July 8, 2010 I learned a lesson today: even those who seem to be well-adjusted, upstanding members of the business community can be complete psychopaths who will threaten you with bodily harm for the slightest perceived insult. Not everyone, it seems, is fully equipped to read and understand Standard Written English.
I’d say more, but I’m afraid of what might happen to me and my wife if I were to do so.
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May 3, 2010 I’m not the kind of person to ask for much from the poker community, but because of extraordinary circumstances here in Nashville I’m putting out this call for any assistance that any of you can offer. My city is drowning.
This past Saturday Nashville received 6.32 inches of rain, the third heaviest rainfall total in a single day since 1871. That caused the local streams and rivers to begin rising. Then on Sunday the city received another 7.25 inches of rain, the single largest rainfall in a single day since 1871. The Weather Channel says that the two-day total rainfall was equal to 28% of precipitation we usually get over the course of an entire year. The US Army Corps of Engineers is calling this a “once in 1,000 years event.”
LP Field across from downtown (Photo: Keith Gallagher)
The streams spilled over their banks and last night the Cumberland River, the heart of Music City, began to threaten downtown Nashville. More than 600 water rescues took place, but there were still a handful of people who died in the flood waters. Tens of thousands of people are still without communication to the outside world when phone cables and power lines went down and cell phone towers became overloaded. One of the city’s two wastewater treatment plants was submerged and went offline yesterday, and now the other treatment plant is being threatened as well; local and state officials are asking people to halve their water usage by only using water for drinking and food preparation. They fear a shortage of clean water by the end of the week if everyone doesn’t cooperate, and even with cooperation there’s still a chance that the entire 1.2-million-strong population of Metro Nashville could soon be drinking bottled water.
Second Avenue in downtown Nashville today (Photo: Keith Gallagher)
Overnight the rain stopped, but the water levels have continued to rise. The Cumberland River isn’t expect to crest until this evening, when it will hit 52.5 to 53 feet; flood stage is considered to be 41 feet. Thousands of people are already staying in shelters, and local charities are trying to provide food and water to thousands more. Even once the water is gone in a few weeks, there will be tens of thousands of people displaced. As you can see, we will be dealing with a very serious situation here in middle Tennessee for quite some time.
More flooding on the Nashville riverfront (Photo: Keith Gallagher)
Poker players are known for their generosity. If you can spare any sort of money at all to help, the people of Nashville and middle Tennessee would be grateful. Per my friends at Nashvillest, here are some charities that are accepting monetary donations:
Second Harvest Food Bank: Provide monetary donations to Second Harvest HERE. The Second Harvest offices are located in Metro Center and are currently inaccessible, so monetary donations are the best bet right now.
Salvation Army: Monetary donations are preferred and can be made online HERE or by phone at 1-800-SAL-ARMY.
The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee: In partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, donate online to the Metro Nashville Disaster Response Fund and/or the Tennessee Emergency Relief Fund HERE (checks can be mailed to P.O. Box 440225, Nashville, TN, 37244).
If you’re able to send anything, please leave a comment so the people here in Tennessee will know who cared enough to offer assistance. I’m looking into setting up a charity tournament somewhere online in the very near future; details will be available as soon as I have them.
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January 8, 2010 One of the best things about being a blogger, other enjoying than the daily acclaim of the masses and knowing for certain that you’ll go down in history as having made a deep and serious impact on humanity, is the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker. It’s been a fantastic event since they began it in 2005 and I’m looking forward to taking part again this year. I’ve come very close to prizes in the past and hopefully will have a shot at finally breaking through this year. Hopefully we’ll see each other at the tables!
I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers, you too can take part by registering on WBCOOP
Registration code: 056789
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October 21, 2009 Riggstad and I finished up our November Nine handicapping over at Full Tilt’s Poker From The Rail yesterday. Part Two of the series, which was published last week, took a look at Jeff Shulman, Joe Cada, and Kevin Schaffel. Part Three, published yesterday, dealt with the short stacks: Phil Ivey, Antoine Saout, and James Akenhead. Thanks again to the inimitable AlCantHang for inviting me to take part in the best writing assignment I’ve had this month.
Now for something completely different, those of you who have to play Tech Support Guy for every relative in your extended family will enjoy this from XKCD:
If you're not reading XKCD, you probably aren't laughing enough.
Posted in 2009 WSOP, Poker No Comments »
October 11, 2009 According to a new NHL Fans’ Association poll, it’s time for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to go. I suppose that this means I was ahead of the curve.
The NHL decided to lock its players out for the 2004-05 season about two months after my buddy Charlie Tuttle and I purchased season tickets. Needless to say, we were a little miffed. I eventually canceled my tickets and wrote a letter to Craig Leipold, the man who then owned the Predators (and who was also instrumental in getting the lockout going), telling him why I was no longer going to let him hang on to my money. I also called for the NHL to sack its commissioner, the aformentioned Gary Bettman, who was even then in the process of running the NHL so far into the ground that even Major League Soccer got more respect than the fastest game on earth.
A few weeks after Charlie died, the NHL and its players finally worked out an agreement to get back to the ice. Great timing, boys! I went to two games at the beginning of the 2005-06 season but it just wasn’t the same without Charlie there. I also hated the idea of giving any more of my money to two organizations run by men who preferred scorched-earth tactics to finding a workable solution. So, I stopped paying attention to hockey altogether. I’m pretty sure that’s not what Bettman’s league was looking for, but it’s what they got.
I’ve only watched a handful of games on television since that time, and I haven’t been to a single one in person. But if the NHL decides to sack Bettman, I promise here and now that I’ll buy a 10-game pack for the 2009-10 Predators season. I’d love to have a reason to catch live hockey again, NHL. Make it happen.
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October 8, 2009 My old friend AlCantHang was nice enough to invite me to a little WSOP November Nine handicapping on Full Tilt’s Poker From The Rail blog. That’s not the sort of opportunity that comes along very often, so of course I jumped on it. Joining me in assessing the chances of the nine guys who will be sitting under the bright lights in November is another poker friend, the one and only Riggstad.
We’ve divided the work up into three posts examining three players each, beginning with the biggest stacks and working our way down. Accordingly, the first post deals with Darvin Moon, Eric Buchman, and Steven Begleiter. Head on over to Poker From The Rail and check the first installment!
Posted in 2009 WSOP, Poker 2 Comments »
August 19, 2009 An internet friend today linked to a Talking Points Memo post featuring emails from people in Australia with their reaction to seeing American media coverage of the health care debate. “Everyone is puzzled by our retarded outrage,” my friend wrote.
The lunatic fringe has indeed been given the opportunity to show up in force at town hall meetings, those Clinton-era mutations of the New England tradition that are curiously unsuited to accomplishing anything of substance outside of their native environment. Fringers have taken that opportunity, like they always do, to jump and yell mind-bogglingly bizarre things – and, most importantly, to be caught on camera doing all those things so television can show them to us. We’re all rightfully shocked by the flat-out retarded things these people come up with. But the problem I see again and again is that these crazy folks are being made out in the media to be the *core* opposition to the Democratic government.
The same leftist punditocracy who blanched at Bush-era accusations of not supporting the troops or loving America’s enemies for opposing policies with which they disagreed are now all too willing to play the role of propagandists for a cause they believe in, leveling blanket accusations of racism or stupidity or just plain craziness at anyone who mistrusts either the government’s intentions or abilities on this issue. Painting all opponents of the Democratic health care reform plan with the crazy/stupid brush is the same sort of rhetorical tactic the Bush/Cheney administration and its cheerleaders used for eight years, with the only difference being that it relies on belittling others’ sanity and intelligence and political correctness instead of belittling their patriotism. Check out this post at Reason for a recent round-up of such rhetoric, which includes links to six previous round-ups of rhetoric.
I’m not a fan of the Democratic-controlled government’s proposal for a lot of reasons. My opposition is based partially on practical concerns (e.g. how on earth is a dead-broke government going to pay for this plan?) and partially based on principle (e.g. government reform is inherently less efficient and responsive than market reform). Because of that – or as some people seem to think these days, despite that – you won’t find me waving a gun at a town hall meeting or screaming “Heil Hitler” and sticking my tongue out at fellow town hall attendees or otherwise acting like a buffoon because I lie awake at night, drenched in sweat, intensely afraid that George Soros and his socialist minions will soon convene my death panel, ready to condemn me so they can take my wife away to their communal love farm and have their filthy, European ways with her.
Instead I’m doing a lot of reading and head-shaking – and basically staying silent on the sidelines. You see, my peer group is almost universally in favor of the government’s current idea of reform. We are all relatively young and middle- to lower-middle-class. We all also happen to think that the current system is a pretty shitty affair. But where they see a benevolent government that cares about them trying to step in and solve their problems, I see a small cadre of powerful people trying to quickly force their wishes on a population that clearly has some reservations about going along with the plan.
But I can’t really get that across to anyone who supports the government right now. The moment they find out that I’m not on their side, I get lumped in with screaming “birthers” and Sarah Palin and the entire right wing of the GOP that is so completely opposed to most of the things that are important to me. The current tenor of American political discourse doesn’t allow me to be a reasonable person who agrees with my friends on plenty of things but happens to disagree on this particular issue. Instead of being the principled opposition, instead of being a person who reads and analyzes and considers, instead of being a citizen who’s concerned about the future of his country, I’ll always be an outraged retard.
Posted in Not Poker, Uncategorized 8 Comments »
June 4, 2009 It’s been nearly four years since my good friend Charlie Tuttle died. Since he left us, it’s been impossible to miss that his presence is still here in the form of all the people he touched.
With that in mind, I’m putting together a gathering of all the people who loved Charlie at the site of his funeral outside Nashville on Sunday, June 21st – the day before the fourth anniversary of his death. We’re going to do potluck food, there’s a pool to swim in, and at sundown we’re going to launch another Viking ship with some messages for him.
If you’re interested in attending, log in to Facebook and look for my Charlie Tuttle Day event. If you can’t attend but would like to pass a message along to be read to his friends and family or to be put on the ship for the sundown ceremony, get in touch with me on Facebook or by email (jason -at- jasonkirk -dot- net).
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May 28, 2009 I won’t be in Vegas for this year’s WSOP – the first time since 2003 that I haven’t been around for at least part of it and the first time since 2005 that I won’t be working there. I do have a lot of friends on the ground in Vegas, though. I’ll be following their work on these websites:
Tao of Poker
Pokerati
PokerNews
PokerListings
There are also going to be a ton of people posting on Twitter. You’ll probably get a fair number of updates on the more interesting moments from the sites listed above, but if you want to get your news firsthand you should check out @FollowPoker on Twitter. Jay Newnum, another oldskool poker media man, put together this account that follows a very large number of poker people.
As a fan of poker, one of the disappointing things about working at the Series is that there’s very little time to actually play the game, so this year I’m going to take advantage of my considerably lightened schedule by getting some time in at the tables. Full Tilt Poker is running its Mini Series of Poker again this year, with buy-ins 1/100th of the corresponding WSOP event, and since that suits my meager bankroll well I’m going to play all of the PLO events as I can. I’m also planning to play the PLHA (pot limit hold’em/PLO mixed) event and probably a few hold’em events here and there. If I were to do well in one of the other events I might consider playing some of the other limit and mixed events, but for now I’m sticking with the games I know best.
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May 25, 2009 Happy Memorial Day to everyone out there. When you’ve got a spare moment today, check out this article about Rachel’s show with fellow APSU alum Brad Reagan in Clarksville, TN. It’s too bad the Leaf-Chronicle didn’t get to it earlier, since the show will be coming down at the end of the week, but if you’re in the area I suppose you’ll still have a chance to get up there and check out her work.
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May 23, 2009 Today is my last chance to run good – at least, to run good for a free $1,500 WSOP seat from PokerListings. The final installment of the Run Good Challenge WSOP Edition will play out in less than an hour at PokerStars. Twice as many seats are up for grabs as last week’s Run Good Challenge WSOP event, so all I have to do to have a reason to go to Vegas this summer is repeat my second-place finish from that tournament. Much easier said than done, of course, but I do have the benefit of knowing how most of my opponents play.
Come on out to PokerStars and rail some of poker’s oldest-skool bloggerati this afternoon (or morning for you West Coasters) at PokerStars. Go to Tourney -> Private and look for “PokerListings Run Good Challenge Event 3″ – and expect a bunch of heckling from this group of wiseasses if you ask for the password! :-)
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May 16, 2009 The lads at PokerListings.com have set up another Run Good Challenge, this time with a two-event schedule with WSOP goodness at the end of the rainbow. Today is the first event, with the winner walking away with a $1,500 WSOP seat and everyone else holding on to fond memories of chat box hijinks. Next week the top two will take down $1,500 WSOP seats.
Unfortunately I won’t be able to play in the second one, but I will be playing in the first one this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. CDT. If you’re feeling frisky, stop by PokerStars and rail me as I try to take down a who’s who of the poker blogging world en route to the WSOP. (Go to Tournaments -> Private and look for the Run Good Challenge.) You can get a preview of the event here.
UPDATE: Well, I definitely had a chance today. I entered heads-up play facing a pretty big chip disadvantage against Poker Grump, but managed to hang in there for a while. Then he flopped bottom two pair, I turned second pair with a gutshot draw, and the chips all went in. Any ace, king, queen or jack would’ve done the trick, but none of them came and Grump is going to the WSOP. GL to him! And thanks to my friends for the rail support. :-)
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March 5, 2009 The PLO cash games continue to go well for me. I’ve begun sticking to the full ring tables since that’s where I’ve enjoyed the most success, actually winning rather than just breaking even. The last two days have been my best back-to-back in two months of playing, taking 11 buy-ins off the tables thanks to players who continue to think that getting their money in as 4-to-1 dogs (or worse) is a winning strategy.
Of course, no matter how many times you get your money in way ahead of the mope chasing his fourth-nut-straight draw, there are always going to be times when those players get lucky. The good news for me is that I’m catching those unlucky breaks more in tournaments than cash games – good because a) I play them much more rarely than I do cash games, and b) they never cost me more than 2.5 cash game buy-ins. The last MTT I played, just this morning, saw me last all of seven hands, getting my entire stack in the middle as a 9-to-1 favorite with one card to come:
(If you’re wondering about my play here: in this spot on the first level of a low-buy-in, double-stacked tournament, I will limp in with this mostly one-dimensional hand the majority of the time, hoping to flop a set if the table plays as passively as I expect it will yet fully ready to toss my cards in the muck if I get raised.
When I flop the set on this draw-heavy board, I choose to bet instead of checking for several reasons: a) I do currently have the nuts, b) I’m guessing I’ll get a few callers and build the pot, c) I can’t count on the players behind me to do the betting for me and let me get in a check-raise, d) given the low skill level in these events, one of my opponents might be willing to lump it all-in right here and now with a bare flush or straight draw, and e) I still have outs to beat any straight or flush an all-in opponent might manage to hit on the turn.
I don’t think the 3h on the turn helps my opponents at all. If they’re chasing straight draws with a flush draw on the board, chances are it isn’t the complete sucker straight; I see T-8, 9-8, and 8-5 as the most likely straight draws these guys would be on. Besides, the turn card gave me the flush draw to go with my set, so I now have two ways to beat such an unlikely straight if indeed someone has made it. Again, I can’t count on the two players behind me to do the betting; also, betting anything less than the pot offers good enough odds for some of the possible combinations to call me profitably. So I bet pot, and lumping it all in the middle was the only real choice once Mr. Bottom-Set-and-Gutshot-Draw decided to get happy with two flush draws on the board.)
If that hand had come at a cash table at the wrong time (e.g. when my opponent and I are both particularly deep-stacked), it could’ve cost me more than the buy-in and a half that it did. Also, I busted on the seventh hand of the tournament, so I have the same result but more free time than if I’d made a run and then gotten unlucky later on. So, when looked at the right way, I guess I’m lucky to be unlucky – at least, to be unlucky in one particular situation instead of another. (A little perspective never hurt anyone.)
For a long time I shied away from PLO because I heard over and over that you have smaller edges in PLO than you do in NLHE. I wish I’d started playing earlier, because what I had heard all that time is a load of crap. The edges are, in fact, smaller preflop than they are in hold’em. But in PLO, you can’t get your stack in the middle before the flop without a lot of effort – the majority of the action comes after the flop. Once you get there, the expanded number of card combinations means that people’s tendency to chase draws only gets magnified; the difference is that most of those draws are mirages, because they’re not the nuts. If you give donkeys more chances to hit a draw that more often than not can’t win the pot, you’re going to make more money. If that’s not a beautiful game, I don’t know what is.
Posted in Poker 2 Comments »
March 2, 2009 When I want to play poker lately but don’t want to sit at the cash tables, I’ll pull up a pot limit Omaha sit and go. I like the Matrix tourneys on Full Tilt since I get to play four tables at once. I also enjoy the heads-up matches. At the lowest buy-ins, which is where I’m spending my time learning PLO, the players are about as poor as I’ve found at any level of any game online in the last five years; they’re exceedingly easy to read and willing to call off their stacks on second-best draws and the occasional lone pair.
My favorite game against these players is the four-player heads-up shootout, in which one player gets everyone else’s money for winning back to back matches. It’s a nice ROI for beating two single players, and given the skill level (slim to none) and temperament (raging infant) of the average opponent I figure my chances have to be pretty good. And it seems like they are – I’m showing a small profit on all my HU matches so far, and in more than a few of them where I’m not winning I’m getting my money in well ahead.
I played one this afternoon to kill some time while waiting to do an interview. In my first match it takes me all of about three hands to figure out that my opponent is the sort who won’t call a bet without something approaching the nuts. That’s bad news for him; I grind him down and finish him off to get to my second opponent. Within the same three-hand window I determine that this fellow is the exact opposite of the last guy: he’ll fire out pot every time it’s checked to him. The best way to play a guy like this is to let him do all the work, so I make that my game plan.
On the fourth hand of our match I limp on the button with Kc-Qc-9s-7c and flop queens full of sevens; he bets pot, and I take it down with a reraise. He pauses for a moment before folding. I’m pretty sure he thinks I was just making a play at him, but he happened to have complete air this time around and hadn’t seen me get aggressive yet.
Two hands later I limp on the button with Ad-Jd-8c-5c and call his raise, only to flop a full house again. It’s an underfull this time, eights full of jacks, so I’m more vulnerable than before. But when he bets pot again I have no good reason to think I’m behind, so I reraise pot myself. He thinks for a good bit and then makes the call. The turn completes a harmless straight draw, which I hope he’s been drawing at; he checks and I move all-in, since the pot is just a little greater than my stack.
dumbass, he types in the chat window, obviously convinced that I’ve decided to try to out-aggress him regardless of my cards since he thinks that’s what I did to him the first time around. And he keeps thinking. Normally I don’t say anything to my opponents other than the occasional nh, but this time I know I’m way ahead and I really want him to call. So I type, just fold.
It’s not three seconds before he calls with Qh-Qd-3d-3c for nothing more than a bare pair of queens, leaving himself only 80 of his 3,000 starting chips behind. Then he spikes another Q on the river for the bigger full house, quickly types frack you, and takes all the mobneys.
The good news:
Speaking of fun in chat boxes, I saw my favorite English-as-a-second-language online poker of the moment this afternoon when I sat at a full ring PLO game. A player from Indonesia was running over the table by raising pot preflop and then betting pot any time the action checked to him. Another player, this one American, didn’t seem to care for the Indonesian’s strategy and decided to play sheriff.
After doubling up once, the American got his whole stack in the middle on the flop in a later pot, putting his Indonesian friend to the test. The Indonesian’s response: type i suck you in the chat box and make the call with no pair and a backdoor flush draw. (He didn’t get there.) I think I know what he meant…and I’m pretty sure he’d have been surprised if the American had felt like taking him up on his offer.
Posted in Poker 2 Comments »
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