Lost

OK, I'm not Lost, but I have watched the show since the beginning, and I'm still very confused. If you enjoy the show, and want to get unconfused about it, check out Julius Goat's blog. His commentary is often incisive and always funny. He promises to have an uber-post up by tomorrow or so. In the meantime, you can catch up on all the Lost episodes from the past.


I'm going to play in Kat's Donkament tonight, as she has promised to continue the tradition. Yay! Thanks Kat!

I've played a few Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Turbo Sit-n-Go tournaments lately, and have been doing OK. In one instance, I mistakenly signed up for a Holdem tournament instead, and won that one. However, in the BBT3, I've been doing terribly lately. I busted out on the first hand of one tournament. It was my first and only hand of No-limit Omaha Hi-Lo -- this was a while ago, but I'll try to remember. I had T987, with 2 suits, and I said to myself, Oh no, this is not going to be pretty. I limped, someone raised, the big blind called, and I called. This is not a great hand because of all the middle cards, but it's such a tempting hand, because you can have a ton of draws. Of course the flop gave me the flush, an open-ended straight flush draw, and two pair for a draw to a full house. I bet out and the big blind called. Not great for me, as this should have signaled me that he had a higher flush. The turn gave me 3 pair and one more out, for a total of 7 as it turns out. The big blind bet, and I pushed all in, and of course my opponent called with the nut flush plus a low draw. The river gave me 4 pair, as I couldn't suck out, and lost all my chips on my only hand ever of NLO8. That gives me a winrate of -10,000 big blinds per 100 hands lifetime in NLO8.

The last tournament of the BBt3 is this Sunday, in Miami Don's Big Game. I guess I'll try to win a token and see if I can cash in the last tournament.

Bankroll management

I definitely have a problem with bankroll management. Before we went to Europe, I stashed my bancake in a file folder, and then forgot where I put it. No problem, I haven't been playing any live poker, so I didn't miss it. I think just before we left, I made a deposit on Poker Stars, and made a mental note to transfer the cash from my bancake to my lunch money or to the wife's lunch money, or whatever. OK, fine. The other day, I went to make the transfer, and couldn't find it anywhere. I went through all the usual hiding places, and finally, it dawned on me as I was coming downstairs after having cleaned out my sock drawer for the third time, I put it in a file somewhere! So I quickly dug it out, made the transfer to my pocket, and put it back in its regular hiding place. (I'm not sure why I felt the cleaners would my money while we were in Europe; we're often not here when they are, and they've never taken it before.)

Later, changed into shorts, because it was a warm day, and I had to drive my son to baseball practice or a game. I stuck the lunch money in my shorts, just in case. The next morning, I brought the laundry down, and went to work with no lunch money! Oh, I also had to renew my license, so it's a good thing they take credit cards! The next day I also went to work with no lunch money! I stopped at the ATM machine and entered my PIN number. Finally when I got home that night, I went down and fished my money out of my shorts. This is the second time in the last few weeks that I have had to rescue wads of twenties from the laundry -- the first time, the machine was running, and I had to stop it just in time. Those laundered bills are always a little smaller, I guess because they use cotton in the paper.

Sheesh, what a dope.

Wii are Faam-a-lii

Wii've had our Wii for a few wiiks now, and I don't think the kids have watched more than a couple of hours of television in total since then. So I guess that is one check box in its favor. I think the last video game console that I owned was an original 8-bit Nintendo that I got second-hand from a teenager who was buying the next version. This was back in 1992 or so. It's good to see how far the graphics have come since then -- umm, at least Mario had arms, right? What is it with the floating hands in the baseball game? The kids received it right after wii got back from Amsterdam, on my daughter's birthday. It was after wii had already celebrated her birthday, and shii had opened her presents, and they flipped out.

It's fun playing baseball or tennis or bowling with the kids, and there's a ton more to explore. Wii just got the Wii Fit on the day after it came out (I think, Coffii Jones put her name on a waiting list.) I did my initial evaluation, and it said I'm 52 years old in Wii years. That's not so good. So I punched in a goal to lower my BMI from 23 point something to 22 point something over four wiiks. OK, two days later, I did it again, and I'm down to 36 Wii years old. Must have been all that biir and wiine I drank last night! Now the crazy thing is that my 10-year-old son has a goal to lose 4 pounds, and his BMI is only 15! I'll bet Ana and Mia are happy about the new Wii Fit. I told him hii's a kid, and should be gaining weight, not losing it.

I enjoy some of the balance games; two of them are skiing related. After a few sessions, more routines are opened up. The rhythmic boxing one may make one break a sweat eventually. Other than that, it's not much of a workout. Some of the strength routines are OK (female trainer, view from behind, LDO.) There's one that involves pushups on the board, and then twisting your body over while supporting yourself with one hand. I don't usually do pushups with my hands flat on the floor, as it hurts my wrists, so I grab the edge of the board. There's another one that involves resting your foreams on the board, and then keeping your body in a pushup-like position for a set amount of time. On that one, I scored couch potato! Hmm... I haven't tried the yoga yet, and I'm not sure how they integrate the board into a yoga routine. One thing that is a little annoying is the shortness of the routines, and the length of time between routines. 4-5 clicks with a few seconds between each click can make your 30-minute "workout" turn into 40-45 minutes.

Overall, I think the Wii is a good addition for our familii, and it is slightly better for the kids to be jumping around swinging their arms than sitting on the couch when getting their scriin time.

Poker Stars freerolls

I've tried a couple of the WSOP freerolls on Poker Stars, and made it to the low 200's out of 3400 tonight. With the blinds and antes escalating so fast, it quickly becomes a luckfest, but with some good opportunities for stealing with an all-in raise after a couple of limpers. There's also the dead money players, who are sitting out during the first few levels. There were a couple of these at my first two tables, and I noticed a strategy by one player to minraise in early position when the dead money was in the blinds. That might be a decent strategy, as you can shut out some of the players who would call for their share of the dead money, but you are not committing too many chips in case of a reraise. If I ever get some dead money directly to my left, I'll have to try a reraise steal when I notice a player using this strategy.

I'm not sure why I'm playing in these freerolls, as I won't be able to go to Vegas during the Main Event anyway. We're heading off to a retired friend's retirement party house on the Cape around then. And then driving to Maryland and back.

How to win the Donkament

I won Kat's Donkament last night, and need to update my donkament strategy, which I previously posted.

Step 1: Make sure you play the "next 5 hands all in" when Kat sez so. I did this (or at least called the all-in) all 11 times, and built up massive karma points for ...

Step 2: Get crazy good cards, and have them hold up:

Hand	# of times	Win%
AA	5	100
AKs	1	100
AKo	1	100
AQo	6	100
ATs	3	67
Etc.	Etc.	Etc.

Step 3: Double up against the chip leader, and become the new chip leader.

Step 4: Flop the nut flush heads up, and have your opponent bluff you off of your "draw".

Step 5: Profit!!! Or, maybe not, maybe just get back some of the cash that I've burned off in the weekly Friday night tournament. If I'm anywhere close to break-even, I'm way ahead life-wise. It's my favorite tournament of the week -- nice start time, great format, and friendly people who will not go ballistic if you make a bad play.

Today I did a lot of yard work, including pulling up almost all of the wild garlic (I think that's what it is), gathering and bagging or cutting up all the sticks, and starting on the raking and dandelion pulling. I don't remember this many sticks last year; it seems as though all of our trees dropped a branch or two over the winter. Anyway, I'm way behind on house stuff, partly due to being in Europe for vacation instead of at home. So, I worked all day, and into the evening, and now I'm about ready to fall asleep.

Minraises

I'm getting killed by minraises, in tournaments and cash games. There are at least two types of minraises, the clueless minraise and the minraise that wants you to call. What the hell are you going to do with a minraise? Reraise? Call? Fold? Rewinding to check behind or to check in hopes that he will slowplay his monster would be the best option, but I don't have that button. I was so frustrated last night that I ejaculated insults at my opponents while trying to watch television with Coffee Jones. She told me to STFU, and not get so upset. I guess I must have been on tilt. It's not the beats that get me, it when I play bad, or when someone outplays me continually that I get frustrated. Time to change tables I guess.

I'm playing in another BBT3 tournament tonight, the Riverchasers. After my quick start, I haven't done much lately. I decided after the first few weeks not to play in the later starting and/or more expensive events, so that leaves two tournaments a week, starting at 9:00 and 9:30. That's not too bad, and the way I've been playing, leaves plenty of time for sleep.

Spatial relationships

Driving in the U.K. was difficult, because my brain has a model built up of what a car is, and the model includes everything from where my body should be in relation to side of the road, how to make a left turn, how to pull out into a gap in the fast lane, and everything else that is completely automatic about driving in my usual milieu. When plunked into a wide SUV on narrow roads with cars parked on both sides, and asked to drive on the wrong side of the road with the shift lever on the wrong side, my mental model breaks down, and I have to use brain power just to keep the car's position and velocity approximately correct. Brain power that is normally used for things like reading signs, navigating, talking, eating, or looking for cool stuff. It can be exhausting. After each long drive, I would ask when my next driving assignment was, and upon hearing that it was more than 12 hours away, I would crack open that first (refrigerated) beer. Glass to lips is another one of those automatic actions!

We drove from Fountain's Abbey to Newcastle to catch the ferry, and my toture was almost over for the vacation. Just one last exercise in navigation -- dropping off the rental in downtown Newcastle. So I asked a friendly bobby, and he pointed to a large entertainment building and said to follow it around, but don't go in the far right lane. So I did this, went straight, and then noticed that the building was fading off to my left. So, with the rental car place less than one block in front of me, and probably visible if I had been looking at it, I made the next left, and wandered around for a while. Finally, I pulled into a parking lot, and called the rental company. As I was describing where I was, I saw a sign down the hill with the the word Westmoreland in the name of a business. Since Westmoreland was the name of the street the rental place was on, I was happy. The employee said they were right across the street from that building. Once I dropped off the car, I asked where the train station was, and she pointed at this large building, when I realized -- Doh! -- it was only 2 blocks back to where I had asked the cop for directions. I also remembered the map that I had looked at on the web before the trip, when the rental location looked real close to the train station. So now I have a great, but probably useless mental model of downtown Newcastle.

We took a bus from the train station to the ferry terminal, and boarded the ferry. The security guys gave me the full frisk, but did not touch the rest of my family. Maybe my "angry liberal" attitude shows when I come in contact with papers-please-asking control freaks. Anyway, the ship was much nicer than we thought it would be. We were expecting something akin to the Scotia Prince, but it was closer to the Norwegian Majesty. Unfortunately, the casino was not as good as the ones on the aforementioned vessels. So, no poker for Daddy. I chatted with the potential child molester Kids' Club pirate character, making sure he wasn't going to take my daughter to find any "special treasure." I did this by juggling three balls to show that I could hold my own in any potential entertainer-vs.-parent battles. He said that his son is also a juggler, and they sometimes perform in Amsterdam, so I felt that was enough to leave them alone for a little while at least.

We slept like crap, possibly because we were so far down as to qualify as ballast in case the ship was riding too low in the water. I tried to determine whether we were under water, and I'm guessing that we were not. We were on deck 2, with just 1, engine room, bilge, and Davey Jones levels below us. I don't know, is it legal to have passengers below water level on a ferry?

When we got to Amsterdam, we dropped the bags at the hotel office, and went to get some lunch. We ended up buying the canal boat tickets for the day, up to noon the following day. When we got back to the office, the bitch who cheated me manager told us that our houseboat was unavailable! What the frickin' frick?! After some discussions, we ended up taking a 2-bedroom apartment for 200 euros a night. Not what we wanted, but who wants to go traipsing around Amsterdam with 5 people looking for rooms at 5:00 in the afternoon. Make that 17.00. Well, she will be getting a horrible review from me on the travel site where I found the Amsterdam House.

Our standard operating procedure in Amsterdam was to walk for an hour, then eat for an hour. Repeat until overcome by sleep. We took it pretty easy, as I only dragged the family through one museum. My wife was quite taken with the architecture in the city center, and also by the cafe lifestyle. I met her shortly after arriving back in the U.S. from having lived in Amsterdam for the better part of a year, and I would throw in Dutch phrases here or there, and regale her with stories of sitting around drinking biertjes or coffees outside at one of the pleins. Now she understands how cool it really is. However, it was cheap back then. A small beer was maybe 2 or 3 guilders, and the dollar was worth 1.8 guilders. Nowadays, a small beer is 2 or 3 euros, and the euro is worth 1.6 dollars. According to a friend, when they switched to euros, everything went way up in price, as they just erased the ­ ­ ƒ symbol and replaced it with the € symbol. So that's almost a tripling of prices in 15 years. Maybe that's not a lot, but it seems like it to me.

I was disoriented somewhat, because my memories of exact street locations and orientation of the major pleins are faulty. I still have the basic shape of the city correctly mapped, as I used to study the map for dozens of minutes per week. I used to be one of these young people casually avoiding getting run down by a bicyclist or taxi. But now, I'm just another tourist gawking at the buildings and people, and getting dinged at by said cyclists. I had the location of Rembrantplein right, but the British pub was in a corner rotated 90 degrees from where I remember it. It's very strange how memory can work. The school where I took Dutch classes now is missing the large set of stone steps that I remember on the outside of it (or maybe they were on the inside?)

My wife remarked about how good-looking everyone was, and I craftily told her I hadn't really noticed. She wants to go back, and I would not mind, as a starting point for a nice sabbatical in 2010. The funniest part of the trip was a small moment where I was in Leidseplein with my son, looking for a newsstand, and I wandered into the Bulldog, a famous coffeeshop. There were a couple of tables of potheads with fancy-looking marijuana ready to roll, and I quickly turned tail. Perhaps strangely to some, I didn't take a single puff, toke, or bong hit the entire time I lived in Amsterdam, although friends would regularly offer it. The Bulldog seemed to have moved to the other side of the plein, and I think the nearby McDonalds was in the same place, but turned into a Burger King.

On the last full day, we took the train to The Hague to meet a friend of my wife. We had some poffertjes, little pancakes with butter and sugar:



Here's what they looked like when complete:
I'm not too into the sugar, but the buttery goodness was irresistible. If you like both buttery and sugary goodness, then poffertjes are for you.

We walked right through the Dutch Parliament building's courtyard, with no security other than some anti-vehicle posts and some video cameras. That is in stark contrast to the metal-detector/buffer zones around the U.S. Congress and White House.

Then we did take the tram (which I mistakenly omitted from my previous post) to Madurodam, which is a miniature city covering a couple of acres, and comprising many famous buildings from many Dutch cities. At first I thought it was very lame, but as I wandered around, it kind of grew on me. The buildings are quite detailed, and there are so many of them. What is the mentality of a person who works on a miniature city? Do they stand in front of the real building for hours? Do they just work from pictures? Do they imagine themselves as small people standing in front of the small building? Does Elmo know? Does Dorothy know?