Off topic
Gardening project update 5
Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Off topic | No Comments
It’s been exactly 17 days since I posted a piece about my gardening project which means that it is about time for an update. In line with my previous update I will write something poker related first since this is after all a blog mostly about poker.
Last Saturday I was on the All In Radio Show again. This time I talked about poker player levels and how to apply the concept to online poker tournaments. I think I did an OK job explaining it, although I definitely find it a lot harder to get my points across verbally as compared to writing them down. I think it has a lot to do with English being my second language.
In addition to the interview I also got to play some large (in my view at least) online tournaments together with my poker buddy Artur. We didn’t win anything but played really well; debating each hand and making good decisions all the way through. It’s difficult to win online tournaments when you lose with AA vs. 88, AK vs. KQ and KK vs. AJ. But hey we got our money in as favorites every time, and you can’t really ask for more than that. The rest is up to the poker gods.
Finally Artur and I also managed to complete our testing of the database systems underlying the pokerBRB freeroll league. The systems passed inspections, so we have now opened the league for registrations. We are in the process of hosting two promotional freerolls at Power Poker to kick off the league. One of them will be played this Sunday. I will post an article about it as soon as the details are confirmed by our affiliation manager at PowerPoker.
As for the garden it has really picked up lately. We just picked and consumed our first tomatoes today. One of them had actually been left too long on the plant and was overly ripe (lesson learned). The other tasted marginally better than the tomatoes you buy in a supermarket (so with the time spent on watering and pruning the plants I’m not sure it has been worth the effort..LOL). Check out the pictures below:
Gardening project update 4
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 | Off topic | No Comments
It’s been about 16 days since I posted a piece about my gardening project which means that it is about time for an update. In line with my previous update I will write something poker related first since this is after all a blog mostly about poker.
My good friend Artur visited me this weekend and as usual we played some medium buyin online poker tournaments. I actually had planned to give Artur an introduction to the pokerbrb freeroll league and especially how the database tables are updated since he will be helping me with that from now on. Unfortunately my website host shut down SSH access to all database files due to some security issue and hasn’t reopened access yet.
We busted out quite late in most tournaments (as favorites of course) without hitting the money though. Fortunately we finished 31st in a 50000$ guaranteed 50$ rebuy on Bet24 which broke us even for the weekend. Once again we were reminded that you can’t just sit around late in tournaments and wait for good hands to come along. It is essential to steal blinds and make moves on your opponents on a regular basis in order to stay above average and avoid being blinded out.
The pictures below show how our small garden looked like about a week ago. Some new and more exiting summer flowers have started blooming. Our tomatoes are still green…wonder how long the take to ripen?
Gardening project update 3
Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | Off topic | 1 Comment
It’s been 17 days since I posted a piece about my gardening project which means that it is about time for an update. In line with my previous update I will write something poker related first since this is after all a blog mostly about poker.
The most exiting thing that’s happened in my short but glorious poker blogging career took place yesterday. I had 10 minutes of fame on The All In Radio Poker Show together with Vic Porcelli, Andy Kazen, Craig Hogard and Cody Duffey. I think I was the first European on the show which makes me kind of proud. We talked about some of my favorite blog posts and about poker and blogging in general. It was all over in a heartbeat, but now I can say that I have been on the same live radio show as Mike Matusow (he came on later in the show). You can download podcasts of the All In Radio Poker Show at All In Podomatic and listened to it live each Saturday through the Team 1380 website. Look out for episode 12 that should come online in a couple of days. It will feature me…yeah:-)
As for the garden it is doing great. Everything is growing at an amazing pace since the last couple of weeks have been dominated by warm and sunny weather. The first summer flowers have started blooming as you can see in the last picture. They are rather boring so we are hoping the others will be nicer. I estimate that our tomatoes will be ripe for picking in a month or so.
Gardening project update 2
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | Off topic | 4 Comments
It’s been 20 days since I posted a piece about my gardening project which means that it is about time for an update. In line with my previous update I will write something poker related first since this is after all a blog mostly about poker.
A couple of days ago I played in a 6000$ guaranteed Multi table tournament on Titan poker which is my favorite site for tournament poker. We were down to 33 from around 1200. Average is about 80000 chips. Blinds are 2000/4000. I have 70000 chips.
I pick up AK suited (hearts, the best suit possible) in SB. BB has me covered with 108000 chips.
UTG+1 raises all in for 40000 chips, the next player who is short stacked also calls.
Do you fold AKs in this situation, do you call, or do you push all in? Let’s have a discussion in the comment section of this post.
Now back to the garden:
As you may have read from my Twitter updates we have had a lot of rain lately which has been really bad news for our little garden. First of all, most of our new summer flower seedlings apparently are not designed for heavy rain (if you are reading this Mother Nature please take notes; you didn’t do a good job on these particular species). Whenever it rains heavily they are all flattened to the ground. Here’s where our second major problem has come into play. Snails. Apparently snails have some kind of radar / sensory organ that can detect flattened seedlings. Each morning after heavy rain I have killed up to 25 snails that were having a feast in our garden. Unfortunately the rumor of our yummy garden has spread; now I have to deal with snails every morning even though it hasn’t rained. It’s not all bad news…..I have devised a very cruel and efficient way of killing the snails involving pair of toothpicks.
I also suspect that the massive amount of rain we have had lately is also responsible for the appearance of multiple brown patches on our tomato plants. However this may also be due to some disease that I don’t know about. The life of a hobby Gardner is challenging to say the least.
The main bed of our garden. The Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odoratus) are coming along nicely along the fence. Quite a few of the summer flower seedlings have survived the continuous snail attack.
Our two tomato plants
Close up of the biggest tomato we have right now. I estimate that it will be ripe in 3 weeks time. Notice the brown patches on the leaves I mentioned before. Does anyone know what this is?
Our small summer bed. The seedlings come from a packet of mixed summer flower seeds. There’s a whole bunch of different plants there. It will be fun to see what they look like later.
Gardening project update 1
Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | Off topic | 5 Comments
It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted a piece about my gardening project which means that it is about time for an update. I actually took some heat for my first gardening project post; apparently people were disappointed to read about plants on a poker blog, some even threatened to stop reading my blog if I continued posting about my garden.
Therefore before I continue with tales of plants I thought I would write at least something about poker…..
I have started listening to a new poker radio show, “The All in Radio Poker Show“, hosted by Vic Porcelli, Andy Kazen and Craig Hogard every Saturday (I have forgotten the exact time due to the time difference between USA an Europe). You might recall that Vic Porcelli has contributed with some really good articles on this blog. Anyway in the future I will be writing a weekly review of the show and also contribute to it from time to time.
Now back to the garden 
Here’s what it looks like now
As you can everything is growing nicely and our tomato plants have their first flowers. We did have a bit of a set back a couple of days ago when a massive thunder storm flattened most of the summer flower seedlings which caused an invasion of slugs and snails. I managed to kill all the snails (killing snails isn’t that hard actually) and pick up most of the seedlings, so we are in the clear for now.
I will update you again in a couple of weeks.
The toothpick, apple and fork balancing trick
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | Off topic | 3 Comments
Since I don’t really have any poker related articles to post today, I thought you might find the toothpick, apple and fork balancing trick interesting.
The toothpick, apple and fork balancing trick
Nobody at my work thought the trick was cool, but they are all physicists so what can you expect?
IMO this is an exceptionally illustrative example of the Lever Principle in action, and best of all it only took me about half an hour to master.
Gardening project
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | Off topic | 3 Comments
This is about as offtopic as it gets:-) My girlfriend and I decided to tidy up our patio about a week ago and in the process we purchased two tomato plants and sowed a bunch of different wild summer flower seeds in the limited soil we have available.
I thought it would be kind of fun to documents how the plants in our little garden grow during the summer. Many of the seeds have actually already germinated, but you probably won’t be able to see them in the first picture series below.
Tomato plants, Hostas and Hortensia
Pelargoniums and hopefully soon to come summer flowers
I will give you another update in a couple of weeks
Nice try but I’m not that stupid
Monday, April 20th, 2009 | Off topic | 2 Comments
Usually I just delete the emails I receive from people who have inherited gold mines in Africa and just need me to send them a few thousand dollars which in return will make me a rich man. However, the email below from Andrew Likierman is the most elaborate and well written email scam I have received to data and I simply had to share it with you. I just googled Andrew Likierman. It turns out the he actually exists and is in fact “non-executive Director of Barclays Bank plc and the Chairman-elect of the National Audit Office”. Hope the real Andrew Likierman doesn’t mind me posting this email from some person who is obviously impersonating him.
Dear Friend,
I am Andrew Likierman, Chairman National Audit at Barclays.I am contacting you concerning a deceased customer William Nathan,and an investment he placed under our banks management.I would respectfully request that you keep the contents of this mail confidential and respect the integrity of the information you come by as a result of this mail.
I contact you independently and no one is informed of this communication.I would like to intimate you with certain facts that I believe would be of interest to you.
In 2005, the subject matter came to our bank to engage in business discussions with our private banking division. He informed us that he had a financial portfolio of 2.35 million British Pounds Sterling, which he wished to have us turn over (invest) on his behalf.I was the officer assigned to his case, I made numerous suggestions in line with my duties as the de-facto chief operations officer of the private banking sector, especially given the volume of funds he wished to put into our bank.
We met on numerous occasions prior to any investments being placed. I encouraged him to consider various growth funds with prime ratings.
The favored route in my advise to customers is to start by assessing data on 6000 traditional stocks and bond managers and 2000 managers of alternative investments. Based on my advice, We spun the money around various opportunities and made attractive margins for our first months of operation, the accrued profit and interest stood at this point at over 4 million British Pounds Sterling, this margin was not the full potential of the fund but he desired low risk guaranteed returns on investments. In mid 2006, he asked that the money be liquidated because he needed to make an urgent investment requiring cash payments.He directed that I liquidate the funds and have it deposited with a security firm.
I informed him that Barclays would have to make special arrangements to have this done and in order not to circumvent due process, the bank would have to make a 9.5 % deduction from the funds to cater for banking and statutory charges. He complained about the charges but later came around when I explained to him the complexities of the task he was asking of us.
I undertook all the processes and made sure I followed his precise instructions to the letter and had the funds deposited with a security consultancy firm. This security firm is an especially private firm that accepts deposits from high net worth individuals and blue chip corporations that handle valuable products or undertake transactions that need immediate access to cash.
This small and highly private organization is familiar especially to the highly placed and well-connected organizations. In Line with instructions, the money was deposited with them.He told me he wanted the money there in anticipation of his arrival from Norway later that week. This was the last communication we had, this transpired around 25 th February 2007.
In June last year, we got a call from the security company informing us of the inactivity of that particular portfolio. This was an astounding position as far as I was concerned, given the fact that I managed the private banking sector I was the only one who knew about the deposit at the security company, and I could not understand why our client had not come forward to claim his deposit.I made futile efforts to locate him.
I immediately passed the task of locating him to the internal investigations department of Barclay. Four days later, information started to trickle in, apparently our man was dead. A person who suited his description was declared dead of a heart attack in Canne, South of France. We were soon enough able to confirm all of this including cause of death. The bank immediately launched an investigation into possible surviving next of kin to alert about the situation and also to come forward to claim his estate.
If you are familiar with private banking affairs, those who patronize our services usually prefer anonymity, but also some levels of detachment from conventional processes. In his bio-data form, he listed no next of kin. In the field of private banking,opening an account with us means no one will know of its existence,accounts are rarely held under a name; depositors use numbers and codes to make the accounts anonymous.
This bank even gives the choice to depositors of having their mail sent to them or held at the bank itself, ensuring that there are no traces of the account and as I said, rarely do they nominate next of kin. Private banking clients apart from not nominating next of kin also usually in most cases leave wills in our care, in this case; our now deceased client died in testate. In line with our internal processes for account holders who have passed away, we instituted our own investigations in good faith to determine who should have right to claim the estate. This investigation has for the past months been unfruitful. We have scanned every continent and used our private investigation affiliate companies to get to the root of the problem.
It is quite clear now that our dear fellow died with no known or identifiable family members. This leaves me as the only person with the full picture of what the prevailing situation is in relation to the deposit and the late beneficiary of the deposit.
According to practice,the security company will by the end of this year broadcast a request for statements of claim to Barclays, failing to receive viable claims they will most probably revert the deposit to Barclays. This will result in the money entering the Barclays accounting system and the portfolio will be out of my hands and out of the private banking division.This will not happen if I have my way.
What I wish to relate to you will smack of unethical practice but I want you to understand something. It is only an outsider to the banking world who finds the internal politics of the banking world aberrational. The world of private banking especially is fraught with huge rewards for those who sit upon certain chairs and oversee certain portfolios. You should have begun by now to put together the general direction of what I propose. There is 2,350,000.00 deposited in a security company.
This bank has spent great amounts of money trying to track the deceased”s family; they have investigated for months and have found no family. The investigation has come to an end. My proposal; I am prepared to furnish the necessary details to you as the closest surviving relation. Upon receipt of the deposit, I am prepared to share the money with you in half. That is: When the bank simply nominate you as the next of kin and the deposit to you.We share the proceeds 50/50.
We can fine-tune this based on our interactions.I am aware of the consequences of this proposal.I ask that if you find no interest in this project that you should discard this mail.I ask that you do not be vindictive and destructive.If my offer is of no appeal to you, delete this message and forget I ever contacted you. Do not destroy my career because you do not approve of my proposal. You may not know this but people like myself who have made a tidy sum out of comparable situations run the whole private banking sector.
I am not a criminal and what I do, I do not find against good conscience, this may be hard for you to understand, but the dynamics of my industry dictates that I make this move. Such opportunities only come ones way once in a lifetime.I cannot let this chance pass me by.For once I find myself in total control of my destiny.This chance wont pass me by.
I ask that you do not destroy my chance, if you will not work with me let me know and let me move on with my life but do not destroy me.I am a family man and this is an opportunity to provide them with new opportunities.There is a reward for this project and it is a task well worth undertaking.I have evaluated the risks and the only risk I have here is from you refusing to work with me and alerting my bank.
If you give me positive signals,I will give you the relevant details and initiate this process towards a conclusion.
Please, again, note I am a family man,I have wife and children.I send you this mail not without a measure of fear as to what the consequences, but I know within me that nothing ventured is nothing gained and that success and riches never come easy or on a platter of gold.This is the one truth I have learned from my private banking clients. Do not betray my confidence.I await your response.
Sincerely,
Andrew Likierman
The resurrection of an Acer laptop
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | Off topic | 2 Comments
For those of you following my Twitter updates you will know that I have been experiencing a lot of problems with my Acer laptop lately. Not only did the screen need serious persuasion to display an image, the laptop also overheated and crashed within an hour of turning it on. The overheating got so bad that it was necessary to regularly cool it down. When I was playing tournaments the fastest way of doing this was to put the computer in the fridge:
Computer in fridge
On one particularly frustrating day I over-persuaded my laptop screen which resulted in a work of modern art:
Over-persuaded laptop screen
Needless to say I was happy that my new Mac was on its way when the above incident took place. However it turned out that busting up the screen of my Acer was a blessing in disguise. Now it does not overheat anymore. I can even connect it to an external monitor and use it as a stationary computer when playing poker tournaments on poker networks that do not support Mac.
I do not recommend over-persuasion as a means of fixing laptops, but it my case it turned out great.
Charlie Glynn
Monday, April 13th, 2009 | Off topic | 7 Comments
My family purchased a new dog about 4 months ago. It’s a Basset Fauve de Bretagne (sounds fancy huh) and they named him Charlie Glynn. For most of my life I haven’t really been a fan of small dogs, mostly because many of them resemble small rats. Lately however, I have started to change my mind on this and have come to realize that many good things come in small packages. Charlie Glynn definitely belongs to the “good things in small packages” category…what a great dog!!!
I didn't chew up your shoe
Let go of that stick or else.....
Posing for the ladies
I took the pictures with my Samsung F-480 mobile phone. They actually turned out a lot better than expected.
Who’s winning and who’s losing
WE RECOMMEND THESE POKER TOOLS AND POKER SCHOOLS
 | Free hand histories and 10% discount on all purchases when using the coupon pokerbrb10 | Click for more details |
 | Paid monthly subscription for as little as 10$ a month. | Click for more details |
 | Software license for less than 100$ a year | Click for more details |
IN DEPTH REVIEWS BY THE POKERBANKROLLBLOG
WE RECOMMEND THESE POKER BONUS DEALS
 | US players not allowed (at the moment) | 100% sign-up bonus up to 600$. Click for more details |
 | US players not allowed | The best sign-up bonus on the market. Click for more details |
 | US players not allowed | 33% rakeback combined with a 110% sign-up bonus. Click for more details |
 | US players not allowed | 10$ free, sign up bonus and 30-40% rakeback. Click for more details |
 | US players allowed | Massive combined sign-up bonus and rakeback deal. Click for more details |