Well, I’ve finally put my money where my mouth is; I turned in my resignation at work and will become self-employed at 9:00 p.m. on July 29th. My boss, a pretty decent guy all around, said he’d keep the door open for me to come back if I wish. Who knows, that may be an option as a last resort, but I’m determined to make my own way in the world from now on. And, my self-confidence is running higher than it ever has.



Yep. There’s no better time than the present.



So, where to from here? First stop, Las Vegas of course. Looking forward to visiting the folks there and to just being back in the States; haven’t been out of Japan for over three years. And, as expected, I’ll be spending a lot of time at the poker tables.



After that, I’m not completely sure where I’ll end up. I made sure to secure a long-term visa for living and working in Japan, and eventually hope to start up a business here. But, between Vegas and returning to Japan, anything can happen, right? I might find myself in Europe, playing in a major poker tournament. Or, down in Melbourne, visiting one of my good friends in his hometown.



I have to say, I’m liking the uncertainty of it all.

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I’m not happy with how I played the river on this one, so I’ve made this kind of note-to-self post.



Full Tilt Limit Hold’em (9 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Preflop: Hero(billywest) is MP2 with J K
2 folds, MP1 calls, Hero raises, 1 fold, CO calls, 3 folds, MP1 calls
I raised pre-flop because MP1 was calling with everything (I had position on him) and I expected a lot of worse hands than mine to call. Also, there hadn’t been much 3-betting pre-flop up to that point.



Flop: (7.4 SB) 10 7 Q (3 players)
MP1 bets, Hero calls, CO raises, MP1 3-bets, Hero caps, CO calls, MP1 calls
A lot of action on the flop, right? I had pot odds to call my open-ended straight draw after MP1 bet, plus the implied odds were looking pretty good when I decided to continue after the 3-bet. Why did I cap it? To disguise my hand. Some might call it spew, but…



Turn: (9.7 BB) 9 (3 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets, CO raises, MP1 calls, Hero 3-bets, CO caps, MP1 calls, Hero calls
I’ve got the nuts at this point and am lucky to get CO to aggressively spew here while MP1 passively spews.



River: (21.7 BB) J (3 players)
MP1 checks, Hero checks, CO checks
So the Jack makes an Ace-high straight possible. I didn’t think CO was drawing to it. His wild aggression on the flop led me to think he was holding 1-pair, two-pair, or a set. At worst, he had the nut-flush draw. MP1 had played more passively on the flop, so it was more likely that he was drawing to a flush or to a straight (gutshot). When MP1 checked, it looked like he knew he had a beaten hand or he had missed a draw. But, I thought, Shit! Did he just make a better straight than mine and is now going to check-raise me since I played the turn so aggressively? I mean, if he put me on the King-high straight, he’d try to do such a thing, wouldn’t he? This is total Monsters-Under-the-Bed nonsense on my part.



Result:
COshows [A Q] a pair of Queens



MP1 shows [8 5] a straight, Queen high



billywestjp shows [J K] a straight, King high



billywestjp wins the pot (21.7 BB) with a straight, King high

So, I was right about CO; he had top pair with a backdoor flush draw on the flop. His flush possibility disappeared on the turn and with the possible straight on the turn (Indeed, I had the nut straight), his aggression on the turn was really just spew (Maybe he read my flop cap as me having a flush draw and not a straight draw). Now, look at MP1: he 3-bet the flop with a mild flush draw but picked up a gutshot straight draw on the turn and made it on the river. It’s clear to me that if I had bet on the river, CO would have likely called and MP1 might have given me some action.



If both only just called, I would have gotten 2 extra BB with my river bet. If MP1 raised me, I would’ve only just called, but if CO called the reraise as well, I could’ve had 4 extra BB for the hand.



Note To Self: There are no such things as monsters under the bed. Well, not this time, anyway.

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A friend of mine, who has lived here in Tokyo for a few years and has loved almost every day of it, has decided to pack it in and head back home. I don’t know the details surrounding the reason for his impending departure, but it’s got me thinking about my own future here in the land of the rising sun.



Why am I thinking about a possible departure myself? Well, there are two main reasons:

• I’ve had enough of my job and am not sure if I’d be interested in working one of the few other jobs in Japan for which I’m qualified. And,
• My long-term poker winrate is so high that it seems like a waste to not play poker full time, where I could likely double my current income.

To be honest, I’m not looking to get out of Japan, or even just Tokyo, for that matter. I’d like to stay. But, unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to save enough money at my current income level to set up my own business here in Japan in the next few years, which is ultimately what I’d like to do.



It seems at this point that my best bet would be to relocate to Vegas for the time being, play poker full time while enjoying the freedom of not being tied down to a company job, and save as much as I can doing it to get a business going in the next couple of years. While having a lot less stress in my life is one benefit of not slaving away at a regular job, I’ll also have more time to think creatively about my plans for the future.



Well, no matter what, I have a strong feeling that this year needs to be a year of unprecedented change for me. A positive change, of course, but one that’s going to take an extraordinary effort on my part. When the dust settles at the end of summer, I should be on a course that will bring me closer to my destiny.

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I started off going 4000 hands at around 7.5 BB/100 only to level off at 6000 hands at 4.1 BB/100. Granted, I had a couple of meltdowns and played some pretty stupid poker through a couple of sessions. But overall, I’m pleased with this winrate.



Actually the 4.1 BB/100 winrate is averaged from the winrates I’ve achieved playing Hold ‘Em at various limits. At the lower limits, the winrate is higher and at the higher limits, it’s lower.



I’ve been playing a lot lately, mostly because I’ve been staying home most of the time on weekends in order to reach my savings goal for the summer. And, since I’m at home so often and am worried about money, playing a lot of poker has been a great way to add more dollars to my name. And, since I’ve had just about enough of my job and am ready to leave it, playing a ton of cards will be good for me since I’m likely to play poker full time after this job is history.

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In case you haven’t noticed, there are some new micro-limit Hold ‘Em games at Full Tilt Poker. The lowest tables are $0.5-$0.10 limit. And yes, these poker tables are crushable for any reasonably-experienced Hold ‘Em player.



Of course, only beginners, dabblers, and hobbyists are likely to spend any real time at these tables, but anyone needing to brush up on their loose-game play a little bit will really appreciate the availability of these tables. In fact, I’ve had so much fun playing these games during the last couple weeks, I’ll be sure to continue visiting them quite often.



These days, my full-time job and after-work lifestyle here in Tokyo keep me too busy to spend much time playing poker. But, I do use the money I make during my limited time at Full-Tilt playing only low-limit Hold ‘Em to pay for my website hosting service and domain name purchases. And, by playing at the $0.5-$0.10 tables, I’ve made just as much money (if not a little more) in the last two weeks as I have playing $0.25-$0.50, and I’ve really enjoyed the loose play. If you play the $0.25-$0.50 tables at Full Tilt regularly, you know these games can be as tight $3-$6 games at times.



Hopefully these new micro-limit Hold ‘Em poker games won’t bust too many people out too quickly causing them to become as tight as the $0.25-$0.50 games often are.

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Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts…



The first part is called The Pledge.



The second part is called The Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something…
And makes it do something extraordinary.



Now you’re looking for the secret.
But you won’t find it because, of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t want to know.



You want to be fooled.

- Michael Caine as Cutter, from the movie The Prestige



In the late 1800s, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison vied for supremacy in the electrical power generation business. Edison tried to publicly discredit Tesla on several occasions by offering demonstrations of how supposedly dangerous Tesla’s AC (alternating current) electric power distribution was. In some cases, animals were electrocuted to death to make the point. In the end, however, Tesla’s AC won out and became the standard in electric power distribution.



Who cares, right? Most people don’t know how the electricity they use every day is generated, nor do they want to. They just pay the electric bill each month and service continues, allowing them to watch TV, check out internet porn, whatever…



Dropping a check in the mail, or having the funds electronically transferred each month and expecting continued, uninterrupted service is like offering a prayer or a sacrifice to some god in order to carry on a comfortable existence. I mean, if the folks at your local power generation facility decide not to keep electricity flowing to your residence at some point, regardless of your timely payment, what are you going to do about it? Those people at the power plant might as well be gods to you.



So how do people carry on and not go crazy worrying about whether or not they’ll have electricity to use whenever they need it? Well, we all know the answer to that one: Faith. Faith in our local energy providers to keep us adequately supplied. Having faith is much easier than trying to learn and understand what makes the world go ’round or the universe do it’s neverending cosmic dance.


The movie The Prestige tells the story of two rival magicians vying to become London’s premier illusionist. Throughout the story, it’s not clear who’s supposed to be the good guy and who’s supposed to be the bad one, and by the end of the story we learn that good and bad has nothing to do with any of it. No morality tale here, just a story of obsession and the fragility of the human heart.


One character is all about being the best. Everything he does, he does for the sake of perfecting his craft. The other is all about fame. He knows that by amazing people, he’ll inspire wonder and give people a reason to believe that the world is a mysterious place and the puzzling nature of its workings inextricable. He knows that most of his audience gets by on faith, not reason, and with this he hopes to achieve a godlike status.



The final scene’s dialogue is a bit philosophy-laden (though not complicated) and thought-provoking. One of the magicians states that his whole raison d’etre was just to see the look on people’s faces when the final trick is carried off. People want escape, and magic is the perfect vehicle for it. The audience forgets all about how cold and miserable the real world can be, and for a moment are filled with wonder. We love thinking about the possibilities, usually more so than finding out concrete answers.



You might say that certain people, like doctors or scientists and engineers are more concerned with finding the answers than dwelling on the possibilities. Even the great physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman said, with regard to his love of theoretical physics, “The kick is in the Discovery” (of how things work). But, I’m willing to bet (if I could even do such a thing) that scientists like him always get a kick out of discovering things because newly-discovered knowledge always opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. Let’s face it, we’re usually more intrigued by the possibilities than we are with simple truths. Facts are cold and hard while possibilities are warm and inviting.


So, that’s what you get with The Prestige, a slightly philosophical movie that intrigues and entertains. You have two rivals: one who is concerned with perfecting his craft and truly becoming the best magician he can be, and one who is obsessed with convincing everyone that he is the best, regardless of his actual talents. Of course, there’s some of each character in all of us.



If you haven’t seen it yet, this movie is definitely worth your time.

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Came across this post on my Wordpress dashboard. Apparently Daniel Florien is a guy who used to be a hardcore Christian, but now has a blog dedicated to “figuring out what it means to be an unbeliever and skeptic.” Having been an unbeliever for many years, I guess I’m not sure if I’ll find visiting his blog “Unreasonable Faith” on a regular basis a worthwhile endeavor or not, but the first post I’ve checked out there is pretty good.

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Praise the Lord and pass the ammuntion; they’re at it again, those wacky gun-lovers and desperate criminal types. Last month, we had the North Carolina nursing home shooting rampage and the police officers killed in Oakland, California. Yesterday, it was some crazy bastard at a New York immigration center. And, today, it was some brilliant guy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on the way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon,” according to his friend. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this kind of stuff up. And, here it is, reality in the U.S.



Yeah, lots of people are going to blame the tough economic times for being the catalyst for some of these events. But, when you look at it simply, all of these people had easy, easy access to the weapons they used, most of them legally.



Ok, you’re a 2nd-Amendment kind of guy or gal. Let’s hear the “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people” nonsense. Come on, it’s what you live for saying. The fact is that guns allow people to kill large amounts of other people in a very short time, before anyone can do anything to stop the madness. Just by these 4 incidents alone, 28 innocent people are dead and even more wounded.



Knowing that there are so many batshit-crazy lunatics in societies in countries throughout the world, it baffles me completely to think that the most advanced nation in the world still allows weapons capable of erasing dozens of lives in a minute or less to easily fall into the hands of these mentally malfunctioning dipshits.



Ok, now say it… “We need guns because we live in a world full of bad people.” Now that you’ve said it, for like the 2000th time without even thinking, show me the statistics that prove more lives are saved by law-abiding citizens who successfully use guns to protect themselves and others than the lives that are taken by nutjobs who had easy, legal access to guns. You can’t, can you. In fact, you can’t even make a sound, logical argument that this might be the case, right? I’m no genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I can see the situation for what it is. It amazes me how many brilliant people still support the right to legal gun ownership.

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Ever since I bought my Nikon DSLR, I shoot around Tokyo every chance I get. Today, I worked in Ikebukuro and took advantage of the building’s rooftop access for the purpose of getting some good shots from up high. I’m sure I’ll be putting all of the best ones into a piece for 7:10 in the near future, but for now, I’ve included a few in this here post.

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From the beginning of this year I’ve been quite busy not only with my new position at work, but also in my social life. Yeah, I usually have quite an active social life, but recently someone special entered it and occupied a fair bit of my time. While it was great while it lasted, it was over before I had a chance to get my senses back about me and I was knocked for a bit of a loop. But, things seem to finally be settling back down now, and I hope to be posting more regularly here at The Pokerist.



Most people who know me know my main site, 7:10 to Tokyo, and also know that I’ve kicked around with a few others. JapanBlogger.net seems to be a site I can leave alone most of the time and just add new blogs to the directory when I get requests to do so, usually one per week. My last post here was about a new site I started called TokyoFilter, which I found myself unable to really get going. For now, I’m just leaving it alone and I don’t know what I’ll do with it, if I ever get back to it.



Though I’ve had a blog, in one form or another, for about three years, it was last year when I really got serious about the Japan blogging thing and bought domain names and web space through a web-hosting service. I started 7:10 a year ago, and in that time it has evolved and de-evolved. For a short while, it was a collaboration between myself and a few other contributors. Now, however, it has basically become my Japan blog with an occasional guest blog post. That’s for the best, though; I don’t have to work as hard to keep it updated and fresh, but traffic flow continues to increase. And, the AdSense revenue pays for the web hosting, so it’s a hobby that costs me nothing. And, so far, it has been a great social-networking endeavor; I’ve made a few more friends here in Tokyo due to the site.



Anyway, from now on, I’m just going to focus on this site here and 7:10 while updating JapanBlogger on occasion. If you feel the need to choose only one site of mine to read on a regular basis, I’d rather you stick with 7:10. But, if you stop by and pay me a visit here once in a while, I’ll definitely be grateful.

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