For thousands of years people have been celebrating different holidays and festivals at the end of October. The Celts celebrated it as Samhain (pronounced "sow-in", with "sow" rhyming with cow). The Irish English dictionary published by the Irish Texts Society defines the word as follows:
"Samhain, All Hallowtide, the feast of the dead in Pagan and Christian times, signalizing the close of harvest and the initiation of the winter season, lasting till May, during which troops (esp. the Fiann) were quartered. Faeries were imagined as particularly active at this season. From it the half year is reckoned. also called Feile Moingfinne (Snow Goddess).(1) The Scottish Gaelis Dictionary defines it as "Hallowtide. The Feast of All Soula. Sam + Fuin = end of summer."(2) Contrary to the information published by many organizations, there is no archaeological or literary evidence to indicate that Samhain was a deity. The Celtic Gods of the dead were Gwynn ap Nudd for the British, and Arawn for the Welsh. The Irish did not have a "lord of death" as such.
The information on Samhain is from Rowan Moonstone's The Origins of Halloween.
For more info check out Halloween on Wikipedia(1) Rev. Patrick Dineen, "An Irish English Dictionary" (Dublin, 1927), p. 937(2) Malcolm MacLennan, "A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language" (Aberdeen, 1979), p. 279
The Celts believed that every year on the last day of October, the souls of the dead visited the earth.
When the Romans conquered the Celts in the first century A.D., they added parts of their festivals, Feralia and Pomona to the tradition. Feralia was a festival to honor the dead and Pomona was a harvest festival named after the goddess of fruit (apples) and trees.
Around the eigth century, the Christian church made November 1 All Saints' Day to honor all of the saints that didn't have a special day of their own. Over the years these festivals combined, the mass held on All Saints' Day was called Allhallowmas (the mass of all Hallows - saintly people). The night before was known as All Hallows Eve. Eventually this name became Halloween.
In the 1800s, as a lot of people emigrated to the U.S., the holidays and traditions of different cultures merged. Halloween was not always a happy time. October 31, or the night before took on other names. Some called it Devil's or Hell night, to others it was mischief night. Here in Vermont, the night before is called cabbage night. To some people this became a time to play tricks on others. Some of these tricks were not fun at all. Luckily, community groups and individuals took action and started to change Halloween into a family event. Dressing up in costumes and going "trick or treating", costume parades, community parties and Fall festivals are some of the ways that Halloween is celebrated today.
Other countries have different Fall festivals to honor the deceased.
The Festival of the Dead is one of the most important happenings in both Palermo and the rest of Sicily. The second of November is a festival day for the children of Palermo as, according to tradition,they were made to believe that their dead relatives would return the night before and leave them traditional sweets and cakes on the table (Martorana fruit, which is almond paste made into the shape of different fruit). They would also receive puppets of boiled sugar and toys. It's one way of keeping the memory of their dead relatives and loved ones alive.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Rate
While driving home from work today, a system to rate my live poker sessions occurred to me. The primary skills for my play on a 1-10 scale are:
Energy: how much energy I bring to the game, measured by how awake I feel and how much I am "into the game" (high number = more energy)
Focus: self-explanatory -- how well I am paying attention and reading my opponents (high number = better focus)
Cards: how good the cards are to me, and a measurement of luck (high number = better cards)
Opponents: quality of my opponents (high number = better players)
Recent tournament win --
Energy: 8
Focus: 9
Cards: 6
Opponents: 4
Recent cash game session --
Energy: 6
Focus: 8
Cards: 6
Opponents: 5
Venetian cash game session --
Energy: 7
Focus: 9
Cards: 10
Opponents: 5
Energy: how much energy I bring to the game, measured by how awake I feel and how much I am "into the game" (high number = more energy)
Focus: self-explanatory -- how well I am paying attention and reading my opponents (high number = better focus)
Cards: how good the cards are to me, and a measurement of luck (high number = better cards)
Opponents: quality of my opponents (high number = better players)
Recent tournament win --
Energy: 8
Focus: 9
Cards: 6
Opponents: 4
Recent cash game session --
Energy: 6
Focus: 8
Cards: 6
Opponents: 5
Venetian cash game session --
Energy: 7
Focus: 9
Cards: 10
Opponents: 5
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Play at Your Own Risk
The Absolute Poker cheating allegations are the hot topic. I can’t help but laugh at all the people writing about this topic – despite all the bitching, everyone will keep playing. And really, what are you, as a player, going to do about it?
My thoughts from a different angle. Imagine these scenarios and tell me what you would do:
-- You log onto your on-line account one evening and the cashier window says your account is $0. You send some e-mails. The response is “our records reflect that your account is $0.” You send more e-mails, make phone calls and repeatedly receive the same response – our records say that your account is $0.
-- You play in a cash game and its obvious that two or more players at your table are colluding. Several people lose money, including you. You send e-mails, and the response is “we have reviewed the history and our records indicate that there was no cheating.”
-- You try to log on to play and the site is no longer running. The company just closed up shop and ran with the money in all player accounts.
Seriously, what would you do? Send messages, make phone calls, post loud rants on chat boards, scream in your personal blog. What would this accomplish when someone else is holding your money? In the U.S., possession is 9/10 of the law. With off-shore internet poker sites, its probably 10/10 of the law (whatever the law may be that governs the situation).
Would you try to sue? Would you actually seek out an attorney and pay him/her money out of your own pocket to file a lawsuit? Who would you sue? How does US law apply in the jurisdiction in which the on-line company operates? The jurisdictional problems alone might be an insurmountable hurdle to anyone that does not have lots of money to pay attorneys. And what attorney would take this case on a contingency basis?
The point is, if any scenario happened where your money just disappears from an on-line poker account, there’s probably not a damn thing you could do about it. For this reason, I am amazing that people rely upon on-line poker as their primary (or only?) source of income. For anyone that actually relies upon this to feed their children -- absolutely irresponsible. I am not indicting poker as a profession, just the unreliable nature of on-line poker.
Play at your own risk.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Tick Tick Boom
The Game: Ameristar $120 buy-in NLHE Thursday night tournament, 49 entrants.
Result: 1st place, $1928 cash. My second biggest tournament cash to date.
I didn’t actually win 1st place outright, but there was a 4-way chop at the end and I got the full 1st place prize money because I had a crushing chip lead over the other three players. I held something like 70% of the chips in play when we were down to four.
How it went down: Nothing spectacular throughout the tournament. I did not deliver a single bad beat, and no one delivered a bad beat against me. I was all-in only twice, when I open-pushed at the 100-200 and 150-300 levels when he blinds were very high relative to all stack sizes. No callers both times, so my tournament life was never at risk in any hand. Every contested pot was for less than my entire stack.
Keys to this tournament: In live play, I play cash games much more than tournaments. The only time I play live tournaments is in Vegas and in the Ameristar tournament maybe 3-4 times per year. As a result, I feel that my read is best in live cash games. So, I went into this tournament with the intention of focusing on my reads, as I do in cash games, to improve this aspect of my game.
It was primarily due to a sensitivity of stack size compared to style of play. I focused on identifying players’ styles, and then balancing that against stack size. There were situations where I avoided confrontations with smaller stacks who were prone to be more aggressive and play back, and be more on the attack against bigger stacks who were generally weaker players.
I would fold some strong hands that I might normally raise with pre-flop, when I had the sense that someone was ready to call or re-raise. I focused on the “look to the left” skill – looking around left at the players remaining to act to get a sense of their strength before I looked at my cards. Most everyone else looked at their hands before it was their turn to act, and they were giving off tells, or at least some aura of strength or weakness that I could just feel. It sounds like New Age mumbo-jumbo, but it was really working – I was predicting (to myself) with amazing accuracy who was strong and ready to pounce. I avoided a lot of trouble and coasted through the mid-levels by doing this.
The Key Hand: When we collapsed to the final table with 9 players, the Villain was a 60-ish woman wearing a red leather cowboy hat. She had a dominant chip lead with maybe 14,000 and everyone else was somewhere between 3000 to 6000. But, she played a big stack horribly. Her problem was that she hardly played at all, and when she did play she was usually out of position and her hand values were relatively weak for all-in confrontations. She would occasionally raise in EP with a hand like KJ, and then call a small stack push who had AJ. Worse, she would fail to call with tremendous pot odds in multi-way pots (ex. 700 call with one teensy stack all in, when the pot was already 3000+), with the opportunity to check it down and knock out the small stack. She continually made bad plays out of position and I got the sense that she came to the final table with a big stack due to luck. So she was the target, if I got the chance.
Despite her weak plays, she managed to collect an even bigger stack after winning some races. I won a few decent hands as the players dwindled, and Villain and I each knocked out two players. Down to five players, she and I were close as the big stacks, but I had her covered, and the other three were short.
At the 700-1400 level, she opened UTG for 4500. I was next to act and had two red kings. The moment I had been waiting for. How to get her stack in the middle? I intentionally fumbled around with a raise, and made it look like I was weakly making a min-raise, but intentionally made it 1000 (two orange chips) short. The dealer called this out, and I tossed the other two chips in. She was watching this act. My read was that she had Ax. The plan was call a push, or push myself if she checked, on any flop that didn’t have an ace.
The flop was T-9-6 rainbow, and she quickly pushed. I called and she showed A8-hearts. Perfect. I held up, and had about 70% of the chips. The other players quickly worked out the deal and I took the full 1st place prize.
Question: When the initial deal idea was raised, the other players all quickly pointed out, “You get 1st place money. You can’t finish any better than that!” But could I have gotten more than 1st place money in a deal? Is this ever done? Do players ever use extreme big-stack deal leverage to squeeze better than 1st place money out of a deal – pay me better than 1st place money, or no deal? My equity in the remaining prize pool was about $2800 based on my stack size, but they were correct that I could not win more than $1928 if we played it out. They each got about $700 in the deal, but 3rd and 4th place money was somewhere around $600 and $400, respectively, so my leverage would have been their individual risk of losing about $300 by playing on. I would have looked like a greedy hog for even trying, but I’m still curious if this would have worked.
Result: 1st place, $1928 cash. My second biggest tournament cash to date.
I didn’t actually win 1st place outright, but there was a 4-way chop at the end and I got the full 1st place prize money because I had a crushing chip lead over the other three players. I held something like 70% of the chips in play when we were down to four.
How it went down: Nothing spectacular throughout the tournament. I did not deliver a single bad beat, and no one delivered a bad beat against me. I was all-in only twice, when I open-pushed at the 100-200 and 150-300 levels when he blinds were very high relative to all stack sizes. No callers both times, so my tournament life was never at risk in any hand. Every contested pot was for less than my entire stack.
Keys to this tournament: In live play, I play cash games much more than tournaments. The only time I play live tournaments is in Vegas and in the Ameristar tournament maybe 3-4 times per year. As a result, I feel that my read is best in live cash games. So, I went into this tournament with the intention of focusing on my reads, as I do in cash games, to improve this aspect of my game.
It was primarily due to a sensitivity of stack size compared to style of play. I focused on identifying players’ styles, and then balancing that against stack size. There were situations where I avoided confrontations with smaller stacks who were prone to be more aggressive and play back, and be more on the attack against bigger stacks who were generally weaker players.
I would fold some strong hands that I might normally raise with pre-flop, when I had the sense that someone was ready to call or re-raise. I focused on the “look to the left” skill – looking around left at the players remaining to act to get a sense of their strength before I looked at my cards. Most everyone else looked at their hands before it was their turn to act, and they were giving off tells, or at least some aura of strength or weakness that I could just feel. It sounds like New Age mumbo-jumbo, but it was really working – I was predicting (to myself) with amazing accuracy who was strong and ready to pounce. I avoided a lot of trouble and coasted through the mid-levels by doing this.
The Key Hand: When we collapsed to the final table with 9 players, the Villain was a 60-ish woman wearing a red leather cowboy hat. She had a dominant chip lead with maybe 14,000 and everyone else was somewhere between 3000 to 6000. But, she played a big stack horribly. Her problem was that she hardly played at all, and when she did play she was usually out of position and her hand values were relatively weak for all-in confrontations. She would occasionally raise in EP with a hand like KJ, and then call a small stack push who had AJ. Worse, she would fail to call with tremendous pot odds in multi-way pots (ex. 700 call with one teensy stack all in, when the pot was already 3000+), with the opportunity to check it down and knock out the small stack. She continually made bad plays out of position and I got the sense that she came to the final table with a big stack due to luck. So she was the target, if I got the chance.
Despite her weak plays, she managed to collect an even bigger stack after winning some races. I won a few decent hands as the players dwindled, and Villain and I each knocked out two players. Down to five players, she and I were close as the big stacks, but I had her covered, and the other three were short.
At the 700-1400 level, she opened UTG for 4500. I was next to act and had two red kings. The moment I had been waiting for. How to get her stack in the middle? I intentionally fumbled around with a raise, and made it look like I was weakly making a min-raise, but intentionally made it 1000 (two orange chips) short. The dealer called this out, and I tossed the other two chips in. She was watching this act. My read was that she had Ax. The plan was call a push, or push myself if she checked, on any flop that didn’t have an ace.
The flop was T-9-6 rainbow, and she quickly pushed. I called and she showed A8-hearts. Perfect. I held up, and had about 70% of the chips. The other players quickly worked out the deal and I took the full 1st place prize.
Question: When the initial deal idea was raised, the other players all quickly pointed out, “You get 1st place money. You can’t finish any better than that!” But could I have gotten more than 1st place money in a deal? Is this ever done? Do players ever use extreme big-stack deal leverage to squeeze better than 1st place money out of a deal – pay me better than 1st place money, or no deal? My equity in the remaining prize pool was about $2800 based on my stack size, but they were correct that I could not win more than $1928 if we played it out. They each got about $700 in the deal, but 3rd and 4th place money was somewhere around $600 and $400, respectively, so my leverage would have been their individual risk of losing about $300 by playing on. I would have looked like a greedy hog for even trying, but I’m still curious if this would have worked.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Save the Chipleader, Save the World
The Game: $1/2 NLHE with a $5 bring-in. It costs at least $5 to limp in, including the BB. You can sit down with a max of $500 or 75% of the biggest stack at the table. I have no idea why the blinds are only $1/2, when the stacks are so big. Standard PF raise is $15 or $20.
My image: Loose PF, fairly tight after the flop. I’ve been playing a lot of hands, open raising or calling standard PF raises with anything playable, including everything down to single and double-gapped suited connectors. Important for this hand: I have not lost a single showdown all night. I’ve either won before showdown, won at showdown, or bailed out before the showdown. I started with $500 and I’m the big stack at the table with around $900.
The Villain: Sunburnt 40-ish Kansas State fan who watched Kansas whip K-State earlier in the day. He’s the luckbox of the evening – he keeps stumbling into lucky coolers that no one can fold. He has AA when someone else has KK, all in PF. He flops top set when someone else flops middle set, all in on the flop. He turns a straight when someone else flops 2-pair. He sat down with about $250 and ran it up to nearly $800 through dumb luck. He’s playing somewhat loose PF, but he sticks to the big cards and doesn’t seem to play the lower cards. Most importantly, Villain has the shakes when he has a big hand, and its very obvious to the whole table. Its been a 100% reliable tell.
The Hand: UTG+1, I raise to $15 PF with AT-clubs. Four callers, including Villain in the BB.
Flop is 4-A-4, rainbow. Villain checks. I bet $45. Everyone folds to Villain, who just calls.
Turn is 4-A-4-2, two spades. Villain bets $100, and he’s shaking horribly. I openly called attention to his shaking by saying “The Shake-O-Meter is pretty high. That really scares me.” Some laughs at the table. Villain looks kind of scared. Then I call.
River is 4-A-4-2-2. Villain bets $200, and he’s shaking even more as he struggles to push forward two stacks of red without causing a minor earthquake. He has $405 left. I say “Wow” when he is done, to point out that I am very aware of how badly he is shaking and aware of his strength. Then I calmly push.
Villain thinks about folding for a long time, then calls and shows J4-hearts. I muck and go home.
Analysis: I was attempting to use his tell against him, but my play failed miserably. I was trying to tell him, “I know how strong you think your hand is, but I am still pushing in the face of such an obvious tell. I have you beat.” Maybe I should have been more blunt and just said, “I know you have a four, but you should still fold and save your chips. I’m all in.”
His pause after my push on the river meant that he at least gave serious consideration to the fact that I could have AA, or maybe A4. I played this hand exactly as I would with AA – just calling his strong bet on the turn, and then pushing on the river even though it was almost 100% obvious he had a four.
(As a side note, I could not figure out his other card during the hand. I really didn’t think he had A4, so that left something like 54 or maybe 64. So, his actual hand of J4 was very unexpected and out of character with his prior play, but also completely irrelevant.)
What I learned from this hand: Don’t try a big bluff against a mediocre player that is incapable of folding in this situation. Be less likely to bluff against someone that has had a really good night and 75% of his stack came from other players. Don’t bluff K-State donkeys.
My image: Loose PF, fairly tight after the flop. I’ve been playing a lot of hands, open raising or calling standard PF raises with anything playable, including everything down to single and double-gapped suited connectors. Important for this hand: I have not lost a single showdown all night. I’ve either won before showdown, won at showdown, or bailed out before the showdown. I started with $500 and I’m the big stack at the table with around $900.
The Villain: Sunburnt 40-ish Kansas State fan who watched Kansas whip K-State earlier in the day. He’s the luckbox of the evening – he keeps stumbling into lucky coolers that no one can fold. He has AA when someone else has KK, all in PF. He flops top set when someone else flops middle set, all in on the flop. He turns a straight when someone else flops 2-pair. He sat down with about $250 and ran it up to nearly $800 through dumb luck. He’s playing somewhat loose PF, but he sticks to the big cards and doesn’t seem to play the lower cards. Most importantly, Villain has the shakes when he has a big hand, and its very obvious to the whole table. Its been a 100% reliable tell.
The Hand: UTG+1, I raise to $15 PF with AT-clubs. Four callers, including Villain in the BB.
Flop is 4-A-4, rainbow. Villain checks. I bet $45. Everyone folds to Villain, who just calls.
Turn is 4-A-4-2, two spades. Villain bets $100, and he’s shaking horribly. I openly called attention to his shaking by saying “The Shake-O-Meter is pretty high. That really scares me.” Some laughs at the table. Villain looks kind of scared. Then I call.
River is 4-A-4-2-2. Villain bets $200, and he’s shaking even more as he struggles to push forward two stacks of red without causing a minor earthquake. He has $405 left. I say “Wow” when he is done, to point out that I am very aware of how badly he is shaking and aware of his strength. Then I calmly push.
Villain thinks about folding for a long time, then calls and shows J4-hearts. I muck and go home.
Analysis: I was attempting to use his tell against him, but my play failed miserably. I was trying to tell him, “I know how strong you think your hand is, but I am still pushing in the face of such an obvious tell. I have you beat.” Maybe I should have been more blunt and just said, “I know you have a four, but you should still fold and save your chips. I’m all in.”
His pause after my push on the river meant that he at least gave serious consideration to the fact that I could have AA, or maybe A4. I played this hand exactly as I would with AA – just calling his strong bet on the turn, and then pushing on the river even though it was almost 100% obvious he had a four.
(As a side note, I could not figure out his other card during the hand. I really didn’t think he had A4, so that left something like 54 or maybe 64. So, his actual hand of J4 was very unexpected and out of character with his prior play, but also completely irrelevant.)
What I learned from this hand: Don’t try a big bluff against a mediocre player that is incapable of folding in this situation. Be less likely to bluff against someone that has had a really good night and 75% of his stack came from other players. Don’t bluff K-State donkeys.
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