Deuce of Spades and Ongoing Card Tricks

The murderous cooler beat as soon as you sit down trend continued as I noted in my last session. First hand I played I’m K-8 of clubs, flopping K-8-2, two spades. I get check-raised by the big blind, I hesitate just for a few seconds to consider, yes, the deuce of spades is the death card here. I go over the top, he shoves, I insta-call, and he immediately turns over 2-8 super confident. Turn is the 2s and I’m on my second buy-in. So with this fresh in mind as I sat for my next session a week later, this Saturday night, I had a fairly impossible anomaly of deuce occurrences awaiting me. First one I’m pocket deuces, and I get a phone call in between limping and the flop, like perfectly inserted in that couple of seconds. I ask the dealer point blank, second time I’ve ever played here, can I answer? “No,” she says, point blank, “not if you are in the hand.” I send the call to voice mail. Everybody at the table immediately speaks up, “Yes you can talk on the phone any time here.” And then she says “Oh yeah. You can.” Why in the hell the dealer can’t give me the straight answer to the question is a little weird. Flop immediately thereafter comes, reminiscent, K-8-2, but rainbow. No action. Winner. Quad deuces on turn but high hand is quad 3s. Win $30 or so. 30 minutes later deuces again. Flop nothing dry board. Check around. I say “deuce of spades “ out loud this time. Comes deuce of spades. A 25 bet, a call, I raise 100, two very slow folds and some kind of nasty antagonistic comment toward me, 100 a big overbet in this game, pretty much. As god is my witness, in the next hand my first card is the 2clubs, next card is pitched at me, hits the auto shuffler, sticks straight up in the air and stands there. 20 seconds everybody just stares. Dealer freaks. No one’s ever seen it. I’ve played 40 years, never seen it. The card has it’s back to me and everyone is saying “deuce of spades” and laughing over the freak occurrence. I take my camera out. Snap it. Proof. I fold pre with whatever the replacement card was, flop is K-9-7 rainbow. Checked around. Turn … you know it: deuce. Dude had flopped top two under the gun and checked it. But my deuces were fouled, you know, standing straight up on the table. The same deuce of spades eerily freaking with me. I’m called for PLO. My first two cards are black deuces, next two black fives. I get involved in a pot, all my chips about an hour later, dude’s first or second hand at table. I have a set and a gutter, he has an overpair and a deuce for a wheel draw. If he hits his overpair for trips it makes me the nut straight. It comes the deuce of clubs.

Game breaks. Take hold’em seat waiting for main game PLO. I play a hand in the dark in a 1-3 game. Flop 6-7-8. I bet two calls. Turn 6. Check, check, check. River 8. Under the gun bets out, next shoves … I look. First card: deuce of spades, why not?. Ruh roh. Second card 8. 8’s full. LOL. Reshove. Uh huh, oh yeah. Dude has same hand: 2-8. Very next deal I’m 3c-5c flop is 6c-6h-4c. Blank. River I call out loud for “deuce of clubs.” Thousand for high hand dude in pot only has 40 so doesn’t matter much. And it came this black deuce … this haunting black deuce of spades. Kind of super weird. That’s 444 sessions of this otherworldly run, of the worst card possible turning off that deck immediately over and over and over and over. And “otherworldly” is exactly it. For 444 sessions and 5 years, the very idea of flopping a wrap and completing it, was a thousand lightyears from me. Over and over and over for 444 sessions I watched Omaha flops to which I had no pair, no draw, no backdoor flush draw. Constant double-suited hands the flop is the other two suits, and I show it. And this happened again last night for the umpteenth time. Dealer after dealer after dealer, week after week after week, month after month after month, year after year after year …. A zeroed out flop as if they checked my hand and hunted thru the deck for the three most unrelated cards. Because here is the kicker: right when this started, five years ago, I had made a commitment to try to correct the “lost in the shuffle” aspect of my life. There is really only one possible thing that could do it: to stop winning, just like for an alcoholic, to stop drinking. On cue, when I started thinking like that, the universe delivered a trillions-to-one shot streak of bizarre savageness and impossibility to aid in the endeavor. This is a very mystical and spiritual universe. Any discounting of that in the goings on of life is inept. I’m not unlucky. That’s not the point. What this is is the wisdom, the agenda, of the telos of nature in action. The quantum field is capable of exactly this, and nothing else is. Okay, here’s a good secret: the weight of the minds at the table changes the distribution of the cards, which is not random, but is approximated as random in our limited knowledge science of probability. The telos of nature, the agenda of the universe, is the ultimate driver of outcomes. Funny, I didn’t really lose that much. I cut way back, didn’t play that often, went way down in stakes, shorter buy-ins, and only playing one, one and a half, two buy-ins. Amazing during the whole streak that was so full of beats, coolers and card death, I would win either zero or one significant pot in each session. And I would count those chips up after the one big winning pot, and over and over and over and over and over I was exactly $1 behind. One time, right as I put up the middel $2 blind while stacking my only winner of the night, six hours in, I realized, “that $2 blind is going to make me $1 behind.” Sure as a daisy, I counted up $699 in front of me, $700 in. There was a rule governing the deck: he plays and stays loser; that’s his medicine. As reported, I was red hot for five years previous to this, and insanely hot the year before it. That last torrid year I won 10 in a row, then 10 in a row again, then 17 out of 18, then 31 in a row. It started with a 1-outer beat on Jan 1, 2016, hold’em, trip kings over trip threes. River. And then it was on me. It becomes like the Buddhist dharma: Can you let it go? Can you let the thrilling yourself with gambling wins as a way of life go? And what is there if you do? “Oh, you committed to this value, to this truth, to this reality … instead of the mesmerizing diversion from all that in the cards? Okay. Here is a run to help you that is utterly beyond the realm of the feasible, trillions and trillions to one against if you figure it by rote odds. BUT, this is your medicine. You know, grasshopper, that you have been lost in the shuffle and that this is a cheapening of life, an addiction, and you were sincere in your intention to redress it. I, the universe, the cosmos, nature, the quantum field, will help you in this sincere intent. The only way for you to learn this is to quit winning, to quit medicating yourself with chips, to quit diverting from critical truths in your consciousness via the games and the highs, faux wellbeing, and fool’s gold they can bring.” So, the part of us that has inclination to know ourselves and value our actual reality, instead of employing full on attempts to escape, when awakening, this part of us has a mighty trickster archetype in cahoots with the telos of nature in service to it. Don’t miss out on this so-called mystical aspect of life. Just as there are many levels to the games, there are many levels to this reality in which, at levels below, explicate and implicate orders (Bohm) have a threshold that holds the mystery of life. This principle visits where you live, of course. Nothing special about a deck of cards. It’s just part of the universe, part of the interface between quantum field and surface level perception like everything else. It has an agenda. Spoiler Show

What I'm looking at is so far beyond the pale that it precludes randomness, and, as such, is revelatory about the nature of the universe. Another session of it tonight ... 200 and some outs over the course of the session in which zero showed up. Again. I showed a full wrap with open end straight flush draw to my neighbor, guaranteeing him it couldn't beat two deuce at the end. Correctamoondo. All wraps missed, my flush draws went 0-for-6 while my opponents went 8-for-8. The game broke for an hour as a huge high hand hour was on. I played one serious hand in the hour: pocket aces. Up against the big blind of 4-8. Flop 6-5-2, rainbow. And of course, of course, of course ... the turn is a 7 and the river is an ace. Just look at how pure that is for a cooler. Perfect turn, perfect river for max loss. So I go back to PLO where the flushes and wraps all ran out to helll. Then to Ac-2c-3s-4s I flop 4c-5c-As. Nut wheel, straight flush draw, nut flush draw, aces up, and what the heck, back door straight flush draw kicker. LOL. I'm under the gun and check-raise a $50 button bet to 200. Instacall. He has 4-5-10-10. Turn is a 4, we both fill up, mine bigger. River of course a 10. This started on January 1, 2016 and has continued without interruption. 700-ish sessions. I lost over 50% of my one outer situations over 24 trials. "Show me some more card tricks" has become my beloved line to try to cope mentally with the reality of this streak. Now sure enough, this run followed one of the great heaters including 10 wins in a row twice, 17-18, and 31 in a row, all separate streaks, in a year of 93 winning sessions, 8 losses. I'm not supposed to win at that rate. I'm a 65% win session over the years. I'm also a big believer in corrections to bubbles are severe in accordance with how big the bubble is, be it stock market, housing market, poker results, etc. But this is something way beyond that. The point here in the analysis is not the losing, but the anomaly of it. I showed 10 hands to neighbors tonight, massive draws, guaranteeing that they wouldn't beat two deuces in the end. Right every time. This has been going on for 8 years. I made one mistake in adjudging this bizarre anomaly run as 35 times longer (700 sessions versus 20) than any I had ever experienced in 40 years of PLO. That was off because though the sessions really are a factor of 35 more, the amount of hands, which is how you judge it, is only about 15 times that previous death run. Still, virtually impossible randomly. There's nothing random in this universe, but such is only a shortcut for predicting results with unknown factors, unknown that is, to us. They aren't actually unknown. The quantum count knows and delivers it agenda with intent. When I was beleaguring that deuce of spades and then it was dealt standing face up on the table to me (see picture a few posts above), I knew this thing was getting metaphysical. And it's beautiful, prescient, and wise.

Wow. We're so delusional that if we lose enough that we can't even realistically attribute it to variance, we now attribute it to metaphysics? Occam's razor... Which is more likely? Bad results because of metaphysical,mystical jargon, or because we're simply playing badly. I'd bet the latter, but yeah, blame baal, or Freya, or the fates, or whatever floats your boat.

Playing a little PLO tonight in a must move and the game breaks. I step over to a 2-5 hold'em game waiting for the seat. First hand I have Q-Q and am up against a $10 button straddle. I limp he checks. HU. Flop: A-Q-7 off. I check it over to him and he bets $35. I looked at that flop for a while, ready for another card trick. I make a crying call. Cauz I'm playing bad. The turn comes an ace. I check/over-shove he instacalls. River 9. He turns over A-9. Why did I always think this situation is ~ 30/1? I just punched it up and it came back I was 98.69%. Lose stack, of course. Playing bad. Two hands later to 5-8 of clubs flop comes 4-6-7 rainbow. I don't slow it, utg bet and I raised. Dude calls it cold behind me, utg folds. Heads up. Turn 8. He has 9-10. I mean, I have an 8, and there are other cards in the deck besides an 8. You can run like this for at least 820 sessions, 110K hands. Move to PLO no winners for 4 hours, then aces unhelped hold up at 700 to go five handed, somehow, on a 7-8-9-10-9 board. Dude turned up kings real fast and the other 3 slowly throw their hands away. I'm last over with aces up winner. It was getting late and short, I dusted a nickel winner. The freak show bad run still on. Anybody that doesn't think everything under the sun is metaphysics, including poker, is blind, and he mistakes probabilistic shortcuts for reality. Uh-huh. Check.

My third or fourth hand at the hold’em table last night, the button straddles and I’m J-J in middle position. I raise, one straggler, button re-raises. Call, call. Flop 4-6-J off. I lead into it light, looking for you know what. It goes fold, raise. I hem and haw and way overship hoping to look like a BS bluff in this fast game (been sweating it waiting). I’m thinking if he’s a good player AND has balls, he might put me on A-K and call. He did. I turned away from the table, refused to look at it, and said: “Bring on the card trick.” To the dealer’s credit, imo, he didn’t ship my chips to the other end of the table until I turned back around and looked at the hand, 15 or 20 seconds after the runout. Board: 4-6-J-5-7, opponent’s hand pockets 8s. 98.28% this time. No good. I’ve long had the perhaps skewed idea that you can never get the money back from beats like this, that once they get way past the normal allotment of these it’s lost, dead money. Even stronger I always had this idea about sports beats and losses, way higher in amounts on that. I don’t really know what the actual with regard to that is. I do know it is possible to get in a vein of these kinds of hands, having luckily over avoided them, probably, for decades. 812 sessions of pure sickness over the last 8 years. Way, way, way beyond bizarre.

Very first hand when I sit at 5-card PLO after waiting for a couple hours for seat: Me: Ad-Kc-Jc-Jh-10s 50 to go 5-handed. Flop: 9d-10c-Qc I lead UTG for the 250. Fold, fold, fold, button raises, and I call my remaining 500. I forgot to say, "Show me the card trick," but I was sure thinking it. I would be absolutely shocked to win the hand. Turn 7d "Did you pick up diamonds," I say. "Nope," he says. River 7h He turns over Kh-Jd-9s-7c-2s. and says, "I made a full house." So I flopped the nuts with redraws open-end royal and climbing wrap. He flops pretty dead nuts with bottom pair. Apparently he had a 3% sweep chance. No problem. Enter the ongoing saga of card tricks. 814 sessions of this. It's really happening. The Trickster reigns.

Had my second or third 1K win in last 820 sessions. Expectation was 2 or 3 hundred of those. I cant begin to describe it other than each session showing up, was that normally 1or 2 % nightmare session. I'd insta bet this streak to be the worst one running on the planet if I had to bet a thousand or so for or against. It's just been too long and perverse ... and 20 times longer than any such streak I've had over the decades. These are kind of half live session, 4 hours average, live play, so only about 110K hands. The fact that it is stretched out over such a long time span -- over 8 years -- is the real mind and life altering component to it. Jammed into 3 months of full time multi-tabling, it would be horrendous but not the same psychological experience. Again, the time factor. There were 3 little mini winning streaks within it, but all small wins still fighting utter card death but winning a large pot with no loss. My longest stretch of near all losing sessions over the decades previously was about 20 full length sessions, as opposed to this 820 half-length sessions ... so 20 times longer. The 820 sessions has about 1/3 winning sessions, almost an exact flip from the typical 2/3rds established rate. Game is tougher, yes. Outs went to near zero on all classic hand types. Don't really have a feel for how long it takes a modern, full-time multi-tabler to play 110K hands. And I kept saying and saying and saying, "I bet I don't have the nuts on the river in one hand of this session" ... and it kept coming to pass. Still even in this 1K win, no nut hands on river. If I had to bet say 20% of my bankroll or more I'd have to back off to the more measured position, "Okay, it's only in the 99 percentile, but probably not the worst." The typical run horrendous of 10 to 20 full sessions over the years wasn't a pimple on this things arse. But I have now seen the edges of the bell curve, and it is an illuminating thing.

Another death run. Every run out was death but one. I turned quads and after the crackerjack river I had the 5th nuts and got raised. Everything is death, which is the fourth time I've lost with quads or better in this streak. World's worst streak, nearly certified. Is it at the outer fringes of the bell curve or is it the outer fringe? All live play. No random generators. Don't believe in them.

Three hands from last night: Holdem: I have 7-10 of spades, flop 8c-9c-Jh. Tightest player in the room min leads out under the gun. My antennae went way up right then. Turn 5h he small balls again, I raise and he hesitates and calls. Somewhat convincing hesitation on his part. River 3d. He small balls again into me after my raise. Odd. I gotta raise a little anyway. He hesitates and shoves and I fold my 7-10 face up. Flop 2nd nuts with no win. Holdem: Heads up with 8-8. Flop J-J-8. I have no win. Heads up against J-J quads. PLO: I have A-K-K-Q-9, double suited, no spades. Flop comes 10s-Js-5d. Wrap and kings. Turn is Ks. Top set, straight that's no count. Dude has royal flush and top set has no win. I had a sick run of all face card hands and aces. Kept showing them zeroing out to player next to me. Not so odd, I said, but 850 sessions of this is odd. Won exactly one hand in which I flopped nothing, everybody kept checking around and took 2 runners to straight flush, everybody insta throws their hand in the muck. Another session from hell in which of the 200 people in the room, I was again in the no win seat(s).

The hands went from the hundreds, to the thousands, to tens of thousands, to over 100,000 ... of perfect coolers. 850 sessions of it. So it's notable. And enlightening.

"Enantiodromia" and Human Experience

I came across a term in a psychology book the other night which made my jaw fall open with respect to all this. Was pretty much innocently reading along and there it was, in black and white: “enantiodromia.” What?? WTF is this? I’ve been reading psychology books for nearly half a century, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any reference to this. The author – Jung – was referring to a sequence of polar opposites appearing in experience, especially as it pertains to luck. Many times I had wondered about the combination of the preternatural sun run I had before this supernatural cooler streak, about how that can even be a thing. So stumbling across this word in Jung was rather astounding. I’ve long said that corrections in results tend to be as severe as the bubble preceding it, and though this is along the same lines, it is something deeper. Enantiodromia: the principle that everything makes way for its opposite, as with good and bad luck. “Wow” is a popular saying in poker, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a wow like this … even at 986-to-1 beats and suckouts which I’ve been involved with a few times. Because immediately preceding this impossible 850 session, 9-year long death run, I was probably one of the hottest players anywhere. In 2015 I had a mini-streak early on in which I won 8 in a row, then a loss, then won 17 of the next 18, then choppy for 4 sessions (2-2), then won 31 in a row. 93-8 for that year, 2015. As that 31-session streak was culminating, and in its aftermath, out of curiosity I began asking players about their longest winning streaks. It wasn’t a brag though they tended to take it that way, it was real curiosity that such a streak had visited me. I heard some surprisingly low numbers about their longest streaks, then I eventually heard some big ones … the biggest one being 24. I asked a mathematician about the odds of winning 31 sessions in a row over a 4000 session sample with an established 65% win rate. The streak should have been about a 28-3 heater, but at the end of the three near sure losses miracles rained. I knew it was all just a super sun run, but in retrospect I’m not sure I realized just how much of one it was, that is, just how much over expectation I was running, just how much the flops and run outs were going my way. I had been running very good for way too long in this sense, and losses, for years now except for in a handful of months over nearly 30 years, were immediately recovered, rarely losing more than once in a row, and very rarely more than twice in a row. Until. On January 1st, 2016 (I remember the date because that is bowl day and I’m a much higher sports bettor than poker player, and I never miss bowl day), I kind of had to play against my wishes in a friend’s new home game to support him. It was hold’em (which I don’t like, I play PLO mostly) and I took a 1-outer beat for my stack on a K-9-3 flop, trip kings against trip 3s. Got riverized, pulverized. I left immediately in a very cross mood that I was even there and that I had taken the beat. Little did I know what was coming. There is or was a thread on 2+2 titled something like, “Why Would Anyone Even Take Up Poker As of 2016?” The game getting too tough and too corrupt, I guess was the idea. Yeah, little did I know how perfectly timed this January 1, 2016 beat was in relation to that thread, and that I would become like the poster child for that thread title. Enter the almost every single flop utterly misses my hand for 100K hands as if they rooted through the deck to find the 3 most unrelated cards possible over and over and over (“no pair, no draw, no back door draw” became my refrain), maddening to watch it continue over years and hundreds of sessions, and the 1% or so of flops where I did connect zeroed out and/or ran out to murderous beats, including slews of 1-outers. It happened. Is still happening. Now here is the huge kicker to the story that moves the whole thing into metaphysics. This jackpot Jungian term appeared in a chapter called “The Psychology of the Trickster.” Having long scoffed at the idea of the Trickster, of course without fully understanding it (it’s not an entity but a pattern), during this very phenomenon of the streaks I had researched and incorporated the Trickster, archetype of prescient chaos, into my worldview. Via the incorporation of opposing patterns in the psyche, like poles of a battery, the human drama and reality itself unfolds. In the service of individuation, in the service of the evolution of consciousness, this is a thing. The Trickster archetype is all about throwing a monkey wrench into things in the service of individuation and evolution. And that is exactly what this experience was … away from “lost in the shuffle” and toward self-knowledge. Poker, after all, has a great escape velocity within the psyche. Only the total and bizarre blocking of expected occurrences could have done the trick. And, voila, The Trickster brought it home in the form of enantiodromia, something that no one but Jung, Heraclitus, and Plato had ever heard of. I’m used to seeing perfect terms land from some of the world’s greatest psychologists and metaphysicians, but this one takes the cake for me.

Tonight's installment: My first hand of the night, about 4 hands into the session. I have A-J versus Ac-2c. Flop A-J-4, no clubs. I slow play check, call on flop. Comes a 3. I check-raise turn. He calls and it comes a 5 of course. The universe gave him my stack. As I was sitting there after the beat, I was thinking it was 25/1. Then it occurred to me, no, it's about 50/1. Very next deal I'm on the button with 7-7. I raise, same opponent heads up. Flop 5-6-K, off. He donks into me. I call. Turn 7: the perfect jackpot card. He bets, I raise, he just calls. River, blank Q. He checks. I hesitate big time -- I know how this works -- then I shove and he turns over 3-4 and takes my stack. This hand just so perfectly describes the super cooler set up of everything. 850 sessions of this. Super-cooler bonanza. So, I'm two buy-ins down on sickness. Right there at the table, I started thinking back about the super-heater preceding all this, and remembering that at some point it occurred to me back then, "Jeez, I've been forever without losing an all-in." Next hand dude shoves over my raise, me with A-K, him with A-Q. Flop 10-J-Q. Turn 3, river K. Chop pot. I leave the table. Quickly get in PLO. Flop nut trips lose pot, flop full house lose stack on river card. Now the coup de grace. I've never seen it. I have about 400 in front of me after all the rapes. Last chips for the night. On button I have A-A-4-4 double suited, spades and diamonds. Small blind has A-A-7-7 also double suited. So two players have aces-up in their hand double-suited. Never seen it. Flop comes 2s-5s-Qd. I have a straight flush draw and aces. The hands are face up. Suddenly it occurs to me that the 7-diamonds is his only win. Turn: 7 diamonds. River: blank. So the only card in the deck that wins for him gives me both nut flush draws, with a wheel draw. I've played 3 hands with this guy, a pro. He had 2 outs, 2 outs, and this hand ... and he won all three. The death run outs and card tricks in this streak defy all explanation except one. I'm very grateful for that reason and for the experience. More and more I suspect that the run is the worst on earth, occasionally pulling back from that thinking, nah it is merely in that 1% outer edge of the bell curve. But I've seen a lot of poker, and in decades nothing came within light years of this sickness.

Having long been a religious follower and bettor of sports, I'm suddenly very spotty with it, just dabbing here and there. I was sitting around and it occurred to me that it wasn't going very good. Betting so small and so infrequently that it isn't important, so I hadn't noticed. Here are my last 16 bets going back a few weeks: Penn St + 4.5 vs. Ohio St. Penn St -- 1.5 (1H) vs. Ohio St. Yanks O.C. World Series (when down 3-0) Yanks Game 5 Yanks -144 Game 3 Bengals -2.5 vs. KC Cowboys +4.5 vs. San Fran Missouri +17.5 vs. Bama Yanks + 170 Game 1 WS Chargers - 2.5 vs. Zona U of L + 185 vs. Miami USC + 150 vs. Penn St. Bama - 20.5 vs. SCar Ohio St. --1 versus Oregon Detroit series outcome SCar +275 vs. Ole Miss These bets have something in common. They all lost. 16 in a row. This streak, combined with the poker, is so thick it defies standard models of reality, defies standard deviations by light years. Not because it is 16 straight losing sports bets, but because this coincides with an 850 session poker anomaly. It speaks of a virtual reality, of a non-random substrate to such results and outcomes. Yesterday, apparently there was just utter sickness at the end of both halves to bring the loser home. The announcer said, "Touchdown, Penn St" ... and I just knew that wouldn't stand ... and it didn't. World's most anomalous streak informs me about the nature of reality, you know, because things like poker and sports are part of reality. This streak rained when I had made a conscious effort to no longer be lost in gambling as a tonic/escape/medication of actual existential realities in the self. And the Trickster, on cue, delivered the agenda to aid the process of self-exploration. This streak cannot happen, and it cannot happen on cue. Unless, unless the nature of things is not the mundane, general model of reality commonly held. The "world" is virtual. The world turned its back on my reign, this is the flip side, my telomeres are unraveling ... and this is no longer the reality in which I had super heaters, reigned over sports betting, and floated over actual existential truths with the winning moves.

Denver +10 and Boyz +3.5. 18 in a row.

Harris in electoral L Harris in the popular L 20 straight losers.

FLA + 21.5 L 21 straight.

Michigan + 14.5 W Clemson - 6 W The streak ends at 21 straight. Shoot! I wanted to see how far it could go.

First hand tonight: I'm A-Q suited, bring it for 2x (I like getting action with this hand), get re-popped by the small blind. Call. Flop: A-A-7. He leads into me, I call. Turn 6. He leads into me again, I raise. He tanks knowing he's in trouble. Very slow call and shove his last 50 or so ott. River K. He wins with pocket kings. A nice little 2-outer welcome. It didn't faze me in the least, didn't exasperate me in the least. Two people at the table gave a big reaction. I just couldn't be less surprised. 857 sessions of this. Later I flop a royal draw on a Ad-Ah-Jh flop. I'm 10-Q of hearts. Turn was a king, but not the king of hearts. My straight is crushed by A-K. Just beautiful, beautiful card tricks. For it to run coolers at me like this for so many sessions is extreme trickeration, for sure.

Flopped six sets and got them all beat, missed every flush draw, missed every straight draw, missed every A-K. None of that is as pertinent as the utter lack of suspense over whether any of these hands are going to win the pot. I have an absolute first timer sitting next to me in the 1-3 game and I can’t get a chip from him. He goes broke and I move up to the 2-5. First hand I have Q-Q, button has a straddle on. Dude limps, I limp hoping for it, and he does, he busts it open for 50. Dude in between us starts counting out 1$ chips over and over and over up past the line, and at some point I had to assume it was a call. I make it 200 then look up there and he has never called. I’ve re-raised out of turn. So he folds and I’m heads up with the button who turns A-K face up and folds. What?? Bizarre. A-K straddle on the button folds for a re-raise. It isn’t 15 minutes till they call the big stack to the main, down to 4-handed now and breaking. Last deal I have 7-7, make it 25 to go. Button calls, same guy with the white chip BS fiasco. Flop comes 6-7-9, off. He has 5-8 and it blanks out and I lose my stack. Just super cooler setups over and over and over and over. And to watch the board blank out to your hand for 9 years is something I recommend highly to all players. 868 sessions now of this kind of death. New table and I have a blithering drunk boozing it up trying to convince everyone he is a billionaire. They start calling him Bill Gates. I take off with A-K of spades against him, 50 to go 3-handed, flop comes 8-8-9 two spades. Check to me on the button, bet 125. One fold, drunk calls. Turn 2-hearts. Check to me, bet 275. Drunk calls, totally clueless and so slow that people are complaining about him even though he is the worst player we’ve ever seen. River is 5 off. Check to me I bet my last 125. He instacalls and turns over A-5 winner. Utterly bizarre. Then I flopped trips and flush draw in PLO against a naked off-suit queen draw. He hit it … then the blank to my 20-outer post his gut shot perfect. Then a better one: I’m heads up with button raiser, a tight hold’em player trying his hand at PLO. He raised on button. Flop of 9-7-5, giving me 3-pair. Turn Q giving me a flush draw and straight draw. So I have the situation of drawing at all 3 classic hands – full house, flush and straight – while my opponent is drawing at none of them. Yet he wins my stack with 3-outer. He has A-A-10-10, but the 10s make me the nut straight, and one of the aces makes me a flush. He has two queens and an ace to win my stack with. Don’t worry. To have these kinds of hands waiting for you for 868 sessions is mind altering, reality radicalizing, and more than anything it is the fact that it is spread over almost 9 years that adds such weightiness to the experience. It is like someone is writing a farcical comedy with the deck, and it’s like that because that is actually what it is. The Trickster is in my house, coming out of my ears, up my kazoo, etc. I’ve heard of these kinds of streaks before, seen other players going thru them where it looked like black magic against them. My turn. Thinking back to a couple of those instances. In one of them, the dude got everything beat for months and months of every night play, then flopped quads one night and some drunk gambling irrespective of what his hole cards or the flop was, took 2 runners to a straight flush and beat him. I stared at that hand and thought about it for quite a while. The scenario was weird. The other dude I saw running like this went on all year then he took 1-outer beats in consecutive pots (I did the second one). Again, I stared. What is this kind of streak? Anyway IT gave me 31 wins in a row as not even a favorite, and IT knows it. This is the reckoning. Anybody who doesn’t see the mystical nature of things isn’t playing with a full deck, is stuck in “rational” mode that is a caricature of rational. IT is the quantum field. I rest my case.

It's trying to teach me something about reality, about so-called randomness, and in particular, about my posture toward the games.

I haven't been playing. The other day I was driving and it popped into my head the day the enantiodromia flipped on me -- went from white hot to like absolute zero arctic chill. January 1, 2016. I didn't want to be there at all that day, was fairly livid about having to miss my normal total immersion in New Year's Day bowl games action, but it was a home game and it was someone I kind of had to support. The seemingly innocent little 1-outer that befell me in the fateful session -- trip kings over trip 3s headed to the river, and deep -- didn't turn out too innocent, but rather heralded in an 850 session streak of statistically impossible coolers, death cards, bricks, beats, fouls, irregularities, suspension of any semblance of standard deviation decorum, and whatever else that voodoo run was. I'd been playing about 35 years as of that New Year's Day of 2016, and in that run I had seen the customary ups and downs, with some extremes thrown in (mostly on the positive side). My worst run in that time where it seemed like every or nearly every run out went to death was about 18 or 20 sessions. Other than than that there was one 8 session such streak, all losers full of coolers. But certainly, neither of those was remarkable in its duration or intensity, or, more importantly, in sheer unlikeliness, sheer implausibility, sheer absurdity and inconceivability. On the plus side my runs were closer to unexpected, streaks of 26 winners out of 27, 17 of 18, scores of 10 in a row, and finally, a 31 session winning streak. With some 4000 sessions logged at about a 65% win rate, to have won 31 in a row at any point was quoted to me to be about a ??? shot. (I forget right now, don't want to misquote it.) Over the whole haul to lose more than twice in a row was extremely rare. But now, on the down side of the Bell, somehow some new standard of expectation anomaly was settling in on me, some kind of nether realm of what could only be non-stochasticity, some glimpse into a non-standard reality upon which I was being schooled, being educated. As a metaphysician of considerable if debatable credentials, that's just my game: non-standard models of reality. So indeed I lived the enantiodromia, and then on cue came across it in a text. That's a synchronicity. Enantiodromia: the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and psychological development, as in "the remorseless enantiodromia of good and bad luck." Going on the premise that synchronicities about enantiodromia are not typical fare, my researcher's instinct was quickened, and my own extensive readings and writings and musings about the nature of synchronicity were front and center, on the table. "A deck of cards is a subset of reality, i.e. the nature of reality is demonstrated via a deck of cards to the same extent it is in all other slivers of nature." That. And so I was on the trail ... on the trail of the mechanics, physical or virtual, of the little snippet of reality called my gambling outcome experience.

You have an interesting style of writing. Gl!

by FellaGaga-52 m (https://www.twoplustwo.com/post?postId=58824463#post58824463)

It's trying to teach me something about reality, about so-called randomness, and in particular, about my posture toward the games.

So the subject isn't bad beats ... it's about an impossibly anomalous streak and the nature of reality. About enantiodromia, and better yet, about a prescient enantiodromia delivered tailor-made by the (so-called) Trickster. That makes it very Jungian. When I say it is about a prescient enantiodromia, I lose almost everybody, and that's because when you get to esoteric truth, you almost by definition lose plausibility with most everyone. It's lonely out in space. You know, when a lot of people discuss the whole subject of the nature of chance (of course a subset of the nature of reality), they try to explain what is happening with a whole cloth conflation of probability and true randomness. Come to papa. I am what I am. If we have people talking to god and revealing his thoughts on here, we can have an actual metaphysician. This anomaly is teaching me something else, something besides this taken for granted conflation. I seem to be pulling a Bowman, a Dave Bowman. It's quite a meaningful and revealing path. And since I was delivered into this world by a Dr. Stats, the teleology of the cosmos, built into nature, is hardly something to be scoffed at, but rather ultimately embraced.

Here I sit ... the betting is done It's impossible to say what was lost and won Money and chips were a small part of it What it was all about requires some wit. The hands from tonight, the 907th session in the death run. Last session for me. As-9s-Jk-Jh-Qd ... Flop Jk-10s-6s. Top set, nut flush draw, open end straight (all the nuts) ... lose stack heads up. K-K-J-J-9 ............... Flop K-4-5 rainbow. Lose stack heads up to pre-flop re-raiser. 7-8-9-10-J ........... Flop 6-7-A rainbow. Five of us ship and aces full wins it. Lose stack. 7-7-6-5-4 ............. Flop 7-6-3. Top set, nut straight and straight flush draw. Lose stack heads up. J-J-10-9-7 .............. Flop J-5-2 rainbow. Lose stack heads up. K-Q-J-2-4 ............. Flop A-10-8 rainbow. Runout 3-5. Runner runner nut wheel for me. Dude makes very slow crying call with trip aces (he says). But he also has the wheel unknowingly. Split pot slow roll. Flop nut flush. Up against top set who bet into me. Quads first card off. A-Q-J-9-7 ............. Flop A-A-4. Lose stack to 4s full. 10-10-J-8-8 ............. Flop A-10-6. Two players flopped aces and sixes and turn is the case ace, both making aces full. Those were all within one hour. Good night, fellas. I don't need this. On the upside, I have learned that this phenomenon isn't random. It is probabilistic, but not random. And also that it doesn't matter much, which was a big news flash.

by FellaGaga-52 m (https://www.twoplustwo.com/post?postId=59130504#post59130504)

Here I sit ... the betting is doneIt's impossible to say what was lost and wonMoney and chips were a small part of itWhat it was all about requires some wit.The hands from tonight, the 907th session in the death run. Last session for me. As-9s-Jk-Jh-Qd ... Flop Jk-10s-6s. Top set, nut flush draw, open end straight (all the nuts) ... lose stack heads up.K-K-J-J-9 ............. See full post

Oh, I forgot: Sitting in a Hold'em game waiting for PLO seat, my very first hand was A-J of diamonds. I raise in cutoff, get re-raised by button. Call. Flop, three babies with two diamonds. I'm check-raising him. Check, check. Turn J of clubs. I bet 125. He calls. River K, not a diamond. He I check, he bets 125, I pay it off. He turns over A-K (2 outs from my turn bet). Just ridiculous, ridiculous coolers awaiting every session. So, I'm in the 7-seat, guy in 9-seat, 8-seat open. Dude comes up and sets rack of chips on the rail, and walks off. 9-seat doesn't see it, elbows it, and there is 500 worth of red chips all over the floor. Right then I predict there will be one missing and I'll be the suspect as they are all over, many right under me. Sure enough one chip missing. I go to PLO as the suspect. Later they said they had found it under a scooter. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I had never seen in almost 50 years a full rack knocked off the table. Now I have.

914 sessions of the super death run now. Playing "ROE" half & half tonight, good game, I was treated to the following hands:

1. 5-5 Hold'em I have 4-4 and limp in early, button raise and four of us to the flop of 2-5-6 rainbow. Button follows for 100 and all 3 of us call. Turn is a 3. I lead for 300 and button insta-calls, other two fold. Queen/ blank on river and she insta-calls 300 again. I turn mine over. And here comes her hand out, like keeps happening, when for all the world my hand is supposed to be good. And she has ..... 4-4. "Nice card trick, " I compliment the dealer. Weird.
2. I raise on button with 8-8, 50 to go. One call. Flop comes 6-7-9. Pretty good. Of course it was the perfect flop for his hand against mine. Just of course it was. He had 8-9. Lose stack.
3. Another long session of PLO with no nut straights or nut flushes. It utterly abandoned me 914 sessions ago. Made one full house which was the bottom board of a bomb pot. Uncontested.
4. It just keeps happening in this run that I either win one hand or none, and the one winning hand, as was the case tonight, bringing me back to between 100 stuck and even, but still forever stuck in the run. It's mind altering. It's medicine. So when I do win this one pot, over and over in sessions, the whole death run starts again in effect doubling the length of time to lose the 3 or 4 buyins that I commit. And stuck the whole time.
5. The one winner I had was an A-9-9 flop to my K-Q-J-9. Of course I can never like that hand with lots of pre-flop and flop action, I could be closed out, but it won about 1000 pot when I was 1100 in.
6. No nut flushes, no nut straights, no flopped wraps, no matched flops, no flopped top sets, no cheap catches on the turn, zero .... nothing nothing, nothing, nothing for 914 sessions.
7. Hold'em flop of Q-10-3 to my Q-10 suited ... he has pocket 3's. Lose stack. Just the perfect flop.
8. Coup de gras ... I have 8-9-9-J doublesuited and went ahead and shoved almost a nickel pre-flop versus some raising. Flop 10-Q-K. Second nut straight and straight flush draw. I'm heads-up and And I'm zero percent to win the pot. He has A-J-J-5, with the nut flush draw and my straight flush blocked. My straight can't reach the ace. No back door flush draw. As soon as we turn the hands over someone said they folded the other pocket nines, so I can't trip. If the board trips out his jacks beat my nines. No win. Cosmic card tricks delivered by The Trickster. Amen. It teaches me about self and reality (which is its whole game plan). Some angst, but no complaints. The worst run in the history of poker: 914 sessions over 10+ years, all live play, started on Jan.1 2016 with a one-outer beat, set over set in holdem, in a pot where I was afraid I was going to win in a walk with K-K, made a min raise, maniac calls with 3-3, flop is K-9-3 ... and he takes my stack. That's where it started. It's real.

It's possible but unlikely. Are all these sessions live? Are they held in different cardrooms or all in the same place? I know omaha is b... but 900 sessions?

by Penetrator m (https://www.twoplustwo.com/post?postId=59224169#post59224169)

It's possible but unlikely. Are all these sessions live? Are they held in different cardrooms or all in the same place? I know omaha is b... but 900 sessions?

Thanks I've described before that all sessions are live in about 10 different casinos/cardrooms, including mostly major ones (Hard Rocks and Caesars, some Florida rooms). My latest new joint, my last two sessions, exact same story. Utter card death, zero connection with flops or as near zero as you can get. I even won a dime during one of these sessions as aces unhelped shipped preflop tripled up. That, by the way, was the third win of a dime or more in the 915 plays now, in mid-size/fast 1-2 + 5-10 winner straddle forced. I would like some input in particular on what percent of sessions are the "everything goes wrong nearly all terrible runouts" type disaster session, normally? I always said 1%, but that could be well off ... maybe 2-5%? I'm sure you are just checking the cliff's, and I don't blame you, but I've described that before this started I was on a super heater sun run including winning 31 sessions in a row, and tons of other streaks. Insanity reigns, it seems. Apparently this was a quarter million-to-one shot or something given a long established 66% win rate in a set of 4000 or so plays, if I remember right. I would like that run again: 66% win rate, over 4K sessions what are the odds winning 31 in a row at any point? I play only hands with a bunch of outs, mostly nut outs (if full game). The way the completion of the hands went to zero, on top of whiffing bizarre percentage of flops, is way, way beyond any even outlier, extreme bell curve standard deviations. That's 915 sessions of being the coldest player at the table and in the room almost all of them. I've played it for 40+ years now. I had one 20 session stretch like this over that long span. To be more representative, I might call these 915 half-sessions, as they are about 4.5 hours on average. But its 915 mind bending actual playing sessions. I realize it is the amount of hands that is the important thing: I vary on estimating that. 125, 000?

In one sense I was a pretty remarkable bubble. As not even a legit favorite in the game against the modern lineups and the rake, I won 31 in a row, shortly after winning 17-out-of-18, and 93-8 for the year. This was long after the two best players that I came up with were having major trouble winning in the current environment. I was nowhere near their caliber, not a poker pro at all ... was just on a super duper heater. What is that? Apparently something like a quarter million-to-1 shot? The flip side of that apparently -- in this enantiodromia (the tendency for extreme bell curve anomalies to turn into their opposite) reality of mine -- is 915 sessions of death, with only one session in the lot that felt close to "routine." That is, no rushes for the duration, only one rush would have happened if I played every hand, and just bizarrely everything went south, went antarctic cold, then went Pluto cold. I'd seen it for 20 sessions once in 40 years, now I've seen it for 915 sessions. (Funny, in writing this I had two synchronicities with the words "bubble" and "absolute zero.") I did make the worst fold of my life the other night in hold'em. It's just gotten too much in my head. But it's okay ... another life track is better. I certainly got my play in over the years, got way more jollies probably than warranted, and I still have the sneaky feeling that perhaps for the whole decades I was running considerably over my expectation in terms of connecting with flops and completing the hands, and only in this last streak did I get any hint of how cold it could go. Perfect summation: certainly a lot of angst, but no complaints.

The way I used to catch: Earlier today I was reminded of a very memorable hand. Amarillo Slim was in the game, the only time I ever played with him, and he had just bluffed me out of a pot. He showed it and said, "You had me, pardner." Real chummy like. Very next hand I think it was, playing PLO, I flopped top set and an open end straight flush draw on a 8-9-Q board. I got raised by an all-in, and said, "I guess I gotta call, " facetiously. On the turn I made quads and on the river I made the straight flush. LOL. So I lean forward and croon my neck just for half a second, like studying the board. "Quads and a straight flush" ... I called it before turning it over. "What?" everybody is thinking. "He's joking, surely." I rolled it out. Slim was snickering and I said to him, "What was your name again, Hollywood Slim?" He absolutely loved it. Those were the days.

Another obscenity of a poker session last night, after taking 3 months off without playing a hand. 6 hours of hold'em with not a single winner, until the last two hands. Flopped 5-10-10 to pocket 5s, everybody folded for $5 bet. LOL. They finally call me for PLO. I take one more hand Q-10 of diamonds, flop 8d-Jd-As. Double gutter straight, flush draw, straight flush draw. I bet $10, everybody folding around to the last guy who hesitates. I couldn't take it any more. "Here, I'll help you out, " I said, turning my hand face up. "Two deuces beats me." He hemmed and hawed around some more then threw it away. PLO immediate obscenity. I have aces single suited, 3 to the flop, one guy in the dark (every hand, he doesn't touch cards until after the flop). Flop 10-10-10. Dark guy with the short stack checks, I bet, other guy calls, dark guy calls. He then inexplicably, drunkenly, says, "Oh I'm just begging to have a 10, " and starts turning his cards over one at a time. We just kind of watch him. The first one answered his prayer, a 10. That leaves me in with the guy with a good stack, me with the nuts. Turn is a jack. The frickin' guy had jacks. Nearly wipes me out. I restack. I have QQxxx and the flop is Q-9-9. Dude rocks into me twice. I raise the turn. He has Q-9. But guess what he gets to say on the river? You know, when another 9 comes. "I have quads." He turns over Q-9-7-5-4. Yet another 1-outer against my nut full. The fact that he had that other queen -- queens full of nines versus nines full of queens -- was just beautiful. Just absolutely perfect. He can't fold, he's super trapped ... voila, miracle, he gets to say that refrain I hear when I've got the nut full but trips hits the board on the river, and the little full takes my stack: "I've got quads." I know what a trillion-to-one looks like, and it just keeps happening like this. 920 sessions, live play, across 4 states, 10 or so joints. "Show me another card trick, " I've started saying to dealers for about the last 800 of those sessions, and those were two pretty good ones tonight for damn sure.

True ... the theme running through this streak of horrendous runs all night, followed by the one-outer beat way up in the morning in the "get out of the trap pot, " is an insult to anything reasonable. Except for one thing: it's not an insult to the ultimate truth of what's going on in this streak, which in fact is an enforcing of dharma. With this new paradigm operating, it's untenable to continue to play. I certainly got my play in, in terms of hours, years, decades, half centuries. It's no longer a winning move to play. Long live the Trickster, for his mayhem is sage!

Another session after several weeks off. First hand when I sit down, I'm A-Q in bb, fold to a raise (I hate the hand). Flop: Q-6-2, off. Pre-flop raiser has 6-6 ... perfect set up to lose stack on first hand, but I ducked it. Then several hours of nothing. I did win one hand. PLO game breaks about 4 AM. Move to hold'em table. First hand I take down. Second hand I'm A-K. Raise, one caller. Flop A-8-2. Opponent has 8-8. It ended like it started, but I couldn't duck it. It laid in wait.

Dropped in for another session after another few weeks licking my wounds. The first thing that happened was I asked the dealer, just me and him at the table as they had just called the new table, and I ask him what they do with the jokers from their decks (since I had just started collecting joker cards). He said he had no idea, never seen one. So I just happen to mention killing a few minutes as we wait for players, "I just got about 25 jokers in from Belgium today." Instantly appears the second player at the table donning a Belgium Brewery hat. A touch weird. We're 4000 miles from the country of Belgium and over 1000 miles from the brewery in Colorado. Whatever. I guess it's apropos as I've written two books on synchronicity, and the guy that wrote the textbook says he's never seen anything like my ass in his life. I make my standard mind bet that everyone at the table will win two hands before I win one. I win that bet again. The deuce of spades starts raining on me, first card 4 out of 5 hands. I take a short break. Come back and the first card of the first hand is the deuce of spades. I move tables. I make the same mind bet ... won't win a hand until everyone wins two. I don't get a chance to win that one as I get tens, jacks and queens all beat in rapid succession. Then the K-10 of diamonds, flop Q-J-5 with two diamonds. I raise and big action 3-handed, preflop raiser being sticky, another lingerer. Turn blank. Check around. River 3 of diamonds. Lingerer checks, I bet into button pre-raiser he folds with drama, linger pauses, eyes my stack, pauses again ... And of course I'm broke. He shoves. He's BB A-7 of diamonds. Waiting for PLO seat. Can't look at any more of this. Go to blackjack. Small loss. Lose interest, cash out all chips from this casino as I'm really near done. They call me for PLO one minute before I'm out the door. Of course I know what that spectacular timing is. One guy sits me and the other guy tongue lashes me for sitting out of turn. Again. Different first name was supposed to have it, even though I'm blinking too. They start another table of it. I sit there. A slew of hands in a row and not one flop card touches my hand. No winners, everybody at the shorthanded table wins several pots, including a guy who called 150 on the flop of 8-9-Q off with 2-6-7-8. He lost his stack on the hand, already nutted out of it, then they let him rebuy short. I don't mind. I get AA99 double suited red. Flop nothing, and the more I looked at that flop the more it seemed just totally mocking my hand. 10-J-Q all black. Just total stymie and cannot possibly play. Two hands later, rather uncanny, I get AAQQ double-suited black. There is a 2-5-25-50 blinds and dead blind raises in front of me, so I pot it. Next dude repots it. He has AA58 no suits. He makes fives and eights and takes my stack. Not even mad. This started January 1, 2016, with a 1-outer beat, trip kings against trip 3s in hold'em, and has persisted for 931 sessions. Who was that guy that used to post, the Big Hitter? I must be the No-Hitter.