Epicurus spent his life chasing happiness and was led to conclude that it’s a rather tricky issue. He thought that pleasure was the most important thing in life and that one has no reason to feel guilty for chasing pleasure. He was, however, known for getting by on very little often making meals out of water, bread, and a few olives.

His central philosophy was that humans are not very good at understanding what makes us happy and that we can easily and mistakenly conclude that material things are what will make us happy. It’s the “what we want is not what we need” philosophy: we pursue our manic impulses not really understanding what it is that makes us happy.

Epicurus believed he discovered the formula for what we really do need in order to be happy. He believed happiness requires three things:

1. Friends

When Epicurus moved to Athens, he bought a large house in the middle of town and asked a group of friends to move in with him. He did this because he viewed friendship as being something we should seek to have around at all times, not just for the occasional phone call or whatever. He suggested making an effort to never eat alone. “A feeding without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf,” he said. He determined it more important who you eat with than what you eat.

2. Freedom

Later in life, Epicurus and his friends left Athens and started a commune in a remote part of Greece. “We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday life and politics,” he said. He thought it was better to have a simple life in which one is free than a life in which we are answerable to insufferable bosses, etc. He and his friends at the commune became self-sufficient and gained independence from what other people thought. They no longer felt that they had something to prove to others financially.

3. An Analyzed Life

Epicurus thought it was important to slow down and analyze our worries and troubles. He thought that the key to eliminating our anxieties was to give ourselves time to think them through. In order to do this, we need time and space to allow for quiet contemplation about our lives.

His philosophy was that if one does not have much money but does have these three things, then they will not be denied happiness. Conversely, someone with money who is lacking friends, freedom, and space for an analyzed life will never be happy. You hear this backed up in psychological studies that show money does not significantly contribute to one’s happiness once their basic needs are met.

Epicurus was a strong critic of advertising. He blamed it for clouding our view of the path to happiness. He suggested that the reason advertising works is because it succeeds in convincing us on a subconscious level that the product being sold will provide us with one or more of the three things that we need to be happy.

So an ad like the one above might succeed in selling us Bacardi when it’s really friends and freedom that we’re looking for.

Interestingly, all of the books that Epicurus wrote were eventually lost. His wisdom survived by being passed down as a creed through societies that formed based on his suggestions for living. A wealthy man, Diogenes of Oenoanda, paid to have a summary of Epicurean philosophy carved on the walls of an ancient city in what is now in modern southwest Turkey. Diogenes believed that we needed constant reminders of what makes us happy and that simply studying philosophy once in a while wasn’t enough. Think of it as balancing out the forces of advertising which seek to cloud our true desires. Diogenes’ wall was an advertisement for what we really do need.

The film shows a modern day effort to replicate that type of counter advertising. Unfortunately, as they point out, philosophers aren’t known for having the kind of budget to make major advertising purchases. But one sign they put up in a mall was pretty clever. It depicted a large mansion with a luxury car parked out front. The photo contains an asterisk at the top with a small warning in the corner that says, “Happiness Not Included”. I wonder what effect advertising of this nature might have on a grander scale? If people can be convinced that they need material things, can they be successfully reminded that they in fact do not need them through the same medium?

A few months ago, I finally got around to having a VHS tape with a bunch of footage of jumps I did converted to DVD. Last night, I spent a few hours editing the footage into a YouTube-ready presentation. It worked out perfectly because when I selected all of the footage I wanted to include it amounted to exactly 10 minutes on the dot, the maximum length for a YouTube video.

It’s worth keeping in mind that while 151 jumps might seem like a lot, it’s basically nothing in the world of skydiving. So this is all pretty much n00b donk amateur footage and nothing nearly as cool as stuff like this being performed by guys who have made literally thousands of skydives over the course of several years. I included some commentary below the video. Most of the footage was shot in the air over Goshen, Indiana unless otherwise specified.

0:00 – Exiting a balloon at Rantoul, Illinois from my perspective. It’s a surreal experience since normally you’re exiting to a ton of noise. Leaving a balloon is all quiet until you pick up velocity.

0:19 – A tricky thing about jumping from a balloon is that you’re exiting wherever the wind happens to have blown you rather than safely over the airport. It creates an added challenge and element of danger. Here I’m setting up for a landing in an elementary school playground and it wasn’t the smoothest landing.

0:56 – My 100th jump. Out of a big Russian helicopter in the air over Rantoul, Illinois. Had to oblige the group in front of me’s request to snap a photo of them before they exited. My friend Scott is on video and gets a nice shot of the helicopter when he deploys.

1:40 – What they call a “hop-n-pop” where you exit at low altitude and deploy rather soon after. I did some backflips on the exit.

2:08 – If you look carefully you can see I had line twists on that deployment. That technically falls into the category of a skydiving malfunction but it is generally very benign and happens every so often. You just have to twist your way out of it.

2:50 – A three-way exit that I cut off pretty quickly since the guy on video was pretty heavy and sunk like a stone rendering him unable to keep us in the frame for the rest of the jump.

3:19 – I don’t know what this was. I guess a buddy and I decided to have a little fun on the ride up and make a video pretending it was my first jump. Clearly, I’m not a very good actor. I exited in the classic n00b fetal position, a big no-no for proper skydiving form.

3:55 – This was what is known as a “tracking jump”. When you put your arms down to your side rather than holding them out in front of you, the change in weight distribution propels you horizontally across the sky. It’s as close to flying as a human can get without wearing a wingsuit.

4:27 – Two-way exit again cut off because of heavy cameraman. Seated in the pink shirt is my friend’s girlfriend who rode up to altitude with us to watch us exit. That experience alone is pretty hairy since most people have never ridden in a plane so small let alone be seated 3 inches away from an open door at 10,000 feet.

5:03 – This was a pretty good jump with me on camera filming the heavy dude. He hesitated on exit but managed to fall fast enough to catch up with me for a dock before we had to break off and deploy.

6:30: – This is me on video filming a tandem jump. What you see at the beginning of the jump was the closest I came to any type of serious catastrophe in skydiving.

7:25 – Tandems deploy very high for safety reasons so the videographer can usually take a long enough delay to keep their deployment in the frame before having to deploy himself. I was pretty proud of the effort for it being the first (and only) time I videoed a tandem; staying with them and keeping everything in frame like that is pretty challenging when you have as little experience as I did. The girl doing the tandem opted not to pay to have it videoed so I was videoing it sans-pressure to just practice. After the dropzone owner saw the footage he was mad at me for giving it to her for free since he said it was high-quality enough that they could have charged her for it.

7:30 – So this is a slo-mo replay of the exit on the tandem jump. What you’ll notice happens is that the tandem’s “drogue”, which is designed to slow down the heavy package to a more sane rate of freefall, hits me on deployment. It was an “oh shit” moment at the time that ended up being no big deal. I just made a bad exit since I wasn’t experienced or prepared enough to know how to properly exit a Cessna with a tandem and ended up in a really bad location for the drogue deployment: right above them. Fortunately, I didn’t get tangled in the line or panic and collide with them (which can happen when you’re right above someone due to the dead air their freefall creates above them). Having a guy with only 100-some jumps video a tandem was a pretty “wild west” move that a bigger dropzone would never in a million years allow. But we had fun in Goshen since it was a pretty small crew and sometimes little liberties got taken here or there.

8:26 – Two-way jump with my friend Keri. Poor girl was always getting hit on by everyone since she was decently cute and more or less the only female around. Interesting side note is that she was raised Amish but decided jumping out of planes was a little more fun than practicing the Amish lifestyle.

9:30 – Keri hits a perfect landing on the gravel pit. I opt for my own shadow instead.

• Drink more water. I’m generally okay about this, but I go for the bottle of fuzzy soda more than I wish I did. I actually went about 5 years without drinking soda once in my life. Then something happened to where I just went back to consuming it like crazy as is typical of many Americans. I’d like to start paying attention to when I feel an urge to reach for a soda and choose water instead.
• Waste less time online. I waste an unbelievable amount of time on the Internet. I find it absolutely fascinating. All of the tantalizing information and entertainment sucks me in like a bug to a light. In any given session at my computer online, there reaches a point where it’s no longer really a positive in my life to still be sitting there. The habit I would like to instill is to notice this and get off the computer immediately rather than click around idly for minutes or hours longer. It’s quite honestly depressing to think about how much time I’ve wasted online in the past several years.
• Read more books. This will be an easier habit to instill thanks to the Kindle my parents got me for Christmas. I’m really loving that thing. What a great little gadget. It satisfies my neurotic need to always be playing with something electronic. I read Slaughterhouse-Five on it in three days. There’s no reason I can’t manage to read an average of an hour a day. I can find that time easily just by cutting out the idle Internet browsing.
• Exercise daily. I was in a great exercise routine before I went back to the U.S. for Christmas. Then, two weeks of traveling and a vacationer’s mindset made me fall off the wagon. Classic tale, really. To me, daily physical exercise is perhaps the most important thing you can be doing for your life. I’m not going to bother with all sorts of firm goals like, “I need to bench x pounds by x date!” That type of an approach seems to arbitrarily pigeon-hole me into an exercise regimen I’ll likely quickly grow tired of. It’s not like I’m trying to train for something in particular that requires a highly specialized workout routine. I just want to exercise each day. So the main priority is finding an exercise that I think to be fun. So maybe squats and deadlifts in the gym one day, yoga the next, whatever. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s something, so I’ll just play it by ear and go with what sounds good on any given day.
• Grind the small details. I can really suck at life when it comes to taking care of menial, tedious tasks. Things like running errands, cleaning, or working on a personal budget just madden me because I get bored with maintenance tasks. Unfortunately, if you neglect these little daily maintenance tidbits, your world can fall out of orbit. I want to do a better job of taking an extra moment to get the details right. For example, take an extra moment to see which bottle of water is the best value rather than grabbing the first one I see (I don’t generally care what brand I’m drinking). Or spending a few minutes in the evening to make a list of things I know I’ll be glad if I remember to do the next day. These boring little details might not be glamorous, but they add up and can lead to increased happiness, I think.
• Be more engaging with others. Going along with the theme of wanting to slow down and not rush through things, I want to do a better job of investing in personal interactions with others. Sometimes I tend to just gloss over this. Like why should I have to bother with having to think of something nice to say to the person behind the coffee counter? But that “just give me my damned latte” attitude is so unfortunate. It’s no way to go through life. I’d like to get better at taking an extra moment to be pleasant with others.
• Less caffeine. I’ve been trying to be really aware lately of how I feel when I consume caffeine. I think I generally don’t particularly care for it. The short-term boost of energy (not to mention the soothing ritual that securing a cup of coffee provides) can be luring, but I ultimately find the drug to be a net negative in my life. Maybe a nice compromise to get the soothing ritual while cutting down on the caffeine consumption would be to drink tea instead. I love tea. A warm cup of tea with a little honey stirred in might just be the greatest thing about being alive. Yea, that’s what I’ll do: less coffee, more tea.
• Be a better dog owner. I have to admit, having a dog can sometimes be a big pain. Maybe you’re tired and ready for bed and the dog is standing by the door like he wants to go out for a walk to pee and all you want to do is just flip his switch to “off” so you don’t have to deal with it. I would actually encourage people to be really thoughtful about these things before they adopt a dog. For many people, as it was with me, my dog was an emotional acquisition. I didn’t really spend much time considering the practical aspects of the dog owner’s lifestyle. It can take a lot of time and energy. Sometimes I get frustrated with my dog for having to spend time dealing with him. But I’ve had him for six years now and he’s a part of the package for better or worse. I might as well figure out how to be more patient with him and budget more of my time to keeping him happy and healthy.

I could probably think of a few more things, but I think that’s a pretty good list for now. What’s on your list?

Happy New Year, everyone.

Part of why I think this film fascinated me so much is that I was pretty estranged with a lot of the ideas presented within. In this fast-paced, technological culture, I’m guilty of never having sat down to read the thoughts of any great philosophers. It’s a shame too because while many of these men lived several centuries ago, their ideas about how we should approach life are timeless and often strikingly simple. I know for myself, and for probably a lot of other people too, there’s sometimes a tendency to shy away from philosophy thinking it will be too complicated and intellectually intimidating. What I’m learning is that the opposite is moreso the case. Philosophy is about cutting through the crap and providing some real answers to the challenges we face as people.

I’m going to dedicate a six-part blog series to breaking down some of the ideas presented by each philosopher in the film, if for no other reason than for my own benefit that I might actually remember some of the lessons I took from this film.

First up is Socrates and his wisdom on self-confidence.

Socrates believed that thinking logically about our lives might help us to be more self-certain and less affected by what other people think. People have a tendency to follow others, especially others that they perceive to be important. We tend to accept that these people must be right. This is precisely the assumption that Socrates encouraged people to question. His viewpoint was that it is more important to think logically about what persons of importance are saying than to accept what they are saying just because we perceive them to be important.

The film offers an easy example of how just because someone important said it doesn’t mean that it’s true: Bill Clinton staring America in the face and proclaiming that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

An interesting edge that Socrates had over an average person today is ease of access to influential people in civilization. In 400 B.C. Athens, Socrates was able to mingle with these people at the market. He was known for spending most of his time mingling among shop-keepers in Athens and approaching important people to ask them questions about life. Socrates wanted to see what these people were made of. His discovery was that there were surprising inadequacies surrounding the way these “important” people were choosing to live their lives. Their aura of confidence was not earned on account of having it all figured out.

Socrates did not believe that Athenian society should do everything his way. He was simply motivated to find the truth. He did this by challenging lazy assumptions which sometimes made others perceive him as a trouble-maker. But making trouble was not his objective at all. Unfortunately, he was put to death for his allegiance to the search for truth; he was found guilty of corrupting minds of the youth in Athens and not believing in the gods of the state.

Socrates felt that it was a responsibility of all men (and women) to scrutinize what they believe. He thought that we should all reflect on our lives and that we are all capable of doing so. He encouraged us to overcome laziness and fear in order to figure out what we really believe and then stand by those beliefs. He viewed philosophy as an invitation to intelligent non-conformity.

Socrates devised a test which one can use to determine if their opinions are worth standing up for. He suggested that anyone wishing to come up with a good thought should follow five steps in order to do so:

1. Look for statements that most people would describe as plain ol’ common sense. Like, “marriage is an important part of happiness.”
2. Try to find an exception to this statement. Is it possible to be completely happy without being married? Is there anyone whose life fits as an exception to this?
3. If you can find an exception to the statement, then you know the statement is false or imprecise.
4. Respond to the original statement with an exception you’ve found. “You can be miserable in a marriage if you’ve married the wrong person.”
5. Continue searching for exceptions to the original statement. The truth is found in a statement that seems impossible to disprove.

Socrates believed that through this process we could come to gain confidence in our beliefs. By being able to logically explain our opposition to a statement, we’re less likely to become overwhelmed or intimidated when others disagree with us. This confidence to examine our lives and our beliefs is Socrates’ greatest contribution to mankind. He viewed philosophy as something an ordinary person could participate in. “An unexamined life is not worth living,” he famously said. Socrates brought philosophy out from behind the walls of a university and showed that it can exist on the street corner. He inspired us to live with our minds turned on at all times.

Yet while Socrates believed each person is capable of living an examined life, he knew that not everyone did in practice. To him, this meant that he couldn’t accept that every opinion was equally worth listening to. As such, he was a critic of democracy. Socrates did not believe that just because the majority supported an opinion that it was therefore right. The film suggests that Socrates would find it ridiculous that people of power allow focus groups to determine their course of action. He thought that decisions should be made based on the merits of the arguments in favor of that decision, not solely because a majority of people favor it. Looking back in history, there are of course numerous examples of what were then majority viewpoints that today seem preposterous (i.e. “it’s acceptable to own slaves”).

The painting The Death of Socrates, shown above, is now a famous symbol of someone standing up intelligently against the will of the majority. Even when facing death, Socrates did not lose his nerve. He believed any true philosopher should not fear death. He accepted the death sentence given by his peers believing that the right time had come for him to die. The painting depicts Socrates pointing to the heavens while reaching for the hemlock, delivered by a distraught disciple, he was ordered to drink to stop his heart. Plato is shown grieving at the end of the bed as his friend Crito clutches his leg.

Socrates chose not to flee Athens despite having an opportunity to do so. He was willing to go as far as to die for his beliefs to show the world that people have a capacity to develop their own beliefs and stand behind them confidently.

They say moving and breaking-up are two of the more stressful things you can go through in life, just behind death of a loved one and losing your job. Just in 2011 alone, I’ve gone through a move, having an online game that has enriched my life immeasurably and served as something of a part-time job for me for five years eliminated by my government, another move (this time out of the country), and a break-up.

And now, I find myself in Mexico where I have access to the game again and for the first time in what feels like ever as an adult, am single. Although my girl and I had a lot of really great things going between us, it just didn’t work out for now. We could both probably psychoanalyze a million reasons for why our relationship ended, but I don’t really think it’s too complicated. The past six years for me have gone by pretty fast. I think I just needed some space to catch up with myself, clear my mind, and straighten out my financial picture. And until I get the chance to do that, I don’t think I’m ready for the type of serious, indefinite commitment she wanted.

I can look back on this time from when I graduated college and moved to Houston until now and in a way it all seems like a blur. It all went by pretty fast and I feel like I’ve been one step behind on absorbing it all.

This is the nature of the shot-taking lifestyle. I could have gotten a conventional job after college. But as a kid from a small town in the midwest, I wanted a shot at more. So I took a chance and moved away from home to a city where I only knew two people. I’ve traveled, gambled, and had some pretty good times. I’ve met a lot of intelligent and interesting people. It’s been a very rewarding and eye-opening ride. There’s so much to be said for leaving the safe little bubble you grew up in. It really gives you a greater appreciation for the world and the types of people and cultures it consists of.

I’ve chased the poker, shot-taking lifestyle pretty far. For me, it’s been my only realistic chance at making a huge pile of money at an early age. I was never good enough at sports or well-educated and connected enough to find my way into a high paying career. Poker has kind of been it for me. I don’t have some master plan of exactly what I will do if I have abundant financial security, I just know that I want it. I don’t even care if I spend the rest of my life figuring out what to do once I have it. Short of opening a highly successful business, which appears to be a pretty damn hard thing to do, poker is really my best shot at generating a substantial net worth at a young age.

When Uncle Sam took poker away from all his little nieces and nephews last April, I decided that I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel on it. Maybe poker will prove to be for me what baseball is to Kenny Powers, but even if it is, that’d be okay. It seems better to try and fail than never try at all and spend your whole life wondering what if.

I also seem to be seeking out some time for myself to, pardon the cliche, just be. I look at Mexico as a chance to get away from the high expectations of American culture. You’re never good enough in America. There’s always another hoop that needs to be jumped through. I’ve definitely had way too much stress in the past several years trying to reach some vision of success that was marketed to me somewhere along the way. It’s pretty stupid to spend time trying to be someone you think others will be happy with versus just being yourself. I definitely fall into this trap too often. People should just like themselves more and be okay with who they are. It’s sad how much people have been sold on some sense of inadequacy.

And so I find myself here in Mexico with a chance to clear my head, reconnect with myself, and play a game on the Internet that the residents of the supposed “land of the free” are not free to play. If you had asked me at the start of the year if I’d be living in Mexico by the fall, I would have laughed at you and said, “not a chance.” But here I am. It’s funny how life works out.

Although I haven’t been here long, I feel happier and more relaxed. I’ve awoken most every day in the past six years in the U.S. overwhelmed with a sense of needing to do something to prove my worth in the world. But having that feeling for so long is like beating your head against a wall. You don’t really get anywhere. Since getting to Mexico and becoming single, I’ve woke up each day with a renewed sense of vitality and appreciation for being alive. I wake up and take my dog for a long walk on the beach without the sense of urgency that I need to be living up to some expectation. I work out, eat well, and sit down to do my work with a clear head and sense of stopping point. In the evenings, I unwind with maybe a swim in the ocean, a sporting event on TV, a good book, or all of the above. I’m enjoying each day for what it is and not feeling rushed or allowing a sense of inadequacy to creep in. Life is too short to spend each day panicking about work or the future.

I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Maybe just a couple of months. Maybe several years. And it doesn’t even really matter. For now, I’m just happy to have found my way to a place in life where I can reconnect with myself and honor the need to see this poker thing through to its proper conclusion.

I spent most of the afternoon in the waiting room of an cargo company in Cancun that I hired to process the importation of my dog, Scout, who rode in the undercarriage on the same flight as myself. Once the dog was put on the plane, he was considered a piece of cargo as far as the Mexican government is concerned. With that being the case, I needed a broker to handle the importation of the cargo. I was paying them extra (about $300 extra to be precise) for expedited service so that I could get Scout back from customs the same day I arrived. I was unsettled at the notion of him being stored in a non-air conditioned warehouse in his crate overnight presumably without food or water. Unfortunately, that possibility turned to reality when an error with the custom’s computer network prohibited them from processing Scout’s same-day release.

Discouraged, and feeling generally upset at the uncertainty of the dog’s fate and situation, I took the 45 minute cab ride to Playa and met with my realtor and landlord who gave me the keys to the condo I’m staying in here. There’s an issue with one of the air conditioner units here, so it’s been rather hot in the living room and kitchen area, but otherwise I like the place a lot. There’s a huge, spacious balcony and the location seems great.

I crashed pretty hard last night after having been awake for 36 hours; I was unable to sleep after a long day of clearing out my apartment in Austin and had to leave ridiculously early to catch a flight from Houston to Cancun.

I slept like I was dead for 11 hours. After waking up, I made the 5 minute walk to the beach. It’ll be hard, but somehow I feel like I’ll figure out a way to survive living a stone’s throw from this:

I took a taxi back to Cancun where I was told to arrive around noon when hopefully Scout would be processed through customs and released to me. I was pretty nervous to start the day; another long day of waiting and being told they’re unable to release the dog would have been exponentially worse than it was on the day I arrived. I could accept one night of him being stored in a Mexican warehouse if I had to, but multiple nights and I probably would have been panicking and trying to figure out a way to get him out of there even if it meant having to fly back to the U.S.

Upon arriving at the customs broker’s office, I was told that the dog was being delivered within the next five minutes. I can’t even describe how relieved and happy I was for that to be the first thing I heard when I walked into the office.

Sure enough, Scout was delivered in a cargo truck about five minutes later. He had been in his crate for 30 hours (as evidenced by the plastic ties still being in place that were put on in Houston to hold the door locked). When I let him out, he ran back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the broker’s office about 5-6 times smiling from ear to ear. I think he was just so happy to be out of that crate that all he wanted to do was run. I was so happy for him and relieved to get him back; having him fly here with me and processing him through customs has been the most stressful part of this move. When I offered him some water, he drank about 20 ounces without pause. That was by far the most water I’ve ever seen him drink which leads me to believe he went without through the night. Not an ideal situation, but he seems no worse for the wear and is settling in to the new place nicely.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon napping and picking up some necessities from a nearby store called “Mega”. It’s somewhat similar to a Wal-Mart only with lots of peculiar differences. For example, chicken is just stored on ice out in the open rather than being encased in packaging behind a meat counter. I already miss my nice, yuppy organic grocery stores in the U.S., but I’ll learn to make do here.

This evening, I went with my realtor to a really good Venezuelan restaurant just three blocks from my place. One pleasant surprise of Playa so far has been the restaurant selection. I guess I had assumed it’d be mostly just Mexican cuisine, but Playa is a very international city. Many people from all over the world have relocated here which is evident from the dining choices; in what little time I’ve spent walking around the city, I’ve seen a steak and lobster place, a Mediterranean place, the Venezuelan place I ate at tonight, and a Spanish tapas place. A lot of the restaurants and cafes are open-air with outdoor seating. In this way, it reminds me a little of Paris.

I think I’m really going to enjoy living here. So far, I have almost no complaints and, like most poker players, I’m usually pretty good at finding things to complain about.

Tomorrow, I am going to start the process of getting back up-and-running online by opening a bank account. I’m hoping to be back on Stars by a week from this Sunday, but I’m also not too panicked about it; I’ll get back on in due time I’m sure. In the meantime, I want to enjoy the area and maybe soak in some sun. But not too much. Sun is ginger kryptonite.

——

If you haven’t heard by now, CardRunners founders Taylor Caby and Andrew Wiggins recently launched a new, legal daily fantasy sports website called DraftDay where you can test your fantasy sports skills for real-money prizes. I was excited when Taylor asked me to contribute to the site as a blogger since real-money fantasy sports is pretty much right up my alley. I had a good weekend last weekend taking 3rd and 4th in their multi-entry $5 NFL league that had ~100 entrants. I’m looking forward to sweating more short-term fantasy sports line-ups as the site’s player volume continues to grow. Here is the first blog I wrote for Draft Day, A Poker Player’s Take on Daily Fantasy Sports. If you have even the slightest interest in fantasy sports, check out that blog and read the part about the ‘Perfect Lineup’ promotion they’re doing which is a really cool, free way to take a shot at winning $1,000,000 by predicting the highest scoring players at every position in any given week during the NFL season.

I have to admit, I’ve chuckled quietly to myself overhearing the various L.A. pipe dreams of bar patrons and pedestrians. It seems like everyone out here is writing a screenplay or going to an audition in the morning. The city is such a huge lottery. For every big superstar who makes it, there are hundreds of people working in a Starbucks hoping to catch their big break. Despite the misery that I’m sure is associated with that struggle and lifestyle, it seems that people make the best of it and maintain a pretty upbeat demeanor.

Here are a few shots I’ve taken on my iPhone since getting into town:

Venice Beach:

A medical marijuana evaluation clinic right on the beach; somehow I doubt their standards for dispensing a marijuana license are too rigorous:

The palm trees here can be really tall:

Standing on the Santa Monica pier looking back at the beach:

The sun setting over Malibu:

Overall, I’ve enjoyed my stay here a lot. The major downsides seem to be that it’s expensive and the traffic is terrible, but otherwise I think I could definitely enjoy living here.

I’m in Los Angeles for the World Poker Tour event at the Bicycle Casino, a $3,500+$200 buy-in that lured something like ~700 entrants. Having not played a live tournament since busting out of the WSOP Main Event in 133rd place, and having never been to Los Angeles, I arrived in the city on Wednesday evening full of excitement and optimism for the trip. Three days later, I feel defeated by life.

This morning, I made my way out the door of shaniac’s now-mostly-empty Santa Monica apartment (he’s moving to Canada to play online poker) for day two of the tournament. Alarmingly, my rental car was nowhere to be found. I was 99.9% sure I left it parked across the street from his apartment a few doors down; I distinctly remember having made a mental note last night after getting back at 1 am from day one of the tournament: “okay, you’re across the street a few doors down to the left.” But somehow, my car wasn’t there.

In a rather panicked state, I called Shane, who stayed the night at his girlfriend’s. I wasn’t sure what to do. Obviously the missing car was a very major problem, but my priority lied mostly with getting to the Bicycle Casino to tend to my equity in the WPT event. He arranged for his friend Owen Crowe (@owencrowe), who was also still in the tournament, to swing by and pick me up on his way to the casino.

With that problem solved, I called the Santa Monica police department to inquire as to whether a car matching the description of mind had been towed.. I was relieved to hear them say that they did indeed tow it. At the time, it having been towed seemed vastly preferable to it having been stolen. I would later come to question this outlook.

I was informed that the vehicle was parked in a manner that blocked someone’s driveway. I guess in my tired state from the night before, I paralleled between two cars without realizing the spot I was parking in wasn’t a spot at all, it was the entrance to someone’s driveway.

Satisfied with having solved the missing car mystery, I turned my focus to the tournament where I had a stack of 45,400 to start 500/1000 with a 100 ante. I built the stack up to 60,000 without having to show any hands at a tough table that featured Allen Kessler, Gavin Smith, and to my immediate left, Matt Affleck.

During 600-1200 with a 200 ante, Allen raised under the gun to 3,000. Next to act, I looked at Ace-King offsuit and re-raised to 7,600. Action folded back to Kessler. I half expected him to fold to my strong-looking three-bet, but he called. I was pleased to see an Ace in the door with a Five and Four revealed behind it. Allen checked and I bet 9,000. He rather quickly raised to 20,000. Although Allen is a notoriously tight player, doing anything other than re-raising all-in never crossed my mind. When Allen called immediately, I figured there was a better than 50% chance we were chopping the pot both of us holding Ace-King. Instead he just had Aces and like that, I was out of the tournament.

I took the long taxi ride all the way across L.A. back to Santa Monica to tend to my impounded rental car issue. At the police station, I was met with a very helpful and rather frank officer who responded, “an arm and a leg,” and “this will be a huge pain in the ass for you,” to my questions of how much the car bailout was going to cost me and how long the process was going to take.

Since the paperwork verifying that the rental was mine was in the glove box of the car, I had to get a piece of paper giving me permission to get into the car from the police station, walk a mile to the towing company’s lot, get the papers, walk back to the police station, pay the impound fees, walk back to the towing company lot, settle with them, and then finally be on my way.

All told, the expenses, fees, and penalties from having parked my car illegally amounted to $468. That’s no small chunk of change and the bill stung slightly worse coming on the heels of the cooler hand at WPT.

Notwithstanding a day of running bad from seemingly every angle, I am enjoying L.A. I am determined to have some fun tomorrow, my last full day here, at hopefully an affordable cost. When I’m in a better mood, I’ll share some of the more positive aspects of the trip along with a few pictures I’ve taken.

But for now, I could use a drink.

I’ve been playing a fair amount of Monopoly lately on iPhone. I’m surprised you don’t hear more about poker players gambling on Monopoly matches (like they do with Chinese Poker and other random games). It’s a really great board game for heads-up matches. And contrary to popular perception, Monopoly matches don’t have to take very long. Usually within 30-60 minutes of heads-up play, it’s apparent enough who will win the match that it’s not necessary to “play it out” (which, yes, can take hours). In this article, I am going to teach you how to crush people at heads-up Monopoly. I think if you employ these strategies, you’ll beat anyone in the world at Monopoly 50-65% of the time (depending on how well they play).

Notice that even when playing perfectly, you can never really establish that much of an edge. That’s because of the luck factor of the dice. To win in Monopoly, you definitely need to have luck on your side! It’s very similar to poker in this regard: some skill, some luck.

Excelling in Monopoly is all about two things:

1. Acquiring Monopolies.
2. Building three houses on those properties.

That’s how you win. All of your efforts can be poured into achieving those two objectives.

Acquiring Monopolies

On a Monopoly board, there are 8 different groups of color-coordinated properties. Every time an opponent lands on your property, they pay you money. If you have houses or a hotel on that property, they pay you a considerably larger amount. The key to Monopoly is getting houses on a few properties so that each time your opponent lands on that space, they are pushed towards the brink of bankruptcy.

But what makes Monopoly a great game is that you can only build houses and hotels on properties that you control a Monopoly on. In other words, you need to own all three of the orange properties in order to put a house on any of them.

Since getting your opponent to land on your properties with houses is the key to victory, and you need a monopoly over a group of properties in order to build houses on them, acquiring those monopolies is your first primary goal of the game.

Always, always, always buy vacant property when you land on it.

If you have to mortgage off a few of your other properties to do so, that’s okay. The only time when this rule doesn’t apply is when you land on the last vacant property of a group that is already owned by multiple players. Since no one can control a monopoly on that group anyway, the final vacant property isn’t worth a whole lot more than it’s mortgage value (so don’t be afraid to let it go to auction rather than paying sticker price for it).

Building Houses

The first 15-30 minutes of a Monopoly game is where the whole game is decided. It’s a race to see who can acquire the most monopolies. Once you have a monopoly, it’s time to punish your opponent(s) by putting houses on those properties. To do so, it’s okay to mortgage off basically all of your other holdings in order to raise cash to build houses. Just save a few dollars for a rainy day, especially if your opponent has houses on the board that you’re having to dodge.

What Monopoly amateurs commonly fail to realize is that properties really aren’t worth much of anything unless they have houses on them. Take Illinois Avenue, the most commonly landed upon space on the board, as an example. It costs $240 to buy Illinois Avenue. You get $20 every time your opponent(s) land on it. That means your opponent(s) have to land on that space in excess of a dozen times before you’re seeing any profit. That simply just won’t happen in a heads-up game. In the amount of rolls it would take on average for your opponent to land on Illinois Avenue a dozen times, the game will have been long over.

The reason you buy Illinois Avenue is not to collect $20 each time your opponent lands on it, it’s to either build towards having a monopoly on the red properties or to prevent your opponent from acquiring one. That’s it. So if you and your opponent have already split the other two red properties, I would only pay an amount for Illinois Avenue equal to its mortgage value ($120) plus one or maybe two times rent for it ($20-$40, so $140-$160 total).

It’s an amateur mistake to be reluctant to mortgage a property in a location where you have no chance of building a monopoly. Mortgage that bad boy and use the money to put houses on your monopolized properties!

Taking a look at the penalty your opponent incurs for landing on a house-laden property, you’ll see a big jump in the value of having two houses versus three houses. Back to our Illinois Avenue example, your opponent is charged $300 for landing on that property if it has two houses and $750 if it has three houses. Since houses cost just $150 to build on that space, the third house is a very +EV investment. This strategy can be applied on every property as the dollar amounts are pretty close to proportionately equal.

Continuing with that, it’s also worth noting that a fourth house and the hotel are “just okay” investments. On Illinois Avenue, four houses command $925 in rent and a hotel $1,100. Since each of those benchmarks cost $150 to achieve, you don’t really gain much in EV by building a fourth house or a hotel. If you have enough money that it doesn’t matter, go for it, but don’t put yourself in a precarious financial situation just to get a fourth house or a hotel on a property. Once you have three houses, your work is done.

Endgame

What happens in a Monopoly game after a while is that all of the properties become owned. At that point, it’s pretty apparent who is going to win. If Player A has one monopoly and Player B has none, Player A will win literally 100% of the time if they play optimally. You can “speed up the process” by quitting to start a new game at that point. Amateur Monopoly players won’t realize this and will keep rolling the dice into eternity until the variance gods finally catch up to Player B. This is why Monopoly has a bit of a bad reputation as being the “never-ending game”. The reality is, most people are just too stupid to realize that the game ended a long time ago.

Closing Tips

90% of optimal Monopoly strategy has already been mentioned in the two keys to winning. If you follow all of the above strategy precisely, you’re pretty much impossible to exploit at Monopoly. It becomes a game of who gets the luckier dice rolls. But there are some other small strategy tips to be aware of:

• In the early game, you should basically always pay the $50 to get out of jail. As the game progresses and all of the properties are gobbled up, the game becomes about avoiding your opponent’s dangerous properties while hoping they fail at avoiding yours. For that reason, being sent to jail is actually a good thing later in the game. You should stay there as long as possible because you really have little to gain by moving around the board (especially if you’ve already fitted your monopolized properties with three houses each).
• Railroads you can always pay sticker price for. Getting a Monopoly on the railroads is a nice cash machine to have.
• The same cannot be said for utilities. In most games, the utilities never generate enough income to have been a good investment at sticker price. Auction them off and let your amateur opponent over pay for them.
• As my friend timex pointed out after reading the original draft of this post, don’t forget to keep an eye on your opponent’s cash situation before paying sticker price for a property. If your opponent has less than the amount needed to buy the property, you could win it in an auction against them for $1 more than the amount of money they have (unless they are able to mortgage properties to screw you for even trying to low-ball them).
• It’s very important to factor in position to your house-buying decisions. If you acquire a Monopoly but are about to pass through some of your opponent’s hotels, wait to safely clear the hotels before investing all your money in houses on the monopoly properties. Having to sell a house is a terrible thing because you only get 50% of your investment back. So if your opponent is still a few rolls away from your monopolized territory, wait a few turns to put houses on them to make sure you don’t need that money for something else. Building the houses and then selling them to pay off a debt before your opponent even got to the houses is a terrible mistake.
• When spending excess cash, your priority is always on building a first, second, or third house on a property, then building a fourth house or hotel on another property, then buying back mortgaged properties on non-monopoly spaces. Having non-monopoly properties mortgaged is really no big deal, so there’s no rush on buying them back.

Good luck in your Monopoly game. If you ever want to play heads-up for money, I’ll be waiting!

I took a day completely off from poker today in Las Vegas. There weren’t really any good tournaments starting today and I’m already registered for the $2,500 6-Max tomorrow (more on that later) so I decided to try to get out and “do something” versus gravitating towards a cash game table.

In Vegas during the WSOP, finding people to “do something” with can be quite a challenge. It’s the only time of the year you’re in the same city as a lot of friends of yours, but you actually have less time for each other than you do the rest of the year while chatting on IM. That can be very frustrating. It’s probably partially because of laziness on the part of poker players and partially because of the hectic schedules people have during the WSOP. There are literally so many tournaments to play and live games running that it’s rare for a group of players to be able to get together and do something that has nothing to do with poker.

Every year I’ve been out here, I’ve tried to make an effort to have a few days on my schedule that have nothing to do with poker. A lot of poker players are smart and entertaining people to be around. There are certain niceties of hanging out with other poker players that you don’t really get with non-poker players. Poker players have their own language and way of looking at the world and it’s nice to sometimes have the chance to interact with your own kind in a non-poker setting.

One poker friend of mine whose enthusiasm for socializing at the WSOP I have always appreciated is one of our poker forums members, Oliver ‘SwoopAE’ Gill. Oliver has a lot of energy and directs some of it towards being a champion of scheduling plans with poker players. It’s nice to have someone asking you if you want to do something, especially when you’re usually the one doing the asking (and dealing with the lack of interest which is typical).

So today, I scooped up Oliver and few other Australians from their condo rental just east of the Strip. We made the long trip to a mini golf place during rush hour. Of course, we did some gambling on the mini golf course. With six of us playing, we decided that everyone would give the winner a certain amount except for the second place finisher, he doesn’t pay and the last-place finisher gives double. We also added a hole-in-one prop where you got a certain amount from everyone if you made one and got double that amount if no one else made at least a 2 on the hole.

Only one hole-in-one was made and it wasn’t by me. I basically played middle-of-the-road and didn’t have to worry about being the guy to pay double near the end, but also didn’t really have much of a chance of being the guy collecting the cash. Overall, it was a fun outting and a great chance to do something outdoors away from a soul-sucking poker setting.

It’s back to that setting tomorrow for the $2,500 6-Max event which is probably the hardest event on my WSOP schedule this year. I’ve played it each of the past 3 years (got 18th in 2008). It’s definitely a pretty tough event but if I’m focused and hungry for chips, I feel okay about my chances. An upside of the 6-Max events is that you have so much more room to spread out at the table. I really enjoy the chance to stretch out and get comfortable when you’re normally forced to sit as if you’re in the middle of the back seat of a car between two people.

In 6-Max, your table draw is very important. How much your expected ROI is affected between the difference of a good table draw and a bad table draw is a great deal more than in a full-ring tournament. Hopefully I’ll draw a table full of donkeys, but admittedly, there probably won’t be very many of those in this event.