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so it took me long enough, but i finally got back to the felt last night at garden city. it was actually the first real live game i played in since getting one-outted at bellagio new year’s day. that is a LONG time between sessions. in the meantime i had been keeping busy and playing a small bit online.

i was reminded of how different playing in a live game is. the speed of the action, the physical tells, the multiple levels of thinking. it was fun to get back to it. i’ll be re-instituting the wednesday night poker sessions from now on and treating it like a hard job.

how’d i do? well, i grinded out a $42 win. not bad for the first day back. i made three different mistakes playing 6-12 hold’em that probably cost me about $100 in pots. interestingly enough, the mistakes were all on passive play, when the guy was actually weak and probably would have folded to a bet, raise, or re-raise. one hand that in which i made a horrid mistake went as so:

two limpers to me in the cut-off. i see Ah8h. i raise it up to two bets. the button had just sat down, didn’t even have chips yet. he called. the big blind and the two limpers called. flop came 10-high with two hearts. checked around to me. i bet (10 small bets in the middle already). button called. other three players folded. now here’s where i begin to fuck up. turn card comes blank. inexplicably, i check. inexplicably, he checks. remember that there are 12 small bets out there. river comes another T, not a heart. now here i should take the pot away. my A-high is unlikely to stand up on its own here, but he hasn’t shown any strength at all. for some bizarre reason i checked it down, hoping not to invest more money in the pot. he checks and flips over AQ. i muck and go puke outside. i’m still sick about how i played the hand. if i follow up on the turn and/or river with aggression, he lays the hand down easily. ugh.

anyhow, i managed to right myself and actually play pretty well after a while, ending up $78 playing hold’em. i hit a couple of bad spots playing Stud-8 later on in the evening and ended the night with a small win. not bad considering i made several horrific mistakes in both games. the one thing i am proud of is that i got up and left the 6-12 table when the table got tough. proper table selection is something i need to work on.

sorry, bunch of different things to talk about and putting them into small groups just wouldn’t make sense…– this artest-for-peja deal is turning into a real fuck up. first of all, i don’t really see how the deal benefits either side. indy gets peja for the rest of this season and then sees him roll off to free agency. i don’t see him pushing them over the top this year, so why? sacramento gets artest who will undoubtedly be a distraction in the market and will be completely bored on a lackluster team with no dominant personality. this is, of course, if he doesn’t explode and destroy the team. you throw in the fact that someone leaked the story before it was a done deal, no one got artest’s blessing from the kings’ side, and peja now hates the kings, and you have a total cluster-fuck. this deal now NEEDS to get done, even if it doesn’t help either team. if it doesn’t get done, both guys need to be gone within the next month anyway. i swear, sometimes i really feel like i could run these teams.– so we have another person from our team leaving, this time for another large software company in the northwest. i’ve said it before, but i think that one of the strangest adjustments to the real world has been the understanding that people will get up and leave at any time. it makes the ending to every relationship at a job strangely sudden. it’s kinda like the first lord of the rings movie when, like me, you were not aware that the movie would have no ending. you get to the end and you’re like “um, is that it? i thought there was going to be more. ah well. later.” then you try to choke jordan for not telling you the movie was ending-less.

– thinking seriously about playing in a few WSOP events this year. i think the recent tunica tournaments seem to indicate that the growth of poker seems to be hitting a plateau, if not a decline. i mean, if i think about my friends, very few of them play poker anymore. as with all booms, a few end up staying and most end up going away. wouldn’t it be interesting if this year’s world series had less players than last year? that’d be bizarre. anyhow. need to closely look at the calendar to examine which events to play in. more on this soon.

– in case you’ve been buried in a hole for a week, kobe scored 81 points the other night against toronto. i commented to a coworker yesterday that his 81 points reminds me of the days when my brother and i would play NBA Jam on the super nintendo and try to score as many points as possible. our strategy? we would be the detroit pistons. my brother would be isiah, because he could shoot so well and was so quick. i would be bill laimbeer, because he was a dirty player who i could use to throw the computer guys on the ground. i think we once got isiah 212 points in one game. to me, that’s what kobe is like right now. and like those old NBA Jam games, kobe leaves spectators so unsatisfied by his ridiculous feats. we would always get to the end of the game and think “well, that was cool. um, should we do it again?” there was no sense of accomplishment because it was relatively meaningless and forgettable. kobe is now that way. to me, he can AVERAGE 60 points for a season and i wouldn’t care. what does he need to do to show me something interesting? win a title. sorry, but that’s it. show us all that you can be something more than a cartoonish caricature of a basketball player. show us a winner. if not, i can just lump you with dominique wilkens, alex rodriguez, and dan marino in my head.

– i’m goin to watch my favorite comedian next month (a month from today exactly). if you’re interested in going, feel free to let me know:

Club Name: San Jose Improv
Show Name: Dave Attell
Show Date/Time: Saturday, 2/25/06 7:00P

[15:03] eafy43: hey jack
[15:03] smallchou: yo
[15:03] eafy43: how come kingsley just told me you werent’ watching football on sunday?[15:14] chantytime: how come you’re not watching football?

[15:19] kingsley’s sister: jack, how come you’re not watching football? and how come you’re so smart and SO hot?

thank you kingsley’s sister. and thanks, kingsley. thanks for telling everyone you know to ask me about not watching football. jerk. just so i don’t have to explain it multiple times, read here:

i was sitting at my desk, in the process of deciding whether to watch football on sunday or play poker. yes, the football games are exciting, but i also haven’t played in the artichoke joe’s sunday tournament in several weeks and i wanted to do that. in any case, i was literally deep in thought on this topic when i clicked to IM and saw the following message from an hour previous:

[13:55] thepoisonedivy: so okay i’m buying tickets for lion king this sunday at 1pm

*momentary panic*

now guys, i have to admit that this was a little bit like getting kicked in the nuts. actually, it was exactly like it. and i’m not talking about the slight glancing blow that makes you sting for a second. i’m talking about the painful type of roundhouse ninja stomp kick that makes you ache for about an hour. kingsley can relate. hey kingsley, why don’t you post a comment here about your first sexual experience?

now there are a few pieces of contextual evidence here:

1. ivy asked me early in the week if i wanted to watch the musical on sunday. i said yes, for obvious reasons, thinking it would be at night, like every other musical i’ve ever seen. should i know that musicals are sometimes shown in the daytime? in three words: no and no.
2. ivy did not know that the football games start at noon on sunday (thrown off by the eastern time thing). those tricky easterners.
3. luckily, the second football game (the game featuring MY preseason super bowl pick, the carolina panthers) starts at 3:30. so anyone in the city want to watch football at 3:30 on sunday?

so, again, why am i not watching football on sunday? well, i am. part of it. but why just part of it? well, in short, because i love my girlfriend and this is what boyfriends do.

and you know what, guys? that’s why it felt like getting kicked in the nuts; because i immediately knew what i would be doing at 1pm on sunday (instead of watching denver squeak by pittsburgh. write that down.). if she wasn’t worth it, i would have spent actual time deciding whether to go to the musical or not. instead? no-brainer. was the timing somewhat unfortunate? yeah, but life is sacrifice and commitment and, yes sometimes…

getting kicked in the nuts. go panthers and GO lion king.

like so many poker players, i started playing in home games. i can fondly remember sitting around the table at my parents’ house years ago, debating whether the big bet in limit hold’em came after the flop or after the turn (anybody else remember that or other ridiculous debates we had?)at some point, i started playing in casinos and card clubs. the first time was at the reno hilton, where kingsley and i sat down at a $3-$6 limit hold’em game for a lengthy session of about 45 minutes . regardless that i now understand that such a short session is absolutely no indication of poker-playing ability and regardless that i had no f’ing idea what i was doing, i won about $75 and declared myself an expert . later that year i went to vegas for the first (real) time and playing $2-$6 spread limit hold’em at aladdin, getting to spin the wheel when i hit quad 9’s. i also played at a few other places that trip, when i formulated my now laughable theory that by playing only two hole cards 9 or above, i was a dominating force at the miniscule-limit table. anyhow, along the way came books, vegas trips, and short stints to bay101 while in college. i would play occasionally, in home games and casinos, slowly improving but not really knowing it.

and then everything changed on one semi-drunk night at the monte carlo in las vegas. think this pseudo-story might be be known by now, but i came back from Club Rain at around 2am still buzzed and immediately bought in for $200 at a 1-2 no limit table. it was my first time playing no-limit in a casino and i probably would have been terrified if i wasn’t drunk. i remember seeing a multi-way flop with A4, flopping middle pair, and coming over the top of some guy. he showed me top pair and folded. i mucked my cards but someone else at the table asked to see them. the dealer flipped the cards over and everyone’s eyes perked up. i’ll never forget that hand. long story short, at the end of about a 9am session, i had somehow stumbled my way to all of the chips at the table, stopping play because there were no other players, winning a hefty amount that still stuns me today considering how bad i was.

so what’s the point. the point is that since then, i stopped playing in home games. for many different reasons, i just don’t play in them anymore. if i could find a high buy-in home game to regularly play in (maybe one bill or more), i probably would. but i just don’t. and it’s odd, because when i DO play in home games now, i almost always lose.

as an improving poker player, i should always ask myself why losing happens to me? am i playing poorly? am i under-betting? over-betting? playing poorly after the flop? am i not changing gears? the end result is to figure out: why in the past two years have i lost in almost all 6 or 7 home games i’ve played in, while i have a total profit of about 200x my home game losses in that time playing in casinos? it’s not exactly a question that consumes me considering the financials, but strange? i think so.

this question comes to me after losing a monstrous $10 buy-in in a home game last night. i would be willing to chalk it up to bad luck based on the hands last night, but that is of course a terrible mistake in all cases as a poker player. yes, perhaps some hands were bad luck, but that doesn’t cover other nameless hands in which i may have lost or gained chips. instead i’ve come up with some hypotheses:

NOT ADJUSTING TO HOME GAME PLAYERS: at a home game last night, i saw a hand where the button limped. the small blind raised to 3x the big blind. the big blind folded. the button thought, then called. flop came QJT. small blind bet about the pot. button called. turn came 2. small blind checked. button bet about half the pot. small blind moved all-in immediately for about the pot. button immediately called. i was expecting to see a set from the small blind and two pair from the button. TT and QJ. pretty believable. small blind flipped over TT, as expected. button flipped over Q5. Q5 offsuit. now, not making any judgements on the play of the hand, i think that’s illustrative of the lack of laying down hands in common home games. i mean, the buy-in is $10. people are willing to call with a lot. lesson: re-read doyle’s super system section on calling stations.

MAKING BAD PRE-FLOP DECISIONS: this is something that i think i’ve corrected but was doing for a while. i consider myself to be a better pre-flop than post-flop player, yet i inexplicably give up this part of my game when playing in a home game. calling out of position. calling when i feel like i’m an underdog. limping with trash. when the buy-in gets small, i tend to want to gamble and try to out-play everyone. the problem, of course, relates to the first point that it’s hard to out-play anyone that can’t lay a hand down; you just need to show them a good hand. lesson: you need to think one level beyond your opponent, not more than that. and, stick to the things that make you successful.

NOT ADJUSTING TO PLAYERS QUICKLY ENOUGH: i like to play long sessions at casinos. sessions where i can sit and watch players for an hour plus play a lot of hands dealt by fast dealers. in no limit this is most profitable because in a long session you can wait, analyze the players, and trap them with huge hands when they arrive. home games however are generally much shorter with less hands dealt. instead of waiting to understand if my reads are strong, perhaps i should move on them more quickly and just trust myself. it’s a hard thing to do, i guess. i also need to work on these skills more and pay more attention. serious flaw in my game. lesson: make better reads and trust myself more.

PLAYING STYLE: while i feel like i have a reasonable ability to change gears for a player at my level, my basic playing style is still tight-aggressive. i don’t feel like this playing style transfers well to a short-handed home game with few hands. i need to become better at changing gears when appropriate and playing looser when needed. this is something that still needs work. lesson: work on changing gears.

the good news is that these are all correctable. the bad news is that i don’t intend on playing a lot more home games, for the same reasons that i haven’t been playing a lot of home games in the recent past. i do think it’s important to think through these things though. they should help me in my overall game. i hope.

hmm, five years ago i was sitting around explaining all kinds of sports to michelle at branner and now she’s interviewing ned colletti, grady little, and tommy lasorda for a korean news show. *sniff*. i’m so proud of her. she’s all grown up : ).http://www.tvk1.com/video/e011106.wmv

i think i finally got through to my dad last week. it took over five years, but i think i might have actually done it. what was the context? well, we were having a rather heated discussion speaking broadly about Asian Parents. i don’t mean parents of asian descent, but rather Asian Parents, who seemingly spend their entire parenthood trying to stifle all creativity in their children. i was explaining to him what i thought was the most demonstrative and damning example of this phenomenon: “go get your master’s.”

i’m sure that many of you have heard this exact phrase, because i think i’ve heard it passingly in at least nine different asian languages by now. it should be placed on some sort of asian parent mt. rushmore of sayings, along with the patronizing pre-25 “do you have a girlfriend yet?” (meaning: you’re far too young to have a girlfriend. you need to work on your schoolwork.) and the post-25 spanish inquisition “do you have a girlfriend yet? (you’re not gay are you? my god, please tell me you’re not gay. you need to get married.).

this particular phrase drives me absolutely insane, because i always consider it to be the most direct affront to the purpose of higher education, at least in america. getting a master’s degree, inherently, is meant to serve a very specific pursuit of knowledge. even in its name, a master’s degree implies that you are studying for deep expertise of a particular subject. yet, when the phrase “go get your master’s” is used by Asian Parents, the purpose could more lucidly be described as:

“you don’t know what you want to do in life? go get an advanced degree. any advanced degree. getting that degree will guarantee that you never starve and buy you time from facing the reality of figuring out what you want to do.”

don’t get me wrong, i am not at all against advanced degrees. if you have determined that you are deeply interested in an area of study or that getting the degree will aid your chosen career, then that sounds perfect. i mean, that is what the degrees were made for after all. but to blindly “go get a master’s” because you don’t know what to do? that just sounds crazy to me.

and that is exactly what i told my dad. his response was, very succinctly,”then why did you study computer science?” and suddenly, i realized the cultural conflict. for my dad, my choice to study computer systems engineering meant a career choice, as studying electrical engineering in taiwan was for him. it meant that i was deciding my life would be in computer software. as chris put it last week, “it’s training, not learning.” my dad thinks of my bachelor’s degree as a vocational degree for really smart people. it is for that reason that he could never have understood a degree in history, sociology, english, or the like: because they have no direct career correlation and are therefore “useless.” and therein lies the conflict between the two of us, because i have always considered my major to be a certain generalist education with a technical slant, so it’s like i set false expectations for him.

i explained to him that some of the smartest people that i have ever met have majored in history, economics, public policy, and sociology. they may or may not expect those curricula to directly pertain to their careers, but they certainly expect them to INDIRECTLY influence their lives. i think of my engineering degree in the same way.

i think he might get it, just a little bit. i guess we’ll see.

- new baseball hall of fame class was announced today. congratulations to bruce sutter, who is probably paving the way for mariano rivera, trevor hoffman, and future relievers to get inducted. is he deserving? not as a first-ballot, but later? eh, probably. he is near the end of his eligibility so it was probably fair.

one question i have though, “if sutter’s career was good enough to get in, then why not goose gossage?” very strange. when you line up their career stats:

sutter: 661 GP, 1042.1 IP, 300 Saves, 309 BB, 861 SO, 2.83 ERA
gossage: 1002 GP, 1809.1 IP, 310 Saves, 732 BB, 1502 SO, 3.01 ERA

considering that getting into the hall of fame is about a high level of achievement over a long period of time, it would seem that gossage is a shoe-in, particularly if sutter’s getting in this year. odd? yes. i think so.

edit: it seems that rob neyer wrote something similar yesterday. i should be a sportswriter.

– so if you’ve been listening to the sports radio the last few days, as i have, it is apparent how galvanizing the baseball hall of fame debate is. tony bruno, on gary radnich’s show this morning, lashed out at the BaseBall Writers’ Association of America for “playing God” and keeping deserving players out of the hall of fame. i think many columnists and radio hosts rant about this every year. they also rant about how stupid it is that someone can be left out for ten years and then suddenly make it in. my thoughts on this:

i actually appreciate what the BBWAA does with the baseball hall of fame. if you look at the hall of fame for every other major sport, they are jokes. every decent football player is a lock for the hall of fame. nobody even knows who’s in the basketball hall of fame. with baseball, they do several things that, at the least, create interest:

1. set the standard extremely high: the bar to get into the baseball hall of fame is downright ludicrous when you think about it. if all of today’s current players stopped playing TODAY, my guess is that there might only be six or seven guys DEFINITELY getting in (barry bonds, roger clemens, greg maddux, randy johnson, roberto alomar (don’t laugh, look at the numbers), piazza, and probably pedro). that is absurd.
2. distinguish between first-ballot hall-of-famers and others: willie mays was not a unanimous first-ballot hall of famer. and the guy was probably the greatest baseball player ever.
3. ask for 75% to get in: 75%? just think about how strong of a sentiment that represents. i bet money that at least 1/2 of the sportswriters that have spoken to barry bonds hate him. now you want at least half of those haters to vote for barry? pretty tough.

those three factors result in lots of argument, controversy, and lobbying. you have people not only arguing if craig biggio should get in (i think he should), but also whether he should be a first-ballot hall of famer. i think those arguments are healthy and only serve to increase interest in the game. bruce sutter? who the hell would care who bruce sutter was today if he didn’t get into the hall of fame? and not only that, would bruce sutter have cried like he did today if he got in on the first ballot? probably not.

say what you want about the Baseball Writers of America, but they sure do make baseball interesting.

– next year? there are several shoe-ins (tony gwynn and cal ripken jr.) as well as one guy who should be a shoe-in if you excuse his bulging steroid-grown muscles (mark mcgwire). i also see several down-the-road maybes, so it could get pretty interesting: (bret saberhagen and *drumroll* jose canseco).

– wild card weekend over, and my preseason super bowl pick (carolina) still looking strong. on october 7, i picked carolina (2-2 at the time) over indy in the super bowl. i’ll stick to that one, though this weekend’s matchup with the bears just looks scary.

A SHORT LIST OF BESTS (miscellaneous)
ho hum, another day at the office. a short list of things that are interesting:Best New Food Discovery: who would have known that the building next door, the one that no one ever goes to, has some of the best food on our campus? i’ve been at oracle for more than 17 months now and only the other day did i discover the tasty and affordable asian rice and noodle bowls in the 200 building. they’re not satisfying in the same way that a jersey joe’s cheesesteak or el metate carnitas super burrito is, but they are perfectly-sized and comforting.

Best New Use of Technology: i went to the optometrist today and i saw probably the best new medical development that i’ve seen in a while. it’s called optomap and it takes in-depth images of your retina immediately for your optometrist to see. no dilation drops. no walking around hazily for half a day. just a quick bright light and a snap. not only that, but you can instantly see the digital images on the machine, enhance them, magnify, and do all of the things that optometrists need to do. i’m probably biased on this since i had my retinal tear and partial detachment last year, but i think it’s pretty awesome.

Best Company I Heard About Today: ivy sent me a link for this company that i find pretty intriguing: 37 Signals. the applications seem really cool and absurdly simple. i also like the “dumbed down” nature of the interfaces and look-and-feel. one of the things that i think many successful web companies have found in the past few years is that having more features doesn’t necessarily translate to having a better product. seems like these guys get that. i also like their phrase that they build products for the “Fortune 5,000,000″. had to laugh at that. someday when your computer is nothing more than a terminal to the internet, products like these will be pretty popular.

Best Moment of the Day: my former director hurriedly ushered me into a conference room today and said to me “please stay.” i was confused, as i really haven’t been trying to leave. it turns out that she noticed i was wearing a coat today (my new br blazer) and assumed that i must be interviewing with other places. ha.

hmm, the thought of winning this thing and getting to sit in a suite at staples screaming “Kobe sucks!” is almost too exciting to handle…Dear Tilter,

Congratulations on qualifying for our Jersey Days Freeroll at 3PM ET on Saturday, January 7th.

You are already registered for this event, so all you have to do is make sure you’re seated at your table when we shuffle up and deal. The top 27 finishers in this tournament will each receive a custom, “home white” Full Tilt Poker basketball jersey. In addition, the first-place finisher will receive a Staples Center VIP basketball prize package valued at $2,000, including four suite tickets to see the Los Angeles Lakers play the Toronto Raptors on Sunday, January 22nd, along with limousine transportation to and from the game, and Lakers gear for everyone in their party.

Good luck in the tournament and we look forward to seeing you at the table.

Sincerely,

Team Full Tilt