Jared Tendler recently put out this article on WSOP preparation, which is pretty interesting. Nothing too ground-breaking, get lots of rest, don't get too high, don't get too low, focus on the process not the end result, gear down after a long day, warm up before you start your day, eat healthy, keep fit, keep hydrated. Got all that? Easy game.

Hey CardRunners

In a little over a week I will be flying to Las Vegas for six weeks to play in my first WSOP. I will likely be playing at least 12 events, all NLH freezeouts in the 1k-3k buy in range, and then the main event. I'll be blogging hopefully multiple times a week to chart my progress. My first event starts Saturday/Sunday June 2-3rd and is a 1.5k re-entry.

For those who aren't paying subscribers to CR and want to post comments or whatnot (vociferous discouragement perhaps?), I am going to start a crosspost thread here. All you have to do is sign up to the forums, which is free, to comment.

I am not going to blog too much about strategy for a few reasons. I also will probably not post blogs about ongoing events. This will probably suit a lot of the readership fine since it has come to my attention that many of my readers don't even play poker. I will definitely post strategy stuff about cash games I am grinding on off days or about deep runs that are over.

What else? This is my first WSOP and I have been preparing hard. I feel like I have done everything I can to prepare to the best of my ability. I cashed in the SCOOP-L main on Sunday and had a couple other deep but unremarkable runs. I had a real chance to go deep in one of the big field SCOOPs during the week last week. I have made runs and a few small final tables in enough tournaments in the past few weeks that I have a lot of confidence in my game right now despite the final results not being there. My goal however, which was to work on my game as much and as efficiently as possible in anticipation of the series, has been achieved.

That leads to what will be a main focus of this blog. I have two things that I want to ensure I do during the series. The first thing is to put my body and mind in a position to succeed. I have rented a house with some fellow CR members which is off the strip, so I should have a relatively quiet place where I can get plenty of rest. I plan on running in the mornings and keeping in shape. I plan on buying healthy food from the grocery store and bringing snacks and supplies to events. I'm not interested in drinking, staying up late, or any of that stuff. I don't really see how I could afford to do those things even if I wanted to. So that's one thing I want to chart, keeping myself active, well fed, well hydrated, and properly rested. If I have no other edge over the field it will be this. Excited yet?!

Second thing is making the highest quality decisions I can during each decision I am presented with. That's basically what I am going down there to do, make the best decisions. I am in the best-decision business. Nothing else matters. Even if these big field WSOP events weren't super high variance and I was grinding 300nl live cash for six weeks making the best decisions would still be all that mattered, the only thing that I could do to affect my outcome.

My MTT game and NLH game in general has come a long way in the past three months and I have a few people, to remain anonymous, to thank for that. Thank you.

Looking forward to it

Gareth

The Knowledge Fallout

In the aftermath of the explosion in poker education, it is difficult for one to predetermine the least inefficient route to becoming a better player. Not only has a desolation been overrun by a cavalcade, but everyone in the procession trumpets their particular offering's superlatives. No organizing, much less reputable, clerk is to be found. Former CardRunners instructor Jonathan Tannen is marketing, to my knowledge, something entirely unique. This isn't something completely different mind you, in the tradition of Python (though you wouldn't know it from its title), but rather a collection of materials bundled into a tidily cross-referenced package.

The wordy Smashing Fewer Holes in Your Computer Desk: Written Insights on Modern Internet Poker retails at 500USD and combines aspects of personal coaching sessions with hardcopy materials one would expect from a book. Smashing contains three student-narrated videos of play at 50nl, 100nl, and 200nl, all six-max. These are accompanied by three PDFs with Tannen's detailed, time-stamped analysis of the footage. The intensely scrutinized leak-finders constitute the bulk of the package's value, but are reinforced by ten stand-alone articles, whose topics range from playing exploitable versus game theory optimal poker, to conditions conducive to triple barreling.

While there are only two folders to download with material organized into subfolders, the nature of the medium means this is no book to be read front to back. Hence some degree of organization is left to the buyer, though the author has gone to lengths to make it accessible, including step by step instructions on the best way to proceed. Overall the material, thankfully, is not quite as unwieldy as its title. Tannen recommends printing out materials (or having them on a second monitor) while watching the video footage. Often the notes reference the strategy articles or previous spots. Our humble reviewer, lacking an accessible printer, first chose the alt-tab route. I can therefore by way of comparison conclude that, yes, printing out the articles and following the author's instructions will serve one well.

Tannen does scatter some attempts at humour through the materials. I was slightly worried all would be lost on me - but there is an uncannily redemptive quality to a Curb Your Enthusiasm reference.

Agglomerating Ideas

For the level of player Smashing is marketed towards, the great theoretical revelations are by and large past. It strikes me that leak-finding material does not have revolutionary aspirations, but is meant, by presenting the vicissitudes of real play, to spark inspiration in the student's game which might otherwise had been difficult for either the student or the teacher to locate. I would not abnegate this strength of the leak-finding format because it wasn't me playing -- the players in question got into instructive spots I would not have.

One pertinent example occurred when one hero did not three-bet pocket nines in blind versus blind where I would have comfortably three-bet in order to five-bet all-in on one hundred big blind stacks. As it happens I am acquainted with the small blind initial raiser from the CardRunners forums and having worked with him a little over Skype. The hero - with none of that shared history - decided to simply flat call. What resulted was a single raised pot I would have never found myself in.

I can tell you I spent over two hours analyzing this hand through a synthetic method I used for the entirety of the footage. I first watched the tape while listening to the hero's reasoning, then I typed up what I thought were the best decisions to make, after which I read Tannen's analysis, which led to me combining his thoughts with mine wherever they were not superseded entirely. In the case of the pocket nines hand, I talked out a couple points with a friend and further reflected on it during a train ride. Smashing provoked real contemplation.

No Pot Left Behind

The footage contains many forgotten pots that the author refreshingly gives full treatment. I imagine I am not unique among players in having a propensity to examine the big pots, or the spots that could lead to big pots. This is surely a disservice to the small pots who, with their wider and more variable ranges, are worthy of dissection by virtue of their accumulation. Multi-way pots, limped pots, small blind completions, and leading all received cogent analysis that was eye opening at times.

On the spectrum of defending three-bets out of position on 100bb stacks the author leans towards four-betting out of position as opposed to having a calling range (sizing dependent). On the question of three-bet/folding for value Tannen leans towards the opinion that very specific circumstances are needed to obtain for this play to be optimal. In a similar vein Tannen advocates four-bet/calling with AQ/AK over calling a three-bet in position, the overwhelming amount of the time. None of these are contrary to the current state of poker theory and knowledge regarding playing the button and the cut-off in 100bb six-max cash. But they are of a certain view in what is a running conversation. I think it is inevitable that one finds reason to disagree with some of the analyses made. What's important is that Tannen avoids common pitfalls, whether it be resting an argument on laurels, or presenting potentially specious reasoning in an obfuscating manner. Things are well reasoned. The reasons are provided in point or at great length in a referenced source.

The Full Package

Part and parcel are the ten articles Tannen has included in the package. One can purchase these articles as stand-alone products from his website for $75, but as mentioned, they reinforce the leak-finders by way of embedded reference. Articles perhaps isn't the best word to describe all ten, documents would often be superior. I am referring to the PDF on suggested HUD layout, for example, which is nothing more than a litany of stats. That is not to say these things aren't valuable. Surely players struggle with constructing their personal HUDs. Worth mentioning are the 2p2 posts to which Tannen hyperlinks in the PDFs, some of which are article-worthy themselves and formatted more or less as such. These are of course free resources available to anyone, but rooting around for first-rate 2p2 posts, suffice to say, can be a needle in a haystack affair.

A further inclusion in the package is a 30 minute Skype session with the author, whose subject matter is left entirely to the purchaser. I chose to spend this time picking Jon's brain on specific pre-flop and post-flop concepts. I had issue with his treatment of three-bet folding for value as well as four-bet calling a hand such as AQ. Jon acquitted himself quite well in the discussion and gave me good reason to believe I had been formulating the issues imprecisely.

As mentioned Tannen has included various humourous tidbits, easter eggs as it were, that provide a touch of personality to a collection of otherwise dry, sturdy documents. These may not add value for everyone, but probably don't detract value for anyone. During the weeks I have been working with Smashing, the author was available through email for the one point of technological assistance I had needed, a point that was resolved quickly and easily.

What's in a price?

At the least, more than a name, since the former can render the fragrant noxious quite proportionally. And certainly no one will mistake a 500USD price tag for olfactory ecstasy. I think it is reasonably unclear whether Smashing is well priced. One reason for this is that the market for this exact style of product did not formerly exist.

An argument has been loosely forwarded that, if independent, ebook type materials were of such value at the high prices they are offered then 2p2 publishing would lose substantial business. This is quite far from persuasive; the material 2p2 puts out is catered to an incomparably wider audience than Smashing. Moreover, it is not even a comparable product. Both running shoes and barbells improve your fitness when mixed with a little sweat, but no consumer buys one as opposed to the other. If the 2p2 books are walking tours, Smashing is a callisthenic routine. Purchasing a 2p2 title over Smashing is unlikely, despite a twenty fold reduction in price, by virtue of the fact that anyone buying a 2p2 no limit title is likely unsuited for Smashing and would presumably be dissuaded, if from no one but the author himself.

Whether the price is optimized for author revenue is unclear. But for the player looking to improve, the calculation is simply whether one's monetary and temporal investment in the materials is profitable when compared to other potential avenues of study. Your reviewer thought as much.

Dost thou attend me?

Who is Smashing designed for? In a conversation with Tannen he agreed that few, if any 10nl or 25nl players are likely at a level where they would be able to enjoy benefits from it. It is indeed made for a "niche market" of players eyeing success at the 200nl and 400nl levels.

The fact is that these materials are targeted towards players winning, or close to winning, at their current six-max stake, whether that stake is 50nl, 100nl, or 200nl, and who want to get incrementally better every day. That already excludes the vast majority of players. Tannen is offering a commodity that is scarce; highly detailed analysis from a winning player who has taken the time to make his thoughts accessible and lucid. With the pace of hold'em innovation the half-life of the product is anyone's guess. I am inclined to believe it will be relatively long, since Tannen's foundation is mathematical. Break even fold rates aren't going to vacillate over time.

Having purchased considerable personal coaching (think low four figures), watched hundreds of training videos, and read perhaps a dozen books, not to mention having consumed all the forum posts, articles, podcasts, and other free materials available on the web that I have, it seems to me that I am qualified to, at the least, not pass over the matter of the price in silence. It seems to me that is the responsibility of the customer to ensure that he or she gets sufficient value out of the package. It may very well be the case that someone purchases Smashing for $500 and receives $100 of value from it.

The good news is that one can, through diligence, make this an investment worth more than the retail price. That's the best type of poker material with which to expand one's game, the kind with value as a function of the labour one invests in absorbing it. As I stated I have spent two hours reviewing one hand played in the footage and I have come away with that analysis feeling much clearer on certain points with regards to no limit play. I think that in the hands of a motivated player, Smashing can pay for itself, but only given substantial personal investment.

Parting Thoughts

In a previous review, I may have been a bit harsh in my characterization of the author's writing as rough. Indeed it strikes me that writing well might be the last skill one should expect a poker player to naturally possess. So in that way Tannen should also receive praise, for his gravitation towards clear and organized prose. Holding a reader's attention is hard enough. Imparting new concepts is difficult. The points themselves are concise, but there are often a half dozen of them. And in the course of a few hours of footage, as is to be expected, numerous situations present themselves, making for lengthy analysis. Thus Tannen achieves concision without brevity. How enviable!

Though the mechanism of studying the materials is cumbersome at times, this is only by nature of working with assorted documents, not for a lack of organization by the author. While I cannot recommend the package to those with limited study time, whether due to a lack of commitment, or because of other commitments, I can recommend it to those who are looking to invest hours off the table to improve their game. What you'll find is lengthy concision, provoking points, new ideas, and clarifying arithmetic.

Whether this style of product catches on is fairly unclear, it gives up something to a book's linearity and something to a live coaching session's intimacy. I can see the less zealous buying it and letting it sit on their desktops unexamined or opening it up a couple times and leaving it unfinished. That's really the danger in investing in a product like this - it could become that dusty exercise apparatus, levers unpulled. But so is the way of all flesh; toil can reward.

Last Sunday

4:30am: wake up

De-grog.

Eat.

5:20am: shower

5:40am: start registering.

6am-2pm: grind.

2pm-330pm: sleep

330-430pm: run 5 miles

430-530: shower, eat

530-9: grind

This Sunday

wake up 7:15am

7:30: Run 3 miles

8:10: eat/shower

8:30am: grind

8:30pm: bust last tourney. Write blog post :).

Let's start at the beginning

A traditional criticism of capitalism points out that the market has a propensity to reward those who do little in the way of actual labour. One would think, after all, that in order to get paid, one would need to work, and that perhaps the degree to which one worked translated proportionally to the amount one was paid. John Locke's most cited work, Two Treatises of Government, contains such criticism, as well as a theory of property. Locke tries to resolve how ownership can be legitimate from some first principles. The question of the market's fairness aside, how can you legitimately own something, especially land? How does one's labour connect to legitimate ownership? And who, or what, grants someone this legitimacy?

Legitimacy is a funny thing in the western world, it being everywhere and nowhere. You, being the observant person you are, might point out for example that few, if any, of the current borders of nation states was acquired legitimately. Instead that well-worn Thucydidean phrase, that might is right, drew today's maps. And you might astutely ask, well isn't the case of property similar? Hardly any of it is earned. And almost nothing about the distribution of income or of wealth, and by extension about the distribution of property, is fair. For some people this is quite bothersome.

Well Locke, writing in 17th Century England, argued that to acquire property (like actual property, meaning land) legitimately one needed to mix his labour with the land. This followed some first principles Thomas Hobbes had laid out for the state of nature (a place without, often preceding, government), namely that there are no rules, and that a man's natural rights to ownership extends only as far as his own body. So if we arrive in a far off continent, free from government, facing expanses of fallow land, how would we go about dividing things up? Locke basically says you get as far as you can hoe. Actually, he says that pretty explicitly:

"As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common."

Some have criticized Locke's intuitively appealing metaphor as mixed at best. In the case of land however, it is no metaphor. You work the land, you get the land. For Hobbes, and other attorneys of natural law, it follows neatly from the ownership a man has over his own body. When that body toils, it can extend a man's property.

Without the legitimacy of a government backing you up, how can you even say this chair is mine? Well, if you actually built the chair, not even one of prehistory's robber barons would dispute your legitimate claim to it - before he packed it in his caravan and raped your daughter of course.

Having the chair delivered and assembled, after trading some stocks, just doesn't pack the same intuitional punch. Marx had similar concerns (surprise!) with property in a capitalist society. He observed that in the factory those who actually mixed their labour with the fruits of the earth were the hardest pressed to enjoy ownership of the product being produced (never mind ownership of the means of production), while those loathe to labour, the owners, did little more than their name suggests. Additionally troubling to him was that ownership and property could be inherited in a capitalist society. No labour, even of the stock trading variety, was required should one be fortuitous enough progeny. It doesn't take too much reflection to see why this offends the sensibilities of those inclined to project fairness into the world. And some would argue that the world used to be fairer, or at least people were equal in a base way, before capital came round. As Calvin's remarkably contemplative tiger put it,

"nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself." (Hobbes, Leviathan, XIII)

One would think this type of equality, the kind established by one's ability to kill any other, couldn't possibly be alluring enough to motivate a return to a period absent of government. You would be surprised.

A popular theme in Enlightenment literature is the espousal of the basic equality of men. So why now, in states influenced by, if not explicitly founded upon, Enlightenment principles, are things so unequal? It depends on your perspective, but one thing not in dispute is that society has never been reset to initial, pre-government conditions, that naked equality of the state of nature (insofar as reset is the right verb). And those who think it a good idea to experiment with such a reset are inevitably mass murdering dictators, unwitting college students, or promiscuous hippies who all later discover, in one way or another, it is not so easy. You can take man out of society but after exposure, you can't take society out of man. In short, it is too late in the game for monumental gambits.

Well, you might press, should we not be concerned that from ownership perspires wealth, while labour leads to earnings not commensurate with perspiration? What about how the act of labour does not bestow or confer ownership, as Locke argued was fair? By now you likely will have spotted the problem with Locke's wedding of labour to ownership. The efficiencies gained from specialization would never be realized in an ownership as mixing-labour economy. Each person would have to have a hand in the construction of their television, their refrigerator, their car, ad naseum. All but the most unwashed hippy anarchists would agree that not having to toil in the creation of all your own stuff is more prudent than the alternative (the healthful satisfaction of harvesting and preparing your own organic, gluten-free chickpeas notwithstanding). But the fact remains, even if we reject Locke's appealing guiding principle, isn't it true, isn't it sickening, that capital creates capital, and that today's salaries don't seem to be tied with any of our moral intuitions about value contributed to society? Why, after all, does a Kobe Bryant make one thousand times the annual salary of a primary school teacher? How can hard work go so unrewarded?

One thing worth pointing out at this point in the exposition is that reality wasn't founded upon our moral intuitions.

To replace you fairly

We've meandered pretty briskly so far. Allow me an anecdote.

Recently in Cusco, Peru I was frequenting a gringo cafe. Frequenting is to say I ate there every day. The head waitress would constantly complain to me about the state of the coffee machine and the malevolent character that was the coffee machine repairman. "He is not a good man. He is always overcharging us, but we cannot do anything, because he is the only one in Cusco who can fix this particular machine," she explained to me, not for the first or for the last time. "Of course he is ripping you off; he is the only repairman in town!" was my predictable response. I never did have much sympathy, because saying he is overcharging and he is the only man available borders on redundancy.

Earnings are inversely proportional to the ease with which you can be replaced. And it isn't hard to see why. No one quite has Kobe's ability to make so many bad shots. Whereas countless people could supervise thirty mediocre eight year olds, should they be required. Some find this a repulsive mutation of the good. But mutation would be the wrong word, because we never began with the good, remember?

Before you start feeling too badly for teachers don't forget that they also enjoy a large deviation from fairness. Well, some teachers. For the unionized, salaried teachers, once their job security is reasonably secured, their incentive to invest in their own labour is quite diminished. And for those who believe hard work should be rewarded this is exactly another note on which they should harp (for some reason they seldom do). The teachers who continue to work hard after a certain degree of job security is achieved protect those teachers who take the achievement as an invitation to work as little as is necessary to maintain their status. I would never argue that middle schools should be meritocracies based on teacher performance, since any criteria would be impossibly subjective, and the criterion of test scores has shown itself to be self-defeating. But it would also be foolish for me to disagree with the statement that many tenured teachers, perhaps a plurality, are lazy, both in mind and in character. This is not least because of the selection pressures a diminutive salary recruits.

This is not to besmirch the hard-working teachers who operate in the vagaries of day to day or week to week pay. When one's daily pay is a direct result of that day's efforts, those efforts tend to be well motivated. The converse obtains.

The expression that one's labour can be invested in, like it was gold, is apt. It is what labour is in fact, another type of commodity, whose price is set in the same way and vacillates as such. And there we can square the observation concerning the ease of replacement. Kobe Bryant's services are in demand because their supply is low. Not just historically low, or temporarily low, but functionally low, low by nature. There can be only one best Pinot Grigio and only one best shooting guard. Bodies capable of supervising children while writing on a chalkboard are a lot like two-percent milk.

Lacteal derisions aside, what can we learn from teachers? One would be that job security can disincentivize people from flourishing (big surprise). It happens with the Kobe Bryant's of the world as well, (maybe Jerome James would be a better example) who sign a fat five year contract and subsequently take the wrong adjectives to heart. Second is that certain job markets might not allow a separation of people, or an easy separation of people, based on merit. The effectiveness of a teacher, it strikes me, has to be extremely difficult to measure, especially from an outside perspective. It is not as if one can look twenty years into the future and know to what degree they contributed to the final product. It is a lot easier to know if a teacher is bad than if a teacher is good. Moreover, it strikes me that there aren't much in the way of actual rewards for being a better teacher past a certain point, at least economically. There is not a ton of room to move up if one is a teacher, not a ton of room to be appreciated for one's toils, and not a ton of expectation for comeuppance.

Welcome to the good life

Every not so often a twenty something poker player writes, in a flash of introspection, how little their vocation contributes to society and how they are looking to graduate to the more important things in life. This invariably (invariable since the 'insights' are so repetitious) reminds me of an exchange between Jerry and his erratically enlightened neighbour Kramer.

Jerry: I had a very interesting lunch with George Costanza today.

Kramer: Really?

Jerry: We were talking about our lives ... and we both kind of realized we're kids.

We're not men!

Kramer: So, then you asked yourselves, "Isn't there something more to life?"

Jerry: Yes. We did.

Kramer: Yeah, well, let me clue you in on something. There isn't.

If anyone had the time and the freedom of opportunity to pick up and read Candide, it would be the twenty something poker player who sets his own schedule and who takes pride in flouting real-world responsibility. If a poker player really had wanted to spend an afternoon in fear and trembling, I'm inclined to believe they would have. Instead it seems likely their demand for philosophical exploration is usually adequately supplied by an introspective post. This isn't a bad thing; there is nothing wrong with preferences being preferred and those preferences carrying into action. But the thing one can most easily mistake oneself for on the internet is a philosopher. This confusion has spread generation-wide amongst those who are accurately described as 'of the internet.'

Hence the minor irony (what, you were expecting a great one?) that the accumulation of money at great relative ease has led some to dismiss, in writing, the merits of money-making. Poker players have become, like so many unhappy enjoyers of modern life, Jerrys. If money wasn't worth so much, it would be worth asking them, why do you have it? But further than to its worthlessness, these reformed accumulators will attest to the corrupting nature of lucre, and the endless treadmills on which moneyed life is run. With so much disdain given to product cycles one would think the reformed accumulators yearn for the degree of motionlessness most commonly associated with death.

So many proselytize this view that its popularity would have moved from farce to tragedy by now were its proponents not so farcical. Inevitably as you meander at the dinner party or through the editorials, you will find someone telling you, quite emphatically, that we have too much stuff, and that this stuff is dimming our judgement, wasting our time, and demagnetizing our moral compass. Money isn't everything is their essential message, and judging people who like shopping is their favourite activity. These people's criticism of modern society rests on two basic assumptions, that they are smarter than most other people, and that nice things are not nice. Shopping isn't the enjoyment of pleasurable things or even a celebration of post-scarcity; apparently, it is the foppery of the credulous. That pleasure really happened, in this series of moments that comprise life, seems undisputable. Not to these folks. What they are really saying is that their sugar is of the refined variety. This is how people who are good at playing 'the looking smart game' operate; they dress up pretence in stoicism and sanctimoniousness in intellectualism.

Money can't buy happiness, they will remind me, and you can't take money with you when you die. Kanye West gives these people the best treatment (the one line variety). In The Good Life, he observes, "Having money isn't everything, not having it is." The money isn't everything people have it only half right, but more importantly, their placement of the phrase's negation shows just what perspective they come from, and what perspective they lack is revealed by a simple transposition. Someone who impresses on you that money isn't everything is pointing out to you that they have never experienced no money. Money has always surrounded them; it is the water in the lazy river that is their life. That money is to be coveted is quickly realized by someone born into poverty. That one can come to tire of the accumulation of money is natural. That one would preach their fatigue as enlightenment simply signals the philosophical carelessness that springs from unexamined privilege.

A not so new age cleanse

Humans are a mess of cognitive errors, most of which are some combination of perceptual predisposition and learned fallacy. We are preprogrammed to do certain things well, raised to do certain things well. Poker isn't one of them. Thankfully, we are also programmable, our cognitive deficits reducible, our brains plastic. Poker is a theoretical construct, played by brains that weren't long ago involved in very few things of a theoretic nature. Stargazing perhaps.

Your natural inclination to misestimate probability gets punished by poker continually. While poker doesn't force humility upon you, improving at poker consistently does. To attempt to improve at poker is to take on a deep cognitive cleansing, the efficacy of which is proportional to expected future earnings. And it isn't as easy as I make it sound. Try sitting around and dispelling your illusions. How far do you think you'll get?

Poker provides a glimpse into our interpretations of the world, that mixture of rationalism, empiricism, and faith. There is the structure of the game and then there is the structure the players construct in their minds. To say they are not one and the same would be gross understatement. The former structure is the finitude of combinations of cards and bets, "a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture." Every now and then in the course of studying, it is this sculpture we glimpse, if only in moments of clarity usually reserved for bathing arithmeticians. And yet in the heat of play, bets and checks traverse this sculpture, unwitting of its curvature, forgetful of its nooks and crannies. The deception goes further, for the defeated will identify a refined understanding as one that is coarse, inferior to their pristine collection of false inferences.

The cash game player mixes his labour with his property every session. He labours with his property, which doubles as his earnings, and both mix in the middle of the table. At the end of the night, the distribution of stacks lining the table is never fair. And unlike the salaried his toil is enduring, his pressure constant. The games, such as they are, don't know such as they were, and whether you won or lost big or small the day before. The replacability criterion also holds. No one can five bet shove two hundred thousand dollars with five deuce off over a cold four bet quite like Phil Ivey. No one can empty the clip quite like Tom Dwan. And no one can check call quite like Phil Galfond. And should they wake up one day having forgotten everything they know, no amount of reputation will save them the next session. Labour may not ensure earnings in the short term, but labour's absence ensures the absence of earnings in the long term. Hard work is rewarded. And yet there is a basic, naked equality in sitting at a table with others, where "the weakest has the strength to kill the strongest," on the turn of a card.

I am back in Canada after a long absence, but the journey is not over. I've got two months now to prepare for my first WSOP. What am I doing?

Well first of all I am playing a lot. I can't say it is going to well results wise, hence the title of this blog. That's ok though. As readers of this space will know, I am responsible for all my results. Its all work that is bound to pay off and that's worth remembering. I'm playing a fair amount of 6 max Zoom as well as daily tournaments on Stars. I just got back from a 3 day trip to Niagara Falls where I was grinding 200nl cash. I managed to lose $600 but definitely felt comfortable back on the live felt. I did run a huge bluff unsuccessfully, which upon reflection definitely looks like a huge leak. I am confident I can plug it pretty easily though -- by not doing it again. That pot aside I was able to get into some really instructive postflop situations, mostly getting value out of live players in nonstandard/optimal ways. Also saw some interesting rivers. One middle aged woman bet the river twice against me; I folded and she showed me a bluff; I called and she showed me the nuts. It was that kind of trip :). I should be getting in some more live cash this month and on May 9th there is a $200 tourney at a local casino which will make for cheap practice. In terms of volume my strategy is to play a huge amount in April while studying during down time. For May I plan on tapering that volume down to focus on quality over quantity, adding studying hours and making sure I am in great shape.

That's been one key thing I have been focusing on. In Grenada I was running about 30 miles a week, sometimes more. I fell off that pace a bit the past few weeks but plan on ramping it up again come May. Being in shape has made it much easier to handle losses. I don't take an evening off any more to decompress from bad results. I mostly take the rest of a day off from playing as a good habit. Quitting is a skill after all. I haven't been doing the absolute best job I can to compliment this physical exertion in my diet, so that will be something to focus on in May. I don't drink booze, eat a lot of meat, any fast food, or anything like that. But I do drink my share of coca cola, which is easy to justify when your burning enough calories. In any case, being in good shape and having considerable physical endurance should give me a leg up on most of the pear shapes I'll be seeing across the table in the average WSOP 1.5k.

Sunday Milly Run

Prior to this recent bad four week stretch I made a deep run in the PokerStars 6 million guaranteed Sunday Million. Out of 34,000 runners I managed to finish 93rd for 4k. First place was 1 million dollars. While I would have taken the big money given the choice I don't see anything but positives to draw out of my run. I feel like I executed really well down the stretch but at the same time know where there is room to improve. Here are a few hands of interest.

Winning the max in blind versus blind

Poker Stars $200+$15 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3000/t6000 Blinds + t600 - 9 players -

CO: t328798 M = 22.83
BTN: t41574 M = 2.89
Hero (SB): t137411 M = 9.54
BB: t196545 M = 13.65
UTG: t59459 M = 4.13
UTG+1: t113132 M = 7.86
UTG+2: t89806 M = 6.24
MP1: t195919 M = 13.61
MP2: t166002 M = 11.53
Pre Flop: (t14400) Hero is SB with Th 7s
7 folds,
Hero raises to t14885, BB calls t8885
Flop: (t35170) Ks Ts 5s (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets t24000, Hero calls t24000
Turn: (t83170) 2d (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets t30000, Hero raises to t97926 all in, BB folds
Final Pot: t143170Hero mucks Th 7s
Hero wins t143170

People raise/folding deep

Poker Stars $200+$15 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t50000/t100000 Blinds + t10000 - 8 players -
CO: t1398120
M = 6.08BTN: t525624 M = 2.29
Hero (SB): t1465462 M = 6.37
BB: t2976796 M = 12.94
UTG: t1211614 M = 5.27
UTG+1: t4226028 M = 18.37
MP1: t783024 M = 3.40
MP2: t2114552 M = 9.19

Pre Flop: (t230000) Hero is SB with 7h Ad4 folds, CO raises to t200000, 1 fold, Hero raises to t1455462 all in, 2 folds

Final Pot: t580000Hero mucks 7h Ad
Hero wins t580000

More maxing value

Poker Stars $200+$15 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t300/t600 Blinds + t60 - 9 players -

UTG+2: t13680 M = 9.50
MP1: t12951 M = 8.99
Hero (MP2): t21622 M = 15.02
CO: t66434 M = 46.13
BTN: t15220 M = 10.57
SB: t5640 M = 3.92
BB: t7040 M = 4.89
UTG: t53021 M = 36.82
UTG+1: t4616 M = 3.21
Pre Flop: (t1440) Hero is MP2 with Kd Ks4 folds, Hero raises to t1200, CO calls t1200, BTN calls t1200, 2 folds
Flop: (t5040) 5s Td 3h (3 players)Hero checks, CO bets t2400, BTN folds, Hero raises to t6455, CO calls t4055
Turn: (t17950) 3d (2 players)Hero bets t13907 all in, CO calls t13907
River: (t45764) 6d (2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: t45764Hero shows Kd Ks (two pair, Kings and Threes)
CO shows Jh Tc (two pair, Tens and Threes)
Hero wins t45764

No plans to make a video out of the run, or any videos right now for that matter. If CR asks me to produce something I am always game of course. As of now it looks like Redstone has zoom covered. VitalMyth and Dintyo have also put out some content recently so I'm looking forward to getting caught up on those.

Studying

As far as studying, well things are getting intensive. I booked a 2 hour coaching session with a very successful tournament player, both in live and online. We were reviewing hand histories and going over important tournament concepts, mostly deviation between cEV and $EV and survival considerations at different stages of the tournament. Before the session I went over the hands we were to review for about five hours and since the session I have spent about six hours (and counting) writing up the analysis in a really long word document. I've got another session with him closer to the series that will cover things more specific to the WSOP.

I've also invested in an interesting study product by former CardRunner's video instructor TannenJ. The product is a collection of materials centred around leakfinder footage and written analysis. I'll be posting a long form review here and on two plus two when I am done with it. It is also quite intensive. Working hard isn't always that fun. In order to get the most out of Tannen's product I have been writing up a running word document. First I watch the footage with the Hero's commentary. Then I write out my analysis of it. After that I read the Hero's comments in PDF and modify my analysis if necessary. Finally I move on to Tannen's analysis and synthesize that as necessary.

Not taking risks is risky

Investing in coaching may seem extremely expensive and a high risk investment to some. I know that I can make sure that the coaching investment I've made is both a profitable and a worthwhile one by working a large number of hours both before and after sessions. So in that way I am confident that my results will turn around and that the money and hours I've put in will come to fruition. Between getting coaching from better players, doing hand history reviews with similar players, and coaching my own students, it would be impossible in my mind for the hard work to not pay off. The bottom line with coaching is that it is as much on the student as the coach to ensure the student gets what they paid for. Both have to bring value to the table. If the student puts enough work into the material that the coach gives him, he can essentially make sure that he value-owned the coach given his return on investment. If a student doesn't work before a session or after, it is inevitable that he'll find he didn't get his money's worth.

Salud y Suerte

Gareth

Sorry for the long delay in posting. CR blogs have been being mean to me. So I have a little backlog of posts coming up, so keep checking out this space in the coming weeks!

Just a short clip of where I am right now...



There are a few more Grenada clips in this post.

Salud

Gareth

Recently I made another big withdrawal from Stars and have been grinding things back up at 50nl for the past two weeks or so. The past two days I did battle with a reg who has apparently been beating up the games. Suffice to say I held over him pretty hard and we developed an aggressive dynamic early on. I think I adjusted extremely well to our dynamic. Let's look at how it all went down:

Hand 1: Here he shows a pretty clear leak in raising. This is the biggest pot he has won off of me. I am not going to get caught up enough in battling to not recognize this for what it is. Moreover he should know my range to bet here includes value hands I am going to value shove and air I could bluff shove on the river if he just calls.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players

CO: $96.61
BTN: $34.30
SB: $63.05
Hero (BB): $58.24
UTG: $69.50
MP: $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with K A
1 fold, MP raises to $1.50, 3 folds, Hero raises to $5, MP calls $3.50

Flop: ($10.25) 5 9 3(2 players)
Hero bets $5.50, MP calls $5.50

Turn: ($21.25) A(2 players)
Hero bets $11, MP raises to $22, Hero folds

Final Pot: $43.25
MP wins $41.30
(Rake: $1.95)

Hand 2: Here I make a loose open which I do not like. I think opening is a mistake and I am trying to cut back on some of these opens. Anyways once I flop like this I think firing twice is my best option. The turn bet may be getting thin but I am not letting him take control of the hand and I know he wants to station/float me on a lot of flop textures. So the way to punish someone for that is to widen your value ranges. I really like the way I played this hand postflop. He should be betting the river one would think.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
BTN: $50.00
SB: $50.58
BB: $76.62
Hero (UTG): $88.39
CO: $81.51

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG with 9 A
Hero raises to $1.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $1.50, 2 folds

Flop: ($3.75) Q A 5(2 players)
Hero bets $2.50, BTN calls $2.50

Turn: ($8.75) J(2 players)
Hero bets $6, BTN calls $6

River: ($20.75) 6(2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Final Pot: $20.75
BTN shows J Q (two pair, Queens and Jacks)
Hero shows 9 A (a pair of Aces)
BTN wins $19.82
(Rake: $0.93)

Hand 3: I continue my turn aggression here and I again think it is fine. A ton of players at 50nl would check-call this turn and I think its just clearly inferior to betting.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players

BB: $50.75
UTG: $60.47
MP: $97.60
CO: $92.79
BTN: $132.47
Hero (SB): $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with A T
4 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, BB calls $1

Flop: ($3.00) K 2 6(2 players)
Hero bets $2, BB calls $2

Turn: ($7.00) T(2 players)
Hero bets $4.50, BB calls $4.50

River: ($16.00) 3(2 players)
Hero checks, BB checks

Final Pot: $16.00
BB shows K 7 (a pair of Kings)
Hero shows A T (a pair of Tens)
BB wins $15.28
(Rake: $0.72)

Hand 4: So onto the winning hands. I am going to include any hands that saw the turn with us HU. Consequently this next hand is very standard.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players

Hero (MP): $174.87
CO: $48.37
BTN: $28.58
SB: $36.50
BB: $64.02
UTG: $96.80

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is MP with A K
1 fold, Hero raises to $1.50, 2 folds, SB calls $1.25, BB calls $1

Flop: ($4.50) K 2 5(3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $3, SB folds, BB calls $3

Turn: ($10.50) 9(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $6.50, BB calls $6.50

River: ($23.50) 3(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $14.50, BB folds

Final Pot: $23.50
Hero mucks A K
Hero wins $22.44
(Rake: $1.06)

Hand 5: Here I use my image of showing down strong hands versus him so far and load up on his capped range. I expected him to have folded some AX in game when I shoved and given how long he tanked (forever) I assume that it is a strong possibility that he did. File this one under: don't try this at home if you are trying to beat 50nl. To make a non-tilting hero call he has to put me on a float or a made hand being turned into a bluff. Most people at 50nl don't do that, so if he is thinking, he should come to the right conclusion and fold his bluff-catcher on the river.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players

Hero (CO): $66.41
BTN: $50.00
SB: $78.03
BB: $23.33
UTG: $116.65
MP: $38.05

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is CO with 4 5
2 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, 1 fold, SB raises to $5, 1 fold, Hero calls $3.50

Flop: ($10.50) 9 5 A(2 players)
SB bets $6.01, Hero calls $6.01

Turn: ($22.52) A(2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $11.50, SB calls $11.50

River: ($45.52) Q(2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $43.90 all in, SB folds

Final Pot: $45.52
Hero mucks 4 5
Hero wins $43.47
(Rake: $2.05)

Hand 6: This is one of the hands that came after the 45hh bluff so hopefully it made him feel good about his fold. Getting lucky against a player like this just goes a long way into turning things in your favour so when you find yourself so fortunate you really need to make sure you keep him down (see subsequent hands).

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players

Hero (BTN): $56.87
SB: $55.28
BB: $20.50
UTG: $54.36
CO: $53.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with A A
1 fold, CO raises to $1.50, Hero raises to $4.50, 2 folds, CO raises to $10, Hero raises to $56.87 all in, CO calls $43 all in

Flop: ($106.75) J 3 T(2 players - 2 are all in)

Turn: ($106.75) J(2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($106.75) Q(2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $106.75
Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Jacks)
CO shows K K (two pair, Kings and Jacks)
Hero wins $104.25
(Rake: $2.50)

Hand 7: This was in our first session seven minutes after the 54hh hand. When you suspect someone is 3betting you very wide one adjustment you can make is 4bet/calling wider. One of the things that has to happen for this to be the best adjustment is that they have to follow up their 3betting frequency by 5 bet shoving lighter. In this instance I expected him to make that adjustment and consequently adjusted my 4 bet/calling range about 2 notches wider than I would normally have it in this spot. This is a really clear example of something that is pretty rare at 50nl tbh, being able to adjust to a thinking player. Another factor is that we are 117x deep, giving a 5 bet some alluring fold equity. Also a lot of 50nl players will start tightening their stack off ranges as early as 110x, something I, usually to my detriment, don't suffer from :).

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players

Hero (BTN): $84.87
SB: $50.25
BB: $58.37
UTG: $26.79
MP: $115.15
CO: $34.51

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with 8 8
2 folds, CO calls $0.50, Hero raises to $2, 1 fold, BB raises to $6, 1 fold, Hero raises to $12.50, BB raises to $58.37 all in, Hero calls $45.87

Flop: ($117.49) K 7 3(2 players - 1 is all in)

Turn: ($117.49) 6(2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($117.49) K(2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $117.49
Hero shows 8 8 (two pair, Kings and Eights)
BB shows 9 7 (two pair, Kings and Sevens)
Hero wins $114.99
(Rake: $2.50)

Hand 8: Hand 7 really comes into play here, the next day, where I pull the 3-way 5 bet bluff pre. Pretty much the perfect spot for it. Not going to go into all the details but since he will remember the hand above I think that works to our advantage here. Yes, I do this. He is SB.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players

SB: $88.07
BB: $99.82
UTG: $43.25
Hero (CO): $110.78
BTN: $51.50

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is CO with A J
1 fold, Hero raises to $1.50, BTN raises to $4.50, SB raises to $11.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $24, 2 folds

Final Pot: $28.00
Hero mucks A J
Hero wins $28.00

Hand 9: Final hand we played together. Just a really clear case of adjusting to a flumoxed opponent trying to win pots too hard after some things haven't gone his way. He insta-quit after this. His river bet is really bad considering that A) His perception of my c/c'ing range should be a lot of TX, JJ type hands. B) All the draws missed C) He has no TX in his river bet range that isn't a boat. Again, not a lot of players at 50nl will change their line from c-betting to c/c TPTK on this wet of a board, they will usually autopilot the flop decision and start thinking after that.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players

CO: $76.32
BTN: $109.44
SB: $48.75
BB: $41.25
Hero (UTG): $125.53
MP: $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG with A Q
Hero raises to $1.75, 1 fold, CO calls $1.75, 3 folds

Flop: ($4.25) 8 Q T(2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $2.84, Hero calls $2.84

Turn: ($9.93) 2(2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $7.58, Hero calls $7.58

River: ($25.09) T(2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $14.37, Hero calls $14.37

Final Pot: $53.83
CO shows 7 A (a pair of Tens)
Hero shows A Q (two pair, Queens and Tens)
Hero wins $51.41
(Rake: $2.42)

I know this space had been lacking some poker content lately so... there it is!

I wish every confrontation with a regular could go this way .

Gareth

I realize that I caveated the last entry with a spoiler warning concerning Homeland. Well that warning is still in effect. But I am just going to assume everyone has watched every episode of Breaking Bad and of Dexter. Like, how could you not?

* * *
Homeland's Carrie Mathison is an overachiever. In the first episode of the series we saw her reveal to her mentor Saul that she believes a lapse in her prowess meant the non-prevention of 9/11. She, like a lot of poker players, internalizes results as a reflection of her abilities. Moreover, she takes responsibility for things outside of her control. In short, she suffers from the illusion of control. Back in the pre-9/11 days she was presumably just a jejune analyst in her early 20s, fetching coffee for Saul and fetching to her boss Estes, without a hope of preventing such a calamity. But to this she would respond, as she did to Saul, "Everyone's not me." When we meet Carrie we see that, ostensibly, her drive to perform her job to the best of her abilities is a reflection of this perceived shortcoming and that urgency her work demands. Getting to know her, we quickly figure out that no amount of success will satisfy her. If there were no more threats to stop she would imagine one. Poker players often suffer from a similar affliction, sometimes into perpetuity, that no amount of money is enough. And poker makes most people as Carrie, strong but fragile, to the point where losing five days in a row can engender an existential funk. Some vocations, take that of the pastor, never provides one with stark falsification, and maybe this is how some of those so employed never suffer their self-doubts to live. For no poker player is this ever the case, since evidence of one losing money in poker is constantly pouring in, every session, every day, every week. Even a long term winner can come to believe they are washed up after a bad run. Sometimes they are right.



Carrie's fervent, emotional commitment to the cause of protecting America is strangely offset by her fleeting concern for the bodies left in her wake. She has become hardened to death by her experience, yet for the cause hers is a teenage fixation. As unhealthy as this seems, the poker equivalent, I would argue, is close to optimal. It being, becoming indifferent to the swings, the beats, and the mistakes, while remaining fanatical about long term improvement. This requires not acting like a girl on prom night waiting for the doorbell to ring, every time you lose five flips in a row. But internalizing results is not entirely an unproductive thing. The philosophy of results-oriented thinking as sin has some major downsides; it increases victomology, promotes cocksure attitudes, and discourages self-criticism. All of these are to a poker player's disservice. In the quietude between sessions, one would be hard pressed to make a case against Cartesian doubt. Moreover, a downswing is almost always partially, and sometimes entirely, the fault of the player. Given the positive feedback loops poker inspires (confidence begets confidence, unconfidence begets unconfidence), often a downswing is only sparked by something out of one's control, something we should not be results-oriented towards. Concerning the twenty thousand hands of terrible play subsequent to that event, however, it would be a huge mistake to sweep it all under one unoriented rug.

Niggling for some Homeland watchers is the fact that Carrie is the protagonist of the show. She is lionized for her obsessive qualities, punished for speaking truth to power, but absolved totally of negligence in the death of innocent people. As in Breaking Bad, the characters in Homeland operate in a universe without considerations to ethereal karma; sometimes things come around and sometimes things don't. This is also known as reality. Breaking Bad charts the ascent (or was it descent?) of high school chemistry teacher Walter White into the violent, territorial world of methamphetamine trafficking. In one of the more controversial treatments of Breaking, Chuck Klosterman sees the series as a comment on personal choice. He quotes creator Vince Gilligan, "Television is historically good at keeping its characters in a self-imposed stasis," meaning that someone like Dexter, or more obviously, like Bart, never really evolves. Sure things happen to Dexter which change his life and force adaptation, but they never manage to change him. He gets married, he's a psychopathic serial killer with a wedding ring; he has a child, he's a psychopathic serial killer with diapers to change. To Klosterman, "It's not just that watching White's transformation is interesting; what's interesting is that this transformation involves the fundamental core of who he supposedly is, and that this (wholly constructed) core is an extension of his own free will."



Certainly Walt and his partner, the unlikeable, temperamental Jesse, feel the repercussions of breaking bad. But at the decision point they have little to lose. Walt's dying of a lung cancer with colossal treatment costs. Jesse has nothing to live for. As they become emulsified in the drug trade, their circumstances change. Walt's lung cancer finds itself in remission; Jesse finds a kind, decent woman with a kid he grows to care for. There is no turning back though, as the saying goes, and Walt finds his family in upheaval and he himself responsible. I doubt none but the most soapbox enamoured would see this as a censorious comment on the quick and dirty choices Walt has made. Being a drug dealer puts a strain on your familial relationships, you don't say? The more interesting observation to come out of Walt's choices, to Klosterman, is that, "He changed himself. At some point, he decided to become bad, and that's what matters." To be sure, Walt becomes bad. By the end of season four, he just doesn't give a fuck. He phones his neighbour and, under the pretense that his family has left town, asks her to check if he left the oven on. He watches her oblige, from his car down the street, waiting to see if his house explodes from the potential trap laid by the callous, unequalled empire maker, Gustavo Fring.



Walt comes to control his world. Back when he was a washed up research chemist teaching at the local high school, sporting an attenuated moustache, and hardly ever fucking his wife, he was suffering from, among other things, the disillusion of control. By force of realizing the inevitability of his death he elevates himself over his circumstances through will and guile, but most importantly, outlook. This Heideggerian carpe diem is fully affirmed by Walt while he sits in a clinic waiting room, listening to prognosis predestination from a feeble 'survivor.' "That is such bullshit," Walt interrupts him, "... life comes with a death sentence, so every few months I come in here for my regular scan, knowing full well that one of these times - hell, maybe even today - I'm gonna hear some bad news. But until then, who's in charge? Me. That's how I live my life."



There exists a mindset whose only concern in game is making the correct decision. Playing well is its own reward. And it satisfies. The way the board ran out, who won the pot, those things are just the interstitial aether separating one decision from the next. In the redux following the last pot being pushed, it seems to me, the poker player must also understand that transcending the illogic of results-oriented thinking does not go far enough. There is a higher plane upon which one takes responsibility for one's results. After all, getting one outered isn't a natural disaster or an act of god (and not just because one doesn't exist). It is what you signed up for. It is what you have come to expect. You know what someone working at Subway knows after eight hours of eight dollar per hour work? That they are owed sixty-four dollars. You chose to wander in the chaos.

Dexter certainly did. True to his psychopathic nature, whenever he gets in a spot where the threat of death or of detection seems elevated beyond what he can quell with steely rage, never is a regret uttered, never is a repentance formulated. Usually his intonation could be used to voice "oh well." His sentiments are often "I guess I got sloppy." Dex is realistic about the inevitability most of history's mass murderers have come to know, all too soon. He lives it a few times a week after all, when he executes a defiant, or a slobbering, or a proselytizing human being wrapped in plastic.

Walter certainly did. In the penultimate episode of season four, with some things that once went around coming around, the chaos swirling, he explains to his wife Skylar, that he chose this life.

"I have lived under the threat of death for a year now. And because of that, I've made choices."

"Walt, I-"

"Listen to me. I alone should suffer the consequences of those choices, no one else. And those consequences...they're coming. No more prolonging the inevitable."

Carrie cannot. In a mania, leading up to the terrorist strike (of which her clairvoyance informs her), she completely loses control, shouting at unwitting cops "The world is about to end and we're standing around talking!" The messy possibility of failure doesn't just fall short of Carrie's acceptance, its incarnation breaks her. For both Dexter and Walter, personal demise, the ultimate undesirable result, is not a failure of the ultimate kind, for they have already come to accept the ramifications of the choices they have made, a power they will never relinquish. They are above being results-oriented, while simultaneously taking responsibility for the result, no matter the outcome. For the poker player, who can only control the decisions he makes and the reactions he has, the lessons are clear. The choice to take responsibility for wandering in the chaos won't be an easy one to make, but it is a path that makes tempting promises. And the choice to break with oneself is incessantly available. All you have to do is take it.