Digital Thinkbox

OK so its been 51 games since my coaching began about 2 weeks ago. Not a huge sample size I realize, so I won’t spew numbers since they will not have any meaning. I can say, with a reasonable degree of confidence, that my over all play has improved dramatically. For example:

1. Min-betting and min-raising – Gone
2. Tighter early play – Check
3. Paying more attention to push opportunities – Good
4. Being mindful of relative stack sizes – Getting better
5. Paying attention to other players and putting them on ranges – Improving
6. Stop overplaying huge hands (AA, KK) – Check

These are all examples of concepts and plays that I wasn’t even aware of pre-coaching. I was a min-betting fiend, hey its just a push of the button right? Just stopping that and using a large “standard” raise (3x BB give or take) has really helped. People either fold, or feed me chips. There is nothing better than this hand:

I’m not really certain what this guy was doing, but GIMME ALL YOUR CHIPS!

However, I’m still not rolling in the $$$. Clearly these players aren’t respecting my l33t p0k3r skilz. More likely, I’m missing +EV situations, although I’m getting much better at pushing in these +EV situations to grab the blinds. Blind stealing is the life blood of any tournament player, especially SnGs.

The other aspect of my play that I must work on is putting other players on ranges. This can be difficult at this level since these people can, and do, play everything. Of course that is a read in itself. Knowing a player is really loose give you an idea of what they are willing to call all-ins with, and really, the looser the better in some cases. Against strong hands, I WANT a loose player to call me. Sure they will occasionally suck out and get all my chips (Occasionally HAH! Like EVERY FRIKING TIME!), but the times they don’t I will have revitalized my stack.

Finally, there is the mind game. This is probably the hardest of all to address. Indeed, my biggest enemy at the table is Me. Getting bored, pissed, distracted, etc will damage my game more than folding a hand. This is especially true when I’ve played well, but still lost. I HATE that. Nothing makes Jack more cranky than playing a good game, and getting busted in 4th place.

OK so I was going to put a pic of a crying baby, but a panda is sooo much cooler.

I figure after the one hundredth time this happens I’ll be able to laugh it off, rather than screaming in rage at the poker gods.

I’m updating Wordpress to the new version and installing a new theme so expect general weirdness over the next few days.

Update 8/24/2006
Upgrade is complete. I’ve upgrade to the latest Wordpress and installed a new theme. The theme still needs some customization since it is stock, but hopefully I’ll get around to that soon.

New stuff included in this upgrade:

• AJAX support in some place.
• Little archive navigation tool just below the header.
• “Live search”. Type a search in the search box and it should update the page automatically without clicking
• Widgets/Modules – Little widgets and modules seen mostly on the side bar. Reorganizing the sidebar is a matter of dragging modules arounds. No more editing the template code.

A group of friends, I included, are taking a trip to Las Vegas this summer. For my Vegas trip I figured I’d better brush up on my gambling skills, of which I have few. I’m not a gambler usually, in fact until recent I haven’t even purchased a lottery ticket. The only “real” gambling I’ve ever done was penny poker when I was in High School.

Since I’ve always been a fan of Blackjack I decided to dive in and really learn the game and how it worked. A quick bit of Googling turned up the Wizard of Odds. An excellent site dedicated to gambling and various games of skill/chance. After reading up on Blackjack and learning the basic strategy I headed off to an online casino to practice; Bodog in this instance. They had a nice FLASH blackjack game that I could play with phoney money.

After several days of practice I had the basic strategy down pretty well I was ready to stake real money, and here my problems started. Let me tell you, it is no picnic to get YOUR money and get it where you want. Credit card companies refuse to fund Internet casinos, not that I blame them there are a lot of shady operations and you have to pick carefully. None the less I persevered, because when I’ve decided to be compulsive about something, nothing can stop me.

I narrowed down my choice of casino after extensive research to just four. After several weeks of messing around I was finally able to send a small about of cash to gamble with. Woot! I’m a high roller now!

Well, long story short, I burned through my stake. I actually didn’t do badly initially, but gambling is risky, and I was foolish at the wrong times. Make no mistake, to be successful at gambling you must be calm, disciplined, and organized. I was all of these things, except when it counted a few times. But, heck I had fun, and that’s what counts right? That’s what I keep telling myself anyhow.

Gambling is fun, and blackjack is an excellent choice since it is largely skill, and if you are good you can profit, maybe, if you are lucky. In fact gambling is more than just fun, it is euphoric. Which is dangerous if you aren’t able to control yourself. Indeed, I was unprepared for the rush I was feeling even when losing.
The problem with online blackjack is that some of that edge is taken away from you. You lose the ability to count cards, and you lose the ability to read a dealer for tells. However, you gain the ability to sit on your ass in your chair and watch your bank balance dwindle. Fun eh?

I learned something else valuable about online gambling, and gambling in general. You need a good sized stake if you want to be successful. Having a measly $250-$500 is only good if you want to make lunch money. Of course, if that is all you want you might as well just mug old ladies for their social security checks. Not that I’m advocating you take up a life of crime to fund your epicurean desires mind you.

You quickly find that betting a reasonable flat bet means betting the table minimum, as well as not having enough money to absorb losses if you decide to bet higher. Betting $1 per hand won’t make you a millionaire, or even buy you dinner.

After four days and a numb mouse button finger from all the clicking I think I’ve gotten internet gambling out of my system. Which is a good thing, because it is insidious? It’s far to easy to gamble online. You don’t have to get up and go to a casino, you just fire up the software and click your savings away.
So here I am poorer, but wiser. Not to mention I play a much better game of blackjack. Next stop…Vegas! Stay tuned for “Jack Gone Wild Part II – Sin City”.
Links to blackjack and gambling related sites:

Wizard of Odds – Great site. Go here to learn about the various games and the odds behind them.
Casinomeister – Excellent Internet casino review site with great forums.
Arnold Snyder’s Blackjack Forum – Forums, articles, excellent site by a Blackjack “Grognard”.

I just recently purchased a Maxtor OneTouch II Firewire 800 drive to use for portable storage and backups of my various computers. Since I have a PowerBook with a FireWire 800 interface, I figured I’d take advantage of that and grab a FW800 drive. Fortunately for the rest of my machines this unit also includes a FireWire 400 port, and one USB 2.0 port. The theory was I would be able to use this drive across one Macintosh, two Windows, and one Linux machine. Great idea in theory, reality was somewhat more complicated.

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed it, Apple Computer has announced the new Intel based Macintosh computers. Their new offerings are composed of the MacBook Pro, a “replacement” for the PowerBook, and a new iMac. It’s been known for some time that Apple has been transitioning to Intel CPU products, but this is the first glimpse at the new architecture.

I think the transition to Intel based CPU’s will be a positive one for Apple, especially in light of the inability of IBM to produce a G5 chip that Apple could use in a laptop. Or more correctly the inability of IBM to product a chip at the price point Apple was willing to pay. This new architecture gives Macintosh computer some legs to run on, especially in the laptop and small form factor space.

So after a week to let things settle a bit I figured I’d comment on what I think about the two new units. Keep in mind that I don’t actually have one of these units, but am considering upgrading my 17″ PowerBook at some point in the near future. It was a Revision A unit that I’ve had for almost three years, and was my first Macintosh. It’s been a trooper and become my primary machine for most tasks. Sadly it’s become a little long in tooth and an upgrade to a newer, shiner unit is inevitable.I’m primarly interested in the laptop line, and not so much in the desktop iMac line. Here are the specifications of the new MacBook Pro. In summary:

• Intel Core Duo (Dual Core CPU) at 1.67Gghz or 1.83Ghz
• 667MHz frontside bus.
• 2 DDR2 DIMM sockets for a max of 2GB of PC2-5300 RAM.
• DVI output
• Built-in 802.11g AirPort Extreme.
• Built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.
• Built-in Gigabit (10/100/1000BT) Ethernet.
• One Firewire 400
• Two USB 2.0 Ports
• Express Card/34
• 80GB,100GB, or 120GB 5400RPM Serial ATA drive.
• 8x Read, 4x Write SuperDrive
• Built in iSight camera
• MagSafe power connector.

That’s the basics, and for the most part it is good. The Intel Core Duo CPU will be a large upgrade over the G4 in previous PowerBooks. Additionally, the increase bus speed and faster RAM will give the laptop a little extra kick.

Networking seems to be pretty standard and the only change is the lack of a built-in modem. Apple now sells a USB modem as an external accessory. I find this to be a small problem for something like a laptop. The whole purpose is to be mobile, and not having a modem reduces your connectivity options, or forces you to carry another piece of gear around. I don’t personally use the modem that often, maybe once a year, but when I need it, I need it.

Only one Firewire 400 port. This is actually quite a downgrade from the previous PowerBooks. Previously, models contained one Firewire 400 and one Firewire 800 port. Is Apple abandoning Firewire 800 just as it has started to take off? I sure hope not. FW800 is an excellent interface, and is especially useful for video professionals due to its increased bandwidth. I myself have a nice external FW800/400 hard drive that I use for back-ups and storage. Not having a FW800 port means the money I invested in this drive is wasted, at least if I were to purchase the current MacBook Pro.

ExpressCard/34 seems a worth addition, although keep in mind you are loosing a PCMCIA card slot. The ExpressCard slot has some rather nice features and hopefully will be the future of notebook external device interfaces. Oddly Apple chose the 34pin slot over the 54 (called ExpressCard/54). Were they really that constrained for space they couldn’t put the larger interface in there? Note: There are Firewire 800 cards for ExpressCard however, they appear to be ExpressCard/54, woops.

The SuperDrive was kind of a shock. It’s slower that its predecessor, the 8x SuperDrive that is present in all newer G4 based PowerBooks. Additionally, this model drops dual layer DVD writing support in addition to its slower speed. Some preliminary research seems to indicate that this model may be thinner that the previous SuperDrive which may account for its reduced feature set. Still somewhat of a disappointment.

Finally, we come to the build-in iSight camera. Normally, I wouldn’t mention this feature, but the little camera built into the top of the top of the MacBook’s screen comes at the cost of 60 lines pixels. Instead of 1440×960 of previous 15″ PowerBooks, we get 1440×900. Personally if I’d wanted an iSight I’d go buy the external one. It’s not such a critical feature that it needs to be integrated into a “Pro” notebook, not at the sacrifice of other functionality.

Apple has actually done some pretty nice thing with the new Intel based machines, especially the iMac. However, I think the MacBook Pro sufferers from a couple of things that prevent me from whipping out my credit card and pulling the trigger. It appears that this MacBook Pro is more of a “iBook Xtreame,” it doesn’t appear targeted at the professional market, and certainly not at the professional video market. The omission of the FW800 port tells us that.

I think this first revision of the MacBook was more for the marketing effect that anything else. It was Apple’s way of announcing their new Intel based machines in a big way with one of their top end classes of machines. I’m quite certain the announcement wouldn’t have had the same impact if they had announced a new Mac Mini instead of a new high-end laptop.

In short: The MacBook Pro suffers from Revision A syndrome, something I’m all to familiar with as I purchased a Rev. A PowerBook 17″ when they were just announced. So lesson learned, I’ll wait for the next revision of the MacBook and see what Apple does in the intervening months to improve the line.