StudioGlyphic

Or rather, they reverse their endorsement of Bush. The Economist endorsed Bush in 2000 and wholly supported the invasion of Iraq, but:

The first was similar to the situation the other night, only tonight I was drinking more, and my judgement was clouded. I got trapped between two people who had trips and I had an open-ended straight draw (KT with a JJQ flop). Every time I called, I had odds. But finally one guy decided to push and it was $13 for me to call. There was $30.30 in the pot. Assuming that the guy to act after me was going to push, it would be $18 to call with $48 in the pot. Now with all that raising and re-raising going on, it didn't seem like anyone actually had the boat. I figured trip Jacks, Queens and Jacks, another draw, or a flopped straight. I should have called. To punish me for my bad choice, the poker gods bestowed a 9 on the turn.

The second was pretty damn stupid. Someone raised to $4 before the flop from UTG. As soon as I raised to $14 with JJ from MP1, I knew I had done something stupid. The difference between $4 and $14 to someone with a competitive hand was not going to be great. This was not a tournament. The button pushed, making it $20 to call. Then I did another stupid thing and called. My jacks got assraped. Yep. UTG had pocket eights, so I was right to challenge him, but my raise just dug a big hole for me that I couldn't resist going into head first. Blargh.

Eventually I had to rebuy and made my way back to even with a flopped boat (AK with AAK flop) against JJ and A2. Still sucks to lose my previous winnings and potential winnings with bonehead play, though.

You can bet your ass there will be legal challenges in several "swing states" this year. Oh God.

How can we stop this madness?

End the winner take all system: allow states to allocate electoral college votes based on the percentage vote each candidate gets within that state. One reason why Florida was worth disputing in 2000 was its 25 electoral votes. Under these proposed changes, Bush and Gore would have each taken 12 or 13 votes, which means that the payoff in mounting a legal challenge would have been much lower. Furthermore, it would be much harder to challenge every outcome in every state/county/precinct. Glasstrack has a good discussion of the Electoral College, fair representation, etc., but I think that this practical argument for changing our system--stopping the post-election legal battles--will probably resonate strongly with a majority of Americans, regardless of party or state.

This type of reform would also open the door to third parties becoming more viable. You need 270 to win, and third parties can promote their issues by exchanging electoral votes for planks in the platform.

The Bush campaign/administration (it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, isn't it?) has tried to spin the story of the missing explosives in lots of different ways, including the assertion that the explosives were missing before the war. Embedded reporters with 101st Airborne actually went to the site during the war and caught it on tape. Brilliant. Let me see now... that over there sure looks like explosives. It says "explosives." Okay, let's say they're explosives. Where are the explosives? Oh, hey, that one down there says "Al Qaqaa." I wonder how you pronounce that. I think I'll be quasi-French and say "What What" instead of "Shit." Oh, back to the point... yeah, that's definitely the place.

Another story on this evidence, including images of IAEA seals on a door-locking cable can be found at KSTP. Check out both story links for more pics and confirming details.

Thanks to Daily Kos for this one, too. I'm just your filter that helps this stuff invade your poker-induced daze.

The Bush campaign put a doctored ad on their website entitled "Whatever it takes." How ironic.

Their explanation was that a podium was in the way. I think what they meant was a lectern. I think what it was was a bunch of soldiers giving Bush the bird.

Credits and discussion can be found at Daily Kos.

The bloggers at Daily Kos posted this scan of a flyer being passed around in Milwaukee's black neighborhoods:

Fucking bastards. They can't win without suppressing the vote.

Daily Kos reports on Kevin Drum's report on a Republican pollster's latest battleground state polls (PDF):

Bush-Cheney: 47%
Kerry-Edwards: 47%
Nader-Camejo: 1.6%
Undecided: 4%

On the face of it, this is good news, especially coming from a Republican poll. Undecideds traditionally break more toward the challenger, so Kerry's got the edge.

But even better news ahead: if the poll is weighted to use exit poll data from 2000 and changes in demographics in the past four years, the results are far more clear cut:

Bush-Cheney: 45%
Kerry-Edwards: 50%
Nader-Camejo: 1.6%
Undecided: 3.7%

These are the battleground states: CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, WI. These are the places where anti-minority, anti-voter dirty tricks will have the greatest effect. Be on your guard, and get out the vote!

CR and ER took last week off, and JB vetoed the idea of playing short-handed, so we skipped a week. This week the regular group was back:

    This week  Cumulative  Average

CR    +$6.05      +$6.05   +$0.47

EM    -$1.40     -$11.85   -$0.79

ER    -$2.95      +$6.35   +$0.49

JB    -$5.00     -$11.15   -$0.80

JC    -$1.55     +$15.55   +$1.11

Me    +$4.85      +$5.80   +$0.39

After the second buy-in, I started to do a little better. In the last 2-3 orbits, I hit a monster rush: 79s beat JJ with a runner-runner flush against a river straight, A8 beat 9T with a river boat against a turn straight, 89s won with a flopped straight against what I assume was a draw that never materialized. The 79s was a true suckout. I called a minimum raise in the BB pre-flop and flopped top pair. I called the bet and turned the straight and flush draws. I called the bet and riverred the flush. Felt bad about that one.

In those first two hours where I lost hand after hand to CR, other people were losing some decent pots to him as well. He took pot after pot and built up his stack to nearly 3 times his buy-in. Over the next hour and half he eventually lost a few bucks, but still made it out of here the big winner. He's still third in cumulative winnings, but he's definitely on a good trajectory.

EM put JC on the spot a couple times when a flush appeared on the board. It was clearly painful for him to fold, but fold he did. Overall, EM's running bad. Her theory is that she needs to be pissed off to win. Possibly. Maybe if I had done that 79s runner-runner against her jacks early on it would have changed the game. Still, she's not down to the depths that I hit after the first ten weeks of keeping records: -$13.

ER was pretty mad about my boat beating her straight. I don't feel as bad about that one as I do the 79s. I had the best hand on the flop and when I raised her turn bet, she just called. A re-raise would have been grounds for thought. I may have called anyway, not believing that she'd made her straight. Another down week for ER, but her cumulative's still good for second place.

Tonight was a lot like some of my NL forays. Down, down, down, then a rush to set things right, and I'm done. Which does wonders for my confidence in my abilities. That's meant to be sarcastic. I'd rather be lucky than good, but I'd still like to be good.

The Iowa city Press-Citizen reports on Ashton Kutcher's efforts to get out the vote in Iowa for Kerry:

Just who does that kid think she is? Good thing the President was there to put her in her place.

The New York Post's Keith Kelly reports what he says.

At least that's what my market analysis professor always says. Then again, I think she's a Republican freaknut. Still, if you're not using PokerTracker, you're out of your gourd. For a while I was just importing hand histories to track my own play, but wasn't really using it very much aside from that. I certainly wasn't using it to find leaks in my game, though I really ought to. I think I'm waiting for the PT guide to come out before I do that.

At any rate, recently I've been taking advantage of the fact that PT now auto-imports hand histories off your hard drive for Party. So I open four windows, run PT, and then come back to see what kind of tables I've been observing. I open a separate GameTime window for each table and check out the stats. If there are a bunch of people seeing the flop and going to the showdown, and if a number of people seem to be losing money, I'll put myself on the waitlist. During play, I leave the GT window open so that I have quick access to their starting hands as well as any notes I may take on the players.

Here's a hand where having this data helped me win a decent pot:

Strictly speaking, I didn't have odds with just the flush draw on the turn. The pot would have had to be paying 4.1:1 if I thought he might have a better hand, but not the boat. In fact, two of my suit would have given him a boat, so with the flush alone, I really needed to get more than 5.6:1. But with the possibility of my making my boat (which I only figured out afterwards), I would have had an additional 6 outs, giving me the correct odds to call. At any rate, the point is not that I made the correct play by accident, but rather that the data I had on this guy helped me feel confident that I was not beat on the turn and had a chance to win outright or chop. I clearly have to firm up my foundational knowledge. It's pretty good, but the word "outs" or "odds" shouldn't even cross my mind, and you shouldn't have to read a post about it.

But if you take anything away from this, it's that PokerTracker is worth the $55. You can make that up in just a few hands depending on the limit you play, and PT might just be the edge you need to make the right move.

The Bush Campaign Film!

Click the image to view. Thanks to Glasstrack for the link.

For more video madness, check out Eminem's latest: Mosh

I hope The Gadflyer doesn't mind my republishing this in its entirety.

In some ways, it's a hyper-efficient way of playing poker. When you're playing limit, you take whatever edge you've got and you push it as far as it'll carry you. That's often good for 10-20BB. In no limit/pot limit, you do the same, but this time it's good for 10-50BB. Sure, there's more variance, but I find that even when the cards run against me, I tend not to lose that much money. The times when I lose the most money is when I refuse to believe the other guy flopped a set. But I don't mind those losses as much.

Destroy their pot odds. The suckouts tend to be more rare since I don't let the calling stations off easy--this not only reduces chasing, but reduces the schooling phenomenon as well. Now here's where your play may differ. Maybe you like having fish in multi-way pots because of the long-term +EV. For me, I'm okay with reducing my variance a bit at the expense of my win rate. All it takes is one guy calling to the showdown with middle pair for you to double up. Here's the key difference between no limit and pot limit: your ability to destroy the odds. With pot limit, anyone with 9 or more outs on the flop has odds to call the pot. Check-raising the max can help you get around this limitation, especially with a few smooth-calls ahead of you. At a loose enough NL table, the implied odds could be through the roof. So you may not be able to manipulate the pot enough to win it. In these situations, you want the best hand, and a good draw: best set, top pair and nut flush and gutshot straight draw, etc.

Establish who you are. Bets and raises for 3-4 times the previous bet can really put the fear of God in your opponents. This does wonders for your table image. I haven't yet fully exploited this, mostly because I'm concerned about my ability to change gears once I've taken a stab at taking the pot, which in turn is colored by my experience of having chasers fold at the river bet.

Manouevers vs. blunt force. I think slowplaying is overrated because if someone's hand improves, it's hard to let go of your good hand, and that can be expensive. Try check-raising instead of check-calling. Also, I think on some hands like a pair or three suited cards on the flop, people expect trickiness, so just betting with your set or flopped flush may get you more calls than checking the flop and betting the turn. That can give you the opportunity for check-calling the turn and other trickiness. Trickiness is overrated.

Anyway, I figured I should actually post something about poker, rather than just results or a hand, so there it is. All based on just a few thousand hands. I'll get back to you when I've got another ten thousand. In the meantime, read the tips at Cards Speak.

And I can point to where that happened. The one hand where I had 15 outs and called all those bets, and the other hand where I paid some fish my buy-in to see that he had indeed sucked out on my cowboys on the turn.

So the review lesson of the day is that one badly played hand (AKA curiosity) can kill your results. I don't regret calling the guys who had two pair on the flop. I only semi-regret confirming that dude was a major fish. But it was an expensive piece of information.

Still, I'm happy about fighting my way back from a $50 deficit to where I ended. And best of all, Pauly was on IM with me to see the Hiltons hold up against a small pocket pair that decided to push pre-flop. The winning hand? My quad nines, queen kicker. Heh.

Okay, so I said I was happy about fighting my way back, but I'm still bummed about paying out too much on that hand. After all, I never got an opportunity to assrape that guy who sucked out the guthshot straight on the turn (after a preflop raise and a $12 bet into a $10 pot). So what good is it to find out whether he flopped trips or just sucked out a better hand? He does, after all, go by many names on Party. And they're all perfectly willing to give it up to my cowboys while holding top pair and hoping for their gutshot. So that settles it. No more investigative work. I'll leave that to the detectives.

I found myself in a hand with KJs. Flop comes up QT3 with two of my suit on the board. Two of my opponents had QT and I got trapped between them as they bet, raised, and re-raised--I'm pretty sure I had odds every time I called--and eventually they were both all in. Pot was $53 and it was $17 for me to call. With the open-ended straight and the flush draw, I decided to call. Didn't improve and the two pairs took it. That was painful. The question is, was it correct? I think so.

These people don't know what they're doing. They are far too dangerous to be returned to the White House.

Stop the damage. Vote for Kerry.

Or just really, really unprofessional:

Oh, I almost forgot. The same table that quadrupled my buy-in also featured Grubby's evil twin:

So why Grubby's evil twin? Not only did he play the hammer, but he insisted that he should have won, had luck not interceded:

I love no limit. Wow, what a run:

#xxx: studioglyphic wins $26.60 from side pot #1 with a pair of aces.
#xxx: studioglyphic wins $19.85 from the main pot with a pair of aces.

My AA vs TT vs AJs, with the other two guys all-in pre-flop. Yeesh. The assrapers held up and I was $26 richer.

#xxx: studioglyphic wins $80.70 from the main pot with a straight, ten to ace.

My AQs vs AKs. I raised to steal, but got re-raised. I called and flopped top pair with a gutshot draw (AJT). I bet half the pot and got re-raised. I called and turned the gutshot while slick made two pair (AJTK). I bet half the pot and got called. Slick pushed when the river paired the ten (1/6 of the pot) and I called (AJTKT).

#xxx: studioglyphic wins $41.35 from the main pot with a straight, ace to five.

Flopped the wheel with A5 and took out the BB who thought his two pair was a BB special from God.

Yeah, I know, a lot of it is just luck, but when you quadruple your buy-in in less than 23 hands, you can't help feeling that the sky is bluer, your whiskey is sweeter, and everything is gonna go your way.

I ignored those feelings and quit. Time to get back to homework.

There are a lot of great reports out there. I recommend you read those first, but if you're still craving more, or dying to know what I had when I pushed on that one hand, go ahead and read this one:

Level 1: 10/20, T1500. I miss just over two orbits after getting home late from work. I play just two hands and fold both when the flop misses me completely. I notice the table's pretty tight.

Level 2: 15/30, T1440. A few hands in, I raise with AJo from MP when it's folded to me.

Level 3: 25/50, T1335. I've got KJo on the button and I limp after two limp ahead of me. Flop comes up 2J8 and Mad Motie bets out T200. I raise T200 and Motie goes nearly all in. Crap. I fold. Motie says he had J8. Next hand I raise with Big Chick from the CO when it's folded to me and take the blinds again.

Level 4: 50/100, T760. Wow, I'm in bad shape. Time to start pushing. With T460 left, I push with Helmuths from the button and win the blinds. On the very next hand I get Assrapers. Cubanlinks throws out T350 and I push. I double up to T1370 which buys me some breathing room.

Level 5: 75/150, T1370. Still in bad shape. After limping with 77 and A4s, I'm down to T770. I get A7o on the button and push after it's folded to me. Everyone folds.

Level 6: 100/200, T770. 1 orbit later and I'm back down to T770 with A8o on the button. EP raises the minimum and I push. A8o vs A2s, with two of his suits on the flop. Luckily, he doesn't get his flush and I spike my 8 on the river, giving me T1840. Five hands later, it's folded to me and I raise from the SB with K8o. BB calls. Shit. Flop is 8QT rainbow and I throw out the minimum bet. BB calls again. Double shit. The turn is the suckout 8, giving me a set. I push, figuring he won't believe me, and double up to T3280. At this point, I'm feeling pretty good. Two hands later I raise with AQs and win the blinds. One orbit later I've got KQs on the button and raise when it's folded to me. BB calls and the flop comes up 25Q rainbow. He pushes with JT and I call. Turn shows a K which gives me two pair and BB an open-ended straight draw. I start to worry. The river shows a T and I knock out the BB for T4643. I'm now in the running for the money!

Level 7: 100/200/25, T4243. With the number of players quickly dwindling down and the antes pumping up the pots, I raise 4xBB with KJs UTG. I take the blinds and antes. Next hand, MP raises and I call with A2o in the BB. I fold when the flop misses me completely. Stupid. One orbit later, I raise 4xBB with A9o on the button. BB calls. Flop is 274, all spades. I have no spades. BB checks, I throw out T600, BB raises to T2000, and I fold. Well that was lame. So much for being in the running. With T1993 I get AQs in the BB. It folds to the SB who limps. I push and SB folds. A few hands later, I get Big Slick in the CO and push when it's folded to me. The blinds fold and I'm up to T2693. I'm still kicking myself for losing so much of my stack in that other hand, but feel a bit better now.

Level 8: 200/400/25, T2693. Half an orbit later, the CO pushes. It's my blind, I've got A4o, and it's only a little over 600 to call. I figure CO might be a little desperate and call, helping him double-up with JJ and no aces for me on the board. Bah. This knocks me down to T1496 and in dire straits once again. I'm looking for a hand to double-up with, but the poker gods are very fickle. I'm blinded and anted down to T321 when I get A8o UTG. I call all-in and face the BB. Board comes up A67Q6 giving my A8 the advantage over his 74. I'm still screwed, and when the same guy raises my blind from the SB, I push with KTo. He shows A7o, but the board decides to give me tens full of jacks and I double-up again. Poor MtDewVirus. Helped me double-up twice in a row. With Maudie cheering me on from the rail and two big wins, I start to lose focus. Two hands later MtDewVirus raises from the CO and I push with ATs. BB calls and CO calls. Uh oh. Yup. BB has TT and CO has Hiltons. Board is 25272, giving my adversaries boats. MtDewVirus more than triples (including the antes) and TPfelt takes the remaining T658. I'm out in 32nd and wonder if I should have learned from my earlier experiences of calling minimum raises with AX.

So that was it. I had a great time playing with all the bloggers/readers and will definitely be up for joining the next one even if it does cost me $22 to languish for four levels and then gamble it all on a few hands. The only good thing about my performance is that I outlasted many of the players listed on the right there. Speaking of which, thanks to Iggy for organizing this. Hopefully we can run more of these tourneys on Stars. Best of luck on your new career.

I've been meaning to link up to BadBlood and SirFWALGMan for a while--I often see them playing at the 1/2 and $25 NL tables, and damn if it doesn't make the grind more fun when you've got someone to bait the fish with. Granted, I'm probably not playing close enough attention to the action, and I'm probably given to playing the Hammer more often than is healthy, but then again, poker is supposed to be fun:

In my neverending quest for poker blogger immortality, I've decided to add to the lexicon. Some greats have already paved the way with such hands as the Hammer, the Hiltons, and the Helmuths. Well, instead of Rockets or Bullets, I propose we call pocket Aces the Assrapers. Why, you may ask? Two reasons: 1) Someone always gets fucked with them (that includes the person holding them) and, perhaps more importantly, 2) Party and Stars don't censor the word. I guess that our society has reached a point where talking about illegitimate children is still verboten, but brutal penetration from behind is perfectly acceptable. So be it. May your assrapers hold up in every seat.

So if it weren't obvious by now, I've reloaded. Between the IGMPAY bonus and the 40BB I've won, I'm feeling pretty good. I still don't think I have the attention span to truly master the limits I'm playing, but I'll give it my best shot. And I definitely don't have the time management skills to keep this thing under control. The day I reloaded, the two hours I had intended to play stretched out into four. On the other hand, yesterday I decided that winning one big hand was good enough, and decided to go to bed early. Tonight I sat out after an hour and half when I had to make a phone call and then decided to watch a movie afterwards instead of getting back in. The only reason I played some more was to help SirFWALGMan bust some balls at the limit tables. The gambooler in me HATES limit. Need to work on putting that guy in his place. Good cards, all.

Had some fun at the 1/2 tables with SirFWALGMan. I don't know how he found this table, but it was fishy as hell! I saw way too many winning hands completing on the river, most of them with no business being in the pot in the first place. The variance was crazy, but I decided to join in and say to hell with the money.

It was a blast.

Oh lordy. I myself had two suckout wins on the river when my TJs (which I raised UTG) made a straight on one hand and my KTs paired the king on another. Two other hands I won with some aggressive bets. On another hand I bet/raised the hammer until someone obviously completed their flush on the river, giving me an excuse to fold and bitch about the suckout fishes.

I had my share of suckout losses, too. My suited big slick was worth 3-betting pre-flop, and apparently someone else's 39s was worth calling 3 bets pre-flop. The flop gave him no hope of survival, but he stayed in to runner runner flush me out of a big pot. It was that kind of session. And all this in the span of 35 hands!

Luckily that JT suckout straight I made put me into positive territory after SirCOULDIHAVEALONGERORHARDERTOTYPEName decided to quit for the day. He did see that last one, and I was glad to show him. I quit after that as well, though now that I think back on it, if I hadn't thrown all those chips at the hammer, I would have had a pretty decent win rate. Damn grubby.

dKosopedia has a list of Republicans for Kerry and Republicans against Bush. Only two people in the list actually hold office, and they're small ones--town mayors with not much to lose by bucking the national party. The rest tend to be old-school Republicans who can't stand the fundamentalist.

Had some lucky breaks, but ultimately my luck ran out when my ATs ran up against the Hiltons and pocket tens. Board decided to give each of them a boat, and my cards just couldn't do anything for me. Still, I outlasted 100 other bloggers and readers, including some of the greats, so I'm pretty happy about that. Gotta learn not to call when someone goes all in and can do some damage to my stack.

Bill : Nah, there weren't really eighty-eight of them. They just called themselves "The Crazy 88."

Budd : How come?

Bill : I don't know. I guess they thought it sounded cool.

Name: Guinness and Poker Blog Tournament
Location: Tournaments > Special
Date/Time: Oct 21 21:00
Tournament #: 2868250
Password: iggy2004
Buy-in: $20+2
Format: No Limit Hold'Em, no re-buys, no add-ons. Blinds increase every 15 minutes.

I may be a bit late for the start. Feel free to steal my blinds.

Updated 15:15.

Rolling Stone's got an interview with John Kerry:

"Terminate with extreme prejudice."

"What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? That he had plans? That he had wisdom? Bullshit man!"

The LA Times has a profile of Senator Barbara Boxer in their October 4 issue, which I guess is still free to the public. It turns out that Boxer was thinking of retiring after her second term:

MTV has a number of commercials in favor of equal marriage rights. The "Threats" and "Permission" spots are pretty good.

I don't think a majority of the people in the country would support giving a gay couple "marriage" status. I don't really care about whether gays can "marry" or not, though it really does smell like separate and unequal.

What I strongly support, however, is giving the full legal/social rights and responsibilities of straight marriage to committed gay couples. These include tax benefits, hospital visitations, inheritance rights, health insurance, alimony, etc. It'd be one thing altogether if marriage were just a label, but it's not. Marriage is a big change in legal/social status that is currently denied to some members of our society based on their sexual orientation, and that violates our right to equal protection under the law. Anyone who believes in a society based on the rule of law and the Constitution as the foundation of our laws would have to concede this point; otherwise I'll be forced to beat them with the breaker bar.

It doesn't rain often here, but when it does, people freak out. I have a low opinion of most people's ability to drive to begin with, and this morning it seemed that every traffic report that managed to sneak into my consciousness before I hit snooze reported another couple accidents on the freeways. Checking Sigalert.com, I can see a clusterfuck of accidents in Orange County (heh, Republicans really can't drive), accidents up and down the 710, and a scattering of accidents everywhere else. Ugh. No thanks.

So here are some tips to my fellow LA area drivers:

1. Pay attention. You should always pay attention, but pay special attention when it's raining/wet. That means turning off your cell phone, saving the paper for later, or doing your makeup before getting in the car.

2. Keep your distance. Your brakes are shitty, your reaction time is slow, your tires are those plastic, long-lasting ones you picked up at Costco for $25 a tire last year. You just aren't going to be able to stop as quickly, period. Multiply that by a factor of 1.5-2.5 in the wet. Don't forget that there's an asshole behind you who drives just like you. If he's tailgating you and you're tailgating the guy in front of you, you're in for a world of hurt.

3. Keep both hands on the wheel. Driving through a pool of standing water can rapidly slow down your wheels on one side, causing your car to jerk toward that side. If you've only got a few fingers resting on the bottom of your steering wheel when that happens, you're probably going to hit that median or the car next to you.

4. Stay home. You just ignored 1-3, didn't you? Well, then just call in sick today. Stay off that road. Or better yet, take advantage of all this free water by washing your car in the rain. Last night I hosed down my car, quickly soaped it up, then took a spin around the block (tried to get my wheels to break loose at the cul de sac, but didn't try hard enough). All in ten minutes. My car is clean!

5. Do the math. Sigh. So you're going to get out there anyway. So let's say you gotta get somewhere that's ten miles away. If you're driving 55 mph, it'll take you 11 minutes. If you're driving 75 mph, it'll take you 8 minutes. If you get in an accident, you can add 1-2 hours to your commute. If you can't handle the speed (and let's be honest here, you can't), go ahead and suck it up. It's going to take you an extra three minutes, and you should stay the fuck out of the passing lane.

I guess this is more of angry rant than a list of tips. There's still good advice in there. ;)

Former New Hampshire US Senator Bob Smith and former South Dakota US Representative Bill Janklow speak out against their party's dirty tricks:

Concord Monitor: Phone-jamming was an outrage

KELOLAND.COM: Janklow Criticizes GOP Vote Effort

From Bob Smith's Concord Monitor piece:

Ignatius of Guinness and Poker AKA Party Poker Blogs is making that great leap to professional poker playing. He's been playing poker at B&Ms and online for years and years, and he's finally going for it:

Iggy also reports that Mr. Wil Wheaton will be joining us in the Poker Blogger Tournament. There are now 49 players registered. It's sure to reach 51 before the day is out. You have two days left to join in the fun.

If it weren't readily apparent that my personality verges on the obsessive (but happily nowhere near that of some of my fellow bloggers), the other night I was dreaming about going through address lists of registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning people that I haven't yet contacted regarding the upcoming election. I've said all along that this is going to be a close one, and while I feel confident about our ability to turn out voters on Election Day, I'm still concerned. This is a crucial election, and American voters need to step up and do the right thing. As a completely disinterested apolitical observer said recently, "If Bush is elected, then America sucks a lot more than I want to believe." Or something to that effect.

The election is just two short weeks away, and while I've done a bit to help our cause, I don't know if I could stand the thought that I might have been able to do more. If I ever stop blogging and get my work for next week done ahead of time, I think I'll join one of those Roadtrip to Vegas tours to canvass for Kerry and get Nevada to swing Blue this time around. What better way to spend a weekend than to immerse myself in politics and maybe a little poker?

This self-imposed no-poker bullshit is driving me nuts. If it weren't for work and school, I'd have the time and energy to devote to ring games. A little clarification: I know I said I was swearing off online poker, but really I've sworn off playing ring games at Party. I've got a few dollars in my Pacific account and play a few low buy-in SNGs now and again because they require only an hour of my time and I need the practice. So all you nit-picky bastards should piss off! That's right, I mean you, Glasstrack and eight23!

Talk about getting off-topic. I meant to go on about how I would ideally devote two-three hours every night (120-180 hands) to playing poker, but it's just not really feasible at this point. My degree program has a 400 hour internship requirement, and since I didn't do jackshit last year, I need to max out my internship hours from now until May to make sure I get it done. So far I'm just shy of the halfway mark, which means that I should have it cleared by January. A triumphant return to playing poker regularly would make a nice birthday present. Of course, as I've said before, winter break should give me a nice block of homework-free time (for better or worse) to devote to pounding the tables. Until then, it'll be the weekly game, the blogger tourney, Vegas, and the occasional Pacific SNG here at StudioGlyphic.

The Poker Blogger Tournament now counts 41 sign-ups. Remember, this is open to bloggers and readers, so go ahead and throw in your chips and get a piece of me.

Begin Rant:

Wireless networking cost me a SNG win last night. I was sitting on big slick on the button. MP/Big Stack limps, I limp (see PokerNerd), SB and BB go all-in with their short stacks. MP calls, I call. Flop is AXX, all hearts. I have the King of hearts. MP throws out a bet, and I'm about to raise him 6 times his bet when the wireless cuts out. By the time I reconnect, my hands been folded and BB sweeps the pot with a pair of aces. God damn technology! I don't know what his kicker was, but I will bet good money that it wasn't going to beat mine. BB and I end up heads up and he knocks me out in second when my J9o goes up against his sevens and I don't improve. Grr.

End Rant.

In other news, HD celebrates his one-year anniversary of poker/blogging over at the Cards Speak. Go on over and say howdy.

Back when there were fewer than twenty signed up, I didn't really think much about the upcoming blogger tourney. No expectation of winning, but no real feelings about it one way or the other. Now that the number of players is over thirty, I'm getting somewhat nervous. Last night I played a couple SNGs on PacificPoker and felt completely disoriented after having played a couple days of Omaha 8. I think I'll have to try out a few more SNGs this week in preparation for Thursday.

For those of you who want to watch, the tourney starts this Thursday at 9PM ET on PokerStars.com. You can open an account without putting any money in if you just want to watch from the rails. Look for the "Guinness and Poker Blog Tournament" under the Tournaments: Private tab.

None of this is really news, but this article by Ron Suskind in the New York Times Magazine helps bring the big picture back into focus: this election is about whether we want the country guided by idealogy and religious fundamentalism or by science and reason.

So here's a somewhat larger question. If there is a large minority group in this country who doesn't see their religion as separate from their politics, but rather uses politics to advance the cause of their religion, can a meaningful democracy survive? Faith is by definition not anchored or hindered by facts. And if we cannot agree on the facts, can we make policy through a consensus process? If there is no real solution for this quandary, does that mean we can only advance by excluding one another from the process? If the fundamentalists gain a majority share of the voting public, what would be the consequences? Imagine Pakistan with its nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the fundamentalists. Imagine North Korea building an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Call me a scare-mongerer, but I don't trust fundamentalists of any nationality. Bush must be defeated.

The Economist reports that the latest corporate tax bill is filled with pork:

Crazy. I was very dehydrated after last night's party and woke up this morning after only six hours of sleep. I had some chicken soup and some ramen to try to get myself rehydrated, but I still felt like crap. Then around 2:30 I decided to take a nap, and slept for five hours. Talk about shooting your day in the ass!

Quite unexpectedly I found myself in downtown this afternoon, which gave me an opportunity to go see Machine Samba speak at an art-political event at USC. Artists in different media came out to talk about politics in art and how they came to create art about politics. MS was there to talk about his comic book Tex!, George Bush, and the comic medium in general.

Afterwards we checked out the latest stop in Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising Tour, also at USC. The event was so-so, but it was great to see the thousands of students who were there to defeat Bush (AKA the Miserable Failure). There were also a bunch of Bush-supporters standing off to the side holding pro-Bush signs, anti-Moore signs, and chanting nonsense. Our protesters are better. Best of all, the voter registration tables were swamped after the event. That lying son of a bitch is going down.

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.

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

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.

Perhaps I have no discipline, as some have suggested, but I really can't deal with the whole school/work/poker thing. So aside from the Poker Blogger tournament, and short of an amazing bonus offer, I'm swearing off online poker (again) until winter break or I quit my job, whichever comes first.

By the way, anyone know any good sites for Omaha 8 strategy?

From the creators of South Park and Baseketball comes Team America: World Police featuring real live puppets! It may or may not be a politically motivated movie, but it's sure to be funny. Speaking of politically motivated movies, Fahrenheit 9/11 is available on DVD now. I still haven't seen it, but Glasstrack's got a copy, so I'll probably watch his.

Note: either Blogger or my hosting service was screwed up today so my blog was down for a bit. I know you missed it. Sorry.

Glasstrack and I decided to do our part for this year's election and hit up a precinct near our house, dropping off literature from the West LA Democratic Club. Basically, if you were a registered Democrat or Decline to State, you got one of our packets. It was great to see just how many Democratic or likely-to-vote-Democratic houses there were--probably 80-90% of the houses on each block. Now it's unlikely that California will go for Bush, but there are local races that could use more Democratic votes, and in some ways these local races are just as important as the federal races, so getting out the vote really can make a difference. For instance, if liberals and progressives do not contest seats in the local school board, you may have some religious fanatics dictating whether or not the science curriculum can teach evolution or whether sex education classes can talk about safe sex versus abstinence. The Republicans understand that winning involves contesting every single seat, from the water commission to the highest office in the land. If we want to have a voice in the way this country is run, we need to be involved in every single race, heart and soul.

And if you're reading this and you're not registered to vote at your current address with your current name, register now.

From my friend JS:

"here's a shot of the marquee at grand lake threatre, right around the corner."

Here's a closer look at the marquee:

"you'll notice the same theatre - and the owner allen - interviewed in the 'opening night' segment on the fahrenheit 911 dvd. he decided not to honor the restrictions of the r-rating."

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

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.

In a lot of ways, this is what it boils down to:

He also has this to say on weapons and how the invasion/aftermath was conducted:

What's FCW? I have no idea.

Vegas in 6 weeks. I can't wait.

In the meantime, here's some reading material from Wil Wheaton about playing poker in Vegas:

MT's also given the Mirage his seal of approval:

I don't have Grubby's bankroll, so no prize for guessing this one.

Top Gear reports that Audi has a new look for the A4:

What in God's name were they thinking? We've seen this new corporate grille on the A6, but that was accompanied by smooth, flowing, curves; I'm still reserving judgement on whether the A6 is a successful design. In the new A4, the pronounced snout and sneering headlights remind me of some kind of mechanical pig with wheels. Worse still, it seems they're trying to follow Bangle's design aesthetic, as seen in the new 5. According to the article, there's not much different under the skin either, which means that they're messing around with the car just for the sake of messing around.

Nader's a dick: "With polls showing a narrowing gap between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, independent candidate Ralph Nader said Sunday that he planned to continue campaigning in key battleground states in the final month of the presidential election."

I just signed up for the Poker Blogger Tournament on PokerStars. It's got one of the nicest interfaces I've seen, though JC insists that it drives him crazy.

PokerStars, if you'll remember, is where I started playing online poker, and where I got killed time and again. It's inhabited by generally good players, though the fish-count has gone up after every WSOP (PokerStars players won the last two). I'd probably stand a better chance now that I've gotten nearly 10,000 hands under my belt, but I'm still wary. Plus the +EV at the Party sites makes playing at any other site seem stupid.

Anyway, the Blogger Tourney is set for Thursday, October 21 at 9PM ET, open to everyone. Just use the password iggy2004 when registering for the "Guinness and Poker Blog Tournament" under the Tournaments: Private tab. Buy-in is $20+2. Format is no-limit. And StudioGlyphic is virtually guaranteed dead money. No bounty for knocking me out (yet).

Smoking the reefer.

PRI/WNYC's Studio 360 has a show this week on gambling featuring James McManus: