StudioGlyphic

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Slate Explainer:

The $28K Sandwich That Grew No Mold - How the Virgin Mary's grilled cheese stayed mold-free for 10 years.

With a winning bid of $28,000, the online casino GoldenPalace.com won the auction for one of eBay's most coveted oddities: a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich, one side of which bears the Virgin Mary's image. The seller, Diana Duyser of Hollywood, Fla., claims that the sandwich never sprouted a single spore of mold, despite having been stored in a less-than-airtight plastic box. Is it possible for a decade-old sandwich to remain mold-free without divine intervention?

This could be huge.

Korea Times: Korean Scientists Succeed in Stem Cell Therapy

Yahoo News (AFP): Paralyzed woman walks again after stem cell therapy

If you read this blog with any regularity (who does?), you'll probably realize that I'm very (i/co)mpulsive. One day I rule every table I touch, the next I ask that StudioGlyphic be taken off all the poker blogrolls since I obviously don't know what I'm doing and should stick to politics, cars, and other random crap. Oh, and it's all fairly boring. Like reading Bob Graham's personal journal:

"Went to lunch with Senator Dumski. Tuna salad on dry wheat with side of fruit. $9.34 + $1.16 tip. Good sandwich."

I think I have some other readily identifiable personality traits, but I won't go into them here.

I do know one thing: I love poker. And that's probably reason enough to write this crap when my bankroll's not swinging like Basie.

It really was a great table. The average flop percentage was 43%, with one player seeing flops in the high fifties, four in the forties, and two in the thirties. Mostly passive before and after the flop, with the exception of one guy who liked to raise a third of the hands he played. Lots of bad cards being played by all--any ace, any king, low suited 3 and 4 gappers, etc. With an environment like that, surely there was money to be made by a guy who had read a couple books, raised his good cards, folded the junk, and limped with speculative hands in good position. Surely.

Yeah, right.

I dropped 20BB and then another 10 (money to be made, right?) until I had 10BB left in my account. Great cards failed to connect, junk hands flopped the goddamn nuts, runner-runner and gutshot draws materialized on the river, etc. Every story is the same, isn't it?

Well, after a rocking performance like that, I decided to play a string of $10 SNG's until the money ran out. It did.

What I had left over I threw away at a PL table. The thing that sucks about that one is that I'd been doing well until I tried to muscle out the BB with my flopped two pair. I didn't ease off when the 3-flush and 4-flush appeared. I think some switch in my head was stuck. That hand didn't clean me out completely, but it brought me back to where I started. The rest I squandered in a classic AQ vs. AK confrontation.

That was that. I knew what I was doing. I just didn't care. I suppose that should worry me, being able to lose 20-25% of my bankroll without really feeling too worried about it. I think I'm actually more irritated that I spent most of my Saturday not doing my schoolwork and apps.

Anyway, with my Party bankroll out of the way, I put another $200 into Paradise and swept up 32BB in just under 2 hours/100 hands. Maybe I'm a crack smoker for extrapolating too much from my 1100 hands there, but I really do feel like I do better there than on Party (6800 hands in the last six months).

So for the time being, you're not likely to see me at your favorite Party skin; StudioGlyphic's going to Paradise.

I think I clocked a good 12 hours of poker today.

Played a lot of 1/2 on Party and managed to get a few big bets in, though the hourly was terrible. Or maybe it just felt terrible.

Later in the evening, JB and I went over to Hustler and played a few hours of 3/6. And I thought Party was bad. I never saw so many gutshot straights completed on the river. I myself suffered two bad beats from the same dude when I was the clear favorite all the way up to the river. I had a better hand, more outs, etc. Unfortunately, when I was finally able to beat the living hell out of him, I had to chop the pot with someone else who had the assrapers. I think there were over 20BB in that pot. It was crazy. The pot was capped preflop and on the flop between me and the other aces, and the other two guys happily called all the way to the showdown. Wow. Ended the session down 3BB, which isn't bad when you consider that I was bad beated twice and had to chop once. I also won two pots proper, one medium and one small, when my good cards held up. JB lost quite a bit more, and we went to Carbon to drown our sorrows in whiskey and gin. Actually, I was really irked. There was a lot of money on that table, and I felt I deserved more than my share of it. I played pretty solid poker, but tonight it was mostly just a race to avoid getting sucked out on. Oh well. It will be better next time.

That irksome feeling drove me to fire up Party when I got home and play more poker. I sat down at a 2/4 BBJ table that was registering "flops seen" somewhere in the 50% range--just slightly tighter than my table at Hustler. This game also featured some really aggressive play. Lots of betting out and raising on every street, which made for some huge variance. At some point I was down 5BB, at another I was up 15. I ended the session up an even 7.5BB, which is okay by me. I have a feeling that I got more than my fair share of good cards, but I also suffered a couple setbacks when I clearly had the best of it preflop, on the flop, on the turn, or some combination of the preceeding. Funny how those miracle 2-outers can save a pirahna from being crushed.

Anyway, I'm up for the day, and you can't really ask for much more than that.

Separate skin from breast with your hand. Pour a few tablespoons of brandy under the skin. Shove fresh rosemary, fresh bay leaves, peeled cloves of garlic, sliced onions, and sliced lemons (with the peel) under the skin and inside the body cavity. Fill rest of cavity with stuffing.

Roast turkey according to directions. Baste every 15 minutes. Don't use an oven bag.

Thanks to MG for the recipe.

From a friend of mine:

Day 2 is here.

As I write this, I've just finished my second beer. I may have a third. Forgive me if things get incoherent.

Let's get back to where we started from:

Today
Showers
High: 47°
Low: 42°

Eh? Showers? In the desert? Strange, but true, it sometimes rains in Vegas. What I didn't realize was that the low temperatures combined with the precipitation down in Vegas would translate into Rain/Snow Showers up in the mountains.

Oh God.

By the time we hit Primm on the California-Nevada border, traffic was starting to get bad. I chalked it up to LA drivers who weren't able to handle a little rain. It turned out to be icy/snowy conditions through the pass, bringing traffic to a near standstill. It took us four hours to travel from Primm to Baker. This normally takes one hour. For a good 10-15 miles, we were crawling along at 5 mph. Wow.

In fact, things got so bad that they closed the pass to traffic after we got through. CR, ER, EM, and D went down 95 to I-40 to try to get around the trouble, but there was snow all through the mountains, making travel very difficult. Highway patrol escorts were all around trying to help people down the icy slopes. It was that bad. Just think about what happens when North Carolina gets hit with their annual snowstorm. All hell breaks loose and the state virtually shuts down. Even now, I have no idea if these guys have made it back home or not. I guess I'll find out in the morning.

JN and K played it smart and got a room in Primm. I once crashed at Whiskey Pete's after staying up all night at the New York New York gambling and trying to drive home the next morning. Wasn't going to happen. We got a room for $20 and crashed for a glorious four hours before heading home. I hope K's running roughshod over Pete's blackjack tables. Pete's is the site for the last desperate attempt of the degenerate gambler to win it all back. Today we stopped by to use the facilities, and I had a look at the roulette tables, but the smell of desperation drove me away.

Anyway, getting back to me, I finally got home 9 hours after leaving Vegas. Unbelievable. I did, however, enjoy the Texas Beef Dip at Bun Boy, site of the largest outdoor thermometer on the way to Vegas (okay, in the world). It occurred to me that this might have been called a French Dip before the Bush administration. No French Fries on the menu either. ;) Oh, but anyway, the Texas Beef Dip was pretty damn good. Slices of beef on a Texas roll (no way in hell is this a French roll) with melted cheese and beef juice (no way in hell is this au jus) on the side. Good freedom fries, too. If you ever need to do the LA-Vegas beef sandwich dip tour, just drop me a line and I'll set you on your way.

So that was pretty much it. Saturday spilled over into Sunday, and Sunday was mostly a clusterfuck of traffic and aggravation.

Mostly. Being the degenerate gambler that I am, I played another few spins of roulette before and after lunch at the Tuscany and netted another $30 or so.

All in all, I had a great time in Vegas. I played decent poker, netting 3BB/hour; thrust most of the weekly regulars into live poker with pretty good results, thus adding several recruits for the local casino outings; had lots of booze and cigarettes; and paid for the trip with some unlikely success at roulette, allowing me to keep my poker earnings in the roll. Oh, and I'm never driving to Vegas ever again.

Thanks for plowing through this stuff. Not the most exciting of trip write-ups, I know, but I'm hoping to make more trips, and with practice, I'll surely improve. I'm still not sure if my schedule will allow me to get out there for the Holiday Classic on the 11th, but if there's any way to finagle it, I'm there.

Totals:

Poker: +$130
Roulette: +$220

On a geeky poker side note, should tips for drinks be paid out of your stack/roll or out of your wallet? JB thinks the line is drawn depending on whether whiskey is part of your game. He may have a point. Several people wondered at the number of whiskey neats I consumed. What that did for my table image exactly is yet to be determined.

Day 1 is here.

Wow, what a rough day. We all clocked at least five hours at the tables, but for yesterday's biggest winners, things were terribly awry.

After eating at the Monte Carlo's lunch buffet, the superstitious among us wanted to return to Excalibur instead of trying a new poker room. So we went back and sat down with our chips at the 2-6 spread limit tables, this time with even higher expectations. I was getting crap left and right, and never had a hand worth raising. After a couple missed draws and several blinds, I found myself down a third of my buy-in. Of course, I'd also had three Jim Beans and a few bottles of water, so that ate into my stack a bit. There was only one pot I can remember winning, and that was with KQo in middle position. I limped with a bunch of callers and flopped top pair. I raised a $4 bet from seat 9 to $10. I don't remember how many callers I had, but seat 9 folded to the raise. I bet both the turn and river and the calling station in seat 5 folded after missing his draw, or so he says. That was an okay pot, but still left me down. So with two-thirds of my buy-in left, I picked up my chips, filled my rack and decided to try out the $100 NL table. I was getting dealt the same crap I was getting at the limit table. I limped with a lot more hands, but never connected to the flop in any meaningful way. I got up down $20 and decided to take a break. Losing $20 an hour wasn't really what I had in mind when I sat down. I needed a change in venue.

The spread limit game at Excalibur's pretty odd as spread limit games go. With a $2 blind and no pre-flop raises, there's usually going to be $10-16 in the pot on the flop. If the flop hits you, you're best off betting the maximum. That means the pot's giving 2.6-3.6 for any callers. Of course with the loose games your implied odds go up pretty high, but that's still a pretty steep price to pay to see a turn. And of course you will be getting plenty of callers who will be making the mistake of calling you, so it can be pretty profitable. Of course, with the possibility of every round being bet at the maximum, the turn and river are just as expensive as the flop, which may have implications I haven't realized. The obvious one is that your pot odds don't go down as drastically. Someone's incorrect flop call could be followed by a correct call on the turn, though the odds are still pretty bad for the loosey.

As for the other players, JB and ER were also having a rough time of it. JB mucked a hand at the showdown for a big pot early on and hadn't noticed that the board had counterfeited the fish's riverred straight. Conceding his half of the pot put him a little on tilt until his buy-in was almost gone. He took a little break to clear his head and jumped back into the fray with another buy-in. ER also faced a very similar situation to mine, and was down $20-30.

CR, on the other hand, was up for the day and the weekend, with double his buy-in sitting in front of him. What a monster. This was a nice thing for him after recording the only loss of the group on Friday.

EM had recorded another 10BB win before getting up and was ready to move on to another poker room. The others decided to stick with the Excalibur.

EM and I decided to give the Luxor poker room a try. They had 2-4, 4-8, and NL games going. I sat down in Seat 4 at a 2-4 table (felt a bit anxious after losing 10BB to cards and drink) and EM took Seat 8 at the 2-4 table next to mine. The blinds at Luxor were the standard half small bet, small bet blinds. They did, however, have this odd feature called the "kill." If a person won a pot twice in a row, the game changed from 2-4 to 3-6. The two-time winner got a "kill" marker and had to post a $3 SB. Blinds were still $1 and $2, but it was $3 to call, and both blinds had to complete to play.

Luxor went well for me, but I happened to get lucky in two hands. Q4o in the BB flopped trips and, strangely enough, got plenty of action. SB checked, I bet, UTG+1 called, MP1 raised, I 3-bet, UTG+1 folded, and MP1 called. The turn put a two-flush on the board. I bet, MP1 called. The river put a three-flush on the board. I bet, MP1 folded, and the button remarked that I had to have had either the flush or the 4. I swept the pot gratefully and tossed my Q4 into the muck.

A couple orbits later, a newish player in Seat 3 won two pots in a row, and the next hand became a kill. With the increase in limits and the added money in the pot, this was the perfect time to play Big Slick suited in LP. There was at least one limper in MP before I raised to 2SB. The button called and the MP limper called. The two-time winner let his kill blind go. Flop came AKQ rainbow and I was pretty damn happy. Checked to me, I bet, the button raised, MP 3-bet, I capped, button called, and MP called, but not before he announced "raise," to which the dealer informed him that the betting had been capped. I had put the button on AQ, but in the midst of the action, I couldn't figure out if MP had trips or a straight. I'd discounted two pair because half the kings and queens were spoken for, so I guess I should have discounted the possibility of trips, too. Hearing him announce a raise he couldn't make made me think he'd limped with JT. Oh, the humanity. I was determined to call this hand down to find out for sure. Turn brought a 9, which was unlikely to help anyone. MP bet, I called, Button called. River brought a glorious King, which was unlikely to help anyone but me. MP bet, I raised, Button mucked in disgust, and MP said "Don't tell me you got the full house on the river." I showed him my boat and he showed me his straight. As I swept the $100 pot, he said, "Nice river." While I probably shouldn't have responded, I said, "Well, you did call my raise with jack-ten." I at least had the good sense not to comment on the shakiness of his call in the first place. He then said something about how he would have had me in NL, to which I responded that I would have pushed with top two pair, a point he conceded.

I ended that session up $67 and some change (hard to say how many big bets that is, since a lot of it came from that 3-6 hand), which netted me $10 for the day. EM won 7-8BB at her table and decided she'd had her fill. We headed back to the Excalibur and found the other three still grinding away. JB was up a bit with his second buy-in, giving him a net positive for the trip. ER was down a bit and still determined to finish up. CR had lost most of his earlier gains by playing crap cards. I've had a few sessions of win-tilt myself, where nothing short of my previous high will be sufficient, and I'll throw good money after bad. It's a harsh lesson to learn, but he recognized that he wasn't doing any good at that table and decided to get up. But it was clear that ER and JB weren't going anywhere, so CR stuck around to wait for them. EM and I wandered over to the bar where JN and K were playing video poker and drinking some awful concoction pretending to be a margarita. They happened to be sitting right under the air conditioning vent, so EM and I wandered over to the roulette table for some more -EV madness. I hit one of my numbers again and made another $70. I decided to wander away when I was at double my initial buy-in. Roulette is an evil, evil game. I recommend you stay away.

Some parts of Vegas have become very expensive. We were planning to go to a club that night and wanted to get a nap in before heading out, so we had to grab a quick bite before heading back to the Tuscany. My cheesesteak sandwich, fries, and large soda came to $16 at the Nathan's in the MGM food court. Unbelievable. And the fries weren't even that great. But when you're short on time, the temperature's in the forties, and you've only got the short-sleeved shirt you were wearing when you left that morning, $16 sounds almost reasonable.

By 11:30, all of us had gotten back to the Tuscany and were ready to go. First stop was Caesar's, where we were supposedly on the guest list. Hip hop's not really my thing, and the club was very loud and very hip hop. So I was not quite disappointed to find out that the guest list required one to be there by 11PM, not midnight. We headed over to Paris to kick back at the Tower Bar, only to find that it had closed an hour earlier. The bar in the center of the casino was open, but it was pretty full, and the odds of finding a table for eight people would have been not great. Probably 22:1, at least. Finally we decided to hit up Risque, the other club for whom we were supposedly on the guest list. The guy in the suit said he couldn't find us, so we debated whether to wait in line and pay the full cover or not when some random guy walked up and offered us 7 comp passes for the club. Being the cheap, desperate bastards we are, we got in line with our passes. K stepped out of line and sweet-talked some other person into handing him an 8th pass, and we were set. Hip hop's not really my thing, and... yada yada. But we were in, we were drinking, and a few of us were dancing and making the most of a drunken deafening experience. It was a good time. I never thought I'd close out a club in Vegas, but I'm starting to realize that the nightlife in Vegas kinda sucks unless you want to make a show of spending thousands of dollars in the desert on mediocrity. Actually, it sucks even then.

I'd said earlier that I wouldn't recommend the Tuscany to anyone, but when we got back to our room, JB and I decided to hit up the cafe for some late night food. It turns out they have a $1 breakfast special between the hours of 2AM and 6AM, or something like that, and it was a more than decent breakfast. Considering it was only $1, I'd say that it was an amazing breakfast, and compared to some other Vegas meals, a positive $15 savings for me. Not bad. So would I recommend the Tuscany now? Actually, yes, yes I would. You've got all the Strip to choose from if you want to spend money. It's much, much harder to find a place with a $1 breakfast.

Oh, and being the degenerate gambler I am, I played another few spins of roulette and netted another $30 or so, bringing me up to $70 for the day. Evil, evil game.

Day 3 is here.

Vegas is awesome.

By the time we drove into town this afternoon, I had been up for seven hours on five hours of sleep. Man. Last time I was here on a gambling trip, I swore I'd never drive again, but being a full time student gives you a different perspective on things. Like airfare. Airfare's expensive!

So we checked in at the Tuscany Suites and Casino and were mildly disappointed. A very large room with a kitchen area does not a suite make. But at least the rate was low and nothing seemed too moldy or ratty. And the fact that it's a small little hotel makes getting stuff from your car to your room pretty damn convenient. Would I recommend this place to anyone? Not if you can stay on the Strip for the same price. But it'll be more than adequate in a pinch. You could be staying, after all, at the Tropicana. Ugh. I don't know why they keep that place around.

The first order of business was food. You can't drink and gamble on an empty stomach. Well, you could, but you and your game would likely suffer. So we tried out this decent Asian fusion restaurant at the Venetian and then headed back to the Tuscany to ditch the car. Of course, once we got back, lethargy set in and I ended up napping for the good part of an hour.

We finally headed out to the Excalibur by limousine around 6:30 and checked out the poker room. They've got some weird spread limit, micro-blind games there. For example, in 2-6, there's only one $2 blind. It's $2 to call, and bets and raises can be anywhere from $2-$6 at any stage. Four bets max. Several of the group wanted to steel their nerves (they've got even less live experience than me!) so we hit the bar for a couple rounds, then headed back.

For the first orbit and a half, I got junk. Played A2s on the button with plenty of limpers, but missed the flop completely. Lots of suited rags that would probably completely fail to give me a winning hand. I think two straights ended up chopping it. Then I got the Hiltons on the blind. There was a limp, a $6 raise, and two calls. I 3-bet and got some callers. Flop was all low cards. Possible low straight. I bet out and got a couple callers. Turn brought another card for the straight. I bet out and got a couple callers. River brought a Jack. I bet out and got one caller. When I showed my queens, the other guy mucked, and I took down a $70 pot. Those sweet, sweet sisters.

Less than two orbits later I got the Hiltons again. I raised from EP, but it got folded all around, netting me $2.

Got KQs in MP but the flop missed me completely and I folded on the flop.

Got the assrapers in EP and raised. Several callers this time, half of whom jumped ship on the raggedy flop. The turn brought no threats and the river gave me a set. Don't know what the one remaining caller had, but it must have lost since another $70 pot was coming my way.

Got K7s in the CO, but made a mistake on the flop. Flop came AX7 with the ace giving me the nut backdoor flush draw. Checked around to the button who bet $6. Now with a large enough pot, it might be worth calling the bet. This pot was only $6-8 and his bet gave me 2:1 on a hand with not enough outs. At any rate, I did the stupid thing and called, then folded the turn when it gave me no help.

When I got up, I had been playing for 90-100 minutes, and was up over 20BB. JB from the weekly game had already cashed in his chips and was up almost 17BB. We talked about our winnings a bit and then headed over to the bar for another drink. ER came over a few minutes later with an extra 20BB weighing down her purse. EM was up 10BB. Needless to say, we were all pretty psyched. For the last week I had been telling the weekly game that they had nothing to worry about playing against the tourists in Vegas, that they were all better players than most of the players I've encountered live and online, but I think they just had to experience it themselves to really know. The only one from our weekly game who lost money was CR, who was down 10-11BB, but he was getting some bad cards and missed flops.

After our drinks we decided to go eat a late dinner at the Raffles Cafe at Mandalay Bay. It's funny how the walk from Excalibur to Mandalay can be so much more pleasureable when you've got four winners in your group. By the way, I recommend the "Prime Directive" at the Raffles. It's a french dip sandwich with thinly sliced prime rib. Very good stuff. As for the Raffles Cafe itself, it's decent, I guess, but I've been to the actual Raffles hotel in Singapore, and this is nothing like it.

Well, between the drive, the early start, the two meals, and all the drinks, I was wiped out. We all were. So instead of heading back to the poker room, we grabbed a cab back to the Tuscany and met up with a couple more friends in the bar. They had just gotten in from LA, so they wanted to hit the hotel casino for some -EV games.

Watching someone play blackjack is really boring. I decided to wander over to my guilty -EV pleasure roulette and throw $10 away. As it turned out, the little ball stopped on one of my numbers and paid me $70. I played another two spins and decided to cash out my $50. After I came back from the cashier, I saw that bitch of a game hit my numbers three more times. I decided that risking another $20 was worth it and hit another one of my numbers again. $70. Two spins later, another $70. After a couple more spins with nothing hitting, I cashed out my $120. I watched some more of the blackjack game, and then decided to press my luck for a third time. Poof. $20 gone. Goodbye, roulette. What a God-awful game.

But now I've doubled my winnings for the day, and I'm determined to log some serious seat time at the poker tables tomorrow. I'm tired as hell. Can barely keep my eyes open to type this. The miscellaneous section of SSHE will have to go unread tonight.

Day 2 is here.

Currently: 47°
High: 66°
Low: 46°

ETA: 13:00

The Boston Globe has the good news:

* Nationwide, 51.6 percent of eligible voters under 30 voted this month. This is nine percentage points over the turnout in 2000 and an increase of 33%.

* In battleground states, turnout was 64.4 percent.

I think that's pretty fantastic. The traditional lower turnout among younger voters leads to a political process that skews toward the demands and point of view of older Americans. Not that that's bad, but it is imbalanced.

The Globe also notes that the Kerry vote (54% vs. 44%) was more anti-Bush than pro-Kerry, so this represents an opportunity to get this age cohort to reject the right-wingers of the GOP consistently, but also challenges the Democrats to put forward candidates and leaders who inspire.

Sometimes April comes around twice a year.

Me. Grubs. SirFWALGMan. BadBlood. The Nerd. GZA.

Watch the tilt, boys: "Poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgement," turned her 120BB loss into a 300BB bust. Eeks.

Thanks to braichu for the link (Flash required).

Simple answer #1: pay everyone off.

The rationales:

Don't believe that someone called your 3SB pre-flop raise with a 3 when two of them hit the flop.

Don't believe that someone raised 1SB pre-flop with anything that could make use of the two 3's that hit the flop. Hey, I see a pattern here.

Push with your trips and a flush draw when your opponent has a boat.

Simple answer #2: turn into a weak player when someone minimum raises your two pair on the flop.

Part of the problem is that the loose tables I'm targeting also tend to have a few aggressive players. The upside is great; the downside equally great. I'm far too eager to want to get a piece of the action for my own good.

Got some advice on weekend trip bankroll requirements from Jeremy (presumably of Love and Casino War):

"I don't recommend 160 BB as the minimum for a four-day trip for the simple reason that if you lose over 80 BB, you're going to be on tilt."

Tilting is what I do best. Especially after getting an ego-stroking initial upward trajectory (e.g., going from +60BB to - 60BB yesterday). But okay: 4/8, 2 x $4 = 8, $8 x 20 = $160, $160 x 3 = $480. Hmm. Even if I'd wanted to lose 80BB, I wouldn't be able to. Heh.

I also asked Iggy what he thought about roll requirements in Vegas and he said:

"bring yer roll. all 600 - i would"

Basically all of this wondering about how much money to bring is a big exercise in wasting time: my bankroll's not big enough for such concerns. The real question is whether I will tilt my meager roll away in the next few days playing on Party?

Another question is, can I get through Pot-Limit and No-Limit Poker and Small Stakes Hold 'EM in time for the trip?

Vegas!

It's a little hard to tell from this angle, but Elle is lying on top of Mr. Excitement.

Beat this:

God damn I'm excited. I've been looking forward to this for two months and it's finally here! Here's what MT has to say about poker in Vegas...

Check out the post from two months ago for HD and Halverson's advice on Vegas.

And if any of you are going to be there next weekend (19-21), send me a howdy. As much as I'd like to join the big blogfest in December, I have this suspicion I'll be working on my finals then. I also have no idea whether next weekend's trip will be positive or negative EV for me. If it's negative, there goes my bankroll in one glorious flash of booze and cards! If it's positive, you'll never hear the end of it.

That last post was pretty silly. The only thing more dangerous than whiskey and poker is whiskey and blogging. Happy Friday.

I know, there's nothing to be gleaned from 158 hands of really unprofitable limit hold 'em, but damn it, as soon as I lost 20BB tonight at 1/2, I tossed Lee Jones off to the side, sashayed on over to the NL tables, and made 20BB. Too bad it was the $25 NL table.

At any rate, maybe I suck at limit, but when you're seeing the flop only 16% of the time and your big pairs get smacked around by flushes and flopped straights, it drives you crazy. By contrast, some fishy NL wannabes called several of my big bets preflop and got crushed. And I wasn't even playing that well. Long live NL!

Maybe careful study of Small Stakes Hold 'EM (which should arrive Monday) will yield me some better results, but I really don't know. As I said before, I was pounding the tables at Paradise, which means one of several things: I was having a good run at Paradise, I can only beat the kinds of players who inhabit Paradise, or I've been having a bad run at Party.

At any rate, I hope the limit tables at the Monte Carlo are a whole lot like Paradise Poker.

JC missed this week.

    This week  Cumulative  Average

CR    -$0.50      +$4.55    +$0.30

EM    -$4.55     -$21.40    -$1.26

ER    +$5.30     +$11.65    +$0.83

JB    +$3.45      -$2.75    -$0.17

Me    -$3.70      -$1.00    -$0.06

We mixed things up by making it dealer's choice a la Maudie's home game. Surprisingly enough, we did not play any Hold 'Em. Instead we played Heinz 57, the Jake (5 draw with Deuces wild), Chicago, Follow the Queen, Omaha 8, and Baseball.

It was a tough night for me. I'm not a stud player, and the wild cards make it particularly tough to figure out whether to pursue my draw or just fold my hand at the earliest opportunity. The wild cards also have the effect of making more people go to showdown more often. It's tough to bet someone out if their two wild cards give them 3-4 different draws. Found myself with the second best hand a few times--forcing me to re-buy halfway through and try to make back some of my losses.

Omaha 8 was a painful experience--not because it's a complex game, which it is, but because everyone was bitching and moaning about how much they hated it, didn't understand it, or whatever. Which doesn't make sense in light of the craziness of wild card games, but I guess those games appeal to their inner gambler.

ER and JB made out like bandits, catching lots of wilds and hole cards. Another session like this, and JB will be in positive territory for the first time since I started keeping track four months ago.

Found my friend's copy of Winning Low-Limit Hold'em last night under a pile of stuff and flipped through a few pages. It's embarrassing how little of it I've actually absorbed. The first time I read the book I thought, "Yeah, this stuff all makes sense," but I was probably on a rush at the time, so I just barreled through it without really incorporating it into my game. I think a lot of my impatience with, and lackluster results in, limit owes a lot to my not playing it as aggressively as I should. I'm letting my favorite offsuit one-gappers and suited two-gappers (Q9s anyone?) erode my stack, and I'm not pumping the pot enough when my cards and position give me an advantage. I'm going to have to reread this one and see if I can stick to his guidelines for a thousand hands or so. I'll let you all know what happens.

On that note, I've decided to put together a reading list using some of my profits. What would you recommend? for low stakes limit? for pot/no limit? for tournament play? for poker in general? Small Stakes Hold 'em is on the list. Should I read The Theory of Poker, or will it give this English major an aneurysm?

I'm fairly ready to take back what I said about the Republicans using an anti-gay agenda to their advantage. Several sources have stated that the evangelical turnout wasn't necessarily as proportionally large as may have been initially stated. I decided to run a regression analysis on the state by state results:

Dependent:

% Bush margin (e.g., 9.83% in Arkansas, -10.29% in California)

Independent:

Density (natural log of population/area, from Census 2004 population estimates)

% college-educated (percentage of population over 25 with bachelors degree or higher, from Census 2000 SF3)

Median income in 1999 (natural log of Census 2000 SF3 data)

Anti-gay ballot initiative (1 for yes, 0 for no)

Results:

R Square 	 0.65 


                    Coeff.  t Stat

Intercept           -1.30   -0.75

Density (ln)        -0.07   -5.51

College or Higher   -2.07   -3.64

Median Income (ln)   0.21    1.20

Gay Ballot           0.04    0.89

I took out the ballot initiative and ran the analysis again:

R Square 	 0.64


                    Coeff.  t Stat

Intercept           -0.99   -0.58

Density (ln)        -0.08   -5.60

College or Higher   -2.11   -3.72

Median Income (ln)   0.18    1.06

State     Actual  Predicted

Nevada     2.62%    30.64%

Maine     -8.79%    13.00%

DC       -80.27%   -60.43%

Virginia   8.64%    -8.46%

Nebraska  34.48%    15.81%

Utah      44.72%    11.95%

Just finished clearing the bonus at Paradise and ended up with 2.5 times my buy-in. So now I'm faced with a choice, do I keep playing at Paradise or move the bankroll over to Party? Here are my stats at different levels:

Paradise 1/2: 1021 hands, VP$IP 23.02, 7.95BB/100 hands

Party 1/2 (since June): 5601 hands, VP$IP 21.32, 1.08BB/100 hands

Party $25PL (since June): 3900 hands, VP$IP 33.56, 5.84BB/100 hands

Party $25NL (since June): 1455 hands, VP$IP 28.45, 9.15BB/100 hands

Since late August I've mostly played PL and NL at Party. Not really sure why I played 1/2 at Paradise, but that's just how it turned out. Anyway, if you have any thoughts on what the best course of action is, let me know (email or comments). Personally I like putting in short hit and run NL sessions and then going off and bragging about it to anyone who'll listen. The brag/play time ratio is very high.

And just for kicks, here are my stats since I started using PT back in March:

All levels/sites: 24773 hands, VP$IP 22.73, 1.97BB/100 hands

Yep. That's what happens to your win rate when you bust out twice. Each time I kept back a little profit, so it wasn't completely devastating to bust out, but it still sucks.

With a name like Diary of a Poker Slut, Ms. Amandalicious is sure to get lots of hits from the Y-dominated poker blog community, no matter how small her bankroll, or the limits she plays. Now the smart money would do what she's doing--playing nickel/dime limit and penny no limit--but I never claimed to be smart money. I've only recently gotten the bankroll in a position to handle the swings of 1/2, and I've been known to risk my $10 Empire bonus at $25 PL (running that up a couple hundred dollars, I might add). But enough about me; check out the poker slut for writing that makes you want more.

Great. Another blog to waste away my day.

Eighty: Percentage of bonus I've cleared.

Two point twenty-five: The number of times I've increased my initial buy-in, including bonuses. Just under two without the bonuses.

Seven: The number of days I've played.

It's really hard to believe. I don't feel like I'm playing great, winning poker, and my time constraints relegate me to playing only an hour here and there. So a lot of this is just making out like a bandit on two or three hands and folding the rest. So I'm left to wonder if I'm just on a good run or if something about Paradise players makes them give it up when I've got the dominant hand. Obviously if it's the latter, I should keep playing there. It's still too early to say for sure (936 hands--mostly at 1/2), but I'm liking the 9.96BB/100 hands.

Here's another number:

Thirteen: the number of days before I hit the tables in Fabulous Las Vegas! Hopefully I'll keep up this current run and have enough in the bankroll to fund the entire trip.

So here's a question for you Vegas gamboolers out there: you should sit down at a table with 20BB according to Love and Casino War (and have an extra 20BB to rebuy if you feel you can beat the table) and your bankroll should have 300BB to play at a particular limit according to The Cards Speak (and others as well, but that's where I recall first seeing the number). How many big bets should you take with you for a Friday - Sunday Vegas trip? I think you can safely assume that I'll be at the tables at least an average of eight hours a day.

Played another hundred hands at Paradise last night and made a decent number of big bets, despite losing a largish pot to a river flush at 2/4. I take back what I said earlier about Paradise being loose-passive. After 15 sessions and 700 hands (which is still far too few), it seems they skew more toward loose-aggressive. That said, I seem to see more people fold to turn and river bets than at the usual Party table. At any rate, I'm probably a bit more than halfway to clearing all the bonuses, so we'll see if I decide to keep playing. I'm making 10BB/100 hands and have nearly doubled my initial buy-in (including bonuses), but the variance is pretty high and the games feel really slow. Two-tabling helps, but there really aren't enough players to sustain much of that. I suspect I'll cash out when I've cleared the bonuses and go hunt down the next bonus whoring opportunity.

As the results came in Tuesday night, I started to get depressed as I saw the red sweep across the country. When they finally called Florida for Bush, it was clear that Kerry would only be able to win by winning Ohio and 1 or 2 of the remaining states. Kerry had slight margins in the upper Midwest, but the other states were looking better for Bush and most of the precincts had reported in.

At this point, Bush was already ahead by 2-3% of the popular vote. That's the thing that killed me. This was supposed to be the election where anti-Bush sentiment and anger over 2000 swept millions of people to the polls. And it did. But a slightly greater number of people went to the polls to vote for Bush. After all we've been through in the last four years, the fact that 59 million people thought George Bush should be President was infuriating.

Then again, Kerry garnered 56 million votes, and as Glasstrack pointed out, these weren't people who necessarily loved Kerry. But we can be pretty sure they disagree with the Bush administration's record and agenda. That makes me feel better. It's a base from which we can build.

Furthermore, a big part of that Republican turnout was due to anti-gay marriage initiatives on ballots as well as a generally anti-gay campaign in the states that mattered. The news organizations refuse to translate for us, but the Bush-voters who said that "values" were most important really meant that "God hates fags." According to Jerry Falwell, that's one of the reasons why God allowed 9/11 to happen. If we keep tolerating homosexuals and liberals in this country, we'll see more Blue States attacked by Islamic fundamentalists doing God's will. Funny, that's how they see it, too.

But I digress.

So the campaign sort of boiled down to anti-Bush vs. anti-Gay, in my opinion, and anti-Gay won. For me, gay marriage is not really that big of a deal--I see it as an equal protection issue--and that's why this result completely blindsided me. Talk about stealth! But this makes me feel better because it means that a single issue pushed Republicans over the top by driving evangelicals out to the polls, and a single issue can be defused or sidestepped in the future. Plus you can't amend your state Constitution twice.

But let's get this straight:

If the Democrats are going to be successful in the future, they're going to have to go deep into swing state territory and get some human intelligence about what really matters to people. They've got to contest every seat from the top to the bottom, and run every campaign precinct by precinct, person to person. We did a pretty good job this time, but the Republicans are better at this than we are.

And finally, let's get a graphic that makes our 50-50 split actually look 50-50:

County by county, who voted for whom, and by what number of votes?

The first weekly game after the election. ER missed out due to election-related issues.

    This week  Cumulative  Average

CR    -$1.00      +$5.05    +$0.36

EM    -$5.00     -$16.85    -$1.05

JB    +$4.95      -$6.20    -$0.41

JC    +$4.15     +$19.70    +$1.31

Me    -$3.10      +$2.70    +$0.17

JB made an outstanding comeback after getting low on chips early on.

As for the rest, not much change in position from last week.

What does the 2000 Census tell us about the Blue and Red states?

Not much, according to a regression analysis, but click the graphic to see the full HTML file.

It looks like this year, Ohio will decide the election. I hope Kerry and the Democrats are able to take the state for the good of the country. This doesn't change the fact that 57 million Americans voted for Bush. If the election were decided on the popular vote alone, then this would be over. Hopefully a Kerry victory in Ohio would not only set the country on a new path, but incite the Republicans to start talking about real reform of our federal election system. What we have now is a crock of shit.

For the record, here's how I'm voting. We'll see how my votes match up with those of my fellow Californians:

I'm voting Democrat up and down the ballot. Without any reservations, either. If D. Feinstein or M. Waters were on my ballot, that'd be a different story. With them, I might abstain.

For the judges, I'm voting against all the criminal prosecutors, which is mostly matched by the LA Weekly's recommendations. The one where we differ, I defer to the judgment of my liberal attorney roommate.

By default, I'd like to vote NO on most propositions. I belive in republicanism, representative government, etc. This direct democracy crap is completely manipulated by people with the biggest soap box, which usually rests on millions of dollars of cash. That said, as long as I gotta choose, here's how I chose:

Proposition 1A: Protection of Local Government Revenues
Yes. Sounds like a good idea.

Proposition 59: Public Records, Open Meetings
Yes! More openness in government.

Proposition 60: Election Rights of Political Parties
No. I'm for open primaries. See Prop 62.

Proposition 60A: Surplus Property
No. This sounds like a bad idea. Whatever problems we have with the budget should not be dealt with by selling off our assets. It's like selling your car to pay off your credit cards.

Proposition 61: Children's Hospital Projects. Grant Program
No. It's a good cause, but we shouldn't be taking on more debt for this kind of program.

Proposition 62: Elections. Primaries
Yes. Open primaries! As liberal as I may be, I think this type of system will better reflect the will of the people. Less hijacking of the primaries by activists. Whatever I may think of the Goobernator and the recall election, he got the popular vote, which would not have been possible in a closed primary process. The wingnuts would have eaten him alive for his pro-choice, pro-education, pro-environment stances.

Proposition 63: Mental Health Services Expansion, Funding. Tax on Personal Incomes above $1 Million
Yes. I just think this is funny. Probably not a good way to fund other things in the future, but just this once, it'd be pretty funny.

Proposition 64: Limit on Private Enforcement of Unfair Business Competition Laws
No. The right to sue protects consumers. I back individuals before faceless, deathless corporate entities. That said, if some attorney is abusing this law, let him be disbarred, but don't take away my rights.

Proposition 65: Local Government Funds, Revenues. State Mandates
No. No more voter-approved budgets!

Proposition 66: Limitations on "Three Strikes" Law. Sex Crimes. Punishment
Yes. Three strikes was a bad law. Now it'll be better. I signed the petition earlier this year, too. The guy was trying to argue the case that it'll save us money, which is true, but seriously, that argument should pale in comparison to the injustice of a mandatory sentence that may not fit the crime.

Proposition 67: Emergency Medical Services. Funding. Telephone Surcharge
No. Good idea, wrong way to raise the funds.

Proposition 68: Non-Tribal Commercial Gambling Expansion. Tribal Gaming Compact Amendments. Revenues, Tax Exemptions
No. No good reason. And I'm a gambler, too!

Proposition 69: DNA Samples. Collection. Database. Funding
No. Innocent until proven guilty is the rule of law. Until convicted, you have a right to privacy. Probably unconstitutional anyway, so why bother?

Proposition 70: Tribal Gaming Compacts. Exclusive Gaming Rights. Contributions to State
No. No good reason.

Proposition 71: Stem Cell Research. Funding. Bonds
Yes, with reservations. It's additional spending, but could potentially pay for itself with innovations, new businesses, new jobs, etc. We need to invest in science and education generally. The question is, does this promote one field over other fields that are also deserving? Is this another giveaway to private biotech companies to make money off public research? One thing's for sure, it's a fuck you to the GOP's fundamentalist wing.

Proposition 72: Health Care Coverage Requirements
Yes. This is a flawed implementation, but it's a first step until Kerry gets his health plan through Congress. Also, since Walmart games the system to get the state to subsidize their employees anyway, this law closes that loophole.

Local Measures

Measure A: Public Safety, Emergency Response and Crime Prevention -- Los Angeles County
No. Good idea, wrong way to raise the funds.

What is it about Market Analysis that makes me launch a poker game? I don't do that in any other class... anyway, I tried out some more 1/2 at Paradise and found myself up against a lot more aggression than my earlier experience would indicate. One guy was seeing 70% of the flops and raising 40% of the time. Wow. Had a bad run early on in two separate sessions when the flop would just miss me completely. The nice thing about the loose aggressive types is that they don't believe you, even when you check-raise them. So I had guys calling me all the way to the river when I had trips, the boat, quads, or whatever, making my good hands profitable enough to net gains in both sessions. Cleared another 10% of the bonus while I was at it. As for the Grublog Poker Classic, it's not looking good for me. That Sunday's the day I come back from Vegas, and a friend is throwing a birthday party. After 2.5 days of gambling and drinking, I'm not sure I'll be up for doing anything when I return.

Daniel Benjamin sums it up in this essay on why the Bush administration allowed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to live when he was in their sights:

Nothing too notable in a known filmmaker and historian endorsing a candidate, but Burns' case for "John Kerry, the conservative choice" is somewhat more eloquent than others I've seen.

Every once in a while, Ford does something right:

That's the Shelby GR-1. Not as stunning as the Ford GT. Looks a bit like an Aston Martin with braces. But much, much better than the previous concept car.

If having a 420bhp 6L V8 means you're a sexy automobile, the Brabus Viano V8 is a sexy automobile for nuclear families:

Here in the States, this would be the ultimate sleeper. Yep. You'd whip me at every stoplight.

Top Gear reports that the Honda Legend, available in the US and Japan, is coming to the UK. Um. What? As far as I know, we don't have a Honda or Acura that looks like this:

Stranger still, this Honda features a 3.5-litre V6 that puts out 300bhp and AWD. Here's Honda's Japanese Legend site.

Haven't been able to play very much poker this weekend, but I did find some time to log a couple hundred hands at Paradise. The next poker blogger tournament will be the Grublog Poker Classic II on November 21 at Paradise Poker. Sign up today with the bonus code on Grubby's page and get a 50% bonus up to $100. The bonuses are cleared $10 at a time for every 100 raked hands you play.

I'm not above doing a little bonus whoring, so I moved some money over to Paradise. There are some things about the interface I like very much. The whole package seems very well thought out and feels like a Windows application. Sure, Party does, too, but on Paradise the little things really make a difference. One thing that's superior to Party is the notes function. A single right-click opens the notes window. Hovering over the player's name shows much more of your note than on Party (haven't run into a character limit yet). Unfortunately, the games are a little slow, moving at a rate of 50-55 hands per hour at a full table; the animation effects are probably partially responsible. Hand histories have to be requested the old-fashioned way.

Of course, the important thing is the quality and quantity of players. In my very limited experience, the games seemed rather loose-passive, with the exception of 2-3 loose-aggressive types at the table tonight. Once it became obvious they were raising pre-flop and betting the flop with crap, it was easy enough to call to the showdown or check-raise the flop or turn and make money with second pair or top pair, weak kicker. In the loose-passive games, I found I was able to take many pots without showing. Again, I should note that I've only played a couple hundred hands, but so far it's been going well. If you're planning to play the Grublog Classic anyway, you might as well get the bonus and make enough profit for some first level re-buy/add-on madness on the 21st. Unfortunately, it's a much smaller "poker room" than Party, and you may find table selection somewhat difficult.