For my poker-starved readers

Here's some rare poker content.

I logged on to Absolute Poker in the wee hours of the morning to play my usual $5/10 6-max hold'em game. I was disappointed to see there were only 2 tables going on a Friday night, and that neither of them looked particularly easy. I was just about to head over to Party Poker, when I decided to check out the $10/20 action. I noticed a pair of 6-max games that looked pretty soft, so I decided to take a shot at that limit. I learned that I'm not ready to stomach the swings of this game on a regular basis, but I was able to book a nice win. Here were a few highlight hands, with very little commentary.

Hand 1: I think you're bullshit!

6 handed $10/20 hold'em.
4 folds to me in the small blind with 2♥2♣
I raise to $20 and the big blind calls.

flop ($40): 3♦ A♦ J♠

I bet $10, he raises to $20, I call.

turn ($80): A♠

I check, he bets $20, I call.

river ($120): 7♥

I check, he bets $20, I call.

He shows K♦8♦

I win $157.

Comments: Don't know my opponent, so I assume he plays like the generic 6-max player. I thought if he had an Ace, he'd have reraised preflop or waited til the turn to raise. And if he had a Jack or another pocket pair he'd have either raised preflop or just called all the way. So I figured a flush draw was his most likely hand.

Hand 2: Value bets or bluffs?

4 handed $10/20 hold'em.
1 fold, button raises to $20, small blind folds, I call in big blind with K♥9♥

flop ($45): 8♣ Q♣ 9♦

I bet $10, he raises to $20, I call.

turn ($85): 5♣

I bet $20, he raises to $40, I raise to $60, he calls.

river ($205): Q♦

I bet $20, he folds. I take down $203.

Comments: I suck at reading hands, so I just put lots of bets in and hope it works. This time it did. Opponent in this hand is very good, so I assumed he was capable of folding a decent made hand or semibluffing (betting/raising with a strong draw). My assumption must have been right, since he obviously he did one of those things.

Hand 3: Nice turn card.

6 handed $10/20 hold'em

UTG calls $10, next guy calls $10, fold, I raise to $20, small blind calls, big blind folds, 2 more callers. I have A♦J♦

flop ($90): 8♥ 7♠ 5♠

Small blind bets $10. 3 callers.

turn ($130): J♥

Small blind bets $20, big blind calls, next guy raises to $40, I raise to $60, small blind caps it to $80, big blind folds, 2 callers.

river ($390): 4♥

Small blind bets $20, 2 callers.

Small blind has J♠6♠ (an 8-high straight)
next guy has J♣9♠ (a pair of Jacks with 9-kicker)

Small blind wins $447

Comment: Small blind was the reason I was in this game. He saw the flop almost every hand, bet and raised often with no hand or on draws, and check/called with his strong hands. The guy with J9 was also loose and weird. My flop call I thought was a no-brainer, even without a backdoor flush draw. Given how bad both players are, I couldn't fold top pair top kicker on the turn, so I figured 3betting was the best play. It turned out I was a 52% favorite to win the hand, so my 3bet (and small blind's cap) was very profitable for me with 2 callers. Too bad I couldn't just claim 52% of the $390 that was in the pot before the river.

Go Terps

Well we looked like a 2nd rate team against Duke this week, and worse, now this crap.

FAQ

When you see FAQ, for example here, does the voice in your head spell it out like "eff-ay-kyoo" or pronounce it like the word "fax" or "fac" or something along those lines?

I'm seriously curious, please post a comment with your answer. If the voices in your head tell you other things, I'd like to hear about them as well.

0.9999... = 1

Pretty funny thread on 2+2. Somebody posted a poll: Does 0.999... = 1?

It is funny because 0.99999... (where "..." means infinite more 9s) is equal to 1. But several people vehemently disagree about this mathematical fact.

Some of my favorites:

A.

You can show (using calculus or other methods) that with a large
enough number of 9s in the expansion, you can get arbitrarily close to
1.

SO in Math it does = 1 , however in reality it doesn't but its accepted that it is. So is the accepted answer its 1 , then yes, is it really no.

B.

They are not equal except in practical terms. It is similar to the question if I travel half the distance to my destination, then half again, on adinfinitum, will I ever reach my destination - no.

C.

I doesn't matter how many 9's there are in the .99999. The number you end up with is still some tiny tiny amount less than 1. That should be obvious but sadly looking at the results of the poll it isn't.

The guy in quote A is willing to draw a line between "math" and "reality." In other words "I don't care what all the experts who understand this issue say, my ignorant opinion is going to govern my reality."

The guy in quote B might have just proved to himself that he can never actually reach any destination.

The guy in quote C is so confident that his wrong answer is right that he actually looks down on people that understand the right answer to the question.

People's confusion on this matter stems from a flawed understanding of the decimal system, difficulty with the concept of infinity and poor math education. They cling to their sense of intuition which is good for concepts like 1, 2, or 10, but is woefully lacking when dealing with complex concepts like infinity. They even dismiss examples that appeal to intuition, like 1/3 = 0.333..., so 3/3 = 0.9999... = 1. Each intuitive step leads to an counterintuitive conclusion, so they ignore it.

Sometimes when people disagree, there is no right answer. Sometimes there is. Flawed reasoning is everywhere because proper reasoning isn't as easy as it seems. Sometimes sound reasoning results in a startling conclusion that defies intuition or conventional wisdom.

When your stance is different than a consensus of experts, maybe you ought to take another look at your stance. We'd all be better off if we were more open to the possibility that we're wrong.

another TV show, too new to include on the list

Small victories

I have trouble playing longer than an hour, too often let myself get frustrated, and tend to quit when I'm emotional. I just overcame all of that, and karma rewarded me with a nice come-from-behind win. My name is Earl.

After about 50 minutes I was down 30BBs, frustrated at a string of bad beats, and nearly convinced myself to quit. But I realized that the people I was playing against were total morons and figured I should stick around a bit longer. After another half hour I had recovered all of my losses and more.

I shouldn't be having these kinds of problems. Usually I don't, but Party 6max games have a mysterious power over me. Plus I'm riding a 150BB downswing at Absolute $5/10, so maybe I'm on edge more than normal. Or I just suck.

Also, I slept from midnight to 4pm last night. It was great.

Good time to try UB

UB is running a 100% signup bonus promotion.

Top Movie Characters

Some favorite performances:





Top 11

11.
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.

3.
2.
1.

Well the joyride at Absolute $5/10 is slowing down, thanks to a 2 day streak of devastating 2nd best hands. 100BB downswings are no fun.

I got a call about a job opening this week. I said I wasn't interested, but its nice that people I used to work with recommended me. If I go broke hopefully they'll hook me up.

How to pay less for your Comcast

Recent words of support reminded me that I meant to add this information to the Businesses that I hate.


When I called to cancel my Comcast account, they asked for a reason. I told them bad customer service. Then said they'd hate to lose my business, would I be willing to stay if they reduced their monthly fee?

I urge everyone to quit giving Comcast your money. But if you stick with them, at least call up and bluff that you're leaving, and they'll almost certainly give you a discount. The worst that can happen is they don't offer you a discount, and then you can say you changed your mind about switching to DirecTV.

Use the extra money I helped you save to fund an account at one of the poker sites I advertise.

Or use it to buy tickets on Fandango. Fucker.

followup

If you object to what Bush did because you believe strongly in checks and balances, and think the harm of his actions in those political terms outweighs their good in national security, that is a good basis for an argument. But there's way too much bullshit out there because everyone has their own little agendas.

Paul's latest.

Basically says that he used to do illegal stuff that he doesn't think should be illegal, so he objects to domestic spying because it might lead to more people like him getting busted. I assume his past crimes were drug related. It comes across like he has more interest in protecting people's secret illegal drug habits than increasing our ability to thwart terrorists.

And here I was concerned that too many people are raising hell about the wiretaps just because they don't like Bush.

To be fair, the reason he cites for his objection is the reasonable idea that if you give someone a power with the understanding they'll use it for good, eventually they'll use it for bad. He brings up the drug issue as the reason why he cares so much - the drugs so near and dear to him are the obvious next target for domestic spying.

I'm open to discussion about legalizing drugs. But given that they're illegal now, I guess those of us with nothing to hide should be put at greater risk so Paul can keep smoking up without fear of big brother.

War, terrorists, Paulp

I decided to chime on on paulp's blog. Some people made the point I was going for a lot better than I did. But I did like my analogy. The entire thread.

His post and some responses:

the unanswerable question

Excerpt from Live and Let Spy

Which brings me to this week's scandal about No Such Agency spying on "Americans." I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9/11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.

With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war. (Perhaps it's because of the media blackout on images of the 9/11 attack. We're not allowed to see those because seeing planes plowing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon might make us feel angry and jingoistic.)

Among the things that war entails are: killing people (sometimes innocent), destroying buildings (sometimes innocent) and spying on people (sometimes innocent).

That is why war is a bad thing. But once a war starts, it is going to be finished one way or another, and I have a preference for it coming out one way rather than the other.

In previous wars, the country has done far worse than monitor telephone calls placed to jihad headquarters. FDR rounded up Japanese — many of them loyal American citizens — and threw them in internment camps.

So "we are at war." The war to which she refers is not the war in iraq, it is the "war on terrorism." We are at war with terrorists, and apparently all manner of once unacceptable measures are necessary to win this war.

My question is this: how will we know when this war is over? This question cannot be answered with any kind of generalities. I want to hear an extremely specific list of criteria for when this war will be over and I can go back to complaining about the government spying on US citizens without any oversight without my being considered a terrorist sympathizer for so doing. If these measures are temporary, if we are making allowances so as to win a struggle that has an end to it, if we are only taking the low road long enough to get back on the high road: well, such claims cannot honestly be made unless the end of the war is well-defined with testable criteria.

So does anyone know how we will know when the war on terrorism is over? I am also curious about the war on poverty and the war on christmas. Oddly the war on drugs could be won in a single day with the stroke of a pen, but it is a mighty heavy pen.

Of course, this is assuming I'm talking to people from the world of the normal. In the Democrats' world, there are two more options. Violate no one's civil liberties and get used to a lot more 9/11s, or the modified third option, preferred by Sen. John D. Rockefeller: Let the president do all the work and take all the heat for preventing another terrorist attack while you place a letter expressing your objections in a file cabinet as a small parchment tribute to your exquisite conscience.

"If you're not with us you're against us."

From: adspar Date: January 3rd, 2006 - 08:26 pm
	(Permanent Link)

Remember that scene in The Last of the Mohicans where Magua turns on the British troops while he's escorting them through the woods? A bunch of Native Americans jump out from behind the trees to ambush the British, and the British soldiers respond by lining up in their rows and firing on command.

Of course, while we're watching that we can see how ridiculous it is that they'd think that was the best response to the attack. Yeah, group all of you together in your bright red coats so they can aim at you easier. Then fire all at once on command so they'll know exactly when to duck for cover. It was painfully obvious that the British military was built for a different kind of fight.

Is it appropriate to spy on American citizens? Should our military torture people? Does this war have an end? Should we even be calling it a war?

Those are all important questions, and people seem to answer based on their party affiliations. But we don't have real answers to them yet because we've never dealt with anything like 9/11 before.

War was always against a well-defined enemy who lived in a specific geographic area and wore the same colors. Most Americans understood that there was a general code of what was acceptable in war. Just like the British had a different code of conduct for war. But that code was made for a different era, and while we debate the details we're risking lives.

9/11 was an unprecedented attack that revealed a different kind of enemy who fight by different rules. I don't know what the right response is. But I don't fault our leadership for taking unprecedented action in response to an unprecedented threat, even if some of it offends people. Hopefully as we continue to deal with this, we'll come to a better understanding and start to figure out some good answers to those questions. Ideally we'll be able to maintain all the liberties we've valued. But maybe some of those liberties are bright red coats that make us easier to hit, and we'll have to switch to camouflage.

(Reply)(Thread)

From: mosch2000 Date: January 3rd, 2006 - 08:54 pm I do not think that word means what you think it means... (Permanent Link)

9/11 was an unprecedented attack that revealed a different kind of enemy who fight by different rules.

9/11 wasn't even remotely unprecedented. Asymmetric warfare has existed for an extraordinarily long time, and is a common tactic when your enemy has greater military might.

This idea that 9/11 is vastly different than Oklahoma City, the Second Boer War, the Revolutionary War, or Hannibal's attacks on Rome is flawed at best. In every one of these cases a weaker force used unconventional tactics to gain an advantage that was considered "unfair" by the stronger force.

(Reply)(Parent) (Thread)

From: adspar Date: January 3rd, 2006 - 09:43 pm Re: I do not think that word means what you think it means... (Permanent Link)

You are right.

But I'm sure you know that I mean the attack resulted in an unprecedented loss of life on American soil. Even if "unprecedented" is somehow the wrong word in that context, the point is that we hadn't seen anything like that, and many of us probably believed nothing like it would happen here.

And I agree that we should look to history, hence my goofy analogy.

(Reply)(Parent) (Thread)

From: mosch2000 Date: January 3rd, 2006 - 10:19 pm Re: I do not think that word means what you think it means... (Permanent Link)

I can think of numerous battles, fought on American soil, which resulted in more death than 9/11. The World Wars mostly resulted in the death of Americans overseas, but I fail to see that as being significantly different either.

9/11 was dramatic and tragic, but even if it happened every year, you'd be more likely to die of:
influenza, cancer, heart disease, drowning, gravity (falling down), car accidents, poisoning, smoke inhalation, diabetes and a host of other "dangers" that we all willingly face every day.

The idea that this one relatively minor risk is somehow special, just because some crazy people did it on purpose is flawed. The idea that our best possible use of resources is to spend a few hundred billion dollars killing people in a faraway land is even more absurd.

(Reply)(Parent) (Thread)

From: adspar Date: January 3rd, 2006 - 11:11 pm Re: I do not think that word means what you think it means... (Permanent Link)

"I can think of numerous battles, fought on American soil, which resulted in more death than 9/11."

Are there any that people alive now have seen? If there are, we've certainly forgotten them. Has any battle resulted in more loss of civilian life? I'm genuinely curious. I think I know the answer, but I'm far from certain.

"The idea that this one relatively minor risk is somehow special, just because some crazy people did it on purpose is flawed."

I disagree.

The 9/11 attack revealed in horrible fashion that there are crazy people out there who want to come to where we work and live and kill us. This IS a special case compared to your list of various natural and lifestyle-related killers. Car accidents don't hate us and want to kill us. We choose to get in cars, accepting the risks. We don't have to choose to let people keep attacking us, we can fight back. And they WILL keep attacking us if we don't stop them.

You compared the terrorist attacks to several historical wars that you sound like you know far more about than I do. I agree with those comparisons - we need to think of this as a war. The goal of war is destroying the enemy, and that is what the terrorists want to do - destroy us.

The reason I responded in the first place is beacause often people that ask the kinds of questions Paul asked ("when is the war over?") do so because they don't think this is a war. I don't know if that was Paul's point or not, but Paul's question does point out that if this is a war, it is a different kind of military war than we are used to, in that it is open-ended.

9/11 showed that they are more of a threat than we ever gave them credit for before it happened. And 9/11 showed some of us that terrorism isn't the "relatively minor risk" that you think it is. No, it didn't kill more people than cancer, but if they got some nukes or dirty bombs they could.

You are right that you can analyze this war in terms of optimal allocation of resources. If our equations are wrong and we're wrong to be at war, we lose hundreds of billions dollars and the lives of soldiers who chose to fight for their country. If we were wrong to avoid this war, we could lose millions of civilians in a WMD attack (and the resulting economic damage would be more worse than the war costs). I prefer the former gamble to the latter.

And by the way, I agree the way we overlook some of the other risks you mentioned is irresponsible. But just because someone smokes a cigarette while expressing concern about terror doesn't mean their terror concerns aren't valid. It means they'd rather die of lung cancer in 30 years than in a blown up building next week, and the weight of the probabilities doesn't compensate for the severity of the preference.

Anyway, I don't often tentacle on Paul's blog but I love reading it. I felt strongly enough about this one to respond, but I've chosen to quickly throw stuff together rather than taking the time and effort to present a tighter argument. But thanks for exchanging your thoughts with me.

To summarize the points I wanted to make:

1. A large-scale attack against civilians on American soil is enough for me to consider this a war.
2. Wars are drastic and ugly and expensive, but sometimes necessary. Whether any one is necessary can be debated, but debating in the middle of it can be dangerous.
3. This is a different kind of war than America is used to fighting, and that should force us to reconsider some things that we've always taken for granted (just like in many of the wars you mentioned, the stronger force should have/did reconsider things in the face of asymmetrical attacks.) Debating things like if we should be spying on citizens in the future is something we should do, but looking back on what has already happened we should give the President the benefit of the doubt because he was faced with a drastic situation that called for drastic action.
4. Debating these matters gets really tricky if we take sides based on the political game, something both sides do way too often.

Books

I've read the following books and recommend them.

Non-fiction:

Understanding People

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond

How the Mind Works
by Steven Pinker

The Language Instinct
by Steven Pinker

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
by Steven Pinker

The Moral Animal
by Robert Wright

Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny
by Robert Wright

The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins

The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
by Spencer Wells

Freakonomics
by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

The Number
by Alex Berenson

Liar's Poker
by Michael Lewis

How to Win Friends & Influence People
by Dale Carnegie


Understanding the Universe

A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking

The Universe in a Nutshell
by Stephen Hawking

The Elegant Universe
by Brian Greene


Understanding Poker

The Theory of Poker
by David Sklansky

Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players
by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth

Small Stakes Hold'em
by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth


Fiction:

Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand

The Lord of the Rings
by J.R.R. Tolkien

Popular Modern Authors I've enjoyed

Clive Cussler
Michael Crichton
John Grisham

Guns, Germs, and Steel

I finally finished reading Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel. I highly recommend this book.

It had the paradoxical properties of being difficult to read yet impossible to put down, because Diamond uses many detailed and dry examples to paint a fascinating picture. Basically it took me a few months to read it in 30 minute increments, compared to the "average book" that might take me a couple weeks to read in 90 minute blocks.


From the Wikipedia summary:

According to the author, an alternative title would be: "A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years". But the book is not merely an account of the past; it attempts to explain why Eurasian civilization, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops.

Cuban is the man

Great investment advice from Mark Cuban:

So here is my investment advice for anyone who doesn’t have enough saved to walk away from their job and retire…

1. If interest rates stay where they are or go higher, look at 5 year or shorter maturity vehicles. It doesnt matter if its a bank CD, a money market fund, a tax free fund, treasuries or combinations there of. Bottom line is this, 4plus percent taxed, or up to 6 plus percent tax free equivalent (depending on your tax bracket), is not a bad way to go. If rates go down, do the same thing, evenif you earn a lower rate. At the end of the year, you are guaranteed to have more than you started with.

2. Evaluate your lifestyle. People forget that sometimes the best investment they can make is in wisely buying things they know they will use. If you track what you use and consume, whether its gas vs bus fare, buying bulk quantities or other discretionary spending, you can save more and earn a far greater return than you could in the stock market. If you can save 10pct per month on a hundred dollar per month budget, thats 120 bucks you can put in the bank. Thats the equivalent of earning 12 pct on a 1k dollar investment. If you can cut 100 bucks per month off 1k dollar monthly budget, thats like earning 12 pct on 10k dollars. Thats pretty darn good. Spend smart, put your savings in risk averse, interest earning offerings.

3. Invest in yourself. Do the things that can get you closer to your goals and dreams. It wont come from a brokerage commercial. It will come from preparing yourself , working hard and standing apart from your competition. You Inc is the best stock you can ever buy…if you are willing to do the work.

I'd rather get lucky than work hard, because I'm lazy. That's a nice fantasy but a really stupid plan. Mark's advice, in the form of a blog entry that took him less than an hour to throw together, is better than any of the bullshit I learned about investing in college. It is pretty cool that a self-made billionaire regularly blogs his thoughts on this kind of thing.

Taxes

I just spent some time starting to organize my poker records for tax purposes. Good times.

Belief in God is comfortable - why take that away?

I recently indicated here that I do not believe in (anything remotely resembling the biblical idea of ) God or any religion. Furthermore, I believe that organized religion is dangerous and intellectually irresponsible, because it encourages irrational belief and behavior. Because of that, I am often tempted to try to convert people from their religious beliefs. But attacking ideas that give people comfort can feel pretty bad. So should I try?

From the Atheist Manifesto:

It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, "“This belief gives my life meaning,"” or "“My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,"” or "I wouldn't want to live in a universe where there wasn't a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator."” Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot.


So the point is that irrational beliefs can make people look like an idiot. If I care about you, I'll probably try to talk you out of things that make you look bad. (Note the fine distinction that in the quote the "madman or idiot" is someone who puts forth comfort as a reasonable basis for belief, not someone who believes in God.)

Reason #1 to try to talk someone out of something in spite of the discomfort it might cause:
You care about them and believe that your suggestion will help them.

The excerpt below from an interview with Richard Dawkins makes a great point about when an anti-religion argument is and isn't appropriate, in regards to the comfort factor.

You've criticized the idea of the afterlife. What do you see as the problem with a terminally ill cancer patient believing in an afterlife?

Oh, no problem at all. I would never wish to disabuse or disillusion somebody who believed that. I care about what'’s true for myself, but I don'’t want to go around telling people who are afraid of dying that their hopes are unreal.

If I could have a word with a would-be suicide bomber or plane hijacker who thinks he'’s going to paradise, I would like to disabuse him. I wouldn'’t say to him, "Don't you see what you're doing is wrong?" I would say, "Don'’t imagine for one second you'’re going to paradise. You'’re not. You'’re going to rot in the ground."

Yeah, I'd rather see the dying person take comfort in something real - fond memories, hope for a bright future for loved ones, an end to the pain. But I wouldn't want to try to take away a misplaced source of comfort because nobody gains from it, and the patient loses. When I would want to make the argument is when someone still will do things that matter to other people.

Reason #2 to try to talk someone out of something in spite of the discomfort it might cause:
If successful, your persuasion of that person will have a positive effect on the lives of other people that is more significant than the negative effect on the person.

Obviously reasons 1 and 2 are both subjective, and it can get pretty nasty when you start telling other people what is best for them. Whether it is worth it depends on your judgement of how strong the positives and negatives are.

Aside from death-bed cases, the negatives shouldn't be very severe if you talk to someone with an open mind. Alas, almost everyone thinks they have an open mind, but many do not, since anyone who isn't open to the falsification of their beliefs is therefore close-minded. They tend to call such close-mindedness "faith" and take pride in it as a virtue.

Pokertracker slice

December
30,000 hands played. Averaged 3.82 tables at a time. Won 1BB/100 hands. Postflop aggression factor 2.15.

November
35,000 hands, 4.11 tables, 1BB/100, AF 2.09

October
16,000 hands, 2.01 tables , -0.3BB/100, AF 1.8

September
17,000 hands, 2.34 tables, -0.4BB/100, AF 1.8

Drinks with Megan

I met up with Megan for drinks last evening. She promised to be on best behavior after what happened last time we held a public rendez-vous. I figured she was lying, but agreed to the meeting anyway. I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for her.

Megan certainly does not have a soft spot for me, because her heart is made of the blackest obsidian. Volcanic glass is hard all over, bitch.

I got there 15 minutes early and saw that Megan was already there. She took a booth near the window so she could see everyone who drove up to the bar. She wanted to see if I had been tailed. Megan stood up to embrace me, and I noticed she hadn't touched her beer.

"You look good," she said.

Then she punched me square in the face. As I tasted the blood dripping into my mouth, I muttered to myself, "I knew she was lying."



---
Hours after that beating, I realized I was lucky.

The cut on my nose will heal; the black eye will fade; the my swollen testicles will eventually return to their regular size. Even my wounded pride wasn't a permanent condition. Not many, few immortals even, walk away from such an encounter with Megan. I danced with the devil and lived to tell the tale.

See, I knew it wasn't personal. It was just business and that's why I didn't attempt to flee (fighting back was never an option). Take it like a man.

She knew that I knew, and appreciated it, which is why she bought me a beer afterwards.

And I knew that she knew that I knew, which is why I stayed and enjoyed a few more rounds with her.

And I think she knew that I knew that she knew that I knew, which may have been why she offered me a ride home but then dropped me off at a highway rest stop 45 minutes from where I live. Actually that was probably because she was drunk.

Atheism

Sometimes I end up in the uncomfortable position of discussing my views about religion with a devout believer. Often those conversations have involved the believer labeling me an atheist, which always made me cringe. After reading An Atheist Manifesto by Sam Harris, I must begrudgingly accept the label. He has articulated my thoughts on so many matters so much better than I can (his quotes in italics below).

I've never wanted the atheist label, because it shouldn't even need a label:

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

Continuing that thought, revealing one's self as an atheist alienates you from everyone else:

As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world's suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion--to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources--is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

But not only am I out of touch, not only do I reject organized religion and belief in a magical God, but I believe that widespread acceptance of religion is wildly irresponsible. How dare I?

The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion. Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.

You don't believe in God, you atheist heathen!!

Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One's convictions should be proportional to one's evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn'’t--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to make them his own.

Inevitably the discussion involves something to the effect of "sometime you have to believe without evidence. That's why it is called faith."

The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke 'faith.'” Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs (e.g. '“the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy,'” '“I saw the face of Jesus in a window,'” '“We prayed, and our daughter'’s cancer went into remission'). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable.

The conversation usually ends with "well if that's how you feel, there's nothing else I can say." And then they hope that some day I'll see the light. Or else I'll burn in hell.

Religious faith is a conversation-stopper. Religion is only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, and--all too often--what they will kill for. This is a problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple choice between conversation and violence. Only a fundamental willingness to be reasonable--to have our beliefs about the world revised by new evidence and new arguments--can guarantee that we will keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing. While there is no guarantee that rational people will always agree, the irrational are certain to be divided by their dogmas.

It is sad to me that expressing my thoughts on this matter is sure to upset people that are dear to me, especially in my Catholic family. I hope that someday they'll see the light.

thank me later

If you know anything about poker and don't have an account at Absolute, read this hand and then go sign up immediately. When you make your first deposit, use code AP200 and get a 200% bonus. Proceed to enjoy playing against these kind of opponents:


4 handed $5/10 hold'em

preflop

utg calls $5
adspar raises to $10 with K♦K♥
sb calls $7
bb raises to $15
utg calls $10
adspar caps $20
everyone calls.

flop - 16 small bets in pot

2♣ A♣ 4♦

sb checks
bb checks
utg checks
adspar bets $5
everyone folds

WHY POKER GODS WHY

I had been overdue for a post where I tell another horror story about Party 6max games. So here's another one.

I've been crushing the $5/10 games on Absolute the last few weeks, playing mostly shorthanded and feeling very comfortable. In my previous forays into shorthanded play online I was always confused and disoriented but this time I've been seeing everything pretty clearly. Maybe the sheer volume of hands I'd been playing of low limit fullhanded has knocked some sense into me and given me more feel for the game that I was finally able to translate to shorthanded.

So this evening I decided to spend an hour 4-tabling Party's $3/6 6max game to see if my success at Absolute translated to Party. It didn't. I lost 70 big bets in under an hour.

I'm so completely baffled. There seems to be a heavy consensus that Party's games are the softest around and that Absolute is a bit tougher. So why the hell can I not for the life of me figure out what I'm doing on Party?

I know it could be all just luck. I've run very hot on Absolute and I've taken some pretty devastatingly bad beats on Party. But if it is possible to set results aside and give an unbiased assessment, I feel like the Absolute games are very easy, and I feel completely lost in the shorthanded Party games.

I keep saying that sooner or later I'm going to need to be able to beat Party's shorthanded games. I really thought that I was finally there. And a single terrible session isn't enough to rule me out, but I'm pretty frustrated. Maybe I shouldn't have jumped into 4 tabling. I don't know. I suck at the pokers.

more King Kong

I don't have the motivation. Last night I was working on elaborate conspiracy theories to explain this, but now I just don't care.

The bottom line is that at no point in the movie did I care what happened to any of the characters. They took a full 90 minutes before any action happened, and I have no idea why they even bothered with more than 5 minutes of intro. I assume they were trying to develop the characters, but none of it worked for me at all. In fact, as all the characters were introduced, I felt confused because it was like they didn't even try to make them real. They were like stupid cartoons that you couldn't relate to at all, which can work in a pure comedy or a pure action movie, but King Kong wasn't trying to be either of those. Ugh.

Naomi Watts starts out boring and is only interesting because she's pretty. Adrian Brody starts out boring and stays boring. Not surprisingly, I didn't have any interest in the boring love story between Adriann Brody and Naomi Watts. It seemed like they were trying to set up all kinds of stuff with the crew of the ship, but none of it ever went anywhere. The only characters I found remotely interesting were Tom Hanks' son (that character goes nowhere, but I just liked his acting) and the goofy guy who played the male lead of the film Jack Black was making.

This brings me to Jack Black. I love Jack Black, and I think he can be a great actor went he wants to be. I think he took this part and did everything with it that they wanted him to do. But he was terrible for this part. To explain why, I need to reference another movie - Wedding Crashers. Christopher Walken was horribly miss-cast (sp?) as the powerful politician father. If you are going to cast Walken in a comedy, you have to take advantage of everything Walken brings to the table. He can be brilliantly intense or totally hilarious and goofy, but the role asked him to be just this bland straight-man. Why use Walken for that? It doesn't make sense. Walken didn't do anything wrong with the role, he just wasn't right for the part.

Same thing with JB in Kong. The role called for a mildly goofy and amusing dude who puts his own obsession with making his movie above everything else. In the scenes of Kong where Black was supposed to be amusing, you could tell he was holding back. His character was always somewhat comedic, but when he was supposed to be serious, I felt painfully aware that I was looking at a brilliantly funny guy trying to play a mildly funny guy acting serious at the moment. It was just awkward and painful to watch.

The action scenes on the island were very very cool, and the CGI was excellent. I have no problem with suspending disbelief and overlooking the many things that didn't make any sense and just enjoy the show. King Kong fighting the T-Rexi was awesome. Basically there were 30 minutes of the 3 hour movie that I found entertaining.

I'm trying to figure out why people are saying such good things about this movie. I think that film geeks liked it because it is a remake of a very old movie that everyone has heard of but only film geeks have ever seen. So that's 1 point in their book. Plus the plot of the movie I assumed to be a big spoof of the movie industry, so I'm sure the critics love that.

I think Peter Jackson is a good director, so I'm going to acknowledge the possibility that this could even have been a good movie in the sense that Heart of Darkness was a good book - respect the art, but god it is boring. Maybe the first 90 minutes were spent painting a picture and establishing allegories that I didn't care enough to notice. Maybe they delivered some poignant message in the last hour that I totally missed because I was too busy wondering why anyone would possibly care about a huge monkey being in love with a blonde.

But how could anybody care about anything that happened? It baffles me. I must have asked myself a dozen times while watching it, "what is the point of this movie?" It isn't a cool story (giant ape falls in love with woman, shows her the sunrise, and fucks shit up??); it isn't an action movie because they spent way too much time on other stuff; in spite of a few funny moments it isn't a comedy. It is just a boring festival of crap.


This is a terrible blog entry. Sorry.

I hated King Kong, more to come

I saw King Kong tonight and I hated it. I've been trying to write about the movie, but I'm struggling to express myself.

I started out writing a story about a lovable jackass (me) that hated a movie, but as I was writing what amounted to a stream-of-consciousness rant I started to stumble onto some pretty good points. Then I started trying to put those points together into an actual reasonably thought-out review.

That left the whole blog entry a mess because in trying to pull off both the entertaining story and the intellectual critique, I failed miserably at both. The challenge is that in order to adequately explain why I hated a movie that got such great reviews, I have to codify what I want to get out of a movie, a task which is actually very intellectually challenging. And its even harder to write about that in a way that would be interesting to anyone but myself.

So for now I'm giving up, but I'll try again tomorrow.

Gifts: bah-hum-bug

Sooner or later I'm going to run out of new thoughts to write about, at which point I'll just start repeating myself. I don't think I've written about my theory of gifts, but I've definitely ranted about it to several people.

My theory of gift exchange is that it is largely a huge waste.

Assume that over your lifetime you'll give and receive roughly equal value in gifts. So you give $1,000 worth of gifts and receive an equal amount. For now consider only the traditional gift exchange occasions - birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, etc, and only gifts exchanged between "equals" (as opposed to gifts where the older generation takes care of the kids).

So we're all just passing around $1,000 but we rarely get to choose exactly what we receive for that money. Who knows better than you what you want for your $1,000? Nobody. But you don't get to choose it. In fact, people love nothing better than keeping your gift a surprise and not directly asking you what you want. So you usually get a decent gift, but maybe it is only 70% as satisfying as the way you would have spent the $1,000. So basically we've all wasted $300 worth of value because of this goofy gift-giving tradition.

Some of us are starting to get the idea and are willing to ask people what they want. This is progress. Hopefully someday we'll all just cancel gift exchanges and just go buy stuff for ourselves. Actually we could order everything online so we never even have to leave the house or talk to anyone ever again. That would be awesome.

Anyway the main exception to this are gifts given in commemoration of some kind of service - like giving a dinner host a bottle of wine. I approve of these kinds of gifts. So continue giving them, secure in the knowledge that you have adspar's full endorsement.


SPECIAL NOTE - This doesn't apply to you specifically. I love every gift you've given me. And I love buying gifts for you. It makes me happy to think how much you will love this _____ I got you. Every time you use ______ you'll think of me. This really solidifies our relationship.

Wherever I May Roam

...And my ties are severed clean
The less I have the more I gain
Off the beaten path I reign

But I'll take my time anywhere
I'm free to speak my mind anywhere
And I'll never mind anywhere

I've called 6 different places my home since 2001. Lately I'm thinking about selling this house and moving again. All 6 of those places have been in Maryland, so maybe it would be good for me to try a new state. I'm restless. Is it possible that I just can't be in one place for too long? Perhaps I'm just a rover.

Nomad Wanderer
Vagabond
Call me what you will

Or maybe I'm sick of this house because I never leave it. Maybe I'm restless because I still don't know what I want to do with my life. I like my poker life better than I liked the office drone life, but I still think poker is a better hobby than career. I just don't know of anything that I could do for a living that I'd like more.

I suppose I should try to figure something else out. Or I could just keep roaming.

-Metallica.

Injury, Loss, and Scars

Reflections a year after losing Melanie.



When you break a bone a few different processes are set in motion:

Pain

You feel immediate severe pain. This severe pain lasts minutes, hours, or days depending on the severity of the injury. After a while it rolls into more of a dull aching pain, which gradually subsides. Eventually the pain decreases until it is gone.

Healing

I haven't taken any biology classes since my sophomore year of high school, but there is a pretty well understood physiological process by which your body heals a broken bone. It can take weeks or months, but eventually with good rehab, your broken bone can be as strong as ever, although usually an expert could detect evidence of a healed fracture on an x-ray.

Learning

You learn to avoid situations that are likely to lead to similar injury. You also learn how to cope with pain, and how your body's healing process feels. Veteran professional athletes have often learned enough to be masters of their own body - knowing where their limits are, how to avoid dangerous situations, when they can play through pain and when they need to sit out.



I think grief is a lot like physical injury. Sometime in this year since Melanie died, the pain went away. And just like the finger I broke in April doesn't hurt any more, every once in a while something happens that makes me remember that pain. Sometimes I can even feel it, just for a second.

What is tricky about psychological injury is that the healing and learning blur together. Healing from loss is going on with your life, and being able to be productive and happy. That can be really hard for some people. You have to learn how to put aside your pain when you can, and take time out to deal with the pain when you need to - basically you have to learn how to heal yourself.

If someone asked me how I was feeling about the loss, I'd think about it and say that while the pain is mostly gone, I feel pretty much the same as I did that day. I don't think there's really any way to fully wrap your mind around the devastating completeness of death, which I realized painfully a year ago and I realize it peacefully now.

But learning from previous experiences with loss helped me heal quickly. My philosophy of life - part of which could be crudely expressed as "enjoy what you have and don't take anything for granted" - made it pretty easy for me to be happy and productive.

I got to spend a couple years working with a great girl, and I enjoyed it. Melanie got to live 25 years and I know she loved her life, because I saw it on her face every day. So I was able to get past feeling sorry for her, and I got past feeling sorry for myself. I probably haven't been very good about helping others deal with it, but I hope that by writing about it, maybe that will be of comfort to someone.

We're all born with the certainty of dying. All of us. I guess you could take that and see all life as tragic since it leads to death, but I just can't see it that way. I'd rather enjoy what I get.

There's a quote from Fight Club that was something like "you don't want to die without any scars do you?" Well, I have a nasty scar on my palm from tearing it open climbing a fence. I have a scar on my forehead from the chicken pox, and a scar under my eye from a car accident. I probably have one of those x-ray scars on my pinky from a basketball collision, and I have a scar from losing Melanie.

I'm glad I have scars.

Why would I hunt penguins?

Don't think that I'm out somewhere hunting penguins cause that's not where I am.

What a waste of time that would be. You got these small little dinosaurs running around and then they learn to fly and over time they evolve into birds with feathers and it is sweet. But then they decide to move to the frozen south pole and stop flying and eat fish and be all black and white. Why would you want to hunt an animal like that?

Traditional reasons to hunt things:

1. For food.
2. For sport.
3. To try out your sweet new weapon.
4. Revenge.

I can't see how any of these reasons apply in the case of penguins. Food? Please. Give me a fucking chicken sandwich. Those are way better than penguin. And don't try to tell me there's any sport in hunting penguins, unless you only like games that you know you can win. I guess if you're a weak gutless hunter maybe penguins are your choice of game. But that still leaves us with the problem that rules out #3, and that is that penguins live really far away from where you live. I guarantee there are closer places to try out your sweet new weapon or easier game much closer. Go hunt a cow. That would be really easy! They are way bigger than penguins so you'd hit it more often, plus they don't run or swim fast. Or better yet just play Contra with the up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start turned on. You'll win that every time and you'll get cool weapons like the swirling fire gun and the badass spread gun, which you might even combine with rapid for an unbeatable combination.

That leaves us with revenge as the only motive anyone could possibly attribute to me in thinking that I'm out hunting penguins. But that is pretty thin too, because nobody knows of anything that a penguin ever did to me. Which isn't to say that I don't have ample reason to hate penguins, cause I do, but its just that I've only ever told one person about that, and I killed her 8 years ago. She was my daughter.

So unless my dead daughter told you about the penguin insults, I don't know why you'd possibly think I'm out there hunting penguins. Get real man.

At ease brother! I ain't after you.

Reader response

I feel like this comment from a reader of my BLAST! post deserved to be highlighted.


SugaryMexican said...

You were in a high school marching band which, while suspect, cannot touch the stratosphere in comparison to the gayness of a collegiate marhcing band. The high school band, particularly yours, is certainly more of a spirit thing as opposed to an outlet for "nerds", and while not being as cool as the bands from "Drumline", was always enjoyable to watch and really was never the target of disdain from what I can remember. I seem to recall alot of the band guys in high school being darn good athletes.

Once you decide to be in the college version, well then you've pretty much given up on caring, in the same way Jerry feels George is sending that message of surrender to the world by wearing sweatpants out in public.

So, I have in the past made numerous soap-box speeches about the absurdity of the college marching band, and specifically how a college band has its own sickening social hierarchy, i.e. whereas a section leader for trombones is probably a reject elsewhere on campus and is not allowed to go to any hetero-parties, he is somehow revered by the other band members and is seen as cool within that group.

And this is all well and good, everyone needs their group of pals, such is the way the world spins. I might add though, that the trouble about which I am going to rant (because it is icy as fuck outisde and I am not going anywhere for an hour) is that being a non-band guy and trying to date (God forbid) a band girl is quite a foray into idiocy. This is so for many reasons.

First and foremost, it can be nearly impossible to find a halfway decent looking band girl in the first place. This is not to say there aren't any, I am just emploring you to watch some NCAA football on tv and I dare you to find a good looking girl when they pan over the band. Now, and I know this first hand, the camera guys either go out on their own vigilanty searches for hot girls in the crowd or are told to do so by the producers. This is fact, anyone who watches football knows this. Thus the fact that they never show any hot girls within a school's marching band can only lead to so many conclusions. Of course they don't pan the band on tv in the stands nearly as much as the cheerleading or dance sqauds, so their are some mathematical issues there, but again - why do you suppose that is?

Secondly, rumor is they don't put out. This is likely an extension of whatever moral decency and social conservativism led them to be in the college band in the first place. Taking a sample of the population would probably show that band members are much less likely to be felons than the rest of mankind. Probably. Although I cannot say the same for maybe a specific offense like being a child predator or serial killer. I just mean, you know, normal non-sicky crimes like robbery and murder and such.

Thirdly, and most absurdly, should you find a decent looking band girl who will in fact let you feel on her boobies a little bit, it is likely that the band members who know her and have met/seen/heard of you will 1. hate you on principle and 2. advise her when you're not around that you suck and she should be dating one of the. Invariably, the band guys (at least in my school) just loved having female friends and they always advise band girls to date their own. It is not so much a "date within social class" thing, as alot of the band guys at school were pretty decent kids by all accounts. It is more that (sickeningly enough) the band guys felt in an "evil governor in Braveheart" way that it was their right to have the band girls to themselves. As in, "I have made it to 3rd assisant drum major, I now have the royal right to have my pick of the litter within the band, whereas I likely have no shot out in public." Take this with the fact that your girl is stuck with them for hours at a time on buses to games and in sleazy hotel rooms, you have to realize she will be bombarded and pressured to no end about this. And then couple that with the ridiculous bond that the college band people have, both in lingo and in how nobody else but them can complain about the "evil band director", it can be an almost unwinnable situation. This is made worse if you happen to be a wise-ass who openly mocks the band and all it stands for.

It is now that you realize you cannot put the band pussy up on a pedestal like that. So you laugh and find someone hotter, younger, and dirtier and the world is good.

J.J. Redick's poetry

My life story is read in poetic stages
I was once weak-minded, now I'm courageous
The cause and effect of a thousand actions
The mathematical breakdown of micro-fractions
It's difficult to fathom the coming of the rapture
What if I awoke in an empty pasture?
Suddenly every ounce of passion had been depleted
And all my determination had been defeated
The rain pours, my tears fall
The pain subsides, I stand in awe
A lightning bolt strikes, I feel a sudden energy
Thunder clouds approach, I can't run from destiny
A tornado tears me down, but I will stand again
My life is a hurricane, but I'll weather it to the end

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH thanks bro

I'm a professional writer, HA!

Full Tilt offered me a flat monthly fee to post a banner on my blog. They said they believe that the poker blogging community (I guess that includes me) is worth investing in, and I think they're right. Lots of potential players read poker blogs every day, and lots of poker blog writers are always looking for new sites to play.

I didn't like Full Tilt very much when it first started, to be honest, but I think they've made great improvements since then. More than most of the major sites, they really seem to try to give their players what they want. I had started to play there a lot in the last 6 weeks or so, and even more since they made this offer.

So now someone is paying me to write stuff. Sweet. (Not very much though.)

I feel a bit pathetic that I've been steadily increasing my advertising while my writing has slowed down. I've been playing a ton of poker and just haven't had time or inspiration to write lately. But I really appeciate their offer, so I added my thoughts on Full Tilt to my overview, and removed some of the other banners that were starting to clutter everything up. The only banners I left up are for Full Tilt and for Absolute, which are the 2 sites I'd recommend the most.

If you signed up for a site using a link from here, thank you very much. If you are interested in signing up for any site I mention, let me know if you have any questions. If you think I'm a pathetic sell-out, that just means you are jealous.

Updated: Online Poker - Sites I play

I'll post my thoughts about a few online poker rooms here. The links to the sites offer you signup incentives and I'll make a little money if you sign up through me. If you have questions about these sites, or general questions about getting started in online poker, post them in the comments here.


FULL TILT POKER

Full Tilt is an up-and-coming room, and they are improving every day. In my opinion they are much better at trying to keep their players happy than Party, Paradise, and UB, although they don't have as many players yet. But they have lots of top pros working with them (Phil Ivy, Howard Lederer, Jesus Ferguson among others) and an aggressive marking approach, so I wouldn't be surprised if they grow into one of the most popular rooms. They offer a huge 100% sign up bonus up to $600, so take advantage of as much of that as you can.

If you sign up for them and want to give me credit for the signup, make sure you click the link below instead of the one in the sidebar that just links directly to the site.



100% Bonus up to $600 at Full Tilt

I've been playing a lot of $3/6 at Full Tilt in the last month. They have a nice software feature that allows you to rotate the table so your seat is anywhere you want, which is especially convenient if you play multiple tables.


ABSOLUTE POKER

A great place to start is Absolute Poker. They offer by far the most bonuses of any site I've played, so you can start with a very small bankroll and quickly build it up even if you just break even in your poker results. You earn the bonuses just by playing a certain number of raked hands, and they release it $10 at a time. If you are thinking of getting started playing for real money online, Absolute Poker is my recommendation for where to start - deposit $100 there, play low limits and earn your bonus.

Click this link to sign up and you'll get 150% of your first deposit up to $150, and you'll hook me up with a few referral dollars.


Absolute Poker 150% First Deposit Bonus

When I play Absolute, I play mostly shorthanded limit hold'em, at $5/10, $10/20, and $15/30 limits.

LIMITED TIME 200% Bonus with code AP200. Info here.


PARTY POKER

Party Poker has the most players, which means they have the best game selection at a wide variety of limits. They don't have great bonuses, but the vast ocean of fishy players should make it very profitable after you gain some experience by playing enough hands to clear some bonuses at other sites. I like their software, and you can play up to 10 tables at once if you are so inclined. The link below hooks you up with a 20% bonus up to $100, so I recommend signing up when you're ready to deposit at least $500 to get the full bonus.


20% First Deposit Bonus up to $100 at Party Poker.

I've played a wide variety of games at Party. Most often lately I play full-handed $10/20 and $15/30 hold'em, but I've played almost every limit they offer up to their $20/40. They have good shorthanded games, and tons of No-Limit action. They've got good Omaha and Stud games, and they run lots of tournaments.


PARADISE POKER

Paradise was the first online poker site I ever played. They have a decent variety of games and a very cool promotion going - the $1,000,000 freeroll where you get free entry to their $1million tournament. Use bonus code "FIRST25" to get a 25% bonus on your first deposit up to $50.


Paradise Poker link

I've played a variety of games at Paradise, but these days when I play there, it is usually for their tournaments. They don't have a great selection of games at the levels of limit hold'em I like to play, otherwise I'd play there a lot more often. I like their "Sit-N-Go" tournaments (Single-table tournaments) the best of any online site. You can also play blackjack there for as little as 10 cents per hand. I think I've won over $1.20 off Paradise blackjack.


ULTIMATEBET

UB has decent limit action in small and middle limits, and excellent no-limit action at every level. You'll find a wide variety of games at this site, including Triple Draw, Royal Hold'em, and Pineapple, which are hard to find anywhere else.

UB also hosts some of the largest games online, with $300/600 heads-up limit action and a very popular $50/100 no-limit hold'em game. I doubt you're playing those levels yet, but its fun to watch some big name pros splash their chips around.


UB offers a 40% first deposit bonus, up to $200.


I played a lot the $10/20 limit hold'em on this site. They have good action both shorthanded and full. I don't play a lot of no-limit these days, but when I do it is usually here. I love playing their triple-draw lowball games as a fun change of pace (Watch out, Aces can't play low in the 2-7 version! I see people blow that all the time). There is usually at least 1 low-limit lowball game going, often more. Whenever I just want to sit and watch some crazy high-stakes action from the rail, I check out UB.


FUNDING AN ACCOUNT

I use Firepay to make deposits and cashouts at most sites I play. Neteller is also very popular, but they don't accept customers from all States. They are like online bank accounts, very similar to using PayPal. In fact, back when I started playing online, PayPal was my payment method of choice, but they stopped doing business with online gambling companies. Most credit cards also will not let you make deposits with gaming sites, so you'll definitely want a Firepay or Neteller account. I've always found it very easy to move funds between my checking account and my Firepay account.

Al the sites have plenty of information about their various funding methods. Every site and payment method I've mentioned here has been secure and reliable for me so far.

BLAST!

Last Friday my girlfriend dragged me to see "BLAST!"

Kira saw highlights of the show on public television and, being a former marching bank geek, decided it would be fun to go see the live show. She offered me the option not to go with her but, being a former marching band geek, I figured the show would probably be entertaining and that I'd appreciate the performance.

But that didn't mean I wasn't going to give her shit for "making me" go to it. The whole way there I referred to the show as "QUEEF!" She reminded me several times that I had the option not to go. I really know how to make my lady feel special.

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. A decent description of the show from their website is that "they bring the power, passion and precision of outdoor pageantry to the stage in a musical performance that we now call BLAST!"

A better description of the show would be that they "bring the power, passion, precision and homosexuality of outdoor pageantry to the stage in a musical gay orgy we now call BLAST!"

I always knew that marching band can be a bit gay, even when I was in it. I just wanted to play some fight songs at half time, but I went along with the goofy costumes and the flag formations and the making out with dudes. Thats just what being in marching band is.


And we all know that theatre can be a bit queer as well. Lots of artsy creative energy in the gay community. So I don't know why I was so suprised that this production was like they took the gayest of gayest of the gay that our nation's marching bands had to offer and pranced them out on stage. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Once you got past the gay, it was an entertaining show, and I had a lot of respect for their musical skills. But I wouldn't recommend it to any homophobes.

Probably the highlight of the show for me happened during a number called Tangerinamadidge, which featured cast members walking through the aisles of the crowd playing didgeridoos. The girl who graced our section looked cute from a distance, but seeing her up close revealed some pretty nasty acne. The drunk Chris Moneymaker look-a-like sitting next to me (who obviously had no idea what he had signed up for by coming to this show - "this is going to be like Stomp and Blue Man Group, right?") leaned over to me and said "That chick needs a face transplant. You know they did that in France, just like in that movie!" Classic.