CARDRUNNERS

What's Your Edge

Taylor Caby: Poker Blog

December 13, 2008

Hello.

I've been bad about blogging lately but hopefully this post will make up for it a bit. I'm feeling incredible right now as I went to bed at 930 last night and got over 9 hours of sleep, which hasn't happened in a very long time. I'm always able to fall asleep immediately after hitting the pillow, but I typically always wake up 7 hours or so after falling asleep, which is quite annoying. I don't think I've ever gone to bed this early on a Friday night before, but I decided I wasn't going out last night, mostly because I've been absolutely punishing my body lately and I needed a break.

After Thanksgiving week, which was filled with way too much drinking and eating, the Team CardRunners pros all met in Fort Lauderdale for a week or so. The first three days it was Me, Brian, Andrew, Lee, and the Stox Management guys and their lead pros. It was really nice to get to know some of these guys, although I was disappointed Leatherass couldn't make it down this time, I'm looking forward to hanging out with him at the next one. I learned a little bit about sports betting from Matt Matros, who was awesome to get to know a little bit. The Stox group as a whole is a little bit older, MUCH more mature group of poker players.  Some of them have families and I definitely look up to them as people who are able to manage the whole poker scene while staying seemingly productive members of society. Maybe I like them just because they make me feel less old compared to clowns like Stinger, who is actually only a junior in college.

The place we stayed at overlooked a pretty nice beach. It comfortably slept 10 people and I think it was around 6,000 sq feet, which was the biggest house I'd ever been in. I believe it was built at least 70 years ago, although it has been modernized.  This place must have been unbelivably nice 70 years ago, because it might have been the nicest house I'd ever been in, 70 years after it was built.

The first few days we spent just getting to know the Stox guys, hanging out, planning out 2009 strategy, and making some videos. At night we would make dinner and then hit up a local bar that had tons of fun bar games, pop-a-shot, beer pong, pool, etc. We must have spent $100 in the pop-a-shot game over the week, which is a lot considering it's 50 cents a game.

On Thursday, most of the Stox guys left and the CR guys came in. Cole, Schneids, Daut, Benefield, Stinger, Peachy, and Menlo rounded out the CR people there. After Lee left, Ezra was left to manage the whole process, which I know was pretty stressful for him.  It's just not easy to get 10 poker players to do much of anything, but he did a pretty damn good job of it.

I particularly enjoyed getting a chance to play Stinger HU PLO for a couple hours. I came out on top, which shows how much variance there is in HU PLO. After reviewing our sessions, I realized just how much I have to learn about HU PLO, which is crazy because I have come a very long way since last summer. I do think I am a winning 5-10 HU PLO player right now, which isn't too bad because assuming I can get decent action, my winrate would be pretty nice there. This series should be coming out in early 2009, so stay tuned if you are interested in learning HU PLO.

I really can't think of a player that is better at PLO than Stinger. The guy is just a machine -- he has all the great qualities that you need to be a top poker player, plus he has been playing PLO for two years now. I give him a lot of credit because he started playing PLO before it became "the thing to do," and now he probably has a couple million extra bucks because of it. Eventually when the games get tougher and it is harder to make money at the nosebleeds, a bunch of nerdy poker players will whine about how they wish they could have been playing in the games when people like Stinger made millions. Well this time they only have themselves to blame because Stinger went out and learned the game before anyone else did. Typically to make extraordinary profits in something you need to have good timing as well as good skill/execution. People like myself were lucky to be in the right place at the right time for the NLHE boom, but all of us could have started playing PLO in 2007 when it started to become popular at 25-50+. I guess what I am saying is sometimes it's better to be the first than the best, and if you can be both, then you are going to be in great shape.

As an aside, over and over I see the same thing in the poker world and in life in general. A new trend or idea becomes popular and profitable for a small amount of people. There is a huge race for copycats to do the same thing, hopefully better than the original. I give people like cts/aejones credit for creating new super expensive training materials. This isn't to say these products are worth or not worth the money, what I am saying is that they did something innovative that gave themselves a realistic shot to make a good return on their time investment. I would bet that over the next six months we'll see quite a few imitations, with most of them being poorly thought out, rushed to market, and generally unsuccessful. This isn't to say that in order to be successful in anything entrepreneurial you need to come up with a completely innovative, never before seen idea. It just means that before getting started, you should think about what is going to seperate your product from whatever else is already out there. People don't like change, so if your product or service doesn't offer some compelling difference compared to what is already on the market, you probably aren't going to succeed. It's just shocking to me how often I see people completely miss this point.

The last night in Florida was definitely the best. We rented a stretch Hummer limo to take us from Fort Lauderdale to Miami. No one had a camera, unfortunately, so no pics of us trying to be wanna-be ballers. We grabbed a case or two of beer and enjoyed the 45 minute ride to Miami. Dinner was at Phillipe, which I think is fairly new and was started by the guy who started Mr. Chows, a famous Chinese restaurant in NYC. The bad news is that we must have waited close to 2 hours to get our table and get served, the good news is that this meal might have been one of the best I've ever had, definitely the best Chinese food I've ever had.

I sat at the end of the table with Stinger, Ezra, and Menlo. The first interesting thing that happened was that a table of French people next to us noticed we were waiting for our food so they sent us probably $100 of extra food they had -- Peking Duck, and some other dish which I can't remember.   They also sent us over the rest of their wine, which was probably a half of a bottle or so.  It was a pretty interesting group, 2 middle aged French gentleman with 3 very attractive French young women.

We got to chatting with these guys and they were in Miami for some Art show that seemingly brought a ton of people into the town. They asked us what we did, probably wondering what 11 kids who looked no older than their early 20s, were doing at this restaurant. Everyone in our group has been playing poker long enough to know you never say poker when a stranger asks you what you do because it will lead to very difficult and/or awkward situations. I told him we had an internet business and he nodded and said "oh, interesting." I figured this was the end of it but a minute later he asked us what type of business we were in.  I said "gambling," figuring that would end the conversation. He goes "Ohhhh!!  Poker!?!?!?" At this point I knew it was all over.

He started to ask questions about our poker playing, and everytime we would tell him something he would excitedly, in French, tell the rest of the table what we had told him. He said he watched poker on TV once a week and was excited to learn that Menlo had finished 4th in the EPT Championship for about 1mil earlier this year.  He later went on to tell us that they were the owners of a large French Venture Capital fund that do early stage investments in internet companies. He asked some questions about CardRunners and said that he thought our business was amazing and we should be really proud because there are people his age that haven't been able to start a business like this one. I told him thanks but our success is also a product of good fortune and timing, he replied by saying that may be true but you must have done many other things correctly to be in the position you guys are. He emailed me the next day and said whenever we come to Europe or if we had any questions in general about the VC process that we should talk to him. It's pretty crazy how just being friendly to people can lead to interesting conversations and connections.

At 1 or so we headed over to a club called Louis or something. It seemed pretty "exclusive" and the door guy was a grade A douchebag so it probably was a pretty good club. The guy at the door made us grease him $100 to get in because a couple of us were wearing polos that didn't have long sleeves. I'm sorry, but when I'm in Miami, I damn well better be able to wear short sleeves because I just don't get the opportunity to do so very often in Chicago. Speaking of door guys, what the hell is with them always being such assholes?  I've never been able to figure out if they become assholes because they hate their job, or if that type of guy is attracted to the job. Probably a little bit of both.  Just once I'd love to see a really polite door guy.

We got to our table which was supposed to be "the best in the house" but I'd say it was more like average, particularly because it was directly below a cooling vent that was literally blowing out ice cold air. I might have been the first guy in Miami to ever get frostbite. By the time we got settled in it was like 2am and everyone was starting to get really tipsy. We had been drinking since 8pm or so and it was starting to show. The first sign of this was when two guys who worked at the club told me to step aside so they could clean up menlo's puke all over the floor by our table. It was hilarious, because they didn't ask any questions, kick anyone out, etc., they just cleaned it up like nothing even happened. Menlo seemed to keep drinking so I guess he was cool after that.

At 330 or so I was starting to get freaking tired so we some of us had the limo take us home. I hastily packed my suitcase and went to sleep for maybe 2 hours before I had to get up for my flight home to Chicago. I woke up feeling HORRIBLE and then laughed when I saw that Stinger had thrown up all over the place. He literally threw up all over the kitchen/entryway to the house. It was disgusting and just shows these Ivy league schools don't teach their students to drink.

The flight home was pretty miserable, and I was nursing a hangover for the whole rest of the day. I haven't touched any alcohol since that night, which feels great. I gotta get going for now, take it easy guys.

Taylor

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Dec 13, 08 11:03:02

good stuff.

in vegas i always got the vibe that doormen are assholes because of pure jealousy. they are probably unintelligent and assume all the kids in the clubs are spoiled by mommy and daddy. so they jus show no respect because they assume most kids in the clubs are free-rolling \$\$\$ wise.

I think as you grow older, those same asshole doormen will suddenly start showing you more and more respect each year.


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