Steelers Win!

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I don't think I mentioned here the biggest sports bet I have ever (and probably will ever) make. A sportsbook at a website called mansion.com launched a "little" promotion that allowed a limited number of signups a risk-free bet on the Pittsburgh Steelers' opening game of the NFL season. The bet was $1100. If you won the bet, you'd win $1000 on top of your bet. If you lost, they would refund your $1100. So here's the scenario. One of my friends and I had placed this large risk-free bet because our bankrolls could afford it and sat down last night to watch the most exciting NFL game I'll ever watch ... due to the money on the line! The game was intense ... we both placed our bets before we knew the main QB Ben was out of the lineup, so we needed Pittsburgh to win by 5 points or more. After the first half we were up by 4 points: so far so good!

In the 3rd quarter, Miami scored a touchdown which put them ahead by 3. Worse yet, Pittsburgh had a good march down the field stopped when they fumbled the ball on the one yard line!!! At that point, we figured our bet was lost ... but we were in for a real treat at the end of the game starting with a Pittsburgh interception which they would soon convert into a TD. Now we were up by 4 again with enough time on the clock that Pittsburgh couldn't just run the clock down.

Pittsburgh marched up field but got stopped at the 25 yard line or so and tried for a field goal - a $1000 field goal for each of us watching. To our dismay, he missed it. At this point, there wasn't that much time on the clock left, and we were worried that Pittsburgh wouldn't try to score anymore points on their next posession ... just try and burn the clock.

But then! Miami threw ANOTHER interception which the Steelers returned for another TD! Boy were we happy with that!

Pittsburgh held on to that score winning the game 28-17 and I'm now $1000 richer. w00t!

Heraldk

I caved

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Yup, I caved. I have re-purchased world of warcraft. My first copy fell out of my hands into my sister's when I stopped playing ages ago. And now, I have caved after months of holding out even when everyone around me was playing. What made me do it? I'm not sure. I'm a little frustrated with poker at the moment. I need a break - I'm not playing my best and I'm playing break even poker even though I know I can do better. That's not entirely it, but it is a start for how I'm feeling.

It's a very odd feeling not playing something that everyone else is playing. With normal games, it isn't too bad. A week or a month pass and no one is talking about it anymore. WoW is entirely different though. It's been out for how long??? And *still* everyone talks about it. As soon as someone talks about it, everyone playing starts talking about it. Increasingly, it has made me feel uncomfortable ... and you'd think that would drive me away from the game.

I have fond memories of playing the game. It is an amazingly fun game - and that is a big reason why so many people are playing it and talking about it for hours and hours ... and hours. I watched my sister playing in the battlegrounds for awhile. I even mentioned to her that I was not all that interested in the battlegrounds because I prefer the content side of the game rather than the PvP play. She wasn't even playing a part of the game that I wanted to play! And yet tonight I was so tempted to go out and purchase the game that I did half an hour before the store closed.

I'm not worried about slacking in my responsibilities. I am too interested in my own success to simply waste my opportunities. My thesis is reaching a first draft stage and will be on its way with my supervisor tomorrow afternoon as he heads to Ottawa. Because I didn't finish in time for the end of summer I needed to pay for another semester anyways which means I've got a ton of time to finish up (not that it will take too much longer). And beside all that, I feel like I need something other than poker to occupy my time. I don't see myself being able to sit down in front of a computer all day playing poker just because I can make money at it. It is fun, but not *that* fun.

So here I am ... installing WoW. It'll probably be another 15 minutes before its installed. Until then, I will ponder why I finally caved...

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Building Part 2

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I left off my poker bankroll building at the end of January 2005. I had capped off a very successful initial 3 months at playing poker considering that most players who win don't start winning right away. Apart from a short spurt at Party when I had no clue what I was doing, I quickly learned the ropes to make myself at worst a break even player at the low limits. Part of learning the ropes, I forgot to mention that I took some of my intial PSO points to order an amazon gift card which I used to purchase 4 poker books to ramp up my learning of the game. These books, in particular "Small Stakes Hold'em" would be my biggest learning tools over the start of my poker career.

Early in February, my first PSO referral points came in worth $65 - apparently one can make a decent amount with some simple referrals!

At this point, PSO launched the PokerNow rake rebate plan. At the time, PokerNow was a skin of Party Poker (it has since been absorbed, and I'm not too sure if it even exists anymore). This was a great deal since I was now serious about online poker and could use a regular paying PSO points influx which were just about as good as cash. I deposited $100, worked through my deposit bonus and by the time the rake rebate plan collapsed due to Party Poker's insistence, I cashed out $273 and had earned another $60 in PSO points for rakeback.

I started my next promotion at Golden Palace poker on March 2, 2005 once again depositing $100 and getting started. I dabbled a little with no limit play, but for the most part, I stuck to my limit game and went through the raked hand requirements at golden palace. At the end, I cashed out $303 to my brand new neteller account which I had finally decided to start up since I didn't want to have to deposit anymore money through my credit card. Plus I received yet another $60 worth of PSO points for the promo!

From here, my poker exploits no longer simply followed the PSO promos around. There was some harder to complete promos to do, but I was also interested in building my bankroll, so I would jump around a little bit. Before I created my neteller account, I started a frequent flopper rakeback plan with Ultimate Bet through PSO. This would be a recurring site for me because when I didn't have a current bonus to work on, I would return to UB to do generic bonus and PSO points. From here on, I will probably need to go month by month ... so I'm going to wrap up my Feb-April months in a table here and be back with part three of this series in the next little while!

PokerNow rake rebate: +173 + $61 PSO points Golden Palace Poker: +$203, $60 PSO points Referral Points: $85 PSO points Absolute Poker (2 deposits): +$129 Ultimate Bet: +$80 + $22 PSO points (rake rebate) Total Winnings: $585 USD + $228 PSO Points

Sum of total winnings to this point: $1086 USD + $3490 CAD + $390.50 PSO points + 1000 chips

Stay tuned for the next three months or so!

Heraldk

Style Modifications

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Well I kept meaning to come back to this blog to fix up the template so that it did everything I've wanted it to. It's now a whole lot farther along that path, though I have more things that I want to do with it. I've added a "recent comments" addition on the left side. I'm hoping that the presence of people's comments will encourage people to make comments on my blog. So ... please do!As well, I've expanded my "recent photo" to show the last 6 photos I've posted to Flickr. Please take a look at my photos and comment on them as well - I would like to hear suggestions on how to improve my photos, and I can get an idea of what people like!

I plan on making more changes to the blog styles in the future, but for now I've got to head out. If you see my blog in a half-broken state it's probably because I'm playing with the template again. My apologies, but I think it'll be for the better!

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Building

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Well it has been awhile since I last wrote about my poker experience. In this post I'm gonna start going through my history of my online poker transactions to build a picture of how profitable it has been in the past 2 years (well, its been since November of 2004). All of my poker experience has been through Poker Source Online which offers huge incentives to get started in online poker. In November of 2004 I started up with PSO and did their Party Poker promotion for a chipset. At the time, I only really wanted the chipset, which seemed like a fairly low risk venture. The promo at the time was to get a 500 chip set for playing 250 raked hands at Party Poker at .5/1 limits. I deposited $100 on my credit card and lost $30 there over the raked hand requirements (considering I knew nothing at the time this was not a big deal). I received my chips a few weeks later and I started thinking about learning how to play poker so I could take advantage of the rest of the PSO promotions.

In December 2004, I deposited $100 at The Gaming Club that at the time were offering an amazingly sweet promotion. $300 of bonus money was available for my deposit, I simply had to play enough raked hands to release it. As I recall it was something like 200 raked hands for $20 released at a time, but I'm not too sure if that is accurate and the promotion has long since gotten worse. I had aquired a copy of Lee Jone's low limit poker book and was using its starting hand requirements to my benefit and was almost immediately breaking even. Over the time at the gaming club (a little over a month), I played break even poker and cashed out a cheque in early January of 2005 worth $405. In addition, I received $70 worth of PSO points to spend at their store. My online poker life had begun.

Next on my list of places to be hit was Pacific Poker where I once again deposited $100. This site was full of fish-like players and I found it much easier to win there than at the gaming club. Between the experience of playing at the gaming club and party poker, and the weak players, I made a healthy profit for playing .5/1. Not long after, I had already completed the short PSO requirements and cashed out a cheque worth $184 plus my PSO prize of another 500 chipset.

A week later, I started the Absolute Poker promotion where I once again deposited $100 and worked through the PSO raked hand requirements while clearing the deposit bonus money. This promo was a little harder to complete at .5/1. In the end I made my first jump to playing 1/2 and hit a lucky streak of cards that ensured a profit when I cashed out. At the end of January 2005, I received my $60 PSO points prize with another cheque worth $189.

Sometime in January there, Party poker gave me some free money to play with which I turned into $53 more money. Hooray!

Another big event happened that January. On the PSO forums, the site organizers had arranged to come to Edmonton for one of the first Canadian Poker Tour events! With such short notice, they made a general post asking if people in Edmonton were able to make it to the $500 buyin poker tournament. I signed up almost immediately and got several others who had let me know about PSO sign up as well. We had a group of 5 people play, and it was me - the 2 month poker experience player who placed well into the money. In fact, I placed 6th for a prize of $3490!! Talk about a bonus for my bankroll! Alot of the reasons for my success was due to the tutelage of Darse Billings: currently a PHD student about to graduate after working on AI in poker for a number of years. He used to play professionally and made a pretty good living doing so, so his experience helped me out considerably. A great part of being a member of PSO is getting a chance to hit some free prizes just for being a member. Over these 3 months of being a member I received $32.50 of PSO points just for participating in the forums, and my great experience with the site would soon get me some referral points (in the next month). That gets me through my first couple months of bonuses. I'll update again in the next week or so with the next segment in my online poker experiences. Here's what I had received from November 2004 - January 2005:

Party Poker: -$30, 500 piece chipset Gaming Club: +$305, $70 PSO points Party Poker: +$53 from free money Pacific Poker: +$84, 500 piece chipset Absolute Poker: +$89, $60 PSO points $500+50 CPT Poker event: $+3490 (canadian dollars) PSO freebies: $62.50 PSO Points Total Winnings: $501 USD + $3490 CAD + $162.50 PSO Points + 1000 chips

Heraldk

Note: select segments were reworded and added to since the first posting to fill in some details I forgot in my rush to post. I've started work on the next few months of PSO experience and that will be up in the coming days!

Building Computers

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Well apparently I've gotten in a habit of building computers for people. Odd. I built a computer a couple weeks ago for Diane, and yesterday I put together a new one for my Dad. It is amazing to me the amount that the cost of computers has dropped over the last few years. The fact that I can easily put a value system together for $500 impresses me to no end. Anyways, once again I need to make more of a push on my thesis. Lots of work to do, and I want to get it out of the way so I can do other stuff. I'm getting to the point where I need to start filling in details, and that is gonna be harder to do than the basic exposition that I've been doing for the most part so far.

Lots of bonuses in casino/poker land. I'm working on the new PSO promo room DreamPoker, plus one of boogster's promotions for play65 (backgammon). That and I did a couple of casinos last week but broke even on both of them. *sigh*.

Time for me to go in to school. Take care everyone!

Heraldk

Busy

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I have no idea why I feel so busy. I have had a fair amount of free time at home, so that's not the issue. Maybe it's because I didn't get enough time to sleep in this past weekend which has made me feel a little moody at the moment. *shrug*. Speaking of this past weekend, I got up early and Diane and I went down to help my friend Jon build a deck in his backyard. We didn't quite get it all done, but we made some really good progress. They provided us with some really good lunch (homemade paninis!) and supper which was really nice.

On Sunday, I returned a picture frame I had got from Ikea which meant a big trip down to the southside. My mom and I took my sister down for a harp gig at the Coast Terrace Inn, and while she was there we did the return and stopped at Indigo books where I used a gift certificate I originally received for Christmas last year. I picked up Angels and Demons, the sequel to The DaVinci Code and a book called The Professor, The Banker and The Suicide King which is about an amateur poker player who has a bankroll that he can use to play against professional poker players for crazy high stakes. Should be some good reads.

So both days this weekend I didn't get a lot of sleep which is adding to the not much sleep I got all last week ... and the trend seems to be continuing. I think I'm gonna need to get myself to sleep sooner one of these nights!

My thesis has come a long way over the last week. This week, the progress has been much slower but I've still managed to get quite far. There are some less pleasant sections to write yet though (because they are more technical and harder to write), so hopefully they don't take too long.

With regards to the changeover of this blog, it appears that everything made the switch okay. If you see anything odd, let me know though! I want to spend some time playing with the layout - I'm not sure if it'll be a complete redesign or not, but we shall see. Suggestions are always welcome of course!

Heraldk

Welcome to my new Home!

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Hello! This site still needs some work, but I couldn't delay this any longer. Welcome to my new blog! I know it doesn't look a whole lot different, but it sure feels like it to me! This is wordpress based (I'll soon get a button that says so, please bear with me) rather than blogger which is slowly aging. Plus, because it's on my own server I have a little more control of what I can do with the site.

Besides this update, I've been doing a bunch of work on my thesis as well as checking out the local summer attractions including the Fringe! If you're in Edmonton and haven't checked out the Fringe, you totally should!

Anyways, enjoy the new site. If you see any problems, please let me know!

Heraldk

Thesis Trucking along

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Well I've finally managed to put together several days of productive thesis work. My thesis is now flirting with the 40 page mark, and there's still a long way to go, but it is coming. It helps that since I did a lot of discussion with Darse concerning the ICGA paper and his thesis, I now have a pretty standard graph format I can use so I don't really have to figure that out. In fact, most of the graphs I just have to reuse as is! I'm gonna be tackling a hard chapter here tomorrow. Its the one that involves the theoretical proof that the tool I've been working on is unbiased. That section is going to be the hardest to write for several reasons - the most difficult thing is laying the proof out so that it is clearly true, but also so it is understandable and easy to follow. This really isn't my strength.

At any rate, I've realized that there's a limit to the productivity I can have on my thesis on a given day. If I'm able to keep up my current rate of writing though, I'll have a pretty decent start on it by the time my supervisor gets back from holidays. Hopefully he likes what I've managed to come up with! In the meantime, while keeping that pace up, I think I'll actually have some chance to play some poker in the evenings. The insanity of the past few weeks seems to have passed and things are starting to get back to more-or-less of a flow (which is good for my thesis writing!).

Heraldk

Long Weekend of Unworkfulness

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But it was fun! This long weekend was filled with food and fun and very much a lack of workiness (take that Stephen Colbert!). Friday night I helped Diane unpack several of her boxes and got her setup so she could actually stay her first night at her new place. Saturday, we headed to Rob Holte's games party which was a lot of fun. There's a new Ticket to Ride game that is, in my opinion, the best in the series! And there's a new blockus game that I rather enjoyed as well.

On Sunday, my family went to Heritage days which was packed this year. They are saying it was record attendance, and I'm really not surprised. The weather was fantabulous and there was a bazillion people out to take in the different cultures of our very multicultural city. Unfortunately, I had two major complaints about the food. First, the food was way too damn expensive to really make me feel comfortable paying to sample. Second, the portions were too large for us to sample many different tastes! The whole idea (I thought) was to offer tastes of the different cultures so you could wander around and taste something from many different booths. But not only could we not afford to do that (at an average ticket price of 5 tickets, with each ticket worth almost $1), there's no way one person could eat that much food! *sigh*.

I ended up not eating very much and let most of the tickets go to the other family members who ate quite a bit. Afterwards, we went to my Aunt's place for dinner where we enjoyed some crab *and* lobster. Sweeeeet! This particular night was very odd because there was games being played. I honestly can't remember a time when I felt more comfortable at my Aunt's place because I was able to do something. We played some frustration rummy and then a poker game broke out that was pretty entertaining. My Uncle Kong is pretty funny when he plays poker even though he doesn't really know how to play.

Yesterday was a rather full day. My mom and dad picked Diane and I up and we went down to Ikea to shop for a bed frame for me and some bookshelves for Diane. I found myself a nice bed frame that wasn't too expensive so I got that. Afterwards, we stopped at memory express to get some computer parts for Diane's new computer. It took a little while, but then we went to my Uncle Kong's place where we had another big BBQ. Mmmm ... food!

Afterwards my mom dropped Diane and I and our day's purchases at my place and I put together Diane's computer. I had forgotten how much fun it was to put together a new computer ... it is oddly entertaining, I'm not too sure why! Maybe that comes from my geeky side.

Today I got quite a bit done on my thesis. Its starting to take some shape, but its really got a ways to go yet before its ready to submit. Hopefully I can make some strides to get the bulk of the writing done in the coming couple weeks. I don't think I have much hope to graduate for this deadline, but if I get as much done as possible, I'll be in good shape to perhaps add some value to my thesis or contribute to the poker group some more!

Heraldk