AND I AM THERE!
I swear, the best day of the year is the day my playoff tickets come. Let's all think happy Bruins thoughts people!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Off-Topic: Bruins in the Playoffs!
AND I AM THERE!
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Hard and Fast - just like me
That's right - I'm not above making dick jokes.
I was thinking recently why Hold 'Em is such a difficult game to master - and I always come back to this: There are damn few hard and fast rules. What hands to play, and how? How much to bet, and when? These seemingly simple questions just don't have one easy answer. Everything is dependent on position, stack size, table makeup, position relative to money list - there are more variables than answers.
But there are some hard and fast rules, at least. Not many, but a few. And I'd like to hear yours. My pal Josie is going to tell you this one: Never play Ace-rag, never never never ever never. It's a good rule, one that she taught me over my initial ridicule, and she's proven that she's right. Think about how tough that was to admit!
Here's mine: For real games (not my weekly home game, that's just for fun), when I open the pot, I open for 3x BB. Every time. Not 3.5x, not 4x, and NEVER just call unless I'm heads up and there's a national emergency or something.
If I don't adhere to this rule, I'll find myself telegraphing the strength of my hand with the size of my opening raise. It's tempting to play with the open to manipulate the action - you know, min-raising or even calling to encourage action - but if you stick with 3x BB in all circumstances nobody is going to have any idea what you have based solely on your open. And when you're playing on line, where that's the only pre-flop tell you can throw, sticking with 3x BB is even more critical.
Well, that's mine. What's yours?
I was thinking recently why Hold 'Em is such a difficult game to master - and I always come back to this: There are damn few hard and fast rules. What hands to play, and how? How much to bet, and when? These seemingly simple questions just don't have one easy answer. Everything is dependent on position, stack size, table makeup, position relative to money list - there are more variables than answers.
But there are some hard and fast rules, at least. Not many, but a few. And I'd like to hear yours. My pal Josie is going to tell you this one: Never play Ace-rag, never never never ever never. It's a good rule, one that she taught me over my initial ridicule, and she's proven that she's right. Think about how tough that was to admit!
Here's mine: For real games (not my weekly home game, that's just for fun), when I open the pot, I open for 3x BB. Every time. Not 3.5x, not 4x, and NEVER just call unless I'm heads up and there's a national emergency or something.
If I don't adhere to this rule, I'll find myself telegraphing the strength of my hand with the size of my opening raise. It's tempting to play with the open to manipulate the action - you know, min-raising or even calling to encourage action - but if you stick with 3x BB in all circumstances nobody is going to have any idea what you have based solely on your open. And when you're playing on line, where that's the only pre-flop tell you can throw, sticking with 3x BB is even more critical.
Well, that's mine. What's yours?
In defense of the call
Alas for the humble call. Disparaged by so-called experts, overused by the inexperienced and the weak, the call has somehow earned the reputation as the Shemp of poker moves.
Bullshit, says I. Granted, calling is not a viable option 100% of the time, but the same could be said for raising, calling, and folding as well. No, calling has its place at the table, and an honored one as well. To articulate every scenario would be as boring as listening to Josie's incessant self-aggrandizing, but forthwith two important cases where calling is by far the best option.
SCENARIO ONE: DRAWS
Having four of a suit after the flop is a seductive temptress; you're 2:1 against and unless this is your first time at the tables you know it. Yet you just can't help yourself, can you? You want to see the turn, or even better, that glorious heart on the river, where you do everything you can possibly do not to blow your load right there and ruin a nice felt table (suggested term: pokergasm). So: you do what you can to keep the pot small, for the moment, to reduce your risk. In short, you call. If you hit you can bet it out or wait for your opponent to do so, so when you turn over your flush you can rake a nice one in.
Many people would semi-bluff right there and take a shot at the pot but I'm usually not one of them. If you semi-bluff on the flop you could take it down right there, sure. But you are taking a risk for what is at that point a small pot, and playing hands when you're a 2:1 dog only pays off when you can claim a big pot when you hit. Plus god forbid you're up against a real hand, or an aggressive asshole, and you get re-popped. Now you're surrendering a big pot and you look like a fishcake.
The downside to this strategy is that it LOOKS like you're playing a four-flush, so if you bluff on the end, a smart player will pick you off right there, so I would counsel not trying. But calling the flop and the turn there keeps things nice and calm, while building the pot for when you do hit.
SCENARIO 2: COUNTERACTING THE CONTINUATION BET
Don't get me wrong; I love the continuation bet. Even if you whiff the flop completely, betting out right there tells a strong story, and lesser men fold immediately. It's a powerful way to steal pots, which you simply have to do to win a tournament. But next time you suspect someone missed the flop and is betting anyway, try this: CALL the bet. BET OUT the turn, say, 3/4ths of the pot. That's going to make bluff boy shut right down. Strength with strength, that's my motto. And the humble call is the key to it all. Hey, that rhymed.
So to sum up: Come up with a poker strategy that rhymes.
Bullshit, says I. Granted, calling is not a viable option 100% of the time, but the same could be said for raising, calling, and folding as well. No, calling has its place at the table, and an honored one as well. To articulate every scenario would be as boring as listening to Josie's incessant self-aggrandizing, but forthwith two important cases where calling is by far the best option.
SCENARIO ONE: DRAWS
Having four of a suit after the flop is a seductive temptress; you're 2:1 against and unless this is your first time at the tables you know it. Yet you just can't help yourself, can you? You want to see the turn, or even better, that glorious heart on the river, where you do everything you can possibly do not to blow your load right there and ruin a nice felt table (suggested term: pokergasm). So: you do what you can to keep the pot small, for the moment, to reduce your risk. In short, you call. If you hit you can bet it out or wait for your opponent to do so, so when you turn over your flush you can rake a nice one in.
Many people would semi-bluff right there and take a shot at the pot but I'm usually not one of them. If you semi-bluff on the flop you could take it down right there, sure. But you are taking a risk for what is at that point a small pot, and playing hands when you're a 2:1 dog only pays off when you can claim a big pot when you hit. Plus god forbid you're up against a real hand, or an aggressive asshole, and you get re-popped. Now you're surrendering a big pot and you look like a fishcake.
The downside to this strategy is that it LOOKS like you're playing a four-flush, so if you bluff on the end, a smart player will pick you off right there, so I would counsel not trying. But calling the flop and the turn there keeps things nice and calm, while building the pot for when you do hit.
SCENARIO 2: COUNTERACTING THE CONTINUATION BET
Don't get me wrong; I love the continuation bet. Even if you whiff the flop completely, betting out right there tells a strong story, and lesser men fold immediately. It's a powerful way to steal pots, which you simply have to do to win a tournament. But next time you suspect someone missed the flop and is betting anyway, try this: CALL the bet. BET OUT the turn, say, 3/4ths of the pot. That's going to make bluff boy shut right down. Strength with strength, that's my motto. And the humble call is the key to it all. Hey, that rhymed.
So to sum up: Come up with a poker strategy that rhymes.
Hello World, Take 2
Lafayette, je me suis retourné.
I stopped writing this blog some little while ago - mostly because I was enraptured with the grand potential of social networking sites like Facebook and I preferred a conversation to a monologue. Well shit - I won't be making that mistake again.
In the meantime my dear friend Josie has started a poker blog, and due to her skill at poker, her engaging and breezy writing style, and her ability to paint a line of bullshit down the highway that's a thousand miles long, it's become quite popular in a short amount of time. I have become a minor player in this blog, most often known as "Jew Boy," due to my being Jewish and Josie being unimaginative.
So I have decided to rechristen (or whatever the Jew Boy equivalent of a christening) this site as a poker blog, a means by which I can recount my own successes and failures at the table, and to act from time to time as a companion site to Josie's (read: glom on to her success).
It's gonna be funny, it's gonna be informative, and the insults are gonna fly all around. Keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times.
It's good to be back.
I stopped writing this blog some little while ago - mostly because I was enraptured with the grand potential of social networking sites like Facebook and I preferred a conversation to a monologue. Well shit - I won't be making that mistake again.
In the meantime my dear friend Josie has started a poker blog, and due to her skill at poker, her engaging and breezy writing style, and her ability to paint a line of bullshit down the highway that's a thousand miles long, it's become quite popular in a short amount of time. I have become a minor player in this blog, most often known as "Jew Boy," due to my being Jewish and Josie being unimaginative.
So I have decided to rechristen (or whatever the Jew Boy equivalent of a christening) this site as a poker blog, a means by which I can recount my own successes and failures at the table, and to act from time to time as a companion site to Josie's (read: glom on to her success).
It's gonna be funny, it's gonna be informative, and the insults are gonna fly all around. Keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times.
It's good to be back.
Friday, January 30, 2009
goodbye
Imagine my surprise to find my brother Ross has effectively quit his blogging adventures because Facebook has taken him over and is the endpoint of most of his spare computing time.
I'm surprised because, like so many things in our life, we both are doing the same thing at the same time, separately (a phase wherein we were both Led Zeppelin fans comes to mind, he in college in New Hampshire, I in the ancestral manse in Mass). For I too have given up on blogging, thinking it way too one-sided. Why pontificate when you can have a conversation?
So, dear friends, I bid you goodbye from this mountaintop, and invite you to join up and ask to "be my friend." I'm tired of shouting from a balcony.
I'm surprised because, like so many things in our life, we both are doing the same thing at the same time, separately (a phase wherein we were both Led Zeppelin fans comes to mind, he in college in New Hampshire, I in the ancestral manse in Mass). For I too have given up on blogging, thinking it way too one-sided. Why pontificate when you can have a conversation?
So, dear friends, I bid you goodbye from this mountaintop, and invite you to join up and ask to "be my friend." I'm tired of shouting from a balcony.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
An Ant as Allegory for the Human Condition;
or,
Ruminations Whilst on the Crapper
or,
Ruminations Whilst on the Crapper
Before I begin, let's get the smirking and laughing out of the way. Yes, I was sitting on the toilet doing my business. Everyone poops, man. Don't you read? I trust the less said the better on that.
Anyway, as I was enjoying my afternoon constitutional, only slightly bemoaning the fact that there was no reading material to while the lonely minutes away, I caught sight of a single ant, scuttling his way across a piece of floor tile. He obviously was separated from the colony and was trying to intuit his way back - except that once he came across a grout line he stopped, refusing to cross it. So he would backtrack and wander, backtrack and wander, until he came across another (or the same) grout line, which he would not ever cross.
This ant will get exhausted and dehydrated and will ultimately die, because he set boundaries on himself that are completely imagined - not really boundaries at all. His failure was caused by his lack of ability to overcome these self-imposed boundaries.
Sound familiar?
Look, I'm the last guy to give new-agey advice. But this was too perfect an allegory to pass up. I firmly believe that 80% of failure is self-imposed.
People fail to do things for so many reasons, so few of them valid. They might be afraid of what others would think if they were to embark on the grand fulfillment of their secret dream; they might be afraid that grabbing the brass ring is unfair to those who cannot stretch out themselves and dare the attempt.
That ant confined his world to a 6x6 floor tile because of an unfounded fear of a dark line and a change of texture. Looking as I was down on him, omniscient, all-powerful, and quite regular, thank you, I realize the folly of his self-imposed prison, the exile of his own making, but he most assuredly did not. So it is, I suspect, with those of us humans who struggle with the same self-imposed boundaries.
Lift them. Understand that they exist in your head. There is nothing that a motivated human being will not dare or do to further the fulfillment of a dream. And conversely, if you unnecessarily constrict your life because of your own imagined fears or boundaries, is it truly a good decision?
To the daring go the greater rewards. Dare!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Random Thoughts
From a recent cleaning of the mental attic:
This may sound infantile or embarrassingly idealistic but there are few things in life more rewarding than repaying a kindness, especially if one pays it forward. This year my family and I have been the beneficiaries of a thousand small kindnesses associated with my father's passing. Sadly, one of my dearest friends - dearer than most of my family - went through the same thing recently. I ran a few errands for them and brought over some cold cuts so that they'd have something to eat. No big deal. A simple, small kindness. But I know firsthand the value of a gesture like that and it was my high honor to be able to help when help was needed. I only wish I didn't know what to do, but to go through something like I went through and not learn from it would have been an even greater tragedy. DB, as you embark on your road, always remember that I stand with you, shoulder to shoulder, here for whatever you need.
On to happier topics...
Good on the Red Sox - they didn't make it to the big dance but they came damn close. Now rumors are swirling about Derek Lowe wanting to come back. You know what? I like the idea. The Sox don't need a #1, #2, or #3 starter - they have Beckett, Lester, and Matsuzaka filling those roles. They don't need a #5 - Tim Wakefield and his maddening, fluttering knuckleball fill that bill perfectly and inexpensively. What we need is a #4 guy who is consistently healthy and who will eat up innings. D-Lowe and his sinker would be perfect for Fenway's much-improved infield and would fit the profile of a #4 guy to a tee.
Manny Ramirez went on record as saying he's glad the Sox got eliminated in the playoffs. Hey, Manny (and the media): We get it. You don't like the Sox. This is no longer news. This has all the salaciousness of the Rosie O'Donnell - Donald Trump feud, which is to say, none at all. Drop it already.
Here's a joke you can tell an 8-year-old (which is why I like it so): What did the zero say to the eight? Nice belt.
Did you know that most of the principal actors in Hogan's Heroes were Jewish? The men that played Klink, Schultz, LeBeau, Burkhalter, and Hochstetter were all Jewish. And John Banner (Schultz) and Robert Clary (LeBeau) actually spent time in concentration camps! Werner Klemperer, who played the beaurocratic, bumbling, Prussian old-liner Colonel Kink, justified his playing of a German soldier by saying, "I am an actor. I can play Richard III; I can play a Nazi." He had a clause in his contract that stipulated that the Germans would NEVER triumph over Hogan and his men.
Anyone out there have a holistic remedy for insomnia?
I have a low-grade desire to drive the cars of my youth - a '77 Maverick, a '78 Mustang II, and my '89 Mustang, the first new car I ever bought. None of these vehicles distinguished themselves by being good automobiles; but I joyrode in them a fair amount and got laid in them a time or two as well. Good times, good times.
Where and when I grew up, we had two UHF channels: WSBK channel 38 and WLVI channel 56. Saturday mornings after the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show on CBS at 9:30 one channel showed an hour of Three Stooges; the other channel showed Little Rascals. This is why I never watched Little Rascals way back then. I was too busy watching Moe poke Larry.
On the subject of black and white media, the Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson are genius - even the cheesy ones set in the 1940's where Holmes helps fend of the Nazis are pretty hip in their own way.
How on earth could anyone like mushrooms? You know they're nothing but big mold, right? And that they grow in SHIT? Frickin gross.
I suppose that's it for now. Stay cool everybody and remember: do something nice for someone.
This may sound infantile or embarrassingly idealistic but there are few things in life more rewarding than repaying a kindness, especially if one pays it forward. This year my family and I have been the beneficiaries of a thousand small kindnesses associated with my father's passing. Sadly, one of my dearest friends - dearer than most of my family - went through the same thing recently. I ran a few errands for them and brought over some cold cuts so that they'd have something to eat. No big deal. A simple, small kindness. But I know firsthand the value of a gesture like that and it was my high honor to be able to help when help was needed. I only wish I didn't know what to do, but to go through something like I went through and not learn from it would have been an even greater tragedy. DB, as you embark on your road, always remember that I stand with you, shoulder to shoulder, here for whatever you need.
On to happier topics...
Good on the Red Sox - they didn't make it to the big dance but they came damn close. Now rumors are swirling about Derek Lowe wanting to come back. You know what? I like the idea. The Sox don't need a #1, #2, or #3 starter - they have Beckett, Lester, and Matsuzaka filling those roles. They don't need a #5 - Tim Wakefield and his maddening, fluttering knuckleball fill that bill perfectly and inexpensively. What we need is a #4 guy who is consistently healthy and who will eat up innings. D-Lowe and his sinker would be perfect for Fenway's much-improved infield and would fit the profile of a #4 guy to a tee.
Manny Ramirez went on record as saying he's glad the Sox got eliminated in the playoffs. Hey, Manny (and the media): We get it. You don't like the Sox. This is no longer news. This has all the salaciousness of the Rosie O'Donnell - Donald Trump feud, which is to say, none at all. Drop it already.
Here's a joke you can tell an 8-year-old (which is why I like it so): What did the zero say to the eight? Nice belt.
Did you know that most of the principal actors in Hogan's Heroes were Jewish? The men that played Klink, Schultz, LeBeau, Burkhalter, and Hochstetter were all Jewish. And John Banner (Schultz) and Robert Clary (LeBeau) actually spent time in concentration camps! Werner Klemperer, who played the beaurocratic, bumbling, Prussian old-liner Colonel Kink, justified his playing of a German soldier by saying, "I am an actor. I can play Richard III; I can play a Nazi." He had a clause in his contract that stipulated that the Germans would NEVER triumph over Hogan and his men.
Anyone out there have a holistic remedy for insomnia?
I have a low-grade desire to drive the cars of my youth - a '77 Maverick, a '78 Mustang II, and my '89 Mustang, the first new car I ever bought. None of these vehicles distinguished themselves by being good automobiles; but I joyrode in them a fair amount and got laid in them a time or two as well. Good times, good times.
Where and when I grew up, we had two UHF channels: WSBK channel 38 and WLVI channel 56. Saturday mornings after the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show on CBS at 9:30 one channel showed an hour of Three Stooges; the other channel showed Little Rascals. This is why I never watched Little Rascals way back then. I was too busy watching Moe poke Larry.
On the subject of black and white media, the Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson are genius - even the cheesy ones set in the 1940's where Holmes helps fend of the Nazis are pretty hip in their own way.
How on earth could anyone like mushrooms? You know they're nothing but big mold, right? And that they grow in SHIT? Frickin gross.
I suppose that's it for now. Stay cool everybody and remember: do something nice for someone.
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