+1200

As you approach atlantic city it rises as if from the bowels of the earth, a dark and dingy babylon. It is a sinister place, a boulevard of broken dreams writ large along the jersey coast. I dont know why I come here, it always makes my skin crawl. A casino should be a world of make believe, there should be no old people or ugly people of any kind, only european princes and glamorous call girls so sweet and sophisticated you cant quite believe they are prostitutes. but atlantic city is not like that at all. Its all old people and sad people and decrepit people. They have built a lot of new stores but it still sure aint vegas.

So I came here I held my nose and I won 1200 dollars, well goodie for me. but I still have to take the greyhound bus back so its still not over with. Im putting my money in my shoes thats a given but Im also going to change into my dirtiest t-shirt to make myself as repulsive and disgusting looking as possible. Hopefully that will keep people away from me. You can say that Im being paranoid but if you always assume you are surrounded by criminals nothing bad will happen to you.

Im excited to get back to New York City. I cant wait to see my girl and I feel like Bruce Springsteen, being in New Jersey and all, and thats a good feeling. Maybe Ill hit up the russian game for a few hours, maybe Ill play in this 10-25 game tomorrow: in other words im rolling with the punches.

+500!



Its 1:48 PM and I have some decisions to make. To go to Atlantic City or to Parx Casino or to find some underground game to play in tonight, but i said to myself "No! Remember now first things first! You are giving up poker to become a celebrated writer. You have to show discipline and recap yesterdays experiences first even if it means suffering through abysmal traffic later." Therefore let me tell you how I did last night. I won 500 dollars which astute readers will have already realized. I am starting a new gimmick by posting my daily results above the blog so you can see how Im doing. I think this will prove very popular. I hope in a few months when I am sick motherfucking baller these results will be talked about by office workers everywhere as they daydream naively about how pleasant is a life built around the easy casino dollar.

Yesterday I went to a russian club with very nice people. There's a guy who always comes in around midnight and hugs and kisses everyone and shakes everyones hand and this time he shakes my hand too so i guess that means that im a regular in the game. He never plays so I dont know what his deal is. Maybe hes the games protector. Maybe he just knows everyone from Brighton Beach high school. Hard to say, but in any case it’s a really very lovely little club and with a waitress that looks exactly like tony sopranos girlfriend Irina.

a couple of hands



Its 5-5 nolimit. guy puts up a 20 dollar Mississippi straddle for some reason (a straddle on the button; now the blinds act first instead of last) 3 people call before it gets to me and I have jack ten suited. I haven't played a hand in awhile and Im trying to play as wild as possible so I make it 120 figuring maybe I can win the pot right now. The guy on my left makes a comment that im so tight and folds saying no one is going to pay me. 3 people call actually. The guy on my left is going crazy as each person calls he shouts "idiots! how can they pay you! idiots!" This is an outrageous breech of poker etiquette and in my head Im like "geez lousie you are spilling the beans here" telling everyone Im playing tight, but I cant help but laugh because it is absurd and its been going on my whole life: I dont play a hand for 3 hours, then I raise and everybody calls. also I have jts and this guy Im sure thinks I would never raise so much with that. The flop is AAA, three aces. On the one hand Ive missed but on the other hand they fear me. I bet 250 like a little over half the pot. It seems like I have a decent chance to win and also I could get called by a hand against which im drawing live. My 3 opponents fold. A bit of an uproar ensues because they tell me to show my hand to win the "high hand" prize which 4 aces or any big pair in the pocket would win and its like 200 bucks so i would definitely show it. I smile and say well what if i dont have anything? and everyone is shocked because they think I am a huge nit who always has it. A big discussion ensues the guy first to act after me saying he had 77 and his fold being critiqued by one of the proprietors of the club who says in that spot he would have auto-shoved any pair. i say "listen ok maybe if you were last to act but the guy with 77 had two people behind him to worry about. and by the way I could have had an ace." To this everyone there says some version of the admonishment "Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda" and I dont introduce them to the concept of a hand range.



This last hand is really shocking. Its 3 handed at the end of the night. its me, a wild russian gambler whose birthday it is and a fat kid who is desperate to get even. He puts up a 20 dollar Mississippi straddle and the russian folds (shockingly since he generally calls 20 dollars blind) i call with ace jack offsuit (I could raise obviously but thats not the point here). The kid on the buttons make it another 35 and he only has like 500 more and hes on monkey tilt desperate for the game not to break so he can get even. I go all in. It could be spewey but I dont want to make a smaller raise and have to take the flop out of position. He goes into the tank and then hes like 'i cant believe im folding this hand" yada yada yada then he folds and flips it over. The Ace of Spades and The King of Spades! I was really shocked since this hand is generally considered the nuts. i didnt know what to do. on the one hand if i show Ace Jack it will really crush his soul which would be nice. on the other hand I dont want to take any steps to teach people anything. you see on the internet they have figured out that no matter how tight you play you can still never have anything, but in live games its the exact opposite, every time i raise they put me on aces.

Ive decided to become a live pro and blog about it. The idea that you don't have to write an entire book to sell it has come into my head and I think I might have the mental and physical tenacity to write one good chapter. Nonetheless I don't trust myself to produce anymore than one blog post at a time. I will post here until I think of a good site name. I don't want to use my actual name even though that might seem logical because my main motivation is that of an attention whore but the problem is that it makes me feel really uncomfortable. Here it feels like my secrets are all imaginary. I think a clever pun is the order of the day but I cant think of one. I thought of endlessgrind.com but its already taken. please feel free to suggest something.

Also I have multiple motivations. For one thing I signed up to take the LSAT (The LAw School Admissions Test) as a way of holding myself hostage. "You clean up and fly right or else" I say When I get high enough to talk to myself in the mirror. We will see what happens with that. In the movie of my life It could be a good foil to my nigh time poker orgies to see me in the next scene in class all tired trying to figure out what promissory estoppel means.

The main thing is that even though there are a lot of great writers and great books in the world I feel like this is a uniquely commercial project. For some reason (and don't ask me to explain it because I cant) People are fascinated by gambling. And although I am not the world champion of poker so far as I can tell there are hardly any books by decent poker players. There are many by writers who also play poker who wrote books but that is not the same thing.

I have to go shortly to the upper west side but I wanted to write this first, to announce quietly that this prodigal son has returned.

Ive already started playing live a bit. I drove to parx casino in philadelphia yesterday and I saw this guy Mike From The Bronx. i remember him asking me one friday night when I was like 19 (and he was like 40) if he should play in a poker game with his absolute last $150; afterall he said "the rent is paid, The frig is full of food and Ive got plenty of cigarettes and i can watch tv until I get paid next wednesday." People are such sick fucks but who can blame them.

Tomorrow I have this 5-5 game with russians form brighton beach. Im up 2k in the game from the last few times so even though it seems risky since Im the only outsider the players are so bad that its worth it. Its like 50 dollars minimum to see a flop usually. You can straddle for any amount under the gun or on the button and people do it constantly for big amounts. The chop is enormous of course around $20 dollars a hand but its ok because its really a huge fucking game. people have thousand in front of them and the blinds are only 5-5. You can just sit there and wait its so absurd. Also please appreciate that you can play super tight to avoid paying the exorbitant rake because with players this bad you get a lot of action no matter what. Also keep in mind that when I say they are russians I dont mean that they are soviets. They are all people from brooklyn fat from the american teat not kill or be killed survivors of Stalingrad. Also it can be educational. The last time I played I learned you can get several years in prison for taking a truck full of cigarettes over state lines with intent to sell. Make what you will of that.

Also in the offing is the promise of a game with some "hedge fund guys" that has my stomach churning. Its 25 25 blinds and a 5k buy in minimum and an insane rake but the players are supposed to be beyond awful. Im hoping in a few months Ill be comfortable playing poker for a lot of money but lately Ive been grinding 1-2 or maximum 2-4 on the internet so im terrified with 2k in front of me. Anyway ill only have about half my own action so i guess my plan is to "feel the fear and do it anyway". My heart is full of stories and people and things to tell you but for now real life intrudes until tomorrow.....

I sold all my netflix at 230 on the way down I just figured id get that out of the way. Still have my gold.....

I just want to be on the record that if you wanted to sell netflix now that competition has developed that would be ok. before there was a lot of talk about competition but there was actually zero competition (competition means you can substitute something for netflix). Now we have hulu plus and just announced amazon. Hulu plus i really cant understand. First of all they have commercials but how come if they are a competitor of netflix, netflix is still able to license nbc universal content? seems as if they are being run as if they were totally separate organization but what i dont understand is is that a strategic choice or is there some anti-trust issue? Anyway I predict hulu will replace television basically which is not really saying much and is not my subject here. i mention it as an armature futurist. Amazon announced last week they are going to have streaming library available for people who have amazon prime. this is dangerous because they have shown tremendous competence in the past. also because they are much bigger they can lose money on the project for awhile if they feel like it.
Netflix is very seasonal although this has been obscured a bit because of their fast growth. So next quarter numbers should be very good at least. Thing is at the moment obviously netflix is the best far and away. But what we had before was a very bullish scenario where people writing articles and talking on television were just copying each others homework saying the space had so much competition - and obviously the ability to buy movies a la cart is not the same as a subscription service because it is is so much more expensive.....and remember PEOPLE HAVE CHILDREN. freakin pay all your bills freakin kids still gonna want a la cart movies every night. cant have that be the norm or you gonna be spending a lot of money. Also on the subject of children when we are thinking about hulu plus having commercials aside from the fact that this sucks i think its much more upsetting for parents. I mind watching commercials a lot less than id mind having my sweet little defenseless children watch them - especially when you think about how its gonna just make them nag you for more stuff.
Short numbers came out today 12.4 million shares short up from 11.3 but this only covers the period till feb 15th and obviously knowing the last two weeks would be a lot more interesting since we were like over 240 on the 15th and cratered since then. (Obviously the run from 220 to 240 had a very short squezzy feel imho but annoying we are now at 206).
So to summarize you could sell now because this absurd thing of people saying there is competition when there is none is over.
Personally im going to go down with the ship at least till 180 since as an armature chartist seems like should be a significant level.
Obviously there is a lot more that I could say but I am late for some appointments. I just wanted to be on the record with this.
(Oh man haven't talked about the criterion collection.....well maybe next time if anybody cares......)

gld last trade 118.20 I predict will reach 130 within 35 calender days.

I just want to get the ball rolling here about netflix.

By now im sure i only have a few readers left which is how i like it - no one trampling my flower beds trying to look at me while i work (believe me its no fun having groupies).

I just want to start posting to get back into things.


I dont know how much time you have spent thinking about netflix. probably not a lot. In brief its like this. The compelling thing about netflix is the astounding value. For $8.99 a month you can stream unlimited content that is growing and growing. with all the recent deals it seems that almost everyone is gonna have their content on netflix as long as its not super new (28 day wait for new movies).

For the time being it seems nothing will be able to compare to the streaming library that netflix has to offer. We will see if msos and hulu or whatever can really get there shit together but netflix is way ahead and offers such a great price. We will discuss all the myraid competitors ad nauseam but for now we just want to see the big picture and understand whats good about it.

If someone wants to defeat them in their space they have to go around to every movie studio and film maker on earth and make deals to license the content. Doesn't seem like this is possible to do overnight and everyone is going crazy competing over the high margin new release video on demand market.

So because of this it seems that the news over the next year will be really positive. We are even going international (I assume to the UK). So while the stock market as a whole could go down company specific risk for netflix seems almost nill in the near term. Its clear they really really know what they are doing and as far as I can tell this cannot be said for the other players. So if the emperor turns out to be naked we wont know for many years and in the short term we will almost certainly be bounding from success to success.

Also the CEO is a huge genius which is a really big deal.

and guess what im feeling so good my long awaited match with elizabeth v, the prominent nyc chess teacher is back on. 9.5-.5????????? im afraid not. try 10-0.

i will crush all of you except for jan gustafsson but he will be crushed in time by my lovely audacious
daughters Winter and Clementine. They will check mate him and say to him politely "you played very well" and then

they will beam up at me with happiness having pleased me and i will look back at them with the true pure pride of a father

whose tiny little daughters are somehow strong chess grandmasters.

Vernese just called me form Stockholm. she was taking these ridiculous long drawn out drags of a cigarette throughout the conversation and sounded really affected. apparently she has succeeded in getting professionally involved in the theater in some capacity and although she kept describing things as "abysmal" i got the impression she was rather enjoying herself in Europe. if i weren't in such a good mood i might have gotten short with her because she kept giggling and saying "Pierre stop it" under her breath every few minutes. but as it is it didnt bother me at all. she seemed to be unsure from my latest post if i have been winning or if i had been committed to an asylum for the mentally ill. preposterous that she calls me up at fucking 8am new york city time and says this to me. but being on top of the world i just said (a tad condescending perhaps) "sweetheart don't worry your pretty little head about it" hung up and went back to eating my olives and water melon because i am a man of many contrasts.

also i know im in a good mood also because Ive been singing loudly that memorable song from the animated feature film an American tale:

"THERE ARE NO CATS IN AMERICA AND THE STREETS ARE FILLED WITH CHEESE!, THERE ARE NO CATS IN AMERICA AND THE STREETS ARE FILLED WITH CHEESE!"

if its not love than its the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb that will bring us together.

I couldn't let the true aficionados down forever.

I have a confession to make. despite my being a huge professional my mood and general outlook IS strongly affected by my short term results, and so while a few days ago i had resolved to either become a professional economist or a career member of the foreign service, now all i can think of for my future is how confounding and ridiculous it is that the bellagio does not have a condo development in its complex. am i supposed to drive from the fucking condos at the palms to get to bobbys room? because online poker is great and all but i need to be somewhere where my fans can enjoy and celebrate me in person. then i will write a book called "inside bobbys room " and colbert will joke with me how this sounds like a book about shy teenage homosexuality and i will smile and chuckle a chuckle triumph and I will reach out to touch his strangely enticing curved ear and say "steven i have always wanted to be YOUR formidable opponent."

Let me tell you a short human interest story. I will abridge it because i know u are busy my dear reader: yesterday im playing 5-10 no limit effective stacks 2k i reraise the cutoff from the button with kts he 4 bets double my 3 bet (quite small in other words) i call and flop 3 tens and he stacks off with aces. he goes crazy how much i suck and how lucky i always am. meanwhile this guy is a professional player but completely sucks my cock and balls (as my cousin from long island used to say). I say nothing because i am too mature and besides no free lessons. but i note that he has been rude to me and he will suffer later. i will make a special effort to crush him. today he is back 10-20 3 handed i squeeze once after he raises on button and sb called. i check fold flop because not a one trick pony. a few minutes later same scenario i have tt. flop comes 9 high i bet flop. turn is small - all in. he calls with 45 pair of 5s and misses. what a pleasure. he looks like complete moron. The game fills up and then people leave and we are playing heads up. i have maybe 6500 he has like 2500 we play awhile he chips away at me until he has almost caught up, and then this hand: there is an irrelevant short stack in the big blind, mr wonderful defends the small blind with k4 of clubs. now basically in nl u can never ever ever call out of position. this is an exaggeration obviously but if u just never called out of position wouldnt be big mistake. certainly, especially in heads up or in this case 3 handed, where your credibility is suspect to start to call out of position with weak hands and the plan of making shenanigans is suicide. i have a6 clubs and it comes down beautiful club club club and we both have like 4500. I bet every street and he check raises all in on the river. and keep in mind this is not our normal game. usually we play 5-10 so this is twice as painful. so fucking beautiful sitting there with all the chips feeling through cyberspace his bitter dejection, his hatred for all men living and dead. his cursing anger at this gross injustice. how i am always lucky and how he is never lucky even though he plays so fucking good. AND UNTIL THIS HAND HE WAS WINNING THE HEADS UP MATCH, congratulating himself on being the true champion after all. At that moment it was really a pleasure to be alive. SWEET LIKE JUICE OR WINE.


anyways enough this poker talk. what shall i buy for my beloved Roxy to celebrate my being the world champion? at first i had thought a smallish pony might suite her, might be just the thing for this park slope princess. but then i was thinking how much more wonderful on Saturday morning to waken her with a litter of lovely piglets furiously running back and forth in our bed celebrating their thriving little lives in a hysterical and vigorous frenzy! but i suppose they will get lonesome for their mother and i dont really have enough room for a sow to live and nurse comfortably. also a large pig might be scary at night.


i will now enjoy my leisure activities.