FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#092 – An Accumulation of Items – Part II (of II)

Posted by Editor | Filed under Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide - Tournament Edition, Gus Hansen, Hedy Lamarr, Me in live tourneys, Me in online tourneys, Michael Craig's writing projects, My Life

Yesterday, I wrote up the first half of my explanation/excuse for not turning myself into a terror on the poker circuit. What I’ve been up to since my return from Maui has led to some interesting and strange experiences, a few of which I hope you’ll be interested to hear about. This is the remainder of those items.

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A MIDDLE AGED MAN

On Tuesday, I undertook one of the greatest tasks of artistry, craftsmanship, and home improvement ever attempted. I painted my garage door. Not just any garage door, mind you, a DOUBLE garage door.

Our double garage door had suffered some kind of trauma – no one is owning up to it but an autopsy by the garage-door installer found signs of a car running into it. The door, which was always cheap and noisy, now looked like it was going to fall off its tracks and wrap itself around my car.

I left the installation of the new door to professionals, but the door was white and our other door and, indeed, the entire exterior of our house, is a shade of tanish beigy color that the helpful hardware folks at Ace called something like M-13/R-97/B4+2.

I should tell you that I don’t have a reputation for being very good at home improvement matters. My original plan was to paint the garage door a color that was close to the color of my Mercedes so it would match if I spilled paint on the car. Once the guys at Ace gave me some tips, like pulling the car OUT of the garage before I painted, I was amazed at what a good job I did.

Barry’s home on spring break and I didn’t even ask him to help. So afterward, when I’m suggesting that I could reasonably change my name from Michael Craig to Michaelangelo, he starts giving me attitude.

I gave it right back to him. “This job is flawless,” I said. “You find one brush mark, one flaw anywhere on that door.”

He starts pointing. “Here’s a brush mark there. And there. There’s a place where the paint dripped all the way down the door. And you missed the whole bottom panel of -”

I cut him off. “I didn’t see you helping out when I was trying to paint the door and play in the $14,000 Guarantee.”

That shut him up. Trust me, it’s a work of art. I’m thinking of surprising Jo Anne by doing a mural across the front of the house.

WHY I PLAY MOST OF MY POKER ONLINE

I really want to get back on the tournament trall. I want to work on my own tournament game and dig up some more great stuff to share. But I couldn’t go to Bay 101; I was in Hawaii and thereby missed Ted Forrest winning the championship. (And that reminds me, I’m going to see if I can take him up on our mutual promise-offer-threat to go car shopping with him.) And I didn’t get to go to Reno because I wanted to be with my son – or his spare robot parts. I have traveled so much for poker over the last few years that I couldn’t blow off my family for those two.

So what’s next? Foxwoods this weekend? Escuse me for being a wuss but don’t they have a Foxwoods WPT event about every 3 months? There’s the WSOP Circuit Event at Caesars Indiana, which I looked into. I could play the prelim events, play the main event, catch up with any pros who are in the field, and maybe even agitate some of my friends to join me.

Then I found out where “Caesars Indiana” is. I thought “Indiana” meant “Chicago.” No, Elizabeth, Indiana is like a suburb of Louisville. I had a nice experience in Louisville at the National Debate Tournament in 1979, but it’s like traveling to another country to get there from Arizona.

As near as I can figure, I’m grounded until the start of the Bellagio Five Star. My plan is play the first couple events, try to catch up with friends, share the scene with you. Then I’ll come back at the end and cover the $25,000 buy-in WPT Championship. That’s the plan, anyway.

The end is The Big Show but I’m just as excited about the beginning. My introduction to big-time poker was at the first day of that tournament in 2004. I wrote about it in #001 of this blog.

PICTURE THIS

Full Tilt finally provided me with my own avatar. I was considering turning it back in. Looks kinda balding, old, fat – but then I realized that it’s a perfect likeness. I’m pleased to have it.

NEWEST ON THE FULL TILT BOOK

On the positive side, Warner Books just sent me the “Advance Reading Copy” of The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition. It looks roughly like the finished product. The cover will be a little different – the production cover is on Amazon.com – and this is the version several players and I made corrections to last month.

On the negative side, I have lost ANOTHER editor. This book is really, really good but it’s looking like the Titanic of publishing. Since we had a verbal agreement to proceed in late 2005, the following things have occurred: Time Warner sold Warner Books to French publishing giant Hachette; the editor who bought the book, Colin Fox, left for Simon & Schuster; I fired my agent; Congress passed a law which several online sites thought put them out of business but which led to Full Tilt expanding dramatically; my second editor, Dan Ambrosio, quit Warner to become a literary agent; my third editor, Sean Jones, told me last week HE was quitting Warner to become a literary agent (different agency); and Beth de Guzman has been named the editor in charge of the project.

You’ll hear a lot more about the book as it gets closer to World Series time. I’m hoping Full Tilt will run some promotions in connection with it and, despite the turnover at Warner/Hachette, I think they are prepping for a big release.

OTHER PROJECTS

Like I’m not falling far enough behind without worrying about what I’m going to write next? I need to write another book this year to keep from falling apart financially. Matusow and I blew up at each other, so it can’t be that. Gus Hansen’s manager asked me to help out with a book or two Gus wants to write. I’ve offered to be an unpaid consultant – my goal is either to make a ridiculous amount of money or no money – so I’m looking at a proposal Gus and his manager have put together for a book in which Gus will analyze every single hand he was dealt on his way to victory in the Aussie Millions. He’s been recording every hand in a voice recorder for the last couple years and from what I’ve looked at so far, this could be GREAT. Hansen has some brilliant insights and I would have loved to have gotten him involved with the Full Tilt book, had I known him back then. It’s not MY project, but like Matusow’s autobio, I’ll be rooting from the sidelines and offering advice when asked.

I’d love to find one more gambling story before leaving the subject, but I’m worried that I’ve already found the best ideas, the market is becoming crowded, publishers are scared of taking more poker books, and I want so much money that every idea I come up with, even a great one, suffers from not being BIG ENOUGH.

I’m focusing my attention on the story of some members of the San Diego law enforcement community who caught a serial killer in their spare time, catching him for a pair of murders he committed before any of them were born. I did a lot of work on the story a couple years ago and it’s very interesting, the determination of the four principals, the false leads, the blind alleys, all the times when it looked like they had no chance to succeed, and yet they did.

(I have a long list of interesting half-pursued ideas. One of them was about the life of Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr, a sex symbol around World War II led a fascinating life. She was in the first nude scene in any mainstream film, she married a wealthy businessman only to find out he was buddies with Hitler and Mussolini, she tried to escape from the castle in which he imprisoned her by hiding in a brothel, she eventually drugged a maid and assumed her identity to make her way to England, where Louis B. Mayer hired her for American films. She became one of the biggest stars in the world, invented a secret system for scrambling radio-controlled torpedoes that became vital during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later became the basis for cell phones, pagers, and WIFI Internet access. She was denied admission into an elite inventors group during World War II and encouraged instead to help the war effort by selling bonds. She once sold $7 million in a night, selling kisses at $25,000 apiece. She married six times, became an advisor to Juan Peron in Argentina (and produced some Argentinian films featuring Eva Peron).)

On the other hand, if I can convince a publisher to give me a couple hundred thousand dollars to write a book about the world according to Ted Forrest, I’ll be “trapped” in poker for another year.

In any event, you won’t be through with me for awhile. I’ve got too much poker stuff on my plate between now and the end of the World Series – this blog, playing in the Series, the Full Tilt book, my BLUFF column – to do much other than play poker, talk about poker, and write about poker.

And that’s fine with me.

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