It's been a year...

I haven't posted in this blog for ages, I just didn't have anything I wanted to say, nor do right now, I just wanted to update on what has been of my life.
It's been a year since I've been in Chile, god, that year seemed as 10!!
So, there are a few things that changed in the past year:

First, I've become this judgmental pessimist negative energy person. I don't know why this happened or how, it just did.

Second, if one year ago I had any idea what I wanted to do after finishing school, then right now, I have absolutely none, zip, zero, nada, keine idee. I know for sure i don't wanna stay in Chile, nor in any country in the region. Somehow, i am interested right now in investment banking, and it would be hard to get a career in IB if i stay in Chile, so i am checking my options after i'm done with Chile; slim chance, i know. I am thinking about a Master in Economics (one year programme) in Munich, or trying to get into a top 14 law school in the states. I know the last one is not the most orthodox methode of getting into IB, but a JD from a top Law school may give you a descent chance to enter as an asociate into an IB.

Fourth, I started going back to the gym which means that I won't be able to drink anything during the summer, which kinda sucks, since there are a lot of parties going on.

Last, I got the Chilean nationality, no big deal, just thought of mentioning it. I can go to any Latin country with just my Id (no passport) and visit Europe without a visa.

p.s I took 27 credits last semester and still managed to get one of the top grades in my class. I think I am easily ranked top 5%. I am not sure if considering my CGPA I would still be top 5%, but damn it, I know that by the time i finish my degree I will be at least top 5%. God I sound so nerdy,

Iysam's out

Word on the Street - News

Today when i googled my name i found very interesting stuff, this link is of a comment i made while in school.
Word on the Street - News

Online poker is flawed

Dear online poker players,

I came across this article the other day. In it it shows how the software itself is flawed and cheaters can exploit this to their benefit. I contacted a couple of major online poker rooms, they said that they made the necessary modifications, however, that was not good enough for me, read the following article I got from some site (whish i remember where) and you will understand why i am off online poker for life.

Poker is a card game that many people around the world enjoy. Poker is played at kitchen tables, in casinos, and cardrooms -- and more recently, the Web. A few of us here at Reliable Software Technologies play poker. Since many of us spend a good amount of our days online, it was only a matter of time before some of us put the two interests together. This is the story of how our interest in online poker and software security mixed to create a spectacular security exploit.
The PlanetPoker Internet cardroom offers real-time Texas Hold'em games against other people on the Web for real money. Being software professionals who help companies deliver secure, reliable, and robust software, we were curious about the software behind the online game. How did it work? Was it fair? An examination of the FAQs at PlanetPoker, including the shuffling algorithm (which was ironically published to help demonstrate the game's integrity) was enough to start our analysis wheels rolling. As soon as we saw the shuffling algorithm, we began to suspect there might be a problem. A little investigation proved that this intuition was correct.
The Game
In Texas Hold'em, each player is dealt two cards (called the pocket cards). The initial deal is followed by a round of betting. After the first round, all remaining cards are dealt face up and shared by all players. The dealer places three cards face up on the board (called the flop). A second round of betting then takes place. Texas Hold'em is usually a fixed limit game, meaning that there are fixed amounts that a player may bet in each betting round. For example, in a $3 to $6 game, the first two betting rounds are $3 bets while the third and fourth betting rounds are $6 bets. After the second round of betting, the dealer places another card face up on the board (called the turn). A third round of betting then takes place. Finally, the dealer places the last card face up on the board (called the river), and a final round of betting ensues. Each remaining player takes their two pocket cards and combines them with the five community cards to make the best five-card poker hand. The best hand among the players is determined by standard poker hand order.
Texas Hold'em is a fast-paced and exciting game. Bluffing is an essential part of the game, and quick decisions about who is holding what sorts of cards separate winners from losers. Interestingly, Texas Hold'em is the poker game played at the World Series of Poker which is held annually in Las Vegas.
Now that everybody and their dog is online, and virtually all types of businesses are represented on the Internet, it's only natural that casinos and cardrooms are there too. Even with the reasonably easy availability of casinos on Indian reservations and riverboats, there is still real demand for more accessible games. Being able to play online in the comfort of your own home (not to mention in your pajamas), without having to endure second-hand smoke and obnoxious players, is definitely appealing.
Security Risks Abound
All this convenience comes at a price. Unfortunately, there are real risks to playing poker online. The casino may be a fraud, existing only to take money from naïve players without ever intending to pay back winnings. The server running the online casino could be cracked by a malicious attacker looking for credit card numbers, or trying to leverage some advantage in the game. Since a majority of casinos don't authenticate or encrypt the network traffic between the player running the client program and the server hosting the card game, a malicious player could conceivably examine the network traffic (with a classic person-in-the-middle attack) for the purposes of determining his opponent's cards. These risks are all very familiar to Internet security experts.
Collusion is a problem that is unique to poker (as opposed to other games like blackjack or craps), since poker players play against each other and not the casino itself. Collusion occurs when two or more players seated at the same table work together as a team, often using the same bankroll. Colluding players know what their team members' hands are (often through subtle signals), and bet with the purpose of maximizing their team's profits on any given hand. Though collusion is a problem in real cardrooms, it is a much more serious problem for online poker. Using tools like instant messaging and telephone conference calls makes collusion a serious risk to online poker players. What if all the players in an online game are all cooperating to bilk an unsuspecting Web patsy? How can you be assured that you're never a victim of this attack?
Last, but not least (especially in terms of our story), there is a real risk that the software behind an online poker game may be flawed. Software problems are a notorious form of security risk often overlooked by companies obsessed with firewalls and cryptography. The problem is that a software application can introduce truck-sized security holes into a system. We spend a great deal of time in our day jobs finding and solving software security problems. It is only natural that we turned our attention to online poker. The rest of this article is devoted to a discussion of software security problems we found in a popular online poker game.
Software Security Risks
Shuffling a Virtual Deck of Cards
The first software flaw we'll focus on involves shuffling virtual cards. What does it mean to shuffle a deck of cards fairly? Essentially, every possible combination of cards should have an equal likelihood of appearing. We'll call each such ordering of the 52 cards a shuffle.
In a real deck of cards, there are 52! (approximately 2^226) possible unique shuffles. When a computer shuffles a virtual deck of cards, it selects one of these possible combinations. There are many algorithms that can be used to shuffle a deck of cards, some of which are better than others (and some of which are just plain wrong).
We found that the algorithm used by ASF Software, Inc., the company that produces the software used by most of the online poker games, suffered from many flaws. ASF has changed their algorithm since we contacted them regarding our discovery. We have not looked at their new approach. Getting everything exactly right from a security perspective is not easy (as the rest of this article will show).
Figure 1: The Flawed ASF Shuffling Algorithm
procedure TDeck.Shuffle;
var
ctr: Byte;
tmp: Byte;

random_number: Byte;
begin
{ Fill the deck with unique cards }
for ctr := 1 to 52 do
Card[ctr] := ctr;

{ Generate a new seed based on the system clock }
randomize;

{ Randomly rearrange each card }
for ctr := 1 to 52 do begin
random_number := random(51)+1;
tmp := card[random_number];
card[random_number] := card[ctr];
card[ctr] := tmp;
end;

CurrentCard := 1;
JustShuffled := True;
end;
The shuffling algorithm shown in Figure 1 was posted by ASF Software in order to convince people that their computer-generated shuffles were entirely fair. Ironically, it had the exact opposite effect on us.
The algorithm starts by initializing an array with values in order from 1 to 52, representing the 52 possible cards. Then, the program initializes a pseudo-random number generator using the system clock with a call to Randomize(). The actual shuffle is performed by swapping every position in the array, in turn, with a randomly chosen position. The position to swap with is chosen by calls to the pseudo-random number generator.

Problem One: An Off-By-One Error
Astute programmers will have noticed that the algorithm in question contains an off-by-one error. The algorithm is supposed to traverse the initial deck while swapping each card with any other card. Unlike most Pascal functions, the function Random(n) actually returns a number between 0 and n-1 instead of a number between 1 and n. The algorithm uses the following snippet of code to choose which card to swap with the current card: . The formula sets random_number to a value between 1 and 51. In short, the algorithm in question never chooses to swap the current card with the last card. When ctr finally reaches the last card, 52, that card is swapped with any other card except itself. That means this shuffling algorithm never allows the 52nd card to end up in the 52nd place. This is an obvious, but easily correctable, violation of fairness.
Problem Two: Bad Distribution Of Shuffles A closer examination of the shuffling algorithm reveals that, regardless of the off-by-one problem, it doesn't return an even distribution of decks. The basic algorithm at the heart of the shuffle is shown in Figure 2.
Shuffling
A closer examination of the algorithm reveals that, regardless of the off-by-one error, it doesn't return an even distribution of shuffles. That is, some shuffles are more likely to be produced than others are. This uneven distribution can be leveraged into an advantage if a tipped-off player is willing to sit at the table long enough.
To illustrate this problem using a small example, we'll shuffle a deck consisting of only three cards (i.e, n=3) using the algorithm described above.
Figure 2: How not to shuffle cards

for (i is 1 to n)
Swap i with random position between 1 and n
Figure 2 contains the algorithm we used to shuffle our deck of three cards, and also depicts the tree of all possible decks using this shuffling algorithm. If our random number source is a good one, then each leaf on the tree in Figure 2 has an equal probability of being produced.
Given even this small example, you can see that the algorithm does not produce shuffles with equal probability. It will produce the decks 231, 213, and 132 more often than the decks 312, 321, 123. If you were betting on the first card and you knew about these probabilities, you would know that card 2 is more likely to appear than any other card. The uneven probabilities become increasingly exaggerated as the number of cards in the deck increase. When a full deck of 52 cards is shuffled using the algorithm listed above (n=52), the unequal distribution of decks skews the probabilities of certain hands and changes the betting odds. Experienced poker players (who play the odds as a normal course of business) can take advantage of the skewed probabilities.
Figure 3: How to shuffle cards
for (i is 1 to 3)
Swap i with random position between i and 3

Figure 3 provides a much better shuffling algorithm. The crucial difference between the two algorithms is that number of possible swap positions decreases as you progress through the deck. Once again, we show a tree illustrating this algorithm on our sample deck of three cards. The change between this new algorithm and the one used by ASF is that each card i is swapped with a card from the range [i, n], not [1, n]. This reduces the number of leaves from the 3^3 = 27 given by the bad algorithm listed above to 3! = 6. The change is important because the n! number of unique leaves means that the new shuffling algorithm generates each possible deck only once. Notice that each possible shuffle is produced once and only once so that each deck has an equal probability of occurring. Now that's fair!
Generating Random Numbers on a Deterministic Machine
The first set of software flaws we discussed merely changes the probabilities that certain cards will come up. The associated skews can be used by a clever gambler to gain an edge, but the flaws really don't constitute a complete break in the system. By contrast, the third flaw, which we explain in this section, is a doozy that allows online poker to be completely compromised. A short tutorial on pseudo-random number generators sets the stage for the rest of our story.
How Pseudo-Random Number Generators Work
Suppose we want to generate a random number between 1 and 52, where every number has an equal probability of appearing. Ideally, we would generate a value on the range from 0 to 1 where every value will occur with equal probability, regardless of the previous value, then multiply that value by 52. Note that there are an infinite number of values between 0 and 1. Also note that computers do not offer infinite precision!
In order to program a computer to do something like the algorithm presented above, a pseudo-random number generator typically produces an integer on the range from 0 to N and returns that number divided by N. The resulting number is always between 0 and 1. Subsequent calls to the generator take the integer result from the first run and pass it through a function to produce a new integer between 0 and N, then return the new integer divided by N. This means the number of unique values returned by any pseudo-random number generator is limited by number of integers between 0 and N. In most common random number generators, N is 2^32 (approximately 4 billion) which is the largest value that will fit into a 32-bit number. Put another way, there are at most 4 billion possible values produced by this sort of number generator. To tip our hand a bit, this 4 billion number is not all that large.
A number known as the seed is provided to a pseudo-random generator as an initial integer to pass through the function. The seed is used to get the ball rolling. Notice that there is nothing unpredictable about the output of a pseudo-random generator. Each value returned by a pseudo-random number generator is completely determined by the previous value it returned (and ultimately, the seed that started it all). If we know the integer used to compute any one value then we know every subsequent value returned from the generator.
The pseudo-random number generator distributed with Borland compilers makes a good example and is reproduced in Figure 4. If we know that the current value of RandSeed is 12345, then the next integer produced will be 1655067934 and the value returned will be 20. The same thing happens every time (which should not be surprising to anyone since computers are completely deterministic).

long long RandSeed = #### ;

unsigned long Random(long max)
{
long long x ;
double i ;
unsigned long final ;
x = 0xffffffff;
x += 1 ;

RandSeed *= ((long long)134775813);
RandSeed += 1 ;
RandSeed = RandSeed % x ;
i = ((double)RandSeed) / (double)0xffffffff ;
final = (long) (max * i) ;

return (unsigned long)final;
}
Based on historical precedent, seeds for number generators are usually produced based on the system clock. The idea is to use some aspect of system time as the seed. This implies if you can figure out what time a generator is seeded, you will know every value produced by the generator (including what order numbers will appear in). The upshot of all this is that there is nothing unpredictable about pseudo-random numbers. Needless to say, this fact has a profound impact on shuffling algorithms!
On To Poker, Or How To Use A Random Number Generator Badly
The shuffling algorithm used in the ASF software always starts with an ordered deck of cards, and then generates a sequence of random numbers used to re-order the deck. Recall that in a real deck of cards, there are 52! (approximately 2^226) possible unique shuffles. Also recall that the seed for a 32-bit random number generator must be a 32-bit number, meaning that there are just over 4 billion possible seeds. Since the deck is reinitialized and the generator re-seeded before each shuffle, only 4 billion possible shuffles can result from this algorithm. Four billion possible shuffles is alarmingly less than 52!.
To make matters worse, the algorithm of Figure 1 chooses the seed for the random number generator using the Pascal function Randomize(). This particular Randomize() function chooses a seed based on the number of milliseconds since midnight. There are a mere 86,400,000 milliseconds in a day. Since this number was being used as the seed for the random number generator, the number of possible decks now reduces to 86,400,000. Eight-six million is alarmingly less than four billion. But that's not all. It gets worse.
Breaking the System
The system clock seed gave us an idea that reduced the number of possible shuffles even further. By synchronizing our program with the system clock on the server generating the pseudo-random number, we are able to reduce the number of possible combinations down to a number on the order of 200,000 possibilities. After that move, the system is ours, since searching through this tiny set of shuffles is trivial and can be done on a PC in real time.
The RST exploit itself requires five cards from the deck to be known. Based on the five known cards, our program searches through the few hundred thousand possible shuffles and deduces which one is a perfect match. In the case of Texas Hold'em poker, this means our program takes as input the two cards that the cheating player is dealt, plus the first three community cards that are dealt face up (the flop). These five cards are known after the first of four rounds of betting and are enough for us to determine (in real time, during play) the exact shuffle. Figure 5 shows the GUI we slapped on our exploit. The "Site Parameters" box in the upper left is used to synchronize the clocks. The "Game Parameters" box in the upper right is used to enter the five cards and initiate the search. Figure 5 is a screen shot taken after all cards have been determined by our program. We know who holds what cards, what the rest of the flop looks, and who is going to win in advance.
Figure 5: The GUI for our exploit

Once it knows the five cards, our program generates shuffles until it discovers the shuffle that contains the five cards in the proper order. Since the Randomize() function is based on the server's system time, it is not very difficult to guess a starting seed with a reasonable degree of accuracy. (The closer you get, the fewer possible shuffles you have to look through.) Here's the kicker though; after finding a correct seed once, it is possible to synchronize our exploit program with the server to within a few seconds. This post facto synchronization allows our program to determine the seed being used by the random number generator, and to identify the shuffle being used during all future games in less than one second!
Technical detail aside, our exploit garnered spectacular press coverage. The coverage emphasizes the human side of our discovery. See our Web site for our original press release, the CNN video clip, and a New York Times story .
Doing Things Properly, or How to Shuffle Virtual Cards
As we have shown, shuffling virtual cards isn't as easy as it may appear at first blush. The best way to go about creating a shuffling algorithm is to develop a technique that can securely produce a well-shuffled deck of cards by relying on sound mathematics. Furthermore, we believe that publishing a good algorithm and opening it up to real-world scrutiny is a good idea (which meshes nicely with the opinions of the Open Source zealots). The main thing here is not relying on security by obscurity. Publishing a bad algorithm (like AFS did) is a bad idea, but so is not publishing a bad algorithm!
Cryptography relies on solid mathematics, not obscurity, to develop strong algorithms used to protect individual, government, and commercial secrets. We think shuffling is similar. We can stretch the analogy to include a parallel between cryptographic key length (which is directly proportional to the strength of many cryptographic algorithms) and the size of the random seed that is used to produce a shuffled deck of cards.
Developing a card-shuffling algorithm is a fairly straightforward task. The first thing to realize is that an algorithm capable of producing each of the 52! shuffles is not really required. The reasoning underlying this claim is that only an infinitesimally small percent of the 52! shuffles will ever be used during play. It is important, however, that the shuffles the algorithm produces maintain an even distribution of cards. A good distribution ensures that each position in the shuffle has an approximately equal chance of holding any one particular card. The distribution requirement is relatively easy to achieve and verify. The following pseudo-code gives a simple card-shuffling algorithm that, when paired with the right random number generator, produces decks of cards with an even distribution.
START WITH FRESH DECK
GET RANDOM SEED
FOR CT = 1, WHILE CT <= 52, DO
X = RANDOM NUMBER BETWEEN CT AND 52 INCLUSIVE
SWAP DECK[CT] WITH DECK[X]

Key to the success of our algorithm is the choice of a random number generator (RNG). The RNG has a direct impact on whether the algorithm above will successfully produce decks of even distribution as well as whether these decks will be useful for secure online card play. To begin with, the RNG itself must produce an even distribution of random numbers. Pseudo-random number generators (PRNG), such as those based on the Lehmer algorithm, have been shown to possess this mathematical property. It is therefore sufficient to use a good PRNG to produce "random" numbers for card shuffling.
As we have seen, choice of initial seed for the PRNG is a make or break proposition. Everything boils down to the seed. It's absolutely essential that players using a deck of cards generated using a PRNG can't determine the seed used to produce that particular shuffle.
A brute force attempt to determine the seed used to produce a particular shuffle can be made by systematically going through each of the possible seeds, producing the associated shuffle, and comparing the result against the deck you're searching for. To avoid susceptibility to this kind of attack, the number of possible seeds needs to be large enough that it is computationally infeasible to perform an exhaustive search within certain time constraints. Note that on average only half of the seed space will need to be searched until a match is found. For the purposes of an online card game, the time constraint would be the length of that game, which is usually on the order of minutes.
In our experience, a simple program running on a Pentium 400 computer is able to examine approximately 2 million seeds per minute. At this rate, this single machine could exhaustively search a 32-bit seed space (2^32 possible seeds) in a little over a day. Although that time period is certainly beyond the time constraints we have imposed on ourselves, it is certainly not infeasible to use a network of computers to perform a distributed search within our real time bounds.
The subject of brute force attacks serves to emphasize the aptness of our analogy between key length in a cryptographic algorithm and the seed behind shuffling. A brute-force cryptographic attack involves attempting every possible key in order to decrypt a secret message. Likewise a brute-force attack against a shuffling algorithm involves examining every possible seed. A significant body of research studying the necessary lengths of cryptographic keys already exists. Generally speaking, things look like this:
Algorithm Weak Key Typical Key Strong Key
DES 40 or 56 56 Triple-DES
RC4 60 80 128
RSA 512 768 or 1024 2048
ECC 125 170 230
People used to think that cracking 56-bit DES in real time would take too long to be feasible, but history has shown otherwise. In January 1997, a secret DES key was recovered in 96 days. Later efforts broke keys in 41 days, then 56 hours, and, in January 1999, in 22 hours and 15 minutes. The leap forward in cracking ability doesn't bode well for small key lengths or small sets of seeds!
People have even gone so far as to invent special machines to crack cryptographic algorithms. In 1998, the EFF created a special-purpose machine to crack DES messages. The purpose of the machine was to emphasize just how vulnerable DES (a popular, government-sanction algorithm) really is. (For more on the DES cracker, see http://www.eff.org/descracker/.) The ease of "breaking" DES is directly related to the length of its key. Special machines to uncover RNG seeds are not outside the realm of possibility.
We believe that a 32-bit seed space is not sufficient to resist a determined brute-force attack. On the other hand, a 64-bit seed should be resistant to almost any brute force attack. A 64-bit seed makes sense since many computers provide the ability to work with 64-bit integers off the shelf, and a 64-bit number should be sufficient for the purposes of protecting card shuffling against brute-force attacks.
64-bits alone won't do it though. We can't overemphasize that there must be absolutely no way for an attacker to predict or approximate the seed that is used by the PRNG. If there is a way to predict the seed, then the computationally-taxing brute-force attack outlined above becomes irrelevant (since the entire system breaks much more easily). In terms of our exploit, not only did ASF's flawed approach rely on a too-small 32-bit PRNG, but the approach relies on a seed based on the time of day as well. As our exploit demonstrated, there is very little randomness in such an approach.
In final analysis, the security of the entire system relies on picking a random seed in a non-predictable manner. The best techniques for choosing such a random number are hardware-based. Hardware-based approaches rely on unpredictably random data gathered directly from the physical environment. Since online poker and other games involving real money are extremely security critical undertakings, it's probably worth investing the necessary resources to ensure that random number generation is done correctly.
In concert, a good shuffling algorithm and a 64-bit pseudo-random number generator seeded with a proven hardware device should produce shuffles that are both fair and secure. Implementing a fair system is not overly difficult. Online poker players should demand it.

Some interesting facts

Today I read in Discovery that statistically speaking, beautiful couples have daughters as their first child while engineers, mathematicians, violent & big people have sons. Since I am big, and an engineer I am assuming I am going to have a son.

Also, the other day I read in a book that left handed people get 15% higher salaries than a right handed person. No explanation was provided because they did not have one to offer. This explains a lot, since medieval ages, righties have been punishing lefties; I even remember a senior back home telling me how the nuns at school used to hit lefties with a ruler until they stopped using it. We lefties have been the envy of righties for centuries because we are smarter, why else would we get paid more for the same job 

I wonder if lefty poker players are more successful…

Superpowers

Yesterday night I was watching a show called ‘Heroes’. In this show a group of people discover they have unusual powers such as painting the future, immortality, flying, bending time in space and mind reading.

My question to you…as a poker player, what superpower would you chose?

I can confidently guess most of you would choose the power of mind reading. Indeed this is the power that would make you a great poker player, even maybe the greatest. As David Slansky wrote in his book ‘The Theory of Poker’:

Every time you play your hand different than if you could see their hands; they gain.
Every time you play your hand exactly the same as if you could see their hands; they loose.
Every time your opponent plays different than if they could see your hand; they loose.
Every time your opponent plays exactly the same as if they could see your hand; they win.

How a perferct play can be no good enough

Both players played the hand perfectly, but sometimes stuff like that happens in poker. Well i guess 10 grands well spend Hudson.

Listen to the dealer!!!

Everyone has a poker moment that he will remember forever. My first Kodak moment was my first winning at casino Niagara with a KJo against a QQ. I cashed out $1,200 that night.

Another moment was on Poker Extravaganza week. I was getting very bad hands, I think I got faces cards less than a dozen times in 3 hours. Then one hand came A6s, I was in the small blind, everyone limped in so I decided to bluff (I was getting really bored and I need to change my table image quick.). The blinds were 1-2. The pot had $19, so I raised it to $7; big blind folded, one guy reraised to $15, three other guys called so it was to me. So my pot odds were ~ 11-1, I thought that even if the odds where there, that I was beaten by a big pocket since there was a reraise and 3 calls, so I was going to fold when Gary – the dealer – said “Come on, you gotta play that hand look at the odds.”

I was surprised that a dealer would say that, I thought they were not allowed to give advice in the table. So I said to myself what the heck, just for Gary, so I called…. Guess what the flop came….

6 6 6

I flopped quads! I couldn’t believe it, I admit I got lucky but if I did not play that hand I would be on a tilt right then. So now the question was hiow do I get the most money out of them?
Since I was first to act, I called $5, my explanation was that if I checked and then called or raised they would know I have a hand but by calling with a small bet like that they would think I want to steal. So someone raised to $10 and everyone called, of course I called; the pot was up to $134. the turn came a brick, I bet $10, one guy calls, and everyone else folds, my mistake L - the pot became $154, the river came a J and when I checked the guy it looked like he liked that river so i knew he had a jack. He had $80 left but I was afraid if I go all-in he wouldn’t call so I just bet $45 assuming he would go all in since he would be pot committed. To my surprise he just calls – as I expected he had a full house 6s full of jacks. I made $244 in that hand which is not a lot compared to other hands but I liked the fact that I got lucky thanks to the dealer…hahaha
p.s. I tipped him $10.

Poker Extravaganza Week

Here is a summary of my Poker Extravaganza week. I don't talk about plays and hands, I MAY in a later post.


Day 1 & 2: -$170 ; was doing pretty good but t someone got really lucky and rivered my all-in full boat – the pot was $1200

Day 3: +$1,380 ; I got some marginal hands that I played to perfection and got me a lot of money. I lost a lot playing qualifiers for the WPT Canadian Open.

Day 4: - $290 ; after I made close to $800 in cash games in less than 3 hours, I went and played $330 qualifiers for the WPT Canadian Open

Day 5: No poker today – had an appointment with citizenship.

Day 6: +$850 ; pure solid poker

Days 7, 8 & 9: I dedicated these days for the tournament, after losing $500, I finally made it to the main event….I am going to the WPT Canadian Open J

Day 10: Today I wake up exhausted,I didn’t really know why but I was really exhausted. I checked my PDA and I had a tournament in the Nuttz poker club at U of T. It is an easy tournament; 50 people, buy-in 50 bucks and a lot of novice people. Then I looked myself in the mirror and I knew I was done poker for that week. My face was terrible; red puffy eyes, pale face as white as snow and my shirt was up side down.

So I decided not to play and give a call to Sophia. We agreed to go for Sushi. She got sushi and I got my favorite plate; sushi and lots of sashimi. After food we walked around and talked, later I met Mika and went to the mall.

Very unproductive day…poker-wise.

15 Signs You Play Too Much Poker

This was in the Full Contact Poker newsletter, i wanted to share it with you guys, enjoy. According to this, I AM playing too much poker.

1. You start classifying people on your life as "weak-tight" or "loose-passive," even when they've never set foot in a poker room.

2. You use the phrase "bad beat" when lending a sympathetic ear to a friend.

3. The guy on TV didn't win the lottery, he had the "nut ticket."

4. It's been more than 24 hours since the first time you told yourself "Just one more round and then I'll get some sleep."

5. Your two ATM cards and five credit cards have all reached their maximum cash advance for the day.

6. You figure if your family leaves you that will give you more time and money and you can move up to a bigger limit.

7. You have 12 games on your computer, solitaire, minesweeper, and 10 poker games.(that's me...hahaha)

8. Your kids are named Check and Raise.

9. Your bathroom library consists of Card Player and Poker Digest.

10. The only reason you go to your in-law's for Thanksgiving is for the nickel, dime, quarter game after dinner.

11. Or because they live closer to Oceans 11.

12. You are having such a bad day at hold 'em that you decide to take a break...and play Omaha.

13. Your sweetie gets a certain look in her eye and you think it means that she want to go to the cardroom.

14. You have nightmares about your cards changing during the hand.(that happened to me too...weird)

15. You have a poker chip in your pocket right now.

Poker Extravaganza Week, Oct 6th to Oct 15th

I was thinking of what to do for this vacation. I was planning to travel to Chile visit my bro or go to Europe but my current situation doesn’t allow me to go anywhere outside Canada. So I came up with the best holyday idea – POKER EXTRAVAGANZA WEEK.

What is poker extravaganza week? I will be taking my vacation from Oct 6th to Oct 15th, in those 10 days all I will be doing is play poker but not online, I will go back to play real games. For these 10 days I will go to Casino Niagara, Fallsview casino and an underground spot here in Toronto. In those days I will go to any games I can hear about and if I do well enough, I will fly to the some casinos in Alberta and visit some of my friends. Also, if my game is tight I will try some of the satellite tournaments they have in Casino Niagara for the WPT Canadian Open.

I am getting ready for Poker Extravaganza week doing the following:
1. Bankroll: I will shorten my bankroll for that week to JUST $1,000. I play better with a small bankroll, I don’t bluff that much J

2. Preparation: I am going to finish 2 books I have been reading:
Killer Poker
Hold’em Poker for Advanced Player

3. Practice: I WILL NOT play poker from now till OCT 6th, I want my head to be fresh to play for 10 days straight so all I will be doing in the meanwhile is practice. I will practice on free-rolls, play money games and simulating hard situations I encountered before using Hold’em Calculatem.

So people be ready to the best 10 posts you are ever goping to read about poker. They will be full of games, excitement, girls (I love girls that play poker at casinos), lust and bluffs.

A day in the poker life of EVH (that's me)

I came back from work tired and smelling like burnt plastic. I ate a delicious salad, watched some TV and then jumped on my leather chair, grabbed my wireless keyboard and logged in at Full Contact Poker. I entered a low stake Pot limit ring game (0.25+0.25 PL), the table was full of lose aggressive players, it took me 30 bucks to find that out but I decided to stay at that table because I knew how to get my money back. I switched my game from passive to aggressive almost every 5 minutes, I was calling pockets and raising with suited connectors and my raising was inconsistent so they were lost. Of course I was playing regular poker with absolutely no bluff with the couple of amateurs at the table.

After 30 minutes I knocked out 3 guys and crippled the ex-chip leader with quads I got at the flop. I just let them raise and re-raise into themselves while I was partying it on my chair and seen that pot getting bigger and bigger. At the river one guy went all in and then the other two followed suit. There was 2 full houses, one Ace high flush and my dear quads. I made enough money to enter the high stake tournament I wanted to play.

After 7 minutes in the game, I was short stacked, i went all in with pocket tens and someone rivered me L , I finished 7^th (it was a single table tournament). With the left over from my previous winning I went to some ring games, after 20 minutes I made a fat profit. When I decided to leave, I saw these entire 2-people table, so I entered one just to watch. Before I entered I was expecting to watch professionals playing for that much money (2,000+) but I was surprised that they had no clue how to play.

So I decided to try it out. I entered a table where my opponent had five folds my stack but I was confident I would get the money. I start using my strategy for showdowns in tournaments which is ALWAYS RAISE NO MATTER WHAT YOU HAVE AND LET THEM FOLD LIKE LITTLE GIRLS. When he noticed what I was doing it was too late, we were almost equal in chips. I was temped to leave with the profit but I knew so much about his game that I wanted to stick around a bit.

I was fishing a lot…I mean I was fishing every single hand. My opponent had no clue what were hand and pot odds; he wasn’t betting enough and he would fold whenever I show I have even a pair. Finally he took his money back with a K high straight while I had the 10 high straight L . But I was confident I would get it back. I forgot about the lose and I went back to my game but this time he believed I was on a tilt so he was calling more of my raises. Thanks to that and a pocket 8s I made a nice profit before he left the table. Too bad.

I was ready to leave the table when a guy came in with 60 bucks (i had 500+). I said to myself ‘ok one more hand.’ – I got a pocket jacks…NICE :) the flop was A 7 9[all hearts], he was first, he bet $1, I raised to $5 and he calls, the turn was a 5, he checks and I bet $5 and he calls. By this time I put him on a straight draw. Next card is a J, he goes all-in and I sit there for a second analyzing the game. I had a feeling he had nothing, he was on a draw and he didn’t make it.

Let’s analyse this

Common card were A795J

He could beat me with KQ, AA, KK & 87 however, I WASN’T FEELING IT, so I called and it turned out he had QT, what a moron :)

Understanding your limits

Yesterday I had a great start, I won 2 ring games, then I won a high stakes tournament. I made a decent profit for one day [it took me almost 3 hours]. Later that night, I was tired but decided to play a bit – BAD DECISION. After I lost the first time, I was on a tilt. At the end I lost everything I made that day [I made a $3 profit J ]. This lead me to today’s topic. How do you know when it is enough?

As you all already know, I am a reliability engineer. Part of what I do is to record work done on equipment and from those records I analyze the history of the equipment so I can come up with the best action [rebuilding, replacing or performing a preventative maintenance] on the equipment. I have been able to increase the production and the uptime of most of our manufacturing lines thanks to that history that I created. This is a good illustration on the importance of building a history with useful data.

Most poker players keep a record of their winnings that’s why I started recording my poker winnings since i was 18. I have been developing what I record and I believe I finally came up with the ideal spreadsheet.

Following is what I record in my spreadsheet for each entry:
Date
Profit/lose [if it was either from ring games or tournaments, and what was the entry fee]
Time
Profit per hour
Location where I played [house game, casino or online (for online I specify the site)]

Also I record the frequency of winning and losing in tournaments (single tables and multiple tables in different indicators), see previous post to see what’s the benefit of this metric.

From this data I can conclude what method is the most profitable for me (so far it has been house games with online at Full Contact Poker a close second). Also, I can conclude my overall profit and my profit per month.

Now back to the first question, How do you know when it is enough?

Using this database and performing some statistical tools, it came up that my optimum profit was at 3.25 hours (3 hours and 15 minutes). And going back to yesterday it makes perfect sense. I made the peak at 2.8 hours, then I lost everything from then to hour six.

So my recommendation is to record the location and the time you spend everyday playing and what is your profit for that day and from that come up with your poker strategy.
If you have more metrics in your records I would love to hear what they are and discuss their benefits.

Delicious chinese food.

You may be wondering why i haven't posted anything in 25 days? the answer is really simple - i have been too busy. I have been fine tuning my online game and i have been studying players' behaviours very carefully. First i started keeping a record of my % of tournament winnings, i already have a poker record but it doesn't specify tournaments. So i found out that my tournamnet winning rate is 27% [sample population was 55 tournaments] which is close to 1 out of every 4 tournaments.

Since January, August has been the first month with a steady profit. The reason for the change is my new method of playing. Here is my game plan. I already got people laughing at it, but it works for me:

Statistically, i win 1 game of every 4 i play. Therefore, i start the day with a $20+2 tournament,and i will continue to play 20+2 games till i loose 3 times, then i will play 50+5. Regardless of the outcome of the last tournament i will return to 20+2 games till i lose 3 times.

What is my phylosophy behind that tactic?

A lot of players they start the day with high stake tournaments and when their bankroll is low they will switch to low stake games. The following example illustrates my point.

(Some of you were getting confused about this, so i made the math clearer)
Regular player
lose 50+5 = -55
lose 50+5 = -55
lose 50+5 = -55
win 20+2 = +88
-----------------
net profit = -77

Me
lose 20+2 = -22
lose 20+2 = -22
lose 20+2 = -22
win 50+5 = 195
------------------
net profit = 129

You may say my method is flawed since you cannot predict that you will always lose the first 3 times and win the 4th game - think about it by answering the following 3 questions.

What is the probability you will fip tails one time? 50%
What is the probability you will fip tails two times in a row? 50% x 50% = 25%
What is the probability you will fip tails three times in a row? 50% x 50% x 50% = 12.5%

According to your history you know your winning rate is 25% so you know you will win one game out of approximetely four [assuming that losing three times in a row doesn't affect your game]. So each time you lose, your winning chances increase [ as illustrated below]. It is the same principle like betting double the last bet on the same color in the roullette.

The odds of losing on time = 77%
The odds of losing 2 times in a row = 77% x 77% = 59%
The odds of losing 3 times in a row = 77% x 77% x 77% = 45%
and for the 4th, 5th and 6th time the probability of losing are 35% , 27% & 20%

If you have any comments i really would like to hear them, good or bad.

As for the picture at the top of this post, I went for chinese today, it was delicious.
Hahaha

Tournaments vs. Ring games.

Every serious poker player keeps a record of his loss/winnings. Every month I take a look at it to see how good I am doing. This month I saw a pattern that I never realized before; I am a better tournament player than a ring player. Combining my house games, online and live tournaments, I win 3 times as often as regular ring games in the casino or online.

As a matter of fact, my records show that I haven’t lost a single house game since April 2004. That may be because I usually play with the same people and friends (it is so easy to learn your friends tells J). But the same is true for ring games at the casino; almost always I end up playing with a table were 70% of the players I played against before but I still don’t win 100% of the time as in house games.

When I start thinking about it, it all make sense. In a tournament you will play the same players for an extended period of time, meanwhile in a ring game I’ve seen people changing tables in less than 30 minutes!!!! Therefore, it is harder to build a reliable history on players betting habits and tells.

In addition, I believe that tournaments are mercier on you than a ring games. I have dozens of examples where I did several mistakes and was the lowest stack in the table and I end up wining the tournament. However, a bad decision in a ring game tend to cost you all your stack.

Tournaments change gears all the time, making the table more dynamic. In a ring game you play virtually 8-10 people all the time which may lead to boredom or playing crappy/marginal hands. However, in tournaments, the number of players keeps going down changing the value of hands, betting amounts and the odds leading you to stay alert in the action all the time. Also, don’t forget the blinds which keep increasing with time!

Finally, I noticed it is easier to be patient in tournaments because as long as you are in the table you are winning. However, in ring games, chip stack is the winning indicator and as a lot of players had found out over centuries, it can be very volatile. This change in chip stack will affect your winning state of mind leading you to play more hands trying get your stack back.

One last word, when I mention tournaments in this post, I refer to single-table tournaments. I consider multi-table tournaments a hybrid between single-table tournaments and ring games. The speed of the game keeps changing because the blinds keep going up. And watching more and more tables being merged gives you a winning feeling. Once, you get to the last table, it becomes a single-table tournament and you should change your tactics accordingly.

BEST street festival ever.

On July 9th I went to the Street Festivasl here in Toronto. It was great, great singers, great talents and great music. It was an enriching experience.

When I went to listen to some beirut tunes in one of the stages, old ladies were dancing and trying to bellydance which i found really cute, then this skinny white dude jumps in attemping to arab dance, i never saw arab dancing being so enjoyable to watch so I taped it and uploaded it on YouTube.com, I linked it here. SO ENJOY and leave me a comment.

What to do when you hit the plateau?

Yesterday I was watching UFC 61 the first couple of fights were neat, however, the last fights were horrible; since both fighters were so good the fight became a boxing match, no one was on the ground, there were no good combos and nothing exciting.

This got me thinking. This years World Cup was not that exciting to watch as well. Why? Because of the lack of goals. Every team is using the same advanced defense techniques that makes it really hard to score. That’s why now the soccer community is thinking of new ways of making this sport exciting again since it hit the plateau.

There is plateau in anything you do; when you are on a diet, you hit a plateau, when you work out, again, there will be a plateau. And of course, there is a plateau in poker.

Lately, I was analyzing the players on my table at Casino Niagara. Disregarding he drunk college boy, every one on my table was playing exactly the same way. They tried to be random, being unpredictable, forgetting the odds and the stats…etc. At this level poker becomes a game of pure luck. As a beginner, poker (specially Texas Hold’em) is a lot about luck. As you advance in the game and adapt new techniques, the game becomes more predictable and more skill-oriented. However, as the poker community gains these skills, these new techniques are not as effective leading to the creation of new more advanced techniques.

Nowadays, I personally believe we reached a level were the game of Texas Hold’em has developed too much neutralizing the skill part of it and increasing the luck factor.

I believe that the new techniques that will rejuvenate poker are in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). I am saying this because I have used it for years in poker and it works wonders.

For example, you flop a monster hand, but when you bet everyone folds so you end up winning a small pot. How can you maximize your winnings? By making your opponents bet. You can try making your opponents bet by commanding them to bet which I don’t see woking or you can persuade them to bet by using neuro-linguistic programming. Also, if you bluffed a pot ad would like your opponent to fold. You may attempt to tell him not to play it, or you can persuade him using NLP.

Finally, NLP will elevate poker to the next level. I don’t know what will be the next step after everyone uses NLP. Maybe a modified version of the currently game theory. We just have to wait and see.

Would you gamble 1 million?

Let’s imagine you won a million dollars in the lottery. Now assume that Donald Trump comes to you and challenges you to flip a coin, heads you win, tails he wins. If you win, he will give you 10 million dollar; however, if you loose you give him your one million dollar. Would you accept this challenge?

From a probabilities point of view you should accept the challenge since you get a 10:1 for the money with a 50% success, that is, you get 10 times the money you bet for a challenge that you would win half the time.

However, from a psychological point of view, should you accept it? It depends on the person. How many million dollars you have? How long does it take you to make one million? Are you willing to lose your one million? Everyone has a different perspective of life therefore we would see some people accepting the challenge (Type A), and some won’t (Type B).

In poker, we run into both types of people, from my personal experience, I never seen successful type B poker players. There is a saying, it takes money to make money and I completely believe it is true in poker. Saving your chips and never risking it is just going to shrink your stack by the hour. However, type A players are the players that you see having a huge stack in front of them or stands up and leaves the game very early. One good example of a type A poker player is Phil Ivey; in tournaments you either see him with a huge stack early in the tournament or you see him out the game in a couple of hours or even minutes!

Even though, type A is the way to go in poker. Sometimes, players (especially me) become type B for a moment. A good example was summer 2005 where an old experiences player went all-in(~$1,000), I knew he had pocket jacks or lower (I had a tell on him therefore I knew he didn’t have anything bigger), I had AKs, so if my assumption was correct it was a coin flip. The pot had $500 before he went all-in; therefore I was getting 1.5:1 for a 50% success. Probabilities-wise, I should have played, but emotional-wise I was too attached to my winnings.

p.s. He showed pocket tens.

A word about online poker

(This article was adopted from http://www.GambleWIKI.com.)

Since early February I had no time to go to Casino Niagara, therefore I've been playing online at PokerRoom.com and PartyPoker.com. So far this year I am in the negative -thanks to online poker. Actually if it wasn't for my casino winnings earlier this year; I would have been in the big negative.

So the question is; Is online poker for me?
I think I could be a good online player since I always make a profit in the first hour I play, then it goes downhill. What is it? maybe I have no patience, maybe I get tired after that or I just get bored.

Consider these points before playing online poker:

1. '''It can be very very addictive.''' Online gambling is more dangerous than live gambling because you tend to play more often (the computer is right in your house) and you can play whenever you want. Also, people tend to forget that the numbers in the screen is ACTUAL money so they tend to play loose.

2. '''Cheating is wide spread in online gambling.''' It is easier for more than one individual to play on the sae table and help each other through the phone or instant messeger. My recommendation to avoid such a situation is to play big tables, that is, 10 people in the table. Also,those tables are EASY to identify when you recognize check re-raise a lot among certain players.

3. '''Online poker can mke you or break you very easy.''' If you don't have patience, discipline and a solid strategy then it would be hard in online poker to make a steady cash flow, same goes for live games to a certain extent.

4. '''Get a CHEAP and FAST method to get money IN & OUT of the net.''' If you are not wise with your transactions you can lose a big portion of your winnings to admistritative and processing fees. Study each deposit site carefully, I personally use NETELLER.

GambleWiki - the ultimate gambling portal

Two days ago, Moneer and I decided that there was not a good gambling poker on the net. Our decision? create one. GambleWIKI.com is the ultime gambling portal on the net.

If you are curious about the history of gambling....GambleWIKI.com
If your friends use poker lingo and you feel like a bum...GambleWIKI.com
If you want to make some coin...GambleWIKI.com
If you want to donate some of that coin...GambleWIKI.com
If you want to share some strategies...GambleWIKI.com
If you would like to arrange house games...GambleWIKI.com

I would like to take the opportunity to metion that GambleWIKI.com does not encourage gambling in any way.GambleWIKI.com will help you be more educated in your gambling and know more about the history of gambling.

I hope that some of my beloved readers will become contributors at the gambling portal; GambleWIKI.com

Business talk

So I am into entrepeneur mode right now. And luckily they got this guy who started 4 businesses that is an alumni from my Uni to give a speach at some class of mine. There is one thing that he said that really got my attention,'If you have an idea just execute it. And just care about doing the first little transaction, do not care about later. If you do that first transaction then that would mean that you just opened your first business. Afterwards, everything gets easier.' So right now, I am trying to do that first transaction. Things are going slow since I need to go to a lot of places and try to make deals with people about something that I have no idea about. I have a friend that knows a lot about that, he is going to help me; actually his father is in that line of business. We'll see how things turn out.

Proyecto Uno

I have been considering this for a while, do my MBA and get a strategic management consulting job for 150k a year or open my own business. Long time ago I realized that I am a lousy worker; I don't let anyone boss my around even the biggest boss, I believe that's why I have so much respect in the company.

When people ask me 'where you see yourself in 5 years?' I give some diplomatic ansdwer that they all like, but later when I am thining about the question, I see myself owing my own company where the longer I work the more money I make, contrary to being employeed. I see myself having 100 employees working fr me, having a great company that provides a great service to the customers, my employees and the comunity.

I have tons of ideas but most of them need capital. Finally, last week I decided that I needed an action plan, so I picked one idea from my ideas vault (yes i have my brainstormed ideas with detailed business plans saved somewhere just in case) i do that because when the opportunity comes along there is no time for preparation; and that opportunity came earlier this week.

I was playing poker at PokerRoom, I was up by $300 in a 2-5NL game when I got a call from my friend. She called me because i asked her for help finding a place to lease in Bay St., the conversation went something like this,

(M=me, F= friend)
F= May I speak to EvolvedHomoSapien.
M=Speaking
F=Hi I am from Colliers, I am calling regarding your request for 4,000 sqt. office space for lease in Bay St.
M= Oh, it is you, how are you?
F=Nothing much. So why do you want that space?
M=I am planning to open a restaurant there.
F=Oh dear, i wouldn't do that, restaurants have the biggest turn over. But listen come tonight to this concert I am going with my boyfriend, you can talk to him about that, he knows a lot about that.
M=Alright, see you there.

That night i went to that concert, it was pretty awesome, good music, nice people and a vibe that filled the air with pure energy. One of the guys singing was her ex-boss, he was a pretty good singer. Well we stayed there listening to music, drinking domestic beer and singing along with the musicians, it was a good time.

In the break, her boyfriend and I started talking about business stuff and he told me about his 2 companies, how he started and all the details. After I pitched my ideas he offered to help me with my credit history through his contacts since he believed I had some good ideas for a business.

Later we went for dinner to the MarketPlace, such a nice place. I got a personalized made deluxe pizza, so delicious. We spend 2 more hours talking, it was such a nice night full of controversial topics, food and alcohol.

I went back home knowing that if I start one of this ideas I wouldn't need the MBA anymore. I emailed my brother and told him about the details and he started to work from his end of the rope. Our project was on its way...Proyecto Uno had been borned.

TTC = Take That Cock!

Woke up early, was sleepy, was hungry and was thirsty. After 30 minutes I was out the door and heading to work. I was pulling the station's door but it wouldn't, i tried pushing and again didn't open. I was still sleepy so I didn't know what was going on; for a second I thought it was Sunday and not monday, I was confused. Then i noticed all the people outside, I realized the operator or collect guy might have forgotten to open the door, so I called the TTC and a surprising message went like this "Welcome to the TTC customer service. All TTC services are closed due to a Union strike". I was pissed big time...it wasn't just for the fact that now it would be a dilemna to get to work but in addition that I hated the TTC union- here is the story:

Fresh from university I joined the TTC as a senior technical assistant in the maintenance departmet. At first I was so happy; good company, excellent pay, health benefits, pension and the whole nine yards. It didn't take me more than a couple of months to realize what a mess it was in there. There were a lot of contributing factors but the big factor was the union. The union at the TTC is really strong. Just as an ilustration, they don't care about anything-it is virtually impossible to fire a union guy. Therefore they would spent a great portion of their time taking a nap at trains scheduled for maintenance and cleaning. In a nutshell, they are the laziest workers I have ever seen in my experience.

Surely, the union was a big factor for me to quit that slow-pace job but there were many more important factors I may discuss in a later post. Going back to the topic of why i dislike that union is that they dare to strike AGAIN after just one year. However, i shouldn't blame them, it is the fault of management, a wiseman once told me 'management gets the union they deserve'. One big fault I noticed in TTC management is that they allow being tosed around by the union, that fact by itself is the mere reason why the union has been able to get away with what it had so far.

Well anyways, once I realized there was no TTC to work I started evaluating options, first I thought of taking a cab but after 5 minutes of waiting I noticed all the cabs were already taken and it was uncertain how long it would take me before getting one. So I tried the Mississauga transit. At first, I spent 10 minutes planning my route to work; I had to take the 11A to Derry Rd. and Rexwood then I would take another bus, the 12E to work. Well that trip took me more than an hour; not because of the route, it was due to the service, there was a 30 minute gap between busses!

As for coming back from work, it was the peak of this experience. First, I thought that TTC was back since I saw some TTC buses on the street. After 45 minutes of waiting I called TTC info and the message said the service will resume the next day at 6am. I was surprised and curious what all those TTC buses where doing then.

Well then I walk for 20 minutes to a Missisauga transit bus, waited there for 25 minutes, got in the bus, got off at Derry Rd. and Rexwood, waited 30 minutes, missed my bus (was seating in the wrong stop!) so I decided to go to Wendy's get some fuel. Got a Single Classic with large fries and a large sprite. Finally I got home at 8pm. What a day.

Begginer's luck or psychic skills.

Today I met the worst luckiest player ever.
At the poker table I was completely dominating the table...I had tells, I played any two cards making profit, I bluffed on and off position.

Then, a skinny little blondie came sat beside me-she had no clue how to bet and to play. I knew she wasn't acting, she was a complete disaster. After a couple of hands I noticed that she called every hand and hoped to get lucky, I was so happy-it was gonna be like stealing candy from a baby.

I had the dealer button and I had pocket 5s. Everyone called and when it came to her she raised it to $12 (the big blind was $2) I was right after her, I called since I just wanted to sneak with it and make a lot of money if I get a set. Everyone else folded, it was the two of us.

The flop was 9 5 6 rainbow. At first I thought it was a bad flop since She could have a straight, BUT then I realized she raised to $12 before the flop- she HAD to have pocket kings, pocket aces, big slick or any other big cards; so I wasn't really concerned. She bet $15, I raised to $45, she called. A BIG tell when she called was her hand shaking-an alarm started beeping in my head.

The turn was a 10. After seeing her shaky hand while betting I realised that she had the straight, damn me, how could I get in that trap, and HOW could she have a straight if she raised before the flop? She bet $15, I called because I could still make the nuts, I had 8 outs so i had a 18% of making the nuts and I had good pot odds. The river was king, I didn't make it, she showed an 8 7 OFF-SUITED. I was so surprised and dissapointed. I motivated myself by realizing that she just got lucky and I played my hand the proper day.

After that hand I left with a $10 profit for the day :(

1st BBQ this year a pure success

While waiting for Lucian and Jack, I took an awesome picture of the business buil;ding in front of my building. This picture looks more like a computer generated picture than a real one.

Once in the car, we talked about the plant and our maintenance plan, i was glad that finally we got a chance to talk about our department without any interuptions.

In Zak's place we were the first people, after 30 minutes, Barb and Isabell showed up, then Octavian, Judith and Carol showed up and lately Gabriela.

Enjoy the pics!

I am not looking down on anybody, but...

So I did this ready-in-11-minutes mac and cheese. First, it is not done in 11 minutes, it takes as much just to boil the god damn water with the milk. Second, if they say it renders for 3 then know that that is for one in anywhere but Sumalia. I ate a bag that said it was for 4, well, I think I went too far with that, but anyways, thumb rule, 3 portions if you want a luch, 2 if you just wanna eat, 1 if you want a crack or just wanna eat it with something else. Anyways, mac and cheese is not what I wanted to talk about, see, as I was leaving the kitchen I told the guy in charge of the residencial and owner, that the internet was down, and he said,'Well, they say at the company that it is a problem -and I quote- of the country and not of their connections.' God, at first I thought, there is no way that he called the company or that he didn't understand what they said. Second thing I thought,'and what the hell do you know about country problems.' I mean, it sounds as if I am this arrogant sona bitch, but see, I am not. See, first thing you don't know is how ignorant he and his wife are. God, I feel bad for saying this, but it is so hard not to think that of them. It is not that they are of a lower social class, I mean he used to be from a really low class, but right now he has like 4 cars, and even if he were from a lower class, that would still not be the case. Sometimes I envy him and his simple style of life, I mean, he hasn't to worry about bigger issues, nor to try to keep updated with world events and politics. But then again, I couldn't be, nor would I accept to myself being that ignorant. I mean, for him me being palestinian is the most exciting thing . First he thinks I am blessed for coming from the holyland. I mean come on, we are not blessed, we are cursed. We die everyday in there like ants. Then he tries to talk in politics with me, too bad for him. He is like, why all the violence in there, and I am like 'well, it is complicated." Well, the saying why all the violence" might seem a rational thing to say, I mean, everyone is saying, why all the violence, try to come up with peace. And that is something understandable, but he actually doesnt know the difference between Israel , Palestine and Turkey. He thinks people in there are violent just as people in Chile are thieves.
Well, I know it sounds as if I am exagerating, BUT see, he said that after we were having this other conversation. First, some background you need to have about him. He considers himself religious, I mean he says he is catholic, but he is not. He is some kinda protestant type of catholic. Well, not a roman catholic. I will not enter into religion now, all you gotta know is that he is considered religious; he knows stuff from the bible by heart. So, he tells me that Jews have to have Jerusalem and all that crap about how Jews should be there in all the Glory that the bible talked about. And I am like, well, but it doesn't mean that all christians in there be thrown to hell and be killed like rats alongside with muslims. And he is like,(with the gesture as if I said something completely knew), 'aren't Jews Christians'. Now, you can imagine my face. I am like, from where the hell did you hear that. He says ,'but Christ was a Jew.' And he consideres himself "religious".Anyways, now you can see why I was frustrated that he was actually talking about the Middle East and even tried to talk about Politics. I will not talk about his wife, but she consideres, and I do as well, her husband as really intelectual.
Well, I guess we can't blame them for their ignorance, since I bet they didn't go to good schools. I am not sure they did enter high school. She had her kid at 16. As I say, sometimes I envy them for their simple lives, and the fact that they don't try to know things. Now that I think about it, bad schooling isn't an excuse. God damn it, I know people that didn't finish 6 grade (and I am not exagerating nor will I mention names), that can talk about any topic because they seek the information. Really, let's take me for an example, I do consider myself of those who wanna know it all. I mean, I know 5 languages, and I can't rest because I am not fluent at 2 of them and because I haven't started chinese mandarin yet.
Well, I think I am gonna leave it like that, and go back and finish my reading for tomorrow. About 50 pages of political accountability and 100 of Video-politics(how the media influences politics.)

Summer is in downtow Toronto

Woke up at 6:30 a.m. on my day off - I couldn't sleep. I sank my head in cold water, jumped on my seat and turned on my computer. Went on PartyPoker.com, after 20 minutes I was up to $50 from just $10, then I was going up and down like a yo-yo, I left with just a $7 loss. After breakfast I entered again, same thing happened but this time I lost $25. This happened to me because I stayed on too long and didn't know when to stop - I'm changing that TODAY.

Later that day, I saw the shining sun rays through my window; it opened my eyes 'What the heck am I doing inside in such a beatiful day?'. I jumped in my sweat pants and went downtown to my gym- it was the best 1-hour workout I had in weeks, well actually, I haven't been in the gym for a month.

After that I went downtown and walked around. I went to Eaton Centre, then to a spanish folklore event beside Eaton Centre and finally I walked to the lake shore. I think I needed that break, now I am ready to hit the poker tables again.

Good things come in two

I tried a different strategy in online poker, so far my 2-day experiment has worked wonders. I came up with TWO conclusions:

1. PartyPoker.com is the best online poker place I have tried so far.

2. Being over-aggressive with seasonal players works online.

First of all, I ain’t getting paid to promote PartyPoker.com (I wish I did). I like it because it has lots of tables you can choose from, for low, medium and high stake players. Also, you will find all ranges of skills, but it is populated with good conservative players, which is good for my strategy which I will mention below.

First, I classify players as strong-conservative, weak-conservative, strong-loose & weak-loose. As you will read in my short analysis you will make most of your money from the loose players.

In order to be able to classify players all you need to do is WATCH. Here are some tips.

Strong-conservative players

These players are easy to spot. They will rarely over bet the pot unless they have the nuts. If you raise and they re-raise you, be assured they have you beat. My strategy is to pound on them, always raise, raise and raise and let them fold, fold and fold. It wouldn’t be wise for you to re-raise against one of them unless you have a strong hand, let someone else in the table fight him and notice what he has ((if he shows) and you will see I was dead right.

The always-raise strategy works with a strong-conservative player because they will fold if they don’t have a strong hand, they might call with a pair. Therefore, you should call most hands (especially in a short handed game), you can afford it with all the blinds that you will steal.

Weak-conservative players

I use the Strong-Conservative player’s strategy with one little modification; I would be more aggressive after the flop. These players tend to over play their hands. Since, they don’t properly bet, you will have good pot odds. Re-raising is not a concern with these players.

Strong-loose players

These are the players that walk away with your money if you are not careful. You see them in almost every hand, they raise, raise and raise. A lot of players lose their money to one of them because they get frustrated with them bluffing at every hand so they might chose any marginal hand to bluff them back. However, they forget that these type of players are watching every bet they make and their patterns. When they feel you are bluffing they won’t let you get away, and they will maximize whatever they can take from you.

My strategy against them is to just play premium hands, never get frustrated, slow play most hands unless there is a draw on the table.

Weak-loose players

You will make tons of money from them if you learn how to play with their heads. These players are there just to have fun and socialize. You will see them in most hands. They will over bet the pot, play out of position and almost never fold a marginal hand –they fish a lot.

My strategy with them is not to use sophisticated poker theory with them. Just play your hand. Try not to bet too much unless you have a good hand. Check-raise plays wonderful with them if you want an all-in from them.

Here you go, a brief classification of poker players and how to be profitable in online poker.

In a nutshell:

1. Play in 6-people games
2. Call most hands before the flop
3. If you are in position, bet after the flop, if you get re-raised then you should analyze who re-raised you.

This is a simple strategy, good for starters.

Ask if you have any questions.

Enjoy,

Marketing Pillows as Toys

Well, I am having this marketing proyect, and we were asked to develope and market a toy for kids in kindergardens. Well, and I came up with a pillow. How did that happen, well, at first I was gonna do some dominos kinda toys that teach how to write numbers, that would be good for kids on their last stages of kindergarden. So, at one side of the domino piece there is gonna be a number from 1 to 9, and on the other side, there would be an amount of objects (of course that the amount would be different from the number in the same domino piece). So kids are supposed to allocate a piece, let's say with the number 2 , besides another piece of domino with 2 objects on it. So, after we were discussing the idea, we were talking how to make that safe, since we are asked to do toys that are not fine toys; that is, not puzzles and stuff like that, but things which the kid would have to move his bodie while playing. So we were thinking of huge dominos. So, to make the story short, I thought, why not making them as pillows, that way it would be safe, and they can use it as pillows when they take their naps. And I saw potential, I mean, they will save money by buying our products, not to mention that they are really stylish, and we would enter another market, the market of design and decore. Check them out,
Other teams did some good toys, but there is no way that those are gonna be sold for the prices they speculate, I mean, 80 dollars on a shitty thing. I mean, we might not have the greatest toy, but we have the one that would get sold in real markets. I guess I gotta focus on that point this wednesday, which is my team's due date . We did 4 pillows, and are thinking that it would be sold on sets of 9. Nice design, he? check out how we attached the numbers. And you wouldn't believe how relaxing they are, I mean, it is unbelievable. I am taking the one with the number 1 for myself.

What I learnt about women from poker (Part 1)

I've been playing poker seriously for more than 6 years. I read somewhere that it takes 1 year for someone to get proficient at something, 3 years to get good at it, 5 years to get professional and 10 years to become a guru.

I consider myself a very talented poker player. Why? Once you start using poker analogies in life, you know you are a serious player. My friend, John, has been having problems getting girls after his break up with Ashley 6 months ago. So I thought to myself how I can help my bud. I came up with a great solution-teach him poker.

John isn't a gambler, I knew that. I had a hard time convincing him that poker will help him to get laid. After 5 hours of intense poker insights he was getting poker.

He asked me how it will help him since he wasn’t gonna try making 1 million playing poker. I said 'now you are ready for the real lesson'. He leaned forward and was anxious for what I was going to teach him.

I broke it down to 4 stages:

1. The preparation

2. The approach (the pre-flop)

3. The build up (the flop)

4. The close (the turn and river)

Preparation: State of Mind

It is all about state of mind. If you feel great, you are great; if you feel like a loser then you are one. You really have to convince yourself that you are up to the challenge. When you talk to yourself don’t say ‘I WILL try to succeed’ say ‘I WONDER how much fun it will be to succeed doing this’. Also, I wouldn’t suggest using statements like ‘I am the BEST poker player in the world’ or something of that sort, why?

Because your brain will be in conflict with itself all the time and it wouldn’t be able to process it- the brain is way more powerful than you think. For example if you say ‘I am thin.’ But you are overweight, then your brain will be in conflict because it knows you are overweight so the statement will not be that effective, you should try something like ‘What can I do today to lose this extra weight?’ or ‘I wonder how long it will take me to take off this extra weight?’. Questions are way more powerful than statements. The brain will try to answer any question you ask yourself, if it doesn’t have the answer then it will find a way to answer it.

What state of mind do you need in poker?

The state of mind that you need is that of an aggressive mind reader that owns wherever he walks in. You need to act as you know it all, act like you can read that individual, make deep eye contact, and act like you know what will happen. After a while of acting it will BECOME you!

In your mind there is no room for failure, if you say to yourself ‘I will try this’ then you are preparing yourself for failure, whenever you TRY something it means there are 2 outcomes: success and failure. You should say ‘I will sit down, have fun and squeeze every penny from these weirdo smurfs.’

This state of mind will eventually translate in your body language which your opponents subconsciously absorb and will fear.

How does this apply to women?

Again…state of mind. Before you go out on a Saturday night with your boys visualize yourself around all these women that are just dying for a chance to talk to you. Imaginehow great it will feel having that power over them. You have to really believe in yourself and that YOU are giving THEM opportunities to get to know YOU, not the other way around.

As you will say to yourself before playing poker that you are going to steal everyone’s money, you would say that you are going to get ALL the women that you want that night. When you see HER don’t think too much, just say to yourself ‘I will invite her to join my great world.’ DON’T say ‘I will TRY to talk to her.’ She will feel your confidence level in your body language and voice, they can smell it.

So that’s the PREPARATION stage I taught John. That’s the first stage of four that I taught him. All this I learnt from poker.

How people hang out in Chile

Well, I thought that it would be iteresting if I give a little idea of how people hang out in Chile, or as we call it "Carrete". Anyways, it is different from the states (as my gringo friends tell me). In here, first we organize a Pre, that is an abreviation for Pre-Carrete. In there we drink, because it is cheaper. For example, last Friday, we were celebrating the birthday of a friend, whose birthday was on Monday (it seems as if everyone's birthday is this month), anyways, we did the Pre at the roof of this apartment's building, which was pretty cool, there was a pool and everything, and if it weren't night, it would have an ocean view. Anyways, in that day, I didn't want to drink Piscola because I am sick of it. Piscola is made of Pisco, chilean's national drink and coca-cola. I prefere a piscosauer, which is pisco and limon juice and other stuff, frankly it is not easy to make that one, you can buy it done, but it is not as good as home made. Anyways, some people drink it with sprite and calle it blanco which means white, but till now I haven't seen anyone doing that. Anyways, I decided I will take advantage of the fact that I am in Chile, a country known for its fine wine, and if you are in chile, then good, cheap wine. How cheap?, well a 13% alcohol(which is really good), merlot, descent wine would cost like 2.5 dolars. For 5 you would get a damn good wine, and for 10 you would get a reserve wine. Anyways, I bought a wine, we put some music (they made me bring my notebook but they put good speakers). Anyways, at 01:10 we call the party off so that we get to the Scratch Disco on time. Our Uni has a deal there, and we can get in free before 01:30 so we wrap everything, and I helped the guy celebrating his birthday who was completely drunk, to get the stuff back to the apartment and I wanted to put my notebook there. So, we waited for a bus and we check the time and notice we won't make it on time for the disco. So we go to the most popular bar in here, which was in the same block and is two blocks from where I live. We go there, check the mood, don't like it, so we go to a booz store, speak with a drunk bump, get some booz, (pisco, rum or as we call it ron), and two coca-colas to mix the drinks. Yeah, yeah, I know I said I wasn't going to drink pisco. Anyways, we went back to the apartment, put some music, play some electric guitar, drink pisco. Now that is called a post-carrete or simply post, we also use the term "After" for a post carrete. A post-carrete is just going back to someone's place and finish the night there. I couldn't drink much, not even half a glass 'cause I was so cold and having the chills. Anyways, at 4:00 we were thinking of leaving, I got home which is 3 blocks away at 5:00 in the morning.Check the bump in th epix.

Poker, Poker and more Poker...and a new TV

I went to Canadian Tire with the purpose of buying a bycicle and I came out with a 24" TV. Don't ask me how....I am a complex guy. It isn't a high-end TV, I don't need one since I am always busy, playing poker and generally on the go somewhere.

After I broke my back bringing it to my crib; I installed it and put it on a small stool i have while I get a nice table. I watched some TV while browsing the net on my cool Axim x51v (here is a pic for you geeks).

After that I went online to play poker. I entered a NL tournament with unlimited rebuys in the first hour. It was a mess, it was all over the place, people were going all in all the time with marginal hands, bluffing was impossible in there. Since there were so many rebuys, the prize pool was fat, it was 10 grands!!! and for an entrance of 10 bucks...who is complaining. I was able to make it through the fist break and lost after 30 minutes of that, finished 241st out of 850 people. It was all good since I lost to a rivered trips-I wasn't blaming myself.

After that I went to a ring game. I know I said I wasn't gonna play in themanymore- just tournaments, but I considered this different; it wasn't a 10 people 1-2 NL ring game; it was a 2-2NL 5 people game...a whole different dynamic. I went in with 40 bucks came out with 105. A 65 US profit on 30 minutes, not bad...hahha
My strategy was to call everything if the pot wasn't raised, I would raise with a blackjack or 20 hand, and I would raise suited connectors, I was being really agressive and it worked a charm. Also, I was lucky because the other 4 players where really conservative...haha

While I was in the table, I befriended a nice dude from London (whom I took all his money), he taught me a method of getting 30% of the rake i put in pokerroom back. That is nice, it is like 100 US a month for me...free. If you interested let me know an I might consider letting you in the secret :)