foucault – think poker

if you want to ride along on the world series of poker, if you enjoyed holden’s big deal and the original alverez, then latch on to foucault. reading him is like being there.

Forwarded Conversation
Subject: Quick Update
————————

From: andrew@bostondebate.org
Date: Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 4:11 AM

Wow, what an absolutely huge day today. I’ll get out a report with all
the details hopefully tomorrow, but I finished with 344,100 (average
should be around 160,000), up from 30,100 at the beginning of the day.

Off to bed.

——–
From: Charles Nesson
To: “andrew@bostondebate.org”
Date: Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 6:31 AM

fantastic
go go go
i am totally hanging on your reports
they are great

—
when appropriate (in my judgment) to an open project and not sensitive (in my judgment) in terms of privacy, i may post email to my blog. all privacy requests respected.

I left the house around 11AM on Friday bound for the Rio and the main
event of the 2007 World Series of Poker. Vegas is experiencing record
highs for the week, with the thermometer topping out near 120 degrees.
It’s enough to leave me sweating after a two block walk to the car. As
I cruised up I-15 with A/C on full blast, George Thorogood came on the
radio. I’m not generally the sort to sing out loud, but this seemed
like a good way to get pumped up, so I declared along with him that I
was, “B-b-b-b-b-aaaaaad. Bad to the bone!” Then, sadly, an even more
fitting song came on: Elton John’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”.

This year, 6000 people are expected to enter the $10,000 poker
tournament. If that number proves accurate, then there will be 5999
broken hearts. No one enters the tournament without a dream of winning
it, and in fact, everyone has a chance, no matter how slim, of
actually taking home the bracelet. One of the keys to poker’s appeal
is that it blends elements of skill and luck. The best players win
often enough to show a profit, but they still lose often enough to
give everyone else a chance. Even though I believe I had a substantial
edge over last year’s field, I was still very fortunate to finish in
the money. There were many players better than I who did not do as
well, and many players worse than I who did better. That’s poker, and
heart-breaking as it can be, it’s also the beauty of the game.

***

Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984)
Truth, for Michel Foucault, is problematic when any attempt is made to see truth as an “objective” quality. He prefers not to use the term truth itself but “Regimes of Truth”. In his historical investigations he found truth to be something that was itself a part of, or embedded within, a given power structure.

begin with the meta idea of truth we all share
each of us may have our own and all of us have one
move to the necker cube and three hats and seeing from another’s point of view
then poker
foucault – think poker
cc on the chips – icommons