Reis Blog

So many of you know that (at least until this past year) I dabble occasionally in the degenerate activity of No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker tournaments.  I’ve been fortunate enough to be a profitable player in this pasttime, simply from a few sizable online scores over the years, combined with many wins at a variety of New Jersey home games.  I’ve always approached the game recreationally, as I have no plans to spend a majority of my life in casinos.  But I knew early on that if I was going to play, I might as well gain as much information as I could about the game to maximize my returns and have more fun.  So about five years ago I immersed myself in books, blogs, discussion groups, podcasts and any tidbits of info about the game I could get my hands on.  I paralelled my interest in playing with an equal interest in seeking out the most in-depth information on the game, typically written by highly-successful players (many of whom play at stakes I will happily never play).  One thing led to another and I made the transition from “crappy player who thought he was great” to “capable player who knows how much he has to learn.”  trust me…you will make far more money in this game knowing you are the latter vs. personifying the former. 

So being a recreational player, tough times over the past year have suspended my participation in both live and online poker.  There is no reason to play when you can’t afford it (no matter how good you “know” you are), and I don’t act like a poker professional and keep a poker bankroll so I can always play.  When I have the money, I play.  When I don’t I simply don’t.  Along the way I will take winnings and buy cool stuff, pay off some bills, take a trip, etc.  But a lean 2008-2009 kept me from this fun hobby, until recently…

Last week I had a rare opportunity to sit down and play with some familiar faces at an affordable, well-attended (3 tables) home poker tournament.  Having not played in a year I had no expectations.  I was just happy to play the game again.  I knew many of the guys in the game, and on its better nights this game can be an absolute blast.  I sat down to play, and within five hours I played my way into the winner’s circle, taking down a nice $1200 prize for first place.  I can’t say that it was the toughest tournament I’ve ever played, but there were some challenging hands for sure.  One thing I realized along the way was that I gained back a tremendous amount of patience that at this time last year I simply did not have.  With my son in the hospital and tough times getting worse, the last thing I needed to do was play poker.  It is widely known that if you’re going through some tough times in your life, it’s best to stay away from the table, because it’s simply impossible to maintain the focus that is necessary to play your best game.  You’re what’s commonly referred to as “dead money.”  But the more I thought about it at the time, the more I realized that I needed the game back then, if nothing else to have a positive distraction.  It was worth the expense to just have one tiny part of my week where I could focus on having fun playing cards, as every other waking moment of my week was occupied with really deep, bad things.

So with poker prowess comes poker discussion, and this particular home game has a discussion group that I occasionally participate in.  To folks who do not play poker, I can assure you that hand analysis is the text equivalent to watching paint dry.  So I’ll apologize to those of you who are not remotely interested in reading about poker hands.  But I thought I would share a hand analysis that I posted on this game’s forum this past week.  In analyzing the hand I realized how much of my thought process during the game had become second nature, or immediate.  It was nice to see on paper how much thought went into a decision I made that had a major impact on my winning the tournament.  I think my time off was a major factor in having the presence of mind to consider as many aspects of the hand as I did when I played it.  And this is not to say that my analysis is even 100% accurate.  Part of the beauty of poker is the thousands of approaches that can be taken to each situation.  It is truly amazing how many pages…even books…can be written on the concepts involved in one single hand of poker.  So take this for what it is, and know that to me it makes all the sense in the world, but if a Vegas pro ever analyzed the situation they may have approached the hand very differently.  It’s only a sign of positive progress if I read this in a year and wince at some inaccuracies or realize how much I actually missed about this hand.  Either way, here goes…

Hand of the Week

Well, even if nobody reads this I might as well document the hand of the week, which happened last Tuesday night as we were 3-handed. Justin “The Phillipine Dream” Gerardo was in the small blind and I was in the big blind. Marucci folded the button. With about 65K at 1500/3000 I raised Justin’s 3k limp to 11K preflop with 77. He called out of position and we saw a flop of J56 with two clubs. Justin’s image was very active, as almost half of his enormous stack (outchipping me by almost 3 to 1) came from uncontested raised pots and hands where he didn’t show down his cards. But as much as he was mixing it up his next move was pretty rare. He led out for a near pot-sized bet of 20K, knowing I had 53k total.

This is a very interesting bet. Online it’s commonly known as a “donk bet” because there is little to gain out of position from betting into the preflop raiser, and oftentimes the donk bettor is trying to cheaply (and many times unsuccessfully) protect 2nd or 3rd pair to control the betting and freeze the preflop raiser.

(disclaimer: I am not calling Justin a donk…to the contrary I think he’s one of the most talented players in this home game, which takes a predictable situation and makes it much more difficult to analyze)

With a player like Justin I could easily include A6 and A5 in his range (especially in a 3-handed blind v blind situation), and in less cases he could actually have the jack. But I thought it was weird that he made a pot-sized bet, knowing that if I shoved he would have to call for 33k more (into what would be a 60K pot) holding anything that remotely connected with the flop. If he was on a draw his bet took away his chance to check-call a pot sized bet from me and see a cheaper turn, so he could see what develops and make a safe fold if I continue betting and he misses with one card to come. If he had the jack he could very safely slow play or check raise allin on the flop. It’s possible that he could have me crushed with 88-TT, but throwing all of this board’s draws (any 2 clubs, 34, 78, 47, non-jack broadway cards) and the made hands I’m beating (x5, x6, 22-44) into his range, I felt I was making a profitable shove. I knew that Justin knew that if I missed the flop with most unpaired preflop raising hands, it would be awful for me to flat call his bet with only 33k behind, and I’m not shoving on a stone cold bluff there if I can fold and have a 15+ bb stack left to fight with.

So I figured he was mostly taking my stack size into consideration, which likely meant he was on a draw at best and just figuring he was a favorite to take the pot down right there. I tossed in my 53k, putting my 77 ahead of most of his range. Justin called and flipped over the 47 offsuit for an open-ender (i.e. 8 outs with 2 cards to come). Justin bricked out and I doubled up to 130k. I strongly feel that the result of the hand does not matter, and even if he hit his draw I was making the right shove in that spot.

Hats off to Justin for scrambling my brain on that one. I was fortunate to not be faced with many tough decisions in this particular tournament, but this one definitely stood out as one of the key hands that helped me get to the winner’s circle for the first time since like 1989…

Great to be back…

So as you might suspect I am going to evangelize quite a bit about Google products on this blog.  I just can’t help it.  They get so much right.  So much of what they release just makes absolute sense, and as many times as we’ve all been through it, we still find ourselves saying the obvious “and THIS is FREE????”

Such is the case with the Google Mobile App.  In my ferocious centrifuge of Twitter flurry I came across the link somewhere…likely from the peeps at Mashable.  But however I ended up there I was wondering what possibly could be so special about this standalone app.  I mean we all have a ton of ways to get to Google, even from our phones.  We have our browsers, and speaking for myself the Blackberry user, we can even jump straight to searching Google from the default “Go To” menu page on the Blackberry Browser…you don’t even have to subject yourself to the excruciating task of typing the 10-character monster “google.com” in the dated (but useful) address bar.  And I always felt like an insider, proudly using the SMS Google Search from my old Palm Treo (and for a few days on my new Blackberry until I came to my senses).  Just text your search to “GOOGL” or “46645” and your results come streaming in via SMS text.  It was always cool for local searches, like “Movies 33133” or “Outback 07960”…much more useful in its day than I originally gave it credit for.  But now that has all changed, and with one, stripped-down, highly simplified function: voice recognition search, with local results, specific to the zip code you’re speaking from.

How could this be?  That simple?  Really?  Well of course I had to break it right away…and of course with the mess that is voice recognition I would have no trouble at all doing so right?  Wrong.  Search one: “Fuddruckers”…damn, spelled it perfectly and jumped right to a cluster of results, including the main web site and my nearest location’s listing, complete with map link and contact info.  OK…Google 7, Reis nothing (well actually I got quite a bit of something out of it).  Next up “Boom Shakalaka”.  Damn…Urban Dictionary in my face defining this ridiculous term as I contemplate the ultimate deal-breaker.  Here we go…”Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”… Friggin Wikipedia entries including Mary Poppins references, dialogue samples, etc?  On the first try?

Well I guess that’s that then.  Google SMS text search has officially gone the way of the rolodex and legal pad.  My Google Mobile App icon is perched right in the top row of my home screen, ready to be used and abused in all of its hands-free glory.  You would be doing yourself a major solid by joining me…after all it’s a hell of a lot of fun to try and break this app, and once again, most importantly…yup, it’s FREE.

Google Mobile App Links

Home Page
Download (device only)
More Google Apps for your Phone

OK…so I’m soft-launching this Blog to dip my toe into the (seemingly-straight forward) world of Tumblr.  But I have to say that my past few days have been filled with complete immersion in Twitter-related everything (follow me).  Who knew that 140-character messages about what we’re doing would end up taking over such a large portion of our lives?  Bizarre, but hey…no complaints…LOVE the Twitter action.  So here’s a few tools I stumbled upon in my quest to get up to speed with all of the 12-year-olds who still know 1000% more about this stuff than I do:

1> Ubertwitter – I have to hand it to my brother-in-law Tony.  I was convinced that Twitterberry was the perfect Twitter client for my Blackberry Tour.  I mean you open it, tweet away…read your feed…no problem right?  Well my bro-in-law Tony starts texting about how Ubertwitter has SOOO many better options, and here I am thinking he’s just saying that because he has it and I don’t.  Of course within an hour I’m downloading the app to see what the fuss is all about, and lo and behold it not only tweets, but adds a link to a MAP OF WHERE YOU TWEET FROM.  How cool is that?  Also you can customize the icon size to accommodate a larger portion of the screen for the incoming tweet text.  The menu options are simple to access, and it took all of a minute for me to replace the Twitterberry icon with the one for Ubertwitter…nice!

2> HootSuite – Oh man…this web-based (FREE) application is sick.  First of all it allows you to keep track of multiple Twitter accounts.  I for instance have one for me, and one for the radio show I work with, Keller’s Cellar (follow).  HootSuite stays logged in to each account as long as you have it open in your browser (it sleeps after a while but just one click on “Wake Up” and all feeds refresh automatically).   Through the use of tabs (similar to Firefox) you can create multi-column groups based on the category of Twitter peeps you follow.  For instance, I have one column for Poker Tweets, one column for Music, one for News & Politics, one for Tech Tweets, etc.  Now instead of the blob that is my main Twitter feed, I have a focused, organized group of Tweet columns that are grouped by category.  ALSO you can post tweets directly from the top of the application window, and choose which account(s) you want to write the tweet from.  Just under the Tweet window there is an automatic url shortening tool, which helps you keep links short, maximizing text space in your tweets.  Better still is the tracking that HootSuite provides for your shortened url’s.  Just go to “Tracking” and you can see click stats on any of your tweeted links.  Similar to Google Analytics, it graphs the popularity ratio of the links based on the past month’s worth of activity, and shows how many of the clicks came from open clicks, Facebook users, etc.  All of your Twitter accounts and Groups are sorted in customized tabs, which you can drag and drop around for ideal organization.  Same goes for the columns within the tabs…just drag them around until everything is laid out the way you want it.  Amazing tool…

3>  Echofon - So since I don’t have an iPhone I gave very little attention to this Twitter client that I saw come up from time to time on people’s Facebook tweets.  But I stumbled upon a reference to the Echofon Firefox extension, and since I have a voracious appetite for Twitter client knowledge these days I figured I’d take a look.  WOW…this is such a cool addon to your browser…Now we all know that as much as we don’t like to admit it, it actually seems like a pain in the ass to go ALL THE WAY up to our browser tabs, CLICK AWAY from our current page, and bounce over to see our newest tweets that just arrived.  Well those archaic, so summer 2009-days are over…Echofon pops up a window (similar to Microsoft Outlook when you receive an email) for a few seconds, and auto-scrolls through your most recent tweets.  Also, if you want to check quickly, no need to jump off your current page…just click the Echofon icon in the status bar at the bottom of your browser, and up pops a preview window, showing your tweets in scrollable form.  Thumbs up on this excellent addon!

4>  TuneIn - So it’s damn cool to get links from all of our tweets that guide us all over the web for the newest and coolest content, right?  But we still have to go through the pain of clicking them all, individually…creating an enormous amount of extra traffic to do everything from viewing twitpics to reading articles and checking out Youtube videos.  Now there’s TuneIn, a free service that consolidates all of the media content from your tweets and displays all of it in categorized form that you specify.  Multiple columns for different types of media streamline the viewing process and it lays out everything nicely so you have all of your tweeted media right in front of you.  THUMBS UP on TuneIn…

5> Mr Tweet -I mean just when you thought you were getting a handle on it, right? This service is perfect for taking your “following” list and blowing it up to mammoth proportions.  Mr. Tweet accesses your current following list, takes stock of all aspects of the people, companies, organizations and events that you follow, and then recommends other Twitter accounts to add to your list based specifically on the global sum of your interests.  It blows me away how on target this application is.  It gives you a limited amount of suggestions per day.  And I guess in a (very successful I might add) ploy to keep traffic through the roof, they update your list every day with a completely new set of suggestions.  There are also “recommendations”, which allow you to recommend other Twitter folk to follow, and list the reasons why.  Recommendations show up when other Mr. Tweet folks receive suggestions that include accounts that you follow.  And of course the more you follow their suggestions, the broader the scope is that Mr. Tweet draws from for future suggestion lists.  So good luck staying under the 1000 following mark for very long after you get addicted to this awesome tool.

6> TweetDeck / Seesmic Desktop - I only mention these clients (since I don’t use either anymore) because people who dream of having all of their Facebook and Twitter feeds in the same place will love them.  Both of them have similar features to HootSuite, but with limitations.  For instance you cannot drag columns in Tweetdeck.  You just get what you get, which is a bit silly after spending even 10 minutes with HootSuite.  Also there are no link tracking features…a HUGE advantage for Hootsuite.  But again it allows you to check your home feed from Facebook side by side with your tweets, so to each their own, but i (for now anyways) have left these clients behind.

I don’t think I need to spend much time mentioning services like Twitpic and TwitVid, but if you’re a Twitter newbie just please check them out now, as they will be essential to your tweeting experience.

Let me know what else you guys find out there.  Being a relative n00b myself I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff out there that is damn fantastic that I have no idea about yet…OBV

Peace…