For the last couple of weeks, Ash has been in and out of hospitals and doctors’ offices, never because of one thing, but because she apparently just really likes it: sinus problems, allergy to medication, nearly broken foot.  It’s been a pretty busy April for me, since I’ve gotten more responsibility with Landen.  This is mostly because Ash has more or less stopped breastfeeding (she was on OTHER meds that made it dangerous.)  This is both a good and a bad thing – I always like more time with my son, I just wish it wasn’t in the wee hours of the morning and he wasn’t crying so much.  Actually, it’s been a blessing in disguise in one aspect: his acid reflux isn’t so bad anymore now that it’s [mostly] bottle feeding.  Of course, that runs us an extra $100 a month – I guess this is where the “babies are expensive” part kicks in.

I’ve been off my blog for a while mainly because of preparations for the weddingish, of course.  The good news it that Landen is going to be a PERFECT age when people are out here.  He is very playful, great around strangers, naps a few times but is still awake for much of the day… everyone should get their money’s worth of ‘cute pictures’.  Jon will have his hands full – hopefully a drink in one hand a camera in the other.

And here it is: the only existing picture of Gram and Smacky.

Another reason for our poor picture posting has little to do with time: we just take bad photos.  I guess now that he’s moving a whole lot more, we’re finding more and more blurry shots.  My camera is excellent at outdoor photos, but absolutely dreadful at taking indoor ones.  Hopefully when it’s just a LITTLE warmer out.  But here are a couple to sate even the most baby-hungry of palattes.  And no, don’t eat our baby.

We’ve got a number of videos.  Hopefully those come out better and will be posted before he turns 10.

Including last night, I’ve had:

-pocket aces lose to Q8 suited (straight)

- J10 lost to J7

-pocket kings lose to AQ (straight to the queen, of course)

Why do I play this game?

For the rest of you, there’ll be some baby photos up very soon.

*edit – of course, the next two tournaments I play I win a 6-person tournament, then I come in 2nd in a 90-person tourney.  I lost the latter with pocket sixes… against pocket 7s.  I’ll take that.

So more or less when I moved out here, I decided I would start a season of MVP Baseball 2005 with the intent of seeing how many major league records I could break.  It was kinda tricky to do – you can’t just make a whole team of super players because you won’t be able to afford them all.  So what I did was make a few very bad players each year (with 5-star potential) so that after quite a few seasons, they’d be great.  In the meantime, I tried to have enough other good players to have a good team – thus earning me more money each year.  I simulated about a dozen seasons (it takes about an hour to sim a season.)  Anyway, I eventually had my team of All-Asian made-up superstars. I still played on the hardest setting.

Each game of actual playing takes between 35 – 50 minutes.  I would play in spurts – playing about ten or twelve games in a week, then going a month without playing.  I had started to break some records by about game 100 of the 162-game season.

Then last week, I had a scare.  I accidentally turned off the machine while it was saving.  I thought it would ruin my hard work.  Turns it out deleted my “profile” (meaning my overall win-loss record and stats) but not the season.  Whew.  That would have been a shame.

Concurrently, I started a new season where I could use cheat codes to make gimmicky players (a tiny tiny man with a huge bat that almost always hits homers, a guy with a bat who breaks and he grounds out to the pitcher every time…) in order to concentrate on beating CERTAIN records. For instance, in this season, I will only use a 3-pitcher rotation to try to break pitching records, and I have players who have no power who will hopefully be hitting lots of doubles and triples against a drawn-in outfield.

And last night, overtired and with Landen in my arms, I saved that second season over my first Asian player season.  Which had only TWO GAMES LEFT IN THE SEASON.

So I actually don’t know which records I broke.  I know for a fact I had 91 homers with two players, I had over 150 steals with a few players, and I also had broken the RBI and Run Scored records with a couple of players.  But their totals are gone forever.  I know I was 156-4 as a team.

So I will bid farewell to my team by naming them.

1B – Sonny Moonsan

2B – Cyrus Chi (lead the league in walks, but had a poor .333 batting average)

SS – Peng Pong

3B – Double Chen

RF – Anzinini Doots

CF – Sam Sung

LF – Mooshoo Park

DH – Man Ho

SPs – Wang Dong (1.40 ERA or so), Glassa Saki (had a no-hitter), Feng Shuey, Asian Stereotype (was tiny and muscular, compiled a 28-0 record), and Seamus Ichiro (he’s Scottish-Japanese.)

RPs – Mitsub Ishii, Makahashi Takahashi, Lee Ving (yeah Clue reference), Wok Hibachi, Pickled Okha

CP – Kari Oki

RIP Cleveland Indians team that never finished.  I’m an idiot (for a number of reasons).  Cue Aaron…

I’m less than one month away from being almost technically “off the market”.  Ladies, be forwarned – I’m about to become almost close to being unavailable, therefore sexier.

More videos can be found at ashsparks’ Youtube account.  Go and squeee.

This is going to pain me.  I liked FF VII more than FFVIII.  Not much, but even a little bit is a painful admission to make.  I was always one of those rebels who actually liked FFVIII better than FFVII.  It’s not that I don’t like FFVIII, because I do; it’s because I had underrated FFVII.  Anyway, enough acronyms in the first paragraph.  Let’s move on.

I “played” the game for a whopping 91 hours and 53 minutes.  That is in quotes because that is the amount of time logged into the game.  However, as anyone with a young baby can attest, quite a fair portion of that time was spent checking on Landen while the game happened to be on, changing a diaper, or walking around, trying to get him to stop crying (I would play late at night while holding him up after feedings – *usually he was asleep*.)  Also, I tried “Angelo Searching” (a very lengthy way to get rare items) for at least one overnight, so that’s 6 or 7 hours right there that I wasn’t playing but the game counter was on.

The rest of the time was spent doing as much as I possibly could in the game.  Following another Absolute Steve awesome walkthrough, I finished the game with all 6 characters at level 100 (which actually isn’t essential for a ‘perfect game), had all the GFs, beat the two strongest enemies in the game (handily, for the Omega Weapon), got one of every card, amassed a number of the items, and basically wasted my life away for a while there.  Here’s the breakdown of the game as a whole:

The Good

- Bar none the best opening movie to date, even better than the ones on the PS2.  This just MAKES you want to play the game.

- “Liberi Fatali” – while the music in this game is fairly forgettable, the opening music is just awesome, among the best in the series

- The ending.  After 2 let-down endings in a row (possibly 3, since I don’t even REMEMBER the ending of 5), this one was a great ending.  Not only was the movie incredible to watch, but it actually shows a little resolution along the way.  The cute ‘home video’ aspect under the credits was a nice, humorous touch.

- It’s an item-whore’s wet-dream.  As someone who loves collecting items, there were tons of ways to do it: from mugging to carding to devouring to modifying to dropping, there are tons of ways to get neat rare items.  It’s always cool getting one of those 64:1 odds items.

- This is the first game where the monsters aren’t set levels – they level up along with you.  This makes it interesting because you could theoretically never level up and face a super weak Ultimecia, or get as strong as possible and face a much stronger boss.

- The gunblade IS pretty badass.  Sure, it’s probably just a glorified bayonet, but a bayonet really is a gun first and a blade in a pinch.  A gunblade is a gun where, guess what, you also get to shoot them at point blank range.

- The card game (an optional sidequest) is very addicting.  While not on the level of Blitzball in terms of fun, it’s still a great time-waster.  I’d say probably 1/3 of my actual playing time was spent on the card game to get cool items.

The Bad

- In order to effectively become usefully strong, you need to amass MANY spells to junction.  This is a highly boring thing to do.  My battle plan looked like this: draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, fight, fight, dead.

- The characters in general just lack any sort of ‘cool’ factor. There isn’t one character who I actually pulled for, whereas in every other game there’s at least someone I could like.  And what’s worse is you can’t even name most of them, just the main two (who I called Emo Jr. and, possibly my favorite name ever, Orifice for the female lead)  I’ll get to the Emo Jr. in a minute.

- In terms of storyline, this might be the least believable love story – I actually believe the love more in “I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry.”  Emo Jr.  is cold and distant, and then suddenly falls in love because of childhood feelings of dejection an loneliness?  I guess?  Freud would have a field day.

- The storyline is okay.  It’s better than VII.  But it’s nothing amazing.  While the idea of time compression is cool, it sort of doesn’t actually explain why anyone would WANT that to happen – let’s say Ultemecia gets her wish and everything ceases to be because time is compressed.  What does she do then?  Learn to whistle?  It’d be pretty boring being the only thing around.

The Ugly

- As many critics have pointed out, the junctioning system is needlessly complex.  It’s really awkward.

- The worst main character in any FF game.  There, I said it.  He’s completely internal, annoying, and I personally didn’t care if he got disemboweled.

- The “school” and “futuristic” feel of the game was a detractor.  This game had no light moments at all except for the fact that everyone likes hot dogs.  Ha!

- How long are those stupid GF summonings, anyway?  I stopped using them because I didn’t feel like waiting through them.

The Awesome

Each game kinda has its own thing that I really appreciate.  (VI had the Yeti, VII had the nail bat)  VIII had the Devour ability.  You walk up to a creature (often times 5x bigger than you), and then it cuts to a screen with a very placid picture (of flowers, water, or a field) while the words “CENSORED…PLEASE STAND BY” scroll by.  If it works, you hear this pretty nasty sounding intestinal workings.  When the screen comes back, the monster is gone.  That’s a nice touch.

Onto the only game in the series I never finished, FFIX.  I will try to leave my bias behind and play the game legit.  No cheatcodes.  That might sway my take on it, but we’ll see.

Total time spent so far: ~377 hours (this is getting depressing to post)

I don’t know why so many new parents complain that their babies aren’t good with schedules.  Landen is great with them.  In fact, he likes schedules so much he makes a new one each day.  Actually, I kid – he’s starting to at least develop trends (a bedtime that is usually 7:30 – 8:30, napping after he eats in the morning… etc)  That’s definitely a good thing.

I was in the store today and the bagger said three things:

1)  He’s adorable.

2) You must hear that all the time.

3) He looks just like you.

I think that means she was hitting on me.  I felt bad, I didn’t get enough groceries to have her bag anything.  I missed my opportunity.  Oh well.  Good thing I have an AWESOME fiancee.

Anyway, you’re all here for the pictures.  Here you go.

Ashley teaching him how good human flesh tastes

No, our son isn’t French: he isn’t surrendering.

The only baby blues we have.

I look asleep, don’t I?

Caption wanted.

Chillin’ in a Jaymar-picked onesie.

On an unrelated note, congrats to Aaron and Julia on their upcoming baby boy.  Julia, one bit of parenting advice: pray to god that Aaron isn’t the biological father.

It ain’t easy dropping to last in one day – it takes hard work:

edit: Today didn’ t go much better.  Two day totals:

4/53 – that’s a batting average of .075.  Wow.

I try never to listen to the advice of ex-girlfriends.  In fact, the last time I tried, her advice was “go jump off a cliff”, and after a few attempts at ‘building up to it’ by hurling myself down a flight of stairs, I just couldn’t do it.  But there are rare occasions that I do listen to them.  My ex (because of whom this silly column even begun) had once told me that anything by the winery Frog’s Leap was excellent, and in a pinch, Ravenswood winery was also a pretty sure bet.  Why I remember that years later I’ll never know.  But when it comes to wine, she knows almost as much as I do.  And what I do know is this:

I do not like Chardonnays.  I’ve made that abundantly clear on this website.  Whereas some wine enthusiasts may say you can taste the “smokey pine” in a wine, to me, Chardonnay normally tastes like sucking on a sapling.  If I wanted smokey pine, I would stop forest fires with my tongue.  So when I went to visit friends and they had bought me a bottle of Chardonnay (“because you like white wines, we thought”), I was tempted to resist, claiming I had stopped drinking (all liquids.)  But I happen to like them as people, and in addition, I noticed it was a Ravenswood wine, so I gave it the old college try, ready to pretend to fall asleep after a few sips if it was that bad.

This is a good wine.  I’m not saying that in a “this is good for a Chardonnay, which means it’s probably good enough to clean dishes with,” but it’s a genuinely good wine.  It doesn’t have the achingly tart sensation that some Chardonnays do, and further it didn’t make me think I was drinking flavored mulch puree like others do.  I don’t know if I typically have a problem with the “dryness” of Chardonnays (as it’s hard to classify anything that’s a liquid as dry), but there is some quality that I do not enjoy that this wine clearly lacked.  In short, perhaps because it tasted less like Chardonnays I’ve had in past, this was a very good wine.

I suppose one can’t discount the fact that, after all this time, I might be becoming acclimated to wine and have ‘expanded my palatte’, so to speak.  Bollocks.  I still don’t like crap that stinks.  But this authoritatively did not stink.  Ravenswood winery does not traditionally make the cheapest wine out there, but if it got me to drink (and even praise) a Chardonnay, they’re doing something right, and I recommend you try it.  Since I’m not sure of the year, I’ll give all Ravenswood Chardonnay’s a 7.5/10 (except 2001.  STAY AWAY FROM THAT YEAR FOR PETE’S SAKE!!!!)

WARNING: this is going to be an extremely long post, and it will deal entirely with poker and statistics.  If these don’t interest you, I suggest going HERE to read a blog I posted earlier today with some mini-updates about my son.  He’s the real reason most of your read this blog.  Don’t read the whole thing and then complain that I wasted your time – I warned you.

So some of you may remember I tried a smaller version of this back in January of 2008.  Basically, in a discussion with some buddies online, I made the hypothesis that Full Tilt Poker favors the bigstack in poker (while on FT, most people say it always favors the weak hand, but I disagree, saying it will only favor the weak hand if they are also the bigstack.)  So I set out to test this by playing 100 tournaments (I ended up with 120 as my sample.)  That produced almost 400 all-ins.  I figure that’s a pretty good cross-section to test a theory.  First off, some notes about the experiment:

- I tracked every all-in on a Word Document which can be downloaded here: www.esoderek.com/data/File/Poker Stats.doc.  I’ve tried linking it three times and it’s not working for whatever reason.  It should be pretty self-explanatory.  Each tick is one all-in.  If it is green, that means I was dominant.  If it was red, then that means I was dominated.  More on domination in a minute.

- I only tracked all-ins.  I did not track severely crippling hands.  Unless one (or more) people’s chips were all in the pot, I didn’t take note of it.  Also, I didn’t take note of times when the chipstacks were exactly even (which was rare) and I didn’t keep track of hands that resulted in a split pot, even if it was a very lucky/unlucky series of cards that produced that split pot.  Finally, I didn’t include pots where the chips were put all-in AFTER the river card was already out as there would be no chance for the computer to change the outcome.

- These numbers indicate when I was actually all-in, not intent.  What I mean is this: if I had very few chips and got pocket Aces, I might slow-play them by only doing a small raise in order to get the most chips out of the hand.  I may know FULL WELL that I will push all in no matter what the flop is, but I do not consider it an all-in until I actually commit the chips.  Even if this means that after the flop I might be behind – if that’s the case, it went down on my sheet as a behind hand, even if I was mentally committed while I was ahead.

- Domination – There is no numerical definition of “domination” that I could find online other than ‘being well ahead/behind on a hand’, so I quantify it as 75% ahead or behind.  This is a pretty significant number.  For instance, AK is NOT dominating AJ.  It’s 70%/30% or so.  So the hands that are colored are pretty significant favorites.  Also, this number is at the time of the all in.  So if I don’t go all-in until the turn, the chances of it being a hand with some type of domination are much higher than pre-flop, as there’s only one card left to come out.

- As far as the terms “ahead” and “behind”, I used the statistical likelihood of winning, not actual.  The website that I used was this one: http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_odds/texas_holdem. After each all in, I’d plug the exact cards of the participants in at the time of the all-in.  If I had a greater percentage to win than the opponent, I was ahead.  If that percentage was greater than 75%, I was dominating.  If I had a smaller percentage than my opponent, I was behind, and if my opponent had a great than 75% of winning, I was dominated.  (NOTE: I realize that this doesn’t take into account other people’s cards, as that could easily affect the numbers.  I figured I had to do it this way since I can’t see mucked cards.  The way I saw it – I’ll probably get hurt by others’ cards as often as I’d get helped, so it would even out.)

- I also tried to do this with multiple-people as well, not just heads up.  Pretty much, if more than two people are in the hand, it’s almost impossible to be dominant, as there are usually too many outs to keep you over 75%.  It got confusing once you had to deal with two other people, who was ahead in chips, and how their percentage was in comparison to yours.  Suffice to say, I did my best and these did not account for many of the all-ins.  I guess my point is – there is an possibility of error of + or – a couple of percent.

Anyway, onto the results:

Overall Results:

While this doesn’t get to my theory yet, I figure it was important to know how I did during my overall 120 tournaments.  If it was a particularly bad stretch, for instance, the numbers could be chalked off to a bad streak.  The first half of the tournament, I had a very bad slide, but made up nearly all of it during the second half.  Overall, I was about even financially, having lost maybe $10 or $15.

In terms of overall all-ins, I was actually ahead.  I won more than I lost.  I had 213 wins vs. 184 losses (53.7% winning percentage).  This accounts for ALL all-ins, including mine or if I was calling someone else’s.  That’s not bad.  I just think that’s important to know going on.

Bigstack vs. Smallstack

I’ll start off with the whole ball of wax here.  Here is the stat that tests my theory.  And here are the numbers.  When I was a bigstack (whether it was my all-in or someone else’s), my record was 112 wins and 66 losses (a 62.9% winning percentage.)  That’s pretty impressive, to be sure.  When I was the smallstack, my record was a less impressive 92 wins and 116 losses (44.2% winning percentage.)

So that’s it, right?  My point is proved?  Well, yes, but I wasn’t satisfied with that.  I demonstrated that as a bigstack, I won considerably more than I lost, which is what I set out to do.  But why?  And where did it happen?  I broke it down even further.

First, I tested out how often I was ahead vs. behind for each circumstance (bigstack and smallstack).  Here’s what shook out.

When I was the bigstack and ahead (better percentage than my opponent): 93 wins, 30 losses (75.6%)

Bigstack but behind: 19 wins 36 losses (34.5%)

This makes sense.  I will win more when I’m ahead than when I’m behind, no matter how many chips I have.  But look at how much those winning percentages drop when I’m the smallstack.

Smallstack and ahead: 63 wins 44 losses (58.9%)

Smallstack but behind: 28 wins 73 losses (26.7%)

When I was the smallstack, BOTH percentages were almost exactly a quarter worse.  That, in my mind, is significant.  So I was trying to figure out possible causes for this.  Sure, when you don’t have many chips, you will push with weaker hands (maybe a K10 or something like that) than when you’re calling as a bigstack.  But that couldn’t really account for everything.  Personally, I try never to go below 5 big blinds without pushing all in, so I usually have some ammunition when I do push.  Therefore, it gives me a little extra time to find a much better hand (a pocket pair or at least KQ suited)  However, I was noticing that many times I would be the smallstack and pair the top card on the flop.  I’d push only to be against a slow-played pair of Ks or a miracle set.  It was uncanny how many times I had a GOOD hand as a smallstack and would be dominated.  So I decided to run the #s to see if I was more dominant as a bigstack than a smallstack.

Domination – Frequency

First off, to see how often I was either dominant or dominated based on my chipstacks.  The results were slightly different than I expected.

As the bigstack, I was dominating 48 of my 119 calls (40.3%).  As a smallstack, I was dominating 38 of my 100 (38%).

As a bigstack, I was dominated 27 of my 53 all-ins (50.9%).  As a smallstack, I was dominated 36 of my 94 (38.3%).

I had expected no real difference here, as in theory you should have a dominant position based on your play and your read, not your chips.  (By this I mean that I find it easier to read another player having a MONSTER hand vs. having a pretty good hand based solely on his betting.)   This mostly held true except for one thing.  I realized when I am calling an all-in, it is much more likely that I am either WAY ahead or WAY behind.  Perhaps I am too loose a player when I have chips.  But aside from that one stat, it goes to show that there isn’t a great disparity between the frequency of domination, regardless of chipstack.  So how did those dominating/dominated hands hold out?

Domination Win Percentage

One expects that if you are more than a 75% favorite to win a hand, you should almost always (but not always) win.  Well, that’s true.

As bigstack when I was dominating, I won 43 and lost only 9 (82.7%)

As smallstack when I was dominating, I won 31 and lost 9 (77.5%)

As bigstack when I was dominated, I won 6 and lost 21 (22.2%)

As smallstack when I was dominated, I won 7 but lost 31 (18.4%)

Again, it shows pretty conclusively that regardless of the overall strength of my hand, I tended to do a little better when I was bigstack than when I was the smallstack.  So far, I was yet to receive a single stat that disproved my theory.  My point in being this thorough was to eliminate a simple factor, such as I tended to push too easily when I was low on chips… etc.

Strength/My Luck

I think it should be noted that I may not be the luckiest person at online poker.  As you know, I won more all-ins than I lost – how could I then possibly be down money, although not much?  Well, simple – the timing of my won hands wasn’t as good as the timing of my losses (or possibly I would get worse beats on bigger-money tournaments.)  Also, it should be noted that I should have won more than I did.  Note:

I was strong (having the better hand) 230 times out of the 386 all-ins (59.6%).  So I should have won around 3/5s of the pots I was in, right?  No.  Remember in the beginning my actual winning percentage was only 53.7%.  Six percent doesn’t sound like alot, but it is when it’s in the negatives.

This whole experiment came about because a friend of mine has done VERY well on the site.  So it made me wonder – I bet he’s a bigstack more than I was, so he wouldn’t notice these bad beats as much.  After all, every poker player remembers those hands where his pocket Qs lose to 5 6 offsuit, but how many poker players remember when their much stronger hand goes on to win?  Not many.  So I compiled one last stat:

I was the bigstack in 178 all-hands.  (Of those, I was strong 69.1% of the time)

I pushed all-in in 208 hands.  (Of those, I was strong 51.4% of the time – still more than half!!!)

I’d be curious to see if my friend who has done well on Full-Tilt was bigstack more than smallstack during an all-in.  It might account for his contentedness with the site.

Final Analysis

The results were pretty much exactly what I’d hoped for.  They’re not astronomically biased, which is what some naysayers would want to see (where the bigstack wins 80% of the time), but if that were the case, people would catch on and nobody would put money into the site.  In fact, if I add my 120 tournament numbers to the numbers when I first kept track, the results are the even more indicative of my point while still not being obvious: 165 wins and 98 losses as the bigstack (62.7%) vs 109 wins and 164 losses as smallstack (40%).  I further think they do this for two reasons:

1) Online, people can sign up for a tournament and not actually play in it.  Even though they get chipped off, they could still catch lucky cards on their eventual all-ins and sneak into the cash.  By tweaking the numbers a bit, the site all but assures that no vacant player will cash, because they will always be the smallstack at the time of their all-in.

2) This speeds the game up and allows more games to be played, making more money for the site.

An interesting side-effect of this experiment was that I saw how my actual play changed.  This happened in two major ways.

> I would use my chipstack as the final decision-maker on a hand I was unsure about.  If I had a large chip lead and had just a drawing hand (A10) and someone made a sizeable all-in, even if I pegged myself as an underdog (thinking they had Js or something) I would call, assuming I would suck them out.  Conversely, if I didn’t have many chips and I had 7s and a bigstack raised heavily before me, I’d fold, thinking he had 8s or 9s which would crush me.  This worked to my advantage quite a bit.

> What actually might have hurt my game was I would tend to overplay hands when I had a hunch I was strong but they had many outs.  If I suspected someone to have a flush draw on the flop and I had top pair, I’d push MUCH harder than I normally would, especially if I was down in chips.  This way, if they called (which people always do on flush draws – it boggles my mind), I could say I was strong when I went all-in, even if I suspected I would lose.  That’s probably not a good strategy to have in poker.  That’s not playing smart poker, that’s giving yourself a reason to complain when you lose.  Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to have carried over in my real game poker.

Anyway, if you read all of this, you’re a very silly person.  Anyway, I stick by my assertion that Full Tilt Poker slightly favors bigstacks.  And once I start playing again, hopefully it will be to break that streak of 5 straight suckouts that I am currently riding (and the reason for my poker haitus).