Monthly Archives: September 2011

Poor Play Or Winning Poker?

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I have been working on a longer post, but wanted to post something worth your time. If you are a poker player who is losing badly, losing slowly, or simply frustrated by the game, this post for you. If you are not a poker player, use the ideas below and apply them to your life. In some areas of everyone’s life there is always room for improvement. Life and Poker need certain skills for success and generally they overlap.

Poker is very good once again in spite of what Card Rooms have done to tip the chips in their favor. All of the games I have access to are nine seat games. Nine seat games make it very difficult to impossible to play a sold game of poker and win over time. Internet poker generally being cut off from many poker players more than offsets nine player games as online players make the transition to live poker.

Overcoming the rake and the antes with only nine players means most average players are at a tremendous disadvantage. Playing solid poker at a loose table is losing poker over time, always has been. If you are willing to step out of your comfort zone, and come to terms with the new rules of poker, you can play a fun game and maybe even show an overall profit.

Some of the old rules still apply. If you are losing, throwing more money on the table is not going to make up for your earlier losses in most instances. Once a few hours of steady losses have gone by, if you can turn your game around and start winning, it is more likely the game will close on you than it is you will make up your losses. This is especially true if you play in the evening.

In the evenings, most players have a time in mind they want to leave at. For many it is between eight and ten o’clock. If you sat down at seven, and have been losing for a few hours, one of two things are going to happen if you choose to keep playing.

The game will tighten up, or the game will end up folding. The reason the game tightens up, is those words no one wants to hear coming out of the brushes mouth, “No list”. Those two words can tighten up a good game quicker than a maniac on a winning streak. The second reason is the time of night. The later it gets, the higher number of good players are sitting in the game with you.

Most poorer players have had their kitchen passes expire or they went broke (lost their daily limit) for the night. These poorer players, if the game keeps on going are placed by better players, who generally are not so willing to throw away chips on poor plays.

No matter what the reason, as the night goes on, the rake grinds down stacks quickly without the looser more generous players who think if they play right and tight they are going to win. So what to do in this situation? Look at your game.

How many times have you come back from behind later in the evening? How many times have you doubled or tripled your losses? You do not even need to open your book to know what the answer is. For most players a losing session is a losing session. Stopping when it is evident it is not your night, is the right thing to do.

To help you keep you out of this situation you need to be realistic about the game. Poker in most card rooms is no longer a game of solid play takes home the money. Solid play helps you survive longer, but eventually the rake wears down your castle walls to rubble.

I tried to explain this to a Hold’em Player who was both confused and curious. He was a good player, playing good cards. He started with 30 BB’s and his castle was crumbling as his frustration grew. I was stacking chips from from a win many players would not have seen the flop with. I am more realistic however. I know that hand values are no longer what they once were, and controlled loose play brings home the chips most nights.

The player of course was feeling the effects of bile rising disgust at my choice of starting cards. Good players do not play these cards. Good players wait for good starting hands and pump the pot. A few years back that was true. Today, good players take home some extra money, and the solid players go home broke and angry at how people play sh!t cards, have fun and win too.

Playing bad cards comes with experience. There is a wide swath between playing like a maniac keeping a balance of solid play and poor play. Unfortunately to be a winning player, like it or not, you are going to have to gamble occasionally.

What you think are semi junk cards when played appropriately does a lot of good things to your game. It is fun, it keeps the table guessing what you are playing, and most importantly you win bigger pots. If you are trying to play well and it is not working so well for you, work out a system for yourself where you can play any two cards once in a while and not hurt your game.

Substituting hands preflop means foregoing a better hand you may want to play to play for a hand no one will expect you to play in another round. This does take thinking and awareness of what the players at your table are playing and how strong the winning hands are. You must be in a loose game, not in a tough game ,or a game where three people are seeing every flop.

Clinging to the belief that good hands make winning poker is great. Playing strong hands wins pots. Playing only strong hands does not win large enough pots to pay for the gas to get to the card room and back home again. The choice is yours to make.

What are the goals for your playing poker? Would you rather have more fun and be able to keep playing, or play consistent good poker and eventually have to stop playing because it costs too much? Stick to losing boring poker, or give yourself a better chance of actually winning. If you still do not come closer to winning, at least you have some fun in the process. The object of Poker is to win money after all.

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Suse 8.2 to Windows 7 to Open Suse 11.04

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I have passed on my imac as painful as it was. I always had a love/hate relationship with my Mac. I love the way it is built. I love the way software works flawlessly. I love the no virus to worry about problem. Most of the software I used was either free or low cost.

I was however sold on the siren song of Windows 7 from using it on my laptop. Windows 7 is nice OS. Nothing to complain about, almost. Just some niggling stuff. Windows 7 complains about the lack of virus protection and I need to buy third party software to have virus protection. Yes, there is free anti virus, but that is not the point. Two included text editors without spell checking? File encryption built in, but turned off unless you have the most expensive version of Windows 7?

These shortcomings are not big things by themselves. They are greed driven things. They are small items that should either be included in Windows 7 when purchased as is. I am all for making a profit. If companies did not make a profit, none of us would have work to do for our money. Like it or not we need to work. But come on, having to pay some serious dollars for the privilege of having file encryption, and a spell checker? That goes beyond making a profit.

I tried hard to enjoy Windows 7. I like it on my laptop for the most part, but my laptop is only used occasionally, I use my desktop a lot more often. As much as I would like to use the space a desktop takes up for something else, a laptop without adding more hardware, does not a desktop make.

After a week it became apparent that life with Windows was only a more polished version of previous life with Windows. Nothing changed really since I left Windows behind some years back. Virus checking, defragment hard drives, wondering how downloads and web sites were giving away presents I did not want. My virus checker confirmed nothing really had changed in the Windows World except the cost of Virus Checking went way up.

I had enough, and it was time to go back to Linux. I tried my favorites, but seeing my desktop is recently off the shelf and 64 bit, my favorite Linux versions did not fit well with one piece or another of my desktop computer. After trying six or seven of my old standby Linux flavors, I went back to my Linux beginnings. Every 32 bit Linux distribution installation was generally happy after install except my LAN and Wireless card which would fail to work after a few minutes.

My first experience with Linux was an off the shelf computer store purchase for $42.00. For my $42.00 plus tax, I had a three Cd set and a Magazine. I had purchased Suse Linux 8.2 for my hard earned money. I never looked back from Linux, even though Suse 8.2 never made my favorites list.

Back then, as now Suse was/is a little confusing to install. Back then because I had no clue, this time around with Open Suse 11.4 because I had a empty one terabyte hard rive, and only wanted to use part of it for Linux OS.

I eventually came to terms with what the install process actually wanted rather than how I thought it should be done. and my Open Suse installation went smoothly. Almost anyone should be able to install Open Suse Linux. It may be daunting for a new user, or perhaps perplexing as it was for me, trying to install Open Suse on an empty hard drive, but there is a wealth of information on the Open Suse web site to ease anyone through the process.

My perspective has changed over the years. When I installed Suse 8.2 I did not appreciate how rigid the structure seemed to be. The mousing was to precise, I could not install any old program I wanted, and I had to learn how to do things the Suse way. Now some years and scores of Linux distributions later, I am typing this in LibreOffice running on Open Suse, Funny how all those original faults I thought I had with Suse Linux, I have now come to value.

There is not a lot to say about Open Suse, that has not been said already. It is a well made, well contained distribution, and if you have been a distro hopper like myself, you will appreciate the precision and care taken with Open Suse. I installed the KDE Desktop, but Gnome, LXDE, and perhaps other desktops are available.

There were a few things I wanted to change. Minor personal nits contained within KDE itself. I have never been a big KDE desktop fan. It is alright, but it is not my first choice for a desktop. I appreciate K3B, a few games, and the wallet, but after that I am indifferent to what KDE has to offer.

After I did not locate what I wanted in the repositories I did what I should have done in the first place. I went to the Open Suse home page and started looking for answers there. Of course everything I wanted to change, was there as other Open Suse users also want something different than the stock DVD. Within thirty minutes, I made all the changes I wanted.

I mentioned I am typing this post in LibreOffice Writer, and it is as snappy and more powerful than any text editor I may use. I have not used the other parts of LibreOffice, so I will leave them to others to write about.

There are numerous reviews about Open Suse, and the newest release is currently getting ready to replace the version I downloaded a few weeks ago. I understand from what I read, there is an upgrade path available for those that want it. I back up what is important to me, and now that I understand the Open Suse way of doing a Linux installation and upgrade or reinstall, either method will be painless.

Open Suse is one of the most popular Linux Distributions in the world. The days of needing everything about your hardware to do an installation have gone the way of my first Linux, Suse 8.2. If you have not found a Linux distribution that reaches and grabs you, you may want to give Open Suse a try. I am happy I decided to give Open Suse a visit.

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Celiac Diet is Healthy With Proper Planning

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This article, Why is Celiac Disease on the Rise?, appeared on Yahoo. I wanted to write a few comments about Celiacs and gluten free eating. For the most part the article is probably the most in depth easy to digest article on Celiacs that has come down the pipeline recently. It is too bad, a few thoughts were not quite what they could be, and were left partially quantified.

I find this timely article surprising because there is a trend of late of people going on a Gluten Free diet when they have no physical need to be on one. There are a lot of benefits to eating a gluten free diet. Copying the Standard American Diet (SAD) is not one of those benefits. Hence the frustration, and feelings of denial that surround a Celiac diet verses the less than great SAD diet.

This brings me to one of two comments I digress on in this timely and mostly well written article. The paragraph starting with, “Does a gluten-free diet help people lose weight?”, is both true and not so true. The particular portion I disagree with is the type of food one can eat on a gluten free diet. The actual comment is quoted as being spoken by Christina Tennyson, MD of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University in New York City.

The Doctor’s quote is indeed correct, although used in a slightly less than perfect context. I am sure Dr. Tennyson really did not intend. the quote intones the only diet available to one on a Celiac Diet is highly processed, high calorie laden food. I think if the good doctor had the opportunity to elaborate on the comment, she would have cleared any conjecture about her lone comment.

Do you remember the last one you ate?If one wants to be on a gluten free diet and eat as if they are eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), it is possible, and can be a reasonably healthy diet.  One, if money is no object, or eating like everyone else is a high priority, there are plenty of alternative highly processed foods, that are high in calories. It should be noted that the SAD is generally a culmination of the same types of foods, only they are cheaper and contain various amounts of wheat per high calorie serving.

Cakes, cookies, chips, ice cream, pastries, noodles, etcetera are a major part of SAD, and can be part of a Celiac diet. This is the SAD truth. If one is willing to pay more than is reasonable, one can eat a gluten free diet, and not notice they are not eating SAD by looks alone.

On the other hand, and I am sure Dr. Tennyson would agree or followup on if questioned further, the Celiac diet does not have to look like a SAD diet, nor does it need to be frugal and nutrition starved as alleged in the last paragraph, “What’s the treatment”.

A Celiac diet if one is willing to forget everything about SAD, can eat healthy well balanced, nutrition filled meals for about the same cost of the SAD diet. Starting with beans, rice, and corn as staples of a Celiac diet, there is a lot of room and dollars for adding fruits and vegetables to each meal.Many Americans forgo fresh fruits and vegetables because they are addicted to their SAD diet of high calorie, high fat, and high sugar.

For thousands of years most of the peoples on the earth made do without highly processed junk foods, and without wheat, barley, and rye. They lived well, and they were healthy. Healthy eating, just like choosing a Celiac diet if one has options is a life changing choice.

For inspiration or ideas look to the cooking of South America, Far East, and the lower Americas. There are more delicious, nutritious, and healthy meals available than imaginable. All that needs to be done is forget what has been programmed into each of us since birth about healthy eating.

If you are curious about Celiacs, and what it means to be Celiac and ignore it, click on the link at the beginning of he article, or do a quick search of this blog for more information on Celiacs. I have a few articles in my blog. For some available foods click on the link on the right side of the page for ideas.

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