Flatland Grinder: We're a Movin' On Up
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Friday, November 23, 2007 at 8:05pm | Delete
The day has finally come. I've moved up limits and have been playing $50 no limit and pot limit poker for the past few days. I've logged 5 sessions, and all of them have been winning sessions, with a bb/100 rate of 11 or so after about 2000 hands. Far too early to tell, but these initial results have been pretty encouraging. It's ironic that as I write this post on my impressive win rate I'm playing a session and losing quite badly. I've been getting a lot of small and middle pairs, and as it goes with set farming aggressive tables, it's pretty costly to see a flop. Different people play these kinds of pairs under different circumstances. Some people use a maximum raise amount that they'll call, such as 6 bb or 8bb. I use an approach based a little more on game theory. Provided that my call has implied odds of about 7.5-1 if I hit my set I'll call. Long term it's a profitable play, but it can get expensive when the stacks are deep. And right now the stacks are deep and I haven't been catching the sets. I'm also playing at the only 3 tables going with any real action. This is less than half of my usual 7 tables, and consequently the 'long run' is going to take a little longer tonight.
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Flatland Grinder: 99; Red Balloons
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 11:35am | Delete
I love poker. Part of the reason is hands like the following. I spent a lot of time micro-anaylzing a losing hand not so long ago. Here's a winning hand with a lot more to it than there would seem to be at first. Here's the hand history. Texas Hold'em $0.25-$0.50 PL (real money), hand #P4-54309598-113
Table Moroni, 20 Nov 2007 11:02 PM ET Seat 1: herberthump ($9.45 in chips)
Seat 2: AncusMarcius ($36.50 in chips)
Seat 3: YellowManJJ ($24.75 in chips)
Seat 4: Maria 26 ($23.80 in chips)
Seat 5: Arale. ($24.25 in chips)
Seat 6: MrTon57 ($20.80 in chips)
Seat 7: L3st3rMurphy [ 9D,9C ] ($23.00 in chips)
Seat 8: jonna92 ($10.10 in chips)
Seat 10: tranquillozh ($28.65 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
L3st3rMurphy posts blind ($0.25), jonna92 posts blind ($0.25). PRE-FLOP
tranquillozh calls $0.25, herberthump bets $1.25, AncusMarcius folds, YellowManJJ calls $1.25, Maria 26 calls $1.25, Arale. calls $1.25, MrTon57 folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $1, jonna92 calls $1, tranquillozh folds. FLOP [board cards 10C,8C,JH ]
L3st3rMurphy checks, jonna92 bets $3, herberthump bets $8.20 and is all-in, YellowManJJ folds, Maria 26 folds, Arale. folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $8.20, jonna92 calls $5.20. TURN [board cards 10C,8C,JH,3H ]
L3st3rMurphy bets $1, jonna92 calls $0.65 and is all-in. RIVER [board cards 10C,8C,JH,3H,9S ] SHOWDOWN
herberthump shows [ AC,AS ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ 9D,9C ]
jonna92 shows [ JS,10D ]
L3st3rMurphy wins $32.50. SUMMARY
Dealer: MrTon57
Pot: $34, (including rake: $1.50)
herberthump loses $9.45
AncusMarcius loses $0
YellowManJJ loses $1.25
Maria 26 loses $1.25
Arale. loses $1.25
MrTon57 loses $0
L3st3rMurphy bets $10.45, collects $32.50, net $22.05 After winning this hand I typed in the chat window "Know your outs :)" Here's why. This is one of those poker hands where the margin of error could be huge. With all of the action against my lowly 99 here my little voice was sending up red warning balloons like crazy. (Yet another brilliantly creative title!) First of all, on the flop I put Jonna92 on at least a premium pocket pair. I didn't have very many hands on him, and in the absence of information to the contrary I always give my opponents credit for a strong hand. I had him holding anything from aa-jj or ak. His bet was for half the pot, essentially offering 2-1 odds for a call, and I was intending to call his bet. The next player, herberthump (nice name bub) was a little looser, and I put him on any pair and hands down to aj. When he moved all in for his 8.20 I put him on top 1 or 2 pair or a flush draw. With a straight I felt it was more likely that he would have flat called hoping to suck me in too. That he bet so big said to me that he was afraid of the draws hitting, or was trying to build a pot in anticipation of the flush. When it came back to me the pot was 18.95 and I had to call 8.20. My outs were anywhere from 6 (the 7s and the Qs, without the clubs to complete a flush draw if there was one and my 2 remaining 9s being counterfeited by a higher set), or 10 outs if there were no flush draw and no higher set. I was confident that there were no higher straights out there. So averaging my outs to 8 I decided I only needed 2.2-1 on the call, and with only $5 more for Jonna92 to call into a $27 pot I was sure that he'd call too. The pot odds alone made it a worthwhile call, and the implied odds with Jonna's predicted call made it a no brainer. I flat called not wanting to scare jonna out and we had a 3 way pot, which I rivered out on. I showed this hand to a friend of mine and his initial reaction was that it seemed like a loose play. So we crunched the numbers with pokertracker and with pokerstove. Here is a rough idea of what we got: My probability of completing my hand by the river was 31.45%. This translated to needing pot odds of 2.18-1, so my guesstimate of 2.2-1 was almost bang on. To call a bet of $8.20 I needed to have a pot of at least of $17.87. I was being offered a pot of $18.95 or odds of 2.32-1, better than I needed. If the implied odds of Jonna92's remaining $5.85 are added to the pot, we then have a pot of $24.80, or implied pot odds of 3.02-1. As it turned out I did have 10 live outs which gave me terrific expectation. In fact, even if I'd had only 7 outs in this hand, it would have been a profitable call. It's only in the event that I had 6 outs or less that this call would show a loss. What I love about this hand is that it shows the importance of a) playing by the math, and 2) not always being afraid of the worst case scenario. At best one can only put their opponents on a range of hands. You can never know for certain what an opponent is holding. And when you're counting outs in a hand like this, you need to apply that same technique of ascribing a range of possibilities to your opponents. While it may be possible that you're drawing dead, it's equally possible that all of your outs are live, even remotely possible that both your opponents are drawing. With that in mind, the best method for calculating pot odds in a situation like this is to take the average of your range of outs and go with that. I love this hand. I was bouncing around my house for a while after this one, not because of the amount of money won, but because of the complexity of the call and the fact that I played it well. Incidentally, had I lost this hand, I think it still would have been the subject of a post. This kind of thing intrigues me to no end!
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Flatland Grinder: Paid to play.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 9:28pm | Delete
There are a lot of skeptics in this world. You tell them that the poker site you play at gives you money to play there and they are disbelieving. For example, this month I stand to get about 400 or 500 in bonuses from my poker site. The skeptics say things like 'that doesn't make sense, why would they pay you to play?" Here is how an online poker room makes money. Just like in a brick and mortar poker room, the site takes a small percentage of every pot, called 'the rake". The rake varies from site to site. The rake can be a contentious issue depending on who you talk to. Some players view it as though the rake comes out of the loser's share of a pot. Others view it as a piece of their winnings being taken. The site I play at has a rake of about 5% of every pot. I share the view that the loser is paying the rake, and I'm being compensated for my share by the pot I win. Whether it's right or wrong I don't care, it helps me ignore the fact that the site is taking a small share. So back to the question, how can a site afford to pay players to play. Consider this. Most players are long term losers. Most bonuses involve a 'raked hand requirement' or collected points system of sorts. You have to play x amount of hands in x amount of time to collect the bonus. A lot of players never actually clear the bonus. The site has drawn their business, collected a good amount of rake off of them, and not had to pay out a penny. Then there are players like my friends and I, bonus whores as we tend to be known as. We're winning players that carefully calculate which bonuses are best and we adhere to strict playing schedules so that we are guaranteed to clear the bonuses. Often times this works out to an extra $3-$5 per hour. Does the site still make money off of us? Yes, just not as much. I just cleared a $200 bonus today, that required me to clear about 10k hands or so. Looking at my stats I can see that in that time frame I paid approx. $300 in rake. So the site made $100 off of my play instead of $300. But there are other benefits for the site. Brick and mortar rooms will often hire 'prop players' to fill their tables, thus insuring that new players always have a poker table to sit at and play. Online sites are no different. Without traffic a site is dead. The network that I play on has always offered some of the best bonuses, and has consistently held a strong market share because of it, which has kept them alive and growing while other sites faltered. Anyway, that's how a poker site can pay players to play. It's more like returning a portion of rake than an actual bonus. In fact 'rakeback' programs are another way that players are paid to play.
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Flatland Grinder: 10k hand checkup
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Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 8:40pm | Delete
What can I say, my play is awesome. First off, the stats; Vpip 16.28, pfr 8.12, AF 3.42 bb/100 9.04 I'm really happy with these results. Things I'm doing well. I'm playing a little looser than the 14/4 rocks that seem to make up more than half of the players these days, and I think that's making me a little harder to read. I'm bumping up my pfr with a lot more position raising than I used to do. For example, if I have a small pair, or a couple of Broadway cards I'm making a small raise. I'm pretty sure that most of the opponents that I need to worry about are using PAHUD. They're not actually watching the size of my raises, just looking at the pfr stat on their PAHUD. That extra 4% of what I used to consider junk raises increases the range of possible hands that my opponents have to consider me capable of playing immensely. In the event that 1 or 2 are watching my raises, about 10% of the time I'm making the small raises (or no raise at all) with the monsters too. Another thing that I'm doing is making a lot more position raises than I used to. If I don't take the pot preflop, I take it often enough with a sensible continuation bet that it's profitable. This is one of the areas that I'm really leaning on PAHUD for. I'm really watching the stats of 'fold to continuation bet" and 'raise continuation bet'. I also discovered a little trick with PAHUD that I never realized I could do before. There's a window that allows you to 'configure pop-up stats" in the edit menu of the layout manager screen. It allows you to customize the info in the pop up stats window. I've added a lot of info to the flop stats section of my pop up that I'm finding to be quite profitable. I've mentioned a few of them here, but the info that I have my pop up window displaying for the flop is Aggression Frequency Flop Flop Aggression Check Raise Flop Fold to Flop Bet Fold to Flop Raise Continuation Bet Raise Continuation Bet Folds Continuation Bet I'm not going to go on at length defining these terms, instead I'll direct you here; http://pokeracesoftware.com/hud/tutorial.php?page=stats Ironically the other thing that I'm doing well is ignoring PAHUD and going with my gut on later streets. Things that I'm doing poorly, or have been doing poorly and recently stopped. I still sometimes overvalue tptk. I was playing under less than ideal conditions. For example, I was taking my laptop to a couple of coffee shops that had shitty internet connections. I did this twice, and rather than stop playing when I saw the connection was likely to give me trouble, I played through. I grew increasing frustrated and in both sessions began to play too aggressively out of fear that I would lose my connection and be folded out of the hand. Subsequently both sessions were losing sessions. This could also have been due to the level of distractions in the coffee shops. or even to some additional edginess and irritability brought on by the caffeine. At home I still sometimes fail to wait until there are no distractions. I want to play more tables so that I can earn more per hour, and I'm pushing the envelope a little too hard at times. I need to pace myself better. I'm not putting in the hours as well as I should. This week I'm currently 8 hours behind my goal. This means that tomorrow I'll be playing for about 8 hours to catch up. And that's not much fun. Believe it or not poker is work. I still pursue vendettas against maniacs at times. Poker shouldn't be personal, but when some 80/40/12 assholed sucks out on me for a backdoor flush I get pissed. I need to work on a more zen outlook. And that's my 10k checkup. :)
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Flatland Grinder: Mental Masturbation with One Hand
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Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 8:10pm | Delete
I had a boss back in the day who was all action and no bullshit. He hated people that used a ten dollar word where a one dollar word would do. He also loathed indecision, he believed it was a sign of weakness. And he also hated micro-analysis of anything, particularly micro-analysis that had no immediately apparent point. People that engaged in any such verbosity, indecision and analysis he referred to as mental masturbators. So he would be absolutely disgusted with me right now. Because I'm still going on about the same hand I've been talking about for several posts now. I'm talking about the jqo that I flopped 2 pair with and then found myself facing 2 reraises. The first point, that I've hammered to death, is that I really should have gone with my gut on that hand. I've since come across a lot of other information in the form of vital concepts of no limit play from Sklansky's NLHETAP. I'm going to list the concepts that I feel had the most bearing on this hand in particular, because listening to my gut and adhering to these simple concepts has really helped my play a lot. DON'T PLAY BIG POTS AGAINST TIGHT OR TRAPPING PLAYERS If the player is an absolute rock, don't play a big pot without the nuts or VERY close to it, for example a set or better. Your opponent won't be in with anything less. In the hand that I keep referring to a 6.4% vpip reraised a reraiser all in. I should have folded holding only 2 pair. A BIG BET IS THE MOST RELEVANT INFORMATION AVAILABLE. When reasonable players make extremely large bets, all information from past action takes a backseat to the big bet. Sklansky notes that if the only possible way he could have you beat is if he held 7 4 offsuit and it's not in his range, disregard the range. The big bet says he's got 7 4 if he's a reasonable player. I chose to use the (false) information from the past action in the hand when I called the all in with my 2 pair, and failed to assign the big post flop bet enough importance. BE WARY OF OVERCALLERS When there has been a lot of action and there's a call and an overcall, the overcaller almost always has to have an extremely powerful hand. In my case, the action demonstrated power even more clearly than an overcall. This hand has fascinated me because it's absolutely riddled with mistakes on my part. Those mistakes are a tremendous learning opportunity. A lot of poker players refer to their losses as their tuition, the dues they pay in order to better their play. I paid a lot of tuition on this hand, and I'm not going to let it go until I've taken my money's worth of education about it. In somewhat related news I recently took an IQ test on Facebook and I did a little better on it than I have traditionally done on these types of exams. After the test it gave me some analysis, my results and some tips on how to improve my IQ score. One tip in particular might explain why my results were a little better than usual on this test. The tip was "Play games (chess, cards, etc.) which require you to work out your opponent's strategy". Well I've put in more than my share of time doing that!
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Recollections of Abrahim Upon Interviewing for a Job.
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Friday, November 16, 2007 at 2:47pm | Edit Note | Delete
I've been told they're going to ask me, "Tell us about a time you dealt with a difficult customer."
And instantly I was thinking of Abe. Let me tell you about Abe. Abe was a portly old gangster in his mid 40s. Actually gangster is too strong a word. Abe was more of a petty hoodlum with some big connections. He used to come into a restaurant and bar I managed in Edmonton, and he would come in and drink one of our finest whiskeys. He let everbody know that he was drinking the finest whiskey too. That we had the cheapest price on that particular whiskey of any lounge in the area was a detail that he kept to himself however. Abe was from somewhere in the Middle East, he made frequent references to Khazakstan, Lebanon, Jordan. He could have been from any one of those nations, and he brought with him a lot of the cultural nuances of the Middle East.
He felt it was rude to deprive you of the odor of his breath, and it was not a pleasant odor.
He liked to hold your hand when he was speaking to you, and it was a clammy hand and a strong hand, and it was difficult to escape it.
Abe was a portly man, and as he told me once, "In my country a large belly is a sign of prosperity." and he led himself around the room by his oversized belly. If he was arguing or being forceful he would belly bump the person he was speaking with. He would lean back in his chair smoking a cigar and rubbing his belly, gold covered fingers and a heavy gold watch glinting like Chivas on the rocks.
The owner valued Abe's business. Abe was very vocal about his status as a regular customer. But outside of Abe's own claims, the owner didn't know him.
Abe didn't spend that much. He'd mooch drinks off of the bartenders, the managers, other customers.
On one occassion Abe sat with a table of young ladies and ran his hand up under the skirt of one of them to cop a feel. We banned him then, but he spoke to the owner and was let back in.
Abe was the quintessential alcoholic. He came down with a bad case of gout, and he told me that his doctor had advised him to quit drinking, which he refused to do. And Abe drank a lot. In fact he drank himself into oblivion on a regular basis, sometimes passing out at his table.
On one such night a customer asked me if I was going to let Abe drive home. A number of other customers overheard this exchange and added their two cents that this guy should not drive home.
When closing time came I told Abe I wasn't letting him drive home. He argued. I told him it was against the law for me to let him drive home. He screamed at the top of his lungs "YOU TELL ME WHERE IN THE LAW IT SAYS THAT I CANNOT DRINK AND THEN DRIVE HOME!!!" Well that shout attracted the attention of far too many witnesses and made me 100% liable for anything that might happen.
He refused to take the cab that I offered to pay for and made a break for his car, at which time my bartender called the police. We have to cover our own asses after all.
The next night Abe came back as if nothing had happened. I told him I wasn't serving him unless he agreed up front that he would take the ride I offered.
He agreed, but at closing time disappeared. So I barred him from coming in for a week. Throughout this process I discussed it with the owner (who had a colorful impaired driving record himself), and he didn't really want to take any action.
A week later Abe came back, with a couple of young friends. He introduced them to me as Tony and Vince or something like that, and told me with a smile that they were his "Italian leverage". Then he asked if I had a few minutes to hear a story and I did, so he told me the Italian Leverage story. "I have many friends you see, and one day a friend of mine who owned a restaurant much like this one approached me for help. He was having some difficulty paying his bills and was in a lot of trouble financially and wanted the restaurant gone in such a way that he could collect the insurance. I as you know am an adjuster, and I helped arrange things for him. So it came to pass that this restaurant of his burned to the ground in a great fire one night, and I took care of his claim with him. This friend told me "I had $2000 worth of CDs" and I told him NO! you had $10,000 worth of CDs. By the time we had taken care of everything I'd made him an extra $30 or $40,0000. So a few weeks later I went to see him, and I asked if I could please have $5000 for a commission. He refused, and we argued but he still would not agree. So I returned late that night with my Italian leverage, and we got my money." The Italian leverage sat there giving me smiles and laughing and telling Abe to shut up, but the message was pretty clear. The Italian leverage however were also blowing Abe off as a bit of a loser, and I concluded I really didn't have much to worry about, it was just a scare tactic. They left, and Abe ordered a drink and called me to his table and told me that he didn't want any bullshit and he'd be driving home. I took the drink away from him, and he got irate, said he'd never drink in my bar again, and when he left he wouldn't be coming back. Then he sat down at a VLT, as was his habit. Beside him there was a bucket of scrap paper, etc. I just happened to be watching when Abe took a match to this bucket and set it on fire. He sat there doing nothing as it quickly turned into a blaze. I was there in a shot with a pint of water and had the fire out in a jiffy. It was a pleasure asking him at that moment to never ever return to my bar.
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Updated about 9 months ago
Candy is for Pee-ers.
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 2:31pm | Edit Note | Delete
My son is regressing to being a non-potty user. It was going well but now he doesn't even want to try. I was desperate for some kind of motivational speech to give him. Then I remembered the 'Coffee is for closers" speech from Glengarry Glenross. So I've made the same speech, to the boy, but I've substituted 'candy is for pee-ers."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY
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A Shout Out to All da Ladeeez in da Hizzy!
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 11:19am | Edit Note | Delete
Let's not kid ourselves ladies. Some of us are getting old. You're gettin' up there, and often few of your good parts are following. But that's not the issue.
Yes, there's an issue.
One day, and one day soon you're going to be classified as an old lady. There is such a thing as a nice little old lady, but nice little old ladies are the exception. Somewhere along the line it seems that women lose their common sense. And I'm preparing you for this, because I want you all to fight it. Yes soon you're going to feel an overwhelming compulsion to stop paying for things with debit or credit or cash, and you're going to be the little blue hair standing at the express checkout writing out a check for your milk and cat food while 9000 people are waiting behind you. You'll also come to the realization that most people can see you when you're driving in the middle of the road and avoid hitting you, thus leading you to falsely believe that this is the safest route for travel. Try to ignore the madness. Don't turn into a little old lady.
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Flatland Grinder: Freudian Poker
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Monday, November 12, 2007 at 9:47am | Delete
As you know I've been reading a book on rapid cognition (intuiion) in the hope of improving my decisions at the poker table. Most recently I've had some bad results using PAHUD's stats even when they conflicted with my gut instinct, and a lot of the time this has cost me money. There are times when I can really rely on pahud, for instance when I'm deciding whether or not to make a continuation bet, or deciding whether or not to go for a check raise. For those small and frequent decisions, pahud gives me pretty close to the exact odds of my chances of success, and it pays for itself quickly. However I've been using it to justify calling some pretty big raises on the river. I've decided that from now on those river calls are going to be the result of my first gut instinct. It's generally correct, and I've found that the research in Blink backs this up. First, a brief summary of the findings in Blink. The researchers found that in small and unimportant decisions, rational analysis using a traditional pros vs cons method had a higher success rate than 'going with your gut." However, they also discovered that as more and more information became available, and the decisions became a little more complex, with few exceptions, subjects had better results when they made their decisions intuitively. This isn't to say that data shouldn't be considered. It's just to say that when there is a wealth of information to analyze the subconscious seems to do a better job of parsing through to the best conclusion than the rational but drawn out processes of the conscious mind. Freud realized this when he was studying the subconscious, and here's a quote from him. "When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep needs of our inner nature." That being said, my inner nature is currently feeling a deep need to go fishing for donkeys online :)
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Remembrance Day
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Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 1:33pm | Edit Note | Delete
First off, I'm all about peace. I'm practically a freaking hippy. I don't want Canada to be in a war. I've marched against some of our more recent wars. That being said I really appreciate that I have the right to march against the actions of my government. And I owe that right to soldiers that were willing to risk sacrificing everything including their lives so that I could. Even if I disagree with the motivations of my government sending our forces to war in a foreign land, I appreciate and respect the soldiers that are doing the fighting. They're making that same sacrifice that my grandfather's made for their children. The only difference is that they are making that sacrifice, not for their children, but for complete strangers on a completely foreign soil. It may or may not be our government's objective, but Canadian soldiers have a long history of bringing humanity, dignity, honor and integrity to their missions, and I will always stand up for them with pride. So today, on Remembrance Day I think of my Father's war experience, of my Grandfather's experience and of my friends. I'm proud of you guys. I salute you.
My Dad is heavily involved with the Royal Canadian Legion and he came to speak at my daughters' school on Thursday. He has never really talked about his experience during the Korean war, and I thought that perhaps at this event he might. He didn't. But he did mention something that I maybe hammer to death. Remembrance Day isn't just about the soldiers that have fallen. It's also about those of you that have come back home, and seen things no one should have to see. The way he puts it is, "There are men that saw things, and they survived. Now they're old men, but they still have dreams that wake them up at night, and they are not the nice kind of dreams."
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Winter 08
Running.
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Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 1:02pm | Edit Note | Delete
A few years ago I hit my running peak. I managed to run 26km on one of my long runs, which is the equivalent of a half marathon. Shortly after that run I hurt my leg moving some furniture, and it was difficult to get back into the running program. I had to start at square one and square one sucks. Every time that I did start again the injury came back too, so I eventually made the difficult decision to give up the idea of running and switch to weights to stay in shape. But I've always missed running. I've tried to start again a few times but I'd lost all of my conditioning and starting at square one (run 1 minute, walk 1 minute) was really demoralizing. It took everything I had to do 20 minutes on the treadmill, and I couldn't seem to convince myself to get back out onto the roads,
This year of brutal physical work outdoors has had a tremendous side effect for me however. My legs are the strongest they've ever been since my running days, and I'm in great shape as far as cardio is concerned. When I got back into the gym after the year had finished I found that I'd lost some of my strength when it came to lifting weights, but I was doing 45 minutes on the treadmill at 2km/hr more than my usual pace almost effortlessly. The first thing that occurred to me is that I can probably jump back in to my running routine. So for the past 2 weeks I've been easing back into it. Today concludes the end of the second week. I'm not ready to run any marathons, or 10ks or 5ks for that matter, but I've got a good base to work with. This week I started with run 3 minutes walk 1 minute, repeat 6 times every session, 3 times a week. Today was was my final run of the week, and so far I'm still injury free. I think that I could probably start with a full 20 minute run right now, but I really don't want to mess up again by going for too much too soon. I'm going to hold at run 3 walk 1 for next week as well, then I'll start moving towards longer runs again.
Today was fantastic. It was everything that I love about running. I left the chaos of my house and in 3 minutes I was at the Mendel heading for the Meewassin Trail. It snowed last night, but by the time I made my run the sun had melted it off of the roads and sidewalks. There was still enough on the grass and in the shadows to make for a beautiful and picturesque day, and the pavement was just wet enough to amplify the sunlight and create an extra bright day. It's Remembrance Day and the streets and sidewalks were deserted except for other runners. We'd pass each other on the trail with a nod and a genuine smile, in absolute silence except for the sound of our breathing and our footsteps on the path. There is a real peace that comes with running, an in the moment kind of simultaneous awareness and detachment. You're acutely aware of your form and your breathing and the path in front of you, and at once you do your best to detach the pain and natural resistance that your body places upon you when you exert yourself. It's a very zen state. Anyway the run was tremendous, and I came home feeling lighter, calmer, faster, stronger and more balanced than when I'd left. I can hardly wait for my next run.
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Flatland Grinder: Using the Force Part Deux
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Friday, November 9, 2007 at 1:26pm | Delete
So in the last post I was talking about an excess of information often complicating and clouding otherwise simple decisions. Often times, this excess of information results in it's possessor developing a false sense of confidence in a judgement call due to the sheer volume of the knowledge. "I have so much data indicating that 'x' is true that it's virtually impossible for 'y' to have any degree of truth." This idea really resonated with my poker experience, particularly when it comes to using tracking software. You may recall a post I made on Hudbots, and the indispenability of playing with PAHUD. I'm revisiting that idea somewhat these days. PAHUD is certainly a useful tool, and it produces a staggering amount of data. But there are some cases where using and relying on PAHUD can be even more harmful than playing without it. I played a hand yesterday that will illustrate this point beautifully. First of all, it's imperative to identify that there were several factors that went into the gross misinterpretation of this hand. I generally play about 6 tables at a time. In this hand I was playing 8 tables, which was a bit of a stretch for me. I wasn't paying quite as much attention as I should have been, but I was counting on PAHUD to help me make decisions that would otherwise be based on a combination of observation and intuition. It's also important to realize that I would have made a perfect read on my opponents had I been paying attention and using accurate info. However my information was inaccurate, a fact that I didn't realize until the hand was over. I was in the big blind for this hand. But I was distracted, and I didn't notice that I was. I was dealt jqo, a hand that I will usually muck to a raise. However when it came time to act in this hand I was distracted by some activity in the house. I'd called a raise with jqo, and what's worse, I didn't realize I had. When the flop came down jq6 I was operating under the impression that it was an unraised pot. This assumption was to be the basis of a series of information based mistakes that cost me a lot of money. I raised my top pair and was immediately reraised by the guy behind me (Lars). Looking at his hudstats I concluded that he wouldn't be in an unraised pot with a decent hand. I put him on a flush draw based on his aggression numbers and i reraised. The guy behind him (Dejection) rereraised all in. Instantly my gut instinct screamed "He has a set". However I took a moment to think about it and I looked at his stats. This player was playing in only 6% of pots, and he was raising almost 5% of those. In order for him to have a set he would have to have either jj, qq, or 66. 66 was outside of his hand range. It's a hand that he just wouldn't play period and I easily eliminated the possibility of a set of 6s. I quickly ruled out jj or qq. This player was certainly playing those hands, but with a pfr almost equal to his vpip, he would be guaranteed to raise them. He had to have one of the 1% or so of hands that he wasn't raising. I put him on aq, or possibly kq with a flush draw, with the very unlikely prospect that he might have the same hand. An all in raise with a flush draw and 2 callers isn't a bad play at all, especially if he had equity from catching top pair as well. I recall thinking that "If there'd been a raise preflop this would be an easy fold." I was 8 tabling, and shouting back and forth with a family member upstairs. I took the few seconds I had to consider this hand to look at stats, sticking with my assumptions about preflop action. After Dejection's all in raise I called and so did Lars for his remaining few chips. This fit with my initial assessment that Lars was on a flush draw. He was a fairly solid player, and getting 2-1 on the flop for his draw, the all in move was a good play. Well needless to say 6% had pocket jack for a set, leaving me just the 2 remaining queens for outs. I missed them, Lars missed his draw and Dejection stacked us both. Without HUDbot this hand would have been an easy fold. I had to consciously over ride my intuition on this hand with a barrage of data and even then it just 'felt' wrong. My goal for the next few weeks is going to be to count on my instincts more than my software. I don't plan to abandon the software altogether, but I need to integrate it in a more cooperative fashion with my gut. Here's the hand history, and for those of you that concern yourself with such things, the stats on my opponents. 007Lars Vpip 21.88 (Voluntarily put in pot) Pfr 6.25 (Pre-Flop Raise) Af 2.00 (Aggression Factor) Dejection Vpip 10.29 Pfr 6.01 Af 14.00 (absolutely huge aggression factor) Seat 1: dejection ($24.50 in chips)
Seat 2: tmobjerg ($12.65 in chips)
Seat 3: martind02 ($28.50 in chips)
Seat 4: Stingray3x ($28.75 in chips)
Seat 6: happy yorik ($31.35 in chips)
Seat 7: L3st3rMurphy [ QH,JS ] ($35.65 in chips)
Seat 8: Cantrim ($23.00 in chips)
Seat 9: 007Lars ($21.05 in chips)
Seat 10: Wormie911 ($13.20 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
L3st3rMurphy posts blind ($0.25), Cantrim posts blind ($0.25). PRE-FLOP
007Lars bets $1, Wormie911 folds, dejection calls $1, tmobjerg folds, martind02 folds, Stingray3x folds, happy yorik folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $0.75, Cantrim folds. FLOP [board cards JD,QD,6S ]
L3st3rMurphy bets $3, 007Lars bets $12.25, dejection bets $23.50 and is all-in, L3st3rMurphy calls $20.50, 007Lars calls $7.80 and is all-in. TURN [board cards JD,QD,6S,9C ] RIVER [board cards JD,QD,6S,9C,KH ] SHOWDOWN
dejection shows [ JC,JH ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ QH,JS ]
007Lars shows [ AD,KD ]
dejection wins $68.80. SUMMARY
Dealer: happy yorik
Pot: $70.30, (including rake: $1.50)
dejection bets $24.50, collects $68.80, net $44.30
tmobjerg loses $0
martind02 loses $0
Stingray3x loses $0
happy yorik loses $0
L3st3rMurphy loses $24.50
Cantrim loses $0.25
007Lars loses $21.05
Wormie911 loses $0
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"I Watched A Snail Crawl Along the Edge of a Straight Razor"
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Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 8:29pm | Edit Note | Delete
Film buffs will recognize the above line as a quote from Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. He's of course a madman, and on the surface he's talking about a dream he had, but in reality he's talking about walking the tightrope between good and evil, the razor's edge between good and evil. "This is my dream, this is my nightmare" he goes on to say (or something like that). Well I too have watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. And that razor is the thin line between employed and unemployed. Those of you that know me and know me well are familiar with my intense distaste for labor and work in general. I'm more about the moment. My EI claim is currently processing as I have just been laid off from my job. But there is a Catch 22. In order to collect EI, I must be looking for full time work. Well I'm a pretty good looking guy, I'm a smart guy and I'm a darn good interviewee. I've got a lot going for me. In short, it's a little tricky to stay unemployed. Fortunately for me I'm a habitual fuck up and a bit of a nut job. I figure that all I have to do is be completely open and honest with any and all prospective employers. For example, one job that I recently applied for stipulated in their ad that 'a good driving record is a mandatory requirement as the representative will be required to travel." So I wrote up a striking and impressive cover letter detailing that without question I had every quality they were seeking in abundance, even excess. However I included the caveat that my driving record was terrible and that I had recently been turned down for a similar position based on it. I actually went as far as to mention "I have a heavy foot". Well wouldn't you fucking know it, I passed the phone interview. Then today I passed the face to face interview. This despite arriving several minutes late. When he asked me what I'd learned about the company in the several days that I'd had to prepare I said "Well I've been really busy and haven't had a chance to look into any of that." Still passed! Thank God for the online personality and psychological assessment they're going to send me next. There's no way in Hell I can pass that! I was even 100% honest with all of my employment dates (trust me it raises huge warning flags in even the most obtuse). I kept waiting for him to ask what I'd been doing for the last 3 years that I've been unemployed so that I could happily blurt out 'Gambling!', but he seemed to sense that going there wasn't going to be pretty and he left it alone. Damn him!
I've also been asking for about 15k/year more than these sorts of jobs generally pay, so at least if I do wind up accidentally getting hired it will be worth it. I'll be taking the online assessment tomorrow. Wish me luck (bad luck that is).
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Flatland Grinder: Using the Force.
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Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 10:01pm | Delete
I'm still working on that book 'Blink', and I'm really enjoying it. As I suspected I'm finding a lot of insights that translate well to poker. Last night I read a section about the Cook County Hospital in Chicago. A few decades back this hospital was a nightmare. They were overwhelmed with patients on a daily basis. By far one of the most resource intensive groups of such patients were suspected heart patients. When someone came in complaining of chest pain, the hospital took it quite seriously, as well they should. In order to diagnose with any certainty that a patient was having a bona fide heart attack, the hospital would subject them to test after test, often keeping the patient in one of the precious few hospital beds for 3 days or more. Then a new administrator came into the chaos, and desperate to somehow free up beds he took it upon himself to streamline the procedure for heart attacks. He created a questionnaire that isolated a number of risk factors, and gave the attending physicians a wealth of information to go on. Things like diet, lifestyle, history, etc. It turned out however that having more information actually produced more misdiagnoses. The administrator then recalled a physician who had met with some controversy over a system of quickly diagnosing heart attacks using an algorithm, a basic mathematic equation based on a very narrow set of factors. No one had been willing to test the system in a live environment however. The administrator took the chance. Ther results were amazing. The algorithm separated real cardiac events from false alarms a staggering 95% of the time. Doctors gathering volumes of information such as ecgs, histories, lifestyle etc were able to produce at best a 70% success rate. But there was an interesting side effect to all of this. Even though the Doctors had results that were increasingly inaccurate in relation to the volume of info gained, their confidence in their decisions increased proportionately. The more they thought they knew, the more positive they were in their assessments. With the algorithm they had a sick and doubtful feeling because of it's utter simplicity. They felt that they needed to know more. The algorithm in essence sliced through all the potential misinformation to produce a result based on the only genuine factors worth considering. The author believes that our sense of intuition works in much the same way, thin-slicing the data at a rapid pace and calculating only the factors that matter. So why is this a poker write up? I was telling my friend J2 this story and at about this point he jumped in and said just like PAHUD. And that is exactly why this is a poker write up, but it's going to have to be a 2 part entry, because I'm getting damn tired. More on this tomorrow, with a humiliating hand example to help iillustrate.
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Serious note for a change.
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Monday, November 5, 2007 at 10:06pm | Edit Note | Delete
Remembrance Day is coming up, and in my family it has been a tremendously important holiday. My parents lived in Britain during the 2nd World War, and they lost nearly every living male relative that was old enough to fight in combat. In addition to this, both of them served in the Armed Forces. My Dad fought in the Korean War, and is currently the President of the Korea Veteran's Association as well as president of the Nutana Branch of the Canadian Legion. Perhaps this is why Remembrance Day carries a little more weight for me than it does for others. Of particular concern is the fact that it's estimated approximately 1500 veterans of the second world war are dying each day in North America. These veterans represent a living history, and a history that forced us to call upon them in horrors few could comprehend. An example would be the battle for Hurtgen Forest in October of 1944. Virtually unheard of, this was and is to this day the longest single battle American Forces ever fought in. It began in the wet cold of Oct. 5 1944. Soldiers never trained for forest combat wandered into the heavily defended woods. There was a perpetual covering of dense fog throughout the small, approximately 50 miles of thick woods. Soldiers could barely see their own comrades, never mind the heavily entrenched and seasoned veterans of the German Forces. The battle began on Oct. 5. By March 16th Allied Forces had gained 3000 yards. 3km of nearly 75 sq km of forest. Casualties were heavy. For that scant piece of territory 4500 men lost their lives. I encourage you to look up this battle for an idea of the sacrifices made by our grandfathers. By December 12 when the battle finished, 24,000 battle casualties (killed in direct fighting) and 9000 non-battle casualties were reported (non-battle being frostbite, trenchfoot exhaustion). A battle for one small town in the forest claimed over 6000 lives, 2000 more than died at Omaha Beach on D-day.
In many cases these veterans are old men and sick men today. Many of them lived and continue to live lives of quiet desperation after the war, forever tortured by the memory of the atrocities they suffered through. The Poppy Fund goes towards helping these men that risked their very lives for the things we cherish today. It secures housing, medical care, and other needs for the veterans of today, and the veterans of tomorrow. So drop a buck and wear a poppy if you can. Not just for the veterans of the last century either, but for the veterans of today as well. Keep in mind that politicians start wars, not soldiers. In many cases soldiers are people that wanted nothing more than a secure job and the chance to serve their country. When their country signs on for an action, they are contracted to go whether they agree with the action or not. Supporting our troops and wishing them well does not mean you support wars. Please remember that veterans of both yesterday and today are where they are only because their countries have sent them. Give the politicians your disrespect if you disagree, but wish the soldier's a quick and safe return and show them you care.
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The Dog That Solved the Kennedy Assassination.
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Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 7:09pm | Edit Note | Delete
A guy is driving around the back woods of Tennessee and he sees a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style house: “Talking Dog For Sale.”
He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.
“You talk?” he asks.
“Yep,” the Lab replies.
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a talking dog, he says, “So, what’s your story?”
The Lab looks up and says, “Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. They asked me if I was interested in solving the Kennedy assassination. I asked if it was Jack or Bobby. They said Jack. The CIA doesn’t really care who killed Bobby. Go figure.”
“Anyway, in no time at all they had me jetting all over the country and all over the world, sitting in rooms with CIA and KGB spies, anti-Castro Cubans, pro-Castro Cubans, all kinds of mafia types and even Castro himself, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. Unlike the Warren Commission’s relatively short investigation, they had me doing this for, oh, I would say, almost three years. I uncovered some pretty amazing stuff. It’s all classified and I’m not at liberty to disclose any of it, but thanks to Congress passing the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, all the information will be coming forth in the year 2017.”
“But I gotta tell ya, all that jetting around and investigating stuff really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in.”
“I uncovered lots of stuff doing that and I was awarded a batch of medals. Eventually I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I’m just retired.”
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.
“Ten dollars,” the man says.
“Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?”
The owner answers "Because he's a damned liar! He never did any of that stuff. And the only things he knows about the Kennedy Assassination are what he's read in books."
(I love talking animal jokes)
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Flatland Grinder: Rapid Cognition
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Friday, November 2, 2007 at 12:05am | Delete
I've read an awful lot of books on poker. I would say that all of them have been worth the read. Currently I'm reading a book however that has very little to do with the subject of poker. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it wasn't written with poker in mind. The book in question is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. The focus of this work is the subject of intuition, which the authour at times refers to as rapid cognition or thin slicing. I've read books on the sense of intuition before, and I enjoy reading them because it increases my trust in the often irrational gut instincts I feel in moments of snap decision making. Unfortunately I'm prone to over-analyze my gut instincts quite frequently, and using logic and reason I direct myself in a direction counter to my intuition, usually with negative results. So one task that I've set myself is to develop this sense of intuition or rapid cognition, or rather develop an increased level of trust in the decisions I make at the gut level. I like the term rapid cognition better than intuition. It seems to be a more accurate descriptor of what's really happening; a sub-conscious decision making process based on prior experience and knowledge then stripped of any pros/cons weighting system. Here is why I find it so important. I play approximately 240 hands of poker per hour (conservative estimate). That boils down to 4 hands of poker per minute. With 4 rounds of betting per hand, that means that I'm seeing 16 rounds of betting per minute, or one win/lose decision every 4 seconds. Most of the time there's quite a bit of math involved, but I've gotten to the point where the clear cut decisions require almost no thought. I've experienced the majority of easy decisions so many times that there is no longer any decision making required, the action is clear and automatic. However there are moments where a hand requires a great deal more thought, the odds and probabilities need to be weighed, the skill level of the opponent, what he thinks I think he thinks I think he has and that sort of thing. That's a lot of thinking when you'll be making another decision in 4 seconds and there's a timer running down on you. Most of the time my gut tells me what to do and I do it. Like Magnum P.I.'s 'little voice'. The problem is that I don't completely trust my gut yet. Even after all the times my rational analysis has fucked me when my gut was right all along. Hence the book. To believe my gut, I need to believe that it's believable, and that means teaching my rational analytical self that there is a higher form of analysis at work on the subconscious level. But I'm rambling again. Remind me not to post after midnight, I get goofy.
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Flatland Grinder: A Whole Lot of Advanced Theory in One Hand.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 11:30am | Delete
Here's the straight vs. set hand that I wanted to post. This hand illustrates a lot of basic principles for winning poker. I have AKo in middle position and it's folded around to me so I open with a standard 4xbb raise and get one caller. PRE-FLOP
funkyjazz1 folds, zariluka folds, MazMatt folds, L3st3rMurphy bets $1, kakkapussi folds, spitalnap folds, happy yorik folds, Schmeltis folds, agassi781 calls $0.75. FLOP [board cards 7D,3S,JH ]
agassi781 checks, L3st3rMurphy bets $2, agassi781 calls $2. I completely miss the flop, but checking is giving my opponent the pot in this situation. I showed strength before the flop, and as I've been playing a tight game there is no reason for my opponent to suspect that I'm not still strong on the flop. The Jack doesn't help me, but there is a damn good chance that it didn't help him either. The chances that I'm ahead with ace high here, combined with the chance that I might still hit my hand and the chance of my opponent folding really calls for a continuation bet here. With one opponent I'm pretty sure I'll take the pot at least half the time with a c-bet, so I slightly underbet the pot. Long term this will generally be a plus ev play. It also enables me to hopefully pick up a free card on the turn when my opponent checks to me with the expectation that I'll bet again. TURN [board cards 7D,3S,JH,10H ]
agassi781 checks, L3st3rMurphy checks. My opponent called my c-bet. This opens up several considerations for me on the turn. My first consideration is that he has something and will most likely call if I fire the second barrel. There are now 2 Broadway cards on the board, and since an opponent calling a preflop raise generally has either high cards or a pair, the chances are quite good that I'm beat here. There is however a slim chance that I may hit my Ace or King for a vulnerable top pair, and also a slim chance that I'll make my inside straight draw on the river. My opponent checks to me as anticipated. If my opponent does have something, another c-bet by me risks a check raise from him, and I won't get to see the river. I choose to check and peek at the river. RIVER [board cards 7D,3S,JH,10H,QH ]
agassi781 bets $6.25, L3st3rMurphy calls $6.25. The river brings out a third heart completing a flush if my opponent was on such a draw. It also makes me the top straight. He makes a pot size bet into me, giving me 2-1 on my call. This sets me to thinking. It's possible that he has the flush but not likely. His smooth call on the flop and subsequent check on the turn were more indicative of a straight draw or pocket pair. I also consider the possibility that he made a smaller straight on the turn and was going for the check raise. The bet seems to large for the nut flush. Generally poker players abide by the weak when strong, strong when weak rule. Having run through this thought process I put him on a semi-bluff...he has something, but it's not the flush and I'm pretty sure I'm ahead. I'm not sure enough however to make a reraise and get stacked on the outside chance that he does have the flush, so I just call. SHOWDOWN
agassi781 shows [ 10S,10D ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ KD,AS ]
L3st3rMurphy wins $17.85. My opponent hit his set on the turn. His play is riddled with mistakes. His call on the flop was weak. He had 2 choices there if he wanted to make it work, either raise or fold, and I personally would be inclined to fold in his position. The overcard is not good, and the possibility of more overcards coming is just to much of a threat to continue. If he suspected me of having nothing, the better play would have been to raise and drive me out on the flop rather than let me draw on him. On the turn he hits his set and FPS (fancy play syndrome) gets a hold of him. He decides to go for the slowplay on a board showing straight draws, flush draws, and the slim possibility that I might have top pair and hit a set. Any size bet here would have won him the pot. When the river hits all his nightmares come true. The straight is made, the flush is made, he knows the chances are very good that he's behind. His max bet here had for me the smell of desperation, of a defensive bet. If he was as strong as he was representing, he would certainly have made a more enticing bet so as not to scare me out of the pot. It seemed instead that he was trying to push me out, and my intuition said call. These are the exact sort of opponents that you want to be up against. They play their monsters slow and weak allowing you to draw out on them time and time again, and when they are weak they throw money at you. Fun hand. SUMMARY
Dealer: happy yorik
Pot: $18.75, (including rake: $0.90)
Schmeltis loses $0.25
agassi781 loses $9.25
funkyjazz1 loses $0
zariluka loses $0
MazMatt loses $0
L3st3rMurphy bets $9.25, collects $17.85, net $8.60
kakkapussi loses $0
spitalnap loses $0
happy yorik loses $0
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Flatland Grinder: Session 1
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 10:51am | Delete
First off, I don't intend to make a blog entry for every session, but I felt that today's session was significant as it's my first day back at the 25pl game at Ongame. I'd set a goal for myself to play at least 250 hands and play them well for this session. I wound up playing 321 hands, and I did play them well, so I'm quite satisfied. My time at the tables was 1:38 and I had an earn for the session of approx. $40, so I'm content with that. I've started playing with about half the required bankroll for these limits, so all initial gains are highly welcomed. I played 4 tables to hit my 300+ hands which is really encouraging. My target for the month is a minimum of 20,000 hands, and with a plan of 4x1.5 hour sessions, 5 days a week, I should be able to exceed that number quite well. By my initial calculations it appeared that I'd be struggling to make 1000 hands per day, but if I can maintain this pace at 5 tables, I should be able to hit 1500 hands per day, or 30000 hands per month. Depending on traffic I may even be able to push 6 tables. This is great news not only for my bottom line, but for bonus whoring as well. My current site has a loyalty program that should allow me to clear an additional $700-1000 every month on top of my earn rate. All in all, I'm quite happy to be back at the tables. I'll post some interesting hand histories as they come up. Today's big wins were the usual aa vs kk and straight vs set variety. Actually, I may post the straight vs set hand in a future post to illustrate a point in a future post.
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Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 1:02pm | Edit Note | Delete
A few years ago I hit my running peak. I managed to run 26km on one of my long runs, which is the equivalent of a half marathon. Shortly after that run I hurt my leg moving some furniture, and it was difficult to get back into the running program. I had to start at square one and square one sucks. Every time that I did start again the injury came back too, so I eventually made the difficult decision to give up the idea of running and switch to weights to stay in shape. But I've always missed running. I've tried to start again a few times but I'd lost all of my conditioning and starting at square one (run 1 minute, walk 1 minute) was really demoralizing. It took everything I had to do 20 minutes on the treadmill, and I couldn't seem to convince myself to get back out onto the roads,
This year of brutal physical work outdoors has had a tremendous side effect for me however. My legs are the strongest they've ever been since my running days, and I'm in great shape as far as cardio is concerned. When I got back into the gym after the year had finished I found that I'd lost some of my strength when it came to lifting weights, but I was doing 45 minutes on the treadmill at 2km/hr more than my usual pace almost effortlessly. The first thing that occurred to me is that I can probably jump back in to my running routine. So for the past 2 weeks I've been easing back into it. Today concludes the end of the second week. I'm not ready to run any marathons, or 10ks or 5ks for that matter, but I've got a good base to work with. This week I started with run 3 minutes walk 1 minute, repeat 6 times every session, 3 times a week. Today was was my final run of the week, and so far I'm still injury free. I think that I could probably start with a full 20 minute run right now, but I really don't want to mess up again by going for too much too soon. I'm going to hold at run 3 walk 1 for next week as well, then I'll start moving towards longer runs again.
Today was fantastic. It was everything that I love about running. I left the chaos of my house and in 3 minutes I was at the Mendel heading for the Meewassin Trail. It snowed last night, but by the time I made my run the sun had melted it off of the roads and sidewalks. There was still enough on the grass and in the shadows to make for a beautiful and picturesque day, and the pavement was just wet enough to amplify the sunlight and create an extra bright day. It's Remembrance Day and the streets and sidewalks were deserted except for other runners. We'd pass each other on the trail with a nod and a genuine smile, in absolute silence except for the sound of our breathing and our footsteps on the path. There is a real peace that comes with running, an in the moment kind of simultaneous awareness and detachment. You're acutely aware of your form and your breathing and the path in front of you, and at once you do your best to detach the pain and natural resistance that your body places upon you when you exert yourself. It's a very zen state. Anyway the run was tremendous, and I came home feeling lighter, calmer, faster, stronger and more balanced than when I'd left. I can hardly wait for my next run.
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Flatland Grinder: Using the Force Part Deux
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Friday, November 9, 2007 at 1:26pm | Delete
So in the last post I was talking about an excess of information often complicating and clouding otherwise simple decisions. Often times, this excess of information results in it's possessor developing a false sense of confidence in a judgement call due to the sheer volume of the knowledge. "I have so much data indicating that 'x' is true that it's virtually impossible for 'y' to have any degree of truth." This idea really resonated with my poker experience, particularly when it comes to using tracking software. You may recall a post I made on Hudbots, and the indispenability of playing with PAHUD. I'm revisiting that idea somewhat these days. PAHUD is certainly a useful tool, and it produces a staggering amount of data. But there are some cases where using and relying on PAHUD can be even more harmful than playing without it. I played a hand yesterday that will illustrate this point beautifully. First of all, it's imperative to identify that there were several factors that went into the gross misinterpretation of this hand. I generally play about 6 tables at a time. In this hand I was playing 8 tables, which was a bit of a stretch for me. I wasn't paying quite as much attention as I should have been, but I was counting on PAHUD to help me make decisions that would otherwise be based on a combination of observation and intuition. It's also important to realize that I would have made a perfect read on my opponents had I been paying attention and using accurate info. However my information was inaccurate, a fact that I didn't realize until the hand was over. I was in the big blind for this hand. But I was distracted, and I didn't notice that I was. I was dealt jqo, a hand that I will usually muck to a raise. However when it came time to act in this hand I was distracted by some activity in the house. I'd called a raise with jqo, and what's worse, I didn't realize I had. When the flop came down jq6 I was operating under the impression that it was an unraised pot. This assumption was to be the basis of a series of information based mistakes that cost me a lot of money. I raised my top pair and was immediately reraised by the guy behind me (Lars). Looking at his hudstats I concluded that he wouldn't be in an unraised pot with a decent hand. I put him on a flush draw based on his aggression numbers and i reraised. The guy behind him (Dejection) rereraised all in. Instantly my gut instinct screamed "He has a set". However I took a moment to think about it and I looked at his stats. This player was playing in only 6% of pots, and he was raising almost 5% of those. In order for him to have a set he would have to have either jj, qq, or 66. 66 was outside of his hand range. It's a hand that he just wouldn't play period and I easily eliminated the possibility of a set of 6s. I quickly ruled out jj or qq. This player was certainly playing those hands, but with a pfr almost equal to his vpip, he would be guaranteed to raise them. He had to have one of the 1% or so of hands that he wasn't raising. I put him on aq, or possibly kq with a flush draw, with the very unlikely prospect that he might have the same hand. An all in raise with a flush draw and 2 callers isn't a bad play at all, especially if he had equity from catching top pair as well. I recall thinking that "If there'd been a raise preflop this would be an easy fold." I was 8 tabling, and shouting back and forth with a family member upstairs. I took the few seconds I had to consider this hand to look at stats, sticking with my assumptions about preflop action. After Dejection's all in raise I called and so did Lars for his remaining few chips. This fit with my initial assessment that Lars was on a flush draw. He was a fairly solid player, and getting 2-1 on the flop for his draw, the all in move was a good play. Well needless to say 6% had pocket jack for a set, leaving me just the 2 remaining queens for outs. I missed them, Lars missed his draw and Dejection stacked us both. Without HUDbot this hand would have been an easy fold. I had to consciously over ride my intuition on this hand with a barrage of data and even then it just 'felt' wrong. My goal for the next few weeks is going to be to count on my instincts more than my software. I don't plan to abandon the software altogether, but I need to integrate it in a more cooperative fashion with my gut. Here's the hand history, and for those of you that concern yourself with such things, the stats on my opponents. 007Lars Vpip 21.88 (Voluntarily put in pot) Pfr 6.25 (Pre-Flop Raise) Af 2.00 (Aggression Factor) Dejection Vpip 10.29 Pfr 6.01 Af 14.00 (absolutely huge aggression factor) Seat 1: dejection ($24.50 in chips)
Seat 2: tmobjerg ($12.65 in chips)
Seat 3: martind02 ($28.50 in chips)
Seat 4: Stingray3x ($28.75 in chips)
Seat 6: happy yorik ($31.35 in chips)
Seat 7: L3st3rMurphy [ QH,JS ] ($35.65 in chips)
Seat 8: Cantrim ($23.00 in chips)
Seat 9: 007Lars ($21.05 in chips)
Seat 10: Wormie911 ($13.20 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
L3st3rMurphy posts blind ($0.25), Cantrim posts blind ($0.25). PRE-FLOP
007Lars bets $1, Wormie911 folds, dejection calls $1, tmobjerg folds, martind02 folds, Stingray3x folds, happy yorik folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $0.75, Cantrim folds. FLOP [board cards JD,QD,6S ]
L3st3rMurphy bets $3, 007Lars bets $12.25, dejection bets $23.50 and is all-in, L3st3rMurphy calls $20.50, 007Lars calls $7.80 and is all-in. TURN [board cards JD,QD,6S,9C ] RIVER [board cards JD,QD,6S,9C,KH ] SHOWDOWN
dejection shows [ JC,JH ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ QH,JS ]
007Lars shows [ AD,KD ]
dejection wins $68.80. SUMMARY
Dealer: happy yorik
Pot: $70.30, (including rake: $1.50)
dejection bets $24.50, collects $68.80, net $44.30
tmobjerg loses $0
martind02 loses $0
Stingray3x loses $0
happy yorik loses $0
L3st3rMurphy loses $24.50
Cantrim loses $0.25
007Lars loses $21.05
Wormie911 loses $0
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"I Watched A Snail Crawl Along the Edge of a Straight Razor"
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Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 8:29pm | Edit Note | Delete
Film buffs will recognize the above line as a quote from Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. He's of course a madman, and on the surface he's talking about a dream he had, but in reality he's talking about walking the tightrope between good and evil, the razor's edge between good and evil. "This is my dream, this is my nightmare" he goes on to say (or something like that). Well I too have watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. And that razor is the thin line between employed and unemployed. Those of you that know me and know me well are familiar with my intense distaste for labor and work in general. I'm more about the moment. My EI claim is currently processing as I have just been laid off from my job. But there is a Catch 22. In order to collect EI, I must be looking for full time work. Well I'm a pretty good looking guy, I'm a smart guy and I'm a darn good interviewee. I've got a lot going for me. In short, it's a little tricky to stay unemployed. Fortunately for me I'm a habitual fuck up and a bit of a nut job. I figure that all I have to do is be completely open and honest with any and all prospective employers. For example, one job that I recently applied for stipulated in their ad that 'a good driving record is a mandatory requirement as the representative will be required to travel." So I wrote up a striking and impressive cover letter detailing that without question I had every quality they were seeking in abundance, even excess. However I included the caveat that my driving record was terrible and that I had recently been turned down for a similar position based on it. I actually went as far as to mention "I have a heavy foot". Well wouldn't you fucking know it, I passed the phone interview. Then today I passed the face to face interview. This despite arriving several minutes late. When he asked me what I'd learned about the company in the several days that I'd had to prepare I said "Well I've been really busy and haven't had a chance to look into any of that." Still passed! Thank God for the online personality and psychological assessment they're going to send me next. There's no way in Hell I can pass that! I was even 100% honest with all of my employment dates (trust me it raises huge warning flags in even the most obtuse). I kept waiting for him to ask what I'd been doing for the last 3 years that I've been unemployed so that I could happily blurt out 'Gambling!', but he seemed to sense that going there wasn't going to be pretty and he left it alone. Damn him!
I've also been asking for about 15k/year more than these sorts of jobs generally pay, so at least if I do wind up accidentally getting hired it will be worth it. I'll be taking the online assessment tomorrow. Wish me luck (bad luck that is).
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Updated about 10 months ago
Flatland Grinder: Using the Force.
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Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 10:01pm | Delete
I'm still working on that book 'Blink', and I'm really enjoying it. As I suspected I'm finding a lot of insights that translate well to poker. Last night I read a section about the Cook County Hospital in Chicago. A few decades back this hospital was a nightmare. They were overwhelmed with patients on a daily basis. By far one of the most resource intensive groups of such patients were suspected heart patients. When someone came in complaining of chest pain, the hospital took it quite seriously, as well they should. In order to diagnose with any certainty that a patient was having a bona fide heart attack, the hospital would subject them to test after test, often keeping the patient in one of the precious few hospital beds for 3 days or more. Then a new administrator came into the chaos, and desperate to somehow free up beds he took it upon himself to streamline the procedure for heart attacks. He created a questionnaire that isolated a number of risk factors, and gave the attending physicians a wealth of information to go on. Things like diet, lifestyle, history, etc. It turned out however that having more information actually produced more misdiagnoses. The administrator then recalled a physician who had met with some controversy over a system of quickly diagnosing heart attacks using an algorithm, a basic mathematic equation based on a very narrow set of factors. No one had been willing to test the system in a live environment however. The administrator took the chance. Ther results were amazing. The algorithm separated real cardiac events from false alarms a staggering 95% of the time. Doctors gathering volumes of information such as ecgs, histories, lifestyle etc were able to produce at best a 70% success rate. But there was an interesting side effect to all of this. Even though the Doctors had results that were increasingly inaccurate in relation to the volume of info gained, their confidence in their decisions increased proportionately. The more they thought they knew, the more positive they were in their assessments. With the algorithm they had a sick and doubtful feeling because of it's utter simplicity. They felt that they needed to know more. The algorithm in essence sliced through all the potential misinformation to produce a result based on the only genuine factors worth considering. The author believes that our sense of intuition works in much the same way, thin-slicing the data at a rapid pace and calculating only the factors that matter. So why is this a poker write up? I was telling my friend J2 this story and at about this point he jumped in and said just like PAHUD. And that is exactly why this is a poker write up, but it's going to have to be a 2 part entry, because I'm getting damn tired. More on this tomorrow, with a humiliating hand example to help iillustrate.
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Serious note for a change.
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Monday, November 5, 2007 at 10:06pm | Edit Note | Delete
Remembrance Day is coming up, and in my family it has been a tremendously important holiday. My parents lived in Britain during the 2nd World War, and they lost nearly every living male relative that was old enough to fight in combat. In addition to this, both of them served in the Armed Forces. My Dad fought in the Korean War, and is currently the President of the Korea Veteran's Association as well as president of the Nutana Branch of the Canadian Legion. Perhaps this is why Remembrance Day carries a little more weight for me than it does for others. Of particular concern is the fact that it's estimated approximately 1500 veterans of the second world war are dying each day in North America. These veterans represent a living history, and a history that forced us to call upon them in horrors few could comprehend. An example would be the battle for Hurtgen Forest in October of 1944. Virtually unheard of, this was and is to this day the longest single battle American Forces ever fought in. It began in the wet cold of Oct. 5 1944. Soldiers never trained for forest combat wandered into the heavily defended woods. There was a perpetual covering of dense fog throughout the small, approximately 50 miles of thick woods. Soldiers could barely see their own comrades, never mind the heavily entrenched and seasoned veterans of the German Forces. The battle began on Oct. 5. By March 16th Allied Forces had gained 3000 yards. 3km of nearly 75 sq km of forest. Casualties were heavy. For that scant piece of territory 4500 men lost their lives. I encourage you to look up this battle for an idea of the sacrifices made by our grandfathers. By December 12 when the battle finished, 24,000 battle casualties (killed in direct fighting) and 9000 non-battle casualties were reported (non-battle being frostbite, trenchfoot exhaustion). A battle for one small town in the forest claimed over 6000 lives, 2000 more than died at Omaha Beach on D-day.
In many cases these veterans are old men and sick men today. Many of them lived and continue to live lives of quiet desperation after the war, forever tortured by the memory of the atrocities they suffered through. The Poppy Fund goes towards helping these men that risked their very lives for the things we cherish today. It secures housing, medical care, and other needs for the veterans of today, and the veterans of tomorrow. So drop a buck and wear a poppy if you can. Not just for the veterans of the last century either, but for the veterans of today as well. Keep in mind that politicians start wars, not soldiers. In many cases soldiers are people that wanted nothing more than a secure job and the chance to serve their country. When their country signs on for an action, they are contracted to go whether they agree with the action or not. Supporting our troops and wishing them well does not mean you support wars. Please remember that veterans of both yesterday and today are where they are only because their countries have sent them. Give the politicians your disrespect if you disagree, but wish the soldier's a quick and safe return and show them you care.
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The Dog That Solved the Kennedy Assassination.
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Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 7:09pm | Edit Note | Delete
A guy is driving around the back woods of Tennessee and he sees a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style house: “Talking Dog For Sale.”
He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.
“You talk?” he asks.
“Yep,” the Lab replies.
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a talking dog, he says, “So, what’s your story?”
The Lab looks up and says, “Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. They asked me if I was interested in solving the Kennedy assassination. I asked if it was Jack or Bobby. They said Jack. The CIA doesn’t really care who killed Bobby. Go figure.”
“Anyway, in no time at all they had me jetting all over the country and all over the world, sitting in rooms with CIA and KGB spies, anti-Castro Cubans, pro-Castro Cubans, all kinds of mafia types and even Castro himself, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. Unlike the Warren Commission’s relatively short investigation, they had me doing this for, oh, I would say, almost three years. I uncovered some pretty amazing stuff. It’s all classified and I’m not at liberty to disclose any of it, but thanks to Congress passing the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, all the information will be coming forth in the year 2017.”
“But I gotta tell ya, all that jetting around and investigating stuff really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in.”
“I uncovered lots of stuff doing that and I was awarded a batch of medals. Eventually I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I’m just retired.”
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.
“Ten dollars,” the man says.
“Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?”
The owner answers "Because he's a damned liar! He never did any of that stuff. And the only things he knows about the Kennedy Assassination are what he's read in books."
(I love talking animal jokes)
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Flatland Grinder: Rapid Cognition
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Friday, November 2, 2007 at 12:05am | Delete
I've read an awful lot of books on poker. I would say that all of them have been worth the read. Currently I'm reading a book however that has very little to do with the subject of poker. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it wasn't written with poker in mind. The book in question is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. The focus of this work is the subject of intuition, which the authour at times refers to as rapid cognition or thin slicing. I've read books on the sense of intuition before, and I enjoy reading them because it increases my trust in the often irrational gut instincts I feel in moments of snap decision making. Unfortunately I'm prone to over-analyze my gut instincts quite frequently, and using logic and reason I direct myself in a direction counter to my intuition, usually with negative results. So one task that I've set myself is to develop this sense of intuition or rapid cognition, or rather develop an increased level of trust in the decisions I make at the gut level. I like the term rapid cognition better than intuition. It seems to be a more accurate descriptor of what's really happening; a sub-conscious decision making process based on prior experience and knowledge then stripped of any pros/cons weighting system. Here is why I find it so important. I play approximately 240 hands of poker per hour (conservative estimate). That boils down to 4 hands of poker per minute. With 4 rounds of betting per hand, that means that I'm seeing 16 rounds of betting per minute, or one win/lose decision every 4 seconds. Most of the time there's quite a bit of math involved, but I've gotten to the point where the clear cut decisions require almost no thought. I've experienced the majority of easy decisions so many times that there is no longer any decision making required, the action is clear and automatic. However there are moments where a hand requires a great deal more thought, the odds and probabilities need to be weighed, the skill level of the opponent, what he thinks I think he thinks I think he has and that sort of thing. That's a lot of thinking when you'll be making another decision in 4 seconds and there's a timer running down on you. Most of the time my gut tells me what to do and I do it. Like Magnum P.I.'s 'little voice'. The problem is that I don't completely trust my gut yet. Even after all the times my rational analysis has fucked me when my gut was right all along. Hence the book. To believe my gut, I need to believe that it's believable, and that means teaching my rational analytical self that there is a higher form of analysis at work on the subconscious level. But I'm rambling again. Remind me not to post after midnight, I get goofy.
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Flatland Grinder: A Whole Lot of Advanced Theory in One Hand.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 11:30am | Delete
Here's the straight vs. set hand that I wanted to post. This hand illustrates a lot of basic principles for winning poker. I have AKo in middle position and it's folded around to me so I open with a standard 4xbb raise and get one caller. PRE-FLOP
funkyjazz1 folds, zariluka folds, MazMatt folds, L3st3rMurphy bets $1, kakkapussi folds, spitalnap folds, happy yorik folds, Schmeltis folds, agassi781 calls $0.75. FLOP [board cards 7D,3S,JH ]
agassi781 checks, L3st3rMurphy bets $2, agassi781 calls $2. I completely miss the flop, but checking is giving my opponent the pot in this situation. I showed strength before the flop, and as I've been playing a tight game there is no reason for my opponent to suspect that I'm not still strong on the flop. The Jack doesn't help me, but there is a damn good chance that it didn't help him either. The chances that I'm ahead with ace high here, combined with the chance that I might still hit my hand and the chance of my opponent folding really calls for a continuation bet here. With one opponent I'm pretty sure I'll take the pot at least half the time with a c-bet, so I slightly underbet the pot. Long term this will generally be a plus ev play. It also enables me to hopefully pick up a free card on the turn when my opponent checks to me with the expectation that I'll bet again. TURN [board cards 7D,3S,JH,10H ]
agassi781 checks, L3st3rMurphy checks. My opponent called my c-bet. This opens up several considerations for me on the turn. My first consideration is that he has something and will most likely call if I fire the second barrel. There are now 2 Broadway cards on the board, and since an opponent calling a preflop raise generally has either high cards or a pair, the chances are quite good that I'm beat here. There is however a slim chance that I may hit my Ace or King for a vulnerable top pair, and also a slim chance that I'll make my inside straight draw on the river. My opponent checks to me as anticipated. If my opponent does have something, another c-bet by me risks a check raise from him, and I won't get to see the river. I choose to check and peek at the river. RIVER [board cards 7D,3S,JH,10H,QH ]
agassi781 bets $6.25, L3st3rMurphy calls $6.25. The river brings out a third heart completing a flush if my opponent was on such a draw. It also makes me the top straight. He makes a pot size bet into me, giving me 2-1 on my call. This sets me to thinking. It's possible that he has the flush but not likely. His smooth call on the flop and subsequent check on the turn were more indicative of a straight draw or pocket pair. I also consider the possibility that he made a smaller straight on the turn and was going for the check raise. The bet seems to large for the nut flush. Generally poker players abide by the weak when strong, strong when weak rule. Having run through this thought process I put him on a semi-bluff...he has something, but it's not the flush and I'm pretty sure I'm ahead. I'm not sure enough however to make a reraise and get stacked on the outside chance that he does have the flush, so I just call. SHOWDOWN
agassi781 shows [ 10S,10D ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ KD,AS ]
L3st3rMurphy wins $17.85. My opponent hit his set on the turn. His play is riddled with mistakes. His call on the flop was weak. He had 2 choices there if he wanted to make it work, either raise or fold, and I personally would be inclined to fold in his position. The overcard is not good, and the possibility of more overcards coming is just to much of a threat to continue. If he suspected me of having nothing, the better play would have been to raise and drive me out on the flop rather than let me draw on him. On the turn he hits his set and FPS (fancy play syndrome) gets a hold of him. He decides to go for the slowplay on a board showing straight draws, flush draws, and the slim possibility that I might have top pair and hit a set. Any size bet here would have won him the pot. When the river hits all his nightmares come true. The straight is made, the flush is made, he knows the chances are very good that he's behind. His max bet here had for me the smell of desperation, of a defensive bet. If he was as strong as he was representing, he would certainly have made a more enticing bet so as not to scare me out of the pot. It seemed instead that he was trying to push me out, and my intuition said call. These are the exact sort of opponents that you want to be up against. They play their monsters slow and weak allowing you to draw out on them time and time again, and when they are weak they throw money at you. Fun hand. SUMMARY
Dealer: happy yorik
Pot: $18.75, (including rake: $0.90)
Schmeltis loses $0.25
agassi781 loses $9.25
funkyjazz1 loses $0
zariluka loses $0
MazMatt loses $0
L3st3rMurphy bets $9.25, collects $17.85, net $8.60
kakkapussi loses $0
spitalnap loses $0
happy yorik loses $0
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Flatland Grinder: Session 1
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 10:51am | Delete
First off, I don't intend to make a blog entry for every session, but I felt that today's session was significant as it's my first day back at the 25pl game at Ongame. I'd set a goal for myself to play at least 250 hands and play them well for this session. I wound up playing 321 hands, and I did play them well, so I'm quite satisfied. My time at the tables was 1:38 and I had an earn for the session of approx. $40, so I'm content with that. I've started playing with about half the required bankroll for these limits, so all initial gains are highly welcomed. I played 4 tables to hit my 300+ hands which is really encouraging. My target for the month is a minimum of 20,000 hands, and with a plan of 4x1.5 hour sessions, 5 days a week, I should be able to exceed that number quite well. By my initial calculations it appeared that I'd be struggling to make 1000 hands per day, but if I can maintain this pace at 5 tables, I should be able to hit 1500 hands per day, or 30000 hands per month. Depending on traffic I may even be able to push 6 tables. This is great news not only for my bottom line, but for bonus whoring as well. My current site has a loyalty program that should allow me to clear an additional $700-1000 every month on top of my earn rate. All in all, I'm quite happy to be back at the tables. I'll post some interesting hand histories as they come up. Today's big wins were the usual aa vs kk and straight vs set variety. Actually, I may post the straight vs set hand in a future post to illustrate a point in a future post.
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End of the Pipe
I'm so embarrassed...
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 11:07pm | Edit Note | Delete
I had no idea when I joined the Large Penis Support Group that it would announce it to all of my contacts! Oh, well the cat's out of the bag (the jungle cat that is, guess I can admit it openly now.) Since it's all out in the open, I might as well try to help out other guys as they struggle with their own large penises. Having an exceptionally large penis as I do, I've encountered almost every large penis related difficulty that you could imagine. So feel free to join the group, and share your experience, strength and hope with those that are still coming to terms with the curse of their humongous members.
The envy of all of us in the LPSG. If only we could have been given little hammers like these...
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If I Was the Man I Was Ten Years Ago...
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 5:18pm | Edit Note | Delete
I'd take a flamethrower to this place! I bought my little 7 (almost 8) year old daughter a winter jacket at The Gap this year. Tomorrow I'm taking the thing back. I'd encourage all of you to do the same and to stop shopping at this heinous purveyor of evil deeds. Here's the skinny, kids, on the skinny kids slipping through the gaps and working for The Gap.
Indian clothes factory in Gap inquiry raided again by police
By Rohit Gandhi and Christian Cotroneo, CBC News
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 | 6:01 PM ET
CBC News
The Indian factory accused of being a child labour sweatshop for retail giant Gap Inc. is still in production.
Following reports that the factory in Shahpur Jat was using child labour to produce garments for Gap's children's line, New Delhi police have conducted two raids on the factory.
Officers first descended on the factory Monday afternoon, finding 14 children in a single workshop. Children's aid workers and journalists accompanied the police. On Tuesday, another 28 children were rounded up.
Reporters were told by factory managers to leave the premises, but not before recording images of barefoot, shirtless boys at work. Ten-year-old Sheikh Ali said he had been in training, without pay, for the last three months.
"I work from 9 a.m. till about 8 p.m. in the evening," said another boy, who would only give the name Rahman.
The raids came a day after the British newspaper, The Observer, published stories about children working in medieval conditions at the south New Delhi plant.
The Observer said children were forced to work as many as 16 hours a day, without pay amid oppressive conditions, including being punished with rubber pipe beatings and having an oily cloth stuffed in their mouths.
Gap stops sale of products from factory
Vowing not to carry any products produced at the factory, Gap Inc., which operates 3,100 stores internationally, has since fired the subcontractor responsible for the abuse.
"As soon as we were alerted to this situation, we stopped the work order and prevented the product from being sold in stores," Gap North America president Marka Hansen said in a statement issued hours after the story broke on Sunday.
"While violations of our strict prohibition on child labour in factories that produce product for the company are extremely rare, we have called an urgent meeting with our suppliers in the region to reinforce our policies."
It’s not the first time Gap Inc. has had to face criticism over child labour in overseas factories.
In 2000, a BBC documentary discovered a Cambodian factory using young girls to produce clothing for Gap. For its part, the company says it’s striving to ensure subcontractors adhere to its Code of Vendor Conduct, which strictly forbids the use of child labour. In 2006, the company stopped doing business with 23 factories, citing violations of that code.
Authorities too lax, says children's group
An Indian Non-Governmental Organization, Save the Children Foundation of India, had demanded the police action, saying authorities have been too lax for too long in tackling the issue of child labour.
"Police need to do a more proactive job," said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer and activist with Save the Children. "The labour department needs to do a more proactive job, the sub-divisional magistrate who is the implementing authority of the labour act needs to do a much, much better job.
"And on top of everything else, we as common citizens need to be more aware of these things. There are people living in the area. They should have immediately called the police when they saw this happening."
Ribhu also called on the garment industry — a $10-billion a year business in India — to adopt an anti-child labour certification program, already in use by the carpet and sporting goods industries.
"It has to be on the ground," Ribhu said. "And it's high time the garment industry also takes a proactive stand and develops good, effective monitoring mechanisms with the civil society, the government and the trade unions to ensure that there is active public participation and there is no child labour."
The children rescued during the raids were herded into a nearby police station to be interviewed before they appear in court Tuesday. It may take weeks for them to be released and reunited with their families.
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Attack of the Clowns
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Monday, October 29, 2007 at 12:28pm | Edit Note | Delete
It's getting a little embarrassing to be a Star Wars fan these days. I used to feel confident that I was way cooler than the uber-nerdesque trekkies of the world (or 'trekkers' as they prefer to be called). Now I'm just not so sure. There is a proliferation of nerdy merchandise out there appealing to the Gen X Star Wars fan; expensive light saber replicas, Hollywood style costumes running into the thousands, and a toy line that is clearly not intended for children. Today however I uncovered a Star Wars fan related item that made me question my level of nerdiness. For years I've identified with the Jedi order. I abstain from drugs and alcohol, I believe in peace and honesty, and I dabble in a bit of eastern philosophy that seems to resonate with the beliefs and practices of the Jedi. In fact, when I met my wife and she asked what religion I was I went as far as to tell her I was a Jedi. Anyway, that being said, I was a bit sickened and disgusted (primarily with myself ) when I came across this gallery of photos; http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=106 showing a training session put on by the New York Jedi.
Part of what disgusts me is that these people are obviously complete freaks. Yet I have thought of engaging in Jedi training myself in the past. Of course it wasn't actual Jedi training that I was contemplating, but rather Aikido training, which is a defensive martial art that seemed tailor made for a Jedi like me. Well, after seeing these pics, I've now decided that being a Jedi is gay, and it might be time to put away all of my Yoda toys once and for all.
gaylords
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Updated about 10 months ago
Flatland Grinder: In the game.
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Monday, October 29, 2007 at 11:53am | Delete
My money is on it's way. Should be online by tomorrow or the day after. What an incredible pain in the ass it's been. And it's apparently going to get worse. My bank handed me a little flyer detailing how they are going to be collecting more info for wire transfers in the interests of preventing terrorism. This is the same ruse that the government used to take down Neteller and most of the online poker world with the Internet Gambling Act last year. Here's the text of the flyer: "DOING OUR PART TO PREVENT MONEY LAUNDERING AND TERRORIST FINANCING. When you send a wire payment outside Canada, we need to collect additional information from you to address anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulations subject to all Canadian Financial Institutions. The reqested information will aslo assist us in ensuring that your payment is processed efficiently and accurately. When you ask us to send a wire payment, we will ask you for the full named, address and account number (if applicable) of both you and the recipient of the wire payment. The information you provide will be shared with the recipient's bank, any intermediary financial institutions involved in processing the payment and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) where required by law. The infromation may also be subject to the laws of any jurisdictions the wire payment passes through in order to be processed. For more information about FINTRAC and the regulatory requirements visit www.fintrac.gc.ca or call 1-866-346-8722. For more information about the RBC Royal Bank Privacy Policy, visit www. rbc.com/privacy. " Translation; there is now a government agency tracking my win rate.
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Spandex Pants
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Sunday, October 28, 2007 at 9:43am | Edit Note | Delete
I found some spandex pants for my Halloween costume. They're actually those ridiculous looking running tights, but they work perfectly for the mid-80s rocker outfit. My costume is now complete. I'll post some pics the next time I have it on (whether Cindy likes me posting them or not).
In this note: Cindy Inness (notes)
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Now what?
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Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 6:19pm | Edit Note | Delete
I've been laid off for the year finally. It's funny. All the time that I spent loathing every waking minute at work, and now that it's over I miss it. I left a lot of good friends this year at that job. Mike, Cooper, Calvin, Connor, all the operators. Sorge and I will still hang occassionally, but I'll miss the other guys. I spent more time with them this year than I spent with my family last year. Strangely enough I think I might miss the work too. There is something rewarding about taking yourself to your physical limits. There's a satisfaction too in knowing that you were tough enough, when a lot of guys weren't. (I know that for some of you it wasn't a matter of toughness, but a matter of what's the point of enduring this when I have something better?). There were plenty of times that I didn't think I would make it. But this period of 4 months off, being home for every birthday, for Halloween and Christmas and New Year's and Easter is a nice motivator. I learned a lot this summer too. I went into this job with barely a clue about fixing things or mechanics or power tools etc. I left able to diagnose small engine troubles, able to service all kinds of heavy equipment from bobcats to trackhoes. I drive past construction sites now and I tell my kids "I can drive every machine you see out there." and there is a real sense of pride in that. On the one hand the chaos of having no set job description was at it's best confusing, at it's worst infuriating, it certainly had it's benefits. Anything I wanted to teach myself I had the freedom to do. I didn't find that out until a little too late in the year, but I really capitalized on it once I did.
I'm actually toying with the idea of going back to this job next year. The money was ridiculously good, the people (with the exception of the highly off-balanced Blair) were great. I spent the last 3 months thinking that I would regret having taken this job for the rest of my life. Here I am only 1 day away from it, and doggone it I miss it. Oh well. We'll see how I feel in the spring :)
Cartoon Saturation and Spandex Pants; The Nightmare from Hell
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 10:33pm | Edit Note | Delete
This will involve 2 different themes, kind of an uber-post before I head back to AB for a few more days.
Around 5 today my kids were watching cartoons, and not just any cartoon but an Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon. I told them, that when Mommy and I were kids, that was one of the 5 or 6 cartoons that were available to us. I told them that we had Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. (I know there were a few more than that, but not many). Then Janet threw in that "and they were only on for 2 hours on Saturday morning!". There are cartoons and children's shows on 24/7 these days. Amazing. Oh to be a child again. Then later in the day I had to physically fucking mail something. Did you know they still do that? I had to find a pen, locate a stamp and envelope seller, remember the correct format for writing an address on an envelope (including where the Hell you put the return address). To quote my boss "it was a nightmare from Hell." (Inside joke). Can you believe man ever lived that way, mailing shit?
Spandex. Do any of you have a pair of spandex pants you're not using. I have my official "Spyder" leather, hot pink/tiger-stripe silk scarf, flimsy sparkly gold scarf, razor blade necklace, studded armbands, aviator shades and big crazy headbanger wig. Just need the spandex (any color will do, looking for a large) and my king of glam costume will be complete. Should I fail in the pursuit of spandex, I'll be looking for leather chaps (studded if you have them, no questions asked).
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Flatland Grinder: Why I'm looking at playing 6max NLHE
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Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 6:35pm | Delete
I guess I should probably explain why I'm considering 6max NLHE. I've always played full ring pot limit and no limit games and done pretty well at them. However these games all but disappear beyond the 2/4 stakes. In order for one to increase profits, it seems that switching to the 6max games is the best option. Originally I wanted to switch to 6max limit because of the quantity of games and because at 2bb/100 (a standard win rate) I would be able to make a pretty decent living off of relatively small bankroll playing 2/4 stakes (multitabling of course). 6max limit seemed safer to me than 6max no limit, because almost all of the decisions are math based. Having a system of mathematics guiding your play relieves you of a lot of emotional investment in the hand, thus making it much less likely that one will tilt. However, something happened over the course of the last week that has me reconsidering no limit. I was watching a thread at 2+2 on delays in payments from the site I was thinking of joining. A poster had stated that his moneybookers withdrawals kept getting cancelled for no discernible reason. A few others had complained of similar troubles, and I didn't want to put any money on to the site in question until I saw that these guys were able to get their money off safely. Well a few days ago the poster posted the resolution. The problem was that he'd made a withdrawal request of $10,000.00, and then made another withdrawal of $10,000 the week after, before the first withdrawal had cleared. This was forcing the Moneybooker's computer system to identify a withdrawal request greater than the weekly 10k max they permit, and automatically the transactions were cancelled. Ten fucking thousand dollars a week!!!!!???? Jeeeeeeezus what the hell game is this mofo playing? I asked myself. I looked up other posts he'd made, and he's a 6maxNLHE player. He plays $200nl and $400 nl mainly. So I've decided that I'm going to study 6max nlhe the way some very studious person would pursue their studies. That's all for now.
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Banking, Game Plan, A New Link.
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Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 2:11pm | Delete
Would you believe that I still haven't put any money online? I estimate it's still going to be another week or so. Tomorrow I'm going to suck it up and send a bank wire to moneybookers so I can get started. In the meantime I've opened an account with Citizen's Bank, an online bank. Moneybookers uses bank wires to move funds back and forth, and all of the big Canadian banks charge anywhere from $10 up to about $50 to receive them. I've heard that Citizen's Bank is either free or a small $5 charge, and they apparently have better service than most banks too. Perhaps I should have read my last post before writing here since I can't remember what I've mentioned already and what I haven't. Anyway, here's the deal. I was going to give 6max limit a shot again, but J2 has been pretty convincing in his arguments for staying with no limit and pot limit games. I'm going to be joining tower gaming and playing $25 pot limit until I've built a nice bankroll. They have $400 in bonuses at 5x, followed by a bottomless 7x bonus. Once I have a substantial bankroll, I'm going to meet j2 halfway. Instead of 6max limit, I'm going to give 6max nl a shot. There has been almost nothing published on the strategy for this game, and consequently the number of fish at the tables is reputed to be huge. In order to keep my tuition fees (ie losses) low while I'm learning, I've been putting in all the research I can in preparation. I found what may be one of the most comprehensive gatherings of information for 6max SSNLHE on the net here http://www.pr0crast.com/2+2.NL.Anthology.v1.htm and here, http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=3239210&an=0&page=0#Post3239210 The first link deals almost exclusively with 6max SSNLHE, and the second one is concerned more with nlhe in general. Between the 2 of them I'm sure anyone could becom a winning player.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 11:07pm | Edit Note | Delete
I had no idea when I joined the Large Penis Support Group that it would announce it to all of my contacts! Oh, well the cat's out of the bag (the jungle cat that is, guess I can admit it openly now.) Since it's all out in the open, I might as well try to help out other guys as they struggle with their own large penises. Having an exceptionally large penis as I do, I've encountered almost every large penis related difficulty that you could imagine. So feel free to join the group, and share your experience, strength and hope with those that are still coming to terms with the curse of their humongous members.
The envy of all of us in the LPSG. If only we could have been given little hammers like these...
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If I Was the Man I Was Ten Years Ago...
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 5:18pm | Edit Note | Delete
I'd take a flamethrower to this place! I bought my little 7 (almost 8) year old daughter a winter jacket at The Gap this year. Tomorrow I'm taking the thing back. I'd encourage all of you to do the same and to stop shopping at this heinous purveyor of evil deeds. Here's the skinny, kids, on the skinny kids slipping through the gaps and working for The Gap.
Indian clothes factory in Gap inquiry raided again by police
By Rohit Gandhi and Christian Cotroneo, CBC News
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 | 6:01 PM ET
CBC News
The Indian factory accused of being a child labour sweatshop for retail giant Gap Inc. is still in production.
Following reports that the factory in Shahpur Jat was using child labour to produce garments for Gap's children's line, New Delhi police have conducted two raids on the factory.
Officers first descended on the factory Monday afternoon, finding 14 children in a single workshop. Children's aid workers and journalists accompanied the police. On Tuesday, another 28 children were rounded up.
Reporters were told by factory managers to leave the premises, but not before recording images of barefoot, shirtless boys at work. Ten-year-old Sheikh Ali said he had been in training, without pay, for the last three months.
"I work from 9 a.m. till about 8 p.m. in the evening," said another boy, who would only give the name Rahman.
The raids came a day after the British newspaper, The Observer, published stories about children working in medieval conditions at the south New Delhi plant.
The Observer said children were forced to work as many as 16 hours a day, without pay amid oppressive conditions, including being punished with rubber pipe beatings and having an oily cloth stuffed in their mouths.
Gap stops sale of products from factory
Vowing not to carry any products produced at the factory, Gap Inc., which operates 3,100 stores internationally, has since fired the subcontractor responsible for the abuse.
"As soon as we were alerted to this situation, we stopped the work order and prevented the product from being sold in stores," Gap North America president Marka Hansen said in a statement issued hours after the story broke on Sunday.
"While violations of our strict prohibition on child labour in factories that produce product for the company are extremely rare, we have called an urgent meeting with our suppliers in the region to reinforce our policies."
It’s not the first time Gap Inc. has had to face criticism over child labour in overseas factories.
In 2000, a BBC documentary discovered a Cambodian factory using young girls to produce clothing for Gap. For its part, the company says it’s striving to ensure subcontractors adhere to its Code of Vendor Conduct, which strictly forbids the use of child labour. In 2006, the company stopped doing business with 23 factories, citing violations of that code.
Authorities too lax, says children's group
An Indian Non-Governmental Organization, Save the Children Foundation of India, had demanded the police action, saying authorities have been too lax for too long in tackling the issue of child labour.
"Police need to do a more proactive job," said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer and activist with Save the Children. "The labour department needs to do a more proactive job, the sub-divisional magistrate who is the implementing authority of the labour act needs to do a much, much better job.
"And on top of everything else, we as common citizens need to be more aware of these things. There are people living in the area. They should have immediately called the police when they saw this happening."
Ribhu also called on the garment industry — a $10-billion a year business in India — to adopt an anti-child labour certification program, already in use by the carpet and sporting goods industries.
"It has to be on the ground," Ribhu said. "And it's high time the garment industry also takes a proactive stand and develops good, effective monitoring mechanisms with the civil society, the government and the trade unions to ensure that there is active public participation and there is no child labour."
The children rescued during the raids were herded into a nearby police station to be interviewed before they appear in court Tuesday. It may take weeks for them to be released and reunited with their families.
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Attack of the Clowns
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Monday, October 29, 2007 at 12:28pm | Edit Note | Delete
It's getting a little embarrassing to be a Star Wars fan these days. I used to feel confident that I was way cooler than the uber-nerdesque trekkies of the world (or 'trekkers' as they prefer to be called). Now I'm just not so sure. There is a proliferation of nerdy merchandise out there appealing to the Gen X Star Wars fan; expensive light saber replicas, Hollywood style costumes running into the thousands, and a toy line that is clearly not intended for children. Today however I uncovered a Star Wars fan related item that made me question my level of nerdiness. For years I've identified with the Jedi order. I abstain from drugs and alcohol, I believe in peace and honesty, and I dabble in a bit of eastern philosophy that seems to resonate with the beliefs and practices of the Jedi. In fact, when I met my wife and she asked what religion I was I went as far as to tell her I was a Jedi. Anyway, that being said, I was a bit sickened and disgusted (primarily with myself ) when I came across this gallery of photos; http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=106 showing a training session put on by the New York Jedi.
Part of what disgusts me is that these people are obviously complete freaks. Yet I have thought of engaging in Jedi training myself in the past. Of course it wasn't actual Jedi training that I was contemplating, but rather Aikido training, which is a defensive martial art that seemed tailor made for a Jedi like me. Well, after seeing these pics, I've now decided that being a Jedi is gay, and it might be time to put away all of my Yoda toys once and for all.
gaylords
Add a comment | 3 comments
Updated about 10 months ago
Flatland Grinder: In the game.
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Monday, October 29, 2007 at 11:53am | Delete
My money is on it's way. Should be online by tomorrow or the day after. What an incredible pain in the ass it's been. And it's apparently going to get worse. My bank handed me a little flyer detailing how they are going to be collecting more info for wire transfers in the interests of preventing terrorism. This is the same ruse that the government used to take down Neteller and most of the online poker world with the Internet Gambling Act last year. Here's the text of the flyer: "DOING OUR PART TO PREVENT MONEY LAUNDERING AND TERRORIST FINANCING. When you send a wire payment outside Canada, we need to collect additional information from you to address anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulations subject to all Canadian Financial Institutions. The reqested information will aslo assist us in ensuring that your payment is processed efficiently and accurately. When you ask us to send a wire payment, we will ask you for the full named, address and account number (if applicable) of both you and the recipient of the wire payment. The information you provide will be shared with the recipient's bank, any intermediary financial institutions involved in processing the payment and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) where required by law. The infromation may also be subject to the laws of any jurisdictions the wire payment passes through in order to be processed. For more information about FINTRAC and the regulatory requirements visit www.fintrac.gc.ca or call 1-866-346-8722. For more information about the RBC Royal Bank Privacy Policy, visit www. rbc.com/privacy. " Translation; there is now a government agency tracking my win rate.
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Spandex Pants
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Sunday, October 28, 2007 at 9:43am | Edit Note | Delete
I found some spandex pants for my Halloween costume. They're actually those ridiculous looking running tights, but they work perfectly for the mid-80s rocker outfit. My costume is now complete. I'll post some pics the next time I have it on (whether Cindy likes me posting them or not).
In this note: Cindy Inness (notes)
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Now what?
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Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 6:19pm | Edit Note | Delete
I've been laid off for the year finally. It's funny. All the time that I spent loathing every waking minute at work, and now that it's over I miss it. I left a lot of good friends this year at that job. Mike, Cooper, Calvin, Connor, all the operators. Sorge and I will still hang occassionally, but I'll miss the other guys. I spent more time with them this year than I spent with my family last year. Strangely enough I think I might miss the work too. There is something rewarding about taking yourself to your physical limits. There's a satisfaction too in knowing that you were tough enough, when a lot of guys weren't. (I know that for some of you it wasn't a matter of toughness, but a matter of what's the point of enduring this when I have something better?). There were plenty of times that I didn't think I would make it. But this period of 4 months off, being home for every birthday, for Halloween and Christmas and New Year's and Easter is a nice motivator. I learned a lot this summer too. I went into this job with barely a clue about fixing things or mechanics or power tools etc. I left able to diagnose small engine troubles, able to service all kinds of heavy equipment from bobcats to trackhoes. I drive past construction sites now and I tell my kids "I can drive every machine you see out there." and there is a real sense of pride in that. On the one hand the chaos of having no set job description was at it's best confusing, at it's worst infuriating, it certainly had it's benefits. Anything I wanted to teach myself I had the freedom to do. I didn't find that out until a little too late in the year, but I really capitalized on it once I did.
I'm actually toying with the idea of going back to this job next year. The money was ridiculously good, the people (with the exception of the highly off-balanced Blair) were great. I spent the last 3 months thinking that I would regret having taken this job for the rest of my life. Here I am only 1 day away from it, and doggone it I miss it. Oh well. We'll see how I feel in the spring :)
Cartoon Saturation and Spandex Pants; The Nightmare from Hell
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 10:33pm | Edit Note | Delete
This will involve 2 different themes, kind of an uber-post before I head back to AB for a few more days.
Around 5 today my kids were watching cartoons, and not just any cartoon but an Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon. I told them, that when Mommy and I were kids, that was one of the 5 or 6 cartoons that were available to us. I told them that we had Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. (I know there were a few more than that, but not many). Then Janet threw in that "and they were only on for 2 hours on Saturday morning!". There are cartoons and children's shows on 24/7 these days. Amazing. Oh to be a child again. Then later in the day I had to physically fucking mail something. Did you know they still do that? I had to find a pen, locate a stamp and envelope seller, remember the correct format for writing an address on an envelope (including where the Hell you put the return address). To quote my boss "it was a nightmare from Hell." (Inside joke). Can you believe man ever lived that way, mailing shit?
Spandex. Do any of you have a pair of spandex pants you're not using. I have my official "Spyder" leather, hot pink/tiger-stripe silk scarf, flimsy sparkly gold scarf, razor blade necklace, studded armbands, aviator shades and big crazy headbanger wig. Just need the spandex (any color will do, looking for a large) and my king of glam costume will be complete. Should I fail in the pursuit of spandex, I'll be looking for leather chaps (studded if you have them, no questions asked).
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Flatland Grinder: Why I'm looking at playing 6max NLHE
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Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 6:35pm | Delete
I guess I should probably explain why I'm considering 6max NLHE. I've always played full ring pot limit and no limit games and done pretty well at them. However these games all but disappear beyond the 2/4 stakes. In order for one to increase profits, it seems that switching to the 6max games is the best option. Originally I wanted to switch to 6max limit because of the quantity of games and because at 2bb/100 (a standard win rate) I would be able to make a pretty decent living off of relatively small bankroll playing 2/4 stakes (multitabling of course). 6max limit seemed safer to me than 6max no limit, because almost all of the decisions are math based. Having a system of mathematics guiding your play relieves you of a lot of emotional investment in the hand, thus making it much less likely that one will tilt. However, something happened over the course of the last week that has me reconsidering no limit. I was watching a thread at 2+2 on delays in payments from the site I was thinking of joining. A poster had stated that his moneybookers withdrawals kept getting cancelled for no discernible reason. A few others had complained of similar troubles, and I didn't want to put any money on to the site in question until I saw that these guys were able to get their money off safely. Well a few days ago the poster posted the resolution. The problem was that he'd made a withdrawal request of $10,000.00, and then made another withdrawal of $10,000 the week after, before the first withdrawal had cleared. This was forcing the Moneybooker's computer system to identify a withdrawal request greater than the weekly 10k max they permit, and automatically the transactions were cancelled. Ten fucking thousand dollars a week!!!!!???? Jeeeeeeezus what the hell game is this mofo playing? I asked myself. I looked up other posts he'd made, and he's a 6maxNLHE player. He plays $200nl and $400 nl mainly. So I've decided that I'm going to study 6max nlhe the way some very studious person would pursue their studies. That's all for now.
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Banking, Game Plan, A New Link.
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Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 2:11pm | Delete
Would you believe that I still haven't put any money online? I estimate it's still going to be another week or so. Tomorrow I'm going to suck it up and send a bank wire to moneybookers so I can get started. In the meantime I've opened an account with Citizen's Bank, an online bank. Moneybookers uses bank wires to move funds back and forth, and all of the big Canadian banks charge anywhere from $10 up to about $50 to receive them. I've heard that Citizen's Bank is either free or a small $5 charge, and they apparently have better service than most banks too. Perhaps I should have read my last post before writing here since I can't remember what I've mentioned already and what I haven't. Anyway, here's the deal. I was going to give 6max limit a shot again, but J2 has been pretty convincing in his arguments for staying with no limit and pot limit games. I'm going to be joining tower gaming and playing $25 pot limit until I've built a nice bankroll. They have $400 in bonuses at 5x, followed by a bottomless 7x bonus. Once I have a substantial bankroll, I'm going to meet j2 halfway. Instead of 6max limit, I'm going to give 6max nl a shot. There has been almost nothing published on the strategy for this game, and consequently the number of fish at the tables is reputed to be huge. In order to keep my tuition fees (ie losses) low while I'm learning, I've been putting in all the research I can in preparation. I found what may be one of the most comprehensive gatherings of information for 6max SSNLHE on the net here http://www.pr0crast.com/2+2.NL.Anthology.v1.htm and here, http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=3239210&an=0&page=0#Post3239210 The first link deals almost exclusively with 6max SSNLHE, and the second one is concerned more with nlhe in general. Between the 2 of them I'm sure anyone could becom a winning player.
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Coming to the end of pipe.
stooooopid strep throat.
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Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 4:42am | Edit Note | Delete
We have chronic recurring strep at my house. If anyone else has the same problem, this might be helpful for you. And if you have any tips, I'd love to hear them. Here's the deal. We moved into the house we're in about 3 years ago I believe, maybe 2. It was December anyway. It was a hellish move because Janet and I and the kids all came down with strep right in the middle of the move. We were knocked on our butts for a week, with half our things in one house, and half our things in another. That's the farthest back that I can pinpoint a date on a case of strep. Since then Janet and I have had strep about 18 times each. It's hell. For those of you that have never had strep, it's more than just a brutally painful sore throat. It's nausea, body aches that make it hard to move, fever, chills, headaches, congestion and the chance that it can develop to scarlet fever. Tonight I went to the doctor again, got more anti-biotics again (I've gotten to the point where I've quit going to the doctor when I get it because the antibiotics just seem to suppress it for 10 days), and told him again how I've had it 18 times now. This doctor actually listened.
He suggested that we probably have an asymptomatic carrier in the house. The best thing to do he said, would be to wait for a time when we are all symptom free and take the whole family in for throat swabs to identify the carrier. Then we can treat the carrier and hopefully be done with this shit.
In the meantime, taking antibiotics, drinking all kinds of herbal teas with lemon and honey, jacking up on painkillers, going to buy a new toothbrush again etc. Oh, and whining. Lots of whining.
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Will this job never end???
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Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 11:38am | Edit Note | Delete
I had strep throat and a fever and a shovel in my hand and it was 7 in the morning and dark and cold and I hadn't slept more than a few hours because the fridge in my hotel room had a habit of going "RRRRRARRRRXXLXLXLXLXLSLNGNGNGNGNGNGNCHNK!!!" every 15 minutes or so.
The surveyor appeared out of the darkness, I saw his reflective safety stripes shining in the inky black of the trench before I saw him, and he said "Hi, how you doin'?" with that wary and uncertain manner that people greet each other with when it's dark and you can barely see who you're talking to or where you're stepping.
"How's it going?" I echoed. "I'll tell you how it's going. Last week when I was here there was speculation that we would be finished for the year in another week or 2. Now I hear that they've lined up not one but several more jobs, and it's an El Nino year, which means it may not freeze up until late November. It could be another 6 weeks of this"
And he gave a chuckle because he's had to work 14 hour days with the rest of us and he's tired too and he knew exactly where I was coming from.
"Look at this!" I said to him, holding up my shovel. "I shovel for a living. What the fuck is that?! You know what I should be doing? I should be driving a mid size luxury sedan with the heat blasting, straightening my tie and calling on accounts that want to throw their money at me. But no. I had to come and dig 'for the summer'. Here I am 8 months later, and no end in sight."
Yeah, that's where I'm at. Please Baby Jesus, let it snow let it snow let it snow.
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For posterity!
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 2:15pm | Edit Note | Delete
My son peed today. But more importantly, he peed in the potty! This is a first, and a momentous occassion indeed. We celebrated with much hooting and hollering and there were many hugs and high fives. A great feast was prepared, and we encouraged him to libate and eat his fill of all and sundry. We also escorted him to a nearby play center where the proprietors also made a great fuss of this mammoth accomplishment. Great day on the prairie, my son has peed!!!
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(International) National Alert
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 2:04pm | Edit Note | Delete
That Full House Episode Where They Meet The Beach Boys Is On Tomorrow At 3 P.M.
WASHINGTON, DC—The United States was placed on high alert this morning as the Department of Homeland Security revealed credible evidence suggesting that tomorrow afternoon at approximately 3 p.m., 2 p.m. Central, ABC Family Channel will air that one Full House episode where the Tanners meet the Beach Boys.
"We strongly advise all Americans to remain indoors between 3:00 and 3:30 p.m., huddle close together with their loved ones, and sit still and stay completely silent unless it's a commercial," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said during a live television address this morning. "In fact, we recommend you be fully prepared by 2:58, so you don't miss the part in the beginning where Danny, Uncle Joey, and the rest of the gang talk like surfers."
Although a general advisory to watch classic Full House episodes is always in effect, government records rate this episode as a 9.1 out of 10, or "Superb." Episodes of this caliber and higher require nationwide warnings.
"Based on Internet chatter pieced together from ABC Family message boards, we can say with relative certainty that it's the one where D.J. wins Beach Boys tickets in the radio contest, but she can only bring one guest, and she picks Uncle Jesse, and Danny gets upset, and then the Beach Boys come over to their house for some reason and start singing 'Kokomo,'" CIA Director Michael Hayden said. "We are unable to reveal any more information at this time, since doing so might ruin all the best parts."
"However, I'm confident the American people know which one we are talking about," Hayden added. "Remember? There's a concert, and the Tanners go onstage and sing? Oh, and the Beach Boys do the 'Beach Boy huddle.' You'll remember once you start watching."
CIA intelligence could not confirm whether or not Kimmy Gibbler makes an appearance during the episode.
"Keep your eyes and ears open," said Chertoff, noting that the threat of laughter is "very real" and that the situation should be taken lightly. "It is up to each and every one of you to be aware of the small but memorable moments, like Joey and Jesse's jingle for Beach Butter Suntan Lotion, or that ridiculous yellow blazer Deej wears to the concert. And only through constant vigilance will you catch Danny's 'Smurfs on Ice' joke."
All citizens have been urged to immediately contact relatives, friends, and neighbors and assure them that little Michelle says something adorable, being absolutely clear exactly which Full House episode featuring the Beach Boys they mean, since the band appeared in two other episodes later in the series. Those who do not have access to cable are advised to seek refuge with someone who does.
"Be warned—this is not the one where the Tanner family goes on vacation to Hawaii and Danny has his 'Clipboard of Fun' and they end up lost because the island they were sailing to turned out to be a potato-chip crumb on the map and then there's Joey and that hula dancer that he keeps seeing and something about Uncle Jesse and Elvis," Chertoff said. "That episode is from the third season, and contrary to popular belief, the Beach Boys do not appear in it."
"We repeat: This is not the Hawaii one," Chertoff added.
The announcement has been met with criticism from citizens who claim the warning has come too late, although the DHS has known about it for months. Many are comparing the situation to the tragic events of 4/13, in which the American people were not notified about the Cheers episode where Cliff goes on Jeopardy! until there were only two minutes left in the show and all the funny parts were over.
Chertoff said the DHS has drawn up a recommended course of action for those who may have to miss the episode in the event of an emergency.
"If you are planning to record the episode using a digital recording device, I have four words of advice for you: 'Save until manually erased,'" Chertoff said. "And for those of you who own the second season on DVD, well, lucky you. Go check out Disc 4, the Howie episode, where Michelle says 'Howie no go.' Priceless."
The DHS discontinued the practice of videotaping classic TV episodes and loaning them out to citizens when, in 2006, they accidentally recorded over the latest al-Qaeda tape with the Home Improvement Christmas special where Mark thinks Wilson is Santa.
Homeland Security Preparedness Kit
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Updated about 10 months ago
Political commentary.
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 2:59pm | Edit Note | Delete
This is dangerous water to tread. All I'm doing is rephrasing a comment by one of the contenders for premier of SK in response to comments by another contender. Brad Wall of the Sask Party has criticized Lorne Calvert's plans for a universal prescription drug plan in Saskatchewan. Wall's own plan would only cover certain age groups. Calvert in turn has criticized Wall's plan to eliminate the PST on used car sales. I thought that this was a pretty clever comment by Calvert (although I'm not saying I'm for or against either candidate, just love these kinds of exchanges.)
Calvert said that when a young diabetic reached the age of 15 when prescription coverage would stop under Wall's plan, the Sask Party would tell him "there is no help for you unless of course you want to buy a 74 thousand dollar used Mercedes and we'll take the tax off".
Now that's clever. That's almost Ralph Klein clever. Our politics are so much more interesting than US politics.
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Flatland Grinder: The lesser of 363,485 evils.
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Monday, October 15, 2007 at 2:13pm | Delete
Payment processor shizzle again. It looks like I have to go with Moneybookers, which means indeterminate wait times to get my money. It also means exposing myself to all the risks that I've been reading about; mysteriously cancelled transactions, phantom charges, ridiculous exchange policies. But when all is said and done they seem to be the most reputable of all the companies out there. If I had a million dollars I would move to Malta and open my own payment processor. The poker forums are all bemoaning the state of internet payments since neteller left. Click2pay, one of the less reputable yet popular processors apparently made $60 million off of poker transactions last year. If a guy could hook up with some of the neteller developers and create an identical system he could be rich beyond his wildest dreams. Of course there are inherent risks, but what the Hell? Now the payment thing gets more complicated than simply selecting moneybookers. I have to select a bank to finance my moneybookers account with. But I have to use international bank transfers, which get expensive. For example, RBC charges about $45 to send money to moneybookers, and $15 to receive money from them. My solution is to open a USD account with Citizen's Bank, an online bank. They only charge $23 to send, and incoming is free. I'm glad I've started looking at this funding conundrum early. It's still going to take a week or 2 to set all of this up. What an incredible pain in the ass.
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Ms. Water Buffalo Ms. Construed
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Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 8:33pm | Edit Note | Delete
Boy did I step in a pile of doo doo. My wife came down the stairs looking absolutely beautiful one day, and to me she was reminiscent of a beauty pageant contestant descending a winding staircase to accept her crown. Now the only beauty pageant song that I know the words to is the one from the Flintstones. In the episode I refer to, Fred and Barney are selected to judge the Miss Water Buffalo pageant. The Master of Ceremonies for the evening croons out a beautiful and moving tribute with the following lyrics; "We searched high and low for Miss Water Buffalo to wear the beauty crown." So, overcome by Janet's beauty I burst into my own chorus of the song. Well let me tell you, it took a hell of a lot of explaining to calm her down and convince her of my sincerity. To this day she brings it up and several years have gone by. I told her about my blog entry comparing Alvin to a water buffalo moving through Jell-0. She made some comment like "oh the water buffalo comparison isn't just for beautiful women anymore?". I thought that writing this little blog would be cathartic for us both, but she is looking over my shoulder right now saying things like "You forget to mention..." and slapping me. So I'm signing off now. Peace out.
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Feeling bad for coworkers who have let themselves go.
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Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 11:16am | Edit Note | Delete
Well, it wouldn't be fair of me to name names, because I'm sure they struggle a lot with their image etc. already. So to protect identities again I'll be using false names. "Alvin" and "Hooper" USED to be strapping young men, full of life and vim and vigor. Hooper has of course let himself go, and he's unrepentant. He's in complete denial that he has the physique of a 50 year old salesman. Well there's no saving him apparently. Luckily he's funny.
Alvin still has a chance though. When Alvin first came to work we thought they'd hired a freakin' Chippendale. This guy was 'toight'. And he was a tough guy too. He'd been around the block a few times, was ready to knock out a fucker at a moment's notice. You didn't fuck with Alvin back in the day. Now though (author shakes head, sighs heavily), Alvin has let himself go. The six pack has given way to the collected cholesterol and trans fats of a 6 pack of donuts followed by a 6 pack of beer every day. This in turn has slowed him down. Alvin used to be fast like lightning, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee. But the other day at work, I experienced first hand just how slow Alvin has become. He 'accidentally' shovelled a bit of sand into my face, so I purposely kicked a shitload of sand back at him. He said "That's it! The gloves are coming off!" and he threw his gloves down in the sand and squared off. I said "Oh yeah, well the hat's coming off too!" and I reached out and knocked his hat off into the sand. Now see, back in the day, I couldn't have gotten anywhere near Alvin's hat. I would have reached towards it and pulled back a bloody stump of my arm where he would have broken it off. But he's gotten slow from too many donuts and beer. It took him a minute to realize his hat was off, and then another moment to get mad. By that time I was already primed and ready for anything. He moved at me like a water buffalo in Jell-O, slow, clumsy, lumbering, and I in turn moved with the swiftness of a jungle cat. I was all reflex and reaction, all my training and experience culminating in a combination of exploding violence and deadly accuracy. Alvin was down in the sand, I was on top, and I threw a flurry of fake punches just to let him know how close he'd come to being fucked up but good. Then I started to feel bad. I thought of the champion and the tough guy that he once was, and in his eyes, I could see that all of that was slipping away from him. I could see too, that as it vanished, his soul was vanishing too. All that was 'Alvin' was disappearing in this one crushing defeat. I didn't want that on my head. So I threw the fight. I released my death hold on him, and let him throw me down on the sand. Afterwards he said "I don't know man, I think we were pretty equally matched there." I gave a gentle smile, thought for a moment and said "Yeah Alvin, you're right. We were equally matched." Sometimes lying IS the right thing to do.
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Updated about 11 months ago
Flatland Grinder: Neteller, we loved you.
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Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 9:52am | Delete
I'm still in the process of determining a payment processor in anticipation of my full time return to poker (the most optimistic estimates are 2 more weeks!). There is no company out there that compares in the least to the service that Neteller used to provide. To illustrate the difficulty of this choice, just take a look at this thread on the 2+2 forums http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10246478&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1 My problem stems in part from the sheer number of available providers, but also from the lack of a clear leader in the field. I'm leaning towards Click2Pay. They offer a visa card that one can withdraw funds to almost instantly. Charges apparently a bit heavy, approx 3% per withdrawal. I was also considering Moneybookers as a solution, however searches on Moneybooker have highlighted service concerns, payment delays, and hypervigilant security features that tend to lock accounts quite frequently. I've also received some news that might have an effect on my game plan of playing 6max limit until 2008. Tower Gaming is currently offering $400 in bonus at 5x (highly attainable), and following that they have what essentially amounts to a bottomless 7x bonus. As part of the Ongame network, Tower is home to the very $25 pot limit games I used to make a killing on. Might have to return there. I'm currently paralyzed with indecision.
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Flatland Grinder: Bowman's poker
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Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 5:45pm | Delete
Alright, I lost all my free party poker money. That's the way she goes. In all fairness (not rationalizing now, just stating facts) I was severely under rolled for the run I was making. It's recommended that you have about 300 times the big bet to play full ring limit, and 3-500 for 6max. I started with a 25 bet roll and ran it up to 140 before it came back down. All in all I think I have what it takes. Since last night I've read a lot more of Pohl's guide, and looked a lot more carefully at my own play. I found that I was overplaying some hands (not many but enough) in early position. I was also calling raises that I shouldn't have been, and that was causing a bit of a problem. So today I switched over to Bowman's poker (and they themselves just switched to the iPoker network joining Titan et al). Today I've been playing with a starting hand guide beside me and using some of Pohl's techniques, like checkraising the flop with marginal holdings to see the river cheaply and drive out weak opponents. I managed to double up the small bankroll I have their playing smaller limits, and clear some points towards a goodwill $300 bonus that they put in my account. I may just have to pursue this bonus, even if it means depositing. I know a lot of you are thinking "I thought you said you'd never play with your own money!" but I did take out and spend my entire bankroll on work gear back in April, so I have to put that back online at some point. I'm determined to master 6max, as the rewards for doing so are too lucrative not to. I mastered no limit, and it's allegedly a tougher game, so I just have to keep up the analysis and stick to the game plan and it should pan out. I'll give it 2 months anyway, starting.......Nov. 1. If by the New Year I'm not showing a significant profit at 6max limit I'll return to nl. I should be able to get in 40000 hands in that time which should give me plenty of time to work out the bugs and then put in a good enough sample size to gauge my ability from. That's all for now.
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Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 4:42am | Edit Note | Delete
We have chronic recurring strep at my house. If anyone else has the same problem, this might be helpful for you. And if you have any tips, I'd love to hear them. Here's the deal. We moved into the house we're in about 3 years ago I believe, maybe 2. It was December anyway. It was a hellish move because Janet and I and the kids all came down with strep right in the middle of the move. We were knocked on our butts for a week, with half our things in one house, and half our things in another. That's the farthest back that I can pinpoint a date on a case of strep. Since then Janet and I have had strep about 18 times each. It's hell. For those of you that have never had strep, it's more than just a brutally painful sore throat. It's nausea, body aches that make it hard to move, fever, chills, headaches, congestion and the chance that it can develop to scarlet fever. Tonight I went to the doctor again, got more anti-biotics again (I've gotten to the point where I've quit going to the doctor when I get it because the antibiotics just seem to suppress it for 10 days), and told him again how I've had it 18 times now. This doctor actually listened.
He suggested that we probably have an asymptomatic carrier in the house. The best thing to do he said, would be to wait for a time when we are all symptom free and take the whole family in for throat swabs to identify the carrier. Then we can treat the carrier and hopefully be done with this shit.
In the meantime, taking antibiotics, drinking all kinds of herbal teas with lemon and honey, jacking up on painkillers, going to buy a new toothbrush again etc. Oh, and whining. Lots of whining.
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Will this job never end???
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Saturday, October 20, 2007 at 11:38am | Edit Note | Delete
I had strep throat and a fever and a shovel in my hand and it was 7 in the morning and dark and cold and I hadn't slept more than a few hours because the fridge in my hotel room had a habit of going "RRRRRARRRRXXLXLXLXLXLSLNGNGNGNGNGNGNCHNK!!!" every 15 minutes or so.
The surveyor appeared out of the darkness, I saw his reflective safety stripes shining in the inky black of the trench before I saw him, and he said "Hi, how you doin'?" with that wary and uncertain manner that people greet each other with when it's dark and you can barely see who you're talking to or where you're stepping.
"How's it going?" I echoed. "I'll tell you how it's going. Last week when I was here there was speculation that we would be finished for the year in another week or 2. Now I hear that they've lined up not one but several more jobs, and it's an El Nino year, which means it may not freeze up until late November. It could be another 6 weeks of this"
And he gave a chuckle because he's had to work 14 hour days with the rest of us and he's tired too and he knew exactly where I was coming from.
"Look at this!" I said to him, holding up my shovel. "I shovel for a living. What the fuck is that?! You know what I should be doing? I should be driving a mid size luxury sedan with the heat blasting, straightening my tie and calling on accounts that want to throw their money at me. But no. I had to come and dig 'for the summer'. Here I am 8 months later, and no end in sight."
Yeah, that's where I'm at. Please Baby Jesus, let it snow let it snow let it snow.
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For posterity!
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 2:15pm | Edit Note | Delete
My son peed today. But more importantly, he peed in the potty! This is a first, and a momentous occassion indeed. We celebrated with much hooting and hollering and there were many hugs and high fives. A great feast was prepared, and we encouraged him to libate and eat his fill of all and sundry. We also escorted him to a nearby play center where the proprietors also made a great fuss of this mammoth accomplishment. Great day on the prairie, my son has peed!!!
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(International) National Alert
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 2:04pm | Edit Note | Delete
That Full House Episode Where They Meet The Beach Boys Is On Tomorrow At 3 P.M.
WASHINGTON, DC—The United States was placed on high alert this morning as the Department of Homeland Security revealed credible evidence suggesting that tomorrow afternoon at approximately 3 p.m., 2 p.m. Central, ABC Family Channel will air that one Full House episode where the Tanners meet the Beach Boys.
"We strongly advise all Americans to remain indoors between 3:00 and 3:30 p.m., huddle close together with their loved ones, and sit still and stay completely silent unless it's a commercial," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said during a live television address this morning. "In fact, we recommend you be fully prepared by 2:58, so you don't miss the part in the beginning where Danny, Uncle Joey, and the rest of the gang talk like surfers."
Although a general advisory to watch classic Full House episodes is always in effect, government records rate this episode as a 9.1 out of 10, or "Superb." Episodes of this caliber and higher require nationwide warnings.
"Based on Internet chatter pieced together from ABC Family message boards, we can say with relative certainty that it's the one where D.J. wins Beach Boys tickets in the radio contest, but she can only bring one guest, and she picks Uncle Jesse, and Danny gets upset, and then the Beach Boys come over to their house for some reason and start singing 'Kokomo,'" CIA Director Michael Hayden said. "We are unable to reveal any more information at this time, since doing so might ruin all the best parts."
"However, I'm confident the American people know which one we are talking about," Hayden added. "Remember? There's a concert, and the Tanners go onstage and sing? Oh, and the Beach Boys do the 'Beach Boy huddle.' You'll remember once you start watching."
CIA intelligence could not confirm whether or not Kimmy Gibbler makes an appearance during the episode.
"Keep your eyes and ears open," said Chertoff, noting that the threat of laughter is "very real" and that the situation should be taken lightly. "It is up to each and every one of you to be aware of the small but memorable moments, like Joey and Jesse's jingle for Beach Butter Suntan Lotion, or that ridiculous yellow blazer Deej wears to the concert. And only through constant vigilance will you catch Danny's 'Smurfs on Ice' joke."
All citizens have been urged to immediately contact relatives, friends, and neighbors and assure them that little Michelle says something adorable, being absolutely clear exactly which Full House episode featuring the Beach Boys they mean, since the band appeared in two other episodes later in the series. Those who do not have access to cable are advised to seek refuge with someone who does.
"Be warned—this is not the one where the Tanner family goes on vacation to Hawaii and Danny has his 'Clipboard of Fun' and they end up lost because the island they were sailing to turned out to be a potato-chip crumb on the map and then there's Joey and that hula dancer that he keeps seeing and something about Uncle Jesse and Elvis," Chertoff said. "That episode is from the third season, and contrary to popular belief, the Beach Boys do not appear in it."
"We repeat: This is not the Hawaii one," Chertoff added.
The announcement has been met with criticism from citizens who claim the warning has come too late, although the DHS has known about it for months. Many are comparing the situation to the tragic events of 4/13, in which the American people were not notified about the Cheers episode where Cliff goes on Jeopardy! until there were only two minutes left in the show and all the funny parts were over.
Chertoff said the DHS has drawn up a recommended course of action for those who may have to miss the episode in the event of an emergency.
"If you are planning to record the episode using a digital recording device, I have four words of advice for you: 'Save until manually erased,'" Chertoff said. "And for those of you who own the second season on DVD, well, lucky you. Go check out Disc 4, the Howie episode, where Michelle says 'Howie no go.' Priceless."
The DHS discontinued the practice of videotaping classic TV episodes and loaning them out to citizens when, in 2006, they accidentally recorded over the latest al-Qaeda tape with the Home Improvement Christmas special where Mark thinks Wilson is Santa.
Homeland Security Preparedness Kit
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Updated about 10 months ago
Political commentary.
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 2:59pm | Edit Note | Delete
This is dangerous water to tread. All I'm doing is rephrasing a comment by one of the contenders for premier of SK in response to comments by another contender. Brad Wall of the Sask Party has criticized Lorne Calvert's plans for a universal prescription drug plan in Saskatchewan. Wall's own plan would only cover certain age groups. Calvert in turn has criticized Wall's plan to eliminate the PST on used car sales. I thought that this was a pretty clever comment by Calvert (although I'm not saying I'm for or against either candidate, just love these kinds of exchanges.)
Calvert said that when a young diabetic reached the age of 15 when prescription coverage would stop under Wall's plan, the Sask Party would tell him "there is no help for you unless of course you want to buy a 74 thousand dollar used Mercedes and we'll take the tax off".
Now that's clever. That's almost Ralph Klein clever. Our politics are so much more interesting than US politics.
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Flatland Grinder: The lesser of 363,485 evils.
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Monday, October 15, 2007 at 2:13pm | Delete
Payment processor shizzle again. It looks like I have to go with Moneybookers, which means indeterminate wait times to get my money. It also means exposing myself to all the risks that I've been reading about; mysteriously cancelled transactions, phantom charges, ridiculous exchange policies. But when all is said and done they seem to be the most reputable of all the companies out there. If I had a million dollars I would move to Malta and open my own payment processor. The poker forums are all bemoaning the state of internet payments since neteller left. Click2pay, one of the less reputable yet popular processors apparently made $60 million off of poker transactions last year. If a guy could hook up with some of the neteller developers and create an identical system he could be rich beyond his wildest dreams. Of course there are inherent risks, but what the Hell? Now the payment thing gets more complicated than simply selecting moneybookers. I have to select a bank to finance my moneybookers account with. But I have to use international bank transfers, which get expensive. For example, RBC charges about $45 to send money to moneybookers, and $15 to receive money from them. My solution is to open a USD account with Citizen's Bank, an online bank. They only charge $23 to send, and incoming is free. I'm glad I've started looking at this funding conundrum early. It's still going to take a week or 2 to set all of this up. What an incredible pain in the ass.
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Ms. Water Buffalo Ms. Construed
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Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 8:33pm | Edit Note | Delete
Boy did I step in a pile of doo doo. My wife came down the stairs looking absolutely beautiful one day, and to me she was reminiscent of a beauty pageant contestant descending a winding staircase to accept her crown. Now the only beauty pageant song that I know the words to is the one from the Flintstones. In the episode I refer to, Fred and Barney are selected to judge the Miss Water Buffalo pageant. The Master of Ceremonies for the evening croons out a beautiful and moving tribute with the following lyrics; "We searched high and low for Miss Water Buffalo to wear the beauty crown." So, overcome by Janet's beauty I burst into my own chorus of the song. Well let me tell you, it took a hell of a lot of explaining to calm her down and convince her of my sincerity. To this day she brings it up and several years have gone by. I told her about my blog entry comparing Alvin to a water buffalo moving through Jell-0. She made some comment like "oh the water buffalo comparison isn't just for beautiful women anymore?". I thought that writing this little blog would be cathartic for us both, but she is looking over my shoulder right now saying things like "You forget to mention..." and slapping me. So I'm signing off now. Peace out.
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Feeling bad for coworkers who have let themselves go.
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Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 11:16am | Edit Note | Delete
Well, it wouldn't be fair of me to name names, because I'm sure they struggle a lot with their image etc. already. So to protect identities again I'll be using false names. "Alvin" and "Hooper" USED to be strapping young men, full of life and vim and vigor. Hooper has of course let himself go, and he's unrepentant. He's in complete denial that he has the physique of a 50 year old salesman. Well there's no saving him apparently. Luckily he's funny.
Alvin still has a chance though. When Alvin first came to work we thought they'd hired a freakin' Chippendale. This guy was 'toight'. And he was a tough guy too. He'd been around the block a few times, was ready to knock out a fucker at a moment's notice. You didn't fuck with Alvin back in the day. Now though (author shakes head, sighs heavily), Alvin has let himself go. The six pack has given way to the collected cholesterol and trans fats of a 6 pack of donuts followed by a 6 pack of beer every day. This in turn has slowed him down. Alvin used to be fast like lightning, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee. But the other day at work, I experienced first hand just how slow Alvin has become. He 'accidentally' shovelled a bit of sand into my face, so I purposely kicked a shitload of sand back at him. He said "That's it! The gloves are coming off!" and he threw his gloves down in the sand and squared off. I said "Oh yeah, well the hat's coming off too!" and I reached out and knocked his hat off into the sand. Now see, back in the day, I couldn't have gotten anywhere near Alvin's hat. I would have reached towards it and pulled back a bloody stump of my arm where he would have broken it off. But he's gotten slow from too many donuts and beer. It took him a minute to realize his hat was off, and then another moment to get mad. By that time I was already primed and ready for anything. He moved at me like a water buffalo in Jell-O, slow, clumsy, lumbering, and I in turn moved with the swiftness of a jungle cat. I was all reflex and reaction, all my training and experience culminating in a combination of exploding violence and deadly accuracy. Alvin was down in the sand, I was on top, and I threw a flurry of fake punches just to let him know how close he'd come to being fucked up but good. Then I started to feel bad. I thought of the champion and the tough guy that he once was, and in his eyes, I could see that all of that was slipping away from him. I could see too, that as it vanished, his soul was vanishing too. All that was 'Alvin' was disappearing in this one crushing defeat. I didn't want that on my head. So I threw the fight. I released my death hold on him, and let him throw me down on the sand. Afterwards he said "I don't know man, I think we were pretty equally matched there." I gave a gentle smile, thought for a moment and said "Yeah Alvin, you're right. We were equally matched." Sometimes lying IS the right thing to do.
Add a comment
Updated about 11 months ago
Flatland Grinder: Neteller, we loved you.
Share
Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 9:52am | Delete
I'm still in the process of determining a payment processor in anticipation of my full time return to poker (the most optimistic estimates are 2 more weeks!). There is no company out there that compares in the least to the service that Neteller used to provide. To illustrate the difficulty of this choice, just take a look at this thread on the 2+2 forums http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10246478&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1 My problem stems in part from the sheer number of available providers, but also from the lack of a clear leader in the field. I'm leaning towards Click2Pay. They offer a visa card that one can withdraw funds to almost instantly. Charges apparently a bit heavy, approx 3% per withdrawal. I was also considering Moneybookers as a solution, however searches on Moneybooker have highlighted service concerns, payment delays, and hypervigilant security features that tend to lock accounts quite frequently. I've also received some news that might have an effect on my game plan of playing 6max limit until 2008. Tower Gaming is currently offering $400 in bonus at 5x (highly attainable), and following that they have what essentially amounts to a bottomless 7x bonus. As part of the Ongame network, Tower is home to the very $25 pot limit games I used to make a killing on. Might have to return there. I'm currently paralyzed with indecision.
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Flatland Grinder: Bowman's poker
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Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 5:45pm | Delete
Alright, I lost all my free party poker money. That's the way she goes. In all fairness (not rationalizing now, just stating facts) I was severely under rolled for the run I was making. It's recommended that you have about 300 times the big bet to play full ring limit, and 3-500 for 6max. I started with a 25 bet roll and ran it up to 140 before it came back down. All in all I think I have what it takes. Since last night I've read a lot more of Pohl's guide, and looked a lot more carefully at my own play. I found that I was overplaying some hands (not many but enough) in early position. I was also calling raises that I shouldn't have been, and that was causing a bit of a problem. So today I switched over to Bowman's poker (and they themselves just switched to the iPoker network joining Titan et al). Today I've been playing with a starting hand guide beside me and using some of Pohl's techniques, like checkraising the flop with marginal holdings to see the river cheaply and drive out weak opponents. I managed to double up the small bankroll I have their playing smaller limits, and clear some points towards a goodwill $300 bonus that they put in my account. I may just have to pursue this bonus, even if it means depositing. I know a lot of you are thinking "I thought you said you'd never play with your own money!" but I did take out and spend my entire bankroll on work gear back in April, so I have to put that back online at some point. I'm determined to master 6max, as the rewards for doing so are too lucrative not to. I mastered no limit, and it's allegedly a tougher game, so I just have to keep up the analysis and stick to the game plan and it should pan out. I'll give it 2 months anyway, starting.......Nov. 1. If by the New Year I'm not showing a significant profit at 6max limit I'll return to nl. I should be able to get in 40000 hands in that time which should give me plenty of time to work out the bugs and then put in a good enough sample size to gauge my ability from. That's all for now.
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Pipelayin' October 07
Flatland Grinder: Something else is broken now and I don't kn...
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Monday, October 8, 2007 at 8:08pm | Delete
I've had a pretty lousy run, to the tune of losing about 14bb/100 over several sessions. I've stopped now, with just enough of my free money left to hopefully rebuild. Might not be enough unfortunately, but it was free money anyway and I had earmarked it for swimming with sharks in unfamiliar waters. Now I'm at the stage where I'm analyzing my game, and I'm taking a lot of the same steps I took when I worked the bugs out of my nl game. I thought it might be interesting for others going through the same process if I detailed my methods here. My losing run was at 6max limit, which as you might know is a completely new game to me. I've been following the strategy guide at http://www.flopturnriver.com/6-Max-Limit-Guide.html and it seemed to work for me during the week. Weekends have always been known to be a variance hell in no limit, and part of me is thinking that the massive plummet I took today is due entirely to that same weekend variance in 6max. That's an easy cop out though, so I've been spending a few hours seeing where I'm going wrong. I reviewed my hands and some of my pokertracker stats and compared them to the stats at http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=micro&Number=2913856&fpart=1&PHPSESSID= and everything seems to be in order statistically. This is neither here nor there as good stats do not a winning player make, however if there were any anomalies in the stats it would have been much easier to find the leak. I also ran my win rates and standard deviation through some pretty complicated calculations (as seen on the second page linked to) to determine if I have any promise as a 6 max player. After 5000 hands I'm sitting at a 55% chance of continuing as a winning player. That's not quite encouraging enough to warrant any belief that I'll be able to make the switch to playing 6maxlimit permanently, but it's definitely encouraging enough to want to keep trying for a while anyway. So all of the easy places to look for the leak have been checked, and now I'm at the point where I'm going to have to do a full out hand by hand review. As stated earlier however, this game is new to me, and I could be staring a blatant mistake right in the face and not know it. So I've done some digging on the net and found a few more guides and articles on 6max that will hopefully give me a little more info to work with. I hit the jackpot with an online .pdf loaded with 6max resources here http://www.ccs00.com/stuff/shorthanded.pdf I'm only a few articles in and have found some nuggets that would probably have saved me a lot of anguish today. The first few articles deal with what Jason Pohl from Pokerpages refers to as the overcard quandary. I haven't gone to my hand histories yet, but I'm almost positive that this is where I'm going to find my leak. Anyway, more later.
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Doing my part for the economy.
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Sunday, October 7, 2007 at 9:57pm | Edit Note | Delete
In an attempt to curb the danger posed to Canadian exporters by the soaring value of the loonie I've decided to take some drastic measures. I intend to be out of work in the next 3 weeks and collecting EI which should increase at least by 1 the number of jobless adults in Canada. If we all pitch in and stop this heinous trend of working, we can all bring the dollar back down to Earth. In lieu of all your heartfelt thanks and appreciation, I would be most grateful if you all encouraged your friends to leave their jobs and do their part for the exporters of this great nation. Thank you for your support.
This picture is completely unrelated to this note and here for no good reason.
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Updated about 11 months ago
Flatland Grinder: the fix fixed it
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Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 10:59pm | Delete
It seems like I found the right leaks when I analyzed my game. I have recovered my losses for the day and I'm up a little more than I started the day at. 3350 hands in and I'm still plus ev, bb/100 of 3. something which is probably a little skewed from where it will be at 20000 hands due to my flawed play earlier, but even if that's as good as it gets I'll be quite content. That's all for now. The internet cafe I'm in is closing.
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I joined the group It's Called a Bunnyhug and Always Will Be"
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Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 1:49pm | Edit Note | Delete
and they have a lot of posts about weird words and speech patterns exclusive to Saskatchewan. One that was mentioned has me laughing, because my Alberta farmer boss does it so much that we can't keep a straight face when he does it. Here's the post from the group's discussion board
"One of my least favourite phrases of all time from my past jobs is "What a guy could do is..." followed by something ridiculously complicated and a pain in the ass. What I hated about it is that usually "the guy" my bosses speak of is me because they don't want to do it..."
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Flatland Grinder Episode VI: The Fish on Empire Strike Back
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Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 1:27pm | Delete
A couple of things to report. First, it's just occurred to me that I've been posting play results and bb/100 rates while telling you nothing of the strategy I'm using. Now I could type out this strategy for you here, but that wouldn't be fair to the author of it. I have to give credit where credit is due. So if you follow this link http://www.flopturnriver.com/6-Max-Limit-Guide.html you'll find the strategy I've been having so much success with. That being said, I'm not having so much success today. Variance is always going to be a bitch in a shorthanded game, but I think my performance drop today has more to do with my play than with any natural swings. First it has to be said that a drop was coming, because the bb/100 rate I was enjoying did seem a little inflated. But a drop of the magnitude that I've taken in 2 of my last 3 sessions is the result of flawed play, pure and simple. I realized to late that I've been wandering off from basic strategy. This just goes to illustrate the importance of post session analysis, particularly when you're learning a new game. Hypermegachi states repeatedly in his strategy guide that cold calling is probably the biggest leak in most players' games. And what have I been doing? I've been cold calling with holdings that aren't quite strong enough. For instance I've been calling 2 bets cold with hands like ajo, or kqo, and really, I shouldn't be getting involved with anything less than a premium pair or aq. I've also been calling and even raising with small pairs out of position. Small pairs do have value, but not so much in early position. After the flop I've let my play slide a bit too. I've been pushing my overcards when they miss the flop and not slowing down when it's obvious I've got a donkey taking it to the river. I mentioned I took a big drop in 2 of my last 3 sessions. The 3rd session I played after doing a little analysis on my previous sessions and isolated some of my leaks. I managed to recover a portion of what I lost splashing around too much by correcting my play. I think it's crucial that I revisit the strategy guide prior to every session until I've internalized this strategy so that it's intuitive. Still not going to give up and go back to no limit just yet, but it's certainly an option.
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On the Ode to Lloydminster
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Friday, October 5, 2007 at 7:42pm | Edit Note | Delete
It's going to have something to do with the upgrader as a constellation on horizon, and i"m going to give it some kind of fiery name like Icarus or something. It will also talk about the air being made of hydrogen sulfide, brimstone and sulphur.
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I'm having a bad week.
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Friday, October 5, 2007 at 7:26pm | Edit Note | Delete
I feel like I'm complaining all the time this week, but it has been a seriously rough week. Last night I got on board the Greyhound for Saskatoon from Edmonton. It was so packed that they had to bring on a second bus. They filled the first one with people going as far as Saskatoon, and half filled the other one with people going beyond Toontown. I had some time to kill before getting on the bus, both in Leduc and Edmonton. By the time I got on the bus I'd had 2 big pint glasses of Coke, a large chocolate milk, and an A&W Root Beer. Some woman on the bus was wearing a HUGE amount of perfume, and the guy beside me was in a similar line of work so he kept talking about it all night. The perfume was getting to me, making me cough, hurting my throat, giving me a headache, so 2 hours later when we got to Lloydminster for a half hour stopover, (I'm going to be writing an ode to Lloydminster in the near future), I went looking for an all night drugstore. I couldn't find one, but I bought a Lemon Iced Tea to get rid of the frogs in my throat at the bus stop. I downed it quickly, then noticed they sold Tylenol right there, so I bought a Tylenol and an Orange Crush to wash it down with. Soon we were off again, on the somewhat winding highway outside of Lloyd. I started to fall asleep but then my stomach started to rumble, and I started feeling nauseous. It occurred to me that I'd had 2 pints of coke, a root beer, a chocolate milk, an iced tea and an orange crush on a pretty much empty stomach in a pretty short time span. Every time the bus went left my stomach contents went right in a heavy sugary tide of carbonated artificial colorings. Left right, left right, bus slowing and accelerating to navigate the turns. Long story short I spent until Radisson in the bus toilet throwing up orange crush flavored puke. Been sleeping most of today. I'm never ever ever ever taking a bus again. The guy behind me had fetid breath, it was about 28 degrees on the bus and everyone had their shoes off so the air was feeted too. (Catch that 'feeted', 'fetid'). When the bus finally pulled into Saskatoon I decided to walk home. All day long I've had the smell of that guy's breath stuck in my olfactories. Disgusting. I just hope he had the smell of my pukey breath stuck in his nose all day. How can people not notice that their breath is so bad people several seats away from them can smell it?
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Updated about 11 months ago
In perfect shape to travel.
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Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 11:24pm | Edit Note | Delete
I caught a pipe upside my head at work today and now I have a big nasty shiner (another first in at least 15 years). I remember when I was younger I used to feel like I looked pretty tough whenever I had a black eye. But this one is weird. It caught me right in the socket, so for the most part you can't see the bruise unless I close my eye. The rest of the time it looks like I'm wearing make up. I was asked if I was wearing mascara about half a dozen times today. Combine that with the hair I have from wearing a hard hat for 14 hours, and I look like a transvestite that just took off his wig and didn't quite get all his makeup off. My hope is that it keeps people away from me on the bus. My fear is that it will attract undesirables. Anyway, I"m on my way back home, between connections, no time to respond to threads at this juncture, but will tomorrow. Peace out yo!
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Updated about 11 months ago
Nothing good can come from this.
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Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 6:16am | Edit Note | Delete
Because nothing good ever comes from any journey that involves a Greyhound. Greyhounds are the preferred method of travel for the lost, the doomed, the wild, the hunted and the haunted. Where do I fit in? Well for the next couple of days doomed I suppose, forsaken to work.
Half the people on my bus were drunk. Most of them were malodorous and unwashed. There was a feeling as we boarded much as one might expect from a group of new inmates being escorted to their cells. We knew that there was no hope. For the next 8 hours we were to be cooped up together in the most uncomfortable seats ever designed for travel (excluding of course the seating in an 89 Chevy Sprint or 84 Chevette).
This freaking station is worse than the bus was. It's like Mos Eisley spaceport. There's no more venomous hive of scum and villainy in the entire galaxy. I lived here for a few years and I never realized just how many junkies this city has. This is going to be a grrrrrrreat fucking day.
Add a comment | 6 comments
Updated about 11 months ago
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Monday, October 8, 2007 at 8:08pm | Delete
I've had a pretty lousy run, to the tune of losing about 14bb/100 over several sessions. I've stopped now, with just enough of my free money left to hopefully rebuild. Might not be enough unfortunately, but it was free money anyway and I had earmarked it for swimming with sharks in unfamiliar waters. Now I'm at the stage where I'm analyzing my game, and I'm taking a lot of the same steps I took when I worked the bugs out of my nl game. I thought it might be interesting for others going through the same process if I detailed my methods here. My losing run was at 6max limit, which as you might know is a completely new game to me. I've been following the strategy guide at http://www.flopturnriver.com/6-Max-Limit-Guide.html and it seemed to work for me during the week. Weekends have always been known to be a variance hell in no limit, and part of me is thinking that the massive plummet I took today is due entirely to that same weekend variance in 6max. That's an easy cop out though, so I've been spending a few hours seeing where I'm going wrong. I reviewed my hands and some of my pokertracker stats and compared them to the stats at http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=micro&Number=2913856&fpart=1&PHPSESSID= and everything seems to be in order statistically. This is neither here nor there as good stats do not a winning player make, however if there were any anomalies in the stats it would have been much easier to find the leak. I also ran my win rates and standard deviation through some pretty complicated calculations (as seen on the second page linked to) to determine if I have any promise as a 6 max player. After 5000 hands I'm sitting at a 55% chance of continuing as a winning player. That's not quite encouraging enough to warrant any belief that I'll be able to make the switch to playing 6maxlimit permanently, but it's definitely encouraging enough to want to keep trying for a while anyway. So all of the easy places to look for the leak have been checked, and now I'm at the point where I'm going to have to do a full out hand by hand review. As stated earlier however, this game is new to me, and I could be staring a blatant mistake right in the face and not know it. So I've done some digging on the net and found a few more guides and articles on 6max that will hopefully give me a little more info to work with. I hit the jackpot with an online .pdf loaded with 6max resources here http://www.ccs00.com/stuff/shorthanded.pdf I'm only a few articles in and have found some nuggets that would probably have saved me a lot of anguish today. The first few articles deal with what Jason Pohl from Pokerpages refers to as the overcard quandary. I haven't gone to my hand histories yet, but I'm almost positive that this is where I'm going to find my leak. Anyway, more later.
Add a comment | View original post
Doing my part for the economy.
Share
Sunday, October 7, 2007 at 9:57pm | Edit Note | Delete
In an attempt to curb the danger posed to Canadian exporters by the soaring value of the loonie I've decided to take some drastic measures. I intend to be out of work in the next 3 weeks and collecting EI which should increase at least by 1 the number of jobless adults in Canada. If we all pitch in and stop this heinous trend of working, we can all bring the dollar back down to Earth. In lieu of all your heartfelt thanks and appreciation, I would be most grateful if you all encouraged your friends to leave their jobs and do their part for the exporters of this great nation. Thank you for your support.
This picture is completely unrelated to this note and here for no good reason.
Add a comment | 2 comments
Updated about 11 months ago
Flatland Grinder: the fix fixed it
Share
Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 10:59pm | Delete
It seems like I found the right leaks when I analyzed my game. I have recovered my losses for the day and I'm up a little more than I started the day at. 3350 hands in and I'm still plus ev, bb/100 of 3. something which is probably a little skewed from where it will be at 20000 hands due to my flawed play earlier, but even if that's as good as it gets I'll be quite content. That's all for now. The internet cafe I'm in is closing.
Add a comment | View original post
I joined the group It's Called a Bunnyhug and Always Will Be"
Share
Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 1:49pm | Edit Note | Delete
and they have a lot of posts about weird words and speech patterns exclusive to Saskatchewan. One that was mentioned has me laughing, because my Alberta farmer boss does it so much that we can't keep a straight face when he does it. Here's the post from the group's discussion board
"One of my least favourite phrases of all time from my past jobs is "What a guy could do is..." followed by something ridiculously complicated and a pain in the ass. What I hated about it is that usually "the guy" my bosses speak of is me because they don't want to do it..."
Add a comment
Flatland Grinder Episode VI: The Fish on Empire Strike Back
Share
Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 1:27pm | Delete
A couple of things to report. First, it's just occurred to me that I've been posting play results and bb/100 rates while telling you nothing of the strategy I'm using. Now I could type out this strategy for you here, but that wouldn't be fair to the author of it. I have to give credit where credit is due. So if you follow this link http://www.flopturnriver.com/6-Max-Limit-Guide.html you'll find the strategy I've been having so much success with. That being said, I'm not having so much success today. Variance is always going to be a bitch in a shorthanded game, but I think my performance drop today has more to do with my play than with any natural swings. First it has to be said that a drop was coming, because the bb/100 rate I was enjoying did seem a little inflated. But a drop of the magnitude that I've taken in 2 of my last 3 sessions is the result of flawed play, pure and simple. I realized to late that I've been wandering off from basic strategy. This just goes to illustrate the importance of post session analysis, particularly when you're learning a new game. Hypermegachi states repeatedly in his strategy guide that cold calling is probably the biggest leak in most players' games. And what have I been doing? I've been cold calling with holdings that aren't quite strong enough. For instance I've been calling 2 bets cold with hands like ajo, or kqo, and really, I shouldn't be getting involved with anything less than a premium pair or aq. I've also been calling and even raising with small pairs out of position. Small pairs do have value, but not so much in early position. After the flop I've let my play slide a bit too. I've been pushing my overcards when they miss the flop and not slowing down when it's obvious I've got a donkey taking it to the river. I mentioned I took a big drop in 2 of my last 3 sessions. The 3rd session I played after doing a little analysis on my previous sessions and isolated some of my leaks. I managed to recover a portion of what I lost splashing around too much by correcting my play. I think it's crucial that I revisit the strategy guide prior to every session until I've internalized this strategy so that it's intuitive. Still not going to give up and go back to no limit just yet, but it's certainly an option.
Add a comment | View original post
On the Ode to Lloydminster
Share
Friday, October 5, 2007 at 7:42pm | Edit Note | Delete
It's going to have something to do with the upgrader as a constellation on horizon, and i"m going to give it some kind of fiery name like Icarus or something. It will also talk about the air being made of hydrogen sulfide, brimstone and sulphur.
Add a comment
I'm having a bad week.
Share
Friday, October 5, 2007 at 7:26pm | Edit Note | Delete
I feel like I'm complaining all the time this week, but it has been a seriously rough week. Last night I got on board the Greyhound for Saskatoon from Edmonton. It was so packed that they had to bring on a second bus. They filled the first one with people going as far as Saskatoon, and half filled the other one with people going beyond Toontown. I had some time to kill before getting on the bus, both in Leduc and Edmonton. By the time I got on the bus I'd had 2 big pint glasses of Coke, a large chocolate milk, and an A&W Root Beer. Some woman on the bus was wearing a HUGE amount of perfume, and the guy beside me was in a similar line of work so he kept talking about it all night. The perfume was getting to me, making me cough, hurting my throat, giving me a headache, so 2 hours later when we got to Lloydminster for a half hour stopover, (I'm going to be writing an ode to Lloydminster in the near future), I went looking for an all night drugstore. I couldn't find one, but I bought a Lemon Iced Tea to get rid of the frogs in my throat at the bus stop. I downed it quickly, then noticed they sold Tylenol right there, so I bought a Tylenol and an Orange Crush to wash it down with. Soon we were off again, on the somewhat winding highway outside of Lloyd. I started to fall asleep but then my stomach started to rumble, and I started feeling nauseous. It occurred to me that I'd had 2 pints of coke, a root beer, a chocolate milk, an iced tea and an orange crush on a pretty much empty stomach in a pretty short time span. Every time the bus went left my stomach contents went right in a heavy sugary tide of carbonated artificial colorings. Left right, left right, bus slowing and accelerating to navigate the turns. Long story short I spent until Radisson in the bus toilet throwing up orange crush flavored puke. Been sleeping most of today. I'm never ever ever ever taking a bus again. The guy behind me had fetid breath, it was about 28 degrees on the bus and everyone had their shoes off so the air was feeted too. (Catch that 'feeted', 'fetid'). When the bus finally pulled into Saskatoon I decided to walk home. All day long I've had the smell of that guy's breath stuck in my olfactories. Disgusting. I just hope he had the smell of my pukey breath stuck in his nose all day. How can people not notice that their breath is so bad people several seats away from them can smell it?
Add a comment | 6 comments
Updated about 11 months ago
In perfect shape to travel.
Share
Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 11:24pm | Edit Note | Delete
I caught a pipe upside my head at work today and now I have a big nasty shiner (another first in at least 15 years). I remember when I was younger I used to feel like I looked pretty tough whenever I had a black eye. But this one is weird. It caught me right in the socket, so for the most part you can't see the bruise unless I close my eye. The rest of the time it looks like I'm wearing make up. I was asked if I was wearing mascara about half a dozen times today. Combine that with the hair I have from wearing a hard hat for 14 hours, and I look like a transvestite that just took off his wig and didn't quite get all his makeup off. My hope is that it keeps people away from me on the bus. My fear is that it will attract undesirables. Anyway, I"m on my way back home, between connections, no time to respond to threads at this juncture, but will tomorrow. Peace out yo!
Add a comment | 4 comments
Updated about 11 months ago
Nothing good can come from this.
Share
Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 6:16am | Edit Note | Delete
Because nothing good ever comes from any journey that involves a Greyhound. Greyhounds are the preferred method of travel for the lost, the doomed, the wild, the hunted and the haunted. Where do I fit in? Well for the next couple of days doomed I suppose, forsaken to work.
Half the people on my bus were drunk. Most of them were malodorous and unwashed. There was a feeling as we boarded much as one might expect from a group of new inmates being escorted to their cells. We knew that there was no hope. For the next 8 hours we were to be cooped up together in the most uncomfortable seats ever designed for travel (excluding of course the seating in an 89 Chevy Sprint or 84 Chevette).
This freaking station is worse than the bus was. It's like Mos Eisley spaceport. There's no more venomous hive of scum and villainy in the entire galaxy. I lived here for a few years and I never realized just how many junkies this city has. This is going to be a grrrrrrreat fucking day.
Add a comment | 6 comments
Updated about 11 months ago
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