Biggestron Writes

The title is why I haven’t posted much. Mostly I just want to blather incoherently about the things that are bugging me. But then I think - why would I do this in a public way? Who really cares about what weighs on my mind? Call it life-tilt, crotch-sand, bunched-panties or plain ol’ dumbassedness (TM on that word by the way…) its where I live right now. So stop reading here if you don’t like that kind of thing.

My search for a new job has shown that the wheels of commercial science are mercilessly slow. It has both made my hungrier to get back into the action but at the same time sapped my energy for looking. I’ve had a few leads - some have evaporated to the whims of fate. For instance:

1) I interviewed with one of the local biotech behemoths only to have the hiring manager call me one week later to say that he was leaving for another company. He liked me enough to give me a shot at the new company, but it is a small start-up and I have mixed feelings after having a closer look. Their scientific basis is sound but I could already spot a few problems. The start-up is co-founded between 3 academic superstars with whom I have no connection. The people with connections are going to have the power and my fear is that I would always be subordinate to their whims. They are probably good scientists, but they have no industry experience - maybe I can pass the inevivitable hazing, maybe not. Do I really want to walk into that type of situation?

2) Another international giant called me for an interview. Everything was set to go for a Monday interview when the HR person called me on Thursday with this little tidbit. “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we have found someone for the position. The bad news is that it isn’t you.”

Seriously? Where do they find these evil HR people? I know there are good ones out there, but lately the ones I’ve dealt with all seem to have to have taken their human relations ques from the Marquis de Sade.

3) I have a phone interview this coming week with another international giant. I’ve had some previous contact with the hiring manager so I think I know what they are looking for in a candidate. They are looking to start a new division to mirror what goes on at some of their other sites. It would be kind of like start-up but with corporate backing. The downside is that it seems like a giant target for future ‘workforce reductions’. After the fiasco of my last corporate endeavor, I think I will do a little better in avoiding some of the problematic situations that ended up becoming my downfall. I’m a smart guy - I can learn from the errors of my ways.

So that’s about it. I presently feel better for having cast my angst to the digital wind - my deepest apologies if you’ve come this far in your reading!

I went deep into the Stars 50K guarantee last night. 2000+ runners and with a 100 left I was running in the top 10 chip counts.  Most of the run was fueled by chips from a player who seemed to be able to suck out on every body but me.  He doubled me at least three times, as he was unable to ever fold a hand. 

In the end I ran pocket kings into pocket aces (a shortie pocket 7’s came along for the ride too) and crippled myself down to an M of 4 with 50 runners left.

The hand went like this:

Blinds/antes are 500/1000/100 (or something like that)I raised to 4000 from EP (I was big stack at the table, sitting on about 100K chips).  Shortie moves all in for about 8K more with pocket 7’s.  Late position smooth calls with Aces.  I pushed the rest of my stack.  Late position install calls and we are off.  I four flushed on the turn but bricked the river. 

Had I sucked out that hand I was final table bound.  As it was, I was left with a stack that required an open push on any decent hand.  I went out about 5 hands later with K4 soooted.

Top prize was ~$8K, I left in the 40’s with a measly $80.  Still - its pure profit as I was playing with $T I’d won in a Sunday Million double shootout.  Not a huge score but a deep run in a big field - a good boost to my worn out poker confidence.

My wife was heading up to bed just before the crucial hand.  I told her how I was doing in the tourney.  She wished my good luck and I was dealt the pocket kings just as she finished saying it.  Too bad my opponent had one better.  Next time I guess I’ll just stay quiet about how I’m doing in the virtual poker world…

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I just wish he would have had the hammer.  Unfortunately, Pauly, the best in the business, didn’t see fit to report the hole cards of either Iggy or his opponent.  Maybe it is a sign of how much Pauly was rooting for Iggy to go a little deeper.  I’m sure it will show up in a revised Tao Poker report.

Still - turning $350 on a Poker Stars sat into over $20K ain’t no little feat.  Nice run, sir.

Many of my readers know that I am a Canadian by birth.  If you didn’t - now you do.  This might explain my lack of enthusiasm for the 4th of July.  I’m not terribly patriotic about my adopted country, but then I was never terribly patriotic towards my birth country.  But I know how to give, and I know how Americans feel about French people.  So here you go - a real life story that makes them look ridiculous.

This story is the only bright spot in a news cycle that seems to be mostly about how much everything is costing us these days:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada’s U.S. embassy apologized on Thursday for a party invitation that featured a prominent figure in Canadian history brandishing a large plate of French fries covered in cheese curds and gravy.

They apologized because some Quebecois Nationalists (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one) were upset that the European discoverer (Samuel de Champlain) of their province was being stereotyped as a lover of high dosage cholesterol.  The dish in question is called ‘poutine’ and is probably one of the finest things you can eat after an evening of beverages.  It is one of the signature Quebecois comfort foods.  I think it was even sold in McDonald restaurants for a brief period.

I spent a year of my life in Montreal.  It is a great city boasting European architecture, cobble-stone streets, wonderful restaurants, and cosmopolitan people.  During my time there (early 90’s) it also featured some ardent Separatists.  These pipe-dreamers wanted to split Quebec from the nasty grip of Canada and have a go as their own country, or perhaps join the US as state #51.  Either way, they had enough of their evil Anglophone oppressors.  After all - we had inflicted our lowbrow but popular ‘Mr. Donut’ stores upon the Quebec people.  The Separatist solution?  These stores were forcibly renamed, via Bill 101, to ‘Monsieur Donut’.  This was all done in the name of preserving French Quebec culture within Canada.  Nice use of governmental resources, garcons.  These folks faded away somewhat after losing successive referendums in the nineties that sought to liberate Quebec from the rest of Canada.  Now it appears that the Separatists/Nationalists are back and they are angry about Monsieur Champlain eating poutine on Canada Day.

Plus ca change, indeed.

Guest posting from cberger

When pros Chip Reese and then Freddy Deeb, two players recognized as top pros, won consecutive WSOP H.O.R.S.E. championships or when Scotty Nguyen won 50000$ at HORSE event, many poker players confirmed that the H.O.R.S.E. event crowned poker’s true champion. Others clamored to argue that the $10,000 no limit Texas hold’em main event was and would always be the championship. Here are some reasons why the H.O.R.S.E. event might supplant the main event as poker’s world championship.

More Games

To play poker and win the main event, all you have to do is be able to play one game well, no limit Texas hold’em. To win at the H.O.R.S.E. event, you need to be good at all the games. If one is to win the crown the world poker champion, they should be good at all forms of poker. They call the winner of the main event the world hold’em poker champion.

Elite Field

The main event is a bit of a crapshoot. With thousands of players, many of whom just learnt how to play poker online throw their chips into the pot with reckless abandon, it’s hard for the cream to rise to the top. The bad players butt heads, half of them eliminated while building the stacks of the other half.

When those bad players run up against the pros with enormous stacks, it’s tough for the pros to get any traction. The $50,000 price tag of H.O.R.S.E. helps restrict the field to those who are truly elites of the game, giving the best player’s skills a legitimate chance to win the day.

History Is Proof

Chip Reese, who many agreed was poker’s best for years before he ever sat down at that championship table, won the first H.O.R.S.E. championship. The following year, Freddy Deeb, another well established pro took the title. Many would say these two are much more worthy champions than 2007’s Jerry Yang, and Jamie Gold, a talented amateur at best before winning it all in 2006.

CemfredMD over at Trial and Error Poker has stepped up to host the Skill Series tourney.  I like the format of these - non NLHE with an easy buy-in and $2 knockout bounties. 

Last night was limit O/8 which meant that a lot of bounties ended up being split.  Nothing like winning a buck for knocking out your pal.  I wanted to see if bounties could get quartered.

I went on an absolute tear in the first level, hitting pretty much every hand I played.  And I was playing nearly every hand.  No donkey play here - we are talking picking up AA23 double suited over and over again.

Of course I ended up with the fate of all early chip leaders - I didn’t win.  I eeked out a 3rd place bottom cash spot as PinkyStinky took a commanding chip lead at the final table.  Irongirl managed to hang in for second when my flopped set of Kings fell to Pinky’s rivered gutshot straight.   Not bad play - he had the chips to call pretty much any draws he wanted, and we all know O/8 is all about the redraw.  He/she just decided to leave out the ‘re’ part.

For an example of bad play, you can look to me calling Irongirl down to the river while holding 222x after flopping the case 2 for bottomest set.  I tried to claim quads at showdown, but I guess angle shooting doesn’t work so well on-line.

In the two months since leaving my former 9-5 gig:

Things I Have Done:

- picked up a cat from the Boston shelter (my last cat died as a result of the tainted Chinese pet food ingredients)

- went to the Celtics championship parade (it has been 6 months since we’ve had a championship parade in Boston - the wait was worth it)

- installed an attic fan (no easy task in my crawlspace sized attic)

- vastly expanded my knowledge of the biotech scene in the Boston area (3 interviews so far)

- undertaken major landscaping projects around my house (completely rebuilt a 4′  x 10′ natural stone retaining wall in the front and created a 25 square foot level stone patio in my slopey backyard)

- set up a linux box capable of running all the necessary tasks to support my particular scientific specialty for under $150 (thanks craigslist and open source software!)

Things I Haven’t Done:

-painting!  Multiple areas in my house need touch-ups

-shutters! (I’ve switched my plan to creating my own board and batten shutters instead of scraping paint off of 50 year old shutters)

-start the homebrewing beer blog/section  (I’ve got some entries started, but I want to release a body of work at once)

- finish the novel I started during nanomo.  I’m a lazy, lazy writer.

- hit the coast for some early morning surf fishing (I think the stripers have pulled a jedi mind trick on me - “You don’t want to get up early and fish”)

-win at poker.  Seriously coolered, sucked out on, or card dead.  You name it  - I’ve busted out of tournies and lost my stack at cash games so many times over the past few months I’m wondering if poker can ever pay my way again.

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I’ve been spending my days on landscaping projects and home improvement and my evenings watching the NBA finals while playing the PokerStars Steps WSOP satellites.

I completed a 6×6′ patio today - no easy task as my yard has a fairly significant slope.  The drop over 6′ was better than 1/2 foot so I had some serious soil redistribution in front of me.  ~1 ton of stone, sand and gravel later and I’ve got myself a sweet spot to fire up my Weber.  Having a nice flat surface to cook is great - my hot dogs don’t roll to one end of the grill anymore.

***

The basketball has been great.  I’m not a huge fan, but a Boston sports team playing in its 3rd championship series of the year makes it hard to ignore.  I say Celtics take it in 7, only because the NBA money-making machine will want it to go that way.  Every game seems to feature a spot of news on the dirty NBA refs.  Basketball games almost always seem to come down to the final 5 minutes - a ref can easily push it one way or another.  When cheating is easy and lucrative, cheating happens.  Take that one to the bank - we’ll find out in 5-10 years about refs fixing games at NBA directions.   Either that or the ticket resellers.

***

The PokerStars steps are pretty cool.  $7.50 entry into step 1, top 2 go on to step 3, 3rd place repeats step 1.  Step 2 is set up similarly - top 2 go to 3, 3&4 repeat, and 5th goes down to step 1.  Steps 1-3 are turbo so they don’t take too long.  Standard S&G play seems to be sufficient - if I could avoid the suckouts I would have been up in level 4 twice by now.  First time I had AA cracked by A7soooted, second time I had QQ cracked by AJ.  You have to reach level 6 for the money - top prize is 12K WSOP packages, 2-4 are heavy cash pay outs.  My past few nights I haven’t made it into level 3 - blinds escalate pretty quickly and the crap shoots haven’t been hitting me with anything but crap.  I’ll get there - it’s been a longstanding goal to hit one of those 12K WSOP packages.  I probably wouldn’t play - 12K cash is waaaay to much to lay on a poker tourney. 

I might, however, fly out and play a few smaller events.  I’d love to be able to put a bracelet up in my office memorabilia corner….

A funny thing happened on the way to the largest casino in the world. Or maybe not so funny given that this was a day of cumulative suckitude.

First off, the fax stop.  I needed to fax some forms for an interview I did recently.  Definitely a good sign that my interviewer wanted them, but seriously UPS store - $1/page for a fax?  I can understand maybe receiving costs of $1/page, but sending?  Please.

Second off, the Dunkin’ Donuts stop.  On the way to Foxwoods, I heard a radio commercial saying that you could get a free iced tea/coffee if you buy a sandwich after 11:00AM when the Red Sox have won the night before.  The Sox had won, it was just past 11, and there was a drive-thru Dunkin’ Donuts right in front of me.  After being made to wait quite long to give my order to the grotty little speaker while envisioning what a bacon and cheese flatbread melt would taste like with my free beverage, I was informed that “We don’t do that in Connecticut”.  Ok Connecticut, I know that you touch NY, and you might feel some kind of torn allegiance to the friggen’ Yankees, but denying me my free ice tea while tempting me with melted cheese and bacon?  Please.

Third - my session at Foxwoods.  I met up with RakeFeeder and a friend of his.  After missing my name for 5-6 open places, being yelled at by the floor manager for eating a piece of pizza near the table, I sat down. Apparently you are not supposed to eat in the poker room at Foxwoods. Please.

Over the next 5 hours I took one of my top 10 beatings at the table.  No crazy suckouts, unless you consider being stacked while holding TPTK and nut flush draw (damn you AK soooted) on the turn vs your opponents set of queens to start the day, and then having the same opponent stack you with a turned straight vs your flopped set of 8’s (raised and isolated preflop, he had 910 off and called sizeable bets preflop, on the flop (478 flop, J on the turn) to end the day.  In between I won a few pots but missed on quite a few more, including one where I flopped the bottom end of the straight and had the board pair on the turn and then the flush and higher straight come on the river.  QQ cracked by A-junk, JJ cracked by K-junk (both of those folded to significant action).  The players at the table were friendly enough and happily showed their hands without being called.

Maybe aggressive play by me - I typically play small ball poker but since my last sessions at Foxwoods had been slight losing ones, principally due to the $10/hr time fee, I thought I might open my game a little.  One or two cards the right way and was walking out with a healthy profit.  As it was I left with metaphorical tail tucked between legs.

But tomorrow is another day.  Please?