Maybe Seafoam Taffeta

Around the end of the Mook, I think Don (or was it Chad?) made a comment on BDR. "Man, Astin must be getting sick of coming in second." They were right.

Granted, 2nd is better than 9th, or 18th, or 23rd, or 112th, but as everyone knows, it sucks more in its own very special way. Especially in the BBToo format.

I played MY game Wednesday night, not the wait-for-aces crap I can fall into. I spent the time before the Mookie going over my gameplan and visualizing the stages of the game. Yah, that's kind of sad for a $10 tournament, but there are bigger things on the line. I played in some token games (and won) to get warmed up, and then a $22 Turbo for some quick 1-table practice and warmup. I was ready to kick ass at 10pm.

There was a big long discussion of various hand here. Blogger chewed it up. Too bad. Coles notes version:

Came over the top of Willwonka bet mid-game because I had a hand on a non-scary board and put him on a steal/draw/mid-pair. Doubled me up and I found aces next hand to take all of Chipperdh's chips and jump to 5th.

Made a solid call on Roguejo when the final table was very short-handed. K99K board and he puts me all-in when I have 88. I tank for a few seconds and decide he has AQ. I call, he proves me right and I double up.

Got away from a 3-way hand with 99 when Irongirl pushed over the top of JoeMav's all-in and Mike Maloney's call. I was totally in if she smooth-called, but she hadn't made a peep all final table so she had to be big. It ended up being her AK vs Joe's AT and Mike's KQc. Mike won with a Q on the flop. My 99 would have flopped a set, and I'd have been chipleader instead of Mike. That said, both Mike and Joe were stronger than I put them on (connected cards and A-rag respectively), and IG fell right into the range I figured (AK, AA, or KK, with MAYBE QQ as a possibility).

I was insanely lucky that Rogue and Mike got into it with with a set vs straight battle and Rogue got crippled. The 3-way all-in next hand that I won put me heads-up with Mike at a 4:1 chips disadvantage. The best I acheived was a 2:1 disadvantage, after a huge JT vs TT broadway suckout, before succumbing to bad cards, no fold equity and well-timed aggression from Mike.

As I've mentioned here, I've also been seeing a lot of 2nd places in $22 Turbo SnG's of late. I blame this largely on me giving SAGE a shot in these. All this all-in before the flop crap makes for too much of a coinflip heads-up. That said, I do think it's a valuable system for assessing hand value and improving heads-up aggression. I'll be sure to incorporate any lessons learned from it into my game.

So with some work, these second place finishes should start becoming firsts. I do have a Mookie and a couple MATH wins under my belt, but those numbers need to increase, especially for the BBT (73*2-6)/20 - 5.

I Should Wear Taffeta

Damn.



That's final table #4, and 2nd place #2. The other 2nd was also the Mookie.

I came to play tonight. I wanted first badly. Like I said in the last post, I wanted to win. With authority.

I'll spare the details until later today maybe. It's 2:20am and I'm wiped. But I got incredibly lucky to get heads-up, and sucked out huge to get up to 100k vs Mike's 200k+. Then card death. I'm not talking A-rag, or unsuited one-gappers. I'm talking 62o, 73o... nothing suited, nothing painted, no aces. And it got WORSE as my chips dropped. Finally called all-in with 67h vs Mike's 69s. 9 hit on the flop, nothing helped me. End of game.

That said, 2nd place MAY be enough to achieve 1/3 of my goals for the week. We'll have to see how tomorrow plays out. I know the other 2 are impossible this week.

Congrats to Mike. Just like I had no problem losing to Iggy, I've got no problem with Mike taking it down over me. It was well deserved. My time will come.

The $190.40 for 2nd is okay, and the $100 win for Lucko's horse betting was gravy. Toss in winning a token for The Big Game (5k superstacks = awesome) earlier in the night and cashing in another $22 turbo and I'd say it was a solid night of poker for me.

Sometimes the Best Move...

... is not playing at all.

I was supposed to play live at the club with Kat last night, but life/poker tilt put her on mini-vacation. I decided by the time I got home that I didn't much feel like playing live either. So I unregistered for the tournament, cooked up a quick pasta dinner, fed the cats, and hunkered down by the warm glow of my monitor to play online.

I registered for the $75 frenzy, and fired up a $22 turbo SnG (my new stomping grounds it seems). On the first hand I called a minraise with A8s and saw a flop of 88x. The minraiser minbet, and I raised. He pushed, I called, he flipped over Q8o. Um. Okay. Not what I was expecting from a preflop minraise. Way to disguise your hand I guess? Turn comes Q and my jaw drops as I go out.

No problem. Fire up another. 5-10 minutes in I run my top pair with a flush draw into a slow-played flopped set and am out.

Started to get aggravated, I fire up one more. I go out on the bubble when I flop trip kings on a KK6 flop only to run into the guy who limped his pocket sixes. Wow.

Okay, RNG not my friend. I get it.

So I go over to Stars and register for The Monkey Tourney. I completely dominated it until we were down to 5. My dealer apparently really wants me to stay at Stars, as even though I had no rockets, no cowboys, and maybe one pair of ladies, I couldn't be beat. I flopped 2 nut boats and 1 2nd nut boat at the final table with ridiculous cards. I flopped 2 straights, turned another, and two pair were being handed out like candy to me. It seemed I could see a flop with any two cards and get the nuts. It was nuts.

Then my phone rang.

I'd take this call over an $11 tournament any day. An hour later I was out of the Monkey, don't even remember how I went out of the frenzy (but have vague memories of Hoy being two to my right, but us not being in any hands together), and happy I'd decided to stay home.

In a great mood between the comaradarie of the Monkey and the phone call, I fired up another $22 Turbo. I took 2nd. Then another. 2nd again. Then one more before calling it a night.

My phone rang again... while I was on the bubble.

2 minutes into THAT call and I'd gone out 3rd for some profit in my last game for the night and had essentially broken even.

An hour later I was off THAT phone call (different person) feeling good about helping a friend drop some anxiety and relax.

All-in-all, a great night that wouldn't have happened if I had walked down the street to toss some real chips around.

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Tripjax had a post up a week or so ago about SAGE. He linked to Klopzi's post which was more detailed. So I did what I do and threw together an Excel sheet that did all those pesky calculations for you in a tidy little package.

With my recent rash of SnG play (and getting to heads-up multiple times), I've been putting it to the test.

Inital results - wow does it blow.

The beauty of a turbo is that when you get heads-up, your Blinds:BB ratios are going to be getting small. So I plug in my hands and the blinds and all that, and do what I'm told. I've constantly run facefirst into the brick wall that is variance. J7h with my opponent's ratio being 4? Push. He flips A9h. A5o, ratio of 5? Push. A7 for my opponent. I've gone into 3/4 of these with the chip lead, and finished in 2nd EVERY single time by following this system. There are definitely hands I wouldn't have played if I was playing my usual heads-up game, but who knows how it would have turned out?

I'll still give it some time. I haven't played nearly enough for a proper sample size.

------------

Mookie Mookie bo Bookie bananafana fo Fookie me mi mo Mookie... Mookie. You try writing "Mookie" that many times and tell me it doesn't look strange. Anyway, our Wednesday tradition continues tonight as the BBT 2: Electric Boogaloo rolls on. 11 TOC seats have been won so far, and I have a feeling #12 will be decided tonight. I have one goal tonight - 1st place, with authority. I'm missing the Riverchasers tomorrow, so tonight counts twice as much.

Similarities and Ratios

First off - I'd like to tip my hat to Hoyazo for mixing up the MATH tournaments these past couple weeks. I love both changes, 6-handed and turbo both made for an interesting variety. I suppose combining them could create a super-short donkfest. May I make a suggestion? $6 or $8 rebuy. It's large enough to stop complete donkery by most of the group (as opposed to Kat's $1 Donkament), but not big enough to make everyone play it like a freezeout. After 4 (or 3 if $8) rebuys, you've paid the standard MATH buy-in, and most people will have 3 minimum (buy-in, stack-doubling rebuy, and add-on). 1000 chips to start, 1000 rebuy, and 1500 add-on. It would likely increase the number of runners as you'll get the "buy-in once" types trying to get deep with tight play. You could even set it to only a 30 min rebuy period instead of an hour, but you'd have to make sure it's a turbo then. Worst case? The pot is smaller than usual.

Anyway, out 16th of 75 (umm... yay points). I saw some cards, but no monsters and stayed alive mostly by taking advantage of the turbo structure. Aggression and position are key in these, especially when antes are in before the first break. My stack, like everyone else's, was all over the place. I'll just have to take down the Mookie on Wednesday to try and lock-in my goals for the week. Congrats to Jamyhawk for the MATH win. Well done.

Onto the meat of this post. It's looong, and being written on ther fly. As usual, I suggest you don't trust a damn thing I say, because I'm just a luckbox donkey who isn't very bright.

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Stockbrokers, bungee-jumpers, gamblers, drug addicts, and these guys all share a common pursuit - the ideal risk/reward ratio. Some might not realize it, but this is the goal.

One of the most valuable adages in life is, "the greater the risk, the greater the reward." Anybody in the financial world knows this. Penny-stocks, junk bonds, speculative trading, IPOs - these are all built off this truth. Some examples:

The initial trading price of Google stock was $85 per share. This is a pretty insane price for a company to start at. Most big IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) tend to be in the $10-$30 range. Naysayers were easy to find - "It's a search engine! Its entire business model is built of targeted advertising! How is it worth this much?" IF you could get in at the IPO price, 100 shares (a reasonable minimum purchase for Joe Average) would cost you $8500. It jumped to $200 a share. The naysayers grew. There was no way it would stay at that level. It wasn't worth it. It was the Dot-Com bubble all over again. Here's the thing. If you had $20,000 lying around to buy 100 shares at $200 in 2004, you could have sold them at $747.24 per share, or $74,724 at its high last week. If you wanted to take a bigger risk and buy 1000 shares for $200,000, you'd have nearly 3/4 of a million now.

The Dot-Com boom of the late 90's/early 00's is another example. Money was being poured into companies based on nothing more than poorly-written business plans with no viable revenue streams. Some, like Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay were successes; most were not. People were willing to take a risk because the potential rewards were so great. Paper billionaires were being created daily. Paper billionaires became broke just as quickly because most of them didn't liquidate their positions in hopes of even greater reward. I maintain Mark Cuban may have been the smartest guy to make it in that era. Start a company, sell it for a mint, and turn into cash pronto instead of useless options and rapidly devalued stocks.

What's my point? As often, it's poker-related.

Poker, for all the arguments against it, is a form of gambling. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of skill involved in being a winning player, but if there wasn't luck, it wouldn't be nearly as popular. Every time we sit down to play, we accept the risk involved. We mitigate this risk in various ways - game type, limits, bankroll management, playing style, table choice, position, buy-in size, locale - all are choices we make to try and minimize our risk while maximizing the reward. Limit or no limit? Hold'em or Omaha? Buy-in short or buy-in full? Weak-tight? Loose-aggressive? Tight-aggressive? The table with Negreanu or the one with the kid with the sunglasses and sideways baseball cap who talks too much? To the left or right of the massive chip stack bully? MGM or Bellagio? Can I afford $200NL or $50NL? Turbo rebuy or long-level doublestack? We might not consciously make all these decisions, but we DO make them, and they all affect our results.

For instance - you have the choice of sitting at one of two tables with the same buy-in. One is Limit Hold'em with a bunch of stacks around the max buy-in. The table is an average mix of players with nobody standing out. The other is No-limit Hold'em with a few very large stacks that are bigger than the maximum buy-in, and at least one or two loud-mouthed loose-aggressive players who are more than willing to buy back in when they get stacked. You know you can grind out a nice little profit at the limit game without risking very much. The no-limit game offers the possibility of a HUGE profit, but you could easily get stacked by one of the LAGs or the big stacks. What do you do?

Your decison is based purely on your situation. Do you have a few buy-ins to risk or only one? Are you just killing time or have you come to play for a few hours? How much confidence do you have in your game? Do you feel lucky? Even so, I'd hazard a guess that most people will take the seat at the NL game because the carrot is just so large and juicy. You're willing to risk losing everything you're willing to part with for the possibility of the much larger reward.

Once you've sat down and bought your chips, the decisions are far from over. Now you have to play poker. Anyone who's played this game seriously in the slightest knows this - poker isn't a card game. It's a betting game. The cards are just the instruments to pick a winner when at least two people won't give up. So now the risks fall into other categories - card selection, bet selection, fold equity, calling, position, tells, reads, chips, and so much more.

In essence, every penny won or lost at the table is due to risk assessment. If you hold bottom pair on a paired board with a flush draw, and straight draw on it, your risk of losing at a showdown is very high. The cards aren't the only factor in the risk though. If you're in position, your risk drops dramatically. If your opponents have shown weakness the whole time, your risk could be much smaller still. Let's say your on the button and it's checked to you on the river - what do you do?

Wait, that isn't enough information, is it? Let's say the pot is just the blinds and your limp at level 3 blinds. What now? How about if the pot could double your stack? The risk:reward profile is very different for these two situations. The risk stays the same, but the reward increases tremendously. Is it worth betting at the pot to try and take it? Take the same pots, but now change your position, or the actions of your opponents? There's a bet that puts you all-in. Do you call? You're UTG. You're MP. You're at the final table of the WSOP ME and short-stacked. You're at a home game with your drunk friends playing for $20. Your opponent is shaking like a leaf. It's Mike Caro. The person left to act behind is Jennifer Tilly and her chest is about to explode. It's the turn. It's the river.

Every piece of info I give you there changes the situation completely, and alters the risk:reward ratio dramatically. You can take the worst possible risk but pair it with the greatest reward and it makes it palatable. Let's say you're the chipleader at the final table of the WSOP ME and everyone goes all-in and you have 23o. You can call and be crippled if you lose, possibly facing someone with 90% of the chips heads-up, or you could win it all with one hand, knocking out 8 opponents at once and be a legend in your own time. Is it worth the risk for that reward?

Of course, we control our risk profile. You can play only premium hands aggressively in position and fold to anything that puts you outside statistical allowances. You will make money. You'll be bored to death, but you will make money. You won't win BIG money, but you will make money.

What if you get to set the tone instead of react? Every steal and resteal is an exercise in assessing risk. A steal from UTG has higher risk than from the button, yet the reward is the same, it's therefore a worse choice. A resteal is riskier than a steal, but the reward is much greater. It's a question of which you value more.

Implied odds are a major part of any game, and one of the most common form of risk-to-reward decision-making we see in poker. J8o is absolute crap UTG. But if you're facing a 3x BB raise and 3 callers when you're on the button with it, does it become worth the call? 9TQ or 88J comes down and you're laughing because there's no way anybody puts you on J8, but a Q, J, AK, or overpairs are all likely for your opponents. UTG with AA, do you limp or bet? Nobody has a read on you. Everybody has a read on you. You've been betting all day and now you limp? You flop a straight with two clubs on the board and you're all red. Bet and risk scaring your opponent or risk the 3rd club and your opponent having two and check-call? Your opponent is Fuel and one of those cards is a 5.

I like KJ. There, I said it. I throw it away more often than I play it, but I like it. Why? Because if I can see a flop with it cheaply, it has HUGE implied odds. TQA, 9TQ, KJx, and even more if its suited, most Kxx and Jxx flops are also solid here, not to mention hands you "create" based on your betting. Plus, it is easy to get away from. If you get your straight your chances of meeting TPTK, two pair, or a set are HUGE, and they won't lay them down. You just have to make sure the risk is worth the potential payoff. The question is, what are you willing to pay for that chance?

Let's generalize further. Pre-flop, everyone knows the good hands (not necessarily in order): AA-TT, AKs, AKo, AQs. Hell, even 22 is ahead of 78s. If you look at pot odds only. 78s is the hand with the BEST odds vs AA at 22.46%. 57s is 20.98%, and 47s is 19.33%. 69o is 15.60%. Think about that. You're against the best starting hand in poker, which will win 85% of the time against two random cards, and the difference between middle suited connectors and an unsuited 2-gapper is under 7%. But look at the difference in a risk vs reward light.

Flop comes 9TJs. You flopped your straight flush with 78s. AA has to be worried if they're any good at all. Any suited board is scary to AA. If it comes 456 rainbow, they're less so, but still wary of straight draws, depending on the preflop action. Maybe 569 or 69T isn't scary, but suited connectors are always a possibility. 7Q8 isn't scarier than any other random flop to AA.

What if you have 69o? Flop comes 578 or 78T rainbow and you'd better be playing online because there's no way you hide your grin. AA isn't afraid of this at all. You can also possibly play up any flush draws to your advantage here.

69o has the better implied odds here, because it was a riskier gambit and is much better disguised. Against a good, observant player, 69o could net you much more than 78s. It could be seen as a better risk:reward choice preflop, even though it's the weaker hand. The potential payoff is huge if you catch a big hand with shitty hole cards like these. The question is - is it worth it to you? If you're willing to play 78s vs what you think is aces, does the 7% difference sway you? What if I say 7% = an 8.6 million difference in possible hands?

One last example. You have 57s on the button, with an M < 3. When do YOU decide it's worth calling action before you? Do you call one minraise? Do you limp? What if the pot is 4x your stack? At some point that suited one-gapper has to look like a worthwhile risk. What does the other side of that ratio have to be? At what point do your opponents not even matter any more and the entire risk vs reward decision get based solely on the chips?

I'm not saying that you should play the longshots like they're aces. That's losing poker, short-term or long-term. What I am saying is that every situation needs to be assessed, and you have to figure out if the risk is worth the reward. Only you can decide that for yourself. You might be the type who will fold KK to a third raise in a 1/2 limit game, or push with J9s over a 7x BB raise in the Big Game at the Bellagio. It's no different than buying bonds vs writing naked calls, or jumping on a trampoline vs jumping out of a plane -- everyone has their sweet spot. That said, you never know where your comfort zone is if you don't step outside of it from time to time.

There, hundreds of words spent to go over what could be said in three sentences.

John Gabriel's Theory

Feel free to apply to online poker. Of course, since bloggers aren't anonymous, this doesn't apply to them. I'm not going to get involved in THAT little high school drama.



More to the point, it's in reference to the real losers out there, brought on by one of those SnGs from yesterday. I was short-stack with 4 left (bubble), and started stealing. Antes were in so it was easy to build up to something respectable. I had some decent hands in there, and was willing to go to the felt a few times but nobody else at the table had the balls.

One guy makes a comment of "I wish I could do something to stop you from stealing every time." I'm not sure if it was directed at me or the big stack who was stealing just as much (and directly to his right). Regardless, he was a pansy.

He goes all-in against my pocket queens to his fours and goes out. I type the usual "gg", which I mean sincerely since he lasted that long and other than being weak on the bubble had played pretty well previously. I get, "f you" back and he's gone. I'll assume the "f" wasn't complimentary.

Fine, whatever. Doesn't bother me, I'd managed to be the big stack by this point and didn't suck out on him or even speak to him before this. But it's just another example of the assholery that occurs in this little game.

My favourite is still a time I was playing a nothing game (either a Tier I or a $6.50 SnG). I believe LJ was there too. Someone gets knocked out by another player and goes into it in the chat. He tops it off with "I hope your entire family dies a horrible death." What. The. FUCK? You just wished a horrible death to someone's family because you lost $6 in a poker game?? What are you? 15 and full of angst?

The same guy knocked me out a while later. I quickly typed, "nh, gg. I hope your family has a long and joyful life."

I've also seen people threaten other player's babies (on Stars, where the avatar was the person's newborn), and start posting personal info about people they lost to. And I play at LOW stakes. Who gets this upset over $5, $10, or $20?

Follow someone from table-to-table all you want telling them they're a donkey. Quote odds and throw out lines like "AQ is the nuts!" as much as you like. Hell, start plagiarising Sklansky in the chat to show someone what math is. But threatening their family? That's just fucked up.

1-Day Turnaround

A fairly standard weekend. Saw American Gangster on Friday - good flick, great cast. Doesn't rate a DVD buy for me, but I enjoyed it. Even Russell Crowe didn't annoy me.

Saturday was spent largely at home worrying about one of the cats, as he was showing a complete change in behaviour to being a total asshole. Behaviour changes are usually a sign of a larger problem. I'm keeping an eye on him, and he seems to be falling back in line. It could just be another phase of the acclimatization process to the new cat.

Now if the new one would stop throwing up once a day, I'd be happy. It is cute when she steals my laundry though.

Enough about cats. Blogs about cats are lame.

My best friend was over Saturday as well, and much Guitar Hero was played between brunch and dinner. I still love it. Plus I got to open up my newly-arrived copy of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. . Have I mentioned I'm a Bruce Campbell fan? Yet again, something brought me back to a younger age. Good times. My friend hated it.

And then poker on Sunday. It started as possibly the worst day of poker I've ever seen. I couldn't win a peep to save my life, and I think I took 3 or 4 shots at a last-minute FTOPS #7 ($1 mil NLHE) spot, only to run into megadonkery. I LOVE when I push an obvious steal and he CALLS with J6o and turns a jack to outpair me. That was but one retarded call-and-catch I saw.

All-in-all, if I hadn't reloaded the roll earlier to head off the inevitable, I'd have gone busto.

However, I returned later and started up the $22+2 Turbo 1-table SnGs and went 2-3-2 to recover a good portion of what I'd lost earlier. I still couldn't win a peep, but did at least cash in it. I played that "one more game" of a $22 Turbo, only to Gigli it after the LONGEST period I've seen before anyone got knocked out of a 1-table turbo. We were at 100-200 when I finally kicked in 9th out of 9. That's what? 21-24 minutes? In a TURBO?

Dinner was intresting. I have some chicken and roasted red pepper tortellini that I needed to use. Naturally I figured Alfredo would be a good sauce. Problem being - the jars of Alfredo I have are apparently crappy. So I made my own. Small issue - no cream. Looking up substitutes I decided to go with evaporated (not condensed) milk, as I had a can sitting around. Used my last clove of garlic, and every shred of parmesan in my place (had EXACTLY the right amount between the fresh stuff and the jar of store-bought grated), and it turned out okay. I still had some evaporated milk leftover though, so I chilled it and turned it into a quick chocolate mousse, which helped use up the 68% and 75% dark chocolate I had around, and most of the 70% too. Now I have a giant bowl of the stuff. It's amazing how far 140ml of milk and 106g of chocolate go.

My SnG run definitely improved the confidence heading into today and the MATH. I'll take one more shot at a token before just buying in, and then it'll be time to focus on a level II for The Big Game on Sunday. Look for me in the frenzies.

I'm feeling good today. This could be the MATH for me... or I could Gigli. Who knows? That's poker. All I know is that I'm missing the Riverchasers this week, so I need to kick ass in the MATH and Mookie this week to (a) regain my leaderboard lead, (b) win the the weekly points, and (c) get in the TOC. Three easily-attainable goals, right?

Presto Can Keep Puckering Up

Congrats to The Truck o' Luck on his TOC spot and Riverchasers win. I was happy to see so much action with the final four.

Out 33rd of 96 in Ye Olde Riverchasers to my old nemesis, presto. I was pretty damned short and after the blinds, antes, raise, and a slightly smaller push in front of me would effectively triple me up, I pushed with KQo to run into 55 and call it a night. I typed "gg" as soon as I saw it.

I got crushed a couple times running a weaker ace into AK, and sucked out huge once when my A6c met AKd and I rivered the 6. AK vs AK was disappointing, and losing with a flush to a rivered boat early on didn't help my mood. I'm just pointing out that my luck isn't endless. It was also a night designed to separate me from my chips as I would constantly flop great hands and get called to shitty turns and rivers for me, forcing me to lay it down to all-ins and large bets on boards that could beat my set in numerous ugly ways.

At least my salad was tasty, although none of my avocados were ripe enough to use. Smoothie was good too.

Out tonight, plans tomorrow, and the family possibly coming by on Sunday means a weekend generally free of poker. I might get on late tomorrow, or during the day Sunday, but I doubt it will be for more than a SnG here or there. Time to start working on those big tokens for the Big Game next week.

What's For Dinner?

I'm full from eating leftover Halloween chocolate (aren't I supposed to try and LOSE weight before Vegas?), but will still need to eat something for dinner. I will now write until I figure it out.

This week has already had:

Dry-rubbed Tilapia, steamed broccoli and zucchini, scalloped potatoes.

An unbelievably tender rib-eye steak, steamed broccoli, sauteed mushrooms, garlic and onions. I smoked up my kitchen good on this one, and didn't use enough pepper.

Turkey soup, and random snacking (elk pepperette, applewood smoked cheddar, frozen mini pizza bagels)

Oriental spicy chicken breast, lemongrass rice, and sauteed broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms and onions.

Lunch today was beef barley soup and a fruit salad.

I'm leaning to more turkey soup (finish off another jar) and a salad (I've got a bunch of veggies I should use). With a smoothie for dessert. I mean, I bought a banana specifically for that, and I have all kinds of frozen fruit that should be used. But part of me just wants to toss a frozen dinner or hot pocket thing into the microwave and call it a day.

Naw, it'll be the salad. I have all those peppers, tomatoes, avocados, green onions, cheese, corn, cucumber, lettuce, and a door full of dressings to use. Or do I make my own? That 10-year aged balsamic vinegar and some blood orange olive oil would be tasty. Soup's still up for debate. Although at 2 degrees C (35 F for you yanks), and a rain/snow mix, soup isn't a bad idea.

Then the smoothie. Banana, raspberry, peach? Or Strawberry in the mix? Or all 4?

Then something caffeinated before the Riverchasers kicks off. Maybe tea... or maybe I'll get around to roasting some fresh coffee.

What? I can't mix up new drinks every night.

ARGH!

First - congrats to DNasty for winning the Mookie. At least, that's who I've heard won it. Not alot of coverage out there at the moment. D ended his blog in January, and hasn't posted on Tripjax's since March it seems. What a slacker :).

Me? I went out 71st of 107. I pushed my AQo into someone's (willwonka?) AKo directly to my left. Whoops. I was short after being outflushed by Donkette earlier in the match, knocking me waaaay down from the top 10. It was a stupid loss by me. I knew she had me outflushed, but I HOPED she just rivered the straight and was stupidly trying to scare me off with a flush on the board. My re-re-raise to put her all-in obviously doesn't work when she's got the nuts. I couldn't be upset with anyone but myself, no matter how much I tried to refocus my anger in her direction. So I ended up needing to double up or steal a lot of blinds. That didn't happen. Ah well.

It's a shame, because I was playing pretty well last night too.

Riverchasers is tonight. I have historically sucked in these, so I will obviously have to win tonight.

Disappointment

So you sit down at the local pub, browse the draft menu and then pick an English ale that sounds just right. It arrives. You take that first drink and it's exactly what you wanted. The flavour, the texture, everything is perfect for that moment.

Then the next day you go to a different establishment, order the same pint, and when you take that first drink it tastes different than the perfect glass you'd had less than 24 hours earlier. Not bad, but not the ambrosia that passed between your lips not a day before.

I hate that.

A Tuesday Win!

Shame it isn't worth a TOC seat.



That said, my dealer moved to Poker Stars tonight it seems.

AA twice, KK 3 times, AK about a brazilian times, and QQ vs 66 to knock ISS Spock to 1 chip heads-up.

Monkey Tourney's in trouble. Turnout is low because Stars gets no love. This is the official Wheatie successor, I'd hate to see it go.

How to Prove the Naysayers Right

Just saw this stat scroll across my TV at work (tuned generally to CNBC).

Radiohead recently released their new album independently online. You could buy the box and CDs for $80, or download and pay whatever price you wanted ($0 being acceptable).

Only 38% of the downloaders paid anything, and the average price for those 38%? $6.

SIX FREAKIN' DOLLARS? Those are American dollars too no doubt, so it's almost exactly like paying nothing.

So after years of people claiming that online distribution would kill the major labels; that people who download music illegally are more likely to buy CDs; that music lovers are generally good people and the market will pay a fair wage... thpppbt.

Granted, for 100 sales, that works out to $228, or $2.28 per album sold. That could very well be a better take for the band than EMI would give them per album.

So then the question becomes - how many albums got downloaded? When they go on tour, will this increase ticket and merchandise sales? Radiohead could end up ahead after all.

Still, a $2.28 average per album sounds pretty crappy to me. Gotta love deadbeat fans.

I once paid $10 for a single song to Jonathan Coulton after I downloaded it because it made me laugh, still makes me laugh, and I think was worth every penny. Then again, I'm a generous guy. Or maybe just stupid.

So how do you tweak this sales model? Do you allow payment after download? Ie.- you really like the album, so you might now pay $20? That's some serious honour system there. Do you set a minimum? $10? Then everyone pays that and no more, but that may still come out ahead here. Bonuses the more you pay?

Just thinking.

Damnit!

Well after another display of luckboxery, I donked out in 20th in the MATH. Yay points? As usual, I wanted the win.

Came back from the brink a couple times with timely hands and tables willing to pay me off, maintained chips with some steals. Lost chips to resteals. Made one HORRIBLE call against Don early on (which was why I needed the comeback soon after) when I completely ignored how *I* played the hand, letting him turn his straight, and generally played like crap.

Went out with Presto AGAIN. If I started running a "Presto is Garbage" thread, I might catch up to Fuel's pontification of it's auriferous properties. Then again, I wouldn't have needed to push with it into a SB steal attempt (QT? AGAIN?) if I'd pushed with my AKo the hand before, but something about twoblackaces' checking of a paired board put me on edge. Every time I reached for the "bet" button, my instincts were telling me that I was doomed.

Anyway, The Mookie is tomorrow, and I'm already signed up. 19 to go. Maybe I should start writing my blog submission.

Congrats to Kaja for taking down the MATH win and a TOC seat!

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Forgot a drink yesterday from the weekend - Kahlua, Caramel Baileys, vodka, and chocolate milk - Brown Mudslide? Caramel-Chocolate Mudslide? Whatever you want to call it, it was good.

Monday Already?

I heard a rumour that there was a weekend recently.

Friday was spent on the Donkament and with a few drinks:

- Sweetened Key Lime Juice, Navan, Tanquery Ten, Creme de Cacao = Tasty

This started as an attempt to approximate Key Lime pie, but I lack any sort of graham cracker-flavoured liquid. Also, Bailey's curdles as expected.

- Orange vodka, Grand Marnier, Peach Schnapps, Apricot Brandy = Okay

A bit harsh, but drinkable. I think too much went into it.

- Strawberry Vodka, Creme de Cacao, Navan, Fragoli = Tasty

Neopolitan flavours = Neopolitan Martini. If only they were coloured and layered. Still, very tasty.

Saturday was where 4 hours of shopping became 8. That said, my freezer is packed and my fridge is well-stocked again. I also have a few more toys in my kitchen. I did manage to make it to a buddy's 30th about 4 or 5 hours later than planned, and stuck around until it broke up 2 1/2 hours later. Apparently my friends are getting old as I haven't seen a party go past 1:30am in months. Laaaame. Also, THREE babies present, and plenty of mommy talk going on made for all the single guys looking for the bar.

Sunday went about as planned - woke up around noon, set the clock back an hour and slept some more. Got up, ate breakfast around 1:30, vegged, played poker, watched TV (finally saw I, Robot - uh... yah), took a nap, played video games, did laundry, made dinner around 10pm (grilled dry-rubbed (garlic, salt, black pepper, chili powder, cayenne, ground coriander seed, ground lemongrass and habanero powder) Tilapia with perfectly steamed zucchini and broccoli, and some leftover scalloped potatoes (with broccoli, bacon, 3 cheeses and cream)), geeked, and went to bed. Somedays you need to lock out the world.

Poker was a bust all weekend. Couldn't win a thing. Due in large part to me sucking and not really paying attention.

MATH is tonight - I've final-tabled the last two, so I'm due to Gigli tonight no doubt. Will we see 82 runners again? More? Less? Who knows! 20 chances left in BBT II.

Donkament Fun

Pictures speak for themselves... oh, and I didn't win.

Quick Question

Why is everyone's kid allergic to peanuts these days?

Friday

Well, Riverchasers went less than optimally. with me finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack. Ah well. I suck. 20 more chances.

Kat's Donkament is tonight. I'm not sure if I'll be there or not. Last week's kinda sucked with silent tables and tighties who apparently are terrified of losing $1. We'll see how a few errands I plan to run and chores go first. Place is a mess, laundry's piling up, and food is running low. I'll probably just hunker down in front of Guitar Hero III and rock out.

Tomorrow is a birthday party, and Sunday I'll be spending by myself on purpose. Maybe I'll take a shot at a few bigger tourneys if the mood strikes me.

Dangnabbit

I'm one of those people who loves to hang around in the background observing, and then avoiding being picked for crap. I'm quite the accomplished slacker.

So it is with no minute amount of chagrin that I must say I've been tagged by Carmen.

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A). Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog...
B). Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself...
C). Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs...
D). Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


1.- I have 3 TVs in my condo. I own only one of them. I don't have a roommate.

2.- I lived with an ex for 3 months. I moved in about a month after we broke up.

3.- I've tried out twice for Jeopardy. I couldn't come up with 5 interesting anecdotes about me for Alex to talk about if I made it.

4.- My middle name starts with a "W". Nobody's been able to guess it without a hint. Only one person has been able to guess it after only 1 hint.

5.- Since high school my sleep schedule has been thus: Sleep 4-6 hours a night during the week, sleep until I get up on weekends. I am NOT a morning person

6.- The last 3 women I've been in a relationship with, plus the last one I went on a date with, have either moved, planned to move, or are about to move away. The closest was a 800 km (only one that didn't happen), the furthest is 6500km (happening in two months). I guess I have that effect on women.

7.- Nothing annoys me more than stupidity. Note that there is a big difference between ignorance, lack of education, and stupidity. Oh, and misplaced arrogance ranks up there too.


Time to tag: Dillo, RaisingCayne, Guin, Buddy Dank, Schaubs, Tragedy, and Lightning.

Any Friend of Lucko's...

Is apparently going to win a TOC seat. With Loretta8 taking down the Mook last night, that means the last 3 spots won, were won by either Lucko or one of his friends. Obviously he's got a superuser account on FTP and is feeding the hole cards.

I intend to present copious amounts of data confirming this as soon as I finish making it up.

Congrats to Loretta. I intend to try and not pass out during the Riverchasers tonight and donk my way to the top.

How to Beat A Luckbox

Hold presto. It's that simple.

I sucked out against Don with A7 vs his 33. Flop of A37, turn of 7, I double up.

I get AA after the break and get up a bit more, but still hurting.

See A9s in the BB, Snake5970 ups it to 3x from the SB, I think steal and push. He calls and flips over 55. Flop comes 4s2sAd, 4 on the turn, 3 on the flop gives snake the straight and IGH. Even if I win though, all it gives me is some breathing room.

Not that I wanted to relate a bad beat, but just showing how 55 is Kryptonite to my luckbox powers. An alternative is to call me when I have presto, as it's also been killing me of late. I think I killed ran over its dog or something.

Anyway, out 35th in the Mook, Riverchasers tonight. I think I'll get some sleep now.

Good luck everyone who's left.

Oh - the Spook was a blast for the 10-15 minutes I was in it. :)