Luck, Poker, and 21 Daze in the Caribbean
MS Noordam · Caribbean Field Note
The In to My Sane
Every day I get to go to work on a cruise ship. It is the in to my sane: doing the same thing again and expecting a different result.
The actual line is usually rendered as: insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. Poker complicates that idea. Sometimes making the right mistake pays off. I would rather be lucky than skillful—at least until luck sends the bill.
I remember the rhythm of The Color of Money: it is in the way that you use it; it comes and it goes. I also think of Paul Newman's observation about the extraordinary role luck plays in all our lives.
"Luck is an art. Luck marches past any number of people while they are looking in every direction except where luck is. I guess I know how to look in the right direction." Paul Newman
The Call · Another 21 Daze
The MS Noordam and I are starting again.
Another Caribbean circuit: repetition from the outside, renewed perception from within.
Pools that made the horizon disappear.
A Renaissance island in the Dutch Caribbean.
The Shawshank Redemption with salt air.
It is not much if it is not Dutch.
Escaping to my reality.
1492, revised from the shoreline.
Bahamas, sea horses, and private-island time.
The USVI through another port window.
The floating city becomes the territory.
The Caribbean flower.
Island rhythm at the end of the world.
The Boat Yard and another day afloat.
Banana Republic is hiring.
The statue is not the saint.
Dam ships, moving coordinates, and lived geography.
Trials · Making the Right Mistake
Luck lends. It never gives.
The poker table turns probability into biography. A bad decision can win a pot, but winning the pot does not make the decision good.
The surest way to win a huge no-limit hold'em pot is to spot someone the nuts and then suck out. When that happens, hate the win, not the winner. I call it making the right mistake.
I was deep and heads-up, with position. A player raised and I called with suited connectors. I put him on ace-king. The flop gave me two pair—fives and sixes—with a king on the board. He shoved. I called instantly and discovered I was dominated by king-six suited.
The river was a five. I filled up and won. That is the kind of hand that makes the nervous system confuse rescue with proof.
Three bullets with nothing.
I fired the flop, turn, and river while holding squadush—nothing, zilch, zero. It worked in the passive game. Then the game changed.
The table loosened. I did not.
Passive players busted. Tight-aggressive players arrived. The game became one of money and odds, and I rebought three times.
The powerful broken computer.
My brain may be the most powerful computer I own. On tilt, it becomes the most powerful broken computer I own.
Self-delusion is the real opponent.
Tilt makes us suboptimal at evaluating rewards, sizing risks, and calculating probabilities. It is like selling the car for gas money.
The Elixir · The Only Link
2012: Happy Last Year
The complete retrospective: a year measured in voyages, stories, destinations, and the decision to keep living before the lesson became obvious.
Read 2012: Happy Last Year