Been playing on Bovada's "Zone Poker" tables, which is their equivalent to rush/zoom poker. Of course being bovada means all the players are anonymous too, so there's zero reads/tells other than stack size and preflop activity. Not even a HUD can be used for tracking. That being said, I've had some success half-stacking these games. 50BB is the minbuy, and it seems to me like there's not much point playing fullstacked or deepstacked because you have no idea who your opponents are and what they payoff with. By avoiding fullstack play you deny them the odds/opportunity to effectively draw against you, and can more comfortably stack off with top pair since you have no idea who you're up against and how they play postflop. Any time I double up I just reload the table to buy back in for 50BB's.
My understanding of deepstack poker and even draws for that matter is entirely predicated on if your opponent pays off when you hit. With no reads I just dont see how you can draw effectively because you never know if you're getting paid off anyway. But the risk of getting oversetted or AA/KK and stuff seems much worse 300BB's deep against random players who cover.
If every hand is essentially in a vacuum, does it make sense to buy in for less to limit your exposure to big losses?
Ok I am scurred. I'm still writhing over a bad fold I made last night in a huge pot at a live NL200 game. I've been struggling to come to grips with what happened other than me making a somewhat questionable soul read.
Then it dawned on me moments ago what happened. While I had fully intended to shove any non-heart turn card (even as deep as we were), I froze when I got raised. I mean that just changed everything for me and suddenly there was a possibility I might actually lose this massive hand. Aside from the obvious complications of being 7 buyins deep which is certainly foreign territory to me, the simple fact of the matter is that I was playing SCARED MONEY.
My quandary is that the lowest live limit available is NL200, which is right on the cusp of affordability for me. My job pays me more than the average NL200 winrate, but not so much more that I can risk thousands of dollars on a bankroll. Plus I have bills, duh. Since my bankroll is theoretically infinite due to having this thing called a job, I go ahead and take 3 buyin shots and stuff because hey, I might flop a set in a $1700 pot. The only problem is that because these are home games I'm obligated to stay a certain amount of time. I cant hit n run, which is what I really should be doing to build my bankroll. I would never sit with $1000 live or online, not at least if nobody else covered. But this is a rather frequent occurrence in the home game arena. I've run my stack up to 1k on dozens of occasions, only to piss it away and maybe cash out $200 profit at the end of the night.
I fucked up that hand so bad because I was too scared to see it through. Had this been for $400 or so, ez peasy. Had I been able to change tables once I won around $600, ez peasy. So where does that leave me? I cant hit n run or else I'll never be invited back. There are no casinos nearby, and I'm not such a donkey that I should quit. Well for the time being I think that means I have absolutely no choice but to go back to playing online again. I dont really require a full bankroll since as mentioned, I can just reload. I think I'll just deposit what would ordinarily be my stop-loss to avoid tilt, which is around 3 buyins. Having $0 in my account should really help prevent spewing. It's also a bit of a chore for me to deposit online, as I have to execute a bank wire which takes a few days to complete, a perfect opportunity to cool down and retrospect.
My other option is to just take trips to the nearest casino which is 4 hours away like once per month or something. This will probably be pretty bad for my growth as a player by having such huge breaks between sessions. Not to mention the resources exhausted just in getting there. At least I can always hop tables though. I apologize to the poker community at large for hit n' running, but the simple fact is I neither know how to play deepstacked, nor have the bankroll to risk multiple buyins on a single hand.
I came across a thread on that other poker forum offering live coaching assistance, which peaked my curiosity so I bought a few sessions to see if I could plug any glaring leaks in my game. I just kinda wanted a fresh start and figured I might as well start with live since the play is so much worse. I came with my hat in hand knowing I was probably doing everything backwards at this point and looking to start over. See whenever I play live I seem to get completely lost in the hand. I could just never find a way to get paid off properly, it had to be something I was doing wrong.
My "coach" kinda drew my attention to the fact that I'm not really going into the hand with a plan. Basically just level 1 poker thinking "i has hand, therefore I bets". I mean I could actually put people on semi-accurate ranges quite often, but I just didnt know how to exploit it. So he's sorta helped me start shifting my strategy to "ok, how can I make money with this hand, vs this player, from this position". Most of the time the answer is "I cant" resulting a fold, which has been really helpful. For instance I would raise 44 utg 9 handed, because somewhere along the line I picked up a strat that says you should raise all PP's regardless of position if you are first in the pot. I get the logic behind it, balance and all that shit. I also get the logic that says you might not even need to balance, so just limp, you could flop a set and stack 3 people first to act. Well it's shit like this that just never panned out. I'd whiff most of the time and have no chance of taking it down on the flop no matter how the hand played out, or I'd flop a set and make like no money.
It wasnt until he asked me to describe how I win a big pot utg with 44 that I started stuttering and realized I had no idea, no plan at all. Just flop a set and hope someone else flops something big enough to cooler them with. Which is funny, because it also brought up this idea of what he called "reciprocity" from some book, which basically says something like you dont make money when you stack someone if they didnt make a mistake. If someone gets it allin for 200BB's vs me set over set, well they didnt really make a mistake. So that money I won wasnt really profit, because it could just go right back when I'm on the opposite side of the table. We make money when our opponents make mistakes. So instead of set-mining out of position with 7x preflop raises, maybe I should just fold and wait to pick up that hand in late position after a few limpers or even a raiser has given me a specific REASON to play that hand vs him. So I really made a concerted effort to look at the board, look at my opponent, think about what he could have (very loose players which can make it difficult sometimes) and then think "how do I get the most money here. Do I raise? Do I call? How much do I bet, small or big?" etc.
So for instance one interesting hand that I found out later I played kinda wrong went like this:
Hero (BB) is dealt 66
UTG (nit $350) raises $15
EP (station $600) calls
CO (maniac $500) calls
Hero (tag $600) calls
Flop ($60)
5 6 9 r
Hero checks
UTG checks
EP bets $20
CO calls
Hero check-raises $120
UTG folds
EP calls
CO folds
Turn ($320)
5 6 9 9 r
Hero checks
EP checks
River ($320)
5 6 9 9 4 r
Hero bets $100
EP min-raises to $200
Hero calls
EP shows 55
My line? Well I was obviously fist-pumping until the river minraise. I checked the turn to induce, and bet the river 1/3 for value against a straight or 9. But I knew he had to be strong, and his raise froze me. I put him on 96. Yeah thats right, one single hand, the only hand that plays passively to see a clear turn card and doesnt just get it allin right away. EP is a horrible player who earlier called a raise OOP with J3s and called a cbet on a 39Qr flop. So often I just freeze vs these players because I get nightmares of all the times I've been sucked out on. I mean he minraised for christ's sake, fish ONLY do that with the goddamn nuts, or at least what they think is the nuts. It just seemed like one of those "well theres no sense in raising, but I cant fold getting 6:1 with a solid boat".
So my coach says instead of trying to get fancy with the turn check, I should have just been pumping money in the whole time. Lead the flop, even into the nit and callers. The idea is simple, they either have something or they dont. If they have something on a board like this, they are calling/raising. We cant be missing any streets of value here. Even as played, on the turn I gotta just ship, especially after he calls a huge check-raise like that. Is anyone ever folding trip 9's or a straight? Fuck no. Get it in now while my equity is still good. Even though I was kinda sorta right on the river about him being so strong, I still cost myself some money from failing to have gotten it allin earlier despite what he could have had.
So that hand stuck with me, and I made sure to use it last night. This time it's a family pot limped to me in the SB and I complete with 78o.
He then says to me "wow, I didnt think you would bet with the nuts there". It obviously didnt really matter since he had 2 pair, but chances are he'd still be thinking that even without 2 pair and probably play it the same way vs me with any top pair, draw, etc. Assuming he'd overplay top pair on this board, these are the kinds of spots where I'm getting villains to make legitimate mistakes, and thus make legitimate profit and not just "reciprocal" profit.
Anyway we'll see where this goes for now. 1st night I won $1200, 2nd night I lost $600 using a 3 buyin stop loss (all coolers). I've picked 3 buyins both for tilt and image purposes. Obviously tilt is the most important, and 3 buyins is all I can really stomach right now before it starts to affect my play. The image part comes into the fact that once people see you losing, even if it was with the nuts every time, bad things start to happen. Fish start to play back at you, nits open up against you, everyone just suddenly sees you as some sort of mark because they know you keep losing. So it's just best to quit before you look like a tilted donkey and have everyone mysteriously playing their A-game against you.
So this blog is going to be a geek whine fest for sci-fi films. Some of you may have heard of a new movie that was just released called Gravity.
The following trailer pretty much sums up the entire movie and basically spoils everything
The rest of this blog will be filled with spoilers. Anyway it has only 2 characters in the entire film depicting a couple of astronauts doing routine space shit. The movie got a lot of people hyped due to the impressive trailer depicting excellent special fx and attention to details, namely their attention to physics. Unfortunately thats about all this movie is, just a demonstration in physics simulations and how difficult maneuvering in zero G can be. The movie was cool and all and I liked it, but there didnt seem to be much point to what was happening. There wasnt any kind of story. Routine mission goes bad due to totally implausible satellite detonation by the Russians, and now there's debris flying everywhere. The orbiting debris around the earth is what gives pause for suspense to build before the debris makes its return and causes more destruction.
The problem without any sort of story is that it's hard to empathize with the characters. Each event is nothing more than a vehicle to set up the next challenge. "Oh crap the shuttle is destroyed, better get to the space station. Oh shit the space station is destroyed, better get to the chinese space station. Goddamn now thats destroyed, better return to earth." There is no grand scheme or anything you're waiting for, other than for the characters to either die or be rescued. George Clooney plays George Clooney the sexy astronaut. It's pretty unbelievable that any astronaut would behave the way he does, but I guess they wanted something in there to break the tension.
You see the problem with a movie like this is that the director wanted it to be as realistic as possible with the phenomenal effects, yet creates this impossible situation and silly character that are complete fiction. The whole crux of the movie is that the Russians inexplicably launch a missile to destroy one of their own satellites. It's not too far fetched, but it's also not the kind of thing that is done at the drop of the hat precisely due to potential debris fields created causing problems for other nations. I know we're not exactly on the best of terms with Russia, but I still dont think they would risk something like this knowing they could endanger American lives. I mean China did this very thing a few years ago, and the USA was fully notified so that they could be sure there would be no risk to the ISS or other missions. What China did was a little different and just a test of anti-satellite technology, but still this whole idea that the Russians lost a very important satellite and just HAD to blow it up RIGHT NOW and then obliterate the ISS in the process is laughable. That'd be like launching a nuke to blow up Red October and then taking out the Statue of Liberty with it and go "whoops our bad guys".
The Russians would never launch a missile to destroy a rogue satellite without at least notifying the United States of the potential for damage. And even if they did the USA would be on high alert and abort any space walk on the off-change such a weapon caused a debris field which is the #1 threat of satellite destruction. So annnnyyyyway, debris from a poorly executed satellite demolition destroys the shuttle and each of their failback escape methods one by one so that the astronauts just cant get a break. And while the film prides itself on realism, they then depict Clooney chasing Sandra down with a jetpack for what must have taken an hour to attempt, and then have her use a fire extinguisher in space when no jetpack is available to hurl herself towards the ISS. I kinda knew from the beginning that this movie would be like "2001 Space Odyssey: For Amatuers who dont understand the vacuum of space". They preface the movie before the starting credits informing people that there is no sound in space, since I'm sure most dumb audience members would be like "hey something is wrong with the surround sound, I just saw an explosion and didnt hear anything!".
So, without trying to lose the audience with hyper realism they toss in a few hero moments when in reality if the shuttle were destroyed everyone would just die in 60 minutes. Even the re-entry to earth was laughable and should have resulted in her instant death (recovery pod is tumbling through the atmosphere on fire for quite some time before correcting trajectory and using its heat shield properly. If this were to really happen I'm pretty sure the hull would be penetrated immediately and she'd die, like what happened with the Columbia tragedy)
Anyway if you want to see some impressive special fx with ridiculous levels of detail (the debris from the ISS being struck must literally have thousands of independently animated objects per frame) you'll like the movie. I guess you could consider this a bit of a rant, but only because the movie is getting such high regard. It's a neat movie but it's riddled with flaws, the kind that cant be forgiven since more realistic space flight movies have already been done so this movie isnt even meeting expectations imo.
New KoRn album out - "The Paradigm Shift". If you're in any way a korn fan you'll like it. Good to have their dual wielding guitar combo back with the reunion of Head to the team, bringing back some interesting and unique notes that have been missing all these years from having 2 guitarists.
Released some time in the early nineties during the height of Stallone's popularity, it turned out to be a cheesy campy action movie with no soul. For some reason hollywood felt possessed to recreate it, and for some reason I felt possessed to watch it now that it is on Netflix.
But I said God Damn! God Damn! This movie was actually really fuckin cool. The story is thin, nothing more than a vehicle to drive some of the most hyper gore shootouts I've ever seen. The catch is that they're all artistically filmed and awesome to watch. Think "Matrix" bullet-time stuff, but with the bullets actually penetrating meat. The new Dredd is the Doc from Star Trek ->
Who's constant scowling under his mask is almost humorous
In fact, he never takes the mask off. Not once do you ever see his full face. Still, the movie has some sick original shootouts, some pretty extreme violence, and makes you completely forgot about the original 90's shit version and is totally worth your time to watch if you have Netflix.
A kickstarter campaign was launched not too long ago to fund the worlds first high-end consumer friendly virtual reality headset. This was basically supposed to be the VR headset that finally does virtual reality right. VR is nothing new, I've tried it before back at various arcades in the early nineties. It was clunky, had horrible head tracking, and very low quality graphics. Everyone wrote it off and rightfully so. Till some guy came up and said "we have the technology". Of course VR has such a bad rep from previous attempts no company was willing to back it, hence the kickstarter campaign. Anyway, the campaign was a huge success and they got all the money they needed to begin development.
Out comes this developers kit which is really meant for game designers, but so many people bought it and began sharing their own stuff that there are actually quite a few nifty demos out there to give you a taste of what VR was always meant to be. I finally grabbed one, and I must say I am impressed. There are still issues with your field of view, and until they come out with a lens that wraps around the side of your temple, or flat out project images on to your retina, you will still feel like you are looking through a pair of binoculars INTO the world, rather than actually feeling like you are IN the world. But it's still incredibly fascinating to look at, and as I write this my head is still spinning and my stomach nauseous from having just played around in the thing.
So far the most impressive worldly feel, and by that I mean a game that actually pulls you into the universe is Half Life 2. This is basically the only commercial game with official support for VR from the developer, so obviously it shines as a well polished example. Plus the world of HL2 is perfect for VR since it's so exploratory. It's also the quickest to make you dizzy since there's so much interaction to proceed. You see, the more you have to move around, the more you get sick.
The easiest games to stomach are the pure demos. You just sorta sit back in a pod or something, or mindlessly walk empty corridors just kind of staring at stuff as you go. These are natural movements, and your brain is willing to accept the disconnect from physical motion and visual motion since you can kind of pretend you are sitting in an electric wheelchair and just gliding everywhere. It's the games like HL2 where you are supposed to be walking and climbing and going around corners that make your stomach churn, since now it feels like the world is just spinning around you. It's perfect to just stand still and look around, but as soon as you have to start moving and going around the corner of some building, your stomach turns into knots, or at least mine does.
What really makes this whole thing work though is the latency factor. Old VR systems used infra-red scanners and magentic resonance detectors and stuff that were just horribly slow and inaccurate, plus the computational horsepower available at the time was pathetic, so when you turned your head left, it could take a full second for the screen to turn left. You basically just felt like you strapped a cellphone to your face and were looking at a little box. With advancements in gyroscopes and accelerometers thanks in large part to the mobile phone boom, incredibly accurate and fast devices are now available and allow the headtracking to be 100% SPOT ON. You move your head the equivalent of 1 pixel width of visual density, and the screen updates PERFECTLY. There is absolutely no delay whatsoever between your eyes and what you see. You can literally turn your head in any direction, upside down, sideways, at an angle, left, right, over your shoulder, you can even spin in your chair and do a 180 and look directly behind you. The camera follows with absolute perfect precision. The only thing left to do with this device is simply widen that field of view so you dont feel like you're looking through a tube.
So in my previous blog I talked about having my shit stolen by the movers I hired to move, my shit. So today was his court appearance where he gets to make a plea in front of a judge and face his accuser and all that jazz. The cops told me it really makes an impression on the judge if the victim comes to court to display the severity of the case and such. I make my appearance, which was a little bit weird since I have never seen the inside of a courtroom before. I felt kinda guilty at first because the kid has been in jail for 2 weeks now just waiting for his hearing. He wasnt able to post bail so it's pretty obvious he's a life degen on the wrong path.
Anyway the room is packed with all walks of life and I'm first to be called. I enjoyed looking like a fish out of water, walking to the wrong podium, and otherwise obviously not knowing what to do with myself. The kid is escorted from behind closed doors in a prison jumpsuit and shackles.
The judge recounts the events as described in my criminal report and verifies everyone agrees on what happened. Then he turns to the kid and starts quizzing him on his criminal past, asking him if he's ever stolen anything before and so on. It was a pretty obvious setup but alas, this guy's in chains for a reason because he's clearly not too bright given the crime he committed. The kid basically describes himself as a saint, before the officer who arrested him cuts him off. Before the officer even gets a word out the judge cuts HIM off, and says "wait wait wait, let me have my fun". There was an audible chuckle in the audience behind me. At that moment the judge proceeds to tear his kid a new asshole, reminding him it's pretty stupid to lie about your past to a fucking JUDGE who has access to your entire life's story. The kid has been arrested several times before for related crimes and was actually on fucking parole when he robbed me.
The echo of giggles continues in the background, and even I find myself struggling not to grin out of fear of the judge considering it disrespectful. Anyway the judge pwns this kid into oblivion while he stutters trying to save his ass with feeble "I'm truly sorry for what I did" comments, gives him a max sentence of another 30 days in jail, then deports his ass back to his home state to suffer the consequences of his parole violation. Judge looks to me and says "Sorry but thats the max I can give him". I nod and thats it. The cop who arrested him escorts me out, jiving about the whole experience on the way. He said the kid was a fucking freak and started doing all sorts of weird shit in the squad car when they arrested him. I didnt bother to get in depth.
All in all I have to say the situation was oddly satisfying. I like to think of myself as a "just" person, an honest person, a good person. I dont do evil shit, I dont hurt others, I live by the golden rule, all that sort of stuff. I kept wanting to feel bad for the kid, to prove to myself I have some sort of empathy. But all I could feel was joy that he got fucked. I mean honestly I think the punishment fits the crime. The kid lied to me about the phone, lied to the cops when they interrogated him, then lied right to a judge's face. How stupid can you be? The kid is obviously just another dumb pathological dip shit who just isnt learning his lesson.
I dont know if he's ever served REAL prison time before, but I'd like to think 45 days is jail probably sucks hard enough that maybe he really will learn something from this. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate people. Most of the time it doesnt, but in this situation I think there's a chance. If I dropped charges and this kid got off after 2 weeks in jail, he'd probably consider this a win. 2 week stint for a $500 prize? Hey no problem right? Shit you could make a living like that. Whatever... I'm glad he's being punished, hope he learns something from it, and still feel oddly good about the whole experience.
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