Buying Vowels

I've said it many times. In fact, there's a chance I heard it from Otis first. Regardless, when you've reached the stage in life I have, you tend to focus more of your mental energy on the happiness of others. For me, as long as my wife and kids are happy and healthy, I can handle anything. All I ask, however, is just one small favor.

Give me Something To Look Forward To(tm)

As such, the above saying has morphed into an acronym - STLFT. Being the wordsmith that he is, Otis coined the aforementioned grouping of letters "SteelFoot."



This weekend is a SteelFoot. G-Rob is calling it Mastodon weekend. Whatever it is, it could get messy.

Stuff that may happen, people who might be here:

- Charlotte gang is coming. Falstaff, Special-K, Brian the Red
- Columbia folk is coming. Big Pirate
- Seattle folk is coming. Dr. Chako
- Dwarves are coming. Iggy
- Drunktards are coming. TripJax ;)
- Poor Otis Substitutes are coming. Dr. Jeff
- Poker Book Authors are coming. Lee Jones
- Thursday night poker crew may show up. Rocket, Backmeister
- Insane Canadians are coming. BamBam, Pebbles
- Fine dining will occur.
- Poker will be played.
- Drinks will be drunk.

- Oh yeah. The reason this is happening. AlCantHang and BoyGenius will be in town.

Just to play it safe, I'm evacuating my house. I'm taking Friday off from work and will be sipping my first dirty martini at PFChang's at 2pm. Where things go from there is anyone's guess. But you guys are smart. You can make "educated" guesses.

Metal Monday Volume 3

Not much pokery stuff to write about, so I'll fall back on my other habit that will never die.

I have a couple of recommendations that may be relatively obscure to most mainstream metal listeners. Each of them are heavily influenced by other bands that are far more established.

First up is a band I like to call mini-Slayer. They've been dubbed heirs to the Thrash Throne by Slayer themselves, here's Demiricous with To Serve Is To Destroy (the intro riff is my default ring tone):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZdgtv7EAFQ

Then comes a Killswitch Engage-esque band out of Australia, produced by Killswitch's own Adam Dutkiewicz. You'll hear some familiarity in the guitar tone and there's a pretty decent killer riff mid-way through the song. Boneywards by Parkway Drive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJe5AB5N-LI

Finally, as many of you have pointed out, the music is OK, but you can't stand the vocals. I can understand that, it's an acquired taste. As such, here's an In Flames cover guitarist doing Pinball Map with electronic drums and bass. The video is great because he harmonizes with himself in minor-thirds in many spots. If you don't groove to this, you are probably busy with your acoustic. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eO8ybZuzb8

Rare Air

I used to play heavily in G-Vegas' underground scene. Based on the well-documented happenings of late 2007, my rate of live play is somewhat decreased.

But not this week.

Played Monday night at the Gooch's.
Playing tonight at my old Thursday night home game haunting grounds.
Playing Friday at my house
Playing Saturday night at Falstaff's.

At what cost? Oh. Only paying for the Mrs' 20th high school reunion trip later this year. I guess that's fair...

The Invisible Hand

We don’t live in an ideal world. In the world of physics, most concepts are taught from within the artificial confines of a frictionless environment. It’s a smart way to eliminate minor effects from the overall behavior of a system. Only when the time comes to model real-world events does friction enter the equation.

Poker is similar. Ideally, poker is a zero-sum game. I win a pot, you lose a pot. Your chips go from your stack to mine in an equal but opposite reaction. Well, almost. Poker has friction. The little bit of energy generated by the transaction. You know it as rake.

If the pot is big enough, you barely notice it. What’s a few dollars to the house when you double up through some moron? If the dealers are savvy enough, you barely notice them reach into the pot, remove part of it, and place it into the drop. Online poker does it too. It’s usually the last thing you’ll notice on a hand history.

The poker population is skewed. Several sources claim that the winners are outnumbered by the losers by a factor of 9 to 1. Part of that reason is the rake. Many break-even players and small losers would find themselves winners in an ideal, frictionless environment.

Here are some statistics just for a frame of reference.

I’ve been playing some PLO8 on FullTilt, small stakes, only a $25 buy-in game. In the last month or so, I’ve logged 13,099 hands.

Amount won: $293.40 for a 4.48 PTBB/100 win rate.
During that same time, thanks to having 27% rakeback, I’ve received $144.57 for my efforts. My winnings, which are modest, are only 2x the amount I received via rakeback. Now, in reality, my contribution to the rake is nearly 4x that amount (1/.27 = 3.7) If there were no rake, I’d be up a much larger amount. That’s a serious amount of friction for any player to overcome. Few people recognize it and few do anything about it.

Now, just to be clear, I understand rake has its place. It’s not easy to set up a poker game, online or live. I host enough home games to know that providing the environment for a fun, successful game is work. It’s a service, and people are willing to pay for it. But if you ever think seriously enough about the setting you’re playing in, you’ll realize that the invisible opponent at the table is perhaps the one most difficult to beat.

Pink Link

Greetings friends, readers and fellow bloggers. As many of you know, I am married. My wife, known here as Mrs_Blood, has undertaken a challenge of sorts. I promised her I'd put something on my blog for her. She knows I have one, but never reads it. I believe that's what they'd call "A Good Thing."

What she's doing is also "A Good Thing." She's a far better person than I.

So if you have a chance to visit the following link or click the pink new banner ad in the upper right, it would be most appreciated.

MrsBlood and Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

My Former Life

Most likely a bunch of you have heard about the plane crash in the Hudson river caused by the engines ingesting a bird and becoming disabled.

One of the things I used to work on back in my days in good ole' Massachusetts was aircraft engines. I primarily worked on military applications. I helped with exhaust design on the F404 - the engine used in the Stealth Fighter. I also covered engine tests on the F414 engine used in the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

Sometimes, the job was pretty cool.

Occasionally, the folks on our team got to witness "Bird Ingestion" testing. Just so you know, these types of events are accounted for in engine design. It's not like nobody ever thought that a bird would get sucked into the engine inlet. The intent is for the engine to avoid failure or fail in a non-catastrophic manner.

One of my co-workers covered a test where, let's just say, things did not go as planned.

During these tests, bird carcasses are fired from an air-cannon into a stationary rig where the engine is running. This is done to simulate an engine mounted in its airframe in flight. On this particular test, the first bird was fired into the engine inlet and it completely destroyed the engine. It was like a bomb hit it.

Military aircraft engines are quite expensive. LDO.

Apparently, the test operator forgot to thaw out the frozen bird carcass. Not good.

The Rock Says Know Your Role

My role in life is to host poker games for special out of town guests. I'm OK with that. I enjoy it. Hopefully those who come from such long distances enjoy themselves. Drizz, CK, F-Train, Heather, you name 'em.

This Friday we have another guest. You may know him as Absinthe. You may know him as Ryan from the Murderers Row game. Or you may know him as the man who busted Jesus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-roYhH0-2sk

We will have 9 players on Friday:

BadBlood
Otis
G-Rob
Absinthe
Falstaff
TheTyle (In yet another astounding spurt of creativity, I've given that nickname to someone whose last name is Tyler. Yo estoy EN FUEGO!)
Lee Jones
Frank the Tank
Brian the Red

By my decree, this shall heretofore be known as "something to look forward to."