Nat Arem's Blog

This picks up in the middle of the conversation, but I was talking on AIM to “Bill Ivey” a few minutes ago:

(2006-07-23 02:37:41) GIFAFI: going to emory
(2006-07-23 02:37:48) GIFAFI: just so i can play in home games with sub
(2006-07-23 02:37:52) GIFAFI: at uga
(2006-07-23 02:38:00) GIFAFI: i’m on the sub tuition plan
(2006-07-23 02:38:31) Bill Ivey: lol
(2006-07-23 02:38:40) Bill Ivey: so its final– you are going to emory?
(2006-07-23 02:38:43) GIFAFI: yea
(2006-07-23 02:38:51) GIFAFI: ship me obv
(2006-07-23 02:38:53) GIFAFI: to atl
(2006-07-23 02:39:19) Bill Ivey: atl get crunk
(2006-07-23 02:39:28) GIFAFI: clearly
(2006-07-23 02:40:11) GIFAFI: i’ve been running hot, i’m looking forward to vegas
(2006-07-23 02:40:20) GIFAFI: i wanna play some crazy home games
(2006-07-23 02:40:53) GIFAFI: brb muffin
(2006-07-23 02:41:17) Bill Ivey: heh… should be fun
(2006-07-23 02:41:27) Bill Ivey: did you just call me “muffin”?
(2006-07-23 02:42:59) GIFAFI: no
(2006-07-23 02:43:03) GIFAFI: i was saying
(2006-07-23 02:43:07) GIFAFI: brb, getting a muffin
(2006-07-23 02:43:16) GIFAFI: looooooool @ idea of calling you muffin
(2006-07-23 02:43:18) GIFAFI: roflroflrofl

As expected, Floyd Landis took the overall lead in the Tour. Tomorrow’s stage is considered to be a formality. It’s a stage meant to celebrate the Tour, not to attack. Even if someone did attack, Landis has about a one minute lead and no one is going to put a minute into him on a flat stage. But no one would even think of trying that. So anyway, Floyd Landis won the Tour becoming on the 3rd American to ever do so. Sastre somewhat collapsed during today’s stage and Kloden and Pereiro both rode great time trials, so Sastre is off the podium and he’ll finish in 4th. He didn’t truly collapse, but he wasn’t able to put together a great ride like the other cyclists at the top of the overall standings.

In other news, I leave for Las Vegas on Monday. I’m really excited to be out there with so many other people that I spend so much time talking to online. While I’ve met a lot of people already at places like Foxwoods, AC, Atlantis or during my last trip to Vegas, this will also be my first chance to meet a lot of other people. In particular, I’m really really excited for the P5s party on July 27th from 6-8 PM at New York New York. It’s too bad it got moved from the Bellagio, but I still expect it to be a great time. Also, I will be taking a ton of pictures all over the place, so look for a lot of photo-filled blog entries in the next two to three weeks. If you see me out there and you’re a blog reader, be sure to introduce yourself. I’m a friendly guy.

First, this Tour started with doping controversy. The two big favorites, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, were suspended from racing due to connections with a doctor under investigation for providing cyclists with performance-enhancing drugs. So the field was thinned from the start, which left the Tour wide-open and ready to be taken by whoever wanted to step up. The main riders designated to take Lance Armstrong’s place at the top were gone.

The “contending” field for the overall was reduced to a few riders:

1. Floyd Landis (USA). Team Phonak. A former Armstrong teammate who was thought to be the pre-Tour favorite once Basso and Ullrich went out. Strong in the mountains and very strong in the time trials.
2. Alejandro Valverde (ESP). Team Caisse d’Epargne. He crashed out of the Tour in the first week.
3. Andreas Kloden (GER). Team T-Mobile. He replaced Jan Ullrich as the team leader after Ullrich was suspended.
4. Denis Menchov (RUS). Team Rabobank. The winner of the 2005 Vuelta and a former winner of the Tour’s best young rider jersey, kind of an equivalent to “rookie of the year.”
5. Cadel Evans (AUS). Team Davitamon Lotto. A strong rider, but possibly just not strong enough to win the overall Tour. A very likely top 10 finisher with an outside shot at a title.
6. Carlos Sastre (ESP). Team CSC. Ivan Basso was supposed to be the leader of CSC, but with his suspension, Sastre was promoted to being the CSC rider to go for the Tour victory.
7. Levi Leipheimer (USA). Team Gerolsteiner. He won the 2006 Dauphine, a key Tour warm-up stage race. But he’s never stepped up in the Tour to look like a true podium contender, he’s a consistent 8th-15th place guy.
8. Iban Mayo (ESP). Team Euskatel-Euskadi. A former podium contender, he’s been off his best form the last few years. He showed some promise with some good rides earlier in the season, thereby getting people’s hopes up. But he was never thought to be a real threat to win the overall.

That’s about it for the real contenders. Here’s where they’re at now while nearing the end of the Tour.

1. Landis – The favorite to win the overall, despite being in 3rd with only one meaningful stage to go. The reason is that the last meaningful stage is a time trial, a discipline in which he excels. He’s only 30 seconds out of the yellow jersey.
2. Valverde – Crashed out early breaking his collarbone.
3. Kloden – He’s in 4th going into the time trial, but he’s about 2 minutes behind Landis in 3rd. Has a chance at a podium spot if he time trials well.
4. Menchov – He’s sitting in 6th, about 3:45 behind Landis and out of contention to win the overall. He’s put together a solid race, but he just hasn’t been strong enough consistently throughout the mountains to put any time into his opponents. He did win a stage in the Pyrenees, but Landis was right on his wheel and didn’t lose any time. While a solid time trialist, he isn’t anything special like an Armstrong or an Indurain.
5. Evans – In 5th behind Kloden and ahead of Menchov. He’s riden a Tour much like Menchov. Solid, but not strong enough to attack and put time into his rivals at key points. He’s been put into difficulty on a few occasions, but he recovered well each time and managed to lose minimal time. Probably can’t get onto the podium.
6. Sastre – In 2nd. 18 seconds ahead of Landis and 12 seconds behind the yellow jersey. He might be able to hold on to win with the time trial of his life, but he’s likely going to finish 2nd in Paris to Landis. That is still a major accomplishment for someone only recently promoted to team leader and it’s a great result for CSC after the Basso controversy.
7. Leipheimer – Was out of real contention after a disastrous time trial in the first week, but he recovered well in the mountains to climb back into the top 10. Somewhat collapsed in the Alps, but is still holding on to a top 20 position in the tour.
8. Mayo – Completely cracked as soon as the Tour went uphill in the Pyrenees and he abandoned the Tour soon after. It looks like any chance he ever had of a podium finish in Paris is now over — his Tour career is basically shot barring an amazing comeback. Maybe he’ll be able to recover and ride well in the Vuelta in September.

The Tour has been really up and down. For weeks, it looked as if Landis was going to take the Tour just by time trialing well and not letting anyone put any time into him in the mountains. That looked like it was going to work when the Tour rode into Alpe D’Huez, a famed Tour ascent. Then the next day, for whatever reason, Landis was weak. He was riding poorly through the whole stage, but he finally cracked on the final climb of Stage 16 at La Toussuire. In a disastrous 10 km or so, he slipped out of the top 10 and was over 8 minutes behind the yellow jersey of Oscar Pereiro (a surprise leader who won’t hold on to the jersey in the time trial).

You can see the profile of that ride below:

As you can see, it’s just a beast. The whole day is either ascending or descending and the final climb managed to do Landis in. Everyone basically gave him up for dead, but they’d forgotten that anything can happen and that there was one more Alpine stage for Landis to make up ground.

While no one could have predicted what happened, Landis went out on the attack early in Stage 17, leaving behind all his rivals on the first climb, the Col de Saisies. You can see the profile below:

Incredibly, he rode virtually on his own (he did tow one rider for much of the way) from that first mountain all the way to the finish in Morzine. The final climb, the Col de Joux-Plane, is an incredible mountain. It’s something like 12 km at an average gradient of 8.5%. That’s very steep. You can tell by looking at the profile how quickly it kicks up. Anyway, Landis managed to hold off the entire field and win the stage by over 5 minutes, an eternity for a 100+ km breakaway in the mountains. He got himself back to where he sits now in the overall standings. It’s now being regarded as one of, if not the, greatest single day ride in modern Tour history. He’s in the driver’s seat to win the Tour if he can put together a strong time trial. And it all happens live tomorrow morning on OLN (Outdoor Life Network). They’ll be replaying it throughout the day.

Here is the time trial profile:

I highly encourage everyone to take at least a few minutes to watch the last 90 minutes of time trial coverage as it will be very exciting to see the overall contenders battle it out for the yellow jersey for the final celebratory ride into Paris.

Like many American males my age, I first started following the Tour de France around 7 years ago in 1999 when Lance Armstrong won his first Tour. Of course, I’d always followed the Tour casually when Greg LeMond won in 1989 and 1990 and then again when the great Miguel Indurain rattled off 5 consecutive Tour wins in the early 90s. But I never really follow the race closely until Lance got involved. And ever since then, I’ve been a huge fan of professional cycling.

It’s really an amazing sport for a lot of reasons. Why?

1st: The athletes are incredible. To put out the effort required to get themselves around these courses at the speed they do is just incredible. They’re probably the greatest endurance athletes in the world.

2nd: There are always tactics and strategies being played out. To the casual observer it may just look like a bunch of guys pedalling like mad to get places as fast as possible, but that’s really not the case. Riders are being moved around strategically depending on the goal of each team (each team consists of 9 riders in the Tour). For some teams, their goal is to win the overall standings at the end of the race in Paris. Some teams focus around a sprinter with the goal of winning stages or winning the green jersey, which designates the best sprinter based on a pre-defined points system. I could go on forever, but just suffice it to say that the strategies in play are fascinating.

3rd: It’s a sport for the people to experience and enjoy. This isn’t like football where many people can’t ever really step onto the playing field and really see what NFL play is like (they might be very seriously injured if they tried). It also isn’t like hockey where you need to live near a rink, find a time that the ice is open and get lessons to get started. Biking costs a little to get off the ground, but once you have it, you’re good to go. And if you want to compete against the best, it’s just a matter if timing yourself, seeing what sort of MPH you can sustain, what sorts of hills you can climb and how well you can descend down a road. Much like golf, you can “equalize” the difficultly of being one of the riders in the race or one of the players on the course. The only major thing you’re missing is the pressure of the moment.

4th: It’s great exercise. Spending a few hours per week on the bike can really help get anyone into better shape. It’s not nearly as hard on the knees as running on pavement can be for most of us.

I would go on, but it would take me too long to write about all the reasons that cycling is such a great sport.

Next I’ll give you a quick breakdown of the cycling season:

Early in the year: A few smaller stage races, such as the Tour of Australia. Because the weather is nice down there during our winter, they hold some races down there.

Spring: The “Classics” of northern Europe. These races are usually one day to a few day races that favor “all around” riders (combo sprinters/climbers/flat roaders) or the sprinters in the case that it’s a bunch finish. These include races such as Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Amstel Gold and the Paris-Roubaix. You can read about the whole UCI ProTour here.

Late Spring: The “Grand Tour” season starts in May with the 3 week long Italian Giro D’Italia. This is one of three Grand Tour races, with the Tour being one of the other two. It’s followed by the Tour warm up races such as Dauphine Libere in France and the Tour de Suisse in Switzerland. These are stage races like the Grand Tours, but they typically only last for a week or less. They usually test some of the types of challenges that will face riders in the Tour, such as time trials and mountain stages.

Summer: Finally, the biggest race of the year, the Tour de France. Most of June is spent resting, getting ready for the Tour, riding a warm up race and, boom, July hits and the Tour is underway. The Tour usually starts off with a week of flatter stages, usually including a time trial. Sometimes there’s also a team time trial where the 9 riders on each team have to ride together — that wasn’t included in this year’s Tour. Then it either hits the Pyrenees (a mountain chain near Spain) or the Alps (a mountain chain near Italy). If it hits the Alps first, then it hits the Pyrenees second. Or vice versa. There are usually around 3-4 mountain stages in each range and those stages typically decide the outcome of the Tour. If a rider isn’t strong in the mountains, then he can’t win the Tour. Typically, Lance would put the hammer down on an early mountain stage, blow away the other contenders and then play a defensive role for the rest of the Tour and cruise to victory. There’s often another individual time trial towards the end, but it hasn’t really mattered much since Lance has been around. He’s had a close call here or there, but I’ve always been very sure he’d win the race when it came down to the day of the final time trial. Especially considering he was probably the best time trialist in the race, even compared to the time trialing specialists who were often hours behind him after the mountain stages were over with. It’s an incredible event and this year’s Tour wraps up this weekend in Paris. Unlike most Tours, the time trial this Saturday will decide the outcome of the Tour. I’m really excited to see what happens.

Fall: After August, the Vuelta a Espana wraps up the Grand Tour season in September. Much like the Italian and French versions, the Spanish version is a 3 week stage race featuring time trials, sprint stages, mountain stages and everything else. While the two smaller Tours aren’t as prestigious, winning one is still like winning a major in golf or a grand slam in tennis. It’s a big deal and everyone wants to win them, especially cyclists racing in their home country.

The rest of the year (including periods that I skipped over) is filled in with various national championships, world championships, smaller races, etc.

So that’s a basic intro. I want to write another entry focusing on this year’s Tour soon so people can watch the all-important final time trial coming up on Saturday (just one day!) with some idea of what is going on. Make no mistake about it, this year’s Tour is an epic that won’t be forgotten in cycling for a long-time. I guess I have to get it done tomorrow.

I think I might have finally gotten the UB program to work correctly.

I haven’t put up a player search or a notice on the site about it (yet), but you can view the tournament list here: http://www.thepokerdb.com/ub/tournaments.php

This link was up and populated a few months ago, but we noticed a TON of errors in the listings. Therefore, we took it down. This new set starts on July 3rd, 2006, so we’re only at a little over two weeks worth of data so far. And to be honest, I really don’t know exactly how complete or error free the data is… but I can say that it looks a lot better than it did a few months ago. I do know of a few consistent errors that occur due to UB being a buggy site, but I’ve given up on trying to deal with those — they’ll just be a fact of life on theubdb.

Let me know what you think, either through the contact us link on the site or by using the comment feature on the blog (I read all the comments obviously).

I get these sometimes. I am psdollars in the conversation, the other guy is some random who I don’t know.

Mccouchpotato: u wanna stake a random guy in a big pokerstars tourney
psdollars: steak or stake
Mccouchpotato: both would be nice
psdollars: i would steak you
psdollars: but
psdollars: you probably live too far away to drive one over
Mccouchpotato: u dont know me
Mccouchpotato: where do u live
psdollars: cambodia
Mccouchpotato: who is on this screen name right now
Mccouchpotato: lol
Mccouchpotato: ps screen name
Mccouchpotato: i mean
psdollars: my screen name is psdollars
Mccouchpotato: u wanna stake me
psdollars: i’ve only been steaking people lately
Mccouchpotato: in a 100 dollar tourney
psdollars: are you a pro
Mccouchpotato: yea
psdollars: hrmm
psdollars: sounds like a good idea then
psdollars: what sort of steak
Mccouchpotato: a t-bone
psdollars: out of those
Mccouchpotato: medium well
psdollars: is london broil okay
Mccouchpotato: sounds good by me
psdollars: cool
psdollars: can you come pick it up in cambodia
Mccouchpotato: yea
Mccouchpotato: i live in
Mccouchpotato: dong tong
psdollars: cool
Mccouchpotato: that is in cambodia
Mccouchpotato: where do u live in there
psdollars: that’s right next door to me
Mccouchpotato: tight
Mccouchpotato: with that steak can i get 100 dollars too
psdollars: i live in downtown dong tong
psdollars: i only have pesos right now
Mccouchpotato: so i can get 109 dollars for a tournment on stars
psdollars: can’t give dollars
Mccouchpotato: k
Mccouchpotato: fine
Mccouchpotato: about 355320 pesos
psdollars: yea, can you get an account on Sombrero Pokero
psdollars: that’s where i keep my peso poker roll
Mccouchpotato: no but on a serious note
Mccouchpotato: would u be interested in staking me
psdollars: no