My first WSOP - part 1

So i can't sleep (again) and have finally convinced myself that a recap of my first WSOP is in order.

I decided earlier this month that I should try to win an event in the World Series of Poker. I did some research, evaluated the 50+ events and decided that event 31 (NLH - 6 handed) was my best shot at earning my first bracelet. The field size the previous year was just over 800, significantly smaller than any of the $1500 buy-in events.

So I looked for plane tickets, arranged a place to stay for the week (Thanks Mr and Mrs S) and got my final table outfit ready. All the while I was studying Mike Caro's videos on poker tells and playing a couple of tourneys a day at local casinos to hone my reading abilities. Unfortunately I wasn't winning any of those local tourneys to bolster my bankroll or my confidence.

I arrived in Vegas on Friday the 13Th. What was I thinking? It was the only reasonably priced flight into Vegas because no one going to the land of luck wants to arrive on the unluckiest day of the year. I was hoping that my total disregard for the luck factor in poker would be welcomed by the poker gods and rewarded with lock hands galore. Boy am I dumb.

But I wasn't playing on the 13th so I should be safe...should being a relative term.

I decided that the best way to prepare for a WSOP event would be to play in some of the mid size tourneys that the other casinos are running. So I signed up for the Cesar's Mega Stack on June 14th at noon. The event gives participants a 10k starting stack with 50 minute blind levels for the $350 buy in. Sounds like a good deal. I am catching average hands for the first hour and manage to donk off about 1/4th of my stack chasing a straight draw. Then I pick up KK in the small blind after pretty much the entire table has limped in. The blinds are at 100/200 and I have approx. 6K in chips remaining. So of course I bump it up big time. I raise to 900, 4 callers, flop is 334, seems harmless enough. I don't think anyone called my monster preflop raise with baby cards so I continue bet my overpair, no subtlety here, 2500 is the bet. Two relatively quick calls with a weird glance from the tightest player at the table who is last to act.

Two callers? 2500 bet and I get two callers? Immediately the red phone starts ringing and we are moving to defcon 2. The turn pops the A of spades (ref. Motorhead - Lemme) and I know that I am done. If I wasn't beat already then I surely am now. I check and hang my head in defeat. Meathead Canadian guy bets out 3k, tightest player at the table calls, I dump KK into the muck. Action gets even crazier on the river. Turns out meathead had 44 in the hole, flopping the boat, and the super squeezer dude had 33, flopping quads. So the A on the turn didn't kill me, I was already pretty dead. The A may have actually saved me a bet or two.

An hour later I get TT and move it in first to act on a 9 high flop. The comedian at the other end of the table calls after a moment of deliberation and then flips AA which holds up to knock me out. Remember this hand for later. TT on a 9 high flop is not always as good as it seems. So I went to get a massage to relax and convince myself that I was getting all of the coolers and bad beats out of my system before my WSOP debut.

The lies that we tell ourselves are often the worst.

The steel mill: ultimate finale location or just overused?

I was watching one of my favorite films today and had a startling revelation. The film, Black Rain, stars Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, as NY cops tracking a crime boss back to Japan. Black Rain is a great film that manages to infuse the typically stale anti-hero cop drama with explorations of cultural identity and racism directed at gaijin or foreigners.

The revelation: the steel mill is the most overused location in action films.

There I was watching Black Rain, a movie I have seen at least 10 times. And just as the climactic third act is getting underway our hero finds himself tracking the bad guy to a steel mill. And that is when it struck me. I could immediately think of three or four action movies with a steel mill as a featured location. In fact a steel millwas the finale location in: Terminator 2, Star Wars Episode III, One of the Highlander movies and probably twenty more that I cant think of right now.

What drives our love of steel mills in movies? If you visit a real steel mill are there bad guys conducting clandestine deals or duking it out with their nemeses around every corner? I'm just wondering why the steel mill is the ultimate finale location in most action director's minds. Is it the machismo associated with the steel worker? Or just all those cool ligthing effects your get from the molten steel?

Florida Aquarium Part 2

Florida Aquarium - pt 1

Some short vids of the Florida Aquarium I took on a recent visit. The quality is not the greatest as I took them with my camera phone.

Connecting the Social Graph: Member Overlap at OpenSocial

Interesting article on the overlap of the user population of various social networking sites and how Google is trying to bridge the gaps with their Open Social project.

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