WSOP Diary: Day Zero

I've got my bankroll in order; the laundry is in the dryer waiting to be taken out, folded, and packed; only a few final details remain.

First thing tomorrow morning, I'm flying to Las Vegas to spend a week participating in the World Series of Poker. This will be the seventh consecutive year that I've gone to the WSOP. Since 2000, it's been a consistently profitable trip.

My WSOP modus operandi is to play single-table satellites and in side games. I am considering playing in the high-low-split seven-card stud events on May 1 and May 5. The buy-ins for these are steep ($2000 and $1500, respectively), and I will likely decide to play in them if I have won enough to comfortably cover the entry fees.

I don't want to make any promises, but I am going to try to post daily updates. I'll be keeping detailed records of my play anyway; it ought to be easy to flesh them out with anecdotes, memorable hands, and local color.

I'm returning home on the evening of Friday, May 7.

Worldwork Open Forum in Berkeley, 7:00 PM 4/28/04

In case you've been wondering just what it is I've been doing that has kept me away from the Oaks' Wednsday night tournaments, here is your chance to find out:

Experience Worldwork!

Open Community Forum, 7:00 PM 4/28/04

Explore issues of importance to you in a facilitated setting.

Examples might include: the war in Iraq; parking in your neighborhood; racism; organic food in the Berkeley Unified School District; etc.

The facilitator, Lane Arye, Ph.D., has worked on community building in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and in Oakland.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004, 7:00-10:00 PM

1452 Cornell Avenue. Berkeley (Please park in church lot across street)

For more information, contact Gabriel Todd (510) 428-9958 or Lane (510) 558-8805

Recommended contribution: $5. No on turned away. Everyone is welcome.

Free Books for Bloggers!

Kevin Drum echoes David Bernstein and Tyler Cowen of The Volokh Conspiracy in wondering why publishers aren't vigorously courting book sales from the blogosphere by sending review copies of books to bloggers. Writers of weblogs, so goes the argument, are shapers and propagators of opinion; a book review in a prominent blog has the potential to reach thousands of readers, with a corresponding boost in sales.

There is a certain logic to this position. Here in the gleaming glass-walled skyscraper that is As I Please International World Headquarters, we are also wondering why more importers of single-malt scotch whiskey aren't vigorously courting sales growth from the blogosphere by offering freebies to bloggers. We also think that the potential of blogging for promoting high-end call girls (to say nothing of luxury sports sedans) is sadly underexploited.

Russian "Anti-Barbie" Too Young to Be Miss Universe

Friends entered the name of Alyona Pliskova into a Web-based contest to select finalists for a competition for the position as Russia's entry to the Miss Universe beauty contest in June.

Alyona was quite different from the other entries, all polished and photographed in the mode of high fashion. Her photo showed her in loose, unstyled hair, without makeup, and wearing a red sweatshirt bearing the slogan "Barbies No Pasaran!"

In a runaway victory, Alyona led the rest of the field in the online voting. According to a BBC report, she collected 40,000 votes, at least twice the number of her nearest competitor.

The contest organizers disqualified her because she is only fifteen years old, too young to compete. They gave her the "Viewer's Choice Award."

But supporters, who have put up the Skazhi Nyet "Kuklam Barbi" (Say No to Barbie Dolls) page are claiming victory:

People, who voted for Alyona, VOTED AGAINST:

• Not naturally looking beauties, who cannot be distinguished from each other;
• Fake emotions, smiles and gazes reflected in the lenses of professional photographers;
• Imposed standards 35"-23"-35" (in inches)/90-60-90 (in centimeters);
• Mass-media standards and the models it imposes;
• Products of the same type and trademark, which are made into cult objects for specific layers of the populace;
• Popular music, which is imposed on us and which becomes popular for this reason only;
• Cigarettes without nicotine and coffee without caffeine.

And VOTED FOR:

• First and foremost, we vote for Alyona, who helped us to look at the beauty contest from an alternative point of view;
• Real people, individuals, who do not want to apply to themselves standard stamps of society;
• Products, which are needed by a specific person, not being designated for some average consumer;
• We vote for individuality, for ourselves!

(via Suzy Charnas)

The House That Smut Built

The "Home & Garden" section of the New York Times has a feature story about the Scottsdale, Arizona, home of porn star Jenna Jameson.

The house was six years old when they bought it. They redid the walls in hand-painted fake stone and marble finishes and in a leatherlike finish in their bedroom. The front door, of glass and hand-forged metal, is 20 feet high. "It weighs in excess of a ton," [Jameson's husband Jay] Grdina said proudly. The entrance hall floor is marble and stone inlay and there is a bronze and alabaster chandelier. There is also a gold-plated custom-frame low-rider bicycle that Ms. Jameson gave Mr. Grdina for his birthday.

She showed off her walk-in closet, with 400 to 500 pairs of shoes and hundreds of matching handbags. "I'm psychotic about purses and shoes," she said in her slightly hoarse smoker's voice.

The master bedroom has a king-size bed with an ostrich-skin headboard and feathered pillows. The bathroom contains a 6-by-7-foot bathtub-Jacuzzi on a raised platform. The couple say they plan to have children and will someday add a 1,500-square-foot guest house with a garage, gym and office.

Perhaps this depiction of the life of luxury led by someone at the top of the adult entertainment biz can serve as an inspiration to my friends and loved ones who toil away in its lower levels.

(via boingboing)

Baby No-Limit Holdem Game at Lucky Chances

Lucky Chances Casino, in Colma, California, is now spreading a small-buyin no-limit Texas hold'em game.

The structure is $1 blind on the dealer button, $1 middle blind and $2 big blind, with action starting at $4 to go. The minimum buy-in is $40 and the maximum is $100. You can only buy more chips if you have less than $100 in front of you, and only enough to bring your stack up to $100. Unlike the larger NLHE games at Lucky Chances, players may not kill, and new players do not need to post to get a hand. There's no rake or jackpot drop; instead there is a $6-per-half-hour time charge, collected when dealers change.

Except for the blind structure, peculiar to Northern California lowball and NLHE games, the game is structured identically to the no-limit games one finds at online poker sites, such as PokerStars or UltimateBet.

Lucky Chances' management is clearly hoping to capitalize on the interest in no-limit hold'em generated by poker games on television such as the World Poker Tour.

I am told that they began to spread the game last Wednesday (April 7). On Friday night, the game was lively and spirited, with a significant list of players waiting to get in. The quality of play was about what you might expect, i.e. terrible – not quite as bad as you'd find in the dime-and-quarter-blind games on PokerStars, but still pretty easy to beat over time. Be prepared to weather some outrageous beats, but on the whole and overall solid play is going to win the money.

I have no clue whether or not the game is going to be sustainable. No-limit poker is notorious for the ease with which the better players can take the poorer players' money. The game might burn out its player base really quickly. On the other hand, if no-limit hold'em on television continues to attract new players into cardrooms, this game might turn out to be sustainable over the long haul.

Grab your rods and reels and your best lures, folks! The fish are biting at Lucky Chances.

Addendum: Tommy Angelo points out that, aside from the blind structure, this game is structured identically to the small NLHE games now being played in Los Angeles cardrooms.

(Updated to add time charge info)

Damnation Alley

Elena, a motorcyclist who lives in Kiev, maintains a guide to motorcycling through the Chernobyl dead zone:

I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations is through the so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides without encountering a single car or living soul. The people are gone now and nature is reasserting itself in blooming plants, woods and rippling lakes.

In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again........ a few centuries from now.

(via Farah Mendlesohn)