Author Archives: Shadowtwin

When the cards finally hit

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There is nothing more frustrating that sitting around watching all your chips dwindle away, especially when you have a fairly strong hand, but you just don’t get hit on the flop, turn, or river. That was the kind of luck I was having all day today. One hand in particular, I had a suited slick and found myself all in against a Q-J offsuit. Sure, I am not a huge favorite to win this one, but he does have only six outs, barring a straight draw, but that would split the pot anyway -well, unless it was 8-Q, but that didn’t happen. What did happen though, was a Q-2-J flop that effectively ended it for me. Then, just to kick me in the nuts, the river was another Jack. Another hand, I did get hit, and made an Ace high flush on the turn, again holding a suited slick, but lost when the river hit a 6 giving the other guy a full house. Yes, he went all in with a 2-6 offsuit after I had raised it 5x pre-flop. It’s no wonder good players hate playing with us donkeys: you simply can’t be prepared for someone to pull that hand out of there ass. What are the odds of them making the full house? Some days it seems like about 1 in 3.

When I decided to play another game several hours later, I went with a low buy in, 18 player game. I sure didn’t want to put much money out with the luck I had been having. Of course, when the prize for winning is only ten bucks, then, then I start to get the cards, and in a big way. Hell, it seems like I couldn’t miss. I started taking some pictures just after what would turn out to be my last shit hand of the tournament. Then I kept on taking them, ’cause it was just silly the cards that I was getting. I offer it up here for your relative enjoyment:

With the suited A-8 in middle position, I limped into this one. I had been having horrible luck all night at this point.

When it turned into an Ace high flush on the river, I bet all in, since the big stack in the bottom middle had raised it when the king came on the turn:

Alas, Mr. Big stack didn’t want to tangle, so it was just me and the short stack that got to show off our cards, and the beginning of what would be a series of awesome hands for me:

I came across a pair of jacks on the button, and was trying to slow play it, hoping to take out at least two of the shorter stacks. Then the one on the top right here went all in. I was the only one to call it, but I only got a pre-flop screenshot of this one (I had two tournaments running at the same time so some of the screenshots I took were of the wrong damn game). She went out on this hand, and it took me to second in chips:

Got an A-4 suited in the big blind, which turned into a bit of a raise-fest. I had to call this one just because of the size of the pot. I would probably have called it anyway though, I always like to see a flop if I have an A-anything that are suited.

PokerStars gave me a gift on this one. I bet half the pot, but even that was too rich for Mr. Bingo:

Look at the size of that pot. It sure is nice when more than one person calls the all in from the short stack. All I had to do now was wait this out and hope that he didn’t catch two running hearts.

Which he didn’t. At that point I took the chip lead:

We’re down to six people when I get the A-J offsuit in late position:

The bet is too high for all but one guy by the time I get my ace on the turn:

So what should come on the river? Well a jack. Giving me top two pair.

I was pretty sure I had this hand won, but when he bet 500 into it, I didn’t want to risk an all in call only to see that he had pocket threes or a 4-5 offsuit. Of course he didn’t have it, he had a broken flush, and a hell of a low one at that:

I am in the small blind here, going in on a hand that I would probably have laid down if I didn’t have such a huge stack at this point. The flop gives me a gutshot draw, but the bet to see the turn is pretty small:

And, it checked around to the river, which was good ’cause if anyone had bet into it at this point I would have probably laid them down.

This time, I bet 500 hoping to keep them both in it, or possibly get a re-raise if someone had two pair, but only one called.

Suited Q-J when we are down to four players, of course I am going in with that hand. Of course I don’t want to bet into it, I am hoping to eliminate one or both of the short stacks if the flop hits me.

The flop leaves me on a flush draw when the short stack pushes. I called him figuring I would make my flush with the luck that I had been having this game:

Turns out he was betting on the flush too. Unfortunately for him, he was doing it in the same suit as I was but with lower cards. The turn gave both of us the flush, and thus me the win. Except that he now had a gutshot straight-flush draw at the river, which he thankfully didn’t make (probably would have in the games I was playing this morning though).

We swapped a few hands back and forth in the heads up. He was having a bit better luck than I was though. Here I am shortstacked after I had lost with top two pair to his three of a kind. Sadly this would be my last win of the heads up.

We got all in on the very next hand, but it didn’t happen until the river. He had been checking since the flop when there were a bunch of small cards on the board, I paired an Ace on the turn and a Queen on the river. I thought I was gonna double-up, but he flipped over yet another three of a kind, 4’s this time.

As much as I know that you are supposed to be pissed when you finish second, I was actually pretty happy with it. I finally made a return on my buy in, and that was far better than I had been doing earlier in the day. I just wish there was some way to know when the cards are going to start falling your way so that I could do this in a game with a higher buy in. I guess that is what everyone is searching for though. The ones whose cards start to hit at exactly the right time can end up making a lot of money.

The thing is that you I can’t really approach this game with the hopes of making money or it seems to cloud your my judgment. If it takes playing the low buy in tables for the next year to get to where I can win with some consistency, thus giving me the confidence to make good judgments when I am playing for larger stakes, that is what I am going to have to do; It is far better to be winning small sums of money than losing large sums (and to me the $10 buy in to the WWDN Invitational counts as a “large sum”).

Technology sucks

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After years of screwing around with computers without ever running into any defective hardware or devices, I have really taken it on the chin of late. I detailed the problem I had with the eMachine that I recently bought, but I am happy to say that I am merrily typing away on that machine right now. So it did eventually get fixed, so no harm no foul.

Unfortunately for me, there have been other problems with computer related devices. A printer for instance. I bought a new printer shortly after I quit my job knowing that my antiquated cannon bubble jet wasn’t going to be able to print out anything approaching an impressive resume. I bought a Lexmark P4350, which worked fabulously for all of about five minutes. There are far too many motors or bands or something in that machine that relate to the paper feeding. One of those little bugger isn’t working right, so I have to feed the paper manually, one sheet at a time. I can send it in for repairs, however since I never took the time to register it, and of course don’t know where the receipt is, they are considering it a repair on out-of-warranty merchandise, which will likely cost a hell of a lot more than the machine itself did. Stupid broken printer.

Then there is the RAM that I bought to put into my shiny new computer. I put it into the slots, plugged the computer back in -which threw an amazing spark as the cord reached the case- and hit the power button. Of course the computer wouldn’t make it past the POST with the new RAM in it. Using the tried and true pull one, then the other technique, I was able to determine that only one of the sticks was bad, so at least one of them still works. Which is quite fortunate, since I have no way to get my money back on that either. I really should keep better track of my receipts. This one was over a month old though, since the RAM just sat uselessly on a shelf while I waited to get the new computer back. I don’t know what your house looks like, but around here something as small as a receipt, given a month to roam the landscape, is deep into the endangered species list, more likely already extinct.

So today I had to justify buying a new printer. That is actually a pretty easy thing to do. All you have to do is go check the prices to replace your current ink cartridges to see that it really isn’t all that much more to buy a new printer anyway. The brand name this time is Brother. I chose this one specifically because I had an old Brother electric typewriter (one which I got at a huge discount for buying the floor model after it was discontinued at Staples) which worked flawlessly for several years before it was eventually cobwebbed when I got my first computer. My boss happened to have one of the same model though, and it was still plugging away eleven years after he bought his, so it does have some staying power.

It is kind of like a crap shoot when you try to hook anything up to Windows. Xp certainly has a better compatibility list than any previous version, but the so called plug-and-play devices are still more of a plug-and-pray situation. The new printer was the latter, of course. Not only did Windows not have a driver for the printer, the printer’s own software would not install in Windows. It would just tool along for a while and all of a sudden stop. The hourglass went away, my cursor was still active, the task manager said the program was running, but there was just nada. The printer showed up in the printers section of the control panel but was listed as not having a driver, yet when I put the driver disk into the cd tray and told it to load the driver it just sat there staring at me…Mocking me.

So I searched out the drivers on the internet. Downloaded that. Uninstalled all of the previous printer drivers, rebooted the system just for good measure, and tried again. Nothing. I went to the manufacturer’s website to search out any known problems and that was where I ran into the first big problem: they don’t even have this model number listed on their website. I mean I know technology has a pretty short lifespan, but could it really have been so quick that the printer had become obsolete in the time it took me to drive home? I guess so, since I tried to register it by serial number while I was at the website and it didn’t like the serial number. I tried removing some of the letters to try to make it look like the models that they did have listed, but wasn’t ever able to get it registered.

I was able to get it to work though. It turns out that going that extra mile and actually connecting the computer to the printer can have a great impact on your ability to get the correct drivers loaded. In fact, once I actually plugged the god damn thing into the computer the cd started to autorun and went through the installation with very little interaction from the flesh bag at the keyboard. It works just great!

Unfortunately the registration problem is very real, and with the luck I am currently having with any device that has a microchip, I am sure that I am going to have to send this thing in for service sometime within the next couple of hours. I wasn’t sure if this was a tech support or customer service issue, so I e-mailed both of them. Hopefully one of them will be able to tell me what the problem with the serial number is, and why the model isn’t even listed on their website. Unless, of course, this is a one of a kind prototype that was stolen from some technology expo, then sold to Wal-Mart through the black market -I find that answer a bit unlikely.

Random randomness

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Well, blogger has been pretty fucked up of late, and since it would be a real pain in the ass to update the front page manually, as I used to do, I have instead lost a couple of complete posts by being a complete idiot. You see, when I first started using the blogger script, I continued to write all of the posts in notepad (including all the html for links, etc). The thing is when I transferred them over to blogger, I would have to do it either a paragraph at a time, or else it would not put in breaks, or I would do it all at once and lose all of the actual html from the document -I would have to go back and reinsert italics, bold, any links, etc. I’m sure that there was a way to get around that, but I never bothered to look it up, I just started using the blogger text editor since it is basically the same as notepad anyway.

Unfortunately for me, I have a habit of not making copies of what I am writing into the text editor over here, so when blogger is continually going down, I don’t actually know that I am going to lose the post until after I have already lost it. That is to say, I didn’t paste the html back to notepad before I attempted to publish the last two posts, and since blogger was down I was not able to retrieve the contents. Stupid blogger and your stupid downtime. Fear not, I am sure the missing posts probably wouldn’t have been earth shaking, they rarely ever are.

Instead I will offer a couple of random things, and for the best reason: no damn reason at all!

The local jocks on the radio were being their normal obnoxious selves this morning. It is sometimes funny, sometimes thought provoking (hard to type that with a straight face finger), sometimes, well most times, just completely, unapologetically chauvinistic. So, kind of humorous in doses, as long as you try to tell yourself that it has to be satire (don’t even question whether or not it is meant to be satire, you will be disappointed with the results. Unless you have a very small mind, in which case you probably don’t think it is satire, but then you probably agree with all the “get your ass back in the kitchen, take off your shoes, and have my baby” type “humor” they throw around).

The show is at its best when it is unintentional though. Like this morning. There was something in the middle of one of the valley freeways, it may have been an animal, but no one was really sure. Anyway, the jocks instantly assumed that it was an animal, and were actively asking the person who had hit the animal to call the show. Of course there were a couple hundred people who called up claiming to be the person who hit the animal, ’cause hearing yourself on the radio is probably at the top of their “must do before I die” list. Some of the calls were funny, just for the outlandish stories the people were telling. For example, one person said that a UFO dropped a mutilated cow on the freeway in front of him and he didn’t have time to dodge. But the best part was that they started playing a stock “tire screech, car crash” audio bit before each new call they took. Until the last one, when someone hit the wrong key. So just as the jock says something like “There is a dead animal in the middle of the I-10”, Marvin Gaye’s song Let’s Get it on started playing in the background. Classic, in that “it’s funny because it’s necrophilia” way.

Next up is a horoscope in the latest issue of The Onion:

Taurus April 20 – May 20:
It seems like no matter how many times you pick up the Bible, you always discover something new within its pages for you to wildly misconstrue.

That applies to a lot more people than just Taurusus Tauruses Taurusis Taurus’ Tauri the ones born under the sign of the bull. The problem is if you own a bible, and you think that the statement doesn’t apply to you, you are exactly the person that it applies to, but you will never admit it.

Finally, Wil put up a link to the following video and it is the funniest thing since sliced bread:


What a couple of weeks can do

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I was on the phone with a friend tonight, and he asked me how long I had been playing poker -Hold ‘Em specifically. And I had to think about it for a bit before I answered. I have had an account on PokerStars for a couple of months, and when I first started it I did play in a few micro-low-limit games, but that was about it. I played at the play money tables, found out that I wasn’t very good at it and just sort of gave it up. I only really started playing a couple of weeks ago.

The first real game I played in was actually a WWDN Tourney, a game that I played in more because I enjoyed reading Wil’s blog and thought it would be cool to play a game of cards with him than because I really thought I had a realistic shot at getting anywhere near the final table. And boy was I ever right. I didn’t go out first, but I am pretty sure I was in the top five (well, bottom five I guess, from that perspective). Yes, I got my ass handed to me. Which is an entirely false statement, the truth is that I handed my ass to myself (that didn’t come out right).

I know myself well enough to know that I am not going to take anybody’s word for anything; you tell me the sky is blue and I am damn sure gonna go check it out for myself. I don’t know what it is about me that makes me do that, but I know that I do. That translated into poker, just as it does pretty much everything else I try, in a bad way. You see, I have to go in there and try what everyone else already knows won’t work before I believe that it won’t work, which is probably a bad thing.

The only Hold ‘Em I had ever even really seen was the WSOP on the travel channel, and then only at the final table with two or three players. Which, of course, means that they guys are going to play with and call with far less than premium hands. That was something that I sure didn’t know at the time. Unfortunately, that mentality was what came into my poker game because that had been my only influence. So when the first tournament I ever really played in just happened to be with about the toughest on-line field you are likely to ever see, I beat myself, and everyone there, including me, knew it.

Nothing pisses me off more than knowing that I want to do something that I am really bad at, so I had to find a way to start getting better. But, I refused to buy or read any strategy book, or pot-odds/hand-odds type material. I wanted to start learning it myself. You see, if I take the lumps along the way, so I surmised, I would learn the lessons a lot better, and I would be far less likely to make a mistake twice, where it would be entirely possible to momentarily forget the same mathematic calculation twice. Which is all just a long, roundabout way of saying that I wouldn’t believe that I really should fold a Q-2 of hearts when three people ahead of me have already gone all-in until I have actually tried it and seen the results (which are always bad, if you are taking notes).

I began playing the low-limit tables at pokerstars and sucking handily. I played every card that had any possible flush or straight possibility. And if it was a possible straight flush, I played it hard. Note that I am not talking about like the AQ of diamonds here, I am talking about the 2-6 of hearts. Just three more hearts and I have a flush! Possibly a straight flush! Which, of course, never happened. And the few times where I actually did make the flush, I would invariably lose the pot to someone with a higher suited card. I lost, and I lost a lot.

My biggest problem (after I began to understand which hands to play) was that I was in “survive until everyone else goes out” mode. I would just sit there staring at the screen hoping beyond hope that everyone else would bust out and leave me in the money. Which also didn’t seem to work out so well, go figure. At that point I was laying down hands that were actually good so that I didn’t have to risk any portion of my meager stack. I am talking about pairs of faces that I would lay down in the face of any bet. I was scared shitless playing like, well, someone who wanted to just watch their stack get blinded away because he lacks the balls to call with the winning hand. That is not a good way to play.

After losing over and over to such horrible tactics, I changed my tactics. Good call, that. I am now into the level where I am actually thinking a few levels into each hand (with various random donkishness inserted). I am now able to think about what I am holding , come up with a fairly decent idea of what my opponent is holding (based on bets), and, most importantly, have a pretty good idea of what he thinks I am holding. Knowing what I am holding is a gimme, but the other two are taking me a lot of practice to improve at. And what is more, it seems that it is far easier to figure out the third point than the second.

The second point is the only one you have no control over; you simply can’t will him to have a different hand -trust me, I have tried. You can control what he thinks you have though, all it takes is good betting. Unfortunately, the good betting still comes and goes for me. I can sometimes do it, but sometimes, particularly if I have a decent lead or defecit, my mind just sort of shuts down. Then I look at my hand histories the next day and wonder why in the fuck I didn’t bet all in when I made my trips, and instead let it go down to the river where he made his flush. I am getting better at it though, all it takes is practice.

I did pretty much luck my way into the final table at the WWDN tourney yesterday (just on the one had really, the rest were just standard suckouts), but I also played another tourney yesterday. It was just a low-limit buy-in ($5) with a field of 45, but I played my way through it better than most of the other donkeys and finished in fourth. That was a tournament that I know I would not have made it past the first table on just a couple of weeks ago. So that made it two tournaments that I played yesterday, and two that I finished in the money. Baby steps people.

So today, while watching the The Mookie Mrs. Butterworth Open, I decided to go play a game with a field of 45 at the dollar table. Jesus titty-fucking christ. I can’t possibly have ever been that bad, can I? I folded an AQ early on when a pair of sevens hit the board and two guys went all-in. Did they both have the other sevens? Nope, they went on to split the pot with 6-9 offsuit hole cards. A split pot with 6-9 offsuit, dear God I hope I never made that push or call, but I probably did. Anyway, out of the 45 I ended up finishing fourth when I pushed all in from the button with queens, and got called by the big blind with kings. I only came in fourth, but oh how I played so much smarter than most of the other people at the table.

With luck my game will continue to get better as time goes on, but for now I am just thinking Wow, what a difference a couple of weeks can make.

eMachines

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Much like I will be offended when I am getting screwed by a large corporation, I will also give credit where credit is due.

I have posted a few entries about eMachines, mostly pertaining to why it is that I continue to buy the machines when they are pretty obsolete right out of the box. Since I don’t want to waste the time looking up old posts, I will sum it all up in a quick sentence: Buy a $300 eMachine, put in $300 worth of upgrades (video card, RAM, etc.) and you have a $1500 HP, Compaq or Dell. That is the type of math that I like (also it is much easier to find an eMachine that comes without a monitor, and the monitor alone is generally at least a third of a system price from other companies -on a low end system).

I have also had extremely good luck with eMachines over the years. My first was a 366 (466? I forget which) which I continued to upgrade well past the time when it was a viable system. I was able to get about six or seven years of use out of it, in computer years that puts it past a dinosaur, hell it has already become fossil fuel by that point. My next few computers purchases were all eMachines as well. I have just had really good luck with them.

So it was that in the middle of May I was thinking about upgrading to yet another computer. After pricing them on the major websites, I determined that it would again be far cheaper to buy a base eMachine and throw in some upgrades. I happened to see one for $280 and decided to go ahead and get it. Of course it only had 256mb of RAM, which really should be criminal on a machine that is running Windows XP, the OS alone requires more than that to function correctly. Of course it was only going to have 256mb long enough to fire it up the first time anyway so it wasn’t of any great concern.

I started it up just long enough to get past the “welcome to Windows” crap, as well as downloading the latest Windows updates (and if you don’t have your machine set to automatically update you are just asking for trouble; Windows is about as secure as a bank working on the honor system), and powered it down for some upgrades.

In went a shiny new 512mb ATI graphics card (pci-express) which would be the biggest upgrade from my current system (which is using a 128 mb card through a PCI slot). Threw in a gig of ram and powered the machine back up. I downloaded the latest Catalyst software for the video card, logged in to Guild Wars to download about a year of updates, and waited. Off and running in about a half an hour.

My wife was actually using the machine at the time (although she didn’t know it) when, after about an hour of play, it started to experience some display issues. The minimap was not showing anything on it, while the rest of it appeared to be functioning normally. Until she got to the middle of a major mission when, of course, the PC just shuts down. No BSD, no warning, just all of a sudden the machine is turned off completely. My keen observational skills lead me to believe that something may be wrong with the system.

Now, the eMachine in question uses an onboard nVidia graphics accelerator (which I had disabled in BIOS prior to poweing it up with the ATI card) and PCI bridge. I briefly thought that it may somehow have something to do with it not running with the ATI card, although that didn’t really make any sense. I know that they are rival companies and all, but the ATI card should be able to work in any system regardless of what other hardware happened to be in it.

Since I had not used the machine for any length or time before I installed the RAM and the video card though, I really had no way to know if it was the video card, RAM, or PC itself that was the problem. I started testing it in a kind of backwards way. I uninstalled all of the software associated with the video card, as well as the card itself, then powered it up again. I tried to play the game for a while in this configuration, and eventually got to a random system shutdown. So, not the video card. Next up to take out the new RAM and put back in the old. Do you know how long it takes to boot Windows XP with only 256mb of RAM? Jeebus it took forever (a little too long I suspect). I didn’t even try to play the game with only 256mb of RAM and onboard video because, well, I don’t think it would have even loaded it. So, just while mindlessly surfing the internet, system shutdown. No BSD, no warning, just powered right down.

Being the psychic that I am, I knew that the first thing the customer service representative was going to suggest was reinstalling the OS, so I decided to go ahead and try that prior to calling them. It would not reinstall the OS, but instead came up with an error about a corrupt fill in the Windows/system32 folder, which is never good news. Could I have already downloaded a virus? It took about four attempts to get the OS to actually reinstall, but reinstall it did. So, back to the internet. Back to a random shutdown. I was less than happy.

Now to contact customer support. I decided to use the online chat with a representative feature, for two reasons: 1)It would give me time to read what I was saying before actually saying it, as I was a bit fucking pissed off upset, and 2)The support reps are invariably in a foreign country, and I really can’t usually understand the majority of what they are saying.

There was one thing that I wasn’t planning to tell the rep, though, and that was that I had already removed the cover and upgraded the system (of course they would know it when they got the machine back, I just didn’t want the rep to imply that I had somehow screwed the machine up while sticking a card into a slot). I didn’t log the session with this guy, but I probably should have, because it was about the worst customer service I have had in a long time. I tried to be as precise as I could in the description of the problem; I gave the model number, the part number, the serial number, the problem with the system randomly powering itself down, and a detailed description of the errors that I received while trying to reinstall the OS (there were a total of four such errors, each one different). His first words (well after the “thank you for contacting support” B.S.) were “Why were you trying to reinstall the operating system?”

Since I am supposed to be giving some kudos to eMachines right now, I am not going to go into a lot of detail about this particular support session. It can basically be summed up with the following:

Me: There is something wrong with the system. It is randomly shutting down. I have tried to reinstall the OS and it has had errors during the installation. Once it did reinstall it continued to have problems with random power downs.

Rep: J00 juz need 2 reb007.

Me: It will not boot, in fact, even the system restore cd is failing to load.

Rep: Joo juz need 2 use teh systm re570re cd

Me: I have tried that, it will not work.

Rep: Joo suxor n00b,

It wasn’t really that bad, but that is kind of how I felt about it. He was repeatedly asking me to try what I had already tried, despite the fact that I assured him I had already tried it. At one point he decided that the “solution” to the problem was that the system restore cd was bad, which would explain all of the system power downs how, exactly? Oh yeah, the spelling might be a bit exaggerated as well. Anyway, eventually he agreed to pick the machine up and get it looked at.

So, on their own dime, eMachines sent me a box to put the system into, along with a fedex pickup slip to send it back to them. Which I did a couple of weeks ago. Today I got curious about the status and decided to contact support again, this time, however, the person I was chatting with was quite friendly.

I had thought that the hard drive was most likely corrupt, as that would explain why the system wouldn’t reinstall the OS. It turns out that I was wrong. It was actually the motherboard that was bad. The machine is currently awaiting a replacement.

So this low dollar machine happened to have a problem, and eMachines went ahead and picked it up, paid for the shipping both ways, and it is repairing free of charge, despite the fact that I had already taken the cover off of it. I don’t know if the other companies have since changed their policies, but it used to be that removing the cover voided all warranties.

Besides, a lot of people say that they have had problems with eMachines, but if they are willing to repair it with zero out of pocket cost to you, what could the problem really be? Aside from the problem with the first customer service rep, which was likely due a lot more to my frustration than his actual support; I know that he had to suggest what I had already tried, that is part of what I am sure is a checklist that they have to go through before they have a system picked up.

I have been perfectly happey with every eMachine I have bought so far, and this one, while it was less than perfect out of the box, was fixed without cost to me. kudos to eMachines.

After writing this, it occurred to me that I might have accepted a non-disclosure agreement, but I checked with eMachines to make sure before I posted it. I wonder if they would have said it was fine if I had written a scathing review? Ah well, I spent the time to write it, so here it is.

Money in the WWDN invitational

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Through an amazing combination of fishery and donkishness, I managed to finish sixth in the WWDN invitational. That is a pretty big deal to me, since some of the best poker bloggers in the game compete in that event. If I get an inkling, I may add to this post at a later time. With mad props to Mungo (linkage to come) for doubling me up when I was down to 475 chips and had a lowly 48 offsuit. But he also should have known better than to go in against a powerhouse hand like that; the only thing that can take it down is the hammer.

I managed to nearly double up very early on when I got queens, but even with what should have been a dominating hand I was scared to go in, and when the board came up with a jack, and the other guy raised, I really thought I was in trouble. When the river came up a 9, giving the board a pair of 9s and a Jack, I had visions of going out really early to either three nines or a boat, but thankfully he had an AJ, so I did get the win. But my god how horribly I played that hand. There is no way I should have let myself get into the position where I felt that I might actually be behind when the cards on the table were all undercards, and with the size bet he had to call to see the flop. But, it turns out that my fears would be realized just a few hands later.

In the small blind with an A5 offsuit, I can see the flop for 50 in chips, so I take it. The flop is A-10-5 rainbow, giving me top and bottom pair. I bet the pot (200 at that point) and get raised, uh oh. I am putting the other guy on a TPTK though, I think he pushes all in on that flop if he has hit middle pair; there isn’t a huge pot, but he can’t possibly want me to see another card if he really has two pair. I raise him all in. He shows AJ, which is good in exactly one way: my read was more or less right on (I had him at AK, AJ isn’t too far off). The river comes up a 7, which leaves me in the lead, but he has way too many outs. Since I have an underpair if the board pairs up the seven or the ten, or if he hits a Jack, I lose. The river pairs up the seven, giving him two pairs with a jack kicker to my 5 kicker. *sigh* I am sitting here thinking about it and wondering if I would play that hand the same if I got it again, and I think I would. I don’t want to go all in on the first bet after the flop, cause I need to see if he has middle pair, especially since an A-10 is likely a hand that someone is willing to pay 50 to see the flop with. So, I donked away 1,000 chips on that hand, but I was still in fairly good position.

Then came my Holy Fuck, what in Christ’s name was I thinking there play of the game, or at least a strong contender. When dealt a 9-10 offsuit in early position, I limped in. I hadn’t been in an hand in quite a while, and that was the closest thing I had seen to a hand since my early A-5 smackdown. Of course there ended up being six guys in the pot, so I should have known that one of them could have a better hand than a 9-10 offsuit. So when the flops comes up 6-3-Q and is checked to me in early position what do I do? I bet half the pot, that’s what I do. Because nothing screams “I don’t have shit here, but I really want your blinds, so please just go ahead and fold now” like an early half pot bet. Apparently at least one guy was on to me. So when the turn paired up the sixes, thus destroying any outside chance of getting a runner runner runner straight, and at the same time giving me what had to be the losing hand, I simply folded. Well, I wish I would have folded, but instead some jackass bet 500 (yes that was me), which was quickly called. Then when the river hit an Ace, my donking off of chips was nearly complete, but at least I had the good sense to lay the hand down, albeit about 800 chips too late. In retrospect, I wonder what the hell I was trying to bluff there. In order for a bluff to work you have to be able to make your opponent believe that you have something better than him. Was I really betting the 500 on the second 6 thinking that I was going to fool him into thinking that I had made my previous bet on middle pair and hit trips on the river? If I was (and honestly I don’t know what I was thinking), that was a totally stupid move. Of course you know what they say about hindsight.

The next thing you know I am down to 475 in chips when Wil gets moved to my table, thus putting me on the short stack, on the TV table, in the big blind. Just fucking perfect. The cards:4-8 offsuit, it would have been more fitting only if it was a 3-8 offsuit. Mungo pulled a reverse-hoy on me, and I called, hell I had to call; I already had a third of my chips in the pot and only had enough chips to post the blinds once more. Well, I sucked out HUGE on the river when I hit and 8, and his pair of threes hadn’t improved. I was back to 1024 in chips, but I wasn’t done there.

I actually got dealt a fairly decent hand the very next time: A-Q in the small blind. I got into the pot with another 75 chips and saw a queen on the flop. I bet a quarter of my stack with TPTK, fully expecting to get re-raised all-in, but figuring he would have folded if I would have simply pushed. He called me all-in with an A-J and I double up again. But could I do it five times in a row? Well, not this time.

It is worth noting that it was at precisely this point that I actually looked at the pokerstars “stats” tab for the first time since I have been using the software -how sad is that? I had won 7 of 8 at the showdown at this point, and had seen an impressive 8% of the flops, which is probably a bit too conservative no matter what your game is. Was I really just going to sit on the sidelines and wait for AA to make a bet? No, no I wasn’t. I proceeded to donk off a sizable portion of my stack when I made a foolish call that I had to lay down on the turn, but should have laid down before the flop.

Later in the tourney, on the bubble, I got aces again. Someone in front of me had already raised it to over half of my stack, so I just smooth called it, not wanting to scare anyone off, and hoping to pull down as many chips as possible. The flop was a goldfish, a flower pot, and Britney Spears, which helped no one, and he called me all in. I went on to double up yet again, and at a crucial time.

I got to the final table with a veritable Who’s Who of the tournament regulars, except for Wil, who was just as lucky to be at the final table as I was. Mungo was kind enough to double me up one last time, but it was clear that I was out geekedmatched at this table, and my ass was getting really sore (you would not believe how many excuses I could come up with in a pinch), so I decided to make the play I had to make: Drop the Hammer!

Unfortunately, Kaellin(matt?) didn’t get the memo, and thought that he could dominate the hammer. Well, it turns out he was right, he had pocket sixes, and the flop came 6hearts, 6clubs, and 6pinnacles. Not often you get quints on the flop. When the turn came up 6swatstikas, I briefly thought I could be back in it. If there were five sixes on the board it would be a split pot. Unfortunately the river was a Babe Ruth rookie card, which is just fucking worthless in that situation, so I go home.

Interesting to note that on 6-6-6 I went home in sixth place, to a six of a kind sixes, at 6:66 pm (+66minutes, +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds +66seconds). That is just too spooky to be a coincidence…

I had a lot of fun playing though, and thanks to actually finishing in the money this time, I will be able to play it again next week. I was damn near out of cash and wasn’t about to rebuy just to throw money to a lot of people that I have no business competing against anyway. And that is the kind of optimism I take into every tournament!

Finally a hand I am happy with

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I am guessing that Party Poker must have the most television advertising going on right now. While the level of play at any of the major poker sites is erratic at best, especially at the low limit tables, even I feel superior to the majority of the players I run into at Party Poker. I have by far my best winning percentage over there and finish in the money probably 2/3 of the games I enter. Of course when I bow out early it is generally because someone is in on a hand they have no business calling with, much like I was doing not so long ago, come to think of it.

I was in a $6 buy-in game this morning, and had been chugging along with maybe one playable hand in the first thirty. Thankfully, it was playable enough that I busted someone out, though he was the short stack so it didn’t contribute greatly to my stack. It did give me enough chips to compete with everyone else though (truth be told, I had made a horrible call earlier in the game with a pair of queens and it took me all the way to the river -even when the flop was a pair of kings- to admit defeat and lay it down. Stupid, stupid mistake.

I was in the big blind when I got dealt a nice, high-end suited connector. There were five people at the table and everyone called the blind, which I raised hoping to eliminate a couple of K Q offsuit limpers. I only raised it 400 (I think) but that was enough to knock two guys out of it. The flop came up just beautiful for me, and I bet into it, knocking out one more player, leaving only myself and one other guy. (pity I only thought to take a screenshot after the turn).

So, just to set it up a bit, I knew this guy had a high pair, or he had made what could be the worst call in the history of poker -it was Party Poker, that is always a possibility. If his pair was Queens, the flop would have given him a three of a kind, which I am sure he would have gone all in with he should have played a bit stronger to my weak bet. He must have thought that I didn’t have the queens either though, or he would have folded. Currently, I was in an open ended straight flush draw, which necessarily implies any straight or flush draw. At any rate, the turn came up in my favor and I went all in. There was already 2,500 in the pot and I didn’t care if I knocked him out of it or he called because there was no way he was going to beat my hand -barring a nut flush draw, and I don’t think there is any way he is playing the A-K of clubs that strong. I am not basing that on anything at all, just a gut feeling.

When the guy actually called the all in, I was left re-evaluating my previous thinking. Maybe he really was in it on a nut flush draw. I found it far more likely that he had pocket queens and thought he was going to take down the pot. There was also the possibility that he was also holding a 10-J, but I don’t think he is going to play it that strong pre-flop. Of course there is also the possibility that he has just made a lower straight with a 5-7 or a 7-10, which he really shouldn’t be in the hand at all with, but again it is Party Poker.

I was extremely confident that the turn had given me the win. The river, however, was just kicking the guy in the nuts:

Yes, he went all in with pocket jacks despite there being a flush draw and multiple straight draws on the table. My only question is what did he think I was holding? He must not have considered that at all, it is either that or he thought I had flopped middle or low pair and was trying to bluff my way into the pot. I suppose there is also the possibility that he was going all in on the gutshot since the pot was so big. But enough about what he might have been thinking.

I am extremely pleased with this hand. Not just the outcome of it either. I am pleased that I had the confidence to raise from the big blind to knock off some of the competition, even though my hand was less than ideal. The rest of it was just the luck of the draw really. The flop could just as easily have brought up a pair of aces and a jack. Once I learn how to play that flop and still come out with the chips, my ego will increase exponentially.

What has become of me?

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So I was lying around the house today watching some hardcore porn…Actually, that isn’t true, although admitting to that would be so much easier than admitting what I was actually watching. There is a new show on The Learning Channel called Honey, We’re Killing the Kids, which I thought was going to be an interesting docudrama that followed a couple around as they hunted down their own children and savagely beat them to death with rusty machetes. When it turned out to be something completely different, I was far too lazy to push the button on the remote that would end my misery, so I watched it anyway.

First off, shouldn’t Disney file a lawsuit against the creators for using their intellectual property? Isn’t it an obvious ripoff of the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? Bleh. The series is probably owned by Disney, or the network is owned by Disney, at any rate I am not going to waste the time to look it up. Because when it comes down to lawsuits, I think Mattel is the company that really has a case. Look at the images and judge for yourself1:


At any rate, the show is all about exploiting fat children. The premise is that a nutritional expert will show the parents what the child will look like at age 40 if they don’t change their lifestyle, but the reality is that it is a show that will be watched by millions of people so that they can think that their children aren’t really all that fat by comparison. The particular show that I watched had a twelve year old kid on it that was only 10 pounds lighter than I am despite the fact that I am almost two feet taller than him. It truly boggles the mind.

I really can’t see why anyone would ever watch more than one episode of this show. I watched the very beginning of another episode and it is exactly the same thing only the people have been changed. I don’t think this is going to be a Jerry Springer type thing, where people like to watch it just to see what happens when the gene pool dries out. I can’t see how this show would be any different ever. Act 1: show the parents grossly exaggerated (or not when you look at the exploding waistline of the U.S. population) age renderings of what their children will look like in a couple of decades. Act 2: Insert change in the form of better food and a more healthy lifestyle, which the family at first rejects but slowly starts to accept. Act 3: show the parents grossly exaggerated (for sure this time) age renderings of what their children will look like in a couple of decades now that they have eaten a piece of fruit (imagine that, they could all be runway models). The End.

It would be nice if they were to go into the epilogue. You know, fast forward a couple of years to find out that the second the cameras were off everyone reverted to old habits and the kids are fatter than ever, but that would sort of make the entire premise of the show kind of pointless then, wouldn’t it?

Normally I am not the type to make vast and sweeping generalizations without factual basis2, but I am going to go with my gut on this one (pun intended). The only people likely to watch this show are going to be the parents of children who are borderline morbidly obese. If they can find just one child on the planet that weighs more than little Timmy, you see, then that means that little Timmy isn’t really that fat. Who else would watch the show? Parents of normal3, healthy, active children wouldn’t want to watch it, and certainly wouldn’t want their children to watch it. So I guess that means that they will always have an audience, at least until every family except for the fattest family in the U.S. has seen it.

1) I think I probably lose a lot of cool points for knowing the Mattel logo well enough to immediately recognize this blatant ripoff. Even more for actually admitting that I recognized it. Thankfully it wasn’t the Kenner logo or I would gain like 2d20 geek points on top of the cool points that I lost. In fact I might get those geek points anyway since Kenner was absorbed by Hasbro a long time ago and only the real Star Wars GeeksTM remember Kenner, and then only because it is printed on the front of their complete set of action figures from the first film.

2) I leave that to the Republicans. *rimshot* Thank you. I will be here all week.

3) That makes it sound like I am implying that the extremely overweight children are not “normal”, I would like to clarify that. I am not implying that they aren’t normal, I am saying it flat out.

Suns lose! Suns lose!

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I am not a basketball fan by any means. I did enjoy watching the game back in the late ’80’s – early ’90’s when it seemed that every game ended with a score of 135-131, usually on some miraculous buzzer beater. The last decade has been boring as hell for basketball. If the Jordan era was the era of big offense, the last decade has been the era of big defense. I suppose that from a purely technical standpoint the defensive play is a lot better. Technically better doesn’t equate to more fun to watch though; a well executed half court press pales in comparison to an offensive fast break that is capped off with an alley-oop dunk. These plays are still made, of course, but they are usually just in the garbage portion of the game when one team has already benched all of their starters and back-ups, leaving you reaching for the team roster to see if the guys now on the court are actually even on the team.

Growing up in Oregon, basketball was the one professional sport that our state actually had a team in. But rather than support them, I actively hated them. It was my (misguided) belief that if we didn’t have the stupid basketball team we would be able to have a football team, and football was always my favorite sport. Since I felt a need to hate the Trailblazers (and what a ridiculous name that is), I needed to choose someone from their conference to root for. My mother lived in Arizona at the time so I picked the suns, and at a damn good time.

Shortly after I started following the Suns they started what would become their “glory days”. Charles Barkley, Dan Majerle (the fact that I can spell that name is a testament to how much I respect the guy), Danny Ainge, Kevin Johnson, Cedric Ceballos, (what was his first name) Dumas, and others went on a tear that ultimately ended with them losing in the NBA finals to none other than Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls (for my money that was the greatest NBA finals of all time, of course I have only actually watched about four of them so I might not be the best judge. But one game in that series went to triple overtime, and it seemed like they were scoring about 150 points each every game -though a quick google search just revealed that the games were much lower scoring that I remember them).

Perhaps I am a bit cynical, but I really think that so much of the game now is about posing for the sake of posing that the game is virtually unwatchable. The latest high school draft pick needs to get himself a good poster shot that really showcases his signature pair of high-tops. The game, the score, the technique be damned, he needs a good panoramic photo doing a dunk over some nameless white guy in a game that he will ultimately lose 100-47 because he doesn’t know what defense is -and I mean that quite literally. He has really never played defense since he has always stood at half court waiting for one of his teammates to pass him the ball; he has a new 720 Tomahawk slam to try out, after all.

But I digress.

After the run of success that the Suns enjoyed in the early ’90’s, they went on a dry spell for about a decade. In that time there wasn’t a single person here in AZ that was actively following them, and if they claim they were they are dirty liars. As recently as midway through this season, sports commentators here in the valley were all talking about how the Suns were going to fall apart and miss the playoffs completely. Not just one or two of the sports commentators or the fans either, this was everyone. That talk didn’t stop until the Suns had actually clinched the playoff berth, and even then most of the talk was about how they would fall apart in the first round.

I really wouldn’t have cared one bit about whether the Suns won or lost, were it not for the fact that Kobe Bryant said (and I must paraphrase since I can’t find the actual quote) that it was good that they drew the Suns in the first round because they were the weakest of the top four teams (which I didn’t disagree with one bit, but I’ll be damned if I wanted to see that smug fuck win after that statement). I thought that my hatred of the Lakers would be done with once Mr. Ass-Bulldozer O’Neal left (how many thousands of people did he knock down with his huge ass and never draw a foul? He would just back into them and push until they fell over, hell it was Shaq, that was all he could do), but apparently I also hate Kobe (and all rapists for that matter. Before you send me that flaming email, I do know that he was not convicted. I also know that he was not acquitted. The fact that his accuser would not testify doesn’t mean that he didn’t do it; if he really didn’t do it he would never have paid her “and undisclosed sum” in an out of court civil settlement.) So I wanted the Suns to win the first round, just because I hate Kobe and his smug, rape-anyone-I-want-to attitude.

What I was getting really sick of, though, was they way every sportscaster in the state of Arizona was trying to make it seem as though they had been behind the Suns all year; knew they were going to the playoffs; never doubted that they would come back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Lakers. I know Arizona is a republican state, but we aren’t all that stupid. You can tell the same lie a billion times and it won’t become the truth (George W. Bush would be well served to learn that lesson), and, like it or not, you are on tape saying exactly the opposite thing.

I will use a local radio station as an example (because I know they have audio on their website, you could actually download some of the stuff from earlier this year to hear them dogging the Suns). 98 KUPD had been ripping on the Suns since the very beginning of the season. They were saying things like “well, this is a throwaway season since they don’t stand a chance with Stoudemire on the D.L.” and “Nash is an old man, he has a retirement home in Phoenix”. While the second one may have been said jokingly (at least partially), it was clear that the DJ’s had made up their mind that the Suns sucked outright and had no chance of making the playoffs.

Fast forward to the start of the playoffs.

“I knew the Suns were going to make it. This is the strongest team they have put on the court since the ’93 finals.” When asked point blank about what they said earlier in the season, the DJ’s went into evasive maneuvers, saying things like, “I never said they weren’t going to make the playoffs, I just said that Nash would have to have a standout year and someone would need to make up for the lack of Stoudemire’s 25 ppg.” Which was such utter bullshit that it was laughable. I know that there is a bandwagon that forms when a team starts winning, but can’t they at least be honest enough with themselves to admit that they are just jumping onto it? Apparently not.

To end this how it started: Suns lose! Suns lose! And not a moment too soon. If I had to hear someone say “Sun-sational” one more time, I was likely to climb a clock tower and take target practice on anyone in a Suns T-shirt.

The three hand theory

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If you don’t want to read about poker, please ignore this post.

I have now developed a theory about playing hold ’em at a single table sit and go: Whether you win or lose will be decided by exactly three hands. The only hard part is knowing which three hands they are. As I have been winning sit and go’s I have noticed that I really can single it out to about three hands that really made the difference between a win and a loss. I will recount the last one here. Unfortunately I didn’t take any screenshots so it will just be a lot of text.

I am in the tourney and it is already down to seven people. Chip leader has 5,000, small stack has 1950, I an just above that with 2015 -thanks mostly to not having a decent hand to play thus far.

I am on the button when I get dealt a monster Kc Kh. The first two guys fold outright, the third wants to limp in with 100, but the guy next to me raises it to 250, which will eventually knock both of the blinds out of it. I am really happy with my hand, but the guy who raised hasn’t made a raise the whole game. I don’t want to raise it only to find out that he has aces, so I just call it. The flop brings up 5s 2s 3h, which really shouldn’t help him considering the amount he went in for pre-flop, unless of course he is holding aces, in which case I am probably screwed. He bets into it with 277, which is just a bit more than a quarter of his stack. I am still worried about the ace, but I want to see if he is just trying to bluff me out of it, so I double his bet. He calls. I am actually worried now that he does have the aces, until I get the Ks on the turn. He checks it to me. If he does have the aces, he has just been beat and I want him to know it. I got in 500, I now have almost three quarters of my stack in this pot and wholly expect him to give it up, but he calls. Now I am worried that he might be in it with an A-4 suited, not something I would expect someone to raise so high pre-flop, but you do get all kinds at the sit and go table. The river came up Kd, thus giving me the nuts and I went all in. At this point I went from fearing that he had an A-4 to actively hoping that he did. Instead, his timer ran down to zero, at which point I said in chat “I got the nuts here”. Little did I know that it was going to give him a time bank extension (I though he was already on one), after which he quickly folded. Note to self; Don’t talk about the hand until the next one is dealt.

The game went on for a few more hands with everyone just basically trading blinds; the cards were horrible for everyone and the winning pocket cards weren’t even faces. Then I get another playable hand. Timmy is chipleader with just over 4,800, myself and another guy are about 1,000 behind.

I am in the big blind here when I get dealt Kc Ad, how I do love to have a good hand in that position. UTG folds, the next guy raises 625 in a heartbeat. It folds around to me and I call the 425 to get into the pot. The flop is 7d 7h Ad which gives me top pair and high kicker, time to see if this guy is going to lay down his queens; I bet 25% of my stack to see if he was going to drop his queens, or hopefully he had an ace with a lower kicker. He went all in. This guy hadn’t made an all in move in the game, although he had called a couple. This was also probably only the second pre-flop raise he had made the whole game; he was extremely confident with his hand. There is no way he is going all in with anything other than an ace, but he has to know that I also have an ace or I wouldn’t have bet big, unless he puts me on 7’s, but he has to know that I wouldn’t have called his 3x preflop with a low pair. My pointer hovered over the call button as the timer ticked down then went to time bank. He isn’t bluffing, he has the aces. I have almost half my stack in the pot, but I layed it down. He said “good fold” and showed the aces. I went from second to fifth place on the hand, but I am still alive. Good fold indeed.

The absolute worst place to finish in a SNG is one place out of the money, and everybody knows it. Once we were down to four guys at the table it went back and forth for a good twenty hands with no one really improving their position. Eventually, someone got down to the short stack once the blinds were up to 400/800. He had just under 2,000 while I had 4,000 and was going to be on the blinds for the next two hands. He went all in and I called. I had A-10 to his Q-J. That one really could have gone either way, but I came out on top. In the money now, we all started playing a bit more aggressively.

I am short-stacked with about 2,700 while second place has 4,000 and the leader is running away with over 10,000. I am on the button with a Q-10 offsuit, with the blinds up to 400/800. I am going to have to move or go home. This is far from my ideal hand, but I limp into it. At this point I am pretty committed to the pot and barring some outlandish flop I am going to live or die by this hand. The flop is a 3d 8d Jc, giving me a gutshot draw that I am not at all happy about, but it is checked around to me so I get to see the turn for free. It is the 9 that I needed, but it is the 9 of diamonds, meaning someone could already have the flush. While I am busy worrying about whether or not someone has the flush, the big blind goes all in. I am thinking to myself “Oh fuck, this guy has the flush”, but at the same time knowing that he is the big blind and that he is not in much better shape than me as far as chips. I go all in with a silent prayer. He flips over a Kd-2c, so he doesn’t have the flush yet, and thankfully the river is a garbage heart. He isn’t out of the game, but he is crippled and I would knock him out on the next hand when he went all in on a 35 offsuit.

There were obviously a lot of other hands in the game, but those are the three that really stick out in my mind as being absolutely crucial. While I actually finished second place in that tourney, it is only because we went all-in after about a half an hour in the heads-up play just to end it. My A-J lost his Q-2, which I would call a bad beat were it not for our prearranged all-in call.