Media blitz

Movies, books, TV . . . I love 'em all. But I hate wasting my time on sub-par media.
Lately, though, I've been fortunate enough to hit the jackpot, so I figured I'd share my good fortune with you.
MOVIES: INCEPTION
If you enjoy having your mind blown, go see Inception. Simple as that.
It's been more than a week since I watched Inception, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. What I am sure of is, I loved it. It's two and a half hours long, but it feels like half that. It's one of thos movies where you walk out of the theatre in a daze.
The basic premise of the film is that the technology exists to infiltrate people's dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio's character is the leader of a team that does just that. That's as much as I'll reveal in terms of plot. I will say, the ending was awesome.
DiCaprio aside, the real star of this movie is writer/director Christopher Nolan. He's most famous for reviving the Batman franchise, and anyone who hasn't seen The Dark Knight at this point simply doesn't enjoy movies. Inception, for me, was most reminiscent of Memento, the flick that put Nolan on the map a decade ago. Like Memento, Inception is a complex psychological thriller. But where Memento was minimalist, Inception is sprawling, with epic action scenes set in multiple universes. If that makes any sense.
(A quick aside: I honestly haven't seen a Nolan movie I haven't enjoyed. Insomnia, with Al Pacino and Robin Williams, and The Prestige with Christopher Bale, are also worth two hours of your time).
In Inception, Nolan riffs on the sources of inspiration, the power of dreams, and the very nature of our perceived reality. Excellent movie.

BOOKS: DOWNTOWN OWL
For a guy with a blog called "The Hipster Doofus," it's inexplicable that I hadn't read a Chuck Klosterman book until last week. So when I stumbled upon Klosterman's 2008 novel "Downtown Owl" during a recent trip to the library (retro, I know), I figured I had to pick it up.
Prior to reading Downtown Owl, I was aware Klosterman was a big sports fan (he occasionally co-authors columns with ESPN.com's Bill Simmons), and had a penchant for sprinkling his writing with pop culture references. On both those counts, Downtown Owl lived up to my preconceived notions. Klosterman's writing voice is so unique, it's hard to explain. But viewing the world through his eyes is simply fascinating.
Downtown Owl, a dark comedy set in 1983, is a three-pronged story chronicling the lives of residents of a middle-of-nowhere town in North Dakota. Klosterman's tale is tightly written, and somehow witty and profound at the same time. I don't read a lot of books, but I devoured this one in less than a week; it will not be my last encounter with Klosterman.

TV: MAD MEN
My favourite TV show these days is Mad Men, the brilliant AMC series about the troubled cast of characters at an ad agency in the 1960s.
Thus, I was pretty stoked about the season premiere last Sunday evening, and I was not disappointed. The show has a different feel for the fourth season - the central characters have established a brand-new ad agency, and with that comes a fresh new set that lends the show a brighter look. The characters are likewise dymanic. Don Draper's rage is closer to the surface. Peggy is more confident - likely a product of having Don beg her to join the new agency in the Season 3 finale. And it's fascinating to watch Betty Draper and the kids adjust to their new family situation.
If you missed the Mad Men bandwagon, I own the first three seasons on DVD. Feel free to borrow them.

Playin' like a donkey, and bouncing back

Blogging about my poker exploits is fun when I'm winning. It's a little less enjoyable when I'm playing like a donkey. Humbling, even. But if I'm going to do this, I'd better be honest, so here's a look at a session I'm not so proud of.
In poker, when somebody loses their mind and starts spewing chips, it's said they're "on tilt." For me, in the bigger picture, sometimes I go on "life tilt." Which is to say, my passion for poker causes me to make terrible choices.
Last Sunday evening, I put in a long shift at the office and didn't arrive home until 11 p.m. But for some reason, I thought it would be wise to crack open the computer and play some sit-n-gos. The first tournament I played was a single-table $30 buy-in, and I built up my stack early. Then I took a gross beat - I bet every street holding QQ on a rag board, only to have my opponent overtake me with a runner-runner flush.
I subsequently lost my mind, and busted out of that tournament and three others - a $50, a $30 and a $20. Including the PokerStars rake, I was down about $140 for the session. Determined to snap my losing streak before I went to bed, I entered a $10 heads-up tourney. And another. And another. By the time I finally won one of those, it was 3 a.m. and I was $160 in the hole.
That's what I mean by life tilt.
The fact of the matter is, I never should have started playing so late at night. Obviously a bad decision for my physical and mental health, and brutal on my poker bankroll. Never mind the fact that I'd planned to continue my poker fast for another couple days. Situations like this are why I need to take breaks from poker.
In terms of poker $, I'm trending upwards again. Five days after my spew-fest, I got back at it and won back all I'd lost, plus another $120. The big scores were a pair of $50 single-table SNGs, which I won for a profit of around $350.
Bankroll = $4,720. Hoping to make better decisions going forward.

A cool poker milestone

I broke my self-imposed poker fast for 24 hours on Thursday/Friday, in order to maintain my VIP level at Pokerstars. The basic deal is, you need to earn a certain number of frequent player points each month to earn bonuses.
Along the way, I enriched myself by about $300, and hit a pretty cool milestone. According to sharkscope.com, I've exceeded the $5,000 plateau in terms of total tournament profits on Pokerstars. Pretty sweet - and I actually still have most of the cash.
On Thursday evening, I was playing about as well as I ever have. I played 14 sit-n-go tournaments, mainly single-tables at a $20 or $30 buy-in. I managed to cash in nine of those, including three wins. I was playing aggressively, and it was like the virtual tables were tilted towards me - I was a magnet for chips.
The sick thing is, I made about $300 while getting close to 100 per cent return on investment . . . and yet I felt the session could have been better. Some of the thirds should have been seconds, and some of the seconds should have been firsts. It was a combination of decision-making and sick beats, but all in all, I can't be too upset making that kind of cash.
I got back at it on Friday morning to finish clearing my bonus, and basically treaded water for eight tournaments. The last one I played was a 180-player, $20 buy-in multi-table tournament, and I left with bit of a sour taste in my mouth. In the latter stages of that event, I had KK and got it all in against two opponents with a chance to more than quadruple up (two early-position raisers folded preflop, creating a ton of dead money in the pot). I was up against AQ and 66, and I flopped a king. But there was also a 10 on the flop, and the turn was a FREAKING JACK to make a broadway straight for the AQ.
Had I won that pot, I would have had a well-above-average stack as we hit the home stretch, and the way I'd been playing, I liked my chances. As it stood, I busted in 59th place. First place was $1,000, and let's just say, some couch cushions got tossed around the living room.
Just like a poker player, to win a whole bunch of cash and then whine about a bad beat. Sorry about that.
Anyway, it's back to the poker fast for at least another week. The break really helped to clear my head, and I think that coming back fresh was a big part of my success over the last 24 hours.
Bankroll = $4,600

Eskimos gift-wrap a win for Riders

The Saskatchewan Roughriders may indeed be the best team in the CFL at the moment, as I suggested last week. But that doesn't mean they've arrived.
Take Saturday's home game against the Edmonton Eskimos, which the Riders "won" 24-20 to move to a perfect 3-0 on the season. I use the quotation marks because the Riders didn't so much win the game, as the Eskimos lost it.
The 0-3 Eskies limped off the field with bullet-riddled feet - Kelly Campbell dropped an easy TD catch in the end zone just before halftime, and Calvin McCarty and Fred Stamps had momentum-crushing fumbles in the fourth quarter.
The Roughriders, for their part, played fairly badly compared to the lofty standard they set in last week's blowout win over the B.C. Lions. The offence sputtered for much of the game, until some creative fourth-quarter play-calling bailed them out. The defence, so dominant the previous week against B.C., was rendered ordinary by an Eskimos o-line that was less generous than that of the Lions. But the Riders defenders deserve credit for being opportunistic in generating the turnovers, and it's the mark of a quality team to pull through with a victory when it's not firing on all cylinders. We'll see how this develops.
On a side note, I got a huge kick out of the Roughriders' new red-and-black retro uniforms - particularly the hideous argyle-type slacks that the coaching staff were made to wear. Those pants would have embarrassed even a professional golfer. Good times.

Moneyball: Don't wait for the movie

As something of a connoisseur of great sports writing, it's somewhat odd that I hadn't read Moneyball, Michael Lewis's 2003 bestseller, until last week. The reason for my tardiness is, I was aware it was a highly influential book on the statistical revolution in baseball. Thus, I assumed it would be largely academic, and therefore a drag to read.
How wrong I was.
Moneyball is a freaking riot. In the first line of the preface, Lewis writes, "I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story." By the end of the book, that much is clear. The general gist of the book chronicles the rise of a new stats-based wisdom in baseball, viewed through a series of fascinating characters - Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane being the most central.
Lewis's brilliance is evident throughout. A's portly left fielder Jeremy Giambi, trying to track down a fly ball, is "like a postman trying to escape a mad dog," in Lewis's parlance. "When he (Giambi) runs, he manages somehow at the same time to convey personal embarrassment." Hilarious stuff. Equally brilliant is Lewis's sarcasm directed at baseball's old boys' club - executives who flatly refuse to open their minds to the new statistical logic.
By the time I'd finished Moneyball, it had earned a place in my personal pantheon of favourite sports books, along with My Losing Season by Pat Conroy, Positively Fifth Street by James McManus, The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam, and Boys Will be Boys by Jeff Pearlman (among others).
As we speak, Moneyball is being made into a movie starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Director is Bennett Miller, who directed Hoffman in the stellar "Capote." Deadly cast. Due in 2011. Can't wait.

Some thoughts on the November Nine

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, after eight days of play, the field at the World Series of Poker main event was whittled down to the nine men who will duke it out in four months for the title. Eye-popping numbers are involved: 7,319 players put up the $10,000 to enter, and the winner earns a couple of pennies less than $9 million. Each final tablist is guaranteed a minimum of $811,000. Must be nice.
LOOK OUT FOR CHEONG
I've been voraciously devouring the WSOP coverage on Pokernews.com, and with the November Nine set, I'm ready to go out on a limb and pick a winner.
I'd never heard of this guy before the main event started, but I've got an inkling Joseph Cheong (pictured right) might win the whole thing. I just like the cut of his jib. He came into Day 8, with 27 players remaining, as the chip leader, but suffered a brutal early beat against Filippo Candio. All the money got in on a 665 flop, with Cheong's aces crushing Candio's 7s5s. The turn came the 8s, giving Candio an open-ended straight draw, which he filled when the river came 4c.
That beat cut Cheong's 24 million stack in half, and after beginning the day as a lock to make the November Nine, he was suddenly in the middle of the pack. But the 24-year-old showed great mental fortitude to build his stack back up, peaking at 40 million before finishing up about where he started, around 23.5 million. That leaves him third in chips heading to November - in great shape.
My sudden man-crush on Cheong's game was sealed when I found out he's a deadly online multi-table tournament specialist. I loved what he had to say to ESPN after the November Nine lineup was set: "I think I have an advantage. I've played over 10,000 tournaments and I think that experience plays to my advantage. There are a lot of solid guys here, but I think I'm going to win this tournament."
Dang. That's a confident cat.
If anyone cares to wager, I'll offer an even-money bet: I get Cheong and Michael Mizrachi (seventh in chips at around 14.5 million), and you get the other seven guys in the field. Pretty favourable odds, by any measure. Come get some.

SOOOO SICK
Poker is a cruel game - just ask Matt Affleck (pictured left). He busted in gut-wrenching fashion in a fascinating hand with Jonathan Duhamel.
Here's how it went down. Duhamel opened with a raise to 550,000, and Affleck reraised to 1.55 million. Duhamel reraised it right back to 3.95 million, and Affleck flat-called.
The flop came down 10d9c7h, and Duhamel checked. Affleck bet 5 million, Duhamel called. Turn was the Qd, and Affleck shipped the rest of his stack - 11.6 million total.
Duhamel eventually called, and Affleck tabled the rockets - AsAc. Duhamel had JhJc - one pair and an open-ended straight draw. The river, from the depths of hell, was the 8d to complete Duhamel's straight. Affleck was out in 15th place, and Duhamel had a monster stack. He'll be the chip leader in November.
Looking at the hand, Duhamel was certainly behind when the chips went in on the turn - he had 10 outs, and Affleck was a 77 per cent favourite. But the thing is, he was actually getting the right odds to call. There was roughly 30 million in the pot when Affleck shipped on the turn for 11.6 million. Duhamel needed approximately 3-1 odds for the call to be correct, and he was getting pretty close to that.
Duhamel's call would be reasonable in a cash game, but in terms of tournament strategy, I believe it was a mistake. I'm not sure it's advisable to call off the vast majority of your chips and put yourself on the brink of elimination in a spot where you're only 23 per cent to win. But Duhamel had a chance to claim a dominating chip lead in the WSOP main event, and he thought it worthwhile. I guess he just has more heart than me.
Affleck's payday was a couple bucks north of $500,000, but it's probably no stretch to say nobody's ever been that unhappy to win a half-million.

Roughriders roll

Let's talk a little CFL football.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a Saskatchewan Roughriders fan. Have been since I was a wee lad. Thus, it did my heart good to watch the Riders rough up the B.C. Lions last Saturday at Empire Field. Final score: 37-18.
Random thoughts:
-- The temporary stadium at Empire Field is everything it's hyped up to be. Seating just north of 27,000 fans, it's a wonderfully intimate spot to watch a football game. It's everything that cavernous, character-less B.C. Place is not.
-- The fans at Empire, on the other hand, leave a little bit to be desired. I attended the game with a crowd of vacationing in-laws from Saskatchewan - Riders season ticket-holders - and they were roundly disappointed with the general lack of football knowledge in the bleachers. In football, it's generally understood that the home fans are to make noise as the visiting team's offence approaches the line of scrimmage, so as to make it difficult for them to communicate. I could count on one hand the number of times Lions fans tried that tactic against the Riders - and then, only after they were instructed what to do by the P.A. announcer. Weak sauce, Lions fans.
-- One more rant on Lions fans. Seems like every time I go to a Lions game, at least one fight breaks out in the stands. On Saturday, there were two brawls. I've attended a lot of sporting events in venues across Western Canada and the States, and I can honestly say that 90 per cent of the scraps I've seen have come at Lions games. I hate to apply the "white trash" label, but . . .
-- I guess I should say something nice about the Lions now. Geroy Simon, with two highlight-reel TD catches, was one of the only Leos with a pulse - I was stunned how much gas he has left in the tank for a 34-year-old. And Travis Lulay's resilience was a credit to him. The Lions backup quarterback entered the game just before halftime after Casey Printers went out with a leg injury, and the Riders spent most of the second half treating him like a pinata. But Lulay stuck with it. With the game out of reach in the fourth quarter, and just one play after being virtually de-cleated by a Sask defender, Lulay stepped up and threw a TD bomb to Simon. I've always liked Lulay.
-- As for the Riders, they looked an awful lot like the best team in the CFL in improving to 2-0. The offence has so many weapons - the score would have been even more lopsided if not for a couple of first-half mental errors - and it's scary to consider the upside as QB Darian Durant (pictured above) continues to improve. The defence, which was porous during a Week 1 win over Montreal, dominated against the Lions. It's hard to put too much stock in that performance, given the atrocious play of B.C.'s offensive line, but it was encouraging regardless.
-- In closing, since I can't seem to successfully embed video in this blog, here's a link to a hilarious YouTube video featuring Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd roasting LeBron James for his "Decision:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtIaMr2hGeI
And just for the heck of it, another surreal clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI

A holiday from the poker grind

Every so often, I feel the need to take a break from poker. It's hard to explain the reasoning. Periodic holidays, I find, are necessary to maintain my sense of balance in life. I tend to take a breather when I feel my passion for poker is swallowing up my mind.

To illustrate, here's a rough history of my online poker play over the last nine months:
November: $1,000 profit
December: Took a break
January: $500 profit
February: Took a break
March: $500 profit
April: $500 profit
May: break-even
June: $500 loss
July (to date): $740 profit
At present, I'm running (and playing) pretty darn well - just this morning, I finished second out of 27 players in a $22 SNG, good for $144. But I feel it's time for a break. When I'm spending all my leisure time staring at the laptop, it can drain energy and focus from more important things - my wife, my job, my relationship with God. Winning money at poker is not the chief goal of my life. A week off, maybe two, is definitely in order.
I will, however, continue to monitor the goings-on at the World Series of Poker main event. Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, pictured above, is second in chips heading into Day 7, with just 78 players of the original 7,300-plus field remaining. Pokernews.com has deadly coverage. Good times.
Bankroll: $4,320

LeBron James, and the dis heard round the world

LeBron James is a member of the Miami Heat, but boy, was that ever cold!

The Global Icon not only dissed his home-state team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, he did it on national TV, essentially inserting the dagger slowly and then twisting it.

I don't have a massive problem with LeBron signing with the Heat - he's entitled to do whatever he believes will make him happy, I suppose. I will say, I'm a fan of the romantic notion of one player sticking with one team for his entire career - think Tim Duncan, Steve Yzerman, Derek Jeter, etc. I'm old-school like that.

Anyway, it's how LeBron orchestrated his move that gives me the heebie-jeebies. His break-up with the Cavaliers and their long-suffering fans was the equivalent of turning on the TV and seeing your girlfriend getting it on with Flavor Flav and Bret Michaels at the same time.

Well done, LeBron. In one fell swoop, you went from being almost universally beloved, to giving folks the notion you're kind of a dick.

In one sense, I completely understand LeBron's logic behind the ESPN production. It's his stated goal to become a global icon along the lines of Jay-Z, and the TV show was simply a means of leveraging his free agency to the greatest possible degree.

Even the timing of his announcement demonstrated a global media-savvy. The FIFA World Cup has completely enraptured the sporting audience planet-wide, so when did James choose to steal the spotlight? On Thursday - the day after the soccer semifinals had wrapped up, and before the hype for Sunday's final shifts into overdrive. And to his credit, it worked. For one hour, James owned the singular focus of sports fans, yours truly included.

But I just never figured he'd do his home-state fans like that. When it was announced he'd go on ESPN, I was convinced he was going to pick the Cavs. All the rumblings that the Heat were his imminent choice had to be an elaborately designed smokescreen. I didn't think he had a taste for torture.

The ironic part of all this is, James is making an exceedingly selfless decision in picking the Heat. Sharing the spotlight with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh will, to a degree, impact his ability to be "The Man." But we always knew LeBron was a good teammate. That's why we loved him.

But what we've always wanted from LeBron was for him to be the alpha male, the Chuck Norris, the ultimate beast of the NBA. What he's done, though, is establish himself as a follower. The Miami Heat have become Dwyane Wade's franchise over the past seven years, make no mistake about that. And Bosh picked the Heat more than 24 hours before LeBron, spurning The King's advances to join him in Cleveland.

What I'm trying to say is, Michael Jordan wasn't running around in the mid-80s looking to team up with Larry Bird or Magic Johnson. And while some might view LeBron-to-the-Heat as a selfless move, others might call it weak sauce.

At the end of the day, the James-Wade-Bosh trinity makes for a fascinating scenario for basketball fans. The North American sports scene has never really seen anything like it. The closest thing I can think of would be soccer's Galacticos - Real Madrid circa 2000-2005, featuring David Beckham, Zinedine Zindane, Ronaldo and Luis Figo, among others.

But before we see whether the Heat can become more than the sum of their formidable parts, let's shed a tear for fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers, victims of the most ruthless sports break-up in history.

Making $50 the hard way

Sometimes grinding these SNGs feels like hitting a boulder with a sledgehammer. You pound away repeatedly with little sign of progress, then suddenly you break through.
Take tonight's late session, where I played four SNGs in a block: single-table $20 and $30, and three-table $10 and $20.
The first three, I came away with zero cents. I basically blew up in the first level of the $20 single-table - the small blind min-reraised my KQ, and the flop was king-high. Knew he had aces, but I proceeded to get all my money in on the turn. Gonzo. Played awful.
I got a little unfortunate in the next two. In the $10 multi-table, I got down to the final eight (five spots pay) with a medium-sized stack. QQ in cutoff, big stack reraises me on the button, I ship, he has AA. Cold deck.
The $30 single-table, I could have played more aggressively. This was one of those where the short stacks double up every time. With 1600 in chips, blinds 100-200 and six players left, I shipped it from the cutoff with AK, and was called by AA on the button. Buh-bye.
Finally, I grinded my way to a second-place finish in the 27-player $20, good for a $144 payout. The deck smoked me in the face early - I raised in early position with QQ, reraise from the cutoff, flat called (four of us to the flop), and the board comes AQQ. Checked flop and turn, made the absolute maximum, knocked out one opponent, and had 4200 in the FIRST FREAKING LEVEL.
Didn't run so lucky after that, lost a few chips in the middle levels, but grinded my way to the final table and picked my spots well to get to three-handed. Blinds got massive, had a monster suckout to get heads-up, and that's as close as I got. Ran pretty good, played real solid, salvaged a profit. Happy.
Bankroll = $4,000. Can't wait to see where LeBron lands tomorrow.

Finally, on a roll

When I started this blog, I was in the throes of an atrocious $500 downswing playing online SNG tournaments. I was running bad, for sure, and it was infecting my play. Poker, to me, is all about confidence, and I had none of it. All the aggression had leaked out of my game.
To rebuild, I read Collin Moshman's Sit 'n Go Strategy. (To clarify, I have about 25 pages to go, but I've got the general gist at this point). The book turned out to be a manual of how I like to play when I'm playing well. Basically, the author prescribes playing tight early to limit your variance, and aggressive late to take advantage of risk-averse opponents. I've decided not to follow Moshman's blueprint to the letter - I prefer to play a little looser than he might approve in the early going, and a little tighter late.
Reading the book, at the very least, helped me to focus my mind, and with that came my long-lost confidence. After a one-week vacation, I put $200 on PokerStars, and promptly lost about $150 of it (I generally play $20 and $30 buy-in SNGs). But I felt I was playing well and making good decisions.
With my Stars mini-bankroll evaporating, I finally staged a breakthrough in a 27-player, $20 SNG. I grinded it out on a short stack to the final table, chipping up gradually to get some wiggle room.
The pivotal hand for me came on the money bubble, with six players left at 200-400 and my stack around 4600. I was in the big blind with KJo, the button limped into the pot and the small blind folded. I checked to see a flop of AJ3 rainbow, and bet 600 into a pot of 1000. The button raised to 1600, and I was poised to click "fold" when it occurred to me that if he had an ace, wouldn't he have raised preflop? So I min-reraised to 2600, and he snap-folded. I was pretty pleased with my play on that hand - it got me out of the danger zone, and I battled all the way back to win the whole thing, worth $200.
That victory got me going - I won a couple other SNGs at $20 and $30, and even took a shot at a $50. It had been a while since I played a $50 - I don't typically play at that level when I'm not playing well - but I won it. Booya!
Thus, the worst downswing of my modest career is over, and I'm $450 to the good - almost back to where I started.
Bankroll = $3,950. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Calling an audible

With my third post, I'd like to slightly change the focus of this blog.
Initially, I stated I'd like to briefly summarize each of the SNG poker tournaments I play. But after writing two such recaps, I realized it was too much work, and perhaps too esoteric to be of interest to anyone but me.
So what I'm going to do is give big-picture updates at least once a week, or thereabouts. The goal, as always, is to nickel-and-dime my way to paying off my mortgage.
Current bankroll = $3,500ish. Let's roll.