How does your garden grow? With muck, muck and more muck! I spent much of today finishing the final muck box and then shifting muck from one box to the next. The first box, which the Big Lad is enthusiastically pointing out, has been rotting down for two years now and once we’d removed the top quarter of unrotted material, we found we’d hit the pay dirt.

Hard as this may be to believe, calling a gun store and asking how much it would cost me to fire an assault weapon is only the second-best piece of advice I’ve gotten for this trip. Speaking to an inmate recently about Vegas, I picked up a strategic tip that forced me to re-evaluate my entire approach to the game. This particular inmate has established himself as a force to be reckoned with on the institutional Texas Hold ‘em circuit, accumulating what is reputed to be an intimidating chip stack, by which I mean mostly Honey Buns and tobacco products. (Note to self: in the future, be very careful running Google image searches for “Honey Buns.”) Anyway, this inmate explained to me that in order to compete at the highest levels of Hold ‘em, there’s a certain mindset that has to be achieved. Specifically, he told me:

When I play poker, I try to leave the table every time with as much money as I started with. Or maybe a little bit more.

Now, I’ve read Brunson. I’ve read Cloutier. I’m still studying Harrington, who’s probably the best of the lot. And while it had occurred to me that leaving the table with as much money as I started with is pretty much a fool-proof style of play, the notion of maybe taking away a little bit more has really opened my eyes to new possibilities. And, if I'm not missing something, the real hidden strength of this strategy is that if I just take away a little bit more every time I play, eventually I’ll wind up with a significant amount more than I started with. I’ve searched and searched for a down side to this approach, but I'm starting to think maybe there isn't one. Somebody should write Brunson about this.