June 2023 live poker recap: Session 4

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 31, 2023

After some rest in my hotel room, I decided to head out to play some holdem at a cash table. I went to a nearby casino, put my name on a list for $1–$3 holdem and waited for more than an hour. When I sat down, I bought in for $250.

I didn’t feel very comfortable. I did not win a single hand. The young white guy two seats to my left had an immense horde of chips — he may have been playing $1,000 — and seemed to have complete control of the table. As for myself, I played passively and conservatively. I suspect the other players were aware that they could get me to fold by making big bets, regardless of whether they had the better holding.

The most memorable hand occurred late in the session and did not involve me. An older white man on my immediate left played a big pot against a young Asian woman on the far side of the table. She shoved after the river came out, putting the gentlemen into the blender.

He obviously didn’t want to fold, but he feared that he was beaten. The issue, as he explained to us while contemplating his play, was that he had recently played the same hold cards in a seniors event and lost with them.

June 2023 live poker recap: Session 3

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 30, 2023

The morning of my second full day in the desert city, I got up early and walked about four and a half miles. I didn’t take any water with me, which eventually came to seem like a potentially harmful error in judgment. About two miles into the trek, I stopped at a convenience store and purchased a large bottle of water and a sports drink for myself as well as some food and drink for a young woman who was begging outside the shop.

Back at the hotel room, I showered, dressed and ordered a ride-share from my hotel to the tournament site. This turned out to be a bit trickier than I’d anticipated because I wasn’t actually sure where the pickup point was at my hotel. Still, I worked that out and managed to get to the tournament venue in plenty of time.

I decided to grab a large water bottle at a convenience store inside the building where the tournament was happening. This became a slightly nerve-rattling experience, because the credit-card machine was on the fritz, delaying everything. I was sixth or seventh in line. I considered leaving; other people actually got out of line and left the shop. Some people entered the store, saw that there was a holdup and left without even getting in line.

Gearing up for more poker play: A very mundane tourist’s tale

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 29, 2023

A few days after I netted $998 at the poker tables, I played in a charity tournament. I had a decent run but did not make the money.

A few days after that, I was feeling funky and went to urgent care, where I was told that I had a chest cold — likely a viral infection. I tested negative for Covid-19. I was prescribed a cough suppressant and told that I could travel, although wearing a mask and washing my hands frequently was highly advisable.

I’d asked about travel because I was slated to fly to the American West in two days’ time.

My flight’s afternoon departure wound up being delayed a few hours, evidently because computer issues were interfering with crew assignments. I suppose I was fortunate: I ran into a Florida couple who told me they’d been trying to return home for two or three days. (They would have driven, but they hadn’t found any available one-way rental cars.) I gather that flights to my destination that were scheduled to depart from my point of origin later in the evening ended up being canceled.

Short takes: ‘Greyhound,’ ‘Ringworld’ and ‘Silo’ season one

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 27, 2023

It’s been nearly a year since I last wrote about literature, movies or television. Here are three items that I recently watched or listened to that I found to be excellent.

The 2020 drama Greyhound is a taut 91-minute war movie starring Tom Hanks as the captain of a U.S. Navy destroyer accompanying a convoy of troops and military supplies across the North Atlantic during World War II. Hanks, who adapted the screenplay from the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd, is the moral and visual center of the movie. Captain Krause, a devout Christian, has prepared his crew for war but also trained them to avoid profanity, at least in his presence. After the sinking of one of several Nazi German submarines that are stalking the convoy, the captain gently remonstrates a subordinate who celebrates the deaths of 50 Krauts by saying “50 souls.”

The fleet of merchant ships and its escort of four destroyers has to survive about two and a half days without protection that land-based air patrols from the United States and Europe can provide against the German submarines. What’s more, Greyhound and its three companions must fend off frigid seas, dwindling munitions and the occasional close call with a freighter as the subs pick off targets.

June 2023 live poker recap: Session 3

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 24, 2023

After collecting my winnings and squaring up on my obligations — including fulfilling a deal with other players and leaving a tip for the tournament dealers and managers — I walked out of the casino with several hundred dollars in my pocket. It was 5:30 p.m. or so. The morning rain had long since cleared off; the ground was dry now and the sun was chasing away the last of the clouds.

I wandered over to an unoccupied outdoor lounge with an eye to writing down notes about some hands from the tournament, but I found to my dismay that I did not have a pen on me. I considered going back to my car, retrieving my laptop and bringing it to the lounge in order to record some recollections. However, my car was more or less on the opposite side of the casino property.

After some reflection, I decided that I would be happier working toward my daily exercise goal than I would be taking notes. I did go back to the car, but in order to dump my poker pack rather than get my computer. Then I headed toward the casino boundary line and started walking along a rural road. I wasn’t formally tracking the distance or time that I traveled, but I went at a moderate pace for around 20 or 25 minutes before turning back and wandering around the casino’s capacious parking lots. I discovered the location of the parking deck, which will be useful if I make a future visit in conditions that weren’t as mild as this June day’s.

Ultimately, according to Fitbit, I finished the day having walked 9.8 miles, climbed 92 flights of stairs (the majority of these being due to moving over hilly terrain rather than actual staircase), engaged in 81 active minutes and passed my daily calories-burned goal. Other than that morning’s 38-minute, 2.5-mile walk, this meandering afternoon stroll was the only part of the 24-hour cycle devoted to physical activity on my part. (Apple Health lists me as having walked 8.9 miles on the day, including a total of three miles between 5 o’clock and 7 o’clock.)

Musing about the most important person of the past half-century

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 16, 2023

The other day, I idly began wondering who the most influential person of the last half-century has been.

I believe that the designation belongs to John Roberts, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Since taking that position in 2005, he’s helped transform the nation’s legal, policy and political landscape. Roberts has cast votes preserving Obamacare, concurring in the overturning of a constitutional right to abortion and radically changing laws on campaign finance, voting rights, affirmative action, religious protections and public health.

Does anyone else have nearly as deserving a claim as Roberts of making such a big impact on the world from 1983 through 2023?

Perhaps. Here are a few contenders.

• Steve Jobs. The computer entrepreneur cofounded arguably the most important computer maker of this time period. Under Jobs’s guidance, Apple released in 2007 what is almost certainly the most important consumer electronics product in recent history: The iPhone, a handheld rectangular slab with a touch-sensitive screen, a camera and a mobile Internet connection. In a few short years, this device, the world’s first smartphone, permanently changed how people work, communicate and recreate.

June 2023 live poker recap: Session 2, part 2

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 5, 2023

A funny thing happened in the tournament after I reached the final table: I thrived.

When I was a short stack earlier in the event, I think I established a reputation as a relatively tight player. Now that I had chips to work with, I was able to make imposing bets. Frequently, everyone folded to me before the flop. The relatively few times that they didn’t, I was able to take down pots without a showdown by making carefully considered postflop bets.

Whereas before I barely had 20 chips of any denomination to my name, now I was stacking 5,000 chips in multiple towers of 20. I enjoyed assembling new 100,000 columns; they served as a prominent sign of my sudden prosperity.

The final table saw an unusual hand that mirrored one from the night before. Betting between two players escalated into an all-in on the turn on a 2-4-5-4 board. One player had A-4 for a set of fours while the all-in player had 3-2 for bottom pair and an open-ended straight draw. The bottom end of this draw — an ace for the wheel, or an A-2-3-4-5 straight — was no good, as it would have transformed the set of fours into a full house of fours over aces.

June 2023 live poker recap: Session 2, part 1

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 3, 2023

Late to bed, early to rise. Well, not that early: The morning after the tournament, I left my hotel room a little before 8:30 a.m. and squeezed in a two-and-a-half-mile walk on part of the resort property and a road threading north into the countryside. Light rain came down as I returned to the hotel. I showered, dressed, packed my things and took all but one bag out of my suite as quickly as I could. I dumped my belongings in the car — the rain wasn’t too persistent, fortunately — and then got my poker backpack from my quarters. I checked out and went to the poker room.

I ought to take a moment to describe said quarters. They cost a little more than twice what I was originally slated to pay at Misfire Motel, but they were far grander. Instead of a modest ground-floor window looking onto a parking lot, the suite — it was on the seventh story, I believe — had floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking forested hills. (Also the casino’s distinctly flat, featureless roof.) The bathroom alone was probably two-thirds or more the size of the room that I’d abandoned after spotting the loathsome loveseat. This was definitely one of the most luxurious lodgings I’d ever had the occasion to enjoy. Reader, it felt Fancy.

But I wasn’t there to sit around a hotel room. I was there to sit around a poker room!