Cheating at poker

Cheating at poker has progressed over the years. Whereas the supposed problem in the Old West was slick dealers stacking the deck and players sliding a hidden Ace into their hand the most usual cheating today is team play. 

Simply put team play can be used to run a player out with multiple raises or raise a team mate’s big hand so he wins a bigger pot. Somewhat more complex play is available almost exclusively on the Internet where 3 or 4 players tell each other what they have via phone or Internet. This allows a player to know certain things. That is, if three guys threw away an Ace and an Ace flopped then the fourth player’s pocket Kings is good and he knows it. That’s a bit simplistic but it shows my point. And if you can get  20 extra small and big bets in per session that’s an extra $600 in a 20-40 game going to your stack.

In live games that is almost impossible. But two people playing together is not. A buddy raises before the flop. Four people call.  The flop comes. The bettor bets and the raiser raises again. Three players fold. One  player calls. The bettor reraises… and the player in the middle mucks his hand. If the cheaters are smart they bet/call to the River when one bets and the other folds. The dumber ones just check the hand down and one shows his hand and the other folds. A few instances of that and the smarter players at the table either get up and leave or complain, sometimes loudly, to the Floor Person supervising the game.

Unlike the Old West, cheating in casino card rooms is mostly ignored.  While checking the Nuts in a tournament to your friend, if detected, will get you a penalty, team play may get a warning from the Floor Person but in 99% of the cases, nothing else.

Worse, many people see nothing wrong in two buds soft playing in tournaments as well as ring games although multiple complaints sometimes bring banning.

Which is better than “Go for your gun, sidewinder!”

But what to do?? My solution is make suspects show both hands if there is a bet and call, or if there both suspects check. And complain to the Floor Person, quietly if you don’t want controversy. Or just bring the subject while talking to another person. Sometimes just the subject being aired stops it.  But if it doesn’t stop, pick up your chips and leave. 

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Whatever happened to those crazy girls??

You know, I didn't note the time frame of my comments in my last post. It was in the late 70's. Of course before then we had the hippies and free love, free that is if you didn't add in the cost of the doctor visit and penicillin shots. (At least that's what my friends have told me.) Then came herpes and then came AIDS and the world changed. But during the 60's....

The Sixties

For all of you who remember being there . . .
And for those of you who are too young and weren't there
- but sometimes wish you had been . .
..

Remember
the words from the song 

"Where have all the flowers gone . . .
Long time passing ..."?

Have you ever wondered what happened. . .
to all those really cute and crazy, great looking, barefoot, young hippie chicks . . .

. .... ..who didn't wear bra's,
did drugs, smoked weed, and got tattooed. . .

...and had sex with every guy they met during that great Age of Aquarius back in the 60's?

Well, wonder no more!

Hat tip to Dave T!

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

What happened to the babes and where did all the fat women come from?

One of the people I admire is Burt Prelutsky. And not just because he admits to being old. I do it because he writes things such as this:

One thing that I have become aware of is that the female icons of today are not as attractive as they used to be, and I don’t attribute that to my age, but to their lack of faces and figures. For instance, Angelina Jolie has the pencil legs of a 90-year-old and lips that are larger than her arms; Lady Gaga looks like something the cat dragged in; and Sarah Jessica Parker looks like the homely girl that pretty girls hung out with in high school so they’d look even prettier by comparison. When you compare them to the likes of Rhonda Fleming, Rita Hayworth and Doris Day, you’d think you were comparing different species from different planets. (Emphasis added.)

Link

Long before the movie "Ten" came out a friend and I sat at the upstairs restaurant in the old Atlanta airport one fine 11ish morning and after sipping a few adult beverages to cover up the headaches from the previous night's adult beverages I remarked how delightful and well groomed the females in our view were. (Actually I probably said something like, "Damn that is one good looking sweet thing....")

My friend, agreeing with my observation, added, "We should devise a rating system. You know, like they do in the Olympics."

So we did. Now I won't trouble you with the details, but we didn't see a female in over an hour of watching and drinking below a 7. And yes, I remember that "the girls get prettier at closing time" and Jimmy M's immortal comment, "Fat women need love too," but it was, as I said, 11ish in the morning and I had practiced my drinking to the point that four or so VO and 7's didn't warp my judgement the way they would now.

The women were dressed better, had better figures, nicer hair do's, their make up was done correctly and they walked and carried themselves in a way that said, "Look at me. I'm a good looking sexy Lady."

I don't remember much else. My friend caught a flight to southeast LA and I probably flew back to Memphis although I can't be sure.

And lest you think my admiration of Burt's observation and comments is based only on memory, be aware that I still get around a bit. And the women I see in airports and in the casinos when I'm walking around between poker games or on break are almost uniformly 3's and below.

No wonder the birth rate is plunging. A lot of these babes are so fat I don't see how anyone could get close enough to get them pregnant....or want to.

Now we didn't rate the guys. I mean being the sexist selfish ignorant pigs that we were it didn't occur to us.

But I have to say that had we done so we would have seen men dressed smartly in suits and ties or neatly in casual clothes with shined shoes and no tattoos. And if they had a beard it would be neatly trimmed and no "5 o'clock shadows."

Now a huge majority look like they dressed to work on their car and have just completed a 12 hour shift doing same. In addition to being unkempt they are likely to be dirty and their beards are shaggy and many look like they haven't shaved in days.

You see them on TV all the time, except the babes are 10's and they are zeros... again  a valid reason why the birth rate is plunging... But's that's TV and if nothing else TV knows its market.

The two groups deserve each other.



"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

The three stages of a man's life

Cappy sent me this. I'm not sure why I used it because I've been married to the same woman for 54 years and 2 months... Yes, I married a Saint who is tolerant, wise, understanding and forgiving...

But, I have known some friends who went through the process....

Now  that I've gotten started....

A friend asked me about my garden.

It's the best I ever had. Man made global warming (sarcasm alert!) allowed me to get it in early and the green beans have produced and produced and produced. We have some 40 odd packets in the freezer along with whole tomatoes, corn, purple hull peas....

I put in Better Girl tomatoes and they have out done my expectations. As I set them out I put in a table spoon of Epsom Salt, mixed well in the soil and used fertilizer with calcium. No end root of the fruit. And yes, boys and girls tomatoes are a fruit. Also helped the squash and cukes.

Tried a hybrid okra and it has done great. The pod is much longer and smaller in girth than what I've been using. Tastes great. Only I have lost the seed packet and can't remember the name.

I am, of course, required to talk a small bit about politics.

I look at Obama's "tax plan" as pure BS.  I say this because:

The Senate can't introduce a revenue bill. So Harry Reid mouthing about it is nonsense. You might say the entire thing is theater written and directed by Obama, produced by Harry Reid and distributed by the Lame Stream Media, aka ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and the press.

BTW - If you have never visited GOC, you need to. He has 4 videos of John Sununu educating the talking heads. He really porks them and it is funny as hell. Too bad McCain's surrogates didn't have the balls to do the same in '08 but then McCain was too busy trying to be nice.

GOC

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Is Obama a Muslim?

Faye C sent me the link below. Supposedly Fox News has bent to pressure from the Obama regime and won't let Hannity show it.

Link

I don't know if that is true.

What I do know though is that Obama did spend his formative years in a Muslim country and his father and stepfather were Muslims and that at the school he attended he was entered as a Muslim. And although it is denied by some, I think it is plain that the school fit the description as Muslim school, a Madrassa, in function if not in name.

What does this mean? Nothing.

Except when you connect that to what he says in the video you have to come to the realization that he was greatly influenced as a child by the Islamic religion and that this influence is at work today.

Then the question becomes:

Do we want a President that is under this much influence by the Islamic religion?

Your call boys and girls.

My answer is no.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

History of the VX squadrons

Dave T sent me this bit of history on the VX squadrons. You may find it interesting.


http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2010/07/vx-squadrons.html">Link






"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper 


 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Murfreesboro Mosque

Larry P sent me an email that had the following link embedded in it.

The link opens to an article that raises some interesting questions:


"Why is it such a big deal that a Muslim community is simply trying to build a house of worship?

Let’s start with a little math. Murfreesboro, TN has just over 100,000 residents. According to estimates provided by the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, there are 200 to 300 Muslim families living in the area. When they announced their plans to build a 53,000 square foot mega mosque, a lot of questions came up. One subject of concern was why they needed such a huge compound for so few families. What is particularly disconcerting is that, according to their own documents (attached 2009 annual report) the ICM only has 45 active paying member families. Naturally this begs another question – who is paying for this massive compound?

And, what will it really cost to build something that looks like this, per square foot, at 53,000 square feet, when the project is completed? How many millions of dollars will these “45 active members” be coming up with – and where is all this money coming from?"

That is a good question, and my answer is:

From someplace and somebody else.

Now before you start waving the First Amendment let me point out religious buildings are subject to the same zoning laws as everyone else.

In this case the mosque members went to the county Planning Commission and received approval.

But then we found out that the meeting where approval was given was not properly advertised. A judge said that but didn't halt construction.

Some people aren't subject to the same rules as others.

But let's go back. Where is the money coming from? Obviously from the same place all the Muslim school money is coming from. From Muslim sources outside the country.

Does the First Amendment say that people are free to practice their religion by building religious buildings all over the country using money from outside the country?

"But the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro says it’s just a place of worship, right?

According to a passage on the ICM website from 2008, since scrubbed from the web, but preserved in the attached documents, here is what the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro website used to say about an objective of their presence, in Tennessee (before they scrubbed this from the web):

“The main focus is to insure the masjid (mosque) stronghold on our community and to expand beyond religious teachings… We must work hard so that the ICM have a prominent role in the development and progression of not only Mufreesboro, but of Middle Tennessee.”


No. The First Amendment doesn't protect "....(mosque) stronghold on our community and to expand beyond religious teachings......."

Here's the link. Be warned that it is not PC so don't complain. You don't have to read it.

Link


"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine