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On this week’s episode of the Thinking Poker Podcast, Nate and Andrew discuss the gap concept in poker, break down an interesting hand from a charity tournament, and talk with battle rapper and poker player Peter “The Saurus” Morris about the similarities between battling and poker, his history, and more.
If you haven’t already, please bookmark http://www.pokernews.com/podcast/ or subscribe to the PokerNews feed to ensure you won’t miss future episodes of the show. Thanks!
I really enjoyed everything about this episode. Russ’s mailbag question and the strategy segment featured a re-occurring theme from our home game. I play much tighter in spots like this because I really do not like being a passive caller in multiway pots. I’d fold the 62s preflop. I’d rather 3-bet it than call, but I fold it 100% of the time in this spot.
I’d love to hear some opinions of the snippets of Peter’s music that were played. I particularly like the song that says “It took more than dropping a few names to work my way toward the top of the food chain.” That should be the tagline of the Thinking Poker podcast.
I agree – the strategy hand was great. I’m glad (for the podcast’s sake) that he made the pre-flop mistake to call to get to the great river decision.
I always appreciate when Nate adds commentary about what poor players could have in spots and what he’s seen playing lower level games.
I’ve been enjoying TheSaurus’ solo work from his web site – tight rhymes and tracks. I’m not a huge hip-hop fan in general, but I can get into his stuff.
Carlos – when are you heading out to Vegas? Are you still going to play at Binion’s? I was hoping when they said you were part of the podcast that we were going to get an update on your plans for the summer.
I’ll be there within the next 5 to 6 hours. I’ll definitely play at the Wynn. I may or may not play Binion’s. It all depends on how the Wynn blows (or hopefully doesn’t blow). I had to do that just for the rapper episode.
Cool – I played a $400 tournament at the Wynn a couple years ago – enjoyed it – they gave me a $20 food voucher with the tournament entry.
I’ll be in Vegas from the 6th to 10th, so we’ll have to meet up at some point. I’ll probably be playing mostly at the Rio but I’ll have a rental car to go to other poker rooms.
Carlos Ill be at the Rio from 6/1. Hope I run into you there. On the 2cnd I plan to hit the Planet Hollywood and get into the PLO tournament they got scheduled there.
OK we need a WSOP trip report section. I just met up with Carlos and Pie Farmer. I took them to eat some Real Chinee food. Was going for the creepy crawly stuff but CW wouldnt go for it. But Pie Farmer handled his chop stix like a pro. We having a good time.
Yeah I have to say no when you offer me food that is “halfway dead.” We had a blast though and that duck was awesome.
Carlos turned down free food?
I’d gladly publish anything you guys care to write up. Or talk to you about it on the air. I know Carlos will still be out there when Nate and I arrive, but if you are too it would be great to catch up with you as well.
A live episode with the 4 of us would be the nuts. Hopefully Keone can make it back out. If not, we will collaborate on a trip report and write it up after he’s played his last tourney. He took a great picture of the crew that would go nicely with this.
Here’s a teaser. I final tabled an Aria tourney so Keone, Pie Farmer, and Breyer all stayed late to support me. They cancelled plans to play other tourneys to do so. I really appreciate those guys.
It was a genuine treat to have dinner with Keone. Many thanks to him, and a shoutout to this blog, the conduit for great new poker friendships.
Havent cashed in anything yet but the friendships that I made with the TP crew is by far the most +++EV. Learning a lot about the game and am confident that I am doing the right things as I observe the general play of the masses.
Carlos played like a steel bolt and had a very disciplined game as he surged on to the Final Table at the Aria afternoon tourney. Unfortunately his shove with 12BBs with a small pair fell against a villain who had too much to drink who felt he had to call with K8 suited with a not much bigger stack.
Discussing hands in a intelligent manner is a big plus for me. More to come.
I’m halfway through. Really enjoyed and appreciate the answer to my question, and the appropriate strategy hand complementing it.
Looking forward to the discussion with The Saurus.
Thanks for discussing my ridiculous hand. I learned a lot.
To answer your question Nate, the 5x opening bet was larger than the UTG’s standard raise of 3x and so your analysis based on that was fine.
Also I forgot to mention one other tidbit about the situation that kept me calling instead of shoving. The rebuy period was not yet over but it was coming to an end soon. That meant that my fold equity was not quite as strong here. Still I agree with you guys that shoving the flop was the play. Shoving the turn seems less good by a long shot since the story of how that 3 helped me is tougher to sell. Still I should have considered that option more than I did.
I’m guessing that you won’t be able to have future podcasts on here for contractual reasons, but on the off chance it’s an editorial decision, it’s worth pointing out that the Poker News link is likely to be far more susceptible to office firewalls than this page is.
My current workplace is blessedly liberal when it comes to these things, so I can access either site without any problems, but I’ve worked in more than one place in the past where the big commercial poker sites (Poker news, 2+2, WSOP etc) are inaccessible, while Thinking Poker and the majority of other poker blogs escape the censors.
There are ways round this, of course (downloading it to one’s iPod at home, for instance), but for maximum accessibility it might be worth retaining a working stream here, even if (for example) it only appears a week after it’s released on Poker News.
But I do realise that this may be out of your hands.
Chris – I work at one of those places you describe and the way around this is to access it through a reader. I use The Old Reader and it works fine – the reader embeds a player and I can listen to the podcast – just can’t comment on the site.
Actually I just checked from work and the podcast is not blocked by websense since it is not on the pokernews site but on the ibus media network / podbean site, so that is one positive outcome of the affliation with ibus (Andrew mentioned on the podcast that he was unsure why he was affiliated with ibus).
I’m trying to find the rappers that The Saurus recommended. I’ve found ‘illmaculate’ and ‘Nocando’. I’ve been unable to find the third – it sounded like ‘Nestle’ to me on the podcast but that’s evidently wrong. 8)
Help?
It’s Ness Lee. Here is a video of them saying mean things to each other in a rhythmic manner for sport.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nTUdA6ctr3E#t=131
Thanks for the link Carlos. That was very interesting. I’ve never been a hip hop or rap fan, but it is easy to see and appreciate the talents on display there.
I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with The Saurus. I am slightly surprised the graphic or adult nature of the content was not discussed in the interview, but I’m not complaining. I don’t judge rappers for their descriptions of women or blacks (I say lots of socially unacceptable things myself). However, I do think it puts a ceiling on how mainstream rap can become, and that I think is worth a conversation.
And when Carlos ships his first big event, I know there will be a rap battle party in his future (with Oreos for everyone). Good luck this summer all.
I can’t say I wasn’t tempted. From the clips that I watched, the f-word (not the one that rhymes with duck) was the one I found most abrasive. I was definitely ready to ask about this if the opportunity presented itself, eg if Saurus referred to himself as “conscious” or political or anything like that I would have pushed back on that point.
I chose not to bring it up myself because I doubted how interested the audience would be – I always imagine a collective groan whenever I broach the subject of identity politics in poker – and because, unlike in poker, I don’t believe that I’m particularly well situated to talk about the culture/politics of the battle rap scene. I know that there’s been a lot of discussion about violence/misogyny/the n-word in rap music generally, and I don’t see where I’d have anything to add to that conversation – I’d just be another voice saying, “That bothers me, why do you do it?”
Russ, I think rap is pretty mainstream as it is. I cant think of many part of society where it isn’t present. IMO, that’s part of the reason it is vulgar. Mainstream society itself is pretty vulgar and hip hop music is one of the most accurate reflections of it.
Andrew, your choice not to question him on it since he doesn’t proclaim to be political was a fair one. Like Russ, he would probably just have admit that he says a lot of socially unacceptable things (me too, guilty as charged) even though he doesn’t mean any harm.
When a rapper drops one of the various letter bombs, it doesn’t bother me any more than when Louis C.K. drops one. Like comedy, hip hop music is just a societal mirror. If the reflection is ugly, it’s not the mirror’s fault. It’s easy to forget sometimes that we humans are still animals on some level. We’re not gonna always like what we see in ourselves, but I appreciate hip hop (and comedy for the same reason) because it is the most honest music genre. Some others wouldnt take an honest look at the worst parts of society. There are hip hop songs about a wide range of topics using mostly terms that were around waaayy before hip hop was.
For whatever reason, this form of expression takes way too much of the blame for things that movies, tv, comedy, or whatever other form of expression does as well. They all show us what we look like at our best and at our worst.
As a side note, I love hip hop because of how I am able to use it to improve my life like a motivational speaker or something. A lot of times, I hear a song about something I completely disagree with like mass violence and use it to my advantage. Like I can get geared up to beat an entire field of poker players by listening to a song about some dude preparing to take on and kill his enemies. In the same way, I can listen to Eye of the Tiger before a game and not go around punching people.
I find that when I listen to music, I hear what I am looking for and get out of it what I need. Everything else is just background noise that I ignore.
Carlos, the only thing I would disagree with is the level of acceptance for rap. It may be mainstream in your world, but it isn’t in mine. Here’s my litmus test. Can those YouTube videos run on CBS? Not likely. I admit I’m (very pleasantly) surprised at what LCK gets past censor and onto FX, but that is a non-mainstream network.
Andrew, agree with Carlos that you probably made a fair choice. I should read more on the issue online. I have conversations with the Carloses of the world, but I’ve not heard a successful, educated practitioner like Saurus give his explanation on the record.
Again, great show.
You meant battle rap? Gotcha. I thought you meant rap as a whole. I’ve seen rappers perform on CBS. Funny, OPP is playing on my Vegas shuttle right now.
Crap, I wrote a long response to this but it doesn’t seem to have posted. I guess I can see how coming after a battler because of his race in a way that’s often considered “out-of-bounds” in contemporary American culture might be an acceptable part of the game/performance in this context. I remember hearing some of this directed at an Asian rapper in one of the battles you played for me.
The thing is, I think there’s a difference between using something like race as a way to connect an opponent to some ultimate insult (you’re Asian so you’re probably a bad driver with a small penis) and using “fucking faggot” as the ultimate insult. In the former case, “Asian” isn’t the actual insult, you’re just getting some cheap laughs from something that most of the audience will probably recognize as stereotypes that you aren’t advancing in earnest.
My concern with the anti-gay slurs is that whether or not they’re delivered in earnest, they feed into an ugly sentiment that many people watching the battle may already harbor. I could be wrong about this but I would guess that the battle rap scene doesn’t have a lot of openly gay participants. I’m not aware of any openly gay mainstream rappers, anyway.
Here’s something I’m curious about regarding the norms/expectations surrounding this sort of thing: let’s say I’m battling a black rapper, how far can I take it before he, the judges, and/or the crowd decide I’ve crossed the line? The impression I get is that if I wanted to make a joke about my opponent not tipping at restaurants or having some illegitimate children that wouldn’t be considered out of bounds. How much leeway do I have if I’m looking for a two-syllable word to rhyme with trigger?
But when they say the F-word, they don’t always mean it to imply that the guy is a homosexual. Louis did a bit on the difference between calling some one that to denigrate their sexually and the less literal connotation of the word. Of course, they do use it in the literal sense sometimes as an insult when actually it’s not even true about the individual, so you have a point in those cases.
There are many openly gay female rappers and a few openly gay male rappers who aren’t well known.
Your last point is an interesting one. I remember one time when Eminem used the N-word in a song and felt the need to apologize in order to salvage sales. I also know of a white female rapper who uses it constantly without a ton of backlash. And I was personally present at a rap battle in which a completely unknown white rapper used it in a battle with no negative result. Everyone there, including me, just enjoyed the shock value of it and the battle kept going. I could post a link to it if you want. It was pretty funny and I still smile when I think about it. But in all honesty, they all used a word that rhymed with giga, not trigger.
This one has a little bit more comedy than cruel jokes…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiKH8jvbnjQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=138
And this one is just all kinds of awesome. Maybe this is what a mainstream battle would sound like…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6H0i1RAdHk
“when they say the F-word, they don’t always mean it to imply that the guy is a homosexual”
I’m very skeptical about this argument. Chris Rock has a bit about this as well, and IMO it’s pretty weak. I think the fact that that word can be tossed around as a casual insult contributes to a culture where gay people are harassed, intimidated, afraid to be open about an important part of their lives, etc.
Just listened to the strategy part. Excellent. Not for the hand history itself but the discussion around it and how you and Nate viewed the situation. You know you guys have a lot of tells. LOL!!!!!
RE: “Carlos turned down free food?”
I accepted the free duck and broccoli. I turned down the still alive food.
RE: “when they say the F-word, they don’t always mean it to imply that the guy is a homosexual” I’m very skeptical about this argument.”
I agree that it may contribute indirectly, but you cant honestly believe that when Louis C.K., calls Cinnabons “fat faggot treats” that he means that they are intended for over-weight homosexual people.
In the same way, when The Saurus called his heavily bearded friend a fucking homeless bum, he doesn’t mean that he sleeps on the streets and he doesn’t mean it as a direct insult to people who do, but it does indirectly perpetuate the idea that society has a negative view of being homeless.
I’m not saying that I agree with the usage of these terms by anybody, but I do recognize a difference between the direct intent and the indirect result. Maybe they should not use them at all if it indirectly offends some people who are a part of a group.
Yes, the word “faggot” is often used not actually to imply homosexuality but rather to imply someone is some combination of whiny, annoying, effeminate, cowardly, weak, etc. Do you think those are two totally distinct uses of the word that have no connection to one another? I would suggest that using that word in the latter context reinforces a lot of stereotypes and negative beliefs about homosexuality, and that those stereotypes and beliefs have pretty severe repercussions for actual homosexuals. I think it’s somewhat more excusable in a context where your entire audience can understand and appreciate that your use of the word is ironic and not actually meant to imply those things about homosexuality.
I think there are a few instances of white people who are so heavily immersed in black culture, have so many black friends, etc that they can get away with the occasional n-bomb around black friends who might lose their shit if an unknown white person were to use that word. Basically they know that he’s using the word in a certain context. I imagine that happens sometimes with white battle rappers. A white person who actually had a problem with black people probably wouldn’t be part of that scene. I don’t think the same thing can be said regarding homosexuality, and I would guess that a lot of people watching those battles do actually have some negative beliefs about homosexuality that are reinforced by hearing that word tossed around so casually.
It’s not just about people getting offended. I would actually argue that some of the worst instances of n-bombing I’ve encountered were when no black people were around. There’s this sense among some white people (actually not just white people, I’m thinking of one specific incident involving a Mexican) that all white people share certain negative beliefs about non-white people and it’s just political correctness that keeps us from speaking our minds. So there’s this “none of them are around, we can loosen our ties and say what we really think” attitude that I think is very dangerous.
I havent weighed in on this issue as my feelings are very personal and complex. I just want to say that Asians and Asian Americans do not take lightly the kind of simplistic stereotypes that weak assed rappers use to denigrate our people. Its not fun. Its not cute. But Im old school and know how I can exact my revenge. And we do come from a culture revenge stands next to loyalty and familial piety. Its the younger Shin Jin Rui or newcomers. From places like Korea and Vietnam who can respond with vigor and energy influenced by rapping our truths. After all every one of them have to serve in a tough military in defense of their country and am not about to take it without responding. I let them speak for me in the art form.
There is a Korean African American rapper that I’d like to point you to. Her name is Tasha Reid or Yoon Mi Rae. Her mother raised her in Korea and father was a US service man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoon_Mi-rae
I dont know the language, but she has a nice flow. I can tell that she’s dope. Check this one out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBZmnjLuOjo
Seems like some very early stuff. Very literate and simplistic. Asian Americans have come a lot further in a more abstract sense in terms of their history. Rap I believe is a true art form and have metamorphed into a deeper space. As far as Asian Americans in battle rap check out MC Jin. He is a rep for yellow brother rap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP0I-3yRTts
I’ll give you that. See that’s how I know you’re a real hip hop head. The guy tells a great story and your response is, yeah but his rhymes were kinda ABC. I agree with that, but I cut him some slack because he’s more of a rock guy than a rap guy. His name is Mike Shinoda from the group Linkin Park. Fort Minor is his less famous hip hop side project.
Here is a video of Fort Minor’s biggest song. You may have heard it in several movie and tv ads a few years back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDvr08sCPOc
Hip hop may be the only genre of music where you can see a black guy, asian guy, and white guy all rock together. It’s kinda like poker in that way. If we all didnt suck at rapping this video could have easily been remade by me, Keone, and Pie Farmer when we were hanging together the other day.
Yes that was the Linkin Park guy. Oh yeah one of the cool brothers who hasnt forgotten his people in the limelight of rock stardom. I didnt realize thats who it was. Knowing you and the Pie man has really opened up my eyes in this very short time. Great teachers thou art. I thought AB and NM was special but with guys like you and Gareth Im learning that TP is a gold mine of knowledge.
I agree with all of this. We all should be more a careful about the impact the impact of our words. Did you watch the funny ones I posted?
Funniest image on this blog ever:
AB wrote:
“Here’s something I’m curious about regarding the norms/expectations surrounding this sort of thing: let’s say I’m battling a black rapper,”
I say Andrew and Carlos settle this with a Battle Rap in Vegas at the next Nitcast meetup! Get Pokernews to film it. It will be off the lanyard or whatever the kids say.
I liked Keone’s take very much.
Just to complete my original point to Carlos. There is so much culture in this world. More than I can consume in my life. I have to have filters. Although it will cause me to miss out on some quality rap, I don’t think placing a “no n-word” filter on my consumption is a poor decision. And I think lots of folks like me miss out on rap/hip hop because of similar high-level filters.