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enough with the dabbling: i decided yesterday that i will be mostly playing stud hi/lo split eight-or-better for the next few months. granted, it probably will not provide the best monetary value (especially considering that the limits are 4-8 while the new no limit game at garden city is generally juicy), but i want to get good at the game.stud hi/lo is a much more intricate and complex game than limit hold’em. the variances in possible hands and the amount of information that you can gather from the board greatly change how much information is in just the cards. it is a game of math and feel and skill. it’s a game of realizing a small edge and maximizing profit or realizing a small disadvantage and minimizing loss.for example: last night i looked down at JT-Q on third street. with several people matching the bring-in bet and nobody completing yet, i was getting great odds to “take one off” and try to pick up an open-ended straight draw on fourth street. that was, of course, until i looked again out at the board and saw two K’s and 2 9’s already out. the chances of me picking up such a draw went from 8 in 42 to 4 in 42 just like that. the hand became an easy fold.

if we just do a quick mathematical count, in an eight-handed game of stud, on third street i will see 10 of the 52 cards, meaning that all further odds are in terms of 42 unseen cards. compare this to hold’em where, when we first make a betting decision, we have seen exactly 2 of the 52 cards and you can understand the intricacy involved in the game.

i’m excited to spend time improving my game in stud hi/lo. last night in a six-hour session i could recount at least 15 different mistakes i made, whether they be missing a bet, missing a raise, or missing a lay-down. i need to fix these things and become proficient at the game.

once i feel confident in stud hi/lo and am able to beat the game at garden city consistently, i will probably move back limit hold’em and try to move up to the 20-40 game. i’m excited about these challenges. wish me luck.

bud selig and baseball announced yesterday that they are launching an independent investigation into steroid use in baseball. i think the common response by most baseball fans is: “now?”if we backtrack over several years of baseball history, the inklings and suspicions of baseball were always there. the massive growth of a multitude of average baseball players. the rapid rate of home runs across the majors. sammy sosa breaking maris’ record after being an average, base-stealing outfielder for most of his career. the low-level rumor mill, mouthing out whispers of in-the-ass injections. the admission of steroid use by ken caminiti. bret boone suddenly spraying 37 home runs in 2001 in the largest ballpark in the majors. the book of jose canseco. mark mcgwire taking the “high road” in front of congress. rafael palmeiro apparently taking the low road in front of congress.despite all of the information, somehow baseball didn’t begin steroid testing at all until 2003, five years after sammy sosa’s arms ballooned like the governator’s. isn’t that a little odd?

all along, over the years of baseball’s resurgence, bud selig sat on the side and let the elephant in the room grow and grow. what’s sad is that he isn’t pushed to this investigation by an overwhelming feeling of morality, but by a book about barry bonds. because people love to hate barry, as a proud and arrogant black athlete (see: jack johnson, muhammad ali, etc.), the public outcry over barry extends far beyond all of the other indicating steroid factors. much to the horror of major league baseball, the steroid problem that they avoided for years has come front and center, so large that selig can no longer ignore it. what does the commissioner of baseball do? start an investigation to wipe his own hands clean.

sorry bud, the steroid era happened on YOUR watch. you let it happen because you wanted the money, the new stadiums, the returning fans, and the adulation that came along with a baseball resurgence. you shut your mouth and let it happen because you were too afraid of what would happen if the steroid usage came out in the press. you sacrificed the honesty of baseball for money and prestige. in other words, you are no different from barry bonds and his alleged steroid use.

now you want to “clean it all up”? i hope dearly that what george mitchell finds is a massive several year period where everyone in baseball looked the other way in the face of relentless news about steroids. and i hope that you, bud selig, are implicated as the sniveling, gutless disgrace of a commissioner that you are. you wanted your legacy to be new ballparks and the return of baseball. instead it will be steroids and the dishonesty of the game. we can all see it in your face: you’re as guilty as jose canseco, ken caminiti, mark mcgwire, sammy sosa, and the rest. you ARE barry bonds.

edit: looks like buster olney agrees…

tags: baseball, steroids, bud selig

interesting perspective by mike lee in the comments of my last post, though i don’t think i ever said i watch sports to see gonzaga (or any other college kids) choke away games. if it didn’t come across in the post, i think we watch sports because on any given night, something that is stunning, unthinkable, amazing, or terrible could happen.about the game: i don’t really believe that gonzaga just gave the game away. i believe that gonzaga lost because they were not in the mental mindset to win the basketball game over 40 minutes. as memphis demonstrated on saturday, short contested misses and turnovers are not necessarily unforced events. i think we should give ucla some recognition for that. i hate the term “battle-tested” to describe sports teams, but in this case i feel as though perhaps gonzaga just wasn’t battle-tested.as for gonzaga: i like gonzaga. i like the program. i like the coach. i think adam morrison is a fine player and a good pro prospect (great, before thursday night). but if you got to watch the game from where i saw it on thursday, you’d know that they bitch and complain far too much for a junior high school team, much less a college team. there was a great moment in saturday night’s ucla-memphis game when jordan farmar started to talk to a ref after being BLATANTLY fouled with no call. the camera cut to ben howland, directing farmar very clearly to “shut UP.” i thought that was a great example of how players should be expected to respond to officiating adversity. it’s a demonstration of toughness and character. don’t like a call? put your head down, dig in, and play harder. don’t lose focus on the game.

and therein lies my problem with adam morrison crying, kid or not. it wasn’t the fact that he was crying, but that the game wasn’t OVER. they were down one point. there were seconds left on the clock. yet morrison was already thinking about losing. there were enough seconds, in fact, for either of: 1) a steal and bucket to win, or 2) a foul, long pass, and bucket to win/tie. were these longshot ways of winning the game? yes. but so was scoring the last 11 points of the game to win by two. if you’re going to cry after a loss, at least do it AFTER the loss. there is no shame in that (jj redick, randy foye, etc.), particularly for a 21-year old.

i wasn’t celebrating a gonzaga choke. i was celebrating a very telling comeback win by ucla and commenting on a very telling moment about adam morrison. it’s a comment that i think is fair considering some nba team will be paying him several million dollars in a few months.

and that is why we watch sports: games like tonight’s.unbelievable game, i can’t believe i got to watch it in-person (thanks phil).the first game of the night, memphis-bradley was rather lackluster as the tigers used their superior athleticism and aggressiveness to run bradley into the ground. the arena was about half full.

as we neared gametime for ucla-gonzaga, the seats started filling up. you could feel a palpable buzz in the air as tip-off came. to be honest, i’ve never felt something like that before a sporting event, even in the great stanford-arizona tilts.

then the game started. and ucla was in trouble. they couldn’t hit a shot. they couldn’t defend morrison and batista. they couldn’t keep their hands off players, repeatedly fouling. and, perhaps most of all, they couldn’t keep arron afflalo on the floor (to score buckets and defend morrison). and yet, at halftime they were *only* down 13. i turned to phil and said, “i can’t believe they’re not down by 25.”

from my seat eight rows back from the court, you could tell that ucla came out to play in the second half. it’s as if howland told them in the locker room, “we might foul every one of our players out of the game, but we’re going to play our asses off.” early in the second half, jordan farmar shoved derek raivio in the neck with a forearm, knocking him to the ground. when raivio turned and complained to the referee, i figured ucla had a chance. why? because tough teams know that you need to go out and TAKE games away. any team with a point guard that would spend that much time crying to the referee was expecting to be given something.

still, i was stunned at the end of the game. i think stunning is the only word to describe it. at the end of the day, ucla made the plays when they mattered, scoring the last 11 points of the game.

the most telling moment came with 2.9 seconds left, as morrison cried on the court, with the game still going on. it was the perfect example of why ucla won the game: they were determined and they WON the game. they didn’t cry about bad calls. they didn’t pout about missed shots. they didn’t wonder about missed opportunities. they just wanted the game more. they were what we should (now) expect from ucla teams: tough.

tags: ucla, sports, gonzaga, basketball

on espn.com, chat session with bill simmons…

Vinay (Norwalk, CT): At what point do you think Tony Parker finally tells Eva Longoria to just shut the hell up? Can’t anything remain private? How bad do you think his teammates rip him for her latest comments about his bedroom skillzzzz? And, in the end, does any of it matter since he’s sleeping with a smoking hot Hollywood actress?

Bill Simmons: (1:46 PM ET ) Nope. none of it matters. She came to the Clips-Spurs game I went to and spent the whole time talking to people in her section — the Sports Gal noticed her in the second quarter and watched her for the rest of the game without once glancing at the court. After the game, she decided, “I think Eva Longoria seems nice.” We were at least 150 feet away from her. Women are crazy.

Scott Adams has an entertaining perspective on the gender difference.

90% of the gender difference seems to be the male preference for compartmentalizing thoughts while women think everything is somehow connected.

phil hooked it UP with sweet 16 tickets for thursday in oakland. second game? memphis-bradley; an after-dinner drink to be enjoyed after the main course: ucla and gonzaga. given the enormity of the game, let’s talk a little bit about my ucla bias…i was always a john wooden fan. i think he is the greatest coach in the history of sports and a tremendous man. i don’t like rick reilly as a sportswriter, but i’ll never forget reading this article about wooden. the autographed wooden autobiography my brother got me is one of my two most prized possessions (december 15, 2003).

when mike started college at UCLA in ‘97, i immediately became a UCLA fan. for several years, i followed the bruins intensely. in ‘98, john fong got a couple of courtside tickets to a stanford-usc matchup at maples. he wore his cal sweatshirt and i wore a bright blue ucla fleece. no joke.

in february of ‘00, a friend’s mother took me to the stanford-UCLA tilt at maples. it was her way of congratulating me for getting into stanford. i wore a stanford shirt but, to be honest, i remember feeling just fine when jerome moiso dropped in the game-winning basket. yes, i said it.

as years went on, i became much more of a stanford fan. attending a school trumps “being a fan,” when the two conflict. i get more excited/ angry/ disappointed/ elated when stanford wins or loses than any other team. case in point: february 07, 2004.

but about ucla… the day ucla hired ben howland, i had a couple of emotions. one, i was excited for ucla and its fans. two, i was disappointed for stanford.

considering that ucla is THE premier basketball program in the country, i always felt through the steve lavin years that ucla deserved better. my brother and i used to talk after every bruins game about the deficiencies of lavin as a coach and ucla as a team. i’m not going to get into more lavin-bashing, because he does seem to be a genuinely good guy and i spent years spewing venom at him on xanga. but let’s just say that: being an avid watcher of pitt basketball during the howland years, i knew what would happen at ucla. having ucla become a powerhouse west coast program would hurt stanford’s recruiting even more (if that’s possible) and make winning pac-10 championships tougher. (on a side note, i loathe the day when cal’s administration rids the school of ben braun.)

let’s look at ben howland’s first three years at ucla:
2003-04: 11-17
2004-05: 18-11
2005-06: 29-6, pac-10 championships (regular seasion & tournament)

now that’s saying something. even though howland attributes the turnaround to “better players,” anyone who knows basketball can notice the difference from the lavin years. i think howland himself says it best:

“I tell them, ‘You guys want to win championships? You want to win big? You want to play at the next level? You want to win now? You’ve got to defend,’” Howland said. “And that’s your constant, night in and night out. Great teams play good defense in any sport. Period.”

they play tough. they play aggressively. they play fearlessly. they play defense. but most of all, they are just getting started. in the next ten years, we’re going to see wave after wave of fantastic recruiting classes molded into athletic, talented, skilled, tough, and confident bruin teams. it’s concerning for stanford, arizona, washington, and all of the other pac-10 schools. ucla is about to rise up to national prominence and re-place itself at the top tier of college basketball, along with duke, north carolina, and uconn. believe that.

i’m happy that john wooden gets to see it.

tags: ucla, sports, basketball, john wooden, ben howland

during the afternoon yesterday, i realized that my “my google” homepage was just not cutting it anymore. the reason? real estate. i understand that google’s design goal is minimalism. for something like search, that just makes a lot of sense. compare google to the most broken search paradigm that i’ve come across lately (linkedin’s People Search) and you realize how nice a single box on a search page is. here, take a look at how clumsy/confusing this is:
but when it comes to a homepage, i want some density. it’s MY homepage. i should be able to convolute the interface as much as i want. if i wanted to make nearly every pixel text, that should be fine.

with google, i reached the point where i just ran out of room. “ran out of room?” you ask. “how can you run out of room? can’t you just scroll?” well, one of the most basic points of human-computer interaction is that you should never make the user scroll if you don’t *have* to. stuff on the page that requires scrolling to view is referred to as “below the fold”. and, like its traditional media counterpart, being “below the fold” on a website is ass. so, as i attempted to add my 30 boxes calendar onto google homepage, i ran into an issue:

some of the problem is text size, but 1) there is substantial white space on the page that i really don’t want, and 2) have you tried decreasing the text size on the google homepage? it doesn’t look so hot.

now, considering it’s my homepage, i don’t want ANY of the information to be below the fold, especially when there is all of that white space all over the damn page. so i went searching for a new homepage and finally settled on netvibes. i have to be honest: there is absolutely nothing that google homepage does that netvibes doesn’t (well, except for Search History, but who gives an F about that?). the UI is just as slick. i personally think it looks nicer. it has integration with web e-mail providers (including gmail). it has integration with several other sites that i use excessively (del.icio.us and box.net). it has integration with several other sites that i intend to use excessively (flickr and writely). it has collapsibility of the sections.

and, most of all, it has SPACE. i’ve already put substantially more words on the page than i had on google, it’s still very readable, and there’s still more room. who knows what new things i’ll be adding on there in the next month/years, but i think there will be enough space to arrange it on there.

i think google minimalism is great for some areas, but i do feel like it just doesn’t cut it everywhere (google finance). homepages is one of these places.

tags: web 2.0, google, netvibes, homepage