Author: Luke M.

Luke Matthews is a writer, board gamer, beer drinker, and all-around geek. He currently lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two cats, and two German wirehaired pointers.
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I’m The Bad Guy

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Yeah, that’s me. All of Geekerific’s podcast production delays rest squarely on my shoulders at this point. First off, I apologize. As you listeners know, I wrote a book. I’m busting ass, now, working on the process of trying to get in published. That’s been taking up almost all of my time, which has left a little too little for the podcasts. But, since all of that is meaningless if you fans don’t have podcasts in your ear-holes, here’s what I’m doing about it:

Episodes 76 and 77 of After The Fact will be edited and posted this week, prior to PAX Prime. I’m going to try to get episode 50 of Trade Secrets out this week as well, but I make no guarantees about that one. What I will guarantee is that it will be posted no later than early next week, after PAX.

Also, we’ll be doing a PAX episode again this year, as always. However, we’re only doing a single show instead of one every day of the con, because we like sanity.

What this means for you guys is that, if you listed to all of our shows, you’ll have four distinct podcasts to listen to in the span of two weeks. I know that doesn’t fully make up for the rampant delays lately, but hopefully it helps.

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On Leaving Things Behind

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On Thursday of last week, I finished the second draft of my first novel. This weekend I sent it off to a proofreader, and once the proofread pass is finished I’ll send it off to beta readers. I’m unbelievably stoked and absolutely fucking terrified.

I find myself, this Monday morning, reflecting on all of the things going on in my life now that I’m looking forward to beginning my second novel. If you’ve read my blog you know that my obligations and hobbies are pretty much split between writing, podcasting, video games, comic books, and poker. There was once a time where the biggest output of effort (aside from my marriage, of course) was a live-action roleplaying game called Amtgard.

I attended my first LARP in my sophomore year of high school in 1992. It was the Yakima, WA chapter of a national game called New England Roleplaying Organization, or NERO for short. For people who don’t LARP, the hobby is vilified as quite possibly the nerdiest endeavor one could partake in. It is seen as being populated by closeted dorks with no social skills who are outcasts even amongst their own hobbies.

For me this couldn’t have been further from the truth. When I began playing NERO I was about as introverted and awkward as a nerd could get. Playing that LARP – and several others since – was truly what drove me out of that shell, out of my comfort zone. LARPing forced me to get out of my house and interact with other, like-minded people, and I credit it with being the catalyst that completely changed my personality.

cal_1Once I moved away from home to go to college, I wasn’t able to attend NERO anymore, and I missed it. For almost two years I wasn’t part of any live-action games at all. When I met my ex-girlfriend, she had been part of Amtgard, a LARP that started in El Paso, Texas in 1983, for several years already. It wasn’t the same as NERO – being much less roleplay oriented and more geared toward live combat games – but it was something.

I began playing Amtgard in 1996. I played consistently for eleven years until “retiring” from the game in 2007. Over the course of that time I founded a chapter that is still running strong to this day, founded one of the longest-running recurring campout events in the Pacific Northwest, and was a fixture of the game in this area the entire time I was part of it. It is a humongous part of my history, and a formative piece of my life.

Toward the end of my time in the game, my mood began to sour. As with any major hobby, there are people who take it too seriously, and whose lives become so wrapped up in it that they know no other form of personal gratification. For them, the game is no longer a hobby – it becomes their entire self-worth. It was those people – while few, very loud – who began leaching the fun out of the game for me. I was there to gather with friends, play a game that I enjoyed, and have a good time. They were there to advance their reputations by any and all means necessary.

In 2006, I ran my last major event in Amtgard before retiring from the game. 90% of the event was extremely successful, in the face of some bad apples striving to ruin it. In the closing minutes of the event, that group decided to vandalize a state park structure as a parting shot toward me on their way out of the event. With my mood already soured toward the game as a whole, dealing with the fallout from this action was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I lasted less than a year in the game before finally calling it quits.

Amtgard was a huge part of my life. It was my dominant hobby and the foundation of my entire social circle. I knew that leaving it behind was necessary, but it crushed me at the time. It was like leaving my family behind. It hurt. A lot.

cal_2Over the next several years, my attentions were diverted from the game I’d left behind. My parents both passed away about 2½ years apart right after leaving the game, I was hired into a job I’d been striving to get for quite some time, I began writing more regularly, and I started a podcast. I filled the void with a lot of things I realized I’d been missing over the years, pouring my efforts into creative pursuits that I’d been setting aside in favor of the game.

Looking back, I realize that I may have actually hamstrung my real life in the late ‘90’s by being too active in my hobby. I loved Amtgard for what it gave me – hell, I can directly attribute it to meeting my wife – but, in retrospect, I allowed my career pursuits and even my last few quarters at college suffer in favor of putting my time and energy into the game. And I only realized that fully once I found out what my life was like without it.

There have been several times over the last 5 years that I’ve thought seriously about going back and becoming a regular again. I can never seem to find the time now, though; those extra minutes and hours now being filled with the things that are fulfilling me domestically and creatively. But I still have those urges… To hang out with the old crew, to get drunk around a campfire telling stories, to hit people with foam-padded sticks, to continue my journey toward awards and honors within the game – namely the Knighthood I never attained.

Never has that pull been stronger than in the last few weeks. I was reminiscing with a few friends who were also long-time Amtgarders, while also trying to explain the game to some people who were not familiar with it. It was like a flashback to the innumerable times I recruited a new player into the group that I was running at the time, or explained the game to onlookers while we were playing out in the park. The nostalgia ran high, and I felt the undeniable pull to go play again.

And I had a ton of fun doing so. I went out to the park and reminded myself how old and slow I’d become, how sedentary my lifestyle is without it. It’s an extremely physical game and I wasn’t up to it, but I pushed myself anyway and had a blast. I capped off the night by hanging out with a whole group of other long-time Amtgarders, some of whom I hadn’t seen since my exit in 2007.

I was hyped again. All the long-dormant neurons were firing, pulling me back toward the game that I’d once loved and lost. I thought about fighting more, making new garb, and going to campouts. I thought of all the fun I used to have… and all of these thoughts immediately led into all the anger at everything wrong with the game as a whole.

See, Amtgard isn’t just a fighting sport, it’s also got a huge element of in-game and interpersonal politics. The interpersonal politics are inherent in any large group activity. Friendships bloom and die, rivalries grow and fester, relationships burn bright and flame out. The in-game politics – each group is run by elected officials – are more prevalent, and tend to bleed into and poison the interpersonal ones. Again, this isn’t a new thing for any group (just look at the recent trials and tribulations of the SFWA). I found, during my time in the game, that the game’s politics hold an unreasonable sway in many players’ lives and that they dictated the course of too many friendships and rivalries.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve realized that none of that has changed. The game is still the same game it was when I started playing 17 years ago. The politics still dominate and the drama still runs high. Many of the older players are still playing, and new players are entering the fold all the time, but the game never seems to advance or recover from the things that spoiled my enjoyment of it.

Every time I return I’ve been greeted by varying numbers of older players who politely grill me about whether I’m coming back full time and what they can do to draw me back in. Every time this has happened I’ve wondered why they’re pushing so hard. I mean, I won’t deny that I may have had some influence on the game in my time, but no one cared when I left. I didn’t burn out… I faded away.

And then it hit me: it’s desperation. The old guard in the game are – just like in real life – longing for times past, when things were “better”, and desperate to commiserate with people who know of the glory days. I saw the same thing amongst the “old timers” when I first joined the game, and now I see it from their point of view – only I’m on the outside looking in. I see a game that is struggling with the exact same problems it had when I was a noob, just under a different regime. I realize that Amtgard has never changed – but I have.

So now, although I’m not facing the same decision that I had to make in 2007, I’m facing the next tier of that same process. I don’t believe I have even the time to devote to being just an Amtgard player. When I left it, so many years ago, I replaced it. There is no longer an Amtgard-shaped hole in my life. Although nostalgia will pull at that wound, it’s been stitched up, healed, and well scarred over.

I now sit, scratching at that scar, wondering if I ever completely left the game like I wanted to. Like I needed to. Amtgard was a part of me all through my twenties. But I’m not in my twenties anymore, and with a five-year separation from the game, I can’t say it has a place in my thirties. I think, maybe, it’s time for me not just to leave the game, but to leave it behind.

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Finally Knocked This Motherf&$#er OUT.

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I finally finished the second draft of my novel. It only took a month or three longer than I expected. Final wordcount sits at roughly 132k, 682 manuscript pages. There are a billion different conversion rates for figuring out how big a book that makes, but I’m just not going to bother figuring it out. Besides, in the world of e-readers, page count is pretty pointless.

I’m mostly happy with my second draft. I’m wondering if it’ll be possible to be completely happy with any draft, and from what I’ve read of other authors’ blogs and advice… probably not. But, I’ll take “mostly happy” for now, until I get feedback from beta readers and that turns into “suicidally depressed”. I send the manuscript off to a friend who offered to do a proofread pass on it for free – an offer I absolutely won’t pass up – in the next couple of days, and will likely have it in readers’ hands in a couple of weeks. And then I wait. And brood.

And begin outlining the sequel. As I’m sure is a huge mistake, this is the first of a planned 4-5 novel series, and I really want to get on with the second book as soon as possible. I’ve got ideas for how it will start and end, and now I just need to flesh out the middle, just like this one. I’m hoping that the second won’t take nearly as long as the first. Actually, I’m going to do my damndest to set and stick to a schedule with deadlines, and crank out book two as fast as I can.

Anyway, it’s done. It’s as done as I can get it before putting it into someone’s hands to read. I could, conceivably, spend another year revising and refining. While I may not be interested in pumping out two novels per year, I also don’t want to be George RR Martin and endlessly pore over a manuscript until it drives me insane. Let’s see what people think.

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Review: Sheltered #1

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sheltered_1_coverSHELTERED #1, $2.99, Image Comics
Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Johnnie Christmas
Colorist: Shari Chankhamma

Fiction is full of post-apocalyptic tales. As a species humanity is obsessed with its own extinction, developing hypothesis after hypothesis dealing with how it might happen. Natural disasters, economic collapse, civil unrest, climate change, or even zombies and giant monsters. Most people are content to live their lives with the apocalypse firmly rooted in their entertainment. Some, however, obsess over how to survive not if, but when, an apocalypse happens.

That’s the basic premise upon which Sheltered is built. A community of doomsday “preppers” has begun assembling an isolationist community in the wilderness, avoiding the entanglements of normal civilization while gearing up for its inevitable fall. While the adults in Safe Haven busy about preparing for possibilities, a group of teenagers know that the inevitable is just over the horizon.

The story centers around Victoria and Lucas, two teenage kids being raised in the tension and anxiety of the Safe Haven prepper community. They each have their own, wildly different take on their situation: Lucas, fully indoctrinated into the pre-apocalyptic mentality, has plans of his own that even his parents aren’t aware of. Victoria, a somewhat new addition, just wants to be a normal kid, but it doesn’t look like she’ll get her wish.

Ed Brisson (www.edbrisson.com), whose previous writing credits include his self-published noir series Murder Book as well as the critically acclaimed Image miniseries Comeback, succeeds at brewing the same sort of tension in Sheltered as he does with his crime stories, but with a different kind of paranoia. Like his noir, the first issue of Sheltered doesn’t give you a black-and-white portrait of who the good guys and bad guys are, instead presenting glimpses of each character’s personality and putting them into a situation that lets the reader begin to develop their own opinions (which I’m sure will be yanked out from under us later).

Relative newcomer Johnnie Christmas (www.jxmas.com) renders Safe Haven with beautifully minimalist lines, and his work with camera angles and shadows really draws the reader into the mounting menace as the issue moves forward. Characters are unique and easily identified, and his facial expressions – which always toe the “cartoony” line but never step over or feel out of place – are especially potent. Christmas’s art is well supported by Shari Chankhamma’s (www.sharii.com) sometimes unorthodox colors, whose palette and design compliment the action at every turn and really help the sense of both isolation and outright cold.

I’m an unabashed fan of Ed Brisson’s work on Comeback, and the first issue of Sheltered engenders the same sort of anticipation as Comeback’s opening issue. Adding to the mix is Brisson’s research of real-life prepper communities, which gives the paranoid state of Safe Haven just enough wackiness to be interesting, but grounding it in the real world in a very creepy way.

I’m in for the haul with Sheltered. I’m looking forward to see where Lucas’s plans lead the group, how Victoria’s personality will tie into it all, and to find out what happens when the rest of humanity falls apart and all we’re left with are the wackadoos.

Check out our interview with Ed Brisson and Johnnie Christmas in episode 47 of the Trade Secrets Podcast HERE

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The Name of My Insecurity

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Today, I did something I haven’t done in a very long time: completely lost myself in a book.

It’s an interesting thing. My wife and I are both pretty voracious readers, especially since we got Kindles (I’ve got another post in mind about that subject). I read a lot, but lately I haven’t been so deeply ensconced in a book that I feel I have to finish it. I have specific times of day that I read, and it happens like clockwork every evening. It’s been a long time – probably a couple of years ago when I was reading The Dark Tower books – that I was truly driven by a book.

tnotwLast Thursday I started reading The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s a fantasy series that Rothfuss – only a couple of years older than me – took seven years to write, if the anecdotes are to be believed. It took another five for the sequel, the second book in a proposed trilogy, to come out. The book plays with a lot of the tropes of fantasy by setting up a story-within-a-story. It flips between first- and third-person perspective, the third-person narrative taking place in “present day” (in the in-book world) and the first-person parts being told by one of the characters as a chronicle of his life.

At first, I was taken aback by the switch in narrative style. It’s a hard switch to justify, but Rothfuss handles it with brilliant grace. I was drawn into Kvothe’s story more deeply than I have been engrossed in a book in a long time. As I said, I began reading it last Thursday and only kept it confined to my “normal” reading times. Over the first four days I covered about the first third of the book. Last night, I began reading at 7pm and put the book down when I was fighting to stay awake at 1am. I began reading it again at 8:30 this morning, and was so lost in it that I was startled by my wife coming home at 3:30. I finished the book shortly thereafter.

I’m not writing this blog post as a straight-up review of Rothfuss’s book, but I am going to say that it’s one of my favorite fantasy series in a very long time. I’ve started several new series recently, including The Colfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman, The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, and soon the Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. The Name of the Wind is far and away the best I’ve read so far.

The last few series – especially trilogies – that I’ve read have not turned out well for me. I can’t say much about the Colfire trilogy; The first book actually got on my nerves to a large degree, and I started reading the second more out of sad hopefulness than any real desire. It didn’t turn out well. The Knife Of Never Letting Go was one of the best first books I’d read in a long time, only to have the rest of the series just fall apart piece by piece until I was actually angry at how it ended. And don’t get me started on The Hunger Games.

Now, I’m worried. The Name Of The Wind ranks amongst the best fantasy I’ve read, but my track record with novel series’ leaves me anxious rather than excited. There is hope that it will fulfill the promise of it’s beginnings, but that hope is terribly tinged with desperation… What if it turns out like The Hunger Games? I’ll have to put that notion aside for now and focus on the positives, and hope that Rothfuss can pull through for me.

The other part of this book that’s rough for me is that I’m a writer. Well, a budding one, anyway. Rothfuss’s prose is so well constructed that he makes the simple seem eloquent. As I read his sentences, I think to myself “I know all of these words!” Then Rothfuss arranges them into groupings that simultaneously inspire to new heights as a writer and despair at the thought of ever putting words down for other people to read.

As I finished The Name Of The Wind, I look back on my own manuscript. I’m close to finishing my second draft. I spent months writing the first one, carefully organizing the jumble of Legos that were my notes and constructing a fancy, but flawed, diorama. As I pore over the words, I find bits out of place or poorly constructed, tear them down, and rebuild. The diorama starts coming together in a way that makes you forget about the little round nubs with LEGO etched in their tops.

Then Rothfuss comes in with a 15-foot-tall flawless recreation of Notre Dame, with minifigs in the appropriate places for all of the reliefs, and suddenly my diorama goes back to looking like a semi-organized pile of kid’s toys. So although I absolutley adored this book, I’m now questioning every paragraph of my own. I mean, how come I know all the same words, but can’t seem to get them into the same configurations? Rothfuss’s prose is the kind I aspire to with my own writing: clear, concise, and understandable, and simultaneously thrilling, engrossing, and evocative.

But I guess this is one of the perils of being a writer. There will always be a better writer out there than me (probably tens of thousands, actually), and every time I read their books I’m going to have this same internal struggle.

Maybe this is good, though. I can’t go around thinking I’m good at this shit.

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My Shifting Opinion of Las Vegas

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On Memorial Day I left for a road trip that lasted nine days. Before leaving, I made big claims about writing blog posts or doing a video blog of the trip, and all of that fell apart in the face of long drives, other obligations, and, well… Vegas. I wrote a few notes while I was gone, though, so I’m going to try to piece together the trip in a few blog posts now that I’m back.

In late 2003 I learned how to play poker. The game changed my life in no small way, as I wrote about in My Journey With Poker. The natural progression, of course, was a desire to finally see Las Vegas. Prior to playing poker I had little interest because I wasn’t a gambler. I don’t play craps or roulette, I don’t like other table games like Blackjack and Pai Gow, and I absolutely can’t stand slots. Vegas had the same vague appeal it has for almost anyone looking to get away and see the opulence of it all, but poker put it in a new light.

It took me a few years to get there; my first trip to Vegas was in 2008, when my wife took me for my 30th birthday. We went with another couple and had a great time doing every touristy thing we could think of. We walked everywhere, and visited every casino from the Mandalay Bay to the Stratosphere. To this day, the only strip casino I haven’t at least walked through is the Palms.

Being in Vegas for the first time was an awesome experience. The places that were legitimately nice – the Bellagio & the Wynn, for example – were beautiful and elegant. The fake re-creation places like the Venetian and the Paris were fun to behold and, to some degree, laugh at. The over-the-top cheeseball places like the Luxor and Treasure Island were hilarious, and the rest of the strip was… well, at least I didn’t catch anything.

We took a trip to Fremont Street for a night and had a great time. The Fremont Street Experience is kinda cool for what it is, and seeing the places that gave Vegas its start was definitely worthwhile. For me, the best part was stopping in to Binions (even though it’s not called that anymore) to see the WSOP Hall of Fame. That is, after all, where it all began.

We walked and walked and walked, visited Hofbrauhaus for some awesome German beer and food, and went to Delmonico for one of the best steaks I’ve ever had in my life. It was a great birthday trip, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience out of Vegas. Coming away from that trip I still looked at the city through rose-colored glasses, tinged by the excitement of everyone else I knew who loved going to Vegas. I couldn’t wait to get back.

My second trip came a few year’s later via a lucky opportunity. My wife’s work was sending her there for an event, and if I could get myself there I could stay in her hotel room, so I jumped at the chance. We stayed in downtown Vegas – for one day in the Plaza and three days in the Las Vegas Club – so we were able to see a lot more of Fremont street. I played poker at the Golden Nugget and the Venetian during the day and hung out with Christina at night.

The first thing I noticed on my second time around was the weather. Our first trip had been in February, so it was in the 70’s and overcast most of the time. That kind of weather suits me just fine, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest and being a lover of rain and clouds. This trip was in July, and the first time I came out of my hotel at 10am it was already 90 degrees, on a day that would top out at 103. That kind of weather, if I might be so bold, can eat a whole bag of dicks.

Wandering around Vegas this second time was a very different experience. Having been there before and seeing almost everything on the strip and in downtown, a lot of the veneer of the place had worn off. Once you get a chance to see past much of the distraction that Vegas is built around, you start seeing the underlying structure. And holy hell, that structure could use a good cleaning, and perhaps a strong disinfectant.

I had a similar experience going there my 3rd time, when my wife and I stopped there for a couple of days to go to the Classic Gaming Convention as part of another trip. The CGC was actually pretty pathetic, and that trip was short, but I was there with my wife again which always makes Vegas better.

The beauty of being in Vegas with my wife, though, is that we both enjoy making fun of stupid shit. So wandering around the casinos and seeing some of the terrible things that they do to attract people is really fun with her around. We have similar tastes in food and entertainment, so going out for some beers or getting an awesome steak are great experiences with her, and we would fill the time in between with sarcastic humor.

This last time in Vegas I went by myself. I was lucky enough to meet up with a friend from my home poker group while I was there, but he wasn’t playing in the WSOP and he wasn’t there the whole time I was. I did spend a lot of time my last two days there alone. And it’s possible that being there alone has a lot to do with how my opinion of the place has shifted.

Driving to Vegas is definitely something I’ll never do again. I drove down via I-15 from Utah and out the opposite way through Barstow & Bakersfield, and it’s one of the worst drives I’ve ever undertaken. It really adds punctuation to Reuben’s quote from Ocean’s Eleven “I’m sure you can make it out of the casino. Of course, lest we forget, once you’re out the front door, you’re still in the middle of the fucking desert!” Never, ever again.

Wandering around the city alone – or even with my friend – gave me some time to really notice the Vegas around me. The artifice of the place really got to me this time, for some reason. Having traveled to Paris last summer, seeing the fake Eiffel Tower at the Paris Las Vegas really struck me as more stupid than funny this time. Before, it was just a kind of neat replica building. This time, it felt almost like an affront to the real thing (which is how I believe real New Yorkers must feel, to a much more acute degree, walking through New York New York).

Packed on top of the artifice of the buildings was the pervasive artifice of the people. I saw more women in little tiny dresses and four-inch heels than I can count, and not a single one of them looked like they wanted to be dressed that way. And the vast majority of the guys who were out in slacks and a tie looked pissed that they couldn’t get into Tao wearing cargo shorts and a wife beater. You should win a jackpot in that city if you can find a single person with a smile on their face who isn’t either drunk or part of the hospitality industry.

Above all else, the thing that got to me this time was the smell. There are very few places on the strip that don’t smell either like a) boiling asphalt, b) cigarette smoke, or c) raw sewage. And if one of those smells doesn’t get you, it’s likely you’ll get a nice whiff of someone’s sweaty armpits, or the bleachy chlorine smell of the Bellagio’s fountains. Inside the buildings you can get away from most of the smells as long as you’re nowhere near a casino floor, and even then it probably smells like cleaning agents or cheap air freshener.

I’m very taken aback by how much Vegas as a place bothered me this time. I already knew that the activities available to me were limited. When I left the poker table each day, instead of feeling like there were a world of possibilities in the town, I felt… stranded. Between the heat and the people and the smell and the fakeness of it all, I just wanted to be anywhere else. And, when I think about it deeper, the only thing Vegas has to offer me is poker tables and tournaments – which is awesome – but when I’m away from a poker room I just want to be back in my living room.

It’s hard for me to justify going to a place where I’m forced to distract myself from it in order to enjoy myself. There is a chance that I might be convinced to go back someday and give it another shot, and perhaps making the trip with friends or my wife again could be enough to make it worthwhile. I would definitely go back to play in the WSOP – if I can ever pull together a buy-in – but I’d do the trip much differently. For now, though, I think I’m just done with Vegas.

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My WSOP Experience

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On Memorial Day I left for a road trip that lasted nine days. Before leaving, I made big claims about writing blog posts or doing a video blog of the trip, and all of that fell apart in the face of long drives, other obligations, and, well… Vegas. I wrote a few notes while I was gone, though, so I’m going to try to piece together the trip in a few blog posts now that I’m back.

This post is for all the poker players out there. There’s a lot of talk of poker play, so there’s also a lot of poker jargon.

The trip centered around my shot at playing in the World Series of Poker. For those of you not familiar, the WSOP is the largest and most famous poker tournament series in the world, comprising almost 60 events across just about every poker game imaginable. Buy-ins range from $1,000 for the smallest events, to $10,000 for the Main Event, to as much as $50,000 for the Player’s Championship and $111,111 for the Big One for One Drop charity event.

wsop_receipts

I played in two smaller events, a $1,000 No-Limit Hold ‘Em event and the $1,500 “Millionaire Maker”, a No-Limit Hold ‘Em tourney where the WSOP was guaranteeing at least $1,000,000 for first place regardless of the number of entrants.

I’ll get this out of the way right at the start: my performance in the series was… less than stellar. I busted in level 6 of the 1k event and level 5 of the Millionaire Maker. Oddly enough, even though I lasted over an hour longer in the 1k, I feel much better about my play in the Millionaire Maker. I guess I’m doing a good job of not being “results oriented”.

The WSOP takes place every year at the Rio, a giant slightly-off-strip casino. The casino floor in the Rio isn’t anything special – it’s just like every other large casino in Vegas – but it’s the convention space they use for the WSOP that make it spectacular. Several large ballrooms are taken over and filled with poker tables, and the atmosphere is absolutely awesome. The main room used for the larger events is called the Amazon Room, and I (unfortunately) never got to play in there. My events both took place in Brasilia, a slightly smaller but still spectacular space that held over 100 poker tables. Most of the events we were playing 9-handed, so the room had over 1,000 players at any given time.

There was a shuttle directly from my hotel to the Rio every day, which drops off on the back-side of the Rio casino floor near the buffet. Coming into the Rio from this entrance, you’d never know that the largest poker tournament in the world was going on. No banners, almost no signs, and no indication of a major event. I had to wind my way through the casino floor until I found the hallway leading to the convention space before I even saw a sign indicating the event. Very strange.

I won’t spend any time talking about the registration line. It was a line. I registered on Wednesday night and my first event was at 11am the next day.

The 1k No-Limit Hold ‘Em events at the WSOP are, for lack of a more endearing term, newbie events. The structure of the WSOP events is very good, but the 1k events only start with 3,000 chips, so there’s not a lot of room to move. Early aggression and/or a good run of cards are necessary to stay in play. The rate at which players bust out in these tournaments was staggering to see. Day 1 started with around 160 tables. By the time I busted – about 6 hours in – over half of those tables were empty.

I started at a fairly weak table with several older, very passive players. For the first several levels I was able to chip myself up to about 6k before the first break (at the end of two 1-hour long levels), but then ran a small bluff into a player who’d flopped a set and dropped back down to 4.4k. I lost a few more hands and dropped to just over the 3k starting stack in level 4, but then doubled through another player when my pocket 7’s held up against his A-J.

My best play of the tourney was in level 4. Blinds were at 50/100 and I was on the button with K♠ 7♠. Two players limped and I limped behind, the small blind folded and the big blind checked. The flop came 4♣ 7♥ Q♣, giving me middle pair, and when everyone checked I bet 300 into a 450 pot. One of the early position limpers called, everyone else folded. With a preflop limp and a check call like this, I put him on suited connectors that either also hit the 7 or were calling with the flush draw, or a low to middle pair. I was sure he’d have bet out on the flop had he hit the Queen or a set, so the check-call looked like he was fishing.

The turn came the K♦, giving me a solid two pair. The other player checked to me and I bet out 650. He started to reach for chips and hesitated, then looked back at his cards and counted out a call. I was pretty positive that my two pair was good at this point. The river was the J♣, an absolutely terrible card for me that completes both the club flush draw and possible high straight draws. I could easily see this player having a hand like A♣ 7♣, so this river card slowed me down and I checked. And I watched.

The other guy immediately dumped a 1,000 chip bet into play without looking at his cards or waiting. I know math players out there will hate to hear me say this, but it just felt fucking fishy, like he’d decided on his line on the last street and just followed through without thought. Something about the way his demeanor changed told me that he probably hadn’t hit a flush and my read told me there’s no way he hit a straight. I thought that two pair might be a possibility, but I couldn’t put him on a two pair that beat mine. I stared at him for a couple of minutes and the combination of my read and my feeling about his demeanor told me I had him beat, so I called. He turned over pocket 5’s, and I took down over a 3k pot. I got a “Wow. Good call.” from another player at the table while I was raking my chips.

I hovered at around 7k for a bit, and then had a very lucky hand where I’d called a preflop raise on the button with K♣ Q♦ and the flop came 9♠ 10♥ J♠. The big blind open-shoved for about 3.2k, and another player in the hand tanked for about 4 minutes, then called all in for about 2.7k, and I snap called both of them (of course). The big blind had A♠ 2♠ for a flush draw, and the other guy had A♦ 9♥ for just bottom pair. I faded the flush draw and was up to almost 14k in chips.

At this point in the tourney, I probably could have floated all the way through day 1. Average chipstack at this point was still down around 6k, and the blinds had just gone up to 100/200, so I was sitting on 70 big blinds, which is monstrous for a tournament like this. I played a little bit of big stack poker in the 100/200 level, stealing the blinds a few times and keeping myself level.

Then my table broke and everything went to hell. When I first analyzed my play in this tourney, I was torn on whether my play at the new table was good. Upon reflection I know it was not. I made one very major mistake: I didn’t spend enough time figuring out my new table’s dynamic before making a couple of big moves that led to my elimination. The first was overplaying middle pair and a flush draw when I had A♦ J♦ and flopped K♦ J♣ 4♦. I put far too many chips into the pot against a player who had flopped a King and turned a Queen for two pair, and I never hit my flush. That hand drained me of over 5,500 chips and left me with just over 7k.

My last hand of the tournament was just a dumb call. I’d spent three laps getting garbage hands until I was dealt pocket 9’s in the big blind. Blinds were 100/200 with a 25 ante, and 5 players limped before me, including the small blind. I raised to 1,100 and everyone folded around to the small blind, who re-raised me all-in. I thought about it for a while and somehow convinced myself to call, and he turned over pocket Jacks. I didn’t hit, and I was out of my first WSOP tourney.

My play after my table broke was pretty much atrocious. I had the opportunity and breathing room to just wait it out and get a better read on my table, and float into day two with a healthy chipstack to start the 200/400 level, and I pissed it all away. Not my finest moment, and it’s one that’ll bother me for a long time to come.

The following Saturday I played in the Millionaire Maker. I wish I had some stories to tell about that one, but my only story is a complete and utter lack of cards. When I got pocket pairs I was forced to fold. When I got pocket Aces once I got no callers, and none of my other hands hit. I just couldn’t put anything together at all until I was forced to go all-in with A♠ Q♠. Luckily I got called by Q-J offsuit and my hand held up, doubling me up to about 3k. I hovered for a little while longer but was bleeding, and was down to 2600 during the 100/200 level. 5 players limped before me, I looked down at A-Q suited again and shoved all-in, and the first limper called me with pocket Queens. To put the nail in the coffin he spiked the case Queen on the flop, taking away even my Ace as an out.

Even after busting both of my WSOP tourneys, I still think it was a stellar experience. The atmosphere around the tournament rooms was electric, and I really had fun playing in them. It might be my only chance to ever play in the WSOP and I can’t say I’m not disappointed in my performance, but it was worth it for the experience of playing in the crown jewel of poker tournaments. If I ever get the chance, I’d definitely play in it again, but for now I’ll have to treat this as my one shot that didn’t quite get there.

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WSOP Road Trip: Day 1

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I’ll start this off with an apology: If this post isn’t up to snuff, it’s because I drove 500 miles on roughly 3 1/2 hours of sleep. And I’m still up. I know I said I’d be doing a video blog of this trip, but I’m not sure whether that’s going to come together, so I’ll stick with normal blog posts for now.

Today marked the beginning of my road trip to the World Series Of Poker in Las Vegas. This will be the first – and I’m treating it as the only – year I’ll be able to play in any WSOP events. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me and I’m extremely blessed that I get to take advantage of it.

Blessed insomuch as I’m married to the most amazing woman who ever walked the earth, and who’s been extremely supportive of my trip to the WSOP to try my hand at my first major poker tournament(s). Without her, I would never be able to do this, and I can’t possibly thank her enough.

The first leg of the journey was a drive from Seattle to Boise. It’s a drive I’ve done probably a dozen times in my life, and it never gets better. This is, however, the first time I’ve done the drive alone, and the entire trip was in varying degrees of rain. I’m not gonna lie: it was a pretty shitty drive.

The road from Seattle to Ellensburg isn’t so bad, but eastern Washington is a big yellow-brown blasted wasteland. There’s a brief respite in northeastern Oregon, and then right back to brown, flat roads. I’ve never been a fan of this drive, but it’s a necessary evil.

I’ve never spent any time in Boise, and this is no exception. I’m only spending about 4 hours here awake, but I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised by the downtown area. It’s well kept and clean, and it looks like it’s being well developed with a lot of small businesses, boutique shops, and good food. It’s nicer than I expected.

It also helps that I got to have dinner with Jordan, a friend of mine from my Nintendo testing days. I haven’t seen Jordan in several years, so I was glad to have the opportunity to hang out for a bit. Good friends, good beer, and good food are a great way to cap off an otherwise kind of crappy driving day, and I have Jordan to thank:

jordan

Tomorrow, I’m headed to Salt Lake City to meet a couple of people I only know on Twitter. I’ll fire up another post in the aftermath of that meeting.

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I’m Bad At Blogging

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See, I’m bad at this.

It’s been over a month since I blogged last, and part of that is due to a narrowed focus in my life overall. A few weeks ago I found that my attention was beginning to wander, into something extremely goofy: I decided that I wanted to build a poker table with hole-cameras and create a setup that allowed me to film some of my home poker games. The intent was to create a show that I could toss up on YouTube.

I became temporarily obsessed. For at least a full week, the idea was in every waking moment of thought for me. The research I put into the possibility was staggering. Every day I’d spend time searching forums, reading up on cameras, working out a budget, checking into editing and card-display software, and trying to figure out how my house would be laid out to accommodate it. I even went so far as to buy a video camera to test its functions – which is actually what snapped me out of the obsession.

I had set up this video camera in my poker room and let it film, trying to gauge its quality and the length of time it could record. While I was watching the video, something in my brain snapped me back to reality. I don’t fucking have time for this! was the revelation I finally came to. I barely had time to do the things already on my plate, including finishing my fucking novel (or: “the whole reason I quit my job”), much less add something else as work-intensive as producing, editing, and publishing and amateur poker show.

After my brief bout with insanity I decided to figure out what the important tasks in my life were and narrow the field. I cut out a lot of chaff, and I refocused myself to four broad categories: my book, my house, my podcasts, and poker. If it doesn’t fall into one of these categories, I can’t justify focusing on it – and I completely forgot about my blog.

My book is the clear priority. The text is finished and I’m on to revisions now. I have a copy-editor friend who offered to do an editing pass on it for me, and I need to get the second draft done before I send it off to him. Prior to this renewed focus I wasn’t concentrating on the book hardly at all, and I realized just how fucking nuts that was. The book is the life.

My house is roughly equal priority, and mostly just includes doing chores. That was the deal, right? I’m able to leave my day job to concentrate on my writing as long as I’m willing to take on the vast majority of the housework, since my wife will now be the family breadwinner. In addition to the daily tasks, we are remodeling one room and re-arranging the house layout, so there’s a lot of work to be done there and it all needs to be finished rather quickly.

My podcasts are important to me, even though they don’t provide any real income or benefit. One of them – After The Fact – is ending after almost four years, and I want it to go out with a bang. The other – Trade Secrets – will be my new ongoing focus. I have more fun preparing for and recording Trade Secrets than I do with most other things in my life. It’s one of the greatest crews of people I’ve ever worked with, and our conversations are insanely fun.

If you’ve read my blog before you understand the position of poker in my life. Focusing on it is something I was lacking for a while, and it was beginning to show in my results. I’d been on a several week long losing streak that had begun to shake my confidence. That was unacceptable – especially right now – because I’m about to go compete in a couple of events at the World Series of Poker. Once I drew poker back into my crosshairs, my performance turned around and I’ve started getting that confidence back.

Everything else – at least from a “work” perspective – is of less importance. I’ll do my best to still fire a blog post up more often than every five weeks. During my trip to Vegas for the WSOP I’ll be blogging regularly and even posting some video blogs, but those will be primarily poker-focused. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it up once I get back.

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Production Delays

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Hey everyone, Luke here.

As I’m sure you’ve figured out, there have been some delays over the last few weeks getting our shows put together. After The Fact listeners have been waiting well over a month for a new episode, primarily because it’s been difficult putting together a crew for the show the last few weeks. Eddie’s back from his work trip, so we should be getting back on track over the next couple of weeks to get the show out to you. I’ll be posting episode 72 tomorrow, and we’re working on getting the recording for episode 73 and beyond scheduled out.

The delay in Trade Secrets is entirely my fault. We have had episode 43 in the can for over a week and a half and it’s been nothing but my scheduling problems and scatterbrain that have prevented it from getting posted. I’m going to try and have it out tomorrow, as well, but it will be no later than Wednesday.

I sincerely apologize for all the delays. We’re working to get back on track right away. Thank you for your patience. As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us on Twitter or Facebook, or e-mail us at afterthefact@geekerific.com or tradesecrets@geekerific.com if you have any questions or comments you want aired on the show. You send it, we’ll read it.