More Wesley in '07!

No, not Crusher (sorry, Wil). This guy gets my nod as the first official Fucking Superhero of 2007. While we're doing our little quizzes to see what dork in tights we're most like (and how exactly does that flawed piece of code peg me as Spiderman? I'm so taking a do-over on that quiz), this guy is the real deal.

From the NY Post -

January 3, 2007 -- A hero construction worker left his two young daughters on a Harlem subway platform and leaped into the path of an oncoming train yesterday to rescue a stranger who had fallen on the tracks.

"Tell my little girls that Daddy is OK!" Wesley Autrey shouted from under the No. 1 train after it screeched to a halt. It was just inches above him and the film student he pushed into the trough between the tracks.

Amazingly, neither Autrey nor the man he saved, 20-year-old Cameron Hollopeter, was seriously injured, even though the train grazed the construction worker's wool cap.

Read the rest here.

Really, my hat's off to the guy, and not just because his got wrecked. He did something without thinking for someone he'd never met that coulda got himself killed. We expect, and require that kind of sacrifice from soldiers and cops, but it's a little above and beyond for the average construction worker.

Tags: subway hero, Wesley Autrey

Play the Players - the Rock

So I'm gonna try something different for a little while. Instead of charting my success, or lack thereof, or just randomly spewing into the ether my life and everything about it, I'm going to put together a series of articles on different types of players and how I think folks should approach playing against those folks. Some of these will be light-hearted, some serious, but all will be my opinion. And as we all know, everybody's stinks but yours, so fire away in the comments whenever you think I'm full of it.

Let's start with the Rock. The Nit. The old grumpy dude in seat 4. He's been playing poker since they played on carved stone tablets and wagered sheep or women instead of chips, and will quickly let you know it. Really, though, a rock isn't necessarily a bad person, just someone who is not very active at all at the table, and very hard to get money out of, kind like squeezing blood from a stone.

The rock isn't going to enter very many pots, that's a key element to being a rock - lack of action. The rock doesn't have a ton of gamble in him (btw, there are female rocks, too, but I've painted this picture of a grumpy old dude and I'm sticking with the male metaphor), so if he's in a pot, watch out, you're probably behind. The rock is the guy who gripes about the straddle, whines about the rake, and generally is pushing for his 2BB/hr.

So how do you play the rock? Don't. Once he gets in a hand, he's going to be almost impossible to push out of it, especially if he's caught some piece of the flop. So don't let him get in many pots. If you make it clear that you're there to have fun and fling chips around, the rocks aren't going to get involved with you, because you're too unpredictable. Nothing makes a rock grumpier than getting his aces cracked by "inferior" starting hands (see "G-Rob"). The more action you create at a table, the fewer hands the rock can see, even with his limited starting hand selection.

The rock is most vulnerable when he is in the SB. A button or cutoff raise will almost alway get him to muck, unless he has a top ten hand. He's almost as vulnerable in the BB, where a raise from the SB every other orbit will often pick up his orphaned blind. Don't go to the well too many times with this trick, though, because if he decides you're targeting him (and you are) he'll call you down on every street with his bottom pair, which frequently isn't good if your style, like mine, counts on people folding to your obvious aggression.

So you don't let the rock see many cheap flops. What if one slips past you and you're heads-up against the rock post-flop? Assuming you don't have the stone-cold nuts, because, let's face it, you've played 7 out of the last 10 hands with air and you probably don't have shit this time around either, you make one stab at the pot, then check it down with the rock and throw him as few chips as possible when his middle pair is good. Your not gonna push him off the hand without putting everything in front of you at risk, and it's just not worth it.

Your positive equity against these supertight players is in picking up small bets and blinds here and there, and on the rare occassion when you do hold the nuts, crushing them. They're not going to have any respect for your game, they're gonna think you're raising with the hammer all the time anyway, so put as few chips at risk as possible against them, and slowly bleed the stone dry. An occassional peace offering of tapioca may help ease the inevitable table tension from crushing too many rocks, as well.

So that's how I play against the rocks - I don't let them see cheap flops, but if I find myself in a hand with them, I try to play small ball unless I have the nuts. I don't apply to much pressure, because they're unlikely to crack, and I frequently just steal their orphaned limps and blinds and concentrate my efforts on other, more profitable player types for me to exploit.

Tags: live poker, poker strategy

Blogger/Writer for Hire

So one of my goals for the next few years is to work less at my 9-5 job and more on my writing. To that end I've played around a little with Scurvy's new project on affiliate marketing sites, starting up several of my own recently. One is based on poker site affiliate signups, something I have typically rejected here on Pokerstage, preferring to solicit paid advertisers instead (btw - there are advertising slots still available). Another is a music blog, hoping to drive some revenue my way via Amazon.com links, and another is a bulletin board for Charlotte theatre folks, using Google Adsense banners and Amazon links to hopefully generate a little revenue.

That's one way in which I'm hoping to generate a little revenue, but the other is purely writing for money. So here it is - I will write for cash. Lots, little, whatever. If there's a website out there that needs scribbling, lemme know. I'm currently working on a project where I'm rewriting all the product descriptions on a manufacturer's website for a per product fee, so I'm available for that kinda stuff as well.

Tags: blogger, writing, writer for hire

OMFG

So like a bunch of other dorks I found Jesus' Favorite from reading Wil and Shane's shit that they were giving their friend Annie when she lost a bet. I added it to my bloglines because she wrote some funny shit. Well, along the way in 2006, like myself and a few other folks, her world got seriously fucked up, and she continued to write about it. Very, very well. The stuff she's putting out there is Otis-level good, so if you don't read her whenever she deigns to post, you're missing out on some brilliant writing. It's often painful to read, but the writing is so fucking beautiful that it sucks you into her pain and her joys.

That's one thing I like about reading blogs, you can feel like you know, just a little, someone from across the country that you've never met and are likely to never meet. Maybe no one really is an island.

HP has new toys!

This post is sponsored by HP, and that's pretty darned cool.

I want my HP, I want my HP, I want my money for nothing and my chicks for free. I want one of these cool digital cameras that HP is giving away to bloggers, not for myself, no...

I want one because , aside from the fact that digital photography is cool, once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a fellow blogger's camera got dropped into a glass of beer, and I think she needs a new one. Now, I just got a 6MP digital camera a few months ago, and you can go to Flickr and see the shots I took of the WPBT winter classic.

Now there are lots of deals out there on digital photography, and I actually just helped my sister buy one for my niece for Christmas, so I did a pile of research on them. I figured out that for my use, I need at least a 5MP, because every once in a while I want to print pictures. It's rare, since so much stuff is done on the web and through services like Flickr, but it happens. A 5MP camera lets you print clearly up to 8x10, and even larger if you get a great shot just right.

I picked out a 4MP camera for Stephanie, because she's not going to do much large-format printing, and needs an entry-level camera to start getting the feel of things and take snapshots and stuff like that. I got her a 512MB memory card, but I may have goofed on the batteries. Her camera uses AA rechargeable batteries, as does my older Sony (which I've given to my wife since I got the newer, more compact camera).

While this seems like a great idea, it's actually a bit of a hassle, since you can't just throw regular AA batteries in there and expect them to work for very long. Rechargeable batteries actually have more juice than normal batteries, and digital cameras use a lot of juice. My new camera has a rechargeable battery pack that I'm much happier with. It's also several years newer than my other camera, so is probably more battery-efficient as well.

So that's just something to think about when you're picking out a digital camera, or looking to get into digital photography. This post has been sponsored by HP through Pay Per Post.

24 hours of Poker - or How I Went Broke for New Year's

It's the second day of the year and my bankroll sits at a whopping $332. To say I've been running bad is a slight understatement. I have lost more money in the month of December 2006 than I won in all of 2005. Frankly, I think I lost nearly that much last weekend. Let's recap, shall we?

Friday - I send out text messages to the two guys I know who run underground games. I get a response from one telling me that there's a tourney that night. $60 with one rebuy and one add-on. I cruise over, stick in my $60, and make it a little past the first break, when I push over the top of what I thought was an isolation move. Short stack goes all in in the cutoff for $500 with blinds of 200-400. I call from the button with AQo. BB raises 1,000 and I push my remaining 3,000 or so into the middle, figuring he was just making an isolation move and he doesn't really have much. AK counts as something a little better than my AQ, and seriously better than shorty's AT. IGHN.

But actually, I go to the cash game now, which I thought would be a good place to make back some of my monthly losses. Not so much. 1/2 NLHE, uncapped buyin. I'd played this structure at the other underground game before and done okay, but that game didn't have two guys buying $500 each on the first hand. There was a flaming assload of money flying around, and I could put my hands on none of it. I was pretty card dead, and whenever I had the opportunity to play a hand, I missed the flop entirely. My suited connectors - no good. My baby pairs - no set. My face cards - low flop. Dropped two buyins and went home a little ill. Total for the night: - $460.

Saturday - other underground game calls and lets me know about their tourney that night. $40 unlimited rebuy. I go, play it fairly well, get broke once right before the end of the rebuy period and do the double rebuy planning to forgo the add on at the break. Get involved in a big hand immediately before the break and get a bunch more chips, but can't do fuckall with them after the break. -$120 so far.

Move to the cash game and start to believe that I remember how to play this stupid game. I play tighter that a frog's rectum for a while, then make a couple of moves when I've got decent cards in position. River the nut flush a couple of times to get me ahead a little and get some breathing room. I probably spend 6 hours at that cash game, and when I cash out I've made back my tournament buyin plus a little. Total for the night: +$250.

Sunday - New Year's Eve party at Em's, small game to go with it. I drop my first $40 buyin, then try to remember how to play this stupid game and play my cards rather than the players, because as we all know, YOU CAN'T BLUFF A CALLING STATION. One guy at the end of the table seems to know how to play a little, but never gives me credit for a hand. I pick up JJ at one point, pop it to 8xBB ($4) and he reraises me to $10. I think a lot about shoving in there, and probably would do so in a more formal game, but it was a party, all that jazz. I call, he misses, my Jacks are good. Suzy gets tired, everybody else gets drunk, we go home. Total for the night: +$40.

Monday - My trip to G-Vegas to defend my BadBlood Series of Poker New Year's Tourney title. My starting table is the stuff of Greenville nightmares: CJ, Otis, Me, BigPirate, Teddy BallGame, Uncle Ted and Tim the Dealer. Every player who cashed in last year's January 1 tourney is at that starting table. This is going to get ugly. I have position on CJ but Otis is on my immediate left. I pick up no hand better than AT, and get it like 4 times before the first break. It holds up once, I think. Maybe. I'm pretty card dead and after the break and we consolidate to two tables, I decide to call CJ's push with 86h, thinking he's on high cards (we both had an M of around 4) and both my cards would be live.

His pocket 7s are exactly what I get for thinking. He makes a thoroughly unnecessary set and I'm bounced. I move over to the cash game and manage to lose $40 playing $.25/.50 NLO8 with The Mark and Stan, most of it on a hand where Stan calls my ridiculously large bets with a low draw and a gutshot that gets there on the river to give him a scooper.

We eventually switch to 1/2 NL when G-Rob arrives and my quick descent in brokenness begins. Note to self - if any two of the following aggro-monkeys are on your left, you must play tighter than the aforementioned frog's rectum - Otis, G-Rob, TheMark. With both Mark and G-Rob to my left, I felt like the retarded virgin cousin at a West Virginia prom. I don't really remember much of the fucking, I just know I woke up bowlegged.

There weren't any really notable hands for me, other than running into G-Rob's Aces. You can't give him credit for ever having a legitimate hand, because he reraised me the exact same amount with 83o earlier. Regardless of what he says, motherfucker can play some cards. Now, he went broke about as many times in that game as I did, because Dealer Tim can also play some cards, and he was the resident cardrack du jour. TheMark took a fuckton of my chips, but that's only fair, since he is now at least partly responsible for both my largest winning day in poker and my largest losing day in poker.

I still love those boys and love hanging out with the G-Vegas crowd, but it was a loooong ride back to Charlotte after having my live bankroll reduced to a whopping $25. Special K gets a consolation prize for listening to me whine, although since I played too poorly to have any bad beat stories, I don't owe him $1.

So I'm now pretty much in that place where a lot of poker players find themselves: busto. I ran the year-end math, and I really, really should give up internet poker. I made about $2,800 off of poker last year, but that number would have been about $4,000 had I not played any online poker. I lost enough playing online to counteract any bonuses that I cleared, and drive me another $1,200 in the hole. Now I did show a profit, so why am I broke now?

Because I use my bankroll to pay for trips and toys, as well as poker. My digital camera - poker. My new Birkenstocks - poker. July trip to Vegas - Poker. You get the picture. And I'm not crying because I'm busto, because I'm not really busto. The kind folks over at Pokerworks continue to give me work, and that's where most of my roll came from in the first place. So that money comes in next week and I'm back in the game. After I spend a little time looking at my game, that is.

Because there's no question that my game has issues right now, and they're not just crises of confidence from running bad. I need to take a little time off from playing and refocus on learning. I'll probably go back through and re-read Harrington, and Phil's Little Green Book, and see if I can't take my game apart and put it back together. It's a sobering thing, losing most of my bankroll, but there's more coming in, and it gives me a chance to fix my game before I get really broke.

But if you love me and wanna help me out, you could go visit my new project, Full Shill Poker, and sign up for something if you're not already signed up for the stuff I've got links to. Or buy something from my Amazon links. There will also be a shameless shill posting from Pay Per Post coming soon. Oh, and since Amy said that she got a shitoad of traffic from mentioning cheerleader crotch shots on her blog, I'm gonna throw in random pornographic terms from time to time to build traffic. Frankly, Amy's got a cute post up about blogger orgies that's definitely worth reading. Mmmm....blogger orgies. Daddy'll bring the bacon if Gracie brings the Crisco!

Meet Pai Gow, the sea cow

Meet Pai Gow, the sea cow, originally uploaded by John Falstaff.

I've finally gotten off my ass and uploaded the photos from the December gathering to flickr. Click through to take a look. This is probably the goofiest one I got of Gracie, but aren't they both jsut so damned precious?

Free James Brown!

Sometimes my boss is a genius. Today he comes into my office and hands me this gem -

We need to come up with a grassroots movement to get James Brown to lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda, and put Gerald Ford at the Apollo Theatre.

Pass it on. Free James Brown, one last time.


Owwwwww!

Pimpin'

If you don't read Truckin' every month, than you're missing out on some of the finest writing on the intertubes, especially in the months where I have a story in there. Like this one! Really, there's some fantastic writing happening here, so if you haven't been there already, go check it out. If you've already been, go back. I'm always honored to be included in this fine company, and this month is no exception.

Be afraid...

Be very afraid. The wife has Christmas-gifted me with my wardrobe for this summer's Vegas gathering.

Behold - the Utilikilt. Designed by technicians and real men for real men, this puppy can carry four beers easily in the side pockets and a hip flask in the back pocket.
For more styles and colors, go to their website. Guys, I can't explain the freedom unless you've worn a kilt. Let's just say that if chicks were packing what we're packing, there's no way they'd put up with pants. Utilikilts are available in extra-long for the Bracelet.

Hope everybody else had as great a Christmas as we did.

Tags: utilikilt, kilts