Still Smarter than Players on Party Poker

An Italian couple stole 50,000 euros from a woman in the Sicilian city of Palermo after convincing her they were vampires who would impregnate her with the son of the Anti-Christ if she did not pay them.
The man, a cabaret singer, and his girlfriend took the money from their victim over four years by selling her pills at 3,000 euros each that they said would abort the Anti-Christ's son.
Police uncovered the fraud after the 47-year-old woman's family became concerned when they discovered she had spent all her savings, local news agencies AGI and ANSA reported.

From Yahoo News

Remember to tip your waitress and raise the hammer.

Remiss for a miss

I'd be remiss in not mentioning Da' Pistol making an appearance on Friday. I didn't get a chance to play with her;which I am sure Da' GrillMeister-MeisterBurger(what?too early for Xmas cartoon references?) is grateful for. From what I hear, she played well.

Bio Feedback and Poker

This weekend was chock full of poker for yours truly; 5 tournaments and a ring game. Too bad I was the Kansas City Royals of poker players. I played poorly, made many errors, over played many hands, and when I did manage to play a hand properly, it would get beat anyway. Having said that, I did win one tournament and had a nice little run at the cash game, and ended just a touch ahead. I made almost as much an 8 year old factory worker in a Bangladesh sweatshop would have in the same amount of time.

I love playing tournaments, but I’m just not worth a damn at it… cash games have always been +++EV for Big Slick. After some prompting from some friends, I am committed to improving my tourney play. One of the parts of my game I consider a real weakness is my poker face…and of course, you realize when I say ‘poker face’ I mean the whole (excuse the pun) body of tells. Although if you ask them, I am pretty inscrutable.
So how do you improve your body’s ‘neutrality’ or even give visual misinformation? Quantifying that is problematic! So one of the measures I am taking is investing in a blood pressure monitor/watch. That way I can get hard data on how my body reacts in different situations….call it bio feedback for poker. It’s certainly not a complete fix, but it’s a step forward; a scientific approach to poker tells. Or so I hope.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh yes, one last thing; I raise with the hammer, flop comes 7, 2,2. I crack aces. That’s how you play the hammer! Tough break Teddy Ruxpin.
Congrats to Bianca, two wins this weekend and to her lesser half Z. Cavaricci for really stepping up his game. JG won the night cap tourney.

How Many People Actually Come Out Ahead Online

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lovinger/050719&num=2

Excerpt from this article…

Since there are very few, if any, reliable studies available that demonstrate the percentage of winners -- and big winners -- from among the tens of millions who play the game, you are probably wondering how I "know" this. Well, as it turns out, there is one group that can -- and does -- track this kind of stat, though they are not about to publicize the results. That group consists of online poker site management, two members of which revealed to me at the WSOP that what intuition suggests must be true -- only 8 and 7 percent, respectively, of all players on their sites finish the year in the black. And I'm not talking about deep in the black, either. The vast majority of those winners are not about to give up their day jobs.

I would have thought the numbers would have been roughly even, like a bookie. Half the people win, half of them lose...of course bookies get a vig and poker rooms get the rake. So let's take that into consideration and and say with a 10% rake the winners to loser ratio is 60-40. So either the winnerw are up huge, or I am missing something.

Taken from www.cardplayer.com

Tough beat

Date / Time:
2005-07-07 13:44:00
Title:
Jennifer Harman Eliminated
Log:
Jennifer Harman, who was seated at the table on the ESPN stage, has been eliminated from this year's main event. She had taken an unbelievable hit in round one, when she flopped a set of queens against an opponent's straight, and she turned a full house on the same card that made her opponent a straight flush.

That might win the bad beat pot!

WSOP Fever

My good friend LLJG is at the WSOP. Kick ass JG and win the whole goddamn thing…I need someone to bankroll me!