Just a little ranting about gun control in the news

Warning: No poker content.

Since about 1998, I have spent an inordinate amount of time on the subject of gun control--reading about it, writing about it, discussing it, lobbying for or against legislative proposals, etc. I'm particularly interested in empirical evidence about what can actually be shown to be effective or ineffective at reducing crime, and the results often--usually, in fact--turn out to be other than what one might expect.

The subject comes up now, obviously, because of the most recent mass shooting, this time in Tucson, Arizona. As predictably as the sun rising, politicians who hate having guns in our society (well, except in the hands of government officials, of course--such people always want to disarm only ordinary citizens) have responded with a flurry of gun-control proposals, some of them new, most of them taken down off of the dusty shelf, where they have been sitting, waiting for just such an opportunity.

Here's the basic problem: It's hard to make it more illegal than it already is to shoot a member of Congress through the head, to execute a federal judge, to murder a 9-year-old girl and several others, and to wound another dozen or so people by shooting indiscriminately into a mass of people. I mean, I suppose you could add a provision that the assailant be boiled in oil or drawn and quartered instead of just executing him in the usual ways, or maybe put his severed head on a pike as a warning to would-be copycats. Other than that, there just isn't any room for raising any higher the criminal penalties for this kind of behavior.

The despicable Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik clearly implied, soon after the events of Saturday, that part of the blame lies with Arizona's liberal concealed-carry laws. "I have never been a proponent of letting everybody in this state carry weapons under any circumstances that they want, and that's almost where we are." (Quoted here. See video clips of his statements here.) In order to accept such a causal connection, you'd have to accept this premise: That if it had been against the law for Jared Lee Loughner to have been carrying a concealed pistol, the whole calamity would have been averted. Apparently this moronic sheriff thinks that Loughner would have thought along these lines: "Oh, I am SO ready to go kill that Gabrielle Giffords and whoever else might be hanging around near her! And I'd do it, too, if not for that pesky law that makes it a misdemeanor for me to carry a gun in public! Curses--foiled again!"

(It's hard not to lapse into sarcasm when the position you're responding to is so patently ridiculous on its face. It's kind of like what I remember reading about Stanley Kubrick: He originally intended to make a serious film about "mutually-assured destruction" as our national nuclear arms policy, but found it so absurd that there was no way to take on the subject seriously, so instead he ended up making "Dr. Strangelove.")

Just as idiotic is Rep. Peter King's call for a federal law that would make it illegal to knowingly carry a gun within 1000 feet of a member of Congress or other highly-placed governmental officials. Once again, it's hard to figure out how he can be so stupid as to think that such a law would have prevented anything last week. If one is willing--eager, even--to commit mass murder, one more statute making illegal a preparatory step to that ultimate act is simply not going to work as a deterrent.

I understand the reflexive reaction that we collectively ought to do something to prevent this kind of horrible tragedy. But when you start sifting through and critically analyzing proposals, nothing really seems both possible and plausible.

I mean, you could propose repealing the Second Amendment, but why bother? There has never been a time since the Bill of Rights was enacted when you could get 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the states to agree to such a thing, and I can't imagine getting anywhere close to that now. It's a non-starter, dead on arrival. Tilt at that particular windmill if you want, but you'll just break off your lance.

How about a ban on handguns? Well, first, you again run headlong into that niggling little Second Amendment problem. In 2008 the Supreme Court squarely ruled that a ban on handguns is unconstitutional. You may disagree with that decision, you may hate it, but there it is, and, unless the Court chooses to reverse itself later, there's nothing that can be done about it short of a constitutional amendment overriding it--which just isn't going to happen, politically.

Even if it did, you have the problem of millions upon millions of handguns already being in circulation. You can deal with that by excluding from your ban those already lawfully owned, in which case you won't see any meaningful drop in the number of handguns in circulation for many decades, since well-maintained firearms last longer than people do. Alternatively, you could take the harder route and make it illegal to own the ones already in possession. But do you seriously think that people will just hand them over if told to? Some will, sure, but if you think you'd round up even half of them that way, you don't understand Americans very well.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy sees this as yet another opportunity to try to institute a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. (Actually, in interviews with her that I've seen, she usually says she wants to ban "clips" that hold more than ten rounds. But a "clip" and a "magazine" are two different things. Glocks do not use clips, nor do any other semi-automatic handguns that I've ever seen. Somebody who doesn't understand the difference between a clip and a magazine is too ignorant of the subject to be proposing federal laws about it.) This is based on the fact that Loughner is reported to have used one of Glock's 33-round magazines in his model 19. Let me list the problems with this dumb idea.

1. Above is a photo (taken from here without permission) of this magazine. The pistol shown is a Glock 26, which is slightly smaller than the Glock 19, but you get the general idea. It's terribly unwieldy. I happen to own one of those magazines. It works in either of my two 9mm Glocks, but I use it only rarely because it's clumsy and heavy, and is more prone to jamming than regular magazines. (Indeed, though news reports are murky on the exact details, it seems that his magazine misfeeding a round was what stopped the shooting long enough for people to jump on Loughner.) My bedside pistol is a 9mm Glock model 34 with a 19-round magazine--much more manageable. I wonder how Loughner carried that thing, because it would be really difficult to carry concealed in any of the usual kinds of holsters. My point is that magazines like this are virtually never carried by either law-abiding citizens or by criminals. I've been paying attention to gun crime matters for more than ten years, and I can't remember another case of somebody using a pistol with this kind of magazine on it in a crime spree.

2. McCarthy's idea is that when a mass shooter has to stop to reload, that's an opportunity for him to be stopped. It's certainly true that points of reload have, in a couple of high-profile cases, been when a bystander has taken the initiative to intervene in a public shooting. But that's only because the shooters have been inexperienced. Want to see how long it takes to reload a handgun with practice? Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJVoc5uJ2e4 That's Travis Tomasie, whom most of you won't have heard of, but he's one of the best competitive handgun shooters in the world. I've seen him shoot in competition; in fact, I've been the range officer (safety official) for him at least once that I can remember, and so was watching him from about two feet away. He really is that fast. Yes, his superb proficiency comes from many, many hours of practice. But reloading quickly is not a complex skill, and it doesn't take very long to get it to less than about two seconds between the last shot of one magazine and the first shot of the next. Laws that depend for their effective operation on criminals being incompetent with their chosen equipment can't be more than marginally effective under the best of circumstances.

3. The United States had a ban on the manufacture and import of magazines of more than 10 rounds between 1994 and 2004. Did crime soar after the ban ended? No. It continued to decline, despite moronic "the sky is falling" predictions by Dianne Feinstein, John Kerry, Sarah Brady, and others of their gun-hating ilk. This is really not at all surprising. The vast majority of uses of guns by both criminals and by law-abiding citizens in defensive situations involve only brandishing the gun, not actually firing it. The minority that do progress to shooting, either offensively or defensively, usually extend to no more than a few shots fired over the course of a few seconds. There is only rarely either time or need for a reload. The proposed ban is sort of like legislating a 100-mph governor on all vehicles under the theory that this will limit the speed of bank robbers' getaway cars and make them easier to catch. It's just ludicrous, and out of touch with the reality of how guns are actually used in real-world situations.

4. The ten-year ban had originally caught manufacturers off guard. Literally the day it ended, manufacturers set their factories to working around the clock to produce an enormous stock of full-capacity magazines, so that if such a ban were ever enacted again, they could ride it out for a long time without losing business to competitors who still had such magazines available for sale. (Pre-existing normal-capacity magazines could still be freely sold.) Similarly, gun enthusiasts learned their lesson and have now bought many more than they thought they would need, just in case such a ban comes around again. Smart speculators had bought large supplies of the magazines before the 1994 law went into effect, and profited handsomely as relative scarcity set in and prices went up. Whatever the effect on crime may have been when the ban went into effect (I don't know of any empirical evidence that it did any good, and doubt that there is any), there would be even less if it were ever repeated, because now the supply of full-capacity magazines is much greater than it was before. Theoretically, you could make it a crime to continue to own such items (and some gun control proponents are pushing for exactly that), but politically it is extremely difficult to criminalize possession of something that is currently legal to own, especially when there are tens of millions of the objects in question, owned by millions of people. Americans don't take kindly to being made criminals by inaction.

Finally, there are vague assertions made by any number of politicians and pundits with access to a microphone about making it harder for mentally unstable people like Loughner to buy a gun.

Well, that's fine in theory, but how are you going to actually write and enforce such a law? We do not deprive people of their constitutional rights lightly in this country--and I hope we'd all agree that that is a very, very good thing. The standard now is that one must have been adjudicated as mentally incompetent or involuntarily committed to a mental institution. That's a high standard, to be sure, but it needs to be. What objective standard less than that would you propose? Do you want to have entered into a governmental database and permanently banned from exercise of constitutional rights everybody who has, e.g., filled a prescription for Prozac or Xanax? Everybody who a neighbor has thought might be a little loony? Everybody who has been to a psychiatrist's office? So far I have not seen any legislative proposals that would specify what lower standard would be used for this purpose, but surely you can see that anything lower than the current threshold is going to sweep up many more unthreatening, law-abiding citizens than dangerously unstable ones.

I am opposed on general principle to legislative proposals that can reliably be predicted to achieve nothing useful, that have no empirical data supporting their claims for what they will accomplish, that are enacted only because they satisfy an irrational emotional need to "do something," that will infringe on law-abiding citizens' rights with no compensatory social benefits, and/or that are unconstitutional or politically unworkable. Every gun-control proposal I have seen or heard about in the past five days has fallen afoul of one or more of these problems.

The President of the United States may be the best-guarded person on the planet, but we still have occasional nutters like Lee Harvey Oswald, Lynette Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, and John Hinckley who either succeed or come very close to succeeding in their efforts at assassination. In an open society awash in firearms, these things are going to happen from time to time. We collectively decided a long, long time ago that we're not going to have a gun-free society, nor are we going to lock people up for being crazy, short of demonstrable threat to themselves or others. Once those two decisions are locked into place, there's not a heck of a lot that can be done to prevent the intersection of mental illness and guns from causing occasional horrific events such as Saturday's.

It's terribly sad when some nutjob's craziness is manifested in such a gruesome, public way. But that doesn't mean that we should rush to enact new, ill-considered, ineffective laws in the vain hope that we can prevent such tragedies in the future.


************

I have one other gun-related response to this news story. I read this story in Slate about a guy named Joe Zamudio, who was legally carrying a concealed handgun near the site of the shooting. He rushed from the store to the scene when he heard the commotion. In the process, he came close to shooting the guy who had taken the gun away from Loughner:

""I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire."

He says later in the interview that he has had no professional training in firearms. I could have guessed that. First, it's terribly dangerous to take off the safety while the gun is still in your pocket. Just like the rule about not putting your finger on the trigger until the gun is on target, so it is with the safety: It is not to be disengaged until you are on target and ready to shoot.

More importantly, though, his story perfectly illustrates why it's usually a big mistake to play the hero, rushing into a situation where you don't need to be, and which you don't understand. You run the terrible risk of mistaking the good guys for the bad guys, and being mistaken by others for the bad guy.

Had Zamudio gotten professional training, he would have known these two basic facts and avoided his mistakes. Some are calling him a hero. I consider him a fool. Well-intentioned, no doubt, but foolish just the same.

WBCOOP 2011

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: XXXXXX 482279

Guess the casino, #750

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Answer: Aria

MGM finally sees the light

It seems that MGM is finally going to try to make their player rewards program competitive with that of Harrah's/Caesars:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jan/06/you-could-pick-music/

'Bout time, dudes. Just don't leave the poker players out of the goodies, please.

New blog

Noah Stephens-Davidowitz has started a poker blog. His first post--about things that do and do not hurt the online "poker economy"--is so cogent and thoughtful that it makes me look forward to reading more of what he has to say:

http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/01/the-poker-economy/

Guess the casino, #749

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Answer: Tuscany

Home again

I'm home from my belated holiday visit to the Utah family. Had a very nice time, including 11 of us for a big dinner last night, followed by a mass visit to my mom at her nursing home. The only photos I took were of people that none of you know. They mean a lot to me, but I won't bore you with them.

My rental car was a Hyundai Elantra, pictured above. It was completely average in just about every possible way: color, looks, size, comfort, performance, etc. But it performed the required task (getting me to SLC and back without problems and without inflicting suffering on me) just fine. The only glitch was that the windshield washer lines froze up and wouldn't function when I needed them to, returning to life only after I got back to warmer Nevada. The Elantra managed a respectable 33.4 mpg for the trip, not at all bad for a car of its size (i.e., not a micro-speck). Above all, it was not, repeat NOT, a Smart Car. The Fox rental car company did its usual fine job of providing me with no nasty surprises, extra charges, long waits, or lousy service. (My experiences with rental car companies has been so uniformly awful that an absence of bad things happening is my highest prasie.)

The car's best feature was XM/Sirius radio, which I didn't even know I had until I was on my way. For much of the route between Vegas and Salt Lake, it's sparsely populated territory, with the only radio choices being country music, preachers, and Rush Limbaugh. Even with those, you have to search for new stations frequently because the mountains keep changing what reception you get. Satellite radio fixes all of that: 200+ channels to pick from, all crystal-clear all the time. I had brought along a bunch of CDs in anticipation of the usual dearth of externally supplied entertainment, but ended up not playing them. Instead, I bounced among opera, other classical music, a Broadway music channel, NPR, oldies, and Howard Stern. If I spent more time in the car than I do, I would definitely invest in this system. Now I'm going to feel deprived whenever I rent a car that doesn't have it.

On my way home, I stopped in Beaver at the Cache Valley Cheese factory outlet. My mother grew up in Cache Valley (northern Utah), and one of her brothers spent his career working for the cheese factory--so in addition to the general reputation for excellence that Cache Valley Cheese has in Utah, there has always been a sense in the family that nothing else could ever be quite as good. When I was little, summers almost always meant a cross-country drive to see family in the West, with a large supply of Cache Valley cheese brought back home. Today I continued that tradition, sort of: I bought 9 1/2 pounds of cheese, divided among six different varieties. That included--to my great delight--the "Smoki" version, which I remember absolutely loving when I was a kid, but which I haven't tasted in at least 35 years. I'm curious to see if I'll like it as much as I remember I used to.

I have a couple of days of catching up to do in terms of reading, correspondence, errands, cleaning up, etc., after which things should revert to regular rhythms around here.

Guess the casino, #748

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Answer: Mirage

Guess the casino, #747

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Answer: Harrah's

At least he's educably retarded

Since the last time I saw him play the Mighty Deuce-Four on TV, Tom Dwan has clearly picked up some pointers--here forcing Phil Ivey to fold. (A 5 was coming on the river, obviously.)

Guess the casino, #746

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Answer: Excalibur

Not as simple as it looks

My favorite magicians, Penn and Teller, have for decades had in their act a routine in which Teller does something that looks simple, but is actually difficult and intricate. He appears to crush out a cigarette, take out another and light it. But what's actually going on is a complex series of sleight-of-hand moves. Take a look:





I was reminded of this just now when watching Wednesday's Poker After Dark. Tom Dwan has A-5 and raises. Phil Galfond reraises with A-K. Dwan calls. The flop is 9-2-3. Galfond bets. Dwan raises all-in. Galfond tanks for about 30 seconds, then settles on a call. (You can watch the hand play out here; it's Wednesday's segment 3.)

We have all seen a zillion calls that superficially resemble this. Most of them come from bad players. Their thought process is no deeper than approximately this: "I have ace-king. I'm not getting many good hands. He might be bluffing. I think I have to go for it."

I think we can safely assume that Galfond's thought process was vastly more complex and nuanced. He knows Dwan's play very, very well, as they have played against each other for countless hours. He knows that Dwan has the positional advantage and a big chip lead in the tournament, and deduces that Dwan will be using those factors to force Galfond to difficult decisions. He obviously knows that it's possible that Dwan has a monster hand, such as a flopped set, or even a medium-strength hand such as A-9 for top pair/top kicker. But he runs some quick estimates about Dwan's range, how often he is bluffing with complete air, takes into consideration that it's a winner-take-all format (which requires taking more chances), checks the size of the pot and his stack, perhaps stares deep into Dwan's soul, and the end result of crunching all of that information is a conclusion that a call is a worthwhile gamble--paying off often enough to be worth going broke if he's wrong.

What I find fascinating is that the call made by the fishy amateur and the one made by the top pro look externally identical, but there is almost no similarity at all in what is actually taking place inside their heads. One is flailing wildly, with more hope than sense. The other is drawing upon his years of experience, his memory of the thousands of hands he has played against this opponent, the facts of the specific situation, some complicated math, and an incredibly well-honed intuition, using it all as inputs for a black-box algorithm so complex that the best poker software in existence would not be able to replicate it.

When you make a call for all your chips with ace-high, which thought process would we see if we could look inside your head?

Tom Dwan may be retarded

OK, this post will definitely fall into the category of weird, quirky things that nobody else would notice.

I'm watching this week's Poker After Dark. On Wednesday's episode, we get a shot of Tom Dwan looking at his hole cards. We're supposed to be excited that he has two kings. I saw something else entirely: It looks to me like he has a single palmar crease on his right hand, rather than the usual two.

This minor anatomic anomaly is known as a "simian crease," because it resembles the way that, e.g., chimpanzees' palms look. It is commonly found in people with Down syndrome. (Incidentally, the term "Down's syndrome" is not considered correct, no matter how many times you may have heard it.)

When I was in college, I noticed that one of my friends had bilateral Simian creases. He had never known that he differed in this way from other people. I should mention that he was an exceptionally bright guy, working on his PhD in economics at the time. I told him, in jest, that this meant he had Down syndrome. He paused a few seconds, then replied, "Gee, just think how smart I'd be if I weren't retarded!"

Somebody else that I know very well has a Simian crease on one side, though her other hand is normal. So if you ever meet Cardgrrl, take a look!

You know who else has a Simian crease on one hand, but the normal two palmar creases on the other? Hillary Clinton, that's who. Oh, and Robert DeNiro, too. And actor Rainn Wilson. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has them on both sides.

So if Dwan does indeed share this little anomaly--and I should add that I'm not sure that he does, because it could simply be a weird camera angle that is preventing view of the more proximal second line--he is in good company. It's just a weird little meaningless thing.

I really only worry about his intellect because of how he plays the Mighty Deuce-Four.

(BTW, this is the kind of post for which it is required that at least one reader submit a comment such as "Get a life!" or "You have too much free time on your hands" or "You need to get out more.")


Addendum, January 8, 2011

Now watching the Thursday installment of the show, I'm more confident that I was right. Here's an even better shot of Dwan's right palm:





There are a couple of shadow lines, but pretty clearly only one transverse palmar crease. We have us a simian poker player!

Announcement

UB has a new slogan: "Friedman's just another word for nothing left to lose."



(Credit: The great Kinky Friedman used this line when running for governor of Texas years ago. I heard "Me and Bobby McGee" on the radio today, which reminded me of Kinky's usage, and I repurposed it for current circumstances.)

Reimbursement optional

Prahlad Friedman is starting to do interviews about his signing on with UltimateBlecch. Here's the first one I've seen so far, from Bluff magazine: http://news.bluffmagazine.com/prahlad-friedman-speaks-about-joining-ub-poker-17829/

I was struck by this statement: "I feel like they [UB] took care of me after the scandal. I feel like they didn’t have to pay people back and they did."

So Friedman's view is that if an online poker site is owned and operated by criminals who steal their customers'/players' money, it's optional that they pay it back. They don't have to. If they repay the people from whom they stole the money, it's because, y'know, they're so kind and good-natured.

No wonder UB wants him. He's the perfect spokesman. Their cover story is pre-set for the next time they steal a few million dollars: "We don't have to pay it back. Prahlad said so."

Do you want to play at a site that takes the official line that they can steal from you and not pay it back when they're caught? I don't think I do.

Guess the casino, #745

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Answer: Treasure Island

Stud Indicator

I just stumbled across this product, Stud Indicator. In addition to the expected stats tracking features, it apparently keeps track of and displays for you all folded cards, working with stud, stud/8, and razz. They claim that the software is approved by PokerStars.

I'm surprised by this. I would not expect the sites to approve any software that allows continued showing of folded cards, because of the tremendous advantage that confers on those using it, especially across multiple tables. I had read a long time ago that such programs were specifically disallowed by the big online poker sites. Has that changed?

If any readers have tried this, I'd be interested in your comments about how well it works.

Packing and unpacking

I got home late on Monday after a lovely nine days visiting Cardgrrl. I spent the time since then working hard to crank out a consulting job I had agreed to. (I paused only to play the monthly Very Josie tournament last night. I didn't have to pause for long. I was one of the earliest bust-outs when I flopped bottom two pair to somebody else's flopped top two pair. Sigh.) Today it's errands, then off to the car rental place, so as to be prepared for a drive to Salt Lake City tomorrow for a belated holiday visit with family there. (Got a great deal through my favorite rent-a-car company, Fox: $84 total for a compact-class car (no Smart this time--but that was through another company anyway) for four days.) I plan to come home Monday, after which things should resume to normal--or to what passes for normal with me.

Guess the casino, #744

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Answer: Santa Fe Station

Theft from player in Bellagio poker room

http://pregame.com/forums/blogs/rj-bell/archive/2011/01/05/my-chips-cash-stolen-from-bellagio-poker-room.aspx

(Hat tip: Kevin Mathers.)

Payment processor news

http://blogs.forbes.com/nathanvardi/2011/01/05/feds-quietly-freeze-online-poker-cash-in-washington/

Hat tip: Andrew Feldman.

Guess the casino, #743

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Answer: Planet Hollywood

How do people get here?

Recently I've seen myself listed by other poker bloggers (specifically Bill Rini and Wicked Chops) as among their top referrers. It occurred to me that I've never done more than glance at the Google Analytics report about who has been referring hits to me. I herewith correct that deficiency. For 2010, the top ten referrers were:

1. http://craakker.blogspot.com/
2. http://www.allvegaspoker.com/
3. http://pkrdlr.blogspot.com/
4. http://taopoker.blogspot.com/
5. http://magicalmysterypokertour.blogspot.com/
6. http://ftrain.blogspot.com/
7. http://www.thinkingpoker.net/Blog/
8. http://bwop.blogspot.com/
9. http://www.twoplustwo.com/
10. http://bastinptc.blogspot.com/

While I was at it, I also took an updated look at what Google queries lead people to something I've written. To be sure, the great majority of Google searches that find me are clearly looking for me, with some combination of "poker," "grump," "rakewell," and "blog." But setting those aside, for as long as I've been peeking in at this sort of thing from time to time, the top inquiry has been about Tom Dwan's sexual orientation. I wrote about it the first time I saw Dwan play on television. Then a while later, I discovered that Google searches about Dwan were by far the most common thing leading people to my blog. For 2010, such questions remain in the lead by a huge margin, with at least 1200 souls having looked through my pages in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity on this vitally important matter.

Interestingly, for the first time, I can actually provide something of an answer. Since I last mentioned the subject, I have heard Dwan speak openly about his girlfriend when playing in various televised events and on his Twitter feed. Assuming that he is telling the truth, and that this refers to a romantic rather than platonic relationship, the answer appears to be that he is straight. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Oddly, the next most common Google search that leads people my way is now "Brad Booth broke." That plus a few variants on the same idea brought over 650 searchers to the blog. The only thing I've written about Booth is a post pointing readers to an interesting All In magazine article about his travails: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/05/brad-booth.html It's not like either Booth or Dwan actually feature heavily in my thoughts or writing.

There are also some strange keyword searches that show up in the rankings:

• poker grump jeep (209)

Huh? I've used the word "Jeep" exactly once in four years. It was in a non-poker-related post, just showing a few photos of a crazily decorated car that I noticed while walking downtown, here. And yet more than 200 people specifically sought out that post? I don't get it.

• shannon elizabeth (152)
• shannon elizabeth feet (61)

Um, OK. I have no idea what these people are doing here. I just tried a Google search for Shannon Elizabeth, and I'm nowhere in the first five pages of results. If you have a foot fetish for her, I'm surely not the go-to guy about that.

• grange95 blog (131)

Baffling once again. When I replicate this search, I find my first mention toward the bottom of the second page of results. If people are looking for the infamous Craakker, how do so many of them get diverted my way, rather than where they presumably want to go?

• cory zeidman drunk (46)

One of my personal favorites, this--though just as mysterious a result as the others. I did write once about having Zeidman at the table with me briefly, but he was not drunk. He consumed only water while he was playing.

As I have found in the past when doing such high-tech navel-gazing, what specific things people are looking for when they find me has zero correlation with either what I write most about or with what I think are my best pieces of work. Oh well. I'm glad I have at least a little something to offer to people with such widely varying interests.

Guess the casino, #742

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Answer: MGM Grand

What's in a screen name? #19

Nice that he lets you know in advance!

By the way, this is the first blog entry I've ever posted from a plane. I'm about halfway between D.C. and Vegas, on AirTran. How cool is that???

Guess the casino, #741

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Answer: Hard Rock

Guess the casino, #740

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Answer: El Cortez

LION CUBS!!!!!!

Warning: Extreme Cuteness Ahead!

I shot all these videos with my little Nikon point-and-shoot camera on its maximal telephoto setting. They're not the best that one might be able to produce, but they are certainly adequate to show what was going on. I hope they suggest how incredible playful and adorable these lion babies are. If you don't immediately fall in love with all seven of the little critters, you are heartless. Period. I think it is also impossible not to find deep admiration for the attentiveness and playfulness with which the two mothers care for their young.

And while I'm editorializing, I'll add that anybody who would shoot a creature as beautiful and magnificent as a lion, for purposes of adding a trophy to his wall or floor, should himself be shot and mounted, as a cautionary testament to the depths of depravity and evilness we humans can stoop to.

(If you're going to watch just one, I suggest trying #5.)

















See also Cardgrrl's wide-angle video of the cubs here.

National Zoo--including lion cubs

Today we spent a couple of hours at the National Zoo, which is conveniently just about a mile from my girlfriend's apartment.

The main purpose of the visit was to see the lion cubs that were recently born--two litters arrived a short time apart, totalling seven cubs. They are let out into the public viewing area for one hour a day. And Oh The Adorableness! We had to leave a little before the hour was over, because we had absorbed a nearly lethal dose of cuteness, what with all the rolling and frolicking and climbing and jumping and mewing and exploring and playing.

We also stopped to watch the elephants, a fishing cat, a sloth bear, a giant panda, and a clouded leopard, all of which you can see in my newest photo album on Picasa Web. If you look closely, you might even find a shot of the extremely rare and elusive wild Cardgrrl.

Pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/rakewell1/NationalZoo?feat=directlink

Lovely evening

I had an absolutely delightful evening. First was dinner with friends at a place called Old Ebbitt Grill, which is apparently the oldest restaurant in Washington, having been in operation since 1856. It was kind of crowded, but excellent food for everyone, from appetizers to desserts.

Then we walked a couple of blocks to the Ronald Reagan Building and saw the Capitol Steps. I've seen them on TV a couple of times, and heard them on the radio (NPR) any number of times. In person, they're even funnier. Most laughs I've had in a long time. Their song parodies rank in cleverness with, say, Gilbert & Sullivan or Tom Lehrer. I think I might try to make this an annual event. It would be worth keeping up on the political news all year just so that you get the jokes! That photo, BTW, is King Jong-Il on the left, with two representatives of the United Nations unable to figure out what to do with him, together doing a song, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea?" (You can watch a version of it here.)

Both the dinner and show were our Christmas gifts from two of Cardgrrl's closest friends, and it was just the perfect thing. Thanks, D&L!

Guess the casino, #739

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Texas Station

Letter to Prahlad Friedman

From Todd Witteles, about Friedman's apparent hiring as a UB sponsored pro, here.

The punchline:

Prahlad, you aren't being forgiving. You are being used by criminals to
give legitimacy to their tainted product and continuously dishonest company.

Please reconsider.

Feeling blue at Arlington National Cemetery

Cardgrrl and I spent a couple of hours this afternoon at Arlington National Cemetery, yet another in the virtually endless list of tourist sites around D.C. that I've never been to before.

I took a bunch of photos, and had hopes that a few of them would be gems. However, when I got home and started looking at them on the computer, I quickly noticed that both the white gravestones and the green grass were blue. I realized pretty fast what had happened. When at the museum the other day, the automatic white balance on my camera was not compensating well for the dim, yellowish light, and pictures were looking yellow, so I manually set it to "incandescent light." I never changed the setting back. Today, under the late afternoon sun, the stupid camera thought we were still indoors with 100-watt bulbs around us. As a result, the pictures are all quite thoroughly saturated in blue that doesn't really belong there.

I'm disappointed, but there's not much to be done about it now. I suppose I might be able to apply some sort of digital correction, but I think it would be more work than it's worth. So I'm just going to chalk it up as a learning experience--the modern equivalent of shooting a roll of film with the lens cap on. And even with no photos that I can proudly show off, the touching experience of the cemetery remains undiminished.

You can see the blue-washed photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/rakewell1/ArlingtonCemetery?feat=directlink

Tomorrow, we hope to see lion cubs at the zoo, then a nice dinner and show (The Capitol Steps) with good friends.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Guess the casino, #738

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Answer: Paris

Playing for funsies

Just played a 90-person $2.20 SNG with Cardgrrl for fun. I was a little surprised to find that it allowed us both to register, since we were using the same IP address, but it did. We ended up finishing in 3rd and 4th places, which was nice:



It's nice when you play with a friend and both end up doing about equally well.

The fun was only tarnished by the final two players engaging in obnoxious, mutual-fan-club chat about how brilliant they were and how donktastic everybody else was. Please, dudes--if you're bragging about being better than the average $2 tournament player, you have set the bar pretty low for yourselves.

In one hand, I had aces hold up against an open-ended straight flush draw. Cardgrrl and I disagreed about our guesses as to the percentages when the money went in on the flop. I thought my opponent was ahead about 52/48. She thought he had it about 60/40. But surprisingly, the truth is that I had a 51/49 edge, according to both PokerStove and the odds calculator at CardPlayer.com:



I was too busy playing to think about why the percentages wouldn't be in his favor, when he had 15 outs. But now that the tournament is over and I'm looking at it again, the reason is obviously the paired flop. That gives me four cards (two aces and two fours) to make a full house, which he could then only beat by hitting his straight flush. Put a blank there (e.g., 2s or Js) instead of a second 4, and he is ahead about 56/44--halfway between my estimate and Cardgrrl's.

Guess the casino, #737

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Answer: Mandalay Bay

Stakes on a plane

My flights to D.C. this time were on AirTran. It's the first time I've used them. I had heard that they had wifi on their planes (mainly through Andy Bloch's Twitter posts about how he now uses AirTran whenever he can for this reason). But my selection of AirTran had nothing to do with this feature; it was simply the best mix of low price and convenient travel time that was available when I went to buy a ticket. I had not given a thought to the wifi thing until shortly before I left home.

But it was true. For most of the 3 1/2 hours from Las Vegas to Atlanta, and most of the 1 1/4 hours from Atlanta to D.C., we had free wifi service. I understand that its being free will not continue much longer; it might even be gone by the time I fly home. But it was pretty cool. I didn't want to enter a tournament--even a short-duration turbo SNG--for fear that the connection would be unreliable. So instead I two-tabled $0.25-$0.50 razz on PokerStars while listening to streaming Christmas carols (it was December 25th, after all) through an online music service, all using my noise-reduction earphones and my new laptop. The combination made me feel like a Thoroughly Modern Millie. The connection was nowhere near at peppy as I'm used to with my cable service, but it worked acceptably well. Only once did I get a warning that I was using up my time to take my turn.

One down side is that it appears that you have to sign on again every 45 minutes, and my first time allotment ended without warning. I just suddenly wasn't connected to anything anymore, with no idea why. It was only when I started the log-on process over again that I figured out that my disconnection was due to 45 minutes having transpired. That was an ugly glitch.

But other than that, it was a beautiful thing. After I got bored with razz, I did some of the review/editing work on my end-of-year review post. I admit that I also sent a couple of emails to friends just saying, "I'm sending you an email--from a plane!" It was reminiscent of when they first installed telephones in the seatbacks, and you got to listen in on neighbors making calls only for the purpose of saying, "Guess where I'm calling from?!"

I wondered at first whether anybody around me would be either curious about or offended by my playing poker. If they were, they stayed quiet about it. It might have helped that I had a whole row to myself for the long leg of the journey (a rare luxury in itself).

The title of this post, in case you didn't figure it out, is a little wordplay on the title of the 2006 film, "Snakes on a Plane." I saw it via Netflix a couple of years ago, and it was every bit as stupid as you'd expect. It had about five good seconds, consisting entirely of Samuel L. Jackson profanely spitting out what became the movie's only famous line of dialogue.

I thought of that line while playing my little poker games. It occurred to me that if somebody logged onto a casino site--one that features all of the traditional casino games--instead of a poker site, he could play some craps, and thus perhaps be given reason to curse, "M-f'in snake eyes on a m-f'in plane!"

Thieving poker dealer

See: http://www.onlinepoker.org/blog/pennsylvania-poker-dealer-caught-stealing-chips/#

Guess the casino, #736

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Answer: Green Valley Ranch

Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Cardgrrl and I spent some time today at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History--not a lot, as we got a late start and available parking ended at 4 p.m. But we managed to hit some of the famous highlights: the rotunda, dinosaurs, the Hope diamond.

It was difficult to take any decent photographs, because the place was (1) jam-packed (to our surprise), and (2) very dimly lit. But the few that turned out well enough not to be completely embarrassing are collected here: http://picasaweb.google.com/rakewell1/SmithsonianNaturalHistoryMuseum?feat=directlink

Guess the casino, #735

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Answer: Bellagio

"Poker" in books

You can now search Google's database of books for the relative frequency with which words or terms show up, by year (or decade) of publication. I was curious about whether "poker" would show an increasing trend over time; after all, there were very few poker books written prior to World War II.

I was therefore surprised at the curve generated, showing a peak in the mid-1940s, and a substantial decline since. (There is a little rise just in the last few years before 2000, which might be attributable to the boom in poker and poker publishing, or might just be statistical noise. Too early to tell.)

For comparison, I also checked "blackjack," "roulette," and "gambling." None of them showed the same kind of trend line.

I'm puzzled by this. Maybe a lot of the references are noncontextual, i.e., referring to fireplace pokers rather than to the game. If so, that would help explain why the other words do not follow similar patterns. Or maybe it's a sampling error problem--i.e., a higher fraction of 1940s books that mention poker found their way into Google's database than was the case in the 1980s.

But I really have no solid idea. Theories, readers?

A grumpy 2010 in review

I am on the third of nine days visiting Cardgrrl in D.C. Then I'm back to Vegas for just three days, with a big project to crank out in that short time, followed by a long weekend driving to visit the family in Utah again. So although I might check in with a quickie note here and there, for all practical purposes, poker and blogging are done for the next couple of weeks.

I'll take this opportunity to present the post mandated by the Blogger Handbook: The best of the year. Last year's effort, with links to those from previous years, is here.


Speaking of Cardgrrl, the best part of the year was the fact that our relationship continued to grow. I was in Washington for visits over Christmas/New Year, in May, and in August, plus she made Vegas voyages in March and June, and we met up in New Mexico in February. That's a decent amount of visiting, though I wish it could be more. She is mostly out of the poker business now, but I still find plenty of occasions to mention her in these pages: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/search/label/cardgrrl

The poker world's knowledge and appreciation of the Mighty Deuce-Four continued to gain ground this year. All sorts of posts about my own experiences, and those of others, playing the most powerful hand in poker are gathered here: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/search/label/deuce-four

A long, rambling, self-revelatory post about my quirky personality and worldview: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/05/misfit-and-mostly-proud-of-it.html

I wandered into the annual fray about women's poker tournaments, and got it all out of my system so that I never have to do so again: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/06/womens-event-at-wsop.html

Once in a while some situation arises at the tables that requires a supervisory ruling, and it's not obvious what the call should be. These aren't common, so when one occurs I try to describe it in detail, with the arguments for each way of making the decision. Here are two examples: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/06/you-make-call-part-1.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/money-in-or-out.html

In non-poker-related news, I wrote here about finally achieving the goal of doing a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle perfectly, start to finish, without having to go back and make any corrections: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/quest-for-perfection.html The update is that I have repeated that accomplishment four more times since then. I love it when I can see measureable progress in a skill. But further update: A friend gave me for Christmas a book of extremely difficult crossword puzzles, definitely a level or two of challenge above NYT Sundays. I've tried three of them so far, and they are right at the bleeding edge of what I can even finish; doing one without errors along the way seems an insurmoutable challenge.

I just pounded out this stupid little poetry parody on the spur of the moment, but some readers seemed to like it: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/who-i-want-at-table.html

I think that this year I did more posts about specific poker hands than has been my practice before. It tends to take a lot of time and work to explain everything that happens leading up to a difficult decision for a lot of chips. Sometimes I have just said what I did, sometimes left it at the decision point for readers to think about, with the end of the story published later:
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/01/folding-set.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/03/there-is-figure-exact-figure.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/call-or-fold.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/09/folding-mighty-deuce-four.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/11/your-decision.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/sweatin-with-oldies.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/decisions-decisions.html

I crack myself up sometimes. I really, really enjoyed writing this fake press release from PokerStars, but I was disappointed that I apparently failed to fool any of my poker-playing readers into believing it was genuine: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/sunglasses-ban.html

This was an interesting situation: Even at the end of a session, and after contemplating it after the fact, I was unable to be sure whether a guy I had played with was the complete newbie he made himself out to be, or a wolf in sheep's clothing: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/03/did-i-get-leveled.html

One of my favorite post genres is the multi-story, when several things happen in the course of a poker session that individually aren't quite worthy of being whole posts, but which, when composited, sometimes make for something greater than the sum of the parts. Here are some examples from this year:
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/03/seeing-things-at-mirage.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/06/night-at-rio.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/10/stratosphere-stories.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/10/palms-reading.html

In that last one, I realize now that I failed to mention one other significant thing that happened that night: I was given my first honest-to-goodness opportunity to "run it twice," when I was short-stacked and made an all-in squeeze play with, I think, 9-9. Original raiser had A-J and called. The rules for the Thursday night game at the Palms allow running it twice, so we really could. My opponent offered. I had long ago decided that I would decline, given the chance. I did. I won, and tripled up (because there had been several other callers who all left their dead money in the pot).

Here's what it's like playing poker with Mr. Magoo: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/04/beware-newbie.html

In one short post, I coined two new words that should be in the general poker vocabulary: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-words.html

Nothing to do with poker, but this year I've made more of an effort not only to take nice pictures of the places I go, but to share them with my readers:
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/10/not-so-smart.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/08/air-and-space-museum.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/08/things-ive-seen.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/05/great-falls-national-park.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/03/valley-of-fire-state-park.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-photos-from-my-new-mexico-trip.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/03/sandia-peak-no-poker-content.html

Thanks to Mike Caro, I knew how to deal with a poker bully: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/05/thanks-mike.html

This little essay on how one learns good and bad poker playing is one of my favorite posts of the year: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-not-to-learn-poker.html

Once in a while I sort of feel like stirring up a hornet's nest, and so I write something like this: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/09/year-of-thewhat.html

My attempt to get a new word into poker circulation: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/09/diseased.html

Sometimes the stories pretty much write themselves: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/09/yeah-probably.html

This year had more than its share of poker frustrations, and I was more candid, I think, than I usually have been in the past sharing them:
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-not-my-birthday-but-ill-cry-if-i.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/01/yes-im-still-hating-sets.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/04/fed-up.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/anyone-have-fork-handy.html

I don't always comment on political developments that affect poker, because, well, everybody else in the business does, and I try not to say anything unless I feel I have some different perspective to contribute. This year we had two biggish national legislative moments, Barney Frank's bill and Harry Reid's. Though I may be dead wrong in my opinions and predictions, I tried to add my contrarian voice over several posts, plus ask some questions that I didn't see anybody else either asking or answering:
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/slippery-slopes.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/08/reason-magazine-on-hr2267.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/balkanization.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/legal-oddity.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-on-hr-2267.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-am-i-missing.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/no-thanks-harry.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/scratching-my-head.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-next-question.html http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/another-alternative-viewpoint-on-reid.html
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/more-questions.html

My take on a brazen robbery at a Berlin poker tournament--again, giving a point of view unlike I had seen anywhere else: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/03/this-is-likely-to-be-one-of-my-least.html

I spent more time playing online tournaments this year than ever before. Looking back through my archives month by month, I see that I wrote a lot about them, too. But there's nothing special about those posts, for the most part--they just relate what happened in this tournament or that. You can review them all, should you find any reason to do so, here: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/search/label/my%20results

That about does it for 2010, as far as my poker life goes. Thanks for sticking around for another year. I expect that 2011 will have some interesting changes in store.

Guess the casino, #734

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Answer: Sam's Town

Guess the casino, #733

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Answer: Palms

Guess the casino, #732

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Answer: Bill's

Christmas videos

For your viewing pleasure, a small collection of nontraditional Christmas-themed videos that I have enjoyed seeing over the past several days:

Guess the casino, #731

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Answer: Golden Nugget

Give blood, get tickets

For at least the last several years, Penn and Teller have generously donated two free tickets to their show to anybody who gives blood during what is otherwise the slowest time of the year for blood donation. (In 2008 I wrote about seeing their show for my second time when a blood-donating friend took me with her.) A Twitter message this morning from @PennJillette reminded me that it was that time of year again: "I'm at United Blood Services on Charleston giving whole blood and free tickets to P&T to other blood donors from now until December 31st."

So I headed over there this afternoon. I confess that I had not donated blood in, oh, 20 years or so. After having been a regular donor in my youth, I stopped when I entered a career that, kind of ickily, gave me sufficiently frequent contact with other people's bodily fluids that I thought it wise not to donate, even though I remained technically eligible. (I was concerned that I might donate in the interval between acquiring some nasty virus and the tests for it turning positive.) But that's no longer an issue, so it's time that I put myself back into the donor pool.

I'm grateful to P&T for their service of giving show tickets as an incentive. It worked for me! To my surprise, the blood bank was also giving each donor a free four-pack of compact fluorescent light bulbs from Nevada Energy (equivalent of 60-watt bulbs), which are not cheap to purchase at stores. The combination made for a rather nice payoff for doing something that I really should just be doing out of the goodness of my heart.

Oooo, shiny!

I like changing the background picture on my computer desktop every month or two. I inevitably choose an astronomy photo, and the most convenient source of beautiful and interesting astronomy pictures is the wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA. Hey, we're already paying for them, so might as well use them. I have it in my daily RSS feed. When I bother to read the detailed explanation that accompanies the photos, I almost always learn something about astronomy that I didn't know before.

The one above is now my new desktop picture. See it in its glorious maximum resolution here, and see the explanation of it here.

I only started using it with a heavy heart, because it meant giving up the one I had been using, which is this astonishing image:




Click to see it at full size. See the explanation of it here.

Another Bodog withdrawal

I took another $200 out of Bodog. I made the request on Saturday or Sunday, and received a check by UPS today, drawn on a Canadian bank. Strangely, the amount was for US$200.35. I'm not sure how to account for the little extra bonus. But unless there are problems with the check clearing, all in all a far better experience than the last withdrawal.

It's possible, in retrospect, that on that previous withdrawal I just wasn't paying enough attention and clicked the wrong option, resulting in the Visa card and its attendant problems. I just can't remember for sure. But either way, I'm glad to have what I consider to be the normal/standard method back in play.

Guess the casino, #730

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Answer: Club Fortune

"Five-Card Stud"

I just watched "Five-Card Stud" (1968), which is available through Netflix, both DVD and instant view. It's the first poker movie I've seen in a long time. Except that it's not really a poker movie. In fact, we see exactly one hand of poker during the whole film. There it is above, in the opening scene.

Somebody in the old west town of Rincon, Colorado, gets caught cheating, and the others form a lynch mob and give the scoundrel the frontier justice that I think casinos still ought to deliver to poker cheats. The town starts going crazy, though, when the card-playing vigilantes start being found dead one by one. The mystery of who is killing the killers is the movie's whole plot.

It's all pretty lame, I'm afraid. But it is kind of fun seeing stars such as Dean Martin, Roddy McDowall, Robert Mitchum, Denver Pyle, and Yaphet Kotto in their much, much younger days.
Maybe the best part, poker-wise, is Martin singing the cheesy title song:



Lyrics (as found at the bottom of the page here):

FIVE CARD STUD
(Music by: Maurice Jarre / Words by: Ned Washington)

He was King at Five Card Stud.
The stranger's game was Five Card Stud.
He was hard to beat,
Rather play than eat,
Long as it was Five Card Stud.

When he played he played for blood.
When this ramblin', gamblin' man said, 'Deal 'em',
You had better beware.

Bet your poke and he'd leave you broke.
Then he'd make a joke as he slyly grinned.
Then he'd say, 'That's enough today!'
And he'd ride away like the wind.

Stud was all he lived and breathed,
But now and then a fire seethed.
Liked his gals and fun.
Then he'd up and run,
Run right back to Five Card Stud.

Never played two hands the same.
He could bluff you, bluff you blind.
You'd swear that He invented the game.

How he loved that Five Card Stud.
Life to him was Five Card Stud.
When he played he played for blood.
He was King at Five Card Stud.

Guess the casino, #729

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Answer: Bally's

Guess the casino, #728

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Answer: Sunset Station

Guess the casino, #727

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Answer: Sahara

Scarves

Get yer scarves, get yer Cardgrrl handmade silk scarves right here: http://www.quellebelle.com/

Though it is not yet technically time for "last-minute" Christmas shopping, Monday is the last day that you can get free shipping, and may well be the last day that you can order and expect delivery by Friday. Early purchasers of my acquaintance have been impressed by their beauty, quality, and suitability as gifts for a tasteful woman in one's life.

Guess the casino, #726

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Answer: Luxor (Easiest one yet?)