That family we had over for a home cooked dinner the other night invited us over to their country club for dinner.  While the power was out the past week, they were "slumming it" at their country club hotel - playing golf, swimming and eating gourmet meals.  La vida es dura.  I don’t think I’ve ever been to a country club for dinner.  But I have been for a few weddings and such.

The food was surprisingly good.  The salad tasted a little tired, but wtf! that's what I get for ordering a salad.  I had the dry aged NY strip and it was one of the best steaks I've had at a restaurant since we moved up here.  Mrs. Fly had some veal tenderloin that she was raving about most of the night.  G had a filet mignon from the kid's menu - lol - I don't think I've seen that before.  He's always been too young for us to take him to "nice" restaurants, so I don't know if that's standard.  And D had some duck fat fries (fries fried in duck fat).  He wasn't hungry so we all helped him finish it.  DoubleFly 1 - Food winner by TKO.

All this can be yours for a $100K initiation fee, $10K a year and $50pp for dinner (not including wine).  Umm...  Mrs. Fly just looks better and better to me every day.  Actually, the cost is not unreasonable, but I'm not really a "country club" kind of guy.  The $100K may seem kind of steep, but it's basically a decades long investment and all your kids get in for much less when they get older.  And $10K a year is just a tournament buy-in - how often do you ever cash in one of those anyway?  At least you get access to 2 great golf courses, tennis, pool, private beach and various other amenities.  Just one more thing to spend money on when hookers & blow isn't quite enough.

POKER

I haven't given up on MTTs - I will probably resume at the next FTOPs. But it occurs to me that I should try and play more single table tournaments ("STTs"), just to make sure I can do well as the fields narrow. It makes no sense to play an MTT when I'm not sure about my end game because the end game is the most important for determining your return. Unlike MTTs, the payouts in STTs are much more conducive to making consistent money. First thru third offer 50%, 30% and 20% respectively. So in doing a productivity analysis, I came up with the following:

At one cash table, I expect to make almost $15 an hour (2.5ptbb @ 70 hands/hour). So for me to get a similar return on MTTs, I need to enter a $100 buy-in and have an ROI of 60%, assuming I play 4 hours on average. Or, for a STT, I need to enter a $200 buy-in and have an ROI of 6%, assuming I play 50 minutes on average. I think the std deviation per 100 hands is probably higher for STTs than cash games. I get roughly 2x higher, but my stats is a little rusty. I think cash is still the best game when you look at potential return vs risk. But STTs should add a little excitement when the grind gets tiring.