Is America on Tilt?

Let me preface this post by first saying that I am, in no way, attempting to trivialize what happened by comparing 9/11 to a poker game. It was a tragedy by all accounts, and a day no American will ever forget. This being said, the course of this country since then has taken on an ominously similar course to that of a tilted poker player. For those of you unfamiliar with poker vernacular, a poker player on 'tilt' is usually one who has lost a large number of chips during play, and then continues to play angry, often resulting in the player going broke fairly quickly.

Like it or not, in poker terms, the terrorists won a gigantic pot on 9/11. When I lose a large number of chips in a poker game, I usually play conservatively for a few hands to straighten out my thoughts, and more importantly, minimize the likelihood that I will follow up the loss with irrational play. In the case of 9/11, within four weeks of the attacks, we were at war in Afghanistan.

I am not going to claim that I am an expert in world political matters, but common sense tells me that you first would want to build a framework of international support before making any major moves -- especially in mountainous terrain, on the other side of the earth, and for the purpose of locating a single individual who was quite likely no longer in the country anyway.

We won a small pot by ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan, but then came Iraq. Here are a few pots we vied for since then... we have lost some, and we have won some... you decide for yourself how our stack of chips is looking:

- Weapons of mass destruction
- Finding Osama Bin Laden
- 3301 American deaths (as of this post)
- 60,000 civilian deaths
- Anthrax deaths
- Capturing/executing Saddam Hussein
- POW torture scandal
- Bali and UK subway bombings
- Skyrocketing fuel costs
- Shoe bomber
- Credibility of the US in the international community
- Darfur region of Sudan
- Shoe bomber
- Katrina preparedness
- North Korea nuclear testing
- Iran
- Popular opinion of the war at home
- Beheadings and kidnappings
- Roadside bombs
- 700+ deaths in Israel since 2000 due to terrorism

Some of these are big wins/losses, and some are not... and I know that this list of events is by no means comprehensive. As I said, you decide for yourself where you think we stand, but here's what I think... we have spent $400 billion on the war in Iraq, and we have seen no return whatsover on this investment. There isn't even a need for a poker analogy here. That is an awful lot of money. Some will argue that we are safer than we were before 9/11, and they would challenge me by asking me to admit that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. I would respond to this request by saying absolutely not. The world, and America, is in shambles right now as compared to where we were pre-9/11 -- and, no, I don't feel safer.

I am a frequent traveller. Before 2001, I was asked before every single flight if I had been in possession of my bags the entire time before I arrived at the counter, which forced me to think before answering. I had to actually show proof that luggage was mine before leaving the airport. I had to show my ID multiple times before boarding and I could walk right up to the gate and fly on standby if I wanted to. Saddam didn't care about any of that, and besides the fact that he was a vile excuse for a human being, I really didn't care about him all that much either. I did, however, care about the 350,000 lives lost since 2003 in the Darfur region of Sudan -- talk about mass destruction.

The biggest victory for the terrorists was the robbery of our liberties, which have yet to be restored hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of innocent lives later. Rather than taking a systematic, calculated, and responsible path to the restoration of our freedoms, security, and credibility, America has taken the road of unbridled, reactionary, tilt -- and we continue bleeding chips each day.

I will do my best at all times to take a logical and rational approach to my poker game, making a special effort to do this at times when I am mentally vulnerable. If I ever, under any circumstances, adjust my game to be based on such concepts as 'justice' or 'revenge', I may as well stop playing and never walk into a card room again.

Keeping My Trap Shut

Professional card player Howard Lederer recent wrote a really great article here. In it, he discusses the disadvantages of wearing sunglasses and earphones during tournaments. I wholeheartedly agree that headgear which in any way obscures your ability to discern fine visual or auditory detail translates into a big advantage for your opponents. So many poker players say so much more than they should at the poker table. If I have headphones on, I can't hear it!

I do not spend a huge amount of time playing cards online, but I play in occasional online tournaments just for fun. I prefer the little $10 sit-and-gos, and once in a blue moon, I will register for a small buy-in multi-table tournament.

In a recent $10 sit-and-go, I had the pleasure a playing with someone who simply could not stay away from the table's chat box. He continuously berated the play of other people at the table, bragged about how he wins the cash games at the Borgata four times each week (misspelling 'Borgata' in the process), and throwing around chips like peanuts. Judging from the words that this person was using, the tone of his comments, the fashion in which he clearly embellished the truth at every opportunity, and his general demeanor, I quickly created an image of this person in my head. He seemed to me like someone who probably has very few friends, and highly insecure about everything, including his poker game. To make a long story short, I stuck him for a huge pot, and he never recovered. The sad part is that he told everyone his entire life story without even realizing it. If had asked the poker gods to deliver a person to me who could effectively demonstrate the validity of the axiom that 'Silence is Golden' when it comes to poker, this guy fit the bill perfectly.

I finished the tounament in second place, and then I quickly proceeded today to forget everything I learned! On a whim (and since I had the day off from work) I decided to enter a $30 multi-table tournament on Bodog. I was seated immediately with arguably the best no-limit held 'em tournament player on Bodog, known as 'head2782'** (he says he had an unusually big head as a child). We were seated together for the entire tournament, and believe it or not, I think I got the best of him in the pots we both participated in (he finished 9th, and I finished 7th for around $350). One hand in particular between us, I hit a rare 4-of-kind, and took a large number of chips from him. He complained about his bad luck, and I replied that '..the last thing I wanted to do was upset Mr. Bodog'. Even though this is all I said, I think it was a huge mistake to say it. I said it in respect of his game and reputation (which I would see as a weakness if I were him), but my saving grace was that my comment could have be construed as being sarcastic.

Anyway... the moral of these stories is that even the most benign comments can unintentionally reveal a great deal of information. I need to remember to stay away from the chat boxes online and the headphones at the table!

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**I registered for a really cool free tool at Bluff Magazine's website this week. It is called 'thepokerdb' and it allows you to view online multi-table tournament results for most of the big online poker sites, including a 'search by screen name' function. Search 'maddgravy' at Bodog, and you can see the history of my two outstanding and gigantic cashes, including today's. Check out the history of head2782 also. Wow. Where does he find the time?!