Oh Really Amazon...
Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2008 Professional Internet
Amazon.com recommends "FLIP: How to Find, Fix, and Sell Houses for Profit" and more.
I'm not so sure about that, Amazon. I guess this is a welcome recommendation over the usual "Amazon.com recommends Crushing Limit Hold'em," or whatever random emails I usually get.
The best part about my job
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2008 Professional Internet
Today I came into the office late because there was a repair guy at my house this morning. I am moving out soon so all of the little things that we’ve been avoiding fixing for months are getting fixed up. I suppose it’s a subtle brag that I can come in late if I have something I need to fix at the house, but that’s not the best part of my job. I walked into the office and Lee, Kevin, Andrew, and Caroline were working at their desks. After getting a glass of water and returning towards my office, I noticed upon closer inspection that Lee and Andrew were both gambling on the internet, and Kevin was watching gambling related videos. It’s pretty awesome that at this job you can be gambling at work and not only is it not frowned upon, it’s actually encouraged. I proceeded to say this aloud, walk over to Andrew’s desk and critique how he played a HU PLO hand, then walk over to my office to get to work. I probably should stop being so emo in general, life isn’t bad.
Goodbye Sweet Monte Cristo, I hardly Knew Thee
Date: Tue, Jul 29, 2008 Professional Internet
It looks like Bennigans is closing its doors, after filing for bankruptcy today. It’s funny; I’ve always loved that damn monte cristo sandwich, even though I haven’t found the time to go there in over 5 years.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/29/news/companies/bennigans_bankruptcy.ap/index.htm?iref=topnews
For those of you that don’t know, the monte cristo is ham, turkey, swiss, and some sweet sauce served in fried bread and topped with powdered sugar. It’s a walking heart attack, but it’s like eating breakfast lunch and dinner at the same time, and I’m not just talking about the amount of calories you’ll consume.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Cristo_sandwich
I was just thinking the other day about how things change in the restaurant industry, and in business in general. For example, it’s no shock to me that Bennigans is struggling. There are an abundance of middle tier restaurants these days. 10 years ago it seemed like if you wanted to go to a middle tier restaurant you pretty much just went to Applebees, TGI Friday’s, or something of the like. Now there are a lot more restaurants that are slightly pricier, but at least appear to have fresher food and a much better ambiance. Examples of these places would be California Pizza Kitchen or PF Chang’s. It seems these places have basically are just modernized versions of the aforementioned places, but they capitalize on the fact that Americans are generally willing to overextend themselves at any chance they get., particularly if it’s seen as “superior” status-wise amongst their peers. In this vein, it helps that places like Bennigans and TGI Friday’s seem to have a stigma of being old, boring, cheap, and unhealthy, when the new places are just as unhealthy and cost more, but people perceive them as superior in all categories. For some reason Americans usually label inexpensive things “cheap,” which has a negative connotation.
I do predict that we are going to see these mid-tier restaurants (both old and new) struggle in the near future and people are eventually going to realize that cheap doesn’t necessarily mean bad. That’s a pretty obvious statement to make I guess, as it’s no secret that with a poor economy what I just stated is likely to happen, but I guess the real point I wanted to make is that I hope that the people of our country do actually realize that cheap doesn’t mean bad, and that people stop looking at debt as a necessary evil for everything in life. You don’t NEED 3 credit cards at 22 years old, you WANT them so you can buy the designer clothes or the fancier house or car. Sorry for that rant.
Anyway, I think I’ll be making a monte cristo sandwich sometime soon. Who is with me?
Back to the blog (aka grind)
Date: Tue, Jul 22, 2008 Professional Internet
I’m back, baby, trying to get into the blog of things again. My blog has been hovering between mediocre and completely unreadable over the past 4-6 months. In actuality, I’m a decent writer with some mildly entertaining things to say, but when I force myself to write even if I’m not feeling it…well, I already said what happens then. I’m just going to blog about some random happenings, including a lot of things I heard and saw in Las Vegas this summer. I don’t really know how this will turn out but there should be some interesting tidbits to follow.
Funny lines from Vegas:
“You’ll be broker than piss on a plate if you play like that!” - A southern gentleman I played with in the $2500 6max event, after someone talked about some mildly bad play someone else made, probably akin to overplaying Ace Queen in a 6max NLHE game (not the biggest error in the world). I love hearing phrases like these from southern guys, they tend to be huge exaggerators (which I find funny in and of itself) and the enthusiasm with which they say them is amusing.
“He went through [his chips] like grits through a goose!” – The same gentleman talking about a young kid who went broke when I set over setted him on the first hand of the tournament.
“I won’t eat a Salmon but I like to see it on the menu” – My roommate Joe, after complaining about the lack of choices on the menu at the restaurant we are at. My response: “First of all, that’s a ridiculous thing to say if you don’t even like fish. Second of all, Salmon is on the menu, it’s the last dish at the bottom.” We all proceed to burst out laughing.
Guy on plane, after reminiscing to his friend about some crazy Vegas story that he didn’t want his friends back home to hear about: “Yeah, but good thing what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
Friend: “No it doesn’t, people actually always talk about what happens in Vegas.” Guy: Yeah, you’re right. So what, that was awesome!”
Overall Vegas Impression: There were a lot more Europeans this year than I ever noticed before. Both playing poker and gambling at the casinos, the Europeans disregard for the value of the American Dollar was very apparent to me. Good for them though, if I could go to Europe for at least a 40% discount, I’d go a few times per year. Hopefully we’ll (America) be back someday, but I’m starting to doubt that.
Ruined Dreams: Gus Hansen ruined my dreams of running off to an island somewhere for the indefinite future. I staked some of my friends for the Main Event, with 2 of them making the money and one getting very deep. With 219 people left and Day 4 or 5 almost over, My friend has 600k in chips with 550 an average stack. I can’t remember what the exact blinds were here but Gus opened in late position and called a 3bet to 90k+ (like 15% of effective stacks) with the good old ATo. The flop obviously comes down AT9 and my friend busts with his AQ. There’s really not a whole lot he can do there, there’s almost no way he could have played that hand and not gone broke, given how big the blinds are and how Gus will put the money in with any Ace.
Overall I made money on the Main Event, but barely. I played three other tournaments and took brutal beats in two of them. Just one time I want to win a big tourney or have someone I stake win one. That would be awesome. I say this every year, but I think next year I’m going to play more tournaments. I want to go really deep in a poker tournament before my poker career is all said and done. I’m not going to be grinding the WSOP events when I have a family some day, so I better get cracking over the rest of my 20’s.
My friend is XYZ, he’s awesome at poker: So I went to the Jimmy Buffet concert in Alpine Valley, Wisconsin this past weekend with some of my friends. A group of 60 of us rented a “party bus” which drove us there from my roommate’s lake house. It was quite a site to see, as another 20 people or so met us at the concert. I didn’t know a lot of the people in the group because it is mostly my roommate’s friends from high school, but I knew enough people and met others which made it fun.
About four hours into the tailgate, I received the obligatory “Hey, so you play poker?” question from some kid. I responded with “yes, I play some poker.” He goes on to tell me about his friend JBmantis who I think is actually GBmantis who I think is a tournament player who I remember from posting at PocketFives. Anyway, apparently this kid is so good that he won $50k one day and $60k the next week!! I told him that I thought his friend must be a good player because that is very tough to do, and thought we’d move the conversation on to something else. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way because he started asking me about my poker playing. I sort of brushed it aside and I don’t even really remember what I said, so he starts to tell me: “my friend is actually sponsored by PartyPoker and FullTiltPoker.” At this point I said: “that’s actually not possible, because ignoring the fact that PartyPoker doesn’t take US customers and certainly won’t sponsor US-only internet players, FTP and Party are not going to sponsor the same kid, it just wouldn’t make sense. He told me that it was in fact true, that his friend was just that good. I tried to be as polite as possible because there’s no reason to get into a dick waving contest, especially at a Jimmy Buffet concert of all places. The truth of the matter is, his friend is good, and is probably in the top .01% of all people that have played online poker. It’s just funny that he happened to run into probably the only guy at the whole concert who wouldn’t be floored by a 50 or 60k win.
Anyway, I’m in the process of moving out of my condo. I’m moving to Lincoln Park to live with 3 of my college friends plus 1 random friend of a friend. I think it should be a lot of fun and as soon as I finalize renting my current place out I will move my stuff over. I’m looking to get a new mattress and I’m probably going to go with a Tempurpedic or the “Dream Bed” from some hotel that I’ve heard good things about. If anyone has input, or even better, a place in Chicago where I can get this bed that would be great. I’m not looking to pay full price, or even really close to it, as all of the research I’ve done tells me that you generally can haggle the hell out of the mattress places. So if you own a mattress place or know someone that does, we can cut the crap and just give me the best price and I’ll give you my business and a shout in my blog when your awesome mattress inevitably improves my sleep!
Good luck,
Taylor
Back home
Date: Fri, Jul 11, 2008 Professional Internet
I'm back in Chicago and it feels nice. What doesn't feel nice is being up this early. I'm heading into the office to get back to work. It's very hard to get on a routine in Vegas, so I'm happy that I should be able to be on a good one now.
I just wanted to say a quick good luck to my friends that are still in the Main Event. If my roommate Joe or Bruce gets deep today/tomorrow, I'll likely fly back out to sweat them. Props to my other roommate Drama for cashing, it was particularly impressive because I don't think his stack was ever over 60 or 70k, and he lost a 100k pot with KK vs 109o all in preflop.
GL to: Joe, Bruce, David, Kara, Justin, Phil, Leo, anyone else i'm forgetting just glancing at the list of ppl still in. I sure hope i get to go back out to Vegas to sweat someone really deep!
Taylor
No offense, MattG
Date: Wed, Jul 9, 2008 Professional Internet
you're a good guy, but I'm tired of seeing your Mug everytime I look at PokerNews for live updates. seeing as you just won an event (congrats, btw) and every poker player in the world has your face burned into their retinas, i see sponsorship dollars in your future!! http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/
i'm spending the day working today, i grabbed a hotel room last night and got a good night sleep and have had some peace and quiet all day to get some stuff done. i think i am headed back to chicago tomorrow, but i haven't totally decided. i still have 2 roommates in the main event, and i'd like to stay and support them, but at the same time i already have a ticket and have a ton of stuff going on. tentatively i am going to leave tomorrow afternoon, and then come back Friday night if anyone is still in the tourney.
i can't wait to get into our new office in Chicago, which I think is an absolutely perfect space for us. it is the perfect combination of spatious but not wasteful, and nice but not too expensive. we needed an upgrade as we were basically all working out of one small room before. i'll have some updates on my poker playing and some thoughts about online poker in general when i get home.
gl to everyone still in the tourney,
taylor
Fourth of July
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008 Professional Internet
Yeterday's tournament was one of those days where nothing good ever happened. Every time I had a hand, someone had a better hand, everytime I made a move, someone had a huge hand.
My table was much more solid than any other Main Event table I've ever had, including last year when I was down to almost the final 1000 people near the end of Day 2 (when theoretically the average player should be much stronger than the beginning of day 1). I'm not sure if I just got unlucky and had a bad table draw, or if the fields really are gettng that much tougher. I think it's probably a little of both.
That being said, my table was by no means really hard, as I suspect there was 1 very good player (young euro), 2-3 solid americans who were likely online MTT grinders, and then some older guys who were mostly nitty, but except for one of them, not clueless.
I put three of my friends into the Main Event and they all are left after Day 1, so I can't be too unhappy. One of them has 75k so he's got a great chance to do some damage. Good luck to everyone still left in the Main Event.
Today I have a meeting at the Rio in an hour, then I'm going to check out the Gaming LIfe Expo (which is basically a ton of gambling related booths), then head home to shower/change before I head to Krantz's place for a 4th of July party. I think we might stop by Phil Gordon's 4th of July Party too but it's kind of far away and I didn't know a ton of people there so it's probably up in the air (was a lovely party, though).
I hope all of you Americans enjoy the 4th of July. You can expect some actual poker content (GASP) from this blog soon. I have a few articles I want to write and I think i'll just link them up here.
Taylor