August Top 15

15. We Are Scientists - After Hours
14. Brendan Benson - Get It Together
13. Weezer - Thought I Knew
12. Bran Van 3000 - Loaded
11. Carolina Liar - I'm Not Over

10. MGMT - Electric Feel
9. Jethro Tull - Locomotive Breath
8. MGMT - Kids
7. Queens of the Stone Age - Mosquito Song
6. Cake - Jolene

5. Kathleen Edwards - Run
4. Asia - Heat of the Moment
3. Paul Westerberg - Runaway Wind
2. MGMT - Time To Pretend

Song of the Month: Brendan Benson - Alternative to Love

The Fantasy Football Draft

So last year I had a very specific Strategy - I was going to pick three RBs, then three WRs, then Jon Kitna in the 7th round. This failed miserably of course, mainly because I got the second pick and had to go with Steven Jackson, who had a terrible season. I drafted Clinton Portis with my second pick, then made a bad trade of him and a couple backups for Maurice Jones-Drew, then got Thomas Jones and his one touchdown early in the third round. It was a debacle.

This year our league expanded to twelve teams and became a keeper league. On Monday we give out one 3-year contract and two 2-year contracts. This changes the strategy considerably, improving the value of the young up and comers while bringing down the TOs and Torry Holts of the world.

So the only guy who finished worse than me last year, Charles, decided to go for Adrian Peterson with the first pick instead of the standard Tomlinson, so I got LT with the second pick. Late in round two I gobbled up Larry Fitzgerald, the kind of reliable WR I've never had before, whose value is even higher in a keeper league.

The third round pick put me in a tough spot. I could have drafted Torry Holt or TJ Houshmandzadeh, probably the best guys available. Taking a QB was out of the question as the other drafters were overly aggressive towards QBs and Big Ben was the best available at this point - and there's no way I'm taking Big Ben with the second pick of the 3rd round. I needed to get a second running back with my next pick 20 spots away. The best available were Jamal Lewis, Michael Turner, Laurence Maroney and Brandon Jacobs.

After mulling it over I decided to go with Michael "The Burner" Turner, LT's backup last season. I felt he had the highest potential both for this season and next, as I will probably sign him to my last 2-year contract. The other guys would have been safer picks and some would argue that with Tomlinson already in the stables, safe would have been the way to go with this pick. This pick will make or break the season.

Ocho Cinco miraculously fell to me late in the fourth round, so I had an automatic pick there and now I have to decide if I want to give him a contract ahead of Turner.

Then I had another interesting decision with the second pick of the fifth round. Both stud Detroit WRs, Roy Williams and Calvin Johnson, were still available. Either of these would have been a great pick but WR was my last priority at this point. I needed a QB, with Derek Anderson being the obvious choice at this point. But I had it in my head to gamble late on QBs with all this talent still out there and such a small disparity between Anderson and the third-tier QBs. I still needed to stockpile running backs, so I snagged Matt Forte knowing I was picking him about ten picks before anyone else would. I almost went with Kevin Smith, rookie Lions running back who has looked really good.

The rest of the draft went as well as I could have imagined. My next pick was the underrated Laveranues Coles. As I had hoped and planned, I got Marc Bulger in the seventh round. This was eerily similar to The Strategy of '07 and once again my team is riding on the shoulders of an unreliable QB. However, I drafted Jon Kitna in the very next round to add another dangerous QB with a high upside. I figure one of the two will come through for me. If not, I will have to make a desperate trade around week four.

With my starting lineup secured I focused on high risk, high reward guys that could pull monster seasons out of their asses. I took the mercurial Ricky Williams, who has gotten rave reviews in camp; Ray Rice - a (inevitable) Willis McGahee injury away from fantasy stardom; Sidney Rice, starter for the Vikings; Steve Slaton of the Texans, who had no business falling to me at the end of the 14th round, and Ronald Curry (ditto).

The team was filled out by Pittsburgh D (perhaps my biggest mistake of the draft as I picked them in round ten when I could have gotten something comparable a couple rounds later), Todd Heap, and Josh Brown.

The roster:

RB LaDainian Tomlinson, San Diego
WR Larry Fitzgerald, Arizona
RB Michael Turner, Atlanta
WR Chad Ocho Cinco, Cincinnati
RB Matt Forte, Chicago
WR Laveranues Coles, New York Jets
QB Marc Bulger, St. Louis
QB Jon Kitna, Detroit
RB Ricky Williams, Miami
D Pittsburgh
TE Todd Heap, Baltimore
RB Ray Rice, Baltimore
WR Sidney Rice, Minnesota
RB Steve Slaton, Houston
WR Ronald Curry, Oakland
K Josh Brown, St. Louis

Considering this is a 12-team league I think my team is absolutely loaded and has to be one of the favorites this fall.

Secretly One of the Best?

Sometimes, like during my current hot streak, I wonder if I am one of the best online cash players out there. I haven't moved up in limits in three years, but that is mostly because I am a wuss, play very few hours relative to my peers, and stacking people at 10-20 still seems like good money to me. It has occurred to me that if I logged the hours of some of the bigger names, I might make as much or more money than them. I think I am more patient, creative, and focused than almost anyone out there, but I can only do it in small doses. I find it hard to log more than twelve hours a week online playing shorthanded cash.

Contradiction

I hate it when people whine in their blogs but here I go.

My physical health is excellent but my mental health is poor.

I think I am one of the most mature people I know but I think most of my friends think I am immature.

I am in the best shape of my life yet it is harder than ever for me to attract the opposite sex.

I lambast the Gambler for being so negative yet I feel myself becoming more like him every day.

My blog is often concerned with solutions to modern twentysomething suburban/gambling dilemmas yet I am the poster child for failing to overcome modern twentysomething suburban/gambling dilemmas.

I watch more poker on tv than ever before.

I play poker rarely.

The thing I love most in the entire world is girls.

The thing I hate most in the entire world is girls.

My 100 Favorite Songs: #96

Toadies - Tyler

I wish I couldn't relate to this creepy, hypnotic story about a Texas stalker, but I can.

Olympics

I was going to do a top ten moments thing with youtube links, but NBC controls all the video and I can't link through them, so I will just quickly say

• Michael Phelps - dominant, obviously, extremely impressive; Certainly a top five athlete in the world; however, swimming as a sport has less strategy than almost anything and is barely watchable
• Beach volleyball was insanely entertaining. Props to Chris Marlowe and Karch Kiraly for doing such a great job in the booth.
• You'll never get me fired up to watch "Team USA Basketball." The US should win the gold at every competition they ever compete in and it should never be close. If you took out the top 50 American players, the US should still easily have the best team in the world. It is really incredible to think about Team USA losing multiple games earlier this decade.
  
• I loved watching Usain Bolt thinking, this is the fastest a human has ever run, of all the billions of humans that have run on the Earth, none has ever run as fast as him
  

NFL Preview Part One: Fantasy Draft Do’s and Don’ts

My first season of fantasy football, I won the league. My second season, I finished ninth out of ten. I learned more from last season’s debacle than from the championship run. I know what works and what doesn’t. With most fantasy football drafts taking place this week, I’ve compiled a list of do’s and don’ts for the draft.

DO stockpile running backs early in the draft. There is nothing harder or more important to attain in fantasy football than a high-scoring running back. Chances are at least one of your RBs will go out with a season-ending injury. It’s not enough to have two, you’ll need at least three and maybe more.

DO NOT draft one of the Jones brothers RBs, Thomas or Julius.

DO go after potentially explosive players rather than solid sure-things. There is no glory in a fifth-place finish in fantasy football. Play for the win and take chances. David Garrard might get you to third place, but he’s not gonna pass for 4,000 yards and 35 TDs.

DO NOT overrate running QBs like Vince Young or Donovan McNabb.

DO think about going after Tom Brady in the first round. Most of the top-scoring fantasy teams last season had Brady on their roster.

DO NOT draft Michael Vick.

DO draft the traditional superstars. You’re not gonna win the league without a few reliable monsters. Put the keys to your fantasy football corvette in the hands of someone who knows how to drive it.

DO NOT draft a Denver Bronco or New England Patriot running back in the first two rounds. He will almost certainly wind up in a platoon and you will almost certainly wind up frustrated and cursing Mike Shanahan/Bill Belichick as one-yard TDs go to the likes of Cecil Sapp and Mike Vrabel.

DO use the chat box to poke fun at inexperienced players who make shaky picks. It’ll undermine their confidence and lead to conservative picks designed to placate the audience. You want your opponents to make conservative picks while you go for the gold. And if you blasted people for taking Randy Moss or Joey Galloway too early in last year’s draft, it will be forgotten.

DO NOT miss the draft and have it auto-drafted for you, unless you want to take a defense and kicker four rounds too early.

DO take chances on potentially explosive rookies at RB and WR. You could wind up with a Ted Ginn Jr., of course, but you might find yourself a Dwayne Bowe or Adrian Peterson. Try to do a little research beforehand to see who’s gonna be getting the ball.

DO NOT waste an early round pick on a tight end this year. You’ll be able to get a producer late in the draft and maybe even off waivers.

DO draft a QB/WR combo from the same team if you enjoy wild emotional swings. Don’t if you want to stay sane during the season.

DO NOT draft multiple kickers, defenses, or tight ends.

DO laugh at those who do.

DO NOT draft your favorite home-team players just because you like them, or because they looked good against second-stringers in last week’s preseason game. Except for Brandon Marshall. I’m all over Brandon Marshall.

DO think about grabbing an aging ex-superstar in a mid-late round. Make sure it’s an ex-superstar like Joey Galloway rather than an ex-star like Joe Horn.

DO NOT trust bigtime producers moving to new teams. Too often they pull an Edgerrin James or Thomas Jones and disappear.

DO look for guys with a chip on their shoulder getting a second chance, a la Randy Moss or Jamal Lewis last season.

DO NOT overanalyze defenses. Too hard to predict.

DO remember that many of the most productive defenses come from teams with high-scoring offenses, as the defenses get many chances to go after the QB and get a lot of late game sacks, interceptions, and defensive touchdowns.

DO NOT waste time on the clock if you know who you’re picking. Pick fast and keep the pressure on your opponents.

DO pay attention to lingering preseason injuries, particularly hamstrings.

DO NOT go into the draft with too many preconceived set-in-stone strategies. You probably don’t know where you’re going to draft; players you thought would be available at certain times will shockingly disappear; the best fantasy football drafters must be able to think on their feet.

DO prepare a spreadsheet of some sort so you’ll know who’s still available, what you need and what your opponents need.

DO NOT draft a kicker until the final round.

MasterJ Update

The day I wrote about the Master, he finished 5th in the FTOPS 6-max knockout for $28k plus bounties. A week later his stakee won the FTOPS main event for $432,400, half of which went to Jason. The Master will be coming out to Boulder and staying with me for the WCOOP in September.

My 100 Favorite Songs: #97

Shivaree - Goodnight Moon

Nomenclatorial preferences aside, this is a unique and enchanting song unearthed by the master archaeologist Quentin Tarantino for the Kill Bill 2 Soundtrack.

A Salvaged Sunday

I won the $215 Heads-Up tournament on Stars for $18.5k this evening. I always dominate everyone in this tournament but traditionally have gotten sucked out on in the big preflop pots. Tonight I still got sucked out on a couple times but luckily I had owned them hard enough earlier in the match to weather the damage and move on, and I never took the crucial bad beat that normally knocks me out.

Hopefully this will spur me out of a major funk I had slipped into in poker and in life. I've been waiting for something to get me going.

My 100 Favorite Songs: #98

Weezer - Say It Ain't So

So many great moments here...the bubbling "bubbling" at 1:05...the woozy mini guitar solo at 1:48...the "waterslide" of lyrics at 2:10...and the spectacular climax starting at 3:07.

My 100 Favorite Songs: #99

The Stills - Lola Stars and Stripes

The Stills are yet another, and possibly the best of, the Strokes-shepherded post punk bands of the 2000s. Lola Stars and Stripes, a shimmering, rollicking blast of urban rock, kicks off their debut album Logic Will Break Your Heart.

My 100 Favorite Songs: #100

Toadies - Possum Kingdom

Toadies' first album Rubberneck is a semi-forgotten classic released during the height of grunge's popularity in 1994. Rubberneck is my second-favorite album to listen to while driving across the desert to Las Vegas, and Possum Kingdom was its smash hit.

The Next Step

The World Series was a massive disappointment for me. I had very high expectations that did not come to pass. I sort of outlined a couple goals for 2008 and have failed miserably in achieving them. When I finally busted out of the Bellagio Cup on July 14 I immediately drove home, dazed and morose. Getting out of Vegas didn't improve my disposition though. My friends couldn't really understand why I wasn't excited to be back home in beautiful Boulder rather than hellish Vegas.

As much as I hate Vegas, there was an opportunity for The Big Score every day and I loved waking up each day with that chance. When it was over, there was a huge letdown and I felt worthless. Not only that, but I had no idea what I was going to do the next day, the next week, the next month, and the next year. I spent nine days in emotional and organizational purgatory, then left on a five-day, five-hike, five-mountain fourteener road trip across the state with my friends Truman and Jeremy.

Truman wrote a fantastic recap of the trip on his blog.

I was planning on "getting my shit together", figuring out what I was going to do this fall and the rest of my life while tramping around the mountains. Instead, I thought about absolutely nothing for four days. Occasionally we mused about the NFL and Truman talked some about girls, but mostly all I thought about was the next step I was going to take getting up or down the mountain.

The first mountain we climbed was Mount Princeton, a large Sawatch Range 14er with a road halfway up it.
Then it was on to Colorado's finest range, the San Juans.First we knocked off Uncompahgre Peak, the highest mountain in the San Juans and (arguably) the finest easy Fourteener hike in the state.The next day was a bit more challenging as we moved a valley over and ascended Wetterhorn Peak.The top was pretty exciting.We went over Engineer Pass,

had a beer in Silverton, hit the Million Dollar Highway to Ouray, soaked in the Ouray Hot Springs, went up Yankee Boy Basin,and danced with the clouds on Mount Sneffels.We wrapped up the trip in the La Garita Wilderness on the most obscure and pleasant of Fourteeners, San Luis Peak.
On the way down we saw a herd of Bighorn Sheepand I was finally able to wrap my head around some other stuff. I came up with a solution for this fall, I think, though my history of following through on planned projects is not promising.

At home I am still walking out of stride. I can't seem to do anything right, though life is not unpleasant. A disjointed week in Boulder gave way to a cloudpacked jaunt up Airplane Gully and Navajo Peak,which featured some tense low visibility routefinding on the return.Monday we decided to step it up and go after a hard one - Pyramid Peaknear the famous Maroon Bells.

Pyramid was the steepest,

hardest,
most dangerous,most spectacular mountain of the seven, but it was also easier than it looked and tons of fun.
At home everything is off. Things are just not quite right and I am perpetually frustrated. But in the mountains, every day has been perfect.

WSOP Recap Part Five: The Master

Jason DeWitt aka TheMasterJ33 is the best tournament player I converse with on a regular basis. No offense to the rest of y'all - the Master finds crazy, creative ways to add chips to his stack that no one else attempts. He is completely fearless and could show up with any two cards at any moment. He loves messing with big stacks. He's relentless on and off the table, passionate about the game.

TheMasterJ33 is a known online player, but his true talent blooms while playing live. He watches the players like a hawk, obsessing over physical tells. During the 10k PLHE event at the WSOP, J picked up a tell on one veteran tournament superstar and then exploited him the rest of the day. He's always telling me crazy hands he played based on some physical read and he's almost always right when he gets a strong sniff of weakness.

The Master takes a lot of time to make decisions at the table. He's a naturally deliberate thinker and wants to consider all the angles before deciding on the right play. He also makes a lot of moves, and spends time Hollywooding when a move goes bad and he wants it to appear like he had some sort of hand. This endless deliberation, combined with his relentless annoying playing style, tends to rankle his opponents. They get frustrated and desperately try to outplay him. During the second day of the $1500 6-handed event, I told Jason that one older player at his table who I had played with the night before was tight, conservative, and not interested in making moves. Half an hour into the day the older fellow exploded and four-bet all-in with queen-eight offsuit against the Master's pocket queens.

During the months leading up to the World Series of Poker, J and I had a lot of discussions about the upcoming events and what we needed to do in order to play our best every day for six weeks. We both had extremely high expectations for the Series. For both of us, it was going to be the Breakthrough Summer.

We got off to similar promising/frustrating starts. The Master bubbled the 10k PLHE, then narrowly missed the 5k mixed hold em final table, then got unlucky late in the 1.5k 6-handed and finished 16th. He then went ice cold and didn't cash the rest of the WSOP, though he was able to snag a solid online score in there. I was deeply disappointed in my own results (more on this in the next blog) but when I thought about Jason I was really heartbroken. I could blame my own failures on a couple key mistakes and generally undistinguished play, but I was really shocked that J never broke through for a monster score. I know poker talent when I see it and the Master has it. I couldn't believe it didn't happen for him this summer. It really made me sad.

A couple weeks after leaving Vegas, it finally happened for the Master. He finished second in a Heartland Poker Tour event in Gary, Indiana for $103k. This was not the Megascore that the Master seeks and will one day hit, but it was enough to make up for a crappy WSOP and pay for a few more big buy-ins on the circuit. It was also enough to restore some of my faith in tournament poker - that the good guys, the ones who play well, want it, and deserve it, will eventually get it.

WSOP Recap Part Four: Awards and Grades

So every year after the WSOP I put together this Grades post. The first year it was probably the best post in that seminal blog’s archives; the second year it was strong, and last year it started slipping. So I decided to change the format to “Awards” instead of grades but then found there were a bunch of topics I wanted to cover and couldn’t give awards to…so I decided to make it half awards, half grades:

The Award For Most Shockingly Awesome Summer Movie goes to The Incredible Hulk. Despite a mail-in performance from Edward Norton and a stale concept, director Louis Leterrier and screenwriter Zak Penn were able to throw together a surprisingly entertaining barnburner.

The Award For Most Shockingly Terrible Summer Movie goes to The Happening. M Night used to have the Automatic Pass (see everything he makes without asking questions) but this latest debacle removes him from that club. This movie was so poorly reviewed I didn’t even bother. Steven Spielberg and Coldplay were also removed from the club this summer, meaning I’m down to the following members of my Automatic Pass Club:

Judd Apatow, the Aussie Millions, Bob Dylan, the color blue, Cake, Christopher Nolan, Daniel Day-Lewis, Green Day, Martin Scorsese, the NFL, Oasis, Quentin Tarantino, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Twisted Pine Brewing, University of Colorado athletics.

The Award For Worst Emerging Poker Fashion Trend goes to…White Sunglasses. Not sure how or why this one got started but hopefully it won’t stick.

The Award for Most Useful Technological Communication Device PiMaster Hasn’t Yet Obtained goes to…text messaging. I estimate I sent and received about a thousand texts during the WSOP. This has become one of those things I can’t remember not having, and can’t believe I was able to survive without.

The Award For Best Friend Made During the WSOP goes to Vitamin Water. As a home for the duration of the WSOP, the Castle was too bold an undertaking. Too big, too many people, too many degrees of separation. On an average morning, I’d wake up and walk into the main house to see some rando I’d never met sleeping on the couch, then see a car or two I’d never seen in our driveway. Two years ago in the original House of Pain we all made lasting friendships. I got along well with everyone who stayed at the Castle but it wasn’t as intimate. Next year we’ll have to scale it back.

As for that dear friend, Vitamin Water, I can’t say just how addictive this blend of water, sugar, and marketing is, but I can provide a guide to when and how each flavor should be used:

Balance – is pretty tricky but generally should be consumed in the morning mainly because of its cran-grapefruit flavor.
Charge – is for post workout hydration.
Defense – is the one you drink after a night out. When you’ve been partying hard, sharing drinks and perhaps other fluids, and your immune system is weakened, it’s time to chug a Defense before passing out.
Endurance – should be drunk the day of the long race, or the night before the big paper is due, etc.
Energy – best after a short night of sleep. This isn’t for hangovers (see Revive).
Essential – is an orange juice copycat and therefore goes with breakfast.
Focus – you drink before a mentally challenging activity, obviously.
Formula 50 – is one you have on stock for no particular purpose – the utilityman of vitamin water.
Multi-v (lemonade) – is the one you drink with a meal when you really have no reason to drink vitamin water. You’re using vitamin water as a substitute for a more traditional beverage.
Power-C – is a pretty standard morning vitamin water before you go about your business.
Relaxed – is best before going to bed.
Rescue – is for green tea situations, whatever those may be. I don’t drink green tea.
Revive – is for hangovers, plain and simple.
Vital-T – I have actually never seen in stores and saw for the first time just now on the website so who knows but it is described as lemon tea so I guess in the afternoon with lunch is logical.
XXX – This one is for taste. This is the one you drink when you have nothing to correct – you just want to sip on something succulent.

The Award For Worst Driver goes to…the Moon. After a respectable performance last year, I really regressed in ’08. My luck in poker tournaments may have been pretty crappy this summer but I and everyone I drove to the Rio should consider themselves lucky to have survived the summer.

The Award For Best New Beer goes to…Miller Chill!? Before the Series started I would have put the chances of me purchasing and enjoying a Miller product well below the chances of me winning two bracelets. You win some, you lose some.

The Award For Worst Kenny Tran Impression goes to…TheMasterJ33. The Master put himself into contention several times, but too often called off big chunks with moderate holdings and paid the price. It’s important to remember that aggression is the better part of valor in poker tournaments. As for the Master, I'll be posting some more on him in a few days...now on to the grades.

Alcohol: B+
Alcohol makes me closer to the person I want to be. That’s a strange, sad thing to say and I wish it wasn't the case but I need a little liquid courage to be socially competent.

Ace-King: D-
Check out these preflop chance-of-winning matchups:

AKo (43%) vs QQ (57%)
AKo (44.5%) vs 99 (55.5%)
AKo (59%) vs JTs (41%)
AKo (65%) vs 74o (35%)
AKo (67%) vs AQs (28%)

Compare that to

QQ (57%) vs AK (43%)
QQ (81%) vs 99 (19%)
QQ (81%) vs JTs (19%)
QQ (84%) vs 74o (16%)
QQ (66%) vs AQs (34%)

Ten-eight offsuit is less of a dog to ace-five than ace-king is to a pair of jacks. Think about that for a sec. No one ever calls two middle cards a coinflip vs big-little, yet ace-king is always getting involved in “coinflips.” The truth is ace-king is not a flip vs. a pair, it’s a dog, and people need to start thinking harder about that.

Brazilians: D
I estimate Brazilians cost me about $80,000 in equity this summer, which is a lot…but not as much money as I lost with ace-king.

The Dark Knight: A
The items that have received an A or better in the history of this post: Batman Begins (2005), Bobby Abreu in the Home Run Derby (2005), Crash (the only A+, 2005) Poppy Montgomery and Angie Harmon (2005), Bag (2006), Hollingol (2006), Sun Chips Garden Salsa Flavor (2006), George Thorogood and the Destroyers (2007), and Volkswagen Jetta (2007). Exclusive company.

The four-bet bluff: D+
It never works.

Hancock: C+
Reasonable entertainment. Probably should have enjoyed it more considering it had three of my favorite actors and the script was pretty clever; not really sure where it misfired.

Harrah’s: B+
This was by far the most efficiently run WSOP since Harrah’s took over. The schedule was decent. The structures were excellent. The main event may have been the best-structured tournament ever. Payout structures were inconsistent but reasonable. Organizational snafus were kept to a minimum. The facility was upgraded. All-in-all, a big step towards recapturing the WSOP magic in the modern era.

Ironman: A-
It’s amazing how important casting and acting can be in today’s world of special-effects superhero blockbusters.

Rio: C-
For those keeping score at home, the Rio’s rankings in the four-year history of this post: D+, D, B, C-. There is never a good reason to stay at the Rio, unless you’re fully comped.

Wanted: B
Again, reasonable entertainment thanks to a fairly witty script along with good casting and acting.
___

Seven weeks takes a lot of digestion; expect a couple more recap posts before I can finally move on to the present and future.

July Top 15

15. Johnny Cash - Spiritual
14. Mojave 3 - Bluebird of Happiness
13. The Black Crowes - Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution
12. Johnny Preston - Running Bear
11. Manfred Mann - The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)

10. Zombies - Time of the Season
9. Cake - Palm of Your Hand
8. Lenny Kravitz - It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over
7. Danny Elfman - The Little Things
6. The Airborne Toxic Effect - Sometime Around Midnight

5. Tift Merritt - Broken
4. LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
3. Cake - End of the Movie
2. Sam Phillips - I Need Love

Song of the Month: Cake - Tougher Than It Is