Proposition Wager

If you've attended one of my home games, you are aware of one of its growing traditions: The Classic Rock Chanel Prop Bet

The rules are quite simple and the game is so unobtrusive that running this game during a poker night can only add to the fun.

In a nutshell, while we listen to the digital cable classic rock channel, each player that wants to play picks a classic rock song and artist. Whoever's artist plays first wins the prop bet from the other players. If you get the song correct too (a rarity, but it does happen), you get paid the bonus bet. In many cases, we'll either play $2/$5 or $1/$3 for the artist/song.

The rules also stipulate that you can only change your pick once someone wins. We generally keep a white board tally of people's choices. Last weekend in Asheville, at Lee Jones' homegame, I got crushed. I was playing my choices and as Otis' surrogate and neither of us hit all night. So for each prop bet, I was paying double. The only thing I managed to win was a side bet with Lee that either The James Gang or Joe Walsh would play before The Eagles. I should've got some odds, but I was so confident I'd win, I took a 1:1 payoff.

Last night, nearing the end of a Gucci Rick homegame, Otis opened the door for some prop betting, something we don't normally do there. Pretty much the same game, but instead of an artist/song structure, it was artist only. But the stakes were $20. Otis, Broc, and TheMark each opted in with Meatloaf, Credence, and Led Zeppelin respectively. At nearly the last minute, I picked Steve Miller Band since that's almost a gimme.

Very next song: The Joker. Ship it. $60 win.

TheMark, disillusioned with the game, opted to discontinue playing. I told him that he should take a risk and pick Edgar Winter. Next song, Free Ride. TheMark just hung his head and played with his iPhone. Well, the obvious choice for me there, after Broc and Otis held strong with their original picks, was to leverage the Led Zeppelin pick from TheMark.

A few songs later - Dazed and Confused. Ship it. $40 more.

Broc then bailed and now it was only me and Otis. Well, you know what happened. Otis switched to Boston, and that opened the door for me to make the tilt pick of Meatloaf myself.

Unfortunately, the game broke at about 2:15 and we went home. I left before Otis, but apparently not before Meatloaf hit the TV. A few more hands and I'd have pulled off the trifecta.

Word on the street is that Falstaff is running hot at this game too. There's a showdown coming, I can feel it.

Hello, It's Me

Well then.

I've not posted in quite some time. Being too lazy to look at my archives, this may be the longest post drought of my blogging "career." Things have changed for me in the past few weeks. We'll get into that in a moment.

First off, Mastadon weekend was everything it should have been. You may have seen me parading around in videos or pics; it was obvious I had a good time. To everyone that managed to be a part of it, no matter how small, thanks for making it as fun as it was. I'd do it again in a split second.

Not soon after that weekend, in fact the very next week, I received some less than flattering feedback concerning my performance at my job. It was rather harsh. The worst in about 15 years since I was but a young buck out of school. Was it fair? Well, that's not for me to say. Other co-workers who know the reality of it say it wasn't, but that is immaterial after the fact. Life isn't fair, I think we all know that.

If anything good was going to come of it, then it would have to be me to make it that way. I really took an honest look at myself and realized a very important fact about myself. I get frustrated at the drop of a hat and wear my frustration on my sleeve. It's as if I expect those around me to register my frustration and change their ways. That's downright stupid. In fact, it's a bit arrogant. And that's not the adjective I want associated with me, for when I see it in others, it's disgraceful.

There's no doubt I was frustrated at work. Several decisions made by others around me seemed obviously incorrect to me and my reaction was far from ideal. It's just not a good idea to show your "support" by reacting in a negative way. All that was brought home to me during my review, the severity of which really took me by surprise. It made me think real hard about myself and I came to a few conclusions that even have effected my home life.

Let me give you a little example.

MrsBlood and I were leaving for my son's gymnastics meet, an overnight stay down in Columbia. As it so happens quite frequently, just as we're pulling out of the driveway, MrsBlood asks me to stop the car because she's forgotten the directions. I obliged and she quickly returned to the car, saying "Thanks for not getting mad at me." I told her that my getting mad at her the previous ten times didn't prevent her from forgetting this time.

And that's really what it comes down to. Getting mad, getting frustrated - it doesn't help matters at all. It's counterproductive. But unfortunately for me, it's been my gut, initial reaction to so many things at work and at home that it's made me a worse person.

So for the past three weeks, I've tried to improve. It's amazing how many times per day I catch myself about to think or say something negative about something. I have no reason on this Earth to be negative. None whatsoever. Otis blogs about being a lucky guy to have the life he has and it's the same way for me. I love my wife (and she's getting hotter by the day), I love my kids (they're perfect to me), but it's been apparent that for a while I didn't feel the same about myself.

I can tie all this into poker somehow, because the above was basically a long description of me being on an ever-increasing amount of life-tilt for no real reason. It's taking effort to look at things constructively rather than destructively, but I believe I'm getting better at it. There's no doubt my poker results are correlating well with the change I've made. My only hopes is that I can continue to improve and make it a more permanent part of my behavior.

I may be beating myself up over something small and insignificant, but I really don't think I have anything to lose by trying to be a better person as a result, even if the impetus was unjust.

And with that, I'll be back to blogging.

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