Sensei’s Poker Dojo

Apparently there exists an actual DJ who goes by the name DJ Sensei. When I came up with the nickname, I had no idea of his (or her?) existence, and of course I didn’t do any research into the matter. I had no expectations of ever becoming well-known by such a silly moniker. Well, 7 years later, I’m kind of a big deal¹. Tonight, I googled ‘dj sensei’ and discovered that my blog is the number one result. My 2+2 profile is #2, and my DeucesCracked page is #5, which seems a little off but I guess has to do with their algorithms or something. Take that, other DJ Sensei!

I guess this is also a good time to explain exactly where my nickname came from. In high school, I was the star of my Mu Alpha Theta² team. My friends who composed the rest of the team were very good too, so we usually smoked the other schools at the regional competitions. One day we decided that we’d give ourselves silly nicknames on the scantron sheet that you used to register. I more or less randomly decided upon “Sensei” and my friends dubbed themselves “Commander” and “Master”. During the awards ceremony at the end of the competition, they actually read out my name as Sensei, and it was awesome. So I kept the nickname and would always put it on the name sheet. After another competition or two I began to be well-known for it. Naturally, as a nerdy high schooler, it was glorious to have all the other high school nerds idolizing me as ‘Sensei’.

Later, during my senior year of high school, I randomly purchased some computer software³ to design and produce techno music and fooled around with it, eventually producing some songs that didn’t totally suck. They didn’t really spread much outside my circle of friends but I needed an artist name and DJ Sensei was the obvious choice. I stopped making any music after I graduated from high school, but the nickname stuck. When I began playing online poker Junior year of college, it was the clear choice for my screen name and the rest, as they say, is history.

1. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany. [↩]
2. A series of math competitions at the regional and state level [↩]
3. ’Acid Techno’, I believe [↩]

It was the spring of my Junior year at Duke, and for lack of a better plan some friends and I decided to go to Myrtle Beach, SC for spring break. I hadn’t ever been, but we had been regaled for several years with tales of wild beach parties and such things, and that sounded like something we’d like to be a part of. We also had all been getting more seriously into poker around that time, so the presence of a casino boat nearby sweetened the deal for us. When we learned that our hotel had a lazy river pool, that sealed it.

Now as it turns out, Myrtle Beach is only a hot beach destination during the warm summer months. During March it is cold and, at least during the week we were there, rainy. The hotels and the beach were mostly empty, and it seems that many of the businesses around were open only to serve the suckers who showed up for spring break anyhow. I don’t know if we even saw any girls our own age the whole time we were there. But these setbacks didn’t stop us from having a good time. There was plenty of college basketball to watch thanks to March Madness, plenty of beer to drink, and of course the lazy river. I forget whether it was our second or third day there that we went to the casino boat, but it proved to be quite an experience.

First, I should explain a few things about this floating casino. Gambling isn’t legal in South Carolina, so the boat had to sail out to international waters before the action could begin. This took about 45 minutes and was quite boring. Once the boat had finally reached its destination (the middle of nowhere in the ocean) the tables were unlocked and the chips began to fly. The boat floated around for about 3 hours, and then all action ceased for the long slow ride back to shore. I suppose the psychological effects of this fixed endpoint in a gambling schedule are probably pretty interesting, as I don’t know of any other casinos which have such conditions in place, but that is a discussion for another time. The important thing now is that we were 4 young dudes ready to take this boat for everything it was worth. Well, probably not, but maybe a few hundred bucks!

In preparation for our trip we had done some research on what games were available on board, and practiced some of the silly ones like Let It Ride (kinda fun) and Caribbean Stud (sucks). We knew that the ship offered poker, but weren’t sure in what capacity it was spread. When we got on board we learned that the only game available was 5/10 limit holdem. Damn. Not only was it limit, the most boring form of poker, but it was 5/10, which at the time was a pretty big game for us. I, being a poor college student, only had a few hundred bucks to play with, and I’d have been pretty displeased if I lost that, so I wasn’t too thrilled with this development. But we were there to play, so after the boat was far enough out to sea, my friend Jake and I sat into the game. Our other friends were content with brackjack, at least at first. In retrospect, that was a rather notable occasion: the first time I ever played poker live in a casino. At the time of course I had no idea of my future in poker, I was a curious mixture of scared money and online-trained confidence. Sadly I don’t remember any particular hands, though there was at least one where Jake and I got into a pot against each other and he came out with the best of it. All I remember is that we quit the game after an hour or so (stuck a little) and went to find our friends for some more sociable gambling experiences. We played some Let it Ride and some Caribbean Stud and some Brackjack, and I recall being down a bit when the boat began its return voyage, but not too much. I don’t think anybody won or lost too much that first trip, really, although it isn’t like we had all that much in play.

We returned to the hotel for some much-needed napping, as the trip had departed fairly early in the morning and returned in the early afternoon. Mike and Dave decided that they had experienced enough gambling for the trip and spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching basketball and movies, but Jake and I had caught the itch, and so we returned to the boat later that afternoon for the second excursion of the day, dollar signs twinkling in our eyes. On the departure towards international waters we struck up conversation with the croupiers, since neither of us knew a thing about craps but were curious about the game. They taught us how the betting worked, and the standard plays which most folks made, and by the time we were once again far enough out in the lonely Atlantic we decided to spend some more time there. But first, we had to take care of some business at the other tables. I forget exactly which ones we began that trip with, but I think it may have been blackjack or Let it Ride. Perhaps we won, perhaps we lost. I don’t really remember. But it didn’t matter. Once we stepped up to the craps table, all of our previous wagers on the boat were left behind.

We began wagering the minimum, which was probably $5 or $10. Not too much happened at first, but then when the dice were finally pushed in my direction I must have picked the right ones. I could do no wrong. I nailed point after point, and the only times I rolled that dirty seven, it was perfectly timed after hitting a point. Jake and I began to rake in more and more chips, and increased our wagers accordingly. The rest of the table was filled with old people (well, I guess the whole boat was filled with them) who were betting larger amounts than us, and making a lot of money on my hot hands. I don’t know exactly how long I was rolling for, and I’m sure I’m exaggerating it somewhat (Craps stories are like fishing stories in that regard, it seems) but I think it was on the order of 25 or 30 minutes. Perhaps not a legendary roll in the grand scheme of things, but when the dust settled I was up close to $500 on the session, and Jake had made a good chunk of change off of me too. Not to mention the old people who did even better; if they were younger I’d probably have gotten a ton of high fives. We didn’t even blow those winnings at another game afterwards! When we finally got back to the hotel that evening we proudly flung our newly collected hundred dollar bills around for a bit, while regaling Mike and Dave with stories of our greatness. Obviously we slowrolled them a bit first and pretended to have lost our shirts, but we couldn’t hold back the smiles for very long.

That was the last time we spent on the casino boat, which was probably a good thing. We went fishing the next day, and though I don’t have any stories about the big fish that got away, we did have a great time. (Except Dave, because he was ridiculously seasick.) The remainder of our Myrtle Beach spring break was relatively uneventful, involving lots of beers in the hotel room and lazy-river floating (also with beers). When I returned to campus, I went to the computer store to buy myself an iPod (my first!). The cashier was surprised when I presented a few crisp hundoes as payment, and asked jokingly if I had just printed them. “Nope,” I replied, “just a hot hand in a dice game”.