The Tiltboys

Russ 1987 Rafe 1987 Mike 1987 Perry 1987 Steve 1987 Dave 1992 Bruce 1993 Tony 1993 Phil 1993 Lenny 1994 Josh 1995 Paul 1996 Kim 1996 JK 1997

"... a half-dozen recent Stanford graduates and their friends, whose escapades, fueled by Rusty Nail and Green Apple cocktails, would delight Dean Martin." Smithsonian Magazine "For a few good belly laughs, read these true tales.... Amidst their PG-13-rated stories of ribaldry in Las Vegas, there is a surprising amount of intelligent discussion of poker." New York Times "... they dress in women's clothes and go to poker rooms. They think this is of great interest to other poker players. This strikes me as a rather pathetic, or at least sophomoric, attempt to get attention." rec.gambling.poker

« Home

Saturday, February 25, 2006

rafe :: 5 Confirmed Sales (maybe)

Based on the book signing turnouts, I didn't think anyone had actually bought Tales From the Tiltboys. But I was just eating some cheetos and googling by myself, and it appears that there are at least five confirmed sales! Or at least five people who read a free copy and felt guilty enough to post a review:

...part Ocean's 11, part Swingers, part "Signs you have a gambling problem" pamphlet from GA. While you breeze through the chapters, the only thing you'll do more than laugh is wish you were at a casino with your buddies, saddled up at a poker table with a drink in one hand while the other is forming a circle that will catch one of their eyes. [more]


I've barely begun to read the book yet and I'm already laughing. Even the cover of the book is funny, with a picture of them all when they crashed a ladies only tournament in drag (seeing Phil Gordon, who is 6'9", in a gorgeous pink skirt and blouse, is priceless). [more]


While everyone is looking for the next great strategy book, it also needs to be said to remind poker players to have fun with their lives. "Tales From The Tiltboys" delivers that "fun" side that is needed to balance out everything that a poker player faces in their games and their lives. There were several moments in my reading of the book that, in all seriousness, I had to stop reading and just laugh uproariously as the Tiltboys demonstrated this pursuit of fun and happiness. [more]


The humor in Tales from the Tiltboys can be compared to several of the sophomoric yet funny movie comedies that have appeared over the last several years. Sure, most of the jokes in Something About Mary and American Pie are low-brow, but at the same time they're infused with enough creativity and inspiration that even more sophisticated audience members can find them funny. We might not want to admit to reading some of these stories, but when nobody's looking we're cackling with glee nonetheless. [more]


By the end of the book you cant help but be slightly jealous. Despite being hopelessly addicted to gambling and sophomoric tomfoolery, these people are having fun… and occasionally winning vast sums of money. If you cant beat them, join them, or at least pick up a copy of their book. Youll still be laughing long after youve turned the final page. [more]

At this rate though, it's going to be 2020 before we send someone to the WSOP.

  

Friday, February 24, 2006

josh :: Why the Tiger Woods bet was bad

I essentially stated that 49 of 50 states had mostly clueless people when it came to making a hypothetical even money bet on Tiger Woods against the field.

In short, such a bet approximates making the statement, "Against a professional golfer, Tiger Woods has an 89% of defeating that golfer in match play." If Woods's percentage is less than that, he becomes less than a 50-50 proposition to win a six-round match play tournament.

I wonder how much money Vegas makes off such bets...

  

Thursday, February 23, 2006

diceboy :: Diceboy sets record for winning the SF condo lottery

For those of you who do not already know, Rena and I went in with our downstairs neighbors and bought our property. This includes our building and the single family house behind us. We closed in mid-January. A few days after we closed our realtor took us out to dinner with our money and asked us if we were going to buy a ticket for the lottery. I said, "no, I don't generally play unless it is over about $50 million or so." He said, "No, I mean the condo lottery. The deadline to enter is in 5 days."

So I did a little research and it turns out that there is a once a year condo lottery in SF where owners who meet certain criteria can enter a lottery in which the winners get the right to sub-divide their property into condos. (There are 4 units on our property, so turning it into condos would be very appealing.) A lot of people enter each year and only a few win. The lottery is weighted such that you have a greater chance of winning each year that you enter. Your chance of winning in year 4 is around 30%. This year, they changed the rules to make the chance of winning in your first 3 years almost impossible. The chance of winning in year one was lowered to about 1.5%. We were not planning on holding the property for that long, so our initial thought was that the odds were so low it wasn't worth it. Then we thought, "hey, it's only $150, why not."

We got exactly 1 ticket in the drawing. There were over 1,300 tickets in the pool, and we qualified for about 20 of the pulls (I think there were about 45 pulls all together). Low and behold, our ticket was pulled. Cha-ching! I think this increased the value of our property by about 15-20% overnight.

Expected time for the average person to win the condo lottery: 5.5 years
Time for Diceboy to win: 2 weeks

--Dice

  

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

josh :: Nevada versus the US

The ESPN question was thus:

"Who will win the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship?"

Below is the state-by-state non-scientific voting:



















Generally, I ignore non-scientific polls. That said, this sure makes me want to play poker with people living outside the state of Nevada.

  

Monday, February 20, 2006

diceboy :: The TiltBlog Mini

I cannot believe that Apple has not thought of this yet…

The TiltBlog® Mini:

It is essentially be a Bluetooth earpiece that connects to your cell phone or Blackberry. Once you turn it on, you hear Perry reading all of the Tiltboy blog posts out loud, sort of like a blogs on tape type of thing. In between each post, Perry tells one joke and a bad beat story. The catch is that it is on an infinite loop. If there are no new blog posts, Perry keeps recycling through old ones. His jokes and bad beat storie, of course, never repeat (should not be a problem since he has an infinite amount of both of them). The catch is that the TiltBlog® Mini does not have an off button, and there is no way to remove the batteries (2yr lithium batteries permanently included). The only way to turn it off is to smash it against a wall.

--Dice

  

rafe :: My new line of clothing

These are the jeans. I'm thinking of a whole new line called "Diceboy Inside" for the summer.

  

Sunday, February 19, 2006

tiltdad :: NJ Book Signing for Tales from the Tiltboys

Kim, Rafe and I went to two book signings for our book "Tales from the Tiltboys" (which bookstores can't keep on the shelves).


Here are some (horrible quality - sorry, used my cellphone camera) photos from the two signing. See if you can pick us out!

JK

  

bruce :: funny hand

A little mini-comedy from last night's Hold'em session:

There's a guy at the table named Roland, he's talking to
me about liking the book and reading our trip reports,
meanwhile we're both looking for some way to get the
other guy on tilt.

He's a strong player but I think I have a good
line on his play, and he surely has a good line on mine.

A hand comes up where I'm in the small blind and he's
in the cutoff.  He raises pre-flop and gives off what I
think is a small tell.  I thought I saw him getting
ready to just call, and then decide to raise when he saw
that there were only two limpers (one of whom was a weak
and easy player.)  I put him on a small-middle pocket pair,
trying to thin the field.

I had QJ.  Usually I'm going to fold this hand out of
position to a raise from a tight player.  But given my tell,
I decide to play.  Big blind calls, as do the two limpers.

Flop is 779.  I check and watch the other players interest
level.  They look bored and check around to Roland.  He bets.

I decide to try a steal play based on a few things:
1) I don't think anybody else caught anything
2) Pot is reasonably big, but not so big as to encourage chasing.
3) Roland has to put me on a very narrow range of
hands given my preflop cold call.  He probably has
me on AJ, ATs, KQ or a pocket pair.  So I can represent
having a pocket pair by raising here.
4) He has to give my raise some respect, because there
are three other players to act after me.

Everybody folds, Roland calls.  I've still got him on a pocket
pair, maybe just taking one off to see if I bet the turn.

Turn is a T, now I've got a straight draw also.  I bet out.
Roland thinks for a little while, then decides to raise me.
Maybe he thinks he can get me to fold the medium pocket
pair I've been representing.  Maybe he thinks I'm just bluffing.
Maybe I'm totally wrong about my tell and he actually has AA or 99.

I'm stuck now.  I think about re-raising, but I figure him
to call me down.  I can't fold with a draw that might have
a lot of outs against the hand I originally put him on.  So I
call, intending to fold unless I river a pair or straight.

River is an A.  Change of plan.  Given the range of hands
I think Roland has me on, an A should be a very scary card
for him.  I bet into him again as a last-chance bluff.

He grabs his cards and nearly mucks.  Then he pauses, ever
the conscientious pro evaluating his decision.  He takes a long,
long time and ends up calling.  He says something like, "here's
my worst call of the night", and flips up has hand.  66.

The rest of the table goes nuts.  Here this supposed "pro"
put a zillion bets into the pot with an under pair, against
a "tight" player who had called his raise from out of position.

Then I say, "wow, nice hand!  I didn't have you that strong."
and muck my hand.  It was almost funny enough to be worth losing
5 big bets.

  

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

rafe :: Caption Contest!

Submit your captions via the "Add a comment" link. Winner will be chosen a week from today.

  

rafe :: Publisher's Wager Results

Congrats to Steve Watanabe who won the Publisher's Wager on the over/under on number of books we'd sell by the end of 2005. Steve gets an invite to the home game, which is more like punishment than a prize, having to listen to Perry non-stop for hours on end.

  

Tiltmom :: Phil, you're still short 23k

So Phil stumbles upon a check for $47,000 in his car.

That ought to nicely solve the problem Dice alerted him to six months ago:

I bought a bunch of new socks today. I didn’t have enough space in my sock drawer to put all of the new ones, so I removed my drawer and emptied it on the floor to sort through them. At the bottom of my sock drawer I have a wooden lock box where I keep various bits of paraphernalia. As long as I was cleaning out my sock drawer, I figured that I may as well clean this out too. It had a few pictures, a corn cob pipe, etc… But way at the very bottom was a contract. It is from October 1995, a half year before Phil moved in with me. I had completely forgotten about it until I read it.

--Dice

The contract involved Dice buying 3000+ shares of Phil's personal Netsys stock, redeemable as soon as Netsys shares had a cash value. On the date Dice sent that mail, those 3000 shares were worth $70k.

  

josh :: Politics of Deception

Enough is enough.

  

Saturday, February 11, 2006

josh :: True Story

As Dave Barry might write, "and I am not making this up..."

I teach high school computer science and mathematics. In the CS classes, students have access to the web.

One student initiated a conversation with me about blogs. He asked me if I had a blog and was surprised when the answer was "Yes, actually I do." So, he Googled it up, and found Rafe's name associated with it.

First words out of his mouth: "Hey, isn't that the guy who busted out first in the World Series of Poker?"

Fame. What a bugger.

  

bruce :: Phil-Gordon-8x10-Hot

Just discovered on Ebay:

autographed *hot* picture of Phil

the best part:

Quantity Available 10


Phil, earning a little on the side this way?

  

Monday, February 06, 2006

Tiltboys :: Welcome to Tiltboys 2.0

Not only are we disgusted with ourselves for being a bunch of PUSSIES and letting our home game dwindle to a shadow of its former self, we are appalled at how long it's taken us to start our own blog. Especially since Tiltboys in Vegas could be considered the first poker blog ever written (That's assuming you differentiate between a weblog and usenet newsgroups; there were far nerdier folks than us blogging on rec.gambling.poker years before the "World Wide Web" and "lasers" were invented).

Anyway, we heard that Rocky is getting back into the ring soon, so what better excuse for a bunch of washed up poker geeks to try to get back in the game. But we need your help. Phil is nearly untiltable since getting a gig where he can make fun of the donkeys on Celebrity Poker Showdown, Lenny is a Stepford Husband and claims to be studying Buddhist meditation between suing companies and changing diapers, and now that JK changed his legal name so he can fly on his father-in-law's unlimited air miles he seems downright serene. What are a bunch of tilt mongers to do? It would seem that only your comments can provide the fuel to fire up the latent tilt that's been building lo these many years.

Bring it, beyotches!