Coolness

My awesome co-worker Dee met Barack Obama when he came to our school to speak on Martin Luther King Jr. Day about 7 years ago. Dee was one of the nominees for our institution's Martin Luther King Jr. Award, so she was able to have picture taken with him. I just helped her scan the photo into her comp today so she can send copies to all of her family members.


Pretty cool to have a picture of yourself with any President, but with this one in particular it's a hell of a lot of awesome. Seven years later, and he's the most important politician in the world. :-)

ABCD...INFP

I was a psych major in college, so I am somewhat familiar with the whole MBTI/"determing your personality type" subject. I think everyone who has taken Psych 101 had to take the Myers-Briggs test at least once. I never really put much stock in stuff like that, though. The actual Myers-Briggs research is pretty cool, but as is the problem with almost all personality psych research, the true findings get buried and subsumed by pop psychology (even in the introductory level psychology classes themselves). And then there's the whole unpleasant offshoot of the pop psych aspect, that of people trying to make a buck off of telling you how wonderful you are deep down inside and how you're really in the wrong career path and oh yeah, just pay us $49.95 and we will give you a nice little home-grown test to determine exactly what you should do with your life. And if you pay another $19.95, maybe we'll even throw in some graphs to show you what a unique person you are.

That said, though, for some reason tonight I was motivated to read some stuff about my (best guess, anyway) Myers-Briggs personality type, INFP (introverted intuitive feeling perceiving). And it's kinda frightening how well these describe me:
http://similarminds.com/jung/infp.html
http://www.murraystate.edu/secsv/fye/INFP.htm
If I had to try to write some blurb about my personality, I really couldn't do any better than that.

I once read that there is an abnormally high concentration of INTJ types among poker players. Makes sense, I guess (although it makes me picture a bunch of Sklansky type limit nerds...I wonder if there is a difference between the average personality type of limit and no limit players).

In other news, we got about 4 inches of snow today. Generally this makes me happy, as I love the snow (seriously, in my dream world Chicago would have 3 feet of snow on the ground for the whole winter), but when the snow starts coming down in the afternoon and you have to drive home in rush hour traffic, it gets pretty annoying.My usually 15-20 minute drive home would have taken me about 1.5 hrs today...I say would have, as my car broke down 2/3rds of the way home. (As they say on 30 Rock, "Blergh!") I've been driving this car ever since I was 15 and on a driver's permit...so 13 yrs now (yikes!)...and I had never before had it break down on me. So, of course, my life being what it is, I get to have my first break down in the middle of the worst snowstorm so far this winter. Heh. I really can't complain, though. The engine lasted long enough for me to make it into a strip mall parking lot and then I called my dad to come and rescue me with his nice big 4-wheel-drive SUV. I even got to spend the intervening time waiting for him in the local pet shop, which is my general idea of a fun outing. (Yeah, INFP, we're not really the wild and crazy fun type.)

Can't Complain

I have entitled this graph The Learning Curve:



Moved up to PLO200 this weekend and so far the results have been agreeable. Nothing like running like God to boost your confidence in a game. I have also been reading Jeff Hwang's PLO book. I think I finally have starting hand values down pat (only took me, what, 3 months?). I am now on to more advanced concepts like "how to know when you are drawing dead" and "bluffing might actually be possible in this game, on occasion."

Favorite hand of the day, which I will entitle Inducing the Bluff:

Full Tilt Poker Game #9475134378: Table Coburn (6 max) - $1/$2 - Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 16:28:41 ET - 2008/12/13
Seat 1: willpga ($501.80)
Seat 2: famouslastwords ($227.25)
Seat 3: BOTSLAYER ($200)
Seat 4: Skyscrapers ($375.30)
Seat 5: schwingk ($57.30)
Seat 6: Emaninch ($343.15)
Skyscrapers posts the small blind of $1
schwingk posts the big blind of $2
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to famouslastwords [7c Jh Th Qs]
Emaninch calls $2
willpga folds
famouslastwords raises to $9
BOTSLAYER folds
Skyscrapers folds
schwingk folds
Emaninch calls $7
*** FLOP *** [3d Kd 8c]
Emaninch checks
famouslastwords bets $14
Emaninch calls $14
*** TURN *** [3d Kd 8c] [7h]
Emaninch checks
famouslastwords has 15 seconds left to act
famouslastwords bets $38
Emaninch calls $38
*** RIVER *** [3d Kd 8c 7h] [7s]
Emaninch checks
famouslastwords bets $2
Emaninch raises to $131
famouslastwords has 15 seconds left to act
famouslastwords calls $129
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Emaninch shows [5h 9s 2d Ac] a pair of Sevens
famouslastwords shows [7c Jh Th Qs] three of a kind, Sevens
famouslastwords wins the pot ($384) with three of a kind, Sevens
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $387 | Rake $3
Board: [3d Kd 8c 7h 7s]
Seat 1: willpga didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: famouslastwords showed [7c Jh Th Qs] and won ($384) with three of a kind, Sevens
Seat 3: BOTSLAYER (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: Skyscrapers (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: schwingk (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: Emaninch showed [5h 9s 2d Ac] and lost with a pair of Sevens

It may just be the luckbox talking, but the PLO games are so good that I don't know if I'll ever go back to NLH. Well, we'll see. I do kind of miss knowing what my equity is in a hand without having to go online and calculate it.

More later.