In it, he directly challenges Michael Craig and Jim McManus for their takes on legendary gambler Nick the Greek Dandolos, and much of the Chicago-Tex-Vegas history between him, Johnny Moss, and Benny Binion.

I have no idea who’s right … it’s all just old-school mob-time poker to me. My take on Johnny is that he’s a solid writer with proper respect for good storytelling, the game of poker, and historical narrative. He also can end up sometimes way off in left field, like any good Texas senior should.

I actually re-read the story upon noticing the publish date of April 1. But then, after re-re-reading, I found myself second-guessing my second-guessing, which i guess is the whole point of the piece.

His latest missive on BigGovernment.com is a good one that puts online poker restrictions in the context of the 18th Amendment. And while yeah-yeah, we all know (most of) this stuff already, check out the 87 (!) comments to see how this key audience is grappling with the notion of creating a bureaucracy in the name of less government intrusion.

Check it out … the New York Times Book Review, as part of a holiday gift guide, have put out their “100 Notable Books of 2009“ … and making the list is Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by Jim McManus.

Of those 100, 55 are non-fiction. Cowboys Full sits between ‘A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent’ by Robert Merry, and ‘Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression’ by Morris Dickstein. Granted, the list is alphabetical, but still …

Take a look at the excerpt the NYT ran last month — titled “Pokertician“. Considering all the good recent press poker has gotten from the likes of the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the National Journal, NPR, et al, you can see how McManus’ book — and his or his publisher’s attached promotional efforts, of course — has done more in 2009 to spread contemporary poker ideology to America’s liberal elitist intellectual set than any press release from PokerStars ever could.

(No offense, Matt, just sayin’ …)

Of course the NYT’s review of McManus’ book is hedlined the (“The Cheating Game“) … so maybe that’s a reminder that despite efforts that may seem to legitimize poker pursuits, the game still will always be thought of as … similar to dieting and matrimony? If so, that might explain why this tome — currently ranked in the Top 500 on Amazon — has apparently struck a chord with at least a few people who aren’t otherwise thinking ’bout poker.

You really should buy Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by Jim McManus. No one’s paying us to say that, but Pokerati will earn at least $0.14 if you do.

The first thing that caught my eye when I saw the cover of the new issue of National Journal was the hand: Obama already has Jacks-or-better, but could also be drawing to an inside straight. Great artistic display of poker metaphor … and I can’t believe, after more than six years since Moneymaker, someone has finally posed a hand as something other than a royal flush. That in and of itself tells me the story’s gonna be good … as the editor clearly understands a little something about politics and poker.

Once and future NJ subscribers can click here:

COVER STORY: High Stakes
AN ANALYSIS OF OBAMA’S POTENTIAL APPROACH TO FOUR MAJOR ISSUES.
by Will Englund / Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009

Or click below to read (the full text from) an email that has been floated through the poker-political ether:

National Journal
Cover Story: When Is Obama Bluffing?
The President Approaches Issues with a Poker Player’s Sensibility, Learned By Playing the Quintessentially American Game.

by Will Englund

High Stakes
An analysis of Obama’s potential approach to four major issues.

The Players:

Obama, Republicans, “Blue Dog” Democrats, liberal Democrats, insurance companies, hospitals, doctors

The Stakes:
Health care availability, the federal budget, political power
His opponents think they can drive Obama out of the tournament in this game.

Life is not a crapshoot. Politics is not chess. Character is not a round of golf.

If there is a single game that comes closest to recapitulating modern existence — that both mimics and informs the logic of a cluttered, challenging, bewilderingly complicated, less-than-all-knowing, partially comprehensible human society — it is poker, where quantitative analysis and calculated deception come together, and where skill wins out over luck in the long run, except that most people don’t have the luxury of waiting until then.

President Obama calls himself a pretty good poker player, with skills honed back when he took part in a regular game in Springfield, Ill. The other players in that game — lobbyists and fellow members of the state Senate — describe him as a cautious participant: patient, conservative, patient, level-headed, patient, affable — and did we mention patient?

That game started more than a decade ago. Today, Obama confronts more-formidable foes, and for much bigger stakes. But in his first 10-plus months in office, he has approached the major issues facing his administration and the country with a poker player’s sensibility. That doesn’t mean that he necessarily has been dealt good hands. It doesn’t even mean that he has always played his hands well. He hasn’t. What he has done, though, is to make an effort to read his opponents, hold his own cards close, keep a straight face, and wait, calmly, for the winning play.

Obama displays “poker-titious” thinking, says James McManus, who has been writing about the game for years and has just published Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker. “He’s a cerebral gatherer of information, who patiently waits for good hands. He doesn’t barge in. He wants to make his read very carefully. In that sense, he is like a poker player.”

Take health care reform, where the game is still on and the outcome uncertain. Obama is determined to get a public option. Or is he? He may be bluffing. He may be satisfied with a good pot, and pass up the chance to sweep the table clean. He certainly did not lay out his hand at the start, as President Clinton (a Hearts player) did with the delivery of a detailed bill to Congress. The stakes are high, but Obama hasn’t gone all-in on health care. The Republicans, with less to lose, seem to have done just that. (See the accompanying analyses of four major issues.)

Poker is enjoying unprecedented worldwide popularity these days. Its roots lie in card games that developed in Renaissance Europe — but it is a quintessentially American pastime. Poker spread out from New Orleans in the early 19th century, exactly the way you would imagine: on Mississippi River steamboats. Lincoln referred to it, Grant played it — as did millions of others down through the years, from Wild Bill Hickok to Harry S. Truman. Richard Nixon financed his first run for Congress with his poker winnings from his years in the wartime Navy, McManus reports.

Today, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia enjoys a regular poker game or two. Former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York runs both a lobbying firm and a group called the Poker Players Alliance.

Poker success depends on shrewd calculation and bluffing. Winning is measured not by points but by money.

“It takes all the elements of our society and brings them to the absolute forefront,” Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law School professor and a champion of the game, said at a symposium in Richmond, Va., last year. “I think it has to do with truth and a way of seeing truth. It is a form of strategic thinking. It just has such a nice balance of judgment and interplay of thought.”

Luck, Lies, and the Long Run

Compare poker with other games. Some of Obama’s most ardent admirers like to say that he is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. By this they mean that he is playing a game of strategic complexity and thinking many moves ahead. But chess pits one player against one other player, which is not the way life works. Moreover, it is a game of “complete information,” as McManus points out. There are no unknowns. “Chess players can’t lie to each other,” he says.

In dice games, on the other hand, there is no information at all to be gleaned. Success relies on the roll of the dice. That makes craps an emotional, sociable, sometimes delirious game. A lot of pleasure comes with winning, but outwitting your opponents has little to do with it.

Craps (which is Sen. John McCain’s favorite game) was what President Bush was playing when he launched the war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein seems to have been playing poker against him, bluffing on weapons of mass destruction and calling what he thought was Bush’s invasion bluff. Neither came out a winner.

Poker falls between craps and chess. It has multiple players, offers a partial amount of information to each, provides each with a means of deducing more information, and has an element of variability. In other words, players have to play the hand they’re dealt, and, as in life, it’s not always a good one. Its partisans say that poker is a game of skill, not chance; but unless time is infinite, luck always plays a role. A player is tested by the luck that comes his or her way. In that sense, poker resembles baseball, and, like baseball, it builds on the history of what has come before. What happened at 9 p.m. can offer crucial insight into how the players will conduct themselves at 1 a.m.

One of the founders of modern game theory, Oskar Morgenstern, was an adviser to President Eisenhower on nuclear arms, and he pointed out that the Cold War was nothing like the chess match it was frequently compared to. Poker, he said, was the better descriptor, built as it is around luck, deceit, and cost-effectiveness. Chess, the Russian game, versus the American-born poker — and yet the Russians seem to have picked up the knack for poker as time went on. One metaphor, from the Kennedy years: After taking JFK’s measure at a summit in Vienna, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev raised the stakes by sending missiles to Cuba. Kennedy re-raised him with a naval embargo. Khrushchev folded. Was Khrushchev conceding defeat, or was he making a smart move in a game that he knew would continue? Probably the latter. The exchange also included, as it turns out, a side bet under which the U.S. removed Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

“Poker is closest to the Western conception of life,” John Lukacs wrote in 1963, in Poker and the American Character, “where life and thought are recognized as intimately combined, where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents, and where — at least in the short run — the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens.”

That last thought certainly gets at contemporary American political culture as practiced by Obama and nearly everyone else. Poker, McManus says, is about “leveraging uncertainty.”

Obama “Too Cautious”

So now let’s drill down just a little deeper, into poker itself, to get a bearing on the kind of player Obama is.

The oldest version, the kind played on steamboats, is draw poker. A player’s cards are hidden from the other players, and the big indication of what your opponent has is the number of cards he or she replaces in a single draw. That, and the pattern of betting.

Stud developed out of draw. Here, four of a player’s cards are dealt faceup, and either one or three are dealt facedown. There are more rounds of betting, and as each faceup card is dealt, more information becomes available.

The most popular version today is “hold ‘em,” which is like stud except that five faceup cards are held in common by all the players. Two cards are dealt to each player facedown. Here the information comes from the players’ betting patterns and general demeanor. Hold ‘em encourages aggressive betting; typically, it has no betting limit, as the other games do. It also televises well.

Obama is a seven-card-stud sort of player. Conservative, cautious, not apparently given to a lot of bluffing, Obama wants information and has the patience to wait for it. At the same time, seven-card stud is more complex and interesting than its five-card sibling. Memory is key because players need to keep track of all the cards that have been played, which isn’t the case with hold ‘em. “In stud, things unfold more sedately, and you’ve got a little more control over your play,” Nesson said in an interview.

When he was in the state Legislature, Obama was part of a group that played dealer’s choice; by all accounts, he would go along with whatever was called for — even the wild-card festivals like baseball poker, a variant of stud in which threes and nines are wild and a faceup four wins a player an extra card — but when it was his turn to deal, he stuck to solid, old-fashioned varieties.

“He’s a traditionalist,” McManus says. “He’s interested in playing a beautiful form of poker, in which shrewd calculation can affect the outcome.”

Obama also held back early on, taking time to get to know the other players.

“It fully sounded to me that he was a poker player in the sense that the smartest thing he does is know what he’s playing,” Nesson said. “He’s not in it for the money. He was a new boy in the Legislature and kind of an odd duck. He was the kind of poker player who bides his time in the game. It’s like figuring out who the players are, and what the game is, is much more the game for him than betting and winning particular pots.”

Now he’s playing in a different league, with a lot of new players, and Nesson said it’s no surprise that Obama hasn’t gone for the quick killing. To a large extent, he is still sizing up the opposition.

Bill Brady, a state senator from Bloomington, Ill., now campaigning for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, isn’t buying any of that. Brady played in those Springfield games — they’re still going on, in fact — and he describes Obama as being careful to a fault. “He was a cautious poker player — in some cases, too cautious.” And as president? “Even though he supports some pretty radical positions, he’s certainly been very cautious,” Brady says. He doesn’t think that Obama has been patiently trying to read his opponents; he thinks that the president, even with his daring agenda, feels himself to be politically constrained from making bold moves.

In some ways, Brady misses the old Obama. “I used to take his money when we played poker,” he says. “Now he’s trying to take mine.”

Showdown at the Calvinist Corral

Poker weaves together two of the main strands of American culture. It has its Puritan side, rewarding patience, close attention, and modest ambitions that can build up over time into something substantial. And it has its cowboy side, where bluster and nerve and hunches, combined with big, all-in bets, can bring quick fortune or ruin. The best players know when to summon up their inner John Winthrop and when to call on Doc Holliday. Obama, McManus says, clearly leans toward being the Puritan at the table — but it was an all-in, cowboy bet when he decided to go after Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries. McManus says he wouldn’t be surprised to see more of that side of Obama as he gets more accustomed to the new game.

If the president can be said to have been playing poker with the Republicans since moving into the White House, it would appear to be a game in which he has hopes of building up his stack of chips later rather than sooner. That would be a perfectly sound poker strategy, if he can do it. Last month, the Republicans won an easy pot in Virginia and a tougher one in New Jersey, and they have been picking off wins here and there with town halls and tea parties and a few White House resignations.

On the other hand, poker strategy calls on a player to try to isolate his chief opponent. Obama, by casting first Rush Limbaugh and now Glenn Beck as the face of the Republican Party, seems to be making an effort to drive potential GOP allies out of their camp. The results won’t be clear until 2010 or, more likely, 2012.

Yet patience and prudence in themselves are insufficient in poker or politics, or nearly anything else. Nesson is keen on that point. He (together with liberal activist and former Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig) founded an organization known as the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, dedicated to using poker as a tool to teach “life skills, strategic thinking, geopolitical analysis, risk assessment, and money management.”

He teaches poker to first-year law students at Harvard, Obama’s alma mater — and the first and most important lesson is the need to take the offensive. Nesson begins with a one-card game, to make it simple. Too many students, he says, come to law school thinking that the law is about finding the correct answers to particular problems. Wrong way to think, he says. A successful lawyer is an aggressive lawyer. Poker, Nesson says, helps his neophyte students “get comfortable with aggression.”

In 2005, playwright David Mamet wrote an op-ed article for the Los Angeles Times in which he lambasted the Democrats, in poker terms, for being too timid. “In poker,” he wrote — as in politics — “one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one’s convictions, one’s intuitions, one’s understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to bet on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt.”

Yes, but.

As president, Obama has already had some experience with impulsive or ill-informed bets. If he had known in January what he knows now about Guantanamo, would he have promised to close the prison within a year? And what if he had folded instead of heedlessly throwing in a bet on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates last summer? Neither of these moves is going to bring his administration down — individual bets by usually cautious players typically don’t do that. But both examples might make him think twice about the difference between courage, as Mamet describes it, and a foolish boldness.

Don’t look, in any case, for Obama to transform himself into a hold ‘em kind of player if he can help it. (When the game is dealer’s choice, you can’t always avoid it.) In hold ‘em, the stakes are too high and the flow too capricious. The last and most climactic card is called “the river,” as in “down the river” — that unhappy phrase rooted in the cruelty of slavery, which says something about the sorrows and incomprehensible turns of the game. When you’re playing with the national interest, Nesson says, you don’t want it to depend on the river, on the turn of a single card. Look for Obama to stick with stud, where memory and insight and experience and calculation rule the table.

There comes a point in all of this, of course, when life is life, politics is politics, character is character — and poker is just poker. It is, for one thing, a zero-sum game, and the business of running the country is not. Several winners will stand up from the health care reform table. Multiple winners — or none — could emerge from the struggle over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And you don’t find poker players involved in half a dozen or a dozen games at once, turning from table to table as the action unexpectedly heats up here, and then suddenly over there.

There could be, though, another way to think about it: Poker isn’t just about counting up the chips. Back in Springfield, it might have been a mistake to consider those games zero-sum affairs, in the larger sense, because Obama joined them principally as a means of fitting into the politicos’ culture and making useful friends. The money won or lost was almost beside the point. Maybe everybody gained something. Maybe poker raises everyone’s game.

Not to be a spoiler, but the closing line features a sound clip from Darvin Moon, with weekend host Guy Raz saying, “That is Darvin Moon, and he’s about as far away as you can get from poker royalty.” That is a funnier line than Raz even realizes, considering Moon’s resistance to all things sponsorship.

Raz does a follow-up the next day, just on Darvin Moon:

For more academic intellect surrounding Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, check out our favorite new older-than-25 Betfair blogger Shamus’ interview with McManus here.

And for a little low-brow historical perspective on McManus from a pre-Darvin Moon era, here’s my interview with the author of Positively Fifth Street from 2004.

(Yikes, 2004!?!)

But this year, I’ll definitely be back, captaining the Pokerati Hotties:

DanM
California Jen
Kevin Mathers

Mathers apparently won’t be able to make it, so playing in his stead will be alternate Robert Goldfarb.

As anyone who has participated in a team poker event has discovered, these things are extra fun. And, frankly, I’m looking forward to accumulating jerseys. You already know about Team Tao of Pokerati — Pauly, Shaniac, and myself … and indeed, we’ll be playing in the real-money event on July 12 (and hopefully July 13). Not only do we want to redeem ourselves, but we figured since DTP took the boldly progressive move of sponsoring our little podcast, the least we could do is buy into their big event.

If you want to play in this $500+60 x3, Team Wicked Chops is hosting an online freeroll (June 25) for a seat on their squad. Tao of Pokerati woulda offered something similar, of course … but we don’t know you, so we couldn’t really take that chance.

Aces, by Jim McManus, in the New Yorker

The Associated Press, breaking down his betting style

The Dice Player vs. The Poker Player (YouTube)

Is Playing Poker Enough to Lead the World? (YouTube)

Sex and Lies in Sin City: The Ted Binion Scandal
(starring Matthew Modine, Mena Suvari, and Marcia Gay Harden)

[Annoying autoplay video removed]

Not sure what Jim McManus thinks of this (lady-friendly) television adaptation of the story of Ted Binion, Becky Behnen, Sandy Murphy, and Rick Tabish. But it’s the drama-filled tale of Texas gamblers, Vegas strippers, mobs, murder, and so much money … and the one that in some ways surrounded the birth of the WSOP. Perfect television for 31-45-year-old women, no?

Here’s how the final 79 players will be seated (seat arrangements from Pokernews):

(Table 1)
Seat 1: Bob Whalen – 1,382,000
Seat 2: Paul Snead – 1,572,000
Seat 3: Christopher Zapf – 297,000
Seat 4: Brian Tatum – 780,000
Seat 5: Aaron Gordon – 3,369,000
Seat 6: Jason Glass – 629,000
Seat 7: David Rheem – 2,586,000
Seat 8: Thomas Keller – 245,000
Seat 9: Garrett Beckman – 1,860,000

(Table 2)
Seat 1: Chris Klodnicki – 2,496,000
Seat 2: Kido Pham – 1,600,000
Seat 3: Aaron Keay – 990,000
Seat 4: Anthony Scherer – 2,245,000
Seat 5: Alfredo Fernandez – 3,053,000
Seat 6: Peter Eastgate – 2,629,000
Seat 7: Judet Christian – 3,031,000
Seat 8: Scott Montgomery – 1,669,000
Seat 9: Mauro Lupo – 2,261,000

(Table 3)
Seat 1: Greg Byard – 1,189,000
Seat 2: Jonathan Plens – 1,870,000
Seat 3: Nhan Le – 2,190,000
Seat 4: Justin Sadauskas – 2,000,000
Seat 5: Keith Hawkins – 636,000
Seat 6: Eric Bamer – 479,000
Seat 7: Cristian Dragomir – 2,372,000
Seat 8: Dean Hamrick – 1,905,000
Seat 9: Joe Bishop – 1,570,000

(Table 4)
Seat 1: Geert Jans – 1,633,000
Seat 2: Justin Scott – 1,971,000
Seat 3: Alan Gould – 1,838,000
Seat 4: Daniel Buzgon – 876,000
Seat 5: Alex Outhred – 699,000
Seat 6: Albert Kim – 3,734,000
Seat 7: David Saab – 1,705,000
Seat 8: Nikolay Losev – 4,058,000
Seat 9: Matt Matros – 766,000

(Table 5)
Seat 1: Jeremy Joseph – 3,100,000
Seat 2: Mark Ketteringham – 5,800,000
Seat 3: Gert Andersen – 1,447,000
Seat 4: Brandon Cantu – 2,288,000
Seat 5: David Benefield – 2,490,000
Seat 6: Dennis Phillips – 3,436,000
Seat 7: Sean Davis – 861,000
Seat 8: Michael Carroll – 957,000
Seat 9: Mark Owens – 595,000

(Table 6)
Seat 1: Rafael Caiaffa – 1,338,000
Seat 2: Steve Lade – 3,225,000
Seat 3: Ivan Demidov – 2,185,000
Seat 4: Phi Nguyen – 1,540,000
Seat 5: Adam Levy – 767,000
Seat 6: Nicholas Sliwinski – 2,236,000
Seat 7: Suresh Prabhu – 1,175,000
Seat 8: Ylon Schwartz – 816,000
Seat 9: Victor Ramdin – 795,000

(Table 7)
Seat 1: James McManus – 2,434,000
Seat 2: Tim Loecke – 996,000
Seat 3: Phil Hellmuth – 721,000
Seat 4: Allen Kennedy – 1,153,000
Seat 5: Kelly Kim – 2,425,000
Seat 6: Larry Wright – 1,502,000
Seat 7: Jason Riesenberg – 2,217,000
Seat 8: Andrew Rosskamm – 1,593,000
Seat 9: Clint Schafer – 1,123,000

(Table 8 )
Seat 1: Chris Crilly – 1,183,000
Seat 2: Craig Marquis – 1,748,000
Seat 3: Felix Osterland – 786,000
Seat 4: Jamal Sawaqdeh – 888,000
Seat 5: Jamal Kunbuz – 3,327,000
Seat 7: Mike Matusow – 1,169,000
Seat 8: Tiffany Michelle – 3,438,000
Seat 9: Jeremy Gaubert – 578,000

(Table 9)
Seat 1: Craig Stein – 440,000
Seat 2: Niklas Flisberg – 1,264,000
Seat 3: Mark Wilds – 485,000
Seat 4: Andrew Brokos – Did Not Report (approx. 4,080,000)
Seat 6: Lisa Parsons – 581,000
Seat 7: Peter Neff – 1,275,000
Seat 8: Darus Suharto – 1,057,000
Seat 9: Owen Crowe – 1,050,000

Anyhow, late last night, Pauly was up bouncing around the Amazon Room in his off-time and Otis had just re-arrived back in town. I had work to do, of course, but the three of us had yet to find time to geek out all pokerbloggy since arriving at the 2007 WSOP, so it was time to make time … and off to the Hooker bar we went. Inspiring and refreshing, to say the least, as we traded poker-blog war stories, tales of SEO, and reminisces about the “good ole days” of 2006.

We must have been appearing to have too much fun, because a few drinks into it all, we were joined by a traveling WSOP circuit dealer, Brian “the Rookie” Wilson, Otis’ friend Mark, and Jim McManus, who was a little down on his game.

“I make way more from writing these days than I do playing poker, that’s for sure,” he said. Funny how just a year ago this exact same sentence might have a completely different meaning.

As the night whittled on, Pauly left us to go whip up a poignant recap of yesterday’s crazy yet meaningful action, as Otis, Mark and I returned to the Amazon Room to play poker. You can always count on a few drunks to sit down at the dwindling WSOP cash tables at about 4 in the morning to keep the chips flying, and last night that was us. Not surprisingly, the three of us would rebuy several times playing $2/$5 NLH, and within a couple hours, collectively we were stuck nearly $2,500, at which point I switched to coffee.

Linda the Dallas dealer had my table for a while — it was great to see her for the first time of the Series. “Just like back home,” she said, smirking as she shipped a pot I lost to the other end of the table.

Mark would end up busting out for a final time, while Otis and I stuck around to grind our way back towards even. I was getting there, too, until I flopped an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw. The turn gave me the nut straight and a straight-flush draw. I was bummed when my opponent and I couldn’t get it all-in at that point, but I guess I was lucky, because while I caught my flush on the river, the other guy caught quads, and I was not in a position to raise his bet. Don’t even get me started about the possible collusion we witnessed between a plump American black lady and a skinny British white guy who were playing together unbeknown to the rest of us, until they cashed out together and gave each other a hug and a kiss at the cage.

I was heavily involved in their last hand. The British guy and I had built a pot to more than $600 when I missed my 17 gajillion outs on the river. He put me all-in for my last $72, and though mathematically I was supposed to call, I couldn’t bring myself to do it with just third pair, knowing if I lost, I was definitely not going to rebuy again. (Because I had no more 100s on me.) The black lady seated to my right belligerently encouraged me to call, and then called clock on me. I eventually mucked, and was pleased when the skinny white dude mucked his cards, presumably telling me that I made the correct play.

That’s when they both cashed out in celebration. And then as he exited the room, the not-so-chappy Brit came up behind me and whispered, “You couldn’t beat pocket 6s?” What an asshole, because yes, I could. So what, he’s trying to put me on tilt even after he has left the table with my money?

I did my best to remain unfazed, and sure enough I began to climb back out of the hole. As the wee hours became morning and almost tournament time, Otis and I were at adjacent tables motioning to each other where we stood in terms of getting unstuck. I was in for $700, he was in for $1,200. And both of us were playing our asses off more sober than before. With my fancy little bankroll graph in the back of my mind, I finally took control of my short-handed, reduced-rake table — with a solid read on the Euro to my right and ability to bluff the gay cowboy to my left with ease. Perhaps the only mistake I made here was getting up from a table I could beat, but it was so late, so early … I was exhausted, and for the first time in more than five hours, I was up.

Buy-in(s): $700 (3)
Cash out: $979
Net: +$279