Jerrod Ankenman's Journal

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Twitter
I made a twitter account now that the WSOP is mostly over. I suspect this will work out because I won't be too irritated by it for a while, and then by next year it will just be a normal part of things.

twitter.com/hgfalling

Also I busted from the main event yesterday, shoved AK into AA.

8game mixed day 3
Well, I've made it to day 3 of the $2500 8game mixed event. I have 412k, second to Jon Turner's 469. Also the four biggest stacks are all at my table. So my finish distribution will probably be a little more polarized than it would be if I were at the other table.

Basically I got all my chips on this hand:

Opener for 6k, early caller, next guy goes all in for 11k. i have QQ and make it 40k, with 140k back. opener folds, caller shoves (has me covered). So like, the question is basically, does he have AK in his range? I think yes so it's an easy call. Turns out he has KK, which is worse for me. After four cards it's still worse for me. The river is a Q, however, so I win the 380k pot. I even, somewhat uncharacteristically, did a little fistpump when the river came. It wasn't anything obnoxious, but I kinda felt weird about it afterward, as I am pretty impassive usually.

Anyway, restart at 2.

sigh
Busted from the 10k stud8 when I took my (88)8 (the case 8 was dead though) against (66)J and a low hand for four bets on 3rd and was drawing stone dead by fifth street when he caught 6,6.

Poker sucks. I am going to take tomorrow off, finish my homework, and relax a little. 0/9 this WSOP, and I really haven't gotten any chips in anything since the 10k mixed.

lol pokernews
Matt Hawrilenko has 800,000 chips (narrowly second) in the 10k limit holdem tournament, going into day 3. Here's what PokerNews has to say about it:

In such a stacked field we were always going to be lucky enough to find ourselves with a quality final table, as the likes of Jennifer Harman, Greg Mueller, Chad Brown, Pat Pezzin, Matt Glantz and Daniel Alaei will all return for final day action. However the man they'll have one eye on will be likely overnight chip leader, Kenny Hsiung who surged late to amass an impressive 831,000 chips.

Somebody ought to tell these people that the BEST LIMIT HOLDEM PLAYER IN THE WORLD is in 2nd place in their tournament. It's like if durr made the final table of the 5k NL and they completely ignored him to talk about Tom Schneider's eight-or-better bracelets.

update
WSOP: 0 for 6, very close to the money in the 1500 6maxNL, but my careless splashing of my small stack failed when my KK ran into AA. Also 4xd my stack in the mixed game tournament, but things didn't work out there either.

Baby: is beautiful and doing well!

Sad: Peter Bernstein died. If you haven't read Against the Gods, go read it without delay.

Ooooh
Brag: I seem to have gotten an A+ in my applied linear algebra class this semester. I have no idea how this happened, as I got a 61 on the midterm, which curved was a B+. Midterm was 30%, HW (98.1%) was 30%, and final was 40%. I don't know what my grade was on the final, though I thought I did well, but it's been my experience that getting that "+" is pretty hard. Yay me!

Edit: My professor emailed to tell me that I got everything right on the final, only student to do so. So I guess that's helpful. Woohoo!

Beat: Michelle has to go to the doctor because she might have some kind of infection that is making her have pain and the baby sick.

Variance: I bet on the Rockets to win Game 7 at 9-1.

whahuh?
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When the very notions of fact and history hang in the balance, is the world ready to embrace the hardest truth of all -- that we are not alone in the universe?

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Bulls-Celtics, Game 5
Wow, NBA officiating is so incredibly bad. Did I ever say this before?

Allen's 5th foul was a joke.
Rose boxes out Perkins for an offensive board, then gets hammered from behind on the putback, no call.
Rondo commits an obvious, easy flagrant 1 on Miller with the game on the line -- ref explains to del Negro that he was "going for the ball," as if NBA players just have no idea that the ball is like three feet away when they take a swipe at some guy's head. They call it a normal foul, Bulls lose.

Just so bad.

baby account...
I really am working on my full account of the baby's birth, complete with more pictures and such. Some of you may not have heard that Mara has been diagnosed with PKU, so that's very sad. But we know something about adjusting diets for metabolic diseases, so I'm sure we'll do all right with this also. Still, it's sort of sad to think that until gene therapy reaches practical levels, your daughter will never eat chicken or bacon or eggs or any kind of proteinaceous food. *sigh*

In other news:

"We are therefore persuaded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states and local governments." --Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Nordyke v King.

16th in $500 LHE SCOOP
Busted on this:

PokerStars Game #26994745565: Tournament #200904202, $500+$30 Hold'em Limit - Level XXI (5000/10000) - 2009/04/12 0:09:52 ET
Table '200904202 28' 6-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: jerrod (71966 in chips)
Seat 2: monk-dogg (191306 in chips)
Seat 3: snowking_85 (66684 in chips)
Seat 4: Victor510 (183818 in chips)
Seat 5: Lest@t Lion (329630 in chips)
Seat 6: turataika (67625 in chips)
Lest@t Lion: posts small blind 2500
turataika: posts big blind 5000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jerrod [Qc Qs]
jerrod: raises 5000 to 10000
monk-dogg: folds
snowking_85: folds
Victor510: raises 5000 to 15000
Lest@t Lion: folds
turataika: folds
jerrod: calls 5000
*** FLOP *** [4c 9h Qh]
jerrod: checks
Victor510: bets 5000
jerrod: raises 5000 to 10000
Victor510: calls 5000
*** TURN *** [4c 9h Qh] [4s]
jerrod: bets 10000
Victor510: calls 10000
*** RIVER *** [4c 9h Qh 4s] [Jh]
jerrod: bets 10000
Victor510: raises 10000 to 20000
jerrod: raises 10000 to 30000
Victor510: raises 10000 to 40000
Betting is capped
jerrod: calls 6966 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (3034) returned to Victor510
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Victor510: shows [Th Kh] (a straight flush, Nine to King)
jerrod: shows [Qc Qs] (a full house, Queens full of Fours)
Victor510 collected 151432 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 151432 | Rake 0
Board [4c 9h Qh 4s Jh]
Seat 1: jerrod showed [Qc Qs] and lost with a full house, Queens full of Fours
Seat 2: monk-dogg folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: snowking_85 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Victor510 (button) showed [Th Kh] and won (151432) with a straight flush, Nine to King
Seat 5: Lest@t Lion (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: turataika (big blind) folded before Flop

short baby update
I will have a longer version, with pictures and the like, in several days. For now:

Mara Judith Ankenman
Born 12:29 am April 3, 2009.
9 lbs (4.1 kg), 22.5 in (57 cm) long.

GameTap explodes
GameTap is this nifty subscription-based computer gaming thing. Basically they have a client and they aggregate tons of games (typically a little older, but many, many, high-quality games) and you can download and play them through the service.

Yesterday, they rolled out a new web-browser based service which I think is better integrated with their new parent company or something. They slapped a BETA tag on the entire thing and deactivated many features (including parental controls, for example). Also the whole thing doesn't work for many people because of some bug introduced by their software's mounting of X: and Y: drives. It's just awful. Also they nuked the old client, so it's this or nothing now.

Who rolls out software to paying customers this way? They have about a week to clean up this mess or they will be missing my money soon.

Baby update
The baby has apparently inherited the procrastination gene from me. Despite this being Michelle's third pregnancy, she is now an entire week late. We've been to the hospital for two sets of stress/fluid testing, and both times Michelle has been cleared to remain pregnant. So we are just waiting.

One time, baby! One time!

Fat tail marketing
Amazon sends me an email with the title:

Now available: "Dynamic Noncooperative Game Models for Deregulated Electricity Markets" by Jose B., Jr. Cruz on Amazon.com

Somehow I doubt that it was financially feasible to direct market this book to me before the Interwebs.

It is much easier to SAY the right thing than to DO it.
“At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led us to narrow prosperity and massive debt. It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow-and-spend to one where we save and invest.”

This made me crack up. (Youtube, may be NSFW)

Your result for The Brutally Honest Personality Test...

Loser- INTP

13% Extraversion, 80% Intuition, 73% Thinking, 40% Judging

Talked to another human being lately? I'm serious. You value knowledge above ALL else. You love new ideas, and become very excited over abstractions and theories. The fact that nobody else cares still hasn't become apparent to you...

Nerd's a great word to describe you, and I seriously couldn't care less about the different definitions of the word and why you're actually more of a geek than a nerd. Don't pretend you weren't thinking that. You want every single miniscule fact and theory to be presented correctly.

Critical? Sarcastic? Cynical? Pessimistic? Just a few words to describe you when you're at your very best...*cough* Sorry, I mean worst. Picking up the dudes or dudettes isn't something you find easy, but don't worry too much about it. You can blame it on your personality type now.

On top of all this, you're shy. Nice one, wench. No wonder you're on OKCupid! Now, quickly go and delete everything about "theoretical questions" from your profile page. As long as nobody tries to start a conversation with you, just MAYBE you'll now have a chance of picking up a date. But don't get your hopes up.

I am interested though. If a tree fell over in a forest, would it really make a sound?

outlier!
One of these things is not like the others...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html

In other news, the jackasses at FEMA recently decided to rezone all of America (apparently) for flood insurance, based on I don't know what. This means that my mortgage company, who requires that I have flood insurance based on FEMA's say-so, despite the fact that I live near the top of a hill, has signed me up for a policy with rates set (at 1% of the mortgage per year!) by ... you guessed it, FEMA.

The town has been petitioning to get this undone, but apparently no luck so far. Now we have to petition individually. I guess it could be worse; I could have a million-dollar mortgage like a bunch of people on the next street, who are now all getting charged around 10k a year because FEMA just randomly decided to redraw all the flood districts. Argh.

the soft power of government
There is a video going around on YouTube, with a bunch of celebrities "pledging" that they will do various things, some silly, some reasonable, some downright creepy (Demi Moore: "I pledge to be of service to our President..."). I've read a fair amount of criticism of this video, mostly directed at the perceived hypocrisy of those in the video, the quasi-cultishness of the whole thing, and so on.

I really disagree with the criticism, even though I personally don't find the video compelling. If Obama's election motivates people to voluntarily give their time and energy in the service of others, that is a tremendous outcome overall. This is a perfect of example of what we might call the soft power of government, where government is able to somehow influence people to voluntarily do things of benefit to the community without having to enact any law. And if celebrities want to make a video to further this cause, great!

Now, there's a trillion dollars in ~~random pork~~ stimulus coming soon, so we are going to see the "hard" power of government as well, whether for good or ill. But one of the hopes I have for Obama is that this soft power will be a lasting element of his presidency. Government is at its very best when it is able to promote voluntary action on the part of individuals that improves communities.

But don't get me started on the "national service" plans where we pay college students $40/hr to perform "community service" with carefully selected organizations who have managed to secure their places at the trough through some political process. Boo to that.