Monthly Archives: October 2004

Fun Stuff

Apple iMac G5

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The very first computer I ever owned was a Mac SE. It was one of those traditional Macs, where everything was contained inside a single box, including a 20MB hard drive and a tiny black and white screen. Since then, I’ve had three Macs and three Windows machines, and I’m probably never going to switch back to using a Macintosh. The price/performance I get out of my Dell is far superior to that of a Mac, or even many Windows PC manufacturers.

That said, the new Apple iMac G5 is very cool. Ever since Jobs returned to Apple, he’s been moving the company from a computer manufacturer to a design object manufacturer, and this latest iMac is the latest expression of that direction. This is a computer you could feature in an art exhibit. Sure, it still has the same limited expandibility issue that the SE had, but the marginal improvement you get from upgrades nowadays aren’t as significant as they once were. And of course, most consumers aren’t going to upgrade their machines anyway (many of them don’t even know how to change their desktop image), so it’s kind of a moot point. The new iMac also has built in wireless and bluetooth, so the only cord you’ll need to plug in is power.

The one thing I would have done to really make this the hot computer product of Christmas 2004 is to add a 6 hour battery and a pen interface (a la the Tablet PC). Sure it looks great on your desk, but really you want to browse the web while sitting on your couch or out in the yard. Of course, Tablet PCs command about a thousand dollar premium over notebooks, so this is probably out of the question. More importantly, since the major poker sites don’t support Macs, any Mac is a big waste of money.

Poker

Weekly game results: October 13

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Both CR and ER took this week off, so we were four handed. JC and I took that as a sign to be much more aggressive. It seemed to pay off more for me than for him:


    This week  Cumulative  Average
EM    -$4.65     -$10.45   -$0.75
JB    +$1.85      -$6.15   -$0.47
JC    -$1.40     +$17.10   +$1.32
Me    +$4.20      +$0.95   +$0.07

Being more aggressive led to the worst bad beat of the night, when JC flopped two pair in the big blind and I flopped top pair in the small blind:

Me: ATs
JC: Q8o

[AQ8]

I bet, JC raises, I call.

[K]

I check, JC bets, I call.

[J]

I check, JC bets, I raise, JC calls.

I win with the suckout straight.

Given the fact that we were short-handed, and JC’s hyper-aggression, I really didn’t know whether he just had top pair like me, or a better hand. I figured there was a good chance he was trying to steal the pot and decided to call him to the river, which netted me a lot of bets.

Thanks in part to that suckout, and mostly to good cards and aggressive play, I’ve finally inched up into positive territory after four consecutive positive weeks. JC and ER still hold first and second place in both cumulative and average winnings, but I’m pretty happy to be positive after 14 sessions. We’ll see how things are once we get a statistically valid number of records.

Playing four-handed was interesting, and if it weren’t for the fact that we started about 45 minutes late, I would have strongly suggested playing some non-HE games to take advantage of the fact that CR and ER were absent. I’m still itching to get some more Omaha 8 experience, but I guess nobody really likes Omaha.

Poker

Weekly game results: October 6

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ER took off early. She’d been running bad all night and threw all her chips into a pair of sixes against my pocket tens.


    This week  Cumulative  Average
CR    -$1.20      +$0.00     $0.00
EM    +$0.30      -$5.80    -$0.45
ER    -$5.00      +$9.30    +$0.78
JB    -$1.45      -$8.00    -$0.67
JC    +$4.00     +$18.50    +$1.54
Me    +$3.35      -$3.25    -$0.25

Another up week for me. Taking ER out significantly helped my stack, but I also got decent cards, took pots when I could, and kept my confrontations to a minimum. That said, toward the end of the night JC called my preflop raise, flopped a set, and turned a boat. Curse those big pocket pairs. That hand alone cost me many big bets, and had I not been so drunk determined to see a showdown, I would have ended up the big stack for the night.

Might I add that drinking and winning makes me cocky and abusive. I take great amusement out of it, but it’s probably not good for my table image.

JB doubled up on the last hand of the night when he flopped two pair and riverred a boat. If CR hadn’t challenged him on that one, he would have ended up for the night.

I think Wil Wheaton said that Krieger said something about one bad hand ruining your night. It was certainly true last night at the weekly game, and yesterday evening in PL online. I dropped $150 in PL in four or five consecutive sessions. What kind of fool does that? Me, I guess. I earned some of it back after the weekly game in 1/2 and NL, but still ended down $120 for the day, which wipes out my gains from Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I hate starting over.