I Threw It All Away

As Adam Schoenfeld said of Bob Dylan's live recordings, "I like any version that is recognizable," and this version of "I Threw it All Away" is better than recognizable, it hits the spot (despite the low recording level).



Another one from the same era, a version of "Girl From the North Country" that Dylan remade with Johnny Cash for Nashville Skyline (the original appears on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan):

Sufferin' by NYGz

This might be my favorite track from the NYG's 2008 album Welcome 2 G-Dom. Fizzy Wo's verse at the end is simply devastating.



"They say that time heals everything/What can I do while I'm sufferin?"

Iron Zion

I hiked Angels Landing for the second time this summer...The first time I went to Zion National Park, I was 18 years old, and the imagery of the place has never left my mind. It's also an amazing getaway from Las Vegas (an easy three hour drive), and a perfect break from the WSOP which I hadn't fully utilized until this summer, my sixth in this city.

I've said it before, but one of the disappointments of the WSOP as it is structured now is how frustrating it can be to connect with one's poker friends and acquaintances despite our geographical proximity.

The first year I was here, 2005, there were a fraction of the events scheduled and few, if any, that began at 5PM. As a result there were many occasions where poker players randomly socialized, and, looking back, I think a lot of my most cohesive friendships in the poker world were formed right there at that first WSOP.

Nowadays, there are 50-plus events, two a day, and the result of the increased action is a decreased probability that your friends will be free for dinner or tennis. This is, of course, overall a very good thing for our profession. Despite its flaws, the WSOP brings more poker players together than anything in the non-virtual poker world. Players from all around the planet converge in this patch of desert to compete in every form of tournament poker (except certain forms of poker like rebuy tournaments and badugi).

So, the modern, beefed-up WSOP simply provides more opportunities for more players to experience success during this six week stretch (ignoring the increasing level of skill in the fields and the burnout factor). But the other result is that it makes it difficult, often impossible, to make solid dinner plans with friends. There are good friends of mine with whom I have had made vague dinner plans but haven't even laid eyes on during the past five weeks at the Rio!

This dynamic contrasts to my Spring experience traveling the European Poker Tour, during which people are more in sync with each others' poker schedule. As a result of the logistics, and the buzz and momentum of traveling itself, people are more open, able and willing to meet each other, and the process of communing with other poker players is a more organic and productive experience.

In the end, I'm grateful to have a core group of friends here in Vegas with whom I can hang out with, break bread with, and share the severe ups and downs of WSOP quotidian. One of my best friends, Owen Crowe, took second place for over $300K in a late-Series prelim, and I feel a genuine sense of pride and happiness for his success (or maybe just my proximity to it). Also a sense that things are just better when the money gets shipped to my immediate family within this poker tribe, even if I don't get my hands of any myself (this will be my third consecutive lame Series barring a run in the Main Event and Crowe's third successful one regardless of if he makes a deep run in the Main Event for the third straight year or not).
***

I am also grateful to see a friend who flies in just for the Main Event, like my friend Tall Good Looking Jason (pictured below, right) whom I've known since the days at the 14th Street Playstation, playing $40 rebuy tournaments, a couple years before I even knew what the term "professional poker player" really meant.

We left at 10:30AM, drove the three hours up to Utah, endured the physically taxing hike to the summit of Angels Landing, which took about 1:20, and we were back in Vegas by 9:30PM, in time for a shower, a meal, and a good night's rest before the first day of the grand finale of this insane poker festival.

Montmartre Memory

My friend Adam put me in contact with his French friend, Julien, while I was visiting Paris, correctly recognizing that our shared interest in hip-hop and smoking would create plenty of common ground. It was an invaluable connection, and the Tartiflette his girlfriend cooked for us one night was probably the highlight of the entire trip, since the only thing better than a home-cooked meal after six weeks traveling is a home-cooked meal consisting of potatoes smothered in cream and baked in cheese.

One Friday night, Julien and I went up to a venue near Montmartre to see a show consisting of three highly accomplished hip-hop producers, Just Blaze and Alchemist opening for DJ Premier (for whom "highly accomplished" doesn't really say enough).

There was a thick line creeping around the block by the time we got to the venue, which was already somewhat close to the time doors were supposed to open, around 11:30PM. To pass some time, Julien took me up the formidable steps to the foot of the famous monument, where a crowd spread out in patches over the steps, people smoking spliffs and screaming at the moon. Paris knows how to party.

When we got back down the steps an hour or so later, the line showed exactly zero signs of movement, and I almost turned around and gave up right there considering a) I am usually uncomfortable in crowds b) seeing live music doesn't hold quite the same thrill it did when I was in my 20s. Not that the latter is a good thing necessarily, but most times I would rather just listen to the NYGz album on the stereo at home. Julien was not about to let me go home, though.

It turned out that the line consisted of people who didn't have tickets yet or didn't realize that the way to get in, as Julien demonstrated, was to squeeze into the front of the mass of bodies and wave the ticket in the air until one of the bouncers allowed for our entrance.

Just Blaze and Alchemist shared the stage as an opening act, and their set was just way too fucking long. At one point, I just thought to myself, C'mon guys, you do not have to play every single song you ever produced. The worst part was they remained onstage for a solid 20-30 minutes after giving some initial hype for Premier and, by the end of the set, Alchemist was standing in front of the stage, in front of the turntables, doing an act that vaguely resembled what a proper MC would do. But Alchemist is not a proper MC, and singing along to raps that other artists wrote, whether you produced the beat or not, made the end of their performance super loose and anti-climactic.

However, I did not realize that Just Blaze produced Kanye West's "Touch the Sky," probably because looping "Move on Up" by Curtis Mayfield as the basis for a beat is the sort of superlative use of soul samples that Kanye himself is known for.

I also never knew where the sample for Jay-Z's classic "U Don't Know" came from, which is this Bobby Byrd track "I'm Not to Blame," nor could I make out the lyrics sampled in the remix, but now I can. Filling in the gaps in hip-hop sampledom still does hold plenty of thrill for me for some reason:



By the time Premier came on, which had to be well past 3AM, I was forcing myself to stay up on my feet, which was a pity since I had been on a Premier kick, listening to a lot of the legendary producer's work since March.

Premier acknowledged the insane timing of the show by saying something to the effect of, "So this is how you do it in Paris, this three-to-five AM shit? Alright!" and then began his set in tribute to his former Gang Starr collaborator, Guru, who had recently died.

Premier spun "Full Clip," during which he asked the audience to scream out "Guru, rest in peace" where the "Big L, rest in peace" refrain usually exists. I stayed until "Who Got Gunz," which is a Gang Starr track featuring Fat Joe and M.O.P. that I had never heard but loved, and that was it.

The Parisians loved Premier, and as much as I was loving seeing the European audience connect to the quintessential NYC hip-hop producer's live performance, my neurotic brain was overwhelmed at the prospect of fighting for a cab at 6AM. So I said goodbye to Julien and found a taxi driver across the street fixing his broken meter. He agreed to a flat rate of 10-Euros and got me back to my sublet before dawn, where I downloaded "Who Got Gunz" and smoked a joint before going to sleep.

Exit Through the Emergency Exit

Do I care about this blog still, as someone recently asked in the comments' section? The answer is, Yes I do but not in a way that encourages me to sit down and plop out generic essays on what Vegas is like in June during the World Series of Poker. (It's mostly hot and oppressive, but sometimes fun, and so far cashless about halfway through the prelims).

I don't need inspiration, or any other form of motivation, to sit down and write, but it's also not something I feel like forcing myself to do. I have deleted my Facebook account, am trying to modulate the use of my iLeashe, and I do not consider this blogspot to be an extension of social networking, but rather a place where a non-professional writer can spew thoughts and stories on a whim.

I want to entertain people, but I'm not equipped to do that on a regular basis. I'd like to detail the arc of my 2010 starting back in March, but without giving it a proper storyline and doing justice to the more interesting details, I would be doing it wrong.

***

And for an awesome film about a man who actually is consummately passionate about his hobby-art outlet, check out Exit Through the Gift Shop, which avoids being one of this era's cookie-cutter documentaries by including a cool story arc, a fair dose of mystery, and a thrilling documentation of an art form that by its nature will never be seen elsewhere the way it is here:

So Long, Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)

Man I loved Easy Rider when I was 17, and I still do. It really helped form the basis of whatever search for "freedom" I believe exists at the core of human struggle, what Funkadelic would later describe as being "free from the need to feel free."

Dennis Hopper had a great career, the type that transcended generational boundaries and the conventions of show business. He won't be missed nearly as much as he'll be remembered.

Guess Who

I don't think my mom will particularly like this song, but it's the best Mother's Day song I could think of...



"Guess Who" by Goodie Mob

Breaking Bad, "One Minute"

The bulk of my current-TV viewing on this trip has been limited to downloads of Breaking Bad (sell Treme on iTunes already, dammit) and all I can say is that I haven't been as thrilled by any five minutes of televised entertainment since the end of The Wire's third season as I was during the most recent episode of Breaking Bad, entitled "One Minute."

I think the show is going to more new and interesting places than I could have expected this season, and during the final sequence of this episode, I was basically breathless for the entire time and literally howling at the monitor at the conclusion of the episode.

(You can find a proper review of the episode on Alan Sepinwall's excellent TV blog).

Adios Monte Carlo

I finished three or four spots out of the money in the 5K 6-max event that I last wrote about. Actually one of the more heartbreaking bubbles I've experienced, not sure exactly why though.

According to the prevailing rumors, this will be the last time the EPT Grand Final is held at this venue, so quite possibly also the last time I will ever be here in Monte Carlo. Glad I got to spend time here in 2007 and 2010. Au revoir.

Last of the Mohicans

The Monte Carlo trip is nearing an end. I am planning to leave town tomorrow, get a train from Nice, France and head for my next destination, Paris, but first I have to try and win the €5K six-handed freezout that started yesterday with 101 players and will end when one player has all the chips.

I've had a very swingy day at the table, starting with 90K and dropping as low as 30K and rising again as high as 120K chips--all in the five levels before dinner break, which is taking place as I write. I will return to the table with about 40K chips and blinds of 1k/2k. There are 16 players left, 12 paid, payouts from €9500 to €170K.

Be Eze

During the two days between tournaments, I shacked up at a tourist destination in the hills above Monaco called Eze. I stayed at a place called Eza Vista, which I would recommend to travelers on a budget (rooms were 75 and 100 Euro per night) who wants a convenient vantage point from which to explore the rest of the French Riviera.

Disappointingly, the second day was drab and rainy (I still tramped up to the Jardin botanique d'Èze at the top of the city), but overall the town provided a serene and very necessary break after San Remo, which was not fun at all for several reasons, including a crashed scooter and the €1K it cost to fix. A story for another time.

In response to a comment from reader Jennifer about my favorite poker destinations, this is it. Monte Carlo.

San Remo, Italy, where the penultimate event of EPT sixth season took place last week, was far more cramped (both the hotel room and the tournament area of the casino), more disorganized and consequently more stressful than I imagined any poker tournament ever could be. The Casino di Sanremo was easily the least customer-friendly, most cacophonous venue I have ever attended. The security staff, particularly the goon assigned to protect the front door, was adversarial to the point that it felt like they were mocking us just because they could.

But that's the past, and here, in Monte Carlo, everything is just...nice. Nicer than I would ever be able to experience if I wasn't a staked poker tournament player (albeit one who grinds a shitload of satellites). The Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and Resort is thoroughly magnificent, easily the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at, and being here is literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air. I feel light and relaxed and completely psyched to play one of the biggest tournaments of the year, the €10K EPT Grand Final, which begins tomorrow.

Hold on to Your World

The new album Ugly Side of Love by the British group Malachai, where you can find the above embedded track "Fading World" [apologies to my American audience, who reportedly can't see the video], has been really good to my earhole. In fact I really can't remember the last time I was thrilled to this degree by a new album (the new Goldfrapp album Head First is sounding pretty good, too). Thanks due to WFMU's Trent for turning me onto these records on his Sound and Safe show.

***

I am on the road for the next couple months (more like three and a half months when you count the World Sseries of Poker in June) to play poker tournaments, and I'm basically at the beginning of the journey, writing from a room in a mediocre hotel around the corner from the train terminal in Rome.

In a few hours, I will be on a train bound for San Remo, where I'll play the penultimate event of this season's European Poker Tour. After that, the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo. After that, around May Day, I will set up shop in an apartment in Paris from where I'll play PokerStars' Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) and two more live events, WPT Paris and WPT Barcelona. Then back to the States, off to Vegas, full throttle towards the finish line.

***

More importantly, it looks like this method of fasting before flying in order to avoid jet lag, which Alex Bolotin showed me during my last trip to Europe, might actually work: I stopped eating about four hours before my flight and drank a lot of water as suggested by the findings. I fought the hunger until I landed in Rome, where I ate a croissant that I had picked up during my layover in Dublin and a totally decent espresso produced by a vending machine at Fiumicino Airport.

The general idea is to trick your body into thinking you're on a local schedule based on eating patterns, and it seems to have worked so far--I got a solid six hours of sleep starting around 2AM local time after some sightseeing and a nice bowl of "cacio e pepe." By the time I sit down to play poker on Friday, I expect to be nicely synced with the local time.

So Long, David Mills

I was thrilled to see the back cover of the New Yorker advertising the upcoming HBO show Treme but quickly sobered by the news that David Mills died yesterday.

Treme is David Simon's followup to The Wire and David Mills was a longtime writing collaborator with Simon and a prolific blogger on music, culture and politics. It will take years still for me to catch up on all the information in his Undercover Black Man blogspot, where he devoted a lot of space to streaming rare and interesting music.


I probably first heard David Mills' name on a Wire audio commentary track, but I eventually had the privilege of exchanging a few emails with him about our shared interests in writing, poker and Funkadelic. In one correspondence he told me about a journey to Eddie Hazel's funeral, where he broke down sobbing in reaction to Hazel's mother "wailing 'that's my baby's music'" when they played the original "Maggot Brain" during the service. In another email, David mentioned that one of the first things he did with his "Hollywood money" was buy some original artwork from Pedro Bell.

So long, David, and thanks.

Mini Moves Pt. 2: Success

As per a tweet from FTP representative extraordinaire known as "FTPDoug," Full Tilt Poker is going to give out MiniFTOPS jerseys.

Thanks, Doug, thanks FTP! And thanks to Mark Ciavola for the excellent mock-up avatar that served as the emblem of my campaign.

Mini Moves, Little Birdy

I won a poker tournament on Sunday in the MiniFTOPS, a tournament series that Full Tilt Poker runs as a lower-stakes counterpart to its Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS). The tournament was a 4096-player headsup shootout, a $50 buyin that required winning 12 consecutive matches to capture the title and approximately $30K.

As many people know, one of the prizes associated with the bigger FTOPS series is a gold jersey avatar that the winner gets to display during online play. Naturally I assumed MiniFTOPS winners received a silver jersey like the one featured in the promotional material for MiniFTOPS, similar to this one below:

(Graphic by Mark Ciavola)

Much to my dismay, I was informed by Full Tilt's support team that "We are sorry for the confusion, but it's just used as a logo of MiniFTOPS" and that no such avatar would be awarded. If you're on board with my sentiment, I encourage you to email support@fulltiltpoker.com with a message saying something like: "I firmly believe that all MiniFTOPS winners are entitled toMiniFTOPS jersey avatars."

I hope my campaign for mini-equality will help avoid heartbreak and disappointment for future silver mini-jersey hopefuls, and I do envision a day when all MiniFTOPS winners past, present and future are given their rightful silver-jersey mini-avatars.

***

In early April I am hitting the road for an exciting lineup of Spring poker tournaments and traveling, and until then I am staying in a rental house in Topanga Canyon with my good friend Owen Crowe.

We've pretty much been grinding online poker all day every day, waking up early and often playing the first satellite of the day for EPT San Remo, which runs at 9:30AM PST. We've been playing those San Remo satellites three times a day for several weeks without a win for either of us.

On Thursday morning, as I was waking up, wiping the cold out of my eyes and warming up my computer to check emails and stuff, Owen, on his way back into the house from a morning cigarette said, "there's a dead bird on the porch." I looked over and saw a little creature lying helplessly on the wooden balcony, but he appeared to be moving slightly and breathing. I said, "dude I don't think he's dead."

I went outside to check on the bird, thinking of how I was going to euthanize him, since I assumed he was badly injured and his days as a free flying bird were over. I picked him up with a paper towel while Owen observed. It was a little hummingbird, and he was indeed alive and was not visibly injured, yet he wasn't flying.

I placed him on the ledge of the porch, looked at him closely, asked him what was wrong, and when he didn't reply, I blew on him gently and gave him a pep talk, "look, you got this...go for it, you can do it." Little birdy continued to ignore me for about 10 seconds, at which point he picked himself up, said "thanks," and flew over to the nearest tree. I assume he had crashed into the window here and either gave up or got too disoriented to fly.

I went back inside, took my seat in the San Remo satellite, and ended the tournament about two hours later, winning the €7900 package by knocking out the second and third place finishers on the same hand with JJ vs A8 and A8.

Oh, little birdy.

Thomas Fuller FTW!

I haven't posted a "root" blog like this in a long time, but I gotta give some love to Thomas Fuller, one of the many kind and amazing poker players in this microcosm whom I feel fortunate to be friends with.

He is playing a huge final table today at the Venetian, which is hosting PokerStars' inaugural NAPT event. He is poised to win as much as $827K. Holy moley, good luck dude!

Deauville Denouement

Thanks for everyone who shot me a good luck message; my run came to an end with three hands left to go on the third day of play and 26 players remaining in the event. Mike McDonald and Peter Eastgate both had a pair of kings and my A8 failed to snap them off to triple up to a 1M-chip stack. Both of those guys are going into the penultimate day with strong stacks, and I won't be surprised if they both make the final table.

About 30 minutes after they chopped up my stack, the three of us sat down for a nice, late dinner at a local bistro. That's poker!

I guess this was just about my deepest run in a live tournament in over two years, which is simultaneously lame while also being slightly encouraging and also somewhat standard when considering the scope of variance. The money I cashed for, €16,500, is not enough to clear my makeup, not even close, and there really is not a huge moral victory in taking 25th per se, but I did manage to get a couple things right during the tournament, mostly in the realm of staying focused and also overcoming the jet lag in order to play halfway decent tournament poker for three days.

More importantly I guess, I liked the atmosphere here and had unanimously positive experiences with the individuals I encountered, players from all over the world--from Mexico to Lebanon, Scotland to Spain, Ukraine to Canada and everywhere in between. And especially the French locals, who made the experience very easygoing and pleasant at every step.

It's something that doesn't get discussed much, but the poker revolution of the 21st century has allowed an amazing diversity of people and cultures to literally come to the table and interact in a way that has probably never existed before.

Meet Me in the Morning

It's 7AM in Deauville, France and still pitch dark. A steady rain is falling outside in the courtyard of the sprawling Normandy Barrière Hotel as I sit up in the bed of my spacious room, unable to sleep. The room is upholstered from the walls to the chairs with a beige-heavy mural featuring images of hunters and gatherers (mostly gatherers it seems), but it's basically a very nice room. Picture a less ominous version of The Shining in an overcast In Bruges, and you'll have a decent idea of the setting.

One significant challenge related to playing EPT events is fading the jet lag and aligning my circadian rhythm with the local time, so hopefully I will be sharp when I sit down tomorrow to play this €5,000 buyin poker tournament. It's possible that I have been unduly obsessing on this issue, but after ignoring it during the EPT-London event of 2009 and being noticeably dysfunctional on day one and busting early, I will at least attempt to coordinate my sleep schedule this time.

To me, one of the great, random pleasures of traveling is arriving burnt out in a foreign hotel room and falling asleep in the bed for an indeterminate amount of time, waking up and momentarily having no idea where I am. The sensation lasts for a matter of seconds, but it's a glorious moment.

I had to forgo that delight for this trip as part of my plan to adjust to local time as quickly as possible, and anyway, the journey to get to Deauville involved a couple extra steps beyond the norm. I took a direct flight from LAX to CDG that departed at 7PM PST and arrived in Paris around 2:30PM local time. The flight was relatively painless, and after a few hours of sleep, a couple of attempts to use Air France's totally crappy entertainment system, listening to a podcast or two, and reading a portion of Julie Holland's excellent memoir, Weekends at Bellevue, we were pretty much there.

And then there was the trains, a straightforward but still somewhat exhausting process. Getting from the terminal at CDG to Gard du Nord was simple enough, but while waiting on the line for a taxi to take me to Gare St Lazare, I was struck by the bone-chilling cold that is a trademark of urban winters.

By the time I got to St Lazare I had to go to the bathroom, but first I wanted to purchase my tickets for the train to Deauville. The "billet" machine made it easy enough to purchase the ticket until it refused to read the magnetic strip on two credit cards on both machines, so I was forced to wait on line. It was around 5PM when I got the ticket finally, and the train was scheduled to leave at 5:45, so I had time to use the public bathroom, for €.50, and smoke a cigarette.

Back home in Santa Monica, I almost never smoke anymore, but a developing habit on the road has been to buy that blue pack of Camel Lights, which I carry around with me as a sort of portable, smokeable comfort blanket. It's not a great pattern, since it threatens to erode my ability to remain abstinent when I am home and perhaps find me venturing back into Serious Scumbag Smoker territory. But that's where I'm at right now in my relationship with cigarettes.

As the train left the station at 5:45 I drifted off to sleep, occasionally startled awake by the thump of a train passing in the other direction. Is it just me, or did they build the railroad tracks in Europe rather close to each other? In any case, it's a similar sensation to that jolt of turbulence that wakes me up in the middle of a plane nap and momentarily puts the fear of death in me.

On the train, I woke up and looked at my watch. It was 6:45 exactly, but I thought it was 5:45 and that we hadn't left the station. Once I realized that, I tried to communicate my confusion to the woman sitting across from me, working on her laptop, but the language barrier made it more goofy than interesting. In any case, I guess that incident will have to suffice for my "waking up having no idea where I am" moment for the trip.

***

I know it's basically impractical and a bit nutty to travel across the world to play one poker tournament, and my friend Paul Smith (the poker player not the fashion designer) ribbed me for embarking on such a strenuous trip.

I explained to him that I feel genuinely lucky to have the opportunity to do things like this, even if the sunk costs of the tournament prize package I won on PokerStars (a €1600 hotel allotment is built into the total value of the satellite win) and the physical drain of the undertaking does not seem like a sensible option when compared to staying at home.

But it's not a false sense of gratitude I was trying to express--I think it's absolutely amazing to get on a flight in Los Angeles and find yourself wandering half-asleep in a strange country, through a new cultural dimension, the following day. How accessible the entire journey is, how connected the world is. Not to mention playing high stakes tournaments in faraway locations, an experience that was literally unheard of 10 years ago, around the time I had the chance to take a couple of road trips back and forth across the beautiful USA.

Recently I was talking with my friend David about one specific road trip we took in 1998, starting in New York, with a plan to pick up an acquaintance in Washington, then scoop down through New Orleans for Jazz Fest and eventually arrive in Oregon. We had no cellphones, no internet access and, yet, when it came time to pick up our companion in DC, we made it happen. "That's just the way it was then," David remarked a bit wistfully, "you had a plan to pick up a guy at a park in Washington at 2AM, and there he was--at a park, in DC, at 2AM."

***

It's now almost 8:30AM, and I'm just beginning to see the first hints of dawn while the rain continues at its consistent rate. The darkest hour.

I'll attempt to spend the day awake, relaxing, checking out the hotel pool (or the bathtub in my room), reading about Bellevue in Deauville; perhaps I'll try to do a little exercise. Hopefully tonight I will get a solid 6-8 hours of sleep and wake up sharp and prepared to win a poker tournament.

WBOC

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 514588

Quickie PCA Update

I played day 1B of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and had a rather tough table, so I'm happy to have made it through with a 129K stack (30K was starting stack). Blinds will be 500/1000 to start day two tomorrow. The tournament got an enormous 1500+ player turnout, and I've managed to get a decent amount of rest and a bit of exercise since getting here, so I can't ask for much more.