I had a SuperNerd Friday

It dawned on me this morning that going a day or two without reading blogs means a LOT of reading to catch up on. I can’t think of a more pleasant problem, and have enjoyed my morning thus far doing just that, catching up.

A bit of nerd history for you. I was 9 (or was it 10?) years old, and after much saving and hoarding, I finally acquired a NES. It was a banner day for me, more so being a socially rejected super-nerd growing up in an oppressively religious environment. Somehow I conned my parents into letting me put the spare TV in my bedroom, and then (unbeknownst to them, of course), proceeded to play Super Mario Bros., Pro Wrestling, and Mike Tysons PunchOut! for nearly 72 hours straight (minus meals and bathroom breaks, of course). In my lifetime it was/is the longest gaming binge EVER, where my nerdiness actually worked to my advantage for once. When asked how I managed to get away with that, my parents said, “We thought you were holed up in your room reading something.” I have never been able to stay awake that long since, even with illicit help.

My reason for not reading any postings yesterday? Fight Night: Round Two. For those who don’t know this is an Xbox game, and while I’m normally a tried and true PC gamer, the console certainly does fit the bill at times, especially now that I can play in full 55” widescreen loveliness with surround sound. My passion for video games isn’t what it once was, but on occasion you can still find me putting in a 10 to 15 hour session if I can when I get a hold of a good PC game, the most recent being Half-Life 2. It is truly a rare occasion when I do something similar with a console game.

I spent about 8 straight hours yesterday landing haymakers and inflicting all sorts of Rocky-esque shit on my virtual opponents. If you are a boxing fan and you like video games even a little bit, you should get this game (it’s available for all the consoles). Everything about it is a huge improvement over the first (which wasn’t bad), and nothing says fun quite like seeing a slow-mo replay from different angles of your opponents face getting mangled (with attendant impact blood and sweat) from a great knockdown punch.

Only one complaint: This game BEGS for a custom soundtrack option, as hearing the same selection of rap songs OVER and OVER gets very tiring. You can turn down the music portion, so it’s not a huge deal, though.

As I sit here this morning with sore thumbs and a bit of a headache from staring unblinking at the television for so long, I can’t help but be a bit wistful where my childhood videogame days are concerned. Damn, those were the days.

Quick Question

While reading BadBlood’s post this morning, he said something that made me wonder.

“…[referring to Mrs. Blood] She'd like to play in the blogger tourney if there's room…”

Could it really be a possibility that the spouses of bloggers (my wife is PUMPED to play) would be excluded? I mailed CJ telling him to sign Mrs. Head and I up for the tourney, but never got a response, perhaps I’ll mail this question to him as well. I figured that I would do a quick post asking first, hoping that someone ‘in the know’ would be able to answer.

Since spouses are many times the struts that prop up us degenerate bloggers, excluding them would be seriously (to quote the Geico caveman) “Not Cool”. For the record, I don’t really think this will happen, but given I’m so freakin’ OCD I want to make sure :)

Thanks to anyone who can ease my OCD mind. Busy with school, more tomorrow.

Update: Thanks, Chris. It didn’t even cross my mind that the Aladdin might not have room to accommodate everyone. (Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot) Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

I am a mini-whore

I arrived home last night pretty beat down, but nonetheless determined to play some poker, it’s been far too long (read: four days). ScurvyDog gave up some details on a little Prima gem, Golden Riviera Poker, so I figured I would give baby whoring a shot. Good god, baby whoring just sounds bad, lets go with mini-whoring. I shot $50 dollars over from FirePay, and proceeded to take part in some fishy goodness.

As suggested, I began at the .50/1 7-Stud tables, which were actually much tighter than I was expecting, with about every third hand getting raked, so I brought up a second table. While GR certainly isn’t the worlds worst, it CERTAINLY doesn’t live up to the self-proclaimed “Sophisticated Internet Multi-Player Poker”. There are a myriad of little things that are annoying, but the worst for me was the fact that I actually have to email support to see how many raked hands I have cleared.

Things began in typical fish schooling fashion, where I lose between 8-10 BB’s on a long odds suckout, and then proceed to work my way back. I was even/up a bit, when I decided that I indeed didn’t like playing here very much and would be cashing ASAP. I went to bed at the normal time, but found myself up again at 1:30 AM staring old man insomnia in the face. Well, I figured this was as good a time as any to finish up those raked hands, so I head downstairs and find ‘The Devils Game’.

No, I did not find a roulette wheel on my main floor. I noticed the 5-Card Stud tab on GR, and decided to check it out. Now, it may be that I’ve completely had my head way up my ass for the last year and a half, but I’ve never heard of this game. Not the way GR dealt it, anyway. The 5-Stud I always knew about, you get 5 cards dealt to you at once, and that’s it. This game was dealt like Stud. One down, One up, then 3 cards face up-one each betting round.

Here is the spot where we find my late night smarts coming to bear.

I jump on the .25/.50 table just to get my feet wet, and for some reason I am OK with the fact that antes are .10, double that of the .50/1 7-Stud game, with a bring-in of .12. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to get the strategery of this game. It was basically everyone call every street, and hope for some kind of suckout, which usually came. After one hour, I found myself down $13 Good Lord! Is this really a poker game, or some –EV variation peculiar to Prima? Or am I just a late night no thinking idjit? I suspect it’s the latter, but I’m hoping for the former. I guess I can take a bit of solace in the fact that every hand was raked, similar to a PL or NL game.

Leaving there, I returned to the .50/1 7-Stud to try and get back to my full $100 ($50 cash + 50 bonus dollars) and actually got pretty close, but alas, some late session chasers got there and knocked me back down. Finally, 3:30 AM and I am ready for sleep, so I say fuckit and cash with $85. I can at least console myself that following Scurvy’s advice will find me with a regular $80/mo in bonus money, because only $50 didn’t seem worth the time. That, or I’m just not a good little bonus whore.

So there’s my take on Golden Riviera. Not great, but not bad either. If you should decide to do this one, don’t let the player count discourage you. The funny thing about it was, the lower the player count the more fishy and loose the play at the Stud tables got. Having mini-whored for the first time in ages, I’m now tempted to try to do that Full Tilt thing. Has anyone actually cleared that whole bonus?

Designing the new header yesterday was some good fun and reminded me that it’s been way too long since I spent any time with FireWorks. Thanks to everyone that took the time to leave some feedback on it, I’m sure I will be tinkering more with it very soon..

I’m Thinking Big, but my head is truly Much Bigger.

What Say You?

Geez I'm slamfucked busy and barely have time to jot a couple of sentences.

What are some thoughts on my new header? It was designed hastily this morning while I fielded phone calls from waaaay too many people, and I can't decide whether or not it sucks.

Sell vitamins instead

First off, many apologies for the lack of regular poker content. It seems that over the last few weeks I have been unable to put together more than three posts in a row with any kind of poker insight. I just haven’t had the energy to play. I suppose I could jump on for a few hands and a short session, but to me it’s just not worth it. If I can’t give it my best effort, it’s just not worth doing. Besides, being tired and playing poker makes me VERY susceptible to tilt and bouts of loud swearing, which Mrs. Head frowns upon. The loud part, not the swearing.

The entire day today has seen me shuffling back and forth between elation and apprehension. Why? Iggy and Hank have written an eBook on power using PokerTracker. I’m elated because I’ve wanted PokerTracker for a while, but kept putting it off because I knew I wouldn’t have hardly any time to devote learning about it’s power. This book pretty much gives me no excuse not to have it now.

Then why did you say you were apprehensive, as well?

Because for some reason the thought of forking over the $75 total for the program and eBook keeps activating the “stingy, reticent, cheap-bastard” part of my brain. Why? Who the hell knows. After dropping over two bills in the last two weeks on DVD’s, you’d think I’d be jumping at the chance to get a hold of a tool that will certainly help make me more money. Part of me is jumping, but it’s doing battle with that cheap bastard from across the brain. I know I’m gonna get it, it just may take a few days to beat that stingy guy into submission.

Man, it sure was hard to go to work today. While doing schoolwork all morning (with more in store this evening) with the usual stream of morning show drivel in the background, I found out at 11AM that I could be making $12000 per week selling vitamins! Not just any vitamins….wait for it……The world’s BEST vitamins.

Man, after deciding to change careers about 3 years ago (in an effort to make the leap from IT dabbler to full-on), it sure is disappointing to know I’ve been balls-to-the-wall trying to learn anything and everything I.T., when I could have been drinking pina coladas while watching people go to my prebuilt website to buy vitamins and make me rich. Dammit, always a day late and a dollar short………

Oh well, I’ll get the next one. Now where in the hell did I put that Carlton Sheets number? Perhaps he’s still willing to make me rich for 4 easy payments of $69.95…

Home Game Nod

After an extended hiatus, the wife and I had another home game last night. We’ve found that among all of the different formats, the participants enjoy the tournament format over all others, so we decided that we’d go that route this night.

If I had to declare an official drink of the Human Head home game, it would mostly likely be Bass, since that it what I find in my oversize paw four out of five times. However, this night I decided I should do something different. Should I give the nod to Iggy and pick up some Guinness? Naah, not tonight. The dark and heavy loveliness of that esteemed beer didn’t seem quite “right”. Should I give the nod to Al, pick up some SoCo and begin finding reasons for shots? Well, it HAS been many, many, many years (11 to be more specific) since I had any of that stuff thrown down my gullet, so the idea seemed like a good one at first. Upon further reflection, though, I realized that I have plenty of hair on my chest for the time being and decided I’d save my re-acquaintance with SoCo for Vegas in June.

After more pondering than was really warranted for such a decision…..

…it finally dawned on me that tonight’s nod would go to Red Stripe, the official drink of the Tao of Poker. I haven’t had one of these lovelies in several years, and they sound perfect for this evening.

We raised the buy-in to $10, since a couple of nights with $5 buy-ins left us feeling wholly unsatisfied. For the first time, I actually had to deal with players who are slowly but surely improving. My brother, normally the biggest fish since the appearance of the whale that swallowed Jonah, discovered that people can be bullied with chips. He got a sizeable stack in the first tourney and used it to pretty good effect, taking down a second place.

By this time I was on my fifth Red Stripe, and was fast remembering the power contained by that innocuous little bottle. A bit of herbal realignment and we were ready to begin the second tourney, this time with seven of us instead of nine, since some folks had to leave.

A friend from school, Bruce, made an appearance for the first time, who has really never played poker before, and just watched the first tourney since he showed late. As he bought in for the second one, I wondered to myself how long it would take for him to call his way to no chips as is the case with so many new players. Damn, Bruce learns effing QUICK. He lasted about halfway through the field, actually making a couple of really nice moves, including slowplaying a flopped straight to bust someone. He ended up getting knocked out when he just called with KK and I managed to hit my ace when after checking my A4o in the big blind. I’m almost scared to have him back.

In spite of my being hammered shit, the wife and I took the entire prize pool in the second tourney when we ended up together in the top two spots. Nice. Ending up +$20 for the night is always better than losing, especially when you can pull it off in such an altered state.

One thing is for sure, I need to not forget about my friend, Red Stripe, in the future. A very nice beer that allows lucidity even after seven or so are consumed. OK, maybe that’s not entirely correct, since Mrs. Head had to take over dealing duties when I accidentally raked a players entire chip stack while building an all-in pot. Surprisingly enough though, I managed to remember what each player had and get them straightened back out in a correct manner.

Nonetheless, Mrs. Head declared me ill-equipped and barred me from touching any chips or cards that weren’t my own for the remainder of the evening.

God bless her, Thinking Big at the times I cannot.