JamesSlusher.com

For all of those out there that don’t know the answers to all of the stupid Obama rumors:

My 20 year (!) class reunion is coming up Friday.  I’m really excited about it and have been prepping for it for months now.  I’m down to 190 pounds and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in for years.  So other than having to admit I build tires for a living, I shouldn’t embarrass myself too much.  Well, no more than normal.

June 13th is rapidly approaching and that is when I go to Las Vegas to play in WSOP Event 27.  It’s a $1500 buy-in No Limit Hold ‘Em event.  It starts on the 14th and runs 3 days.  I’m hoping to win the last hand of the tourney, so I should be finishing up Monday evening some time.  Of course, anything can (and will) happen in poker so I could end up having 3 days to bum around.  In that case, my buddy Todd (who is going with me, but not playing in the tournament) and I will hang out in Vegas, see the sights, gamble a little and drink too much.  I’m in the tournament to win it, but as long as I make wise decisions and get my money in ahead, I will be happy with however it turns out.

So both of these things are coming up and are big deals for me, but right now it is simply wait, wait, wait.

Slusher Family 2008

Originally uploaded by jaslusher

Here is our obligatory family photo for 2008.

I’ve got a good-looking family and I know it.

I’ve noticed that most Republican mouthpieces string words together like they are always writing an 80’s pop music song.  They have these loaded words that evoke emotion from you, but once you string them together they actually make no sense.  In a way, this nonsense is almost exclusively the reason for their political successes.  You can’t really debate them on their merits, there are no merits.  It’s like reasoning with a drunk.  He is absolutely sure he is right and nothing you say can get him to button his pants back up and get out of the fountain.

Here are some examples:

Democrats just want to tax and spend.

Yes, that is in fact the correct way to do it.  Here is a quick lesson for all you Republicans:  Taxes are income.  That’s how you get the money to pay for government expenditures.  If you want to say, fight an unnecessary war that costs $222,000 a minute, you have to pay for it somehow.  Cutting taxes and then spending heavily (a time-honored Republican tradition) is how a country ends up broke.  Giving rich people a free ride whilst spending more than at any other time in history is only something that rich people would think of.

I’m tired of getting blamed for slavery.

Huh?  I’ve never once in my entire life ever heard a black person accuse a white person of being responsible for slavery.  Have you?  That’s crazy talk.  What is generally meant by that phrase is actually, “I’m scared that if the playing field were actually leveled so that everyone were judged on their own merits, I wouldn’t make it.  Please don’t point out the fact that others have been saddled with institutionalized racism, because if you point out all my advantages I will feel guilty about not having accomplished more.  And I want to feel good about myself without actually, you know, doing anything to help.”

Environmentalists are just wackos.

Yeah, you are right.  How could anyone in their right mind want to recycle more and pollute less?  Wackos.  Only a Republican could argue in favor of pollution.  On a related note, that reminds me of something a boss of mine (Charles Sinagra) once said.  He pointed out that there weren’t many mountain lions left.  He said, “we should go shoot one before they are all gone.”  If he was a Republican, he would have been serious.  Come to think of it, he might have been serious.

To get back to my original point, it’s like listening to 80’s pop songs.  It evokes an emotion but ultimately means nothing.

I’ve said this before, but it is worth repeating.  I rarely, if ever, hear nice people complaining about having to be politically correct.  It is almost exclusively the domain of jerks who don’t want to feel peer pressure to not be jerks.  If you can’t speak of others in basic terms that aren’t insulting, you need to shut up.  Now.

I’ve always felt that one of the biggest impediments to racial progress in America is that there aren’t any slurs of sufficient hatefulness towards White people.  Honkey just doesn’t cut it.  I’ve been called that before and it always seemed somewhat comical, like a cast member from Sanford and Son was insulting me.  No matter what happens in my life, I will always be able to handle taunts from someone that reminds me of Rollo with a smile on my face (Rollo, by the way, is my favorite character from that show).

I have decided, however, that despite the lack of a good slur, we need to have a euphemism for a name.  White is too easy.  So in the vein of African-American (which is dumb and I never use it), I think white people should be Blanco-Americans.  That is a term I think we can all be uncomfortable with, thus leveling the playing field.

Poker is a funny game.  There are all kind of games in this world and most of them have a single optimal strategy that if followed all but guarantee a high rate of success.  Tournament No Limit Hold Em Poker isn’t really like that because of several complicating factors.  First, there are up to 10 people at the table all playing different strategies to begin with.  There may be a single optimal strategy against any single player, but you have 8 others to contend with and unless you are the last guy to act, they can throw a monkey wrench into your plans at any moment.  Second, it is a game of incomplete information.  You don’t know what the other guy is playing, it could be gold or it could be garbage.  You have to guess based on what you have seen him/her play before and any clues he/she might give you.  And those clues might be a deception.  That’s where bluffing comes in.  Other people at the table can lie to you and it is perfectly acceptable. It’s this part of the game that is so devious.  Let me tell you a story of what just happened to me and how I got suckered by my own trick.

I play mostly premium hands in the early goings of a tourney.  By premium I mean AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ.  Those are the hands I will definitely enter any pot at any position with.  If it is especially cheap to get into a pot and I have a good position, I might play about any two cards.  Given 10 to 1 or better pot odds, I will play anything on the button (if you are confused by any of this poker jargon, go here for a good glossary).   If I win one out of every eleven times I play like that, I’m breaking even.  Anything better and I’m ahead of the game.  A side benefit of this is that people see these junky hands when I get lucky and win and think I play crap all of the time.  These cheap hands make me more money later on.  A short while ago on PokerStars I was playing in a tourney that I was dominating.  I hit with my good hands and I hit with my bad hands and I was coasting.  A few people were out and the second place chipleader was to my immediate right.  He called a raise and went all the way to a showdown with a 2 4 offsuit.  That info stuck with me.  What kind of moron calls a raise with a 2 4 off?  A big one that’s who.  Two hands later I have AJ off and I raise about 3 times the big blind.  He reraises me about the same amount.  Now I’ve seen him play crap, so I reraise him All in.  He has JJ.  I don’t hit my ace and I go from first to worst in one hand.  That’s the power of deception and he used my own trick against me. Bastard.  Minus that 2 4 hand, I would have just thought that he had a high pair (which would have been correct) and would have laid my hand down.

There is a third component to this game that I will talk about in a different post as it deserves it’s own attention: Luck.  Adding that in, you’ve got a brutal game.

My brother talked me into downloading the PokerStars software a few weeks ago.  It’s okay, the GUI is a little weird and I hate not being able to move my seat around on the table so I end up forgetting where I am at and losing track of when it is my turn.  Those are minor quibbles though.

A few days ago they deposited $5 free into my account since I had not deposited any money.  I guess it is a way to get you hooked.  The only stipulation is that you have to play it in a certain time frame or it disappears.  Thus far in $1 SitnGos I’m batting 1.000.  I’m 2 for 2.  I’m about to play a third and if I win this one, I know I will be hooked on PokerStars.  I still like Bodog too though.

Update: It turns out that some of the things that I don’t like about the GUI are customizable if you take the time to learn the software. My bad. 

I honestly don’t know what to say about this.