Wednesday, March 31, 2004

all poker'd out



we got to ocean's 11, and sat down around 7:30pm after having some food at the bar. i was looking forward to playing a tight game, but the first 3 hands i was dealt were monsters. first hand, 2 pairs. jacks and queens. second hand, straight. third hand, straight. so within 5 minutes i'm up 80 dollars. for the next 4 hours, i fluctuate from being up 60 to being up 100. me and stan notice an ususual pattern of kings showing up. there seems to be 2 kings always showing up on the flop, or on the turn. unfortunately, everyone plays with kings, and the luck seemed to be distributed evenly.



i played one had wrong where i had pocket queens, 2 kings came up on the flop, no one raised, so i just called everyone's raises after the turn. and they were reraising representing they had kings. i'm not sure when would have been a good fold, but the pot was incredibly large, and both people rerasing had the kings. i still lost a lot of money on that hand. probably close to $30. i'll need to think about this one.



there was this hand where i had A7, and another guy had A6. i sensed his hesitation to raise when he made his pair of aces on the flop. he ended up checking. so i raised, every change i got, and he called every raise with quite a bit of hesitation. and lucky for me, the 7 kicker played. i thought that was a really good read on my part.



another memorable events of the night was that i saw this bald chubby hispanic guy. playing super agressive. literally buying out every pot. like he was board, and really didn't care about his money. i picked up on that. he had JQ suited. i had QK suited. the board came up 56564. he bet every turn, and i quickly called as soon as he got chips in there. when it was done, i had taken all of his money except $1. he gave that to the dealer and left the table. i felt like i had taught that guy a lesson, and did good for the entire table by kicking a guy like that out.



there was this indian guy...looked like he was 18. there was this one hand where i had top pair, and he flipped over pocket 5's to make trips. you can never read what cards someone has when they have pockets. he took a lot of money from me that hand. me being the chip leader at the table, i sensed his david vs goliath complex the way he was firing at the pot whenever i raised. knowing this, i knew he wouldn't be playing as tight, so i was overjoyed when he kept reraising my raises when i was holding big slick (AK). the flop comes out, and i flop an inside straight draw. the miracle card comes out on the river, and i make the nut straight. and the indian guy is still betting at the pot. so i raise him. i flip over my monster, and bitch slap his overagressive immature ass back in his seat. i make my money back, and then some.



so the big blind position is circling towards me. i tell the dealer i need a rack for my chips. so as i'm racking another full rack of chips, i have some left (4 or 5) that i can carry in my hand. so i wait to fold my next hand. well what do you know? pocket aces once again. then there was this drunk guy at the table who was rerasing my raises. i'm like, man this is great. he's doing all the work for me. and some crappy flops come out, and i know he hasn't made anything. so i keep betting, and he's reraising me. so i don't even look at the turn or the rivers as they come out, and i'm just throwing money into it every chance i get. he finally decides to call, and i turn over my pocket aces, and it turns out he had top pair on the flop and nothing else. i don't know what he was rerasing me with, but it was an easy victory. so i'm kinda off my chair, and i'm like...."ummm...i need a...." someone hands me anoter rack. i tip the dealer, and make my exit.



one odd thing is that i never had a single hand of trips. a totally different thing than what i had experienced last time i was at ocean's. this time i had a few flushes, few striaghts, and a lot of high pairs and 2 paris that got me the win. i came out with more than 3x of winnings i had when i went last thursday. one thing i didn't like doing was reraising on the flop whenever stan was in an hand since he rarely seemed to be playing his hands. but everytime he finally decided to call, i was holding AK, KQ suited, AJ, etc. seriously, i never raised preflop with anything less than AJ unsuited, and he seemed to be in the majority of those hands.



in all honesty, i felt really drained afterwards. i got lucky with some great hands last time. this time, i went up against really agressive players and i had moderately good hands so it wasn't so easy. i was up a lot by hour and a half, and i already got my fill at that time. even though i had walked out with more money after 4 hours, it felt like i had to grind it out. and i don't think i could ever have the patience be a rounder for a living.

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

a brush with greatness



stan, matt, steve, and i decided to try our poker skillz at the casino. we had enough people to start a new table, so we all got sit together. i still can't say wheter it was a good thing or a bad thing.



so deciding who the dealer was going to be, they let us pick a card from the deck. somehow i manage to come up with the Ace of Spades. best card of the 52 deck. the dealer tells everyone else you might as well not bother picking to see if they'll be dealer since it doesn't get better than the ace of spades. so the first few hands i've been given were crap. i fold the first 6 hands that are dealt to me, without putting out a single dollar. the advantage of starting out as a dealer. this also estabilishes credibility at the table as me being a really tight player. but in all honesty, i was getting crap. i finally eventually manage to start getting some callable hands, and win a few small pots here and there. breaking even for the first hour or so.



first interesting hand of the night was when stan was dealt pocket 4's, and the other guy (a well known veteran of poker at this casino it seemed) was dealt pocket aces. seeing how the guy with the pocket aces never preraised on the flop, but did it this time, it was an easy fold for me. stan on the other hand seemed to be still in this hand for some reason. i wasn't in the position to disturb any play or calls to be made. then the flop comes out 4, A, something. Both stan and the veteran make their trips. Stan is holding 3 of a kind 4's, and the veteran is holding 3 of a kind Aces. And the betting begins. The dealer tells us there is no limit on how many times we can reraise, just in how much increments. so they both can't seem to reraise fast enough. and the veteran decides to take it easy on stan and just call. and then another 4 comes up, giving stan 4 of a kind, and the veteran a full house. another intense round of betting begins. i'm thinking the whole time, "man, stan is playing unusually agressive." i'm really holding back from telling him to stop betting so agressively. i blink for a second, and stan turns over his 4 of a kind, and the veteran turns over his full house. man, i almost felt bad for that old guy. you can't fold a hand like that (trips on the flop, and a full house on the turn).



another interesting thing i kept noticing was that a pair of 3's would come up on the flop almost every other hand. so i told myself, if i get a 3, no matter how crappy the hand is, i'm gonna play it. so i played every single hand when i was dealt 3's. also, 10's were my lucky number, so i decided to play a weak hand with a 10 in it, like 10, 8 unsuited, or 10, 6 suited, etc.



so i get dealt 3, 6 and i'm like, alright, i'll try this out. and wouldn't you know it, a pair of 3's on the flop. an easy win. a couple of old guys say, "man, no one ever plays a hand like that."



so i get some more very weak hands with 3's, and I seem to be winning every pot.



then i get dealt pocket 3's (3,3). I'm like, alright, if i just get one more three on the flop, this should be pretty easy. people are betting pretty agressively. i reraise pre flop. 5 people call. and i couldn't believe it at first but a pair of 3's showed up on the flop. so i raise again. big mistake. i should have figured that no one even has had a chance to pair up. so everyone basically folds except steve. after the turn, i check thinking any raise, and steve is going to muck his cards. steve checks. after the river is dealt, i raise again, and steve mucks his cards. i decided to show my hand anyway, and i get a big, "whoa" from everyone in the crowed. man, are they glad they made the right call. and me with my 4 of a kinds on the flop should have slow played it. it turns out stan would have had the nut flush (with an ace), and if i hadn't reraised before the flop, he would have possibily stayed in knowing how competitve he is and how cheap it would have been to get to the river. pocket 3's is definitely not a good hand to preraise before the flop, but knowing how much of a luck streak 3's were, i felt really lucky. next time for sure, i'm slow playing my 4 of a kind on the flop.



after that, i get 3,6 again. as bad of a hand that is, i decide to call. and i flop an inside straight draw. having some money, i decide to call to the river against a guy i clearly read had trips on the flop. and wouldn't ya know it? the river gave me a straight. i raise, he calls. i win. he gets super pissed about me beating him with a junk hand. for the second time. according to stan, he was about to cuss me out. i feel like i'm the king of the world. hahahah.



so i pretty much played a tight game. made the right folds. and i picked up on some unmistakable clues for luck, and ran with it. i played 95% of the losing hands correctly, having never folded something i would have regretted except maybe once or twice. surprisingly i won 7 out of 8 hands whenever i held a 3 or a 10. the 3's were screaming at me to play with them. i just can't describe how obvious the luck was staring me in the face. me and stan combined had winnings of $90. matt and steve lost a combined sum of $91. so our net gain was -$1. but me and stan had such an incredible time.



i played poker again on saturday. won on saturday.



i'm gonna go again tonight at ocean's 11. i'm planning to play my A game, and play a super tight game. it is my nature to start playing loose when i'm on a winning streak. so i'll have to practice my patience tonight. i'm not looking forward to winning. just improving my game.

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

i've just played the most incredible hand of no limit poker.



I ended up with a Ace high flush, with 4 clubs on the board, which is pretty rare



But I lost to the guy who had a full hose. now when 4 of the cards on the board is the same suit, that means that the 5th card needs to pair up with one of the 4 cards on the board with the same suit. then to make the full house, the guy with the full house needs to have the a card matching the pair to make the 3 of the kind, then have another card to match another card on the board to make the full house. This flush in itself is probably the most rarest flushes to hit on texas hold em. Probably in the 100's of thousands.



But now it gets interesting. The 4 clubs on the board was all over the place. There was a 5, 10, and 6, and 2 of clubs on the board. But someone reveals a straight flush with a connected 3 4 of clubs. So the guy with the impossible full house loses. and i still lose with my Ace high flush. what are the odds of all of these 3 hands being incorporated in one hand of poker? I'd say in the millions.



moral of the story, the only unbeatable hand is the royal flush.



As for American Idol, I've kinda lost interest in the singers, except Camile. I think she did well enough for the next round. She did show us how incredible her voice sounds in small snippets. If only she can harness it....

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

The scientific approach to American Idol



If they are going to do what they've been doing in the other seasons (picking bottom 3, letting 1 go), here are my predictions for the person that are going tonight. The word "package" refers to the video clip of the person they showed before they started singing that introduced the person more in depth.



Amy Adams was the only obvious one. Other than the hair, she doesn't stand out. Plus she had a weak performance last night. This is an obvious one. And I think she'll be the 1 out of the bottom 3 to go.



John Peter Lewis (aka the pen salesman) is my second pick for bottom 3. Despite what the judges said that last night he doesn't have much to offer. And even though Simon called him the "dark horse that can win this competition" that was a total lie to sway the votes. Simon still thinks John Peter Lewis is a joke. Simon is just playing the game. He knows that by complementing him so highly, he'll get less votes, and when people think the underdog is going to win, they stop voting because they think they'll make it on their own. He won't be the one to get the boot today since he did gain a tremendous amount of fans for being the people's choice for the wild card show. Simon will just have to continue lying through his teeth and keep complementing him.



My third pick for bottom 3 is Jennifer Hudson. I agree she's got an amazing voice. She could probably land a recording contract just on her voice alone today, but having said that, she doesn't stand out. She's an amazing vocal performer out of a group of amazing vocal performers who stand out more than her.



There were other people who I thought had weak performances but there are reasons why they won't be voted in the bottom 3.



Camile Valesco - First off, I thought her package was fantastic. Shes beautiful, talented, passionate about what she does, humble, loves her simple life and simple job. You can't not admire someone with those qualities. And she has a tremendous amount of potential, and even if she didn't show it tonight, people are still itching to see if she can bring out something that will blow us away.



John Stevens - He's anti pop. He stands out, but he doesn't stand out enough to win this competition. But what he has is the support of old people voting for him, and they vote in record numbers. He will be around a while as long as the shows don't go on too late for the senior citizens to vote.



Leah Labelle - She looked really hot tonight with her new hair style.. Harsher the comments on a pretty face, the more it helps in the earlier final rounds. She will get enough votes to not get picked for the bottom 3.



Matt Rogers had a pretty good performance, but not up to par with at least top 6 of 12 tonight. But his number of votes in the semifinals displayed that he had a lot of appeal towards to voting crowd. He is the Josh Gracin (last year's Marine) this year. He'll go far...maybe make top 4-6.



My 2 favorites this year is George Huff. After he shaved his mustache, he no longer looks like a 38 year old man. And I would say his voice is good as Ruben Studdards. And of course Camile just on her potential, beauty, and personality alone. I hope she can just let loose and give us all she can give before people start doubting her.

Saturday, March 13, 2004

as requested:



Friday, March 5, 2004

Hilarious. UPTE loses by a landslide defeat! A 2 to 1 vote against UPTE. Unionizing bastards. UPTE should stand for UP The Ess. It has been a big worry in our dept about them trying to unionize us and us having almost no control over it. Luckily, the majority of us saw right through all that non sense.



All UPTE has done for me is take away $2000 from me as a student cause I was making big bucks at the time so that they can distribue that money towards people higher up who had no right in taking my money.



If I deserve a raise, UPTE would never put it through, or they would probably negotiate that I should get a smaller raise to meet union standards.



If I don't deserve one, I don't care about getting one. Everyone should move up together my ass. I doubt they would ever get anything through the bargaining table. What are they going to bargain with? By organizing a strike? Yeah, that works. Just ask the people at VONS, Albertsons, and Ralphs. They went jobless for 5 months, are all now in serious financial trouble, and ended up accepting the offer they pretty much originally proposed before the strike. I don't want to be striking anyway. That's really stupid and barbaric. People that need to strike should be easily replaceable. With the job market in its current state, there are a lot more qualified workers out there than these people who suck at their jobs and needs big brother to get a raise for them.



Plus, they were going to take $40+ out of my pay check on a montly basis. That's like 2 full rib dinners at Phils. Total bullshit.



Unions discourage hard work and competition by never rewarding any efforts. People don't fear getting laid off so they lose motivation for even do the bare minimum. You know what that is called? Communism.

Monday, March 1, 2004

another month has gone by



why is it that as you get older, time seems to go by faster? it is because when you are young, the length of consciousness of one's existence is much shorter, that each minute that goes by seems like a significant percentage of one's entire life? or is it that you just stop thinking that each minute of your life is important, when you have been trained all your life to wait and wait at the mercy of of others?



friday, i went to go play poker at a friend's friend's place. well, he had a small apartment but about 24 people showed up. him only having one table, 10 of us decided to go to another guy's condo that he just bought. so after about an hour and so of just waiting for people, and getting lost, we finally got the game under way. we started playing much earlier than usual. it was good since i had to wake up for d1gp early the next day. in about 2 hours, i had control of about 90% of the chips on the table. but my luck had run out and it was getting late. but when we finally got around to the heads up match, stan and i were about even on our chip counts. so long story short, i went all in on a K, 10 off suit, and stan went all in with a A, J off suit. i got second. i'll get him next time. made out with 20 extra dollars and called it a night.



saturday, i woke up at 7:30 for d1gp. got over to casey's place at around 8:30, like everyone said they would. as usual, i was the first one there. we picked eric up and then we got to Irwindale at around 10:30. we stopped by jack in the box, then got to the racetrack a little after 11. the luck was on our side because they ran out of parking, and the only place left for us to park was at the overflow parking next to the gate. getting there 45 minutes late, ultimately saved us about an hour of waiting to exit the parking lot. the prelims were already under way. the drifting was really cool. there were only one major collison to the wall, and all other ones were minor. it was much different than the one the other guys had been to before. at the other event, they said people were driving really agressively and there were a lot more collisions, car to car, and car to wall. it might have been due to the fact that this is only round one of this competition (a lot more races to be held in japan), and people didn't want to wreck early, and were a little cold starting out. there was a new souped up viper that was being drifted. if i remember correctly, it was prepped for Datona. it was quite a sight considering the car was probably twice as heavy as the average car in the competition. it wasn't really for any points. only for an exhibition. unfortunately, he spun out and hit the wall. i'm sure it's gonna cost loads of money to get it repaired. probably the entire cost of some of the cars that were being drifted. the competition ended around early evening. 3 silvia's got first and second and fourth. there was a R32 (i think) skyline that got third. one thing i was really touched by was the sportsmanship of the drivers. they were really humble no matter which place they got. and they were really appreciative of their win and congradulatory to their competitors that beat them by a nose. some even pretty emotional. that says to me that these drivers, no matter how easy it seemed to us, they must have trained endlessly to be where they are at and were really proud of their accomplishments. even the third place guy had tears of joy in his eyes. congrats to all the winners.



after the race, we went to this chinese noodle place. it was quite different that the chinese food places i have been to before. this was supposed to be one of those restaurants reminiscent of those street vendors in china. one of them pointed out that they had stinky tofu there. being curious as usual, i decided to try it. and just as i feared, it was awful. i think this is a pretty accurate description of my experience with stinky tofu. well it smells and tastes like hard tofu that's been marinated in sewedge. then cleaned off, and put into a soup. the smell is really recognizable as sewedge. something i really can't stand. at first bite, it tasted like regular tofu, then the aftertaste got me. like with chicken feet, i'll never be having it again. after that we went to get boba and played a small game of texas hold em just for fun. we didn't have any chips so we used one of the decks as chips. it actually worked out pretty well, and was pretty fun. after that, it was midnight, and time to head home. i got home a little before 1am. putting an end to an intersting long day.



sunday, i decided to catch up on my sleep. i slept and watched tv in bed till about 3pm. went to costco. then went to jeff's house so i can put in a second video card on his computer. after that, i headed to the gym, got a okay workout. watched the academy awards while doing my mild cardio. LOTR was a big winner as it was expected. it won all 11 of 11 nominations. Lost in Translation. i didn't know that sofia coppola wrote and directed it. wow, she can write, direct, and not act. ;) weekend over. time to grind some stones.