Celebrity Poker Showdown: Since I am kind of a loser and never hang out with anyone cool, I am about to drop a name that I hope will make you think to yourself, “Self, that Ammon is a cool guy. I think I will buy him sweets and shiny trinkets.” I was playing poker last night in a live game to hone my live game skills (Yes, I won), and I looked over at the next table to see Paul Rudd intently focused on a game. That’s right, I saw a celebrity. Now I am not one to gush and hoo and haw, but I really like him as an actor and I had seen a hilarious interview with him on The Daily Show the night before. So as I left I made a joke to him about his appearance on the show and got a laugh out of him. And I do believe it was a genuine laugh, not one of those “OK, you frighten me please go away now you leering rubbernecker” laughs. I was elated. OK, I wasn’t, but it is still cool to see and say hi to someone you respect. It is strange how celebrity affects people, and I always thought that I was not one of them. After all, I work two floors below Tim Robbins (another actor I regard highly) and ride the elevator with him frequently so I figured I am used to it. Not so. I guess I am just one of the starstruck groupies that I hate so much. OK, I exaggerate. But it is cool, ain’t it?
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/02/study-so-my-reading-list-is-as-follows/
Study! So my reading list is as follows…
Zen and the Art of Poker
Play Poker Like the Pros
Inside the Poker Mind
Caro’s Book of Poker Tells
Tournament Poker for Advanced Players
Poker Tournament Strategies
I am beginning to get very nervous for this poker tournament. My biggest fear is coming in last. My goal right now is to finish “in the money,” which will require placing in the top 90 out of about 750. I think I have a reasonable shot at that, as long as I can keep myself under control and well disciplined. I am sure you are all (both?) tired of hearing about this, but it weighs heavily on my mind lately. I will try to blog updates from the ship, too.
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/02/popularity-contest-so-i-looked-at-my/
Popularity Contest: So I looked at my website referral logs today. Three people found my site by typing “Ammon Brown” in a search engine. Twenty-nine found it by typing in “Jared Vallejo”. Twenty nine. Why do you people insist on finding MY site with HIS name. How embarassing for me. You bunch of jerks.
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/02/student-of-game-practice-and-study/
A Student of the Game Practice and study. Practice and study. I spent $100 on poker books yesterday. I bought books on strategy, tournament strategy, psychology, mathematics, and game theory. I want to be prepared for this tournament. I made the remark to a friend today that I am studying harder for this than I did for the GMAT! I am constantly looking for tournaments I can play to get more and more practice. I had my home game last night, which did not go well. I made the mistake of inviting a girl from our office and her husband. She took $15 off of me over the course of the evening. I told her next time I will just give her $15 and she can kick me in the nuts and we will call it even. Save us a few hours, too. Mike, Vin, and Tara were the big winners. I was struggling, catching bad cards and worse flops, if that means anything to you. I am pretty much singleminded right now, so there is not much else going on. Boring, I know.
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/02/gambling-is-vice/
Gambling is a vice. With that said, I am a DAMN GOOD GAMBLER! Poker is not really gambling to me, but I just WON a $9000 cruise package to go on the Party Poker Million III Cruise! Out of 750 contestants I finished FIRST! I qualified online for $25 and ran it up to $9000! I might even make the final table, be on the World Poker Tour on the Travel Cannel and possibly win a MILLION dollars! OK, counting my chickens too soon. Today I played from 3:30 PM until 12:30 AM to win this thing. I just got lucky cards, I guess. YEEEEEEAHHHHH!!!!
And the winner is…
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/01/it-is-all-over-now-after-winning/
It is All Over Now! After winning a commanding 0% of the vote in New Hampshire, Al Sharpton’s campaign has gotten a major boost, as he has been endorsed by Moby. It pays to have the heavy hitters in your corner! Look for a Sharpton resurgence!
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/01/i-realized-today-that-i-simply-exist/
I realized today that I simply exist. Nothing more. I just am. A sad an profound realization.
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/01/pokah-i-played-another-poker/
Pokah! I played another poker tournament at Foxwoods this weekend. I did even better than last time. This time there were 200 players and I finished 14th, winning a hundred dollars. Not too bad for my second tournament. I got lucky and found some good hole cards. It also helped that the table I was seated at was really weak so I cleaned them out before I saw any real competition. I was pretty darn proud of myself. I only made one major mistake, I folded my cards face up and had to go on time out for 10 minutes mid tournament. Rookie mistake. I wound up getting knocked out with two jacks in my hand and some fool called my raise with a 5-7 to make a low straight. What a jerk. I met up with a guy I met at the last tournament and we were assigned to the same table. We had fun playing at each other. He went out before me so he had to buy lunch. Good times were had by all.
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/01/daddy-responds-response-about-wal-mart/
Daddy Responds! A response about the Wal-Mart article I posted yesterday (below) from my dad, whose opinion I value highly:
Am I the only one who has read Adam Smith??? (Look him up if you have
to. Your encyclopedia will probably not fully express his place in
history. His influence in establishing free economies and democracies
in Europe is a phenomenal example of the pure power of ideas.)
Adam Smith simply says: if someone in another country wants to sell
(even underpriced subsidized) goods to you cheaper than you can make
them, –then LET HIM!! You get more of life’s basics for the same
price and therefore are in a position to produce higher value goods
yourself. Look at history. RCA was the big stock of the 1920’s
bubble. No radios have been produced in this country for years. Were
American workers thrown into mass unemployment? When Zenith, the last
domestic TV producer, quit, did the economy dive? Steelmaking made
America the dominant industrial power in the last century. Now there
is almost no primary steel production in this country. Automobile and
aircraft production are soon to go the same way. What happened in
these cases? America’s free economy just moved on to the next great
thing. As long as this economy remains the freest in the world, it
will also remain the strongest. Always innovating the next big
moneymaker. Always leading the way to the next economic step.
So why the gloom and doom? Resistance to change is one of the most
basic human reactions. (Read “inertia”.) No one likes to lose a job.
They will keep a dead ender because, by definition, they can’t see what
might be available in the future. This ability to view only the
present leads people who should know better to wring their hands over
“lost jobs”. The world is full of economists, credentialed, but not
credible, who simply do not understand history. If these people had
been one tenth right over the last decades, we would now have 80%
unemployment. And I don’t believe the new jobs will only be “service
jobs” as is so often said. Yes, that is where some end up, but the
rising generation of workers go into the rising industries. There are
not fewer jobs or worse jobs, just different jobs. That need for
change to different jobs is what frightens people and there are lots of
these diploma only economists who feed into this fear of change in the
people. Look at the example of Britain, an economic basket case in the
60’s. In the 80’s Margaret Thatcher shut down the unions, throwing 90%
of the mining industry out of work. And the result?? Britain has
regained its economic position in the world.
It is natural and easy to make decisions based on present conditions or
hardships. The problem is that those decisions will be aimed at
keeping things as they are. And keeping things as they are means
foregoing a future.
Thought question. We get very few of these subversive cheap goods from
South America and almost none from Africa. Why? They certainly have
an ocean of the absolute world’s cheapest labor.
Thought question. Japan, the world’s second largest economy, has been
stagnant for 15 years while America’s has grown apace and innovations
continue to come out of America. Why?
Thought question. India, with the world’s second largest pool of cheap
labor was on the other side of the world until just the last 10 years
and now work is going there daily. Why India all of a sudden?
In the fog of the recent political rhetoric about lost jobs going
overseas, has anyone noticed that the unemployment rate is falling?
Adam Smith might be dead, but his understanding of the world isn’t.
Adam Smith tells me not to be worried.
https://ammonbrown.com/2004/01/evil-empire-i-have-been-meaning-to/
Evil Empire: I have been meaning to post this article for a while now, but have not had a chance. It is long but worth it. Every time you go to Wal-Mart from now on, you may just be putting your daddy out of a job. Just think about that while you munch on your $2.97 gallon of pickles. This is just another example of too much power concentrated in one place. But the power was bestowed by the very people getting screwed, so who is to blame here? Our thirst for cheap goods is killing us, and Wal-Mart is making a tiny profit on billions of items. Crazy what economies of scale can do to distort the world economy.
Oh, the state of the union address last night… didn’t really pay attention. Didn’t really care. But I had to mention it.