Mistreatment of the environment is larger than global warming. Drought is a huge factor too which has non-global warming components.

In the 1930's, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California got together, measured how much water ran through the Colorado River, and divided it up. It turns out they measured it at a higher volume than long term average, so every year the situation gets worse. Disproportionate growth among the signees exacerbated the drought problem.

It's not necessarily global warming related (maybe, maybe not) and it's not necessarily "mistreating" the environment (it was well-intentioned).

If you had a time machine, you should definitely go back and found Los Angeles elsewhere. It is in a geologically terrible location for a metropolis.

No worse than New Orleans though...and our idiot government charged us to REBUILD that sorry place in the same spot, below the elevation of the nearby lake, and where the river wants to be. Now that is disrespecting the environment!

Not to get in the way of all the fun "man caused changes to the environment" as the fire causes, but wasn't there actual arson involved? Wouldn't the fires being intentionally set make it directly man-caused without the need for intermediary stuff?

This time around all but one had a suspicious ignition point.
Believe they are beginning the arson investigation today.
I was told back in '07 it was started by a lost hiker with a flare gun. (Not sure if there was more than one)

We've had a few bad ones around here caused by arsonists or criminally negligent people. I'm sure the people who have their lives crushed are particularly angered. I think one of the biggest just up the canyon was a volunteer fireman violating a burn ban to burn some cleared brush, but I might have the details wrong.

Well, just like B&M threads, it usually takes a few mistakes by diffrent peoppe to create a gigantic ****up.

This one may have been started by people, but there are also plenty of lightning strikes which start fires too. The approach has to be multipronged - reducing underbrush, stricter zoning, stopping arsonists, and educating hikers.

Some of the problem may be attributable to where people choose to build. See The Control of Nature, by John McPhee.

During the big cycle of wildfires in 2003, urban critic Mike Davis wrote this (emphasis added):

Davis also tackled the subject of Southern California wildfires in his book Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. There he quotes fire expert Richard Minnich (professor of earth sciences at UC Riverside) as saying, "Fuel, not ignitions, causes fire. You can send an arsonist to Death Valley and he'll never be arrested."

The issue is land management in Southern California. Fire is part of the natural ecology. Since the area was developed in the early part of the previous century, fire suppression has been the policy, allowing the chaparral to accumulate massive fuel load.

So I think the consensus here is that LA should be burned to the ground.

Around here, mountain living is popular. You have expensive houses in places where there were never structures. It makes fire fighting harder, makes strategies of "only protect structures" have to cover more ground, and provides more people to accidentally ignite fires. Of late, you've had fire districts demand clearing of trees and brush to their required distances even saying "we won't even try to protect your house if you don't clear vegetation around it." OFC, if you live in the mountains, you'd probably prefer to have beautiful trees right around your house.

We have the beetle kill problem to go with over-abundance of fuel. I'd guess several big fire seasons are coming. At some point (and that is probably now), fire season isn't an emergency. There are just people who spend every summer fighting fires. Standard. Sad if it is in your neighborhood, but not unexpected and not out of normal.

Apologies if I missed discussion, I did a quick search and didnt see anything.

Post for the BayArea folks.

Casino M8trix news:

Casino M8trix to lose license?

San Jose: Casino M8trix charged with hiding profits, could lose license

Hopefully see some of you guys in Vegas in two weeks.

Hope all is well,
Joe

it's really terrible here, I lost $20k straight playing 20 this year and played so well I should only have lost $10k. Even OTR is seldom in the top 3 best fastest winners at our typical 20 games.

To the 80-160 regular @ bay 101 on friday night who waited till he made eye contact with the fish strolling in to the casino before leaping to the empty seat on his left:

Look, I'm not going to insult your intelligence by claiming that predatory seat changes are long term -EV and all that. But do you have to make it so goddam obvious? Here are a few tips:

a. If your current seat is not that great, and there are two empty seats next to each other, just pre-emptively move to the leftmost one. Hopefully the fish will walk in and take the other one and you get jesus-seat without playing musical chairs in front of him.

b. Pass up on some marginal seat change situations when fish are present at the table. (e.g. your first up on the must move)

c. If you want to move to a better seat, wait till you've lost a pot then frustratedly toss a chip to the new seat. Fish understand that.

Anyone know if there is mid stakes LHE in Toronto?
Played with a kid a lot last summer at Bellagio who I believe was from there (always wore a bluejays hat) and got the impression he was more a live player than online.

I have never been there, but I have read that there is good LHE in Brantford, which I think is kind of a distant suburb on Toronto, plus in Toronto itself every summer when there is a temporary poker room at the CNE.

He's online guy. Think there's like private 20 games that run but unsure of the details.

none of the "kids" in blue jays hats who played bellagio 40/80 last summer are online guys

I'm just assuming it's the same guy I played 80 And 1-2 with and was also isn't my tables in some 5k tourneys, and I know who he was online.

I played with a couple people from toronto that implied there was some mid-high stakes LHE games. Maybe private?

I already answered about the casino in Brantford. I have heard they have 10-20 and 20-40 games.

Right now I'm playing in a game with someone who played $10K-$20K with his own money. Makes me feel like a high roller.

This

Meh, I will.

Let's start by admiring the game. This upper midstakes game goes more regularly than most midstakes games, and may be second only to the Commerce. It has a deep player pool and a lot of shot takers.

This game does not happen by accident. Or at least entirely by accident.

There are daytime regs who show up to start the game. They happily play each other until others show up. They take abuse from the fish. They don't jump around the table. They don't call the floor for minor rule infractions. They're courteous to the staff and each other.

And the staff nerf the game too. They don't pick people up when they've been gone an hour and a half, they know peoples' names, and as far as I know, they don't dick around with lists.

Seat changes are bad in the long run by contributing to an atmosphere of hostility. No one incident is a big deal, but the cumulative effect is large, like a roof caving in because of snowfall.

Maybe the Friday night game is so strong that people can dick around and the game will still be strong. But think long term. Poker players get minor raises by improving their games and major raises by moving up. If you plan to play for a while and ever want a big raise, you not only need to keep the 80 alive but lay the groundwork for a bigger regular game in the future. And that means making sure people are 110% comfortable in the 80 and itching to play bigger. A lot of people think that not immediately breaking a game is A-level game management. It's really D-level and the minimum that you can do without being a ****up.

Aggressive seat changing is not EV- in the sense that you will actually lose money by doing it. It's EV- in the sense that you won't win as much by doing it excessively.

My suggestions:

0. Silverbail's suggestions are good.

1. I suggest regs pretend to have a favorite seat. When a table is relatively empty, you pick that seat. That way, you don't end up with a 4-handed game between seats 1-4 because everyone wants to be to the left of seat 1.

2. Look at the list to see who's first up. It's not generally a huge secret to know who's the next person to sit down. If you want to be to his left, plan ahead.

3. Never seat change more than once a session. Never seat change to someone's left more than once every 5-6 of that person's sessions. Look, if someone comes in every 3 months and you're always on his left, it may be 1% of your sessions but it's 100% of his.

I like all the above suggestions except maybe 1. Picking a favorite seat is going to basically tie you to that seat and draw attention to you when you switch to a different one. I guess I don't understand your argument for how it helps in a short-handed game?

I will seat change and sit out the appropriate number of hands under the guise that I need time to use the restroom.

I think he's saying that if four regs "prefer" to game start in the 2, 4, 6, and 8 seats, they all get the benefit of the random losing player sitting in a seat good for them. This is better than the 4 game starters sitting 1,2,3,4 and fighting over who gets to be "left of seat 1". I assume either seat 1 is the spot or because they're live pros and are silly enough to want position on each other rather than position on the guy who loses money when he chooses to sit.