Sensei’s Poker Dojo

Earlier today I learned of the existence of a restaurant in Spain called el bulli (Official website here). Apparently it is commonly regarded as the best restaurant in the world, which piqued my interest even further. I read a full report here (You should read it too if you like delicious and interesting food!). The most obvious feature of most dishes in their 30 (!) course meal was that they were completely ridiculous and rarely resembled food the way that you or I know it. I was mildly familiar with the concepts of molecular gastronomy because there was a student at Duke a few years younger than me who was an aspiring chef of the style and the Duke Magazine featured him in an article. It had been some time since the concept was brought to my mind though.

Now, it being a relatively slow business day¹ I did some followup research, which led me to a list of the top 50 restaurants in the world. As it seems, nearly all of the very highest-rated restaurants in the world use MG concepts in their dishes, which surprised me. Have we² come so far as to claim that traditionally prepared and cooked food is no longer in consideration as the best food in the world? I guess now I have to go find out for myself. Perhaps I must send myself to Europe for a gourmet vacation!

On the up side, my research also led to the discovery of a few restaurants in SF that I now want to go try.³ On the down side, I was so pumped up about fancy gourmet food that my actual dinner, delivery Indian food, couldn’t quite satisfy me in the manner which I was hoping for, even though objectively it was perfectly good. And on the business side, I stacked up plenty papers today, so that was nice too. But clearly you came here to read about crazy food, not some boring internet-style poker.

1. I was only playing a few tables intermittently for most of the afternoon. [↩]
2. well I guess just food critics [↩]
3. Though they are not MG-style, just regular-type. [↩]

Earlier today I ran slightly bad at the tables, so I took a break and played some Dominion¹ online. After a few games I glanced back at the stars lobby to discover that one of my favorite tripledraw fish was playing at 100/200. I hopped on the table without a wait, and the pots were heading in my direction pretty quickly. To sweeten the deal, our guest of honor joined some other tables and I followed suit.

Typically when I play tripledraw, I’ll only play a few tables. It requires a lot of mouse-clicking and attention span when you’re in a pot, so multitabling is more difficult than other games. To account for the unused brainpower which normally would be devoted to another 5 or 6 tables of poker, I will often put on a video of some sort on the other half of my massive 30″ screen. Tonight’s videos of choice were the last few episodes of Tommy Angelo’s video series The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment, which may well have the finest audio track ever created to accompany a poker session.²

So I kept running pleasantly hot, the videos were perfectly relaxing and soothing, and to top it off Jenny was kind enough to curl up in my lap for a little nap³. There were no traces of tilt or stress left in me whatsoever, and I booked a nice 70-bet win when our fishy friend finally left for the night. Sure, it might be 5 AM now, but I don’t have anything scheduled tomorrow, so I plan to sleep in nice and late. Ahhhh, summer.

Also, here’s a fun bonus hand that ordinarily would be rather frustrating but at the time was just amusing:

PokerStars Game #31765431978: Triple Draw 2-7 Lowball Limit ($100/$200 USD) – 2009/08/18 4:30:01 PT [2009/08/18 7:30:01 ET]
Table ‘Musca IV’ 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: oogee ($2803 in chips)
Seat 2: DJ Sensei ($8764 in chips)
Seat 3: Zacpacker ($3583 in chips)
Seat 4: GrowingPains ($2933 in chips)
Seat 5: vui-qua-di ($5908 in chips)
Seat 6: TRIPAS ($3368 in chips)
oogee: posts small blind $50
DJ Sensei: posts big blind $100
*** DEALING HANDS ***
Dealt to DJ Sensei [7d 2h 4h 5c 3s]
Zacpacker: folds
GrowingPains: folds
vui-qua-di: folds
TRIPAS: folds
oogee: folds
Uncalled bet ($50) returned to DJ Sensei
DJ Sensei collected $100 from pot
DJ Sensei: doesn’t show hand

1. The most recent board/card game addiction among my friends and I. I’d highly recommend that you give it a try if you like strategy games. [↩]
2. We also offer a plain MP3 version on DeucesCracked for this reason. [↩]
3. I’m a firm believer that the best prevention of online poker tilt is a lap cat. [↩]