Truth

While looking at smoking websites I stumbled across two cool things. First is this email motivator. Reminds me of a story I heard once of a business in Japan that would walk around airports with signs where people could buy compliments. You'd pay some girl $1 and she'd give you a compliment about how you have a cool walk or a great smile... I'm going to look and see if I can't find a really long list of compliments. That way, whenever you needed to give one, you could just pull it out of a compliment jar.

Second cool thing I found is The Truth. It's a website with all sorts of cool stuff... all I can say is it's quality. It's not cheesy and boring like most of the other stop smoking sites.

According to the site :

1 in every 5 US deaths can be attributed to tobacco products
1 out of 3 smokers will eventually die of a tobacco-related illness
In 1984, one tobacco company referred to new customers as "replacement smokers"
Tobacco companies make a product that kills 440,000 Americans a year
1,200 a day
Every :08 seconds someone dies due to tobacco

Anyway, check out the site. Go to CrazyWorld.

See the Coffee Cup

There's a list of pretty good relationship tips at Men's Health. It's called "Confessions of a Perfect Husband" by Hugh O'Neill, and it's pretty good. I figure if it applies to marriages, it probably applies to long-term relationships too. I've been seeing Gianna longer than my parents knew each other before they got married...

Here's one tip that stuck out :

No. 8 - See the coffee cup
The perfect husband understands that women often get confused by stuff that doesn't matter, as in the undwashed coffee cup that's been sitting in the sink for days. Few wives understand that it isn't that we see the coffee cup and elect not to rinse it, but rather that the neural link between our eyeballs and brains actually keeps us from seeing the cup. The gender biology of why we don't see the cup comes down to this We have a lot of more important things on our minds. Will the Bills cover? Any chance of sex today? I think my biceps really are getting bigger. Our minds are cauldrons of profound thoughts. Any wonder we occasionally overlook some stray dishware?

Charge: We don't help enough around the house. We're guilty. But here's the fix: Do more. not a lot more-just a little more. One of the best things about women is that they really appreciate the smallest sign that you're trying. They're effort oriented.

Try walking into a room with a woman's mind. Imagine that your brain has space in it for trivialities like unwashed cups. Ask yourself, If I were a psycho neat freak, what would bother me in here? The coffee cup-whichsometimestakes the form of the kids' sneakers under the table or the towel you didn't put away after taking a shower-will suddenly reveal itself to you.


Pretty good stuff. Read the rest of the article here.

Photos!

The photos section of my website is now active.

Big thanks to my girlfriend Gianna for taking all of the photos, working them over in Photoshop, creating all the buttons, and coding the html. Check out our picture bottom row, second to the left.

Thanks also to Bobby (top row, second to left) for helping with the mouse-overs and the pic-loading routine.

Hollywood Stock Exchange

Here is one of my favorite sites on the Internet... Hollywood Stock Exchange, or HSX for short. It's basically a play-money stock exchange for movies and actors. You manage a portfolio and try to build up H$s based on the performance of movies, actors, etc. They used to give out cash prizes when you hit certain milestones... those days are long gone now, though.

I'd really like to start a little poker player HSX league. If anyone's interested, leave a comment here and we'll get the league together this New Year's.

So sick and tired...

Ever wonder why you never hear a bad beat story start out "So I had 74o in early position, right?" Here's a bad beat story... I was in the middle of a fight with my girlfriend, and also playing several tourneys online. In one of the tournaments, we're down to 13 people... pays 9. I'm in the SB with QQ and the cutoff pushes all-in. He's got about half of my stack. I call and as I do, Gianna says "FIVES". And the guy turns over fives... and the flop comes Q55. Sick. So then she starts laughing and is like "See, I said fives!" Great. That shit makes me want to have a cig. Looks like not smoking is going to be a little harder for me now that I'm back from Missouri.

The Jungle Rule

Here's a little thought that I picked up from Amir Vahedi a few months ago over some BBQ ribs. Amir, by the way, is ultra-cool and one fierce competitor at the tables.

In tournaments, you've got to observe the jungle rule. On nature shows, you don't see a tiger attacking a gorilla do you? You go after the weak stacks and leave the strong ones alone.

Pretty good advice... the other day in an PL Holdem tournament, I started at the final table with about 6x as much as anyone else except for one other guy... we got it all in on a hand where I flopped top two pair and he had a straight-flush draw. He got there, and I ended up getting 6th. You might say I got screwed... or you might say I just didn't observe the jungle rule.

The Perfect Path

Flew back from Missouri to Fresno today. Came up with a few thoughts on the way back. First one was when I was thinking about the perfect path. Wrote this down in the spirit of the narraration of Pi.

9:35 am. Restate my assumptions. One. That there exists in every poker tournament perfect opportunities where you can increase your chip count without any risk. Two. These perfect opportunities arise with enough frequency that a player can gather more chips than are being blinded off. Three. If a player can capture every perfect opportunity, he can get heads-up without ever seeing a flop. Therefore...

It is possible to win every poker tournament that you play

Word of the Day

Rakehell : \Rake"hell'\, n. A lewd dissolute fellow; a debauchee; a rake.

"It seldom doth happen in any way of life, that a sluggard and a rakehell do not go together." -- Barrow.

Getting Better at Poker

I'm guessing that most people who are going to be reading this blog are probably more interested in what I think about poker then what I think about the latest CNN story or last week's big blockbuster. So I'm going to try to start posting some more of my poker ideas.

A lot of people ask me how they can take their game to the next level. The answer isn't really that simple. You can't just think of poker as one skill. It's a whole set of skills. Let's look at a few of the skills that you need to be a contender.
----------
General Skills
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• Emotional Control : This is how you handle losing (and winning for that matter).
  
• Reading Hands : This is the ability to put an opponent on a hand.
  
• Math and Probabilities : Knowing the odds of getting hands and cards to come.
  
• Hand Selection : Knowing which hands to play before the flop (or on third street).
  
• Betting : Knowing when to value bet your hand.
  
• Bluffing : Knowing when to take a stab at taking a pot.
  
• Money Management : Knowing how to manage your bankroll is essential.
  
• Game Selection : Figuring out which game to play.
  
• Opponent Manipulation : Changing the way your opponents play.
  
• Changing Gears : Most important in tournaments, knowing when to change your game.
  
• Discipline : Being able to implement what you already know.
  
• Self Control : How you handle yourself away from the table.
  

Ok... enough about poker for now... I'm going to go into more detail about how you can improve each of those skills later on. For now, check out this cool site : JuxtInteractive.com.

It's coming right for us!

Looks like deer hunting has gone virtual. Check out this article from CNN. I told Bobby about it and he said it reminded him of an idea he had a few years ago for a website called FeedMySnake.com. He'd set up an aquarium with a big boa constrictor and some sort of mechanical feeding device that would be connected to the Internet. Visitors could pay five bucks to release a mouse into the aquarium and then watch the snake go for it. He said he could link it to a sister site called SaveMyMouse.com. Genius.

WANTED : Poker Stuff

One of the next sites that we're working on at Intervault is called Poker Marketplace. It's up to me to find the perfect poker-related stuff to sell. Besides your standard fare (books, videos, chips, tables) I'm also trying to sell gift items... you know, the stuff you get for the girl or guy who has everything. How about a cardigan with dogs playing poker on it or a t-shirt that says "got poker?". Or better yet, an old 1908 postcard like the one shown below... which is being sold on eBay right now.


So if you ever come across something that is really cool, I'd love to hear about it. And if you have anything that you want to get rid of that is related to poker, shoot me an email and we'll see what we can work out.

Cold Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving
So I'm on Day 8 of no smoking. I'm going cold turkey sans nicotine... no patches, no gum, no nothing. Instead I developed my own "proven" way to stop smoking. I bummed a cig from my step-brother George and wrote in really small print all the reasons I wanted to stop smoking right on the white part of the fag. Then I wrote "LUCKY" on the filter. The plan was as follows... anytime I started jonesing for a smoke, I'd pull the cig out and read the reasons why I'm stopping... then I'd put it in my mouth to help get over that hand to mouth part of the habit. Also, if I'm ever in a spot where I look down and don't feel like I'm lucky, then I'll smoke the cigarrette (ink and all) and make a new one.


Well, it sounds stupid but it's helping. It's starting to get really effective in curbing the desire to smoke because after a few days behind my ear or stuffed in my pocket, the thing started getting pretty nasty. It's been dropped on the floor a bunch of times, it's all oily from being behind my ear, it's starting to kind of smell bad. And each time I get the urge, I put this dirty fucker in my mouth and start chewing a bit. It's pretty unpleasant... and it kind of makes me nauseous just thinking about it. Pretty effective conditioning... associating that negative feeling with wanting a cig. I've promised myself that the next cig I'm smoking is this foul thing. Maybe I'll smoke again... and then again, maybe not. ;)

It's making poker pretty hard. I had a prop buddy in San Jose's Garden City when I used to work there that stopped smoking. He said the worst part was that he'd tilt a lot more. Almost lost his bankroll.

With the new company I'm working on, I put almost my whole roll into the business bank account as the seed money. Now I'm left with a bankroll of just shy of $500. It's pretty sad, but it does keep me working on business instead of playing poker. I did play a little bit today, though, and got pretty close to winning a tournament. It's been awhile since I've won that last hand... not since Ben and JLo were still together.

Every Bill a Lottery Ticket

I'm in Columbia Missouri for the Thanksgiving holiday. My family is out here. I've got a little brother named Austin who's 4. I took him to gymnastics today. Nothing funnier than watching a bunch of four year old kids trying to do a cartwheel.

Also went to go see National Treasure. Decent movie... but made a lot better because I was with my mom. We don't get a lot of movies in together with me being in Fresno.

One really cool thing about the movie's website is they have a game going where they use the serial number of dollar bills as a lottery ticket. This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, ever since my brother Bobby first told me to check out Where's George. I was interested in serial numbers anyway because of the game Liars Poker.

Did you know that some bills are worth more than others just because of that game? A normal $1 bill with 6 3s in the serial number just sold on eBay last week for $2. And one with the serial number 44441111 sold for $5! I've got one in my wallet with the serial # 41141167... I wonder if I could get $4.11 for it.

Rules for Liar's Poker

What the world needs now / is another folk singer

So this is my first post in my blog. I guess a little introduction is in order. My name is Dutch Boyd... actually my first name is Russ, but I got the nickname Dutch a few years ago and it stuck.



Most people know me as a poker player. I started playing professionally when I was 18, and caught my first big break at the 2003 World Series of Poker where I came in 12th, won $80,000, and got more air time on ESPN than I probably deserved. After that, I put together the crew and started on the tournament trail. This year at the 2004 WSOP, the crew took home three bracelets, but I didn't take home any personally... just a second in a Razz tournament. It made ESPN, though, which might be more valuable thangold.

Before I was a poker player, I was a child prodigy. I started college when I was 12 and finished up with my law degree at 18. I had a pretty bright future as a lawyer, but I gave it all up to play cards.

Now I live in Fresno, California where I'm working on a new business called Intervault and a concept called RakeFree. It's a website development business focusing on poker sites. Check out InterVault.net for more info.

I'm going to be trying to post on here pretty regularly. I'll be talking about poker, business, friends, entertainment, women, family, politics... basically anything that I feel like sharing with the world.