N 82 50 24 / Nat Arem Blog

For those ZJ blog readers out there, you may recall that Ozzy and I went out to Vegas in December to see Gigabet play the Five Diamonds WPT Final Table. I guest blogged about it here (I didn’t start up my blog until around the PCA, a few weeks later). You can read most of the background there.

Anyway, as you might be aware, last night was the WPT broadcast of the final table. Patrik Antonius pretty much owned the table thanks to good cards and good play. As I’m sure you saw, it was domination. But what you probably didn’t see was my first WPT appearance… in the crowd. Ozzy, sheets, myself and Gigabet’s family were there to support him. I managed to get some screen captures of the broadcast to make the N 82 spotting a little easier.

The pictures are a little too big to put in the blog, so I’m just going to link them, with descriptions after each link:

1. Ozzy/Nat: Me just to the left of the camera in the 2nd row, Ozzy to my right, our left. who’s bad in the white shirt to my left, our right. E-WeE sitting in the white shirt above Ozzy and I.
2. Ozzy/Nat: Ozzy and I again, Gigabet folding 73o!. Laak about to get owned by the asian boob lady.
3. Gigabet with AJo: Gigabet getting a count on Doyle’s small blind push with AKo. He basically had to call considering his cards and the situation, even though it turned out he was dominated.
4. Gigabet calls: Ozzy and sheets (just above Giga’s head in the shot) surveying the situation and finding out the bad news. I haven’t gotten up yet (although I can be seen), I guess my reactions are slow.
5. Gigabet with A4o: Gigabet about to get stop-and-goed by Doyle’s T-high. Ozzy and I looking on.
6. Gigabet busting with 44 - preflop: I think the cards are being turned up here. I was talking about something with sheets (Ozzy in the middle)… probably something about how “one time dealer!” might be applicable here.
7. Deal the flop already: Waiting patiently for the flop…
8. Re-deal the flop already: Okay, that wasn’t what we wanted to see. Giga no longer in a good spot.
9. Gigabet after busting: Ozzy and I again, with Gigabet walking over after busting out.
10. Gigabet hugging his mom: sheets is also looking on, in between them in the frame. I’m not sure who the guy in the yellow shirt is, but I think that’s Gigabet’s dad in the bottom right of the frame with the hat on. I know he was sitting around there…
11. Patrik: Patrik just after busting Gigabet. We are still in the audience for the time being, as Gigabet was outside the lounge being interviewed by Courtney Friel in front of the fountains. We left soon after for a few hours.
12. Patrik celebrating a little prematurely: This isn’t the best screen cap, but I grabbed it because you can see myself at the top of the frame, with Ozzy and ZeeJustin just below me. One of Patrik’s friends is in front of ZJ, but you should be able to make his face out in this shot. Patrik was about to go from extremely happy to pretty sick, ZeeJustin wrote about the hand in this blog entry.

Anyway, it was a great trip and you can read more about it in the ZJ blog that I wrote.

And remember, I’m making my 2nd crowd appearance of the WPT season next week when Ozzy makes the Bahamas WPT final table!

Nat :: Apr.27.2006 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

First, this is not about the brsavage/gobboboy/ActionJeff argument that has emerged on P5s in the last couple of days (see original post and followup post). While I disagree with a lot of things said in those posts, it’s really an argument that can’t be won because both sides believe one thing or the other. I don’t really care to rant about an unwinnable argument — I’m not suggesting that arguments have to be won or lost, but some are more endless than others. That is an endless argument.

Anyway, I’m here because poker forums in general have bothered me as of late. I’ll talk about a few of the things that bother me… (remember that a lot of posters don’t fall into these categories, it’s just a few bad ones that tend to ruin it for everyone).

1. People feel the right to say whatever they want because of anonymity. It’s not that I mind people calling someone a donk or whatever, but when someone makes a bunch of posts calling someone ugly while remaining anonymous and not posting a picture of themselves, it’s just ridiculous. Another example is when a poster insults the intelligence or looks someone’s family members or significant others while once again not providing any details about their own superiority. It seems wrong to call someone’s girlfriend ugly when the critical poster most likely can’t do any better. Everyone’s a critic with no real accountability. By no means do I think we all need to be friends and love each other, but if you’re going to call out someone’s poker game, looks, intelligence, etc, you shouldn’t be able to hide behind your keyboard and monitor. Show who you are and THEN explain why you think someone’s girlfriend is ugly and yours is that much better looking.

2. Another problem is dumb questions that have been covered over and over. I know, not everyone knows as much as the well-known posters. I don’t expect someone to know obscure details and it’s fine for people to ask questions. But asking something like “Is FossilMan on Stars really Raymer?” or “What bankroll is required for limit holdem” is really just retarded. Most, if not all, forums have a search function. Google is a good resource as well. It gets incredibly frustrating to see the same n00b questions over and over when they’ve clearly made no attempt to find the answer themselves. Poker forums aren’t some live support center for all your questions.

3. Dumb comments get to me, especially the ones that are made over and over and over. I admit to being guilty of making dumb comments in response to my friends’ posts, so I have to work on this as well. I plan on stopping this practice, or minimizing it as much as I can take. An example of a dumb comment is “Wow, the site really made out on that hand” in response to the .50 rake on some HU 50/100 NL $50K pot that Mahatma played on UB. People feel the need to say this in almost every thread and it’s just so dumb. It’s well-known that higher limits are raked less on a % basis… Are you saying the site should rake $100? What exactly are you trying to say when you bring the rake to everyone’s attention for the 5000th time?

4. Horrible arguments bother me, although I usually take a look at a few sentences and just give up. People in general are ridiculously result-oriented — that’s one of the reasons that poker games are usually very good. People are convinced that a suit is lucky or that some trash hand must be played and therefore, they slowly just give their money away while probably ranting about some bad luck, cold cards or whatever along the way. Unfortunately, people bring the same horrible mindset to their posts and it brings down the level of discussion by quite a few notches.

5. Disguised bad beat posts (even worse than a real bad beat post IMO). People post things like “I was in the BB with AK and 12,000 chips, the button raised my 1K BB to 3K, should I shove?” and then it’s almost always followed by a hand history where they shoved and either a) the guy had AA and they were crushed or b) the guy had J4o and hit one of his live cards to win the pot. I never see this question posed if the button calls with A8 and loses the hand to AK. The answer to the question is obviously yes, your decision is automatic and you should push. You know this, I know this, anyone who has any clue about NLHE poker knows this. Stop disguising your bad beats posts with the dumbest strategy questions of all time.

6. ENDLESS bitching about free speech and whatnot. I know that I’m bitching in this post, but this is my blog. I would never post this on a poker forum because most people don’t care what I have to say about the state of the bigger poker forums today. The few that do care what I have to say come to this site and read my blog (if you’ve made it this far, even if you disagree with me, then, for some reason, you are clearly interested in what I have to say about this subject). On the other hand, people bitch and moan constantly on P5s about their posts being deleted. So what? It happens to everyone. I’m friends and business partners with the owners of P5s and I’ve had a ton of posts deleted. I’ve never complained about it. They delete things for a reason and they put a ton of effort into maintaining a clean site. Don’t make their job harder by bitching about some post being deleted. For some reason, people take everything as some huge personal affront and they’ll hold grudges due to something really small and meaningless. Just leave the forum if it bothers you; it’s a private website with no freedom of speech protection what-so-ever. Get a blog if you want freedom of speech and see if people care enough to come visit.

7. People are incredibly jealous of successful players. They attack the best strategy posters for no apparent reason other than some personal feeling of inadequacy with regards to their poker play, success in life, whatever. Actually, I don’t really know why people constantly feel the need to attack people at the top. Note that I’m not saying you shouldn’t criticize someone, most people deserve it at some point or another. If you disagree with the way someone played a hand, fine, go ahead and let us see the hand and explain why you think they played it wrong. If you think that someone is wrong in a post, go ahead and explain why. But don’t attack for the sake of jealousy, it makes the attacker look pathetic and stupid.

I’m tired right now, but I’ll probably write more about this in the future because there are a lot more problems with poker forums.

Good night and have a good week.

Nat :: Apr.23.2006 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

I know, I’m passing off some post about another viral video clip as a blog entry.

Anyway, this one is great:

Look at me being serious!

Here are some additional links on the situation at hand:

1. His school profile
2. This guy blogged about it: blog #1, blog #2, blog #3, blog #4
3. Student newspaper article
4. Another blog: blog #1, blog #2
5. The same video, but they put it up at lookatmebeingserious.com

Nat :: Apr.23.2006 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »