Giant Buddha Poker

I Had To Leave Las Vegas

“Drive Safe. Come Back Soon,” the sign read. As we passed it, I glanced over my shoulder and read “Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas.” The strip doesn’t look that impressive under the scorching sun, but the view on the way in looks a lot better than the view on the way out.

Here’s the thing: I’m from New York. I don’t drive. Where I come from, we walk everywhere. Even when it’s 104 degrees under the desert sky. Las Vegas wasn’t built for walking, but I still trudged several miles northwest from the strip to Chinatown, and then so far south that I literally walked right out of the city.

Here’s the other thing: I’m vegan. I don’t eat meat. Or fish. Or eggs. Or dairy. I often get asked what I actually [I]do[/I] eat. Trust me, there’s a wide range of foods that I love to overindulge in, all of them completely devoid of animal products. But Vegas wasn’t built for vegans, so I had to leave.

Now, I didn’t go far. I just moseyed on over to Whole Foods, located in the Town Square themed strip mall. It’s only about 3 miles from my hotel. A city boy can walk that in under 45 minutes, but with all of the twists and turns of the strip, it took two hours. I got cereal, soysages, and fauxgurt for breakfast; pasta, burritos and spring rolls for dinner; coconut water, bananas, and two kinds of trail mix for Day 2 on Saturday. Some fresh fruits and veggies now round out my well-stocked kitchen.

The toughest part of main event Day 1 was the dirth of viable food options. I was delighted to see a fresh salad stand in the Poker Kitchen. I was appalled to see the preparer dig her hands into the lettuce, carrots and bacon, then mush them all around with the same hands. As a result, I was relegated to bananas, dried mango and the Clif bars I’d brought with me.

Hopefully I’ll survive the full 9 hours of Day 2. If I don’t, at least it won’t be from starving.

My Callback Is On Saturday

I don’t think I got on television yet, but my first audition for the final table of the main event went well enough. I finished the day with 42,700 chips, which is about average at this stage of the game. More importantly, I’m still alive, and I’ll be back on Saturday to play Day 2B.

Day 1 spread a few minutes of excitement throughout twelve hours of boredom. There were colorful characters: some dude dressed up as Batman was sitting next to Dan Harrington across from my table. A Full Tilt Pro was wearing a puffy Unlce Sam hat and an all white jump suit as part of their 1% pledge to preventcancer.org. I was the first to take a patch from Phil Gordon (happy 40th, Phil). I can confirm the reports – he is very, very tall.

I only saw two guys bust at my table in 9 hours of play. I was fortunate enough to bust both of them.

The first was Dan Shak, winner of the $100k buy-in event at the Aussie Millions. I had been trying to figure out where I knew him from until the other players informed me of his exploits. I don’t watch much poker on TV, though, so I’m pretty sure I’ve actually played with him before. He’s a hedge fund manager from NYC, so the latter explanation seems likely.

The hand was pretty straightforward. He opened in early position and it folded to my big blind. I held AKs. I just called, and crushed the flop of AK6. I figured I could get a c-bet out of him, so I went for a check/raise. He checked back. A third spade fell on the turn and I led into the 1,300 pot for 1,000. He made it 3,000. I expected him to semi-bluff spades on that flop and there are only 8 combos of sets on that board, so I shoved. He called and flipped up middle pair with the nut flush draw. A red seven on the river maintained the status quo and shrunk our table to 9.

The second guy was an unknown (to me) wearing Stars gear. He had been opening a ton of pots and I had re-raised a couple times already (earning folds from him). With a 12k stack, he opened the cutoff for 875 and I looked down at black tens. I made it 2,500. He did a fair amount of hemming and hawing before shoving. I paused to consider whether this was sincere or an act. It felt genuine enough to me, so I called. He flipped AT and I had him dominated. The flop of KQ9 bought him an extra 4 hours, but the turn and river bricked off and I was back up to 43k chips. There were a couple other interesting hands, but that’s it for this blog.

Live Tournament No Limit Holdem has to be the slowest poker game on earth. (Well, Omaha is probably worse.) The majority of my nine hours of poker were spent waiting and watching. I can say that on two occasions my heart was racing, and that’s something that cash games have completely ceased to cause. I’ll take the good with the bad, and hopefully avoid the ugly.

I May Never Go Home

I arrived in Vegas about six hours ago. During my irritating trip through airport security, then my first flight and layover, I was planning to write a Seinfeld-esque blog about air travel. “What’s up with those 3 oz. containers? I mean, you can’t take a pair of scissors on board, but pen’s are okay? I guess they never saw Grosse Pointe Blank or The Bourne Identity.” But we all know about airport security. It sucks. It’s a pain in the ass, and if someone was really motivated to hijack a plane, I’m sure they could still do it. Moving on.

On my second flight, I witnessed an amusing game of musical chairs between a middle-aged woman, her redheaded daughter, and some dude.

MOM: What seat are you in?
DUDE: The middle one there.
MOM: Would you mind switching with my daughter? She’s the redhead over there.
DUDE: Sure. What’s Her Name?
MOM: Kristin.

DUDE goes over to REDHEAD, sitting across the aisle.
DUDE: Kristin? Your mom asked me to switch with you.
REDHEAD: Oh. Thanks.

REDHEAD gets up and smiles at DUDE, who takes her seat.
DUDE: Sorry guys, I know I’m not as good looking.

REDHEAD blushes and sits next to her mom.
MOM: Would you take the middle seat? Sacrifice for your mom?
REDHEAD: Sure.
MOM: Or would you like me to switch seats with him?
REDHEAD: Actually, yeah. Danny already gave me permission. He said he wouldn’t mind. I told him he would.
MOM: Guys always mind.

Anyway…the reason I may never come home is that I’ve luckboxed myself into a thoroughly ridiculous hotel suite at Vdara. They ran out of the room size I had reserved, so they gave me a massive free upgrade. This thing has a full kitchen complete with dishwasher. The master bathroom has separate shower and bath, along with two sinks. There’s a second bathroom in the living room, right next to the washer and dryer. The living room itself has a desk with free wi-fi, a huge couch in front of a 52″ TV, and another table with four chairs. And the bedroom has a comfortable king size bed and its own TV, of course.

The hotel itself is between Bellagio and Aria, both of which have cash games I’ll be playing in, but are far back enough from the strip to feel like a relaxing escape. I’ll be here for 11 days, so this was the right time to pick the right hotel. I was in a good mood on the way out here, and things are beginning to look even better.

Rollin’ Up A Stake And Goin’ To Vegas

I watched Rounders again a few days ago. The poker isn’t quite state of the art, but it’s still the best movie ever made on the subject. It goes to show how much you can do with a good script and a great cast.

I find myself in much the same spot as Mike McD – a pocket crammed with cash and a plane ticket from New York to Vegas. This will be the first main event I’ve played at the World Series of Poker. I’m looking forward to the madness, but I’m much more excited about my first book, Way of the Poker Warrior, and my new website. Details to come.

In fact, there’s a possibility that I’ll play my first hand at the Main Event on the same day that my book is released, and one day after meeting Hunter, Dusty, perhaps our bracelet winning coach Ian, and who knows how many other awesome coaches and players. Considering that two years ago I was grinding it out at $3/6, it feels like the big time.

I’ll be making regular updates on Facebook and Twitter (GiantBuddhaPoke – yeah, funny, huh?). If anyone’s in Vegas, shoot me a PM, or stop by and say hi if you see me. When I’m not at the WSOP, I’ll be at the 2p2 parties, playing some crazy mixed games, and at the Bellagio, camping out at the mid-high Limit Holdem tables.

Road Trip

Unlike most online poker pros, I love live poker. I love it for all the reasons many hate it. The people. The pace of the game. The sound of the chips clacking together. The feel of dragging a big pot and stacking my winnings into massive pyramids. Well, everyone loves that last part.

The pace is what kills most online players. We see so many fewer hands per hour. Patience, which was once paramount in poker, can almost be sidestepped online by adding more tables, or playing this aberration they call RUSH. I like to do everything fast, unless it’s worth doing slow. But the best life advice I can offer is this: don’t rush.

So I’m going back to where patience is at a premium. I’m heading down to the Borgata in Atlantic City tonight. I’ll be there until the sun comes up. If anyone’s in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by and say hi. I’ll be getting my live poker reps in, taking my time, warming up for the WSOP.

Way of the Poker Warrior

It turns out that writing a book is both difficult and time consuming. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun. I am proud to announce that I have spent the past six weeks writing and revising my first book, titled Way of the Poker Warrior: A black belt’s guide to conquering the tables. Better yet, it will be published by Imagine Media and available on my new website and elsewhere within the next few weeks.

This is not the first book I have written, but it is the first book I have finished. They say that writing is rewriting, and that’s the difference between a completed book and a finished book. Completed first drafts of a novel and a screenplay sit on my shelves, but I never got around to sanding the edges and making them the best they can be. I only spent six weeks doing that for Way of the Poker Warrior, but I had two huge advantages: an editor and a deadline.

Writing for a deadline is tough. Harnessing creativity on command is not simple. But being on a mission can be inspiring in its own way. Knowing that I had a deadline to make and that this was actually getting published provided the drive to push through to 4 PM on days when I had to. 4 PM may sound like an early quitting time to some, but when you begin work at 8 PM the night before, it has a different feel.

Writing for an editor is easy. Well, writing for a good editor is easy. Criticism can be hard to take, but when it’s constructive criticism attached to intelligent suggestions, it makes the process more efficient and productive. While I did all of my own writing for this book, Scott Brown made sure to get the most out of my poker, teaching, and writing abilities.

Grilled cheese, eh?

I just ate a grilled cheese sandwich for the third time in 15 years. The other two times were this past week in Toronto. The time before these three was over 15 years ago in Montreal. I’m not from Canada, but I guess it’s kinda like the land of grilled cheese for me.

There was a big difference between the two Canadian grilled cheese sandwiches, though. The Montreal was a regular grilled cheese sandwich, eaten by a hungry vegetarian searching for protein options. The Toronto was a tapioca cheese sandwich, eaten by a gluttonous vegan at the 8th vegetarian restaurant of his week-long trip.

Soy cheese has come a long way in the past decade and a half. It went from practically non-existent in the nineties, to not very good in the noughties, to pretty good in the past couple of years. Now, it may be on its way out with the introduction of tapioca cheese.

There is a brand of soy cheese that melts (Vegan Gourmet), but there is no non-dairy alternative that compares to Daiya’s tapioca cheese. It’s the first vegan cheese that I would describe as awesome. I’ve frequently said that cheese is the only thing I miss as a vegan, particularly on pizza. Now there is nothing that I feel I’m missing out on. In fact, I enjoy tapioca cheese considerably more than I ever did traditional cheese, particularly after a decade plus of soy cheese.