Sounds innocuous online, many people say it, but this time, or any time you're dealing with anything which COULD GET DRAGGED INTO COURT, find someone who actually says, "IAAL".
You don't want the nasty side effects of nothing written:
1. Verbal agreements are worth the paper they're printed on (aka nada). 2. Clear, defined boundaries on What Is X-Corp and What Is Yours precludes a claim by the employer of code ownership. 3. When you leave the company, there will be less bad blood between you and X-Corp.. which will make them usable reference when you try to work at Y, Ltd. 4. YOU COULD GET SUED!
This, to me, seems like a logical extension of The Jack.
For those of you who don't know what The Jack is, it is the term used to describe a 'play anything' format for radio.
It's not true 'play anything', of course; for example, a radio station in Chicago, WZRD (88.3 FM; Pacifica affiliate; college station), is true free-form, where one minute you'll hear jazz fusion and another you'll hear Tibetan chant, for example. Usually, it's 'play anything' within a specific genre, or within certain popular genres.
In the same way FM radio is upping its playlist song counts in an attempt to retain listeners, this talk radio station is using unpredictable podcasts in a similar manner: to pique the interests of potential listeners.
Either that, or trying to use the frequency as a huge write-off (in which case I would suggest simply licensing the BBC World Service, since there's at least a sizable audience for _that_ content...)
Instead of the regular Risk games, I suggest getting one of Hasbro^H^H^H^H^H^HAvalon Hill's other versions... *Risk 2210: You have commanders which change the odds in your favor (short version: instead of rolling d6, you roll d8), you have a game which will end (only five turns-- then again, my cabal of gamers has yet to finish in less than two hours), and more territories to conquer (underwater and the moon) *Risk Godstorm: You have the gods, who fight amongst themselves and reward you with boons for performing certain tasks; the gameboard looks like an ancient map of Europa, yet is still the same ol' Risk board; your troops keep fighting for you in the Underworld; you can sink Atlantis (and really piss someone off;)
I also suggest the game Succession by Your Move Games. You are a courtier, and you are trying to promote one of five candidates the dying King is considering to be the next monarch. You work behind the scenes, pushing a candidate and trying to win favor with him/her. It's fun.
Not a boardgame, granted, but I am still a huge fan of Paranoia XP, printed by Mongoose Publishing. Essentially, your job is to expose your teammates as traitorous mutant Commie scum before they do that to you, even though you are a traitor and a mutant. (Commie optional.)
Time to go now.. Samantha has been talking to a musician friend, and he has fixed her up with a large pianist. She's having difficulty squeezing him in to her docket...
I play a total blender (which, to add to the chaos, I've completely sleeved- small-format card sleeves are perfect for this) which lasts - typically! - three hours a pop between five people.
SJ Games, though, make a great choice for non-collectible card games, and you are supporting a guy who got f***ed over by the Secret Service because of a game related to hacking.
Looney Labs also makes: -Stoner Fluxx, which is flooded with weed and donates a buck towards legalization -Chrononauts and Early American Chrononauts, where you can screw around with time for fun and profit -Are You A Werewolf?, the cheapest fun you can have with 9-15 people (it costs three f***ing bucks! and you get to kill the peasantry!) -Nanofictionary, where you make up a cute little story on the fly -Fluxx Aquarius, where you try to get seven tiles with your image to connect -Icehouse, whose pyramids are the basis of myriad games ranging from simple to absolutely psychotically hard!
Granted, this may qualify as shameless pimping for Avalon Hill -} Wizards of the Coast -} Hasbro, but the new Risk games they've released are great.
Risk 2210: You can conquer the moon and take over underwater cities. Parts of the world are completely inaccessible due to nuclear holocost (when the right parts of Oz or SouthAm are gone, it's twisted). You have space stations, which send dudes to the moon and let you defend on a D8; you have commanders, which have specialties and d8's at their disposal. You have cards, which do cool and nifty things. Yes, parts of the moon and ocean are continents with appropriate bonuses.
Risk Godstorm: It's the European mythic past (sorry Asia, Africa, Americas.) With a map of the world which resembles medieval orientation and style, yet has the functional similarity to the classic Risk board, you try to conquer the ancient world. Setup is recommended to be random; adds extra skill. Four areas are blighted with plague; plague kills half the troops and banishes gods, since the people lose faith. Gods lead troops in battle, have special abilities. Gods fight other gods. The dead (mostly) go to the Underworld, where they can keep fighting and, possibly, return to the World of the Living. There are cards, which are expensive or require a labor be competed, like conquering three territories or rolling trips. Magical artifacts can f*** things up. Atlantis can be sunk. Sound good?
Both games are 5 turns long (usually), turn order is by bidding energy (2210) or faith (Godstorm).
I would love to learn more about Canadian history.
American history is all about wars, and genocide, and dirty dealings in rooms full of substances the state of California finds to be dangerous to the health....
Thing is, though, Americans, in general, tend to think of themselves as "God's chosen people". This particular bias comes from when a bunch of tight-strung Calvinists from East Anglia missed the St Lawrence by several miles, instead landing on a forsaken rock they decided to call Plymouth, for some reason commemorating the land they left. As a result, there is a general attitude that the rest of the world can go f*** itself. (Why do you think Americans generally barely qualify as monoglots?)
At least Canada has a lower drinking age and available healthcare.
Here's the secret to buying any - and I do mean ANY - game:
Make sure that there's someone to play with!
I mean, I may have a beautiful chess set in my basement. But what f***ing good does it do me if I can't find someone to play with?
Risk is infamous in this regard, since apocryphally games could last forever. The new Risk games, 2210 and Godstorm, have a limited number of turns to preclude this. Still, a full game runs nearly 3 hours. Can you find a cadre of people to do this with?
How about RPGs? Expand the imagination, do stuff you normally can't... but can you find people willing to invest the time?
How about Munchkin? It's a great game, with a bunch of expansions and base sets, which SRPs for about 25 per base set, 15 per expansion, for a grand total of about USD 160 for a full, complete, maniacal, 'blender' game. Backstabbing, wheeling and dealing, and insane humor. Hard to get people together though..
Hell... even Go can have this problem.
(Aside: Go kicks ass. You can understand someone by how they play Go, or so I've been told. Then again, that also holds true for other games... like poker.....;)
(Aside: Yes, I know several games can be played online. It's an entirely different experience handling bits than handling stones, pawns, or cards. Real life is underrated. The previous comes from a hardcore geek who has spent more than half his life online. )
You wanna change the world, you gotta do it yourself.
We have to challenge EVERY ONE OF THESE APPLICATIONS.
Not just the behemoth from Redmond, though. I mean all software patents.
The nice thing about the patent system is this whole public review period before some bureaucrat rubber-stamps and OKs it, and the ability to claim prior art afterwards.
It's a better to prevent a patent than to cancel one. Enough of us, who have the technical knowledge and some form of literary skill needed to educate the patent clerks, can prevent an request for a patent from hurling its way through.
[ I know that I don't speak out much anymore, but this was too friggin' important for me to stay silent (especially with my good-karma mouthpiece). ]
Re:Dunno - newbie pack is formidible
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Geeks and Poker?
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· Score: 1
You should almost never fold AA pre flop (though there are very very very rare situations where it is a good idea), but AA is only an 87% winner against a random hand.
If you're flying American Airlines, chances are you WANT to push all your chips into the middle of the table, given the opportunity. It forces players with weaker hands out, and you are going to stare down a hand which needs a lot of help to win.
IT IS NEVER THE CORRECT PLAY TO FOLD ACES PREFLOP. Even if another player also has aces, chances are high you will split the pot, since the only way one wins outright is with a flush draw.
The only time you'd fold bullets preflop is if you know the other two are out of the deck, and by nature of the game you really can't know that without cheating.
It also needs to be clarified: AA beats non-pairs roughly 85-93% of the time, less if the cards are suted (by a bare percentage or two) AA beats pairs roughly 4:1.
I needed to reply to this, because that is horrific misinformation.
Re:Personally... (Video poker is not the issue!)
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Think about what JQ Public says when they listen to geekish. It's a similar situation: every subgroup has a specific slang. (Try dissecting med or law sometime. Eew.)
Here's a good description of the game, and I don't just say that because I wrote it: Link to the entire yee-haw of Texas Hold'Em (Yeah, I know, I missed a couple things. Sue me later.)
If you know about poker stuff, then just/ignore the rest of this post. Else, enjoy a little poker lingo.
I explained a few terms within the post, but here's a few more: Blind: Forced bets. The players dealt cards first in the hand must post blinds prior to looking at cards. The first player posts a 'small' or 'little' blind, roughly half a full wager. The second player posts the 'big' blind, equal to a full wager. The blinds are live bets.
Button: In games with a "blind" structure, like Texas Hold'Em, the button represents the person who would be the dealer if the players dealt themselves. The button rotates around the table, moving one person each hand. Each full rotation, every player has posted the big and littl eblinds. The player 'on the button' has a positional advantage, since s/he gets to act last in each round after the first (the blinds, who had to wager prior to getting cards, act last in the first round).
Supersatellite: The poor man's way to get into a major tournament. Entries into a super are significantly cheaper than a main event; for example, entries into the last chance supers to WSOP Main Event are $200+$25, and supers into the Rendevous de Paris this July are E500+0 (both compare to $/E10,000 buy-ins). Online supersatellites can be even cheaper; UltimateBet runs $100+$9 tourneys which feed most major WPT events and its own stop in Aruba, PartyPoker held events as cheap as $25+$2 to get into WSOP (they sent over 300 people there!) Note: X+Y is the normal form for tourney entry fees. X goes into the prize pool. Y goes to defray cost of running the event, such as tying up the venue for so many days, paying the dealers, providing the cards and chips, etc. Technically, this year's WSOP is a $9600+$400 event. Doesn't change the fact it costs 10 large to play.
Big Slick: A-K. One of the most powerful, dangerous hands in Hold'Em. Khan: A-Q. (Newer term. Plays off the name of the nuclear scientist from Pakistan who sold secrets to anyone with the cash.) Wired: A pair. Any pair can be called wired. (Ex: I got eliminated with wired 8's when that guy hit his inside straight draw.) Cowboys, Knights, etc: A pair of kings. Second or third best opening hand in Hold'Em, depending on who you talk to. Bullets, Pocket Rockets, American Airlines, etc: A pair of aces. Hands down, THE BEST opening hand you can get in Texas Hold'em. Ducks: 2's. Don't ask. Presto: 5's. Don't ask.
Tight: A player who plays little, and then only the best starting hands. When a tight player reaches for chips, either you better have a better hand or run. Loose: A player who plays way too much. Loose players play insane hands, like 8-6, 9-5, etc, hands without much chance of winning. These are also known (by expert players) as rent money. Dog: Think.. UNDERdog.
Flop: The play in Texas Hold'Em is around three revelations of community cards, and those five community cards combine with a player's two down cards to make the best possible 5-card poker hand. The first revelation is of three cards, dealt off the top of the deck after a card is discarded, and is known as the FLOP. A round of betting occurs after the flop is shown. Turn: The next revelation is a single card known as the TURN. A round of betting again commences. River: The last revelation - the fifth card is revealed now.
Check out my most recent journal entry for a few more links, because I'm too lazy to write it all here.
Oh yeah, to the AC that says 8th is no different from last: For me the difference was six hours of play, nearly two thousand dollars from
Skill in Hold'Em ( was: Re: Personally..)
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Luck has a role in poker, sure. You can't control what cards you get, but, once you have the cards, skill really takes over. Your decisions on what to do with those cards can win you the hand, regardless of what the cards say.
Going all-in with The HAMMER! (7-2 offsuit) isn't necessarily a bad play, especially when you think your opponants got dealt crap. Going all-in with aces isn't necessarily a good play, if there's someone you suspect may have a decent hand and you wish to get all the chips you can out of him.
Skill in betting is precisely a mathematical skill. At the least, you need to know what odds you're getting and giving for that bet. (EX: 100k bet into a 1M pot = 10:1 pot odds.) Flashing through exactly which hands can beat yours, and the odds that your opponant has it, is also tricky. (EX: I have Q-9 off. Board reads 6-7-Q-8-T, rainbow. What beats my hand? A J-9.)
If no skill were involved, then each final table would be completely different and random... but you look at the leader boards, and a few faces keep coming to the top. Games of skill have a cream of the crop. Games of chance, by nature, can't.
sorry but roulette with just picking the color gives your 50% odds of winning. That's pretty damn good and pretty much the best you can expect of any form of gambling. (payout is lower though)
Dolt! Ever look at a roulette wheel?
18 red spaces
18 black spaces
1 or 2 GREEN SPACES
18/(37 or 38) != 50%.
Those green spaces are, quite frankly, the house edge in roulette. There is no freaking way to get those kind of odds playing a card game (at least not without counting cards; which is illegal BTW).
Yeah, there is. Craps played on the pass/don't pass with sufficiently high odds (10x plus) approaches even money. Blackjack with perfect basic strategy approaches even money odds. Poker is a game which advantage is explicitly possible, since one plays against other people, not the house.
In addition, COUNTING CARDS IS NOT ILLEGAL. So long as you do it in your head and not with any aids or with any help. They can't criminalize what's in yer head. If you do it right, as well, they can't stop you, either.
One problem I've heard about is collusion. You go to a casino or a card club and play for money with people you don't know, and you don't realize that two of them are actually in it together. For instance, they'll have a secret signal so that one knows to drop out when the other is bluffing. Seems like it could be equally bad online.
One solution to that is the SHEER ABUNDANCE OF SURVEILLANCE at brick-and-mortar casinos. I mean, the only place without a cam is the restroom, and if they could do so legally they would have them there as well.
Online it is potentially worse. Besides RT chats, like IRC and IM, you also have programs like PokerTracker which take your brain out of the equasion by tracking all your opponants for you. (I never use that because I play online for the numbers exersize and tournament experience, and I need to keep the wit sharp for RL play.) Link to audio
Low stakes games... Ahh.. The old "No Fold'em hold'em" games.
Actually, it is quite true that the pros playing the better hands will win more in the long haul. Note, IN THE LONG HAUL. You will roller-coaster up and down.
That's life.
You deal with it.
If you don't have a bankroll that can support that, build a bigger one or stop playing. (Rough words, but you need a bankroll of approximately 300 big wagers to safely eradicate your risk of ruin.)
I've done so consistantly. Patience and endurance are the keys. If you are a good player, you should be able to push the other guys around and pull their chips into your stack.
Good example: In one session at a table I had aces and kings cracked. I kept pressing, and I turned my $120 buyin at a $3/$6 kill game to $250 in six hours.
Best example: I go to a No Limit table. Buy in is $200, but everyone else at the table has at least $1,000. Yet me, little short stack with virtually no chips, still pushes the big guys around. Why? Because I wait for the better hands, and play them appropriately. I walked away from that table three hours later with a sore back and $1,200.
Poker is a tough game. It takes time to learn, especially how to handle it live. (In my first hold'em tourney, I was the first man eliminated because I knew damn near nothing about how to play. Seriously.)
Re:"How many Slashdot readers play poker"??
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Geeks and Poker?
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All those who aren't posting anymore, because they're too skint to pay the ISP bill now...
I know that was probably meant as a joke, but I want to be serious for a sec. I'm a fairly serious gamer.
That's the sign of a gaming problem.
I play a good deal. But all the money I use to play with is money that I don't need to pay for food, clothes, bills, car, etc.
I've seen people go broke playing. Not just poker, but any game. Hell, I wouldn't doubt that a few of the 2,576 that signed up for the WSOP Main Event put up money they couldn't afford.
Some people just can't stand up from the table. If you're playing to the point where you can't cover your costs of living, then you really REALLY should talk to someone, like Gamblers' Anonymous, or call your state's gaming problem help line.
Don't mean to be a total buzzkill, but I seriously don't want to win someone's rent money or the money she needs to feed her kids.
Re:Personally... (Video poker is not the issue!)
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Geeks and Poker?
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VIDEO poker != TABLE poker.
Lemme explain, as a fairly proficient card shark. (I missed WSOP by eight seats in a 150-man supersatellite this past Feb. Wired 7s, short-stacked, on the button, against a bozo with 9-10 off. He flopped a 9, I go home.)
Video poker is a game of chance. Granted, due to Gaming Board regulations, the chance of any card hitting is in line with actual probabilities, but, in the end, you are, like a slot monkey, looking for particular combinations of cards to get a payoff, usually starting at a pair of jacks.
Table poker, though, is an entirely different animal. Larger amounts of money are typically involved. Play is much more skill-based than in video poker. Knowing when to toss Big Slick (A-K), or when to hold Khan (A-Q) is a tricky thing to master. It's even harder to know what to do on a flop. Some flops it's damned obvious, some the right looking thing will kill you. (Ex: A-9, flop comes 9-3-3 with one caller. Too bad the &*#$ had J-3. Two pair is good. A set is better.)
Add to that understanding the psychology of the game. You have tight players, you have loose players, you have lunatics, you have masters, and quite often you don't know who's who until they've taken some of your precious pieces of resin. VP, you're playing a machine.
Probability is also a major major factor. Big Slick, for example, is a monster hand because (a) it is favored against any other non-paired hand and (b) against any paired hand that isn't kings or aces, it's a coin-flip. (7-3 dog against cowboys, 12-1 dog against bullets. Link to a great poker odds calculator)
But the most difficult part of poker - especially high-stakes tournament poker - is keeping it together when you're so nervous, excited, tense, and anxious at the same time. Keeping it together when you know you've got the nuts (the very best hand possible) and you've got a sucker betting into you.. or calming down enough to see if your set also made your opponent fill her straight.. It's tough.
This DiskT@2(tm) lets you burn an image or text on the unused portion of a CD-R or (potentially) DVD-R, using laser pulses a tenth the duration of those used in the actual burn.
If you want another reason to nudge towards physical activity: Exercise promotes brain function.
Beyond research showing that exercise alters the function of the brain in a beneficial manner, just simple biology will tell you that increased cardiovascular activity leads to increased oxygen capacity in the blood, which can carry more of that precious O2 into your greymatta and increase mental function.
The ancient Greeks had a point in training minds and bodies.
Rupert Murdoch is basically gambling his empire on DirecTV.
1: Charlie Ergen, CEO of Echostar, IS a gambler. Not as in a business sense.
2: You forget that NewsCorp. is one of the largest media empires of the world. DirecTV gives him worldwide satellite coverage, Fox News gives him news. While DirecTV may be a jewel of his crown, there are other elements that make it sit high on his head.
If the GOP becomes a threat to profitabity, Rupert will try to eliminate the GOP.
Not a chance. His politics lean conservative to begin with. FCC regulation? Bah. So what if it means he can't PPV porn (fat chance, especially once courts get involved, possibly fixing original indecency decision)? The satellite network is useful for other reasons to Rup.
Content regulation only affects certain aspects of broadcasting. The primary target is OTA broadcasters, the ones you pick up on a radio dial or with a pair of rabbit ears on your radiation box. Secondary targets may be basic cable channels, as they tend to use unscrambled satellite signals for broadcast. Note, *may* *be*. One typically cannot receive such signals without equipment, my neighbor's (EM-wise) noisy TV notwithstanding.
Premium services and PPV events, which are encrypted and encoded, are most likely to avoid any regulation. Current laws, including our ol' friend 12 USC 1701, preclude illicit reception of the signals.
I am not a lawyer, but I play one online. Do not use for legal advice, medication, stock tips, or to induce vomiting.
I took the plunge last week and got a laptop based on AMD's Mobile Athlon64.
For the next month or so, or until I see someone with a Voodoo machine (not likely), I can rest assured that my laptop is well ahead of the Intel curve:)
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL.
Sounds innocuous online, many people say it, but this time, or any time you're dealing with anything which COULD GET DRAGGED INTO COURT, find someone who actually says, "IAAL".
You don't want the nasty side effects of nothing written:
1. Verbal agreements are worth the paper they're printed on (aka nada).
2. Clear, defined boundaries on What Is X-Corp and What Is Yours precludes a claim by the employer of code ownership.
3. When you leave the company, there will be less bad blood between you and X-Corp.. which will make them usable reference when you try to work at Y, Ltd.
4. YOU COULD GET SUED!
$100 at a lawyer now will save $250 per hr later.
I'm going to take the contrarian view on this one.
Yes, it'll help the job skills of the unemployed. But, who's going to keep those highways clean? Who's going to bring meals to the elderly?
(Take it as Funny or Sarcastic. I'm too damned tired to know which hemisphere's in charge.)
This, to me, seems like a logical extension of The Jack.
For those of you who don't know what The Jack is, it is the term used to describe a 'play anything' format for radio.
It's not true 'play anything', of course; for example, a radio station in Chicago, WZRD (88.3 FM; Pacifica affiliate; college station), is true free-form, where one minute you'll hear jazz fusion and another you'll hear Tibetan chant, for example. Usually, it's 'play anything' within a specific genre, or within certain popular genres.
In the same way FM radio is upping its playlist song counts in an attempt to retain listeners, this talk radio station is using unpredictable podcasts in a similar manner: to pique the interests of potential listeners.
Either that, or trying to use the frequency as a huge write-off (in which case I would suggest simply licensing the BBC World Service, since there's at least a sizable audience for _that_ content...)
-From a grandfather of the modern podcast.
Instead of the regular Risk games, I suggest getting one of Hasbro^H^H^H^H^H^HAvalon Hill's other versions... ;)
*Risk 2210: You have commanders which change the odds in your favor (short version: instead of rolling d6, you roll d8), you have a game which will end (only five turns-- then again, my cabal of gamers has yet to finish in less than two hours), and more territories to conquer (underwater and the moon)
*Risk Godstorm: You have the gods, who fight amongst themselves and reward you with boons for performing certain tasks; the gameboard looks like an ancient map of Europa, yet is still the same ol' Risk board; your troops keep fighting for you in the Underworld; you can sink Atlantis (and really piss someone off
I also suggest the game Succession by Your Move Games. You are a courtier, and you are trying to promote one of five candidates the dying King is considering to be the next monarch. You work behind the scenes, pushing a candidate and trying to win favor with him/her. It's fun.
Not a boardgame, granted, but I am still a huge fan of Paranoia XP, printed by Mongoose Publishing. Essentially, your job is to expose your teammates as traitorous mutant Commie scum before they do that to you, even though you are a traitor and a mutant. (Commie optional.)
Time to go now.. Samantha has been talking to a musician friend, and he has fixed her up with a large pianist. She's having difficulty squeezing him in to her docket...
Did you come by the WotC booth in the gaming area to do any CCG stuff, by any chance?
QUICK?!?!?!?
You gotta be nuts.
I play a total blender (which, to add to the chaos, I've completely sleeved- small-format card sleeves are perfect for this) which lasts - typically! - three hours a pop between five people.
SJ Games, though, make a great choice for non-collectible card games, and you are supporting a guy who got f***ed over by the Secret Service because of a game related to hacking.
Fnord.
Looney Labs also makes:
-Stoner Fluxx, which is flooded with weed and donates a buck towards legalization
-Chrononauts and Early American Chrononauts, where you can screw around with time for fun and profit
-Are You A Werewolf?, the cheapest fun you can have with 9-15 people (it costs three f***ing bucks! and you get to kill the peasantry!)
-Nanofictionary, where you make up a cute little story on the fly
-Fluxx Aquarius, where you try to get seven tiles with your image to connect
-Icehouse, whose pyramids are the basis of myriad games ranging from simple to absolutely psychotically hard!
Granted, this may qualify as shameless pimping for Avalon Hill -} Wizards of the Coast -} Hasbro, but the new Risk games they've released are great.
Risk 2210: You can conquer the moon and take over underwater cities. Parts of the world are completely inaccessible due to nuclear holocost (when the right parts of Oz or SouthAm are gone, it's twisted). You have space stations, which send dudes to the moon and let you defend on a D8; you have commanders, which have specialties and d8's at their disposal. You have cards, which do cool and nifty things. Yes, parts of the moon and ocean are continents with appropriate bonuses.
Risk Godstorm: It's the European mythic past (sorry Asia, Africa, Americas.) With a map of the world which resembles medieval orientation and style, yet has the functional similarity to the classic Risk board, you try to conquer the ancient world. Setup is recommended to be random; adds extra skill. Four areas are blighted with plague; plague kills half the troops and banishes gods, since the people lose faith. Gods lead troops in battle, have special abilities. Gods fight other gods. The dead (mostly) go to the Underworld, where they can keep fighting and, possibly, return to the World of the Living. There are cards, which are expensive or require a labor be competed, like conquering three territories or rolling trips. Magical artifacts can f*** things up. Atlantis can be sunk. Sound good?
Both games are 5 turns long (usually), turn order is by bidding energy (2210) or faith (Godstorm).
I would love to learn more about Canadian history.
American history is all about wars, and genocide, and dirty dealings in rooms full of substances the state of California finds to be dangerous to the health....
Thing is, though, Americans, in general, tend to think of themselves as "God's chosen people". This particular bias comes from when a bunch of tight-strung Calvinists from East Anglia missed the St Lawrence by several miles, instead landing on a forsaken rock they decided to call Plymouth, for some reason commemorating the land they left. As a result, there is a general attitude that the rest of the world can go f*** itself. (Why do you think Americans generally barely qualify as monoglots?)
At least Canada has a lower drinking age and available healthcare.
Here's the secret to buying any - and I do mean ANY - game:
;)
Make sure that there's someone to play with!
I mean, I may have a beautiful chess set in my basement. But what f***ing good does it do me if I can't find someone to play with?
Risk is infamous in this regard, since apocryphally games could last forever. The new Risk games, 2210 and Godstorm, have a limited number of turns to preclude this. Still, a full game runs nearly 3 hours. Can you find a cadre of people to do this with?
How about RPGs? Expand the imagination, do stuff you normally can't... but can you find people willing to invest the time?
How about Munchkin? It's a great game, with a bunch of expansions and base sets, which SRPs for about 25 per base set, 15 per expansion, for a grand total of about USD 160 for a full, complete, maniacal, 'blender' game. Backstabbing, wheeling and dealing, and insane humor. Hard to get people together though..
Hell... even Go can have this problem.
(Aside: Go kicks ass. You can understand someone by how they play Go, or so I've been told. Then again, that also holds true for other games... like poker.....
(Aside: Yes, I know several games can be played online. It's an entirely different experience handling bits than handling stones, pawns, or cards. Real life is underrated. The previous comes from a hardcore geek who has spent more than half his life online. )
Simple.
You wanna change the world, you gotta do it yourself.
We have to challenge EVERY ONE OF THESE APPLICATIONS.
Not just the behemoth from Redmond, though. I mean all software patents.
The nice thing about the patent system is this whole public review period before some bureaucrat rubber-stamps and OKs it, and the ability to claim prior art afterwards.
It's a better to prevent a patent than to cancel one. Enough of us, who have the technical knowledge and some form of literary skill needed to educate the patent clerks, can prevent an request for a patent from hurling its way through.
[
I know that I don't speak out much anymore, but this was too friggin' important for me to stay silent (especially with my good-karma mouthpiece).
]
You should almost never fold AA pre flop (though there are very very very rare situations where it is a good idea), but AA is only an 87% winner against a random hand.
If you're flying American Airlines, chances are you WANT to push all your chips into the middle of the table, given the opportunity. It forces players with weaker hands out, and you are going to stare down a hand which needs a lot of help to win.
IT IS NEVER THE CORRECT PLAY TO FOLD ACES PREFLOP. Even if another player also has aces, chances are high you will split the pot, since the only way one wins outright is with a flush draw.
The only time you'd fold bullets preflop is if you know the other two are out of the deck, and by nature of the game you really can't know that without cheating.
It also needs to be clarified:
AA beats non-pairs roughly 85-93% of the time, less if the cards are suted (by a bare percentage or two)
AA beats pairs roughly 4:1.
I needed to reply to this, because that is horrific misinformation.
Think about what JQ Public says when they listen to geekish. It's a similar situation: every subgroup has a specific slang. (Try dissecting med or law sometime. Eew.)
/ignore the rest of this post. Else, enjoy a little poker lingo.
Here's a good description of the game, and I don't just say that because I wrote it: Link to the entire yee-haw of Texas Hold'Em (Yeah, I know, I missed a couple things. Sue me later.)
If you know about poker stuff, then just
I explained a few terms within the post, but here's a few more:
Blind: Forced bets. The players dealt cards first in the hand must post blinds prior to looking at cards. The first player posts a 'small' or 'little' blind, roughly half a full wager. The second player posts the 'big' blind, equal to a full wager. The blinds are live bets.
Button: In games with a "blind" structure, like Texas Hold'Em, the button represents the person who would be the dealer if the players dealt themselves. The button rotates around the table, moving one person each hand. Each full rotation, every player has posted the big and littl eblinds. The player 'on the button' has a positional advantage, since s/he gets to act last in each round after the first (the blinds, who had to wager prior to getting cards, act last in the first round).
Supersatellite: The poor man's way to get into a major tournament. Entries into a super are significantly cheaper than a main event; for example, entries into the last chance supers to WSOP Main Event are $200+$25, and supers into the Rendevous de Paris this July are E500+0 (both compare to $/E10,000 buy-ins). Online supersatellites can be even cheaper; UltimateBet runs $100+$9 tourneys which feed most major WPT events and its own stop in Aruba, PartyPoker held events as cheap as $25+$2 to get into WSOP (they sent over 300 people there!)
Note: X+Y is the normal form for tourney entry fees. X goes into the prize pool. Y goes to defray cost of running the event, such as tying up the venue for so many days, paying the dealers, providing the cards and chips, etc. Technically, this year's WSOP is a $9600+$400 event. Doesn't change the fact it costs 10 large to play.
Big Slick: A-K. One of the most powerful, dangerous hands in Hold'Em.
Khan: A-Q. (Newer term. Plays off the name of the nuclear scientist from Pakistan who sold secrets to anyone with the cash.)
Wired: A pair. Any pair can be called wired. (Ex: I got eliminated with wired 8's when that guy hit his inside straight draw.)
Cowboys, Knights, etc: A pair of kings. Second or third best opening hand in Hold'Em, depending on who you talk to.
Bullets, Pocket Rockets, American Airlines, etc: A pair of aces. Hands down, THE BEST opening hand you can get in Texas Hold'em.
Ducks: 2's. Don't ask.
Presto: 5's. Don't ask.
Tight: A player who plays little, and then only the best starting hands. When a tight player reaches for chips, either you better have a better hand or run.
Loose: A player who plays way too much. Loose players play insane hands, like 8-6, 9-5, etc, hands without much chance of winning. These are also known (by expert players) as rent money.
Dog: Think.. UNDERdog.
Flop: The play in Texas Hold'Em is around three revelations of community cards, and those five community cards combine with a player's two down cards to make the best possible 5-card poker hand. The first revelation is of three cards, dealt off the top of the deck after a card is discarded, and is known as the FLOP. A round of betting occurs after the flop is shown.
Turn: The next revelation is a single card known as the TURN. A round of betting again commences.
River: The last revelation - the fifth card is revealed now.
Check out my most recent journal entry for a few more links, because I'm too lazy to write it all here.
Oh yeah, to the AC that says 8th is no different from last: For me the difference was six hours of play, nearly two thousand dollars from
Luck has a role in poker, sure. You can't control what cards you get, but, once you have the cards, skill really takes over. Your decisions on what to do with those cards can win you the hand, regardless of what the cards say.
Going all-in with The HAMMER! (7-2 offsuit) isn't necessarily a bad play, especially when you think your opponants got dealt crap. Going all-in with aces isn't necessarily a good play, if there's someone you suspect may have a decent hand and you wish to get all the chips you can out of him.
Skill in betting is precisely a mathematical skill. At the least, you need to know what odds you're getting and giving for that bet. (EX: 100k bet into a 1M pot = 10:1 pot odds.) Flashing through exactly which hands can beat yours, and the odds that your opponant has it, is also tricky. (EX: I have Q-9 off. Board reads 6-7-Q-8-T, rainbow. What beats my hand? A J-9.)
If no skill were involved, then each final table would be completely different and random... but you look at the leader boards, and a few faces keep coming to the top. Games of skill have a cream of the crop. Games of chance, by nature, can't.
You still end up down. Ever see the fees on those machines?
Brutal!
sorry but roulette with just picking the color gives your 50% odds of winning. That's pretty damn good and pretty much the best you can expect of any form of gambling. (payout is lower though)
Dolt! Ever look at a roulette wheel?
18 red spaces
18 black spaces
1 or 2 GREEN SPACES
18/(37 or 38) != 50%.
Those green spaces are, quite frankly, the house edge in roulette.
There is no freaking way to get those kind of odds playing a card game (at least not without counting cards; which is illegal BTW).
Yeah, there is. Craps played on the pass/don't pass with sufficiently high odds (10x plus) approaches even money. Blackjack with perfect basic strategy approaches even money odds. Poker is a game which advantage is explicitly possible, since one plays against other people, not the house.
In addition, COUNTING CARDS IS NOT ILLEGAL. So long as you do it in your head and not with any aids or with any help. They can't criminalize what's in yer head. If you do it right, as well, they can't stop you, either.
Please mod the AC parent DOWN.
One solution to that is the SHEER ABUNDANCE OF SURVEILLANCE at brick-and-mortar casinos. I mean, the only place without a cam is the restroom, and if they could do so legally they would have them there as well.
Online it is potentially worse. Besides RT chats, like IRC and IM, you also have programs like PokerTracker which take your brain out of the equasion by tracking all your opponants for you. (I never use that because I play online for the numbers exersize and tournament experience, and I need to keep the wit sharp for RL play.) Link to audio
Low stakes games... Ahh.. The old "No Fold'em hold'em" games.
Actually, it is quite true that the pros playing the better hands will win more in the long haul. Note, IN THE LONG HAUL. You will roller-coaster up and down.
That's life.
You deal with it.
If you don't have a bankroll that can support that, build a bigger one or stop playing. (Rough words, but you need a bankroll of approximately 300 big wagers to safely eradicate your risk of ruin.)
I've done so consistantly. Patience and endurance are the keys. If you are a good player, you should be able to push the other guys around and pull their chips into your stack.
Good example: In one session at a table I had aces and kings cracked. I kept pressing, and I turned my $120 buyin at a $3/$6 kill game to $250 in six hours.
Best example: I go to a No Limit table. Buy in is $200, but everyone else at the table has at least $1,000. Yet me, little short stack with virtually no chips, still pushes the big guys around. Why? Because I wait for the better hands, and play them appropriately. I walked away from that table three hours later with a sore back and $1,200.
Poker is a tough game. It takes time to learn, especially how to handle it live. (In my first hold'em tourney, I was the first man eliminated because I knew damn near nothing about how to play. Seriously.)
I know that was probably meant as a joke, but I want to be serious for a sec. I'm a fairly serious gamer.
That's the sign of a gaming problem.
I play a good deal. But all the money I use to play with is money that I don't need to pay for food, clothes, bills, car, etc.
I've seen people go broke playing. Not just poker, but any game. Hell, I wouldn't doubt that a few of the 2,576 that signed up for the WSOP Main Event put up money they couldn't afford.
Some people just can't stand up from the table.
If you're playing to the point where you can't cover your costs of living, then you really REALLY should talk to someone, like Gamblers' Anonymous, or call your state's gaming problem help line.
Don't mean to be a total buzzkill, but I seriously don't want to win someone's rent money or the money she needs to feed her kids.
VIDEO poker != TABLE poker.
Lemme explain, as a fairly proficient card shark. (I missed WSOP by eight seats in a 150-man supersatellite this past Feb. Wired 7s, short-stacked, on the button, against a bozo with 9-10 off. He flopped a 9, I go home.)
Video poker is a game of chance. Granted, due to Gaming Board regulations, the chance of any card hitting is in line with actual probabilities, but, in the end, you are, like a slot monkey, looking for particular combinations of cards to get a payoff, usually starting at a pair of jacks.
Table poker, though, is an entirely different animal. Larger amounts of money are typically involved. Play is much more skill-based than in video poker. Knowing when to toss Big Slick (A-K), or when to hold Khan (A-Q) is a tricky thing to master. It's even harder to know what to do on a flop. Some flops it's damned obvious, some the right looking thing will kill you. (Ex: A-9, flop comes 9-3-3 with one caller. Too bad the &*#$ had J-3. Two pair is good. A set is better.)
Add to that understanding the psychology of the game. You have tight players, you have loose players, you have lunatics, you have masters, and quite often you don't know who's who until they've taken some of your precious pieces of resin. VP, you're playing a machine.
Probability is also a major major factor. Big Slick, for example, is a monster hand because (a) it is favored against any other non-paired hand and (b) against any paired hand that isn't kings or aces, it's a coin-flip. (7-3 dog against cowboys, 12-1 dog against bullets. Link to a great poker odds calculator)
But the most difficult part of poker - especially high-stakes tournament poker - is keeping it together when you're so nervous, excited, tense, and anxious at the same time. Keeping it together when you know you've got the nuts (the very best hand possible) and you've got a sucker betting into you.. or calming down enough to see if your set also made your opponent fill her straight.. It's tough.
I love it.
Yamaha beat this one to the punch, and it uses REGULAR MEDIA.
0 1.asp
Link: http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/tech/discta2_
This DiskT@2(tm) lets you burn an image or text on the unused portion of a CD-R or (potentially) DVD-R, using laser pulses a tenth the duration of those used in the actual burn.
If you want another reason to nudge towards physical activity: Exercise promotes brain function.
Beyond research showing that exercise alters the function of the brain in a beneficial manner, just simple biology will tell you that increased cardiovascular activity leads to increased oxygen capacity in the blood, which can carry more of that precious O2 into your greymatta and increase mental function.
The ancient Greeks had a point in training minds and bodies.
1: Charlie Ergen, CEO of Echostar, IS a gambler. Not as in a business sense.
2: You forget that NewsCorp. is one of the largest media empires of the world. DirecTV gives him worldwide satellite coverage, Fox News gives him news. While DirecTV may be a jewel of his crown, there are other elements that make it sit high on his head.
Not a chance. His politics lean conservative to begin with. FCC regulation? Bah. So what if it means he can't PPV porn (fat chance, especially once courts get involved, possibly fixing original indecency decision)? The satellite network is useful for other reasons to Rup.
Content regulation only affects certain aspects of broadcasting. The primary target is OTA broadcasters, the ones you pick up on a radio dial or with a pair of rabbit ears on your radiation box. Secondary targets may be basic cable channels, as they tend to use unscrambled satellite signals for broadcast. Note, *may* *be*. One typically cannot receive such signals without equipment, my neighbor's (EM-wise) noisy TV notwithstanding.
Premium services and PPV events, which are encrypted and encoded, are most likely to avoid any regulation. Current laws, including our ol' friend 12 USC 1701, preclude illicit reception of the signals.
I am not a lawyer, but I play one online. Do not use for legal advice, medication, stock tips, or to induce vomiting.
I took the plunge last week and got a laptop based on AMD's Mobile Athlon64.
:)
For the next month or so, or until I see someone with a Voodoo machine (not likely), I can rest assured that my laptop is well ahead of the Intel curve