For something else interesting, go here to see a bad-ass caricature of Heath Ledger's Joker, done by that German artist guy Chris.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Dark Knight
While I would love to write a review for The Dark Knight, I currently am in awe of Hobbit's own review. Two thumbs up, Hobbit. Way up.
For something else interesting, go here to see a bad-ass caricature of Heath Ledger's Joker, done by that German artist guy Chris.
For something else interesting, go here to see a bad-ass caricature of Heath Ledger's Joker, done by that German artist guy Chris.
Artwork from back in the day
One of the few remaining portraits from my time as a freelance portrait artist. The rest were sold.It is an example of how unintended results are not always disastrous. I intended this to be a portrait of Christina Ricci. I don't think it looks like her at all, but I still like it.
A portrait of my identical twin and his cat, Burbee.
It was supposed to be a caricature, but the artist said we looked to goofy already. This was drawn by Chris, an artist at Six Flags. Check out more of his artwork at his blog.Thursday, July 24, 2008
Daniel Negreanu's Small-ball puts the Power in your Hold'em
A review for Power Hold'em
Other books go over basic preflop guidelines with little explanation for the intricacies of postflop play. They never move beyond “mix it up,” “value bet,” “catch over-aggressive players in bluffs,” and other basic sayings few authors go very far to explain. Aside from a few gems from Sklansky and his team, not until Harrington's tournament and cash game series did we see detailed examples of postflop strategies. Earlier authors focused on the simple line of thought associated with world class play: outplay your opponent.
What they failed to do was discuss the variables necessary to determine:
1.If we have the best hand in murky situations
2.If we do have the best hand, what lines of play extract the most value?
3.If we don't have the best hand, what situations and players can we exploit to turn our hand into a successful bluff?
4.What kinds of variables are necessary so we can exploit similar situations?
What we need is a book that addresses the weaknesses so many other books promote.
That's where Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em comes in, and where we jump ahead to it's real gem: Small-ball.
Small-ball is a style meant to confuse your opponent and give you maximum value. It is a style employed by many of the smartest, most successful tournament players including Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, and our author, Daniel Negreanu. As Negreanu states, when you watch a small-ball player, “you will notice that he appears to be in control of the table, yet at the same time, seems to be playing with reckless abandon, giving little thought to the strength of his starting hand.”
Daniel Negreanu's small-ball section details a myriad of complex postflop decisions. He wants us to play as many hands as possible to put us in as many profitable situations as we want. The more hands we play, the more situations we must be able to exploit or we will become exploited ourselves. As such, the author must provide vivid examples of how to take advantage of common but complicated streets based off specific player tendencies, board textures, and typical methods of exploiting how certain hands react to different boards.
Once we move beyond the monkey play of getting it all in with the nuts, a player's skill becomes dependent not just on how to play his hand but on how to play his opponent. The message of other advanced strategists has been to read what hand your opponent has. Small-ball takes this a step further with the axiom: Don't play what your opponent has. Play what your opponent doesn't have.
Building on this axiom, Negreanu explains perhaps the most revolutionary concept in his book: “bluffing outs,” a strategy that calls for us to determine the true odds of drawing out on our opponent as well as what cards we can bluff with. Negreanu stresses that advanced plays such as these require advanced reads. We must observe if an opponent is capable of folding, and if so what hands will he fold to what situations. Unless we have noticed a player can lay down pocket Aces to a low, 4-card straight board, it's best to just concede the hand and pick a better spot. But given we have a read, adding bluffing outs into our decision can turn a difficult fold into a clear call.
Players immersed in Negreanu's later sections may misconstrue some of the plays he suggests as too passive to succeed, but it's a style that's allowed him to go deep in numerous tournaments while his opponents' over-aggressive styles often lead them to either build a big stack, or more often to just bust out. Small-ball wants us to get maximum value for our legitimate hands as well as our bluffs, and Negreanu insists that sometimes means taking a small risk with big hands for bigger rewards.
For example, Negreanu suggests often just calling a preflop raise in position with big pairs like Jacks or Tens, while common discussions of such situations almost always advocate reraising. In his section on Turn play, he suggests check/calling or checking behind big but marginal hands that unfortunately cannot withstand a bluff.
Critics of these sections may note that not betting the turn fails to protect our hand as well as misses potential value, but as Negreanu points out, noting player tendencies and board textures allows us to put our opponent on a hand and determine spots in which we are well ahead or way behind. If our opponent only has 3 or 4 outs, it is pointless to create a situation that could deter our opponent from proceeding with the worst hand, or worse, failing to convince him to bluff with what he or she thinks is the best hand.
A small-ball player utilizes a mix of aggressive and passive strategies because, at the end of the day, the small-ball player wants to still be in the tournament with a stack that seems to have grown on its own.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not stack up. With all due respect to the contributing authors to Power Hold'em, their sections fail by following the same trend as their predecessors. Too many poker players are beyond learning a hand ranking chart, and those that aren't have many other books and websites to learn such basics. Televised poker games until recently utilized sports commentators. At best poker amateurs, those commentators are dropping off, replaced by professional poker players, reflecting an overall trend of increasing sophistication in both players and viewers of the game. The poker audience includes more than trained monkeys, and they are hungry for the advanced strategies found in the small-ball section of Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em.
If you're frustrated because you rarely go deep in tournaments, confused because your bluffs never work, sad because no one ever pays off your big hands, and eager to join a group of players that make poker seem effortless, you need to buy this book.
Other books go over basic preflop guidelines with little explanation for the intricacies of postflop play. They never move beyond “mix it up,” “value bet,” “catch over-aggressive players in bluffs,” and other basic sayings few authors go very far to explain. Aside from a few gems from Sklansky and his team, not until Harrington's tournament and cash game series did we see detailed examples of postflop strategies. Earlier authors focused on the simple line of thought associated with world class play: outplay your opponent.
What they failed to do was discuss the variables necessary to determine:
1.If we have the best hand in murky situations
2.If we do have the best hand, what lines of play extract the most value?
3.If we don't have the best hand, what situations and players can we exploit to turn our hand into a successful bluff?
4.What kinds of variables are necessary so we can exploit similar situations?
What we need is a book that addresses the weaknesses so many other books promote.
That's where Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em comes in, and where we jump ahead to it's real gem: Small-ball.
Small-ball is a style meant to confuse your opponent and give you maximum value. It is a style employed by many of the smartest, most successful tournament players including Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, and our author, Daniel Negreanu. As Negreanu states, when you watch a small-ball player, “you will notice that he appears to be in control of the table, yet at the same time, seems to be playing with reckless abandon, giving little thought to the strength of his starting hand.”
Daniel Negreanu's small-ball section details a myriad of complex postflop decisions. He wants us to play as many hands as possible to put us in as many profitable situations as we want. The more hands we play, the more situations we must be able to exploit or we will become exploited ourselves. As such, the author must provide vivid examples of how to take advantage of common but complicated streets based off specific player tendencies, board textures, and typical methods of exploiting how certain hands react to different boards.
Once we move beyond the monkey play of getting it all in with the nuts, a player's skill becomes dependent not just on how to play his hand but on how to play his opponent. The message of other advanced strategists has been to read what hand your opponent has. Small-ball takes this a step further with the axiom: Don't play what your opponent has. Play what your opponent doesn't have.
Building on this axiom, Negreanu explains perhaps the most revolutionary concept in his book: “bluffing outs,” a strategy that calls for us to determine the true odds of drawing out on our opponent as well as what cards we can bluff with. Negreanu stresses that advanced plays such as these require advanced reads. We must observe if an opponent is capable of folding, and if so what hands will he fold to what situations. Unless we have noticed a player can lay down pocket Aces to a low, 4-card straight board, it's best to just concede the hand and pick a better spot. But given we have a read, adding bluffing outs into our decision can turn a difficult fold into a clear call.
Players immersed in Negreanu's later sections may misconstrue some of the plays he suggests as too passive to succeed, but it's a style that's allowed him to go deep in numerous tournaments while his opponents' over-aggressive styles often lead them to either build a big stack, or more often to just bust out. Small-ball wants us to get maximum value for our legitimate hands as well as our bluffs, and Negreanu insists that sometimes means taking a small risk with big hands for bigger rewards.
For example, Negreanu suggests often just calling a preflop raise in position with big pairs like Jacks or Tens, while common discussions of such situations almost always advocate reraising. In his section on Turn play, he suggests check/calling or checking behind big but marginal hands that unfortunately cannot withstand a bluff.
Critics of these sections may note that not betting the turn fails to protect our hand as well as misses potential value, but as Negreanu points out, noting player tendencies and board textures allows us to put our opponent on a hand and determine spots in which we are well ahead or way behind. If our opponent only has 3 or 4 outs, it is pointless to create a situation that could deter our opponent from proceeding with the worst hand, or worse, failing to convince him to bluff with what he or she thinks is the best hand.
A small-ball player utilizes a mix of aggressive and passive strategies because, at the end of the day, the small-ball player wants to still be in the tournament with a stack that seems to have grown on its own.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not stack up. With all due respect to the contributing authors to Power Hold'em, their sections fail by following the same trend as their predecessors. Too many poker players are beyond learning a hand ranking chart, and those that aren't have many other books and websites to learn such basics. Televised poker games until recently utilized sports commentators. At best poker amateurs, those commentators are dropping off, replaced by professional poker players, reflecting an overall trend of increasing sophistication in both players and viewers of the game. The poker audience includes more than trained monkeys, and they are hungry for the advanced strategies found in the small-ball section of Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em.
If you're frustrated because you rarely go deep in tournaments, confused because your bluffs never work, sad because no one ever pays off your big hands, and eager to join a group of players that make poker seem effortless, you need to buy this book.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Pissed off Whale drops money bomb in low-stakes poker room!
Pissed off Whale leaves pit games to drop a money bomb in low-stakes poker room!
In Philadelphia, MS, the Golden Moon casino offers some of the best service, dealers, and mixed games in the area. What they do not offer is a high stakes, deep, No-limit cash game. Aside from the rare $5/$10 No-limit Hold'em game, the highest stakes Golden Moon offers is $2/$5 No-limit Hold'em, with a maximum buy-in of $500 or half of the largest stack at the table. The buy-in rule results in a culture where most players buy in short, and those few that want to play deep expect to almost never see enough money on the table to allow or justify having an ineffective stack.
Last month, that all changed. Poker players received the kind of gift they could expect if Santa played poker and rewarded boys and girls for being sick degenerates.
Sometime in the late afternoon a pit boss observed one of their most frequent whales losing large sums of money at the pit games. The pit boss made an off-hand comment that threw the whale into a tantrum, and he promptly picked up his money and left the floor. On his way back to his room, he caught sight of the inconspicuous Poker Room and wandered in. A player waiting for his seat reports he heard the whale murmur, "Gosh, didn't realize they played games in here, too."
The whale sat at the biggest game possible, the $2/$5 No-Limit Hold'em table, bought in for the maximum $500, and announced to the table, "Just want to let all of you know: you want to sit in this game, I'm making it $100 a hand." The players, perhaps unfamiliar with his status, laughed at what they thought was a joke, then watched in fascination, soon in glee, as every hand the whale raised the pot to $100. He didn't care about position. He didn't care what his cards were. He was here to gamble, and for a table of poker players, some who made their living at this table, they were here to let him.
Then the deck hit the whale in the face. A short-stack moved in with Q-Q over the whale's mandatory $100 pre-flop raise, and the whale called with 9-4 suited. On the river, the whale hit a flush, felting the short-stack. Soon the whale felted several others, amassing a stack over $1,500, one of the largest stacks this table had ever seen. Either on tilt, greed, or appreciation for their good fortune, players that never bought in for more than $200 now bought in for the maximum, a sum that started at $800, and by the end of the night would for some include their entire bankrolls for tens of thousands of dollars. At one point, some players had stacks dozens of times bigger than their normal buy-in, making the earlier $1,500 seem like a puddle next to a lake.
The Poker Room offered to set-up a $5/$10 game many of them had waited over a week to sit in, but when they saw the whale not even consider leaving the current table, they declined the invitation.
After more than 30 hours at the table, the deck cooled off and the whale dropped a money bomb into the players' laps totaling over $100,000. Some had lost their entire bankrolls, while others were looking forward to finally contributing to their children's college funds.
The whale stood up from the game with a grin, wished the players a good day, and left them with the comment, "This game's just too much luck for me. Think I'll go back to my regular games."
Friday, July 18, 2008
The play festival was a hit! HANK REARDIN will never write again!!! And other things to come
Last night was perhaps the biggest night for Fondren Theater Workshop. They provided some of the best material and readings yet, and in return the audience came out in droves.
I saw a play, Night Watch, Megan and I wrote. Sadly, Megan could not be there, and due to technical difficulties we could not record the play. But the play was a smash. The director (an art, TV, and film geek/professional for his real job) found extraordinary actors. Chief among them was a young lad playing one of our central characters. The part called for a 12 year old boy. Watch out Abigail Breslin. This kid could outshine you.
I want to say our play was best, but Hank Reardin, a new face to the Jackson locale, introduced himself to us all with a comedic tour de force. Sadly, in a fit of jealousy, all the writers pounced on him and tore off each one of his fingers so he could never write again. We would have sucked out his soul, but word is he already sold it the devil to produce that masterful work.
Otherwise, look forward to these future posts: a news article about a whale dropping $100K at the casino in some of the lowest stakes possible; book reviews for Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Abusive Men, and Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em; reviews for the films Wanted, Hancock, and Batman: The Dark Knight; as well as more Firefly episodes.
I saw a play, Night Watch, Megan and I wrote. Sadly, Megan could not be there, and due to technical difficulties we could not record the play. But the play was a smash. The director (an art, TV, and film geek/professional for his real job) found extraordinary actors. Chief among them was a young lad playing one of our central characters. The part called for a 12 year old boy. Watch out Abigail Breslin. This kid could outshine you.
I want to say our play was best, but Hank Reardin, a new face to the Jackson locale, introduced himself to us all with a comedic tour de force. Sadly, in a fit of jealousy, all the writers pounced on him and tore off each one of his fingers so he could never write again. We would have sucked out his soul, but word is he already sold it the devil to produce that masterful work.
Otherwise, look forward to these future posts: a news article about a whale dropping $100K at the casino in some of the lowest stakes possible; book reviews for Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Abusive Men, and Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em; reviews for the films Wanted, Hancock, and Batman: The Dark Knight; as well as more Firefly episodes.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Michael Bay's Rejected "The Dark Knight" script!!!
For those that wonder what a Batman film would look like with extended, CGI heavy, flashy action sequences with characters we care nothing about and dialogue that compels you to watch the film on MUTE, read these leaked pages of Michael Bay's rejected Batman: The Dark Knight script.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Hancock suffers from Kryptonite
Or so I hear. Reviews are awful. Close friends assure me it is not what the trailers promised. The third act is absent from any promotions not for a refreshing surprise, but because if any of us had seen images from the third act we would probably never see the film.
Despite this, I am still going to see it and later post my own review.
Meanwhile, I found the original script, titled Tonight, He Comes! Read it here.
It will be interesting to later read the differences behind the scenes sources say ruined the film. Originally, the film set out to satire super hero films with a hard R rating. But once Will Smith became attached to the property, the studio decided to clean up the film's act so much that they cleaned out the thrill of seeing a bum stuck being a super hero.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
For those about to react
I have rolled around in my head off and on, occasionally blogging those thoughts, to find the best language to communicate why I choose to no longer associate with my brother.
I consider him too reactive to interact with. I don't know what will set him off around me. He used to become passive aggressive against what I consider little provocation (see previous posts for more on what that means), and now he has discovered how to be aggressive aggressive as well. I think when he feels threatened, for whatever reason, he doesn't have a rational response. He becomes reactive. I discussed it with him a while back, telling him I think he doesn't realize how passive aggressive he is because he is often so passive he can misconstrue it (or these days, misrepresent it). Interestingly, that conversation went well, and I find it ironic that it's as he has moved onto this course of "life mastery" that he has become more and more reactive (though a friend has pointed out he has always been so reactive, it's just that The Game has given him an outlet).
As a side note, I find it interesting that his life has taken on many aspects of The Game's main character, Style, including physical appearance. I don't want to oversimplify, because it's not as though he is living in Hollywood with a bunch of other pick-up artists, but it seems as far as his addictions and relationships go, it is as though he took Style's journey as shown in the book and is now using that as a script for his life.
I've encountered this kind of behavior before and for a long time wondered if me moving away from emotionally volatile people was an indication of my own insecurity. As those close to me know, I went through a period of self-imposed extreme emotional distance. Because of my journey to learn how to connect with people, I wondered if distancing myself from those that showed strong emotional reactions was another consequence of my habit to distance myself from any emotion at all.
But I realize that is not so. It's reactive people that bother me. Reactive people that become so fueled by their emotion they lose self-control.
I am not talking about passion. Passion fuels our lives. Passion wakes us up and keeps us going in the face of adversity. Passion causes us to take control of ours lives. I am talking about that powerful mix of rationale and emotion, the mind to form a plan and the heart to get us moving.
As my good friend Gamemaster has taught me, emotions are a part of our lives. They are neither right or wrong, often can't be explained, and except in an indirect sense, we rarely have any immediate control over how we feel.
What we do have control over is what we choose to do with those emotions.
For example, in an early conversation about getting married, I heard our relationship might not work out if we didn't agree to get married, so I reacted to my feeling of loneliness and agreed to get married rather than face the threat of being alone. It's so weird how being reactive can seem so rational! Talk to me at that time and would have told you I was confident I could find someone else. I would choose to marry this person because I loved her, all the while denying I was reacting on such a deeply emotional level I could not separate my thoughts from my emotions.
Or, my brother forcing me to live in an apartment with no utilities because he felt uncomfortable. I talked to him the next day, asked him to reconsider since that left me roughly a week to find a new place to live, and he told me I created the situation, so it was my problem. (He later relented to forcing me out halfway through the month instead of the beginning, but LOL, 15 days or 30 days, I did not see a difference, considered him too volatile to remain around, so left of my own volition ahead of schedule).
Or, when I left, I told him I needed distance from him. But upon reading blog posts that I conclude he felt threatened by, he took it upon himself to break that distance and post again and again to bring me around to me what he called the Truth. For a blog post! It is my opinion a blog is pretty much diatribe and shouldn't be reacted to with any extreme response.
That's all.
I consider him too reactive to interact with. I don't know what will set him off around me. He used to become passive aggressive against what I consider little provocation (see previous posts for more on what that means), and now he has discovered how to be aggressive aggressive as well. I think when he feels threatened, for whatever reason, he doesn't have a rational response. He becomes reactive. I discussed it with him a while back, telling him I think he doesn't realize how passive aggressive he is because he is often so passive he can misconstrue it (or these days, misrepresent it). Interestingly, that conversation went well, and I find it ironic that it's as he has moved onto this course of "life mastery" that he has become more and more reactive (though a friend has pointed out he has always been so reactive, it's just that The Game has given him an outlet).
As a side note, I find it interesting that his life has taken on many aspects of The Game's main character, Style, including physical appearance. I don't want to oversimplify, because it's not as though he is living in Hollywood with a bunch of other pick-up artists, but it seems as far as his addictions and relationships go, it is as though he took Style's journey as shown in the book and is now using that as a script for his life.
I've encountered this kind of behavior before and for a long time wondered if me moving away from emotionally volatile people was an indication of my own insecurity. As those close to me know, I went through a period of self-imposed extreme emotional distance. Because of my journey to learn how to connect with people, I wondered if distancing myself from those that showed strong emotional reactions was another consequence of my habit to distance myself from any emotion at all.
But I realize that is not so. It's reactive people that bother me. Reactive people that become so fueled by their emotion they lose self-control.
I am not talking about passion. Passion fuels our lives. Passion wakes us up and keeps us going in the face of adversity. Passion causes us to take control of ours lives. I am talking about that powerful mix of rationale and emotion, the mind to form a plan and the heart to get us moving.
As my good friend Gamemaster has taught me, emotions are a part of our lives. They are neither right or wrong, often can't be explained, and except in an indirect sense, we rarely have any immediate control over how we feel.
What we do have control over is what we choose to do with those emotions.
For example, in an early conversation about getting married, I heard our relationship might not work out if we didn't agree to get married, so I reacted to my feeling of loneliness and agreed to get married rather than face the threat of being alone. It's so weird how being reactive can seem so rational! Talk to me at that time and would have told you I was confident I could find someone else. I would choose to marry this person because I loved her, all the while denying I was reacting on such a deeply emotional level I could not separate my thoughts from my emotions.
Or, my brother forcing me to live in an apartment with no utilities because he felt uncomfortable. I talked to him the next day, asked him to reconsider since that left me roughly a week to find a new place to live, and he told me I created the situation, so it was my problem. (He later relented to forcing me out halfway through the month instead of the beginning, but LOL, 15 days or 30 days, I did not see a difference, considered him too volatile to remain around, so left of my own volition ahead of schedule).
Or, when I left, I told him I needed distance from him. But upon reading blog posts that I conclude he felt threatened by, he took it upon himself to break that distance and post again and again to bring me around to me what he called the Truth. For a blog post! It is my opinion a blog is pretty much diatribe and shouldn't be reacted to with any extreme response.
That's all.
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