i think my friend tommy angelo came up with that one. tommy is one heck of a guy and i havent seen him in a few years since i also havent been going to the bay area. soon enough ill get back down and look up tommy. he is always fun and comes up with real good sayings and writes good columns about things.

along with tommy i try to see the rest of the bay area crew like el diablo and his buds. some years we get a dinner together in and i miss that.

mostly i get to play in the big no limit game down there in san jose which is fun for me and i do fine.

a big plus is going to santa cruz and seeing all the weirdos and doing a bunch of cool day trips. like the elephant seals at ana nueavo park up the coast a bit.

maybe about February this coming year.

Welcome to the House of Blogs sub-forum Ray Zee. I look forward to reading more contributions from you. I hope you find the niche passion and the endurance needed to keep this thread going.

Good Luck.

recently in a thread i was in, one of the players eluded to that playing against tight nits was very profitable. possibly more so than against loose players. not so in my opinion and the opinion of many others. as it makes sense.

simply tight nits dont put hardly any money into the pots, so the pots stay small. in small pots the rake takes a huge amount of your edge away. perhaps so much it makes games with smallish pots unbeatable.
plus usually they have extra strong starting hands so your big edge of bluffing them out runs into good hands too often.

loose players put money into the pot all the way through the hand with hands that have little chance of winning so your edge on those hands makes your win rate skyrocket against them. total money lost is so much more from the loose players it cant be possible to win more form the nits.

i am not saying you cannot come out ahead in the pots you play with them, but it isnt easy.

am i off base here?

nope, you're not. rake + hands/hr (live) make it unprofitable to sit with nits.

most live players classify old men as tight nits or just tight. a lot of that is true. certainly old players play much tighter than the younger crowd in general. that stands to reason though. younger people are more impetuous and want action. older people want to stay in the game longer.

but in reality i think the older players play closer to what you should play in starting hands than the younger crowd. its just that those old guys tend also to be way too passive in their betting, and way way too passive in their raising requirements. they raise close to the nuts. if they loosened up their betting hands and raising hands it would be very tough to beat them at all. as this is basically what is called tight aggressive. and that is how most good winners play.

ebola is sure scary and i know i dont want to catch it anytime soon. but even if it does spread around our country it certainly will be contained somewhat and the chances of catching it will be slim.

yet so many people are terrified. their chances of dying from ebola are much less than dying from overeating or the fast food they eat. or from a car wreak while driving impaired. i did say impaired and not drunk as pot is now legal in many states and should be included in the driving thing.

so in essence if you are worried about ebola getting you, it should follow that changing your lifestyle would be imminent.

Ray Zee is still alive! And Kicking. Good Lord. I just stumbled on this by pure chance. Glad you are posting in the blog. Now I have reason to come and say hi and see how you are doing.

Glad Tommy Angelo is still about also. Does he post at all on 2+2 like in the old days?

Agree on Ebola - your chance of being killed on the drive to work is about million times more dangerous.

Fall in Montana is beautiful I bet.

still kickin and taking a lickin and coming through fine.
fall is the best time of the year everyplace. oregon too. oregon had two straight summers of little rain and plenty of sunshine. and this year having the best salmon runs in recent history. limits are the norm for them with the coho in force.
oregon has a thriving poker community with many games around. maybe younneed to come home. zeno.

Oregon finally getting some rain just in time for the salmon season. Thinking about moving back sometime soon. Guess what: I purchased my Mom's place near Port Orford. Great fly fishing everywhere and the Rouge is only 1 hr away. Perhaps I should start my own blog - this is your platform.

By the way, since you mentioned it; I should try and meet up with the San Fran crowd in Feb like I did a long time ago. Make sure to mention it in your blog so I can make plans.

Fishing and poker, not too shabby of a way to spend your time.

oregon now has small and some bigger buyin tournaments in most areas of the state. it is social gambling with no rake allowed generally. so most of the tournament money is sent back to the players.

they also have some cash games in many towns and cities. some make the cash games play like a tournament with a specified quitting time and a restart with everyone keeping what chips they have. so its really a regular cash game for all purposes.

the house makes some money off drinks and food. and some places have like a ten dollar a night entry fee to come and play.

overall for a smaller stakes player it is a good place to be. oregon is a friendly state with wonderful people. and did i say has fantastic fishing.

I agree 100% As a strictly Omaha hi-lo player, it's nice to see him not only alive and well, but posting too!

Am very curious about this. As a guy who spent his 20's either locked in a room playing poker, or (In Michael McDonald voice) takin' it to the streets, my girlfriend has converted me into appreciating nature much more, something I never did in Michigan. Now that I'm in Vegas, we go to Zion, and I've been very intrigued in regards to the falls in Montana and Oregon, would love to hear some light shed!

John

if you are talking about the fall of the year both states have wonderful ones. decent weather although oregon is more temperate and montana have cold mornings and nice afternoons.

trees are turning colors in both states with the high country being more prominent. fish are on the move and biting since the hot weather is gone. and in oregon the salmon are running up the rivers to spawn.

poker is also good in both as the pacific northwest is an outdoors area and people do much more during the summer than in other areas. then when the weather cools poker picks up and seasonal workers are now in action.

i just read that Ray Zee is a pseudonym, making you the coolest poker author, imo.

the stock market took its dip and has come back. being scared of ups and downs just doesnt get it. but being a poker player or gambler you learn to pass off ups and downs as merely nothing to worry or even consider most times.

with the price of oil dropping like the pants on a hot teenager it gives us a chance to get more oil company stocks cheaply. you do know oil will go back up in price. exon is the big one and will be around long after we are gone and a lot higher in price. andarko petroleum gives you bang for the buck with much more fluctuation. occidental petroleum is one ive been in for many decades. and will by more.

also think about stocks in companies that have mid level income and lower income people for customers. gas prices are low so that adds about 50 a month income for them and you know they will spend whatever they have available.
so it has to go somewhere. just figure it out. and you get the cash.

I Non Discretionary

1. food - grocery stores (KR) food producers (Dean, Tyson, Kraft)
2. medicine- big pharma (Pfizer, Bristol, Merck)

II Discretionary

1. alcohol - beer (InBev, Molson, SABMiller), liquor (Diageo, Brown-Forman)
2. entertainment - movies (Disney, Vivendi)
3. weed (?)

The companies listed are not recommendations but merely suggestions. Do the work yourself or see a financial advisor.

not the first time i had a pack rat in a cabin but this guy got me good. a pack rat is the same as a wood rat. not the same rat like in the cities and sewers. they are cute and like to steal bright shiny things.
this guy chewed his way through the floor of my cabin and decided it would be a nice place to live this winter. i hadnt been there in a while so he had it good till then.
after the hole in the floor he made about three giant three foo square foot nest made of garbage things he brought in from the woods. next he chewed up about ten books and scattered the pages around along with his smelly urine and droppings. got into closets and places and brought out things like bars of soap,tooth brushes and pens, chewed them up and other things that were shiny.
so when i found this terrible mess out came the rat traps. i set them up but had to go away on a trip for a month and hoped when i got back the cabin wasnt ruined as it could easily be.
it turned out he sprung one trap but didnt get by the havaheart live trap. but after a month in it he didnt quite make it. cleaned up a small mess and now have my cabin back although it will be a little smelly for a time.
the last one made his nest in my cars motor area and chewed up a pile of things.
if i can get another ten years before another gets me i am a happy camper.

well as you get older most people get cataracts in theirs eyes. so it was my turn to get them. actually i had them for a few years and finally my vision got bad enough i had to get the surgery. it is an expensive little deal and by little the operation only takes ten minutes an eye. they only do one eye until it heals and then the other. luckily its almost free thanks to the payments i made all my life to medicare.
its the second day and my vision is still clouded but seems to be better as it goes on. after the wait i should have better vision than before. i hope.

so no poker for a few days and of course i missed some really good games.
as ive said many times as it gets colder outside and the golf and such stop the poker gets real good and thats the best time to play. hunting season is here and a few are or will be missing from the games but they are going to be great for awhile.
my friend pavel is in vegas right now but i havent heard as to how he is doing so far. i wish him the best of luck. he got plenty of good advice from me on how to handle his play and what to do. if he listens he will come back better loaded for bear. keeping money in vegas is tough and you have to have a clear cut plan and follow it to a t or you arent going to come home with more than you brought with you.

its going on now for much of the month of november. there are lots of tournaments with cheap buyins of 200 or so. with a couple in the 1600 range.
so plenty of medium and smaller stake players have and are descending on vegas to hang out and play some poker.

these tournys are and should be good as the top players arent interested in them so your opponents are more easily beaten. and thats good.

best of all the cash games run all night and spill over to some other casinos, like belagio and aria. they will be very good and a great time to be in vegas. if you cant make money here then give it up. this should be a duck shoot if you can control yourself.

I am always amazed at the low quality of play through all stakes levels in LV. So many people flying in every day who don't play a lot, want to drink, have fun, et cetera. Nothing like the constant grind back home in Chicago, where our games are populated by intelligent, tight, creative societal rejects that NEED to win.

But alas, so many traps in Vegas, a town designed to break you. From the pit to the machines, the waitresses, the night life, the night "ladies", the race and sport book, the feeling that 100's are just like 10's anywhere else in the world.

Takes a strong guy to pull it off.

it happens all the time. i have seen it over and over and it is such a shame.
the best or good players from some place sooner or later make a vegas trip. we all do it. a certain portion of them lose and go broke and dont come back, or do and go broke again playing poker. thats life. most arent good enough to win in the big city games against real professionals.

however many do win because they play really well and at first try to keep all their ducks in a row. but sooner or later they get ahead decent money and it goes to their head. they play too high for their bankroll and lose it all. or they play too long of sessions or against better players without game selection.

and then those that get bored or get stuck and steam and head for the pit and lose it all soon there. most cannot recover and lose the ability to play tight and grind a giant loss back. and leave town and arent seen again.

then there are select few that are smart enough to make it and those are the ones still in action.

well getting old is no fun. so this month i had two eye operations to have cataracts removed so i can see better. a few times before and after each operation i had to go in for eye tests and whatever.

the operation itself is short and painless. hard to believe but true. no pain at all. they give you a bunch of eye drops for about a half hour and then take you in and blow up the cataract with some probe and then insert a new lens in the eye. sounds scary and it was .but it took only about ten minutes and i was out.

same for the second operation. three days of kinda cloudy vision in the eye and then it was back to 20/20 vision for distance. big change from seeing blurry road signs and muffled colors. you dont notice how your sight degenerates when its so slow a process over some years.

i still will need reading glasses as you only get good distance vision and not both. they have some lenses that do both but problems arise and i didnt want that as there isnt an easy way to redo things once they are done.

playing poker is much better even without them finished healing as i can see the flop much more clearly.
cataracts dont come back so it usually is best to take care of them soon after you find out about it. i waited and wish i hadnt. but eye stuff is scary.

Glad it came out well for you Ray. Must be useful to actually see the flop cards - you don't have to bluff your way out of the tight spots when you mistake a 8 of spades for a 9 of spades when holding that Ten-Nine of spades. Bad way to lose your stack.

And now that you see better it may improve your fly-fishing also!!

As usual you hit the nail on the head in poker savvy. I was/am decent at various poker games but am glad I stuck with a great job that paid me really well for more than 10 years with great benefits and 401k, etc and I piled up a nice nest egg. Think I made the right decision and came out ahead in the long run by not trying to turn pro. May start playing again often but never for a living - just to supplement income and for the fun of it. For us old farts, I think that is the best way.

Also, I took some advance from Ray years ago and invested some in the stock market. That has turned out well for me. Didn't get rich and did not except to but I made some extra bucks that I could then use on Roth IRA's and other retirement investments. Plus I now have over 100k in the market and I'm doing well enough - and the long term/haul is what I'm after. So Thanks Ray - you helped me get on track. I did also do much reading and studying on my own so I think I deserve some credit, but Ray did give good advance and a kick in the pants to smart investing.

great for you zeno. i knew you would get ahead and do well. letting time compound your money is the key to making it in the long run and staying away from those potshot investments that might make 20 to 1 for your dough only to lose over and over.

ive always thought of poker as a stepping stone to a better future rather than it being my future. although i do admit ive played more poker than i should have in my lifetime.

lucked out again this year with an early freeze. we had a week of very low temps so my pond that ice skating is great on froze to a perfect glass surface.
for a week it was some of the best ice skating you could ever imagine. about a quarter of a mile of it is fantastic.

usually then comes some snow and warmer temps and the ice is trashed for the season. some times it rains hard then freezes again after the snow is gone and we get a second chance at it. but in town there is a pond the city maintains so that is a good option.

it takes awhile to get decent at skating but not too long if you work at it. so far its been about ten years since i have fallen down. a few times close but not yet. i dont do any tricks or i would be on my but every day.
i look forward to this sport each winter for a time.

i hope all the poker players had a good thanksgiving. and dinner of course. the dinner is what its all about as the original reasons for the holiday are basically lost.

and a good chance you may lose your money as well. mostly because during the holidays the action players arent out as much and more regs. are playing each other. so if you arent in the top tier of players you easily can turn into a loser for the period. although some places the games are fine or better so there it doesnt apply.

so if your games are slow take a trip or vacation. or if you must still play every day then take a trip to a poker area you have been thinking about to check it out. it helps your mind as well.