Couple
Taken from an upper deck on the cruise ship we were on.
Meerkat
At the San Diego Zoo. I took like 30 photos of these guys, and almost all of them turned out pretty well!
Meerkats have some significance to the poker group since that's what the poker-academy API is called.
Kitchen Games Poker
Two nights ago, I got a chance to go to a kitchen game poker night that a coworker was putting on. The whole idea for the night was to play dealer's choice poker from the set of crazy games that people have come up with over the years. We weren't allowed to choose the casino standbys of hold'em, omaha, or 7 card stud. Instead, we played a series of games like Chicago, 727, Midnight Baseball, Mexican Sweat, etc. It's been a long time since I've played games like this. I've been playing Texas Hold'em pretty seriously for a couple of years, so it's kind of interesting to revisit some of these silly games to see if there is anything of interest. We played quite a few games, actually, that I'd like to note down for future reference because they were all quite fun. So here's the rules for some fun kitchen games that have a little depth to them.
- 727: Players get two cards down, and one up. The aim of the game is to be the closest to the total of 7 or 27. Face cards count either ten points or half a point. An ace counts either 1 point or eleven. On each round, players are asked one at a time if they want one more card added face up to their hand, followed by a round of betting. If all players pass on a card, then the game is over, but otherwise another round is dealt. The game can last quite a few rounds! After the last round, players then simultaneously indicate whether they are attempting to win by being closest to 7, by being closest to 27, or to both. Half the pot is awarded to the closest to 7 (who indicated they were trying to win that side), and half is awarded to the the closest to 27 (who indicated they were trying to win that side). To win both, the players who indicated so have to be closest on both sides.
- Auction: Each player is dealt two down cards. Then a card is turned up in the middle of the table for each player in the hand. Players then make a blind bid. The person who bids the most chooses the card they want. The next highest bid chooses the next card and so on. When all the cards are gone, another set of cards is dealt in the middle. This is repeated until all the players have 7 cards each. A round of betting happens after that. The person with the best high hand takes half the pot and the person with the best low hand takes the other half.
- Ten Card Regrets: There are 5 rounds to this game. The object of the game is to partition 10 cards into two 5 card poker hands: one that is a low hand and one that is a high hand. On each round, players get two cards and must decide whether to put them on the left side to be part of the low hand, or on the right side to be part of the high hand. At the end, the person with the best high hand takes half the pot and the person with the best low hand takes half the pot.
- Tic-Tac-Toe Hold'em/Omaha: Players are dealt two or four cards depending if they are playing the hold'em or omaha variant of the game. The key difference is the community cards are dealt in a 3x3 grid of cards. First, the flop is the four cards that form the sides of the grid. The turn is the four corner cards, and the river is the middle card of the grid. Players then make the best poker hand they can from the cards in their hand and any of 8 sets of three cards from the board. These sets are the three horizontal lines, three vertical lines, and the two diagonals. You can play Hold'em, Omaha High, or Omaha High Low.
These were my favourites from the night. Do you have any fun kitchen games I can deal next time?
Heraldk
Water
It's been a long time since I posted here. Due to my recent move to Ireland and the combination of Diane and my adventures mostly happening together, blog updates are happening with much more frequency over at Minor Agenda. This blog will mostly become a flickr blog with some poker/tech talk every once in awhile when I have something to talk about!
This photo was shot at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin -- it's an exhibit about Water which is one of the four key ingredients in Guinness. The others being barley, hops, and yeast.
Updates from Vegas
Polaris Wins! Our computer poker program took on some of the best poker pros and came out on top!
Sorry for the lack of updates here. If you haven't figured out, my travel blog has moved over to minoragenda, so if you want to read about our adventures in detail, please head on over there. I forgot to post a message like this earlier, so sorry about not letting you know.
I have a big todo list of stuff and not much time to do it. I want to get around to posting photos and post poker reports for the couple of live sessions I've managed to squeeze in. But that will have to wait for a little while.
Hope all is well with you!
Heraldk
On Variance
Something every poker player has to learn is to cope with variance. At times, variance can be your best friend, but at other times it can be your villain that not only kicks you in the crotch, but then slams you with a baseball bat to the head while you're down.
Case in point, my latest downswing. I had thought I had made a successful leap to $200nl. After all, I was up a couple grand and was feeling pretty good about how I was doing. Some of that was undoubtedly positive variance, but I figured I could sustain some bad luck.
Little did I know that the fates had it in for me and my bankroll plummetted over the course of just a few days. That's what provoked my previous post about taking an extended break.
I played a short session at 100nl today. I had some free time and thought I'd take a shot and see how I did. This session went a whole lot better, and despite running QQ into KK preflop for a stack, I won two stacks (the small blip at the right edge of the graph above). I don't know how much time I'll have to play over the next two weeks what with the wedding and all, but I'm gonna take it pretty easy still. There's lots of other things to do. Still, it's good to be able to get a nice winning session in after getting my ass handed to me the last time I played.
Heraldk
Pine Cones
Taken on our river valley hike.
Playoff Predictor, Stanley Cup Finals, 2008
Well my predictor is sure doing better than I did in my playoff pools. Going into the conference finals, it was 11 for 12 for predictions, and it got both of the conference finals right as well!
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.579 0.204 Philadelphia_Flyers 0.421 0.119 Detroit_Red_Wings 0.681 0.498 Dallas_Stars 0.319 0.178
So what's left? The Stanley cup finals start tomorrow night and it should be a great series. So I gave my predictor one final spin to see what it says. It should come as no surprise that Detroit is heavily favoured by the program:
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.295 Detroit_Red_Wings 0.705
While I'd be happy to say my program went 14/15, I'm still kinda rooting for the penguins. They are an exciting team to watch with a hell of a lot of talent at a very young age. Whoever wins though, the series should be one for the ages.
Heraldk
Pipe
David makes a really cool looking silhouette with his hat. Taken on a recent river valley hike on the May long weekend.
Nightwish Edmonton Show Review
Wow this took awhile to get around to doing. This past weekend I had the chance to check off the third of my five favourite european metal bands off my "I must see these bands" list. I was truly surprised to find out that Nightwish was coming to Edmonton to play a sold out show at the Starlite room. I was surprised that they were coming, and I was also surprised that they sold out faster than the other two bands I saw: Sonata Arctica and Stratovarius. Maybe it's the female singer that makes them more attractive to more people. Not sure. Anyways, Diane and I arrived a bit late to the Starlite room, and already an impressive looking line had formed all the way down the block. So there was nothing for us to do except go to the back of the line and wait for about 35-40 minutes to get in. Such is the state of going to the Starlite, since that has been the way of things in the past. On the plus side, the weather was beautiful so waiting in line wasn't a big deal.
While in line the opening band started up. It didn't really look like we were missing anything, and I didn't even bother to find out who was playing. Then again, it's really hard to tell since the volume was turned up so loud. *sigh*. The problem with live concerts.
So Diane and I found our spot on the right side of the venue on the stairs descending to the floor. It was packed in there though, so it took awhile to squirm into a good spot. It took a long time, as usual, for the main band to have all their gear setup and sound tested, but after the long wait Nightwish finally came on stage.
Nightwish has undergone a bit of turmoil in the recent months. They fired their distinctive lead singer after the band decided that they were not on the same page concerning the direction of the band (or something, I'm not really familiar with the situation). This made for some troubling times as the band tried to find someone to replace her. I'm not sure they ever would've found someone with quite as deep and powerful a voice as Tarja, but they did find someone who does a pretty darn good job. The new vocalist didn't sing too many classic Nightwish songs, but the ones that she did do she did pretty well I'd have to say.
Here's the setlist for the night:
Intro + Bye Bye Beautiful
Dark Chest of Wonders
Who ever brings the night
The Siren
Amaranth
Islander
The Poet and the Pendulum
Come Cover Me
While Your Lips are Still Red
Sahara
Nemo
7 days
Dead to the World
Wish I had an Angel
All in all the show was amazing. The various members of the band are quite good at their respective intruments. The keyboardist isn't as flashy as the one in Stratovarius or Sonata Arctica, but that's okay. One of the guitarist's sported a rather epic beard/hair combination.
It's been a few days since the event, so I don't remember too many details. Also I wanted to get this post up before I forgot about it entirely. I took some video that I'd like to share, but I need to post process it so I can upload it somewhere useful (I was thinking flickr). That might take a little while.
Anyways, it was a pretty good show, and I was quite happy that I got the chance to go!
Heraldk
Edmonton Downtown Buildings Wide-angle
Taken after a flickr meet.
Downswing
Well it's been awhile, but I haven't played through a big downswing in a little while. That all changed over the last couple days. I had been running super hot playing 200NL for a couple of weeks. That seems like the past now that I dropped 7 stacks at 200nl last night, and another 6 stacks at 100nl tonight. Ouch.
I think it's time for an extended break. I should probably concentrate on other tasks anyways. Going through a downswing puts me in a foul mood. Which is why I don't think I could ever play pro. I don't mind losing a stack now or again, but extended and brutal beatings are a little hard to get used to.
Heraldk
Big Slippers, B&W
The Granddaughter of one of Diane's coworkers.
Dinner and Edmonton Tweetup
Last night after I finally had to give up on the UPS guy coming with the RAM for my Mac Pro, I went to go pick up Diane on our way to her coworker An's place for dinner. An had spent the entire day cooking up a storm. When we got there, her entire kitchen was filled with lots of food! We started our dinner off with salad rolls -- they're kind of like not deep fried spring rolls. Next were some freshly deep fried spring rolls, and then a bowl of wonton soup. After that the other two guests arrived and we continued to eat. There was grilled pork ribs, shrimp and chicken skewers, shrimp and squid stirfry (I've never had squid so tender and non-rubbery before!), and a bunch of other great foods as well. I ate so much that I didn't eat anything all day until dinner. Today was the Edmonton Tweetup. A while ago, I joined twitter and blogged a bit about the experience. To put it quickly - I was a bit bummed out that I was the first of my group of friends to join the twitter experience. Well that's changed a bit, thanks to @mastermaq who found me using twitter local. After just a couple of weeks, I had several twitter friends and the service became useful for me. Not long after that, Mack started organizing a twitter meet, which apparently is affectionately called a tweetup. The planning and organizing ended up with today being the day for the tweetup.
I showed up with Diane and we had a great turnout. We had at least 14 or 15 people there, and it was great to meet everyone. There was quite a large range of people who showed up -- young people, older people, and a fair range of fields (although most were tech related in some way). It was quite a fun time actually. I spent a lot of time chatting with @bruceclark since we shared an interest in photography, but I also chatted with quite a few other people. It was a most enjoyable afternoon.
After the party seemed to have waned a little, I returned home for a short time before heading out to the airport to pick up my parents who were in Europe on holidays for a month. I took them out for supper as a mother's day thing since the actual Mother's day involved driving my sister to a couple of gigs. I got to hear a little about their trip, and it was good to have them back in town :)
This evening I played a bit of poker, having my first real downswing at 200NL since an early downswing when I first moved up. Downswining 7 buyins is not my idea of a fun time. All sorts of crap happened to me that I had somehow avoided for the most part over the last little while of playing. Oh well, it can't all go my way. I'm still up playing those limits, it's just unfortunate that I couldn't continue the trend that's been lasting for the past little while. I guess it brings my winrate down to a much more sustainable level. It just sucks for it to happen all at once like this.
So I'm off to bed. I'm taking Megan to her first of two gigs tomorrow at the Radisson Hotel (formerly the Coast Terrace Inn) tomorrow morning. If you're in the mood for some fancy brunch with some harp music for entertainment, feel free to stop in between 10:15 and 2:15.
Heraldk
Mac Pro
My brand new Mac Pro gets unwrapped.
Crazy
I'm starting to go a tad crazy I think. This week has been insanely busy. It seems like I keep getting things piled on me. Work has been exceptionally busy as we madly prepare for the upcoming man-machine poker match. I've had a pile of fairly little tasks to do along with a couple of larger tasks. There's a huge list of directions we want to go before the competition happens, and we're going to be madly trying many of them right up until the competitions. This week my Mac Pro arrived, so I've been pretty distracted by setting it up. It's taking me a surprisingly long time to set it up. There's a lot of things that go into my computer environment that I need to get just so. That, and copying large numbers of files to and from my drobo takes a little longer than I'd like it to.
The wedding planning continues at a relatively slow pace. We've got a lot of the things that we need checked off the list, but there's still lots of things to do. It's hard to believe that it's only (less than) a month away!
Last night I finally caught up uploading photos to Flickr. That took entirely too long, but now I've got over a thousand photos up on my flirckr account. Pretty sweet to break that milestone.
Today I stayed home working and waiting for a package that contains some additional RAM sticks to put in my Mac Pro. Unfortunately, they haven't yet arrived and I need to go join Diane for dinner at one of her coworker's place. I don't understand how UPS scheduling works -- I saw one of their trucks stop at the building across the street, and my package had arrived in Edmonton yesterday morning. Why wasn't my package on the truck that came that close to my place?
It seems every so often UPS just doesn't work well for me. I was so happy to see that my RAM was scheduled to arrive today, but now it looks like it'll be Monday or Tuesday before I get it. *sigh*.
Anyways, sorry for the haphazard-ish update. I've got to get going pretty soon here.
Heraldk
Playoff Predictor, Round 3 2008
Well the second round of the playoffs is over, and it's time to give my simulator another spin. First, let's look at the results from Round 2:
Montreal_Canadiens 0.616 0.348 0.147 Detroit_Red_Wings0.772 0.530 0.380 Philadelphia_Flyers 0.384 0.174 0.056 Colorado_Avalanche 0.228 0.091 0.039 Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.568 0.289 0.114 San_Jose_Sharks 0.483 0.180 0.094 New_York_Rangers 0.432 0.189 0.064 Dallas_Stars 0.517 0.199 0.107
The simulator goes 3 for 4 this round with the only one not going its way being the Montreal-Philly series. Overall, the simulator's predictions have been 11 for 12. Not too shabby huh?
Here are the predictions of my simulator for the conference finals:
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.579 0.204 Philadelphia_Flyers 0.421 0.119 Detroit_Red_Wings 0.681 0.498 Dallas_Stars 0.319 0.178
So according to the program, Detroit has just shy of a 50% chance to win the whole thing, and their likely opponents is the Pittsburgh Penguins. Dallas and Pittsburgh are very close for 2nd place and Philly is not liked as much by the program.
See Round 2 and Round 1 for more information.
Heraldk
Ireland Bound
Just a quick note to tell anyone who reads this blog who doesn't know already - I got the job with Pocketkings in Dublin (pending a successful work permit application of course). So in addition to everything else that's going on this summer (getting married, honeymoon, computer bot competitions), Diane and I have to pack up our lives and move them overseas for my August 1st start date. Does anyone have experience in moving overseas (or know someone who does?). If so, I wouldn't mind chatting with people about good shipping options for the stuff we want to send over to Ireland.
Should be an exciting summer!
Heraldk
Playoff Predictions, Round 2, 2008
I posted before the first round playoffs started to present some output from my NHL playoff simulator. How'd it do at predicting the results? Well let's have a look. I removed the later round predictions from the last post just to clean this up and make it easier to read. Correct predictions are in bold.
Montreal_Canadiens 0.720 Detroit_Red_Wings 0.811 Boston_Bruins 0.280 Nashville_Predators 0.189 Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.590 San_Jose_Sharks 0.634 Ottawa_Senators 0.410 Calgary_Flames 0.366 Washington_Capitals 0.481 Minnesota_Wild 0.468 Philadelphia_Flyers 0.519 Colorado_Avalanche 0.532 New_Jersey_Devils 0.477 Anaheim_Ducks 0.414 New_York_Rangers 0.523 Dallas_Stars 0.586
Not bad huh? In every case, the favourite team of each match was the one that won. Three of the series went right down to the wire though, and I honestly thought Washington was going to beat Philly in game 7. They were a feel good story this year, along with the Oilers late season push to the playoffs that fell *just* short. San Jose and Montreal almost choked in the first round on series leads, but managed to pull through in the end.
So what does the simulator say for the next round? Once again the first column is the probability of winning that round. The second column is the probability of winning the conference final, and the third column is the probability of taking home the cup. This run is one million playoff simulations seeded with the results of the first playoff round.
Montreal_Canadiens 0.616 0.348 0.147 Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.568 0.289 0.114 New_York_Rangers 0.432 0.189 0.064 Philadelphia_Flyers 0.384 0.174 0.056 Detroit_Red_Wings 0.772 0.530 0.380 San_Jose_Sharks 0.483 0.180 0.094 Dallas_Stars 0.517 0.199 0.107 Colorado_Avalanche 0.228 0.091 0.039
Detroit, Dallas, Montreal, and Pittsburgh are the favourites according to the simulator. The only selection that is a bit surprising for this round is Dallas - but I'm not too surprised by that considering some of the numbers they put up this year. If they can shut down Thornton, they've got a pretty good shot at the conference finals.
Overall Detroit still has the highest probability of winning the cup, up to 38% now. Montreal and Pittsburgh are neck and neck for second place in probability of winning the cup. Dallas and San Jose are next and the last three have a 6% or less chance.
Now that the first round is out, the last remaining Canadian team is my second favourite team in the league: the Montreal Canadiens. So since the Oil are down and out, I'm cheering for them. Push that 14.7% edge boys!
Heraldk