The View From The 3 Seat

On-line Poker leaving the Dark Ages?

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:34:00 GMT

Ok, I'm torn about the coming proposed on-line poker legislation. On the one hand I'm somewhat pleased at finally getting poker out of the cyber back rooms, but on the other hand if Barney Frank is pushing it, then it can't possibly be a good idea.

http://www.compatiblepoker.com/poker-rumors/mike-sexton-predicts-us-poker-legislation-in-2010/3482

The Flying Carlos

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:26:00 GMT

Words can not express...

Zombies and Naked Chicks!!!

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:49:00 GMT

Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2 yesterday and White Bread sent me the preview.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06/01/left-4-dead-2-exclusive-rps-preview/

No word yet on the Naked Chicks, but they have got to be in the planning for realism's sake. Seriously! You can't tell me that there weren't people in the shower that got infected too. Get it together Valve. I'm sooo going to kick ass with the new Frying Pan!

Nicholas has left the 3s

Loadin, loadin, loadin

Thu, 28 May 2009 05:30:00 GMT

Started finally loading some old posts from back in the day. Sorry if it tweaks your feed, but some of them are a pretty good trip down amnesia lane. My exploits still crack me up. Made it half way through 2006. More to come laters. I might actually play some cards Friday night in a 1/2 home game with some of my drinking buddies. We'll see what kind of coin they're actually talking before I commit. If I play the maniac early then shift gears and tighten up it should be an easy clean. I'll let you know...

Nicholas has left the 3s

Better off Un-dead

Sat, 09 May 2009 19:44:24 GMT

No, this isn’t me completely changing my long-held stance that zombies suck and the best movies still have both zombies and naked chicks. I’m also still actively preparing for the coming zombie apocalypse along with White Bread, his pops Big Mike and several other true believers. Even the nephews are getting into the full swing of things at a young age. Like I always say, no one ever plans to fail and be eaten by zombies, they just fail to plan; or something like that. Anyway, White Bread and I have been steadily training for the forthcoming return of the dead by getting in simulator training using the now award winning Left 4 Dead!

I’ve been playing FPS ever since they were created and I’ve even played them for money at north of $20 per kill a few times. I’ve always been pretty good at them, mostly because I tend to do unorthodox things that completely catch the opposition off-guard and I use lots of strategy. For example, I was once in a Quake match with a bunch of friends at our buddy Shawn’s house, REALLY low on health and the other guy started chasing me to end the match since we were the final combatants in a team death match. So, I start hauling balls down a long corridor strafing from side to side avoiding his rocket assault only barely. Then I come up to a ledge about 50 feet from the floor below and take a leap of faith, this was before falling damage. In mid-fall I get an idea and everything went in slow motion for me as I get into “the zone” with full force. I spin 180 degrees and slowly (miliseconds, remember I was in “the zone”) line up a shot at about 5 feet above the lip of the ledge and wait, wait; then I let a couple of rockets fly. Sure enough, just as the rocket crested the ledge they connect right to Shawn’s face and BOOM, BOOM, DEAD! Fuckin-A!!! We win and everyone in the house screamed at the amazing shot having watched the awesome action real-time through their chase cams.

While I’ve continued to play FPS through the years, I have been re-born with Left 4 Dead. Although, Rise of the Triad matches during college at Dave A.’s house with Oaky, Jeff, Justin, and whomever else was around that night, will always hold a warm place in my heart. L4D does what other shooters have not accomplished beyond being run and gun frag fests that leave the soul yearning for more. Plus, I’m apparently not alone in my love for the game because it has received Game of the Year status and they even have a billboard southbound on the 680! L4D FORCES you to play as a team, and if you don’t, then forget about it because you’re zombie vittles.

So, while this doesn’t seem exactly poker related, it really is in a couple of ways and that’s what draws us to it like crack head to a pipe.

Strategy is Job 1 – L4D IS A STRATEGY GAME in disguise as a FPS, let there be no mistake. That makes it a skill game just like poker along with your own game play abilities. People that try and play by running off on their own end up dead in record time. They may be great at Call of Duty, but you can’t win L4D by yourself, one Survivor in the Safe Room is like coming in fourth with Bullets in a large multi-way pot. If you don’t have a microphone and communicate steadily with your teammates, then you’re dead. If you don’t work together on strategy and heal each other, then you’re dead. Just like in a real life zombie apocalypse. Like I always say while waiting in the lobby, No mic – No dice! If you can’t talk to your team, then you can’t play worth shit.
The Goal is Survival not Points – Play smart. If you’re going for a higher score, then you’re a severe detriment to your team mates ability to survive. This is like trying to win lots of pots instead of trying to win lots of money. The only points that matter are team points, except when you’re just talking smack to your friends; like how White Bread is CHRONICALLY at the bottom of our infected individual points.
Probability – Ya, you read that one correctly. While I don’t calculate odds on the fly like in Poker, I do use probability a lot in the game. Such as while you could stand on the other side of a counter and hope that a Smoker doesn’t pull you out of the shop in a horde, forcing your team mates to risk their lives to save you, the probability is greater than zero. While standing behind the counter gives you and your team a probability of exactly zero to be yanked into a death spiral. That’s why I also NEVER stand on top of building ledges, if you stand BEHIND them, then you can’t get pulled off to your death. I use that one a lot on people that don’t think these things through. It’s almost worse to end up hanging from the edge because then it ties up your team to help you up and leaves them wide open to attacks by Special Infected.
Patience – I must admit that my regular team with White Bread has been guilty of not being patient in recent weeks while playing as Infected. What’s worse is that I’ve found my impatience bleeding over to my other regular teams and my game has suffered. Much like Poker, you have to be patient and wait for your team mates to spawn and then wait for the right time to attack, then do so with a coordinated effort. It’s that simple. Now we just need to get back to playing that way…

So, Left 4 Dead makes for great action entertainment along with satisfying my Poker jones as the same time. Get in the game and look me up on XBox Live, my handle is “The3Seat”, go figure. ;-)

Nicholas has left the 3 seat

Back in the 3s

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:02:29 GMT

OK, it’s not like I haven’t been playing cards. I just haven’t been posting. Various reasons including Blogger.com messing up my account when they switched to Google’s login format. It’s most likely my fault for that, but I had planned on moving my blog fully to my own hosting server instead of using them and just taking their output and reformatting it. Then my hosting company was pretty much retarded and I couldn’t properly host DotNetNuke the way that I wanted to since I have multiple sites, so I put things on hold since I had such a large number of posts, that I obviously didn’t want to abandon. Now I’m on a new full-server hosting company where I have complete access to the OS-level and can do anything that I want without crappy hosting company rules. So that’s where I’m at today. Now I just have to import all of the historical posts.

Back to poker, so I’ve been playing since my last official posts, but haven’t really written much for other various reasons. Time being the biggest reason as I took on a new roll at my company and have been really cranking. I decided a couple of years ago that I needed to get destiny back on its’ tracks too and cut down on my card room playing time. I put in enough years grinding that my game was really cruising anyway. At least as much as I’d ever wanted, not having any desire to play for a living. It’s just not my true passion, while computers and doing my own software company have been at the top of my list since I was a teenager. Better to keep that moving along and stay focused on my core lifetime goals. That said, I’ll be doing some more posts, just not as frequently, but I have lots of archives to keep the interested reading. Life is good and that’s all that anyone can ask for.

Nicholas has left the 3s

TV Poker Celebrities

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 23:31:00 GMT

I got to play and chat with Linda last week at Bellagio during the whirl wind trip to Vegas. Something that she mentioned struck a chord with me because I've been gradually putting thought into it for a couple of years. The term "Bad Beat" has lost all meaning as the population of Poker newbies has swelled. What was once used to refer to an improbable loss, is now commonly used to refer to any time that a player loses a hand.

Think about it, when was the last time that you heard someone say, "I lost the hand." Not very often, but what you tend to hear all the time is a player telling you about his "Bad Beat" when his Aces with an 8 Kicker didn't hold up to an ATs. WHAT!?!?! That's not a bad beat, and it doesn't take a genius to see that. Although I think that last statement speaks volumes about why the term "Bad Beat" is still being used in the wrong way with such high frequency. The game has gotten bigger over the past few years, but it appears that most haven't learned much in the process and their lack of "Game" shows.

I was watching some TV Poker show once and it had a couple of Poker Bimbos on it that are slightly known. However, this time around I got to watch their play and determined that they were in-fact retarded. It was just about the worst poker that I've ever imagined being played in my entire life! These are people with major tournament success! There is no way in hell that they would stand a chance making a living at the game if they had to actually play for a living. Their Poker skills just don't come close to matching their Poker celebrity.

TV did wonders for the game, but I can say with all honesty that I'd rather die than watch poker on TV, except of course for High Stakes Poker on GSN. Every other show, especially WPT literally bores me to sleep. It's been years since I've been able to sit through a Poker show and I can't imagine in a million years why anyone would watch that drivel. So, I'm yet again holding the minority opinion because the crappy Poker shows are still wafting over the air waves in droves.

I'm a firm believer that most of these new "Pros" don't have a shot in hell of making a living at it over time. There are so many of them that don't have the faintest grasp of fundamental skills and I'll wager that they'll take their "lottery" winnings and slink back into obscurity in their home towns. I've already seen the exact same thing happen post dot-com implosion. So many people that I worked with years ago. They left the industry all together, never to be seen with a technology business card again. This wasn't their career, it was just another job for them.

Hopefully the new "Pros" have squirreled away most of their windfall so that they can have some nice startup capital for the rest of their lives and they'll get back on a more promising path to economic success. Playing tournaments is nothing more than hoping and praying you'll run lucky long enough to scrape into the money. There is skill involved, but with such a massive deluge of people that don't have a clue what they're doing, you're at a huge disadvantage. Why else do you think that the online sites are finally starting to publicly crack down on cheating on their sites? It's become the only way to compete in these massive fields. If you can't make money in the cash games, then you really don't stand a chance at making a living at playing. There's just too much random variance to handle.

I fully admit that I obcess over Poker, but I'd never quit my career in a million years to play cards for a living. Maybe other people can, because I can sort of understand that most people lost their way and don't love what they do for a living. As for me, I can't imagine ever leaving the computer industry, which has been my true love since I was 12. It's what I am, my destiny; and I can never change that. Why would anyone want to?

Back to coding, and Happy Independence Day America!

Nicholas has left the 3s

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 02:07:00 GMT

I'm short as hell this week, ya there's a shocker. My plan is to get to sleep early tonight since I have 3 conference calls tomorrow, prior to jumping on a plane for...Vegas! Yet again, legitimate business purposes. I'm still shocked at those words being in the same vacinity of "Vegas".

Unfortunately (for me at least), the World Series kicked off last weekend which means that the lists will be measured in weeks. Not so much a problem though, I'm only in town for 36 hours, and I have a bunch of business to accomplish while on Nevada soil (dust?).

I'm hoping to catch Linda G. and Murph while I'm in town since I've been out of touch since my last trip when we all got to hang at The Venetian. I also finally realized that I hadn't added Murph's site to my Blog list. No, that doesn't mean that I don't feel the love for any other sites out there, but I can only do so much in a day and that includes crafting a single line of HTML in a month.

Look at it another way. Anne has been one of my links forever, and she has YET to call me to say thanks! I know that she's busy and all fighting the forces of evil at the New York Times (thanks again assholes). Lord knows why some concerned citizens group hasn't torched their building yet. They're more than willing to aid the enemy as has been proven on multiple occasions and then hide behind the 1st ammendment. Perhaps when they finally start publishing daily troop movements and get a couple of platoons slaughtered, then someone will finally say enough is enough. As it stands today, they're just help terrorist organizations refine their money laundering techniques. Because as we all know, there are a lot of elementary school buses in America and Johnny Abdul needs lots of coin for the C4 and detonators. Thank you, NYT!

Nicholas has left the 3s

Got creative today!

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:18:00 GMT

Played with the new Samsung Q1 and ArtRage2, which is a pretty kick ass painting program that does a decent job simulating oils and canvas. The fact that the Q1 is a TabletPC with touch screen makes it really nice to paint with.

I also got a riff in my head and had to drop a track, which I haven't done in quite some time. I use Reason 2.5 from Propellerhead Software, although I really should get off my ass and upgrade it to the new rev, if for no other reason (no pun intended) than to get access to the grouping feature thingy which allows you to treat multiple devices as a single unit.

So I laid the track along with some voice samples that I've had lying around for what seems like 10 years. Here's the link to download page with the result of said spurt of inspiration. I.e. Free Music Download!!! I'll warn you now that it's not for everyone. It's Techno, it's called Lust, it lives up to its' name and it's all mine. Caveat emptor.

I also managed a couple of Poker sessions this weekend, IRL and online. Nothing special happened in the Pot Limit game at Napa Valley, ended up a little down. No harm, no foul. Cards have been dry-gulch for 3 weeks now, what's it take to get a hand, and then have it hold up??? Blogger tournament on Poker Stars was a crap shoot considering the morons at my table. Got cracked for most of my stack when my KQ got cracked by a K5 suck out on the end. Why that guys was...oh who gives a shit. That's why most tournaments suck so much anymore, with the junior woodchucks slinging chips without a shadow of a clue. Much different story when it's their real cash on the line and not tournament chips at stake.

Oh, well. At least I got a bunch of coding done this weekend on PokerQuiz too, after taking time off to deal with ISP Hosting issues. Long story short, I'm sick of waiting for the SQL Server 2005 upgrade, so I'm self-hosting the DB and WebServices.

Work has me tired as hell these days due to multiple projects, and wouldn't ya know it. I am being forced to go back to Vegas for business... AGAIN!!! Gotta take one for the team. Life is tough.

Nicholas has left the 3s

Death of the Aircraft Carrier!

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 02:23:00 GMT

I finally succumbed to my techno-lust and delivery came on Friday afternoon. THANK GOD, the Aircraft Carrier is dead!

For those not in the know, the Aircraft Carrier is what I not-so lovingly referred to my 17", 947 pound work laptop. I bought the new UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC), the Samsung Q1. See pic below with the Samsung Q1 and my hand resting on the Aircraft Carrier. I can already hear my back thanking me for not lugging it around on the road anymore.

Now for the kick-ass news about the new toy; it runs FULL Windows XP with Tablet PC extensions! Which means that any application that runs on your desktop. If you look closely (sorry for the crappy pic quality), I'm running Party Poker on it.

It weighs a little over a pound and has a really nice touch screen. THUS, no keyboard required! Although to speed typing, I do have the Samsung USB mini-keyboard/mouse on the way and it fully supports Bluetooth, so it will interface with any Bluetooth device.

I have already hooked it up to my trusty Samsung i700 Pocket PC Phone and jumped on the Internet when I'm not at home. It kicked ass and I'm going to order the Verizon EVDO wireless Internet PC Card and a USB-to-PCMCIA adapter to get multi-megabit 'Net access.

I also got a copy of Stardock Multiplicity, which allows you to control another computer from the same keyboard/mouse without switching using a KVM. It's just like using Multi-Monitor, you just drag your mouse to the device and it transfers standard keyboard and mouse Windows messages to that computer seemlessly just like it was another LCD physically attached to your primary desktop machine. I'm also going to be loading ObjectDock, DesktopX and WindowBlinds (all from Stardock, those guys are KICK-ASS programmers!) to fully customize the desktop user interface and make it even more Touch-friendly. Microsoft Live FolderShare integration to keep my machines in sync with Docs, Spreadsheets, PowerPoints, Music, Movies, etc. Looks like my project of archiving my personal DVD collection on my Terrabyte of server storage is already paying off, I tested by copying Pulp Fiction and Rounders to my Q1 and it runs like a champ! I'm also looking forward to checking out Orb Networks free multimedia scaling and streaming service. There are so many cool things that I want to do, that my mind is completely spinning in euphoria!

I also want to point out the completely idiotic review of the Samsung Q1 by PC Magazine. He totally scorched the Q1, and that moron obviously doesn't get it and probably never travelled a day in his life. The Aircraft Carrier couldn't even open to allow me to do any work on a plane! This sucker will leave tons of room to spare, even with the keyboard which is nicely integrated with the Q1 folding case. The Samsung Q1 picks up where the Pocket PC leaves off with full Windows XP support (yes, it's Vista ready too!) which means that I can completely replace my laptop for work.

It is also a Tablet PC, so I'll be taking notes during all of my meetings in Microsoft OneNote, which I can email to BD (we're getting him a Q1 too for his notes). OneNote can also convert the hand writing to text and integrate with MSN Desktop Search. Thus, we can search and instantly find any piece of information about any customer that we've ever talked to...and we talk to a LOT of customers! I can already feel my information overload fading into extinction.

For those lucky enough to have a Samsung Q1 or one of the other UMPC's, here are some GREAT tips and tweaks. DON'T forget to head over to Stardock and tell them that I sent you!

Too much more to do and the adrenalin is running full steam, I'll write more later. This is me, being happy! ;-)

Nicholas has left the 3s