A Weekend of Length

Well, it was another lovely, long weekend. The weather was so solid in Chicago. It was just amazing. Kudos to the weather Gods.

So anyway, I had the best of it this weekend. At least, I think so. On Friday night, Sandy and I met up with some friends for dinner at Adobo Grill in Old Town. They make your guac tableside there. I had the tilapia, which was a little "fishy", if you know what I mean. Overall though, I recommend the place. They make a great mojito.

On Saturday, I got my run in and then it was out to Greektown for another lovely dinner. It was a little birthday celebration this time around. I had all of the dolmades, saganaki, moussaka, and what not that any one man would ever need. I had to jet out quick after dinner though, as it was late and I had to babysit my brother on Sunday.

I rolled into the Bourbonnais area around midnight and sat around watching tv for a bit. This turned out to be a bad idea, when Nick woke me up at 7:30 in the morning. There was little that I could do but get up out of bed. Nick and I hit the lovely Cracker Barrel for breakfast. I was stuffed. We then made it to the 12:30 showing of Star Wars: Episode III. This was now the second time I've seen it. I could have been fine with once. I was actually a little happier with it the second time around. Nick loved it. On my way back, I scooped up some sauce buns from Jaenicke's, an absolute institution in the Kankakee area. A sauce bun is a like a chili-cheese dog without the hot dog in it. I wish that I could do it justice with words. Just trust me that it is better than it sounds though.

Monday brought sleeping in and a trip to Phoenix (the restaurant in Chinatown, not the city) for dim sum around noon. Sandy and I ate more than two people should probably ever eat at dim sum, but it was great. We ran about 5 miles in the afternoon to get rid of some of it. We then hit Clarke's for dinner. I got the Monte Cristo, so my exercise was probably for naught.

I love Clarke's though. If you live in the Chi and you haven't been there, I do recommend it. It's a great value and the bulk of the menu is incredibly tasty. It's much better than one would expect, by appearances. It's a great little all-american diner. There are too few of these.

Paris and Carl's

So I just couldn't resist yet another Paris Hilton entry. Have you seen the new Carl's Jr. commercial? It's softcore porn with Paris. They can't even air it on tv, as the religious right clearly balked. It crashed the Carl's Jr. website but you can now view it here. I think this was intentional all along. It's clearly a publicity stunt.

I know what is in this for Carl's Jr., but what was Paris thinking? I thought she was going for a more toned down semi-professional business-person image. I guess though that porn is what got here here, so maybe she feels like she needs to go back to that well every once in a while just to make people remember why she should be famous. I'm admittedly not sure why that is, but it's working for her. As they say, "don't hate the player, hate the game". I won't say anymore. I'll keep my hatorade in check, at least where Paris is concerned.

I did want to say a few words about Carl's though. I don't really know where a Carl's is these days. I'll tell you one thing though. When Carl's Jr. acquired Hardee's it sucked. They made the brilliant decision of rebranding the Hardee's in Bourbonnais to a Carl's and altered the menu accordingly. The Carl's fries sucked and I didn't dig the menu changes. Apparently no one else in my town did either, as they closed it down about 2 months after this change. Now a crappy radio station that no one listens to has their offices there. It's a tragedy. This had to be one of the 25 most profitable Hardee's in the country. I'm sticking to that. There were always plenty of people in there and the drive-thru was always going. I must have eaten there a thousand times. It was right by my high school and I loved the straight up cheeseburgers and fries. They had great buns on those burgers. It's a memory that I'd love to relive, but Carl's totally screwed me here. To this day, I wouldn't eat at a Carl's. Bastards.

Bowling Out of my League

Well, I went bowling last week with my college associate, Dr. Levine. We hit Classic Bowl, which is sort of the home alley for the both of us. It's more so for him though. He's a league bowler and everything.

The good Doctor was my college bowling partner. Our senior year, we spent an inordinate amount of time in the basement of our Student Union. The Doc was much better than me then, and he's still better than me. We've both improved, but he's just on a ridiculous level now.

So anyway last Wednesday, we reunited for some more fun knocking down pins. We bowled a few games on our own with me doing terribly. Then, some of his associates from his league showed up and started rolling with us. I felt like a special olympian in an NBA game. To top that, there was some minor action going on but I didn't get involved. I might have tried (with a handicap, of course), but the holes on my ball are a little too wide and after 5 games, I had no skin left in between my thumb and index finger. It was like one enormous blister. The skin is returning now. So I had a good time just watching superior bowlers bowl. My partner ended up bowling something like 11 games, it was just insane.

Here were my scores: 119, 124, 134, 137, 157
Average YTD: 138.4

I'm clearly not bowling often enough. Anyway, then on Saturday, Sandy and I went to a birthday party at 10pin. It's like a bowling nightclub at the House of Blues. We bowled 2 sub par games. I didn't write the scores down, so I guess they aren't going into our averages. It's not true bowling there anyway, as you are in the dark with rock videos playing right in your face. It's still fun, but it's not exactly the same. No one is bringing their own ball to this place. Let's just put it that way. Good times though.

Boo Annie Duke! Boo!

This is the response to my Annie Duke email. I got this about 3 weeks after my auto-reply. Apparently Annie is too busy to answer my questions. Here it is, unedited as usual.

Hi! Thank you for writing to me and for your kind words and support!

Due to the overwhelming response to our "Ask Annie" page, we are going
to limit answers to a spotlight question of the month (which might be
yours!). Additionally, we will be posting a FAQ page in order to answer
as many questions as possible.

In the meantime, thank you for writing and for your patience in getting
an answer!

Cheers,

Annie Duke

Ramblings

"Let me take you to a place I know you want to go, it's a good life" - Inner City

I'm way into silly dance music lately. I have absolutely no idea why.

Well, I haven't done a blog entry recently so I almost feel obligated to ramble for a couple of minutes. As I'm literally pointing, clicking, waiting, pointing, clicking, waiting, ad nauseum at work right now, I figure I can spare a minute or four.

So what's been going lately? Hmmmmm.....let me see.

Well, first of all some congratulations are in order. My friend in the blogosphere Betty Rocker is 30 today. As far as I can tell, that's a good thing. Even if it isn't, you have to congratulate people on birthdays right? At some point, birthdays make the transition from "congratulations, you are really growing up" to "good job, you made it another year" to "wow, I can't believe you are that friggin' old". I think that thirty might be the last year in the first group. If there was any doubt about you being an adult before, there is no doubt now. Thankfully, I have about 2 more years of denial.

The second set of congratulations go to Amber Corzine on her recent engagement. If you went to high school with me, you probably know Amber. Otherwise, you have no idea who the hell I'm talking about. Either way, big ups Amber.

I missed the Britney/Federline show. I can't believe I missed the first one. How am I ever going to catch up now?

Have you read Paul Shirley's blog yet? If you haven't, you definitely should. Check out what he said about Tim Floyd being one of the people he respects most in the world. That's unbelievable.

I'm bowling tonight with a guy that really bowls well. He'll bowl circles around me, but maybe it will lift my game. We'll see. I'll try to update tomorrow on that.

Action Update

So I haven't played poker in a while. It's been about 2 weeks since I played hold 'em. I did mess around a little on Sunday at $0.50/$1 Omaha high table. I don't know enough about Omaha but I just felt like playing. I lost $4. I'll work on my Omaha game next probably. Right now, I'm studying to patch some "leaks" that I feel are in my limit hold 'em game. It might take me another couple of weeks to emerge solidly.

Anyway, so I ended up at the Cubs game on Tuesday with Rao, Leheney, and Dr. Levine. It was a solid outing across the board. Leheney and I decided to do our best Josh Arieh impersonation and get all kinds of action bets going on the game. This made a Cubs blowout even a little more fun. We were basically making all kinds of bets on things happening in the game. The most typical went something like this "$1 even money on Hairston Jr. to get a hit, walks and hit by pitch are a push".

We did this for most of the game. We even bet $1 on the first letter of the first name of the person singing the seventh inning stretch. I had N-Z and lost when George Wendt sang. Anyway, I started streaking towards the end and by the 8th, I was up to $14. I laid 5 to 1 against a home run by the end of the game. If a homerun came, I'm out $5. It was all house money anyway. It seemed unlikely. At the end, Leheney hands me a $20 and we make this bet. He puts up $5 at 3 to 1 that the last half inning is a 1,2,3 inning with exactly one strikeout. Remlinger struck out the first guy which really had me sweating. When he k'd the 2nd man, I was in the money! So I ended up paying for my hotdogs and a couple of beers at the Full Shilling. With the Cubs victory, this made for a strong night. I just hope I don't turn into an action junky.

The Cubs are on a 2 game win streak now too. Coincidence? I think not.

Kickin' Weekend

So this past weekend was exceptional. It started off with the Bridge Healthcare Finance one year anniversary party at Le Colonial. The food was great but I was so hungry I don't think I got enough of the appetizer action they were serving up. Luckily, several vodka tonics and a couple of Stella Artois' were enough to make me forget all about it. I'll just say it was a good time with some memorable moments. I also talked myself into an online heads up hold 'em match. Heads up isn't exactly my best game, but we'll see how that goes. After it happens, I'll post the results. I'm watching Phil Hellmuth self-destruct in the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions right now. Hopefully that won't be my fate.

Poker Sidebar: I never understood this Tournament of Champions event at the end. They film Annie winning and there is no one at all there. Couldn't Howard Lederer have stuck around, or her husband? I mean, she was reduced to hugging the dealer. You just never see that. Usually, it's anyone but the dealer. That's how desperate this was. The woman wins $2 million beating 9 of the greatest ever and there is no one there but the dealer? She ends up calling her brother on her cell, and they even film that. Poor planning, that's all I can say.

Anyway, Saturday brought with it a more relaxing day. Thanks to the generous nature of Sandy's CEO, we ended up with Club Level seats to see U2 at the United Center. Kings of Leon opened up. If I learned one thing about Kings of Leon, it's that I don't like Kings of Leon. Their sound wasn't too well suited to the UC either, as the echo was nuts. So then U2 came out. I saw U2 on their last tour in Milwaukee. I'd say the previous show was a little better. Bono was maybe a bit over top with working his activism into this show. I mean, I definitely expect some of that but they took it just a smidge too far in my mind. Still, I loved the show. It's amazing that after 20 years, these guys still play a dynamite live show. I'm against big venues these days across the board so I would never have ended up at this show if we didn't get free tickets. Nevertheless, I was psyched about the show afterwards. I'm still not reversing my stance on large venues though. I prefer to see the band. If I (or anyone else) has to watch the tv screens to see the band, the place is too big. That's my opinion.

Sunday brought essentially an entire day devoted to poker study and play. Sandy is out in New York with her parents so I'm holed up in my own little poker university. It's been a good relaxing weekend. I hope that yours was exceptional also.

Internet Poker Gone Mad - Rakes

I want this post to be user friendly for the uninitiated so I'm sorry to you avid poker stars out there who will be reading some basics that you already know.

My beef this week is with internet poker and the rakes they charge. What is the rake you ask? I'll tell you what it is. It's the fee collected by the house from every winning poker pot. This is a system that's been in place in casino poker rooms for years. The rake is what pays dealer salaries, justifies the space in the casino, and pays for all of those free drinks, pretty pictures on the walls, and shareholder dividends. In the bricks and mortar casino, I have no problem with the rake. Without the rake, there is no game. No game means no fun and/or money for me and that's just no good.

Now, in internet poker the rake bugs me. A standard internet rake pricing model is 5% of every pot up to $3. A lot of players barely notice this coming out of the pot, because they just won the pot! Who notices $3 if you just won $45? Well let me tell you, if you do the math on it, you would. Take for example a good friend of mine who has often played on Party Poker since October. He's played approximately 28,000 hands. His rake in that time (thanks Poker Tracker and add-on) was $3250.19. That's $3k that could be in his pocket but it isn't.

Why do the internet rooms need this rake? Mostly, they don't. These guys have a lot more tables. The games go faster. There's no dealers to pay and no buildings to maintain. They have tremendous economies of scale, yet they still charge a large rake. It's a great business model for the sites but it's bad for the players. Lower limit games are very tough to beat with this form of taxation going on. This bugs me.

It also bugs a guy that I generally don't like, Dutch Boyd. You might remember Dutch as a member of "The Crew" from the 2003 World Series of Poker. Anyway, Dutch is starting a site called rakefree.com. While something of a misnomer, the model trounces the current model as far as the players are concerned. His model would take something like $30/month per player. You wouldn't pay up front though. It would just use the conventional model until you reached $30 in rakes and then you wouldn't be raked any more. This could literally make a break-even player very profitable. My aforementioned friend would have more than an additional $3k in his pocket if he were playing at rakefree.com instead of Party Poker. I have to think that this business needs some pricing competition. If it's not Dutch that brings it, it will be someone else. Dutch already had a failed online cardroom, so his rep isn't the best. His idea though, is completely beautiful. That's what you get from a guy that starts college at 12 though.

Anyway, as I feel passionately about this. I wrote to one of my favorite poker players/bloggers/guys, Josh Arieh. Here's an unedited transcript of my note to Josh:

From: Chris Milone
To: josh@josharieh.com
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 2:03 PM
Subject: Internet Rake


Josh,

What do you think about Dutch Boyd's concept for rakefree.com? Do you think it's inevitable that the online rake will have to come down at some point and sites will compete on price? It seems insane to me the rakes they charge. I'm sure the sites are killing casinos in poker profits because they can play so many tables at once with no real dealers to pay, no space to maintain, etc. It only makes sense to me that, due to this cost savings, the rake should be much lower than bricks and mortar rooms. What do you think?

Here was Josh's unedited reply to me:

A rake war could be the end of online poker as we know it. In essence, a plae could show profit raking .25c a hand, but they dont do it becuase then another place will rake .24c a hand

Just be thankful that you can play from the comfort of your own home and make it a point to improve your game a tad to cover the big rake.
Josh Arieh
http://www.atlantapokerschool.com
www.Bodog.com/poker

You have to love Josh for taking the time to answer my question. He answered it about an hour after I sent it to him. This is one busy dude too. I can't say enough about him.

However, I respectfully disagree with Josh. I'm not happy with this pricing model, and many others aren't either. I think a price war is an inevitability. I don't think this would be the end of online poker as we know it, any more than Wal-Mart was the end of retail. It's just a lower cost outlet. A lower cost site is great for the players and that's your market if you are an online poker room. If given the decision of paying $40/night to play or $30/month, my lifetime numbers are looking a lot better with the $30/month and so are everyone else's.

Hurry up Dutch. I've got at least a crisp $100 bill with your name on it if you are still seeking investors.

Sometimes I even make sense....

Check out what I said about the Bulls in mid-December here. I don't want to brag or anything but I might have actually known what I was talking about there.

The Sweet Taste of Ale

I work with a real stand-up fellow. He lives out in Salinas, CA (a.k.a. the lettuce patch) and he is a huge Browns fan. I am clearly a Bears fan. Every year now beginning last year, we have a standing bet. We wager a 12 pack of beer (winner's choice) on which team will have the better record. This year, we doubled this up with a bet on the head to head match up.

Now, if you've been following the Browns offseason maneuvers, you know that they signed Romeo Crennel to be their head coach. This was a great decision. However, they followed that up with signing Trent Dilfer to be their starting QB. This isn't even the serviceable "just don't do anything stupid" Trent Dilfer that managed the Ravens into the Super Bowl a few years back. This is the "surely past his prime when he maybe never had a prime" Trent Dilfer. Good luck.

They also followed this up with drafting Braylon Edwards, a guy that I desperately didn't want the Bears to take with the 4th pick. The Browns did us the service of taking him with the 3rd. He's totally overrated. The one thing they did have going for them was the comeback of Kellen Winslow Jr., an undeniable impact player at tight end. He just wrecked his motorcycle and was bleeding internally and what not. Great decision Kellen!

Anyway, as this just happened yesterday, I just wanted to share my situation. I couldn't be any closer to tasting the hops and barley. Mmmmm......beer.