Back "home"
I finished moving back to New Orleans, where I lived previously for about a month. I barely went out for that month also, due to school. So when I tell people where I go to school, they invariably make a slight or soundless "Oh," and ask about the state of the city. Which is fine, but honestly I don't know. I barely got to know the strip malls in the suburbs before fleeing, and back then the city looked just the way it has always been described to me, as close to a third world country that a US city can get.
It pretty much looks the same. Here and there you can still see the storm, in bent fences, unkept brush, and the occasional uprooted tree along the road. But honestly, I'm not sure I'd be surprised if I saw that before the storm.
I went home to Las Vegas for a couple of weeks. Played a lot of poker. One of the more interesting hands is related by Keith in one of his recent posts. The player in that hand who showed his hand to a neighbor before folding, claiming a weak kicker, was one of the more fun players to play against in recent memory. His tell basically was any move that he made, as the proper response was to act on the assumption that he was lying. His all-ins were usually out of context pure bluffs.
Even if that estimate is inaccurate, it brings up an interesting point. That style of play is pretty much completely opposite to my own. Usually I play solid hands, rarely bluffing. My style is usually infrequently imaginative. I tried experimenting once, at a homegame, by selectively going all-in almost every hand. IIRC, it took almost 30 minutes for me to be knocked out. I remember because the game was for micro-stakes and the players weren't all that experienced, so the action kept getting held up for minutes at a time. That and I had some serious bad gas that night, so I really wanted to leave.
I mention that because it brings up two questions. How profitable is a maniac-aggressive style of play? What criteria is best to use to determine whether to switch to that mode? The result of all my experiences with poker and maybe even in general is that aggression is rewarded, but whenever I try it, my results are usually negative. So, something to work on.
In other news, F1 has become almost as boring as the 2000-2002 seasons. Alonso is dominating something awful, and now they're talking about regulating costs by "freezing", or basically eliminating engine development. Teams would theoretically then be on a more level playing field. Whether thats real or just a negotiating ploy between the teams and the F1 administration over revenue sharing remains to be seen. But it goes to show how far from any sort of my own personal ideals F1 has become. When I think of F1, half of that is the technology. Otherwise, it'd be no different than IRL or CART or even NASCAR.
In one of my recent F1 posts, I think on cheating, Keith commented with a question about whether it would be more interesting to see cheating or pure racing in F1. I think I would have to say cheating. If pure racing means making everything equal except driver skill, same engines, same chassis, same tires, etc. (or as close as possible to equal cars, there are inevitably manufacturing error-based differences in HP, weight, construction that will give some advantage or disadvantage) then you could pretty much find that kind of racing everywhere.
That's called spec racing, and every track on any given month will have one or two of those races. You can see that at karting tracks too, which would probably make for better spectating due to the smaller track size, not to mention generally that karts look funny.
It's like the difference between high school football and the NFL. When I was playing football, I heard I think either one of the coaches or one of the fathers who always hung around with the coaches at practice say that he preferred high school football because it was "a purer sport." Money isn't involved, there are no superstar players usually. At that level it's purely to play ball and beat other teams.
Fuck the Saints, now that I think about it. This fall I think I might rather get drunk and go watch a high school football game.
But back to the point, pure sport has its merit, but pure racing takes a lot out of what F1 means. Pure racing makes it too much about the driver, which seems to be what the F1 administrators seem to be looking for. But it's an activity thats much more fun to do than to watch.
F1 is definitely about the drivers, but also about the engineers, the politics, the advertisers, the billions of dollars, and of course, the Fosters pit babes. It is the entire package that wins the races, and all these elements together enrich the mythology. Essentially, the stakes are higher. So in a sense it becomes less about racing and more about winning. That's why the cheating, or the "gray area re-interpretations", as just another element, makes it fun to watch and follow.
Granted, it used to be more about the drivers and the car engineers, whereas now it's more about the entire unit, teams are more like corporations nowadays. But still, its fun to see them thrashing about trying to win every two weeks.
It pretty much looks the same. Here and there you can still see the storm, in bent fences, unkept brush, and the occasional uprooted tree along the road. But honestly, I'm not sure I'd be surprised if I saw that before the storm.
I went home to Las Vegas for a couple of weeks. Played a lot of poker. One of the more interesting hands is related by Keith in one of his recent posts. The player in that hand who showed his hand to a neighbor before folding, claiming a weak kicker, was one of the more fun players to play against in recent memory. His tell basically was any move that he made, as the proper response was to act on the assumption that he was lying. His all-ins were usually out of context pure bluffs.
Even if that estimate is inaccurate, it brings up an interesting point. That style of play is pretty much completely opposite to my own. Usually I play solid hands, rarely bluffing. My style is usually infrequently imaginative. I tried experimenting once, at a homegame, by selectively going all-in almost every hand. IIRC, it took almost 30 minutes for me to be knocked out. I remember because the game was for micro-stakes and the players weren't all that experienced, so the action kept getting held up for minutes at a time. That and I had some serious bad gas that night, so I really wanted to leave.
I mention that because it brings up two questions. How profitable is a maniac-aggressive style of play? What criteria is best to use to determine whether to switch to that mode? The result of all my experiences with poker and maybe even in general is that aggression is rewarded, but whenever I try it, my results are usually negative. So, something to work on.
In other news, F1 has become almost as boring as the 2000-2002 seasons. Alonso is dominating something awful, and now they're talking about regulating costs by "freezing", or basically eliminating engine development. Teams would theoretically then be on a more level playing field. Whether thats real or just a negotiating ploy between the teams and the F1 administration over revenue sharing remains to be seen. But it goes to show how far from any sort of my own personal ideals F1 has become. When I think of F1, half of that is the technology. Otherwise, it'd be no different than IRL or CART or even NASCAR.
In one of my recent F1 posts, I think on cheating, Keith commented with a question about whether it would be more interesting to see cheating or pure racing in F1. I think I would have to say cheating. If pure racing means making everything equal except driver skill, same engines, same chassis, same tires, etc. (or as close as possible to equal cars, there are inevitably manufacturing error-based differences in HP, weight, construction that will give some advantage or disadvantage) then you could pretty much find that kind of racing everywhere.
That's called spec racing, and every track on any given month will have one or two of those races. You can see that at karting tracks too, which would probably make for better spectating due to the smaller track size, not to mention generally that karts look funny.
It's like the difference between high school football and the NFL. When I was playing football, I heard I think either one of the coaches or one of the fathers who always hung around with the coaches at practice say that he preferred high school football because it was "a purer sport." Money isn't involved, there are no superstar players usually. At that level it's purely to play ball and beat other teams.
Fuck the Saints, now that I think about it. This fall I think I might rather get drunk and go watch a high school football game.
But back to the point, pure sport has its merit, but pure racing takes a lot out of what F1 means. Pure racing makes it too much about the driver, which seems to be what the F1 administrators seem to be looking for. But it's an activity thats much more fun to do than to watch.
F1 is definitely about the drivers, but also about the engineers, the politics, the advertisers, the billions of dollars, and of course, the Fosters pit babes. It is the entire package that wins the races, and all these elements together enrich the mythology. Essentially, the stakes are higher. So in a sense it becomes less about racing and more about winning. That's why the cheating, or the "gray area re-interpretations", as just another element, makes it fun to watch and follow.
Granted, it used to be more about the drivers and the car engineers, whereas now it's more about the entire unit, teams are more like corporations nowadays. But still, its fun to see them thrashing about trying to win every two weeks.
posted by joe at 11:08 AM
3 comments
