GinohnNews
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23 FEBRUARY 2006 |
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J: I learned how to fold a shirt! I saw
this video last week
where someone folds a shirt using slick prestidigitation. For three
days afterward I kept playing it over and over in my head. Then while
folding laundry I thought, hey, it's just origami. I can do origami. So
I did. Then I spent the rest of the day finding shirts and magically
folding them.
Went to Dave & Busters on Sunday with Rizolda and Petra, for
Rich's
birthday. Rich showed me some nifty games, mostly shooty shooty and
drivey drivey games. I liked the drivey drivey games most.
I'm way behind on some new tombstones
and hankisms and such, but
I'll try to catch up later. Later!
G: When I found out Izolda was tending bar at Pirate Feast and said she would miss the performances upstairs since she'd be stuck at the bar, I offered to come and help out so she could take breaks to see some of the gigs. So I dressed up like a pirate and went to the Adelphi Mill on Saturday night. I had a really nice time, saw lots of friends, and poured beer for about half the night.
Sunday night was a party for Rich's anniversary of his birth. As
usual there were tons of great food and drink, and lots of good
friends. Izolda refereed a Comedy Sports (Improv games) competition.
For one of the games, my team had to mime a location, profession, and a
murder weapon, suggested by the audience, for one team member who to
guess. We had 3 minutes for Aly to guess Stonehenge, mortician, and an
EYELASH CURLER, but she did it and we were so happy. At least I was.
Another impressive display were the jokes made up for the 185 game. I
don't remember other's jokes too well, but here's the only one I came
up with.
185 Nail Guns walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve Nail Guns here. The Nail Guns say, Got any nails? Bartender says, "No." So the Nail Guns say, "Got any duck food?"
Only some of you will get this.
As had become tradition, John and I stayed much later than the majority of the guests, and Kevin stayed as late as us, chatting with Rizolda. It was fun.
Our friend Noelle was at the party and Luisa and I arranged to get
together with her to hang out Tuesday night. We hung out at Luisa's
until around midnight, and had a good time. As I was getting ready to
leave, I started to feel a little funny in my tummy. Something was
happening... and it didn't let up. I felt sicker and sicker, and
squirmed around in bed all night, not sleeping much. I had a doctor's
appointment the next day, so I got myself out of bed a little after 10
and got in the shower, where I heaved up the soup and cake from the
night before and felt much better. I've been slowly feeling better
since, and got some advice from the doctor - only drink an ounce of
water every 15 minutes unless I throw up again, then stop for an hour.
I never did throw up again, as I thought, and started drinking lots of
water and broth last night. Today I feel much better, just a little
weak. So, I either caught the stomach bug that's been going around, or
letting a kid feed me a cracker might have poisoned me, who knows where
his little hands had been.
Over the past few months I've sporadically grabbed a bunch of PokerRoom's EV stats for starting hands and compared them to my personal hand ranking system, using spreadsheets and graphs to plot one against the other. I've decided that while my card selection is very good (when I'm not frivolous) and correlates well with pokerroom's EVs, my post-flop play needs lots of help. Lots.
[There are a few interesting outliers in the PokerRoom data. For 10
players, A6s has less average EV than A5s or A4s. And get this-- 55 is
ranked ever so slightly lower
than 44. So much for holding pocket fives. For heads-up play, A5s is
ranked lower than all other ace hands except A2s.]
I've found once again--and again and again--that when it comes to poker
my intuition sucks. My intuition is the culprit that keeps breaking
fundamental advice handed down from the sages, e.g. Phil Gordon and
Action Dan. Good advice like "never go broke on a pair," and "let's
calculate the pot odds, shall we?" My intuition only sees the pretty
spikes in the long, noisy data stream of games. My intuition is both
reckless and cowardly: it's afraid to play 47o when the pot odds are
ripe, and then goes all in with 22 when limpers abound. When I tilt,
intuition takes control and hands all my chips over to its siblings:
Despair and Superstition.
Every game I play becomes a battle between my cold analytic self and my
intuitive self-- left brain vs right brain. Every game I play, win or
lose, the analyst in me points out mistakes I made, while my intuition
blithely ignores these lessons in its mad search for "luck."
At least that's what it feels like. I have hope that some of what my
left brain learns is leaking into my right brain. Hope, as you might
recall, is the daughter of Despair.
