Sloe Times

I have moved my blog

2005-08-30T18:55:00.000-05:00

Hello, and welcome to my final Blogger post. I've added a redirect tag that will automatically move you to my new blog location in about 30 seconds. If you are viewing this via Bloglines, you may want to update your subscription information for my blog. It is atom and rss2 capable and can be found at http://www.sloetimes.com/

Blogger was good to me but I've come to the conclusion that I want more of central home rather than a number of seperate outposts on the net. As such, this will be my final post on blogger, thanks for stopping by and for what its worth the archive will remain here for those folks who stumble onto the site. Thanks to a nifty little wordpress tool I was able to move all of my posts and comments from here onto my new blog so nothing significant was lost.

Back in the day

2005-08-23T22:51:00.000-05:00

Way back in the good old days.... how is it that 300 baud was better than 3MB/s? Anyway, back when the closest thing to massive interconnected systems was BBS's with a FidoNET feed ASCII art was all the rage. To some extent it is still very cool what some people can do with some control characters and plain text today. While browsing around the net for something completely unrelated, I found this Text Image site that is just too cool for words.

It's been awhile

2005-08-23T22:22:00.000-05:00

And honestly, it's going to be a little while longer. I've finally come to grips that I've outgrown Blogger and am in the process of acquiring a hosting service and my own domain. Once I get settled I'll figure out how to move stuff over if I can, and put up the appropriate redirect links here.

What do you mean there are no tag backs?

2005-08-01T14:42:00.000-05:00

Well, since Ty tagged me for the turn on and turn offs meme I guess I'll have to respond. Of course you realize that I've been married for the near side of a bazillion years and don't really think about these things any more right? Well, before I get on with this, I'll tag Al and BG since they're likely to actually respond with some interesting perspective.

As I sit here ~~fantasizing~~ thinking about what turns me on or off to someone of the opposite sex I figured it was worth breaking down into the Physical, Mental, and Total package categories.
Turn Offs

Physical

Shaved heads - shave everything else but bald heads don't even work for most men
Too much body art - visible piercings should be limited to 4 or 5 tops, total body should be less than 10. Any more than that and it's just too much. Tattoos should be limited to one or two tasteful bits. With so many other ways to express individuality, why cover up large portions of your skin with permanent art that is subjectively good or bad?
Bigger in the middle than the top or bottom - If you're not pregnant, it's not attractive.
Smoking - It smells bad, makes you smell bad, and ultimately makes you taste bad. Just don't do it, there are better ways to manage stress.
Mental
Lights are on but no ones home - You can be physically perfect, but if there's nothing going on behind the eyes you're only good for the night... maybe two and a recurring role when things get slow.
No opinion - I'm not looking for a sycophant, I don't need someone who's going to agree with everything I say, it gets boring and I’m not right nearly as often as I think I am.
Keep it Sane - If you can't express yourself in a reasonable way, we're going to have a problem. Drama queens piss me off and manic-depressives are just too much work.
Total Package
Dependant girls need not apply - any relationship based on the dependency of one or more of the people involved is doomed to some hard times. Probably my number one beef is women who get into a relationship and then want the man to make all the decisions about where to go, what to do, when to do it, etc. Relationships are work, but share the load.

Turn Ons

Physical

Long hair - Fun to comb, play with, tug on, etc... even better when it's a nice red with blonde highlights in color.
Hips - I can't exactly explain it but women with hips turn me on. If there's no curve, it just seems wrong.
Well balanced - an hour glass figure doesn't hurt but what I mean here that there should be some muscle tone and in a normal relaxed state I shouldn't wonder if you could use a burger or 3 to hide the bones protruding from your body.
Mental
Must play games - card games, board games, computer games, outdoor games (tennis, golf, soccer, etc). Being able to do stuff cooperatively or competitively is awesome.
Must have a sense of humor - must be able to dish it out and take it
Stand up for yourself - In my experience if you're not a pushover then you've got some spirit or fire in you which is fun and healthy :)
Total Package
Complete me - In any relationship I'm looking for someone who not only shares my interests and life, but also someone that makes me feel like a better person because I'm with them and in turn that feels they are a better person because they are with me. If there's no reward in being together, the attraction will fade because there's no recognition that you're involvement is important to the relationship.

They call it stormy Monday (but Tuesday's just as bad)

2005-08-01T13:39:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the maelstrom that kicks off August. It's a little annoying that the summer is winding down already and I haven't been able to get out for even nine holes of golf. I did get out to the driving range the other day and have come to the conclusion that a year without golf has seen me in some of the worst shape yet. My swing (for whatever it was before) is still there but I got tired just swinging clubs for 90 minutes. Imagine trying to walk and carry my clubs, I don't think I'd make it past the 3rd hole on my favorite course. Anyway, enough about my out of shape ass.

Continuing my education on real estate investing I'm following up on the suggestion of an earlier commenter and trying to understand the options available with REITs. I found this REIT Portal that seems pretty good. A couple of things that stand out in it for me is not only the information about the topic but also a search option to actually find REITs. Looks like I'll have to open up a brokerage account someplace to be able to invest in any of the publicly traded options but I'm not quite that far along yet. It's been a few months since the last budget exercise, it's about time to go through one again and fix some of the cracks that have surfaced. An important output from this will be to actually start building up the investing nest egg. For the short term I'll just throw it in a savings account while I try and figure out what kind of bankroll is required to actually start.

Speaking of bankrolls, I was able to parlay my $40 that was left over in my Party account into $100 relatively quickly playing $.50/$1. Made a stab at $1/$2 and after taking a beating and only being able to drag myself back up to a -$25 loss I went back to the $.50/$1 tables until I could run it up to $100 again which I was able to do last night. Back to $1/$2 today and walked away positive, though only slightly. Maybe it's just perception but I would swear that the $1/$2 players are worse than the $.50/$1 players. Or maybe the real issue is that I have an unrealistic expectation that players at the $1/$2 level would actually be better and so their bad plays are surprising me when they shouldn't. Regardless, the lesson here is to beware tangling with maniacs while working a short bankroll.

I had my interviews last week for a different position at work. On the upside I had worked with most of the interviewers in the past and had plenty of good experiences with them so was a 'known quantity' and the interviews were relatively straightforward events. The downside is that after getting glowing feedback from everyone and a verbal offer to join the team it turns out that their paperwork is lagging behind and they can't actually write me a formal offer yet. I'm confident that it will sort itself out, it's just a little annoying for the build up to occur only to trip over a speed bump just before the finish.

I'm getting more and more serious about wanting to move forward with my idea for an MMOG but I've run into a minor obstacle. The IP for the setting and theme I want to use is licensed to someone else. This other group already has at least two products in the MMOG space and is not planning to produce another one using the theme and setting that I want. I guess the trick now is either to find another way to move forward without the license (going a similar but different route) or trying to figure out a compelling proposal for a partnership with the company who currently owns the license. The tough part at this point is assembling the data needed for a VC treatment and presentation. I'm thinking that if I can put a proposal together that would get others as enthusiastic about the idea as me it would be a look getting the money to move forward with development. Which leads me to another area of study, what goes into a winning VC proposal?

As the blogfather "suggests"

2005-07-30T15:33:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'll admit that my attempts to separate and 'focus' my writing here make for a lot of growing pains. This is especially true when something meaningful comes to mind and I want to write about it even though it doesn't fit with my theme. I've resigned myself to the fact that this is probably going to be the exception that will become more the rule over time. Being a thinker of things and human being with more than one interest in life it occurs to me that I will never be able to escape thinking and talking about poker. The latest assault on my attempts to isolate was a post on Iggy's site about how bluffing == lying && lying == failure, forced me to respond. Now wouldn’t you know it, the particular post that I wanted to respond to doesn't allow comments? So I dropped him an email to which he responded, "Man, you should just post that to your blog - its real good stuff." Well, with that kind of a response I guess I can't refuse. And since I'm posting it, I'll take the opportunity to clean up many of the grammatical, spelling, and other errors that were in the original.

Iggy said the following about how lying is necessary to win in poker, "In poker you have to lie to win; in life telling lies will only make you lose." Since the comment in context was regarding the parallels of poker to life outside of the poker room it seems necessary to point out that he wasn't suggesting that poker players are all liars and in fact was suggesting that this fact was where the similarities broke down. Later on, he reposted the following from someone else regarding elements within the game, "Poker is a game of strategy and deception." and "Poker is a game of manipulation and pressure." I disagree with the deception aspect of the first statement (since it clearly is related to bluffing defined as lying) and very much agree with the second statement. My thinking in this is that if you perform an activity long enough, you will revert to type. So unless you're a pathological liar you can not effectively bluff if bluffing is lying. This reasoning may be why most professional players suggest that the pros make little use of the tool. What follows is my argument for why the pros probably bluff more than the standard definition would indicate and why it is a useful tool and how it should be used.

A macro examination of the (my) decision tree when evaluating what to play has nothing to do with lying or deception and everything to do with exploiting a perceived weakness in other players. Upon further review perhaps this thinking would not be categorized as bluffing, but the unanalyzed activity is the same so I’m taking the longer view of the topic and perhaps what follows will provide other students of the game fodder for coming to their own conclusion.

Most definitions of bluffing are simplified as playing a very weak hand as a very strong hand. I’ll concede that this could very well be the case for the uneducated players. The problem I have with the definition is that this would seem to indicate what Iggy says is true and that by bluffing you are indeed lying. The problem with this and perhaps the problem people have with bluffing in general is that people have a hard time lying to other people. Their bodies tend to give them away in subtle ways that makes it difficult to utilize an important tool in poker play.

Since I object to the basic foundation that bluffing is lying, allow me to present bluffing in a more effective construct of two phases and their usage. The first phase of bluffing is used when you’re playing with people you have no experience with at the table. Recognizing that you’re playing with little or no information about your opponents you will default to a mode of discovery and standard play tactics. What this means is that you want to use your advantages of position, odds, and opponents lack of information about you as best you can. You would use bluffing in this case to push people sitting on marginal hands out of a pot or discover the players who have strong hands. I’ll stress again, that bluffing in this case has nothing to do with lying and is generally a tool for information discovery. Who plays aggressively or passively? Who are the calling stations? Who’s playing weak and can be pushed around? Using this first phase of bluffing generally has little to do with your cards because you’re attempting to exploit relatively cheap opportunities to learn more about the players around you. The key here is to remember to fold against credible resistance. The goal is to gather information, not to measure the size or tensile strength of your balls.

The second phase of bluffing has nothing to do with your cards and everything to do with utilizing the information you have about your opponents. You’ve now gone beyond trying to gather information about a given player and are now using that information to exploit their style of play and what they think they know about you. I’m not suggesting that you play blind (that would be silly), however you’re now in a psychological battle rather than a battle of best hand. By bluffing your garbage/weak/inferior hand against an opponent you’re not trying to convince them that you have better of it. Instead you are trying to convince them that whatever they do have is not good enough. A very subtle point I admit, but an important one. You’re now drawing on your experience with the player, the patterns they’ve exhibited; any tells they may have or your own gut instinct to identify when your opponent has likely played a marginal hand, and you want to apply the leverage of your knowledge to give them the mental nudge that they’ve played their marginal hand at the wrong time. They’re already worried about it if they’re reasonably savvy, so why not help them out and ‘confirm’ their fear with a push in the right direction?

I hope I’ve demonstrated that in either case of using bluffing you are not lying. Instead your motivation for the play is distinctly different and not influenced by the desire to deceive your opponent. However, there’s a bit of classic wisdom that comes from the world of limit hold’em that goes something like – You can’t bluff a calling station. Applying what I’ve described above, you’ve applied the thinking of phase one and determined that someone is a calling station and that analysis should tell you that the person has effectively removed a tool from your bag. Trying to apply any of the thinking from the second phase of bluffing against this person is a complete waste of time. The reason for this is that they simply lack the fear that they might be beat. They don’t care because they’re playing the losing strategy of thinking that if they’re in enough hands, they’re going to make them often enough to be a winner. The philosophy is pretty simple. You have to play to win and you can’t win if you’re not playing. So the technique is to minimize the investment on hands that are not obvious locks (check, call, repeat) and try to hammer their opponents when they do hit the jackpot. The reason I say this is a losing strategy is because smart, observant, players will usually not be involved in the hand or divine based on their experience with the player when to get out of the way of the two or one outer that just made their premium hand second best.

Getting on track

2005-07-25T10:16:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, at my first consulting job, as part of what I can only guess now was a self improvement effort sponsored by the company two books were handed to each consultant. One was "A discipline for software engineering" a very typical and dry text book on the subject. The second book was "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", also a relatively dry and tough read on the subject. Oddly enough, I still own both books and over the last 10 years have carted them around and made them a permanent part of my library. I can't recall at any point having actually cracked the cover of either book. Ever.

Anyway, I figured that if I was going to start seriously making an effort to make a career shift I should make sure my fundamentals are good. To that end, I consider the concepts of the seven habits to be part of that foundation. I still can't really bring myself to read it but I have gotten the audio book version and in going with the practice of reinforcing things you learn through teaching, I'll share my notes and thoughts on the course with you here virtually and later this week with my wife.

My understanding of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Definitions:
Paradigm - A perspective or role
Habit - An internalized principle; an overlapping of knowledge, skill and attitude or knowing what to do, how to do it, and why to do something and wanting to.

Changing habits involves dealing with the chronic issues as opposed to the acute instance of a problem. The only way to effectively change your habits is to treat the chronic problems. Attempts to only treat the acute issues can result in other chronic issues.

Effectiveness - The P PC balance. P stands for is the production of desired results, PC stands for production capability. Effectiveness is leveraging PC to achieve P.

In any organization there are three basic resources - Physical, Financial, and Human.

If you don't maintain the production capability, short term results of production can not be sustained over time.

Production problems are production capability opportunities.

To improving relationships utilize the following six ways to build the emotional bank account with people:
1. Simple kindnesses
2. Honesty
3. Making and Keeping Promises
4. Managing Expectations - Problems come from conflicting role and goal expectations
5. Loyalty - Greater to be trusted and respected than liked.
6. Apologize when you fail in any of the first 5

However, if you focus too much on the PC, this can be a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. There still needs to be a touch point with reality and the goals that you're trying to achieve.

The maturity continuum is visualized with dependency at the low end, independence in the middle, and at the upper end interdependency.

Dependency – This is the attitude of you. Dependant people need others to get what they want.

Independency – This is the attitude of I. Independent people only need themselves to get what they want.

Interdependency – This is the attitude of We. Interdependent people need themselves and others to get what they want.

You can not be effectively interdependent on a team without first being successful at being independent. A dependant person can not effectively communicate if they feel at risk of obtaining their needs or goals due to the dependency on others.

Being independent provides the confidence and foundation to effectively work interdependently with others.

The habits are grouped as character habits (1-3), personality habits (4-6), and reinforcement (7). The habits taken together when applied will take you from dependency to independence, and on to interdependency. This is done through building the foundation of character.

Habit 1 - Be proactive

Take responsibility for yourself. Being proactive allows you to adapt and achieve your desired results regardless of external forces. Being reactive can obscure your goal through the external events that derail your progress.

By keeping the goal or desired end result in focus, you can choose how to respond to external events that would normally stop you in your tracks and keep you from your desires and needs and take control of events rather than let events control you.

Being proactive means having the freedom to exercise the options of liberty. The difference being that liberty means you have many options where freedom is an internal condition that gives you the power to choose.

The first habit, be proactive, is the habit of being aware of your control of how you react and respond. Using the goal or end result as your focal point, you exercise your values and principles to achieve those results.

Habit 2 - Begin with the end in mind (Leadership)

How do you foster being proactive? Develop the mission statement and set up the reward and information system to reinforce your desires identified in the mission statement. Applying principles of leadership focuses you on the goals you want to achieve and provides the feedback loop from the day to day activities so that you can validate that your actions are contributing to your goals.

The mission statement is used as the criteria by which all decisions are made. The mission statement should pertain to your organization and your situation. It centers you around a set of principles, values, and purposes that transcend the day to day.

Two basic ways to get in control of your life:
1. Set a goal and work to achieve it
2. Make a promise and work to keep it

Control of your life builds self confidence which is the first step to independence.

If you were to write your own eulogy, what would you want said about you on in the following aspects of your life:

1. Family
2. Friend
3. Working Associate
4. Public Servant

Habit 3 - Put first things first (Management)

Taking the results of habit two and making it happen. This habit is your scheduling around your roles and goals to make them happen.

Time Management Matrix:
Quad 1: Important & Urgent (Problems or Crisis)
Quad 2: Important & Not Urgent
Quad 3: Not Important & Urgent
Quad 4: Not Important & Not Urgent

Important means it attaches to habit 2, your mission statement, your roles, and goals.
Urgent is things that are pressing upon you, gives a sense of urgency. For example a ringing phone that demands your attention, may not be important.

I can't think of one activity in my life that if I did superbly well and consistently that would produce 'marvelous' results. This goes for my personal life, work life, or public life.

80% of the results flow from 20% of the activities -- Plato

The fundamental capacity to be able to work in quadrant two is being proactive.

You don't think efficiency with people. You manage things, but lead people.

Habit one (vision) requires self awareness
Habit two (leadership) requires imagination and conscience
Habit three (management) requires willpower

These endowments make up the concepts of character that generate a sense of independence and self reliance. You will build your security off of your integrity to your value system.

Habit 4 - Think Win, Win

The attitude of seeking mutual benefit through communication

This is a philosophy of life that you apply to conflicts, especially when it involves the things that are very important to yourself and/or the people you are interacting with. When you can't achieve a win, win solution, there is another option besides win, lose or lose, win. This other option is the "no deal" solution where both parties agree to disagree.

The basic elements of the win, win agreement:
1. Desired results
2. Guidelines
3. Resources
4. Accountability
5. Consequences (positive and negative results from achievement or failure)

Habit 5 - Seek first to understand, and then to be understood

This is the habit of communication.

Only the unmet need motivates. The key to effective communication is meeting the unmet need of understanding and being understood.

To be able to create the win, win outcome, you must first be able to listen. Really, really listen and understand the perspective of the person you're interacting with. Using what you heard and clearly understood you can then express your feelings and perspective to your target. Once both parties have achieved understanding, you can then develop synergies.

Most people see the world as they are, rather than as the world is. Individuals are not wrong in this view because it is a matter of perspective.

By meeting the need to be understood you are also meeting the need to be appreciated, and people feel validated in their position which opens them up to change win, lose or lose, win situations into win, win opportunities.

Habit 6 - Synergize

Produce new solutions to the differences between us, better than the individual proposed solutions.

Compromise means 1+1 = 1 1/2, when you compromise something is lost from the sum of the parts.
Synergy means 1+1 = 3, 4, or more. When you synergize the result is greater than the sum of the parts.

The significant problems we create can not be solved by the thinking that created them - Albert Einstein

Habit 7 - Sharpen the Saw

This is the habit that is implemented by exercising the four dimensions of human personality to maintain the first six habits.

Four dimensions of human personality:
1. Physical
2. Spiritual (value system)
3. Mental
4. Social/Emotional

The key to maintaining these four dimensions is finding a balance to building on each of them consistently.

Some things to remember

The whole history of institutions can be summed up in the following formula:
Challenge is external, Response is internal. If the response is equal to the challenge then you will have success. If the response is obsolete it will lead to failure.

Principles remain, practices change to address different situations. Practices can become obsolete. However, principles are the foundation used to develop practices and can not become obsolete.

Imagine two circles on a page, one circle within the other. The inner circle is representative of your circle of influence, or the things in which you can have a direct affect. The outer circle (which is generally much larger) is your circle of concern. These are things that affect you, but that you do not have any direct control over. The seven habits when applied correctly will focus your activities within your circle of influence.

Funk be gone

2005-07-22T12:26:00.000-05:00

As things stand now, I am having to take a harder look at how to move forward mostly solo in this endeavor. As a kind reader suggested, perhaps it's just changing up how I choose to invest or what I choose to invest in. Fortunately, I have at least set my goal even if I haven't quite figured out how to reach it.

That goal dear reader is simply to invest in things that will supplant the income I currently work for. There are times where I actually like what it is I do for a living and now is just not one of those times. Of course having that feeling makes the desire to replace it with something else even stronger than usual. At least I think I understand my motivations in wanting to be rid of the dependence on a job where I could lose my income at the whim of management. Granted that's not an eminent threat or fear, but it is the reality of working and the root of the problem. You either have a job or you do not. I would be happy to not have a job if I had an alternate stream of income to replace it so that I could at least maintain my current lifestyle and housing situation. Until I achieve that though the axiom holds, "I like food, therefore I work."

So back to figuring out how to achieve my goal, now without the support and partner that I thought I had in the trek. Looking at my personal strengths, I'm fairly confident that I can solve the problem. The risks along the way are staying motivated, not getting distracted by things that are not core to achieving the goal, and recognizing progress, however small, so as not to get discouraged along the way. Back in the before time when I started this blog, I said then that one day at a time was the way I was going to measure my progress. Of course I also think that was a pretty binary approach... Did I post today? Yes, great I achieved progress. No, try and make up for it tomorrow.

Well, as time wore on and I allowed other things not core to what I was trying to achieve invade I slipped in my posting, slipped in my poker playing, and generally faded away. I'm not sure if there's a lesson to be learned or if I have yet since I knew then just like I do now that it does require dedication and that by applying some focus to it I will make progress. It still all boils down to keeping the demons that like to eat away at the little time that exists in a day at bay.

This song's just six words long

2005-07-17T21:51:00.000-05:00

I'm kind of at a loss for the moment. One of the most relevent pieces of advice in just about every book on REI and many of the websites and forums that discuss the topic is that if you have a spouse they have to be on board with doing it. A few weeks back when I sat down with my spouse she was as committed as I was. Now that some time has passed it just seems that there's every number of other things that keep her away from any level of study that we could then use to bounce ideas off of each other and work towards formulating a plan. Frankly it kind of pisses me off. I haven't really figured out what to do about it but try yet again to sit her down and see if she's really committed to doing this. The worst case situation is that she's not, and then what? *sigh* It goes without saying this would be so much easier in just about every respect if I were single and say five years younger. I'm at a loss at the moment.

A Vacation is a terrible thing to waste

2005-07-11T13:29:00.000-05:00

So I took last week off from pretty much everything that I could and it was good. On the other hand perhaps it wasn't so good. Too much time to think and re-think things really causes the OCD to kick into overdrive. I'd say I'm a detail buy but the reality is I can get really wrapped around the smallest details and never look up if I don't catch myself. Of course being aware of this character trait is only half the battle. As I continue the learning and information absorption process I have to continuely try to not fixate on every little detail otherwise I'll fall into the analysis paralysis that could really sabotage my efforts. I'm about half way through my current book and it's been a little slower going than expected. It's quite the balancing act having a job(career?) and trying to develop the knowledge and skills to make a shift into an unrelated area.

obPost

2005-06-30T10:55:00.000-05:00

The best blogs I've read have generally been focused on a given topic or theme. To that end I have usually tried to identify the theme I wanted for my blog and stick to it. First it was poker and now it's REI. The problem is that there's a ton of other junk I think about and want to record for posterity or whatever and it has nothing to do with my theme (or is at best distantly related). I can not bring myself to spawn another blog for these other things. While some other notables *cough* Pauly *cough* have multiple blogs for probably this very reason, I just can't do it. So rather than get wrapped around the axel about it I'll follow in the footsteps of my uber posting idol and periodically just brain dump what's on my mind generally unrelated to my primary theme.

On Poker
You know a sure fire way to make yourself want to do something that you haven't had any urge to do lately? Tell everyone you're never going to do it again. Talk about an itch needing to be scratched but I've probably played more poker in the last two weeks and had more thoughts on it than in the last 3 or 4 months. Go figure. So I'm applying the SSH approach to the $0.50/$1 tables at party and have so far booked solid winning sessions. Still taking my lumps with some bad beats but for the most part exercising some patience and play that I haven't used in a long, long, time. Up to about $75 from $14, yay me.

Has anyone else noticed the proliferation of poker content on pay per view? First was Helmuth with his online poker video, and next up was lederer's similarly themed program. I guess it sort of makes sense that it would show up, but it's still a little stunning to actually see that type of content while scrolling through the PPV listings.

Paradise is kicking off their $1 million freeroll starting on 7/1 going through 8/26. This seems like a good way to get involved in playing some MTT if you're willing to move your play over to Paradise for a couple of months. Like all good drug dealers, the first shot is free, but after that you have to earn points by playing raked games to get another shot at the freeroll. The structure for winning a seat is interesting. If you play in the 4pm daily only the top 10 (out of a possible 4000) win a seat. If you instead you play at 9pm, the top 20 win a seat. The best odds of all are available if you play at 1am, in which the top 30 win a seat. I think I figured up that by August 26th 3400 people would have won a seat to the tournament and sure enough if you look at the fine print you see that Paradise will probably be offering up to 600 seats through alternate tournaments or intra-casino promotions. The business of an online casino/poker room is pretty facinating and this is no exception.

On Gaming
MMORPGs are the future of gaming and perhaps more. I say this because the global communities have no other way to get together in real time in a large scale combining both visual and audio senses. This medium provides not just the tools to communicate but also the structure and setting to 'do' things as a community. The problem with the genre as I see it is that the things that made their ancestors great (MUD, MUSH, etc) appear to be lost in the race for great graphics and mass produced generic content. I appriciate that these games can not be all things to all people which leaves plenty of room for alternate and competing products but there are some very basic design fundamentals that seem to get lost in whatever becomes the final product.

As a player you want an invironment just interesting enough to explore. Once you've become comfortable with getting around you then want a way to extend it and make it your own. As a business you want a product that will draw in consumers and keep them engaged so that you have a steady stream of revenue. Despite what you might see on the various forums for MMORPGs, these two perspectives are not at odds with one another and there is a way to have everyone win.

From the player perspective the aspects that give them what they want is the ability to customize and be unique (or not as they choose). The environment should be open ended enough to allow them to explore and become familiar with the mechanics of the game and 'taste' the possibilities of what can be if they make the investment to continue on after the initial 30 days. The best way for a game to achieve this is to provide the customer an opportunity to become part of the game and develop a sense of ownership and impact to the game world. This can be done a number of ways through player housing, crafting, guild formations, town/city development, and the opportuntiy to become a part of the games history as well as impact its direction.

Bah, enough on this for now since if I can keep my attention on it, this may become a business case for creating a new game.

Other
If you want your own Solaris capable system and some support to go with it SUN has a deal for you. Buy the support and they'll give you a system for free. Very tempting offer and an interesting way to finance an AMD Opteron workstation. If you subscribe to SUN support for 3 years at about $30/mnth they'll send you a nice new shiny 64-bit workstation with Solaris 10 on it. As a technologist this does have a certain amount of appeal but I'm still on the fence if I want to do it. I believe the same system bought outright would be about $850 (from SUN) so to get it via the support subscription the system would cost $1080... or I guess you could flip it around to say that the system cost you $850 and 3 years of support only cost you $230. Check it out if you're interested here at SUN's website.

Dumping the anchor

2005-06-29T19:40:00.000-05:00

A lot of the advise/information that I've been reading online points out something pretty obvious about people who 'decide' they're going to invest in real estate. By and large, a majority of the people who become interested never follow through. To a point I think I probably belong(ed) to that group because I've been kicking the ideas and concepts around for more than a few years and never really acted on it before this point and I had to wonder what the heck was holding me back? Knowing what was holding me back then lead to the next question, how can I get rid of this boat anchor?

I think the biggest obstacle holding me back in the past was not being prepared to invest the time to really study and commit to really doing something. Somehow good intentions just wasn't getting it done, go figure. The next thing is being unable to quantify the risks involved. Paralyzed by fear? There are probably still a number of risks I'm not seeing, but for the risks that I can identify I can start figuring out ways to mitigate them. Plus talking about them and planning to deal with them often identifies new issues to be aware of. I think the biggest risk/fear for me is the potential financial impact to my family if things don't work out like I plan. Taking risks is so easy when you're not responsible for anyone else but yourself. So the key here has been acknowledging the risks and planning accordingly.

The other thing holding me back is that there always seems to be something else that needs to have money applied to it and it draws away from my savings. I always seemed to be in the same place that I was the year before when I "made the decision" to start learning and investing in RE. The reality isn't quite that bleak, but with no tangible results it may as well be. So what's different this time? Well I'm armed with a budget that is helping keep spending under control, that's been a huge help where before we seemed to spend until the ATM machine said there was nothing left. Into the budget we built in a savings plan to put away cash for investing purposes.

There's a concept that we use when planning performance planning and reviews at work. Commonly it is referred to as setting S.M.A.R.T. goals which means

Specific
Measurable
Acceptable to you
Realistic
Time limited

In my planning for this I trying to apply these guides to the steps I'm planning. Maybe it's not a one size fits all concept, but logically it looks like will apply just fine in this case.

Mentor, what is it good for?

2005-06-28T20:46:00.000-05:00

While I've been concidering my learning path and activities I think I've come to the conclusion that I won't look for a mentor. Not that they might not be helpful or anything like that. I think that I wouldn't be able to effectively make use of their advice since it would be very easy to use them as a crutch. Not to mention it still seems very strange to just ask someone to share their experience without having anything to really offer in return. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, but for now I'm gonna focus on some of the things I talked about in my last post and focusing on my personal finances to se if there's any more I can squeeze into the seed money I'm likely to need.

Starting to break it down

2005-06-28T08:47:00.000-05:00

Applying some problem solving stratagies to this, and extrapolating from my reading I'm starting to identify an approach for my learning as well as some near term tasks that I need to start moving on. The ability to effectively evaluate a property seems like a very daunting task with many different areas of knowledge that have to come together to be able to do it successfully. The concern here is to be able to confidently identify investment opportunities that are financially worse than they appear. Speaking of finacials the near term tasks I've identified for myself are to take the microscope to my financial situation which means tightening up the budget a little and continuing to put the seed money away.

Evaluating property seems to break down into four main areas:

Housing Market
Physical Property
Financial Potential
Legal State of the Property

I think evaluating the market should be pretty easy from looking at the classifieds in the paper as well as data from the MLS realators use. The agents I used to purchase my current home provide a nice benefit to me in that I can search and monitor the MLS for any properties that match what I think I'm looking for. The other side of that is figuring out what neighborhood(s) are good candidates for investing in and that's going to just require some driving or walking around that I'm not quite prepared to do yet.

Physical property inspection seems pretty daunting. I mean it can't be trivial or a whole career for home inspectors wouldn't exist. I've noticed that Chicago (lucky me) has a school with courses for home inspectors that could even lead to certification. I'm thinking this may be useful, but obviously I have to weigh that against whatever the cost is to hire someone who already is certified and has experience.

The financial opportunity a property presents has lots of twists in turns in it starting with the type of property, the financing scheme, etc. Lots of twists and turns here that can probably be broken down into a matrix when I get that far. Beyond though, I'm sure there are other things to concider that I haven't figured out yet so this is an area for extended study.

Finally, the legal side of things seems to boil down into two questions. What can I find out myself? What aspects of REI do/should I need a RE lawyer for? Again, I don't have enough information here to really expand on what I don't know here so an area for extended study.

Cart before the horse?

2005-06-27T14:39:00.000-05:00

When learning something new it helps to have the ability to get your hands dirty and develop some experience and lessons learned. What I can't seem to wrap my head around at the moment is how to do this with real estate. I guess I have some ideas, but this seems to be one of those things I'm feeling more uncomfortable about than I should. Maybe I should try and find a good mentor that I can learn the ropes from first. Of course, not real sure where to find one of those so until I figure that out I'm on my own. So back to the first issue, how do you 'dabble' without getting in too deep to avoid permanent scaring, or staying too shallow to make the experience irrelevant?

I'm continuing to read "The Beginners Guide to Real Estate Investing" and have to admit that some of what the author is suggesting seems... suspicious. Maybe it's the paranoid eye after reading some of the material from John T. Reed (not necessarily a bad thing), but some of the strategies that are being suggested for financing home purchases seem dodgy at best. Almost makes you wonder if you have to be shady to get the "great deals" that may be out there. I think the answer is no, but I have nothing to base that on.

The idea I have in mind about how to get started can be summed up in learn how to evaluate properties. I think even that breaks down into at least two halves that are obviously complementary. The first half is evaluate condition (new, fixer-upper, etc) and value of a property. The second half of that is evaluate the investment opportunity or answer the question, "Can I make money on this thing?"

From a buy and hold perspective the last question depends on the result of the first since obviously you need to make enough rent to break even or better on the cost. Then again, for short periods of time I guess even a small loss is sustainable. On a short term hold or flip maybe the monthly income matters less since the thinking would be to rehab and sell for the new higher value.

The only thing I know for sure now is that I have a lot more questions than I have answers so I'll continue to read and keep working on a plan of attack.

Math is hard, lets go shopping

2005-06-23T17:20:00.000-05:00

And that phrase molded the warped minds of little girls everywhere. At least until the consumer groups in the 80s made Mattel change the talking teen Barbi. Funny as that is, most young people (and I was in this group) didn't know anything about managing my finances when I got out on my own. As long as there will still checks there was still money right? Well, I learned my lesson pretty quickly after they quit accepting my checks anywhere and a few years after that finally had the mess cleaned up. Now days I still have my share of consumer/credit card debt to work down but I recall spending a lot of time cleaning up my credit report to buy my home. To that end, here's a great link for picking up your credit report for free from the big 3 every year.

Yay Blogger!

2005-06-22T22:40:00.000-05:00

A huge thanks to Robin at Blogger who restored my nuked blog. I'll get the couple of old posts moved over later, happy! happy! joy! joy!

More thoughts on Rich Dad, Poor Dad

2005-06-22T08:20:00.000-05:00

Having slept on it, I thought I would expand on my thoughts regarding "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert T. Kiyosaki. Like I said yesterday it wasn't exactly what I expected but after some more analysis this doesn't appear to be a bad thing. It seems to me that the purpose of the book is to be an attitude adjustment and to plant the seeds of options and success in your mind.

What would make me happy? Reading a book like this definitely sets the mind in motion about how nice it would be to be rich and all the fun you could have in the care free world of not working for a paycheck. Splashing a dose of reality on there I have to consider that despite how easy someone elses story makes it sound, there has to be a practical application of knowledge and a plan. So the question doesn't have an answer yet but when it does I figure I'll have a goal and can start shaping a plan to meet it. So if I had to say how the book applied to me and achieving my dream... well that may be going to far since I haven't really figured out 100% what it is I'm trying to achieve. Anyway these are the things I got out of it:

Pay attention to the flow of my money

I need to learn how to find and evaluate investment opportunities

I need to learn the fundamentals and the impact of investing on taxes

I need to learn about protecting my family and my investments

Oddly enough the one thing that seemed to be missing from the book that to me would be critical is at least a short discussion around planning and it's ability to help take the dream of being rich and make it a reality. I found a site that is pretty negative on the book (more on that in a minute) with a large number of supporting feedback from folks who were skeptical or jumped without looking where they were going to land. I suspect that a lot of that sentiment comes from the lack of a planning topic. I'd have to say that if there were a serious flaw in the book that this is probably it. Perhaps though that is intentional (though it shouldn't need to be) since the author does have a number of other books I'm sure he wants you to buy. Heck even worst case at least little bit at the end saying something to the effect of "To learn how to put these ideas into action, read my book(s)...." *shrug*

While looking for sources of information on the internet I found this Rich Dad, Poor Dad review by John T. Reed that would seem to suggest that not only is the book crap, but that it is dangerous. It's a pretty long critique but I got through it and came away with the feeling that he (Reed) took exception with the author (Kiyosaki) and his simplifying of investing topics. He also identifies or calls into question a number of specific items in the book (some of which I don't remember and I just read it) that honestly don't seem core to the point as I see it. I'd like to think I'm a "sift the wheat from the chaff" type so when I read books for education I probably apply a filter to what I'm reading looking for the pieces of information that I can use or that are interesting enough to want to look into deeper. You would think that Reed was out to kick Kiyosaki just for the pure joy of it, to each their own I suppose. I did spend quite a bit of time reading other things written by Mr. Reed on his site and in general can appreciate his perspective and advise as well. He definitely seems more geared towards a more experienced audience so it will probably be a bit before I get back to looking into his stuff again.

To guru or not to guru

2005-06-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

I'm figuring that most people that were not born to a mentor, probably looked to a proclaimed (self or otherwise) guru when they thought they wanted to get out of working for someone else and captain their own lives towards freedom and wealth. I'm not really any different, having spent my youth at or below the poverty line and having no one around that was doing any better to learn from leaves little room to do anything but follow the same path. I don't know about you, but I hated being "poor" and not having the things I wanted. So, I did what any young, self-motivated person would do in that situation, I got out by learning something new. As it turned out I was pretty good at making those computer things do stuff people wanted and hit the job market about mid internet bubble and with a little luck and some skill managed to not get mangled when the bubble burst. However, I also did not strike it big while the iron was hot so to speak.

Now I'm in another fine mess. Making a decent wage and a half-step past living paycheck to paycheck. As I'm getting older I'm finding the desire to get away from the traditional paycheck stronger and the need to be more in control of my destiny much more desireable. So, like everyone else I revert to type and pick up some books and hit the internet to start trying to figure out if investing in real estate is the right thing for me and my family.

That last statement there is pretty damn important for something like this. I've learned one thing being married for as long as I have, and that's that no major finacial decisions can be made with including the wife. Even if the only thing she can contribute to the endevor is support, that's the bare minimum needed to make sure that it can happen and that I don't have to listen for months about how I shouldn't have spent the money on whatever big ticket thing I just bought is.

So the first step is edumacating myself enough so that I can then explain it to someone else. I've learned over the years that for me, if I can explain something to someone else and keep all the facts straight I know it well enough to be confident that I'll be able to use that knowledge in the real world. This brings me back to the question at had, do I look into the various gurus that are pushing books, courses, etc onto the market? Perhaps having this direct educational effort shave some time off the reading and researching that I would do on my own.

The trouble with that seems to be that most of the 'big name' gurus today are frauds (depending on who you read/ask). At the moment, I've compromised just to at least get things moving in the right direction. I've bough a few books and I'm reading around on the net and slowly working down the self education route. I'm on the fence about attending any sort of seminar and just need more data before I try to commit one way or the other. On the one hand my experience with seminars in the technical field have usually been positive learning experiences. On the other hand a lot of data I'm reading about RE seminars seems to indicate they are just additional tools to pry money from your wallet.

Like I said, I picked up a couple of books for $25 at the bookstore. The first is "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert T. Kiyosaki and the other is "The Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing" by Gary W. Eldred.

I was able to pretty quickly read through the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book (about 200 pages) and it's not exactly what I expected for something that always seems to be on the 'popular' shelf at the bookstore. It's more story than it is guide, but honestly it never said it was a guide, how-to, or cookbook for becoming rich. It did however get me to thinking about what I'm doing with the money I do make now and planted the seed that there are other wise I could be earning a dollar. There's apparently a couple of other books that make up the "Rich Dad Trio" I may give them a look see at the bookstore and see if there's some more specific advice on planning or what things a beginner should know.

I'm only about a dozen pages into The Beginner's Guide (which seems to be around 300 pages of denser material) so I don't have much to say about that yet. I should be through it by this weekend so I'll keep track of my thoughts on it and write something up then. In general, I'm pretty excited, but that's easy to be when something is new and different. Lets see how I feel about it in 30 days.

Be careful what you wish for

2005-06-21T09:32:00.000-05:00

To say I'm in shock would be a major understatement. So here I am dinking with my blogger dashboard and trying to work out a new theme/style for my blog and after dinking with it a bit I go to delete my test blog that I had been noodling on. No biggie, I go back to the dashboard to go into my blog and start making changes and it's gone. G O N E ! It's heart wrenching to even think about a year of effort to be blown away so easily. I mean hell, I wanted to start the blog off in a new direction, but this is not what I had in mind. :( I wonder if the blogger folks can restore it. *fingers crossed* I'm off to see if they have backups.

The Last Poker Post

2005-06-18T01:42:00.000-05:00

A little over a year ago I got interested enough in playing poker to actually make an effort to improve my game. I'll admit to at one time dreaming of playing at the big tournaments and having stacks of chips in front of me so big they'd have to stop play to reinforce the table at my seat. Time, perspective, and reality have brought me to the place I'm at today, which is oddly enough far from a poker table, and no itch to find one. Don't get me wrong I learned a lot in a years time about the game, have a library of material online and off that I don't regret accumulating and at one point played some of the best poker of my life. While I would say I dropped out of the poker blogging community some time ago, I'd like to officially bid it farewell and leave a sliver of advice to anyone who might still be listening.

To avoid sounding too much like a professional, or giving the impression that I'm anything more than just a guy who can shuffle some cards and almost do one decent chip trick I'll stick with the practical advice that anyone can benefit from. Without further delay, here are my three suggestions to playing better poker.

Commit to Improving - Playing poker is like doing anything else that requires skill. If you want to really improve spend as much time doing it as you can. Work, school, family, and other hobbies all compete for your precious time so you need to prioritize if you're serious about becoming good. If you try to squeeze it in for an hour or two once a week, you're not going to have enough table time to know what you need to improve. On the same token don't spend all your up front time reading poker material. Save that stuff for when you're traveling or just unable to get to a poker table. I'm not saying that reading isn't part of learning, but experience is the best teacher and provides the context that you should be reading for. By and large, poker books are generally boring reads and better consumed in relevant chunks. Want to tweak your game pre-flop, just read stuff related to that and get back to the tables so you can start figuring out what works and what doesn't. Again, if you want to get better you have to commit to playing regularly.

Invest Wisely - There are a ton of books and tools out there that are "guaranteed" to help you with your game. New or not to playing poker, and especially playing poker online my advice here is that you don't spend more than $80 on software or books before you've spent much time playing. If you've never played before, I wouldn't deposit any money into a poker room either. All of the major poker rooms allow you to sign up and play for free using play money. Granted the betting in play tables leaves a lot to be desired, but if you've never played a game before, doing this will at least give you the basics of play. At the point that you're ready to try using some real money, I think I would suggest Paradise Poker. The only reason I do this is because in my opinion they are a reputable site and they have micro-limit (1 cent/2 cent blinds) tables well suited for novice players that gives you more relevant betting experience against what will probably be similar caliber players. If you absolutely have to buy books and tools before you start playing, I recommend Poker Tracker and either "The Theory of Poker" or if you have some experience playing I've always been partial to "Super System" because of the way the material is presented. However, before you buy any books, do yourself a favor and take advantage of the wealth of information that's available in various forums (2+2), blogs (Party Poker Blogs and The Cards Speak for starters), and miscellaneous websites. You'd be a fool not to take advantage of all of that collective knowledge.

Consider a support group - Seriously. I have no regrets for putting this blog together and getting involved with the poker blogging community. A nicer bunch of folks there never was. Always there to cheer your wins, and empathise with your losses. Fortunately for you, you're not the first intrepid explorer in the realm of poker and there's no reason to take the trip alone. Having folks to share experiences with makes the learning process so much easier. Not to mention providing a healthy dose of encouragement, competition, and camaraderie that will make what will periodically be a very frustrating endeavor a little less so. Start a blog? Sure, why not. If nothing else, by recording your activities you can enhance that analysis and maybe get some feedback on your evaluation of your play and that paths your taking to learning.

If your curious as to what I'm up to now I'm filling the brief minutes between work, school, family, and sleep with learning about real estate investing. Poker was definitely not my ticket to the carefree and workless lifestyle that I aspire to so I'm pursuing a more traditional method of generating income without having to work for someone else. I'll probably retool the blog a little bit and definitely start posting more frequently since there's a lot of good information I'm finding that if nothing else I want to record for myself if not to share with anyone else. Heck, maybe there will be an idea or two for you rich poker pros that don't know what to do with all their money. While I will certainly keep reading many of you, this is definitely my last poker post and I hope that it's useful to someone.

The amazing Yo-Yo hits himself with The Hammer

2005-04-25T10:15:00.000-05:00

So yesterdays blogger tournament was good times, despite smacking myself in the head with The Hammer vs the nut straight and ultimetly finishing 57th out of 78. I wonder if I should just go back to playing NL full time because I made some plays that would have been good in a limit game that upon reflection were very questionable in a NL game. This question will require some soul searching. I think to make the transition back to NL ring I'll probably invest some time at the SNG tables to limit the re-learning curve losses.

Coming down to it

2005-04-21T13:11:00.000-05:00

This Sunday will see #35 of 37 super-satellite events for the College Poker Championships. I won my seat to the satellite so long ago that Royal Vegas has been sending me we miss you and want you back letters. I'm sort of anxious about the fact that in 4 weeks I'm going to be in a fairly sizable tournament that would definetly make getting through school much easier. To that end it's time to start getting back into the groove again so I'm planning to start hitting the tables again this week. Just got to wait for that silly deposit to go through.

I've been a bad reader. Basicly I check in on BG about once a week or so, and haven't been keeping up with anyone else really :( Being a bad reader hasn't seemed to affect being read though. Seriously, something must be wrong. When I was at it daily I got maybe 20-30 hits a day. I just happened to look a few minutes ago and my daily hits are in the mid 100s. WTF!? I hit 10k unique visits and I'm wondering if somehow StatCounter has lost its mind.

I'm sure you're curious how I've been filling my time away from the tables. Mostly Working (40+ hrs a week doesn't leave much time after sleeping), The boy is growing like a weed and is more fun than ever to play with, Everquest 2 (got to have some gaming in there), and oh yeah there's the wife. ;)

I've got some aprehension about getting back into playing again. I think it's safe to say that I'm a good card player, but not a great one. The funny thing is, aspiring to greatness can be a slippery slope for me. I can see now that I am/was very results focused. Granted to be able to track progress and identify good and bad trends you have to pay attention to your results, but perhaps being obsessed about them is going a little too far. If only somehow I could live the dream and replace my six figure slaving for the man salary with a six figure income from playing cards. Too old and too many responsibilities to just say fuck it and try to make it or break it playing poker and golf. Somehow, somewhere I'm going to own a golf course with a poker room in the club house. That's the end game right there ladies and gentleman. Step to work out the plan to get there.

Accidental Life

2005-04-21T08:11:00.000-05:00

I don't watch the local news for a relatively short list of reasons the top one being that in general they follow the philosophy that if it bleeds, it leads. However, when you're listening to the national news over dinner, sometimes it's a little slow to break from dinner just to switch to the music station or off. Anyway, yesterdays news story was about a 3 year old boy who was killed by a gun he found and played with in his home.
The police are calling it an "accidental shooting" and I'm thinking bullshit. Not because I believe something sinister happened or that the kid didn't find the loaded gun and kill himself while playing with it. No, I call bullshit on "accidental" because if you're going to be a gun owner, you are responsible for your guns. End of story. I probably won't get to own a gun again until I'm around 50. Mostly because the wife and I don't see eye to eye on the subject and since we live in a relatively safe place safety isn't a significant concern and I can always go to a range to cure the itch. However, the reason the wife and I don't see eye to eye on the subject is because of stories like this.

Maybe I'm a hardass but I'm thinking an Involuntary Manslaughter charge against the parents is appropriate here. Sure, they're going through what amounts to the worst time in their life right now, but a message has to be sent. If you're going to own a gun, own it responsibly. You child-proof cabinets and drawers to keep kids out of the drano and the rat poison, where the hell were you on storing your weapons? I've got a kid and at almost a year and a half he's into EVERYTHING and that's ok because that's how you learn about things when you're young. However, the really important stuff is way out of his reach or secured in some way. That doesn't keep him from finding inventive ways to damage himself but I can at least relax knowing that I haven't directly or indirectly created opportunities to put him in harms way.

Stuff like this is just sad, more fuel for the anti-gun zealots and a family destroyed. I think it mostly pisses me off because it's crap like this that give the policy-makers something to pander to while removing my abilities to choose and act responsibly as a citizen. By and large I still think events like these serve an evolutionary purpose, but I'm more aware now than when I was younger about the indrect impact these things have on me personally.

Time out of context

2005-04-05T23:30:00.000-05:00

You ever have one of those moments where one second you're dead to the world and the next your wide awake. No transition from sleepiness to your wakeful state, only a sudden surge of adrenaline and the hint that something is wrong.
I suspect that for those of you who have a hint of what I am talking about, this usually occurs in the middle of the night, or sometime in the morning, usually well after the alarm clock should have waken you. Imagine though that this event were to occur while you thought you were already awake. Playing mathmatically correct poker is boring to the point of being mind numbing. Sure you can try to multi-table and keep the action rolling but at some point that numbness has to set in. Is it the numbness of thinking that you're finally immune to fuming about having your made hand cracked by the one-outer? The serene feeling of knowing that the last 4 hours have just been part of that never ending session where you're going to be up more than you're going to be down? Perhaps instead you've just become comfortably numb to the fact that play after play the bets are slipping away because instead of playing the table, you're playing the cards.

The first sign is the cold sweat that just seems to have appeared on your body. Is it hot in here or is it just me? What time is it? It's 2am and I'm up 2bb/hr since 7pm when I dragged my ass in from the office and blew off the family to work down that bonus. Funny, the seats haven't changed much at this table but the folks I started with are up a heck of a lot more than me. I'm playing the perfect game, how is it that slick over there is playing a lot more hands than he should and taking it down? My hands never seem to pay off like the others but I'm consistantly up so that's ok. Maybe I'll make a few different plays to change things up a bit.

Then it hits you like a frieght train and you're awake. Your stack is gone and you're down now and trying to remember where it turned against you. What mistake did you make, you were playing perfect. Staying away from the junk, getting out of pots where you got outdrawn, and pushing your good hands. Just where did you go wrong? It slowly comes to you, you sat down at the table 8 hours ago.

Irony

2005-03-25T08:23:00.000-06:00

Because I could I happened to go look at statcounter this morning to see what the traffic level was now to this here pothole on the internet. Stunningly I've been getting more traffic since I took a break from posting than I did while I was fairly active. Maybe it's like the artist effect that whatever information I had to share become more worthwhile when I was gone. Somehow I doubt this and attribute the bulk of the traffic to bloglines and some pictures from GenCon Indy last year.

I have a confession

2005-03-24T23:30:00.000-06:00

You know those guilty pleasures you have in life? For some rather obvious and non-obvious reasons I'm addicted to watching "The L Word" Granted, how can the Shoetime go wrong with a show about lesbians but if it were just that, I don't think I'd really be that facinated with it. It's about 5 episodes into season 2 now and if I had to give a list of the things I like about the show it would look like this, in order:

Complex characters

The music

Uh, they're like hot and stuff

Has some fun ideas... Can not wait to play "Too Hot" with the wife

Did I mention I like the music? Thank jeebus they put the remix of "Get On" on their season two soundtrack

Looking at the shows I watch, they all seem to share some common themes in that they're complex, smart, and generally well written. In no particular order (well as I'm scanning the channels in my mind forward to back, but there is no favorite in this list I like them all equally):

CSI (the original, though miami is ok)

The West Wing

Nip/Tuck

The Shield

Battlestar Galactica (the new one)

The Sopranos

Six Feet Under

Deadwood

The L Word

The funny thing is, that without TiVo there really wouldn't be any TV for me. Funny how such a dependance on a device that is relatively new to the home entertainment technology arena could become critical to the point that there probably wouldn't be a TV in my home if I didn't have it.

Speaking of which, the boy's favorite show in the world is "Seasame Street" which is cool because other than a couple of annoying characters it's fun to watch and play with him while it's on. The question I have is this. When did Big Bird become such a whiney bitch? Every time "Journey to Ernie" comes up I want to just reach out and slap Big Bird.

This aimless and rambling post brought to you by the letter S and the number 10.

General: ping

2005-02-16T13:13:00.000-06:00

I think it is fairly safe to say that for about the last month I've fallen off of the face of the earth. Honestly, I don't see that changing too much in the short term either. The missus and I are implementing a fairly tight budget that will keep me from recharging the poker account(s) for some time, so the only action I'm seeing there is the weekly freeroll on Royal Vegas leading up to the CPC. I busted out on my birthday in January... whee happy b-day :( on Party but honestly I wasn't playing well for a couple of weeks and the short stay at the blogger table reflected that, if not even magnified it. Too many little distractions where my mind just wasn't in the game. I was sitting at the keyboard, clicking the buttons and going through the motions but I wasn't paying attention or playing to the level that I should have. I got what I deserved there. School kicks back in next month and so I figure what little spare time I have between work and family will evaporate so there should be less time to worry about things that will just sort themselves out without my help in the first place. Anyway, I guess you could call this a hiatus or something, but the short version is that without playing cards, or playing much in the way of games, reading, etc there's nothing else to really write about here so until that situation changes I'm likely to post very little in the near term. Stat-tracker says people still visit though I suspect that's thanks to bloglines. Back to work for me, I've just felt really guilty for not keeping up with my journaling and the commitment I made there but part of the reason for doing it was to reflect and improve on something I'm not really doing much of right now anyway so I should write about the things that I am doing (b-o-r-i-n-g... not that my other stuff was gripping) or go ahead and set things aside until I find new inspiration or get back to doing the fun stuff again.

Poker: I know why...

2005-01-19T16:12:00.000-06:00

I know why they frown on poker in the work place, it's things like this (quoted from a post atIggy's):

I'm thinking I might get kicked out of a casino if I jumped up, slammed my cards on the table and yelled, "IT'S THE FUCKING HAMMER, BITCHES!"

Being the visual type I am, instant picture pops in my head and I stifle a laugh just long enough to snort. Fuckers. This is worse than Grubby's AVN pictures. I sit in a corner and no one can see the inadvertant things that pop up on my monitor... It's kind of hard to hide laughing like a hyena in cubical-ville.

Poker/General: Time is not on my side

2005-01-14T06:23:00.000-06:00

Two weeks into the new year and I have not had much time for anything really. My poker play has taken on a weak appearance as I've tried to tighten up and with the brilliant clarity of hindsight I'm not winning as many pots as I would have. For whatever it's worth, since I'm playing at .50/1 I've at least killed the habit of trying to bluff the calling stations which is obviously a bet saver right there, but on the other hand I'm not giving as much action as I have in the past and I'm definetly seeing a trend of not winning as often or as much as I have. Without some adjustments I'll probably actually bust out here in the next couple of weeks. Oh well, if change was easy, then everyone would be doing it.

On the weight thing, I'm down 6 pounds from the last couple of weeks strictly from diet change. I'm still trying to get my sleep schedule back on track after the holiday/vacation cycle where sleep was "optional." I'm hoping to actually get the exercise portion of the plan started next week, but at least I'm trending in the right direction. 6 down, 44 more to go. :)

The boy is at the stage where we're trying to get him off baby food and he doesn't want to. Pretty frustrating in general more because he's still not able to really communicate beyond a shake of the head and clamping his mouth shut like a vice. You just can't reason with someone who lacks the capability to reason in the first place. Don't get me wrong, fatherhood is great but with times like these where you're trying to make adjustments and develop your kid, it leaves me feeling a little(lot) stupid and discouraged. Granted, people have been raising kids for thousands of years and and in much worse circumstances so I'll count my blessings that in most ways the boy is a happy kid and other than the standard infant/toddler things is relatively low maintinance and fun to hang out with.

I'm jelous of Hdouble. Not so much because of his cool new gig, but more because he's actually getting to go work in an organization that does stuff he has a lot of passion for. As an IT person, I've personally evolved beyond the point where the hardware and software is geek-a-licious. I've developed my skills and knowledge to a point where I actually care about things beyond the technology and frankly it is depressing. So much wasted time and manpower out there all for the short term game with no concideration for the big picture. Whatever, I'm good at what I do and make a good paycheck. Perhaps in a year or two I'll reach a state (financially) where I can feel comfortable trying to do something myself and move from the rat race.

General: Hidden Treasure

2005-01-07T13:13:00.000-06:00

So I've been trying to track down the background music that plays during the install of Windows XP for years. It's a catchy little tune but I seem to only remember I want it when I do an install of XP... funny that. Anyway, I just replaced a failed HD in one of my machines and was in the process of doing the install and lo and behold the music plays and I once again figure I'll be doing the failing search for the music. Lucky me, other folks have found it and posted it about it so my life is semi-complete. I have the music, it is cool, and it will now reside in my play list. The thing that now bothers me is that no one seems to know who the artist is or the real name of the track. Anyway, if you've also thought to yourself that it would be a groovy tune to have in rotation, do a search on your windows xp box for "title.wma"

General: I am NOT a pack rat

2005-01-06T03:26:00.000-06:00

I happened to be cleaning my office (or as my wife refers to it, the guest bedroom where I keep my computers) to spruce it up a bit before her friend comes to visit this weekend. Normally this type of activity is done at gunpoint, this time was no exception. The problem is that it's not that I'm a messy person from my perspective, it's just that the things I need "ready" access to start to sprawl as that list gets longer. Eventually there's only this pathway to show the carpet on the floor and it's generally considered a hazerdous work zone for anyone but me.

Anyway, so here I am cleaning up my office. I've been at it for four hours and I'm finally done. Or at least done to the standards required for guests. Anyway, while I was doing this cleaning I happened to notice that my file drawer has papers in it that are arguably as old as I am and honestly there's really no good reason why I still have some (all?) of them. Let's take an inventory shall we?

Manuals to household equipment (TVs, stereos, etc) that I no longer own. Ok, so that one is a no brainer, but the garbage is full so they'll sit until I have a "clean out the file cabinet day."

Dragon Magazine, Issue #80. Oh, now here is some fine history. This issue was published in December of 1983. It featured lots of things, but for the budding young computerist that I was, it also featured a AD&D character generater written in BASIC. Well, it published the program listing, you had to type it in without errors and save it to cassette tape (TRS-80 color computer 3 at the time). What fun what fun. How could I ever throw this away?

Speaking of AD&D the next folder contains old character sheets and laminated hex and grid paper for mapping. Can't have a real game without proper supplies. Never mind that most of the stuff dates back to first edition AD&D and the game has recently published the 3.5e rules which may as well be a different game if you try to compare the two.

Moving on, we have "The World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting." Hmm, more 1st Ed. AD&D stuff. Next.

Ahhh, "The Rules of Warfare" a quick and dirty rule book for playing Battletech that I put together for playing at gaming conventions. Too bad those rules have changed in the last 15 years as well.

Maps to the computer game "Wizardry" (Moved up to the Tandy 1000 which was an 8088 with 2 5.25" floppy drives by this point). Did you know that if you cut a divot in the other side of the floppy disk you could flip it over and have double the storage?

Maps and a guide to playing Baulder's Gate. At least this one is within 10 years but probably greater than 4 years old.

A strategy guide to playing Masters of Orion 2. Hmm, somewhere on floppys (3.5") I have the original MOO. Probably in a different drawer desperatly needing some attention.

This next one requires a little background. Back in the before time (that would be the time before the greater population knew anything about the Internet), BBSs were all the rage. A buddy (in the virtual sense) ran a BBS on his Atari ST and it had what I would call the "All Time Greatest Door Game" named "Space Empire Elite" or SEE for short. This had to be around the early to mid 80s. Anyway the point of the game was to trade, occupy, and conquer. Not only your local galaxy on the BBS but using FidoNET other galaxies on other BBSs. Ah, the good old days. If you're as nostalgic as me, I believe someone has written a clone for the web called Black Nova Traders. They've done some things to it that I don't like (I'm a traditionalist when it comes to some things) but there it is.

Last file worth mentioning tonight. So it's getting on to the late 80s and anybody who is anybody is on the Internet. Not like those posers on The Well or CompuSERV, the real deal, pre World Wide Web. I'm talking WAIS, gopher, and MUDs baby. Writing C code to extend and mutilate the TinyMUD server, writing pseudo C code to build dungeons and play environments for other players to explore. Too damn much effort and things just were not stable enough (giant resource hogs on machines that my p3 1Ghz system in the corner could crush without computing too hard) so lo and behold there's MUSH. MUSHes (Multi-User Shared Hallucinations) were a nice change of pace because they used a LISP like programing language for building and some clever hackery within the framework that didn't require much of any tinkering with the source code. Life is good. So in my drawer is the complete printout of all of the MUSH commands for version 2.2.1 (I think) and also the "MUSH Manual" written by Lydia Leong back in 1995.

How can you possibly get rid of such rich history? I am not a pack rat, I'm an archivist. :)

Poker: The bet just doesn't matter

2005-01-04T01:14:00.000-06:00

So I'm sitting at the tables tonight, finally getting recovered from the plague that overran my house. I have to say I sat down to a real winner tonight. Maddog288 (that really is his Party handle) is running over the table with PFR, PFRR, etc. It's a fairly weak table but he's showing down some weak hands that are just catching. I got to thinking about how I would have played with someone like that a year ago. I probably would have been very passive, not played at all, or at best check-called my good hands. Well, not the new and improved sloejack, no sir-e-bob. I took one look at his play and how loose and agressive he was being and decided that I would use him to recover my challenge status. And then he left the table. Bastard. Of course not before I picked his pocket for about 20BB and he mine for 10BB. So I net +10BB for the 30 minutes or so he was there and I get to go away and blog (brag?) about it.

Anyway, playing against someone like that who was showing such raw, naked, stupid, agression was enlightening to me. I can honestly say that I am a much smarter player today and was able to resist joining the melee and look for my opportunities to fleece the player. It didn't always work out, like the time his K2 beat my AK with a KQKJ board that rivered a 2. However, I didn't even flinch (I am the super man), I actually smiled and waited my turn. :) This in and of itself is a nice change of pace where last year I would have steamed, pissed and moaned, etc. His bets were staggering for $.50/$1 but I paid it no mind, slotting his activity as his way of showing me just how much money he would like to donate. About the smartest thing that fellow did was get up and leave the table. That did make me sad. Not just because he left, but because the table broke up shortly after. I guess those sharks lost the scent. If you troll those low limit waters, keep an eye out for my new buddy. :)

General: A guide to blogging

2004-12-29T14:03:00.000-06:00

I came across this comic today and thought it might help those folks wondering how to start a blog of their own.

Poker: 9, 8, 7, 6, & 5 Days until the New Year - Money Management

2004-12-27T21:49:00.000-06:00

On top of being away for the holidays I also got sick. I think I caught it from the boy but in general since there's really nothing I want to do other than drown my fevered body in cold water and scoop out my eyeballs to ease the sinus pressure I figured I'd at least touch on the next topic I wanted to ponder over and that is Money Management.

Since the number two reason for me playing is to make money I should identify what my plans for all the cash I'm going to be raking in is. This last year I started off poorly and didn't expect to make any money at all. Once I did hit the black, I spent it on things that may not have been worth while (in relation to wiping out my bank roll). Since I'm challenging myself to turn $50 into $2k using the OIC formula I need to decide what to do with the 2k each time I reach it (I'm making the bold assumption that not only will I do this, but I'll do it multiple times this year).

I'm seriously wanting to look into generating some sort of passive income through investments so I think my basic strategy will be to take 1/3 (650) and put it towards some sort of rainy day savings, another 1/3 (650) to go towards an investment fund, and the final 1/3 (650) to go to some worthwhile (undecided) cause. That leaves 50 to start the challenge over with.

On the other hand, playing $0.50/$1 sucks. The players are weak and the variance is greater than I remember 2/4 or 3/6 being. I've tightened up a lot since I last played which is probably saving me a lot of bets that would have been easily gambled away. On the other hand, I play single table and now spend a lot of time putting on a folding clinic which is boring. Perhaps for my birthday I can convince the wife to get me a 19" LCD to replace my 15". I'm thinking that If I could be at 1600x1200 instead of 1024x768 multitabling becomes a viable possibility. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

The pressure to pull excess winnings out of my bank roll to cover other expenses is pretty great. For example, this last year involved a vacation and some medical expenses. I probably didn't need to wipe myself out to cover those things, but I did and I suspect the temptation will arise again this year. Hence, the plan. I think that by setting down in writing what I'm going to do with the money I pull in from this hobby it will at least allow me to mentally segregate it from other things I could/would spend money on. To that end I'm looking to get involved with an investment club locally. Since I know little to nothing about investing for short term returns this should be an interesting challenge as well.

Something else for me to keep in mind is that if I do achieve my goal of making the 2k challenge multiple times, I'm going to have to seriously look into the tax ramifications for this income. There could be worse problems to have, but the last thing I need to do is be on the bad side of the IRS.

General: Holiday Absence

2004-12-23T20:51:00.000-06:00

I should be pumping out Day 9 of my 12 days till New Years but things are a mad house around here as we're gearing up for pre-christmas family events, christmas, and post-christmas events. That being said I'll hold on to Days 9,8, and 7 until Sunday. That gives me a little more time to figure out what I'm going to write. Have a good holiday and I'll talk to y'all on Sunday.

General: Blogger tweaks

2004-12-22T22:05:00.000-06:00

More tweaks to my template and blog. The last week has had its share of long posts and I often find myself just wanting to scan the page for something I wrote and I've found that in the last week all that scrolling makes my finger ache. I found this trick to make expandible posts that I'll use for anything over a few paragraphs. Hopefully it's not too annoying for the reader at large.

In other news I noticed on stat tracker I cleared 10,000 hits which is cool, I'm closing in on 5k unique visits as you can see at the bottom.

<The Mask Voice>They read me, they really read me!</The Mask Voice>

Poker: The Bloggers Guide to: Online Poker

2004-12-22T18:36:00.000-06:00

With all the collective brain power in the poker blogging community and not to mention talent, why is "The Bloggers Guide to Online Poker" not on bookshelves? Here's a rough draft that could be a solid money maker with some help.

This is a parody, no offense to anyone named or otherwise is intended. In fact if you were named, I have nothing but the deepest respect for you and I'm only roasting you because I ran out of chestnuts. I'm also dimwitted, I didn't roast nearly everyone (or myself for that matter) that could use it so if you can think of some appropriate chapters that would likely be included (and of course an appropriate author) please let me know and we'll get it into the second edition printing. ;)

---------------------------------
The Bloggers Guide to:

Online Poker
---------------------------------
Chapter 1: Online Poker Concepts
1.1 Money Matters by anonymous

Because Uncle Sam has not become enlightened to the tax income benefits of legalizing online gambling you're going to need to work with a middle man to ~~launder~~ deposit and withdrawal your money in online card rooms. Neteller is probably the most commonly used system plus they have a little lottery going all the time that you can use the points you get from all the deposits and withdrawals you'll be making while bonus whoring.

When it comes time to pay the bills you'll want to make withdrawals in smallish amounts to avoid tripping up the income alarms. You don't want to be paying any unnecessary taxes.

1.2 Bonus Whores by Grubby

Unless you've got a pile of your own money to be funding your bank roll online, you'll need to become a bonus whore. What this means is that you take advantage of the various online casinos deposit bonuses to increase your stake by playing ~~blackjack~~ a game you can either minimize the houses edge or beat solidly in the case of micro-limit poker. These bonuses are generally worked off against an amount wagered or a quantity of raked hands. These programs vary from casino to casino so be sure to read the fine print.

Chapter 2: Playing online
2.1 Necessary Equipment by theMaroon

To be a top online poker player you have to have the right setup. To make those millions from playing poker you're going to be spending a lot of time on your ass. Get a comfy chair like that $4000 massaging chair from Sharper Image. Next you need a computer and more importantly a good display. I recommend the a quad CPU Xeon box. You don't really need that kind of horsepower but the only way to take advantage of how rigged online poker is, is to have a more powerful box than the site you play on. For a display I recommend the 96" plasma wall mounted display. You really need to multi-table properly and since the only game you're able to crush is the $0.01/$0.02 on Paradise, you're going to need lots of tables open. You'll also need a remote keyboard, mouse, and catheter. Natch.

2.2 Where to play online by Ignatious

If you are not playing on Party Poker, you are retarded. I'll take pity on you and give you a deposit bonus if you use bonus code IGGY when you sign up. Oh the humanity!

Chapter 3: Starting hands
3.1 The Hilton Sisters by Dr. Pauly

All of the real players are laying down the monster beats on the fishes with pocket queens. If you have this hand, ram and jam all the way. Fold everything else.

3.2 The Hammer by Grubby

The Hilton Sisters can really help your win rate, but if you really want to bust people up, you have to play The Hammer. 72s or 72o is an undeniable force to be reckoned with. Like playing the Hilton Sisters you want to ram and jam with this starting hand.

Chapter 4: Alter your poker client
4.1 Beautify your client by Chris "Martha Stewart" Halverson

The default poker clients are just so ugly. I've found these wonderful skins which add just the right color and style to your drab windows. You can download my custom skins at http://prettypoker.com/skins/

4.2 See everyone's hole cards by teh 1ee+ hax0r

Hay foo! pwnz teh llamerz wit dis patch to yo poker warez. You can DL it from http://viriiloader.to/pokerhack.exe to be able to see all of your opponents hole cards.

Chapter 5: Playing Poker
5.1 Aggression by SirFWALGMan

Everyone says that you can't win all of the time. Well, they're wrong. If those fish are sucking out on you and winning with any two cards like AA or KK while you're playing The Hammer or The Hilton Sisters you need to set those losers straight. Nothing proves the might of your skill and power of your game like jumping from the $0.05/$0.10 tables where those bastards don't know how to fold and playing in the $40/$80 game heads up with Skalansky. If you deplete your bank roll don't be afraid to recharge, because you can't be aggressive with an empty account.

5.2 Dealing with Maniacs by AlCantHang

Tilting out sucks but sometimes those maniac fish always seem to catch their hands. None of that phases me and I'm going to share with you dear reader my own personal secret to becoming tilt-proof. Southern Comfort. You'll need to begin a strict regimen to work up to the necessary 3 or 4 bottles a day to become bulletproof like Superman. Once you have accomplished this level of stone faced play the final table at the WSOP is in the bag.

Chapter 6: Making a career change
6.1 Sidelined by HDouble

You might have had an active life before but that recurring hang nail has kept you from your dream job. That's ok, I've been where you are. Since I'm the only legit writer in the bunch I invite you to come drink from my font of wisdom. Reading my stuff will make you a better poker player and soon you'll wonder why you ever thought of doing anything else with your free time.

6.2 Going Pro by Ignatious

I quit my day job and became a professional poker player and you can too. Wait a minute, you haven't signed up at Party Poker yet? This is your last chance to use bonus code IGGY or you will need to start riding the short bus with Phil Helmuth. Don't even consider going pro until you do this!

Glossary
Acronyms by UWannaBet?

Many times we use acronyms to communicate online, especially in the blogger world. Recounting the many bad beats, monster pots and general situations typically are bettered by tossing in an acronym to get to the point. I was working, daydreaming the other day and thought about all of the acronyms that people might and might not be aware of...

nh= nice hand
gp= good play
gg= good game
SNG= sit and go

These were some of the first ones that came to mind but like all good bloggers I knew there was much more to the list.

TPTK = top pair top kicker
PDTTG = please don't tap the glass
YPTC = you played that crap
WTTBTSTSTTF = welcome to the blogger table said the spider to the fly
YPQ3ORW = you play Q-3 off really well
TFRYCF = thanks for raising you clueless fish
OTH! = OH THE HUMANITY!
VIAB = variance is a bitch
YRSTC = you really should try checkers
NHYHYOOOTRA = nice hand you hit your only out on the river again
MRMBJC = minimun raises make baby jesus cry
ONDPIPPWPA = Oh no Dr. Pauly is playing poker without pants again
WTTBTSTSTTF = welcome to the blogger table said the spider to the fly

Lord, I apologize for that and be with the pigmys down in New Guinea. Amen. -- Larry the Cable Guy

Poker: 10 Days to the new year - Mind and Body

2004-12-22T16:20:00.000-06:00

The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become. -- Ben Herbster

The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, thats the day you start to the top. -- O.J. Simpson

I am not the picture of health. The irony with that statement is that I know (from experience) that if I were in shape that I would have more energy, be able to focus better, and not really wonder when my heart attack is coming. On top of that I look good when I'm fit.

So you might be wondering what the hell this has to do with playing poker so I'll get to the point. One of the biggest villains against consistent play is fatigue. More mental fatigue than physical, but both take their toll. Mind and body are the behind the scenes distractions that can knock you off your game. And since I would like to find myself at the final table in major tournaments I need to find ways of helping what little talent I have and making the vision a reality.

I just checked the scale, I'm weighing in at an even 272 lbs. In the back of my mind I hear Kyle saying "Dude you're a fat ass!" To put that into perspective, when I hooked up with my wife some 10 years ago, I was 90 lbs lighter and honestly structurally smaller (shoulders didn't widen out until my early 20s). If I hadn't been maintaining a 270-275 lb weight for so damn long I'd console myself that it's just age and actually eating real meals that crept up on me. The reality is, that it's a lack of activity. I'm a firm believer that if your body is sedentary, your mind becomes sedentary. No reason to think quick, your reflexes are already shot and blood just isn't flowing through your brain like it should. Again, with this stuff weighing (no pun intended) on my mind, it's just one more distraction for when I'm sitting at the desk or on the couch playing poker. For the record I once tried to rig up my elliptical machine so I could play with my laptop on the book rest... ummm lets just leave it at this is not a good idea.

It seems the best solution for this particular problem is to make an effort to eat right/better and make time for working out. I happened to catch a piece of that show "Biggest Loser" a few weeks back. Did you know that those folks work out 4 hours a day? Granted apparently they're off at fat camp so there's not much else to do but still, how can you just put your life on hold and go off and mess around like that? Well, I can't just put my life on hold just so I can work out so something has got to give or I'll have to finish developing the 26 hour day.

On the eating better front this isn't too hard. I can get oatmeal at the office from the deli down stairs in the morning each morning I go in. I need to bring that routine home and have a stash of oatmeal in the cupboard for weekends and WFH days. I've recently started picking up the "Healthy Choice" frozen meals for lunches at work... cheaper than buying lunch out every day in Chicago. Ok, that takes care of two major meals but there's a couple of other things... snacks and dinner. I'm thinking I should bite the bullet and just buy a bag of fruit or something and basically have a fruit basket at work to resist the urge to hit the candy aisle at Walgreen's. Dinner is a tough one. Not to hard to pack the meat in I like chicken and beef so just about anything made with one of those would be fine, the trouble is that since I don't cook (me Tarzan, you Jane. ook!) I need to convince the wife to make healthy things that she generally doesn't eat (veggies) and not in portions that could feed everyone in a large 3rd world nation because I'll eat em if they're there.

How about working out? According to Men's Health a fit person can do 40-50 push ups in 2 minutes, 35-40 sit ups per minute, 45 squats before form breaks down, have a cardio step score of 60-100, be able to flex 2-6 inches past your feet with your hands out, do the shuttle run in ~10 seconds, and have a vertical jump of about 20 inches. I think I want to avoid getting a gym membership again, though having a personal trainer to help keep motivation up would be helpful. The grandparents sent $50 for Christmas, I think I'll be picking up some free weights to be able to do strength training at home. Between the jump rope and elliptical machine I think I've got cardio covered. The last time I had a work out routine it involved hitting the gym at 5 or 6 in the morning with a buddy. I like working out in the mornings, it really sets you up for the day and gets to blood pumping. So, the day is going to start at 5 and alternate between cardio and weights for 30 - 60 min 6 days a week. Even the great googly-moogly had to rest on the 7th day. Spring is coming and I think I'm going to make a serious effort to join the soccer league that has indoor and outdoor fields near by. I've always found it easier to do the things I should when I have an obligation to something or someone.

The toughest part about dieting and working out is building the routine and sticking to it. The benefits on the other hand are undeniable. It's hard to let things drag you down when you feel good and for poker that means a step towards tilt-proof and keeping a sharp and focused mind on the game. The holidays suck. Especially if you don't have much self control around good food (me) and a major sweet tooth (also me). It also doesn't help when family unconsciously sets out to sabotage you by buying you things like Jelly Belly Jelly Beans (have I mentioned that these are my all time favorite candy/snack in the world next to Gummi Bears?), cookies, and chocolate goodies. So to that end, I'm not even going to try and fight it and end up kicking myself for being an undisciplined wimp. I'll do the traditional thing and hold out for new years day where I've got some space to build the habit, routine, and discipline to control myself around those types of things.

The important thing is keeping the goals realistic and manageable. For example, if I lost 1 lb a week by the end of 2005 I would be at my goal weight. Seems easy enough. I know that on the front end the pounds will fly off relatively quickly where on the back end I'll have to fight for every pound. The irony here being that by doing strength training I'm going to put muscle mass back on (yay!) and muscle is heavier than fat (boo!). However, strength training burns fat faster than just doing cardio and losing that belly fat is a high priority to reducing other major health risks/issues.

To bring this little show to a close here is my goal. My goal, to improve not only my poker skills/play but my life in general, is to lose 50 lbs by this time next year by developing discipline in eating and in exercise. To be able to do all of the things a fit person should be able to do (as listed above) or at least as close to it as humanly possible. To do this I'm going to cut back an hour a day where I would normally be surfing the net and dedicate it to working out at least 6 days a week and not let my diet slip out of laziness or convenience.

Poker: Weak!

2004-12-22T13:56:00.000-06:00

So my Neteller EFT deposit finally went through yesterday so I was ready to throw $50 into my account at Party to kick off the New Year. I am a weak man. I logged into Party last night and lurked at the Blogger tables and tried mighty hard to resist playing. Well I resisted temptation last night but I just couldn't do it any more today. So, in goes $50 to Party and oh looky I get a micro bonus. I should clear that off really quick, so I'll play some 7-stud since those pots always get raked. Color me stupid why dontcha?

I cleared all but 10 hands before I finished donating $25 and I had already crippled my challenge bankroll. Oh yes, I is the smart one. Well, I have conclusively proved that not knowing how to play the game will definitely make you a loser in the long run. I think my trouble with 7-stud is that it seems easy. You see lots of cards on the table and with a relatively good memory I can remember how many of a suit I saw when I'm looking for a flush or trying to figure out if someone chasing theirs had a chance of catching or not. I think overall I was doing ok for the first 30 minutes and was even up about 15 BB. Then I let my concentration slip back to work, chased some things that I shouldn't have, tried to bluff a calling station, and shazam! I'm thinking to myself WTF? Was this really such a good idea?

Now that that little experiment is over I figured there is no reason not to either attempt to correct the downswing or bust out completely (all or nothing baby!). So I take my remaining $25 and go find a 'juicy' table. To make a long story short, the juicy table turned into a rock garden, but not before I had run my chipstack up +37 BB. With the 10 added on from the bonus (which I will use some creative accounting to claim as a stupidity deduction from my 7-stud tax) I'm sitting at +22 BB for this level ($.50/$1) and need to add on 28 more BB to go up to $1/$2 where it will start all over again.

50 BB per level seems like a nice achievable number in that context. I think the mental troubles come in when you start relating those BBs to their dollar value. Definitely a tough thing to avoid but no sense in dwelling on it now.

My card playing (7-stud not withstanding) was a little rusty but over all I was happy with my results. There were two times where I wasn't paying attention and paid someone off after getting a read on their hand too late and early on (first 30 hands or so) I wasn't playing nearly as aggressive as I should have PF but that got fixed quickly. Rusty but not bad for what's been basically a 3 month hiatus from card playing. I haven't really even been playing in the college poker championships since I already qualified in the super satellites for the satellite that's now been scheduled for March I think. Funny, I start school back up in March as well... maybe not so funny. :(

I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to write for my next "12 days till new year" article, I'm sure something will come to me, if not I'll make it up and blame the results on a drunken haze and some loose women. Speaking of women, Pauly is pimping hard for Elisha but I'd have to say my belongs to Kate.

Poker: 11 Days to the new year - Edge

2004-12-21T13:15:00.000-06:00

Being a winning poker player means having the advantage of the odds on your side more often than not when at a given table. Since I'm not psychic, don't have x-ray vision, or ESP, I have to employ other tools of the mind and in this case of the computer to get the edge necessary to achieve my expected/desired win rate. So in this post I'll examine my tool bag for getting the edge. At a high level, there are two types of tools to use, tools that are helpful offline in home games and B&M games as well as online and then there are tools that only help with the online game.

Offline Tools

Books - While I tend to be a more visceral learner, preferring to experience things over reading about them, can be a costly way to learn things in poker. To that end I have invested in what I consider to be a decent library (seen on the left there) of books that approach the game from many different perspectives. I make the effort to commit at least an hour every week to reading (or re-reading) some part of my books. What I read generally depends on what I feel I'm having trouble with that week, or areas that I might want to explore in my game in the future.

Trainers - Lots of computer software out there that plays holdem. Some of it good, and some of it not so good. Right now my software collection consists of the fun but not so good variety. Apparently the Turbo programs by Wilson Software are about as good as they get in terms of electronic trainers. I haven't purchased any of them and will probably use some portion of my winnings in the coming year to acquire their library. Meanwhile I'd just like to say that I pwnz Treasure Island, The Mirage, and Bellagio in the Bicycle Casino game! Woot! ;) While this isn't the best training (and honestly after the initial fun wore off I don't play this much any more) it does at least make me analyze my hand, pot odds, etc in a pseudo online fashion.

Community - If you can not experience something directly yourself, the next best thing is to experience it vicariously through someone else. This is generally more reading, but also can come in the form of water cooler talk with friends. Simply, this involves hearing and exploring other peoples play to uncover the keys to good play, traps to avoid, and generally play Monday morning QB and analyze how you would want to behave if put in the same situation. The best places for partaking in this experience are many of the hundreds of poker blogs or the more popular forums like 2+2

All of these 'tools' basically just get your mind in the game. The best way to be able to make the right choice when you have to make decisions at the table is to feed your brain with all of the data you can when you're not in it. Practice prepares you for the real thing. That being said, even the best practice can be wasted on a brain that functions more like a sieve than a steel trap so when it comes to playing online, there are some other tools that I'll want to bring to bear to increase my edge.

Online Tools

Record Keeping - Not only to track wins and losses, but also play performance and opponent history. Having the cold hard facts of my play helps prevent my mind from editing history when I'm doing particularly bad or good. This will help fill the holes in my game. Keeping records of my play will also help in tracking the people I play against so I can identify the tough players from the typical players. No shame in getting an edge by surrounding yourself with fish at the table. To do this I'll be using Poker Tracker which creates a nice foundation for the other online tools I'll be using.

Odds & Outs - When I first started playing online this year I'll have to admit that I sucked. I, like many before me, figured that my success in the few random home games or casino outings was due to my obviously superior skills and large brain. $500 later I learned that I was mistaken and probably had creatively modified my playing history to make myself feel confident in playing online. If I was going to keep playing I needed a crash course in good starting hands and odds of hitting my hand (at the time I was playing a lot of NL SNGs). I made a small investment in a piece of software that would help me in real time called Online Holdem Inspector. Turn an "Any 2 cards will do maniac" into a solid player in moments. After a few months of using this little aid I had odds and starting hands basically beat into me. In fact I owe the quick recovery of my initial losses to this tool as well as the education it gave me for my future winnings. It's still a useful tool to keep handy since its stoplights can save a weary or tilted mind from making a chip stack crippling mistake.

Know thy enemy - I know myself pretty well but it's the other players I'm worried about. Thanks to recent changes in how hand histories are archived locally by the Party client it is easier than ever to have real time Poker Tracker information about how you're performing and how you're opponents are performing. Add now into the mix GameTime+ and there's no excuse in not knowing when the previously fishy waters have turned into a rock garden or knowing that the bigger shark that you've tangled with in the past is now sitting to your left.

General: A Texas Chili Contest

2004-12-21T06:26:00.000-06:00

My aunt and mom sent this to me and I thought it was damn funny. Funny enough to share even. Being a Texan and living in Illinois makes it even funnier. Mostly I don't get to cook whenever there will be other people eating the food besides myself, perhaps this has some clues as to why. :)

The following notes are from an inexperienced Chili taster named Frank, who was visiting from Springfield, IL.

Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a chili cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions to the Coors Light truck, when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Native Texans) that the chili wouldn't be all that spicy and, besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted.

Here are the scorecards from the advent: (Frank is Judge #3)

Eddie's Maniac Monster Chili
Judge # 1	A little too heavy on the tomato. Amusing kick.
Judge # 2	Nice, smooth tomato flavor. Very mild.
Judge # 3	Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These Texans are crazy.

Austin's Afterburner Chili
Judge # 1	Smoky, with a hint of pork. Slight jalapeno tang.
Judge # 2	Exciting BBQ flavor, needs more peppers to be taken seriously.
Judge # 3	Keep this out of the reach of children. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich maneuver. They had to rush in more beer when they saw the look on my face.

Ronny's Famous Burn Down the Barn Chili
Judge # 1	Excellent firehouse chili. Great kick. Needs more beans.
Judge # 2	A bean less chili, a bit salty, good use of peppers.
Judge # 3	Call the EPA ! I've located a uranium spill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drano. Everyone knows the routine by now. Get me more beer before I ignite. Barmaid pounded me on the back, now my backbone is in the front part of my chest. I'm getting shit- faced from all of the beer

Dave's Black Magic
Judge # 1	Black bean chili with almost no spice. Disappointing.
Judge # 2	Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods, not much of a chili.
Judge # 3	I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it. Is it possible to burn out taste buds ? Sally, the barmaid, was standing behind me with fresh refills. That 300-lb woman is starting to look HOT . . . just like this nuclear waste I'm eating ! Is chili an aphrodisiac ?

Lisa's Legal Lip Remover
Judge # 1	Meaty, strong chili. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.
Judge # 2	Chili using shredded beef, could use more tomato. Must admit the cayenne peppers make a strong statement.
Judge # 3	My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. Sally saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from the pitcher. I wonder if I'm burning my lips off. It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Screw those rednecks.

Pam's Very Vegetarian Variety
Judge # 1	Thin yet bold vegetarian variety chili. Good balance of spices and peppers.
Judge # 2	The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb !
Judge # 3	My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulfuric flames. I shit myself when I farted and I'm worried it will eat through the chair. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except that Sally. Can't feel my lips anymore. I need to wipe my ass with a snow cone.

Carla's Screaming Sensation Chili
Judge # 1	A mediocre chili with too much reliance on canned peppers.
Judge # 2	Ho hum, tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chili peppers at the last moment. **I should note that I am worried about Judge # 3! He appears to be in a bit of distress as he is cursing uncontrollably.
Judge # 3	You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn't feel a thing. I've lost sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with chili, which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava to match my shirt. At least during the autopsy, they'll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing it's too painful. Screw it; I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air, I'll just suck it in through the 4-inch hole in my stomach.

Karen's Toenail Curling Chili
Judge # 1	The perfect ending, this is a nice blend chili. Not too bold but spicy enough to declare its existence.
Judge # 2	This final entry is a good, balanced chili. Neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge #3 farted, passed out, fell over and pulled the chili pot down on top of himself. Not sure if he's going to make it. Poor fella, wonder how he'd have reacted to really hot chili?
Judge # 3

Poker: 12 Days to the new year - Motivation

2004-12-20T16:39:00.000-06:00

It's really unclear why I've imposed the break from poker on myself like I did. It's not like I busted out and needed a time out. It's not like I got tired of playing the game either. So what happened? I think the answer is that I lost my motivation. I was playing but had no reason. I wasn't trying to get better, and in fact just before I cashed out and stopped I believe I had posted that I was purely trying to "make money for the next doodad I wanted to spend it on." Ok, that's nice but there are easier and faster ways for me to make money. My non-poker skills definitely generate more coin than my meager draw from the poker tables. But I still want to play poker damn it! That's all well and good, but why?

I spent some time with one of my under-read books, "The Psychology of Poker" and decided that perhaps I should try and answer the questions posed and understand why I want to play in an effort to be more realistic about what I would get out of playing as well as to find ideas or attitudes that I want to change about my play. The first two questions right out of the gate are "Why do you play poker?" and "Why do you play the way you do?"

Taking the second question first, I had mentioned previously that I had looked at my stats from last year and had PokerTracker auto-analyze them. It's determined that my play-style was Loose-aggressive and gave me a fish icon. Trying to be honest with my play and reading the description in TPoP I just can't agree with that type of a rating. I'm not as patient as I could be when I play, but I also do not 'crave' action. Upon further examination of the numbers a couple of things become apparent. First, not all of my play is reflected. PokerTracker has come a long way this year, but with quite a bit of time spent whoring around on sites, many of which were not PT friendly, a lot of my history is missing. The other thing I noticed is that my session time was on average between 30 and 60 minutes. Maybe 100 hands dealt during that span of time. Hardly a staggering number and I modified my play style to work with that. By this I mean step one is play a couple of orbits pretty loose (maniac) to set up a bad image and then spend the next half dozen orbits or so trying to punish peoples assumptions. Then it's time to go take care of the boy, deal with work, wife, etc. So basically, I'd adopted a maniac bait and switch play style to compensate for how little time I could actually play.

Getting back to the first question I tried to reflect honestly on it (which is harder to do than you'd think) and I'd have to say that the number one reason for doing so was status. Both my personal view of how I was doing ("Must be a winning player!") but also how others viewed me as a player (Damn them blog reading hordes). The second reason was the money. If I could win a lot of money, I could pay for other stuff. On that second item, boy did I. Let's see, last year I got set of 1000 nice clay poker chips, a set of fancy KEM cards, spent some on miscellaneous doodads, and paid for most of a vacation dedicated to gaming(not the casino type) all on my winnings. To round out the top three reasons for playing, I would have to say I played for the fun of it. That's a pretty generic statement that encompasses the thrill of risk, winning, losing, meeting new people, getting involved in blogging, and just playing cards.

So looking towards the new year I'm trying to put a plan or strategy together that will help me overcome the weaknesses that exist within my game but still work towards my overall personal goals. I think I've moved past the point of having something to prove. I think from a performance perspective last year I proved that I could learn from my mistakes, overcome my lack of knowledge and apply raw talent to new knowledge and become a winning player. So taking this from page 35 of TPoP I'm rating my motives for playing this next year:

Make Money 20%
Socialize, meet people 15%
Relax 10%
Get excitement of risk 15%
Test self against competitive challenges 25%
Sense of accomplishment from winning 15%
Pass time 0%

The breakdown for each one:

money - No denying this, no sense in playing poker if there isn't money involved somewhere. I got plenty of other fun games I can play if I'm not interested in the money.
socialize - Hell yeah. This makes it fun. If it weren't for the bloggers I've met this last year, I probably would have just up and quit a long time ago out of sheer boredom.
relax - It seems odd but I've always found playing games with something on the line relaxing. I think it's a release valve for other stresses
risk - If you're not really living if you're not exposing yourself to a little risk. I don't mean this in the gambooler sense. I mean it in the sense of taking on tougher games or opponents where you're the underdog and taking the chance to heroically come out on top
test self - I'm going to use the challenge/step program to try and improve my overall skill. I think that by doing it I will have to use many different skills in different combinations to be successful. The result is that I should become a more fierce competitor as time goes on.
accomplishment - regardless of what others think about my progress or abilities, when I reflect back on my play I want to feel like I moved in the right direction for improving myself as a player and reaching my goals.
pass the time - There are far better ways for me to pass the time than play cards, if I ever feel the need to kill time, you won't find me at a card table because that's the wrong attitude to have

Ok, this felt good getting down and helps focus the mind on what I want to achieve but I've neglected to put into words what my personal goal is. It may seem silly to some but I want to be like Richard Brodie. Just in case there is any confusion I mean that in the financially free, comfortable, jet-setting way. But I'll get to that in a different post.

Poker: Home Game Terrorists

2004-12-20T03:19:00.000-06:00

I'm a huge fan of live friendly games for their social factor. By and large it's cheap entertainment and a good way too hook up with old and new friends. This notice that showed up on Pokerati is kind of annoying but I figure it's more a case of when, and not if, with this sort of thing. Or to clarify, if you're having fun "The Man" has to come put you down. "We got laws against a good time around here you know."

General: The more things change....

2004-12-20T01:42:00.000-06:00

The more things change, the more they stay the same. About a year ago I heard a mix from some Euro DJ and he had used a monologue over some nice beats. After listening to the monologue I got to thinking about how true it is and wondered where he found it because it was "relevant." Ok, so some time passes and I was never really ever able to track it down probably because I wasn't remember the exact phrasing to be able to google it. Fast forward to this evening (morning?) I've got Rhapsody going in the background while I'm working and I decide to load up the current Eminem CD, "Encore", into the playlist and during the track "Yellow Brick Road" he used a sample of the same monologue that I had heard a year ago. Well, now that it was fresh in my mind (and I could rewind and get the phrase exact) I load it up into google and this is what I found:

Sometimes it appears that we're reaching a period when our senses and our minds will no longer respond to moderate stimulation. We seem to be approaching an Age of The Gross. Persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action.

The young and by this I dont mean by any stretch of the imagination all the young, but Im talking about those who claim to speak for the young at the zenith of physical power and sensitivity, overwhelm themselves with drugs and artificial stimulants. Subtly is lost and fine distinctions based on acute reasoning are carelessly ignored in a headlong jump to a predetermined conclusion.

Life is visceral, rather than intellectual. And the most visceral practitioners of life are those who characterize themselves as intellectuals. Truth to them is revealed rather than logically proved. And the principal infatuations of today revolve around the Social Sciences, those subjects which can accommodate any opinion and about which the most reckless conjecture cannot be discredited.

Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim, rather than to learn. The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap.

A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

-- Vice President Spiro Agnew in Houston, Texas on May 22, 1970

In my mind, sage words to be sure. However, you have to wonder what it takes to not only listen, but to act or put into action a real effort to change and improve society. I think like all things the biggest road block is overcoming people's perceptions about what is important. I say people because you can talk to an individual and present a logical argument based on reason and common sense that when all things considered could change their mind. People on the other hand are more difficult to sway without some extreme event to galvanize them into motion. Damn sheep. I'd like to think I'm a smart guy but I can see where some of the ideas I've held in the past were not really my own, but more in the "go along to get along" vein. Granted, more often than not, it's easier to keep the peace than it is to stick your head up. The thing I think that makes us individuals is being able to determine what is "important" in a reasonable and realistic manner and not compromise on those things when they might go against the mainstream. A compromised life, is an unfulfilled one.

The year is winding down and it was great and disappointing all at the same time. All this deep thinking isn't really for making new years resolutions but more accurately a new years plan and strategy. In case I don't post again before next year, I wish all of you a happy holiday and I hope that you are able to find a way to make your desires reality.

General: One for the good guys

2004-12-19T17:36:00.000-06:00

In the past I've commented on the topic of spam and the issues that I and a friend have had dealing with it. Well, it seems that some fine detective work and a lot of tireless effort has finally paid off for him. He finally had his day in court and adding insult to injury with the laws in Iowa and having a nice little Federal RICO applied it came out to quite a judgment. I can only hope that this brings some understanding to the general public that spam is not a victimless crime, and that the knobs who do this are not nearly as anonymous as they think. It was personally crushing to watch the enterprise that we built get crushed under a load that never should have existed and that there were not really funds to deal with properly. There were a number of times that I advised him to just fold up shop more because of the mental strain it was putting on him and his family and partially the financial strain it put on the business because numerous outages caused customers to bail. I'm extremely happy for him that he got this victory. No, it doesn't put a stop to it, and no it's not hitting the lottery, but it does mean that the efforts that he's gone through do mean something and that he's not alone in thinking that there ought to be some recourse against spammers.

Poker: Open Internet Challenge

2004-12-10T08:26:00.002-06:00

After watching(reading?) Chris's account of participating in the OIC3 at The Gaming Club a couple of things occurred to me. The first is that the challenge is pretty interesting from the stand point that assuming you play well enough to go from the bottom to the top you're going to encounter just about every type of player there is. Then a second thought occurred to me. Yes, yes you are playing different levels and lots of different opponents, wouldn't it be nice to super-compile all of that data from each person into poker tracker?

So now I'm fully off on a tangent and am wondering if it would be feasible to coordinate a blogger version of this and have a three-fold purpose. First, a nice friendly challenge among bloggers to demonstrate skill and fill time between blogger tournaments. Second, as part of the challenge have each participant contribute their hand histories both as the tracking mechanism for progress but ultimately a nice opponent DB to be shared with the community. Third, some prize(s) for the winner(s). I'm thinking a seat at the next blogger tourney, a book (cert to amazon to pick up your desired poker tome), or something along those lines. The trick about that third part is paying for it. I've no idea how to find sponsors and convince them to fund ventures like this. However, if the opponent database would be considered worth something, perhaps there could be a modest "entry fee" that would grant the participant license to use the compiled data from the event and whomever coordinated it all would then use the entry fees to pay for the prizes.

Obviously I'm getting psyched about playing again in Jan. and a nice little recurring challenge like this seems like a good way to keep the skills sharp against a wide variety of opponents as well as a good way to put some real analysis into finding the leaks in my game since in theory it's a doable task and trying to figure out why I can't (if that's the case) will probably be very beneficial.

General: Gen Con SoCal 2004 Trip Report

2004-12-07T16:10:00.000-06:00

So I survived SoCal and in general it was fun. The Con itself was pretty weak when compared to Indy but I suspect that is to be expected. No real eye candy and the way we ran DMs for True Dungeon didn't make participating in many (any) of the gaming events a real possibility. Not that I couldn't have had my schedule made a little more flexible, but the reality of it was, after thumbing through the schedule of events there wasn't much I was interested in doing.

The highlights:
Thanks to what I would consider some hard work on my part and stepping up to do whatever needed to be done (not to mention being in the right place at the right time) I was promoted to a Head DM role for the event. Mostly that just meant being there a couple of hours early for previous day review and current day adjustment meetings and then being responsible for making sure that the other DMs were comfortable running my room that they were assigned to for the day. My room was the Training room which at first blush doesn't appear to be that big of a deal, but in reality I think it's one of the most important since you're introducing game mechanics and concepts to the players as well as answering all kinds of questions so that they can try and be successful in the dungeon. I also got to run the Split Decision (Treasure/Oracle & Zombie Crypt) room and the Handbook room (Final room). A real upside to the one DM per room was that it allowed us to really focus on exactly what happened in a specific room and be really intimate with making adjustments and making the room run consistently throughout the whole event.

As for the con itself, SoCal is tiny. I think attendance was projected to be at 5,000 (as opposed to Indy's 30,000). Just to put it in perspective for you, take all of the gaming (minis, CCG, board, etc), the art show, and the dealer room. Now put all of this in a hall the size, if not a little smaller, of the dealer room at Indy. Chairs out-numbered the people in the hall greatly so it looked like a lot of wasted space. While touring the dealer room I got to spend a lot of time talking to the Lucas Arts PR folks that were there showing off SWG: JtL (As well as other LA games) and since I helped introduce/demo the JtL expansion to interested folks I got a couple of free books as schwag which I appreciated much more than some of the schwag I've gotten in the past like posters or card packs. Hopefully the contact that I made there will also get me in on the Combat Upgrade Beta Test for SWG. I met up with the folks that ran the poker tournament at Indy. It sounds like things are going to be bigger and better in 2005 so I'm looking forward to playing in it again and hopefully this time taking my rightful place at the top of the heap.

Things I found interesting:
There was a booth in the dealer room with a Porn star hawking her vids and pics. One the one hand this seems somewhat in-appropriate (young audience for many things) but on the other hand, it's probably the right demographic market for her product. Not my type, but more power to her.

I did find at least a couple of new games that were worth playing and at least one I'll buy before Indy. The first was Anachronism by TriKing in cooperation with the History Channel. Imagine "Celebrity Death Match" with historical figures. It's a pretty cool concept and the game can be played in 5 - 10 minutes (if you really drag it out). Anachronism is due to be released sometime in early 2005.

The other game which apparently has been out for awhile but I've just been introduced to is "Munchkin" by Steve Jackson Games. Promoting the best(worst) combination of power-gaming and rules-lawyering this was a great game to play. I got to play the standard Munchkin which parodies D&D and like genre games, movies, etc. I also played Munchkin Bites! which parodies the Vampire and like genre games, movies, etc. There's apparently also a version called Star Munchkin which parodies Sci-Fi stuff, as well as Munchkin Fu which parodies kung fu movies and games, and in case that wasn't enough there's Munchkin Blender which allows you to combine all of the sets (Std, Star, Bites, and Fu) into one giant game. I'm currently hunting down on ebay a set of 8 of the games (4 games w/4 expansions) which I plan on bringing to Indy if I win them. Easy to play and great fun to win and lose so that basically meets all of my criteria for a good game. :)

General: SoCal Sightings

2004-12-05T01:40:00.000-06:00

So the trip to SoCal is winding down tonight, I fly back to Chicago in the morning. Aside from the standard fair of Sci-Fi types that you would see at a convention like GenCon I did have a couple of miscellaneous Star sightings/meetings. First was John C. Reilly who happened to be flying back from Chicago (presumably returning from their Thanksgiving travels) to LA. It took me a few days to remember his name even though I could remember quite a few of the movies I had seen him in. The second one brought out the fanboi in me a bit as Wil Wheaton made a trek through True Dungeon (what I've been working on all week). Anyway, pictures and more trip report later, time to go help break down and finish packing.

Poker: Royal Vegas 1k Freeroll

2004-12-02T09:45:00.000-06:00

Being in California does have at least one interesting benifit. I'm in Pacific Time which means that events that I would normally not participate in I can due to the time differences and event start times working well with my other commitments. The freeroll this morning is interesting in that you can do a $2 add-on/rebuy in the first hour. I think I'll just iron man this and see how far I can go with just the starting stack. The field size is 7783 and they're paying down to 130th place but really only the top 10 get any money above the single digit range. It does occure to me that I may have to get up at the 2hr 30min mark, but we'll see if I even get that far.

Then again, with the lag and getting dumped multiple times, I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Aw well.

General: So that's Disneyland?

2004-11-29T23:30:00.000-06:00

A relatively uneventful flight (accented by long lines and long waits at both the departure and arrival location) brings me from Chicago to Los Angeles. Then a good distanced shuttle ride brings me to Anahiem. The shuttle made a stop at the Disneyland Hotel before moving on to the Marriot. It seems small. One of the other passengers who is also working with TD this event said that Disneyland is very small compared to Disney World (which I have only seen from the air) so I'll take that at face value. Still seems pretty small for a 'major' theme park.

Holy cow it's been a long day, but I'm trying to tough it out so that I can be on a resonable sleep schedule. Tomorrow is going to be a LONG day of setting up the TD event but it should be good fun. No pictures from today though I should have gotten one of gloomy Chicago and sunny LA just for the contrast.

General: SoCal here I come

2004-11-29T01:18:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving was a nice laid back event with a little traveling involved to see family. Working on the principle of "receive and inflict no pain" it was all good. :) Dinner was traditional at the Father-In-Laws and I did my best to eat more than I should have. To get it out of the way, I'm thankful for my wife, my family, my friends, and most of all my son. I'm now putting the final touches on packing to fly out in the morning for GenCon SoCal. I'll be in Anaheim, CA until the 5th and fly home first thing in the morning to still arrive home after my sons first birthday party. On the one had this sucks, and on the other I don't have to be there when all the people are around. Don't get me wrong, I want to be there and celebrate the birthdays for the boy, but I have more fun with him when it's just me and him. When the rest of the relatives are around he tends to resemble a football in a hand-off drill. So I'm going to miss the party but I'm not too upset about it. I'm fairly certain though that the wife is less than pleased but that's life.

The thing that's killing me at the moment is thinking about 3-4 hours in the air plus waiting time in the airport. Since I have not yet moved into the iPod generation, I'm loading up my trusty mp3 player (non-expandable 128M Intel jukebox with a built in AM/FM radio). Song selections for the trip:

J-Kwon - Tipsy (Club Mix)
Da Hool - Meet Her At The Love Parade
Dido - Thank You (Deep Dish Remix)
Plumb - Damaged (Florida Airwaves Remix)
Paul Oakenfold - Southern Sun (Gabriel & Dresden Unplugged Mix)
Radio Head - Street Spirit (Paul Oakenfold Remix)
Six Pence None The Richer - Kiss Me (Lenny Bertoldo White Label)
Spiller - Groove Jet
Sticky feat. Ms. Dynamite - Boo
Sting & Cheb Mami - Desert Rose (DJ Evil's Breakbeat Mix)
The Blue Boy - Remember Me (Original 12")
Voodoo & Serano - Blood Is Pumping (Club Mix)
Lo Fidelity All Stars - Battle Flag
Goldtrix feat. Andrea Brown - Trippin' (White Label)
Ferry Corsten - Punk (Cosmic Gate Remix)
Etta James - Miss You (Illicit Remix)
Jocelyn Enriquez - A Little Bit of Ecstasy (Original 12")

In addition to the music, I'm pulling out my "Dragonlance Annotated Legends" which has been on the shelf for quite awhile. Fortunately this serves two purposes, one I have some reading material, and two I can get it signed by Tracy Hickman since Margaret has already been kind enough to do so when it was mailed to me. I can't explain why the Dragonlance setting and series of books has always been my favorite, just accept that it is and the fact that Margaret has continued to expand on it pleases me to no end. My own Dragonlance PBeM campaign is still moving along though the time sinks from work have occasionally caused me some delays and pain.

Anyway, time to finish packing. Hope to have lots of pictures to share and I'll try to keep things updated as I go rather than try and find the time on the back end that just won't be there with the end of year rushing that is looming.

General: Things that get the foot tapping and booty shaking

2004-11-24T08:23:00.000-06:00

After reading through all the lists of 'top 5 favorite songs', it occurs to me that just thinking about it started a maelstrom of thinking in my little brain. How can you possibly limit yourself to a top 5 songs? This is why my music collection is hundreds of CDs and hundreds of gigs of MP3s. Pure lunacy to even attempt to constrain music so. Having a decent memory and a good ear for music, I can recall title and artist on most anything I've really listened to and deemed 'good' music. After 11 years this still surprises my wife and you got to figure that after that much time, if I can still surprise her with anything about me, that's got to be something. Then again I'm full of basically useless trivia, among other things. So after much anguish and brain wracking I came up with my own list of 5 songs that if I were forced to never listen to anything else ever again, these would be them in no particular order:

Da Hool - Love Parade
George Strait - Ace in the hole
Dido - Thank You
Enya - Boadicea
Nelly - Air Force Ones

It's very hard not to try and re-edit that list over and over again (I've already done it 11 times).

I have a subscription to Rhapsody and fortunately they've got a fairly wide and deep collection of music that makes setting up mood music for coding, playing, writing, etc pretty easy. One of the things I struggle with in dealing with my personal music collection is the sorting and grouping of it. The best I can do is grouping by Style, beyond that I generally just construct lists of songs I'm specificity wanting to listen to instead of having a random stream of one specific style.

To that end, Rhapsody has a radio feature where I can plug in my favorite artists and then it will stream music at me that fits those types. The upside is that I get a large selection of tunes streamed my way. The down side is that there's no sense to the music, it's just spewing random selections of everything in those genres. I think this is one of the reasons I like the DJ/Mixing culture so much. For me, I can fixate on a beat or melody and then string songs together that hold or shift the feeling or splice things together to make something really cool. Currently working on a mix of Snoops "Drop it like it's Hot" and Missy E's "Work It" that should be off the hizook [sorry, couldn't help it].

This tangential spew brought to you by the number 5 and the letter M.

General: My eyes are bleeding

2004-11-23T14:39:00.000-06:00

Do you realize how much effort it takes to read through a month and a half or so of blog postings? Never mind the time, that would have just been used up in small chunks as opposed to one long bonanza of post reading. Eyes burning, must flee computer screen.

Having been away for so long, something funny just occured to me about poker blogging in general. The blogs evolve from the shiney new performance obsessed form (to be replaced by other new performance obsessed blogs) into a slightly more laid back "ups and downs" style. Most stay in this area of posting style. Some hit a specific (and desired) niche like the blogfather or Hank and others are more open ended like BG or Pauly. I'm not saying anyones blog is better or worse than another (who am I to judge?) just noting an observation and wanting to send out a general "Thank You" to all of the bloggers for sharing their experience, insights, highs, lows, and everything in between.

General: Fantasy Football

2004-11-19T13:33:00.000-06:00

For not being much of a football watcher I think I've turned into a heck of a fantasy football player. Early on in the season I was saddled with a retarded draft (mostly because I didn't understand how the Yahoo! auto-draft really worked) and then an evil amount of injuries. Checking out the wayback machine, my team looked like this:

Starting Lineup -
S. McNair (Ten - QB)
S. Moss (NYJ - WR)
An. Johnson (Hou - WR)
C. Rogers (Det - WR)
M. Williams (Min - RB) [Traded Steven Jackson to cover for Bennett]
W. Dunn (Atl - RB) [Traded Reggie Wayne for a starting RB]
L. Smith (Phi - TE)
M. Andersen (Min - K) [A 'lucky' waiver pickup after losing Nedney]
Jacksonville (Jac - DEF)

The Bench -
J. Delhomme (Car - QB)
A. Boldin (Ari - WR) [Injured]
W. Green (Cle - RB)
S. Morris (Mia - RB) [Picked up off waivers, dropped Calico]
M. Bennett (Min - RB) [Injured]
G. Jones (Jac - RB)
B. Franks (GB - TE)
P. Dawson (Cle - K)
Pittsburgh (Pit - DEF)

At the midway point in the season, things looked pretty bleak, I was 0-7 with only 7 weeks left to play. However, I had also been watching the waivers, watching the players, and reading all the free advise I could find. I finally was able to field a real team on week #8 and thus began the winning streak and there's a real possibility that I could win out the rest of my games with a little luck at this point. Game #14 pits me against Manning and many of the IND recieving corps, that will be tough. But just to record the change my team went through, here it is today:

Starting Lineup:
D. Brees (SD - QB)
K. McCardell (SD - WR)
An. Johnson (Hou - WR)
J. Morton (KC - WR)
M. Pittman (TB - RB)
D. BlaylockP (KC - RB)
J. Witten (Dal - TE)
N. Kaeding (SD - K)
Arizona (Ari - DEF)

Bench:
D. Carr (Hou - QB)
J. Gaffney (Hou - WR)
S. Moss (NYJ - WR)
A. Boldin (Ari - WR)
L. Evans (Buf - WR)
O. Smith (Min - RB)
W. Dunn (Atl - RB)
M. Bennett (Min - RB)
A. Smith (Ten - RB)

Here's to winning out. :) Now, here's my 5 lessons learned from this year.

Don't give too much weight to someones kooky scheme for drafting the 'hidden' talent.
Do your research, there's plenty of free, good, advise for fantasy players out there, use it. If you really want to spend a few bucks, there's a number of services that that will help you understand individual player values that can impact your draft. (I'll probably do this for next year)
If possible, get into a live draft to give yourself more opportunities to adjust your drafting to catch key players. If you're in an auto-draft situation, you're probably better off not messing with the priority order very much.
Do your research. Read up on player performance and keep an eye out for injuries. Watch the waiver wire like a hawk. Identifying trends and picking up rising talent or replacement talent for injured super-stars is the best way to fill gaps and improve your team.
Pay attention to your matchups. A middling player can shine when up against teams that are weak against that player or position. Shuffling players around to take advantage of these matchups can garner those extra few points that can really come in handy in close contests.

General: Stunning

2004-11-16T08:50:00.000-06:00

Lets just say that I have been busy is a bit of an understatement. Honestly the pace of things doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon either. I'm off to Southern California in a couple of weeks to help out the True Dungeon crew at GenCon SoCal. I fly home on the boys birthday. Not the best timing in the world but with commitments made and plane tickets purchased it was too late to do anything other than make sure I can get home as early as possible. It's kind of hard to believe that it's been a year since he was born. He's walking around now with less and less assistance on things to hold on to and there's real communication with him now. This of course is one aspect of life that has kept my hands full. The other is continued activity on the game beta testing front. This month we're on to "Acts of War", an RTS being published by Atari, and after a bit of a learning curve to deal with the AI it's turning into a challenging but enjoyable game. The sad part is that all of this is a sad replacement for cards but it looks like I won't be able to re-fund my online accounts until January. In the mean time, there's plenty of freeroll action every Sunday on Royal Vegas for the CPC and Check n Raise is still doing quite a bit of beta testing on their java client. Honestly though I haven't been playing as much as I could mostly because I did I'd convince myself to invest the money and time that I don't really have right now.

*sigh* January is just around the corner and the itch is very much there. I've pretty much dropped out of the community as it were and that's a shame. I happened to look at stattracker this morning and was stunned to see that there are still visitors. Probably just mis-guided souls doing google searches but if I were really going for readership I'd probably be more on top of this. Since that isn't going to happen, I expect to pretty much be MIA until about mid-January and then back for the long haul. The number one goal for next year is to not get into a position where I canibalize my bankroll. We'll call that new years resolution #1. :)

General: Seven Score and Twenty Years Ago

2004-11-03T13:52:00.000-06:00

Back in about late '83 - early '84 I started reading "The Gunslinger" and last night I finished reading "The Dark Tower" It took me awhile to figure out when I would have read the first book in the series, but I had to figure it was around age 9 or 10. Now that I've read it to the very last page, I have to say that the ending was a mystery right up until about the last chapter (not meta chapter mind you). Thinking back over the whole series I have to say that the ending isn't really too surprising but it is definetly a thinker. My wife on the other hand (who finished the last book a month ago... oh the fight over who got to read it first) hated the ending. I suspect she was hoping that it really would have ended a chapter earlier and now she just knows too much and that offends her senses. :) Things have been hectic enough that I hadn't actually started reading until last week and it was a little slow going but at one point in the story King tells you that it will pass very rapidly now, and sure enough it did. I'm not sure if that was right at the half way point in the book but finishing it didn't take half as long as getting that far. Go figure.

It has been an interesting journey with Roland over the years and like the story, time with him seemed to stretch at times and on others go by in a blink. I think one of the things I've always liked about the Dark Tower series is that even when there wasn't a book specifically in the series, you could glimpse a brief view through his other works. I can't imagine what I could read now that would fill the void that has been left by two major series of books. First was what amounts to the final chapter of the Jack Ryan books (we'll not include his most recent book with JR Jr.) by Tom Clancy and now the last book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Funny, the characters, settings, and stories of both authors intertwine throughout their books in many and interesting ways and I suspect that's why they entertain me so. I call this the incidental series. For there are books that are not neccessarily directly about the characters of previous books or the settings in previous books but if you pay attention the ties are there. John Grisham is another author who does this and I enjoy his stuff very much as well.

Oh well, I recently recieved my autographed copy of "The Annotated Legends" which I'll probably wait just a little longer before I start to read it. It's difficult to want to pick up another large work after screaming through 850ish pages.

General: SWG Combat System

2004-10-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

These are some thoughts I wanted to remember that I wrote about the SWG combat system as it exists today. Maybe I can actually get someones ear that it could make a difference on.

The combat system as it is is both good and flawed in many ways. The NPC/MOBs are in the same boat. The problem is that you can't create a reasonable AI to compete with the way that humans will try to exploit the game, your alternatives are either make the non-player components unnaturally challenging, apply bounds that limit the exploitation of the system in place, or a little of both.

Thinking like a DM, the first thing I would do is change how the game evaluates a challenge, and how it rewards players for overcoming that challenge. A classic example of this are solo groups and buffed players. The system will grant difficult quests to individuals based on the cummulative level of the members of a group. One person in that group then runs off and completes that quest acquiring all of the xp and reward for doing so. they can do this thanks to some great armor, some great buffs, and some great food.
The exploit here is gaining a mission above their abilities and being able to complete it as an individual because the game does not accurately evaluate and adapt to the players real challenge level. Quest challenge level is based on weapon in hand, perhaps even skill with that weapon, but perhaps not. I'm thinking I can recall getting some healthy missions holding a nice flamethrower that I couldn't use while at the mission terminal working on my marksman tree.

When developing challenges for a normal RPG more stuff is taken into account than the weapon an individual is holding, in fact here are the things I would want the system to look at:

* Number of individuals in the group
* HAM level of group individuals (cumulative)
* Relative Power (weapon/armor/resists)

Using that information I would then randomly spawn a mission that would actually create a challenge for the person(s) acquiring it. As it stands now using my example above, you're looking for specific types of missions/MOBs and I wouldn't give players that option. I would allow only the group leader to acquire a mission (if it's jsut you, you default to the group leader right?) and basicly offer a Good/Neutral/Evil ... perhaps more SWG correct method would be Rebel/Neutral/Imperial aligned mission. Not a factional mission, although maybe that could be a toggle for the group to decide to use or not, but a mission that is in line with the focus of those three alignments. You shouldn't have to change things up too much since this can be as simple as something you have today like clearing some vicious animals where the wants to mine/build/etc for individuals and low powered groups, to something more complex for large/powerful groups like a one shot dungeon. As you may have noticed many of the dungeons/caves in the galaxy look a lot alike, so the template is there, it just needs a starting point which I don't see it being difficult to make dynamic by spawning stairs down into a dungeon or a mini base instead of a nest (there when the mission starts, gone when it ends just like the nests), content (quantity and difficulty of NPCs/MOBs based on power level of group) and rewards (treasure chests and mob loot based on the challenge level of the quest plus the mission bounty). One other thing I would do to reduce the clutter is put a time limit on the mission based on the challenge level. At level X the mission it should take Y amount of time to complete. If you don't complete it, despawn it, and if you're in the middle of it, teleport you(group) out of any dynamic dungeon and you get to keep whatever you looted and if there were a mechanisim for determining how far along you got, maybe a partial bounty, otherwise no bounty since the mission didn't get completed.

Some changes in the the way NPCs work (MOBs excluded since creatures seem to have a good setting, they just need more appropriate matchups vs. PCs when they are a mission objective) would be to actually assign professions and skill levels to NPCs and have them use the specials and weapons to full effect just like PCs. As it is there seems to be a little of this for NPCs in that you see those with rifles actually try for range vs. you and then shoot, but their weapon graphic is random and damage is apparently capped based on the level of the mob. I would also make armor that NPCs wore relavent rather than just random set resists, put them in armor and let that armor provide its resists. Now, you might be thinking more DB bloat to actually make this work, but I don't think it would really have to be any different than it is now. Skin the NPCs with armor and weapons that they would reasonably have (flags in the code) and identify vulnerable areas (no armor/resists/vulnerabilities). The only reason you would have to create objects is if you actually allowed linked loot to a given NPC(type). i.e. An NPC with a T21 in Ubese armor may have ubese armor pieces or even a T21 available to loot (spawned in the container when killed/looted). I wouldn't make these loot items better than what players could make except as ultra-rare drops, and in general slightly inferior to what players can make (this could be determined via point in time scrapes periodically from the server DB). In addition to these gear type loots, I would then have a 1:n chance of random object junk or treasure also on the body.

General: SWG JtL Beta Ending

2004-10-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow morning the Beta officially ends for the Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed expansion. It will be officially unleashed upon the general population on Wednesday October 27th. I've mentioned it before, but in general I had a lot of fun getting back into SWG. Learning the new crafting profession was a nice challenge and the way it has been implemented is a significant improvement over existing crafint professions. Add on top of that the ability to fly your own ship and an excuse to break out the joystick and I think I'm gonna be back in the groove for SWG for quite some time. While I messed around with the Beta Test I happened to put my main character in a position to start working through the Force Sensitive quests for Jedi so that's definetly a direction that I wanted to go when the game first came out and I'm glad that it now at least appears to be within the realm of possibility. And on that note, it's bed time for bonzo, tomorrow's a working day.

Poker: 505th out of 2329

2004-10-24T16:13:00.000-05:00

I played some great cards today in the CPC tourney. Using a combination of my cards and my opponents I was sitting a little over double the average stack just after the break having floated between 2nd and 20th of the remaining players most of the way. I guess I got cocky after the break and after seeing a couple of folks limp I raised it up to just over the pot to 1100 trying for a steal with ATo. So much for stealing, I catch 4 callers including both blinds. Hmm, that didn't work out so well but the flop is complete garbage. I've been at the table with the folks that are in for awhile and none of them raised PF so I figured they were on big cards and with a crap flop I can try for one more steal. That was a bad move. The pot was 4700 and I shoved all in. Everyone drops but the guy who stayed with crap cards that gave him two pair. Such is life. I'm not terribly unhappy with how I played. I would have liked to have done better but concidering I was a leader 90% of the time I'll accept that one mistake cost me and try and learn from it.

General: Reverse Engineering

2004-10-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

I've been beating my head against a solid wall for a bit over a week now trying to reverse engineer a complex excel spreadsheet someone created. I suppose it wouldn't be so hard if I actually knew something about VBA or macro coding for excel but I don't and that's all there is to that. However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I've succeeded in adding the new functionality that I wanted into the project and that's a good thing. On the other hand I seem to have broken some things that worked before so *shrug* what are you going to do. I think my head is almost numb enough that I don't care any more but needless to say building on top of someone elses work (that isn't documented very well) is probably as difficult as trying to do it all yourself from scratch.

Poker: 6520th out of 6965

2004-10-19T19:11:00.000-05:00

Well, so much for settling in for a long night of poker. I put in a pot sized raise pre-flop with KJo (50) and have two callers. The flop is not too bad with K,K,T. I check and call a minimum bet. I think this was a dumb move because I wasn't paying to close of attention since I had trips with a decent kicker and no one played like they were holding big slick. The reason I think this was a mistake is beause there were 2 hearts on the board. It compounded when the turn brought a third heart. Since the J in my hand was a heart I figured it wasn't too bad off as far as things go I still had a one outer for quads and three for a house. So I pot it and the first guy bails and the other one doubles my bet. I think about it for a second and figure that he's probably not holding anything better than me and go ahead and shove which he quickly calls. Turns out I was right, he was holding K9o (no hearts) and I wasn't feeling too bad about the whole ordeal until the river brought a 9 giving him a house. With only 60 chips left I caught a pair of sixes and figured that was probably as good as it was going to get with the blinds getting ready to go up. I guess it just wasn't my nice since the flop gave the only caller trips and a house on the turn. Game over rover.

General: I can't believe it

2004-10-15T09:24:00.000-05:00

I can not believe I forgot to journal this. So last night I'm playing with the boy (who's about 10 mo. now) and he's jibber jabbering and stuff and so I figured I'd see if I could actually get him to say a coherent word. First rattle out of the box, I say "Hello" and he looks at me and says "ello" Dude! He's been making noises that sound like "da da" and stuff, but this is definetly the first word that we're sure he meant to say it as opposed to babble that just sounded like a word. He so totally rocks. :)

General: Ugh

2004-10-15T07:10:00.000-05:00

I don't really want to be posting now, but it's been a few days and I couldn't deal with the thought of letting this thing go for a whole week. I have a tooth infection where a little decay underneath a filling is killing me.... or rather the pain makes me think using a hammer to crush my jaw there would feel so much better. Back to the dentist today to see if I can get it cleaned up enough for the ammoxicillan to finish the infection off.

Thanks to the pain and the pain killers I slept through the $1500 freeroll I had been invited to on Royal Vegas. I'm sure my dead chips were appriciated by someone. :( Looking forward to the CPC MTT on Sunday and hoping to do better there than this last time. Hopefully the tooth pain will be gone and I can focus.

The Betas for Pirates and Axis & Allies have ended so that's both good and bad. Good that the games will be out soon (just in time for Christmas??), bad that the reality is I probably can't justify to myself going and buying them to continue playing them once the retail version is out. Something we didn't get to test in A&A was the single player campaign. That should be fun but I'm on the fence on that one. Pirates! is very cool, but also a huge time sink since mostly you're going at it and then look up and wonder how you could have spent 3 hours sailing a little boat around saying Argh! to yourself. It's addictive and that just means it's got good play/re-play value but not something I can see buying to try and work into my schedule. I suspect the SWG: JtL beta is coming to an end soon with a planned release date only 11 days away (Oct. 26). This has been a lot of fun and reminded me why I liked SWG in the first place. I will probably pick up JtL and continue my quest to become a Jedi as well as become a terror of the stars :)

Poker: CPC - 608th

2004-10-10T15:57:00.000-05:00

I pretty much played like crap today. My stack performance was like a wicked roller coaster with a crash at the end. The biggest hit (and lesson) was slow playing a flopped two pair trying to be fancy and letting my opponent catch his flush on the river. There had been some pretty heavy betting pre-flop so it was a nice pot and I should have gone to take it down straight away but ended up shooting myself in the foot. *sigh* Nothing more to say about that.

General: Career Foo

2004-10-08T10:19:00.000-05:00

These days everybody wants to be a DJ. Let me just tell you who. My Mother wants to be a DJ. My Father wants to be a DJ. My Sister wants to be a DJ. My Aunt wants to be a DJ. My Cousin wants to be a DJ. My best friend wants to be a DJ. My Girlfriend wants to be a DJ. My cat wants to be a DJ. My goldfish wants to be a DJ. My Neighbor wants to be a DJ. The Postman wants to be a DJ. The Teacher wants to be a DJ. The Bus Driver wants to be a DJ. The Wed Nerd. The Bum wants to be a DJ. The Pimp wants to be a DJ. My Bucci Bag wants to be a DJ. The President wants to be a DJ. The Queen wants to be a DJ. The King wants to be a DJ. The Priest wants to be a DJ. Jesus wants to be a DJ. The Trees wants to be a DJ. The Ground wants to be a DJ. The Sheep wants to be a DJ. The Dogs want to be DJs. The Stars wants to be DJs. The Moon wants to be a DJ. The Sun wants to be a DJ. My Foot wants to be a DJ. My Ears wants to be a DJ. My Mind wants to be a DJ. My Hands wants to be a DJ. My Head wants to be a DJ. My Dick wants to be a DJI Just Want To Be a Drummer.
-- Heavy Rock - I Just Want To Be a Drummer

How can one person be so effing busy yet so bored at the exact same time? That's the situation I find myself in now. By profession I'm what you would call an I.T. person. From my perspective I'm a person who warms a seat, fills out paperwork, and attends meetings. Now to be honest I ground out many years as an operations level person who was responsible for monitoring and fixing broken things. In a sense I've paid my dues for the club and have been progressing into areas of more... impact. Or at least that's the theory. The problem is that I don't feel like I make much of an impact on anything. I take someone else's plan, implement it and then hand it off to another group to support. As important as the role may be, there's not much technical ability involved in it and there's no sense of real control over anything. It either gets done, or it doesn't. Not getting it done impacts the company negatively and generates all kinds of noise and undesirable events. On the other hand, getting the job done doesn't generate anything. I think there is a proportional response missing in this equation. Lets see.... lots of anguish and teeth gnashing when things go badly, but rarely an acknowledgement when things go as designed. This isn't just true for my current situation but it's a recurring theme in a lot of work places and lots of people. Giving this particular problem some thought it's not as easy to solve as you might think. There really isn't a proportional response for doing your job because from a company perspective, that's what you're paid to do. However from a worker point of view, there has to be a level of job satisfaction and as important as a paycheck is, it doesn't amount to very much if you're not satisfied with the type of work your doing or its perceived value/impact to the organization. For me, I think it's a degree of challenge. The problem is, that everything a company needs done isn't always a challenge. What may have been a challenge the first six months on the job is old hat a year later, now what? I think this one of the reasons the .com era was so great for people like me. Once the challenge was overcome there was always an opportunity a phone call away that you could jump into. Not so much now. The challenges are out there, but now days it takes a little more than a phone call and frankly as you get a little older your priorities shift to the point where job hopping isn't as attractive as it once was. They don't make golden parachutes for the little guy so it's a precarious position now to try and job hop and look out for your financial future.

Anyway, all of this lead me to thinking what would be a cool job today? Then I got to thinking, what are some of the pitfalls we try to ignore when going for that dream job?

Since about the age of puberty and the first dirty magazine, what boy hasn't wanted to be an erotic photographer? The barrier to entry is pretty low, you need a camera, and a willing beautiful model. Take some pictures, shop them around, and rinse and repeat. The downside is that it's much more fun looking at the output than it is dealing with all of the hassles of producing the pictures. Models are finicky creatures, who knows why they won't wear the bridle and prance around in 26 inch heels but some of them flat refuse. Go figure. On top of that, there's very few 'perfect' people in the world so the pre and post work involved is really not that glamorous. Who knew you'd have to airbrush out the 2 day growth of pubes that make her look more like a hazardous waste zone. While it's not exactly a tough life, you've got to figure that its going to have some impact on the way you look at sex and other people and not necessarily in a good way.

Moving on, there's the perennial favorite, sports superstar. The problem is, there are very few real superstars relative to the total number of players in a given sport and on top of having to have some sort of athletic ability you spend most of your time practicing and then riding the bench when the real action is going on.

Part of what you want to do also depends on the culture you're around at a given time. I spent some time in England and everyone from 12 - 30 wants to be a fucking DJ. Like trying to party 24/7 is really as great as it sounds. First, you've got to have some talent (an ear) for music and the ability to match beats and create an energy and flow using music that people want to shake their ass to. Next you've got to start out by being willing to play the 4am - 6am set at some hole in the wall during the week where the only thing on the dance floor is are two passed out birds and somebody's dinner making a second appearance. If you're still banging away at it after all of that, you might catch a break at a summer festival or maybe a get a set in Ibiza where you'll get some recognition that you can turn into a more premier gig with some big name producer. Then you'll realize that the real glory and glamour is in banging out your own tunes and not spinning someone else's.... unless you've had a go at remixing it.

Bah, enough cynicism and pissing and moaning for now. I'm certain things will work out, and if not, I'll do the trendy thing and join the pro poker circuit, anyone want to stake me? I know all the suits and and numbers of the cards real well. ;)

General: SWG: Jump to Lightspeed

2004-10-05T18:23:00.000-05:00

Just thought I would mark down some of my general thoughts about this. The beta has had the unexpected effect of rekindling my enjoyment of the game and that's not necessarily a bad thing. However due to an unfortunate vendor accident my Armorsmith character lost all of their resources so I'll be killing off that character which isn't too terrible since that saves me the subscription cost of one account. Anyway, onto the beta thoughts.

The JtL expansion brings the space/flying expansion to SWG that has truly been missing since day one. Along with it comes two new player races and 2 new player classes a builder (shipwright) and pilot (rebel, imperial, neutral sub-variations). The crafting aspect will be familiar to players who have pursued other crafting classes. To fly in space you're either going to be a pilot or a passenger, and since we all know how much you want to be a passenger that means becoming a pilot. I think it's fairly safe to say that you'll need various levels of experience to fly different classes of ships and to operate ship equipment. This should be a nice change of pace for the builder class since in most of the other crafting professions if you're not a master, it's difficult to find customers. In this case most customers can't use the items a master could craft until they become very experienced themselves.

One aspect that will take SWG players a bit to get used to is having to actually aim at what they're fighting in space. Personally, I think this is an improvement but it's probably too much to hope that this gets implemented on the surface as well. Then again, I'm probably just bitter about all the punk players who like to grief other players. There's not much else to say other than space is beautiful. Each planet has it's on mood and environment and so far I like flying around Endor.

Poker: It's Official

2004-10-05T18:15:00.001-05:00

Well, it is official, I got my email today verifying that I had made it to the satellite based on my performance in the super satellite. I guess that really doesn't mean a whole lot since I've still got to play well to get into the championship game but it is one step closer. Fortunately there's super satellites every Sunday until sometime in February so lots of time to practice my MTT play. Who knows, if I can work my way down in to the top 20 I'll even cash at some of these things and that would be a nice turn of events.

General: On the Beta Testing front

2004-10-03T16:55:00.000-05:00

On the beta testing front, I just picked up an invite to the Star Wars Galaxies: Jump To Lightspeed beta last week. From a timing perspective that works out pretty well as both Axis & Allies and Pirates! betas are both winding down and preping to go gold. Of course the irony here is that I just canceled my SWG account (that doesn't expire for awhile so no issues there) because I really didn't have the time to play any more. So far the game play isn't too much different in terms of movement from the standard SWG client. Additions include a Z axis and flying takes a little bit to get used to. They've added a couple of new races as well as new professions related to piloting and building ships. One of the things that is semi annoying is that you can't go from system to system unless you have a ship equipped with a hyper drive. I guess this makes sense but it would be nice if I could fly from system to system 'the slow way' if I wanted to. I'm not sure what else I can say about it but if you're playing SWG and on the fence about picking up the JtL expansion, at this point I can confidently recommend it.

Poker: College Poker Championship Qualifier

2004-10-03T16:50:00.000-05:00

I played in the 5th qualifier today (after bombing out of the first and missing the next three) and placed 162nd out of 1876 players. In theory becuase I finished in the top 10% I've made it into the the championship tournament in February. I didn't get very many good cards today and spent an abnormal amount of time folding. I'd have to say that all in all, tournaments require an amount of patience and stamina that I apparently don't have... I was bored silly and ended up making at least a few goofy plays that I shouldn't have. In theory the cure may be to play in more of them to 'condition' myself, but I'm not sure if I've got the time to make that kind of investment in training. For someone who wants to be a better poker player that sounds silly, but it is what it is.

General: The goings on of things

2004-09-28T21:31:00.000-05:00

So last week was full of fun and excitement... ok maybe not so much fun... and not so exciting. It was however busy as hell. Work over the last couple of months has sucked. The company has been working towards being merged and as that process has moved along the project work basically dried up. What this means is that the job I'm there to do just isn't happening. That's ok though because we're short handed on the production support side so I've been filling in there :( I don't look down on the job so much as dislike it because I've put in my time on the front line and don't really like being back there. The company on the other hand still pays me so I guess I'll do what needs to be done.

This past weekend the boy has started to stand with some version of balance. This basically means that he'll pull himself up on something... distract himself with whatever is in his hands and then realize he's not actually holding onto any sort of support and fall down. My money is that he'll be walking about in a month or so and then begins the reign of "The Terror of Tiny Town!" He's also started talking a little bit. According to the wife he really doesn't say much during the day but when I get home he's quite the chatter box. The only truly intelligible word is "Da-Dee" which is says when he's looking for me. That so totally rocks. Everything else is still garbled in jibber jabber but we try real hard not to coo or talk nonsense back at him so hopefully this is how the learning process works. The current concern is that we have a beautiful tile floor in the kitchen.... a nice hard tile floor. Bets on when he lets go and busts his head? There's really no way to prevent this from happening and we've resigned ourselves to the fact that it's a when and not an if event. I can only hope that I'm around when it happens to put humpty dumpty back together again.

I've kicked off my Dragonlance Play-by-Email campaign this week finally. I ended up starting fewer players than I wanted but I was able to alter the adventure enough to fit the group while leaving room for anyone else who is able to re-join. I officially canceled my Star Wars Galaxies accounts today so no more of that... Probably forever, but it was fun while it lasted (about a year of active playing). Beta testing still continues on Axis & Allies, the improvements there are steady and generally make the game more balanced and challenging. I received my discs in the mail for the start of the Sid Meiers Pirates! beta test over the weekend. I came into the A&A testing relatively late so I had missed a lot of the fits and starts that occur during the early stages of the testing. The first patch came out yesterday and playability actually took a step backwards when some things that were working well got broken. What can I expect, that's the process. We're pretty limited in what we can say about the game but I think it's safe to say that if you enjoyed the original, or enjoy Sid Meier/Firaxis games, you're going to love Pirates!

The work crew is getting together this Friday for our "Engineering Round Table." I'm pretty stoked about that. It's been awhile since we've been able to sit down for a night of cards and I think in general we're all looking forward to the trash talking, drinking, and attempting to empty each others pockets. This Sunday is also the next College Poker Championship satellite on Royal Vegas. I apparently missed a few between the last time I played and now but I couldn't exactly help it. Their email keeps getting gobbled up by the earthlink spam blocker even though I keep telling it that mail from them is ok. *sigh*

General/Poker: Where did my week go?

2004-09-27T10:26:00.000-05:00

Holy Cow! I haven't posted anything in a week and honestly I didn't even realize it. Not that I'm ignoring my blog or anything but between work and home there hasn't been much time to do anything other than eat, crap, and sleep. I played a little poker over the weekend but it was nothing to write home about. I think I actually ended up down a little after encountering my share of suckouts and hands that held up. I'm not sure how I feel about trying to blog about my play. I've not had a lot of time to read and study to make any real progress on improving my game and writing about the wins and losses just doesn't seem to hold any real interest for me. I think from a development standpoint I'm to the point where the bad beats really don't phase me very much.

I've backed off of my aggression a little bit but that has actually seemed to induce more suckouts (perhaps it's just misaligned perception). In either case, thanks to some truly monumental suckouts this morning, I've actually busted out online. Honestly, I'm not sure that I particularly care at this moment. With the boy growing like a weed and becoming both mobile and talkative he's much more interesting than when he was sleeping all of the time. Also, having picked up a new game to beta test (Sid Meier's Pirates!) I guess playing online has moved down in my list of priorities. It's funny how things work out. Two weeks ago, I couldn't find enough to do to fill my day, now I can't find enough day to fit it all in. I'll probably get back into it, but honestly it may not be until after the first of the year. I'll still try and get into any of the home games I can in the area but in the final analysis, I got to play a lot of poker for free, got some great new poker chips with some of my winnings, and got to take a much needed vacation on the rest of the winnings. That's a pretty good showing for a guy who has played less hands in 6 months than some people do in a week. So, there's no shame in imploding today. I'm not exactly happy about it since that means I'll have to resort to traditional savings to save up for the 2005 GenCon since my original plan was to build up the bankroll again to support another vacation.

What in the world will I blog about then? Despite the fact that this will probably alienate the few folks who have been reading this thing (according to StatCounter, ~40 return visitors a day) I'll continue blogging about my non-poker related stuff. This is a little depressing. I've always liked being a part of the poker blogging community, but it's hard to be a part of it when you're not contributing and frankly I haven't contributed much in the last couple of months so maybe I haven't been a part of it longer than I realized.

There's been a lot of stuff happening the last couple of weeks with the boy, the beta testing, and my tentative steps back into the role playing world. I'll get to those items tomorrow when I have more time. On top that, the weekend was another disappointing loss for my fantasy team. McNair has truely been a let down so far this season.

General: The Apprentice, A How to Win Guide

2004-09-22T22:12:00.000-05:00

I finally got to the second episode of The Apprentice on my TIVO this evening and all I have to say is that Caroline had the best, and most telling, statement of the whole show. To paraphrase she said, "A 10 year old kid could do this better." At the time she was talking about the Ice Cream task, but frankly after the first two episodes I think this really applies to the whole process.

The sad part is that, I could not afford to take 15 weeks off from work to show the world how it's done, but I'm confident that there will be a season three, assuming that this season doesn't tank in the ratings, and to that end I will offer my guide to potential candidates on how to survive the show and earn the coveted spot as The Donald's apprentice.

Step One: Know thy self
If you are a social reject that likes to push peoples buttons (no matter what the wife says, this does not describe me.... really, I swear!) you probably want to reel that impulse in.... completely. You're going to be tossed into close proximity with strangers that will want to work with you at first, and then want to shove you out the board room window after they have been inflicted with your special brand of charm and wit.

You're not nearly as funny, cute, smart, talented, attractive, etc... as you think you are. Actions speak louder than words and instead of trying to convince everyone about how good you are by telling them about your past exploits, show them through your ability to work effectively on a team as well as effectively lead a team. The Apprentice is a unique opportunity where your past experiences and self promotion only open the door for you. To step on through you have to put your actions where your mouth is, so shut up, keep your eye on the prize, and do what needs to be done.

Some people don't do so well at self examination and may not know what an annoying jerk they are. Fortunately for them, if they are observant and can listen/accept criticism they may have a chance to correct the behaviors that can make teammates want to work against them instead of with them.

A healthy ego can help you display confidence, ability, and trust. Keep a little humility on the side though because while you may think you're smarter and better than the rest of the wanna-be apprentices, you may just find that someone is smarter, better, and stronger than you in a lot of areas. All is not lost though, you can overcome this with wisdom and experience.

Step Two: Lead Effectively
When it's your turn to be the project manager your priorities are very simple. First, you must understand the task. If you understand what is expected of your team, then you should be able to plan, communicate, and direct your team. Leading by democracy isn't going to work. Too many people have too many opinions and you'll burn precious time if you let everyone have their vote. Since you understand the task at hand, step two is to lay out your vision of how it can be accomplished and solicit feedback to improve weak ideas or enhance the plan to exceed expectations. Once you have a plan for success, step three is to delegate the tasks. If you have communicated the plan and expectations to your team well enough, you should be able to ask for volunteers for specific things and let your team members step up to demonstrate their strengths. If some tasks are left unclaimed you're going to have to delegate. Given the type of people you're likely to be teamed up with, you should be able to trust your team members to pull their weight. That doesn't mean that you don't keep track of what's being done to make sure the team is on track, but it does mean you don't have to be standing over their shoulders telling them how to do something unless they are completely incapable of performing a task. If that's the case, you probably made a mistake in your delegation and you need to correct it immediately. Allowing someone to fail so that you can drag them into the boardroom with you is unacceptable. As the leader, you're expected to adapt and do what is necessary to be successful. If you do this and still end up in the boardroom then you were out played but honestly, if you do it right, the only way you're going that route is if you lost a coin flip style challenge where both teams were super strong.

If you end up in the boardroom be prepared. You planned it, executed it, and failed. Have some ideas of how you could have done better. Now that you have identified some areas of improvement, decide why those specific areas were not as strong as they could be. Was it poor planning? Was it a resource failure? Was it uncontrollable fate that no amount of planning or experience could have foreseen? Honestly though, this is for your own self improvement. The fact is that the tapes have been seen and everyone involved has their perception of how things went. You'll use this mental exercise to adjust those perceptions where necessary but the moment of truth comes when its time to decide who is coming to the boardroom with you to get fired.

From the first minute you met and started talking to the other players, and ultimately your team mates you've been sizing them up and identifying strengths and weaknesses. In your mind you've got a running rating of your team mates from strongest to weakest. Unless the strong member did something some monumentally stupid (Bradford) you want to bring the weakest team members with you. The reason is simple, a stronger team reduces the chance of ending up in the boardroom again. When asked why you picked them, the answer is simple. Based on what you've seen to date, they are the weakest members of the team and you feel that the team has a greater chance of success without one of them. Don't be afraid to verbalize what it is about that person that makes them the weakest team member in your mind. It's review time and fortunately no one is perfect (including you) so keep your comments constructive and professional. Everyone wants to survive so the people you brought with you are also going to be trying to take you down. Acknowledge their criticism of you and politely disagree if necessary. Getting into a childish argument of "Yes you are!" and "No I'm not!" isn't impressing anyone. If Trump cares why you disagree, he'll ask and you have an opportunity to explain why a perceived weakness is not what it seems. Don't use your rebuttal to attack your team mate, you've had your say and dodging the opportunity to represent yourself so that you can try and flip the script on your team mate isn't altering any perception, you're just dodging the issue.

Step Three: Be an Indian
We've all heard the saying about too many chiefs and not enough indians. When it is someone else's turn to lead the team you're going to have a role to play, and it shouldn't be to undermine the leader. Participate in the planning and offer suggestions. Give advice when asked, and sometimes when you haven't been asked. Open communication is as important for the team members as it is for the Project Manager. If they don't know what you're thinking, they can't adjust a possible mistake or improve the teams chances of succeeding without feedback. Pull your weight. If you've been involved in the planning, you know what is expected of you for a given task. If you need someone to tell you want to do, or rather how to accomplish your part of the task, you either volunteered for something that was way over your head or you didn't speak up when tasks were being delegated to let the leader know that this was a weakness for you and that you were not comfortable with your ability to perform the task. Not knowing how to do something and saying so is less of a sign of weakness than making a half assed attempt at a task and then blaming the project manager for poor direction or leadership (although a PM who's on top of things will realize you're floundering and should adapt the plan).

If you end up in the board room, you already know in your mind what your perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses are of the other two people with you. If the task could have been done better, say so and support that position. Be prepared to identify why things could not have been done any better than they were. Individual mistakes and quirks are well know to everyone because it was caught on tape. Unless an individuals activities directly impacted the teams success do not try and attach the failure to a single person. The team failed. Presuming that your part in the task (and previous tasks) were performed at 100%, or more, of your abilities speak to that when it comes time to state your case of why you shouldn't be fired. When it comes time to respond to who you think should be fired, use the same process as if you were the leader who got to choose the two team members with you. Identify the weaknesses and why firing the weakest of the two would improve the teams ability to succeed in the future.

Step Four: The Task at Hand
Keep things simple. The more complex you make the solution to a task/problem the more opportunities you're providing the team to fail. This has nothing to do with risk and everything to do with understanding what has to be done and being able to execute on it. I believe that by keeping solutions simple and straight forward, you can take a little more risk but be able to reduce it while maximizing the reward because simple plans are easier to adjust when risky activities throw curves your way.

Contribute as much as possible, especially in areas that you consider to be your strengths. Positive visibility is the key. Remember, you know you're great, but by showing your teammates and everyone else that you can do things successfully and efficiently, you're building a good reputation and visibility to the people you want to hire you. Building the perception of strength and success through action is the key to winning. Not just on a silly game show, but in life in general.

Appendix A: Choosing a Team Name
Why does so much effort get wasted on something so meaningless? I mean really. Yes, you need a team name, but your objective is simple. You want something that sounds cool and represents success, power, and ability. My suggestion, make two lists of six words. The first list should be words that imply scope like International, Infinity, and Total. The second list of words should imply success, power, or ability like Professional, Solution, and Triumph. Number each entry in the columns one through six and then take six small pieces of paper (numbered of course) and draw one from a hat two times. Combine the two words drawn and that's you're team name. You'll want to avoid something like planets and electronics for categories since Dilbert has already shown us that you're likely to end up with Uranus Hertz.

Poker: A step towards tilt proof

2004-09-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

So I was playing on the slot machine that is the Party $0.50/$1 tables this evening. -33 BB later I can't say I played all that horribly, but I can say that for every gut shot, river chased, suckout that I endured I was a little frustrated but there was no wailing at the monitor or gnashing of teeth. The stunning part was that all 33 BB were lost on sets that were winners right up until the river with the fish capping the whole way. But one rivered flush and one rivered straight later and I'm at the decision point of nabbing more chips or heading to bed. Bed is gonna win this round but I'll be back. Oh yes, and they'll rue the day. When I get back. At the tables. Because I will set them up the bomb. This was much funnier in my mind with the Bullwinkle voice.

Poker: I PokerBot

2004-09-21T13:54:00.000-05:00

So I went and had a read of the MSNBC article on poker playing programs and basically I have to say I'm not too impressed. A proliferation of bots, if it were to ever come to that , would just leave us at that state of the game where everyone is great and the poker rooms take everyone's money with the rakes. Bots would also be a bad thing even if that were not the case. Talk about having an ability to over-fish the population. If bots eat all of the fish, the only thing left will be a bunch of sharks staring at each other and trying to figure out which end to eat first. I appreciate the AI opportunities in programming a really good player, but to build something like this and sell it so that others who are not good players can automatically become good players is hokey at best, but more likely just plain wrong. It's bad enough that people collude and cheat in other ways, but being able to drop a bot into an MTT, go to bed and wake up in the cash is not what the game is about. This is as bad a form of cheating as any other. It's not you that's playing but you're trying to reap the benefits. Maybe that's not such a big deal. What would be a big deal IMO would be someone using a bot to win a WSOP or other live tournament seat and getting a vacation so they can go dump their chips at the tournament on day one.

Maybe bots are not that big of a deal, but they offend my sense of right and wrong.

General: Axis & Allies RTS Redux

2004-09-21T11:41:00.000-05:00

The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle. It is your killer instinct which must be harnessed if you expect to survive in combat. Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills. If your killer instincts are not clean and strong, you will hesitate at the moment of truth. You will not kill. You will become dead marines, and then you will be in a world of shit, because marines are not allowed to die without permission. Do you maggots understand?
-- Gunnery Sergeant Hartman played by R. Lee in Full Metal Jacket Ermey

It occurs to me that I didn't really give a complete review of this game as it stands today and having played it quite a bit to this point I think it is a game that others will enjoy. First off, I unfortunately do not have any screen shots to offer. The developers have asked us not to post any since its current state and look may not be how it appears when it hits store shelves. That being said, my testing rig has a GeForce 5600 Ultra and playing at 1024x768 on light weight 15" LCD (makes taking hardware to LAN parties easier) the graphics for this type of game are pretty smooth. Currently there are still some glitches during large scale battles (5+ regiments per side going at it in one area) that cause a stutter but normal play is smooth and beautiful. Like other RTSs there's plenty of replay factor here since it's never the same game twice. However, just to take it up a knock the developers have added some twists.

The sides in the game are made up of the classic A&A combatants, USA, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan. Each side has similar standard units with the ability to generate unique advanced units. For example, Germany can build King Tiger Tanks and Russia can conscript infantry (cheaper infantry option for building up Russian human wave attacks), and the Japanese can build tankettes. In addition to choosing a side, you also choose a leader. Each side has 4 possible leaders that bring different special abilities to your game. The special abilities can be temporary boosts in power for selected units, additional supplies to support your troops with, special bombing attacks that do more damage, and even the atomic bomb. There's a decent balance between the leaders so you have the flexibility of choosing one that fits your play style without feeling you'll be over powered by not taking 'the best leader.'

My past experience with RTSs have included C&C, Warcraft, and AOE. For the most part A&A RTS plays a lot like AOE or Warcraft does in terms of building base structures, researching improvements, and support being based on your bases development. Something that makes this a more strategic game than say C&C is that in general is that building nothing but the biggest units is not going to win your engagement. To win, you'll need to use combined arms to take advantage of terrain, enemy weaknesses, and to overcome a well defended base. Like AOE or Warcraft, you have building limits that dictate how many of each types of regiments you can have in the field based on the number of HQs you've constructed. Regiments are either infantry, airborne, mechanized, or armored groups built by one of 4 different types of HQs. Each HQ can only control a limited number of regiments. For example the Infantry HQ can only command a maximum of 5 infantry regiments and an Armor HQ can only command a maximum of 3 armor regiments. To field more of a given type of regiment you'll need to build out more of that type of HQ. This is generally a win-win situation since instead of having to have resource gatherers, you gain money at a steady rate based on your HQ infrastructure, town occupation, and resource utilization.

The balancing act of resources (money, ammunition, and oil) requires that consideration be used in what types of units you build, bunkers built to defend your base (AA, pill boxes, and fixed artillery), and the quantity of units you can field at a given time. If you don't manage your oil and ammunition supplies it will severely cut into your money/income levels.

The only combat type missing from the game is naval. There are some scenarios that can be built by the map editor that can give players aircraft carriers and battleships but there is no naval HQ that would allow you to build other ships. The air combat is fairly simplistic so the focus is generally on the land engagements.

That's all I can think of for now but I'll try to add to this if I think of anything else. The new Sid Meier's Pirates! Beta has kicked off and the CD should be hitting my doorstep late this week. I never played the original VGA version, but I am eagerly anticipating the swashbuckling goodness to come. :)

General: Resident Evil & Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

2004-09-18T18:50:00.000-05:00

I hadn't been to the movies in awhile and while talking with Steel_Rain I figured there were at least a few out recently that I had not seen yet and that wouldn't be an unplesant way to spend the afternoon alone. First up, Resident Evil: Apocolypse. Of movies based on video games, this is probably about as good as it gets. The Mortal Combat and Street Fighter flicks left a lot to be desired. The Resident Evil movies on the other hand have everything you could want in a movie like this; guns, zombies, creative deaths, attractive stars, and a nice straight forward plot line. To put a little icing on the cake, they left it open for what should be an interesting third movie. Damn that evil Umbrella Corporation! This one's a keeper for when it comes out on DVD.

I also saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. All in all it was just wierd. I'm one of those people that rarely sees a bad movie. If I think a movie is going to be bad, I just won't watch it. If on the other hand I watch a movie regardless of what the critics think about it, I tend to find something I like about them. Anyway, I didn't say that because I think people will decide that this is a bad movie, just that when you take a 1940 style setting and then apply the robots of the future plot line you've got to do something a little different to entertain the audience here in 2004. And this is where I ran into something I thought was annoying. A lot of the language and manners just didn't fit the setting. Perhaps they should have named it Sky Captain and the World of Yesterday. Based on the actions and speech used you would think that what really happened is that someone from present day was transported back into the 40s to fight off the evil invaders. I liked the plane, that was cool, got to get me one of those :) Otherwise, it was worth the watch, but probably not a repeat.

Poker: Spur of the moment game

2004-09-18T10:19:00.000-05:00

Work was winding down yesterday and a couple of the guys at the office were going out for drinks and since the boy and the wife are off visiting grandma this weekend I figured I could hit a beer or two before heading home. We get to the bar and one of the guys mentions he's got to bail in a couple of hours for a game to which my only response was, "Where's the love?" After a phone call and a couple of beers his friends calls back says they're all full so no game for me tonight. Well since I'm not playing I'm drinking. I lost count of the pints but place it somewhere <10 but >5. Doesn't really matter though because apparently I had drank myself into an invite to the game. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not, but I figured if Al can do it, why can't I? Of course once you start drinking like this, it's hard to stop, I didn't try so there were another unknown quantity of beers >1 but <24 through the next 2 hours.

I am sure I've mentioned it before, by my live game play that involves anything other than a casino is generally social. I'm not playing to win big, and I enjoy the atmosphere and friends. When it comes to playing with new people I also try not to play too hard since I want to be invited back. That being said, I also try to make sure I walk away fairly close to even whenever possible. So the play last night consisted of 3 NLHE tournaments, $20, $20, and $40 buy-ins with the last one having a twist that the first 2 guys busted out picked a local bar, and the winner had to contribute half of his winnings to the bar tab where everyone would end up after the game.

There were 6 of us for the first game and I couldn't tell you what I held at any point in the game but after about 45 minutes I've got all the chips. Hmm, I'm up $100 and noticed a few comments about shark... then again maybe I'm paranoid. Ok, fair enough, the game was extremely soft (as were the other two) and since winning isn't the goal, I loosened up to just before the point where you would just play any two cards. Suited Big little, one gapers, off suit connecters I was there for just about any flop. Game two was going well until my big pair ran into 4 diamonds on the board and I couldn't get the guy with x2d to lay down with an all in shove so I was gone. Game three came around and it's getting on to about the time I need to catch a train and I try to get out early and call an all-in with pocket 3s. Would you believe they held up? I can't recall much of the rest of the play in the 3rd game except that after doubling up I played pretty aggressive and it ended up heads up with me and another guy who had shown up late enough that this game was the only game I played with him in. The last hand of the evening, we were about even in chips (he had me covered probably) but I caught A9 so I shoved figuring that he hadn't folded anything else he'll call and I feel ok about my chances. He calls and shows Tx. The cards come down and he hits a ten somewhere in there and I hit nothing and that's the ball game.

Not too bad really. I had fun... I think... and after food, drinks, and a cab ride I broke even for the night so it was all good in my book. So I've drank more than I've eaten and I've got just a few minutes before the shut down the McD's to get some hot nuggets and cold fries to try and absorb some of that alcohol while waiting for the train. While sitting on the steps waiting and eating I got to witness a train wreck of a different type. There's a couple of girls sitting below me and they've obviously come from a concert. Apparently it was a Von Bondies concert which I only know because they said it. (Being the good little researcher that I am, I actually looked them up, their music isn't too shabby) Anyway, a short time goes by and a guy carrying a guitar case (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume there was actually a guitar in it) sits down near the girls and starts chatting them up with what had to have been the worst attempt to pick up a girl I have ever seen. He started off by asking girl #1 about her bracelet that was coincidently (according to her) the same pink color as the poster she was holding. The problem was that it sounded like he was making fun of her for wearing something the same color as the bands colors. It then deteriorated from there to the point where they were both dissing each other and the girls ended up just walking away. It's been awhile since I've tried to chat up a girl, but I don't think it’s supposed to work that way.

General: Axis & Allies RTS

2004-09-17T15:21:00.000-05:00

So today, Atari partially lifted the NDA for the Axis & Allies RTS game that is being developed. Yay, that means I can blab about it which I've been dieing to do since I started testing it. First things first, if you don't like real time strategy games, there's no help for you no matter how much you might like the Axis & Allies franchise. I think beyond using the name, and the countries likeness for units and designation, there's nothing here related to the board game.

If you've played Warcraft, AOE, C&C, etc then the game play will be familiar to you. You build your army of infantry, mechanized, and armored units by constructing corps buildings that let you recruit various types of units. There are technologies to research that allow you to improve units defense, attack, and speed capabilities as well as modified units like adding a flamethrower infantry regiment or flame tanks.

It's not clear how much more development there is to go yet, but hopefully the AI gets some work done to it. So far I haven't found it very challenging because there seems to be an optimum strategy for beating the computer. That being said, I've found that in order to play effectively you have to use a combination of units and abilities to overcome your live opponents.

The gameplay is pretty smooth but some of the things like unit pathing and some terrain effects with shadows still need to be resolved. Like many types of these games I expect that there will be a lot of tweaking in terms of game mechanics so I am looking forward to seeing the game evolve into what will become the final product.

General: A week with my brother

2004-09-17T09:23:00.000-05:00

So my brother is headed back to New Mexico today after hanging out for a week while he was in Chicago for training. It was cool having him around but it was unfortunate that he wasn't able to schedule a little weekend time so that he could actually see some of the area and tourist type things. Fortunetly he is headed back around the 1st so hopefully I can get him involved in the work game that is happening on the 1st. I'm honestly not sure how well he does or doesn't play poker but I figured I would stake him and it would be a good time hanging out with the guys, knocking back a few beers, and playing some cards.

I've never really been close to my family. Not for any real reason other than I'm not particularly close to anyone other than my wife and son. I'm sure it's a personality defect but it's not something so horribly broken that I've felt it needs to be fixed. That being said, I had forgotten that I actually like hanging out with my brother. He's a little younger than me, but we have a lot of the same interests. He's actually looking for a job in the Chicago area so I'm kind of stoked that he may be moving into the area if he can find a gig. To that end I've been banging around my network of friends to see if they've got any openings for a unix/windows/os X admin. Hopefully something will turn up soon.

General: FFL Picks for Week 2

2004-09-17T09:19:00.000-05:00

Week 1 was a horror. It's not like I had the studs of the NFL to start with, but the 'strong' players I did have didn't score to their potential. Once again attempting to make lemonade out of lemons, here's what I'm going with for week 2.

QB S. McNair (Ten - QB)
WR S. Moss (NYJ - WR)
WR An. Johnson (Hou - WR)
WR A. Bryant (Dal - WR)
RB W. Dunn (Atl - RB)
RB O. Smith (Min - RB)
TE L. Smith (Phi - TE)
K J. Hall (Was - K)
DEF Jacksonville (Jac - DEF)

Here's to a better week.

General: Mid-everything blues

2004-09-15T22:03:00.000-05:00

It is the middle of the week and the middle of the month. If there were any more things going on right now, I would probably have lost my mind.

For the last couple of weeks work has been about as interesting as watching paint dry. This week however things took a turn for the chaoticly busy. Projects that were dormant came to life just as I was trying to take on some other things to pass the time. Truely a case of be careful what you wish for.

My brother is in town for some training. It has been cool having him around and it reminds me that I generally do not get to see much of him beyond the once a year visit south for Chirstmas or Thanksgiving. I'll have to re-evaluate that as the boy gets older.

Speaking of the boy, he is sick again. After road tripping with his mother to grandmothers house (200 miles or so away) then to her friends house (also about 200 miles away oddly enough in a triangle fashion) and finally to home. With all that running around and exposure to other people (and apparently sick people) it is no wonder he feels horrible. To top it off, his bottom two teeth have come in and his others are starting.... who knew they would be so sharp.

I have started to really read the Small Stakes Hold'em book and am about 1/3 of the way through it right now. Nothing super revealing in there after months of playing and adapting to playing on Party, but I'll finish it up since there's always a nugget or two that appears when you need it most. I am not disappointed having picked it up, and as others have mentioned it is easier to read it than the other Sklansky books. If you are struggling with the low limit games, this may be a good purchase for you. If you are cleaning the fish regularly, then save your clams for something more useful.

I have been gearing up for my Dragonlance PBeM campaign and have noticed that a lot of rules have changed since first edition AD&D. That is ok though, I have been having fun getting back into the fantasy and role playing. Aside from getting into the 3.5e and Dragonlance stuff I also started looking at Eberron which is the new campaign setting for D&D. Some interesting stuff there. I've only read through the first couple of chapters of the campaign setting book but so far I am interested. The concept of action points is interesting and the setting has lots of room for just about any type of adventure. The concept of a world where magic is the rule rather than the extrodinary is a bit of a twist from other campaign types. The new races bring in some nice twists from other campaign worlds and at least something new in terms of the Warforged. For classes it's more or less the standard fair however psionics are more of a core rather than a rarity. Also they've added the Artificer which seems appropriate given all the magic that abounds. That's as far as I've gotten so far, I'll leave you with just two words, Warforged Monk.

Poker: Recent and Upcoming poker rooms

2004-09-14T10:53:00.000-05:00

Awhile back I fired up Doyle's Room when they opened up. The site is back ended by platinum casino software and in general the site was pretty weak. The interfaces were clumsy and the action on there was limited at best. I probably gave it a go for a month and then just walked away with a sizable deposit bonus unclaimed ($350) and down $60 from my initial deposit. It is somewhat unfortunate because I had some high hopes for it, probably because I bought into the hype of it being a poker room endorsed by Doyle. I think if the software/client were better behaved that it would cure a lot of ills, but it is damn hard to get away from the fish barrel that is Party.

Speaking of new poker rooms, Check n Raise Poker is opening its doors later this month (the 26th I believe) and I am somewhat anxious to see what it will be like. I will try to ignore the grief they caused with Pauly last month and look forward to a client and service that cater more to making the online experience better. Or at least, that's what their hype would lead you to believe. Obviously it is hard to know how it is going to play until they open up, but assuming their client really is the cats meow and they can attract enough players, it may be worth spending some time on.

The ultimate client IMO would be a combination of UB(mini view for multi-tabling) and Stars(avatars and overall general client appearance) with the user base of Party. You got to wonder how hard it would be to write a kick ass service with a client API and let some solid interface people create skins/clients for poker rooms.

General: Don't second guess

2004-09-11T15:30:00.000-05:00

For my fantasy football team I've got McNair and Delhomme and I had originally planned to use Delhomme this weekend, but let myself be talked out of it. I'm almost certain this is going to be one of those examples about second guessing yourself. The Tennessee vs. Miami game is over and Tennessee won it, but to judge by the play by play, you would think that McNair broke his arm in the first quarter. Lets see here, 14 attempts, 9 completions for a stunning 73 passing yards for the whole game. I should be thankful that he hasn't thrown any interceptions... oh wait, you have to throw the ball for that to happen. On an alternate note, there have been 21 penalties for 132 yards (14 of them and 77 yards for Miami) during this game. Every play where yards are gained looks like a fricken yo-yo. The yards lost for Miami would be worse except they got a few of those penalties in the redzone near the goal line so only lost a yard or so per penalty. I'm not bitter or anything. I'm thankful that the 1 yard pass into the endzone got me some points for that touchdown. Without that I think McNair would have racked up a whole 3 points for my team today. The moral of this missive, don't second guess yourself. Do your analysis, make your call and if you're still sort of on the fence, go with your gut, don't look to someone else to tell you how to play it (especially if they're in your league).

Poker: Bad Beat Tables

2004-09-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

My Party bankroll really is not in a shape to play the Bad Beat tables but that's only a minor cautionary flag if you are willing to play solid and not get caught up in the craziness that seems to afflict people who are trying to put bad beats on one another. The last few days I've been catching a stream of cold cards while playing $.50/$1. After annihilating about half my bankroll ($70) there, I opted to take a break and change things up a bit. I played a SNG that laid some evil bad beats against me (and the rest of the table for that fact). The fellow to my right was playing very aggressively and betting into pots when he had nothing or bottom pair. After the table pretty much figured him out, his bets didn't get any real respect, but he must have tipped the dealer pretty nice because in looking back through the showdown history, there were 4 All-ins against him after he bet to try and steal the pot where his trash hand caught runner and at least once, runner-runner to knock people out. I busted out on the bubble when he shoved against my raise with JJ and I called his 88 putting me all in. Ah well, maybe hold'em is not my game right now. I figured I would give omaha hi/lo a shot and sat down at a 5+1 SNG. It was fun but I busted out 9th. <yoda>Much to learn of Omaha I have</yoda>. After that triumphant attempt at poker for the last two days where I set myself back I figured I would sleep on it and give it another go today.

Hey, how about playing the bad beat tables? The reasonable side of me would never suggest someone move up in limits just to make up for losses, but I rationalized it by figuring that if I was going to get pummeled by bad beats, then I was gonna play where it might pay me off anyway, and if I had gone back to the $.50/$1 or even the $25NL tables I was likely to play scared. So, I took it all to the $2/$4 bad beat table and planned to win or bust, but definitely not play scared. I sat down with my $60 and contributed my blinds for the first couple of orbits and caught my card rush in the 3rd orbit. The first winning hand was one of those trusting your parachute plays. I've catch 88 in the BB. The flop came down 6c,3c,Kc. One over card, very likely that one (if not more) of the 4 other people in the hand have a K at least and possibly a club flush but, I put a cheap feeler out there to see. So I lead out with $2 UTG and it called all the way around. Ok, no raise so either someone is slow playing their flush, or they have a weak Ks. The turn is an 8h giving me the set, and I'm no longer worried about the Kx, but what about a slow played flush? Probably a weak area in my game is that I'm aggressive when I probably shouldn't be. I lead off UTG again with the $4 bet to see who gets froggy. I lose one but have 3 callers. Hmm, Kx and a weak flushes that just won't let go? The river pairs the board with a 3d and I'm figuring my house is golden so I lead off again lose one player but get the other two to pay me off with exactly what I figured, Kx. The one I couldn't figure out, he was playing K2o, WTF? Yes, the 2 was a club, but he couldn't possibly think that would allow him to scrape if a 4th club hit. The other one was only slightly more reasonable in that he had K6o (no clubs) and had nabbed two pair on the flop. The next hand was J4s and I was the SB. Easy enough to get away from when the flop missed me completely. It didn't go so well for the guy who caught his gutshot straight on the turn and ran into quad 5s on the river.

The next hand was a fluke, I would say I was click happy and accidentally called on the button with J8s but that wouldn't explain what came next. The flop came down 7c, 8s, Ts (I have hearts) and there are 4 of us looking at this thing. It checks around to the guy on my right (the same knob who played K2o earlier) and he bets out. I'm not sure why I decided trying to push him around was a good thing but I raised it up to $4, the other two guys call, and he raises to $6. I am claiming temporary insanity because I called with my middle pair, and oddly enough, so did the other two players. The turn brought a 3s (remember I have hearts) and the guy to my right leads off again. Ok, so my options here are a gut shot draw to a 9 to catch a straight that can't beat the spade flush. Maybe the 3rd 8 that would give me a set that could also not beat the spade flush. This is clearly a folding situation, so I call and so do the other two guys. The turn drops Td on the board pairing the high cards and it checks all the way around to me. Somehow sanity reasserted itself and I also check and end up scraping with my two pair, Ts and 8s. Hopefully, I have described this accurately enough to show the MANY mistakes that were made by me. Yes, I scraped but from beginning to end I shouldn't have been in that hand with my short stack against 3 other people with no outs that could beat what appeared to be an obvious flush.

However, if I ever needed a hand like that to set up a big scrape, it came at the right time. The very next hand I've got A8s (hearts again) in LP and I call a small raise just before me as do 4 others putting us 6 handed going to the flop. I must have paid my dues because the flop gave me the nut flush with 6,7,3 and being in late position really let me take advantage of it. The guy to my right leads off and I go ahead and raise getting two callers and losing two players before it gets back around to him and he must have read my mind and raises it up just so I can cap it and keeping the other two callers. Can you say "payday?" I knew you could. The turn is a 2s and the guy to my right is still betting into me, so I oblige him by raising and we cap it again on the turn. I'm thinking at this point he's got a set and is going to be pretty unhappy if he thinks I'm still suffering from the insanity of last hand. And just to turn that little molehill of a thought into a mountain the river pairs the board with a 3d. Can you say, "Sheeeee-it?" That's a movie reference that I just can't remember the name of right now... has Edward Norton in it and he's getting busted by the DEA because he's got drugs in his couch. Anyway back to my real nightmare, he leads off again and I figure I'm making my crying call into an $88 pot. Turns out he was holding KJs and I scraped $93. WTF was he thinking? I mean even if he did have me pegged as a maniac from the last hand, even maniacs catch cards and he was content to bet into me and cap it out with less than the nuts.

All of this is to say, that I had a bit of a roller coaster experience the last few days, I'm back up and above my goal for the week, and that if you're not playing them you should seriously consider the bad beat tables. If nothing else you can come take my money when I have my lapses in sanity.

General: Crunch Time

2004-09-10T09:56:00.000-05:00

So the season is upon me and it's crunch time. I got the royal shaft in the Yahoo Autodraft in terms of running backs, and then to add some icing to that crap cake, 4 of my players hit the injured list and at least one of them out for the season. So, here's the line up I'm running this weekend.

Starting Lineup -
QB S. McNair (Ten - QB)
WR S. Moss (NYJ - WR)
WR An. Johnson (Hou - WR)
WR C. Rogers (Det - WR)
RB M. Williams (Min - RB) [Traded Steven Jackson to cover for Bennett]
RB W. Dunn (Atl - RB) [Traded Reggie Wayne for a starting RB]
TE L. Smith (Phi - TE)
K M. Andersen (Min - K) [A 'lucky' waiver pickup after losing Nedney]
DEF Jacksonville (Jac - DEF)

The Bench -
BN J. Delhomme (Car - QB)
BN A. Boldin (Ari - WR) [Injured]
BN W. Green (Cle - RB)
BN S. Morris (Mia - RB) [Picked up off waivers, dropped Calico]
BN M. Bennett (Min - RB) [Injured]
BN G. Jones (Jac - RB)
BN B. Franks (GB - TE)
BN P. Dawson (Cle - K)
BN Pittsburgh (Pit - DEF)

General: If I were single today

2004-09-09T16:13:00.000-05:00

The wife has been gone for a couple of days to help her mother redecorate her kitchen as a birthday present. This also means that the boy is gone leaving me with the cat and the dog. Honestly, I could do without the dog, and the cat... well he can take care of himself and generally ignores me until he needs some attention or food. So as I'm getting ready for work this morning in my way to quiet house the question occured to me, what would I do if I were single?

Things sort of break down into catagories of priority of which only the 'neccessities' are important. My neccessities would break down to the following:

Companionship (of the human female variety)
An income stream (to pay for toys, entertainment, bills)
Food (A mans gotta eat)
Transportation (Walking will only take you so far)

Funny that being 'with' someone is still a pretty high priority. I guess it's hard to let go of the idea of having someone to share your time with, not to mention the physical and psychological well being benefits being in a relationship grants you. That being the case, there is this gorgeous red head that works in a retail branch of the same bank I work for that would probably be filing a restraining order against me after the first attempt to ask her on a date. It is odd being old (relatively speaking). If I had the self confidence around women that I have now, 10 years ago, the world would be a different place. However, that still rules out the clubbing and bar scene since that is the hunting grounds of the twenty something crowd.

I would most likely maintain the type of job I have now, however with no responsibilites other than myself, I might be a little more willing to take risks in terms of exploring career options. What I do for a living is not hard, in fact some days I fantasize about getting a mindless clone to replace me in most meetings. I was also at the right place, at the right time, during the Internet boom and bust so I have no real complaints about anything. However, if my lifestyle wasn't so engrained and I didn't have any dependants, I probably would make a stab at becoming a pro poker player. I have credible skills that may (or may not) be dy-no-mite! with significant time and effort invested in playing. I would probably also become a teacher. Elementry or Middle School I think. I enjoy enteracting with children, and the opportunity to warp fragile little minds shouldn't be missed if you can help it. Maybe adult education wouldn't be so bad. I'm a soft skills kind of guy so I like to think that public speaking is something I'm good at. I'm not sure if I'm a good motivator though. I can see when things need to be done, plan to accomplish it successfully, and I have been able to coordinate others in achieving specific objectives. However, I am not certain that I have what it takes to really motivate people. When I think of people who have successfully motivated me to do things, I like to think that I've learned something from them and would apply the same principles and drive to motivating others. It is just one of those gray areas for me.

On the food front, that's a tough one. Being single has some other hassles associated with it. Especially when you reference need #1. That means I would probably have to eat better than I do now, and add more exercise to the mix. I should be exercising more now, but that is really not the point. Back in the before I was married time, I took care of myself well enough. I cooked and at reasonably healthy for a poor college student. Anyway I guess I would have to start cooking for myself again and that's not really all bad, I'm good at it. I'm probably not Boy Genius good, but I can hold my own.

On the transportation front, I probably would not change much. I have a Mazda 6 that is a nice warm yellow in color. Being single I would have probably gotten the stick instead of the automatic and also the black leather instead of the scotch guarded fabric, but it is a great car that is fun to drive. Because it is bright yellow and also has the sports package with some additional cosmetic upgrades, it turns heads and gets lots of positive comments. My ultimate dream machine is a BMW M5, but I'm not that rich yet.

Poker: Card Rushes and "Lots of Action"

2004-09-09T15:23:00.000-05:00

So a week or so ago I started mulling over the idea on card rushes and their occurrence. Should you play in a manner that may or may not induce them, or should you just ignored such obvious nonsense and play your normal game and enjoy the occasional streak?

I really have given this a lot of thought, but I suspect that what I am about to write is just going to sound very Brunson-esq. Perhaps that's appropriate since one of the main thoughts on trying to take control of a table through rushes comes right from his book Super System. The strategy, if you want to call it that, is that when you have a winning hand, you play the following hand (cheaply if necessary) regardless of the cards. The result being that you can capitalize on the times when the deck is slapping you in the face no matter what you play. I believe there's also a psychological component that applies to higher limit and no-limit games in that when a person is on fire, you're less likely to tangle with them without a great hand.

When I first suggested this as a valid playing strategy I mostly caught a lot of comments to the effect of playing any two cards(ATC) after a winning hand only has a negative expected value. It was never my intention to imply that no matter what you should play a hand after winning. Frankly, without a little luck, you're not going to catch great cards hand after hand. What Brunson suggested, and I support, is playing the hand if you can do it cheaply. After a lot of reflection, my reason for doing this is less about creating a card rush, and more about giving a little action. If I make a loose play cheaply and getting away from it quickly when it doesn't work out then I'm giving some action so that later on I get action when someone believes I am playing a little too loose.

I've been playing this concept for a couple of weeks now and at least online (the only place I can get accurate records) I have been gaining about 8 BB/hr. The frightening statistic is that my flops seen % floats around the 40% - 50% range which makes me look like a bloody maniac. Prior to playing ATC after a winning hand my flops seen was around 30% - 35% and honestly my gains were about the same 7 or 8 BB/hr. So, while I have not really been able to play enough hands over a long enough period of time to definitively say that this is a viable strategy or not, my earn rate hasn't suffered and I sure get to play in lots of hands.

I would be interested to hear some feedback from anyone who seriously attempts to employ this strategy. My own results could be skewed from a combination of factors so any other input would be appreciated.

General: Feedback Loop

2004-09-09T15:12:00.000-05:00

So the other day I solicited some feedback on my writing from someone else who's writing I have come to respect. Yes, this is a personal effort, however one of my primary goals with starting and continuing with a blog has been to improve me writing skills. Honestly, I am pretty stunned with my ability to have stuck with this. Perhaps even more so that I have found that I actually enjoy writing about all the little odds, ends, and experiences of my days. I read every blog in my list (and some that have not quite made it to my blogroll) on a daily basis, or at least as frequently as they post and it appears in my Bloglines feeds. I used to be a little more active in the commenting on other peoples posts but lately it has felt a little dry to just chime in and say that I agree with the half dozen other people that already commented on your post. I am not sure why I have slowed down in that area. I know I appreciate it when people chime in on my posts and I figure that like links, comments can and should be reciprocal. Thanks to all of you who have provided hours of advice, entertainment, and the occasional vicarious thrill.

General: Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB)

2004-09-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

I nearly choked on my Pepsi when I read this.

Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB)
By Dave Barry

I like to think that I am a modest person. (I also like to think that I look like Brad Pitt naked, but that is not the issue here.) There comes a time, however, when a person must toot his own personal horn, and for me, that time is now.

A new book has confirmed a theory that I first proposed in 1987, in a column explaining why men are physically unqualified to do housework.

The problem, I argued, is that men -- because of a tragic genetic flaw -- cannot see dirt until there is enough of it to support agriculture. This puts men at a huge disadvantage against women, who can detect a single dirt molecule 20 feet away. This is why a man and a woman can both be looking at the same bathroom commode, and the man -- hindered by Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB) -- will perceive the commode surface as being clean enough for heart surgery or even meat slicing; whereas the woman can't even see the commode, only a teeming, commode-shaped swarm of bacteria.

A woman can spend two hours cleaning a toothbrush holder and still not be totally satisfied; whereas if you ask a man to clean the entire New York City subway system, he'll go down there with a bottle of Windex and a single paper towel, then emerge 25 minutes later, weary but satisfied with a job well done.

When I wrote about Male Genetic Dirt Blindness, many irate readers complained that I was engaging in sexist stereotyping, as well as making lame excuses for the fact that men are lazy pigs. All of these irate readers belonged to a gender that I will not identify here, other than to say: Guess what, ladies? There is now scientific proof that I was right. This proof appears in a new book titled "What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works".

I have not personally read this book, because, as a journalist, I am too busy writing about it. But according to an article by Reuters, the book states that a man's brain "takes in less sensory detail than a woman's, so he doesn't see or even feel the dust and household mess in the same way." Got that? We can't see or feel the mess! We're like: "What snow tires in the dining room? Oh, those snow tires in the dining room.''. And this is only one of the differences between men's and women's brains.

Another difference involves a brain part called the "cingulate gyrus" which is the sector where emotions are located. The Reuters article does not describe the cingulate gyrus, but presumably in women it is a structure the size of a mature cantaloupe, containing a vast quantity of complex, endlessly re-calibrated emotional data involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of human relationships; whereas in men it is basically a cashew filled with NFL highlights.

In any event, it turns out that women's brains secrete more of the chemicals "oxytocin" and "serotonin", which, according to biologists, cause humans to feel they have an inadequate supply of shoes. No, seriously, these chemicals cause humans to want to bond with other humans, which is why women like to share their feelings. Some women (and here I am referring to my wife) can share as many as three days' worth of feelings about an event that took eight seconds to actually happen.

We men, on the other hand, are reluctant to share our feelings, in large part because we often don't have any. Really. Ask any guy: A lot of the time, when we look like we're thinking, we just have this low-level humming sound in our brains. That's why, in male-female conversations, the male part often consists entirely of him going "hmmmm." This frustrates the woman, who wants to know what he's really thinking. In fact, what he's thinking is, literally, "hmmmm."

So anyway, according to the Reuters article, when a man, instead of sharing feelings with his mate, chooses to lie on the sofa, holding the remote control and monitoring 750 television programs simultaneously by changing the channel every one-half second (pausing slightly longer for programs that feature touchdowns, fighting, shooting, car crashes or bosoms) his mate should not come to the mistaken conclusion that he is an insensitive jerk. In fact, he is responding to scientific biological brain chemicals that require him to behave this way for scientific reasons, as detailed in the scientific book "What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works", which I frankly cannot recommend highly enough.

In conclusion, no way was that pass interference.

Poker: Party Improvements

2004-09-08T18:38:00.000-05:00

So, I finally caught some time this afternoon and fired up Party to work on my weekly goal and kill some time. I hit my mark and as I was cleaning up I went to request my hand histories which is my normal habit and lo and behold, I get a pop-up saying they are not available on my local hard drive. This seriously rocks. Hopefully this means no more lost hands and no more worrying about missing hands when you breach 100 hands between requests. Yay!

General/Poker: Where did it all go?

2004-09-07T13:50:00.000-05:00

I feel so lazy lately. In the last week or so, my posting has really dropped off. Not so much because I've been ignoring my blog, but because I've been so busy with everything and nothing all at the same time. Other than the few things I have already written about, absolutely nothing has happened worth writing about lately. That being the case, I will now inflict upon you all the crap still floating around in my head.

On the poker front, I've been doing relatively well. This of course being relative to how much I'm actually getting to play which isn't much lately. I'm on track with the goal I set earlier, so I have nothing to complain about. I did have the home game this weekend and was playing real well right up until the very end. We played a tournament and I took 2nd in that when my A6 didn't improve over an unimproved A7. Them's the breaks. We played ring games after which consisted of Stud, Hold'em, and an orbit of Omaha. We were playing 6 handed and I was playing a nice solid game. I got schooled by the wife a couple of times early on after I had made a big deal of sitting down with her a couple of nights before to explain how to play it tight so she could play pretty much all night without losing all her money early on. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so liberal with the lesson ;) Anyway, we got down to 4 handed after awhile and then the games got expanded to 5 stud, 5 draw, baseball, and finally midnight baseball. The midnight baseball game cost me my winnings and my buy-in but that's life. I pulled a 3 with 3 or 4 cards left to roll and after counting out the pot figured out it would put me all in to match. That didn't seem so bad considering at the time I had the best hand with cards to go and if I caught another 3, that would be just fine because I was already all-in. So I went.... and lost. That's ok, it was good times and good fun with friends. Final tally at the end of the night left me -$20, the wife -$1, Steel_Rain +$33, his brother -$17, my canadian friend and his girlfriend +$5. The funny part is that my friends girlfriend was also pretty new to playing and he got cleaned out and she recovered nicely for him ;)

Speaking of my friend from Canada and his girlfriend. I was glad he could make it down and seeing him and meeting her made for a nice weekend. Other than dinner at Fogo the other night we went out to Navy Pier (something I honestly hadn't done before and I have lived in Chicago for a long time now). It was fun, and a bit aggravating when the ticket dork miscounted the tickets she gave us for the ferris wheel and then rather than acknowledge the mistake basically called my friend a liar. It's not like this was a tough issue, she got $20, and gave us 3 tickets (tickets are $5 ea). What's the problem here? So after some escalating back and forth and $5 MORE later, we're climbing 150 feet into the air and checking out the skyline of Chicago. Now, just to add insult to injury here, we had timed it fairly close so that we would be up near the top of the ride when the nightly fireworks started. They started late and we were on the down side behind a building with no view of the lake where the fireworks were being set off when they started. Bastards. This was obviously conspiracy to mess with my evening.

I have been reading my AD&D books and finally came to the conclusion that I miss gaming of the roleplaying, paper, and dice variety. To that end I've put together a quick campaign that I'm building on in the Dragonlance setting. I'm doing this for a PBeM campaign that will probably start up in a week or so. I've always liked the Dragonlance stories and campaign setting. It's always seemed to be more geared towards roleplaying and getting your characters more involved than 'travel to the dungeon, slay the creatures, collect the loot, rinse, and repeat.' So for that, my hats off to Margaret Wies and Tracey Hickman for building a vivid and gripping world that has provided years of entertainment.

Work is about as boring as it gets right now. All of the projects I'm involved in are stalled for one reason or another outside of my control. Because of this I've been relegated to helping with production support activities, or doing nothing at all. I don't mind helping out on the production stuff, but it is definitely not what I hired on for so the sooner the projects start back up, the happier I will be. What makes this an absolutely horrible situation is that because we are still in the process of reorganizing the teams, I do not have anything going on giving me some visibility to the folks that are building the new teams out. I am not worried about losing my job, but I am concerned that I may miss out on an opportunity because I'm unaware of it and the people making those decisions don't have any visibility to me. I could do some cold calling and just get my name out there, but one of the other factors here is that the team I'm currently on hasn't had any real announcements in terms of it's future structure and frankly I like the folks I work with, no knob-heads to speak of and if it's going to stay intact, I wouldn't be upset with staying where I am. So I'm trying not to let too much of the 'grass is greener syndrome' grind on my mind.

The boy is super mobile now and using anything he can get a grip on to pull himself up into a standing position. Of course he doesn't have any real balance while standing yet so it requires that whatever he is holding onto not being mobile. This isn't so bad except for thing in the kitchen. When he falls and hits the carpet, there's plenty of padding and he's not falling far enough to cause any damage. The kitchen on the other hand has a floor made for cracking skulls so I suspect it's more a matter of when than if. *sigh* However, if I want to just turn him into a drooling, unmoving, zombie all I have to do is pop in the Baby Mozart DVD and he goes into this unbreakable trance. That helps when I've got baby duty while trying to get some work done.

General: Odds and Ends

2004-09-05T01:16:00.000-05:00

There are a few things that really make me feel pretty dumb when I either can't figure out something that should be pretty easy to make work like the new version of Poker Tracker that's supposed to be able to do some auto analysis and determine the level of player(s) you're up against after a certain number of hands goes by. Still haven't been able to get it to work. I guess I'll just have to wait until it's out of beta and the documentation is better.

In other news, I went out to dinner this evening with the wife and a couple of friends. We ate at the Fogo de Chao here in Chicago. There's basically nothing finer than all you can eat meat. Just as we were sitting down to our table my wife notices that Kerry Wood and Matt Clement are waiting to be seated. Me, not being much of sports person, I didn't recognize them but the wife was basically leaping out of her skin. Of course, I do recognize that both of my brother-in-laws are HUGE Cubs fans. So my wife does the pee pee dance or something trying to screw up the nerve to ask for an autograph. Me, I'm like WTF? So there I am, I politely approach and say (remember, I'm not a sports person and barely recognize that this guy is a pitcher for the Cubs), "Excuse me, are you Kerry Woods?" Kerry, "Wood, yeah I am." .... So long story short, I probably came off like an ass by not even getting his name right, but he did give me an autograph for my brother-in-law that we're gonna get framed and give to him for his birthday.

General: Sifting through history

2004-09-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

So I'm a bit of a pack rat. Not in the sense that I can't throw anything away, but I have a hard time letting go of things that I once had more than a passing interest in. For example, until a few moments ago I had a shelf of Dragon Magazines from 1979 through 1988. I say until a few moments ago, because I need room for other books and magazines and well, they are disposable. I mean really, the game has definitely moved on since 1988 although a lot of the cover artwork was really good I need to let go a little. What really brought this collection into perspective is that I happened to acquire the most recent issue of Dragon and Dungeon while at Gen Con this year. I was about to pitch them also when I noticed that Wil Wheaton had a column in Dungeon. That being the only thing I read from Dungeon I'm pretty glad I did. Wil was writing about cracking the books after many years so that he could run a game for his sons. That dude rocks. It makes me all the more anxious for my son to get a little older so that I can share with him the 'cool/geeky' things that I know and enjoy.

General: Template Trashed

2004-09-02T14:06:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure what caused it, but something made my template go all goofy so being the lazy person I am at the moment, I decided to fall back to a blogger standard template. I may, or may not, try and fix my previous template. This for now should resolve the display weirdness that was occurring.

Poker: General Malaise

2004-09-02T10:23:00.000-05:00

In the poker game of life, women are holding 72o and always cracking your nuts.
--sloejack

Last month was actually an up month. Of course the trip to Gen Con generated a hit against the bankroll, but that is what it is there for right? I would like to thank the fish on Party and Pacific for helping fund my vacation.

My current goal is to have poker cover my Gen Con vacation next year. In figuring out what I spent, along with what I wanted to spend I figured that if I could average $20 a week from now until Gen Con Indy 2005, I would have it covered. Given that my play last month was severely cut short (relative to previous months) for a variety of reasons I figured that this was a reasonable goal.

Something funny I've come to realize lately is that I love playing poker, I love talking about poker, I hate grinding through games just to build up a bankroll. The most fun I have playing is with people I know, being somewhat social, and basically not taking things too seriously. Grinding up a table by myself can be profitable but boring. So what's my motivation in playing? To have some fun, make a little money on my mediocre to decent poker skills and pacify the gambling monkey. Sure, I have held the fantasies about putting in the time and practice enough to try and replace the income I work for with income from a hobby, but that chances of me actually being good enough to follow through on that are pretty damn slim. Just to maintain equilibrium we are talking about needing to regularly pull down $9k-$10k a month in net winnings. Besides, there are some new things on the horizon that are destined to compete for my game playing time. The new Star Wars Galaxies expansion is coming out in about a month. Also this winter Microsoft is releasing Settlers of Catan for playing online.

I'm still working on organizing my thoughts about card rushes, their psychological impact on a table, and stratagies for maximizing this. I've appriciated all the feedback thus far as it's helped confirm some of my thinking or adjusted it as needed.

In more relevant news...

I finished Amber and Ashes last night. That was a great read. Of course now I'm annoyed because the book just hit the bookstores this week and so it will be some number of months before the next one comes out. *sigh* I did order the Annotated Legends so hopefully that will be here soon and that will tied me over. In the mean time I'm reading the next pulp novel in the Tom Clancy Op-Center series, Call to Treason, it helps the two hour train commute every day pass with relative ease. I've had a hard time really starting Small Stakes Hold'em but I'll probably try and start and finish it before the month ends and at least figure out if there are any parts worth re-reading to improve my play.

Since Iggy mentioned it I gave the Badbeat tables a run yesterday at $2/$4 while I was doing some system patching for work. It was interesting how often people would call you all the way to the river and then fold at the river. It was an up session for me so I didn't notice the rake being too oppressive. The thing I did notice is that the jackpot was over 100k and the qualifier to get it was quad 8s, go figure.

Since I was up pretty late from patching last night, and I am going to be doing it again tonight I opted to work from home today which means basically catching up on documentation and keeping the right eye on a poker table. I stumbled across ICP purely by accident (I hadn't had him in my buddy list until today) and since there was an open seat at his table I figured why not have a seat and at least be social. Some spectacular (bad) play on this table and it was ripe for the picking and getting beat down. At one point I was +30BB but walked away for lunch +15BB. ICP didn't admit it but I suspect my chatty ass was a bit of distraction since he was multi-tabling and getting his big hands cracked by truly bizarre cards. The conversation that ensued there is what generated the quote above. It seems much more appropriate than the associated Rounders quote. Speaking of which, I've just been told to clean my office... Ah well, it's for a good cause, I've got friends coming in from Canada tomorrow and what is building up to be a decent home game for Sunday.

General: How does this thing work?

2004-08-31T12:51:00.000-05:00

So my office mates have kicked off a fantasy football season and once again I'm in without a clue. Perhaps some of you better sports/football/stats equipped folks might take pity on me and help me out with the draft. It's an auto-draft so the only thing I get to do is alter my rankings on 25 players and/or exclude them from my ranking. Problem is, none of the names mean anything to me, and I don't understand if all of these guys are in the same/similar positions, or if I'm ranking my priority for the whole offense. Anyway, here's the ranking I've picked based on some advice, any help or advice you may wish to impart, I would be most appreciative. Last year I don't think I came in last, but that was due entirely to luck of the draw. I sucked so bad I forgot to track playing schedules so I had guys in that were not even playing some weeks. :( Anyway, I'd like to try and at least be competitive this year if nothing else. Is there anyone else in my list I should have and don't, what do you think of my priority order?

1. A. Green
2. M. Bennett
3. S. Moss
4. S. McNair
5. A. Johnson
6. C. Rogers
7. R. Wayne
8. K. Winslow
9. A. Boldin
10. G. Jones
11. J. Delhomme
12. B. Franks
13. Pittsburgh
14. J. Nedney
15. D. Carr
16. C. Brown
17. T. Calico
18. L. Smith
19. J. Brown
20. Jacksonville

Default Rankings (provided by Yahoo)
21. P. Holmes
22. L. Tomlinson
23. C. Portis
24. S. Alexander
25. D. McAllister

General: I'm going to be rich!

2004-08-31T08:39:00.000-05:00

This was too funny to pass up:

Poker: Who is playing in command?

2004-08-30T22:21:00.000-05:00

No. Who's playing first. -- Abbott and Costello

I've posed the following questions to a small group of bloggers:

How often do you figure you go on card rushes?

When you do, would you say it's something that just happens, or do you try and make them happen?

Feel free to answer them for yourself before reading on. Last month I can recall going on quite a few card rushes and having a real good month. As this month is winding down I'm looking back through poker tracker and not really seeing anything more than break even for the most part. Closer analysis showed that I'm not playing as many hands per hands dealt as I did in the previous month. Then like someone lighting a candle in a dark room, it hit me.

I'm playing on Pacific (I already withdrew my deposit, just playing on the bonus and the winnings) when I get KK and take down a decent pot. My next hand is J5s and I fold it away. My next hand after that is KQs and I take down another decent pot. For the record, the J5s would have taken down another monster and cracked AA. I wondered for a long time why I didn't play the J5. Not more than a month ago, I would have without hesitation. I missed out on a decent card rush that would have netted me at least 3 nice pots (maybe more) instead of 2.

Ok, so why would I have played a marginal hand like J5s and what does that have to do with rushes? I'd play it because Doyle told me to, and by not playing I'll never catch even half the rushes that I should. If you are using Poker Tracker and have the patience to, go back through and find every hand you've won in the last month, and then look at the next hand. Did you play it? If you didn't, would it have won if you had? That's tough to say if you didn't get to see all the community cards, but personally in looking back over my month there were quite a few times I could have seen the next hand cheap enough and won with it despite how raggedy the hole cards looked. How much money did I leave on the table by not following the aggressive sage advice of Doyle Brunson? There is of course the converse question of how much money did I save by not doing it? The answer to that one is easy though, not as much as I would have won.

So based on my limited experience in researching my play thus far, I'm standing in the camp of making rushes happen as opposed to just catching a nice string of great cards. The reason I think this is important is because there is a psychological shift of the players during card rushes and why it seems that in tournaments, or ring play, a big stack just seems to get bigger. I try to play the cards I'm dealt but some of those low-middle pairs don't look so good when going up against a guy that's just tearing a table up. It's this psychological advantage that I really want to explore and exploit. However, rather than make up my own lame interpretation of what this means, I'll quote from the good book:

...if I win a pot, I nearly always play the next pot as well, within reason. Although the cards will break even in the long run, card rushes do happen. A card rush means more than that you're winning a lot of pots. It also means that you have temporary command of the game.

He's specifically talking about no-limit games with this quote, but in my experience I've also seen similar behavior in limit games with reasonable (no real calling stations) players. It all boils down to taking command of the game and exploiting that temporary status for maximum return.

In home games it's pretty easy to take command without ever really doing anything. If you've built up a solid reputation there's going to be a certain group that just don't play their best against you, because they know you're better than them. Online, everyone realizes you're actually a 12 year old tabby with chronic hair balls and a cat nip addiction you just can't kick. So, naturally when you sit down at a new table, you get little to no respect. I think that a key factor in building that temporary/short term solid reputation is to seek and exploit the rushes. It seems to me the only way to make rushes happen is to do as Doyle says and play the follow up hands after a win and roll with it. The key to not getting punished for trying to make your rush is to get away from the hand if the flop misses you. Assuming you were able to limp in cheaply then you're out 1 BB. If the flop hits you though, more than likely you're going to be scraping more than 1 BB and that should more than make up for the misses.

The following comment(edited) is offered up by DoubleAs

Trying to make card rushes happen always fails. After losing several big pots, I sometimes push too hard and just compound the losing. You can't make cards happen and trying to make people fold won't work for very long. It seems that people quickly pick up on the fact that you've become a betting machine and will think you're out of line. They'll play back at you with mediocre hands or call you down with bottom pair guessing that you can't possibly have a good hand AGAIN. That mentality on your opponents' part is what makes card rushes so profitable. It must be ego issues on their part. I believe that poker is best played without emotion or ego by staying analytical and letting the cards work for you.

I think this supports the point of getting away from the hands when they don't hit. You can't force a rush, either the cards are with you, or they are not. Remember the point of what I'm suggesting is that by just playing the cards you're dealt, you may be missing out on the other hands you could, should, have won not so much because you played any two cards after a win, but because you're working to build momentum that will win you more chips with the monsters you do hold or draw.

This probably isn't too applicable to low limit games where the money just falls into your lap because your opponents are a sitting mistake. I can see however where this would be much more applicable in long term no limit games, tournaments, and higher stakes limit games.

General: Gen Con - Star Wars Pics

2004-08-30T12:12:00.000-05:00

Make Money	20%
Socialize, meet people	15%
Relax	10%
Get excitement of risk	15%
Test self against competitive challenges	25%
Sense of accomplishment from winning	15%
Pass time	0%