Champagne Parties and Caviar Dreams

The following very well may be my  favorite Emil story, which is interesting because a) it has nothing to do with poker and b) I wasn't even there when it happened. Nevertheless, ever since I heard it, I have always retold it, and I have always enjoyed it. 

During our junior year of college, Emil went out to the bars one night with some friends. At the end of the night everyone was hammered and starving so they went to a 24 hour deli/sandwich shop. While the other guys clamored at the register ordering huge sandwiches or whatever, Emil stood at the other end of the counter,  staring at a tray of huge cookies in the plexiglass dessert display case. 

For five full minutes Emil stood in silence staring at the cookies. Finally, a deli guy came over. "Can I help you, sir?" He asked. 

"Yeah," said Emil, without moving his eyes from the giant cookie tray. "I'm gonna need five of those cookies."

"FIVE?" asked the deli guy incredulously. These were huge deli cookies, probably five inches across. No one would ever need or want more than two. "Are you sure you want FIVE??"

Emil thought for a moment. "You're right." said Emil, nodding but not taking his eyes off the cookies. "Better make it six."

I used to have a 20" Samsung 204b LCD monitor like half of all poker grinders. I was gonna get another one to have a nice, symmetrical set-up, but I never got around to it, so I used an old, fat Samsung CRT I had had for a couple of years.  When the LCD died a while back, I was left with only the CRT. I wasn't playing poker at the time, so I didn't bother getting a new second monitor. 

Recently, I decided it was time to go back to twins. I asked around to see what monitors all the cool kids are using these days. Apparently the most popular setups for poker grinders are a 30" with one or two rotated 20"s on the side or twin 24" widescreens. After pricing that out, I realized I didn't feel like going out and dropping $700+ on new monitorage, so I started looking elsewhere. 

As is always the case these days, "elsewhere" means one thing: craigslist.

I searched for "monitor" in NYC and there it was: Viewsonic p95f+ 19" CRT monitor for sale - $20.  

Fuck YES!

I googled a review of the monitor model. It said, "A very good monitor, although CRT is pretty much an obsolete technology." The review was dated January 2003. January two thousand and three!! This thing was obsolete before Moneymaker even started the main event. I googled the specs of the monitor: 18.5" by 18.5" by 18.8", 55lbs. Fifty-five pounds!  That's a second grader for Christ's sake. This behemoth, which according to the reviews could deliver as much as 2048x1536 resolution with a 0.25 mm dot pitch, could be mine for less than the cost of a taxi ride. Done fucking deal.  This thing must be mine. 

To add to the adventure, the ad said the monitor was on the Upper East Side, a full hour each way from my Brooklyn apartment. Now some people might say, who would spend two hours on the subway, half of which would be spent dragging a ferociously heavy, unwieldy, and yet remarkably fragile box up and down stairs and across platforms?  Furthermore, who would go through all that rigamarole for a big heavy box that was laughably out-of-date?

To those who would say such things, I would respond, perhaps you didn't hear me: twenty bucks for a 2048x1536 monitor. Twenty.  

And yes, I said, "rigamarole" back there. This is a post about a 19" CRT monitor. Shit's getting retro here. 

I dashed off an e-mail to the seller and told him I would buy it. Now the question was one of logistics. Now the question was one of logistics. I had to make sure I could actually move the thing. My roommates have one of those wire carts that people in the city use to schlep around their groceries, but a quick test with my Samsung CRT confirmed there was no way this thing would fit in there (although trying to fit the giant monitor into the tiny cart did remind me of a joke: what do you get when you cross an elephant with a poodle? A dead poodle, split in half.)

So the only viable option was an open hand cart, but I needed bungee cords. I went to the hardware store and got four 4-foot bungees with carabiner clips for $31. Yes, the bungee cords cost fifty percent more than the actual monitor. 

When I went to pick up my beautiful new ViewSonic I asked the guy why he was getting rid of it (as if it was unusual to want to get rid of a fifty pound eight year old computer monitor). He raised an eyebrow. "Well, for one, without it my apartment is twice as big."  Touche, craigslist man. Touche. 

I wrapped my new baby in blankets and bungee cord and started back. As I left I thought, "The US-UK exchange rate is a joke. I can get fifty-five pounds for twenty bucks."  Dragging this thing from 80th street in Manhattan to South Slope Brooklyn was exactly as big a pain in the ass as you would think it would be, especially considering I live in a fourth floor walk-up with no elevator. But it was all worth it when I finally plugged it in.

Look at those magnificent bastards. There's nearly a hundred fucking pounds of monitor on that rickety ass IKEA desk. Two mismatched 19" CRTs. My beloved Samsung is now, unbelievably, the smaller monitor. I call these babies Fat Man and Little Boy (too soon?).

Let's look at the overhead view.

Baby got back. 

You maybe asking yourself, is that a webcam duct-taped to the top of that monitor? You're goddamned right it is!!  It is Frankensystem. It is alive!!!  And yes, that is a windowless closet that I have converted into a makeshift eighteen-square-foot office.  I know what you're thinking: yes, the whole thing IS straight balla. 

As I type this on my giant new monitor I think, I got a million extra pixels and I got a blog post. Best twenty bucks I ever spent.

My last post was about the second worst bet I ever made. Now it’s time to talk about the single worst gambling move I ever made. It took place in an underground NYC poker club.

“Underground” is an ironic term for these places. They’re usually in a converted third floor apartment. I haven’t been to one in years, and I kinda miss it. They were the closest I ever came to feeling like I was in “Rounders”. The first time I ever went to one, you had to press a buzzer and look into a camera before they let you in. It was just like Mike and Worm walking into the Chesterfield, except instead of Famke Janssen waiting inside the door, there was a gigantic, mean-looking bouncer. He patted us down for weapons, and I mean really patted us down. He got to know me better than a lot of my girlfriends. I can understand it though, I was pretty intimidating, if you’re intimidated by pale, skinny college sophomores. Nevertheless, being checked for weapons before going to gamble late at night at an illicit New York City poker club made me feel like half a badass.

My college poker buddies used to talk about the clubs a lot. There was Play Station, which I never went to, which was supposedly pretty big but you had to know someone to be let in, there was Straddle Club, which became my club of choice but has long since been shuttered or moved to some location unknown to me, and there were a couple others whose names I’ve forgotten. I probably played in about four or five different ones. They were never around very long. They changed addresses and phone numbers often, got busted by the cops pretty regularly, and got robbed a little less regularly.

Besides the cheap thrill of doing something a little illicit, these clubs were the easiest way for me to play live poker, and even though my total online hands outnumber my total live hands by a hundred to one, I still prefer playing live. I just find it more fun to sit behind felt, shuffle clay chips and drag pots by the armful. It’s more visceral and tangible to me than numbers on a screen.

Problem is, I usually only went to these clubs after a raucous evening, arriving more often than not in a less than optimal state to gamble effectively. This led to a number of bonehead plays in these clubs: bad bluffs, bad calls, way too loose pre-flop play, etc. But one move stands above the rest, and is indeed the most boneheaded gambling move I have ever pulled.

I had just arrived at the club this particular night and had probably only played about five hands so far. I was sitting at 2/5NL with $500. The table seemed typical for a club like this, which is to say, full of loose, bad players. I was on the button, and I called a raise with A4s along with about three other players. Four or five of us saw a flop of 23J. There was a medium sized bet and two calls so I overcalled hoping to hit my gutter. The turn was a king. The EP PF raiser checked, a thin middle aged blonde lady to his left checked, and the CO, a heavyset man of about thirty, bet about 110 into a pot of 200. For no real reason at all, I decided this was a good pot to try and pick up with some aggression, so I raised it to 300. Maybe I thought I could represent a flopped set or KJ, maybe I thought it was a decent semi-bluff if my Ace outs were also clean, I dunno. It was late, I was more than halfway drunk, and I wanted to bluff.

The PFR folded and then, out of NOWHERE, the thin lady in middle position shoved over the top. The CO folded, and as it was back on me I remembered why it wasn’t a good idea to bluff in big live multiway pots. When I saw it was only 30 more to call the shove, I remembered it was also important to keep stack sizes in mind when you made bets.

Eh, fuck it, I thought, it’s 30 into about a thousand. Maybe I’ll hit my five. I drunkenly shrugged and called.

The river was another Jack. Oh well. Without waiting for the action to get to me, I said, “Nice hand. I missed.” and tossed my hand into the muck.

At once, the table exploded. “What the hell are you DOING? It’s not on you yet! Don’t you know your hand is dead now!” they exclaimed.

I was a little surprised by their reaction. “Relax guys. I had ace high. She overshoved in a big pot. She’s obviously got me.” I said.

The CO looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said, “Dude, she has been doing ridiculous nonsense. All. Night. Long.”

I turned and looked at the lady. I now saw that she had a confused, faraway look in her eyes. It was the kind of look someone has their first time they’re a shooter on a craps table, nervous, unsure of themselves, constantly asking, “Okay, now what do I do? Was that good or bad? Why do I want to roll a four?”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“He mucked his hand. You have the only live hand left, so you’ve automatically won the pot.” said the dealer.

Clearly still confused, she turned over her hand. A six and an eight. Eight high. Nothing. No draw, no pair, no nothing.

This time I exploded. “Eight HIGH?! What the HELL just happened here?!”

The table was in hysterics as I just stood, slack-jawed, while the dealer pushed a thousand dollar pot to the still befuddled lady. A pot that I had won with ace high, and that I had thrown away with a casual flick of my wrist, for no reason at all.

The lady left the table four hands later. To be fair, that was about a half hour later, because it took about that long for the table to stop laughing at me.

Even now, years later, I will sometimes flick my wrist as if mucking a phantom hold ’em hand. It is the slightest of gestures, barely noticeable. And I will think to myself, “There it is. A thousand dollars. Poof. Gone.”

And then I’ll think to myself, what the hell could she possibly have been thinking? Why call preflop? Why call that flop? Why, in God’s name why, bluff (?) shove for thirty dollars more with eight high on that turn?

And then I’ll think, and how on Earth did I possibly find a way to be even dumber than her?

That flick of the wrist remains the worst gambling move I have ever made.

Note: I know I’m pretty new at the whole blogging thing, but I really kinda like it, but it is hard. Each post ends up twice as long as I thought it would be and takes four times as long to write as I thought it would, which is why I don’t update as often as I like. Nevertheless, it makes it more cool and all the more remarkable when I see Tommy Angelo just nail it and make an awesome blog post in four lines.

One day I was hanging out in my living room and my roommate walked in and said, “My God, did you know the price of gold is six hundred dollars an ounce?!”

Now, I lived in South Africa from 1999 to 2002 and gold is a major industry over there. In fact, South African newscasters report the price of gold the way American newscasters report the Dow Jones Industrial Average. They announce it like the weather (“It’s twenty-eight degrees in Pretoria and the price of gold is $287 an ounce. Here’s Jan with sports.”) And the entire time I lived there the price of gold hovered between $250 and $310 an ounce. I couldn’t believe that gold had more than doubled in price without me hearing about it.

“No way.” I said. “No way the price of gold is that high. It’s probably around $350.”

My roommate looked at me like I had just said Tetris was a kind of pasta.

Then he asked me, “You want to bet?”

Obviously he had just looked up the price of gold online twenty seconds ago. Nobody walks into a room and announces the price of gold completely out of nowhere unless they have just that minute learned the stat themselves. For him to be wrong at that moment he would have to have the most bizarrely specific case of Tourette’s of all time, one that compelled its victims to randomly announce incorrect facts, as if they were the world’s worst Snapple cap.

However, at that moment, he was also implying that I was wrong about a trivial factoid and he was challenging me to defend my knowledge with money.

Few things annoy me more than when somebody says something I believe to be flatly incorrect. One of those more annoying things is when someone says something I believe to be flatly incorrect, then follows it with a smug, condescending comment like, “You want to bet?” Another thing is the word, “anyhoo”.

So, at that moment, I felt that I had been challenged, that a gauntlet had been thrown, and even though my brain was fully aware that he was right and I was wrong, my mouth said, “Fine. Let’s bet.”

(Also, my girlfriend was in the room at the time. I think I felt duty-bound to accept any challenge presented, no matter how retarded. Thanks, evolution! That instinct’s definitely helpful.)

“How much?” my roommate asked.

“A hundred bucks,” said my mouth. My brain silently screamed that I was an idiotic douchebag.

“Fine.” he said.

We promptly went into his room and walked to his computer, which was obviously open to a website displaying the current price of gold. It was six hundred dollars an ounce. Shocking.

“How about that?” I said, trying unsuccessfully to maintain some dignity. I pulled a hundred bucks out of my wallet and handed it over.

The whole event took ninety seconds. As I walked back to the living room I thought to myself, “that has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever done in my life.”

And it was – at the time.

Little did I know that I could go even dumber. But that story, my friends, is a story for another time.

Later on, when I was thinking about my price of gold bet, I was reminded of a line from Guys and Dolls. “Son,” one of the characters says, “if a man shows you a deck of cards on which the seal has not yet been broken and says that he will bet you that the Jack of Spades will leap out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear, do not bet that man. For if you take that bet, then as sure as you are standing there, you will wind up with an ear full of cider.”

A wise lesson. To that I would add, “if someone randomly announces the price of gold, completely out of nowhere, just fucking believe them.”

I think a lot of people, especially when they first start playing poker, have a few poker players they idolize at least a little bit. For some people it might be Sam Farha, the consummate suave gambler with the dangling unlit cigarette. For some it might be Scotty Ngyuen, laughing and knocking back Michelobs, taunting with, “You call, it’s gonna be all over, baby.” For some, especially when they were just starting out, it might have been, let’s face it, Phil Hellmuth. Like any competitive field, poker has its stars, its personalities, its celebrities.

But one of the amazing things about poker is that it is actually possible for an average player to sit down and compete with the “names” of the game. If you’re a basketball fan and worship Kobe Bryant, you’re never going to find yourself D-ing him up on the court, but if you play poker and love Barry Greenstein, you really might find yourself across the table from him in a tournament some day. And even if you did somehow find yourself in a game of one-on-one against Kobe, you wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance. You wouldn’t even score a point. But if you find yourself in a tournament against Barry Greenstein, it is completely possible that you’ll beat him in a hand. Hell, you can even knock him completely out of the tournament, and take home a signed copy of “Ace on the River” as proof!

The more you move up in stakes, the more likely to are to find yourself competing against the “stars” of poker. As Emil moved up in stakes, I would see and hear about him playing against names that I knew from television, and I was amazed. And that’s when Emil started finding out that just because someone was on TV doesn’t mean they are any good at poker!

One by one he would sit with someone we both watched on ESPN back in 2003 and he would be shocked at their level of play. One by one he would report back to me: “Man, Hellmuth is terrible!” “Man, Matusow is terrible!” “Man, so-and-so is terrible!”

Without exception, the players I knew from TV turned out to be, according to Emil, godawful. He once played a tournament out in L.A. and he sent me a text. “They seated us alphabetically by first name. I made mincemeat out of Eric Lindgren and Eric Seidel!”

It was actually a little sad and disillusioning, kinda like finding out there was no Santa Claus. I had started playing because I thought the players and the lifeastyle were so cool, and now I learn that they’re not actually any good. Suddenly I had almost no poker heroes left.

But I did have at least one: Phil Ivey. Every year Norman Chad kept saying how awesome Phil Ivey was, how he was the best, etc. etc. At least I could hope and believe that Phil Ivey actually was the real deal.

Then, in the summer of 2007, Jay and Emil rocketed up to the nosebleeds, and soon enough they were playing 200/400 and 300/600 on Full Tilt against the one and only Phil Ivey.

And they started beating the shit out of him.

I couldn’t believe it. They were up mid-six-figures against him almost immediately. Emil would sit at tables waiting for him, and when Ivey sat in, Emil would walk through the apartment cackling. “We got Ivey!!!” He did the same thing whenever some megafish European whale sat against him. I couldn’t believe he viewed Phil Ivey as an opponent the same way he viewed some random rich businessman. I even saved this screenshot, because I just couldn’t believe that anyone, let alone the kid who was my roommate, would want to make sure he could play Ivey more.

(Click for make big)

“You’re excited to play Ivey?” I asked. “Isn’t he supposed to be awesome?”

“No, dude!” Emil laughed. “Ivey’s terrible!”

That was it. I had no heroes left. Apparently everyone in the world is terrible at poker.

I stopped asking about who was good and who wasn’t, because I now knew that everyone was terrible. No point in asking. They kept playing Ivey. I think Ivey ended up winning a bunch back from Jay and Emil, (he might have actually finished up against them, six figures isn’t exactly a huge amount at 200/400 and 300/600, it turns out), but I didn’t really pay close attention. Shortly afterwards, Jay and Emil had a brutal downswing at 500/1000 and stopped playing the nosebleeds for a while.

Years later I read an interview somewhere about how Phil Ivey plays online poker. Someone was saying (it might have been Phil Gordon) that, online, Ivey didn’t really care about the money so much, he just wanted to learn how the online hotshots played their game and defeat them. There was a story of how Ivey sat against some highly feared online limit player with the goal of making the player refuse to play him. Apparently Ivey lost over a million to this online limit player while studying his game, then Ivey won it all back plus more and finally, this highly feared limit player refused to play him anymore. There was a quote in the interview that went something like, “Ivey will sit in and lose a couple hundred thousand to these kids, just to see what they do and why, and then he’ll win it all back and then some.”

I thought to myself, “Wait a minute…”

One day around that time I was hanging out with Emil and some other high stakes players and they were all talking shop: discussing results, opponents, poker news, players. I think Isildur1 might have been the big story at the time, and everyone was talking about durrrr, Antonius, Ivey, everyone involved in the matches. But this time, all these high stakes players had nothing but glowing things to say about Ivey, and Ivey’s game.

Even, to my utter amazement, Emil.

Once again, I couldn’t believe it. But this time, I was incredulous for the completely opposite reason. Two years ago, I couldn’t believe that all these poker players were bad. But this time, after years of hearing how awful everyone apparently really was, I couldn’t believe anyone, anywhere was, according to Emil, actually any good at poker at all, let alone (to judge from the way everyone was talking) really, really good.

By this point there were a steady stream of Ivey stories online. The $16 million drubbing of Andy Beal, games of craps played at stratospheric stakes, effusive testimonials to his skill from every top cash pro, bracelets and bracelet bets won…check out the “Phil Ivey is the Stone Cold Nuts” thread on 2p2 and you will find some awesome stories (e.g. Ivey is talking to Barry Greenstein about Super Bowl bets. Ivey: I basically broke even, won about 800. Barry: Well, which is it, you broke even, or you won $800,000? Ivey: What’s the difference?). Everything seemed to point to Ivey actually being the real deal, the best and coolest goddamn gambler on Planet Earth.

The only lingering doubt I had was what Emil had said about him two years prior.

So on that day, two years later, I asked him again. “Emil, so Ivey’s good?”

Emil must have learned something in those matches against Ivey after I stopped paying attention, because this time Emil said something he’d never said about any player ever before.

“Ivey’s awesome.” Emil grinned, “Ivey’s the Man.”

I was reading a thread on 2p2 the other day titled, “What were the 2+2 forums like in the beginning?” I actually avoided the thread for a while because it was in NVG and I assumed it would just be full of dumb jokes and bad information (“NVG: Not Very Good”) but when the thread had grown I decided to check it out and it actually had some interesting stories from longtime posters that took me back to what poker and the forums were like in the early and mid 2000s.

Then there was a post from a newer poster who asked, “All you posters with early registration dates who aren’t poker millionaires: what happened?”

I registered on 2p2 in December 2004. To put that in perspective, that’s before durrrr registered there. And yet I am not a poker millionaire. So what happened?

A lot of players romanticize the early-to-mid-2000s to an almost mythical degree. They think, “man, if I could just go back to those early Party days, pre-UIGEA, I would grind 28 hours a day and stack more cheddar than a Kraft employee with OCD! I’d be a millionaire!” Maybe so. But I have met more than my share of poker millionaires, and I’d like to share my thoughts about what it seems to take to become one. Even if you started back in the good old days.

In addition to Jay and Emil, I’ve met a lot of other really successful online players over the years. Longtime high stakes players and posters on 2p2 seem to form a pretty tight-knit community. I think it’s because they are all veterans of a very specialized and unique set of experiences and opportunities and that, in a way, bonds them together. Kinda like the soldiers in Band of Brothers, except instead of reminiscing about fighting the Germans at Bastogne, they share recommendations for high-end sushi places in San Fransisco.

Anyways, my point is, when it comes to observing poker millionaires, I think I have a pretty reasonable sample size. They are a diverse group, but they all seem to have two things in common. Here is what it appears to take to join their ranks:

1. They’re smart. Like really, really smart. Have you ever been to a party and started talking to someone and then, while they’re saying something remarkably insightful on a dense or complicated topic, think to yourself, “Damn, this is a smart dude!”? Well, when THAT guy goes to a party and talks to Phil Galfond or Ariel Schneller, THAT guy says, “Damn! these are some really smart fucking dudes!”

2. They’ve worked incredibly hard. The next time you read a “well” post from a sucessful online pro, read it closely. I guarantee that when they describe how they rose through the ranks they will talk about an extended period of time when they were “obsessed” with poker. Every single well post I’ve read mentions a fanatical period early in their career where they had to learn everything they could about the game. They’ll describe how they voraciouslty read forums, endlessly talked about hands and line options and opponents and situations with other similarly obsessed players, and ground out thousands and thousands and thousands of hands.

Back when Emil and I used to play at a weekly dormroom game in college, Emil would play a hand, then leap from his chair to play a few hands online at his desk, then run back to the table when the action returned to him. I remember going to his room to try and drag him out to some party sophomore year only to find him somehow 14-tabling on two 17" monitors back in early 2004. Back before I knew him that well, even though there were a lot of guys that played in our dorm game, Emil was the only one who was, “the poker guy”, and while I was out flunking music theory, he and flawless_victory and Prevaricator and AZK and two dozen others were figuring out who to three-bet against, when, and why, and it was only after they had worked their games inside and out that they started making graphs with tall green lines that snaked to the top right of the screen on shiny, poker-bought 30" monitors.

So even back then, even in the good old days when a table with an average VPIP of 35% was a bad table, nobody who was just “pretty good”, or “decent”, or “solid” ended up becoming a millionaire. It still took a smart, talented person who worked their ass off. Sorry guys, in the end, poker’s just like everything else.

So does that mean the “good old days” really weren’t as great as people say? HELL no. It really was amazing, a true gold rush. With a minimum of awareness and the mere outline of a thought process (i.e., the way I play poker), you could have a three figure hourly and earn thousands and thousands of dollars.

But not millions.

Millions took a little bit more.

If you’ve been to college, or are just a devoted follower of fraternity wisdom, you’ve probably heard the saying, “Beer before liquor, never been sicker”. Early on in my collegiate poker career, I coined a saying of my own: “Beer before poker, never been broker.”

Which is a shame, because gambling and alcohol are vices which go together so comfortably, like marijuana and White Castle cheeseburgers. Most of my best memories of Vegas aren’t actually memories at all. They start with a cocktail before dinner, then there’s a flash where I’m sitting at a poker table in the bowels of some dirty casino, and then nothing until I remember staggering out the next morning with a rumpled dress shirt and a dazed expression as the blistering Vegas sun beats down like the vengeful eye of an angry God.

Good times.

I used to love going out drinking with friends in college, then sneaking away at the end of the night to go to an underground NYC poker club and playing, hammered, until dawn. For some reason, drunk John thinks he is excellent at getting people to fold to his big bluffs. Also, drunk John thinks people in underground NYC poker clubs fold, ever. He is wrong on both counts. So most of these late night excursions ended badly for our intrepid hero.

Hence the adage, “beer before poker…”

Yet after years of consistently negative feedback, I still frequently found myself on Full Tilt late at night, inebriated and playing 60/55/5 and being stunned at the calldowns opponents would make. (“Sure, two pair is good THIS time, but FYI I could have EASILY had a runner runner straight there, rounders6969, if that IS your real name!”).

Eventually I instinctively settled on a compromise where I would play much lower stakes if I logged in drunk. It wasn’t as thrilling when I won, but, well, I didn’t win often anyway. This low stakes rule became a sane policy that I never wavered from.

Except one night, I was in the midst of a hellish downswing that had been mutilating my 6k 200NL bankroll and sent me through that most hated practice of the poker player, moving down to lower stakes. (Shudder) Oh the continued shame of playing pots half as big and winning money half as quickly as you know you would be winning in a just and merciful Universe, the Universe you were living in back when you were winning at higher stakes!

So that night, after being out drinking and lamenting my luck to be in this UNjust and indifferent Universe in which we all find ourselves, I was back in the apartment and opened up Tilt and Stars to see just how far I had fallen from my 6k baseline. I was disheartened by what I found. Pokerstars had around $1,600. Full Tilt had a lousy six hundred bucks.

Fuck it, I decided. To hell with my “penny-ante poker while drinking” rule. I am going to play until both of these accounts are at the next thousand-dollar mark, or bust them both trying. I fired up two tables of 600NL.

And that is the last thing I remember.

I awoke the next morning, still fully dressed and lying on top of my covers. In waves, the events of the previous night returned to me, culminating in my gambling decision fueled by alcohol and rage, (which is on the short list for the worst kind of decision you can make). Shitshitshitshitshit. I nervously crawled to my computer and checked my balances.

Pokerstars: $2,033.68
Full Tilt: $1,089.10

Success. Against all odds and logic, success. I couldn’t believe it.

At first I was just incredibly relieved. But after it sunk in that I had just had my best day in a month while blackout drunk, I felt like King Gangster Pimp the Awesome. I even had to coin a new phrase:

Drinking and winning is the best kind of sinning.

Way back in the fall of 2005, I was living with Emil and our mutual friend Tom. We were all in our senior year at NYU. We all had pretty light schedules and a short commute to class. We also all played poker seriously. Not surprisingly, none of us graduated on time.

But this post is not about our lackadaisical academic attitudes. This post is about what happened when Tom and I convinced Emil to buy his first plasma TV.

Mind you, way back in 2005 most people didn’t have flat screen televisions. They were still seen as a luxury item, and even though Emil was a big winner at 5/10 and up at the time, the only TV in our apartment was the 27" CRT I bought from my Dad for $75 the summer before freshman year.

Anyways, the three of us were chugging along that fall, playing poker and thinking occasionally that maybe one of us should go to class sometime, when Emil found a fish at (what was then for him) super high stakes, 50/100 I think. Emil ended up winning about $40,000, his biggest win to date, and Tom and I were floored.

“Dude, you gotta get a plasma TV for the apartment!” We said. Emil kinda shrugged. “I dunno, I don’t feel like going through all that hassle. Tell you what, if you two do the research and figure out what the best TV deal is, then yeah, I’ll get it.”

That seemed more than fair to the two of us. So we spent the next three days reading online reviews, checking prices, and trekking over to the local J&R Electronics to find the best TV. After due diligence, the two of us told Emil the best deal was a Panasonic 42" model that cost around 2k and told him he should get that one.

He kinda grinned a little and said, “Hey, what if we got two and put them in the same room, one on top of the other?”

Tom and I stood there, confused as hell. “Um, why would we need two TVs on the same wall?”

Emil elaborated on what had clearly been a long-percolating plan: “We could hook a computer up to one of them, and then I could 4-table on one TV while I watched sports on the other!”

Tom and I stood there, slack-jawed, contemplating the absurdity of this for a few minutes. We then explained to him how ridiculous that would be. Considering that Emil already had a laptop that he used to play poker while he was watching sports on TV, it took a surprising amount of convincing to talk him out of spending two thousand dollars on a TV we absolutely did not need.

But we did it. Emil found the TV model online that Tom and I had painstakingly researched, ordered it, and all was well with the world.

Until two days later when Emil came out of his room and said, “Yo, I just bought the second TV.”

Sure enough, a few days later two 42" Panasonic plasma TV’s showed up. And sure enough, we mounted both on the wall, one above the other. Emil was giddy. Tom and I just shook our heads. This was pretty unnecessary.

But, we had to admit, pretty fuckin’ cool.

We connected a computer to the top TV and got a wireless keyboard and mouse. Then, and only then, did we realize that, from eight feet away, the tables are too small to comfortably multitable, even on a big TV. I think Emil played about 30 hands before he said, “Ah, fuck it.” and grabbed his laptop.

So after a thirty minute experiment, we found ourselves saddled with a two thousand dollar conversation piece.

After that it was always fun to watch people as they entered the apartment for the first time.

We eventually found a little use for the second TV – we’d watch TV on the bottom one and play a video game on the top one, for example, or a movie on one and a muted sports game on the other. I downloaded an NES emulator and started playing Contra and MegaMan 2 again, and I finally beat Tyson in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out (I had to do it with save-states at the end of each round and loading over and over and over, but I knocked him out, dammit! Let ten-year-old me finally have that victory.) Ninja Gaiden, by the way, is still fucking impossible. I remember playing two or three mindless comedy movies back-to-back on the bottom TV while I stared at the top TV playing Ninja Gaiden over and over and over and still not being able to beat it.

Did I mention I didn’t graduate on time?

But the laziest and most decadent use I found for the second TV was in the mornings. Up until about ten a.m., sunlight would cast a glare on the bottom TV, making it just slightly harder to watch. When that happened, I would just flip to the top TV and watch there. Then, when the glare was gone, I’d just switch it back. I did it for years and I remember thinking it was funny and absurd every single time.

For three years our apartment just had two giant TVs in the same room and on the same wall. After a while you get used to it. Human beings are, after all, remarkably adaptive.

Once, Emil was laying on the couch and staring at the ceiling. “You know,” he said, “If we got another TV and put it on the ceiling I could watch TV while lying here like this.”

We talked him out of it, though. Come on. That would have been crazy.

(This is a continuation of a project I started earlier to spend twenty two dollar bills and notice how people react)

Bill 6 – I joined some friends at Henry Public in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. The bartender was a snappily dressed Brooklyn type complete with a “Mad Men” style skinny tie and a vest. After waiting ten minutes to get his attention in an uncrowded bar at 5 p.m., I tipped him a Two for some exotic draught and got a barely raised eyebrow in return. Bust.

Bill 7 – I hoped for better luck the next day when I went to gimme coffee!, my favorite coffee shop in the city. The girl behind the counter was that adorable and enchanting New York City coffee girl type that seem to find jobs anywhere that has a Proust quote written on a wall in pink chalk. What do the ads for these jobs say? “Wanted: slender, attractive brunette with Lisa Loeb glasses and ineffable charm to serve coffee to young men that own at least three Apple products and openly wear scarves. Ironic tattoos a plus. Fans of Top 40 music need not apply”

I tipped a Jefferson for my coffee and she nodded in appreciation and we chatted briefly. The other barista – who was, naturally, a rail-thin young man with a goatee and a full sleeve tattoo – was impressed as well and started telling me about a strip club he had been to that handed out two dollar bills instead of singles so you end up tipping the girls twice as much.

I almost mentioned that I had heard that if you tour Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s famous estate, the ticket price is $3 so they can give Twos as change if you pay with a five. But I caught myself, realizing that bringing up such trivial nerditude in the presence of such StuffWhitePeopleLike-style New York City hipness would be like farting at a funeral.

“It’s nowhere near as good as this strip club out in San Fransisco, though. All these cute girls with cool tattoos…love it.” continued my sleeved new friend.

“Good to know!”

So I left the coffee shop with both a delicious coffee and a West Coast strip club recommendation. I can honestly say I did not expect a Two to buy me that.

Bill 8 – That weekend I traveled home to the Washington D.C. area for my father’s birthday. I went to buy a Metrocard from a vending machine and I noticed my fare was $1.85.

Hmmmm, I wonder….

I slipped the precious Two into the cold, impersonal vending machine with a sense of trepidation. Considering how highly I have valued two dollar bills my whole life, the idea of losing one for a Metrocard made me a little uncomfortable. But I knew I was compelled to try, for the good of the project.

Bzzrt. The machine spit the bill back. Phew.

That meant that bill number eight had to wait until I was back in New York and went to a brand new pizza place that was running a Grand Opening Promotion: 2 slices for 2 dollars.

2 perfect.

I strode in proudly, ordered my slices, proferred my unusual payment, and waited.

The proprietor took the Two, looked it over wearily, and put it in the tray without a word. Frankly, he looked like he was slowly realizing that he was not going to make any money selling slices at a dollar apiece and he was questioning every decision he had made that lead him to this point. He had a dull, listless stare that even a Two couldn’t fix.

Oh well. Pizza was all right, at least.

Bill 9 – I was hanging out with an old work colleague I hadn’t seen in a while at Local 182. I tipped a Two on two beers and got the by-now familiar bartender doubletake. Then she looked up at me and said, “Ha, I hope you didn’t fake this!”

Hmm.

Now, I know it can be difficult to come up with something clever on the spot (boy, do I know. Exhibit A: me saying, “You too!” in my ‘Fast Reversal’ post.) But the idea that someone would go through the trouble and risk of couterfeiting only to produce a very low-value obscure bill was a particularly unusual one. I don’t have a photo of my reaction, so I give you this lolcat as a rough approximation of my facial expression.

Bill 10 – The next night I was hanging out with a different group of old work friends at The Dove Parlour. When the what-are-you-up-to question came up, I mentioned this two dollar bill project and some of the fun and interesting reactions I was getting. “Oh, how cool!” they said. “Try it here! Try it here!”

So I swaggered up to the bar with a new friend to order some drinks. I whipped out a crisp Two and my new friend watched eagerly. I tipped the bartenderess and she grabbed it and tossed it casually in a jar. Bust.

My new friend was very disappointed. “That happens sometimes.” I said sheepishly.

So there went the next five bills. If nothing else, the Two seems to be the cheapest way to start a conversation, either with someone who’s just received one or with people who want to hear about the project. However, the callous, dispassionate nature of the female New York City bartender continues to be a disappointment. But then again, it always was.

(Note: I’ve been working on this project a little and I think this blog is the best avenue for its presentation. I have plenty more glamorous poker-entourage stories to tell and this blog will be filled with them soon, but for now, here’s this mini side-project. Enjoy!)

I’ve always really liked money.

Let me explain. I mean, I know everyone likes money. What I mean is I am fascinated by actual US curency. Without checking, I can tell you that the number one appears as a word or number sixteen times on a US one dollar bill. I know that the most money you can have in US coins without having exact change for a dollar is $1.19 (figure out how!). I am one of the only 9% of Americans who can identify the President on the dime as FDR (based on a study from the Institute of Numbers I Just Made Up).

I especially like more obscure pieces of US currency. For a long time I carried around a Kennedy half-dollar, just because. While everyone else was annoyed by their existence, I exchanged paper dollar bills for Susan B. Anthony dollars, then Sacajawea dollars and most recently the new Presidential $1 coins. I know that Salmon P. Chase is on the $10,000 bill and literally not one single other fact about Salmon P. Chase. Frankly, it it could be a person or it could be a disgusting contest involving fish urine. Who knows?

But my favorite piece of American currency is the two dollar bill: common enough that everyone knows it, yet just rare enough that it’s a little special when one pops up. Whenever I came into contact with one, even when I was a little kid, I would hoard it for ages. I have a folded up $2 bill in my wallet right now that has been there for literally years.

There’s just something about the Two that fasincates me. First, the President on the bill is Thomas Jefferson, probably my favorite President. John Kennedy once held an event at the White House to welcome winners of the Nobel Prize. Forty-nine Laureates arrived, and Kennedy greeted them by saying, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

How cool is that?

Then there’s the actual design of the bill itself.

Right below the portrait on the front, unlike any of the other bills, are the words “The United States of America”, which gives the bill a thicker border than its brothers.

And on the back, instead of some lame-ass building, there is an action shot of dozens of founding fathers signing the Declaration of Independence.

EASILY the best reverse of any US note. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to create an awesome banknote, it is time for the US two dollar bill.

Up until recently my experience with two dollar bills was like a passive treasure hunt; I would only encounter one if chance brought one my way. This past Christmas, however, I got the idea to use two dollar bills as stocking stuffers. It went over splendidly and I was thoroughly pleased with the idea.

And that got me thinking. What if I got a bunch of two dollar bills from the bank and just spent them around New York City?

So that’s what I decided to do. I went to the bank and got twenty crisp, unspent two dollar bills. I intend to dole them out and see how people react to this beautiful and underrepresented note, and record my Jeffersonial adventures here.

The Adventure Begins: The First Five Bills

The night after I went to the bank I had tickets to go to the Comedy Cellar near NYU.

Bill # 1 – Before a show at the Comedy Cellar, my sense of humor was not at its peak receptivity level. Luckily, I was a stone’s throw from Off the Wagon, which has $1 drafts on Monday nights. A perfect place to start my experiment.

I walked into the bar and ordered a $1 Coors Light and paid for it with a $1 bill. Then I pulled out a Two and gave it to the bartender as a tip. I know what you’re thinking – why didn’t I just pay for the beer with a Two in the first place? I mean, it seems like something the Two is PERFECT for – one dollar beer, one dollar tip! Well, young friends, since this was to be the very first Two spent in this experiment – a significant honor and distinction – I wanted to make sure it was used as an especially generous tip.

…also, it didn’t occur to me to just use the Two in the first place until I already bought the beer with a single. Sorry, but I was thrown by having beer be one dollar in the first place. Who the hell has one dollar beer in New York City? I mean, come on!

Anyways, when I handed the Two to the bartender, it was like a switch got flipped and he changed from zombielike New York barnteder Stony McBlankface to the guy who just saw his best friend walk through the front door. “Hey, look at this! A $2 bill! I haven’t seen one in ages! How about that!”

We talked for a bit about how convenient the Two is and how we wished there were more in circulation and other currency-related details. Then he said, “What’s your name? I’m Randall.” I don’t remember the last time a New York City bartender volunteered a name to me. I told him I was John and he said, “Nice to know you, John, your next draft is on me.”

And it was. He poured me a free beer and even remembered me when I returned to the bar hours later after the comedy show. “Hey, Two Dollar John! How’s it going! What can I getcha?”

One bill spent, one free drink earned, one lifelong friend made. This experiment is starting out all right, if I do say so myself.

Bill # 2 – After the comedy show, my friends and I walked out of the Cellar right as a clown in a bright yellow suit towing about forty balloons came walking by, telling jokes and asking for tips. This was too good to pass up. I whipped out Two number two and handed it to him. “Hope it brings you luck.” I said. His eyes popped. “Whoa, haven’t seen one of these in a while. Thanks!”

He posed for a picture with me!

I call that a win.

As I had with my new bartender friend, I happened to run into my new clown friend a few hours later. I was walking with some friends and we passed him hanging out in front of 1849. He remembered me and we ended up talking for a good ten minutes. He asked what I did, I said I did a little writing, and he said we should do a project together (!). He gave me his real name and phone number!

Now when my female friends complain that “some clown gave me his number last night.” I can say, “I know exactly what you mean.”

Bills #3, 4, and 5 – After the comedy show I found myself at Off the Wagon with an intense, burning need to play some beerpong. Step one was procuring a pitcher of beer, which is eight dollars on Mondays. I checked my wallet and, to my horror, found only $9 – three remaining Twos and three ones. That doesn’t leave much for a tip on an eight dollar pitcher, but I thought, no worries! I have the magical power of the Two Dollar Bill on my side! And based on the success I’ve been having with individual Twos, paying for something with three Twos at once should be explosively good!

So I ordered the pitcher from the lovely bartenderess by the upstairs bar and I put on a sly smile. “I’m sorry, I can only tip you a dollar on the pitcher, but I’ve got three two-dollar bills. I hope that counts for something.”

She gave me the most forced, fake, tight-lipped “you-undertipping-douche” smile I have ever seen.

“Thanks.”

…if it were any colder the beer would have frozen.

Okay. So apparently two dollar bills aren’t magical to everyone (and they don’t make up for a shitty tip, even if you use multiple bills). Good to know. From now on the Twos shall be dispensed individually for maximum positive life impact. Lesson learned.

When the night was over I had spent five Twos, made a few new friends, and received a free beer. I declared it to be a successful beginning to the experiment and I look forward to seeing what other fun our third President can get me into.

It’s All About the Jeffersons, What!