While this will probably be of no use to most of my loyal readers (thanks for being DC members, woooo!)1, DeucesCracked is offering our videos for free viewing by anyone between now and October 4th. So if you aren’t a member yet and want to watch some high-quality poker videos, gogogo! I hope you see how awesome the videos are and decide to upgrade to a premium membership.
If you’re not a poker player (Hi mom!) but are curious about what I actually do for a living, then you’ve got your chance! Our poker strategy videos may seem boring and confusing to you, but we’re definitely the best at what we do.
Although actually it is a good chance to remind you of the refer-a-friend program which can net you some free months! [↩]
A few years ago, Jay (Krantz) and myself began working with an aspiring director and poker player (Ryan Firpo) to produce a documentary film about online poker professionals. Our budget was modest by most film standards, but large enough to shoot the film professionally, in high definition, and in a few different locations (Vegas, San Francisco, Madison WI). It took us much longer than expected to finish the film, and it went through a number of changes in style, but it is finally complete! You can view it here. Let me know what you think!
Originally our intention was to produce a more general film, featuring a number of online players, but once we realized how interesting Greg’s (Captain Zeebo) story was, we decided to focus the effort on him in particular, and to hopefully produce a series of short films about other players in the future. Our grand scheme is to raise funds for a full-length feature doc that we can release to the general public, perhaps earning some gold as well as showing the uninformed public what the real deal with online poker is. Worst case scenario, we’ve put together a pretty cool little film and had some fun doing it!
Those are my PLO HUDs for 6max tables. To use them, first rightclick the link and save to your desktop (or wherever else you like), then enter PAHUD and the Layout Manager, choose the right settings (site and 6max tables) then click file -> import and select the files from wherever you saved them. Keep in mind that I have it set to automatically put me in seat 3 (bottom right) on stars and seat 1 (bottom center) on FTP.
I was born and raised in the South, and had a pretty good time there for about 22 years. So I’ve got a pretty positive outlook on the place. But if you’re like most folks, you may not know very much about it, aside from the giant swath of red that seems to cover it on maps every 4 years. Here is a list of things about the South that are great; hopefully it will leave you with a more favorable opinion of the region.
Also, for reference: The northern half of Florida is in the South, and the southern half of Florida is, for all intensive purposes, part of the North.
Sweet tea is made by adding a large amount of sugar to a pitcher of tea immediately after brewing, while the liquid is still very hot. The sugar supersaturates and thus it can reach a higher concentration than would be possible if the sugar was added after the tea had cooled down. [↩]
Some highlights include fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread, and a vast assortment of fruit pies and cobblers. [↩]
In many parts of the South, you can set your watch by them every afternoon during the summer. They are best enjoyed either indoors reading a book or in the mountains trying to stay dry and avoid being struck by lightning. [↩]
Our most common analysis of the situation has been that since there are more days of the year when girls can wear revealing clothing, they have more incentive to be in good shape. Another possible explanation is that many Southern girls are not very bright and thus must rely on good looks to make it through life successfully. I’d like to think the former is the dominant reason, but I don’t know if any scientific studies have been done. [↩]
The contraction of ‘you all’, y’all is the best word in the English language for referencing a group of people in the second person. Northerners who fail to use it are speaking inefficiently. [↩]
I’ve been following the latest news on the election for a while now, as best I can. This is the first election I can recall where I’ve actually been interested, which is rather exciting. As a 24 year old who lives in San Francisco, my personal opinion on the candidates probably should come as no surprise, but I don’t think that I have anything to say that hundreds of other amateur pundits on the internet already have, so I won’t bother piling any more mud on the McCain/Palin ticket or lobbing praises to Obama and Biden.
But I would like to spread the word about a website I’ve been spending a lot of time at lately. FiveThirtyEight is, to the best of my knowledge, the most statistically diligent site devoted to coverage of the campaign. Operated by Nate Silver, who is an avid poker player, economist, and one of the founders of Baseball Prospectus (perhaps the most well-respected baseball statistics analysis site?), FiveThirtyEight offers a gloriously mathematical outlook on the current proceedings and a comprehensive look at the current state of public opinion. They combine dozens of well-established existing polls and weight the results based on the past accuracy of the polling company as well as a number of other principles perhaps best left to statisticians (these are explained more fully in the FAQ if you’re curious). Other interesting features include a ‘return on investment index’ which presumably estimates the relative value of campaign spending in various states.
From the perspective of a mathematically-minded and business-oriented poker professional, 538 blows all other sites out of the water (though it did have me worrying more than I needed to when McCain was running hot a few weeks ago). Check it out if you’re into that sort of thing.
Also, on a similar note, I’ve been thinking about booking some wagers on the election. Perhaps an underdog bet on McCain at 3-1 or so, as a sort of emotional hedge (If Obama wins, I won’t care about losing some gold; If McCain wins, at least I win a few grand!) More likely though, given the action that I could reasonably get, would be a valuebet on Obama, laying 2:3 or something like that. If 538 is to be trusted, I think thats a very +EV bet right now.
Hulu.com is a website where you can watch TV (and movies) for free, and you can pick and choose from hundreds of them. You can even watch specific clips from classic movies, or individual comedy sketches. Thankfully, several of the major networks are on board with the plan, and new episodes of currently running TV shows are quickly added to the site. You do have to watch a few commercials here and there, but they occur in much smaller quantity than standard television, so its a sacrifice I’m happy to make. One potential downside to Hulu is complete and utter loss of productivity, at least until you’ve watched “Lazy Sunday” half a dozen times or so and are satisfied for the day. So it goes.
Another feature of Hulu that I’m happy to share is the ability to embed their videos into other websites, the obvious example being my blog. So I present to you this classic SNL commercial:
In the music department, Pandora is a site which allows you to design custom radio stations for yourself. To begin, you seed your new station with a particular artist or song and Pandora provides a few songs of similar style. By rating the songs played for you (with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down) and adding new seed information if you like, you provide the site with enough information to tailor a great station of related songs for you. If you want to skip a song, you can, though the site limits the number of times you can do this for some legal reason. Small price to pay!
Pandora takes all the benefits of traditional radio (namely that you’re exposed to a variety of music and new artists and songs, and that its free) and takes away all the things that suck (commercials, awful playlists, limited choice of stations). Unlike Hulu, Pandora may actually increase your productivity by providing a stream of music appropriate to your current working needs. To invoke the specific example of an online poker professional, I’ve been able to craft a few streams of music for my particular moods. When I’m having a tough session or need to relax a bit, I turn on a station of mellow indie rock. When I’m in high gear aggro mode, I flip to the Wu Tang-based station and stack those papers. And so on, and so on. Unfortunately, Pandora is only available to folks in the USA (as far as I know). But thats ok for most of us!
UPDATE (10/5/08): I stumbled upon this article about how to access Hulu or Pandora (or other similar sites) from outside the USA! Wooo!
Here is the layout file I promised in the first episode of “To Nit or Not to Nit”. To use it, rightclick and select “save as” then enter whatever name you like for it, with the extension ‘.pah’
Then, in PokerAce, click “options” -> “layout manager”, select fulltilt 9-max as the table type, and then “file” -> “import” and select the file you saved. Voila!
Update: The PokerStars fullring HUD is now available here. To install it, follow the same steps as for the FullTilt one, but with Stars 9-max as the table type. It may not be quite as well lined-up as the FTP one, but it should be easy enough to tweak it how you like it.
Sometimes there's a man... and I'm talking about the Dude, here. Sometimes there's a man who, well, he's the man for his time and place.