Biggestron Writes

Many of my readers know that I am a Canadian by birth.  If you didn’t - now you do.  This might explain my lack of enthusiasm for the 4th of July.  I’m not terribly patriotic about my adopted country, but then I was never terribly patriotic towards my birth country.  But I know how to give, and I know how Americans feel about French people.  So here you go - a real life story that makes them look ridiculous.

This story is the only bright spot in a news cycle that seems to be mostly about how much everything is costing us these days:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada’s U.S. embassy apologized on Thursday for a party invitation that featured a prominent figure in Canadian history brandishing a large plate of French fries covered in cheese curds and gravy.

They apologized because some Quebecois Nationalists (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one) were upset that the European discoverer (Samuel de Champlain) of their province was being stereotyped as a lover of high dosage cholesterol.  The dish in question is called ‘poutine’ and is probably one of the finest things you can eat after an evening of beverages.  It is one of the signature Quebecois comfort foods.  I think it was even sold in McDonald restaurants for a brief period.

I spent a year of my life in Montreal.  It is a great city boasting European architecture, cobble-stone streets, wonderful restaurants, and cosmopolitan people.  During my time there (early 90’s) it also featured some ardent Separatists.  These pipe-dreamers wanted to split Quebec from the nasty grip of Canada and have a go as their own country, or perhaps join the US as state #51.  Either way, they had enough of their evil Anglophone oppressors.  After all - we had inflicted our lowbrow but popular ‘Mr. Donut’ stores upon the Quebec people.  The Separatist solution?  These stores were forcibly renamed, via Bill 101, to ‘Monsieur Donut’.  This was all done in the name of preserving French Quebec culture within Canada.  Nice use of governmental resources, garcons.  These folks faded away somewhat after losing successive referendums in the nineties that sought to liberate Quebec from the rest of Canada.  Now it appears that the Separatists/Nationalists are back and they are angry about Monsieur Champlain eating poutine on Canada Day.

Plus ca change, indeed.

Guest posting from cberger

When pros Chip Reese and then Freddy Deeb, two players recognized as top pros, won consecutive WSOP H.O.R.S.E. championships or when Scotty Nguyen won 50000$ at HORSE event, many poker players confirmed that the H.O.R.S.E. event crowned poker’s true champion. Others clamored to argue that the $10,000 no limit Texas hold’em main event was and would always be the championship. Here are some reasons why the H.O.R.S.E. event might supplant the main event as poker’s world championship.

More Games

To play poker and win the main event, all you have to do is be able to play one game well, no limit Texas hold’em. To win at the H.O.R.S.E. event, you need to be good at all the games. If one is to win the crown the world poker champion, they should be good at all forms of poker. They call the winner of the main event the world hold’em poker champion.

Elite Field

The main event is a bit of a crapshoot. With thousands of players, many of whom just learnt how to play poker online throw their chips into the pot with reckless abandon, it’s hard for the cream to rise to the top. The bad players butt heads, half of them eliminated while building the stacks of the other half.

When those bad players run up against the pros with enormous stacks, it’s tough for the pros to get any traction. The $50,000 price tag of H.O.R.S.E. helps restrict the field to those who are truly elites of the game, giving the best player’s skills a legitimate chance to win the day.

History Is Proof

Chip Reese, who many agreed was poker’s best for years before he ever sat down at that championship table, won the first H.O.R.S.E. championship. The following year, Freddy Deeb, another well established pro took the title. Many would say these two are much more worthy champions than 2007’s Jerry Yang, and Jamie Gold, a talented amateur at best before winning it all in 2006.

Play Poker: Find the best online poker bonus at Full Tilt Poker using the exclusive Full Tilt Poker Referral Code or at PokerStars.com using the PokerStars Marketing Code bonus.

CemfredMD over at Trial and Error Poker has stepped up to host the Skill Series tourney.  I like the format of these - non NLHE with an easy buy-in and $2 knockout bounties. 

Last night was limit O/8 which meant that a lot of bounties ended up being split.  Nothing like winning a buck for knocking out your pal.  I wanted to see if bounties could get quartered.

I went on an absolute tear in the first level, hitting pretty much every hand I played.  And I was playing nearly every hand.  No donkey play here - we are talking picking up AA23 double suited over and over again.

Of course I ended up with the fate of all early chip leaders - I didn’t win.  I eeked out a 3rd place bottom cash spot as PinkyStinky took a commanding chip lead at the final table.  Irongirl managed to hang in for second when my flopped set of Kings fell to Pinky’s rivered gutshot straight.   Not bad play - he had the chips to call pretty much any draws he wanted, and we all know O/8 is all about the redraw.  He/she just decided to leave out the ‘re’ part.

For an example of bad play, you can look to me calling Irongirl down to the river while holding 222x after flopping the case 2 for bottomest set.  I tried to claim quads at showdown, but I guess angle shooting doesn’t work so well on-line.

In the two months since leaving my former 9-5 gig:

Things I Have Done:

- picked up a cat from the Boston shelter (my last cat died as a result of the tainted Chinese pet food ingredients)

- went to the Celtics championship parade (it has been 6 months since we’ve had a championship parade in Boston - the wait was worth it)

- installed an attic fan (no easy task in my crawlspace sized attic)

- vastly expanded my knowledge of the biotech scene in the Boston area (3 interviews so far)

- undertaken major landscaping projects around my house (completely rebuilt a 4′  x 10′ natural stone retaining wall in the front and created a 25 square foot level stone patio in my slopey backyard)

- set up a linux box capable of running all the necessary tasks to support my particular scientific specialty for under $150 (thanks craigslist and open source software!)

Things I Haven’t Done:

-painting!  Multiple areas in my house need touch-ups

-shutters! (I’ve switched my plan to creating my own board and batten shutters instead of scraping paint off of 50 year old shutters)

-start the homebrewing beer blog/section  (I’ve got some entries started, but I want to release a body of work at once)

- finish the novel I started during nanomo.  I’m a lazy, lazy writer.

- hit the coast for some early morning surf fishing (I think the stripers have pulled a jedi mind trick on me - “You don’t want to get up early and fish”)

-win at poker.  Seriously coolered, sucked out on, or card dead.  You name it  - I’ve busted out of tournies and lost my stack at cash games so many times over the past few months I’m wondering if poker can ever pay my way again.

This is a sponsored review

Poker players looking to sign up for Poker Stars should try this Poker Stars Marketing Code.  The web site behind that link shows how you can get a Pokerstars Rakeback Equivalent.  Poker Stars is a very popular site - most nights it features over 100,000 players, so there is plenty of action.  If you’ve been waiting to try online poker, why not go for some free pokerstars money?  Poker Stars offers tournies for all levels, from the microstakes player to the high roller.  Similarly, there are ring games you can play for pennies on up.  So check out Poker Stars Marketing Code and get started today!

I’ve been spending my days on landscaping projects and home improvement and my evenings watching the NBA finals while playing the PokerStars Steps WSOP satellites.

I completed a 6×6′ patio today - no easy task as my yard has a fairly significant slope.  The drop over 6′ was better than 1/2 foot so I had some serious soil redistribution in front of me.  ~1 ton of stone, sand and gravel later and I’ve got myself a sweet spot to fire up my Weber.  Having a nice flat surface to cook is great - my hot dogs don’t roll to one end of the grill anymore.

***

The basketball has been great.  I’m not a huge fan, but a Boston sports team playing in its 3rd championship series of the year makes it hard to ignore.  I say Celtics take it in 7, only because the NBA money-making machine will want it to go that way.  Every game seems to feature a spot of news on the dirty NBA refs.  Basketball games almost always seem to come down to the final 5 minutes - a ref can easily push it one way or another.  When cheating is easy and lucrative, cheating happens.  Take that one to the bank - we’ll find out in 5-10 years about refs fixing games at NBA directions.   Either that or the ticket resellers.

***

The PokerStars steps are pretty cool.  $7.50 entry into step 1, top 2 go on to step 3, 3rd place repeats step 1.  Step 2 is set up similarly - top 2 go to 3, 3&4 repeat, and 5th goes down to step 1.  Steps 1-3 are turbo so they don’t take too long.  Standard S&G play seems to be sufficient - if I could avoid the suckouts I would have been up in level 4 twice by now.  First time I had AA cracked by A7soooted, second time I had QQ cracked by AJ.  You have to reach level 6 for the money - top prize is 12K WSOP packages, 2-4 are heavy cash pay outs.  My past few nights I haven’t made it into level 3 - blinds escalate pretty quickly and the crap shoots haven’t been hitting me with anything but crap.  I’ll get there - it’s been a longstanding goal to hit one of those 12K WSOP packages.  I probably wouldn’t play - 12K cash is waaaay to much to lay on a poker tourney. 

I might, however, fly out and play a few smaller events.  I’d love to be able to put a bracelet up in my office memorabilia corner….

A funny thing happened on the way to the largest casino in the world. Or maybe not so funny given that this was a day of cumulative suckitude.

First off, the fax stop.  I needed to fax some forms for an interview I did recently.  Definitely a good sign that my interviewer wanted them, but seriously UPS store - $1/page for a fax?  I can understand maybe receiving costs of $1/page, but sending?  Please.

Second off, the Dunkin’ Donuts stop.  On the way to Foxwoods, I heard a radio commercial saying that you could get a free iced tea/coffee if you buy a sandwich after 11:00AM when the Red Sox have won the night before.  The Sox had won, it was just past 11, and there was a drive-thru Dunkin’ Donuts right in front of me.  After being made to wait quite long to give my order to the grotty little speaker while envisioning what a bacon and cheese flatbread melt would taste like with my free beverage, I was informed that “We don’t do that in Connecticut”.  Ok Connecticut, I know that you touch NY, and you might feel some kind of torn allegiance to the friggen’ Yankees, but denying me my free ice tea while tempting me with melted cheese and bacon?  Please.

Third - my session at Foxwoods.  I met up with RakeFeeder and a friend of his.  After missing my name for 5-6 open places, being yelled at by the floor manager for eating a piece of pizza near the table, I sat down. Apparently you are not supposed to eat in the poker room at Foxwoods. Please.

Over the next 5 hours I took one of my top 10 beatings at the table.  No crazy suckouts, unless you consider being stacked while holding TPTK and nut flush draw (damn you AK soooted) on the turn vs your opponents set of queens to start the day, and then having the same opponent stack you with a turned straight vs your flopped set of 8’s (raised and isolated preflop, he had 910 off and called sizeable bets preflop, on the flop (478 flop, J on the turn) to end the day.  In between I won a few pots but missed on quite a few more, including one where I flopped the bottom end of the straight and had the board pair on the turn and then the flush and higher straight come on the river.  QQ cracked by A-junk, JJ cracked by K-junk (both of those folded to significant action).  The players at the table were friendly enough and happily showed their hands without being called.

Maybe aggressive play by me - I typically play small ball poker but since my last sessions at Foxwoods had been slight losing ones, principally due to the $10/hr time fee, I thought I might open my game a little.  One or two cards the right way and was walking out with a healthy profit.  As it was I left with metaphorical tail tucked between legs.

But tomorrow is another day.  Please?

I am back from my vacation in the Canadian Rockies.  It was my first time there - people kept asking me how I liked it.  I think I disappointed them with my answer of ‘It’s ok’.  What are you supposed to say when you are surrounded by emerald green and sky blue lakes, roaming elk, towering mountains and other descriptors of pristine wilderness. 

How do you like it?

Jeez.

***

One of the first things I did when I returned last night was to catch the finale of Lost, the Writer’s Strike Season. 

Once again we get to see a new hatch/Darma hole/deus ex machina before the big gap in episodes (otherwise known as the summer).  I thought the Orchid rather nifty, and an interesting extension to the whole time shifting (flash backs, flash forwards) concept going on in the plot line.

Had anyone else guessed Locke was in the coffin last year?

Check out what I wrote when they gave us the first flash-forward episode of the series:

“I think it is Locke in the coffin.”

(Biggestron in a blog posting from last year around the time of the episode where they showed the coffin)

I was anagramming “Jeremy Bentham” to see if I could figure out why they chose that name. 

I came up with “Jam my bet here, N”

In the next several Lost-less months, my guess is that every fan will be trying to figure out who this “N” character is, and why he/she is playing against such an aggressive gambler.

****

There can be only two reasons for the writers to give us a prominent shot of the spelling of Locke’s neo-name in the last few minutes of the show:

1) Anagram action (see above)

2) Google!

Google gives us this (courtesy of Wikipedia):

Jeremy Bentham (IPA: ['benθəm] or ['bentəm]) (15 February 1748–6 June 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical, and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism, for the concept of animal rights,[1][2] and his opposition to the idea of natural rights, with his oft-quoted statement that the idea of such rights is “nonsense upon stilts.”[3] He also influenced the development of welfarism.[4]

who is essentially* a time shifted version of this guy:

(*as close to “essential” as we can get in a pop-culture geekfest show like Lost, because I’m sure the Society of People Who Study Dead British intellectuals gets a bit miffed at my brazen comparison of Jeremy Bentham to John Locke)

John Locke (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. This influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.

Check out Jeremy Bentham nee John Lock’s last request:

As requested in his will, his body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet

Shivers, huh?  Get it?  New Lost head-spooky guy, old Lost head-spooky guy, and time-shifting?  Awesome. 

My inner-geek is thrilled with the Lost writers using their down-time to learn how to use Wikipedia.  Either that or they are really up on obscure dead white guys.

It was a fun episode, and the end of the first season that I had to watch in real time.  I am a late-comer to Lost and was able to cruise through all the previous seasons on DVD.  I’m not sure I like this whole ‘wait until next season’ deal. 

Maybe I need to find my own time shifting wheel…

There was excitement aplenty in Casa de Biggestron this morning.

I had LittleBiggestron help me with the drawing for the Poker Academy software give away.

A 5 year old boy was about the best RNG I could find to help decide the winner of the Poker Academy Contest.  He quickly drew out this name:

Congrats to on_thg, winner of the Poker Academy/Poker Prospector software.  From reading his blog, on_thg gets junk-kicked by the on-line RNG nearly as much as I do, so I’m glad that my home grown RNG has served him a little better.  Enjoy playing with the Poker Academy bots, on_thg - I’m sure it will be just like playing online.

Thanks to everyone for entering and Poker Academy for giving me a copy to give away.

***

I’m off on vacation to the fabulous Canadian Rockies until next Saturday, so probably not so many postings this coming week.  I hope everyone enjoys beating up on each other in the blogger tournies this week without me!

I’m cutting off entries to my free Poker Academy give-away ($140 worth of software) tonight at midnight eastern time.  As of this posting you have a 10% chance of winning - all you have to do is read this review I wrote about Poker Academy / Poker Prospector.

***

My recent poker results have been, um, not so good.  I’m still sticking to the blogger tournies, but luck has, shall we say - cooled? 

1.  Monday -  Early exit from the MATH - I can’t even remember what happened.  I know that I did a lot of folding.

2.  Tuesday - I skipped the BoDonkey - this one has never been very good to me, I didn’t want the trouble.  Also I have no shot at winning a seat in their WSOP freeroll, so why bother?  The other event of the evening, the NL Omaha/8 Skillz game was interesting.  I made it fairly deep, but was crushed by a suckout just before the final table.  This was my first time playing NL08.  Given the fact that no hand has much of an advantage pre-flop over any other hand in O8, I think limping is a good strategy in early to mid-position regardless of your cards.  If you are raised, you can push.  If pushed, you can fold with minimal loss.  I liked Columbo’s description of NLO8:

Here’s what we did. We each went down to the busiest street nearby. (We chose the famous 8 mile.) Now, each player ties a blindfold over their eyes and the players shut their mouths and listen. When they think there is no traffic coming, they run across the street. When everyone gets to the other side (or doesn’t), you repeat until there is one “runner” left.

The one bright spot was that I finished second in a poooosh-fest.  Had my 23o held up against PushMonkey72 I would have gone on to a glorious victory.  Alas, 2nd in the pooooshfest pays just as much as last.

3. Wednesday - I took a guest spot on Live Poker Radio and was somewhat distracted during play.  In the Mookie I got impatient with my dwindling stack (a dozen missed draws will do that) and jammed with a pair of 6’s into the BB’s KK just before the first break.  Nothing came and I was done.  Onto the Dookie, where I played half the tourney thinking it PLO8 when it was in fact PLO.  Let me just say my nut-low bluff didn’t exactly do well against a flopped nut flush.

4. Thursday - RiverChaser’s.  NLHE double stacks (3K start)  This tourney features the most horrific play of any of the blogger tournies.  I usually manage to make it the middle levels but rarely have the chips I need to go further.  This time I changed things up and tried to do some blind stealin’ when they became worth stealin’.  I jammed a 5K stack in late position with A7 soooted (a semi-bluff) but the player right behind me had QQ.  Flop was 10JQ, turn a blank, river J.  If J was K I go on to the final table.

*****

I think I need to find a non-blogger tourney to make a big score.  I used to take down 4 figure prizes on a regular basis.  I’ve never seen a 5 figure - I’d like to some day. 

I believe I will set that as a poker goal - 5 figure tourney score before the end of the year.