?

AA
KK
QQ
JJ

Against each of these I’m about a a 4 to 1 dog.

AK
AQ
AJ
KQ

Against hands like these, I’m a marginal favorite.

Other hands he may have gone all-in with include lower pairs (including the Nines he did go in with), and against those I’m about a 4 to 1 favorite.

Against a hand with one card higher than my Tens and one lower, like A9, I’m about a 2.6 to one favorite. But how likely is he to have gone all-in with hands like those?

Against two unpaired cards lower than my Tens, I’m usually a better than 5 to 1 favorite. And with hands like those, he’s wildly unlikely to have gone all-in.

Okay, he could have held TT, too. Not likely, but, barring a four-flush or five-flush on the board, it would have been a split pot.

Now, here’s my point: against most of the hands he was likely to have gone all-in with, I was either a heavy underdog or a slight favorite.

Me calling an all-in bet. preflop, was just plain wrong.

And I can’t be giving my opponents breaks like that. Here’s why: I’ve been winning about five out of six of my heads-up matches, lately. Whether that’s the trend or not, I don’t know. But it’s the data I have to go on. So, the question is, why would I want to give an opponent something even as close aa a coin-flip early in the match when, in all likelihood, I could grind him up with my superior play, as I’ve been doing since soon after I started playing heads-up?

The correct play? I should have folded.

Would it have been correct for me to call and early preflop all-in bet with any other pair? Yeah, either Aces or Kings. Queens? I’m not sure, yet.

Though the poker gods were kind to me, even though my play sucked, there is a two-part moral here: Keep the money I won, but don’t kid myself into believing I won that match with sparkling play–I just got lucky. And don’t slip up like that, ever again. (It makes me wonder what greater sins my opponent must have committed to have had to suffer the fate the poker gods had in store for him.)

Post script:
I’ve since told myself that he may not have made the all-in play with pocket rockets (AA) or a pair of cowboys (KK), in an attempt to squeeze some chips out of me. That, of course, would reduce the peril I’d subjected myself to. Nevertheless, unless he was a great player and I had to get my licks in before he ground me up the way I’ve ground up players weaker than I, the proper play for me was to fold.

Having analyzed this hand, my play will suck a little less in the future.

I want to post something about sleep and how it relates to poker–at least the way I play poker. But that post is still in the works.

However, having said that, I want to talk, now, about how the lack of sleep and some of the stuff I’ve been taking to improve my sleep have resulted in some terrible play.

To start this out, let me say I’d been in southern California for three weeks and, though I played for a while while I was there, I finally stopped because I had so many things to do. As I’ve said, I need focus to play poker.

I still read about the game, thought about it, and even did some analysis. Otherwise, poker was on the back burner my last week there.

Now, I’m back in Oregon. After a long road-trip I arrived yesterday and I’m finally getting back into playing. So yesterday, in my first heads-up session of the day (if you’ll recall, I’m playing match play, just now) I lost. I didn’t start out losing. I had my opponent on the ropes, but I just couldn’t put him away. Eventually, he put me away.

How’d I lose? Well, I knew what my problem was: I didn’t have a plan. I mean, I had one, but I couldn’t implement it.

There’s an ebb and flow to any poker game. At least there is for me. I play a very aggressive game, but I watch how my opponents react to my play and, in heads-up play, I have only one opponent to watch. So I study his betting patterns while also trying to figure out how my betting patterns are affecting him. For example, if he lets me push him around, I keep pushing him around, stealing pots here and stealing pots there. If he takes a stand, which usually means he either starts calling or raising my bets, I start playing stronger hands and making value bets in the first case or raising back in the second case–unless I discover he’s only calling or raising because he’s caught a few good hands. but “good” is relative in poker and, if that’s the only time he’s going to take a stand, i.e., when he catches good hands, I’m going to keep running him over.

But, let’s say he catches on to me and he starts playing back at me. As I said, I begin value betting and/or raising. What I’m doing is what the poker players call “changing gears.”

Another way of saying it is to paraphrase the poker writer, Mike Caro, and say, I try to figure out what my opponent expects me to do, then I do everything in my power to disappoint him.

But to do this, I need to be acutely aware of how my opponent is reacting to my play. Then, as I see my opponent change his play, I have to devise my traps. This is how I had previously embarked on the long string of heads-up wins I’d previously written about.

The problem, yesterday, seemed to be that I was having trouble remembering how my opponent was reacting and trouble devising ploys to trap him, when I did. In fact, my play became almost entirely unimaginative. The result was that I ceased to be pushing him around and he began pushing me around. And he did it very well and I lost. I was pissed, mostly at myself.

So, I played again. Once again, I had problems remembering much of how my opponent was reacting and, even when I did, I had trouble setting traps.

Setting traps in poker is sort of like playing chess: you have to be able to see a few moves ahead. I couldn’t set a trap if I couldn’t see more than one move ahead.

I won that second match, anyway. How’d I win it? I won because my opponent was so bad. Yeah, I was playing bad, but he was playing terrible.

Even though I’d won, I was beginning to panic. I was wondering if I’d lost my edge or something.

So, I played again, to see. It was another rough match because I was having trouble thinking. I won again, but there was nothing to be proud of. My victory was, once again, simply the result of my opponent’s incompetence and not my own brilliance and craftiness.

Hey, if you want to get good at this game, you have to be honest with yourself. At least that’s the way I feel. And when I suck, I tell myself that I suck. Just because you’re winning doesn’t mean you can’t be doing better. And, just because you won doesn’t mean you didn’t suck.

Let me digress:

Some thirty-plus years ago, I watched the former heavyweight champion, Joe Frazier, fighting a guy, I think it was Terry Daniels. As far as I could see, Frazier was winning the fight. But, at the end of the third round, Frazier went back to his stool and his corner guy was screaming at him. “What are you trying to do, lose this?” Still yelling, he started telling Frazier what he had to do. He had to go to the body, he had to do this, he had to do that, he had to do blah, blah, blah. Frazier didn’t even try to look up at the guy screaming at him. I wasn’t sure he was even listening. But the bell rang and he went out for the fourth round and suddenly he was fighting a new fight. Where previously he was just beating the guy up, he was now destroying him by fighting him the way he’d been told and, before the round was out, the fight was stopped.

Here’s my point–in fact, it was apparently that cornerman’s point, too: You may be able to beat the suckers with your B game, but don’t get into the habit of playing your B game just because it seems easy. When you finally run into someone good, you’re going to have some bad habits and he’s going to pick you apart. Always play your A game. Or at least try to. If you find yourself playing your B game, find out why. Find out how to get back to your A game, whether you’re playing against your grandmother for paper clips, you’re at the final table of the WSOP, or you’re fighting for the heavyweight championship.

But, here was my problem: With my brain not functioning right, I couldn’t find my A game.

Here’s where it gets crazy. Yeah, I’d won, again. But I was still overlooking something. I just didn’t realize it, yet.

I got up from my computer and went into the other room to talk with my friend, Diana. Then I went to the bathroom. Then I went to the kitchen and got a glass of water. I was thinking of playing, again. I wanted to play to see if I could fix my game.

I came back to my room. There was something funny on my monitor. I sat down to the computer and read the message. The game wasn’t over. I almost did a double take. Gradually, I realized I hadn’t signed up for a heads-up match, I’d mistakenly signed up for a four-man “shootout.” The format of this shootout was that there’d be two pairings of heads-up matches and the winners of those matches would then meet each other to play for the whole enchilada.

I almost crapped my pants. My brain was so out of it that I didn’t even know what I’d signed up for. And, because I’d been wandering around the house, had the other match ended, I’d have been getting blinded away. In fact, I may have wound up losing the shootout this way if I hadn’t luckily come back to the computer.

Once I realized what was going on, I also realized I could go watch the other match, which was still in progress.

I did.

It didn’t take long for me to realize both players were tentative and that, if I were on my A game, either one would be easy pickings. But I wasn’t on my A game and, now realizing I not only wasn’t playing well, and that I wasn’t even capable of signing up for the right game to boot, I couldn’t just walk away without losing. Under the terms for which I’d signed up, I was being forced to play, else I lost everything.

So, I watched and waited.

Here’s where it gets anticlimactic. Because the other two players were so tentative, their match was a long, grueling one. But, because the blinds were escalating, it had to end and it finally did. Then, without even giving the winner a one-minute break, our match began. (Thank the poker gods I had gotten back to my computer in time.)

On the first deal, I was the big blind and I was dealt Js5s. My opponent just completed the blind and I checked. I immediately realized that was a mistake. The right play–for me, anyway–was to raise, no matter what I had, to come out swinging on that first hand, to see what kind of crap my opponent would let me get away with. That’s the way I play. The right way to start was to be aggressive. I had to try to take control and see how he’d react, and here I was, checking in the big blind on the first hand. I never do that. But, now, with my addled brain, I did.

I didn’t deserve to win. And, if I kept playing that way and, if the other player was any good, I wouldn’t win.

The flop was 2s 5c 5h.

I’d made trips on the flop.

I checked immediately. Now was the time to see if he’d try to buy what looked like an orphan flop (a flop that didn’t look like it helped anyone). Sometimes, being aggressive means setting a trap.

But he just checked. I mumbled some expletive to myself.

The turn was 2d.

I now had a full house, fives full of deuces. I wanted to make something with this hand and get on to the next one. I bet 40. He called. Good. But I couldn’t figure out what he might have as hole cards. (That’s another danger of checking. At least if he has to call or reraise, I can start putting him on some kind of hand.) Now I had to wonder what kind of hand he would he have called my turn bet with? I was pretty sure that, since he was last to act on each betting round, he’d have bet a Five or a Deuce on the flop if he held either. Could he be holding a Three and a Four so he now had an open-ended straight draw? Was he holding an Ace? If neither one of us held a Five, a Deuce, or a higher pair, the best hole card to have in your hand would be an Ace.

I also tried to figure out what he thought I was holding that he’d thought my bet was worth a call. Did he think I was on a bluff? Of course, I’d checked when the pair of Fives fell, so he probably didn’t think I held a Five or even a Deuce.

But my brain was still too addled to trust any of my guesses. All I was sure of…pretty sure of…was that my Fives full were likely to be good. In fact, at this point, the only hand he could have me beaten with would have been quad Deuces.

The river card was 6d.

So, here we had a possible straight, a possible full house, even possible quads. Of course, as we know, I already had a full house.

I bet 120 hoping he’d pay me off. I was still sure I was ahead and I wanted to make something.

He made it 240 to go.

He raised? With what?

I almost called, but, after thinking a second, I decided to raise and I made it 520 to go.

He made it 800 to go. Was he sitting on a pair of Sixes and had the river given him a higher full house?

I thought a few seconds.

My stack was going to be severely crippled if I called and lost.

I asked myself: Would he have bet a pair of Sixes earlier? I think he would have.

Would he have bet a Five in his hand after making trips on the flop? Probably, since he was last to act.

Would he have bet a Deuce then if he’d held one? Probably.

With that analysis, I finally decided: He must have been holding a Three and a Four and the Six on the river straightened him out–and he didn’t believe I’d filled.

Knowing I still wasn’t thinking straight, I went all in anyway, hoping I was right, and, after a hesitation, he called.

The computer turned our hands up. He held Jc6s. He had two pairs.

What the hell was going on in his head? Had his first match been so long that he wasn’t thinking straight? Did he somehow convince himself that I was initiating all my bets with nothing but what was on the board? Or because he thought I was holding no more than an Ace that I believed was good?

Whatever it was, he deserved to lose, but I didn’t deserve to win. But I did win because he deserved it even less. (Hey, like I said, I’d watched him win his own match and he didn’t deserve winning.)

So ended my match with him in just one crazy deal.

But I quit play for the day. If I could beat the first guy–but lost, and if I couldn’t even tell what I was signing up for, I had to quit. Then I had to figure out why I was behaving the way I was. And I think I know why. And that will be the subject of my next post. And that’s where I’ll talk about my efforts to get a handle on my sleep.