One Long Tuesday

Last Tuesday was a horrible day. The day before I decided I was going to go stay at my mom’s house in Troy, Illinois to see my little sisters and such. While I was over there, a few of my poker buddies who I had not played cards with in over three weeks gave me a call and said they were going to start a cash game down the road from my moms. I had not played in awhile due to Full Tilt being shut down and me being busy with school so I decided I would go ahead and play. I bought in for $20, lost that. Borrowed $20, lost that. Borrowed another $20, and was able to win enough while paying off the person I had borrowed money off of to still walk away up $94. Not too shabby for being negative $60 at one point. Then I went home. I arrived home somewhere around 1:30p.m. Sometimes it is very hot in my room at my moms house and the bed is not as comfortable as my foam mattress at my dad’s house. I found a fan and turned it on full blast. I still managed to become hot underneath the blankets. After about three hours of discomfort, I changed blankets. I layed some more still unable to get comfortable. Stared at the bright red numbers on my alarm clock. I somehow managed to fall asleep somewhere around the time of 5:30 a.m. Unfortunately, the next day my class began at 8 a.m.

online poker= DEAD

On April 15, 2011, the U.S. government banned online poker in the states. They also pretty much shut it down everywhere else. The FBI seized the top 3 online poker gambling sites’ owners: Full Tilt, Poker Stars, and Absolute Poker. The FBI is trying to get the companies for money laundering and fraud. An estimated $3 billion in money laundering. "These defendants, knowing full well that their business with U.S. customers and U.S. banks was illegal, tried to stack the deck," said Janice Fedarcyk, FBI assistant director-in-charge. "They lied to banks about the true nature of their business. Then, some of the defendants found banks willing to flout the law for a fee. The defendants bet the house that they could continue their scheme, and they lost."
This has many professional poker players debating if they should leave the United States. Honestly, I'm mostly thinking about it because of being disgusted about living in a country that would ban online poker," Gallo said when contacted by ESPN.com. "I'd rather play poker abroad than do something else in this country at this point. I feel like my country is trying to make money in the guise of holding my hand." There are a few other sites players could play on but none of them feel safe using a sight that is not Poker Stars or Full Tilt.
There is also a World Series of Poker that is the biggest tournament in poker which occurs naturally in Las Vegas every year. Ever since a rookie accountant, Chris Moneymaker, won the whole tournament and took home $2.5 million, the WSOP has boomed. The result is more and more people going to the WSOP to try to be the next Moneymaker. The 2010 tournament awarded the winner with a little under $9 million. Now with the ban on the most popular site in the US, the WSOP may lose attendance due to the fact the websites held tournaments to pay for people to go to the WSOP.

Da Blues

Last night I had the liberty to attend a free St. Louis Blues game. I have attended probably eight or so games this year. Usually, we have excellent lower level seats for every game, but the last two games we have sat in the upper deck. If you have ever been to a hockey game at Scottrade, you would know that theres really not a bad seat anywhere in the arena.
The St. Louis Blues are coming off another trade that sent a St. Louis city favorite to Buffalo for a draft pick. A few of the stars that we have gotten rid of are Johnson, McClement, and Boyes. A new player we got from a trade with Colorado is Stewart. In his first six games he had six goals. He has pretty much been our only playmaker lately. We also have Ben Bishop who is our huge goalie. He can be shaky at times but he has been doing really well lately and the only reason were getting scored on is because our defense is extremely lacking.
Last night we played the Calgary Flames who ended our goal scoring streak the last game we played. This mostly has to do with their goalie Kiprusoff. Calgary also is a pretty strong defensive team. Unfortunately, we were once again unable to score last night. The game was quite pitiful. There was a lot of yelling and cussing aimed towards noone in particular. The only time the crowd was exciteful after being down a few goals was when Janssen got into a fight that electrified the crowd. After four goals were scored I noticed a lot of people leaving. After five goals were scored I noticed even more leaving. After six goals I was ready to go home as well. We lost 6-0 and our playoff chances are getting slimmer.

Subwoofers

The first time I ever heard a subwoofer I was in my godfather’s Honda Civic. I was 8 at the time and he had put me in the backseat to receive the full experience. When he turned the music up I could feel my teeth chattering and my whole body was shaking. It was by far the coolest thing I had ever experienced! Being able to “feel” the music being played adds a completely different dynamic to songs. After he was done demoing his system for me, he pulled me out of the backseat and let me look at what was in the trunk. To my surprise, he only had two ten inch Rockford Fosgate subwoofers. I was amazed at how much power those two little speakers were able to produced and ever since then I always wanted to have a system of my very own. When I turned sixteen and finally had a car, I was finally able to install a system of my own. My first system consisted of two ten inch JL Audio subwoofers I borrowed from my cousin, along with a 300 watt Orion amp. I was extremely excited to finally have a system in my car but I was not satisfied yet. Since I installed my cousin’s subwoofers in my car, I have owned and ran a total of five different subs including tens, twelves, and fifteens. I currently have one fifteen inch subwoofer that can take about 1600 watts, but due to a stock alternator I am only able to push about 500 watts to the subwoofer. I am currently planning on upgrading the alternator so I can push my subwoofer to its limits and add another amplifier to run more door speakers. I am doing all of this to my car even though the car is not really top of line, but most people who are into car audio have multiple vehicles so their better car does not get torn up by all the vibrations a subwoofer can cause. After I purchase the new alternator, I am planning on possibly buying my first eighteen inch woofer. Yes 18 inches!!! I may enter it into contests and go to car audio shows as well if I have enough free time on my hands.

DONKING

Lately I have been playing a lot of poker, both online and house games, for money of course. For house games I typically play either at my buddy Zach’s house or my friend Josh’s. Whenever we play at Zach’s, there are two or three guys there who love trying to “donk” people. “Donking” is when you play a bad hand that would typically not be played because it is not a very strong starting hand. When these kinds of hands are played, the person is typically trying to get really lucky or “suck out” on the other players by either catching two straight cards in a row or hitting one of their only four outs. A lot of people believe that poker is pure luck and has no skill involved. Although having luck is important in poker, there are many other aspects that are involved, such as, reading other people, knowing your winning odds, and playing pot odds.  Knowing your winning odds is where “donking” comes into play. Sometimes “donkers” will continue in a hand even though they only have about a 10% chance of getting the card they need to win. This is found by subtracting the number of cards in the deck by the number of cards each player that is in the hand is holding and then subtracting that number by however many cards are visible on the table. Now the player would determine how many cards would give him the best possible hand and divide that by the number determined earlier. Unfortunately, “donking” is sometimes effective and players should look out for donkey players. My friends who play “donk” poker do it all the time and it is sometimes frustrating. However, the number of “donk” players online definitely exceeds how many donkeys we play with. This can cause “tight” players to get extremely frustrated and play badly.