Monday, May 18, 2009

Angels and demons review

Blevins really wanted to see Angels and Demons, and I was curious having liked the book better than the DaVinci code. I promised him we'd go on opening night.



Without giving too much away for those who haven't seen it, I had two major problems: 1) they don't develop what should be one of the major characters nearly enough. 2) the best part of the book is all the philosophy and history. They are bit players in the movie; window-dressing.



Overall it was an average movie. I think I might have been less disappointed if I hadn't read the book.



Saturday, May 9, 2009

Lou Krieger on HORSE

There are a lot of dualities in poker.  Some people at live poker are really annoying, yet these are often the people you want to sit with because they play badly.  Being a professional player may seem like a great life, and there are a lot of freedoms, but it also comes with a lot of stresses that a "normal" job does not have.

I have long lamented the lack of books, strategy advice, etc about HORSE games and tournaments as their own entity.  Of course there are several things to be read on each game individually, but there are few things that discuss the overall strategy of mixed games and tournaments.  The meta game, if you will.  Most of what I know on that front I have gleaned from personal experience and discussion with other players who know what they are doing on the mixed front.

On the other hand, this lack of ready information is exactly what makes HORSE games so juicy.  While NLHE is probably the game that I understand the best, just because I have played far and away more hands of that compared to anything else, my relative skill level relative to my opponents is certainly much higher in HORSE.

Nonetheless, I am really happy to see that Lou Krieger is doing a new weekly HORSE column for PokerNews.  The first part is available here.  Second is here.  I'm definitely looking forward to future columns.

Personally, I know I need improvement on the HORSE tournament front (in the middle of rereading FT's Tournament book in prep for the series).  My HORSE cash game is pretty solid.



Maybe not a vampire, but close.

I was gmail chatting with a friend the other day and I noted that the worst part for me about returning to a 9-5er would be waking up in the morning.  I'm definitely not a morning person, though I did manage to turn into one of those people who wake up by 10am on weekends after 5 years of the 9-5 thing. 

He immediately retorted with: "But you are always awake early!" 

Indeed.  It was 7:30am when we were chatting.

Before I could type my response he wrote again: "Oh.  *Still* awake?"

Yessir.  Definitely NOT a morning person.  I much prefer to be able to sleep when I am sleepy and wake when I'm not.