Tao of Poker

Silent in the Morning

"Great acts are made up of small deeds." - Lao Tzu

Finally a decent day of weather in the big city. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the Yankees are winning, and Pauly's building his bankroll back up to respectability on Party Poker... a lovely day indeed.

Well, if you don't know, Week 2 of the Boy Genius-Pauly gamblethon was kicked off when I lobbed a softball towards BG and suggested:

How much will Shrek 2's Memorial Day weekend gross be? Over or under $151 M.

And of course he took the under. Ogre vs. Disasterpiece Theatre?I'm in trouble. I should have did a better job at picking the numbers. If you get the chance go see Shrek 2! Take the girlfriend, take the kids. Take a bus load of Aimish teens. Shrek 2 will prevail, even if I have to go see it three hundred times, since movies in NYC cost as must a a round trip ticket to Bangladesh. I got lucky when Tony Randall died and won $5 last week. Speaking of which... there's a nice segue to what happened to Grubby the other day at work:

While laying out the catalog, I took a break and read Pauly's funny account of his brush with the late Tony Randall. I copied and pasted text that I was going to email him with, but instead I continued work on the catalog. Within the description of "toilet seat cover dispensers," I accidentally pasted Pauly's description of Mr. Randall so that it read (in bold): that fuckin' umbrella jerkoff for dispensing quarter-fold paper toilet seat covers.

Nice! The Tao cut and spliced while on the job. I dig it.

Quality Scribes...

Good job to the Poker Prof for his kick ass updates of the WSoP. We all know who the winner is, and if you don't check out the Poker Prof.

Cheap Thrills also had a good write up that a friend of his wrote on the final table action.

Al Can't Hang has a trip report to the Borgata in where he admits he played the best poker of his life:

With KK in LP, I raised 5xBB. $10. These raises get absolutely no respect. Saul stares at me with his one good eye, and pushes all-in. Thank you Saul, I'll be with you in a second. Because CLG calls the all-in. Eff both these guys when a K hits the flop. Saul doesn't even flinch, just reaches into his rack for 60 more. Cranky guy is about to lose his mind. He would have thrown all his chips in the air if they weren't already getting pushed to my side of the table.

Here's his sad tale about getting a set of flopped Kings cracked by runner runner:

Doyle Brunson pops up in my head. I think I have the best of it, don't be afraid to put your chips in the middle.

All-in. $650. Two things are going to happen, he's going to fold and I'm going to move up to 750. He's going to call with a hand that is dominated and I'm going to double up to 1300. I don't care if he calls or folds at this point.

After staring at me for 10 minutes, he calls. Here we go. What I'm about to describe may not be suitable for the easily offended and woman who are pregnant.

Man, oh man. Read the rest of his report.

Maudie has an excellent post about White Moments. It's a must read. Here's a bit:

A friend of mine, years ago while in graduate school, spoke of what she termed "white moments" - these are the moments which provide the greatest reward as a performing artist. They are hard to describe but unmistakable when they occur. The best way I can describe it is these are the moments when all the ingredients blend to make the perfect concoction - in theatre it's when everything - the acting, set, lights costumes and audience come together in a crystal clear moment of truth - the art is complete.

Our favorite Minnypokerblogger is on a nice rush. I won't say his name for fear of jinxing him!

And you gotta take a peek at all of HDouble's and Iggy's Vegas write ups. Here's some of the best of the best of HDouble:

We call Iggy's hotel room, but he's nowhere to be found, so M and I stumble hazily into a cab, steeling ourselves for the insanity we'll shortly face at the Horseshoe. The first day of the big one, and we arrive at Binion's at around 2:00 PM to battle our way through a huge crowd of observers. ESPN cameras and boom mikes hover around Hellmuth, Doyle sits calmly, and a crowd has gathered behind the window in back of Johnny Chan's seat.

I'd never thought much of the WSOP. There's just too much luck involved in winning one big tournament, and I never really understood all the hype. But sitting there, looking at the best of the best at the beginning of a 7 day shootout for all the money, I finally got it. It's the experience. Nobody in this thing really expects to win, but the rush of playing the best in the world, and just having a chance... that's what the WSOP is all about.

And a snippet of Iggy:

Long story short - we ended up at a casino called Terrible's playing craps. Damn, we had fun. The table was rocking and rolling all night as we sunk further and further into savage drunkeness. I'm not sure what did it, but we ended up tilting out the craps boss. I had some help from M, who nicknamed the guy Don Rickles, which the entire table quickly picked up on. It was too damn funny because this guy was openly rooting against us. I suspected he was just bitter about us winning because he was, in reality, the casino owner just slumming it at the craps table.

The Poker Nerd had somethings to say about the future winners of Celebrity Poker Letdown. Don't miss it:

3rd Place -- Star Jones -- Could be better than I think, but my guess is her ego, matched only by her size, gets the best of her. I bet Barbara Walters takes all the money in The View's home game...

Lastly, some Penguin Droppings from the man from New Zealand himself:

Like the Hammer, this may prove to be nothing more than an amusing piece of stupidity. Which brings me back to the question that started it all. What do I feel Sully should do with the Hammer in the BB in an unraised family pot. Well, I think he should check. But I always check my big blinds in limit poker unless there's only one other person in the pot and I think he's cheeky. In this case, it's not yet a value bet, and there are too many players to try and Vegas out of the pot.

Oh wait, the main question was "how is the hammer properly played?". I don't have a clue, I don't play properly. I mean I'm advocating calling as an aggressive play.

As always quality Penguin.