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While overseas, I took the opportunity of using my cousin’s clean computer to sign up for a new Party Poker account. My old account had been closed for “inappropriate chat” at the blogger NL tables; the same thing happened to Bonus Code Iggy, but somehow he got it all squared away. This time I decided to sign up through PokerSourceOnline. Unfortunately, their rake rebate program no longer has Party as an option. Still, by signing up through PSO I got 6000 PSO points, 5000 of which I promptly traded in for a $50 Amazon Gift Card.

One of the three poker books I picked up was The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. Once I started reading the first few pages, I was hooked. I can’t even tell you why I found the book as interesting as it did.

Michael Craig pieces together what happened when wealthy Texas banker Andy Beal went to Vegas to play the biggest cash game players for stakes that no one had ever played before. We’re talking limit hold’em for millions of dollars, blinds of 50,000-100,000. One of the LA bloggers once asked us how much money it would take for us to be able to go off and do whatever we wanted for the rest of our lives. For these players, it was just one big pot.

I take back what I said earlier.

This is what makes the Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King so interesting:

1. Most of us have wondered if we could go after the biggest players, provided we had the bankroll. Andy Beal had that bankroll.

2. Two of the hardest things to really learn as a player is separating bets from their dollar values and accepting fluctuations in results (and bankroll) as normal variance. When the stakes got large enough, the best poker veterans in the world re-faced those same struggles.

I personally have no ambitions to face off against great players. Hell, I play so little poker these days I feel guilty. But I’m glad Andy Beal took a shot at the best, and I hope he keeps at it.

Eventually you have to give up waiting on Full Tilt to give you a job. There’s probably some kind of restriction on how many LA-based bloggers they can employ (though if Joe Speaker or Absinthe announces next month he’s making the switch, I’m going to kill somebody).

Anyway, I’ll be starting my new job next week. Drop me a line if there’s something you’ve always wanted to see on MySpace. Erm, it’s not a Planning job.

My friend Jake is apparently making his acting debut in a play that is being put on in a bar in West LA. I can’t tell you if it’s good or not, but here’s what Jake says:

I’ll be at the Saturday show if anyone is interested in coming out.

At the passenger unloading curb, I pulled all my Kiwi money out of my wallet and shoved it into my sister’s hands, figuring I wouldn’t need it anymore. Wrong! Apparently you have to pay New Zealand $25 or they won’t let you leave. Those bastards. I charged this one last expense to my AmEx, knowing full well I was getting shafted by their exchange rate.

The latest version of PokerTracker is 2.07.03. If you haven’t updated PokerTracker in the last month, check out the new support for PostgreSQL as well as the latest bug fixes. For those of us with largish hand history databases, this new feature is almost more welcome than hand histories at Full Tilt. Maybe I’m smoking crack, but I swear that auto-rating players and exporting notes is faster this way.

You’ll need to update your version of GameTimePlus to use with the PostgreSQL database.

Eh? What am I talking about? You slack monkeys who haven’t picked up the PokerTrackerGuide ought to do yourselves a favor and buy it today.

Ever want to pinpoint where the moon missions landed? Now you can with Google Moon.

And don’t forget to take Google Earth for a spin.

BG organized a poker tournament this Sunday in memory of Jason’s friend Charlie.

Details:

PokerStars
WPBT “Charlie” Tournament
No Limit Hold’Em

Tournament 9680072
Sunday, July 17th
18:00 ET
$20 buy-in

You’ll find it under Tourney –> Private. The buy-in will go to Charlie’s family to do with as they like. So we’ll be playing purely for bragging rights.

Update: July 14, 2005. I’m happy to report that 46 players are now signed up for the tournament. That’s $920 raised through the blogs, $20 at a time. Let’s push it over a grand. Sign up now, even if you don’t think you’ll be able to play.

Stupid teen.

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In case you haven’t heard, I’ve returned to the US. I jumped right into the gambling frame of mind with the start of the month, playing Blackjack with bonus money at Will Hill and Intercasino (see ScurvyDog for the affiliate links), O8 and NLHE at the LA Blogger Home Game, and 2/4 HE at the Bad Beat Jackpot tables on Party Poker. Yep. I finally got a new Party account after getting myself banned last January for “inappropriate chat.” I still don’t know what the hell that means, but whatever.

There are some excellent tables to be found under that BBJ tab. I happened to catch -EV 4-tabling a few of them, but I opted to play elsewhere. No need to sit down with a known tight-aggressive player who reminds you everytime he sees you about that $50NL session where he took two buy-ins off of you (5 months ago!). Anyway, with several players playing in excess of 35-55% of all their hands, my BBJ sessions evoked fond memories of playing in the LA and Vegas casinos.

Coincidentally, I’ll be heading out to Vegas in the morning to bake in 105 degree sunshine and immerse myself in the madness that is the WSOP. No, I won’t be playing in any of the events–I don’t have the skills or the bankroll for that–but I do intend to sit myself down next to some poker-crazed tourists and try to dodge bad beats while building a mountain of chips. There will be no blackjack or roulette on this trip; then again, Grubby’s a persuasive guy.

Thrower-induced recovery notwithstanding, it was time to get a new poker machine. I can’t trust my laptop to keep on working the way it’s been working the past few days, and rather than find myself without a computer at what will most likely be the most inconvenient time possible, I figure the best thing to do is get a replacement. I checked out Dell’s site to see what kinds of deals they had available, but they seemed rather so-so. A little over $500 would get me a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB SDRAM, an 80GB HD, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, and integrated video with a 2 year warranty.

I don’t really need a high-powered machine. But Glasstrack assured me that for the money I was willing to spend, I could get a much better machine if I were willing to shop around and buy the components I needed. Here’s what we came up with…
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