The Irish Thug

I finally freed up a little cash off of the other sites I play to give WPEX a shot.

The Facts:
Still a baby, but growing. In the last thirty days, the count on cash players has increased by 25%. (Source: Poker Site Scout, additional info on Source to follow.)
Tonight at 9(EST) there where 2 full 100NL and 3 full 50NL tables and then one of each playing short handed. 1/2 and 2/4 both had 5 full tables.

The Look:
Setup is slightly different than the standard. Your cards are shown next to your action buttons (tiny versions also appear on the table). When you fold you cards are shadowed, but still visible for the entire hand. Now you have to notice you would have caught that straight. I altered the table graphics right away. I copied the “Waffle Cards” (here) that I use on Party and Stars. Everything else I have can be found here. The everything else page does a lot of good things. Your stack get a different graphic than the rest of the table and the active player is highlighted.

The Software:
This is where they still have a few issues to work out. I have read they are taking steps in the right direction.

• Table Response is a little slow. A tick or two will drop of the clock between your click and the action.
• Tables steal focus even if you have to act at another table.
• The slider is as unreliable as Party, so entering bets are tricky. I think I could be able to pull of an AutoHotKey script for the betting, no grantees now.
• No short handed tables for NL yet. I have been told they are on the way. At present, short handed is 5 players. 6 is kind of the standard, but WPEX is not the only site to run 5 handed tables.
• Password restrictions force you to use only letters and digits and only 8 characters (pretty weak considering certain places force you to do longer elaborate passwords.
• The biggest issue is that hand histories are not saved to the hard drive. You have to request they get sent to you. Puts a good delay on getting stats.

The Stats:
High Stakes Poker was on tonight, so I only played 200 hands. On the first night I won a little. (Rigged?) Over this tiny bit of data, I have payed (and will receive back) $3.86 per hundred hands playing 50NL. If I played only on WPEX for thirty days that would be over $200 that I get returned. And that is if I don’t go back to 100NL (which hopefully I do soon).

Overall:
A decent list of things that need to happen before WPEX can be the real deal and gain popularity. Rafe free is a great selling point and I think that it will do good things for online poker when people start to look at it. The site still needs new players and we’ll have to wait and see if only veterans stay at a rake free site or will novices show up and stay. I give WPEX a C+ based on the action so far and have listed a few things that would bring it up to a solid B or higher.

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Poker Site Scout
A nice little site that is very useful. On the outside, it appears to just be a ranking of poker sites, but it does deeper. These figures are just cash players. Party and Stars are still 1 and 2, but for those that only play cash, this is what you want to see. Active players and Active tables. Sites are ranked by a 24 hour high-water-point on active players.

As you look deeper you find that each site has it’s own page with a in depth breakdown by level and type of table. There is a search feature that will bring up all the totals for different site based on your selected level or table type. Also, hidden back in the far corner, is a Pro-Finder. A list of Pro’s, their Aliases, where they play and if they are playing now.

Was gonna make this when the story broke to the news, but Hawking has a K in it and I wasn’t going to try and work around that.

Ok, Stephen Hawking thinks we need to start thinking about making space communities. He’s right in the fact that Earth is getting more and more screwed. (I can’t go into more about that without being a hippie, so I push forward.)

Yes his IQ quite big, but has he watched any Sci-Fi movies. At minimum, 50% of them are about one race of space creatures who over used their planet and then needed to go somewhere new. It never works out. If we do this, the armed forces need to have nothing to do with it. We are going to run into another creature that is as smart as some creatures that reside on Earth and they are not going to be happy when we start moving in.

I present to you the next big thing in the area of competition. LiveCoda is a real time programing competition. Programmers were given 10 minutes to produce code that would correct errors in a sample image. They were allowed to use the language of their choosing and whatever methods they wanted. The 2006 winners, who have a name I can’t say, produced the functional code in 5 minutes and 40 seconds.

I’ve been reading Harrington on Hold’em Vol 2. I really like it, even though it’s tournament strategy. I think what sets HoH apart is the examples. Theory of Poker has an insane amount of content, but is a tough read. My theory is that the example hands in HoH are what make it easier to read. For those that haven’t read either volume, there are a lot of problems used as examples. If you haven’t read the books, think of a number of how many example hands there are in a chapter.
That number is not big enough. The first chapter in Vol 2 is Making Moves. It is about 110 pages. Half of that is the “Problems” section where Harrington goes through example hands. There is also a hand or two within the main text of the chapter.

Now on to the title of this entry. In these examples, Dan gives the results of the hand after he explains what move you should make. (The player doesn’t always follow Harrington’s advice, which he uses to prove points.) The thing with showing the results is that they usually look like this:
Your Hand: Ts3c
Action to you: You are the SB. Players A through E fold. The pot is $240 (BB is all-in).
Action: You call, the BB shows 7d6s. The board comes KcQdTdTh6h.
Now you didn’t need to improve, but yet you end up with trips and completely dominate the BB who happens to pair his bottom card after he was already drawing dead. There are hands where it works out so Harrington can say, “Well, it doesn’t always work out, but you know you made the right play.” But that’s like 1 out of every 10 hands.

Another one of my favorite things is when he does this:
Situation: Towards the end of a one-table satellite. Players B and E are aggressive. Player C is supper-aggressive.
Your hand: AhTd
Action to you: Player A folds. Player B raises to $120. Players C,D and E all fold. The pot is now $210.
Thanks Dan, for the great reads on players C and E, cause they have so much effect on what I do in this hand.

In closing, very good book. I need to re-read some sections.

We were on our way to Max’s when we passed the new dorm development. Then we saw part of a metal object that seemed out of place. As we got closer we understood what was out of place. The metal belonged to an excavator. This excavator happened to be located where 3-story structure had stood the last time we had passed by. You don’t understand how dumbfounded one can become when a large object does not appear where one expects the object to be.

So by some means, my college email got put on a spam list. As of now it’s just stock quotes. I tried replying to a couple saying to remove my name, all came back undeliverable. I almost never use my college email beyond college and my COOP. Likely suspects are CampusFood.com or SallieMae.com
A bad email setup makes it more annoying. If an email comes featuring a name in addition to an email address, it appears “NAME” . A columns size can not be enlarged, so only a name will appear if email and name are present. If I’m expecting random emails from a COOP company, do i just open an email and pray it doesn’t contain a virus. Even medium sized subject lines also get cutoff. And I’m stuck using it email for at minimum between two and four more years.

Do I complain a lot on my blog? I feel I do, I need to not do it as often.

Gary Coleman says “Sup?”

What’s the best way to settle a dispute when no one will play ball. Rock, Paper, Scissors. Mr. Presnell knows what I mean. That’s why he ordered to attorneys to play one round. The issue at hand is where to hold the court deposition. The Court Order did not state a plan for if there was a tie.

At first I would have ordered a coin be flipped, but then there would be the matter of who flipped and who called. Odds-Evens also would not work because of the issue of the call. So he probably should have went with best two out of three instead of one round.

It’s been raining in Boston a lot recently. This was the case last night and the one previous to that. That being said, can some one explain why my school was still watering the lawns during said rain?

When the table pops up and its my big blind and I check, why don’t I say “Hey, I’m gonna act again real soon. Maybe I shouldn’t go and start looking at some webpage.”

Evan and I made a bet on the present WPT event. They are in the order they were picked (I went not second). Just remember to cheer against the people on the right.

Updated:11pm EST

Liam was sitting down in his chair to wait for an upcoming radio program. This famous show was known only as Q. Q was a light in a dull void that Liam was living. As day was turning to night, Liam would grow with an aura that could chill any arousal of animosity or loathing his day could bring forth.
Only half an hour ’til six, it would start soon, Liam thought. Would tonight consist of a story by Lisa, an anthropologist who was just now coming back from South Africa, or Rollin, a past cohort of Alvin Karpis. Q was always highly alluring for Liam with an original story day in day out.
Adjusting his position slightly in his chair, Liam found a cozy spot. Six Fourty, it would start soon. Today was rough, his family had cast him off for his lowly affairs. In truth, his family didn’t know about most of his affair. His landlord, his boss, his bank didn’t know about most of his affair. For this was how Liam was opting to go on. Most did not mind, but this was not fitting for his family.
Six Fifty, it would start soon. But Q was always supporting him. With Q on, Liam would slip away from what was causing him anguish or pain. Column discussing Q would continually show disgust with it’s programing. Liam could not fathom why this was so. Q would work up such a paramount absolution in him, but not for critics.
Six, it was starting. Liam was snoring, lying back in his chair.

So I’m walking on Mass Ave. on my way back to work after lunch. I’m about to get to the extent if this block when this guy turns the corner very fast, rushing past me.
The thing is that he wasn’t running. This guy was on an apparatus with wheels. But there were not two wheels. No there were not three or four. There was one wheel. WHO USES A UNICYCLE AS A MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION?

Now wait, it gets better. Let’s assume the normal unicycle has a wheel that is 2 feet across the whole wheel with a seat at about 3.5 feet. This unicycle was not a normal unicycle. The wheel was at least 4 feet across. This man was barreling through pathway 6 feet off the pavement.

He was wearing his helmet.