CARDRUNNERS

Hey guys...this is kind of an exciting post for me. I dunno if you guys remmeber, but a few posts back, I mentioned how a friend of mine had encouraged me to write up some of my stories about my poker life, and specifically about nyc. I thought it was a good idea and I started writing stuff up. Thus far I've written about 5 snippets, but I think I'm gonna start posting them at one per week as long as you guys like them. It will kind of be a detailed story about my poker life, somewhat fictionalized but with a lot of truth, and will hopefully provide for pretty good entertainment. Today's snippet is effectively my introduction to who I am, and the games here in NYC. I hope you enjoy, and let me know if you do. This isn't supposed to be an expose or anything. All names and addresses have been changed. This merely supposed to be an exciting, exhilirating read. I hope you enjoy part I, and I'll continue to update this at about 4-5 page section per week.

<3,
Ezra

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THE GAME

"You've got balls, kid."

The heavily accented Israeli voice from the seat to my left merely emphasized what the rest of the table was thinking. Embodied the energy boiling up from the green felt. Just as any great sports fan could appreciate Sergio's running leap, Jordan's fade away at the buzzer, or Mays' back turned grab, the nine men sitting at my table were most certainly impressed by the ease at which I'd shoved a little over fifteen hundred dollars towards the dealer. Fifteen hundred dollars with a lowly pair of tens. A seemingly overconfident pair of tens made even more remarkable by the Jack already visible for all to see -- and use -- in the middle of the table. It may not have been skill or instinct they were impressed by. Most likely, it was a twenty one year old kid with a seeming utter disregard for money. Money that stretched often into the thousands, and sometimes even the tens of thousands. I, they had inferred, was one of their own.

My fingers caressed the pool of black $100 chips, green $25 chips, and red $5 chips as I quickly dragged them towards my seat through the faded green felt. And goddamn if it didn't feel good -- the cool clay raining through my fingers. It wasn't so much the money that made my heart race with pride, with excitement. I had been setting up this hand for the past 90 minutes. Carefully attacking my opponent -- the biggest whale in the game -- with concentrated aggressive bets until I could sense he was reaching breaking point. Most of the guys in this game, the whale included, enjoyed playing a very passive style of poker. Paying a couple of bucks every hand to try and catch some cards, make a huge hand, and get "paid off" by a weaker hand. But I had taken them all out of their comfort zone by intentionally juicing the pots time after time with large raises. Here within these pale white walls sat a bleak display of four poker tables and a cashier's cage atop of an aging grey carpet; televisions muted to yesterday's sports highlights and today's horse raises. Here within these walls, I was redefining how these guys played poker.

On one of the first hands of the night, I'd lost $500 to my primary target, one of the most infamous whales in the city, when I put all my money in as 6:4 underdog. In the successive hour, I'd managed to make it all back from him by building huge pots early on in the hand and following them up with daunting raises at the latter stages of the betting. And, as I'd learned from years of experience, even the most aggravated of whales feel the need to have some semblance of a "made" hand to call a bet of several hundred dollars from a cocky kid with highlighted, spiky hair. The purpose of the first hand of the night, wherein I'd lost $500, was to paint a portrait of myself -- that of an aggressive trust fund baby, playing maniacally with daddy's money. Had I won the hand, and the $1,000 pot, no doubt all the businessmen at the table would've resounded in a chorus over how "lucky" I was. Yet, winning or losing that particular hand didn't matter. Nor did the $500. What mattered was whether the gallery bought the painting I was selling. And based on Mendel's awed observation, his belief that I was a gambler at heart, a young kid with "balls," I might as well have been Picasso.

But the truth of the matter was that I was I no gambler at heart. Losing money made me sick. The first time I'd ever played, and lost, at blackjack, lost my own money, the money I'd worked so hard during the year for, I'd sworn off the game for good. And I'd kept my vow. The remarkable thing about the hand versus the whale, known only by his first name Nivola, was that I knew exactly how favored my hand was over his from the very first bet. He'd raised me several hundred dollars on the flop, and based on my experience with him, I knew it meant one of two things. He either had a pair of eights which would make my pair of tens about a 75% favorite over his hand. Or, alternately he was raising with his flush draw, making me about a 65% favorite to win the hand. I also knew that based on his actions on the next card to be exposed, I would be able to tell which of the two possibilities was the correct one. The whale had made a move and I'd called him. He would now, nearly certainly, slow down. I knew this from experience. There was no chance he would stick his remaining one thousand dollars into the middle of the pot without a made hand. When the next card was exposed and he "checked" the action to me, I knew exactly where I stood. Versus his lowly pair of 8's, I was now an 85% favorite to win. And versus his potential flush draw, I was now 81% to win. Definitely odds even the most conservative of non-gamblers would love to take on their money. I bet the entirety of his remaining money, a little over a thousand dollars, and he called. Perhaps out of frustration at my constant betting, or perhaps just hoping to get lucky -- feeling lucky. Exactly how I'd set him up to think and feel. When the dealer exposed the final card, known as the "river card" -- an 8 -- my insides turned a little knot. One of his two possible holdings had just done the unthinkable and beaten me. But he quickly threw his cards towards the dealer, shrugged off his missed flush draw, and purchased another thousand dollars in chips to stay in the game.

But this moment wasn't about the money. Or the competition. Or the thrill of winning. What was incredible was that I was 15 minutes away from my apartment. A mere 5 stops uptown on the 1 train. This wasn't Las Vegas. It wasn't Atlantic City. This was Broadway and 56th St. The 12th floor. Behind security cameras. A requisite series of knocks at bolted doors. This was underground in New York City. Gritty, real, and often dangerous. Here, the players weren't cowboys. In their place we offered a collection of diamond merchants, real estate tycoons, restaurateurs, and fashion gurus. Rabbis, sports stars, television stars, even European royalty. Best of all, it was only 2:15 in the afternoon. The game was just getting started.

Dear Blog,

I tried to get this post up yesterday but my wife likes to run enough power at one time to light up a small third world country. Half way through the post, the breaker kicked off and it was murder she wrote like Angele Lansbury.

I studied my first video yesterday which was BT-27. I took extensive notes as well which I think will help the CR community if they care to look at them. I view them as the cliff notes of the vid. It's like a morning multivitamin. I mainly focus on what hands he did play and the actions he took and not so much on what he was folding. I believe most mid stakes players at least have a moderate grasp on what is trash and position but it really is helping me edit my starting ranges and work on my post flop play. I hope to complete all the videos on Full Tilt as this is my home rather than watching videos on other sites. If I can be a dominant force, how can I win on the road?

Here's the link. Hopefully it is sufficient for helping you work on your game.

http://static.scribd.com/docs/a7rnxtnizc9ac.swf?INITIAL_VIEW=width

Well, I'm off to study some more. I want to knock out another five vids today if nothing else comes up.

-Locks