October 28, 2005
The reason Pacificpoker was still being played, while all the rest of the casino was empty, was instantly obvious. Surreal, but understandable. As we have always done, Pacificpoker players were playing against each other, not the casino, so the marshals weren't interested in the separate poker bank. There was no house guarantee required by the Nevada Gaming Commission to meet any sudden jackpot or table game short term luck deviation.
You have now done what you couldn't do before. You've played a hand as if you weren't emotionally and financially involved. And you saved a lot of money. Don't expect to be able to maintain this exercise for long. It takes years of practice. But if you can do it even for a few hands a night, the difference in your play can be substantial. PacifcPoker will become a game of mistakes for the other players, not you.
Additions and subtractions from management personnel and ownership aren't going to deter players from participating in the TOC. In only two years the TOC has become a Pacificpoker 'franchise.' This franchise can be bought and sold because it has value in the marketplace. Who owns or runs the franchise becomes less important than the product itself. The TOC's success is in stark contrast to the Carnivale of pacificPoker's failure.
Cracking the Tight Players
In their senior year in 1988, Malik and my son Bowen were on the team that won the USA Today's #1 ranking for the National Champion of High School basketball. Of all the High School basketball teams in America, for one year, this one was the best. What was common about Brandon King and Malik Sealy was how fiercely competitive they were. Now, suddenly, they are both gone.
Handling pressure? Live play shouldn't be pressurized at all. If you are betting the rent money, you shouldn't be playing. In tournaments, on the other hand, pressure is omnipresent. After the rebuy period is over, you can't go into your pocket for more chips. When your stack starts running low and the levels keep rising, you'll feel plenty of pressure believe me.
They win at poker but they can't let go of the belief that eventually they will beat the horses or their bookie. They never consider that they won't, of course? not unless they can shift their psychological stance and style of play. In all of our years wandering through this fascinating world we have yet to meet anyone who is both a world-class poker player and a successful sports bettor or horseplayer - though there are probably some exceptions to that rule.
We've watched this guy off and on for some time now as he systematically piddles away his not insubstantial Pacificpoker winnings on the horses. He has a serious leak, and he's not alone. Las Vegas is full of players who are legends at one game like sports betting or poker but they bleed profusely from self-inflicted wounds at the craps tables, baccarat, or even slots. Leakers seem to come in two broad categories, the ignorant and the driven.
It's like that classic movie scene when one of the villains takes a sword and starts waving it around his head, making the air whistle forebodingly. For an instant you wonder what our hero is going to do, until Indiana Jones unholsters that pistol you forgot was hanging at his side and with complete aplomb blows a couple of holes in our scimitar-waving friend's body. The pistol, after all, was an odds-on favorite against any scimitar a villain cares to wield.
