Friday, November 24, 2006

On the occasion of my 28th birthday

I have this annoying habit of thinking of myself as the age I will be in that year for the whole year...eventhough my birthday is at the end of November.  So eventhough I am still technically 27, I have thought of myself as 28 for at least 6 months.  I am weird.  This is probably not a shock to anyone who knows me.  LOL



My birthday is Sunday, 11/26.  Happy birthday to me.  :)



Friday, November 17, 2006

Internet Gambling Ban

Here is an interesting assessment of the Internet Gambling Ban passed by the Senate about a month ago (it had already been passed in the House earlier this year).  In case you didn't know (and if you didn't know, then you probably should just stop reading right now because you are probably not going to be interested in this, LOL), Bill Frist attached the Online Gambling Ban legislation to a Homeland Security/Defense bill about port security.  If the bill had come up on its own, it may not have passed.  Since it was attached to a Homeland Security Bill, no one voted against it.



The legislation was basically sold as a moral thing (how shocking) and yet exemptions were made for gambling on horse races.  Apparently one can become addicted to online poker but not online gambling on horse races (insert a big roll of the eyes here).



Anyways, as Slate points out, there may be some large unintended consequences of this poorly thought out legislation. 



Saturday, November 4, 2006

More Poker

Perhaps I need to add a poker category here...



I don't generally like to broadcast how I play on the internet, so I don't usually get into hand specifics on here, but I feel like my poker game has come a long way, baby.  I basically started playing a year ago (last Thanksgiving was the first time I played live, though I guess I had been playing online before that). 



I made a killing this week in my two home games (partly due to luck, and partly due to my game), and I just feel like I'm finally improving a few areas of play that hadn't been that great for me before:
1) my ability to gear shift when the game shifts.  I have always been pretty adept at realizing when the game had changed, but adjusting my play took awhile for some reason.  I've definitely gotten better at this recently, though there are a few things I still need to tinker with (sorry, no details, LOL).
2) New games.  I started playing in a Limit HoldEm, Omaha Hi Lo, and Stud8 game and I basically just started playing limit and any version of Omaha/Stud about a month and a half ago.  My learning curve has definitely been a lot faster than my NLHE learning curve was.  I really like Omaha a lot.  In addition to opening up new games, NLHE all the time gets super boring. 
3)Varying my playing style just to be random.  Perhaps I shouldn't be posting about this one.  ;)  One of my greatest strengths is that I am consistently changing my playing style, even when the game has not changed.  A lot of people seem to figure that they know how you play based on a few hands you've shown down with them, and even when they get contradicting information, they still feel like you're playing the way they think you do based on previous hands.  Heck, I've fallen into this trap myself, all the time.  I like to play the same hands different ways just to throw people off (obviously my ability to do so is dependent on what cards are on the board, what people I'm up against, etc.).  It seems to work.  I love getting the vibe that no one at the table is quite sure of what I have, or they are quite sure of what I have and they are wrong (especially afterwards when people try to put me on a hand and they are not even close, LOL).  As with the previous two things, I obviously still have a ways to go on perfecting this, but I surely have gotten better at this, especially compared to July when we were in Vegas and I felt like the good players sitting there could put me on a hand every single time.



Anyways, I know I still have a long way to go, but I am very pleased with my game recently. 



Another thing - I actually got into a long conversation with a guy at Foxwoods in May about how I got into poker.  Honestly, the primary attraction of it for me at first was not monetary (especially because when I first started I sucked!), but psychological.  Playing poker helps me to improve personality flaws that I have (impatience, pride, being too uptight, etc., etc.)  Probably no one who knows me would describe me as Zen (and I'm sure I just caused some longtime acquaintances to spit soda on their computer screen in laughter, just by saying that), but I have gotten so much better at just taking things in stride, which was something I sorely needed to work on before.  Still have a long way to go, but relatively speaking, I feel like I have made a lot of progress on this front as well.



Musical Comfort Food

Not sure why, but around this time of year I always start waxing nostalgic.  Perhaps it is my upcoming birthday, or maybe it is a holdover from Syracuse - I associate colder weather with the oncoming 6 months of depression due to living in the cold dark north.  :)



Anyways, I have been delving deep into some of my cd's that have not been listened to in awhile.  Like old friends, they always make me feel good.  And they always make me think of times past. 



If you are reading this blog and you are older than me you might know the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.  If you are my age (or if you are younger and you don't know what albums or even *liner notes* are), you probably don't know them.  One of my friends in college used to throw these parties where he would spin the vinyl of Paul Butterfield Blues Band's eponymous album while we all danced around his living room drinking wine from a box and cheap beer from the keg in the back yard.  Good times.  Parties like that are fewer and farther between these days (boo!), though at least now we have all upgraded our alcohol selection.  ;)



The Departed/The Prestige

We saw both of these films recently and they were both pretty good.  The Departed has an all-star cast, and eventhough I could see where it was headed about 30 minutes before it ended, there were still some surprising twists.  Jack Nicholson stole the show.  I would recommend it.



The Prestige was also good, and, imho, slightly less predictable.  I don't even like Hugh Jackman that much, but he did a really good job.  I love this time of year; most of the good movies come out.