Runner-Runner-Rebuy

I'm so friggen' torn about the NHL playoffs this year. After some good runs the past few years, my beloved Sabres failed to make the cut. If it was the NFL, I would probably stop caring. When the Bills fail to make the playoffs (ummmm, every year) I usually could care less about what is going on. That's mostly because I like the Bills more than I actually like football. And I only follow other NFL teams for fantasy sports reasons. And to watch the Patriots blow it. When the Pats went 19-No, you would have thought the Bills just won the Superbowl the way people were celebrating at my Superbowl party.

But hockey is different. I love it. I watch it every night during playoff season wether the Sabres make it or not. The only thing to worry about is to find a team to root for. For me, that team was the Washington Capitals. Alex Ovechkin is amazing. I get to see him live a few times a year when the caps come to Buffalo, and let me say, right now, he is the next great one, not Sidney Crosby. Sidney is a great all around player, and could become the next great one I guess, but no one I have ever seen play live comes close to the offensive skills of Alex Ovechkin. I only saw Gretzky play live once he was past his prime. Alex is the real deal, and the run the Caps went on to make the playoffs got me rooting for them.

A first round match up against the Flyers sealed the deal for who I was rooting for. The Broad Street Bullies are one of my most hated teams. A historically nasty team, lacking in talent, generous in cheap shots and dirty play, and fans that boo Santa Claus. There is not really anything to like about any Philadelphia team. I fully expected the Caps to walk through the Flyers. The flyers never go anywhere in the playoffs. Well, it was a great series that went 7 games, with 2 OTs and the Flyers end up victorious. Fuck.

In the meantime, the crappy Boston Bruins take it 7 games against what looked like an unstoppable Montreal Canadians team. Well, as the Sabres know, 1st seed sucks. You end up not coming prepared. The Habs ended up taking the series from the Bruins, but I knew they were not going to get much further. I was really rooting for the Bruins, because I love it when Canadian teams don't win the cup (mostly because of the asshole Leafs fans that invade our arena whenever TO plays the Sabres). Of course I was then hoping the Bruins would get bounced the next round because Fuck Boston and all their recent success.

Que Flyers vs. Habs. This was getting interesting, I really liked what I saw out of the Flyers in round one, and as round two went on, I found myself really rooting for Marty Biron and Daniel Briere, two ex sabers who went the way of free agency. And also two guys who are the nicest, most sincere hockey players that give back to the fans in more ways than saves and goals. I want these guys to win, but at the same time I want the flyers to suck it. They crush the Habs, as expected, and are now in the conference finals against the Penguins.

At first I was really exited for Marty and Danny, we had some great chances to win the Cup with them the past few years in Buffalo, just fell a little short, and these guys deserve it. But then visions of them lifting the Cup in Flyers jerseys came to mind and I got sick to my stomach. Umberger doesn't deserve it. Hatcher, Upshall, and Knuble don't deserve it. Flyers ownership doesn't deserve it. And most of all, Philly fans don't deserve it. To see Marty and Danny lift the cup for the despised Flyers would break me. At least no Canadian teams are left.

Here's how I see the rest of the playoffs working out.

Flyers vs. Pens - Pens take it in 6. Malkin and Crosby are just to strong for the Flyers. If the Flyers focus on Fluery's glove side, they can take it to seven games, but will ultimately be defeated. Pens advance to Cup Finals.

Dallas vs. Detroit - Detroit in 5 provided Osgood stays healthy. If Osgood gives up 2 games in the first 4, Hasek comes back in and his rusty old groin will drop the next two. Osgood however, will stay healthy and Detroit will advance to Cup finals against Pittsburgh.

Cup Finals - Pens vs. Detroit - This will be a great series that will go 7 games with stellar goaltending from Osgood going up against great scorers Malkin and Crosby. I pick Pens in 7.

Conference finals kick off Thursday on NBC and Versus, I'll be rooting for the Pens.

Missed the riverchasers last night due to packing for the big move, but hopped on later and got involved in one of the blogger cash games while I played some 55+5 SNG's.

I folded my way down to 4 players in the 3 SNG's, and got a 1st, 2nd, and 4th place. I don't know what was going on last night in the 55+5's but the players were crazy, 3 or 4 going all in at a time. Normally, I'm pretty aggro in the turbo SNG's, but sitting back and folding into the $$$ seemed to be the way to go last night and it worked out pretty good for me.

In the cash game, I never really got any cards, or traction. Also, it was kinda hard to pay attention while playing some SNG's and .15/.30 just can't keep me focused. Lost about $30 in the cash game.

The real fun of the night was losing my Pushfest virginity. I heard rumbling of the pushfest over the past few days, but didn't really know exactly what peeps were talking about. In case your late to the party too, here's the scoop. Listen to BDR, and at some point they will call for a pushfest. Typically a 90 player $3 tourney, or a 50 FTP tourney is chosen. As many bloggers as possible sign up. Everyone pushes all in EVERY HAND (plays just like the Mookie). Last man standing wins, and everyone else ships him/her some agreed upon amount ($5 or $7). It is insanely fun. The reactions from the "normals" at the tables are hilarious.

RecessRampage ended up winning one of the tourney outright. I came close in one, but Donkette ended up taking it down. To be honest, even if I outlasted her, I think I would have been disqualified, because I accidentally folded a bad hand out of habit, instead of pushing all-in. Its actually tough to play a pushfest while multi-tabling, because of the auto-pilot mode I tend to go into while playing 3-6 tables.

Hmmmmm.....thinking back on the crazy 55+5 SNG's I was playing, I wonder if it was really some more advanced level of pushfest going on. Maybe a bunch of guys normally playing $500 SNGs decided to slum it in the 55+5's and have a pushfest of their own.

Big move tomorrow. Lots of shit to finish tonight. Good luck at the tables, and see you all on Sunday for the Big Game (provided my internet gets set up in time).

Finished 2nd in Bodonkey tonight, which should put me into the top 10 in points and come close to solidifying a spot in the TOC.

Got heads up with the fake Donkette for the second time in the Bodonkey. I took the first one, she took it this time using her 5:1 chiplead to stomp me pretty quickly.

I also managed to knock out BoDog pro David Williams along the way. He raised my BB from the cutoff. I only had K6, but the $100 bounty on his head enticed me to push and he called with A4. River K, DWGH, and I collect $100. Hat tip Blinders.

Early exit from the Skillz Game on FT. Don't even remember what I had. Oh wait, it was JJ cracking my QQ i think. Runner-runner flush I believe. Oh well.

Shit is hectic around here, and I'm surprised I did as well as I did tonight. I'm busy packing for a move from apartment to first home on Saturday, and I don't know how shit is going to get done in time.

I'll prob play the Mookie tomorrow, but I think I'm going to play blind. So for the small amount of readers I have, there's a little edge for you. Expect me to raise and re-raise from late position with air. Seems to be the way to win a Mookie.

Texas Hold'em

Poker is a game with many different variations.  And one of the most popular variations over time has been 7 Card Stud as it was the most widely played at US casinos.  However, Texas Hold’em would gradually creep up on 7 Card Stud until the turn of the new millennium when TV pushed it to the top.

Now Texas Hold’em is everywhere and it’s hard to find an area where the game isn’t prevalent.  Turn on your television at any moment and flip through if you don’t believe me.  There is World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker Circuit events, Poker After Dark, and many other shows all dedicated to bringing people coverage of Texas Hold’em.  For those who aren’t familiar with how to play Texas Hold’em in an online poker room, each person is dealt two cards and they wait until bets are made before the flop is turned up. The flop is three cards being dealt in the center of the table which are community cards (everyone uses them to make their hand). Poker hand rankings guideis a very good place to start if you are just beginning to learn poker.



After bets are made, the next step of Texas Hold’em is for players to go through another round of betting and when they are finished the turn (fourth card being turned up) happens.  The final step of a Texas Hold’em hand is for another round of betting to occur and then the river is dealt.  This is the final card and it determines who will be able to make the best five card hand out of the five on the table and the two cards in one’s hand.

Once the hand is over, the process happens all over again.  Texas Hold’em is a very difficult game to master but if one can consistently make good hands over and over again, then maybe one day they will be lucky enough to appear on TV. 

Rakebrain is hooking some of us bloggers up tonight with a little $1000 freeroll on FT. Should be fun. The LeCheese Challenge II is goin' off at 6PM tonight Hold Em/Omaha Hi game.

Looks like there will be some tough competition now that I can see which other bloggers are in it. I look to avenge myself tonight on BuddyDank for his bad call that knocked me out of the BoDonkey on Tuesday. With AA and a few limpers, I pop it to 4x BB and it folds around to Buddy who calls with 77. He of course flops the set and checks. With around $1000 in the pot, I push my last 1K and get insta-called. He sort of admitted on BDR that it was a questionable call but that he got lucky and it paid off. I think it was close, but with 300 to call and 7.5:1 chances of flopping the set, he needs to get paid $2250 for it to be a good call. I simply didn't have enough behind to give him the payoff he needed if he hits.

I often wonder about this kind of situation. In a cash game, if I limp with a small pocket pair, and I am raised by a small stack that can't offer me the right odds, I will almost always through away the hand. In a tourney I sometimes wonder if it is ok to make a call like Buddy's. He was a big stack at the time and the call could pay off 6:1. Now, this isn't the 7.5:1 you would want, but there is the added value of eliminating someone from the tourney. Late in a tourney, I can see that you might want to do this because eliminating one player while you have a big stack can have a large effect on the average chip stack.

For example, there are 7 players left, the average chip stack is T10000, and the blinds are 200-400, and a player in the BB with T5000 makes a raise to T1600. You have a stack of T20000, and have limped with a small pocket pair, out of position. It folds around to you and you have to call T800. Your odds of hitting the set are 7.5:1, so you need to get paid T6000 on your T800 call. With T2200 in the pot already, and the raiser having only T3400 behind, he most you could make if all the money goes in is T5600.

Suppose you hit and all the money gets in, your stack is now T25600, and the average stack is now T10833. I'm not going to brake out the ICM calculator, but this most certainly has a measurable effect on your ICM equity.

But the same exact situation with say, 30-40 players left, just doesn't seem to justify making a call that cannot pay you off directly with T$. It has almost no effect on your ICM equity.

In essence, I say it was a bad call by Buddy. Forgive me if I have the numbers slightly wrong and it was a good call. More important to me than this particular hand is what people think about making calls that can't be paid off directly in T$ but potentially have some other kind of chip equity depending on the stage of the tourney. Any other opinions out there?

I know there are some people out there that talk a lot about finally getting their first Mookie win. Well, until last night, I've never even cashed in the thing. I've won the MATH a few times, won the Big Game, won the Bodonkey, won the Riverchasers, cashed in the Skill game I think....but never in the Mookie. Never even close to a cash in the Mookie for that matter. After 2 years.

So, one of my goals or 2008, was not to win the Mookie, but just to friggin cash in it. 3rd place last night accomplished the goal. I guess now I have to win the damn thing.

My game has been turning around the past few weeks and I think I am getting out of the slump I was in. I've buckled down a bit and re-focused. I think the slump would have been shorter if I stuck to my game instead of trying to adjust it to deal with the variance I was seeing. I'm still down a ton in online play so far for 2008, but my live game play has been moderately successful so I'm only down a few K overall and feel like I have turned a corner.

I went into the Mookie last night thinking the only way to win it was to play fast and loose and get lucky. That seems to be the way people win it. But when I sat down, I just couldn't do it. I have been working on playing tighter and using position better and I just couldn't bring myself to playing crazy.

A great thing I have done in the past a few times, and have done about 4 times in the past week is to play a tourney blind. Cover your cards with a piece of paper on the screen and only look at them if you are put into a position to call off all your chips. It does wonders for your game, reminds you of the importance of image, and really makes you pay attention to what the rest of the table is doing. Most importantly, it truly demonstrates how vital positional play is. Until I did this the first time about 2 years ago, I don't think I truly understood that. And in fact, I need to play a game blind from time to time to remind me. Playing these blind tourney's last week has gotten me back on track I hope. By the way, I won the Big Game last fall playing blind.

Back to the Mookie- I couldn't bring myself to play really loose-aggro, so I didn't. I played a very tight, pretty aggressive game, and finally cashed. I was under T1000 by the first break, and barley over T1000 at the second break. I was definitely getting worried. But a few mini-rushes kept me alive, mixed in with an occasional well times steal. I went from T1500 to T11000 in 3 or 4 hands with AA, AK, AA, and 99. And rolled into the final table.

When it was down to 11 players I noticed that all the remaining players were known players, and damn good ones. I made a regrettable comment in the chat -
"Wow, besides Waffles, the last 11 players are a really tough field." My regret has nothing to do with the current "chat controversy" going on, because it was not meant as ill will towards Waffles, just a funny barb because he has had a history of blowing it at the final table. Also, I know he can take a joke, just as I have taken it it from him in the past and see it as nothing more than camaraderie. My regret was because as soon as I typed it, I was terrified that I had just reverse coolered him.

In any case, I think my tight image really worked for me, and I made some steals and re-steals when I needed to at the final table and generally got respect from the other players. I only saw 8% of the flops, won about 70% of flops seen, and took down another 8% pre-flop. The combination of tight positional play and, lets be honest, getting some good cards at the right time, saw me through to the final 3 players. Down to LJ, Waffles, and myself, with LJ about a 2:1 stack over Waffles and I. I got into a bad spot with K10. I raise, Waffles re-raises, and in a serious lapse of judgment, I push my stack into his KK.

I have to give Waffles a ton of credit for his performance. My connection might have been timing out, but it looked like he actually considered folding the KK. He called of course, and won, but the fact hat he considered what to do is a testament to how well he played last night. The heads up battle between him and LJ when on for a while before Waffles was victorious. LJ is just someone I can't figure out. Most of the time I think LJ is a terrible poker player, but considering the cashes she has made recently and that fact that I can never put her on a hand makes me think she is actually really, really good.

All in all, it was a fun night, I hope I'm back on track, and congrats to both Waffles and LJ for a great HU battle. GL to Waffles in the TOC.

Disclaimer - This post contains broad generalizations about professions. It is not meant to offend anyone, but probably will. Most likely, the broad generalizations do not apply to the intelligent, sophisticated people that read this blog.

Yes, it's true. Lawyers are greater than Doctors. But let's be clear here, I'm not talking about actual Doctors. An actual Doctor is someone who studies some very specific subject matter and is only granted the title "Dr." after adding something new to the field and defending it to a group of experts. You know, PhD's - real doctors. Doctor comes from the latin doctoris, meaning teacher.

What I'm talking about in this post is Physicians. Why they are granted the title Doctor is beyond me. For some reason, in the 19th century, they got jealous of real Doctors and started granting themselves the same title. And though they are MD's, and Lawyers are JD's, you don't see people going around calling Lawyers things like "Dr. Hoy" or "Dr. Ck." Not to diminish the accomplishments of Attorneys, I'm sure Law School is difficult and it takes a certain kind of mix of logical analysis and hard work to be a successful lawyer.

Physicians on the other hand (and PharmD's more so), just piss me off. They demand to be called "Dr." though they are not adding anything new to the field, MD/PhD's withstanding. To be a successful "medical practitioner" takes a certain kind of person. A hard working, memorizing person. This is not to say there are not highly intelligent Physicians out there, but just to say high intelligence does not seem to be a requirement to pursuing an MD degree.

I know many Physicians, and some are very intelligent, and some are complete idiots. Most lawyers I know are pretty smart people, and I can't think of one that I would consider an idiot. Plenty of them are assholes, but with the exception of Hoy's boss, I don't think you can get away with stupidity in the legal world. You just won't last very long.

The simple fact is, I guess I want any attorney I hire to be an asshole. Their job is to be the best, hard nosed, fuck you advocate they can for their clients. When I hire a lawyer, I don't want a nice guy to be representing me, I want to win the damn thing.

Physicians are more of a drain on society than people think. In particular, I speak of General Practitioners, or, Primary Care Physicians (PCP). I think this is where many of the dumb ones end up. In general, Physicians are not thinkers. They are memorizers. All medical school consists of is memorizing many, many, many texts. Residency might be where some thinking comes in. Watching, learning, and practicing with others in your selected specialty is what makes for a great surgeon, or psychiatrist. Though there is some of this in medical school during your two years of rotations, it seems to me that the residency is where real learning can happen. The rotations in years 3 and 4 of medical school just serve to weed out people from different specialties.

Are PCP's the weed outs? I don't know, maybe it's really competitive to get a General Practitioner residency, because everyone want the great hours. Maybe not, because the AMA seems to want to encourage people away from specialties. All I do know is that my experience* has shown me that PCP's are shitty, greater than thou, non-caring assholes.

When I hire a lawyer, that's what I want. It is not what I want when I hire a physician.

Example the First -

A year ago I had a very sore throat, fever, etc. I made an appointment with my PCP for 9:30am. I arrive on time. I wait an hour to be taken to the examination room. Once there, I read a magazine. I fall asleep in the chair and wake up at 1:00PM. No one has seen me yet. Furious, I storm out and demand my co-pay back. They assure me I was just about to be seen, as the "doctors" had just returned from lunch. This made me flip out on them. They gave my co-pay back and I left.

Example the Second -

My sister has two friends who have the same pediatrician for their children. One of them must go in to the doctors office with her child every time something is wrong. The other one only has to call the doctor and they will prescribe over the phone without making them come in for a visit. What the hell is going on here? Well, one of them has insurance that requires a co-pay, and one has insurance that does not require a co-pay. You figure out the rest.

Example the Last -

I have a rash of Excema on my lower leg. My insurance does not require me get referrals from my PCP, so generally, if I have an issue, I just go to a specialist in that area. It is difficult to make an appointment with a dermatologist, and my appointment was over a month away. I decided to call my PCP to see if it would be worthwhile to come in there in the meantime if there was something they could do for me. They first berated me on the phone for not coming in to them more often, and then told me yes, I should definitely come in if the excema was really bothering me and I couldn't wait until seeing the dermatologist.

I arrived, paid my $20 co-pay, and was seen relatively promptly. I showed then the problem and was then berated again for 5 minutes about how I should come in more often. I asked if they could just prescribe me a topical cream to alleviate the inflammation, letting them know I have used Betamethazone (a topical cortico-steriod) in the past with good results.

"No, you need to go to a dermatologist."

"I know, but I was told to come here in the meantime."

"Well, I can give you a list of Dermatologists to call."

"Then why the fuck did I come here? I don't need referrals, and I know how to use a phone book."

"Well, there is nothing we can do, I suggest you call a dermatologist."

"Thanks a bunch asshole. Next time, I'll stay at home and burn a $20 bill. It will save me 2 hours. Fuck you."

The PCP business is a god damn racket. There needs to be a class action law suit against the AMA. All that is cared about is the co-pay. They are in business to take $20 from you. I would gladly pay $100 for actual service. But we are forced to pay $20 for none. I'm lucky, in that I don't need referrals, but most medial insurance requires patients to first go to a PCP and waste time and money. The AMA and HMO's are in cahoots in what is probably the largest "legal" racketeering outfit in the history of the nation.

This is why lawyers > "doctors."

*I have worked at a law firm for 4 years, a large hospital system for 5 years, and an HMO for 1 year, so I do have a bit of experience in dealing with these groups of people. I won't even get started on the HMO's, I had to quit that job because of how evil they are.

Well....geez, thanks everyone for the great response to my foray into comic writing. At first I was thinking I'm definitely going to have to do more of these, but now I'm worried about living up to some expectations.

I already have tons of ideas where I can go with this if I decide to do some more, but we'll see how things go, I can't force it, and while it was really fun to do, I don't want it to get boring. I tentatively plan to do one for each MATH tourney, featuring whoever knocks me out as the villain. I'm sure some weeks will not make for much of a story, so I'll be playing it by ear.

It took me longer to create the comic than it did to play in the MATH, so I hope I get better at story boarding as time goes on. One difficult thing is coming up with photo's of other bloggers to use. I have spent some time scouring blogs and flickr for blogger photos but some villians will be hard to portray.

If Pauly or Al ever knock me out of a tourney, I'm all set, there are hundreds of photo's of them out there on the internets, but some people are hard to find. If anyone knows a good way to search blogspot for photos in archives, please let me know, google search isn't cutting it. If you want to be a feature villain, it would greatly help to drop me a link to flickr or something where I can grab some photos of you.

I missed the Riverchasers last night. I was at a friend's house and couldn't connect to his wireless with my Mac because his firmware is from 1953. His router was the size of a refrigerator and was made pre-transistor era.

No time for serious hand analysis, so here's recap of another kind instead.

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I don't know who this altronIV is, but a google search came up with some anime thing, so I used that to represent the villian. Bust me next week at the math and you can be the feature villian.

Maybe it will be me, but I doubt it. My game is slipping. A few weeks of really bad variance (12 standard deviations out of the norm) in early February has definitely had an effect on my play.

At first I didn't think so, but looking back at my play over the past few weeks has made me now think otherwise. I've de-generated back into a tight/weak style. In an effort to avoid suckouts, I have tried to keep pots small and play only premium hands. This has resulted in way to many limps, and playing only my cards, not situations.

The end product of this has been getting halfway though tourneys, ending up short, and having to make many more decisions for all my chips than I would normally have to make. This puts me in bad situations where I need to call off my tournament life with less than stellar holdings, and push in spots I'd rather not.

Essentially, it has gotten me into exactly the types of things I hoped to avoid. When they say you have to play though variance, you have to play though with a good game, not a shitty one. It's a different kind of tilt that I guess I am experiencing, but now that I can see it, I will remove it.

GL to everyone tonight, and congrats to whoever the victor may be (as long as its me).