Tourney AK Question

Sunday million, 345 players left 306 make the money, blind are $500/$1000 with $100 ante. I have about $21,000 and a solid table image, I have only showed down quality hands for the position I came into the hands and only raised early and shown AA JJ QQ AKs the situations were Raise, small stack all in and call, in the last hour. The hand in question I had AKo and first to act, raised to $3500. It folded around to the BB and he goes all in for about $11,900 more, I have $17,500 left, $20,000 in the pot. I think I know this player well and believe he would only do this with QQ or better. My thoughts were I was 50/50 or dominated, and if I lost I would not make the money, if I fold now I can fold to the money. If I call and win I'll be able to keep stealing blinds for 5-10 more minutes. After careful consideration I decided that I wasn't willing to put that much in at this stage. I folded and he showed QQ. Many questions are now floating around in my head, this is the first time I have shown weakness at this table. Should I be raising with AK at this stage in early if I'm not willing to call off more chips? Should I be raising more than $3500, maybe all in? I know I should be taking advantage of the short stacks trying to make it, but now I am one. I am very curious to get your perspective on this.

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New home page
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

I am experimenting with a new home page, using Zoho Notebooks:

Rafe’s Home Page

I know it’s not ideal, esp since it doesn’t appear to work on Safari, and you have to click to see the content (what’s that all about?) However, I love how easy it is to create non-rectilinear layouts and overlapping content. If anyone knows of a better system with those features, or tricks on Zoho that I’m apparently not aware of, I’d appreciate hearing from you via the comments section here.

Also, as a straw poll, post a comment if you can’t view the page properly since I don’t know what browsers work with Zoho and what don’t.

And if you have any other comments about how to improve the page, what you’d want to see on it, lemme know.

5:56 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Parrondo’s Paradox and Poker
Category: Games

One of my new favorite pastimes is identifying real world scenarios that I think are examples of Parrondo's Paradox.  Here are some from the world of poker:

10:36 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

REMINDER: online BBoC today at noon Eastern
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

Full Tilt Poker under Private tourneys tab. Password is "badbeat".

8:33 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Tournament Advice

Here's my latest poker post with some tournament advice.

7:22 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Bird Beat on Cancer tourney :-)
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

We will be holding an online BBoC tourney the day after Thanksgiving:

Nov 23 @ 12pm Eastern (9am Pacific)
location: Full Tilt Poker (under the Private Tourneys tab)
password: badbeat

Gobble, Gobble!

10:31 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Reminder: Bad Beat Tourney on Full Tilt Poker tonight
Category: Games

10pm Eastern / 7pm Pacific.

Tourney is 28674653 located in the Private tab, and the password is "badbeat".

Michael Craig and Rafe Furst both have bounties on themselves.

Hope to see you there!

12:29 AM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

How to Read a Book for Free on Amazon

With a little bit of cleverness, you can read entire books on Amazon.com for free, assuming they have the "Search Inside" feature. Here's how.

Getting Started

When you first click the cover of a book that has Search Inside (for example Tales From the Tiltboys), you will be able to flip back and forth between certain pages, up to a point. Typically, they give you through the introduction, index and several pages of the first chapter. Once you get to the point where the page numbers stop going up by one, you need to go into "search mode". In our book this is after page 6. Search mode consists of typing in keywords into the Search Inside this Book box on the left until you locate either the next page in the sequence, or the one after, or the one after that. You have some leeway because you will be able to flip back and forth several pages from where you end up.

The key to efficient search mode technique is to choose a keyword (or small set of keywords) that are likely to show up on every page. Amazon is smart enough not to index commonplace words like "the", but based on whatever you are reading, there will always be words that are good general choices. For instance "tilt" appears on 90 different pages including 2, 3, 8-9, 17-19, 21-23, 25, 29, 31, 34-35, 37-38, 40-41, 43-44, 46-50. "Poker" appears on 94 pages including 1-5, 7, 12, 14, 16-18, 24, 26, 30-32, 37, 39, 41-42, 47, 49-50. The only pages that are not direct hits with either of these two keywords are 6, 10, 11, 13, 15, 20, 27, 28, 33, 36, 45. And given the two page leeway in either direction, you can read every page in the first 50 with just "tilt" and "poker". In fact you can cover every page in the book with them except for two pages,* which you can easily pick up by adding "roshambo".

Minimal Amazon Covering Set (MACS)

A set of keywords that lets you read an entire book for free on Amazon is a covering set (CS). If the number of keywords in a CS is less than or equal to that of all other CSs for the same book, then it is a Minimal Amazon Covering Set (MACS). There may be more than one MACS for any given book. (And yes, someone who is highly skilled at discovering these could be considered a "MACS book pro").

Freeload it Forward

I have set up a Wikipedia page here where you can add MACS for your favorite books. It's fun and easy to do!

UPDATE: Wikipedia is threatening to be lame and delete my "apparent neologism". If they do, then just post your MACS here as comments and I will set up a true, open wiki if there is enough demand.

Also, if you Digg this post, it will spread faster and more people will add MACS for you to enjoy.


Note to Amazon

Before you look to close this loophole, first check to see your sales numbers are positively or negatively affected. Personally, I find it tedious and not that satisfying to read a book electronically and end up buying the book if I'm at all interested. There's something about being able to physically flip pages and read from print (as opposed to an LCD) that makes it a totally different experience, and one worth paying for.

Currently reading : Tales from the Tiltboys By The Tiltboys Release date: 01 July, 2005

3:28 PM - 12 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Online BBoC tourney on TUESDAY Oct 16
Category: Games

In the spirit of mixing things up and giving people who work on the weekends a chance to play, we are holding this month's Bad Beat on Cancer tourney on Full Tilt Poker on Tuesday, Oct 16 @ 10pm Eastern (7pm Pacific). As always, the password is "badbeat" and the tourney can be found under the Private tourney tab.

Hope to see you all there!

4:04 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Are you happy?
Category: Life

Ervin Laszlo reports in The Chaos Point:

Since 1957, GNP in the United States has more than doubled, but the average level of happiness has declined: those who report being "very happy" are only 32 percent of the population. At the same time the divorce rate doubled, the teen suicide rate more than doubled, violent crime tripled, and more people than ever say they are depressed.
Social psychologist David Meyers called this the "syndrome of soaring wealth and shrinking spirit." More than ever, he noted, we have big houses and broken homes, high income and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We excel at making a living but fail at making a life.

11:50 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment