Things have been ok recently. The city is finally getting nicer for spring, just in time for me to ship off to the desert for the summer. Unfortunately (or, fortunately...) I'm trying to put a ton of hours in this month, both coaching and playing, so I may not see the sunlight enough, but vegas should bring plenty of both, I think.
The houses of the last couple of years have trickled apart, so hopefully I'll get to see all those guys while I'm out there. This year, the new crew will have a house in the same area. Greg (Gramps), Scotty, and Samer (braminc) are staying with me in the house for the entirety of the 6 weeks. John (aka bjorn, aka kleath) will be with us for a month, and Chipchucker keeps mentioning coming out for a week or so. Should be a pretty sweet time.
In non job related news, I joined a DC kickball team with a bunch of people that I grew up with/went to high school with. Our first game got rained out, but we got to meet a bunch of the other teammates at a bar in Adams Morgan, and I'll get a few games in before Western work season. Really looking forward to it, as I'm finding that working 'full time' at home puts a strain on getting out of the house enough.
That's about all in the way of life-lights for now. See you on the flip side.
-Alex
Friday, May 8, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Moroccan food rules....probably
Sophie's (brother's girlfriend) birthday dinner last night was pretty interesting. We went to "Marakesh", a Moroccan place in Chinatown (Yeah, I thought that was pretty sweet too...Moroccan in Chinatown....) I wandered around for a while trying to find the place, but eventually caught up with some of the older bro's old gang and we found the crew.
A belly dancing show, 3.5 hours, and 7 courses later, only one of which required or came with eating utensils, we were all pretty stuffed. I have to say, the meats were some of the best that I've had out in D.C. The tea was a perfect, warm ending to a huge dine-out experience. I guess another warm hand towel at the end would've been nice, but a great time nonetheless. If you're in Chinatown in D.C and want a unique restaurant that may provide you with some new cultural experiences, I say go for it.
Nothing else terribly interesting. Going to be trying to crank out the work load as best as I can with trying to dodge life logistics and holidays until I ship off to the desert for a good part of the summer. Holla.
A
A belly dancing show, 3.5 hours, and 7 courses later, only one of which required or came with eating utensils, we were all pretty stuffed. I have to say, the meats were some of the best that I've had out in D.C. The tea was a perfect, warm ending to a huge dine-out experience. I guess another warm hand towel at the end would've been nice, but a great time nonetheless. If you're in Chinatown in D.C and want a unique restaurant that may provide you with some new cultural experiences, I say go for it.
Nothing else terribly interesting. Going to be trying to crank out the work load as best as I can with trying to dodge life logistics and holidays until I ship off to the desert for a good part of the summer. Holla.
A
Friday, March 6, 2009
Sigh
Casey (Bones) and I did a review of my play at a 1-table shorthanded high buy in sng on Deucescracked. I won't go into the same length of a rant I went on on the forums there (here), but my philosophy on videos, why I make them or what I do in them really doesn't have to do with my actual decisions so much as the analysis behind why it's good or bad.
In fact, sometimes I make the mistakes on purpose because I believe it to be a more effective way of providing the viewers with the quality content, both on an introductory and a more advanced level. And in most cases, elaborating on these decisions (and the unintentional or more debatable plays, of course) in the threads after the videos are posted so members have a chance to speak to the coaches about it on a more interactive scale (sometimes, as in this thread actually, this is where some talk of the more advanced concepts come out moreso that just don't come up in any type of game-play video or in-game type of analysis setting or context).
Anyways, apparently a lot of the viewers do not share any aspect of this sentiment, because the small-sample (aka meaningless?) star rating seems to be average at best, where the analysis we put into the video + thread seems to be pretty thorough and reasonable especially given the context of the video and its relative boringness (to some of the awesome non sng content, or non live play content of SNGs, what have you) of content I've gotten good feedback on or think another coach did well in the past etc.
I guess the reason why I have such a hard time with it is their actual presentation of evidence (hell, the one guy said it was the worst video he'd seen)- they use the mistakes I make in a video to exemplify why it's a bad video, when, combining the video with the thread, I think it makes for the most effective learning tool, assuming their goal is to watch it and think about the spots, similar spots, how things connect and the nuances to the plays (and mistakes) made or when it might become the right play. It's just really tough to combat that when it takes me fighting against a 'you're terrible' with nothing constructive added, or when the 'something constructive' is what you fundamentally believe is constructively the argument for the opposite. Or something like that. And even moreso upsetting because I don't feel that this person intended to 'troll' or be an idiot with his comments (who knows though, so many of them, right?), but rather to try and say that I did something bad and analyzed it badly, the bad analysis part due to bad mouse-clicking on mine/Bones' end of this instance being something I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. Since when has anything in this world been 'black and white', especially as it relates to poker, and even *more* specifically, short stack poker where your edges (and mistakes) come in decimal increments under 1% a lot of the time? The irony of it all being that, with the aforementioned revelations on my philosophies here, plenty of my videos where people find and discuss mistakes made for reasons unbeknown st to them, people have reviewed as 'very good' or 'really valuable' in various ways.
Will someone just tell me I'm a bad speaker or writer already? In my entire life, I've felt that there are 3(ish) teachers that I've respected in terms of their profession and how they treat it on every level basically. But I can't count the number of times I've received a "B" on a paper that says "Great job!" with no other comments or criticisms, leaving me only to ask one question: "Where's the A, bitch?" Or when a criticism makes no sense, some unwillingness to change the grade because they already gave it and it seems subjective to them and you're the student and they're the teacher.
I'm honestly not real sure what the motive is and I guess I'm trying to figure it out now because I'm in this 'teacher role', and have been in videos for many months now, and among a lot of positive, constructive feedback, I s'pose one can't help but realize that they can't be perfect at what they do, and perhaps someone telling me something I should do differently that made sense would go a long way (and for me, admittedly 'stop caring' should be the answer it seems, especially in my profession). Perhaps I can't figure out their angle because I was never allowed to tell a teacher in school that they sucked, and why I thought so.
I guess this rant is done. As always, thanks for reading.
-A
In fact, sometimes I make the mistakes on purpose because I believe it to be a more effective way of providing the viewers with the quality content, both on an introductory and a more advanced level. And in most cases, elaborating on these decisions (and the unintentional or more debatable plays, of course) in the threads after the videos are posted so members have a chance to speak to the coaches about it on a more interactive scale (sometimes, as in this thread actually, this is where some talk of the more advanced concepts come out moreso that just don't come up in any type of game-play video or in-game type of analysis setting or context).
Anyways, apparently a lot of the viewers do not share any aspect of this sentiment, because the small-sample (aka meaningless?) star rating seems to be average at best, where the analysis we put into the video + thread seems to be pretty thorough and reasonable especially given the context of the video and its relative boringness (to some of the awesome non sng content, or non live play content of SNGs, what have you) of content I've gotten good feedback on or think another coach did well in the past etc.
I guess the reason why I have such a hard time with it is their actual presentation of evidence (hell, the one guy said it was the worst video he'd seen)- they use the mistakes I make in a video to exemplify why it's a bad video, when, combining the video with the thread, I think it makes for the most effective learning tool, assuming their goal is to watch it and think about the spots, similar spots, how things connect and the nuances to the plays (and mistakes) made or when it might become the right play. It's just really tough to combat that when it takes me fighting against a 'you're terrible' with nothing constructive added, or when the 'something constructive' is what you fundamentally believe is constructively the argument for the opposite. Or something like that. And even moreso upsetting because I don't feel that this person intended to 'troll' or be an idiot with his comments (who knows though, so many of them, right?), but rather to try and say that I did something bad and analyzed it badly, the bad analysis part due to bad mouse-clicking on mine/Bones' end of this instance being something I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. Since when has anything in this world been 'black and white', especially as it relates to poker, and even *more* specifically, short stack poker where your edges (and mistakes) come in decimal increments under 1% a lot of the time? The irony of it all being that, with the aforementioned revelations on my philosophies here, plenty of my videos where people find and discuss mistakes made for reasons unbeknown st to them, people have reviewed as 'very good' or 'really valuable' in various ways.
Will someone just tell me I'm a bad speaker or writer already? In my entire life, I've felt that there are 3(ish) teachers that I've respected in terms of their profession and how they treat it on every level basically. But I can't count the number of times I've received a "B" on a paper that says "Great job!" with no other comments or criticisms, leaving me only to ask one question: "Where's the A, bitch?" Or when a criticism makes no sense, some unwillingness to change the grade because they already gave it and it seems subjective to them and you're the student and they're the teacher.
I'm honestly not real sure what the motive is and I guess I'm trying to figure it out now because I'm in this 'teacher role', and have been in videos for many months now, and among a lot of positive, constructive feedback, I s'pose one can't help but realize that they can't be perfect at what they do, and perhaps someone telling me something I should do differently that made sense would go a long way (and for me, admittedly 'stop caring' should be the answer it seems, especially in my profession). Perhaps I can't figure out their angle because I was never allowed to tell a teacher in school that they sucked, and why I thought so.
I guess this rant is done. As always, thanks for reading.
-A
Sunday, February 22, 2009
[Re] Learning PLO
With an effort to stay true to my love for cash games, I figured I'd stick in a brief update in an additional effort to not suck at updating my blog quite as much. So yeah, I've decided to get seriously back into Pot Limit Omaha and make that one of my primary game-focuses for this year in addition to a few other games.
I will be continuing tournament work for www.deucescracked.com, as well as my coaching in SNGs and MTTs, and only plan to become more active with the team over there as time goes on and as my multi-game understanding and volume increases.
Hopefully if I don't forget there'll be some more interesting blog posts in the future. For now, here is a report of the superbowl party that I attended in Vegas a few weeks ago. Definitely worth checking out:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/36/stt-strategy/trip-report-second-annual-sttf-superbowl-sng-party-nsfw-405979/
(scroll past the poker part at the beginning if you only want to get to the rated "R" section)
I also paid for that trip in a single 5 hour Bellagio cash session playing only nl500, going to show down exactly 1 time in 5 hours. So that was cool. Think that's all I got for now, stay good everyone.
A
I will be continuing tournament work for www.deucescracked.com, as well as my coaching in SNGs and MTTs, and only plan to become more active with the team over there as time goes on and as my multi-game understanding and volume increases.
Hopefully if I don't forget there'll be some more interesting blog posts in the future. For now, here is a report of the superbowl party that I attended in Vegas a few weeks ago. Definitely worth checking out:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/36/stt-strategy/trip-report-second-annual-sttf-superbowl-sng-party-nsfw-405979/
(scroll past the poker part at the beginning if you only want to get to the rated "R" section)
I also paid for that trip in a single 5 hour Bellagio cash session playing only nl500, going to show down exactly 1 time in 5 hours. So that was cool. Think that's all I got for now, stay good everyone.
A
Monday, February 9, 2009
"It cannot be sustained; in a rational society"
Main site: http://theunionmovie.com/TheUnionWeb.html
Actual documentary: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1657827965975839596&ei=VCt-SaWoAYrSjgKkiIHNDw&q=union+business&dur=3
When you think about the reason that people dying from use of this plant/paying for fighting against it comes from its status as illegal only and directly, it's sort of depressing. But I found this incredibly informative and of great academic interest from economic, political and medical standpoints. I did completely lose faith in our government and society because of it, though.
-A
Actual documentary: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1657827965975839596&ei=VCt-SaWoAYrSjgKkiIHNDw&q=union+business&dur=3
When you think about the reason that people dying from use of this plant/paying for fighting against it comes from its status as illegal only and directly, it's sort of depressing. But I found this incredibly informative and of great academic interest from economic, political and medical standpoints. I did completely lose faith in our government and society because of it, though.
-A
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